13227	----	THE LORD OF DYNEVOR: A Tale of the Times of Edward the First by Evelyn Everett-Green. CHAPTER I. DYNEVOR CASTLE. "La-ha-hoo! la-ha-hoo!" Far down the widening valley, and up the wild, picturesque ravine, rang the strange but not unmusical call. It awoke the slumbering echoes of the still place, and a hundred voices seemed to take up the cry, and pass it on as from mouth to mouth. But the boy's quick ears were not to be deceived by the mocking voices of the spirits of solitude, and presently the call rang out again with greater clearness than before: "La-ha-hoo!" The boy stood with his head thrown back, his fair curls floating in the mountain breeze, his blue eyes, clear and bright and keen as those of a wild eaglet, fixed upon a craggy ridge on the opposite side of the gorge, whilst his left hand was placed upon the collar of a huge wolfhound who stood beside him, sniffing the wind and showing by every tremulous movement his longing to be off and away, were it not for the detaining hand of his young master. The lad was very simply dressed in a tunic of soft, well-dressed leather, upon the breast of which was stamped some device which might have been the badge of his house. His active limbs were encased in the same strong, yielding material, and the only thing about him which seemed to indicate rank or birth was a belt with a richly-chased gold clasp and a poniard with a jewelled hilt. Perhaps the noble bearing of the boy was his best proof of right to the noble name he bore. One of the last of the royal house of Dynevor, he looked every inch a prince, as he stood bare-headed in the sunlight amidst the everlasting hills of his well-loved home, too young to see the clouds which were settling so darkly and so surely upon the bright horizon of his life -- his dreams still of glory and triumph, culminating in the complete emancipation of his well-loved country from the hated English yoke. The dog strained and whined against the detaining clasp upon his neck, but the boy held him fast. "Nay, Gelert, we are not going a-hunting," he said. "Hark! is not that the sound of a horn? Are they not even now returning? Over yon fell they come. Let me but hear their hail, and thou and I will be off to meet them. I would they heard the news first from my lips. My mother bid me warn them. I wot she fears what Llewelyn and Howel might say or do were they to find English guests in our hall and they all unwarned." Once more the boy raised his voice in the wild call which had awakened the echoes before, and this time his practised ear distinguished amongst the multitudinous replies an answering shout from human lips. Releasing Gelert, who dashed forward with a bay of delight, the lad commenced springing from rock to rock up the narrowing gorge, until he reached a spot where the dwindling stream could be crossed by a bound; from which spot a wild path, more like a goat track than one intended for the foot of man, led upwards towards the higher portions of the wild fell. The boy sped onwards with the fleetness and agility of a born mountaineer. The hound bounded at his side; and before either had traversed the path far, voices ahead of them became distinctly audible, and a little group might be seen approaching, laden with the spoils of the chase. In the van of the little party were three lads, one of whom bore so striking a resemblance to the youth who now hastened to meet them, that the relationship could not be for a moment doubted. As a matter of fact the four were brothers; but they followed two distinct types -- Wendot and Griffeth being fair and bright haired, whilst Llewelyn and Howel (who were twins) were dark as night, with black hair and brows, swarthy skins, and something of the wildness of aspect which often accompanies such traits. Wendot, the eldest of the four, a well-grown youth of fifteen, who was walking slightly in advance of his brothers, greeted Griffeth's approach with a bright smile. "Ha, lad, thou shouldst have been with us! We have had rare sport today. The good fellows behind can scarce carry the booty home. Thou must see the noble stag that my bolt brought down. We will have his head to adorn the hall -- his antlers are worth looking at, I warrant thee. But what brings thee out so far from home? and why didst thou hail us as if we were wanted?" "You are wanted," answered Griffeth, speaking so that all the brothers might hear his words. "The mother herself bid me go in search of you, and it is well you come home laden with meat, for we shall need to make merry tonight. There are guests come to the castle today. Wenwynwyn was stringing his harp even as I came away, to let them hear his skill in music. They are to be lodged for so long as they will stay; but the manner of their errand I know not." "Guests!" echoed all three brothers in a breath, and very eagerly; "why, that is good hearing, for perchance we may now learn some news. Come these strangers from the north? Perchance we shall hear somewhat of our noble Prince Llewelyn, who is standing out so boldly for the rights of our nation. Say they not that the English tyrant is on our borders now, summoning him to pay the homage he repudiates with scorn? Oh, I would that this were a message summoning all true Welshmen to take up arms in his quarrel! Would not I fly to his standard, boy though I be! And would I not shed the last drop of my blood in the glorious cause of liberty!" Llewelyn was the speaker, and his black eyes were glowing fiercely under their straight bushy brows. His face was the least boyish of any of the four, and his supple, sinewy frame had much of the strength of manhood in it. The free, open-air life that all these lads had lived, and the training they had received in all martial and hardy exercises, had given them strength and height beyond their years. It was no idle boast on the part of Llewelyn to speak of his readiness to fight. He would have marched against the foe with the stoutest of his father's men-at-arms, and doubtless have acquitted himself as well as any; for what the lads lacked in strength they made up in their marvellous quickness and agility. The love of fighting seemed born in all these hardy sons of Wales, and something of warfare was known to them even now, from the never-ending struggles between themselves, and their resistance of the authority, real or assumed, of the Lords of the Marches. But petty forays and private feuds with hostile kinsmen was not the kind of fighting these brothers longed to see and share. They had their own ideas and aspirations, and eager glances were turned upon Griffeth, lest he might be the bearer of some glorious piece of news that would mean open warfare with England. But the boy's face was unresponsive and even a little downcast. He gave a quick glance into the fierce, glowing face of Llewelyn, and then his eyes turned upon Wendot. "There is no news like that," he said slowly. "The guests who have come to Dynevor are English themselves." "English!" echoed Llewelyn fiercely, and he turned away with a smothered word which sounded like an imprecation upon all the race of foreigners; whilst Howel asked with quick indignation: "What right have English guests at Dynevor? Why were they received? Why did not our good fellows fall upon them with the sword or drive them back the way they came? Oh, if we had but been there --" "Tush, brother!" said young Griffeth quickly; "is not our father lord of Dynevor? Dost think that thou canst usurp his authority? And when did ever bold Welshmen fall upon unarmed strangers to smite with the sword? Do we make war upon harmless travellers -- women and children? Fie upon thee! it were a base thought. Let not our parents hear thee speak such words." Howel looked a little discomfited by his younger brother's rebuke, though he read nothing but sympathy and mute approbation in Llewelyn's sullen face and gloomy eyes. He dropped a pace or so behind and joined his twin, whilst Wendot and Griffeth led the way in front. "Who are these folks?" asked Wendot; "and whence come they? And why have they thus presented themselves unarmed at Dynevor? Is it an errand of peace? And why speakest thou of women and children?" "Why, brother, because the traveller has his little daughter with him, and her woman is in their train of servants. I know not what has brought them hither, but I gather they have lost their road, and lighted by chance on Dynevor. Methinks they are on a visit to the Abbey of Strata Florida; but at least they come as simple, unarmed strangers, and it is the boast of Wales that even unarmed foes may travel through the breadth and length of the land and meet no harm from its sons. For my part I would have it always so. I would not wage war on all alike. Doubtless there are those, even amongst the English, who are men of bravery and honour." "I doubt it not," answered Wendot, with a gravity rather beyond his years. "If all our mother teaches us be true, we Welshmen have been worse enemies to one another than ever the English have been. I would not let Llewelyn or Howel hear me say so, and I would fain believe it not. But when we see how this fair land has been torn and rent by the struggles after land and power, and how our own kinsman, Meredith ap Res, is toying with Edward, and striving to take from us the lands we hold yet -- so greatly diminished from the old portion claimed by the lords of Dynevor -- we cannot call the English our only or even our greatest foes. Ah, if Wales would but throw aside all her petty feuds, and join as brothers fighting shoulder to shoulder for her independence, then might there be some hope! But now --" Griffeth was looking with wide-open, wondering eyes into his brother's face. He loved and reverenced Wendot in a fashion that was remarkable, seeing that the elder brother was but two years and a half his senior. But Wendot had always been grave and thoughtful beyond his years, and had been taken much into the counsels of his parents, so that questions which were almost new to the younger lad had been thought much of by the eldest, the heir of the house of Dynevor. "Why, brother, thou talkest like a veritable monk for learning," he said. "I knew not thou hadst the gift of such eloquent speech. Methought it was the duty of every free-born son of Wales to hate the English tyrant." "Ay, and so I do when I think of his monstrous claims," cried Wendot with flashing eyes. "Who is the King of England that he should lay claim to our lands, our homage, our submission? My blood boils in my veins when I think of things thus. And yet there are moments when it seems the lesser ill to yield such homage to one whom the world praises as statesman and soldier, than to see our land torn and distracted by petty feuds, and split up into a hundred hostile factions. But let us not talk further of this; it cuts me to the heart to think of it. Tell me more of these same travellers. How did our parents receive them? And how long purpose they to stay?" "Nay, that I have not heard. I was away over yon fell with Gelert when I saw the company approach the castle, and ere I could find entrance the strangers had been received and welcomed. The father of the maiden is an English earl, Lord Montacute they call him. He is tall and soldier-like, with an air of command like unto our father's. The damsel is a fair-faced maiden, who scarce opens her lips; but she keeps close to our mother's side, and seems loath to leave her for a moment. I heard her father say that she had no mother of her own. Her name, they say, is Lady Gertrude." "A damsel at Dynevor," said Wendot, with a smile; "methinks that will please the mother well." "Come and see," cried Griffeth eagerly. "Let us hasten down to the castle together." It was easy work for the brothers to traverse the rocky pathway. Dangerous as the descent looked to others, they were as surefooted as young chamois, and sprang from rock to rock with the utmost confidence. The long summer sunlight came streaming up the valley in level rays of shimmering gold, bathing the loftier crags in lambent fire, and filling the lower lands with layers of soft shadow flecked here and there with gold. A sudden turn in the narrow gorge, through which ran a brawling tributary of the wider Towy, brought the brothers full in sight of their ancestral home, and for a few seconds they paused breathless, gazing with an unspeakable and ardent love upon the fair scene before them. The castle of Dynevor (or Dinas Vawr = Great Palace) stood in a commanding position upon a rocky plateau overlooking the river Towy. From its size and splendour -- as splendour went in those days -- it had long been a favourite residence with the princes of South Wales; and in a recent readjustment of disputed lands, consequent upon the perpetual petty strife that was ruining the land, Res Vychan, the present Lord of Dynevor, had made some considerable sacrifice in order to keep in his own hands the fair palace of his fathers. The majestic pile stood out boldly from the mountain side, and was approached by a winding road from the valley. A mere glance showed how strong was the position it occupied, and how difficult such a place would be to capture. On two sides the rock fell away almost sheer from the castle walls, whilst on the other two a deep moat had been dug, which was fed by small mountain rivulets that never ran dry; and the entrance was commanded by a drawbridge, whose frowning portcullis was kept by a grim warder looking fully equal to the office allotted to him. Lovely views were commanded from the narrow windows of the castle, and from the battlements and the terraced walk that ran along two sides of the building. And rough and rude as were the manners and customs of the period, and partially uncivilized as the country was in those far-off days, there was a strong vein of poetry lying latent in its sons and daughters, and an ardent love for the beautiful in nature and for the country they called their own, which went far to redeem their natures from mere savagery and brute ferocity. This passionate love for their home was strong in all the brothers of the house of Dynevor, and was deepened and intensified by the sense of uncertainty now pervading the whole country with regard to foreign aggression and the ever-increasing claims upon Welsh lands by the English invaders. A sense as of coming doom hung over the fair landscape, and Wendot's eyes grew dreamy as he stood gazing on the familiar scene, and Griffeth had to touch his arm and hurry him down to the castle. "Mother will be wanting us," he said. "What is the matter, Wendot? Methinks I see the tears in thine eyes." "Nay, nay; tears are for women," answered Wendot with glowing cheeks, as he dashed his hand across his eyes. "It is for us men to fight for our rightful inheritance, that the women may not have to weep for their desolated homes." Griffeth gave him a quick look, and then his eyes travelled lovingly over the wide, fair scene, to the purple shadows and curling mists of the valley, the dark mysterious woods in front, the clear, vivid sunlight on the mountain tops, and the serried battlements of the castle, now rising into larger proportions as the boys dropped down the hillside towards the postern door, which led out upon the wild fell. There was something of mute wistfulness in his own gaze as he did so. "Brother," he said thoughtfully, "I think I know what those feelings are which bring tears to the eyes of men -- tears of which they need feel no shame. Fear not to share with me all thy inmost thoughts. Have we not ever been brothers in all things?" "Ay, truly have we; and I would keep nothing back, only I scarce know how to frame my lips to give utterance to the thoughts which come crowding into my brain. But see, we have no time for communing now. Go on up the path to the postern; it is too narrow for company." Indeed, so narrow was the track, so steep the uncertain steps worn in the face of the rock, so deep the fall if one false step were made, that few save the brothers and wilder mountaineers ever sought admission by the postern door. But Wendot and Griffeth had no fears, and quickly scaled the steps and reached the entrance, passing through which they found themselves in a narrow vaulted passage, very dark, which led, with many twists and turns, and several ascending stairs, to the great hall of the castle, where the members of the household were accustomed for the most part to assemble. A door deeply set in an embrasure gave access to this place, and the moment it was opened the sound of a harp became audible, and the brothers paused in the deep shadow to observe what was going on in the hall before they advanced further. A scene that would be strange and picturesque to our eyes, but was in the main familiar to theirs, greeted them as they stood thus. The castle hall was a huge place, large enough to contain a muster of armed men. A great stone staircase wound upwards from it to a gallery above. There was little furniture to be seen, and that was of a rude kind, though not lacking in a certain massiveness and richness in the matter of carving, which gave something baronial to the air of the place. The walls were adorned with trophies of all sorts, some composed of arms, others of the spoil of fell and forest. The skins of many savage beasts lay upon the cold stone flooring of the place, imparting warmth and harmony by the rich tints of the furs. Light was admitted through a row of narrow windows both above and below; but the vast place would have been dim and dark at this hour had it not been that the huge double doors with their rude massive bolts stood wide open to the summer air, and the last beams of the westering sun came shining in, lying level and warm upon the group at the upper end of the hall, which had gathered around the white-haired, white-bearded bard, who, with head thrown backwards, and eyes alight with strange passions and feelings, was singing in a deep and musical voice to the sound of his instrument. Old Wenwynwyn was a study in himself; his flowing hair, his fiery eyes, his picturesque garb and free, untrammelled gestures giving him a weird individuality of his own. But it was not upon him that the eyes of the brothers dwelt, nor even upon the soldier-like figure of their stalwart father leaning against the wall with folded arms, and eyes shining with the patriotic fervour of his race. The attention of the lads was enchained by another and more sumptuous figure --that of a fine-looking man, approaching to middle life, who was seated at a little distance from the minstrel, and was smiling with pleasure and appreciation at the wild sweetness of the stream of melody poured forth. One glance at the dress of the stranger would have been enough to tell the brothers his nationality. His under tunic, which reached almost to the feet, was of the finest cloth, and was embroidered along the lower border with gold thread. The sur-tunic was also richly embroidered; and the heavy mantle clasped upon the shoulder with a rare jewel was of some rich texture almost unknown to the boys. The make and set of his garments, and the jewelled and plumed cap which he held upon his knee, alike proclaimed him to be English; yet as he gazed upon the noble face, and looked into the clear depths of the calm and fearless eyes, Wendot felt no hostility towards the representative of the hostile race, but rather a sort of reluctant admiration. "In faith he looks born to command," he whispered to Griffeth. "If all were like unto him --" But the lad did not complete the sentence, for he had suddenly caught sight of another figure, another face, and he stopped short in a sort of bewildered amaze. In Dynevor Castle there had never been a girl child to share the honours with her brothers. No sister had played in its halls, or tyrannized over the lads or their parents. And now when Wendot's glance fell for the first time upon this little fairy-like creature, this lovely little golden-haired, blue-eyed maiden, he felt a new sensation enter his life, and gazed as wonderingly at the apparition as if the child had been a ghost. And the soft shy eyes, with their fringe of dark lashes, were looking straight at him. As he gazed the child suddenly rose, and darted towards the brothers as if she had wings on her feet. "Oh, you have come back!" she said, looking from one to the other, and for a moment seeming puzzled by the likeness; "and -- why, there are two of you," and the child broke into the merriest and silveriest of laughs. "Oh, I am so glad! I do like boys so much, and I never have any to play with at home. I am so tired of this old man and his harp. Please let me go somewhere with you," and she thrust her soft little hand confidingly into Wendot's, looking up saucily into his face as she added, "You are the biggest; I like you the best." Wendot's face glowed; but on the whole he was flattered by the attention and the preference of the little maiden. He understood her soft English speech perfectly, for all the Dynevor brothers had been instructed in the English tongue by an English monk who had long lived at the castle. Res Vychan, the present Lord of Dynevor, foresaw, and had foreseen many years, the gradual usurpation of the English, and had considered that a knowledge of that tongue would in all probability be an advantage to those who were likely to be involved in the coming struggle. The boys all possessed the quick musical ear of their race, and found no difficulty in mastering the language; but neither Llewelyn nor Howel would ever speak a single word of the hated tongue if they could help it, though Wendot and Griffeth conversed often with the old monk right willingly. So as Wendot looked down into the bright little upturned face, he was able to reply readily and smilingly: "Where would you like to go, little lady, and what would you like me to show you?" "Oh, everything -- all out there," said the little girl, with a wave of her hand towards the front door. "I want to go and see the sun. I am tired of it in here." Wendot led the child through the hall, and out upon the great terrace which overlooked the steep descent to the valley and away to the glowing west. Griffeth followed, glad that his elder brother had been preferred before himself by the little maiden, yet half fascinated by her nameless charm. Wendot lifted her up in his strong arms to see over the wide stone balustrade, and she made him set her down there and perch himself by her side; for she seemed loath to go back to the hall again, and the boys were as willing as she to remain out in the open air. "It is pretty here," said the child graciously; "I think I should like to live here sometimes, if it was always summer. Tell me your name, big boy. I hope it is not very hard. Some people here have names I cannot speak right." "They call me Res Wendot," answered the lad; "generally Wendot at home here. This is Griffeth, my youngest brother. Those are not hard names, are they?" "No, not very. And how old are you, Wendot?" "I am fifteen." "Oh, how big you are!" said the little lady, opening her eyes wide; "I thought you must be much older than that. I am twelve, and you can lift me up in your arms. But then I always was so little -- they all say so." "Yet you travel about with your father," said Wendot. "I never did before; but this time I begged, and he took me. Sometimes he says he shall have to put me in a nunnery, because he has nobody to take care of me when he has to travel about. But I don't think I should like that; I would rather stay here." Wendot and Griffeth laughed; but the child was not at all disconcerted. She was remarkably self possessed for her years, even if she was small of stature and infantile in appearance. "What is your name?" asked Wendot; and the little maid answered, with becoming gravity and importance: "I am called Lady Gertrude Cherleton; but you may call me Gertrude if you like, because you are kind and I like you. Are there any more of you? Have you any sisters?" "No; only two brothers." "More brothers! and what are their names?" "Llewelyn and Howel." "Llewelyn? Why, that is the name of the Prince of North Wales that the king is going to fight against and conquer. Do you think when he has done so that he will come here and conquer you, too?" Wendot's cheek burned a sudden red; but he made no reply, for at that moment a head suddenly appeared round an angle of the wall, and a heavy grip was laid upon the shoulder of the child. A wild face and a pair of flashing black eyes were brought into close proximity with hers, and a smothered voice spoke in fierce, low accents. CHAPTER II. THE BROTHERS "What is that you dare to say?" The voice was harsh, the words were spoken with a rough accent, unlike the gentler tones of Wendot and Griffeth. The child uttered a little cry and shrank back away from the grip of the strong hand, and might have been in some danger of losing her balance and of falling over the balustrade, had not Wendot thrown a protecting arm round her, whilst pushing back with the other hand that of the rude interloper. "Llewelyn! for shame!" he said in his own tongue. "Art thou a man, and claimest the blood of princes, and yet canst stoop to frighten an inoffensive child?" "She spoke of conquest -- the conquest of our country," cried Llewelyn fiercely, in the hated English tongue, scowling darkly at the little girl as he spoke. "Thinkest thou that I will stand patiently by and hear such words? What right hath she or any one besides to speak of that tyrant and usurper in such tones?" "He is not a tyrant, he is not a usurper!" cried the little Lady Gertrude, recovering herself quickly, and, whilst still holding Wendot by the hand, turning fearlessly upon the dark-faced lad who had startled and terrified her at the first. "I know of whom you are speaking -- it is of our great and noble King Edward. You do not know him -- you cannot know how great and good he is. I will not hear you speak against him. I love him next best to my own father. He is kind and good to everybody. If you would all give your homage to him you would be happy and safe, and he would protect you, and --" But Llewelyn's patience was exhausted; he would listen no more. With a fierce gesture of hatred that made the child shrink back again he turned upon her, and it seemed for a moment almost as though he would have struck her, despite Wendot's sturdy protecting arm, had not his own shoulder been suddenly grasped by an iron hand, and he himself confronted by the stern countenance of his father. "What means this, boy?" asked Res Vychan severely. "Art thou daring to raise thine arm against a child, a lady, and thy father's guest? For shame! I blush for thee. Ask pardon instantly of the lady and of her father. I will have no such dealings in mine house. Thou shouldst be well assured of that." The black-browed boy was crimson with rage and shame, but there was no yielding in the haughty face. He confronted his father with flashing eyes, and as he did so he met the keen, grave glance of the stranger's fixed upon him with a calm scrutiny which aroused his fiercest rage. "I will not ask pardon," he shouted. "I will not degrade my tongue by uttering such words. I will not --" The father's hand descended heavily upon his son's head, in a blow which would have stunned a lad less hardy and hard-headed. Res Vychan was not one to be defied with impunity by his own sons, and he had had hard encounters of will before now with Llewelyn. "Choose, boy," he said with brief sternness. "Either do my will and obey me, or thou wilt remain a close prisoner till thou hast come to thy senses. My guests shall not be insulted by thy forward tongue. Barbarous and wild as the English love to call us, they shall find that Res Vychan is not ignorant of those laws which govern the world in which they live and move. Ask pardon of the lady, or to the dungeon thou goest." Llewelyn glanced up into his father's face, and saw no yielding there. Howel was making vehement signs to him which he and he alone could interpret. His other brothers were eagerly gazing at him, and Griffeth even went so for as to murmur into his ear some words of entreaty. It seemed as though the silence which followed Res Vychan's words would never be broken, but at last the culprit spoke, and spoke in a low, sullen tone. "I meant no harm. I would not have hurt her." "Ask her pardon then, boy, and tell her so." "Nay, force him no more," said the little lady, who was regarding this curious scene with lively interest, and who began to feel sorry for the dark wild boy who had frightened her by his vehemence before; "I was to blame myself. I should not have spoken as I did. "Father, tell them how my tongue is always running away with me. Hast not thou told me a hundred times that it would get me into trouble one of these days? It is right that he should love his country. Do not think ill of him for that." "Ay, let the lad go now, good friend," quoth Lord Montacute. "No doubt this little witch of mine was at the bottom of the mischief. Her tongue, as she truly says, is a restless and mischievous possession. She has found a stanch protector at least, and will come to no harm amongst thy stalwart lads. I could envy thee such a double brace of boys. I would it had pleased Providence to send me a son." "Nay, father, say not so," cried little Lady Gertrude coaxingly. "I would not have a brother for all the world. Thou wouldst love him so well, if thou hadst him, that thou wouldst have none to spare for thy maid. I have seen how it ever is. I love to have all thy heart for mine own." The father smiled, but Res Vychan's face was still severe, and he had not loosed his clasp upon Llewelyn's arm. "Say that thou art sorry ere I let thee go," he said, in low but very stern tones; and after a moment's hesitation, Llewelyn spoke in audible tones. "I am sorry," he said slowly; "I am sorry." And then as his father's clasp upon his arm relaxed he darted away like an arrow from the bow, and plunged with Howel through a dark and gloomy doorway which led up a winding turret stair to a narrow circular chamber, which the brothers shared together. "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" he panted fiercely; "ay, that indeed I am. Sorry that I did not wring her neck as the fowler wrings the neck of the bird his shaft hath brought down; sorry I did not cast her headlong down the steep precipice, that there might be one less of the hated race contaminating the air of our pure Wales with their poisonous breath. Sorry! ay, that I am! I would my hand had done a deed which should have set proud Edward's forces in battle array against us. I would that this tampering with traitors were at an end, and that we warriors of South Wales might stand shoulder to shoulder, firmly banded against the foreign foe. I would plunge a dagger in the false heart of yon proud Englishman as he lies sleeping in his bed tonight, if by doing so I could set light to the smouldering flame of national hatred. "What sayest thou? Can we do nought to bring upon us an open war, which is a thousand times better than this treacherous, hollow peace? Our father and mother are half won over to the cause of slavery. They --" Llewelyn paused, choking back the fierce tide of passion which went far to unman him. He had not forgotten the humiliation placed upon him so recently, when his father had compelled him to sue for pardon to an English maiden. His heart was burning, his soul was stirred to its depths. He had to stop short lest his passion should carry him away. Howel seemed to understand him without the medium of words. The links which bound the twin brothers together were very subtle and very strong. If Llewelyn were the more violent and headstrong, Howel was more than his equal in diplomacy. He shared every feeling of his brother's heart, but he was less outspoken and less rash. "I know what thou wouldst do," he said thoughtfully: "thou wouldst force upon our father a step which shall make a rupture with the English inevitable. Thou wouldst do a thing which should bring upon us the wrath of the mighty Edward, and force both ourselves and our neighbours to take arms against him. Is not that so?" "Ay, truly; and could such a thing be, gladly would I lay down my life in the cause of liberty and freedom." Howel was pondering deeply. "Perchance it might be done," he said. Llewelyn eagerly raised his head. "Thinkest thou so? How?" "I know not yet, but we shall have time for thought. Knowest thou that the maid will remain here beneath our mother's charge for a while, whilst our father goes forward as far as the Abbey of Strata Florida with yon stranger, to guide him on his way? The maid will remain here until her father's return." "How knowest thou that?" "I had it from Wenwynwyn's lips. He heard the discussion in the hall, and it seems that this Lord Montacute would be glad to be free of the care of the child for a while. Our mother delights in the charge of a little maid, and thus it will be as I have said." A strange fire gleamed in Llewelyn's eyes. The brothers looked at each other a good while in silence. "And thou thinkest --" said Llewelyn at last. Howel was some time in replying, and his answer was a little indeterminate, although sufficiently significant. "Why, the maid will be left here; but when her father returns to claim her, perchance she will not be found. If that were so, thinkest thou not that nought but open war would lie before us?" Llewelyn's eyes glowed. He said not a word, and the darkness gathered round the boys in the narrow chamber. They thought not of descending or of asking for food, even after their day's hunting in the hills. They were hardy, and seasoned to abstemious ways, and had no room for thoughts of such a kind. Silence was settling down upon the castle, and they had no intention of leaving their room again that night. Dark thoughts were their companions as they undressed and made ready for bed; and hardly were they settled there before the door opened, and the old bard Wenwynwyn entered. This old man was almost like a father to these boys, and Llewelyn and Howel were particularly attached to him and he to them. He shared to the full their ardent love for their country and their untempered hatred of the English race. He saw, as they did, nothing but ill in the temporizing attitude now to be found amongst the smaller Welsh chieftains with regard to the claims made by the English monarch; and much of the fierce hostility to be found in the boys had been the result of the lessons instilled into their mind by the wild-eyed, passionate old bard, one of the last of a doomed race. "Wenwynwyn, is it thou?" "Ay, boys, it is I. You did well to abstain from sitting at meat with the stranger tonight. The meat went nigh to choke me that was swallowed in his presence." "How long stays he, contaminating our pure air?" "He himself is off by sunrise tomorrow, and Res Vychan goes with him. He leaves behind the little maid in the care of thy mother." A strange smile crossed the face of the old man, invisible in the darkness. "Strange for the parent bird to leave the dove in the nest of the hawk -- the eyry of the eagle." "Ha!" quoth Llewelyn quickly, "that thought hath likewise come to thee, good Wenwynwyn." The old man made no direct response, but went on speaking in low even tones. "The maid has dwelt in the household of the great king. She has played with his children, been the companion of the young princesses. She is beloved of them and of the monarch and his wife. Let them but hear that she is lost in the fastness of Dynevor, and the royal Edward will march in person to her rescue. All the country will rise in arms to defend itself. The north will join with the south, and Wales will shake off the hated foreign yoke banded as one man against the foreign foe." The boys listened spellbound. They had often talked together of some step which might kindle the conflagration, but had never yet seen the occasion. Hot-headed, rash, reckless as were the youths; wild, tameless, and fearless as was the ancient bard; they had still been unable to hit upon any device which might set a light to the train. Discontent and resentment were rife all over the country, but it was the fashion rather to temporize with the invader than to defy him. There was a strong party gathering in the country whose policy was that of paying homage to Edward and retaining their lands under his protection and countenance, as being more truly patriotic and farsighted than continuing the old struggle for supremacy among themselves. This was a policy utterly incomprehensible both to the boys and the old man, and stirred the blood of the lads to boiling pitch. "What can we do?" asked Llewelyn hoarsely. "I will tell you," whispered the old man, approaching close to the bed whereon the brothers lay wide-eyed and broad awake. "This very night I leave the castle by the postern door, and in the moonlight I make my way to the commot of Llanymddyvri, where dwells that bold patriot Maelgon ap Caradoc. To him I tell all, and he will risk everything in the cause. It will be very simply done. You boys must feign a while -- must feign friendship for the maid thus left behind. Your brothers have won her heart already; you must not be behind them. The dove must have no fear of the young eaglets. She has a high courage of her own; she loves adventure and frolic; she will long to stretch her wings, and wander amid the mountain heights, under the stanch protection of her comrades of Dynevor. "Then listen, boys. The day will come when the thing is to be done. In some of the wild fastnesses of the upper Towy will be lurking the bold bands of Maelgon ap Caradoc. Thither you must lead the unsuspicious maid, first by some device getting rid of your brothers, who might try to thwart the scheme. These bold fellows will carry off the maid to the safe keeping of Maelgon, and once let her be his prisoner, there is no fear of her escaping from his hands. Edward himself and all his forces at his back will scarce wrest away the prize, and the whole country will be united and in arms ere it suffer the tyrant to march through our fair vales." Whilst within this upper turret chamber this plot was being concocted against the innocent child by two passionate, hot-headed boys and one of the ancient race of bards, the little maiden was herself sleeping soundly and peacefully within a small inner closet, close to the room where Gladys, the lady of the castle, reposed; and with the earliest streak of dawn, when the child opened her eyes upon the strange bare walls of the Welsh stronghold, the first thing that met her eyes was the sweet and gentle face of the chatelaine bending tenderly over her. Although the present lady of Dynevor was the sister of the bold and fierce Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, who gave more trouble to the King of England than did anybody else, she was herself of a gentle and thoughtful disposition, more inclined to advocate peace than war, and more far-seeing, temperate, and well-informed than most persons of her time, and especially than the women, who for the most part had but very vague ideas as to what was going on in the country. She had had many thoughts herself during the still hours of this summer night, and when she bent over the sleeping child and wakened her by a kiss, she felt a strange tenderness towards her, which seemed to be reciprocated by the little one, who suddenly flung her arms about her neck and kissed her passionately. "Is my father gone?" she asked, recollection coming back. "Not gone, but going soon," answered the Lady of Dynevor, smiling; "that is why I have come to waken thee early, little Gertrude, that thou mayest receive his farewell kiss and see him ride away. Thou wilt not be grieved to be left with us for a while, little one? Thou wilt not pine in his absence?" "Not if I have you to take care of me," answered the child confidingly -- "you and Wendot and Griffeth. I am weary of always travelling on rough roads. I will gladly stay here a while with you." There was the bustle of preparation going on in the hall when the lady descended with the child hanging on to her hand. Gertrude broke away and ran to her father, who was sitting at the board, with Wendot standing beside him listening eagerly to his talk. The boy's handsome face was alight, and he seemed full of eager interest in what was being said. Lord Montacute frequently raised his head and gave the lad a look of keen scrutiny. Even whilst caressing his little daughter his interest seemed to be centred in Wendot, and when at parting the lad held his stirrup for him, and gently restrained little Gertrude, who was in danger of being trampled on by the pawing charger, Lord Montacute looked for a moment very intently at the pair, and then let his glance wander for a moment over the grand fortress of Dynevor and the beautiful valley it commanded. Then he turned once more to Wendot with a kindly though penetrating smile. "In the absence of your father, Wendot, you are the master and guardian of this castle, its occupants and its treasures. I render my little daughter into your safe keeping. Of your hands I shall ask her back when I return in a week's time." Wendot flushed with pleasure and gratification. What boy does not like the thought of being looked upon as his father's substitute? He raised his head with a gesture of pride, and clasped the little soft hand of Gertrude more closely in his. "I will take the trust, Lord Montacute," he said. "I will hold myself responsible for the safety of Lady Gertrude. At my hands demand her when you return. If she is not safe and well, take my life as the forfeit." Lord Montacute smiled slightly at the manly words and bearing of the lad, but he did not like him the less for either. As for little Gertrude, she gazed up into the bold bright face of Wendot, and clasping his hand in hers, she said: "Am I to belong to you now? I think I shall like that, you are so brave and so kind to me." The father gave the pair another of his keen looks, and rode off in the bright morning sunshine, promising not to be very long away. "I shan't fret, now that I have you and the Lady of Dynevor," said the child confidingly to Wendot. "I've often been left for a long time at the palace with the ladies Eleanor and Joanna, and with Alphonso and Britton, but I shall like this much better. There is no governess here, and we can do as we like. I want to know everything you do, and go everywhere with you." Wendot promised to show the little lady everything she wanted, and led her in to breakfast, which was a very important meal in those days. All the four brothers were gathered at the board, and the child looked rather shyly at the dark-browed twins, whom she hardly knew one from the other, and whom she regarded with a certain amount of awe. But there was nothing hostile in the manner of any of the party. Llewelyn was silent, but when he did speak it was in very different tones from those of last night; and Howel was almost brilliant in his sallies, and evoked many a peal of laughter from the lighthearted little maiden. Partings with her father were of too common occurrence to cause her much distress, and she was too well used to strange places to feel lost in these new surroundings, and she had her own nurse and attendant left with her. Full of natural curiosity, the child was eager to see everything of interest near her temporary home, and the brothers were her very devoted servants, taking her everywhere she wished to go, helping her over every difficult place, and teaching her to have such confidence in them, and such trust in their guidance, that she soon ceased to feel fear however wild was the ascent or descent, however lonely the region in which she found herself. Although Wendot continued her favourite, and Griffeth stood next, owing to his likeness to his eldest brother, the twins soon won her favour also. They were in some respects more interesting, as they were less easily understood, wilder and stranger in their ways, and always full of stories of adventure and warfare, which fascinated her imagination even when she knew that they spoke of the strife between England and Wales. She had a high spirit and a love of adventure, which association with these stalwart boys rapidly developed. One thing about Llewelyn and Howel gratified her childlike vanity, and gave her considerable pleasure. They would praise her agility and courage, and urge her on to make trial of her strength and nerve, when the more careful Wendot would beg her to be careful and not risk herself by too great recklessness. A few days spent in this pure, free air seemed to infuse new life into her frame, and the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes deepened day by day, to the motherly satisfaction of the Lady of Dynevor and the pride of Wendot, who regarded the child as his especial charge. But in his father's absence many duties fell upon Wendot, and there came a bright evening when he and Griffeth were occupied about the castle, and only Llewelyn and Howel had leisure to wander with the little guest to her favourite spot to see the red sun set. Llewelyn was full of talk that evening, and spoke with a rude eloquence and fire that always riveted the attention of the child. He told of the wild, lonely beauty of a certain mountain peak which he pointed out up the valley, of the weird charm of the road thither, and above all of the eagle's nest which was to be found there, and the young eaglets being now reared therein, which he and Howel meant to capture and keep as their own, and which they purposed to visit the very next day to see if they were fit yet to leave the nest. Gertrude sat entranced as the boy talked, and when she heard of the eagle's nest she gave a little cry of delight. "O Llewelyn, take me with you. Let me see the eagle's nest and the little eaglets." But the boy shook his head doubtfully. "You could not get as far. It is a long way, and a very rough walk." The child shook back her curling hair defiantly. "I could do it! I know I could. I could go half the way on my palfrey, and walk the rest. You would help me. You know how well I can climb. Oh, do take me -- do take me! I should so love to see an eagle's nest." But still Llewelyn shook his head. "Wendot would not let you go; he would say it was too dangerous." Again came the little defiant toss. "I am not Wendot's slave; I can do as I choose." "If he finds out he will stop you." "But we need not tell him, need we?" "I thought you always told him everything." The child stamped her little foot. "I tell him things generally, but I can keep a secret. If he would stop us from going, we will not tell him, nor Griffeth either. We will get up very early and go by ourselves. We could do that, could we not, and come back with the young eaglets in our hands? O let us go! let us do it soon, and take me with you, kind Llewelyn! Indeed I shall not be in your way. I will be very good. And you know you have taught me to climb so well. I know I can go where you can go. You said so yourself once." Llewelyn turned his head away to conceal a smile half of triumph, half of contempt. A strange flash was in his eyes as he looked up the valley towards the crag upon which he had told the child the eyry of the eagles hung. She thought he was hesitating still, and laid a soft little hand upon his arm. "Please say that I may go." He turned quickly and looked at her. For a moment she shrank back from the strange glow in his eyes; but her spirit rose again, and she said rather haughtily: "You need not be angry with me. If you don't wish me to come I will stay at home with Wendot. I do not choose to ask favours of anybody if they will not give them readily." "I should like to take you if it would be safe," answered Llewelyn, speaking as if ashamed of his petulance or reluctance. "Howel, could she climb to the crag where we can look down upon the eyry if we helped her up the worst places?" "I think she could." The child's face flushed; she clasped her hands together and listened eagerly whilst the brothers discussed the plan which in the end was agreed to -- a very early start secretly from the castle before the day dawned, the chief point to be observed beforehand being absolute secrecy, so that the projected expedition should not reach the ears either of Wendot, his mother, or Griffeth. It was to be carried out entirely by the twins themselves, with Gertrude as their companion. CHAPTER III. THE EAGLE'S CRAG. "Where is the maid, mother?" "Nay, I know not, my son. I thought she was with thee." "I have not seen her anywhere. I have been busy with the men." "Where are the other boys?" "That I know not either. I have seen none since I rose this morning. I have been busy." "The maid had risen and dressed herself, and had slipped out betimes," said the Lady of Dynevor, as she took her place at the board. "Methought she would be with thee. She is a veritable sprite for flitting hither and thither after thee. Doubtless she is with some of the others. Who knows where the boys have gone this morning? They are not wont to be absent at the breakfast hour." This last question was addressed to the servants who were at the lower end of the board, and one of them spoke up in reply. By what he said it appeared that Griffeth had started off early to fly a new falcon of his, and it seemed probable that his brothers and little Lady Gertrude had accompanied him; for whilst he had been discussing with the falconer the best place for making the proposed trial, Llewelyn had been to the stables and had saddled and led out the palfrey upon which their little guest habitually rode, and there seemed no reason to doubt that all the party had gone somewhere up upon the highlands to watch the maiden essay of the bird. "She would be sure to long to see the trial," said Wendot, attacking the viands before him with a hearty appetite. "She always loves to go with us when there is anything to see or hear. I marvel that she spoke not of it to me, but perchance it slipped her memory." The early risers were late at the meal, but no one was anxious about them. When anything so engrossing as the flying of a young falcon was in the wind, it was natural that so sublunary a matter as breakfast should be forgotten. The servants had finished their meal, and had left the table before there was any sign of the return of the wanderers, and then it was only Griffeth who came bounding in, his face flushed and his eyes shining as he caressed the hooded bird upon his wrist. "He is a beauty, Wendot. I would thou hadst been there to see. I took him up to --" "Ay, tell us all that when thou hast had something to eat," said Wendot. "And where is Gertrude? she must be well-nigh famished by this time." "Gertrude? Nay, I know not. I have not seen her. I would not have wearied her with such a tramp through the heavy dews." "But she had her palfrey; Llewelyn led it away ere it was well light. Were you not all together?" "Nay, I was all alone. Llewelyn and Howel were off and away before I was ready; for when I sought them to ask if they would come, they were nowhere to be found. As for the maid, I never thought of her. Where can they have taken her so early?" A sudden look of anxiety crossed Wendot's face; but he repressed any exclamation of dismay, and glanced at his mother to see if by any chance she shared his feeling. But her face was calm and placid, and she said composedly: "If she is with Llewelyn and Howel she will be safe. They have taken her on some expedition in secret, but none will harm her with two such stout protectors as they." And then the lady moved away to commence her round of household duties, which in those days was no sinecure; whilst Wendot stood in the midst of the great hall with a strange shadow upon his face. Griffeth, who was eagerly discussing his breakfast, looked wonderingly at him. "Brother, what ails thee?" he said at length; "thou seemest ill at ease." "I am ill at ease," answered Wendot, and with a quick glance round him to assure himself that there was no one by to hear, he approached Griffeth with hasty steps and sat down beside him, speaking in a low, rapid way and in English, "Griffeth, tell me, didst thou hear aught last night ere thou fell asleep?" "Ay, I heard Wenwynwyn singing to his harp in his own chamber, but nought beside." "I heard that too," said Wendot, "and for his singing I could not sleep; so when it ceased not, I rose and stole to his room to ask him to forbear, yet so wild and strange was the song he sang that at the door I paused to listen; and what thinkest thou was the burden that he sang?" "Nay, I know not; tell me." "He sang a strange song that I have never heard before, of how a dove was borne from safe shelter -- a young dove in the absence of the father bird; not the mother bird, but the father -- and carried away to the eagle's nest by two fierce young eaglets untamed and untamable, there to be left till the kites come down to carry off the prize. "Ha! thou startest and changest colour! What is it thou fearest? Where are Llewelyn and Howell and what have they done with the maid? What kuowest thou, Griffeth?" "I know nought," answered Griffeth, "save that Wenwynwyn has been up to the commot of Llanymddyvri, and thou knowest what all they of that place feel towards the English. Then Llewelyn and Howel have been talking of late of the eagle's nest on the crag halfway thither, and if they had named it to Gertrude she would have been wild to go and see it. We know when Wenwynwyn sings his songs how he ever calls Maelgon ap Caradoc the kite, and the lords of Dynevor the eagles. But, Wendot, it could not be -- a child -- a maid -- and our father's guest. I cannot believe it of our own brothers." "I know not what to think, but my heart misgives me. Thou knowest what Llewelyn ever was, and Howel is but his shadow. I have mistrusted this strange friendship before now, remembering what chanced that first day, and that Llewelyn never forgives or forgets; but I would not have dreamed of such a thing as this. Yet, Griffeth, if the thing is so, there is no time to lose. I am off for the crag this very minute. Thou must quietly collect and arm a few of our stanchest men, together with the English servants left here with their young mistress. Let all be done secretly and quietly, and come after me with all speed. It may be that we are on a fool's errand, and that our fears are groundless. But truly it may be that our brothers are about to betray our guest into the hands of one of England's most bitter foes. "Oh, methinks were her father to return, and I had her not safe to deliver back to him, I would not for very shame live to see the day when I must avow to him what had befallen his child at the hands of my brethren!" Griffeth was fully alive to the possible peril menacing the child, and eagerly took his orders from his elder brother. It would not be difficult to summon some dozen of the armed men on the place to accompany him quietly and secretly. They would follow upon Wendot's fleet steps with as little delay as might be, and would at least track the fugitive and her guides, whether they succeeded in effecting a rescue that day or not. Wendot waited for nothing but to give a few directions to his brother. Scarce ten minutes had elapsed from the moment when the first illumination of mind had come to him respecting some plot against the life of an innocent child, before he had armed himself, and unleashed two of the fleetest, strongest, fiercest of the hounds, and was speeding up across the moor and fell towards the lonely crag of the eagle's nest, which lay halfway between the castle of Dynevor and the abode of Maelgon ap Caradoc. There was one advantage Wendot possessed over his brothers, and that was that he could take the wild-deer tracks which led straight onward and upward, whilst they with their charge would have to keep to the winding mule track, which trebled the distance. The maiden's palfrey was none too clever or surefooted upon these rough hillsides, and their progress would be but slow. Wendot moved as if he had wings to his feet, and although the hot summer sun began to beat down upon his head, and his breath came in deep, laboured gasps, he felt neither heat nor fatigue, but pressed as eagerly onwards and upwards as the strong, fleet hounds at his side. He knew he was on the right track; for ever and anon his path would cross that which had been trodden by the feet of the boys and the horse earlier in the day, and his own quick eyes and the deep baying of the hounds told him at once whenever this was the case. Upwards and onwards, onwards and upwards, sprang the brave lad with the untiring energy of a strong and righteous purpose. He might be going to danger, he might be going to his death; for if he came into open collision with the wild and savage retainers of Maelgon, intent upon obtaining their prey, he knew that they would think little of stabbing him to the heart rather than be balked. There was no feud so far between Llanymddyvri and Dynevor, but Wendot knew that his father was suspected of leaning towards the English cause, and that it would take little to provoke some hostile demonstration on the part of his wild and reckless neighbour. The whole country was torn and rent by internecine strife, and there was a chronic state of semi-warfare kept up between half the nobles of the country against the other half. But of personal danger Wendot thought nothing. His own honour and that of his father were at stake. If the little child left in their care were treacherously given up to the foes of the English, the boy felt that he should never lift up his head again. He must save her -- he would. Far rather would he die in her defence than face her father with the story of the base treachery of his brothers. The path grew wilder and steeper; the vegetation became more scant. The heat of the sun was tempered by the cold of the upper air. It was easier to climb, and the boy felt that his muscles were made of steel. Suddenly a new sound struck upon his ear. It was like the whinny of a horse, only that there was in it a note of distress. Glancing sharply about him, Wendot saw Lady Gertrude's small white palfrey standing precariously on a ledge of rock, and looking pitifully about him, unable to move either up or down. The creature had plainly been turned loose and abandoned, and in trying to find his way home had stranded upon this ledge, and was frightened to move a step. Wendot was fond of all animals, and could not leave the pretty creature in such a predicament. "Besides, Gertrude may want him again for the descent," he said; and although every moment was precious, he contrived to get the horse up the steep bank and on to better ground, and then tethered him on a small grassy plateau, where he could feed and take his ease in safety for an hour or two to come. That matter accomplished, the lad was up and off again. He had now to trust to the hounds to direct him, for he did not know what track his brothers would have taken, and the hard rocks gave no indications which he could follow. But the dogs were well used to their work, and with their noses to the ground followed the trail unceasingly, indicating from time to time by a deep bay that they were absolutely certain of their direction. High overhead loomed the apex of the great crag. Wendot knew that he had not much farther to go. He was able to distinguish the cairn of stones which he and his brothers had once erected on the top in honour of their having made the ascent in a marvellously short space of time. Wendot had beaten that record today, he knew; but his eyes were full of anxiety instead of triumph. He was scanning every track and every inch of distance for traces of the foe he felt certain were somewhere at hand. Had they been here already, and had they carried off the prey? Or were they only on their way, and had he come in time to thwart their purpose yet? Ha! what was that? Wendot had reached the shoulder of the mountain; he could see across the valley -- could see the narrow winding track which led to the stronghold of Maelgon. The Eagle's Crag, as it was called, fell away precipitously on the other side. No one could scale it on that face. The path from the upper valley wound round circuitously towards it; and along this path, in the brilliant sunshine, Wendot saw distinctly the approach of a small band of armed men. Yes: they were approaching, they were not retreating. Then they had not already taken their prey; they were coming to claim it. The boy could have shouted aloud in his triumph and joy; but he held his peace, for who could tell what peril might not lie in the way? The next moment he had scaled the steep, slippery rock which led to the precipitous edge of the crag. Not a sign could he see of his brothers or the child, but the hounds led right on to the very verge of the precipice, and for a moment the boy's heart stood still. What if they had grown afraid of the consequences of their own act, and had resolved to get rid of the child in a sure and safe fashion! For a moment Wendot's blood ran cold. He recalled the traits of fierce cruelty which had sometimes shown themselves in Llewelyn from childhood, his well-known hatred of the English, his outburst of passion with Gertrude, so quickly followed by a strange appearance of friendship. Wendot knew his countrymen and his nation's characteristics, and knew that fierce acts of treachery were often truly charged upon them. What if -- But the thought was too repellent to be seriously pursued, and shaking it off by an effort, he raised his voice and called his brothers by name. And then, almost as it seemed from beneath his very feet, there came an answering call; but the voice was not that of his brothers, but the cry of a terrified child. "Oh, who are you? Do, please, come to me. I am so frightened. I know I shall fall. I know I shall be killed. Do come to me quickly. I don't know where Llewelyn and Howel have gone." "I am coming -- I am Wendot," cried the boy, his heart giving a sudden bound. "You are not hurt, you are safe?" "Yes; only so giddy and frightened, and the sun is so hot and burning, and yet it is cold, too. It is such a narrow place, and I cannot get up or down. I can't see the eagle's nest, and they have been such a long time going after it. They said they would bring the nest and the young eagles up to me, but they have never come back. I'm afraid they are killed or hurt. Oh, if you would only help me up, then we would go and look for them together! Oh, I am so glad that you have come!" Wendot could not see the child, though every word she spoke was distinctly audible. He certainly could not reach her from the place where he now stood; but the hounds had been following the tracks of the quarry they had been scenting all this way, and stood baying at a certain spot some fifty yards away, and a little lower down than the apex of the crag. It was long since Wendot had visited this spot, his brothers knew it better than he; but when he got to the place indicated by the dogs, he saw that there was a little precipitous path along the face of the cliff, which, although very narrow and not a little dangerous, did give foothold to an experienced mountaineer. How the child had ever had the nerve to tread it he could not imagine, but undoubtedly she was there, and he must get her back, if possible, and down the mountainside, before those armed men from the upper valley could reach them. But could he do this? He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, and saw to his dismay how quickly they were approaching. From their quickened pace he fancied that his own movements had been observed. Certainly there was not a moment to lose, and leaving the dogs to keep guard at the entrance, he set his foot upon the perilous path and carefully pursued his way. The face of the cliff jutted outwards for some yards, and then made a sharp turn round an angle. At the spot where this turn occurred, a sort of natural arch had formed itself over the narrow ledge which formed the path, and immediately behind the arch there was a small plateau which gave space to stand and move with some freedom, although a step over the edge would plunge the unwary victim into the deep gulf beneath. The cliff then fell away once again, but the ledge wound round it still, until it ended in a shallow alcove some eight feet deep, which lay just beneath the highest part of the crag, which overhung it by many yards. And it was crouched up against the cliff in this little alcove that Wendot found Gertrude; cowering, white-faced, against the hard rock, faint from want of food, terrified at the loneliness and at her own fears for the safety of her companions, and so overwrought by the tension of nerve she had undergone, that when Wendot did stand beside her she could only cling to him sobbing passionately, and it was long before he could even induce her to let him go, or to attempt to eat the contents of a small package he had had the forethought to bring in his wallet. He heard her tale as she sobbed in his arms. They had come here after the eagle's nest. Llewelyn and Howel had been so kind! They had not minded her being so slow, but had brought her all the way; and when she wanted to follow them along the ledge to get a better view of the nest, they had blindfolded her that she might not get giddy, and had put a rope round her and brought her safely along the narrow ledge till she had got to this place. But the nest could not be seen even from there, and they had left her to see where it really was. They said they would soon be back, but they had not come, and she had got first anxious and then terrified about them, and then fearful for her own safety. At last when faintness and giddiness had come upon her, and she could get no answer to her repeated shouts, her spirit had altogether given way; and unless Wendot had really come to her rescue, she was certain she should have fallen down the precipice. She did not know now how she should ever get back along the narrow ridge, she was so frightened and giddy. But if Llewelyn and Howel would come, perhaps she might. Did Wendot know where they were? Would he take care of her now, and bring her safe home? "I will if I can," answered the boy, with a strange light in his blue eyes. "Griffeth is on his way with plenty of help. He will be here soon. Do you think you could walk along the ridge now, if I were to hold you up and help you? We should get home sooner if you could." But the child shrank back and put her hand before her eyes. "Oh, let us wait till Griffeth comes. I am so giddy still, and I am so afraid I should fall. Hark! I'm sure I hear voices. They are coming already. Oh, I am so glad! I do want to get home. Wendot, why do you look like that? Why do you get out that thing? You are not going to fight?" "Lady Gertrude," said Wendot, speaking in a grave, manly way that at once riveted the child's attention, "I am afraid that those voices do not belong to our friends, but to a band of men who are coming to try and take you prisoner to a castle up the valley there. No: do not be frightened; I will save you from them if I can. There is help coming for us, and I think I can hold this path against them for some time to come. You must try and keep up heart and not be frightened. You may see some hard blows struck, but you can shut your eyes and not think about it. If they do kill me and carry you off, do not give up hope, for Griffeth and our own men will be after you to rescue you. Now let me go, and try not to be afraid. I think we can hold them at bay till we are more equally matched." The child's eyes dilated with horror. She caught Wendot by the hand. "Give me up," she said firmly. "I will not have you killed for me. I would rather go with them. Give me up, I say!" "No, Gertrude; I will not give you up," answered Wendot very quietly, but with an inflexibility of tone which made his voice seem like that of another person. "Your father placed you in my hands; to him I must answer for your safety. What is life to a man without honour? Would you have me stain my name for the sake of saving my life? I think not that that is the English code of honour." Child as she was, little Gertrude understood well what was implied in those words, and a new light flashed into her eyes. Something of the soldier spirit awoke within her, and she snatched at a small dagger Wendot carried in his belt, and drawing her small figure to its full height, she said: "We will both fight, Wendot; we will both fight, and both die rather than let them take us." He smiled, and just for a moment laid his hand upon her head; then he drew on his mailed gloves and looked well to the buckles of the stout leathern jerkin, almost as impervious to the stabs of his foes as a suit of mail itself. The temper of his weapon he well knew; he had no fear that it would play him false. He had not the headpiece of mail; he had started in too great a hurry to arm himself completely, and speed was too much an object for him to willingly encumber himself needlessly. But as he skirted the narrow ledge, and placed himself beneath the protecting arch, he smiled grimly to himself, and thought that the stone would be as good a guard, and that here was a place where a man could sell his life dear, and send many a foe to his account before striking his own colours. Scarcely had he well established himself in the commanding position he had resolved upon, when the sound of voices became more distinct. The party had plainly arrived at the appointed place, and Wendot could hear them discussing who was best fitted for the task of traversing the dangerous ledge to bring back the captive who was to be found there. The wild Welsh was unintelligible to Gertrude, or she would have known at once what dark treachery had been planned and carried out by her trusted companions; but Wendot's cheek glowed with shame, and he set his teeth hard, resolved to redeem the honour of his father's name to the last drop of his blood if he should be called upon to shed it in the cause. He heard the slow and cautious steps approaching along the path, and he gripped his weapon more tightly in his hand. The red light of battle was in his eyes, and the moment he caught sight of the form of the stalwart soldier threading his perilous way along the path he sprang upon him with a cry of fury, and hurled him into the gulf beneath. Down fell the man, utterly unprepared for such an attack, and his sharp cry of terror was echoed from above by a dozen loud voices. Cries and shouts and questions assailed Wendot, but he answered never a word. Those above knew not if it had been an accident, or if an ambushed foe had hurled their comrade to destruction. Again came a long pause for consideration -- and every moment wasted was all in favour of the pair upon the ledge -- and then it became plain that some course of action had been determined upon, and Wendot heard the cautious approach of another foe. This man crept on his way much more cautiously, and the youth held himself ready for a yet more determined spring. Luckily for him, he could remain hidden until his opponent was close to him; and so soon as he was certain from the sound that the man was reaching the angle of the rock, he made another dash, and brought down his sword with all the strength of his arm upon the head of the assailant. Once again into the heart of the abyss crashed the body of the unfortunate soldier; but a sharp thrill of pain ran through Wendot's frame, and a barbed arrow, well aimed at the joint of his leather jerkin, plunged into his neck and stuck fast. The first assailant whom he had disposed of was but one of a close line, following each other in rapid succession. As his face became visible to the man now foremost a shout of surprise and anger rose up. "It is Res Wendot! It is one of the sons of the house of Dynevor! "Wendot, thou art mad! We are the friends of thy house. We are here at the instigation of thine own kindred. Give us the maid, and thou shalt go free. We would not harm thee." "Stir but one step nearer, and I slay thee as I have slain thy two comrades," cried Wendot, in a voice which all might hear. "I deal not in treachery towards those that trust us. I will answer for the safety of the maid with mine own life. Of my hand her father will demand her when he comes again. Shall we men of Wales give right cause to the English to call us murderers, traitors, cowards? Take my life if you will, take it a thousand times over if you will, it is only over my dead body that you will reach that child." "Down with him -- traitor to the cause! He is sold to the English! He is no countryman of ours! Spare him not! He is worthy of death! Down with every Welshman who bands not with those who would uphold his country's cause!" Such were the shouts which rent the air as the meaning of Wendot's words made itself understood. As for the brave lad himself, he had plucked the arrow from his neck, and now stood boldly on guard, resolved to husband his strength and keep on the defensive only, hoping thus to gain time until Griffeth and the armed men should arrive. He had all the advantage of the position; but his foes were strong men, and came on thick and fast one after another, till it seemed as if the lad might be forced backwards by sheer weight and pressure. But Wendot was no novice at the use of arms: as his third foe fell upon him with heavy blows of his weighted axe, he stepped backwards a pace, and let the blows descend harmlessly upon the solid rock of the arch; until the man, disgusted at the non-success of his endeavours to tempt his adversary out of his defended position, threw away his blunted axe, and was about to draw his sword for a thrust, when the boy sprang like lightning upon him, and buried his poniard in his heart. Over went the man like a log, almost dragging Wendot with him as he fell, and before the youth had had time to recover himself, he had received a deep gash in his sword arm from the foe who pressed on next, and who made a quick dash to try to get possession of the vantage ground of the arch. But Wendot staggered back as if with weakness, let his adversary dash through the arch after him; and then, hurling himself upon him as he passed through, pushed him sheer off the ledge on the other side into the yawning gulf beneath. The comrades of this last victim, who had just sent up a shout of triumph, now changed their note, and it became a yell of rage. Wendot was back in his old vantage ground, wounded by several arrows, spent by blows, and growing faint from loss of blood, but dauntless and resolute as ever, determined to sell his life dearly, and hold out as long as he had breath left in him, sooner than let the helpless child fall into the clutches of these fierce men, goaded now to madness by the opposition they had met with. Hark! what was that? It was a shout, a hail, and then the familiar call of the Dynevor brothers rang through the still air. "La-ha-boo!" It was Griffeth's voice. He had come at last. It was plain that the foe had heard, and had paused; for if they were menaced from another quarter, it was time to think of their own safety. Summoning up all his strength, Wendot sent back an answering hail, and the next moment there was the sound of fierce voices and the clashing of weapons overhead on the summit of the cliff; and in quick, urgent accents Wendot's foes were ordered to retreat, as there was treachery somewhere, and they had been betrayed. Wendot saw his antagonists lower their weapons, and return the way they had come, with fearful backward glances, lest their boy foe should be following them. But he had no wish to do that. He was spent and exhausted and maimed. He turned backwards towards the safer shelter of the little alcove, and sank down beside the trembling child, panting, bleeding, and almost unconscious. CHAPTER IV. WENDOT'S REWARD. "Father, father, father!" The shrill, glad cry broke from the lips of little Gertrude almost at the same moment as Wendot sank at her feet, spent and fainting; and the lad, making a great effort, opened his dim eyes to see the tall form of the English noble stooping over his little daughter, gathering her in his arms with a gesture of passionate endearment. Wendot fancied he must be dreaming; perhaps it was all a strange, terrible dream: everything was swimming before his eyes in a sort of blood-coloured mist. He gave up the effort to try to disentangle the maze in which he seemed to be moving, and was sinking into unconsciousness again when a sharp cry from his brother aroused him. "Wendot, Wendot! -- O father, see --they have killed him!" "Nay, lad, not that. Here, let me get to him. "Griffeth, run thou and tell the fellows to let down ropes from above to draw him up. He cannot return along that narrow ledge. He and the child had best be drawn up by those above. Tell them to lose no time. The boy must be taken home to his mother's care. This narrow ledge is growing like an oven. Bid one of the men run to the brook for a draught of water." Wendot's lips framed themselves to the word "water" as he heard it spoken. If he had but a draught of water, perhaps he could speak again and understand what was passing. As it was, he only heard the sound of a confusion of voices, the clear tones of little Gertrude being the most continuous and the most distinct. She seemed to be pouring some tale into the ears of her listeners, and Wendot was certain, from the quick, sudden movements of his father, who was supporting him as he lay, that the story heard was exciting in him feelings of indignation and amazement, although the boy's brain was too much confused to tell him the reason for this displeasure. But the sense of rest and safety inspired by his father's presence was very comforting; and when the wounded lad had been drawn to the summit of the cliff by the strong, willing arms of the retainers, and his hurts rudely dressed by kindly hands, and his parched throat refreshed by deep draughts of cold water, he began to shake off the sense of unreality which had made him feel like one in a dream, and to marvel at the unexpected appearance on the lonely fell of his father and Lord Montacute. A sure-footed mountain pony was bearing him gently down the steep slope, and his questioning look called Griffeth to his side. "What means all this, Griffeth?" he whispered. "Whence came they? and what do they know? And Llewelyn and Howel, where are they? Can it be that they --" He could not frame his lips to speak the words, but Griffeth understood him without, and his cheek flushed. "I fear me it is indeed as we thought. She went with them, and they left her alone on the ledge, where once the eagle's eyry used to be. Maelgon's men came to carry her off thence. Had it not been for thee, Wendot, she would have been in their hands ere now. I would I had stood beside thee, brother. I would I had shared thy perils and thy hurts." "Thou didst better than that," answered Wendot, faintly smiling, "for thou broughtest aid in the very nick of time. And how came it that our father and our guest were with thee? Methought it must surely be a dream when I saw them." "Ay, we met them journeying towards the castle when we had but made a short mile from it. They would have reached last night but for an accident to one of the beasts, which detained them on the road; but they had started ere the sun rose, and were hard by when we encountered them. Hearing our errand, some went forward as before, but others joined our party. It was well we were thus reinforced, for Maelgon's men fight like veritable wolves." "What knoweth our father of the matter? Spakest thou to him of Llewelyn and Howel?" "I had perforce to do so, they questioned me so closely. I know not what they thought. Our guest's face is not one that may be read like a book, and our father only set his lips in his stern fashion, as though he would never open them again. I trow he is sore displeased that sons of his should thus act; but perchance it may not be so bad as we think." Wendot made no reply. He was growing too spent and weary to have words or thoughts to spare. It seemed as if the long and weary descent would never be accomplished; and the beat of the sun beating down upon them mercilessly as they reached the lower ground turned him sick and faint. Little Gertrude, mounted now upon her palfrey, was chattering ceaselessly to her father, as he strode on beside her down the hillside; but Lord Montacute was grave and silent; and as for the face of Res Vychan, it looked as if carved out of marble, as he planted himself by the side of the sturdy pony who carried his son, and placed his arm round the lad to support him during that long and weary ride. It was plain that the thoughts of both men were of a very serious complexion, and gave them food for much reflection and consideration. Griffeth bounded on a little ahead of the cavalcade, excited by the events of the day, anxious for his brother, yet intensely proud of him, envying him the chance of thus displaying his heroic qualities, yet only wishing to have shared them -- not that anything should be detracted from the halo which encircled Wendot. He had reached a turn in the path, and for a moment was alone and out of sight of the company that followed, when the hounds who had accompanied Wendot, and were now returning with them, uttered a deep bay as of welcome, and the next moment two dark and swarthy heads appeared from behind the shelter of some great boulders, and the faces of Llewelyn and Howel looked cautiously forth. In a moment Griffeth was by their side, various emotions struggling in his face for mastery; but the tie of brotherhood was a strong one, and his first words were those of warning. "It is all known -- our father knows, and hers. I know not what your punishment will be. I have never seen our father look so stern. Do as you will about returning home, but I wot not how you will be received." Llewelyn and Howel exchanged glances; and the former asked eagerly, "And the maid?" "Is safe with her father and ours. Wendot risked his life to save her from Maelgon's men. Nay, linger not to hear the tale, if you would fly from the anger of those who know that you sought to betray her. It will be no easy thing to make peace with our father. You know his thoughts upon the sacredness of hospitality." But even as he spoke Griffeth saw the change that came over his brothers' faces as they looked past him to something behind; then as he himself turned quickly to see what it was, he beheld their father and two of the servants approaching; and Res Vychan pointed sternly to the two dark-leaded boys, now involuntarily quailing beneath the fiery indignation in his eyes, and said: "Bind them hand and foot and carry them to the castle. They shall be dealt with there as their offence shall warrant." Then turning on his heel, he rejoined the company; whilst Llewelyn and Howel were brought captive to the paternal halls of Dynevor. Wendot knew very little of the occurrences of the next few days. He was carried to the chamber that he shared with Griffeth, and there he lay for several days and nights in a dreamy, semi-conscious state, tended by his mother with all the skill and tenderness she possessed, and, save when the pain of his wounds made him restless and feverish, sleeping much, and troubling his head little about what went on within or without the castle. He was dimly aware that little Gertrude came in and out of his room sometimes, holding to his mother's hands, and that her gentle prattle and little caressing gestures were very soothing and pleasant. But he did not trouble his head to wonder how it was he was lying there, nor what event had crippled him so; and only in the fevered visions of the night did he see himself once again standing upon the narrow ledge of the Eagle's Crag, with a host of foes bearing down upon him to overpower and slay both him and his charge. But after a few days of feverish lassitude and drowsiness the lad's magnificent constitution triumphed -- the fever left him; and though he now lay weak and white upon his narrow bed, his mind was perfectly clear, and he was eager and anxious to know what had happened whilst he had been shut out from the life of the castle. His mother was naturally the one to whom he turned for information. He saw that she was unwontedly pale and grave and thoughtful. As she sat beside his bed with some needlework in her hands one bright afternoon, when the sunlight was streaming into the chamber, and the air floating in through the narrow casement was full of scent and song, his eyes fixed themselves upon her face with more of purpose and reflection, and he begged her to tell him all that had passed. "For I know that our guests are still here. Gertrude comes daily to see me. But where are Llewelyn and Howel? I have not seen them once. Is my father angry with them still? or have they been punished and forgiven?" "Your brothers are still close prisoners," answered the mother with a sigh. "They have been chastised with more severity than any son of ours has needed to be chastised before; but they still remain sullen and obdurate and revengeful, and thy father will not permit them to come out from their retirement so long as our guests remain. Perchance it is best so, for it would but cause trouble in the house for them to meet. I would that they could see matters differently; and yet there are many amongst our people who would say that the true patriotism was theirs." "And our guests, mother -- why linger they still? Methought they Would leave so soon as Lord Montacute returned." "So they purposed once; but he has wished to remain till thou art sound once more, my son. He hath a very warm feeling towards thee, and would speak to thee of something that is in his heart ere he quits Dynevor. He has spoken of it to thy father and to me, but he wishes thee to hear it from his own lips." Wendot's interest was aroused. Something in his mother's expression told him that the thing of which she spoke was a matter of some importance. As an eldest son and forward for his years, and of a reflective and thoughtful turn, he had often been consulted by his parents, and particularly by his mother, in matters rather beyond his comprehension, and had shared in discussions which many youths of his age would have shunned and despised. Now, therefore, he looked eagerly at his mother and said: "What is it he wishes to say Canst thou not tell me thyself?" The Lady of Dynevor paused awhile in thought; and when she spoke, it did not appear to be in direct reply to her son's question. "Wendot," she said gravely, "thou hast heard much talk of the troubled state of these times and of the nation's affairs. Thou hast lived long enough to see how hopeless some amongst us feel it ever to hope for unity amongst ourselves. We are torn and distracted by faction and feud. Families are banded together against families, and brothers strive with brothers for the inheritance each claims as his own. Each lord of some small territory tries to wrest from his weaker neighbour that which belongs to him; and if for a moment at some great crisis petty feuds are forgotten, and a blow is struck for national liberty, scarce has peace been proclaimed again before the old strife breaks out once more, and our fair land is desolated by a more grievous war than ever the English wage." Wendot bent his head in voiceless assent. He knew something of his country's history, and that his mother spoke only the sad truth. "My son," continued she after a pause, "it chances sometimes in this troubled life of ours that we are called upon to make choice, not between good and evil, but between two courses, both of which are beset with difficulties and obstacles, both of which mingle together evil and good, for which and against which much may be argued on both sides, and many things that are true be said for and against both. To some such choice as this has our poor country now come. Experience has taught us that she is incapable of uniting all her forces and of making of herself one compact, united kingdom. That course, and that alone, would be her true salvation; but that course she will not take, and failing that, she has to choose between being torn and rent by faction till she is an easy prey to the English king, who will then divide her territories amongst his own hungry and rapacious barons, or for the princes to submit to pay him the homage for their lands which he (possibly with injustice) demands, but which if paid will make of him their friend and protector, and will enable the country to live in peace and prosperity, assured that the king will support those who acknowledge him, and that he will not deprive of their ancestral rights any who will bring their homage to him, and hold their territory as it were from him. Understandest thou thus much?" "Ay, mother, I understand it well; and though there is something in the thought that stirs my blood and sets it coursing through my veins in indignation -- for I see not by what right the English king lays claim to our fair lands -- still I know that conquest gives to the conqueror a right, and that if he chose to march against us with his armies, he might well find us too much weakened by our petty feuds to resist his strong veterans. And the English are not all bad. I have learned that these many days whilst our guests have been with us. I have thought at times that they would be true friends and allies, and that we might do well to copy them in many ways. In truth, if the choice lies betwixt being rent in pieces by each other and giving homage to the great Edward, who can be merciful and just, I would rather choose the latter. For there must be something grand and noble about him by what our little maid says; and to pay homage is no such hard thing. Why, does not he himself pay homage to the King of France for the lands he holds in his kingdom?" A look of relief crossed the face of the mother as she heard these words from her first-born son. She took his hand in hers and said earnestly: "Wendot, I am glad to hear thee speak thus, for thou art the heir of Dynevor, and upon thee much may fall some day. Thou knowest what thy brothers are -- I speak of Llewelyn and Howel. I cannot but fear for them -- unless, indeed, the rapacious greed I sometimes see in Llewelyn proves stronger than his fierce hatred to the English, and he prefers to do homage for his lands rather than lose them. But thou art the head of the family, and the chief power will rest with thee when thy father is gone. I counsel thee, if the time comes when thou must make thy choice, be not led away by blind hatred of the English. They may prove less cruel foes than thine own countrymen are to one another. If Wales may not be united under one native king, let her think well ere she rejects the grace held out to all who will yield fealty to the English monarch. That is what I wished to say to thee. Remember that the English are not always cruel, always rapacious. There are generous, noble, honourable men amongst them, of whom I am sure our guest is one." "Ay, he has a grand face," said Wendot. "A face one can both love and trust. And all that the little one tells me of the king and his family inclines my heart towards him and his. I will remember what you have said, mother, and will ponder your words. Methinks it is no lovely thing to hate as Llewelyn and Howel hate; it makes men act rather as fiends than as honourable soldiers should." The conversation ended there, and was not renewed; but the very next day Lord Montacute sought Wendot's room, when the lad was lying alone, wearying somewhat of his own company, and the light sprang into his eyes as he saw the guest approach, for in his own boyish way he had a great admiration for this man. "Well, lad, I am glad to see thee looking something more substantial and like thine own self," said Lord Montacute, seating himself upon the edge of the bed and taking Wendot's hand in his. "This hand has done good service to me and mine -- good service, indeed, to the King of England, who would have been forced to chastise with some severity the outrage planned upon a subject of his, and one dear to him from association with his children. Tell me, boy, what can I do for thee when I tell this tale to my lord of England? What boon hast thou to ask of him or of me? For thou needest not fear; whatever it be it shall be granted." "Nay, I have no boon," answered Wendot, his cheek flushing. "I did but do my duty by any guest beneath my father's roof. I was responsible for the safety of the maid. I had taken that duty on myself. I want nothing; she is safe, and that is enough. Only if you would speak to my father for my brothers Llewelyn and Howel. I know they have merited deep displeasure; yet they are but lads, and doubtless they were led away by evil counsels. He would hear pleading better from you than from me." "It shall be done," said Lord Montacute, still regarding Wendot steadily; "and now, boy, I would speak to thee seriously and gravely as man to man, for thou hast proved thyself to be a man in action, in courage, and in foresight. And thy parents tell me that thou art acquainted with the burning questions of the day, and that thy brothers' headstrong hatreds and prejudices do not blind thee." Wendot made no reply, but fixed his bright eyes steadily on Lord Montacute's face. He on his side, after a brief silence, began again in clear, terse phrases: "Lad, if thou livest thou wilt some day be Lord of Dynevor -- master of this fair heritage, the fairest, perhaps, in all South Wales. Thou hast noble blood in thy veins -- the blood of princes and kings; thou hast much that men covet to call their own; but thou art surrounded by foes who are jealous of thee, and by kinsmen who have already cast covetous eyes on thy possessions." "Ay, that traitorous Meredith ap Res, whose mother is English, and who would -- But pardon me. I would not willingly speak against your nation. Indeed, I feel not bitter as others do; only --" "Boy, thou art right to be loyal and true. I like thee none the less for the patriotic fervour which breaks out in thee. But I am glad that thou shouldest see both sides of this matter, that thou shouldest see the peril menacing thy brothers from thine own kinsman, who has strengthened himself by an English alliance. It is useless to blind thine eyes to what is coming. They tell me thou art not blind; and I come to thee, lad, because I think well of thee, to ask if it would please thee to strengthen thy position in thine own land and in Edward's sight by an alliance with an English maiden of noble birth. Hast thou ever thought of such a thing?" Wendot's wide-open eyes gave answer enough. Lord Montacute smiled slightly as he said: "Ah, thou art full young for such thoughts; and thou livest not in the atmosphere of courts, where babes are given in marriage almost from their cradles. But listen, Res Wendot; I speak not in jest, I am a man of my word. Thou hast risked thy life to save my little maid. Thou art a noble youth, and I honour both thee and thy parents. The maid has told me that she loves thee well, and would be well pleased to wed thee when she is of the age to do so. These are but childish words, yet they may prove themselves true in days to come. It is in the interests of all those who have the peace and prosperity of this land at heart to strengthen themselves in every way they can. My little daughter will have an ample dower to bring her husband; and I will keep her for thee if thou wilt be willing to claim her in days to come. I should like well to see her ruling in these fair halls; and thou hast proved already that thou art a knightly youth, whose hand she may well take with confidence and pride. "Thy parents are willing; it waits only for thee to say. What thinkest thou of a troth plight with the little maid?" Wendot's face glowed with a sort of boyish shame, not unmingled with pride; but the idea was altogether too strange and new to him to be readily grasped. "I have never thought of such things," he said shyly, "and I am too young to wed. Perchance I may grow into some rough, uncouth fellow, who may please not the maiden when she reaches years of discretion. Methinks it would scarce be fair to plight her now, at least not with such a plight as might not be broken. If our nations meet in fierce conflict, as they yet may, it would be a cruel thing to have linked her hand with that of a rebel, for such we are called by the English monarch, they say, when we rise to fight for our liberties bequeathed by our ancestors. "Nay, noble lord, frown not on me. There be moments when methinks two spirits strive within me, and I am fearful of trusting even myself. I would not that grief or sorrow should touch her through me. Let me come and claim her anon, when I have grown to man's estate, and can bring her lands and revenues. But bind her not to one whose fate may be beset with perils and shadows. There be those amongst our bards who see into the future; and they tell us that a dark fate hangs over the house of Dynevor, and that we four shall be the last to bear the name." Lord Montacute was looking grave and earnest. There was something in his face which indicated disappointment, but also something that spoke of relief. Possibly he himself had offered this troth plight with something of hesitation, offered it out of gratitude to the noble lad, and out of respect to his parents, who, as he saw, would prove valuable allies to the English cause, could they but be induced to give their allegiance to it. Yet there was another side to the picture, too; and Wendot was too young for any one to predict with certainty what would be his course in the future. The hot blood of his race ran in his veins; and though his judgment was cool, and he saw things in a reasonable and manly light, it would be rash to predict what the future might have in store for him. "Well, lad, thou hast spoken bravely and well," said the Englishman, after a pause for thought. "Perchance thy words are right; perchance it will be well to let matters rest as they are for the present. We will have no solemn troth plight betwixt ye twain; but the maid shall be promised to none other these next four years, so that if thou carest to claim her ere she reaches woman's estate, thou shalt find her waiting for thee. And now I must say thee farewell, for tomorrow we ride away the way we came. I trust to see thee at the king's court one of these days, and to make known to his royal majesty the noble youth of Dynevor." Wendot was left alone then for some time, pondering the strange offer made to him, and wondering whether he had been foolish to refuse the promised reward. He had never seriously thought of marriage, although in those days wedlock was entered upon very young if there were any advantage to be gained from it. A lad of fifteen is seldom sentimental; but Wendot was conscious of a very warm spot in his heart for little Gertrude, and he knew that he should miss her sorely when she went, and think of her much. Would it have been a sweet or a bitter thing to have felt himself pledged to a daughter of England? He felt that he could not tell; but at least the decision was made now, and his words could not be recalled. Just ere the sun set that summer's day there came down the stone corridor which led to his room the patter of little feet, and he leaned up on his elbow with brightening eyes as the door opened and little Gertrude came dancing in. "I thought I was to have been married to you, Wendot, before we went away," she said, looking into his face with the most trusting expression in her soft dark eyes; "but father says you will come to marry me some day at the king's court. Perhaps that will be better, for I should like Eleanor and Joanna to see you. They would like you so, and you would like them. But do come soon, Wendot. I do so like you; and I shall want to show you to them all. And I have broken my gold coin in two -- the one the king gave me once. I got the armourer to do it, and to make a hole in each half. You must wear one half round your neck, and I will wear the other. And that will be almost the same as being married, will it not? And you will never forget me, will you?" Wendot let her hang the half of the coin round his neck by a silken thread, strange new thoughts crowding into his mind as he felt her soft little hands about him. Suddenly he clasped them in both of his and pressed warm kisses upon them. Gertrude threw her arms about his neck in a childish paroxysm of affection, saying as she did so between her kisses: "Now, it's just like being husband and wife; and we shall never forget one another -- never." CHAPTER V. THE KING'S CHILDREN. "Dynevor --did you say Dynevor? O Eleanor, it must be he!" A tall, slim, fair-faced maiden, with a very regal mien, looked up quickly from an embroidery frame over which she was bending, and glanced from the eager, flushed face of the younger girl who stood beside her to that of a tall and stalwart English youth, who appeared to be the bearer of a piece of news, and asked in her unconsciously queenly way: "What is it, Sir Godfrey, that you have told this impetuous child, to have set her in such a quiver of excitement?" "Only this, gracious lady, that certain youthful chieftains from the south have come hither to Rhuddlan to pay their homage to your royal father. In his absence at Chester they have been lodged within the castle walls, as becomes their station. It has been told me that amongst them are four sons of one Res Vychan, lately dead, and that he was Lord of Dynevor, which honour has descended to his eldest son. I was telling what I knew to Lady Gertrude when she broke away to speak to you." "Eleanor, it must be he -- it must be they!" cried Gertrude, with flushing cheek and kindling eye -- "Res Vychan, Lord of Dynevor, and his four sons. It could be none else than they. O Eleanor, sweet Eleanor, bid them be brought hither to see us! Thou hast heard the story of how we went thither, my father and I, two years agone now, and of what befell me there. I have never heard a word of Wendot since, and I have thought of him so oft. Thou art mistress here now; they all heed thy lightest word. Bid that the brothers be brought hither to us. I do so long to see them again!" Gertrude was fairly trembling with excitement; but that was no unusual thing for her, as she was an ardent, excitable little mortal, and ever in a fever of some kind or another. The young knight who had brought the news looked at her with unmistakable admiration and pleasure, and seemed as though he would gladly have obeyed any behest of hers; but he was fain to wait for the decision of the stately Eleanor, the king's eldest and much-beloved child, who in the temporary absence of her parents occupied a position of no little importance in the household, and whose will, in the royal apartments at any rate, was law. But there were other listeners to Gertrude's eager words. At the far end of the long gallery, which was occupied by the royal children as their private apartment, a group of three young things had been at play, but the urgency of Gertrude's tones had arrested their attention, and they had drawn near to hear her last words. One of these younger children was a black-eyed girl, with a very handsome face and an imperious manner, which gave to onlookers the idea that she was older than her years. Quick tempered, generous, hasty, and self willed was the Lady Joanna, the second daughter of the king; but her warm affections caused all who knew her to love her; and her romantic temperament was always stirred to its depths by any story that savoured of chivalry or heroism. "What!" she cried; "is Wendot here -- Wendot of Dynevor, who held the Eagle's Crag against half a hundred foemen to save thee, sweetest Gertrude, from captivity or death? -- Eleanor, thou knowest the story; thou must bid him hither at once! Why, I would thank him with my own lips for his heroism. For is not Gertrude as our own sister in love?" "Ay, Eleanor, bid him come," pleaded Alphonso, a fragile-looking boy a year younger than Joanna, whose violet-blue eyes and fair skin were in marked contrast to her gipsy-like darkness of complexion; and this request was echoed eagerly by another boy, a fine, bold-looking lad, somewhat older than Alphonso, by name Britten, who was brought up with the king's children, and treated in every way like them, as the wardrobe rolls of the period show, though what his rank and parentage were cannot now be established, as no mention of him occurs in any other documents of that time. The Princess Eleanor, as she would now be called, although in those far-back days the title of Lady was generally all that was bestowed upon the children of the king, did not attempt to resist the combined entreaties of her younger playfellows. Indeed, although somewhat mature both in mind and appearance for her years, she was by no means devoid of childish or feminine curiosity, and was as willing to see the hero of Gertrude's oft-told tale as her more youthful companions could be. Moreover, it was her father's policy and pleasure to be generous and gracious towards all those who submitted themselves to his feudal sovereignty; and to the young he ever showed himself friendly and even paternal. The stern soldier-king was a particularly tender and loving father, and his wife the best of mothers, so that the family tie in their household was a very strong and beautiful thing. When the monarch was called away from his own royal residences to quell sedition or rebellion in this turbulent country of Wales, his wife and children accompanied him thither; and so it happened that in this rather gloomy fastness in North Wales, when the rebellion of the warlike Llewelyn had but just been crushed, the king's children were to be found assembled within its walls, by their bright presence and laughter-loving ways making the place gay and bright, and bringing even into political matters something of the leniency and good fellowship which seems to be the prerogative of childhood. Thus it was that one powerful and turbulent noble, Einon ap Cadwalader, had left as hostage of his good faith his only child, the Lady Arthyn, to be the companion of the king's daughters. She had been received with open arms by the warm-hearted Joanna, and the two were fast friends already, although the Welsh girl was several years the elder of the pair. But Joanna, who had been educated in Spain by her grandmother and namesake, and who had only recently come to be with her own parents, had enjoyed abroad a liberty and importance which had developed her rapidly, and her mind was as quick and forward as her body was active and energetic. Intercourse with Arthyn, too, had given to the younger princess a great sympathy with the vanquished Welsh, and she was generously eager that those who came to pay homage to her father should not feel themselves in a position that was humiliating or galling. The gentle Eleanor shared this feeling to the full, and was glad to give to the young knight Sir Godfrey Challoner, who was one of her own gentlemen-in-waiting, a gracious message for the young Lord of Dynevor to the effect that she would be glad to receive him and his brothers in her father's absence, and to give them places at the royal table for the evening meal shortly to be served. Great was the delight of Gertrude when the message was despatched. Her companions crowded round her to hear again the story of her adventure on the Eagle's Crag. Gertrude never knew how she had been betrayed by Wendot's brothers. She believed that they had been accidentally hindered from coming to her rescue by the difficulties of the climb after the eagle's nest. There was a faint, uncomfortable misgiving in her mind with regard to the black-browed twins, but it did not amount to actual suspicion, far less to any certainty of their enmity; and although Eleanor had heard the whole story from her parents, she had not explained the matter more fully to Gertrude. An invitation from royalty was equal to a command, and the eager children were not kept waiting long. The double doors at the end of the long gallery, which had closed behind the retiring form of Godfrey, opened once again to admit him, and closely in his wake there followed two manly youths -- two, not four -- upon whose faces every eye was instantly fixed in frank and kindly scrutiny. Wendot had developed rapidly during these two last years, although he retained all his old marked characteristics. The waving hair was still bright and sunny, the open face, with its rather square features, was resolute, alert, manly, and strong. The fearless blue eyes had not lost their far-away dreaminess, as though the possessor were looking onward and outward beyond the surroundings visible to others; and beneath the calm determination of the expression was an underlying sweetness, which shone out from time to time in the sunny smile which always won the heart of the beholder. The figure was rather that of a man than a lad -- tall, strongly knit, full of grace and power; and a faint yellow moustache upon the upper lip showed the dawn of manhood in the youth. There was something in his look which seemed to tell that he had known sorrow, trial, and anxiety; but this in no way detracted from the power or attractiveness of the countenance, but rather gave it an added charm. Griffeth retained his marked likeness to his brother, and was almost his equal in height; but his cheek was pale and hollow, while Wendot's was brown and healthy, his hands were slim and white, and there was an air of languor and ill-health about him which could not fail to make itself observed. He looked much younger than his brother, despite his tall stature, and he blushed like a boy as he saw the eyes of the ladies fixed upon them as they came forward, bowing with no ungraceful deference. "Wendot, Wendot. don't you know me?" The young man started and raised his eyes towards the speaker. So far, he had only been aware that there were a number of persons collected at the upper end of the long gallery. Now he found himself confronted by a pair of eager, dancing eyes, as soft and dark as those of a forest deer, whilst two slim hands were held out to him, and a silvery voice cried softly and playfully: "O Wendot, Wendot, to think you have forgotten!" "Lady Gertrude!" "Ah, I am glad you have not forgotten, though methinks I have changed more than you these past years. I should have known you anywhere. But come, Wendot; I would present you to my friends and companions, who would fain be acquainted with you. They know how you saved my life that day, I have told the tale so oft. "Let me present you first to our sweetest Lady Eleanor, our great king's eldest daughter. You will love her, I know -- none can help it. And she lets me call myself her sister." Young things have a wonderful faculty of growing intimate in a very brief space, and the formalities of those simpler times were not excessive, especially away from the trammels of the court. In ten minutes' time Wendot and his brother had grasped the names and rank of all those to whom they had been presented, and were joining in the eager talk with ease and with enjoyment. Joanna stood beside Wendot, listening, with unfeigned interest, to his answers respecting himself and those near and dear to him; whilst Alphonso had drawn Griffeth to the embrasure of a window, and was looking up into his face as they compared notes and exchanged ideas. It seemed from the first as though a strong link formed itself between those two. "Your brothers would not come. Was that fear or shame or pride?" asked Joanna, with a laughing look into Wendot's flushed face. "Nay, think not that we would compel any to visit us who do it not willingly. Gertrude has prepared us to find your brothers different from you. Methinks she marvelled somewhat that they had come hither at all with their submission." Wendot hesitated, and the flush deepened on his face; but he was too young to have learned the lesson of reticence, and there was something in the free atmosphere of this place which prompted him to frankness. "I myself was surprised at it," he said. "Llewelyn and Howel have not been friendly in their dealings with the English so far, and we knew they aided Llewelyn of North Wales in the revolt which has been lately quelled. But since our parents died we have seen but little of them. They became joint owners of the commot of Iscennen, and removed from Dynevor to the castle of Carregcennen in their own territory, and until we met them some days since in company with our kinsman Meredith ap Hes, coming to tender their homage, as we ourselves are about to do, we knew not what to think of them or what action they would take." "Are both your parents dead, then?" asked Gertrude, with sympathy in her eyes. "I heard that Res Vychan was no longer living, but I knew not that the gentle Lady of Dynevor had passed away also." Wendot's face changed slightly as he answered: "They both died within a few days of each other the winter after you had been with us, Lady Gertrude. We were visited by a terrible sickness that year, and our people sickened and died in great numbers. Our parents did all they could for them, and first my father fell ill and died, and scarce had the grave closed over him before our mother was stricken, and followed him ere a week had passed. Griffeth was also lying at the point of death, and we despaired of his life also; but he battled through, and came back to us from the very gates of the grave, and yet methinks sometimes that he has never been the same since. He shoots up in height, but he cannot do the things he did when he was two years younger. "What think you of him, sweet Lady Gertrude? Is he changed from what he was when last you saw him, ere the sickness had fastened upon him?" Several eyes were turned towards the slim, tall figure of the Welsh lad leaning against the embrasure of the window. The sunlight fell full upon his face, showing the sharpness of its outlines, the delicate hectic colouring, the tracery of the blue veins beneath the transparent skin. And just the same transparent look was visible in the countenance of the young Prince Alphonso, who was talking with the stranger youth, and more hearts than that of Wendot felt a pang as their owners' eyes were turned upon the pair beside the sunny window. But Wendot pressed for no answer to his question, nor did Gertrude volunteer it; she only asked quickly: "Then Griffeth and you live yet at Dynevor, beautiful Dynevor, and Llewelyn and Howel elsewhere?" "Ay, at Carregcennen. We have our respective lands, though we are minors yet; and our kinsman Meredith ap Res is our guardian, though it is little we see of him." "Meredith ap Res! I know him well," cried a girlish voice, in accents which betrayed her Welsh origin. "He has ever been a traitor to his country, a traitor to all who trust him; a covetous, grasping man, who will clutch at what he can get, and never cease scheming after lands and titles so long as the breath remains in him." They all turned to see who had spoken, and Arthyn -- the headstrong, passionate, patriotic Arthyn, who, despite her love for her present companions, bitterly resented being left a hostage in the hands of the English king -- stood out before them, and spoke in the fearless fashion which nobody present resented. "Wendot of Dynevor, if you are he, beware of that man, and bid your brothers beware of him, too. I know him; I have heard much of him. Be sure he has an eye on your fair lands, and he will embroil you yet with the English king if he can, that he may lay claim to your patrimony. He brings you here to the court to make your peace, to pay your homage. If I mistake not the man, you will not all of you return whence you came. He will poison the king's mind. Some traitorous practices will be alleged against you. Your lands will be withheld. You will be fed with promises which will never be fulfilled. And the kinsman who has sold himself body and soul to the English alliance will rule your lands, in your names firstly perchance, until his power is secure, and he can claim them boldly as his own. See if it be not so." "It shall not be so," cried Alphonso, suddenly advancing a step forward and planting himself in the midst of the group. His cheek was crimson now, there was fire in his eyes. He had all the regal look of his royal father as he glanced up into Wendot's face and spoke with an authority beyond his years. "I, the king's son, give you my word of honour that this thing shall not be. You are rightful Lord of Dynevor. You took not up arms against my father in the late rebellion; you come at his command to pay your homage to him. Therefore, whatever may be his dealings with your brothers who have assisted the rebels, I pledge my princely word that you shall return in peace to your own possessions. My father is a just and righteous king, and I will be his surety that he will do all that is right and just by you, Wendot of Dynevor." "Well spoken, Alphonso!" cried Joanna and Britton in a breath, whilst Wendot took the hand extended to him, and bent over it with a feeling of loyal gratitude and respect. There was something very lovable in the fragile young prince, and he seemed to win the hearts of all who came within the charm of his personal presence. He combined his father's fearless nobility with his mother's sweetness of disposition. Had he lived to ascend the throne of England, one of the darkest pages of its annals might never have been written. But this hot discussion was brought to an end by the appearance of the servants, who carried in the supper, laying it upon a long table at the far end of the gallery. No great state was observed even in the royal household, when the family was far away from the atmosphere of the court as it was held at Westminster or Windsor. A certain number of servants were in attendance. There were a few formalities gone through in the matter of tasting of dishes served to the royal children, but they sat round the table without ceremony; and when the chaplain had pronounced a blessing, which was listened to reverently by the young people, who were all very devout and responsive to religious influences, the unconstrained chatter began again almost at once, and the Welsh lads lost all sense of strangeness as they sat at the table of the king's children. "Our father and mother will not return for several days yet," said Joanna to Wendot, whom she had placed between herself and Gertrude; "but we have liberty to do what we wish and to go where we like. "Say, Gertrude, shall we tell Wendot on what we have set our hearts? It may be he would help us to our end." "I would do anything you bid me, gracious lady," answered Wendot with boyish chivalry. The girls were eying each other with flushed faces, their voices were lowered so that they should not reach the ears of the Lady Edeline, Joanna's governess, who was seated at the board, although she seldom spoke unless directly addressed by Eleanor, who seemed to be on friendly terms with her. "Wendot," whispered Joanna cautiously, "have you ever hunted a wolf in your mountains?" "Ay, many a time, though they be more seldom seen now. But we never rid ourselves altogether of them, do as we will." "And have you killed one yourself?" "Yes, I have done that, too." "And is it very dangerous?" "I scarce know; I never thought about it. I think not, if one is well armed and has dogs trained to their duties." Joanna's eyes were alight with excitement; her hands were locked together tightly. Her animated face was set in lines of the greatest determination and happiest anticipation. "Wendot," she said, "there is a wolf up yonder in that wild valley we can see from yon window, as you look towards the heights of Snowdon. Some of our people have seen and tracked it, but they say it is an old and wily one, and no one has got near it yet. Wendot, we have set our hearts on having a wolf hunt of our very own. We do not want all the men and dogs and the stir and fuss which they would make if we were known to be going. I know what that means. We are kept far away behind everybody, and only see the dead animal after it has been killed miles away from us. We want to be in the hunt ourselves -- Britten, Alphonso, Arthyn, Gertrude, and I. Godfrey would perhaps be won over if Gertrude begged him, and I know Raoul Latimer would -- he is always ready for what turns up -- but that would not be enough. O Wendot, if you and your brothers would but come, we should be safe without anybody else. Raoul has dogs, and we could all be armed, and we would promise to be very careful. We could get away early, as Gertrude did that day she slipped off to the Eagle's Crag. "Wendot, do answer -- do say you will come. You understand all about hunting, even hunting wolves. You are not afraid?" Wendot smiled at the notion. He did not entirely understand that he was requested to take part in a bit of defiant frolic which the young princes and princesses were well aware would not have been permitted by their parents. All he grasped was that the Lady Joanna requested his assistance in a hunt which she had planned, and with the details of which he was perfectly familiar, and he agreed willingly to her request, not sorry, either for his own sake or for that of his more discontented brothers, that the monotony of the days spent in waiting the return of the king should be beguiled by anything so attractive and exciting as a wolf hunt. The Dynevor brothers had often hunted wolves before, and saw no special peril in the sport; and Joanna and Gertrude felt that not even the most nervous guardian could hesitate to let them go with such a stout protector. "I do like him, Gertrude," said Joanna, when Wendot and his brother had retired. "I hope if I ever have to marry, as people generally do, especially if they are king's daughters, that I shall find somebody as brave and handsome and knightly as your Wendot of Dynevor." For Gertrude and Joanna both took the view that the breaking of the king's gold coin between them was equivalent to the most solemn of troth plights. CHAPTER VI. WELSH WOLVES. The Princess Joanna was accustomed to a great deal of her own way. She had been born at Acre, whilst her parents had been absent upon Edward's Crusade, and for many years she had remained in Castile with her grandmother-godmother, who had treated her with unwise distinction, and had taught her to regard herself almost as a little queen. The high-spirited and self-willed girl had thus acquired habits of independence and commanding ways which were perhaps hardly suited to her tender years; but nevertheless there was something in her bright vivacity and generous impetuosity which always won the hearts of those about her, and there were few who willingly thwarted her when her heart was set upon any particular thing. There were in attendance upon the king and his children a number of gallant youths, sons of his nobles, who were admitted to pleasant and easy intercourse with the royal family; so that when Joanna and Alphonso set their hearts upon a private escapade of their own, in the shape of a wolf hunt, it was not difficult to enlist many brave champions in the cause quite as eager for the danger and the sport as the royal children themselves. Joanna was admitted to be a privileged person, and Alphonso, as the only son of the king, had a certain authority of his own. The graver and more responsible guardians of the young prince and princesses might have hesitated before letting them have their way in this matter; but Joanna took counsel of the younger and more ardent spirits by whom she was surrounded, and a secret expedition to a neighbouring rocky fastness was soon planned, which expedition, by a little diplomacy and management, could be carried out without exciting much remark. The king and queen encouraged their family in hardy exercises and early hours. If the royal children planned an early ride through the fresh morning air, none would hinder their departure, and they could easily shake off their slower attendants when the time came, and join the bolder comrades who would be waiting for them with all the needful accoutrements for the hunt on which their minds were bent. One or two of the more youthful and adventurous attendants might come with them, but the soberer custodians might either be dismissed or outridden. They were accustomed to the vagaries of the Lady Joanna, and would not be greatly astonished at any freak on her part. And thus it came about that one clear, cold, exhilarating morning in May, when the world was just waking from its dewy sleep of night, that Joanna and Alphonso, together with Gertrude and Arthyn, and young Sir Godfrey and another gentleman in attendance, drew rein laughingly, after a breathless ride across a piece of wild moorland, at the appointed spot, where a small but well-equipped company was awaiting them with the spears, the dogs, and the long, murderous-looking hunting knives needed by those who follow the tracks of the wild creatures of the mountains. This little band numbered in its ranks the four Dynevor brothers; a tall, rather haughty-looking youth, by name Raoul Latimer; and one or two more with whose names we have no concern. Britten, who accompanied the royal party, sprang forward with a cry of delight at seeing the muster, and began eagerly questioning Raoul as to the capabilities of the dogs he had brought, and the possible dangers to be encountered in the day's sport. Gertrude and Joanna rode up to Wendot and greeted him warmly. They had seen him only once since the first evening after his arrival, and both girls stole curious glances at the dark faces of the two brothers unknown as yet to them. They were almost surprised that the twins had come at all, as they were not disposed to be friendly towards the English amongst whom they were now mingling; but here they were, and Gertrude greeted both with her pretty grace, and they answered her words of welcome with more courtesy than she had expected to find in them. Llewelyn and Howel were submitting themselves to the inevitable with what grace they could, but with very indignant and hostile feelings hidden deep in their hearts. Their old hatred towards the English remained unaltered. They would have fought the foe tooth and nail to the last had they been able to find allies ready to stand by them. But when their uncle of North Wales had submitted, and all the smaller chieftains were crowding to the court to pay homage, and when they knew that nothing but their own nominal subjection would save them from being deprived of their lands, which would go to enrich the rapacious Meredith ap Res, then indeed did resistance at that time seem hopeless; and sooner than see themselves thus despoiled by one who was no better than a vassal of England, they had resolved to take the hated step, and do homage to Edward for their lands. Indeed, these brothers had to do even more; for, having been concerned in the late rebellion, they had forfeited their claim upon their property, only that it was Edward's policy to restore all lands the owners of which submitted themselves to his authority. The brothers felt no doubt as to the result of their submission, but the humiliation involved was great, and it was hard work to keep their hatred of the English in check. Those wild spirits had not been used to exercising self-control, and the lesson came hard now that they were springing up towards man's estate, with all the untempered recklessness and heat of youth still in their veins. Perhaps there was something in the expression of those two dark faces that told its tale to one silent spectator of the meeting between the Welsh and English; for as the party united forces and pushed onwards and upwards towards the wild ravine where the haunt of the wolf lay, the twin brothers heard themselves addressed in their own language, and though the tones were sweet and silvery, the words had a ring of passionate earnestness in them which went straight to their hearts. "Methinks I am not mistaken in you, sons of Dynevor. You have not willingly left your mountain eyry for these halls where the proud foeman holds his court and sits in judgment upon those who by rights are free as air. I have heard of you before, Llewelyn and Howel ap Res Vychan. You are not here, like your brethren, half won over to the cause of the foe; you would fight with the last drop of your blood for the liberty of our country." Turning with a start, the brothers beheld the form of a slight and graceful maiden, who was pushing her palfrey up beside them. She appeared to be about their own age, and was very beautiful to look upon, with a clear, dark skin, large, bright eyes, now glowing with the enthusiasm so soon kindled in the breast of the children of an oppressed people -- a people thrilling with the strange, deep poetry of their race, which made much amends for their lack of culture in other points. Llewelyn and Howel, learning caution by experience, scarce knew how to respond to this appeal; but the girl met their inquiring glances by a vivid smile, and said: "Nay, fear me not. I am one of yourselves -- one of our country's own children. Think not that I am here of my own free will. I deny not that I have learned to love some amongst our conqueror's children and subjects, but that does not make me forget who I am nor whence I have come. Let us talk together of our country and of the slender hopes which yet remain that she may gird herself up and make common cause against the foe. Oh, would that I might live to see the day, even though my life might pay the forfeit of my father's patriotism. Let Edward slay me -- ay, and every hostage he holds in his hand -- so that our country shakes off the foreign yoke, and unites under one head as one nation once again." These words kindled in the breast of the twin brothers such a glow of joy and fervour as they had not known for many a weary day. They made room for Arthyn to ride between them, and eager were the confidences exchanged between the youthful patriots as they pursued their way upwards. Little they heeded the black looks cast upon them by Raoul Latimer, as he saw Arthyn's eager animation, and understood how close was the bond which had thus quickly been established between them and the proud, silent girl whose favours he had been sedulously trying to win this many a day. Raoul Latimer was a youth with a decided eye to the main chance. He knew that Arthyn was her father's heiress, and that she would succeed at his death to some of the richest lands in Wales. Possibly her father might be deprived of these lands in his lifetime, as he was a turbulent chieftain, by no means submissive to Edward's rule. If that were the case, and if his daughter had wedded a loyal Englishman of unquestionable fidelity, there would be an excellent chance for that husband of succeeding to the broad lands of Einon ap Cadwalader before many years had passed. Therefore young Raoul paid open court to the proud Welsh maiden, and was somewhat discomfited at the small progress he had made. But he was a hot-headed youth, and had no intention of being thrown into the shade by any beggarly Welshmen, be they sons of Dynevor or no, so that when the party were forced by the character of the ground to dismount from their horses and take to their own feet, he pressed up to Arthyn and said banteringly: "Sweet lady, why burden yourself with the entertainment of these wild, uncivilized loons? Surely those who can but speak the language of beasts deserve the treatment of beasts. It is not for you to be thus --" But the sentence was never finished. Perhaps the flash from Arthyn's eye warned him he had gone too far in thus designating the youths, who were, after all, her countrymen; but there was a better reason still for this sudden pause, for Llewelyn's strong right hand had flown out straight from the shoulder, and Raoul had received on the mouth a stinging blow which had brought the red blood upon his lips and the crimson tide of fury into his cheeks. With an inarticulate cry of rage he drew his dagger and sprang upon the young Welshman. Swords were drawn in those days only too readily, and in this case there had been provocation enough on both sides to warrant bloodshed. The youths were locked at once in fierce conflict, striking madly at each other with their shining blades, before those who stood by well knew what had occurred. It was only too common at such times that there should be collision between the sons of England and Wales; and the suffering and the penalty almost invariably fell upon the latter. This fact was well known to the children of the king, and possibly prompted the young Alphonso to his next act. Drawing the small sword he always carried at his side, he threw himself between the combatants, and striking up their blades he cried in tones of such authority as only those can assume who feel the right is theirs: "Put up your weapons, gentlemen; I command you in the king's name. "Raoul, this is your doing, I warrant. Shame on you for thus falling upon my father's guest in his absence, and he a stranger and an alien! Shame on you, I say!" But scarce had these words been uttered before a shrill cry broke from several of the girls, who were watching the strange scene with tremulous excitement. For young Llewelyn, maddened and blinded by the heat of his passion, and not knowing either who Alphonso was or by what right he interposed betwixt him and his foe, turned furiously upon him, and before any one could interpose, a deep red gash in the boy's wrist showed what the Welsh lad's blade had done. Wendot, Griffeth, and Godfrey flung themselves upon the mad youth, and held him back by main force. In Raoul's eyes there was an evil light of triumph and exultation. "Llewelyn, Llewelyn, art mad? It is the king's son," cried Wendot in their native tongue; whilst Joanna sprang towards her brother and commenced binding up the gash, the lad never for a moment losing his presence of mind, or forgetting in the smart of the hurt the dignity of his position. Llewelyn's fierce burst of passion had spent itself, and the sense of Wendot's words had come home to him. He stood shamefaced and sullen, but secretly somewhat afraid; whilst Arthyn trembled in every limb, and if looks would have annihilated, Raoul would not have existed as a corporate being a moment longer. "Gentlemen," said Alphonso, turning to those about him, and holding up his bandaged hand, "this is the result of accident -- pure accident. Remember that, if it ever comes to the ears of my father. This youth knew not what he did. The fault was mine for exposing myself thus hastily. As you value the goodwill in which I hold you all, keep this matter to yourselves. We are not prince or subject today, but comrades bent on sport together. Remember and obey my behest. It is not often I lay my commands upon you." These words were listened to with gratitude and relief by all the party save one, and his brow gloomed darker than before. Arthyn saw it, and sprang towards Alphonso, who was smiling at his sister in response to her quick words of praise. "It was his fault -- his," she cried, pointing to the scowling Raoul, who looked ill-pleased at having his lips thus sealed. "He insulted him -- he insulted me. No man worthy the name would stand still and listen. It is the way with these fine gallants of England. They are ever stirring up strife, and my countrymen bear the blame, the punishment, the odium --" But Alphonso took her hand with a gesture of boyish chivalry. "None shall injure thee or thine whilst I am by, sweet Arthyn. The nation is dear to me for thy sake, and thy countrymen shall be as our honoured guests and brothers. Have we not learned to love them for thy sake and their own? Trouble not thy head more over this mischance, and let it not cloud our day's sport. "Raoul," he added, with some sternness, "thou art a turbulent spirit, and thou lackest the gentle courtesy of a true knight towards those whose position is trying and difficult. Thou wilt not win thy spurs if thou mendest not thy ways. Give thy hand now, before my eyes, to the youth thou didst provoke. If thou marrest the day's pleasure again, I shall have more to say to thee yet." It was not often that the gentle Alphonso spoke in such tones, and therefore his words were the more heeded. Raoul, inwardly consumed with rage at being thus singled out for rebuke, dared not withstand the order given him, and grudgingly held out his hand. It was not with much greater alacrity that Llewelyn took it, for there was much stubborn sullenness in his disposition, and his passion, though quickly aroused, did not quickly abate; but there was a compulsion in the glance of the royal boy which enforced obedience; and harmony being thus nominally restored, the party once more breathed freely. "And now upwards and onwards for the lair of the wolf," cried Alphonso; "we have lost time enough already. Who knows the way to his favourite haunts? Methinks they cannot be very far away now." "I should have thought we had had enough of Welsh wolves for one day," muttered Raoul sullenly to Godfrey; but the latter gave him a warning glance, and he forbore to speak more on the subject. Gertrude had watched the whole scene with dilated eyes, and a feeling of sympathy and repulsion she was perfectly unable to analyze. When the party moved on again she stole up to Wendot's side, and said as she glanced into his troubled face: "He did not mean it? he will not do it again?" Wendot glanced down at her with a start, and shook his head. "He knew not that it was the king's son -- that I verily believe; but I know not what Llewelyn may say or do at any time. He never speaks to me of what is in his head. Lady Gertrude, you know the king and his ways. Will he visit this rash deed upon my brother's head? Will Llewelyn suffer for what he did in an impulse of mad rage, provoked to it by yon haughty youth, whose words and bearing are hard for any of us to brook?" "Not if Alphonso can but get his ear; not if this thing is kept secret, as he desires, as he has commanded. But I fear what Raoul may say and do. He is treacherous, selfish, designing. The king thinks well of him, but we love him not. I trust all will yet be well." "But you fear it may not," added Wendot, completing the sentence as she had not the heart to do. "I fear the same thing myself. But tell me again, Lady Gertrude, what would be the penalty of such an act? Will they --" "Alphonso has great influence with his father," answered Gertrude quickly. "He will stand your brother's friend through all; perchance he may be detained in some sort of captivity; perchance he may not have his lands restored if this thing comes to the king's ears. But his person will be safe. Fear not for that. Methinks Alphonso would sooner lay down his own life than that harm should befall from what chanced upon a day of sport planned by him and Joanna." And Gertrude, seeing that a load lay upon the heart of the young Lord of Dynevor, set herself to chase the cloud from his brow, and had so far succeeded that he looked himself again by the time a warning shout from those in advance showed that some tracks of the wild creature of whom they were in pursuit had been discovered in the path. "Do not run into danger," pleaded Gertrude, laying a hand on Wendot's arm as he moved quickly forward to the front. "You are so brave you never think of yourself; but do not let us have more bloodshed today, save the blood of the ravenous beast if it must be. I could find it in my heart to wish that we had not come forth on this errand. The brightness of the day has been clouded over." Wendot answered by a responsive glance. There was something soothing to him in the unsolicited sympathy of Gertrude. He had thought little since they parted two years before of that childish pledge given and received, although he always wore her talisman about his neck, and sometimes looked at it with a smile. He had no serious thoughts of trying to mate with an English noble's daughter. He had had no leisure to spare for thoughts of wedlock at all. But something in the trustful glance of those dark eyes looking confidingly up to him sent a quick thrill through his pulses, which was perhaps the first dawning life of the love of a brave heart. But there was an impatient call from the front, and Wendot sprang forward, the huntsman awakening within him at the sight of the slot of the quarry. He looked intently at the tracks in the soft earth, and then pointed downwards in the direction of a deep gully or cavernous opening in the hillside, which looked very dark and gloomy to the party who stood in the sunshine of the open. "The beast has gone that way," he said; "and by his tracks and these bloodstains, he has prey in his mouth. Likely his mate may have her lair in yon dark spot, and they may be rearing their young in that safe retreat. See how the dogs strain and pant! They smell the prey, and are eager to be off. We must be alert and wary, for wolves with young ones to guard are fierce beyond their wont." He looked doubtfully at the girls, whose faces were full of mingled terror and excitement. Godfrey read his meaning, and suggested that the ladies should remain in this vantage ground whilst some of the rest went forward to reconnoitre. But Joanna, ever bold and impetuous, would have none of that. "We will go on together," she said. "We shall be safest so. No wolf, however fierce, will attack a number like ourselves. They will fly if they can, and if they are brought to bay we need not go near them. But why have we come so far to give up all the peril and the sport at the last moment?" "She speaks truth," said Wendot, to whom she seemed to look. "At this season of the year wolves have meat in plenty, and will not attack man save in self defence. If we track them silently to their lair, we may surprise and kill the brood; but we are many, and can leave force enough to defend the ladies whilst the rest fight the battle with the creatures at bay." Nobody really wished to be left behind, and there was a pleasant feeling of safety in numbers. Slowly and cautiously they all followed the track of the wolf downwards into the gloomy ravine, which seemed to shut out all light of the sun between walls of solid rock. It was a curious freak in which nature had indulged in the formation of this miniature crevasse between the hillsides. At the base ran a dark turbid stream, which had hollowed out for itself a sort of cavernous opening, and the walls of rock rose almost precipitately on three sides, only leaving one track by which the ravine could be entered. The stream came bubbling out from the rock, passing through some underground passage; and within the gloomy cavern thus produced the savage beasts had plainly made their lair, for there were traces of blood and bones upon the little rocky platform, and the trained ear of Wendot, who was foremost, detected the sound of subdued and angry growling proceeding from the natural cave they were approaching. "The beasts are in there," he said, pausing, and the next moment Raoul had loosed the dogs, who darted like arrows from bows along the narrow track; and immediately a great he wolf had sprung out with a cry of almost human rage, and had fastened upon one of the assailants, whose piercing yell made the girls shrink back and almost wish they had not come. But Wendot was not far behind. He was not one of the huntsmen who give all the peril to the dogs and keep out of the fray themselves. Drawing his long hunting knife, and shouting to his brothers to follow him, he sprang down upon the rocky platform himself, and Llewelyn and Howel were at his side in a moment. Godfrey would fain have followed, but his duty obliged him to remain by the side of the princess; and he kept a firm though respectful grasp upon Alphonso's arm, feeling that he must not by any means permit the heir of England to adventure himself into the fray. And indeed the boy's gashed hand hindered him from the use of his weapon, and he could only look on with the most intense interest whilst the conflict between the two fierce beasts and their angry cubs was waged by the fearless lads, who had been through many such encounters before, and showed such skill, such address, such intrepidity in their attack, that the young prince shouted aloud in admiration, and even the girls lost their first sense of terror in the certainty of victory on the side of the Welsh youths. As for Raoul Latimer, he stood at a safe distance cheering on his dogs, but not adventuring himself within reach of the murderous fangs of the wolves. He occupied a position halfway between the spot upon which the fray was taking place and the vantage ground occupied by the royal party in full sight of the strife. Arthyn had passed several scornful comments upon the care the young gallant was taking of himself, when suddenly there was a cry from the spectators; for one of the cubs, escaping from the melee, ran full tilt towards Raoul, blind as it seemed with terror; and as it came within reach of his weapon, the sharp blade gleamed in the air, and the little creature gave one yell and rolled over in its death agony. But that cry seemed to pierce the heart of the mother wolf, and suddenly, with almost preternatural strength and activity, she bounded clean over the forms of men and dogs, and dashed straight at Raoul with all the ferocity of an animal at bay, and of a mother robbed of her young. The young man saw the attack; but his weapon was buried in the body of the cub, and he had no time to disengage it. Turning with a sharp cry of terror, he attempted to fly up the rocky path; but the beast was upon him. She made a wild dash and fastened upon his back, her fangs crushing one shoulder and her hot breath seeming to scorch his cheek. With a wild yell of agony and terror Raoul threw himself face downwards upon the ground, whilst his cry was shrilly echoed by the girls -- all but Arthyn, who stood rigidly as if turned to stone, a strange, fierce light blazing in her eyes. But help was close at hand. Wendot had seen the spring, and had followed close upon the charge of the maddened brute. Flinging himself fearlessly upon the struggling pair, he plunged his knife into the neck of the wolf, causing her to relax her hold of her first foe and turn upon him. Had he stabbed her to the heart she might have inflicted worse injury upon Raoul in her mortal struggle; as it was, there was fierce fight left in her still. But Wendot was kneeling upon the wildly struggling body with all his strength, and had locked his hands fast round her throat. "Quick, Llewelyn -- the knife!" he cried, and his brother was beside him in an instant. The merciful death stroke was given, and the three youths rose from their crouching posture and looked each other in the eyes, whilst the wolf lay still and dead by the side of her cub. "Methinks we have had something too much of Welsh wolves," was the only comment of Raoul, as he joined the royal party without a word to the brothers who had saved his life. CHAPTER VII. THE KING'S JUDGMENT. The great King Edward had been sitting enthroned in the state apartment of the castle, receiving the homage of those amongst the Welsh lords and chieftains who had been summoned to pay their homage to him and had obeyed this summons. It was an imposing sight, and one not likely to be forgotten by any who witnessed it for the first time. The courageous but gentle Queen Eleanor, who was seldom absent from her lord's side be the times peaceful or warlike, was seated beside him for the ceremony, with her two elder daughters beside her. The young Alphonso stood at the right hand of the king, his face bright with interest and sympathy; and if ever the act of homage seemed to be paid with effort by some rugged chieftain, or he saw a look of gloom or pain upon the face of such a one, he was ever ready with some graceful speech or small act of courtesy, which generally acted like a charm. And the father regarded his son with a fond pride, and let him take his own way with these haughty, untamable spirits, feeling perhaps that the tact of the royal boy would do more to conciliate and win hearts than any word or deed of his own. Edward has been often harshly condemned for his cruelty and treachery towards the vanquished Welsh; but it must be remembered with regard to the first charge that the days were rude and cruel, that the spirit of the age was fierce and headstrong, and that the barons and nobles who were scheming for the fair lands of Wales were guilty of many of the unjust and oppressive acts for which Edward has since been held responsible. The Welsh were themselves a very wild race, in some parts of the country barely civilized; and there can be no denying that a vein of fierce treachery ran through their composition, and that they often provoked their adversaries to cruel retaliation. As for the king himself, his policy was on the whole a merciful and just one, if the one point of his feudal supremacy were conceded. To those who came to him with their act of homage he confirmed their possession of ancestral estates, and treated them with kindness and consideration. He was too keen a statesman and too just a man to desire anything but a conciliatory policy so far as it was possible. Only when really roused to anger and resolved upon war did the fiercer side of his nature show itself, and then, indeed, he could show himself terrible and lion-like in his wrath. The brothers of Dynevor were the last of those who came to pay their act of homage. The day had waned, and the last light of sunset was streaming into that long room as the fair-haired Wendot bent his knee in response to the summons of the herald. The king's eyes seemed to rest upon him with interest, and he spoke kindly to the youth; but it was noted by some in the company that his brow darkened when Llewelyn followed his brother's example, Howel attending him as Griffeth had supported Wendot; and there was none of the gracious urbanity in the royal countenance now that had characterized it during the past hour. Several faces amongst those in immediate attendance upon the king and his family watched this closing scene with unwonted interest. Gertrude stood with Joanna's hand clasped in hers, quivering with excitement, and ever and anon casting quick looks towards her brother, who stood behind the chair of state observant and watchful, but without betraying his feelings either by word or look. Raoul Latimer was there, a sneer upon his lips, a malevolent light in his eyes, which deepened as they rested upon Llewelyn, whilst Arthyn watched the twin brothers with a strange look in her glowing eyes, her lips parted, her white teeth just showing between, her whole expression one of tense expectancy and sympathy. Once Llewelyn glanced up and met the look she bent on him. A dusky flush overspread his cheek, and his fingers clenched themselves in an unconscious movement understood only by himself. The homage paid, there was a little stir at the lower end of the hall as the doors were flung open for the royal party to take their departure. Edward bent a searching look upon the four brothers, who had fallen back somewhat, and were clustered together not far from the royal group, and the next minute an attendant whispered to them that it was the king's pleasure they should follow in his personal retinue, as he had somewhat to say to them in private. Wendot's heart beat rather faster than its wont. He had had some foreboding of evil ever since that unlucky expedition, some days back now, on which Llewelyn's sword had been drawn upon an English subject, and had injured the king's son likewise. Raoul had for very shame affected a sort of condescending friendliness towards the brothers after they had been instrumental in saving him from the fangs of the she wolf; but it was pretty evident to them that his friendship was but skin deep; whilst every word that passed between Arthyn and Llewelyn or his brother -- and these were many -- was ranked as a dire offence. Had Wendot been more conversant with the intrigues of courts, he would have seen plainly that Raoul was paying his addresses to the Welsh heiress, who plainly detested and abhorred him. The ambitious and clever young man, who was well thought of by the king, and had many friends amongst the nobles and barons, had a plan of his own for securing to himself some of the richest territory in the country, and was leaving no stone unturned in order to achieve that object. A marriage with Arthyn would give him the hold he wanted upon a very large estate. But indifferent as he was to the feelings of the lady, he was wise enough to see that whilst she remained in her present mood, and was the confidante and friend of the princesses, he should not gain the king's consent to prosecuting his nuptials by force, as he would gladly have done. Whereupon a new scheme had entered his busy brain, as a second string to his bow, and with the help of a kinsman high in favour with the king, he had great hopes of gaining his point, which would at once gratify his ambition and inflict vengeance upon a hated rival. Raoul had hated the Dynevor brothers ever since he had detected in Arthyn an interest in and sympathy for them, ever since he had found her in close talk in their own tongue with the dark-browed twins, whose antagonism to the English was scarcely disguised. He had done all he knew to stir the hot blood in Llewelyn and Howel, and that with some success. The lads were looked upon as dangerous and treacherous by many of those in the castle; and from the sneering look of coming triumph upon the face of young Latimer as the party moved off towards the private apartments of the royal family, it was plain that he anticipated a victory for himself and a profound humiliation for his foes. Supper was the first business of the hour, and the Dynevor brothers sat at the lower table with the attendants of the king. The meal was well-served and plentiful, but they bad small appetite for it. Wendot felt as though a shadow hung upon them; and the chief comfort he received was in stealing glances at the sweet, sensitive face of Gertrude, who generally responded to his glance by one of her flashing smiles. Wendot wondered how it was that Lord Montacute had never sought him out to speak to him. Little as the lad had thought of their parting interview at Dynevor during the past two years, it all came back with the greatest vividness as he looked upon the fine calm face of the English noble. Was it possible he had forgotten the half-pledge once given him? Or did he regret it, now that his daughter was shooting up from a child into a sweet and gracious maiden whom he felt disposed to worship with reverential awe? Wendot did not think he was in love -- he would scarce have known the meaning of the phrase and he as little understood the feelings which had lately awakened within him; but he did feel conscious that a new element had entered into his life, and with it a far less bitter sense of antagonism to the English than he had experienced in previous years. After the supper was ended the royal family withdrew into an inner room, and presently the four brothers were bidden to enter, as the king had somewhat to say to them. The greater number of the courtiers and attendants remained in the outer room, but Sir Godfrey Challoner, Raoul Latimer, and one or two other gentlemen were present in the smaller apartment. The queen and royal children were also there, and their playfellows and companions, Gertrude holding her father by the hand, and watching with intense interest the approach of the brothers and the faces of the king and his son. Edward was seated before a table on which certain parchments lay. Alphonso stood beside him, and Wendot fancied that he had only just ended some earnest appeal, his parted lips and flushed cheeks seeming to tell of recent eager speech. The king looked keenly at the brothers as they made their obeisance to him, and singling out Wendot, bid him by a gesture to approach nearer. There was a kindliness in the royal countenance which encouraged the youth, and few could approach the great soldier king without experiencing something of the fascination which his powerful individuality exercised over all his subjects. "Come hither, boy," he said; "we have heard nought but good of thee. Thou hast an eloquent advocate in yon maiden of Lord Montacute's, and mine own son and daughters praise thy gallantry in no measured terms. We have made careful examination into these parchments here, containing reports of the late rebellion, and cannot find that thou hast had part or lot in it. Thou hast paid thy homage without dallying or delay; wherefore it is our pleasure to confirm to thee thy possession of thy castle of Dynevor and its territory. We only caution thee to remain loyal to him thou hast owned as king, and we will establish thee in thy rights if in time to come they be disputed by others, or thou stirrest up foes by thy loyalty to us." Wendot bowed low. If there was something bitter in having his father's rightful inheritance granted to him as something of a boon, at least there was much to sweeten the draught in the kindly and gracious bearing of the king, and in Alphonso's friendly words and looks. He had no father to look to in time of need, and felt a great distrust of the kinsman who exercised some guardianship over him; so that there was considerable relief for the youth in feeling that the great King of England was his friend, and that he would keep him from the aggression of foes. He stood aside as Edward's glance passed on to Llewelyn and Howel, and it was plain that the monarch's face changed and hardened as he fixed his eye upon the twins. "Llewelyn -- Howel," he said, "joint lords of Iscennen, we wish that we had received the same good report of you that we have done of your brethren. But it is not so. There be dark records in your past which give little hope for the future. Nevertheless you are yet young. Wisdom may come with the advance of years. But the hot blood in you requires taming and curbing. You have proved yourselves unfit for the place hitherto occupied as lords of the broad lands bequeathed you by Res Vychan, your father. For the present those lands are forfeit. You must win the right to call them yours again by loyalty in the cause which every true Welshman should have at heart, because it is the cause which alone can bring peace and safety to your harassed country. It is not willingly that we wrest from any man the lands that are his birthright. Less willingly do we do this when homage, however unwilling and reluctant, has been paid. But we have our duties to ourselves and to our submitted subjects to consider, and it is not meet to send firebrands alight into the world, when a spark may raise so fierce a conflagration, and when hundreds of lives have to pay the penalty of one mad act of headstrong youth. It is your youth that shall be your excuse from the charge of graver offence, but those who are too young to govern themselves are not fit to govern others." Whilst the king had been speaking he had been closely studying the faces of the twin brothers, who stood before him with their eyes on the ground. These two lads, although by their stature and appearance almost men, had not attained more than their sixteenth year, and had by no means learned that control of feature which is one of nature's hardest lessons. As the king's words made themselves understood, their brows had darkened and their faces had contracted with a fierce anger and rage, which betrayed itself also in their clenched hands and heaving chests; and although they remained speechless -- for the awe inspired by Edward's presence could not but make itself felt even by them -- it was plain that only the strongest efforts put upon themselves hindered them from some outbreak of great violence. Edward's eye rested sternly upon them for a moment, and then he addressed himself once again to Wendot. "To thee, Res Wendot," he said, "we give the charge of these two turbulent brothers of thine. Had not the Prince Alphonso spoken for them, we had kept them under our own care here in our fortress of Rhuddlan. But he has pleaded for them that they have their liberty, therefore into thy charge do we give them. Take them back with thee to Dynevor, and strive to make them like unto thyself and thy shadow there, who is, they tell me, thy youngest brother, and as well disposed as thyself. "Say, young man, wilt thou accept this charge, and be surety for these haughty youths? If their own next-of-kin will not take this office, we must look elsewhere for a sterner guardian." For a moment Wendot hesitated, He knew well the untamable spirit of his brothers, and the small influence he was likely to have upon them, and for a moment his heart shrank from the task. But again he bethought what his refusal must mean to them -- captivity of a more or less irksome kind, harsh treatment perhaps, resulting in actual imprisonment, and a sure loss of favour with any guardian who had the least love for the English cause. At Dynevor they would at least be free. Surely, knowing all, they would not make his task too hard. The tie of kindred was very close. Wendot remembered words spoken by the dying bed of his parents, and his mind was quickly made up. "I will be surety for them," he said briefly. "If they offend again, let my life, my lands, be the forfeit." The monarch gave him a searching glance. Perhaps some of the effort with which he had spoken made itself audible in his tones. He looked full at Wendot for a brief minute, and then turned to the black-browed twins. "You hear your brother's pledge," he said in low, stern tones. "If you have the feelings of men of honour, you will respect the motive which prompts him to give it, and add no difficulties to the task he has imposed upon himself. Be loyal to him, and loyal to the cause he has embraced, and perchance a day may come when you may so have redeemed your past youthful follies as to claim and receive at our hands the lands we now withhold. In the meantime they will be administered by Raoul Latimer, who will draw the revenues and maintain order there. He has proved his loyalty in many ways ere this, and he is to be trusted, as one day I hope you twain may be." Llewelyn started as if he had been stung as these words crossed the king's lips. His black eyes flashed fire, and as he lifted his head and met the mocking glance of Raoul, it seemed for a moment as if actually in the presence of the king he would have flown at his antagonist's throat; but Wendot's hand was on his arm, and even Howel had the self-command to whisper a word of caution. Alphonso sprang gaily between the angry youth and his father's keen glance, and began talking eagerly of Dynevor, asking how the brothers would spend their time, now that they were all to live there once more; whilst Arthyn, coming forward, drew Llewelyn gently backward, casting at Raoul a look of such bitter scorn and hatred that he involuntarily shrank before it. "Thou hast taken a heavy burden upon thy young shoulders, lad," said a well-remembered voice in Wendot's ear, and looking up, he met the calm gaze of Lord Montacute bent upon him; whilst Gertrude, flushing and sparkling, stood close beside her father. "Thinkest thou that such tempers as those will be easily controlled?" Wendot's face was grave, and looked manly in its noble thoughtfulness. "I know not what to say; but, in truth, I could have given no other answer. Could I leave my own brethren to languish in captivity, however honourable, when a word from me would free them? Methinks, sir, thou scarce knowest what freedom is to us wild sons of Wales, or how the very thought of any hindrance to perfect liberty chafes our spirit and frets us past the limit of endurance. Sooner than be fettered by bonds, however slack, I would spring from yonder casement and dash myself to pieces upon the stones below. To give my brothers up into unfriendly hands would be giving them up to certain death. If my spirit could not brook such control, how much less could theirs?" Gertrude's soft eyes gave eloquent and sympathetic response. Wendot had unconsciously addressed his justification to her rather than to her father. Her quick sympathy gave him heart and hope. She laid her hand upon his arm and said: "I think thou art very noble, Wendot; it was like thee to do it. I was almost grieved when I heard thee take the charge upon thyself, for I fear it may be one of peril to thee. But I love thee the more for thy generosity. Thou wilt be a true and brave knight ere thou winnest thy spurs in battle." Wendot's face flushed with shy happiness at hearing such frank and unqualified praise from one he was beginning to hold so dear. Lord Montacute laid his hand smilingly on his daughter's mouth, as if to check her ready speech, and then bidding her join the Lady Joanna, who was making signals to her from the other side of the room, he drew Wendot a little away into an embrasure, and spoke to him in tones of considerable gravity. "Young man," he said, "I know not if thou hast any memory left of the words I spake to thee when last we met at Dynevor?" Wendot's colour again rose, but his glance did not waver. "I remember right well," he answered simply. "I spoke words then of which I have often thought since -- words that I have not repented till today, nor indeed till I heard thee pass that pledge which makes thee surety for thy turbulent brothers." A quick, troubled look crossed Wendot's face, but he did not speak, and Lord Montacute continued -- "I greatly fear that thou hast undertaken more than thou canst accomplish; and that, instead of drawing thy brothers from the paths of peril, thou wilt rather be led by them into treacherous waters, which may at last overwhelm thee. You are all young together, and many dangers beset the steps of youth. Thou art true and loyal hearted, that I know well; but thou art a Welshman, and --" He paused and stopped short, and Wendot answered, not without pride: "I truly am a Welshman -- it is my boast to call myself that. If you fear to give your daughter to one of that despised race, so be it. I would not drag her down to degradation; I love her too well for that. Keep her to thyself. I give thee back thy pledge." Lord Montacute smiled as he laid his hand upon the young man's shoulder. "So hot and hasty, Wendot, as hasty as those black-haired twins. Yet, boy, I like thee for thy outspoken candour, and I would not have thee change it for the smooth treachery of courtly intrigue. If I had nought else to think of, I would plight my daughter's hand to thee, an ye both were willing, more gladly than to any man I know. But, Wendot, she is mine only child, and very dear to me. There are others who would fain win her smiles, others who would be proud to do her lightest behest. She is yet but a child. Perchance she has not seriously considered these matters. Still there will come a time when she will do so, and --" "Then let her choose where she will," cried Wendot, proudly and hotly. "Think you I would wed one whose heart was given elsewhere? Take back your pledge -- think of it no more. If the day comes when I may come to her free and unfettered, and see if she has any regard for me, good. I will come. But so long as you hold that peril menaces my path, I will not ask her even to think of me. Let her forget. I will not bind her by a word. It shall be as if those words had never passed betwixt us." Lord Montacute scarce knew if regret, relief, or admiration were the feeling uppermost in his mind, as the youth he believed so worthy of his fair daughter, and perhaps not entirely indifferent to her dawning charms, thus frankly withdrew his claim upon her hand. It seems strange to us that any one should be talking and thinking so seriously of matrimony when the girl was but fourteen and the youth three years her senior; but in those days marriages were not only planned but consummated at an absurdly early age according to our modern notions, and brides of fifteen and sixteen were considered almost mature. Many young men of Wendot's age would be seriously seeking a wife, and although no such thought had entered his head until he had seen Gertrude again, it cannot be denied that the idea had taken some hold upon him now, or that he did not feel a qualm of pain and sorrow at thus yielding up one bright hope just when the task he had taken upon himself seemed to be clouding his life with anxiety and peril. "Boy," said Lord Montacute, "I cannot forget what thou hast done nor what she owes to thee. I love thee well, and would fain welcome thee as a son; but my love for her bids me wait till we see what is the result of this office thou hast taken on thyself. Thou hast acted rightly and nobly, but in this world trouble often seems to follow the steps of those who strive most after the right. If thine own life, thine own possessions, are to pay the forfeit if thy brethren fall away into rebellion -- and Edward, though a just man and kind, can be stern to exact the uttermost penalty when he is angered or defied -- then standest thou in sore peril, peril from which I would shield my maid. Wherefore --" "Nay, say no more -- say no more. I comprehend it all too well," replied Wendot, not without a natural though only momentary feeling of bitterness at the thought of what this pledge was already costing him, but his native generosity and sweetness of temper soon triumphed over all besides, and he said with his peculiarly bright and steadfast smile, "You have judged rightly and well for us both, my lord. Did I but drag her down to sorrow and shame, it would be the bitterest drop in a bitter cup. A man placed as I am is better without ties." "Also the days will soon pass by, and the time will come when this charge ceases. Then if the Lady Gertrude be still mistress of her hand and heart, and if the Lord of Dynevor comes to try his fate, methinks, by what I have seen and heard, that he may chance to get no unkindly answer to his wooing." Wendot made no reply, but only blushed deeply as he moved away. He scarce knew whether he were glad or sorry that Gertrude came out to meet him, and drew him towards the little group which had gathered in a deep embrasure of the window. Joanna, Alphonso, and Griffeth were there. They had been eagerly questioning the younger lad about life at Dynevor, and what they would do when they were at home all together. Joanna was longing to travel that way and lodge a night there; and Gertrude was eloquent in praise of the castle, and looked almost wistfully at Wendot to induce him to add his voice to the general testimony. But he was unwontedly grave and silent, and her soft eyes filled with tears. She knew that he was heavy hearted, and it cut her to the quick; but he did not speak of his trouble, and only Alphonso ventured to allude to it, and that was by one quick sentence as he was taking his departure at bedtime. "Wendot," he said earnestly, "I will ever be thy friend. Fear not. My father denies me nothing. Thy trial may be a hard one, but thou wilt come nobly forth from it. I will see that harm to thee comes not from thy generosity. Only be true to us, and thou shalt not suffer." Wendot made no reply, but the words were like a gleam of sunshine breaking through the clouds; and one more such gleam was in store for him on the morrow, when he bid a final adieu to Gertrude before the general departure for Dynevor. "I have my half gold coin, Wendot. I shall look at it every day and think of thee. I am so happy that we have seen each other once again. Thou wilt not forget me, Wendot?" "Never so long as I live," he answered with sudden fervour, raising the small hand he held to his lips. "And some day, perchance, Lady Gertrude, I will come to thee again." "I shall be waiting for thee," she answered, with a mixture of arch sweetness and playfulness that he scarce knew whether to call childlike confidence or maiden trust. But the look in her eyes went to his heart, and was treasured there, like the memory of a sunbeam, for many long days to come. CHAPTER VIII. TURBULENT SPIRITS. The four sons of Res Vychan went back to Dynevor together, there to settle down, outwardly at least, to a quiet and uneventful life, chiefly diversified by hunting and fishing, and such adventures as are inseparable from those pastimes in which eager lads are engrossed. Wendot both looked and felt older for his experiences in the castle of Rhuddlan. His face had lost much of its boyishness, and had taken a thoughtfulness beyond his years. Sometimes he appeared considerably oppressed by the weight of the responsibility with which he had charged himself, and would watch the movements and listen to the talk of the twins with but slightly concealed uneasiness. Yet as days merged into weeks, and weeks lengthened into months, and still there had been nothing to alarm him unduly, he began, as the inclement winter drew on, to breathe more freely; for in the winter months all hostilities of necessity ceased, for the mountain passes were always blocked with snow, and both travelling and fighting were practically out of the question for a considerable time. Wendot, too, had matters enough to occupy his mind quite apart from the charge of his two haughty brothers. He had his own estates to administer -- no light task for a youth not yet eighteen -- and his large household to order; and though Griffeth gave him every help, Llewelyn and Howel stood sullenly aloof, and would not appear to take the least interest in anything that appertained to Dynevor, although they gave no reason for their conduct, and were not in other ways unfriendly to their brothers. The country was for the time being quiet and at peace. Exhausted by its own internal struggles and by the late disastrous campaign against the English, the land was, as it were, resting and recruiting itself, in preparation, perhaps, for another outbreak later on. In the meantime, sanguine spirits like those of Wendot and Griffeth began to cherish hopes that the long and weary struggle was over at last, and that the nation, as a nation, would begin to realize the wisdom and the advantage of making a friend and ally of the powerful monarch of England, instead of provoking him to acts of tyranny and retaliation by perpetual and fruitless rebellions against a will far too strong to be successfully resisted. But Llewelyn and Howel never spoke of the English without words and looks indicative of the deepest hatred; and the smouldering fire in their breasts was kept glowing and burning by the wild words and the wilder songs of the old bard Wenwynwyn, who spent the best part of his time shut up in his own bare room, with his harp for his companion, in which room Llewelyn and Howel spent much of their time during the dark winter days, when they could be less and less out of doors. Since that adventure of the Eagle's Crag, Wendot had distrusted the old minstrel, and was uneasy at the influence he exercised upon the twins; but the idea of sending him from Dynevor was one which never for a moment entered his head. Had not Wenwynwyn grown old in his father's service? Had he not been born and bred at Dynevor? The young lord himself seemed to have a scarce more assured right to his place there than the ancient bard. Be he friend or be he foe, at Dynevor he must remain so long as the breath remained in his body. The bard was, by hereditary instinct, attached to all the boys, but of late there had been but little community of thought between him and his young chieftain. Wendot well knew the reason. The old man hated the English with the bitter, unreasoning, deadly hatred of his wild, untutored nature. Had he not sprung from a race whose lives had been spent in rousing in the breasts of all who heard them the most fervent and unbounded patriotic enthusiasm? And was it to be marvelled at that he could not see or understand the changes of the times or the hopelessness of the long struggle, now that half the Welsh nobles were growing cool in the national cause, and the civilization and wealth of the sister country were beginning to show them that their own condition left much to be desired, and that there was something better and higher to be achieved than a so-called liberty, only maintained at the cost of perpetual bloodshed? or a series of petty feuds for supremacy, which went far to keep the land in a state of semi-barbarism? So the old bard sang his wild songs, and Llewelyn and Howel sat by the glowing fire of logs that blazed in the long winter evenings upon his hearth, listening to his fierce words, and hardening their hearts and bracing their wills against any kind of submission to a foreign yoke. A burning hatred against the English king also consumed them. Had they not, at the cost of most bitter humiliation, gone to him as vassals, trusting to his promise that all who did homage for their lands should be confirmed in peaceful possession of the same? And how had he treated this act of painful submission? Was it greatly to be wondered at that their hearts burned with an unquenchable hatred? To them Edward stood as the type of all that was cruel and treacherous and grasping. They brooded over their wrongs by day and by night; they carried their dark looks with them when they stirred abroad or when they rested at home. Wenwynwyn sympathized as none besides seemed to do, and he became their great solace and chief counsellor. Wendot might uneasily wonder what passed in that quiet room of the old man's, but he never knew or guessed. He would better have liked to hear Llewelyn burst forth into the old passionate invective. He was uneasy at this chronic state of gloom and sullen silence on the vexed question of English supremacy. But seldom a word passed the lips of either twin. They kept their secret -- if secret they had -- locked away in their own breasts. And days and weeks and months passed by, and Wendot and Griffeth seemed almost as much alone at Dynevor as they had been after their father's death, when Llewelyn and Howel had betaken themselves to their castle of Carregcennen. But at least, if silent and sullen, they did not appear to entertain any plan likely to raise anxiety in Wendot's mind as to the pledge he had given to the king. They kept at home, and never spoke of Iscennen, and as the winter passed away and the spring began to awaken the world from her long white sleep, they betook themselves with zest to their pastime of hunting, and went long expeditions that sometimes lasted many days, returning laden with spoil, and apparently in better spirits from the bracing nature of their pursuits. Griffeth, who had felt the cold somewhat keenly, and had been drooping and languid all the winter, picked up strength and spirit as the days grew longer and warmer, and began to enjoy open-air life once more. Wendot was much wrapped up in this young brother of his, who had always been dearer to him than any being in the world besides. Since he had been at death's door with the fever, Griffeth had never recovered the robustness of health which had hitherto been the characteristic of the Dynevor brothers all their lives. He was active and energetic when the fit was on him, but he wearied soon of any active sport. He could no longer bound up the mountain paths with the fleetness and elasticity of a mountain deer, and in the keen air of the higher peaks it was difficult for him to breathe. Still in the summer days he was almost his former self again, or so Wendot hoped; and although Griffeth's lack of rude health hindered both from joining the long expeditions planned and carried out by the twins, it never occurred to Wendot to suspect that there was an ulterior motive for these, or to realize how unwelcome his presence would have been had he volunteered it, in lieu of staying behind with Griffeth, and contenting himself with less adventurous sports. Spring turned to summer, and summer to autumn, and life at Dynevor seemed to move quietly enough. Griffeth took a fancy to book learning -- a rare enough accomplishment in those days -- and a monk from the Abbey of Strata Florida was procured to give him instruction in the obscure science of reading and writing. Wendot, who had a natural love of study, and who had been taught something of these mysteries by his mother -- she being for the age she lived in a very cultivated woman -- shared his brother's studies, and delighted in the acquirement of learning. But this new development on the part of the Lord of Dynevor and his brother seemed to divide them still more from the two remaining sons of Res Vychan; and the old bard would solemnly shake his head and predict certain ruin to the house when its master laid aside sword for pen, and looked for counsel to the monk and missal instead of to his good right hand and his faithful band of armed retainers. Wendot and Griffeth would smile at these dark sayings, and loved their studies none the less because they opened out before them some better understanding of the blessings of peace and culture upon a world harried and exhausted with perpetual, aimless strife; but their more enlightened opinions seemed but to widen the breach between them and their brothers, and soon they began to be almost strangers to each other. Wendot and Griffeth regretted this without seeing how to mend matters. They felt sorry for Llewelyn and Howel, deprived of the employments and authority they had enjoyed of late, and would have gladly given them a share of authority in Dynevor; but this they would not accept, drawing more and more away into themselves, and sharing their confidences with no one except Wenwynwyn. The summer was now on the wane, and the blustering winds of the equinox had begun to moan about the castle walls. The men were busy getting in the last of the fruits of the earth and storing them up against the winter need, whilst the huntsmen brought in day by day stores of venison and game, which the women salted down for consumption during the long dreary days when snow should shut them within their own walls, and no fresh meat would be obtainable. It was a busy season, and Wendot had time and mind alike full. He heeded little the movements of his brothers, whom he thought engrossed in the pleasures of the chase. He was not even aware that old Wenwynwyn was absent for several days from the castle, for since the estrangement between him and the old man he was often days at a time without encountering him. Llewelyn and Howel were visibly restless just now. They did not go far from the castle, nor did they seem interested in the spoil the hunters brought home. But they spent many long hours in the great gallery where the arms of the retainers were laid up, and their heads were often to be seen close together in deep discussion, although if any person came near to disturb them they would spring asunder, or begin loudly discussing some indifferent theme. They were in this vast, gloomy place, sitting together in the deep embrasure of one of the narrow windows as the daylight began to fail, when suddenly they beheld Wenwynwyn stalking through the long gallery as if in search of them, and they sprang forward to greet him with unconcealed eagerness. "Thou hast returned." "Ay, my sons, I have returned, and am the bearer of good news. But this is not the place to speak. Stones have ears, and traitors abound even in these hoary walls which have echoed to the songs of the bard for more years than man can count. Ah, woe the day; ah, woe the falling off! That I should live to see the sons of Dynevor thus fall away -- the young eaglets leaving their high estate to grovel with the carrion vulture and the coward crow! Ah! in old days it was not so. But there are yet those of the degenerate race in whom the spirit of their fathers burns. Come, my sons -- come hither with me. I bring you a message from Iscennen that will gladden your hearts to hear." The boys pressed after him up the narrow, winding stair that led to the room the bard called his own. It was remote from the rest of the castle, and words spoken within its walls could be heard by none outside. It was a place that had heard much plotting and planning ere now, and what was to be spoken tonight was but the sequel of what had gone before. "Speak, Wenwynwyn, speak!" cried the twins in a breath. "Has he returned thither?" "Ay, my sons; he has come back in person to receive his 'dues,' and to look into all that has passed in his absence. These eyes have seen the false, smiling face of the usurper, who sits in the halls which have rung to the sound of yon harp in days when the accursed foot of the stranger would have been driven with blows from the door. He is there, and --" "And they hate and despise and contemn him," cried Llewelyn in wild excitement. "Every man of Iscennen is his foe. Do not I know it? Have we not proved it? There is no one but will rise at the sound of my trumpet, to follow me to victory or death. "Wenwynwyn, speak! thou hast bid us wait till the hour has come till all things be ripe for action. Tell us, has not that hour come? Hast thou not come to bid us draw the sword, and wrest our rightful inheritance from the hand of the spoiler and alien?" "Ay, verily, that hour has come," cried the old bard, with a wild gesture. "The spoiler is there, lurking in his den. His eyes are roving round in hungry greed to spoil the poor man of his goods, to wrest the weapon from the strong. He is fearful in the midst of his state -- fearful of those he calls his vassals -- those he would crush with his iron glove, and wring dry even as a sponge is wrung. Ay, the hour is come. The loyal patriots have looked upon your faces, my sons, and see in you their liberators. Go now, when the traitor whose life you saved is gloating over his spoil in his castle walls. Go and show him what it is to rob the young lions of their prey; show him what it is to strive with eagles, when only the blood of the painted jay runs in his craven veins. Saw I not fear, distrust, and hatred in every line of that smooth face? Think you that he is happy in the possession of what he sold his soul to gain? Go, and the victory will be yours. Go; all Iscennen will be with you. Wenwynwyn has not sung his songs in vain amongst those hardy people! He has prepared the way. Go! victory lies before you." The boys' hearts swelled within them at these words. It was not for nothing that they, with their own faithful followers, sworn to secrecy, had absented themselves again and again from Dynevor Castle on the pretence of long hunting expeditions. It was true that they had hunted game, that they had brought home abundance of spoil with them; but little had Llewelyn or Howel to do with the taking of that prey. They had been at Iscennen; they had travelled the familiar tracks once again, and had found nothing but the most enthusiastic welcome from their own people, the greatest hatred for the foreign lordling, who had been foisted upon them by edict of the king. Truly Raoul Latimer had won but a barren triumph in gaining for himself the lands of Iscennen. A very short residence there had proved enough for him, and he had withdrawn, in fear that if he did not do so some fatal mischance would befall him. He had reigned there as an absentee ever since, not less cursed and hated for the oppressive measures taken in his name than when he had been the active agent. Matters were ripe for revolt. There only wanted the time and the occasion. The leader was already to hand -- the old lord, young in years, Llewelyn ap Res Vychan, and Howel his brother. With the twins at their head, Iscennen would rise to a man; and then let Raoul Latimer look to himself! For the Welsh, when once aroused to strike, struck hard; and it cannot be denied that they ofttimes struck treacherously beside. Small wonder if, as Wenwynwyn declared, young Raoul had found but small satisfaction in his visit to his new estate, and lived upon it in terror of his very life, though surrounded by the solid walls of his own castle. The hour had come. Llewelyn and Howel were about to taste the keen joy of revenging themselves upon a foe they hated and abhorred, about to take at least one step towards reinstating themselves in their ancestral halls. But the second object was really less dear to them than the first. If the hated Raoul could be slain, or made to fly in ignominy and disgrace, they cared little who reigned in his place. Their own tenure at Carregcennen under existing circumstances they knew to be most insecure, and although they had organized and were to lead the attack, they were to do so disguised, and those who knew the share they were to take were pledged not to betray it. Loose as had grown the bond between the brothers of late, the twins were not devoid of a certain rude code of honour of their own, and had no wish to involve Wendot in ruin and disgrace. He was surety for their good behaviour, and if it became known to Edward that they had led the attack on one of his English subjects, Dynevor itself might pay the forfeit of his displeasure, and Wendot might have to answer with his life, as he had offered to do, for his brothers. Thus, though this consideration was not strong enough to keep the twins from indulging their ungovernable hatred to their foe, it made them cautious about openly appearing in the matter themselves; and when, upon a wild, blustering night not many days later, a little band of hardy Welshmen, all armed to the teeth, crept with the silent caution of wild beasts along a rocky pathway which led by a subterranean way, known only to Llewelyn and Howel, into the keep of the castle itself; none would have recognized in the blackened faces of the two leaders, covered, as they appeared to be, with a tangled growth of hair and beard, the countenances of the sons of Res Vychan; whilst the stalwart, muscular figures seemed rather to belong to men than lads, and assisted the disguise not a little. The hot-headed but by no means intrepid young Englishman, who had not had the courage to remain long in the possessions he had coveted, and who was fervently wishing that this second visit was safely over, was aroused from his slumbers by the clash of arms, and by the terrified cries of the guard he always placed about him. "The Welsh wolves are upon us!" he heard a voice cry out in the darkness. "We are undone -- betrayed! Every man for himself! They are murdering every soul they meet." In a passion of rage and terror Raoul sprang from his bed, and commenced hurrying into his clothes as fast as his trembling hands would allow him. In vain he called to his servants; they had every man of them fled. Below he heard the clash of arms, and the terrible guttural cries with which the Welsh always rushed into battle, and which echoed through the halls of Carregcennen like the trump of doom. It was a terrible moment for the young Englishman, alone, half-armed, and at the mercy of a merciless foe. He looked wildly round for some means of escape. The tread of many feet was on the stairs. To attempt resistance was hopeless. Flight was the only resource left him, and in a mad impulse of terror he flung himself on the floor, and crept beneath the bed, the arras of which concealed him from sight. There he lay panting and trembling, whilst the door was burst open and armed men came flocking in. "Ha, flown already!" cried a voice which did not seem entirely unfamiliar to the shivering youth, though he could not have said exactly to whom it belonged, and was in no mood to cudgel his brains on the subject. He understood too little of the Welsh tongue to follow what was said, but with unspeakable relief he heard steps pass from the room; for even his foes did not credit him with the cowardice which would drive a man to perish like a rat in a hole rather than sword in hand like a knight and a soldier. The men had dashed out, hot in pursuit, believing him to be attempting escape through some of the many outlets of the castle; and Raoul, still shivering and craven, was just creeping out from his hiding place, resolved to try to find his way to the outer world, when he uttered a gasp and stood or rather crouched spellbound where he was; for, standing beside a table on which the dim light of a night candle burned, binding up a gash in his arm with a scarf belonging to the Englishman, was a tall, stalwart, soldierly figure, that turned quickly at the sound made by the wretched Raoul. "Spare me, spare me!" cried the miserable youth, as the man with a quick movement grasped his weapon and advanced towards him. He did not know if his English would be understood, but it appeared to be, for the reply was spoken in the same tongue, though the words had strong Welsh accent. "And wherefore should I spare you? What have you done that we of Iscennen should look upon you as other than a bitter foe? By what right are you here wringing our life blood from us? Why should I not stamp the miserable life out of you as you lie grovelling at my feet? Wales were well quit of such craven hounds as you." "Spare me, and I renounce my claim. I swear by all that is holy that if you will but grant me my life I will repair to the king's court without delay, and I will yield up to him every claim which I have on these lands. I swear it by all that is holy in heaven and earth." "And what good shall we reap from that? We shall but have another English tyrant set over us. Better kill thee outright, as a warning to all who may come after." But Raoul clasped the knees of his foe, and lifted his voice again in passionate appeal. "Kill me not; what good would that do you or your cause? I tell you it would but raise Edward's ire, and he would come with fire and sword to devastate these lands as I have never done. Listen, and I will tell you what I will do. Spare but my life, and I will entreat the king to restore these lands to your feudal lords, Llewelyn and Howel ap Res Vychan. It was by my doing that they were wrested from them. I confess it freely now. Grant me but my life, and I will undo the work I have done. I will restore to you your youthful chiefs. Again I swear it; and I have the ear of his Grace. If thou hast thy country's cause at heart thou wilt hear me in this thing. I will give you back the lords you all love. I will trouble you no more myself. I would I had never seen this evil place. It has been nought but a curse to me from the day it was bestowed." The man uttered a harsh laugh, and stood as if considering. Raoul, whose eyes never left the shining blade his foe held suspended in his hand, pleaded yet more and more eloquently, and, as it seemed, with some effect, for the soldier presently sheathed his weapon, and bid the wretched youth rise and follow him. Raoul obeying, soon found himself in the presence of a wild crew of Welsh kerns, who were holding high revelry in the banqueting hall, whilst his own English servants -- those, at least, who had not effected their escape -- lay dead upon the ground, the presence of bleeding corpses at their very feet doing nothing to check the savage mirth and revelry of the victors, who had been joined by the whole of the Welsh garrison, only too glad of an excuse for rising against the usurper. A silence fell upon the company as the dark-bearded soldier marched his captive into the hall, the yell of triumph being hushed by commanding gesture from the captor. A long and unintelligible debate followed, Raoul only gathering from the faces of those present what were their feelings towards him. He stood cowering and quaking before that fierce assembly -- a pitiful object for all eyes. But at length his captor briefly informed him that his terms were accepted: that if he would write his request to the king and obtain its fulfilment, he should go free with a whole skin; but that, pending the negotiation, which could be carried on by the fathers of the Abbey of Strata Florida, he would remain a close prisoner, and his ransom would be the king's consent. These were the best terms the unhappy Raoul could obtain for himself, and he was forced to abide by them. The fathers of the abbey were honest and trustworthy, and carried his letters to the king as soon as they had penned them for him. Raoul was clever in diplomatic matters, and was so anxious for his own safety that he took good care not to drop a hint as to the evil conduct of the people of Iscennen, which might draw upon them the royal wrath and upon him instant death. He simply represented that he was weary of his charge of this barren estate, that he preferred life in England and at the court, and found the revenues very barren and unprofitable. As the former owners had redeemed their character by quiet conduct during the past year and a half, his gracious Majesty, he hinted, might be willing to gratify them and their people by reinstating them. And when Edward read this report, and heard the opinion of the father who had brought it -- a wily and a patriotic Welshman, who knew how to plead his cause well -- he made no trouble about restoring to Llewelyn and Howel their lands, only desiring that Wendot should renew his pledge for their loyalty and good conduct, and still hold himself responsible for his brothers to the king. And so Llewelyn and Howel went back to Carregcennen, and Wendot and Griffeth remained at Dynevor, hoping with a fond hope that this act of clemency and justice on the part of Edward would overcome in the mind of the twins the deeply-seated hatred they had cherished so long. CHAPTER IX. THE RED FLAME OF WAR. "Wendot, Wendot, it is our country's call! Thou canst not hang back. United we stand; divided we fall. Will the Prince of Dynevor be the man to bring ruin upon a noble cause, by banding with the alien oppressor against his own brethren? I will not believe it of thee. Wendot, speak -- say that thou wilt go with us!" Wendot was standing in his own hall at Dynevor. In the background was a crowd of retainers and soldiers, so eagerly discussing some matter of vital interest that the brothers stepped outside upon the battlemented terrace to be out of hearing of the noise of their eager voices. There was a deep gravity on Wendot's face, which was no longer the face of a boy, but of a youth of two-and-twenty summers, and one upon whom the cares and responsibilities of life had sat somewhat heavily. The tall, well-knit frame had taken upon it the stature and developed grace of manhood; the sun-browned face was lined with traces of thought and care, though the blue eyes sparkled with their old bright and ready smile, and the stern lines of the lips were shaded and hidden by the drooping moustache of golden brown. There were majesty, power, and intellect stamped upon the face of the young Lord of Dynevor, and it was very plain to all who observed his relations with those about him that he was master of his own possession, and that though he was greatly beloved by all who came in contact with him, he was respected and obeyed, and in some things feared. By his side stood Griffeth, almost as much his shadow as of yore. To a casual observer the likeness between the brothers was very remarkable, but a closer survey showed many points of dissimilarity. Griffeth's figure was slight to spareness, and save in moments of excitement there was something of languor in his movements. The colour in his cheeks was not the healthy brown of exposure to sun and wind, but the fleeting hectic flush of long-standing insidious disease, and his eyes had a far-away look -- dreamy and absorbed; whilst those of his brother expressed rather watchful observation of what went on around him, and resolution to mould those about him to his will. Facing this fair-haired pair were the twin Lords of Iscennen, considerably changed from the sullen-looking lads of old days, but still with many of their characteristics unchanged. They were taller and more stoutly built than Wendot and Griffeth, and their dark skins and coal-black hair gave something of ferocity and wildness to their appearance, which look was borne out by the style of dress adopted, whilst the young Lords of Dynevor affected something of the refinement and richness of apparel introduced by the English. For the past years a friendly intercourse had been kept up between Dynevor and Carregcennen. The country had been at peace -- such peace as internal dissensions would allow it -- and no one had disturbed the sons of Res Vychan in the possession of their ancestral rights. The tie between the brothers had therefore been more closely drawn, and Wendot's responsibility for the submissive behaviour of the turbulent twins had made him keep a constant eye upon them, and had withheld them on their side from attempting to foment the small and fruitless struggles against English authority which were from time to time arising between the border-land chief and the Lords of the Marches. But now something very different was in the wind. After almost five years of peace with England, revolt had broken out in North Wales. David, the brother of Llewelyn, had commenced it, and the prince had followed the example thus set him. He had broken out into open rebellion, and had summoned the whole nation to stand by him in one united and gallant effort to free the country from the foreign foe, and unite it once again as an undivided province beneath the rule of one sovereign. The call was enthusiastically responded to. North Wales rose as one man, and flocked to the banners of the prince and his brother. South Wales was feeling the contagion of coming strife, and the pulse of the nation beat wildly at the thought that they might win liberty by the overthrow of the foe. One after another the petty chiefs, who had sworn fealty to Edward, renounced their allegiance, and mustered their forces to join those of Llewelyn and David. The whole country was in a wild ferment of patriotic excitement. The hour seemed to them to have arrived when all could once again band together in triumphant vindication of their national rights. Llewelyn and Howel ap Res Vychan were amongst the first to tender their allegiance to the cause, and, having sent on a compact band of armed men to announce their coming in person, had themselves hurried to Dynevor to persuade their brothers there to join the national cause. And they found Wendot less indisposed than they had feared. The five years which had passed over his head since he had fallen under the spell of the English king's regal sway had a good deal weakened the impression then made upon him. Edward had not visited the country in person since that day, and the conduct of the English Lords of the Marches, and of those who held lands in the subjected country, was not such as to endear their cause to the hearts of the sons of Wales. Heart-burnings and jealousies were frequent, and Wendot had often had his spirit stirred within him at some tale of outrage and wrong. The upright justice of the king was not observed by his subjects, and the hatred to any kind of foreign yoke was inherently strong in these sons of the mountains. In the studies the Dynevor brothers had prosecuted together they had imbibed many noble thoughts and many lofty aspirations, and these, mingling with the patriotic instinct so strongly bound up in the hearts of Cambria's sons, had taught them a distrust of princes and an intense love for freedom's cause, as well as a strong conviction that right must ever triumph over might. So when the news arrived that the north was in open revolt, it struck a chord in the hearts of both brothers; and when the dark-browed twins came with the news that they had openly joined the standard of Llewelyn, they did not encounter the opposition they had expected, and it was with an eager hopefulness that they urged upon the Lord of Dynevor to lend the strength of his arm to the national cause. "Wendot, bethink thee. When was not Dynevor in the van when her country called on her? If thou wilt go with us, we shall carry all the south with us; but hang thou back, and the cause may be lost. Brother, why dost thou hesitate? why dost thou falter? It is the voice of thy country calling thee. Wilt thou not heed that call? O Wendot, thou knowest that when our parents lived -- when they bid us not look upon the foe with too great bitterness -- it was only because a divided Wales could not stand, and that submission to England was better than the rending of the kingdom by internal strife. But if she would have stood united against the foreign foe, thinkest thou they would ever have held back? Nay; Res Vychan, our father, would have been foremost in the strife. Are we not near in blood to Llewelyn of Wales, prince of the north? Doth not the tie of blood as well as the call of loyalty urge us to his side? Why dost thou ponder still? Why dost thou hesitate? Throw to the wind all idle scruples, and come. Think what a glorious future may lie before our country if we will but stand together now!" Wendot's cheek flushed, his eye kindled. He did indeed believe that were his father living he would be one of the first to hasten to his kinsman's side. If indeed the united country could be strong enough to throw off the yoke, what a victory it would be! Was not every son of Wales bound to his country's cause at such a time? There was but one thing that made him hesitate. Was his word of honour in any wise pledged to Edward? He had paid him homage for his lands: did that act bind him to obedience at all costs? But such refinements of honour were in advance of the thought of the time, incomprehensible to the wilder spirits by whom he was surrounded. Llewelyn answered the brief objection by a flood of rude eloquence, and Howel struck in with another argument not without its weight. "Wendot, whatever course thou takest thou art damned in Edward's eyes. Thou hast held thyself surety for us, and nought but death will hold us back from the cry of our country in her need. Envious eyes are cast already by the rapacious English upon these fair lands of thine, which these years of peace have given thee opportunity to enrich and beautify. Let the king once hear that we have rebelled, and his nobles will claim thy lands, thy life, thy liberty, and thou must either yield all in ignominious flight or take up arms to defend thyself and thine own. I trow that no son of Res Vychan will stand calmly by to see himself thus despoiled; and if thou must fight, fight now, forestall the foe, and come out sword in hand at thy country's call, and let us fight shoulder to shoulder and hand to hand, as our forefathers have done before us. Thou knowest somewhat of English rule, now that thou hast lived beneath it these past years. Say, wilt thou still keep thy neck beneath the yoke, or wilt thou do battle like a warrior for liberty and independence? By our act thou art lost -- yet not even that thought can hold us back -- then why not stand or fall as a soldier, sword in hand, than be trapped like a rat in a hole in inglorious inaction? For methinks whatever else betided thou wouldst not raise thy hand against thy countrymen, even if thy feudal lord should demand it of thee." "Never!" cried Wendot fiercely, and his quick mind revolved the situation thus thrust upon him whilst Howel was yet speaking. He saw at once that a course of neutrality would be impossible to him. Fight he must, either as Edward's vassal or his foe. The first was impossible; the second was fraught with a keen joy and secret sense of exultation. It was true what Howel said: he would be held responsible for his brothers' revolt. The English harpies would make every endeavour to poison the king's mind, so that they might wrest from him his inheritance. He would be required to take up arms against his brothers, and his refusal to do so would be his death warrant. Disgrace and ruin lay before him should he abide by such a course. The other promised at least glory and renown, and perhaps a soldier's death, or, better still, the independence of his country -- the final throwing off of the tyrant's yoke. His heart swelled within him; his eyes shone with a strange fire. Only one thought checked the immediate utterance of his decision, and that was the vision of a pair of dark soft eyes, and a child's face in which something of dawning womanhood was visible, smiling upon him in complete and loving trust. Yes, Wendot had not forgotten Gertrude; but time had done its work, and the image of the fair face was somewhat dim and hazy. He yet wore about his neck the half of the gold coin she had given him; but if he sometimes sighed as he looked upon it, it was a sigh without much real bitterness or regret. He had a tender spot in his memory for the little maid he had saved at the risk of his own life, but it amounted to little more than a pleasant memory. He had no doubt that she had long ago been wedded to some English noble, whose estates outshone those of Dynevor in her father's eyes. During the first years after his return home he had wondered somewhat whether the earl and his daughter would find their way again to the rich valley of the Towy; but the years passed by and they came not, and the brief dream of Wendot's dawning youth soon ceased to have any real hold upon him. If her father had had any thoughts of mating her with the Lord of Dynevor, he would have taken steps for bringing the young people together. The last doubt fled as Wendot thought this over; and whilst his brothers yet spoke, pointing to the rich stretch of country that lay before their eyes in all the glory of its autumn dress, and asking if that were not an inheritance worthy to be fought for, Wendot suddenly held out his hand, and said in clear, ringing tones: "Brothers, I go with you. I too will give my life and my all for the liberty of our land. The Lord of Dynevor shall not be slack to respond to his country's call. Methinks indeed the hour has come. I will follow our kinsman whithersoever he shall bid." Llewelyn and Howel grasped the outstretched hand, and from within the castle walls there burst forth the strains of wild melody from the harp of old Wenwynwyn. It seemed almost as though he must have heard the words that bound Wendot to the national cause, so exultant and triumphant were the strains which awoke beneath his hands. It was but a few days later that the four brothers rode forth from beneath the arched gateway of Dynevor, all armed to the teeth, and with a goodly following of armed attendants. Wendot and Griffeth paused at a short distance from the castle to look back, whilst a rush of strange and unwonted emotion brought the tears to Griffeth's eyes which he trusted none saw beside. There stood the grand old castle, his home from childhood -- the place around which all the associations of a lifetime gathered. It was to him the ideal of all that was beautiful and strong and even holy -- the massive walls of the fortress rising grandly from the rocky platform, with the dark background of trees now burning with the rich hues of autumn. The fair valley stretched before their eyes, every winding of which was familiar to them, as was also every individual tree or crag or stretch of moorland fell as far as eye could see. The very heart strings of Wendot and Griffeth seemed bound round these homelike and familiar things; and there was something strangely wistful in the glances thrown around him by the young Lord of Dynevor as he reined in his horse, and motioning to the armed followers to pass him, stood with Griffeth for a few brief moments alone and silent, whilst the cavalcade was lost to sight in the windings of the road. "Is it a last farewell?" murmured the younger of the brothers beneath his breath. "Shall I ever see this fair scene again?" And Wendot answered not, for he had no words in which to do so. He had been fully occupied all these last days -- too much occupied to have had time for regretful thought; but Griffeth had been visiting every haunt of his boyhood with strange feelings of impending trouble, and his cheek was pale with the stress of his emotion, and his voice was husky with the intensity of the strain he was putting upon himself. "Griffeth, Griffeth!" cried Wendot suddenly, "have I done wrong in this thing? I asked not thy gentle counsel, yet thou didst not bid me hold back. But tell me, have I been wrong? Could I have done other than I have?" "I think not that thou couldst. This seems like a call from our country, to which no son of hers may be deaf. And it is true that our brothers have undone thee, and that even wert thou not willing to take up arms against them and thy countrymen, the rupture with Edward is inevitable. No, I am with thee in what thou hast done. The Lord of Dynevor must show himself strong in defence of his country's rights. "Yet my heart is heavy as I look around me. For we are going forth to danger and death, and who knows what may betide ere we see these fair lands again, or whether we may ever return to see them more?" Wendot would fain have replied with cheerful assurance, but a strange rush of emotion came over him as he gazed at his childhood's home, together with a sudden strong presentiment that there was something prophetic in his brother's words. He gazed upon the gray battlements and the brawling river with a passionate ardour in his glance, and then turning quickly upon Griffeth, he said: "Brother, why shouldst thou leave it? thou art more fit for the safe shelter of home than for the strife of a winter war. Why shouldst thou come forth with us? Let us leave thee here in safety --" "Wendot!" It was but one word, but the volume of reproach compressed into it brought Wendot to a sudden stop. They looked into each other's eyes a moment, and then Griffeth said, with his sweet, meaning smile: "We have never been separated yet, my Wendot; in sorrow and joy we have ever been together. It is too late to change all that now. I will be by thy side to the end. Be it for life or for death we will ride forth together." And so with one hard hand clasp that spoke volumes, and with one more long, lingering look at the familiar towers of the old home, Wendot and Griffeth, the Lords of Dynevor, rode forth to meet their fate at the hands of the mighty English king. Of that sudden, fierce, and partially successful revolt the history books of the age give account. Llewelyn and his brother David, joined by the whole strength of the North, and by much able assistance from the South, drove back the English across the border; and when Edward, hurrying to the spot, marched against them, his army was utterly routed near the Menai Straits, and the triumphant Welsh believed for a few brief months that they were victors indeed, and that the power of the foe was hopelessly broken. Llewelyn with his army retired to the fastnesses of Snowdon, where the English durst not pursue them, and these less hardy soldiers suffered so terribly in the winter cold that the mortality in their ranks caused the triumphant mountaineers to prophesy that their work would be done for them without any more exertion on their part. But the lion-hearted King of England was not of the stuff that easily submits to defeat. He knew well that Wales was in his power, and that he had but to exercise patience and resolution, and the final victory would be his. Permitting no relaxation of his efforts in the North, even when the winter's bitter cold was causing untold sufferings amongst his soldiers, he commenced a muster of troops in the South, from which country most of the disaffected nobles had drawn away to join the insurgents under the Prince of Wales, as Llewelyn was called. It was a shock of no small magnitude to that prince to hear that his foe was thus employing himself; and leaving the fastnesses of Snowdon with a picked band of his hardiest men, amongst whom he numbered Llewelyn and Howel, he marched southward himself, hoping to overthrow this new force before it had gathered power sufficient to be dangerous. Wendot would gladly have been of the number, for inaction, and the rude barbarism he saw around him, were inexpressibly galling to him; and the more he saw of the savage spirits by whom he was surrounded the less he was able to hope for any permanent advantage as the result of this rising. The jealousies of the respective chiefs were hardly held in check even in the face of a common peril. It was impossible not to foresee that the termination of a war with England would only be the signal for an outbreak of innumerable petty animosities and hostile feuds. So Wendot would have been thankful to escape from this irksome inactivity, and to join the band going south; but the condition of Griffeth withheld him, for the youth was very ill, and he often felt that this winter of hardship up in the mountain air was killing him by inches, although he never complained. It was out of the question for Griffeth to march or to fight. He lay most of the day beside a little fire of peat, in a cabin that Wendot and his men had constructed with their own hands, beneath the shelter of a rock which broke the force of the north wind, and formed some protection against the deep snow. Griffeth had borne his share gallantly in the earlier part of the campaign, but a slight wound had laid him aside; and since the intense cold had come, he had only grown more white and wasted and feeble day by day. Now that the sun was gaining a little more power, and that the melting of the snow bespoke that spring was at hand, Wendot began to hope the worst was over; but to leave his brother in such a state was out of the question, and he saw Llewelyn and Howel depart without attempting to join them. Days and weeks had passed, and no news had been received by those up in the mountains of the result of Llewelyn's expedition. It was reported by scouts that Edward was at Carnarvon Castle in person, making hostile demonstrations of a determined kind, which, in the absence of their chief, the wild Welsh kerns knew not how to repel. They were safe where they were, and awaited the return of their leader; but a terrible stroke had yet to fall upon them, which proved the final blow to all their hopes and ambitions. It was a wild, windy night. Wendot had piled the fire high, and was sitting with Griffeth talking of past days, and gazing with an unconscious wistfulness into the glowing embers, which seemed to him to take the semblance of those familiar towers and rocks which he sometimes felt as though he should never see again. Griffeth paused in the midst of something he was saying, and looked round with a start. It seemed to both brothers as though a hand was fumbling at the latch. Wendot rose and opened the door, and a tall, gaunt figure staggered rather than walked into the room, and sank down as if perfectly exhausted beside the glowing fire. Griffeth uttered a startled exclamation. "Llewelyn!" he cried sharply; and Wendot, barring the door, and coming forward like one in a dream, asked with the calmness of one who reads dire disaster: "Where is Howel?" "Dead," came the answer in a hollow voice, as though the speaker was exhausted past words -- "dead by the side of Llewelyn our prince. Would that I too lay beside them!" Wendot, too stunned to say another word at that moment, busied himself in getting his brother food and wine, of which he plainly stood sorely in need. He ate ravenously and in perfect silence; and his brothers watched him without having the heart to put another question. Indeed they knew the worst: their prince dead; the flower of their army slain -- their own brother among the number -- the rest dispersed; the remaining forces without a leader, without a rallying point, without a hope. What need of farther words? Presently Llewelyn spoke again, this time with more strength, but still with the sullenness of despair: "It was a mere skirmish on the banks of the Wye. We were in advance of the main body, and a party of English fell upon us. We did our best to sell our lives dearly. I thought I had sold mine when my time came, but I awoke and found myself beside the stream. Howel was lying upon me, stark and dead, and our prince a few yards away, with his own men round him. I do not think the foe knew whom they had slain, or they would have taken at least his head away as a trophy. I know not who took the news to our comrades, but they learned it, and dispersed to the four winds. I was forced to remain for some days in a shepherd's hut till my wounds were somewhat healed, and since then I have been struggling back here, not knowing what had befallen our camp in these mountains. Am I the first to bear the, news, or has it been known before?" "You are the first," answered Wendot in a strange, blank voice. "We have heard nothing; we have been living in hopes of some triumph, some victory. We will let our fellows rest in peace one night longer. Tomorrow we must tell all, and decide what our action must be." "There is nothing more to hope for," said Llewelyn darkly. "Our hope is dead, our last prince lies in a nameless grave. There is but one choice open to us now. Let those who will submit themselves to the proud usurper, and let us, who cannot so demean the name we bear, go forth sword in hand, and die fighting to the last for the country we may not live to deliver." It seemed, indeed, as if Llewelyn's words were to prove themselves true; for no sooner did the news of the disaster on the banks of the Wye become known than the army began to melt away, like the snow in the increasing power of the sun. The chiefs, without a head, without a cause or a champion, either retired to their own wild solitudes or hastened to make their peace with their offended king; and only those who put honour before safety or life itself stood forth sword in hand to die, if it might be, with face to foe in defence of a cause which they knew was hopelessly lost. And amongst this gallant but reckless little band were the three brothers of Dynevor, who, having once taken up the sword against Edward, were determined not to lay it down until the hand of death was cold upon each heart. CHAPTER X. CARNARVON CASTLE. "There has been a battle -- desperate fighting. They are bringing the prisoners into the guardroom," cried Britton, bursting into the royal apartments with small ceremony in his excitement. "Come, Alphonso; come, Joanna -- let us go and see them. Our fellows say they made a gallant stand, and fought like veritable tigers. In sooth, I would I had been there. Methinks it is the last of the fighting these parts will see for many a long year." Alphonso sprang up at the word of his comrade, eager to go and see the prisoners, his humane and kindly nature prompting him to ascertain that no undue harshness was displayed towards them by the rude soldiers. But Joanna, although her face was full of interest and eagerness, shook her head with a little grimace and a glance in the direction of her governess, Lady Edeline; for during the years that had elapsed between the visit of the royal children to Rhuddlan and this present visit to Carnarvon, Joanna had grown from a child to a woman, and was no longer able to run about with her brothers at will, though she still retained her old fearless, independent spirit and impulsive generosity of temperament, and was a universal favourite, despite the fact that she gave more trouble than any of her younger sisters. The royal family had been for some time in Wales. They had wintered at Rhuddlan, where the little Princess Elizabeth had been born the previous year, just prior to the outbreak of the rebellion. Now they were at Carnarvon for greater security, the king considering that fortress the stronger of the two. The rebellion was practically at an end, but there was much to look into and arrange with regard to the rebels and their affairs, and there was the prospect of a considerable sojourn at the castle. At this moment Edward was himself absent, though not far away. It had been rumoured that there had been sharp, irregular fighting all about the region of Snowdon, where the rebels had had their headquarters. Considerable excitement had prevailed for some time in the English ranks, and there was still complete uncertainty as to the fate of Llewelyn, Prince of Wales; for although a rumour was rife that he had fallen in fight, it had never been corroborated by trustworthy testimony, and so long as that turbulent prince remained alive there was no security for the peace or submission of the country. Thus it was that the news of a victory and the capture of prisoners was exceedingly exciting to those within the castle. Alphonso, who was looking somewhat stronger for his sojourn in the bracing air of Wales, sprang up to go with Britton to make inspection, and again Joanna secretly bewailed her fate at being a girl, unable to take an equal share with her brother in such matters. The guardroom at the castle was a vast and really fine apartment, with a vaulted roof and majestic pillars, that gave the idea of much rude strength of construction. Just at this moment it was the scene of an animated picture, and the boys paused at the door by which they had entered to look about them with eager curiosity. The hall was full of soldiers, most of whom wore the English king's badge, and were known by sight to them as being attached to the castle; but mingled with these were other men, some in the English dress, but many others wearing the wild garb of the sons of the mountains, and these last had, for the most part, fetters on their wrists, or were bound two and two together and guarded by the English, whilst many of them were drooping under the effect of ghastly wounds, and several forms lay stretched along the ground indifferent to, or insensible of, their surroundings. Desperate fighting there had been, indeed, to judge from appearances, and Alphonso's gentle spirit was stirred within him as he caught the sound of deep groans mingling with the loud voices of the soldiers. He had inherited the gentle spirit of his mother, and the generosity which always takes the part of the weak and oppressed. It mattered not that these men had been taken with swords drawn against his royal father; they were prisoners now, they had lost their all; and if rebels from the English standpoint, had been striving to free their country from what appeared to them as the unjust inroads of a foreign foe. Alphonso, himself sinking into an early grave, and fully aware of his own state, saw life somewhat differently from his soldier sire, and felt little sympathy for that lust of conquest which was to the great Edward as the elixir of life. The lad's thoughts were more of that eternal crown laid up in the bright land where the sword comes not, and where the trump of war may never be heard. The glory of an earthly diadem was as nothing to him, and he had all that deep love for his fellow men which often characterizes those who know that their time on earth is short. Stepping forward, therefore, with the air of quiet authority which he knew so well how to assume, he enforced silence by a gesture; and as the soldiers respectfully fell back before him, he walked through the groups of prisoners, speaking friendly words to them in their own tongue, and finally gave strict command to the captain of the guardroom to remove the fetters from those who were wounded, and see that they had all due tendance and care, whilst the rest were to be guarded with as little rigour as possible, and shut up together, where they would have at least the consolation of companionship in their misfortune. The captain gave respectful heed to these words, and was by no means loath to carry out his instructions. He was a humane man himself, though inured to the horrors of war, and he, in common with all who came into contact with the young prince, felt towards him a great love and reverence; for there was something unearthly at times in the radiant beauty of the young Alphonso's face, and the growing conviction that he was not long for this world increased the loving loyalty shown to him by all. "Your Grace's behests shall be obeyed," answered the man readily; "I myself will see that the wounded receive due and fitting care. They are brave fellows, be they rebels or no, and verily I believe there is not a man of them but would have laid down his life a hundred times to save that of the two young leaders who led them on to the last desperate sally. Such gallant feats of arms I have seldom beheld, and it was sore trouble to capture without killing them, so fiercely did they fight. But I bid the men take them alive, if possible, as they seemed too gallant and noble to fall in that vain struggle. Methinks, could they be tamed to serve the king as valiantly as they fought for that forlorn hope, they might be well worth the saving. I am always loath to see a brave life flung away, be it of friend or foe." "Right, good Poleyn; thy words do thee credit. And where are these gallant leaders? Show me them, for I would fain speak a kindly word to them. I would not that they feared my father's wrath too much. Stern he may be, but cruel never, and it would please me well to bid them submit themselves to him, that he might the more readily forgive them. Tell me which they be." "They are not here," answered the captain; "I had them removed for greater comfort and security to mine own lodging. One of them is so sore wounded that I feared he would not live to make submission to the king unless he had prompt and skilful tendance; whilst the other, although his hurts be fewer and less severe, looks as if some mortal sickness were upon him. It may be nought but the feebleness that follows loss of blood and hard fighting; but I left them both to the care of my wife, who is the best tender of the sick that I have ever known. They came under her hands last night, brought on by our mounted fellows in advance of the rest. Today they are somewhat recovered; but I have had scarce time to think of them. I have been occupied since dawn with these other prisoners." "I would fain see these youths; said you not they were but youths, Poleyn?" said Alphonso, whose interest was aroused by the tale he had heard. "I will go to your lodging and request admittance. Your worthy wife will not refuse me, I trow?" The man smiled, and said that his wife would be proud indeed to be so visited. Alphonso, to whom the intricacies of the castle were well known, lost no time in finding the lodging of the captain of the guard, and quickly obtained admittance to the presence of the wounded youths, who occupied a comfortable chamber over the gateway, and had plainly been well looked to by the capable and kindly woman who called Poleyn her lord and master. The bright light of day was excluded from the sickroom, and as the prince stood in the doorway his eyes only took in the general appearance of two recumbent figures, one lying upon a couch beside a glowing fire of wood, and the other extended motionless upon a bed in an attitude that bespoke slumber, his face bandaged in such a way that in no case would it have been recognizable. But as Alphonso's eyes grew used to the darkness, and fixed themselves upon the face of the other youth, who was dressed and lying on the couch, he suddenly gave a great start, and advanced with quick steps to his side. "Griffeth!" he cried suddenly. The figure on the couch gave a start, a pair of hollow eyes flashed open, there was a quick attempt to rise, checked by the prince himself, and Griffeth exclaimed in the utmost astonishment: "Prince Alphonso!" "Yes, Griffeth, it is I indeed;" and then the prince sat down on the edge of the couch and gazed intently at the wasted features of the youth, towards whom in days gone by he had felt such a strong attachment. There was something of sorrow and reproach in his glance as he said gently: "Griffeth, can it really be thou? I had not thought to have seen thee in the ranks of our foes, fighting desperately against my father's soldiers. Whence has come this bitter change in thy feelings? and what is Wendot doing, who was to act as guardian toward his younger brethren? Hast thou broken away from his controlling hand? O Griffeth, I grieve to see thee here and in such plight." But Griffeth's sad glance met that of the young prince unfalteringly and without shame, although there was something in it of deep and settled sorrow. He made a gesture as though he would have put out his hand, and Alphonso, who saw it, grasped it warmly, generous even when he felt that he and his father had been somewhat wronged. "Think not that we took up arms willingly, Wendot and I," he said faintly, yet with clearness and decision. "Ay, it is Wendot who lies there, sore wounded, and sleeping soundly after a night of fever and pain. We shall not disturb him, he is fast in dreamland; and if you would listen to my tale, gentle prince, I trow you would think something less hardly of us, who have lost our all, and have failed to win the soldier's death that we went forth to seek, knowing that it alone could make atonement for what must seem to your royal father an act of treachery and breach of faith." And then Griffeth told all his tale -- told of the wrongs inflicted on hapless Wales in Edward's absence by the rapacious nobles he had left behind him to preserve order, of the ever-increasing discontent amongst the people, the wild hope, infused by David's sudden rising, of uniting once and for all to throw off the foreign yoke and become an independent nation again. He told of the action taken by their twin brothers, of the pressure brought to bear upon Wendot, of the vigilant hostility of their rapacious kinsman Res ap Meredith, son of the old foe Meredith ap Res, now an English knight, and eager to lay his hands upon the broad lands of Dynevor. It was made plain to the prince how desperate would have been Wendot's condition, thus beset with foes and held responsible for his brothers' acts. Almost against his will had he been persuaded, and at least he had played the man in his country's hour of need, instead of trying to steer his way by a cold neutrality, which would have ruined him with friend and foe alike. Griffeth told of the hardships of that campaign amongst the mountains; of the death of Llewelyn the prince, and of his brother Howel; and of the resolve of the gallant little band, thus bereft of their hope, to go out and die sword in hand, and so end the miserable struggle that had ceased to be aught but a mockery of war. It was plainly a bitter thought even to the gentle Griffeth that they had not met the death they craved, but had fallen alive into the hands of the foe. Alphonso gently chid him, and comforted him with brave and kindly words; and then he asked what had befallen his brother Llewelyn, and if he had likewise fallen in the fight. "Nay; he was not with us when we made that last rally. He commenced the march with us, but his wound broke out again, and we were forced to leave him behind. He and a handful of faithful servants from Iscennen and Dynevor were to try and push on to the stronghold of Einon ap Cadwalader, and ask counsel and assistance from him. In old days he and our father were friends. Although he was one of the few who did not join Llewelyn in this rising, he has ever been well-disposed towards his countrymen. So we hoped our brother would find shelter and help there. If he had tried to march with us, he must assuredly have died." "Ha!" said Alphonso smilingly, "methinks Llewelyn will have no trouble in gaining entrance there. Rememberest thou the Lady Arthyn, who was with us at Rhuddlan when thou wast there before? She hath left us of late to return to her father, whose loyalty has been proved, and whose request for his child was listened to graciously. But we shall be seeing them soon again, for my father betrothed Arthyn's hand to Raoul Latimer, whom doubtless thou rememberest as a somewhat haughty and quarrelsome lad. Time has softened down some of his rude tempers, and he has ever been eager for the match. My father has promised her hand in troth plight to him, and we await the coming of her and her father for the ceremony of betrothal. "If I remember rightly, she was always a friend to thy brother. If so, he will find a ready welcome at her father's house, for my Lady Arthyn always had a soft spot in her heart for those we called rebels. She was a true daughter of Wales, albeit she loved us well, and she will like thy brother none the less that his sword has been unsheathed against the English usurper." And then the prince and the rebel subject both laughed, and that laugh did more to bring them back to their old familiar relations than all that had gone before. Griffeth was easily led on to tell the story of the life at Dynevor these past years; and Alphonso better understood from his unconscious self-betrayal than from his previous explanation how the fire of patriotic love burned in the hearts of these brothers. He thought that had he been one of them he would have acted even as they had done, and there was no anger but only a pitying affection in his heart towards one whose life was overshadowed by a cloud so like the one which hung upon the horizon of his own sky. For it was plain to him that Griffeth's hold on life was very slight; that he was suffering from the same insidious disease which was sapping away his own health and strength. He had suspected it years before, and this supposition had made a link between them then; now he was certain of it, and certain, too, that the end could not be very far off. The fine constitution of the young Welshman had been undermined by the rigours of the past winter, and there was little hope that the coming summer would restore to him any of the fictitious strength which had long buoyed up Wendot with the hope that his brother would yet live to grow to man's estate. "For myself I do not think I wish it," said Griffeth, with one of his luminous glances at Alphonso; "life is very hard, and there seems nothing left to live for. I know not how I could live away from the woods and rocks of Dynevor. But there is Wendot -- my dear, kind, most loving brother. It cuts me to the heart to think of leaving him alone. Prince Alphonso, you are the king's son; will you pardon Wendot his trespass, and stand his friend with your royal father? I have no right to ask it. We have grievously offended, but he is my brother --" A violent fit of coughing came on, and the sentence was never completed. Alphonso raised the wasted form in his arms, and soothed the painful paroxysm as one who knows just what will best relieve the sufferer. The sound roused Wendot, who had been sleeping for many hours, and although he had been brought in last night in an apparently almost dying state, his vigorous constitution was such that even these few hours' quiet rest, and the nourishment administered to him by the good woman who waited on him, had infused new life into his frame, so that he had strength to sit up in bed, and to push aside the bandage which had fallen over his eyes, as he anxiously asked his brother what was amiss. Then Alphonso came towards him, and, holding his hand in a friendly clasp, told him that he had heard all the story, and that he was still their friend, and would plead for them with his father. Wendot, bewildered and astonished and ashamed, could scarce believe his senses, and asked, with a proud independence which raised a smile in Alphonso's eyes, that he might be led out to speedy death -- the death by the headsman's axe, which was all he had now to hope for. Life had no longer any charms for him, he said; if only his young brother might be pardoned, he himself would gladly pay the forfeit for both. But Alphonso, upon whose generous spirit bravery and self devotion, even in a foe, were never thrown away, replied kindly that he would see if peace could not be made with his offended sire, and that meantime Wendot must get well fast, and regain his health and strength, so as to be fit to appear before the king in person if he should be presently summoned. But though the young prince left lighter hearts behind him in the room where the two eagles of Dynevor were imprisoned, he found that the task he had set himself with his father was a more difficult one than he had anticipated. Edward was very greatly incensed by this fierce and futile rebellion that had cost him so many hundreds of brave lives, and had inflicted such sufferings on his loyal troops. The disaster at Menai still rankled in his breast, and it was with a very stern brow and a face of resolute determination that he returned to Carnarvon to look into matters, and to settle upon the fate of the many prisoners and vassals who had once mere placed themselves or their lands in his sole power through the act which had rendered them forfeit. Nor was Alphonso's task rendered less difficult from the fact that Sir Res ap Meredith had been before him, poisoning the king's mind against many of the Welsh nobles, and particularly against the sons of Res Vychan, in whose possession were the province and castle of Dynevor. Upon that fair territory he had long cast covetous eyes. He cared little in comparison for the more barren and turbulent region of Iscennen, and it was upon Wendot and Griffeth, but particularly upon Wendot, that the full bitterness of his invective was poured. He had so imbued the king with the idea that the youth was dangerous, turbulent, and treacherous (charges that his conduct certainly seemed to bear out), that it was small wonder if Edward, remembering his own former goodwill towards the youth, should feel greatly incensed against him. And although he listened to Alphonso's pleadings, and the lad told his story with much simple eloquence and fervour, the stern lines of his brow did not relax, and his lips set themselves into an ominous curve which the prince liked little to see. "Boy," he said, with an impatience that boded ill for the success of the cause, "I verily believe wert thou in the place of king, thou wouldst give to every rebel chief his lands again, and be not contented until thine own throne came tottering about thine ears. Mercy must temper justice, but if it take the place of justice it becomes mere weakness. I trusted Wendot ap Res Vychan once, and laid no hand upon his lands. Thou hast seen how this trust has been rewarded. To reinstate him now would be madness. No. I have in Sir Res ap Meredith a loyal and true servant, and his claims upon his traitorous kinsman's lands may not be disregarded. Dynevor will pass away from Wendot. It is throwing words away to plead with me. My mind is made up. I trust not a traitor twice." There was something in his father's tone that warned Alphonso to press the matter no more. He knew that when Edward thus spoke his word was final and irrevocable; and all he ventured now to ask was, "What will become of Wendot and his brother? You will not take their lives, sweet sire?" "Their lives I give to thee, my son," answered Edward, with a gesture towards his boy which betrayed a deep love, and showed that although he had denied him sternly he did not do so willingly. "As thou hast pleaded for them, I will not sentence them to death; but they remain my prisoners, and regain not their liberty. I know the turbulent race from which they spring. Sir Res will have small peace in his new possessions if any of the former princes of Dynevor are at large in the country. Wendot and Griffeth remain my prisoners." "Nay, father; let them be my prisoners, I pray," cried Alphonso, with unwonted energy and animation. "Thou hast granted me their lives; grant me the keeping of their persons too. Nay, think not that I will connive at their escape. Give whatsoever charge thou wilt concerning the safety of their persons to those who guard us in our daily life, but let me have them as gentlemen of mine own. Call them prisoners an you will, but let their imprisonment be light -- let me enjoy their company. Thou knowest that Britton is fretting for a freer life, and that I see little of him now. I have often longed for a companion to share my solitary hours. Give me Griffeth and Wendot. They have the royal blood of Wales flowing in their veins, and methinks they love me even as I love them. And, father, Griffeth has not many months, methinks, to live; and I know so well all he suffers that my heart goes out to him. He has the love of books that I have, and we have so many thoughts which none seem to understand save our two selves. And he and Wendot are as one. It would be cruelty such as thou wouldst not inflict to separate them whilst one has so short a time to live. Give me them for mine own attendants, and bid the servants guard them as best pleaseth thee. Sweet father, I have not asked many boons of thee. Grant me this one, I pray thee, for my heart is verily set on it." There was something in this appeal, something in the look upon Alphonso's face, something in the very words he had used, that made it impossible to his father to refuse him. Blind his eyes as he would to the truth, he was haunted by a terrible fear that the life of his only son was surely slipping away. Alphonso did not often speak of his health, and the hint just dropped struck chill upon the father's heart. Passing his hand across his face to conceal the sudden spasm of pain that contracted it, he rose hastily from his chair, and said: "Give thine own orders concerning these youths. I leave them in thy hands. Make of them what it pleaseth thee. Only let them understand that charge will be given to the custodians of the castle, and of whatever place they visit in the future, that they are prisoners at the king's pleasure, and that any attempt at escape will be punished with instant and rigorous captivity." "So be it," answered Alphonso, with brightening eyes. "I thank thee, father, for the boon. Thou shalt never have cause to repent it." CHAPTER XI. THE KING'S CLEMENCY. "Unhand me, sir. How dare you thus insult me? Let go my hand, or I summon help instantly. I am come to seek the king. Will you raise a tumult within hearing of his private apartments? Unhand me, I say," and Arthyn's cheeks flamed dangerously, whilst her eyes flashed fire. But Raoul Latimer, though a craven before the face of an armed foe, could be resolute enough when he had only an unprotected woman to deal with, and was quite disposed to show his valour by pressing his unwelcome salutations upon the cheek of the girl he regarded as his future wife. His surprise at encountering Arthyn, whom he believed far away in her father's castle, hastening alone down one of the long corridors of Carnarvon Castle, had been very great. He could not imagine what had thus brought her, and was eager to claim from her the greeting he felt was his due. But Arthyn had never lacked for spirit, and had always confessedly abhorred Raoul, nor had absence seemed to make the heart grow fonder, at least in her case. She repulsed him with such hearty goodwill that his cowardly fury was aroused, and had not the girl cried aloud in her anger and fear, he might have done her some mischief. But even as she lifted her voice a door in the corridor was flung open, and the king himself strode forth, not, as it chanced, in response to the call, which had not reached his ears, but upon an errand of his own. Now when he saw that at the doors of his own private apartments one of his own gentlemen had dared to lay rude hands upon a woman, his kingly wrath was stirred, and one blow from his strong arm sent Raoul reeling across the corridor till the wall stopped his farther progress. "How now, malapert boy?" cried Edward in deep displeasure. "Is it thus you disgrace your manhood by falling upon the defenceless, and by brawling even within hearing of your sovereign? You are not so wondrous valiant in battle, Raoul Latimer, that you can afford to blast the small reputation you have. "Sweet lady, be not afraid; thy king will protect thee from farther insult. "Ha, Arthyn, is it thou, my child? Nay, kneel not in such humbly suppliant fashion; rise and kiss me, little one, for thou art only less dear to me than mine own children. Come hither, maiden, and speak to me. What has brought thee here alone and unannounced? And what has raised this storm betwixt ye twain?" "Sire -- my king -- hear me," cried Arthyn in a choked voice; "and bid that wicked youth, whom I have ever hated, leave us. Let me speak to you alone and in private. It is to you, gracious lord, that I have come. Grant me, I pray you, the boon of but a few words alone and in private. I have somewhat to tell your grace -- your royal pardon to ask." "Pardon? tush, maiden! thou canst not have offended greatly. But come hither; what thou hast to say thou shalt say before the queen and Eleanor. They have ever been as mother and sister to thee. Thou hast no secrets for me which they may not hear?" "Ah no; I would gladly speak all before them," answered Arthyn eagerly, knowing that in the gentle Eleanor of Castile and her daughter she would find the most sympathizing of friends. Intensely patriotic as the girl had ever been, loving her country above all else, and throwing heart and soul into that country's cause, she had yet learned a deep love and reverence for the family of the English king, amongst whom so many years of her young life had been spent. She was able to do full justice to the kindly and domestic side of the soldier king's nature, and, whilst she regarded him as a foe to Wales, looked upon him personally as a friend and protector. Edward's gentleness and affection in his private life equalled his stern, unbending policy in matters of state. It was very tenderly and kindly that he led the girl to the private apartments of the queen; and when once Arthyn found herself face to face with one who had given to her more of mother love than any other being in the world, she flung herself into the arms opened to receive her, and out came the whole story which had brought her on this secret mission to Carnarvon. "Sweet lady, O most gracious madam, listen and plead for me with the king. He is kind and good, and he knows what true love is. Lady, it is as a wedded wife I come to you, craving pardon for what I have done. But I ever hated that wicked Raoul Latimer, my country's foe, and would have died rather than plight my troth to him. And when he came to us -- he, my love, my life, he whom I loved long years ago when we met as boy and girl, and whom I have never forgotten -- what could I do? How could I resist? "And my father approved. He gave my hand in wedlock. And now I am come to pray your pardon for myself and for him whom I love. Oh, do not turn a deaf ear to me! As you have loved when you were young, pardon those who have done likewise." King and queen exchanged glances, half of amusement, half of astonishment, but there was no anger in either face. Raoul was no favourite in the royal circle, and his visible cowardice in the recent campaign had brought him into open disfavour with the lion-hearted Edward. He loved Arthyn dearly, and this proof of her independence of spirit, together with her artless confidence in his kindliness of heart, pleased him not a little. He had been forced during these past days to act a stern part towards many of the Welsh nobles who had been brought before him. He was glad enough, this thankless task accomplished, to allow the softer and more kindly side of his nature to assert itself. And perhaps the sympathetic glances of his son Alphonso, who had just entered the room, helped to settle his resolve that Arthyn at least should receive full and free forgiveness. Eleanor had drawn her former playmate towards her, and was eagerly questioning her as to the name of him to whom her heart and hand were now given, and the answer sent a thrill of surprise through the whole company. "It is one whom you all know, sweet Eleanor -- Llewelyn, the son of Res Vychan, Lord of Dynevor. Thou knowest, Eleanor, how he came amongst us at Rhuddlan years agone now, and perchance thou sawest even then how we loved one another, albeit it was but the love of children. But we never have forgotten, and when he came to my father's castle, wounded and weary and despairing after the disaster which robbed Wales of her last native prince, what could we do but receive and tend him? It was thus it came about, and love did the rest." "And so thou hast wed a rebel, maiden?" quoth Edward, in tones that seemed to be stern by effort rather than by the will of the speaker, whilst the kindly light in the eyes belied his assumed harshness; "and having done so thou hast the hardihood to come and tell us of it thine own self. Fie upon thee for a saucy wench! What better dost thou expect for thyself and thy lord than a lodging in the lowest dungeon of the keep?" "I know that we ought to expect nothing better," answered Arthyn, with her brightest smile, as she turned fearlessly upon the king. "But do as you will with us, noble king, and we will not rebel or complain, so that we may be together. And my dear lord bid me give you this. He took it with his own hands from the dead hand of Llewelyn, Prince of Wales, and he charged me to place it in your hands as a pledge and token that your enemy ceased to live. Report has told him that men say Llewelyn escaped that day, and that he yet lives to rise against you again. By this signet you may know that he lies dead and cold, and that with him has perished the last hope of Wales ever to be ruled by a prince of her own." Edward put forth his hand eagerly, and examined the signet ring, which was one he himself had given to Llewelyn on the occasion of his last submission. And as he looked upon it a great weight seemed to be rolled from off him, for it was the first decided intimation he had had that his foe was actually slain. Rumour had been rife with reports of his escape, and although there had not been lacking testimony to the effect that the prince had fallen in battle, the fact had never been adequately established. A few quick questions to Arthyn appeared to establish this beyond all doubt, and in the expansion of the moment Edward was ready not only to forgive the bearer of such welcome tidings, but to forget that he had ever been an offender. One of the sons of Res Vychan had paid the price of his breach of faith with his life; two more were prisoners at his royal pleasure. Surely the family had suffered enough without harsher vengeance being taken. Surely he might give to Arthyn the liberty and possibly even the lands of her lord in return for the welcome intelligence she had brought. Alphonso, ever on the side of mercy, joined with the queen and Eleanor in persuading the king to forgive and forget, and Arthyn was sent home the day following laden with presents and good wishes, bearing a full pardon to her lord from the English king, as well as a half promise that when the country became somewhat more settled he might make request for his commot of Iscennen with reasonable chance of being heard. Wendot and Griffeth both saw their new sister before her return, and charged her with all sorts of friendly messages for Llewelyn. If Wendot thought it hard that the brother who had always been England's bitterest foe should be pardoned and rewarded, whilst he himself should be left to pine in captivity, at least he made no sign, and never let a word of bitterness pass his lips. Indeed he was too ill greatly to trouble himself over his own condition or the future that lay before him. Fever and ague had supervened upon the wounds he had received, and whilst Griffeth was rapidly recovering such measure of health and strength as he ever could boast, Wendot lay helpless and feeble, scarce able to lift his head from the pillow, and only just equal to the task of speaking to Arthyn and comprehending the good news with which she came charged. The brothers had now been removed to better apartments, near to those occupied by the prince, whose servants they nominally were. Griffeth had begun to enter upon some of his duties towards his royal patron, and the friendship begun in boyhood was rapidly ripening to an intimacy which surprised them both. Such perfect mutual understanding and sympathy was rare and precious; and Griffeth did not even look back with longing to the old life, so entirely had his heart gone out to the youthful prince, whose days on earth, like his own, were plainly numbered. Lady Gertrude Cherleton was still an inmate of the royal household. She was now a ward of Edward's, her father having died a year or two previously. She was not considered a minor any longer, having attained the age of eighteen some time before, and the management of her estates was left partially to her. But she remained by choice the companion of Eleanor and Joanna, and would probably continue to do so until she married. It was a source of wonder to the court why she did not make choice of a husband amongst the many suitors for her hand; but she had hitherto turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of all. Sir Godfrey Challoner had long been sighing at her feet, but she would have none of him, and appeared to be proof against all the shafts of the blind god of love. But her intense excitement when she heard of the arrival at Carnarvon of the two brothers from Dynevor told its own tale to the Princess Joanna, who had ever been the girl's confidante in this matter, and who had known from childhood how Gertrude had always believed herself pledged. It was a charming secret for them to cherish between them; and now that Wendot was once more beneath the castle roof, the impulsive Joanna would launch out into extravagant pictures of future happiness and prosperity. Her ardent temperament, having no personal romance to feed upon -- for though her hand had once been plighted, her future lord had been drowned the previous year in a boating accident, and she was again free -- delighted to throw itself into the concerns of her friend, and the sense of power which had been so early implanted within her made her confident of being able to overcome obstacles and attain the object of her wishes, be the difficulties and dangers in their path never so great. "You shall be united, Gertrude, an he loves thee," cried the generous Joanna, flinging her arms round the neck of her companion, and kissing her again and again. "His life, his liberty, shall be obtained, and thou and he shall be happy together. I have said it, and I will do it." Whatever was known to Joanna was known to Alphonso, who shared all her feelings, and was most tenderly beloved by her. He was as ardent in the cause as his sister could be; but he saw more of the difficulties that beset their path, and knew better his father's iron temperament, and how deeply Wendot had offended. Doubtless much was due to the misrepresentations of Sir Res ap Meredith, who had now secured for himself the coveted lands of Dynevor; but whatever the cause, the eldest son of the house of Dynevor was the object of the king's severe displeasure, and it was not likely he would relax his vigilance or depart from his word, not even for the prayers of his children or the tears of his favourite Gertrude. He had pardoned Llewelyn at the instance of Arthyn; if the same game were to be played over again by another of his daughters' companions, he would not unnaturally believe that he was being cajoled and trifled with. "If it were only Griffeth it would be easy," said Alphonso thoughtfully. "But Wendot --" And there he stopped and shook his head. It was some days before the king saw the new attendant of his sons; but coming into Alphonso's private apartment one day suddenly, he found several of the royal children gathered there, and with them a fair-haired youth, who was reading to the prince out of an illuminated missal. Alphonso was lying on a couch, and his look of fragile weakness struck cold to the father's heart. Of late the lad's strength had been failing rapidly, but Edward had tried to blind his eyes to the truth. Now he took a hasty step towards the couch, and Griffeth rose quickly from his seat and bent the knee before the king. "Ha, Wendot," said Edward, with a grave but not unkindly glance, "I have not seen you at these new duties before. So you are a student as well as a soldier? Well, the arts of peace will better become you for the future. I remember your face well, young man. I would it had not been my duty to place you under restraint; but you have broken faith with me, and that grievously. How then can it be possible to trust you in the future? You, as the head of the house, should have set your brothers an example of honour and fealty. As it is, it has been far otherwise, and now you will have to bear the burden of that breach of trust and honour." Twice Griffeth had opened his lips as if to speak, but Alphonso laid his hand upon his arm with a warning touch, which said as plainly as words could do, "Be silent." So the youth held his peace, and only bent his head in submission; and Edward, after a moment's pause, added more kindly: "And how fares it with your brother, Wendot? I hear that his state is something precarious. I hope he has the best tendance the castle can afford, for I would not that any member of my son's household should suffer from lack of care." "He has all that he needs, I thank you, sire," answered Griffeth. "He lies sorely sick at this present time, but I trust he will amend ere long." And then the king turned to his son, and spoke with him on some message of the state, and departed without heeding the excited glances of Joanna or the restless way in which she kept looking first at Alphonso and then at Gertrude. But scarcely had the door closed behind the retiring form of the king before the excitable girl had bounded to her brother's side. "O Alphonso," she cried, "did you do it on purpose? Tell me what you have in your head." Alphonso sat up and pushed the hair out of his eyes. Griffeth was simply looking on in surprise and bewilderment. The prince laid a hand upon his arm and spoke very earnestly. "Griffeth," he said, "it seems to me that through this error of my father's we may yet find means to compass the deliverance of Wendot. There are none of those save ourselves who know which of you twain is the first-born and which the youngest. In your faces there is little to mark you one from the other. Griffeth, if thou wilt be willing to be called Wendot-- if Wendot will consent to be Griffeth -- then we may perchance make his way plain to depart and live in liberty once more; for it is Wendot, and not Griffeth, who has so roused my father's anger. Griffeth he might easily consent to pardon; but Wendot he will keep as a hostage in his own hands possibly for life itself." Griffeth listened, and a strange look crept into his face. His cheek flushed, and his breath came thick and fast. He knew Alphonso's motive in suggesting this change of identity. The lads, so closely drawn together in bonds of more than brotherly love, had not opened to each other their innermost souls for nought. Alphonso knew that no freedom, no liberty, would give to the true Griffeth any extension of his brief span of life. His days were as assuredly numbered as those of the royal lad himself, and life had ceased to have attractions for the pair, whose spirits were almost on the wing, who had set their hopes and aspirations higher than anything which earth could give, and whose chiefest wish now was to remain together until death should call them home. Griffeth's only trouble had been the thought of leaving his brother, and it was when he had realized from Alphonso's words that the king was deeply offended with Wendot, and that it was almost hopeless to think of his obtaining his liberty again, that the heart of the lad sank in despondency and sorrow. For one of the young eagles of Dynevor thus to be caged -- to be left to pine away in hopeless captivity, his brother gone from him as well as the prince who would stand his friend; possibly incarcerated at last in some dreary fortress, there to linger out his days in hopeless misery and inaction -- the thought had been so terrible to Griffeth that there had been moments when he had almost longed to hear that the leeches gave up hope of saving his brother's life. But Wendot was mending now; there was no doubt of ultimate recovery. He would rise from his sickbed to find -- what? Griffeth had not dared to ask himself this question before; but now a great hope possessed him suddenly. He looked into Alphonso's eyes, and the two instantly understood one another; as did also Gertrude and Joanna, who stood by flushed and quivering. "Let it be so," said Griffeth, in a voice which trembled a little, although the words were firm and emphatic. "I take the name the king has given me. I am Wendot, whom he believes the traitor and the foe. Griffeth lies yonder, sick and helpless, a victim to the influence of the first-born son of Res Vychan. It may be, when the king hears more of him, he will in his clemency release and pardon him. "Ah, if I could but be the means of saving my brother -- the brother dearer to me than life -- from the fate which others have brought upon him, that I could lay down my life without a wish ungratified! It has been the only thought of bitterness in my cup that I must leave him alone -- and a prisoner." Gertrude's face had flushed a deep red; she put out her hand and clasped that of Griffeth hard; there was a little sob in her voice as she said: "Oh, if you will but save him -- if you will but save him!" Griffeth looked into her sweet face, with its sensitive features and soft eyes shining through a mist of tears, and he understood something which had hitherto been a puzzle to him. There had been days when the intermittent fever from which Wendot suffered left him entirely for hours together, sometimes for a whole day; and Griffeth had been sure that on some of these days, in the hours of his own attendance on the prince, his brother had received visits from others in the castle: for flowers had appeared to brighten the sick room, and there had been a wonderful new look of happiness in the patient's eyes, although he had said nothing to his brother as to what had befallen him. And in truth Wendot was half disposed to believe himself the victim of some sweet hallucination, and was almost afraid to speak of the fancies that floated from time to time before his eyes, lest he should be told that his mind was wandering, and that he was the victim of delusion. Not once alone, but many times, during the hours of his tardy convalescence, when he had been lying alone, crushed by the sense of weariness and oppression which illness brings to one so little accustomed to it, he had been roused by the sound of light footfalls in his room; he had seen a graceful form flitting about, bringing lightness and beauty in her wake, and leaving it behind when she left. The vision of a sweet, small face, and the lustrous dark eyes which had haunted him at intervals through the long years of his young manhood, appeared again before him, and sometimes his name was spoken in the gentle tones which had never been forgotten, although the memory was growing dim. Weak and dazed and feeble, both in body and mind, from the exhausting and wasting illness that had followed the severe winter's campaign, Wendot knew not if this vision was but the figment of his own brain, or whether the passionate love he felt rising up in his heart was lavished upon a mere phantom. But so long as she flitted about him he was content to lie and watch her, with the light of a great happiness in his eyes; and once when he had called her name -- the never forgotten name of Gertrude -- he had thought that she had come and taken his hand and had bent over him with a wonderful light in her eyes, but the very effort he made to rise up and grasp her hands, and learn if indeed it were a creature of flesh and blood, had resulted in a lapse back into unconsciousness, and he was silent as to the vision even to Griffeth, lest perchance he should have to learn that it was but a fevered dream, and that there was no Gertrude within the castle walls at all. But Gertrude knew all; it was no dream to her. She saw the love light in the eyes dearest to her in the world. She had heard her name called; she had seen that the love she had cherished for the hero of her childhood had not been cherished in vain. Perhaps Wendot had betrayed more in his sickness and weakness than he would have allowed himself to do in his strength, knowing himself a helpless, landless prisoner in the hands of the stern monarch who occupied England's throne. But be that as it may, Gertrude had read his secret and was happy, though with such a chastened happiness as alone was possible to one who knew the peril in which her lover lay, and how hopeless even Alphonso thought it to obtain for him the king's pardon. "My father would have betrothed us as children," said Gertrude, her face glowing, but her voice steady and soft, for why should she be ashamed of the faithful love of a lifetime? "When we saw each other again he would have plighted us, but for the fear of what Llewelyn and Howel would do. But think you I love him less for his love to his country? Think you that I have aught to reproach him with, when I know how he was forced into rebellion by others? I care not what he has done. I love him, and I know that he loves me. Sooner would I share a prison with him than a palace with any man beside; yet I fear that in prison walls he will pine and die, even as a caged eagle, and it is that fear which breaks my heart. "O Griffeth, Griffeth, if you can save him, how we will bless you from, our hearts! Give him to me, and I will guard and cherish him. I have wealth and lands for us both. Only his liberty is lacking --" "And that we will strive to compass yet," said Alphonso gently. "Fear not, sweet Gertrude, and betray not thyself. Only remember from this time forward that Wendot is my friend and companion here, and that thy lover Griffeth lieth in yon chamber, sick and stricken." "I will remember," she answered resolutely; and so the change of identity was accomplished, with the result that the old chroniclers aver that Wendot, eldest son of Res Vychan, died in the king's prison in England, whilst all that is known of the fate of Griffeth is that he was with his brother in captivity in England in the year 1283, after which his name completely disappears, and no more is known of him, good or bad. That night there were commotion and distress in Carnarvon Castle, for the young Alphonso broke a blood vessel in a violent fit of coughing, and for some hours his life was in the utmost danger. The skill of the leeches, however, combined with the tender care of his mother and sisters, averted for a time fatal consequences, and in a few days the prince was reported to be out of immediate danger. But the doctors all agreed that it would not be wise for him to remain longer in the colder air of north Wales, and advised an immediate removal to Windsor, where more comforts could be obtained, and where the climate was milder and more genial. Edward's work in Wales was done. The country was quiet, and he had no longer any fear of serious rebellion. The first thought in his mind was the precarious condition of his son, and immediate steps were taken to convey the invalid southward by slow and gentle stages. A horse litter was prepared for him, and by his own special request this easy conveyance was shared by him with the two Welsh youths, to whom, as his father and mother thought, he had taken one of those strange sick fancies not uncommon to those in his state of health. Wendot, as he called the younger brother, had been his most devoted nurse during the days of peril, and his quick understanding of the unspoken wishes of the prince had evoked a real and true gratitude from the royal parents. The real Wendot was by this time so far recovered as to be able to bear the journey, and illness had so wasted him that he looked no older than Griffeth; and though still perplexed at being called Griffeth, and by no means understanding his brother's earnest request that he would continue to answer to the name, he was too weak to trouble his head much about the matter; and the two Welsh brothers were regarded by the English attendants as too insignificant to be worthy of much notice. The prince's freak to have them as travelling-companions was humoured by his parents' wish; but they little knew how much he was wrapped up in the brothers, nor how completely his heart was set upon seeing the accomplishment of his plan before he died. Alphonso had all his senses about him, and the wistful look on Griffeth's face, as the mountains of his beloved Wales grew dim in the distance, was not lost upon him. Wendot was sleeping restlessly in the litter, and Alphonso stretched out his hand, and laid it gently upon Griffeth's. "Art regretting that thou leavest all for me?" he asked gently; and the answer was such a look of love as went to his very heart. "Nay; I would leave far more than that for thee, sweet prince, but it is my last look at home. I shall see these grand, wild hills no more." "No, nor yet I," answered the prince, his own eyes growing somewhat dim; "and I, too, have loved them well, though not as thou lovest, my friend. But be content; there are fairer things, sweeter scenes than even these, in store for us somewhere. Shall we repine at leaving the beauties of earth, when the pearly gates of Paradise are opening before our very eyes? "O Griffeth, it is a wondrous thought how soon we may be soaring above the very stars! And methinks it may well be given to thee to wing thy way to thine own home for one last look ere thou departest for the holy land whence we can never wish to return." Griffeth gave him a bright, eager look. "I will think that myself -- I will believe it. This is not my last farewell." CHAPTER XII. A STRANGE BRIDAL. "My prince, tempt me not. It is hard to refuse; but there are some things no man may do with honour, and, believe me, honour is dearer to me than life, dearer even than liberty; though Heaven alone knows how dear that is to every free-born son of Cambria. I to leave my brother to wear away his days in captivity whilst I escape under his name! Prince Alphonso, I know not what you think my heart is made of. Am I to live in freedom, whilst he whom I love best in the world bears the burden of my fault, and lingers out his young life within the walls of the king's prison?" Alphonso looked searchingly in Wendot's face, and realized for the first time the youth's absolute ignorance of his brother's state. No wonder he refused with scorn the proffered boon! Yet it would be a hard task to break the sad tidings to one who so deeply loved his gentle younger brother, from childhood his chosen comrade. Alphonso was lying on a couch in one of the smaller state apartments of Windsor Castle, and the window, close to which he had bidden his attendants wheel him, overlooked the beautiful valley of the Thames. The first of the autumn tints were gilding the rich stretches of woodland, whilst a faint blue haze hung over the distance, and the river ran like a silver thread, glinting here and there into golden brightness as some brighter ray of sunlight fell upon it. Alphonso loved the view commanded by this window. He and Griffeth spent many long happy hours here, looking out on the fair prospect, and exchanging whispered thoughts and bright aspirations with regard to some land even fairer than the one they now beheld. But Wendot never looked at the beautiful valley without experiencing a strange oppression of spirit. It reminded him of that wilder valley of the Towy, and his eyes would grow dim and his heart sick with the fruitless longing after home, which grew harder and harder to hear with every week of captivity, now that his bodily health was restored. Captivity was telling upon him, and he was pining as an eagle pines when caught and shut up by man even in a gilded cage. He looked pale and wan and wistful. Often he felt stifled by the warm, close air of the valley, and felt that he must die did he not escape to the freer air of the mountains. But he seldom spoke of these feelings even to Griffeth, and strangely enough his illness and these homesick longings produced upon his outer man an effect which was wonderfully favourable to the plan fermenting in the brains of the royal children and their immediate companions. Wendot had lost the sturdiness of figure, the brown colouring, and the strength of limb which had distinguished him in old days from Griffeth. A striking likeness had always existed between the brothers, whose features were almost identical, and whose height and contours were the same. Now that illness had sharpened the outlines of Wendot's face, had reduced his fine proportions, and had given to him something of the hollow-eyed wistfulness of expression which Griffeth had so long worn, this likeness became so remarkable that few in the castle knew one brother from the other. Knowing this, they both answered indifferently to the name of either, and any change of personality would be managed without exciting the smallest fear of remark. Wendot had been perplexed at times by the persistence with which he had been addressed as Griffeth, even when he was certain that the speaker was one of the few who knew him and his brother apart; but he had not troubled his head much over the matter until this day, when Alphonso had openly spoken to him of the plan that was in their minds, and had bidden him prepare for a secret flight from the castle, promising that there should be no ardent search after him, as Wendot, and not Griffeth, was the culprit who had fallen under the royal displeasure, and the king would care little for the escape of the younger brother so long as he held the ex-Lord of Dynevor in his own safe keeping. Wendot's indignant refusal to leave his brother and make good his own escape showed Alphonso how little he realized Griffeth's condition, and with gentle sympathy, but with candour and frankness, he explained to the elder brother how short would be the period of Griffeth's captivity -- how soon and how complete the release for which he was patiently and happily waiting. Wendot gave a great start as the meaning of Alphonso's words first broke upon him, and then he buried his face in his hands, and sat motionless, neither answering nor moving. Alphonso looked at him, and by-and-by put out his own wasted hand and laid it upon Wendot's knee. "Does it seem a sad thing to thee, Wendot? Believe me, there is no sadness for Griffeth in the thought. Nay, is it not a blessed thing to know that soon, very soon, we shall be free of this weary burden of pain and sickness and weakness, and laying all aside will pass away to the land of which the seer of old foretold that 'the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' Thou knowest not, perhaps, the sweetness of those words, but I know it well, and Griffeth likewise. "Nay, Wendot, thou must learn not to grudge him the rest and the bliss of yon bright land. In this world he could look for nothing save wearing weakness and lingering pain. Thou shouldst be glad that the fiat has gone forth, and that the end may not be far off -- the end of trouble and sorrow; for of the glory that shall follow there shall be no end." But Wendot broke in hoarsely and impetuously. "If he must die, let him at least die in freedom, with the old hills around him; let him be laid to rest beneath their shadow. You say that he might well escape; that no cry would be made after him so long as I were in the king's safe keeping. Let him then fly. Let him fly to Llewelyn and Arthyn. They will give him tendance and a home. He shall not die in prison, away from all that he holds dear. I cannot brook the thought!" "Nay, Wendot," answered Alphonso with a kindling smile, "thou needest not grieve for thy brother because that he is here. Ask him -- take it not from my lips; but I will tell thee this, that where thou art and where I am is the place where Griffeth would fain end his days. Ah! thou canst not understand, good youth, how when the great and wonderful call comes for the human soul, how lightly press the fetters of the flesh; how small these things of time and place appear that erst have been of such moment. Griffeth and I are treading the same path at the same time, and I think not even the offer of a free pardon and unfettered liberty would draw him from my side. "Moreover, Wendot, he could not take the journey of which thou speakest. The keen autumn air, which will give thee strength and vigour, would but lay him low on the bed from which he would never rise. His heart is here with me. Think not that thou art wronging him in taking his name. The one load lying now upon his heart is the thought that he is leaving thee in captivity. Let him but know that thou art free -- that he has been thy helper in thy flight -- and he will have nought left to wish for in this world. His soul will be at peace." Wendot rose and paced through the chamber, and then returned to the side of the prince. His face betrayed many conflicting emotions. He spoke with bitterness and impetuosity. "And what good is life to me if I take you at your word and fly this spot? Have I not lost all that makes life worth living? My lands given to my traitorous kinsman; the brother who has been more to me than life lying in a foreign grave. What use is life to one so lonely and bereft? Where should I fly? what should I do? I have never lived alone. I have always had another to live for and to love. Methinks death would be the better thing than such a loveless life." "And why should thy life be loveless, Wendot?" asked Alphonso, with kindling eyes and a brightening smile. "Dost not thou know? -- does not thine own heart tell thee that one faithful heart beats for thee and thee alone? Have I not seen thee with her times and again? Have not your eyes told eloquent secrets -- though I know not what your lips have said --" Wendot's face was all in a glow, but he broke in hastily: "Prince, prince, speak not of her. If I have been beguiled, if I have betrayed the feelings which I cannot help, but which I must hold sternly in check -- be not thou the one to taunt me with my weakness. There is none like her in the world. I have known it for long. But even because I know it so well I may not even dream of her. It is not with me as of old, when her father spoke to me of troth plight. I am a beggar, an outcast, a prisoner. She is rich, honoured, courted. She is the brightest star of the court --" "And she loveth thee, Wendot," interposed Alphonso firmly. "She has loved thee from childhood with a faithful and true love which merits better things than to be cast aside as if it were but dross. What are lands and gold to a woman if her lover share them not? Is it meet that she should suffer so cruelly simply because her father has left her well endowed? Wendot, on Lord Montacute's dying bed this daughter of his avowed her love for thee, and he gave her his blessing and bade her act as she would. Art thou, then, to be the one to break her heart, ay, and thine own, too, because thou art too proud to take more than thou canst give? "Fie, man! the world is wide and thou art young. Thou hast time to win thy spurs and bring home noble spoil to lay at thy lady's feet. Only let not pride stand in the way of her happiness and thine own. Thou hast said that life is dark and drear unless it be shared with some loved one. Then how canst thou hold back, when thou hast confessed thine own love and learned that hers is thine? Take it, and be grateful for the treasure thou hast won, and fear not but that thou wilt bring as much as thou wilt receive. There are strange chances in the fate of each one of us. Who knows but that thou and she will not yet reign again in the halls of Dynevor?" Wendot started and flushed, and again paced down the whole length of the room. When he returned to the window Alphonso had gone, and in his place stood Gertrude herself, her sweet face dyed rosy red with blushes, her hands half stretched out towards him, her lips quivering with the intensity of her emotion. He paused just one moment looking at her, and then holding out his arms, he said: "Gertrude!" Next moment she was clasped in his close embrace, and was shedding happy tears upon his shoulder. "Oh!" said Gertrude at last, in a soft whisper, "it was worth waiting for this. I never thought I could have been so happy." "Joanna -- Alphonso, it is all settled. He will leave the castle with me. He will help me now in the care of my lands. But he will not move whilst Griffeth lives. And I think he is right. They have so loved each other, and he will not leave his brother to die amongst strangers in captivity." "It is like him," said Joanna eagerly. "Gertrude, thou hast found a very proper knight, as we told thee from the first, when he was but a lad, and held the Eagle's Crag against a score of men. But ye must be wedded soon, that there be no delay when once the poor boy be gone. Every day he looks more shadowy and frail. Methinks that our softer air ill suits him, for he hath dwindled to a mere shadow since he came. You will not have to wait long." "Joanna speaks the truth," said Alphonso, half sadly, half smilingly. "He will not be with us long. But it is very true that this marriage must be privately celebrated, and that without delay, that when the day comes when 'Griffeth' flies from the castle, he and his wife may go together." "Ay, and my chaplain will make them man and wife, and breathe not a word to any man," cried Joanna, who, now that she was older, had her own retinue of servants, equal in number to those of her sister, by whom she was dearly loved for her generosity and frankness, so that she could always command ready and willing obedience to any expressed wish of hers. "You think he will? O Joanna, when shall it be?" "It shall be at midnight in the chapel," said the girl, with the prompt decision which characterized her. "Not tonight, but three nights from this. Leave all things in my hands, sweet Gertrude; I will see that nought is lacking to bind thee lawfully to thy lord. My chaplain is a good and holy man from the west country. He loveth those poor Welsh who are prisoners here, and spends much of his time in ministering to them. He loves thy future lord and his dying brother, and he knows somewhat of our plan, for I have revealed it in the confessional, and he has not chided me for it. "Oh, I can answer for him. He will be glad that thou shouldst find so proper a knight; and he is kind of heart, and stanch to my service. Fear not, sweet Gertrude: ere three days have gone by thou shalt be a wedded wife; and when the time comes thou mayest steal away with him thy plighted lord, and trust thy sister Joanna to make thy peace with the king, if he be in any way angered or grieved." Gertrude threw herself into Joanna's arms and kissed her a hundred times; and Joanna laughed, and said she deserved much credit for plotting to rid herself of her dearest friend, but was none the less loyal to the cause because Gertrude's gain would be her loss. So there came a strange night, never to be forgotten by those who witnessed the proceedings, when Wendot ap Res Vychan and the Lady Gertrude Cherleton stood at midnight before the altar in the small private chapel of the castle, whilst the chaplain of the Princess Joanna's private suite made them man and wife according to the law of the Church. And of the few spectators who witnessed the ceremony two were of royal blood -- Alphonso and Joanna -- and beside them were only one or two attendants, sworn to secrecy, and in full sympathy with the youthful lovers thus plighting their troth and being united in wedlock at one and the same time. Griffeth was not of the number who was present to witness this ceremony. He was unable to rise from his bed, a sudden access of illness having overtaken him, possibly as the result of the excitement of hearing what was about to take place. When the solemn words had been spoken, and the bride was led away by her proud and happy spouse -- happy even in the midst of so much peril and sorrow in the thought of the treasure he had won -- she paused at the door of her apartments, whither he would have left her (for so long as they remained within the walls of the castle they would observe the same manner of life as before), and glancing into his face said softly: "May I not go with thee to tell the news to Griffeth?" "Ay, well bethought," said Alphonso, who was leaning on Wendot's other arm, the distance through the long passages being somewhat fatiguing to him. "Let us go and show to him thy wife. None will rejoice more than he to know that she is thine in very truth, and that none can take her from thee." Griffeth's room was nigh at hand, and thither Wendot led his bride. A taper was burning beside the bed, and the sick youth lay propped up with pillows, his breath coming in laboured gasps, though his eyes were bright and full of comprehension as Wendot led the slim, white-robed figure to his side. But the elder brother was startled at the change he saw in his patient since he had left him last. There was something in his look that struck chill upon his heart. He came forward and took the feeble hand in his. It was deadly cold, and the unearthly radiance upon the lad's face was as significant in its own way. Had not their mother looked at them with just such a smile when she had slipped away into another world, whilst they were trying to persuade themselves that she was better? "My sister Gertrude," whispered Griffeth. "Oh, I am so happy! You will be good to him -- you will comfort him. "Wendot -- Gertrude --" he made a faint effort, and joined their hands together; and then, as if his last earthly task was accomplished, he seemed to look right on beyond them, whilst a strange expression of awe and wonder shone from his closing eyes. "Howel," he whispered -- "father -- mother -- oh, I am coming! Take me with you." Then the head fell backwards, the light vanished from the eyes, the cold hand fell nervelessly from Wendot's grasp, and they knew that Griffeth was the king's prisoner no longer. Three days later the Lady Gertrude Cherleton said farewell to her royal companions, and started forth for her own estates in Derbyshire, which she had purposed for some time to visit. Perhaps had the minds of those in the castle been free to wonder at anything so trivial as the movements of the young heiress, they would have felt surprise at her selecting this time to betake herself to a solitary and independent existence, away from all her friends and playmates; but the mortal illness of the Prince Alphonso occupied the whole attention of the castle. The remains of the so-called Wendot, late of Dynevor, had been laid to rest with little ceremony and no pomp, and the very existence of the other brother was almost forgotten in the general dismay and grief which permeated through all ranks of people both within and without the castle walls. The lady had a small but sufficient retinue; but it was considered rather strange that she should not start until the dusk had begun to gather round the castle, so that the confusion of the start was a good deal increased from the darkness which was stealing upon the place. Had there been much time or attention free, it might have been noted by a keen observer that Lady Gertrude had added to her personal attendants one who looked like a tall and stout woman, though her hood was so closely drawn that her face was seen by none of the warders, who, however, let her pass unchallenged: for she rode beside her mistress, and was evidently in the position of a trusted companion; for the lady was speaking to her as they passed out through the gate, and there could certainly be no reason for offering any obstruction to any servant of hers. If there were any fear or excitement in Gertrude's breast as she and her husband passed out of the gate and rode quickly along the path which led through the town, she did not betray it by look or gesture. Her eagerness was mainly showed by a desire to push on northward as fast as possible, and the light of a full harvest moon made travelling almost as easy as by day. On they rode, by sleeping hamlets and dreaming pastures, until the lights of Windsor lay twinkling in the dim, hazy distance miles away. Then Gertrude suddenly threw back her hood, and leaning towards her companion -- they two had outridden their followers some time before -- cried in a strange, tense voice: "O Wendot husband, thou art free! Tomorrow will see us safe within those halls of which thou art rightful lord. Captivity, trouble, peril is at an end. Nothing can greatly hurt us now, for are we not one in bonds that no man may dissever?" "My noble, true-hearted wife," said Wendot, in accents of intense feeling; and then he leaned forward and kissed her in the whispering wood, and they rode forward through the glades of silvery moonlight towards the new life that was awaiting them beyond. "Hills, wild rocks, woods, and water!" cried Wendot, with a sudden kindling gleam in his eyes. "O Gertrude, thou didst not tell me the half! I never guessed that England had aught so like home as this. Truly it might be Dynevor itself -- that brawling torrent, those craggy fells, and these gray stone walls. And to be free -- free to breathe the fresh wind, to go where the fancy prompts, to be loosed from all control save the sweet bonds that thou boldest me in, dearest! Ah, my wife, thou knowest not what thou hast done for me. How shall I thank thee for the boon?" "Why, by being thine old self again, Vychan," said Gertrude, who was standing by her husband's side on a natural terrace of rock above the Hall which was to be their home. She had brought him out early in the morning to see the sun rise upon their home, and the rapture of his face, the passionate joy she saw written there, was more than she had hoped for. "Thou hast grown old and worn of late, too saddened, too grave for thy years. Thou must grow young again, and be the bright-faced youth to whom I gave my heart. Thy youth is not left so far behind but what thou canst recall it ere it be too late." "In sooth I shall grow young again here, sweetheart," quoth Wendot, or Vychan, as we must call him now. He had an equal right to that name with his father, though for convenience he had always been addressed by the other; and now that Lady Gertrude had brought her husband home, he was to be known as Res Vychan, one of the descendants of the last princes of South Wales, who had taken his wife's name also, as he was now the ruler of her land; so, according to the fashion of the English people, he would henceforth be known as Vychan Cherleton. His brother's name he could not bear to hear applied to himself, and it was left to Joanna to explain matters to the king and queen when the chance should arrive. None else need ever know that the husband of the Lady Gertrude had ever been a captive of Edward's; and the name of Griffeth ap Res Vychan disappears from the ken of the chroniclers as if it had never been known that he was once a prisoner in England. There was no pursuit made after the missing Welshman. The king and queen had other matters to think of, and the fondness of their son for the youth would have been protection enough even if he had not begged with his dying breath that his father would forgive and forget. Lady Gertrude and her husband did not come to court for very many years; and by the time they did so, Vychan Cherleton's loyalty and service to the English cause were too well established for any one to raise a question as to his birth or race. If the king and queen ever knew they had been outwitted by their children, they did not resent that this had been so, nor that an act of mercy had been contrived greater than they might have felt justified in ratifying. But all this was yet in the future. As Vychan and his wife stood on that high plateau overlooking the fair valley of the Derwent, it seemed to Gertrude as though during the past three days her husband had undergone some subtle change. There was a new light in his eyes; his frame had lost its drooping air of languor; he had stood the long days of rough riding without the smallest fatigue. It really seemed as if the old Wendot had come back again, and she smilingly asked him how it was that he had gained such strength in so short a time. "Ah, that question is soon answered, sweet wife. It is freedom that is the elixir of life to us sons of Cambria. I know not if your English-born men can brook the sense of fetter and constraint, but it is death to us. "Let us not think of it more. That page has closed for ever; and never shall it reopen, for sooner will I die than fall alive into the hands of a foe. Nay, sweetest Gertrude, look not so reproachfully at me. Thou shalt soon see that I mean not to die, but to live for thee. Here in this fair, free spot we begin our new life together. It may be even yet -- for see, is not that bright sky, illumined by those quivering shafts of light athwart our path, an omen of good? -- that as thou showest me this fair spot with which thou hast endowed me, I may one day show thee again and endow thee with the broad lands of Dynevor." CHAPTER XIII. THE NEW LORD OF DYNEVOR. "Vychan, Vychan, the hour has come! That false traitor Sir Res has risen in revolt against England's king. Loyal men are called upon to put down the rebellion, and such as do so will be rewarded with the lands reft from the traitor. Vychan, Vychan, lose not a moment; arm and take the men, and fly to Dynevor! Now is the time to strike the blow! And I will to Edward's court, to plead with him for the lands and castle of Dynevor as my husband's guerdon for his services. O Vychan, Vychan, have not I always said that thou shouldest live to call thyself Lord of Dynevor again?" Gertrude came flying to her husband with these words, looking scarce less young and certainly none less bright and happy than she had done four years back, when she and her husband had first stood within the walls of her ancestral home. A beautiful, sturdy boy hung upon her hand, keeping pace gallantly even with her flying steps, and the joy of motherhood had given something of added lustre to the soft beauty of her dark eyes; otherwise she was scarce changed from the Gertrude of past days. As for Vychan, he still retained the eagle glance, the almost boyish freshness of colouring, and the soldier-like bearing which distinguished his race, and the gold of his hair had not tarnished or faded, though he had developed from the youth to the man, and was a noble specimen of manhood in the zenith of its strength and beauty. Rising hastily at his wife's approach, he gazed at her with parted lips and glowing eyes, whilst she once more told him the news, brought by a special messenger from the Princess Joanna, brought thus, as both knew, with a special meaning which they well understood. Four years of peaceful prosperity in England had in no whit weakened Vychan's love for his own land or blunted the soldier-like instincts of his race. There was something of the light of battle and of conquest in his eye as he gazed at his wife, and his voice rang out clear and trumpet-like as he gathered the sense of the message she brought. "Take up arms against that false traitor-kinsman of mine? ay, verily, that I will. False first to his kindred and his country, then false to the king who has trusted and rewarded him so nobly. Res ap Meredith, methinks thine hour is come! Thou didst plot and contrive to wrest from me the fair lands my father bequeathed me; but I trow the day has dawned when the false lord shall be cast forth, even as he has cast forth others, and when there shall be a lord of the old race ruling at Dynevor, albeit he rule beneath a new name." "Heaven grant it may be so!" cried Gertrude, the tears of excitement sparkling in her eyes; whilst little Griffeth, catching some of the sense of his father's words, and understanding with the quick instinct of childhood that there was something unwonted going on, shook his little fist in the air, and cried: "Dynevor, Dynevor! me fight for Dynevor, too." The father picked up his son and held him in a close embrace. "Ay, Griffeth, my man, thou shalt reign at Dynevor one of these days, please God to give us victory over false friends and traitorous allies." And even as the parents stood looking smilingly at the brave child, the blast from the warder's trumpet gave notice that strangers were approaching the Hall; and hurrying to the entrance gate to be ready to receive the guests, Vychan and his wife beheld a little troop of horsemen winding their way up the valley, headed by a pair who appeared to be man and wife, and to hold some exalted position, for the trappings of their steeds and the richness of their own dress marked them as of no humble rank. Visitors were sufficiently rare at this lonely place for this sight to cause some stir in the Hall; and Gertrude, shading her eyes with her hand, gazed eagerly at the two figures in advance. Suddenly she gave a little cry of rapture, and bounded forward through the gateway. "It is Arthyn -- Arthyn and Llewelyn! Vychan, thy brother and his wife are here. Oh, they have come to bid thee to the fray! They bring tidings, and are come to summon thee to the fight. "Arthyn, sweetest sister, ten thousand welcomes to our home! Nay, I can scarce believe this is not a dream. How I have longed to see thee here!" Vychan was at his brother's side, as Arthyn, flinging herself from her saddle, flew into Gertrude's arms. For some moments nothing could be distinguished but the glad clamour of welcome, and scarce had that subsided before it recommenced in the eager salutations of the Welsh retainers, who saw in Vychan another of the sons of their well-loved Lord, Res Vychan, the former Lord of Dynevor and Iscennen, whose wise and merciful rule had never been forgotten. Vychan was touched, indeed, to see how well he was remembered, and the sound of the familiar tongue sent thrills of strange emotion through him. It was some time before he could free himself from the throng of servants who pressed round him; and when he could do so he followed his wife and guests into the banqueting hall, where the noonday repast was spread, giving charge to his seneschal for the hospitable entertainment of the retinue his brother had brought and their lodgment within the walls of the Hall. When he reached the inner hall he found the servants spreading the best viands of the house upon the table; whilst Gertrude, Arthyn, and Llewelyn were gathered together in the embrasure of a window in eager discussion. Gertrude broke away and came quickly towards him, her face deeply flushed and her eyes very bright. "Vychan, it is even as we have heard. That false traitor is in open revolt, and he has been even more false than we knew. What think you of this? -- he professed to be sorry for his revolt, and sent a letter of urgent pleading to Llewelyn and Arthyn begging them to use their influence with the king to obtain his pardon. Believing him to be sincere, Llewelyn set out for England not more than two short weeks back, taking with him, on account of the unsettled state of the country, the pick of the men from Carregcennen. And when this double-dyed traitor knows that Arthyn is alone and unprotected in the castle, what does he do but send a strong band of his soldiers, himself at their head, who obtain entrance by the subterranean passage, slay the guard, and take possession of the fortress. Arthyn has but bare time to escape with a handful of men, and by hard riding to join her husband on the road to England. "So now have they turned aside to tell the tale to us, and to summon thee to come with thy men and fight in the king's quarrel against this wicked man. And whilst ye lead your soldiers into Wales, Arthyn and I will to the court, to lay the story before the royal Edward, and to gain from him the full and free grants of the castles of Dynevor and Carregcennen for our husbands, who have responded to his call, and have flown to wrest from the traitor the possession he has so unrighteously grasped." "Thy wife speaketh wise words, Vychan," said Llewelyn, whose dark brows wore a threatening look, and who had the appearance of a man deeply stirred to wrath, as indeed he well might be; "and it were well that we lost no time in dallying here. How many men canst thou summon to thy banner, and when can we be on the march for the south? The Earl of Cornwall has been called upon to quell this revolt, and he has summoned to his aid all loyal subjects of the king who hold dear the peace and prosperity of their land. "The days are gone by in which I should despise that call and join the standard of revolt. The experience of the past has taught me that in the English alliance is Wales's only hope of tranquillity and true independence and civilization. When such men as this Res ap Meredith break into revolt against Edward, it is time for us to rally round his standard. What would our lives, our lands, our liberties be worth were such a double-distilled traitor as he transformed into a prince, as is his fond ambition?" "True, Llewelyn, true. The race of kings has vanished from Wales, and methinks there is no humiliation in owning as sovereign lord the lion-hearted King of England. Moreover, has he not given us a prince of our own, born upon Welsh soil, sprung of a kingly race? We will rally round the standard of father and son, and trust that in the future a brighter day will dawn for our long-distracted country." So forthwith there sped messengers through the wild valleys and wilder fells of Derbyshire, and many a sturdy son of the mountains came gladly and willingly at the call of the feudal lord whose wise and kindly rule had made him greatly beloved. The fighting instinct of the age and of the race was speedily aroused by this call to arms, and the surrounding gentlemen and yeomen of the county likewise pressed their services upon Vychan, glad to be able to strike a blow to uphold the authority of a king whose wise and brave rule had already made him the idol of the nation. It was a goodly sight to see the brothers of Dynevor (as their wives could not but call them once again) ride forth at the head of this well-equipped following. Llewelyn marvelled at the discipline displayed by the recruits -- a discipline decidedly in advance of anything his own ruder followers could boast. But Welsh and English for once were in brotherly accord, and rode shoulder to shoulder in all good fellowship; and the English knew that their ruder comrades from Cambria, if less well trained and drilled, would be able to show them a lesson in fierce and desperate fighting, to which they were far more inured than their more peaceable neighbours from the sister country. And fighting there was for all; but the struggle, if fierce, was brief. Sir Res was a coward at heart, as it is the wont of a traitor to be, and finding himself opposed by foes as relentless and energetic as Vychan and Llewelyn, he was speedily driven from fortress to fortress, till at length he was forced to surrender himself a prisoner to the Earl of Gloucester; who, out of kindness to his wife, Auda de Hastings, connived at his escape to Ireland. There he lived in seclusion for some time; but the spirit of rebellion was still alive within him, and two years later he returned to Wales, and succeeded in collecting an army of four thousand turbulent spirits about him, at the head of which force he fought a pitched battle with the king's justiciary, Robert de Tibetot. His army was cut to pieces. He was taken prisoner himself, and met a cruel death at York as the reward of his many acts of treasonable rebellion. But the halls of Dynevor saw him no more from the moment when Res Vychan, with a swelling heart, first drove him forth, and planted his own foot once again upon the soil dearer to him than any other spot on earth. As he stood upon the familiar terrace, looking over the wide, fair valley of the Towy, his heart swelled with thankfulness and joy; and if a slow, unwonted tear found its way to his eye, it was scarce a tear of sorrow, for he felt assured that his brother Griffeth was sharing in the joy of this restoration to the old home, and that his loving and gentle spirit was not very far from him at this supreme hour of his life. "Father, father, father!" Vychan turned with a start at the sound of the joyous call, and the next moment was clasping wife and son to his breast. "Sweetheart! come so quickly? How couldst thou?" "Ay, Vychan, love hath ever wings, and neither I nor Arthyn could keep away, our business at the court once accomplished. Vychan, husband, thou standest here Lord of Dynevor in thine own right. Thou hast won back thine ancestral home, the boy's inheritance. "Seest thou this deed? Knowest thou the king's seal? Take it, for it secureth all to thee under thy name of Vychan Cherleton. And if in times to come those who come after know not that it was the son of Res Vychan who thus reclaimed his patrimony, and if our worthy chroniclers set down that Dynevor and its lands passed to the keeping of the English, what matters it? We know the truth, and those who have loved thee and thy father know who thou art and whence thou hast come. Let that be sufficient for thee and for me. "Griffeth, little son, kiss thy father, and bid him welcome to his own halls again -- the halls of Dynevor." Vychan could not speak. He pressed one passionate kiss upon the lips of his wife, and another upon the brow of his noble boy, who looked every inch a Dynevor, with the true Dynevor features, and the bold, fearless mien so like his father's. Then commanding himself by an effort, he opened the king's parchment and quickly mastered its contents, after which he took his wife's hand and held out the other to his son. "My faithful fellows are mustering in the hall to bid me welcome once more to Dynevor. Come, sweet wife; I must show to them their lady and their future lord. "Arthyn -- where is she? Has she gone on to Iscennen to meet Llewelyn there?" "Ay, verily: she was as hungry for him as I for thee; and she hath a similar mandate for him regarding his rights to Carregcennen. "O Vychan, dearest husband, I can scarce believe it is not all a dream." Indeed, to Vychan it seemed almost as though he dreamed, as in the old familiar hall he stood, a little raised from the crowd of armed retainers upon the steps of the wide oak staircase, as he addressed to them a speech eloquent with that thrilling eloquence which is the gift of all who speak from the heart, and speak to hearts beating in deep and true response. Vychan thanked all those who had so bravely fought for him, explained to all assembled there his new position and his new name, bid them not think him less a Welshman and a Dynevor because he bore his wife's arms and called himself the servant of the English king, and held up before their eyes the mandate of that English king confirming to him the lands and halls of Dynevor. A wild, ringing cheer broke from all who heard him as he thus proved to their own satisfaction that the royal Edward was their best friend, and as the new Lord of Dynevor held up his child for them to see, and to own as future lord in the time-honoured fashion, such a shout went up from the throats of all as made the vaulted roof ring again. Blades were unsheathed and waved in wild enthusiasm, and Gertrude's dark eyes glistened through a mist of proud and happy tears. Suddenly from some dim recess in the old ball there issued a strain of wild music -- the sound of a harp played by no unskilled hand; whilst mingling with the twang of the strings was the voice of the ancient bard, cracked through age, yet still retaining the old power and some of the old sweetness. And harp and voice were raised alike in one of those triumph songs that have ever been as the elixir of life to the strong, rude, sensitive sons of wild Cambria. "It is Wenwynwyn," quoth Vychan. "He is yet alive. I little thought to see him more. "Griffeth, boy, run to yon old man and bid him give thee his blessing, and tell him that there is a son of Dynevor come back to rule as Lord of Dynevor once again." POSTSCRIPT. The story of the sons of Res Vychan is very intricate and difficult to follow, owing to the lack of contemporaneous documents; but the main facts of their story as related in the foregoing pages are true, though a certain license has been taken for purposes of fiction. They have been represented as somewhat younger than they were at the time of these events, whilst the children of Edward the First have been made some few years older than their true ages. There is no actual historical warrant for the change of identity between Wendot and Griffeth, and for the escape and reinstatement of the former in the halls of Dynevor; but there are traditions which point to a possibility that he did escape from prison, in spite of the affirmation of the chroniclers, as there have been those who claim descent from him, which they would hardly have done if such had not been the case, for there is no record that he was married before he was taken prisoner to England. The children of the English king were not really at Rhuddlan Castle in 1277, as represented here, as they were at that time too young to accompany their father on his expeditions. If, however, they had been as old as represented in these pages, there is little doubt they would have accompanied him, as the monarch was a most affectionate father, and loved to have wife and children about him. Arthyn is a fictitious character; as is also Gertrude. There is no record that any of the sons of Res Vychan married or left descendants, except the tradition alluded to above. THE END. 
11642	----	Distributed Proofreaders WHAT TO SEE IN ENGLAND A GUIDE TO PLACES OF HISTORIC INTEREST, NATURAL BEAUTY, OR LITERARY ASSOCIATION BY GORDON HOME 1908 [Illustration: BOOTHAM BAR, AND YORK MINSTER.] [Illustration: SKETCH PLAN OF LONDON SHOWING RAILWAY STATIONS] [Illustration: REFERENCE TO RAILWAY STATIONS Broad Street Cannon St. (South Eastern & Chatham) Charing Cross (South Eastern & Chatham) Euston Station (London & North Western) Fenchurch St. (London, Tilbury, & Southend) Great Central Station Great Eastern (Liverpool St.) Great Western Station King's Cross (Great Northern) Liverpool St. (Great Eastern) London Bridge (South Eastern & Chatham & Brighton & South Coast) London & North Western (Euston Station) London & South Western (Waterloo) London, Tilbury, & Southend (Fenchurch St.) Marylebone Station (Great Central) Paddington Station (Great Western) St Pancras (Midland) South Eastern & Chatham: Cannon Street Charing Cross Holborn Viaduct London Bridge Ludgate Hill Victoria Waterloo South Western Railway (Waterloo) Victoria (London, Brighton, & South Coast & South Eastern & Chatham) Waterloo (London & South Western)] PREFACE This book is intended to put in the smallest possible space the means by which one may reach the chief places of interest in England and Wales. It will possibly make many holidays, week-ends, or isolated days more enjoyable by placing a defined objective before the rambler. Places within an hour or two of London are in the front of the book, so that as one turns over the pages one is taken further and further afield. The brief summary of the interests of each place, and the many illustrations, may help to memorise the impressions obtained. The first edition of a book of this nature must of necessity be incomplete, and the author is prepared to hear of long lists of places which should have been included, and also to hear criticisms on his choice of those appearing. It is to some extent natural that special familiarity with certain places and certain writers or heroes of the past may distort one's vision, and perhaps induce a choice of subjects which may not seem so comprehensive to some individuals as to others. Future editions will, however, give ample scope for embracing all the good suggestions which may be made. G.H. HAM HOUSE AND PETERSHAM =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Richmond (1-1/4 miles from Petersham Church). =Distance from London.=--10 miles. =Average Time.=--1/2 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 1s. 3d. 1s. 0d. 0s. 9d. Return 2s. 0d. 1s. 6d. 1s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Castle Hotel," "Roebuck Hotel," Richmond. "Dysart Arms" at Petersham. The little church at Petersham is interesting on account of the memorial it contains to the memory of Vancouver, the discoverer, in 1792, of the island bearing his name, on the west coast of the North American continent. It is said that "the unceasing exertions which Vancouver himself made to complete the gigantic task of surveying 9000 miles of unknown and intricate coasts--a labour chiefly performed in open boats--made an inroad on his constitution from which he never recovered, and, declining gradually, he died in May 1798." The church is also the burying-place of the Duchess of Lauderdale, whose residence was Ham House. This fine old Jacobean mansion stands at no great distance from Petersham Church. It was built as a residence for Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I., who, however, died early, the gossips of the time hinting at poison. The house is still said to be haunted by the spirit of the old Duchess of Lauderdale, who lived in the time of Charles II. WALTON-ON-THAMES (SCOLD'S BRIDLE) =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Walton. =Distance from London.=--17 miles. =Average Time.=--3/4 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 10d. 1s. 10d. 1s. 5d. Return 4s. 0d. 3s. 0d. 2s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Ashley" at station; "Swan," on the river; "Duke's Head," in the town, etc. Walton-on-Thames is a little riverside town, very much surrounded by modern villas. The church contains in a glass case in the vestry a "scold's bridle." This rusty iron contrivance is one of the few specimens of this mediaeval instrument of torture to be seen in this country, and it is certainly the nearest to London. In Elizabethan times a "scold" was looked upon in much the same light as a witch, and this bridle was applied to those women who obtained for themselves the undesirable reputation. [Illustration: THE GARDEN FRONT OF HAM HOUSE.] [Illustration: THE SCOLD'S BRIDLE IN WALTON-ON-THAMES CHURCH. "Chester presents Walton with a bridle To curb women's tongues when they are idle."] HARROW =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Harrow. =Distance from London.=--11-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--1/2 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 1s. 6d. 1s. 0d. 0s. 9d. Return 2s. 3d. 1s. 6d. 1s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"King's Head," etc. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from Baker Street, Metropolitan Railway. Train from Broad Street, L. and N.W. Railway. Train from Marylebone, Great Central Railway. Harrow, from its high position, 200 feet above the sea, was selected by the Romans as an important military station. By the Saxons it was called Hereways, and was purchased in 822 by Wilfred, Archbishop of Canterbury. The ancient manor-house, of which no traces now remain, was formerly the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, and it was here that Thomas à Becket resided during his banishment from Court. Cardinal Wolsey, who was once Rector of Harrow, resided at Pinner, and is said to have entertained Henry VIII. during his visit to Harrow. The manor was exchanged by Archbishop Cranmer with the king for other lands, and was subsequently given to Sir Edmund Dudley, afterwards Lord North. At the bottom of the hill, and spreading rapidly in all directions, are quantities of modern houses and villas, but the point of greatest interest in Harrow is the celebrated school, wonderfully situated on the very summit of the hill, with views extending over thirteen counties. Founded in the reign of Queen Elizabeth by John Lyon, a yeoman of the parish, the school has now grown enormously, the oldest portion being that near the church, which was erected three years after the founder's death. In the wainscotting of the famous schoolroom are the carvings cut by many generations of Harrovians, among them being the names of Peel, Byron, Sheridan, the Marquess of Hastings, Lord Normanby, and many others. The church stands on the extreme summit of the hill, and from the churchyard the view is simply magnificent. In the building are some interesting tombs and brasses, and a monument to John Lyon, the founder of the school. The grave shown on the opposite page is known as "Byron's tomb," on account of his fondness for the particular spot it occupied in the churchyard, from whence the fascinating view just mentioned can be seen, from the shade of the trees growing on either side. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ "BYRON'S TOMB" IN HARROW CHURCHYARD.] HOLWOOD HOUSE, KESTON THE HOME OF WILLIAM PITT =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, and London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Hayes (2 miles from Keston village). About 3 miles from Holwood House. =Distance from London.=--12 miles. =Average Time.=--35 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 0d. 1s. 3d. 1s. 0-1/2d. Return 3s. 3d. 2s. 4d. 1s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Fox Inn," "The George." =Alternative Route.=--To Orpington Station by the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway, about 4 miles distant. _Visitors are able to pass through the park on a public footpath._ About 3 miles' walk from Hayes Station by a pleasant road over Hayes Common is Holwood House, a stately, classic building, for many years the home of William Pitt, the famous statesman and son of the Earl of Chatham. He owned the estate between 1785 and 1802, and it was during this period that the British camp in the park suffered so severely. The earth-works were occupied by some early British tribe before Caesar crossed the Channel, and the place probably owed its strength to its well-chosen position. Pitt, however, caused these fascinating remains to be levelled to a considerable extent, in order to carry out some of his ideas of landscape gardening. A magnificent tree growing near the house is known as "Pitt's Oak," from the tradition that Pitt was specially fond of spending long periods of quiet reading beneath its overshadowing boughs. Another tree of more interest still stands quite near the public footpath through the park. This is known as "Wilberforce's Oak," and is easily distinguished from the surrounding trees by the stone seat constructed in its shade. The momentous decision which makes this tree so interesting is given in Wilberforce's diary for the year 1788. He writes, "At length, I well remember after a conversation with Mr. Pitt in the open air at the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent into the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to bring forward the abolition of the slave-trade." With the exception of Knole Park, Holwood boasts some of the finest beeches in the country. The present house took the place of the one occupied by Pitt in 1825; the architect was Decimus Burton. [Illustration: WILBERFORCE'S OR "EMANCIPATION OAK" IN HOLWOOD PARK, KESTON.] CHIGWELL, ESSEX =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Chigwell. =Distance from London.=--12-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--55 minutes. Quickest train, 31 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 1s. 10d. 1s. 4d. 0s. 11d. Return 2s. 6d. 1s. 10d. 1s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The King's Head." In 1844 Charles Dickens wrote to Forster: "Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious old inn facing the church--such a lovely ride--such forest scenery--such an out-of-the-way rural place--such a sexton! I say again, Name your day." This is surely sufficient recommendation for any place; and when one knows that the "delicious old inn" is still standing, and that the village is as rural and as pretty as when Dickens wrote over sixty years ago, one cannot fail to have a keen desire to see the place. "The King's Head" illustrated here is the inn Dickens had in his mind when describing the "Maypole" in _Barnaby Rudge_, and the whole of the plot of that work is so wrapped up in Chigwell and its immediate surroundings that one should not visit the village until one has read the story. One may see the panelled "great room" upstairs where Mr. Chester met Mr. Geoffrey Haredale. This room has a fine mantelpiece, great carved beams, and beautiful leaded windows. On the ground floor is the cosy bar where the village cronies gathered with Mr. Willett, and one may also see the low room with the small-paned windows against which John Willett flattened his nose looking out on the road on the dark night when the story opens. Chigwell School, built in 1629, and founded by Archbishop Harsnett, still remains, although there have been several modern additions. Here William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was educated. (See Index for Jordans and Penn's Chapel at Thakeham.) Chigwell Church, facing "The King's Head," has a dark avenue of yews leading from the road to the porch. A brass to the memory of Archbishop Harsnett may be seen on the floor of the chancel. The epitaph in Latin was ordered to be so written in the will of the archbishop. Translated, the first portion may be read: "Here lieth Samuel Harsnett, formerly vicar of this church. First the unworthy Bishop of Chichester, then the more unworthy Bishop of Norwich, at last the very unworthy Archbishop of York." [Illustration: THE KING'S HEAD INN AT CHIGWELL. The "Maypole" of Dickens's _Barnaby Rudge_.] WALTHAM ABBEY AND CROSS =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Waltham. =Distance from London.=--12-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--40 minutes. Quickest train, 23 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 0d. 1s. 6d. 1s. 1d. Return 3s. 3d. 2s. 6d. 1s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The New Inn," etc. Waltham Abbey is a market town in Essex on the banks of the Lea, which here divides into several branches which are used as motive power for some gunpowder and flour mills. Harold II. founded the stately Abbey Church in May 1060. William the Conqueror disputed Harold's claim to the throne and landed in England at Pevensey in 1066. At Waltham Abbey, troubled and anxious, Harold prayed for victory in England's name before the fatal battle of Hastings, where he was slain. William at first refused to give up Harold's body to his mother, Gytha, but he afterwards allowed two monks from Waltham to search for the body of the king. They were unable to find it amongst the nameless dead, but his favourite, Edith the swan-necked, whose eye of affection was not to be deceived, discovered it. His weeping mother buried the disfigured corpse probably about 120 feet from the east end of the old church. At Waltham is one of the many crosses erected by Edward I. in memory of his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, wherever her body rested on its way to Westminster from Lincoln. At Northampton is another of these famous crosses. When the king asked the Abbot of Cluny to intercede for her soul, he said, "We loved her tenderly in her lifetime; we do not cease to love her in death." A little way to the left of Waltham Cross, now a gateway to the park of Theobalds, stands Temple Bar, stone for stone intact as it was in the days when traitors' heads were raised above it in Fleet Street, although the original wooden gates have gone. A portion of the richly-carved top of the gate is still in existence in London. Waltham Abbey is probably close to that part of the river Lea where King Alfred defeated the Danes. They had penetrated far up the river when King Alfred diverted the waters of the river from underneath their black vessels and left them high and dry in a wilderness of marsh and forest. The gentle Charles Lamb was very fond of the country all round Waltham Abbey, especially Broxbourne and Amwell. [Illustration: THE ABBEY GATE AT WALTHAM. Waltham Abbey was founded in 1060 by Harold II.] DOWNE THE HOME OF DARWIN =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Orpington (3-1/2 to 4 miles from Downe). =Distance from London.=--13-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--35 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 4d. 1s. 6d. 1s. 2-1/2d. Return 4s. 0d. 3s. 0d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Queen's Head," at Downe, facing the church. Hotels at Farnborough--"White Lion," "George and Dragon." The home of the great scientist is still standing in the little village of Downe in Kent. The road to the hamlet is through Farnborough, and the walk takes an hour. Downe is a pleasant place, possessing a large village pond and a small church with a shingled spire. Darwin's home, known as Downe House, was built in the eighteenth century. Its front is of white stucco, relieved by ivy and other creepers. The wing on the west side of the house was added by Darwin shortly after he came to live there. This new portion of the house was used partly to accommodate his library. On the north side is the room used by Darwin as a study, in which he wrote some of his most important works. The garden of the house is sheltered and reposeful, and from the old wall-garden to the south there is a beautiful view over the delightful stretch of country in the direction of Westerham. The life led by Darwin when at Downe was exceedingly quiet and regular, for he always went to bed at an early hour, and rising at six was enabled to get in a walk and breakfast before commencing work at eight o'clock. At some other time of the day he would manage to get an opportunity for another walk, and part of the evening would be given up to his family and friends who were privileged to enjoy conversation with the great author of _The Origin of Species_. Professor Haeckel, describing a visit to Darwin's home, says, "There stepped out to meet me from the shady porch ... the great naturalist himself, a tall and venerable figure, with the broad shoulders of an Atlas supporting a world of thought, his Jupiter-like forehead, highly and broadly arched ... and deeply furrowed with the plough of mental labour; his kindly, mild eyes looking forth under the shadow of prominent brows." [Illustration: DOWNE HOUSE AT DOWNE, KENT. The Home of Charles Darwin.] EPSOM: ITS RACES AND ITS SALTS =How to get there.=--From Waterloo, South-Western Railway. From London Bridge or Victoria, London, Brighton, and South Coast Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Epsom. =Distance from London.=--14 miles. =Average Time.=--3/4 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 3d. 1s. 6d. 1s. 2d. Return 3s. 0d. 2s. 6d. 2s. 2d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"King's Head," "Spread Eagle," etc. One must choose any other than a race-day if one wishes to see the charming old town of Epsom at its best. But if, on the other hand, one wishes, to see something of the scene on the race-course depicted in Mr. Frith's famous picture, one gets no suggestion of the great spectacle except on race-days. On these occasions, at the Spring meeting and during Derby week, one has merely to follow the great streams of humanity which converge on the downs from the roads from London and from the railway stations. On ordinary days the wide rolling downs are generally left alone to the health-giving breezes which blow over them. In the town itself there is much to be seen of the seventeenth-century architecture associated with the days of Epsom's fame as a watering-place. The wide portion of the High Street at once attracts one's notice, for with one or two exceptions its whole length is full of the quaintest of buildings with cream walls and mossy tiled roofs. The clock-tower was built in 1848, when it replaced a very simple old watch-house with a curious little tower rising from it. The "Spread Eagle" is one of the oldest of the Epsom inns; its irregular front and its position looking up the High Street make it more conspicuous than the "King's Head," an equally old and very interesting hostelry facing the clock-tower. Pepys stayed there in 1667, for in his diary of July 14 of that year he writes, "To Epsom, by eight o'clock, to the well; where much company. And to the towne to the King's Head; and hear that my Lord Buckhurst and Nelly (Gwynne) are lodged at the next house, and Sir Charles Sedley with them: and keep a merry house." This house, next to the "King's Head," is still standing. A little further along the street is the large red-brick building known to-day as Waterloo House. It was built about the year 1680, and was then known as the New Inn. The old banqueting-hall it contains is divided up now, for the building is converted into shops. Durdans, the residence of Lord Rosebery, is about ten minutes' walk from the High Street. One can see the house and grounds from the narrow lane leading to the downs. [Illustration: HIGH STREET, EPSOM. Showing one of the famous inns which flourished in the seventeenth century.] EPPING FOREST =How to get there.=--From Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Theydon Bois. Other stations near the forest are Chingford, Loughton, and Epping. =Distance from London.=--15 miles. =Average Time.=--1 hour. Quickest train, 38 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 8d. 1s. 11d. 1s. 3-1/2d. Return 3s. 9d. 2s. 11d. 1s. 11d. Those who wish to ramble through Epping Forest off the beaten paths should carry a compass and a map, so that they do not merely keep in one section of the forest, and thus miss some of the tracts which are quite distinct in character to others. The best days during the summer for having the glades to one's self are Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, but during the winter the whole place is left to the keepers and the feathered inhabitants of the forest. During spring and autumn one also finds that the grassy walks are left almost entirely alone, and at these periods the forest is at its very best. Those who have only visited it in the height of summer, when the foliage is perhaps drooping a little, when the birds are not singing, and when there are traces of more than one picnic party, have no idea of the true beauty of the forest. A herd of deer are allowed to breed in the wilder and less frequented portions if the forest, and these add much to the charm of some of the umbrageous by-paths when one suddenly disturbs a quietly grazing group. Queen Elizabeth's hunting lodge, which adjoins the Forest Hotel at Chingford, is a restored three-storied and much gabled building, constructed of plastered brickwork and framed with oak. It seems that the building originally had no roof, but merely an open platform, from which one could obtain a good comprehensive view of any sport going on in the vicinity. The lodge has now been made the home of a museum of objects of antiquity discovered in the forest. The special points of Epping Forest which should be included in a long day's ramble are Connaught Water, a lake near Chingford; High Beach, an elevated portion of the forest possessing some splendid beeches; the earthwork known as Loughton Camp, which probably belongs to pre-Roman times, and Ambresbury Banks, towards Epping. This camp is said to have been the last fortress of the Britons under Boadicea. From here they are believed to have marched against the Romans to receive the crushing defeat inflicted upon them. [Illustration: A GLADE AMONG THE BEECHES IN EPPING FOREST.] HAMPTON COURT =How to get there.=--South-Western Railway. Waterloo Station. =Nearest Station.=--Hampton Court. =Distance from London.=--15 miles. =Average Time.=--3/4 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 0d. 1s. 6d. 1s. 2-1/2d. Return 2s. 9d. 2s. 0d. 1s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Castle Hotel," "Mitre Hotel," "The King's Arms Hotel," "Greyhound Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--By steamboats from London Bridge, etc., during the summer months. Within a few hundred yards of the Hampton Court station on the London and South-Western Railway stands the magnificent palace of Hampton Court, originally erected by Cardinal Wolsey for his own residence, and after his sudden downfall appropriated by his ungrateful master Henry VIII. for his private use and property. The approach from the station lies through a pair of finely designed wrought-iron gates to the north frontage of the palace, erected by Wolsey himself. This front is all in the fine red-brick architecture of the period, with quaint gables, small mullioned windows, and a collection of moulded and twisted red-brick chimneys of wonderfully varied designs. The entrance through the gatehouse, flanked by two towers, is under a massive Tudor gateway, and leads into an inner quadrangle and thence into a second court, both of the same picturesque character. In these inner courts are the suites of rooms given as residences by royal favour, and on the left-hand side is Wolsey's great banqueting-hall, with a magnificent open timber roof. The southern and eastern portions, with the Fountain Court and the splendid frontage to the gardens, were designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and form one of the best examples of his work. In this part of the building are the picture galleries, containing a priceless collection of works, comprising Sir Peter Lely's Beauties of King Charles II.'s time, valuable specimens of Holbein, Kneller, West, Jansen, Vandyck, Reynolds, and other masters, and seven wonderful cartoons by Raphael. The splendidly kept gardens, about 44 acres in extent, are still very much as they were in the time of William III. Hampton Court "Maze" is one of the most intricate in the country. The palace, grounds, and picture galleries are open to the public daily, free, except on Fridays; summer, 10 to 6; winter, 10 to 4. Sundays, summer, 2 to 6; winter, 2 to 4. [Illustration: THE EAST SIDE OF THE CLOCK TOWER, HAMPTON COURT.] RYE HOUSE, BROXBOURNE =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street. Great Eastern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Broxbourne (quite close to Rye House). =Distance from London.=--17 miles. =Average Time.=--50 minutes. Quickest train, 39 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 3d. 2s. 3d. 1s. 6d. } reduced during Return 4s. 9d. 3s. 6d. 2s. 6d. } summer months. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Rye House has been converted into an hotel. Rye House stands close to the banks of the river Lea, and is now perhaps more of a resort than some would wish it to be, for it has been altered from a manor-house into an hotel. It has not, however, quite lost its picturesqueness, as one will see from the illustration given here, and within one may see the fine old dining-hall and the famous "Great bed of Ware," large enough, it is said, to contain twelve people! The historical interest which attaches itself to Rye House, though well known, may be briefly given here. It was in 1683 the scene of a plot, in Charles II.'s reign, to assassinate the king and his brother the Duke of York, afterwards James II., on their way to London from Newmarket. Charles, though restored to the throne, was giving great dissatisfaction to many in the country. Though professedly a Protestant, it was well known that his leanings were towards Roman Catholicism, and his brother the Duke of York was an avowed Catholic. Then it was discovered that Charles had been receiving a pension from Louis XIV. of France, on condition that this country did not go to war with the French, an arrangement which was most humiliating to the English people. The nation was thoroughly alarmed, and at the next meeting of Parliament the Commons brought in a bill to exclude the Duke of York from ever coming to the throne. Many of the leading Whigs, including Lord William Russell, Algernon Sidney, and the Earl of Essex, formed a confederacy. It has never been proved that they ever meant the country to rise against the king, but unfortunately, just at the same time, some bolder and fiercer spirits of the Whig party determined to kill both Charles and James at the lonely Rye House belonging to Rumbolt. The plot failed from the fact that the house which the king occupied at Newmarket accidentally caught fire, and Charles was obliged to leave Newmarket a week sooner than was expected. This conspiracy as well as the meetings of the Whig party were betrayed to the king's ministers. Russell was beheaded in 1683, and Sidney shared the same fate. [Illustration: RYE HOUSE. The scene of the famous Rye House Plot in 1683.] HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTS =How to get there.=--From King's Cross. Great Northern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Hatfield. =Distance from London.=--17-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--35 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 6d. ... 1s. 5-1/2d. Return 5s. 0d. ... 2s. 11d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Red Lion Hotel," etc. Permission to see the interior of Hatfield House can be obtained when the Marquess of Salisbury is not in residence. After the Norman Conquest Hatfield, the _Haethfield_ of the Saxons, became the property of the bishops of Ely, and was known as Bishops Hatfield, as indeed it is marked on many maps. There was here a magnificent palace, which at the Reformation became the property of Henry VIII., and was afterwards given to the Cecils by James I., who received Theobalds in exchange. The town of Hatfield is a quaint, straggling place, with narrow streets and many antique houses. A steep declivity leads up to the old church, dedicated to St. Etheldreda, just outside one of the entrances to the grounds of Hatfield House. The church contains a monument to Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, also tombs of the Botelers, Brockets, and Reads of Brocket Hall. The entrance gateway, close to the churchyard, leads to what are now the stables of Hatfield House, a fine red-brick structure, once the banqueting-hall of the Bishop's Palace. This building, with its fine open timber roof, is perhaps the only example of its kind in England used as a stable. Hatfield House is one of the most perfect and magnificent of Elizabethan mansions in the kingdom. It was built by the first Earl of Salisbury in 1611, and is practically unaltered. The fine oak panelling and carving, the plaster ceilings, and much of the furniture, all remain as they were in the days of the great Lord Burleigh. The great hall, with its splendid timber roof, and the gallery, with a fine collection of pictures and curios, are two striking features. The staircase is magnificent in design and detail, and is furnished with gates at the bottom, placed there originally for preventing the dogs from wandering upstairs. The paintings in the hall and other rooms in Hatfield House include portraits of the great Burleigh, Sir Robert and other Cecils, by Lely and Kneller; Henry VIII., Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, the Earl of Leicester, and Queen Elizabeth. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ HATFIELD HOUSE.] RUNNYMEAD, THE SIGNING OF MAGNA CHARTA =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Staines. =Distance from London.=--19 miles. =Average Time.=--50 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 0d. 2s. 0d. 1s. 6d. Return 5s. 0d. 3s. 6d. 2s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Staines--"Pack Horse Hotel," "Swan Hotel," "Bridge Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington to Staines. G.W.R. Runnymede takes a prominent place among the many historical spots which crowd the banks of the Thames. The river at this point is winding and picturesque. Some doubt attaches to the exact spot where John, in 1215, realising at last that the barons were too strong for him, confirmed their articles with his hand and seal, with the full intention of breaking his word as soon as it was possible. It was either on the south side of the river, or on an island opposite the end of the meadow, now known as Magna Carta Island, that this early bulwark of freedom was granted by the king. Though there is strong tradition in favour of the meadows on the opposite bank, possibly the balance of favour is with the island. On the island there is a rough stone bearing an inscription stating that this is the celebrated spot. The island is now private property. Above it, on the left, is a low wooded ridge known as Cooper's Hill, from which one can enjoy some exquisite views of the Thames valley. THE OLDEST BRASS IN ENGLAND =How to get there.=--Train to Leatherhead by South-Western or London, Brighton and South Coast lines. =Distance from London.=--19 miles. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Swan Hotel," etc., at Leatherhead. Two and a half miles from Leatherhead is situated the ancient church of Stoke d'Abernon, famous for possessing the oldest brass in England. It shows a complete figure of Sir John d'Abernoun, who died in 1277. The church, restored externally, overlooks the river Mole. [Illustration: IN STOKE D'ABERNON CHURCH Twelfth Century Parish Chest, with slot for inserting Peter's Pence. The three locks were for the rector and two churchwardens. The brass to Sir John d'Abernoun on the floor of the Chancel showing the chain armour worn between 1250 and 1300 A.D. Jacobean hour-glass stand.] ST. ALBANS VERULAMIUM AND GORHAMBURY =How to get there.=--Through train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--St. Albans. =Distance from London.=--20 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1/2 to 1 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 2s. 8d. ... 1s. 7-1/2d. Return 5s. 4d. ... 3s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Peahen," "Red Lion Hotel," "The George," etc. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from Euston, L. and N.W. Railway. Train from King's Cross, Great Northern Railway. St. Albans is an ancient town of much historic interest, being built close to the site of the old Roman city of Verulamium. West of the town; by a little stream, the Ver, some remains of the old Roman wall may be seen, and the frequent discoveries made there are placed in the museum in the town. St. Alban, or Albanus, who has given his name to the town, was the first British martyr. He lived in the reign of Diocletian, and was beheaded on the site of the abbey raised in his honour. The Benedictine monastery which arose became the wealthiest and most popular in England through the fame of the saint. Most of the kings from Saxon times until the dissolution of the monastery in Henry VIII.'s reign, visited this shrine. In later times the Abbey Church was made parochial, and finally a cathedral. St. Albans owes some of its importance to its situation on the famous northward road; Watling Street runs through it. Owing to its proximity to London, it was the scene of two battles in its High Street during the Wars of the Roses. The cathedral occupies the highest site of any in England. The square Norman tower owes its red hue to the Roman bricks used in its construction. One remarkable feature is the length of the nave, which is only exceeded by Winchester. Every style of architecture is represented in the interior from Early Norman to Late Perpendicular, and in the triforium of the north transept are to be seen some Saxon balusters and columns. The shrine of St. Alban is in the Saint's Chapel, with the interesting watching-loft on the north side. The west end has been very much renovated by Lord Grimthorpe. At Gorhambury can be seen the tower of the ruined house formerly occupied by Sir Nicholas Bacon, and visited by Queen Elizabeth. In the antique church of St. Michael in Verulamium is Lord Bacon's monument. [Illustration: _F. Frith & Co., Ltd._ ST. ALBANS ABBEY. Showing the Central Tower constructed of Roman bricks from Verulamium.] STOKE POGES CHURCH, BUCKS =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Slough (2-1/2 miles from Stoke Poges). =Distance from London.=--21-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3/4 to 1 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 0d. 2s. 0d. 1s. 6d. Return 5s. 0d. 3s. 6d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Windsor--"White Hart Hotel," "Castle Hotel," "Bridge House Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo to Windsor, 3 miles from Stoke Poges. London and South-Western Railway. "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day" has immortalised the otherwise unimportant district of Stoke Poges--a parish embracing numerous small hamlets. Leaving Slough by the north end of the railway bridge, one turns first to the right and then to the left, and soon after leaving the uninteresting bricks and mortar of the town, one enters some of the most beautiful lanes in the home counties. At the first cross road one turns to the right, and again through an open gate to the left, and thence a field path leads to the churchyard. The little church, which is always open, has walls of old red brick and flint, with patches of rough plaster. It is wonderfully picturesque, with its partial covering of ivy and beautiful background of fine old trees, and no one can view the scene at sunset without recalling Gray's immortal _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_--those exquisite verses which breathe in every line the peace of an ideal country scene. To a lover of Nature there can be nothing more beautiful than the lines-- Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds; Save where the beetle wheels his drony flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. Near the east wall of the church is the red brick tomb where Gray sleeps his last sleep, and in the meadow by the chancel window stands the huge cenotaph raised to his memory by John Penn. Of the little cottage where he spent his summer vacations and wrote the _Elegy_ nothing now remains. Gray was born in London in 1716, and died at Cambridge in 1771. The interior of the church has lost its high old pews and galleries, so that it lacks the interest it might have had, for until these were removed the building was almost exactly what Gray knew so well. [Illustration: _Mackenzie Fine Art Co._ STOKE POGES CHURCHYARD. Associated with Gray's _Elegy_.] WINDSOR =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Windsor. =Distance from London.=--21-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1/2 to 1 hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 6d. 2s. 3d. 1s. 9d. Return 5s. 6d. 4s. 0d. 3s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"White Hart Hotel," "Bridge House Hotel," "Castle Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. The chief interest of Windsor centres in its castle, without which visitors to the town would probably be few in number. Some of the old streets are narrow, and there are many architecturally interesting buildings. The business portion of the town lies nearest to the Castle, the residential parts being chiefly round the Great Park. The Town Hall, in the High Street, was commenced in 1686, and was completed under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren. The history of Windsor Castle commences with the granting of the site of the castle and town to the Abbot of Westminster by Edward the Confessor. William the Conqueror, was, however, so struck with its splendid military position, that he revoked the grant, and where the castle now stands built a fortress of considerable size. Of this there is no description extant. The first court was held at Windsor by Henry I., and during his reign many splendid functions took place there. Edward III. employed William of Wykeham to rebuild almost the whole castle. Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth all made additions to the buildings. Many magnificent paintings were added during the reign of Charles I. George I. made Windsor Castle his chief residence, and appointed a Royal Commission to rebuild the castle in its present form at a cost of more than one million sterling. About 1860, Wolsey's Chapel, now known as the Albert Memorial Chapel, was restored in memory of the Prince Consort, and the Duchess of Kent's mausoleum was erected. St. George's Chapel, a splendid specimen of ecclesiastical architecture, was originally built by Edward III., and was finally restored in 1887. The State apartments, which can be seen when the Royal family are absent, are sumptuously furnished and contain much beautiful tapestry and a valuable collection of pictures. Windsor Great Park, the chief feature of which is the Long Walk, is well stocked with deer. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ WINDSOR CASTLE.] JORDANS AND WILLIAM PENN =How to get there.=--Train from Baker Street. Metropolitan Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Chalfont Road (3 miles from Jordans). =Distance from London.=--22 miles. =Average Time.=--51 minutes. (Convenient trains, 10.27 A.M., 12.17 and 2.27 P.M.) 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 2d. 2s. 4d. 1s. 7d. Return 4s. 9d. 3s. 5d. 2s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--None at Jordans. =Alternative Route.=--Train to Uxbridge. Great Western Railway. Jordans, the burial-place of William Penn, the great English Quaker and philanthropist, lies on a by-road in Buckinghamshire, leading from Chalfont St. Peter to Beaconsfield. The place itself, though full of the typical charm of English scenery in the home counties, does not contain anything of particular interest, and it owes its reputation to the associations with the wonderful man who lived and died there. Jordans is visited by many hundreds of tourists during the summer, mainly Americans. One of these offered to remove Penn's remains to Philadelphia, capital of Pennsylvania, and there build a mausoleum over them; but the offer was declined. The road runs south-west from the village of Chalfont St. Peter, and after a sharp curve brings the visitor to the Meeting House, a very plain and unobtrusive structure, dating from about the end of the seventeenth century. In the secluded burying-ground surrounded and overhung by great trees lies William Penn. Five of his children also rest among these quiet surroundings; and here are buried two well-known Quaker leaders, Isaac Penington and Thomas Ellwood. At the actual time of burial there were no gravestones, but these have since been added. Though the house as a regular place of meeting has long fallen into disuse, there is still an annual gathering of Quakers there in memory of the great dead. Penn was the son of Sir William Penn, an eminent admiral, and was born in 1644. His violent advocacy of the Quaker creeds led him into continual trouble and several times into prison. In 1681 he obtained, in lieu of the income left by his father, a grant from the Crown of the territory now forming the state of Pennsylvania. Penn wished to call his new property Sylvania, on account of the forest upon it, but the king, Charles II., good-naturedly insisted on the prefix Penn. The great man left his flourishing colony for the last time in 1701, and after a troublous time in pecuniary matters, owing to the villany of an agent in America, Penn died at Ruscombe in Berkshire in 1718. [Illustration: _H.C. Shelley._ THE JORDANS. The burial-place of William Penn.] KNOLE HOUSE AND SEVENOAKS =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Sevenoaks (Knole House is just outside Sevenoaks). =Distance from London.=--22 miles. =Average Time.=--45 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 10d. 2s. 5d. 1s. 11d. Return 6s. 8d. 4s. 10d. 3s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Sevenoaks--"Royal Crown Hotel," "Royal Oak Hotel," "Bligh's Private Hotel," etc. Sevenoaks is famous for its beautiful situation near the Weald of Kent. It possesses still some old inns, relics of coaching days. The Grammar School was founded in 1432 by Sir William Sevenoke, who, from being a foundling, became Lord Mayor. St. Nicholas' Church is a large building in the Decorated and Perpendicular style, much restored. The chief charm of Sevenoaks is Knole House, a splendid example of the baronial dwellings that were erected after the Wars of the Roses, when the fortress was no longer so necessary. The demesne of Knole was purchased in the fifteenth century by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, who rebuilt the mansion on it. It was taken from Cranmer by the Crown and granted in 1603 to Thomas Sackville, Baron Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, who is now represented by the Sackville-West family, the present owners. The first Earl of Dorset greatly improved Knole, employing, it is said, 200 workmen constantly. The building surrounds three square courts and occupies about 5 acres. Knole possesses an extremely valuable collection of paintings, and the mediaeval furniture is untouched from the time of James I. There are famous pictures by Flemish, Dutch, Venetian, and Italian painters. In the dressing-room of the Spangled Bedroom are to be seen some of Sir Peter Lely's beauties. The Cartoon Gallery has copies of Raphael's cartoons by Mytens, and in the Poet's Parlour are portraits of England's famous poets--some by Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The banqueting-hall has a screened music gallery. It is said that there are as many rooms in the house as there are days in the year. The drives and walks of the large park are always open, and the house is shown on Fridays from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., and on Thursdays and Saturdays from 2 to 5 P.M. at a charge of 2s.; there is a reduction for a party. Tickets are procurable at the lodge. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ KNOLE HOUSE. One of the finest examples of a baronial residence of the period immediately succeeding the Wars of the Roses.] GREENSTEAD CHURCH A SAXON CHURCH WITH WOODEN WALLS =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Chipping Ongar (1 mile from Greenstead Church). =Distance from London.=--22-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1 to 1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 11d. 2s. 10d. 1s. 11-1/2d. Return 5s. 9d. 4s. 2d. 3s. 1d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Inn, etc., at Ongar. Entering Ongar from the railway station one finds on the right a footpath leading into a fine avenue. About ten minutes' walk down this brings one to Greenstead Hall, a red brick Jacobean house, with the church adjoining it. Set among a profusion of foliage, the simple little building would be quite interesting as an ideally situated little rustic church, but when one realises how unique it is, the spot at once becomes fascinating. The walls of the diminutive nave, as one may see from the illustration given here, consist of the trunks of large oak trees split down the centre and roughly sharpened at each end. They are raised from the ground by a low foundation of brick, and inside the spaces between the trees are covered with fillets of wood. On top the trees are fastened into a frame of rough timber by wooden pins. The interior of the building is exceedingly dark, for there are no windows in the wooden walls, and the chief light comes from the porch and a dormer window. This window in the roof, however, was not in the original design, for the rude structure was only designed as a temporary resting-place for the body of St. Edmund the Martyr. It was in A.D. 1010 that the saint's body was removed from Bury to London, its protectors fearing an incursion of the Danes at that time. Three years afterwards, however, the body was brought back to Bury, and on its journey rested for a time at Greenstead--a wooden chapel being erected in its honour. The remains of this chapel, built nearly half a century before the Conquest, are still to be seen in the wooden walls just referred to. The length of the original structure was 29 feet 9 inches long by 14 feet wide. The walls, 5 feet 6 inches high, supported the rough timber roof, which possessed no windows. The chancel and tower were added afterwards. Ongar Castle, a huge artificial mound surrounded by a moat, is close to the main street. The church contains in the chancel, hidden by a carpet, the grave of Oliver Cromwell's daughter. A house in the High Street is associated with Livingstone. [Illustration: GREENSTEAD CHURCH, ESSEX. Built in 1013, is remarkable for its nave, constructed of solid tree trunks.] CHALFONT ST. GILES HOME OF MILTON =How to get there.=--Train from Baker Street. Metropolitan Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Chalfont Road (2-1/2 miles from Chalfont St. Giles). An omnibus runs between the village and the station during the summer months. =Distance from London.=--23-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--51 minutes. (Convenient trains, 10.27 A.M., 12.17 and 2.27 P.M.) 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 2d. 2s. 4d. 1s. 7d. Return 4s. 9d. 3s. 5d. 2s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Merlin's Cave Inn," etc. This pretty little Buckinghamshire village has become almost as celebrated as its neighbour Stoke Poges, on account of having been the home of John Milton. The poet's cottage is the last on the left side at the top of the village street. As one may see from the illustration, it is a very picturesque, half-timbered house, whose leaded windows look into a typical country garden. In 1887 a public subscription was raised and the cottage was purchased. Visitors are therefore able to see the interior as well as the exterior of Milton's home, which, it should be mentioned, is the only one existing to-day of the various houses he occupied. For those who are not residents in the parish a charge of sixpence is made for admission. The poet's room, which is on the right on entering, is rather dark, and has a low ceiling. One notices the wide, open fireplace where the white-bearded old man would sit in winter days, and the lattice-paned windows through which in summer-time came the humming of bees and the scent of the flowers growing in the old-fashioned garden. The pleasant indications of his surroundings must have been a great solace to the blind old man. In these simple surroundings one must picture Milton dictating his stately verse, with his thoughts concentrated on the serried ranks of the hosts of heaven. Milton came to Chalfont in 1665, in order to escape from the plague. His eldest daughter was at that time about seventeen years of age, and as she and her sisters are supposed to have remained with their father until about 1670, it is probable that they came to Chalfont with him. The church of Chalfont St. Giles has a Norman font, and there are other traces of Norman work in the bases of the pillars and elsewhere. The south wall of the nave and the north chapel are specially interesting on account of their frescoes. [Illustration: MILTON'S COTTAGE, CHALFONT ST. GILES. Milton moved here from London in 1665, to avoid the Plague.] WESTERHAM THE HOME OF GENERAL WOLFE =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Westerham. =Distance from London.=--25 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1 to 2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 3s. 10d. 2s. 5d. 2s. 0d. Return 6s. 8d. 4s. 10d. 4s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The King's Arms," "The Bull," "The George and Dragon," etc. Westerham as a small country town is not very remarkable in itself, although not devoid of interest, but as containing the birthplace of General Wolfe it becomes a place worthy of a pilgrimage. Colonel and Mrs. Wolfe, the parents of the hero of Quebec, had just come to Westerham, and occupied the vicarage at the time of the birth of their son James in 1727. This, being previous to 1752, was during the old style, when the year began on March 25. The day was December 22, now represented by January 2. Colonel Wolfe's infant was christened in Westerham Church by the vicar, the Rev. George Lewis; but although born at the vicarage, James's parents must have moved into the house now known as Quebec House almost immediately afterwards, for practically the whole of the first twelve years of the boy's life were spent in the fine old Tudor house which is still standing to-day. The vicarage is also to be seen, and though much altered at the back, the front portion, containing the actual room in which Wolfe was born, is the same as in the past. It has a three-light window towards the front, and two small windows in the gable at the side. Quebec House is near the vicarage. It does not bear its name upon it, but it will be pointed out on inquiry. The front is a most disappointing stucco affair, but this merely hides the beautiful Elizabethan gables which originally adorned the house from every point of view. Two private tenants now occupy the house, but the interior is on the whole very little altered since little James Wolfe played hide-and-seek in the old passages and rooms. Squerryes Court, the seat of Lieut.-Colonel C.A.M. Warde, J.P., is the local storehouse of Wolfe relics. Numbers of letters, portraits, and other interesting objects are all carefully preserved there. Young Wolfe was constantly at Squerryes, and the spot in the park where he received his first commission is marked by a stone cenotaph. [Illustration: QUEBEC HOUSE, WESTERHAM. Where General James Wolfe spent the first twelve years of his life.] GUILDFORD, SURREY =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. South-Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Guildford. =Distance from London.=--29-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies from 50 minutes to 1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 5s. 0d. 3s. 2d. 2s. 6d. Return 8s. 9d. 5s. 6d. 5s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Angel," "White Lion," "Castle," etc. =Alternative Route.=--South-Eastern and Chatham Railway from Charing Cross Station, and other South-Eastern and Chatham Railway termini. Guildford High Street is without doubt one of the most picturesque in England. When one stands beneath the shadow of the quaint seventeenth-century town hall, with its great clock projecting half-way across the street towards the Corn Exchange, with its classic stone portico, a most charming picture is spread before one. The steep street dropping down to the river Wey, with the great green slopes of the Hog's Back rising immediately beyond, framed in with quaint gabled fronts and projecting windows. The castle, though very much in ruins, still possesses its huge square keep standing upon an artificial mound. Both the keep and the other portions of the fortress were probably built in the reign of Henry II. Those who are endeavouring to read the history of the castle should bear in mind that in 1623 it was converted into a private dwelling-house, and this accounts for the red brick mullions in the upper windows of the keep. From the highest portion of the walls there is an exceedingly pretty view up the winding course of the Wey. Abbot's Hospital, at the top of the High Street, was built in 1619. It is an exceedingly picturesque old structure of red brick, with conspicuously fine chimney-stacks. The buildings enclose a beautiful courtyard full of the richest architectural detail. The dining-hall is oak-panelled almost to the ceiling, and contains oak tables, benches, and stools. The chapel in the north-east corner contains an alms-box and a "Vinegar" Bible, and two of the windows are remarkable for their fine old glass. The Angel Hotel in the High Street is built over a thirteenth-century crypt and contains much panelling. The old stone grammar school in Spital Street was founded by Edward VI. St. Mary's Church, in the centre of the town, has a painted roof to one of its chapels and some Saxon features. [Illustration: HIGH STREET, GUILDFORD. Showing the Town Hall, with its projecting clock, and the Corn Exchange.] GAD'S HILL THE HOME OF CHARLES DICKENS =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria or Holborn Viaduct. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Rochester. (Gad's Hill lies 1-1/2 miles from Rochester). =Distance from London.=--31 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1 and 1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 5s. 4d. 3s. 4d. 2s. 8d. Return 9s. 4d. 6s. 8d. 5s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Rochester--"King's Head Hotel," "Royal Victoria Hotel," "Bull Hotel," "Royal Crown Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. Mr. Latham, the present occupier, kindly admits visitors on Wednesday afternoons. Lovers of Charles Dickens naturally have a pleasure in seeing the places near Rochester so familiar to them through his works. A mile and a half from this ancient city with its cathedral and castle is Gad's Hill Place, where the great author resided from 1856 till the day of his death in 1870. When Dickens was a small boy the house had always a curious interest for him, for he thought it the most beautiful house he had ever seen. His father, then living in Rochester, used to bring him to look at it, and used to tell the little fellow that if he grew up to be a clever man he might own that or another such house. Gad's Hill Place is a comfortable old-fashioned house, built, it is said, about 1775. Facing it is a shrubbery containing huge cedars. This was connected with the grounds opposite by an underground passage still existing, and here Dickens erected a châlet given to him by his friend Mr. Fechter, in which he worked till the time of his sudden death. Gad's Hill had a peculiar fascination for Dickens, for it was on the highway there that he obtained his wonderful insight into the character and manners of the various tramps and showmen he portrays in his books. Dickens liked nothing better than taking his friends over this district. He thought the seven miles between Rochester and Maidstone one of the most beautiful walks in England. Dickens would compress into infinitely few days an enormous amount of sight-seeing and country enjoyment: castles, cathedrals, lunches and picnics among cherry orchards and hop-gardens. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ GAD'S HILL PLACE, NEAR ROCHESTER. The home of Charles Dickens.] IGHTHAM MOTE, KENT =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria, Holborn Viaduct, and Ludgate Hill. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Wrotham (2 miles from Ightham Mote). =Distance from London.=--31 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1 to 1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 5s. 1d. 3s. 2d. 2s. 6d. Return 8s. 11d. 6s. 4d. 5s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The George and the Dragon," Ightham. =Alternative Route.=--None. In a lovely green hollow, surrounded by splendid old trees and velvet turf, stands Ightham Mote, a gem among old English moated manor-houses. It is the home of Mr. J.C. Colyer-Fergusson, who allows the public to see the house and grounds on Fridays, between 11 and 1, and 2 and 6. A charge of 6d. is made. Crossing a bridge over the moat, one enters the courtyard of the house through the great Tudor gate illustrated here. Standing in this courtyard one can scarcely imagine anything more beautiful and picturesque. The great square battlemented tower, through which one has just passed, is pierced with leaded windows, and its weather-beaten old walls are relieved by all sorts of creepers, which have been allowed to adorn without destroying the rich detail of stone and half-timber work. Those who find pleasure in gazing on architectural picturesqueness can satisfy themselves in the richness of colour and detail revealed in this beautiful courtyard. The crypt with its fine groined roof, the chapel which dates from 1520, the drawing-room with its two hundred years old Chinese wall-paper--believed to be one of the earliest occasions when wall-papers were used in this country--and many other interesting features are shown to visitors. The original Ightham Mote seems to have been built in 1180 by Sir Ivo de Haut. The Hall, it is known, was built by Sir Thomas Cawne in 1340. Richard de Haut, who owned the place later on, was beheaded in 1484 at Pontefract. His estate was confiscated and came into the hands of Sir Robert Brackenbury, governor of the Tower, who lost his life at the battle of Bosworth. However, during the reign of Henry VII., Ightham once more came into the possession of the de Hauts; and it should be mentioned that throughout the seven centuries of its existence the house has always been inhabited. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ IGHTHAM--THE MOAT AND BRIDGE.] PENSHURST =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Penshurst. =Distance from London.=--32 miles. =Average Time.=--1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 5s. 0d. 3s. 3d. 2s. 6d. Return 8s. 8d. 6s. 2d. 4s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Leicester Arms Hotel." The pleasant little village of Penshurst, situated 6 miles north-west from Tunbridge Wells, is renowned for the beautiful fourteenth-century mansion known as Penshurst Place. From Norman times a house has occupied the site, but the present building did not come into existence until 1349, when Sir John de Poultenay, who was four times Lord Mayor of London, built the present historic seat. Having come into the possession of the Crown, the estate was given by Edward VI. to Sir William Sidney, who had fought at Flodden Field. The unfortunate young King Edward died in the arms of Sir William's son Henry, whose grief was so excessive that he retired to Penshurst and lived there in seclusion. Sir Henry Sidney had three children, one of whom being Sir Philip Sidney, the type of a most gallant knight and perfect gentleman. It was at Penshurst that Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip's friend, wrote his first work, the _Shepherd's Calendar_, and though Sidney did not actually write his famous poem _Arcadia_ in his beautiful Kentish home, its scenery must have suggested many of the descriptions. Algernon Sidney, who was illegally put to death through Judge Jeffreys, was the nephew of Sir Philip, and he is supposed to be buried in Penshurst Church, though no monument remains. The present owner of Penshurst is Lord De Lisle and Dudley (Sir Philip Charles Sidney (died 1851) was given the peerage in 1835), who allows visitors to view the historic mansion on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 3 P.M. to 6 P.M. (admission 1s.). The great feature of the house is the baronial hall, built in 1341, which has a hearth in the centre of the room. The Queen's drawing-room, said to have been furnished by Queen Elizabeth, contains some interesting Tudor furniture, and the satin tapestry which adorns the walls is also believed to be the work of the virgin queen and her maidens. There are many valuable and interesting portraits of the famous members of the Sidney family. In the beautiful grounds of Penshurst is an oak tree, planted, says tradition, at the time of Sir Philip Sidney's birth. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ PENSHURST PLACE. Which was built in 1349, was the home of Sir Philip Sidney.] ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT AND MARAZION =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Marazion. =Distance from London.=--324-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 8-1/2 to 11-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 50s. 2d. 31s. 6d. 25s. 1d. Return 87s. 10d. 55s. 0d. 50s. 2d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Godolphin Hotel," "Marazion Hotel," etc. Marazion, the nearest town to St. Michael's Mount, is situated on the eastern side of Mount's Bay, and was in the Middle Ages a place of some importance, being the headquarters of the pilgrims to St. Michael's Mount. Marazion is connected with St. Michael's Mount by a causeway 120 feet in width, formed of rocks and pebbles, and passable only at low tide for three or four hours. The mount itself is a remarkable granite rock, about a mile in circumference and 250 feet high. It was referred to by Ptolemy, and is supposed to have been the island Iclis of the Greeks, noticed by Diodorus Siculus as the place near the promontory of Belerium to which the tin, when refined, was brought by the Britons to be exchanged with the Phoenician merchants. Its British name was equivalent to "the grey rock in the woods," a traditional name, apparently confirmed by the discovery of a submarine forest extending for some miles round the base of the mount. The beauty of the spot caused it to be selected by the ancient Britons as a favourite resort for worship, and shortly after the introduction of Christianity it became a place of pilgrimage, and was visited in the fifth century by St. Kelna, a British princess, who founded a hermitage there. Some sort of military defences protected the mount at a very early date, for Edward the Confessor's charter in 1047 to the Benedictine monks, whom he settled here, especially mentions its _castella_ and other buildings. In Charles II.'s reign the estate was purchased from the Basset family by the St. Aubyns, who still remain its owners. In the castle itself, which crowns the mount, the chief feature is the old hall, now known as the "Chevy Chase" room, from its being adorned with carvings of various field sports. There is some fine old furniture and good pictures. Visitors are allowed to see the principal rooms of the castle when the family are from home, and at all times to see the quaint old Gothic chapel. There is a small fishing village with a pier and harbour at the foot of the rock. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT. The rock is 250 feet in height, and has possessed a castle since 1047.] ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria, Holborn Viaduct, or St. Paul's. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Rochester. =Distance from London.=--33 miles. =Average Time.=--1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 5s. 4d. 3s. 4d. 2s. 8d. Return 9s. 4d. 6s. 3d. 5s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"King's Head Hotel," "Royal Victoria," "Bull Hotel," "Royal Crown Hotel," etc. Rochester, a most picturesque old town on the river Medway, has been a place of importance from the earliest times. The cathedral, which is not very impressive externally, and is much surrounded by houses, is best seen from the castle. It was the first church built after Augustine settled in Canterbury, but of this building no trace now remains except some foundations. The Norman Bishop Gundulf in 1080 built a large portion of the Norman work of the present cathedral. In 1201 it was largely rebuilt by money obtained from thank-offerings for miracles wrought by St. William, a baker of Perth, who was murdered near Rochester on his way to Canterbury, and buried in the cathedral. The Norman castle, standing on the banks of the river, was built by Bishop Gundulf, and though it is now in ruins, the interior having been destroyed for its timber, the walls remain firm. The castle was besieged by William Rufus and Simon de Montfort, and on both occasions suffered considerable damage. One of the many interesting buildings in the High Street is the three-gabled house of Watts's Charity, which has become famous from Dickens's Christmas story of _The Seven Poor Travellers_. According to the inscription above the doorway, Richard Watts in 1579 founded this "Charity for Six Poor Travellers, who not being Rogues or Proctors, may receive gratis for one night, Lodging, Entertainment, and Fourpence each." Restoration House, an old red-brick mansion on the Maidstone Road, is so named from the visit of Charles II. on his way to London in 1660. To all admirers of Charles Dickens, Rochester is full of memories (see Index, Gad's Hill). Not only did Dickens make Rochester the scene of his last unfinished work, _Edwin Drood_, but he made many allusions to it elsewhere. Mr. Jingle, for instance, in the _Pickwick Papers_ says, "Ah! fine place, glorious pile--frowning walls--tottering arches--dark nooks--crumbling staircases--old cathedral too--earthy smell--pilgrims' feet worn away the old steps." [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL. A considerable portion was built in 1080 by Bishop Gundulf.] TUNBRIDGE WELLS =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Tunbridge Wells. =Distance from London.=--34-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1 to 2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 5s. 10d. 3s. 8d. 2s. 8-1/2d. Return 10s. 0d. 7s. 4d. 5s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Spa Hotel," "The Swan Hotel," "Castle Hotel," "Carlton Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Victoria, Holborn Viaduct, and St. Paul's. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. At the same time that Epsom began to become known as a watering-place, Tunbridge Wells was rapidly growing into a famous inland resort. The wells were discovered by Lord North in 1606, while he was staying at Eridge, and in a few years Tunbridge Wells became the resort of the monied and leisured classes of London and other parts of the kingdom. From that time to this the town has been one of the most popular of England's inland watering-places. The Tunbridge Wells of to-day is a charming and picturesque town. "The Pantiles," with its row of stately limes in the centre and the colonnade in front of its shops, is unique among English towns. Readers of Thackeray's _Virginians_ will remember his description of the scene on the Pantiles in the time of powdered wigs, silver buckles, and the fearful and wonderful "hoop." At the end of the Pantiles is the red brick church of King-Charles-the-Martyr, the only one with any claim to antiquity in the town; the rest are all quite modern. Walks and excursions around Tunbridge Wells are numerous. The common, with its mixture of springy turf, golden gorse, with here and there a bold group of rocks, is one of the most beautiful in the home counties, and in whatever direction one wanders there are long views over far-stretching wooded hills and dales. Rusthall Common, about a mile from the town, though somewhat smaller than that of Tunbridge Wells, commands more extensive views. One great feature of interest at Rusthall Common is the group of rocks, of which the largest, the Toad Rock, bears a most singular resemblance to the reptile from which it is named. The High Rocks, situated further on, and just in the county of Sussex, are also very remarkable, rising from 30 to 60 feet in height. [Illustration: THE TOAD ROCK On Rusthall Common, Tunbridge Wells.] [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE PANTILES, TUNBRIDGE WELLS.] THE QUINTAIN POST AT OFFHAM AND MALLING ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria, Holborn Viaduct, Ludgate Hill, or St. Paul's. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--West Malling (1 mile from Offham). =Distance from London.=--36 miles. =Average Time.=--1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 5s. 11d. 3s. 9d. 2s. 11-1/2d. Return 10s. 4d. 7s. 6d. 3s. 11d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"George Hotel" at West Malling. =Alternative Route.=--None. On the green at Offham, an out-of-the-way Kentish village, stands the only quintain post in England. It consists of a tall white post, having a spike at the top, upon which revolves a cross-bar. This portion, which turns on the spike, has a fairly broad square end covered with small holes, while at the opposite end hangs a billet of wood. The pastime consisted in riding on horseback at the broad end and aiming a lance at one of the holes. The rider had to duck his head at the same instant, in order to save himself from the billet which swung round immediately the lance-point caught the opposite end. Only those who were very agile saved themselves from a nasty blow. Instead of a billet, a bag containing sand or mould would sometimes be suspended on the cross-bar. This would swing round with sufficient force to unseat the rider. This quintain post is undoubtedly one of the most interesting survivals of the pastimes of the "good old days." The owners of the adjoining house have been required to keep the quintain post in a good state of repair, and it is doubtless to this stipulation in the title-deeds of the property that we owe the existence of this unique relic. The ruins of Malling Abbey, now the property of an Anglican sisterhood, are extremely interesting. The abbey was founded in 1090, and was given to the nun Avicia by the famous Gundulf of Rochester. The keep of St. Leonard, not far from the abbey, was also built by Gundulf, who is responsible for the White Tower of the Tower of London. This St. Leonard's Tower is said to be of earlier character than any keep in Normandy. Permission to see the ruins must be obtained from the abbess or chaplain, and visitors are expected to give a small contribution towards the restoration fund. [Illustration: OFFHAM. The Quintain Post on the Green.] EVERSLEY THE HOME OF CHARLES KINGSLEY =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. South-Western Railway. =Nearest Stations.=--Wokingham, 5 miles; Winchfield, 7 miles. =Distance from London.=--Wokingham, 36-1/2 miles; Winchfield, 39 miles. =Average Time.=--Wokingham, 2 hours; Winchfield, 1-1/2 hours. =Fares.=-- Single. Return. 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Wokingham 5s. 6d. 3s. 9d. 3s. 0d. 9s. 0d. 6s. 6d. 6s. 0d. Winchfield 6s. 6d. 4s. 0d. 3s. 3d. 11s. 6d. 7s. 2d. 6s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Small village inn at Eversley. "George Hotel" at Odiham, 2 miles from Winchfield Station; very old and picturesque. =Alternative route.=--Train to Wellington College. S.E. and C. Rly. The drive from Winchfield (7 miles) is chiefly across beautiful heathery commons; from Wokingham the road is more enclosed with hedges. Eversley Church and rectory stand almost alone, save for a farmhouse and barns, being nearly a mile from the other portions of the village. The church is very picturesquely situated on sloping ground, an avenue of yews leading from the lych gate to the porch. Inside, the building has suffered a good deal from restoration, but the pulpit from which Kingsley preached his stirring sermons remains unaltered. The rectory is a very old building which has been modernised on the side fronting on the road. On the lawn stands the group of glorious Scotch firs which Kingsley was never tired of watching. Their boughs sweep downwards and almost touch the grass, and their great red trunks are a strong contrast to the dense green of the surrounding foliage. In one of the sitting-rooms is a set of drawers in which Kingsley kept a collection of fossils. His grave is on the side of the church yard nearest the overshadowing branches of the Scotch firs. The Runic cross of white marble is a beautiful one. The head is ornamented with a spray of passion flower and bears upon it the words "God is Love." On the base are the words "Amavimus, amamus, amabimus." The neighbouring district of Bramshill has still the little thatched cottage where Kingsley used to conduct a little simple service on Sunday afternoons. The whole of the country surrounding Bramshill Park is closely covered with self-sown firs, and the commons interspersed among the forest lands are covered with heather and gorse. This was the country Kingsley loved, whether he was riding over it with the local pack of foxhounds or on a visit to one of his parishioners. [Illustration: EVERSLEY RECTORY. The scene of the labours of Charles Kingsley.] FARNHAM, SURREY THE HOME OF WILLIAM COBBETT =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. South-Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Farnham. =Distance from London.=--37-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 6s. 3d. 4s. 0d. 3s. 1-1/2d. Return 10s. 0d. 7s. 0d. 6s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Bush," "The Railway Hotel," "The Lion and Lamb," etc. =Alternative Route.=--None. In 1762 William Cobbett, one of the great writers and reformers of the eighteenth century, was born at Farnham, in Surrey. The house is still standing, and is now known as the "Jolly Farmer" Inn. Cobbett gives a very clear account of his early years at Farnham, and some of his youthful escapades are very amusing. One game which he and two of his brothers were never tired of playing was that of rolling each other like barrels down the very steep sandy hill which one may see rising sharply from the back of the "Jolly Farmer." Cobbett left Farnham for London when he was twenty-one, but often revisited his native town in later years. When he died, in 1835, he was buried in Farnham churchyard. The grave faces the porch on the north side of the church. The Rev. Augustus Toplady, who wrote the universally known hymn "Rock of Ages," was born in a little house in West Street, Farnham, which was rebuilt some years ago. Overlooking the town from the hills to the north is Farnham Castle, the historic seat of the Bishops of Winchester for many generations past. A portion of the buildings, including the keep, are of Norman origin, the rest having been chiefly built by Bishop Fox in the early part of the sixteenth century. During the Parliamentary war Farnham Castle was for some time the headquarters of the Roundhead army operating in this part of the country, Sir William Waller having overcome the garrison placed there by the High Sheriff of Surrey. Vernon House, in West Street, is notable by reason of the visit paid to it by Charles I. when on his way to London as a prisoner in the hands of the Parliamentary troops. The silk cap which King Charles presented to his host is still preserved in the house by the present owner, a descendant of the Vernon family. [Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM COBBETT AT FARNHAM.] HINDHEAD, SURREY =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Haslemere. =Distance from London.=--43 miles. =Average Time.=--1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 7s. 2d. 4s. 6d. 3s. 7d. Return 12s. 6d. 8s. 0d. 6s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Old Swan Hotel," "The Hindhead Beacon," "White Horn Hotel," Haslemere. "Hindhead Hotel," "Royal Anchor Hotel," Liphook, etc. The Hindhead district, not long ago one of the wildest in the home counties, has of late been much encroached upon by the erection of modern villas and houses. A few years back there was scarcely a vestige of human habitation to be seen from the road skirting the "Devil's Punchbowl," or the descent on the other side, but since the time Professor Tyndall built his house there, the aspect of the country has been in places considerably changed. From Haslemere Station one may take a direct road to the Hindhead summit, but the most interesting route is through Shottermill, about a mile distant (see p. 64). From here an easy walk takes one into the main Portsmouth road close to the Seven Thorns Inn, where there is a long ascent to the summit of Hindhead, with its inn, the Royal Huts Hotel. Close by is the village of Grayshott, now fast growing into a place of considerable residential importance. Following the road Londonwards, one arrives in a few hundred yards at the very highest point of the road over Hindhead, after which it drops gently, skirting the magnificent hollow known as the "Devil's Punchbowl." On the left-hand side, in the loneliest part of the road, is the gruesome tombstone which marks the spot where an unknown sailor was murdered and robbed while tramping from Portsmouth to London. This stone and its surroundings, it will be remembered, are mentioned in _Nicholas Nickleby_, in the account of the walk of Nicholas and Smike from London to Portsmouth. Close by, on the opposite side of the road, there is a rough sandy track--once the old coach road--which leads up to the stone cross on the extreme summit of the Hindhead--900 feet above sea-level--where the murderers of the sailor were executed, and hung in chains. The view from this point, aptly named Gibbet Hill, is quite magnificent for Surrey. On the northern slope of Blackdown--the high ridge of hills towards the south-east--is Aldworth House, where Tennyson resided in his latter years. [Illustration: THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD. Near the highest point, where it crosses Hindhead.] SHOTTERMILL THE HOME OF GEORGE ELIOT =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo Station. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Haslemere (1 mile by road from Shottermill village). =Distance from London.=--43 miles. =Average Time.=--From 1-1/2 to 2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 7s. 2d. 4s. 6d. 3s. 7d. Return 12s. 6d. 8s. 0d. 6s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Haslemere--"White Horse Hotel," "Swan Hotel," etc. "Oakland's Mansion Private Hotel." This lovely little village, on the slopes of Hindhead, with its breezy uplands, its hills covered with Scotch firs and its undulating tracts of land, so beautiful in the autumn with the glorious purple heather, was much beloved by George Eliot, known to the whole world as the writer of _Adam Bede_ and the _Mill on the Floss_. In 1871, while _Middlemarch_ was appearing in parts, George Eliot, who as Mr. Lewes said, "never seemed at home except under a broad sweep of sky," spent part of the spring and summer at Brookbank,--an old-fashioned gabled cottage in the village (close to the church) with delightful lattice-paned windows,--belonging to a Mrs. Gilchrist. At this time George Eliot was in a delicate state of health and scarcely equal to finishing her new story. One cannot call it a novel, for it had no plot. It was simply a remarkable picture of provincial life in the first half of the nineteenth century. George Eliot greatly enjoyed her quiet life at Shottermill, although many of her friends thought it incomprehensible that she could endure such a secluded life. One can scarcely read her graphic description of the sweet beauty of a Warwickshire lane, with its hedgerows all radiant in summer beauty, without feeling how much this remarkable woman loved it all, and in some degree one may understand how restful were the village surroundings. They led a most uneventful life, but occasionally would pay a visit to Tennyson, whose house at Aldworth was only 3 miles off. George Eliot rarely went out in the daytime, but sometimes she would go to see some cottagers and have a chat with them. A farmer's wife was greatly astonished at her knowledge of butter-making, and of the growth of fruit and vegetables, little imagining that in her early days, after her mother's death, the great authoress had managed the dairy in her own home at Griff House. [Illustration: BROOKBANK. George Eliot's cottage at Shottermill, near Haslemere.] PENN'S CHAPEL AT THAKEHAM, SUSSEX =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria or London Bridge. L.B. and S.C. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Billingshurst (3 miles from Thakeham). =Distance from London.=--44 miles. =Average Time.=--1-1/2 to 2-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 7s. 2d. 4s. 8d. 3s. 6-1/2d. Return 11s. 5d. 8s. 2d. 7s. 1d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--None at Thakeham. "King's Arms" at Billingshurst. The little chapel where the great William Penn used to worship when he lived at the old mansion of Warminghurst is so entirely buried in the country that one must make careful inquiries in order to find one's way to it from Billingshurst. When one reaches the cottage at last, one finds a gate right across the road, for beyond it the lane gradually deteriorates to a mere grassy track between hedges. Locally this Thakeham meeting-house is known as the "Blue Idol," a name not altogether explained when one discovers that for a long period the interior of the chapel had blue-washed walls. As one may see from the drawing given here, it is an exceedingly quaint old building, the portion shown being used as a meeting-house, the other half being a cottage occupied by the family who act as caretakers. The cream-washed walls are broken up by the richly mellowed half-timber work, and above is the roof of grey green Horsham slabs splashed over with bright orange lichen. Inside there are the very old oaken settles as well as less ancient ones. The timber framing shows on the walls and roof, here, as on the exterior, and the general quaintness of the place is enhanced by the old stone-flagged floor. Of William Penn's house at Warminghurst no traces whatever remain, but this only helps to increase the interest in the little chapel which has remained entirely unaltered for over two centuries. Penn, who bought the house in 1682, probably chose its site on account of its remoteness, for those were the days when their meetings were at any moment liable to interruption--when the members of the congregation met together knowing well that discovery meant imprisonment. In the quaint little meeting-house it is easy to feel the spirit of the Quakers, and one may almost imagine that one hears outside the rumble of the wheels of the heavy ox-waggon in which Penn drove over from Warminghurst Place. [Illustration: THE OLD CHAPEL AT THAKEHAM NEAR BILLINGSHURST. Where William Penn used to worship.] CHAWTON THE HOME OF JANE AUSTEN =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Alton (1 mile from Chawton). =Distance from London.=--46-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-3/4 to 2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 7s. 9d. 5s. 0d. 3s. 10-1/2d. Return 13s. 6d. 8s. 8d. 7s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Alton--"Swan Hotel," "Crown Hotel," etc. Situated about a mile from Alton Station, on the main line of the South-Western Railway, is the little village of Chawton, the residence of Jane Austen at the time when she was producing her best literary work. A walk along the main Winchester road brings one to the charming old-world place, and, keeping on past the thatched cottages of the village, one reaches a small brick house on the right-hand side, near a pond, just before the road divides for Winchester and Gosport. This building, which is now tenanted by a workman's club, was Chawton Cottage, where Jane Austen spent some of the brightest days of her life, and wrote her most successful novels, books which are more highly appreciated at the present day than they were during the lifetime of the authoress. Her father was rector of Steventon, another Hampshire village, at which place his daughter was born in 1775, and where her early days were spent. Jane Austen's novels are remarkable for the truthfulness and charm with which they reproduce the everyday life of the upper middle classes in England in her time, and for delicate and yet distinct insight into every variety of the human character. Miss Austen's first four novels, _Sense and Sensibility_, _Pride and Prejudice_, _Mansfield Park_, and _Emma_, were published anonymously. A short distance along the Gosport road is Chawton Park, a remarkably fine Elizabethan mansion, occupied in Miss Austen's time by Edward Knight, the lord of the manor. This country seat, which is not accessible to visitors, was most probably the original of _Mansfield Park_, and in the little church close by are several monuments to the Knight family. Miss Austen died at Winchester on July 24, 1817, and is buried in the cathedral. The brass to her memory is in the north aisle. Within easy walking distance is Gilbert White's home at Selborne, which is treated under a separate heading (p. 70). [Illustration: JANE AUSTEN'S COTTAGE AT CHAWTON. _Sense and Sensibility_, _Pride and Prejudice_, and _Northanger Abbey_ were revised and partly rewritten here; and _Emma_, _Mansfield Park_, and _Persuasion_ were entirely produced at the cottage.] SELBORNE THE HOME OF GILBERT WHITE =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Alton (4 miles from Selborne). =Distance from London.=--46-1/2 miles. East Tisted, 2 miles from Selborne, shortly to be available. =Average Time.=--1-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 7s. 9d. 5s. 0d. 3s. 10-1/2d. Return 13s. 6d. 8s. 8d. 7s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Alton--"Swan Hotel," "Crown Hotel," etc. Selborne, the birthplace of the famous naturalist, Gilbert White, is situated in the extreme eastern corner of the county of Hampshire. A vast chalk hill rises some 300 feet above the south-western side of the village, part of which is covered with an extensive beech wood, called "The Hanger," and a down or sheep-walk. This down is a beautiful park-like spot, with a delightful woodland, now bounded by the Sussex Downs. The village lies at the foot of the chalk hill parallel with the Hanger, and contains only one straggling street, nearly a mile in length, a small rivulet rising at each end. The stream at the north-western end often fails, but the other, known as the "Well-Head," is a fine spring, seldom influenced by drought. Wolmer Forest, near by, is famed for its timber. In the centre of the village, on a piece of ground commonly known as "The Plestor," there stood, until the fearful storm of 1703, a colossal oak tree, with a short body and enormous horizontally spreading arms. The stone steps, with seats above them, surrounding the tree, formed a favourite resort for both old and young during summer evenings. This oak, together with an equally large elm tree, are mentioned by White. Gilbert White was born in 1720. He began his education at Basingstoke, from whence he proceeded in 1739 to Oriel College, Oxford, and finally became one of the senior proctors of the university in 1752. On his father's death, White became the occupier of his house in Selborne known as "The Wakes," and afterwards became curate of the parish. He never married, but lived a happy and uneventful life, wrapped up in the wonderfully exact observations of nature which were the basis of his numerous letters forming _The Natural History of Selborne_. His final resting-place is unobtrusively marked by a simple grey stone bearing the initials "G.W.," a monument entirely in keeping with Gilbert White's quiet and retiring nature and refreshingly simple style of writing. [Illustration: THE WAKES. Gilbert White's house at Selborne.] ELSTOW THE HOME OF JOHN BUNYAN =How to get there.=--Through train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Bedford (1 mile from Elstow). =Distance from London.=--50 miles. =Average Time.=--An hour. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 6s. 7d. ... 3s. 11-1/2d. Return 13s. 2d. ... 7s. 11d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Embankment Hotel," "Lion Hotel," "Swan Hotel," etc., at Bedford. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. The little village of Elstow, near Bedford, will always be remembered as the birthplace of John Bunyan, and the cottage is still shown where the "immortal dreamer" was born. It was while in Bedford jail for "conscience' sake" that Bunyan ministered to all posterity by writing the _Pilgrim's Progress from this World to the World to Come_, under the similitude of a dream. As an allegory of the soul's conflicts and struggles with evil in its journey through life, it is unsurpassed. It is believed that no other book except the Bible has gone through so many editions or attained such a popularity in all languages. It has been generally understood that Bunyan's early life was a very profligate one, but some have thought that his terrible self-accusations in after years may have arisen from the height of his religious fervour and Puritan strictness, which made him look on dancing and bell-ringing as deadly sins. This idea is satisfactorily given by Macaulay. Bunyan was of poor parentage, his father being a tinker. At one time he was in the Parliamentary Army, and in 1645, was present at the siege of Leicester. Having left the army, he married. Then after a time of great spiritual agony and doubt, with quieter intervals, he became a member and then minister of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. His labours were stopped by the Act of Conventicles, and Bunyan was a prisoner in Bedford jail for twelve years. While in prison Bunyan assisted in providing for the wants of his wife and family by making tagged laces. The only books he had during his confinement were the Bible and Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_. Through the kind interposition of Bishop Barlow of Lincoln, Bunyan was released, and resumed his work of a preacher until his death from fever in London in 1688. Bunyan also wrote the _Holy War_ and _Grace Abounding_, an autobiographical narrative. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ BUNYAN'S COTTAGE AT ELSTOW. The cottage is structurally the same as in Bunyan's time.] LEWES, SUSSEX =How to get there.=--Train from London Bridge or Victoria. London, Brighton, and South-Coast Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Lewes. =Distance from London.=--50 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-1/4 to 2-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 8s. 6d. 5s. 0d. 4s. 2d. Return 15s. 0d. 9s. 0d. 8s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The White Hart Hotel," "Crown," "Commercial," "Temperance Hotel," etc. Lewes, a prosperous agricultural centre, situated on the Sussex Ouse, is a place of great antiquity, in spite of its present modern appearance. Its early history is vague, but it is known that it was of importance even under the Saxon kings, and was fortified in Alfred's time. William the Conqueror gave Lewes to Earl William de Warenne, who had married Gundrada, said to be the daughter of Queen Matilda and the Conqueror. De Warenne built the castle, or considerably enlarged the old Saxon fortress, which is now in ruins. The castle possessed a curious feature, of which no other examples now remain, in having two keeps, each built upon a mound. Only one of these keeps (admission 6d.) still exists, its towers covered with ivy. From its summit a splendid view of the surrounding country can be obtained towards the chalk bluffs of the South Downs and the valley of the Ouse. The great gateway of the castle still stands, and in Southover, the suburb of Lewes, are the remains of the once large and wealthy Priory of St. Pancras. This was the first Cluniac establishment in England. It was founded by De Warenne and Gundrada, and continued to be of great importance up to the dissolution. Until about sixty years ago the old pigeon-house of the priory, containing 3228 pigeon-holes, was still standing. When excavations were going on during the construction of the railway, which passes through the priory grounds, the workmen came upon two leaden coffins, which were discovered to be those of William de Warenne and his wife. These were removed to Southover Church, and Gundrada's grave has now its original tombstone of black marble, which was found in Isfield Church. On the site of the race-course was fought in 1264 the battle of Lewes, between Henry III. and the insurgent barons, led by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. There are a few old houses left, and the modern town hall contains a beautiful oak staircase and panelling taken from the old Star Inn. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE BARBICAN AT LEWES CASTLE. The castle was built by William de Warenne, who had received Lewes from William the Conqueror.] BODIAM CASTLE, SUSSEX =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Robertsbridge (4 miles from Bodiam). From Robertsbridge take train to Bodiam Station (which is close to the castle) on Rother Valley Light Railway. =Distance from London.=--51 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-1/2 to 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 8s. 4d. 5s. 3d. 4s. 2-1/2d. Return 14s. 8d. 10s. 6d. 8s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Castle Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--None. Bodiam Castle is open to the public every day of the week except Sundays (tickets, obtainable at the keeper's cottage, 6d. each; Thursdays, 1s. each). There is practically no other moated castle in England which compares with Bodiam in its completeness. It was built about the year 1386, but its usefulness for defensive purposes, in view of the increasing destructiveness of weapons at that time, has been doubted. However, the knight who was responsible for its construction was Sir Edward Dalyngrudge, who fought at both Crecy and Poictiers, and must therefore have seen the primitive forerunner of the modern field-gun in use. The walls of the castle now enclose a grassy quadrangle, to which access is gained through a fine gateway, which still retains its outer iron portcullis. The three others, through which an attacking force was obliged to penetrate, have all disappeared. Although it has been stated that the parliamentary forces under Waller captured Bodiam Castle during the Civil War, it seems to be unlikely that such an attack was ever made; for in March 1645 the property was conveyed by the Earl of Thanet to one Nathaniel Powell of London, who was strongly in favour of the Commonwealth. Lord Ashcombe, the present owner, has restored the walls very carefully, and the chapel and various private apartments with their fireplaces remain intact. The castle buildings as a whole are a rectangular block entirely surrounded by the wide moat shown in the illustration. One crosses to the main gateway by a narrow raised pathway. The surface of the water during the summer is generally bright with water-lilies. Bodiam Church is an Early English structure, now very much restored. It is on the hill, a few minutes' walk from the castle. [Illustration: BODIAM CASTLE. One of the most perfect moated castles in England.] COLCHESTER, ESSEX =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Colchester. =Distance from London.=--51-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies from 1 hr. 4 m. to 2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 9s. 9d. ... 4s. 4-1/2d. Return 14s. 8d. ... 8s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The George," "Red Lion," "The Cups," etc. Modern Colchester is the direct descendant of the ancient British town of Camulodunum, referred to by Tacitus and other Roman historians. Various kings of the Trinobantes seem to have caused much trouble during the early period of the Roman occupation. Cunobelinus, one of their kings, reigned from about 5 B.C. to A.D. 42 or 43, and numerous coins bearing the abbreviated form of his name, CVNO, have been discovered. After his death the Emperor Claudius came over to England, subdued the Trinobantes, and established a Roman colony at Camulodunum. The new colony, under the name of Colonia Victriensis, was, however, attacked by a huge horde of the British under Boadicea in A.D. 61. They slaughtered all the inhabitants and destroyed the temple of Claudius. The Romans, however, soon turned the tables again on the Britons, and at once surrounded the town with a very strong wall. From this time onwards for several centuries the place was one of the strongest Roman stations in the country. It is not surprising, therefore, that the remains of the Roman occupation at Colchester are the most perfect of the kind in the country. The coins range from Asupa, 6 B.C., to Valentinian, who died A.D. 455, while very great quantities of Roman glass, pottery, and tiles, all sorts of domestic vessels and personal ornaments have been discovered. Some idea of the richness of these finds can be obtained from the collection in the museum in the old Norman castle. The story of King Coel in connection with Colchester is not altogether accepted by historians, yet there are so many references to it in Anglo-Saxon writings that it cannot be quite ignored. Colchester suffered terribly in the Civil War, and sustained a fearful siege lasting seventy-six days, the townsfolk and Royalist forces being eventually forced to surrender to Fairfax. The Saxon doorway of Trinity Church, and St. Botolph's Priory, are exceedingly interesting. [Illustration: COLCHESTER CASTLE. Which now contains a magnificent collection of the Roman remains found in the town.] LAYER MARNEY =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street. Great Eastern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Colchester (7 miles from Layer Marney). =Distance from London.=--51-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1 and 2-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 9s. 9d. ... 4s. 4-1/2d. Return 14s. 8d. ... 8s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Red Lion Hotel," "George Hotel," "The Cups Hotel," etc., all at Colchester. The unfinished home of the Marneys rises in lonely grandeur in an out-of-the-way part of Essex. To the north runs the road to Colchester; southwards the ground slopes away in the direction of the Blackwater. The great gateway has stood in these peaceful surroundings quite untouched for 400 years. A small portion of the mansion is by the side of the gateway, and the church with the Marney monuments is further to the left. Lord Marney fought for Henry VII. in France, and was one of the court counsellors at the time of his son's accession. He became a great favourite with Henry VIII., and was created a baron, besides being made a Knight of the Garter and Captain of the Bodyguard. He came of an old Norman stock, but had not overmuch land. At Layer Marney, his chief estate, he determined to build a fitting abode for himself. It was one of the earliest buildings since Roman times to be built of brick. The terra-cotta mouldings are a peculiar feature. It is thought that Lord Marney brought over Italian workmen to make the terra-cotta, for there is a classic touch about the ornaments. The gateway has two towers, one ivy-clad. The whole structure is strikingly original in style. It was commenced in 1500, but Lord Marney died before the work was done. John, his son, died the next year, and with him the line of Marneys became extinct. In the church are three monuments of the Marneys. The tomb of Henry, Lord Marney, is in the arch leading to the Marney Chapel, which was founded by him. The figure is of dark marble, clad in armour, and wearing the robes of a Knight of the Garter. An ancestor of Lord Marney, who died in 1414, lies near. The effigy is clothed in mail. The figure of John, the last of the Marneys, is of black marble. There are some curious frescoes in the church, and an oak screen. The interior of the building is probably older than the exterior, which is of about the same date as the towers. The church keys may be procured at the rectory. [Illustration: LAYER MARNEY TOWER, ESSEX. Commenced by the first Lord Marney about the year 1500, but owing to the death of Lord Marney and of his only son, the year following, the buildings were never finished.] BATTLE ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross or Cannon Street. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Battle. =Distance from London.=--55-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/2 hours and 1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 9s. 4d. 5s. 10d. 4s. 8-1/2d. Return 16s. 4d. 11s. 8d. 9s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"George" and "Star" Hotels. =Alternative Route.=--None. Battle Abbey is open to the public on Tuesdays only, between 12 and 4. There is no charge for admission, tickets being obtained from the stationer's shop bearing the name Ticehurst. It is situated close to the main entrance to the abbey. The great gateway through which one enters is illustrated here. It was probably built by Abbot Retlynge in the first half of the fourteenth century. The original abbey was built in fulfilment of a vow which William the Norman made just before the battle of Senlac Hill, the building being arranged so that the high altar was placed on the exact spot where the body of Harold II. was discovered on the awful field of slaughter. The sixty monks who started the monastery were brought over by William from the Benedictine monastery of Marmontier in Normandy. They were granted many extraordinary privileges, including the right of treasure-trove. A further privilege was given to the abbots in the form of authority to pardon any sentenced criminal whom they might chance to meet on the road. The abbey was not completed until after the death of William the Conqueror. On the left, as one goes through the great gateway, are the portions of the abbey which have been converted into the house which was, until her death, the home of the Duchess of Cleveland. At right angles to these buildings runs a terrace, from which one looks towards the sea across the battlefield on which was decided one of the most momentous issues which have affected the English nation. One must have read Lord Lytton's _Harold_ to fully realise the tremendous pathos of the struggle to the death between the English and the Normans. The green facing the great gateway has half hidden on its surface an old bull ring. In wet weather this is scarcely discoverable, the ring being easily hidden in the small puddles of water which accumulate. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE GATEWAY OF BATTLE ABBEY. The high altar of Battle Abbey was placed exactly over the spot where the body of Harold II. was discovered after the battle of Senlac Hill.] CAMBRIDGE =How to get there.=--Train from St. Pancras or Liverpool Street. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Cambridge. =Distance from London.=--55-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-1/4 and 2-1/2 hours. Quickest train, 1 h. 13 m. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 8s. 9d. ... 4s. 7-1/2d. Return 15s. 10d. ... 9s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Bull Hotel," "Lion Hotel," "University Arms Hotel," "Hoop Hotel," "Bath Hotel," etc. =Alternative Routes=.--From Euston by L. and N.W. Railway. From King's Cross, Great Northern Railway. From St. Pancras, Midland Railway. Cambridge shares with its sister university, Oxford, the honour of being one of the two most ancient seats of learning in Great Britain. The town itself is of very remote origin, and stands on the site of the Roman station _Camboricum_, on the _Via Devana_. By the Saxons, Cambridge appears to have been known as Grantabrycge, which was probably later abbreviated into Cantbrigge. The true history of the town as a university began at the opening of the twelfth century, when Joffred, Abbot of Crowland, sent over to Cottenham, near Cambridge, four monks, who, in a hired barn, started their teachings, which soon became excessively popular. The first regular society of students was founded in 1257. Cambridge abounds in features of interest and contains a large number of old churches, perhaps the most interesting being that of St. Sepulchre, one of the four circular churches remaining in England. This church, which is in Bridge Street, was erected in the reign of Henry I., and founded, like the one at Northampton, by the Knights Templars in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The colleges are, of course, the glory of Cambridge, and one is almost bewildered by the beauty and variety of their architecture. King's College Chapel is one of the most magnificent examples in the town, but nearly all the more important collegiate buildings are beautiful types of mediaeval work. The visitor should on no account omit to walk through the "Backs," which is the 'varsity term for the backs of the colleges, with the "Fellows' Gardens" reaching down to the quiet Cam. The Great Court, Trinity College, is one of the most imposing of the numerous quadrangles, and is the largest of any at either Oxford or Cambridge. The Master's Lodge here is the residence of the sovereign on all royal visits. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ST. JOHN'S GATEWAY, CAMBRIDGE.] ARUNDEL CASTLE =How to get there.=--Trains from Victoria and London Bridge. By London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Arundel. =Distance from London.=--58-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 9s. 2d. 6s. 0d. 4s. 8d. Return 14s. 10d. 10s. 7d. 9s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Norfolk Hotel," "Eagle Inn," "Bridge Hotel," "Granville Boarding House," etc. The interior of the castle is not shown to visitors without special permission from the Duke of Norfolk, the keep alone being thrown open to all on Mondays and Fridays between 12 and 4 P.M.--tickets being obtained at the Norfolk Hotel. The park, however, is open to the public. The town of Arundel is one of the oldest and most beautifully situated in Sussex, that county of ancient towns, and its castle, a wonderful feudal fortress, was originally bequeathed by Alfred the Great to his nephew Adhelm. After the Conquest, it came into the possession of Roger de Montgomery, who rebuilt it, and in 1097 it was held for a short time by William II. It was at Arundel Castle that Adeliza, the widow of Henry I., entertained Queen Maud in 1139. The castle came afterwards to the Fitzalans, and from them by marriage to the Howard family, who still hold it. It was the object of several fierce attacks during the Parliamentary War, for having been captured by Waller and garrisoned for the Parliament, it was retaken by the Royalists under Lord Hopton, and soon after taken once more by Waller. The castle was much damaged by all these assaults, and was almost in ruins at the commencement of the last century, when it was taken in hand and restored by the then Duke of Norfolk. Of the ancient buildings, the keep, the entrance gateway, and parts of the walls, are all that now remain. The keep or Bevis Tower is an old Norman structure with walls 8 to 10 feet thick, having in the centre the castle dungeon, reached by a narrow staircase in the wall. The restoration was made as much as possible in conformity with the style of the old fortress, and the interior is a good example of modern Gothic art, the new chapel being an interesting example of this. The Baron's Hall, with its open chestnut roof and stained-glass windows, is perhaps one of the most striking features in the castle. A fine stone bridge of three arches connects the two portions of the town. It spans the river Arun, which is navigable up to Arundel for vessels of 150 tons burden. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ARUNDEL CASTLE. Built soon after the Conquest by Roger de Montgomery. It was much damaged during the Parliamentary War, but was repaired by a former Duke of Norfolk early in the 19th century.] OLNEY, BUCKS THE HOME OF COWPER =How to get there.=--Train from St. Pancras. Change trains at Bedford. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Olney. =Distance from London.=--60-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--1-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 8s. 1d. ... 4s. 9-1/2d. Return 16s. 2d. ... 9s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Bull Hotel," etc. Olney was for a period the home of the delicate and sensitive poet William Cowper, who was born at the parsonage of Great Berkhampstead. His father was chaplain to George II. Cowper lost his mother at a very early age, and the sad event made a deep impression on his mind. In after years he wrote a poem addressed to his mother's portrait which it is said has drawn more tears than any other poem in the English language. Cowper was sent to school at six years of age, but was very unhappy there, and it laid the foundation of that settled gloom which oppressed him all through life. When Cowper had finished his studies at the Westminster School he commenced the study of law, and was afterwards called to the bar; but he never practised, for he hated law. Cowper was offered several appointments, but failed in examinations for them from extreme nervousness. By the kindness of friends an income was secured for him and he went to reside at Huntingdon. Here he formed an acquaintance with Mrs. Unwin, the "Mary" of his poems, which ripened into deepest friendship. He enjoyed much tranquil happiness during the time of his residence with the Unwin family. When Cowper and his friends moved to Olney they lived in the old-fashioned regular fronted house illustrated opposite. Here Cowper is said to have amused himself with his hares and in the making of boxes and tables. He was also interested in the bees in the old-fashioned garden at the back of the house, where one may still see the little rustic summer-house in which _John Gilpin_ and some of the _Task_ were written. The house now contains a Cowper museum, and visitors thus have an opportunity of seeing the parlour and other rooms, besides many other interesting objects connected with the poet. His great friend at Olney was the Rev. John Newton. They were constantly together in their walks, in their homes, and at church, and both wrote a number of hymns. [Illustration: _Thornborough._ COWPER'S HOME AT OLNEY. The house now contains a Cowper museum.] WANTAGE AND THE COUNTRY OF ALFRED THE GREAT =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Wantage Road. =Distance from London.=--60-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-1/2 to 2-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 10s. 0d. 6s. 4d. 5s. 0-1/2d. Return 17s. 8d. 11s. 0d. 10s. 1d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Good posting and hotels. "Bear Hotel" and "Blue Boar." The chalk ridge in the north of Berkshire is rich in memories of Alfred. First in importance is Wantage, a peaceful town at the foot of the hills, and famous as the birthplace of the great king. There is a statue by Count Gleichen in the wide market-place representing Alfred with a battle-axe and a charter in his hands. The church is a fine example of Early English architecture, and interesting besides as the burying-place of many famous Fitz-warens, among them Ivo, whose daughter married Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. Dr. Butler of _The Analogy_ was born in the town, and the house is still to be seen. Leaving Wantage, one may go along the breezy downs to Uffington Castle, a large fort, presumably of British origin. It was one of many similar forts along the Roman way called Ichenilde Street, that stretches straight as an arrow along the whole ridge. Near the fort is the famous White Horse cut in the chalk, which, since its recent cleansing, gleams brilliantly from the hillside. It was cut out to commemorate the magnificent victory of Ethelred the Unready and Alfred over the Danes at Ashdown in 871. Readers of _Tom Brown's School Days_ will recall the story of the Berkshire revels in 1857, when the scouring of the Horse took place. Judge Hughes was born here, under the shadow of the downs, and near by is the round hill where tradition says St. George slew the dragon. In _Kenilworth_ Sir Walter Scott has immortalised Wayland Smith's Cave, a neolithic burial-place of some ancient chieftain which lies to the west of Uffington Castle. It is a circle of stone slabs with flat stones on the top. Wayland was the "Vulcan" of the men of the north, and Alfred, in one of his translations, altered the "Fabricius" of the Roman account into the northern "Wayland," the fairy smith who replaced lost shoes on horses. It was in this cave that Scott made Flibbertigibbet play tricks on Tressilian. [Illustration: THE STATUE OF ALFRED THE GREAT AT WANTAGE. It was designed by Count Gleichen.] CANTERBURY AND ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria, Holborn Viaduct, Charing Cross, or Cannon Street. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Canterbury (East). =Distance from London.=--61-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-3/4 to 2-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 10s. 4d. 6s. 6d. 5s. 2d. Return 18s. 0d. 13s. 0d. 10s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"County Hotel," "The Fleece Family and Commercial Hotel," Baker's "Temperance Hotel," "The Royal Fountain Hotel," "Falstaff Hotel," etc. The city of Canterbury, originally an important station in Watling Street, the _Durovernum_ of the Romans, was one of the earliest places occupied by the Saxons, by whom it was named _Cantwarabyrig_, or "town of the Kentish men," and made the capital of the Saxon kingdom of Kent, and a royal residence. About 597 the abbey was founded by St. Augustine and his royal convert King Ethelbert. Canterbury was then constituted the seat of the primacy in England, a dignity it retains to this day. At the period of the Norman Conquest the city was of considerable size, and the castle, of which very little now remains, is reputed to be the work of William the Conqueror. The cathedral was burnt down at least twice before the present building was erected, but under the influence of the Norman archbishops, Lanfranc and Anselm, the erection of the new "Church of Christ" proceeded apace. But it was not until the end of the twelfth century that the murder of Becket set the whole of Europe ringing with excitement, and Canterbury rose at once into the front rank as an ecclesiastical city and pilgrims' shrine. At the time when Chaucer wrote his _Canterbury Tales_ the city was surrounded by a strong wall with twenty-one towers and six gates. Of the wall there are some remains in Broad Street; of the gates "West Gate," through which the pilgrims entered from London, is the only survivor. Canterbury teems with interesting relics of the past, and weeks may be spent in its old-world streets, where one is continually coming across unexpected little bits of half-timber work, weather-beaten gables, and grotesque oak carving. The cathedral, whose "Bell Harry" or central tower seems to dominate the whole city, should be approached through Mercery Lane, at the corner of which are some slight remains of Chaucer's hostelry, "The Chequers of Hope." At the bottom of the lane the cathedral close is entered by the famous Christ Church Gateway, erected by Prior Goldstone in 1517. Once inside the close gate the visitor gets some idea of the amazing beauty of the structure, which is certainly unsurpassed by any other cathedral in the kingdom. The building exhibits almost every style of architecture, from the Norman work of William of Lens to the late Perpendicular of Prior Goldstone, and yet the work of composition and design has been so exquisitely carried out that there is no hint of any want of harmony in the magnificent whole. The interior is no less remarkable, the arches and vaulting of the nave being some of the most beautiful in existence. Becket's shrine was despoiled at the Reformation, but the number of pilgrims who visited it may be imagined from the fact that the broad stone steps are worn hollow, and this only by the knees of his worshippers. The Angel doorway in the cloisters, by which the archbishop entered the sacred building pursued by his murderers, gives access on to the north-west or martyrdom transept. Here is shown the spot where the primate made his last stand and fell under the blows of the Norman knights. Another object of special interest is the tomb of Edward, the Black Prince, who died in the city in 1376. There is so much to see in and about the cathedral and its precincts, however, that a trustworthy guide-book is a _sine qua non_. The building is open from 9.30 to the end of evening service--the nave and two west transepts free; the choir and crypt, 6d. each person. Sketching orders, 2s. 6d. per day, and photographing orders, 5s. per day. In the city itself the most interesting of the old churches is St. Martin's, reputed to be the oldest in England (admission, 6d.). Here St. Augustine first preached Christianity before the cathedral was built. St. Martin's Hill, near the church, should be noticed. It was over this ascent that Augustine with his Roman monks passed into Canterbury in 697. In Monastery Street is the fine gateway of the once rich and powerful St. Augustine's Abbey; and near it, not many years ago, was a fine example of Saxon work, known as Ethelbert's Tower, which some of the intelligent busybodies of the time had removed with a battering-ram. In Broad Street is the Hospital of St. John, with its quaint entrance and fine old timbered gateway. The Grammar School, known as the King's School, was founded at the close of the seventh century. The most remarkable portion of what remains of the old buildings is an almost unique Norman staircase. [Illustration: THE WEST GATE, CANTERBURY. The only one left standing of the six in existence in the days of Chaucer.] [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE TRANSEPT OF MARTYRDOM. In Canterbury Cathedral.] RECULVERS =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria, Holborn Viaduct, or St. Paul's. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Herne Bay. (Reculvers lies 3 miles along the coast.) =Distance from London.=--62-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-3/4 to 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 10s. 6d. 6s. 6d. 5s. 2-1/2d. Return 18s. 5d. 13s. 0d. 10s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Herne Bay--"The Dolphin Hotel," "The Connaught," "The Grand," "St. George's Cliff," "Pier Hotel," "Herne Bay Hotel," etc.; also the "Bungalow Hotel," etc., at Birchington. About 3 miles to the east of Herne Bay, the twin towers of an old Roman church stand prominently out from the flat marsh-land which stretches between the villages of Herne and Birchington, some 5 miles from the well-known health resort of Margate. Regulbium, now known as Reculver, and Rutupium, or Richborough, near Sandwich, were two Roman stations guarding the entrances to the estuary which formerly separated the Isle of Thanet from the mainland. Regulbium was also used as a lighthouse and watch-tower, because of its commanding position near the mouths of both the Thames and Medway. After the Roman occupation, Regulbium became one of the chief seats of the Saxon kings, and when, after his conversion to Christianity by St. Augustine, King Ethelbert gave up his palace at Canterbury, he lived there with his court, and his remains were interred in the first church erected on the spot. In the ninth century a Benedictine abbey was founded at Regulbium by a priest named Bapa. A few years after, King Edred granted the abbey to the Monastery of Christchurch at Canterbury, but the society was either removed or dissolved before the Norman Conquest. This practically ends the history of Regulbium, for owing to the steady encroachments of the sea, and to the fact that the estuary continued to fill up, the once populous Roman city was gradually deserted. The present remains consist of parts of the earth-works of the Roman station, and the twin towers and ruined walls of the church. Though the church formerly occupied the centre of the Roman city, the sea has now reached the base of the bank on which the towers stand. In his famous "Brothers of Birchington," Thomas Ingoldsby says of the twin towers-- They were tall and upright And just equal in height. Reculvers and the neighbourhood were at one time a favourite resort for smugglers. [Illustration: RECULVERS FROM THE EAST.] OXFORD =How to get there=.--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station=.--Oxford. =Distance from London=.--63-1/2 miles. =Average Time=.--Varies between 1-1/4 to 2-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares=.--Single 10s. 6d. 6s. 8d. 5s. 3-1/2d. Return 18s. 6d. 11s. 8d. 10s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Randolph Hotel," "Mitre Hotel," "The Roebuck Hotel," "Railway Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. Oxford was a centre of learning in the time of Alfred. Walter de Merton _founded_ the first college there, and others started the collegiate system of corporate colleges which makes English universities unique. The most celebrated colleges are Christ Church, Magdalen, New College, and Merton. Keble, Mansfield, and Hertford were established in Victorian times. In one part of the High Street the scene is architecturally magnificent. On the south side is University College, which claims the oldest foundation, although the present building only dates from the seventeenth century. Opposite is Queen's College, then comes All Souls'. On the same side is St. Mary's Church, and a little further All Souls' Church. A turning by St. Mary's Church leads to the Bodleian Library, the Sheldonian Theatre, and the Ashmolean Museum. At one end of St. Giles' Street is the Martyrs' Memorial and the Taylor Institution. Returning to High Street, and going towards the stations, a turning on the left leads to Oriel, Corpus Christi, and Merton Colleges, and still further on, St. Aldate's Street, on the left, leads to Pembroke College and the fourteenth-century church of St. Aldate's. Opposite the church are the buildings known as Christ Church, which has the Cathedral Church of St. Frideswide for its chapel. In the principal entrance is "Great Tom," the famous bell that tolls at 9.5 P.M. Christ Church, though the smallest cathedral in England, and possibly in Europe, is of great interest on account of its very distinct transitional style. Magdalen College, near the bridge over the River Cherwell, and the Botanic Gardens, are at the other end of the High Street. There was a monastery in Oxford in the eighth century. A castle was built by William I. after he captured the town, and from that time it was often visited by English kings. Several parliaments have been held there, and the courts of law as well as the parliament removed to Oxford during the plague of 1665. Charles I. made it his headquarters until Fairfax took the town. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD.] MIDHURST AND THE HOME OF RICHARD COBDEN =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Midhurst. =Distance from London.=--64-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 to 3-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 10s. 2d. 6s. 6d. 5s. 0-1/2d. Return 17s. 10d. 11s. 3d. 10s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Angel," "Spread Eagle," "New Inn," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Victoria and London Bridge. London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. Though only a small town, Midhurst is a place of some antiquity, and was of some size prior to the Conquest. It is situated in Mid-Sussex on the Rother, and on a site close by it, now marked only by a mound, was the castle of the Bohuns, a powerful Norman family, who were lords of the manor here. In 1547, King Edward VI. was entertained with great splendour here. It is curious to note that the custom of ringing the curfew bell is still maintained at Midhurst. The town is picturesque, and contains many old houses and buildings of interest, notably those in West Street and Wool Lane, near the church, and the Grammar School at the further end of the town, where Sir Charles Lyell and Richard Cobden were educated. Cobden was born at Durnford, close to Midhurst. Durnford House, built for him by the nation, is still standing, and at Cocking Causeway is a monument to his memory. In Cowdray Park, within easy walking distance, are the ruins of the magnificent Tudor mansion, Cowdray House, destroyed by fire in 1793. There was an old tradition, "The Curse of Cowdray," that the building should perish by fire and water, and this was curiously fulfilled, for the house was burnt and the last Lord Montague drowned almost on the same day. A custodian who shows visitors over Cowdray House has a cottage here. Over what remains of the entrance gateway are the arms of Sir Anthony Browne, the favourite of King Henry VIII.; and on the porch are the initials of the Earl of Southampton. West Lavington Church, beautifully situated on a height two miles south of Midhurst, has in its churchyard the grave of Richard Cobden, the political reformer, and originator of Free Trade. Cardinal Manning was rector here at one period. [Illustration: _F. Coze, Midhurst._ COBDEN'S PEW IN HEYSHOTT CHURCH. The pew is immediately beneath the pulpit, in which a small brass plate may be noticed. Here Cobden regularly worshipped.] PEVENSEY CASTLE LANDING-PLACE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR =How to get there.=--Train from London Bridge or Victoria. London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Pevensey and West Ham. =Distance from London.=--65 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 and 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 10s. 0d. 6s. 2d. 4s. 8d. Return 17s. 6d. 11s. 8d. 9s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Oak Inn" at Pevensey village. Pevensey, the scene of so many notable events in English history, was probably a fishing-port in prehistoric times. It is situated on flat and low-lying marsh-land, about 15 miles westward along the coast from Hastings. Here the Romans built a town and fortress. Entering Pevensey Castle by the main gateway, you stand on the site of the Roman city of Anderida, of which many evidences remain in the shape of Roman cement and tiles in a wall which surrounds the enclosure. The Romans retired from Anderida in the fifth century, when it was destroyed by the Saxons under Ella, and the inhabitants slain for their obstinate resistance. A fortnight before the great battle on Senlac Hill, William of Normandy landed at the old Roman city. After the Conquest, Roger, Earl of Mortmain and Cornwall, half-brother of the Conqueror, built the Norman building whose shattered walls are to be seen to-day. William Rufus, Simon de Montfort, and Stephen each attacked the castle, and it remained a fortress until the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In the south-eastern corner of the Brito-Roman city, there still stands an interesting old culverin, bearing the crown, Tudor rose, and the initials of Queen Elizabeth. It is one of two cannon placed there in 1587 in readiness for the Spaniards. The present castle shows the different work of several centuries. The remains of a much-weathered stone font, surrounded by an iron cage, stand in the centre of the enclosure. Near by, within a palisade, is the old castle well, with hart's-tongue ferns growing on the damp brick lining. At one time Pevensey formed, with Hastings, one of the Cinque Ports. It began to decline as a seafaring place with the loss of its harbour, owing to the receding of the sea along the Sussex shore--the walls, which were formerly almost washed by the waves, being now quite a mile inland. Visitors may enter the castle on week days without charge. [Illustration: PEVENSEY CASTLE. Before the sea receded the waves almost reached the Castle walls.] WINCHESTER & ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Winchester. =Distance from London.=--66-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-1/2 to 2-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 11s. 0d. 7s. 0d. 5s. 6d. Return 19s. 3d. 12s. 2d. 10s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"George Hotel," "Royal Hotel," "Black Swan Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. Winchester, the ancient Saxon capital of England, is situated near the foot of the chalk uplands surrounding the river Itchin. It is a city full of historical interest, and its two most striking features are the cathedral and college. Long before the Norman Conquest there was a grammar school at Winchester under the care of the monks. Bishop William of Wykeham was educated at this earlier school, and it was he who re-established it on a larger scale. The new college was founded at the end of the fourteenth century, under the direction of a corporation, and was allied to one of the colleges at Oxford. For five centuries this college, the most ancient of the public schools in England, has kept a foremost place among the many educational centres that now exist. Many of the college buildings remain almost the same as they were originally founded. The cathedral, which is the largest in England, shows every style of architecture from pure Norman to Early Renaissance. It was founded by Walkelin, the first Norman bishop, whose carved font is one of the finest treasures of the building. Bishop Wykeham, at the end of the fourteenth century, continued the building, which had been steadily progressing for a considerable time, and commenced the partial casing of the Norman columns with Perpendicular mouldings. The vaulting shafts of the nave rise from the ground, and owing to the thickness of the Norman masonry, there is no proper triforium. The reredos was built by Cardinal Beaufort in the fifteenth century, and the Lady Chapel was added about the same time. Though it suffered much damage during the Parliamentary wars, the cathedral is wonderfully rich in monuments, all its various architects being buried there, and among the many shrines is that of William Rufus. Winchester's associations with King Alfred, and its numerous examples of architecture of all the centuries, make the city one of the most interesting in England. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. Showing the Norman north transept and the west end.] SAVERNAKE FOREST =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Savernake. =Distance from London.=--70 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 to 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 11s. 8d. 7s. 4d. 5s. 10d. Return 20s. 6d. 12s. 10d. 11s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Forest Hotel" (near railway station), "Ailesbury Arms Hotel," etc., in Marlborough. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. Savernake is said to be the only forest in England possessed by a subject. It occupies a piece of country 16 miles in circumference, is entirely open to all, and the Marquess of Ailesbury also allows Savernake Forest House to be seen by strangers when the family are absent. At Savernake Station one is brought within sight of the forest, and entering it at this point one is able to enjoy a lovely walk of 6 or 7 miles, which brings one out close to Marlborough Station, with the town on the further side of the railway. The forest is specially famous for its glorious avenue of beech 4 miles in length, and there is little doubt that there is no finer in the kingdom. If one enters through the park gates, near Savernake Station, the house (formerly known as Tottenham House) lies on the right, and in the opposite direction one may notice, at the end of a perspective formed by great masses of elms and beeches, the column erected in 1781 by the first Earl of Ailesbury (the marquisate was not created until 1821), commemorating the recovery of George III. and other circumstances. If one crosses the avenue and bears off to the right across the turf the church of St. Catherine will soon appear in sight. It is a very richly ornamented structure, and was built by a former Marchioness of Ailesbury, in memory of her mother the Countess of Pembroke. Returning to the avenue, one may continue down it for about 3 miles to the "eight walks," where an opening in the ranks of the stately trees reveals a number of grassy glades running off to the chief points of the compass. The walk going off to the south-west leads to the King's Oak, a gigantic tree whose hollow trunk is 24 feet in circumference. This oak is surrounded by a number of grand old trees, their bold outlines enriched with velvety moss. On an autumn afternoon, when the forest is a blaze of crimson and yellow, this spot is seen at its loveliest--the long shadows and the golden sunlight giving the scene a painted, almost too brilliant effect. [Illustration: _E.H. Roberts._ THE AVENUE IN SAVERNAKE FOREST.] ELY CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--From Liverpool Street or St. Pancras. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Ely. =Distance from London.=--70-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies from 1-3/4 to 3-1/4 hours. Quickest train 1 hour 38 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 11s. 3d. ... 5s. 11-1/2d. Return 20s. 0d. ... 11s. 11d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Bell Hotel" and others. Ely is situated on an eminence in the midst of the flat district forming the centre of the county of Cambridge, and was originally a settlement termed by the Saxons _Eleg_ or _Elge_, _i.e._ "an eel," from the number of eels found in the fenny district around. St. Etheldreda, daughter of a king of the East Angles, founded an abbey here, where she died in 679, being afterwards canonised as a saint. The monastery was destroyed by the Danes in 870, and did not regain importance till one hundred years later. In _Hereward the Wake_ Kingsley tells us how gallantly the Isle of Ely was defended against the attacks of William the Conqueror, but the chieftain was at last forced to surrender, and the monastery was seized. Ely was created a bishopric by Henry I. in 1107. The cathedral is one of the most beautiful and remarkable in England. The oldest portion was erected in the reign of William Rufus and Henry I., and additions were continually made to the fabric until 1534, so that it contains an almost unbroken series of the architectural styles prevailing from the Conquest, yet so wonderfully has the design been managed that no disagreeable effect is produced. The nave of the cathedral, considered one of the finest specimens of Norman work in England, was completed about 1174, and the west front, built by Geoffrey Ridel, the third bishop, about ten years later. Originally there stood a square tower in the centre of the building, but this fell in 1322, crushing three arches of the choir. The repair of this misfortune was undertaken by the sacrist, Alan de Walsingham, who erected in 1342 the octagonal tower now existing. The choir contains much rich decorated Gothic; and the east end of the cathedral, with its two tiers of lancet windows, is very beautiful. Another most interesting feature is the Lady Chapel, with a magnificent fan-vaulted roof; the walls were originally decorated with countless niches and statues of saints and martyrs, not one of which escaped the destroying hand of the Puritan. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ELY CATHEDRAL. The remarkable octagonal tower was rebuilt in 1342 by Alan de Walsingham.] ST. IVES, HUNTINGDONSHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street or St. Pancras. G.E.R. =Nearest Station.=--St. Ives. =Distance from London.=--70-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 to 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 8s. 9d. ... 4s. 10-1/2d. Return 17s. 6d. ... 9s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At St. Ives, "The Golden Lion Hotel," "White Horse Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--From King's Cross to Huntingdon. G.N. Rly. St. Ives is a town of considerable antiquity, and in Saxon times was known as _Slepe_, which name is still retained by one of the two manors included in the parish, and it is applied to the town in the Domesday book. The more modern name is derived from Ivo, or St. Ives, a Persian who is said to have visited England in the sixth century, and to have been buried here. A considerable part of the place was destroyed by fire in 1689, but there are still a number of quaint and interesting buildings. Over the Ouse is a stone bridge of six arches, supposed to have been built by the abbots of Ramsey. The approach to the bridge on the south side is by a causeway raised on arches to admit the passage of the waters in time of floods, which have on different occasions caused much damage here; and over one of the arches, near the centre of the bridge, is a mediaeval building, originally intended for a chapel. The first church, built by Abbot Ednoth in the reign of King Edgar, was burnt in 1207, and rebuilt. The present structure, dedicated to All Saints, occupies the same site, close to the river, where it forms with the old houses adjoining a very charming picture. Until quite recent years, by a quaint bequest, dicing for bibles on the altar of the church took place every Whit Tuesday. The dicing is now done on a small table. The interest in St. Ives and the neighbouring town of Huntingdon chiefly centres in the fact of their associations with Oliver Cromwell, who was born at the latter town in 1599. Cromwell went to school at Huntingdon, and from thence to Cambridge, but his father dying shortly afterwards, he returned home to manage family affairs. In 1628 he was elected for the borough of Huntingdon, but after the dissolution of Parliament, Cromwell returned to his native county and devoted himself to farming on the Ouse at Huntingdon and St. Ives. During his residence at St. Ives, Cromwell occupied the manor-house, Slepe Hall, which has been ruthlessly pulled down to allow of the erection of modern houses. [Illustration: THE BRIDGE AT ST. IVES, HUNTINGTON.] WINCHELSEA AND RYE =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, or London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Winchelsea. =Distance from London.=--72 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/4 to 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 12s. 0d. 7s. 6d. 6s. 0d. Return 21s. 0d. 15s. 0d. 12s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The New Inn," etc., Winchelsea. =Routes.=--_Via_ Ashford or _via_ Hastings. Winchelsea, situated about 8 miles from Hastings, though now a small village, was once an important seaport, being one of the Cinque Ports. It has suffered severely from the sea, having been completely destroyed in 1287 by an inundation. It was afterwards rebuilt by Edward I. on higher ground. The French made several attempts on the town, and in 1380 succeeded in capturing and burning it. The gradual decay of the port was due to the retiring of the sea in the fifteenth century, which rendered the harbour useless. Winchelsea is a pretty place with massive gateways, survivals of the old fortified town. In the centre of the village is a square containing the remains of the old Parish Church built in 1288 in the Decorated style. The nave and transepts have gone, having been destroyed by the French, and only the chancel remains. It contains some interesting canopied tombs, one being to Gervase Alard, Admiral of the Cinque Ports in 1383. John Wesley preached his last open-air sermon in the churchyard. Rye lies 2 miles east of Winchelsea, and though more flourishing than the latter place, has much dwindled in importance, since it too was a Cinque Port. The town is built on a hill, and the steep, narrow streets are filled with quaint houses. The harbour is still visited by small fishing-boats. The French constantly attacked Rye, and in 1380 they succeeded in burning it. Overlooking the sea and belonging to the old wall is the Ypres Tower, built in the reign of Stephen by William de Ypres. Close to the tower is the large Parish Church, which contains much Decorated Gothic work, although its oldest portions are Norman, the church having been partly rebuilt after the destruction caused by the French in 1380. It contains a wonderful clock, made in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and said to be the oldest in England still in working order. It has a long pendulum which comes through the ceiling and swings in the church. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ WINCHELSEA CHURCH. The French did much damage to the building in 1380, and portions of it are still in ruins.] BLENHEIM PALACE =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Blenheim. =Distance from London.=--72-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--2-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 12s. 0d. 7s. 6d. 6s. 0-1/2d. Return 21s. 2d. 13s. 4d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Bear Inn," Woodstock, "King's Arms Hotel," "Marlborough Hotel," "Star Hotel," etc. Blenheim Palace, the magnificent seat of the Duke of Marlborough, was, like Strathfieldsaye, erected at the public expense. On the 2nd of August 1704, the great Duke of Marlborough gained a decisive victory over the combined forces of the French and Bavarians near the village of Blenheim, on the banks of the Danube. The French and Bavarians left 10,000 killed and wounded on the field, huge numbers were drowned in the river, and about 13,000 taken prisoners. The victory was complete, and immediately afterwards Queen Anne presented the victorious general with a "grant of the honour of Woodstock," this being followed by a vote of £500,000 for the erection of the palace and the laying out of the grounds. The building was erected from the designs of Sir John Vanbrugh, the great architect and dramatist. It is of enormous size, the frontage being 350 feet from wing to wing, and the entire structure covers about 7 acres. The gateway to the park on the Woodstock side is a fine Corinthian triumphal arch, giving access to a magnificent avenue more than 2 miles in length. Among the principal apartments of the palace are the lofty entrance hall, with a fine painted ceiling by Thornhill; the bay-window room with its famous tapestry; the dining-room, containing many family portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds; the marble saloon, the ceilings and walls of which are painted by La Guerre; and the library, a magnificent room nearly 200 feet long, containing about 20,000 volumes. In addition to these, there are the chapel and theatre, as well as the state and other drawing-rooms. The Titian room was totally destroyed by fire, with a large portion of the north-east section of the palace, in February 1861. The ancient road, called Akeman Street, runs across the park, and Roman remains have been discovered near it. The palace is open every day (except Saturdays and Sundays) from 11 to 1, and the gardens from 11 to 2. Either can be seen separately by tickets, 1s. each, obtainable at the porter's lodge. [Illustration: _Taunt, Oxford._ BLENHEIM PALACE. Built for the Duke of Marlborough at the public expense, after his famous victory over the French and Bavarians.] PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL AND CROWLAND =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Peterborough. =Distance from London.=--76-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-1/4 to 2-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 11s. 3d. ... 6s. 4d. Return 22s. 6d. ... 12s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Great Northern Railway Company's Hotel," "Golden Lion Hotel," "Angel Hotel," "Grand Hotel," etc., at Peterborough. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Liverpool Street, _via_ Ely. Great Eastern Railway. Nine miles north of Peterborough the ruins of Crowland Abbey arise out of the flat fen country like a lighthouse out of the sea. With only the nave and north aisle standing, it breathes the very spirit of romance even in its decay. It is easy to picture the time when four streams surrounded the monastery and church and formed an island in the fens, and to recall how Hereward the Wake demanded entrance to the abbey to see Torfrida, and was refused admittance by the Abbot Ulfketyl. In those days two rivers met in the High Street of the little town that grew round St. Guthlac's Monastery. Now the country is drained, Crowland is a decayed little town with many thatched roofs, situated in an agricultural district; the island exists no longer, and the old triangular bridge rises over the dry Square at a place where three roads meet. This bridge is older and more peculiar than any bridge in Europe that is not of Roman origin. It is believed to have been built in 870, and consists of three pointed arches rising steeply in the centre to permit the rush of water in flood times. It is too steep to admit of its use by any sort of vehicle, and one ascends by steps to the top. At the end of one portion of the bridge there is a stone image of a Saxon king--possibly Ethelbert--with a loaf in one hand. In the time of Ethelbald, King of Mercians, a young noble named Guthlac, weary of life's rough way, sought peace in the ascetic life. He drifted in a boat to Crowland Isle, and there lived a hermit's life till his death in 817. On the spot where he died Ethelbald founded and endowed a monastery on the island, and it flourished exceedingly. The larger part of the conventual church is now destroyed, but the north aisle is used as the Parish Church of Crowland. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CROWLAND ABBEY. The building rises above the little thatched village, which stands on slightly raised ground in the midst of the fens.] PETERBOROUGH As was the case with Wells, Peterborough would have had no existence but for its cathedral, which was reared in the midst of the fertile fen country near the slow-flowing river Ness. But the coming of the railways has roused the country town, and in the last fifty years its population has increased fivefold. It is situated in a rich agricultural district, and has a good trade in farm products. Its annual wool and cattle markets are well known in the eastern counties. On the site of the present cathedral a minster was built in 870 by a king of Mercia. On its being destroyed by Danes, a new building was erected, which was burned down in 1116. The foundations of the Saxon church can be seen in the crypt. The new Norman building was consecrated in 1237, and has remained with few alterations to the present day. While the interior of St. Albans Cathedral shows every phase of Norman and Gothic architecture, that of Peterborough is remarkable as showing practically one style throughout the entire building. The west front has been described as the "grandest portico in Europe." It is Early English in style, and the finest feature of the cathedral. Its three colossal arches are flanked and strengthened by two turreted towers with spires. It needs a close observer to perceive that the central gable of the west front is smaller than the side ones, for the difficulty has been cleverly overcome. The northern gable and part of the arch below have been repaired very carefully amid an outcry from all parts of England against the restoration. However, the work was proved to be necessary, as the mortar had crumbled to dust, and many stones were merely resting one on the other. The Perpendicular Galilee Porch over the small doorway adds strength to the façade. The room over it is used as a library. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the interior is the twelfth-century wooden vaulting of the nave. There is no Lady Chapel at the east end as is usually the case. When the ritual demanded a retro-choir for processions, the Norman apse fortunately was not pulled down, but the new building, Tudor in style, and with a beautiful stone-vaulted roof, was built round it. After Ely's Tower fell, the Norman central tower of Peterborough was pulled down as if a similar fate was feared for it, and a shorter tower was erected in its place. Two queens have been buried in the church, namely, Catherine of Arragon and Mary Queen of Scots. The remains of both queens have been removed to Westminster Abbey. Other places worth visiting in Peterborough are the Parish Church and a well-preserved thirteenth-century manor-house at Longthorpe. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL The magnificent west front, which has recently been restored.] SOUTHAMPTON =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Stations.=--Southampton Docks or Southampton West. =Distance from London.=--78-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/4 to 3-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 13s. 0d. 8s. 2d. 6s. 6d. Return 23s. 0d. 14s. 6d. 11s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Royal Hotel," "Radley's Hotel," "London and South-Western Hotel," "Dolphin Hotel," "Royal Pier Hotel," "Flower's Temperance," etc. =Alternative Route.=--From Paddington. Fares as above. The earliest accounts of Southampton are vague and uncertain. On the opposite bank of the Itchen, at Bitterne, was the Roman station of Clausentum, but Southampton itself seems to have been originally a settlement of the West Saxons. In the reign of William the Conqueror, Southampton, owing to its situation, became the principal port of embarkation for Normandy. In 1295 it first returned representatives to Parliament, and in 1345 was strongly fortified, and able to contribute twenty-one ships to the Royal Navy, Portsmouth only supplying five. Many expeditions for Normandy embarked here during the reigns of the Plantagenets, and the men who fought and won at Crecy and Agincourt must have passed, on the way to their ships, under the old West Gate, which still remains much as it was in those stirring times. The town is full of interesting relics of every description, one of the most remarkable being the old wall, of which a considerable portion remains; that known as The Arcades, built in a series of arches, being specially noticeable. Close by, in Blue Anchor Lane, is a Norman house, reputed to be King John's palace, and claiming, with several others, to be the oldest house in England. The town was formerly entered by several gates, two of which, Westgate and Bargate, are still in a good state of preservation. The Bargate stands in the centre of the High Street, and is an excellent example of mediaeval fortification. At the head of Blue Anchor Lane is the remarkably picturesque and substantial Tudor house, once the residence of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, and nearly opposite rises the tall tower of St. Michael's, the oldest church in Southampton. The building is open all day (the keys being obtainable on inquiry), and contains a remarkable carved black marble font, reputed to be of Byzantine origin, and a fine eagle lectern of the fifteenth century. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE BARGATE IN THE HIGH STREET OF SOUTHAMPTON.] HELMINGHAM HALL =How to get there.=--Great Eastern Railway. Liverpool Street. =Nearest Station.=--Woodbridge (10 miles). =Distance from London.=--79 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 to 2-1/2 hours. Quickest train 1 hour 56 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 14s. 9d. ... 6s. 8d. Return 22s. 2d. ... 13s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Bull Hotel," etc., at Woodbridge. Helmingham Hall, the seat of Lord Tollemache, lies in a beautiful park, ten miles from Woodbridge, in Suffolk, and has been one of the homes of the family for generations. The Tollemache family own two of the finest Tudor houses in this country, Ham House near Richmond, the property of the Earls of Dysart, and Helmingham, which now belongs to the other branch of the Tollemache peerage. Helmingham came to them in the reign of Henry VIII., by the marriage of Lionel Tollemache with the daughter and heiress of Sir William Joyce, who owned a home called Creke Hall. The present mansion he rebuilt on the same site, in all probability retaining the ancient moat. The hall is approached through an entrance gateway, giving access to a fine avenue leading directly up a gentle slope to the moat and main drawbridge of the hall. The house, of red brick, wonderfully tinted by the hand of time, is remarkably picturesque, with its twisted chimneys, finely proportioned gables, and beautiful bay windows; and its charm is considerably enhanced by the brickwork, with sturdy buttresses here and there, rising sheer out of the clear and tranquil waters of the moat. The hall is entered by two bridges, each ending in a drawbridge, which is kept in full working order, and both drawbridges are, and have been for some hundreds of years, hauled up at ten o'clock every night, when the house can only be approached from the park by means of a boat. On crossing the main bridge, one enters the inner court, a fine red brick quadrangle, much after the style of those at Hampton Court. From this access is gained to the various wings and apartments of the mansion, the finest room being the hall, with its deep oak dado, fireplace, and open timber roof. The best suite of rooms looks out across the moat to the beautiful gardens. These are some of the most magnificent in the county, and they are most carefully and elaborately arranged, and always kept in fine condition. The garden is divided into two portions by a strip of water covered with lilies. [Illustration: HELMINGHAM HALL. An Elizabethan moated mansion. Its drawbridge has been lowered and raised every day for about 400 years.] STONEHENGE, WILTSHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. South-Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Amesbury (1-1/2 miles from Stonehenge). =Distance from London.=--80 miles. =Average Time.=--3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 13s. 2d. 8s. 3d. 6s. 7-1/2d. Return 23s. 2d. 14s. 8d. 13s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The George Hotel" at Amesbury. "Railway Hotel" (small) at Porton. =Alternative Route.=--Porton Station, 5-1/2 miles, and Salisbury Station, 8 miles from Stonehenge. One of the earliest and most enduring works of man in the British Islands is to be seen in the circles of giant stones on Salisbury Plain. They stand in two concentric circles. The outer ring of monoliths encloses an inner one of blue stones about half their height. These in turn surround a horseshoe formation consisting of the remains of five great trilithons. Some of these stones have fallen across the flat one known as the altar stone, occupying a central position at the head of the horseshoe. On the 21st of June the sun rises exactly in a line with the centre of the horseshoe and the long earthen avenue leading towards the stones, and thus throws a ray between two of the outer monoliths and touches the altar stone. This orientation on the plan of so many eastern shrines proves that Stonehenge was the temple of some early sun-worshipping race of men in Britain. Sir Norman Lockyer's recent observations at the summer solstice have placed the date of erection at about 1680 B.C., and the discovery of flint implements beneath some Roman remains also points to neolithic times. The upright stones and those resting upon them were originally all mortised and tenoned together, and from the fact that no similar stone is found nearer than Marlborough Downs the primitive men must have hauled the stones considerable distances by means of long leather ropes. The small blue stones were possibly brought from Normandy. Other stone circles and similar remains are to be seen at Avebury, Rollright, and Kit's Coty House, a few miles from Rochester. Also in Shropshire there is a district rich in stone circles and prehistoric remains. This is in a line north of Bishops Castle and Shelve, and to those who appreciate wild scenery this part of the county may be specially recommended. [Illustration: STONEHENGE. Looking towards the east from the altar stone. The point on the horizon where the sun rises on June 21 is indicated by the small stone seen through the arches.] NETLEY ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo _via_ Southampton. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Netley (about a mile from the abbey). =Distance from London.=--82-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-3/4 to 4-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 13s. 6d. 8s. 6d. 6s. 9-1/2d. Return 23s. 10d. 15s. 0d. 12s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Hotel," "Radley's Hotel," "Dolphin," "South-Western," etc., Southampton (3 miles from Netley). Netley is a small village on Southampton Water, about 3 miles south-east of the town of Southampton. It is famous for the ruins of Netley Abbey, which are not far from the shore, in a wooded and picturesque nook. The abbey is supposed to have been founded by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester in Henry III.'s reign, and the monks belonged to the Cistercian order. It was neither a rich nor famous establishment, and the monks possessed but one book, Cicero's _Treaty on Rhetoric_. Since the Dissolution the abbey has belonged to many different families. Only the walls are now standing, but enough remains to show how beautiful it once was. The buildings formed a square of which the south wall of the church formed the side opposite the entrance. Various buildings in connection with the monastery formed the rest of the quadrangle, which was known as Fountain Court. The kitchen is still roofed in, although it has lost its stone groining. Other buildings are, conjecturally, the buttery and the refectory. Near the kitchen is a curious underground passage leading to the castle (erected by Henry VIII.), which stands nearer the shore than the abbey. It is thought to be a drain. The church is of cruciform shape, in Early English style. Though the west end is now in a very ruinous condition, the great east window is fairly well preserved. It has two lights, and is very beautifully proportioned. Outside the court is the garden, with lawns and trees, too often desecrated by picnic parties, and the ponds that supplied the monks with fish are now choked up. It is said that a carpenter who bought the materials of the church from Sir Bartlet Lucy was warned in a dream by a monk not to destroy the building. He paid no heed, and was killed by the west window falling on him. The Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Soldiers, erected after the Crimean War, can be seen at Netley. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ NETLEY ABBEY, LOOKING EAST.] SALISBURY AND ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Salisbury. =Distance from London.=--83-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 1-3/4 and 3-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 14s. 0d. 8s. 9d. 6s. 11-1/2d. Return 24s. 6d. 15s. 4d. 12s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Angel Hotel," "Crown Hotel," "White Hart Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. Salisbury Cathedral is, in the opinion of many, the finest of all the English cathedrals, and it certainly has many claims to be considered so. The vast building was completed within fifty years, and is therefore practically in one style throughout, an advantage not shared by any other cathedral in the kingdom. Its situation, too, is unique, standing as it does in the fine old close, entirely separated from any other buildings, and with its grey walls and buttresses rising sheer up from such velvety turf as is seen in England alone. The tower and spire are perhaps the most beautiful in this country. Passing into the close by the gate at the end of the High Street, one reaches the west front, which is very rich in effect, with its tiers of canopied statues and wonderfully proportioned windows. Through the beautiful north porch one passes into the nave, which, though exceedingly beautiful, has a certain air of coldness owing to the absence of stained glass. It seems hardly credible that this beautiful glass, the making of which is now a lost art, was deliberately destroyed at the end of the eighteenth century by the so-called "architect" James Wyatt. In addition to this, "Wyatt swept away screens, chapels, and porches, desecrated and destroyed the tombs of warriors and prelates; obliterated ancient paintings, flung stained glass by cartloads into the city ditch, and razed to the ground the beautiful old campanile which stood opposite the north porch." The Lady Chapel of the cathedral is one of the most beautiful in the kingdom. Although the cathedral is the great glory of Salisbury, there are plenty of interesting mediaeval buildings in the city. In the close itself are the King's House and the King's Wardrobe, both old gabled houses of great beauty. St. Thomas's and St. Edmund's are the two most interesting churches in the city. About 2 miles north of Salisbury is a group of pretty cottages on the Avon, forming the village of Milston. Here, on May 1, 1672, Joseph Addison was born in the old rectory, now unfortunately pulled down. His father, Lancelot Addison, was rector of the parish. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. The spire is one of the most graceful in the world, and the whole building, commenced in 1220, was completed within fifty years.] SANDWICH, KENT =How to get there.=--Train from Charing Cross, Cannon Street, and London Bridge. South-Eastern and Chatham Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Sandwich. =Distance from London.=--84-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/2 to 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 13s. 0d. 8s. 4d. 6s. 6d. Return 22s. 8d. 16s. 8d. 13s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Bell," "Bell and Anchor," "Fleur de Lys," etc. It is difficult to realise that Sandwich, now 1-1/2 miles from the coast, was yet once situated on the sea, and was the second in importance of the Cinque Ports. In Roman and early Saxon times a wide arm of the Thames, called the Wantsume, flowed from Reculver (then known as Regulbium), where it was a mile wide, southwards to what is now the mouth of the Stour. Between Ebbsfleet and Worth it was over 4 miles wide. The Roman fortress of Ritupiae (Richborough) guarded it on the south, and the river Stour flowed into it at Stourmouth. This stream caused so much alluvial deposit that the sea receded from Richborough in early Saxon times, and part of the population removed to Sandwich. The repeated attacks by the Danes and the French did not check the growth of the town, which attained its maximum prosperity in Edward IV.'s reign, when it was walled. But the sea left its shores, and the town declined to again rise in importance, when the 400 Flemish emigrants settled there in Elizabeth's reign and introduced silk-weaving, flannel manufactures, and market-gardening. Sandwich contains some of the richest bits of mediaeval architecture in England. There are some traces of the walls to be seen, and one ancient gateway is perfect, Fisher's Gate, near the quay. On the north is the Tudor barbican gate. St. Clement's Church possesses a central Norman tower. The nave is in the Perpendicular style, and the chancel is Decorated. Both have fine roofs. St. Peter's Church (thirteenth century) has a tower, but its south aisle was destroyed in 1661. The session-room at the town hall has some curious seats for the mayor and aldermen, and the hospital of St. Bartholomew's has an Early English chapel. The best of the ancient houses in the town are in Strand Street and Lucksboat Street. Manswood Grammar School dates from 1564, and has a Flemish front. At Richborough can be seen some Roman rectangular walls about 10 feet high, with a subterranean concrete building in the centre. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ FISHER'S GATE, SANDWICH. A picturesque survival of the days of the town's importance as a Cinque Port.] NEW FOREST, HAMPSHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Lyndhurst Road Station (3 miles). =Distance from London.=--85-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/4 to 3-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 14s. 2d. 9s. 0d. 7s. 1d. Return 24s. 10d. 15s. 8d. 14s. 2d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Grand Hotel," Lyndhurst; "Crown Hotel," Lyndhurst; "Rose and Crown," Brockenhurst, etc. The popular story as to the creation of what was then the "New" Forest by William the Conqueror has been probably much exaggerated, although we all believed in our school days the old chroniclers, who averred that the king destroyed fifty or so churches and numerous villages, and exterminated their inhabitants. The fact is that the harsh feudal forest laws were rigidly enforced by the Conqueror, who no doubt in some places swept away the villages and churches of rebellious foresters, but the very qualities of the forest soil disprove the fact that the land was once all "smiling pastures and golden cornfields," as some of the old historians would have us believe. The New Forest of the present day forms a triangle about 20 miles long and 12 broad, of which the base is a line drawn westward from the mouth of the Beaulieu river to within a mile or two of the Avon, the apex reaching to the confines of Wiltshire. The forest scenery is extremely diversified, but always very beautiful; glades and reaches of gentle park and meadow, and open heath-like stretches, contrast wonderfully with the actual masses of huge beeches, under some of which daylight never penetrates. Lyndhurst, the little capital of the New Forest, is situated in its centre, and is one of the best points from which to explore the beauties of the district. The church at Lyndhurst is modern, rebuilt in 1863; but it should be visited in order to see the large altar-fresco of the Ten Virgins executed by the late Lord Leighton. A little way beyond the church is the Queen's House, built in Charles II.'s reign. Here resides the Deputy-Surveyor, who administers under the Crown, while six elected Verderers, in their courts of Swain-mote, represent the Commoners. In the hall is kept what is known as William Rufus's stirrup-iron. Close to the village of Minsted is Malwood Lodge, Sir William Harcourt's New Forest seat. From a ridge near this there are grand views of the forest, till one comes to the Compton Arms Hotel, a completely isolated inn, near the Rufus Stone, which marks the spot where William II. fell by the arrow of Walter Tyrell. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE RUFUS STONE IN THE NEW FOREST. Marking the spot where William II. fell by Walter Tyrell's arrow.] OSBORNE HOUSE =How to get there.=--Train from London Bridge or Victoria. London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Cowes. =Distance from London.=--87 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4 to 5-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 16s. 0d. 10s. 5d. 8s. 10d. Return 27s. 10d. 18s. 2d. 16s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Cowes--"Fountain Hotel," "The Gloster," "Royal Marine Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo _via_ Southampton. L. and S.W. Railway. Osborne House having been presented to the nation by King Edward, portions of the buildings and grounds are, or will be, available to the public on week days. This stately marine residence of the late Queen Victoria is situated in the Isle of Wight, an island remarkable for the variety and beauty of its scenery. The Queen purchased the estate in 1845 from Lady Elizabeth Blachford, and the palace was finished in 1851. Since that time many additions have been made. The main gates are about three-quarters of a mile up the hill from the ferry, and the Prince of Wales's Gate further south, opposite the hotel. Osborne House has a melancholy interest attached to it, for here, on January 22, 1901, Queen Victoria breathed her last. A portion of every year was spent by the Queen at her seaside home, which had many associations of her happy life there with her husband, the late Prince Consort, "Albert the Good." Surrounded with their children, they forgot the splendours and fatigues of Court, and devoted themselves to training their family in all that was useful and good. The Queen nearly always spoke of Osborne as "her island home." She and Prince Albert delighted in the fact that it was their own, that they could make their own plans, exercise their own taste in the laying out of the gardens, and in the building--in fact, in everything in this seaside home. The building is in the Palladian style, and was designed by Thomas Cubitt and the late Prince Consort. The grounds, covering 5000 acres, are 8 miles in extent, with a sea front of 1-1/3 miles. The terrace gardens are ornamented with statuary, and the grounds lead down to the water's edge, where there are sea baths and a private pier. The last journey of Victoria the Good from Osborne to the mausoleum at Frogmore, in the grounds of Windsor Castle, was a spectacle never to be forgotten. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ OSBORNE HOUSE. Built by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1851.] CARISBROOKE CASTLE =How to get there.=--Train from Victoria or London Bridge _via_ Portsmouth and Ryde. London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Carisbrooke. =Distance from London.=--88 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/2 to 5-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 16s. 4d. 10s. 8d. 9s. 1d. Return 28s. 4d. 18s. 6d. 16s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Red Lion Hotel," "Waverley Hotel," "Eight Bells Hotel," "Castle Hotel," "Temperance Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo _via_ Cowes and Ryde. L. and S.W. Railway. Carisbrooke village is a charming place delightfully situated in the centre of the island. The castle (the charge for entering is 4d.) stands on a wooded hill at an elevation of 150 feet. The summit of the hill forms a level plateau about 20 acres in extent, all enclosed by the castle walls. Sir Walter Scott is said to have had this castle in his mind when writing _Marmion_. Beyond the great interest attached to the fact that it was here that Charles I. was confined, the castle does not figure very prominently in history. The fact, however, that this unfortunate monarch was imprisoned here in 1647 by the Parliament will be always sufficient to give its ancient walls and battlements a never-dying interest. When Charles was brought to the castle he was treated more as a guest than a prisoner, but after his attempted escape the king was much more closely watched and his pleasures curtailed. The story of the king attempting in vain to get through his bedroom window is known to all. Everything was in readiness, the details of rescue were all carefully prepared. Captain Titus and others of the guard had been won over to assist the king, and had King Charles negotiated the narrow window, in all probability the escape would have been a success. In 1650, the year after Charles I. was beheaded, Henry Duke of Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth were brought to the castle. Shortly after her arrival the princess, who was of a sickly constitution, took a severe chill and was found one morning by her attendants lying dead on a couch. Queen Victoria had a beautiful monument erected to her memory in Newport Church. The Well House, where the water is drawn from the depth of 150 feet by a clever donkey and draw-wheel, is an interesting feature of the castle. Princess Beatrice is the present Governor of the Island. [Illustration: CARISBROOKE CASTLE. Where Charles I. was imprisoned in 1647.] LUTTERWORTH THE HOME OF JOHN WYCLIFF =How to get there.=--Train from Marylebone. Great Central Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Lutterworth. =Distance from London.=--90 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/4 to 3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 12s. 4d. ... 7s. 0d. Return 24s. 0d. ... 14s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Hind Hotel," "Denbigh Arms," "Fox," etc. Situated in typical English midland scenery, the quiet little country town of Lutterworth rises from the surrounding undulating pasture-land. Here, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, when it was probably merely a fair-sized village, John Wycliff, the "Morning Star of the Reformation," and founder of the Lollards, was born. The main street slopes down the hill, beyond the houses, till it reaches the river side, where it is carried over the little river Swift on a small bridge. A good proportion of the church, which is so closely associated with Wycliff, dates from the fourteenth century. It is a large building, with a tower and belfry stage, and four crocketed pinnacles. The tower was formerly surmounted by a wooden belfry, but this was destroyed by the great gale of 1703. The nave is lighted by a clerestory, and the aisles are divided by high arches. The church is built in Early Perpendicular style, but there is a good decorated window at the eastern end of the south aisle, where there used to be a Lady Chapel. The lower portions of the walls date from before the time of Wycliff. At the eastern end of the chancel are an aumbry and piscina. About thirty years ago the church was restored by Sir Gilbert Scott, when much new stone was inserted. There are three interesting frescoes in the interior: one is believed to represent Queen Philippa asking Edward III. to give the living of Lutterworth to Wycliff. The roof of the nave is formed of fine woodwork of the Perpendicular period, but the pulpit, a splendid piece of fourteenth-century oak carving, claims the chief interest, being the same from which the great reformer preached. The base has been renewed, and the rest has been much repaired, but the same pulpit has been in use for more than 500 years. A fragment of Wycliff's cope or chasuble is preserved in a glass case in the vestry, but some doubt attaches to the origin of "Wycliff's chair," which seems of considerably later date. [Illustration: WYCLIFF'S PULPIT IN LUTTERWORTH CHURCH. It is a fine piece of fourteenth-century oak carving.] COMPTON WYNYATES =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. London and North-Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Kineton (5 miles from Compton Wynyates). =Distance from London.=--91-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 to 3-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 14s. 4d. 9s. 0d. 7s. 8d. Return 26s. 6d. 16s. 11d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Kineton--"Red Lion Hotel," "Swan Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--None. Compton Wynyates, the seat of the Marquess of Northampton, is one of the most beautiful Tudor houses in England, and although Warwickshire is exceedingly rich in castles and fine old houses, it can show nothing to surpass this time-worn pile of red brick and stone. Though the moat, which was the outer guard of the place, has been partly filled in and converted into smooth lawns, one of the most romantic aspects of the house is to be seen across an angle of the watery enclosure. The buildings surround a quadrangle, the entrance being made through a beautiful Tudor gateway. In the spandrils of its archway are carved the arms of Henry VIII., with the griffin and greyhound for supporters and the royal crown above. The house was built by Sir William Compton during the reign of Henry VIII., with the exception of some additions, including the great parlour panelled with oak, which dates from the days of Queen Elizabeth. To touch on half the glories of this perfect Tudor house would occupy many pages of this book--its beautiful chapel with its curious carvings with the seven deadly sins represented as knights in armour, the great hall in which Henry VIII. was welcomed by Sir William Compton, the drawing-room with its fine plaster ceiling--all are so full of beauty and interest that they can merely be referred to here. The situation of the house in a richly timbered hollow adds infinitely to its charm. The gardens, too, are of the beautiful type that one learns to expect in conjunction with so lovely a dwelling, while flowering creepers on the towers and on the gabled walls complete an ideal picture of all that is loveliest in an old English mansion. Permission to see Compton Wynyates can only be obtained by a written application. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ COMPTON WYNYATES. The seat of the Marquess of Northampton, is one of the most beautiful mediaeval homes in England.] KENILWORTH CASTLE =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Kenilworth. =Distance from London.=--99 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/2 to 4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 15s. 3d. 10s. 2d. 8s. 1-1/2d. Return 28s. 3d. 17s. 10d. 16s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Abbey Hotel," "King's Arms," "Castle Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--None. Kenilworth is a small town, situated midway between Coventry and Warwick, about 5 miles from either town. It is chiefly noted for the ruins of the famous castle, so celebrated from its association with Sir Walter Scott's romance. The castle was built in the reign of Henry I., the site having been granted to Geoffrey de Clinton, Lord Chief Justice of England. The fortress at one time belonged to Simon de Montfort, who imprisoned Henry III. and his son Edward during the War of the Barons. Edward II. also was forced to sign his abdication there. Queen Elizabeth gave the castle as a present to her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who spent large sums in making great alterations and additions, and entertained the Queen on four different occasions. The memorable visit that has been described by Scott took place in 1575, when Dudley not only lodged Queen Elizabeth, her court, and 400 servants for seventeen days, but provided a series of pageants and festivities to please his royal mistress. During the Civil War the castle was taken by Cromwell and given by him to Colonel Hawkesworth and some other officers belonging to his army. They destroyed the place very much, draining the lake, besides pulling down walls and towers. The estate now belongs to the Earl of Clarendon, to whose ancestor, Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, it was given by Charles II. The only building which has still preserved its roof is the gatehouse, built by Robert Dudley. It is now used as a dwelling-house, and contains some beautiful panelling and also a wonderful chimney-piece. The rest of the castle is very ruined, but the remains are of great interest, being sufficient to convey an impression of the castle as it originally stood. Close to the parish church are the ruins of the priory, which was founded at the same time as the castle, by Geoffrey de Clinton. At the Dissolution it was completely destroyed, and only the gatehouse remains. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ KENILWORTH CASTLE. Where Queen Elizabeth was entertained for seventeen days by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.] BELVOIR CASTLE THE SEAT OF THE DUKE OF RUTLAND =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Grantham (7 miles from Belvoir Castle). =Distance from London.=--105-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 and 2-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 15s. 10d. ... 8s. 9d. Return 31s. 8d. ... 17s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Angel Hotel," etc., at Grantham. =Alternative Route.=--None. Belvoir Castle, the Leicestershire seat of the Duke of Rutland, stands on a lofty eminence, commanding a magnificent view over the rich vale of Belvoir. It was originally founded by Robert de Todeni, a Norman noble, and a standard-bearer to William the Conqueror. In the reign of Henry III. the property passed to Robert de Roos, and in the time of Henry VIII. to the family of Manners, who have held it ever since. The building suffered much damage during the Wars of the Roses and the Parliamentary Civil War. James I. was entertained there in 1603, on his way from Scotland to London, by Roger, the fifth Earl. In 1814, George IV., then Prince Regent, visited the castle, in commemoration of which one of the towers was named Regent Tower. In 1816, alterations were being carried out in the interior, under the direction of James Wyatt, the architect, when a fire broke out and almost entirely destroyed the castle. The picture gallery and the grand staircase perished utterly, and the damage was reckoned at £120,000. The final restoration was completed by Matthew Wyatt, who succeeded in building one of the finest palaces in the length and breadth of England. One of the features of the mansion is a magnificent picture gallery in which hang priceless works by Nicolas Poussin, Claude, Murillo, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and other old masters. The name "Belvoir" is derived from the magnificent prospects lying around it in all directions, the view extending over the level country for 30 miles; more than 170 towns and villages are visible within its horizon. The castle is situated in the midst of a fine sporting country, the Belvoir hounds being one of the finest packs in the country. Near the mansion, and below it, are some remains of a priory also founded by the Norman owner, Robert de Todeni, about 1076. This priory was dedicated to St. Mary, and was annexed to the Abbey of St. Albans. [Illustration: _G.W. Wilson & Co._ BELVOIR CASTLE. It was originally founded by Robert de Todeni, a standard-bearer to William the Conqueror.] BATH =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Bath. =Distance from London.=--107 miles. =Average Time.=--2-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 17s. 10d. 11s. 2d. 8s. 11d. Return 31s. 3d. 19s. 6d. 17s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Empire Hotel," "Pulteney Hotel," "York House Family Hotel," "Royal Station Hotel," "Railway Hotel," "Waldron's Private Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo. South-Western Railway. Bath, one of the largest towns in Somersetshire, is beautifully situated on the Avon in a wooded valley in the north-east of the county. The city is of great antiquity, and was one of the most powerful Roman stations, being at the intersection of two very important roads,--the Fosse Way, which extended from the coast of Devonshire to the north-east coast of Lincolnshire, and the Via Julia, the great road between London and Wales. The story of the British king Bladud and his connection with Bath is immortalised in the _Pickwick Papers_, but is more or less legendary; however, as to the greatness of the city during the Roman occupation there is ample evidence. Even in those times the great natural feature of the place was its mineral waters, and in the first century the Romans built some luxurious baths there, and now the extensive remains have made the place notable. The Saxons quaintly named the city _Akeman Ceaster_, or town of invalids. In the original Abbey Church took place the coronation of King Edgar as King of England by the famous St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury. This church stands on the site of the old conventual church, on the spot where once stood the Roman temple of Minerva. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by Bishop Oliver King, and completed by Bishop Montague at the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the west front are sculptures representing the angels upon Jacob's Ladder, and the whole building teems with interest; but the original purity of its architecture has been much marred by faulty and ignorant restoration. Till the middle of the eighteenth century Bath covered no larger area than that contained within the Roman walls, but Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark having conceived a great partiality for the place, and the medicinal quality of the waters being much advocated, the city rapidly grew in favour and size, until it reached its heyday in the time of Beau Nash and the Prince Regent. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE RESTORED ROMAN BATH AT BATH. The bases of the columns are chiefly untouched Roman work.] BOSTON AND THE PILGRIM FATHERS =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Boston. =Distance from London.=--107-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 15s. 4d. ... 8s. 11d. Return 30s. 8d. ... 17s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Peacock and Royal," "Red Lion" Hotels, etc. =Alternative Route.=--None. The English Boston, which gave its name to the great American seaport, was at one time--although it is hard to believe--of as relatively great importance as its mighty namesake of to-day. In the time of Edward III. it was considered the third most important town in England, for during that reign it contributed no fewer than seventeen ships to the great fleet which was raised by Edward III. But Boston declined through its river--the Witham--becoming scarcely navigable for more than small ships, and after a time was placed on the list of decayed seaports. At the present time it should be mentioned that its trade is steadily reviving. The town has a quiet, old-fashioned aspect, and many of its houses date from the days when the Pilgrim Fathers made their first attempt to leave England. The very first effort failed, through the treachery of the captain of the vessel in which they were to take passage. They suffered a month's imprisonment, but shortly afterwards made another attempt to get away from the coast on a Dutch ship. This was only partially successful, for William Brewster and a few others only, reached Amsterdam, the women and the rest of the party having fallen into the hands of a detachment of soldiers. Brewster, however, by untiring efforts got all the rest over to Holland. It was in 1620 that the Pilgrim Fathers finally set out on their voyage to America. (See Index, Plymouth.) The greatest glory of Boston is "The Stump," the highly unsuitable name given to its magnificent church tower, 300 feet high, and a landmark all over the surrounding fen-lands and even out at sea. It seems strangely slight when one is standing within the tower and notices that no floor breaks the great sweep of walls for a great height. The large perpendicular windows also help to give an impression of frailty. The foundation stone, however, was laid as long ago as 1309, and the structure is not so many years younger. [Illustration: BOSTON, LINCOLNSHIRE. From whence the Pilgrim Fathers sailed in the _Mayflower_.] WARWICK =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Warwick. =Distance from London.=--108 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 15s. 3d. 10s. 2d. 8s. 1-1/2d. Return 28s. 3d. 17s. 10d. 16s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Warwick Arms Hotel," "Woolpack Hotel," "Globe Hotel," etc. A charge of one shilling is made for admission to Warwick Castle, the gardens and state apartments being shown to visitors. Warwick is a small but historic town, charmingly situated on the River Avon, and dominated by its castle, one of the very few baronial castles still remaining entire. The town was destroyed by the Danes, but it was rebuilt by King Alfred's Ethelfleda, who also built a fortress on an artificial mound, overlooking the river. By the orders of William I. the castle was enlarged, and afterwards given by the Conqueror to Henry de Newburgh, whom he made the first Earl of Warwick of the Norman line. The castle was of such strength that when, in the reign of Henry III., it became the property of Margery, sister of Thomas de Newburgh, she was informed that she would not be allowed to marry any one in whom the king had not great confidence. The castle afterwards passed into the hands of the Beauchamps, in whose family it remained until 1445, when the heiress, Anne, married Richard Neville, the "King-maker," who took the title of Earl of Warwick. The title without the estates was given by James I. to Robert, Lord Rich. The castle was given to Sir Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke. In 1759, when Edward Rich died without issue, Francis Greville was made Earl of Warwick, with whose descendants the estates have since remained. The entrance to the castle is along a winding road cut for more than 100 yards out of the solid rock. The castle as it now stands is a splendid specimen of the fourteenth-century stronghold built in the transition period, when the mere fortress was being superseded by a building of more grace and comfort. St. Mary's Church in Warwick was rebuilt in the reign of Queen Anne, the former church, built by Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, having been destroyed by fire in 1694. Guy's Cliff, situated 1-1/4 miles from Warwick, is a most picturesque spot, and is celebrated, according to tradition, as the retreat of Guy of Warwick. A charge of threepence each person (no fee less than sixpence) is made, for admission to St. Mary's Church. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ WARWICK CASTLE ON THE AVON. One of the very few baronial castles still remaining entire.] GLOUCESTER AND ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Gloucester. =Distance from London.=--114 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-3/4 to 3-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 19s. 0d. 12s. 0d. 9s. 6d. Return 33s. 3d. 21s. 0d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Bell Hotel," "New Inn Hotel," "The Wellington Hotel," and others. =Alternative Route.=--None. Gloucester is one of the most thriving cities in the south of England. It has been a town of some description from quite early times, for the British had a fortress on the site which the Romans are believed to have occupied as a strong position on the road into Wales. The Danes repeatedly made incursions into this part of the country, and Gloucester suffered very much from their ravages; but probably through the fact that the kings of Mercia instituted a palace and priory there, the city seems to have had sufficient strength to recover after each disaster. Gloucester was even of sufficient importance for Edward the Confessor to have kept his courts there for a considerable time. Being in the west country, it naturally suffered severely during the parliamentary struggle, and a great portion of the city was destroyed. But although the town lost many of its old buildings at this time, it has still a good deal of antiquity to boast, and for this reason alone is attractive to the stranger. Its main streets are modelled on the Roman plan of a cross, the four arms bearing the names North, South, East and West-gate Streets. The cathedral is not many minutes' walk from the railway station, and is remarkable for its influence upon the English architecture which succeeded it, for it directed the course of the curvilinear movement in the direction of the Perpendicular style of Gothic. After remaining uncopied for a few years, the new style spread over the length and breadth of England. The east window is remarkable as being one of the largest in the world. Portions of the cathedral may possibly date from pre-Norman days, but according to the records, the earliest date is 1088. The tower was completed in 1518, and is with the cloisters almost without equal in this country for beauty and perfection. The cathedral contains the tomb of Osric, King of Northumbria, which was recently opened and found to contain the bones within a wooden coffin. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL. Showing the east window, which is one of the largest in the world.] NORFOLK BROADS =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street. Gt. Eastern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Norwich. =Distance from London.=--114 miles. =Average Time.--Varies between 2-1/2 to 4-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 20s. 6d. ... 9s. 5-1/2d. Return 31s. 10d. ... 18s. 11d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Norwich--"Royal Family Hotel," "Maid's Head." Yarmouth--"Royal," "Queen's," etc. Cantley--"Red House Hotel." Brundall--"Yare Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--To Norwich from King's Cross, Great Northern Railway. Train to Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Beccles, Cantley, Reedham, etc., from Liverpool Street, Great Eastern Railway. The charm of the Norfolk Broads consists to a great extent in the fact that they present different scenery to almost any other county in England, although the salt marshes of Essex and Suffolk possess the family likeness obtaining throughout East Anglia. The Norfolk Broads occupy the stretch of country north of a line drawn between Norwich and Yarmouth, and both towns offer great advantages for getting into the Broad country. A "broad," it should be mentioned, is a local name for a shallow lake connected with others, and finally with the sea by such rivers as the Yare, the Bure, or Ant. These rivers and their various tributaries form excellent sailing grounds, for after tacking for some time in a rush-fringed river, one suddenly enjoys the contrast of a broad lagoon where there is plenty of space to sail more freely. The separate characteristics of the different broads give a choice of surroundings capable of satisfying every one. Oulton Broad, for instance, is generally to be found full of smart yachts, while Heigham forms a contrast in its solemn loneliness. Wroxham Broad is always bright with white sails going to or from Surlingham, Rockland, or Salhouse Broads. The last mentioned a beautiful piece of water, the quieter portions of its surface being generally thick with yellow iris and purple loosestrife and many other species of water herb. It is shaded by trees, and makes charming pictures from many points of view. Crome, it is said, commenced a picture of this broad on the day of his death, and anticipated that it would be his best work. Irstead is another beautiful broad surrounded by feathery reeds and thick with rushes where kingfishers and wild duck are to be found. The ruins of St. Benet's Abbey are an interesting feature along the river Bure. Within the monastic walls a windmill has been built, and this too is now an old ruin, having lost its sails many years ago. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ AMONG THE NORFOLK BROADS. A typical scene on one of the rivers connecting the broads.] NORWICH CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Station _via_ Colchester. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Norwich. =Distance from London.=--114 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/2 to 4-1/4 hours. Quickest train 2 hours 32 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 20s. 6d. ... 9s. 5-1/2d. Return 31s. 10d. ... 18s. 11d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Family Hotel," "Maid's Head Hotel," "Bell Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. The city of Norwich has a unique charm from its combination of the mediaeval with the modern, and "improvements" so called have not spoilt it. The chief object of interest is the cathedral, which was founded in 1094 by Bishop Herbert Losinga, who was at one time prior at Fécamp in Normandy, and chaplain to William II. It is regarded as one of the greatest existing examples of Norman work, and has the finest cloisters in England. It is 411 feet long and 191 feet broad at the transepts, and is crowned with a spire second only to that of Salisbury. Near the cathedral are a number of ancient and interesting structures more or less in ruins. Chief of these may be mentioned St. Ethelbert's and the Erpingham Gate, by the west front of the cathedral, the former in Decorated English, the latter in Late Perpendicular, and both are valuable and rich specimens of these styles. It was Sir Thomas Erpingham whom Henry V. in Shakespeare's play addresses as "Good old Knight," and it was he who gave the signal to the English at the Battle of Agincourt, saying, as he threw up his truncheon, "Now, strike!" Norwich occupies a place in history from the time of the earlier Danish invasions. First its castle was erected as a stronghold by the East Anglican kings, and resorted to as a place of safety by the inhabitants, who gave it the name of North-wic, or northern station or town. The bishopric of the East Angles was removed hither in 1094, when the magnificent cathedral was founded. Evelyn in his _Diary_ gives an account of a visit he paid to that famous scholar and physician, Dr. Thomas Browne, author of the _Religio Medici_ and _Vulgar Errors_, then living in Norwich. It is a pleasant picture of the fine old cathedral town which he gives. After seeing all the rare curiosities in Sir Thomas Browne's house, he was shown all the remarkable places of the city, and speaks of the "venerable cathedrall, the stately churches, and the cleannesse of the streetes." [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ NORWICH CATHEDRAL. It was founded in 1094, and is considered one of the finest examples of Norman architecture.] LICHFIELD THE BIRTHPLACE OF DR. JOHNSON =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Lichfield. =Distance from London.=--118 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2 to 3-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 16s. 9d. 10s. 9d. 9s. 8-1/2d. Return 33s. 6d. 21s. 5d. 19s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Swan Hotel," "George Hotel," etc. Lichfield, though an ancient town, has now a modern appearance, but is interesting on account of its beautiful cathedral and its association with Dr. Johnson. The house where the "great lexicographer" was born is still to be seen in the market-place, very little altered from its original condition. Next to this house is the Three Crowns Inn, where Dr. Johnson and Boswell stayed when they visited Lichfield in 1776. Among the few old houses that are remaining are St. John's Hospital, rebuilt in 1495, and the Friary, part of an establishment of Grey Friars, now forming a portion of a private house. Lichfield has been a bishop's see since Anglo-Saxon times, and among its earliest bishops was St. Chad, who advanced Christianity in England. For a short period Lichfield boasted an archbishop, during the reign of Offa, king of Mercia, who persuaded the Pope to grant his kingdom this honour. No trace of any Anglo-Saxon building is left, and of the Norman church that was next erected only the west part of the choir remains. The present cathedral, built in the Early English style of Gothic, was commenced about 1200, and was not finished until 1325, builders being employed all the time. Though numbered among the smaller cathedrals, Lichfield is very beautiful, possessing a great charm in the ruddiness of the stone used in its construction. Its most striking features are the three graceful spires, the sculptured west front, and the large Lady Chapel. Owing, unfortunately, to its being fortified, the cathedral suffered much damage when besieged by the Roundheads during the Civil War. Windows and statues were broken, brass stripped from the tombs, registers burned, but the worst calamity was the destruction of the central tower. After the Restoration the cathedral was carefully repaired, greatly due to the efforts of good Bishop Hacket, who spent his time and money upon the work. The central spire was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL. Showing the richly-sculptured west front, and the central tower rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren.] SHERBORNE AND ITS ABBEY CHURCH =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo, _via_ Salisbury. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Sherborne. =Distance from London.=--118 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/4 to 6 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 19s. 8d. 12s. 4d. 9s. 10d. Return 34s. 6d. 21s. 6d. 19s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Digby Hotel," "Antelope," "Half Moon," etc. Sherborne is full of archaeological interest, for besides its wonderful Abbey Church, it has the ruins of its castle on a rocky height at the east end of the town and a good number of ancient houses. The town itself is situated on the side of a hill sloping down to the Yeo, and has a clean and quaint aspect. About 705, it was chosen as the seat of a bishopric. The see was removed to Old Sarum in 1078, but the castle continued to be used as an episcopal residence until it was besieged by Stephen, when it became Crown property. The Abbey Church of St. Mary the Virgin is Norman in origin, but it has been so rebuilt and remodelled that it is now practically Perpendicular. The whole church, with the exception of the Lady Chapel, was very carefully restored between 1848 and 1851. Adjoining the Abbey Church, at the west end, are the remains of the parochial church of Alhalows, a three-aisled church in Decorated or Early Perpendicular style. The monks and the parishioners had many quarrels, one resulting in a fire which destroyed much of the abbey. The Abbey Church was granted by Henry VIII. to Sir John Horsley, who sold it to the parish for £250. There being no further use for Alhalows Church, it was taken down. The exterior of Sherborne Church has been called unpicturesque, owing to its low central tower and insignificant pinnacles. It is, however, a huge building, and its interior is so richly decorated that it more resembles a cathedral than a parish church. It possesses the finest fan-vault in existence, covered with gilded bosses and heraldic arms. Contrasting with this wonderful richness of decoration are three plain Norman arches. The nave is divided into five bays by panelled arches, the irregular widths of which are due to the fact that the Norman arches are cased in with Perpendicular work. The south transept has a wonderful roof of black Irish oak. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ SHERBORNE ABBEY CHURCH. It contains Norman work and some of the finest fan-vaulting in existence.] NEWARK =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Newark. =Distance from London.=--120 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-1/2 to 3-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 17s. 6d. ... 10s. Return 35s. 0d. ... 20s. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Ram Hotel," "Clinton Arms," "Saracen's Head," "White Hart," "Swan and Salmon," etc. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from Euston, _via_ Market Harboro', L. and N.W. Railway. Train from St. Pancras, Midland Rly. Newark-upon-Trent is believed by some antiquaries to have been built in Roman times; others state its origin to have been Saxon, but the first absolutely certain record of it is in the time of Edward the Confessor. The castle, which was built in the reign of Stephen, stands on the bank of the river, and on that side is still tolerably perfect. Of the interior nothing remains except the foundations of a great hall, probably built in later times than the rest of the fortress. A flight of steps leads from the hall to the crypt beneath, which has loop-holes looking towards the river. The eastern wall has disappeared, but those remaining are fairly intact. The architecture of the castle varies, part being Norman, and other portions dating from before the Parliamentary War. The space enclosed by the castle walls is now used for a bowling-green, and also as a large cattle-market. During King John's reign the castle was besieged by the Barons, and John, coming to relieve them, was taken ill and died there in 1216. During the reign of Henry III. the fortress, which had been taken from the See of Lincoln by Stephen, was restored, and remained ecclesiastical property until the reign of Edward VI. In the time of Charles I. the castle sustained several sieges. It was at Newark that Charles I. was deserted by his nephews Rupert and Maurice, after his defeat at Naseby. The king withdrew to Oxford at the approach of the Scots and Parliamentary armies, and Newark was besieged by the Scots. After the king's surrender in 1646, Newark was delivered up by his orders, and the fortifications, which were 2-1/4 miles long, were destroyed by the Parliamentary troops. Newark Parish Church is built chiefly in the Perpendicular style, but contains some traces of Norman work. In the town there are also the remains of a chapel of an ancient hospital of the Knights Templars, some walls of an Augustine priory, and a Gothic cross. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ NEWARK CASTLE. King John died here, and in the Parliamentary War the castle underwent several sieges.] WELLS AND ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Wells. =Distance from London.=--120-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-3/4 to 5-3/4 hours. =Fares.=--_Via_ Chippenham and Westbury. 1st 2nd 3rd Single 20s. 0d. 12s. 6d. 10s. 0-1/2d. Return 35s. 2d. 22s. 0d. 20s. 0d. _Via_ Yatton-- Single 24s. 8d. 15s. 6d. 12s. 4d. Return 41s. 0d. 27s. 0d. 24s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Swan Hotel," "Mitre Hotel," "Star Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. Wells is essentially an ecclesiastical town. It has no history of its own, no great family has ever lived there, and it has no manufactures,--it has simply grown up round the cathedral. For these reasons the quiet little Somersetshire town has preserved much of its antiquity and fascination. The presence of the natural wells, which still are to be found in the gardens of the Bishop's Palace, probably induced King Ina in 704 to found a college of secular canons. Here a monastery grew, and subsequently became a bishop's see. John de Villula transferred his seat to Bath in (_circa_) 1092, and in 1139 the title was altered to Bishop of Bath and Wells. Wells is one of the smallest of the English cathedrals, and is in many ways the most beautiful. The clear space in front emphasises the glorious way in which the three massive towers harmonise with the ruins of the Bishop's Palace, the remains of the Vicar's Close, and the chapter-house. The present building was commenced in 1121, but Bishop Joceline of Wells (1206-1242) rebuilt it from the middle of the choir to the west end. The Early English work shows considerable differences to that in Salisbury and Ely Cathedrals, being carried out by a local school of masons, who show considerable originality in design. The glory of Wells is centred in its west front. The deep buttresses on the towers cast shadows which only serve to show up the marvellous sculptured figures of saints and kings, which may represent a Te Deum in stone. The inside of the cathedral is remarkable for the inverted arches which were put in the chancel to support the towers. Bishop Beckington built the three arches to the close. A charge of 6d. is made for admission to the choir of the cathedral. [Illustration: _F. Frith & Co._ WELLS CATHEDRAL. Commenced in 1121, but chiefly rebuilt between 1206 and 1242. It is one of the smallest cathedrals in England.] STRATFORD-ON-AVON THE BIRTHPLACE OF SHAKESPEARE =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Stratford-on-Avon. =Distance from London.=--121-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3 to 4-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 16s. 0d. 10s. 6d. 8s. 5d. Return 29s. 3d. 18s. 6d. 16s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Red Horse Hotel," "Shakespeare Hotel," "Golden Lion Hotel," "Red Lion," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. Stratford-on-Avon, a picturesque town situated on the river Avon, in Warwickshire, is visited yearly by thousands of people desirous of seeing the birthplace of William Shakespeare. John Shakespeare, the father of William, bought the two half-timbered houses in Henley Street, where he practised his trade of wool-stapler, and it was in one of these houses that William Shakespeare was born in 1564. These houses are now practically in their original condition, although at one time the wool-shop was turned into an inn. The desk, said to have been used by Shakespeare when at school, is to be seen in the former wool-shop, now converted into a museum. The King Edward VI. Grammar School, to which Shakespeare went, occupies the first floor of the old Guildhall, built in the thirteenth century, but much altered in the fifteenth century. It was in this Guildhall that Shakespeare saw for the first time a theatrical performance given by travelling players. Close to the Guildhall is the site of New Place, which was bought by Shakespeare. Only the foundations of this house remain, as in 1753 the owner, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, being angry at having to pay some rates, was not content with cutting down the famous mulberry tree planted by the poet, but caused the whole house to be razed and the materials sold. The Church of Holy Trinity, most beautifully situated on the river Avon, is cruciform in plan. In the chancel is Shakespeare's grave, with the stone slab having the well-known lines:-- GOOD FREND, FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE, TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE; BLESTE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES, AND CVRST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES. At Shottery, one mile from Stratford, is the half-timbered cottage where Anne Hathaway, the wife of Shakespeare, was born. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON. From the river. In the chancel is Shakespeare's grave.] BURNHAM THORPE, NORFOLK THE BIRTHPLACE OF NELSON =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street or St. Pancras. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Burnham Market (1 mile from Burnham Thorpe). =Distance from London.=--122 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-3/4 and 4-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 19s. 10d. ... 10s. 3d. Return 34s. 0d. ... 20s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Hoste Arms" at Burnham Market. Burnham Thorpe, the native village of the great Admiral Nelson, is within walking distance of either Holkham, Burnham Market, or Wells-next-the-Sea. Horatio Nelson, the fourth son of Edmund and Catherine Nelson, was born on September 29, 1758, at the Parsonage House, which has unfortunately been pulled down. There are, however, many interesting relics of Nelson in the village church, and it is interesting to see the surroundings among which Nelson's childhood was passed. In the parish register may be seen the signature of Nelson as a witness to a marriage in the year 1769, when he was eleven years old. There is a lectern constructed from the wood of the old _Victory_, which was presented by the Lords of the Admiralty in 1881. The old Purbeck marble font in which Horatio was baptized is still to be seen in the church. How much Nelson loved his native village can be understood from his remark as the _Victory_ was going into action, "This is the happiest day of my life; what a happy day, too, for Burnham Thorpe, for it is the day of their fair." Nelson's father was not by any means well off, and the question of providing for his sons was a very serious one. Horatio, however, solved the question as to his own career. At the Grammar School at Norwich, Nelson said to his brother, "Do, William, write to my father and tell him that I should like to go to sea with Uncle Maurice." Captain Maurice Suckling is said to have heard of Horatio's decision with some surprise, for he said, "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action a cannon-ball may knock off his head and provide for him at once." In January 1771, when at school at North Walsham, Nelson heard that he was to join the _Raisonnable_, of 64 guns, at Chatham. He was then only twelve years old. [Illustration: _G.W. Wilson & Co._ BURNHAM THORPE CHURCH. It still contains the old marble font in which Nelson was baptized.] LULWORTH COVE, DORSETSHIRE =How to get there.=--By rail from Waterloo Station. South-Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Wool, 5 miles. (Corfe Castle, Wareham, and Swanage are very convenient, though the drive is a little longer.) =Distance from London.=--126 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/2 to 5-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 21s. 0d. 13s. 2d. 10s. 6d. Return 36s. 9d. 23s. 0d. 21s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Cove Hotel," West Lulworth. "Banke's Arms Hotel" at Corfe Castle. =Alternative Route.=--_Via_ Bournemouth. Train direct from Waterloo. Steamers run once a week or oftener during the summer months (weather permitting) to Swanage and Lulworth Cove. The remarkable cove at West Lulworth consists of a completely circular basin, hollowed out of the bold cliffs of the southern coast-line of Purbeck Island. It is of sufficient depth to allow small ships of from sixty to eighty tons to enter. The narrow opening to the cove is between two bluffs of Portland stone, forming a portion of what was the barrier to the sea in former times. Once, however, did the waves eat through the Portland stone in this place, it was easy work to gradually batter down and wash out, through the narrow opening, a circular bay from the soft strata of Hastings sands lying in the protection of the Portland stone. On the west side of the cove one may notice rocks with such peculiarly contorted strata as those shown in the foreground of the illustration opposite. A most interesting and rugged portion of the coast lies to the west of Lulworth Cove. After leaving the coastguard signal station one reaches Stair Hole, a cavity walled off from the sea by Portland limestone. At high tide, however, the sea enters the chasm through a number of small apertures, and is probably carving out at this spot a circular basin after the manner of Lulworth Cove. Passing Dungy Head and Oswald or Horsewall Bay, with its towering chalk cliffs, one reaches a low promontory known as Tongue Beach. It is formed of layers of limestone tilted into curved or perpendicular positions. Crossing this promontory one enters Durdle Bay, with the Barndoor, an archway 30 feet high, in a massive cliff. At East Lulworth, a little way inland from the cove, stands Lulworth Castle, an imposing-looking building with circular towers at each corner. It was built about three hundred years ago on the site of an earlier castle. [Illustration: LULWORTH COVE FROM THE WEST. The circular basin has been eaten out of the sandy soil after the sea had cut an opening in the Portland stone which forms the actual coast-line at this point.] CORFE CASTLE IN THE ISLE OF PURBECK, DORSETSHIRE =How to get there=.--By rail from Waterloo Station. South-Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Corfe Castle--quite close to the ruins. =Distance from London.=--130 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3 to 5 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 21s. 2d. 13s. 3d. 10s. 7d. Return 37s. 0d. 23s. 3d. 21s. 2d. =Accommodation Obtainable.= "The Banke's Arms Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--_Via_ Bournemouth and steamer to Swanage. Corfe Castle on its great hill, with the little hamlet which goes by the same name which clusters at its foot, is one of the most spectacular of the ruined fortresses to be found in Southern England. At the periods of the year when there are no strangers in the village, the ruins and the village leave an impression on the mind which is not so palpable when there are the distractions caused by other visitors. But even then, the grand view across the wild downs forming the backbone of the island of Purbeck, over which one gazes from the shattered towers and curtain walls, is sufficiently memorable. Its position, commanding the whole Purbeck range of hills, made the spot famous in Saxon days, when it was known as Corfe Gate. Shortly after the days of Alfred the Great the hill was strongly fortified by King Edgar, who made it his residence and probably built the central keep, whose ruins still crown the summit of the hill. Edgar left the castle to his widow Elfrida, whose name has been handed down as the murderer of her stepson Edward--afterwards named Edward the Martyr. He visited Corfe Castle in order to see his brother, but while drinking a goblet of wine in the gateway between the two circular towers shown in the illustration, he was stabbed by command of Elfrida. During the civil war between Stephen and Maud, the fortress defied all attempts to take it by Stephen's adherents; and up to the struggle between Charles I. and his Parliament, when for a space of six weeks Lady Bankes held the castle with a handful of retainers, Corfe Castle has figured prominently in English history. The village is almost entirely composed of cottages whose stone walls and thick slate roofs are beautifully mellowed by the hand of time. Nowhere does there appear anything new to jar with the silver greys and the grey greens of the old cottages, the church, and the castle ruins. A charge of sixpence each person is made for admission to the castle. [Illustration: CORFE CASTLE. Showing on the left the massive round towers flanking the gateway, where, in Saxon times, Edward is said to have been stabbed by command of his stepmother, Elfrida.] LINCOLN AND ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Lincoln. =Distance from London.=--130 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 2-3/4 to 3-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 18s. 10d. ... 10s. 9d. Return 37s. 8d. ... 21s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Great Northern Hotel," and others. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from Marylebone, Great Central Railway. Train from Liverpool Street, Great Eastern Railway. Train from St. Pancras, _via_ Nottingham, Midland Railway. Lincoln stands on a hill surrounded by level country. First a British settlement, it became a Roman colony. In 1074 the decree that all bishoprics should be in fortified places caused the removal of the See of Dorchester to Lincoln. Even at this time Lincoln was an important commercial town. Many parliaments have been held in its chapter-house, and Henry VII. offered his thanksgivings after Bosworth in the cathedral. The mighty fane, with its three massive towers, rises majestically over the red roofs of the town. Its most striking feature is the great Norman screen, running up without buttresses or projections to the parapet and hiding the bases of the square, richly decorated towers of the west front. The plain centre of the screen is the work of Remigius, the first bishop. The rest of it is relieved with rich arcading of Late Norman and Early English periods. The wooden spires which crowned the towers were removed in 1807. In 1192 Hugh of Avalon determined to rebuild the Norman building of Remigius, which an earthquake had shaken. To him we owe the choir and eastern transept. His successors completed the western transept and began the west end of the nave. So much money had to be spent in rebuilding the central tower, which fell in 1239, that the canons could not rebuild the nave entirely, but had to incorporate the Norman end by Remigius. Unfortunately the axis of the west front does not correspond to that of the nave, which is too wide for its height. The low vaulting is a serious defect in the choir built by St. Hugh, but of the superb beauty of the Angel Choir, which encloses his shrine, there can be no doubt. In its richness of sculpture it is one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture in England. The interior of the cathedral is remarkable for the harmony of its style, which is Lancet-Gothic, and the dim lighting of the nave only adds to its impressiveness. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. The original Norman building was built by Remigius, but the structure having been weakened by an earthquake shock, Hugh of Avalon in 1192 built the Choir and Eastern Transept, and his successors finished the work.] SOMERSET, THE BIRTHPLACE OF TENNYSON =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Horncastle (6 miles from Somersby). =Average Time.=--from 3 to 4-1/2 hours. =Distance from London.=--130 miles. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 18s. 4d. ... 10s. 10d. Return 36s. 8d. ... 21s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--No inn at Somersby. Paying guests accommodated at Baumber's Manor House at Somersby. Hotels at Spilsby. On August 6, 1809, Alfred Tennyson was born at the rectory at Somersby. His grandfather, Mr. George Tennyson, M.P., resided at Bayon's Manor, where the family had for a long period been known in Lincolnshire. Alfred was the fourth of the twelve children of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson. Although there seems little reason for not believing that the scenery which surrounded him in his youth impressed itself on his mind, yet it is now stated with authority that the localities associated with his subject poems, "which had been ingeniously identified with real brooks and granges, were wholly imaginary." Those who visit Somersby, therefore, would be wise in avoiding what is pointed out as "Tennyson's Brook," merely gaining instead a general idea of the appearance of the country which impressed itself on the poet's mind. When he was six years old Tennyson was sent to the grammar school at Louth, a town his mother was connected with, her father having been vicar there. After five years at school at Louth, Tennyson returned to Somersby Rectory to be trained by his father. The rectory possessed a good library, and here the poet obtained his extensive knowledge of the English classics. When only twelve years old he wrote an epic of 6000 lines, and two years later a drama in blank verse. Tennyson's early knowledge of the sea was obtained at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast, where the family spent their summer holidays. His father would not allow him to leave Somersby until he could recite from memory the whole of the odes of Horace. In the early part of 1831 he returned to Somersby from Cambridge, and within a few days his father died. The new incumbent, however, allowed the family to continue at the rectory for some years. In 1837 they were finally obliged to leave, and for the next three years they lived at High Beach, Epping Forest. [Illustration: SOMERSBY RECTORY. Where Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809.] GLASTONBURY ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. South-Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Glastonbury and Street. =Distance from London.=--132-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies from 3-1/2 to 5 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 21s. 0d. ... 10s. 6d. Return 36s. 9d. ... 21s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"George Hotel," "Red Lion Hotel," "Crown Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. In the early days of Christianity in Britain this celebrated abbey, according to tradition, was established in A.D. 63. Joseph of Arimathea was supposed to be the founder, and the "miraculous thorn," which flowered on Christmas Day, was believed to be holy by the common people even up to the time of the Puritans. During the wars between Charles I. and his Parliament the thorn was destroyed, but sturdy trees grown from cuttings of the original still flourish in some of the neighbouring gardens. This thorn was believed by the people to be the staff used by Joseph in his journey to Britain from the Holy Land. At one time Glastonbury Abbey covered 60 acres, and was the lengthiest ecclesiastical building in England, but as many of the houses in Glastonbury, and also a causeway across Sedgemoor (where the unhappy Duke of Monmouth was defeated) were constructed of the materials, the ruins are of necessity much diminished. The most interesting remains are the Abbey Church, with St. Joseph's Chapel, St. Mary's Chapel, and the Abbot's Kitchen. St. Joseph's Chapel is supposed to have been erected in the time of Henry II. and Richard I. It is one of the finest specimens in existence of transitional Norman work. It is now roofless, and even the vaulting of the crypt is nearly destroyed. The windows and archways of St. Mary's Chapel are beautiful, although roofless. The Abbot's Kitchen, a square massive structure with strong buttresses, was built about 1450. The roof is of stone and is surmounted by a louvre, through which the smoke escaped during the great culinary preparations in the days of the abbey's prosperity. The gargoyles around the building, representing the heads of sheep and oxen, are suggestive of the purpose of the building. Henry VIII., who coveted the treasures of the abbey, in 1539 summoned Abbot Whiting to surrender, and on his refusal ordered him to be drawn and quartered. This was carried out on Glastonbury Tor. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ GLASTONBURY ABBEY. The doorway of St. Joseph's Chapel.] WALSINGHAM, NORFOLK THE PRIORY OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM =How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street or St. Pancras. Great Eastern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Walsingham. =Distance from London.=--133 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4 and 5-1/2 hours. Quickest train 3 hours 50 minutes. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 19s. 7d. ... 10s. 3d. Return 33s. 3d. ... 20s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Black Lion Hotel," "Abbeygate Temperance Hotel," etc. The ruins of the famous priory are now included in the extensive grounds of Walsingham Abbey, the property of Mr. Henry Lee Warner. Visitors have permission to see these ruins on Wednesdays and Fridays, by application at the lodge of the abbey. Walsingham is a pretty village 5 miles from Wells-on-Sea. It possesses a noble church in the Perpendicular style, an ancient town pump, and two wishing wells, which were formerly believed to possess miraculous powers, for the legend is that they sprang from the ground at command of the Virgin. Walsingham was an important place for many centuries, for it contained the famous shrine of the Virgin, or, as it was called, "Our Lady of Walsingham." This far-famed chapel of the Virgin was founded by Ricoldie, the mother of Geoffrey de Faverches. When Geoffrey set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he granted to God and St. Mary, and to Edwy, his clerk, the chapel which his mother Ricoldie had built at Walsingham, with other possessions, requesting him to found a priory there. It became one of the richest in the world. From the very commencement there was an unceasing flow of pilgrims from all nations to it. Several kings and queens of England, and among them Henry VIII., paid their devotions there. Erasmus, who visited the priory in 1511, derided its enormous wealth. Parts of the road leading to this priory are known to this day as the "Walsingham Way" and the "Palmer's Way." It is said more pilgrims came to Walsingham than to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. The monks taught the people that the "Milky Way" pointed to the shrine. Hence the Norfolk people called it the "Walsingham Way." This shrine was destroyed at the dissolution of monasteries in 1539. [Illustration: _Rev. W. Martin, Walsingham._ EAST WINDOW OF THE PRIORY AT WALSINGHAM.] CHEDDAR CAVES, CHEDDAR, SOMERSET =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Cheddar. =Distance from London.=--134 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-1/4 to 5-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 21s. 4d. 13s. 4d. 10s. 8d. Return 37s. 4d. 23s. 4d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Cliff Hotel," etc. The village of Cheddar, a name which reminds one of the cheese for which the district is famous, is situated under the Mendip Hills, on the Cheddar river, a tributary of the Axe. The place was once a market town of considerable note, as the fine market-cross still testifies, but is now chiefly celebrated as a starting-point for visiting the wonderful natural beauties of the neighbourhood, the tremendous gorge through the Cheddar cliffs and the stalactite caves being the most remarkable. The road from the village rises gradually, passing the masses of rock known as the "Lion," the "Castle Rock," the "Pulpit," and others, named from their wonderful resemblance to the work of human hands. The way winds between steep limestone walls and towering pinnacles, rising here and there to a height of between four and five hundred feet, and absolutely shutting one in from even the merest glimpse of the magnificent scenery in the valley below. There are paths here and there leading up to points of vantage, but the way is difficult and dangerous owing to the manner in which the passes are honeycombed with caverns and fissures. In the midst of the gorge on the right hand of the way lie the entrances to the marvellous stalactite caves, the first of which was discovered in 1837, and the second in comparatively recent times. It is needless to say that the proprietor of each cave affirms his to be the better--as a matter of fact, both are well worth seeing. One looks with something like awe on the fantastic shapes of the stalagmites and stalactites in these huge caverns, where the moisture, percolating through the earth, has been dripping in the darkness for countless centuries, each lime-laden drop lengthening imperceptibly the stalactite overhead and the stalagmite beneath, while the consequent splashings, and, in some parts, more sluggish dripping, make hundreds of quaint and suggestive forms above and below. The caverns are well lit up to display their beauties, and the admission is 2s. for a single visitor, or 1s. each for members of a party. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CHEDDAR CLIFFS. The road leading to the limestone caves.] NEWSTEAD ABBEY THE BIRTHPLACE OF BYRON =How to get there.=--Train from St. Pancras. Change trains at Nottingham. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Newstead. =Distance from London.=--134-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/4 to 4-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 17s. 6d. ... 10s. 9-1/2d. Return 35s. 0d. ... 21s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Station Hotel,"* Newstead. "Swan Hotel,"* Mansfield. "Midland," "White Hart," and "Green Dragon," and others. Near Sherwood Forest, and not far from the town of Mansfield, is Newstead Abbey, the ancestral seat of the Byrons. Founded in 1170 by Henry II. as an expiation for the murder of Thomas à Becket, the abbey, at the dissolution of the monasteries, was given by Henry VIII. to Sir John Byron. The latter made it his home, altering it very little, but allowing the church to fall into ruins. The monks, before leaving their old home, hid the charters in the lectern, which they threw into the lake. About 100 years ago the lectern, still containing the charters, was discovered, and is now being used at Southwell. The "Wicked Lord Byron," the grand-uncle of the poet, allowed the abbey to fall into decay, and to spite his sons cut down a large number of splendid oaks. Byron succeeded to the estate when a mere boy, and loved it so much that, even when in great need of money, he refused to part with it. At last he was obliged to sell the home, which he has so vividly portrayed in verse, to his old school friend Colonel Wildman. After the loss of the abbey, Byron left England, and died six years afterwards, in 1824, at Missolonghi, fighting for the independence of the Greeks. The Abbey Church, though in ruins, is a very good example of Early English work. The abbey itself is full of interesting and historic rooms, one being the bedroom where Charles II. slept, retaining still the state bed, whose coverlet was embroidered by Mary Queen of Scots. Edward I. is known to have stayed in the abbey, and the room which he occupied contains some splendid oak carving. Lord Byron's bedroom is just as he left it, with his college pictures on the walls and the writing-table that he used. Newstead is open to the public on Tuesday and Friday when the family are not in residence. Tickets may be obtained at the two hotels mentioned above which are marked with an asterisk. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ NEWSTEAD ABBEY. It contains Lord Byron's bedroom in exactly the condition he left it in 1818.] THE WESSEX OF THOMAS HARDY'S ROMANCES =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Dorchester. =Distance from London.=--135-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3 to 5-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 22s. 8d. 14s. 2d. 11s. 4d. Return 39s. 8d. 24s. 10d. 22s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Antelope," "King's Arms," and other hotels. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. The centre of the district in the south-west of England which has been labelled with its ancient Saxon name of Wessex, may be found at the old-fashioned town of Dorchester. This is the Mecca of the whole countryside so vividly portrayed in Mr. Hardy's numerous romances dealing with the rustic life of the west country. On market-days, Dorchester is crowded with carriers' vans and innumerable vehicles which have brought in the farmers and their families from remote corners of the surrounding country, and it is then that one is able to select examples of many of the characters created by the novelist. To get at these folk in their homes, one may journey in almost any direction from Dorchester. The streets of Dorchester are suggestive of Mr. Hardy's works at every turn, so much so that the wayfarer may almost feel that he is taking an expurgated part in _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. A large old-fashioned house near St. Peter's Church seems to correspond to Lucetta's residence--High Place Hall. Then, the comfortable bay-windows of the "King's Arms," an old hostelry belonging to coaching days, suggests recollections of Henchard, who dined there on the occasion of the memorable banquet, when he threw down the challenge so quickly taken up by Farfrae. Going up South Street one passes on the right the Grammar School, founded in 1579 by a certain Thomas Hardy, an ancestor of all the Dorset Hardys--Nelson's friend and the Wessex novelist being the most distinguished among them. Mr. Thomas Hardy lives in a new red house known as "Max Gate," which is situated a short distance from Dorchester. Eight miles away from the town is the village of Puddletown, known as "Weatherbury" in _Far from the Madding Crowd_. The church Mr. Hardy describes in his novel can be seen, but Warren's malt-house was destroyed more than twenty years ago. St. Peter's Church, Dorchester, of the Perpendicular period, has a Norman porch and contains two cross-legged recumbent effigies. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ DORCHESTER. The centre of Mr. Thomas Hardy's "Wessex."] TINTERN ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Tintern. =Distance from London.=--145-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-3/4 to 6 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 24s. 6d. 15s. 4d. 12s. 2-1/2d. Return 42s. 9d. 26s. 10d. 24s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Beaufort Arms Hotel," "Royal George Hotel," "Rose and Crown Hotel," at Chepstow, 5-1/2 miles distant by road. Tintern Abbey is situated in a level valley, surrounded on all sides by high green pastures and wooded hills, at the bottom of which the glorious river Wye glides in its circuitous course to the sea. The abbey is said to share with Melrose the distinction of being the most picturesque and beautiful ecclesiastical ruin in Great Britain. When the sun is setting, or better still, under the mystic light of the harvest moon, the picture formed by the roofless abbey in its perfect setting, needs a Wordsworth to do it justice. An abbey for Cistercian monks was established on this spot in 1131 by Walter Fitz-Richard de Clare and dedicated to St. Mary. None of this building remains, as the whole edifice was rebuilt about 1260. The chief part of the ruins, now standing, is the church, though in 1847, when excavations were being carried on in an adjoining orchard, the remains of the Hospitium were discovered. This was an oblong building, supported on pillars, in which it was the custom for the monks to entertain strangers or travellers of their order. In the middle of the nave are the four arches which supported the tower, now mere skeletons, yet sufficiently preserved to show their form. The walls are nearly complete, and many of the columns still stand, as well as the bases of those whioh have fallen. All the pavement has disappeared, and the whole of the former floor is reduced to one level, now carpeted with turf. The church is cruciform in plan and measures 228 feet from east to west. The remains of the dormitory, chapter-house, cloisters, and the refectory, which still has its lectern for the use of the reader during meals, are to be found on the north side of the church. Walking on the walls is forbidden. The vast extent of the ruins of the Hospitium recalls the fact that Tintern Abbey was for a long period distinguished for its luxurious style of living and its great hospitality. When in the neighbourhood of Tintern one should visit Monmouth for its remarkable old bridge with its interesting gatehouse. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ TINTERN ABBEY. The beautiful river Wye is seen flowing just beyond the ruins.] CHESTERFIELD, DERBYSHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Chesterfield. =Distance from London.=--146 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3 to 3-3/4 hrs. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 19s. 2d. ... 12s. 1d. Return 38s. 4d. ... 24s. 2d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Angel Hotel," "Station Hotel," "Midland Hotel," "Hotel Portland," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Marylebone. Great Central Rly. Chesterfield, now the second largest town in its own county, was at the time of the Doomsday survey merely a bailiwick to Newbold, which at the present time has dwindled down to a small hamlet to the west of the parish. In the middle of the thirteenth century a battle was fought here between the Earl of Derby and Prince Henry, nephew of Henry III., in which the Earl was defeated and taken prisoner. It was also the scene of a fierce engagement during the civil wars of Charles I., in which the Earl of Newcastle routed the Parliamentary forces in 1643. The great feature of interest in Chesterfield is the parish church of All Saints, with its extraordinary twisted spire 230 feet in height. This "crooked" spire, which leans over to the south-west, has been the object of much discussion amongst antiquaries, as to whether it was designed in such a fashion, or whether the present state of affairs has been brought about by a warping of the timber frame under the outside covering of lead. The latter seems the more feasible theory. There was a church at Chesterfield in the eleventh century, but the present structure is mainly of the fourteenth century, with later additions. In the interior there are several features of interest, among them being the screen separating the transept from the chancel. This is carved with a set of mysterious figures, supposed to be emblematical of the crucifixion. There are many extremely fine and interesting monuments in the church, especially two belonging to the Foljambe family. At the east end is a very good modern stained-glass window, erected as a memorial to a former vicar, the late Archdeacon Hill. In the neighbourhood of Chesterfield there are a number of interesting places, notably the fine old churches at Old Brampton and Wingerworth, and a small disused chapel with a Norman doorway at Newbold. [Illustration: _G.W. Wilson & Co._ CHESTERFIELD CHURCH. With its strangely-distorted spire, probably due to the unequal shrinking of its timbers.] DUKERIES =How to get there.=--From King's Cross. Great Northern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Worksop Station. =Distance from London.=--146-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--3-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 20s. 1d. ... 12s. 2-1/2d. Return 40s. 2d. ... 24s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Hotel," etc., at Worksop. =Alternative Route.=--From Marylebone or to Dukeries Junction from King's Cross. The district known as the "Dukeries" is undoubtedly the finest portion of what remains of the famous Sherwood Forest associated with Robin Hood and his "merrie men." The name "Dukeries" arises from the fact that within the boundaries of the forest were once the homes of the Dukes of Portland, Newcastle, Norfolk, Leeds, and Kingston. The Dukes of Norfolk and Leeds no longer hold their property, and Earl Manvers, as a representative of the Kingston family, preserves at Thoresby the traditions of his race. At Welbeck the Duke of Portland, and at Clumber the Duke of Newcastle, still keep up their magnificent homes. To the latter noblemen the majority of the "Dukeries" belongs. The drive round this lovely part of the forest is nearly 30 miles, through beautiful scenery. Worksop, with its fine old priory church, is one of the best starting-points for a tour round the Dukeries. Clumber House, the seat of the Duke of Newcastle, is 4 miles from Worksop, and orders to see the interior can be obtained from the Newcastle agent, in Park Street, by writing a day or two beforehand. The mansion, built in 1772, is very magnificent and contains some priceless pictures. Thoresby House, the seat of Earl Manvers, is not far distant from Clumber. The present house, which was designed by Salvin in 1868, is the third home of the Manvers which has occupied this site. Welbeck Abbey, the home of the Duke of Portland, is another of the important seats in the district, standing in the centre of one of the finest parks in the kingdom. The mansion itself is not a showplace, but when the family is not in residence various parts of it are exhibited upon payment of 1s., any weekday except Saturday. An extra shilling will enable the visitor to view the underground apartments. The whole of the "Dukeries" district teems with interesting places, ancient and modern. From Mansfield one may visit Hardwick Hall, Bolsover Castle, and Newstead Abbey, beloved of Byron (see Index), while Belvoir Castle (see Index) and Woolaton Hall are within easy distance. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CLUMBER HOUSE The seat of the Duke of Newcastle. It was built in 1772.] HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE =How to get there.=--Through train from St. Pancras or change at Derby. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Rowsley (1-1/2 miles distant). =Distance from London.=--149-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--4 to 4-1/3 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 19s. 11d. ... 12s. 4-1/2d. Return 39s. 10d. ... 24s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Bakewell--"Rutland Arms Hotel," "Red Lion," "Castle," etc. Haddon Hall, the most perfect of baronial mansions existing in England, is situated in a wonderfully picturesque position on a limestone rock overlooking the river Wye in Derbyshire. The manor was originally given by William the Conqueror to William Peveril, the famous "Peveril of the Peak" of Scott's novel. In the reign of Henry II. the lands reverted to the Crown, and the property was granted to the Avenalls, from whom it passed by marriage to the Vernons, of whom the last, Sir George, known as the "King of the Peak," died in 1567. His daughter, the celebrated Dorothy Vernon, married John Manners, son of the Earl of Rutland, and thus the property passed to the Rutland family, who are still the owners. The mansion is approached by a small bridge crossing the river Wye, whence one enters, under a lofty archway, the first courtyard. In this beautiful quadrangle one of the most interesting features is the chapel at the south-west corner. This chapel, which is one of the oldest portions of the structure, is Norman, with some later work. Almost opposite, on the left, is the magnificent porch and bay-window leading into the great hall. It is exactly as it was in the days of the Vernons, with its dais and table at which the "lord of the feast" sat, its huge fireplace, timber roof, and minstrels' gallery. Adjoining it is the dining-room, a magnificent apartment erected by the "King of the Peak." Here there is a remarkably fine oriel window, richly ornamented with carving. Among other interesting features in the second courtyard are the drawing-room, hung with the original arras, the long gallery, and the ancient state-room, adjoining which is the Peveril Tower, the highest point and oldest portion of the hall. The long gallery, with its stately bay-windows, looks on to the well-known terrace and the magnificent garden, made so familiar by photographs. Haddon Hall may be seen by visitors from nine till dusk, a gratuity being generally given to the attendant. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE BALL-ROOM AT HADDON HALL] THE ISLE OF ATHELNEY, AND SEDGEMOOR THE SCENE OF MONMOUTH'S DEFEAT =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Athelney. =Distance from London.=--150-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-1/2 to 5-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 26s. 8d. 16s. 8d. 13s. 4d. Return 53s. 4d. 33s. 4d. 26s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Railway Hotel." The Isle of Athelney, the hiding-place of Alfred the Great, at the time when the fortunes of England lay trembling in the balance, is a slightly elevated plot of land where the river Parret joins the Tone. In Alfred's days it was a small island surrounded by an impenetrable morass, and thickly grown with alders. Here tradition places the hut in which the king, deep in thought, allowed the good wife's cakes to burn. Soon a little band of faithful followers joined Alfred, and together they built a causeway over the marshes, eventually constructing a fort from which successful sallies were made against the Danes in the vicinity. The rally of the Saxons round their intrepid king resulted in the victory of Ethandune, and out of gratitude for his success, Alfred built on the island an abbey, of which a few relics, including the famous Alfred Jewel, remain to-day. A monument erected by Mr. John Slade marks the spot. A mile to the north is Boroughbridge with its solitary hill, on which many believe that Alfred built his chief fort. The hill is now crowned by the ruins of St. Michael's Church, St. Michael being the saint whose name is associated with most of our hill-top shrines. Ling, the next village, is thought to be a corruption of Atheling. Athelney is on the edge of the flat valley of Sedgemoor, the scene of Monmouth's defeat in 1685. The royal troops were quartered in the villages of Weston Zoyland, Middlezoy, and Chedzoy, their headquarters being Weston Zoyland, round which the battle raged most fiercely. Knowing the carelessness that prevailed in the royal camp, Monmouth attempted a night attack. On Sunday night, July 5, therefore, his troops stole out. But they were foiled and trapped by the broad ditches called "rhines," in which they lost their way in a helpless fashion, and a pistol that went off in the confusion roused the Royalists, with the result that Monmouth's followers were hopelessly routed, a thousand being slain. [Illustration: THE "ISLAND" OF ATHELNEY. The Alfred memorial is in the foreground, and in the distance is the "Mump," the lonely hill surmounted by the ruined church of Boroughbridge.] RAGLAN CASTLE =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Raglan. =Distance from London.=--151-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 26s. 9d. 16s. 9d. 18s. 4-1/2d. Return 46s. 10d. 29s. 4d. 26s. 9d. Fares _via_ Monmouth are slightly cheaper. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Beaufort Arms." Raglan Castle stands on a hill near a tributary of the Usk. It is the most celebrated ruin on the borders of Wales, and is well preserved. There is a six-sided keep with walls 10 feet thick, and a gateway with two ivy-clad towers. It dates probably from Edward IV.'s reign, although some writers give an earlier time. Before its destruction by the Parliamentarians the castle was a magnificent structure. A massive gateway leads to the arched bridge over the moat by which entrance was gained to the castle. The moat, 30 feet broad, surrounded the keep. The great hall had a fine roof of Irish bog oak, and the gallery was of great length. This fortress was garrisoned for Charles I. by the sturdy old Earl of Worcester, who was created a marquess in 1642. He collected an army of 1500 foot-soldiers and 500 horse, which was commanded by his son, the second marquess. After his defeat at Naseby, in July 1645, Charles fled to Raglan and stayed till September. Sir Thomas Fairfax besieged the castle in June 1646, and after a three months' siege the marquess honourably surrendered to the Parliamentary forces. This was the last stronghold in the west to hold out for Charles. The walls of the keep were destroyed, and, in defiance of the terms of surrender, the aged marquess was imprisoned. He died the following year, and was buried in Windsor Castle. The second marquess was a mechanical genius, who invented what was known as a "Water-commanding Engine." He erected an apparatus in the moat which spouted water as high as the top of the castle. This was the first practical attempt to use steam as a mechanical agent. The marquess also used his various mechanical contrivances to terrify a body of villagers who came to search the castle for arms in the cause of the Parliament. When the machines were set agoing the rustics fled, believing lions or some other forms of wild animals were after them. This marquess died in London in 1667, and was buried in Raglan Church. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ RAGLAN CASTLE. It probably dates from the reign of Edward IV.] DOVEDALE =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Thorpe Cloud, at the south end of Dovedale. =Distance from London.=--152 miles. =Average Time.=--About 4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 20s. 6d. ... 12s. 1-1/2d. Return 39s. 10d. ... ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Izaak Walton Hotel," at Ham; "The Peveril Hotel," near Thorpe; "Green Man," "White Hart," etc., at Ashbourne. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway to Ashbourne, thence by coach; or train from King's Cross, Great Northern Railway. Dovedale is the apt name given to the valley of the Dove, a river rising on the borders of Derby and Stafford, near Buxton and Axe Edge Hill, and, after a course of 45 miles, joining the Trent at Newton Solney. The portion of its course chiefly associated with the name begins half a mile from the village of Thorpe, which may be reached from Ashbourne, the nearest station, by coach. From Thorpe the river is approached by a stony declivity on the east of Thorpe Cloud. The footpath is throughout on the Derbyshire side of the stream, and may be reached from the Staffordshire side either by crossing the narrow bridge or some stepping-stones at Thorpe Cloud. For some distance after entering the valley the footpath follows the margin of the river, whose banks are a mass of magnificent foliage, intermixed with a tangle of brambles, honeysuckle, and wild roses. On the Staffordshire bank, a little further up, the foliage suddenly changes to a mass of sheer cliff, changing again to a mass of rifted rocks, divided into curious turret-like terminations. This striking formation is known as Dovedale Church, and is accompanied on the Derbyshire side by a number of rocks which appear from below to terminate in sharp pinnacles, and have been named "Tissington Spires," from the village close by. About 200 yards beyond the "Church," on the Derbyshire bank, is the entrance to Reynard's Cave, a huge cavern with an entrance 40 feet high by 20 wide, from which the view over the dale is superb. Throughout its whole length of nearly 3 miles the Dovedale scenery is the extraordinary mixture of ruggedness and soft beauty, which makes it unequalled, in its particular style, in the kingdom. Dovedale is associated with the name of Izaak Walton and his friend Charles Cotton, the poet. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ TISSINGTON SPIRES, DOVEDALE.] WELLINGTON AND THE WREKIN, SHROPSHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Wellington. =Distance from London.=--152-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-3/4 to 4-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 22s. 8d. 15s. 0d. 12s. 0-1/2d. Return 42s. 2d. 26s. 6d. 24s. 1d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Wrekin Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. To reach the top of the Wrekin from Wellington--a distance of 3 miles--one must follow the main road to Shrewsbury for a mile; then turning to the left, having skirted a ridge of the hills, and following a lane one reaches the foot of the ascent. The Wrekin, although it rises in such a compact and lonely fashion from the level country, is not one single height, but a range consisting of four hills. Those on the north-east are called the Ercall and Lawrence hills, while those on the west are the Wrekin and Primrose hills. The Wrekin is composed of igneous rocks, and is one of the most remarkable examples of eruptive trap in England. Its shoulders are of silurian and carboniferous strata. The sedimentary deposits within the influence of the volcanic action have passed through considerable changes, the sandstone having become granitic quartz rock, chiefly composed of pure white quartz with particles of decomposed felspar. Close to the valleys of Little Wenlock, to the south-east of the Wrekin, are irregularly shaped bosses of basaltic greenstone. The folk-lore concerning the Wrekin is, of course, rich and full of detail. One legend says that two giants set to work to make themselves a citadel, and dug out the earth required for the purpose from the bed of the Severn. The top of the Wrekin is 1335 feet high, and owing to its remarkably isolated position the horizon on a clear day has a circumference of 350 miles. It is not surprising, therefore, that the hill was used as a beacon station in early days. The great sweeping prospect from the summit includes the Malvern Hills, Caradoc and the Brown Clee group, Plinlimmon, Cader Idris, the Brecknock Beacons, Arran Fowdy, and the Berwin chain of mountains, overtopped by the Snowdon range. Wellington is chiefly modern, and its old church was rebuilt in 1789. The chief industry is nail-making. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ THE WREKIN FROM WELLINGTON.] WROXETER AND THE ROMAN CITY OF URICONIUM, SALOP =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Upton Magna _via_ Shrewsbury (Wroxeter lies 2-1/2 miles south of Upton Magna). =Distance from London.=--159 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/4 to 5 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 23s. 10d. 15s. 9d. 12s. 7d. Return 44s. 0d. 27s. 6d. 25s. 2d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Shrewsbury, "Raven Hotel," "Lion Hotel," "George Hotel," etc. The village of Wroxeter would not be of exceptional interest but for the proximity of the site of the Roman city of Uriconium. It is owing to this fact that the churchyard gate is composed of Roman pillars and capitals. A summer-house in an adjoining garden is also made of Roman materials, and the church contains a font in the form of an adapted Roman capital, obtained with the rest from Uriconium. The church is chiefly Norman, but probably a portion of the south wall of the chancel is Saxon. The little village occupies the southern extremity of the Roman city whose circumference measures about 3 miles. One can trace the limits of the place by the indications of the vallum and fosse. There is no doubt that Uriconium was the Romanised capital of the Cornavii, a British tribe, and it is equally well known that the town became the centre of a network of great roads leading in different directions. The walls enclosed an area more than twice the size of Roman London, and one may easily gauge its importance and its princely style of buildings from the traces of its forum and its amphitheatre, as well as from its wide streets. The huge destruction brought about when the city was overwhelmed by the West Saxons left the place a mass of ruins, for there are evident signs that the place was plundered and burned. During the Middle Ages there must have been, however, more than mere rubbish heaps, and the many walls then standing were probably destroyed by monks in order to furnish cheap material for ecclesiastical buildings. There is, notwithstanding this, a great piece of wall 72 feet long by 20 feet high. The other remains consist of a blacksmith's shop and the site of a market-place. A warming apparatus under one of the floors is even more perfect than is usually discovered in Rome. The key of the enclosure containing the chief portion of the remains is obtainable at the neighbouring cottage. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ WROXETER. Remains of the Roman city of Uriconium at Wroxeter. The wall is 20 feet high in places. A warming apparatus in the foundation of one of the houses is more perfect than those usually found in Rome.] BUILDWAS ABBEY, SHROPSHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Buildwas Junction (1/2 mile from Abbey). =Distance from London.=--160 miles. =Average Time.=--4-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 24s. 2d. 16s. 3d. 13s. Return 45s. 6d. 28s. 6d. 26s. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Abbey Inn." The village of Buildwas is situated at the foot of the Wrekin, on the banks of the Severn, half a mile distant from the ruined abbey lying on the south bank of the river. It was one of the oldest Cistercian monasteries in England, and was founded by Roger de Clinton the Crusader Bishop of Chester in 1135, for monks of the Cistercian order. The building, erected on the site of a hermitage, to which an early bishop of Lincoln had retired in the time of King Offa, was destined to become one of the richest establishments in the kingdom. It was partly destroyed in 1536 and the site granted to Edward Grey, Lord Powis, who married Anne, daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Sussex. But though the monastery itself was destroyed, the outer walls of the noble church remain, together with a great portion of the massive central tower, the choir chapels, and the east end, with its delicate lancet-windows. The clerestory, with its Norman windows, is also intact on both sides of the nave, and between the columns are remains of the screen which once shut off the eastern aisle. The door on the south side leading to the dormitories of the monks may still be traced. The ruins of the chapter-house are remarkably fine, and in good preservation, with a beautiful early Gothic groined roof. Beyond the chapter-house are the refectory and kitchen, and on the side next to the river were the cloisters. In the outer court of the abbey stood the lodge, and there was formerly a fine gatehouse, which collapsed in 1828, and is now almost entirely gone. The brook, that once flowed across the abbey court, still works the mill close by; but the fine old bridge over the Severn, built by the monks, was taken down in 1690. A good way of seeing Buildwas is to go there from Shrewsbury by an early train, walking to Leighton and Eaton Constantine, both charming villages, and rejoining the train at Cressage for Shrewsbury. An alternative route is from Shrewsbury to Much Wenlock, where there are the ruins of a fine Abbey. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ BUILDWAS ABBEY. The ruins of the Church. This was one of the oldest Cistercian monasteries in England.] LUDLOW AND ITS CASTLE =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Ludlow. =Distance from London.=--162 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-1/2 to 7 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 24s. 4d. 15s. 6d. 12s. 4-1/2d. Return 43s. 4d. 27s. 2d. 24s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Feathers Hotel," "Angel Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. Beautifully situated in a lovely valley surrounded by wooded hills, Ludlow presents a picture of an ancient but prosperous city. The town is placed at the meeting of two small rivers, the Teme and Corve, which flow into the Severn. On the top of a hill in the western part of the town is the old castle, which was a royal residence from early times. It was built at the time of the Conquest, and was the most important of all the castles that guarded the Welsh border. The eldest son of Edward IV. lived in the castle under the guardianship of his uncle, Lord Rivers, and he was proclaimed king there when only twelve years old. Prince Arthur, the first husband of Katharine of Aragon, and the eldest son of Henry VII., was also brought up and educated in the castle. In the Civil War the Parliamentary troops partially destroyed the castle, but it was not until the reign of George I. that the buildings were unroofed for the sake of their lead. Sir Henry Sidney, the father of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, resided at Ludlow, being President of the Council of Wales. In the Great Hall, now roofless, Milton's masque _Comus_ was performed for the first time, and Samuel Butler is said to have written part of _Hudibras_ in a little room over the entrance gateway. The Parish Church, also situated at the top of the hill, is mainly a fifteenth-century building, although it contains some earlier work. The fine east window, occupying the whole breadth of the chancel, is filled with very old stained glass, depicting the life of St. Lawrence. There is a round church in the castle, said to be one of the earliest circular churches in England. The streets are full of picturesque old houses, the most celebrated being the "Feathers Inn," a beautiful Jacobean house containing a coffee-room which has a most elaborately decorated plaster ceiling and fine oak-panelled walls. The appearance of the room is exceedingly rich. The Grammar School, founded by the Guild of Palmers, claims to be the oldest in England. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ LUDLOW, SHOWING THE PARISH CHURCH.] SHREWSBURY =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Shrewsbury. =Distance from London.=--162-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/4 to 5 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 24s. 4d. 16s. 3d. 13s. Return 45s. 6d. 28s. 6d. 26s. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Raven Hotel," "George Inn," "Lion Inn," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. The ancient city of Shrewsbury, surrounded on three sides by the river Severn, is most beautifully situated on a lofty peninsula. It was a British stronghold before the Conquest, when it was given by William the Conqueror to Roger de Montgomery, who built the castle which stands on the narrow isthmus leading to the town. Henry IV. stayed in the castle in 1403, before the battle with Harry Hotspur, which was fought at Battlefield, about 3 miles from the town. Only the keep of the old Norman castle remains, and that is now used as a modern residence. The quaint streets of Shrewsbury not only retain their old names, such as Wyle Cop and Dogpole, but are filled with half-timbered houses of the fifteenth century. At the old Grammar School, built in 1630, and now converted into a free library and museum, many distinguished scholars have been educated, among them Sir Philip Sidney and Judge Jeffreys. Outside this school is erected a statue to Charles Darwin, a former scholar, who was born in the old suburb of Frankwell. (For Darwin's home at Downe, see Index). The Elizabethan Market House and the Council House, which was visited by both Charles I. and James II. on different occasions, are two of the numerous fascinating old buildings to be seen in Shrewsbury. The Church of St. Mary, founded in Saxon times, is the most important of the many churches of Salop, by which name Shrewsbury is still known. The present building contains examples of almost every period of English architecture. Dr. Burney, the father of Fanny Burney, was baptized in this church. Of Shrewsbury Abbey, which once occupied 10 acres, very little remains, with the exception of the Abbey Church, of which only the nave is left. The west end has a great tower with a beautiful Gothic window. Along the banks of the river is a public park known as the Quarry, which has a wonderful avenue of lime trees, planted in 1719 by one Wright of Bicton, who, with the help of two men, planted them all in one night. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ SHREWSBURY. A group of fine old half-timbered houses.] BUXTON AND THE PEAK DISTRICT =How to get there.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Buxton; then by train to Castleton, by Dore and Chinley Railway. =Distance from London.=--164-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-3/4 to 4-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 21s. 8d. ... 13s. 7d. } To Return 43s. 4d. ... 27s. 2d. } Buxton. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Empire Hotel," "Crescent Hotel," Buxton. "Castle Hotel," "Bull's Head," Castleton. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. The town of Buxton, which is one of the best points from which to visit the beautiful Peak Country, ranks among the best of English inland watering-places, and is the highest town of any importance in the kingdom. The town is divided into two portions, the higher and lower, or old and new, the latter 80 feet lower than the former, being the fashionable modern resort. Here are the celebrated baths, reputed to be a sovereign cure for all rheumatic complaints, and celebrated since the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. The spring which supplies the baths may be considered one of the wonders of the Peak district, for, by means of a cleverly-arranged pump, hot and cold water are obtained within a few inches of each other. The neighbourhood of Buxton abounds in the most wild and romantic scenery--steep rocks, dark chasms, and wooded hills, mixed in delightful confusion. Among the favourite places of resort are Ashwood Dale, with its famous Lover's Leap rock; Shirbrook Dale, with its fissure and cascade; Diamond Hill, so called from the quartz crystals or "Buxton diamonds" found there; Chee Tor, a huge limestone rock 350 feet high, which rises sheer from the bed of the Wye, washing its base; and Axe Edge, 2-1/2 miles from Buxton, rising to a height of 1800 feet above the level of the sea. From this point, in clear weather, a marvellous view is obtained, embracing the mountains of North Wales to the westward and Lincoln Cathedral to the eastward. From the sides of this rock issue four rivers in opposite directions--the Dove and the Wye, ultimately falling into the Humber, and the Dane and the Goyle, tributaries of the Mersey. The view north from Axe Edge extends over countless heights and ridges to The Peak itself, the highest point of all. Another famous resort on account of its remarkable view is the Cat and Fiddle Inn, on the Macclesfield Road, 5 miles from Buxton. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CASTLETON PEAK CAVERN.] TEWKESBURY =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Tewkesbury. =Distance from London.=--171 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-1/2 to 6 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 19s. 3d. ... 9s. 6d. Return 33s. 9d. ... 19s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Swan Hotel," etc. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from Paddington _via_ Gloucester, Great Western Railway. Train from St. Pancras, Midland Railway. Tewkesbury is famous for its magnificent conventual church, for the historic battle fought close to the town, and for the ancient timbered and pargetted houses in the centre of the town and down by the riverside, which rival even Chester. The population of the town is decreasing; it is no longer famous for the mustard which made Shakespeare say, "His wit is thick as Tewkesbury mustard" (_Henry IV._), but it has a considerable local trade in agricultural produce. Situated on the banks of the Avon, near its junction with the Severn, it is almost insulated by these rivers and two tributaries. The old many-arched bridge over the Avon is extremely picturesque. In a county famed for its rich monasteries, Tewkesbury was among the most important. The name is believed to come from Theoc, a Saxon missionary monk, who founded a hermitage here. The abbey was originally a dependency of Cranbourne Abbey in Dorsetshire, but being richly endowed, Tewkesbury became the leading monastic establishment. Fitz-Hamon, Earl of Gloucester, began the rebuilding of the church. The choir was reconstructed in 1350 in Gothic style, but the nave and massive central tower are Norman. The whole building is cruciform, and the choir, having an hexagonal end, is surrounded by an ambulatory and numerous beautiful chapels as in Westminster. The nave is extraordinarily long, and the height of its columns has led to a squat appearance in the triforium, but the choir has short columns and plenty of height in the triforium. The colossal arch over the perpendicular window of the west front forcibly reminds one of Peterborough. The Duke of Clarence and Isabel his duchess, the king-maker's daughter; the Duke of Somerset, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury; Abbot Alear, Becket's friend, are all buried here. There is a fine gatehouse near the west end of the church. At the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, which proved so disastrous to the Lancastrian cause, Prince Edward, Henry III.'s son, was slain while fleeing from the field. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ TEWKESBURY ABBEY. Its chief feature is the huge arch over the west window, just appearing above the trees in the picture.] EXETER AND ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--South-Western Railway, Waterloo Station. =Nearest Station.=--Queen Street, Exeter. =Distance from London.=--171-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/2 to 5-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 28s. 6d. 18s. 0d. 14s. 3-1/2d. Return 50s. 0d. 31s. 6d. 28s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Clarence Hotel," "Rougemont Hotel," "Half Moon Hotel," Pople's "New London Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Great Western Railway, from Paddington Station, London, to St. Davids, Exeter. Exeter, the metropolis of the west, was known as a city even when the Romans came to Britain. There are no important Roman buildings left now, but coins and pottery testify to the Roman occupation. The first actual historic records date from the reign of King Alfred, whose grandson, Athelstane, made Exeter into a strong city, fortifying it with walls. Exeter made a stubborn resistance to William the Conqueror, but when besieged by him was forced to yield. The city suffered siege on two other notable occasions. In the reign of Henry VII., Perkin Warbeck, the pretender, made an attack on the castle, but was defeated. In 1646 the city was blockaded by the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax and compelled to surrender. In the centre of the city is the cathedral, which was commenced in A.D. 1107 by Bishop Warelwast, who built the massive Norman towers. Bishop Quivil, who died in 1292, completely remodelled the cathedral, changing the somewhat heavy Norman structure into the present graceful Gothic one. The successor of Bishop Quivil carried out the plans he left behind him, and the cathedral was finished in 1350, although some minor work remained to be done. Unlike so many of the early cathedrals, Exeter has no central tower, therefore its interior is famous for having the most uninterrupted vista of any cathedral in England, having no tower-piers to hinder the view. One of the most beautiful features is the carved west front. Standing on the highest ground in Exeter, though not now conspicuous, are the ruined walls of the Norman castle, called Rougemont (Red Mount), which obtained its name from the red clay found there. The High Street contains many old and picturesque buildings, the most important of which is the Guildhall, built in the fifteenth century, but altered during the late Renaissance period. Many of the parish churches of Exeter are worthy of note. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE WEST FRONT OF EXETER CATHEDRAL. Exeter has no central tower, but is unique in having one over each transept.] MARKET DRAYTON, SALOP AND THE BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT CLIVE =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Market Drayton. =Distance from London.=--178 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-1/4 to 5-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 24s. 2d. 15s. 5d. 13s. 2d. Return 46s. 0d. 29s. 0d. 26s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Corbet Arms," etc. =Alternative Route.=--None. In the parish of Moreton Say, 3 miles west of Market Drayton, is Styche Hall, the birthplace of Robert Clive. The family of Clive took their name from the little town of Clive in Cheshire, removing to Styche when the heiress of the latter place married James Clive in the reign of Henry VI. Robert Clive, the hero of Plassey, born in 1725, was educated for a few years at Market Drayton before he went to the Merchant Taylors' School. His father not being at all wealthy, Clive accepted a writership in the East India Company and went out to Madras, but soon changed his post for a commission in the army. After a brilliant career in India, which he won for the English, raising them from the position of mere traders to be the rulers of an Eastern Empire, he returned to England in 1767. Worn out by the persecutions of his enemies, he died by his own hand in 1774, when only in his forty-ninth year. "Great in council, great in war, great in his exploits, which were many, and great in his faults, which were few," Sir Charles Wilson says, "Clive will ever be remembered as the man who laid deeply the foundations of our Indian Empire, and who, in a time of national despondency, restored the tarnished honour of the British arms." The parish church of Moreton Say contains Clive's tomb besides other old monuments dating from 1600, though the church itself is chiefly eighteenth-century work. Market Drayton, sometimes thought to be the Roman Mediolanum, still has a few timbered houses, but its church has been much restored. Close to the town, standing on a wooded hill, is Buntingsdale, a stately red brick and stone house built in Georgian times, belonging to the Tayleurs. Situated 2-1/2 miles from Market Drayton is Audley Cross, marking the site of the battle of Blore Heath, fought between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, when many Cheshire gentlemen were slain. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ MARKET DRAYTON FROM THE RIVER. Where Clive was educated before he went to the Merchant Taylors' School.] CHESTER =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Chester. =Distance from London.=--179 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-1/2 to 5-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 27s. 10d. 18s. 8d. 14s. 11d. Return 51s. 9d. 32s. 8d. 29s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Queen's Hotel," "Grosvenor Hotel," "Talbot Hotel," "Blossoms Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. The city of Chester, one of the most picturesque in the kingdom, was known in the Roman era as the "Camp of the Great Legion," and was called by the Romans _Deunana_ or _Deva_, being half surrounded by the Dee. After the Conquest, the city fell to the share of Hugh Lupus, a nephew of William the Conqueror, who was created Earl of Chester, and was the builder of the first castle. His descendants were Earls of Chester until the reign of Henry III., when the earldom was conferred upon Prince Edward, whose son, Edward of Carnarvon, was the first Prince of Wales. The title is still used by the eldest son of the sovereign. The streets of Chester are exceedingly picturesque, Old Bridge Street and Watergate Street being perhaps two of the best examples, abounding as they do in mediaeval timber work and oak carving. But the most remarkable architectural features of the city are the "Rows," which are certainly unique in this country. These Rows, which contain the chief shops, are level with the first floors of the houses; the second floor projects over them, forming a covered way. The streets were cut into the red sandstone by the Romans to a depth of 10 feet, the Rows marking the natural level. The old walls of the city are among the most perfect in the kingdom, and measure nearly 2 miles in circumference, with four gates, one marking each point of the compass. The east gate, showing the termination of the great Roman Watling Street, was rebuilt in 1769. Chester Cathedral, though not of great exterior beauty, should be visited for the sake of its antiquity and its associations. It is said to have been founded by Ethelfleda, the daughter of Alfred the Great, on the site of a nunnery built in 875. The west front, with the Bishop's Palace on its left, is perhaps the best feature of the exterior; while the Bishop's Throne, in the cathedral, is a wonderfully early piece of carving, ornamented with figures of the kings of Mercia. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ONE OF THE MOST PICTURESQUE OF THE ROWS AT CHESTER. The upper floors project over these covered footways.] EXMOOR =How to get there.=--Great Western Railway, Paddington Station. =Nearest Stations.=--Dulverton or Minehead. For both stations change at Taunton. =Distance from London.=--180 miles to Dulverton; 188 miles to Minehead. =Average Time.=--To Dulverton varies between 5 to 6-1/2 hours. To Minehead varies between 5-1/2 to 7 hours. =Fares.=-- Single Return 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Dulverton 30s. 9d. 19s. 3d. 15s. 4-1/2d. 53s. 10d. 33s. 9d. 30s. 9d. Minehead 31s. 4d. 19s. 6d. 15s. 8d. 54s. 10d. 34s. 4d. 31s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Dulverton--"Carnarvon Arms," "Lamb," etc. Minehead--"Métropole," "Beach," "Wellington," "Plume of Feathers," etc. Porlock--"The Ship," etc. Simonsbath--"Exmoor Forest Hotel." Exmoor, like Dartmoor, can be approached from many different places, but to reach some of the finest and most typical stretches of the moor one cannot do better than choose Dulverton or Minehead. Porlock, six or seven miles by road (there is no railway) from Minehead, is a third place admirably suited for getting on to Exmoor; it is the nearest place of any size to Dunkery Beacon, which is the highest shoulder of the moor (1707 feet). The drawing given here shows the valley of the Horner, a small stream rising on the heathery slopes of Dunkery Beacon, which appears in the distance. This valley is one of the most romantic spots on Exmoor. After a long ride or ramble on foot over the open heather, with sweeping views which include Dartmoor, South Wales, the hills around Bath, as well as Brown Willy in Cornwall, one finds the ground falling steeply, and before long one is climbing down a water-worn path among sturdy oaks. The air also becomes full of the music of the rushing Horner below. The stream is eventually discovered boiling over mossy stones in the green shade of the close-growing trees filling the deep valley. The quieter pools are frequently taken advantage of by a hard-pressed stag, for this particular piece of country is frequently hunted over by the Devon and Somerset staghounds, some of the most popular meets of the season being held at Cloutsham farm, on one of the slopes of the Horner valley. The neighbourhood of Dulverton includes some fine bits of river scenery--the Barle, the Haddeo, and the Exe meeting one another in the midst of lovely wooded hills. Many of the villages on the margin of Exmoor are exceedingly pretty. The churches, too, are generally of great interest. [Illustration: ON EXMOOR. Looking up the Horner valley towards Dunkery Beacon, which is shown under shadow.] KNUTSFORD THE HOME OF MRS. GASKELL =How to get there.=--Train from Euston _via_ Crewe. L. and N.W. Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Knutsford. =Distance from London.=--180 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4 to 5-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 24s. 6d. 16s. 6d. 14s. 3-1/2d. Return 49s. 0d. 31s. 6d. 28s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal George Hotel," etc. Knutsford still retains the air of old-world quaintness which Mrs. Gaskell has made so familiar in her delightful _Cranford_. The whole of Knutsford breathes the fresh and bright tidiness one always involuntarily associates with such ladies as "Miss Jenkyns," and every house rejoices in a beautifully neat garden. The Royal George Hotel, in the High Street, is a perfect feast to the eye of panelled wainscotting, oak settles, and Chippendale cabinets. The richness, all over the town, of ancient carvings, staircases, and chimney-pieces, is due to the prosperity which the coach traffic between Liverpool and Manchester brought to the place for many years. Mrs. Gaskell was born in Chelsea in 1810, but her mother dying soon after, she went to live under the care of her mother's sister, who lived at Knutsford in Cheshire. Mrs. Gaskell, as a child, was brought up in a tall red house, standing alone in the midst of peaceful fields and trees, on the Heath, with a wide view reaching to the distant hills. In a green hollow near this house there stand an old forge and mill, the former having existed for more than two hundred years. Mrs. Gaskell had a lonely childhood, occasionally relieved by a visit to her cousins at the old family house of Sandlebridge. This old house is now dismantled, but contains many interesting features. A shuffle-board, or extremely long table, with drawers and cupboards underneath, of which there now exist scarcely any specimens, a cradle of great antiquity, and the fine old wooden chimney-pieces in the front parlour, still remain. A few places in Knutsford claim association with _Cranford_. One house is pointed out as being Miss Matty's tea-shop. The Knutsford ladies still gossip over toasted cheese and bezique. Mrs. Gaskell spent her married life in Manchester, where most of her books were written, but she used often to return and stay with her cousins, from whom she learnt many of the quaint stories still told in Knutsford. [Illustration: _F. Frith & Co._ KNUTSFORD. The village described by Mrs. Gaskell in _Cranford_.] TORR STEPS ON THE BARLE, SOMERSET =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington Station. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Dulverton. =Distance from London.=--180 miles to Dulverton. =Average Time.=--To Dulverton varies between 5 and 6-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 30s. 9d. 19s. 3d. 15s. 4-1/2d. Return 53s. 10d. 33s. 9d. 30s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Dulverton--"Carnarvon Arms," "Lamb," etc. One of the very earliest forms of bridge in England is to be seen on the beautiful river Barle, about 7 miles above Dulverton. Torr Steps (the name is locally pronounced Tarr) are a distinct advance upon stepping-stones, for although the entire bridge is submerged in flood-time, there are, in ordinary conditions, seventeen spans raised clear above the level of the water. The great stones which form the piers support slabs averaging from 6 to 8 feet in length. In the centre these are about 3 feet 6 inches wide, and the piers are supported by sloping stones to resist the force of the current. At the ends of the bridge the slabs are narrower, and are placed in pairs side by side, thus giving the advantage of the greatest weight where the force of the stream is most strongly felt. No traces of cement can be found among the stones, so that the structure has preserved itself purely by the weight of its individual parts. Although it is impossible to make any definite statement as to the date of Torr Steps, it is probable that they were built by the Celtish inhabitants of this part of the west country, the bridge having been on the beaten track between one or two important centres. The size of the stones does not raise any obstacle to this theory, for though of great weight, they are not so unwieldy as the majority of those forming Stonehenge, which is generally accepted as the work of an exceedingly early race of sun-worshipping men. The name "Torr" is possibly derived from the Celtic word "Tochar," a causeway, modified to "Toher" and then to "Torr." The lanes leading from Dulverton to the village of Hawkridge, about 1-1/2 miles from the steps, are exceedingly beautiful, and the whole course of the river Barle is remarkable for the striking charm of its woodland scenery, which is frequently contrasted with the wild moorland commons on the hillsides above. [Illustration: TORR STEPS ON THE RIVER BARLE. An early form of bridge, probably of Celtic origin.] CLEEVE ABBEY, SOMERSET =How to get there.=--From Paddington. Great Western Station. To Washford Station _via_ Taunton. =Nearest Station.=--Washford (2 or 3 minutes' walk). =Distance from London.=--182-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-1/2 to 7 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 30s. 4d. 19s. 0d. 15s. 3d. Return 53s. 0d. 33s. 3d. 30s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Luttrell Arms Hotel," "Dunster," 4-1/2 miles from Washford. "Métropole," "Beach," "Plume of Feathers," etc., at Minehead, 6-1/2 miles from Washford. At Cleeve the Cistercian abbey church has disappeared, save for the bases of the pillars in the nave, but the conventual buildings are some of the most perfect in England, those of Beaulieu in Hampshire and Fountains in Yorkshire being the only ones able to compare with them. One first passes through the magnificent old gatehouse pictured here. Inside is a large grassy space, with the mass of buildings facing one. They are arranged in a quadrangular form, enclosing a grassy cloister garth. On the south side is the refectory, a magnificent hall above some small rooms on the ground floor. It is believed to have been built by Abbot Dovell in the sixteenth century. The roof, of carved walnut, is in a perfect state of preservation. From the refectory one may pass into the Abbots' Lodge, then descending to the cloister garth again, one may penetrate all the different portions of the buildings--the day-room, where the monks did all sorts of work; the dormitory, where they slept; the chapter-house, where they conducted the business of the abbey; the sacristy, the parlour, and other smaller rooms. The buildings are so perfect that it is quite easy to obtain a comprehensive idea of the inner workings of one of these great mediaeval institutions. The monks' day-room is a large building 60 feet long by 22 feet wide. The upper floor, forming one half of the dormitory, has disappeared, but there still remain the bases of the two central pillars which supported the groined roof. The restoration of Cleeve Abbey was carried out several years ago by Mr. G.F. Luttrell of Dunster Castle. Before that time the whole place was used as a farm, and floors of encaustic tiles were buried deep in farm-yard rubbish. There is practically no recorded history of Cleeve Abbey. One shilling is charged for admission for one person, or sixpence each for a party of two or more. [Illustration: THE GATE-HOUSE OF CLEEVE ABBEY. The monastic buildings are all beyond the grassy space inside the gateway.] HAWARDEN =How to get there.=--Train from Euston _via_ Chester. L. and N.W. Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Hawarden. =Distance from London.=--186 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4 to 5 hours. =Fares.=--To Chester-- 1st 2nd 3rd Single 27s. 10d. 18s. 8d. 14s. 11d. Return 51s. 9d. 32s. 8d. 29s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Glynne Arms," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington _via_ Wrexham. Great Western Railway. Hawarden is a small town, about 6-1/2 miles from Chester. The great interest of the place centres in Hawarden Castle, the home, until his death, of the Rt. Hon. W.E. Gladstone. There are really two castles, but little remains of the old one except the large circular keep and part of the banqueting-hall. On the spot previously occupied by the old battlements a modern wall has been built, from which a fine view across the Dee estuary can be obtained. The castle was probably built before the time of Edward I. Here Simon de Montfort surrendered the castle to Llewelyn. After its reversion to the Crown it was again taken by Llewelyn's brother, and it was about this time that the present keep was built. After its dismantling during the Parliamentary War, it was purchased by Serjeant Glynne, in whose family it still remains. Within full view of the old castle, and enclosed by the same park, stands the modern mansion, constructed in the style of a castellated Gothic building of the thirteenth century. It was originally a square brick building, but it has had so many additions, besides being turreted and encased in stone, that it is almost impossible to trace the former structure. The south-east front looks on a gravel walk surrounding some formal flower-beds, which was one of Mr. Gladstone's favourite walks when he was unable to take other exercise. Visitors are not admitted to the modern castle. Euloe Castle, some two or three miles from Hawarden, is said to be connected with the few remains of the old chapel by means of an underground passage. It is a picturesque, ivy-mantled ruin, but little is known of its history. Hawarden Church has a central tower, surmounted by a short spire; it was restored by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1857. A window to the memory of Mr. Gladstone, by the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones, has just been placed in the west end. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ HAWARDEN CASTLE. The home, until his death, of the Rt. Hon. W.E. Gladstone.] YORK MINSTER =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--York. =Distance from London.=--188-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-3/4 to 5 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 27s. ... 15s. 8d. Return 54s. ... 31s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Harker's York Hotel," "Black Swan Hotel," "Station Hotel," etc. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from St. Pancras _via_ Sheffield, Midland Railway. Train from Liverpool Street, Great Eastern Railway. The city of York is one of the most famous and interesting in the kingdom. It was originally the _Eborac_ of the British and the _Eboracum_ of the Romans, who made it an imperial colony, and the capital of _Maxima Caesariensis_. Later the place changed hands many times between Danes and Saxons until the time of William the Conqueror, who built the castle. The whole city was burnt in 1137, with the cathedral and forty churches, and in the Wars of the Roses it was continually the scene of sanguinary conflicts between the rival parties. It has been visited at various times by nearly all our kings, and numerous insurrections have been quelled within its walls. The cathedral--the chief glory of York--dates from Saxon times. The first church was founded by Edwin, the fifth king of Northumbria, but before it was finished he was slain, and the work thenceforward was carried out by his successor Oswald. The present cathedral was mainly built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its chief features are a nave with the most magnificent side-aisles in the kingdom, two transepts, a choir, a lady chapel, a large central tower, two bell towers, and a wonderfully fine chapter-house. During the last century it was twice nearly destroyed by fire, first by the act of a lunatic, and then by the carelessness of a workman. The present structure takes rank with the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in the world. Apart from the minster, the whole city teems with archaeological interest. There are many fine old churches, and much mediaeval architecture, including the gates of the city, which are wonderfully well preserved, one of the best being Micklegate Bar, where Richard Duke of York's head was exhibited. The city walls built by Edward I. still remain in a remarkably good state of preservation. Many of the towers, of which Leland stated there were forty, still exist. [Illustration: BOOTHAM BAR AND YORK MINSTER.] COXWOLD, YORKSHIRE THE HOME OF STERNE =How to get there.=--Great Northern Railway, King's Cross Station. =Nearest Station.=--Easingwold _via_ York and Alne; from thence runs a branch line to Easingwold. =Distance from London.=--199 miles. =Average Time.=--About 5 hours. =Fares.=--No through fares in operation. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--The village inn--"The Fauconberg Arms." The pretty little village of Coxwold, where the Rev. Laurence Sterne wrote _A Sentimental Journey_, lies about 18 miles north of York. The hamlet stands on slightly rising ground. At the bottom of the hill is the village smithy, the well, a farm, and facing a big elm tree is the inn, bearing a great hatchment-like signboard showing the Fauconberg arms and motto. The cottages of the villagers are on the slope of the hill, and at the top is the church to which Sterne was appointed vicar in 1760. Close at hand is the quaint seventeenth-century house he occupied. It is a singularly picturesque little building, with its mossy stone-covered roof, its wide gables, and massive chimney-stacks. Sterne, in his humorous way, called it "Shandy Hall." The stone tablet over the doorway states that Sterne wrote _Tristram Shandy_ and _A Sentimental Journey_ at Shandy Hall; but this is not quite accurate, for he entered upon the incumbency of Coxwold in 1760, whereas two volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ had already been published in 1759. Of his life at Coxwold one gathers that the vicar was more devoted to his books than to his parish. In the intervals of writing and his clerical duties he amused himself with painting, fiddling, dining out and telling stories, at the same time suffering from ill-health and other discomforts. His gift of humour, however, helped him to bear his troubles better than might otherwise have been the case. He was firmly persuaded that "every time a man smiles, but much more so when he laughs, he adds something to the fragment of life." Sterne's study may still be seen. It is a tiny room with a low ceiling, although it undoubtedly possesses the charm of cosiness. On one occasion Sterne writes: "I have a hundred hens and chickens about my yard, and not a parishioner catches a hare or a rabbit or a trout but he brings it as an offering to me." Sterne died in London in 1768 at the age of 55 years. [Illustration: "SHANDY HALL" AT COXWOLD. Where the Rev. Laurence Sterne lived while he was Vicar of Coxwold. Part of _Tristram Shandy_ was written here.] LLANGOLLEN AND VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Llangollen. Valle Crucis Abbey lies 2 miles from Llangollen. =Distance from London.=--203 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 4-1/2 to 7-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 28s. 10d. 19s. 3d. 15s. 4-1/2d. Return 53s. 6d. 33s. 9d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Llangollen--"Hand Hotel," "Royal Hotel," "The Eagle Hotel," etc. The scenery of Llangollen can scarcely be called mountainous, but the little town is situated in the most beautiful part of the hill district of Wales. Its chief charm, in common with all other Welsh villages, is in its contrasts,--deep lanes with fern and flower-clad banks lead you past picturesque cottages and farms, surrounded with low stone walls, half hidden by brilliantly coloured creepers; bold crags, high above the valley, give place to bright green sheep pastures, they in turn changing to thick woods of oak and ash. Llangollen Bridge, across which runs the chief thoroughfare, is one of the so-called "wonders of Wales." It was built in 1346 by John Trevor, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and was the first stone bridge in Wales. It is borne by five stone arches, and beneath them rushes the fine river Dee. The church is dedicated to St. Collen, but is of no particular interest. In the churchyard is a monument to the two fashionable ladies who at an early age tired of the vanities of this world, and lived in complete seclusion at Plas Newydd, a house just beyond the village, famed for its old oak. Valle Crucis Abbey, which can be reached either by walking along the canal from Llangollen, or by train to Berwyn, lies in a beautiful wooded valley surrounded by some of the best scenery in the neighbourhood of Llangollen. A little to the east, a very picturesque view of the ruins, which are the finest of their kind in Wales, may be obtained over a quiet pool of water. The abbey was founded in the thirteenth century by Madoc-ap-Gryffydd Moelor, who was a supporter of Llewelyn in the cause of Welsh independence. The buildings are in Early English style, and some of the finest remains are a circular gable window and three decorated Gothic ones, also part of the west end with dog-tooth moulding, and a piscina and canopy in the south transept. Stretching at right angles from the south side of the church are the old monastic buildings. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY. The ruins of the Church. The monastic buildings are on the south side.] KNARESBOROUGH, DRIPPING WELL =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Knaresborough. =Distance from London.=--204 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5 to 7 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 28s. 5d. ... 17s. 0-1/2d. Return 56s. 10d. ... 34s. 1d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Commercial Hotel," "Crown Hotel," etc. Knaresborough, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is a town of great interest and antiquity, and occupies part of the site of an ancient forest which was 20 miles in length. It was a crown manor before the Conquest, and was given by William the Conqueror to Serlo de Burgh, a Norman baron, by whom the stately castle was first erected. The place was afterwards held by Richard Plantagenet, who founded a priory in the vicinity, Piers Gaveston, and John of Gaunt, and the castle was for some time the place of confinement of Henry II. During the Civil War it was held for the King; but after the battle of Marston Moor it was taken by Fairfax, and dismantled by order of Parliament in 1648. The castle, one of the finest of its kind, is situated in a remarkable position on a lofty rock, and was once practically inaccessible. It was formerly flanked by eleven towers, of which only one remains. The other ruins consist of a small portion of the keep and some very beautiful and elaborate vaulted apartments, in which the murderers of Thomas à Becket took refuge. On the cliffs opposite the castle is the famous Knaresborough "Dripping Well," whose waters have the property of "turning into stone" any articles left for a time under the dripping waters of the well. The water being highly charged with limestone in a state of impervious powder, rapidly encrusts the object until it appears to be made of solid rock, and various specimens of this result may be obtained. About half a mile below the castle are the remains of the priory for brothers of the Holy Trinity, founded by Richard Plantagenet; and further south, hewn out of the solid rock, at a considerable height above the river Nidd, is St. Robert's Chapel, with a fine groined roof. It has an altar on the east side and contains carvings of the Trinity and the Virgin Mary. Knaresborough was at one time a place of fashionable resort on account of the efficacy of its mineral waters, but they have long since been abandoned for those of Harrogate. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE DRIPPING WELL AT KNARESBOROUGH. The water contains limestone, and coats over whatever substance it falls upon.] FOUNTAINS ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross _via_ Leeds. Great Northern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Ripon (2 miles from the Abbey). =Distance from London.=--214 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5 to 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 29s. 9d. ... 17s. 5d. Return 59s. 6d. ... 34s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Ripon--"Black Bull Hotel," "Black Swan Hotel," "Bradford Hotel," etc. Fountains Abbey, about 2 miles south-west from Ripon in Yorkshire, stands in a beautiful wooded valley, through which runs a pretty stream known as the Skell. The abbey is noted for the great extent of its remains, which seem to have escaped any wanton destruction. A fine tower at the north end of the transept still stands, but the central one has fallen into great decay. Besides the church there are many remains of this famous abbey, which at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries was one of the richest in the country. The cloisters, 300 feet long, are unsurpassed in England. They extend across an archway over the stream, and are lit by lancet windows. There are also remains of the chapter-house, the refectory, and the kitchen with its two wide fireplaces. The history of the foundation of Fountains Abbey is of considerable interest. In the twelfth century some monks of the Benedictine monastery of St. Mary at York, being attracted by the sanctity of the inmates of the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, became dissatisfied with their own form of government, and wished to adopt the rules of Rievaulx Abbey and withdraw from their own monastery. This naturally did not please their abbot; but eventually, after appealing to the Archbishop of York, some land in a lonely valley, known as Skell Dale, was granted to them. Here, in the depth of winter, without shelter or means of subsistence, the pious monks suffered great hardship. After a few years Hugh, Dean of York, left all his possessions to the Abbey of Fountains, and after this endowments and benefactions flowed in. In 1140 the abbey was burnt down, but in 1204 the restoration was recommenced, and the foundations of a new church, of which the present ruins are the remains, were laid. The great tower, however, was not completed till the end of the fourteenth century. At the Dissolution Sir Richard Gresham bought the estates, and they are now owned by the descendants of Mr. William Aislabie of Studley Royal. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ FOUNTAINS ABBEY. One of the finest ruined monasteries in England.] RIPON CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross _via_ Leeds. Great Northern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Ripon. =Distance from London.=--214 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5 to 7 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 29s. 9d. ... 17s. 5d. Return 59s. 6d. ... 34s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Black Bull Hotel," "Black Swan Hotel," "Bradford Hotel," etc. Ripon is situated on the little river Ure in a picturesque valley in the west of Yorkshire. Its past history has been eventful enough, for it was burnt by the Danes in the ninth century, destroyed by King Edred, and laid waste by the Conqueror. It recovered quickly from all these adversities, and is now a peaceful town given up to agricultural pursuits. Besides possessing a small but interesting old cathedral and some ancient houses in its town, many places of historic importance lie in its immediate neighbourhood. Fountains Abbey is 3 miles distant (see Index), and also Fountains Hall, a fifteenth-century building. An interesting relic of old times is the blowing of the horn at nine in the evening by a constable outside the mayor's house and at the market-cross. Ripon's minster became a cathedral in 1836. In the seventh century a monastery was established here, and St. Wilfrid, the famous Archbishop of York, built the minster. Of this building only the crypt remains, consisting of a central chamber with niches in the walls, and a window known as "St. Wilfrid's Needle" looking into the passage outside. It is reached by steps and a long passage leading from the nave of the present cathedral. Only the chapter-house and vestry remain of Archbishop Thurstan's Norman church, erected in the place of the Anglo-Saxon one, for Roger, Archbishop of York, pulled it down and began to erect the present building in (_circa_) 1154. Being only a Collegiate Church in those days, it was not built in a cathedral fashion, and it had no aisles to its wide and low-roofed nave. The present aisles were added in the sixteenth century, with the intention of giving a cathedral aspect to the minster church. Much of Roger's work has been altered by subsequent bishops, and the result is a strange succession of styles of architecture. Ripon is the only cathedral that has glass in the triforium of the choir. The exterior, viewed from a distance, is a little squat, for it needs the timber spires that formerly crowned the three towers. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ RIPON CATHEDRAL--THE MINSTER BRIDGE.] DARTMOOR =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Bovey Tracey. =Distance from London.=--215-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6 to 7 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 33s. 0d. 20s. 6d. 16s. 5-1/2d. Return 57s. 9d. 36s. 0d. 32s. 11d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Bovey Tracey--"The Dolphin," "The Railway," "The Moorland" Hotels. =Alternative Route.=--Train to Okehampton from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. Okehampton is 5 miles from Sourton and 10 from Lydford. While only two places are mentioned above as starting-places from which to get at Dartmoor, a dozen others, such as Tavistock and Ashburton, might be mentioned. Bovey Tracey, however, has many advantages, for the moment one alights from the train one sees only four miles distant two of the most rugged tors of the moor--Hey Tor and Rippon Tor--the last with its great logan stone balanced near the summit. A coach from the "Dolphin," which runs three days a week in the season, takes one through scenery which grows more and more desolate and grand as the summit of Hey Tor is approached. From Hey Tor the coach goes on to Buckland Beacon, whence a wide view is obtained, including the shining roofs of Princetown right away in the distance. Princetown, with its convict prison, is considered by the people of the moor to be its most important town. Holne, which is included in some of the coach drives from Bovey Tracey, contains the birthplace of Charles Kingsley. Dartmoor is so huge that one must be born and spend a lifetime in or near it to really know it, and the visitor can merely endeavour to see typical examples of its granite tors, its peaty streams, its great stretches of boulder-strewn heather, and its strangely isolated villages. Eight miles from Bovey Tracey is Widdecombe, the lonely little village possessing a church which is known as "the Cathedral of the Moor." The great tower of the church was struck by lightning one Sunday in October 1638, and a contemporary account can be seen on some panels in the tower. Brent Tor, illustrated opposite, is quite close to the station on the L. and S.W. Railway of that name. The little battlemented church on the summit, which has nave, aisles, and chancel, has a legendary origin and is dedicated to St. Michael. The rock composing the tor is volcanic trap. [Illustration: BRENT TOR, DARTMOOR. The little church standing on Brent Tor is very prominently situated and can be seen for many miles across the moor.] HAWORTH THE HOME OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË =How to get there.=--Train from St. Pancras. Change at Keighley. Midland Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Haworth. =Distance from London.=--216 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-1/2 to 6-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 28s. 7d. ... 16s. 6-1/2d. Return 57s. 2d. ... 33s. 1d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Keighley--"Devonshire Hotel." Haworth is a long straggling village 4 miles from Keighley, a large manufacturing town in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The road is very steep to the village--"four tough, scrambling miles." It consists of one street, so steep that the flagstones with which it is paved are placed end-ways that the horses may not stumble. Past the church and the lonely parsonage are the wide moors, high, wild, and desolate, up above the world, solitary and silent. This gray, sad-looking parsonage, so close to the still sadder churchyard, is a spot of more than ordinary interest, for it was the home of the Brontës--that wonderfully gifted and extraordinary family! Charlotte Brontë shared with her sisters their intense love for the wild, black, purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church which is built at the summit of the one long narrow street. All round the horizon are wave-like hills. _Jane Eyre_, published in 1847, written with extraordinary power and wonderful genius, astonished the entire reading world. Little did any one imagine that the authoress lived far away from the busy haunts of men in a quiet northern parsonage, leading a gentle, sad life; for her two sisters, whom Charlotte loved as her own life, were very delicate, and their one brother, in whom they had placed great hopes, had given way to drink. Charlotte was known to the literary world as Currer Bell, her sisters as Acton and Ellis Bell. After _Jane Eyre_ came _Shirley_, written in a period of great sorrow, for her two loved sisters died within a short space of each other, not long after the death of their unhappy brother, and Charlotte was left alone in the quiet, sad parsonage with only her aged father. _Villette_ was well received. It was her last work. Charlotte Brontë married, in 1854, the Rev. Arthur Nichols, and after a few brief months of happiness passed away on March 31, 1855, at the early age of thirty-nine. Haworth has been much influenced by the growth of Keighley. [Illustration: _W.T. Stead, Heckmondwike._ THE PARSONAGE AT HAWORTH, FROM THE CHURCHYARD. Where Charlotte Brontë and her family lived.] RIEVAULX ABBEY =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Helmsley. =Distance from London.=--219-1/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 3-3/4 to 5 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 31s. 3d. ... 18s. 3-1/2d. Return 62s. 6d. ... 36s. 7d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Black Swan" and "Crown" Hotels at Helmsley. There is no inn at Rievaulx. =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras _via_ Sheffield. Midland. The little village of Rievaulx--the name is Norman-French, but is pronounced Rivers--is situated close to the river Rye, and 2-1/2 miles from Helmsley, on the Thirsk road. The great point of interest in connection with the village is the fact that close by are the ruins of the once magnificent abbey for monks of the Cistercian order, founded by Sir Walter D'Espec in 1131. The founder eventually became a monk at Rievaulx, and at his death was buried there. After the Dissolution the site was granted to the Villiers family, from whom it came to the Duncombes in 1695. The most striking view of the abbey is obtained by leaving the main road and taking the footpath across Duncombe Park, where a sudden turn brings one in sight of a bend in the Rye, with the great roofless church rising on the left bank of the river. The principal remains of the fine old abbey, one of the most beautiful ruins in the kingdom, consist of the choir and transept of the church, and the refectory. The hospitium or guest house was formerly on the right of the lane leading to Helmsley. The great nave of the church is now a shapeless ruin, but from certain indications it may be seen that it was Norman, and probably the work of D'Espec. The lower parts of the transept are Norman, and the remainder Early English. The magnificent tower arch, 75 feet high, is still standing, and one of the most striking views of the ancient fabric is the crumbling nave as it appears framed in this lofty and wonderfully-proportioned opening, with a background of rich English foliage and landscape. West of the nave were the cloisters, of which only a few arches now remain, and opening from their west wall is the fine Early English refectory, with the reading-desk still existing. Underneath the refectory there are the remains of the Norman dormitory. Near the bridge, at the lower end of the village of Rievaulx, a place still called the "Forge," was possibly an ironworks under the superintendence of the monks. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ RIEVAULX ABBEY.] BRIXHAM, DEVON LANDING-PLACE OF WILLIAM III. =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Brixham. =Distance from London.=--222-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-1/4 to 6-3/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 34s. 0d. 21s. 4d. 17s. 0-1/2d. Return 59s. 8d. 37s. 4d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Queen's Hotel," "The Bolton," "The George Hotel," "The Globe," etc. On the southern side of Tor Bay is Brixham, the fishing village selected by William of Orange as a landing-place when in 1688, at the request of the English Parliament, he brought over an army raised in Holland. It was from here, too, that he commenced his victorious march to London with thirteen thousand men--Exeter, Bristol, and other towns throwing open their gates to welcome the Prince of Orange. The French, on the momentous occasion of the visit of Admiral Tourville to the English coast during the reign of James II., found Tor Bay a safe place for their fleet to anchor, and William of Orange, probably having heard of this, chose the same portion of the Devonshire seaboard. The exact spot on which the Dutch prince first placed his foot on shore is marked by a brass footprint, and close by stands the statue of England's third William, overlooking the quaint quay, the brown-sailed fishing-boats, and the old-world village. Brixham is just such another town as Newlyn or Port Isaac, for its streets are narrow and winding, and there are flights of stone steps here and there which add considerably to the picturesqueness of the place. Brixham can easily be visited at the same time as Dartmouth, which is dealt with on another page. Totnes can also be reached by taking the train to Paignton, whence run two omnibuses at various intervals throughout the day. It is a delightful drive, occupying less than an hour. Totnes has a very quaint little main street which rises steeply from the bridge over the Dart. Near the highest portion the roadway is crossed by one of the old gateways of the town. This feature and the many quaint gabled houses give a charm to the place, making it attractive to all who love old architecture. Fragments of the old walls, a second gateway, and the shell of the castle, which is possibly pre-Norman, are also in existence. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ BRIXHAM HARBOUR. Showing the statue of William of Orange on the spot where he landed in 1688.] CONWAY CASTLE =How to get there.=--From Euston Station. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Conway. =Distance from London.=--225 miles. =Average Time.=--6-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 35s. 9d. 20s. 7d. 18s. 8d. Return 65s. 0d. 36s. 6d. 33s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Castle Hotel," "Erskine Arms," "Bridge Hotel," "Harp Hotel," "Aberconway Temperance Hotel" (old house containing coffee-room dated 1400), and others. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington, _via_ Chester. Great Western Railway. The castle at Conway is one of the noblest fortresses in the kingdom, the only one to approach it in size being the famous building at Carnarvon. The present town of Conway has gradually sprung up round the castle, built by Edward I. in 1284 to intimidate the Welsh. It was unsuccessfully besieged by them in 1290. At the commencement of the Parliamentarian War, the castle was garrisoned for the King by Williams, Archbishop of York, but was taken by Mytton in 1646. The building was comparatively unhurt during the war, but the lead and timber were removed at the Restoration by Lord Conway, who dismantled the beautiful fortress in a most barbarous manner, and the edifice was allowed to fall more or less into decay. The castle stands on the verge of a precipitous rock on the south-east of the town, one side bounded by the river, a second by a tidal creek; the other frontages overlook the town. It constitutes part of the walls of Conway, which, with the castle, form the finest examples extant of thirteenth-century military fortification. The castle itself was a perfect specimen of a fortress, with walls of enormous thickness, flanked by eight huge embattled towers. There are some traces still remaining of the royal features of "Queen Eleanor's Oratory." Near the Castle Hotel, in a side street, stands _Plas Mawe_, the "Great House," a rich example of domestic Elizabethan architecture, built in 1585 by Robert Wynn of Gwydir. The rooms contain much oak panelling and carving. A charge of 6d. is made for admission to the house. Conway has a station of its own within the walls of the town, but the visitor will do well to get out at Llandudno Junction, where a walk of a few hundred yards leads to the famous Suspension Bridge, designed by Telford in 1826. The charge for admission to the castle is 3d. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CONWAY CASTLE. It is one of the finest of the ruined castles England possesses. The suspension bridge was designed by Telford in 1826.] THE DOONE VALLEY, EXMOOR ASSOCIATED WITH "LORNA DOONE" =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo _via_ Barnstaple. L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Lynton (about 6 miles distant). =Distance from London.=--225 miles. =Average Time.=--7 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 37s. 10d. 24s. 0d. 18s. 10-1/2d. Return 65s. 6d. 42s. 0d. 37s. 9d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--Lynton--"The Tors Hotel," "Valley of Rocks," "Royal Castle," "Kensington," "Crown," "Globe," etc. Minehead--"Métropole," "Beach," "Plume of Feathers," etc. Porlock--"The Ship," "The Castle," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington to Minehead, Great Western Rly. By coach from Minehead _via_ Porlock, 12 miles. Every one who has read the late Mr. R.D. Blackmore's _Lorna Doone_ has a keen interest in what is frequently called the Doone Country. This comprises the north-west corner of Exmoor, bordering on the boundaries of Devonshire. But those who visit the little village of Oare and Badgworthy Water must not expect to see all that the novelist's imagination conjured up. Nevertheless, though some have been disappointed, there is much to be seen which is of interest. The church at Oare, for instance, is closely associated with John Ridd and Lorna, and the Snowe family, mentioned by the novelist, are commemorated in the church. Then, too, the feats of a "Great John Ridd" are obscurely traditional in the district. The Doone valley, with Badgworthy (pronounced _Badgery_) Water running through it, is about half-an-hour's walk from Malmsmead Bridge, which is close to the village of Oare. Keeping up the course of the stream one reaches a wood of oaks, and near it one finds a tributary of the brook falling down a series of miniature cascades. This is the "water slide" up which Blackmore took his hero on the occasion of his first meeting with Lorna Doone. If one crosses a bridge near this the path will be found to continue for about a mile. At this distance one turns to the right by another stream, and enters a combe containing the ruins of the Doone Houses as they are called. A lonely cottage looks down upon all that is to be seen of the famous stronghold of the Doones. The narrow approach to the place never existed outside the pages of the romance. The scenery of this portion of Exmoor is exceedingly wild. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE DOONE VALLEY, EXMOOR. Associated with Blackmore's _Lorna Doone_.] LLANDOVERY, SOUTH WALES A CENTRE FOR THE FINE SCENERY OF THE DISTRICT =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Llandovery. =Distance from London.=--228 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6-3/4 to 8-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 33s. 11d. 21s. 1d. 16s. 10d. Return 58s. 9d. 37s. 0d. 33s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Castle Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. The town of Llandovery, chiefly interesting by reason of the interesting and picturesque excursions in its vicinity, is situate in the county of Carmarthenshire, 24 miles north-east of Carmarthen. The town stands on the river Bran, near its junction with the Towy, in a beautiful valley, surrounded by wooded hills. Besides these two rivers, some smaller streams join in the neighbourhood, and from this fact comes the name of the place, a corruption of the Welsh _Llan ym Ddy fri_, or Church among the Waters. There are two churches of some interest, the more important being the one in the main street, where the famous Rhys Pritchard was vicar in 1602. The other church stands on higher ground to the north of the town, on the site of the old Roman station. On a grassy knoll, adjoining the Castle Hotel and overlooking the river Bran, are the remains of Llandovery Castle, built about the twelfth century, and dismantled by Cromwell's orders. Llandovery is a good starting-place for the ascent of the Carmarthenshire Van (_i.e._ Beacon), about 13 miles distant, one of the highest peaks in South Wales. The view from the summit of the Van in clear weather is magnificent. Near at hand are the Black Mountains, a rather gloomy sandstone range, and in the distance are the mountains of North Wales, Swansea Bay, and the Devonshire coast. An easy descent may be effected on the south-eastern side of the mountain to Penwyllt station, on the Brecon-Swansea line. Just below this is Craig-y-Nos Castle, the home of Madame Patti-Nicolini. Among other interesting excursions from Llandovery are those to Irecastle, a village in the valley of the Usk; Ystradffyn, near which a splendid panorama of the valley of the Towy is obtained; and Pumpsaint, a romantic village with a gold-mine near at hand. [Illustration: _H.F. Dann._ LLANDOVERY CASTLE. It was built in the twelfth century, and dismantled by Cromwell's orders.] DARTMOUTH, DEVON =How to get there.=--From Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Dartmouth (by steam ferry from Kingswear). =Distance from London.=--229 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-1/2 to 7 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 34s. 6d. 21s. 6d. 17d. 3d. Return 60s. 3d. 37s. 10d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Castle Hotel," "Raleigh Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--None. There is scarcely a more romantic spot in the whole of England than Dartmouth. Spread out on one of the steep slopes of the Dart, it overlooks the deep-set river towards the sea and inland towards Totnes. Steep wooded banks rising out of the water's edge give the windings of the estuary the feeling of solemn mystery which is not obtainable from meadows or ploughlands. In the midst of scenery of this character--and it must have been richer still a few centuries back--the inhabitants of Dartmouth made history. Perhaps the earliest mention of Dartmouth is by Chaucer. Among his Canterbury Pilgrims he says:-- A schipman was ther, wonyng fer by weste; For ought I wost, he was of Dertemouthe. Whether this particular "schipman" was given over to piracy it is not possible to say, but the nature of their splendid harbour, which they protected with a great chain drawn across the narrow outlet to the sea, led the Dartmouth men into a trade which to-day goes by that name. Thus in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and even in more recent times, these lusty sailors gained a livelihood by periodical harryings of the opposite coast of Brittany, suffering in the chances of such warfare the disadvantages of sudden incursions of the Bretons, which, despite the chain and the two little castles at the mouth of the inlet, were sometimes so successful that when the Frenchmen retired there were a good many heaps of smoking ashes where comfortable homes had stood. Despite the varied turns of fortune's wheel, there are still many fine old gabled houses in Dartmouth, with overhanging upper stories rich in carved oak. The church of St. Saviour contains a finely carved pulpit, and is full of indications of the wealth and importance of Dartmouth in the past. Though a chain is no longer used to close the entrance to the Dart, the remains of the two little towers are still to be seen. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ THE BUTTER MARKET AT DARTMOUTH. Although the town possesses many fine old seventeenth-century houses, these in the Butter Market are the finest examples.] RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Richmond. =Distance from London.=--237 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6-1/2 to 9-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 33s. 6d. ... 19s. 9d. Return 67s. 0d. ... 39s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Fleece Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras _via_ Sheffield. Midland Railway. Richmond was a place of considerable importance at the time of the Norman Conquest, when William I. gave the title of Richmond to his kinsman, Alan Rufus, on his obtaining the estates of the Saxon Earl Edwin, which then extended over nearly a third of the North Riding of Yorkshire. When Henry VII., who was Earl of Richmond, came to the throne, these possessions reverted to the Crown, and many years later Charles II. gave the title to the Lennoxes, with whose descendants it still remains. The castle, which is the most striking feature of Richmond, stands on an almost perpendicular rock, 100 feet above the level of the Swale, and in its best days must have been practically impregnable. The structure is now in ruins, though the Norman keep with pinnacled corner towers is still intact, the walls being over 100 feet high and 11 feet thick. At the south-east corner is the ruin of a smaller tower, beneath which is a dungeon 15 feet deep, and at the south-western corner is another lofty tower. The castle originally covered five acres, and from its magnificent position commanded the whole of the surrounding country. The church, standing on the hillside near the castle, is full of interest, and has been admirably restored by Sir Gilbert Scott, who used the old materials as far as possible. The greater part of the choir and the tower are Perpendicular, the rest Decorated, and two of the old Norman piers remain at the west end. The screen and stall work brought from Easby Abbey are of great beauty, and the carvings on the subsellia are quaint and humorous. Besides the castle, there are the remains of a Grey Friars' monastery, founded in 1258 by Ralph Fitz-Randal, and situated at the back of French-gate; and about a mile from the town the ruins of the monastery of St. Martin and the abbey of St. Agatha, on the north bank of the Swale, in the adjoining parish of Easby. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ RICHMOND CASTLE. It stands upon a perpendicular rock one hundred feet above the river Swale.] TINTAGEL =How to get there.=--Train from Waterloo, L. and S.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Camelford. Thence by omnibus to Tintagel (4-1/2 miles distant) twice daily. =Distance from London.=--241 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6-1/2 to 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 41s. 0d. 26s. 3d. 21s. 3d. Return 72s. 2d. 46s. 4d. 42s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"King Arthur's," "Castle Hotel," "Tintagel," etc. Tintagel Castle is situated near Bossiney, a place of some importance in bygone times, to judge from the number of ruins of houses to be seen there. Situated as the castle is, high up on a mass of dark, slaty rock in one of the wildest parts of the coast of Northern Cornwall, it is a suitable spot to be the legendary birthplace of King Arthur. The formation of the rocky ground is very interesting. Tintagel itself is almost an island, but a low isthmus connects it with the mainland. On both sides of the chasm are the ruins of the castle, and wide as the gap is, the buildings on the mainland and on the rock are in an exact line, and present the same characteristic features, thus showing that there has probably been a considerable subsidence of the land at that point. The castle must have been almost inaccessible. In the time of Leland a chapel occupied part of the keep. Some doubt is entertained as to the date of the building of the castle, opinion being divided between a Norman, a Saxon, or a Roman origin. The remains of a British or Saxon church are to be found on the summit of the island. The church is supposed to have belonged to the abbey and convent of Fontevrault, in Normandy. It was afterwards given by Edward IV. to the Collegiate Church of Windsor, the dean and the chapter being the patrons. Parts of the church of Tintagel have recently been restored by the vicar of the parish. About 3 miles from Tintagel is the Slaughter Bridge, which derives its names from the two great battles which were fought there, one between King Arthur and his nephew, who died in 542, when Arthur was said to have been mortally wounded, and the other between the Britons and Saxons in 823. Other ancient relics in the form of barrows and stone crosses are to be found in this neighbourhood. For Stonehenge and other prehistoric remains, see Index. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ KING ARTHUR'S CASTLE, TINTAGEL. One of the wildest spots on the north coast of Cornwall.] WHITBY =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Whitby. =Distance from London.=--244-3/4 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6-1/2 to 7-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 34s. 6d. ... 20s. 4d. Return 69s. 0d. ... 40s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Hotel," "Crown Hotel," "Métropole Hotel," etc. Whitby is renowned for its ancient abbey and its beautiful situation on the high and rocky coast of Yorkshire, just where the river Esk finds a way to the sea. The Esk cuts the town into two portions. East Cliff is on the one side, with its hoary abbey and quaint parish church on its summit, towering over the old fishing hamlet which clusters so picturesquely at its base. West Cliff is on the other side, a modern, fashionable seaside resort. Close by are the heather-clad moors with their keen, invigorating air. From the bottom of East Cliff one ascends by 199 steps to the abbey, which was founded in (_circa_) 658. Its first abbess was the saintly Lady Hilda. During her rule, the poor cowherd, Caedmon, sleeping among the cattle, being ashamed that he could not take harp and sing among the rest, had his wonderful dream. An angel appeared to him and told him to sing the Beginning of the Creation. Immediately the cowherd went to the Abbess Hilda and sang his song. He became our first English poet. In 870 the abbey and town were destroyed by the Danes. The ecclesiastical buildings were deserted for two hundred years, but the town was rebuilt and prospered. The foundations of the present buildings were laid in 1220, and the abbey flourished till the Dissolution, when it was despoiled. Even in its ruinous condition it is a marvellous specimen of Gothic architecture. The choir, with its north aisle and transept, parts of the north aisle, and the west front are standing. The Parish Church of St. Mary is worth a visit because of its extreme age (it dates from Norman times) and its quaint ugliness. Whitby built the ship in which Captain Cook sailed round the world. The house where he served his apprenticeship to a shipbuilder is in Grape Lane. The jet works are only carried on to a limited extent. In the Scaur, below East Cliff, ammonites are to be found. A charge of threepence is made for admission to the abbey. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ WHITBY. The old town from across the harbour.] CARNARVON CASTLE =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Carnarvon. =Distance from London.=--246 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 7 and 9-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 39s. 11d. 22s. 9d. 20s. 7-1/2d. Return 72s. 0d. 38s. 6d. 35s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Hotel," "Royal Sportsman Hotel," "Castle Hotel," "Queen's Hotel," "Prince of Wales Hotel," "Arvonia Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--From Paddington _via_ Chester, 282 miles. Fares as from Euston. The town of Carnarvon is situated on the east side of the Menai Straits, close by the side of the Roman station of _Segontium_, which was connected with Chester by Watling Street. There is said to have been a fortress here shortly after the Conquest, but the real beginning of the importance of Carnarvon was the erection of the magnificent castle there by Edward I., immediately after his conquest of the principality. The work was commenced in 1283, and occupied more than ten years. In 1284, the birth of Edward II., the first Prince of Wales, took place at Carnarvon. During the Civil War the castle changed hands several times; at length, in 1646, it was taken and held by the Parliamentary forces under General Mytton. Portions of the old Roman wall of the city still exist, and numerous interesting relics have been found. Traces of the old Roman forts or outposts are also to be seen. The remains of the castle are very extensive, covering nearly three acres. The outer walls, from 8 to 10 feet thick, are nearly perfect, and have thirteen towers, with turrets of five, six, or eight sides. The five-sided Eagle Tower is one of the loftiest, and takes its name from the finely sculptured figure of an eagle which surmounts it. This tower is entered by the Water Gate. The other entrances to the castle are by a gateway on the north side, under a tower bearing a statue of Edward I., and by Queen Eleanor's Gate, which looks northward and is defended by four portcullises. The enclosure originally formed two courts, and though the interior buildings are in a very decayed state, the outer walls have been preserved to a great extent by judicious restoration. Thus Carnarvon Castle is a prominent feature in the general aspect of the town, and shares with the magnificent remains at Conway the honour of being one of the two finest castles in the kingdom. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CARNARVON CASTLE. The birth of Edward II., the first Prince of Wales, took place here.] PLYMOUTH =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Plymouth (North Road Station). =Distance from London.=--246 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-1/4 to 6-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 37s. 4d. 23s. 4d. 18s. 8d. Return 65s. 4d. 40s. 10d. 37s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Hotel," "Central Hotel," "Chubb's Hotel," "Grand Hotel," "The Lockyer Hotel," "Duke of Cornwall Hotel," "Mount Pleasant Hotel," "Great Western Hotel," "Westminster Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Waterloo. L. and S.W. Railway. Down by Sutton Pool is the portion of the quay known as the Barbican, famous as the spot from which the _Mayflower_ cast off her moorings and commenced her momentous voyage across the Atlantic. The place is marked by a stone inserted among the granite sets, bearing the inscription "_Mayflower_ 1620." The Pilgrim Fathers had started from Delfshaven, in Holland, in July, and after coming to Southampton, started their voyage in the _Mayflower_ and _Speedwell_. The _Speedwell_, however, proved unseaworthy, and both ships were obliged to put into Dartmouth, where the _Speedwell_ underwent repairs. When they started again, however, it became evident that the _Speedwell_ would not be able to stand the long Atlantic voyage, so once more the Puritans put back to the shelter of a port--this time Plymouth--and there abandoned the _Speedwell_. On 6th September 1620 (old style) they finally started, having reduced their numbers to 101 persons--48 men, the rest women and children. After sailing for sixty days they reached the coast of America, but it was a portion of the coast not covered by the charter of the Company, whose assistance they had sought; they thereupon declared their intention to "plant this colony for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith." The spot where they landed they named Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Hoe, with a magnificent view down Plymouth Sound and its associations with Drake's game of bowls during the approach of the Spanish Armada, is one of the chief glories of Plymouth. The view includes Mount Edgcumbe Castle, the breakwater built across the mouth of the harbour and Drake's Island. The Hamoaze--the estuary of the Tamar--is always full of the activity of England's great naval port. [Illustration: THE BARBICAN AT PLYMOUTH. From this quay the _Mayflower_ finally left England for her long voyage across the Atlantic.] DURHAM AND ITS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Durham. =Distance from London.=--256 miles. =Average Time.=--6-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 35s. 10d. ... 21s. 2d. Return 71s. 8d. ... 42s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal County Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. For the magnificent position it occupies, Durham Cathedral is without a rival in this country; and even if one includes the Continent, the cathedral of Albi in France will alone bear comparison in respect to its position. Overlooking the Wear from a considerable height appear the two massive western towers and the magnificent central tower of the cathedral, and when these and the masses of foliage beneath them are reflected on the calm surface of the river, the scene is one of rare and astonishing beauty. The origin of the cathedral and city of Durham may be directly traced to the desire on the part of Bishop Eardulph and his monks to erect some building in which to place the coffin containing the body of St. Cuthbert. They had travelled with their sacred charge for seven years, and at the end of that time, in 997, having reached the rocky plateau overlooking the river Wear, they decided to build a chapel there. Bishop Aldhun went further, and by 999 he had finished a large building known as the "White Church." Of this, however, there are no authentic remains; for in 1081, William of St. Carileph had been appointed bishop, and after he had remained in exile in Normandy for some years he returned to Durham fired with the desire to build a cathedral on the lines of some of the great structures then appearing in France. In 1093, therefore, the foundations of the new church were laid, and the present building from that day forward began to appear. Only the walls of the choir, part of the transepts, and the tower arches had been constructed at the time of Carileph's death in 1096, but the work went on under Ralph Flambard, and when he too was gathered to his fathers, the aisles were finished and the nave also, excepting its roof. Flambard also saw the two western towers finished as high as the roof of the nave. The beautiful transitional Norman Galilee Chapel at the west end was built prior to 1195 by Hugh Pudsey. This narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of Wyatt, who in 1796 pulled down the splendid Norman chapter-house. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ DURHAM CATHEDRAL. It has the finest situation of any English cathedral.] RABY CASTLE, DURHAM =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Durham. (Raby Castle is close to the town of Staindrop.) =Distance from London.=--256 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-3/4 to 7-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 35s. 10d. ... 21s. 2d. Return 71s. 8d. ... 42s. 4d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Durham--"Rose and Crown Hotel," "Royal County Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. Raby Castle, the ancestral home of the Nevilles and an almost perfect specimen of a fourteenth-century castle, is situated close to the little town of Staindrop in the county of Durham. Canute, the Danish king, is said to have had a house in Staindrop; and it was he who presented Raby Castle to the shrine of St. Cuthbert. The castle passed from the possession of the monks in 1131, when they granted it to Dolphin, who belonged to the royal family of Northumberland, for the yearly rental of £4. Dominus de Raby, a descendant of Dolphin, married Isabel Neville, the heiress of the Saxon house of Balmer, and their son, Geoffrey, took the surname of Neville. The present castle was built by John, Lord Neville, about the year 1379, when he had permission to fortify. There is very little history attaching to the fortress, for, with the exception of two insignificant attacks during the Civil War, it sustained no sieges. It belonged to the Nevilles until 1570, when Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland, lost the castle, together with all his estates, for the share which he took in the rising in the North for the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion in England. Not being situated on high ground, the chief defence of Raby Castle, apart from the strength of its walls, must have been the abundance of water which completely surrounded it. The chapel is the oldest portion; but the castle was almost entirely built in one man's lifetime, and bears scarcely any traces of earlier or later work. The interior, however, has been much altered by modern architects, who have obliterated a great portion of John Neville's work. The Baron's Hall used to be a fine room, with beautiful windows, an oak roof, and a stone music-gallery. The kitchen, which occupies the whole interior of a large tower, is one of the most interesting and perfect features of the castle, though it has no longer the original fireplaces. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ RABY CASTLE. Built by John, Lord Neville, about the year 1379.] SNOWDON =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Llanberis (5 miles distant). This is the easiest of the ascents by a well-marked path. =Distance from London.=--257 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6-1/2 to 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 41s. 6d. 23s. 7d. 21s. 4-1/2d. Return 74s. 9d. 40s. 9d. 37s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Royal Victoria Hotel," Llanberis. "Castle Hotel," "Snowdon Valley," "Dolbadarn," "Padarn Villa." Snowdon Summit Hotel is 3560 feet above the sea. Snowdon is the name not only of the highest mountain in Wales, but it is itself a mountain range, broken up by valleys and river courses into four mountain groups of which Moel-y-Wyddfa is the central and highest one. The best spot from which a good view of the whole group can be seen is Capel Curig. The Llanberis ascent to Snowdon is the easiest, but not so interesting as the other routes. From Capel Curig the ascent is the steepest and finest, and is unsurpassed for grandeur of scenery. In respect of foreground Snowdon is not so fine as Cader Idris, and the mountains of Scotland and the English lake district. There is an absence of rich valley scenery in the mid-distance, which the Scottish mountains possess and which so adds to the beauty of the Cumberland and Westmorland mountains. But the glory of Snowdon is that it commands such an extended view of other mountain peaks and ridges. It well repays the holiday-maker to spend a night on the summit of Snowdon to see the grand panorama which gradually unfolds itself as the sunrise dispels the mist--sea, lakes, and mountain ridges standing out by degrees in the clear morning light. Naturally the view is dependent on atmospheric conditions for its extent. On a clear day one sees the coast-line from Rhyl to the furthest extremity of Cardigan Bay, also the southern part of the Menai Straits, nearly all the Isle of Anglesey, and part of the Tubular Bridge. One of the mountain lakes is Llyn Llydaw, a fine sheet of water 1500 feet above the sea, and surrounded except on one side by the precipitous arms of Snowdon, and there are also the Capel Curig lakes. Snowdon is 3571 feet in height. All the ascents are free from danger. From Llanberis there is a pony-track all the way to the top, but it is not the most interesting of the various routes. The new mountain railway follows fairly closely the pathway leading from Llanberis. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ SNOWDON. It is 3571 feet to the summit.] HARLECH CASTLE =How to get there.=--L. and N.W. Railway from Euston. =Nearest Station.=--Harlech. =Distance from London.=--259 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 8-1/4 and 12-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 37s. 10d. 24s. 0d. 20s. 4d. Return 70s. 3d. 43s. 10d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Castle Hotel," "Lion," "Belle Vue," "Cambrian" (Temperance), etc. Harlech Castle is about 10 miles from the pleasant town of Barmouth in North Wales. The name implies "on the rock," and every year it is a great attraction to the many visitors to Wales, because of the fine mountain and sea view obtained from this commanding height. Like many other Welsh castles it owes its origin to Edward I. after his conquest of Wales. Owen Glyndwr or Glendower, a Welsh prince and a descendant of Llewelyn, had rebelled against Henry IV. in consequence of repeated injustice done to him by Lord Grey de Ruthin, who had appropriated his estates. As Owen could obtain no redress from the king he took his cause into his own hands, and in 1404 seized the important stronghold of Harlech Castle. Four years later it was retaken by the royal forces. At first Owen Glendower was successful, but eventually he had to flee to the mountains. During the Wars of the Roses, when the Duke of York defeated Henry VI., Queen Margaret fled to Harlech Castle, but after a lengthened siege in 1468, the defenders had to yield to the victorious forces of the "White Rose." It is said that this siege gave rise to the favourite Welsh air known as the "March of the Men of Harlech." The castle stands high, is square, with a round tower at each corner, and gives one the impression of massive proportions and enormous strength. The main entrance to the inner ward is between two huge round towers, and the passage was defended at one end by two, and at the inner extremity by a third, portcullis. The ascent to the top of the walls is made by a stair from the courtyard. There is a well-protected walk on the battlements. The view from the castle is magnificent and extensive, and should the day be fine it is one vast panorama of mountain, sea, and coast-line--a sight not easily forgotten. Across the bay, 7 miles off, can be seen the equally ancient castle of Criccieth, although its ruins cannot compare to Harlech. On the other side is a glorious range of heights culminating in Snowdon, while to the left are the graceful Rivals, mountain heights which should not be missed. [Illustration: HARLECH CASTLE.] GRASMERE AND RYDAL MOUNT THE HOMES OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Ambleside (4 miles from Grasmere). =Distance from London.=--260 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6 to 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 39s. 0d. 25s. 2d. 23s. Return 76s. 4d. 49s. 4d. 45s. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Prince of Wales Hotel," on lake, 1/2 mile from village. "Rothay Hotel," near church. "Red Lion Hotel," "Mossgrove" (Temperance), "Grasmere Hotel" (Temperance), all in village. No inn at Rydal village. =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. Grasmere is the name of a village and lake in Westmorland, about 3 miles north-west of Ambleside. The lovely village, beautifully situated at the head of the lake, has an old church containing the grave of Wordsworth. Wordsworth's cottage (a charge of 6d. is made for admission) is only half a mile from the church. It is restored, as far as possible, to its condition in Wordsworth's day, and contains a number of relics of the poet's family. The lake, a mile in length, and surrounded by mountains, forms one of the most beautiful scenes in England. Wordsworth afterwards removed to Rydal Mount (two or three miles off), which place remains especially associated with his memory. It is a somewhat remarkable fact that this quiet and thoughtful interpreter of nature was in the early years of his life, while going on a pedestrian tour through France, thrust into the early fervours of its great Revolution. Wordsworth's sympathy with the aims of the Gironde party might have cost him his life, for many of his friends in Paris suffered death, but happily circumstances caused him to return to England. It was his noble sister Dorothy, his constant and devoted companion, who met him on his return from Paris, broken-hearted, and induced him to return to nature. Wordsworth's poetry was not appreciated for a considerable time, but he calmly wrote on, undismayed by the ridicule poured forth on the "Lake School of Poets," which included Coleridge and Southey, and gradually his calm and dignified descriptions of nature asserted their rightful influence. After publishing his greatest poem, _The Excursion_, the tide of generous appreciation set in. In 1843, Wordsworth was made Poet Laureate. His pure and fervent poetry was a protest against the diseased sentimentality of the age. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ RYDAL WATER.] THE LAKE DISTRICT =How to get there.=--Train to Ambleside from Euston. London and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Ambleside (for visiting Coniston, Grasmere, Hawkshead, Patterdale, and Windermere). =Distance from London.=--260 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6 to 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 39s. 0d. 25s. 2d. 23s. 0d. Return 76s. 4d. 49s. 4d. 45s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Ambleside--"Queen's Hotel," "White Lion Hotel," "Royal Oak Inn," "Robinson's Temperance Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. Ambleside, situated in the very centre of the Lake District, is by many regarded as the most tempting spot in the whole region. It is a long and straggling town of about 2000 inhabitants. The old church stands up the hill, in the more picturesque part of the town. The old ceremony of "rush-bearing," dating from the time of Gregory IV., is still, in a modified form, an annual function in Ambleside, which, with one or two Westmorland villages, can claim the custom as unique. About a mile south from Ambleside is the northern extremity of Lake Windermere, 10-1/2 miles long, and varying in breadth from a mile in the widest part to a few hundred yards in the narrowest. The surrounding scenery is magnificent, of a soft and graceful beauty, which forms a wonderful contrast to the wild and sublime grandeur of other parts of the Lake District. There are a number of beautiful islands in the lake, which is very plentifully stocked with fish. The little lake at Grasmere, a village to the north of Ambleside, is one of the gems of the Lakeland scenery; indeed, Grasmere is an excellent centre from which to visit some of the points of interest in the district. Wordsworth's cottage stands half a mile outside the village. Within easy reach of Ambleside are Coniston village and lake, upon which a little steamer plies. Near the head of the lake is Coniston Hall, now a farmhouse, but for long the seat of the Le Flemings, a well-known Westmorland family. Among the numerous other places of interest near Ambleside are Hawkshead, the scene of Wordsworth's school life, and a most charmingly picturesque village; Patterdale and the surrounding district; Langdale Pikes, Shap Fells, and Stockgill Force, a fine waterfall 150 feet high. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ WINDERMERE. It is ten and a half miles in length, and is surrounded by the most beautiful wooded scenery.] ST. DAVIDS CATHEDRAL =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Haverfordwest (16 miles from St. Davids), thence by coach to St. Davids, past Roch Castle. =Distance from London.=--To Haverfordwest, 261 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6-1/2 to 9 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 42s. 0d. 26s. 3d. 21s. 0d. Return 72s. 3d. 46s. 0d. 42s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Grove Hotel," "City Hotel," etc. St. Davids, the most western town in Wales, is situated on the little river Alan, a mile from its mouth, near St. Davids Head, on the north side of St. Brides Bay. The place is now little more than a village, though in the Middle Ages it was a large city, the great resort of pilgrims to St. David's shrine. The city, which was the =Menevia= of the Romans, is almost as isolated now as it was in their days, the only available communication being by the daily mail-cart from Haverfordwest, and an omnibus twice a week during the season. The modern "city" of St. Davids is a mere village, consisting of one principal street and two at right angles, with a fine old cross at their junction, but the chief attractions are its grand old cathedral and the ruins of its once famous Episcopal palace. The cathedral, originally built in 1176, is curiously situated in a deep dell, so that only the upper part of the lofty tower is visible from the village, and the close is entered by descending thirty-nine steps, locally known as the thirty-nine articles. The entrance to the close is through a fine old tower-gateway, 60 feet high, where the records were formerly kept and a consistory court held. The west front of the cathedral, which has been well restored, is one of the finest features of the building. Among the more interesting objects in the cathedral are Bishop Morgan's throne, of remarkable workmanship; the fine rood screen, the work of Bishop Gower; Bishop Vaughan's beautiful Tudor chapel and monument; and the shrine of St. David. The Bishop's Palace, on the opposite bank of the river, was one of the finest in the kingdom. It was founded by Bishop Gower in the fourteenth century, and, together with the cathedral, St. Mary's College, and other ecclesiastical buildings, was enclosed by a lofty wall having four gateways, of which only one remains. In mediaeval days the shrine of St. David was regarded with great veneration, and was visited by William the Conqueror, Henry II., and by Edward I. and his queen. [Illustration: _G.W. Wilson & Co._ ST. DAVIDS CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] FURNESS ABBEY, LANCASHIRE =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Furness Abbey. =Distance from London.=--262 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6 and 7-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 38s. 2d. ... 21s. 9d Return 75s. 4d (available for one month). =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Furness Abbey Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. In the days of its prosperity Furness must have been one of the most important monastic establishments in the kingdom, although its completeness did not come about until many years after the date of its foundation in 1127 by Stephen, at that time Earl of Mortain and Boulogne. The situation chosen was on the banks of a stream flowing through a narrow fertile valley--the favourite position for Cistercian abbeys. The monks came originally from Savigny in Normandy. Having become very richly endowed, the foundation of the abbey was confirmed by the charters of twelve successive sovereigns and the bulls of various popes. Remarkable privileges were given to the abbot, who had great authority in the whole of the surrounding district, even the military element being, to a certain extent, dependent upon him. A register known as the Abbot's Mortuary was kept at Furness throughout three centuries. This was almost unique among Cistercian monasteries, for only names of those abbots who, having presided for ten years, continued at the abbey and died abbots there, were entered in the register. During 277 years, therefore, only ten names were written upon the pages. When Henry VIII., in 1537, suppressed Furness Abbey, it was surrendered by Roger Pyke, who was abbot at the time. The ruins of the abbey to be seen to-day are of Norman and Early English character, and the general hue of the stone-work is a ruddy brown. Their massive appearance almost suggests a shattered castle; but the share the abbey took in military matters is better illustrated from the fact that they built a watch-tower on the top of a hill rising from the walls of the monastery, and commanding a view over the sea and the whole district known as Low Furness. From this height the monks on watch were enabled to give warning by signals of the approach of an enemy. The painted glass, formerly in the east window, was removed many years ago to the east window of Bowness Church in Westmorland. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ FURNESS ABBEY. It was founded in 1127, and gradually grew in importance until even the military element in the district became to some extent dependent upon the abbot.] MONKWEARMOUTH, NEAR JARROW THE HOME OF THE "VENERABLE BEDE" =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Jarrow (2 miles north-east from Monkton). =Distance from London.=--268 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-1/4 to 7-1/2 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares=--Single 37s. 7d. ... 22s. 3d. Return 75s. 2d. ... 44s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Jarrow--"Ben Lomond Hotel," "Burkett's Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. Monkwearmouth, a little town 2 miles distant from Jarrow, the large shipbuilding town on the southern bank of the river Tyne, is famous for being the birthplace of the Venerable Bede. Bede, who was born in 673 A.D., was placed, at the age of seven years, in the monastery at Monkwearmouth, from which he went to Jarrow, to the new monastery just built by Benedict Biscop. He remained at Jarrow for the rest of his life, studying the Scriptures and writing books. His greatest work was the _Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation_, which has given him his position as the father of English history. The story of his death is very beautiful. He was translating St. John's Gospel into English when he was attacked by a sudden illness, and felt he was dying. He kept on with his task, however, and continued dictating to his scribe, bidding him write quickly. When he was told that the book was finished he said, "You speak truth, all is finished now," and after singing "Glory to God," he quietly passed away. The abbey churches of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow are interesting, because they have remained practically unaltered from their construction in the seventh century. The monasteries never grew sufficiently to require great enlargements, and thus they would have been to-day very nearly as the Anglo-Saxon monks saw them. Monkwearmouth Church was built in the Romanesque style by Benedict Biscop, who sent to France for workmen to put in the glass for the church windows. Besides the church, no trace remains of any monastic building at Monkwearmouth. The chancel and tower of the abbey church at Jarrow bear a great resemblance to those of Monkwearmouth, both being the work of Benedict Biscop. The domestic part of the monastery at Jarrow, where Bede lived and died, has disappeared, for the present ruins show Norman and not Saxon work. Monkwearmouth possesses one of the earliest Christian gravestones in England. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ MONKWEARMOUTH CHURCH. Partly built by Bishop Biscop in Bede's time.] THE ISLE OF MAN =How to get there.=--Train from Euston, King's Cross, St. Pancras, or Paddington _via_ Liverpool, and thence by steamer. =Nearest Station.=--Douglas, on Isle of Man. =Distance from London.=--205 miles to Liverpool (75 miles by sea from Liverpool to Douglas, 90 to Ramsey). =Average Time.=--12 hours. 1st and 2nd and 3rd and 3rd and saloon saloon saloon fore cabin =Fares.=--Single 35s. 0d. 26s. 8d. 22s. 6d. ... Return 68s. 0d. 46s. 3d. 39s. 6d. 35s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable=.--At Douglas--"Grand," "Métropole," "Regent," "Central," "Granville," and many others. At Ramsey--"Mitre," "Queen's," "Prince of Wales," "Albert," "Albion," etc. At Castletown--"George," "Union," etc. At Peel--"Creg Melin," "Marine," "Peel Castle," etc. The Isle of Man is much visited because of its mild and equable climate, its scenery, and its quaint laws and customs. The island is 30 miles long, and is mountainous in the centre. From the highest point, Snaefell, one can see four countries. Picturesque wooded glens are to be found in many parts of the island, and these having become well known as attractive resorts, a small charge is made to enter each glen. At Glen Darragh there is a circle of stones, and at Laxey, famous for its gigantic wheel for pumping water from the mines, there is another small circle called the "Cloven Stones." In many cases the churchyards possess old Runic crosses. Douglas, on the east of the island, is the chief town. It is a modern seaside resort, much frequented by Lancashire folk in August. Ramsey, further north, is quieter, and pleasantly situated on the only river of importance in Man. It is an old town, with yellow sands and a harbour crowded with herring-boats. Castletown lies to the south, a quiet old place, with narrow, crooked streets. Castle Rushen, built in the thirteenth century, shows no signs of decay. It consists of a keep and massive outer wall. Here the kings and lords of Manxland lived, though until lately it was the prison of the island. Peel, on the west, is chiefly remarkable for its rocky island near the shore, on which there are the ruins of a castle and churches surrounded by a battlemented wall. St. Patrick probably landed here, and the ruined cathedral is the oldest see in Britain. The most famous king of "Mona" was Orry, son of a Danish king of the tenth century. The island became subject to England in 1290. The National Assembly, or House of Keys, was founded by Orry. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CASTLE RUSHEN, ISLE OF MAN. Built in the thirteenth century, it was for a long period the residence of the kings and lords of Manxland.] BRANTWOOD THE HOME OF JOHN RUSKIN =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Coniston Lake (Brantwood is on the eastern side of Coniston Lake). =Distance from London.=--279 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 8-1/4 to 9-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 41s. 1d. ... 23s. 2-1/2d. Return 80s. 5d. ... 46s. 5d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Waterhead Hotel," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. The road to Brantwood from Coniston runs under the shade of beautiful trees, at the head of Coniston Water. After leaving behind the village and the Thwaite, with its peacocks strutting in its old-world gardens, one skirts the grounds of Monk Coniston. Soon afterwards Tent Lodge, where Tennyson once lived, is passed. Afterwards comes Low Bank Ground, which is only a short distance from Brantwood. The situation, as one may see from the drawing given opposite, is one of great natural advantages, while the house is quite unassuming; its simple white walls, however, give one the sense of a comfortable if unpretending home. The interior has been described as giving an impression "of solid, old-fashioned furniture, of amber-coloured damask curtains and coverings." There were Turner's and other water-colours in curly frames upon the drawing-room walls. Writing of his earliest recollections of Coniston, in _Praeterita_, Ruskin says: "The inn at Coniston was then actually at the upper end of the lake, the road from Ambleside to the village passing just between it and the water, and the view of the long reach of lake, with its softly-wooded, lateral hills, had for my father a tender charm, which excited the same feeling as that with which he afterward regarded the lakes of Italy." Ruskin's death in 1900 took place at Brantwood. George Eliot, in speaking of him, said, "I venerate Ruskin as one of the greatest teachers of the age. He teaches with the inspiration of a Hebrew prophet." Ruskin was the son of a wealthy wine merchant, and was born in London in 1819. He studied at Oxford, where he gained the Newdigate prize for English poetry in 1839. After taking his degree, in the following year appeared his first volume of _Modern Painters_, the design of which was to prove the great superiority of modern landscape-painters, particularly Turner, over the old masters. [Illustration: RUSKIN'S HOUSE AT BRANTWOOD. The room with the turret window was Ruskin's bedroom.] FOWEY =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Fowey. =Distance from London.=--282 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies from 7 to 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 43s. 4d. 27s. 0d. 21s. 8d. Return 75s. 10d. 47s. 6d. ... =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The Fowey Hotel," "St. Catherine's Private Hotel," "Cotswold House," etc. Fowey, now little more than a fishing village and holiday resort, was once the chief port in Cornwall, and the equal of Plymouth and Dartmouth, a position it owed to its fine harbour, formed by the mouth of the river Fowey, on which it stands. On the west side of the harbour stands St. Catherine's Castle, dating from the reign of Henry VIII., and on the east the ruins of St. Saviour's Chapel, an old church. There are also remains of two square stone towers, erected for the protection of the entrance to the harbour in the reign of Edward IV. Between these forts, in mediaeval days, the men of Fowey used to draw a chain as an additional security. The houses are built chiefly of stone, but the streets are so narrow and full of angles that it is difficult for a vehicle of any size to pass through them. In the reign of Edward III. it sent forty-seven vessels to assist in the siege of Calais. A heavy blow was dealt to the town by Edward IV. After he had concluded peace with France, the men of Fowey continued to make prizes of whatever French ships they could capture, and refused to give up their piratical ways. This so incensed the king, that the ringleaders in the matter were summarily executed, a heavy fine was levied upon the town, and its vessels handed over to the port of Dartmouth, as a lesson against piracy. This treatment of Fowey seems a little hard in view of the fact that Dartmouth men were constantly raiding the coasts of Brittany. The church, built in the reign of Edward IV. and restored in 1876, has one of the highest towers in Cornwall. The interior has a good timber roof, a carved oak pulpit, an old font, and several interesting monuments to the Treffry and Rashleigh families. The finest and most interesting house in the town is Place House, the seat of the Treffrys, who have been connected with Fowey for many generations. Many of the apartments are exceedingly interesting, especially the hall, with its fine oak roof. The present owner allows the hall and other portions to be shown to visitors. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd._ FOWEY. Showing the two little forts at the mouth of the harbour, across which in mediaeval time a chain was drawn.] HEXHAM AND HADRIAN'S WALL =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross and St. Pancras _via_ Newcastle-on-Tyne. Great Northern Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Hexham. =Distance from London.=--289 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 5-1/2 to 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 40s. 10d. ... 24s. 4d. Return 81s. 8d. ... 48s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Tynedale Hydropathic Mansion," etc. =Alternative Route.=--Train from Euston and St. Pancras _via_ Carlisle. London and North-Western Railway. Hexham has a beautiful position, surrounded with woods and hills on three sides, while the broad Tyne flows past the historic town. Above the surrounding roofs the hoary Abbey Church rises, with its one low central tower and flat roofs. The history of Hexham begins with the granting of some land to St. Wilfrid in 674, on which he built a monastery and church. A few years later Hexham was made a See, and the "Frithstool" still remains from the time when its cathedral received the right of sanctuary. This early cathedral was destroyed by the Danes, and the building left a battered ruin. When monasticism rose to its height, after the Norman Conquest, a priory of Canons of St. Augustine was founded there. Its wealth and numbers gradually increased until, at the end of the thirteenth century, an entirely new building replaced the Saxon one, and Hexham became exceedingly powerful. Hadrian's Wall.--Three miles north of Hexham, at Chollerford, one may see the remains of the piers of a Roman bridge over the North Tyne, and close at hand is one of the best preserved forts of Hadrian's Wall. It was about 124 A.D. that Hadrian started Aulus Plautorius Nepos on the building of the line of continuous fortifications running from the mouth of the Tyne to the Solway, a distance of over seventy miles. This was built on the chain of hills overlooking the valley which runs from Newcastle to Carlisle. The massive and astonishing ruins to be seen to-day fill one with surprise, for they suggest to a considerable extent the Great Wall of China. The remains of the wall proper are, as a rule, 8 feet thick, and are composed of hewn stone (the total height of the wall was probably about 18 feet). Turrets and small forts are built into the wall at frequent intervals. The object of the wall was undoubtedly to act as a military defence against the unconquerable tribes of the north. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ A PORTION OF HADRIAN'S WALL. The continuous line of fortifications built across England by Aulus Plautorius Nepos about 124 A.D.] THE LAKE DISTRICT =How to get there.=--Train to Keswick from Euston. L. and N.W.R. =Nearest Station.=--Keswick (for visiting Derwentwater, Skiddaw, Bassenthwaite, Buttermere, Cockermouth, Wytheburn). =Distance from London.=--300 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6 to 10 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 42s. 0d. 26s. 7d. 24s. 1d. Return 81s. 0d. 47s. 6d. 43s. 0d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Keswick Hotel," "Royal Oak," "Queen's," etc. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from King's Cross to Keswick, Great Northern Railway. Train from St. Pancras, Midland Railway. Keswick, usually regarded as the capital of the north-western portion of the Lake District, is situated in the lovely vale of Derwentwater, on the river Greta, shut in on all sides by mountain walls, the highest summit being the lofty Skiddaw, which crowns the range to the north of the valley. The old portion of the town is picturesque and interesting, especially the quaint old town hall in the market-place, marking the centre of the town. Foremost among the attractions in the vicinity of Keswick is Lake Derwentwater, within less than a mile of the town, and separated from it by rising ground. The lake is 3-1/2 miles in length and 1-1/2 wide, and is remarkable for the transparency of its waters, the shingle and rocks at the bottom being clearly visible at a depth of 15 or 20 feet. The scenery of the lake is beyond description beautiful. "Here is Derwentwater," says De Quincey, "with its lovely islands in one direction, Bassenthwaite in another; the mountains of Newlands; the gorgeous confusion of Borrowdale revealing its sublime chaos through the narrow vista of its gorge; the sullen rear closed by the vast and towering masses of Skiddaw and Blencathra." The valley of Borrowdale is to the south of the lake, and near the south-eastern extremity are the famous Falls of Lodore, so wonderfully described in Southey's celebrated poem. Bassenthwaite Water, connected with Derwentwater by the Derwent, is a smaller lake, but exceedingly beautiful, and Buttermere has a quaint little village which goes by the same name. Among the many places within easy reach of Keswick are Cockermouth, the birthplace of Wordsworth; Wytheburn, the nearest village to Thirlmere; and Skiddaw, the ascent of which can be accomplished with comparative ease on pony-back. The summit is over 3000 feet above sea-level. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ CRUMMOCK WATER AND BUTTERMERE.] KESWICK AND THE HOME OF ROBERT SOUTHEY =How to get there.=--Train from Euston. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Keswick. =Distance from London.=--300 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 7 to 10-1/4 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares=.--Single 42s. 0d. 26s. 7d. 24s. 1d. Return 81s. 0d. 53s. 0d. 48s. 2d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Keswick Hotel," "Royal Oak," "Queen's," etc. =Alternative Routes.=--Train from King's Cross, Great Northern Railway. Train from St. Pancras, Midland Railway. Keswick is much resorted to by visitors, as it forms convenient headquarters for exploring the Cumberland part of the Lake District. It is a small and not very beautiful town, containing several large hotels. It is situated in a flat valley through which the Derwent and its tributaries flow, and lies near the north end of Derwentwater Lake. Hills surround it on every side, while the mountains of Skiddaw shield it on the north. Since the discovery of plumbago in the district, Keswick has been famed for its lead-pencils. A renowned week of religious services, known as the "Keswick Convention," takes place here. Crosthwaite, to the north-west of the town, is famous for its twelfth-century church dedicated to St. Kentigern. It has a long battlemented roof and massive square tower, and possesses many old brasses and monuments, besides a font of the time of Edward III. To most people the monument to Southey will be the chief object of interest. It is a recumbent figure, with an epitaph in verse by his life-long friend Wordsworth. Robert Southey was the son of a Bristol linen-draper, and was educated at Westminster and Balliol. Southey and Coleridge were much associated with Lovell, a Bristol Quaker. These three friends made a plan--never carried out--of going to the wilds of America and returning to the patriarchal manner of living. They all married three sisters named Fricker. Unfortunately Southey's wife died insane, and he then married a very talented lady named Catherine Bowles. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the Southeys and Coleridges settled in the same house at Greta, near Keswick, and Mrs. Lovell, widow of Robert Lovell, and her son joined the household. Here Southey lived till his death in 1843. In 1813 he was made Poet Laureate, and later was given a pension of £300 a year. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ASHNESS BRIDGE, DERWENTWATER.] ALNWICK CASTLE =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Alnwick. =Distance from London.=--309 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 7 and 8 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 43s. 1d. ... 25s. 9d. Return 86s. 2d. ... 51s. 6d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Northumberland Arms," "Star Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras _via_ Sheffield and York. Midland Railway. Standing in a magnificent position overlooking the town from which it takes its name, Alnwick Castle occupies the site of one of the oldest of the border points of defence. It is believed that a fort existed here during the Roman occupation, and that a castle was erected on its site by the Saxons, who named the place _Ealnwic_. Just before the Conquest the castle and barony were the property of one Gilbert Tyson, who was slain at the battle of Hastings. His possessions passed into the hands of the Norman lords De Vesci, who held them till about 1297, when the castle and barony were bequeathed by the licence of Edward I. to the Bishop of Durham. Shortly afterwards they were purchased by Lord Henry de Percy, from whom they have descended regularly to the present owner, the Duke of Northumberland. The castle is one of the finest examples of a feudal fortress in England, the walls enclosing an area of five acres, and the grounds, watered by the Alne, presenting scenes of the most varied and romantic beauty. The two north-western round towers of the keep, together with the Armourer's and Falconer's towers, have recently been swept away in order to accommodate the new Prudhoe Tower. During the last six years 200 workmen have been employed in transforming the feudal interior of the castle into a Roman palazzo. Alnwick, situated so near the border, was the scene of countless raids and conflicts during the Middle Ages, and with these fights the castle was always closely associated. It was besieged in 1093 by Malcolm III., King of Scotland, and defended by Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland. The Scottish king and his son Prince Edward both fell during the siege. King David gained possession of the town in 1135. William the Lion, who took part with young Richard, afterwards Coeur de Lion, against his father Henry II., entered Northumberland in 1174, with 80,000 men, and laid siege to Alnwick; but the attempt was a failure, and William was taken prisoner. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ALNWICK CASTLE. One of the finest examples of a feudal fortress in England.] LANERCOST PRIORY, CUMBERLAND =How to get there.=--Train from Euston _via_ Carlisle. L. and N.W. Railway. =Nearest Station.=--Brampton (Lanercost Abbey is situated 2 miles north of Brampton). =Distance from London.=--317 miles. =Average Time.=--Varies between 6 to 9 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 40s. 10d. ... 24s. 4d. Return 81s. 8d. ... 48s. 8d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--At Brampton--"Howard Arms," "White Lion Hotel." =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras. Midland Railway. Lanercost Priory is situated in a singularly beautiful sylvan valley watered by the river Irthing. Only the shell of the chancel remains, but the nave has been restored, and is now used as the church of the parish. The walls of the roofless transepts as well as the central tower are still standing. The pillars on the south side support a much decayed clerestory, but on the opposite side both the triforium and clerestory are in a fairly good state of preservation. A side chapel in the choir contains some very finely carved but battered altar-tombs belonging to the Dacre family--one of them is believed to be that of Lord William Howard. Under what was the refectory of the conventual buildings, one may find the crypt in a very good state of preservation. In it are preserved some Roman altars and carvings discovered at various times in the locality. A number of Roman inscriptions having been discovered on the walls of the Priory Church; it is generally supposed that much of the building material was obtained from the Roman wall. The Rev. J. Maughan has argued for the existence of a Roman station at this point, and its name is believed to have been _Petriana_. The monastery adjoining the Priory Church belonged to the order of St. Augustine, and its endowments consisted of all the land lying between the Picts' wall and the river Irthing, upon which the buildings stood, and between Burgh and Poltross. After the dissolution the monastic buildings were put into a proper state of repair, and were converted into a private residence by Lord Thomas Dacre, who built the castellated portion towards the south, which of course did not belong to the original structure. Half a mile distant from the priory is Naworth Castle, the historic seat of the Earl of Carlisle, and Brampton is famous for its _mote_, which was possibly a Danish fort. [Illustration: _Valentine & Sons, Ltd_. LANERCOST PRIORY AND STEPPING-STONES.] CHILLINGHAM CASTLE, NORTHUMBERLAND =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Belford (6 miles from Chillingham). =Distance from London.=--323 miles. =Average Time.=--About 9 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 44s. 11d. ... 26s. 11d. Return 89s. 10d. ... 53s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=-- =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras _via_ Newcastle-on-Tyne. Midland Railway. The castle at Chillingham, the seat of the Earl of Tankerville, is a remarkably picturesque building, erected in the reign of Elizabeth, on the site of an older fortress. The castle, which is now in the occupation of Sir Andrew Noble, to whom it has been let by Lord Tankerville, contains many valuable portraits. An ancestor of the Earl of Tankerville, Charles Lord Ossulston, came into the property in 1695 by marriage with the daughter and heiress of Lord Grey, Earl of Tankerville, a descendant of the Greys of Chillingham and Wark, who had much property in Glendale. The herds of cattle at Chillingham are believed to be survivors of _Bos primigenius_, the wild ox of Europe, which is the supposed progenitor of our domestic cattle. This fact is of great scientific interest and is analogous to the preservation of the few remaining buffaloes in America, only in this case these wild cattle have been preserved through much changed conditions for a vastly longer period. The King, when Prince of Wales, shot one of these animals, but in doing so had a rather narrow escape. The chief external appearances distinguishing the cattle from all others are as follows--"their colour is invariably white; muzzles black, the whole of the inside of the ear and about one-third of the outside, from the lips downwards, red; horns white with black tips, very fine and bent upwards; some of the bulls have a thin upright mane about an inch and a half or two inches long." It should be pointed out that there is some danger in encountering any of the herd in the absence of the park-keepers. The calves have been noticed to have the wild characteristic of dropping when suddenly surprised. A reproduction is given opposite of Landseer's picture of the wild cattle. [Illustration: _Collection A. Rischgitz._ THE WILD CATTLE AT CHILLINGHAM. From the painting by Landseer. The herd are survivors of the wild ox or _Bos primigenius_.] ST. IVES, CORNWALL =How to get there.=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly. =Nearest Station.=--St. Ives. =Distance from London.=--325 miles. =Average Time.=--About 9 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 50s. 3d. 31s. 6d. 25s. 1-1/2d. Return 88s. 0d. 55s. 0d. 50s. 3d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Tregenna Castle," "Porthminster," "Western," "Queen's," etc. =Alternative Route.=--None. St. Ives is a quiet, old-world fishing town on the northern coast of Cornwall. The town occupies the western limb of the wide bay of St. Ives. On the narrow neck of land joining the promontory known as The Island to the mainland, most of the houses of the fishing town are packed away in picturesque confusion, while the streets are tortuous in the extreme. On either side of this isthmus the land rises; behind it thunder the waves on Porthmeor beach; in front are the deep green waters of the harbour, protected by two piers. The beach is of firm, hard sand, upon which the boats are hauled up in safety. The fifteenth-century church, standing on the site of the former Norman chapel, is a large building near the harbour. It is said that the Norman structure was dedicated to St. Ivo, a Persian bishop, who is supposed to have Christianised the Britons in Cornwall in the ninth century, and to have erected six chapels. Others think that St. Ia was the daughter of an Irish chieftain, and was murdered at Hayle. The beautiful font is thought to be a relic from the former chapel. A fifteenth-century cross has been dug up in the churchyard and re-erected. On the island is a little building which is thought to be the remains of one of St. Ivo's chapels. There is also a fort of Cornu-British origin, and a grass-covered battery on the hill, whose green slopes are covered with fishing-nets. Half-way across the bay the river Hayle enters the sea, and at the furthest extremity is Godrevy Point with its lighthouse. St. Ives became an important town in the time of Edward III., and its present church was erected in Henry VI.'s reign. Perkin Warbeck from Ireland and the Duke of Monmouth from Holland each landed at St. Ives on their ill-fated ventures. During recent years St. Ives and the neighbouring fishing villages have attracted numerous artists of considerably varying merit, and an exhibition of the Royal Academy is now almost certain to contain at least one picturesque glimpse of the place. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ ST. IVES. A quaint little Cornish fishing village.] BAMBOROUGH CASTLE, NORTHUMBERLAND =How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly. =Nearest Station.=--Belford (4-1/2 miles from Bamborough). =Distance from London.=--393 miles. =Average Time.=--About 9 hours. 1st 2nd 3rd =Fares.=--Single 43s. 11d. ... 26s. 11d. Return 87s. 10d. ... 33s. 10d. =Accommodation Obtainable.=-- =Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras to Belford (Midland Railway) _via_ Newcastle-on-Tyne. Standing on an almost perpendicular mass of basaltic rock, overlooking the sea at a height of 150 feet, is Bamborough Castle. The stately keep belongs to the original stronghold, which was built on the site of what was probably one of a chain of fortresses raised by the Romans for the protection of the coast. For many centuries the castle was possessed of great strength, and was frequently used as a place of refuge by the Kings and Earls of Northumberland. It was founded by Ida, king of the Angles, about A.D. 547, and suffered considerably at the hands of the Danes in 933. Earlier than this, however, in the seventh century, Bamborough was besieged by Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, who, although having recently gained several victories, made great efforts to burn down the castle. Having set his men to work to accumulate a great mass of brushwood, Penda had huge piles heaped up beneath the walls. As soon as the wind was in the right quarter he set alight the brushwood. Shortly afterwards, however, the wind veered round until it blew in the opposite direction, to the discomfiture of his own people, who were thus obliged to abandon their camp. Afterwards the castle was repaired again, and was besieged by William II. when Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, took refuge there. During the Wars of the Roses Bamborough was frequently captured and recaptured, and in the various sieges suffered very severely. In 1720 Nathaniel, Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, having purchased the castle, bequeathed it in his will for charitable purposes. The Bishop's trustees carried out a considerable amount of repairs, and at the present time the residential portion is frequently let by the trustees to tenants for varying periods. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ BAMBOROUGH CASTLE.] 
15551	----	_The_ KINGS TREASURIES OF LITERATURE GENERAL EDITOR SIR A.T. QUILLER COUCH [Illustration: THE LADY OF THE LAKE TELLETH ARTHUR OF THE SWORD EXCALIBUR] NEW YORK--E.P. DUTTON & COMPANY [Illustration: FIRST AND CHIEF OF ALL THE THREE BEST MOST CHRISTIAN AND WORTHY, KING ARTHUR] STORIES FROM LE MORTE D'ARTHUR AND THE MABINOGION RETOLD BY BEATRICE CLAY LONDON & TORONTO--J.M. DENT & SONS Ltd. SOLE AGENT FOR SCOTLAND THE GRANT EDUCATIONAL CO. LTD. GLASGOW FIRST EDITION, 1920 REPRINTED, 1922, 1924 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BOOK I.--THE COMING OF ARTHUR I. OF ARTHUR'S BIRTH; AND HOW HE BECAME KING II. THE ROUND TABLE III. OF THE FINDING OF EXCALIBUR IV. OF THE TREACHERY OF QUEEN MORGAN LE FAY V. HOW THE SCABBARD OF EXCALIBUR WAS LOST VI. MERLIN VII. BALIN AND BALAN BOOK II.--SIR LAUNCELOT VIII. SIR LAUNCELOT DU LAC IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHAPEL PERILOUS X. SIR LAUNCELOT AND THE FALCON BOOK III.--SIR TRISTRAM XI. OF THE BIRTH OF ST. TRISTRAM XII. HOW TRISTRAM FOUGHT WITH SIR MARHAUS OF IRELAND XIII. THE FAIR ISOLT XIV. HOW KING MARK SENT SIR TRISTRAM TO FETCH HIM A WIFE XV. HOW SIR TRISTRAM AND THE FAIR ISOLT DRANK OF THE MAGIC POTION XVI. OF THE END OF SIR TRISTRAM BOOK IV.--KING ARTHUR'S NEPHEWS XVII. SIR GAWAIN AND THE LADY XVIII. THE ADVENTURES OF SIR GARETH BOOK V.--SIR GERAINT XIX. THE ADVENTURES OF GERAINT XX. GERAINT AND ENID BOOK VI.--THE LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN XXI. THE LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN BOOK VII.--SIR PEREDUR XXII. THE ADVENTURES OF SIR PEREDUR BOOK VIII.--THE HOLY GRAIL XXIII. THE COMING OF SIR GALAHAD XXIV. HOW SIR GALAHAD WON THE RED-CROSS SHIELD XXV. THE ADVENTURES OF SIR PERCIVALE XXVI. THE ADVENTURES OF SIR BORS XXVII. THE ADVENTURES OF SIR LAUNCELOT XXVIII. HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SAW THE HOLY GRAIL XXIX. THE END OF THE QUEST BOOK IX.--THE FAIR MAID OF ASTOLAT XXX. THE FAIR MAID OF ASTOLAT BOOK X.--QUEEN GUENEVERE XXXI. HOW MORDRED PLOTTED AGAINST SIR LAUNCELOT XXXII. THE TRIAL OF THE QUEEN XXXIII. HOW SIR GAWAIN DEFIED SIR LAUNCELOT XXXIV. HOW KING ARTHUR AND SIR GAWAIN WENT TO FRANCE BOOK XI.--THE MORTE D'ARTHUR XXXV. MORDRED THE TRAITOR XXXVI. THE BATTLE IN THE WEST XXXVII. THE PASSING OF ARTHUR XXXVIII. THE DEATH OF SIR LAUNCELOT AND OF THE QUEEN INTRODUCTION Among the stories of world-wide renown, not the least stirring are those that have gathered about the names of national heroes. The _Æneid_, the _Nibelungenlied_, the _Chanson de Roland_, the _Morte D'Arthur_,--they are not history, but they have been as National Anthems to the races, and their magic is not yet dead. In olden times our forefathers used to say that the world had seen nine great heroes, three heathen, three Jewish, and three Christian; among the Christian heroes was British Arthur, and of none is the fame greater. Even to the present day, his name lingers in many widely distant places. In the peninsula of Gower, a huge slab of rock, propped up on eleven short pillars, is still called Arthur's Stone; the lofty ridge which looks down upon Edinburgh bears the name of Arthur's Seat; and--strangest, perhaps, of all--in the Franciscan Church of far-away Innsbrück, the finest of the ten statues of ancestors guarding the tomb of the Emperor Maximilian I. is that of King Arthur. There is hardly a country in Europe without its tales of the Warrior-King; and yet of any real Arthur history tells us little, and that little describes, not the knightly conqueror, but the king of a broken people, struggling for very life. More than fifteen centuries ago, this country, now called England, was inhabited by a Celtic race known as the Britons, a warlike people, divided into numerous tribes constantly at war with each other. But in the first century of the Christian era they were conquered by the Romans, who added Britain to their vast empire and held it against attacks from without and rebellions from within by stationing legions, or troops of soldiers, in strongly fortified places all over the country. Now, from their conquerors, the Britons learnt many useful arts, to read and to write, to build houses and to make roads; but at the same time, they unlearnt some of their own virtues and, among others, how to think and act for themselves. For the Romans never allowed a Briton any real part in the government of his own country, and if he wished to become a soldier, he was sent away from Britain to serve with a legion stationed in some far-distant part of the empire. Thus it came about that when, in the fifth century, the Romans withdrew from Britain to defend Rome itself from invading hordes of savages, the unhappy Britons had forgotten how to govern and how to defend themselves, and fell an easy prey to the many enemies waiting to pounce on their defenceless country. Picts from Scotland invaded the north, and Scots from Ireland plundered the west; worst of all, the heathen Angles and Saxons, pouring across the seas from their homes in the Elbe country, wasted the land with fire and sword. Many of the Britons were slain; those who escaped sought refuge in the mountainous parts of the west from Cornwall to the Firth of Clyde. There, forgetting, to some extent, their quarrels, they took the name of the Cymry, which means the "Brethren," though the English, unable to understand their language, spoke of them contemptuously as the "Welsh," or the "Strangers." For a long time the struggle went on between the two races, and nowhere mere fiercely than in the south-west, where the invaders set up the Kingdom of Wessex; but at last there arose among the Britons a great chieftain called Arthur. The old histories speak of him as "Emperor," and he seems to have been obeyed by all the Britons; perhaps, therefore, he had succeeded to the position of the Roman official known as the Comes Britanniæ, whose duty it was to hasten to the aid of the local governors in defending any part of Britain where danger threatened. At all events, under his leadership, the oppressed people defeated the Saxons in a desperate fight at Mons Badonicus, perhaps the little place in Dorsetshire known as Badbury, or, it may be, Bath itself, which is still called Badon by the Welsh. After that victory, history has little to say about Arthur. The stories tell that he was killed in a great battle in the west; but, nowadays, the wisest historians think it more probable that he met his death in a conflict near the River Forth. And so, in history, Arthur, the hero of such a mass of romantic story, is little more than a name, and it is hardly possible to explain how he attained to such renown as the hero of marvellous and, sometimes, magical feats, unless on the supposition that he became confused with some legendary hero, half god, half man, whose fame he added to his own. Perhaps not the least marvel about him is that he who was the hero of the Britons, should have become the national hero of the English race that he spent his life in fighting. Yet that is what did happen, though not till long afterwards, when the victorious English, in their turn, bent before their conquering kinsmen, the Normans. Now in the reign of the third Norman king, Henry I., there lived a certain Welsh priest known as Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey seems to have been much about the Court, and perhaps it was the Norman love of stories that first made him think of writing his _History of the British Kings_. A wonderful tale he told of all the British kings from the time that Brut the Trojan settled in the country and called it, after himself, Britain! For Geoffrey's book was history only in name. What he tells us is that he was given an ancient chronicle found in Brittany, and was asked to translate it from Welsh into the better known language, Latin. It is hardly likely, however, that Geoffrey himself expected his statement to be taken quite seriously. Even in his own day, not every one believed in him, for a certain Yorkshire monk declared that the historian had "lied saucily and shamelessly"; and some years later, Gerald the Welshman tells of a man who had intercourse with devils, from whose sway, however, he could be freed if a Bible were placed upon his breast, whereas he was completely under their control if Geoffrey's _History_ were laid upon him, just because the book was so full of lies. It is quite certain that Geoffrey did not write history, but he did make a capital story, partly by collecting legends about British heroes, partly by inventing stories of his own; so that though he is not entitled to fame as an historian, he may claim to rank high as a romantic story-teller who set a fashion destined to last for some three centuries. So popular was his book that, not only in England, but, in an even greater degree, on the Continent, writers were soon at work, collecting and making more stories about the greatest of his kings, Arthur. By some it is thought that the Normans took such delight in the knightly deeds of Geoffrey's heroes that they spread the story in France when they visited their homes in Normandy. Moreover, they were in a good position to learn other tales of their favourite knights, for Normandy bordered on Brittany, the home of the Bretons, who, being of the same race as the Welsh, honoured the same heroes in their legends. So in return for Geoffrey's tales, Breton stories, perhaps, found their way into England; at all events, marvellous romances of King Arthur and his Round Table were soon being told in England, in France, in Germany and in Italy. Now, to some it may seem strange that story-tellers should care to weave their stories so constantly about the same personages; strange, too, that they should invent stories about men and women who were believed actually to have existed. But it must be remembered that, in those early days, very few could read and write, and that, before printing was invented, books were so scarce that four or five constituted quite a library. Those who knew how to read, and were so fortunate as to have books, read them again and again. For the rest, though kings and great nobles might have poets attached to their courts, the majority depended for their amusement on the professional story-teller. In the long winter evening, no one was more welcome than the wandering minstrel. He might be the knightly troubadour who, accompanied by a jongleur to play his accompaniments, wandered from place to place out of sheer love of his art and of adventure; more often, however, the minstrel made story-telling his trade, and gained his living from the bounty of his audience--be it in castle, market-place, or inn. Most commonly, the narratives took the form of long rhyming poems; not because the people in those days were so poetical--indeed, some of these poems would be thought, in present times, very dreary doggerel--but because rhyme is easier to remember than prose. Story-tellers had generally much the same stock-in-trade--stories of Arthur, Charlemagne, Sir Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis of Southampton, and so on. If a minstrel had skill of his own, he would invent some new episode, and so, perhaps, turn a compliment to his patron by introducing the exploit of an ancestor, at the same time that he made his story last longer. People did not weary of hearing the same tales over and over again, any more than little children get tired of nursery rhymes, or their elders turn away from "Punch and Judy," though the same little play has been performed for centuries. As for inventing stories about real people, that may well have seemed permissible in an age when historians recorded mere hearsay as actual fact. Richard III., perhaps, had one shoulder higher than the other, but within a few years of his death grave historians had represented him as a hunchbacked deformity. The romances connected with King Arthur and his knights went on steadily growing in number until the fifteenth century; of them, some have survived to the present day, but undoubtedly many have been lost. Then, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, the most famous of all the Arthurian stories was given to the world in Sir Thomas Malory's _Morte D'Arthur_. By good luck, the great printer who made it one of his first works, has left an account of the circumstances that led to its production. In the reign of Edward IV., William Caxton set up his printing-press (the first in England) in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. There he was visited, as he himself relates, by "many noble and divers gentlemen" demanding why he had not printed the "noble history of the Saint Grail and of the most-renowned Christian King ... Arthur." To please them, and because he himself loved chivalry, Caxton printed Sir Thomas Malory's story, in which all that is best in the many Arthurian romances is woven into one grand narrative. Since then, in our own days, the story of Arthur and his knights has been told in beautiful verse by Lord Tennyson; but for the originals of some of his poems it would be useless to look in Malory. The story of Geraint and Enid, Tennyson derived from a very interesting collection of translations of ancient Welsh stories made by Lady Charlotte Guest, and by her called _Mabinogion_,[1] although not all Welsh scholars would consider the name quite accurate. [Footnote 1: Meaning the apprentices of the bards.] And now it is time to say something about the stories themselves. The Arthur of history was engaged in a life-long struggle with an enemy that threatened to rob his people of home, of country, and of freedom; in the stories, the king and his knights, like Richard Coeur-de-Lion, sought adventure for adventure's sake, or, as in the case of Sir Peredur, took fantastic vows for the love of a lady. The Knights of the Round Table are sheathed from head to foot in plate armour, although the real Arthur's warriors probably had only shirts of mail and shields with which to ward off the blows of the enemy. They live in moated castles instead of in halls of wood, and they are more often engaged in tournaments than in struggles with the heathen. In fact, those who wrote the stories represented their heroes as living such lives as they themselves led. Just in the same way, Dutch painters used to represent the shepherds in the Bible story as Dutch peasants; just so David Garrick, the great actor of the eighteenth century, used to act the part of a Roman in his own full-bottomed wig and wide-skirted coat. It must not be forgotten that, in those far-away days when there were few who could even read or write, there was little that, in their ignorance, people were not prepared to believe. Stories of marvels and magic that would deceive no one now, were then eagerly accepted as truth. Those were the days when philosophers expected to discover the Elixir of Life; when doctors consulted the stars in treating their patients; when a noble of the royal blood, such as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, could fall into disgrace because his wife was accused of trying to compass the king's death by melting a wax image of him before a slow fire. Of all the stories, perhaps the most mystical is that of the Quest of the Holy Grail, and it has features peculiar to itself. Nuns take the place of fair ladies; there are hermitages instead of castles; and the knights themselves, if they do not die, become monks or hermits. The reason for this change in scene and character is, that this is a romance in which the Church was trying to teach men, by means of a tale such as they loved, the lesson of devotion and purity of heart. The story sprang from certain legends which had grown up about the name of Joseph of Arimathea. It was related that, when our Lord was crucified, Joseph caught in a dish, or vessel, the blood which flowed from His wounded side. In later years, the pious Jew left his home and, taking with him the precious vessel, sailed away on unknown seas until he came to the land of Britain. In that country he landed, and at Glastonbury he built himself a hermitage, where he treasured the sacred dish which came to be known as the Saint Grail. After Joseph's death, the world grew more wicked, and so the Holy Grail disappeared from the sight of sinful men, although, from time to time, the vision of it was granted, as in the story, to the pure in heart. In later days, legend said that where Joseph's hermitage had stood, there grew up the famous monastery of Glastonbury, and it came to have a special importance of its own in the Arthurian romance. In the reign of Henry II., by the king's orders, the monks of Glastonbury made search for the grave of King Arthur, and, in due time, they announced that they had found it, nine feet below the soil, the coffin covered with a stone in which was inlaid a leaden cross bearing this inscription: "Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurius in insula Avalonia." Some, however, suggested that the monks, less honest than anxious to please the masterful king, had first placed the stone in position and then found it! One more feature of the tales remains to be mentioned: their geography. There is no atlas that will make it plain in all cases; and this is hardly wonderful, for so little was known of this subject that, even in the reign of Henry VIII., the learned Lord Berners was quite satisfied that his hero should journey to Babylon by way of the Nile! Some of the places mentioned in the stories are, of course, familiar, and others, less well known, can, with a little care, be traced; but to identify all is not possible. Caerleon, where King Arthur so often held his Court, still bears the same name, though its glory has sorely shrank since the days when it had a bishop of its own. Camelot, where stood the marvellous palace built for the king by Merlin, is perhaps the village of Queen's Camel in Somersetshire. If it is borne in mind that the French call Wales _Pays de Galles_, it is not difficult to see that North Galis may well be North Wales. Gore is the peninsula of Gower; Liones probably the land south-west of Cornwall, now sunk beneath the sea; and Avalonia was the name given to one of the many small islands of the once marshy, low-lying shore of Somersetshire, which became afterwards better known as Glastonbury. Happily, it is neither on their history nor on their geography that the tales depend for their interest. As long as a story of adventure thrills; as long as gentleness, courtesy and consideration for the weak excite respect, so long will be read the tales of the brave times "When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight." STORIES FROM LE MORTE D'ARTHUR AND THE MABINOGION BOOK I THE COMING OF ARTHUR CHAPTER I OF ARTHUR'S BIRTH; AND HOW HE BECAME KING Long years ago, there ruled over Britain a king called Uther Pendragon. A mighty prince was he, and feared by all men; yet, when he sought the love of the fair Igraine of Cornwall, she would have naught to do with him, so that, from grief and disappointment, Uther fell sick, and at last seemed like to die. Now in those days, there lived a famous magician named Merlin, so powerful that he could change his form at will, or even make himself invisible; nor was there any place so remote but that he could reach it at once, merely by wishing himself there. One day, suddenly he stood at Uther's bedside, and said: "Sir King, I know thy grief, and am ready to help thee. Only promise to give me, at his birth, the son that shall be born to thee, and thou shalt have thy heart's desire." To this the king agreed joyfully, and Merlin kept his word: for he gave Uther the form of one whom Igraine had loved dearly, and so she took him willingly for her husband. When the time had come that a child should be born to the King and Queen, Merlin appeared before Uther to remind him of his promise; and Uther swore it should be as he had said. Three days later, a prince was born, and, with pomp and ceremony, was christened by the name of Arthur; but immediately thereafter, the King commanded that the child should be carried to the postern-gate, there to be given to the old man who would be found waiting without. Not long after, Uther fell sick, and he knew that his end was come; so, by Merlin's advice, he called together his knights and barons, and said to them: "My death draws near. I charge you, therefore, that ye obey my son even as ye have obeyed me; and my curse upon him if he claim not the crown when he is a man grown." Then the King turned his face to the wall and died. Scarcely was Uther laid in his grave before disputes arose. Few of the nobles had seen Arthur or even heard of him, and not one of them would have been willing to be ruled by a child; rather, each thought himself fitted to be king, and, strengthening his own castle, made war on his neighbours until confusion alone was supreme, and the poor groaned because there was none to help them. Now when Merlin carried away Arthur--for Merlin was the old man who had stood at the postern-gate--he had known all that would happen, and had taken the child to keep him safe from the fierce barons until he should be of age to rule wisely and well, and perform all the wonders prophesied of him. He gave the child to the care of the good knight Sir Ector to bring up with his son Kay, but revealed not to him that it was the son of Uther Pendragon that was given into his charge. At last, when years had passed and Arthur was grown a tall youth well skilled in knightly exercises, Merlin went to the Archbishop of Canterbury and advised him that he should call together at Christmas-time all the chief men of the realm to the great cathedral in London; "For," said Merlin, "there shall be seen a great marvel by which it shall be made clear to all men who is the lawful King of this land." The Archbishop did as Merlin counselled. Under pain of a fearful curse, he bade barons and knights come to London to keep the feast, and to pray heaven to send peace to the realm. The people hastened to obey the Archbishop's commands, and, from all sides, barons and knights came riding in to keep the birth-feast of our Lord. And when they had prayed, and were coming forth from the cathedral, they saw a strange sight. There, in the open space before the church, stood, on a great stone, an anvil thrust through with a sword; and on the stone were written these words: "Whoso can draw forth this sword, is rightful King of Britain born." At once there were fierce quarrels, each man clamouring to be the first to try his fortune, none doubting his own success. Then the Archbishop decreed that each should make the venture in turn, from the greatest baron to the least knight; and each in turn, having put forth his utmost strength, failed to move the sword one inch, and drew back ashamed. So the Archbishop dismissed the company, and having appointed guards to watch over the stone, sent messengers through all the land to give word of great jousts to be held in London at Easter, when each knight could give proof of his skill and courage, and try whether the adventure of the sword was for him. Among those who rode to London at Easter was the good Sir Ector, and with him his son, Sir Kay, newly made a knight, and the young Arthur. When the morning came that the jousts should begin, Sir Kay and Arthur mounted their horses and set out for the lists; but before they reached the field, Kay looked and saw that he had left his sword behind. Immediately Arthur turned back to fetch it for him, only to find the house fast shut, for all were gone to view the tournament. Sore vexed was Arthur, fearing lest his brother Kay should lose his chance of gaining glory, till, of a sudden, he bethought him of the sword in the great anvil before the cathedral. Thither he rode with all speed, and the guards having deserted their post to view the tournament, there was none to forbid him the adventure. He leaped from his horse, seized the hilt, and instantly drew forth the sword as easily as from a scabbard; then, mounting his horse and thinking no marvel of what he had done, he rode after his brother and handed him the weapon. When Kay looked at it, he saw at once that it was the wondrous sword from the stone. In great joy he sought his father, and showing it to him, said: "Then must I be King of Britain." But Sir Ector bade him say how he came by the sword, and when Sir Kay told how Arthur had brought it to him, Sir Ector bent his knee to the boy, and said: "Sir, I perceive that ye are my King, and here I tender you my homage"; and Kay did as his father. Then the three sought the Archbishop, to whom they related all that had happened; and he, much marvelling, called the people together to the great stone, and bade Arthur thrust back the sword and draw it forth again in the presence of all, which he did with ease. But an angry murmur arose from the barons, who cried that what a boy could do, a man could do; so, at the Archbishop's word, the sword was put back, and each man, whether baron or knight, tried in his turn to draw it forth, and failed. Then, for the third time, Arthur drew forth the sword. Immediately there arose from the people a great shout: "Arthur is King! Arthur is King! We will have no King but Arthur"; and, though the great barons scowled and threatened, they fell on their knees before him while the Archbishop placed the crown upon his head, and swore to obey him faithfully as their lord and sovereign. Thus Arthur was made King; and to all he did justice, righting wrongs and giving to all their dues. Nor was he forgetful of those that had been his friends; for Kay, whom he loved as a brother, he made Seneschal and chief of his household, and to Sir Ector, his foster-father, he gave broad lands. CHAPTER II THE ROUND TABLE Thus Arthur was made King, but he had to fight for his own; for eleven great kings drew together and refused to acknowledge him as their lord, and chief amongst the rebels was King Lot of Orkney who had married Arthur's sister, Bellicent. By Merlin's advice, Arthur sent for help overseas, to Ban and Bors, the two great Kings who ruled in Gaul. With their aid, he overthrew his foes in a great battle near the river Trent; and then he passed with them into their own lands and helped them drive out their enemies. So there was ever great friendship between Arthur and the Kings Ban and Bors, and all their kindred; and afterwards some of the most famous Knights of the Round Table were of that kin. Then King Arthur set himself to restore order throughout his kingdom. To all who would submit and amend their evil ways, he showed kindness; but those who persisted in oppression and wrong he removed, putting in their places others who would deal justly with the people. And because the land had become overrun with forest during the days of misrule, he cut roads through the thickets, that no longer wild beasts and men, fiercer than the beasts, should lurk in their gloom, to the harm of the weak and defenceless. Thus it came to pass that soon the peasant ploughed his fields in safety, and where had been wastes, men dwelt again in peace and prosperity. Amongst the lesser kings whom Arthur helped to rebuild their towns and restore order, was King Leodegrance of Cameliard. Now Leodegrance had one fair child, his daughter Guenevere; and from the time that first he saw her, Arthur gave her all his love. So he sought counsel of Merlin, his chief adviser. Merlin heard the King sorrowfully, and he said: "Sir King, when a man's heart is set, he may not change. Yet had it been well if ye had loved another." So the King sent his knights to Leodegrance, to ask of him his daughter; and Leodegrance consented, rejoicing to wed her to so good and knightly a King. With great pomp, the princess was conducted to Canterbury, and there the King met her, and they two were wed by the Archbishop in the great Cathedral, amid the rejoicings of the people. On that same day did Arthur found his Order of the Round Table, the fame of which was to spread throughout Christendom and endure through all time. Now the Round Table had been made for King Uther Pendragon by Merlin, who had meant thereby to set forth plainly to all men the roundness of the earth. After Uther died, King Leodegrance had possessed it; but when Arthur was wed, he sent it to him as a gift, and great was the King's joy at receiving it. One hundred and fifty knights might take their places about it, and for them Merlin made sieges or seats. One hundred and twenty-eight did Arthur knight at that great feast; thereafter, if any sieges were empty, at the high festival of Pentecost new knights were ordained to fill them, and by magic was the name of each knight found inscribed, in letters of gold, in his proper siege. One seat only long remained unoccupied, and that was the Siege Perilous. No knight might occupy it until the coming of Sir Galahad; for, without danger to his life, none might sit there who was not free from all stain of sin. With pomp and ceremony did each knight take upon him the vows of true knighthood: to obey the King; to show mercy to all who asked it; to defend the weak; and for no worldly gain to fight in a wrongful cause: and all the knights rejoiced together, doing honour to Arthur and to his Queen. Then they rode forth to right the wrong and help the oppressed, and by their aid, the King held his realm in peace, doing justice to all. CHAPTER III OF THE FINDING OF EXCALIBUR Now when Arthur was first made King, as young knights will, he courted peril for its own sake, and often would he ride unattended by lonely forest ways, seeking the adventure that chance might send him. All unmindful was he of the ruin to his realm if mischief befell him; and even his trusty counsellors, though they grieved that he should thus imperil him, yet could not but love him the more for his hardihood. So, on a day, he rode through the Forest Perilous where dwelt the Lady Annoure, a sorceress of great might, who used her magic powers but for the furtherance of her own desires. And as she looked from a turret window, she descried King Arthur come riding down a forest glade, and the sunbeams falling upon him made one glory of his armour and of his yellow hair. Then, as Annoure gazed upon the King, her heart grew hot within her, and she resolved that, come what might, she would have him for her own, to dwell with her always and fulfil all her behests. And so she bade lower the drawbridge and raise the portcullis, and sallying forth accompanied by her maidens, she gave King Arthur courteous salutation, and prayed him that he would rest within her castle that day, for that she had a petition to make to him; and Arthur, doubting nothing of her good faith, suffered himself to be led within. Then was a great feast spread, and Annoure caused the King to be seated in a chair of state at her right hand, while squires and pages served him on bended knee. So when they had feasted, the King turned to the Lady Annoure and said courteously: "Lady, somewhat ye said of a request that ye would make. If there be aught in which I may pleasure you, I pray you let me know it, and I will serve you as knightly as I may." "In truth," said the lady, "there is that which I would fain entreat of you, most noble knight; yet suffer, I beseech you, that first I may show you somewhat of my castle and my estate, and then will I crave a boon of your chivalry." Then the sorceress led King Arthur from room to room of her castle, and ever each displayed greater store of beauty than the last. In some the walls were hung with rich tapestries, in others they gleamed with precious stones; and the King marvelled what might be the petition of one that was mistress of such wealth. Lastly, Annoure brought the King out upon the battlements, and as he gazed around him, he saw that, since he had entered the castle, there had sprung up about it triple walls of defence that shut out wholly the forest from view. Then turned he to Annoure, and gravely he said: "Lady, greatly I marvel in what a simple knight may pleasure one that is mistress of so wondrous a castle as ye have shown me here; yet if there be aught in which I may render you knightly service, right gladly would I hear it now, for I must forth upon my way to render service to those whose knight I am sworn." "Nay, now, King Arthur," answered the sorceress mockingly, "ye may not think to deceive me; for well I know you, and that all Britain bows to your behest." "The more reason then that I should ride forth to right wrong and succour them that, of their loyalty, render true obedience to their lord." "Ye speak as a fool," said the sorceress; "why should one that may command be at the beck and call of every hind and slave within his realm? Nay, rest thee here with me, and I will make thee ruler of a richer land than Britain, and give thee to satisfy thy every desire." "Lady," said the King sternly, "I will hear and judge of your petition at this time, and then will I forth upon my way." "Nay," said Annoure, "there needs not this harshness. I did but speak for thine advantage. Only vow thee to my service, and there is naught that thou canst desire that thou shalt not possess. Thou shalt be lord of this fair castle and of the mighty powers that obey me. Why waste thy youth in hardship and in the service of such as shall render thee little enough again?" Thereupon, without ever a word, the King turned him about and made for the turret stair by which he had ascended, but nowhere could he find it. Then said the sorceress, mocking him: "Fair sir, how think ye to escape without my good-will? See ye not the walls that guard my stronghold? And think ye that I have not servants enow to do my bidding?" She clapped her hands and forthwith there appeared a company of squires who, at her command, seized the King and bore him away to a strong chamber where they locked him in. And so the King abode that night, the prisoner of that evil sorceress, with little hope that day, when it dawned, should bring him better cheer. Yet lost he not courage, but kept watch and vigil the night through lest the powers of evil should assail him unawares. And with the early morning light, Annoure came to visit him. More stately she seemed than the night before, more tall and more terrible; and her dress was one blaze of flashing gems, so that scarce could the eye look upon her. As a queen might address a vassal, so greeted she the King, and as condescending to one of low estate, asked how he had fared that night. And the King made answer: "I have kept vigil as behoves a knight who, knowing him to be in the midst of danger, would bear himself meetly in any peril that should offer." And the Lady Annoure, admiring his knightly courage, desired more earnestly even than before to win him to her will, and she said: "Sir Arthur, I know well your courage and knightly fame, and greatly do I desire to keep you with me. Stay with me and I promise you that ye shall bear sway over a wider realm than any that ever ye heard of, and I, even I, its mistress, will be at your command. And what lose ye if ye accept my offer? Little enough, I ween, for never think that ye shall win the world from evil and men to loyalty and truth." Then answered the King in anger: "Full well I see that thou art in league with evil and that thou but seekest to turn me from my purpose. I defy thee, foul sorceress. Do thy worst; though thou slay me, thou shalt never sway me to thy will"; and therewith the King raised his cross-hilted sword before her. Then the lady quailed at that sight. Her heart was filled with hate, but she said: "Go your way, proud King of a petty realm. Rule well your race of miserable mortals, since more it pleasures you than to bear sway over the powers of the air. I keep you not against your will." With these words, she passed from the chamber, and the King heard her give command to her squires to set him without her gates, give him his horse, and suffer him to go on his way. And so it came to pass that the King found himself once more at large, and marvelled to have won so lightly to liberty. Yet knew he not the depths of treachery in the heart of Annoure; for when she found she might not prevail with the King, she bethought her how, by mortal means, she might bring the King to dishonour and death. And so, by her magic art, she caused the King to follow a path that brought him to a fountain, whereby a knight had his tent, and, for love of adventure, held the way against all comers. Now this knight was Sir Pellinore, and at that time he had not his equal for strength and knightly skill, nor had any been found that might stand against him. So, as the King drew nigh, Pellinore cried: "Stay, knight, for none passes this way except he joust with me." "That is no good custom," said the King; "it were well that ye followed it no more." "It is my custom, and I will follow it still," answered Pellinore; "if ye like it not, amend it if ye may." "I will do my endeavour," said Arthur, "but, as ye see, I have no spear." "Nay, I seek not to have you at advantage," replied Pellinore, and bade his squire give Arthur a spear. Then they dressed their shields, laid their lances in rest, and rushed upon each other. Now the King was wearied by his night's vigil, and the strength of Pellinore was as the strength of three men; so, at the first encounter, Arthur was unhorsed. Then said he: "I have lost the honour on horseback, but now will I encounter thee with my sword and on foot." "I, too, will alight," said Pellinore; "small honour to me were it if I slew thee on foot, I being horsed the while." So they encountered each other on foot, and so fiercely they fought that they hewed off great pieces of each other's armour and the ground was dyed with their blood. But at the last, Arthur's sword broke off short at the hilt, and so he stood all defenceless before his foe. "I have thee now," cried Pellinore; "yield thee as recreant or I will slay thee." "That will I never," said the King, "slay me if thou canst." Then he sprang on Pellinore, caught him by the middle, and flung him to the ground, himself falling with him. And Sir Pellinore marvelled, for never before had he encountered so bold and resolute a foe; but exerting his great strength, he rolled himself over, and so brought Arthur beneath him. Then had Arthur perished, but at that moment Merlin stood beside him, and when Sir Pellinore would have struck off the King's head, stayed his blow, crying: "Pellinore, if thou slayest this knight, thou puttest the whole realm in peril; for this is none other than King Arthur himself." Then was Pellinore filled with dread, and cried: "Better make an end of him at once; for if I suffer him to live, what hope have I of his grace, that have dealt with him so sorely?" But before Pellinore could strike, Merlin caused a deep sleep to come upon him; and raising King Arthur from the ground, he staunched his wounds and recovered him of his swoon. But when the King came to himself, he saw his foe lie, still as in death, on the ground beside him; and he was grieved, and said: "Merlin, what have ye done to this brave knight? Nay, if ye have slain him, I shall grieve my life long; for a good knight he is, bold and a fair fighter, though something wanting in knightly courtesy." "He is in better case than ye are, Sir King, who so lightly imperil your person, and thereby your kingdom's welfare; and, as ye say, Pellinore is a stout knight, and hereafter shall he serve you well. Have no fear. He shall wake again in three hours and have suffered naught by the encounter. But for you, it were well that ye came where ye might be tended for your wounds." "Nay," replied the King, smiling, "I may not return to my court thus weaponless; first will I find means to purvey me of a sword." "That is easily done," answered Merlin; "follow me, and I will bring you where ye shall get you a sword, the wonder of the world." So, though his wounds pained him sore, the King followed Merlin by many a forest path and glade, until they came upon a mere, bosomed deep in the forest; and as he looked thereon, the King beheld an arm, clothed in white samite, shoot above the surface of the lake, and in the hand was a fair sword that gleamed in the level rays of the setting sun. "This is a great marvel," said the King, "what may it mean?" And Merlin made answer: "Deep is this mere, so deep indeed that no man may fathom it; but in its depths, and built upon the roots of the mountains, is the palace of the Lady of the Lake. Powerful is she with a power that works ever for good, and she shall help thee in thine hour of need. For thee has she wrought yonder sword. Go now, and take it." Then was Arthur aware of a little skiff, half hidden among the bulrushes that fringed the lake; and leaping into the boat, without aid of oar, he was wafted out into the middle of the lake, to the place where, out of the water, rose the arm and sword. And leaning from the skiff, he took the sword from the hand, which forthwith vanished, and immediately thereafter the skiff bore him back to land. Arthur drew from its scabbard the mighty sword, wondering the while at the marvel of its workmanship, for the hilt shone with the light of many twinkling gems--diamond and topaz and emerald, and many another whose names none know. And as he looked on the blade, Arthur was aware of mystic writings on the one side and the other, and calling to Merlin, he bade him interpret them. "Sir," said Merlin, "on the one side is written 'Keep me,' and on the other 'Throw me away.'" "Then," said the King, "which does it behove me to do?" "Keep it," answered Merlin; "the time to cast it away is not yet come. This is the good brand Excalibur, or Cut Steel, and well shall it serve you. But what think ye of the scabbard?" "A fair cover for so good a sword," answered Arthur. "Nay, it is more than that," said Merlin, "for, so long as ye keep it, though ye be wounded never so sore, yet ye shall not bleed to death." And when he heard that, the King marvelled the more. Then they journeyed back to Caerleon, where the knights made great joy of the return of their lord. And presently, thither came Sir Pellinore, craving pardon of the King, who made but jest of his own misadventure. And afterwards Sir Pellinore became of the Table Round, a knight vowed, not only to deeds of hardihood, but also to gentleness and courtesy; and faithfully he served the King, fighting ever to maintain justice and put down wrong, and to defend the weak from the oppressor. CHAPTER IV OF THE TREACHERY OF QUEEN MORGAN LE FAY There was a certain Queen whose name was Morgan le Fay, and she was a powerful sorceress. Little do men know of her save that, in her youth, she was eager for knowledge and, having learnt all human lore, turned her to magic, becoming so skilled therein that she was feared of all. There was a time when great was her enmity towards King Arthur, so that she plotted his ruin not once only nor twice; and that is a strange thing, for it is said that she herself was the kinswoman of the King. And truly, in the end, she repented her of her malice, for she was, of those that came to bear Arthur to the Delightful Islands from the field of his last bitter conflict; but that was long after. Now when this enchantress learned how the Lady of the Lake had given the King a sword and scabbard of strange might, she was filled with ill-will; and all her thought was only how she might wrest the weapon from him and have it for her own, to bestow as she would. Even while she pondered thereon, the King himself sent her the scabbard to keep for him; for Merlin never ceased to warn the King to have in safe keeping the scabbard that had power to keep him from mortal hurt; and it seemed to Arthur that none might better guard it for him, till the hour of need, than Morgan le Fay, the wise Queen that was of his own kindred. Yet was not the Queen shamed of her treacherous intent by the trust that Arthur had in her; but all her mind was set on how she might win to the possession of the sword itself as well as of the scabbard. At the last--so had her desire for the sword wrought upon her--she resolved to compass the destruction of the King that, if she gained the sword, never might she have need to fear his justice for the wrong she had done. And her chance came soon. For, on a day, King Arthur resolved to chase the hart in the forests near Camelot, wherefore he left behind him his sword Excalibur, and took but a hunting spear with him. All day long, he chased a white hart and, when evening fell, he had far outstripped his attendants, save only two, Sir Accolon of Gaul and Sir Uriens, King of Gore, the husband of Queen Morgan le Fay herself. So when the King saw that darkness had come upon them in the forest, he turned to his companions, saying: "Sirs, we be far from Camelot and must lodge as we may this night. Let us go forward until we shall find where we may shelter us a little." So they rode forward, and presently Arthur espied a little lake glinting in the beams of the rising moon, and, as they drew nearer, they descried, full in the moonlight, a little ship, all hung with silks even to the water's edge. Then said the King to his knights: "Yonder is promise of shelter or, it may be, of adventure. Let us tether our horses in the thicket and enter into this little ship." And when they had so done, presently they found themselves in a fair cabin all hung with silks and tapestries, and, in its midst, a table spread with the choicest fare. And being weary and hungered with the chase, they ate of the feast prepared and, lying down to rest, were soon sunk in deep slumber. While they slept, the little ship floated away from the land, and it came to pass that a great wonder befell; for when they woke in the morning, King Uriens found himself at home in his own land, and Sir Accolon was in his own chamber at Camelot; but the King lay a prisoner, bound and fettered and weaponless, in a noisome dungeon that echoed to the groans of hapless captives. When he was come to himself, King Arthur looked about him and saw that his companions were knights in the same hard case as himself; and he inquired of them how they came to be in that plight. "Sir," said one of them, "we are in duresse in the castle of a certain recreant knight, Sir Damas by name, a coward false to chivalry. None love him, and so no champion can he find to maintain his cause in a certain quarrel that he has in hand. For this reason, he lies in wait with a great company of soldiers for any knights that may pass this way, and taking them prisoners, holds them in captivity unless they will undertake to fight to the death in his cause. And this I would not, nor any of my companions here; but unless we be speedily rescued, we are all like to die of hunger in this loathsome dungeon." "What is his quarrel?" asked the King. "That we none of us know," answered the knight. While they yet talked, there entered the prison a damsel. She went up to the King at once, and said: "Knight, will ye undertake to fight in the cause of the lord of this castle?" "That I may not say," replied the King, "unless first I may hear what is his quarrel." "That ye shall not know," replied the damsel, "but this I tell you: if ye refuse, ye shall never leave this dungeon alive, but shall perish here miserably." "This is a hard case," said the King, "that I must either die or fight for one I know not, and in a cause that I may not hear. Yet on one condition will I undertake your lord's quarrel, and that is that he shall give me all the prisoners bound here in this dungeon." "It shall be as ye say," answered the damsel, "and ye shall also be furnished with horse and armour and sword than which ye never saw better." Therewith the damsel bade him follow her, and brought him to a great hall where presently there came to him squires to arm him for the combat; and when their service was rendered, the damsel said to him: "Sir Knight, even now there has come one who greets you in the name of Queen Morgan le Fay, and bids me tell you that the Queen, knowing your need, has sent you your good sword." Then the King rejoiced greatly, for it seemed to him that the sword that the damsel gave him was none other than the good sword Excalibur. When all was prepared, the damsel led King Arthur into a fair field, and there he beheld awaiting him a knight, all sheathed in armour, his vizor down, and bearing a shield on which was no blazonry. So the two knights saluted each other, and, wheeling their horses, rode away from each other some little space. Then turning again, they laid lance in rest, and rushing upon each other, encountered with the noise of thunder, and so great was the shock that each knight was borne from the saddle. Swiftly they gained their feet, and, drawing their swords, dealt each other great blows; and thus they contended fiercely for some while. But as he fought, a great wonder came upon Arthur, for it seemed to him that his sword, that never before had failed him, bit not upon the armour of the other, while every stroke of his enemy drew blood, till the ground on which he fought was slippery beneath his feet; and at the last almost his heart failed within him, knowing that he was betrayed, and that the brand with which he fought was not Excalibur. Yet would he not show aught of what he suffered, but struggled on, faint as he was and spent; so that they that watched the fight and saw how he was sore wounded, marvelled at his great courage and endurance. But presently, the stranger knight dealt the King a blow which fell upon Arthur's sword, and so fierce was the stroke that the blade broke off at the pommel. "Knight," said the other, "thou must yield thee recreant to my mercy." "That may I not do with mine honour," answered the King, "for I am sworn to fight in this quarrel to the death." "But weaponless thou must needs be slain." "Slay me an ye will, but think not to win glory by slaying a weaponless man." Then was the other wroth to find himself still withstood and, in his anger, he dealt Arthur a great blow; but this the King shunned, and rushing upon his foe, smote him so fiercely on the head with the pommel of his broken sword that the knight swayed and let slip his own weapon. With a bound, Arthur was upon the sword, and no sooner had he it within his grasp than he knew it, of a truth, to be his own sword Excalibur. Then he scanned more closely his enemy, and saw the scabbard that he wore was none other than the magic scabbard of Excalibur; and forthwith, leaping upon the knight, he tore it from him and flung it far afield. "Knight," cried King Arthur, "ye have made me suffer sore, but now is the case changed and ye stand within my power, helpless and unarmed. And much I misdoubt me but that treacherously ye have dealt with me. Nevertheless, yield you recreant and I will spare your life." "That I may not do, for it is against my vow; so slay me if ye will. Of a truth, ye are the best knight that ever I encountered." Then it seemed to the King that the knight's voice was not unknown to him, and he said: "Tell me your name and what country ye are of, for something bids me think that ye are not all unknown to me." "I am Accolon of Gaul, knight of King Arthur's Round Table." "Ah! Accolon, Accolon," cried the King, "is it even thou that hast fought against me? Almost hast thou undone me. What treason tempted thee to come against me, and with mine own weapon too?" When Sir Accolon knew that it was against King Arthur that he had fought, he gave a loud cry and swooned away utterly. Then Arthur called to two stout yeomen amongst those that had looked on at the fight, and bade them bear Sir Accolon to a little hermitage hard by, and thither he himself followed with pain, being weak from loss of blood; but into the castle he would not enter, for he trusted not those that held it. The hermit dressed their wounds, and presently, when Sir Accolon had come to himself again, the King spoke gently to him, bidding him say how he had come to bear arms against him. "Sir and my lord," answered Sir Accolon, "it comes of naught but the treachery of your kinswoman, Queen Morgan le Fay. For on the morrow after we had entered upon the little ship, I awoke in my chamber at Camelot, and greatly I marvelled how I had come there. And as I yet wondered, there came to me a messenger from Queen Morgan le Fay, desiring me to go to her without delay. And when I entered her presence, she was as one sore troubled, and she said to me: 'Sir Accolon, of my secret power, I know that now is our King, Arthur, in great danger; for he lies imprisoned in a great and horrible dungeon whence he may not be delivered unless one be found to do battle for him with the lord of the castle. Wherefore have I sent for you that ye may take the battle upon you for our lord the King. And for greater surety, I give you here Excalibur, Arthur's own sword, for, of a truth, we should use all means for the rescuing of our lord.' And I, believing this evil woman, came hither and challenged the lord of this castle to mortal combat; and, indeed, I deemed it was with Sir Damas that I fought even now. Yet all was treachery, and I misdoubt me that Sir Damas and his people are in league with Queen Morgan le Fay to compass your destruction. But, my lord Arthur, pardon me, I beseech you, the injuries that, all unwitting, I have done you." King Arthur was filled with wrath against the Queen, more for the wrong done to Sir Accolon than for the treason to himself. In all ways that he might, he sought to comfort and relieve Sir Accolon, but in vain, for daily the knight grew weaker, and, after many days, he died. Then the King, being recovered of his wounds, returned to Camelot, and calling together a band of knights, led them against the castle of Sir Damas. But Damas had no heart to attempt to hold out, and surrendered himself and all that he had to the King's mercy. And first King Arthur set free those that Sir Damas had kept in miserable bondage, and sent them away with rich gifts. When he had righted the wrongs of others, then he summoned Sir Damas before him, and said: "I command thee that thou tell me why thou didst seek my destruction." And cringing low at the King's footstool, Damas answered: "I beseech you, deal mercifully with me, for all that I have done, I have done at the bidding of Queen Morgan le Fay." "A coward's plea," said the King; "how camest thou first to have traffic with her?" "Sir," replied Damas, "much have I suffered, first by the greed of my younger brother and now by the deceit of this evil woman, as ye shall hear. When my father died, I claimed the inheritance as of right, seeing that I was his elder son; but my young brother, Sir Ontzlake, withstood me, and demanded some part of my father's lands. Long since, he sent me a challenge to decide our quarrel in single combat, but it liked me ill, seeing that I am of no great strength. Much, therefore, did I desire to find a champion but, by ill fortune, none could I find until Queen Morgan le Fay sent word that, of her good will to me, she had sent me one that would defend my cause; and that same evening, the little ship brought you, my lord, to my castle. And when I saw you, I rejoiced, thinking to have found a champion that would silence my brother for ever; nor knew I you for the King's self. Wherefore, I entreat you, spare me, and avenge me on my brother." Therewith, Sir Damas fawned upon the King, but Arthur sternly bade him rise and send messengers to bring Sir Ontzlake before him. Presently, there stood before the King a youth, fair and of good stature, who saluted his lord and then remained silent before him. "Sir Ontzlake," said the King, "I have sent for you to know of your dealings with Sir Accolon and of your quarrel with your brother." "My lord Arthur," answered the youth, "that I was the cause of hurt to yourself, I pray you to pardon me, for all unwitting was I of evil. For ye shall know that I had challenged my brother to single combat; but when word came to me that he was provided of a champion, I might not so much as brook my armour for a sore wound that I had got of an arrow shot at me as I rode through the forest near his castle. And as I grieved for my hard case, there came a messenger from Queen Morgan le Fay bidding me be of good courage, for she had sent unto me one, Sir Accolon, who would undertake my quarrel. This only she commanded me, that I should ask no question of Sir Accolon. So Sir Accolon abode with me that night and, as I supposed, fought in my cause the next day. Sure am I that there is some mystery, yet may I not misdoubt my lady Queen Morgan le Fay without cause; wherefore, if blame there be, let me bear the punishment." Then was the King well pleased with the young man for his courage and loyalty to others. "Fair youth," said he, "ye shall go with me to Camelot, and if ye prove you brave and just in all your doings, ye shall be of my Round Table." But to Sir Damas he said sternly: "Ye are a mean-spirited varlet, unworthy of the degree of knighthood. Here I ordain that ye shall yield unto your brother the moiety of the lands that ye had of your father and, in payment for it, yearly ye shall receive of Sir Ontzlake a palfrey; for that will befit you better to ride than the knightly war-horse. And look ye well to it, on pain of death, that ye lie no more in wait for errant knights, but amend your life and live peaceably with your brother." Thereafter, the fear of the King kept Sir Damas from deeds of violence; yet, to the end, he remained cowardly and churlish, unworthy of the golden spurs of knighthood. But Sir Ontzlake proved him a valiant knight, fearing God and the King and naught else. CHAPTER V HOW THE SCABBARD OF EXCALIBUR WAS LOST Now when Queen Morgan le Fay knew that her plot had miscarried and that her treachery was discovered, she feared to abide the return of the King to Camelot; and so she went to Queen Guenevere, and said: "Madam, of your courtesy, grant me leave, I pray you, to depart." "Nay," said the Queen, "that were pity, for I have news of my lord the King, that soon he will return to Camelot. Will ye not then await his return, that ye may see your kinsman before ye depart?" "Alas! madam," said Morgan le Fay, "that may not be, for I have ill news that requires that immediately I get to my own country." "Then shall ye depart when ye will," said the Queen. So before the next day had dawned, Morgan le Fay arose and, taking her horse, departed unattended from Camelot. All that day and most of the night she rode fast, and ere noon the next day, she was come to a nunnery where, as she knew, King Arthur lay. Entering into the house, she made herself known to the nuns, who received her courteously and gave her of their best to eat and to drink. When she was refreshed, she asked if any other had sought shelter with them that day; and they told her that King Arthur lay in an inner chamber and slept, for he had rested little for three nights. "Ah! my dear lord!" exclaimed the false sorceress; "gladly would I speak with him, but I will not that ye awaken him, and long I may not tarry here; wherefore suffer me at least to look upon him as he sleeps, and then will I continue my journey." And the nuns, suspecting no treachery, showed Queen Morgan le Fay the room where King Arthur slept, and let her enter it alone. So Morgan le Fay had her will and stood beside the sleeping King; but again it seemed as if she must fail of her purpose, and her heart was filled with rage and despair. For she saw that the King grasped in his hand the hilt of the naked brand, that none might take it without awakening him. While she mused, suddenly she espied the scabbard where it hung at the foot of the bed, and her heart rejoiced to know that something she might gain by her bold venture. She snatched up the empty sheath, and wrapping it in a fold of her garment, left the chamber. Brief were her farewells to the holy nuns, and in haste she got to horse and rode away. Scarcely had she set forth, when the King awoke, and rising from his couch, saw at once that the scabbard of his sword was gone. Then summoned he the whole household to his presence and inquired who had entered his chamber. "Sir," said the Abbess, "there has none been here save only your kinswoman, the Queen Morgan le Fay. She, indeed, desired to look upon you since she might not abide your awakening." Then the King groaned aloud, saying, "It is my own kinswoman, the wife of my true knight, Sir Uriens, that would betray me." He bade Sir Ontzlake make ready to accompany him, and after courteous salutation to the Abbess and her nuns, together they rode forth by the path that Morgan le Fay had taken. Fast they rode in pursuit, and presently they came to a cross where was a poor cowherd keeping watch over his few beasts, and of him they asked whether any had passed that way. "Sirs," said the peasant, "even now there rode past the cross a lady most lovely to look upon, and with her forty knights." Greatly the King marvelled how Queen Morgan le Fay had come by such a cavalcade, but nothing he doubted that it was she the cowherd had seen. So thanking the poor man, the King, with Sir Ontzlake, rode on by the path that had been shown them, and presently, emerging from the forest, they were aware of a glittering company of horsemen winding through a wide plain that lay stretched before them. On the instant, they put spurs to their horses and galloped as fast as they might in pursuit. But, as it chanced, Queen Morgan le Fay looked back even as Arthur and Sir Ontzlake came forth from the forest, and seeing them, she knew at once that her theft had been discovered, and that she was pursued. Straightway she bade her knights ride on till they should come to a narrow valley where lay many great stones; but as soon as they had left her, she herself rode, with all speed, to a mere hard by. Sullen and still it lay, without even a ripple on its surface. No animal ever drank of its waters nor bird sang by it, and it was so deep that none might ever plumb it. And when the Queen had come to the brink, she dismounted. From the folds of her dress she drew the scabbard, and waving it above her head, she cried, "Whatsoever becometh of me, King Arthur shall not have this scabbard." Then, whirling it with all her might, she flung it far into the mere. The jewels glinted as the scabbard flashed through the air, then it clove the oily waters of the lake and sank, never again to be seen. When it had vanished, Morgan le Fay mounted her horse again, and rode fast after her knights, for the King and Ontzlake were in hot pursuit, and sore she feared lest they should come up with her before she might reach the shelter of the Valley of Stones. But she had rejoined her company of knights before the King had reached the narrow mouth of the valley. Quickly she bade her men scatter among the boulders, and then, by her magic art, she turned them all, men and horses and herself too, into stones, that none might tell the one from the other. When King Arthur and Sir Ontzlake reached the valley, they looked about for some sign of the presence of the Queen or her knights, but naught might they see though they rode through the valley and beyond, and returning, searched with all diligence among the rocks and boulders. Never again was Queen Morgan le Fay seen at Camelot, nor did she attempt aught afterwards against the welfare of the King. When she had restored her knights to their proper form, she hastened with them back to her own land, and there she abode for the rest of her days until she came with the other queens to carry Arthur from the field of the Battle in the West. Nor would the King seek to take vengeance on a woman, though sorely she had wronged him. His life long, he guarded well the sword Excalibur, but the sheath no man ever saw again. CHAPTER VI MERLIN Of Merlin and how he served King Arthur, something has been already shown. Loyal he was ever to Uther Pendragon and to his son, King Arthur, and for the latter especially he wrought great marvels. He brought the King to his rights; he made him his ships; and some say that Camelot, with its splendid halls, where Arthur would gather his knights around him at the great festivals of the year, at Christmas, at Easter, and at Pentecost, was raised by his magic, without human toil. Bleise, the aged magician who dwelt in Northumberland and recorded the great deeds of Arthur and his knights, had been Merlin's master in magic; but it came to pass in time that Merlin far excelled him in skill, so that his enemies declared no mortal was his father, and called him devil's son. Then, on a certain time, Merlin said to Arthur: "The time draws near when ye shall miss me, for I shall go down alive into the earth; and it shall be that gladly would ye give your lands to have me again." Then Arthur was grieved, and said: "Since ye know your danger, use your craft to avoid it." But Merlin answered: "That may not be." Now there had come to Arthur's court, a damsel of the Lady of the Lake--her whose skill in magic, some say, was greater than Merlin's own; and the damsel's name was Vivien. She set herself to learn the secrets of Merlin's art, and was ever with him, tending upon the old man and, with gentleness and tender service, winning her way to his heart; but all was a pretence, for she was weary of him and sought only his ruin, thinking it should be fame for her, by any means whatsoever, to enslave the greatest wizard of his age. And so she persuaded him to pass with her overseas into King Ban's land of Benwick, and there, one day, he showed her a wondrous rock, formed by magic art. Then she begged him to enter into it, the better to declare to her its wonders; but when once he was within, by a charm that she had learnt from Merlin's self, she caused the rock to shut down that never again might he come forth. Thus was Merlin's prophecy fulfilled, that he should go down into the earth alive. Much they marvelled in Arthur's court what had become of the great magician, till on a time, there rode past the stone a certain Knight of the Round Table and heard Merlin lamenting his sad fate. The knight would have striven to raise the mighty stone, but Merlin bade him not waste his labour, since none might release him save her who had imprisoned him there. Thus Merlin passed from the world through the treachery of a damsel, and thus Arthur was without aid in the days when his doom came upon him. CHAPTER VII BALIN AND BALAN Among the princes that thought scorn of Arthur in the days when first he became king, none was more insolent than Ryons of North Wales. So, on a time when King Arthur held high festival at Camelot, Ryons sent a herald who, in the presence of the whole court, before brave knights and fair dames, thus addressed the King: "Sir Arthur, my master bids me say that he has overcome eleven kings with all their hosts, and, in token of their submission, they have given him their beards to fringe him a mantle. There remains yet space for the twelfth; wherefore, with all speed, send him your beard, else will he lay waste your land with fire and sword." "Viler message," said King Arthur, "was never sent from man to man. Get thee gone, lest we forget thine office protects thee." So spoke the King, for he had seen his knights clap hand to sword, and would not that a messenger should suffer hurt in his court. Now among the knights present the while was one whom men called Balin le Savage, who had but late been freed from prison for slaying a knight of Arthur's court. None was more wroth than he at the villainy of Ryons, and immediately after the departure of the herald, he left the hall and armed him; for he was minded to try if, with good fortune, he might win to Arthur's grace by avenging him on the King of North Wales. While he was without, there entered the hall a Witch Lady who, on a certain occasion, had done the King a service, and for this she now desired of him a boon. So Arthur bade her name her request, and thus she said: "O King, I require of you the head of the knight Balin le Savage." "That may I not grant you with my honour," replied the King; "ask what it may become me to give." But the Witch Lady would have naught else, and departed from the hall, murmuring against the King. Then, as it chanced, Balin met her at the door, and immediately when he saw her, he rode upon her, sword in hand, and, with one blow, smote off her head. Thus he took vengeance for his mother's death, of which she had been the cause, and, well content, rode away. But when it was told King Arthur of the deed that Balin had done, he was full wroth, nor was his anger lessened though Merlin declared the wrong the Witch Lady had done to Balin. "Whatsoever cause he had against her, yet should he have done her no violence in my court," said the King, and bade Sir Lanceour of Ireland ride after Balin and bring him back again. Thus it came to pass that, as Sir Balin rode on his way, he heard the hoof-beats of a horse fast galloping, and a voice cried loudly to him: "Stay, Knight; for thou shalt stay, whether thou wilt or not." "Fair Knight," answered Balin fiercely, "dost thou desire to fight with me?" "Yea, truly," answered Lanceour; "for that cause have I followed thee from Camelot." "Alas!" cried Balin, "then I know thy quarrel. And yet, I dealt but justly by that vile woman, and it grieves me to offend my lord King Arthur again." "Have done, and make ready to fight," said Lanceour insolently; for he was proud and arrogant, though a brave knight. So they rushed together, and, at the first encounter, Sir Lanceour's spear was shivered against the shield of the other, but Balin's spear pierced shield and hauberk and Lanceour fell dead to the earth. Then Sir Balin, sore grieved that he had caused the death of a knight of Arthur's court, buried Lanceour as well as he might, and continued sorrowfully on his journey in search of King Ryons. Presently, as he rode through a great forest, he espied a knight whom, by his arms, he knew at once for his brother, Sir Balan. Great joy had they in their meeting, for Balan had believed Balin still to be in prison. So Balin told Balan all that had befallen him, and how he sought Ryons to avenge Arthur upon him for his insolent message, and hoped thereby to win his lord's favour again. "I will ride with thee, brother," said Balan, "and help thee all I may." So the two went on their way till, presently, they met with an old man--Merlin's self, though they knew him not, for he was disguised. "Ah, Knight," said Merlin to Balin, "swift to strike and swift to repent, beware, or thou shalt strike the most dolorous blow dealt by man; for thou shalt slay thine own brother." "If I believed thy words true," cried Balin hotly, "I would slay myself to make thee a liar." "I know the past and I know the future," said Merlin; "I know, too, the errand on which thou ridest, and I will help thee if thou wilt." "Ah!" said Balin, "that pleases me well." "Hide you both in this covert," said Merlin; "for presently there shall come riding down this path King Ryons with sixty of his knights." With these words he vanished. So Balin and Balan did as he had bidden them, and when King Ryons and his men entered the little path, they fell upon them with such fury that they slew more than forty knights, while the rest fled, and King Ryons himself yielded him to them. So Sir Balan rode with King Ryons to Camelot that he might deliver him to King Arthur; but Balin went not with them, for he would see more adventures before he sought King Arthur's presence again. After many days' travel and many encounters, it befell that, one evening, Balin drew near to a castle; and when he would have sought admittance, there stood by him an old man, and said: "Balin, turn thee back, and it shall be better for thee," and so vanished. At that moment there was blown a blast on a horn, such as is sounded when the stag receives its death; and hearing it, Balin's heart misgave him, and he cried: "That blast is blown for me, and I am the prize. But not yet am I dead!" At that instant the castle gate was raised and there appeared many knights and ladies welcoming Balin into the castle. So he entered, and presently they were all seated at supper. Then the lady of the castle said to Balin: "Sir Knight, to-morrow thou must have ado with a knight that keeps an island near-by; else mayest thou not pass that way." "That is an evil custom," answered Balin; "but if I must, I must." So that night he rested, but with the dawn he arose, and was arming himself for battle when there came to him a knight and said: "Sir, your shield is not good; I pray you, take mine which is larger and stouter." In an evil hour, Balin suffered himself to be persuaded, and taking the stranger's shield, left; behind his own on which his arms were blazoned. Then, entering a boat, he was conveyed to the island where the unknown knight held the ford. No sooner was he landed, than there came riding to him a knight armed all in red armour, his horse, too, trapped all in red; and without word spoken, they charged upon each other, and each bore the other from the saddle. Thus for a while they lay, stunned by the fall. The Red Knight was the first to rise, for Balin, all wearied by his travels and many encounters, was sore shaken by the fall. Then they fought together right fiercely, hacking away great pieces of armour, and dealing each other dreadful wounds. But when they paused to take breath, Balin, looking up, saw the battlements of the castle filled with knights and ladies watching the struggle, and immediately, shamed that the conflict should have so long endured, he rushed again upon the Red Knight, aiming at him blows that might have felled a giant. So they fought together a long while; but at the last, the Red Knight drew back a little. Then cried Balin: "Who art thou? for till now, never have I met my match." Then said the Red Knight: "I am Balan, brother to the noble knight, Sir Balin"; and with the word, he fell to the ground as one dead. "Alas!" cried Balin, "that I should have lived to see this day!" Then, as well as he might, for his strength was almost spent, he crept on hands and knees to his brother's side and opened the vizor of his helmet, and when he saw his brother's face all ghastly, as it was, he cried: "O Balan, I have slain thee, as thou hast also slain me! Oh! woeful deed I never to be forgotten of men!" Then Balan, being somewhat recovered, told Balin how he had been compelled by those at the castle to keep the ford against all comers, and might never depart; and Balin told of the grievous chance by which he had taken another's shield. So these two died, slain by each other's hands. In one tomb they were buried; and Merlin, passing that way, inscribed thereon the full story of their deaths. BOOK II SIR LAUNCELOT CHAPTER VIII SIR LAUNCELOT DU LAC Now, as time passed, King Arthur gathered into his Order of the Round Table knights whose peers shall never be found in any age; and foremost amongst them all was Sir Launcelot du Lac. Such was his strength that none against whom he laid lance in rest could keep the saddle, and no shield was proof against his sword dint; but for his courtesy even more than for his courage and strength, Sir Launcelot was famed far and near. Gentle he was and ever the first to rejoice in the renown of another; and in the jousts, he would avoid encounter with the young and untried knight, letting him pass to gain glory if he might. It would take a great book to record all the famous deeds of Sir Launcelot, and all his adventures. He was of Gaul, for his father, King Ban, ruled over Benwick; and some say that his first name was Galahad, and that he was named Launcelot du Lac by the Lady of the Lake who reared him when his mother died. Early he won renown by delivering his father's people from the grim King Claudas who, for more than twenty years, had laid waste the fair land of Benwick; then, when there was peace in his own land, he passed into Britain, to Arthur's court, where the King received him gladly, and made him Knight of the Round Table and took him for his trustiest friend. And so it was that, when Guenevere was to be brought to Canterbury, to be married to the King, Launcelot was chief of the knights sent to wait upon her, and of this came the sorrow of later days. For, from the moment he saw her, Sir Launcelot loved Guenevere, for her sake remaining wifeless all his days, and in all things being her faithful knight. But busy-bodies and mischief-makers spoke evil of Sir Launcelot and the Queen, and from their talk came the undoing of the King and the downfall of his great work. But that was after long years, and after many true knights had lived their lives, honouring the King and Queen, and doing great deeds whereby the fame of Arthur and his Order passed through all the world. CHAPTER IX THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHAPEL PERILOUS Now on a day, as he rode through the forest, Sir Launcelot met a damsel weeping bitterly, and seeing him, she cried, "Stay, Sir Knight! By your knighthood I require you to aid me in my distress." Immediately Sir Launcelot checked his horse and asked in what she needed his service. "Sir," said the maiden, "my brother lies at the point of death, for this day he fought with the stout knight, Sir Gilbert, and sorely they wounded each other; and a wise woman, a sorceress, has said that nothing may staunch my brother's wounds unless they be searched with the sword and bound up with a piece of the cloth from the body of the wounded knight who lies in the ruined chapel hard by. And well I know you, my lord Sir Launcelot, and that, if ye will not help me, none may." "Tell me your brother's name," said Sir Launcelot. "Sir Meliot de Logris," answered the damsel. "A Knight of our Round Table," said Sir Launcelot; "the more am I bound to your service. Only tell me, gentle damsel, where I may find this Chapel Perilous." So she directed him, and, riding through forest byeways, Sir Launcelot came presently upon a little ruined chapel, standing in the midst of a churchyard, where the tombs showed broken and neglected under the dark yews. In front of the porch, Sir Launcelot paused and looked, for thereon hung, upside down, dishonoured, the shield of many a good knight whom Sir Launcelot had known. As he stood wondering, suddenly there pressed upon him from all sides thirty stout knights, all giants and fully armed, their drawn swords in their hands and their shields advanced. With threatening looks, they spoke to him saying: "Sir Launcelot, it were well ye turned back before evil befell you." But Sir Launcelot, though he feared to have to do with thirty such warriors, answered boldly: "I turn not back for high words. Make them good by your deeds." Then he rode upon them fiercely, whereupon instantly they scattered and disappeared, and, sword in hand, Sir Launcelot entered the little chapel. All was dark within, save that a little lamp hung from the roof, and by its dim light he could just espy how on a bier before the altar there lay, stark and cold, a knight sheathed in armour. And drawing nearer, Sir Launcelot saw that the dead man lay on a blood-stained mantle, his naked sword by his side, but that his left hand had been lopped off at the wrist by a mighty sword-cut. Then Sir Launcelot boldly seized the sword and with it cut off a piece of the bloody mantle. Immediately the earth shook and the walls of the chapel rocked, and in fear Sir Launcelot turned to go. But, as he would have left the chapel, there stood before him in the doorway a lady, fair to look upon and beautifully arrayed, who gazed earnestly upon him, and said: "Sir Knight, put away from you that sword lest it be your death." But Sir Launcelot answered her: "Lady, what I have said, I do; and what I have won, I keep." "It is well," said the lady. "Had ye cast away the sword your life days were done. And now I make but one request. Kiss me once." "That may I not do," said Sir Launcelot. Then said the lady: "Go your way, Launcelot; ye have won, and I have lost. Know that, had ye kissed me, your dead body had lain even now on the altar bier. For much have I desired to win you; and to entrap you, I ordained this chapel. Many a knight have I taken, and once Sir Gawain himself hardly escaped, but he fought with Sir Gilbert and lopped off his hand, and so got away. Fare ye well; it is plain to see that none but our lady, Queen Guenevere, may have your services." With that, she vanished from his sight. So Sir Launcelot mounted his horse and rode away from that evil place till he met Sir Meliot's sister, who led him to her brother where he lay, pale as the earth, and bleeding fast. And when he saw Sir Launcelot, he would have risen to greet him; but his strength failed him, and he fell back on his couch. Sir Launcelot searched his wounds with the sword, and bound them up with the blood-stained cloth, and immediately Sir Meliot was sound and well, and greatly he rejoiced. Then Sir Meliot and his sister begged Sir Launcelot to stay and rest, but he departed on his adventures, bidding them farewell until he should meet them again at Arthur's court. As for the sorceress of the Chapel Perilous, it is said she died of grief that all her charms had failed to win for her the good knight Sir Launcelot. CHAPTER X SIR LAUNCELOT AND THE FALCON Sir Launcelot rode on his way, by marsh and valley and hill, till he chanced upon a fair castle, and saw fly from it, over his head, a beautiful falcon, with the lines still hanging from her feet. And as he looked, the falcon flew into a tree where she was held fast by the lines becoming entangled about the boughs. Immediately, from the castle there came running a fair lady, who cried: "O Launcelot, Launcelot! As ye are the noblest of all knights, I pray you help me to recover my falcon. For if my husband discover its loss, he will slay me in his anger." "Who is your husband, fair lady?" asked Sir Launcelot. "Sir Phelot, a knight of Northgalis, and he is of a hasty temper; wherefore, I beseech you, help me." "Well, lady," said Sir Launcelot, "I will serve you if I may; but the tree is hard to climb, for the boughs are few, and, in truth, I am no climber. But I will do my best." So the lady helped Sir Launcelot to unarm, and he led his horse to the foot of the tree, and springing from its back, he caught at the nearest bough, and drew himself up into the branches. Then he climbed till he reached the falcon and, tying her lines to a rotten bough, broke it off, and threw down bird and bough to the lady below. Forthwith, Sir Phelot came from amongst the trees and said: "Ah! Sir Launcelot! Now at length I have you as I would; for I have long sought your life." And Sir Launcelot made answer: "Surely ye would not slay me, an unarmed man; for that were dishonour to you. Keep my armour if ye will; but hang my sword on a bough where I may reach it, and then do with me as ye can." But Sir Phelot laughed mockingly and said: "Not so, Sir Launcelot. I know you too well to throw away my advantage; wherefore, shift as ye may." "Alas!" said Sir Launcelot, "that ever knight should be so unknightly. And you, madam, how could ye so betray me?" "She did but as I commanded her," said Sir Phelot. Then Launcelot looked about him to see how he might help himself in these straits, and espying above his head a great bare branch, he tote it down. Then, ever watching his advantage, he sprang to the ground on the far side of his horse, so that the horse was between him and Sir Phelot. Sir Phelot rushed upon him with his sword, but Sir Launcelot parried it with the bough, with which he dealt his enemy such a blow on the head that Sir Phelot sank to the ground in a swoon. Then Sir Launcelot seized his sword where it lay beside his armour, and stooping over the fallen knight, unloosed his helm. When the lady saw him do that, she shrieked and cried: "Spare his life! spare his life, noble knight, I beseech you!" But Sir Launcelot answered sternly: "A felon's death for him who does felon's deeds. He has lived too long already," and with one blow, he smote off his head. Then he armed himself, and mounting upon his steed, rode away, leaving the lady to weep beside her lord. BOOK III SIR TRISTRAM CHAPTER XI OF THE BIRTH OF SIR TRISTRAM In the days of Arthur, there ruled over the kingdom of Liones the good knight Sir Meliodas; and his Queen was the fair Elizabeth, sister of King Mark of Cornwall. Now there was a lady, an enchantress, who had no good-will towards King Meliodas and his Queen; so one day, when the King was hunting, she brought it to pass by her charms that Meliodas chased a hart till he found himself, far from all his men, alone by an old castle, and there he was taken prisoner by the lady's knights. When King Meliodas did not return home, the Queen was nigh crazed with grief. Attended only by one of the ladies of her court, she ran out into the forest to seek her lord. Long and far she wandered, until she could go no further, but sank down at the foot of a great tree, and there, in the midst of the forest, was her little son born. When the Queen knew that she must die, she kissed the babe and said: "Ah! little son, sad has been thy birth, wherefore thy name shall be Tristram; but thou shalt grow to be a brave knight and a strong." Then she charged her gentlewoman to take care of the child and to commend her to King Meliodas; and after that she died. All too late came many of the barons seeking their Queen, and sorrowfully they bore her back to the castle where presently the King arrived, released by the skill of Merlin from the evil spells of the enchantress. Great indeed was his grief for the death of his Queen. He caused her to be buried with all the pomp and reverence due to so good and fair a lady, and long and bitterly he mourned her loss and all the people with him. But at the end of seven years, King Meliodas took another wife. Then, when the Queen had sons of her own, it angered her to think that in the days to come, her stepson Tristram, and none other, should rule the fair land of Liones. The more she thought of it, the more she hated him till, at the last, she was resolved to do away with him. So she filled a silver goblet with a pleasant drink in which she had mixed poison, and she set it in the room where Tristram played with the young princes, his half-brothers. Now the day was hot, and presently, being heated with his play, the young prince, the Queen's eldest son, drank of the poisoned goblet; and immediately he died. Much the Queen grieved, but more than ever she hated her stepson Tristram, as if, through him, her son had died. Presently, again she mixed poison and set it in a goblet; and that time, King Meliodas, returning thirsty from the chase, took the cup and would have drunk of it, only the Queen cried to him to forbear. Then the King recalled to mind how his young son had drunk of a seeming pleasant drink and died on the instant; and seizing the Queen by the hand, he cried: "False traitress! tell me at once what is in that cup, or I will slay thee!" Then the Queen cried him mercy and told him all her sin. But in his wrath the King would have no mercy, but sentenced her to be burnt at the stake, which, in those days, was the doom of traitors. The day having come when the Queen should suffer for her fault, she was led out and bound to a stake in the presence of all the court, and the faggots were heaped about her. Then the young prince Tristram kneeled before the King and asked of him a favour: and the King, loving him much, granted him his request. "Then," said Tristram, "I require you to release the Queen, my stepmother, and to take her again to your favour." Greatly the King marvelled, and said: "Ye should of right hate her, seeing that she sought your life." But Tristram answered: "I forgive her freely." "I give you then her life," said the King; "do ye release her from the stake." So Tristram unloosed the chains which bound the Queen and led her back to the castle, and from that day the Queen loved him well; but as for King Meliodas, though he forgave her and suffered her to remain at court, yet never again would he have aught to do with her. CHAPTER XII HOW TRISTRAM FOUGHT WITH SIR MARHAUS OF IRELAND Now King Meliodas, though he had pardoned the Queen, would keep his son Tristram no longer at the court, but sent him into France. There Tristram learnt all knightly exercises, so that there was none could equal him as harper or hunter; and after seven years, being by then a youth of nineteen, he returned to his own land of Liones. It chanced, in those days, that King Anguish of Ireland sent to Cornwall, demanding the tribute paid him in former times by that land. Then Mark, the Cornish King, called together his barons and knights to take counsel; and by their advice, he made answer that he would pay no tribute, and bade King Anguish send a stout knight to fight for his right if he still dared claim aught of the land of Cornwall. Forthwith there came from Ireland Sir Marhaus, brother of the Queen of Ireland. Now Sir Marhaus was Knight of the Round Table and in his time there were few of greater renown. He anchored his ships under the Castle of Tintagil, and sent messengers daily to King Mark, bidding him pay the tribute or find one to fight in his cause. Then was King Mark sore perplexed, for not one of his knights dared encounter Sir Marhaus. Criers were sent through all the land, proclaiming that, to any knight that would take the combat upon him, King Mark would give such gifts as should enrich him for life. In time, word of all that had happened came to Liones, and immediately Tristram sought his father, desiring his permission to go to the court of his uncle, King Mark, to take the battle upon him. Thus it came to pass that, with his father's good leave, Tristram presented himself before King Mark, asking to be made knight that he might do battle for the liberties of Cornwall. Then when Mark knew that it was his sister's son, he rejoiced greatly, and having made Tristram knight, he sent word to Sir Marhaus that there was found to meet him a champion of better birth than Sir Marhaus' self. So it was arranged that the combat should take place on a little island hard by, where Sir Marhaus had anchored his ships. Sir Tristram, with his horse and arms, was placed on board a ship, and when the island was gained, he leaped on shore, bidding his squire put off again and only return when he was slain or victorious. Now, when Sir Marhaus saw that Tristram was but a youth, he cried aloud to him: "Be advised, young Sir, and go back to your ship. What can ye hope to do against me, a proven knight of Arthur's Table?" Then Tristram made answer: "Sir and most famous champion, I have been made knight to do battle with you, and I promise myself to win honour thereby, I who have never before encountered a proven knight." "If ye can endure three strokes of my sword, it shall be honour enough," said Sir Marhaus. Then they rushed upon each other, and at the first encounter each unhorsed the other, and Sir Marhaus' spear pierced Sir Tristram's side and made a grievous wound. Drawing their swords, they lashed at each other, and the blows fell thick as hail till the whole island re-echoed with the din of onslaught. So they fought half a day, and ever it seemed that Sir Tristram grew fresher and nimbler while Sir Marhaus became sore wearied. And at the last, Sir Tristram aimed a great blow at the head of his enemy, and the sword crashed through the helmet and bit into the skull so that a great piece was broken away from the edge of Tristram's sword. Then Sir Marhaus flung away sword and shield, and when he might regain his feet, fled shrieking to his ships. "Do ye flee?" cried Tristram. "I am but newly made knight; but rather than flee, I would be hewn piecemeal." Then came Gouvernail, Sir Tristram's squire, and bore his master back to land, where Mark and all the Cornish lords came to meet him and convey him to the castle of Tintagil. Far and wide they sent for surgeons to dress Sir Tristram's wound, but none might help him, and ever he grew weaker. At the last, a wise woman told King Mark that in that land alone whence came the poisoned spear could Sir Tristram find cure. Then the King gave orders and a ship was made ready with great stores of rich furnishings, to convey Sir Tristram to Ireland, there to heal him of his wound. CHAPTER XIII THE FAIR ISOLT Thus Tristram sailed to Ireland, and when he drew nigh the coast, he called for his harp, and sitting up on his couch on the deck, played the merriest tune that was ever heard in that land. And the warders on the castle wall, hearing him, sent and told King Anguish how a ship drew near with one who harped as none other might. Then King Anguish sent knights to convey the stranger into the castle. So when he was brought into the King's presence, Tristram declared that he was Sir Tramtrist of Liones, lately made knight, and wounded in his first battle; for which cause he was come to Ireland, to seek healing. Forthwith the King made him welcome, and placed him in the charge of his daughter, Isolt. Now Isolt was famed for her skill in surgery, and, moreover, she was the fairest lady of that time, save only Queen Guenevere. So she searched and bandaged Sir Tristram's wound, and presently it was healed. But still Sir Tristram abode at King Anguish's court, teaching the Fair Isolt to harp, and taking great pleasure in her company. And ever the princess doubted whether Sir Tristram were not a renowned knight and ever she liked him better. So the time passed merrily with feastings and in the jousts, and in the lists Sir Tristram won great honour when he was recovered of his wound. At last it befell upon a day that Sir Tristram had gone to the bath and left his sword lying on the couch. And the Queen, entering, espied it, and taking it up, drew the sword from the sheath and fell to admiring the mighty blade. Presently she saw that the edge was notched, and while she pondered how great a blow must have broken the good steel, suddenly she bethought her of the piece which had been found in the head of her brother, Sir Marhaus. Hastening to her chamber, she sought in a casket for the fragment, and returning, placed it by the sword edge, where it fitted as well as on the day it was first broken. Then she cried to her daughter: "This, then, is the traitor knight who slew my brother, Sir Marhaus"; and snatching up the sword, she rushed upon Sir Tristram where he sat in his bath, and would have killed him, but that his squire restrained her. Having failed of her purpose, she sought her husband, King Anguish, and told him all her story: how the knight they had harboured was he who had slain Sir Marhaus. Then the King, sore perplexed, went to Sir Tristram's chamber, where he found him fully armed, ready to get to horse. And Tristram told him all the truth, how in fair fight he had slain Sir Marhaus. "Ye did as a knight should," said King Anguish; "and much it grieves me that I may not keep you at my court; but I cannot so displease my Queen or barons." "Sir," said Tristram, "I thank you for your courtesy, and will requite it as occasion may offer. Moreover, here I pledge my word, as I am good knight and true, to be your daughter's servant, and in all places and at all times to uphold her quarrel. Wherefore I pray you that I may take my leave of the princess." Then, with the King's permission, Sir Tristram went to the Fair Isolt and told her all his story; "And here," said he, "I make my vow ever to be your true knight, and at all times and in all places to uphold your quarrel." "And on my part" answered the Fair Isolt, "I make promise that never these seven years will I marry any man, save with your leave and as ye shall desire." Therewith they exchanged rings, the Fair Isolt grieving sore the while. Then Sir Tristram strode into the court and cried aloud, before all the barons: "Ye knights of Ireland, the time is come when I must depart. Therefore, if any man have aught against me, let him stand forth now, and I will satisfy him as I may." Now there were many present of the kin of Sir Marhaus, but none dared have ado with Sir Tristram; so, slowly he rode away, and with his squire took ship again for Cornwall. CHAPTER XIV HOW KING MARK SENT SIR TRISTRAM TO FETCH HIM A WIFE When Sir Tristram had come back to Cornwall, he abode some time at the court of King Mark. Now in those days the Cornish knights were little esteemed, and none less than Mark himself, who was a coward, and never adventured himself in fair and open combat, seeking rather to attack by stealth and have his enemy at an advantage. But the fame of Sir Tristram increased daily, and all men spoke well of him. So it came to pass that King Mark, knowing himself despised, grew fearful and jealous of the love that all men bore his nephew; for he seemed in their praise of him to hear his own reproach. He sought, therefore, how he might rid himself of Tristram even while he spoke him fair and made as if he loved him much, and at the last he bethought him how he might gain his end and no man be the wiser. So one day, he said to Tristram: "Fair nephew, I am resolved to marry, and fain would I have your aid." "In all things, I am yours to command," answered Sir Tristram. "I pray you, then," said King Mark, "bring me to wife the Fair Isolt of Ireland. For since I have heard your praises of her beauty, I may not rest unless I have her for my Queen." And this he said thinking that, if ever Sir Tristram set foot in Ireland, he would be slain. But Tristram, nothing mistrusting, got together a company of gallant knights, all fairly arrayed as became men sent by their King on such an errand; and with them he embarked on a goodly ship. Now it chanced that when he had reached the open sea, a great storm arose and drove him back on to the coast of England, and landing with great difficulty he set up his pavilion hard by the city of Camelot. Presently, word was brought him by his squire that King Anguish with his company lay hard by, and that the King was in sore straits; for he was charged with the murder of a knight of Arthur's court, and must meet in combat Sir Blamor, one of the stoutest knights of the Round Table. Then Sir Tristram rejoiced, for he saw in this opportunity of serving King Anguish the means of earning his good will. So he betook himself to the King's tent, and proffered to take upon him the encounter, for the kindness shown him by King Anguish in former days. And the King gratefully accepting of his championship, the next day Sir Tristram encountered with Sir Blamor, overthrew him, and so acquitted the Irish King of the charge brought against him. Then in his joy, King Anguish begged Sir Tristram to voyage with him to his own land, bidding Tristram ask what boon he would and he should have it. So rejoicing in his great fortune, Sir Tristram sailed once again for the Irish land. CHAPTER XV HOW SIR TRISTRAM AND THE FAIR ISOLT DRANK OF THE MAGIC POTION Then King Anguish made haste to return to Ireland, taking Sir Tristram with him. And when he was come there and had told all his adventures, there was great rejoicing over Sir Tristram, but of none more than of the Fair Isolt. So when Sir Tristram had stayed there some while, King Anguish reminded him of the boon he should ask and of his own willingness to grant it. "Sir King," replied Sir Tristram, "now will I ask it. Grant me your daughter, the Fair Isolt, that I may take her to Cornwall, there to become the wife of my uncle, King Mark." Then King Anguish grieved when he heard Sir Tristram's request, and said: "Far more gladly would I give her to you to wife." "That may not be," replied Sir Tristram; "my honour forbids." "Take her then," said King Anguish, "she is yours to wed or to give to your uncle, King Mark, as seems good to you." So a ship was made ready and there entered it the Fair Isolt and Sir Tristram, and Gouvernail, his squire, and Dame Bragwaine, who was maid to the princess. But before they sailed, the Queen gave in charge to Gouvernail and Dame Bragwaine a phial of wine which King Mark and Isolt should drink together on their wedding-day; "For," said the Queen, "such is the magic virtue of this wine, that, having drunk of it, they may never cease from loving one another." Now it chanced, one day, that Sir Tristram sat and harped to the Fair Isolt; and the weather being hot, he became thirsty. Then looking round the cabin he beheld a golden flask, curiously shaped and wrought; and laughing, he said to the Fair Isolt: "See, madam, how my man and your maid care for themselves; for here is the best wine that ever I tasted. I pray you, now, drink to me." So with mirth and laughter, they pledged each other, and thought that never before had they tasted aught so good. But when they had made an end of drinking, there came upon them the might of the magic charm; and never from that day, for good or for ill, might they cease from their love. And so much woe was wrought; for, mindful of his pledge to his uncle, Sir Tristram brought Isolt in all honour into the land of Cornwall where she was wedded with pomp and ceremony to King Mark, the craven King, who hated his nephew even more than before, because he had returned in safety and made good his promise as became an honourable knight. And from that day he never ceased seeking the death of Sir Tristram. CHAPTER XVI OF THE END OF SIR TRISTRAM Then again Sir Tristram abode at King Mark's court, ever rendering the Fair Isolt loyal and knightly service; for King Mark would imperil his life for none, no matter what the need. Now among the Cornish knights, there was much jealousy of Sir Tristram de Liones, and chief of his enemies was his own cousin, Sir Andred. With lying words, Sir Andred sought to stir up King Mark against his nephew, speaking evil of the Queen and of Sir Tristram. Now Mark was afraid openly to accuse Sir Tristram, so he set Sir Andred to spy upon him. At last, it befell one day that Sir Andred saw Sir Tristram coming, alone and unarmed, from the Queen's presence, and with twelve other knights, he fell upon him and bound him. Then these felon knights bore Sir Tristram to a little chapel standing upon a great rock which jutted out into the sea. There they would have slain him, unarmed and bound. But Sir Tristram, perceiving their intent, put forth suddenly all his strength, burst his bonds, and wresting a sword from Sir Andred, cut him down; and so he did with six other knights. Then while the rest, being but cowards, gave back a little, he shut to and bolted the doors against them, and sprang from the window on to the sea-washed rocks below. There he lay as one dead, until his squire, Gouvernail, coming in a little boat, took up his master, dressed his wounds, and carried him to the coast of England. So Sir Tristram was minded to remain in that country for a time. Then, one day, as he rode through the forest near Camelot, there came running to him a fair lady who cried: "Sir Tristram, I claim your aid for the truest knight in all the world, and that is none other than King Arthur." "With a good heart," said Sir Tristram; "but where may I find him?" "Follow me," said the lady, who was none other than the Lady of the Lake herself, and ever mindful of the welfare of King Arthur. So he rode after her till he came to a castle, and in front of it he saw two knights who beset at once another knight, and when Sir Tristram came to the spot, the two had borne King Arthur to the ground and were about to cut off his head. Then Sir Tristram called to them to leave their traitor's work and look to themselves; with the word, one he pierced through with his spear and the other he cut down, and setting King Arthur again upon his horse, he rode with him until they met with certain of Arthur's knights. But when King Arthur would know his name, Tristram would give none, but said only that he was a poor errant knight; and so they parted. But Arthur, when he was come back to Camelot, sent for Sir Launcelot and other of his knights, bidding them seek for such an one as was Sir Tristram and bring him to the court. So they departed, each his own way, and searched for many days, but in vain. Then it chanced, at last, as Sir Launcelot rode on his way, he espied Sir Tristram resting beside a tomb; and, as was the custom of knights errant, he called upon him to joust. So the two ran together and each broke his spear. Then they sprang to the ground and fought with their swords, and each thought that never had he encountered so stout or so skilled a knight. So fiercely they fought that, perforce, at last they must rest. Then said Sir Launcelot: "Fair Knight, I pray you tell me your name, for never have I met so good a knight." "In truth," said Sir Tristram, "I am loth to tell my name." "I marvel at that," said Sir Launcelot; "for mine I will tell you freely. I am Launcelot du Lac." Then was Sir Tristram filled at once with joy and with sorrow; with joy that at last he had encountered the noblest knight of the Round Table, with sorrow that he had done him such hurt, and without more ado he revealed his name. Now Sir Launcelot, who ever delighted in the fame of another, had long desired to meet Sir Tristram de Liones, and rejoicing to have found him, he knelt right courteously and proffered him his sword, as if he would yield to him. But Tristram would not have it so, declaring that, rather, he should yield to Sir Launcelot. So they embraced right heartily, and when Sir Launcelot questioned him, Sir Tristram acknowledged that it was he who had come to King Arthur's aid. Together, then, they rode to Camelot, and there Sir Tristram was received with great honour by King Arthur, who made him Knight of the Round Table. Presently, to Tristram at Camelot, there came word that King Mark had driven the Fair Isolt from court, and compelled her to have her dwelling in a hut set apart for lepers. Then Sir Tristram was wroth indeed, and mounting his horse, rode forth that same hour, and rested not till he had found the lepers' hut, whence he bore the Queen to the castle known as the Joyous Garde; and there he held her, in safety and honour, in spite of all that King Mark could do. And all men honoured Sir Tristram, and felt sorrow for the Fair Isolt; while as for King Mark, they scorned him even more than before. But to Sir Tristram, it was grief to be at enmity with his uncle who had made him knight, and at last he craved King Arthur's aid to reconcile him to Mark. So then the King, who loved Sir Tristram, sent messengers to Cornwall to Mark, bidding him come forthwith to Camelot; and when the Cornish King was arrived, Arthur required him to set aside his enmity to Tristram, who had in all things been his loyal nephew and knight. And King Mark, his head full of hate, but fearful of offending his lord, King Arthur, made fair proffers of friendship, begging Sir Tristram to return to Cornwall with him, and promising to hold him in love and honour. So they were reconciled, and when King Mark returned to Cornwall, thither Sir Tristram escorted the Fair Isolt, and himself abode there, believing his uncle to mean truly and honourably by him. But under a seeming fair exterior, King Mark hated Sir Tristram more than ever, and waited only to have him at an advantage. At length he contrived the opportunity he sought. For he hid him in the Queen's chamber at a time when he knew Sir Tristram would come there unarmed, to harp to the Fair Isolt the music that she loved. So as Sir Tristram, all unsuspecting, bent over his harp, Mark leaped from his lurking place and dealt him such a blow from behind that, on the instant, he fell dead at the feet of the Fair Isolt. So perished the good knight, Sir Tristram de Liones Nor did the Fair Isolt long survive him, for refusing all comfort, she pined away, and died within a few days, and was laid in a tomb beside that of her true knight. But the felon King paid the price of his treachery with his life; for Sir Launcelot himself avenged the death of his friend and the wrongs of the Fair Isolt. BOOK IV KING ARTHUR'S NEPHEWS CHAPTER XVII SIR GAWAIN AND THE LADY Among the knights at King Arthur's court were his nephews, the sons of his sister, Queen Bellicent, and of that King Lot of Orkney, who had joined the league against Arthur in the first years of his reign. Of each, many tales are told; of Sir Gawain and Sir Gareth to their great renown, but of Sir Mordred to his shame. For Sir Gawain and Sir Gareth were knights of great prowess; but Sir Mordred was a coward and a traitor, envious of other men's fame, and a tale-bearer. Now Sir Gawain was known as the Ladies' Knight, and this is how he came by the name. It was at Arthur's marriage-feast, when Gawain had just been made knight, that a strange thing befell. There entered the hall a white hart, chased by a hound, and when it had run round the hall, it fled through the doorway again, still followed by the hound. Then, by Merlin's advice, the quest of the hart was given to Gawain as a new-made knight, to follow it and see what adventures it would bring him. So Sir Gawain rode away, taking with him three couples of greyhounds for the pursuit. At the last, the hounds caught the hart, and killed it just as it reached the court-yard of a castle. Then there came forth from the castle a knight, and he was grieved and wroth to see the hart slain, for it was given him by his lady; so, in his anger, he killed two of the hounds. At that moment Sir Gawain entered the court-yard, and an angry man was he when he saw his greyhounds slain. "Sir Knight," said he, "ye would have done better to have taken your vengeance on me rather than on dumb animals which but acted after their kind." "I will be avenged on you also," cried the knight; and the two rushed together, cutting and thrusting that it was wonderful they might so long endure. But at the last the knight grew faint, and crying for mercy, offered to yield to Sir Gawain. "Ye had no mercy on my hounds," said Sir Gawain. "I will make you all the amends in my power," answered the knight. But Sir Gawain would not be turned from his purpose, and unlacing the vanquished knight's helmet, was about to cut off his head, when a lady rushed out from the castle and flung herself on the body of the fallen knight. So it chanced that Sir Gawain's sword descending smote off the lady's head. Then was Sir Gawain grieved and sore ashamed for what he had done, and said to the knight: "I repent for what I have done; and here I give you your life. Go only to Camelot, to King Arthur's court, and tell him ye are sent by the knight who follows the quest of the white hart." "Ye have slain my lady," said the other, "and now I care not what befalls me." So he arose and went to King Arthur's court. Then Sir Gawain prepared to rest him there for the night; but scarcely had he lain down when there fell upon him four knights, crying: "New-made knight, ye have shamed your knighthood, for a knight without mercy is without honour." Then was Sir Gawain borne to the earth, and would have been slain, but that there came forth from the castle four ladies who besought the knights to spare his life; so they consented and bound him prisoner. The next morning Sir Gawain was brought again before the knights and their dames; and because he was King Arthur's nephew, the ladies desired that he should be set free, only they required that he should ride again to Camelot, the murdered lady's head hanging from his neck, and her dead body across his saddle-bow; and that when he arrived at the court he should confess his misdeeds. So Sir Gawain rode sadly back to Camelot, and when he had told his tale, King Arthur was sore displeased. And Queen Guenevere held a court of her ladies to pass sentence on Sir Gawain for his ungentleness. These then decreed that, his life long, he must never refuse to fight for any lady who desired his services, and that ever he should be gentle and courteous and show mercy to all. From that time forth, Sir Gawain never failed in aught that dame or damsel asked of him, and so he won and kept the title of the Ladies' Knight. CHAPTER XVIII THE ADVENTURES OF SIR GARETH Gareth was the youngest of the sons of Lot and Bellicent, and had grown up long after Gawain and Mordred left their home for King Arthur's court; so that when he came before the King, all humbly attired, he was known not even by his own brothers. King Arthur was keeping Pentecost at Kink Kenadon on the Welsh border and, as his custom was, waited to begin the feast until some adventure should befall. Presently there was seen approaching a youth, who, to the wonderment of all that saw, leaned upon the shoulders of two men, his companions; and yet as he passed up the hall, he seemed a goodly youth, tall and broad-shouldered. When he stood before the King, suddenly he drew himself up, and after due greeting, said: "Sir King, I would ask of you three boons; one to be granted now and two hereafter when I shall require them." And Arthur, looking upon him, was pleased, for his countenance was open and honest. So he made answer; "Fair son, ask of me aught that is honourable and I will grant it." Then the youth said: "For this present, I ask only that ye will give me meat and drink for a year and a day." "Ye might have asked and had a better gift," replied the King; "tell me now your name." "At this time, I may not tell it," said the youth. Now King Arthur trusted every man until he proved himself unworthy, and in this youth he thought he saw one who should do nobly and win renown; so laughing, he bade him keep his own counsel since so he would, and gave him in charge to Sir Kay, the Seneschal. Now Sir Kay was but harsh to those whom he liked not, and from the first he scorned the young man; "For none," said he, "but a low-born lout would crave meat and drink when he might have asked for a horse and arms." But Sir Launcelot and Sir Gawain took the youth's part. Neither knew him for Gareth of the Orkneys, but both believed him to be a youth of good promise who, for his own reasons, would pass in disguise for a season. So Gareth lived the year among the kitchen-boys, all the time mocked and scorned by Sir Kay, who called him Fairhands because his hands were white and shapely. But Launcelot and Gawain showed him all courtesy, and failed not to observe how, in all trials of strength, he excelled his comrades, and that he was ever present to witness the feats of the knights in the tournaments. So the year passed, and again King Arthur was keeping the feast of Pentecost with his knights, when a damsel entered the hall and asked his aid: "For," said she, "my sister is closely besieged in her castle by a strong knight who lays waste all her lands. And since I know that the knights of your court be the most renowned in the world, I have come to crave help of your mightiest." "What is your sister's name, and who is he that oppresses her?" asked the King. "The Red Knight, he is called," replied the damsel. "As for my sister I will not say her name, only that she is a high-born lady and owns broad lands." Then the King frowned and said: "Ye would have aid but will say no name. I may not ask knight of mine to go on such an errand." Then forth stepped Gareth from among the serving men at the hall end and said: "Sir King, I have eaten of your meat in your kitchen this twelvemonth since, and now I crave my other two boons." "Ask and have," replied the King. "Grant me then the adventure of this damsel, and bid Sir Launcelot ride after me to knight me at my desire, for of him alone would I be made knight." "It shall be so," answered the King. "What!" cried the damsel, "I ask for a knight and ye give me a kitchen-boy. Shame on you, Sir King." And in great wrath she fled from the hall, mounted her palfrey and rode away. Gareth but waited to array himself in the armour which he had kept ever in readiness for the time when he should need it, and mounting his horse, rode after the damsel. But when Sir Kay knew what had happened, he was wroth, and got to horse to ride after Gareth and bring him back. Even as Gareth overtook the damsel, so did Kay come up with him and cried: "Turn back, Fairhands! What, sir, do ye not know me?" "Yes," answered Gareth, "I know you for the most discourteous knight in Arthur's court." Then Sir Kay rode upon him with his lance, but Gareth turned it aside with his sword and pierced Sir Kay through the side so that he fell to the ground and lay there without motion. So Gareth took Sir Kay's shield and spear and was about to ride away, when seeing Sir Launcelot draw near, he called upon him to joust. At the first encounter, Sir Launcelot unhorsed Gareth, but quickly helped him to his feet. Then, at Gareth's desire, they fought together with swords, and Gareth did knightly till, at length, Sir Launcelot said, laughing: "Why should we fight any longer? Of a truth ye are a stout knight." "If that is indeed your thought, I pray you make me knight," cried Gareth. So Sir Launcelot knighted Gareth, who, bidding him farewell, hastened after the damsel, for she had ridden on again while the two knights talked. When she saw him coming, she cried: "Keep off! ye smell of the kitchen!" "Damsel," said Sir Gareth, "I must follow until I have fulfilled the adventure." "Till ye accomplish the adventure, Turn-spit? Your part in it shall soon be ended." "I can only do my best," answered Sir Gareth. Now as they rode through the forest, they met with a knight sore beset by six thieves, and him Sir Gareth rescued. The knight then bade Gareth and the damsel rest at his castle, and entertained them right gladly until the morn, when the two rode forth again. Presently, they drew near to a deep river where two knights kept the ford. "How now, kitchen-knave? Will ye fight or escape while ye may?" cried the damsel. "I would fight though there were six instead of two," replied Sir Gareth. Therewith he encountered the one knight in mid-stream and struck him such a blow on the head that he fell, stunned, into the water and was drowned. Then, gaining the land, Gareth cleft in two both helmet and head of the other knight, and turned to the damsel, saying: "Lead on; I follow." But the damsel mocked him, saying: "What a mischance is this that a kitchen-boy should slay two noble knights! Be not over-proud, Turn-spit. It was but luck, if indeed ye did not attack one knight from behind." "Say what you will, I follow," said Sir Gareth. So they rode on again, the damsel in front and Sir Gareth behind, till they reached a wide meadow where stood many fair pavilions; and one, the largest, was all of blue, and the men who stood about it were clothed in blue, and bore shields and spears of that colour; and of blue, too, were the trappings of the horses. Then said the damsel: "Yonder is the Blue Knight, the goodliest that ever ye have looked upon, and five hundred knights own him lord." "I will encounter him," said Sir Gareth; "for if he be good knight and true as ye say, he will scarce set on me with all his following; and man to man, I fear him not." "Fie!" said the damsel, "for a dirty knave, ye brag loud. And even if ye overcome him, his might is as nothing to that of the Red Knight who besieges my lady sister. So get ye gone while ye may." "Damsel," said Sir Gareth, "ye are but ungentle so to rebuke me; for, knight or knave, I have done you good service, nor will I leave this quest while life is mine." Then the damsel was ashamed, and, looking curiously at Gareth, she said: "I would gladly know what manner of man ye are. For I heard you call yourself kitchen-knave before Arthur's self, but ye have ever answered patiently though I have chidden you shamefully; and courtesy comes only of gentle blood." Thereat Sir Gareth but laughed, and said: "He is no knight whom a maiden can anger by harsh words." So talking, they entered the field, and there came to Sir Gareth a messenger from the Blue Knight to ask him if he came in peace or in war. "As your lord pleases," said Sir Gareth. So when the messenger had brought back this word, the Blue Knight mounted his horse, took his spear in his hand, and rode upon Sir Gareth. At their first encounter their lances shivered to pieces, and such was the shock that their horses fell dead. So they rushed on each other with sword and shield, cutting and slashing till the armour was hacked from their bodies; but at last, Sir Gareth smote the Blue Knight to the earth. Then the Blue Knight yielded, and at the damsel's entreaty, Sir Gareth spared his life. So they were reconciled, and at the request of the Blue Knight, Sir Gareth and the damsel abode that night in his tents. As they sat at table, the Blue Knight said: "Fair damsel, are ye not called Linet?" "Yes," answered she, "and I am taking this noble knight to the relief of my sister, the Lady Liones." "God speed you, Sir," said the Blue Knight, "for he is a stout knight whom ye must meet. Long ago might he have taken the lady, but that he hoped that Sir Launcelot or some other of Arthur's most famous knights, coming to her rescue, might fall beneath his lance. If ye overthrow him, then are ye the peer of Sir Launcelot and Sir Tristram." "Sir Knight," answered Gareth, "I can but strive to bear me worthily as one whom the great Sir Launcelot made knight." So in the morning they bade farewell to the Blue Knight, who vowed to carry to King Arthur word of all that Gareth had achieved; and they rode on, till, in the evening, they came to a little ruined hermitage where there awaited them a dwarf, sent by the Lady Liones, with all manner of meats and other store. In the morning, the dwarf set out again to bear word to his lady that her rescuer was come. As he drew near the castle, the Red Knight stopped him, demanding whence he came. "Sir," said the dwarf, "I have been with my lady's sister, who brings with her a knight to the rescue of my lady." "It is lost labour," said the Red Knight; "even though she brought Launcelot or Tristram, I hold myself a match for them." "He is none of these," said the dwarf, "but he has overthrown the knights who kept the ford, and the Blue Knight yielded to him." "Let him come," said the Red Knight; "I shall soon make an end of him, and a shameful death shall he have at my hands, as many a better knight has had." So saying, he let the dwarf go. Presently, there came riding towards the castle Sir Gareth and the damsel Linet, and Gareth marvelled to see hang from the trees some forty knights in goodly armour, their shields reversed beside them. And when he inquired of the damsel, she told him how these were the bodies of brave knights who, coming to the rescue of the Lady Liones, had been overthrown and shamefully done to death by the Red Knight. Then was Gareth shamed and angry, and he vowed to make an end of these evil practices. So at last they drew near to the castle walls, and saw how the plain around was covered with the Red Knight's tents, and the noise was that of a great army. Hard by was a tall sycamore tree, and from it hung a mighty horn, made of an elephant's tusk. Spurring his horse, Gareth rode to it, and blew such a blast that those on the castle walls heard it; the knights came forth from their tents to see who blew so bold a blast, and from a window of the castle the Lady Liones looked forth and waved her hand to her champion. Then, as Sir Gareth made his reverence to the lady, the Red Knight called roughly to him to leave his courtesy and look to himself; "For," said he, "she is mine, and to have her, I have fought many a battle." "It is but vain labour," said Sir Gareth, "since she loves you not. Know, too, Sir Knight, that I have vowed to rescue her from you." "So did many another who now hangs on a tree," replied the Red Knight, "and soon ye shall hang beside them." Then both laid their spears in rest, and spurred their horses. At the first encounter, each smote the other full in the shield, and the girths of the saddles bursting, they were borne to the earth, where they lay for awhile as if dead. But presently they rose, and setting their shields before them, rushed upon each other with their swords, cutting and hacking till the armour lay on the ground in fragments. So they fought till noon and then rested; but soon they renewed the battle, and so furiously they fought, that often they fell to the ground together. Then, when the bells sounded for evensong, the knights rested again a while, unlacing their helms to breathe the evening air. But looking up to the castle windows, Gareth saw the Lady Liones gazing earnestly upon him; then he caught up his helmet, and calling to the Red Knight, bade him make ready for the battle; "And this time," said he, "we will make an end of it." "So be it," said the Red Knight. Then the Red Knight smote Gareth on the hand that his sword flew from his grasp, and with another blow he brought him grovelling to the earth. At the sight of this, Linet cried aloud, and hearing her, Gareth, with a mighty effort, threw off the Red Knight, leaped to his sword and got it again within his hand. Then he pressed the Red Knight harder than ever, and at the last bore him to the earth, and unlacing his helm, made ready to slay him; but the Red Knight cried aloud: "Mercy; I yield." At first, remembering the evil deaths of the forty good knights, Gareth was unwilling to spare him; but the Red Knight besought him to have mercy, telling him how, against his will, he had been bound by a vow to make war on Arthur's knights. So Sir Gareth relented, and bade him set forth at once for Kink Kenadon and entreat the King's pardon for his evil past. And this the Red Knight promised to do. Then amidst much rejoicing, Sir Gareth was borne into the castle. There his wounds were dressed by the Lady Liones, and there he rested until he recovered his strength. And having won her love, when Gareth returned to Arthur's court, the Lady Liones rode with him, and they two were wed with great pomp in the presence of the whole Fellowship of the Round Table; the King rejoicing much that his nephew had done so valiantly. So Sir Gareth lived happily with Dame Liones, winning fame and the love of all true knights. As for Linet, she came again to Arthur's court and wedded Sir Gareth's younger brother, Sir Gaheris. BOOK V SIR GERAINT CHAPTER XIX THE ADVENTURES OF GERAINT It befell, one Whitsunday, that Arthur was holding his court at Caerleon, when word was brought to him of a splendid white stag that ranged the Forest of Dean, and forthwith the King proclaimed a hunt for the morrow. So, with the dawn, there was much trampling of hoofs and baying of hounds as all the knights got to horse; but Queen Guenevere herself, though she had said she would ride with the hunt, slept late, and when she called her maidens to her, it was broad day. Then, with much haste, she arrayed herself, and taking one of her ladies with her, rode to a little rising ground in the forest, near which, as she well knew, the hunt must pass. Presently, as she waited, there came riding by the gallant knight, Geraint of Devon. He was arrayed neither for the chase nor for the fight, but wore a surcoat of white satin and about him a loose scarf of purple, with a golden apple at each corner. And when the Queen had answered his salutation, she said: "How is it, Prince, that ye be not ridden with the hunters?" "Madam," answered he, "with shame I say it; I slept too late." Smiling, the Queen said: "Then are we both in the same case, for I also arose too late. But tarry with me, and soon ye will hear the baying of the hounds; for often I have known them break covert here." Then as they waited on the little woodland knoll, there came riding past a knight full armed, a lady with him, and behind them a dwarf, misshapen and evil-looking, and they passed without word or salutation to the Queen. Then said Guenevere to Geraint: "Prince, know ye yonder knight?" "Nay, madam," said he; "his arms I know not, and his face I might not see." Thereupon the Queen turned to her attendant and said: "Ride after them quickly and ask the dwarf his master's name." So the maiden did as she was bidden; but when she inquired of the dwarf, he answered her roughly: "I will not tell thee my master's name." "Since thou art so churlish," said she, "I will even ask him himself." "That thou shalt not," he cried, and struck her across the face with his whip. So the maiden, alarmed and angered, rode back to the Queen and told her all that had happened. "Madam," cried Geraint, "the churl has wronged your maiden and insulted your person. I pray you, suffer me to do your errand myself." With the word, he put spurs to his horse and rode after the three. And when he had come up with the dwarf, he asked the knight's name as the maiden had done, and the dwarf answered him as he had answered the Queen's lady. "I will speak with thy master himself," said Geraint. "Thou shalt not, by my faith!" said the dwarf. "Thou art not honourable enough to speak with my lord." "I have spoken with men of as good rank as he," answered Geraint, and would have turned his horse's head that he might ride after the knight; but the dwarf struck him across the face such a blow that the blood spurted forth over his purple scarf. Then, in his wrath, Geraint clapped hand to sword, and would have slain the churl, but that he bethought him how powerless was such a misshapen thing. So refraining himself, he rode back to the Queen and said: "Madam, for the time the knight has escaped me. But, with your leave, I will ride after him, and require of him satisfaction for the wrong done to yourself and to your maiden. It must be that I shall come presently to a town where I may obtain armour. Farewell; if I live, ye shall have tidings of me by next even." "Farewell," said the Queen; "I shall ever hold your good service in remembrance." So Geraint rode forth on his quest, and followed the road to the ford of the Usk, where he crossed, and then went on his way until he came to a town, at the further end of which rose a mighty castle. And as he entered the town, he saw the knight and the lady, and how, as they rode through the streets, from every window the folk craned their necks to see them pass, until they entered the castle and the gate fell behind them. Then was Geraint satisfied that they would not pass thence that night, and turned him about to see where he could obtain the use of arms that, the next day, he might call the knight to account. Now it seemed that the whole town was in a ferment. In every house, men were busy polishing shields, sharpening swords, and washing armour, and scarce could they find time to answer questions put to them; so at the last, finding nowhere in the town to rest, Geraint rode in the direction of a ruined palace, which stood a little apart from the town, and was reached by a marble bridge spanning a deep ravine. Seated on the bridge was an old man, hoary-headed, and clothed in the tattered remains of what had once been splendid attire, who gave Geraint courteous greeting. "Sir," said Geraint, "I pray you, know ye where I may find shelter for this night?" "Come with me," said the old man, "and ye shall have the best my old halls afford." So saying, he led Geraint into a great stone-paved court-yard, surrounded by buildings, once strong fortifications, but then half burned and ruinous. There he bade Geraint dismount, and led the way into an upper chamber, where sat an aged dame, and with her a maiden the fairest that ever Geraint had looked upon, for all that her attire was but a faded robe and veil. Then the old man spoke to the maiden, saying: "Enid, take the good knight's charger to a stall and give him corn. Then go to the town and buy us provision for a feast to-night." Now it pleased not Geraint that the maiden should thus do him service; but when he made to accompany her, the old man, her father, stayed him and kept him in converse until presently she was returned from the town and had made all ready for the evening meal. Then they sat them down to supper, the old man and his wife with Geraint between them; and the fair maid, Enid, waited upon them, though it irked the Prince to see her do such menial service. So as they ate, they talked, and presently Geraint asked of the cause why the palace was all in ruins. "Sir knight," said the old man, "I am Yniol, and once I was lord of a broad earldom. But my nephew, whose guardian I had been, made war upon me, affirming that I had withheld from him his dues; and being the stronger, he prevailed, and seized my lands and burnt my halls, even as ye see. For the townsfolk hold with him, because that, with his tournaments and feastings, he brings many strangers their way." "What then is all the stir in the town even now?" asked Geraint. "To-morrow," said the Earl, "they hold the tournament of the Sparrow-Hawk. In the midst of the meadow are set up two forks, and on the forks a silver rod, and on the rod the form of a Sparrow-Hawk. Two years has it been won by the stout knight Edeyrn, and if he win it the morrow, it shall be his for aye, and he himself known as the Sparrow-Hawk." "Tell me," cried Geraint, "is that the knight that rode this day with a lady and a dwarf to the castle hard by?" "The same," said Yniol; "and a bold knight he is." Then Geraint told them of the insult offered that morning to Queen Guenevere and her maiden, and how he had ridden forth to obtain satisfaction. "And now, I pray you," said Geraint, "help me to come by some arms, and in to-morrow's lists will I call this Sparrow-Hawk to account." "Arms have I," answered the Earl, "old and rusty indeed, yet at your service. But, Sir Knight, ye may not appear in to-morrow's tournament, for none may contend unless he bring with him a lady in whose honour he jousts." Then cried Geraint: "Lord Earl, suffer me to lay lance in rest in honour of the fair maiden, your daughter. And if I fall to-morrow, no harm shall have been done her, and if I win, I will love her my life long, and make her my true wife." Now Enid, her service ended, had left them to their talk; but the Earl, rejoicing that so noble a knight should seek his daughter's love, promised that, with the maiden's consent, all should be as the Prince desired. So they retired to rest that night, and the next day at dawn, Geraint arose, and, donning the rusty old armour lent him by Earl Yniol, rode to the lists; and there amongst the humbler sort of onlookers, he found the old Earl and his wife and with them their fair daughter. Then the heralds blew their trumpets, and Edeyrn bade his lady-love take the Sparrow-Hawk, her due as fairest of the fair. "Forbear," cried Geraint; "here is one fairer and nobler for whom I claim the prize of the tournament." "Do battle for it, then!" cried Edeyrn. So the two took their lances and rushed upon one another with a crash like thunder, and each broke his spear. Thus they encountered once and again; but at the last Geraint bore down upon Edeyrn with such force that he carried him from his horse, saddle and all. Then he dismounted, and the two rushed upon each other with their swords. Long they fought, the sparks flying and their breath coming hard, till, exerting all his strength, Geraint dealt the other such a blow as cleft his helmet and bit to the bone. Then Edeyrn flung away his sword and yielded him. "Thou shalt have thy life," said Geraint, "upon condition that, forthwith, thou goest to Arthur's court, there to deliver thyself to our Queen, and make such atonement as shall be adjudged thee, for the insult offered her yester morn." "I will do so," answered Edeyrn; and when his wounds had been dressed he got heavily to horse and rode forth to Caerleon. Then the young Earl, Yniol's nephew, adjudged the Sparrow-Hawk to Geraint, as victor in the tourney, and prayed him to come to his castle to rest and feast. But Geraint, declining courteously, said that it behoved him to go there where he had rested the night before. "Where may that have been?" asked the Earl; "for though ye come not to my castle, yet would I see that ye fare as befits your valour." "I rested even with Yniol, your uncle," answered Geraint. The young Earl mused awhile, and then he said: "I will seek you, then, in my uncle's halls, and bring with me the means to furnish forth a feast." And so it was. Scarcely had Prince Geraint returned to the ruined hall and bathed and rested him after his labours, when the young Earl arrived, and with him forty of his followers bearing all manner of stores and plenishings. And that same hour, the young Earl was accorded with Yniol, his uncle, restoring to him the lands of which he had deprived him, and pledging his word to build up again the ruined palace. When they had gone to the banquet, then came to them Enid, attired in beautiful raiment befitting her rank; and the old Earl led her to Geraint, saying: "Prince, here is the maiden for whom ye fought, and freely I bestow her upon you." So Geraint took her hand before them all and said: "She shall ride with me to Caerleon, and there will I wed her before Arthur's court." Then to Enid he said: "Gentle maiden, bear with me when I pray you to don the faded robe and veil in which first I saw you." And Enid, who was ever gentle and meek, did as he desired, and that evening they rode to Caerleon. So when they drew near the King's palace, word was brought to Guenevere of their approach. Then the Queen went forth to greet the good knight, and when she had heard all his story, she kissed the maiden, and leading her into her own chamber, arrayed her right royally for her marriage with the Prince. And that evening they were wed amidst great rejoicing, in the presence of all the knights and ladies of the court, the King himself giving Enid to her husband. Many happy days they spent at Caerleon, rejoicing in the love and good-will of Arthur and his Queen. CHAPTER XX GERAINT AND ENID Geraint and the fair Enid abode more than a year at Arthur's court; Enid winning daily more and more the love of all by her gentleness and goodness, and Geraint being ever amongst the foremost in the tournament. But presently there came word of robber raids upon the borders of Devon; wherefore the Prince craved leave of Arthur to return to his own land, there to put down wrong and oppression, and maintain order and justice. And the King bade him go and secure to every man his due. So Geraint passed to his own land, Enid going with him; and soon he had driven the oppressors from their strongholds and established peace and order, so that the poor man dwelt in his little cot secure in his possessions. But when all was done, and there was none dared defy him, Geraint abode at home, neglectful of the tournament and the chase, and all those manly exercises in which he had once excelled, content if he had but the companionship of his wife; so that his nobles murmured because he withdrew himself from their society, and the common people jeered at him for a laggard. Now these evil rumours came to Enid's ears, and it grieved her that she should be the cause, however unwillingly, of her husband's dishonour; and since she could not bring herself to speak to her lord of what was in her heart, daily she grew more sorrowful, till the Prince, aware of her altered demeanour, became uneasy, not knowing its source. So time went by till it chanced, one summer morning, that with the first rays of the sun, Enid awoke from her slumbers, and, rising, gazed upon her husband as he lay, and marvelled at his strength. "Alas!" said she, "to be the cause that my lord suffers shame! Surely I should find courage to tell him all, were I indeed true wife to him!" Then, by ill chance, her tears falling upon him awoke him, so that he heard her words, but brokenly, and seeing her weep and hearing her accuse herself, it came into his thought that, for all his love and care for her, she was weary of him, nay, even that perhaps she loved him not at all. In anger and grief he called to his squire and bade him saddle his charger and a palfrey for Enid; and to her he said: "Put on thy meanest attire, and thou shalt ride with me into the wilderness. It seems that I have yet to win me fame; but before thou seest home again, thou shalt learn if indeed I am fallen so low as thou deemest." And Enid, wondering and troubled, answered, "I know naught of thy meaning, my lord." "Ask me nothing," said Geraint. So sorrowfully and in silence Enid arrayed herself, choosing for her apparel the faded robe and veil in which first her lord had seen her. Then the squire brought them their horses; but when he would have mounted and ridden after, Geraint forbade him. And to Enid the Prince said: "Ride before me and turn not back, no matter what thou seest or hearest. And unless I speak to thee, say not a word to me." So they rode forward along the least frequented road till they came to a vast forest, which they entered. There Enid, as she rode in front, saw four armed men lurking by the road, and one said to the other: "See, now is our opportunity to win much spoil at little cost; for we may easily overcome this doleful knight, and take from him his arms and lady." And Enid hearing them, was filled with fear and doubt; for she longed to warn her lord of his danger, yet feared to arouse his wrath, seeing he had bidden her keep silence. Then said she to herself: "Better to anger him, even to the slaying of me, than have the misery of seeing him perish." So she waited till Geraint drew near, and said: "Lord, there lie in wait for thee four men fully armed, to slay and rob thee." Then he answered her in anger: "Did I desire thy silence or thy warning? Look, then, and whether thou desirest my life or my death, thou shalt see that I dread not these robbers." Then, as the foremost of the four rode upon him, Geraint drove upon him with his spear with such force that the weapon stood out a cubit behind him; and so he did with the second, and the third, and the fourth. Then, dismounting from his horse, he stripped the dead felons of their armour, bound it upon their horses, and tying the bridle reins together, bade Enid drive the beasts before her. "And," said he, "I charge thee, at thy peril, speak no word to me." So they went forward; and presently Enid saw how three horsemen, well armed and well mounted, rode towards them. And one said to the other: "Good fortune, indeed! Here are four horses and four suits of armour for us, and but one knight to deal with; a craven too, by the way he hangs his head." Then Enid thought within herself how her lord was wearied with his former combat, and resolved to warn him even at her own peril. So she waited till he was come up with her, and said: "Lord, there be three men riding towards us, and they promise themselves rich booty at small cost." Wrathfully spoke Geraint: "Their words anger me less than thy disobedience"; and immediately rushing upon the mid-most of the three knights, he bore him from his horse; then he turned upon the other two who rode against him at the same moment, and slew them both. As with the former caitiffs, so now Geraint stripped the three of their armour, bound it upon the horses, and bade Enid drive these forward with the other four. Again they rode on their way, and, for all his anger, it smote Geraint to the heart to see the gentle lady labouring to drive forward the seven horses. So he bade her stay, for they would go no farther then, but rest that night as best they might in the forest; and scarcely had they dismounted and tethered the horses before Geraint, wearied with his encounters, fell asleep; but Enid remained watching, lest harm should come to her lord while he slept. With the first ray of light, Geraint awoke, and his anger against Enid was not passed; so, without more ado, he set her on her palfrey and bade her drive the horses on in front as before, charging her that, whatever befell, that day at least, she should keep silence. Soon they passed from the forest into open land, and came upon a river flowing through broad meadows where the mowers toiled. Then, as they waited to let the horses drink their fill, there drew near a youth, bearing a basket of bread and meat and a blue pitcher covered over with a bowl. So when the youth saluted them, Geraint stayed him, asking whence he came. "My lord," said the lad, "I am come from the town hard by, to bring the mowers their breakfast." "I pray thee, then," said the Prince, "give of the food to this lady, for she is faint." "That will I gladly," answered the youth, "and do ye also partake, noble sir"; and he spread the meal for them on the grass while they dismounted. So when they had eaten and were refreshed, the youth gathered up the basket and pitcher, saying he would return to the town for food for the mowers. "Do so," said the Prince, "and when thou art come there, take for me the best lodging that thou mayst. And for thy fair service, take a horse and armour, whichsoever thou wilt." "My lord, ye reward me far beyond my deserts," cried the youth. "Right gladly will I make all ready against your arrival, and acquaint my master, the Earl, of your coming." So Geraint and Enid followed after the youth to the town, and there they found everything prepared for their comfort, even as he had promised; for they were lodged in a goodly chamber well furnished with all that they might require. Then said Geraint to Enid: "Abide at one end of the room and I will remain at the other. And call the woman of the house if thou desirest her aid and comfort in aught." "I thank thee, lord," answered Enid patiently; but she called for no service, remaining silent and forlorn in the farthest corner of the great chamber. Presently there came to the house the Earl, the youth's master, and with him twelve goodly knights to wait upon him. And Geraint welcomed them right heartily, bidding the host bring forth his best to furnish a feast. So they sat them down at the table, each in his degree according to his rank, and feasted long and merrily; but Enid remained the while shrinking into her corner if perchance she might escape all notice. As they sat at the banquet, the Earl asked Prince Geraint what quest he followed. "None but mine own inclination and the adventure it may please heaven to send," said Geraint. Then the Earl, whose eye had oft sought Enid as she sat apart, said: "Have I your good leave to cross the room and speak to your fair damsel? For she joins us not in the feast." "Ye have it freely," answered the Prince. So the Earl arose, and approaching Enid, bowed before her, and spoke to her in low tones, saying: "Damsel, sad life is yours, I fear, to journey with yonder man." "To travel the road he takes is pleasant enough to me," answered Enid. "But see what slights he puts upon you! To suffer you to journey thus, unattended by page or maiden, argues but little love or reverence for you." "It is as nothing, so that I am with him," said Enid. "Nay, but," said the Earl, "see how much happier a life might be yours. Leave this churl, who values you not, and all that I have, land and riches, and my love and service for ever shall be yours." "Ye cannot tempt me, with aught that ye can offer, to be false to him to whom I vowed my faith," said she. "Ye are a fool!" said the Earl in a fierce whisper. "One word to these my knights, and yonder is a dead man. Then who shall hinder me that I take you by force? Nay, now, be better advised, and I vow you my whole devotion for all time." Then was Enid filled with dread of the man and his might, and seeking but to gain time, she said: "Suffer me to be for this present, my lord, and to-morrow ye shall come and take me as by force. Then shall my name not suffer loss." "So be it," said he; "I will not fail you." With that he left her, and taking his leave of Geraint, departed with his followers. Never a word of what the Earl had said did Enid tell her husband that night; and on the departure of his guests, the Prince, unheedful of her, flung him on the couch, and soon slept, despite his grief and wrath. But Enid watched again that night, and, before cock-crow, arose, set all his armour ready in one place, and then, though fearful of his wrath, stepped to his side and touching him gently, said: "Awake, my lord, and arm you, and save me and yourself." Then she told him of all the Earl had said and of the device she had used to save them both. Then wrathfully he rose and armed himself, bidding her rouse the host to saddle and bring forth the horses. When all was ready, Prince Geraint asked the man his reckoning. "Ye owe but little," said the host. "Take then the seven horses and the suits of armour," said Geraint. "Why, noble sir," cried the host, "I scarce have spent the value of one." "The richer thou," answered Geraint. "Now show me the road from the town." So the man guided them from the town, and scarce was he returned when Earl Durm--for so was the Earl named--hammered at the door, with forty followers at his back. "Where is the knight who was here erewhile?" "He is gone hence, my lord," answered the host. "Fool and villain!" cried the Earl, "why didst thou suffer him to escape? Which way went he?" And the man, fearful and trembling, directed the Earl the road Geraint had gone. So it came to pass, as they rode on their way, Enid in front, the Prince behind, that it seemed to Enid she heard the beat of many horse-hoofs. And, as before, she broke Geraint's command, caring little for aught that might befall her in comparison of loss to him. "My lord," said she, "seest thou yonder knight pursuing thee and many another with him?" "Yea, in good truth, I see him," said Geraint, "and I see, too, that never wilt thou obey me." Then he turned him about and, laying lance in rest, bore straight down upon Earl Durm, who foremost rushed upon him; and such was the shock of their encounter, that Earl Durm was borne from his saddle and lay without motion as one dead. And Geraint charged fiercely upon the Earl's men, unhorsing some and wounding others; and the rest, having little heart for the fight after their master's overthrow, turned and fled. Then Geraint signed to Enid to ride on as before, and so they journeyed the space of another hour while the summer sun beat upon them with ever increasing force. Now the Prince had received a grievous hurt in the encounter with Earl Durm and his men; but such was his spirit that he heeded it not, though the wound bled sore under his armour. Presently, as they rode, there came to them the sound of wailing, and by the wayside they saw a lady weeping bitterly over a knight who lay dead on the ground. "Lady," said Geraint, "what has befallen you?" "Noble knight," she replied, "as we rode through the forest, my husband and I, three villains set upon him at once, and slew him." "Which way went they?" asked Geraint. "Straight on by this high-road that ye follow even now," answered she. Then Geraint bade Enid remain with the lady while he rode on to take vengeance on the miscreants. And Enid waited fearfully the long while he was gone, and her heart rejoiced when she saw him returning. But soon her joy was turned to sorrow, for his armour was all dented and covered with blood and his face ghastly; and even as he reached her side, he fell from his horse, prone on the ground. Then Enid strove to loosen his armour, and having found the wound, she staunched it as best she might and bound it with her veil. And taking his head on her lap, she chafed his hands and tried with her own body to shield him from the sun, her tears falling fast the while. So she waited till, perchance, help might come that way; and presently, indeed, she heard the tramp of horses, and a troop came riding by with the Earl Limours at their head. And when the Earl saw the two fallen knights and the weeping women beside them, he stayed his horse, and said: "Ladies, what has chanced to you?" Then she whose husband had been slain said: "Sir, three caitiffs set on my husband at once and slew him. Then came this good knight and went in pursuit of them, and as I think, slew them; but when he came back, he fell from his horse, sore wounded as ye see, and, I fear me, by now he is dead." "Nay, gentle sir," cried Enid; "it cannot be that he is dead. Only, I beseech you, suffer two of your men to carry him hence to some place of shelter where he may have help and tendance." "I misdoubt me, it is but labour wasted," said the Earl; "nevertheless, for the sake of your fair face, it shall be as ye desire." Then he ordered two of his men to carry Geraint to his halls and two more to stay behind and bury the dead knight, while he caused the two women to be placed on led horses; and so they rode to his castle. When they were arrived there, the two spearmen who had carried Geraint, placed him on a settle in the hall, and Enid crouched by his side, striving if by any means she might bring him back to life. And gradually Geraint recovered, though still he lay as in a swoon, hearing indeed what passed around him, but dimly, as from a distance. Soon there came into the hall many servitors, who brought forth the tables and set thereon all manner of meats, haunches of venison and boars' heads and great pasties, together with huge flagons of wine. Then when all was set, there came trooping to the board the whole company of Earl Limours' retainers; last of all came the Earl himself and took his place on the raised dais. Suddenly, as he feasted and made merry, he espied Enid, who, mistrusting him utterly, would fain have escaped his eye. And when he saw her, he cried: "Lady, cease wasting sorrow on a dead man and come hither. Thou shalt have a seat by my side; ay, and myself, too, and my Earldom to boot." "I thank you, lord," she answered meekly, "but, I pray you, suffer me to be as I am." "Thou art a fool," said Limours; "little enough he prized thee, I warrant, else had he not put thy beauty to such scorn, dressing it in faded rags! Nay, be wise; eat and drink, and thou wilt think the better of me and my fair proffer." "I will not," cried Enid; "I will neither eat nor drink, till my lord arise and eat with me." "Thou vowest more than thou canst perform. He is dead already. Nay, thou shalt drink." With the word, he strode to her and thrust into her hand a goblet brimming with wine, crying, "Drink." "Nay, lord," she said, "I beseech you, spare me and be pitiful." "Gentleness avails nothing with thee," cried the Earl in wrath; "thou hast scorned my fair courtesy. Thou shalt taste the contrary." So saying, he smote her across the face. Then Enid, knowing all her helplessness, uttered an exceeding bitter cry, and the sound roused Geraint. Grasping his sword, with one bound he was upon the Earl and, with one blow, shore his neck in two. Then those who sat at meat fled shrieking, for they believed that the dead had come to life. But Geraint gazed upon Enid and his heart smote him, thinking of the sorrow he had brought upon her. "Lady and sweet wife," he cried, "for the wrong I have done thee, pardon me. For, hearing thy words not three days since at morn, I doubted thy love and thy loyalty. But now I know thee and trust thee beyond the power of words to shake my faith." "Ah! my lord," cried Enid, "fly, lest they return and slay thee." "Knowest thou where is my charger?" "I will bring thee to it." So they found the war-horse and Geraint mounted it, setting Enid behind him; thus they went forth in the direction of the nearest town, that they might find rest and succour. Then, as they rode, there came forth from a glade of the forest a knight, who, seeing Geraint, at once laid lance in rest as if he would ride upon him. And Enid, fearing for her husband, shrieked aloud, crying: "Noble knight, whosoever ye be, encounter not with a man nigh wounded to the death." Immediately the knight raised his lance and looking more attentively upon, them, he exclaimed: "What! is it Prince Geraint? Pardon me, noble knight, that I knew you not at once. I am that Edeyrn whom once ye overthrew and spared. At Arthur's court, whither ye sent me, I was shown kindness and courtesy little deserved, and now am I knight of Arthur's Round Table. But how came ye in such a case?" Then Geraint told him of his encounter with the three caitiffs, and how he had afterwards been borne to the castle of Earl Limours. "To do justice on that same felon is Arthur himself here even now," cried Edeyrn. "His camp is hard by." Then Geraint told Edeyrn how Limours lay dead in his own halls, justly punished for the many wrongs he had done, and how his people were scattered. "Come then yourself to greet the King and tell him what has chanced." So he led the way to Arthur's camp, where it lay in the forest hard by. Then were they welcomed by the King himself and a tent assigned to them, where Geraint rested until his wounds were healed. Never again, from that time forth, had Geraint a doubt of the love and truth of Enid; and never from that time had she to mourn that he seemed to set small store by his knightly fame. For after he was cured, they returned to their own land, and there Geraint upheld the King's justice, righting wrong and putting down robbery and oppression, so that the people blessed him and his gentle wife. Year by year, his fame grew, till his name was known through all lands; and at last, when his time was come, he died a knightly death, as he had lived a knightly life, in the service of his lord, King Arthur. BOOK VI THE LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN CHAPTER XXI THE LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN King Arthur was holding his court at Caerleon-upon-Usk, and it was the time of the evening banquet, when there entered the hall the good knight, Sir Kynon. A brave warrior was he, and of good counsel, but he seemed in weary plight as, after due salutation to all, he took his place at the Round Table. So it was that all were eager to hear of his adventure, yet none would question him until he had eaten and drunk. But when he was refreshed, the King said to him: "Whence come ye, Sir Kynon? For it would seem that ye have met with hard adventure." "Sir King," answered Kynon, "it has been with me as never before; for I have encountered with, and been overthrown by, a single knight." All were filled with wonder at his words, for never before had Sir Kynon been worsted in any meeting, man to man. Then said the King: "The stoutest of us must some time meet his match; yet did ye bear you valiantly, I doubt not. Tell us now, I pray you, of your adventures." "Noble lord," said Kynon, "I had determined to journey into other lands; for I would seek new and untried adventures. So I passed into a far land, and it chanced, one day, that I found myself in the fairest valley I had ever seen. Through it there flowed a mighty river, which I followed, until I came, as evening fell, to a castle, the largest and strongest I have ever seen. At the castle gate I espied a man of right noble mien, who greeted me courteously, and bade me enter. So as we sat at supper, he inquired of my journey and the quest I followed, and I told him how I sought but adventure, and whether, perchance, I might encounter one stronger than myself. Then the lord of the castle smiled and said: 'I can bring you to such an one, if ye would rather that I showed you your disadvantage than your advantage.' And when I questioned him further, he replied: 'Sleep here this night, and to-morrow I will show you such an one as ye seek.' So I rested that night, and with the dawn I rose and took my leave of the lord of the castle, who said to me: 'If ye will persevere in your quest, follow the path to the head of the glade, and ascend the wooded steep until ye come to an open space in the forest, with but one great tree in its midst. Under the tree is a fountain, and beside it a marble slab to which is chained a silver bowl. Take a bowlful of water and dash it upon the slab, and presently there will appear a knight spurring to encounter with you. If ye flee, he will pursue, but if ye overcome him, there exists none in this world whom ye need fear to have ado with.' "Forthwith I departed, and following these directions, I came at last to such a space as he described, with the tree and fountain in its midst. So I took the bowl and dashed water from the fountain upon the marble slab, and, on the instant, came a clap of thunder so loud as near deafened me, and a storm of hailstones the biggest that ever man saw. Scarce was I recovered from my confusion, when I saw a knight galloping towards me. All in black was he, and he rode a black horse. Not a word we spoke, but we dashed against each other, and at the first encounter I was unhorsed. Still not a word spoke the Black Knight, but passing the butt-end of his lance through my horse's reins, rode away, leaving me shamed and on foot. So I made my way back to the castle, and there I was entertained again that night right hospitably, none questioning me as to my adventure. The next morning, when I rose, there awaited me a noble steed, ready saddled and bridled, and I rode away and am returned hither. And now ye know my story and my shame." Then were all grieved for the discomfiture of Sir Kynon, who had ever borne himself boldly and courteously to all; and they strove to console him as best they might. Presently there rose from his siege the good knight Sir Owain of Rheged, and said: "My lord, I pray you, give me leave to take upon me this adventure. For I would gladly seek this wondrous fountain and encounter with this same Black Knight." So the King consented, and on the morrow Sir Owain armed him, mounted his horse, and rode forth the way Sir Kynon had directed him. So he journeyed many a day until at last he reached the valley of which Sir Kynon had told, and presently he came to the strong castle and, at the gate, met the lord thereof, even as Sir Kynon had done. And the lord of the castle gave him a hearty welcome and made him good cheer, asking nothing of his errand till they were seated about the board. Then, when questioned, Sir Owain declared his quest, that he sought the knight who guarded the fountain. So the lord of the castle, failing to dissuade Sir Owain from the adventure, directed him how he might find the forest glade wherein was the wondrous fountain. With the dawn, Sir Owain rose, mounted his horse, and rode forward until he had found the fountain. Then he dashed water on the marble slab and instantly there burst over him the fearful hailstorm, and through it there came pricking towards him the Black Knight on the black steed. In the first onset, they broke their lances and then, drawing sword, they fought blade to blade. Sore was the contest, but at the last Owain dealt the Black Knight so fierce a blow that the sword cut through helmet and bone to the very brain. Then the Black Knight knew that he had got his death-wound, and turning his horse's head, fled as fast as he might, Sir Owain following close behind. So they came, fast galloping, to the gate of a mighty castle, and instantly the portcullis was raised and the Black Knight dashed through the gateway. But Sir Owain, following close behind, found himself a prisoner, fast caught between two gates; for as the Black Knight passed through the inner of the two gates, it was closed before Sir Owain could follow. For the moment none noticed Sir Owain, for all were busied about the Black Knight, who drew not rein till he was come to the castle hall; then as he strove to dismount, he fell from his saddle, dead. All this Sir Owain saw through the bars of the gate that held him prisoner; and he judged that his time was come, for he doubted not but that the people of the castle would hold his life forfeit for the death of their lord. So as he waited, suddenly there stood at his side a fair damsel, who, laying finger on lip, motioned to him to follow her. Much wondering, he obeyed, and climbed after her up a dark winding staircase, that led from the gateway into a tiny chamber high in the tower. There she set food and wine before him, bidding him eat; then when he was refreshed, she asked him his name and whence he came. "Truly," answered he, "I am Owain of Rheged, knight of King Arthur's Round Table, who, in fair fight, have wounded, I doubt not to the death, the Black Knight that guards the fountain and, as I suppose, the lord of this castle. Wherefore, maiden, if ye intend me evil, lead me where I may answer for my deed, boldly, man to man." "Nay," answered the damsel eagerly, "in a good hour ye are come. Well I know your name, for even here have we heard of your mighty deeds; and by good fortune it may be that ye shall release my lady." "Who is your lady?" asked Sir Owain. "None other than the rightful Chatelaine of this castle and Countess of broad lands besides; but this year and more has the Black Knight held her prisoner in her own halls because she would not listen to his suit." "Then lead me to your lady forthwith," cried Sir Owain; "right gladly will I take her quarrel upon me if there be any that will oppose me." So she led him to the Countess' bower, and there he made him known to the fair lady and proffered her his services. And she that had long deemed there was no deliverance for her, accepted them right gladly. So taking her by the hand, he led her down to the hall, and there, standing at the door, he proclaimed her the lawful lady of that castle and all its lands, and himself ready to do battle in her cause. But none answered his challenge, for those that had held with the Black Knight, deprived of their leader, had lost heart, whereas they that for their loyalty to their lady had been held in subjection, gathered fast about Sir Owain, ready to do battle. So in short space, Sir Owain drove forth the lawless invaders of the Countess' lands, and called together her vassals that they might do homage to her anew. Thus he abode in the castle many days, seeking in all that he might to do her service, until through all her lands order was restored, and her right acknowledged. But when all was done, Sir Owain yet tarried in the lady's castle; for he loved her much, but doubted ever of her favour. So one day, Luned, the damsel who had come to his aid on the day that he slew the Black Knight, said to him: "Alas! Sir Knight, the time must come when ye will leave us. And who will then defend my lady's fountain, which is the key to all her lands? For who holds the fountain, holds the land also." "I will never fail your lady while there is breath in my body," cried Sir Owain. "Then were it well that ye stayed here ever," answered Luned. "Gladly would I," answered Sir Owain, "if that I might." "Ye might find a way if your wits were as sharp as your sword," she answered, and laughing, left him, but herself sought her lady. Long he pondered her words, and he was still deep in thought, when there came to him the Countess, and said: "Sir Knight, I hear that ye must leave us." "Nay, my lady," answered Sir Owain, "I will stay as long as ye require my services." "There must ever be one to guard the fountain, and he who guards the fountain, is lord of these lands," answered the lady softly. Then Sir Owain found words at last, and bending the knee, he said: "Lady, if ye love me, I will stay and guard you and your lands; and if ye love me not, I will go into my own country, and yet will I come again whensoever ye have need of me. For never loved I any but you." Then the Countess bade him stay, and calling her vassals together, she commanded all to do homage to him, and took him for her husband in presence of them all. Thus Sir Owain won the Lady of the Fountain. BOOK VII SIR PEREDUR CHAPTER XXII THE ADVENTURES OF SIR PEREDUR At one time there was in the North of Britain a great Earl named Evrawc. A stout knight he was, and few were the tournaments at which he was not to be found in company with six of his sons; the seventh only, who was too young to bear arms, remaining at home with his mother. But at the last, after he had won the prize at many a tourney, Earl Evrawc was slain, and his six sons with him; and then the Countess fled with Peredur, her youngest, to a lonely spot in the midst of a forest, far from the dwellings of men; for she was minded to bring him up where he might never hear of jousts and feats of arms, that so at least one son might be left to her. So Peredur was reared amongst women and decrepit old men, and even these were strictly commanded never to tell the boy aught of the great world beyond the forest, or what men did therein. None the less, he grew up active and fearless, as nimble and sure-footed as the goats, and patient of much toil. Then, one day, when Peredur was grown a tall, strong youth, there chanced what had never chanced before; for there came riding through the forest, hard by where Peredur dwelt with his mother, a knight in full armour, none other, indeed, than the good knight, Sir Owain himself. And seeing him, Peredur cried out: "Mother, what is that, yonder?" "An angel, my son," said his mother. "Then will I go and become an angel with him," said Peredur; and before any one could stay him, he was gone. When Sir Owain saw him approaching, he reined in his horse, and after courteous salutation, said: "I pray thee, fair youth, tell me, hast thou seen a knight pass this way?" "I know not what a knight may be," answered Peredur. "Why, even such an one as I," answered Sir Owain. "If ye will tell me what I ask you, I will tell you what ye ask me," said Peredur; and when Owain, laughing, consented, Peredur touched the saddle, demanding, "What is this?" "Surely, a saddle," replied Sir Owain; and, in like manner, Peredur asked him of all the parts of his armour, and Owain answered him patiently and courteously. Then when he had ended his questions, Peredur said: "Ride forward; for yesterday I saw from a distance such an one as ye are, ride through the forest." Sir Peredur returned to his mother, and exclaimed: "Mother, that was no angel, but a noble knight"; and hearing his words, his mother fell into a swoon. But Peredur hastened to the spot where were tethered the horses that brought them firewood and food from afar, and from them he chose a bony piebald, which seemed the strongest and in the best condition. Then he found a pack and fastened it on the horse's back, in some way to resemble a saddle, and strove with twigs to imitate the trappings he had seen upon Sir Owain's horse. When his preparations were complete, he returned to the Countess, who, by then, was recovered from her swoon; and she saw that all her trouble had been in vain, and that the time was come when she must part with her son. "Thou wilt ride forth, my son?" she asked. "Yea, with your leave," he answered. "Hear, then, my counsel," said she; "go thy way to Arthur's court, for there are the noblest and truest knights. And wheresoever thou seest a church, fail not to say thy prayers, and whatsoever woman demands thy aid, refuse her not." So, bidding his mother farewell, Peredur mounted his horse, and took in his hand a long, sharp-pointed stake. He journeyed many days till, at last, he had come to Caerleon, where Arthur held his court, and dismounting at the door, he entered the hall. Even as he did so, a stranger knight, who had passed in before him, seized a goblet and, dashing the wine in the face of Queen Guenevere, held the goblet aloft and cried: "If any dare dispute this goblet with me or venture to avenge the insult done to Arthur's Queen, let him follow me to the meadow without, where I will await him." And for sheer amazement at this insolence, none moved save Peredur, who cried aloud: "I will seek out this man and do vengeance upon him." Then a voice exclaimed: "Welcome, goodly Peredur, thou flower of knighthood"; and all turned in surprise to look upon a little misshapen dwarf, who, a year before, had craved and obtained shelter in Arthur's court, and since then had spoken no word. But Kay the Seneschal, in anger that a mere boy, and one so strangely equipped as Peredur, should have taken up the Queen's quarrel when proven knights had remained mute, struck the dwarf, crying: "Thou art ill-bred to remain mute a year in Arthur's court, and then to break silence in praise of such a fellow." Then Peredur, who saw the blow, cried, as he left the hall: "Knight, hereafter ye shall answer to me for that blow." Therewith, he mounted his piebald and rode in haste to the meadow. And when the knight espied him, he cried to him: "Tell me, youth, saw'st thou any coming after me from the court?" "I am come myself," said Peredur. "Hold thy peace," answered the knight angrily, "and go back to the court and say that, unless one comes in haste, I will not tarry, but will ride away, holding them all shamed." "By my faith," said Peredur, "willingly or unwillingly, thou shalt answer to me for thine insolence; and I will have the goblet of thee, ay, and thy horse and armour to boot." With that, in a rage, the knight struck Peredur a violent blow between the neck and the shoulder with the butt-end of his lance. "So!" cried Peredur, "not thus did my mother's servants play with me; and thus will I play with thee"; and drove at him with his pointed stake that it entered the eye of the knight, who forthwith fell dead from his horse. Then Peredur dismounted and began wrenching at the fastenings of the dead man's armour, for he saw in the adventure the means of equipping himself as a knight should ride; but knowing not the trick of the fastenings, his efforts were in vain. While he yet struggled, there rode up Sir Owain who had followed in hot haste from the court; and when he saw the fallen knight, he was amazed that a mere lad, unarmed and unskilled in knightly exercises, should thus have prevailed. "Fair youth," said he, "what would ye?" "I would have this knight's iron coat, but I cannot stir it for all my efforts." "Nay, young Sir," said Sir Owain, "leave the dead his arms, and take mine and my horse, which I give you right gladly; and come with me to the King to receive the order of knighthood, for, by my faith, ye have shown yourself worthy of it." "I thank you, noble Sir," answered Peredur, "and gladly I accept your gift; but I will not go with you now. Rather will I seek other adventures and prove me further first; nor will I seek the King's presence until I have encountered with the tall knight that so misused the dwarf, and have called him to account. Only, I pray you, take this goblet to Queen Guenevere, and say to my lord, King Arthur, that, in all places and at all times, I am his true vassal, and will render him such service as I may." Then, with Sir Owain's help, Peredur put on the armour, and mounting his horse, after due salutation, rode on his way. So, for many days, Peredur followed his adventures, and many a knight he met and overthrew. To all he yielded grace, requiring only that they should ride to Caerleon, there to give themselves up to the King's pleasure, and say that Peredur had sent them. At last he came to a fair castle that rose from the shores of a lake, and there he was welcomed by a venerable old man who pressed him to make some stay. So, as they sat at supper, the old man asked Peredur many questions of himself and his adventure, gazing earnestly on him the while; and, at last, he said: "I know thee who thou art. Thou art my sister's son. Stay now with me, and I will teach thee the arts and courtesy and noble bearing of a gentle knight, and give thee the degree when thou art accomplished in all that becomes an honourable knight." Thereto Peredur assented gladly, and remained with his uncle until he had come to a perfect knowledge of chivalry; after that, he received the order of knighthood at the old man's hands, and rode forth again to seek adventures. Presently he came to the city of Caerleon, but though Arthur was there with all his court, Sir Peredur chose to make himself known to none; for he had not yet avenged the dwarf on Sir Kay. Now it chanced, as he walked through the city, he saw at her casement a beautiful maiden whose name was Angharad; and at once he knew that he had seen the damsel whom he must love his life long. So he sought to be acquainted with her, but she scorned him, thinking him but some unproved knight, since he consorted not with those of Arthur's court; and, at last, finding he might in no wise win her favour at that time, he made a vow that never would he speak to Christian man or woman until he had gained her love, and forthwith rode away again. After long journeyings, he came one night to a castle, and, knocking, gained admittance and courteous reception from the lady who owned it. But it seemed to Sir Peredur that there hung over all a gloom, none caring to talk or make merry, though there was no lack of the consideration due to a guest. Then when the evening hour was come, they took their places at the board, Peredur being set at the Countess' right hand; and two nuns entered and placed before the lady a flagon of wine and six white loaves, and that was all the fare. Then the Countess gave largely of the food to Sir Peredur, keeping little for herself and her attendants; but this pleased not the knight, who, heedless of his oath, said: "Lady, permit me to fare as do the others," and he took but a small portion of that which she had given him. Then the Countess, blushing as with shame, said to him: "Sir Knight, if we make you poor cheer, far otherwise is our desire, but we are in sore straits." "Madam," answered Peredur courteously, "for your welcome I thank you heartily; and, I pray you, if there is aught in which a knight may serve you, tell me your trouble." Then the Countess told him how she had been her father's one child, and heir to his broad lands; and how a neighbouring baron had sought her hand; but she, misliking him, had refused his suit, so that his wrath was great. Then, when her father died, he had made war upon her, overrunning all her lands till nothing was left to her but the one castle. Long since, all the provision stored therein was consumed, and she must have yielded her to the oppressor but for the charity of the nuns of a neighbouring monastery, who had secretly supplied her with food when, for fear, her vassals had forsaken her. But that day the nuns had told her that no longer could they aid her, and there was naught left save to submit to the invader. This was the story that, with many tears, the Countess related to Peredur. "Lady," said he, "with your permission, I will take upon me your quarrel, and to-morrow I will seek to encounter this felon." The Countess thanked him heartily and they retired to rest for that night. In the morning betimes, Sir Peredur arose, donned his armour and, seeking the Countess, desired that the portcullis might be raised, for he would sally forth to seek her oppressor. So he rode out from the castle and saw in the morning light a plain covered with the tents of a great host. With him he took a herald to proclaim that he was ready to meet any in fair fight, in the Countess' quarrel. Forthwith, in answer to his challenge, there rode forward the baron himself, a proud and stately knight mounted on a great black horse. The two rushed together, and, at the first encounter, Sir Peredur unhorsed his opponent, bearing him over the crupper with such force that he lay stunned, as one dead. Then, Peredur, drawing his sword, dismounted and stood over the fallen knight, who, when he was recovered a little, asked his mercy. "Gladly will I grant it," answered Peredur, "but on these conditions. Ye shall disband this host, restore to the Countess threefold all of which ye have deprived her, and, finally, ye shall submit yourself unto her as her vassal." All this the baron promised to do, and Peredur remained with the Countess in her castle until she was firmly established in that which was rightfully hers. Then he bade her farewell, promising his aid if ever she should need his services, and so rode forth again. And as he rode, at times he was troubled, thinking on the scorn with which the fair Angharad had treated him, and reproaching himself bitterly for having broken his vow of silence. So he journeyed many days, and at length, one morn, dismounting by a little woodland stream, he stood lost in thought, heedless of his surroundings. Now, as it chanced, Arthur and a company of his knights were encamped hard by; for, returning from an expedition, the King had been told of Peredur and how he had taken upon him the Queen's quarrel, and forthwith had ridden out in search of him. When the King espied Sir Peredur standing near the brook, he said to the knights about him: "Know ye yonder knight?" "I know him not," said Sir Kay, "but I will soon learn his name." So he rode up to Sir Peredur and spoke to him, demanding his name. When Peredur answered not, though questioned more than once, Sir Kay in anger, struck him with the butt-end of his spear. On the instant, Sir Peredur caught him with his lance under the jaw, and, though himself unmounted, hurled Kay from the saddle. Then when Kay returned not, Sir Owain mounted his horse and rode forth to learn what had happened, and by the brook he found Sir Kay sore hurt, and Peredur ready mounted to encounter any who sought a quarrel. But at once Sir Owain recognised Sir Peredur and rejoiced to see him; and when he found Sir Peredur would speak no word, being himself an honourable knight, he thought no evil, but urged him to ride back with him to Arthur's camp. And Sir Peredur, still speaking never a word, went with Sir Owain, and all respected his silence save Kay, who was long healing of the injuries he had received, and whose angry words none heeded. So they returned to Caerleon and soon, through the city, were noised the noble deeds of Sir Peredur, each new-comer bringing some fresh story of his prowess. Then when Angharad learnt how true and famous was the knight whom she had lightly esteemed, she was sore ashamed; and seeing him ever foremost in the tournament and courteous to all in deed, though speaking not a word; she thought that never had there been so noble a knight, or one so worthy of a lady's love. Thus in the winning of her favour, Sir Peredur was released from his vow, and his marriage was celebrated with much pomp before the King and Queen. Long and happily he lived, famed through all Britain as one of the most valiant and faithful knights of King Arthur's Round Table. BOOK VIII THE HOLY GRAIL CHAPTER XXIII THE COMING OF SIR GALAHAD Many times had the Feast of Pentecost come round, and many were the knights that Arthur had made since first he founded the Order of the Round Table; yet no knight had appeared who dared claim the seat named by Merlin the Siege Perilous. At last, one vigil of the great feast, a lady came to Arthur's court at Camelot and asked Sir Launcelot to ride with her into the forest hard by, for a purpose not then to be revealed. Launcelot consenting, they rode together until they came to a nunnery hidden deep in the forest; and there the lady bade Launcelot dismount, and led him into a great and stately room. Presently there entered twelve nuns and with them a youth, the fairest that Launcelot had ever seen. "Sir," said the nuns, "we have brought up this child in our midst, and now that he is grown to manhood, we pray you make him knight, for of none worthier could he receive the honour." "Is this thy own desire?" asked Launcelot of the young squire; and when he said that so it was, Launcelot promised to make him knight after the great festival had been celebrated in the church next day. So on the morrow, after they had worshipped, Launcelot knighted Galahad--for that was the youth's name--and asked him if he would ride at once with him to the King's court; but the young knight excusing himself, Sir Launcelot rode back alone to Camelot, where all rejoiced that he was returned in time to keep the feast with the whole Order of the Round Table. Now, according to his custom, King Arthur was waiting for some marvel to befall before he and his knights sat down to the banquet. Presently a squire entered the hall and said: "Sir King, a great wonder has appeared. There floats on the river a mighty stone, as it were a block of red marble, and it is thrust through by a sword, the hilt of which is set thick with precious stones." On hearing this, the King and all his knights went forth to view the stone and found it as the squire had said; moreover, looking closer, they read these words: "None shall draw me hence, but only he by whose side I must hang; and he shall be the best knight in all the world." Immediately, all bade Launcelot draw forth the sword, but he refused, saying that the sword was not for him. Then, at the King's command, Sir Gawain made the attempt and failed, as did Sir Percivale after him. So the knights knew the adventure was not for them, and returning to the hall, took their places about the Round Table. No sooner were they seated than an aged man, clothed all in white, entered the hall, followed by a young knight in red armour, by whose side hung an empty scabbard. The old man approached King Arthur and bowing low before him, said: "Sir, I bring you a young knight of the house and lineage of Joseph of Arimathea, and through him shall great glory be won for all the land of Britain." Greatly did King Arthur rejoice to hear this, and welcomed the two right royally. Then when the young knight had saluted the King, the old man led him to the Siege Perilous and drew off its silken cover; and all the knights were amazed, for they saw that where had been engraved the words, "The Siege Perilous," was written now in shining gold: "This is the Siege of the noble prince, Sir Galahad." Straightway the young man seated himself there where none other had ever sat without danger to his life; and all who saw it said, one to another: "Surely this is he that shall achieve the Holy Grail." Now the Holy Grail was the blessed dish from which Our Lord had eaten the Last Supper, and it had been brought to the land of Britain by Joseph of Arimathea; but because of men's sinfulness, it had been withdrawn from human sight, only that, from time to time, it appeared to the pure in heart. When all had partaken of the royal banquet, King Arthur bade Sir Galahad come with him to the river's brink; and showing him the floating stone with the sword thrust through it, told him how his knights had failed to draw forth the sword. "Sir," said Galahad, "it is no marvel that they failed, for the adventure was meant for me, as my empty scabbard shows." So saying, lightly he drew the sword from the heart of the stone, and lightly he slid it into the scabbard at his side. While all yet wondered at this adventure of the sword, there came riding to them a lady on a white palfrey who, saluting King Arthur, said: "Sir King, Nacien the hermit sends thee word that this day shall great honour be shown to thee and all thine house; for the Holy Grail shall appear in thy hall, and thou and all thy fellowship shall be fed therefrom." And to Launcelot she said: "Sir Knight, thou hast ever been the best knight of all the world; but another has come to whom thou must yield precedence." Then Launcelot answered humbly: "I know well I was never the best." "Ay, of a truth thou wast and art still, of sinful men," said she, and rode away before any could question her further. So, that evening, when all were gathered about the Round Table, each knight in his own siege, suddenly there was heard a crash of thunder, so mighty that the hall trembled, and there flashed into the hall a sun-beam, brighter far than any that had ever before been seen; and then, draped all in white samite, there glided through the air what none might see, yet what all knew to be the Holy Grail. And all the air was filled with sweet odours, and on every one was shed a light in which he looked fairer and nobler than ever before. So they sat in an amazed silence, till presently King Arthur rose and gave thanks to God for the grace given to him and to his court. Then up sprang Sir Gawain and made his avow to follow for a year and a day the Quest of the Holy Grail, if perchance he might be granted the vision of it. Immediately other of the knights followed his example, binding themselves to the Quest of the Holy Grail until, in all, one hundred and fifty had vowed themselves to the adventure. Then was King Arthur grieved, for he foresaw the ruin of his noble Order. And turning to Sir Gawain, he said: "Nephew ye have done ill, for through you I am bereft of the noblest company of knights that ever brought honour to any realm in Christendom. Well I know that never again shall all of you gather in this hall, and it grieves me to lose men I have loved as my life and through whom I have won peace and righteousness for all my realm." So the King mourned and his knights with him, but their oaths they could not recall. CHAPTER XXIV HOW SIR GALAHAD WON THE RED-CROSS SHIELD Great woe was there in Camelot next day when, after worship in the Cathedral, the knights who had vowed themselves to the Quest of the Holy Grail got to horse and rode away. A goodly company it was that passed through the streets, the townfolk weeping to see them go; Sir Launcelot du Lac and his kin, Sir Galahad of whom all expected great deeds, Sir Bors and Sir Percivale, and many another scarcely less famed than they. So they rode together that day to the Castle of Vagon, where they were entertained right hospitably, and the next day they separated, each to ride his own way and see what adventures should befall him. So it came to pass that, after four days' ride, Sir Galahad reached an abbey. Now Sir Galahad was still clothed in red armour as when he came to the King's court, and by his side hung the wondrous sword; but he was without a shield. They of the abbey received him right heartily, as also did the brave King Bagdemagus, Knight of the Round Table, who was resting there. When they had greeted each other, Sir Galahad asked King Bagdemagus what adventure had brought him there. "Sir," said Bagdemagus, "I was told that in this abbey was preserved a wondrous shield which none but the best knight in the world might bear without grievous harm to himself. And though I know well that there are better knights than I, to-morrow I purpose to make the attempt. But, I pray you, bide at this monastery awhile until you hear from me; and if I fail, do ye take the adventure upon you." "So be it," said Sir Galahad. The next day, at their request, Sir Galahad and King Bagdemagus were led into the church by a monk and shown where, behind the altar, hung the wondrous shield, whiter than snow save for the blood-red cross in its midst. Then the monk warned them of the danger to any who, being unworthy, should dare to bear the shield. But King Bagdemagus made answer: "I know well that I am not the best knight in the world, yet will I try if I may bear it." So he hung it about his neck, and, bidding farewell, rode away with his squire. The two had not journeyed far before they saw a knight approach, armed all in white mail and mounted upon a white horse. Immediately he laid his spear in rest and, charging King Bagdemagus, pierced him through the shoulder and bore him from his horse; and standing over the wounded knight, he said: "Knight, thou hast shown great folly, for none shall bear this shield save the peerless knight, Sir Galahad." Then, taking the shield, he gave it to the squire and said: "Bear this shield to the good Knight Galahad and greet him well from me." "What is your name?" asked the squire, "That is not for thee or any other to know." "One thing, I pray you," said the squire; "why may this shield be borne by none but Sir Galahad without danger?" "Because it belongs to him only," answered the stranger knight, and vanished. Then the squire took the shield and, setting King Bagdemagus on his horse, bore him back to the abbey where he lay long, sick unto death. To Galahad the squire gave the shield and told him all that had befallen. So Galahad hung the shield about his neck and rode the way that Bagdemagus had gone the day before; and presently he met the White Knight, whom he greeted courteously, begging that he would make known to him the marvels of the red-cross shield. "That will I gladly," answered the White Knight. "Ye must know, Sir Knight, that this shield was made and given by Joseph of Arimathea to the good King Evelake of Sarras, that, in the might of the holy symbol, he should overthrow the heathen who threatened his kingdom. But afterwards, King Evelake followed Joseph to this land of Britain where they taught the true faith unto the people who before were heathen. Then when Joseph lay dying, he bade King Evelake set the shield in the monastery where ye lay last night, and foretold that none should wear it without loss until that day when it should be taken by the knight, ninth and last in descent from him, who should come to that place the fifteenth day after receiving the degree of knighthood. Even so has it been with you, Sir Knight." So saying, the unknown knight disappeared and Sir Galahad rode on his way. CHAPTER XXV THE ADVENTURES OF SIR PERCIVALE After he had left his fellows, Sir Percivale rode long through the forest until, one evening, he reached a monastery where he sought shelter for the night. The next morning, he went into the chapel to hear mass and there he espied the body of an old, old man, laid on a richly adorned couch. At first it seemed as if the aged man were dead, but presently, raising himself in his bed, he took off his crown, and, delivering it to the priest, bade him place it on the altar. So when the service was concluded, Sir Percivale asked who the aged king might be. Then he was told that it was none other than King Evelake who accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to Britain. And on a certain occasion, the King had approached the Holy Grail nigher than was reverent and, for his impiety, God had punished him with blindness. Thereupon he repented and, entreating God earnestly, had obtained his petition that he should not die until he had seen the spotless knight who should be descended from him in the ninth degree. (This his desire was fulfilled later when Sir Galahad came thither; after which, he died and was buried by the good knight.) The next day, Sir Percivale continued his journey and presently met with twenty knights who bore on a bier the body of a dead knight. When they espied Sir Percivale, they demanded of him who he was and whence he came. So he told them, whereupon they all shouted, "Slay him! slay him!" and setting upon him all at once, they killed his horse and would have slain him but that the good knight, Sir Galahad, passing that way by chance, came to his rescue and put his assailants to flight. Then Galahad rode away as fast as he might, for he would not be thanked, and Sir Percivale was left, horseless and alone, in the forest. So Sir Percivale continued his journey on foot as well as he might; and ever the way became lonelier, until at last he came to the shores of a vast sea. There Sir Percivale abode many days, without food and desolate, doubting whether he should ever escape thence. At last it chanced that, looking out to sea, Sir Percivale descried a ship and, as it drew nearer, he saw how it was all hung with satin and velvet. Presently, it reached the land and out of it there stepped a lady of marvellous beauty, who asked him how he came there; "For know," said she, "ye are like to die here by hunger or mischance." "He whom I serve will protect me," said Sir Percivale. "I know well whom ye desire most to see," said the lady. "Ye would meet with the Red Knight who bears the red-cross shield." "Ah! lady, I pray you tell me where I may find him," cried Sir Percivale. "With a good will," said the damsel; "if ye will but promise me your service when I shall ask for it, I will lead you to the knight, for I met him of late in the forest." So Sir Percivale promised gladly to serve her when she should need him. Then the lady asked him how long he had fasted. "For three days," answered Sir Percivale. Immediately she gave orders to her attendants forthwith to pitch a tent and set out a table with all manner of delicacies, and of these she invited Sir Percivale to partake. "I pray you, fair lady," said Sir Percivale, "who are ye that show me such kindness?" "Truly," said the lady, "I am but a hapless damsel, driven forth from my inheritance by a great lord whom I have chanced to displease. I implore you, Sir Knight, by your vows of knighthood, to give me your aid." Sir Percivale promised her all the aid he could give, and then she bade him lie down and sleep, and herself took off his helmet, and unclasped his sword-belt. So Sir Percivale slept, and when he waked, there was another feast prepared, and he was given the rarest and the strongest wines that ever he had tasted. Thus they made merry and, when the lady begged Percivale to rest him there awhile, promising him all that ever he could desire if he would vow himself to her service, almost he forgot the quest to which he was vowed, and would have consented, but that his eye fell upon his sword where it lay. Now in the sword-hilt there was set a red cross and, seeing it, Percivale called to mind his vow, and, thinking on it, he signed him with the cross on his forehead. Instantly, the tent was overthrown and vanished in thick smoke; and she who had appeared a lovely woman disappeared from his sight in semblance of a fiend. Then was Sir Percivale sore ashamed that almost he had yielded to the temptings of the Evil One, and earnestly, he prayed that his sin might be forgiven him. Thus he remained in prayer far into the night, bewailing his weakness; and when the dawn appeared, a ship drew nigh the land. Sir Percivale entered into it, but could find no one there; so commending himself to God, he determined to remain thereon, and was borne over the seas for many days, he knew not whither. CHAPTER XXVI THE ADVENTURES OF SIR BORS Among the knights vowed to the Quest of the Holy Grail was Sir Bors, one of the kin of Sir Launcelot, a brave knight and pious. He rode through the forest many a day, making his lodging most often under a leafy tree, though once on his journey he stayed at a castle, that he might do battle for its lady against a felon knight who would have robbed and oppressed her. So, on a day, as he rode through the forest, Sir Bors came to the parting of two ways. While he was considering which he should follow, he espied two knights driving before them a horse on which was stretched, bound and naked, none other than Sir Bors' own brother, Sir Lionel; and, from time to time, the two false knights beat him with thorns so that his body was all smeared with blood, but, so great was his heart, Sir Lionel uttered never a word. Then, in great wrath, Sir Bors laid his lance in rest and would have fought the felon knights to rescue his brother, but that, even as he spurred his horse, there came a bitter cry from the other path and, looking round, he saw a lady being dragged by a knight into the darkest part of the forest where none might find and rescue her. When she saw Sir Bors, she cried to him: "Help me! Sir Knight, help me! I beseech you by your knighthood." Then Sir Bors was much troubled, for he would not desert his brother; but bethinking him that ever a woman must be more helpless than a man, he wheeled his horse, rode upon her captor and beat him to the earth. The damsel thanked him earnestly and told him how the knight was her own cousin, who had that day carried her off by craft from her father's castle. As they talked, there came up twelve knights who had been seeking the lady everywhere; so to their care Sir Bors delivered her, and rode with haste in the direction whither his brother had been borne. On the way, he met with an old man, dressed as a priest, who asked him what he sought. When Sir Bors had told him, "Ah! Bors," said he, "I can give you tidings indeed. Your brother is dead"; and parting the bushes, he showed him the body of a dead man, to all seeming Sir Lionel's self. Then Sir Bors grieved sorely, misdoubting almost whether he should not have rescued his own brother rather than the lady; and at the last, he dug a grave and buried the dead man; after which he rode sorrowfully on his way. When he had ridden many days, he met with a yeoman whom he asked if there were any adventures in those parts. "Sir," said the man, "at the castle; hard by, they hold a great tournament." Sir Bors thanked him and rode along the way pointed out to him; and presently, as he passed a hermitage, whom should he see sitting at its door but his brother, Sir Lionel, whom he had believed dead. Then in great joy, he leaped from his horse, and running to Lionel, cried: "Fair brother, how came ye hither?" "Through no aid of yours," said Sir Lionel angrily; "for ye left me bound and beaten, to ride to the rescue of a maiden. Never was brother so dealt with by brother before. Keep you from me as ye may!" When Sir Bors understood that his brother would slay him, he knelt before him entreating his pardon. Sir Lionel took no heed, but mounting his horse and taking his lance, cried: "Keep you from me, traitor! Fight, or die!" And Sir Bors moved not; for to him it seemed a sin most horrible that brother should fight with brother. Then Sir Lionel, in his rage, rode his horse at him, bore him to the ground and trampled him under the horse's hoofs, till Bors lay beaten to the earth in a swoon. Even so, Sir Lionel's anger was not stayed; for, alighting, he drew his sword and would have smitten off his brother's head, but that the holy hermit, hearing the noise of conflict, ran out of the hermitage and threw himself upon Sir Bors. "Gentle knight," he cried, "have mercy upon him and on thyself; for of the sin of slaying thy brother, thou couldst never be quit." "Sir Priest," said Lionel, "if ye leave him not, I shall slay you too." "It were a lesser sin than to slay thy brother," answered the hermit. "So be it," cried Lionel, and with one blow, struck off the hermit's head. Then he would have worked his evil will upon his brother too, but that, even as he was unlacing Sir Bors' helm to cut off his head, there rode up the good knight Sir Colgrevance, a fellow of the Round Table. When he saw the dead hermit and was aware how Lionel sought the life of Bors, he was amazed, and springing from his horse, ran to Lionel and dragged him back from his brother. "Do ye think to hinder me?" said Sir Lionel. "Let come who will, I will have his life." "Ye shall have to do with me first," cried Colgrevance. Therewith, they took their swords, and, setting their shields before them, rushed upon each other. Now Sir Colgrevance was a good knight, but Sir Lionel was strong and his anger added to his strength. So long they fought that Sir Bors had time to recover from his swoon, and raising himself with pain on his elbow, saw how the two fought for his life; and as it seemed, Sir Lionel would prevail, for Sir Colgrevance grew weak and weary. Sir Bors tried to get to his feet, but, so weak he was, he could not stand; and Sir Colgrevance, seeing him stir, called on him to come to his aid, for he was in mortal peril for his sake. But even as he called, Sir Lionel cut him to the ground and, as one possessed, rushed upon his brother to slay him. Sir Bors entreated him for mercy, and when he would not, sorrowfully he took his sword, saying: "Now, God forgive me, though I defend my life against my brother." Immediately there was heard a voice saying, "Flee, Bors, and touch not thy brother"; and at the same time, a fiery cloud burned between them, so that their shields glowed with the flame, and both knights fell to the earth. But the voice came again, saying, "Bors, leave thy brother and take thy way to the sea. There thou shalt meet Sir Percivale." Then Sir Bors made ready to obey, and, turning to Lionel, said: "Dear brother, I pray you forgive me for aught in which I have wronged you." "I forgive you," said Lionel, for he was too amazed and terrified to keep his anger. So Sir Bors continued his journey, and at the last, coming to the sea shore, he espied a ship, draped all with white samite, and entering thereon, he saw Sir Percivale, and much they rejoiced them in each other's company. CHAPTER XXVII THE ADVENTURES OF SIR LAUNCELOT After Sir Launcelot had parted from his fellows at the Castle of Vagon, he rode many days through the forest without adventure, till he chanced upon a knight close by a little hermitage in the wood. Immediately, as was the wont of errant knights, they prepared to joust, and Launcelot, whom none before had overthrown, was borne down, man and horse, by the stranger knight. Thereupon a nun, who dwelt in the hermitage, cried: "God be with thee, best knight in all this world," for she knew the victor for Sir Galahad. But Galahad, not wishing to be known, rode swiftly away; and presently Sir Launcelot got to horse again and rode slowly on his way, shamed and doubting sorely in his heart whether this quest were meant for him. When night fell, he came to a great stone cross which stood at the parting of the way and close by a little ruined chapel. So Sir Launcelot, being minded to pass the night there, alighted, fastened his horse to a tree and hung his shield on a bough. Then he drew near to the little chapel, and wondered to see how, all ruinous though it was, yet within was an altar hung with silk and a great silver candlestick on it; but when he sought entrance, he could find none and, much troubled in his mind, he returned to his horse where he had left it, and unlacing his helm and ungirding his sword, laid him down to rest. Then it seemed to Sir Launcelot that, as he lay between sleeping and waking, there passed him two white palfreys bearing a litter wherein was a sick knight, who cried: "Sweet Lord, when shall I be pardoned all my transgressions, and when shall the holy vessel come to me, to cure me of my sickness?" And instantly it seemed that the great candlestick came forth of itself from the chapel, floating through the air before a table of silver on which was the Holy Grail. Thereupon the sick knight raised himself, and on his bended knees he approached so nigh that he kissed the holy vessel; and immediately he cried: "I thank Thee, sweet Lord, that I am healed of my sickness." And all the while Sir Launcelot, who saw this wonder, felt himself held that he could not move. Then a squire brought the stranger knight his weapons, in much joy that his lord was cured. "Who think ye that this knight may be who remains sleeping when the holy vessel is so near?" said the knight. "In truth," said the squire, "he must be one that is held by the bond of some great sin. I will take his helm and his sword, for here have I brought you all your armour save only these two." So the knight armed him from head to foot, and taking Sir Launcelot's horse, rode away with his squire. On the instant, Sir Launcelot awoke amazed, not knowing whether he had dreamed or not; but while he wondered, there came a terrible voice, saying: "Launcelot, arise and leave this holy place." In shame, Sir Launcelot turned to obey, only to find horse and sword and shield alike vanished. Then, indeed, he knew himself dishonoured. Weeping bitterly, he made the best of his way on foot, until he came to a cell where a hermit was saying prayer. Sir Launcelot knelt too, and, when all was ended, called to the hermit, entreating him for counsel. "With good will," said the hermit. So Sir Launcelot made himself known and told the hermit all, lamenting how his good fortune was turned to wretchedness and his glory to shame; and truly, the hermit was amazed that Sir Launcelot should be in such case. "Sir," said he, "God has given you manhood and strength beyond all other knights; the more are ye bounden to his service." "I have sinned," said Sir Launcelot; "for in all these years of my knighthood, I have done everything for the honour and glory of my lady and naught for my Maker; and little thank have I given to God for all his benefits to me." Then the holy man gave Sir Launcelot good counsel and made him rest there that night; and the next day he gave him a horse, a sword and a helmet, and bade him go forth and bear himself knightly as the servant of God. CHAPTER XXVIII HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SAW THE HOLY GRAIL For many days after he had left the hermitage, Sir Launcelot rode through the forest, but there came to him no such adventures as had befallen him on other quests to the increase of his fame. At last, one night-tide, he came to the shores of a great water and there he lay down to sleep; but as he slept, a voice called on him: "Launcelot, arise, put on thine armour and go on thy way until thou comest to a ship. Into that thou shalt enter." Immediately, Sir Launcelot started from his sleep to obey and, riding along the shore, came presently to a ship beached on the strand; no sooner had he entered it, than the ship was launched--how, he might not know. So the ship sailed before the wind for many a day. No mortal was on it, save only Sir Launcelot, yet were all his needs supplied. Then, at last, the ship ran ashore at the foot of a great castle; and it was midnight. Sir Launcelot waited not for the dawn, but, his sword gripped in his hand, sprang ashore, and then, right before him, he saw a postern where the gate stood open indeed, but two grisly lions kept the way. And when Sir Launcelot would have rushed upon the great beasts with his sword, it was struck from his hand, and a voice said: "Ah! Launcelot, ever is thy trust in thy might rather than thy Maker!" Sore ashamed, Sir Launcelot took his sword and thrust it back into the sheath, and going forward, he passed unhurt through the gateway, the lions that kept it falling back from his path. So without more adventure, Launcelot entered into the castle; and there he saw how every door stood open, save only one, and that was fast barred, nor, with all his force, might he open it. Presently from the chamber within came the sound of a sweet voice in a holy chant, and then in his heart Launcelot knew that he was come to the Holy Grail. So, kneeling humbly, he prayed that to him might be shown some vision of that he sought. Forthwith the door flew open and from the chamber blazed a light such as he had never known before; but when he made to enter, a voice cried: "Launcelot, forbear," and sorrowfully he withdrew. Then where he knelt, far even from the threshold of the wondrous room, he saw a silver table and, on it, covered with red samite, the Holy Grail. At sight of that which he had sought so long, his joy became so great that, unmindful of the warning, he advanced into the room and drew nigh even to the Table itself. Then on the instant there burst between him and it a blaze of light, and he fell to the ground. There he lay, nor might he move nor utter any sound; only he was aware of hands busy about him which bore him away from the chamber. For four-and-twenty days, Sir Launcelot lay as in a trance. At the end of that time, he came to himself, and found those about him that had tended him in his swoon. These, when they had given him fresh raiment, brought him to the aged King--Pelles was his name--that owned that castle. The King entertained him right royally, for he knew of the fame of Sir Launcelot; and long he talked with him of his quest and of the other knights who followed it, for he was of a great age and knew much of men. At the end of four days, he spoke to Sir Launcelot, bidding him return to Arthur's court; "For," said he, "your quest is ended here, and all that ye shall see of the Holy Grail, ye have seen." So Launcelot rode on his way, grieving for the sin that hindered him from the perfect vision of the Holy Grail, but thanking God for that which he had seen. So in time he came to Camelot, and told to Arthur all that had befallen him. CHAPTER XXIX THE END OF THE QUEST After he had rescued Sir Percivale from the twenty knights who beset him, Sir Galahad rode on his way till night-fall, when he sought shelter at a little hermitage. Thither there came in the night a damsel who desired to speak with Sir Galahad; so he arose and went to her, "Galahad," said she, "arm you and mount your horse and follow me, for I am come to guide you in your quest." So they rode together until they had come to the sea-shore, and there the damsel showed Galahad a great ship into which he must enter. Then she bade him farewell, and he, going on to the ship, found there already the good knights Sir Bors and Sir Percivale, who made much joy of the meeting. They abode in that ship until they had come to the castle of King Pelles, who welcomed them right gladly. Then, as they all sat at supper that night, suddenly the hall was filled with a great light, and the holy vessel appeared in their midst, covered all in white samite. While they all rejoiced, there came a voice saying: "My Knights whom I have chosen, ye have seen the holy vessel dimly. Continue your journey to the city of Sarras and there the perfect Vision shall be yours." Now in the city of Sarras had dwelt long time Joseph of Arimathea, teaching its people the true faith, before ever he came into the land of Britain; but when Sir Galahad and his fellows came there after long voyage, they found it ruled by a heathen king named Estorause, who cast them into a deep dungeon. There they were kept a year, but at the end of that time, the tyrant died. Then the great men of the land gathered together to consider who should be their king; and, while they were in council, came a voice bidding them take as their king the youngest of the three knights whom Estorause had thrown into prison. So in fear and wonder they hastened to the prison, and releasing the three knights, made Galahad king as the voice had bidden them. Thus Sir Galahad became King of the famous city of Sarras, in far Babylon. He had reigned a year when, one morning early, he and the other two knights, his fellows, went into the chapel, and there they saw, kneeling in prayer, an aged man, robed as a bishop, and round him hovered many angels. The knights fell on their knees in awe and reverence, whereupon he that seemed a bishop turned to them and said: "I am Joseph of Arimathea, and I am come to show you the perfect Vision of the Holy Grail." On the instant there appeared before them, without veil or cover, the holy vessel, in a radiance of light such as almost blinded them. Sir Bors and Sir Percivale, when at length they were recovered from the brightness of that glory, looked up to find that the holy Joseph and the wondrous vessel had passed from their sight. Then they went to Sir Galahad where he still knelt as in prayer, and behold, he was dead; for it had been with him even as he had prayed; in the moment when he had seen the vision, his soul had gone back to God. So the two knights buried him in that far city, themselves mourning and all the people with them. And immediately after, Sir Percivale put off his arms and took the habit of a monk, living a devout and holy life until, a year and two months later, he also died and was buried near Sir Galahad. Then Sir Bors armed him, and bidding farewell to the city, sailed away until, after many weeks, he came again to the land of Britain. There he took horse, and stayed not till he had come to Camelot. Great was the rejoicing of Arthur and all his knights when Sir Bors was once more among them. When he had told all the adventures which had befallen him and the good knights, his companions, all who heard were filled with amaze. But the King, he caused the wisest clerks in the land to write in great hooks this Quest of the Holy Grail, that the fame of it should endure unto all time. BOOK IX THE FAIR MAID OF ASTOLAT CHAPTER XXX THE FAIR MAID OF ASTOLAT At last, the Quest of the Holy Grail was ended, and by ones and twos the knights came back to Camelot, though many who had set out so boldly were never seen again about the Round Table. Great was the joy of King Arthur when Sir Launcelot and Sir Bors returned, for, so long had they been away, that almost he had feared that they had perished. In their honour there was high festival for many days in London, where Arthur then had his court; and the King made proclamation of a great tournament that he would hold at Camelot, when he and the King of Northgalis would keep the lists against all comers. So, one fair morning of spring, King Arthur made ready to ride to Camelot and all his knights with him, save Launcelot, who excused himself, saying that an old wound hindered him from riding. But when the King, sore vexed, had departed, the Queen rebuked Sir Launcelot, and bade him go and prove his great prowess as of old. "Madam," said Sir Launcelot, "in this, as in all else, I obey you; at your bidding I go, but know that in this tournament I shall adventure me in other wise than ever before." The next day, at dawn, Sir Launcelot mounted his horse, and, riding forth unattended, journeyed all that day till, as evening fell, he reached the little town of Astolat, and there, at the castle, sought lodgement for that night. The old Lord of Astolat was glad at his coming, judging him at once to be a noble knight, though he knew him not, for it was Sir Launcelot's will to remain unknown. So they went to supper, Sir Launcelot and the old lord, his son, Sir Lavaine, and his daughter Elaine, whom they of the place called the Fair Maid of Astolat. As they sat at meat, the Baron asked Sir Launcelot if he rode to the tournament. "Yea," answered Launcelot; "and right glad should I be if, of your courtesy, ye would lend me a shield without device." "Right willingly," said his host; "ye shall have my son, Sir Tirre's shield. He was but lately made knight and was hurt in his first encounter, so his shield is bare enough. If ye will take with you my young son, Sir Lavaine, he will be glad to ride in the company of so noble a knight and will do you such service as he may." "I shall be glad indeed of his fellowship," answered Sir Launcelot courteously. Now it seemed to the fair Elaine that never had she beheld so noble a knight as this stranger; and seeing that he was as gentle and courteous as he was strong, she said to him: "Fair Knight, will ye wear my favour at this tournament? For never have I found knight yet to wear my crimson sleeve, and sure am I that none other could ever win it such honour." "Maiden," said Sir Launcelot, "right gladly would I serve you in aught; but it has never been my custom to wear lady's favour." "Then shall it serve the better for disguise," answered Elaine. Sir Launcelot pondered her words, and at last he said: "Fair maiden, I will do for you what I have done for none, and will wear your favour." So with great glee, she brought it him, a crimson velvet sleeve embroidered with great pearls, and fastened it in his helmet. Then Sir Launcelot begged her to keep for him his own shield until after the tournament, when he would come for it again and tell them his name. The next morn, Sir Launcelot took his departure with Sir Lavaine and, by evening, they were come to Camelot. Forthwith Sir Lavaine led Sir Launcelot to the house of a worthy burgher, where he might stay in privacy, undiscovered by those of his acquaintance. Then, when at dawn the trumpets blew, they mounted their horses and rode to a little wood hard by the lists, and there they abode some while; for Sir Launcelot would take no part until he had seen which side was the stronger. So they saw how King Arthur sat high on a throne to overlook the combat, while the King of Northgalis and all the fellowship of the Round Table held the lists against their opponents led by King Anguish of Ireland and the King of Scots. Then it soon appeared that the two Kings with all their company could do but little against the Knights of the Round Table, and were sore pressed to maintain their ground. Seeing this, Sir Launcelot said to Sir Lavaine: "Sir Knight, will ye give me your aid if I go to the rescue of the weaker side? For it seems to me they may not much longer hold their own unaided." "Sir," answered Lavaine, "I will gladly follow you and do what I may." So the two laid their lances in rest and charged into the thickest of the fight and, with one spear, Sir Launcelot bore four knights from the saddle. Lavaine, too, did nobly, for he unhorsed the bold Sir Bedivere and Sir Lucan the Butler. Then with their swords they smote lustily on the left hand and on the right, and those whom they had come to aid rallying to them, they drove the Knights of the Round Table back a space. So the fight raged furiously, Launcelot ever being in the thickest of the press and performing such deeds of valour that all marvelled to see him, and would fain know who was the Knight of the Crimson Sleeve. But the knights of Arthur's court felt shame of their discomfiture, and, in especial, those of Launcelot's kin were wroth that one should appear who seemed mightier even than Launcelot's self. So they called to each other and, making a rally, directed all their force against the stranger knight who had so turned the fortunes of the day. With lances in rest, Sir Lionel, Sir Bors, and Sir Ector, bore down together upon Sir Launcelot, and Sir Bors' spear pierced Sir Launcelot and brought him to the earth, leaving the spear head broken off in his side. This Sir Lavaine saw, and immediately, with all his might, he rode upon the King of Scots, unhorsed him and took his horse to Sir Launcelot. Now Sir Launcelot felt as if he had got his death-wound, but such was his spirit that he was resolved to do some great deed while yet his strength remained. So, with Lavaine's aid, he got upon the horse, took a spear and, laying it in rest, bore down, one after the other, Sir Bors, Sir Lionel, and Sir Ector. Next he flung him into the thickest of the fight, and before the trumpets sounded the signal to cease, he had unhorsed thirty good knights. Then the Kings of Scotland and Ireland came to Sir Launcelot and said: "Sir Knight, we thank you for the service done us this day. And now, we pray you, come with us to receive the prize which is rightly yours; for never have we seen such deeds as ye have done this day." "My fair lords," answered Sir Launcelot, "for aught that I have accomplished, I am like to pay dearly; I beseech you, suffer me to depart." With these words, he rode away full gallop, followed by Sir Lavaine; and when he had come to a little wood, he called Lavaine to him, saying: "Gentle Knight, I entreat you, draw forth this spear head, for it nigh slayeth me." "Oh! my dear lord," said Lavaine, "I fear sore to draw it forth lest ye die." "If ye love me, draw it out," answered Launcelot. So Lavaine did as he was bidden, and, with a deathly groan, Sir Launcelot fell in a swoon to the ground. When he was a little recovered, he begged Lavaine to help him to his horse and lead him to a hermitage hard by where dwelt a hermit who, in bygone days, had been known to Launcelot for a good knight and true. So with pain and difficulty they journeyed to the hermitage, Lavaine oft fearing that Sir Launcelot would die. And when the hermit saw Sir Launcelot, all pale and besmeared with blood, he scarce knew him for the bold Sir Launcelot du Lac; but he bore him within and dressed his wound and bade him be of good cheer, for he should recover. So there Sir Launcelot abode many weeks and Sir Lavaine with him; for Lavaine would not leave him, such love had he for the good knight he had taken for his lord. Now when it was known that the victorious knight had departed from the field sore wounded, Sir Gawain vowed to go in search of him. So it chanced that, in his wanderings, he came to Astolat, and there he had a hearty welcome of the Lord of Astolat, who asked him for news of the tournament. Then Sir Gawain related how two stranger knights, bearing white shields, had won great glory, and in especial one, who wore in his helm a crimson sleeve, had surpassed all others in knightly prowess. At these words, the fair Elaine cried aloud with delight. "Maiden," said Gawain, "know ye this knight?" "Not his name," she replied; "but full sure was I that he was a noble knight when I prayed him to wear my favour." Then she showed Gawain the shield which she had kept wrapped in rich broideries, and immediately Sir Gawain knew it for Launcelot's. "Alas!" cried he, "without doubt it was Launcelot himself that we wounded to the death. Sir Bors will never recover the woe of it." Then, on the morrow, Sir Gawain rode to London to tell the court how the stranger knight and Launcelot were one; but the Fair Maid of Astolat rose betimes, and having obtained leave of her father, set out to search for Sir Launcelot and her brother Lavaine. After many journeyings, she came, one day, upon Lavaine exercising his horse in a field, and by him she was taken to Sir Launcelot. Then, indeed, her heart was filled with grief when she saw the good knight to whom she had given her crimson sleeve thus laid low; so she abode in the hermitage, waiting upon Sir Launcelot and doing all within her power to lessen his pain. After many weeks, by the good care of the hermit and the fair Elaine, Sir Launcelot was so far recovered that he might bear the weight of his armour and mount his horse again. Then, one morn, they left the hermitage and rode all three, the Fair Maid, Sir Launcelot, and Sir Lavaine, to the castle of Astolat, where there was much joy of their coming. After brief sojourn, Sir Launcelot desired to ride to court, for he knew there would be much sorrow among his kinsmen for his long absence. But when he would take his departure, Elaine cried aloud: "Ah! my lord, suffer me to go with you, for I may not bear to lose you." "Fair child," answered Sir Launcelot gently, "that may not be. But in the days to come, when ye shall love and wed some good knight, for your sake I will bestow upon him broad lands and great riches; and at all times will I hold me ready to serve you as a true knight may." Thus spoke Sir Launcelot, but the fair Elaine answered never a word. So Sir Launcelot rode to London where the whole court was glad of his coming; but from the day of his departure, the Fair Maid drooped and pined until, when ten days were passed, she felt that her end was at hand. So she sent for her father and two brothers, to whom she said gently: "Dear father and brethren, I must now leave you." Bitterly they wept, but she comforted them all she might, and presently desired of her father a boon. "Ye shall have what ye will," said the old lord; for he hoped that she might yet recover. Then first she required her brother, Sir Tirre, to write a letter, word for word as she said it; and when it was written, she turned to her father and said: "Kind father, I desire that, when I am dead, I may be arrayed in my fairest raiment, and placed on a bier; and let the bier be set within a barge, with one to steer it until I be come to London. Then, perchance, Sir Launcelot will come and look upon me with kindness." So she died, and all was done as she desired; for they set her, looking as fair as a lily, in a barge all hung with black, and an old dumb man went with her as helmsman. Slowly the barge floated down the river until it had come to Westminster; and as it passed under the palace walls, it chanced that King Arthur and Queen Guenevere looked forth from a window. Marvelling much at the strange sight, together they went forth to the quay, followed by many of the knights. Then the King espied the letter clasped in the dead maiden's hand, and drew it forth gently and broke the seal. And thus the letter ran: "Most noble Knight, Sir Launcelot, I, that men called the Fair Maid of Astolat, am come hither to crave burial at thy hands for the sake of the unrequited love I gave thee. As thou art peerless knight, pray for my soul." Then the King bade fetch Sir Launcelot, and when he was come, he showed him the letter. And Sir Launcelot, gazing on the dead maiden, was filled with sorrow. "My lord Arthur," he said, "for the death of this dear child I shall grieve my life long. Gentle she was and loving, and much was I beholden to her; but what she desired I could not give." "Yet her request now thou wilt grant, I know," said the King; "for ever thou art kind and courteous to all." "It is my desire," answered Sir Launcelot. So the Maid of Astolat was buried in the presence of the King and Queen and of the fellowship of the Round Table, and of many a gentle lady who wept, that time, the fair child's fate. Over her grave was raised a tomb of white marble, and on it was sculptured the shield of Sir Launcelot; for, when he had heard her whole story, it was the King's will that she that in life had guarded the shield of his noblest knight, should keep it also in death. BOOK X QUEEN GUENEVERE CHAPTER XXXI HOW MORDRED PLOTTED AGAINST SIR LAUNCELOT Before Merlin passed from the world of men, imprisoned in the great stone by the evil arts of Vivien, he had uttered many marvellous prophecies, and one that boded ill to King Arthur; for he foretold that, in the days to come, a son of Arthur's sister should stir up bitter war against the King, and at last a great battle should be fought in the West, when many a brave knight should find his doom. Now, among the nephews of Arthur, was one most dishonourable; his name was Mordred. No knightly deed had he ever done, and he hated to hear the good report of others because he himself was a coward and envious. But of all the Round Table there was none that Mordred hated more than Sir Launcelot du Lac, whom all true knights held in most honour; and not the less did Mordred hate Launcelot that he was the knight whom Queen Guenevere had in most esteem. So, at last, his jealous rage passing all bounds, he spoke evil of the Queen and of Launcelot, saying that they were traitors to the King. Now Sir Gawain and Sir Gareth, Mordred's brothers, refused to give ear to these slanders, holding that Sir Launcelot, in his knightly service of the Queen, did honour to King Arthur also; but by ill-fortune another brother, Sir Agravaine, had ill-will to the Queen, and professed to believe Mordred's evil tales. So the two went to King Arthur with their ill stories. Now when Arthur had heard them, he was wroth; for never would he lightly believe evil of any, and Sir Launcelot was the knight whom he loved above all others. Sternly then he bade them begone and come no more to him with unproven tales against any, and, least of all, against Sir Launcelot and their lady, the Queen. The two departed, but in their hearts was hatred against Launcelot and the Queen, more bitter than ever for the rebuke they had called down upon themselves; and they resolved, from that time forth, diligently to watch if, perchance, they might find aught to turn to evil account against Sir Launcelot. Not long after, it seemed to them that the occasion had come. For King Arthur having ridden forth to hunt far from Carlisle, where he then held court, the Queen sent for Sir Launcelot to speak with him in her bower. Then Agravaine and Mordred got together twelve knights, friends of Sir Gawain, their brother, and persuaded them to come with them for they should do the King a service. So with the twelve knights they watched and waited in a little room until they saw Sir Launcelot, all unarmed, pass into the Queen's chamber; and when the door was closed upon him, they came forth, and Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred thundered on the door, crying so that all the court might hear: "Thou traitor, Sir Launcelot, come forth from the Queen's chamber. Come forth, for thy treason against the King is known to all!" Then Sir Launcelot and the Queen were amazed and filled with shame that such a clamour should be raised where the Queen was. While they waited and listened in dismay, Sir Mordred and Sir Agravaine took up the cry again, the twelve knights echoing it: "Traitor Launcelot, come forth and meet thy doom; for thy last hour is come." Then Sir Launcelot, wroth more for the Queen than for himself, exclaimed: "This shameful cry will kill me; better death than such dishonour. Lady, as I have ever been your true knight, since the day when my lord, King Arthur, knighted me, pray for me if now I meet my death." Then he went to the door and cried to those without: "Fair lords, cease this outcry. I will open the door, and then ye shall do with me as ye will." With the word, he set open the door, but only by so much that one knight could enter at a time. So a certain Sir Colgrevance of Gore, a knight of great stature, pushed into the room and thrust at Sir Launcelot with all his might; but Sir Launcelot, with the arm round which he had wrapped his cloak, turned aside the sword and, with his bare hand, dealt Colgrevance such a blow on the helmet that he fell grovelling to the earth. Then Sir Launcelot thrust to and barred the door, and stripping the fallen knight of his armour, armed himself in haste with the aid of the Queen and her ladies. All this while, Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred continued their outcry; so when he was armed, Sir Launcelot called to them to cease their vile cries and the next day he would meet any or all of them in arms and knightly disprove their vile slander. Now there was not one among those knights who dared meet Sir Launcelot in the open field, so they were resolved to slay him while they had the advantage over him. When Sir Launcelot understood their evil purpose, he set wide the door and rushed upon them. At the first blow he slew Sir Agravaine, and soon eleven other knights lay cold on the earth beside him. Only Mordred escaped, for he fled with all his might; but, even so, he was sore wounded. Then Sir Launcelot spoke to the Queen. "Madam," said he, "here may I no longer stay, for many a foe have I made me this night. And when I am gone, I know not what evil may be spoken of you for this night's work. I pray you, then, suffer me to lead you to a place of safety." "Ye shall run no more risk for my sake," said the Queen; "only go hence in haste before more harm befall you. But as for me, here I abide. I will flee for no traitor's outcry." So Sir Launcelot, seeing that at that time there was naught he might do for Queen Guenevere, withdrew with all his kin to a little distance from Carlisle, and awaited what should befall. CHAPTER XXXII THE TRIAL OF THE QUEEN When Mordred escaped Sir Launcelot, he got to horse, all wounded as he was, and never drew rein till he had found King Arthur, to whom he told all that had happened. Then great was the King's grief. Despite all that Mordred could say, he was slow to doubt Sir Launcelot, whom he loved, but his mind was filled with forebodings; for many a knight had been slain, and well he knew that their kin would seek vengeance on Sir Launcelot, and the noble fellowship of the Round Table be utterly destroyed by their feuds. All too soon, it proved even as the King had feared. Many were found to hold with Sir Mordred; some because they were kin to the knights that had been slain, some from envy of the honour and worship of the noble Sir Launcelot; and among them even were those who dared to raise their voice against the Queen herself, calling for judgment upon her as leagued with a traitor against the King, and as having caused the death of so many good knights. Now in those days the law was that if any one were accused of treason by witnesses, or taken in the act, that one should die the death by burning, be it man or woman, knight or churl. So then the murmurs grew to a loud clamour that the law should have its course, and that King Arthur should pass sentence on the Queen. Then was the King's woe doubled; "For," said he, "I sit as King to be a rightful judge and keep all the law; wherefore I may not do battle for my own Queen, and now there is none other to help her." So a decree was issued that Queen Guenevere should be burnt at the stake outside the walls of Carlisle. Forthwith, King Arthur sent for his nephew, Sir Gawain, and said to him: "Fair nephew, I give it in charge to you to see that all is done as has been decreed." But Sir Gawain answered boldly: "Sir King, never will I be present to see my lady the Queen die. It is of ill counsel that ye have consented to her death." Then the King bade Gawain send his two young brothers, Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris, to receive his commands, and these he desired to attend the Queen to the place of execution. So Gareth made answer for both: "My Lord the King, we owe you obedience in all things, but know that it is sore against our wills that we obey you in this; nor will we appear in arms in the place where that noble lady shall die"; then sorrowfully they mounted their horses, and rode to Carlisle. When the day appointed had come, the Queen was led forth to a place without the walls of Carlisle, and there she was bound to the stake to be burnt to death. Loud were her ladies' lamentations, and many a lord was found to weep at that grievous sight of a Queen brought so low; yet was there none who dared come forward as her champion, lest he should be suspected of treason. As for Gareth and Gaheris, they could not bear the sight and stood with their faces covered in their mantles. Then, just as the torch was to be applied to the faggots, there was a sound as of many horses galloping, and the next instant a band of knights rushed upon the astonished throng, their leader cutting down all who crossed his path until he had reached the Queen, whom he lifted to his saddle and bore from the press. Then all men knew that it was Sir Launcelot, come knightly to rescue the Queen, and in their hearts they rejoiced. So with little hindrance they rode away, Sir Launcelot and all his kin with the Queen in their midst, till they came to the castle of the Joyous Garde where they held the Queen in safety and all reverence. But of that day came a kingdom's ruin, for among the slain were Gawain's brothers, Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris. Now Sir Launcelot loved Sir Gareth as if he had been his own younger brother, and himself had knighted him; but, in the press, he struck at him and killed him, not seeing that he was unarmed and weaponless; and in like wise, Sir Gaheris met his death. So when word was brought to King Arthur of what had passed, Sir Gawain asked straightway how his brothers had fared. "Both are slain," said the messenger. "Alas! my dear brothers!" cried Sir Gawain; "how came they by their death?" "They were both slain by Sir Launcelot." "That will I never believe," cried Sir Gawain; "for my brother, Sir Gareth, had such love for Sir Launcelot that there was naught Sir Launcelot could ask him that he would not do." But the man said again: "He is slain, and by Sir Launcelot." Then, from sheer grief, Sir Gawain fell swooning to the ground. When he was recovered, he said: "My Lord and uncle, is it even as this man says, that Sir Launcelot has slain my brother Sir Gareth?" "Alas!" said the King, "Launcelot rode upon him in the press and slew him, not seeing who he was or that he was unarmed." "Then," cried Gawain fiercely, "here I make my avow. Never, while my life lasts, will I leave Sir Launcelot in peace until he has rendered me account for the slaying of my brother." From that day forth, Sir Gawain would not suffer the King to rest until he had gathered all his host and marched against the Joyous Garde. Thus began the war which broke up the fellowship of the Round Table. CHAPTER XXXIII HOW SIR GAWAIN DEFIED SIR LAUNCELOT Now it came to the ears of the Pope in Rome that King Arthur was besieging Sir Launcelot in his castle of the Joyous Garde, and it grieved him that there should be strife between two such goodly knights, the like of whom was not to be found in Christendom. So he called to him the Bishop of Rochester, and bade him carry word to Britain, both to Arthur and to Sir Launcelot, that they should be reconciled, the one to the other, and that King Arthur should receive again Queen Guenevere. Forthwith Sir Launcelot desired of King Arthur assurance of liberty and reverence for the Queen, as also safe conduct for himself and his knights, that he might bring Dame Guenevere, with due honour, to the King at Carlisle; and thereto the King pledged his word. So Launcelot set forth with the Queen, and behind them rode a hundred knights arrayed in green velvet, the housings of the horses of the same all studded with precious stones; thus they passed through the city of Carlisle, openly, in the sight of all, and there were many who rejoiced that the Queen was come again and Sir Launcelot with her, though they of Gawain's party scowled upon him. When they were come into the great hall where Arthur sat, with Sir Gawain and other great lords about him, Sir Launcelot led Guenevere to the throne and both knelt before the King; then, rising, Sir Launcelot lifted the Queen to her feet, and thus he spoke to King Arthur, boldly and well before the whole court: "My lord, Sir Arthur, I bring you here your Queen, than whom no truer nor nobler lady ever lived; and here stand I, Sir Launcelot du Lac, ready to do battle with any that dare gainsay it"; and with these words Sir Launcelot turned and looked upon the lords and knights present in their places, but none would challenge him in that cause, not even Sir Gawain, for he had ever affirmed that Dame Guenevere was a true and honourable lady. Then Sir Launcelot spoke again: "Now, my Lord Arthur, in my own defence it behoves me to say that never in aught have I been false to you. That I slew certain knights is true; but I hold me guiltless, seeing that they brought death upon themselves. For no sooner had I gone to the Queen's bower, as she had commanded me, than they beset the door, with shameful outcry, that all the court might hear, calling me traitor and felon knight." "And rightly they called you," cried Sir Gawain fiercely. "My lord, Sir Gawain," answered Sir Launcelot, "in their quarrel they proved not themselves right, else had not I, alone, encountered fourteen knights and come forth unscathed." Then said King Arthur: "Sir Launcelot, I have ever loved you above all other knights, and trusted you to the uttermost; but ill have ye done by me and mine." "My lord," said Launcelot, "that I slew Sir Gareth I shall mourn as long as life lasts. As soon would I have slain my own nephew, Sir Bors, as have harmed Sir Gareth wittingly; for I myself made him knight, and loved him as my brother." "Liar and traitor," cried Sir Gawain, "ye slew him, defenceless and unarmed." "It is full plain, Sir Gawain," said Launcelot, "that never again shall I have your love; and yet there has been old kindness between us, and once ye thanked me that I saved your life." "It shall not avail you now," said Sir Gawain; "traitor ye are, both to the King and to me. Know that, while life lasts, never will I rest until I have avenged my brother Sir Gareth's death upon you." "Fair nephew," said the King, "cease your brawling. Sir Launcelot has come under surety of my word that none shall do him harm. Elsewhere, and at another time, fasten a quarrel upon him, if quarrel ye must." "I care not," cried Sir Gawain fiercely. "The proud traitor trusts so in his own strength that he thinks none dare meet him. But here I defy him and swear that, be it in open combat or by stealth, I shall have his life. And know, mine uncle and King, if I shall not have your aid, I and mine will leave you for ever, and, if need be, fight even against you." "Peace," said the King; and to Sir Launcelot: "We give you fifteen days in which to leave this kingdom." Then Sir Launcelot sighed heavily and said: "Full well I see that no sorrow of mine for what is past availeth me." Then he went to the Queen where she sat, and said: "Madam, the time is come when I must leave this fair realm that I have loved. Think well of me, I pray you, and send for me if ever there be aught in which a true knight may serve lady." Therewith he turned him about and, without greeting to any, passed through the hall, and with his faithful knights rode to the Joyous Garde, though ever thereafter, in memory of that sad day, he called it the Dolorous Garde. There he called about him his friends and kinsmen, saying: "Fair Knights, I must now pass into my own lands." Then they all, with one voice, cried that they would go with him. So he thanked them, promising them all fair estates and great honour when they were come to his kingdom; for all France belonged to Sir Launcelot. Yet was he loth to leave the land where he had followed so many glorious adventures, and sore he mourned to part in anger from King Arthur. "My mind misgives me," said Sir Launcelot, "but that trouble shall come of Sir Mordred, for he is envious and a mischief-maker, and it grieves me that never more I may serve Sir Arthur and his realm." So Sir Launcelot sorrowed; but his kinsmen were wroth for the dishonour done him, and making haste to depart, by the fifteenth day they were all embarked to sail overseas to France. CHAPTER XXXIV HOW KING ARTHUR AND SIR GAWAIN WENT TO FRANCE From the day when Sir Launcelot brought the Queen to Carlisle, never would Gawain suffer the King to be at rest; but always he desired him to call his army together that they might go to attack Sir Launcelot in his own land. Now King Arthur was loth to war against Sir Launcelot; and seeing this, Sir Gawain upbraided him bitterly. "I see well it is naught to you that my brother, Sir Gareth, died fulfilling your behest. Little ye care if all your knights be slain, if only the traitor Launcelot escape. Since, then, ye will not do me justice nor avenge your own nephew, I and my fellows will take the traitor when and how we may. He trusts in his own might that none can encounter with him; let see if we may not entrap him." Thus urged, King Arthur called his army together and bade collect a great fleet; for rather would he fight openly with Sir Launcelot than that Sir Gawain should bring such dishonour upon himself as to slay a noble knight treacherously. So with a great host, the King passed overseas to France, leaving Sir Mordred to rule Britain in his stead. When Launcelot heard that King Arthur and Sir Gawain were coming against him, he withdrew into the strong castle of Benwick; for unwilling indeed was he to fight with the King, or to do an injury to Sir Gareth's brother. The army passed through the land, laying it waste, and presently encamped about the castle, laying close siege to it; but so thick were the walls, and so watchful the garrison, that in no way could they prevail against it. One day, there came to Sir Launcelot seven brethren, brave knights of Wales, who had joined their fortunes to his, and said: "Sir Launcelot, bid us sally forth against this host which has invaded and laid waste your lands, and we will scatter it; for we are not wont to cower behind walls." "Fair lords," answered Launcelot, "it is grief to me to war on good Christian knights, and especially on my lord, King Arthur. Have but patience and I will send to him and see if, even now, there may not be a treaty of peace between us; for better far is peace than war." So Sir Launcelot sought out a damsel and, mounting her upon a palfrey, bade her ride to King Arthur's camp and require of the King to cease warring on his lands, proffering fair terms of peace. When the damsel came to the camp, there met her Sir Lucan the Butler, "Fair damsel," said Sir Lucan, "do ye come from Sir Launcelot?" "Yea, in good truth," said the damsel; "and, I pray you, lead me to King Arthur." "Now, may ye prosper in your errand," said Sir Lucan. "Our King loves Sir Launcelot dearly and wishes him well; but Sir Gawain will not suffer him to be reconciled to him." So when the damsel had come before the King, she told him all her tale, and much she said of Sir Launcelot's love and good-will to his lord the King, so that the tears stood in Arthur's eyes. But Sir Gawain broke in roughly: "My Lord and uncle, shall it be said of us that we came hither with such a host to hie us home again, nothing done, to be the scoff of all men?" "Nephew," said the King, "methinks Sir Launcelot offers fair and generously. It were well if ye would accept his proffer. Nevertheless, as the quarrel is yours, so shall the answer be." "Then, damsel," said Sir Gawain, "say unto Sir Launcelot that the time for peace is past. And tell him that I, Sir Gawain, swear by the faith I owe to knighthood that never will I forego my revenge." So the damsel returned to Sir Launcelot and told him all. Sir Launcelot's heart was filled with grief nigh unto breaking; but his knights were enraged and clamoured that he had endured too much of insult and wrong, and that he should lead them forth to battle. Sir Launcelot armed him sorrowfully, and presently the gates were set open and he rode forth, he and all his company. But to all his knights he had given commandment that none should seek King Arthur; "For never," said he, "will I see the noble King, who made me knight, either killed or shamed." Fierce was the battle between those two hosts. On Launcelot's side, Sir Bors and Sir Lavaine and many another did right well; while on the other side, King Arthur bore him as the noble knight he was, and Sir Gawain raged through the battle, seeking to come at Sir Launcelot. Presently, Sir Bors encountered with King Arthur, and unhorsed him. This Sir Launcelot saw and, coming to the King's side, he alighted and, raising him from the ground, mounted him upon his own horse. Then King Arthur, looking upon Launcelot, cried: "Ah! Launcelot, Launcelot! That ever there should be war between us two!" and tears stood in the King's eyes. "Ah! my Lord Arthur," cried Sir Launcelot, "I pray you stay this war." As they spoke thus, Sir Gawain came upon them, and, miscalling Sir Launcelot traitor and coward, had almost ridden upon him before Launcelot could provide him of another horse. Then the two hosts drew back, each on its own side, to see the battle between Sir Launcelot and Sir Gawain; for they wheeled their horses, and departing far asunder, rushed again upon each other with the noise of thunder, and each bore the other from his horse. Then they put their shields before them and set on each other with their swords; but while ever Sir Gawain smote fiercely, Sir Launcelot was content only to ward off blows, because he would not, for Sir Gareth's sake, do any harm to Sir Gawain. But the more Sir Launcelot forbore him, the more furiously Sir Gawain struck, so that Sir Launcelot had much ado to defend himself, and at the last smote Gawain on the helm so mightily that he bore him to the ground. Then Sir Launcelot stood back from Sir Gawain. But Gawain cried: "Why do ye draw back, traitor knight? Slay me while ye may, for never will I cease to be your enemy while my life lasts." "Sir," said Launcelot, "I shall withstand you as I may; but never will I smite a fallen knight." Then he spoke to King Arthur: "My Lord, I pray you, if but for this day, draw off your men. And think upon our former love if ye may; but, be ye friend or foe, God keep you." Thereupon Sir Launcelot drew off with his men into his castle, and King Arthur and his company to their tents. As for Sir Gawain, his squires bore him to his tent where his wounds were dressed. BOOK XI THE MORTE D'ARTHUR CHAPTER XXXV MORDRED THE TRAITOR So Sir Gawain lay healing of the grim wound which Sir Launcelot had given him, and there was peace between the two armies, when there came messengers from Britain bearing letters for King Arthur; and more evil news than they brought might not well be, for they told how Sir Mordred had usurped his uncle's realm. First, he had caused it to be noised abroad that King Arthur was slain in battle with Sir Launcelot, and, since there be many ever ready to believe any idle rumour and eager for any change, it had been no hard task for Sir Mordred to call the lords to a Parliament and persuade them to make him king. But the Queen could not be brought to believe that her lord was dead, so she took refuge in the Tower of London from Sir Mordred's violence, nor was she to be induced to leave her strong refuge for aught that Mordred could promise or threaten. This was the news that came to Arthur as he lay encamped about Sir Launcelot's castle of Benwick. Forthwith he bade his host make ready to move, and when they had reached the coast, they embarked and made sail to reach Britain with all possible speed. Sir Mordred, on his part, had heard of their sailing, and hasted to get together a great army. It was grievous to see how many a stout knight held by Mordred, ay, even many whom Arthur himself had raised to honour and fortune; for it is the nature of men to be fickle. Thus it was that, when Arthur drew near to Dover, he found Mordred with a mighty host, waiting to oppose his landing. Then there was a great sea-fight, those of Mordred's party going out in boats, great and small, to board King Arthur's ships and slay him and his men or ever they should come to land. Right valiantly did King Arthur bear him, as was his wont, and boldly his followers fought in his cause, so that at last they drove off their enemies and landed at Dover in spite of Mordred and his array. For that time Mordred fled, and King Arthur bade those of his party bury the slain and tend the wounded. So as they passed from ship to ship, salving and binding the hurts of the men, they came at last upon Sir Gawain, where he lay at the bottom of a boat, wounded to the death, for he had received a great blow on the wound that Sir Launcelot had given him. They bore him to his tent, and his uncle, the King, came to him, sorrowing beyond measure. "Methinks," said the King, "my joy on earth is done; for never have I loved any men as I have loved you, my nephew, and Sir Launcelot. Sir Launcelot I have lost, and now I see you on your death-bed." "My King," said Sir Gawain, "my hour is come, and I have got my death at Sir Launcelot's hand; for I am smitten on the wound he gave me. And rightly am I served, for of my willfulness and stubbornness comes this unhappy war. I pray you, my uncle, raise me in your arms and let me write to Sir Launcelot before I die." Thus, then, Sir Gawain wrote: "To Sir Launcelot, the noblest of all knights, I, Gawain, send greeting before I die. For I am smitten on the wound ye gave me before your castle of Benwick in France, and I bid all men bear witness that I sought my own death and that ye are innocent of it. I pray you, by our friendship of old, come again into Britain, and when ye look upon my tomb, pray for Gawain of Orkney. Farewell." So Sir Gawain died and was buried in the Chapel at Dover. CHAPTER XXXVI THE BATTLE IN THE WEST The day after the battle at Dover, King Arthur and his host pursued Sir Mordred to Barham Down where again there was a great battle fought, with much slaughter on both sides; but, in the end, Arthur was victorious, and Mordred fled to Canterbury. Now, by this time, many that Mordred had cheated by his lying reports, had drawn unto King Arthur, to whom at heart they had ever been loyal, knowing him for a true and noble king and hating themselves for having been deceived by such a false usurper as Sir Mordred. Then when he found that he was being deserted, Sir Mordred withdrew to the far West, for there men knew less of what had happened, and so he might still find some to believe in him and support him; and being without conscience, he even called to his aid the heathen hosts that his uncle, King Arthur, had driven from the land, in the good years when Launcelot was of the Round Table. King Arthur followed ever after; for in his heart was bitter anger against the false nephew who had wrought woe upon him and all his realm. At the last, when Mordred could flee no further, the two hosts were drawn up near the shore of the great western sea; and it was the Feast of the Holy Trinity. That night, as King Arthur slept, he thought that Sir Gawain stood before him, looking just as he did in life, and said to him: "My uncle and my King, God in his great love has suffered me to come unto you, to warn you that in no wise ye fight on the morrow; for if ye do, ye shall be slain, and with you the most part of the people on both sides. Make ye, therefore, treaty for a month, and within that time, Sir Launcelot shall come to you with all his knights, and ye shall overthrow the traitor and all that hold with him." Therewith, Sir Gawain vanished. Immediately, the King awoke and called to him the best and wisest of his knights, the two brethren, Sir Lucan the Butler and Sir Bedivere, and others, to whom he told his dream. Then all were agreed that, on any terms whatsoever, a treaty should be made with Sir Mordred, even as Sir Gawain had said; and, with the dawn, messengers went to the camp of the enemy, to call Sir Mordred to a conference. So it was determined that the meeting should take place in the sight of both armies, in an open space between the two camps, and that King Arthur and Mordred should each be accompanied by fourteen knights. Little enough faith had either in the other, so when they set forth to the meeting, they bade their hosts join battle if ever they saw a sword drawn. Thus they went to the conference. Now as they talked, it befell that an adder, coming out of a bush hard by, stung a knight in the foot; and he, seeing the snake, drew his sword to kill it and thought no harm thereby. But on the instant that the sword flashed, the trumpets blared on both sides and the two hosts rushed to battle. Never was there fought a fight of such bitter enmity; for brother fought with brother, and comrade with comrade, and fiercely they cut and thrust, with many a bitter word between; while King Arthur himself, his heart hot within him, rode through and through the battle, seeking the traitor Mordred. So they fought all day, till at last the evening fell. Then Arthur, looking around him, saw of his valiant knights but two left, Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere, and these sore wounded; and there, over against him, by a great heap of the dead, stood Sir Mordred, the cause of all this ruin. Thereupon the King, his heart nigh broken with grief for the loss of his true knights, cried with a loud voice: "Traitor! now is thy doom upon thee!" and with his spear gripped in both hands, he rushed upon Sir Mordred and smote him that the weapon stood out a fathom behind. And Sir Mordred knew that he had his death-wound. With all the might that he had, he thrust him up the spear to the haft and, with his sword, struck King Arthur upon the head, that the steel pierced the helmet and bit into the head; then he fell back, stark and dead. Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere went to the King where he lay, swooning from the blow, and bore him to a little chapel on the sea-shore. As they laid him on the ground, Sir Lucan fell dead beside the King, and Arthur, coming to himself, found but Sir Bedivere alive beside him. CHAPTER XXXVII THE PASSING OF ARTHUR So King Arthur lay wounded to the death, grieving, not that his end was come, but for the desolation of his kingdom and the loss of his good knights. And looking upon the body of Sir Lucan, he sighed and said: "Alas! true knight, dead for my sake! If I lived, I should ever grieve for thy death, but now mine own end draws nigh." Then, turning to Sir Bedivere, who stood sorrowing beside him, he said: "Leave weeping now, for the time is short and much to do. Hereafter shalt thou weep if thou wilt. But take now my sword Excalibur, hasten to the water side, and fling it into the deep. Then, watch what happens and bring me word thereof." "My Lord," said Sir Bedivere, "your command shall be obeyed"; and taking the sword, he departed. But as he went on his way, he looked on the sword, how wondrously it was formed and the hilt all studded with precious stones; and, as he looked, he called to mind the marvel by which it had come into the King's keeping. For on a certain day, as Arthur walked on the shore of a great lake, there had appeared above the surface of the water a hand brandishing a sword. On the instant, the King had leaped into a boat, and, rowing into the lake, had got the sword and brought it back to land. Then he had seen how, on one side the blade, was written, "Keep me," but on the other, "Throw me away," and, sore perplexed, he had shown it to Merlin, the great wizard, who said: "Keep it now. The time for casting away has not yet come." Thinking on this, it seemed to Bedivere that no good, but harm, must come of obeying the King's word; so hiding the sword under a tree, he hastened back to the little chapel. Then said the King: "What saw'st thou?" "Sir," answered Bedivere, "I saw naught but the waves, heard naught but the wind." "That is untrue," said King Arthur; "I charge thee, as thou art true knight, go again and spare not to throw away the sword." Sir Bedivere departed a second time, and his mind was to obey his lord; but when he took the sword in his hand, he thought: "Sin it is and shameful, to throw away so glorious a sword." Then, hiding it again, he hastened back to the King, "What saw'st thou?" said Sir Arthur. "Sir, I saw the water lap on the crags." Then spoke the King in great wrath: "Traitor and unkind! Twice hast thou betrayed me! Art dazzled by the splendour of the jewels, thou that, till now, hast ever been dear and true to me? Go yet again, but if thou fail me this time, I will arise and, with mine own hands, slay thee." Then Sir Bedivere left the King and, that time, he took the sword quickly from the place where he had hidden it and, forbearing even to look upon it, he twisted the belt about it and flung it with all his force into the water. A wondrous sight he saw, for, as the sword touched the water, a hand rose from out the deep, caught it, brandished it thrice, and drew it beneath the surface. Sir Bedivere hastened back to the King and told him what he had seen. "It is well," said Arthur; "now, bear me to the water's edge; and hasten, I pray thee, for I have tarried over-long and my wound has taken cold." So Sir Bedivere raised the King on his back and bore him tenderly to the lonely shore, where the lapping waves floated many an empty helmet and the fitful moonlight fell on the upturned faces of the dead. Scarce had they reached the shore when there hove in sight a barge, and on its deck stood three tall women, robed all in black and wearing crowns on their heads. "Place me in the barge," said the King, and softly Sir Bedivere lifted the King into it. And these three Queens wept sore over Arthur, and one took his head in her lap and chafed his hands, crying: "Alas! my brother, thou hast been over-long in coming and, I fear me, thy wound has taken cold." Then the barge began to move slowly from the land. When Sir Bedivere saw this, he lifted up his voice and cried with a bitter cry: "Ah! my Lord Arthur, thou art taken from me! And I, whither shall I go?" "Comfort thyself," said the King, "for in me is no comfort more. I pass to the Valley of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound. If thou seest me never again, pray for me." So the barge floated away out of sight, and Sir Bedivere stood straining his eyes after it till it had vanished utterly. Then he turned him about and journeyed through the forest until, at daybreak, he reached a hermitage. Entering it, he prayed the holy hermit that he might abide with him, and there he spent the rest of his life in prayer and holy exercise. But of King Arthur is no more known. Some men, indeed, say that he is not dead, but abides in the happy Valley of Avilion until such time as his country's need is sorest, when he shall come again and deliver it. Others say that, of a truth, he is dead, and that, in the far West, his tomb may be seen, and written on it these words: "Here lies Arthur, once King and King to be." CHAPTER XXXVIII THE DEATH OF SIR LAUNCELOT AND OF THE QUEEN When news reached Sir Launcelot in his own land of the treason of Mordred, he gathered his lords and knights together, and rested not till he had come to Britain to aid King Arthur. He landed at Dover, and there the evil tidings were told him, how the King had met his death at the hands of his traitor nephew. Then was Sir Launcelot's heart nigh broken for grief. "Alas!" he cried, "that I should live to know my King overthrown by such a felon! What have I done that I should have caused the deaths of the good knights, Sir Gareth, Sir Gaheris, and Sir Gawain, and yet that such a villain should escape my sword!" Then he desired to be led to Sir Gawain's tomb where he remained long in prayer and in great lamentation; after which he called to him his kinsmen and friends, and said to them: "My fair lords, I thank you all most heartily that, of your courtesy, ye came with me to this land. That we be come too late is a misfortune that might not be avoided, though I shall mourn it my life long. And now I will ride forth alone to find my lady the Queen in the West, whither men say she has fled. Wait for me, I pray you, for fifteen days, and then, if ye hear naught of me, return to your own lands." So Sir Launcelot rode forth alone, nor would he suffer any to follow him, despite their prayers and entreaties. Thus he rode some seven or eight days until, at the last, he came to a nunnery where he saw in the cloister many nuns waiting on a fair lady; none other, indeed, than Queen Guenevere herself. And she, looking up, saw Sir Launcelot, and at the sight, grew so pale that her ladies feared for her; but she recovered, and bade them go and bring Sir Launcelot to her presence. When he was come, she said to him: "Sir Launcelot, glad am I to see thee once again that I may bid thee farewell; for in this world shall we never meet again." "Sweet Madam," answered Sir Launcelot, "I was minded, with your leave, to bear you to my own country, where I doubt not but I should guard you well and safely from your enemies." "Nay, Launcelot," said the Queen, "that may not be; I am resolved never to look upon the world again, but here to pass my life in prayer and in such good works as I may. But thou, do thou get back to thine own land and take a fair wife; and ye both shall ever have my prayers." "Madam," replied Sir Launcelot, "ye know well that shall never be. And since ye are resolved to lead a life of prayer, I, too, will forsake the world if I can find hermit to share his cell with me; for ever your will has been mine." Long and earnestly he looked upon her as he might never gaze enough; then, getting to horse, he rode slowly away. Nor did they ever meet again in life. For Queen Guenevere abode in the great nunnery of Almesbury where Sir Launcelot had found her, and presently, for the holiness of her life, was made Abbess. But Sir Launcelot, after he had left her, rode on his way till he came to the cell where Sir Bedivere dwelt with the holy hermit; and when Sir Bedivere had told him all that had befallen, of the great battle in the West, and of the passing away of Arthur, Sir Launcelot flung down his arms and implored the holy hermit to let him remain there as the servant of God. So Sir Launcelot donned the serge gown and abode in the hermitage as the priest of God. Presently there came riding that way the good Sir Bors, Launcelot's nephew; for, when Sir Launcelot returned not to Dover, Sir Bors and many another knight went forth in search of him. There, then, Sir Bors remained and, within a half-year, there joined themselves to these three many who in former days had been fellows of the Round Table; and the fame of their piety spread far and wide. So six years passed and then, one night, Launcelot had a vision. It seemed to him that one said to him: "Launcelot, arise and go in haste to Almesbury. There shalt thou find Queen Guenevere dead, and it shall be for thee to bury her." Sir Launcelot arose at once and, calling his fellows to him, told them his dream. Immediately, with all haste, they set forth towards Almesbury and, arriving there the second day, found the Queen dead, as had been foretold in the vision. So with the state and ceremony befitting a great Queen, they buried her in the Abbey of Glastonbury, in that same church where, some say, King Arthur's tomb is to be found. Launcelot it was who performed the funeral rites and chanted the requiem; but when all was done, he pined away, growing weaker daily. So at the end of six weeks, he called to him his fellows, and bidding them all farewell, desired that his dead body should be conveyed to the Joyous Garde, there to be buried; for that in the church at Glastonbury he was not worthy to lie. And that same night he died, and was buried, as he had desired, in his own castle. So passed from the world the bold Sir Launcelot du Lac, bravest, most courteous, and most gentle of knights, whose peer the world has never seen ever shall. After Sir Launcelot's death, Sir Bors and the pious knights, his companions, took their way to the Holy Land, and there they died in battle against the Turk. So ends the story of King Arthur and his noble fellowship of the Round Table. 
16823	----	MY NEIGHBORS STORIES OF THE WELSH PEOPLE BY CARADOC EVANS NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N.J. TO MY FRIEND THOMAS BURKE OF "LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS" CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE THE WELSH PEOPLE 3 I. LOVE AND HATE 11 II. ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN 31 III. THE TWO APOSTLES 59 IV. EARTHBRED 81 V. FOR BETTER 99 VI. TREASURE AND TROUBLE 117 VII. SAINT DAVID AND THE PROPHETS 131 VIII. JOSEPH'S HOUSE 155 IX. LIKE BROTHERS 173 X. A WIDOW WOMAN 187 XI. UNANSWERED PRAYERS 199 XII. LOST TREASURE 215 XIII. PROFIT AND GLORY 231 THE WELSH PEOPLE Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He comes to deliver us a sermon we shall have made a hole in the roof and taken down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike the Father Christmas of picture-books. Often he lies on his stomach on Heaven's floor, an eye at one of his myriads of peepholes, watching that we keep his laws. Our God wears a frock coat, a starched linen collar and black necktie, and a silk hat, and on the Sabbath he preaches to the congregation of Heaven. Heaven is a Welsh chapel; but its pulpit is of gold, and its walls, pews, floor, roof, harmonium, and its clock--which marks the days of the month as well as the hours of the day--are of glass. The inhabitants are clothed in the white shirts in which they were buried and in which they arose at the Call; and the language of God and his angels and of the Company of Prophets is Welsh, that being the language spoken in the Garden of Eden and by Jacob, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah. Wales is Heaven on earth, and every Welsh chapel is a little Heaven; and God has favored us greatly by choosing to rule over us preachers who are fashioned in his likeness and who are without spot or blemish. Every Welsh child knows that the preacher is next to God; "I am the Big Man's photograph," the preacher shouts; and the child is brought up in the fear of the preacher. Jealous of his trust, the preacher has made rules for the salvation of our bodies and souls. Temptations such as art, drama, dancing, and the study of folklore he has removed from our way. Those are vanities, which make men puffed up and vainglorious; and they are unsavory in the nostrils of the Big Man. And look you, the preacher asks, do they not cost money? Are they not time wasters? The capel needs your money, boys bach, that the light--the grand, religious light--shall shine in the pulpit. That is the lamp which burns throughout Wales. It keeps our feet from Church door and public house, and it guides us to the polling booth where we record our votes as the preacher has instructed us. Be the season never so hard and be men and women never so hungry, its flame does not wane and the oil in its vessel is not low. White cabbages and new potatoes, eggs and measures of corn, milk and butter and money we give to the preacher. We trim our few acres until our shoulders are crutched and the soil is in the crevices of our flesh that his estate shall be a glory unto God. We make for him a house which is as a mansion set amid hovels and for the building thereof the widow must set aside portions of her weekly old age pension. These things and many more we do, for forgiveness of sin is obtained by sacrifice. Such folk as hold back their offerings have their names proclaimed in the pulpit. Said the preacher: "Heavy was the punishment of the Big Man on Twm Cwm, persons, because Twm speeched against the capel. Was he not put in the coffin in his farm trowsis and jacket? And do you know, the Big Man cast a brightness on his buttons for him to be known in the blackness of hell." It is no miracle that we are religious. Our God is just behind the preacher, and he is in the semblance of the preacher; and we believe in him truly. It is no miracle that we are prayerful. Our God is by us in our hagglings and cheatings. Becca Penffos prays that the dealer's eyes are closed to the disease of her hen; Shon Porth asks the Big Man to destroy his pregnant sister into whose bed Satan enticed him; Ianto Tybach says: "Give me a nice bit of haymaking weather, God bach. Strike my brother Enoch dead and blind and see I have his fields without any old bother. A champion am I in the religion and there's gifts I give the preacher. Ask him. That's all. Amen." Although we know God, we are afraid of to-morrow: one will steal our seeds, a horse will perish, our wife will die and a servant woman will have to be hired to the time that we find another wife, the Englishman whom we defrauded in the market place will come and seek his rights. We are what we have been made by our preachers and politicians, and thus we remain. Among ourselves our repute is ill. Our villages and countryside are populated with the children of cousins who have married cousins and of women who have played the harlot with their brothers; and no one loves his neighbor. Abroad we are distrusted and disdained. This is said of us: "A Welshman's bond is as worthless as his word." We traffic in prayers and hymns, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and we display a spurious heart upon our breast. Our politicians, crafty pupils of the preachers and now their masters, weep and moan in the public places as if they were women in childbirth; in their souls they are lustful and cruel and greedy. They have made themselves the slaves of the wicked, and like asses their eyes are lifted no higher than the golden carrot which is their reward from the wicked. Not of one of us it can be said: "He is a great man," or "He is a good man," or "He is an honest man." Maybe the living God will consider our want of knowledge and act mercifully toward us. I LOVE AND HATE By living frugally--setting aside a portion of his Civil Service pay and holding all that he got from two butchers whose trade books he kept in proper order--Adam Powell became possessed of Cartref in which he dwelt and which is in Barnes, and two houses in Thornton East; and one of the houses in Thornton East he let to his widowed daughter Olwen, who carried on a dressmaking business. At the end of his term he retired from his office, his needs being fulfilled by a pension, and his evening eased by the ministrations of his elder daughter Lisbeth. Soon an inward malady seized him, and in the belief that he would not be rid of it, he called Lisbeth and Olwen, to whom both he pronounced his will. "The Thornton East property I give you," he said. "Number seven for Lissi and eight for Olwen as she is. It will be pleasant to be next door, and Lissi is not likely to marry at her age which is advanced. Share and share alike of the furniture, and what's left sell with the house and haff the proceeds. If you don't fall out in the sharing, you never will again." At once Lisbeth and Olwen embraced. "My sister is my best friend," was the testimony of the elder; "we shan't go astray if we follow the example of the dad and mother," was that of the younger. "Take two or three excursion trains to Aberporth for the holidays," said Adam, "and get a little gravel for the mother's grave in Beulah. And a cheap artificial wreath. They last better than real ones. It was in Beulah that me and your mother learnt about Jesus." Together Olwen and Lisbeth pledged that they would attend their father's behests: shunning ill-will and continually petitioning to be translated to the Kingdom of God; "but," Lisbeth laughed falsely, "you are not going to die. The summer will do wonders for you." "You are as right as a top really," cried Olwen. Beholding that his state was the main concern of his children, Adam counted himself blessed; knowing of a surety that the designs of God stand fast against prayer and physic, he said: "I am shivery all over." A fire was kindled and coals piled upon it that it was scarce to be borne, and three blankets were spread over those which were on his bed, and three earthen bottles which held heated water were put in his bed; and yet the old man got no warmth. "I'll manage now alone," said Lisbeth on the Saturday morning. "You'll have Jennie and her young gentleman home for Sunday. Should he turn for the worse I'll send for you." Olwen left, and in the afternoon came Jennie and Charlie from the drapery shop in which they were engaged; and sighing and sobbing she related to them her father's will. "If I was you, ma," Jennie counseled, "I wouldn't leave him too much alone with Aunt Liz. You never can tell. Funny things may happen." "I'd trust Aunt Liz anywhere," Olwen declared, loath to have her sister charged with unfaithfulness. "What do you think, Charlie?" asked Jennie. The young man stiffened his slender body and inclined his pale face and rubbed his nape, and he proclaimed that there was no discourse of which the meaning was hidden from him and no device with which he was not familiar; and he answered: "I would stick on the spot." That night Olwen made her customary address to God, and before she came up from her knees or uncovered her eyes, she extolled to God the acts of her father Adam. But slumber kept from her because of that which Jennie had spoken; and diffiding the humor of her heart, she said to herself: "Liz must have a chance of going on with some work." At that she slept; and early in the day she was in Cartref. "Jennie and Charlie insist you rest," she told Lisbeth. "She can manage quite nicely, and there's Charlie which is a help. So should any one who is twenty-three." For a week the daughters waited on their father and contrived they never so wittily to free him from his disorder--Did they not strip and press against him?--they could not deliver him from the wind of dead men's feet. They stitched black cloth into garments and while they stitched they mumbled the doleful hymns of Sion. Two yellow plates were fixed on Adam's coffin--this was in accordance with the man's request--and the engraving on one was in the Welsh tongue, and on the other in the English tongue, and the reason was this: that the angel who lifts the lid--be he of the English or of the Welsh--shall know immediately that the dead is of the people chosen to have the first seats in the Mansion. The sisters removed from Cartref such things as pleased them; Lisbeth chose more than Olwen, for her house was bare; and in the choosing each gave in to the other, and neither harbored a mean thought. With her chattels and her sewing machine, Lisbeth entered number seven, which is in Park Villas, and separated from the railway by a wood paling, and from then on the sisters lived by the rare fruits of their joint industry; and never, except on the Sabbath, did they shed their thimbles or the narrow bright scissors which hung from their waists. Some of the poor middle-class folk near-by brought to them their measures of materials, and the more honorable folk who dwelt in the avenues beyond Upper Richmond Road crossed the steep railway bridge with blouses and skirts to be reformed. "We might be selling Cartref now," said Olwen presently. "I leave it to you," Lisbeth remarked. "And I leave it to you. It's as much yours as mine." "Suppose we consult Charlie?" "He's a man, and he'll do the best he can." "Yes, he's very cute is Charlie." Charlie gave an ear unto Olwen, and he replied: "You been done in. It's disgraceful how's she's took everything that were best." "She had nothing to go on with," said Olwen. "And it will come back. It will be all Jennie's." "What guarantee have you of that? That's my question. What guarantee?" Olwen was silent. She was not wishful of disparaging her sister or of squabbling with Charlie. "Well," said Charlie, "I must have an entirely free hand. Give it an agent if you prefer. They're a lively lot." He went about over-praising Cartref. "With the sticks and they're not rubbish," he swore, "it's worth five hundred. Three-fifty will buy the lot." A certain man said to him: "I'll give you two-twenty"; and Charlie replied: "Nothing doing." Twelve months he was in selling the house, and for the damage which in the meanseason had been done to it by a bomb and by fire and water the sum of money that he received was one hundred and fifty pounds. Lisbeth had her share, and Olwen had her share, and each applauded Charlie, Lisbeth assuring him: "You'll never regret it"; and this is how Charlie applauded himself: "No one else could have got so much." "The house and cash will be a nice egg-nest for Jennie," Olwen announced. "And number seven and mine will make it more," added Lisbeth. "It's a great comfort that she'll never want a roof over her," said Olwen. Mindful of their vows to their father, the sisters lived at peace and held their peace in the presence of their prattling neighbors. On Sundays, togged in black gowns on which were ornaments of jet, they worshiped in the Congregational Chapel; and as they stood up in their pew, you saw that Olwen was as the tall trunk of a tree at whose shoulders are the stumps of chopped branches, and that Lisbeth's body was as a billhook. Once they journeyed to Aberporth and they laid a wreath of wax flowers and a thick layer of gravel on their mother's grave. They tore a gap in the wall which divided their little gardens, and their feet, so often did one visit the other, trod a path from backdoor to backdoor. Nor was their love confused in the joy that each had in Jennie, for whom sacrifices were made and treasures hoarded. But Jennie was discontented, puling for what she could not have, mourning her lowly fortune, deploring her spinsterhood. "Bert and me are getting married Christmas," she said on a day. "Hadn't you better wait a while," said Olwen. "You're young." "We talked of that. Charlie is getting on. He's thirty-eight, or will be in January. We'll keep on in the shop and have sleep-out vouchers and come here week-ends." As the manner is, the mother wept. "You've nothing to worry about," Lisbeth assuaged her sister. "He's steady and respectable. We must see that she does it in style. You look after the other arrangements and I'll see to her clothes." She walked through wind and rain and sewed by day and night, without heed of the numbness which was creeping into her limbs; and on the floor of a box she put six jugs which had been owned by the Welshwoman who was Adam's grandmother, and over the jugs she arrayed the clothes she had made, and over all she put a piece of paper on which she had written, "To my darling niece from her Aunt Lisbeth." Jennie examined her aunt's handiwork and was exceedingly wrathful. "I shan't wear them," she cried. "She might have spoken to me before she started. After all, it's my wedding. Not hers. Pwf! I can buy better jugs in the six-pence-apenny bazaar." "Aunt Liz will alter them," Olwen began. "I agree with her," said Charlie. "Aunt Liz should be more considerate seeing what I have done for her. But for me she wouldn't have any money at all." Charlie and Jennie stirred their rage and gave utterance to the harshest sayings they could devise about Lisbeth; "and I don't care if she's listening outside the door," said Charlie; "and you can tell her it's me speaking," said Jennie. Throughout Saturday and Sunday Jennie pouted and dealt rudely and uncivilly with her mother; and on Monday, at the hour she was preparing to depart, Olwen relented and gave her twenty pounds, wherefore on the wedding day Lisbeth was astonished. "Why aren't you wearing my presents?" she asked. "That's it," Jennie shouted. "Don't you forget to throw cold water, will you? It wouldn't be you if you did. I don't want to. See? And if you don't like it, lump it." Olwen calmed her sister, whispering: "She's excited. Don't take notice." At the quickening of the second dawn after Christmas, Jennie and Bert arose, and Jennie having hidden her wedding-ring, they two went about their business; and when at noon Olwen proceeded to number seven, she found that Lisbeth had been taken sick of the palsy and was fallen upon the floor. Lisbeth was never well again, and what time she understood all that Olwen had done for her, she melted into tears. "I should have gone but for you," she averred. "The money's Jennie's, which is the same as I had it and under the mattress, and the house is Jennie's." "She's fortunate," returned Olwen. "She'll never want for ten shillings a week which it will fetch. You are kind indeed." "Don't neglect them for me," Lisbeth urged. "I'll be quite happy if you drop in occasionally." "Are you not my sister?" Olwen cried. "I'm having a bed for you in our front sitting-room. You won't be lonely." Winter, spring, and summer passed, and the murmurs of Jennie and Charlie against Lisbeth were grown into a horrid clamor. "Hush, she'll hear you," Olwen always implored. "It won't be for much longer. The doctor says she may go any minute." "Or last ages," said Charlie. "Jennie will have the house and the money," Olwen pleaded. "And the money hasn't been touched. Same as you gave it to her. She showed it to me under the mattress. Not every one have two houses." "By then you will have bought it over and over again," said Charlie. "Doesn't give Jennie and me much chance of saving, does it?" "And she can't eat this and can't eat that," Jennie screamed. "She won't, she means." Weekly was Olwen harassed with new disputes, and she rued that she had said: "I'll have a bed for you in our front sitting-room"; and as it falls out in family quarrels, she sided with her daughter and her daughter's husband. So the love of the sisters became forced and strained, each speaking and answering with an ill-favored mouth; it was no longer entire and nothing that was professed united it together. "I must make my will now," Lisbeth hinted darkly. "Perhaps Charlie will oblige you," replied Olwen. "Charlie! You make me smile. Why, he can't keep a wife." "I thought you had settled all that," Olwen faltered. "Did you? Anyway, I'll have it in black and white. The minister will do it." After the minister was gone away, Lisbeth said: "I couldn't very well approach him. He's worried about money for the new vestry. Why didn't you tell me about the new vestry? It was in the magazine." Olwen mused and from her musings came this: "It'll be a pity to spoil it now. For Jennie's sake." She got very soft pillows and clean bed-clothes for Lisbeth and she placed toothsome dishes before Lisbeth; and it was Lisbeth's way to probe with a fork all the dishes that Olwen had made and to say "It's badly burnt," or "You didn't give much for this," or "Of course you were never taught to cook." For three years Olwen endured her sister's taunts and the storms of her daughter and her son-in-law; and then Jennie said: "I'm going to have a baby." If she was glad and feared to hear this, how much greater was her joy and how much heavier was her anxiety as Jennie's space grew narrower? She left over going to the aid of Lisbeth, from whom she took away the pillows and for whom she did not provide any more toothsome dishes; she did not go to her aid howsoever frantic the beatings on the wall or fierce the outcry. Never has a sentry kept a closer look-out than Olwen for Jennie. Albeit Jennie died, and as Olwen looked at the hair which was faded from the hue of daffodils into that of tow and at the face the cream of the skin of which was now like clay, she hated Lisbeth with the excess that she had loved her. "My dear child shall go to Heaven like a Princess," she said; and she sat at her work table to fashion a robe of fine cambric and lace for her dead. Disturbed by the noise of the machine, Lisbeth wailed: "You let me starve but won't let me sleep. Why doesn't any one help me? I'll get the fever. What have I done?" Olwen moved to the doorway of the room, her body filling the frame thereof, her scissors hanging at her side. "You are wrong, sister, to starve me," Lisbeth said. "To starve me. I cannot walk you know. You must not blame me if I change my mind about my money. It was wrong of you." Olwen did not answer. "Dear me," Lisbeth cried, "supposing our father in Heaven knew how you treat me. Indeed the vestry shall have my bit. I might be a pig in a pigsty. I'll get the fever. Supposing our father is looking through the window of Heaven at your cruelty to me." Olwen muttered the burden of her care: "'The wife would pull through if she had plenty of attention. How could she with her about? The two of you killed her. You did. I warned you to give up everything and see to her. But you neglected her.' That's what Charlie will say. Hoo-hoo. 'It's unheard of for a woman to die before childbirth. Serves you right if I have an inquest.'..." "For shame to keep from me now," said Lisbeth in a voice that was higher than the continued muttering of Olwen. "Have you no regard for the living? The dead is dead. And you made too much of Jennie. You spoiled her...." On a sudden Olwen ceased, and she strode up to the bed and thrust her scissors into Lisbeth's breast. II ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN On the eve of a Communion Sunday Simon Idiot espied Dull Anna washing her feet in the spume on the shore; he came out of his hiding-place and spoke jestingly to Anna and enticed her into Blind Cave, where he had sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom she had called Abel, Anna stretched out her tongue at the schoolmaster and took her son to the man who farmed Deinol. "Brought have I your scarecrow," she said. "Give you to me the brown pennies that you will pay for him." From dawn to sunset Abel stood on a hedge, waving his arms, shouting, and mimicking the sound of gunning. Weary of his work he vowed a vow that he would not keep on at it. He walked to Morfa and into his mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and beat him until he could not rest nor move with ease. "Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach,"[1] said Anna to the farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?" [Footnote 1: Dear little man. "Bach" is the Welsh masculine for "dear"; "fach" the Welsh feminine for "dear."] But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and when Abel married he let him live in Tybach--the mud-walled, straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes down from Synod Inn into Morfa--and he let him farm six acres of land. The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout were confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of butter to market than even Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick. Twelve years did they live thus wise. For the woman these were years of toil and child-bearing; after she had borne seven daughters, her sap husked and dried up. Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea. Then the farmer felt embittered, and by day and night he drank himself drunk in the inns of Morfa. Because he wanted Deinol, Abel brightened himself up: he wore whipcord leggings over his short legs, and a preacher's coat over his long trunk, a white and red patterned celluloid collar about his neck, and a bowler hat on the back of his head; and his side-whiskers were trimmed in the shape of a spade. He had joy of many widows and spinsters, to each of whom he said: "There's a grief-livener you are," and all of whom he gave over on hearing of the widow of Drefach. Her he married, and with the money he got with her, and the money he borrowed, he bought Deinol. Soon he was freed from the hands of his lender. He had eight horses and twelve cows, and he had oxen and heifers, and pigs and hens, and he had twenty-five sheep grazing on his moorland. As his birth and poverty had caused him to be scorned, so now his gains caused him to be respected. The preacher of Capel Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping road and in shop, and brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat. Even if Abel had land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was not filled until his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son. "Indeed me," he cried, "Benshamin his name shall be. The Large Maker gives and a One He is for taking away." He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer he recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the woman from Drefach. Benshamin grew up in the way of Capel Dissenters. He slept with his father and ate apart from his sisters, for his mien was lofty. At the age of seven he knew every question and answer in the book "Mother's Gift," with sayings from which he scourged sinners; and at the age of eight he delivered from memory the Book of Job at the Seiet; at that age also he was put among the elders in the Sabbath School. He advanced, waxing great in religion. On the nights of the Saying and Searching of the Word he was with the cunningest men, disputing with the preacher, stressing his arguments with his fingers, and proving his learning with phrases from the sermons of the saintly Shones Talysarn. If one asked him: "What are you going, Ben Abel Deinol?" he always answered: "The errander of the White Gospel fach." His father communed with the preacher, who said: "Pity quite sinful if the boy is not in the pulpit." "Like that do I think as well too," replied Abel. "Eloquent he is. Grand he is spouting prayers at his bed. Weep do I." Neighbors neglected their fields and barnyards to hear the lad's shoutings to God. Once Ben opened his eyes and rebuked those who were outside his room. "Shamed you are, not for certain," he said to them. "Come in, boys Capel. Right you hear the Gospel fach. Youngish am I but old is my courtship of King Jesus who died on the tree for scamps of parsons." He shut his eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the heathenism of the Church, the wickedness of Church tithes, and against ungodly book-prayers and short sermons. Early Ben entered College Carmarthen, where his piety--which was an adage--was above that of any student. Of him this was said: "'White Jesus bach is as plain on his lips as the purse of a big bull.'" Brightness fell upon him. He had a name for the tearfulness and splendor of his eloquence. He could conduct himself fancifully: now he was Pharaoh wincing under the plagues, now he was the Prodigal Son longing to eat at the pigs' trough, now he was the Widow of Nain rejoicing at the recovery of her son, now he was a parson in Nineveh squirming under the prophecy of Jonah; and his hearers winced or longed, rejoiced or squirmed. Congregations sought him to preach in their pulpits, and he chose such as offered the highest reward, pledging the richest men for his wage and the cost of his entertainment and journey. But Ben would rule over no chapel. "I wait for the call from above," he said. His term at Carmarthen at an end, he came to Deinol. His father met him in a doleful manner. "An old boy very cruel is the Parson," Abel whined. "Has he not strained Gwen for his tithes? Auction her he did and bought her himself for three pounds and half a pound." Ben answered: "Go now and say the next Saturday Benshamin Lloyd will give mouthings on tithes in Capel Dissenters." Ben stood in the pulpit, and spoke to the people of Capel Dissenters. "How many of you have been to his church?" he cried. "Not one male bach or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But there's glad am I to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon got with half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you will and stamp on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach y fy, why for he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me that. From where does his Church come from? She is the inheritance of Satan. The only thing he had to leave, and he left her to his friends the parsons. Iss-iss, earnest affair is this. Who gives him his food? We. Who pays for Vicarage? We. Who feeds his pony? We. His cows? We. Who built his church? We. With stones carted from our quarries and mortar messed about with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our fathers." At the gate of the chapel men discussed Ben's words; and two or three of them stole away and herded Gwen into the corner of the field; and they caught her and cut off her tail, and drove a staple into her udder. Sunday morning eleven men from Capel Dissenters, with iron bands to their clogs on their feet, and white aprons before their bellies, shouted without the church: "We are come to pray from the book." The Parson was affrighted, and left over tolling his bell, and he bolted and locked the door, against which he set his body as one would set the stub of a tree. Running at the top of their speed the railers came to Ben, telling how the Parson had put them to shame. "Iobs you are," Ben answered. "The boy bach who loses the key of his house breaks into his house. Does an old wench bar the dairy to her mishtress?" The men returned each to his abode, and an hour after midday they gathered in the church burial-ground, and they drew up a tombstone, and with it rammed the door; and they hurled stones at the windows; and in the darkness they built a wall of dung in the room of the door. Repentance sank into the Parson as he saw and remembered that which had been done to him. He called to him his servant Lissi Workhouse, and her he told to take Gwen to Deinol. The cow lowed woefully as she was driven; she was heard even in Morfa, and many hurried to the road to witness her. Abel was at the going in of the close. "Well-well, Lissi Workhouse," he said, "what's doing then?" "'Go give the male his beast,' mishtir talked." "Right for you are," said Abel. "Right for enough is the rascal. But a creature without blemish he pilfered. Hit her and hie her off." As Lissi was about to go, Ben cried from within the house: "The cow the fulbert had was worth two of his cows." "Sure, iss-iss," said Abel. "Go will I to Vicarage with boys capel. Bring the baston, Ben bach." Ben came out, and his ardor warmed up on beholding Lissi's broad hips, scarlet cheeks, white teeth, and full bosoms. "Not blaming you, girl fach, am I," he said. "My father, journey with Gwen. Walk will I with Lissi Workhouse." That afternoon Abel brought a cow in calf into his close; and that night Ben crossed the mown hayfields to the Vicarage, and he threw a little gravel at Lissi's window. * * * * * The hay was gathered and stacked and thatched, and the corn was cut down, and to the women who were gleaning his father's oats, Ben said how that Lissi was in the family way. "Silence your tone, indeed," cried one, laughing. "No sign have I seen." "If I died," observed a large woman, "boy bach pretty innocent you are, Benshamin. Four months have I yet. And not showing much do I." "No," said another, "the bulk might be only the coil of your apron, ho-ho." "Whisper to us," asked the large woman, "who the foxer is. Keep the news will we." "Who but the scamp of the Parson?" replied Ben. "What a sow of a hen." By such means Ben shifted his offense. On being charged by the Parson he rushed through the roads crying that the enemy of the Big Man had put unbecoming words on a harlot's tongue. Capel Dissenters believed him. "He could not act wrongly with a sheep," some said. So Ben tasted the sapidness and relish of power, and his desires increased. "Mortgage Deinol, my father bach," he said to Abel. "Going am I to London. Heavy shall I be there. None of the dirty English are like me." "Already have I borrowed for your college. No more do I want to have. How if I sell a horse?" "Sell you the horse too, my father bach." "Done much have I for you," Abel said. "Fairish I must be with your sisters." "Why for you cavil like that, father? The money of mam came to Deinol. Am I not her son?" Though his daughters, murmured--"We wake at the caw of the crows," they said, "and weary in the young of the day"--Abel obeyed his son, who thereupon departed and came to Thornton East to the house of Catherine Jenkins, a widow woman, with whom he took the appearance of a burning lover. Though he preached with a view at many English chapels in London, none called him. He caused Abel to sell cattle and mortgage Deinol for what it was worth and to give him all the money he received therefrom; he swore such hot love for Catherine that the woman pawned her furniture for his sake. Intrigued that such scant fruit had come up from his sowings, Ben thought of further ways of stablishing himself. He inquired into the welfare of shop-assistants from women and girls who worshiped in Welsh chapels, and though he spoiled several in his quest, the abominations which oppressed these workers were made known to him. Shop-assistants carried abroad his fame and called him "Fiery Taffy." Ben showed them how to rid themselves of their burden; "a burden," he said, "packed full and overflowing by men of my race--the London Welsh drapers." The Welsh drapers were alarmed, and in a rage with Ben. They took the opinion of their big men and performed slyly. Enos-Harries--this is the Enos-Harries who has a drapery shop in Kingsend--sent to Ben this letter: "Take Dinner with Slf and Wife same, is Late Dinner I am pleased to inform. You we don't live in Establishment only as per printed Note Heading. And Oblige." Enos-Harries showed Ben his house, and told him the cost of the treasures that were therein. Also Harries said: "I have learned of you as a promising Welshman, and I want to do a good turn for you with a speech by you on St. David's Day at Queen's Hall. Now, then." "I am not important enough for that." "She'll be a first-class miting in tip-top speeches. All the drapers and dairies shall be there in crowds. Three sirs shall come." "I am choked with engagements," said Ben. "I am preaching very busy now just." "Well-well. Asked I did for you are a clean Cymro bach. As I repeat, only leading lines in speakers shall be there. Come now into the drawing-room and I'll give you an intro to the Missus Enos-Harries. In evening dress she is--chik Paris Model. The invoice price was ten-ten." "Wait a bit," Ben remarked. "I would be glad if I could speak." "Perhaps the next time we give you the invite. The Cymrodorion shall be in the miting." "As you plead, try I will." "Stretching a point am I," Harries said. "This is a favor for you to address this glorious miting where the Welsh drapers will attend and the Missus Enos-Harries will sing 'Land of my Fathers.'" Ben withdrew from his fellows for three days, and on the third day--which was that of the Saint--he put on him a frock coat, and combed down his mustache over the blood-red swelling on his lip; and he cleaned his teeth. Here are some of the sayings that he spoke that night: "Half an hour ago we were privileged to listen to the voice of a lovely lady--a voice as clear as a diamond ring. It inspired us one and all with a hireath for the dear old homeland--for dear Wales, for the land of our fathers and mothers too, for the land that is our heritage not by Act of Parliament but by the Act of God.... "Who ownss this land to-day? The squaire and the parshon. By what right? By the same right as the thief who steals your silk and your laces, and your milk and butter, and your reddy-made blousis. I know a farm of one hundred acres, each rod having been tamed from heatherland into a manna of abundance. Tamed by human bones and muscles--God's invested capital in His chosen children. Six months ago this land--this fertile and rich land--was wrestled away from the owners. The bones of the living and the dead were wrestled away. I saw it three months ago--a wylderness. The clod had been squeesed of its zweat. The land belonged to my father, and his father, and his father, back to countless generations.... "I am proud to be among my people to-night. How sorry I am for any one who are not Welsh. We have a language as ancient as the hills that shelter us, and the rivers that never weery of refreshing us.... "Only recently a few shop-assistants--a handful of counter-jumpers--tried to shake the integrity of our commerse. But their white cuffs held back their aarms, and the white collars choked their aambitions. When I was a small boy my mam used to tell me how the chief Satan was caught trying to put his hand over the sun so as to give other satans a chance of doing wrong on earth in the dark. That was the object of these misguided fools. They had no grievances. I have since investigated the questions of living-in and fines. Both are fair and necessary. The man who tries to destroy them is like the swimmer who plunges among the water lilies to be dragged into destruction.... "Welsh was talked in the Garden of Aden. That is where commerse began. Didn't Eve buy the apple?... "Ladies and gentlemen, Cymrodorion, listen. There is a going in these classical old rafterss. It is the coming of God. And the message He gives you this night is this: 'Men of Gwalia, march on and keep you tails up.'" From that hour Ben flourished. He broke his league with the shop-assistants. Those whom he had troubled lost courage and humbled themselves before their employers; but their employers would have none of them, man or woman, boy or girl. Vexation followed his prosperity. His father reproached him, writing: "Sad I drop into the Pool as old Abel Tybach, and not as Lloyd Deinol." Catherine harassed him to recover her house and chattels. To these complainings he was deaf. He married the daughter of a wealthy Englishman, who set him up in a large house in the midst of a pleasure garden; and of the fatness and redness of his wife he was sickened before he was wedded to her. By studying diligently, the English language became as familiar to him as the Welsh language. He bound himself to Welsh politicians and engaged himself in public affairs, and soon he was as an idol to a multitude of people, who were sensible only to his well-sung words, and who did not know that his utterances veiled his own avarice and that of his masters. All that he did was for profit, and yet he could not win enough. Men and women, soothed into false ease and quickened into counterfeit wrath, commended him, crying: "Thank God for Ben Lloyd." Such praise puffed him up, and howsoever mighty he was in the view of fools, he was mightier in his own view. "At the next election I'll be in Parliament," he boasted in his vanity. "The basis of my solidity--strength--is as immovable--is as impregnable as Birds' Rock in Morfa." Though the grandson of Simon Idiot and Dull Anna prophesied great things for himself, it was evil that came to him. He trembled from head to foot to ravish every comely woman on whom his ogling eyes dwelt. His greed made him faithless to those whom he professed to serve: in his eagerness to lift himself he planned, plotted, and trafficked with the foes of his officers. Hearing that an account of his misdeeds was spoken abroad, he called the high London Welshmen into a room, and he said to them: "These cruel slanderers have all but broken my spirit. They are the wicked inventions of fiends incarnate. It is not my fall that is required--if that were so I would gladly make the sacrifise--the zupreme sacrifise, if wanted--but it is the fall of the Party that these men are after. He who repeats one foul thing is doing his level best to destroy the fabric of this magnificent organisation that has been reared by your brains. It has no walls of stone and mortar, yet it is a sity builded by men. We must have no more bickerings. We have work to do. The seeds are springing forth, and a goodly harvest is promised: let us sharpen our blades and clear our barn floors. Cymru fydd--Wales for the Welsh--is here. At home and at Westminster our kith and kin are occupying prominent positions. Disestablishment is at hand. We have closed public-houses and erected chapels, each chapel being a factor in the education of the masses in ideas of righteous government. You, my friends, have secured much of the land, around which you have made walls, and in which you have set water fountains, and have planted rare plants and flowers. And you have put up your warning signs on it--'Trespassers will be prosecuted.' "There is coming the Registration of Workers Act, by which every worker will be held to his locality, to his own enormous advantage. And it will end strikes, and trades unionism will deservedly crumble. In future these men will be able to settle down, and with God's blessing bring children into the world, and their condition will be a delight unto themselves and a profit to the community. "But we must do more. I must do more. And you must help me. We must stand together. Slander never creates; it shackles and kills. We must be solid. Midway off the Cardigan coast--in beautiful Morfa--there is a rock--Birds' Rock. As a boy I used to climb to the top of it, and watch the waters swirling and tumbling about it, and around it and against it. But I was unafraid. For I knew that the rock was old when man was young, and that it had braved all the washings of the sea." The men congratulated Ben; and Ben came home and he stood at a mirror, and shaping his body put out his arms. "How's this for my maiden speech in the house?" he asked his wife. Presently he paused. "You're a fine one to be an M.P.'s lady," he said. "You stout, underworked fool." Ben urged on his imaginings: he advised his monarch, and to him for favors merchants brought their gold, and mothers their daughters. Winter and spring moved, and then his mind brought his enemies to his door. "As the root of a tree spreads in the bosom of the earth," he said, "so my fame shall spread over the world"; and he built a fence about his house. But his mind would not be stilled. Every midnight his enemies were at the fence, and he could not sleep for the dreadful outcry; every midnight he arose from his bed and walked aside the fence, testing the strength of it with a hand and a shoulder and shooing away his enemies as one does a brood of chickens from a cornfield. His fortieth summer ran out--a season of short days and nights speeding on the heels of night. Then peace fell upon him; and at dusk of a day he came into his room, and he saw one sitting in a chair. He went up to the chair and knelt on a knee, and said: "Your Majesty...." III THE TWO APOSTLES God covered sun, moon, and stars, stilled the growing things of the earth and dried up the waters on the face of the earth, and stopped the roll of the world; and He fixed upon a measure of time in which to judge the peoples, this being the measure which was spoken of as the Day of Judgment. In the meanseason He summoned Satan to the Judgment Hall, which is at the side of the river that breaks into four heads, and above which, its pulpits stretching beyond the sky, is the Palace of White Shirts, and below which, in deep darknesses, are the frightful regions of the Fiery Oven. "Give an account of your rule in the face of those whom you provoked to mischief," He said to Satan. "My balance hitched to a beam will weigh the good and evil of my children, and if good is heavier than evil, I shall lighten your countenance and clothe you with the robes of angels." "Awake the dead" He bade the Trumpeter, and "Lift the lids off the burying-places" He bade the laborers. In their generations were they called; "for," said the Lord, "good and evil are customs of a period and when the period is passed and the next is come, good may be evil and evil may be good." Now God did not put His entire trust in Satan, and in the evening of the day He set to prove him: "It is over." "My Lord, so be it," answered Satan. "How now?" asked God. "The scale of wickedness sways like a kite in the wind," cried Satan. "Give me my robes and I will transgress against you no more." "In the Book of Heaven and Hell," said God, "there is no writing of the last of the Welsh." Satan spoke up: "My Lord, your pledge concerned those judged on the Day of Judgment. Day is outing. The windows of the Mansion are lit; hark the angels tuning their golden strings for the cheer of the Resurrection Supper. Give me my robes that I may sing your praises." "Can I not lengthen the day with a wink of my eye?" "All things you can do, my Lord, but observe your pledge to me. Allow these people to rest a while longer. Their number together with the number of their sins is fewer than the hairs on Elisha's head." God laughed in His heart as He replied to Satan: "Tell the Trumpeter to take his horn and the laborers their spades and bring to me the Welsh." The laborers digged, and at the sound of the horn the dead breathed and heaved. Those whose wit was sharp hurried into neighboring chapels and stole Bibles and hymn-books, with which in their pockets and under their arms they joined the host in Heaven's Courtyard, whence they went into the Waiting Chamber that is without the Judgment Hall. "Boy bach, a lot of Books of the Word he has," a woman remarked to the Respected Towy-Watkins. "Say him I have one." "Happy would I be to do like that," was the reply. "But, female, much does the Large One regard His speeches. What is the text on the wall? 'Prepare your deeds for the Lord.' The Beybile is the most religious deed. Farewell for now," and he pretended to go away. Holding the sleeve of his White Shirt, the woman separated her toothless gums and fashioned her wrinkled face in grief. "Two tens he has," she croaked. "And his shirt is clean. Dirty am I; buried I was as I was found, and the shovelers beat the soil through the top of the coffin. Do much will I for one Beybile." "A poor dab you are," said Towy. "Many deeds you have? But no odds to me." "Four I have." "Woe for you, unfortunate." "Iss-iss, horrid is my plight," the woman whined. "Little I did for Him." "Don't draw tears. For eternity you'll weep. Here is a massive Beybile for your four deeds." "Take him one. Handy will three be in the minute of the questioning." "Refusing the Beybile bach you are. Also the hymn-book--old and new notations--I present for four. Stupid am I as the pigger's prentice who bought the litter in the belly." "Be him soft and sell for one." "I cannot say less. No relation you are to me. Hope I do that right enough are your four. Recite them to me, old woman." "I ate rats to provide a Beybile to the Respected," the woman trembled. "I--" "You are pathetic," Towy said. "Hie and get your tokens and have that poor one will I because of my pity for you." The woman told her deeds in Heaven's Record Office, and she was given four white tablets on which her deeds were inscribed; and the rat tablet Towy took from her. "Faith and hope are tidy heifers," he said, "but a stallion is charity. Priceless Beybile I give you, sinner." As he moved away Towy cried in the manner of one selling by auction: "This is the beloved Beybile of Jesus. This is the book of hymns--old and new notations. Hymns harvest, communion, funerals, Sunday schools, and hymns for children bach are here. Treasures bulky for certain." For some he received three tablets each, for some five tablets each, and for some ten tablets each. But the gaudy Bible which was decorated with pictures and ornamented with brass clasps and a leather covering he did not sell; nor did he sell the gilt-edged hymn-book. Between the leaves of his Bible he put his tablets--as a preacher his markers--the writing on each tablet confirming a verse in the place it was set. His labor over, he chanted: "Pen Calvaria! Pen Calvaria! Very soon will come to view." Men and women gazed upon him, envying him; and those who had Bibles and hymn-books hastened to do as he had done. Among the many that came to him was one whose name was Ben Lloyd. "Dear me," said Towy. "Dear me," said Ben. "Fat is my religion after the springing," cried Towy. "Perished was I and up again. Amen, Big Man. Amen and amen. And amen. "I opened my eyes and I saw a hand thrusting aside the firmament and I heard One calling me from the beyond, and the One was God." "Like the roar of heated bulls was the noise, Ben bach." "Praise Him I did that I was laid to rest at home. Away from the stir of Parliament. Tell Him I will how my spirit, though the flesh was dead, bathed in the living rivers and walked in the peaceful valleys of the glorious land of my fathers--thinking, thinking of Jesus." "Hold on. Not so fast. From Capel Bryn Salem I journeyed to mouth with my heart to the Lord, and your slut of widow paid me only four soferens. Eloquent sermon I spouted and four soferens is the price of a supply." "In your charity forgive her; her sorrow was o'erpowering." "Sorrow! The mule of an English! She wasn't there." "You don't say," cried Ben. "If above she is I will have her dragged down." "Not a stone did she put over your head, and the strumpets of your sisters did not tend your grave. Why you were not eaten by worms I can't know." On a sudden Towy shouted: "See an old parson do I. Is not this the day of rising up? Awful if the Big Man mistakes us for the Church. Not been inside a church have I, drop dead and blind, since I was born." None gave heed to his cry, for the sound of the bargaining was most high. "Dissenters," he bellowed, "what right have Church heathens to mix with us? The Fiery Oven is their home." The people were dismayed. Their number being small, the Church folk were pressed one upon the other; and after they were thrown in a mass against the gate of the Chariot House the Dissenters spread themselves easily as far as the door of the Crooked Stairway. "Now, boys capel," Towy-Watkins said, "we will have a sermon. Fine will Welsh be in the nostrils of the Big Preacher. Pray will I at once." The prayer ended, and one struck his tuning-fork; and while the congregation moaned and lamented, a tall man, who wore the habit of a preacher and whose yellow beard--the fringe of which was singed--hung over his breast like a sheaf of wheat, passed through the way of the door of the Stairway, and as he walked towards the Judgment Hall, some said: "Fair day, Respected," and some said: "Similar he is to Towy-Watkins." "Shut your throats, colts," Towy rebuked the people. "Say after me: 'Go round my backhead, Satan.'" "Go round my backhead, Satan," the people obeyed. "Catch him and skin him," Towy screamed. "Teach him we will to snook about here." Fear arming his courage, Satan shouted: "He who hurts me him shall I pitch head-long to the flames." The people's hands went to their sides, and Satan departed in peace. "In my heart is my head," Towy said. "Near the Oven we are. Blow your noses of the stench. Young youths, herd blockheads Church over here." Before the stalwarts started on their errand, the Overseer of the Waiting Chamber came to the door of the lane that takes you into the Judgment Hall, wherefore the Dissenters wept, howled, and whooped. "Ready am I, God bach," Towy exclaimed, stretching his hairy arms. "Take me." "Patiently I waited for the last Trump and humbly do I now wait for the Crown from your fingers," said Ben Lloyd. "My deeds are recorded in the archives of the House of Commons and the Cymrodorion Society." "Clap up," Towy admonished Ben. "My religious actions can't be counted." Lowering his eyes the Overseer murmured: "I am not the Lord." "For why did you not say that?" cried Towy. He stepped to the Overseer. "Hap you are Apostle Shames. A splendid photo of Shames is in the Beybile with pictures. Fond am I of preaching from him. Lovely pieces there are. 'Abram believed God.' Who was Abram? Father of Isaac bach. Who made Abram? The Big Man. And the Big Man made the capel and the respected that is the jewel of the capel. Is not the pulpit the throne? Glad am I to see you, indeed, Shames." The Overseer opened his lips. "Enter with you will I," said Towy. "Look through my glassy soul you can." "Silence--" the Overseer began. "Iss, silence for ever and ever, amen," said Towy. "No trial I need. How can the Judge judge if there's no judging to be? Go up will I then. Hope to see you again, Shames." The Overseer tightened his girdle. "Thus saith the Lord," he proclaimed: "'I will consider each by his deeds or all by the deeds of their two apostles.'" "Ho-ho," said Towy. "Half one moment. Think will we. Dissenters, crowd here. Ben Lloyd, make arguments. Tricky is old Shames." The Dissenters assembled close to Ben and Towy, and the Church people crept near them in order to share their counsel; but the Dissenters turned upon their enemies and bruised them with fists and Bibles and hymn-books, and called them frogs, turks, thieves, atheists, blacks; and there never has been heard such a tumult in any house. Alarmed that he could not part one side from the other, the Overseer sought Satan, who had a name for crafty dealings with disputants. Satan was distressed. "If it was not for personal reasons," he said, "I would let them go to Hell." He sent into the Chamber a carpenter who put a barrier from wall to wall, and he appointed Jude in charge of the barrier to guard that no one went under it or over it. Then the wise men of the Dissenters continued to examine the Lord's offer; and a thousand men declared they were holy enough to go before God, and from the thousand five hundred were cast out, and from the five hundred three hundred, and from the two hundred one hundred were cast away. Now this hundred were Baptists, Methodists, and Congregationalists, and they quarreled so harshly and decried one another so spitefully that Ben and Towy made with them a compact to speak specially for each of them in the private ear of God. The strife quelled and Towy having cried loudly: "Dissenters and Churchers, glad you are that me and Ben Lloyd, Hem Pee, are your apostles," he and Ben followed the Overseer. In the Judgment Hall the two apostles crouched to pray, and they were stirred by Satan laying his hands on their shoulders. "Prayers are useless here, my friends," said the Devil. "We must proceed with the business. I am just as anxious as you are that everything reaches a satisfactory conclusion." "I object," said Ben. "Solemnly object. I don't know this infidel. I don't want to know him." "Go from here," Towy gruntled. "A sweat is in my whiskers. Inhabitants, why isn't his tongue a red-hot poker?... Well, boys Palace, grand this is. Say who you are?" he asked one whose face shone like a mirror. "Respected Towy-Watkins am I." He whose face shone like a polished mirror answered that he was Moses the Keeper of the Balance. "The Lord is in the Cloud," he said. Towy addressed the Cloud, which was the breadth of a man's hand, and which was brighter than the golden halo of the throne: "Big Man, peep at your helper. Was not I a ruler over the capel? Religious were my prayers." "I did not hear any," said God. "Mistake. Mistake. Towy bach eloquent was I called. Here am I with the Speech, and the Speech is God and God is the Speech. Take you as a great gift this nice hymn-book." "What are hymns?" asked God. "Moses, Moses," cried Towy, "explain affairs to Him." God spoke: "Satan, render your account of the mischief you made these men do." "This is a travesty of the traditions of the House," said Ben. "Traditions that are dear to me, being taught them at my mother's knees. I refuse to be drenched in Satan's froth. Against one who was a member of the Government you are taking the evidence of the most discredited man in the universe--the world's worst sinner." He ceased, because Satan had begun to read; and Satan read rapidly, with shame, and without pantomime, not pausing at what times he was abused and charged with lying; and he read correctly, for the Records Clerk followed him word by word in the Book of the Watchers; and for every sin to which he confessed Moses placed a scarlet tablet in the scale of wickedness. "I will attend to what I have heard," said the Lord when Satan had finished. "Put your tablets in the scale and go into the Chamber." Ben and Towy withdrew, and as they passed out they beheld that the scale of scarlet tablets touched the ground. Then the Cloud vanished and God came out of the Cloud. "My wrath is fierce," He said. "Bind these Welsh and torment them with vipers and with fire in the uttermost parts of Hell. They shall have no more remembrance before me." "Will you destroy the just?" asked Moses. "They have chosen." "Shall the godly perish because of the godless?" "I flooded the world," said God. "The righteous Noah and his house and his animals you did not destroy. And you repented that you smote every living thing. May not my Lord repent again?" "I am not destroying every living thing," God replied. "I am destroying the vile." "Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife and his daughters. They all sinned after their deliverance. The doings of Sodom stayed." Moses also said: "You gave your ear to Jonah from the well of the sea." "I sacrificed my Son for man." "And loosed Satan upon him." "Is scarlet white?" asked God. "Is justice the fruit of injustice? The two men were not of the Church, and the Church may be holy in your sight." "I have judged." "And your judgment is past understanding," said Moses, and he sat at the Balance. The servants of the Lord spoke one with another: "I cannot eat of the supper," said one; "The songs will be as a wolf's howlings in the wilderness," said another; "The honey will be as bittersweet as Adam's apple," said a third. But Satan exclaimed: "Come, let us seek in the Book of the Watchers for an act that will turn Him from His purpose." In seeking, some put their fingers on the leaves and advised Moses to cry unto the Lord in such and such a manner. "My voice is dumb," replied Moses. Satan presently astonished the servants; he took the book to the Lord. "My Lord," he said, "which is the more precious--good or evil?" "Good," said the Lord. "More precious than the riches of Solomon is a deed done in your name?" "Yes." "Though the sins were as numerous as the teeth of a shoal of fish?" "So. Unravel your riddle." "An old woman of the Dissenters," said Satan, "claimed four tablets, whereas her deeds were nine." God looked at the Balance and lo, the scale of white tablets was heavier than the scale of scarlet tablets. "Bid hither the apostles," He commanded the Overseer, "for they shall see me, and this day they and their flocks shall be in Paradise." Satan stood before the face of Moses, glowing as the angels; and he brought out scissors to clip off the fringe of his beard. When he had cut only a little, the Overseer entered the Judgment Hall, saying: "The two apostles tricked Jude and crawled under the barrier, and they shot back the bolts of the gate of the Chariot House and called a charioteer to take them to Heaven. 'This is God's will,' they said to him." Satan's scissors fell on the floor. IV EARTHBRED Because he was diseased with a consumption, Evan Roberts in his thirtieth year left over being a drapery assistant and had himself hired as a milk roundsman. A few weeks thereafter he said to Mary, the woman whom he had promised to wed: "How now if I had a milk-shop?" Mary encouraged him, and searched for that which he desired; and it came to be that on a Thursday afternoon they two met at the mouth of Worship Street--the narrow lane that is at the going into Richmond. "Stand here, Marri," Evan ordered. "Go in will I and have words with the owner. Hap I shall uncover his tricks." "Very well you are," said Mary. "Don't over-waggle your tongue. Address him in hidden phrases." Evan entered the shop, and as there was no one therein he made an account of the tea packets and flour bags which were on the shelves. Presently a small, fat woman stood beyond the counter. Evan addressed her in English: "Are you Welsh?" "That's what people say," the woman answered. "Glad am I to hear you," Evan returned in Welsh. "Tell me how you was." "A Cymro bach I see," the woman cried. "How was you?" "Peeped did I on your name on the sign. Shall I say you are Mistress Jinkins?" "Iss, indeed, man." "What about affairs these close days?" "Busy we are. Why for you ask? Trade you do in milk?" "Blurt did I for nothing," Evan replied. "No odds, little man. Ach y fy, jealous other milkmen are of us. There's nasty some people are." "Natty shop you have. Little shop and big traffic, Mistress Jinkins?" "Quick you are." "Know you Tom Mathias Tabernacle Street?" Evan inquired. "Seen him have I in the big meetings at Capel King's Cross." "Getting on he is, for certain sure. Hundreds of pints he sells. And groceries." "Pwf," Mrs. Jenkins sneered. "Fulbert you are to believe him. A liar without shame is Twm. And a cheat. Bad sampler he is of the Welsh." "Speak I do as I hear. More thriving is your concern." "No boast is in me. But don't we do thirty gallons?" Evan summoned up surprise into his face, and joy. "Dear me to goodness," he exclaimed. "Take something must I now. Sell you me an egg." Evan shook the egg at his ear. "She is good," he remarked. "Weakish is the male," observed Mrs. Jenkins. "Much trouble he has in his inside." "Poor bach," replied Evan. "Well-well. Fair night for to-day." "Why for you are in a hurry?" "Woman fach, for what you do not know that I abide in Wandsworth and the clock is late?" Mrs. Jenkins laughed. "Boy pretty sly you are. Come you to Richmond to buy one egg." Evan coughed and spat upon the ground, and while he cleaned away his spittle with a foot he said: "Courting business have I on the Thursdays. The wench is in a shop draper." "How shall I mouth where she is? With Wright?" "In shop Breach she is." He spoke this in English: "So long." In that language also did Mrs. Jenkins answer him: "Now we shan't be long." Narrowing his eyes and crooking his knees, Evan stood before Mary. "Like to find out more would I," he said. "Guess did the old female that I had seen the adfertissment." "Blockhead you are to bare your mind," Mary admonished him. "Why for you call me blockhead when there's no blockhead to be?" "Sorry am I, dear heart. But do you hurry to marry me. You know that things are so and so. The month has shown nothing." "Shut your head, or I'll change my think altogether." The next week Evan called at the dairy shop again. "How was the people?" he cried on the threshold. Mrs. Jenkins opened the window which was at the back of her, and called out: "The boy from Wales is here, Dai." Stooping as he moved through the way of the door, Dai greeted Evan civilly: "How was you this day?" "Quite grand," Evan answered. "What capel do you go?" "Walham Green, dear man." "Good preach there was by the Respected Eynon Daviss the last Sabbath morning, shall I ask? Eloquent is Eynon." "In the night do I go." "Solemn serious, go you ought in the mornings." "Proper is your saying," Evan agreed. "Perform I would if I could." "Biggish is your round, perhaps?" said Dai. "Iss-iss. No-no." Evan was confused. "Don't be afraid of your work. Crafty is your manner." Evan had not anything to say. "Fortune there is in milk," said Dai. "Study you the size of her. Little she is. Heavy will be my loss. The rent is only fifteen bob a week. And thirty gallons and more do I do. Broke is my health," and Dai laid the palms of his hands on his belly and groaned. "Here he is to visit his wench," said Mrs. Jenkins. "You're not married now just?" asked Dai. "Better in his pockets trousers is a male for a woman," said Mrs. Jenkins. "Comforting in your pockets trousers is a woman," Dai cried. "Clap your throat," said Mrs. Jenkins. "Redness you bring to my skin." Evan retired and considered. "Tempting is the business," he told Mary. "Fancy do I to know more of her. Come must I still once yet." "Be not slothful," Mary pleaded. "Already I feel pains, and quickly the months pass." Then Evan charged her to watch over the shop, and to take a count of the people who went into it. So Mary walked in the street. Mrs. Jenkins saw her and imagined her purpose, and after she had proved her, she and Dai formed a plot whereby many little children and young youths and girls came into the shop. Mary numbered every one, but the number that she gave Evan was three times higher than the proper number. The man was pleased, and he spoke out to Dai. "Tell me the price of the shop," he said. "Improved has the health," replied Dai. "And not selling I don't think am I." "Pity that is. Great offer I have." "Smother your cry. Taken a shop too have I in Petersham. Rachel will look after this." Mrs. Jenkins spoke to her husband with a low voice: "Witless you are. Let him speak figures." "As you want if you like then," said Dai. "A puzzle you demand this one minute," Evan murmured. "Thirty pounds would--" "Light is your head," Dai cried. "More than thirty gallons and a pram. Eighty I want for the shop and stock." "I stop," Evan pronounced. "Thirty-five can I give. No more and no less." "Cute bargainer you are. Generous am I to give back five pounds for luck cash on spot. Much besides is my counter trade." "Bring me papers for my eyes to see," said Evan. Mrs. Jenkins rebuked Evan: "Hoity-toity! Not Welsh you are. Old English boy." "Tut-tut, Rachel fach," said Dai. "Right you are, and right and wrong is Evan Roberts. Books I should have. Trust I give and trust I take. I have no guile." "How answer you to thirty-seven?" asked Evan. "No more we've got, drop dead and blind." He went away and related all to Mary. "Lose the shop you will," Mary warned him. "And that's remorseful you'll be." "Like this and that is the feeling," said Evan. "Go to him," Mary counseled, "and say you will pay forty-five." "No-no, foolish that is." They two conferred with each other, and Mary gave to Evan all her money, which was almost twenty pounds; and Evan said to Dai: "I am not doubtful--" "Speak what is in you," Dai urged quickly. "Test your shop will I for eight weeks as manager. I give you twenty down as earnest and twenty-five at the finish of the weeks if I buy her." Dai and Rachel weighed that which Evan had proposed. The woman said: "A lawyer will do this"; the man said: "Splendid is the bargain and costly and thievish are old lawyers." In this sort Dai answered Evan: "Do as you say. But I shall not give money for your work. Act you honestly by me. Did not mam carry me next my brother, who is a big preacher? Lend you will I a bed, and a dish or two and a plate, and a knife to eat food." At this Mary's joy was abounding. "Put you up the banns," she said. "Lots of days there is. Wait until I've bought the place." Mary tightened her inner garments and loosened her outer garments, and every evening she came to the shop to prepare food for Evan, to make his bed, and to minister to him as a woman. Now the daily custom at the shop was twelve gallons of milk, and the tea packets and flour bags which were on shelves were empty. Evan's anger was awful. He upbraided Mary, and he prayed to be shown how to worst Dai. His prayer was respected: at the end of the second week he gave Dai two pounds more than he had given him the week before. "Brisk is trade," said Dai. "I took into stock flour, tea, and four tins of job biscuits," replied Evan. "Am I not your servant?" "Well done, good and faithful servant." It was so that Evan bought more than he would sell, and each week he held a little money by fraud; and matches also and bundles of firewood and soap did he buy in Dai's name. In the middle of the eighth week Dai came down to the shop. "How goes it?" he asked in English. "Fine, man. Fine." Changing his language, Evan said: "Keep her will I, and give you the money as I pledged. Take you the sum and sign you the paper bach." Having acted accordingly, Dai cast his gaze on the shelves and on the floor, and he walked about judging aloud the value of what he saw: "Tea, three-pound-ten; biscuits, four-six; flour, four-five; firewood, five shillings; matches, one-ten; soap, one pound. Bring you these to Petersham. Put you them with the bed and the dishes I kindly lent you." "For sure me, fulfil my pledge will I," Evan said. He assembled Dai's belongings and placed them in a cart which he had borrowed; and on the back of the cart he hung a Chinese lantern which had in it a lighted candle. When he arrived at Dai's house, he cried: "Here is your ownings. Unload you them." Dai examined the inside of the cart. "Mistake there is, Evan. Where's the stock?" "Did I not pay you for your stock and shop? Forgetful you are." Dai's wrath was such that neither could he blaspheme God nor invoke His help. Removing the slabber which was gathered in his beard and at his mouth, he shouted: "Put police on you will I." "Away must I now," said Evan. "Come, take your bed." "Not touch anything will I. Rachel, witness his roguery. Steal he does from the religious." Evan drove off, and presently he became uneasy of the evil that might befall him were Dai and Rachel to lay their hands on him; he led his horse into the unfamiliar and hard and steep road which goes up to the Star and Garter, and which therefrom falls into Richmond town. At what time he was at the top he heard the sound of Dai and Rachel running to him, each screaming upon him to stop. Rachel seized the bridle of the horse, and Dai tried to climb over the back of the cart. Evan bent forward and beat the woman with his whip, and she leaped aside. But Dai did not release his clutch, and because the lantern swayed before his face he flung it into the cart. Evan did not hear any more voices, and misdeeming that he had got the better of his enemies, he turned, and, lo, the bed was in a yellow flame. He strengthened his legs and stretched out his thin upper lip, and pulled at the reins, saying: "Wo, now." But the animal thrust up its head and on a sudden galloped downwards. At the railing which divides two roads it was hindered, and Evan was thrown upon the ground. Men came forward to lift him, and he was dead. V FOR BETTER At the time it was said of him "There's a boy that gets on he is," Enoch Harries was given Gwen the daughter of the builder Dan Thomas. On the first Sunday after her marriage the people of Kingsend Welsh Tabernacle crowded about Gwen, asking her: "How like you the bed, Messes Harries fach?" "Enoch has opened a shop butcher then?" "Any signs of a baban bach yet?" "Managed to get up quickly you did the day?" Gwen answered in the manner the questions were asked, seriously or jestingly. She considered these sayings, and the cause of her uneasiness was not a puzzle to her; and she got to despise the man whom she had married, and whose skin was like parched leather, and to repel his impotent embraces. Withal she gave Enoch pleasure. She clothed herself with costly garments, adorned her person with rings and ornaments, and she modeled her hair in the way of a bob-wig. Enoch gave in to her in all things; he took her among Welsh master builders, drapers, grocers, dairymen, into their homes and such places as they assembled in; and his pride in his wife was nearly as great as his pride in the twenty plate-glass windows of his shop. In her vanity Gwen exalted her estate. "I hate living over the shop," she said. "It's so common. Let's take a house away from here." "Good that I am on the premizes," Enoch replied in Welsh. "Hap go wrong will affairs if I leave." "We can't ask any one decent here. Only commercials," Gwen said. With a show of care for her husband's welfare, she added: "Working too hard is my boy bach. And very splendid you should be." Her design was fulfilled, and she and Enoch came to dwell in Thornton East, in a house near Richmond Park, and on the gate before the house, and on the door of the house, she put the name Windsor. From that hour she valued herself high. She had the words Mrs. G. Enos-Harries printed on cards, and she did not speak of Enoch's trade in the hearing of anybody. She gave over conversing in Welsh, and would give no answer when spoken to in that tongue. She devised means continually to lift herself in the esteem of her neighbors, acting as she thought they acted: she had a man-servant and four maid-servants, and she instructed them to address her as the madam and Enoch as the master; she had a gong struck before meals and a bell rung during meals; the furniture in her rooms was as numerous as that in the windows of a shop; she went to the parish church on Sundays; she made feasts. But her life was bitter: tradespeople ate at her table and her neighbors disregarded her. Enoch mollified her moaning with: "Never mind. I could buy the whole street up. I'll have you a motor-car. Fine it will be with an advert on the front engine." Still slighted, Gwen smoothed her misery with deeds. She declared she was a Liberal, and she frequented Thornton Vale English Congregational Chapel. She gave ten guineas to the rebuilding fund, put a carpet on the floor of the pastor's parlor, sang at brotherhood gatherings, and entertained the pastor and his wife. Wherefore her charity was discoursed thus: "Now when Peter spoke of a light that shines--shines, mark you--he was thinking of such ladies as Mrs. G. Enos-Harries. Not forgetting Mr. G. Enos-Harries." "I'm going to build you a vestry," Gwen said to the pastor. "I'll organize a sale of work to begin with." The vestry was set up, and Gwen bethought of one who should be charged with the opening ceremony of it, and to her mind came Ben Lloyd, whose repute was great among the London Welsh, and to whose house in Twickenham she rode in her car. Ben's wife answered her sharply: "He's awfully busy. And I know he won't see visitors." "But won't you tell him? It will do him such a lot of good. You know what a stronghold of Toryism this place is." A voice from an inner room cried: "Who is to see me?" "Come this way," said Mrs. Lloyd. Ben, sitting at a table with writing paper and a Bible before him, rose. "Messes Enos-Harries," he said, "long since I met you. No odds if I mouth Welsh? There's a language, dear me. This will not interest you in the least. Put your ambarelo in the cornel, Messes Enos-Harries, and your backhead in a chair. Making a lecture am I." Gwen told him the errand upon which she was bent, and while they two drank tea, Ben said: "Sing you a song, Messes Enos-Harries. Not forgotten have I your singing in Queen's Hall on the Day of David the Saint. Inspire me wonderfully you did with the speech. I've been sad too, but you are a wedded female. Sing you now then. Push your cup and saucer under the chair." "No-no, not in tone am I," Gwen feigned. "How about a Welsh hymn? Come in will I at the repeats." "Messes Lloyd will sing the piano?" "Go must she about her duties. She's a handless poor dab." Gwen played and sang. "Solemn pretty hymns have we," said Ben. "Are we not large?" He moved and stood under a picture which hung on the wall--his knees touching and his feet apart--and the picture was that of Cromwell. "My friends say I am Cromwell and Milton rolled into one. The Great Father gave me a child and He took him back to the Palace. Religious am I. Want I do to live my life in the hills and valleys of Wales: listening to the anthem of creation, and searching for Him under the bark of the tree. And there I shall wait for the sound of the last trumpet." "A poet you are." Gwen was astonished. "You are a poetess, for sure me," Ben said. He leaned over her. "Sparkling are your eyes. Deep brown are they--brown as the nut in the paws of the squirrel. Be you a bard and write about boys Cymru. Tell how they succeed in big London." "I will try," said Gwen. "Like you are and me. Think you do as I think." "Know you for long I would," said Gwen. "For ever," cried Ben. "But wedded you are. Read you a bit of the lecture will I." Having ended his reading and having sobbed over and praised that which he had read, Ben uttered: "Certain you come again. Come you and eat supper when the wife is not at home." Gwen quaked as she went to her car, and she sought a person who professed to tell fortunes, and whom she made to say: "A gentleman is in love with you. And he loves you for your brain. He is not your husband. He is more to you than your husband. I hear his silver voice holding spellbound hundreds of people; I see his majestic forehead and his auburn locks and the strands of his silken mustache." Those words made Gwen very happy, and she deceived herself that they were true. She composed verses and gave them to Ben. "Not right to Nature is this," said Ben. "The mother is wrong. How many children you have, Messes Enos-Harries?" "Not one. The husband is weak and he is older much than I." "The Father has kept His most beautiful gift from you. Pity that is." Tears gushed from Ben's eyes. "If the marriage-maker had brought us together, children we would have jeweled with your eyes and crowned with your hair." "And your intellect," said Gwen. "You will be the greatest Welshman." "Whisper will I now. A drag is the wife. Happy you are with the husband." "Why for you speak like that?" "And for why we are not married?" Ben took Gwen in his arms and he kissed her and drew her body nigh to him; and in a little while he opened the door sharply and rebuked his wife that she waited thereat. Daily did Gwen praise and laud Ben to her husband. "There is no one in the world like him," she said. "He will get very far." "Bring Mistar Lloyd to Windsor for me to know him quite well," said Enoch. "I will ask him," Gwen replied without faltering. "Benefit myself I will." Early every Thursday afternoon Ben arrived at Windsor, and at the coming home from his shop of Enoch, Ben always said: "Messes Enos-Harries has been singing the piano. Like the trilling of God's feathered choir is her music." Though Ben and Gwen were left at peace they could not satisfy nor crush their lust. Before three years were over, Ben had obtained great fame. "He ought to be in Parliament and give up preaching entirely," some said; and Enoch and Gwen were partakers of his glory. Then Gwen told him that she had conceived, whereof Ben counseled her to go into her husband's bed. "That I have not the stomach to do," the woman complained. "As you say, dear heart," said Ben. "Cancer has the wife. Perish soon she must. Ease our path and lie with your lout." Presently Gwen bore a child; and Enoch her husband looked at it and said: "Going up is Ben Lloyd. Solid am I as the counter." Gwen related her fears to Ben, who contrived to make Enoch a member of the London County Council. Enoch rejoiced: summoning the congregation of Thornton Vale to be witnesses of his gift of a Bible cushion to the chapel. As joy came to him, so grief fell upon his wife. "After all," Ben wrote to her, "you belong to him. You have been joined together in the holiest and sacredest matrimony. Monumental responsibilities have been thrust on me by my people. I did not seek for them, but it is my duty to bear them. Pray that I shall use God's hoe with understanding and wisdom. There is a talk of putting me up for Parliament. Others will have a chanse of electing a real religious man. I must not be tempted by you again. Well, good-by, Gwen, may He keep you unspotted from the world. Ships that pass in the night." Enoch was plagued, and he followed Ben to chapel meetings, eisteddfodau, Cymrodorion and St. David's Day gatherings, always speaking in this fashion: "Cast under is the girl fach you do not visit her. Improved has her singing." Because Ben was careless of his call, his wrath heated and he said to him: "Growing is the baban." "How's trade?" Ben remarked. "Do you estimate for Government contracts?" "Not thought have I." "Just hinted. A word I can put in." "Red is the head of the baban." "Two black heads make red," observed Ben. "And his name is Benjamin." "As you speak. Farewell for to-day. How would you like to put up for a Welsh constituency?" "Not deserving am I of anything. Happy would I and the wife be to see you in the House." But Ben's promise was fruitless; and Enoch bewailed: "A serpent flew into my house." He ordered Gwen to go to Ben. "Recall to him this and that," he said. "A very good advert an M.P. would be for the business. Be you dressed like a lady. Take a fur coat on appro from the shop." Often thereafter he bade his wife to take such a message. But Gwen had overcome her distress and she strew abroad her charms; for no man could now suffice her. So she always departed to one of her lovers and came back with fables on her tongue. "What can you expect of the Welsh?" cried Enoch in his wrath. "He hasn't paid for the goods he got on tick from the shop. County court him will I. He ate my food. The unrighteous ate the food of the righteous. And he was bad with you. Did I not watch? No good is the assistant that lets the customer go away with not a much obliged." The portion of the Bible that Enoch read that night was this: "I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt.... Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with love. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone on a long journey. He hath--" "That's lovely," said Gwen. "Tapestry from my shop," Enoch expounded. "And Irish linen. And busy was the draper in Kingsend." Gwen pretended to be asleep. "He is the father. That will learn him to keep his promise. The wicked man!" Unknown to her husband Gwen stood before Ben; and at the sight of her Ben longed to wanton with her. Gwen stretched out her arms to be clear of him and to speak to him; her speech was stopped with kisses and her breasts swelled out. Again she found pleasure in Ben's strength. Then she spoke of her husband's hatred. "Like a Welshman every spit he is," said Ben. "And a black." But his naughtiness oppressed him for many days and he intrigued; and it came to pass that Enoch was asked to contest a Welsh constituency, and Enoch immediately let fall his anger for Ben. "Celebrate this we shall with a reception in the Town Hall," he announced. "You, Gwen fach, will wear the chikest Paris model we can find. Ben's kindness is more than I expected. Much that I have I owe to him." "Even your son," said Gwen. VI TREASURE AND TROUBLE On a day in a dry summer Sheremiah's wife Catrin drove her cows to drink at the pistil which is in the field of a certain man. Hearing of that which she had done, the man commanded his son: "Awful is the frog to open my gate. Put you the dog and bitch on her. Teach her will I." It was so; and Sheremiah complained: "Why for is my spring barren? In every field should water be." "Say, little husband, what is in your think?" asked Catrin. "Stupid is your head," Sheremiah answered, "not to know what I throw out. Going am I to search for a wet farm fach." Sheremiah journeyed several ways, and always he journeyed in secret; and he could not find what he wanted. Tailor Club Foot came to sit on his table to sew together garments for him and his two sons. The tailor said: "Farm very pretty is Rhydwen. Farm splendid is the farm fach." "And speak like that you do, Club Foot," said Sheremiah. "Iss-iss," the tailor mumbled. "Not wanting an old farm do I," Sheremiah cried. "But speak to goodness where the place is. Near you are, calf bach, about affairs." The tailor answered that Rhydwen is in the hollow of the hill which arises from Capel Sion to the moor. In the morning Sheremiah rode forth on his colt, and he said to Shan Rhydwen: "Boy of a pigger am I, whatever." "Dirt-dirt, man," Shan cried; "no fat pigs have I, look you." "Mournful that is. Mouthings have I heard about grand pigs Tyhen. No odds, wench. Farewell for this minute, female Tyhen." "Pigger from where you are?" Shan asked. "From Pencader the horse has carried me. Carry a preacher he did the last Monday." "Weary you are, stranger. Give hay to your horse, and rest you and take you a little cup of tea." "Happy am I to do that. Thirsty is the backhead of my neck." Sheremiah praised the Big Man for tea, bread, butter, and cheese, and while he ate and drank he put artful questions to Shan. In the evening he said to Catrin: "Quite tidy is Rhydwen. Is she not one hundred acres? And if there is not water in every field, is there not in four?" He hastened to the owner of Rhydwen and made this utterance: "Farmer very ordinary is your sister Shan. Shamed was I to examine your land." "I shouldn't be surprised," answered the owner. "Speak hard must I to the trollop." "Not handy are women," said Sheremiah. "Sell him to me the poor-place. Three-fourths of the cost I give in yellow money and one-fourth by-and-by in three years." Having taken over Rhydwen, Sheremiah in due season sold much of his corn and hay, some of his cattle, and many such movable things as were in his house or employed in tillage; and he and Catrin came to abide in Rhydwen; and they arrived with horses in carts, cows, a bull and oxen, and their sons, Aben and Dan. As they passed Capel Sion, people who were gathered at the roadside to judge them remarked how that Aben was blind in his left eye and that Dan's shoulders were as high as his ears. At the finish of a round of time Sheremiah hired out his sons and all that they earned he took away from them; and he and Catrin toiled to recover Rhydwen from its slovenry. After he had paid all that he owed for the place, and after Catrin had died of dropsy, he called his sons home. Thereon he thrived. He was over all on the floor of Sion, even those in the Big Seat. Men in debt and many widow-women sought him to free them, and in freeing them he made compacts to his advantage. Thus he came to have more cattle than Rhydwen could hold, and he bought Penlan, the farm of eighty acres which goes up from Rhydwen to the edge of the moor, and beyond. In quiet seasons he and Aben and Dan dug ditches on the land of Rhydwen; "so that," he said, "my creatures shall not perish of thirst." Of a sudden a sickness struck him, and in the hush which is sometimes before death, he summoned to him his sons. "Off away am I to the Palace," he said. "Large will be the shout of joy among the angels," Aben told him. "And much weeping there will be in Sion," said Dan. "Speak you a little verse for a funeral preach." "Cease you your babblings, now, indeed," Sheremiah demanded. "Born first you were, Aben, and you get Rhydwen. And you, Dan, Penlan." "Father bach," Aben cried, "not right that you leave more to me than Dan." "Crow you do like a cuckoo," Dan admonished his brother. "Wise you are, father. Big already is your giving to me." Aben looked at the window and he beheld a corpse candle moving outward through the way of the gate. "Religious you lived, father Sheremiah, and religious you put on a White Shirt." Then Aben spoke of the sight he had seen. The old man opened his lips, counseling: "Hish, hish, boys. Break you trenches in Penlan, Dan. Poor bad are farms without water. More than everything is water." He died, and his sons washed him and clothed him in a White Shirt of the dead, and clipped off his long beard, which ceasing to grow, shall not entwine his legs and feet and his arms and hands on the Day of Rising; and they bowed their heads in Sion for the full year. Dan and Aben lived in harmony. They were not as brothers, but as strangers; neighborly and at peace. They married wives, by whom they had children, and they sat in the Big Seat in Sion. They mowed their hay and reaped their corn at separate periods, so that one could help the other; if one needed the loan of anything he would borrow it from his brother; if one's heifer strayed into the pasture of the other, the other would say: "The Big Man will make the old grass grow." On the Sabbath they and their children walked as in procession to Sion. In accordance with his father's word, Dan dug ditches in Penlan; and against the barnyard--which is at the forehead of his house--water sprang up, and he caused it to run over his water-wheel into his pond. Now there fell upon this part of Cardiganshire a season of exceeding drought. The face of the earth was as the face of a cancerous man. There was no water in any of the ditches of Rhydwen and none in those of Penlan. But the spring which Dan had found continued to yield, and from it Aben's wife took away water in pitchers and buckets; and to the pond Aben brought his animals. One day Aben spoke to Dan in this wise: "Serious sure, an old bother is this." "Iss-iss," replied Dan. "Good is the Big Man to allow us water bach." "How speech you if I said: 'Unfasten your pond and let him flow into my ditches'?" "The land will suck him before he goes far," Dan answered. Aben departed; and he considered: "Did not Penlan belong to Sheremiah? Travel under would the water and hap spout up in my close. Nice that would be. Nasty is the behavior of Dan and there's sly is the job." To Dan he said: "Open your pond, man, and let the water come into the ditches which father Sheremiah broke." Dan would not do as Aben desired, wherefore Aben informed against him in Sion, crying: "Little Big Man, know you not what a Turk is the fox? One eye bach I have, but you have two, and can see all his wickedness. Make you him pay the cost." He raised his voice so high that the congregation could not discern the meaning thereof, and it shouted as one person: "Wo, now, boy Sheremiah! What is the matter, say you?" The anger which Aben nourished against Dan waxed hot. Rain came, and it did not abate, and the man plotted mischief to his brother's damage. In heavy darkness he cut the halters which held Dan's cows and horses to their stalls and drove the animals into the road. He also poisoned pond Penlan, and a sheep died before it could be killed and eaten. Dan wept very sore. "Take you the old water," he said. "Fat is my sorrow." "Not religious you are," Aben censured him. "All the water is mine." "Useful he is to me," Dan replied. "Like would I that he turns my wheel as he goes to you." "Clap your mouth," answered Aben. "Not as much as will go through the leg of a smoking pipe shall you have." In Sion Aben told the Big Man of all the benefits which he had conferred upon Dan. Men and women encouraged his fury; some said this: "An old paddy is Dan to rob your water. Ach y fi"; and some said this: "A dirty ass is the mule." His fierce wrath was not allayed albeit Dan turned the course of the water away from his pond, and on his knees and at his labor asked God that peace might come. "Bury the water," Aben ordered, "and fill in the ditch, Satan." "That will I do speedily," Dan answered in his timidity. "Do you give me an hour fach, for is not the sowing at hand?" Aben would not hearken unto his brother. He deliberated with a lawyer, and Dan was made to dig a ditch straightway from the spring to the close of Rhydwen, and he put pipes in the bottom of the ditch, and these pipes he covered with gravel and earth. So as Dan did not sow, he had nothing to reap; and people mocked him in this fashion: "Come we will and gather in your harvest, Dan bach." He held his tongue, because he had nothing to say. His affliction pressed upon him so heavily that he would not be consoled and he hanged himself on a tree; and his body was taken down at the time of the morning stars. A man ran to Rhydwen and related to Aben the manner of Dan's death. Aben went into a field and sat as one astonished until the light of day paled. Then he arose, shook himself, and set to number the ears of wheat which were in his field. VII SAINT DAVID AND THE PROPHETS God grants prayers gladly. In the moment that Death was aiming at him a missile of down, Hughes-Jones prayed: "Bad I've been. Don't let me fall into the Fiery Pool. Give me a brief while and a grand one I'll be for the religion." A shaft of fire came out of the mouth of the Lord and the shaft stood in the way of the missile, consuming it utterly; "so," said the Lord, "are his offenses forgotten." "Is it a light thing," asked Paul, "to defy the Law?" "God is merciful," said Moses. "Is the Kingdom for such as pray conveniently?" "This," Moses reproved Paul, "is written in a book: 'The Lord shall judge His people.'" Yet Paul continued to dispute, the Prophets gathering near him for entertainment; and the company did not break up until God, as is the custom in Heaven when salvation is wrought, proclaimed a period of rejoicing. Wherefore Heaven's windows, the number of which is more than that of blades of grass in the biggest hayfield, were lit as with a flame; and Heman and his youths touched their instruments with fingers and hammers and the singing angels lifted their voices in song; and angels in the likeness of young girls brewed tea in urns and angels in the likeness of old women baked pleasant breads in the heavenly ovens. Out of Hell there arose two mountains, which established themselves one over the other on the floor of Heaven, and the height of the mountains was the depth of Hell; and you could not see the sides of the mountains for the vast multitude of sinners thereon, and you could not see the sinners for the live coals to which they were held, and you could not see the burning coals for the radiance of the pulpit which was set on the furthermost peak of the mountain, and you could not see the pulpit--from toe to head it was of pure gold--for the shining countenance of Isaiah; and as Isaiah preached, blood issued out of the ends of his fingers from the violence with which he smote his Bible, and his single voice was louder than the lamentations of the damned. As the Lord had enjoined, the inhabitants of Heaven rejoiced: eating and drinking, weeping and crying hosanna. But Paul would not joy over that which the Lord had done, and soon he sought Him, and finding Him said: "A certain Roman noble labored his horses to their death in a chariot race before Cæsar: was he worthy of Cæsar's reward?" "The noble is on the mountain-side," God answered, "and his horses are in my chariots." "One bears witness to his own iniquity, and you bid us feast and you say 'He shall have remembrance of me.'" "Is there room in Heaven for a false witness?" asked God. Again did Paul seek God. "My Lord," he entreated, "what manner of man is this that confesses his faults?" "You will provoke my wrath," said God. "Go and be merry." Paul's face being well turned, God moved backward into the Record Office, and of the Clerk of the Records He demanded: "Who is he that prayed unto me?" "William Hughes-Jones," replied the Clerk. "Has the Forgiving Angel blotted out his sins?" "For that I have fixed a long space of time"; and the Clerk showed God eleven heavy books, on the outside of each of which was written: "William Hughes-Jones, One and All Drapery Store, Hammersmith. His sins"; and God examined the books and was pleased, and He cried: "Rejoice fourfold"; and if Isaiah's roar was higher than the wailings of the perished it was now more awful than the roar of a hundred bullocks in a slaughter-house, and if Isaiah's countenance shone more than anything in Heaven, it was now like the eye of the sun. "Of what nation is he?" the Lord inquired of the Clerk. "The Welsh; the Welsh Nonconformists." "Put before me their good deeds." "There is none. William Hughes-Jones is the first of them that has prayed. Are not the builders making a chamber for the accounts of their disobedience?" Immediately God thundered: the earth trembled and the stars shivered and fled from their courses and struck against one another; and God stood on the brim of the universe and stretched out a hand and a portion of a star fell into it, and that is the portion which He hurled into the garden of Hughes-Jones's house. On a sudden the revels ceased: the bread of the feast was stone and the tea water, and the songs of the angels were hushed, and the strings of the harps and viols were withered, and the hammers were dough, and the mountains sank into Hell, and behold Satan in the pulpit which was an iron cage. The Prophets hurried into the Judgment Hall with questions, and lo God was in a cloud, and He spoke out of the cloud. "I am angry," He said, "that Welsh Nonconformists have not heard my name. Who are the Welsh Nonconformists?" The Prophets were silent, and God mourned: "My Word is the earth and I peopled the earth with my spittle; and I appointed my Prophets to watch over my people, and the watchers slept and my children strayed." Thus too said the Lord: "That hour I devour my children who have forsaken me, that hour I shall devour my Prophets." "May be there is one righteous among us?" said Moses. "You have all erred." "May be there is one righteous among the Nonconformists," said Moses; "will the just God destroy him?" "The one righteous is humbled, and I have warned him to keep my commandments." "The sown seed brought forth a prayer," Moses pleaded; "will not the just God wait for the harvest?" "My Lord is just," Paul announced. "They who gather wickedness shall not escape the judgment, nor shall the blind instructor be held blameless." Moreover Paul said: "The Welsh Nonconformists have been informed of you as is proved by the man who confessed his transgressions. It is a good thing for me that I am not of the Prophets." "I'll be your comfort, Paul," the Prophets murmured, "that you have done this to our hurt." Abasing themselves, they tore their mantles and howled; and God, piteous of their howlings, was constrained to say: "Bring me the prayers of these people and I will forget your remissness." The Prophets ran hither and thither, wailing: "Woe. Woe. Woe." Sore that they behaved with such scant respect, Paul herded them into the Council Room. "Is it seemly," he rebuked them, "that the Prophets of God act like madmen?" "Our lot is awful," said they. "The lot of the backslider is justifiably awful," was Paul's rejoinder. "You have prophesied too diligently of your own glory." "You are learned in the Law, Paul," said Moses. "Make us waywise." "Send abroad a messenger to preach damnation to sinners," answered Paul. "For Heaven," added he, "is the knowledge of Hell." So it came to pass. From the hem of Heaven's Highway an angel flew into Wales; and the angel, having judged by his sight and his hearing, returned to the Council Room and testified to the godliness of the Welsh Nonconformists. "As difficult for me," he vowed, "to write the feathers of my wings as the sum of their daily prayers." "None has reached the Record Office," said Paul. "They are always engaged in this bright business," the angel declared, "and praising the Lord. And the number of the people is many and Heaven will need be enlarged for their coming." "Of a surety they pray?" asked Paul. "Of a surety. And as they pray they quake terribly." "The Romans prayed hardly," said Paul. "But they prayed to other gods." "Wherever you stand on their land," asserted the angel, "you see a temple." "I exceedingly fear," Paul remarked, "that another Lord has dominion over them." The Prophets were alarmed, and they sent a company of angels over the earth and a company under the earth; and the angels came back; one company said: "We searched the swampy marges and saw neither a god nor a heaven nor any prayer," and the other company said: "We probed the lofty emptiness and we did not touch a god or a heaven or any prayer." Paul was distressed and he reported his misgivings to God, and God upbraided the Prophets for their sloth. "Is there no one who can do this for me?" He cried. "Are all the cunning men in Hell? Shall I make all Heaven drink the dregs of my fury? Burnish your rusted armor. Depart into Hell and cry out: 'Is there one here who knows the Welsh Nonconformists?' Choose the most crafty and release him and lead him here." Lots were cast and it fell to Moses to descend into Hell; and he stood at the well, the water of which is harder than crystal, and he cried out; and of the many that professed he chose Saint David, whom he brought up to God. "Visit your people," said God to the Saint, "and bring me their prayers." "Why should I be called?" "It is my will. My Prophets have failed me, and if it is not done they shall be destroyed." David laughed. "From Hell comes a savior of the Prophets. In the middle of my discourse at the Judgment Seat the Prophets stooped upon me. 'To Hell with him,' they screamed." "Perform faithfully," said the Lord, "and you shall remain in Paradise." "My Lord is gracious! I was a Prophet and the living believe that I am with the saints. I will retire." "Perform faithfully and you shall be of my Prophets." Then God took away David's body and nailed it upon a wall, and He put wings on the shoulders of his soul; and David darted through a cloud and landed on earth, and having looked at the filthiness of the Nonconformists in Wales he withdrew to London. But however actively he tried he could not find a man of God nor the destination of the fearful prayers of Welsh preachers, grocers, drapers, milkmen, lawyers, and politicians. Loth to go to Hell and put to a nonplus, David built a nest in a tree in Richmond Park, and he paused therein to consider which way to proceed. One day he was disturbed by the singing and preaching of a Welsh soldier who had taken shelter from rain under the tree. David came down from his nest, and when the mouth of the man was most open, he plunged into the fellow's body. Henceforward in whatsoever place the soldier was there also was David; and the soldier carried him to a clothier's shop in Putney, the sign of the shop being written in this fashion: J. PARKER LEWIS. The Little (Gents. Mercer) Wonder. Crossing the threshold, the soldier shouted: "How are you?" The clothier, whose skin was as hide which had been scorched in a tanner's yard, bent over the counter. "Man bach," he exclaimed, "glad am I to see you. Pray will I now that you are all Zer Garnett." His thanksgiving finished, he said: "Wanting a suit you do." "Yes, and no," replied the soldier. "Cheap she must be if yes." "You need one for certain. Shabby you are." "This is a friendly call. To a low-class shop must a poor tommy go." "Do you then not be cheated by an English swindler." The clothier raised his thin voice: "Kate, here's a strange boy." A pretty young woman, in spite of her snaggled teeth, frisked into the room like a wanton lamb. Her brown hair was drawn carelessly over her head, and her flesh was packed but loosely. "Serious me," she cried, "Llew Eevans! Llew bach, how are you? Very big has the army made you and strong." "Not changed you are." "No. The last time you came was to see the rabbit." "Dear me, yes. Have you still got her?" "She's in the belly long ago," said the clothier. "I have another in her stead," said Kate. "A splendid one. Would you like to fondle her?" "Why, yez," answered the soldier. "Drat the old animal," cried the clothier. "Too much care you give her, Kate. Seven looks has the deacon from Capel King's Cross had of her and he hasn't bought her yet." As he spoke the clothier heaped garments on the counter. "Put out your arms," he ordered Kate, "and take the suits to a room for Llew to try on." Kate obeyed, and Llew hymning "Moriah" took her round the waist and embraced her, and the woman, hungering for love, gladly gave herself up. Soon attired in a black frock coat, a black waistcoat, and black trousers, Llew stepped into the shop. "A champion is the rabbit," he said; "and very tame." "If meat doesn't come down," said the clothier, "in the belly she'll be as well." "Let me know before you slay her. Perhaps I buy her. I will study her again." The clothier gazed upon Llew. "Tidy fit," he said. "A bargain you give me." "Why for you talk like that?" the clothier protested. "No profit can I make on a Cymro. As per invoice is the cost. And a latest style bowler hat I throw in." Peering through Llew's body, Saint David saw that the dealer dealt treacherously, and that the money which he got for the garments was two pounds over that which was proper. Llew walked away whistling. "A simple fellow is the black," he said to himself. "Three soverens was bad." On the evening of the next day--that day being the Sabbath--the soldier worshiped in Capel Kingsend; and betwixt the sermon and the benediction, the preacher delivered this speech: "Very happy am I to see so many warriors here once more. We sacrificed for them quite a lot, and if they have any Christianity left in them they will not forget what Capel Kingsend has done and will repay same with interest. Happier still we are to welcome Mister Hughes-Jones to the Big Seat. In the valley of the shadow has Mister Hughes-Jones been. Earnestly we prayed for our dear religious leader. To-morrow at seven we shall hold a prayer meeting for his cure. At seven at night. Will everybody remember? On Monday--to-morrow--at seven at night a prayer meeting for Mister Hughes-Jones will be held in Capel Kingsend. The duty of every one is to attend. Will you please say something now, zer?" Hughes-Jones rose from the arm-chair which is under the pulpit, and thrust out his bristled chin and rested his palms on the communion table; and he said not one word. "Mister Hughes-Jones," the preacher urged. "I am too full of grace," said Hughes-Jones; he spoke quickly, as one who is on the verge of tears, and his big nostrils widened and narrowed as those of one who is short of breath. "The congregation, zer, expects--" "Well-well, I've had a glimpse of the better land and with a clear conscience I could go there, only the Great Father has more for me to do here. A miracle happened to me. In the thick of my sickness a meetority dropped outside the bedroom. The mistress fainted slap bang. 'If this is my summons,' I said, 'I am ready.' A narrow squeak that was. I will now sit and pray for you one and all." In the morning Llew went to the One and All and in English--that is the tongue of the high Welsh--did he address Hughes-Jones. "I've come to start, zer," he said. "Why wassn't you in the chapel yezterday?" "I wass there, zer." "Ho-ho. For me there are two people in the chapel--me and Him." "Yez, indeed. Shall I gommence now?" "Gommence what?" "My crib what I leave to join up." "Things have changed. There has been a war on, mister. They are all smart young ladies here now. And it is not right to sack them and shove them on the streets." "But--" "Don't answer back, or I'll have you chucked from the premizes and locked up. Much gratitude you show for all I did for the soders." "Beg pardon, zer." "We too did our bits at home. Slaved like horses. Me and the two sons. And they had to do work of national importance. Disgraceful I call it in a free country." "I would be much obliged, zer, if you would take me on." "You left on your own accord, didn't you? I never take back a hand that leave on their own. Why don't you be patriotic and rejoin and finish up the Huns?" Bowed down, the soldier made himself drunk, and the drink enlivened his dismettled heart; and in the evening he stole into the loft which is above the Big Seat of Capel Kingsend, purposing to disturb the praying men with loud curses. But Llew slept, and while he slept the words of the praying men came through the ceiling like the pieces of a child's jigsaw puzzle; some floated sluggishly and fell upon the wall and the roof, and some because of their little strength did not reach above the floor; and none went through the roof. Saint David closed his hands on many, and there was no soundness in them, and they became as though they were nothing. He formed a bag of the soldier's handkerchief, and he filled it with the words, but as he drew to the edges they crumbled into less than dust. He pondered; and he made a sack out of cobwebs, and when the sack could not contain any more words, he wove a lid of cobwebs over the mouth of it. Jealous that no mishap should befall his treasure, he mounted a low, slow-moving cloud, and folding his wings rode up to the Gate of the Highway. VIII JOSEPH'S HOUSE A woman named Madlen, who lived in Penlan--the crumbling mud walls of which are in a nook of the narrow lane that rises from the valley of Bern--was concerned about the future state of her son Joseph. Men who judged themselves worthy to counsel her gave her such counsels as these: "Blower bellows for the smith," "Cobblar clox," "Booboo for crows." Madlen flattered her counselors, though none spoke that which was pleasing unto her. "Cobblar clox, ach y fy," she cried to herself. "Wan is the lad bach with decline. And unbecoming to his Nuncle Essec that he follows low tasks." Moreover, people, look you at John Lewis. Study his marble gravestone in the burial ground of Capel Sion: "His name is John Newton-Lewis; Paris House, London, his address. From his big shop in Putney, Home they brought him by railway." Genteel are shops for boys who are consumptive. Always dry are their coats and feet, and they have white cuffs on their wrists and chains on their waistcoats. Not blight nor disease nor frost can ruin their sellings. And every minute their fingers grabble in the purses of nobles. So Madlen thought, and having acted in accordance with her design, she took her son to the other side of Avon Bern, that is to Capel Mount Moriah, over which Essec her husband's brother lorded; and him she addressed decorously, as one does address a ruler of the capel. "Your help I seek," she said. "Poor is the reward of the Big Preacher's son in this part," Essec announced. "A lot of atheists they are." "Not pleading I have not the rent am I," said Madlen. "How if I prentice Joseph to a shop draper. Has he any odds?" "Proper that you seek," replied Essec. "Seekers we all are. Sit you. No room there is for Joseph now I am selling Penlan." "Like that is the plan of your head?" Madlen murmured, concealing her dread. "Seven of pounds of rent is small. Sell at eighty I must." "Wait for Joseph to prosper. Buy then he will. Buy for your mam you will, Joseph?" "Sorry I cannot change my think," Essec declared. "Hard is my lot; no male have I to ease my burden." "A weighty responsibility my brother put on me," said Essec. "'Dying with old decline I am,' the brother mouthed. 'Fruitful is the soil. Watch Madlen keeps her fruitful.' But I am generous. Eight shall be the rent. Are you not the wife of my flesh?" After she had wiped away her tears, "Be kind," said Madlen, "and wisdom it to Joseph." "The last evening in the seiet I commanded the congregation to give the Big Man's photograph a larger hire," said Essec. "A few of my proverbs I will now spout." He spat his spittle and bundling his beard blew the residue of his nose therein; and he chanted: "Remember Essec Pugh, whose right foot is tied into a club knot. Here's the club to kick sinners as my perished brother tried to kick the Bad Satan from the inside of his female Madlen with his club of his baston. Some preachers search over the Word. Some preachers search in the Word. But search under the Word does preacher Capel Moriah. What's the light I find? A stutterer was Moses. As the middle of a butter cask were the knees of Paul. A splotch like a red cabbage leaf was on the cheek of Solomon. By the signs shall the saints be known. 'Preacher Club Foot, come forward to tell about Moriah,' the Big Man will say. Mean scamps, remember Essec Pugh, for I shall remember you the Day of Rising." It came to be that on a morning in the last month of his thirteenth year Joseph was bidden to stand at the side of the cow which Madlen was milking and to give an ear to these commandments: "The serpent is in the bottom of the glass. The hand on the tavern window is the hand of Satan. On the Sabbath eve get one penny for two ha'pennies for the plate collection. Put money in the handkerchief corner. Say to persons you are a nephew of Respected Essec Pugh and you will have credit. Pick the white sixpence from the floor and give her to the mishtir; she will have fallen from his pocket trowis." Then Joseph turned, and carrying his yellow tin box, he climbed into the craggy moorland path which takes you to the tramping road. By the pump of Tavarn Ffos he rested until Shim Carrier came thereby; and while Shim's horse drank of barley water, Joseph stepped into the wagon; and at the end of the passage Shim showed him the business of getting a ticket and that of going into and coming down from a railway carriage. In that manner did Joseph go to the drapery shop of Rees Jones in Carmarthen; and at the beginning he was instructed in the keeping and the selling of such wares as reels of cotton, needles, pins, bootlaces, mending wool, buttons, and such like--all those things which together are known as haberdashery. He marked how this and that were done, and in what sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell what nobody wants." The first year passed happily, and the second year; and in the third Joseph was stirred to go forward. "What use to stop here all the life?" he asked himself. "Better to go off." He put his belongings in his box and went to Swansea. "Very busy emporium I am in," were the words he sent to Madlen. "And the wage is twenty pounds." Madlen rejoiced at her labor and sang: "Ten acres of land, and a cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty, and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to the Respected. "Pounds without number he is earning," she cried. "Rich he'll be. Swells are youths shop." "Gifts from the tip of my tongue fell on him," said Essec. "Religious were my gifts." "Iss, indeed, the brother of the male husband." "Now you can afford nine of pounds for the place. Rich he is and richer he will be. Pounds without number he has." Madlen made a record of Essec's scheme for Joseph; and she said also: "Proud I'll be to shout that my son bach bought Penlan." "Setting aside money am I," Joseph speedily answered. Again ambition aroused him. "Footling is he that is content with Zwanssee. Next half-holiday skurshon I'll crib in Cardiff." Joseph gained his desire, and the chronicle of his doings he sent to his mother. "Twenty-five, living-in, and spiffs on remnants are the wages," he said. "In the flannelette department I am and I have not been fined once. Lot of English I hear, and we call ladies madam that the wedded nor the unwedded are insulted. Boys harmless are the eight that sleep by me. Examine Nuncle of the price of Penlan." "I will wag my tongue craftily and slowly," Madlen vowed as she crossed her brother-in-law's threshold. "I Shire Pembroke land is cheap," she said darkly. "Look you for a farm there," said Essec. "Pelted with offers am I for Penlan. Ninety I shall have. Poverty makes me sell very soon." "As he says." "Pretty tight is Joseph not to buy her. No care has he for his mam." "Stiffish are affairs with him, poor dab." Madlen reported to Joseph that which Essec had said, and she added: "Awful to leave the land of your father. And auction the cows. Even the red cow that is a champion for milk. Where shall I go? The House of the Poor. Horrid that your mam must go to the House of the Poor." Joseph sat on his bed, writing: "Taken ten pounds from the post I have which leaves three shillings. Give Nuncle the ten as earnest of my intention." Nine years after that day on which he had gone to Carmarthen Joseph said in his heart: "London shops for experience"; and he caused a frock coat to be sewn together, and he bought a silk hat and an umbrella, and at the spring cribbing he walked into a shop in the West End of London, asking: "Can I see the engager, pleaze?" The engager came to him and Joseph spoke out: "I have all-round experience. Flannelettes three years in Niclass, Cardiff, and left on my own accord. Kept the colored dresses in Tomos, Zwanssee. And served through. Apprentized in Reez Jones Carmarthen for three years. Refs egzellent. Good ztok-keeper and appearance." "Start at nine o'clock Monday morning," the engager replied. "Thirty pounds a year and spiffs; to live in. You'll be in the laces." "Fashionable this shop is," Joseph wrote to Madlen, "and I have to be smart and wear a coat like the preachers, and mustn't take more than three zwap lines per day or you have the sack. Two white shirts per week; and the dresses of the showroom young ladies are a treat. Five pounds enclosed for Nuncle." "Believe your mam," Madlen answered: "don't throw gravel at the windows of the old English unless they have the fortunes." In his zeal for his mother's welfare Joseph was heedless of himself, eating little of the poor food that was served him, clothing his body niggardly, and seldom frequenting public bath-houses; his mind spanned his purpose, choosing the fields he would join to Penlan, counting the number of cattle that would graze on the land, planning the slate-tiled house which he would set up. "Twenty pounds more must I have," he moaned, "for the blaguard Nuncle." Every day thereafter he stole a little money from his employers and every night he made peace with God: "Only twenty-five is the wage, and spiffs don't count because of the fines. Don't you let me be found out, Big Man bach. Will you strike mam into her grave? And disgrace Respected Essec Pugh Capel Moriah?" He did not abate his energies howsoever hard his disease was wasting and destroying him. The men who lodged in his bedroom grew angry with him. "How can we sleep with your dam coughing?" they cried. "Why don't you invest in a second-hand coffin?" Feared that the women whom he served would complain that the poison of his sickness was tainting them and that he would be sent away, Joseph increased his pilferings; where he had stolen a shilling he now stole two shillings; and when he got five pounds above the sum he needed, he heaved a deep sigh and said: "Thank you for your favor, God bach. I will now go home to heal myself." Madlen took the money to Essec, coming back heavy with grief. "Hoo-hoo," she whined, "the ninety has bought only the land. Selling the houses is Essec." "Wrong there is," said Joseph. "Probe deeply we must." From their puzzlings Madlen said: "What will you do?" "Go and charge swindler Moriah." "Meddle not with him. Strong he is with the Lord." "Teach him will I to pocket my honest wealth." Because of his weakness, Joseph did not go to Moriah; to-day he said: "I will to-morrow," and to-morrow he said: "Certain enough I'll go to-morrow." In the twilight of an afternoon he and Madlen sat down, gazing about, and speaking scantily; and the same thought was with each of them, and this was the thought: "A tearful prayer will remove the Big Man from His judgment, but nothing will remove Essec from his purpose." "Mam fach," said Joseph, "how will things be with you?" "Sorrow not, soul nice," Madlen entreated her son. "Couple of weeks very short have I to live." "As an hour is my space. Who will stand up for you?" "Hish, now. Hish-hish, my little heart." Madlen sighed; and at the door she made a great clatter, and the sound of the clatter was less than the sound of her wailing. "Mam! Mam!" Joseph shouted. "Don't you scream. Hap you will soften Nuncle's heart if you say to him that my funeral is close." Madlen put a mourning gown over her petticoats and a mourning bodice over her shawls, and she tarried in a field as long as it would take her to have traveled to Moriah; and in the heat of the sun she returned, laughing. "Mistake, mistake," she cried. "The houses are ours. No undertanding was in me. Cross was your Nuncle. 'Terrible if Joseph is bad with me,' he said. Man religious and tidy is Essec." Then she prayed that Joseph would die before her fault was found out. Joseph did not know what to do for his joy. "Well-well, there's better I am already," he said. He walked over the land and coveted the land of his neighbors. "Dwell here for ever I shall," he cried to Madlen. "A grand house I'll build--almost as grand as the houses of preachers." In the fifth night he died, and before she began to weep, Madlen lifted her voice: "There's silly, dear people, to covet houses! Only a smallish bit of house we want." IX LIKE BROTHERS Silas Bowen hated his brother John, but when he heard of John's sickness, he reasoned: "Blackish has been his dealings. And trickish. Sly also. Odd will affairs seem if I don't go to him at once." At the proper hour he closed the door of his shop. Then he washed his face, and put beeswax on the dwindling points of his mustache, and he came out of Barnes into Thornton East; into High Road, where is his brother's shop. "That is you," said John to him. "How was you, man?" Silas asked. "Talk the name of the old malady." "Say what you have to say in English," John answered in a little voice. "It is easier and classier." That which was spoken was rendered into English; and John replied: "I am pleazed to see you. Take the bowler off your head and don't put her on the harimonium. The zweat will mark the wood." "The love of brothers push me here," said Silas. "It is past understanding. As boyss we learn the same pray-yer. And we talked the same temperance dialogue in Capel Zion. I was always the temperance one. And quite a champion reziter. The way is round and about, boy bach, from Zion to the grave." "Don't speak like that," pleaded John. "I caught a cold going to the City to get ztok. I will be healthy by the beginning of the week." "Be it so. Yet I am full of your trouble. Sick you are and how's trade?" "Very brisk. I am opening a shop in Richmond again," John said. "You're learning me something. Don't you think too much of that shop; Death is near and set your mind on the crossing." John's lame daughter Ann halted into the room, and stepped up to the bed. "Stand by the door for one minit, Silas," John cried. "I am having my chat confidential." From a book Ann recited the business of that day; naming each article that had been sold, and the cost and the profit thereof. "How's that with last year?" her father commanded. "Two-fifteen below." "Fool!" John whispered. "You are a cow, with your gamey leg. You're ruining the place." Ann closed the book and put her fountain pen in the leather case which was pinned to her blouse, and she spoke this greeting: "How are you, Nuncle Silas. It's long since I've seen you." She thrust out her arched teeth in a smile. "Good-night, now. You must call and see our Richmond establishment." "Silas," said John, "empty a dose of the medecyne in a cup for me." "There's little comfort in medecyne," Silas observed. "Not much use is the stuff if the Lord is calling you home. Calling you home. Shall I read you a piece from the Beybile of the Welsh? It is a great pity you have forgot the language of your mother." "I did not hear you," said John. "Don't you trouble to say it over." He drank the medicine. "Unfortunate was the row about the Mermaid Agency. I was sorry to take it away from you, but if I hadn't some one else would. We kept it in the family, Silas." "I have prayed a lot," said Silas to his brother, "that me and you are brought together before the day of the death. Nothing can break us from being brothers." "You are very doleful. I shall shift this little cold." "Yes-yes, you will. I would be glad to follow your coffin to Wales and look into the guard's van at stations where the train stop, but the fare is big and the shop is without a assistant. Weep until I am sore all over I shall in Capel Shirland Road. When did the doctor give you up?" "He's a donkey. He doesn't know nothing. Here he is once per day and charging for it. And he only brings his repairs to me." "The largest charge will be to take you to your blessed home," said Silas. "The railway need a lot of money for to carry a corpse. I feel quite sorrowful. In Heaven you'll remember that I was at your deathbed." John did not answer. "Well-well," said Silas, whispering loudly, "making his peace with the Big Man he is"; and he went away, moaning a funereal hymn tune. John thought over his plight and was distressed, and he spoke to God in Welsh: "Not fitting that you leave the daughter fach alone. Short in her leg you made her. There's a set-back. Her mother perished; and did I complain? An orphan will the pitiful wench be. Who will care for the shop? And the repairing workman? Steal the leather he will. A fuss will be about shop Richmond. Paid have I the rent for one year in advance. Serious will the loss be. Be not of two thinks. Send Lisha to breathe breathings into my inside--in the belly where the heart is. Forgive me that I go to the Capel English. Go there I do for the trade. Generous am I in the collections. Ask the preacher. Take some one else to sit in my chair in the Palace. Amen. Amen and amen." In his misery he sobbed, and he would not speak to Ann nor heed her questionings. At the cold of dawn he thought that Death was creeping down to him, and he screamed: "Allow me to live for a year--two years--and a grand communion set will I give to the Welsh capel in Shirland Road. Individual cups. Silver-plated, Sheffield make. Ann shall send quickly for the price-list." His fear was such that he would not suffer his beard to be combed, nor have his face covered by a bedsheet; and he would not stretch himself or turn his face upwards: in such a manner dead men lie. Again came Silas to provoke his brother to his death. "Richmond shops are letting like anything," he said. "The place is coming on," replied John. "I was lucky to get one in King's Row. She is cheap too." "What are you talking about? There's a new boot shop in King's Row already. Next door to the jeweler." "You are mistook. I have taken her." "Well, then, you are cheated. Get up at once and make a case. Wear an overcoat and ride in the bus." But John bade Ann go to Richmond and to say this and that to the owner of the house. Ann went and the house was empty. A third time Silas came out of Barnes, bringing with him gifts. These are the gifts that he offered his brother John: a tin of lobster, a tin of sardines, a tin of salmon, and a tin of herrings; and through each tin, in an unlikely place, he had driven the point of a gimlet. "Eat these," he said, "and good they will do you." "Much obliged," replied John. "I'll try a herring with bread and butter and vinegar to supper. Very much obliged. It was not my blame that we quarreled. Others had his eye on the agency." "Tish, I did not want the old Mermaid. You keep her. I got the sole agency for the Gwendoline." "How is Gwendolines going?" "More than I can do to keep ztok of her. Four dozen gents' laces and three dozen ladies' ditto on the twenty-fifth, and soon I order another four dozen ladies' buttons." John called Ann and to her he said: "How is Mermaid ztok?" "We are almost out of nine gents and four ladies," answered Ann. "Write Nuncle Silas the order and he'll drop her in the Zity. Pay your fare one way will I, Silas." Silas fled the next day into the Mermaid warehouse and sought out the manager. "My brother J. Owen and Co. Thornton East has sold his last pair of Mermaids," he said. He brought trouble into his eyes and made his voice to quiver as he told how that John was dying and how that the shop was his brother's legacy to him. "Send you the goods for this order to my shop in Barnes," he added. "And all future orders. That will be my headquarters." He did not go to John's house any more; and although John ate of the lobster, the herrings, and the sardines and was sick, he did not die. A week expired and a sound reached him that Silas was selling Mermaid boots; and he enjoined Ann to test the truth of that sound. "It's sure enough, dad," Ann said. John's fury tingled. He put on him his clothes and seized a stick, and by the strength of his passion he moved into Barnes; and he pitched himself at the entering in of the shop, and he saw that Ann's speech was right. He came back; and he did not eat or drink or rest until he had removed all that was in his window and had placed therein no other boots than the Mermaids; and on each pair he put a ticket which was truly marked: "Half cost price." On his door he put this notice: "This FIRM has no Connection with the shop in Barnes"; and this notice could be seen and read whether the door was open or shut. After a period people returned to him, demanding: "I want a pair of Mermaids, please"; and inasmuch as he had no more to sell, they who had dealt with him went to the shop of his brother. X A WIDOW WOMAN The Respected Davydd Bern-Davydd spoke in this sort to the people who were assembled at the Meeting for Prayer: "Well-well, know you all the order of the service. Grand prayers pray last. Boys ordinary pray middle, and bad prayers pray first. Boys bach just beginning also come first. Now, then, after I've read a bit from the Book of Speeches and you've sung the hymn I call out, Josi Mali will report." Bern-Davydd ceased his reading, and while the congregation sang, Josi placed his arms on the sill which is in front of pews and laid his head thereon. "Josi Mali, man, come to the Big Seat and mouth what you think," said Bern-Davydd. Josi's mother Mali touched her son, whispering this counsel: "Put to shame the last prayer, indeed now, Josi." By and by Josi lifted his head and stood on his feet. This is what he said: "Asking was I if I was religious enough to spout in the company of the Respected." "Out of the necks of young youths we hear pieces that are very sensible," said Bern-Davydd. "Come you, Josi Mali, to the saintly Big Seat." As Josi moved out of his pew, his thick lips fallen apart and his high cheek bones scarlet, his mother said: "Keep your eyes clapped very close, or hap the prayers will shout that you spoke from a hidden book like an old parson." So Josi, who in the fields and on his bed had exercised prayer in the manner that one exercises singing, uttered his first petition in Capel Sion. He told the Big Man to pardon the weakness of his words, because the trousers of manhood had not been long upon him; he named those who entered the Tavern and those who ate bread which had been swollen by barm; he congratulated God that Bern-Davydd ruled over Sion. At what time he was done, Bern-Davydd cried out: "Amen. Solemn, dear me, amen. Piece quite tidy of prayer"; and the men of the Big Seat cried: "Piece quite tidy of prayer." The quality of Josi's prayers gave much pleasure in Sion, and it was noised abroad even in Morfa, from whence a man journeyed, saying: "Break your hire with your master and be a servant in my farm. Wanting a prayer very bad do we in Capel Salem." Josi immediately asked leave of God to tell Bern-Davydd that which the man from Morfa had said. God gave him leave, wherefore Bern-Davydd, whose spirit waxed hot, answered: "Boy, boy, why for did you not kick the she cat on the backhead?" Then Josi said to his mother Mali: "A preacher will I be. Go will I at the finish of my servant term to the school for Grammar in Castellybryn." "Glad am I to hear you talk," said Mali. "Serious pity that my belongings are so few." "Small is your knowledge of the Speeches," Josi rebuked his mother. "How go they: 'Sell all that you have?' Iss-iss, all, mam fach." Now Mali lived in Pencoch, which is in the valley about midway between Shop Rhys and the Schoolhouse, and she rented nearly nine acres of the land which is on the hill above Sion. Beyond the furnishings of her two-roomed house, she owned three cows, a heifer, two pigs, and fowls. She fattened her pigs and sold them, and she sold also her heifer; and Josi went to the School of Grammar. Mali labored hard on the land, and she got therefrom all that there was to be got; and whatever that she earned she hid in a hole in the ground. "Handy is little money," she murmured, "to pay for lodgings and clothes preacher, and the old scamps of boys who teach him." She lived on potatoes and buttermilk, and she dressed her land all the time. People came to remark of her: "There's no difference between Mali Pencoch and the mess in her cow-house." Days, weeks, and months moved slowly; and years sped. Josi passed from the School of Grammar to College Carmarthen, and Mali gave him all the money that she had, and prayed thus: "Big Man bach, terrible would affairs be if I perished before the boy was all right. Let you me keep my strength that Josi becomes as large as Bern-Davydd. Amen." Even so. Josi had a name among Students' College, and even among ordained rulers of pulpits; and Mali went about her duties joyful and glad; it was as if the Kingdom of the Palace of White Shirts was within her. While at her labor she mumbled praises to the Big Man for His goodness, until an awful thought came to her: "Insulting am I to the Large One bach. Only preachers are holy enough to stand in their pray. Not stop must I now; go on my knees will I in the dark." She did not kneel on her knees for the stiffness that was in her limbs. Her joy was increased exceedingly when Josi was called to minister unto Capel Beulah in Carmarthen, and she boasted: "Bigger than Sion is Moriah and of lofts has not the Temple two?" "Idle is your babbling," one admonished her. "Does a calf feed his mother?" Josi heard the call. His name grew; men and women spoke his sayings one to another, and Beulah could not contain all the people who would hear his word; and he wrote a letter to his mother: "God has given me to wed Mary Ann, the daughter of Daniel Shop Guildhall. Kill you a pig and salt him and send to me the meat." All that Josi asked Mali gave, and more; she did not abate in any of her toil for five years, when a disease laid hold on Josi and he died. Mali cleaned her face and her hands in the Big Pistil from which you draw drinking water, and she brought forth her black garments and put them on her; and because of her age she could not weep. The day before that her son was to be buried, she went to the house of her neighbor Sara Eye Glass, and to her she said: "Wench nice, perished is Josi and off away am I. Console his widow fach I must. Tell you me that you will milk my cow." Sara turned her seeing eye upon Mali. "An old woman very mad you are to go two nines of miles." "Milk you my cow," said Mali. "And milk you her dry. Butter from me the widow fach shall have. And give ladlings of the hogshead to my pigs and scatter food for my hens." She tore a baston from a tree, trimmed it and blackened it with blacking, and at noon she set forth to the house of her daughter-in-law; and she carried in a basket butter, two dead fowls, potatoes, carrots, and a white-hearted cabbage, and she came to Josi's house in the darkness which is in the morning, and it was so that she rested on the threshold; and in the bright light Mary Ann opened the door, and was astonished. "Mam-in-law," she said, "there's nasty for you to come like this. Speak what you want. Sitting there is not respectable. You are like an old woman from the country." "Come am I to sorrow," answered Mali. "Boy all grand was Josi bach. Look at him now will I." "Talking no sense you are," said Mary Ann. "Why you do not see that the house is full of muster? Will there not be many Respecteds at the funeral?" "Much preaching shall I say?" "Indeed, iss. But haste about now and help to prepare food to eat. Slow you are, female." Presently mourners came to the house, and when each had walked up and gazed upon the features of the dead, and when the singers had sung and the Respecteds had spoken, and while a carpenter turned screws into the coffin, Mary Ann said to Mali: "Clear you the dishes now, and cut bread and spread butter for those who will return after the funeral. After all have been served go you home to Pencoch." She drew a veil over her face and fell to weeping as she followed the six men who carried Josi's coffin to the hearse. Having finished, Mali took her baston and her empty basket and began her journey. As she passed over Towy Street--the public way which is set with stones--she saw that many people were gathered at the gates of Beulah to witness Mary Ann's loud lamentations at Josi's grave. Mali stayed a little time; then she went on, for the light was dimming. At the hour she reached Pencoch the mown hay was dry and the people were gathering it together. She cried outside the house of Sara Eye Glass: "Large thanks, Sara fach. Home am I, and like pouring water were the tears. And there's preaching." She milked her cows and fed her pigs and her fowls, and then she stepped up to her bed. The sounds of dawn aroused her. She said to herself: "There's sluggish am I. Dear-dear, rise must I in a haste, for Mary Ann will need butter to feed the baban bach that Josi gave her." XI UNANSWERED PRAYERS When Winnie Davies was let out of prison, shame pressed heavily on her feelings; and though her mother Martha and her father Tim prayed almost without ceasing, she did not come home. It was so that one night Martha watched for her at a window and Tim prayed for her at the door of the Tabernacle, and a bomb fell upon the ground that was between them, and they were both destroyed. All the days of their life, Tim and Martha were poor and meek and religious; they were cheaper than the value set on them by their cheapeners. As a reward for their pious humility, they were appointed keepers of the Welsh Tabernacle, which is at Kingsend. At that they took their belongings into the three rooms that are below the chapel; and their spirits were lifted up marvelously that the Reverend Eylwin Jones and the deacons of the Tabernacle had given to them the way of life. In this fashion did Tim declare his blessedness: "Charitable are Welsh to Welsh. Little Big Man, boys tidy are boys Capel Tabernacle." "What if we were old atheists?" cried Martha. "Wife fach, don't you send me in a fright," Tim said. They two applied themselves to their tasks: the woman washed the linen and cleaned the doorsteps and the houses of her neighbors, the man put posters on hoardings, trimmed gardens, stood at the doors of Welsh gatherings. By night they mustered, sweeping the floor of the chapel, polishing the wood and brass that were therein, and beating the cushions and hassocks which were in the pews of the most honored of the congregation. Sunday mornings Tim put a white india-rubber collar under the Adam's apple in his throat, and Martha covered her long, thin body in black garments, and drew her few hairs tightly from her forehead. Though they clad and comported themselves soberly Enoch Harries, who, at this day, was the treasurer and head deacon of the chapel, spoke up against them to Eylwin Jones. This is his complaint: "Careless was Tim in the dispatch department, delivering the parcel always to the wrong customers and for why he was sacked. Good was I to get him the capel. Careless he is now also. By twilight, dark, and thick blackness, light electric burns in Tabernacle. Waste that is. Sound will I my think. Why cannot the work be done in the day I don't know." "You cannot say less," said Eylwin Jones. "Pay they ought for this, the irreligious couple. As the English proverb--'There's no gratitude in the poor.'" "Another serious piece of picking have I," continued Harries. "I saw Tim sticking on hoarding. 'What, dear me,' I mumbled between the teeth--I don't speech to myself, man, as usual. The Apostles did, now. They wrote their minds. Benefit for many if I put down my religious thinks for a second New Testament. What say you, Eylwin Jones? Lots of says very clever I can give you--'is he sticking?' A biggish paper was the black pasting about Walham Green Music Hall. What do you mean for that? And the posters for my between season's sale were waiting to go out." Rebuked, Tim and Martha left over sinning: and Tim put Enoch Harries' posters in places where they should not have been put, wherefore Enoch smiled upon him. "Try will I some further," said Tim by and by. "Don't you crave too much," advised Martha. "The Bad Man craved the pulpit of the Big Man." "Shut your backhead. Out of school will Winnie be very near now." "Speak clear." "Ask Enoch Harries will I to make her his servant." "Be modest in your manner," Martha warned her husband. "Man grand is Enoch." "Needing servants hap he does." "Perhaps, iss; perhaps, no." "Cute is Winnie," said Tim; "and quick. Sense she has." Tim addressed Enoch, and Enoch answered: "Blabber you do to me, why for? Send your old female to Mishtress Harries. Order you her to go quite respectable." Curtsying before Mrs. Harries, Martha said: "I am Tim Dafis' wife." "Oh, really. The person that is in charge of that funny little Welsh chapel." Mrs. Harries sat at a table. "Give me your girl's name, age, and names of previous employers for references." Having written all that Martha said, she remarked: "We are moving next week to a large establishment in Thornton East. I am going to call it Windsor. Of course the husband and I will go to the English church. I thought I could take your girl with me to Windsor." "The titcher give her an excellent character." "I'll find that out for myself. Well, as you are so poor, I'll give her a trial. I'll pay her five pounds a year and her keep. I do hope she is ladylike." Martha told Tim that which Mrs. Harries had said, and Tim observed: "I will rejoice in a bit of prayer." "Iss," Martha agreed. "In the parlor of the preacher. They go up quicker." God was requested by Tim to heap money upon Mrs. Harries, and to give Winnie the wisdom, understanding, and obedience which enable one to serve faithfully those who sit in the first pews in the chapel. Now Winnie found favor in the sight of her mistress, whose personal maid she was made and whose habits she copied. She painted her cheeks and dyed her hair and eyebrows and eyelashes; and she frequented Thornton Vale English Congregational Chapel, where now worshiped Enoch and his wife. Some of the men who came to Windsor ogled her impudently, but she did not give herself to any man. These ogles Mrs. Harries interpreted truthfully and she whipped up her jealous rage. "You're too fast," she chided Winnie. "Look at your blouse. You might be undressed. You are a shame to your sex. One would say you are a Piccadilly street-walker and they wouldn't be far wrong. I won't have you making faces at my visitors. Understand that." Winnie said: "I don't." "You must change, miss," Mrs. Harries went on. "Or you can pack your box and go on the streets. Must not think because you are Welsh you can do as you like here." On a sudden Winnie spoke and charged her mistress with a want of virtue. "Is that the kind of miss you are!" Mrs. Harries shouted. "Where did you get those shoes from?" "You yourself gave them to me." "You thief! You know I didn't. They are far too small for your big feet. Come along--let's see what you've got upstairs." That hour Mrs. Harries summoned a policeman, and in due time Winnie was put in prison. Tim and Martha did not speak to any one of this that had been done to their daughter. "Punished must a thief be," said Tim. "Bad is the wench." "Bad is our little daughter," answered Martha. Sabbath morning came and she wept. "Showing your lament you are, old fool," cried Tim. "For sure, no. But the mother am I." Tim said: "My inside shivers oddly. Girl fach too young to be in jail." A fire was set in the preacher's parlor and the doors of the Tabernacle were opened. Tim, the Bible in his hands, stepped up to the pulpit, his eyes closed in prayer, and as he passed up he stumbled. Eylwin Jones heard the noise of his fall and ran into the chapel. "What's the matter?" he cried. "Comic you look on your stomach. Great one am I for to see jokes." "An old rod did catch my toe," Tim explained. Eylwin changed the cast of his countenance. "Awful you are," he reproved Tim. "Suppose that was me. Examine you the stairs. Now indeed forget a handkerchief have I for to wipe the flow of the nose. Order Winnie to give me one of Enoch Harries. Handkerchiefs white and smelly he has." "Ill is Winnie fach," said Martha. "Gone she has for brief weeks to Wales," Tim added. In the morning Eylwin came to the Tabernacle. "Not healthy am I," he said. "Shock I had yesterday. Fancy I do a rabbit from Wales for the goiter." "Tasty are rabbits," Tim uttered. "Clap up, indeed," said Martha. "Too young they are to eat and are they not breeding?" "Rabbits very young don't breed," remarked Eylwin. "They do," Martha avowed. "Sometimes, iss; sometimes, no. Poison they are when they breed." "Not talking properly you are," said Eylwin. "Why for you palaver about breeding to the preacher? Cross I will be." "Be you quiet now, Martha," said Tim. "Lock your tongue." "Send a letter to Winnie for a rabbit; two rabbits if she is small," ordered Eylwin. "And not see your faults will I." Tim and Martha were perplexed and communed with each other; and Tim walked to Wimbledon where he was not known and so have his errand guessed. He bought a rabbit and carried it to the door of the minister's house. "A rabbit from Winnie fach in Wales," he said. "Eat her I will before I judge her," replied Eylwin; and after he had eaten it he said: "Quite fair was the animal. Serious dirty is the capel. As I flap my hand on the cushion Bible in my eloquence, like chimney smoke is the dust. Clean you at once. For are not the anniversary meetings on the sixth Sabbath? All the rich Welsh will be there, and Enoch Harries and the wife of him." He came often to view Tim and Martha at their labor. "Fortunate is your wench to have holiday," he said one day. "Hard have preachers to do in the vineyard." "Hear we did this morning," Tim began to speak. "In a hurry am I," Eylwin interrupted. "Fancy I do butter from Wales with one pinch of salt in him. Tell Winnie to send butter that is salted." Martha bought two pounds of butter. "Mean is his size," Tim grieved. "Much is his cost," Martha whined. "Get you one pound of marsherin and make him one and put him on a wetted cabbage leaf." The fifth Sunday dawned. "Next to-morrow," said Martha, "the daughter will be home. Go you to the jail and fetch her, and take you for her a big hat for old jailers cut the hair very short." "No-no," Tim replied. "Better she returns and speak nothing. With no questions shall we question her." Monday opened and closed. "Mistake is in your count," Martha hinted. "Slow scolar am I," said Tim. "Count will I once more." "Don't you, boy bach," Martha hastened to say. "Come she will." At the dusk of Friday Eylwin Jones, his goitered chin shivering, ran furiously and angrily into the Tabernacle. "Ho-ho," he cried. "In jail is Winnie. A scampess is she and a whore. Here's scandal. Mother and father of a thief in the house of the capel bach of Jesus Christ. Robbed Mistress Harries she did. Broke is the health of the woman nice as a consequent. She will not be at the anniversary meetings because the place is contaminated by you pair. And her husband won't. Five shillings each they give to the collection. The capel wants the half soferen. Out you go. Now at once." Tim and Martha were sorely troubled that Winnie would come to the Chapel House and not finding them, would go away. "Loiter will I near by," said Tim. "Say we rent a room and peer for her," said Martha. Thereon from dusk to day either Tim or Martha sat at the window of their room and watched. The year died and spring and summer declined into autumn, when on a moon-lit night men flew in machines over London and loosened bombs upon the people thereof. "Feared am I," said Martha, "that our daughter is not in the shelter." She screamed: "Don't stand there like a mule. Pray, Tim man." Remembering how that he had prayed, Tim answered: "Try a prayer will I near the capel." So Martha watched at her window and Tim prayed at the door of the Tabernacle. XII LOST TREASURE Here is the tale that is told about Hugh Evans, who was a commercial traveler in drapery wares, going forth on his journeys on Mondays and coming home on Fridays. The tale tells how on a Friday night Hugh sat at the table in the kitchen of his house, which is in Parson's Green. He had before him coins of gold, silver, and copper, and also bills of his debts; and upon each bill he placed certain monies in accordance with the sum marked thereon. Having fixed the residue of his coins and having seen that he held ten pounds, his mind was filled with such bliss that he said within himself: "A nice little amount indeed. Brisk are affairs." "Millie," he addressed his wife, "look over them and add them together." "Wait till I'm done," was the answer. "The irons are all hotted up." Hugh chided her. "You are not interested in my saving. You don't care. It's nothing to you. Forward, as I call." "If I sit down," Millie offered, "I feel I shall never get up again and the irons are hotted and what I think is a shame to waste gas like this the price it is." "Why didn't you say so at the first opportunity? Be quick then. I shan't allow the cash to lay here." Duly Millie observed her husband's order, and what time she proved that which Hugh had done, she was admonished that she had spent too much on this and that. "I'm doing all I can not to be extravagant," she whimpered. "I don't buy a thing for my back." Her short upper lip curled above her broken teeth and trembled; she wept. "But whatever," said Hugh softening his spirit, "I got ten soferens in hand. Next quarter less you need and more you have. Less gass and electric. You don't gobble food so ravishingly in warm weather. The more I save." Having exchanged the ten pounds for a ten-pound note, remorse seized Hugh. "A son of a mule am I," he said. "Dangerous is paper as he blows. If he blows! Bulky are soferens and shillings. If you lose two, you got the remnants. But they are showy and tempting." He laid the note under his pillow and slept, and he took it with him, secreted on his person, to Kingsend Chapel, where every Sunday morning and evening he sang hymns, bowed under prayer, and entertained his soul with sermons. Just before departing on Monday he gave the note to Millie. "Keep him securely," he counseled her. "Tell nobody we stock so much cash." Millie put the note between the folds of a Paisley shawl, which was precious to her inasmuch as it had been her mother's, and she wrapped a blanket over the shawl and placed it in a cupboard. But on Friday she could not remember where she had hidden the note; "never mind," she consoled herself, "it will occur to me all of a sudden." As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted: "Got the money all tightly?" "Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England." "Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in a mass would be fifty pounds. "With ordinary luck, and I'm sure you desire it because you're always at it, it will," Millie agreed. "No luck about it. No stop to me. We've nothing to purchase. And you don't. At home you are, with food and clothes and a ceyling above you. Kings don't want many more." "Yes," said Millie. "No." Weeks passed and Millie was concerned that she could not find the note, tried she never so hard. At the side of her bed she entreated to be led to it, and in the day she often paused and closing her eyes prayed: "Almighty Father, bring it to me." The last Friday of the quarter Hugh divided his money in lots, and it was that he had eleven pounds over his debts. "Eleven soferens now," he cried to his wife. "That's grand! Makes twenty-one the first six months of the wedded life." "It reflects great credit on you," said Millie, concealing her unhappiness. "Another eighty and I'd have an agency. Start a factory, p'raps. There's John Daniel. He purchases an house. Ten hands he has working gents' shirts for him." Millie turned away her face and demanded from God strength with which to acquaint her husband of her misfortune. What she asked for was granted unto her at her husband's amorous moment of the Sabbath morning. Hugh's passion deadened, and in his agony he sweated. "They're gone! Every soferen," he cried. "They can't all have gone. The whole ten." He opened his eyes widely. "Woe is me. Dear me. Dear me." Until day dimmed and night grayed did they two search, neither of them eating and neither of them discovering the treasure. Therefore Hugh had not peace nor quietness. Grief he uttered with his tongue, arms, and feet, and it was in the crease of his garments. He sought sympathy and instruction from those with whom he traded. "All the steam is gone out of me," he wailed. One shopkeeper advised him: "Has it slipped under the lino?" Another said: "Any mice in the house? Money has been found in their holes." The third said: "Sure the wife hasn't spent it on dress. You know what ladies are." These hints and more Hugh wrote down on paper, and he mused in this wise: "An old liar is the wench. For why I wedded the English? Right was mam fach; senseless they are. Crying she has lost the yellow gold, the bitch. What blockhead lost one penny? What is in the stomach of my purse this one minute? Three shillings--soferen--five pennies--half a penny--ticket railway. Hie backwards will I on Thursday on the surprise. No comfort is mine before I peep once again." He pried in every drawer and cupboard, and in the night he arose and inquired into the clothes his wife had left off; and he pushed his fingers into the holes of mice and under the floor coverings, and groped in the fireplaces; and he put subtle questions to Millie. "If you'd done like this in a shop you'd be sacked without a ref," he said when his search was over. "We must have him back. It's a sin to let him go. Reduce expenses at once." Millie disrobed herself by the light of a street lamp, and she ate little of such foods as are cheapest, whereat her white cheeks sunk and there was no more luster in her brown hair; and her larder was as though there was a famine in the country. If she said to Hugh: "Your boots are leaking," she was told: "Had I the soferens I would get a pair"; or if she said: "We haven't a towel in the place," the reply was: "Find the soferens and buy one or two." The more Hugh sorrowed and scrimped, the more he gained; and word of his fellows' hardships struck his broad, loose ears with a pleasant tinkle. While on his journeys he stayed at common lodging-houses, and he did not give back to his employers any of the money which was allowed him to stay at hotels. Some folk despised him, some mocked him, and many nicknamed him "the ten-pound traveler." To the shopkeeper who hesitated to deal with him he whined his loss, making it greater than it was, and expressing: "The interest alone is very big." By such methods he came to possess one hundred and twenty pounds in two years. His employers had knowledge of his deeds, and they summoned him to them and said to him that because of the drab shabbiness of his clothes and his dishonest acts they had appointed another in his stead. "You started this," he admonished Millie. "Bring light upon mattar." "What can I do?" Millie replied. "Shall I go back to the dressmaking as I was?" Hugh was not mollified. By means of such women man is brought to a penny. He felt dishonored and wounded. Of the London Welsh he was the least. Look at Enos-Harries and Ben Lloyd and Eynon Davies. There's boys for you. And look at the black John Daniel, who was a prentice with him at Carmarthen. Hark him ordering preacher Kingsend. Watch him on the platform on the Day of David the Saint. And all, dear me, out of J.D.'s Ritfit three-and-sixpence gents' tunic shirts. He considered a way, of which he spoke darkly to Millie, lest she might cry out his intention. "No use troubling," he said in a changed manner. "Come West and see the shops." Westward they two went, pausing at windows behind which were displayed costly blouses. "That's plenty at two guineas," Hugh said of one. "It's a Paris model," said Millie. "Nothing in her. Nothing." "Not much material, I grant," Millie observed. "The style is fashionable and they charge a lot." "I like to see you in her," said Hugh. "Take in the points and make her with an odd length of silk." When the blouse was finished, Hugh took it to a man at whose shop trade the poorest sort of middle-class women, saying: "I can let you have a line like this at thirty-five and six a dozen." "I'll try three twelves," said the man. Then Hugh went into the City and fetched up Japanese silk, and lace, and large white buttons; and Millie sewed with her might. Hugh thrived, and his success was noised among the London Welsh. The preacher of Kingsend Chapel visited him. "Not been in the Temple you have, Mistar Eevanss, almost since you were spliced," he said. "Don't say the wife makes you go to the capel of the English." "Busy am I making money." "News that is to me, Mistar Eevanss. Much welcome there is for you with us." In four years Hugh had eighteen machines, at each of which a skilled woman sat; and he hired young girls to sew through buttons and hook-and-eyes and to make button-holes. These women and girls were under the hand of Millie, who kept count of their comings and goings and the work they performed, holding from their wages the value of the material they spoilt and of the minutes they were not at their task. Millie labored faithfully, her heart being perfect with her husband's. She and Hugh slept in the kitchen, for all the other rooms were stockrooms or workrooms; and the name by which the concern was called was "The French Model Blouse Co. Manageress--Mme. Zetta, the notorious French Modiste." Howsoever bitterly people were pressed, Hugh did not cease to prosper. In riches, honor, and respect he passed many of the London Welsh. For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of him, he rented a big house. That hour men were arrived to take thereto his belongings, Millie said: "I'll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm. I wouldn't lose it for anything"; and as she moved away the ten-pound note fell on the ground. "Well, I never!" she cried in her dismay. "It was there all the time." Hugh seized the note from her hand. "You've the head of a sieve," he said. Also he lamented: "All these years we had no interest in him." XIII PROFIT AND GLORY By serving in shops, by drinking himself drunk, and by shamming good fortune, Jacob Griffiths gave testimony to the miseries and joys of life, and at the age of fifty-six he fell back in his bed at his lodging-house in Clapham, suffered, drew up his crippled knees and died. On the morrow his brother Simon hastened to the house; and as he neared the place he looked up and beheld his sisters Annie and Jane fach also hurrying thither. Presently they three saw one another as with a single eye, wherefore they slackened their pace and walked with seemliness to the door. Jacob's body was on a narrow, disordered bed, and in the state of its deliverance: its eyes were aghast and its hands were clenched in deathful pangs. Then Simon bowed his trunk and lifted his silk hat and his umbrella in the manner of a preacher giving a blessing. "Of us family it can be claimed," he pronounced, "that even the Angel do not break us. We must all cross Jordan. Some go with boats and bridges. Some swim. Some bridges charge a toll--one penny and two pennies. A toll there is to cross Jordan." "He'll be better when he's washed and laid out proper," remarked the woman of the lodging-house. "Let down your apron from your head," Simon said to her. "We are mourning for our brother, the son of the similar father and mother. You don't think me insulting if I was alone with the corpse. I shan't be long at my religious performance. I am a busy man like you." The woman having gone, he spoke at Jacob: "Perished you are now, Shacob. You have unraveled the tangled skein of eternal life. Pray I do you will find rest with the restless of big London. Annie and Jane fach, sorrowful you are; wet are your tears. Go you and drink a nice cup of tea in the café. Most eloquent I shall be in a minute and there's hysterics you'll get. Arrive will I after you. Don't pay for tea; that will I do." "Iss, indeed," said Annie. "Off you, Jane fach. You, Simon, with her, for fear she is slayed in the street. Sit here will I and speak to the spirit of Shacob." "The pant of my breath is not back"--Jane fach's voice was shrill. "Did I not muster on reading the death letter? Witness the mud sprinkled on my gown." "Why should you muster, little sister?" inquired Simon. "Right that I reach him in respectable time, was the think inside me," Jane fach answered. "What other design have I? Stay here I will. A boy, dear me, for a joke was Shacob with me. Heaps of gifts he made me; enough to fill a yellow tin box." "Generous he was," Simon said. "Hap he parted with all. Full of feeling you are. But useless that we loll here. No odds for me; this is my day in the City. How will your boss treat you, Annie, for being away without a pass? Angry will your buyer be, I would be in a temper with my young ladies. Hie to the office, Jane. Don't you borrow borrowings from me if you are sacked." "You are as sly as the cow that steals into clover," Annie cried out. She removed her large hat and set upright the osprey feathers thereon, puffed out her hair which was fashioned in a high pile, and whitened with powder the birth-stain on her cheek. "They daren't discharge me. I'd carry the costume trade with me. Each second you hear, 'Miss Witton-Griffiths, forward,' and 'Miss Witton-Griffiths, her heinness is waiting for you.' In favor am I with the buyer." "Whisper to me your average takings per week," Simon craved. "Not repeat will I." After exaggerating her report, Annie said: "You are going now, then." Jane fach took from a chair a cup that had tea in it, a candlestick--the candle in which died before Jacob--and a teapot, and she sat in the chair. "Oo-oo," she squeaked. "Sorry am I you are flown." "Stupid wenches you are," Simon admonished his sisters. "And curious. Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of the perished dead." Jane fach, whose shoulders were crumped and whose nose was as the beak of a parrot, put forth her head. "The reins of a flaming chariot can't drag me from him. Was he not father to me? Much he handed and more he promised." "Great is your avarice," Simon declared. "Fonder he was of me than any one," Annie cried. "The birthdays he presented me with dresses--until he was sacked. While I was cribbing, did he not speak well to my buyer? Fitting I stay with him this day." "I was his chief friend," said Simon. "We were closer than brothers. So grand was he to me that I could howl once more. Iss, I could preach a funeral sermon on my brother Shacob." Jacob's virtues were truly related. Much had the man done for his younger brother and sisters; albeit his behavior was vain, ornamenting his person garishly and cheaply, and comporting himself foolishly. Summer by summer he went to Wales and remained there two weeks; and he gave a packet of tea or coffee to every widow who worshiped in the capel, and a feast of tea and currant bread and carraway-seed cake to the little children of the capel. Wheedlers flattered him for gain: "The watch of a nobleman you carry" and "The ring would buy a field," said those about Sion; "Never seen a more exact fact simily of King George in my life than you," cried spongers in London public-houses. All grasped whatever gifts they could and turned from him laughing: "The watch of the fob is brass"; "No more worth than a play marble is the ring"; "Old Griffiths is the bloomin' limit." Yet Jacob had delight in the thought that folk passed him rich for his apparel and acts. "Waste of hours very awful is this," Simon uttered by and by. He brought out his order book and a blacklead pencil. "Take stock will I now and put down." He searched the pockets of Jacob's garments and the drawers in the chest, and knelt on his knees and peered under Jacob's bed; and all that he found were trashy clothes and boots. His sisters tore open the seams of the garments and spread their fingers in the hollow places, and they did not find anything. "Jewellary he had," exclaimed Annie. "Much was the value of his diamond ring. 'This I will to you,' he said to me. Champion she would seem on my finger. Half a hundred guineas was her worth." "Where is the watch and chain?" Jane fach demanded. "Gold they were. Link like the fingers of feet the chain had. These I have." "Lovely were his solitaires," cried Annie. "They are mine." "Liar of a bitch," said Jane fach. "'All is yours,' mouthed Shacob my brother, who hears me in the Palace." Simon answered neither yea nor no. He stepped down to the woman of the house. "I have a little list here of the things my brother left in your keeping," he began. "Number wan, gold watch--" The woman opened her lips and spoke: "Godstruth, he didn't have a bean to his name. Gold watch! I had to call him in the mornings. What with blacking his whiskers and being tender on his feet, which didn't allow of him to run to say the least of it, I was about pretty early. Else he'd never get to Ward's at all. And Balham is a long run from here." "I will come back and see you later," Simon replied, and he returned to his sisters. "Hope I do," he said to them. "You discover his affairs. All belong to you. Tall was his regard for you two. Now we will prepare to bury him. Privilege to bury the dead. Sending the corpse to the crystal capel. Not wedded are you like me. Heavy is the keep of three children and the wife." "For why could not the fool have saved for his burying, I don't say?" Annie cried. "Let the perished perish. That's equal for all." "In sense is your speech," Simon agreed. "Shop fach very neat he might have if he was like me and you." "Throwing away money he did," Annie said. "I helped him three years ago when he was sacked. Did I not pay for him to sleep one month in lodgings?" "I got his frock coat cleaned at cost price," Jane fach remembered, "and sewed silk on her fronts. I lent him lendings. Where are my lendings?" "A squanderer you were," Simon rebuked the body. "Tidy sums you spent in pubs. Booze got you the sack after twenty years in the same shop. Disgraced was I to have such a brother as you, Shacob. Where was your religion, man? But he has to be buried, little sisters, or babbling there'll be. Cheap funeral will suit in Fulham cematary. Reasonable your share is more than mine, because the Big Man has trusted me with sons." "No sense is in you," Annie shouted. "Not one coin did he repay me. The coins he owed me are my share." "As an infidel you are," said Simon. "Ach y fy, cheating the grave of custom." "Leaving am I." Jane fach rose. "Late is the day." "Woe is me," Simon wailed. "Like the old Welsh of Cardigan is your cunning. Come you this night here to listen to funeral estimates. Don't you make me bawl this in your department, Annie, and in your office laundry, Jane." From the street door he journeyed by himself to Balham, and habiting his face with grief, he related to Mr. Ward how Jacob died. "He passed in my arms," he said; "very gently--willingly he gave back the ghost. A laugh in his face that might be saying: 'I see Thy wonders, O Lord.'" "This is very sad," said Mr. Ward. "If there is anything we can do--" "You speak as a Christian who goes to chapel, sir. It's hard to discuss business now just. But Jacob has told he left a box in your keep." "I don't think so. Still, I'll make sure." Mr. Ward went away, and returning, said: "The only thing he left here is this old coat which he wore at squadding in the morning. Of course there is his salary--" "Yes, yes, I know. I'd give millions of salaries for my brother back." "You are his only relative?" "Indeed, sir. No father and mother had he. An orphan. Quite pathetic. I will never grin again. Good afternoon, sir. I hope you'll have a successful summer sale." "Hadn't you better take his money?" said Mr. Ward. "We pay quarterly here." "Certainly it will save coming again. But business is business, even in the presence of the dead." "It's eighteen pounds. That's twelve weeks at one-ten." "Well, if you insist, insist you do. Prefer I would to have my brother Jacob back." Simon put the coat over his arm and counted the money, and after he had drunk a little beer and eaten of bread and cheese, he made deals with a gravedigger and an undertaker, and the cost for burying Jacob was eight pounds. That night he was with his sisters, saying to them: "Twelve soferens will put him in the earth. Four soferens per each." "None can I afford," Jane fach vowed. "Not paid my pew rent in Capel Charing Cross have I." "Easier for me to fly than bring the cash," said Annie. "Larger is your screw than me." Simon smote the ground with his umbrella and stayed further words. "Give the soferens, bullocks of Hell fire." Annie and Jane fach were distressed. The first said: "The flesh of the swine shall smell before I do." The second said: "Hard you are on a bent-back wench." Notwithstanding their murmurs, Simon hurled at them the spite of his wrath, reviling them foully and filthily; and the women got afraid that out of his anger would come mischief, and each gave as she was commanded. The third day Simon and Annie and Jane fach stood at Jacob's grave; and Annie and Jane were put to shame that Simon bragged noisily how that he had caused a name-plate to be made for Jacob's coffin and a wreath of glass flowers for the mound of Jacob's grave. THE END 
19959	----	Transcribed from the 1902 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE MABINOGION TRANSLATED FROM THE RED BOOK OF HERGEST BY LADY CHARLOTTE GUEST VOL. I. LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN 11 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS. MXCII INTRODUCTION. More than half a century ago Lady Charlotte Guest gave _The Mabinogion_ to English readers in the form which, probably, will ever most delight them. Her transcript of the Red Book of Hergest was not perfect, she found the meaning of many a Welsh phrase obscure, but her rendering is generally very accurate; and the Celtic tales retain in their new dress much of the charm, which so often evades the translator, of a perfect style formed by generations of narrating. The Red Book of Hergest, from which _The Mabinogion_ are taken, is a collection of tales and poems written during the fourteenth century. Some of the Mabinogion in it have been reconstructed in Norman and Crusading times, but they contain reminiscences of a more distant period, often but half understood by the later story-teller. Among these are "The Dream of Rhonabwy," "The Lady of the Fountain," and "Peredur the son of Evrawc"--the three which happen to come first in the Red Book. These are Christian, but with distant glimpses of Celtic heathenism. The adventures are all grouped around Arthur and his knights; and a kind of connection is given to the three tales by the presence of Owen and his mysterious ravens. Others, especially the four Mabinogion properly so called and the Tale of Lludd and Llevelys, are far older; they are older than Christianity, and older than Arthur. In this new edition of Lady Guest's translation I have put, in the form of footnotes, what appears to me to be a more correct or a more literal rendering of some of the passages of the Welsh. This course makes it unnecessary to tamper with the charming translation that has become a classic of the English language. I am very grateful to the Principal and Fellows of Jesus College for access to the Red Book, to Dr J. Gwenogvryn Evans for permission to use his edition and to Lord Wimborne (the Ivor of Lady Guest's dedication) for information kindly given. OWEN EDWARDS. LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD, 1_st_ _March_ 1902. TO IVOR AND MERTHYR MY DEAR CHILDREN, Infants as you yet are, I feel that I cannot dedicate more fitly than to you these venerable relics of ancient lore, and I do so in the hope of inciting you to cultivate the Literature of "Gwyllt Walia," in whose beautiful language you are being initiated, and amongst whose free mountains you were born. May you become early imbued with the chivalric and exalted sense of honour, and the fervent patriotism for which its sons have ever been celebrated. May you learn to emulate the noble qualities of Ivor Hael, and the firm attachment to your Native Country, which distinguished that Ivor Bach, after whom the elder of you was named. I am, Your affectionate Mother, C. E. GUEST. DOWLAIS, 29_th_ _August_ 1838. THE LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN. King Arthur {15} was at Caerlleon upon Usk; and one day he sat in his chamber; and with him were Owain the son of Urien, and Kynon the son of Clydno, and Kai the son of Kyner; and Gwenhwyvar and her hand-maidens at needlework by the window. And if it should be said that there was a porter at Arthur's palace, there was none. Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr was there, acting as porter, to welcome guests and strangers, and to receive them with honour, and to inform them of the manners and customs of the Court; and to direct those who came to the Hall or to the presence chamber, and those who came to take up their lodging. {16} In the centre of the chamber king Arthur sat, upon a seat of green rushes, over which was spread a covering of flame-coloured satin; and a cushion of red satin was under his elbow. Then Arthur spoke, "If I thought you would not disparage me," said he, "I would sleep while I wait for my repast; and you can entertain one another with relating tales, and can obtain a flagon of mead and some meat from Kai." And the King went to sleep. And Kynon the son of Clydno asked Kai for that which Arthur had promised them. "I too will have the good tale which he promised to me," said Kai. "Nay," answered Kynon, "fairer will it be for thee to fulfil Arthur's behest in the first place, and then we will tell thee the best tale that we know." So Kai went to the kitchen and to the mead-cellar, and returned, bearing a flagon of mead, and a golden goblet, and a handful of skewers upon which were broiled collops of meat. Then they ate the collops and began to drink the mead. "Now" said Kai, "it is time for you to give me my story." "Kynon," said Owain, "do thou pay to Kai the tale that is his due." "Truly," said Kynon, "thou art older, and are a better teller of tales, and hast seen more marvellous things than I; do thou therefore pay Kai his tale." "Begin thyself," quoth Owain, "with the best that thou knowest." "I will do so," answered Kynon. "I was the only son of my mother and father; and I was exceedingly aspiring, and my daring was very great. I thought there was no enterprise in the world too mighty for me, and after I had achieved all the adventures that were in my own country, {17a} I equipped myself, and set forth to journey through deserts, and distant regions. And at length it chanced that I came to the fairest valley in the world, wherein were trees of equal growth; and a river ran through the valley, and a path was by the side of the river. And I followed the path until mid-day, and continued my journey along the remainder of the valley until the evening; and at the extremity of a plain I came to a large and lustrous Castle, at the foot of which was a torrent. And I approached the Castle, and there I beheld two youths, with yellow curling hair, each with a frontlet of gold upon his head, and clad in a garment of yellow satin; and they had gold clasps upon their insteps. In the hand of each of them was an ivory bow, strung with the sinews of the stag; and their arrows had their shafts of the bone of the whale, and were winged with peacock's feathers. The shafts also had golden heads. And they had daggers with blades of gold, and with hilts of the bone of the whale. And they were shooting their daggers. "And a little way from them, I saw a man {17b} in the prime of life, with his beard newly shorn, clad in a robe and a mantle of yellow satin; and round the top of his mantle was a band of gold lace. On his feet were shoes of variegated leather, fastened by two bosses of gold. When I saw him, I went towards him and saluted him; and such was his courtesy, that he no sooner received my greeting than he returned it. {18a} And he went with me towards the Castle. Now there were no dwellers in the Castle, except those who were in one hall. And there I saw four and twenty damsels, embroidering satin, at a window. And this I tell thee, Kai, that {18b} the least fair of them was fairer than the fairest maid thou didst ever behold, in the Island of Britain; and the least lovely of them was more lovely than Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur, when she appeared loveliest at the Offering, on the day of the Nativity, or at the feast of Easter. {18c} They rose up at my coming, and six of them took my horse, and divested me of my armour; and six others took my arms, and washed them in a vessel, until they were perfectly bright. And the third six spread cloths upon the tables, and prepared meat. And the fourth six took off my soiled garments, and placed others upon me; namely, an under vest and a doublet of fine linen, and a robe, and a surcoat, and a mantle of yellow satin, and a broad gold band upon the mantle. And they placed cushions both beneath and around me, with coverings of red linen. And I sat down. Now the six maidens who had taken my horse, unharnessed him, as well as if they had been the best Squires in the Island of Britain. Then, behold, they brought bowls of silver wherein was water to wash; and towels of linen, some green and some white; and I washed. And in a little while the man sat down to the table. {19a} And I sat next to him, and below me sat all the maidens, except those who waited on us. And the table was of silver; and the cloths upon the table were of linen. And no vessel was served upon the table that was not either of gold, or of silver, or of buffalo horn. And our meat was brought to us. And verily, Kai, I saw there every sort of meat, and every sort of liquor, that I ever saw elsewhere; but the meat and the liquors were better served there, than I ever saw them in any other place. "Until the repast was half over, neither the man nor any one of the damsels spoke a single word to me; but when the man perceived that it would be more agreeable to me to converse than to eat any more, he began to enquire of me who I was. I said I was glad to find that there was some one who would discourse with me, and that it was not considered so great a crime at that Court, for people to hold converse together. 'Chieftain,' said the man, 'we would have talked to thee sooner, but we feared to disturb thee during thy repast. Now, however, we will discourse.' Then I told the man who I was, and what was the cause of my journey. And said that I was seeking whether any one was superior to me, or whether I could gain the mastery over all. The man looked upon me, and he smiled, and said, 'If I did not fear to distress thee too much, {19b} I would shew thee that which thou seekest.' Upon this I became anxious and sorrowful; and when the man perceived it, he said, 'If thou wouldst rather that I should shew thee thy disadvantage, than thine advantage, I will do so. Sleep here to-night, and in the morning, arise early, and take the road upwards through the valley, until thou reachest the wood, through which thou camest hither. A little way within the wood, thou wilt meet with a road, branching off to the right; by which thou must proceed, until thou comest to a large sheltered glade, with a mound in the centre. And thou wilt see a black man of great stature, on the top of the mound; he is not smaller in size than two of the men of this world. He has but one foot, and one eye, in the middle of his forehead. And he has a club of iron, and it is certain that there are no two men in the world, who would not find their burden in that club. And he is not a comely man, but on the contrary he is exceedingly ill favoured; and he is the woodward of that wood. And thou wilt see a thousand wild animals, grazing around him. Enquire of him the way out of the glade, and he will reply to thee briefly, {20} and will point out the road, by which thou shalt find that which thou art in quest of.' "And long seemed the night to me. And the next morning I arose, and equipped myself, and mounted my horse, and proceeded straight through the valley, to the wood, and I followed the crossroad which the man had pointed out to me, till at length I arrived at the glade. And there was I three times more astonished at the number of wild animals that I beheld, than the man had said I should be. And the black man was there, sitting upon the top of the mound. Huge of stature as the man had told me that he was, I found him to exceed by far the description he had given me of him. As for the iron club, which the man had told me was a burden for two men, I am certain, Kai, that it would be a heavy weight for four warriors to lift. And this was in the black man's hand. And he only spoke to me in answer to my questions. {21a} Then I asked him what power he held over those animals. 'I will shew thee, little man,' said he. And he took his club in his hand, and with it he struck a stag a great blow, so that he brayed vehemently, and at his braying, the animals came together, as numerous as the stars in the sky, so that it was difficult for me to find room in the glade, to stand among them. There were serpents, and dragons, and divers sorts of animals. And he looked at them, and bade them go and feed. And they bowed their heads, and did him homage, as vassals to their lord. "Then the black man said to me, 'Seest thou now, little man, what power I hold over these animals?' Then I enquired of him the way; and he became very rough in his manner to me; however he asked me whither I would go. And when I had told him who I was, and what I sought, he directed me. 'Take,' said he, 'that path that leads towards the head of the glade, and ascend the wooded steep, until thou comest to its summit; and there thou wilt find an open space, like to a large valley, and in the midst of it a tall tree, whose branches are greener than the greenest pine trees. Under this tree is a fountain, and by the side of the fountain, a marble slab, and on the marble slab a silver bowl, attached by a chain of silver, so that it may not be carried away. {21b} Take the bowl, and throw a bowlful of water upon the slab, and thou wilt hear a mighty peal of thunder; so that thou wilt think that heaven and earth are trembling with its fury. With the thunder there will come a shower so severe, that it will be scarcely possible for thee to endure it and live. And the shower will be of hailstones. And after the shower, the weather will become fair; but every leaf that was upon the tree will have been carried away by the shower. Then a flight of birds will come and alight upon the tree; and in thine own country thou didst never hear a strain so sweet, as that which they will sing. And at the moment thou art most delighted with the song of the birds, thou wilt hear a murmuring and complaining coming towards thee along the valley. And thou wilt see a knight upon a coal black horse, clothed in black velvet, and with a pennon of black linen upon his lance, and he will ride unto thee to encounter thee, with the utmost speed. If thou fleest from him he will overtake thee, and if thou abidest there, as sure as thou art a mounted knight, he will leave thee on foot. And if thou dost not find trouble in that adventure, thou needst not seek it during the rest of thy life.' "So I journeyed on, until I reached the summit of the steep. And there I found every thing, as the black man had described it to me. And I went up to the tree, and beneath it I saw the fountain, and by its side the marble slab; and the silver bowl, fastened by the chain. Then I took the bowl, and cast a bowlful of water upon the slab; and thereupon behold the thunder came, much more violent than the black man had led me to expect; and after the thunder came the shower; and of a truth I tell thee, Kai, that there is neither man nor beast that could endure that shower and live. For not one of those hailstones would be stopped either by the flesh, or by the skin, until it had reached the bone. I turned my horse's flanks towards the shower, and placed the beak of my shield over his head and neck, while I held the upper part of it over my own head. And thus I withstood the shower. When I looked on the tree, there was not a single leaf upon it, and then the sky became clear; and with that, behold the birds lighted upon the tree, and sang. And truly, Kai, I never heard any melody equal to that, either before or since. And when I was most charmed with listening to the birds, lo, a murmuring voice was heard through the valley, approaching me, and saying, 'Oh, Knight, what has brought thee hither? What evil have I done to thee, that thou shouldest act towards me and my possessions, as thou hast this day? Dost thou not know that the shower to-day has left in my dominions neither man nor beast alive, that was exposed to it?' And thereupon, behold a Knight on a black horse appeared, clothed in jet black velvet, and with a tabard of black linen about him. And we charged each other; and as the onset was furious, it was not long before I was overthrown. Then the Knight passed the shaft of his lance through the bridle rein of my horse, and rode off with the two horses; leaving me where I was. And he did not even bestow so much notice upon me, as to imprison me, nor did he despoil me of my arms. So I returned along the road by which I had come. And when I reached the glade where the black man was, I confess to thee, Kai, it is a marvel that I did not melt down into a liquid pool, through the shame that I felt at the black man's derision. And that night I came to the same Castle, where I had spent the night preceding. And I was more agreeably entertained that night, than I had been the night before; and I was better feasted, and I conversed freely with the inmates of the Castle; and none of them alluded to my expedition to the fountain, neither did I mention it to any. And I remained there that night. When I arose on the morrow, I found ready saddled a dark-bay palfrey, with nostrils as red as scarlet. And after putting on my armour, and leaving there my blessing, I returned to my own Court. And that horse I still possess, and he is in the stable yonder. And I declare that I would not part with him for the best palfrey in the Island of Britain. "Now of a truth, Kai, no man ever before confessed to an adventure so much to his own discredit; and verily it seems strange to me, that neither before nor since have I heard of any person, besides myself, who knew of this adventure, and that the subject of it should exist within King Arthur's dominions, without any other person lighting upon it." "Now," quoth Owain, "would it not be well to go and endeavour to discover that place?" "By the hand of my friend," said Kai, "often dost thou utter that with thy tongue, which thou wouldest not make good with thy deeds." "In very truth," said Gwenhwyvar, "it were better thou wert hanged, Kai, than to use such uncourteous speech towards a man like Owain." "By the hand of my friend, good Lady," said Kai, "thy praise of Owain is not greater than mine." With that Arthur awoke, and asked if he had not been sleeping a little. "Yes, Lord," answered Owain, "thou hast slept awhile." "Is it time for us to go to meat?" "It is, Lord," said Owain. Then the horn for washing was sounded, and the King and all his household sat down to eat. And when the meal was ended, Owain withdrew to his lodging, and made ready his horse and his arms. On the morrow, with the dawn of day, he put on his armour, and mounted his charger, and travelled through distant lands, and over desert mountains. And at length he arrived at the valley which Kynon had described to him; and he was certain that it was the same that he sought. And journeying along the valley, by the side of the river, he followed its course till he came to the plain, and within sight of the Castle. When he approached the Castle, he saw the youths shooting their daggers, in the place where Kynon had seen them; and the yellow man, to whom the Castle belonged, standing hard by. And no sooner had Owain saluted the yellow man, than he was saluted by him in return. And he went forward towards the Castle, and there he saw the chamber; and when he had entered the chamber, he beheld the maidens working at satin embroidery, in chairs of gold. And their beauty, and their comeliness seemed to Owain far greater than Kynon had represented to him. And they arose to wait upon Owain, as they had done to Kynon. And the meal which they set before him, gave more satisfaction to Owain than it had done to Kynon. About the middle of the repast the yellow man asked Owain the object of his journey. And Owain made it known to him, and said, "I am in quest of the Knight who guards the fountain." Upon this, the yellow man smiled, and said that he was as loth to point out that adventure to Owain as he had been to Kynon. However he described the whole to Owain, and they retired to rest. The next morning Owain found his horse made ready for him by the damsels, and he set forward and came to the glade where the black man was. And the stature of the black man seemed more wonderful to Owain, than it had done to Kynon, and Owain asked of him his road, and he showed it to him. And Owain followed the road, as Kynon had done, till he came to the green tree; and he beheld the fountain, and the slab beside the fountain with the bowl upon it. And Owain took the bowl, and threw a bowlful of water upon the slab. And lo, the thunder was heard, and after the thunder came the shower, much more violent than Kynon had described, and after the shower, the sky became bright. And when Owain looked at the tree, there was not one leaf upon it. And immediately the birds came, and settled upon the tree, and sang. And when their song was most pleasing to Owain, he beheld a Knight coming towards him through the valley, and he prepared to receive him; and encountered him violently. Having broken both their lances, they drew their swords, and fought blade to blade. Then Owain struck the Knight a blow through his helmet, head piece and visor, and through the skin, and the flesh, and the bone, until it wounded the very brain. Then the black Knight felt that he had received a mortal wound, upon which he turned his horse's head, and fled. And Owain pursued him, and followed close upon him, although he was not near enough to strike him with his sword. Thereupon Owain descried a vast and resplendent Castle. And they came to the Castle gate. And the black Knight was allowed to enter, and the portcullis was let fall upon Owain; and it struck his horse behind the saddle, and cut him in two, and carried away the rowels of the spurs that were upon Owain's heels. And the portcullis descended to the floor. And the rowels of the spurs and part of the horse were without, and Owain, with the other part of the horse remained between the two gates, and the inner gate was closed, so that Owain could not go thence; and Owain was in a perplexing situation. And while he was in this state, he could see through an aperture in the gate, a street facing him, with a row of houses on each side. And he beheld a maiden, with yellow curling hair, and a frontlet of gold upon her head; and she was clad in a dress of yellow satin, and on her feet were shoes of variegated leather. And she approached the gate, and desired that it should be opened. "Heaven knows, Lady," said Owain, "it is no more possible for me to open to thee from hence, than it is for thee to set me free." "Truly," said the damsel, "it is very sad that thou canst not be released, and every woman ought to succour thee, for I never saw one more faithful in the service of ladies than thou. As a friend thou art the most sincere, and as a lover the most devoted. Therefore," quoth she, "whatever is in my power to do for thy release, I will do it. Take this ring and put it on thy finger, with the stone inside thy hand; and close thy hand upon the stone. And as long as thou concealest it, it will conceal thee. When they have consulted together, they will come forth to fetch thee, in order to put thee to death; {27} and they will be much grieved that they cannot find thee. And I will await thee on the horseblock yonder; and thou wilt be able to see me, though I cannot see thee; therefore come and place thy hand upon my shoulder, that I may know that thou art near me. And by the way that I go hence, do thou accompany me." Then she went away from Owain, and he did all that the maiden had told him. And the people of the Castle came to seek Owain, to put him to death, and when they found nothing but the half of his horse, they were sorely grieved. And Owain vanished from among them, and went to the maiden, and placed his hand upon her shoulder, whereupon she set off, and Owain followed her, until they came to the door of a large and beautiful chamber, and the maiden opened it, and they went in, and closed the door. And Owain looked around the chamber, and behold there was not even a single nail in it, that was not painted with gorgeous colours; and there was not a single panel, that had not sundry images {28} in gold portrayed upon it. The maiden kindled a fire, and took water in a silver bowl, and put a towel of white linen on her shoulder, and gave Owain water to wash. Then she placed before him a silver table, inlaid with gold; upon which was a cloth of yellow linen; and she brought him food. And of a truth, Owain never saw any kind of meat that was not there in abundance, but it was better cooked there, than he ever found it in any other place. Nor did he ever see so excellent a display of meat and drink as there. And there was not one vessel from which he was served, that was not of gold, or of silver. And Owain ate and drank, until late in the afternoon, when lo, they heard a mighty clamour in the Castle; and Owain asked the maiden what that outcry was. "They are administering extreme unction," said she, "to the Nobleman who owns the Castle." And Owain went to sleep. The couch which the maiden had prepared for him was meet for Arthur himself; it was of scarlet, and fur, and satin, and sendall, and fine linen. In the middle of the night they heard a woeful outcry. "What outcry again is this?" said Owain. "The Nobleman who owned the Castle is now dead," said the maiden. And a little after daybreak, they heard an exceeding loud clamour and wailing. And Owain asked the maiden what was the cause of it. "They are bearing to the church, the body of the Nobleman who owned the Castle." And Owain rose up, and clothed himself, and opened a window of the chamber, and looked towards the Castle; and he could see neither the bounds, nor the extent of the hosts that filled the streets. And they were fully armed; and a vast number of women were with them, both on horseback, and on foot; and all the ecclesiastics in the city, singing. And it seemed to Owain that the sky resounded with the vehemence of their cries, and with the noise of the trumpets, and with the singing of the ecclesiastics. {29a} In the midst of the throng, he beheld the bier, over which was a veil of white linen; and wax tapers were burning beside, and around it, and none that supported the bier was lower in rank than a powerful {29b} Baron. Never did Owain see an assemblage so gorgeous with satin, and silk, and sendall. And following the train, he beheld a lady with yellow hair falling over her shoulders, and stained with blood; and about her a dress of yellow satin, which was torn. Upon her feet were shoes of variegated leather. And it was a marvel that the ends of her fingers were not bruised, from the violence with which she smote her hands together. Truly she would have been the fairest lady Owain ever saw, had she been in her usual guise. And her cry was louder than the shout of the men, or the clamour of the trumpets. {30} No sooner had he beheld the lady, than he became inflamed with her love, so that it took entire possession of him. Then he enquired of the maiden who the lady was. "Heaven knows," replied the maiden, "she may be said to be the fairest, and the most chaste, and the most liberal, and the wisest, and the most noble of women. And she is my mistress; and she is called the Countess of the Fountain, the wife of him whom thou didst slay yesterday." "Verily," said Owain, "she is the woman that I love best." "Verily," said the maiden, "she shall also love thee not a little." And with that the maid arose, and kindled a fire, and filled a pot with water, and placed it to warm; and she brought a towel of white linen, and placed it around Owain's neck; and she took a goblet of ivory, and a silver basin, and filled them with warm water, wherewith she washed Owain's head. Then she opened a wooden casket, and drew forth a razor, whose haft was of ivory, and upon which were two rivets of gold. And she shaved his beard, and she dried his head, and his throat, with the towel. Then she rose up from before Owain, and brought him to eat. And truly Owain had never so good a meal, nor was he ever so well served. When he had finished his repast, the maiden arranged his couch. "Come here," said she, "and sleep, and I will go and woo for thee." And Owain went to sleep, and the maiden shut the door of the chamber after her, and went towards the Castle. When she came there, she found nothing but mourning, and sorrow; and the Countess in her chamber could not bear the sight of any one through grief. Luned came and saluted her, but the Countess answered her not. And the maiden bent down towards her, and said, "What aileth thee, that thou answerest no one to-day?" "Luned," said the Countess, "what change hath befallen thee, that thou hast not come to visit me in my grief? It was wrong in thee, and I having made thee rich; it was wrong in thee that thou didst not come to see me in my distress. That was wrong in thee." "Truly," said Luned, "I thought thy good sense was greater than I find it to be. Is it well for thee to mourn after that good man, or for anything else, that thou canst not have?" "I declare to heaven," said the Countess, "that in the whole world there is not a man equal to him." "Not so," said Luned, "for an ugly man would be as good as, or better than he." {31} "I declare to heaven," said the Countess, "that were it not repugnant to me to cause to be put to death one whom I have brought up, I would have thee executed, for making such a comparison to me. As it is, I will banish thee." "I am glad," said Luned, "that thou hast no other cause to do so, than that I would have been of service to thee when thou didst not know what was to thine advantage. And henceforth evil betide whichever of us shall make the first advance towards reconciliation to the other; whether I should seek an invitation from thee, or thou of thine own accord shouldest seek to invite me." With that Luned went forth; and the Countess arose and followed her to the door of the chamber, and began coughing loudly. And when Luned looked back, the Countess beckoned to her; and she returned to the Countess. "In truth," said the Countess, "evil is thy disposition; but if thou knowest what is to my advantage, declare it to me." "I will do so," quoth she. "Thou knowest that except by warfare and arms it is impossible for thee to preserve thy possessions; delay not, therefore, to seek some one who can defend them." "And how can I do that?" said the Countess. "I will tell thee," said Luned, "unless thou canst defend the fountain, thou canst not maintain thy dominions; and no one can defend the fountain, except it be a knight of Arthur's household; and I will go to Arthur's court, and ill betide me, if I return thence without a warrior who can guard the fountain, as well as, or even better than, he who defended it formerly." "That will be hard to perform," said the Countess. "Go, however, and make proof of that which thou hast promised." Luned set out, under the pretence of going to Arthur's court; but she went back to the chamber where she had left Owain; and she tarried there with him as long as it might have taken her to have travelled to the Court of King Arthur. And at the end of that time, she apparelled herself, and went to visit the Countess. And the Countess was much rejoiced when she saw her, and enquired what news she brought from the Court. "I bring thee the best of news," said Luned, "for I have compassed the object of my mission. When wilt thou, that I should present to thee the chieftain who has come with me hither?" "Bring him here to visit me to-morrow, at mid-day," said the Countess, "and I will cause the town to be assembled by that time." And Luned returned home. And the next day, at noon, Owain arrayed himself in a coat, and a surcoat, and a mantle of yellow satin, upon which was a broad band of gold lace; and on his feet were high shoes of variegated leather, which were fastened by golden clasps, in the form of lions. And they proceeded to the chamber of the Countess. Right glad was the Countess of their coming. And she gazed steadfastly upon Owain, and said, "Luned, this knight has not the look of a traveller." "What harm is there in that, Lady?" said Luned. "I am certain," said the Countess, "that no other man than this, chased the soul from the body of my lord." "So much the better for thee, Lady," said Luned, "for had he not been stronger than thy lord, he could not have deprived him of life. There is no remedy for that which is past, be it as it may." "Go back to thine abode," said the Countess, "and I will take counsel." The next day, the Countess caused all her subjects to assemble, and shewed them that her Earldom was left defenceless, and that it could not be protected but with horse and arms, and military skill. "Therefore," said she, "this is what I offer for your choice: either let one of you take me, or give your consent for me to take a husband from elsewhere, to defend my dominions." So they came to the determination, that it was better that she should have permission to marry some one from elsewhere; and thereupon she sent for the Bishops and Archbishops, to celebrate her nuptials with Owain. And the men of the Earldom did Owain homage. And Owain defended the Fountain with lance and sword. And this is the manner in which he defended it. Whensoever a knight came there, he overthrew him, and sold him for his full worth. And what he thus gained, he divided among his Barons, and his Knights; and no man in the whole world could be more beloved than he was by his subjects. And it was thus for the space of three years. It befell that as Gwalchmai went forth one day with King Arthur, he perceived him to be very sad and sorrowful. And Gwalchmai was much grieved to see Arthur in this state; and he questioned him, saying, "Oh my Lord! what has befallen thee?" "In sooth, Gwalchmai," said Arthur, "I am grieved concerning Owain, whom I have lost these three years; and I shall certainly die, if the fourth year passes without my seeing him. Now I am sure, that it is through the tale which Kynon the son of Clydno related, that I have lost Owain." "There is no need for thee," said Gwalchmai, "to summon to arms thy whole dominions, on that account; for thou thyself, and the men of thy household, will be able to avenge Owain, if he be slain; or to set him free, if he be in prison; and if alive, to bring him back with thee." And it was settled, according to what Gwalchmai had said. Then Arthur and the men of his household prepared to go and seek Owain; and their number was three thousand, beside their attendants. And Kynon the son of Clydno acted as their guide. And Arthur came to the Castle, where Kynon had been before. And when he came there the youths were shooting in the same place, and the yellow man was standing hard by. When the yellow man saw Arthur, he greeted him, and invited him to the Castle. And Arthur accepted his invitation, and they entered the Castle together. And great as was the number of his retinue, their presence was scarcely observed in the Castle, so vast was its extent. And the maidens rose up to wait on them. And the service of the maidens appeared to them all to excel any attendance they had ever met with; and even the pages who had charge of the horses, were no worse served, that night, than Arthur himself would have been, in his own Palace. The next morning, Arthur set out thence, with Kynon for his guide, and came to the place where the black man was. And the stature of the black man was more surprising to Arthur, than it had been represented to him. And they came to the top of the wooded steep, and traversed the valley, till they reached the green tree; where they saw the fountain, and the bowl and the slab. And upon that, Kai came to Arthur, and spoke to him. "My Lord," said he, "I know the meaning of all this, and my request is, that thou wilt permit me to throw the water on the slab, and to receive the first advantage that may befall." And Arthur gave him leave. Then Kai threw a bowlful of water upon the slab, and immediately there came the thunder, and after the thunder the shower. And such a thunderstorm they had never known before. And many of the attendants who were in Arthur's train were killed by the shower. After the shower had ceased, the sky became clear. And on looking at the tree, they beheld it completely leafless. Then the birds descended upon the tree. And the song of the birds was far sweeter than any strain they had ever heard before. Then they beheld a Knight, on a coal-black horse, clothed in black satin, coming rapidly towards them. And Kai met him and encountered him, and it was not long before Kai was overthrown. And the Knight withdrew. {36} And Arthur and his host encamped for the night. And when they arose in the morning, they perceived the signal of combat upon the lance of the Knight; and Kai came to Arthur, and spoke to him. "My Lord," said he, "though I was overthrown yesterday, if it seem good to thee, I would gladly meet the Knight again to-day." "Thou mayst do so," said Arthur. And Kai went towards the Knight. And on the spot he overthrew Kai, {37a} and struck him with the head of his lance in the forehead, so that it broke his helmet and the headpiece, and pierced the skin, and the flesh, the breadth of the spearhead, even to the bone. And Kai returned to his companions. After this, all the household of Arthur went forth, one after the other, to combat the Knight, until there was not one that was not overthrown by him, except Arthur and Gwalchmai. And Arthur armed himself to encounter the Knight. "Oh, my lord," said Gwalchmai, "permit me to fight with him first." And Arthur permitted him. And he went forth to meet the Knight, having over himself and his horse, a satin robe of honour which had been sent him by the daughter of the Earl of Rhangyw, and in this dress he was not known by any of the host. And they charged each other, and fought all that day until the evening. And neither of them was able to unhorse the other. The next day they fought with strong lances; and neither of them could obtain the mastery. And the third day they fought with exceeding strong lances. And they were increased with rage, and fought furiously, even until noon. And they gave each other such a shock, that the girths of their horses were broken, so that they fell over their horses' cruppers to the ground. And they rose up speedily, and drew their swords, and resumed the combat. {37b} And the multitude that witnessed the encounter felt assured that they had never before seen two men so valiant, or so powerful. And had it been midnight, it would have been light from the fire that flashed from their weapons. And the Knight gave Gwalchmai a blow that turned his helmet from off his face, so that the Knight knew that it was Gwalchmai. Then Owain said, "My lord Gwalchmai, I did not know thee for my cousin, owing to the robe of honour, that enveloped thee; take my sword and my arms." Said Gwalchmai, "Thou, Owain, art the victor; take thou my sword." And with that Arthur saw that they were conversing, and advanced towards them. "My lord Arthur," said Gwalchmai, "here is Owain, who has vanquished me, and will not take my arms." "My lord," said Owain, "it is he that has vanquished me, and he will not take my sword." "Give me your swords," said Arthur, "and then neither of you has vanquished the other." Then Owain put his arms around Arthur's neck, and they embraced. And all the host hurried forward to see Owain, and to embrace him. And there was nigh being a loss of life, so great was the press. And they retired that night, and the next day Arthur prepared to depart. "My lord," said Owain, "this is not well of thee. For I have been absent from thee these three years, {38} and during all that time, up to this very day, I have been preparing a banquet for thee, knowing that thou wouldest come to seek me. Tarry with me therefore, until thou and thy attendants have recovered the fatigues of the journey, and have been anointed." And they all proceeded to the Castle of the Countess of the Fountain, and the banquet which had been three years preparing was consumed in three months. Never had they a more delicious or agreeable banquet. And Arthur prepared to depart. Then he sent an embassy to the Countess, to beseech her to permit Owain to go with him, for the space of three months, that he might shew him to the nobles, and the fair dames of the Island of Britain. And the Countess gave her consent, although it was very painful to her. So Owain came with Arthur to the Island of Britain. And when he was once more amongst his kindred and friends, he remained three years, instead of three months, with them. * * * * * And as Owain one day sat at meat, in the City of Caerlleon upon Usk, behold a damsel entered, upon a bay horse, with a curling mane, and covered with foam; and the bridle, and as much as was seen of the saddle, were of gold. And the damsel was arrayed in a dress of yellow satin. And she went up to Owain, and took the ring from off his hand. "Thus," said she, "shall be treated the deceiver, the traitor, the faithless, the disgraced, and the beardless." {39} And she turned her horse's head, and departed. Then his adventure came to Owain's remembrance, and he was sorrowful. And having finished eating, he went to his own abode, and made preparations that night. And the next day he arose, but did not go to the Court, but wandered to the distant parts of the earth, and to uncultivated mountains. And he remained there until all his apparel was worn out, and his body was wasted away, and his hair was grown long. And he went about with the wild beasts, and fed with them, until they became familiar with him. But at length he grew so weak, that he could no longer bear them company. Then he descended from the mountains to the valley, and came to a park, that was the fairest in the world, and belonged to a widowed Countess. One day the Countess and her maidens went forth to walk by a lake, that was in the middle of the park. And they saw the form of a man. And they were terrified. Nevertheless they went near him, and touched him, and looked at him. And they saw that there was life in him, though he was exhausted by the heat of the sun. And the Countess returned to the Castle, and took a flask full of precious ointment, and gave it to one of her maidens. "Go with this," said she, "and take with thee yonder horse, and clothing, and place them near the man we saw just now. And anoint him with this balsam, near his heart; and if there is life in him, he will arise, through the efficacy of this balsam. Then watch what he will do." And the maiden departed from her, and poured the whole of the balsam upon Owain, and left the horse and the garments hard by, and went a little way off, and hid herself, to watch him. In a short time she saw him begin to move his arms; and he arose up, and looked at his person, and became ashamed of the unseemliness of his appearance. Then he perceived the horse and the garments, that were near him. And he crept forward till he was able to draw the garments to him from off the saddle. And he clothed himself, and with difficulty mounted the horse. Then the damsel discovered herself to him, and saluted him. And he was rejoiced when he saw her, and enquired of her, what land and what territory that was. "Truly," said the maiden, "a widowed Countess owns yonder Castle; at the death of her husband, he left her two Earldoms, but at this day she has but this one dwelling that has not been wrested from her, by a young Earl, who is her neighbour, because she refused to become his wife." "That is pity," said Owain. And he and the maiden proceeded to the Castle; and he alighted there, and the maiden conducted him to a pleasant chamber, and kindled a fire, and left him. And the maiden came to the Countess, and gave the flask into her hand. "Ha! maiden," said the Countess, "where is all the balsam?" "Have I not used it all?" said she. "Oh, maiden," said the Countess, "I cannot easily forgive thee this; it is sad for me to have wasted seven-score pounds' worth of precious ointment, upon a stranger whom I know not. However, maiden, wait thou upon him, until he is quite recovered." And the maiden did so, and furnished him with meat and drink, and fire, and lodging, and medicaments, until he was well again. And in three months he was restored to his former guise, and became even more comely, than he had ever been before. One day Owain heard a great tumult, and a sound of arms in the Castle, and he enquired of the maiden the cause thereof. "The Earl," said she, "whom I mentioned to thee, has come before the Castle, with a numerous army, to subdue the Countess." And Owain enquired of her whether the Countess had a horse and arms, in her possession. "She has the best in the world," said the maiden. "Wilt thou go and request the loan of a horse and arms for me," said Owain, "that I may go and look at this army?" "I will," said the maiden. And she came to the Countess, and told her what Owain had said. And the Countess laughed. "Truly," said she, "I will even give him a horse and arms, for ever; such a horse and such arms, had he never yet, and I am glad that they should be taken by him to-day, lest my enemies should have them against my will to-morrow. Yet I know not what he would do with them." The Countess bade them bring out a beautiful black steed, upon which was a beechen saddle, and a suit of armour, for man and horse. And Owain armed himself, and mounted the horse, and went forth, attended by two pages completely equipped, with horses and arms. And when they came near to the Earl's army, they could see neither its extent, nor its extremity. And Owain asked the pages in which troop the Earl was. "In yonder troop," said they, "in which are four yellow standards. Two of them are before, and two behind him." "Now," said Owain, "do you return and await me near the portal of the Castle." So they returned, and Owain pressed forward, until he met the Earl. And Owain drew him completely out of his saddle, and turned his horse's head towards the Castle, and, though it was with difficulty, he brought the Earl to the portal, where the pages awaited him. And in they came. And Owain presented the Earl as a gift to the Countess. And said to her, "Behold a requittal to thee for thy blessed balsam." The army encamped around the Castle. And the Earl restored to the Countess the two Earldoms, he had taken from her, as a ransom for his life; and for his freedom, he gave her the half of his own dominions, and all his gold, and his silver, and his jewels, besides hostages. And Owain took his departure. And the Countess and all her subjects besought him to remain, but Owain chose rather to wander through distant lands and deserts. And as he journeyed, he heard a loud yelling in a wood. And it was repeated a second and a third time. And Owain went towards the spot, and behold a huge craggy mound, in the middle of the wood; on the side of which was a grey rock. And there was a cleft in the rock, and a serpent was within the cleft. And near the rock, stood a black lion, and every time the lion sought to go thence, the serpent darted towards him to attack him. And Owain unsheathed his sword, and drew near to the rock; and as the serpent sprung out, he struck him with his sword, and cut him in two. And he dried his sword, and went on his way, as before. But behold the lion followed him, and played about him, as though it had been a greyhound, that he had reared. They proceeded thus throughout the day, until the evening. And when it was time for Owain to take his rest, he dismounted, and turned his horse loose in a flat and wooded meadow. And he struck fire, and when the fire was kindled, the lion brought him fuel enough to last for three nights. And the lion disappeared. And presently the lion returned, bearing a fine large roebuck. And he threw it down before Owain, who went towards the fire with it. And Owain took the roebuck, and skinned it, and placed collops of its flesh upon skewers, around the fire. The rest of the buck he gave to the lion to devour. While he was doing this, he heard a deep sigh near him, and a second, and a third. And Owain called out to know whether the sigh he heard proceeded from a mortal; and he received answer, that it did. "Who art thou?" said Owain. "Truly," said the voice, "I am Luned, the hand-maiden of the Countess of the Fountain." "And what dost thou here?" said Owain. "I am imprisoned," said she, "on account of the knight who came from Arthur's Court, and married the Countess. And he staid a short time with her, but he afterwards departed for the Court of Arthur, and he has not returned since. And he was the friend I loved best in the world. And two of the pages of the Countess's chamber, traduced him, and called him a deceiver. And I told them that they two were not a match for him alone. So they imprisoned me in the stone vault, and said that I should be put to death, unless he came himself, to deliver me, by a certain day; and that is no further off, than the day after to-morrow. And I have no one to send to seek him for me. And his name is Owain the son of Urien." "And art thou certain, that if that knight knew all this, he would come to thy rescue?" "I am most certain of it," said she. When the collops were cooked, Owain divided them into two parts, between himself and the maiden; and after they had eaten, they talked together until the day dawned. And the next morning Owain enquired of the damsel, if there was any place where he could get food and entertainment for that night. "There is, lord," said she; "cross over yonder, and go along the side of the river, and in a short time, thou wilt see a great Castle, in which are many towers. And the Earl who owns that Castle, is the most hospitable man in the world. There thou mayest spend the night." Never did sentinel keep stricter watch over his lord, than the lion that night over Owain. And Owain accoutred his horse, and passed across by the ford, and came in the sight of the Castle. And he entered it, and was honourably received. And his horse was well cared for, and plenty of fodder was placed before him. Then the lion went and laid down in the horse's manger; so that none of the people of the Castle dared to approach him. The treatment which Owain met with there, was such as he had never known elsewhere, for every one was as sorrowful, as though death had been upon him. {45} And they went to meat. And the Earl sat upon one side of Owain; and on the other side his only daughter. And Owain had never seen any more lovely than she. Then the lion came and placed himself between Owain's feet, and he fed him with every kind of food, that he took himself. And he never saw any thing equal to the sadness of the people. In the middle of the repast, the Earl began to bid Owain welcome. "Then," said Owain, "behold it is time for thee to be cheerful." "Heaven knows," said the Earl, "that it is not thy coming that makes us sorrowful, but we have cause enough for sadness and care." "What is that?" said Owain. "I have two sons," replied the Earl, "and yesterday they went to the mountains to hunt. Now there is on the mountain a monster, who kills men and devours them. And he seized my sons. And to-morrow is the time he has fixed to be here, and he threatens that he will then slay my sons before my eyes, unless I will deliver into his hands this my daughter. {46a} He has the form of a man, but in stature he is no less than a giant." "Truly," said Owain, "that is lamentable. And which wilt thou do?" "Heaven knows," said the Earl, "it will be better that my sons should be slain, against my will, than I should voluntarily give up my daughter to him to ill-treat and destroy." Then they talked about other things, and Owain staid there that night. The next morning, they heard an exceeding great clamour, which was caused by the coming of the giant, with the two youths. And the Earl was anxious both to protect his Castle, and to release his two sons. {46b} Then Owain put on his armour, and went forth to encounter the giant; and the lion followed him. And when the giant saw that Owain was armed, he rushed towards him, and attacked him. And the lion fought with the giant, much more fiercely than Owain did. "Truly," said the giant, "I should find no difficulty in fighting with thee, were it not for the animal that is with thee." Upon that Owain took the lion back to the Castle, and shut the gate upon him. And then he returned to fight the giant, as before. And the lion roared very loud, for he heard that it went hard with Owain. And he climbed up, till he reached the top of the Earl's Hall; and thence he got to the top of the Castle, and he sprang down from the walls, and went and joined Owain. And the lion gave the giant a stroke with his paw, which tore him from his shoulder to his hip, and his heart was laid bare. And the giant fell down dead. Then Owain restored the two youths to their father. The Earl besought Owain to remain with him, and he would not, but set forward towards the meadow, where Luned was. And when he came there, he saw a great fire kindled, and two youths with beautiful curling auburn hair, were leading the maiden to cast her into the fire. And Owain asked them what charge they had against her. And they told him of the compact {47} that was between them; as the maiden had done the night before. "And," said they, "Owain has failed her, therefore we are taking her to be burnt." "Truly," said Owain, "he is a good knight, and if he knew that the maiden was in such peril, I marvel that he came not to her rescue. But if you will accept me in his stead, I will do battle with you." "We will," said the youths, "by him who made us." And they attacked Owain, and he was hard beset by them. And with that the lion came to Owain's assistance; and they two got the better of the young men. And they said to him, "Chieftain, it was not agreed that we should fight, save with thyself alone, and it is harder for us to contend with yonder animal, than with thee." And Owain put the lion in the place where the maiden had been imprisoned, and blocked up the door with stones. And he went to fight with the young men as before. But Owain had not his usual strength, {48} and the two youths pressed hard upon him. And the lion roared incessantly at seeing Owain in trouble. And he burst through the wall, until he found a way out, and rushed upon the young men, and instantly slew them. So Luned was saved from being burned. Then Owain returned with Luned, to the dominions of the Countess of the Fountain. And when he went thence, he took the Countess with him to Arthur's Court, and she was his wife as long as she lived. And they took the road that led to the Court of the savage black man. And Owain fought with him, and the lion did not quit Owain, until he had vanquished him. And when he reached the Court of the savage black man, he entered the hall: and beheld four and twenty ladies, the fairest that could be seen. And the garments which they had on, were not worth four and twenty pence. And they were as sorrowful as death. And Owain asked them the cause of their sadness. And they said, "We are the daughters of Earls, and we all came here, with our husbands, whom we dearly loved. And we were received with honour and rejoicing. And we were thrown into a state of stupor, and while we were thus, the demon who owns this Castle, slew all our husbands, and took from us our horses, and our raiment, and our gold, and our silver. And the corpses of our husbands are still in this house, and many others with them. And this, Chieftain, is the cause of our grief, and we are sorry that thou art come hither, lest harm should befall thee." And Owain was grieved, when he heard this. And he went forth from the Castle, and he beheld a Knight approaching him, who saluted him, in a friendly and cheerful manner, as if he had been a brother. And this was the savage black man. "In very sooth," said Owain, "it is not to seek thy friendship that I am here." "In sooth," said he, "thou shalt not find it then." And with that they charged each other, and fought furiously. And Owain overcame him, and bound his hands behind his back. Then the black savage besought Owain to spare his life, and spoke thus, "My lord Owain," said he, "it was foretold, that thou shouldst come hither and vanquish me, and thou hast done so. I was a robber here, and my house was a house of spoil. But grant me my life, and I will become the keeper of an Hospice, and I will maintain this house as an Hospice for weak and for strong, as long as I live, for the good of thy soul." And Owain accepted the proposal of him, and remained there that night. And the next day he took the four and twenty ladies, and their horses, and their raiment, and what they possessed of goods, and jewels, and proceeded with them to Arthur's Court. And if Arthur was rejoiced when he saw him, after he had lost him the first time, his joy was now much greater. And of those ladies, such as wished to remain in Arthur's Court, remained there; and such as wished to depart, departed. And thenceforward Owain dwelt at Arthur's Court, greatly beloved as the head of his household, until he went away with his followers; and those were the army of three hundred ravens which Kenverchyn had left him. And wherever Owain went with these, he was victorious. And this is the tale of THE LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN. PEREDUR THE SON OF EVRAWC. Earl Evrawc owned the Earldom of the North. And he had seven sons. And Evrawc maintained himself not so much by his own possessions as by attending tournaments, and wars, and combats. And, as it often befalls those who join in encounters and wars, he was slain, and six of his sons likewise. Now the name of his seventh son was Peredur, and he was the youngest of them. And he was not of an age to go to wars and encounters, otherwise he might have been slain as his father and brothers. His mother was a scheming and thoughtful woman, and she was very solicitous concerning this her only son and his {52} possessions. So she took counsel with herself to leave the inhabited country, and to flee to the deserts and unfrequented wildernesses. And she permitted none to bear her company thither but women and boys, and spiritless men, who were both unaccustomed and unequal to war and fighting. And none dared to bring either horses or arms where her son was, lest he should set his mind upon them. And the youth went daily to divert himself in the forest, by flinging sticks and staves. And one day he saw his mother's flock of goats, and near the goats two hinds were standing. And he marvelled greatly that these two should be without horns, while the others had them. And he thought they had long run wild and on that account they had lost their horns. And by activity and swiftness of foot, he drove the hinds and the goats together into the house which there was for the goats at the extremity of the forest. Then Peredur returned to his mother. "Ah, mother," said he, "a marvellous thing have I seen in the wood; two of thy goats have run wild, and lost their horns; through their having been so long missing in the wood. And no man had ever more trouble than I had to drive them in." Then they all arose and went to see. And when they beheld the hinds, they were greatly astonished. And one day they saw three knights coming along the horse-road on the borders of the forest. And the three knights were Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar, and Geneir Gwystyl, and Owain the son of Urien. And Owain kept on the track of the knight who had divided the apples in Arthur's Court, whom they were in pursuit of. "Mother," said Peredur, "what are those yonder?" "They are angels, my son," said she. "By my faith," said Peredur, "I will go and become an angel with them." And Peredur went to the road, and met them. "Tell me, good soul," said Owain, "sawest thou a knight pass this way, either to-day or yesterday?" "I know not," answered he, "what a knight is." "Such an one as I am," said Owain. "If thou wilt tell me what I ask thee, I will tell thee that which thou askest me." "Gladly will I do so," replied Owain. "What is this?" demanded Peredur, concerning the saddle. "It is a saddle," said Owain. Then he asked about all the accoutrements which he saw upon the men, and the horses, and the arms, and what they were for, and how they were used. And Owain shewed him all these things fully, and told him what use was made of them. "Go forward," said Peredur, "for I saw such an one as thou enquirest for, and I will follow thee." Then Peredur returned to his mother and her company, and he said to her, "Mother, those were not angels, but honourable knights." Then his mother swooned away. And Peredur went to the place where they kept the horses that carried firewood, and that brought meat and drink from the inhabited country to the desert. And he took a bony piebald horse, which seemed to him the strongest of them. And he pressed a pack into the form of a saddle, and with twisted twigs he imitated the trappings which he had seen upon the horses. And when Peredur came again to his mother, the Countess had recovered from her swoon. "My son," said she, "desirest thou to ride forth?" "Yes, with thy leave," said he. "Wait then, that I may counsel thee before thou goest." "Willingly," he answered, "speak quickly." "Go forward," then she said, "to the Court of Arthur, where there are the best, and the boldest, and the most bountiful of men. And wherever thou seest a church, repeat there thy Paternoster unto it. And if thou see meat and drink, and hast need of them, and none have the kindness or the courtesy to give them to thee, take them thyself. If thou hear an outcry, proceed towards it, especially if it be the outcry of a woman. If thou see a fair jewel, possess thyself of it, and give it to another, for thus thou shalt obtain praise. If thou see a fair woman, pay thy court to her, whether she will or no; for thus thou wilt render thyself a better and more esteemed man than thou wast before." After this discourse, Peredur mounted the horse, and taking a handful of sharp pointed forks in his hand, he rode forth. And he journeyed two days and two nights in the woody wildernesses, and in desert places, without food and without drink. And then he came to a vast wild wood, and far within the wood he saw a fair even glade, and in the glade he saw a tent, and seeming to him to be a church, he repeated his Paternoster to the tent. And he went towards it, and the door of the tent was open. And a golden chair was near the door. And on the chair sat a lovely auburn- haired maiden, with a golden frontlet on her forehead, and sparkling stones in the frontlet, and with a large gold ring on her hand. And Peredur dismounted, and entered the tent. And the maiden was glad at his coming, and bade him welcome. At the entrance of the tent he saw food, and two flasks full of wine, and two loaves of fine wheaten flour, and collops of the flesh of the wild boar. "My mother told me," said Peredur, "wheresoever I saw meat and drink, to take it." "Take the meat and welcome, chieftain," said she. So Peredur took half of the meat and of the liquor himself, and left the rest to the maiden. And when Peredur had finished eating, he bent upon his knee before the maiden. "My mother," said he, "told me, wheresoever I saw a fair jewel, to take it." "Do so, my soul," said she. So Peredur took the ring. And he mounted his horse, and proceeded on his journey. After this, behold the knight came, to whom the tent belonged; and he was the Lord of the Glade. And he saw the track of the horse, and he said to the maiden, "Tell me who has been here since I departed." "A man," said she, "of wonderful demeanour." And she described to him what Peredur's appearance and conduct had been. "Tell me," said he, "did he offer thee any wrong?" "No," answered the maiden, "by my faith, he harmed me not." "By my faith, I do not believe thee; and until I can meet with him, and revenge the insult he has done me, and wreak my vengeance upon him, thou shalt not remain two nights in the same house." And the knight arose, and set forth to seek Peredur. Meanwhile Peredur journeyed on towards Arthur's Court. And before he reached it, another knight had been there, who gave a ring of thick gold at the door of the gate for holding his horse, and went into the Hall where Arthur and his household, and Gwenhwyvar and her maidens, were assembled. And the page of the chamber was serving Gwenhwyvar with a golden goblet. Then the knight dashed the liquor that was therein upon her face, and upon her stomacher, and gave her a violent blow on the face, and said, "If any have the boldness to dispute this goblet with me, and to avenge the insult to Gwenhwyvar, let him follow me to the meadow, and there I will await him." So the knight took his horse, and rode to the meadow. And all the household hung down their heads, lest any of them should be requested to go and avenge the insult to Gwenhwyvar. For it seemed to them, that no one would have ventured on so daring an outrage, unless he possessed such powers, through magic or charms, that none could be able to take vengeance upon him. Then, behold Peredur entered the Hall, upon the bony piebald horse, with the uncouth trappings upon it; and in this way he traversed the whole length of the Hall. {56} In the centre of the Hall stood Kai. "Tell me, tall man," said Peredur, "is that Arthur, yonder?" "What wouldest thou with Arthur?" asked Kai. "My mother told me to go to Arthur, and receive the honour of knighthood." "By my faith," said he, "thou art all too meanly equipped with horse and with arms." Thereupon he was perceived by all the household, and they threw sticks at him. Then, behold, a dwarf came forward. He had already been a year at Arthur's Court, both he and a female dwarf. They had craved harbourage of Arthur, and had obtained it; and during the whole year, neither of them had spoken a single word to any one. When the dwarf beheld Peredur, "Ha ha!" said he, "the welcome of Heaven be unto thee, goodly Peredur, son of Evrawc, the chief of warriors, and flower of knighthood." "Truly," said Kai, "thou art ill- taught to remain a year mute at Arthur's Court, with choice of society; and now, before the face of Arthur and all his household, to call out, and declare such a man as this the chief of warriors, and the flower of knighthood." And he gave him such a box on the ear, that he fell senseless to the ground. Then exclaimed the female dwarf, "Ha ha! goodly Peredur, son of Evrawc; the welcome of Heaven be unto thee, flower of knights, and light of chivalry." "Of a truth, maiden," said Kai, "thou art ill-bred to remain mute for a year at the Court of Arthur and then to speak as thou dost of such a man as this." And Kai kicked her with his foot, so that she fell to the ground senseless. "Tall man," said Peredur, "show me which is Arthur." "Hold thy peace," said Kai, "and go after the knight who went hence to the meadow, and take from him the goblet, and overthrow him, and possess thyself of his horse and arms, and then thou shalt receive the order of knighthood." "I will do so, tall man," said Peredur. So he turned his horse's head towards the meadow. And when he came there, the knight was riding up and down, proud of his strength, and valour, and noble mien. "Tell me," said the knight, "didst thou see any one coming after me from the Court?" "The tall man that was there," said he, "desired me to come, and overthrow thee, and to take from thee the goblet, and thy horse and thy armour for myself." "Silence," said the knight; "go back to the Court, and tell Arthur, from me, either to come himself, or to send some other to fight with me; and unless he do so quickly, I will not wait for him." "By my faith," said Peredur, "choose thou whether it shall be willingly or unwillingly, but I will have the horse, and the arms, and the goblet." And upon this the knight ran at him furiously, and struck him a violent blow {58} with the shaft of his spear, between the neck and the shoulder. "Ha ha! lad," said Peredur, "my mother's servants were not used to play with me in this wise; therefore, thus will I play with thee." And thereupon he struck him with a sharp pointed fork, and it hit him in the eye, and came out at the back of his neck, so that he instantly fell down lifeless. "Verily," said Owain the son of Urien to Kai, "thou wert ill advised, when thou didst send that madman after the knight, for one of two things must befall him. He must either be overthrown, or slain. If he is overthrown by the knight, he will be counted by him to be an honourable person of the Court, and an eternal disgrace will it be to Arthur and his warriors. And if he is slain, the disgrace will be the same, and moreover, his sin will be upon him; therefore will I go to see what has befallen him." So Owain went to the meadow, and he found Peredur dragging the man about. "What art thou doing thus?" said Owain. "This iron coat," said Peredur, "will never come from off him; not by my efforts, at any rate." {59a} And Owain unfastened his armour and his clothes. "Here, my good soul," said he, "is a horse and armour better than thine. Take them joyfully, and come with me to Arthur, to receive the order of knighthood, for thou dost merit it." "May I never shew my face again, if I go," said Peredur, "but take thou the goblet to Gwenhwyvar, and tell Arthur, that wherever I am, I will be his vassal, and will do him what profit and service I am able. And say that I will not come to his Court, until I have encountered the tall man that is there, to avenge the injury he did to the dwarf and dwarfess." And Owain went back to the Court, and related all these things to Arthur and Gwenhwyvar, and to all the household. {59b} And Peredur rode forward. And as he proceeded, behold a knight met him. "Whence comest thou?" said the knight. "I come from Arthur's Court," said Peredur. "Art thou one of his men?" asked he. "Yes, by my faith," he answered. "A good service, truly, is that of Arthur." "Wherefore sayest thou so?" said Peredur. "I will tell thee," said he, "I have always been Arthur's enemy, and all such of his men as I have ever encountered, I have slain." And without further parlance, they fought, and it was not long before Peredur brought him to the ground, over his horse's crupper. Then the knight besought his mercy. "Mercy thou shalt have," said Peredur, "if thou wilt make oath to me, that thou wilt go to Arthur's Court, and tell him that it was I that overthrew thee, for the honour of his service; and say that I will never come to the Court, until I have avenged the insult offered to the dwarf and dwarfess." The knight pledged him his faith of this, and proceeded to the Court of Arthur, and said as he had promised, and conveyed the threat to Kai. And Peredur rode forward. And within that week he encountered sixteen knights, and overthrew them all shamefully. And they all went to Arthur's Court, taking with them the same message which the first knight had conveyed from Peredur, and the same threat which he had sent to Kai. And thereupon Kai was reproved by Arthur; and Kai was greatly grieved thereat. And Peredur rode forward. And he came to a vast and desert wood, on the confines of which was a lake. And on the other side was a fair castle. And on the border of the lake he saw a venerable hoary-headed man sitting upon a velvet cushion, and having a garment of velvet upon him. And his attendants were fishing in the lake. When the hoary-headed man beheld Peredur approaching, he arose, and went towards the castle. And the old man was lame. Peredur rode to the palace, and the door was open, and he entered the hall. And there was the hoary-headed man sitting on a cushion, and a large blazing fire burning before him. And the household and the company arose to meet Peredur, and disarrayed him. And the man asked the youth to sit on the cushion; and they sat down, and conversed together. When it was time, the tables were laid, and they went to meat. And when they had finished their meal, the man enquired of Peredur, if he knew well how to fight with the sword. "I know not," said Peredur, "but were I to be taught, doubtless I should." "Whoever can play well with the cudgel and shield, will also be able to fight with a sword." And the man had two sons; the one had yellow hair, and the other auburn. "Arise, youth," said he, "and play with the cudgel and the shield." And so did they. "Tell me, my soul," said the man, "which of the youths thinkest thou plays best?" "I think," said Peredur, "that the yellow-haired youth could draw blood from the other, if he chose." "Arise thou, my life, and take the cudgel and the shield from the hand of the youth with the auburn hair, and draw blood from the yellow-haired youth, if thou canst." So Peredur arose, and went to play with the yellow-haired youth; and he lifted up his arm, and struck him such a mighty blow, that his brow fell over his eye, and the blood flowed forth. "Ah, my life," said the man, "come now, and sit down, for thou wilt become the best fighter with the sword of any in this island; and I am thy uncle, thy mother's brother. And with me shalt thou remain a space, in order to learn the manners and customs of different countries, and courtesy, and gentleness, and noble bearing. Leave, then, the habits and the discourse of thy mother, and I will be thy teacher; and I will raise thee to the rank of knight from this time forward. And thus do thou. If thou seest aught to cause thee wonder, ask not the meaning of it; if no one has the courtesy to inform thee, the reproach will not fall upon thee, but upon me that am thy teacher." And they had abundance of honour and service. And when it was time, they went to sleep. At the break of day, Peredur arose, and took his horse, and with his uncle's permission, he rode forth. And he came to a vast desert wood, and at the further end of the wood was a meadow, and on the other side of the meadow he saw a large castle. And thitherward Peredur bent his way, and he found the gate open, and he proceeded to the hall. And he beheld a stately hoary-headed man sitting on one side of the hall, and many pages around him, who arose to receive and to honour Peredur. And they placed him by the side of the owner of the palace. Then they discoursed together; and when it was time to eat, they caused Peredur to sit beside the nobleman during the repast. And when they had eaten and drank as much as they desired, the nobleman asked Peredur, whether he could fight with a sword? "Were I to receive instruction," said Peredur, "I think I could." Now, there was on the floor of the hall a huge staple, as large as a warrior could grasp. "Take yonder sword," said the man to Peredur, "and strike the iron staple." So Peredur arose, and struck the staple, so that he cut it in two; and the sword broke into two parts also. "Place the two parts together, and reunite them," and Peredur placed them together, and they became entire as they were before. And a second time he struck upon the staple, so that both it and the sword broke in two, and as before they reunited. And the third time he gave a like blow, and placed the broken parts together, and neither the staple nor the sword would unite, as before. "Youth," said the nobleman, "come now, and sit down, and my blessing be upon thee. Thou fightest best with the sword of any man in the kingdom. Thou hast arrived at two-thirds of thy strength, and the other third thou hast not yet obtained; and when thou attainest to thy full power, none will be able to contend with thee. I am thy uncle, thy mother's brother, and I am brother {62} to the man in whose house thou wast last night." Then Peredur and his uncle discoursed together, and he beheld two youths enter the hall, and proceed up to the chamber, bearing a spear of mighty size, with three streams of blood flowing from the point to the ground. And when all the company saw this, they began wailing and lamenting. But for all that, the man did not break off his discourse with Peredur. And as he did not tell Peredur the meaning of what he saw, he forebore to ask him concerning it. And when the clamour had a little subsided, behold two maidens entered, with a large salver between them, in which was a man's head, surrounded by a profusion of blood. And thereupon the company of the court made so great an outcry, that it was irksome to be in the same hall with them. But at length they were silent. And when time was that they should sleep, Peredur was brought into a fair chamber. And the next day, with his uncle's permission, he rode forth. And he came to a wood, and far within the wood he heard a loud cry, and he saw a beautiful woman with auburn hair, and a horse with a saddle upon it, standing near her, and a corpse by her side. And as she strove to place the corpse upon the horse, it fell to the ground, and thereupon she made a great lamentation. "Tell me, sister," said Peredur, "wherefore art thou bewailing?" "Oh! accursed Peredur, little pity has my ill fortune ever met with from thee." "Wherefore," said Peredur, "am I accursed?" "Because thou wast the cause of thy mother's death; for when thou didst ride forth against her will, anguish seized upon her heart, so that she died; and therefore art thou accursed. And the dwarf and the dwarfess that thou sawest at Arthur's Court, were the dwarfs of thy father and mother; and I am thy foster-sister, and this was my wedded husband, and he was slain by the knight that is in the glade in the wood; and do not thou go near him, lest thou shouldest be slain by him likewise." "My sister, thou dost reproach me wrongfully; through my having so long remained amongst you, I shall scarcely vanquish him; and had I continued longer it would, indeed, be difficult for me to succeed. Cease, therefore, thy lamenting, for it is of no avail, and I will bury the body, and then I will go in quest of the knight, and see if I can do vengeance upon him." And when he had buried the body, they went to the place where the knight was, and found him riding proudly along the glade; and he enquired of Peredur whence he came. "I come from Arthur's Court." "And art thou one of Arthur's men?" "Yes, by my faith." "A profitable alliance, truly, is that of Arthur." And without further parlance, they encountered one another, and immediately Peredur overthrew the knight, and he besought mercy of Peredur. "Mercy shall thou have," said he, "upon these terms, that thou take this woman in marriage, and do her all the honour and reverence in thy power, seeing thou hast, without cause, slain her wedded husband; and that thou go to Arthur's Court, and shew him that it was I that overthrew thee, to do him honour and service; and that thou tell him that I will never come to his Court again until I have met with the tall man that is there, to take vengeance upon him for his insult to the dwarf and the dwarfess." And he took the knight's assurance, that he would perform all this. Then the knight provided the lady with a horse and garments that were suitable for her, and took her with him to Arthur's Court. And he told Arthur all that had occurred, and gave the defiance to Kai. And Arthur and all his household reproved Kai, for having driven such a youth as Peredur from his Court. Said Owain the son of Urien, "This youth will never come into the Court until Kai has gone forth from it." "By my faith," said Arthur, "I will search all the deserts in the island of Britain, until I find Peredur, and then let him and his adversary do their utmost to each other." Then Peredur rode forward. And he came to a desert wood, where he saw not the track either of men or animals, and where there was nothing but bushes and weeds. And at the upper end of the wood he saw a vast castle, wherein were many strong towers; and when he came near the gate, he found the weeds taller than he had done elsewhere. And he struck the gate with the shaft of his lance, and thereupon behold a lean auburn-haired youth came to an opening in the battlements. "Choose thou, chieftain," said he. "Whether shall I open the gate unto thee, or shall I announce unto those that are chief, that thou art at the gateway?" "Say that I am here," said Peredur, "and if it is desired that I should enter, I will go in." And the youth came back, and opened the gate for Peredur. And when he went into the hall, he beheld eighteen youths, lean and red-headed, of the same height and of the same aspect, and of the same dress, and of the same age as the one who had opened the gate for him. And they were well skilled in courtesy and in service. And they disarrayed him. Then they sat down to discourse. Thereupon, behold five maidens came from the chamber into the hall. And Peredur was certain that he had never seen another of so fair an aspect as the chief of the maidens. And she had an old garment of satin upon her, which had once been handsome, but was then so tattered, that her skin could be seen through it. And whiter was her skin than the bloom of crystal, and her hair and her two eyebrows were blacker than jet, and on her cheeks were two red spots, redder than whatever is reddest. And the maiden welcomed Peredur, and put her arms about his neck, and made him sit down beside her. Not long after this he saw two nuns enter and a flask full of wine was borne by one, and six loaves of white bread by the other. "Lady," said they, "Heaven is witness, that there is not so much of food and liquor as this left in yonder Convent this night." Then they went to meat, and Peredur observed that the maiden wished to give more of the food and of the liquor to him than to any of the others. "My sister," said Peredur, "I will share out the food and the liquor." "Not so, my soul," said she. "By my faith, but I will." So Peredur took the bread, and he gave an equal portion of it to each alike, as well as a cup full of the liquor. And when it was time for them to sleep, a chamber was prepared for Peredur, and he went to rest. "Behold, sister," said the youths to the fairest and most exalted of the maidens, "we have counsel for thee." "What may it be?" she enquired. "Go to the youth that is in the upper chamber, and offer to become his wife, or the lady of his love, if it seem well to him." "That were indeed unfitting," said she. "Hitherto I have not been the lady love of any knight, and to make him such an offer before I am wooed by him, that, truly, can I not do." "By our confession to Heaven, unless thou actest thus, we will leave thee here to thy enemies, to do as they will with thee." And through fear of this, the maiden went forth; and shedding tears, she proceeded to the chamber. And with the noise of the door opening, Peredur awoke; and the maiden was weeping and lamenting. "Tell me, my sister," said Peredur, "wherefore dost thou weep?" "I will tell thee, lord," said she, "my father possessed these dominions as their chief, and this palace was his, and with it he held the best earldom in the kingdom; then the son of another earl sought me of my father, and I was not willing to be given unto him, and my father would not give me against my will, either to him or any earl in the world. And my father had no child except myself. And after my father's death, these dominions came into my own hands, and then was I less willing to accept him than before. So he made war upon me, and conquered all my possessions except this one house. And through the valour of the men whom thou hast seen, who are my foster brothers, and the strength of the house, it can never be taken while food and drink remain. And now our provisions are exhausted; but as thou hast seen, we have been fed by the nuns, to whom the country is free. And at length they also are without supply of food or liquor. And at no later date than to-morrow, the earl will come against this place with all his forces; and if I fall into his power, my fate will be no better than to be given over to the grooms of his horses. Therefore, lord, I am come to offer to place myself in thy hands, that thou mayest succour me, either by taking me hence, or by defending me here, whichever may seem best unto thee." "Go, my sister," said he, "and sleep; nor will I depart from thee until I do that which thou requirest, or prove whether I can assist thee or not." The maiden went again to rest; and the next morning she came to Peredur, and saluted him. "Heaven prosper thee, my soul, and what tidings dost thou bring?" "None other, than that the earl and all his forces have alighted at the gate, and I never beheld any place so covered with tents, and thronged with knights challenging others to the combat." "Truly," said Peredur, "let my horse be made ready." So his horse was accoutred, and he arose, and sallied forth to the meadow. And there was a knight riding proudly along the meadow, having raised the signal for battle. And they encountered, and Peredur threw the knight over his horse's crupper to the ground. And at the close of the day, one of the chief knights came to fight with him, and he overthrew him also, so that he besought his mercy. "Who art thou?" said Peredur. "Verily," said he, "I am Master of the Household to the earl." "And how much of the Countess's possessions is there in thy power?" "The third part, verily," answered he. "Then," said Peredur, "restore to her the third of her possessions in full, and all the profit thou hast made by them, and bring meat and drink for a hundred men, with their horses and arms, to her court this night. And thou shalt remain her captive, unless she wish to take thy life." And this he did forthwith. And that night the maiden was right joyful, and they fared plenteously. And the next day Peredur rode forth to the meadow; and that day he vanquished a multitude of the host. And at the close of the day, there came a proud and stately knight, and Peredur overthrew him, and he besought his mercy. "Who art thou?" said Peredur. "I am Steward of the Palace," said he. "And how much of the maiden's possessions are under thy control?" "One third part," answered he. "Verily," said Peredur, "thou shalt fully restore to the maiden her possessions, and, moreover, thou shalt give her meat and drink for two hundred men, and their horses and their arms. And for thyself, thou shalt be her captive." And immediately it was so done. And the third day Peredur rode forth to the meadow; and he vanquished more that day than on either of the preceding. And at the close of the day, an earl came to encounter him, and he overthrew him, and he besought his mercy. "Who art thou?" said Peredur. "I am the earl," said he. "I will not conceal it from thee." "Verily," said Peredur, "thou shalt restore the whole of the maiden's earldom, and shalt give her thine own earldom in addition thereto, and meat and drink for three hundred men, and their horses and arms, and thou thyself shalt remain in her power." And thus it was fulfilled. And Peredur tarried three weeks in the country, causing tribute and obedience to be paid to the maiden, and the government to be placed in her hands. "With thy leave," said Peredur, "I will go hence." "Verily, my brother, desirest thou this?" "Yes, by my faith; and had it not been for love of thee, I should not have been here thus long." "My soul," said she, "who art thou?" "I am Peredur the son of Evrawc from the North; and if ever thou art in trouble or in danger, acquaint me therewith, and if I can, I will protect thee." So Peredur rode forth. And far thence there met him a lady, mounted on a horse that was lean, and covered with sweat; and she saluted the youth. "Whence comest thou, my sister?" Then she told him the cause of her journey. Now she was the wife of the Lord of the Glade. "Behold," said he, "I am the knight through whom thou art in trouble, and he shall repent it, who has treated thee thus." Thereupon, behold a knight rode up, and he enquired of Peredur, if he had seen a knight such as he was seeking. "Hold thy peace," said Peredur, "I am he whom thou seekest; and by my faith, thou deservest ill of thy household for thy treatment of the maiden, for she is innocent concerning me." So they encountered, and they were not long in combat ere Peredur overthrew the knight, and he besought his mercy. "Mercy thou shalt have," said Peredur, "so thou wilt return by the way thou camest, and declare that thou holdest the maiden innocent, and so that thou wilt acknowledge unto her the reverse thou hast sustained at my hands." And the knight plighted him his faith thereto. Then Peredur rode forward. And above him he beheld a castle, and thitherward he went. And he struck upon the gate with his lance, and then, behold a comely auburn-haired youth opened the gate, and he had the stature of a warrior, and the years of a boy. And when Peredur came into the hall, there was a tall and stately lady sitting in a chair, and many handmaidens around her; and the lady rejoiced at his coming. And when it was time, they went to meat. And after their repast was finished, "It were well for thee, chieftain," said she, "to go elsewhere to sleep." "Wherefore can I not sleep here?" said Peredur. "Nine sorceresses are here, my soul, of the sorceresses of Gloucester, and their father and their mother are with them; and unless we can make our escape before daybreak, we shall be slain; and already they have conquered and laid waste all the country, except this one dwelling." "Behold," said Peredur, "I will remain here to-night, and if you are in trouble, I will do you what service I can; but harm shall you not receive from me." So they went to rest. And with the break of day, Peredur heard a dreadful outcry. And he hastily arose, and went forth in his vest and his doublet, with his sword about his neck, and he saw a sorceress overtake one of the watch, who cried out violently. Peredur attacked the sorceress, and struck her upon the head with his sword, so that he flattened her helmet and her headpiece like a dish upon her head. "Thy mercy, goodly Peredur, son of Evrawc, and the mercy of Heaven." "How knowest thou, hag, that I am Peredur?" "By destiny, and the foreknowledge that I should suffer harm from thee. And thou shalt take a horse and armour of me; and with me thou shalt go to learn chivalry and the use of thy arms." Said Peredur, "Thou shalt have mercy, if thou pledge thy faith thou wilt never more injure the dominions of the Countess." And Peredur took surety of this, and with permission of the Countess, he set forth with the sorceress to the palace of the sorceresses. And there he remained for three weeks, and then he made choice of a horse and arms, and went his way. And in the evening he entered a valley, and at the head of the valley he came to a hermit's cell, and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. And Peredur stood, and compared the blackness of the raven, and whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the lady that best he loved, which was blacker than jet, and to her skin which was whiter than the snow, and to the two red spots upon her cheeks, which were redder than the blood upon the snow appeared to be. Now Arthur and his household were in search of Peredur. "Know ye," said Arthur, "who is the knight with the long spear that stands by the brook {72} up yonder?" "Lord," said one of them, "I will go and learn who he is." So the youth came to the place where Peredur was, and asked him what he did thus, and who he was. And from the intensity with which he thought upon the lady whom best he loved, he gave him no answer. Then the youth thrust at Peredur with his lance, and Peredur turned upon him, and struck him over his horse's crupper to the ground. And after this, four and twenty youths came to him, and he did not answer one more than another, but gave the same reception to all, bringing them with one single thrust to the ground. And then came Kai, and spoke to Peredur rudely and angrily; and Peredur took him with his lance under the jaw, and cast him from him with a thrust, so that he broke his arm and his shoulder blade, and he rode over him one and twenty times. And while he lay thus, stunned with the violence of the pain that he had suffered, his horse returned back at a wild and prancing pace. And when the household saw the horse come back without his rider, they rode forth in haste to the place where the encounter had been. And when they first came there, they thought that Kai was slain; but they found that if he had a skilful physician, he yet might live. And Peredur moved not from his meditation, on seeing the concourse that was around Kai. And Kai was brought to Arthur's tent, and Arthur caused skilful physicians to come to him. And Arthur was grieved that Kai had met with this reverse, for he loved him greatly. "Then," said Gwalchmai, "it is not fitting that any should disturb an honourable knight from his thought unadvisedly; for either he is pondering some damage that he has sustained, or he is thinking of the lady whom best he loves. And through such ill-advised proceeding, perchance this misadventure has befallen him who last met with him. And if it seem well to thee, lord, I will go and see if this knight has changed from his thought; and if he has, I will ask him courteously to come and visit thee." Then Kai was wrath, and he spoke angry and spiteful words. "Gwalchmai," said he, "I know that thou wilt bring him because he is fatigued. Little praise and honour, nevertheless, wilt thou have from vanquishing a weary knight, who is tired with fighting. Yet, thus hast thou gained the advantage over many. And while thy speech and thy soft words last, a coat of thin linen were armour sufficient for thee, and thou wilt not need to break either lance or sword in fighting with the knight in the state he is in." Then said Gwalchmai to Kai, "Thou mightest use more pleasant words, wert thou so minded; and it behoves thee not upon me to wreak thy wrath and thy displeasure. Methinks I shall bring the knight hither with me without breaking either my arm or my shoulder." Then said Arthur to Gwalchmai, "Thou speakest like a wise and a prudent man; go and take enough of armour about thee, and choose thy horse." And Gwalchmai accoutred himself, and rode forward hastily to the place where Peredur was. And Peredur was resting on the shaft of his spear, pondering the same thought, and Gwalchmai came to him without any signs of hostility, and said to him, "If I thought that it would be as agreeable to thee as it would be to me, I would converse with thee. I have also a message from Arthur unto thee, to pray thee to come and visit him. And two men have been before on this errand." "That is true," said Peredur, "and uncourteously they came. They attacked me, and I was annoyed thereat, for it was not pleasing to me to be drawn from the thought that I was in, for I was thinking of the lady whom best I love; and thus was she brought to my mind,--I was looking upon the snow, and upon the raven, and upon the drops of the blood of the bird that the hawk had killed upon the snow. And I bethought me that her whiteness was like that of the snow, and that the blackness of her hair and her eyebrows was like that of the raven, and that the two red spots upon her cheeks were like the two drops of blood." Said Gwalchmai, "This was not an ungentle thought, and I should marvel if it were pleasant to thee to be drawn from it." "Tell me," said Peredur, "is Kai in Arthur's Court?" "He is," said he, "and behold he is the knight that fought with thee last; and it would have been better for him had he not come, for his arm and his shoulder blade were broken with the fall which he had from thy spear." "Verily," said Peredur, "I am not sorry to have thus begun to avenge the insult to the dwarf and dwarfess." Then Gwalchmai marvelled to hear him speak of the dwarf and the dwarfess; and he approached him, and threw his arms around his neck, and asked him what was his name. "Peredur the son of Evrawc am I called," said he, "and thou? Who art thou?" "I am called Gwalchmai," he replied. "I am right glad to meet with thee," said Peredur, "for in every country where I have been, I have heard of thy fame for prowess and uprightness, and I solicit thy fellowship." "Thou shall have it, by my faith, and grant me thine," said he. "Gladly will I do so," answered Peredur. So they rode forth together joyfully towards the place where Arthur was; and when Kai saw them coming, he said, "I knew that Gwalchmai needed not to fight the knight. And it is no wonder that he should gain fame; more can he do by his fair words, than I by the strength of my arm." And Peredur went with Gwalchmai to his tent, and they took off their armour. And Peredur put on garments like those that Gwalchmai wore; and they went together unto Arthur, and saluted him. "Behold, lord," said Gwalchmai, "him whom thou hast sought so long." "Welcome unto thee, chieftain," said Arthur. "With me thou shalt remain; and had I known thy valour {76} had been such, thou shouldst not have left me as thou didst. Nevertheless, this was predicted of thee by the dwarf and the dwarfess, whom Kai ill treated, and whom thou hast avenged." And hereupon, behold there came the Queen and her handmaidens, and Peredur saluted them. And they were rejoiced to see him, and bade him welcome. And Arthur did him great honour and respect, and they returned towards Caerlleon. And the first night, Peredur came to Caerlleon, to Arthur's Court, and as he walked in the city after his repast, behold, there met him Angharad Law Eurawc. "By my faith, sister," said Peredur, "thou art a beauteous and lovely maiden; and were it pleasing to thee, I could love thee above all women." "I pledge my faith," said she, "that I do not love thee, nor will I ever do so." "I also pledge my faith," said Peredur, "that I will never speak a word to any Christian again, until thou come to love me above all men." The next day, Peredur went forth by the high road, along a mountain ridge, and he saw a valley of a circular form, the confines of which were rocky and wooded. And the flat part of the valley was in meadows, and there were fields betwixt the meadows and the wood. And in the bosom of the wood he saw large black houses, of uncouth workmanship. And he dismounted, and led his horse towards the wood. And a little way within the wood he saw a rocky ledge, along which the road lay. And upon the ledge was a lion bound by a chain, and sleeping. And beneath the lion he saw a deep pit, of immense size, full of the bones of men and animals. And Peredur drew his sword, and struck the lion, so that he fell into the mouth of the pit, and hung there by the chain; and with a second blow he struck the chain, and broke it, and the lion fell into the pit, and Peredur led his horse over the rocky ledge, until he came into the valley. And in the centre of the valley he saw a fair castle, and he went towards it. And in the meadow by the Castle he beheld a huge grey man sitting, who was larger than any man he had ever before seen. And two young pages were shooting the hilts of their daggers, of the bone of the sea horse. And one of the pages had red hair, and the other auburn. And they went before him to the place where the grey man was. And Peredur saluted him. And the grey man said, "Disgrace to the beard of my porter." Then Peredur understood that the porter was the lion. And the grey man and the pages went together into the Castle, and Peredur accompanied them; and he found it a fair and noble place. And they proceeded to the hall, and the tables were already laid, and upon them was abundance of food and liquor. And thereupon he saw an aged woman and a young woman come from the chamber; and they were the most stately women he had ever seen. Then they washed, and went to meat, and the grey man sat in the upper seat at the head of the table, and the aged woman next to him. And Peredur and the maiden were placed together; and the two young pages served them. And the maiden gazed sorrowfully upon Peredur, and Peredur asked the maiden wherefore she was sad. "For thee, my soul; for, from when I first beheld thee, I have loved thee above all men. And it pains me to know that so gentle a youth as thou should have such a doom as awaits thee to-morrow. Sawest thou the numerous black houses in the bosom of the wood. All these belong to the vassals of the grey man yonder, who is my father. And they are all giants. And to-morrow they will rise up against thee, and will slay thee. And the Round Valley is this valley called." "Listen, fair maiden, wilt thou contrive that my horse and arms be in the same lodging with me to-night." "Gladly will I cause it so to be, by Heaven, if I can." And when it was time for them to sleep rather than to carouse, they went to rest. And the maiden caused Peredur's horse and arms to be in the same lodging with him. And the next morning Peredur heard a great tumult of men and horses around the Castle. And Peredur arose, and armed himself and his horse, and went to the meadow. Then the aged woman and the maiden came to the grey man, "Lord," said they, "take the word of the youth, that he will never disclose what he has seen in this place, and we will be his sureties that he keep it." "I will not do so, by my faith," said the grey man. So Peredur fought with the host; and towards evening, he had slain the one-third of them without receiving any hurt himself. Then said the aged woman, "Behold, many of thy host have been slain by the youth. Do thou, therefore, grant him mercy." "I will not grant it, by my faith," said he. And the aged woman and the fair maiden were upon the battlements of the Castle, looking forth. And at that juncture, Peredur encountered the yellow-haired youth, and slew him. "Lord," said the maiden, "grant the young man mercy." "That will I not do, by Heaven," he replied; and thereupon Peredur attacked the auburn-haired youth, and slew him likewise. "It were better thou hadst accorded mercy to the youth, before he had slain thy two sons; for now scarcely wilt thou thyself escape from him." "Go, maiden, and beseech the youth to grant mercy unto us, for we yield ourselves into his hands." So the maiden came to the place where Peredur was, and besought mercy for her father, and for all such of his vassals as had escaped alive. "Thou shalt have it, on condition that thy father, and all that are under him, go and render homage to Arthur, and tell him that it was his vassal Peredur that did him this service." "This will we do willingly, by Heaven." "And you shall also receive baptism; and I will send to Arthur, and beseech him to bestow this valley upon thee, and upon thy heirs after thee for ever." Then they went in, and the grey man and the tall woman saluted Peredur. And the grey man said unto him, "Since I have possessed this valley, I have not seen any Christian depart with his life, save thyself. And we will go to do homage to Arthur, and to embrace the faith, and be baptized." Then said Peredur, "To Heaven I render thanks that I have not broken my vow to the lady that best I love, which was, that I would not speak one word unto any Christian." That night they tarried there. And the next day, in the morning, the grey man, with his company, set forth to Arthur's Court; and they did homage unto Arthur, and he caused them to be baptized. And the grey man told Arthur, that it was Peredur that had vanquished them. And Arthur gave the valley to the grey man and his company, to hold it of him as Peredur had besought. And with Arthur's permission, the grey man went back to the Round Valley. Peredur rode forward next day, and he traversed a vast tract of desert, in which no dwellings were. And at length he came to a habitation, mean and small. And there he heard that there was a serpent that lay upon a gold ring, and suffered none to inhabit the country for seven miles around. And Peredur came to the place where he heard the serpent was. And angrily, furiously, and desperately, fought he with the serpent; and at the last he killed it, and took away the ring. And thus he was for a long time without speaking a word to any Christian. And therefrom he lost his colour and his aspect, through extreme longing after the Court of Arthur, and the society of the lady whom best he loved, and of his companions. Then he proceeded forward to Arthur's Court, and on the road there met him Arthur's household, going on a particular errand, with Kai at their head. And Peredur knew them all, but none of the household recognised him. "Whence comest thou, chieftain?" said Kai. And this he asked him twice, and three times, and he answered him not. And Kai thrust him through the thigh with his lance. And lest he should be compelled to speak, and to break his vow, he went on without stopping. "Then," said Gwalchmai, "I declare to Heaven, Kai, that thou hast acted ill in committing such an outrage on a youth like this, who cannot speak." And Gwalchmai returned back to Arthur's Court. "Lady," said he to Gwenhwyvar, "seest thou how wicked an outrage Kai has committed upon this youth who cannot speak; for Heaven's sake, and for mine, cause him to have medical care before I come back, and I will repay thee the charge." And before the men returned from their errand, a knight came to the meadow beside Arthur's Palace, to dare some one to the encounter. And his challenge was accepted; and Peredur fought with him, and overthrew him. And for a week he overthrew one knight every day. And one day, Arthur and his household were going to Church, and they beheld a knight who had raised the signal for combat. "Verily," said Arthur, "by the valour of men, I will not go hence until I have my horse and my arms to overthrow yonder boor." Then went the attendants to fetch Arthur's horse and arms. And Peredur met the attendants as they were going back, and he took the horse and arms from them, and proceeded to the meadow; and all those who saw him arise and go to do battle with the knight, went upon the tops of the houses, and the mounds, and the high places, to behold the combat. And Peredur beckoned with his hand to the knight to commence the fight. And the knight thrust at him, but he was not thereby moved from where he stood. And Peredur spurred his horse, and ran at him wrathfully, furiously, fiercely, desperately, and with mighty rage, and he gave him a thrust, deadly-wounding, severe, furious, adroit and strong, under his jaw, and raised him out of his saddle, and cast him a long way from him. And Peredur went back, and left the horse and the arms with the attendant as before, and he went on foot to the Palace. Then Peredur went by the name of the Dumb Youth. And behold, Angharad Law Eurawc met him. "I declare to Heaven, chieftain," said she, "woeful is it that thou canst not speak; for couldst thou speak, I would love thee best of all men; and, by my faith, although thou canst not, I do love thee above all." "Heaven reward thee, my sister," said Peredur, "by my faith, I also do love thee." Thereupon it was known that he was Peredur. And then he held fellowship with Gwalchmai, and Owain the son of Urien, and all the household, and he remained in Arthur's Court. Arthur was in Caerlleon upon Usk; and he went to hunt, and Peredur went with him. And Peredur let loose his dog upon a hart, and the dog killed the hart in a desert place. And a short space from him he saw signs of a dwelling, and towards the dwelling he went, and he beheld a hall, and at the door of the hall he found bald swarthy youths playing at chess. And when he entered, he beheld three maidens sitting on a bench, and they were all clothed alike, as became persons of high rank. And he came, and sat by them upon the bench; and one of the maidens looked steadfastly upon Peredur, and wept. And Peredur asked her wherefore she was weeping. "Through grief, that I should see so fair a youth as thou art, slain." "Who will slay me?" enquired Peredur. "If thou art so daring as to remain here to-night, I will tell thee." "How great soever my danger may be from remaining here, I will listen unto thee." "This Palace is owned by him who is my father," said the maiden, "and he slays every one who comes hither without his leave." "What sort of a man is thy father, that he is able to slay every one thus?" "A man who does violence and wrong unto his neighbours, and who renders justice unto none." And hereupon he saw the youths arise and clear the chessmen from the board. And he heard a great tumult; and after the tumult there came in a huge black one-eyed man, and the maidens arose to meet him. And they disarrayed him, and he went and sat down; and after he had rested and pondered awhile, he looked at Peredur, and asked who the knight was. "Lord," said one of the maidens, "he is the fairest and gentlest youth that ever thou didst see. And for the sake of Heaven, and of thine own dignity, have patience with him." "For thy sake I will have patience, and I will grant him his life this night." Then Peredur came towards them to the fire, and partook of food and liquor, and entered into discourse with the ladies. And being elated with the liquor, he said to the black man, "It is a marvel to me, so mighty as thou sayest thou art, who could have put out thine eye?" "It is one of my habits," said the black man, "that whosoever puts to me the question which thou hast asked, shall not escape with his life, either as a free gift, or for a price." "Lord," said the maiden, "whatsoever he may say to thee in jest, and through the excitement of liquor, make good that which thou saidest and didst promise me just now." "I will do so, gladly, for thy sake," said he. "Willingly will I grant him his life this night." And that night thus they remained. And the next day the black man got up, and put on his armour, and said to Peredur, "Arise, man, and suffer death." And Peredur said unto him, "Do one of two things, black man; if thou wilt fight with me, either throw off thy own armour, or give arms to me, that I may encounter thee." "Ha! man," said he, "couldst thou fight, if thou hadst arms? Take, then, what arms thou dost choose." And thereupon the maiden came to Peredur with such arms as pleased him; and he fought with the black man, and forced him to crave his mercy. "Black man, thou shalt have mercy, provided thou tell me who thou art, and who put out thine eye." "Lord, I will tell thee, I lost it in fighting with the Black Serpent of the Carn. There is a mound, which is called the Mound of Mourning; and on the mound there is a earn, and in the earn there is a serpent, and on the tail of the serpent there is a stone, and the virtues of the stone are such, that whosoever should hold it in one hand, in the other he will have as much gold as he may desire. And in fighting with this serpent was it that I lost my eye. And the Black Oppressor am I called. And for this reason I am called the Black Oppressor, that there is not a single man around me whom I have not oppressed, and justice have I done unto none." "Tell me" said Peredur, "how far is it hence?" "The same day that thou settest forth, thou wilt come to the Palace of the Sons of the King of the Tortures." "Wherefore are they called thus?" "The Addanc of the Lake slays them once every day. When thou goest thence, thou wilt come to the Court of the Countess of the Achievements." "What achievements are there?" asked Peredur. "Three hundred men there are in her household, and unto every stranger that comes to the Court, the achievements of her household are related. And this is the manner of it,--the three hundred men of the household sit next unto the Lady; and that not through disrespect unto the guests, but that they may relate the achievements of the household. And the day that thou goest thence, thou wilt reach the Mound of Mourning, and round about the mound there are the owners of three hundred tents guarding the serpent." "Since thou hast, indeed, been an oppressor so long," said Peredur, "I will cause that thou continue so no longer." So he slew him. Then the maiden spoke, and began to converse with him. "If thou wast poor when thou camest here, henceforth thou wilt be rich through the treasure of the black man whom thou hast slain. Thou seest the many lovely maidens that there are in this Court, thou shalt have her whom thou best likest for the lady of thy love." "Lady, I came not hither from my country to woo; but match yourselves as it liketh you with the comely youths I see here; and none of your goods do I desire, for I need them not." Then Peredur rode forward, and he came to the Palace of the Sons of the King of the Tortures; and when he entered the Palace, he saw none but women; and they rose up, and were joyful at his coming; and as they began to discourse with him, he beheld a charger arrive, with a saddle upon it, and a corpse in the saddle. And one of the women arose, and took the corpse from the saddle, and anointed it in a vessel of warm water, which was below the door, and placed precious balsam upon it; and the man rose up alive, and came to the place where Peredur was, and greeted him, and was joyful to see him. And two other men came in upon their saddles, and the maiden treated these two in the same manner as she had done the first. Then Peredur asked the chieftain wherefore it was thus. And they told him, that there was an Addanc in a cave, which slew them once every day. And thus they remained that night. And next morning the youths arose to sally forth, and Peredur besought them, for the sake of the ladies of their love, to permit him to go with them; but they refused him, saying, "If thou shouldst be slain there, thou hast none to bring thee back to life again." And they rode forward, and Peredur followed after them; and after they had disappeared out of his sight, he came to a mound, whereon sat the fairest lady he had ever beheld. "I know thy quest," said she, "thou art going to encounter the Addanc, and he will slay thee, and that not by courage, but by craft. He has a cave, and at the entrance of the cave there is a stone pillar, and he sees every one that enters, and none see him; and from behind the pillar he slays every one with a poisonous dart. And if thou wouldst pledge me thy faith, to love me above all women, I would give thee a stone, by which thou shouldst see him when thou goest in, and he should not see thee." "I will, by my troth," said Peredur, "for when first I beheld thee, I loved thee; and where shall I seek thee?" "When thou seekest me, seek towards India." And the maiden vanished, after placing the stone in Peredur's hand. And he came towards a valley, through which ran a river; and the borders of the valley were wooded, and on each side of the river were level meadows. And on one side of the river he saw a flock of white sheep, and on the other a flock of black sheep. And whenever one of the white sheep bleated, one of the black sheep would cross over, and become white; and when one of the black sheep bleated, one of the white sheep would cross over, and become black. And he saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf. And nigh thereto he saw a youth sitting upon a mound, and two greyhounds, white-breasted, and spotted, in leashes, lying by his side. And certain was he, that he had never seen a youth of so royal a bearing as he. And in the wood opposite he heard hounds raising a herd of deer. And Peredur saluted the youth, and the youth greeted him in return. And there were three roads leading from the mound; two of them were wide roads, and the third was more narrow. And Peredur enquired where the three roads went. "One of them goes to my palace," said the youth, "and one of two things I counsel thee to do, either to proceed to my palace, which is before thee, and where thou wilt find my wife, or else to remain here to see the hounds chasing the roused deer from the wood to the plain. And thou shall see the best greyhounds thou didst ever behold, and the boldest in the chase, kill them by the water beside us; and when it is time to go to meat, my page will come with my horse to meet me, and thou shalt rest in my palace to-night." "Heaven reward thee; but I cannot tarry, for onward must I go." "The other road leads to the town, which is near here, and wherein food and liquor may be bought; and the road which is narrower than the others goes towards the cave of the Addanc." "With thy permission, young man, I will go that way." And Peredur went towards the cave. And he took the stone in his left hand, and his lance in his right. And as he went in, he perceived the Addanc, and he pierced him through with his lance, and cut off his head. And as he came from the cave, behold the three companions were at the entrance; and they saluted Peredur, and told him that there was a prediction that he should slay that monster. And Peredur gave the head to the young men, and they offered him in marriage whichever of the three sisters he might choose, and half their kingdom with her. "I came not hither to woo," said Peredur, "but if peradventure I took a wife, I should prefer your sister to all others." And Peredur rode forward, and he heard a noise behind him. And he looked back, and saw a man upon a red horse, with red armour upon him; and the man rode up by his side, and saluted him, and wished him the favour of Heaven and of man. And Peredur greeted the youth kindly. "Lord, I come to make a request unto thee." "What wouldest thou?" "That thou shouldest take me as thine attendant." "Who then should I take as my attendant, if I did so?" "I will not conceal from thee what kindred I am of. Etlym Gleddyv Coch am I called, an Earl from the East Country." "I marvel that thou shouldest offer to become attendant to a man whose possessions are no greater than thine own; for I have but an earldom like thyself. But since thou desirest to be my attendant, I will take thee joyfully." And they went forward to the Court of the Countess, and all they of the Court were glad at their coming; and they were told it was not through disrespect they were placed below the household, but that such was the usage of the Court. For, whoever should overthrow the three hundred men of her household, would sit next the Countess, and she would love him above all men. And Peredur having overthrown the three hundred men of her household, sat down beside her, and the Countess said, "I thank Heaven that I have a youth so fair and so valiant as thou, since I have not obtained the man whom best I love." "Who is he whom best thou lovest?" "By my faith, Etlym Gleddyv Coch is the man whom I love best, and I have never seen him." "Of a truth, Etlym is my companion; and behold here he is, and for his sake did I come to joust with thy household. And he could have done so better than I, had it pleased him. And I do give thee unto him." "Heaven reward thee, fair youth, and I will take the man whom I love above all others." And the Countess became Etlym's bride from that moment. And the next day Peredur set forth towards the Mound of Mourning. "By thy hand, lord, but I will go with thee," said Etlym. Then they went forwards till they came in sight of the mound and the tents. "Go unto yonder men," said Peredur to Etlym, "and desire them to come and do me homage." So Etlym went unto them, and said unto them thus--"Come and do homage to my lord." "Who is thy lord?" said they. "Peredur with the long lance is my lord," said Etlym. "Were it permitted to slay a messenger, thou shouldest not go back to thy lord alive, for making unto Kings, and Earls, and Barons, so arrogant a demand as to go and do him homage." Peredur desired him to go back to them, and to give them their choice, either to do him homage or to do battle with him. And they chose rather to do battle. And that day Peredur overthrew the owners of a hundred tents. And the next day he overthrew the owners of a hundred more; and the third day the remaining hundred took counsel to do homage to Peredur. And Peredur enquired of them, wherefore they were there. And they told him they were guarding the serpent until he should die. "For then should we fight for the stone among ourselves, and whoever should be conqueror among us would have the stone." "Await here," said Peredur, "and I will go to encounter the serpent." "Not so, lord," said they, "we will go altogether to encounter the serpent." "Verily," said Peredur, "that will I not permit; for if the serpent be slain, I shall derive no more fame therefrom than one of you." Then he went to the place where the serpent was, and slew it, and came back to them, and said, "Reckon up what you have spent since you have been here, and I will repay you to the full." And he paid to each what he said was his claim. And he required of them only that they should acknowledge themselves his vassals. And he said to Etlym, "Go back unto her whom thou lovest best, and I will go forwards, and I will reward thee for having been my attendant." And he gave Etlym the stone. "Heaven repay thee and prosper thee," said Etlym. And Peredur rode thence, and he came to the fairest valley he had ever seen, through which ran a river; and there he beheld many tents of various colours. And he marvelled still more at the number of water-mills and of wind-mills that he saw. And there rode up with him a tall auburn-haired man, in a workman's garb, and Peredur enquired of him who he was. "I am the chief miller," said he, "of all the mills yonder." "Wilt thou give me lodging?" said Peredur. "I will, gladly," he answered. And Peredur came to the miller's house, and the miller had a fair and pleasant dwelling. And Peredur asked money as a loan from the miller, that he might buy meat and liquor for himself, and for the household, and he promised that he would pay him again ere he went thence. And he enquired of the miller, wherefore such a multitude were there assembled. Said the miller to Peredur, "One thing is certain; either thou art a man from afar, or thou art beside thyself. The Empress of Cristinobyl the Great is here; and she will have no one but the man who is most valiant; for riches does she not require. And it was impossible to bring food for so many thousands as are here, therefore were all these mills constructed." And that night they took their rest. And the next day Peredur arose, and he equipped himself and his horse for the tournament. And among the other tents, he beheld one, which was the fairest he had ever seen. And he saw a beauteous maiden leaning her head out of a window of the tent, and he had never seen a maiden more lovely than she. And upon her was a garment of satin. And he gazed fixedly on the maiden, and began to love her greatly. And he remained there, gazing upon the maiden from morning until mid-day, and from mid-day until evening; and then the tournament was ended; and he went to his lodging, and drew off his armour. Then he asked money of the miller as a loan, and the miller's wife was wroth with Peredur; nevertheless, the miller lent him the money. And the next day he did in like manner as he had done the day before. And at night he came to his lodging, and took money as a loan from the miller. And the third day, as he was in the same place, gazing upon the maiden, he felt a hard blow between the neck and the shoulder, from the edge of an axe. And when he looked behind him, he saw that it was the miller; and the miller said to him, "Do one of two things: either turn thy head from hence, or go to the tournament." And Peredur smiled on the miller, and went to the tournament; and all that encountered him that day, he overthrew. And as many as he vanquished, he sent as a gift to the Empress, and their horses and arms he sent as a gift to the wife of the miller, in payment of the borrowed money. Peredur attended the tournament until all were overthrown, and he sent all the men to the prison of the Empress, and the horses and arms to the wife of the miller, in payment of the borrowed money. And the Empress sent to the Knight of the Mill, to ask him to come and visit her. And Peredur went not for the first nor for the second message. And the third time she sent an hundred knights to bring him against his will, and they went to him, and told him their mission from the Empress. And Peredur fought well with them, and caused them to be bound like stags, and thrown into the mill dyke. And the Empress sought advice of a wise man, who was in her counsel; and he said to her, "With thy permission, I will go to him myself." So he came to Peredur, and saluted him, and besought him, for the sake of the lady of his love, to come and visit the Empress. And they went, together with the miller. And Peredur went and sat down in the outer chamber of the tent, and she came and placed herself by his side. And there was but little discourse between them. And Peredur took his leave, and went to his lodging. And the next day he came to visit her, and when he came into the tent, there was no one chamber less decorated than the others. And they knew not where he would sit. And Peredur went and sat beside the Empress, and discoursed with her courteously. And while they were thus, they beheld a black man enter with a goblet full of wine in his hand. And he dropped upon his knee before the Empress, and besought her to give it to no one who would not fight with him for it. And she looked upon Peredur. "Lady," said he, "bestow on me the goblet." And Peredur drank the wine, and gave the goblet to the miller's wife. And while they were thus, behold there entered a black man, of larger stature than the other, with a wild beast's claw in his hand, wrought into the form of a goblet, and filled with wine. And he presented it to the Empress, and besought her to give it to no one but the man who would fight with him. "Lady," said Peredur, "bestow it on me." And she gave it to him. And Peredur drank the wine, and sent the goblet to the wife of the miller. And while they were thus, behold a rough-looking crisp-haired man, taller than either of the others, came in with a bowl in his hand full of wine; and he bent upon his knee, and gave it into the hands of the Empress, and he besought her to give it to none but him who would fight with him for it; and she gave it to Peredur, and he sent it to the miller's wife. And that night Peredur returned to his lodging; and the next day he accoutred himself and his horse, and went to the meadow, and slew the three men. Then Peredur proceeded to the tent, and the Empress said to him, "Goodly Peredur, remember the faith thou didst pledge me when I gave thee the stone, and thou didst kill the Addanc." "Lady," answered he, "thou sayest truth, I do remember it." And Peredur was entertained by the Empress fourteen years, as the story relates. * * * * * Arthur was at Caerlleon upon Usk, his principal palace; and in the centre of the floor of the hall were four men sitting on a carpet of velvet, Owain the son of Urien, and Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar, and Howel the son of Emyr Llydaw, and Peredur of the long lance. And thereupon they saw a black curly-headed maiden enter, riding upon a yellow mule, with jagged thongs in her hand, to urge it on; and having a rough and hideous aspect. Blacker were her face and her two hands than the blackest iron covered with pitch; and her hue was not more frightful than her form. High cheeks had she, and a face lengthened downwards, and a short nose with distended nostrils. And one eye was of a piercing mottled grey, and the other was as black as jet, deep sunk in her head. And her teeth were long and yellow, more yellow were they than the flower of the broom. And her stomach rose from the breast bone, higher than her chin. And her back was in the shape of a crook, and her legs were large and bony. And her figure was very thin and spare, except her feet and her legs, which were of huge size. And she greeted Arthur and all his household, except Peredur. And to Peredur she spoke harsh and angry words. "Peredur, I greet thee not, seeing that thou dost not merit it. Blind was fate in giving thee fame and favour. When thou wast in the Court of the Lame King, and didst see there the youth bearing the streaming spear, from the points of which were drops of blood flowing in streams, even to the hand of the youth, and many other wonders likewise, thou didst not enquire their meaning nor their cause. Hadst thou done so, the King would have been restored to health, and his dominions to peace. Whereas, from henceforth, he will have to endure battles and conflicts, and his knights will perish, and wives will be widowed, and maidens will be left portionless, and all this is because of thee." Then said she unto Arthur, "May it please thee, lord, my dwelling is far hence, in the stately castle of which thou hast heard, and therein are five hundred and sixty-six knights of the order of Chivalry, and the lady whom best he loves with each; and whoever would acquire fame in arms, and encounters, and conflicts, he will gain it there, if he deserve it. And whoso would reach the summit of fame and of honour, I know where he may find it. There is a Castle on a lofty mountain, and there is a maiden therein, and she is detained a prisoner there, and whoever shall set her free will attain the summit of the fame of the world." And thereupon she rode away. Said Gwalchmai, "By my faith, I will not rest tranquilly until I have proved if I can release the maiden." And many of Arthur's household joined themselves with him. Then, likewise said Peredur, "By my faith, I will not rest tranquilly until I know the story and meaning of the lance whereof the black maiden spoke." And while they were equipping themselves, behold a knight came to the gate. And he had the size and the strength of a warrior, and was equipped with arms and habiliments. And he went forward, and saluted Arthur and all his household, except Gwalchmai. And the knight had upon his shoulder a shield, ingrained with gold, with a fesse of azure blue upon it, and his whole armour was of the same hue. And he said to Gwalchmai, "Thou didst slay my lord, by thy treachery and deceit, and that will I prove upon thee." Then Gwalchmai rose up. "Behold," said he, "here is my gage against thee, to maintain either in this place, or wherever else thou wilt, that I am not a traitor or deceiver." "Before the King whom I obey, will I that my encounter with thee take place," said the knight. "Willingly," said Gwalchmai, "go forward, and I will follow thee." So the knight went forth, and Gwalchmai accoutred himself, and there was offered unto him abundance of armour, but he would take none but his own. And when Gwalchmai and Peredur were equipped, they set forth to follow him, by reason of their fellowship, and of the great friendship that was between them. And they did not go after him in company together, but each went his own way. At the dawn of day, Gwalchmai came to a valley, and in the valley he saw a fortress, and within the fortress a vast palace, and lofty towers around it. And he beheld a knight coming out to hunt from the other side, mounted on a spirited black snorting palfrey, that advanced at a prancing pace, proudly stepping, and nimbly bounding, and sure of foot; and this was the man to whom the palace belonged. And Gwalchmai saluted him, "Heaven prosper thee, chieftain," said he, "and whence comest thou?" "I come," answered he, "from the Court of Arthur." "And art thou Arthur's vassal?" "Yes, by my faith," said Gwalchmai. "I will give thee good counsel," said the knight. "I see that thou art tired and weary, go unto my palace, if it may please thee, and tarry there to-night." "Willingly, lord," said he, "and Heaven reward thee." "Take this ring as a token to the porter, and go forward to yonder tower, and therein thou wilt find my sister." And Gwalchmai went to the gate, and shewed the ring, and proceeded to the tower. And on entering, he beheld a large blazing fire, burning without smoke, and with a bright and lofty flame, and a beauteous and stately maiden was sitting on a chair by the fire. And the maiden was glad at his coming, and welcomed him, and advanced to meet him. And he went and sat beside the maiden, and they took their repast. And when their repast was over, they discoursed pleasantly together. And while they were thus, behold there entered a venerable hoary-headed man. "Ah! base girl," said he, "if thou didst think that it was right for thee to entertain and to sit by yonder man; thou wouldest not do so." And he withdrew his head, and went forth, "Ha! chieftain," said the maiden, "if thou wilt do as I counsel thee, thou wilt shut the door, lest the man should have a plot against thee." Upon that Gwalchmai arose, and when he came near unto the door, the man, with sixty others, fully armed, were ascending the tower. And Gwalchmai defended the door with a chessboard, that none might enter until the man should return from the chase. And thereupon, behold the earl arrived. "What is all this?" asked he. "It is a sad thing," said the hoary-headed man, "the young girl yonder has been sitting and eating with him who slew your father. He is Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar." "Hold thy peace, then," said the earl, "I will go in." And the earl was joyful concerning Gwalchmai. "Ha! chieftain," said he, "it was wrong of thee to come to my Court, when thou knewest that thou didst slay my father; and though we cannot avenge him, Heaven will avenge him upon thee." "My soul," said Gwalchmai, "thus it is; I came not here either to acknowledge or to deny having slain thy father; but I am on a message from Arthur, and therefore do I crave the space of a year until I shall return from my embassy, and then, upon my faith, I will come back unto this palace, and do one of two things, either acknowledge it, or deny it." And the time was granted him willingly; and he remained there that night. And the next morning he rode forth. And the story relates nothing further of Gwalchmai respecting this adventure. And Peredur rode forward. And he wandered over the whole island, seeking tidings of the black maiden, and he could meet with none. And he came to an unknown land, in the centre of a valley, watered by a river. And as he traversed the valley, he beheld a horseman coming towards him, and wearing the garments of a priest, and he besought his blessing. "Wretched man," said he, "thou meritest no blessing, and thou wouldst not be profited by one, seeing that thou art clad in armour on such a day as this." "And what day is to-day?" said Peredur. "To-day is Good Friday," he answered. "Chide me not, that I knew not this, seeing that it is a year to-day since I journeyed forth from my country." Then he dismounted, and led his horse in his hand. And he had not proceeded far along the high road before he came to a cross road, and the cross road traversed a wood. And on the other side of the wood he saw an unfortified castle, which appeared to be inhabited. And at the gate of the castle there met him the priest whom he had seen before, and he asked his blessing. "The blessing of Heaven be unto thee," said he, "it is more fitting to travel in thy present guise, than as thou wast erewhile; and this night thou shalt tarry with me." So he remained there that night. And the next day Peredur sought to go forth. "To-day may no one journey. Thou shalt remain with me to-day and to-morrow, and the day following, and I will direct thee as best I may to the place which thou art seeking." And the fourth day Peredur sought to go forth, and he entreated the priest to tell him how he should find the Castle of Wonders. "What I know thereof, I will tell thee," he replied. "Go over yonder mountain, and on the other side of the mountain thou wilt come to a river, and in the valley wherein the river runs is a King's Palace, wherein the King sojourned during Easter. And if thou mayest have tidings anywhere of the Castle of Wonders, thou wilt have them there." Then Peredur rode forward. And he came to the valley in which was the river, and there met him a number of men going to hunt, and in the midst of them was a man of exalted rank, and Peredur saluted him. "Choose, chieftain," said the man, "whether thou wilt go with me to the chase, or wilt proceed to my Palace, and I will despatch one of my household to commend thee to my daughter, who is there, and who will entertain thee with food and liquor until I return from hunting; and whatever may be thine errand, such as I can obtain for thee, thou shalt gladly have." And the King sent a little yellow page with him as an attendant; and when they came to the palace, the lady had arisen, and was about to wash before meat. Peredur went forward, and she saluted him joyfully, and placed him by her side. And they took their repast. And whatsoever Peredur said unto her, she laughed loudly, so that all in the palace could hear. Then spoke the yellow page to the lady. "By my faith," said he, "this youth is already thy husband; or if he be not, thy mind and thy thoughts are set upon him." And the little yellow page went unto the King, and told him that it seemed to him that the youth whom he had met with was his daughter's husband, or if he were not so already, that he would shortly become so, unless he were cautious. "What is thy counsel in this matter, youth?" said the King. "My counsel is," he replied, "that thou set strong men upon him, to seize him, until thou hast ascertained the truth respecting this." So he set strong men upon Peredur, who seized him, and cast him into prison. And the maiden went before her father, and asked him, wherefore he had caused the youth from Arthur's Court to be imprisoned. "In truth," he answered, "he shall not be free to-night, nor to-morrow, nor the day following, and he shall not come from where he is." She replied not to what the king had said, but she went to the youth. "Is it unpleasant to thee to be here?" said she. "I should not care, if I were not," he replied. "Thy couch and thy treatment shall be in no wise inferior to that of the King himself, and thou shalt have the best entertainment that the palace affords. And if it were more pleasing to thee that my couch should be here, that I might discourse with thee, it should be so, cheerfully." "This can I not refuse," said Peredur. And he remained in prison that night. And the maiden provided all that she had promised him. And the next day Peredur heard a tumult in the town. "Tell me, fair maiden, what is that tumult?" said Peredur. "All the King's hosts and his forces have come to the town to-day." "And what seek they here?" he enquired. "There is an Earl near this place, who possesses two Earldoms, and is as powerful as a king; and an engagement will take place between them to-day." "I beseech thee," said Peredur, "to cause a horse and arms to be brought, that I may view the encounter, and I promise to come back to my prison again." "Gladly," said she, "will I provide thee with horse and arms." So she gave him a horse and arms, and a bright scarlet robe of honour over his armour, and a yellow shield upon his shoulder. And he went to the combat; and as many of the Earl's men as encountered him that day, he overthrew; and he returned to his prison. And the maiden asked tidings of Peredur, and he answered her not a word. And she went and asked tidings of her father, and enquired who had acquitted himself best of the household. And he said that he knew not, but that it was a man with a scarlet robe of honour over his armour, and a yellow shield upon his shoulder. Then she smiled, and returned to where Peredur was, and did him great honour that night. And for three days did Peredur slay the Earl's men; and before any one could know who he was, he returned to his prison. And the fourth day Peredur slew the Earl himself. And the maiden went unto her father, and enquired of him the news. "I have good news for thee," said the King, "the Earl is slain, and I am the owner of his two Earldoms." "Knowest thou, lord, who slew him?" "I do not know," said the King. "It was the knight with the scarlet robe of honour, and the yellow shield." "Lord," said she, "I know who that is." "By Heaven," he exclaimed, "who is he?" "Lord," she replied, "he is the knight whom thou hast imprisoned." Then he went unto Peredur, and saluted him, and told him that he would reward the service he had done him, in any way he might desire. And when they went to meat, Peredur was placed beside the King, and the maiden on the other side of Peredur, "I will give thee," said the King, "my daughter in marriage, and half my kingdom with her, and the two Earldoms as a gift." "Heaven reward thee, lord," said Peredur, "but I came not here to woo." "What seekest thou, then, chieftain?" "I am seeking tidings of the Castle of Wonders." "Thy enterprise is greater, chieftain, than thou wilt wish to pursue," said the maiden, "nevertheless, tidings shalt thou have of the Castle, and thou shalt have a guide through my father's dominions, and a sufficiency of provisions for thy journey, for thou art, O chieftain, the man whom best I love." Then she said to him, "Go over yonder mountain, and thou wilt find a Lake, and in the middle of the Lake there is a Castle, and that is the Castle that is called the Castle of Wonders; and we know not what wonders are therein, but thus is it called." And Peredur proceeded towards the Castle, and the gate of the Castle was open. And when he came to the hall, the door was open, and he entered. And he beheld a chessboard in the hall, and the chessmen were playing against each other, by themselves. And the side that he favoured lost the game, {102} and thereupon the others set up a shout, as though they had been living men. And Peredur was wroth, and took the chessmen in his lap, and cast the chessboard into the lake. And when he had done thus, behold the black maiden came in, and she said to him, "The welcome of Heaven be not unto thee. Thou hadst rather do evil than good." "What complaint hast thou against me, maiden?" said Peredur. "That thou hast occasioned unto the Empress the loss of her chessboard, which she would not have lost for all her empire. And the way in which thou mayest recover the chessboard is, to repair to the Castle of Ysbidinongyl, where is a black man, who lays waste the dominions of the Empress; and if thou canst slay him, thou wilt recover the chessboard. But if thou goest there, thou wilt not return alive." "Wilt thou direct me thither?" said Peredur. "I will show thee the way," she replied. So he went to the Castle of Ysbidinongyl, and he fought with the black man. And the black man besought mercy of Peredur. "Mercy will I grant thee," said he, "on condition that thou cause the chessboard to be restored to the place where it was when I entered the hall." Then the maiden came to him and said, "The malediction of Heaven attend thee for thy work, since thou hast left that monster alive, who lays waste all the possessions of the Empress." "I granted him his life," said Peredur, "that he might cause the chessboard to be restored." "The chessboard is not in the place where thou didst find it; go back, therefore, and slay him," answered she. So Peredur went back, and slew the black man. And when he returned to the palace, he found the black maiden there. "Ah! maiden," said Peredur, "where is the Empress?" "I declare to Heaven that thou wilt not see her now, unless thou dost slay the monster that is in yonder forest." "What monster is there?" "It is a stag that is as swift as the swiftest bird; and he has one horn in his forehead, as long as the shaft of a spear and as sharp as whatever is sharpest. And he destroys the branches of the best trees in the forest and he kills every animal that he meets with therein; and those that he does not slay perish of hunger. And what is worse than that, he comes every night, and drinks up the fish pond, and leaves the fishes exposed, so that for the most part they die before the water returns again." "Maiden," said Peredur, "wilt thou come and show me this animal?" "Not so," said the maiden, "for he has not permitted any mortal to enter the forest for above a twelvemonth. Behold, here is a little dog belonging to the Empress, which will rouse the stag, and will chase him towards thee, and the stag will attack thee." Then the little dog went as a guide to Peredur, and roused the stag, and brought him towards the place where Peredur was. And the stag attacked Peredur, and he let him pass by him, and as he did so, he smote off his head with his sword. And while he was looking at the head of the stag, he saw a lady on horseback coming towards him. And she took the little dog in the lappet of her cap, and the head and the body of the stag lay before her. And around the stag's neck was a golden collar. "Ha! chieftain," said she, "uncourteously hast thou acted in slaying the fairest jewel that was in my dominions." "I was intreated so to do; and is there any way by which I can obtain thy friendship?" "There is," she replied. "Go thou forward unto yonder mountain, and there thou wilt find a grove; and in the grove there is a cromlech, do thou there challenge a man three times to fight, and thou shalt have my friendship." So Peredur proceeded onward, and came to the side of the grove, and challenged any man to fight. And a black man arose from beneath the cromlech, mounted upon a bony horse, and both he and his horse were clad in huge rusty armour. And they fought. And as often as Peredur cast the black man to the earth, he would jump again into his saddle. And Peredur dismounted, and drew his sword; and thereupon the black man disappeared with Peredur's horse and his own, so that he could not gain sight of him a second time. And Peredur went along the mountain, and on the other side of the mountain he beheld a castle in the valley, wherein was a river. And he went to the castle; and as he entered it, he saw a hall, and the door of the hall was open, and he went in. And there he saw a lame grey-headed man, sitting on one side of the hall, with Gwalchmai beside him. And Peredur beheld his horse, which the black man had taken, in the same stall with that of Gwalchmai. And they were glad concerning Peredur. And he went and seated himself on the other side of the hoary- headed man. Then, behold a yellow-haired youth came, and bent upon the knee before Peredur, and besought his friendship. "Lord," said the youth, "it was I that came in the form of the black maiden to Arthur's Court, and when thou didst throw down the chessboard, and when thou didst slay the black man of Ysbidinongyl, and when thou didst slay the stag, and when thou didst go to fight the black man of the cromlech. And I came with the bloody head in the salver, and with the lance that streamed with blood from the point to the hand, all along the shaft; and the head was thy cousin's, and he was killed by the sorceresses of Gloucester, who also lamed thine uncle; and I am thy cousin. And there is a prediction that thou art to avenge these things." Then Peredur and Gwalchmai took counsel, and sent to Arthur and his household, to beseech them to come against the sorceresses. And they began to fight with them, and one of the sorceresses slew one of Arthur's men before Peredur's face, and Peredur bade her forbear. And the sorceress slew a man before Peredur's face a second time, and a second time he forbade her. And the third time the sorceress slew a man before the face of Peredur, and then Peredur drew his sword, and smote the sorceress on the helmet, and all her head armour was split in two parts. And she set up a cry, and desired the other sorceresses to flee, and told them that this was Peredur, the man who had learnt Chivalry with them, and by whom they were destined to be slain. Then Arthur and his household fell upon the sorceresses, and slew the sorceresses of Gloucester every one And thus is it related concerning the Castle of Wonders. THE DREAM OF RHONABWY. Madawc the son of Maredudd possessed Powys within its boundaries, from Porfoed to Gwauan in the uplands of Arwystli. And at that time he had a brother, Iorwerth the son of Maredudd, in rank not equal to himself. And Iorwerth had great sorrow and heaviness because of the honour and power that his brother enjoyed, which he shared not. And he sought his fellows and his foster-brothers, and took counsel with them what he should do in this matter. And they resolved to despatch some of their number to go and seek a maintenance for him. Then Madawc offered him to become Master of the Household and to have horses, and arms, and honour, and to fare like as himself. But Iorwerth refused this. And Iorwerth made an inroad into England, slaying the inhabitants, and burning houses, and carrying away prisoners. And Madawc took counsel with the men of Powys, and they determined to place an hundred men in each of the three Commots of Powys to seek for him. And thus did they in the plains of Powys from Aber Ceirawc, and in Allictwn Ver, and in Rhyd Wilure, on the Vyrnwy, the three best Commots of Powys. So he was none the better, he nor his household, in Powys, nor in the plains thereof. {108} And they spread these men over the plains as far as Nillystwn Trevan. Now one of the men who was upon this quest was called Rhonabwy. And Rhonabwy and Kynwrig Vrychgoch, a man of Mawddwy, and Cadwgan Vras, a man of Moelvre in Kynlleith, came together to the house of Heilyn Goch the son of Cadwgan the son of Iddon. And when they near to the house, they saw an old hall, very black and having an upright gable, whence issued a great smoke; and on entering, they found the floor full of puddles and mounds; and it was difficult to stand thereon, so slippery was it with the mire of cattle. And where the puddles were a man might go up to his ankles in water and dirt. And there were boughs of holly spread over the floor whereof the cattle had browsed the sprigs. When they came to the hall of the house, they beheld cells full of dust, and very gloomy, {109} and on one side an old hag making a fire. And whenever she felt cold, she cast a lapful of chaff upon the fire, and raised such a smoke, that it was scarcely to be borne, as it rose up the nostrils. And on the other side was a yellow calf skin on the floor, a main privilege was it to any one who should get upon that hide. And when they had sat down, they asked the hag where were the people of the house. And the hag spoke not but muttered. Thereupon behold the people of the house entered; a ruddy, clownish curly-headed man, with a burthen of fagots on his back, and a pale slender woman, also carrying a bundle under her arm. And they barely welcomed the men, and kindled a fire with the boughs. And the woman cooked something and gave them to eat, barley bread, and cheese, and milk and water. And there arose a storm of wind and rain, so that it was hardly possible to go forth with safety. And being weary with their journey, they laid themselves down and sought to sleep. And when they looked at the couch, it seemed to be made but of a little coarse straw full of dust and vermin, with the stems of boughs sticking up therethrough, for the cattle had eaten all the straw that was placed at the head and the foot. And upon it was stretched an old russet-coloured rug, threadbare and ragged; and a coarse sheet, full of slits was upon the rug, and an ill-stuffed pillow, and a worn-out cover upon the sheet. And after much suffering from the vermin, and from the discomfort of their couch, a heavy sleep fell on Rhonabwy's companions. But Rhonabwy, not being able either to sleep or to rest, thought he should suffer less if he went to lie upon the yellow calfskin that was stretched out on the floor. And there he slept. As soon as sleep had come upon his eyes, it seemed to him that he was journeying with his companions across the plain of Argyngroeg, and he thought that he went towards Rhyd y Groes on the Severn. As he journeyed, he heard a mighty noise, the like whereof heard he never before; and looking behind him, he beheld a youth with yellow curling hair, and with his beard newly trimmed, mounted on a chesnut horse, whereof the legs were grey from the top of the forelegs, and from the bend of the hindlegs downwards. And the rider wore a coat of yellow satin sewn with green silk, and on his thigh was a gold-hilted sword, with a scabbard of new leather of Cordova, belted with the skin of the deer, and clasped with gold. And over this was a scarf of yellow satin wrought with green silk, the borders whereof were likewise green. And the green of the caparison of the horse, and of his rider, was as green as the leaves of the fir tree, and the yellow was as yellow as the blossom of the broom. So fierce was the aspect of the knight, that fear seized upon them, and they began to flee. And the knight pursued them. And when the horse breathed forth, the men became distant from him, and when he drew in his breath, they were drawn near to him, even to the horse's chest. And when he had overtaken them, they besought his mercy. "You have it gladly!" said he, "fear nought." "Ha, chieftain, since thou hast mercy upon me, tell me also who thou art," said Rhonabwy. "I will not conceal my lineage from thee. I am Iddawc the son of Mynyo, yet not by my name, but by my nickname am I best known." "And wilt thou tell us what thy nickname is?" "I will tell you; it is Iddawc Cordd Prydain." "Ha, chieftain," said Rhonabwy, "why art thou called thus?" "I will tell thee. I was one of the messengers between Arthur and Medrawd his nephew, at the battle of Camlan; and I was then a reckless youth, and through my desire for battle, I kindled strife between them, and stirred up wrath, when I was sent by Arthur the Emperor to reason with Medrawd, and to shew him, that he was his foster-father and his uncle, and to seek for peace, lest the sons of the Kings of the Island of Britain, and of the nobles, should be slain. And whereas Arthur charged me with the fairest sayings he could think of, I uttered unto Medrawd the harshest I could devise. And therefore am I called Iddawc Cordd Prydain, for from this did the battle of Camlan ensue. And three nights before the end of the battle of Camlan I left them, and went to the Llech Las in North Britain to do penance. And there I remained doing penance seven years, and after that I gained pardon." Then lo! they heard a mighty sound which was much louder than that which they had heard before, and when they looked round towards the sound; behold a ruddy youth, without beard or whiskers, {111} noble of mien, and mounted on a stately courser. And from the shoulders and the front of the knees downwards the horse was bay. And upon the man was a dress of red satin wrought with yellow silk, and yellow were the borders of his scarf. And such parts of his apparel and of the trappings of his horse as were yellow, as yellow were they as the blossom of the broom, and such as were red, were as ruddy as the ruddiest blood in the world. Then behold the horseman overtook them, and he asked of Iddawc a share of the little men that were with him. "That which is fitting for me to grant I will grant, and thou shalt be a companion to them as I have been." And the horseman went away. "Iddawc," enquired Rhonabwy, "who was that horseman?" "Rhuvawn Pebyr, the son of Prince Deorthach." And they journeyed over the plain of Argyngroeg as far as the ford of Rhyd y Groes on the Severn. And for a mile around the ford on both sides of the road, they saw tents and encampments, and there was the clamour of a mighty host. And they came to the edge of the ford, and there they beheld Arthur sitting on a flat island below the ford, having Bedwini {112} the Bishop on one side of him, and Gwarthegyd the son of Kaw on the other. And a tall auburn-haired youth stood before him, with his sheathed sword in his hand, and clad in a coat and a cap of jet black satin. And his face was white as ivory, and his eyebrows black as jet, and such part of his wrist as could be seen between his glove and his sleeve was whiter than the lily, and thicker than a warrior's ankle. Then came Iddawc and they that were with him, and stood before Arthur, and saluted him. "Heaven grant thee good," said Arthur. "And where, Iddawc, didst thou find these little men?" "I found them, lord, up yonder on the road." Then the Emperor smiled. "Lord," said Iddawc, "wherefore dost thou laugh?" "Iddawc," replied Arthur, "I laugh nor; but it pitieth me that men of such stature as these should have this Island in their keeping, after the men that guarded it of yore." Then said Iddawc, "Rhonabwy, dost thou see the ring with a stone set in it, that is upon the Emperor's hand?" "I see it," he answered. "It is one of the properties of that stone, to enable thee to remember that thou seest here to-night, and hadst thou not seen the stone, thou wouldest never have been able to remember aught thereof." After this they saw a troop coming towards the ford. "Iddawc," enquired Rhonabwy, "to whom does yonder troop belong?" "They are the fellows of Rhuvawn Pebyr the son of Prince Deorthach. And these men are honourably served with mead and bragget, and are freely beloved by the daughters of the kings of the Island of Britain. And this they merit, for they were ever in the front and the rear in every peril." And he saw but one hue upon the men and the horses of this troop, for they were all as red as blood. And when one of the knights rode forth from the troop, he looked like a pillar of fire glancing athwart the sky. And this troop encamped above the ford. Then they beheld another troop coming towards the ford, and these from their horses' chests upwards were whiter than the lily, and below blacker than jet. And they saw one of these knights go before the rest, and spur his horse into the ford in such a manner that the water dashed over Arthur and the Bishop, and those holding counsel with them, so that they were as wet as if they had been drenched in the river. And as he turned the head of his horse, the youth who stood before Arthur struck the horse over the nostrils with his sheathed sword, so that had it been with the bare blade it would have been a marvel if the bone had not been wounded as well as the flesh. And the knight drew his sword half out of the scabbard, and asked of him, "Wherefore didst thou strike my horse? Whether was it in insult or in counsel unto me?" "Thou dost indeed lack counsel. What madness caused thee to ride so furiously as to dash the water of the ford over Arthur, and the consecrated Bishop, and their counsellors, so that they were as wet as if they had been dragged out of the river?" "As counsel then will I take it." So he turned his horse's head round towards his army. "Iddawc," said Rhonabwy, "who was yonder knight?" "The most eloquent and the wisest youth that is in this Island; Adaon the son of Taliesin." "Who was the man that struck his horse?" "A youth of froward nature; Elphin the son of Gwyddno." Then spake a tall and stately man, of noble and flowing speech, saying that it was a marvel that so vast a host should be assembled in so narrow a space, and that it was a still greater marvel that those should be there at that time who had promised to be by mid-day in the battle of Badon, fighting with Osla Gyllellvawr. "Whether thou mayest choose to proceed or not, I will proceed." "Thou sayest well," said Arthur, "and we will go all together." "Iddawc," said Rhonabwy, "who was the man who spoke so marvellously unto Arthur erewhile?" "A man who may speak as boldly as he listeth, Caradawc Vreichvras, the son of Llyr Marini, his chief counsellor and his cousin." Then Iddawc took Rhonabwy behind him on his horse, and that mighty host moved forward, each troop in its order, towards Cevndigoll. And when they came to the middle of the ford of the Severn, Iddawc turned his horse's head, and Rhonabwy looked along the valley of the Severn. And he beheld two fair troops coming towards the ford. One troop there came of brilliant white, whereof every one of the men had a scarf of white satin with jet black borders. And the knees and the tops of the shoulders of their horses were jet black, though they were of a pure white in every other part. And their banners were pure white, with black points to them all. "Iddawc," said Rhonabwy, "who are yonder pure white troop?" "They are the men of Norway, and March the son of Meirchion is their prince. And he is cousin unto Arthur." And further on he saw a troop, whereof each man wore garments of jet black, with borders of pure white to every scarf; and the tops of the shoulders and the knees of their horses were pure white. And their banners were jet black with pure white at the point of each. "Iddawc," said Rhonabwy, "who are the jet black troop yonder?" "They are the men of Denmark, and Edeyrn the son of Nudd is their prince." And when they had overtaken the host, Arthur and his army of mighty ones dismounted below Caer Badon, and he perceived that he and Iddawc journeyed the same road as Arthur. And after they had dismounted he heard a great tumult and confusion amongst the host, and such as were then at the flanks, turned to the centre, and such as had been in the centre moved to the flanks. And then, behold, he saw a knight coming, clad, both he and his horse, in mail, of which the rings were whiter than the whitest lily, and the rivets redder than the ruddies blood. And he rode amongst the host. "Iddawc," said Rhonabwy, "will yonder host flee?" "King Arthur never fled, and if this discourse of thine were heard, thou wert a lost man. But as to the knight whom thou seest yonder, it is Kai. The fairest horseman is Kai in all Arthur's Court; and the men who are at the front of the army hasten to the rear to see Kai ride, and the men who are in the centre, flee to the side from the shock of his horse. {116a} And this is the cause of the confusion of the host." Thereupon they heard a call made for Kadwr, Earl of Cornwall, and behold he arose with the sword of Arthur in his hand. And the similitude of two serpents was upon the sword in gold. And when the sword was drawn from its scabbard, it seemed as if two flames of fire burst forth from the jaws of the serpents, and then, so wonderful was the sword, that it was hard for any one to look upon it. And the host became still, and the tumult ceased, and the Earl returned to the tent. "Iddawc," said Rhonabwy, "who is the man who bore the sword of Arthur?" "Kadwr, the Earl of Cornwall, whose duty is to arm the King on the days of battle and warfare." And they heard a call made for Eirynwych Amheibyn, Arthur's servant, a red, rough, ill-favoured man, having red whiskers {116b} with bristly hairs. And behold he came upon a tall red horse, with the mane parted on each side, and he brought with him a large and beautiful sumpter pack. And the huge red youth dismounted before Arthur, and he drew a golden chair out of the pack, and a carpet of diapered satin. And he spread the carpet before Arthur, and there was an apple of ruddy gold at each corner thereof, and he placed the chair upon the carpet. And so large was the chair that three armed warriors might have sat therein. Gwenn was the name of the carpet, and it was one of its properties, that whoever was upon it no one could see him, and he could see every one. And it would retain no colour but its own. And Arthur sat within the carpet, and Owain the son of Urien was standing before him. "Owain," said Arthur, "wilt thou play chess?" "I will, Lord," said Owain. And the red youth brought the chess for Arthur and Owain; golden pieces and a board of silver. And they began to play. And while they were thus, and when they were best amused with their game, behold they saw a white tent with a red canopy, and the figure of a jet black serpent on the top of the tent, and red glaring venomous eyes in the head of the serpent, and a red flaming tongue. And there came a young page with yellow curling hair, and blue eyes, and a newly springing beard, wearing a coat and a surcoat of yellow satin, and hose of thin greenish yellow cloth upon his feet, and over his hose shoes of parti- coloured leather, fastened at the insteps with golden clasps. And he bore a heavy three-edged sword with a golden hilt, in a scabbard of black leather tipped with fine gold. And he came to the place where the Emperor and Owain were playing at chess. And the youth saluted Owain. And Owain marvelled that the youth should salute him and should not have saluted the Emperor Arthur. And Arthur knew what was in Owain's thought. And he said to Owain, "Marvel not that the youth salutes thee now, for he saluted me erewhile; and it is unto thee that his errand is." Then said the youth unto Owain, "Lord, is it with thy leave that the young pages and attendants of the Emperor harass and torment and worry the Ravens? And if it be not with thy leave, cause the Emperor to forbid them." "Lord," said Owain, "thou hearest what the youth says; if it seem good to thee, forbid them from my Ravens." "Play thy game," said he. Then the youth returned to the tent. That game did they finish, and another they began, and when they were in the midst of the game, behold, a ruddy young man with auburn curling hair, and large eyes, well grown, and having his beard new shorn, came forth from a bright yellow tent, upon the summit of which was the figure of a bright red lion. And he was clad in a coat of yellow satin, falling as low as the small of his leg, and embroidered with threads of red silk. And on his feet were hose of fine white buckram, and buskins of black leather were over his hose, whereon were golden clasps. And in his hand a huge, heavy, three-edged sword, with a scabbard of red-deer hide, tipped with gold. And he came to the place where Arthur and Owain were playing at chess. And he saluted him. And Owain was troubled at his salutation, but Arthur minded it no more than before. And the youth said unto Owain, "Is it not against thy will that the attendants of the Emperor harass thy Ravens, killing some and worrying others? If against thy will it be, beseech him to forbid them." "Lord," said Owain, "forbid thy men if it seem good to thee." "Play thy game," said the Emperor. And the youth returned to the tent. And that game was ended, and another begun. And as they were beginning the first move of the game, they beheld at a small distance from them a tent speckled yellow, the largest ever seen, and the figure of an eagle of gold upon it, and a precious stone on the eagle's head. And coming out of the tent, they saw a youth with thick yellow hair upon his head, fair and comely, and a scarf of blue satin upon him, and a brooch of gold in the scarf upon his right shoulder as large as a warrior's middle finger. And upon his feet were hose of fine Totness, and shoes of parti- coloured leather, clasped with gold, and the youth was of noble bearing, fair of face, with ruddy cheeks and large hawk's eyes. In the hand of the youth was a mighty lance, speckled yellow, with a newly sharpened head; and upon the lance a banner displayed. Fiercely angry, and with rapid pace, came the youth to the place where Arthur was playing at chess with Owain. And they perceived that he was wroth. And thereupon he saluted Owain, and told him that his Ravens had been killed, the chief part of them, and that such of them as were not slain were so wounded and bruised that not one of them could raise its wings a single fathom above the earth. "Lord," said Owain, "forbid thy men." "Play," said he "if it please thee." Then said Owain to the youth, "Go back, and wherever thou findest the strife at the thickest, there lift up the banner, and let come what pleases Heaven." So the youth returned back to the place where the strife bore hardest upon the Ravens, and he lifted up the banner; and as he did so they all rose up in the air, wrathful and fierce and high of spirit, clapping their wings in the wind, and shaking off the weariness that was upon them. And recovering their energy and courage, furiously and with exultation did they, with one sweep, descend upon the heads of the men, who had erewhile caused them anger and pain and damage, and they seized some by the heads and others by the eyes, and some by the ears, and others by the arms, and carried them up into the air; and in the air there was a mighty tumult with the flapping of the wings of the triumphant Ravens, and with their croaking; and there was another mighty tumult with the groaning of the men, that were being torn and wounded, and some of whom were slain. And Arthur and Owain marvelled at the tumult as they played at chess; and, looking, they perceived a knight upon a dun-coloured horse coming towards them. And marvellous was the hue of the dun horse. Bright red was his right shoulder, and from the top of his legs to the centre of his hoof was bright yellow. Both the knight and his horse were fully equipped with heavy foreign armour. The clothing of the horse from the front opening upwards was of bright red sendal, and from thence opening downwards was of bright yellow sendal. A large gold-hilted one-edged sword had the youth upon his thigh, in a scabbard of light blue, and tipped with Spanish laton. The belt of the sword was of dark green leather with golden slides and a clasp of ivory upon it, and a buckle of jet black upon the clasp. A helmet of gold was on the head of the knight, set with precious stones of great virtue, and at the top of the helmet was the image of a flame-coloured leopard with two ruby-red stones in its head, so that it was astounding for a warrior, however stout his heart, to look at the face of the leopard, much more at the face of the knight. He had in his hand a blue-shafted lance, but from the haft to the point it was stained crimson-red, with the blood of the Ravens and their plumage. The knight came to the place where Arthur and Owain were seated at chess. And they perceived that he was harassed and vexed and weary as he came towards them. And the youth saluted Arthur, and told him, that the Ravens of Owain were slaying his young men and attendants. And Arthur looked at Owain and said, "Forbid thy Ravens." "Lord," answered Owain, "play thy game." And they played. And the knight returned back towards the strife, and the Ravens were not forbade any more than before. And when they had played awhile, they heard a mighty tumult, and a wailing of men, and a croaking of Ravens, as they carried the men in their strength into the air, and, tearing them betwixt them, let them fall piecemeal to the earth. And during the tumult they saw a knight coming towards them on a light grey horse, and the left foreleg of the horse was jet black to the centre of his hoof. And the knight and the horse were fully accoutred with huge heavy blue armour. And a robe of honour of yellow diapered satin was upon the knight, and the borders of the robe were blue. And the housings of the horse were jet black, with borders of bright yellow. And on the thigh of the youth was a sword, long, and three-edged, and heavy. And the scabbard was of red cut leather, and the belt of new red deerskin, having upon it many golden slides and a buckle of the bone of the sea horse, the tongue of which was jet black. A golden helmet was upon the head of the knight, wherein were set sapphire stones of great virtue. And at the top of the helmet was the figure of a flame-coloured lion, with a fiery-red tongue, issuing above a foot from his mouth, and with venomous eyes, crimson-red, in his head. And the knight came, bearing in his hand a thick ashen lance, the head whereof, which had been newly steeped in blood, was overlaid with silver. And the youth saluted the Emperor: "Lord," said he, "carest thou not for the slaying of thy pages, and thy young men, and the sons of the nobles of the Island of Britain, whereby it will be difficult to defend this Island from henceforward for ever?" "Owain," said Arthur, "forbid thy Ravens." "Play this game, Lord," said Owain. So they finished the game, and began another; and as they were finishing that game, lo, they heard a great tumult and a clamour of armed men, and a croaking of Ravens, and a flapping of wings in the air, as they flung down the armour entire to the ground, and the men and the horses piecemeal. Then they saw coming a knight on a lofty-headed piebald horse. And the left shoulder of the horse was of bright red, and its right leg from the chest to the hollow of the hoof was pure white. And the knight and horse were equipped with arms of speckled yellow, variegated with Spanish laton. And there was a robe of honour upon him, and upon his horse, divided in two parts, white and black, and the borders of the robe of honour were of golden purple. And above the robe he wore a sword three-edged and bright, with a golden hilt. And the belt of the sword was of yellow goldwork, having a clasp upon it of the eyelid of a black sea horse, and a tongue of yellow gold to the clasp. Upon the head of the knight was a bright helmet of yellow laton, with sparkling stones of crystal in it, and at the crest of the helmet was the figure of a griffin, with a stone of many virtues in its head. And he had an ashen spear in his hand, with a round shaft, coloured with azure blue. And the head of the spear was newly stained with blood, and was overlaid with fine silver. Wrathfully came the knight to the place where Arthur was, and he told him that the Ravens had slain his household and the sons of the chief men of this Island, and he besought him to cause Owain to forbid his Ravens. And Arthur besought Owain to forbid them. Then Arthur took the golden chessmen that were upon the board, and crushed them until they became as dust. Then Owain ordered Gwres the son of Rheged to lower his banner. So it was lowered, and all was peace. Then Rhonabwy enquired of Iddawc, who were the first three men that came to Owain, to tell him his Ravens were being slain. Said Iddawc, "They were men who grieved that Owain should suffer loss, his fellow-chieftains and companions, Selyv the son of Kynan Garwyn of Powys, and Gwgawn Gleddyvrudd, and Gwres the son of Rheged, he who bears the banner in the day of battle and strife." "Who," said Rhonabwy, "were the last three men who came to Arthur, and told him that the Ravens were slaughtering his men?" "The best of men," said Iddawc, "and the bravest, and who would grieve exceedingly that Arthur should have damage in aught; Blathaon, the son of Mawrheth, {124a} and Rhuvawn Pebyr the son of Prince Deorthach, and Hyveidd Unllenn." And with that behold four and twenty knights came from Osla Gyllellvawr, to crave a truce of Arthur for a fortnight and a month. And Arthur arose and went to take counsel. And he came to where a tall auburn curly-headed man was a little way off, and there he assembled his counsellors. Bedwini, {124b} the Bishop, and Gwarthegyd the son of Kaw, and March the son of Meirchawn, and Caradawc Vreichvras, and Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar, and Edeyrn the son of Nudd, and Rhuvawn Pebyr the son of Prince Deorthach, and Rhiogan the son of the King of Ireland, and Gwenwynwyn the son of Nav, Howel the son of Emyr Llydaw, Gwilym the son of Rhwyf Freinc, and Daned the son of Ath, {124c} and Goreu Custennin, and Mabon the son of Modron, and Peredur Paladyr Hir, and Hyveidd {125a} Unllenn, and Twrch the son of Perif, and Nerth the son of Kadarn, and Gobrwy the son of Echel Vorddwyttwll, Gwair the son of Gwestyl, and Gadwy {125b} the son of Geraint, Trystan {125c} the son of Tallwch, Moryen Manawc, Granwen the son of Llyr, and Llacheu the son of Arthur, and Llawvrodedd Varvawc, and Kadwr Earl of Cornwall, Morvran the son of Tegid, and Rhyawd the son of Morgant, and Dyvyr the son of Alun Dyved, Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd, Adaon the son of Taliesin, Llary {125d} the son of Kasnar {125e} Wledig, and Fflewddur Fflam, and Greidawl Galldovydd, Gilbert the son of Kadgyffro, Menw the son of Teirgwaedd, Gwrthmwl Wledig, Cawrdav the son of Caradawc Vreichvras, Gildas the son of Kaw, Kadyriaith the son of Saidi, and many of the men of Norway, and Denmark, and many of the men of Greece, and a crowd of the men of the host came to that counsel. "Iddawc," said Rhonabwy, "who was the auburn haired man to whom they came just now?" "Rhun the son of Maelgwn Gwynedd, a man of whose prerogative it is, that he may join in counsel with all." {125f} "And wherefore did they admit into counsel with men of such dignity as are yonder a stripling so young as Kadyriaith the son of Saidi?" "Because there is not throughout Britain a man better skilled in counsel than he." Thereupon, behold, bards came and recited verses before Arthur, and no man understood those verses, but Kadyriaith only, save that they were in Arthur's praise. And, lo, there came four and twenty asses with their burdens of gold and of silver, and a tired wayworn man with each of them, bringing tribute to Arthur from the Islands of Greece. Then Kadyriaith the son of Saidi besought that a truce might be granted to Osla Gyllellvawr for the space of a fortnight and a month, and that the asses and the burdens they carried might be given to the bards, to be to them as the reward for their stay and that their verse might be recompensed, during the time of the truce. And thus it was settled. "Rhonabwy," said Iddawc, "would it not be wrong to forbid a youth who can give counsel so liberal as this from coming to the councils of his Lord?" Then Kai arose, and he said, "Whosoever will follow Arthur, let him be with him to-night in Cornwall, and whosoever will not, let him be opposed to Arthur even during the truce." And through the greatness of the tumult that ensued, Rhonabwy awoke. And when he awoke he was upon the yellow calfskin, having slept three nights and three days. And this tale is called The Dream of Rhonabwy. And this is the reason that no one knows the dream without a book, neither bard nor gifted seer; because of the various colours that were upon the horses, and the many wondrous colours of the arms and of the panoply, and of the precious scarfs, and of the virtue-bearing stones. Footnotes: {15} "The Emperor Arthur" all through the tale. {16} To begin to honour them, to inform them of the manners and the customs of the Court, those he was told were to go to the hall or the presence chamber, and those he was told were to get lodging. {17a} And I did not think there was in the world a wrong too mighty for me to set right. And when I had set right all the wrongs that were in my own country. {17b} Add "with fair curly hair." {18a} And such was his courtesy that he greeted me before I could greet him. {18b} Add, "I ween that." {18c} When she was ever loveliest, at Christmas, or at Easter tide mass. {19a} And the man I had seen erstwhile sat down to the table. {19b} Did I not think that too much trouble would befall thee. {20} With querulous roughness. {21a} And he would but bandy words with me. {21b} So that they cannot be separated. {27} Add "On account of the knight." {28} An image of a different kind. {29a} Monks. {29b} Land-owning. {30} Louder was her cry than any trumpet blast that arose from among the multitude. {31} "Truly," said Luned, "I thought thy good sense was greater than I find it to be. Is it better to grieve because thou canst not get _that_ good man, than it is to grieve for anything else thou canst never get?" "I declare to heaven," said the Countess, "that I could never get my lord in any other man, be he the best in the world." "Oh yes," said Luned, "thou couldst marry a husband that would be as good as he, or better than he." {36} Encamped. {37a} Add "and looked at him." {37b} And belaboured each other. {38} Add "and this is my abode." {39} To the disgrace of thy beard. {45} Owen was certain he had never seen better service, but every one was as sorrowful as if death had been upon him. {46a} And to-morrow is the appointed day for me to meet him, to deliver to him yonder maiden, otherwise he will kill my sons before my eyes. {46b} And the Earl determined to hold the castle against him, abandoning his two sons to their fate. {47} And they told him their tale. {48} But Owen's strength had not yet returned. {52} Her. {56} And very unmeet for so honourable a Court. {58} Add "causing a grievous wound." {59a} "This iron coat will never come off him," said Peredur. "I doubt whether it is not part of himself, born with him." {59b} Add "and the threat against Kai." {62} We are brother and sister. {72} In the dingle. {76} Progress. {102} And the side that he would favour would lose the game. {108} And they reckoned that the corn land of Powys, from Aber Ceirawc in Allictun Ver to Rhyd Wilure on the Vyrnwy, was as good as the three best commots in Powys; and that, if there was not sustenance for him and his followers in that corn land, there would be none in Powys. {109} Scantly draped, poverty-stricken. {111} Moustache. {112} Bedwin. {116a} For fear of being crushed by his horse. {116b} A red moustache. {124a} Murheth. {124b} Bedwin. {124c} Oth. {125a} Heneidd. {125b} Adwy. {125c} Dyrstan. {125d} Llara. {125e} Kasnat. {125f} It is his privilege that everyone should come to have counsel with him. Printed at The Edinburgh Press 9 & 11 Young Street 
18778	----	GARTHOWEN A Story of a Welsh Homestead. by ALLEN RAINE. Author of "Torn Sails," "A Welsh Singer," "By Berwen Banks," Etc. Sixty-Fifth Thousand London Hutchinson & Co. Paternoster Row CONTENTS CHAP. I. A Turn of the Road II. "Garthowen" III. Morva of the Moor IV. The Old Bible V. The Sea Maiden VI. Gethin's Presents VII. The Broom Girl VIII. Garthowen Slopes IX. The North Star X. The Cynos XI. Unrest XII. Sara's Vision XIII. The Bird Flutters XIV. Dr. Owen XV. Gwenda's Prospects XVI. Isderi XVII. Gwenda at Garthowen XVIII. Sara XIX. The "Sciet" XX. Love's Pilgrimage XXI. The Mate of the "Gwenllian" XXII. Gethin's Story XXIII. Turned Out! XXIV. A Dance on the Cliffs GARTHOWEN CHAPTER I A TURN OF THE ROAD It was a typical July day in a large seaport town of South Wales. There had been refreshing showers in the morning, giving place to a murky haze through which the late afternoon sun shone red and round. The small kitchen of No. 2 Bryn Street was insufferably hot, in spite of the wide-open door and window. A good fire burnt in the grate, however, for it was near tea-time, and Mrs. Parry knew that some of her lodgers would soon be coming in for their tea. One had already arrived, and, sitting on the settle in the chimney corner, was holding an animated conversation with his landlady, who stood before him, one hand akimbo on her side, the other brandishing a toasting fork. Her beady black eyes, her brick-red cheeks and hanks of coarse hair, were not beautiful to look upon, though to-day they were at their best, for the harsh voice was softened, and there was a humid gentleness in the eyes not habitual to them. Her companion was a young man about twenty-three years of age, dark, almost swarthy of hue, tanned by the suns and storms of foreign seas and many lands, As he sat there in the shade of the settle one caught a glance of black eyes and a gleam of white teeth, but the easy, lounging attitude did not show to advantage the splendid build of Gethin Owens. One of his large brown fists, resting on the rough deal table, was covered with tattooed hieroglyphics, an anchor, a mermaid, and a heart, of course! Anyone conversant with the Welsh language would have divined at once, by the long-drawn intonation of the first words in every remark, that the subject of conversation was one of sad or tender interest. "Well, indeed," said Mrs. Parry, "the-r-e's missing you I'll be, Gethin! We are coming from the same place, you see, and you are knowing all about me, and I about you, and that I supp-o-s-e is making me feel more like a mother to you than to the other lodgers." "Well, you _have_ been like a mother to me, mending my clothes and watching me so sharp with the drink. Dei anwl! I don't think I ever took a glass with a friend without you finding me out, and calling me names. 'Drunken blackguard!' you called me one night, when as sure as I'm here I had only had a bottle of gingerpop in Jim Jones's shop," and he laughed boisterously. "Well, well," said Mrs. Parry, "if I wronged you then, be bound you deserved the blame some other time, and 'twas for your own good I was telling you, my boy. Indeed, I wish I was going home with you to the old neighbourhood. The-r-e's glad they'll be to see you at Garthowen." "Well, I don't know how my father will receive me," said her companion thoughtfully. "Ann and Will I am not afraid of, but the old man--he was very angry with me." "What _did_ you do long ago to make him so angry, Gethin? I have heard Tom Powell and Jim Bowen blaming him very much for being so hard to his eldest son; they said he was always more fond of Will than you, and was often beating you." "Halt!" said Gethin, bringing his fist down so heavily on the table that the tea-things jingled, "not a word against the old man--the best father that ever walked, and I was the worst boy on Garthowen slopes, driving the chickens into the water, shooing the geese over the hedges, riding the horses full pelt down the stony roads, setting fire to the gorse bushes, mitching from school, and making the boys laugh in chapel; no wonder the old man turned me away." "But all boys are naughty boys," said Mrs. Parry, "and that wasn't enough reason for sending you from home, and shutting the door against you." "No," said Gethin, "but I did more than that; I could not do a worse thing than I did to displease the old man. I was fond of scribbling my name everywhere. 'Gethin Owens' was on all the gateposts, and on the saddles and bridles, and once I painted 'G. O.' with green paint on the white mare's haunch. There was a squall when that was found out, but it was nothing to the storm that burst upon me when I wrote something in my mother's big Bible. As true as I am here, I don't remember what I wrote, but I know it was something about the devil, and I signed it 'Gethin Owens,' and a big 'Amen' after it. Poor old man, he was shocking angry, and he wouldn't listen to no excuse; so after a good thrashing I went away, Ann ran after me with my little bundle, and the tears streaming down her face, but I didn't cry--only when I came upon little Morva Lloyd sitting on the hillside. She put her arms round my neck and tried to keep me back, but I dragged myself away, and my tears were falling like rain then, and all the way down to Abersethin as long as I could hear Morva crying and calling out 'Gethin! Gethin!'" "There's glad she'll be to see you." "Well, I dunno. She was used to be very fond of me; she couldn't bear Will because he was teazing her, but I was like a slave to her. 'I want some shells to play,' sez she sometimes, and there I was off to the shore, hunting about for shells for her. 'Take me a ride,' sez she, and up on my shoulder I would hoist her, as happy as a king, with her two little feet in my hands, and her little fat hands ketching tight in my hair, and there's galloping over the slopes we were, me snorting and prancing, and she laughing all the time like the swallows when they are flying." They were interrupted by a clatter of heavy shoes and a chorus of boisterous voices, as three sailors came in loudly calling for their tea. "Hello, Gethin! not gone? Hast changed thy mind?" "Not a bit of it," said Gethin, pointing to his bag of clothes. "I have been a long time making up my mind, but it's Garthowen and the cows and the cawl for me this time and no mistake." "And Morva," said Jim Bowen, with a smile, in which lurked a suspicion of a sneer. "Thee may say what thee likes about the old man, and the cows, and the cawl, but I know thee, Gethin Owens! Ever since I told thee what a fine lass Morva Lloyd has grown thee'st been hankering after Garthowen slopes." There was a general laugh, in which Gethin joined good-humouredly, standing and stretching himself with a yawn. The evening sun fell full upon him, showing a form of sinewy strength, and a handsome manly face. His dark skin and the small gold rings in his ears, so much affected by Welsh sailors, gave him a foreign look, which rather added to the attractiveness of his personal appearance. When the tea had been partaken of, with a running accompaniment of broad jokes and loud laughter, the three sailors went out, leaving Gethin still sitting on the settle. This was Mrs. Parry's hour of peace--when her consumptive son came home from his loitering in the sunshine to join her at her own quiet "cup of tea," while her rough husband was still engaged amongst the shipping in the docks. "Well, what'll I say to Nani Graig?" said Gethin. "Oh, poor mother, my love, and tell her if it wasn't for my boy Tom I'd soon be home with her again, for I'll never live with John Parry when my boy is gone." "He's not going for many a long year," said Gethin, slapping the boy on the back, his more sensitive nature shrinking from such plain speaking. But Tom was used to it, and smiled, shuffling uneasily under the slap. "What you got bulging out in your bag like that?" he asked. "Oh, presents for them at Garthowen; will I show them to you?" said the sailor awkwardly, as he untied the mouth of the canvas bag. "Here's a tie for my father, and a hymn-book for Ann, and here's a knife for Will, and a pocket-book for Gwilym Morris, the preacher who is lodging with them. And here," he said, opening a gaily-painted box, "is something for little Morva," and he gently laid on the table a necklace of iridescent shells which fell in three graduated rows. "Oh! there's pretty!" said Mrs. Parry, and while she held the shining shells in the red of the sun, again the doorway was darkened by the entrance of two noisy, gaudily-dressed girls, who came flouncing up to the table. "Hello! Bella Lewis and Polly Jones, is it you? Where you come from so early?" said Mrs. Parry. "Come to see me, of course!" suggested the sailor. "Come to see you and stop you going," said one of the girls. "Gethin Owens, you _are_ more of a skulk than I took you for, though you are rather shirky in your ways, if this is true what I hear about you." "What?" said Gethin, replacing the necklace in the box. "That you are going home for good, going to turn farmer and say good-bye to the shipping and the docks." And as she spoke she laid her hand on the box which Gethin was closing, and drew out its contents. There was a greedy glitter in her bold eyes as she asked, "Who's that for?" and she clasped it round her own neck, while Gethin's dark face flushed. "Couldn't look better than there," he answered gallantly, "so you keep it, to remember me," and tying up his canvas bag he bade them all a hurried good-bye. Mrs. Parry followed him to the doorway with regretful farewells, for she was losing a friend who had not only paid her well, but had been kind to her delicate boy, and whose strong fist had often decided in her favour a fight with her brutal husband. "There you now," she said, in a confidential whisper and with a nudge on Gethin's canvas bag, "there you are now; fool that you are! giving such a thing as that to Bella Lewis! What did you pay for it, Gethin? Shall I have it if I can get it from her? Why did you give it to her? you said 'twas for little Morva--" "Yes, it was," he said; "but d'ye think, woman, I would give it to Morva after being on Bella Lewis's neck? No! that's why I am running away in such a hurry, to buy her another, d'ye see, and Dei anwl, I must make haste or else I'll be late on board. Good-bye, good-bye." Mrs. Parry looked after him almost tenderly, but called out once more: "Shall I have it if I can get it?" "Yes, yes," shouted Gethin in return, and as he made his way through the grimy, unsavoury street, he chuckled as he pictured the impending scrimmage. CHAPTER II "GARTHOWEN" Along the slope of a bare brown hill, which turned one scarped precipitous side to the sea, and the other, more smooth and undulating, towards a fair scene of inland beauty, straggled the little hamlet of Pont-y-fro. Jos Hughes's shop was the very last house in the village, the road beyond it merging into the rushy moor, and dwindling into a stony track, down which a streamlet trickled from the peat bog above. The house had stood in the same place for two hundred years, and Jos Hughes looked as if he too had lived there for the same length of time. His quaintly cut blue cloth coat adorned with large brass buttons, his knee breeches of corduroy, and grey blue stockings, looking well in keeping with his dwelling, but very out of place behind a counter. His brown wrinkled face and ruddy cheeks were like a shrivelled apple, his shrewd inquisitive eyes peered out through a pair of large brass-rimmed spectacles, and, to judge by his expression, the view they got of the world in general was not satisfactory. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and intense heat, but through the open shop door the sea wind came in with refreshing coolness. Behind the counter Jos Hughes measured and weighed lazily, throwing in with his short weight a compliment, or a screw of peppermints, as the case required. "Who is this coming up in the dust?" he mumbled. "'Tis Morva of the moor," said a woman standing in the doorway and shading her eyes with her hand. "What does she want, I wonder? There's a merry lass she is!" "Oh! day or night, sun or snow don't matter to her," said Jos Hughes. At this moment the subject of their remarks entered the shop, and, sitting on a sack of maize, let her arms fall on her lap. She was quickly followed by a large black sheep dog, who bounded in and, placing his fore-paws on the counter, with tongue hanging out, looked at Jos Hughes intently. "Down, Tudor!" said the girl, and he sprang on a sack of peas beside her. The mountain wind blowing in through the open doorway touzled the little curls that were so unruly in Morva's hair; it was neither gold nor ebony, but, looking at its rich tints, one was irresistibly reminded of the ripe corn in harvest fields, while the blue eyes were like the corn flowers in their vivid colouring. "How are they at Garthowen?" asked Fani "bakkare." "Oh! they are all well there," answered the girl, panting and fanning herself with her sun-bonnet, "except the white calf, and he is better." "There's hot it is!" said Fani, taking up her basket of groceries. "Oh! 'tis hot!" said the girl, "but there's a lovely wind from the sea." "What are you wanting to-day, Morva?" said Jos. "A ball of red worsted for Ann, and an ounce of 'bacco for 'n'wncwl Ebben, and oh! a ha'porth of sweets for Tudor." The dog wagged his tail approvingly as Jos reached down from the shelf a bottle of pink lollipops, for, though a wild country dog, he had depraved tastes in the matter of sweets. "There's serious you all look! what's the matter with you?" said the girl, looking smilingly round. "Nothing is the matter as I know," said Fani, "only there's always plenty of trouble flying about. We can't be all so free from care as you, always laughing or singing or something." "Indeed I wish we could," said Madlen, a pale girl who was bending over a box of knitting pins, looking round curiously and rather sadly; "I wish the whole world could be like you, Morva." Morva snatched the girl's listless hand in her own warm firm grasp, and pressed it sympathetically, for she knew Madlen's secret sorrow. "Wait another year or two," said Fani, "we'll talk to you then! Wait till your husband comes home drunk from 'The Black Horse!'" "And wait till you put all your money into a shop and then find it doesn't pay you," said Jos. Madlen said nothing, but Morva knew that in her heart she was thinking, "Wait until your lover proves false to you!" and she gave her hand another squeeze. "Well, indeed!" she said springing up, "what are you all talking about? I won't put all my money in a shop, and I won't marry a drunkard! Sixpence, is it? I am going home over the bog and round the hill, but I am going to sit on the bench outside a bit first. There's lots of swallows' nests under your eaves, Jos Hughes; that brings good luck, they say, so your shop ought to pay you well." So saying she passed out, and sitting on the bench round the corner of the house she kissed her hand toward the swallows, who flitted in and out of their nests, twittering ecstatically. "Hark to her," said Fani, "singing again, if you please--always light-hearted! always happy! I don't think its quite right, Jos bâch, do you? You are a deacon at Penmorien and you ought to know. If it was a hymn now! but you hear it's all nonsense about the swallows. Ach y fi! she is learning them from Sara ''spridion';[1] some song of the 'old fathers' in past times!" "Yes," said Jos, sanctimoniously clasping his stubby fingers, "I'm afraid the girl is a bit of a heathen. What wonder is it? Nursed by Sara--always out with the cows or the sheep, and they say she thinks nothing of sleeping under a hedge, or out on the slopes, if any animal is sick and wants watching." Fani went out with a toss of her head, as the sweet voice came in through the little side window with the twittering of the swallows and the cluck, cluck of a happy brood hen. Outside, Morva had forgotten all about Jos Hughes and Fani "bakkare's" sour looks, and was singing her heart out to the sunshine. "Sing on, little swallows," she said, "and I'll sing too. Sara taught me the 'bird song' long ago when I was a baby." And in a clear, sweet voice she joined the birds, and woke the echoes from the brown cliffs. The tune was quaint and rapid; both it and the words had come down to her with the old folklore of generations passed away. "Over the sea from the end of the wide world I've come without wetting my feet, my feet, my feet, Back to the old home, straight to the nest-home, Under the brown thatch, oh sweet! oh sweet! oh sweet! "When over the waters I flew in the autumn, Then there was plenty of seed, of seed, of seed. Women have winnow'd it, threshers have garner'd it, Barns must be filled up indeed, indeed, indeed! "Are you glad we have come with a flitter and twitter Once more on the housetop to meet, to meet, to meet? Make haste little primroses, cowslips, and daisies, we're Longing your faces to greet, to greet, to greet!" --_Trans._ "Yes, that's what you are singing. Good-bye," and waving her hand towards them again, she turned her face to the boggy moor, picking her way over the stepping-stones which led up to the dryer sheep paths. The golden marsh marigolds glittered around her, the beautiful bog bean hung its pinky white fringe over the brown peat pools, the silky plumes of the cotton grass nodded at her as she passed, and the wind whispered in the rushes the secrets of the sea. Morva listened with a smile, a brown finger up-raised. "Yes, yes, I know what you are singing too down there in the rushes, sweet west wind," she said. "Sara has told me, but I haven't time to sing the 'wind song' to-day," and reaching the sheep path which led round the mountain, she sped against the wind, her hair streaming behind her, her blue skirt fluttering in the breeze, the ball of scarlet worsted and the shining 'bacco box held high in either hand to steady her flying footsteps, Tudor barking with joy as he bounded after her and twitched at her fluttering skirts. It was tea-time when she reached Garthowen, and, winter or summer, that was always the pleasantest hour at the farmstead, when the air was filled with the aroma of the hot tea, and the laughter and talk of the household. On the settle in the cosy chimney corner sat Ebben Owens himself, the head of the family and the centre of interest to every member of it. He possessed that doubtful advantage, the power of attracting to himself the affection and friendship of everyone who came in contact with him; his children idolised him, and Morva was no whit behind them in her affection for him. In spite of his long grizzled locks, and a slight stoop, he was still a hale and hearty yeoman under his seventy years. His cheeks bore the ruddy hue of health, his eyes were still bright and clear, the lines of his mouth expressed a gentle and sensitive nature. It was by no means a strong face, but its very weakness perhaps accounted for the protecting tenderness shown to him by all his family. As he sat there in the shadow of the settle it was easy to understand why his children were so devotedly attached to him, and why he bore the reputation of being the kindest and most good-natured man in Pont-y-fro and its neighbourhood. Ann, his only daughter, was looking smilingly at him from the head of the table, her smooth brown hair parted over her madonna-like brows, her brown eyes full of laughter. Opposite to her, at the bottom of the table, sat Gwilym Morris, preacher at the Calvinistic Methodist chapel, down in the valley by the shore. He had lived at Garthowen for many years as one of the family, being the son of an old friend of Ebben Owens. Having a small--very small--income of his own, he was able to devote his services to the chapel in the valley, expecting and receiving nothing in return but a pittance, for which no other minister would have been willing to work. He was a dark, pale man, of earnest and studious appearance, of quiet manners, and rather silent, but often seeking the liquid brown eyes which lighted up Ann's gentle face. "Tis the only time father is cross when he has lost his 'bacco box," said Ann, laughing; "but then he is as cross as two sticks." "Lol! lol!" said the old man snappishly, "give me a cup of tea; but I can't think where my 'bacco box is. I swear I left it here on the table." Gwilym Morris hunted about in the most unlikely places, as men generally do--on the tea tray, between the leaves of some newspapers which stood on the deep window-sill. He was about to open Ann's work-bag in search of it, when Morva entered panting, and placed the shining box and ball of red wool on the table. "Good, my daughter," said Ebben Owens, pocketing his new-found treasure, and regaining his good temper at once. "I saw it was empty, so I took it with me to Jos Hughes's shop," she said. Soon afterwards, seated on her milking stool, she was singing to the rhythm of the milk as it streamed into the frothing pail, for Daisy refused to yield her milk without a musical accompaniment. Very soft and low was the girl's singing, but clear and sweet as that of the thrush on the thorn bush behind her. "Give me my little milking pail, For under the hawthorn in the vale The cows are gathering one by one, They know the time by the westering sun. Troodi, Troodi! come down from the mountain, Troodi, Troodi! come up from the dale; Moelen, and Corwen, and Blodwen, and Trodwen! I'll meet you all with my milking pail." So sang the girl, and the lilting tune caught the ears of a youth who was just entering the farmyard. He knew it at once. It was a snatch of Morva's simple milking song. He stopped to pat Daisy's broad forehead, and Morva looked up with a smile. "Make haste," she said, "or tea will be finished. Where have you been so late?" "Thou'll be surprised when I tell thee," said the young man; but before he had time for further conversation, Ann's voice called him from the kitchen window, and he hurried away unceremoniously. Morva continued her song, for Daisy wanted nothing new, but was contented with the old stave which she had known from calfhood. Will Owens, arriving in the farm kitchen, had evidently been eagerly awaited. Both Ann and Gwilym Morris came forward to meet him, and Ebben Owens rubbed his hands nervously over his corduroy knees. "Well?" said all three together. "Well!" echoed Will, flinging his hat across to the window-sill. "It's all right. I met Price the vicar coming down the street, so I touched my hat to him, and he saw at once that I wanted to speak to him, and there's kind he was. 'How's your father?' he said, 'and Miss Ann, is she well? I must come up and see them soon.'" "Look you there now," said his father. "'They will be very glad to see you sir,' I said, but I didn't know how to tell him what I wanted. "'I am very glad to hear how well you get on with your books,' he said; 'but 'tisn't every young man has Gwilym Morris to help him and to teach him.' And then, you see, when he made a beginning, 'twas easier for me to explain." The preacher's pale face lighted up with a smile of pleasure, and Ann flushed with gratified pride as Will continued. "'He is a man in a hundred,' said Mr. Price, 'and 'tis a pity that his talents are wasted on a Methodist Chapel. I wish I could persuade him to enter the Church.' "'Well, you'll never do that,' I said. 'You might as well try to turn the course of the On. He won't come himself, but he is sending a very poor substitute to you, sir.' "'And who is that? You?' said Mr. Price. "'Well, sir, that is what I wanted to see you about. You know that although we are Methodists bred and born, both my grandfather and my great-grandfather had a son in the Church,' and with that he took hold of my two hands. "'And your father is going to follow their good example? I _am_ glad!' and he shook my hands so warmly." "There for you now!" said Ebben Owens. "'I will do all I can for you,' Mr. Price said, 'and I'm sure your uncle will help you.' "'Oh!' said I, 'if my father will send me to the Church, sir, it will be without pressing upon anyone else for money,' for I wasn't going to let him think we couldn't afford it." "Right, my boy," said Ebben Owens, standing up in his excitement; "and what then?" "Oh! then he asked me when did I think of entering college; and I said, 'Next term, sir, if I can pass.' "'No fear of that,' he said again, 'with Gwilym Morris at your elbow.' But I'm choking, Ann; give me a cup of tea, da chi.[2] I'll finish afterwards." "That's all, I should think," said the preacher; "you've got on pretty far for a first interview." "I got a little further, though," said Will. "What do you think, father, he has asked me to do?" "What?" said the old man breathlessly. "He asked would I read the lessons in church next Sunday week. ''Twould be a good beginning,' he said; 'and tell your father and Miss Ann they must come and hear you.' "'Well,' I said, 'my father hasn't been inside a church for years, and I don't know whether he will come.'" "Well, of course," said the old man eagerly, "I will come to hear you, my boy, and Ann--" "Not I, indeed," said Ann, with a toss of her head, "there will be a sermon in my own chapel." "But it will be over before eleven, Ann, and I don't see why you shouldn't go if you wish to," said Gwilym Morris. "I don't wish to," she answered, turning to the tea-table, and pouring out her brother's tea. She was a typical Welsh woman, of highly-strung nervous temperament, though placid in outward appearance and manners, unselfish even to self-effacement where her kindred were concerned, but wary and suspicious beyond the pale of relationship or love; a zealous religionist, but narrow and bigoted in the extreme. In his heart of hearts Ebben Owens also hated the Church. Dissent had been the atmosphere in which his ancestors had lived and breathed, but in his case pride had struggled with prejudice, and had conquered. For three generations a son had gone forth from Garthowen to the enemy's Church, and had won there distinction and riches. True, their career had withdrawn them entirely from the old simple home circle, but this did not deter Ebben Owens from desiring strongly to emulate his ancestors. Why should not Will, the clever one of the family, his favourite son--who had "topped" all the boys at the village school, and had taken so many prizes in the grammar school at Caer-Madoc--why should not he gain distinction and preferment in the Church, and shed fresh lustre on the fading name of "Owens of Garthowen," for the name had lost its ancient prestige in the countryside? In early time theirs had been a family of importance, as witness the old deeds in the tin box on the attic rafters, but for two hundred years they had been simple farmers. They had never been a thrifty race, and the broad lands which tradition said once belonged to them had been sold from time to time, until nothing remained but the old farm with its hundred acres of mountain land. Ebben Owens never troubled his head, however, about the past glories of his race. He inherited the "happy-go-lucky," unbusiness-like temperament which had probably been the cause of his ancestors' misfortunes, but Will's evident love of learning had aroused in the old man a strong wish to remind the world that the "Owens of Garthowen" still lived, and could push themselves to the front if they wished. As Will drank his tea and cleared plate after plate of bread and butter, his father looked at him with a tender, admiring gaze. Will had always been his favourite. Gethin, the eldest son, had never taken hold of his affections; he had been the mother's favourite, and after her death had drifted further and further out of his father's good graces. The boy's nature was a complete contrast to that of his own and second son, for Gethin was bold and daring, while they were wary and secret; he was restless and mischievous, while his brother was quiet and sedate; he was constantly getting into scrapes, while Will always managed to steer clear of censure. Gethin hated his books too, and, worse than all, he paid but scant regard to the services in the chapel, which held such an important place in the estimation of the rest of the household. More than once Ebben Owens, walking with proper decorum to chapel on Sunday morning, accompanied by Will and Ann, had been scandalised at meeting Gethin returning from a surreptitious scramble on the hillside, with a row of blue eggs strung on a stalk of grass. A hasty rush into the house to dress, a pell-mell run down the mountain side, a flurried arrival in the chapel, where Will and his father had already hung up their hats on the rail at the back of their seat, did not tend to mitigate the old man's annoyance at his son's erratic ways. Gethin was the cause of continual disturbances in the household, culminating at last in a severer thrashing than usual, and a dismissal from the home of his childhood--a dismissal spoken in anger, which would have been repented of ere night had not the boy, exasperated at his utter inability to rule his wild and roving habits, taken his father at his word and disappeared from the old homestead. "Let him go," Ebben Owens had said to the tearful pleading Ann. "Let him go, child; it will do him good if he can't behave himself at home. Let him go, like many another rascal, and find out whether cold and hunger and starvation will suit him. Let him feel a pinch or two, and he'll soon come home again, and then perhaps he'll have come to his senses and give us less trouble here." Ann had cried her eyes red for days, and Will had silently grieved over the loss of his brother, but he had been prudent, and had said nothing to increase his father's anger, so the days slipped by and Gethin never returned. His father, relenting somewhat (for he seldom remained long in the same frame of mind), made inquiries of the sea-faring men who visited the neighbouring coast villages, and learning from them that Gethin had been taken as cabin boy by an old friend of his, whom he knew to be of a kindly disposition, felt quite satisfied concerning his son's safety, and congratulated himself upon the result of his own firmness. "There's the very thing for him," he thought; "'twill make a man of him, and 'tis time he should be brought to his senses! and he won't be so ready with his 'Amens!' again. Ach y fi!" From time to time as the years sped on, news of Gethin came in a roundabout way to the farm, and at last a letter from some foreign port, from which it was evident that the youth, now growing up to manhood, still retained his bright sunny nature and laughter-loving ways, together with the warmth of heart which had always distinguished the troublesome Gethin. There was no allusion to the past, no begging for forgiveness, no hint of a wish to return home. His father seldom looked at the lad's letters, but flung them to Will to be read, the quarrel between him and his son, instead of dwindling into forgetfulness, seeming to grow and widen in his mind with each succeeding year, as trifling disagreements frequently do in weak but obstinate natures. "Gethin will be an honour to us yet," Ann would say sometimes. "Honour indeed!" the old man would answer, with a red spot on each cheek, which always denoted his rising anger. "What honour? A common sailor lounging about from one foreign port to another! 'Tis stopping at home he ought to be, and helping his old father with the farming. If Will is going to be a clergyman I will want somebody to help me with the work." "Well, I'm sure he would come, father, and glad too, if he knew that you were wanting him." "Oh, I don't want him. Let him come when he likes; that's fair enough." But Gethin still roamed, and latterly nothing had been heard of him, no letters and no news. 'Tis true, a dim and hazy report had reached Garthowen from some sailor in the village "that Gethin Owens was getting on 'splendid,' that he was steady and saving." Ann had flushed with pleasure, but the old man had laughed scornfully, saying, "Well, I'll believe that when I see it--Gethin steady and saving!" And even Will had joined in the laugh, but Gwilym Morris looked vexed and serious. "I think, indeed, you are too hard upon that poor fellow,", he said; "he may return to you some day like the prodigal son. Don't forget that, Ebben Owens--" "Oh, I don't forget that," said the old man; "and when he comes home in the same temper as the son we read of, then we'll kill for him the fatted calf." "Well, I'd like to know what did he do whatever?" said a girlish voice from behind the settle, where Morva Lloyd (who was shepherdess, cowherd, milkmaid, all in one), was drying her hands on a jack-towel; "what did Gethin do so very bad?" "Look in his mother's Bible," said the old man, "and you'll see his last sin." "I've put it away," said Ann. "Twas too wicked to leave about; but he was very young, father, and Gwilym says--" "Oh! Gwilym," said her father, "has an excuse for everyone's faults except his own; for thine especially." There was a general laugh, during which Morva made up her mind to hunt up the old Bible. "I hope," said Ann, addressing Will, when he had come to an end of his tea, "you told Price the vicar that Gwilym did not spend evening after evening here helping you on with your studies, _knowing_ that you were going to be a clergyman?" "No, I didn't tell him that, but I can tell him some other time," answered Will, who would have promised anything in his desire to propitiate Ann and his father, and to gain their consent to his entering Llaniago College at the beginning of the next term. "I'll tell him if he comes here," said Ann. "I wouldn't have him think that Gwilym Morris, the Methodist minister, spent his time in teaching a parson." "Well," said the preacher, who was standing at the old glass bookcase looking for a book, "you certainly did spring the news very suddenly upon me, Will; you kept your secret very close; but still, Ann, it makes no difference. I would have done anything for your brother, and I'm glad, whatever his course may be, that I have been able to impart to him a little knowledge." "Look you here now," said the old man, shuffling uneasily, for there was a secret consciousness between him and his son that they had wilfully kept Gwilym Morris in the dark as long as possible, fearing lest his dissenting principles might prevent the accomplishment of their wishes, "look you here now, Will, October is very near, and it means money, my boy, and that's not gathered so easy as blackberries about here; you must wait until Christmas, and you shall go to Llaniago in the New Year, but I can't afford it now." Will's handsome face flushed to the roots of his hair, his blue eyes sparkled with anger, and the clear-cut mouth took a petulant curve as he answered, rising hastily from the tea-table: "Why didn't you tell me that sooner, instead of letting me go and speak to Mr. Price? You have made a fool of me!" And he went out, banging the door after him. There was a moment's silence. "Will's temper is not improving," said Ann at last. "Poor boy," said the indulgent father, "'tis disappointed he is; but it won't be long to wait till January." "But, father," said Ann, "there is the 80 pounds you got for the two ricks? You put that into the bank safe, didn't you?" "Yes, yes, yes, quite safe, 'merch i. Don't you bother your head about things that don't concern you," and he too went out, leaving Ann drumming with her fingers on the tea-tray. Her father's manner awoke some uneasiness in her mind, for long experience had taught her that money had a way of slipping through his hands ere ever it reached the wants of the household. "I went with him to the bank," said Gwilym Morris reassuringly, "and saw him put it in," and Ann was satisfied. Under her skilful management, in spite of their dwindled means, Garthowen was always a home of plenty. The produce of the farm was exchanged at the village shops for the simple necessaries of domestic life. The sheep on their own pasture lands yielded wool in abundance for their home-spun clothing, the flitches of bacon that garnished the rafters provided ample flavouring for the cawl, and for the rest Will and Gwilym's fishing and shooting brought in sufficient variety for the simple tastes of the family. Indeed, there was only one thing that was not abundant at Garthowen, and that was--ready money! [1] Spirit Sara. [2] Do. CHAPTER III MORVA OF THE MOOR When Will had reached the door of the farm kitchen in a fume of hot temper, the cool sea breeze coming up the valley had bathed his flushed face with so soothing an influence that he had turned towards it and wandered away to the cliffs which made the seaward boundary of the farm. A craggy hill on the opposite side of the valley cast its lengthening shadow on his path until he reached the Cribserth, a ridge of rocks which ran down the mountain side on the Garthowen land. It rose abruptly from the mountain pasturage, as though some monster of the early world were struggling to rise once more from its burial of ages, succeeding only in erecting its rugged spine and crest through the green sward. This ridge marked a curious division of the country, for on one side of it lay all the signs of cultivation of which this wind-swept parish could boast. Here were villages, fertile fields, and wooded valleys; but beyond the rugged escarpment all was different. For miles the seaward side of the hills was wild and bare, except for the soft velvet turf, interspersed with gorse and heather, which stretched up the steep slopes, covering and softening every rough outline. Even Will, as he rounded the ridge, recovered his equanimity, and his face lighted up with pleasure at the sight which met his view. Down below glistened a sea of burnished gold, with tints and shades of purple grey; above stretched a sky of still more glowing colours; and landward, rising to the blue of the zenith, the rugged moorland was covered with a mantle of heath and gorse, which shone in the evening sun in a rich mingling of gold and purple. "What a glorious evening!" were Will's first thoughts. The birds sang around him, the sea lisped its soft whispers on the sea below, the song of a fisherman out on the bay came up on the breeze, the rabbits scudded across his path, and the seagulls floated slowly above him. All the sullenness went out of his face, giving way to a look of pleased surprise, as out of the carpet of gorgeous colouring spread before him rose suddenly the vision of a girl. It was Morva who came towards him, her hair glistening in the sunshine, her blue eyes dancing with the light of health and happiness. Behind a rising knoll stood her foster-mother's cottage, almost hidden by the surrounding gorse and heather, for, according to the old Welsh custom, it had been built in a hollow scooped out behind a natural elevation, which protected it from the strong sea wind; in fact, there was little of it visible except its red chimney-pot, from which generally curled the blue smoke of the furze and dried ferns burning on the bare earthen floor below. Turning round the pathway to the front of the house, one came upon its whitewashed walls, the low worm-eaten door deep set in its crooked lintels, and its two tiny windows, looking out on the sunny garden, every inch of which was neatly and carefully cultivated by Morva's own hands; for she would not allow her "little mother" to tire herself with hard work in house or garden. To her foster-child it was a labour of love. In the early morning hours before milking time at the farm, or in the grey of the twilight, Morva was free to work in her own garden, while Sara only tended her herb bed. There at the further end was the potato bed in purple flower, here were rows of broad beans, in which the bees were humming, attracted by their sweet aroma that filled the evening air; there was the leek bed waving its grey green blades, and here, in the sunniest corner of all, was Sara's herb bed, which she tended with special care, whose products were gathered at stated times of the moon's age, not without serious thought and many consultations of an old herbal, brown with age, which always rested with her Bible and Williams "Pantycelyn's" hymns above the lintel of the door. For nearly seventeen years this had been Morva's home, ever since the memorable night of wind and storm which had wrecked the good ship _Penelope_ on her voyage home from Australia. She had reached Milford safely a week before, after a prosperous voyage, and having landed some of her passengers, was making her further way towards Liverpool, her final destination. It was late autumn, and suddenly a storm arose which drove her out of her course, until on the Cardiganshire coast she had become a total wreck. In the darkness and storm, where the foaming waves leapt up to the black sky, the wild wind had battered her, and the cruel waves had torn her asunder, and engulphed her in their relentless depths; and when all was over, a few bubbles on the face of the water, a few planks tossed about by the waves, were all the signs left of the _Penelope_. The cottagers on the rugged coast never forgot that stormy night, when the roofs were uplifted from the houses, when gates were wrenched from their hinges, when the shrieking wind had torn the frightened sheep from their fold, and carried them over hedges and hillocks. There had never been such a storm in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and when in the foam and the spray, Stiven "Storrom" had raked out from the debris washed on to the shore a hencoop, on which was bound a tiny baby, sodden and cold, but still alive, every one of the small crowd gathered on the beach below Garthowen slopes, considered he had added a fresh claim to his name--a name which he had gained by his frequent raids upon the fierce storms, and the harvest which he had gathered from their fury. That baby had found open arms and tender hearts ready to succour it, and when Sara "'spridion" had stretched imploring hands towards it, reminding the onlookers of her recent bereavement, it was handed over to her fostering care. "Give it to me," she said, "my heart is empty; it will not fill up the void, but it will help me to bear it. There are other reasons," she added, "good reasons." She had carried it home triumphantly, and little Morva had never after missed a mother's love and tenderness. The seventeen years that followed had glided happily over her head; in fact she was so perfect an embodiment of health and happiness, that she sometimes excited the envy of the somewhat sombre dwellers on those lonely hillsides; and when in the golden sunset, she suddenly rose from the gorse bloom to greet Will's sight, she had never appeared brighter or more brimful of joy. "Well, indeed," said Will, casting a furtive glance behind him, to make sure that no one from Garthowen was following in his footsteps, "Morva, lass, where hast come from? I will begin to think thou art one of the spirits thy mother says she sees. I thought thee wast busy in the dairy at home!" Morva laughed merrily. "I had some milk to bring home, and Ann sent me early to help mother a bit. I was going now to gather dry furze and bracken to boil the porridge. Will you come and have supper with us, Will?" "I have just had my tea," he said, "and a supper of bitter herbs into the bargain, for my father angered me by something he said. He is changeable as the wind, and I was roaming over here to seek for calmness from the sea wind, and perhaps a talk with Sara." "Yes, come! She is in the herb garden gathering her bear's claws and rue; 'tis the proper time for them. But first we must cut the bracken." Will took her sickle and soon cut a pile of the dry brittle fuel, binding it with a rope which she carried; and turning towards the cottage, they dragged it behind them. "You go and seek mother," said Morva, "while I go and boil the porridge." And in the garden Will found Sara stooping over her herb bed, and deeply intent upon her task. The sun was setting now, and threw its ruddy beams upon the sunny corner, and upon the aged face and figure of the old woman. "Well, 'machgen i," she said, straightening herself. "What is it?" "Oh, nothing," said Will; "only, roaming about the moor, I came in to see you, and Morva has asked me to have supper with you--you are gathering your herbs?" "Yes, 'tis time to dry them and hang them up under the rafters; if they will save one human being from pain 'twill be a good thing. Last night Mari Lewis came to ask me for something for her boy; I gave it to her, but she never came to tell me whether it had done him any good," and she smiled as she led the way back to the cottage carrying her bunches of herbs. "Was it Dan?" asked Will. "Yes." "Then he is well, for I saw him ploughing this evening." "That's better than thanks," said the old woman, entering the dark cottage, where Morva was stirring a crock which hung on a chain from the open chimney, the furze and bracken flaming and crackling beneath it and lighting up her beautiful face. Once in the cottage, Sara sat down on the old oak settle and waited for her supper, her herbs lying in a green heap on the floor beside her. The square of scarlet flannel, which she always wore pinned on her shoulders, made a bit of bright colour in the gloom, her wrinkled hands were clasped on her lap, and a far-away look came into her wonderful dark eyes. Morva looked up from her work. "Are you seeing anything, mother?" "No, no, child, nothing. Make haste with the supper," said Sara. And when Morva had divided the porridge in the three shining black bowls, they drew round the bare oak table, on which the red of the setting sun made a flickering pattern of the mallow bush growing on the garden hedge. They talked about the farm work, the fishing, the lime burning, the fate of the _Lapwing_, which had sailed in the autumn and had never returned, until, when supper was over, Will rose to go with a stretch and a yawn. "Ann wants me to give the white calf his medicine to-night, mother," said Morva. "Wilt come with me now?" said Will, "for I am going." "Yes, go," said the old woman, "go together." But as the two young people went out under the low doorway she looked after them pensively, and remained long looking up at the evening sky, which the open door revealed. At last she tied up her herbs and began washing her bowls, and while engaged at her work she sang. Her voice had the pathetic tremble of old age, but was still true and musical, for she had once been a singer among singers, and the song that she sang--who shall describe it? from what old stores of memory did it come to light? from what old wells of ancient folklore and tradition did it spring? But Sara was full of songs and hymns--of the simplest and oldest--of the rocky path--of the golden summit--of the angelic host--of the cloud of witnesses--but of the more modern hymns of church festivals or chapel revivals, of creeds and shibboleths, she knew nothing! Outside on the heath and gorse Will and Morva made their way along the narrow sheep paths, until, reaching the green sward where two could walk abreast, he drew nearer, and passing his arm round her shoulders, turned her gently towards the side of the cliff, where jutting crags and stunted thorns made "sheltered nooks for lovers' seats." "Come, sit down here, Morva," he said; "all day I have wanted to talk to thee. Dost know what kept me so long at Castell On to-day? Dost know what grand thing is opening out before me? Dost know, lass, the time is coming when I will be able to put rings on thy fingers, and silken scarves on thy shoulders, and pretty shoes on thy little feet?" Morva's lips parted, disclosing two rows of pearly teeth, as she stared in astonishment at her companion. "Oh, Will, lad, what is the matter with thee? Hast lost thy senses? We mustn't be long or Ann will be waiting." "Oh, Ann!" said Will pettishly, "let her wait; listen thou. I am going to finish with them all before long; I am not going to plod on here on the farm any longer; I am going to college, lass; I am going to pass my examination and be a clergyman, like Mr. Price, or like that young curate who was stopping with him a month ago. Didst see him, Morva? Such a gentleman! dressed so grand, and went from town in the Nantmyny carriage." Morva was still speechless. "Oh, anwl! what art talking about, Will?" she said at last. "Truth, Morva; I will be like that young man before long, and when I have a home ready I will send for thee; thou shalt come secretly to meet me in some large town where no one will know us. I will have a silken gown ready for thee, and we will be married, and thou shalt be a real lady." Morva's only answer was a peal of laughter, which reached over moor and crag and down to the sandy beach below. "Oh, Will, Will!" she gasped, with her hand on her side, "now indeed thy senses are roaming. Morva Lloyd in velvet shoes and silken gowns, and Will Owens with flapping coat tails like Mr. Price, and one of those ugly shining hats that the gentlemen wear! Oh, Will, Will! there's funny indeed!" and she laughed again until she woke the echoes from the cliffs. "Hush-sh-sh!" said Will, a good deal nettled, "or laugh at thyself if thou wilt, but not at me, for I tell thee that's how thou'lt see me very soon." "Well, indeed, then," said the girl, "when thou tak'st that path thou must say 'good-bye' to Morva Lloyd, for such things will never suit her." "I tell thee, girl," said Will, taking both her hands in his, "thou must come with me. I will follow that path--I feel I must, and I feel it will lead to riches and honour, but I feel, too, that I can never live without thee; thou must come with me, Morva. What is in the future for me must be for thee too! dost hear?" "Yes, I hear," said the girl, with a gasp. "Dost remember thy promise, Morva? When we were children together, and sat here watching the stars, didn't I hold thy little finger and point it up to the North Star and make thee promise to marry me? And if thou art going to change thy mind, 'twill break my heart," and his mouth took a sad, pathetic curve. "But I am not going to change. I remember the star which I pointed to when I promised to marry thee. 'Twill be up there by and by when the light is gone, for it is always there, though the others move about." "Yes, 'tis the North Star, and the English have a saying, 'As true as the North Star'--that's what thou must be to me, Morva." "Yes, indeed. The English are very wise people. But after all, Will, I must laugh when I think of a clergyman marrying a shepherdess. Oh! Will, Will!" added the girl more seriously and in a deprecating tone, "thou art talking nonsense. Think it over for a day or two, and then we'll talk about it. I cannot stay longer--Ann will be angry." And slipping out of his grasp, she ran with light footsteps over the soft turf, Will looking after her bewildered and troubled, until she disappeared round the edge of the ridge; then he rose slowly, picked up his book, and followed her with slow steps and an anxious look on his handsome face. He was tall and well grown, like every member of the Garthowen family; his reddish-brown hair so thick above his forehead that his small cap of country frieze was scarcely required as a covering for his head; and not even the coarse material of his homespun suit, or his thick country-made shoes, could hide a certain air of jaunty distinction, which was a subject of derision amongst the young lads of his acquaintance, but of which he himself was secretly proud. From boyhood he had despised the commonplace ways of his rustic home, and had always aimed at becoming what he called "a gentleman." No wonder, then, that with his foot, as he thought, on the first rung of the ladder, he was pensive and serious as he followed Morva homewards. Ebben Owens, when he had risen from the tea table, had followed his son into the farmyard, but finding no trace of him there, his face had taken a troubled and anxious expression, for Will was the idol of his soul, the apple of his eye, and a ruffle upon that young man's brow meant a furrow on the old man's heart. He reproached himself for having allowed "the boy" to proceed too far with his plans for entering college before he had suggested that there might be a difficulty in finding the required funds. After a long reverie, he muttered as he went to the cowsheds: "Well, well, I must manage it somehow. I must ask Davy my brother, to lend me the money until I have sold those yearlings." Not having the moral courage to open his mind to his son, he allowed the subject to drift on in the dilatory fashion characteristic of his nation; and as time went on, he began to allude to the coming glories of Llaniago in a manner which soothed Will's irritation, and made him think that the old man, on reconsideration, was as usual becoming reconciled to his son's plans. As a matter of fact, Ebben Owens was endeavouring to adjust his ideas to those of his son, solving the difficulties which perplexed him by mentally referring to "Davy my brother," or "those yearlings." Will also took refuge, as a final resource, in the thought of his rich uncle, the Rev. Dr. Owen, of Llanisderi, who, through marriage with a wealthy widow, had in a wonderfully short time gained for himself preferment, riches, and popularity. "I will stoop to ask Uncle Davy to help me," he thought, "rather than put it off;" but he kept his thoughts to himself, hoping still that his father would relent, for he considered the want of funds was probably a mere excuse for keeping him longer at home. It had been very easy, one day a month earlier, when, sitting in the barn together, they had talked the matter over, for Ebben Owens to make any number of plans and promises, for he had just sold two large ricks of hay, and had placed the price thereof in the bank. He was, therefore, in a calm and contented frame of mind, and in the humour to be reckless in the matter of promises. The whole country side knew how good-natured he was, how ready to help a friend, very often to his own detriment and that of his family; he was consequently very popular at fair and market. Everybody brought his troubles to him, especially money troubles; and although Ebben Owens might at first refuse assistance, he would generally end by opening his heart and his pockets, and lending the sum required, sometimes on good security, sometimes on bad, sometimes on none at all but his creditors' word of honour, whose value, alas! was apt to rise or fall with the tide of circumstances. He had many times given his own word of honour to his anxious daughter, that he would never again lend his money or "go security" for his neighbours without consulting his family; but over the first blue of beer, at the first fair or market, he had been unable to withstand the pleadings of some impecunious friend. Only a week after he and Will had talked over their plans in the barn, Jos Hughes, who was his fellow-deacon at Penmorien Chapel, had met him in the market at Castell On, and had persuaded him to lend him the exact amount which his ricks had brought him, with many promises of speedy repayment. "Tis those hard-hearted Saeson,[1] Mr. Owens bâch! They will never listen to reason, you know," he had argued, "and they are pressing upon me shocking for payment for the goods I had from them last year; and me such a good customer, too! I must pay them this week, Mr. Owens bâch, and you are always so kind, and there is no one else in the parish got so much money as Garthowen. I will give you good security, and will pay you week after next, as sure as the sun is shining!" It was a plausible tale, and Ebben Owens, as usual, was weak and yielding. He liked to be considered the "rich man" of the parish, and to be called "Mr. Owens," so Jos went home with the money in his pocket, giving in return only his "I. O. U.," and a promise that the transaction should be carefully kept from Ann's ears, for Ebben Owens was more afraid of his daughter's gentle reproofs than he had ever been of his wife's sharp tongue. [1] English. CHAPTER IV THE OLD BIBLE On the following Sunday, Morva kept house alone at Garthowen, for everyone else had gone to chapel, except Will, who had walked to Castell On, which was three miles away up the valley of the On, he having been of late a frequent attendant at Mr. Price's church. The vicar was much beloved by all his parishioners, beloved and respected by high and low, but still his congregation was sparse and uncertain, so that every new member was quickly noticed and welcomed by him--more especially any stray sheep from the dissenting fold possessed for him all the interest of the sheep in the parable, for whose sake the ninety and nine were left in the wilderness. Will had gone off with a large prayer book under his arm, determined to take special note of the Vicar's manner in reading the lessons, for on the following Sunday this important duty would devolve upon him. No one who has not spent a Sunday afternoon in a Methodist household can really have sounded the depths of dullness; the interminable hours between the early dinner and the welcome moment when the singing kettle and the jingling of the tea-things break up the spell of dreariness, the solemn silence pervading everything, broken only by the persistent ticking of the old clock on the stairs, Morva had noted them all rather wearily. Even the fowls in the farmyard seemed to walk about with a more sober demeanour than usual, but more trying than anything else to an active girl was the fact that _there was nothing to do_. It was a hot blazing summer afternoon; she had paid frequent visits to the sick calf, which was getting well and mischievous again, and inclined to butt at Tudor, so even that small excitement was over, and the girl came sauntering back under the shady elder tree which spread its branches over the doorway of the back kitchen. She crossed to the window, and leaning her arms on the deep sill looked out over the yard, and the fields beyond, to the sea, whose every aspect she knew so well. Not a boat or sail broke its silvery surface, even there the spell of Sabbath stillness seemed to reign. She thought of the chapel with its gallery thronged with smiling lads and lasses; she thought of Will sitting bolt upright at church. Yes; decidedly the dullness was depressing; but suddenly a brightening thought struck her. Why should she not hunt up the old Bible which Ann said was too bad to leave about? What could Gethin have written in it that was so wicked? She remembered him only as her friend and companion, and her willing slave. She was only a child when he left, but she had not forgotten the burst of bitter wailing which she sent after him as he picked up his bundle and tore himself away from her clinging arms, and how she had cried herself to sleep that night by Sara's side, who had tried to pacify her with promises of his speedy return. But he had never come, and his absence seemed only to have left in his father's memory a sense of injury, as though he himself had not been the cause of his boy's banishment. Even Ann and Will, who had at first mourned for him, and longed for his return, appeared to have forgotten him, or only to regard his memory as a kind of sorrowful dream. Why, she knew not, but the thought of him on this quiet Sunday afternoon filled her with tender recollections. She opened every dusty book in the glass bookcase, but in vain. Here was Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress"; and here a worm-eaten, brown stained book of sermons; here were Williams of "Pantycelyn's" Hymns and his "Theomemphis," with Bibles old and new, but _not_ the one which she sought. Mounting a chair, and from thence the table, she at last drew out from under a glass shade, covering a group of stuffed birds, a dust-begrimed book, with a brass clasp and nails at the corners. Dusting it carefully she laid it on the table before her, and proceeded to decipher its faded inscriptions. Yes--no doubt this was the book for which she had sought, and with a brown finger following the words, she read aloud: "ANN OWENS, HER BOOK, GARTHOWEN." Beneath this was written in a boyish hand the well-known doggerel lines: "This book is hers, I do declare, Then steal it not or else beware! For on the dreadful Judgment Day You may depend the Lord will say, 'Where is that book you stole away?'" It was written in English, and Morva, though she could make herself understood in that language, was not learned enough to read it easily. However, there was no difficulty in reading the signature of "William Owens" which followed. She turned over a leaf, and here indeed were signs of Gethin, for all over the title page was scrawled with many flourishes "Gethin Owens, Garthowen," "Gethin Owens," "G. O.," "Gethin," etc. It was wrong, no doubt, to deface the first page of the Bible in this way, but Ann had said "too wicked to leave about!" so Morva searched through the whole book, until on the fair leaf which fronted "The Revelations" she found evident proof of Gethin's depravity; and she quailed a little as she saw a vivid and realistic pen and ink drawing of a fire of leaping flames, standing over which was a monster in human shape, though boasting of a tail and cloven hoofs. With fiendish glee the creature was toasting on a long fork something which looked fearfully like a man, whose starting eyes and writhing limbs showed plainly that he was not as happy as his tormentor. It was very horrible, and Morva closed the book with a snap, but could not resist the temptation of another peep, as there was something written beneath in Welsh, which translated ran thus: "Here's the ugly old Boy! I tell you beware! If you fall in his clutches there's badly you'll fare! Look here at his picture, his claws and his tail, If you make his acquaintance you're sure to bewail! Hallelujah! Amen! --GETHIN OWENS." At the last words Morva stood aghast; this then was Gethin's terrible crime! "Oh! there's a boy he must have been!" said the girl, clasping her fingers as she leant over the big Bible. "Oh! dear, dear! no wonder 'n'wncwl Ebben was so angry! I don't forget how cross he was one day when I let the Bible fall; didn't his face alter! 'Dost remember, girl,' he said, 'it is the Word of God!' and there's frightened I was! Poor Gethin! 'twas hard, though, to turn him away, for all they are such wicked words. 'Hallelujah! Amen!' Well, indeed! the very words that 'n'wncwl Ebben says so solemn after the sermon in Penmorien!" and she shook her head sorrowfully, "and here they are after this song about the devil. Will would never have done that," and she pondered a little seriously; "but poor Gethin! After all, he was only a boy, and boys do dreadful things--but Will never did! Mother reads her Bible plenty too, but I don't think she would have turned me out when I was a little girl if I had made this song. I'll tell her to-night, and see what she says about Gethin, poor fellow." She closed and clasped the book, and mounting the table again, replaced it in the hollow at the top of the bookcase, with the stuffed birds and glass case over it. When Ann and her father returned from chapel, there was a conscious look on her face which they both remarked upon at once. "What's the matter, Morva?" asked Ann. "Is the calf worse?" asked the old man. "No," answered the girl, her seriousness vanishing at once. "Nothing's the matter; the calf is getting quite well." As she spoke Will arrived from church, wearing a black coat and a white cotton tie, his prayer-book under his arm. Ebben Owens looked at him with an air of proud satisfaction. "Here comes the parson," he said, and Will smiled graciously even at Morva, whom he generally ignored in the presence of Ann and his father. "Hast been stopping at home, Morva? I thought thee wast at chapel." "I am going home now," said the girl, eyeing him rather critically. "I will tell mother I have seen the 'Rev. Verily Verily.'" Will flushed up, though he pretended to laugh; but Ebben Owens looked annoyed. "No more of that nonsense, Morva; thou art a bit too forward, girl; remember Will is thy master's son, and leave off thy jokes." "Oh! she meant no harm," said Will apologetically; "'twill be hard if we can't have our jokes, parson or no parson." "Well, indeed," said Morva, without a shade of annoyance in her voice, "'twill be hard at first; but I suppose I will get used to it some day. Will you want me again to-night, Ann?" "No; but to-morrow early," said Ann. And Morva went singing through the farmyard, and along the fields to the Cribserth; but to-day it was a hymn tune of mournful minor melody which woke the echoes from moor and cliff. Rounding the ridge, the same fair view greeted her eyes, as had chased away Will's ill-temper on the preceding evening, and she sat a moment under the shadow of a broom bush to ponder, for Morva was a girl of many thoughts though her mind was perfectly uneducated, her heart and soul were alive with earnest questions. Her seventeen years had been spent in close companionship with a woman of exceptional character, and although the girl did not share in the abnormal sensitiveness of her foster-mother, she had gained from her intimacy with her, an unusual receptivity to all the delicate influences of Nature. Sara claimed to be clairvoyant, though she had never heard the word. Morva was clear seeing only; her pure and simple spirit was undimmed by any mists of worldly ideas; no subterfuge or plausible excuse ever hid the truth from her, and yet in spite of this crystal innocence, she kept her engagement to Will a secret from all the world, excepting Sara. It is the custom of the country to keep a love affair a secret as long as possible; if it is discovered and talked about by outside gossips, half its delight and charm is gone; indeed it is considered indelicate to show any signs of love-making in public. It is true that this secrecy often leads to serious mischief, but, on the other hand, there is much to be said for the sensitive modesty of the Welsh maiden, when compared with an English girl's too evident appreciation of her lover's attentions in public. So hitherto Morva had followed Will's lead, and shown no signs of more than the love and affection which was naturally to be expected from her close intercourse with the Garthowen family from babyhood. Did she feel anything more? She thought she did. From childhood she had been promised to Will; the idea of marrying him when they were both grown to manhood and maidenhood had been familiar to her ever since she could remember. It caused no excitement in her mind, no tumult in her heart. It was in the nature of things--it was Will's wish--it was her fate! She did not rebel against it, but it woke no thrill of delight within her. She had promised, and the idea of breaking that promise was one that never entered her mind; but this evening, as she sat under the broom bush, a curious feeling of unrest came over her. How was it all to end? Would it not be wiser of Will to turn his face to the world lying beyond the Cribserth ridge, where the towns--the smooth roads--the college--and the many people lay, and leave her to her lonely moor--to the sheep, and the gorse, and the heather? She looked around her, where the evening sun was flooding land and sea with golden glory. "I would not break my heart," she thought; "here is plenty to make me happy; there's the sea and the sands and the rocks! and at night, oh, anwl! nobody knows how beautiful it is to float about in Stiven 'Storrom's' boat, in and out of the rocks, and the stars shining so bright in the sky, and the moon sometimes as light as day. Oh, no; I wouldn't be unhappy," and stretching her arms out wide, she turned her face up to the glowing sky. "I love it all," she said, "and I do not want a lover." Catching sight of the blue smoke curling up from the heather mound behind which Sara's cottage was buried, she rose, and dropping her sober thoughts, ran homewards, singing and filling the sweet west wind which blew round her with melody. But ere she reached the cottage door, there came a whistle on the breeze, and, turning round, she saw Will standing at the corner of the Cribserth, just where the rocky rampart edged the hillside. She turned at once and slowly retraced her footsteps, Will coming to meet her with more speedy progress. He had changed his clothes, and in his work-a-day fustian looked far better than he had in the black cloth suit which he had worn to church. "Well, indeed, Morva lass, thou runn'st like the wind; I could never catch thee. Come and sit down behind these bushes, for I want to talk to thee. Wert offended at what my father said just now?" "Offended! no," said the girl. "Garthowen has a right to say what he likes to me, and besides, he was right, Will. I must learn to treat thee with more respect." "Respect!" said Will, laying hold of her hands, "'tis more love I want, lass, and not respect; sometimes I fear thou dost not love me." "But I do," said the girl calmly; "I do love thee, Will. 'Tis truth that I would lay down my life for thee and all at Garthowen. Haven't you been all in all to me--father, sister, brother? and especially you and I, Will, have been together all our lives. Ann has not been quite so much a sister to me since we've grown up, but then I am only the milkmaid, and Gwilym Morris has come between." "Yes, true," said Will; "but between me and thee, Morva, nothing has ever come. Promise me once more, that when I have a home for thee thou wilt marry me and come and live with me. My love for thee is the only shadow on my future, because I fear sometimes that something will part us, and yet, lass, it is the brightest spot, too--dost believe me?" "Yes," said Morva, with eyes cast down upon the wild thyme which her fingers were idly plucking, "I believe thee, Will. What need is there to say more? I have promised thee to be thy wife, and dost think I would break my word? Never! unless, Will, thou wishest it thyself. Understand, that when once I am sure that thou hast changed thy mind then I will never marry thee." "That time will never come," said Will; and they sat and talked till the evening shadows lengthened and till the sun sank low in the west; then they parted, and Morva once more turned her footsteps homewards. She walked more soberly than before, and there was no song upon her lips. CHAPTER V THE SEA MAIDEN Sara was sitting at tea when the girl arrived. Through the open doorway came the glow of the sunset, with the humming of bees and the smell of the thyme and the bean flowers. "Thou hast something to ask me, Morva. What is it?" she said, making room for her at the little round table in the chimney corner. "Oh, 'tis nothing, I suppose," said Morva, cutting herself a long slice of the flat barley loaf; "only 'tis the same old questions that are often troubling me. What is going to become of me? What is in the future for me? I used to think when I grew to be a woman I would marry Will, and settle down at Garthowen close to you here, mother fâch, and take care of 'n'wncwl Ebben when Ann and Gwilym Morris were married; but now, somehow, it all seems altered." The old woman looked at her long and thoughtfully. "Wait until later, child," she said. "Clear away the tea, tidy up the hearth, and let me read my chapter while the daylight lasts," and finishing her tea Morva did as she was bid. Later on in the evening, sitting on the low rush stool opposite to Sara, she continued her inquiries. "Tell me, mother, about Will and Gethin when they were boys. Was Gethin so very wicked?" "Wicked? No," said Sara, "never wicked. Wild and mischievous and full of pranks he was, but the truest, the kindest boy in the world was Gethin Owens Garthowen." "And Will?" "Will was a good boy always, but I never loved him as I loved the other. Gethin had a bad character because he stole the apples from the orchard, and he took Phil Graig's boat one day without asking leave, and there was huboob all over the village, and his father was mad with anger, and threatened to give him a thrashing; but in the evening Gethin brought the boat back quite safely. He had been as far as Ynysoer, and he brought back a creel full of fish for Phil, to make up. Phil made a good penny by the fish, and forgave the boy bâch; but his father was thorny to Gethin for a long time. Then at last he did something--I never knew what--that offended his father bitterly, and he was sent away, and never came back again." "Mother," said Morva solemnly, "I have found out what he did. He got his mother's Bible and he wrote some dreadful things in it, and made a fearful picture." "Picture of what?" asked the old woman. "A picture of flames and fire, and the devil toasting a man on it, and a song about the devil. Here it is; I remember every word," and she repeated it word for word, it having sunk deeply into her mind. "Then at the bottom he had written, 'Hallelujah, Amen! Gethin Owens Garthowen.'" A smile overspread Sara's countenance as she observed Morva's solemnity, a smile which somewhat lessened the girl's disquietude. "Was it so very wicked, mother?" "Wicked? No," said the old woman. "What wonder was it that the boy drew a picture of the things that he heard every Sunday in chapel--God's never-ending anger, and the devil's gathering in the precious souls which He has created. That would be a failure, Morva, and God can't fail in anything. No, no," she added shrewdly, nodding her head, "He will punish us for our sins, but the devil is not going to triumph over the Almighty in the end." Morva pondered seriously as she fed the fire from a heap of dried furze piled up in the corner behind the big chimney. "I was very little when Gethin went away, but I remember it. Now tell me about the night when first I came to you. I love that story as much now as I did when I was a child." "That night," said Sara, "oh! that night, my child. I see it as plainly as I have seen the gold of the sunset to-night. It had been blowing all day from the north-west till the bay was like a pot of boiling milk. It was about sunset (although we couldn't see the sun), there was a dark red glow over everything as if it were angry with us. Up here on the moor the wind shrieked and roared and tore the poor sheep from the fold, and the little sea-crows from their nests. I sat here alone, for it was the year when my husband and baby had died, and, oh, I was lonely, child! I moaned with the wind, and my tears fell like the rain. I heaped the furze on the fire and kept a good blaze; it was cold, for it was late in October. It grew darker and darker, and I sat on through the night, and gradually my ears got used to the raging of the storm, I suppose, for I fell asleep, sitting here under the chimney, but suddenly I awoke. The wind was shrieking louder than ever, and there in that dark corner by the spinning-wheel I saw a faint shadow that changed into the form of a woman. She was pale, and had on a long white gown, her hair, light like thine, hung down in threads as if it were wet. She held out her hands to me, and I sat up and listened. I saw her lips move, and, though I could not hear her voice, I seemed to understand what she said, for thee know'st, Morva, I am used to these visions." "Yes," said the girl, nodding her head. "Well, I rose and answered her, and drew my old cloak from the peg there. 'I am coming,' I said, and she glided before me out through the door and down the path over the moor. I saw her, a faint, white figure, gliding before me till I reached the Cribserth, and there she disappeared, but I knew what she wished me to do; and I followed the path down to the shore, and there was tumult and storm indeed, the air full of spray, and even in the black night the foaming waves showing white against the darkness. Out at sea there was a ship in distress, there was a light on the mast, and we knew by its motion that the poor ship was sorely tossed and driven. Many people had gathered on the shore in the darkness. No one had thought of calling me, for here we are out of the world, Morva; but the spirits come more easily to the lonely moor than to the busy town. Ebben Owens was there, and little Ann, and all the servants and the people from the farms beyond the moor, but no one could help the poor ship in her distress. At last the light went out, and we knew the waves had swallowed her up, and all night on the incoming tide came spars and logs and shattered timber, and many of the drowned sailors. Stiven 'Storrom' was there as usual, and in the early dawn, when there was just a streak of light in the angry sky, he shouted out that he had found something, and we all ran towards him, and there, tied safely to a hencoop, lay a tiny baby, wet and sodden, but still alive. It was thee, child, so wasn't I right to call thee Morforwyn?[1] though indeed we soon shortened it to Morva. When I saw thee I knew at once 'twas thy mother who had come to me here, and had led me down to the shore, and I begged them to give me the baby. 'There is a reason,' I said, but I did not tell them what it was. What was the good, Morva? They would not understand. They would only jeer at me as they do, and call me Sara ''spridion.'[2] Well, let them, I am richer than they, oh! ten thousand times, and I would not change my life here on the lonely moor, and the visions I have here, for any riches they could offer me." "No, indeed, and it is a happy home for me, too, though I don't see your visions; but then you tell me about them, and it teaches me a great deal. Mother, I think my life is more full of happy thoughts than most of the girls about here because of your teaching. No, I don't want to leave here, except, of course, I must live at Garthowen when Will wants me." The old woman made no answer, but continued to gaze at the crackling furze. "You wish that too, mother?" asked the girl. "I did, 'merch i, but now I don't know indeed, Morva. Thou must not marry without love." "Without love, mother! I have told you many times I love Will with all my heart." Sara shook her head with a smile of incredulity. "It is a dream, child, and thou wilt wake some day. Please God it may not be too late." A pained look overspread the girl's face, a turmoil of busy thought was in her brain, but there was no uncertainty in the voice with which she answered: "Mother, I love Will. I have told him so. I have promised to be his wife, and I would rather die than break my word." "Well, well," said Sara, "there is no need to trouble, child, only try to do right, and all that will be settled for thee; but I think I see sorrow for thee, and it comes from Will." "Well," said Morva bravely, as she flung another bunch of furze on the fire, "I suppose I must bear my share of that like other people. 'As the sparks fly upward,' mother, the Bible says, and see, there's a fine lot of them," and she raked the small fire with the lightsome laugh of youth. "Ah!" said the old woman, "thou canst laugh at sorrows now, Morva; but when they come they will prick thee like that furze." "And I will stamp them out as I do these furze, mother," and again she laughed merrily, but ceased suddenly, and, with her finger held up, listened intently. "What is that sound?" she asked. "It is some one brushing through the heather and furze. Who can it be? Is it Will?" Both women were fluttered and frightened, for such a thing as a footstep approaching their door at so late an hour was seldom heard, for at Garthowen they all retired early, and the cottagers in the village below avoided Sara as something uncanny, and looked askance even at Morva, who seemed not to have much in common with the other girls of the countryside. "'Tis a man's step," she whispered, "and he is coming into the cwrt," and, while she was still speaking, there came a firm, though not loud, knock at the door. Morva shrank a little under the big chimney, where she stood in the glow of the flaming furze; but Sara rose without hesitation, and going to the door, opened it wide. "Who is here so late at night?" she asked. "Shall I come in, Sara, and I will explain?" said a pleasant, though unknown voice. "'Twas to Garthowen I was going, but when I reached there every light was put out, so I wouldn't wake the old man from his first sleep, and I have come on here to see can you let me sleep here to-night? Dost know me, Sara?" "Gethin Owens!" exclaimed the old woman, with delighted surprise. "My dear boy, come in!" There was no light in the cottage except that of the fitful furze fire, so that when Gethin entered he exclaimed at the darkness, "Sara fâch, let's have a light, for I am longing to see thee!" Morva threw a fresh furze branch on the fire. The motion attracted Gethin's attention, and as the quick flame leaped up, the girl stood revealed. While Sara fumbled about for the candle the flame burnt out, and for a moment there was gloom again. "Hast one of thy spirits here, or was it an angel I saw standing there by the fire?" said the newcomer; but when Sara had succeeded in lighting the candle, he saw it was no spirit, but a creature of flesh and blood who stood before him. "No, no, 'tis only Morva," said Sara, dusting a chair and pushing it towards him. "Sit thee down, my boy, and let me have a good look at thee. Well! well! is it Gethin, indeed? this great big man, so tall and broad." But Gethin's eyes were fixed upon the girl, who still stood astonished and bewildered under the chimney. "Morva!" he said, "is this little Morva, who cried so bad after me when I went away, and whom I have longed to see so often? Come, shake hands, lass; dost remember thy old playmate?" and he advanced towards her with both hands outstretched. Morva placed her own in his. "Yes, indeed," she answered, "now in the light I can see 'tis thee, Gethin--just the same and unaltered only--only--" "Only grown bigger and rougher and uglier, but never mind; 'tis the same old Gethin who carried thee about the slopes on his shoulders, but, dei anwl! I didn't expect to see thee so altered and so--so pretty." Morva blushed but ignored the compliment. "Well, indeed, there's glad they'll be to see thee at Garthowen." "Dost think?" "Yes, indeed; but won't I put him some supper, mother?" "Yes, 'merch i, put on the milk porridge." And Morva, glad to hide her embarrassment, set about preparing the evening meal, for Gethin's eyes told the admiration which he dared not speak. His gaze followed her about as she mixed the milk and the oatmeal in the quaint old iron crochon. "'Twill soon be ready; thee must be hungry, lad," said Sara, laying the bowls and spoons in readiness on the table. "Yes, I am hungry, indeed, for I have walked all the way from Caer-Madoc. 'Tis Sunday, thee seest, so there were no carts coming along the road. Halt, halt, lass!" he said, "let me lift that heavy crochon for thee." "Canst sleep on the settle, Gethin?" asked the old woman, "for I have no bed for thee. I will spread quilts and pillows on it." Gethen laughed boisterously. "Quilts and pillows, indeed, for a man who has slept on the hard deck, on the bare ground, on a coil of ropes; and once on a floating spar, when I thought sleep was death, and welcomed it too." "Hast seen many hardships then, dear lad?" said Sara. "Perhaps when we were sleeping sound in out beds, thou hast oftentimes been battling with death and shipwreck." "Not often, but more than once, indeed," said Gethin. "Thou must tell us after supper some of thy wonderful escapes." "Yes, I'll tell you plenty of yarns," said Gethin, his eyes still following Morva's movements. A curious silence had fallen upon the girl, generally so ready to talk in utter absence of self-consciousness. She served the porridge into the black bowls, and shyly pushed Gethin's towards him, cutting him a slice of the barley bread and butter. "I have left my canvas bag at Caer-Madoc," said Gethin, when he had somewhat appeased his appetite. "'Twill come up to Garthowen to-morrow. I have a present in it for thee, Morva." "For me?" said the girl, and a flood of crimson rushed into her face. "I didn't think thee wouldst be remembering me." "There thou wast wrong, then," said Gethin, cutting himself another slice. "Well, indeed, I have never had a present before!" "I have one for Ann, and Will, and my father, God bless him! And how is good old Will?" "He is quite well," said Morva. "As industrious and good as ever? Dei anwl! there's a difference there was between me and him! You wouldn't think we were children of the same mother. Well, you can't alter your nature, and I'm afraid 'tis a bad lot Gethin Owens will be to the end!" And he laughed aloud, his black eyes sparkling, and the rings in his ears shining out in the gloom of the cottage. Morva looked at the stalwart form, the swarthy skin, the strong, even teeth, that gleamed so white under the black moustache, the jet-black hair, the broad shoulders, and thought how proud Ann would be of such a brother. They sat long into the night, Sara gathering from the young man the history of all his varied experiences since he had left his father's home; Morva listening intently as she cleared away the supper, Gethin's eyes following her light figure with fascinated gaze. At last the door was bolted, the fire swept up, and Sara and Morva, retiring to the penucha, left Gethin to his musings, which, however, quickly resolved themselves into a heavy, dreamless sleep, that lasted until the larks were singing above the moor on the following morning. [1] Sea-maiden. [2] Spirit Sara. CHAPTER VI GETHIN'S PRESENTS The corn harvest had commenced, and Ebben Owens was up and out early in the cornfields. Will, too, was there, but with scant interest in the work. It had never been a labour of love with him, and now that fresh hopes and prospects were dawning upon him, the farm duties seemed more insignificant and tedious than ever. Had it been Gethin who stretched himself and yawned as he attacked the first swathe of corn, Ebben Owens would have called him a "lazy lout," but as it was Will, he only jokingly rallied him upon his want of energy. "Come, come," he said, "thee'st not got thy gown and bands on yet. We'll have hard work to finish this field by sunset; another hand wouldn't be amiss." "Here it is, then," said a pleasant, jovial voice, as a sunburnt man came through the gap, holding out his brown right hand to Ebben Owens. The other he stretched towards Will, who had thrown his sickle away, and was hastily approaching. No human heart could have steeled itself against that frank countenance and beaming smile, certainly no father's. There was no questioning "Who art thou?" for in both father's and brother's hearts leaped up the warm feeling of kinship. "Gethin!" said Ebben Owens, clasping the hand held out to him so genially. "'Machgen i, is it thee indeed? Well, well, I am glad to see thee!" And Will, too, greeted the long-lost one with warm welcome. The reapers gathered round, and Gethin's reception was cordial enough to satisfy even his anticipations; for he had thought of this home-coming, had dreamt of the welcome, and had earnestly desired it, with the intense longing for home which is almost the ruling passion of a Welshman's heart. "Here I am," he said, laughing, his eyes sparkling with happiness--"here I am, ready for anything! 'The prodigal son' has returned, father. Will you have him? Will you set him to work at once with your hired servants? For I love hard work, and if I don't get it, perhaps I'll fall into mischief again." "No, no," said Ebben Owens, "no work for thee this morning, lad. Thee must go home with Will, and lighten Ann's heart, for she has grieved for thee many a time, and I will follow at noon. To-morrow thou shalt work if thou wilt; there is plenty to do at Garthowen, as usual. Come, boys, come, on with the work. Nothing must stop the harvest, not even the homecoming of Gethin." The men stooped to their work again, but there were muttered comments on the master's want of feeling. "Dei anwl! if it had been Will," said one man to his neighbour, "the reaping would have been thrown to the winds, and we would have had a grand supper on the fatted calf. But Gethin is different. There's a fine fellow he is!" "Yes," said another; "did you notice his broad chest and his bright eyes? Will looks nothing by him." And they looked after the two young men as they passed through the gap together, Ebben Owens taking up Will's sickle and setting to work in his place. Meanwhile Gethin, with a sailor's light, swinging gait, hastened Will's more measured steps towards the homestead. "Well, Will lad, there's glad I am to see thee!" "And I," said Will. "No one knows how much I grieved after thee at first, but latterly I was beginning to get used to thy absence." "Well, 'twas quite the contrary with me, now," said Gethin. "At first I was full of the new scenes and people around me, and I didn't think much about old Wales or any of you; but as the time went on my heart seemed to ache more and more for the old home--more and more, more and more!--till at last I made up my mind I would give up the sea and go back to Garthowen and stay, if they wanted me there, and help the old man on the farm. Dost think he will have me?" "Yes, of course," said Will. "Thou hast come in the nick of time, and 'twill be easier for me to leave home, as I am going to do next month." "Leave home?" said Gethin, in astonishment. "Yes," and Will began to expatiate with pride on his new plans, and his intention of entering Llaniago College at once. "Diwss anwl!" said Gethin; "have I got to live continually with a parson? I'm afraid I had better pack up my bundle at once; thee wilt never have patience with me and my foolish ways." Will looked sober. "Thy foolish ways! I hope thou hast left them behind thee." "Well, truth," said Gethin, "as we grow older our faults and follies get buried deeper under the surface; but it takes very little to dig them up with me. I am only a foolish boy in spite of my strong limbs and tall stature. But so it will always be. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and Gethin Owens will be Gethin Owens always. There's the dear old place!" he cried suddenly; "there's the elder tree over the kitchen door! Well, indeed! I have thought of it many times in distant lands and stormy seas, and here it is now in reality! God bless the old home!" and he took off his cap and waved it round his head as he shouted, "Hoi! hoi!" to Ann, who, already apprised of his coming, was running through the farmyard to meet him. "Oh, Gethin anwl!" she sobbed, as she clasped her arms round his neck. Gethin gently loosed her clinging fingers, and kissed the tears from her eyes, and in her heart welled up again the tender love which had been smothered and buried for so long. Gwilym Morris came hurrying down from his "study," a tiny room partitioned off from the hayloft. And if the fatted calf was not killed for Gethin's return, a fine goose was, and no happier family sat down to their midday meal that day in all Wales than the household of Garthowen. In the afternoon Gethin insisted upon taking his sickle to the cornfield, and although the work was new to him his brawny arm soon made an impression on the standing corn. The field was full of laughter and talk, the sweet autumn air was laden with the scent of the blackberries and honeysuckle in the hedges, and the work went on with a will until, at four o'clock, the reapers took a rest, sitting on the sunny hedge sides. Through the gap Ann and Morva appeared, bringing the welcome basket of tea. Gethin hurried towards them, relieving them of the heavy basket which they were carrying between them. "Thee'll have enough to do if thee'st going to help the women folk here," said Will. "He's been in foreign parts," said a reaper, "and learnt manners, ye see." "Yes," said another, "that polish will soon wear off." "Well, caton pawb!" said Gethin, "manners or no manners, man, I never could sit still and see a woman, foreign or Welsh, carry a heavy load without helping her." The two girls spread the refreshing viands on the grass, and with merry repartee answered the jokes of the hungry reapers. "'Twill be a jolly supper to-night, Miss Ann; we'll expect the 'fatted calf,'" said one. "Well, you'll get it," replied Ann; "'tis veal in the cawl, whatever." "Hast seen Gethin before?" said Will to Morva, observing there was no greeting between them. "Well, yes," answered the girl, blushing a rosy red under her sunbonnet; "wasn't it at our cottage he slept last night? and indeed there's glad mother was to see him." "And thee ought to be too," said one of the reapers, "for I'll never forget how thee cried the day he ran away." "Well, I'll never make her cry again," said Gethin. "Art going at once, lass? Wilt not sit here and have tea with us?" and he drew his coat, which he had taken off for his work, toward her, and spread it on the hedge side. Morva laughed shyly; she was not used to such attentions. "No, indeed, I must go," she answered; "we are preparing supper." As she followed Ann through the gap Gethin looked after her with a smile in his eyes. "There's bonnie flowers growing on the slopes of Garthowen, and no mistake," he said. Will examined the edge of his sickle and did not answer. Later on, when the harvest supper was over, and the last brawny reaper had filed out of the farmyard in the soft evening twilight, the Garthowen household dropped in one by one to the best kitchen, where their own meals were generally partaken of. Ebben Owens himself, as often as not, took his with the servants, but Will, especially of late, preferred to join Ann and Gwilym Morris in the best kitchen or hall. Here they were seated to-night, a glowing fire of culm balls filling the large grate, and throwing a light which was but little helped by the home-made dip standing in a brass candlestick on the middle of the table, round which they were all gathered while Gethin displayed his presents. "Here's a tie for you, father; green it is, with red spots; would you like it?" "Ts-ts!" said the old man, "it has just come in time, lad, for me to wear on Sunday when I go to hear Will reading in church." "That will be a proud day for you, father; I will go with you. And for thee, Will, here's a knife. I remember how fond thee wast of the old knife we bought in the fair together." "Well, indeed!" said Will, clasping and unclasping the blades; "'tis a splendid one, too, and here's a fine blade to mend pens with!" "And for Ann," continued Gethen, "I have only a hymn-book." "What couldst thou bring me better? And look at the cover! So good. And the gold edges! And Welsh! I will be proud of it." "Yes," said Gethin; "I bought it in Liverpool in a shop where they sell Welsh books. And for you, sir," he said, turning to Gwilym Morris. "'Sir,'" said the preacher, laughing; "Gethin bâch, this is the second time you have called me 'sir.' Drop it, man, or I will be offended." "Well! I won't say it again. Dei anwl! I will have to be on my best behaviour here, with a parson and a preacher in the house! Well! it's a pocket-book for you, I thought very like, being a preacher, you would like to put down a word sometimes." "Quite right, indeed," said Gwilym Morris; "and look at my old one, barely hanging together it is!" At the bottom of the bag from which Gethin drew his treasures, lay the little painted box containing Morva's necklace. "Where's Morva?" he asked. "I've got something for her, too." "Oh, well," said Will, "thou art a generous man and a rich, I should think! Perhaps thou hast one for Dyc 'pigstye' and Sara ''spridion' too." "Dyc 'pigstye'; no! But Sara, indeed I'm sorry I didn't remember her, whatever." "I hear Morva's voice in the yard. Will I call her in?" said Ann, and she tapped at the little side window. "No, no," said Gethin, "I will take it to her," and he went out, carrying the gaudy box in his hand. "Morva!" he called, and under the elder tree, where she was counting the chickens at roost on its branches, the girl stood facing him, the rising moon shining full upon her. "Morva, lass," he said, drawing near; "'tis the present I told thee of. Wilt have it?" and there was a diffident tremor in his voice, which was not its usual tone; for to-night he was as shy as a schoolboy as he opened the box and drew out the shining necklace. The iridescent colours gleamed in the moonlight and Morva exclaimed in admiration: "Oh, anwl! is that for me?" "Yes, for thee, lass; for who else?" said Gethin. "Let me fasten it on for thee. 'Tis a tiresome clasp," and as she bent her shapely neck and his fingers touched it for a moment, she gently drew further away. "Dost like them?" said Gethin, looking from the shining shells to the glowing face above them. "Oh, they are beautiful!" she answered, feeling them with her fingers. "I will go in and show them to Ann. I haven't said 'thank you,' but I do thank thee indeed, Gethin;" and he followed her into the "hall," where the glowing light from the fire and the candle fell on the changing glitter of the shells. "Oh, there's beautiful!" said Ann. "Come near, Morva, and let me look at them. Well, indeed, they are fit for a lady." "Thee must have paid a lot for that," said Ebben Owens, rather reproachfully. "Not much indeed, father, but I wasn't going to forget my little playfellow, whatever." "No, no, my boy, that was quite right," said the old man; and Will too tried to smile and admire, but there was a flush of vexation on his face which did not escape Morva's notice. "I must go now," she said, a little shadow falling over her. "Let me loosen the clasp for thee," said Gethin; but Morva, remembering the touch of the brown fingers, quickly reached the door. "No--no, I must show them to mother." "Hast thanked Gethin, lass?" said the old man. "Not much, indeed," she answered, turning back at the door, "but I thank thee, Gethin, for remembering me," and, half-playfully and half-seriously, she made him a little bob curtsey. Arrived in the cottage she drew eagerly into the gleam of the candle. "Mother, mother, look! see what Gethin has brought me. Oh! look at them, mother; row under row of glittering shells from some far-off beach. Look at them, mother; green--blue--purple with a silver sheen over them, too. I never thought there were such shells in the world." "They are beautiful, indeed," said Sara, "but just like a sailor. If he had given thee something useful it would have been better. They will not suit a shepherdess. Thee will have to take them off in a day or two and lay them away in their box. 'Tis a pity, too, child." "Any way, mother, I will wear them sometimes; they are only shells after all. 'Tis hard I can't wear them because they are so lovely." And the next day she wore them again, and, longing to see for herself how she looked, made her way up to the moor in the early morning sunshine to where a clear pool in the brown peat bog reflected the sky and the gold of the furze bushes. Here she stood on the edge and gazed at her own reflection in the clear water. "Oh, 'tis pretty!" she said leaning over the pool, and as she gazed her own beautiful face with its halo of golden hair impressed itself on her mind as it had never done before. "And there's pretty I am, too," she whispered, and gazing at her own image she blushed, entranced with the vision. "Good-bye, Morva," she whispered again, "good-bye. I wonder does Gethin see me pretty? But I must not think that; what would be the use? Will does, and that must be enough for me;" and with a sigh she turned down the moor again. CHAPTER VII THE BROOM GIRL One morning in the following week the high road leading to Castell On presented a lively appearance. It was white and dusty from the tramp of the country folk and the vehicles of all descriptions which followed each other towards the town, whose one long street would be crowded from ten o'clock in the morning till late afternoon, as it was market day. This was the weekly excitement of the neighbourhood, and there was scarcely a household within the radius of a few miles that did not send at least one of its members to swell the number of chafferers and bargainers in the market. Jolly farmers, buxom maidens, old women in witch hats and scarlet scarves, pigs, sheep, horses, all followed each other in the same direction. Amongst the rest came a girl who rather stooped under what looked like a large bunch of blooming heather. It was Morva, who was carrying her bundle of heath brooms to the corner of the market-place, where she was eagerly waited for by the farmers' wives. Dyc "pigstye" was accustomed to bring her a bundle of broom handles, which he had roughly fashioned in the wood in the valley, and she and Sara employed their leisure hours in tying on to them the bunches of purple heather, binding them firmly with the young withies of the willows growing here and there on the boggy moor. There was always quite a little knot of women round her stall of brooms and wings, for she collected also from the farmhouses the wings of the geese and ducks which had been killed for the market, and after drying them carefully in the big chimney, sold them as brushes for hearth and stairs. Sometimes, too, her stock-in-trade was increased by a collection of wooden bowls, spoons, scales, and trenchers, which Stiven "Storrom," living on the shore below, turned off his lathe, and sold through Morva's agency. At such times she borrowed Stiven's donkey-cart, and stood by it in the market until her wares were sold. But to-day she had only her brooms, and tying them on her shoulders, she held the cords crossed over her bosom, stooping a little under their weight. Her head was buried in the purple blossoms, so that she did not hear the tramp of footsteps following close behind her. Gethin and Will were going to the market together, and the latter had recognised the girl at some distance off, but had kept silence and lessened his speed a little until his brother had asked: "Who is this lass walking before us? Let's catch her up and carry her brooms for her." "Nonsense," said Will. "A Garthowen man may drive his sheep, his oxen, and his horses to market, but to carry a bundle of brooms would not look well. Leave them and the fowls to the women, and the pigs to the men-servants--that's my fancy." "Well, my fancy is to help this lassie," said Gethin. "She's got a tidy pair of ankles, whatever; let's see what her face is like." "'Tis Morva," said Will, rather sulkily. "Then we know what her face is like. Come on, man. Who will be the first to catch her?" and Gethin hurried his steps, while Will held back a little. "Why, what's the matter? Surely thou art not ashamed to be seen with Morva?" "Of course not," said Will irritably; "but--er--er--a broom girl!" "Oh, jawks!" said Gethin. "Brooms or no brooms, I am going to catch her up," and coming abreast other, he laid his hand on the bunches of blooming heather. "Morva," he said, bending round her purple burden, "where art here, lassie? Thee art buried in flowers! Come, loosen thy cords, and hoist them upon my shoulder." And as the girl looked at him from under the brooms, his voice changed, the brusque sailor manner softened. "'Tis not for a girl like thee to be carrying a heavy weight on thy shoulders," he said gently. "Come, loosen thy cords." But Morva held them tightly. "Not for the world," she said. "It is quite right I should carry my wares to market, but I would not like to see a son of Garthowen with a bundle of brooms on his shoulders." "I will have them," he said; "come, loosen the cords," and he laid hold of one of the hands which held the rope. A warm glow overspread Morva's face, as the large brown hand covered hers in its firm grasp. "No, I will do this to please thee," she said, and loosening her hold of the bundle, she flung it suddenly into an empty red cart which was rattling by. "Take care of them, Shemi, thou know'st my corner in the market." "Yes, yes," said Shemi, "they will be all right." And Morva stood up in the sunshine freed from her burden. Will seemed to think it the right time to join them, and suddenly appearing, greeted the girl, but rather coldly, and the three walked on together, Gethin much resenting Will's bad temper, and endeavouring to make up for his brother's somewhat silent and pre-occupied manner by keeping up the conversation himself. But a little constraint fell upon them all, Gethin chafing at the girl's apparent nervousness, and his brother's silence; Morva fearful of offending Will, and disturbed at her own pleasure at meeting Gethin. When they reached the town she bade them good-bye. "Here's my corner," she said, "and when I have sold my brooms, I am going home in the cart from the mill at Pont-y-fro." Will seemed relieved at this solving of his difficulties, but Gethin was not so satisfied; he roamed the market discontentedly, filling his pockets with sweets and gingerbread. Many times that day he peered through the crowd into the corner out of the sun, where Morva's purple blooms made a grand show. At last he ventured nearer, and laying his sweets and gingerbreads down beside her, said: "Thee'll be hungry by and by, Morva; wilt have these?" The girl's eyes drooped, and she scarcely answered, but the smile and the blush with which she took up the paper bags were quite enough for Gethin, who went home early, with that smile and blush gilding every thought and every subject of conversation with his companions of the road. In the afternoon Morva, having sold her brooms, prepared to leave the market. Looking up the sunny street, she saw Will approaching, and the little cloud of sadness which Gethin's genial smile had banished for a time, returned, bringing with it a pucker on the brows and a droop at the corners of her mouth. "Well, indeed," she soliloquised, "there's grand Will is looking, with his gloves and shining boots; quite like a gentleman. 'Tis not only me he will have to say good-bye to soon, I am thinking, but to all at Garthowen." Her thoughts were interrupted by his arrival. "Art still here, Morva?" he said; "I thought thee wouldst have gone long ago." "Only just now I have sold my brooms. There's Jacob the Mill, now I will go." Will looked at the cart uneasily as it rumbled up the street; already he was beginning to be ashamed of his rustic surroundings. With keen sensitiveness Morva read his thoughts. "Nay, there's no need for you to help me, Will. I am used to the mill cart, and indeed to goodness, 'twould not suit with gloves and shining boots to be helping a girl into a red cart." "Twt, nonsense," said Will irritably; but he nevertheless allowed her to leave him, with a wave of her hand, and an amused twinkle in her eye. As she hurried to catch the cart, he stood a moment moodily looking after her, his better nature prompting him to follow and help her, but it was too late; already the brilliant vehicle, with Morva and the burly Jacob sitting in it side by side, was swallowed up by the crowd of market people and cattle, and Will turned on his heel with a look of vexation on his face. The market was at its liveliest, the sunny air laden with a babel of sounds. Men and women chattered and chaffered, pigs shrieked, sheep bleated, and cattle lowed, but Will scarcely noticed the familiar sounds. A light step and a soft voice, however, attracted his attention, and he saw approaching him two girls, who evidently belonged to a different class from those whose simple ways we have hitherto followed. One was a lady of very ordinary appearance, but the other he recognised as Miss Vaughan of Nantmyny, a young lady whose beauty and pleasant manners were the frequent theme of the countryside gossip, "and no wonder," he thought, "she _is_ pretty!" "Ah! what a pity!" she was saying to her friend, who was evidently a young housekeeper intent upon her purchases, "the brooms are all gone! we're too late!" Will walked away hastily, lest standing upon that spot he might appear to be in some way connected with the broom girl. Suddenly there was a tumult in the air, a rushing of feet, and cries of fright, and in a cloud of dust he saw rushing towards him an infuriated bull, which had evidently escaped from his attendant, for from the iron ring in his nose still hung the rope by which he had been held. With head lowered and tail curled high over his back, he dashed towards the two ladies, who fled in affright before him, one escaping through an open doorway, while the other, bewildered and terrified, catching her foot in an upturned stall-table, fell prone exactly in the path of the bull. The poor animal, as frightened as any of his shouting pursuers, increased his own mad fury by continually stepping upon the rope which dangled from the ring in his nose, thus inflicting upon himself the pain from which he endeavoured to escape. The girl screamed with terror, as the snorting nostrils and curving horns came close upon her. In another moment she would undoubtedly have been seriously gored, had not Will, who was in no wise lacking in personal courage, rushed in upon the scene. One look at the beautiful, pale face lying helpless in the dust, and he had seized the creature's horns. The muscular power of his arms was well known at Garthowen, and now it stood him in good stead, for calling his full strength to his aid, he succeeded by a sudden wrench in turning the bull's head aside, so that the direct force of his attack came upon the ground instead of the girl's body. In a moment the enraged animal turned upon his assailant, and probably Will would have fared badly had not a drover arrived, who, possessing himself of the rope, gave a sudden and sharp twitch at the bull's nose, a form of punishment so agonising and alas, so familiar, that the animal was instantly subdued, and brought under comparative control, not, however, before his horn had slightly torn Will's arm. An excited crowd of market people had now reached the spot, and while the animal, frightened into submissiveness by the blows and cries that surrounded him, was led away snorting and panting, Will looked in affright at the girl who lay white and unconscious on the ground. "Did he toss her?" asked one of the crowd, "or is she only frightened? Dear! there's white she looks, there's delicate the gentry are!" "'Tis her foot, I think," said Will; "let be, I will hold her." "Yes, 'tis her foot," said another, "the bull must have trampled on it, see how dusty it is--there's a pity." It was in fact more from the pain of the crushed foot than from fright that Gwenda had fainted, for she was a brave girl. Though fully alive to her danger she had not lost consciousness until her foot had been crushed, and even then not before she had seen Will's rush to her rescue, and his energetic twist of the animal's horns. Two or three gentlemen now came running up the street, amongst them her uncle, Colonel Vaughan, who, standing at the door of the hotel, had witnessed the escape of the bull, and the pursuit of him by the excited throng of market people. Remembering that his niece had but a few moments previously passed up the street, he too ran in the same direction, and arrived on the scene as promptly as his short legs and shorter breath permitted him. In a fever of fright and flurry he approached, the crowd making way for him as he snapped out a cannonade of irrelevant questions. "Good heavens! Gwenda! What is it? My darling, are you hurt? Who did it? How very careless!" "'Tis her foot, I think, sir," said Will. "She has not been gored, and if you will send for your carriage I will lift her in as I am already holding her." "She'd have been killed for certain," said one of the crowd, "if this young man had not rushed at the bull and saved her life. I saw it all from the window of the Market Hall. He risked his life, I can tell you, sir, and you've got to thank him that the young lady is not killed." "Yes, yes, a brave young fellow, pommy word. There comes the carriage, now raise her gently," and Will lifted the slender form as easily as he would have carried a swathe of corn. Slipping her gently into a recumbent position in the carriage, he endeavoured to rest her foot on the opposite seat, but she moaned and opened her eyes as he did so, crying out with evident pain. "'Tis plain the position hurts her," said her uncle. Will lifted the foot again, and the moaning ceased. "That's it," said the colonel; "sit down and hold it up." Will did as he was bid in a maze of bewilderment, and while the colonel continued to wonder, to lament, and to congratulate, Will made a soft cushion of a wrap which he found beside him, and resting the foot upon it he held the two ends, so that the injured limb hung as it were in a sling, thus lessening very much the effect of the jolting of the carriage over the rough road. "Drive slowly," said the colonel to his coachman, "and call at Dr. Jones's on your way. Can you spare time to come as far as Nantmyny?" he said, addressing Will. "Oh! yes, sir, certainly," he answered in good English. "Tis the right foot, I think," said the old gentleman, unbuttoning the boot. The girl opened her eyes. "Oh! uncle, it hurts," she said. "Keep it up," and catching sight of Will, she looked inquiringly at her uncle. "Tis the young man who saved your life, child," he explained. "Oh! not that, sir," said Will. "I am sorry I have not even prevented her being hurt." At first there was a pompous stiffness in Colonel Vaughan's manner, but he added more graciously: "I hope you were not hurt yourself. Bless me! is that blood on your hand?" "I have cut my wrist a little, but 'tis nothing," said Will. "Please not to think about it." "Oh! certainly, certainly, we must. Here's Dr. Jones. Come in, doctor. You must squeeze in somewhere. Gwenda has had a narrow escape, and this young fellow has hurt his wrist in saving her. A very brave young man! Mercy we were not all killed, I'm sure!" "I'll attend to them both when we get to Nantmyny," said Dr. Jones. "Keep her foot in that position, and be as quiet as possible, young man," said the colonel, and Will, though he resented the tone and the "young man," still felt a glow of satisfaction at the turn affairs had taken. To have sat in the Nantmyny carriage! What a story to tell Ann and his father! and Will felt as they drove through the lodge gates that the charm of the situation outweighed the twinges of pain in his arm. Gwenda Vaughan, recovering a little, smiled at him gratefully. "Thank you so much for holding up my foot," she said. "It is easier so. I am sorry you have hurt your wrist. Does it pain you much?" "Oh, 'tis nothing at all," said Will, not accustomed to think much of slight wounds or bruises. On arriving at Nantmyny he assisted in carrying her into the house. "Now," said the doctor, when they had laid her on a couch, "let me see, and I will look at your wrist afterwards. Young Owens of Garthowen, I think--eh?" "Yes," said Will, quietly retreating into the background, while Colonel Vaughan and the maids pressed round the sofa. He only waited until, after a careful examination, the doctor said, "No bones broken, I'm glad to say, only rather badly bruised," and then, leaving the room unnoticed, found his way to the front door, and in a glow of excitement walked back to Castell On. His arm was getting more painful, so on his way through the town he called on Dr. Hughes, who was considered "the people's" doctor, while Dr. Jones was more patronised by "the gentry." CHAPTER VIII GARTHOWEN SLOPES Dr. Jones's visits to Nantmyny were very frequent during the following week, for Gwenda's foot had been rather severely crushed, and the pain was acute; but being a girl of great spirit she bore it patiently, though it entailed many long hours of wearisome confinement to the house and sofa. During these hours of enforced idleness, she indulged in frequent "brown studies," for her firm and decided character was curiously tinged with romance. She had received but a desultory education; her uncle, though providing her amply with all the means of learning, yet chafed continually against the application which was necessary for her profiting by them. "Come out, child," he would call, standing outside the open window, his jovial face broadening into a smile of blandishment, most aggravating to Miss Howells, who, inside the window, was trying to fix her pupil's attention upon some subject of history or grammar. The rustling of the brown leaves and the whispering of the wind in the trees added their own enticements, which required all Gwenda's firmness to resist. "No, uncle," she would say, shaking her finger at him. "Yesterday and Monday you made me neglect my studies. You mustn't come again this week to tempt me out. I have promised Miss Howells to be industrious. It will soon be four o'clock, and then I will come." And her uncle had perforce to be content, for at Nantmyny there was no doubt that Gwenda "ruled the roost." Somehow she emerged from the stage of girlhood with a fair amount of knowledge, although her mother's sisters, the two Miss Gwynnes of Pentre, were much dissatisfied with her want of what they called "polish." "She'll never make a good match," they were wont to say, "never! That plain outspokenness is all very well in a man, or even in an old woman, but it's very unbecoming in a girl, and I'm sure it will ruin her prospects." And on the subject of her "prospects" they were accustomed to dilate so continually and so earnestly that Gwenda had a shrinking dislike to the word, as well as to the subject to which it referred. "We must really speak to her again, Maria, for of course George may marry some day, and then what would become of her prospects?" And another lecture was prepared for Gwenda. A few days after the accident which made her a prisoner, lying on the sofa in the morning-room she had fallen into a deep reverie, which had caused quite a pucker between her eyebrows. Being naturally a romantic, sentimental girl, she mentally resented the sordid necessity so continually urged by her aunts of making a "good match." It was in Gwenda to cast all their prudent manoeuvres to the winds, and to follow the bent of her own inclinations; but it was in her also to immolate herself entirely upon the altar of an imagined duty. She chafed somewhat at the want of freedom in her surroundings, her aunts declaring it was incumbent upon her to please her uncle by marrying well, and as soon as possible. And all these restrictions galled the young lady, in whom the romantic dreams of the natural woman were calling loudly for fulfilment. Perhaps these feelings would account for the little look of worry and discontent in her face on the Sunday morning while her uncle lingered round her sofa. "Well, I'm sorry to leave you alone, Gwenda; but here are the magazines, and I'll soon be back. I don't like the Nantmyny pew to be empty, you know. Good-bye." When the sounds of the carriage-wheels had died away, Gwenda took up one of the magazines and turned over the pages listlessly. She sighed a little wearily, and fell asleep--a sleep which lasted until her uncle returned from church, and came blustering into the room. "Well, pommy word, child, I think you have had the best of it this morning. Price the vicar didn't preach. Some Jones of Llan something, and you never heard such a rhodomontade in your life; but I went to sleep and escaped the worst of it--all about mortar, give you my word for it, Gwenda, and about not putting enough cowhair in the mortar." "Really!" she said, yawning. "No wonder you went to sleep. Were the Williamses there?" "Yes, and the Griffiths of Plâsdu, and the Henry Reeses, and Captain Scott is staying with them. Well, I'm going to have a smoke." But at the door he turned round with a fresh bit of news. "Oh, what d'ye think, Gwenda? A young man stood up to read the lessons, and I couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd seen him before, and I bothered my brains about it all through the sermon till I fell asleep. After service I asked Price the vicar, and who should he be but that young fellow who tackled the bull the other day? Pommy word, he's a fine-looking fellow; got his arm in a sling, though." And he went out banging the door. Gwenda pondered with a brightening look in her face. The young man who seized the bull! How strange! Reading the lessons! What was the meaning of that? And with his arm in a sling! It must have really required attention when he disappeared so mysteriously the other day. Handsome? Yes, he was very handsome. That broad white forehead crowned with its tawny clumps of hair! She would like to thank him once more, for he had certainly saved her life. She rang the bell, and a maid appeared. "Lewis, can you tell me who that man was who seized the bull the other day?" "'Twas young Owens Garthowen, miss." "My uncle says he read the lessons in church to-day." "Yes, I daresay indeed, miss. He's going to be a clergyman, they say. He hurt his arm shocking the other day, miss, because he went to Dr. Hughes on his way from here, and he is keeping it in a sling ever since." "Where does he live?" "Oh, about three miles the other side of Castell On, miss, towards the sea. 'Tis an old grey farmhouse, very old, they say; 'tis on the side of the hill towards the sea, very high up, too. 'Tis very windy up there, I should think." Here the colonel entered again. "Lewis tells me, uncle, that young man who read the lessons is going to enter the Church." "Shouldn't wonder at all; every Cardiganshire farmer tries to send one son to the Church. There's Dr. Owen, now, he was a farmer's son. Bless my soul! Why, he is this young man's uncle! Never thought of that! Of course. He's own brother to Ebben Owens, Garthowen. I don't think he keeps up any acquaintance with them, though, and, of course, nobody alludes to them in his presence. I daresay he will take this young man in hand and we shall have him canon or archdeacon or bishop very soon." This was something more for Gwenda to ponder over, and before the day was ended she had woven quite a halo of romance round Will's unconscious head. "Shouldn't we send to ask how his arm is, uncle?" "Yes; pommy word we ought to. I am going to the meet to-morrow at Plâsdu, 'twill be very little out of my way to go up to the farm and ask how the young fellow is." The next afternoon when he returned from the hunt, he brought a fresh item of news for his niece, for he pitied the girl lying there inactive, a state of existence which above all others would have galled him beyond measure. "I called up at the farm, Gwenda, and saw our young friend with the lion locks. He was crossing the farmyard with a book under his arm, which was still in a sling, but when I asked him about it he only laughed (splendid teeth all those Garthowens have, old Ebben's even are perfect)! He said his arm was quite well and he didn't know why Dr. Hughes insisted upon keeping it in a sling. If he could only be sure, he said, that the young lady's foot was not giving her more pain than he felt he would be glad. I told him your foot was painful, but would soon be all right. Well-spoken young man. By the by, all the men on the field asked after you, and most of them said that was a brave fellow who sprang at the bull. I told them it was one of Ebben Owens's sons. Everybody knows him, you know. Very old family. At one time, I am told, the Garthowen estate was a large one. Griffiths Plâsdu's grandfather bought a great deal of it, all that wooded land lying this side of the moor. By the by, Captain Scott is coming round this way to dine with us to-morrow and to stay the night. Pommy word, child, I think he has taken a fancy to you. He seemed quite anxious about you. Good-bye, my dear, I must go." Gwenda turned her face to the window. The black elm branches swayed against the evening sky, a brilliant star glittered through them, a rising wind sighed mournfully and the girl sighed too. "Yes, Captain Scott no doubt was interested in her, probably he would propose to her, and if he did, probably she would accept him, with all his money, his starting eyes, and his red nose! How dull and uninteresting life is," she said. "I wonder what we are born for?" * * * * * * At Garthowen the stream of life was flowing on smoothly just then. Will was happy and content. He had read the lessons on Sunday to Mr. Price's entire satisfaction, clearly and with an evident understanding of their meaning. Sometimes the roll of the "r's" and the lengthening of the "o's" showed the Welshman's difficulty in pronouncing the English tongue, but upon the whole, the accent was wonderfully good. Above all things Will had taken pains to acquire the English tone of speech, for he was sufficiently acute to know that however learned a Welshman may be, his chances of success are seriously minimised by a Welsh accent, therefore he had paid much attention to this point. "The time is drawing near, father," he said one day. "I am determined to go to Llaniago, and if you can't pay I must get the money somewhere else, that's all," and he had risen from the table with that wilful, dogged curve on his mouth which his father knew so well, and had always been so weakly unable to resist. "Twt, twt, my boy," he said, "that will be all right; don't you vex about that." And thus reassured, Will gladly banished the disquieting doubt from his mind, and his good humour returned. Gethin seemed to fall naturally into his place as eldest son of the family, taking to the farm work with zeal and energy, and making up for his want of experience by his complete devotion to his work. Ann was calm and serene as usual, happy in her brother's prospects, and deeply interested in the grey stone house which the congregation at Penmorien were building for their minister. Gwilym Morris devoted himself entirely to Will's preparations for his entrance examination. And for Morva, what had the autumn brought? A rich, full tide of life and happiness. Every morning she rose with the sun, and as she opened the door and let in the scent of the furze and the dewy grass, her whole being responded to the voice of Nature around her. She was constantly running backwards and forwards between Garthowen and the cottage. Nothing went well at the farm without her, and in the cottage there were a score of things which she loved to do for Sara. There were the fowls to be fed, the eggs to be hunted for, the garden to be weeded, the cottage to be cleaned, Sara's knitting to be set straight, the herbs to be dried and sorted and tied up in bundles under the brown rafters. Oh, yes! every day brought for Morva its full harvest of lovely scenes, of beautiful sounds, and sweet scents. Certainly, Will was a little cold and irritable lately, but she was well used to his variable humours, and somehow the home-coming of Gethin had filled the only void there had been in her life, though of that she had scarcely been conscious. There was hardly an hour in the day when Morva's song might not be heard filling the autumn air with melody, for how could she help singing as she sat knitting on the moorside while she watched the cattle, and kept them from roaming too near the edge of the cliff. On the brow of the hill Gethin was harrowing. His lively whistle reached her on the breeze, and she would look up at him as he passed along the skyline, and rejoice once more that he had returned to make their lives complete, to fill Ann's heart with happiness, and his father's with content; for the girl, generally so clear-sighted, so free from guile or pretence, was deceiving herself utterly, and imagined that the increased joy and glory of life which had permeated her whole being since Gethin's return, arose only from the deep interest she took in every member of the Garthowen family, and was due solely to the happiness which the return of the wanderer naturally evoked. Was not Gethin Will's brother? had she not every reason to be glad in his return to the old home? her playmate, the friend of her childhood? and she gave herself up unrestrainedly to the happiness which brooded over every hour of her life. To Gethin, too, the world seemed to have changed to a paradise. Every day, every hour drew him closer to Morva; in her presence he was lost in a dream of happiness, in her absence she was ever present like a golden vision in his mind. Will's manner towards the girl being intentionally formal and distant, had completely blinded his brother to the true state of affairs, and though his daily intercourse with Morva seemed to him almost too delightful to last, he followed blindly the chain that was binding him continually more closely to her. "Art not going to the market to-day?" he shouted out to her one morning as he drove the horses over the moor. "No," called Morva in return. "Will and Gwilym Morris are gone," he shouted again, beginning his way towards her between the low gorse bushes. "Art watching the sheep, lass?" "No; 'tis the calves who will stray to the bog over yonder. Indeed, they are wilful, whatever, for the grass down here is much sweeter. There they go again--see!" and Gethin helped her with whoop and halloo, and many devious races of circumvention to recover them. "Oh, anwl, they are like naughty children," she said, sitting down, exhausted with laughter and running, Gethin flinging himself beside her, and picking idly at the gorse blossoms which filled the air with their rich perfume. The clear, blue autumn sky was over them, the deep blue sea stretched before them, the larks sang overhead, the sheep bleated on the moor, and in the grass around them the dewdrops sparkled in the morning sun. "'Tis a fair world," said Morva; "didst ever see more beautiful sea or land than ours in all thy voyages, Gethin?" "Brighter, grander, warmer, but more beautiful--none, Morva. Indeed to me, since I've come home, every day seems happier and more beautiful--and thou, too, Morva. I think by that merry song thou wert singing thou art not very unhappy." "Well, indeed, 'twas not a very happy song," said the girl, "but I suppose I was putting my own foolishness into it." "Wilt sing it again, lass?" "Wilt sing, too?" "Oh, dei anwl, yes; there's no song ever reaches my ears but I must join in it. Come, sing on." And Morva sang again, Gethin's rich tones blending with hers in full harmony. This time she was awake, and realised the sorrow of the words. "Well, no," said Gethin, "'tis not a very merry thing, indeed, to set your heart upon winning a maiden, and to lose her as that poor fellow did. But, Morva," he said, tossing the gorse blossoms on her lap, "'tis a happy thing to love and to be loved in return." "Yes, perhaps," said the girl, thinking of Will, and wondering why, though he loved her so much, there was always a shadow hanging over her affection for him. Gethin longed to break the silence which fell over them, but a nervous fear deterred him, a dread of spoiling the happy freedom of their intercourse--a nameless fear of what her answer might be; so he put off the hour of certainty, and seized the joys of hope and delight which the present yielded him. "Where's thy necklace, Morva?" "'Tis at home in the box. Mother says a milkmaid should not wear such beautiful things every day, and on Sunday the girls and boys would stare at me if I wore them to chapel." "What art keeping them for, then?" said Gethin. "For thy wedding-day?" "That will be a long time; oh, no, before then very often I will wear it, now when I'm at home alone, and sometimes when the sun is gone down I love to feel it on my neck; and I go up to the moor sometimes and peep at myself in the bog pools just to see how it looks. There's a foolish girl I am!" What a day of delight it was! The browns of autumn tingeing the moor, the very air full of its mellow richness, the plash of the waves on the rocks below the cliffs, the song of the reapers coming on the breeze, oh, yes, life was all glorious and beautiful on the Garthowen slopes just then. "To-morrow night is the 'cynos.'[1] Wilt be there, Morva?" asked Gethin. "Well, yes, of course," answered the girl, "and 'tis busy we'll be with only Ann and me and the men-servants, for Will never goes to the cynos; he doesn't like farm work, and now he's studying so hard and all 'twould be foolish for him to sit up all night." "I will be there, whatever," said Gethin. "Wilt indeed?" and a glow of pleasure suffused her face. "There's going to be fun there, they say, for Jacob the miller is going to ask Neddy 'Pandy' to dance the 'candle dance,' and Robin Davies the sailor will play the fiddle for him. Hast ever seen the candle dance?" "No," said Gethin, his black eyes fixed on the girl's beautiful face, which filled his mind to the exclusion of what she was saying. "'Tis gone out of fashion long ago, but Jacob the miller likes to keep up the old ways." "The candle dance," said Gethin absently, "what is it like?" "Well, indeed," said Morva, shyly bending her head under his ardent gaze, "thee wilt see for thyself; I have dropped a stitch." A long silence followed while the stitch was recovered, and the furze blossoms came dropping into her lap, into her hair, and on to her neck. She laughed at last, and sprang up tossing them all to the ground. "The calves! the calves!" she cried, and once more both ran in pursuit of the wilful creatures. So simple a life, so void of all that is supposed to make life interesting, and yet so full of love and health and happiness that the memory of it was impressed upon the minds of both for the rest of their lives. Yes, even in old age they called it to mind with a pensive tenderness, and a lingering longing, and the words, "There's happy we were long ago on the Garthowen slopes!" Before he went to market in the morning Will had sought out Morva as she sat on her milking-stool, leaning her head on Daisy's flank, and milking her to the old refrain: "Troodi, Troodi! come down from the mountain! Troodi, Troodi! come up from the dale!" "I want to see thee, Morva; wilt meet me beyond the Cribserth to-night? 'Twill be moonlight. I will wait for thee behind the broom bushes on the edge of the cliff." "Yes, I will come." Will was looking his best, a new suit of clothes made by a Caer-Madoc tailor, the first of the kind he had ever had, set off his handsome figure to advantage, his hat pushed back showed the clumps of red gold hair, the blue eyes, and the mouth with its curves of Cupid's bow. Yes; certainly Will was a handsome man. "There's smart thou art," said Morva, with a mischievous smile. "'Tis my new suit; they are pretty well," said Will. "And what are those? Gloves again! oh, anwl! indeed, it is time thee and me should part," and rising from her stool she curtseyed low before him with a little sarcasm in her looks and voice. "Part, Morva--never!" said Will. "Remember tonight." Morva nodded and bent to her work again, and the white sunbonnet leant against Daisy once more, and the sweet voice sang the old melody. When her pail was full she sighed as she watched Gwilym Morris and Will disappear through the lane to the high road. [1] The annual corn-grinding. CHAPTER IX THE NORTH STAR Ebben Owens was going to market in his rough jolting car, Dyc "pigstye" beside him, both dressed in their best frieze. In the back of the car, covered over with a netting, lay three small pigs, who grunted and squealed in concert when a rough stone gave them an extra jolt. In the crowded street at Castell On, where the bargaining was most vigorous, and the noise of the market was loudest, he stopped and unharnessed Bowler, who had "forged" into town with great swinging steps and much jingling of buckles and chains. Having led him into the yard of the Plough Inn, he returned, and with Dyc's help proceeded to lift out the pigs and carry them to the pen prepared for them in the open street, Dyc taking them by the ears and Ebben Owens by the tail. Now, pigs have remonstrated loudly against this mode of conveyance for generations, but nobody seems to have listened to their expostulations. They are by no means light and airy creatures, indeed, for their size, they are of considerable weight, so why they of all other animals should be picked out for this summary mode of transport is difficult to understand. At any rate the Garthowen pigs resented it warmly, and the air was rent with their shrieks as Will and Gwilym Morris came upon the scene. Ebben Owens almost dropped his pig in the delight of seeing his son in his new clothes. Will nodded smilingly at him, while keeping at a respectable distance from the shrieking animals, and the old man was filled with a glow of pride and happiness which threw a _couleur de rose_ over everything for the rest of the day. In truth, Morgan Jones of Bryn made an easy bargain with him for those pigs, and Ebben went home in the evening with ten shillings less in his pocket than he meant to have had when he started from home. "Look you here," he said to Ann and Gethin, who both hovered round him on his return with loving attentions, "look you here now; wasn't a gentleman in the market looking smarter than our Will to-day! There was the young son of Mr. Vaughan the lawyer, was dressed like him exactly--same brown hat, same grey suit, and his boots not shining so well as Will's! Caton pawb! there's handsome he was! Shouldn't wonder if he didn't marry a lady some day, with plenty of money!" "Shouldn't wonder, indeed," said Gethin, clapping him on the back; "and there's proud he'll be to drive his old father to church with him!" "Hech! hech! hech!" laughed the old man, sitting down and rubbing his knees. "Well, indeed, he's a fine boy, whatever!" "Wasn't Gwilym there?" asked Ann. "Yes, yes, to be sure, and he is looking very nice always; but I didn't notice him much today." Meanwhile, in the town, Will and Gwilym had much to do; there were books to be got--there was a horse to be looked at for the farm--and, moreover, Will was to call upon Mr. Price the vicar, so the hours passed quickly away, until late in the afternoon when the crowd was a little thinning, the Nantmyny carriage passed through the street, within it Colonel Vaughan and his niece. Will saw it at once, and turned away to avoid recognition--for although nothing would have pleased him more, he was a man of great tact and common sense, and never spoiled a good chance by indiscreet intrusion. As he turned away, Colonel Vaughan caught sight of him, and, stopping the carriage, beckoned to a bystander, who touched his hat with a knobbed stake from the hedge. "Isn't that young Owens of Garthowen?" "Iss, sare," said the man, knocking his hat again. "Ask him to come here, then." And Will came, not too hurriedly, and with assumed nonchalance. "Well, young man," said the colonel, "I want to know how your arm is?" "It is quite well, thank you," said Will, carefully studying his accent. "I hope," he added, taking off his hat and turning to Gwenda, who sat up interested, "I hope you are no longer suffering pain?" "Very little, thank you. I am so glad your arm is well again, and I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking you." And as Will prepared to withdraw again, lifting his hat and showing his tawny locks and his white teeth, Miss Vaughan placed her hand in his with a friendly good-bye. The old colonel winced a little. "I don't think you need have shaken hands with him, child; however, it was very nice of you, and I've no doubt it will please the young man very much. I declare he looks like a gentleman." "And speaks like one," said Gwenda. "Yes; pommy word I don't know what's the world coming to!" "Very nice people those Vaughans, I should think," said Gwilym Morris, as he and Will tramped homewards in the evening. "H'm! yes," said Will; "I daresay they thought they were honouring me very much by their notice; but, mind you, Gwilym, in a few years I'll show them I can hold up my head with any of them." "Will," said Gwilym, after a pause, "I am afraid for you, lad; I am afraid of what the world will make of you. At Garthowen, with nothing but the simple country ways around us, we escape many temptations; but once we enter the world outside, even here in the market it reaches us, that subtle insidious glamour which incites us, not to become what we ought to be, but to appear different to what we are in reality." "I can't follow you," said Will. "I suppose it is every man's duty to try and get on as far as he can in the path of life which he has chosen. I have chosen mine, and I don't mean to leave a stone unturned which may help me on. Yon can't blame me for that, Gwilym." "No, no! I suppose not; and yet--and yet--" "And yet what?" asked Will irritably. "You may get to the very top of the ladder, and then find it has not been leaning against the right wall. That would be a poor success, Will." "Well, well!" he said, as they entered the farmyard, "what's the matter with you to-night? You wait a few years, give me only a chance, and you'll be proud of your old pupil." When they had separated, Gwilym looked after him thoughtfully. "I wonder will I, indeed!" he said. * * * * * * It was late in the evening when Morva made her way to the cliffs to meet her lover. The moor was bathed in a flood of silver moonlight, the sea below was lighted up by the same serene effulgence, and the silence of night was only broken by the trickle of the mill stream down in the valley, the barking of the dogs on the distant farms, and the secret scurry of a rabbit under the furze bushes. As she neared the edge of the cliff, the peace and beauty of the scene impressed her eye but did not reach her heart, which was beating with a strange unrest. In the dark shadow of the crags on the cliff side Will was waiting for her. He had been there some time, and was a little nettled at her delay. "Where hast been, Morva?" he said, stretching out his hand and drawing her towards him in the shadow. "Come out of the moonlight, lass. There is Simon 'Sarndu' fishing down there with Essec Jones; they will see thee." "Well, indeed," said the girl, "what is the good of our going on like this? It will be a weariness to thee to be always hiding thy--thy--" "My love for thee? No, Morva, 'tis all the sweeter to me that nobody guesses it. And nobody must guess it; and that's what I wanted to speak to thee about. When a man begins his life in earnest, and takes his place in the outside world, he must be careful, Morva--careful of every step--and must act very differently to those who mean to spend their lives in this dull corner of the world." "Dull corner!" said Morva. "To me it seems the one bright spot in the whole world, and as if no other place were of any consequence. I'm sure if I ever leave here, I will be pining for the old home, the lovely moor, and the sea and the cliffs. Oh! I can never, never be happy anywhere else!" "Twt, twt," said Will, "thou art talking nonsense. When I send for thee to come and live with me in a beautiful home, thou wilt be happy. But listen, girl! Is thy love for me strong enough and true enough to bear what may look like neglect and forgetfulness? For a time, Morva, I want to break away from thee, lest any whispers of my love for thee should get abroad. It would blast my success in life, 'twould ruin my prospects if it were known that I courted my father's shepherdess, and so, for a time I want to drop all outward connection with thee. Canst bear that, Morva, and still be true to me?" "I don't know," said the girl. "Canst not believe that I shall love thee as much as ever, and more fervently perhaps than ever?" "I will try," said Morva; "but I think thou art making a hard path for thyself and me. 'Twould be better far to drop me out of thy life, then thou couldst climb the uphill road without looking back." "And leave thee free to marry another man? Never, Morva! I claim thy promise. Remember when thou wast a little girl how I made thee point up to the North Star and promise to marry me some day." "Indeed the star is not there to-night, whatever." "It is there, Morva, only the moonlight is too bright for thee to see it. It is there unchangeable, as thou hast promised to be to me." "Yes, I have promised; what more need be?" "Yes, more; thou must tell me again to-night, Morva, that thou wilt be true to me whatever happens--whatever thou mayst hear about me--that thou wilt still believe that in my heart I love thee and thee only. Dost hear, girl--_whatever_ thou dost hear?" "I will believe nothing I may hear against thee, Will; nothing at all. But when I see with my own eyes that thou art weary of me and art ashamed of me, _then_ remember I am free." "But thine eyes may deceive thee." "I will swear by _them_, whatever," said Morva, with spirit. Will sighed sentimentally. "What a fate mine is! to be torn like this between my desire to rise in the world and my love for a girl in a--in a humbler position than that to which I aspire!" "Oh, Will bâch! thou art getting to talk so grand, and to look so grand. Take my advice and drop poor Morva of the moor!" "I will not!" said Will. "I will rise in the world, and I will have thee too! Listen to me, lass, I am full of disquiet and anxiety, and thou must give me peace of mind and confidence to go on my path bravely." "Poor Will!" said the girl, looking pensively out over the shimmering sea. "Once more, Morva, dost love me?" "Oh, Will, once more, yes! I love thee with all my heart, thee and everyone at Garthowen." "Well," said Will, "we have been kind to thee ever since thou wast cast ashore by the storm. It would be cruel and ungrateful to return our kindness by breaking my heart." "Oh, I will never, Will; I will never do that! Be easy, have faith in me, and I will be true to my promise." "Wilt seal it with a kiss, then?" Morva was very chary of her kisses, but to-night she let him draw her closer to him; while he pressed a passionate kiss upon her lips. There was no answering fervour on her part, but she went so far as to smooth back the thick hair which shaded his forehead and to press a light kiss upon his brow. "Well done!" said Will, with a laugh, "that is the first time thou hast ever given me a kiss of thine own accord. I must say, Morva; thou art as sparing of thy kisses as if thou wert a princess. Well, lass, we must part, for to-morrow I am going to Llaniago to see about my rooms, and there's lots to do to-night, so good-bye." And once more holding her hand in his, he kissed her, and left her standing behind the broom bushes. She passed out into the moonlight, and walked slowly back over the moor with her head drooping, an unusual thing for Morva, for from childhood she had had a habit of looking upwards. Up there on the lonely moor, the vault of heaven with its galaxy of stars, its blue ethereal depths, its flood of silver moonlight, or its breadth of sunlit blue, seemed so closely to envelop and embrace her that it was impossible to ignore it; but to-night she looked only at the gossamer spangles on her path. "What did Will mean by 'We must part! Whatever thou mayst hear!'" and she sighed a little wearily as she lifted the latch of the cottage door. "Morva sighing!" said Sara, who sat reading her chapter by the fireside. "Don't begin that, 'merch i, or I must do the same. I would never be happy, child, if thou wert not happy too; we are too closely knit together." And she took the girl's strong, firm hand in her own, so frail, so slender, and so soft. Morva's eyes filled with tears. "Mother, I am happy, I think. Why should I not be? They are all so kind to me at Garthowen, and I love them all so much. I would lay my life down for them, mother, and still be happy!" "Yes, child, I believe thou wouldst. Come to supper, the cawl is ready." "Tis the cynos to-morrow night, mother, will I go?" "Yes, of course; I wouldn't have thee go to the cynos of any other farm; there is too much foolishness going on." "Robin Davies, the sailor, is going to bring his fiddle, and there will be fun, but Ann will not allow any foolishness." "No, no," said Sara, "she's a sensible girl, and going to be married to Gwilym Morris too! that will be a happy thing for her I think." Morva was silent, following her own train of thoughts while she ate her barley bread and drank her cawl, and when she broke the silence with a remark about Will, to both women it came naturally, as the sequence of their musings. "Will is going away to-morrow, mother." "Away to-morrow! so soon?" "Only for a day or two, I think." "Was that the meaning of the sigh then, Morva?" "I don't know," said the girl, pensively chasing a fly with her finger on the table. "Oh, mother! I don't know, it is all a turmoil and unrest of thoughts here," and she drew her hand over her forehead. "Well, never mind that, 'merch i, if it is rest and happiness _here_," and Sara laid her finger on the region of Morva's heart. "Tell me that, child; is it rest and love there?" "Oh! I don't know, mother; I don't know indeed, indeed." And then she did what Sara had scarcely ever seen her do since she had "gone into long frocks and turned her hair up," she crossed her arms on the table, and leaning her head upon them, she sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed. CHAPTER X THE CYNOS In the old grey mill in the gorge, which ran up the moor about half a mile beyond Sara's cottage, there was a "sound of revelry by night," for the Garthowen "cynos" was in full swing. It bid fair to be the merriest, heartiest cynos of the year, and Jacob the miller was in his element. As Morva came down the side of the moor after supper, the enlivening sounds which greeted her ear hastened her steps and quickened the blood in her veins. Will's absence, though unconsciously, was a relief to her, and in the morning when, on rising, she had opened the cottage door, disclosing to view all the charms of the autumn day, its glow of crimson bramble, its glory of furze and heather, against the blue of the sea, her spirits had risen with a bound, and the sadness of the evening before had at once taken flight. For in the elasticity of youth, the hand of sorrow has but to be removed for a moment and the flowers of hope and happiness rise with unimpaired freshness and vigour; not so when age draws near, then the heavy hand may be lifted, and the crushed flowers of happiness may slowly revive and open once more, but there is a bruise on the stem and a stain on the petals which remain. Ebben Owens and Ann had all day been busy with the preparations for the cynos. Gethin's whistle came loud and clear from the brow of the hill. It had been a happy day for every one, so Morva thought, knowing nothing of the anxiety which her burst of sorrow on the previous evening had awakened in her foster-mother's heart. Sara's love for her adopted child, who had come to her when her mother's heart was crying aloud in its bereavement, had in it not only tenderness deep as a mother's, but also that keen intuition and sensitiveness to every varying mood and feeling of the loved one, which is the bitter prerogative of all true love. So, while Morva had gone singing to her milking, Sara had walked in her herb garden, musing somewhat sadly. There was neither sorrow nor anxiety in the girl's heart as she hastened her steps down the side of the gorge. She saw the twinkling light in the window of the old mill kitchen, she heard the trickling of the stream, and the sound of laughter and merry voices which issued from the wide open mill door. When she arrived there was Gethin busy with the sacks of corn, there was the hot kiln upon which the grain would be roasted, while ranged round it stood the benches which Jacob had prepared for the company. Already some of the young men and girls from the surrounding farms were dropping in to share in the evening's amusement and work. Shan, the miller's wife, was busy in the old kitchen with preparations for the midnight meal. Ebben Owens had caused a small cask of beer to be tapped, and Jacob was unremitting in his attentions to it during the night. "Garthowen's is worth calling a cynos," he said. "He doesn't forget how the flour gets into one's throat and makes one thirsty. I'm no Blue Ribbonite, no, not I, nor intend to be, and that's why I try always to make the Garthowen cynos a jolly one." "Yes, yes," said Shan, "you needn't trouble to tell me the reason; I know it well now these many years." When Morva entered she was warmly greeted by all. The farm lads particularly were loud in their welcome. "Come in, lass, where'st been lately? We haven't seen thee a long time." "Well, indeed, I've been on the moor every day with the calves or the sheep; they are grazing there now." Everyone said something except Gethin, who only glanced at her with a smile and a sparkle of black eyes, for he had seen her many times during the day, and he was already, according to the fashion of his country, beginning to hide his love under an outward appearance of stolid indifference; but this did not offend Morva, for it saved her from the ordeal of curious eyes and broad comments, and Gethin felt that the tender flower of love was well shielded from rude contact with the outside world, by the secrecy behind which a Welshman hides his love, for, in a hundred ways unnoticed and unseen by those around him, there were opportunities of apprising the girl of his constant and watchful interest. How sweet was the chance touch of her brown fingers in the course of the mill work. If her eyes met his, which they did not often, how easy it was to send a meaning glance from his own! how delightful to sit beside her in the circle round the glowing kiln! Robin Davies and Neddy "Pandy" were late, so to beguile the time Jacob struck up a merry tune, the whole company joining in the chorus. Song after song followed each other, interspersed with stories, some of old times and traditions, others of modern adventures at market or fair, until at midnight they all adjourned to the mill kitchen, where Shan had prepared the usual meal of steaming coffee with bread and butter. There was bread of all sorts, from the brown barley loaf to the creamy, curled oatcake, flanked by piles of the delicious tea-cakes for which Pont-y-fro was noted. The men washed down their cakes with foaming "blues" from the beer barrel. Robin Davies and Neddy "Pandy" arrived just in time for the coffee, and when the meal was over they all returned to the kiln room, where the air was filled with the aroma of the roasting corn. It was only at such gatherings as these that Neddy ever experienced the full enjoyments of life, for he was a homeless wanderer from place to place. Nature had been bountiful to him in the matter of bodily size and strength, but she had not been correspondingly generous in her allotment of mental capacities. No one knew anything of his parentage or birthplace. Nobody cared sufficiently to inquire, and no one knew of his weary hours of tramping over moor and mountain, led only by some stray rumour of a fair or festive gathering, at which he might at least for a few hours enjoy the pleasures of a "blue" of beer, a cheerful greeting, and a seat in the chimney-corner, in return for a song, or a turn at the "candle-dance," for which he was famous. He had called at the old mill the week before, and Jacob had engaged his services for the coming cynos. He had spent the day on board the _Speedwell_, where Robin Davies was mate, and had had a good rest and a feast of music, for Robin was a genius, and played his fiddle with wonderful taste and skill, and Neddy, though wanting in many things, was behind no one in his love for and appreciation of music. He was therefore unusually bright and fresh when he arrived at the mill. He and Robin had walked up all the way from Abersethin through the surf, carrying their shoes under their arms. "'Twill freshen thy feet, and make them hard for the candles," said Robin. Neddy's thin haggard face, surmounted by a thick crop of grizzled curly hair, lighted up with pleasure as he felt the warm air of the roasting room. "Here, sit down by the kiln, man," said Gethin, "and rest a bit before thou begin'st." "Yes, and sing us 'Aderin pûr'," said Jacob, "'twill prepare the air for the dancing." And Neddy struck up at once. He never required pressing, for his songs seemed always on his lips. He sang his ballads as he passed through the country towns and villages, and the people came out and pressed pennies into his hand, or invited him into their houses for a rest, a hunch of bread and cheese, or a bowl of cawl; and he sang as he tramped over the lonely hillsides, sometimes weary and faint enough, but still singing; and when at night he retired to rest in some hay-loft or barn, or perhaps alone under the starry night sky, he was wont to sing himself to sleep, as he had done when a child in the old homestead of which nobody knew. When he began the words of the song so sweet to every Welshman's ear: "Oh! lovely bird with azure wing Wilt bear my message to her?" every ear was intent upon the melody, and as the rich sonorous voice carried it on through its first fervid strains of love, to the imploring cadences of the ending, heads and hands beat time, eyes glistened, humid with feeling, and when the song had come to an end, there was a breathless silence and a sigh of satisfaction. "There's lovely it is! Sing us again, Neddy bâch." And Neddy sang again the song of the red-cheeked little prince, who slept in his golden cradle, a red-cheeked apple in his hand. It was but a simple nursery rhyme, but Neddy put his soul into it, for he was but a child himself in spite of his tall stature and grizzled locks. Morva was sitting on the steps which led up to the rickety, windy loft, Gethin beside her on an upturned barrow. "I might go on with my knitting," said the girl, "if somebody would hold my skein for me to wind." Gethin held it, of course; and while the ball increased in size there was plenty of time and opportunity for talk, which was interrupted by Robin's fiddle striking up a merry jig time. Wool and ball were laid aside, while Ann placed six lighted candles on the floor--four in the centre and one at each end, with space enough between them for the figures of the dance. Neddy listened a few moments, seemingly to get the rhythm well into his mind; then starting up, and flinging his heavy shoes aside, he took his place at the end of the space cleared for him, his ragged corduroy trousers hanging in tatters round his bare ankles. With his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, he began the dance, singing all the time an old refrain descriptive of its measure; keeping at a little distance from the group of candles, but gradually approaching nearer and nearer, and at length flinging his bare feet around the flaring lights. Round them and over them, in between them and outside them, until it was a mystery how the bare feet were not burnt and the ragged trousers did not catch fire. Over and over again he stopped for breath, until the loud stamping of feet and cries of applause, in which Tudor joined vociferously, encouraged him to begin again. The music waxed faster and faster, and Neddy danced with more marvellous rapidity, until he seemed to lose himself in the intricate mazes of the dance. He was pale, and beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, when at last, with a trick of his bare foot, he extinguished every light, and staggered to his seat in the corner by the kiln. "Hooray, Neddy! as good as ever he was! Well done, bâchgen! fetch him a 'blue.'" And Neddy, triumphant and thoroughly enjoying the cheering and _éclat_ of his exploit, leant back panting to recover himself. "The corn! The corn!" said Ann, turning to the roasting-pan over the kiln. "We mustn't forget that with our dancing and our singing, and thee mustn't have another 'blue' yet, Neddy." "Oh, indeed 'tis wonderful!" said Morva. "Yes, 'tis a pretty dance indeed," said Gethin, "and something like the sailor's hornpipe we used to dance on board ship sometimes." "Canst dance?" said the girl, with wide-open eyes of intense interest. "Well, yes--I was considered to have a pretty good foot for a fling." "Oh, dance!" said Morva, clasping her hands, "Ann, Ann, Gethin can dance!" "But not in these boots," he said. "Oh, Gethin, try!" said his sister. "Well, if I had my shoes. Run, Grif, to Garthowen and fetch them." And in a short time the boy returned, bringing Gethin's best Sunday shoes under his arm. The floor was cleared again, and everybody watched eagerly while the sailor took his stand, with arms folded across his chest and head well thrown back. "Now, Robin, a jig tune for me." "Yes, yes, the sailor's hornpipe proper," said Robin; and he struck up the time with spirit, and Gethin began the dance with equal vigour. The company looked on with breathless admiration, Neddy with critical nods of approval; but Morva's delight was indescribable. With eagerness like a child's she followed every dash, every scrape, and every fling of the dance, and when it was ended, and Gethin returned, laughing and panting, to his seat on the barrow, alas! alas! he had danced into her very heart. "Oh! there's handsome he is!" said Magw, the dairymaid, with a sigh; and Morva echoed the sentiment, though she did not give it utterance. "Yes, 'twas very well," said Neddy; "but thee couldn't do it if thou hadst the candles." "That I couldn't, Neddy; nobody but thee could," and the old man was quite satisfied. In the early grey of the morning the stray visitors dropped off one by one, and Neddy, having slept for an hour in his cosy corner, shook himself awake and betook himself, crooning an old song, once more to his solitary rambles over the hills. It was not until the sun had well risen, and the whole remaining party had breakfasted together in the mill kitchen, that the Garthowen household returned home, leading with them the lumbering blue and scarlet carts, laden with the sacks of meal sufficient for the coming year, Tudor following the procession with the air of a dog who congratulates himself upon having brought affairs to a satisfactory conclusion. Ebben Owens was already up to receive them, the big oak coffers in the grain room were swept out, the dry meal poured into them, and Twm the carter, with white cotton stockings kept for the occasion drawn over his feet and legs, stood in the coffers treading the meal into as hard a mass as possible. When they were full to the brim the heavy lids were closed with a snap, and the Garthowen cynos was over for the year. Afterwards the work of the farm went on as usual, but there were many surreptitious naps taken during the day, in hay loft or barn, or behind some sunny hedgerow or stack. Gwilym Morris and Will did not return that day, as had been expected. "Wilt stay a little later, Morva?" said Ann; "they may come by the carrier at seven o'clock, and I will want to prepare supper for them." Morva's heart sank, but she made no outward sign; she had been full of restless excitement all day, and had looked forward to the quiet of the cottage under the furze bank, and to Sara's soothing company. All day she had been haunted by the memory of the sailor's hornpipe, Gethin's flashing eyes, his handsome person, his supple limbs! She tried to banish the vision and to turn her thoughts to Will, but found it impossible! and she went about her work in a dream of happiness, unwillingly recalling every word that Gethin had spoken, every hidden compliment, and every look of tenderness. She avoided him when he returned from the fields at midday, she trembled and blushed at the sound of his name, and when he came home in the evening to his supper she feigned some excuse and was absent from the evening meal; but when at last Will's return was despaired of, and Morva took her way round the Cribserth towards home, Gethin, no longer to be baulked, followed her with rapid steps, and caught her up just as she turned the rugged edge of the ridge. "Morva!" he called, and she turned at once and stood facing him in the light of the full moon. She bent her head a little and let her arms fall at her sides, standing like a culprit before his accuser. The attitude pained Gethin, whose whole being was overflowing with tenderness. "Morva, lass! what is the matter? Where art going? Art running away from _me_?" The girl raised her eyes to his, and in a low but firm voice answered, "Yes." "Why? Why?" he asked, and taking her hands hastily he drew her away from the path, and down to the shadow of a broom bush on the cliff side. She remembered it was the very bush behind which she had met Will two evenings before. For a moment they were silent, both feeling too agitated to speak. Beyond the shadow of the bushes the world lay silent in the mellow moonlight, a soft breathing stole up to them from the heaving sea below, a whispering breeze played on their faces, and through it all the insidious glamour of the dance, which had enchanted the simple rustic girl, wove like a silver thread. "Morva," he said at last, pressing the hand which he held in his, "thou knowest well what I want to say. If I had learning like Will's now, I would not be hunting for words like this, but indeed, lass, I am fair doited with love of thee. Answer me, dost love me too? I think, Morva," and he drew her closer, "I think thou dost not hate me?" "Oh, no," she whispered, "but--but--" and she slowly endeavoured to withdraw from his detaining grasp, "but, Gethin, I am promised to Will." "What? What didst say, girl?" said Gethin, in an agitated voice. "Thou hast promised to marry Will?" There was a long pause of silence, during which the lapping of the waves on the beach, the rustle of the leaves in the bushes, together with their own fluttering breaths, were distinctly audible. "Didst say that, Morva?" "Yes, indeed, 'tis true," said the girl, in a low voice. "But--but does Will love thee?" "Yes, he loves me," answered Morva sadly, but steadily, "and I love him, and I must listen to no other man, for I have promised him." "Promised him! when?" said Gethin, trying to steady his voice. "Oh, many times, many times; two nights ago, here, under this very broom bush, I promised to be true and unchangeable." "Is this true indeed, then? Hast promised thyself away from me?" said Gethin, looking round as if dazed and stunned. "Yes," she answered again, in a low voice. "Will asked me if I loved him, and I said 'Yes, I love thee with all my heart, and I love everyone at Garthowen the same, and would willingly give my life for them.'" "And what did he say to that?" asked Gethin in a scornful tone. "He said, 'twas right I should feel like that, for they had all been kind to me, ever since the sea cast me up here, a little helpless baby; and he said 'twould ill repay their kindness to break his heart." Gethin snatched at her hand hungrily. "Will I tell thee, lass, what I would have answered if I had been Will? I would have said, 'Love me, Morva, _more_ than all the others at Garthowen; love me more than all the world beside; love me as I love thee, girl! Nothing less will satisfy me; no riches, no worldly goods, no joy, no happiness will be of any account to me if I have not all thy love.'" "Stop, Gethin, stop," said Morva, turning away. But Gethin continued, still detaining her hands in his, "That is what I would have said, Morva, if I were Will. Canst say nothing to me, lass?" Morva had turned her face to the broom bush, and was sobbing with her apron to her eyes. "Why didst thou promise him?" Gethin said again, in a fierce tone. "I promised him when I was a little girl, and ever since, whenever he has asked me, I have said, 'Oh, Will, there is no need to say more, for I have promised,'" and she turned slowly to move away; but Gethin drew her back. "Thou shalt not go," he said; "I cannot live without thee; all through the long years I too have loved thee, Morva, ever since that day when I tore myself from thy clinging arms and heard thee crying after me; but because I was away, and could not tell thee of my love, I have lost thee." "I have promised," was all her answer. "Well, then, I suppose there is nothing else to be said, and I must live without thee; but 'twill be hard, very hard, lass. I thought--I thought--but there; what's the use of thinking? I suppose I must say 'Good-bye.' Wilt give me one kiss before we part? No? Well, indeed, an unwilling kiss from Morva would kill me, so fforwel, lass! At least shake hands." Morva turned towards him, placing her hand in his, and by the bright moonlight he saw her face was very pale. "Fforwel!" he said once more, and dropping her hand, he left her suddenly, standing alone under the night sky. She looked after him until he had passed round the Cribserth, and then turned homewards with a heavier heart than she had ever borne before. "'As the sparks fly upward!'" she whispered, as she reached the cottage door, "Yes, mother was right, 'as the sparks fly upward!'" CHAPTER XI UNREST "Ach y fi!" said Ann one day as the autumn slipped by, "only a week before Will goes; there's dull it will be without him!" "Twt, twt!" said Will, tossing his tawny mane, "'twill only be for three months. Christmas will be here directly, and I will be home then for the holidays--vacation, I mean." "Vacation; is that what they call it? Dear! dear! we must mind our words now with a college man among us." Gethin seldom came into the house; from morning to night he worked hard on the farm, and his father was obliged to confess that, after all his roving, he showed more aptitude for steady work than Will did. When he did enter the house, it was only to take his meals hurriedly and silently, and if by chance he encountered Morva, as was unavoidable sometimes in the day's work, he was careful not to look at her. The girl, though conscious of his change of manner, showed no outward sign of the acute suffering she was undergoing. Her whole life seemed upturned, full of discordant elements and strained relations. To bear Will's apparent indifference was not difficult, for she had been accustomed to that all her life; but to know that she was bound to him--that he still loved her, and would carry with him his faith and trust in her, was a heavy burden. The change in Gethin's manner, the averted look, the avoidance of her, the formal question or request, were positively so many sharp thorns that pierced her like some tangible weapon, and added to this was a deep regret that she was so unworthy of Will's love. He did not ask her to meet him again behind the broom bushes, and only one night in the old beudy,[1] where she had carried a pail of grain to a sick cow, had he tried to speak to her alone. Gethin, who watched his brother with eager interest, was astonished at the indifference he showed towards her. Surely they must meet somewhere secretly! Well, what was it to him? What was anything to him? For Morva's love he would willingly have laid down his life; but now that that was denied him, nothing else was of any consequence; and in troubled thought he sauntered out to cross the farmyard on his way to Pont-y-fro. The moor beyond the Cribserth he avoided carefully, and when his work led him along the brow of the hill, he tried to avert his eyes as well as his thoughts from its undulating knolls, a background, against which memory would picture a winsome girl, red-cloaked and blue-kilted. Will had preceded him about a quarter of an hour, and had found Morva pensively holding the empty pail before the cow, who had eaten up the grain, and was licking round in search of more; she did not see him until he was close upon her, and then she started from her dreams. "Oh, Will!" she said, and nothing more. "I wanted to see thee once more, lass, to say good-bye, and to remind thee of thy promise." "You will be back before Christmas, Will, and we will be together again." "Yes," he answered, "and then we must manage to meet sometimes, for I find I cannot live without thee. I cannot break away from thee entirely; but we must be careful, very, very careful. I would not have anyone suspect our courtship for all the world. Thou wilt keep my secret, Morva?" "Yes," she said wearily. "Come, cheer up, lass, 'twill soon be over. A year or two and I will have a home for thee--I know I will. And now good-bye, I hear footsteps. Good-bye, Morva." He clasped her once to his heart, and whispered a word of endearment in her ear; but she stood like a statue, and only answered "Good-bye," and even that he did not hear, for he had already slipped away, and by a circuitous path reached the house. Crossing the farmyard, Gethin's approaching footsteps made but little sound on the soft stubble; and Morva, thinking herself quite alone, stood leaning just within the doorway, crying softly in the darkness, for the flaring candle had gone out. "Who is there?" said Gethin. There was no answer, Morva checking her sobs, and standing perfectly still. "Morva, is it thee crying here by thyself? What is it? Tell me, child." "Oh! nothing," said the girl. "Only Will has been here." "Oh! I see," said Gethin bitterly, "to bid thee fforwel, I suppose. Well, it won't be for long; he will be back soon, and then thou wilt be happy, Morva." "Gethin, thee must promise me one thing." "And what is that?" he said. "Never to tell anyone what I told thee over yonder beyond the Cribserth. Will wants it to be a secret." "Fear nothing," said Gethin, "I will never tell tales. Gethin Owens has not many good qualities, but he has one, and that is, he would never betray a trust, so be easy, Morva. I am going to Pont-y-fro. Good-night!" "Good-night," echoed the girl, and, taking up her pail, she closed the beudy door, and as she crossed the yard under the bright starlight she recalled Gethin's parting words, "Be easy, Morva," and repeated them to herself with a sorrowful smile. * * * * * * "'Tis Martinmas Fair to-morrow," said Ann, as Morva entered the best kitchen. "Are you going, father?" "Yes," he said. "I have those yearlings to sell." "I will come with you," said Gwilym Morris, for they seldom let the old man go alone. "I can see about Will's coat, and I want some books. Come on, Ann, come with us; 'twill be a lively fair, I think." "Very well, I'll come and look after you both." "That's right," said the old man, rubbing his knees. "Twm will drive the yearlings. Art coming, Will?" "No," he answered, "I have promised to go to Caer-Madoc to-morrow." And so Garthowen was empty next day, for Gethin did not return to the midday meal. Morva, as usual in Ann's absence, took charge of the house, and very sad and lonely she felt as she roamed from one room to another, dusting a chair or table occasionally, and looking out through the windows at the dull, leaden sea, for outside, too, the clouds were gathering, and the wind whispered threatenings of change. Three nights ago! Was it possible? So lately as that was she bright and happy, and was the world around her so full of light and warmth? She leant her elbows on the deep window-sill and mused. How long ago, too, it seemed since she had taken down the old Bible and hunted up Gethin's delinquencies. She saw it now in her mind's eye, and, getting upon the table, she reached it down again, and turned to the disfigured page. Now she knew how little harm there had been in those foolish, boyish rhymes; now she knew the bright black eyes which had guided the pen in those brown fingers were full of nothing but mischief. "Oh, no! no harm," she said, "only fun and mischief." She read the lines again, and a sad little smile came over her mouth, then she looked at the signatures below. "Gethin Owens, Garthowen." "G. O." "Gethin." She half-closed the old book, and then, with a furtive glance round the room and through the window, opened it again, and, stooping down, pressed her lips on the name, then, blushing a vivid red, she mounted the table once more and replaced the Bible. It was a long, weary day, but it came at last to a close. She made up the fire, prepared the tea, with piles of buttered toast and new-laid eggs in plenty, and soon the jingling car drove into the farmyard, Gwilym Morris lifting Ann bodily out, and both assisting the old man with tender care, Morva hovering round. She was to sleep at the farm that night in order to be ready for the early churning next day, so when they were all seated at the tea-table she left the house with the intention of seeing if Sara required any help. "I will be back before supper," she said, and hurried homewards over the moor, where the wind was rising and sighing in the broom bushes. The clouds were hurrying up from the north-west, and threatening to overcast the pale evening sky, quivering flocks of fieldfares whirred over her, and the gold and purple were fast losing their brilliant tints. As she neared the cottage in the darkening twilight, a patch of scarlet caught her eye, and a warm glow of comfort rushed into her heart. It was Sara's red mantle and she knew the faithful heart was waiting for her. "The dear old mother," she said, and hastening her footsteps soon reached Sara, who stood leaning on her stick and peering over the moor. "Here I am, mother!" she said, as cheerfully as she could. "'Merch fâch i!" said Sara tenderly, and they turned into the cottage together. The tea was laid on the little round table in the chimney corner. "Did you expect me, then, mother?" "Yes; I thought thou wouldst come, child, to see how I fared as thou art sleeping there to-night," and sitting down together they chatted over their tea. At Garthowen there was much chat going on, too. Ebben Owens had not sold his yearlings. "I wasn't going to give them away for half price, not I!" he said. "I'd rather keep them till next fair." So Twm had driven them home again, and was even now turning them into the old cowhouse. "Well! I have a wonderful piece of news to give you all," said Gwilym Morris, leaning back in his chair and diving deep into his pocket. Having pulled out a canvas bag he laid it triumphantly on the table with a bang. "What is it?" said all, in a breath. Gwilym did not answer, but undoing the pink tape which tied it, he poured out on the table forty glittering sovereigns. "There!" he said, "what do you think; old Tim 'Penlau' paid me the 40 pounds he has owed me so long!" "Well, wonders will never cease!" said Ebben Owens. "How long has he had them?" asked Will. "Oh! these years and years. I had quite given them up, but he was always promising that when he sold his farm he would repay me. Now they have come just in time to furnish the new house, Ann." "But why didn't you put them into the bank?" asked Will. "'Twas too late, the bank was closed; but I will take them in to-morrow." "I saw you talking to Gryny Lewis in the market," said Ebben Owens. "What were you saying to him? You weren't such a fool as to tell him you had received the 40 pounds?" "Well, yes, indeed I did," replied Gwilym. "Well, I wouldn't tell him. Don't forget how he stole from Jos Hughes's till." "Well, indeed, I never remembered that. Oh, I'll take care of them," he said, tying them once more in his bag, and returning them to his pocket. "I'll put them in my drawer to-night, and to-morrow I'll take them to the bank." When Morva returned they were still discussing the preacher's good fortune in the recovery of the loan which he had almost despaired of. "Oh, there's glad I am!" said the girl; and Gethin put in a word of congratulation as he sauntered out to take a last look at the horses. Long before ten the whole household had retired for the night. Ann and Morva slept in a small room on the first landing, just beyond which, up two steps, ran a long passage, into which the other bedrooms opened. Morva, who generally found the handmaid of sleep waiting beside her pillow, missed her to-night. Hour after hour she lay silent and open-eyed, vainly endeavouring to follow Ann into the realms of dreamland. Tudor, too, who usually slept quietly in his kennel, seemed disturbed and restless, and filled the air with mournful howling. The girl was in that cruellest of all stages of sorrow, when the mind has but half grasped the meaning of its trouble. She had no name for the deep longing which rebelled in her heart against the fate that was closing her in; for she had as yet scarcely confessed to herself that her whole being turned towards Gethin as the flower to the sun, and that in her breast, so long calm and unruffled as the pools in the boggy moor, was growing as strong a repulsion for one brother as love for the other. And as she lay quietly on her pillow, endeavouring not to disturb her companion's rest, a tide of sorrowful regrets swept over her, even as outside, under the shifting moonlight, the bay, yesterday so calm, was torn and tossed by the rising north-west wind. Through all, and interwoven even with her bitter grief, was the memory of that happy night--surely long ago?--when she had sat in the warm air of the cynos, and Gethin had danced into her heart. Oh, the pity of it! such love to be offered her, and to be thrust aside! "That is what I would say if I were Will!" And all night every sorrowful longing, every endeavour after resignation, every prayer for strength, ended with the same refrain, "If he were Will! if he were Will!" Tick, tack, tick, tack! the old clock filled the night air with its measured beat. "Surely it does not tick so loudly in the day?" she thought. Ten, eleven, and twelve had struck, and still Morva lay wakeful, with wide-open eyes, watching the hurrying clouds. At last she slept for an hour or two, and her uninterrupted breathing showed that the invigorating sleep of youth had at length fallen upon her weary eyelids. For an hour or two she slept, but at last she suddenly stirred, and in a moment was wide awake, with every sense strained to the utmost. What had awakened her she could not tell. She was conscious only of an eager and thrilling expectancy. She was about to relapse into slumber when a gliding sound caught her ear, and in a moment she was listening again, with all her senses alert. Was it fancy? or was there a soft footfall, and a sound as of a hand drawn over the whitewashed wall of the passage? A board creaked, and Morva sat up, and strained her ears to listen. After a stillness of some moments, again there was the soft footfall and the gliding hand on the wall. She rose and quietly crept into the passage just in time to see a dark figure entering the preacher's room. Who could it be? Intense curiosity was the feeling uppermost in her mind, and this alone prevented her calling Ann. Standing a few moments in breathless silence, she heard the slow opening of a drawer; another pause of eager listening, while the stealthy footsteps seemed to be returning towards the doorway. At this moment the moon emerged from behind a cloud, and in her light Morva saw a sight which astonished her, for coming from the preacher's room a well-known form stood plainly revealed. It was Gethin! and the girl shrank a little into the shadow of a doorway. But her precaution was needless, for he walked as if dazed or asleep, and with unsteady footstep seemed to stagger as he hurriedly gained his own room. Morva, frightened and wondering, returned to bed, and if the early hours of the night had been disturbed and restless, those which followed were still more so. What could it mean? What could Gethin want in Gwilym's room? She had thought it was a thief, and if not a thief what was the meaning of those stealthy footsteps and the opening of the drawer? and full of unrest she lay awake listening to the ticking of the clock, and to Tudor's continued howling. Should she wake Ann? No! for Gethin had evidently desired secrecy, and she would not be the one to frustrate his intentions, for whatever might be the object of his secret visit to the preacher's room, she never doubted but that it was right and honourable. All night she lay in troubled thought, rising many times to look through the ivy-framed window towards the eastern brow of the slopes. At length the pale dawn drew near, and Morva slept a heavy dreamless sleep, which lasted till Ann called her for the churning. [1] Cowhouse. CHAPTER XII SARA'S VISION "Morva, lass," said Ann, "what's the matter to-day? No breakfast; after thy work at the churn, too?" "Well, indeed," said Morva, "I drank so much butter milk that I don't want much breakfast." "Come, lass," said Ebben Owens, "hard work wants good feeding." "Well," said Ann, "you are not eating much yourself. Did you sleep well, father?" "Yes, of course," said the old man; "I always sleep like a top. Here's Will; he'll satisfy thee in the eating line, whatever." "Yes; especially when there's fresh butter and new bread," said Will, sitting down and cutting a thick slice for himself. "What was the matter with Tudor last night? He was howling all night. Did you hear him, father?" "Not I. 'Twas the moonlight, I suppose. Dogs often howl on a moonlight night." "Tudor doesn't," said Ann. "I'm glad I didn't hear him, ach y fi! I don't like it at all. But where's Gwilym and Gethin? There's late they are." At this moment the former entered and took his seat silently at the table, looking pale and flurried. "Where can Gethin be?" said Ann again; "not back from the mountain?" and Magw was sent to the top of the garden to call him, which she did with such stentorian tones that his name flew backwards and forwards across the valley, but no Gethin came. Breakfast over, the big Bible was placed before Ebben Owens as usual, and all the farm servants assembled for prayers. When they rose from their knees and the wooden shoes had clattered out of the kitchen, Gwilym said, as he drew his chair to the table: "Ann, we must wait a little longer for our furniture. My bag of sovereigns is gone!" "Gone?" echoed everyone, and Morva, who was putting away the Bible, turned white with a deadly fear, which seemed to freeze the blood in her veins. In the excitement of the moment her change of countenance escaped the notice of the other members of the family. "Gone," said Will, "gone where? What do you mean, man? Stolen?" "Yes, no doubt, for the window and the drawer were open." "The window?" said Ebben Owens. "Then the thief must have come in that way." "And gone out, too, I suppose," said Gwilym. "Tis that devil, Gryffy Lewis," said Will. "He could easily creep up from his cottage. You ought not to have told him." "No, I ought not," said the preacher; "but, indeed, I was so glad of the money and to find that Tim 'Penlau' was honest after all our doubts, and Gryffy Lewis seemed as glad as I was." "The deceitful blackguard!" said Ebben Owens. "Well, we don't know it was he after all," suggested Gwilym. "Poor man, we must not blame him till we are certain. I hoped and believed that he had taken a turn for the better, and this would be a dreadful blow to me." "Blow to you!" said Will excitedly. "I'll go to Castell On for a policeman, and it'll be a blow to Gryffy when he feels the handcuffs on his wrists." "No--no," said Gwilym Morris, "that I will never allow." For in his daily life the preacher carried out his Master's teaching in its spirit, and forgave unto seventy times seven, and with curious inconsistency abhorred the relentless anger which on Sundays in the pulpit he unconsciously ascribed to the God whom he worshipped. "No, let him have the money, it will bring its own punishment, poor fellow! I have lived long enough without it, and can do without it still, only poor Ann won't have mahogany chairs and a shining black sofa in her parlour--deal must do instead." "Deal will do very well," said Ann soothingly, "Well," said Ebben Owens, "you take your trouble like a Christian, Gwilym." "Like a Christian!" said Will. "Like a madman I call it! I think you owe it to everyone in the house, Gwilym, to send for a policeman and have the matter cleared up." "It wouldn't do," said Ebben, "to charge Gryffy without any proofs, so we had better hush it up and say nothing about it before the servants." "Yes, that is the best plan," said the preacher, "and perhaps in time and by kindness I can turn Gryffy's mind to repentance and to returning the money." "But where's Gethin this morning?" inquired Will. "I hope nothing has happened to Bowler." The morning hours slipped by, and yet Gethin did not appear. At dinner in the farm kitchen there were inquiries and comments, but nobody knew anything of the absent one. In the best kitchen the meal was partaken of in silence, a heavy cloud hung over the household, and terrible doubts clutched at their hearts, but no one spoke his fears. When, however, the shades of evening were closing in, and neither on moor nor meadow, in stable nor yard, was Gethin to be seen, a dreadful certainty fell upon them. It was too evident that he had disappeared from the haunts of Garthowen. Will swore under his breath, Gwilym Morris was even more tender than usual to every member of the family, and Ebben Owens went about the farm with a hard look on his face, and a red spot on each cheek, but nobody said anything more about sending for a policeman. Ann cried herself to sleep that night. Morva went home to her mother, white and dry-eyed, her mind full of anxious questioning, her heart sinking with sorrow. Sara held out her wrinkled hand towards her. "Come, 'merch fâch i, 'tis trouble, I know; but what is it, lass?" "Oh, mother, 'tis too dreadful to think of! How can such things be? You say the spirits come and talk to you, they never come to me; ask them to be kind to me, too, and to take me to themselves, for this world is too full of cruel thorns!" Sara's kind eyes filled with tears. "Oh! that I could bear thy sorrow for thee, my little girl; but it is one of the thorns of life that we cannot raise the burden of sorrows from our dear ones and bind it on our own shoulders. God alone can help thee, my child." "Mother, do you know what has happened?" "Yes," said the old woman. "I was quite failing to sleep last night, so I got up and lighted the fire, and I read a chapter sitting here on the settle. After I had read, looking I was at the flames and the sparks that flew upwards, and a vision came before me. I was at Garthowen in the dark, I saw a figure creeping quietly into a room; it was a man, but I could not recognise him. He opened a drawer, and took something out of it, and I did not see anything more. When I awoke the fire had gone out, and I was very cold, so I went back to bed, and slept heavily all night, and when I awoke this morning I knew thou wouldst come to me in sorrow and fright." "Well, mother, can you gather some comfort from your vision? Oh! tell me the meaning of it all. What did Gethin want in Gwilym's room?" "Gethin?" said Sara, in astonishment, "in Gwilym Morris's room!" "Yes, I saw him; and from there a bag of sovereigns has been stolen. He has gone away without a word to anyone, and I know they all think that he has done this dreadful thing? but I will _not_ believe it, never! never! never!" "No, it is all dark, but one thing is plain to me and thee, Gethin did not do this shameful thing. Let me be, child, and perhaps it will all come before me again, or perhaps Gethin will come back. I know, whatever, that my message to thee is Gethin is not guilty of this wickedness." "Mother, I believe you," said the girl; "and though all the world should swear it was Gethin, I should know better, for you know, mother. We only see with our bodily eyes, but your spirit sees. Mother, I know it--but he is gone! What is the meaning of that; he is gone like the mist of the morning--like a dream of the night, and he will never return, and if he did return it could never be anything to me!" And leaning on the table as she had done once before, her face buried on her arms, she sobbed unrestrainedly, Sara sitting by her and crying in sympathy. All day they discussed the unhappy event. "Who did it, mother? and why did Gethin go away?" "I don't know," said the old woman. "I shall never know perhaps who did it, but I know it was not Gethin." "Why did I see him, mother? I awoke suddenly and went into the passage, and there he was. I wish I had slept sounder, for that sight will always be on my mind. When we came down to breakfast he was gone, and every one will think he stole the money. Forty sovereigns, mother! Will he ever come back and clear it up?" "Some day it will be plain, but now we must be satisfied to know it was not Gethin." "No one else will believe us, mother." "Oh! I am used to that," said the old woman, with a patient smile; "that makes no difference in God's plans. Thou must pluck up thy heart, and have courage, child, for there is a long life before thee. A dark cloud is shading thy path now, but 'twill pass away, and thou wilt be happy again." "Never! unless Gethin comes back to clear his name. Oh! 'tis a cold grey world. Only here with you, mother, is the comfort of love. When I draw near the cottage I look out for your red mantle, and if I see it, it sends a warm glow through me." And so they talked until, as the twilight gathered round them, Morva said: "I must go; the cows must be milked. Poor Garthowen is a sad house to-day! I wish I could comfort them a little, but 'tis all dark." And as she crossed the moor to the Cribserth, she looked round her, but found no shred of comfort. The sea, all rough and torn by the high wind, looked cold and cruel; the brow of the hill, which Gethin's whistle had so often enlivened, looked bare and uninteresting; the moor had lost its gorgeous tints; a rock pigeon, endeavouring to reach its nest, was driven by the wind against a thorn bush. "Tis pricked and beaten like me," thought the girl, and struggling with the high wind, she helped the bird with tender fingers to extricate himself. When she entered the farmyard Daisy stood waiting, and Morva, knowing that without her song there would be no milk, began the old refrain, but her voice broke, and while she sang with trembling lips the tears ran down her cheeks. The news of Gethin's absence was soon bruited abroad, and many were the conjectures as to its cause. "He seemed so jolly at the cynos," said the farm servants; "who'd have thought his heart was away with the shipping and the foreign ports?" "Well, well," said the farmers, "Garthowen will have to do without Gethin Owens, that's plain; the roving spirit is in him still, and Ebben Owens will have to look alive, with only Ann and Gwilym Morris to help him." "Well, he needn't be so proud, then! Will a clergyman indeed! 'tis at home at the plough I'd keep him!" But nobody knew anything of the robbery, which added so much poignancy to the sorrow at Garthowen. Ebben Owens seemed to take his son's disappearance much to heart, and to feel his absence more in sorrow than in anger. Will grew more and more irritable, so that it was almost a relief when one day in the following week he took his departure for Llaniago, his father accompanying him in the car, and returning next day with glowing accounts of his son's introduction to the world of learning and collegiate life. "If you were to see him in his cap and gown!" he said, "oh, there's a gentleman he looks; in my deed there wasn't one in the whole college so handsome as our Will! so straight and so tall, and everybody noticing him." And so Will was launched on the voyage of clerical life with full sails and colours flying, while Gethin was allowed to sink into oblivion; his name was never mentioned, his place knew him no more, and the tide of life flowed on at Garthowen with the outward monotonous peace and regularity common to all farm life. Ebben Owens leant more on Gwilym and Ann, and Twm took his own way more, but further than this there was no difference in the daily routine of work. The grey house at Brynseion was nearing completion, but Ann put off her marriage again and again, and even hinted at the desirability of breaking off her engagement entirely, unless it could be arranged for her and her husband to live on at Garthowen, and let the grey house to somebody else. "Well!" said Gwilym, "'tis for you and your father to settle that. I will be happy with you anywhere, Ann, and I see it is impossible for you to leave the old man while both his sons are away; so do as you wish, 'merch i, only don't keep me waiting any longer." And so it was settled, and Ann sat down to indite a letter to Will in the fine pointed handwriting which she had learnt during her year of boarding-school at Caer-Madoc, fine and pointed and square, like a row of gates, with many capitals and no stops. The letter informed her brother with much formality, "that having known Gwilym Morris for many years, he and she had now decided to enter upon the matrimonal state. Our father and mother," she continued, "having been married in Capel Mair at Castell On, I have a strong wish to be married in the same place, and Gwilym consents to my wish. We will fix our wedding for some day after your return from Llaniago at Christmas, as we would like you to be present as well as my father. Elinor Jones of Betheyron will be my bridesmaid, and Morva and Gryffy Jones will be the only others at the wedding." By return of post Will's answer came, requesting them not to count upon him, as he might accept the invitation of a friend to spend part of his vacation with him. "In any case," he added, "it would scarcely look well for a candidate for Holy Orders in the Church of England to attend a service in a dissenting chapel." Gwilym Morris folded the letter slowly, and returned it to Ann without a word. "Well, well!" said Ebben Owens, "'tis disappointing, but Will knows best; no doubt he's right, and thee must find someone else, Ann. I wish Gethin was here," the old man said, with a sigh. It was strange, Ann thought, how tenderly and wistfully he longed for Gethin, once so little cared for; and as the memory of the sinister event which she believed caused his absence crossed her mind she coloured with shame. "Oh, father," she said, clasping her hands. "Poor Gethin! how could I have him at my wedding? I never thought one of our family could be dishonest." "Nor I--nor I, indeed!" said Ebben Owens, shaking his head sorrowfully. "It is too plain, isn't it?" said Ann, "going away like that--oh! to think our Gethin was a thief!" and throwing her apron over her face she burst into a fit of sobbing, a thing so unusual with the placid Ann that her father and Gwilym both watched her in surprise. Gwilym took her hand in silence, and the old man, leaning his elbow on the table and shading his eyes with his hand dropped some bitter tears. He had looked forward to Will's return with intense longing, had counted the days that must elapse before that happy hour should arrive when, great-coated and gloved, he should drive his son over the frosty roads, and usher him like a conquering hero into the old home. Through her own tears Ann observed the old man's sorrowful attitude, and instantly she dried her eyes and ran towards him. "Father, anwl," she said, in an abandon of love, kneeling down beside him, and throwing her strong white arm around him, "is it tears I see dropping down on the table? Well, indeed, there's a foolish daughter you've got, to cry and mourn, and make her old father cry. Stop those tears at once, then, naughty boy," she said cheerily, patting the old man's back; "or I'll cry again, and Gwilym will be afraid to enter such a showery family." Her father tried to laugh through his tears, and Ann, casting her sorrow to the winds, laid herself out with "merry quips and cranks" to restore him to cheerfulness. "Now see," she cried, with assumed childish glee, "what a dinner I have for you! what you've often called 'a dinner for a king' and so it is, and that king is Ebben Owens of Garthowen!" and she placed before him a plate of boiled rabbit, adding a slice of the pink, home-cured bacon, which Gwilym was cutting with a smile of amusement at her playful ruse. "Now, potatoes and onion sauce, salt, cabbages, knife and fork, and now the dear old king is going to eat a good dinner." Ebben Owens laughingly took his knife and fork, and in spite of the previous tears, the meal was a cheerful one, even Tudor stood up with his paws on the table with a joyous bark. Will's letters were the grand excitement of the farm, coming at first pretty regularly once a week--read aloud by Ann in the best kitchen, examined carefully by her father lest a word should have escaped the reader, carried out to farm kitchen or stable or field, and read to the servants, who listened with gaping admiration. "There's a scholar he is! Caton pawb! Indeed, Mishteer, there's proud you must be of him!" And all this was incense to Ebben Owens's heart. CHAPTER XIII THE BIRD FLUTTERS In the first term of his college life Will fully realised his pleasantest anticipations, and now, if never before, he acknowledged to himself his deep indebtedness to Gwilym Morris; his own abilities he had never doubted. The ease, too, with which he had matriculated much elated him, and he began his studies with a light heart and a happy consciousness of talent, which, coupled with a dogged perseverance and a determination to overcome every obstacle in his path, ensured success in the long run. He had one fixed and constant aim, namely, advancement in the career upon which he had entered, and in furtherance of this object, he was determined to let no hankering after the past stand in his way. In his own opinion there were but two hindrances to his progress, two shadows from the past to darken his path, and these were his obscure birth and his love for Morva, for this he had not yet succeeded in crushing. Before he left home his constant intercourse with her and the ease with which they met had prevented the usual anxieties which are said to beset the path of love. With innate selfishness, he had taken to himself all the pleasure derivable from their close companionship, without troubling himself much as to the state of the girl's feelings. That she was true to him, he had never had reason to doubt. Since he left home things had taken a different aspect; true, the thought of Morva was interwoven with all he did or read or studied, but there was an accompanying feeling of disquietude, a shrinking from the memory of her simple rustic ways, which he began to realise were incompatible with his new hopes and aspirations. It was becoming very evident to him, therefore, that his love for her must be banished, with all the old foolish ties and habits which bound him to the past. A vision of the clear blue eyes, the winsome smile, the lissom figure _would_ rise persistently before him, and alas! the threadbare woollen gown, the wooden shoes, the pink cotton neckerchief, were also photographed upon his brain. He heard from Ann of her approaching marriage, no longer deferred in expectation of his presence, and he was much relieved by this arrangement; but still, when the morning dawned clear and frosty, he was cross and irritable, for he could not banish from his mind the thought of the old ivy-covered homestead, with the few gnarled trees overshadowing its gables, its bare sea front turned bravely to the north-west, the elder tree over the back door, the farm servants, all with white favours pinned on their breasts; the gentle bride, the handsome thoughtful bridegroom, the dear old father excited and merry, and above all, Morva decked out in wedding finery! How lovely she would look! Why was it that this sweet picture of home filled Will's heart only with discontent and an abiding unrest? The answer is plain, because he had determined, come what would, to sever himself from that homely, simple life, to cast the thought of it into the background, to live only for the future, and that future one of success and self-aggrandisement. Morva alone held him back; how could he hope to rise in his career, while his heart was fettered by the memory of a milkmaid, a cowherd, a shepherdess? No, it was very evident that from her he must break away. "But not now," he said to himself, as he paced round the quadrangle, "not yet." She was so sweet--he loved her so much; not yet must the severance come. "It will be time enough," so his reverie ended, "when my future is more defined and certain, then it will be easy to break away from poor Morva." The invitation of which he had spoken had not been renewed, and though he was far too proud to show his annoyance, the omission galled and fretted his haughty nature, for the lowliness of his birth and circumstances chafed him continually, and engendered a sensitiveness to small annoyances which would not have troubled a nobler nature. In spite of all this, he found himself, as the term drew near its close, looking forward with pleasure to the old home ways, and the old home friends, and when he climbed into the jingling car beside his father, in the yard of the hotel, not even the rough country shabbiness of the equipage could altogether spoil the pleasant anticipations of a first vacation at home, although, it must be confessed, that as he drove out of the town, he earnestly hoped he would escape the observation of his fellow collegians. Ebben Owens's happiness should now have been complete, for he had his much-loved son at home at his own hearth; but a shadow seemed to have fallen on the old man's life, a haunting sadness which nothing seemed to dispel. Ann rallied him upon it playfully, and he would laughingly promise to reform. "Will at home and all," she said, "and everything going on so well--except, of course, 'tis dreadful about Gethin; but we have been used to his absence, father; and you never seemed to grieve about him." "No, no," said her father, "I have never grieved about him much, but lately I had got so fond of him; he was so kind to me, so merry he was, and so handsome, and always ready to help!" and again he would relapse into silence. On market day he was very anxious to drive Will into Castell On. "Come on, 'machgen i; I will give you a new waistcoat. Come and show yourself to Mr. Price and to all the young ladies. Be bound, if they were to see you in your cap and gown, not the highest among them but would be proud to shake hands with you!" But Will declined the offer. Later in the day, however, he walked in alone, and only that sad angel, who surely records the bitter wounds inflicted by children upon the tender parent hearts, knew how sharp a stab entered the old man's soul; but next day he had "got over it," as the phrase is. With a slow, dragging step Morva walked home on the evening of Will's arrival. He had nodded at her in a nonchalant manner, with a kindly, "Well, Morva!" in passing, just as he had done to Magw and Shan, but further than that had not spoken to her again, though his eyes followed her everywhere as she moved about her household duties. "Prettier than ever!" he thought. "My word! there is not one of the Llaniago young ladies fit to tie her shoe!" As soon as the cows were milked and the short frosty day had ended, the moon rose clear and bright over the Cribserth. "I am going to see Sara," said Will, taking his hat off the peg in the blue painted passage. No one was surprised at that, for both Will and Gethin, ever since their mother's death, had been accustomed to run to Sara for sympathy with every pleasure or misfortune, and after being two months away it was quite natural that he should want to see her; so Morva had scarcely rounded the bend of the Cribserth before Will had caught her up. A little shiver ran through her as she recognised the step and the whistle which called her attention. It was Will, whom she once thought she had loved so truly, and the coldness which she had felt towards him of late was strangely mingled with remorse and tender memories as she turned and walked a few steps back to meet him. "Stop, Morva; let me speak to thee. Give me thy hand, lass. After so long a parting thou canst not deny me a kiss too." Ah, how sweet it was to return to the dear old Welsh, and the homely "thee" and "thou"! "Art well, Will? But I need not ask. Indeed, there is life and health in thy very face." "Yes, I am well," said Will, drawing her towards him. "I am coming with thee to see Sara." "Yes, come," said Morva. "Art glad to see me, lass?" "Yes, indeed, I am very glad, whatever. Garthowen will be full again; it has been very empty lately." She was thinking of Gethin, unconsciously, perhaps, and hung her head a little guiltily when Will said: "Thou didst miss me, then?" "Of course we all missed thee--thy father especially." "More than thee, Morva?" She sighed. "'Tis this way, Will. I am tired of this secrecy. We grew up like brother and sister. Can't we remain like that? Don't ask me for more, and then thou canst rise as high as thou pleasest, and I will be always glad to see thee, and so proud to hear of thy getting on. Will, it will never do for a clergyman to marry his father's milkmaid!" "Twt, twt," said Will, "let us not think of the future, lass--the present is enough for me; and I promise thee not to allude to our marriage if thou wilt only meet me like this whenever I come home, and let me feel thee close to my heart as thou hast to-night." "But I will not," said the girl suddenly, withdrawing herself from the arm which he had passed round her waist. "Why not?" he asked. "Because," said Morva, "'tis only my promise to marry thee that makes me meet thee as I do, and deceive them all at Garthowen. Let me tell them how it is between us, Will." "What! Morva talk about her sweetheart as the English girls do! No, thou art too modest, lass." "That is quite different," said Morva. "I do not want to talk about my--my--" "Lover," said Will. "Yes, but I don't want any longer to deceive my best friends. Let me go, Will, or let us be married soon. I am willing for either." "Indeed, lass," said Will, beginning to hedge, "I would almost think thou hadst found another sweetheart, only I know how seldom any other man comes across thy path, unless indeed Gethin the thief has stolen thy love from me. Morva, dost love any other man?" "Gethin is no thief," she answered hotly, "and thou knowest it as well as I do. Thou knowest his nature; 'twould be impossible for him to do a mean thing." "Thou hast a high opinion of him," said Will scornfully. "Is it he, then, who hast stolen thine heart?" Morva walked with bent head, pulling at her apron-strings. "I am not saying that," she answered, in a very low tone, "but I wish to be free, or marry thee soon." It was now Will's turn to be anxious. The possibility of Morva's loving any other man had never before disturbed him, but now her words, her attitude, all impressed him with a strong suspicion, and a flame of anger and jealousy rushed through his veins. "Free!" he said, "after all thy promises to me--free to marry another man! Is it that, Morva?" and as he spoke his hot temper gathered strength. "Never!" he said, "I will never free thee from thy promise. Thou canst break it an thou wishest, and break my heart at the same time; 'twill be a fine return for all our kindness to thee, 'twill be a grand ending to all thy faithful vows!" "I am willing to marry thee, Will," she said, "if thou wilt let it be soon." "Marry thee soon! How can that be, Morva?--a student without home or money, and a girl without a penny in the world! What madness thou art talking. I only ask thee to have patience for a year or two, and I will have a home for thee. And who is thy new sweetheart?" "I have no sweetheart; but, Will, I want to be free." "And I will never give thee back thy freedom. Take it if thou lik'st. The absent are always forgotten. How could I expect thee to be true?" Morva began to cry silently. "I see I have set my heart upon a fickle, cruel woman, one who, after years of faithful promises, forgets me, and wishes to take back her vows. I have but to leave her for two months, and she at once breaks her promises and forgets the past, while I," said Will, with growing indignation and self-pity, "have found all my studies blurred by thine image, and the memory of thee woven with all my thoughts. Oh, Morva! had I known when we were boy and girl together that thou couldst be so false, I would never have treasured thee in my heart, but would have turned and fled as Gethin did, instead of clinging to thee, and for thy sake stopping in the dull old home when the world was all before me. And now to come home and find that thou art tired of me--art cold to me, and hast forgotten me! 'Tis a hard fate, indeed!" "Oh, Will, no, no!" sobbed the girl, "'tis not so; indeed. God knows I love thee still as much as ever I did. 'Tis only that I have grown older, and wiser, and sadder perhaps, because it seems that knowing much brings sorrow with it. I was so young when I made all those promises." "Two months younger than thou art now!" scoffed Will. "Two months is a long time," she said, "when you begin to think, and I have thought and thought out here at night when the stars are glittering overhead, when the sea is sighing so sad down below, and after all my thinking only one thing is plain to me, Will; let there be no promises between us." "Never!" said Will, a vindictive feeling rising within him, "never will I set thee free to marry another man, whoever he is!" "He is no one," interpolated Morva, in a low voice. "Whoever he is," repeated Will, as though he had not heard her, "I will never set thee free, never--never, never!" All the dogged obstinacy of his nature was roused, and the feeling that he was a wronged and injured man gave his voice a tone of indignant passion which told upon the girl's sensitive nature. "Oh, Will," she said, stretching out her hand towards him, "I did not think thou loved me like that! I cannot be cruel to thee; thou art a Garthowen, and for them I have often said I would lay down my life. I will lay down my life for thee, Will. Once more I promise." "Nay," he said, laughing, "I will never ask thee to do that for me, lass; only be true to me and wait patiently for me, Morva;" and he drew her towards him once more. "I will," she answered. They had reached the cottage, and Will passed round into the court, leaving her standing with eyes fixed steadfastly on the bright north star. "I will," she repeated, "for I have promised, and there are many ways of laying down one's life." For a moment she stood alone in the moonlight, and what vows of self-sacrifice she made were known only to herself. "Anwl, anwl!" said Sara, as Will entered, "will I make my door bigger? Will I find a stool strong enough for this big man?" Will laughed and tossed back his hair. "Will I ever be more than a boy to thee, Sara?" "Well, indeed," said the old woman, "I am forgetting how the children grow up. Sit down, my boy, and tell us all about the grand streets and the college at Llaniago, and the ladies and gentlemen whom thou art hand and glove with there--and so thou ought to be, too. Caton pawb! I'd like to see the family whose achau[1] go back further than Garthowen's!" Here Morva entered. "I thought thou hadst run away, lass!" said Will, with a double meaning as he looked at her. She only smiled and shook her head. "Oh! 'twouldn't do for me," said Sara, "whenever Morva stops out under the night sky to think she has run away; she often strays out when the stars are shining." Gethin had always been Sara's favourite, and Will's visit therefore did not give her so much pleasure as his brother's had done; but she would have belied her hospitable nature had she allowed this preference to influence the warmth of her welcome. Morva seemed to have regained her cheerfulness, and spread the simple supper, sometimes joining in the conversation, while Will and Sara chatted over the blaze of the crackling furze. It was quite late when he rose to go. "Well," he said, "they will be shutting me out at Garthowen, and thinking I have learnt bad ways at Llaniago. Good-night, Sara fâch, I am glad to see thee looking so well. Good-night, Morva. Wilt come with me a little way? 'Twill be an excuse for another ten minutes under the stars, Sara." And they went out together, their shadows blending into one in the bright moonlight. Once more Will extracted the oft-repeated promise, and Morva returned to the cottage, her chains only riveted more firmly, and her heart filled with a false strength, arising from an entire surrender of self and all selfish desires to an imaginary duty. [1] Pedigree. CHAPTER XIV DR. OWEN It was New Year's Day, the merriest and most festive day of the year, and Ebben Owens, sitting under the big chimney, seemed for a time at least to have shaken off the cloud that had hung over him of late. Christmas Day in Wales is by no means the day of festivity that it is in England, the whole day being taken up with religious services of some kind; but the first day of the year is given up entirely to pleasure and happy re-unions. For the children it is the day of days. Before the sun has risen they congregate in the village streets, and set out in the dark and cold of the frosty morning in noisy groups, on expeditions into the surrounding country, with bags on their shoulders, in which they collect the kindly "calenigs," or New Year's gifts, prepared for them in every farm and homestead. 'Tis a merry gathering, indeed, the tramp through the frost and snow under the bright stars in the early morning, adding the charm of novelty and mystery to the usual delight of an expedition. Ann and Morva had cut the generous hunches of barley bread and cheese overnight, and well it was that they were thus prepared, for before the hens and turkeys had flown down from their roosting-place, and before the cows had risen from their warm beds of straw in the beudy, or the sheep had begun to shake off the snow which had fallen on their fleeces in the night, fresh young voices were heard in the farmyard singing the old refrain familiar to generations of Welsh children: "Calenig i fi, calenig i'r ffon, Calenig i fytta ar hyd y ffordd. Un waith, dwywaith, tair!" _Translation._ "A gift for me and a gift for my staff, And a gift to eat as I trudge along. Once, twice, thrice!" It is a peremptory demand, sung in a chanting kind of monotone, and very seldom refused. A boy is chosen to knock at the farm door and rouse the inmates, it being considered unlucky for the household if a girl first crosses the threshold. The family at Garthowen had risen hurriedly, and with smiling faces had opened the door to the children. Bags were filled, greetings were interchanged, and the happy troop were sent on their way rejoicing, shouting as they went, "A happy New Year to you all!" When the bread and cheese had come to an end, Ebben Owens had distributed pennies from a large canvas bag which he had filled for the occasion; and in the afternoon, when the calls were becoming less frequent, he sat under the open chimney with an almost empty bag. Suddenly the doorway was darkened by a portly figure in black. A genial face glowing from the frosty air, a voice of peculiar mellowness, which always added a musical charm of its own both to singing and conversation; a chimney-pot hat not of the newest, his black clerical coat uncovered by greatcoat or cloak, a strong knobbed walking-stick in the right hand, while the finger and thumb of the left hand were generally tightly closed on a pinch of snuff, well-shined creaking shoes, completed the costume of the visitor, who was no other than Mr. Price, the vicar of Castell On. "I saw the children coming to the back door, and I am come with them," said the vicar as he entered, pointing with his stick to a queue of children in the yard. "How do you do, Owens?" and he shook hands warmly with the old man, who rose hurriedly to greet his visitor. "Caton pawb, Mr. Price!" he said, flinging his remaining pence into the yard, where the children scrambled for them. "Come in, sir, come in," and he opened the door of the best kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting in the glow of the culm fire. Will started to his feet, exclaiming, "Mr. Price!" and for a moment he hesitated whether to speak in English or in Welsh, but the visitor settled the matter by adhering to his mother-tongue. Ann rose, calm and dignified, and held out her hand without much empressement. Mr. Price was a clergyman, and a little antagonism awoke at once in her faithful bigoted heart. "My husband," she said, pointing to Gwilym, who flung away his book and came forward laughing. "My dear girl," he said, "although Mr. Price and I work apart on Sundays, we meet continually in the week, and need no introduction, I think." Mr. Price joined in the laugh, and shook hands warmly with the preacher and Will, and the conversation soon flowed easily. Will's career was the chief topic, the vicar appearing to take a personal interest in it, which delighted the old man's heart. "I am very glad, indeed," said the former, with his pinch of snuff held in readiness, "to hear such a good account of you from my friend, the dean," and he disposed of his snuff. "He wrote to me, knowing I was particularly interested, and also that we are neighbours. He says, 'There is every reason to think your young friend will be an honour to his father, and to his college, if he goes on as he has begun. I have seldom had the privilege of imparting knowledge to one whose early teaching presents such well prepared ground for cultivation. Who was his tutor?' I have told him," added the vicar, "how much you owe to your brother-in-law." "It has been a pleasure to instruct Will," said the preacher. "For one thing he has a wonderfully retentive memory. Of course it is useless to pretend that I should not have been better pleased if he had remained a member of 'the old body'; but, wherever he is, I shall be very grateful if the small seeds I have sown are allowed to bear the blossom and fruit of a useful Christian life." "Yes, yes! just so, exactly so!" said the vicar; "but having chosen the Church of his own free will, I am very anxious he should get on well and be an honour to her." He held out his silver snuff-box towards the preacher, who declined the luxury, but Ebben Owens accepted it with evident appreciation. "There is one thing," said the vicar, turning to Will, "which I think very necessary for your advancement. You must make your uncle's acquaintance. Dr. Owen is a personal friend of the bishop's, and they say no one to whom he is unfriendly gets on in the Church." "I hope he is not unfriendly to me," said Will, tossing his hair off his forehead. "I have never troubled him in any way, or claimed his acquaintance." "Have you never spoken to him?" "Only as a child," said Will haughtily. "He has not been here for a long time, and when he came I did not see him for I was not at home." As a matter of fact Will had been ploughing on the mountain-side when the Dr. had honoured his brother with a call. He was beginning to be ashamed of the farm work and kept it out of sight as much as possible. "Well, well!" said his father apologetically, "we are three miles from Castell On, you see, and it is uphill all the way, and Davy my brother, never comes to the town except to some service in the church, and so I can't expect him to spend his time coming out here." "No, no, perhaps not! He is a very busy man," said the vicar, who was never known willingly to hurt anyone's feelings or to speak a disparaging word of an absent person. "Well, now, he is coming to lunch with me on Friday on his way to the archidiaconal meetings at Caer-Madoc, and I want you to come too." "He won't like it, perhaps," said Will, "and I should be sorry to force my company upon him." "Oh! you have no reason to think that," said the vicar. "I think when he has seen you he will like you; anyway, I hope you will come." "Of course, Will, of course," said Ebben Owens. "He'll come, sir, right enough." "You are very kind, sir," said Will, slowly and reluctantly. "I would give the world if it could be avoided, but if you think it is the right thing for me to do I will do it." "I am sure it is! I'm sure it is!" said the vicar, taking snuff vigorously; "so I shall expect you. Well, Miss Ann, I beg pardon--Mrs. Morris, I mean, I have not congratulated you yet. 'Pon me word, I am very neglectful; but I do so now heartily, both of you. May you live long and be very happy. In fact, my call was intended for the bride and bridegroom as well as for my young friend here. And where is Morva Lloyd? She works with you, does she not?" "She's at home to-day. 'Tis a holiday for her. "She is a great favourite of mine; what a sweet girl she is! I never have a great beauty pointed out to me but I say 'Very lovely; but not so lovely as Morva of the Moor.'" "Yes; she is a wonderful girl," said Ann, "for a shepherdess." "Well, yes!" said Gwilym Morris; "I think she owes her charm in a great measure to her foster-mother. Do you know old Sara?" "Oh, yes!" said the vicar; "we have all heard of old Sara ''spridion.' Something uncanny about the old woman, they say. But, 'pon me word, there is something very interesting about her, too." "Yes," said Gwilym Morris, "she has a wonderful spiritual insight, if I may call it so. She often shocks me by her remarks, but if I lay a subject before her upon which I have been pondering deeply but have not succeeded in elucidating, she grasps its meaning at once and explains it to me in simple words, and I come away wondering where the difficulty lay." After the vicar was gone, Will accompanying him half a mile down the road, the whole family were loud in his praise. "There's a man now!" said Ebben Owens; "if every clergyman was like him 'twould be a good thing for the Church. No difference to him whether a man is a Methodist, a Baptist, or a Churchman, always the same pleasant smile and warm greeting for them all, and as much at home in a Dissenter's house as a Churchman's." "Yes, a true Christian," said Gwilym Morris, "and so genial and pleasant. At 'Bethel' on Wednesday night, when Jones 'Bethesda' was preaching, he was there, and seemed much impressed by the sermon; and well he might be! I have never heard such an eloquent preacher. Wasn't he, Ann?" "Oh, beautiful!" she replied. "I wish Mr. Price could have stopped to tea, but, of course, that meeting prevented him." Next day when Will, having rung the bell, stood waiting on the vicar's doorstep, he was certainly not in as equable a frame of mind as his outward demeanour would lead one to suppose. He was in a few moments to meet face to face the man who of all others had interested him most deeply, though his feeling towards him was almost akin to hatred. It was a sore point at Garthowen that Ebben Owens' own brother had so completely ignored his relationship with him; and Will's hopes of success were greatly sweetened by the thought that in time he might hold his head as high as his uncle's, and bring that proud man to his senses; but to-day as he stood waiting at Mr. Price's door he called to mind the necessity of hiding his feelings, and conciliating the great man, who perhaps might have the power of helping him in the future. When shown into the hall he heard voices within; the vicar's jovial laugh, and a pleasant voice so like his own, that he was startled. "Hallo! Owen, how do you do? so glad to see you," said the vicar in English. And the tall man who was standing by the window received him with an equally pleasant greeting. "My nephew, I am told. Well, to be sure, this makes me realise how old I am getting." "Nay, sir," said Will, "you are many years younger than my father." The Rev. Dr. Owen looked over Will with secret surprise and satisfaction. He had expected a raw country youth, his angles still unrubbed off, his accent rough and Welshy, but Will was on his guard; it was his strong point, and though the care with which he chose his words was sometimes a little laboured and pedantic, yet they were always well chosen and free from any trace of Welsh accent. Dr. Owen was delighted; he had dreaded a meeting with his brother's uncouth progeny, and had been rather inclined to resent the vicar's interference in the matter, but when Will entered, well dressed, simple and unaffected in manner, and yet perfectly free from gaucherie, a long-felt uneasiness was set at rest, and the unexpected relief made Dr. Owen affable and pleasant. Will was relieved too. He had feared a haughty look, a contemptuous manner, and dreaded lest his own hot temper might have refused to be controlled. The vicar was delighted; he felt his little plan had succeeded, and his kind heart rejoiced in the prospective advantages which might accrue to Will from his acquaintance with his uncle. "And how is my brother Ebben?" said Dr. Owen. "Well, I hope. I am ashamed to think how long it is since I have called to see him; but, indeed, I never come to Castell On except on important Church matters, and I never have much time on my hands. You will find that to be your own case, young man, when you have fully entered upon your clerical duties. The Church in Wales is no longer asleep, and she no longer lets her clergy sleep. I hope it is not with the idea that you will gain repose and rest that you have entered her service, for if it is you will be disappointed." "Certainly not, sir," answered Will; "my greatest desire is a sphere in which I can use my energies in the services of the Church. I don't want rest, I want work." "That being so," said the Dr., "we must see that you get it. I have no doubt with those feelings and intentions you will get on. You will take your degree, I suppose, before leaving college?" "I hope so," said Will, modestly; "that is my wish." "Your sister Ann," inquired his uncle at last, "how is she? And your eldest brother? Turned out badly, didn't he?" "Well," said Will, "he is of a roving disposition, certainly; but that is all. My sister is quite well." He intentionally left unmentioned the fact of her marriage, but the vicar, whose blunt, honest nature never thought of concealment, imparted the information at once. "She was married about a month ago, and I should think has every prospect of happiness." "Married! Ah, indeed! To whom? A farmer, I suppose?" "No; to the minister of the Methodist Chapel at Penmorien. A very fine fellow, and one of the best scholars in the county. You know his 'Meini Gobaith,' published about a year ago?" "Oh, is that the man?" said the doctor. "Ts! ts! you have left a nest of Dissenters, William. I am glad you have escaped." "Yes," said Will, laughing; "a nest of Dissenters, certainly." "Well," said the vicar, "you owe a great deal to Gwilym Morris. You would never have begun your college career on such good standing had it not been for him. In fact, you have had exceptional advantages." "Yes," said Will; "he is a splendid teacher, and a good man." "Well, well," said his uncle, "let the superstructure be good, and the foundation will soon be forgotten." "A good man's silent influence is a very solid foundation to build upon, whatever denomination he may belong to," said the vicar. "Oh, certainly, certainly," agreed Dr. Owen. "My carriage is at The Bear; perhaps you will walk down with me, both of you?" "Of course, of course," said Mr. Price; "if you must go." "Yes, I must go; I must not be late for the meeting at Caer-Madoc." The vicar hunted for his walking-stick, and Will helped his uncle to get into his greatcoat. "Thank you, my boy," said the old man, almost warmly, for he was beginning to feel the ties of blood awakening in his heart. In truth, he was so pleasantly impressed by his new-found nephew's appearance and manners that already visions of a lonely hearth passed before him, lightened by the presence of a young and ardent spirit, who should look up to him for help and sympathy, giving in return the warm love of relationship, which no heart, however cold and isolated, is entirely capable of doing without. Will was elated, and conscious of having stepped easily into his uncle's good graces, he walked up the street with the two clergymen, full of gratified pride. On their way, to his great annoyance, they met Gryff Jones of Pont-y-fro, a farmer's son holding the same position as his own. He would have passed him with a nod, but the genial vicar, to whom every man was of equal importance, whether lord or farmer, stopped to shake hands and make kindly inquiries. Will and the doctor moved on, and John Thomas the draper, standing at his shop-door, turned round with a wink at his assistant and a knowing smile. "Well, well," he said, "Will Owens Garthowen _is_ a gentleman at last. That's what he's been trying to be all his life." At the door of the Bear Hotel they came upon a knot of ladies, who at once surrounded Dr. Owen. He was a great favourite amongst them, his popularity being partly due to his good looks and pleasant manners, partly to his good position in the Church, and in some measure certainly to his reputed riches. Soon after entering the Church he had married a lady of wealth and good position, who was considerably older than himself, and who, having no children, at her death had bequeathed to him all her property. Many a net had been spread for the rich widower, but he had hitherto escaped their toils, and appeared perfectly content with his lonely life. Will was almost overwhelmed with nervousness and shyness as they reached the group of ladies; but, true to his purpose, he put on a look of unconcern which he was far from feeling. "How do you do, Mr. Owen?" said one of the girls, holding out her hand with a shy friendliness, "I am Miss Vaughan, you know, whom you saved from that furious bull." "Yes, of course," said Will, shaking hands. "I thought perhaps you had forgotten me," she said. Will had flushed to the roots of his hair from nervousness, but he quickly regained his self-possession. He looked down the side of his leg and pondered his boot. "Would that be possible, I wonder?" he said, half aloud. "I don't see much difficulty," said the girl laughingly. Will laughed too, and his laugh was always charming, the ice was broken, and the chat was only disturbed by the Dr.'s hurried good-bye. "Good-bye, ladies," he said, as he stepped briskly into his gig. "I am grieved to have to leave you, but that meeting calls. Good-bye, Will, I shall see you at Llaniago, and you, Miss Vaughan, I hear I am to have the pleasure of meeting you at Llwynelen." And the Dr. drove off amongst a flutter of hands and handkerchiefs. And now Will would have been in a dilemma had not the vicar arrived on the scene. Again there were many "How do you do's?" and much shaking of hands, while Will was debating within himself what he should do. The vicar at once introduced him to each and all of the young ladies, some of whom would have drawn back in horror had they known that the young man who addressed them with such sang-froid was the son of a farmer, and a brother-in-law of a dissenting preacher. Will knew this obstacle in his path, and was determined to overcome it. Gwenda Vaughan, he thought, was delightfully easy to get on with, and their conversation followed on uninterruptedly until they reached the vicarage door, where they parted, the ladies separating, and Will staying to bid the vicar good-bye. "Who on earth was that handsome man, Gwenda?" asked Adela Griffiths before parting. "I don't know how it is, but you always manage to get hold of handsome men. "And nothing ever comes of it," whispered Edith Williams. "Why, he's Dr. Owen's nephew," said Gwenda; "didn't you hear Dr. Owen introduce him?" And she said no more, but carried away with her a distinct impression of Will's handsome person and charming smile. * * * * * * About this time a strange thing happened at Garthowen. It was midday. Ann had just laid the dinner on the table, and Ebben Owens had lounged in. "Well, the threshing will be done soon," said the old man; "Twm is a capital fellow. Don't know in the world what I should do without him." "What is that noise?" asked Morva, pushing back her hair to listen, as a curious sound as of shaking and thumping was heard by all. "'Tis upstairs, and in your room, Gwilym," said Ann. Suddenly there was a jingling sound and rolling as if of money, followed by a satisfied bark. "Run up Morva and see," said Ann; "what is that dog doing?" The girl ran up, passing Tudor on the stairs, who entered the kitchen with waving tail and glistening eyes carrying in his mouth a canvas bag from which hung a draggled pink tape, and at the same moment Morva's voice was heard calling, "Oh, anwl! come up and see!" Ann and Gwilym hurried up, followed by Ebben Owens and Will, to find Morva pointing to the floor which was strewn with pieces of gold. "My sovereigns!" said Gwilym, "no doubt! and Tudor has emptied the bag. Where could they have come from?" and everyone looked through the open window down the lane to where in the clear frosty air the blue smoke curled from a little brown thatched chimney. Ebben Owens jerked his thumb towards the cottage. "There's no need to ask that," he said. "'Twould be easy to stand on the garden wall and throw it in through the window." Ann was busily counting the sovereigns which had rolled into all sorts of difficult corners. "Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty!" "Every one right," said Gwilym; "how fortunate! but how I should like to tell Gryffy Lewis I forgive him, and that he has done right in returning the money." "I expect fear as well as a guilty conscience made him return them, the blackguard!" suggested Will. "No doubt; no doubt," said the old man. As for Morva, she was so overcome with joy at this proof of Gethin's innocence that she was scarcely able to hide her agitation from those around her. When all the money had been gathered into Ann's apron they returned to their dinner to find Tudor occupying the mishteer's chair, with a decided expression of satisfaction on his face, the canvas bag lying beside him. "Well," said Ebben Owens, ousting Tudor unceremoniously from his seat, and speaking in an agitated and tremulous voice, "one thing has been made plain, whatever, and that is that poor Gethin had nothing to do with the money. You all see that, don't you?" "Well I suppose he hadn't," said Will; "but why then did he go away so suddenly? That, I suppose, must remain a mystery until he chooses to turn up again." "Yes, it is strange," said his father, with a deep sigh. "Well, thank God!" said Gwilym; "'tis plain he never took the money, Ann. There is no more need for tears." "No, indeed," she said, "but will he ever come back? Oh! father, anwl! no more sighs. Will is a collegian and getting on well. Gethin is an honest man wherever he is. He will come back suddenly to us one day as he did before, and there is no need for heavy hearts any longer at Garthowen. Morva, lass, art not glad?" "Yes, indeed," said the girl, "but I never thought it was Gethin." Ebben Owens looked up at her quickly. "Who then?" he said. "Oh, I didn't know," said the girl, "but I thought God would make it plain some day." "I don't think there is much doubt about it," said Gwilym. "Poor Gryffy; we know he must have suffered much remorse before he threw that bag in at the window again." "'Twas not Gethin, and that's all we need trouble our heads about now," said the old man rising from the table. The frosty wind was scarcely more fleet than Morva's flying footsteps as she crossed the moor that evening. "Mother, mother!" she called, even before she had reached the doorway. "Mother, mother! the money is found and everyone knows now that Gethin is innocent!" and the whole story was poured into Sara's ears. Tudor, who sat beside the girl on the settle, her arm thrown round his neck, looked from one face to another as the story proceeded, interpolating a bark whenever there was a pause. "So the clouds roll by," said Sara. "Patience 'merch i! and the sun will shine out some day!" "How can that be, mother, when I am bound to Will? A milkmaid to a clergyman; and he already ashamed of her!" CHAPTER XV GWENDA'S PROSPECTS "I am going to walk into town," said Dr. Owen one morning as he turned over the sheets of his newspaper; "is anyone inclined for a walk?" He was sitting in the sunny bay-window of the breakfast-room at Llwynelen, a large country house about a mile out of Llaniago. "I am," answered Gwenda Vaughan, who sat at work near him. "Such a lovely day! I was longing for a walk." "And I too," said Mrs. Trevor, their hostess. "I have some shopping to do, and will come with you." "Do. Will you be ready in half an hour, ladies? I am going to call upon my nephew; I can go to his rooms while you are doing your shopping." "Yes," said Mrs. Trevor, "and bring him back to lunch with us. I shall be glad to make his acquaintance. I hear he is a very promising young man." "Thank you. I am sure he will be delighted to come. I think you will like him; but I forgot that you, Miss Vaughan, have already seen him." "Oh, yes!" said Gwenda. "He once saved my life; so of course I am very grateful." "Saved your life, child; how," asked Mrs. Trevor. And Gwenda related the story of the runaway bull, and the manner in which Will had gone to her rescue. "Dear me," said Dr. Owen, "he never mentioned it to me! Well! I'll go and look him up today." Noontide found Will seated at lunch at Llwynelen, Mr. Trevor plying him with questions concerning his studies and college life; Dr. Owen not a little pleased with his nephew's self-possessed, though unobtrusive, manner. He was pleased, too, to see that he made a favourable impression upon the genial host and hostess. Gwenda was as delightfully agreeable as she knew how to be, and that is saying a good deal. Her naïve remarks and honest straightforward manner had made her a favourite with Dr. Owen, and it gratified him to see an easy acquaintance springing up between her and his nephew. "It is Will's twenty-fourth birthday to-day, he tells me," he said. "How odd!" said Gwenda; "it is my twenty-second." "That is strange," said Mrs Trevor; "and you never let me know! But you need not tell everyone your age." "Why not?" "Oh! well, young ladies don't usually tell their ages; but you are not quite like other girls." Gwenda laughed; and Will thought how charming were the dimple in her chin, the perfect teeth, the sparkling black eyes! Yes, she was very pretty, no doubt! "Is that remark meant to be disparaging or complimentary?" asked the girl. "Oh! a little of both," said Mrs. Trevor; "girls are odd nowadays." "Yes; I think the days are gone by when they were all run into the same mould," remarked Dr. Owen. "And I'm afraid the mould got cracked before I was run into it," replied Gwenda. "Well, you are not very misshapen," said the Dr. warmly, "and if you do run into little irregularities, they are all in the right direction." "Let us hope so," said the girl. Will said nothing; but Gwenda, catching the look of ardent admiration, blushed vividly, and looked down at her plate. "In the meantime," she remarked, "no one has wished me or Mr. Owen many happy returns of the day." "Bless me, no!" said Mr. Trevor; "but I do so now, my dear, with all my heart." "And I--and I," echoed the others. "Let us drink the health of the two young people," said the host. "Thank you very much for your kind wishes," said Will. "Yes, thank you very much," echoed Gwenda. Will was in danger of losing his head as well as his heart. To have his name (from which, by the by, he had dropped the plebeian "s") bracketed with Miss Gwenda Vaughan's was a state of things which, though occasioned only by a simple coincidence, elated him beyond measure. He had indeed, he thought, stepped out of the old order of things and made his way into a higher grade of life by an easy bound. He was careful, however, to hide his gratified pride entirely from those around him. After lunch, Mrs. Trevor proposed a stroll through the conservatories, and while the elders stopped to admire a fern or a rare exotic, Will and Gwenda roamed on under the palms and greenery to where a sparkling fountain rose, and flung its feathery spray into the air. "Will you sit down?" said Will, pointing to a seat which stood invitingly near. "You must be tired after your long walk." "Tired? Oh no, I love walking, and am very strong, but we can rest till the others come up." And sitting down together they watched the gold fish in the fountain's rustic basin. Through the glass they could see the sparkling frosty branches outside against the pale blue sky of a winter's day, the sun shining round and red through the afternoon haze. "What a glorious day," said Gwenda at last. "Yes," answered Will, adding a little under his breath, "one I shall never forget." There was something in the tone of his voice which caused a little flutter of consciousness under Gwenda's fur necklet. She made no answer, and, after a moment, changed the subject, though with no displeasure in her voice. "Do you see those prismatic colours in the spray?" "Yes, beautiful!" answered Will, rather absently. He was wondering whether all this was a dream--that he, Will Owen of Garthowen Farm, was sitting here under the palms and exotics with Miss Gwenda Vaughan of Nantmyny. At last Gwenda rallied him. "You are dreaming," she said playfully. "I am afraid I am." At this moment the rest of the party appeared, and they all returned to the house together. Will looked at his watch. "I think I must go," he said. "I have a lecture to attend." "Well," said his uncle, "we won't detain you from that. Quite right, my boy, never neglect your lectures. I shall see you again to-morrow." "Now, don't wait for an invitation," said Mrs. Trevor hospitably, "but come and see us as often as you can. Your uncle is quite at home here, and we shall be delighted if you will make yourself so too!" "I shall only be too glad to avail myself of your kindness." "I will come with you to the gate," said his uncle, and Will went out in a maze of happiness. "My dear boy," said Dr. Owen, taking his arm as they passed together up the broad avenue, "I have done a good thing for you to-day. I have introduced you to the nicest family in the neighbourhood. Keep up their acquaintance, it will give you a good standing." "You are very good to me, sir," said Will. "I don't know how to thank you." "By going on as you have begun, William. I am very pleased to find you such a congenial companion. I mean to be good to you, better than you can imagine. I am a lonely old man, and you must come and brighten up my home for me." "Anything I can do," said Will warmly. "Well, well, no promises, my dear boy. I shall see how you go on. I believe we shall get on very well together. Good-bye, I shall see you tomorrow." "You evidently take a great interest in your nephew," said Mrs. Trevor, on the Dr.'s return to the house, "and I am not surprised. He seems a very nice fellow, so natural and unaffected, and so like you in appearance; he might be a son of yours." "Yes," said Dr. Owen thoughtfully, "I am greatly pleased with him. You see I am a lonely man. I have no one else to care for, so I shall watch the young man's career with great interest. He will be everything to me, and with God's help I will do everything for him." "He is a lucky fellow indeed," said Mrs. Trevor. "Well, yes, I think he will be." Gwenda was sitting quietly at work in the bay window, where not a word of this conversation was lost upon her. Was it possible that bright hopes were dawning even for her, who had been tossed about from early girlhood upon the sea of matrimonial schemes? Schemes from which her honest nature had revolted; for Gwenda Vaughan had within her a fund of right feeling and common sense, a warmth of heart which none of the frivolous, shallow-minded men with whom she had come in contact had ever moved. Attracted only by her beauty, they sought for nothing else, while she, conscious of a depth of tenderness waiting for the hand which should unseal its fountain, turned with unsatisfied yearnings from all her admirers and so-called "lovers." She had felt differently towards Will from the day when he had, as she thought, saved her life, and when he had ridden home with her foot in his hand. A strange feeling of attraction had inclined her towards him, all the romance in her nature, which had been stunted and checked by the manoeuvres and manners of country "society," turned towards this stalwart "son of the soil" who had so unexpectedly crossed her path. She had not thought it possible that her romantic dreams could be realised; such things were not for her! In her case everything was to be sacrificed to the duty of "making a good match," of settling herself advantageously in the world, but now what did she hear? "I will do everything for him," surely that meant "I will make him my heir!" For wealth and position for their own sakes she cared not a straw, but Will's "prospects," the sickening word that had been dinned into her ears for years, began to arouse a deep interest in her mind. Her heart told her that he was not entirely indifferent to her, and experience had taught her that when she laid herself out to please she never failed to do so. All day she was very silent until at last Mrs. Trevor said: "You are very quiet to-day, love; I really shall begin to think you have fallen in love with Dr. Owen's nephew. A charming young man, certainly, and I should think his prospects--" "Oh, stop, dear Mrs. Trevor! _Prospects_! I am sick of the word. Shall I play you something?" And in the twilight she sat down to the piano. "Do, dear; I love to see you on that music stool," said the good lady; and well she might, for Gwenda was a musician from the soul to the finger tips, and this evening she seemed possessed by the spirit of music, for long after the twilight had faded into darkness, she sat there pouring her very heart out in melody, and when she retired to rest her pillow was surrounded by thoughts and visions of happiness, more romantic and tender than had ever visited her before. As the year sped on its course, Will's college life became more and more absorbing. The greater part of his vacations were always spent at Isderi, his uncle's house, situated some twenty miles up the valley of the On. Invited with his uncle to all the gaieties of the neighbourhood, he frequently met Gwenda Vaughan. Their attraction for each other soon ripened into a deeper feeling, and in the opinion of her friends and acquaintances Gwenda was a fortunate girl, Will being regarded only as the nephew and probable heir of the wealthy Dr. Owen, very few knowing of or remembering his connection with the old grey-gabled farm by the sea. A hurried scrap-end of the time at his disposal was spent at Garthowen, where his father was consumed alternately by a feverish longing to see him, and a bitter disappointment at the shortness of his visit. He was beginning to find out that the love--almost idolatry--which he had lavished upon his son did not bring him the comfort and happiness for which he had hoped. Will was affable and sometimes affectionate in his demeanour while he was present with his father; but he showed no desire to prolong his visits beyond the time allotted him by his uncle, who seemed more and more to appropriate to himself the nephew whose acquaintance he had so lately made. This in itself chafed and irritated Ebben Owens, and he felt a bitter anger against the brother who had ignored him for so long, and was now stealing from him what was more precious to him than life itself. He tried to rejoice in his son's golden prospects, and perhaps would have succeeded had Will shown himself less ready to drop the old associations of home and the past, and a more tender clinging to the friends of his youth; but this was far from being Will's state of feeling. More and more he felt how incongruous were the simple ways of Garthowen with the formal and polished manners of his uncle's household, and that of the society to which his uncle's prestige had given him the entrée. He was not so callous as to feel no pain at the necessity of withdrawing himself entirely from his old relations with Garthowen, but he considered it his bounden duty to do so. He had chosen his path; he had put his hand to the plough, and he must not look back, and the dogged persistence which was a part of his nature came to his assistance. "_I_ could pay all your expenses, my boy," said his father, with a touching humility unnoticed by Will. "I have been saving up all my money since you went to college, and now there it is lying idle in the bank." "Well, father, it would only offend my uncle if I did not let him supply all my wants; and as my future depends so much upon him, would it be wise of me to do that?" "No, no, my boy, b'tshwr, it wouldn't. I am a foolish old man, and must not keep my boy back when he is getting on so grand. Och fi! Och fi!" and he sighed deeply. "Och fi!" laughed Ann and Will together. "One would think 'twas the downward path Will was going," said the former. "No, no!" replied the old man, "'tis the path of life I was thinking of, my children. You don't know it yet, but when you come to my age perhaps you will understand it," and he sighed again wearily. He had altered much of late, a continual sadness seemed to have fallen on his spirit, the old pucker on his forehead was seldom absent now, he was irritable and ready to take offence, and if not spoken to, would remain silently brooding in the chimney corner. On the contrary, Ann's whole nature seemed to have expanded. Her happy married life drew out the brightness and cheerfulness which perhaps had been a little lacking in her early girlhood. Gwilym Morris was an ideal husband; tender and affectionate as a woman, but withal firm and steady as steel; a strong support in worldly as well as spiritual affairs. Latterly the extreme narrowness of the Calvinistic doctrines, which had made his sermons so unlike his daily practice, had given place to broader views, and a more elevating realisation of the Creator's love. Many hours he spent with Sara in her herb garden, on the moor, or sitting by the crackling fire, conversing on things of spiritual import; and the well-read scholar confessed that he had learnt much from the simple woman, the keen perception of whose sensitive soul, had in a great measure separated her from her kind, and had made her to be avoided as something uncanny or "hyspis." And what of Morva? To her, too, time had brought its changes. She was now two years older, and certainly more than two years wiser, for upon her clear mind had dawned in unmistakeable characters of light, the truth, that her relations with Will were wrong. She knew now that she did not love him--she knew now it would be sinful to marry him, and she sought only for a way in which she could with the least pain to him, sever the connection between them. She saw plainly, that Will had ceased to love her, and she rejoiced at the idea that it would not be difficult therefore to persuade him to release her from her promise. When one day she met him on the path to the moor, and he tried as of old to draw her nearer and imprint a kiss on her lips she started from him. "No, Will," she said, "that must not be. You must let me go now. Do you think I do not see you have changed, that you have ceased to love me?" Will noticed at once the dropping of the familiar "thee" and "thou"; and in his strange nature, where good and bad were for ever struggling with each other, a fierce anger awoke. That she--Morva! a shepherdess! a milkmaid! should dare to oppose the wishes of the man who had once ruled her heart, and at whose beck and call she would have come as obediently as Tudor--that she should now set her will in opposition to his, and dare to ruffle the existence which had met with nothing but favour and success, was unbearable. "What dost mean by these words, lodes?[1] how have I ever shown that I have forgotten thee? Dost expect me, who have my studies to employ me, and my future to consider--dost expect me to come philandering here on the cliffs after a shepherdess?" "No," said Morva, trying to curb her hot Welsh temper, which rushed through her veins, "no! I only ask you to free me from my promise. I have sworn that I would keep it, but if you do not wish it, He will not expect me to keep my vow. I see that plainly. It would be a sin--so let me go, Will," and her voice changed to plaintive entreaty; "I will be the same loving sister to you as ever--set me free!" "Never," said Will, the old cruel obstinacy taking possession of him, a vindictive anger rising within him against the man whom he suspected had taken his place in the girl's heart. Gethin--the wild and roving sailor! No! he should never have her. "Thou canst break thy promises," he said, turning on his heel, "and marry another man if thou wilt, but remember _I_ have never set thee free. I have never agreed to give thee up;" and without another word he passed round the broom bushes, leaving Morva alone gazing out over the blue bay. As he returned to the farm he was filled with indignation and anger. The obstinacy which was so strong a trait in his character was the real cause of his refusal to give Morva her freedom, for the old love for her was fast giving place to his new-born passion for Gwenda Vaughan, which had grown steadily ever since he had first met her. [1] Girl. CHAPTER XVI ISDERI Three miles above Llaniago, the river On, which had flowed peaceably and calmly for some miles through fair meadows and under the spanning arches of many a bridge, seemed to grow weary of its staid behaviour and suddenly to return to the playful manners of its youth. In its wild exuberance it was scarcely recognisable as the placid river which, further in its course, flowed through Llaniago and Castell On. With fret and fume and babbling murmurs it made its way through its rocky channel, filling the air with the sound of its turmoil. Both sides of its precipitous banks down to the water's edge were hidden in woods of stunted oak, through whose branches the sound of its flow made continual music, music which this evening reached the ears of a solitary man, who sat at the open window of a large house standing near the top of the ravine, its well-kept grounds and velvet lawn reaching down to the very edge of the oak wood, and even stretching into its depths in many a green glade and avenue. There was no division or boundary between the wood and the lawn, so that the timid hares and pheasants would often leave their leafy haunts to disport themselves upon its soft turf. It was Dr. Owen who, contrary to his usual careful habits, sat at that open window in the gathering twilight, dreaming dreams which were borne to him on the sound of the rushing waters, which lulled his senses, and brought before him the scenes of his past life. The twilight darkened into gloom, and still he sat on in brooding thought, letting the voice of the river bear to him on its wings sweet memories or sad retrospect as it chose. The early days of his childhood came back to him, when with a light heart he had roamed over moor and sandy beach, or over the grassy slopes of Garthowen. The river still sang on, and before him rose the vision of a man of homely and rustic appearance, who urged and encouraged his youthful ardour in the pursuit of knowledge, who rejoiced at his successes, and supplied his wants, who laid his hand upon his young head with a dying blessing. How vividly the scene returned to him! The dismay of the household when that rugged figure disappeared from the scene, the difficulties which had crowded his path in the further pursuance of his education, the arduous steps up the ladder of learning, the perseverance crowned with success! Still the rushing river filled his ears and brought before him its phantom memories--his successful career in the Church--his prosperous marriage, the calm domestic life which followed--the wealth--the honour--the prestige--what had they led to?--an empty home, a solitary hearth, no heir to inherit his riches, no young voices to fill the house with music and laughter--no--it had all turned to dust and ashes--there was no one to whom he could confide his joys or his sorrows--he was alone in the world, but need it always be so? and again he listened, deep in thought, to the spirit voices which the roar of the river seemed to carry into his soul. What a change would Will's presence bring into his life. How much ruddier would be the glow of the fire! how much more cosy the lonely hearth! How pleasant it would be to see him always seated at the well-appointed table! how the silver and glass would sparkle! how they would wake the echoes of the old house with happy talk and merry laughter! and the old man became quite enamoured of the picture which his imagination had conjured up. "Yes," he said aloud, for there was no one to hear him, "I will no longer live alone; I will adopt Will as my son and heir. I think he is all I could wish him to be, and I believe he will reflect credit on my choice." And when he closed the window and turned to his book and reading-lamp it was with a pleased smile of content, and a determination to carry out his plans without delay. Will should be fully informed of his intentions. "It will give him confidence," thought the old man, and the feeling of kinship which had so long slept within him began to awake and to fill his heart with a warm glow which he had missed so long, though perhaps unconsciously. In the following week Will came for a two days' visit, and Dr. Owen looked forward to their evening smoke with eager impatience. When at last they were seated in the smoking-room and Will had, with thoughtful care, pushed the footstool towards him and placed the lamp in his favourite position on the table at his back, he no longer delayed the hour of communication. "Thank you, my boy, I quite miss you when you are away; you seem to fall into your place here so naturally I almost wish your college life was over so that I might see more of you." "It would be strange if I did not feel at home here, you are so indulgent to me, uncle. If I were your own son I don't think you could be kinder." "Well, Will, that is what I want you to become--my own son, the comfort of my declining years, and the heir to my property when I die. Does that agree with your own plans for the future, or does it clash with your inclination?" "Sir! Uncle!" exclaimed Will, in delighted astonishment, "how can I answer such a question? Such a change in my prospects takes my breath away. What can I say to you? I had never thought of such a thing," and he rose, with a heightened colour and an air of excited surprise, which left Dr. Owen no doubt as to the reality of his feelings. They were not, however, altogether real, for Will had latterly begun to suspect the true meaning of his uncle's kindness to him. "There is only one thing to be said, sir. Did it clash with my own plans there would be no sacrifice too great for me to make in return for your kindness. But you must know, uncle, that not only the ties of gratitude compel me, but the bonds of relationship and affection (may I say love) are strong upon me, and I can only answer once more that I accept your generosity with the deepest gratitude. I little thought a year ago that I should ever feel towards you as I do now. I felt a foolish, boyish resentment at the enstrangement between you and my father, but now I am wiser, I see the reason of it. I know how impossible it would be to combine the social duties of a man in your position with continued intimate relations with your old home. The impossibility of it even now hampers me, uncle, and I feel that it will be well for me to break away from the old surroundings if I am ever to make my way up the ladder of life. Your generous intentions towards me smooth this difficulty, and I can only thank you again, uncle, from my heart. I hope my conduct through life may be such that you will never regret the step you have taken, certainly I shall endeavour to make it so." "Agreed, my boy!" said the Dr., holding out his hand, which Will grasped warmly, "we understand each other, from this time forward you are my adopted son; the matter is settled, let us say no more about it," and for a few moments the two men followed the train of their own thoughts in silence. "How plainly we hear the On to-night," said Will, "it seems to fill the air. Shall I close the window?" "Yes," said Dr. Owen, "if you like, Will; I have never heard it so plainly before. There is something solemn at all times in the sound; but to you it can bring no sad memories from the days gone bye, you have so lately left that wonderful past, which, as we grow older, becomes ever more and more bathed in the golden tints of imagination, 'that light which never was on sea or land.' You owe something to those rushing waters, Will, for while I sat here alone one evening, they flooded my soul with old and tender memories, and bore in upon me the advisability of the offer which I have just made you, and to which you have agreed." Not a word was said as to the possibility of Ebben Owens objecting to the arrangement, in fact, neither of them thought of the old man, who even now was sitting in the chimney corner at Garthowen, building castles in the air, and dreaming dreams in which Will ever played the part of hero. Later on, when the latter lay wakeful in the silent hours of night, the distant roar of the river carried home to his heart too, the memory of the old homestead, of many a scene of his careless and happy boyhood, and of the old man, the warmth of whose affection for him he was beginning to find rather irksome and embarrassing. On the following day Dr. Owen called all his servants together, and in a few words but with a very decided manner, made them acquainted with the important step which he had taken with regard to Will, and bade them bear in mind, that for the future, his nephew would hold, next to himself, the highest place in the household. Will had been careful to ingratiate himself as much as possible with the old servants, whose opinions he thought might weigh somewhat in their master's decisions, the younger ones he treated with a somewhat haughty bearing. "You will be coming again next week," said the Dr., as they both sat at dinner together; "the Trevors are coming, you know, to spend a few days with me, a long promised visit. We shall have a day with the otter hounds. Colonel Vaughan and Miss Gwenda are coming too, did I tell you?" "No," said Will, "I did not know that. Do they often stay with you?" "No, they have never been here before. They were dining at the Trevors. I included them in the invitation, and they promised to come. Miss Gwenda is a great favourite of mine, and of yours, Will, eh? Am I right?" Will's handsome face flushed as he answered with some embarrassment, for he was not at all sure that his uncle would approve of the entanglement of a love affair. "I--I. Well, sir, no one can be acquainted with Miss Vaughan without being impressed by her charms both of mind and person, but further than that, it would--I have no right to--in fact, uncle, it would be madness for a young man in my station, I mean--of my obscure birth, to think of a young lady like Miss Vaughan." "Oh, that you can leave out of your calculations henceforth, I imagine. I know the world better than you do, Will, and I shall be much surprised if the advantages of being my adopted son and my heir will not far outweigh the fact of your rustic birth. Money is the lever which moves the world now-a-days. That has been my experience, and, if you act up to the position which I offer you, your old home will not stand in your way much. Of course I need not tell a young man of your sense and shrewdness that it will not be necessary for you to allude to it. Let the past die a natural death." This was exactly what Will meant to do, but, expressed in his uncle's cold, business-like tones, its callousness jarred upon him, and he felt some twinges of conscience, and a regretful sympathy with his old father rose in his heart, which brought a lump in his throat and an unwonted moisture in his eyes. But he mastered the feeling, and assumed an air of pleased compliance which for the moment he did not feel. "As for Gwenda Vaughan," continued his uncle, "you could never make a choice that would please me better; and, if she is at all inclined towards you, I fancy you will find your stay together here will mark a new era in your acquaintance." "I do not think she dislikes me," said Will; "but more than that it would be presumption on my part to expect." "H'm. Faint heart never won fair lady," laughed the Dr. Will left Isderi much elated by his good fortune. Fortunately for him, he was possessed of a full share of common sense which came to his aid at this dangerous crisis of his life and prevented his head being completely turned by the bright hopes and golden prospects which his uncle's conversation suggested to him. It had been settled between them that it would be advisable not to make Ebben Owens at once acquainted with their plans, but to let the fact dawn upon him gradually. "He will like it, my dear boy," said his uncle, when Will a little demurred to the necessity of keeping his father in the dark; "he will be proud of it when he sees the real and tangible advantages which you will gain by the arrangement. You will go and see him sometimes as before, and it need make no difference in your manner towards him, which, I have no doubt, has always been that of a dutiful son." One day in the following week, Will returned to Isderi; and it was with a delightful feeling of prospective proprietorship that he slipped into the high dog-cart which his uncle sent for him. He took the reins, naturally, into his own hands, and the servant seemed to sink naturally into his place beside him; and if, as he drove with a firm hand the high-stepping, well-groomed horse along the high-road, he felt his heart swell with pride and self congratulation, can it be wondered at? On reaching the drive, which wound through the park-like grounds, he overtook his uncle and Colonel Vaughan. Alighting, he joined them; and Dr. Owen introduced him to his visitor. "Ah! yes, yes, your nephew of course--we have met before," said the old man awkwardly, and he shook hands with Will in a bewildered manner. "Of course, of course; I remember your pluck when you tackled that bull. Pommy word I think Gwenda owes her life to you. I shall never forget that, you know." "Well, you must give me a fuller account of that affair some day," said Dr. Owen. "You are come just in time, Will. Colonel Vaughan suggests that a break in those woods, so as to show the river, would be an improvement, and I think I agree with him. What do you say to the idea?" "I think Colonel Vaughan is quite right, uncle; the same thing had already struck me." "That's right; then that settles the matter," said Dr. Owen, who had determined to leave no doubt in his guest's mind of his nephew's importance in his estimation, and of his generous intentions towards him. Gwenda was sitting alone in the drawing-room when Will entered, and it was a great relief to him that this was the case, for he was not yet so completely accustomed to the small convenances of society as to feel no awkwardness or nervousness upon some occasions. Free from the restraint of Mrs. Trevor's presence, however, he made no attempt to hide the pleasure which his meeting with Gwenda aroused in him. She was looking very beautiful in a dress of some soft white material, and as she held out her hand to Will a strange feeling came over him, a feeling that that sweet face would for ever be his lodestar, and that firm little white hand would help him on the path of life. He scarcely dared to believe that the blush and the drooping eyes were caused by his arrival, but it was not long before he had conquered his diffidence, and remembering his golden prospects had recovered his self-confidence sufficiently to talk naturally and unrestrainedly. "Never saw such a thing," said the old colonel, later on in the day, to his niece, sitting down beside her for a moment's talk, under cover of a song which Mrs. Trevor was singing. "Dr. Owen seems wrapped up in his nephew, and the fellow seems to take it all as naturally as a duck takes to the water. Pommy word, he's a lucky young dog." And naturally and quietly Will did take his place in the household, never pleasing his uncle more than when he sometimes unconsciously gave an order to the servants, and so took upon himself the duties which would have devolved upon him had he been his son instead of his nephew. Gradually, too, Colonel Vaughan became accustomed to the change in the "young fellow's" circumstances, and accepted the situation with equanimity. Will left no stone unturned to ingratiate himself with the old man, and was very successful in his attempts. So much so, that when he and Gwenda would sometimes step out of the French window together, and roam through the garden and under the oak trees side by side, her uncle noticed it no more than he would have had Will been one of the average young men of On-side society. Meanwhile, for the two young people, the summer roses had a deeper glow, the river a sweeter murmur, and the sky a brighter tint than they had ever had before; and while Gwenda sat under the shade of the gnarled oaks, with head bent over some bit of work, Will lying on the green sward beside her in a dream of happiness, Mrs. Trevor watched them from her seat in the drawing-room with a smile full of meaning, and Dr. Owen with a look of pleased content. "You must find it a very pleasant change from hard study to come out here sometimes," said Gwenda, drawing her needle out slowly. "Yes, very," said Will; "I never bring a book with me, and I try to banish my studies from my mind while I am here." "Do you find that possible? I am afraid I have a very ill-regulated mind, as an interesting subject will occupy my thoughts whether I like it or not." "Well, of course," said Will, plucking at the grass, "there are some subjects which never can be banished. There is one, at all events, which permeates my whole life; which gilds every scene with beauty, and which tinges even my dreams. Need I tell you what that is, Miss Vaughan?" Gwenda's head bent lower, and there was a vivid glow on her cheek as she answered: "Your life here must be so full of brightness, the scenes around you are so lovely, it is no wonder if they follow you into your dreams. But--but, Mr. Owen, I will not pretend to misunderstand you." "You understand me, and yet you are not angry with me? Only tell me that, Miss Vaughan, and I shall be satisfied; and yet not quite satisfied, for I crave your love, and can never be happy without it." There was no answer on Gwenda's lips, but the eyes, which were bent on her work, grew humid with feeling. "I love you, but dare I have the presumption to hope that you return my love? You know me here as my uncle's nephew, but it is not in that character that I would wish you to think of me now." What was it in the girl's pure and honest face which seemed to bring out Will's better nature? "I am only William Owens" (he even added the plebeian "s" to his name) "the son of the old farmer Ebben Owens of Garthowen; 'tis true my uncle calls me his son, and promises that I shall inherit his wealth, but there is no legal certainty of that. He might die to-morrow, and I should only be William Owens, the poor student of Llaniago College, and yet I venture to tell you of my love. I think I must be mad! I seek in vain for any possible reason why you should accept my love, and I can find none." "Only the best of all reasons," said Gwenda, almost in a whisper. "Gwenda! what is that?" said Will, rising to his feet, an action which the girl followed before she answered. "Only because I love you too." "Gwenda!" said Will again. They had been resting on the velvet lawn that reached down to the oak wood, and now they turned towards its shady glades, and Mrs. Trevor, who had been watching them with deep interest, was obliged to control her curiosity until, when an hour later, they entered the house together, Will looking flushed and triumphant, and Gwenda with a glow of happiness which told its own tale to her observant friend. "It's all right, my love, I see it is! I needn't ask any questions, he who runs may read! You have accepted him?" "I don't know what my uncle will say, it all depends upon that." "Never mind what he says, my dear. You and I together will manage him, we'll make him say just what we please, so _that's_ settled!" In fact, Will's wooing seemed to belie the usual course of true love. Upon it as upon everything else connected with him, the fates seemed to smile, and Colonel Vaughan was soon won over by Gwenda's persuasions. "Well! pommy word, you know, Gwenda, I like the young fellow myself. Somehow or other he has taken us by storm. Of course, I should have been better pleased if he were Dr. Owen's son instead of his nephew." "Well, he is next thing to it, uncle," said the girl coaxingly. "He is his adopted son, and will inherit all his wealth, and you know how necessary it is for me to marry a rich man, as I haven't a penny myself. Of course I will never marry him without your consent, uncle dear, but then I am going to get it," and she sat on his knee and drew her soft hands over his bald head, turning his face up like a cherub's, and pressing her full red lips on his wiry moustache. "Not a penny yourself! Well! well! we'll see about that. Be good, girl, and love your old uncle, and I daresay he won't leave you penniless. But, pommy word! look here, child, we must ask him here to stay a few days. He won't be bringing old Owens Garthowen here, I hope; couldn't bear that, you know." "I am afraid he doesn't see much of his old father and sister," she said pensively. "Afraid! I should think you would be delighted." "No, I should prefer his being manly enough to stick to his own people, and brave the opinion of the world. _I_ should not be ashamed of the old man; but, of course, I would never thrust him upon my relations." "Well! well! you are an odd little puss, and know how to get over your old uncle, whatever!" And so all went smoothly for Will. At the end of two years he took his degree, and another year saw him well through his college course; complimented by his fellow students, praised and flattered by his uncle, and loved by as sweet a girl as ever sprang from a Welsh stock. Before entering upon the curacy which his uncle procured for him with as little delay as possible, he spent a few days at Garthowen, during which time he was made the idol of his family. Full of new hopes and ambitions, he scarcely thought of Morva, who kept out of his way as much as possible, dreading only the usual request that she would meet him by the broom bushes; but no such request came, and, if the truth be told, he never remembered to seek an interview with her, so filled was his mind with thoughts of Gwenda. He had been studiously reticent with regard to his engagement to her, at her special request. She knew how much gossip the news would occasion, and felt that the less it was talked about beforehand the less likelihood there would be of her relations being irritated and annoyed by ill-natured remarks. She was happier than she had ever hoped to be, and if she sometimes saw in her lover a trait of character which did not entirely meet the approbation of her honest nature, she laid the flattering unction to her soul, "When we are married I will try to make him perfect." CHAPTER XVII GWENDA AT GARTHOWEN On the slope of the moor, where the autumn sun was burnishing the furze and purpling the heather, Morva sat knitting, her nimble fingers outrun by her busy thoughts. She was sitting half way up the moor, an old cloak wrapped round her and its hood drawn over her head, for the wind was keen, blowing fresh from the bright blue bay, which stretched before her to the hazy horizon. Her eyes gazed absently over its azure surface, flecked with white, as though with scattered snowflakes, and dotted here and there with the grey sails of the boats which the herring fishery called out from their moorings under the cliffs. She sat at the edge of a rush-bordered pool in the peaty bog, occasionally bending over it to look at her own image reflected on its glassy surface. Between the folds of the old cloak glistened the necklace of shells which Gethin had given her. It was her twentieth birthday, so she seized the excuse for wearing the precious ornament which generally lay locked in its painted casket on the shelf at her bed head. It was not at herself she gazed, but the ever-changing gleam of the shells was irresistible. How well she remembered that evening when in the moonlight under the elder tree at Garthowen, Gethin had held them out to her, with a dawning love in his eyes, and her heart had bounded towards him with that strong impulse, which alas! she now knew was love!--love that permeated her whole being, that drew her thoughts away on the wings of the wind, over the restless sea, away, away, to distant lands and foreign ports. Where did he roam? What foreign shores did his footsteps tread? In what strange lands was he wandering? far from his home, far from the hearts that loved him and longed for his return! The swallows flew in fluttering companies over the moor, beginning to congregate for their departure across the seas. Oh! that she could borrow their wings, and fly with them across that sad dividing ocean, and, finding Gethin, could flutter down to him and shelter on his breast, and twitter to him such a song of love and home that he should understand and turn his steps once more towards the old country! Will never troubled her now, never asked her to meet him behind the broom bushes. He had ceased to love her, she knew, and although he had never freed her from her promise, Morva had too much common sense to feel bound for ever to a man who had so evidently forgotten her. If sometimes the meanness and selfishness of his conduct dawned upon her mind, the feeling was instantly repressed, and as far as possible banished, in obedience to the instinct of loyalty to Garthowen, which was so strong a trait in her character. She turned again to look at her necklace in the pool, and caught sight of a speck of vivid scarlet on the brow of the hill--another and another. They were the huntsmen returning from their unsuccessful run, for she had seen the breathless panting fox an hour before when he crossed the moor and made for his covert on the rocky sides of the cliffs. Once there, the hunters knew the chase was over. And there were the tired hounds for a moment appearing at the bare hill-top. In a few moments they had passed from sight, leaving the moor to its usual solitude and silence. But surely no! Here was one stray figure who turned towards the cliffs, and, alighting, led her horse down the devious paths between the furze and heather. Such an uncommon sight roused Morva from her dreams. "Can I come down this way?" said a clear, girlish voice, as Gwenda Vaughan drew near. She spoke in very broken Welsh, but Morva understood her. "Does it lead anywhere?" "It leads nowhere," said Morva, "but to the cliffs; but round there beyond the Cribserth," and she pointed to the rugged ridge of rocks, "is Garthowen; up there to the right is nothing but moorland for two miles." "Oh, then I will turn this way," said Gwenda. "Will they let me rest at the farm a while, do you think? I am very tired and hungry." "Oh, of course," said Morva, her hospitable instincts awaking at once. "Come into mother's cottage," and she pointed to the thatched roof and chimney, which alone were visible above the heathery knoll. "Is that a cottage?" "Yes--will you come?" "Yes, just for a moment, and then perhaps you will show me the way to the farm. That Cribserth looks a formidable rampart. Are you sure there is a way round it?" "Oh, yes; I will come and show you," said Morva. "Here is mother," and Sara approached from her herb garden with round, astonished eyes. "Well, indeed!" she said; "this is a pleasant sight--a lady coming to see us, and on Morva's birthday, too! Come in, 'merch i, and sit down and rest. The horse will be safe tied there to the gate." And Gwenda passed into the cottage with a strange feeling of happiness. "Now, what shall I give you?" said Sara. "A cup of milk, or a cup of tea? or, I have some meth here in the corner. My bees are busy on the wild thyme and furze, you see, so we have plenty of honey for our meth." "I would like a cup of meth," said Gwenda; and as she drank the delicious sparkling beverage, Sara gazed at her with such evident interest that she was constrained to ask: "Why do you look at me so?" "Because I think I have seen you before," said the old woman. "Not likely," replied Gwenda, "unless in the streets at Castell On." "I have not been there for twenty years," said Sara. "It must be in my dreams, then." "Perhaps! What delicious meth! Who would think there was room for house and garden scooped out on the moor here; and such a dear sheltered hollow." Sara smiled. "Yes; we are safe and peaceful here." Morva had taken the opportunity of doffing her necklace and placing it in the box. "I am going to show the young lady the way to Garthowen, mother." "Yes; it is easy from there to Castell On," said Sara; "the farm lane will lead you into the high road. But 'tis many, many years since I have been that way." The chat fell into quite a friendly and familiar groove, for Sara and Morva knew nothing of the restraints of class and conventionality. "I am so glad I came; but I must go now," said Gwenda, rising at last. "My name is Gwenda Vaughan," she added, turning to Morva. "What is yours?" "Mine is Morva Lloyd; but I am generally called Morva of the Moor, I think. Mother's is Sara." "Good-bye, and thank you very much," said Gwenda, and Sara held her hand a moment between her own soft palms, while she looked into the girl's face. "You have a sweet, good face," she said. "Thank you for coming, 'merch i; in some way you will bring us good." And again that strangely happy feeling came over Gwenda. Rounding the Cribserth, the two girls soon reached Garthowen. It was afternoon, and drawing near tea-time. Ebben Owens was already sitting on the settle in the best kitchen, waiting for it, when the sound of voices without attracted his attention. "Caton pawb!" he said, "a lady, and Morva is bringing her." Ann hastened to the front door, and Morva led the horse away, knowing well that she was leaving the visitor in hospitable hands. "I am Miss Vaughan of Nantmyny! I have been out hunting today, and on the top of the hill I felt so tired that I made up my mind to call here and ask if you would let me rest awhile." "Oh, certainly! Come in," said Ann, holding out her hand, which Gwenda took warmly. "Miss Owen, I suppose?" "I was Ann Owens," she said, blushing. "I am Mrs. Gwilym Morris now these three years. This is my little boy," she added, as a chubby, curly-headed child toddled towards her. She had already opened the door of the best kitchen. "There is no fire in the parlour," she apologised, "or I would take you there." "Oh, no; please let me come to your usual sitting-room. Is this your father?" And she held out her hand again. There was something in her face that always ensured its own welcome. "Yes, I am Ebben Owens," said the old man, "and very glad to see you, though I not know who you are." "I am Gwenda Vaughan of Nantmyny, come to ask if you will let me rest awhile. I have been out with the fox-hounds; we have had a long run, and I am so tired." She had no other excuse to give for her inroad upon their hearth; but in Wales no excuse is required for a call. "Well, indeed," said the old man, rubbing his knees with pleasure, "there's a good thing now, you come just in time for tea. I think I have heard your name, but I not know where. Oh, yes. I remember now; 'twas you the bull was running after in the market, and my boy Will stop it; 'twas good thing, indeed, you may be kill very well!" Gwenda stopped to pat Tudor to hide the blush that rose to her cheek as she answered: "Yes, indeed, and of course we were very grateful to him!" "Oh, yes; he's very good fellow. Will you take off your hat? 'Tis not often we're having visitors here, so we are very glad when anybody is come." "I was afraid, perhaps, I was taking rather a liberty," said Gwenda, laying her hat and gloves aside, "but you are all so kind, you make me feel quite at home." "That's right," said the old man; "there's a pity now, my son-in-law, Gwilym Morris, is not at home. He was go to Castell On to-day to some meeting there. What was it? Let me see--some hard English word." "I can speak Welsh," said Gwenda, turning to that language. "Oh! wel din!" said the old man, relieved, and continuing in Welsh, "'tisn't every lady can speak her native language nowadays." "No. I am ashamed of my countrywomen, though I speak it very badly myself," said Gwenda. "There's my son Will now, indeed I'm afraid he will soon forget his Welsh, he is speaking English so easy and smooth. Come here, Ann," the old man called, as his daughter passed busily backwards and forwards spreading the snowy cloth and laying the tea-table. "The lady can speak Welsh!" "Oh! well indeed, I am glad," said Ann; "Will is the only one of us who speaks English quite easily." "Oh! there's Gwilym," said her father. "Yes, Gwilym speaks it quite correctly," said Ann, with pride, "but he has a Welsh accent, which Will has not--from a little boy he studied the English, and to speak it like the English." "Will is evidently their centre of interest," thought Gwenda, "and how little he seems to think of them!" Here the little curly pate came nestling against her knee. "Hello! rascal!" said the old man, "don't pull the lady's skirts like that." But Gwenda took the child on her lap. "He is a lovely boy," she said, thus securing Ann's good opinion at once. The little arms wound round her neck, and before tea was over she had won her way into all their hearts. "I am sorry my sons are not here," said the old man; "they are good boys, both of them, and would like to speak to such a beautiful young lady." "Have you two sons, then?" asked Gwenda. "Yes, yes. Will, my second son, is a clergyman. He is curate of Llansidan, 'tis about forty miles from here; but Gethin, my eldest son, is a sailor; indeed, I don't know where he is now, but I am longing for him to come home, whatever; and Will does not come often to see me. He is too busy, I suppose, and 'tis very far." And Gwenda, sensitive and tender, heard a tremble in the old man's voice, and detected the pain and bitterness of his speech. "Young men," she said, "are so often taken up with their work at first, that they forget their old home, but they generally come back to it, and draw towards it as they grow older; for after all, there is nothing like the old home, and I should think this must have been a nest of comfort indeed." "Well, I don't know. My two sons are gone over the nest, whatever; but Ann is stopping with me, She is the home-bird." Gwenda thought she had never enjoyed such a tea. The tea cakes so light, the brown bread so delicious; and Ann, with her quiet manners, made a perfect hostess; so that, when she rose to go, she was as reluctant to leave the old farmhouse as her entertainers were to lose her. "Indeed, there's sorry I am you must go," said Ebben Owens. "Will you come again some day?" "I will," said Gwenda, waving them a last good-bye; and as she rode down the dark lane beyond the farmyard she said to herself, "And I _will_ some day, please God!" Reaching the high road, she hurried down the hill to the valley below, where Castell On lay nestled in the bend of the river. It was scarcely visible in the darkening twilight, except here and there where a light glimmered faintly. The course of the river was marked by a soft white mist, and above it all, in the clear evening sky, hung the crescent moon. The beauty of the scene before her reached Gwenda's heart, and helped to fill her cup of happiness. Her visit to the farm had strengthened her determination to turn her lover's heart back to his old home. It was all plain before her now; she had a work to do, an aim in life, not only to make her future husband happy, but to lead him back into the path of duty, from which she clearly saw he had been tempted to stray. There was no danger that she would take too harsh a view of his fault, for her love for Will was strong and abiding. There was little doubt that in that wonderful weaving of life's pattern, which some people call "Fate" and some "Providence," Gwenda and Will had been meant for each other. When she reached home she found a letter awaiting her--a letter in the square clear writing which she had learned to look for with happy longing. She hastened to her room to read it. It bore good tidings--first, that Will had acceded to Mr. Price's request to preach at Castell On the following Sunday; secondly and chiefly, that the living of Llanisderi had been offered him, and had been accepted. "The church is close to my uncle's property, and as he has always wished me to make my home at Isderi, he now proposes that we should be married at once, and take his house off his hands, only letting him live on with us, which I think neither you nor I will object to. There is no regular vicarage, so this arrangement seems all that could be desired. Does my darling agree?" etc., etc. Of course "his darling" agreed, stipulating only that their marriage should take place in London, for she thought this plan would obviate the necessity for inviting her husband's relations to her wedding, and still cause them no pain. Will was delighted with the suggestion, for he had not been without some secret twinges of compunction at the idea of being married at Castell On, and still having none of his people at the wedding. That, of course, in his own and his uncle's opinion was quite out of the question; and so the matter was settled. * * * * * * One day there was great excitement at Garthowen. "Well, Bendigedig!" [1] said Magw under her breath, as crossing the farmyard she met Mr. Price the vicar making his way through the stubble to the house-door, "well, Bendigedig! there's grand we are getting. Day before yesterday a lady on horseback, to-day Price the vicare coming to see the mishteer! Well, well! Oh, yes, sare," she said aloud, in answer to the vicar's inquiry, "he's there somewhere, or he was there when I was there just now, but if he is not there he must be somewhere else. Ann will find him." And she jerked her thumb towards the house as Mr. Price continued his way laughing. "I am come again," said the genial vicar, shaking hands with Ebben Owens, whom he found deeply studying the almanac, "I am come to congratulate you on your son's good fortune. I hear he has been given the living of Llanisderi, and I think he will fill it very well. You are a fortunate man to have so promising a son and such an influential brother, and I expect you will be still better pleased with the rest of my news. He is going to preach at Castell On next Sunday." Ebben Owens gasped for breath. "Will!" he said, "my son Will? Oh! yes, he is a good boy, indeed, and is he going to preach here on Sunday? Well, well, 'twill be a grand day for me!" "Yes," said Mr. Price, "I hear he is a splendid preacher, and I thought 'twas a pity his old friends in this neighbourhood should not hear him, so I asked him, and he has agreed to come. You must all come in and hear him--you too, Mrs. Morris, and your husband." "My husband," said Ann, drawing herself up a little, "will have his own services to attend to; but on such an occasion I will be there certainly." "Well, you must all dine with me," said the hospitable vicar. "No, no, sir," said Ebben Owens, "I'll take the car, and we'll bring Will back here to dinner. We'll have a goose, Ann, and a leg of mutton and tongue." "Yes," said Ann, smiling, "Magw will see to them while we are at church." Mr. Price stayed to tea this time, and satisfied the old man's heart by his praises of his son. On his departure Ebben Owens sat down at once to indite a letter to Will, informing him of the great happiness it had given him to hear of his intention to preach at Castell On. "Of course, my boy," he went on to say in his homely, rugged Welsh, "we will be there to hear you, and I will drive you home in the car, and we will have the fattest goose for dinner, and the best bedroom will be ready for you. These few lines from "Your delighted and loving father, "EBBEN OWENS, "Garthowen." Will crushed the letter with a sigh when he had read it, and threw it into the fire, and the old Garthowen pucker on his forehead was only chased away by the perusal of a letter from Gwenda, whose contents we will not dare to pry into. Never were there such preparations for attending a service, as were made at Garthowen before the next Sunday morning. Never had Bowler's harness received such a polish, every buckle shone like burnished gold. Ebben Owens had brushed his greatcoat a dozen times, and laid it on the parlour table in readiness, and had drawn his sleeve every day over the chimney-pot hat which he had bought for the occasion. When the auspicious morning arrived Ann arrayed herself in her black silk, with a bonnet and cape of town fashion; and in the sunny frosty morning they set off to Castell On, full of gratified pride and pleasant anticipations. Leaving the car at a small inn near the church, they entered and took their places modestly in the background. No one but he who reads the secrets of all hearts knew what a tumult of feelings surged through the breast of that rugged, bent figure as Will passed up the aisle, looking handsomer than ever in his clerical garb. Thankfulness, pride, love, a longing for closer communion with his son, were all in that throbbing heart, but underneath and permeating all was the mysterious gnawing pain that had lately cast its shadow over the old man's life. During the service both he and Ann were much perplexed by the difficulty of finding their places in the prayer-book, and they were greatly relieved when at last it was over and the sermon commenced. Mr. Price had not been misinformed. Will was certainly an eloquent preacher, if not a born orator, and possessed that peculiar gift known in Wales as "hwyl"--a sudden ecstatic inspiration, which carries the speaker away on its wings, supplying him with burning words of eloquence, which in his calmer and normal state he could never have chosen for himself. Will controlled this feeling, not allowing it to carry him to that degree of excitement to which some Welsh preachers abandon themselves; on the contrary, when he felt most, he lowered his voice, and kept a firm rein upon his eloquence. His command of English, too, surprised his hearers, and Dr. Owen, himself a popular preacher, confessed he had never possessed such an easy flow of that language. As for Ebben Owens himself, as the sermon proceeded, although he understood but little English, not a word, nor a phrase, nor an inflection of the beloved voice escaped his attention; and as he bent his head at the benediction tears of thankfulness, pride, and joy filled his eyes. But he dried them hastily with his bran new silk handkerchief, and followed Ann out of the church with the first of the congregation. "We'll wait with the car," he said, "at the top of the lane. We won't push ourselves on to him at the church door when all the gentry are speaking to him." And Ann sat in the car with the reins in her hand, while the congregation filed past, many of them turning aside to congratulate warmly the father and sister of such a preacher. One by one the people passed on, two or three carriages rolled by, and still Will had not appeared. "Here he is, I think," said Ebben Owens, as two gentlemen walked slowly up the lane, and watching them, he scarcely caught sight of a carriage that drove quickly by. But a glance was enough as it turned round the corner into the street. In it sat Will, accompanied by Dr. Owen, Colonel Vaughan, and his niece. "Was that Will?" said Ann, looking round. "Yes," said her father faintly, looking about him in a dazed, confused manner. He put his hand to his head and turned very pale. Ann was out of the car in a moment, flinging the reins to the stable boy who stood at Bowler's head. "Come, father anwl!" she said, supporting the old man's tottering steps, for he would have fallen had she not passed her strong arm round him. "Come, we'll go home. You will be better once we are out of the town," and with great difficulty she got him into the car. "Cheer up, father bâch," she said, trying to speak cheerfully, though her own voice trembled, and her eyes were full of tears. "No doubt he meant to come, or he would have written, but I'm thinking they pressed him so much that he couldn't refuse." "Yes, yes," said the old man in a weak voice; "no doubt, no doubt! _'tis all right_, Ann; 'tis the hand of God." Ann thought he was wandering a little, and tried to turn his thoughts by speaking of the sermon. "'Twas a beautiful sermon, father, I have never heard a better, not even from Jones Bryn y groes." "Yes, I should think 'twas a good sermon, though I couldn't understand the English well; only the text 'twas coming in very often 'Lord, try me and see if there be any wicked way in me,'" and he repeated several times as he drove home "'any wicked way in me.' Yes, yes, 'tis all right!" When they reached home without Will, Gwilym Morris seemed to understand at once what had happened, and he helped the old man out of the car with a pat on his back and a cheery greeting. "Well, there now! didn't I tell you how it would be? Will had so many invitations he could not come back with you. There was Captain Lewis Bryneiron said, 'You must come and dine with me!' and Colonel Vaughan Nantmyny said, 'He must come with me!' and be bound Sir John Hughes wanted him to go to Plâsdû; so, poor fellow, he _had_ to go, and we've got to eat our splendid dinner ourselves! Come along; such a goose you never saw!" Ebben Owens said nothing, as he walked into the house, stooping more than usual, and looking ten years older. There was dire disappointment in the kitchen, too, when the dinner came out scarcely tasted. It is not to be supposed that by such observant eyes as Gwenda's, the Garthowen car, with the waiting Ann and the old man hovering about, had escaped unnoticed. Nay! To her quick perception the whole event revealed itself in a flash of intuition. They were waiting there for Will. He had disappointed and wounded his old father, but at the same moment she saw that the slight had been unintentional; for as the carriage dashed by the waiting car, she saw in Will's face a look of surprise and distress, a hurried search in his pocket, and an unwelcome discovery of a letter addressed and stamped--but, alas! unposted. The pathetic incident troubled her not a little. An English girl would probably have spoken out at once with the splendid honesty characteristic of her nation, but Gwenda, being a thorough Welshwoman, acted differently. With what detractors of the Celtic character would probably call "craftiness," but what we prefer to call "tact and tenderness," she determined not to ruffle the existing happy state of affairs by risking a misunderstanding with her lover, but would rather wait until, as a wife, she could bring the whole influence of her own honest nature to bear upon this weak trait in his character. A few days later the announcement of his approaching marriage reached Garthowen, in a letter from Will himself, enclosing the unposted missive, which he had discovered in his pocket as he drove to Nantmyny on the previous Sunday. It pacified the old man somewhat, but nothing availed to lift the cloud which had fallen upon his life; and the intimation of the near approach of his son's marriage with "a lady" coming upon him as it did unexpectedly, was the climax of his depression of spirits. He sat in the chimney-corner and brooded, repeating to himself occasionally in a low voice: "Gone! gone! Both my boys gone from me for ever!" Ann and Gwilym's arguments were quite unheeded. Morva's sympathy alone seemed to have any consoling effect upon him. She would kneel beside him with her elbows on his knees, looking up into his face, and with make-believe cheerfulness would reason with a woman's inconsequence, fearlessly deducing results from causes which had no existence. "'Tis as plain as the sun in the sky, 'n'wncwl Ebben bâch! Gethin is only gone on another voyage, and so will certainly be back here before long. Well, you see he _must_ come, because he wouldn't like to see his old father breaking his heart--not he! We know him too well. And then there's his best clothes in the box upstairs! And there's the corn growing so fast, he will surely be here for the harvest." She knew herself it was all nonsense, realising it sometimes with a sudden sad wistfulness; but she quickly returned to her argument again. "Look at me now, 'n'wncwl Ebben!--Morva Lloyd, whom you saved from the waves! Would I tell you anything that was not true? Of course, I wouldn't indeed! indeed! and I'm sure he'll come soon. You may take my word for it they will both come back very soon. I feel it in my heart, and mother says so too." "Does she?" said the old man, with a little show of interest. "Does Sara say so?" "Yes," said Morva; "she says she is sure of it." "Perhaps indeed! I hope she is right, whatever!" And he would lay his hands on Morva's and Tudor's heads, both of whom leant upon his knees and looked lovingly into his face. [1] "Blessed be!" CHAPTER XVIII SARA For Gwenda and Will, from this time forward, all went "merry as a marriage bell." Early in the spring their wedding took place in London, and when one morning Morva brought from Pont-y-fro post office a packet for Ebben Owens containing a wedge of wedding cake and cards, he evinced some show of interest. On the box was written in Gwenda's pretty firm writing, "With love to Garthowen, from William and Gwenda Owen." Ebben rubbed his knees with satisfaction. "There now," he said, "in her own handwriting, too! Well, indeed! I thought she was a nice young lady that day she came here, but, caton pawb! I never thought she would marry our Will." A second piece of cake was enclosed and addressed. "To my friends Sara and Morva of the Moor," and Morva carried it home with mingled feelings of pride and pleasure, but paramount was the joy of knowing that she was completely released from the promise which had become so galling to her. "I knew," said Sara, "that that face would bring us a blessing," and she looked with loving inquiry into Morva's face, which was full of varying expressions. At first, there was the pleasurable excitement of unfolding and tasting the wedding cake, but it quickly gave way to a look of pensive sadness, which somehow had fallen over the girl rather frequently of late; the haunting thought of Gethin's absence, the cloud of suspicion which had so long hung over him, (it was cleared away now, but it had left its impress upon her life), her ignorance of his whereabouts, and above all, a longing, hidden deep down in her heart, to meet him face to face once more, to tell him that she was free, that no longer behind the broom bushes need she turn away from him, or wrest her hands from his warm clasp. All this weighed upon her mind, and cast a shadow over her path, which she could not entirely banish. Sara saw the reflection of the sorrowful thought in the girl's tell-tale eyes, and her tender heart was troubled within her. "A wedding cake is a beautiful thing," said Morva; "how do they make it, I wonder? Ann said I must sleep with a bit of it under my pillow to-night, and I would dream of my sweetheart, but that is nonsense." "Yes, 'tis nonsense," said Sara, "but 'tis an old-time fable; thee canst try it, child," she added, smiling, and trying to chase away the girl's look of sadness. "'Twould be folly indeed, for there is no sweetheart for me any more, mother, now that Will is married. Oh! indeed, I hope that sweet young lady will be happy, and Will too." "He will be happy, child; but for thee I am grieving. Thou art hiding something from me; surely Will's marriage brings thee no bitterness?" "No, no," said the girl, "I am glad, mother, so thankful to be free; I could sing with the birds for joy, and yet there is some shadow in my heart. 'Tis for Garthowen, I think, 'n'wncwl Ebben is so sad--Gethin has never come home, and that money, mother! who stole it and put it back again? We used to be so happy, but now it seems like the threatening of a stormy day." "Sometimes those stormy days are the end of rough weather, lass. Through wind and cloud and lightning, God clears up the sky. Thee must not lose patience, 'merch i; by and by it will be bright weather again." "Do you think, mother?" "Yes, I think--I am sure." "Well, indeed," said Morva, "you are always right; but oh! I am forgetting my cheese, I set the rennet before I came out. I must run." And away she went, and in a short time had reached the dairy, where the curdled milk was ready for her. First she went to the spring in the yard to cool her hands and arms, and then with shining wooden saucer, she broke up the creamy curds, gradually compressing them into a solid mass, while the delicious whey was poured into a quaint brown earthen pitcher. The clumsy door stood wide open, and the sunshine streamed in, and glistened on the bright brass pan in which Morva was crumbling her curds, her sleeves tucked up above her elbows, showing her dimpled arms. With her spotless white apron, her neatly shod feet, and her crown of golden hair, she looked like the presiding goddess of this temple of cleanliness and purity. Round the walls stood shelves of the blue slaty stone of the neighbourhood, upon which were ranged the pans of golden cream, above them hanging the various dairy utensils of wood, polished black with long use and rubbing. Morva's good spirits had returned, for she hummed as she rubbed her curds: "Troodi! Troodi! come down from the mountain, Troodi! Troodi! up from the dale! Moelen and Trodwen, and Beauty and Blodwen, I'll meet you all with my milking pail." Meanwhile at home in the thatched cottage on the moor Sara seemed to have caught the mantle of sadness which had fallen from the girl's shoulders. She went about her household duties singing softly it is true, but there was a look of disquiet in her eyes not habitual to them, an air of restlessness very unlike her usual placid demeanour. For sixteen years her life and Morva's had been serene and uneventful, the limited circle which bound the plane of their existence had been complete and undisturbed by outward influences; but latterly unrest and anxiety had entered into their quiet lives, there was a veiling of the sun, there was a shadow on the path, a mysterious wind was ruffling the surface of the sea of life. No trouble had touched Sara personally, but what mattered that to one so sympathetic? She lived in the lives of those she loved; and as she moved about in the subdued light of the cottage, or in the broad sunshine of the garden, a thread of disquietude ran through the pattern of her thoughts. The cause of Morva's sadness she guessed at, but how to remove it, or how to bring back the peace and happiness that seemed to have deserted the old Garthowen homestead, she saw not yet. Suddenly she started, and standing still crossed her hands on her bosom with a look of pleased expectancy; her lips moved as if in prayer, she passed out into the garden, and gathering a bunch of rue, tied it together and hung it to the frame of the doorway so that no one could enter the house without noticing it. Then returning to the quiet chimney corner, she sat down in the round-backed oak chair, and clasping her hands on her lap, waited, while over her came the curious trance-like sleep to which she had been subject at intervals all her life. She was accustomed to these trances, and even welcomed their coming for the sake of the clear insight and even the clairvoyance which followed them. They were seasons of refreshing to this strange woman's soul--seasons during which the connecting thread between spirit and body was strained to the utmost, when a rude awakening might easily sever that attenuated thread, when Morva knew that tender handling and shielding care were required of her. In the evening when she returned from the farm she came singing into the little court, where the gilly flowers and daffodils were once more swaying in the wind, and the much treasured ribes was hanging out its scented pink tassels. She stopped to gather a spray, and then turning to the door, was confronted by the bunch of rue, at sight of which she instantly ceased her singing and a look of seriousness almost of solemnity came over her face, for the herb had long been a pre-concerted signal between Sara and herself. She gently pulled the string which lifted the latch, and entered the cottage, treading softly as one does where death has already entered. The stillness was profound, for it was a calm day and the sea was silent, the fire only crackling on the hearth. The old cat slept on the spinning bench, and Sara lay there unconscious and dead to all outward surroundings. Morva approached her softly, and pressed a kiss on the marble forehead; she felt her hands, they were supple though cold; the eyes were closed and the breathing was scarcely perceptible, but Morva had no fear for Sara's safety. She gently raised her feet upon the rush stool, and rested her head more comfortably; then bolting the door and making up the fire, she took her supper and prepared for a long night's vigil. And now came one of those seasons of contemplation and of wondering awe which Sara's trances brought into Morva's simple life, which made her somewhat different from the other girls of the neighbourhood, yet in no way detracted from the brightness and cheerfulness of her character. Magw, the house servant, was often out under the stars, but she paid more attention to the stubble in the farmyard than to the glittering spangled sky above her. Dyc "pigstye" often passed over the cliffs and up the moor, but his own whistle, the bleat of the sheep, the lowing of the herds, were more to him than the whispers of the sea or the singing of the larks. Ebben Owens was out from morning to night, in the brilliant sunshine, and under the mellow moon, but they taught no tale to him, and brought no messages to his soul, save of crops, of work, of harvests. But to Morva, every tint of broom or heather, every shade of sea or sky, every flower that unfolded in the sunshine spoke and stirred within her sentiments of love and wonder which she had no words to express, but which left their impress upon her spirit. Sitting by the fire on her low stool, she kept a careful watch over the still figure on the other side of the hearth. The night wind sighed in the chimney, the owls hooted, and the sea whispered its mysterious secrets on the shore below. The candle burnt low in its socket, and Morva replaced it with another, for she would not be left in the dark with this silent unconscious being, much as she loved her. Sometimes she ventured upon a gentle appeal, "Mother fâch!" but no answer came from the closed lips, and again she waited while the night hours passed on. "Where is her spirit wandering, I wonder?" thought the girl, setting her untaught and inexperienced mind to work upon the fathomless mystery. "Perhaps in the land which we roam in our dreams. 'Tis pity she cannot remember; 'tis pity she cannot tell me about it, for, oh, I would like to know." But to-night, at all events, it seemed there was to be no elucidation of this enigma of life. The night hours dragged on slowly, and still Sara slept on, until in the pale dawn Morva gently opened the door and looked out towards the east, where a rosy light was beginning to flush the clear blue of a cloudless sky. Already the sun was rising over the grey slopes, the cottage walls caught the rosy tints, and the ribes tree, which alone was tall enough to catch his beams over the high turf wall of the court, glowed under his morning kiss. Morva looked round the fair scene with eyes and heart that took in all its beauty. A cool sea breeze, brine-laden, swept over the moor, refreshing and invigorating her, and she turned again to the cottage with renewed longing for Sara's awakening. When she entered, she found that the rays of the rising sun shone full upon the quiet face, on the placid brow, and the closed eyes, imparting to them a look of unearthly spirituality. Moved by the sight, and by the events of the night, the girl knelt down, and, leaning her face on her foster-mother's lap, said her prayers, with the same simple faith as she had in the days of childhood. The sunlight pouring in through the little window bathed her in a stream of rosy light, and rested on her bent head like a blessing. As she rose from her knees a quiver passed over Sara's eyelids, a smile came on her lips, and opening her eyes she looked long at Morva before she spoke, as though recalling her surroundings. "Mother," said the girl, kissing her cheek, which was beginning to show again the hue of health. "Mother fâch, you've come back to me again." "Yes," said Sara, "I am come back again, child," and she attempted to rise, but Morva pushed her gently back. "Breakfast first, mother fâch." And quickly and deftly she set the little brown teapot on the embers, and spread her mother's breakfast before her. "Now, mother, a new-laid egg and some brown bread and butter." And Sara smilingly complied with the girl's wishes, and partook of the simple fare. "Mother, try and remember where you have been. Oh, I want to know so much." "I cannot, 'merch i, already it is slipping away from me as usual; but never mind, it will all come back by and by, and I hope I will be a wiser and a better woman after my long sleep. It is always so, I think, Morva." "Yes," said the girl, "you are always wiser, and better, and kinder after your long sleeps, if that is possible, mother fâch." Sara's ordinary cheerful and placid manner had already returned to her, and in an hour or two she was quite herself again, and moving about her cottage as if nothing had happened; and when Morva left her for the morning milking she felt no uneasiness about her. "She's in the angels' keeping, I know, and God is over all," she murmured, as she ran over the cliffs to Garthowen. She said nothing at the farm of the events of the past night, knowing how reticent Sara was upon the subject herself. Moreover, it was one of too sacred a character in the eyes of these two lonely women to be discussed with the outside and unbelieving world. In the evening, when Morva returned from the farm, a little earlier than usual, she was full of tender inquiries. "Are you well, mother fâch? I have been uneasy about you." "Quite well, child, and very happy. 'Twill all be right soon, Morva. Canst take my word for it? For I cannot explain how I know, but I tell thee thy trouble will soon be over. How are they at Garthowen to-night?" "Oh, well," said the girl; "only 'n'wncwl Ebben is always very sad. Not even Will's marriage will make him happy. 'Tis breaking his heart he is for the old close companionship. Will ought to come and see him oftener. Poor 'n'wncwl Ebben! 'Tis sad to lose his two sons." "Gethin will come home," said Sara; "and Ebben Owens will be happy again." Morva made no answer, but watched the sparks from the crackling furze, as they flew up the chimney, and thought of the night when she had stamped them out with her wooden shoe, and had dared the uncertainties of the future. She was wiser now, and knew that life had its shadows as well as its glowing sunshine. She had experienced the former, but the sunshine was returning to her heart to-night in a full tide of joy, for she had implicit confidence in her foster-mother's keen intuitions. "Mother, what did you see, what did you hear, in that long trance? I would like to know so much. Your body was here, but where was your spirit?" "I cannot tell, 'merch i. To me it was a dreamless sleep, but now that I am awake I seem to know a great many things which were dark to me before. You know it is always so with me when I have had my long sleeps. They seem to brighten me up, and it appears quite natural to me when the things that have been dark become plain." She felt no surprise as the scenes and events of the recent past were unfolded to her. She understood now why Gethin had gone away so suddenly and mysteriously. Morva's love for him she saw with clear insight, and, above all, the cause of Ebben Owens's increasing gloom. How simple all was now, and how happy was she in the prospect of helping them all. "Mother," asked Morva again one evening, as they walked in the garden together, "there is one question I would like to ask you again, but somehow I am afraid. Who stole the money at Garthowen?" "Don't ask me that question, 'merch i. Time will unfold it all. 'Tis very plain who took it, and I wonder we didn't see it before; but leave it now, child. I don't know how, but soon it will be cleared up, and the sun will shine again. Ask me no more questions, Morva, and every day will bring its own revealment." "I will ask nothing more, mother. Let us go in and boil the bwdran for supper." At the early milking next morning Ebben Owens himself came into the farmyard. He stooped a good deal, and, when Morva rallied him on his sober looks, sighed heavily, as he stood watching the frothing milk in her pail. "See what a pailful of milk Daisy has, 'n'wncwl Ebben! Yesterday Roberts the drover from Castell On passed through the yard when I was milking, and oh, there's praising her he was! 'Would Ebben Owens sell her, d'ye think?' he asked, and he patted her side; but Daisy didn't like it, and she nearly kicked my pail over. 'Sell her!' I said. 'What for would 'n'wncwl Ebben sell the best cow in his herd? No, no,' said I. 'Show us one as good as her, and 'tis buying he'll be, and not selling.'" "Lol! lol!" said the old man; "thee mustn't be too sure, girl. I am getting old and not fit to manage the farm. I wouldn't care much if I sold everything and went to live in a cottage." "'Twt, twt," said Morva, "you will never leave old Garthowen, and 'twill be long before Roberts the drover takes Daisy away. Go and see mother, 'n'wncwl Ebben; she is full of good news for you. She says there is brightness coming for you, and indeed, indeed _she knows_." "Yes, she knows a good deal, but she doesn't know everything, Morva. No, no," he said, turning away, "she doesn't know everything." CHAPTER XIX THE "SCIET" "Art going to chapel to-night, Morva?" said Ebben Owens on the following Sunday afternoon, as he sat smoking in the chimney-corner, Tudor beside him gazing rather mournfully into the fire. He was looking ill and worn, and spoke in a low, husky voice. He had sat there lost in thought ever since he had pushed away his almost untasted dinner. "Yes," said Morva, "I am going; but mother is not coming to-night; she doesn't like the Sciet, you know." "She is an odd woman," said Ann. "Not like the Sciet indeed! If I didn't love her so much I would be very angry with her." Morva flushed. "She is very different to other people, I know; but she is a good woman whatever." "Yes, yes, yes," said Ebben Owens emphatically; "but why doesn't she like the Sciet?" "Oh! that's what she is saying," answered the girl, "that she doesn't see the use of people standing up to confess half their sins and keeping back the other and the worst half. She has been talking to Gwilym Morris about it, and he is agreeing with her." "Och fi!" sighed the old man, relapsing into his moody silence, from which not even little Gwyl's chatter was able to rouse him. At last when the cheerful sound of the tea-things, and Ann's oft-repeated summons, recalled him to outward surroundings, he rose as if wearily, and drew his chair to the table, where, stooping more and more over his tea, Ann detected a tear furtively wiped away. "You won't take little Gwyl to chapel to-night, will you? 'tis rather damp," he said, though it was really a clear twilight. "No, no," said Ann, "Magw will take care of him at home." Gwilym helped the old man to change his coat. "Where are his gloves, Ann, and his best hat? There's grand he'll be!" But there was no answering smile on his father-in-law's face. "Twt, twt," he said, "there is no need of gloves for me, and I won't wear my best hat, give me my old one." He sighed heavily as with bent head, and hands buried deep in his coat pockets, he followed Ann and her husband down the stony road to the valley where Penmorien Chapel lay. It was one of the unlovely square buildings so much affected by the Welsh Dissenters, its walls of grey stone differing little in appearance and colour from the rocky bed of the hill which had been quarried out for its site. As the Garthowen family entered, led by the preacher hat in hand, there was a little movement of interest in the thronging congregation, and a settling down to their prospective enjoyment, for an eloquent sermon possesses for the Welsh the intense charm of a good drama. The familiar pictures of every-day life with which the sermon is frequently illustrated, the vivid word-painting, the tender but firm touch which plays upon the chords of their strongest emotions, all combine to awaken within them those feelings of pleasurable excitement, denied to them through the medium of the forbidden theatre. Gwilym Morris was heart and soul a preacher, full of burning zeal for his mission, and, moreover, at this period of his ministry he was passing through a crisis in his spiritual life--a crisis which left him with a broader field of vision, and more enlightened views of God's Providence than he had hitherto dared to adopt. As he passed up the pulpit stairs and saw the thronging mass of eager faces upraised to his, a subtle influence reached him, a fervour of spirit which he knew was the answer to the expectancy depicted on his people's faces. It was as though that waiting throng had formed itself into one collective being, for whose soul he bore a message, and to whom he must unburden himself, and there was a depth of meaning in his voice as he gave out the words of an old familiar hymn which fixed his hearers' attention at once. Ebben Owens had always led the hymns, but latterly he had dropped that custom, and to-night he stood silent with eyes fixed upon the evening sky, visible through the long chapel window. The hymn was sung with fervour, and in that volume of sound his voice was not missed. The old grey walls reverberated to the rich tones, which filled the chapel, and pouring out through the open doors, flooded the narrow valley with harmony. It was followed by a prayer, and another hymn, after which the candles were lighted, one on each iron pillar supporting the crowded gallery, one on each side of the "big seat" under the pulpit, and one on each side of the preacher, who, leaning his arms on the open Bible before him, began in low impressive tones to deliver himself of the message which he bore to his people. Only the old familiar words, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." Only the message of a greater Preacher than he--only the theme of a love unchanging and unfathomable, but told in such vivid though simple language, that the sensitive Celtic hearts of his audience, were enthralled and subdued, and there were few in that large crowd who did not gaze at the preacher through eyes blurred with tears. Sometimes his voice rose in indignant protest, and sometimes fell in tender appeal, and when at last the sermon was over and the last hymn had been sung, there was an evident feeling of regret and a furtive drying of eyes. In curious almost ludicrous contrast to the preacher's mellow tones, Jos Hughes's cracked voice broke the solemn silence, with the information that there would be an "experience" meeting after the service. One third of the congregation therefore, remained seated while the rest poured out through the narrow doorways into the stony road, up which the sea wind was blowing. Then the doors were closed and the preacher came down and sat among the deacons in the "big seat." Ebben Owens was asked for his usual opening prayer, but he declined the request with a shake of his head. Jos Hughes gladly took his place, and after a long-winded prayer from him, a hymn was sung again, and then the business of the meeting commenced. From a dark corner pew a weak voice broke the silence, and every eye turned to the speaker, a little shrivelled woman who was a frequent confessor of sins, and was correspondingly respected. "I wish to say," said the quavering voice, "that I am daily and hourly becoming less sure of my salvation, my past sins weigh heavily upon me, and neither prayer nor reading bring a gleam of comfort into my heart. I should be glad to see the preacher or one of the deacons if they will trouble to come to Ffoshelig." "I will certainly," said the preacher; and again there was a pause, till Jos Hughes stood up, and with great unction delivered his soul of its burden. "My dear brethren," he said, with eyes upturned to the ceiling, his stubby fingers interlaced over his waistcoat of fawn kerseymere, "I am much perplexed and disheartened! I have been deacon of this chapel for thirty years, and I am not aware that I have ever failed in my duty as a member of this 'body.' I neglect no opportunity of prayer, or hymn singing, or warning my neighbour. I teach in the Sunday School, and I fulfil every duty as far as I am able--and yet, my friends, for two whole days in the week that is past, I was as dry as--a paper bag! I felt no fervour of spirit, no uplifting of soul; in fact, dear people, it was low tide with me, the rocks were bare, the sands were dry, and I was almost despairing. But thank the Lord! the tide turned, grace and praise and joy flowed in upon me once more; I have received the 'Invoice' of good things to come, and I am filled with the peace and content I generally enjoy." A few words of congratulation and sympathy were spoken by another grey-headed deacon, after which a silence fell upon the meeting, the preacher making no comment upon what he had heard. The tick of the clock on the gallery, the distant swish of the waves, and the soft sighing of the evening breeze alone were audible. At length another voice broke the silence. It was Ebben Owens, who was standing up, and for a moment looking round at the old familiar faces of his fellow worshippers. It had been a frequent custom of his to relate his religious experiences at the "Sciets," so neither Ann nor her husband were surprised; but Morva detected something unusual in the old man's manner. At many a meeting he had confessed to the frailties of human nature, with platitudes, and expressions of repentance, which had lost all reality from constant repetition. But he had satisfied the meeting, and at the end of it he had taken up his hat, smoothed his hair down over his forehead, and walked out of the chapel in the odour of sanctity. To-night it was a very different man who stood there. At first his voice was low and trembling, but as he proceeded it gathered strength, so that his words were audible even in the corner pew, whose little shrivelled occupant was eagerly listening, in the hopes that another person's experience--and he a good man--might throw some light upon her own difficulties. "Good people all!" said the old man, "will you bear with me for a few moments, while I unburden my mind of a weight that is pressing sore upon me? and God grant that none of you may suffer what I have suffered lately! but justly--remember justly am I punished. "You think you know me well, my dear friends. 'There is Ebben Owens Garthowen,' you say, 'our deacon,' and perhaps you say 'an upright man and honest!' But I am here to-night to tell you what I am in truth. I have stood before you dozens of times, and told you of want of faith--of cold prayers--and lack of interest in holy things. I have asked for your prayers many times, and have gone home and forgotten to pray myself! Yes, I have been your deacon for thirty years, and all that time I have deceived you, and deceived myself. I never told you about my real sins, but you shall know to-night what Ebben Owens is. I have been weak and yielding in money matters--have lent and given my money, not out of real charity, but because it brought me the praise of man. I have lied and cheated in the market, and still my soul was asleep, and you all thought well of me. I have pretended to be a temperate man, but I have often drunk until my brain was dull, and my eyes were heavy, and have flung myself down on my bed in a drunken sleep, without thought and without prayer." He paused a moment, and the sea wind, coming in at the window, blew a stray lock of his grey hair over his forehead. His tongue seemed parched and dry, his voice husky and uncertain, but with a fresh effort he continued: "Are you beginning to know me, my friends? Not yet, not yet, listen! God gave me two brave boys, and how did I take his gift? I made an idol of one, and was unjust, and often harsh, to the other. As the years went on I continued in that sinful path, and in my old age the Lord is punishing me. The boy I idolised and loved--God knows with a love that effaced the image of the Almighty from my heart--has deserted me, has grown ashamed of me, and my punishment is just and righteous. The other--whom I treated harshly and thrust from me--has also deserted me in my old age; this, too, is just and righteous. The sting of it is sharp and hard to bear, for God has made me love that boy, and long for his presence; and this, too, is just and righteous. Let no one pity me, or think I am punished more than I deserve. And now, do you think you know me? Not yet, my friends, for listen, your deacon, Ebben Owens of Garthowen, is a thief! Do you hear it, all of you? A thief!" and he looked round the chapel inquiringly. The men looked at him with flushed, excited faces, the women stooped forward to hide theirs, some of them crying silently, but all moved as by a sudden storm. Ann had bent lower and lower in her pew, and was weeping bitter tears of shame, clasping Morva's hand, who stood looking in frightened amazement from one to another. "A thief!" continued the old man, "and a cowardly thief! One who sacrificed honour and truth and common honesty that he might gratify his foolish pride. But to come nearer, my friends, hear what I have done. By careless spendthrift ways I had wasted my money so that I had not sufficient to send my son to college. This galled my pride, and I stole from my son-in-law's drawer the sum of 40 pounds which I knew he had placed there. I was too proud to borrow from a Methodist preacher the money I required to get my son into the Church. When the theft was discovered," and the old man held up his finger to enforce his words--"are you listening?--when the theft was discovered I tried at first to throw the blame upon a member of this congregation, whom, of course, I knew to be innocent; later on, when circumstances seemed to point more directly to my dear eldest son, I gladly let the suspicion rest upon him, and I did everything in my power to give colour to the idea of his guilt. There I am, dear friends. That is Ebben Owens. You know him now as what he is--a liar--a sot--a thief! You will turn me out of your 'Sciet.' You are right; I am not worthy to be a member of it. I don't want anyone's pity, I only want you to know me as I am, and may God forgive me." And he sat down amidst breathless silence, his hands sunk deep into his pockets, his chin resting on his chest. Shame, repentance, and sorrow filled his heart, and it required all the strength of his manhood to keep back the tears which would well up into his eyes. It was all so still in the chapel, not a word of sympathy; even a word of reproach would have been acceptable to the miserable man, who could not read beneath the surface, the tumult of varied feelings which were surging through the hearts of the congregation. Suddenly two heavy paws were resting on his knee, and Tudor's warm breath was on his face as he tried to lick the old man's bare forehead. The touch of sympathy was more than he could bear, he rose hastily to his feet, and, followed by the dog, passed out of the chapel, leaving Gwilym Morris, with a tremble in his voice, to bring the meeting to a close. Although he had sometimes strayed into the chapel Tudor had never before been known to invade the sanctity of the "big seat," and what brought him there on this particular evening was one of those mysteries which enshroud the possibilities of animal instinct. Perhaps he had been struck by the dejected attitude of his master, as he followed his daughter and son-in-law through the farmyard; at all events the loving and loyal heart had felt that over that bent head and stooping figure a cloud of trouble hung low, and as he followed his master through the silent congregation he hung his head and drooped his tail as though he himself were the delinquent. "Come, Ann, let us follow him," whispered Morva. "No," answered Ann, withdrawing her hand from Morva's warm clasp, "I cannot. Go thou and comfort him. I will wait for Gwilym." And Morva did not hesitate, though it required some courage to make her way through that shocked and scandalised throng. Gaining the door, where the fresh night air met her with refreshing coolness, she saw the tall, stooping figure moving slowly up the stony road, followed by the dejected Tudor, and in a moment was at his side. Taking his hard, rough hand in both her warm palms she lifted it to her cheek and pressed it to her neck. "'N'wncwl Ebben dear, and dear, and very dear! my heart is breaking for you! To think that while we knew nothing about it you were bearing all the burden of your repentance alone. But there is plenty of love in all our hearts to sink every sin you ever committed in its depths, for the sake of all the good you have done and all the kindness you have shown to me and to every one who came near you, and you know God's forgiveness is waiting for every sinner who repents." The old man said nothing for some time, but trudged heavily beside her. "_Thou_ art tender and forgiving, whatever," he said at last; "but Ann, where is she? Will she ever forgive me?" "She is waiting for Gwilym," answered Morva. "She is right; but come thou with me, lass; thou must help me to-night, for I have only done half my task," and as they passed under the elder tree at the back door he hurried before her into the house. "Now, 'merch i, bring me pen and ink and some paper." Now was the time, he felt, when he must make a clean breast of all his guilt, and drink his bitter draught of expiation to the dregs. He seized the pen eagerly and with trembling hands began to write, "My beloved son." The letter was to Will, of course. A clergyman! a gentleman! with a lady to wife! What would he say when he heard that his father was a thief? He made a full and ample confession, adding no extenuating circumstances and making no excuses. He wrote slowly and laboriously, Morva meanwhile rifling Ann's work-box for a seal. "There's beautiful writing for an old man," she said at last, as Ebben Owens toiled through the address, his tongue following every movement of the pen. "Now, here's the seal, and I will put the letter in the post at once, and then your mind will be easy." "Easy!" he said, leaning his head on his folded arms; "'tis my son, girl, my beloved son, whose love and respect I am cutting off from me for ever. Tell thy mother, too; let them all know what I am. Here come Ann and Gwilym; perhaps they will be as hard upon me as I deserve." Here Tudor again laid his soft head on the table beside his master's, and the old man passed his arm round the dog's neck. "Yes--yes, 'machgen i, I know I have thee still. Go, Morva, post my letter at Pont-y-fro, though 'tis Sunday night. Good-night, girl, thou hast an old man's blessing. For what it is worth," he added, under his breath, as the girl passed out of one door, while Gwilym and Ann entered at the other. On their way home through the clear starlight, Gwilym had endeavoured to soothe Ann's distress, to point out to her how real a proof of repentance was her father's confession. He reminded her of the joy amongst the angelic host over one sinner that repenteth! but his words failed to make their usual impression upon her. Shame, and contempt for her father's weakness were uppermost in her heart, and expressed upon her countenance, when she entered the kitchen. One glance, however, at the bowed grey head and the dejected attitude, banished every feeling of anger to the winds; with a bound she was at her father's side, her arms round his neck, her head leaning with his on the table, Tudor laying his own beside them. Ebben Owens's departure from the chapel had been followed by a few moments of breathless silence. No more experiences were told, no hymn was sung, but a short and fervid prayer from the preacher alone preceded the dismissal which sent the astonished and deeply-moved congregation pouring out into the roadway. Jos Hughes had trembled with fright when Ebben Owens had alluded to his want of money at the time of Will's entering college, and had expected nothing less than an exposure of his oft broken promises and the long delayed payment of his debt; but as the old man proceeded without allusion to his shortcomings, he had regained his courage, and his usual smug appearance of righteous peace and content. "Well!" he said to his fellow-deacons, as they followed the rough road to Pont-y-fro, "did you ever think we had such a fool for a deacon?" "'Ts--'ts! never indeed," said John Jones of the "Blue Bell." "Well, indeed," said old Thomas Morgan, the weaver, "I didn't know we had such a sinner amongst us; but fool! perhaps it would be better if we were all such fools." But no one took any notice of his remark, for he was never considered to have been endowed with his full complement of sense, though his pure and unblemished life had caused him to be chosen deacon. "Well," said Jos again, as he reached his own shop door, "I always knew Garthowen's pride would come down some day; but I never, never thought he was such a fool!" CHAPTER XX LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE It was nearly midnight, and still Sara and Morva sat over the fire in earnest conversation. The March wind roared in the chimney, the sound of the sea came up the valley. Outside, under the night sky, the furze and broom bushes waved and bowed to each other, and in the sheltered cwrt the daffodils under the hedge nodded and swayed in the wind; but the two women inside the cottage were too much engrossed in their conversation, and with their thoughts, to notice the wildness of the night. Often they sat in silence, broken by occasional words of sorrow. "Oh, poor 'n'wncwl Ebben! No wonder he was sitting thinking and thinking in the chimney-corner!" "No, no wonder indeed, och i! och i! But now he has done the best thing for his own peace of mind." "Peace of mind!" said Morva. "I am afraid he will never have that, mother. He said when we were walking home together that he wished he could die; and I'm afraid he will before long. He is breaking his heart for his two sons." Sara did not answer; she was gazing at the glowing fire, whose flames and sparks chased each other up the chimney. At last she straightened herself. "Garthowen shall not die while I can help him, Morva," she said. "I have seen all this coming, 'merch i, and I know now what my dreams have meant lately. _They_ are calling me, Morva; _they_ have been calling me since the turn of the year, and I have closed my ears. But now"--and she stood up, though still leaning on her stick--"but now I must go." Morva looked at her in astonishment, for the aged form seemed to grow young again with the strength of purpose within it. The gentle face appeared to lose the wrinkles of age. In the fitful light of the fire, it took again the lines of beauty and youth which had once belonged to it. "Thou must not be surprised, child," she added, "if some evening when thou com'st home from the farm thou shalt find the house empty. The key will be on the lintel, and thou must come in and wait in patience till I return. I thought there was nothing more for me to do, but I see it now," and with her stick she pointed into the dark corner where the spinning-wheel stood, and the red earthen pitcher which went so often to the well. "I see it, 'merch i; 'tis a journey for me. I don't see quite where it ends, but I will be safe, Morva, for God is everywhere. _They_ are calling me, and they will bring me safe home again. Let me go, child; 'tis to fetch a blessing for Garthowen and for thee, so don't thee fret, lass. Then my work will be done; there will be only one more journey for me--the last! and from that thou wilt not see me return. But I will be with thee, and thee must not sorrow for me." "Oh, mother," said the girl, burying her face in her apron, "are you going to die? How can I live in this world without you?" And swaying backwards and forwards, she cried bitterly. "Not yet, my child, not yet; I have work to do and there are happy days in store for us both; but some day, Morva, it must come, and when it comes thou must not grieve for me. Come, 'merch i, 'tis late; let us go to bed." And the girl, somewhat comforted, dried her eyes and closed the rickety door. She slept heavily after her late watching, so heavily that she did not hear when Sara rose in the grey of the dawn. At her usual time Morva rose too, and immediately missed her mother. A wild fear throbbed through her heart as she searched in and out of the cottage. "Mother!" she called up the step ladder which led to the loft, out in the cwrt and in the garden. "Mother fâch! where are you?" But there was no answer, and she realised that Sara had gone, and that she was alone! After the first pang of fright, a calmness and even happiness entered her heart; she had learnt to put implicit trust in her strange foster-mother, and a feeling of complete reassurance and content began to take possession of her mind. It would be well with Sara, for whatever she attempted she never failed to accomplish, and it would be well with Garthowen too! "Her ways are blessed," said the girl, clasping her hands, and returning to her solitary breakfast. "The spirits have her in their keeping, that I know, and she will come back and bring us joy and happiness!" Whether in the depths of her heart it was dawning upon her what blessing she expected from Sara's pilgrimage is difficult to know; perhaps unconsciously she already nourished the hope which was to grow with every day of her mother's absence, until it gilded her whole life with a rapturous expectancy; at all events, it was a very blithe and joyous maiden who brushed the dew off the sheep path to Garthowen in time for the milking that morning. She would have sung one of Sara's old Nature songs, had not the remembrance of the sorrow at the farm kept her silent. The March wind blew keen and crisp around her, the air was filled with the quivering songs of the larks, the furze was bursting into bloom, even the bare blackthorn put on its speckled mantle of white; what wonder was it in a world so fair, that Morva's heart sang for joy? But as she turned round the Cribserth, a sudden shadow came upon her, for here was Ebben Owens coming towards her, with bent head and slow dragging step. She hurried forward to meet him. "I thought thee wouldst turn back, lass, or make an excuse to pass me by," he said. "But no! no! no!" said the girl, linking her arm into the old man's, and turning back with him, "'tis closer and closer we must cling together, 'n'wncwl Ebben, dear, the further we go on the path of life. Did you think that Morva could pass you by? Ach y fi! no indeed! But where are you going so early?" "To see Sara," said the old man--"to see if she will still be my friend when she knows how bad I am." "She knows it all," said Morva; "I told her last night, and her heart was torn with sorrow and love for you; and now turn back with me to Garthowen, for Sara is gone; the cottage is empty!" "Gone!" said the old man, with a gasp, "Sara gone!" "Yes--gone! 'Garthowen shall not die of grief while I can help him,' she said; 'I am going a long journey, child, and ye must not grieve for me; I will come back and bring joy and comfort with me.' That's what she said," and Morva nodded her head emphatically. "Oh, she will come, she will come, as she has promised, and bring you comfort; what it will be I cannot tell," and leaning her head coaxingly on the old man's arm she asked, in a playful tone of mystery, "now what can it be, this great blessing she is going to bring you?" "I don't know," said the old man, taking scant interest in her surmises; he was thinking how he would bear this fresh loss! "But what do you think?" "A Bible, perhaps." "A Bible!" said Morva impatiently, "no--no, not a Bible; Sara knows you have plenty of them at Garthowen, and she has too much sense to bring you another--no! 'tisn't that! but oh, what will it be, I wonder?" And day after day this was the question that ran through her thoughts, "What will it be, I wonder?" Sitting down to her milking she sang with full voice once more the old song which Daisy loved. Of late her voice had been very low, and the song scarcely reached beyond Daisy's sleek sides, but to-day it came back, and the farmyard was filled with happy melody. Everything went on as usual in the farm. Ann tried to let no difference be seen in her manner to her father, unless indeed she was a little more tender and loving. The farm servants, who, if they had not been at the Sciet, had yet heard the tale of disgrace, were unanimous in their endeavours to comfort the old mishteer whom they loved with so much loyalty. "Pwr fellow bâch!" they said to each other, "'twas for his son after all, and if he had kept it to himself nobody would have known anything about it!" He alone was altered, going about with a saddened mien and gentler voice than of old, and apparently finding his chief solace in the company of his little grandson, who followed him about as closely and untiringly as Tudor did. "Ah, we are brave companions, aren't we, Gwil?" he would sometimes ask with a tremble in his voice. "Odin (Yes, we are)," said the child. "And thou lov'st thine old grandfather with all thine heart, eh?" "Odw (Yes, I do!)," said the child, impatient to be gone. They were sitting under the elder tree in the farmyard. "Stop a minute," said the old man, in a husky, anxious voice, "if da-cu (grandfather) had done anything wrong, wouldst love him still the same?" "Oh, more!" said the boy, "because then we'd be two naughty boys!" And while they sat under the elder tree, and Morva helped Ann with her churning, five miles away, on the wind-swept high road, a bent figure was trudging along, with slow but steady footsteps, with the thought of them all in her mind, and the sweet memory of home in her heart, but with an earnest purpose in her eyes; to bring happiness and hope to her old friend, to the man who in the days gone by had jilted her, and torn her heart strings, who had won her love, but had married another woman, and regretted it ever after. It was Sara, who had risen with the first streak of dawn, and snatching a hurried breakfast had left her foster-daughter asleep. She had lifted the lid of the coffer and had taken out the best half of her scarlet mantle, leaving the worn and faded half hanging Over the spinning wheel. "Morva would understand," she thought, "and would wash it and lay it away in the coffer until her return." A gown too she wore, instead of her peasant dress, a gown of red and black homespun, which had been her best when she was first married. On her head a black felt hat, with low crown, and slouching brim over her full bordered cap of frilled muslin. Strong shoes with bows on the instep, her crutch stick in her hand, and a little bundle of clothes tied up in a cotton handkerchief completed her outfit, and thus equipped she stole silently to the bedside where Morva lay, flushed with the heavy sleep of youth and health. "My little daughter!" was all she said, but her eyes were full of tears as she passed through the cwrt and took the sheep path which led to the top of the moor. Reaching the brow of the hill she turned into a narrow lane, over which the thorn bushes, just showing signs of their budding greenery, almost met together. Under their branches she made her way, to where the lane opened out to a grassy square, on which stood a tiny whitewashed cottage. The thatch reached low over the door, and its one window no bigger than a child's slate. There were no signs of life, but Sara did not hesitate to raise the wooden latch and open the door, which she found unbolted. In the murky gloom of the cottage it was difficult at first to see where the bed lay, but as space was circumscribed she had not far to look; in fact, one curtained side of the bed made the wall of the passage, and she had but to turn round this to see an old and wrinkled face asleep on the pillow. "I must wake her, pwr thing," said Sara, and she began to call softly, "Nani, Nani fâch!" The sleep of age is easily put to flight, and Nani opened her eyes. "Sara ''spridion'!" she said, in astonishment. "Sara Lloyd, I mean, but I was dreaming, Sara dear. What is it?" and she sat up not a little disturbed, for Sara's name alone sufficed to arouse the latent fear of the "hysbis" or occult, always lurking in the Celtic mind. Sara only smiled as the word "'spridion" escaped the frightened woman's lips. "Is it time to get up?" she said, beginning to rub her eyes. "No, no," said Sara, taking a seat by the bedside, and leaning upon her stick. "Lie still, Nani fâch, and forgive me for awaking you, but I am going a journey, and a journey that won't wait." "Oh, dear!" said Nani, "are you going by the old trên, then? As for me, I'm too frightened of it to go and see my own daughter. She's asked me many times, and I would have good living there, but I wouldn't venture in the trên for the whole world!" "I'm not afraid of it," said Sara, "but I have never seen it. 'Twould be strange to me, and the shipping comes more natural, so I'm going to Caer-Madoc, for I know the steamer sails from there to Cardiff every Tuesday. I hope I will be there in time; but tell me, Nani, about Kitty your daughter." "She is married again, and such a good husband she has. John Parry nearly killed her, pwr thing, and then he died, and she married this man--his name is Jones." "But I want to know," said Sara, "did she say anything about Gethin Owens when she was here?" "She said she was never seeing him, and she didn't know why he was keeping away from her, and the sailors were often seeing him about the docks, but she didn't know where he was lodging now. There's glad I was to see her; but indeed, Sara fâch, it cost me a lot of money, 'cos she's got a good appetite, whatever. 'Tis a great waste to come all that long way by the trên. She wants to come again, and if it wasn't for the money--" Sara, who had no sympathy with the parsimony of many of her class, rose to go. "Well, I won't stop longer, Nani fâch; good-bye and thank you." When she saw her visitor was really going, Nani was profuse in her offers of hospitality. "Going! Caton pawb! not without breakfast?" But Sara was gone, and already making her way to the high road which led along the brow of the hill to Caer-Madoc. It was twenty years since she had last been in the town, and even in this remote place twenty years had brought changes--the busy streets, the shops, the cries of the vendors of herrings and cockles, would have bewildered and puzzled her had she not been possessed by a strong purpose and sustained by that faith which can move mountains. Aided by old memories she found her way to the quay and to the small steamer with the long English name, which plied twice a week between the ports of Caer-Madoc and Cardiff. "Are you going to Cardiff?" she asked the master, who stood on the quay. "Why, yes, of course this is the day, and we are starting in a quarter of an hour. Who are you?" he said, looking with amused curiosity at the quaint figure with her crutch stick and black bundle. "I am Sara Lloyd of Garthowen Moor, and I want to go with you to Cardiff. Will you take me?" "Of course, little woman, if you can pay." "Oh, yes," said Sara, undoing the corner of her pocket-handkerchief, "how much is it?" and she held out a half-sovereign. "Eight shillings--you pay in there," and he pointed to a red painted shed, "but look you here, little woman, that big pocket doesn't suit such a place as Cardiff, 'tis too easily got at; tie your money up tight and put it inside the breast of your gown." "Yes," said Sara, obeying, "and thank you." "Look alive, then, and I will take you on board." Sara found a seat near the prow of the ship. "We'll have to tie a few weights to you by and by, I'm thinking, or you'll be blown away," said the captain, as he kindly arranged some boxes and baskets so as to shelter her a little from the strong March wind. "Am I the only passenger?" "Yes. 'Tis mostly goods we carry, but sometimes we have a stray passenger. And where would you be going now so far from Garthowen Moor in your old age?" Welsh curiosity is a quantity that has to be taken into account. "I am going to Cardiff." "Yes, yes; but when you get there?" "I don't know for sure." The captain looked grave. "You have a daughter, perhaps, or a son at Cardiff?" "No, neither," said Sara. "'Tis the oldest son of Garthowen I am seeking for--Gethin Owens, have you ever seen him?" "Gethin Owens!" said the captain, in a tone of surprise. "What? the dark brown chap with the white teeth and the bright eyes like a starling's?"--Sara nodded--"and gold rings in his ears?" "That's him," said Sara. "Do you know him?" "Caton pawb! as well as if he was my own son. He's mate of the _Gwenllian_, trading to Monte Video and other foreign parts. The _Gwenllian_ sailed about four months ago and would be back about now. Is that what you are expecting?" "Yes," said Sara, "Ebben Owens Garthowen is wearing his heart away longing for his son, and I think if I can see him I have news for him that will bring him to the old home." "Well, well," said the captain, "little did I think the mate of the _Gwenllian_ was the son of my old friend Ebben Owens Garthowen! Why! long ago I have been stopping with him, when he was a young man and I the same. I remember he was courting a handsome girl there, the finest lass you ever set your eyes upon, straight she was, and tall, with brown hair and dark blue eyes, like the night sky with the stars in it; oh! she was a fine lass, and she carried her pail on her head as straight as a willow wand," and the old captain clasped his own waist above the hips, and strutted about with an imaginary pail on his head. "Well, I heard afterwards that Ebben Owens treated her shocking bad, and married another girl, with money, but they say he never cared for her, and was never happy with her; and serve him right, say I. Dear! dear! how the time slips by!" "Yes," said Sara, "he is an old man now, and in sore trouble. I live on his land, and I want to bring happiness back to Garthowen." "Of course, of course!" said the captain, "but indeed; little woman, I'm afraid you'll have hard work, for there's something strange about that lad lately; he's keeping with the English sailors when he's in port and avoiding all his old companions. I have heard my son tell of him too, and how altered he is, and how angry the Welsh sailors are with him, but I believe he is stiddy and upright." "Well," said Sara, "if I can only have a word with him 'twill be all right." "Jâr-i! you have pluck, little woman, and 'tis well to have a friend like you. Well, I'll do my best for you. I'll find you a night's lodging and somebody to show you the way about next day. Mrs. Jones, Bryn Street, would take you in; it's where I go myself when I do spend a night ashore." "A hundred thanks. That's where I'd like to go because I know her and her mother." When the captain left her she fell into a reverie, her sweet, patient face, with its delicate complexion, lighted up by the images of retrospection; the dark blue eyes, which held so much insight and purpose in their depths, were still beautiful under their arched eyebrows, the soft, straight fringe of hair combed down over her forehead like a little child's showed the iron-grey of age, and the mouth, a little sunken, told the same tale, but the spirit of love and peace within preserved to Sara a beauty that was not dependent upon outward form. It was felt by all who came in contact with her, and perhaps was the cause of the curious feeling of awe with which her neighbours regarded her. As the little puffing steamer ploughed her way through the clear, green water, the ever-changing sky of a March day overhead, the snow-white wreaths of spray, the clear white line of the horizon, the soft grey, receding shore, all unheeded by the captain and his three subordinates, aroused in Sara's mind the intense pleasure that only a heart at peace with itself and with Nature can feel, and as she leant her soft veined hands on her crutched stick, resting her chin upon them, a little picturesque figure on the commonplace, modern steamer, the romance of life which we are apt to associate only with the young, added its charm to the thoughts of the woman of many years. The beauty of the world, the joy of it, the great hopes of it, all filled her soul to overflowing, for she believed her journey would bring light and happiness to Ebben Owens. This had been the desire of her young life, and would now be granted to her in her old age. Yes! Sara's heart was full of joy and gratitude, for she knew neither doubt nor fear. CHAPTER XXI THE MATE OF THE "GWENLLIAN" "There!" said Mrs. Jones next morning, as she gave Sara's toilet a finishing touch, consisting of sundry tugs of adjustment to the red mantle and an encouraging pat on the shoulders; "there! go 'long with you now and find your precious Gethin, and give him a good scolding from me. Tell him he is the last man in the world I would expect to desert an old friend as he has done lately. There! the sight of such a tidy, fresh-looking little country woman will do our pale-faced town people good. Oh, anwl! I wish my Tom was alive; he'd have piloted you straight to the _Gwenllian_. He knew every ship that came into the docks. His heart was with the shipping though he could do nothing but look at them, poor boy!" and drying her eyes with her apron she dismissed Sara, who started with a brave heart. Up the grimy, uninteresting Bryn Street, which the bright morning sunlight scarcely improved, and soon into a wide, busy thoroughfare where hurrying footsteps and jostling crowds somewhat disconcerted her. The gay shops, especially the fruit shops, interested her greatly, as well as the vehicles of every description, from the humble costermonger's to the handsome broughams bearing their wealthy owners to their offices for the day; the prettily-dressed children who toddled beside their busy mothers to their early shopping; and, above all, the strains of a brass band which was enlivening the morning hours with its familiar _repertoire_. Each and all were a revelation of delight to the simple peasant. Straight from the gorse and heather, a woman exceptionally endowed with the instincts of a refined nature, one whose only glimpses of the world had been gathered from the street of a small provincial town, was it to be wondered at that to her the varied sights and sounds around her seemed like the pageantry of a dream? "'Tis a blue and gold world," she murmured, "and I'm glad I have seen it before I die, but I can't think why the people look so dull and cross." Although she was unconscious of it, she was herself an object of interest to the hurrying passers-by. Many of them turned round to look at the picturesque peasant woman, with her country gown and quaint headgear. "A woman come down from the hills," said a lady to her companion, as Sara passed them, for a moment raising her eyes to theirs. "And what a sweet face, and what wonderful eyes, so dark and blue. There is something touching in that smooth fringe of grey hair." But Sara passed on unheeding. She was now in a quieter street, and as she passed under the high grey walls of the jail, the prison van crossed her path. The heavy iron doors opened and it passed out of her sight; the doors closed with a soft click and a turn of the key, and Sara went on her way with a sigh. "There are grey and black shadows in the making of it, too," she said, and hurried on. Once or twice she stopped to ask her way of a passer-by. "The docks this way? Yes, go on, and turn to the left." At the end of the road she came upon a crowd of boys who were playing some street game with loud shouts and laughter, and Sara, who had hitherto braved all dangers, shrank a little. "Hello, mother! where are you going? There's a penny to pay for passing through this way," and they crowded clamorously around her. She looked at them calmly, disregarding their begging. "Iss one of you will show me the docks, then shall he have a penny. You," she said, pointing to one with a round pale face, and honest black eyes. "Yes 'll I," said the boy, and he turned down a corner, beckoning to her to follow. "Go on, old witch!" cried the disappointed ones; "where's your broom?" "Can't you speak Welsh?" she asked, as she came abreast with her guide. "Yes, that can I," said the boy in his native tongue. "Oh, very good, then. 'Tis the _Gwenllian_ I am wanting--Captain Price--can you find her?" "Oh, yes, come on," said the boy. "I was on board of her yesterday morning, but she was about sailing for Toulon with a cargo of coal. Most like she's gone." Sara's heart sank, and as they came in sight of the forests of masts, the bales of goods, the piles of boards, of pig iron, of bricks and all the other impedimenta of a wharf, for the first time her heart was full of misgivings. "Stop you there," said the boy, "and I will go and see," and he darted away, leaving Sara somewhat forlorn amongst the rough crowd of sailors and dockmen. "Hullo, mother!" said a jolly-looking red-faced man who had nearly toppled over the little frail figure; "what you doing so far from home? They are missing you shocking in some chapel away in the hills somewhere, I'm sure." "Well, indeed, 'tis there I would like to go as soon as my business is ended. 'Tis Gethin Owens I am looking for, mate of the _Gwenllian_." "Oh, ho," said the man, "you may go back to chapel at once, little woman; you won't find him, for he sailed yesterday for France." At this moment the boy returned with the same information, and Sara turned her face sorrowfully away from the shipping. "I will give you two pennies if you will take me back to Bryn Street." "Come on," said the boy. He did not tell her that his home lay in that identical street, and that he was already due there. Once more the little red mantle passed through the busy crowd. Not for years had Sara felt so sad and disappointed, the heavy air of the town probably added to her dejection. Mrs. Jones was loud in her sympathy as Sara, faint and weary, seated herself on the settle. "Oh, Kitty Jones fâch!" she said, leaning on her stick and swaying backwards and forwards. "I am more sorry than I can say. To go back without comfort for Garthowen or my little Morva. He's gone to France, and I suppose he won't be back for a year or six months, whatever, and I have no money to stop here all that time." "Six months!" said Mrs. Jones; "there's ignorant you are in the country. Why, he'll be back in a fortnight, perhaps a week. What's the woman talking about?" "Yes, indeed?" said Sara, in delighted astonishment. "Yes, I am a very ignorant woman, I know, but a week or a fortnight, or even three weeks, I will stop," and the usual look of happy content once more beamed in her eyes. Every day little Tom Jenkins, upon whom Sara's two pennies had made a favourable impression, went down to the docks to see if the _Gwenllian_ had arrived. When a week, a fortnight, and nearly three weeks had passed away, and still she was not in port, Mrs. Jones suggested that probably she had extended her voyage to some other port, or was perhaps waiting for repairs. At last one sunny morning Tom Jenkins came in with a whoop. "The _Gwenllian_ is in the docks!" he cried, and Sara prepared at once for another expedition in that direction. "Wait a bit," said Mrs. Jones. "You can write, Sara?" "Yes, in Welsh," said the old woman. "Well, then, send a letter, and Tom will take it for you." Sara took her advice, and, putting on her spectacles, wrote as follows: "Sara Lloyd, Garthowen Moor, is writing to thee, Gethin Owens, to say she is here at Mrs. Jones's, No. 2 Bryn Street, with good news for thee. All the way from Garthowen to fetch thee, my boy, so come as soon as thou canst." The writing was large and sprawly, it was addressed to "Gethin Owens, mate of the _Gwenllian_,--Captain Price," and when Tom had departed, with the letter safe in his jacket pocket, the two women set themselves to wait as patiently as they could; but the hours dragged on heavily until tea-time. "Gethin was fond of his tea," said Mrs. Jones, "and I wouldn't wonder if he'd be here before long." The tea table was laid, the cakes were toasted the tea brewing was delayed for some time. It was Mrs. Jones's turn now to be anxious, and even irritable; but Sara had quite regained her composure. "He'll come," she said. "I know he'll come. I know my work is nearly over." "There's missing you I'll be," said Mrs. Jones. "I wish my poor old mother was as easy to live with as you, Sara; but 'tis being alone so long has made her cranky. And the money--oh, she loves it dearly. Indeed, if I can get Davy to agree, we will give up this house and go home and live near her; 'tis pity the old woman should grow harder in her old age." "Yes," said Sara. "'Tis riper and softer we ought to be growing in our old age, more ready to be gathered. I will go and see her sometimes; oftener than I have." Their conversation was interrupted by a shadow passing the window, and a firm footstep in the passage. "Hoi, hoi!" said a loud, breezy voice, "Mrs. Jones!--how is she here?" and Gethin Owens clasped her hand with a resounding clap. "Much you care how I am, Gethin Owens. Never been to see me for so long." "Well, you look all the better for my absence, I think. But what you want with me? Tom Jenkins said an old woman wanted to see me shocking, and I gave him a clatch on his ear, to teach him not to call a young woman like you an old woman. Why, you look ten years younger than when I saw you last." "Go 'long, Gethin Owens," said Mrs. Jones. "Didn't you have the letter?" "No. Tom said the boys in the streets had torn it in a scrimmage they had; but he gave me your message." "Well, come in and look on the settle then." In the shadow of the settle, Sara sat listening to the conversation, with a look of amusement in her eyes. Gethin looked a moment into the dark corner, and, recognising her, took two steps in advance, with extended hands and a smiling greeting on his lips; but suddenly the whole expression of his face changed to one of anxiety and distrust. "What is it," he said, "has brought you so far, Sara? Is the old man dead?" "Nonsense, no!" said Sara. "Well, you wouldn't come so far to tell me Will was married." "Indeed I would, then," she said, rising. "Come, thou foolish boy, didn't I say it was good news? Oh! but thou hasn't had my letter." Gethin took both her hands between his own. "Tis very kind of thee, Sara fâch, but a letter would have brought me the news quite as safely. Well! I wish him joy. 'Tisn't Gethin Owens is going to turn against his brother, because he has been a fortunate man, while I have been unfortunate. Yes, I wish him joy, and sweet Morva every blessing under the sun." "Twt, twt!" said Sara, "thee art all wrong, my boy. 'Tisn't Morva he has married at all! and that's how I thought a letter could not explain everything to thee as I could myself, and bring thee home to the old country again." Gethin shook his head. "No, no; I have said good-bye to Garthowen, I will never go there again." "Well! why?" said Sara, still holding his hands, and looking into his face with those compelling eyes of hers. "There is no need to tell thee, Sara," said the sailor, a dogged, defiant look coming into his eyes. "I have said good-bye to Garthowen, and will never darken its doors again." "And yet thou hast been very happy there?" "Ah! yes," said Gethin, a tender smile chasing away the angry look on his face. "I was very happy there indeed, when I whistled at my plough, with the song of the larks in my ears, and the smell of the furze filling the air. But now--no--no! I must never turn my face there again." "Wilt not, indeed?" asked Sara. "Wait till I've told thee all, my lad. And now I have a strange story to tell thee, 'tis of thy poor old father, Gethin." "My father? what's the matter with him? Thou hast said he's alive, what then? Is he ill? Not ill? What then, Sara?" and his face took a frightened expression; "what evil has come upon the old man?" His voice sank very low as he clutched the old woman's hand and wrung it unconsciously. "What is it? not shame, Sara--say, woman, 'tis not shame that has come upon him in his old age!" Sara was embarrassed for the first time. "Shame," she said, "in the eyes of men, is sometimes honour in the eyes of God! Listen, Gethin--Dost remember the night of thy going from Garthowen?" He nodded with a serious look in his eyes. "That night I had a dream; only, I was awake when I saw it. I was at Garthowen in my dream, and I saw a dark figure entering Gwilym Morris's room; he stooped down and opened a drawer, and took something out of it. I could not see the man's face, but it was not _thee_, Gethin, though thy sudden disappearance made them think at first, that thou wert the thief; only Morva and I knew better. She heard a footstep that night, and when she went out to the passage, she saw thee coming out of that room. But she and I knew that it was not thou who took the money. What dreadful sight met thee in that room, Gethin bâch, we did not know, but it was something that made thee reel out like a drunken man." "It was, it was," he answered, shuddering and covering his eyes with his hands, as though he saw it still. "'Twas a sight that shadowed the whole world to me, and has altered my life ever since. Dei anwl! 'twas a sight I would give my whole life not to have seen." "I know it all now, my boy, and I know what thou must have suffered. _'Twas thy father who took Gwilym Morris's money_. Sorrow and bitter repentance have been his companions by day, and have sat by his pillow at night, ever since he was tempted to commit that sin. He has become thin, and haggard, and old. He confessed it all at the Sciet. And think how hard it must have been for him to bring himself to tell it all before the men who had thought so highly of him. 'Twas for Will's sake, but 'twas you that he wronged, Gethin, and that is what is breaking his heart." "Me!" said Gethin. "Me? He is not grieving for me, is he? Poor old man! he did me no wrong; 'twas I by going away, brought the dishonour upon myself. And he confessed it all!" "Yes," said Sara, "and made it all as black as he could. Canst forgive him, Gethin?" "Forgive him? Fancy Gethin Owens _forgiving_ anyone! as if he was such a good man himself! especially his own father! I have nothing to forgive; he did me no harm, poor old man. And if all the world is going to turn against him because his love for his son did prove stronger than his honesty, why! it's home to Garthowen I'll go, to cheer him and to love him, and to show the world that I for one will stick to him, weak or strong, upright or sinful!" "Gethin bâch! thou know'st what real love is! Love that no folly or weakness, or even sin, in the dear one can alter. That is what I have come to fetch; a son to support and comfort my old friend in his latter days. Gwilym Morris is good and kind to him, and Ann--thou know'st they are married these four years?" "Yes, Jim Brown told me, and I was very glad." "But 'tis his own son he is longing for. ''Tis my boy Gethin I want to see,' he says; 'he was so kind to me.'" "Did he say that?" "That did he." "Diwss anwl! I never knew he cared a button for me." He was longing to ask for Morva. "Thee hasn't asked for Morva yet," said Sara. "Is she well?" "Oh! well--quite well, and as happy as a bird since Will is married." "Since Will is married! How can that be if he has deserted her and married another woman? I never thought Will would do that! And who has he married? "A lady, Gethin! Miss Gwenda Vaughan of Nantmyny--didst ever hear such a thing?--and as sweet a girl as ever lived!" "Well, well, and so Will has married a lady? Well, that's his choice, mine would never lie that way; a simple country lass for me, or else none at all, and most likely 'twill be that. Well, we may say good-bye to Will. I suppose we sha'n't see much more of him." "Perhaps not." "But 'tis Morva I'm thinking of, Sara; how does she bear it? She is hiding her grief from you--she loved him, I know she loved him! and for him to turn from her and give his love to another must have been a cruel grief to her." "Gethin," said the old woman, "she never loved him. She promised to marry him when she was a child, before she knew what love meant, but since she has grown up her heart has been refusing to keep the promise which bound her to Will. She has tried over and over again to get her freedom; like those poor birds we see caught in the net sometimes, she has fluttered and fluttered, but all in vain; and when the letter came from Will to Garthowen telling his father of the wonderful marriage that was coming so near, 'twas as if someone had broken the net and let the bird go free. And there's Morva now, happy and bright like she was before she found out that her promise to Will was galling her sore. 'Tis only one thing she wants now, Gethin. 'Tis for Garthowen to be happy, and that will never be till thou art home once more. Come, Gethin bâch, come home with me; our hearts are all set upon thee." "Halt!" said Gethin, and he pushed his fingers through his hair until it stood on end. "Phew! Mrs. Jones was never stinting with her fire; 'tis stifling hot here," and he turned away to the doorway, and stood a moment looking out into the street. "Will married--and not to Morva!" What wild hopes were rising again within him? but he crushed them down, and turned on his heel with a laugh. "How you women can live day after day with a roaring fire I can't think--but come, Sara, on with your story." "Well!" she said, "all the way from Garthowen I have come to fetch thee, Gethin, and thou must come home with me." "Would Morva like to see me?" he said, in a low, uncertain voice. "Oh! Gethin, thou art a foolish man, and a blind man! Morva does not know what I have come here for; but if thou ask'st me the question, 'Would Morva be glad to see me?' I answer 'Yes.'" "D'ye think that--that--" "Never mind what I think, come home and find out for thyself." "Sara, woman," said Gethin, bringing his fist down with a thump on the table, "take care what you are doing. I tell you it has taken me three long years to smother the hopes which awoke in my heart when I was last at home. Don't awake them again, lest they should master me; unless you have some gleam of hope to give me." Sara laughed joyfully. "Well, now, how much will satisfy thee?" "D'ye think, Sara, she could ever be brought to love me?" "Well," she said mischievously, "thee canst try, Gethin. Come home and try, man!" "What day is it to-day? 'Tis Tuesday; I'll only stop to settle with Captain Price, and I'll come home, Sara. Wilt stop for me?" "No, no, I have been too long from home. Tomorrow the _Fairy Queen_ is going back, and I will go with her. I can trust thee, my boy, to follow me soon." "Dei anwl! Yes! the ship's hawser wouldn't keep me back! I'll be down there one of these next days. I'll cheer the old man up--and Sara, woman, I have money to lay out on the farm. 'Tis too long a story to tell thee now, how a man I helped a bit in the hospital at Montevideo died, and left me all his money, 500 pounds! I didn't care a cockleshell for it, but to-day I am beginning to be glad of it. There's glad I'll be to see the old place again! Mrs. Jones," he shouted, "come here and hear the good news. Didn't I tell you years ago I was going home to Garthowen, to the cows and the sheep and the cawl! and so I am then, and it is this good little woman who has brought it about!" and clasping his arms round Sara, he drew her from the settle, and twisted her round in a wild dance of delight, Sara entreating, laughing, and scolding in turns. "Caton pawb! the boy will kill me!" but he seated her gently on the settle before he went away. "I'll be on the wharf to meet you to-morrow, Sara, and see you safe on board the _Fairy Queen_. Good-night, woman, 'tis a merry heart you are sending away to-night!" and as he passed up the street they heard his cheerful whistle until he had turned the corner. CHAPTER XXII GETHIN'S STORY True to his promise, Gethin was early at the docks, and as he sat dangling his legs over a coil of rope, he laughed and slapped his knee, when amongst the crowd of loiterers on the wharf-side he saw Sara's red mantle appear. "Didn't I say so?" he exclaimed, crossing to meet her, "didn't I say you'd be here an hour and a half too soon? Just like a country woman! why, the ship must wait for the tide, Sara fâch. But I'm glad you're come, we shall have time for a chat; there's some things I want you to know before I see you again." "Afraid I was, 'machgen i," said Sara, "that the steamer would start without me, and I will be quite happy to sit here and wait. Dear, dear! how full the world is of wonders that we never know of down there in the gorse and heather! all these strange people, different faces, different languages. Gethin bâch, those who roam away from home see much to open their minds." "Yes," said Gethin, "and much to make them sick of it all; 'tis glad I'll be to say good-bye to it, and to settle down in the old home again. But the time is passing, Sara fâch, and I wanted to tell thee what I have never told any one else, why I left Garthowen so suddenly. I can tell you now, since my father has let every one know of it; but I couldn't talk about it before Kitty Jones last night, for 'tis a bitter thing to know your father has been dishonourable, and has lost the respect of his neighbours. Well--'twas a night I never will forget--that night when Gwilym Morris lost his bag of gold; 'twas a night, Sara, that made a deep mark on me, a blow it was that nearly drove me to destruction and ruin. I may as well tell thee everything, Sara, and make a clean breast of it all. I had grown so fond of Morva, Diwss anwl! she was in my thoughts morning, noon, and night, and I thought she cared for me a little; but there I was mistaken, I suppose, for when I asked her, she told me she was promised to Will. 'Here behind this very bush,' she said, 'only two nights ago, I met him, and I promised him again that I would be true to him.' I have been in foreign lands when an earthquake shook the world under my feet, and at those words of Morva's I felt the same, as if the world was going to pieces; but I had to bear it; 'tis wonderful how much a man can bear!" "And a woman too, 'machgen i," said Sara, laying her soft hand upon his, "'twas a bitter time for Morva too." "I didn't know that," said Gethin, "or 'twould have been worse to bear. Well, when I went to bed that night, there was no sleep for me, no more sleep than if I was steering a ship through a stormy sea. Well, that dreadful night, the old house was very quiet, no sound but the clock ticking very loud, and the owls crying to the moon; there was something wrong with Tudor too, he was howling shocking all night, and 'twas a thing I never heard him do before, perhaps because I slept too sound. I tossed and turned till the clock struck twelve, and then I began to feel drowsy; but all of a sudden I was as wide awake as I am now. I thought I could hear a soft footstep in the passage, as if someone was walking without shoes; I listened so hard I could hear my heart beating. I thought 'twas a thief, or perhaps a murderer, and I determined to rush upon him, but somehow I could not move, for I heard a hand rubbing over the wall; 'tis whitewashed and rough you know, Sara, and the hand was a rough hand--I could hear that; then somebody passed my door, and in to Gwilym Morris's room. I was out of bed in a minute, and across the passage in the dark, for there were black clouds that night, and the moon was hidden sometimes. Just as I reached the door of Gwilym's room, whatever, she came out and lighted up the whole place, and there, Sara, I saw a sight that made my heart leap up in my throat. Indeed, indeed, 'twas a sight that I would give my life never to have seen, but I did see it, Sara, plain enough, and now you know what it was, and I can't bring my lips to put it into words. I turned back to my bed with my hands over my eyes, as if I could tear away the horrid sight. And if 'twas like an earthquake when Morva refused me, 'twas worse--oh, much worse--when I saw what I did. My old father had always been so dear to me--so much I loved him, so highly I thought of him, although, I knew he was over fond of a drop sometimes; but caton pawb! I would have staked my life on his honour, and more upon his honesty. I lay awake of course that night--yes, and many a night after, going over my troubles--worse than that, my shame; and through all my tossing and turning, one thought was clear before me, 'twould be better for me to bear the blame than for old Ebben Owens Garthowen to be known as a thief. I thought I would be far away in foreign lands or on distant seas, and so I would not hear the whispering, nor see the pointing of the fingers. What did it matter what people said about me? Morva would not have me, so what was the use of a good name to me?" "I got up before the sun rose, and I pushed a few things into my canvas bag, and went quiet down the stairs. I stopped a minute outside Ann and Morva's room. I could hear them breathing soft and regular, and so I hoped they had slept all night. Then I went into the dairy and cut enough bread and cheese to last for the day, and before anyone was up at Garthowen, I was far on my way towards Caer-Madoc. "I sailed from there to Cardiff, and there on the docks I saw many of my old friends--Tom Powell and Jim Bowen, and many others; but diwss anwl! I was ashamed to look them in the face, so I avoided them all, and went amongst the English and the foreign sailors; and in every port I was avoiding the Welsh sailors, and when I came to Cardiff I never went to Kitty Jones's any more. "Well, then, I took ship for South America, and I didn't come home for two years. All that time I led a wild and reckless life, Sara fâch. Wasn't a fight but I was in it--wasn't a row but Gethin Owens was there, drinking and swearing and rioting. I didn't care a cockle-shell what became of me; and if ever a man was on the brink of destruction, it was Gethin Owens of Garthowen during those two years. I tried everything to drown my sorrows. "'Twas just then in Monte Video I caught a fever--the yellow fever they call it--and I was in the hospital there for many weeks. They told me afterwards that I had a very bad turn of it. The doctors said they'd never seen a man so ill and yet recover. I took their word for it. But I knew nothing about it myself, for I was as happy as a king those weeks, roaming about Garthowen slopes, dancing in the mill, and whistling at the plough, and Morva at my side always. Dei anwl! When I came to myself, and saw the bare, whitewashed walls of the hospital, the foreign nurses moving about--very kind and tender they were, too, but 'twasn't Morva--Garthowen slopes, Morva, the mill and the moor had all gone, and when I saw where I was, what will you think of me, Sara, when I tell you I cried like a little child, like I did the day when I tore myself away from little Morva long ago, when I ran away from home, and heard her calling after me, 'Gethin! Gethin!' "The nurse was very kind to me. She saw my tears were falling like the rain. ''Tis weak you are, poor fellow,' says she, for she could speak English. God bless her! I will never forget her. And she did her best to strengthen me with good food and cheering words; and in time I got well, but 'twas many months before I felt like myself again. "Well, in the next bed to mine was a man, brought in when I was at my worst, or my best, having that jolly time on Garthowen slopes with Morva. When I came to myself, he was there, poor fellow, as yellow as a guinea, with black shadows under his eyes, and the parched lips that showed he was having a hard fight for his life. But singing he was all through the long nights in that strange place, though his voice was so weak and husky you could scarcely hear him; but the words, Sara fâch! I almost rose up in my bed when I heard them. What d'ye think they were but, 'Yn y dyfroedd mawr a'r tònau'?[1] My heart leapt out to him at once, and I tried hard to speak to him, but he couldn't hear me; and when I was getting better he was getting worse, till one day the black vomit came on, and then I thought 'twas all over with him. But instead of that, it seemed to do him good, for he got better after that, and very soon I was able to sit a bit by his bedside, and to talk to him about the old country. His name was Jacob Ellis, and he had been captain of the _Albatross_ trading between Swansea and Cardiff and Monte Video. He hadn't a relation in the world that he knew of. He had got on well, and had saved five hundred pounds. They were safe in the bank at Cardiff, and when he found he was not going to get better after all--for he hadn't the same healthy constitution that I had--well, nothing would do for him but he must make his will and leave all he had to me. 'Twas all right and proper, Sara, and the nurse and the doctor witnessed it. "Caton pawb! he thought I had done a lot for him, poor fellow; when, if he only knew, the Welsh hymns and the talks about Wales had helped me to get well. I had my hand on his, just like you have yours on mine now, when he died. He said a few serious words to me before he went, Sara. I will keep them to myself, but I can tell you they often come back to my memory. Well, he died and I got well, and as soon as I was strong enough I hired on board a ship bound for Cardiff. I went at once to a lawyer to see about my 500 pounds, and I felt a rich man, I can tell you, but there was no pleasure in it, Sara. "I would willingly have thrown it over the docks, if that would blot out one evening behind the broom bushes at Garthowen, and one night when I saw a sight which spoilt my life. It's twenty minutes to the starting time yet, Sara. Art tired, or will I tell the rest of my story?" "Go on, 'machgen i," said Sara, "tell it me all today, and there will be no need for us ever to have any more talk about it." "No; that is what I wish," said Gethin. "Well, with my pay in my pocket, and 500 pounds at my back, I thought I would enjoy myself as much as I could, and smother the hiraeth[2] that was so strong upon me, the longing to go home to see Morva, and you, and the moor, Sara; my father, Ann, and Will, and all of them were dragging sore at my heart, so I threw myself in with a lot of roystering fellows, who were bent upon having as many sprees as they could while their money lasted. I was keeping away from the Welsh sailors entirely, and my friend, Ben Barlow, and I were having what they call in English a jolly time. We went together to a low place near the docks, where there was singing and dancing every night for sailors. I saw many of my old companions there and amongst them was a girl called Bella Lewis, who used to come often to see Kitty Jones in Bryn Street. She wasn't a bad sort altogether, very kind-hearted and merry. She was altered a good deal since I saw her last, she looked older and thinner, but she was laughing and dancing as lively as ever. As soon as she caught sight of me, she came to me, and I think she was real glad to see me, because she thought I had been kind to her once when she was ill and very poor. "'Gethin Owens, I do believe,' she says, 'where have you been all this long time? Kitty Jones will be glad to see you, whatever.' "I saw the foreign sailor she had been dancing with looking very black at me, and I began to laugh, and talk, and joke with Bella, just to plague him, and we danced and drank together, and I soon saw that the two years I had been away had not improved her. She was more noisy, and her talk was more coarse, and many an oath was on her lips. I saw it, but I didn't care, because I had become quite reckless, and my laugh and my jokes were louder than anyone's in the room. "'Well, wherever you have been,' says Bella, 'you're very much improved, Gethin.' "'Am I that?' says I. 'And how, then?' "'Oh, well, you are not afraid of a joke, and you've not got that hard look on your mouth when you hear a light word. Oh, anwl! I was afraid of you those days; but I will say you had a kind heart, Gethin Owens.' "'Well,' I says, 'that's alright still, whatever.'" "'Well then,' she says, 'if it is, you'll take me to the Vampire Theatre to-night. Come on, Gethin Owens, for the sake of old times,' she says; and I was glad to see her, certainly, 'twas so long since I had met an old friend, and the brandy had got in my head a little, though I hadn't had so much as Bella. "'Come on, then,' sez I, for I couldn't refuse her when she said 'for the sake of old times'; and I looked round for Ben Barlow to tell him I was going, but I couldn't see him anywhere. Well, off we went together, and when we got out in the street, in spite of the flaring gas-lamps, you could see 'twas a beautiful night. The moon was shining round and clear above us, and I never could see the full moon, Sara, even far away in foreign countries, without thinking of Garthowen slopes and the moor. Well, this night they came before me very plain, but I shut them out from my thoughts, with the music from The Vampire sounding loud in nay ears, and Bella Lewis hanging on my arm. "All of a sudden, when we reached the door of the theatre, Bella turned round, and something glittered on her neck in the moonlight. "'What is that?' I said, pointing to it. "''Tis my necklace that you gave me,' she said; 'twas in my pocket at the dancing. I was so afraid it would drop off.' "And there it was hanging row under row, and the shells showing all their colours in the bright moonlight. I don't know how can such things be, Sara, but as sure as I'm here I saw Morva standing there, just as I saw her that night when I gave her her necklace, standing under the elder-tree, with the round moon shining full on her face. Sara, woman, I nearly lost my breath, and had to lay my hand on the doorpost to steady myself. Bella had hold of my arm, and I felt as if a snake was hanging there that I wanted to throw off. The music came full and loud into the street, and I hated it all. I cannot tell what came over me, but my knees trembled and my hands--mine, remember, Gethin Owens, the big, strong sailor!--my hands were shaking like a leaf when I took the tickets. I tried to throw it off, and to laugh and talk again with Bella. "'What's the matter?' she said; but I couldn't answer, for whenever I looked at her that glittering necklace brought Morva's face before me so plain as if she had been there herself; and when we sat down in the theatre I couldn't hear the music and I couldn't see the stage, because soft in my ears was Morva's voice calling me, like she called me that day on the slopes when I tore myself from her little clinging arms: 'Gethin! Gethin! come back!' was plain in my ears. "I looked round me quite moidered. Lots of Bella's friends were there, and lots of mine; but I could not stop. I stood up, determined to go out, whatever the others might think of me, for all the time Morva's voice was in my ears calling 'Gethin! Gethin!' "'I am going,' said I to Bella; 'somebody is calling me.' And there, close to me, who should I see but Ben Barlow sitting alone. I pushed the play bill in his hand. 'Look after Bella,' I said; 'I am going,' and I went towards the door. I could hear Bella's friends laughing and shouting, and the last thing I heard as I went out was a shower of bad names and foul words that Bella was flinging after me. "The tide is nearly full, I see; she'll be starting directly, but I have almost told you everything now. "I shipped for another long voyage after that, and only now I have come back; but indeed, Sara fâch, whether 'twas a dream or vision, or what, I don't know, but never, in storms or wrecks or fine weather, on land or sea, will I forget the strong hand that laid hold of me that night, and turned my face away from the music, the lights, the sin and the folly of the town. I have told thee all, Sarah fâch. Wilt still be my friend?" "For ever, 'machgen i!" "Then it is to the old country I'm going, Sara, back to the sea wind, the song of the lark, and the call of the seagulls on the bay. I'll be home one of these days; as soon as I can get things settled here. Diwss anwl! I must make haste or the steamer will start with me aboard. All right, captain, take care of her. She's a good friend to me." "Don't I know it?" said the old captain, shaking hands warmly with both. "Didn't she come up with me about a month ago, and didn't I direct her to safe lodgings? 'Fraid I was, man, that with her innocent face and her wide tick pocket, she would be robbed or murdered or something. But here you are safe again, little woman. Going home to the old countryside?" "Yes," said Sara, laughing. "I am quite safe, and I have spent a pleasant time with Kitty Jones, but I am not sorry to leave your big smoky town. Ach y fi! 'tis pity to think so many people live and die there without sight of the sea and the cliffs and the moor. Poor things! poor things!" "Well! 'tis well to be contented with one's lot," said the old man, "but I don't know how I would be now without a sight of the docks and the shipping, and a yarn with my old comrades on the waterside sometimes, but I am going to try it, whatever. Marged is grumbling shockin' because I don't stop at home in our little cottage. It's a purty place, too, just a mile outside Carmarthen, but quiet it is, shockin' quiet! And you, Gethin Owens, little did I think these two years I bin meeting you about the docks and the shipping, that you wass the son of my old friend, Ebben Owens of Garthowen! Why din you tell me, man?" Gethin coloured with embarrassment, while he pretended to arrange a sheltered seat for Sara, who came bravely to his assistance. "And how could he know, captain, that you were the friend of his father?" she said in Welsh, for she had gathered the sense of the English talk between the two sailors. "Well! that's true indeed," said the captain, scratching his head; "we were both in the dark. But there's the bell! You must go, my lad, if you won't come with us." "Not to-day," replied Gethin, "but one of these next days I'll be following that good little woman." And when, from the edge of the wharf, he watched the little steamer making her way between the river craft, Sara's red mantle making a bright spot in the grey of the fog and smoke, his heart went with her to the old homestead, his old haunts, and his old friends. [1] "In the deep waters and the waves," a well-known and favourite hymn. [2] Home sickness. CHAPTER XXIII TURNED OUT! The first few days following the Sciet were days of anxious waiting for Ebben Owens. He had laid his soul bare before his son, the idol of his life, and he waited for the answer to his letter, with as intense an anxiety as does a prisoner for the sentence of the judge. He rose with the dawn as was always his custom, but now, instead of the active supervision of barn or stable or cowshed, which had filled up the early morning hours, his time was spent in roaming over the moor or the lonely shore, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes bent on the ground. Morva watched him from the door of her cottage, and often, as the morning mists evaporated in curling wisps before the rising sun, the sad, gaunt figure would emerge from the shadows and pass over the moorland path. Then would Morva waylay him with a cheerful greeting. "There's a brâf day we are going to have, 'n'wncwl Ebben!--" "Yes, I think," the old man would answer, looking round him as if just awakening to the fact. "Yes, look at the mist now rolling away from Moel Hiraethog, and look at those rocks on Traeth y daran which looked so grey ten minutes ago; see them, all tipped with gold, and, oh, anwl, look at those blue shadows behind them, and the bay all blue and silver!" "Yes," answered her companion, looking round with sad eyes, "'tis all beautiful." "Well, now," said Morva, "I am only an ignorant girl, I know, and I have many foolish thoughts passing through my mind, but this, 'n'wncwl Ebben, isn't it a wise and a true one? 'Tis Sara has told me, whatever." "What is it?" he asked. "If Sara told thee 'tis sure to be right." "Yes, of course," said Morva. The sun was gradually lighting up the moor with golden radiance. The old man stood with his back to the light, the girl facing him, bathed in the bright effulgence of the sunrise, her hair in threads of gold blown by the sea breeze like a halo round her face, her blue eyes earnest with the light of an inner conviction which she desired to convey to her companion. "Look, now," she said, "how everything is bathed in light and beauty! Where are the grey shadows and the curling mists? All gone! 'Tis the same world, 'n'wncwl Ebben, dear, but the sun has come and chased away the darkness. 'Tis like the grace of God, so mother says, if we will open our hearts and let it in, it shines upon us like the sunlight. His love spreads through our whole being, He blots out our sins if we are sorry for them, He smiles upon us and holds out His loving arms to us, and yet we turn our backs upon Him, and walk about in the shadows with our heads bent down, and our eyes fixed upon the ground. Every morning, mother says, when the sun rises, God is telling us, 'This is how I love you, this is how I will fill your hearts with warmth and light and joy.' Now, isn't that true, 'n'wncwl Ebben?" "What about the mornings when the mist does not clear away, lass, but turns to driving rain?" "Oh, well, then," said Morva, not a whit daunted, "the rain and the clouds are wanted sometimes for the good of the earth, and, remember, 'tis only a thin veil they make; the sunshine is behind them all the time, filling up the blue air, and ready to shine through the least break in the clouds. And, after all, 'n'wncwl Ebben," she added, in a coaxing tone, "'tis very seldom the mornings do turn to rain and fog. You and I, who are out on the mountains so early, know that better than the townspeople, who lie in bed till nine o'clock, they say, and often by that time the glory of the morning is shaded over." "Well, perhaps," he said. "Thou art more apt to count the clear dawns, while I count the grey ones." "Twt, twt, you must leave off counting the grey ones. There's a verse in mother's Bible that says, 'Forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.'" "Yes, indeed, 'merch i, I've read it many times, but I never thought much of the meaning of it before. 'Tis a comforting verse, whatever, and I will look for it in my Bible." "Yes, I suppose 'tis in every Bible," said Morva, with a merry laugh; "but, indeed, I feel as if mother's brown Bible was the best in the world, and was full of messages to brighten our lives. Didn't I say I was a foolish girl?" "Thee't a good girl, whatever; but 'tis time to milk the cows." "Yes, indeed. Let me shut the door and I will come back with you." And as she ran over the dewy grass, he looked after her with a smile. "She's got the sea wind in her heels, I think," he said. He chatted cheerfully as they walked home together, and gladdened Ann's heart by making a good breakfast. In the course of the morning Morva entered the best kitchen, bearing a letter which Dyc "pigstye" had just brought from Pont-y-fro. "Tis from Will, 'n'wncwl Ebben," said the girl; "here are your glasses, or will I call Ann to read it to you?" "Let me see, is it English or Welsh?" said Ebben Owens, opening it with trembling fingers. "Oh! 'tis Welsh, so read thou to me. My glasses are not suiting me so well as they were." The truth was, he was too nervous to read the letter himself, a fact which Morva quite comprehended. "MY DEAR FATHER," began Will, "I daresay you are expecting to hear from me, but I have had a good deal to do since we returned from our wedding tour. The contents of this letter will surprise you, I am sure, but I hope they will please you too. We are very happy in our new home, and my uncle, though living under the same roof with us, is very kind and considerate, and never interferes with our plans. He seems very fond of Gwenda, and it would be strange if he were not, for she is as good as she is beautiful. The church here is filled with a large congregation, and they seem to appreciate my ministrations thoroughly. There is, I am glad to say, very little dissent in the parish. You know I never liked dissent, but Gwenda is broader in her views, and wants to convert me to her way of thinking. Now this letter is really more a message from her than from me. She wants to know if you will have us at the farm for a week or a fortnight, when the spring is a little more advanced. She wants to see the moor when the gorse is in blossom. She would like to know you more intimately, she says, and would enjoy nothing more than a taste of real farm life; she therefore begs, that if you can have us you will not make any alteration in your ways of living. She sends her love to Ann, and hopes she will put up with her for a little while. If you will let us know when it will be convenient to you, we will fix a time to come to Garthowen. I remain, dear father, "Your affectionate son, "WILLIAM OWEN." Ebben Owens had been gradually growing more excited, and at the last word said with a gasp: "He has forgotten my confession, Morva; I am of no consequence to him!" "Yes--yes," said the girl, "here's another half sheet with 'P.S.' at the top," and she continued to read: "Dear father, Gwenda was looking over my shoulder, so I could not add what I say now. Please ask Ann to put the best knives and forks on the table, and to bring out mother's silver teapot when we come. I forgot to refer to the contents of your last letter. You make too much of your fault, dear father, you have made a cornstack of a barleymow. I am only sorry you have published it abroad as you have done. You need only have confessed to God, or if you wanted to do more, I am an ordained priest. I can't imagine why you did not ask Gwilym to lend you the money; at all events you returned it as soon as you could. Ask Jacob the Mill to keep one of Fan's pups for me." Ebben Owens was too excited by the rest of the letter to notice the callousness of the postscript, and thought only of the kindness which so easily forgave his sin. "Call Ann," he said, and Morva went joyfully. "Come, Ann fâch!" she cried, at the foot of the stairs, "here's good news for you. Will and his wife are coming to see you." Ann came down in a flurry, half of pleasure and half of fright. "Oh, anwl!" she said, as she entered the kitchen, "there's a happy time it will be for us all. Oh! mustn't we bustle about and get everything nice for them. I must rub up the furniture in the best bedroom and get the silver teapot out and the silver spoons!" "Yes," said her father, rubbing his knees, "'twill be a grand time indeed! When will they come, I wonder? Perhaps we have not quite lost Will after all." "Twt, twt, no," said Morva; "didn't mother always say that they would come back to you?" "Yes, indeed--do you think she meant Gethin too?" "I think she meant him too," said Morva, blushing. "When will the gorse and the heather be in full bloom, I wonder? Caton pawb! I have never noticed it much," asked the old man. "Oh! in another month," answered Morva, "'twill be gold and purple all over, with soft blue and brown shadows in the mornings, and in the evenings grey and copper in all the little hollows. Oh, 'tis beautiful! and I can show her where the plovers lay their eggs, and I will take her to listen for the curlew's note coming out of the mist like a spirit whistler, and I can take her down to the rocks by Ogo Wylofen, too, where the seals are making their home. But, indeed, Will knows it all as well as I do, and he will like to show them all to her himself, I think." From that day light seemed to dawn upon the old man's soul; his step grew firmer, he stooped less in the shoulders, he looked less on the ground and more bravely on his fellow travellers on the road of life. He did not flinch from the consequences of his confession, but seemed to find some inward peace, which more than recompensed him for the discredit which he had brought upon himself. From this time forward a great change was observable in him, a change for which we can find no better name than _conversion_. It is an old-fashioned word, all but tabooed in modern polite society, but where will be found another which so well expresses the complete transformation in the life and character of a man who awakes from the sleep of selfish worldliness, to the better and higher principles of spiritual life? To every human being this awakening comes sooner or later. To some, gradually and naturally as the dawning of morning, and the bright effulgence of its rays is not recognised until the darkness and clouds have already rolled away, and, lo, it is day. Upon others it bursts with the suddenness of a thunderstorm, and the soul cowers under the threatening peals, and is riven by the lightning flashes of conscience before it reaches the haven of calm and peace. To some, alas, the awakening comes not at all, until through the open door of death the soul escapes from the veil of flesh which has hidden from it the true life. "Is there a 'Sciet' next Sunday?" asked Ebben Owens, as they all sat at tea together one evening. "No--not till the Sunday after," said Gwilym, reddening. Ann's hand shook as she poured out the tea. "Father bâch!" she said tenderly, looking at him with eyes in which the tears welled up. "Oh! don't you vex about me," said the old man. "I must bear my punishment like everyone else; 'twill not be so hard as I deserve." "I must not let my feelings influence me in this matter," said Gwilym, "though you know, father, how it breaks my heart." And he held his shapely hand across the table and grasped the old man's warmly. "Yes, yes, 'tis all right; you must do your duty, only I would like it to be over soon. Gwae fi! that it could be next Sunday." "Well, I will give it out at the prayer-meeting tonight if you like, and have a special meeting next Sunday." "Yes," said Ebben Owens, "the sooner I am turned out the better. I am quite prepared. Perhaps they will take me back again some day, though I was pretty hard upon Gryffy Lewis when he got drunk, and would not agree to his being taken back again for months, when the other deacons were quite ready to forgive him. Well, well! I must live a good many years yet to repent of all my bad ways, and you must have patience with me, my little children." "Well, next Sunday it shall be then," answered the preacher; "and may God turn the bitter to sweet for you, father bâch." "Oh, it will be all right for me!" said the old man again, and sitting under the big chimney after tea, Tudor and Gwil both leaning on his knees, the old peace and content seemed in some measure to have returned to him. The following market day was a trying ordeal to him, but one from which he did not flinch. At breakfast no one suggested the usual journey into Castell On, until Ebben himself called to Magw as she passed through the kitchen. "Tell them to harness Bowler, and put the two pigs in the car. I'll sell them to-day if I can." "I will come too," said Ann, "and take little Gwil to have a new cap. He wants one shocking." She chatted volubly as they drove under the leafy ash branches which bordered the road, her father answering only in monosyllables. When the pigs had been carried shrieking, in the usual unceremonious ear-and-tail fashion into their pens, and Bowler had been led into the "Lamb" yard, the old man looked rather forlorn and desolate as he gazed after Ann, who was making her way with little Gwil down the busy street. "'Twill be hard to bear to-day," he thought. "They are all talking about me; but 'tis not so hard as I deserve." Suddenly a hand was laid on his arm, and a kindly greeting reached his ears. Mr. Price the vicar, standing at his window, had observed the Garthowen car pass into the market, and had startled his housekeeper by turning round suddenly with the question. "Didn't you say we wanted a pig, Jinny?" "That I did about six months ago, sare, but you never got one. We wanted one then because we had so much milk to spare, but now Corwen is drying up very much, and Beauty is not so good as she was." Mr. Price took snuff vigorously. "I think a little pig would look well in that stye, and he would be company for you, Jinny and we could buy a little bran or mash or something for him," he added, hunting for his stick and hat, and hurrying to the front door, Jinny looking after him with a smile of amused disdain. "'Ts-ts!" she said; "Mistheer, pwr fellow, is very ignorant, though he is so learned. 'Tis a wonder, indeed, he didn't want to buy hay for the pig!" But she went out pleased, nevertheless, and spread a bed of yellow straw in readiness for her expected "company." "I wonder who is wanting to sell a pig now," she soliloquised. "I daresay Mishteer saw an old 'bare bones' passing that nobody else would buy, and is going to take pity on him." "Poor old Ebben Owens. 'Twill be hard for him to-day," thought the vicar, as he made his way to the pig market, and in another moment he was gladdening the heart of the lonely old man by his kindly greeting. "Well, well, Mr. Price, sir! Is it you indeed so early in the market?" "Yes, I have come to buy a pig," said the vicar, holding out his hand. Embarrassment and shame suffused Ebben Owens's face with a burning glow, and he hesitated to place his own hand in the vicar's. "Have you heard about me, sir?" he asked, "I have heard everything," answered the vicar, grasping the timid hand and pressing it warmly. "And yet you shake hands with me, sir? Well, indeed." "Yes, with more respect than I have ever done before. Not condoning your sin, remember that, Ebben Owens; but honouring you for having the courage to confess it. That is sufficient proof of your repentance." There were tears in the old man's eyes as he tried to answer; but Mr. Price, seeing his emotion, hastened to change the subject. "Now let us see the pigs," he said, holding out his snuff box, from which Ebben Owens helped himself with more cheerfulness than he had felt since the meeting at which he had made his confession. They bent over the pen in conclave, during which the vicar exhibited such lamentable ignorance of the points of a pig that, had it not been for his previous kindness, he would have fallen considerably in the old farmer's estimation. "This is the fattest," he said, prodding one with his stick, and trying to look like a connoisseur. "Oh! he's too fat for you, sir; this is the one that would look well on your table." "Poor thing," said the vicar, a shadow falling on his face, as he realised that there would come a morning when the air would be rent with shrieks, and he would wish himself in the next parish. "No doubt, you're right, you're right, he looks a nice little pig; there's a nice curl in his tail, and I like his ears; he'll do very nicely. And here's Dyc 'pigstye.' Well, Dyc, how are you? Will you drive the pig home to my yard, and tell Jinny to give him a good meal, and a glass of beer for you, Dyc. And now we have settled that matter," he said, turning to the farmer with a business-like air, "I want you to come home with me, Owens, I won't keep you long, just that you may see a very nice letter I have had from your brother, Dr. Owen; 'tis all about your son and his bride, and the home they are coming to." "But, Mr. Price, sir, you haven't asked the price of the pig," said the farmer, with a gasp. "Bless me! no!" said the vicar, "I quite forgot that," and he laughed heartily at his own want of thought. "But I'm sure it won't be much. Two or three pounds, I suppose!" "Two pounds I thought of getting for this one, and two pound ten for the other." "Very cheap, too," said the vicar, drawing out the two sovereigns from his waistcoat pocket. Leaving the pen in charge of a friend, Ebben Owens accompanied Mr. Price in a state of joyful bewilderment. To walk up the street, in friendly converse with the vicar, he felt would do more than anything else to reinstate him in the good opinion of his neighbours, and as they passed through the crowded market in animated and confidential conversation, the hard verdict which many a man had passed on his conduct was changed into one of pitying sympathy. "Well," they thought, "the vicar has forgiven him, whatever, and he is a good man." Sitting in the vicarage dining-room, listening to the praises of his beloved son, Ebben Owens became less depressed, and felt braver to meet the consequences of his confession. Although he never discovered that the purchase of the pig was but a blind of the vicar's to hide his plans for helping him to regain, in some degree, the respect of his neighbours, Ebben Owens never forgot the strengthening sympathy held out to him on that much dreaded morning, and Price the vicar became to him ever after, the exemplar of all Christian graces. "There's a man now," he would say, rubbing his knees as he sat under the big chimney at home; "there's a man now, is fit to help you in this world, and to guide you to the next; and there's the truth! But he does not know much about pigs." The prospect of seeing Will once more in his old home shed a radiance over everything, and in spite of the humiliation and contrition which overshadowed him, a new-born calmness and peace gradually filled his heart. To Morva too had come a season of content and joy--why, she could not tell, for she was not free from anxiety concerning Sara's prolonged absence. Certainly the longing for Gethin's return increased every day, but in spite of this, life seemed to hold for her a cup brimming over with happiness. Going home through the gloaming one evening, singing the refrain of her milking song, she broke off suddenly and began to run towards the cottage, for lo! against the brown hill across the valley she saw the blue smoke rise from Sara's thatched chimney, and in another moment a patch of scarlet showed bright against the golden furze. "Mother anwl! Dear mother! you have come!" And she was folded in the tender loving arms. "My little daughter! I have missed thee!" said Sara, and together they entered the cottage. Supper was on the table, and the crock of porridge hung over the blazing furze fire on the hearth. "They called me into Penlau," said Sara, "as I passed through the yard, and made me bring this oatmeal, 'for thee'lt want something quick for thy supper,' they said; and there's asking questions they were about what I had seen in Cardiff. Let us have our bwdran, child, for oh! I am tired of the white bread, and the meat, and the puddings they have in the towns. Kitty Jones was very kind, making all sorts of dainties for me, but 'tis bwdran and porridge and cawl and bacon is the fittest food for human beings after all, and the nicest." "Oh, mother, tell me what you have seen?" "My little girl, 'twill take many days to tell thee all. Ladies in silks and satins--carriages and horses sparkling in the sun--men playing such beautiful music through shining brass horns--little children dressed up like the dolls you see at the fairs--fruit of every kind--grand houses and gay streets--but oh, Morva, nothing like the moor when the gorse and heather are in blossom, nothing like the sea and the rocks and the beautiful sky at night when the stars are shining; you couldn't see it, Morva, because of the lamps and the smoke." "And the moon, mother, did you see her there?" "Well, yes, indeed, she was there, but she was not looking so clear and so silvery as she is here. No, no, Morva, I thank God I have lived on the moor, and I pray Him to let me die here." Morva was longing to ask whether success had crowned her mother's mysterious journey, but refrained from doing so with a nervous shyness which did not generally mark her intercourse with Sara. "'Twas a long journey; mother; are you glad you took it?" "Why, yes, child, of course, since I've gained my object. Gethin Owens will be home before long." A crimson tide of joy rushed up into Morva's face, and an embarrassment which she turned away to hide, but which was not lost upon Sara. "Well, indeed, then," said the girl, "there's glad 'n'wncwl Ebben will be. Will I go and tell him when I have finished my bwdran?" "No, no, better not tell him anything till Gethin arrives. Lads are so odd; he may not come for a week, and that would seem long waiting to his father." It was long waiting for Morva too, but she hid the secret in her heart, and flooded the moor with happy songs. On the following Sunday evening a special Sciet was held in the gaunt grey chapel in the valley; an event of small importance to the outside world, but to Ebben Owens and every member of his family one of momentous interest. To them every event of life was brightened or shaded by its connection with their religious life, and Penmorien Chapel was almost as sacred in their eyes as the Temple of old was to the Jews. The members dropping in one by one from moor, or village, or shore, looked with sympathising curiosity as the Garthowen family entered, and took their places in the corner pew, Ebben Owens sitting with them, and for the first time for many years vacating his place amongst the deacons in the square seat under the pulpit. A formal admission of sin is of frequent occurrence at an "experience meeting," but the real confession of a sinful action is very rare. Therefore the Garthowen family required strong moral courage to enable them to pass through the trying ordeal of the Sciet, and its fiat of excommunication, with dignified firmness. The doors were closed, the soft sea wind blew up the valley, and the breaking of the waves on the shore below was distinctly audible. Sara and Morva did not attend the Sciet, but shut themselves up in their cottage, cowering over the fire as if it had been winter. Sara particularly, appeared to suffer acutely as the evening hours passed on. "There's the sun going, mother, 'tis seven o'clock, the Sciet is over. Will I go and meet them? Oh! mother, I long to comfort 'n'wncwl Ebben." "No, child, leave him alone to-night; he has better help than thou canst give him. To-night he will feel God's presence as he has never felt it before, and what else will he want, Morva? Come and read our chapter, 'merch i." And while they read by the light of their tiny candle, and the furze crackled and sparkled up the open chimney, a bronzed and stalwart man was tramping down the stony road towards the chapel. Looking down the narrow valley, he saw the broad grey sea, its ripples tipped with the crimson of the setting sun. To the left towered the high cliffs which closed in the valley, and on the right stretched away the furze-covered slopes leading to Garthowen and the moor, and the rough sailor heart throbbed with the happiness of home-coming and the re-awakening of long deferred hopes. His brown face lighted up with pleasure, as he waved his hand towards the sunlit side of the scene, but he turned his face and his footsteps into the grey shadowed court-yard of the chapel. It was Gethin! He had sailed into Caer-Madoc harbour in the afternoon, the ships being the only things considered free to come and go during the Sabbath hours. He had met an Abersethin man in the town, who had promised to bring his luggage home in his cart next day, and had supplemented the promise by the information that on this particular evening, Ebben Owens would be turned out from the Penmorien Sciet. "Jâr-i! it's time for me to start, then," said Gethin; "will I be there in time, d'ye think?" "Yes, if you walk sharp; but what will you do? You can't stop them turning him out! There's a pity!" "No, no," said Gethin, "that's all right, I suppose; but I want to be there to meet the old man at the door. He'll find he's got one son that'll stick to him, whatever. God bless him!" and he started bravely along the old familiar road. There were lights in the chapel windows as he approached, and outside the closed doors one solitary friend already waited. It was Tudor, who had sat there during the service, his eyes fixed on the blank closed door, doggedly resisting the inviting barks of a collie who had caught sight of him from the opposite hill. But when his long absent friend appeared on the scene his self-restraint was thrown to the winds, and Gethin in vain tried to check the joyous barks which accompanied his frantic gambols of greeting. "Art come to guard the poor old man, lad?" whispered Gethin, holding up a reproving finger. "Yes," said Tudor, as plainly as bark could speak. "Then hush-sh-sh," said Gethin, pointing to the closed door, and Tudor smothered his barks. The murmur of voices inside the chapel was distinctly audible, blending with the soft murmur of the sea. In a few moments the doors were opened, and the congregation filed out with a more than usually solemn look in their faces; some of the women dried their eyes, and actually refrained from even a whispered remark until they had got fairly outside the "cwrt." Gethin kept out of sight until he saw his father leave the chapel, followed closely by Ann and Gwilym. The bent head and subdued appearance of the old man went straight to the sailor's warm, impulsive heart. With a single step he was at his father's side, taking his arm and linking it in his own. "Who is it?" said Ebben Owens, his eyes blinded by tears and the darkening twilight. "Gethin it is, father bâch! come home to ask your forgiveness for all his foolish ways, and to stick to you and to old Garthowen for ever and ever." "Is it Gethin?" asked the old man, in a tone of awed astonishment; "is it Gethin indeed? Then God has forgiven me. I said to myself: 'When I see my boy Gethin at home again, then will I believe that God has forgiven me.' Now I will be happy though I'm turned out of the Sciet. God will not turn me out of heaven, now that Gethin my son has forgiven me. Hast heard all my bad ways, lad?" "Yes," said Gethin, "and I will confess, father, it nearly broke my heart. It made me feel there was no good in the world, if my old father was not good. But when I heard how brave you were in telling the whole world how you had fallen, and how you repented, my heart was leaping for joy. 'Now there's a man,' says I to myself, 'a man worth calling my father!' Any man may fall before temptation, but 'tisn't every man is brave enough to confess his sins before the world!" Arm was already hanging on her brother's arm and pressing it occasionally to her side. "Oh, Gethin!" she said, "Garthowen has been sad and sorrowful, but to-night it seems as if you had brought back all the sunshine. There's happy we'll be now." "'Tisn't my doing," said her brother, "'tis Sara Lloyd who has done it all. God bless her! She came all the way to Cardiff to fetch me home. And where is she to-night? I thought she and Morva would surely be at chapel." "She has kept away for my sake, I think," said his father. "They call her Sara ''spridion,' and they mean no good by it, but I think 'tis a good name for her, whatever, for I believe the good spirits are always around her, helping her and blessing her just as she is always helping and blessing everybody around her." "To be sure they are," said Gethin; "I always knew it from a little boy. Whether living or dying 'twould be well to be in Sara's shoes!" When they reached the old farmyard, and passed under the elder tree where the fowls and turkeys were already roosting in rows on the branches, little Gwil bounded out to meet them, Gwilym Morris at the same moment caught them up from behind, and Ebben Owens felt that his cup of earthly happiness was refilled almost to overflowing. Gethin alone missed Morva. CHAPTER XXIV A DANCE ON THE CLIFFS On the following morning Gethin was up with the dawn, and so was every one else at Garthowen, for the day seemed one of re-birth and renewal of the promise of life to all. Leading his son from cowhouse to barn, from barn to stable, Ebben Owens dilated with newly-awakened pleasure upon the romance of Will's marriage, and on his coming visit with his bride to his old home, Gethin listening with untiring patience, as he followed his father from place to place. The new harrow and pigstye were inspected, the two new cows and Malen's foal were interviewed, and then came Gethin's hour of triumph, when with pardonable pride he informed his father of his own savings, and of the legacy which had so unexpectedly increased his store; also of his plans for the future improvement of the farm. Ebben Owens sat down on the wheel-barrow on purpose to rub his knees, and Gethin's eyes sparkled with pleasure, but he looked round in vain for Morva. Some new-born shyness had overwhelmed her to-day; she could not make up her mind to meet Gethin. She had longed for the meeting so much, and now that it was within her reach, she put the joy away from her, with the nervous indecision of a child. "Have the cows been milked?" asked Gethin, casting his eyes again over the farmyard. "Oh, yes," said Magw, "while you were in the barn, Morva helped me, and ran home directly; she said her mother wanted her." All the morning she was absent, and nobody noticed it except Gethin, and Gwilym Morris, who, with his calm, observant eyes, had long discovered the secret of their love for each other. An amused smile hovered round his lips as, later in the forenoon, he entered the best kitchen bringing Gethin with him from the breezy hillside. Morva was tying Gwil's cap on when they entered, and could no longer avoid the meeting; but if Gwilym had expected a rapturous greeting, he was disappointed; for no shy schoolboy and girl ever met in a more undemonstrative manner than did these two, who for so long had hungered for each other's presence. "Hello, Morva! How art, lass, this long time?" said Gethin, taking her hand in his big brown palm in an awkward, shame-faced manner, and dropping it at once as if it had scorched him. "Well, indeed, Gethin. How art thou? There's glad we are to see thee. Stand still, Gwil," and she stooped to unfasten the knot which she had just tied. Apparently there was nothing more to be said, and Gwilym saw with amusement how all day long they avoided each other, or met with feigned indifference. "Ah, well," he thought, "'tis too much happiness for them to grasp at once. How well I remember when Ann and I, though we sought for each other continually, yet avoided each other like two shy fawns." In the evening, when the sun had set and given place to a soft round moon, he was not at all astonished to find that Gethin was missing: nor was he surprised, as he stood at the farm door, to see him rounding the Cribserth and disappear on the moonlit moor. Reaching the broom bushes, Gethin waited in their shadows, recalling every word and every look of Morva's on that well-remembered night, when she had turned away from him so firmly, though so sorrowfully. Waiting, he paced the greensward, sometimes stopping to toss a pebble over the cliffs, and ever watching where on the grey moor a little spark of light shone from Sara's window. Was he mistaken? Would she come to-night? Surely yes, for the broom bushes grew close to the path to Garthowen, and over that path she was constantly passing and repassing, whether in daylight or starlight or moonlight. "'Tis very quiet here," he thought. "It makes me think of a night watch at sea." The sea heaved gently down below, the waves breaking softly and regularly on the beach. He heard the rustling of the grasses as they trembled in the night breeze, the hoot of the owl in the ivied chimneys of Garthowen, the distant barking of a dog, the tinkle of a chain on some fishing boat rocking on the undulating waves; but no other sound broke the silence of the night. "Jâr-i! there's slow she is, if she's coming at all," said Gethin. "Will I go and see how Sara is after her journey? 'Tis what I ought to do, and no mistake, after all her kindness." And leaving the shadow of the bushes, he stepped out into the full moonlight, only to meet Morva face to face. "Well, indeed, Gethin!" she exclaimed, "I wasn't expecting to see you here so far from Garthowen." "No; nor I, lass," said Gethin, taking her hand, and continuing to hold it. "I was so surprised to see thee out alone to-night; it gave me a start. I was not expecting to see thee." "No, of course," said Morva, "and I wouldn't be here, only I was afraid I had not fastened the new calf up safely and--and--" And they looked at each other and laughed. "Well, now, 'tis no use telling stories about it," said Gethin; "I will confess, Morva, I came here to look for thee; but I can't expect thee to say the same--or didst expect to see me, too, lass? Say yes, now, da chi!" [1] Morva hung her head, but answered mischievously: "Well, if I did, I won't tell tales about myself, whatever; but, indeed, I mustn't stop long. Mother will be waiting for me." "She will guess where thou art, and I cannot let thee go, lass. Dost remember the last time we were here?" "Yes--yes, I remember." "Dost remember I told thee what I would say if I were Will? Wilt listen to me now, lass, though I am only Gethin?" Is it needful to tell that she did stay long--that Sara did guess where she was; and that there, in the moonlight, with the sea breeze whispering its own love messages in their ears, the words were spoken for which each had been thirsting ever since they had met there last? * * * * * * In the early sunrise of the next morning Ebben Owens, too, was crossing the moor. He wanted to tell Sara of the happiness which his son's return had brought him, and to thank her for her share in bringing it to pass. He wanted, too, to tell her of the sorrow and repentance which filled his heart, and the deep gratitude he felt for all she had done for him. She was already in her garden attending to her bees. "Sara, woman," said the old man, standing straight before her with outstretched hands. "Dear, dear, Ebben Owens, so early coming to see me! Sit thee down, then, here in the sun," and she placed her hand in his, endeavouring to draw him down beside her; but he resisted her gentle pressure and, still standing, bent his head like a guilty child. "No, no," he said, with a tremble in his voice. "Tell me first, can'st forgive me my shameful sin? Everybody is forgiving me too easy, much too easy, I know. 'Tis only one will be always remembering, and that is me." "I am not surprised at that, and I am glad to hear those words from thee," said Sara, "but my forgiveness, Ebben bâch, is as full and free as I believe thy repentance is deep." And gradually the old man ceased to resist her gentle persuasions, and, sitting down beside her, the bees humming round them, and the sun rising higher and higher in the sky, they conversed together in that perfect communion of soul which sometimes gilds the friendship of old age. Together they had experienced the joys of youth, in middle age both had tasted the bitterness of sorrow, and now in old age the calm and peace of evening was beginning to shine upon one as it had long shone upon the other. "I have never thanked thee," he said at last, "for all thy loving-kindness to me; never in words, Sara, but I have felt it; and I thank God that thou art living here so near me, where I can come sometimes for refreshment of spirit, as my journey draws towards the end, for I am a weak man, as thou knowest, and often stumble in my path. Ever since that first mistake of my life I have suffered the punishment of it, Sara, and thou hast reaped the golden blessing." "Yes," said Sara, looking dreamily over the garden hedge, "I have had more than compensation, my cup is full and running over. No one can understand how bright life is to me," and over her face there spread a light and rapture which Ebben Owens gazed at with a kind of wondering reverence. "There's no doubt thou hast something within thee that few others have," he said, with a shake of his head. Here Morva arrived from the milking, and finding them still sitting in the sunshine in earnest conversation, held her finger up reprovingly, and begged them to come in to breakfast. "Oh, stop, 'n'wncwl Ebben, and have breakfast with us. Uwd it is, and fresh milk from Garthowen." "No, no, child," said the old man, rising. "Ann will be waiting for me; I must go at once." "Well indeed, she was laying the breakfast. She doesn't want me to-day, she says, so I am stopping at home with mother to weed the garden." And as Ebben Owens trudged homewards, her happy voice followed him, breaking clear on the morning air as she sang in the joy other heart: "Troodie! Troodie! come down from the mountain; Troodie! Troodie! come up from the dale; Moelen and Corwen, and Blodwen and Trodwen, I'll meet you all with my milking-pail!" The echo of it brought a pleased smile to the old man's lips, as he neared his home and left the clear singing behind him. The day had broadened to noontide, and had passed into late afternoon, when Gethin Owens once more crept round the Cribserth. He crept, because he heard the sound of Morva's voice, and he would come upon her unawares--would see the sudden start, the shy surprise, the pink blush rising to the temples; so he stole from the pathway and crept along behind the broom bushes, watching through their interlacing branches while Morva approached from the cottage, singing in sheer lightness of heart, Tudor following with watchful eyes and waving tail, and a sober demeanour, which was soon to be laid aside for one of boisterous gambolling, for on the green sward Morva stopped, and with a bow to Tudor picked up her blue skirt in the thumb and finger of each hand, showing her little feet, which glanced in and out beneath her brick-red petticoat. She was within two yards of Gethin, where he stood still as a statue, scarcely breathing lest he should disturb the happy pair, his eyes and his mouth alone showing the merriment and fun which were brimming over in his heart. "Now, 'machgen i," said Morva, "what dost think of me?" and she curtseyed again to Tudor, who did the same. "Dost like me? dost think I am grand to-day? See the new bows on my shoes, see the new caddis on my petticoat, and above all, Tudor, see my beautiful necklace! Come, lad, let's have a dance, for Gethin's come home," and she began to imitate as well as she could the dance which Gethin had executed, with such fatal consequences to her heart, at the Garthowen cynos. Up and down, round and across, with uplifted gown, Tudor following with exuberant leaps and barks of delight, and catching at her flying skirts at every opportunity. As she danced she sang with unerring ear and precision, the tune that Reuben Davies had played in the dusty mill, setting to it the words of one refrain, "Gethin's come home, bâchgen! Gethin's come home!" Little did she know that Gethin's delighted ears missed not a note nor a word of her singing, or silence and dire confusion would have fallen upon that light-hearted couple who pranked so merrily upon the green. But human nature has its limits, even of happy endurance; the temptation to join that dance was irresistible, and Gethin, suddenly succumbing to it, sprang out upon them. There was a little scream, a bark, and a flutter, and Morva, clasped in Gethin's arms, was wildly whirled in an impromptu dance, round and round the green sward, up and down, and round again, until, breathless and panting, they stopped from sheer exhaustion; and when Gethin at last led his laughing partner to rest under the golden broom bushes, he cared not a whit that she chided him with a reproving finger, for her voice was full of merriment and joy. The sun was drawing near his setting, and still they sat and talked and laughed together, Tudor stretched at their feet, and looking from one to the other with an air of entire approval. [1] Do. 
19973	----	Transcribed from the 1902 Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE MABINOGION TRANSLATED FROM THE RED BOOK OF HERGEST BY LADY CHARLOTTE GUEST VOL. II. LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN 11 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS. MXCII {The salmon of Llyn Llyw. "And they heard a great wailing and lamenting from the dungeon.": p0.jpg} INTRODUCTION. In this second volume, as in the first, I have given Lady Charlotte Guest's translation exactly as she wrote it. It would have been easy to make it a more faithful reproduction of the Welsh by occasionally changing a word, or by making a phrase more simple in diction. But the reader would not have forgiven me for placing before him a translation that was not Lady Charlotte Guest's. I have again ventured, however, after a careful comparison of the translation with the original, to put in the form of footnotes a more accurate or more literal rendering of passages which Lady Charlotte Guest did not read aright, passages which she has omitted, and passages the real meaning of which she seems to me to have failed to grasp. The first two tales in this volume make up, with "The Dream of Rhonabwy," the second volume of the original edition. "The Dream of Rhonabwy" was placed in my first volume, with "The Lady of the Fountain" and "Peredur"--the two tales that form the first volume of the original edition. The oldest of the tales--the Mabinogion proper--will all be included in the third volume. OWEN EDWARDS. LLANUWCHLLYN, _June_ 1902. GERAINT THE SON OF ERBIN. {Picture: p7.jpg} Arthur was accustomed to hold his Court at Caerlleon upon Usk. And there he held it seven Easters, {7a} and five Christmases. And once upon a time he held his Court there at Whitsuntide. For Caerlleon was the place most easy of access in his dominions, both by sea and by land. And there were assembled {7b} nine crowned kings, who were his tributaries, and likewise earls and barons. For they were his invited guests at all the high festivals, unless they were prevented by any great hindrance. And when he was at Caerlleon, holding his Court, thirteen churches were set apart for mass. And thus were they appointed: one church for Arthur, and his kings, and his guests; and the second for Gwenhwyvar and her ladies; and the third for the Steward of the Household and the Suitors; and the fourth for the Franks, and the other officers; and the other nine churches were for the nine Masters of the Household, and chiefly for Gwalchmai; for he, from the eminence of his warlike fame, and from the nobleness of his birth, was the most exalted of the nine. And there was no other arrangement respecting the churches than that which we have mentioned above. Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr was the chief porter; but he did not himself perform the office, except at one of the three high festivals, for he had seven men to serve him; and they divided the year amongst them. They were Grynn, and Pen Pighon, and Llaes Cymyn, and Gogyfwlch, and Gwrdnei with Cat's eyes, who could see as well by night as by day, and Drem the son of Dremhitid, and Clust the son of Clustveinyd; and these were Arthur's guards. And on Whit Tuesday, as the King sat at the banquet, lo! there entered a tall, fair-headed youth, clad in a coat and a surcoat of diapred satin, and a golden-hilted sword about his neck, and low shoes of leather upon his feet. And he came, and stood before Arthur. "Hail to thee, Lord!" said he. "Heaven prosper thee," he answered, "and be thou welcome. Dost thou bring any new tidings?" "I do, Lord," he said. "I know thee not," said Arthur. "It is a marvel to me that thou dost not know me. I am one of thy foresters, Lord, in the Forest of Dean, and my name is Madawc, the son of Twrgadarn." "Tell me thine errand," said Arthur. "I will do so, Lord," said he. "In the Forest I saw a stag, the like of which beheld I never yet." "What is there about him," asked Arthur, "that thou never yet didst see his like?" "He is of pure white, Lord, and he does not herd with any other animal through stateliness and pride, so royal is his bearing. And I come to seek thy counsel, Lord, and to know thy will concerning him." "It seems best to me," said Arthur, "to go and hunt him to-morrow at break of day; and to cause general notice thereof to be given to-night in all quarters of the Court." And Arryfuerys was Arthur's chief huntsman, and Arelivri was his chief page. And all received notice; and thus it was arranged. And they sent the youth before them. Then Gwenhwyvar said to Arthur, "Wilt thou permit me, Lord," said she, "to go to-morrow to see and hear the hunt of the stag of which the young man spoke?" "I will, gladly," said Arthur. "Then will I go," said she. And Gwalchmai said to Arthur, "Lord, if it seem well to thee, permit that into whose hunt soever the stag shall come, that one, be he a knight or one on foot, may cut off his head, and give it to whom he pleases, whether to his own ladylove, or to the lady of his friend." "I grant it gladly," said Arthur, "and let the Steward of the Household be chastised if all are not ready to-morrow for the chase." And they passed the night with songs, and diversions, and discourse, and ample entertainment. And when it was time for them all to go to sleep, they went. And when the next day came, they arose; and Arthur called the attendants, who guarded his couch. And these were four pages, whose names were Cadyrnerth the son of Porthawr Gandwy, and Ambreu the son of Bedwor, and Amhar, the son of Arthur, and Goreu the son of Custennin. And these men came to Arthur, and saluted him, and arrayed him in his garments. And Arthur wondered that Gwenhwyvar did not awake, and did not move in her bed: and the attendants wished to awaken her. "Disturb her not," said Arthur, "for she had rather sleep than go to see the hunting." Then Arthur went forth, and he heard two horns sounding, one from near the lodging of the chief huntsman, and the other from near that of the chief page. And the whole assembly of the multitudes came to Arthur, and they took the road to the Forest. And after Arthur had gone forth from the palace, Gwenhwyvar awoke, and called to her maidens, and apparelled herself. "Maidens," said she, "I had leave last night to go and see the hunt. Go one of you to the stable, and order hither a horse such as a woman may ride." And one of them went, and she found but two horses in the stable, and Gwenhwyvar and one of her maidens mounted them, and went through the Usk, and followed the track of the men and the horses. And as they rode thus, they heard a loud and rushing sound; and they looked behind them, and beheld a knight upon a {10} hunter foal of mighty size; and the rider was a fair haired youth, bare-legged, and of princely mien, and a golden-hilted sword was at his side, and a robe and a surcoat of satin were upon him, and two low shoes of leather upon his feet; and around him was a scarf of blue purple, at each corner of which was a golden apple. And his horse stepped stately, and swift, and proud; and he overtook Gwenhwyvar, and saluted her. "Heaven prosper thee, Geraint," said she, "I knew thee when first I saw thee just now. And the welcome of heaven be unto thee. And why didst thou not go with thy Lord to hunt?" "Because I knew not when he went," said he. "I marvel too," said she, "how he could go unknown to me." "Indeed, lady," said he. "I was fast asleep, and knew not when he went; but thou, O young man, art the most agreeable companion I could have in the whole kingdom; and it may be that I shall be more amused with the hunting than they; {11} for we shall hear the horns when they sound, and we shall hear the dogs when they are let loose, and begin to cry." So they went to the edge of the Forest, and there they stood. "From this place," said she, "we shall hear when the dogs are let loose." And thereupon they heard a loud noise, and they looked towards the spot whence it came, and they beheld a dwarf riding upon a horse, stately, and foaming, and prancing, and strong, and spirited. And in the hand of the dwarf was a whip. And near the dwarf they saw a lady upon a beautiful white horse, of steady and stately pace; and she was clothed in a garment of gold brocade. And near her was a knight upon a war-horse of large size, with heavy and bright armour both upon himself and upon his horse. And truly they never before saw a knight, or a horse, or armour, of such remarkable size. And they were all near to each other. "Geraint," said Gwenhwyvar, "knowest thou the name of that tall knight yonder?" "I know him not," said he, "and the strange armour that he wears prevents my either seeing his face or his features." "Go, maiden," said Gwenhwyvar, "and ask the dwarf who that knight is." Then the maiden went up to the dwarf; and the dwarf waited for the maiden, when he saw her coming towards him. And the maiden enquired of the dwarf who the knight was. "I will not tell thee," he answered. "Since thou art so churlish as not to tell me," said she, "I will ask him himself." "Thou shall not ask him, by my faith," said he. "Wherefore?" said she. "Because thou art not of honour sufficient to befit thee to speak to my Lord." Then the maiden turned her horse's head towards the knight, upon which the dwarf struck her with the whip that was in his hand across the face and the eyes, until the blood flowed forth. And the maiden, through the hurt she received from the blow, returned to Gwenhwyvar, complaining of the pain. "Very rudely has the dwarf treated thee," said Geraint. "I will go myself to know who the knight is." "Go," said Gwenhwyvar. And Geraint went up to the dwarf. "Who is yonder knight?" said Geraint. "I will not tell thee," said the dwarf. "Then will I ask him himself," said he. "That wilt thou not, by my faith," said the dwarf; "thou art not honourable enough to speak with my Lord." Said Geraint, "I have spoken with men of equal rank with him." And he turned his horse's head towards the knight, but the dwarf overtook him and struck him as he had done the maiden, so that the blood coloured the scarf that Geraint wore. Then Geraint put his hand upon the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf, and to be attacked unarmed by the armed knight, so he returned to where Gwenhwyvar was. "Thou hast acted wisely and discreetly," said she. "Lady," said he, "I will follow him yet, with thy permission; and at last he will come to some inhabited place, where I may have arms either as a loan or for a pledge, so that I may encounter the knight." "Go," said she, "and do not attack him until thou hast good arms, and I shall be very anxious concerning thee, until I hear tidings of thee." "If I am alive," said he, "thou shall hear tidings of me by to-morrow afternoon;" and with that he departed. And the road they took was below the palace of Caerlleon, and across the ford of the Usk; and they went along a fair, and even, and lofty ridge of ground, until they came to a town, and at the extremity of the town they saw a Fortress and a Castle. And they came to the extremity of the town. And as the knight passed through it, all the people arose, and saluted him, and bade him welcome. And when Geraint came into the town, he looked at every house, to see if he knew any of those whom he saw. But he knew none, and none knew him to do him the kindness to let him have arms either as a loan or for a pledge. And every house he saw was full of men, and arms, and horses. And they were polishing shields, and burnishing swords, and washing armour, and shoeing horses. And the knight, and the lady, and the dwarf, rode up to the Castle that was in the town, and every one was glad in the Castle. And from the battlements and the gates they risked their necks, through their eagerness to greet them, and to show their joy. Geraint stood there to see whether the knight would remain in the Castle; and when he was certain that he would do so, he looked around him; and at a little distance from the town he saw an old palace in ruins, wherein was a hall that was falling to decay. And as he knew not any one in the town, he went towards the old palace; and when he came near to the palace, he saw but one chamber, and a bridge of marble-stone leading to it. And upon the bridge he saw sitting a hoary-headed man, upon whom were tattered garments. And Geraint gazed steadfastly upon him for a long time. Then the hoary-headed man spoke to him. "Young man," he said, "wherefore art thou thoughtful?" "I am thoughtful," said he, "because I know not where to go to-night." "Wilt thou come forward this way, chieftain?" said he, "and thou shalt have of the best that can be procured for thee." So Geraint went forward. And the hoary-headed man preceded him into the hall. And in the hall he dismounted, and he left there his horse. Then he went on to the upper chamber with the hoary- headed man. And in the chamber he beheld an old decrepit woman, sitting on a cushion, with old tattered garments of satin upon her; and it seemed to him that he had never seen a woman fairer than she must have been when in the fulness of youth. And beside her was a maiden, upon whom were a vest and a veil, that were old, and beginning to be worn out. And truly he never saw a maiden more full of comeliness, and grace, and beauty, than she. And the hoary-headed man said to the maiden, "There is no attendant for the horse of this youth but thyself." "I will render the best service I am able," said she, "both to him and to his horse." And the maiden disarrayed the youth, and then she furnished his horse with straw and with corn. And she went to the hall as before, and then she returned to the chamber. And the hoary-headed man said to the maiden, "Go to the town," said he, "and bring hither the best that thou canst find both of food and of liquor." "I will, gladly, Lord," said she. And to the town went the maiden. And they conversed together, while the maiden was at the town. And, behold! the maiden came back, and a youth with her, bearing on his back a costrel full of good purchased mead and a quarter of a young bullock. And in the hands of the maiden was a quantity of white bread, and she had some manchet bread in her veil, and she came into the chamber. "I could not obtain better than this," said she, "nor with better should I have been trusted." "It is good enough," said Geraint. And they caused the meat to be boiled; and when their food was ready, they sat down. And it was in this wise; Geraint sat between the hoary-headed man and his wife, and the maiden served them. And they ate and drank. And when they had finished eating, Geraint talked with the hoary-headed man, and he asked him in the first place, to whom belonged the Palace that he was in. "Truly," said he, "it was I that built it, and to me also belonged the city and the castle which thou sawest." "Alas!" said Geraint, "how is it that thou hast lost them now?" "I lost a great Earldom as well as these," said he, "and this is how I lost them. I had a nephew, the son of my brother, and I took his possessions to myself; and when he came to his strength, he demanded of me his property, but I withheld it from him. So he made war upon me, and wrested from me all that I possessed." "Good, Sir," {15} said Geraint, "wilt thou tell me wherefore came the knight, and the lady, and the dwarf, just now into the town, and what is the preparation which I saw, and the putting of arms in order." "I will do so," said he. "The preparations are for the game that is to be held to-morrow by the young Earl, which will be on this wise. In the midst of a meadow which is here, two forks will be set up, and upon the two forks a silver rod, and upon the silver rod a Sparrow- Hawk, and for the Sparrow-Hawk there will be a tournament. And to the tournament will go all the array thou didst see in the city, of men, and of horses, and of arms. And with each man will go the lady he loves best; and no man can joust for the Sparrow-Hawk, except the lady he loves best be with him. And the knight that thou sawest has gained the Sparrow- Hawk these two years; and if he gains it the third year, they will, from that time, send it every year to him, and he himself will come here no more. And he will be called the knight of the Sparrow-Hawk from that time forth." "Sir," said Geraint, "what is thy counsel to me concerning this knight, on account of the insult which I received from the dwarf, and that which was received by the maiden of Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur?" And Geraint told the hoary-headed man what the insult was that he had received. "It is not easy to counsel thee, inasmuch as thou hast neither dame nor maiden belonging to thee, for whom thou canst joust. Yet, I have arms here, which thou couldest have; and there is my horse also, if he seem to thee better than thine own." "Ah! Sir," said he, "Heaven reward thee. But my own horse, to which I am accustomed, together with thine arms, will suffice me. And if, when the appointed time shall come to-morrow, thou wilt permit me, Sir, to challenge for yonder maiden that is thy daughter, I will engage, if I escape from the tournament, to love the maiden as long as I live, and if I do not escape, she will remain unsullied as before." "Gladly will I permit thee," said the hoary-headed man, "and since thou dost thus resolve, it is necessary that thy horse and arms should be ready to-morrow at break of day. For then, the knight of the Sparrow-Hawk will make proclamation, and ask the lady he loves best to take the Sparrow-Hawk. 'For,' will he say to her, 'thou art the fairest of women, and thou didst possess it last year, and the year previous; and if any deny it thee to-day, by force will I defend it for thee.' And therefore," said the hoary-headed man, "it is needful for thee to be there at daybreak; and we three will be with thee," and thus was it settled. And at night, lo! {17} they went to sleep; and before the dawn they arose, and arrayed themselves; and by the time that it was day, they were all four in the meadow. And there was the knight of the Sparrow-Hawk making the proclamation, and asking his ladylove to fetch the Sparrow- Hawk. "Fetch it not," said Geraint, "for there is here a maiden, who is fairer, and more noble, and more comely, and who has a better claim to it than thou." "If thou maintainest the Sparrow-Hawk to be due to her, come forward, and do battle with me." And Geraint went forward to the top of the meadow, having upon himself and upon his horse armour which was heavy, and rusty, and worthless, and of uncouth shape. Then they encountered each other, and they broke a set of lances, and they broke a second set, and a third. And thus they did at every onset, and they broke as many lances as were brought to them. And when the Earl and his company saw the knight of the Sparrow-Hawk gaining the mastery, there was shouting, and joy, and mirth amongst them. And the hoary-headed man, and his wife, and his daughter, were sorrowful. And the hoary-headed man served Geraint lances as often as he broke them, and the dwarf served the knight of the Sparrow-Hawk. Then the hoary-headed man came to Geraint. "Oh! chieftain," said he, "since no other will hold with thee, behold, here is the lance which was in my hand on the day when I received the honour of knighthood; and from that time to this I never broke it. And it has an excellent point." Then Geraint took the lance, thanking the hoary-headed man. And thereupon the dwarf also brought a lance to his lord. "Behold here is a lance for thee, not less good than his," said the dwarf. "And bethink thee, that no knight ever withstood thee before so long as this one has done." "I declare to Heaven," said Geraint, "that unless death takes me quickly hence, he shall fare never the better for thy service." And Geraint pricked his horse towards him from afar, and warning him, he rushed upon him, and gave him a blow so severe, and furious, and fierce, upon the face of his shield, that he cleft it in two, and broke his armour, and burst his girths, so that both he and his saddle were borne to the ground over the horse's crupper. And Geraint dismounted quickly. And he was wroth, and he drew his sword, and rushed fiercely upon him. Then the knight also arose, and drew his sword against Geraint. And they fought on foot with their swords until their aims struck sparks of fire like stars from one another; and thus they continued fighting until the blood and sweat obscured the light from their eyes. And when Geraint prevailed, the hoary-headed man, and his wife, and his daughter were glad; and when the knight prevailed, it rejoiced the Earl and his party. Then the hoary-headed man saw Geraint receive a severe stroke, and he went up to him quickly, and said to him, "Oh, chieftain, remember the treatment which thou hadst from the dwarf; and wilt thou not seek vengeance for the insult to thyself, and for the insult to Gwenhwyvar the wife of Arthur!" And Geraint was roused by what he said to him, {19} and he called to him all his strength, and lifted up his sword, and struck the knight upon the crown of his head, so that he broke all his head armour, and cut through all the flesh and the skin, even to the skull, until he wounded the bone. {Picture: p18.jpg} Then the knight fell upon his knees, and cast his sword from his hand, and besought mercy of Geraint. "Of a truth," said he, "I relinquish my overdaring and my pride in craving thy mercy; and unless I have time to commit myself to Heaven for my sins, and to talk with a priest, thy mercy will avail me little." "I will grant thee grace upon this condition," said Geraint, "that thou wilt go to Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur, to do her satisfaction for the insult which her maiden received from thy dwarf. As to myself, for the insult which I received from thee and thy dwarf, I am content with that which I have done unto thee. Dismount not from the time thou goest hence until thou comest into the presence of Gwenhwyvar, to make her what atonement shall be adjudged at the Court of Arthur." "This will I do gladly. And who art thou?" said he. "I am Geraint the son of Erbin. And declare thou also who thou art." "I am Edeyrn the son of Nudd." Then he threw himself upon his horse, and went forward to Arthur's Court, and the lady he loved best went before him and the dwarf, with much lamentation. And thus far this story up to that time. * * * * * Then came the little Earl and his hosts to Geraint, and saluted him, and bade him to his castle. "I may not go," said Geraint, "but where I was last night, there will I be to-night also." "Since thou wilt none of my inviting, thou shall have abundance of all that I can command for thee, in the place thou wast last night. And I will order ointment for thee, to recover thee from thy fatigues, and from the weariness that is upon thee." "Heaven reward thee," said Geraint, "and I will go to my lodging." And thus went Geraint, and Earl Ynywl, and his wife, and his daughter. And when they reached the chamber, the household servants and attendants of the young Earl had arrived at the Court, and they arranged all the houses, dressing them with straw and with fire; and in a short time the ointment was ready, and Geraint came there, and they washed his head. Then came the young Earl, with forty honourable knights from among his attendants, and those who were bidden to the tournament. And Geraint came from the anointing. And the Earl asked him to go to the hall to eat. "Where is the Earl Ynywl," said Geraint, "and his wife, and his daughter?" "They are in the chamber yonder," said the Earl's chamberlain, "arraying themselves in garments which the Earl has caused to be brought for them." "Let not the damsel array herself," said he, "except in her vest and her veil, until she come to the Court of Arthur, to be clad by Gwenhwyvar, in such garments as she may choose." So the maiden did not array herself. Then they all entered the hall, and they washed, and went, and sat down to meat. And thus were they seated. On one side of Geraint sat the young Earl, and Earl Ynywl beyond him; and on the other side of Geraint was the maiden and her mother. And after these all sat according to their precedence in honour. And they ate. And they were served abundantly, and they received a profusion of divers kind of gifts. Then they conversed together. And the young Earl invited Geraint to visit him next day. "I will not, by Heaven," said Geraint. "To the Court of Arthur will I go with this maiden to-morrow. And it is enough for me, as long as Earl Ynywl is in poverty and trouble; and I go chiefly to seek to add to his maintenance." "Ah, chieftain," said the young Earl, "it is not by my fault that Earl Ynywl is without his possessions." "By my faith," said Geraint, "he shall not remain without them, unless death quickly takes me hence." "Oh, chieftain," said he, "with regard to the disagreement between me and Ynywl, I will gladly abide by thy counsel, and agree to what thou mayest judge right between us." {22} "I but ask thee," said Geraint, "to restore to him what is his, and what he should have received from the time he lost his possessions, even until this day." "That will I do gladly, for thee," answered he. "Then," said Geraint, "whosoever is here who owes homage to Ynywl, let him come forward, and perform it on the spot." And all the men did so. And by that treaty they abided. And his castle, and his town, and all his possessions, were restored to Ynywl. And he received back all that he had lost, even to the smallest jewel. Then spoke Earl Ynywl to Geraint. "Chieftain," said he "behold the maiden for whom thou didst challenge at the tournament, I bestow her upon thee." "She shall go with me," said Geraint, "to the Court of Arthur; and Arthur and Gwenhwyvar, they shall dispose of her as they will." And the next day they proceeded to Arthur's Court. So far concerning Geraint. * * * * * Now, this is how Arthur hunted the stag. The men and the dogs were divided into hunting parties, and the dogs were let loose upon the stag. And the last dog that was let loose was the favourite dog of Arthur. Cavall was his name. And he left all the other dogs behind him, and turned the stag. And at the second turn, the stag came towards the hunting party of Arthur. And Arthur set upon him. And before he could be slain by any other, Arthur cut off his head. Then they sounded the death horn for slaying, and they all gathered round. Then came Kadyrieith to Arthur, and spoke to him. "Lord," said he, "behold yonder is Gwenhwyvar, and none with her save only one maiden." "Command Gildas the son of Caw, and all the scholars of the Court," said Arthur, "to attend Gwenhwyvar to the palace." And they did so. Then they all set forth, holding converse together concerning the head of the stag, to whom it should be given. One wished that it should be given to the lady best beloved by him, and another to the lady whom he loved best. And all they of the household and the knights disputed sharply concerning the head. And with that they came to the palace. And when Arthur and Gwenhwyvar heard them disputing about the head of the stag, Gwenhwyvar said to Arthur, "My lord, this is my counsel concerning the stag's head; let it not be given away until Geraint the son of Erbin shall return from the errand he is upon." And Gwenhwyvar told Arthur what that errand was. "Right gladly shall it be so," said Arthur. And thus it was settled. And the next day Gwenhwyvar caused a watch to be set upon the ramparts for Geraint's coming. And after mid-day they beheld an unshapely little man upon a horse, and after him, as they supposed, a dame or a damsel, also on horseback, and after her a knight of large stature, bowed down, and hanging his head low and sorrowfully, and clad in broken and worthless armour. And before they came near to the gate, one of the watch went to Gwenhwyvar, and told her what kind of people they saw, and what aspect they bore. "I know not who they are," said he. "But I know," said Gwenhwyvar, "this is the knight whom Geraint pursued, and methinks that he comes not here by his own free will. But Geraint has overtaken him, and avenged the insult to the maiden to the uttermost." And thereupon, behold a porter came to the spot where Gwenhwyvar was. "Lady," said he, "at the gate there is a knight, and I saw never a man of so pitiful an aspect to look upon as he. Miserable and broken is the armour that he wears, and the hue of blood is more conspicuous upon it than its own colour." "Knowest thou his name?" said she. "I do," said he, "he tells me that he is Edeyrn the son of Nudd." Then she replied, "I know him not." So Gwenhwyvar went to the gate to meet him, and he entered. And Gwenhwyvar was sorry when she saw the condition he was in, even though he was accompanied by the churlish dwarf. Then Edeyrn saluted Gwenhwyvar. "Heaven protect thee," said she. "Lady," said he, "Geraint the son of Erbin, thy best and most valiant servant, greets thee." "Did he meet with thee?" she asked. "Yes," said he, "and it was not to my advantage; and that was not his fault, but mine, Lady. And Geraint greets thee well; and in greeting thee he compelled me to come hither to do thy pleasure for the insult which thy maiden received from the dwarf. He forgives the insult to himself, in consideration of his having put me in peril of my life. And he imposed on me a condition, manly, and honourable, and warrior-like, which was to do thee justice, Lady." "Now, where did he overtake thee?" "At the place where we were jousting, and contending for the Sparrow-Hawk, in the town which is now called Cardiff. And there were none with him, save three persons, of a mean and tattered condition. And these were an aged, hoary-headed man and a woman advanced in years, and a fair young maiden, clad in worn-out garments. And it was for the avouchment of the love of that maiden that Geraint jousted for the Sparrow-Hawk at the tournament; for he said that that maiden was better entitled to the Sparrow-Hawk than this maiden who was with me. And thereupon we encountered each other, and he left me, Lady, as thou seest." "Sir," said she, "when thinkest thou that Geraint will be here?" "To-morrow, Lady, I think he will be here with the maiden." Then Arthur came to him, and he saluted Arthur, and Arthur gazed a long time upon him, and was amazed to see him thus. And thinking that he knew him, he enquired of him, "Art thou Edeyrn the son of Nudd?" "I am, Lord," said he, "and I have met with much trouble, and received wounds unsupportable." Then he told Arthur all his adventure. "Well," said Arthur, "from what I hear, it behoves Gwenhwyvar to be merciful towards thee." "The mercy which thou desirest, Lord," said she, "will I grant to him, since it is as insulting to thee that an insult should be offered to me as to thyself." "Thus will it be best to do," said Arthur, "let this man have medical care until it be known whether he may live. And if he live, he shall do such satisfaction as shall be judged best by the men of the Court; and take thou sureties to that effect. And it he die, too much will be the death of such a youth as Edeyrn for an insult to a maiden." "This pleases me," said Gwenhwyvar. And Arthur became surety for Edeyrn, and Caradawc the son of Llyr, Gwallawg the son of Llenawg, and Owain the son of Nudd, and Gwalchmai, and many others with them. And Arthur caused Morgan Tud to be called to him. He was the chief physician. "Take with thee Edeyrn the son of Nudd, and cause a chamber to be prepared for him, and let him have the aid of medicine as thou wouldest do unto myself if I were wounded, and let none into his chamber to molest him, but thyself and thy disciples, to administer to him remedies." "I will do so, gladly, Lord," said Morgan Tud. Then said the steward of the household, "Whither is it right, Lord, to order the maiden?" "To Gwenhwyvar and her and maidens," said he. And the Steward of the Household so ordered her. Thus far concerning them. * * * * * The next day came Geraint towards the Court, and there was a watch set on the ramparts by Gwenhwyvar, lest he should arrive unawares. And one of the watch came to the place where Gwenhwyvar was. "Lady," said he, "methinks that I see Geraint, and the maiden with him. He is on horseback, but he has his walking gear upon him, and the maiden appears to be in white, seeming to be clad in a garment of linen." "Assemble all the women," said Gwenhwyvar, "and come to meet Geraint, to welcome him, and wish him joy." And Gwenhwyvar went to meet Geraint and the maiden. And when Geraint came to the place where Gwenhwyvar was, he saluted her. "Heaven prosper thee," said she, "and welcome to thee. And thy career has been successful, and fortunate, and resistless, and glorious. And Heaven reward thee, that thou hast so proudly caused me to have retribution." "Lady," said he, "I earnestly desired to obtain thee satisfaction according to thy will; and, behold, here is the maiden through whom thou hadst thy revenge." "Verily," said Gwenhwyvar, "the welcome of Heaven be unto her; and it is fitting that we should receive her joyfully." Then they went in, and dismounted. And Geraint came to where Arthur was, and saluted him. "Heaven protect thee," said Arthur, "and the welcome of Heaven be unto thee. And since {27} Edeyrn the son of Nudd has received his overthrow and wounds from thy hands, thou hadst had a prosperous career." "Not upon me be the blame," said Geraint, "it was through the arrogance of Edeyrn the son of Nudd himself that we were not friends. I would not quit him until I knew who he was, and until the one had vanquished the other." "Now," said Arthur, "where is the maiden for whom I heard thou didst give challenge?" "She is gone with Gwenhwyvar to her chamber." Then went Arthur to see the maiden. And Arthur, and all his companions, and his whole Court, were glad concerning the maiden. And certain were they all, that had her array been suitable to her beauty, they had never seen a maid fairer than she. And Arthur gave away the maiden to Geraint. And the usual bond made between two persons was made between Geraint and the maiden, and the choicest of all Gwenhwyvar's apparel was given to the maiden; and thus arrayed, she appeared comely and graceful to all who beheld her. And that day and that night were spent in abundance of minstrelsy, and ample gifts of liquor, and a multitude of games. And when it was time for them to go to sleep, they went. And in the chamber where the couch of Arthur and Gwenhwyvar was, the couch of Geraint and Enid was prepared. And from that time she became his bride. And the next day Arthur satisfied all the claimants upon Geraint with bountiful gifts. And the maiden took up her abode in the palace, and she had many companions, both men and women, and there was no maiden more esteemed than she in the Island of Britain. Then spake Gwenhwyvar. "Rightly did I judge," said she, "concerning the head of the stag, that it should not be given to any until Geraint's return; and, behold, here is a fit occasion for bestowing it. Let it be given to Enid, the daughter of Ynywl, the most illustrious maiden. And I do not believe that any will begrudge it her, for between her and every one here there exists nothing but love and friendship." Much applauded was this by them all, and by Arthur also. And the head of the stag was given to Enid. And thereupon her fame increased, and her friends thenceforward became more in number than before. And Geraint from that time forth loved the stag, and the tournament, and hard encounters; and he came victorious from them all. And a year, and a second, and a third, he proceeded thus, until his fame had flown over the face of the kingdom. And once upon a time, Arthur was holding his Court at Caerlleon upon Usk, at Whitsuntide. And, behold, there came to him ambassadors, wise and prudent, full of knowledge, and eloquent of speech, and they saluted Arthur. "Heaven prosper you," said Arthur, "and the welcome of Heaven be unto you. And whence do you come?" "We come, Lord," said they, "from Cornwall; and we are ambassadors from Erbin the son of Custennin, thy uncle, and our mission is unto thee. And he greets thee well, as an uncle should greet his nephew, and as a vassal should greet his lord. And he represents unto thee that he waxes heavy and feeble, and is advancing in years. And the neighbouring chiefs knowing this, grow insolent towards him, and covet his land and possessions. And he earnestly beseeches thee, Lord, to permit Geraint his son to return to him, to protect his possessions, and to become acquainted with his boundaries. And unto him he represents that it were better for him to spend the flower of his youth, and the prime of his age, in preserving his own boundaries, than in tournaments, which are productive of no profit, although he obtains glory in them." "Well," said Arthur, "go, and divest yourselves of your accoutrements, and take food, and refresh yourselves after your fatigues; and before you go forth hence you shall have an answer." And they went to eat. And Arthur considered that it would go hard with him to let Geraint depart from him and from his Court; neither did he think it fair that his cousin should be restrained from going to protect his dominions and his boundaries, seeing that his father was unable to do so. No less was the grief and regret of Gwenhwyvar, and all her women, and all her damsels, through fear that the maiden would leave them. And that day and that night were spent in abundance of feasting. And Arthur showed Geraint the cause of the mission, and of the coming of the ambassadors to him out of Cornwall. "Truly," said Geraint, "be it to my advantage or disadvantage, Lord, I will do according to thy will concerning this embassy." "Behold," said Arthur, "though it grieves me to part with thee, it is my counsel that thou go to dwell in thine own dominions, and to defend thy boundaries, and to take with thee to accompany thee as many as thou wilt of those thou lovest best among my faithful ones, and among thy friends, and among thy companions in arms." "Heaven reward thee; and this will I do," said Geraint. "What discourse," said Gwenhwyvar, "do I hear between you? Is it of those who are to conduct Geraint to his country?" "It is," said Arthur. "Then is it needful for me to consider," said she, "concerning companions and a provision for the lady that is with me?" "Thou wilt do well," said Arthur. And that night they went to sleep. And the next day the ambassadors were permitted to depart, and they were told that Geraint should follow them. And on the third day Geraint set forth, and many went with him. Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar, and Riogonedd the son of the king of Ireland, and Ondyaw the son of the duke of Burgandy, Gwilim the son of the ruler of the Franks, Howel the son of Emyr of Brittany, Elivry, and Nawkyrd, Gwynn the son of Tringad, Goreu the son of Custennin, Gweir Gwrhyd Vawr, Garannaw the son of Golithmer, Peredur the son of Evrawc, Gwynnllogell, Gwyr a judge in the Court of Arthur, Dyvyr the son of Alun of Dyved, Gwrei Gwalstawd Ieithoedd, Bedwyr the son of Bedrawd, Hadwry the son of Gwryon, Kai the son of Kynyr, Odyar the Frank, the Steward of Arthur's Court, and Edeyrn the son of Nudd. Said Geraint, "I think that I shall have enough of knighthood with me." "Yes," said Arthur, "but it will not be fitting for thee to take Edeyrn with thee, although he is well, until peace shall be made between him and Gwenhwyvar." "Gwenhwyvar can permit him to go with me, if he gives sureties." "If she please, she can let him go without sureties, for enough of pain and affliction has he suffered for the insult which the maiden received from the dwarf." "Truly," said Gwenhwyvar, "since it seems well to thee and to Geraint, I will do this gladly, Lord." Then she permitted Edeyrn freely to depart. And many there were who accompanied Geraint, and they set forth; and never was there seen a fairer host journeying towards the Severn. And on the other side of the Severn were the nobles of Erbin the son of Custennin, and his foster father at their head, to welcome Geraint with gladness; and many of the women of the Court, with his mother, came to receive Enid the daughter of Ynywl, his wife. And there was great rejoicing and gladness throughout the whole Court, and throughout all the country, concerning Geraint, because of the greatness of their love towards him, and of the greatness of the fame which he had gained since he went from amongst them, and because he was come to take possession of his dominions, and to preserve his boundaries. And they came to the Court. And in the Court they had ample entertainment, and a multitude of gifts, and abundance of liquor, and a sufficiency of service, and a variety of minstrelsy and of games. And to do honour to Geraint, all the chief men of the country were invited that night to visit him. And they passed that day and that night in the utmost enjoyment. And at dawn next day Erbin arose, and summoned to him Geraint, and the noble persons who had borne him company. And he said to Geraint, "I am a feeble and an aged man, and whilst I was able to maintain the dominion for thee and for myself, I did so. But thou art young, and in the flower of thy vigour and of thy youth: henceforth do thou preserve thy possessions." "Truly," said Geraint, "with my consent thou shalt not give the power over thy dominions at this time into my hands, and thou shall not take me from Arthur's Court." "Into thy hands will I give them," said Erbin, "and this day also shalt thou receive the homage of thy subjects." Then said Gwalchmai, "It were better for thee to satisfy those who have boons to ask, to-day, and to-morrow thou canst receive the homage of thy dominions." So all that had boons to ask were summoned into one place. And Kadyrieith came to them, to know what were their requests. And every one asked that which he desired. And the followers of Arthur began to make gifts and immediately the men of Cornwall came, and gave also. And they were not long in giving, so eager was every one to bestow gifts. And of those who came to ask gifts, none departed unsatisfied. And that day and that night were spent in the utmost enjoyment. And the next day, at dawn, Erbin desired Geraint to send messengers to the men, to ask them whether it was displeasing to them that he should come to receive their homage, and whether they had anything to object to him. Then Geraint sent ambassadors to the men of Cornwall, to ask them this. And they all said that it would be the fulness of joy and honour to them for Geraint to come and receive their homage. So he received the homage of such as were there. And they remained with him till the third night. And the day after the followers of Arthur intended to go away. "It is too soon for you to go away yet," said he, "stay with me until I have finished receiving the homage of my chief men, who have agreed to come to me." And they remained with him until he had done so. Then they set forth towards the Court of Arthur; and Geraint went to bear them company, and Enid also, as far as Diganhwy: there they parted. Then Ondyaw the son of the duke of Burgundy said to Geraint, "Go first of all, and visit the uttermost parts of thy dominions, and see well to the boundaries of thy territories; and if thou hast any trouble respecting them, send unto thy companions." "Heaven reward thee," said Geraint, "and this will I do." And Geraint journeyed to the uttermost part of his dominions. And experienced guides, and the chief men of his country, went with him. And the furthermost point that they showed him he kept possession of. And, as he had been used to do when he was at Arthur's Court, he frequented tournaments. And he became acquainted with valiant and mighty men, until he had gained as much fame there as he had formerly done elsewhere. And he enriched his Court, and his companions, and his nobles, with the best horses, and the best arms, and with the best and most valuable jewels, and he ceased not until his fame had flown over the face of the whole kingdom. And when he knew that it was thus, he began to love ease and pleasure, for there was no one who was worth his opposing. And he loved his wife, and liked to continue in the palace, with minstrelsy and diversions. And for a long time he abode at home. And after that he began to shut himself up in the chamber of his wife, and he took no delight in anything besides, insomuch that he gave up the friendship of his nobles, together with his hunting and his amusements, and lost the hearts of all the host in his Court; and there was murmuring and scoffing concerning him among the inhabitants of the palace, on account of his relinquishing so completely their companionship for the love of his wife. And these tidings came to Erbin. And when Erbin had heard these things, he spoke unto Enid, and enquired of her whether it was she that had caused Geraint to act thus, and to forsake his people and his hosts. "Not I, by my confession unto Heaven," said she; "there is nothing more hateful to me than this." And she knew not what she should do, for, although it was hard for her to own this to Geraint, yet was it not more easy for her to listen to what she heard without warning Geraint concerning it. And she was very sorrowful. And one morning in the summer time, they were upon their couch, and Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid was without sleep in the apartment, which had windows of glass. And the sun shone upon the couch. And the clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, and he was asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his appearance, and she said, "Alas, and am I the cause that these arms and this breast have lost their glory and the warlike fame which they once so richly enjoyed!" And as she said this, the tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell upon his breast. And the tears she shed, and the words she had spoken, awoke him; and another thing contributed to awaken him, and that was the idea that it was not in thinking of him that she spoke thus, but that it was because she loved some other man more than him, and that she wished for other society, and thereupon Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he called his squire; and when he came to him, "Go quickly," said he, "and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them ready. And do thou arise," said he to Enid, "and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to be accoutred, and clothe thee in the worst riding dress that thou hast in thy possession. And evil betide me," said he, "if thou returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my strength so completely as thou didst say. And if it be so, it will then be easy for thee to seek the society thou didst wish for of him of whom thou wast thinking." So she arose, and clothed herself in her meanest garments. "I know nothing, Lord," said she, "of thy meaning." "Neither wilt thou know at this time," said he. Then Geraint went to see Erbin. "Sir," said he, "I am going upon a quest, and I am not certain when I may come back. Take heed, therefore, unto thy possessions, until my return." "I will do so," said he, "but it is strange to me that thou shouldst go so suddenly. And who will proceed with thee, since thou art not strong enough to traverse the land of Lloegyr alone." "But one person only will go with me." "Heaven counsel thee, my son," said Erbin, "and may many attach themselves to thee in Lloegyr." Then went Geraint to the place where his horse was, and it was equipped with foreign armour, heavy and shining. And he desired Enid to mount her horse, and to ride forward, and to keep a long way before him. "And whatever thou mayest see, and whatever thou mayest hear, concerning me," said he, "do thou not turn back. And unless I speak unto thee, say not thou one word either." And they set forward. And he did not choose the pleasantest and most frequented road, but that which was the wildest and most beset by thieves, and robbers, and venomous animals. And they came to a high road, which they followed till they saw a vast forest, and they went towards it, and they saw four armed horsemen come forth from the forest. When they had beheld them, one of them said to the other, "Behold, here is a good occasion for us to capture two horses and armour, and a lady likewise; for this we shall have no difficulty in doing against yonder single knight, who hangs his head so pensively and heavily." And Enid heard this discourse, and she knew not what she should do through fear of Geraint, who had told her to be silent. "The vengeance of Heaven be upon me," she said, "if I would not rather receive my death from his hand than from the hand of any other; and though he should slay me, yet will I speak to him, lest I should have the misery to witness his death." {36a} So she waited for Geraint until he came near to her. "Lord," said she, "didst thou hear the words of those men concerning thee?" Then he lifted up his eyes, and looked at her angrily. "Thou hadst only," said he, "to hold thy peace as I bade thee. I wish but for silence and not for warning. {36b} And though thou shouldst desire to see my defeat and my death by the hands of those men, yet do I feel no dread." Then the foremost of them couched his lance, and rushed upon Geraint. And he received him, and that not feebly. But he let the thrust go by him, while he struck the horseman upon the centre of his shield in such a manner, that his shield was split, and his armour broken, and so that a cubit's length of the shaft of Geraint's lance passed through his body, and sent him to the earth the length of the lance over his horse's crupper. Then the second horseman attacked him furiously, being wroth at the death of his companion. But with one thrust Geraint overthrew him also, and killed him as he had done the other. Then the third set upon him, and he killed him in like manner. And thus also he slew the fourth. Sad and sorrowful was the maiden as she saw all this. Geraint dismounted his horse, and took the arms of the men he had slain, and placed them upon their saddles, and tied together the reins of their horses, and he mounted his horse again. "Behold what thou must do," said he, "take the four horses, and drive them before thee, and proceed forward, as I bade thee just now. And say not one word unto me, unless I speak first unto thee. And I declare unto Heaven," said he, "if thou doest not thus, it will be to thy cost." "I will do, as far as I can, Lord," said she, "according to thy desire." Then they went forward through the forest; and when they left the forest, they came to a vast plain, in the centre of which was a group of thickly tangled copse-wood; and from out thereof they beheld three horsemen coming towards them, well equipped with armour, both they and their horses. Then the maiden looked steadfastly upon them; and when they had come near, she heard them say one to another, "Behold, here is a good arrival for us, here are coming for us four horses and four suits of armour. We shall easily obtain them spite of yonder dolorous knight, and the maiden also will fall into our power." "This is but too true," said she to herself, "for my husband is tired with his former combat. The vengeance of Heaven will be upon me, unless I warn him of this." So the maiden waited until Geraint came up to her. "Lord," said she, "dost thou not hear the discourse of yonder men concerning thee?" "What was it?" asked he. "They say to one another, that they will easily obtain all this spoil." "I declare to Heaven," he answered, "that their words are less grievous to me than that thou wilt not be silent, and abide by my counsel." "My Lord," said she, "I feared lest they should surprise thee unawares." "Hold thy peace then," said he, "do not I desire silence?" {38} And thereupon one of the horsemen couched his lance, and attacked Geraint. And he made a thrust at him, which he thought would be very effective; but Geraint received it carelessly, and struck it aside, and then he rushed upon him, and aimed at the centre of his person, and from the shock of man and horse, the quantity of his armour did not avail him, and the head of the lance and part of the shaft passed through him, so that he was carried to the ground an arm and a spear's length over the crupper of his horse. And both the other horsemen came forward in their turn, but their onset was not more successful than that of their companion. And the maiden stood by, looking at all this; and on the one hand she was in trouble lest Geraint should be wounded in his encounter with the men, and on the other hand she was joyful to see him victorious. Then Geraint dismounted, and bound the three suits of armour upon the three saddles, and he fastened the reins of all the horses together, so that he had seven horses with him. And he mounted his own horse, and commanded the maiden to drive forward the others. "It is no more use for me to speak to thee than to refrain, for thou wilt not attend to my advice." "I will do so, as far I am able, Lord," said she; "but I cannot conceal from thee the fierce and threatening words which I may hear against thee, Lord, from such strange people as those that haunt this wilderness." "I declare to Heaven," said he, "that I desire nought but silence; therefore, hold thy peace." {39} "I will, Lord, while I can." And the maiden went on with the horses before her, and she pursued her way straight onwards. And from the copse-wood already mentioned, they journeyed over a vast and dreary open plain. And at a great distance from them they beheld a wood, and they could see neither end nor boundary to the wood, except on that side that was nearest to them, and they went towards it. Then there came from out the wood five horsemen, eager, and bold, and mighty, and strong, mounted upon chargers that were powerful, and large of bone, and high-mettled, and proudly snorting, and both the men and the horses were well equipped with arms. And when they drew near to them, Enid heard them say, "Behold, here is a fine booty coming to us, which we shall obtain easily and without labour, for we shall have no trouble in taking all those horses and arms, and the lady also, from yonder single knight, so doleful and sad." Sorely grieved was the maiden upon hearing this discourse, so that she knew not in the world what she should do. At last, however, she determined to warn Geraint; so she turned her horse's head towards him. "Lord," said she, "if thou hadst heard as I did what yonder horsemen said concerning thee, thy heaviness would be greater than it is." Angrily and bitterly did Geraint smile upon her, and he said, "Thee do I hear doing everything that I forbade thee; but it may be that thou wilt repent this yet." And immediately, behold, the men met them, and victoriously and gallantly did Geraint overcome them all five. And he placed the five suits of armour upon the five saddles, and tied together the reins of the twelve horses, and gave them in charge to Enid. "I know not," said he, "what good it is for me to order thee; but this time I charge thee in an especial manner." So the maiden went forward towards the wood, keeping in advance of Geraint, as he had desired her; and it grieved him as much as his wrath would permit, to see a maiden so illustrious as she having so much trouble with the care of the horses. Then they reached the wood, and it was both deep and vast; and in the wood night overtook them. "Ah, maiden," said he, "it is vain to attempt proceeding forward!" "Well, Lord," said she, "whatsoever thou wishest, we will do." "It will be best for us," he answered, "to turn out of the wood, and to rest, and wait for the day, in order to pursue our journey." "That will we, gladly," said she. And they did so. Having dismounted himself, he took her down from her horse. "I cannot, by any means, refrain from sleep, through weariness," said he. "Do thou, therefore, watch the horses, and sleep not." "I will, Lord," said she. Then he went to sleep in his armour, and thus passed the night, which was not long at that season. And when she saw the dawn of day appear, she looked around her, to see if he were waking, and thereupon he woke. "My Lord," she said, "I have desired to awake thee for some time." But he spake nothing to her about fatigue, {40} as he had desired her to be silent. Then he arose, and said unto her, "Take the horses, and ride on; and keep straight on before thee as thou didst yesterday." And early in the day they left the wood, and they came to an open country, with meadows on one hand, and mowers mowing the meadows. And there was a river before them, and the horses bent down, and drank the water. And they went up out of the river by a lofty steep; and there they met a slender stripling, with a satchel about his neck, and they saw that there was something in the satchel, but they knew not what it was. And he had a small blue pitcher in his hand, and a bowl on the mouth of the pitcher. And the youth saluted Geraint. "Heaven prosper thee," said Geraint, "and whence dost thou come?" "I come," said he, "from the city that lies before thee. My Lord," he added, "will it be displeasing to thee, if I ask whence thou comest also?" "By no means--through yonder wood did I come." "Thou camest not through the wood to-day." "No," he replied, "we were in the wood last night." "I warrant," said the youth, "that thy condition there last night was not the most pleasant, and that thou hadst neither meat nor drink." "No, by my faith," said he. "Wilt thou follow my counsel," said the youth, "and take thy meal from me?" "What sort of meal?" he enquired. "The breakfast which is sent for yonder mowers, nothing less than bread and meat, and wine; and if thou wilt, Sir, they shall have none of it." "I will," said he, "and Heaven reward thee for it." So Geraint alighted, and the youth took the maiden from off her horse. Then they washed, and took their repast. And the youth cut the bread in slices, and gave them drink, and served them withal. And when they had finished, the youth arose, and said to Geraint, "My Lord, with thy permission I will now go and fetch some food for the mowers." "Go, first, to the town," said Geraint, "and take a lodging for me in the best place that thou knowest, and the most commodious one for the horses, and take thou whichever horse and arms thou choosest in payment for thy service and thy gift." "Heaven reward thee, Lord," said the youth, "and this would be ample to repay services much greater than those I rendered unto thee." And to the town went the youth, and he took the best and the most pleasant lodgings that he knew; and after that he went to the palace, having the horse and armour with him, and proceeded to the place where the Earl was, and told him all his adventure. "I go now, Lord," said he, "to meet the young man, and to conduct him to his lodging." "Go gladly," said the Earl, "and right joyfully shall he be received here, if he so come." And the youth went to meet Geraint, and told him that he would be received gladly by the Earl in his own palace; but he would go only to his lodgings. And he had a goodly chamber, in which was plenty of straw, and draperies, and a spacious and commodious place he had for the horses, and the youth prepared for them plenty of provender. And after they had disarrayed themselves, Geraint spoke thus to Enid: "Go," said he, "to the other side of the chamber, and come not to this side of the house; and thou mayest call to thee the woman of the house, if thou wilt." "I will do, Lord," said she, "as thou sayest." And thereupon the man of the house came to Geraint, and welcomed him. "Oh, chieftain," he said, "hast thou taken thy meal?" "I have," said he. Then the youth spoke to him, and enquired if he would not drink something before he met the Earl. "Truly, I will," said he. So the youth went into the town, and brought them drink. And they drank. "I must needs sleep," said Geraint. "Well," said the youth, "and whilst thou sleepest, I will go to see the Earl." "Go, gladly," he said, "and come here again when I require thee." And Geraint went to sleep, and so did Enid also. And the youth came to the place where the Earl was, and the Earl asked him where the lodgings of the knight were, and he told him. "I must go," said the youth, "to wait on him in the evening." "Go," answered the Earl, "and greet him well from me, and tell him that in the evening I will go to see him." "This will I do," said the youth. So he came when it was time for them to awake. And they arose, and went forth. And when it was time for them to take their food they took it. And the youth served them. And Geraint enquired of the man of the house, whether there were any of his companions that he wished to invite to him, and he said that there were. "Bring them hither, and entertain them at my cost with the best thou canst buy in the town." And the man of the house brought there those whom he chose, and feasted them at Geraint's expense. Thereupon, behold, the Earl came to visit Geraint, and his twelve honourable knights with him. And Geraint rose up, and welcomed him. "Heaven preserve thee," said the Earl. Then they all sat down according to their precedence in honour. And the Earl conversed with Geraint and enquired of him the object of his journey. "I have none," he replied, "but to seek adventures, and to follow my own inclination." Then the Earl cast his eye upon Enid, and he looked at her steadfastly. And he thought he had never seen a maiden fairer or more comely than she. And he set all his thoughts and his affections upon her. Then he asked of Geraint, "Have I thy permission to go and converse with yonder maiden, for I see that she is apart from thee?" "Thou hast it, gladly," said he. So the Earl went to the place where the maiden was, and spake with her. "Ah, maiden," said he, "it cannot be pleasant to thee to journey thus with yonder man!" "It is not unpleasant to me," said she, "to journey the same road that he journeys." "Thou hast neither youths nor maidens to serve thee," said he. "Truly," she replied, "it is more pleasant for me to follow yonder man than to be served by youths and maidens." "I will give thee good counsel," said he. "All my Earldom will I place in thy possession, if thou wilt dwell with me." "That will I not, by Heaven," she said, "yonder man was the first to whom my faith was ever pledged; and shall I prove inconstant to him?" "Thou art in the wrong," said the Earl; "if I slay the man yonder, I can keep thee with me as long as I choose; and when thou no longer pleasest me, I can turn thee away. But if thou goest with me by thy own good will, I protest that our union shall continue eternal and undivided as long as I remain alive." Then she pondered these words of his, and she considered that it was advisable to encourage him in his request. "Behold, then, chieftain, this is most expedient for thee to do to save me any needless imputation; come here to-morrow, and take me away as though I knew nothing thereof." "I will do so," said he. So he arose, and took his leave, and went forth with his attendants. And she told not then to Geraint any of the conversation which she had had with the Earl, lest it should rouse his anger, and cause him uneasiness and care. And at the usual hour they went to sleep. And at the beginning of the night Enid slept a little; and at midnight she arose, and placed all Geraint's armour together, so that it might be ready to put on. And although fearful of her errand, she came to the side of Geraint's bed; and she spoke to him softly and gently, saying, "My Lord, arise, and clothe thyself, for these were the words of the Earl to me, and his intention concerning me." So she told Geraint all that had passed. And although he was wroth with her, he took warning, and clothed himself. And she lighted a candle, that he might have light to do so. "Leave there the candle," said he, "and desire the man of the house to come here." Then she went, and the man of the house came to him. "Dost thou know how much I owe thee?" asked Geraint. "I think thou owest but little." "Take the eleven horses and the eleven suits of armour." "Heaven reward thee, Lord," said he, "but I spent not the value of one suit of armour upon thee." "For that reason," said he, "thou wilt be the richer. And now wilt thou come to guide me out of the town?" "I will, gladly," said he, "and in which direction dost thou intend to go?" "I wish to leave the town by a different way from that by which I entered it." So the man of the lodgings accompanied him as far as he desired. Then he bade the maiden to go on before him; and she did so, and went straight forward, and his host returned home. And he had only just reached his house, when, behold, the greatest tumult approached that was ever heard. And when he looked out he saw fourscore knights in complete armour around the house, with the Earl Dwrm at their head. "Where is the knight that was here?" said the Earl. "By thy hand," said he, "he went hence some time ago." "Wherefore, villain," said he, "didst thou let him go without informing me?" "My Lord, thou didst not command me to do so, else would I not have allowed him to depart." "What way dost thou think that he took?" "I know not, except that he went along the high road." And they turned their horses' heads that way, and seeing the tracks of the horses upon the high road, they followed. And when the maiden beheld the dawning of the day, she looked behind her, and saw vast clouds of dust coming nearer and nearer to her. And thereupon she became uneasy, and she thought that it was the Earl and his host coming after them. And thereupon she beheld a knight appearing through the mist. "By my faith," said she, "though he should slay me, it were better for me to receive my death at his hands, than to see him killed without warning him." "My Lord," she said to him, "seest thou yonder man hastening after thee, and many others with him?" "I do see him," said he, "and in despite of all my orders, I see that thou wilt never keep silence." Then he turned upon the knight, and with the first thrust he threw him down under his horse's feet. And as long as there remained one of the fourscore knights, he overthrew every one of them at the first onset. And from the weakest to the strongest, they all attacked him one after the other, except the Earl: and last of all the Earl came against him also. And he broke his lance, and then he broke a second. But Geraint turned upon him, and struck him with his lance upon the centre of his shield, so that by that single thrust the shield was split, and all his armour broken, and he himself was brought over his horse's crupper to the ground, and was in peril of his life. And Geraint drew near to him; and at the noise of the trampling of his horse the Earl revived. "Mercy, Lord," said he to Geraint. And Geraint granted him mercy. But through the hardness of the ground where they had fallen, and the violence of the stroke which they had received, there was not a single knight amongst them that escaped without receiving a fall, mortally severe, and grievously painful, and desperately wounding, from the hand of Geraint. {Picture: p48.jpg} And Geraint journeyed along the high road that was before him, and the maiden went on first; and near them they beheld a valley which was the fairest ever seen, and which had a large river running through it; and there was a bridge over the river, and the high road led to the bridge. And above the bridge, upon the opposite side of the river, they beheld a fortified town, the fairest ever seen. And as they approached the bridge, Geraint saw coming towards him from a thick copse a man mounted upon a large and lofty steed, even of pace and spirited though tractable. "Ah, knight," said Geraint, "whence comest thou?" "I come," said he "from the valley below us." "Canst thou tell me," said Geraint, "who is the owner of this fair valley and yonder walled town?" "I will tell thee, willingly," said he, "Gwiffert Petit he is called by the Franks, but the Welsh call him the Little King." "Can I go by yonder bridge," said Geraint, "and by the lower highway that is beneath the town?" Said the knight, "Thou canst not go by his tower {47a} on the other side of the bridge, unless thou dost intend to combat him; because it is his custom to encounter every knight that comes upon his lands." "I declare to Heaven," said Geraint, "that I will, nevertheless, pursue my journey that way." {47b} "If thou dost so," said the knight, "thou wilt probably meet with shame and disgrace in reward for thy daring." {48a} Then Geraint proceeded along the road that led to the town, and the road brought him to a ground that was hard, and rugged, and high, and ridgy. {48b} And as he journeyed thus, he beheld a knight following him upon a war-horse, strong, and large, and proudly-stepping, and wide-hoofed, and broad-chested. And he never saw a man of smaller stature than he who was upon the horse. And both he and his horse were completely armed. When he had overtaken Geraint he said to him, "Tell me, chieftain, whether it is through ignorance or through presumption that thou seekest to insult my dignity, and to infringe my rules?" "Nay," answered Geraint, "I knew not that this road was forbid to any." "Thou didst know it," said the other; "come with me to my Court, to do me satisfaction." "That will I not, by my faith," said Geraint; "I would not go even to thy Lord's Court, excepting Arthur were thy Lord." "By the hand of Arthur himself," said the knight, "I will have satisfaction of thee, or receive my overthrow at thy hands." And immediately they charged one another. And a squire of his came to serve him with lances as he broke them. And they gave each other such hard and severe strokes, that their shields lost all their colour. But it was very difficult for Geraint to fight with him on account of his small size, for he was hardly able to get a full aim at him with all the efforts he could make. {49} And they fought thus until their horses were brought down upon their knees; and at length Geraint threw the knight headlong to the ground; and then they fought on foot, and they gave one another blows so boldly fierce, so frequent, and so severely powerful, that their helmets were pierced, and their skullcaps were broken, and their arms were shattered, and the light of their eyes was darkened by sweat and blood. At the last Geraint became enraged, and he called to him all his strength; and boldly angry, and swiftly resolute, and furiously determined, he lifted up his sword, and struck him on the crown of his head a blow so mortally painful, so violent, so fierce, and so penetrating, that it cut through all his head armour, and his skin, and his flesh, until it wounded the very bone, and the sword flew out of the hand of the Little King to the furthest end of the plain, and he besought Geraint that he would have mercy and compassion upon him. "Though thou hast been neither courteous nor just," said Geraint, "thou shalt have mercy, upon condition that thou wilt become my ally, and engage never to fight against me again, but to come to my assistance whenever thou hearest of my being in trouble." "This will I do, gladly, Lord," said he. So he pledged him his faith thereof. "And now, Lord, come with me," said he, "to my Court yonder, to recover from thy weariness and fatigue." "That will I not, by Heaven," said he. Then Gwiffert Petit beheld Enid where she stood, and it grieved him to see one of her noble mien appear so deeply afflicted. And he said to Geraint, "My Lord, thou doest wrong not to take repose, and refresh thyself awhile; for, if thou meetest with any difficulty in thy present condition, it will not be easy for thee to surmount it." But Geraint would do no other than proceed on his journey, and he mounted his horse in pain, and all covered with blood. And the maiden went on first, and they proceeded towards the wood which they saw before them. And the heat of the sun was very great, and through the blood and sweat, Geraint's armour cleaved to his flesh; and when they came into the wood, he stood under a tree, to avoid the sun's heat; and his wounds pained him more than they had done at the time when he received them. And the maiden stood under another tree. And, lo! they heard the sound of horns, and a tumultuous noise, and the occasion of it was, that Arthur and his company had come down to the wood. And while Geraint was considering which way he should go to avoid them, behold, he was espied by a foot page, who was an attendant on the Steward of the Household, and he went to the steward, and told him what kind of man he had seen in the wood. Then the steward caused his horse to be saddled, and he took his lance and his shield, and went to the place where Geraint was. "Ah, knight!" said he, "what dost thou here?" "I am standing under a shady tree, to avoid the heat and the rays of the sun." "Wherefore is thy journey, and who art thou?" "I seek adventures, and go where I list." "Indeed," said Kai, "then come with me to see Arthur, who is here hard by." "That will I not, by Heaven," said Geraint. "Thou must needs come," said Kai. Then Geraint knew who he was, but Kai did not know Geraint. And Kai attacked Geraint as best as he could. And Geraint became wroth, and he struck him with the shaft of his lance, so that he rolled headlong to the ground. But chastisement worse than this would he not inflict on him. Scared and wildly Kai arose, and he mounted his horse, and went back to his lodging. And thence he proceeded to Gwalchmai's tent. "Oh, Sir," said he to Gwalchmai, "I was told by one of the attendants, that he saw in the wood above a wounded knight, having on battered armour, and if thou dost right, thou wilt go and see if this be true." "I care not if I do so," said Gwalchmai. "Take, then, thy horse, and some of thy armour," said Kai, "for I hear that he is not over-courteous to those who approach him." So Gwalchmai took his spear and his shield, and mounted his horse, and came to the spot where Geraint was. "Sir Knight," said he, "wherefore is thy journey?" "I journey for my own pleasure, and to seek the adventures of the world." "Wilt thou tell me who thou art, or wilt thou come and visit Arthur, who is near at hand?" "I will make no alliance with thee, nor will I go and visit Arthur," said he. And he knew that it was Gwalchmai, but Gwalchmai knew him not. "I purpose not to leave thee," said Gwalchmai, "till I know who thou art." And he charged him with his lance, and struck him on his shield, so that the shaft was shivered into splinters, and their horses were front to front. Then Gwalchmai gazed fixedly upon him, and he knew him. "Ah, Geraint," said he, "is it thou that art here?" "I am not Geraint," said he. "Geraint thou art, by Heaven," he replied, "and a wretched and insane expedition is this." Then he looked around, and beheld Enid, and he welcomed her gladly. "Geraint," said Gwalchmai, "come thou, and see Arthur; he is thy lord and thy cousin." "I will not," said he, "for I am not in a fit state to go and see any one." Thereupon, behold, one of the pages came after Gwalchmai, to speak to him. So he sent him to apprise Arthur that Geraint was there wounded, and that he would not go to visit him, and that it was pitiable to see the plight that he was in. And this he did without Geraint's knowledge, inasmuch as he spoke in a whisper to the page. "Entreat Arthur," said he, "to have his tent brought near to the road, for he will not meet him willingly, and it is not easy to compel him in the mood he is in." So the page came to Arthur, and told him this. And he caused his tent to be removed unto the side of the road. And the maiden rejoiced in her heart. And Gwalchmai led Geraint onwards along the road, till they came to the place where Arthur was encamped, and the pages were pitching his tent by the road-side. "Lord," said Geraint, "all hail unto thee." "Heaven prosper thee; and who art thou?" said Arthur. "It is Geraint," said Gwalchmai, "and of his own free will would he not come to meet thee." "Verily," said Arthur, "he is bereft of his reason." Then came Enid, and saluted Arthur. "Heaven protect thee," said he. And thereupon he caused one of the pages to take her from her horse. "Alas! Enid," said Arthur, "what expedition is this?" "I know not, Lord," said she, "save that it behoves me to journey by the same road that he journeys." "My Lord," said Geraint, "with thy permission we will depart." "Whither wilt thou go?" said Arthur. "Thou canst not proceed now, unless it be unto thy death." {53} "He will not suffer himself to be invited by me," said Gwalchmai. "But by me he will," said Arthur; "and, moreover, he does not go from here until he is healed." "I had rather, Lord," said Geraint, "that thou wouldest let me go forth." "That will I not, I declare to Heaven," said he. Then he caused a maiden to be sent for to conduct Enid to the tent where Gwenhwyvar's chamber was. And Gwenhwyvar and all her women were joyful at her coming, and they took off her riding dress, and placed other garments upon her. Arthur also called Kadyrieith, and ordered him to pitch a tent for Geraint, and the physicians, and he enjoined him to provide him with abundance of all that might be requisite for him. And Kadyrieith did as he had commanded him. And Morgan Tud and his disciples were brought to Geraint. And Arthur and his hosts remained there nearly a month, whilst Geraint was being healed. And when he was fully recovered, Geraint came to Arthur, and asked his permission to depart. "I know not if thou art quite well." "In truth I am, Lord," said Geraint. "I shall not believe thee concerning that, but the physicians that were with thee." So Arthur caused the physicians to be summoned to him, and asked them if it were true. "It is true, Lord," said Morgan Tud. So the next day Arthur permitted him to go forth, and he pursued his journey. And on the same day Arthur removed thence. And Geraint desired Enid to go on, and to keep before him, as she had formerly done. And she went forward along the high road. And as they journeyed thus, they heard an exceeding loud wailing near to them. "Stay thou here," said he, "and I will go and see what is the cause of this wailing." "I will," said she. Then he went forward into an open glade that was near the road. And in the glade he saw two horses, one having a man's saddle, and the other a woman's saddle upon it. And, behold, there was a knight lying dead in his armour, and a young damsel in a riding dress standing over him, lamenting. "Ah! Lady," said Geraint, "what hath befallen thee?" "Behold," she answered, "I journeyed here with my beloved husband, when, lo! three giants came upon us, and without any cause in the world, they slew him." "Which way went they hence?" said Geraint. "Yonder by the high road," she replied. So he returned to Enid. "Go," said he, "to the lady that is below yonder, and await me there till I come." She was sad when he ordered her to do thus, but nevertheless she went to the damsel, whom it was ruth to hear, and she felt certain that Geraint would never return. Meanwhile Geraint followed the giants, and overtook them. And each of them was greater of stature than three other men, and a huge club was on the shoulder of each. Then he rushed upon one of them, and thrust his lance through his body. And having drawn it forth again, he pierced another of them through likewise. But the third turned upon him, and struck him with his club, so that he split his shield, and crushed his shoulder, and opened his wounds anew, and all his blood began to flow from him. But Geraint drew his sword, and attacked the giant, and gave him a blow on the crown of his head so severe, and fierce, and violent, that his head and his neck were split down to his shoulders, and he fell dead. So Geraint left him thus, and returned to Enid. And when he saw her, he fell down lifeless from his horse. Piercing, and loud, and thrilling was the cry that Enid uttered. And she came and stood over him where he had fallen. And at the sound of her cries came the Earl of Limours, and the host that journeyed with him, whom her lamentations brought out of their road. And the Earl said to Enid, "Alas, Lady, what hath befallen thee?" "Ah! good Sir," said she, "the only man I have loved, or ever shall love, is slain." Then he said to the other, "And what is the cause of thy grief?" "They have slain my beloved husband also," said she. "And who was it that slew them?" "Some giants," she answered, "slew my best beloved, and the other knight went in pursuit of them, and came back in the state thou seest, his blood flowing excessively; but it appears to me that he did not leave the giants without killing some of them, if not all." The Earl caused the knight that was dead to be buried, but he thought that there still remained some life in Geraint; and to see if he yet would live, he had him carried with him in the hollow of his shield, and upon a bier. And the two damsels went to the court; and when they arrived there, Geraint was placed upon a litter-couch in front of the table that was in the hall. Then they all took off their travelling gear, and the Earl besought Enid to do the same, and to clothe herself in other garments. "I will not, by Heaven," said she. "Ah! Lady," said he, "be not so sorrowful for this matter." "It were hard to persuade me to be otherwise," said she. "I will act towards thee in such wise, that thou needest not be sorrowful, whether yonder knight live or die. Behold, a good Earldom, together with myself, will I bestow on thee; be, therefore, happy and joyful." "I declare to Heaven," said she, "that henceforth I shall never be joyful while I live." "Come, then," said he, "and eat." "No, by Heaven, I will not," she answered. "But by Heaven thou shalt," said he. So he took her with him to the table against her will, and many times desired her to eat. "I call Heaven to witness," said she, "that I will not eat until the man that is upon yonder bier shall eat likewise." "Thou canst not fulfil that," said the Earl, "yonder man is dead already." "I will prove that I can," said she. Then he offered her a goblet of liquor. "Drink this goblet," he said, "and it will cause thee to change thy mind." "Evil betide me," she answered, "if I drink aught until he drink also." "Truly," said the Earl, "it is of no more avail for me to be gentle with thee than ungentle." And he gave her a box in the ear. Thereupon she raised a loud and piercing shriek, and her lamentations were much greater than they had been before, for she considered in her mind that had Geraint been alive, he durst not have struck her thus. But, behold, at the sound of her cry Geraint revived from his swoon, and he sat up on the bier, and finding his sword in the hollow of his shield, he rushed to the place where the Earl was, and struck him a fiercely-wounding, severely-venomous, and sternly-smiting blow upon the crown of his head, so that he clove him in twain, until his sword was stayed by the table. Then all left the board and fled away. And this was not so much through fear of the living as through the dread they felt at seeing the dead man rise up to slay them. And Geraint looked upon Enid, and he was grieved for two causes; one was, to see that Enid had lost her colour and her wonted aspect; and the other, to know that she was in the right. "Lady," said he, "knowest thou where our horses are?" "I know, Lord, where thy horse is," she replied, "but I know not where is the other. Thy horse is in the house yonder." So he went to the house, and brought forth his horse, and mounted him, and took up Enid from the ground, and placed her upon the horse with him. And he rode forward. And their road lay between two hedges. And the night was gaining on the day. And, lo! they saw behind them the shafts of spears betwixt them and the sky, and they heard the trampling of horses, and the noise of a host approaching. "I hear something following us," said he, "and I will put thee on the other side of the hedge." And thus he did. And thereupon, behold, a knight pricked towards him, and couched his lance. When Enid saw this, she cried out, saying, "Oh! chieftain, whoever thou art, what renown wilt thou gain by slaying a dead man?" "Oh! Heaven," said he, "is it Geraint?" "Yes, in truth," said she. "And who art thou?" "I am the Little King," he answered, "coming to thy assistance, for I heard that thou wast in trouble. And if thou hadst followed my advice, none of these hardships would have befallen thee." "Nothing can happen," said Geraint, "without the will of Heaven, though much good results from counsel." "Yes," said the Little King, "and I know good counsel for thee now. Come with me to the court of a son-in- law of my sister, which is near here, and thou shalt have the best medical assistance in the kingdom." "I will do so, gladly," said Geraint. And Enid was placed upon the horse of one of the Little King's squires, and they went forward to the Baron's palace. And they were received there with gladness, and they met with hospitality and attention. And the next morning they went to seek physicians; and it was not long before they came, and they attended Geraint until he was perfectly well. And while Geraint was under medical care, the Little King caused his armour to be repaired, until it was as good as it had ever been. And they remained there a fortnight and a month. Then the Little King said to Geraint, "Now will we go towards my own Court, to take rest and amuse ourselves." "Not so," said Geraint, "we will first journey for one day more, and return again." "With all my heart," said the Little King, "do thou go then." And early in the day they set forth. And more gladly and more joyfully did Enid journey with them that day than she had ever done. And they came to the main road. And when they reached a place where the road divided in two, they beheld a man on foot coming towards them along one of these roads, and Gwiffert asked the man whence he came. "I come," said he, "from an errand in the country." "Tell me," said Geraint, "which is the best for me to follow of these two roads?" "That is the best for thee to follow," answered he, "for if thou goest by this one, thou wilt never return. Below us," said he, "there is a hedge of mist, and within it are enchanted games, and no one who has gone there has ever returned. And the Court of the Earl Owain is there, and he permits no one to go to lodge in the town except he will go to his Court." "I declare to Heaven," said Geraint, "that we will take the lower road." And they went along it until they came to the town. And they took the fairest and pleasantest place in the town for their lodging. And while they were thus, behold, a young man came to them, and greeted them. "Heaven be propitious to thee," said they. "Good Sirs," said he, "what preparations are you making here?" "We are taking up our lodging," said they, "to pass the night." "It is not the custom with him who owns the town," he answered, "to permit any of gentle birth, unless they come to stay in his Court, to abide here; therefore, come you to the Court." "We will come, gladly," said Geraint. And they went with the page, and they were joyfully received. And the Earl came to the hall to meet them, and he commanded the tables to be laid. And they washed, and sat down. And this is the order in which they sat, Geraint on one side of the Earl, and Enid on the other side, and next to Enid the Little King, and then the Countess next to Geraint, and all after that as became their rank. Then Geraint recollected the games, and thought that he should not go to them; and on that account he did not eat. Then the Earl looked upon Geraint, and considered, and he bethought him that his not eating was because of the games, and it grieved him that he had ever established those games, were it only on account of losing such a youth as Geraint. And if Geraint had asked him to abolish the games, he would gladly have done so. Then the Earl said to Geraint, "What thought occupies thy mind, that thou dost not eat? If thou hesitatest about going to the games, thou shall not go, and no other of thy rank shall ever go either." "Heaven reward thee," said Geraint, "but I wish nothing better than to go to the games, and to be shown the way thither." "If that is what thou dost prefer, thou shalt obtain it willingly." "I do prefer it, indeed," said he. Then they ate, and they were amply served, and they had a variety of gifts, and abundance of liquor. And when they had finished eating, they arose. And Geraint called for his horse and his armour, and he accoutred both himself and his horse. And all the hosts went forth until they came to the side of the hedge, and the hedge was so lofty, that it reached as high as they could see in the air, and upon every stake in the hedge, except two, there was the head of a man, and the number of stakes throughout the hedge was very great. Then said the Little King, "May no one go in with the chieftain?" "No one may," said Earl Owain. "Which way can I enter?" enquired Geraint. "I know not," said Owain, "but enter by the way that thou wilt, and that seemeth easiest to thee." Then fearlessly and unhesitatingly Geraint dashed forward into the mist. And on leaving the mist he came to a large orchard, and in the orchard he saw an open space, wherein was a tent of red satin, and the door of the tent was open, and an apple-tree stood in front of the door of the tent, and on a branch of the apple-tree hung a huge hunting horn. Then he dismounted, and went into the tent, and there was no one in the tent save one maiden sitting in a golden chair, and another chair was opposite to her, empty. And Geraint went to the empty chair, and sat down therein. "Ah! chieftain," said the maiden, "I would not counsel thee to sit in that chair." "Wherefore?" said Geraint. "The man to whom that chair belongs has never suffered another to sit in it." "I care not," said Geraint, "though it displease him that I sit in the chair." And thereupon they heard a mighty tumult around the tent. And Geraint looked to see what was the cause of the tumult. And he beheld without a knight mounted upon a war-horse, proudly-snorting, high-mettled, and large of bone, and a robe of honour in two parts was upon him and upon his horse, and beneath it was plenty of armour. "Tell me, chieftain," said he to Geraint, "who it was that bade thee sit there?" "Myself," answered he. "It was wrong of thee to do me this shame and disgrace. Arise, and do me satisfaction for thine insolence." Then Geraint arose, and they encountered immediately, and they broke a set of lances; and a second set; and a third; and they gave each other fierce and frequent strokes; and at last Geraint became enraged, and he urged on his horse, and rushed upon him, and gave him a thrust on the centre of his shield, so that it was split, and so that the head of his lance went through his armour, and his girths were broken, and he himself was borne headlong to the ground the length of Geraint's lance and arm, over his horse's crupper. "Oh, my Lord!" said he, "thy mercy, and thou shalt have what thou wilt." "I only desire," said Geraint, "that this game shall no longer exist here, nor the hedge of mist, nor magic, nor enchantment." "Thou shalt have this gladly, Lord," he replied. "Cause then the mist to disappear from this place," said Geraint. "Sound yonder horn," said he, "and when thou soundest it, the mist will vanish; but it will not go hence unless the horn be blown by the knight by whom I am vanquished." And sad and sorrowful was Enid where she remained, through anxiety concerning Geraint. Then Geraint went and sounded the horn. And at the first blast he gave, the mist vanished. And all the hosts came together, and they all became reconciled to each other. And the Earl invited Geraint and the Little King to stay with him that night. And the next morning they separated. And Geraint went towards his own dominions; and thenceforth he reigned prosperously, and his warlike fame and splendour lasted with renown and honour both to him and to Enid from that time forward. {Picture: p62.jpg} KILHWCH AND OLWEN OR THE TWRCH TRWYTH {Picture: p63.jpg} Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon desired a wife as a helpmate, and the wife that he chose was Goleuddydd, the daughter of Prince Anlawdd. And after their union the people put up prayers that they might have an heir. And they had a son through the prayers of the people. From the time of her pregnancy Goleuddydd became wild, and wandered about, without habitation; but when her delivery was at hand, her reason came back to her. Then she went to a mountain where there was a swineherd, keeping a herd of swine. And through fear of the swine the queen was delivered. And the swineherd took the boy, and brought him to the palace; and he was christened, and they called him Kilhwch, because he had been found in a swine's burrow. Nevertheless the boy was of gentle lineage, and cousin unto Arthur; and they put him out to nurse. After this the boy's mother, Goleuddydd, the daughter of Prince Anlawdd, fell sick. Then she called her husband unto her, and said to him, "Of this sickness I shall die, and thou wilt take another wife. Now wives are the gift of the Lord, but it would be wrong for thee to harm thy son. Therefore I charge thee that thou take not a wife until thou see a briar with two blossoms upon my grave." And this he promised her. Then she besought him to dress her grave every year, that nothing might grow thereon. {64} So the queen died. Now the king sent an attendant every morning to see if anything were growing upon the grave. And at the end of the seventh year the master neglected that which he had promised to the queen. One day the king went to hunt, and he rode to the place of burial, to see the grave, and to know if it were time that he should take a wife; and the king saw the briar. And when he saw it, the king took counsel where he should find a wife. Said one of his counsellors, "I know a wife that will suit thee well, and she is the wife of King Doged." And they resolved to go to seek her; and they slew the king, and brought away his wife and one daughter that she had along with her. And they conquered the king's lands. On a certain day as the lady walked abroad, she came to the house of an old crone that dwelt in the town, and that had no tooth in her head. And the queen said to her, "Old woman, tell me that which I shall ask thee, for the love of Heaven. Where are the children of the man who has carried me away by violence?" Said the crone, "He has not children." Said the queen, "Woe is me, that I should have come to one who is childless!" Then said the hag, "Thou needest not lament on account of that, for there is a prediction that he shall have an heir by thee, and by none other. Moreover, be not sorrowful, for he has one son." The lady returned home with joy, and she asked her consort, "Wherefore hast thou concealed thy children from me?" The king said, "I will do so no longer." And he sent messengers for his son, and he was brought to the Court. His stepmother said unto him, "It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is sought of every man of renown in the world." "I am not yet of an age to wed," answered the youth. Then said she unto him, "I declare to thee, that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr." And the youth blushed, and the love of the maiden diffused itself through all his frame, although he had never seen her. And his father enquired of him, "What has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?" "My stepmother has declared to me, that I shall never have a wife until I obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr." "That will be easy for thee," answered his father. "Arthur is thy cousin. Go, therefore, unto Arthur, to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as a boon." {Picture: p66.jpg} And the youth pricked forth upon a steed with head dappled grey, of four winters old, firm of limb, with shell-formed hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold on his head, and upon him a saddle of costly gold. And in the youth's hand were two spears of silver, sharp, well-tempered, headed with steel, three ells in length, of an edge to wound the wind, and cause blood to flow, and swifter than the fall {66} of the dew-drop from the blade of reed grass upon the earth, when the dew of June is at the heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was upon his thigh, the blade of which was of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of the hue of the lightning of heaven: his war-horn was of ivory. Before him were two brindled white- breasted greyhounds, having strong collars of rubies about their necks, reaching from the shoulder to the ear. And the one that was on the left side bounded across to the right side, and the one on the right to the left, and like two sea swallows sported around him. And his courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs, like four swallows in the air, about his head, now above, now below. About him was a four-cornered cloth of purple, and an apple of gold was at each corner; and every one of the apples was of the value of an hundred kine. And there was precious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes, and upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe. And the blade of grass bent not beneath him, so light was his courser's tread as he journeyed towards the gate of Arthur's palace. Spoke the youth, "Is there a porter?" "There is; and if thou holdest not thy peace, small will be thy welcome. {67} I am Arthur's porter every first day of January. And during every other part of the year but this the office is filled by Huandaw, and Gogigwc, and Llaeskenym, and Pennpingyon, who goes upon his head to save his feet, neither towards the sky nor towards the earth, but like a rolling stone upon the floor of the Court." "Open the portal." "I will not open it." "Wherefore not?" "The knife is in the meat, and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in Arthur's hall, and none may enter therein but the son of a king of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing his craft. But there will be refreshment for thy dogs, and for thy horses; and for thee there will be collops cooked and peppered, and luscious wine and mirthful songs, and food for fifty men shall be brought unto thee in the guest chamber, where the stranger and the sons of other countries eat, who come not unto the precincts of the Palace of Arthur. Thou wilt fare no worse there than thou wouldest with Arthur in the Court. A lady shall smooth thy couch, and shall lull thee with songs; and early to-morrow morning, when the gate is open for the multitude that came hither to-day, for thee shall it be opened first, and thou mayest sit in the place that thou shall choose in Arthur's Hall, from the upper end to the lower." Said the youth, "That will I not do. If thou openest the gate, it is well. If thou dost not open it, I will bring disgrace upon thy Lord, and evil report upon thee. And I will set up three shouts at this very gate, than which none were ever more deadly, from the top of Pengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol, in the North, and to Esgair Oervel, in Ireland. And all the women in this Palace that are pregnant shall lose their offspring; and such as are not pregnant, their hearts shall be turned by illness, so that they shall never bear children from this day forward." "What clamour soever thou mayest make," said Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr, "against the laws of Arthur's Palace, shalt thou not enter therein, until I first go and speak with Arthur." Then Glewlwyd went into the Hall. And Arthur said to him, "Hast thou news from the gate?"--"Half of my life is past, and half of thine. I was heretofore in Kaer Se and Asse, in Sach and Salach, in Lotor and Fotor; and I have been heretofore in India the Great and India the Lesser; and I was in the battle of Dau Ynyr, when the twelve hostages were brought from Llychlyn. And I have also been in Europe, and in Africa, and in the Islands of Corsica, and in Caer Brythwch, and Brythach, and Verthach; and I was present when formerly thou didst slay the family of Clis the son of Merin, and when thou didst slay Mil Du, the son of Ducum, and when thou didst conquer Greece in the East. And I have been in Caer Oeth and Annoeth, and in Caer Nevenhyr; nine supreme sovereigns, handsome men, saw we there, but never did I behold a man of equal dignity with him who is now at the door of the portal." Then said Arthur, "If walking thou didst enter in here, return thou running. And every one that beholds the light, and every one that opens and shuts the eye, let him show him respect, and serve him, some with gold-mounted drinking horns, others with collops cooked and peppered, until food and drink can be prepared for him. It is unbecoming to keep such a man as thou sayest he is in the wind and the rain." Said Kai, "By the hand of my friend, if thou wouldest follow my counsel, thou wouldest not break through the laws of the Court because of him." "Not so, blessed Kai, it is an honour to us to be resorted to, and the greater our courtesy, the greater will be our renown, and our fame, and our glory." And Glewlwyd came to the gate, and opened the gate before him; and although all dismounted upon the horse-block at the gate, yet did he not dismount, but he rode in upon his charger. Then said Kilhwch, "Greeting be unto thee, Sovereign Ruler of this Island; and be this greeting no less unto the lowest than unto the highest, and be it equally unto thy guests, and thy warriors, and thy chieftains--let all partake of it as completely as thyself. And complete be thy favour, and thy fame, and thy glory, throughout all this Island." "Greeting unto thee also," said Arthur, "sit thou between two of my warriors, and thou shalt have minstrels before thee, and thou shalt enjoy the privileges of a king born to a throne, as long as thou remainest here. And when I dispense my presents to the visitors and strangers in this Court, they shall be in thy hand at my commencing." Said the youth, "I came not here to consume meat and drink; but if I obtain the boon that I seek, I will requite it thee, and extol thee; and if I have it not, I will bear forth thy dispraise to the four quarters of the world, as far as thy renown has extended." Then said Arthur, "Since thou wilt not remain here, chieftain, thou shalt receive the boon whatsoever thy tongue may name, as far as the wind dries and the rain moistens, and the sun revolves, and the sea encircles, and the earth extends; save only my ship; and my mantle; and Caledvwlch, my sword, and Rhongomyant, my lance; and Wynebgwrthucher, my shield; and Carnwenhau, {70a} my dagger; and Gwenhwyvar, my wife. By the truth of Heaven, thou shalt have it cheerfully, name what thou wilt." "I would that thou bless {70b} my hair." "That shalt be granted thee." And Arthur took a golden comb, and scissors, whereof the loops were of silver, and he combed his hair. And Arthur enquired of him who he was. "For my heart warms unto thee, and I know that thou art come of my blood. Tell me, therefore, who thou art." "I will tell thee," said the youth, "I am Kilhwch, the son of Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon, by Goleuddydd, my mother, the daughter of Prince Anlawdd." "That is true," said Arthur. "Thou art my cousin. Whatsoever boon thou mayest ask, thou shalt receive, be it what it may that thy tongue shall name." "Pledge the truth of Heaven and the faith of thy kingdom thereof." "I pledge it thee, gladly." "I crave of thee then, that thou obtain for me Olwen, the daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, and this boon I likewise seek at the hands of thy warriors. I seek it from Kai, and Bedwyr, and Greidawl Galldonyd, {71a} and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl, and Greid the son of Eri, and Kynddelig Kyvarwydd, and Tathal Twyll Goleu, and Maelwys the son of Baeddan, and Crychwr {71b} the son of Nes, and Cubert the son of Daere, and Percos the son of Poch, and Lluber Beuthach, and Corvil Bervach, and Gwynn the son of Nudd, and Edeyrn the son of Nudd, and Gadwy {71c} the son of Geraint, and Prince Fflewddur Fflam, and Ruawn Pebyr the son of Dorath, and Bradwen the son of Moren Mynawc, and Moren Mynawc himself, and Dalldav the son of Kimin Cov, and the son of Alun Dyved, and the son of Saidi, and the son of Gwryon, and Uchtryd Ardywad Kad, and Kynwas Curvagyl, and Gwrhyr Gwarthegvras, and Isperyr Ewingath, and Gallcoyt Govynynat, and Duach, and Grathach, and Nerthach, the sons of Gwawrddur Kyrvach, (these men came forth from the confines of Hell), and Kilydd Canhastyr, and Canastyr Kanllaw, and Cors Cant-Ewin, and Esgeir Gulhwch Govynkawn, and Drustwrn Hayarn, and Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr, and Lloch Llawwynnyawc, and Aunwas {71d} Adeiniawc, and Sinnoch the son of Seithved, and Gwennwynwyn the son of Naw, and Bedyw the son of Seithved, and Gobrwy the son of Echel Vorddwyttwll, and Echel Vorddwyttwll himself, and Mael the son of Roycol, and Dadweir Dallpenn, and Garwyli the son of Gwythawc Gwyr, and Gwythawc Gwyr himself, and Gormant the son of Ricca, and Menw the son of Teirgwaedd, and Digon the son of Alar, and Selyf the son of Smoit, {71e} and Gusg the son of Atheu, and Nerth the son of Kedarn, and Drudwas the son of Tryffin, and Twrch the son of Perif, and Twrch the son of Annwas, and Iona king of France, and Sel the son of Selgi, and Teregud the son of Iaen, and Sulyen the son of Iaen, and Bradwen the son of Iaen, and Moren the son of Iaen, and Siawn the son of Iaen, and Cradawc the son of Iaen. (They were men of Caerdathal, of Arthur's kindred on his father's side.) Dirmyg the son of Kaw, and Justic the son of Kaw, and Etmic the son of Kaw, and Anghawd the son of Kaw, and Ovan the son of Kaw, and Kelin the son of Kaw, and Connyn the son of Kaw, and Mabsant the son of Kaw, and Gwyngad the son of Kaw, and Llwybyr the son of Kaw, and Coth the son of Kaw, and Meilic the son of Kaw, and Kynwas the son of Kaw, and Ardwyad the son of Kaw, and Ergyryad the son of Kaw, and Neb the son of Kaw, and Gilda the son of Kaw, and Calcas the son of Kaw, and Hueil the son of Kaw, (he never yet made a request at the hand of any Lord). And Samson Vinsych, and Taliesin the chief of the bards, and Mamawyddan the son of Llyr, and Llary the son of Prince Kasnar, and Ysperni {72a} the son of Fflergant king of Armorica, and Saranhon the son of Glythwyr, and Llawr Eilerw, and Annyanniawc the son of Menw the son of Teirgwaedd, and Gwynn the son of Nwyvre, and Fflam the son of Nwyvre, and Geraint the son of Erbin, and Ermid {72b} the son of Erbin, and Dyvel the son of Erbin, and Gwynn the son of Ermid, and Kyndrwyn the son of Ermid, and Hyveidd Unllenn, and Eiddon Vawr Vrydic, and Reidwn Arwy, and Gormant the son of Ricca (Arthur's brother by his mother's side; the Penhynev of Cornwall was his father), and Llawnrodded Varvawc, and Nodawl Varyf Twrch, and Berth the son of Kado, and Rheidwn the son of Beli, and Iscovan Hael, and Iscawin the son of Panon, and Morvran the son of Tegid (no one struck him in the battle of Camlan by reason of his ugliness; all thought he was an auxiliary devil. Hair had he upon him like the hair of a stag). And Sandde Bryd Angel (no one touched him with a spear in the battle of Camlan because of his beauty; all thought he was a ministering angel). And Kynwyl Sant, the third man that escaped from the battle of Camlan, (and he was the last who parted from Arthur on Hengroen his horse). And Uchtryd the son of Erim, and Eus the son of Erim, and Henwas Adeinawg the son of Erim, and Henbedestyr the son of Erim, and Sgilti Yscawndroed son of Erim. (Unto these three men belonged these three qualities,--with Henbedestyr there was not any one who could keep pace, either on horseback or on foot; with Henwas Adeinawg, no four-footed beast could run the distance of an acre, much less could it go beyond it; and as to Sgilti Yscawndroed, when he intended to go upon a message for his Lord, he never sought to find a path, but knowing whither he was to go, if his way lay through a wood he went along the tops of the trees. During his whole life, a blade of reed grass bent not beneath his feet, much less did one ever break, so lightly did he tread.) Teithi Hen the son of Gwynhan, (his dominions were swallowed up by the sea and he himself hardly escaped, and he came to Arthur; and his knife had this peculiarity, that from the time that he came there, no haft would ever remain upon it, and owing to this a sickness came over him, and he pined away during the remainder of his life, and of this he died). And Carneddyr the son of Govynyon Hen, and Gwenwynwyn the son of Nav Gyssevin, Arthur's champion, and Llysgadrudd Emys, and Gwrbothu Hen, (uncles unto Arthur were they, his mother's brothers). Kulvanawyd the son of Goryon, and Llenlleawg {74a} Wyddel from the headland of Ganion, and Dyvynwal Moel, and Dunard king of the North, Teirnon Twryf Bliant, and Tegvan Gloff, and Tegyr Talgellawg, Gwrdinal {74b} the son of Ebrei, and Morgant Hael, Gwystyl the son of Rhun the son of Nwython, and Llwyddeu, the son of Nwython, and Gwydre the son of Llwyddeu, (Gwenabwy the daughter of [Kaw] was his mother, Hueil his uncle stabbed him, and hatred was between Hueil and Arthur because of the wound). Drem the son of Dremidyd, (when the gnat arose in the morning with the sun, he could see it from Gelli Wic in Cornwall, as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain). And Eidyol the son of Ner, and Glwyddyn Saer, (who constructed Ehangwen, Arthur's Hall). Kynyr Keinvarvawc, (when he was told he had a son born, {74c} he said to his wife, 'Damsel, if thy son be mine, his heart will be always cold, and there will be no warmth in his hands; and he will have another peculiarity, if he is my son he will always be stubborn; and he will have another peculiarity, when he carries a burden, whether it be large or small, no one will be able to see it, either before him or at his back; and he will have another peculiarity, no one will be able to resist water and fire so well as he will; and he will have another peculiarity, there will never be a servant or an officer equal to him'). Henwas, and Henwyneb, (an old companion to Arthur). Gwallgoyc, (another; when he came to a town, though there were three hundred houses in it, if he wanted any thing, he would not let sleep come to the eyes of any one whilst he remained there). Berwyn the son of Gerenhir, and Paris king of France, {75a} and Osla Gyllellvawr, (who bore a short broad dagger. When Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek for a narrow place where they might pass the water, and would lay the sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would form a bridge sufficient for the armies of the three Islands of Britain, and of the three Islands adjacent, with their spoil). Gwyddawg the son of Menestyr, (who slew Kai, and whom Arthur slew together with his brothers, to revenge Kai). Garanwyn the son of Kai, and Amren the son of Bedwyr, and Ely Amyr, and Rheu Rhwyd Dyrys, and Rhun Rhudwern, and Eli, and Trachmyr, (Arthur's chief huntsmen). And Llwyddeu the son of Kelcoed, and Hunabwy the son of Gwryon, and Gwynn Godyvron, and Gweir Datharwenniddawg, and Gweir the son of Cadell the son of Talaryant, {75b} and Gweir Gwrhyd Ennwir, and Gweir Paladyr Hir, (the uncles of Arthur, the brothers of his mother). The sons of Llwch Llawwynnyawg, (from beyond the raging sea). Llenlleawg Wyddel, and Ardderchawg Prydain. Cas the son of Saidi, Gwrvan Gwallt Avwyn, and Gwyllennhin the king of France, and Gwittart the son of Oedd king of Ireland, Garselit Wyddel, Panawr Pen Bagad, and Ffleudor the son of Nav, Gwynnhyvar mayor of Cornwall and Devon, (the ninth man that rallied the battle of Camlan). Keli and Kueli, and Gilla Coes Hydd, (he would clear three hundred acres at one bound. The chief leaper of Ireland was he). Sol, and Gwadyn Ossol and Gwadyn Odyeith. (Sol could stand all day upon one foot. Gwadyn Ossol, if he stood upon the top of the highest mountain in the world, it would become a level plain under his feet. Gwadyn Odyeith, the soles of his feet emitted sparks of fire when they struck upon things hard, like the heated mass when drawn out of the forge. He cleared the way for Arthur when he came to any stoppage.) Hirerwm and Hiratrwm. (The day they went on a visit three Cantrevs provided for their entertainment, and they feasted until noon and drank until night, when they went to sleep. And then they devoured the heads of the vermin through hunger, as if they had never eaten anything. When they made a visit, they left neither the fat nor the lean, neither the hot nor the cold, the sour nor the sweet, the fresh nor the salt, the boiled nor the raw.) Huarwar the son of Aflawn, (who asked Arthur such a boon as would satisfy him. It was the third great plague of Cornwall when he received it. None could get a smile from him but when he was satisfied). Gware Gwallt Euryn. The two cubs of Gast Rhymi, Gwyddrud and Gwyddneu Astrus. Sugyn the son of Sugnedydd, (who would suck up the sea on which were three hundred ships, so as to leave nothing but a dry strand. He was broad-chested). {76a} Rhacymwri, the attendant of Arthur; (whatever barn he was shown, were there the produce of thirty ploughs within it, he would strike it with an iron flail until the rafters, the beams, and the boards, were no better than the small oats in the mow upon the floor of the barn). Dygyflwng, and Anoeth Veidawg. And Hir Eiddyl, and Hir Amreu, (they were two attendants of Arthur). And Gwevyl the son of Gwestad, (on the day that he was sad, he would let one of his lips drop below his waist, while he turned up the other like a cap upon his head). Uchtryd Varyf Draws, (who spread his red untrimmed beard over the eight-and-forty rafters which were in Arthur's Hall). Elidyr Gyvarwydd, Yskyrdav, and Yscudydd, (two attendants of Gwenhwyvar were they. Their feet were swift as their thoughts when bearing a message). Brys the son of Bryssethach, (from the Hill of the Black Fernbrake in North Britain). And Grudlwyn Gorr. Bwlch, and Kyfwlch, and Sefwlch, the sons of Cleddyf Kyfwlch, the grandsons of Cleddyf Difwlch. (Their three shields were three gleaming glitterers; their three spears were three pointed piercers; their three swords were three griding gashers; Glas, Glessic, and Gleisad. Their three dogs, Call, Cuall, and Cavall. Their three horses, Hwyrdyddwd, and Drwgdyddwd, and Llwyrdyddwg. {77a} Their three wives, Och, and Garym, and Diaspad. Their three grand-children, Lluched, and Neved, and Eissiwed. Their three daughters, Drwg, and Gwaeth, and Gwaethav Oll. Their three handmaids, Eheubryd the daughter of Kyfwlch, Gorascwrn the daughter of Nerth, Ewaedan the daughter of Kynvelyn Keudawd Pwyll the half man.) Dwnn Diessic Unbenn, Eiladyr the son of Pen Llarcau, Kynedyr Wyllt the son of Hettwn Talaryant, Sawyl, Ben Uchel, Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar, Gwalhaved the son of Gwyar, Gwrhyr Gwastawd Ieithoedd, (to whom all tongues were known,) and Kethcrwn {77b} the Priest. Clust the son of Clustveinad, (though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant, fifty miles off, rise from her nest in the morning). Medyr the son of Methredydd, (from Gelli Wic he could, in a twinkling, shoot the wren through the two legs upon Esgeir Oervel in Ireland). Gwiawn Llygad Cath, (who would cut a haw from the eye of the gnat without hurting him). Ol the son of Olwydd; (seven years before he was born his father's swine were carried off, and when he grew up a man, he tracked the swine, and brought them back in seven herds). Bedwini the Bishop, (who blessed Arthur's meat and drink). For the sake of the golden-chained daughters of this island. For the sake of Gwenhwyvar, its chief lady, and Gwennhwyach her sister, and Rathtyeu the only daughter of Clemenhill, and Rhelemon the daughter of Kai, and Tannwen the daughter of Gweir Datharweniddawg. {78a} Gwenn Alarch, the daughter of Kynwyl Canbwch. {78b} Eurneid the daughter of Clydno Eiddin. Eneuawc the daughter of Bedwyr. Enrydreg the daughter of Tudvathar. Gwennwledyr the daughter of Gwaledyr Kyrvach. Erddudnid the daughter of Tryffin. Eurolwen the daughter of Gwdolwyn Gorr. Teleri the daughter of Peul. Indeg the daughter of Garwy {78c} Hir. Morvudd the daughter of Urien Rheged. Gwenllian Deg the majestic maiden. Creiddylad the daughter of Llud Llaw Ereint. (She was the most splendid maiden in the three Islands of the mighty, and in the three Islands adjacent, and for her Gwythyr the son of Greidawl and Gwynn the son of Nudd fight every first of May until the day of doom.) Ellylw the daughter of Neol Kynn- Crog. (She lived three ages.) Essyllt Vinwen, and Essyllt Vingul." And all these did Kilhwch son of Kilydd adjure to obtain his boon. Then said Arthur, "Oh! Chieftain, I have never heard of the maiden of whom thou speakest, nor of her kindred, but I will gladly send messengers in search of her. Give me time to seek her." And the youth said, "I will willingly grant from this night to that at the end of the year to do so." Then Arthur sent messengers to every land within his dominions, to seek for the maiden, and at the end of the year Arthur's messengers returned without having gained any knowledge or intelligence concerning Olwen, more than on the first day. Then said Kilhwch, "Every one has received his boon, and I yet lack mine. I will depart and bear away thy honour with me." Then said Kai, "Rash chieftain! dost thou reproach Arthur? Go with us, and we will not part until thou dost either confess that the maiden exists not in the world, or until we obtain her." Thereupon Kai rose up. Kai had this peculiarity, that his breath lasted nine nights and nine days under water, and he could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. A wound from Kai's sword no physician could heal. Very subtle was Kai. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity,--so great was the heat of his nature, that when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire. And Arthur called Bedwyr, who never shrank from any enterprise upon which Kai was bound. None were equal to him in swiftness throughout this Island except Arthur and Drych Ail Kibddar. And although he was one-handed, three warriors could not shed blood faster than he on the field of battle. Another property he had, his lance would produce a wound equal to those of nine opposing lances. And Arthur called to Kynddelig the Guide, "Go thou upon this expedition with the chieftain." For as good a guide was he in a land which he had never seen as he was in his own. He called Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoedd, because he knew all tongues. He called Gwalchmai the son of Gwyar, because he never returned home without achieving the adventure of which he went in quest. He was the best of footmen and the best of knights. He was nephew to Arthur, the son of his sister, and his cousin. And Arthur called Menw the son of Teirgwaedd, in order that if they went into a savage country, he might cast a charm and an illusion over them, so that none might see them, whilst they could see every one. They journeyed until they came to a vast open plain, wherein they saw a great castle, which was the fairest of the castles of the world. And they journeyed that day until the evening, and when they thought they were nigh to the castle, they were no nearer to it than they had been in the morning. And the second and the third day they journeyed, and even then scarcely could they reach so far. And when they came before the castle, they beheld a vast flock of sheep, which was boundless, and without an end. And upon the top of a mound there was a herdsman, keeping the sheep. And a rug made of skins was upon him; and by his side was a shaggy mastiff, larger than a steed nine winters old. Never had he lost even a lamb from his flock, much less a large sheep. He let no occasion ever pass without doing some hurt and harm. All the dead trees and bushes in the plain he burnt with his breath down to the very ground. Then said Kai, "Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoedd, go thou and salute yonder man." "Kai," said he, "I engaged not to go further than thou thyself." "Let us go then together," answered Kai. {81a} Said Menw the son of Teirgwaedd, "Fear not to go thither, for I will cast a spell upon the dog, so that he shall injure no one." And they went up to the mound whereon the herdsman was, and they said to him, "How dost thou fare? O herdsman!" "No less fair be it to you than to me." "Truly, art thou the chief?" "There is no hurt to injure me but my own." {81b} "Whose are the sheep that thou dost keep, and to whom does yonder castle belong?" "Stupid are ye, truly! Through the whole world is it known that this is the castle of Yspaddaden Penkawr." "And who art thou?" "I am called Custennin the son of Dyfnedig, and my brother Yspaddaden Penkawr oppressed me because of my possession. And ye also, who are ye?" "We are an embassy from Arthur, come to seek Olwen, the daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr." "Oh men! the mercy of Heaven be upon you, do not that for all the world. None who ever came hither on this quest has returned alive." And the herdsman rose up. And as he arose, Kilhwch gave unto him a ring of gold. And he sought to put on the ring, but it was too small for him, so he placed it in the finger of his glove. And he went home, and gave the glove to his spouse to keep. And she took the ring from the glove when it was given her, and she said, "Whence came this ring, for thou art not wont to have good fortune?" "I went," said he, "to the sea to seek for fish, and lo, I saw a corpse borne by the waves. And a fairer corpse than it did I never behold. And from its finger did I take this ring." "Oh man! does the sea permit its dead to wear jewels? Show me then this body." "Oh wife, him to whom this ring belonged thou shalt see herein the evening." {82} "And who is he?" asked the woman. "Kilhwch the son of Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon, by Goleuddydd the daughter of Prince Anlawdd, his mother, who is come to seek Olwen as his wife." And when she heard that, her feelings were divided between the joy that she had that her nephew, the son of her sister, was coming to her, and sorrow because she had never known any one depart alive who had come on that quest. And they went forward to the gate of Custennin the herdsman's dwelling. And when she heard their footsteps approaching, she ran out with joy to meet them. And Kai snatched a billet out of the pile. And when she met them she sought to throw her arms about their necks. And Kai placed the log between her two hands, and she squeezed it so that it became a twisted coil. "Oh woman," said Kai, "if thou hadst squeezed me thus, none could ever again have set their affections on me. Evil love were this." They entered into the house, and were served; and soon after they all went forth to amuse themselves. Then the woman opened a stone chest that was before the chimney corner, and out of it arose a youth with yellow curling hair. Said Gwrhyr, "It is a pity to hide this youth. I know that it is not his own crime that is thus visited upon him." "This is but a remnant," said the woman. "Three and twenty of my sons has Yspaddaden Penkawr slain, and I have no more hope of this one than of the others." Then said Kai, "Let him come and be a companion with me, and he shall not be slain unless I also am slain with him." And they ate. And the woman asked them, "Upon what errand come you here?" "We come to seek Olwen for this youth." Then said the woman, "In the name of Heaven, since no one from the castle hath yet seen you, return again whence you came." "Heaven is our witness, that we will not return until we have seen the maiden." Said Kai, "Does she ever come hither, so that she may be seen?" "She comes here every Saturday to wash her head, and in the vessel where she washes, she leaves all her rings, and she never either comes herself or sends any messengers to fetch them." "Will she come here if she is sent to?" "Heaven knows that I will not destroy my soul, nor will I betray those that trust me; unless you will pledge me your faith that you will not harm her, I will not send to her." "We pledge it," said they. So a message was sent, and she came. The maiden was clothed in a robe of flame-coloured silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three- mewed falcon, was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest roses. Whoso beheld her was filled with her love. Four white trefoils sprung up wherever she trod. And therefore was she called Olwen. She entered the house, and sat beside Kilhwch upon the foremost bench; and as soon as he saw her he knew her. And Kilhwch said unto her, "Ah! maiden, thou art she whom I have loved; come away with me lest they speak evil of thee and of me. Many a day have I loved thee." "I cannot do this, for I have pledged my faith to my father not to go without his counsel, for his life will last only until the time of my espousals. Whatever is, must be. But I will give thee advice if thou wilt take it. Go, ask me of my father, and that which he shall require of thee, grant it, and thou wilt obtain me; but if thou deny him anything, thou wilt not obtain me, and it will be well for thee if thou escape with thy life." "I promise all this, if occasion offer," said he. {84a} She returned to her chamber, and they all rose up and followed her to the castle. And they slew the nine porters that were at the nine gates in silence. And they slew the nine watch-dogs without one of them barking. And they went forward to the hall. "The greeting of Heaven and of man be unto thee, Yspaddaden Penkawr," said they. "And you, wherefore come you?" "We come to ask thy daughter Olwen, for Kilhwch the son of Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon." "Where are my pages and my servants? {84b} Raise up the forks beneath my two eyebrows which have fallen over my eyes, that I may see the fashion of my son-in-law." And they did so. "Come hither to-morrow, and you shall have an answer." They rose to go forth, and Yspaddaden Penkawr seized one of the three poisoned darts that lay beside him, and threw it after them. And Bedwyr caught it, and flung it, and pierced Yspaddaden Penkawr grievously with it through the knee. {85a} Then he said, "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly. I shall ever walk the worse for his rudeness, and shall ever be without a cure. This poisoned iron pains me like the bite of a gad-fly. Cursed be the smith who forged it, and the anvil whereon it was wrought! So sharp is it!" That night also they took up their abode in the house of Custennin the herdsman. The next day with the dawn, they arrayed themselves in haste, and proceeded to the castle, and entered the hall, and they said, "Yspaddaden Penkawr, give us thy daughter in consideration of her dower and her maiden fee, which we will pay to thee and to her two kinswomen likewise. And unless thou wilt do so, thou shall meet with thy death on her account." Then he said, "Her four great-grandmothers, and her four great-grandsires are yet alive, it is needful that I take counsel of them." "Be it so," answered they, "we will go to meat." As they rose up; he took the second dart that was beside him, and cast it after them. And Menw the son of Gwaedd caught it, and flung it back at him, and wounded him in the centre of the breast, so that it came out at the small of his back. "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly," said he, "the hard iron pains me like the bite of a horse-leech. Cursed be the hearth whereon it was heated, and the smith who formed it! So sharp is it! Henceforth, whenever I go up a hill, I shall have a scant in my breath, and a pain in my chest, and I shall often loathe my food." And they went to meat. And the third day they returned to the palace. And Yspaddaden Penkawr said to them, "Shoot not at me again unless you desire death. Where are my attendants? Lift up the forks of my eyebrows which have fallen over my eyeballs, that I may see the fashion of my son-in-law." Then they arose, and, as they did so, Yspaddaden Penkawr took the third poisoned dart, and cast it at them. And Kilhwch caught it, and threw it vigorously, and wounded him through the eyeball, so that the dart came out at the back of his head. "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly! As long as I remain alive, my eyesight will be the worse. Whenever I go against the wind, my eyes will water; and peradventure my head will burn, and I shall have a giddiness every new moon. Cursed be the fire in which it was forged. Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron." And they went to meat. And the next day they came again to the palace, and they said, "Shoot not at us any more, unless thou desirest such hurt, and harm, and torture as thou now hast, and even more. Give me thy daughter; and if thou wilt not give her, thou shall receive thy death because of her." "Where is he that seeks my daughter? Come hither where I may see thee." And they placed him a chair face to face with him. Said Yspaddaden Penkawr, "Is it thou that seekest my daughter?" "It is I," answered Kilhwch. "I must have thy pledge that thou wilt not do towards me otherwise than is just, and, when I have gotten that which I shall name, my daughter thou shalt have." "I promise thee that willingly," said Kilhwch; "name what thou wilt." "I will do so," said he. "Seest thou yonder vast hill?" "I see it." "I require that it be rooted up, and that the grubbings be burned for manure on the face of the land, and that it be ploughed and sown in one day, and in one day that the grain ripen. And of that wheat I intend to make food and liquor fit for the wedding of thee and my daughter. And all this I require to be done in one day." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though this be easy for thee, there is yet that which will not be so. No husbandman can till or prepare this land, so wild is it, except Amaethon the son of Don, and he will not come with thee by his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Govannon the son of Don to come to the headland to rid the iron, he will do no work of his own good will except for a lawful king, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get; the two dun oxen of Gwlwlyd, {87} both yoked together, to plough the wild land yonder stoutly. He will not give them of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get; the yellow and the brindled bull yoked together do I require." "It will be easy for me to compass this." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get; the two horned oxen, one of which is beyond, and the other this side of the peaked mountain, yoked together in the same plough. And these are Nynniaw and Peibaw, whom God turned into oxen on account of their sins." "It will be easy for me to compass this." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Seest thou yonder red tilled ground?" "I see it." "When first I met the mother of this maiden, nine bushels of flax were sown therein, and none has yet sprung up, neither white nor black; and I have the measure by me still. I require to have the flax to sow in the new land yonder, that when it grows up it may make a white wimple, for my daughter's head on the day of thy wedding." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Honey that is nine times sweeter than the honey of the virgin swarm, without scum and bees, do I require to make bragget for the feast." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "The vessel of Llwyr the son of Llwyryon, which is of the utmost value. There is no other vessel in the world that can hold this drink. Of his free will thou wilt not get it, and thou canst not compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir, if the whole world should come together, thrice nine men at a time, the meat that each of them desired would be found within it. I require to eat therefrom on the night that my daughter becomes thy bride. He will give it to no one of his own free will, and thou canst not compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The horn of Gwlgawd Gododin to serve us with liquor that night. He will not give it of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The harp of Teirtu to play to us that night. {89} When a man desires that it should play, it does so of itself, and when he desires that it should cease, it ceases. And this he will not give of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The cauldron of Diwrnach Wyddel, the steward of Odgar the son of Aedd, king of Ireland, to boil the meat for thy marriage feast." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. It is needful for me to wash my head, and shave my beard, and I require the tusk of Yskithyrwyn Benbaedd to shave myself withal, neither shall I profit by its use if it be not plucked alive out of his head." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. There is no one in the world that can pluck it out of his head except Odgar the son of Aedd, king of Ireland." "It will be easy for me to compass this." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. I will not trust any one to keep the tusk except Gado of North Britain. Now the threescore Cantrevs of North Britain are under his sway, and of his own free will he will not come out of his kingdom, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it wilt not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. I must spread out my hair in order to shave it, and it will never be spread out unless I have the blood of the jet black sorceress, the daughter of the pure white sorceress, from Pen Nant Govid, on the confines of Hell." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. I will not have the blood unless I have it warm, and no vessels will keep warm the liquid that is put therein except the bottles of Gwyddolwyn Gorr, which preserve the heat of the liquor that is put into them in the east, until they arrive at the west. And he will not give them of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Some will desire fresh milk, and it will not be possible to have fresh milk for all, unless we have the bottles of Rhinnon Rhin Barnawd, wherein no liquor ever turns sour. And he will not give them of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Throughout the world there is not a comb or scissors with which I can arrange my hair, on account of its rankness, except the comb and scissors that are between the two ears of Twrch Trwyth, the son of Prince Tared. He will not give them of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. It will not be possible to hunt Twrch Trwyth without Drudwyn, the whelp of Greid, the son of Eri." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Throughout the world there is not a leash that can hold him, except the leash of Cwrs Cant Ewin." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Throughout the world there is no collar that wilt hold the leash except the collar of Canhastyr Canllaw." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The chain of Kilydd Canhastyr to fasten the collar to the leash." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Throughout the world there is not a huntsman who can hunt with this dog, except Mabon the son of Modron. He was taken from his mother when three nights old, and it is not known where he now is, nor whether he is living or dead." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Gwynn Mygdwn, the horse of Gweddw that is as swift as the wave, to carry Mabon the son of Modron to hunt the Boar Trwyth. He will not give him of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Thou wilt not get Mabon, for it is not known where he is, unless thou find Eidoel, his kinsman in blood, the son of Aer. For it would be useless to seek for him. He is his cousin." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Garselit the Gwyddelian {92} is the chief huntsman of Ireland; the Twrch Trwyth can never be hunted without him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. A leash made from the beard of Dissull Varvawc, for that is the only one that can hold those two cubs. And the leash will be of no avail unless it be plucked from his beard while he is alive, and twitched out with wooden tweezers. While he lives he will not suffer this to be done to him, and the leash will be of no use should he be dead, because it will be brittle." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Throughout the world there is no huntsman that can hold those two whelps, except Kynedyr Wyllt, the son of Hettwn Glafyrawc; he is nine times more wild than the wildest beast upon the mountains. Him wilt thou never get, neither wilt thou ever get my daughter." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. It is not possible to hunt the Boar Trwyth without Gwynn the son of Nudd, whom God has placed over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy the present race. He will never be spared thence." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. There is not a horse in the world that can carry Gwynn to hunt the Twrch Trwyth, except Du, the horse of Mor of Oerveddawg." {93} "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Until Gilennhin the king of France shall come, the Twrch Trwyth cannot be hunted. It will be unseemly for him to leave his kingdom for thy sake, and he will never come hither." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The Twrch Trwyth can never be hunted without the son of Alun Dyved; he is well skilled in letting loose the dogs." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The Twrch Trwyth cannot be hunted unless thou get Aned and Aethlem. They are as swift as the gale of wind, and they were never let loose upon a beast that they did not kill him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get; Arthur and his companions to hunt the Twrch Trwyth. He is a mighty man, and he will not come for thee, neither wilt thou be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The Twrch Trwyth cannot be hunted unless thou get Bwlch, and Kyfwlch, [and Sefwlch,] the grandsons of Cleddyf Difwlch. Their three shields are three gleaming glitterers. Their three spears are three pointed piercers. Their three swords are three griding gashers, Glas, Glessic, and Clersag. Their three dogs, Call, Cuall, and Cavall, Their three horses, Hwyrdydwg, and Drwgdydwg, and Llwyrdydwg. Their three wives, Och, and Geram, and Diaspad. Their three grandchildren, Lluched, and Vyned, and Eissiwed. Their three daughters, Drwg, and Gwaeth, and Gwaethav Oil. Their three handmaids, [Eheubryd, the daughter of Kyfwlch; Gorasgwrn, the daughter of Nerth; and Gwaedan, the daughter of Kynvelyn.] These three men shall sound the horn, and all the others shall shout, so that all will think that the sky is falling to the earth." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. The sword of Gwrnach the Giant; he will never be slain except therewith. Of his own free will he will not give it, either for a price or as a gift, and thou wilt never be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Difficulties shall thou meet with, and nights without sleep, in seeking this, and if thou obtain it not, neither shalt thou obtain my daughter." "Horses shall I have, and chivalry; and my lord and kinsman Arthur will obtain for me all these things. And I shall gain thy daughter, and thou shalt lose thy life." "Go forward. And thou shalt not be chargeable for food or raiment for my daughter while thou art seeking these things; and when thou hast compassed all these marvels, thou shalt have my daughter for thy wife." * * * * * All that day they journeyed until the evening, and then they beheld a vast castle, which was the largest in the world. And lo, a black man, huger than three of the men of this world, came out from the castle. And they spoke unto him, "Whence comest them, O man?" "From the castle which you see yonder." "Whose castle is that?" asked they. "Stupid are ye truly, O men. There is no one in the world that does not know to whom this castle belongs. It is the castle of Gwrnach the Giant." "What treatment is there for guests and strangers that alight in that castle?" "Oh! chieftain, Heaven protect thee. No guest ever returned thence alive, and no one may enter therein unless he brings with him his craft." Then they proceeded towards the gate. Said Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd, "Is there a porter?" "There is. And thou, if thy tongue be not mute in thy head, wherefore dost thou call?" "Open the gate." "I will not open it." "Wherefore wilt thou not?" "The knife is in the meat, and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in the hall of Gwrnach the Giant, and except for a craftsman who brings his craft, the gate will not be opened to-night." "Verily, porter," then said Kai, "my craft bring I with me." "What is thy craft?" "The best burnisher of swords am I in the world." "I will go and tell this unto Gwrnach the Giant, and I will bring thee an answer." So the porter went in, and Gwrnach said to him, "Hast thou any news from the gate?" "I have. There is a party at the door of the gate who desire to come in." "Didst thou enquire of them if they possessed any art?" "I did enquire," said he, "and one told me that he was well skilled in the burnishing of swords." "We have need of him then. For some time have I sought for some one to polish my sword, and could find no one. Let this man enter, since he brings with him his craft." The porter thereupon returned, and opened the gate. And Kai went in by himself, and he saluted Gwrnach the Giant. And a chair was placed for him opposite to Gwrnach. And Gwrnach said to him, "Oh man! is it true that is reported of thee that thou knowest how to burnish swords?" "I know full well how to do so," answered Kai. Then was the sword of Gwrnach brought to him. And Kai took a blue whetstone from under his arm, and asked him whether he would have it burnished white or blue. "Do with it as it seems good to thee, and as thou wouldest if it were thine own." Then Kai polished one half of the blade and put it in his hand. "Will this please thee?" asked he. "I would rather than all that is in my dominions that the whole of it were like unto this. It is a marvel to me that such a man as thou should be without a companion." "Oh! noble sir, I have a companion, albeit he is not skilled in this art." "Who may he be?" "Let the porter go forth, and I will tell him whereby he may know him. The head of his lance will leave its shaft, and draw blood from the wind, and will descend upon its shaft again." Then the gate was opened, and Bedwyr entered. And Kai said, "Bedwyr is very skilful, although he knows not this art." And there was much discourse among those who were without, because that Kai and Bedwyr had gone in. And a young man who was with them, the only son of Custennin the herdsman, got in also. And he caused all his companions to keep close to him as he passed the three wards, and until he came into the midst of the castle. {98a} And his companions said unto the son of Custennin, "Thou hast done this! Thou art the best of all men." And thenceforth he was called Goreu, the son of Custennin. Then they dispersed to their lodgings, that they might slay those who lodged therein, unknown to the Giant. The sword was now polished, and Kai gave it unto the hand of Gwrnach the Giant, to see if he were pleased with his work. And the Giant said, "The work is good, I am content therewith." Said Kai, "It is thy scabbard that hath rusted thy sword; give it to me that I may take out the wooden sides of it, and put in new ones." And he took the scabbard from him, and the sword in the other hand. And he came and stood over against the Giant, as if he would have put the sword into the scabbard; and with it he struck at the head of the Giant, and cut off his head at one blow. Then they despoiled the castle, and took from it what goods and jewels they would. And again on the same day, at the beginning of the year, they came to Arthur's Court, bearing with them the sword of Gwrnach the Giant. Now when they had told Arthur how they had sped, Arthur said, "Which of these marvels will it be best for us to seek first?" "It will be best," said they, "to seek Mabon the son of Modron; and he will not be found unless we first find Eidoel, the son of Aer, his kinsman." Then Arthur rose up, and the warriors of the Islands of Britain with him, to seek for Eidoel; and they proceeded until they came before the Castle of Glivi, {98b} where Eidoel was imprisoned. Glivi {99a} stood on the summit of his Castle, and he said, "Arthur, what requirest thou of me, since nothing remains to me in this fortress, and I have neither joy nor pleasure in it; neither wheat nor oats? Seek not therefore to do me harm." Said Arthur, "Not to injure thee came I hither, but to seek for the prisoner that is with thee." "I will give thee my prisoner, though I had not thought to give him up to any one; and therewith shall thou have my support and my aid." His followers said unto Arthur, "Lord, go thou home, thou canst not proceed with thy host in quest of such small adventures as these." Then said Arthur, "It were well for thee, Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Iethoedd, to go upon this quest, for thou knowest all languages, and art familiar with {99b} those of the birds and the beasts. Thou Eidoel oughtest likewise to go with my men in search of thy cousin. And as for you, Kai and Bedwyr, I have hope of whatever adventure ye are in quest of, that ye will achieve it. Achieve ye this adventure for me." They went forward until they came to the Ousel of Cilgwri. And Gwrhyr adjured her for the sake of Heaven, saying, "Tell me if thou knowest aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old from between his mother and the wall." And the Ousel answered, "When I first came here, there was a smith's anvil in this place, and I was then a young bird; and from that time no work has been done upon it, save the pecking of my beak every evening, and now there is not so much as the size of a nut remaining thereof; yet the vengeance of Heaven be upon me, if during all that time I have ever heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless I will do that which is right, and that which it is fitting that I should do for an embassy from Arthur. There is a race of animals who were formed before me, and I will be your guide to them." So they proceeded to the place where was the Stag of Redynvre. "Stag of Redynvre, behold we are come to thee, an embassy from Arthur, for we have not heard of any animal older than thou. Say, knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken from his mother when three nights old?" The Stag said, "When first I came hither, there was a plain all around me, without any trees save one oak sapling, {100} which grew up to be an oak with an hundred branches. And that oak has since perished, so that now nothing remains of it but the withered stump; and from that day to this I have been here, yet have I never heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless, being an embassy from Arthur, I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which was formed before I was." So they proceeded to the place where was the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. "Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, here is an embassy from Arthur; knowest thou aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken after three nights from his mother?" "If I knew I would tell you. When first I came hither, the wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up. And there grew there a second wood; and this wood is the third. My wings, are they not withered stumps? Yet all this time, even until to-day, I have never heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless, I will be the guide of Arthur's embassy until you come to the place where is the oldest animal in this world, and the one that has travelled most, the Eagle of Gwern Abwy." Gwrhyr said, "Eagle of Gwern Abwy, we have come to thee an embassy from Arthur, to ask thee if thou knowest aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken from his mother when he was three nights old." The Eagle said, "I have been here for a great space of time, and when I first came hither there was a rock here, from the top of which I pecked at the stars every evening; and now it is not so much as a span high. From that day to this I have been here, and I have never heard of the man for whom you enquire, except once when I went in search of food as far as Llyn Llyw. And when I came there, I struck my talons into a salmon, thinking he would serve me as food for a long time. But he drew me into the deep, and I was scarcely able to escape from him. After that I went with my whole kindred to attack him, and to try to destroy him, but he sent messengers, and made peace with me; and came and besought me to take fifty fish spears out of his back. Unless he know something of him whom you seek, I cannot tell who may. However, I will guide you to the place where he is." So they went thither; and the Eagle said, "Salmon of Llyn Llyw, I have come to thee with an embassy from Arthur, to ask thee if thou knowest aught concerning Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken away at three nights old from his mother." "As much as I know I will tell thee. With every tide I go along the river upwards, until I come near to the walls of Gloucester, and there have I found such wrong as I never found elsewhere; and to the end that ye may give credence thereto, let one of you go thither upon each of my two shoulders." So Kai and Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd went upon the two shoulders of the salmon, and they proceeded until they came unto the wall of the prison, and they heard a great wailing and lamenting from the dungeon. {102} Said Gwrhyr, "Who is it that laments in this house of stone?" "Alas, there is reason enough for whoever is here to lament. It is Mabon the son of Modron who is here imprisoned, and no imprisonment was ever so grievous as mine, neither that of Lludd Llaw Ereint, nor that of Greid the son of Eri." "Hast thou hope of being released for gold, or for silver, or for any gifts of wealth, or through battle and fighting?" "By fighting will whatever I may gain be obtained." {Picture: p102.jpg} Then they went thence, and returned to Arthur, and they told him where Mabon the son of Modron was imprisoned. And Arthur summoned the warriors of the Island, and they journeyed as far as Gloucester, to the place where Mabon was in prison. Kai and Bedwyr went upon the shoulders of the fish, whilst the warriors of Arthur attacked the castle. And Kai broke through the wall into the dungeon, and brought away the prisoner upon his back, whilst the fight was going on between the warriors. And Arthur returned home, and Mabon with him at liberty. * * * * * Said Arthur, "Which of the marvels will it be best for us now to seek first?" "It will be best to seek for the two cubs of Gast Rhymhi." "Is it known," said Arthur, "where she is?" "She is in Aber Deu Gleddyf," said one. Then Arthur went to the house of Tringad, in Aber Cleddyf, and he enquired of him whether he had heard of her there. "In what form may she be?" "She is in the form of a she wolf," said he, "and with her there are two cubs." "She has often slain my herds, and she is there below in a cave in Aber Cleddyf." So Arthur went in his ship Prydwen by sea, and the others went by land, to hunt her. And they surrounded her and her two cubs, and God did change them again for Arthur into their own form. And the host of Arthur dispersed themselves into parties of one and two. * * * * * On a certain day, as Gwythyr the son of Greidawl was walking over a mountain, he heard a wailing and a grievous cry. And when he heard it, {103} he sprung forward, and went towards it. And when he came there, he drew his sword, and smote off an ant-hill close to the earth, whereby it escaped being burned in the fire. And the ants said to him, "Receive from us the blessing of Heaven, and that which no man can give we will give thee." Then they fetched the nine bushels of flax-seed which Yspaddaden Penkawr had required of Kilhwch, and they brought the full measure, without lacking any, except one flax-seed, and that the lame pismire brought in before night. * * * * * As Kai and Bedwyr sat on a beacon carn on the summit of Plinlimmon, in the highest wind that ever was in the world, they looked around them, and saw a great smoke towards the south, afar off, which did not bend with the wind. Then said Kai, "By the hand of my friend, behold, yonder is the fire of a robber!" Then they hastened towards the smoke, and they came so near to it, that they could see Dillus Varvawc scorching a wild Boar. "Behold, yonder is the greatest robber that ever fled from Arthur," said Bedwyr unto Kai. "Dost thou know him?" "I do know him," answered Kai, "he is Dillus Varvawc, and no leash in the world will be able to hold Drudwyn, the cub of Greid the son of Eri, save a leash made from the beard of him thou seest yonder. And that even will be useless, unless his beard be plucked alive with wooden tweezers; for if dead, it will be brittle." "What thinkest thou that we should do concerning this?" said Bedwyr. "Let us suffer him," said Kai, "to eat as much as he will of the meat, and after that he will fall asleep." And during that time they employed themselves in making the wooden tweezers. And when Kai knew certainly that he was asleep, he made a pit under his feet, the largest in the world, and he struck him a violent blow, and squeezed him into the pit. And there they twitched out his beard completely with the wooden tweezers; and after that they slew him altogether. And from thence they both went to Gelli Wic, in Cornwall, and took the leash made of Dillus Varvawc's beard with them, and they gave it unto Arthur's hand. Then Arthur composed this Englyn, Kai made a leash Of Dillus son of Eurei's beard. Were he alive, thy death he'd be. And thereupon Kai was wroth, so that the warriors of the Island could scarcely make peace between Kai and Arthur. And thenceforth, neither in Arthur's troubles, nor for the slaying of his men, would Kai come forward to his aid for ever after. * * * * * Said Arthur, "Which of the marvels is it best for us now to seek?" "It is best for us to seek Drudwyn, the cub of Greid, the son of Eri." A little while before this, Creiddylad, the daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint, and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl, were betrothed. And before she had become his bride, Gwyn ap Nudd came, and carried her away by force; and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl gathered his host together, and went to fight with Gwyn ap Nudd. But Gwyn overcame him, and captured Greid the son of Eri, and Glinneu the son of Taran and Gwrgwst Ledlwm, and Dynvarth {105} his son. And he captured Penn the son of Nethawg, and Nwython, and Kyledyr Wyllt his son. And they slew Nwython, and took out his heart, and constrained Kyledyr to eat the heart of his father. And therefrom Kyledyr became mad. When Arthur heard of this, he went to the North, and summoned Gwyn ap Nudd before him, and set free the nobles whom he had put in prison, and made peace between Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl. And this was the peace that was made: that the maiden should remain in her father's house, without advantage to either of them, and that Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl should fight for her every first of May, from thenceforth until the day of doom, and that whichever of them should then be conqueror should have the maiden. And when Arthur had thus reconciled these chieftains, he obtained Mygdwn, Gweddw's horse, and the leash of Cwrs Cant Ewin. And after that Arthur went into Armorica, and with him Mabon the son of Mellt, and Gware Gwallt Euryn, to seek the two dogs of Glythmyr Ledewic. And when he had got them, he went to the West of Ireland, in search of Gwrgi Severi; and Odgar the son of Aedd, king of Ireland, went with him. And thence went Arthur into the North, and captured Kyledyr Wyllt; and he went after Yskithyrwyn Penbaedd. And Mabon the son of Mellt came with the two dogs of Glythmyr Ledewic in his hand, and Drudwyn, the cub of Greid the son of Eri. And Arthur went himself to the chase, leading his own dog Cavall. And Kaw, of North Britain, mounted Arthur's mare Llamrei, and was first in the attack. Then Kaw, of North Britain, wielded a mighty axe, and absolutely daring he came valiantly up to the Boar, and clave his head in twain. And Kaw took away the tusk. Now the Boar was not slain by the dogs that Yspaddaden had mentioned, but by Cavall, Arthur's own dog. And after Yskithyrwyn Penbaedd was killed, Arthur and his host departed to Gelli Wic in Cornwall. And thence he sent Menw the son of Teirgwaedd to see if the precious things were between the two ears of Twrch Trwyth, since it were useless to encounter him if they were not there. Albeit it was certain where he was, for he had laid waste the third part of Ireland. And Menw went to seek for him, and he met with him in Ireland, in Esgeir Oervel. And Menw took the form of a bird; and he descended upon the top of his lair, and strove to snatch away one of the precious things from him, but he carried away nothing but one of his bristles. And the boar rose up angrily and shook himself so that some of his venom fell upon Menw, and he was never well from that day forward. After this Arthur sent an embassy to Odgar, the son of Aedd, king of Ireland, to ask for the Cauldron of Diwrnach Wyddel, his purveyor. And Odgar commanded him to give it. But Diwrnach said, "Heaven is my witness, if it would avail him anything even to look at it, he should not do so." And the embassy of Arthur returned from Ireland with this denial. And Arthur set forward with a small retinue, and entered into Prydwen, his ship, and went over to Ireland. And they proceeded into the house of Diwrnach Wyddel. And the hosts of Odgar saw their strength. When they had eaten and drank as much as they desired, Arthur demanded to have the cauldron. And he answered, "If I would have given it to any one, I would have given it at the word of Odgar, king of Ireland." When he had given them this denial, Bedwyr arose and seized hold of the cauldron, and placed it upon the back of Hygwyd, Arthur's servant, who was brother, by the mother's side, to Arthur's servant, Cachamwri. His office was always to carry Arthur's cauldron, and to place fire under it. And Llenlleawg Wyddel seized Caledvwlch, and brandished it. And they slew Diwrnach Wyddel and his company. Then came the Irish, {108a} and fought with them. And when he had put them to flight, Arthur with his men went forward to the ship, carrying away the cauldron full of Irish money. {108b} And he disembarked at the house of Llwydden {108c} the son of Kelcoed, at Forth Kerddin in Dyved. And there is the measure of the cauldron. Then Arthur summoned unto him all the warriors that were in the three Islands of Britain, and in the three Islands adjacent, and all that were in France and in Armorica, in Normandy and in the Summer Country, and all that were chosen footmen and valiant horsemen. And with all these, he went into Ireland. And in Ireland there was great fear and terror concerning him. And when Arthur had landed in the country, there came unto him the saints of Ireland and besought his protection. And he granted his protection unto them, and they gave him their blessing. Then the men of Ireland came unto Arthur, and brought him provisions. And Arthur went as far as Esgeir Oervel in Ireland, to the place where the Boar Trwyth was with his seven young pigs. And the dogs were let loose upon him from all sides. That day until evening, the Irish fought with him, nevertheless he laid waste the fifth part of Ireland. And on the day following the household of Arthur fought with him, and they were worsted by him, and got no advantage. And the third day Arthur himself encountered him, and he fought with him nine nights and nine days without so much as killing even one little pig. {109} The warriors enquired of Arthur, what was the origin of that swine; and he told them that he was once a king, and that God had transformed him into a swine for his sins. Then Arthur sent Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoedd, to endeavour to speak with him. And Gwrhyr assumed the form of a bird, and alighted upon the top of the lair, where he was with the seven young pigs. And Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoedd asked him, "By him who turned you into this form, if you can speak, let some one of you, I beseech you, come and talk with Arthur." Grugyn Gwrych Ereint made answer to him. (Now his bristles were like silver wire, and whether he went through the wood or through the plain, he was to be traced by the glittering of his bristles.) And this was the answer that Grugyn made, "By him who turned us into this form we will not do so, and we will not speak with Arthur. That we have been transformed thus is enough for us to suffer, without your coming here to fight with us." "I will tell you. Arthur comes but to fight for the comb, and the razor, and the scissors, which are between the two ears of Twrch Trwyth." Said Grugyn, "Except he first take his life, he will never have those precious things. And to-morrow morning we will rise up hence, and we will go into Arthur's country, and there will we do all the mischief that we can." So they set forth through the sea towards Wales. And Arthur and his hosts, and his horses and his dogs, entered Prydwen, that they might encounter them without delay. Twrch Trwyth landed in Porth Cleis in Dyved, and the {110} came to Mynyw. The next day it was told to Arthur, that they had gone by, and he overtook them, as they were killing the cattle of Kynnwas Kwrr y Vagyl, having slain all that were at Aber Gleddyf, of man and beast, before the coming of Arthur. Now when Arthur approached, Twrch Trwyth went on as far as Preseleu, and Arthur and his hosts followed him thither, and Arthur sent men to hunt him; Eli and Trachmyr, leading Drutwyn the whelp of Greid, the son of Eri, and Gwarthegyd the son of Kaw, in another quarter, with the two dogs of Glythmyr Ledewig, and Bedwyr leading Cavall, Arthur's own dog. And all the warriors ranged themselves around the Nyver. And there came there the three sons of Cleddyf Divwlch, men who had gained much fame at the slaying of Yskithyrwyn Penbaedd; and they went on from Glyn Nyver, and came to Cwm Kerwyn. And there Twrch Trwyth made a stand, and slew four of Arthur's champions, Gwarthegyd the son of Kaw, and Tarawc of Allt Clwyd, and Rheidwn the son of Eli Atver, and Iscovan Hael. And after he had slain these men, he made a second stand in the same place. And there he slew Gwydre the son of Arthur, and Garselit Wyddel, and Glew the son of Ysgawd, and Iscawn the son of Panon; and there he himself was wounded. And the next morning before it was day, some of the men came up with him. And he slew Huandaw, and Gogigwr, and Penpingon, three attendants upon Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr, so that Heaven knows he had not an attendant remaining, excepting only Llaesgevyn, a man from whom no one ever derived any good. And together with these, he slew many of the men of that country, and Gwlydyn Saer, Arthur's chief Architect. Then Arthur overtook him at Pelumyawc, and there he slew Madawc the son of Teithyon, and Gwyn the son of Tringad, the son of Neved, and Eiryawn Penllorau. Thence he went to Aberteivi, {111a} where he made another stand, and where he slew Kyflas {111b} the son of Kynan, and Gwilenhin king of France. Then he went as far as Glyn Ystu, and there the men and the dogs lost him. Then Arthur summoned unto him Gwyn ab Nudd, and he asked him if he knew aught of Twrch Trwyth. And he said that he did not. And all the huntsmen went to hunt the swine as far as Dyffryn Llychwr. And Grugyn Gwallt Ereint, and Llwydawg Govynnyad closed with them and killed all the huntsmen, so that there escaped but one man only. And Arthur and his hosts came to the place where Grugyn and Llwydawg were. And there he let loose the whole of the dogs upon them, and with the shout and barking that was set up, Twrch Trwyth came to their assistance. And from the time that they came across the Irish sea, Arthur had never got sight of him until then. {111c} So he set men and dogs upon him, and thereupon he started off and went to Mynydd Amanw. And there one of his young pigs was killed. {112a} Then they set upon him life for life, and Twrch Llawin was slain, and then there was slain another of the swine, Gwys was his name. After that he went on to Dyffryn Amanw, and there Banw and Bennwig were killed. {112b} Of all his pigs there went with him alive from that place none save Grugyn Gwallt Ereint, and Llwydawg Govynnyad. Thence he went on to Llwch Ewin, and Arthur overtook him there, and he made a stand. And there he slew Echel Forddwytwll, and Garwyli the son of Gwyddawg Gwyr, and many men and dogs likewise. And thence they went to Llwch Tawy. Grugyn Gwrych Ereint parted from them there, and went to Din Tywi. And thence he proceeded to Ceredigiawn, and Eli and Trachmyr with him, and a multitude likewise. Then he came to Garth Gregyn, and there Llwydawg Govynnyad fought in the midst of them, and slew Rhudvyw Rhys and many others with him. Then Llwydawg went thence to Ystrad Yw, and there the men of Armorica met him, and there he slew Hirpeissawg, the king of Armorica, and Llygatrudd Emys, and Gwrbothu, Arthur's uncles, his mother's brothers, and there was he himself slain. Twrch Trwyth went from there to between Tawy and Euyas, and Arthur summoned all Cornwall and Devon unto him, to the estuary of the Severn, and he said to the warriors of this Island, "Twrch Trwyth has slain many of my men, but, by the valour of warriors, while I live he shall not go into Cornwall. And I will not follow him any longer, but I will oppose him life to life. Do ye as ye will." And he resolved that he would send a body of knights, with the dogs of the Island, as far as Euyas, who should return thence to the Severn, and that tried warriors should traverse the Island, and force him into the Severn. And Mabon the son of Modron came up with him at the Severn, upon Gwynn Mygddon, the horse of Gweddw, and Goreu the son of Custennin, and Menw the son of Teirgwaedd; this was betwixt Llyn Lliwan and Aber Gwy. And Arthur fell upon him together with the champions of Britain. And Osla Kyllellvawr drew near, and Manawyddan the son of Llyr, and Kacmwri the servant of Arthur, and Gwyngelli, and they seized hold of him, catching him first by his feet, and plunged him in the Severn, so that it overwhelmed him. On the one side, Mabon the son of Modron spurred his steed and snatched his razor from him, and Kyledyr Wyllt came up with him on the other side, upon another steed, in the Severn, and took from him the scissors. But before they could obtain the comb, he had regained the ground with his feet, and from the moment that he reached the shore, neither dog, nor man, nor horse could overtake him until he came to Cornwall. If they had had trouble in getting the jewels from him, much more had they in seeking to save the two men from being drowned. Kacmwri, as they drew him forth, was dragged by two millstones into the deep. And as Osla Kyllellvawr was running after the Boar his knife had dropped out of the sheath, and he had lost it, and after that the sheath became full of water, and its weight drew him down into the deep, as they were drawing him forth. Then Arthur and his hosts proceeded until they overtook the Boar in Cornwall, and the trouble which they had met with before was mere play to what they encountered in seeking the comb. But from one difficulty to another, the comb was at length obtained. And then he was hunted from Cornwall, and driven straight forward into the deep sea. And thenceforth it was never known whither he went; and Aned and Aethlem with him. Then went Arthur to Gelliwic, in Cornwall, to anoint himself, and to rest from his fatigues. * * * * * Said Arthur, "Is there any one of the marvels yet unobtained?" Said one of his men, "There is--the blood of the witch Orddu, the daughter of the witch Orwen, of Penn Nant Govid, on the confines of Hell." Arthur set forth towards the North, and came to the place where was the witch's cave. And Gwyn ab Nudd, and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl, counselled him to send Kacmwri, and Hygwyd his brother to fight with the witch. And as they entered the cave, the witch seized upon them, and she caught Hygwyd by the hair of his head, and threw him on the floor beneath her. And Kacmwri caught her by the hair of her head, and dragged her to the earth from off Hygwyd, but she turned again upon them both, {114} and drove them both out with kicks and with cuffs. And Arthur was wroth at seeing his two attendants almost slain, and he sought to enter the cave; but Gwyn and Gwythyr said unto him, "It would not be fitting or seemly for us to see thee squabbling with a hag. Let Hiramren, and Hireidil go to the cave." So they went. But if great was the trouble of the two first that went, much greater was that of these two. And Heaven knows that not one of the four could move from the spot, until they placed them all upon Llamrei, Arthur's mare. And then Arthur rushed to the door of the cave, and at the door, he struck at the witch, with Carnwennan his dagger, and clove her in twain, so that she fell in two parts. And Kaw, of North Britain, took the blood of the witch and kept it. Then Kilhwch set forward, and Goreu, the son of Custennin, with him, and as many as wished ill to Yspaddaden Penkawr. And they took the marvels with them to his Court. And Kaw of North Britain came and shaved his beard, skin and flesh, clean off to the very bone from ear to ear. "Art thou shaved, man?" said Kilhwch. "I am shaved," answered he. "Is thy daughter mine now?" "She is thine," said he, "but therefore needest thou not thank me, but Arthur who hath accomplished this for thee. By my free will thou shouldest never have had her, for with her I lose my life." Then Goreu the son of Custennin, seized him by the hair of his head, and dragged him after him to the keep, and cut off his head, and placed it on a stake on the citadel. Then they took possession of his castle, and of his treasures. {Picture: p115.jpg} And that night Olwen became Kilhwch's bride, and she continued to be his wife as long as she lived. And the hosts of Arthur dispersed themselves, each man to his own country. And thus did Kilhwch obtain Olwen the daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr. THE DREAM OF MAXEN WLEDIG. {Picture: p116.jpg} Maxen Wledig was emperor of Rome, and he was a comelier man, and a better and a wiser than any emperor that had been before him. {116} And one day he held a council of Kings, and he said to his friends, "I desire to go to-morrow to hunt." And the next day in the morning he set forth with his retinue, and came to the valley of the river that flowed towards Rome. And he hunted through the valley until mid-day. And with him also were two and thirty crowned kings, that were his vassals; not for the delight of hunting went the emperor with them, but to put himself on equal terms with those kings. {117} And the sun was high in the sky over their heads, and the heat was great. And sleep came upon Maxen Wledig. And his attendants stood and set up their shields around him upon the shafts of their spears to protect him from the sun, and they placed a gold enamelled shield under his head, and so Maxen slept. And he saw a dream. And this is the dream that he saw. He was journeying along the valley of the river towards its source; and he came to the highest mountain in the world. And he thought that the mountain was as high as the sky; and when he came over the mountain, it seemed to him that he went through the fairest and most level regions that man ever yet beheld, on the other side of the mountain. And he saw large and mighty rivers descending from the mountain to the sea, and towards the mouths of the rivers he proceeded. And as he journeyed thus, he came to the mouth of the largest river ever seen. And he beheld a great city at the entrance of the river, and a vast castle in the city, and he saw many high towers of various colours in the castle. And he saw a fleet at the mouth of the river, the largest ever seen. And he saw one ship among the fleet; larger was it by far, and fairer than all the others. Of such part of the ship as he could see above the water, one plank was gilded and the other silvered over. He saw a bridge of the bone of the whale from the ship to the land, and he thought that he went along the bridge and came into the ship. And a sail was hoisted on the ship, and along the sea and the ocean was it borne. Then it seemed that he came to the fairest island in the whole world, and he traversed the island from sea to sea, even to the farthest shore of the island. Valleys he saw, and steeps, and rocks of wondrous height, and rugged precipices. {118a} Never yet saw he the like. And thence he beheld an island in the sea, facing this rugged {118b} land. And between him and this island was a country of which the plain was as large as the sea, the mountain as vast as the wood. And from the mountain he saw a river that flowed through the land and fell into the sea. And at the mouth of the river, he beheld a castle, the fairest that man ever saw, and the gate of the castle was open, and he went into the castle. And in the castle he saw a fair hall of which the roof seemed to be all gold, the walls of the hall seemed to be entirely of glittering precious gems, the doors all seemed to be of gold. Golden seats he saw in the hall, and silver tables. And on a seat opposite to him, he beheld two auburn-haired youths playing at chess. He saw a silver board for the chess, and golden pieces thereon. The garments of the youths were of jet black satin, and chaplets of ruddy gold bound their hair, whereon were sparkling jewels of great price, {119} rubies, and gems, alternately with imperial stones. Buskins of new cordovan leather on their feet, fastened by slides of red gold. {Picture: p118.jpg} And beside a pillar in the hall he saw a hoary-headed man, in a chair of ivory, with the figures of two eagles of ruddy gold thereon. Bracelets of gold were upon his arms, and many rings upon his hands, and a golden torquis about his neck; and his hair was bound with a golden diadem. He was of powerful aspect. A chessboard of gold was before him, and a rod of gold, and a steel file in his hand. And he was carving out chessmen. And he saw a maiden sitting before him in a chair of ruddy gold. Not more easy than to gaze upon the sun when brightest, was it to look upon her by reason of her beauty. A vest of white silk was upon the maiden, with clasps of red gold at the breast; and a surcoat of gold tissue was upon her, and a frontlet of red gold upon her head, and rubies and gems were in the frontlet, alternating with pearls and imperial stones. And a girdle of ruddy gold was around her. She was the fairest sight that man ever beheld. The maiden arose from her chair before him, and he threw his arms about the neck of the maiden, and they two sat down together in the chair of gold: and the chair was not less roomy for them both, than for the maiden alone. And as he had his arms about the maiden's neck, and his cheek by her cheek, behold, through the chafing of the dogs at their leashing, and the clashing of the shields as they struck against each other, and the beating together of the shafts of the spears, and the neighing of the horses and their prancing, the emperor awoke. And when he awoke, nor spirit nor existence was left him, because of the maiden whom he had seen in his sleep, for the love of the maiden pervaded his whole frame. {120} Then his household spake unto him. "Lord," said they "is it not past the time for thee to take thy food?" Thereupon the emperor mounted his palfrey, the saddest man that mortal ever saw, and went forth towards Rome. And thus he was during the space of a week. When they of the household went to drink wine and mead out of golden vessels, he went not with any of them. When they went to listen to songs and tales, he went not with them there; neither could he be persuaded to do anything but sleep. And as often as he slept, he beheld in his dreams the maiden he loved best; but except when he slept he saw nothing of her, for he knew not where in the world she was. One day the page of the chamber spake unto him; now, although he was page of the chamber, he was king of the Romans. "Lord," said he, "all thy people revile thee." "Wherefore do they revile me?" asked the emperor. "Because they can get neither message nor answer from thee, as men should have from their lord. This is the cause why thou art spoken evil of." "Youth," said the emperor, "do thou bring unto me the wise men of Rome, and I will tell them wherefore I am sorrowful." Then the wise men of Rome were brought to the emperor, and he spake to them. "Sages of Rome," said he, "I have seen a dream. And in the dream I beheld a maiden, and because of the maiden is there neither life, nor spirit, nor existence within me." "Lord," they answered, "since thou judgest us worthy to counsel thee, we will give thee counsel. And this is our counsel; that thou send messengers for three years to the three parts of the world, to seek for thy dream. And as thou knowest not what day or what night good news may come to thee, the hope thereof will support thee." So the messengers journeyed for the space of a year wandering about the world, and seeking tidings concerning his dream. But when they came back at the end of the year they knew not one word more than they did the day they set forth. And then was the emperor exceeding sorrowful, for he thought that he should never have tidings of her whom best he loved. Then spoke the king of the Romans unto the emperor. "Lord," said he, "go forth to hunt by the way that thou didst seem to go, whither it were to the east or to the west." So the emperor went forth to hunt, and he came to the bank of the river. "Behold," said he, "this is where I was when I saw the dream, and I went towards the source of the river westward." And thereupon thirteen messengers of the emperor's set forth, and before them they saw a high mountain, which seemed to them to touch the sky. Now this was the guise in which the messengers journeyed; one sleeve was on the cap of each of them in front; as a sign that they were messengers, in order that through what hostile land soever they might pass no harm might be done them. And when they were come over this mountain they beheld vast plains, and large rivers flowing therethrough. "Behold," said they, "the land which our master saw." And they went along the mouths of the rivers, until they came to the mighty river which they saw flowing to the sea, and the vast city, and the many-coloured high towers in the castle. They saw the largest fleet in the world, in the harbour of the river, and one ship that was larger than any of the others. "Behold again," said they, "the dream that our master saw." And in the great ship they crossed the sea, and came to the Island of Britain. And they traversed the island until they came to Snowdon. "Behold," said they, "the rugged {122} land that our master saw." And they went forward until they saw Anglesey before them, and until they saw Arvon likewise. "Behold," said they, "the land our master saw in his sleep." And they saw Aber Sain, and a castle at the mouth of the river. The portal of the castle saw they open, and into the castle they went, and they saw a hall in the castle. Then said they, "Behold the hall which he saw in his sleep." They went into the hall, and they beheld two youths playing at chess on the golden bench. And they beheld the hoary-headed man beside the pillar, in the ivory chair, carving chessmen. And they beheld the maiden sitting on a chair of ruddy gold. The messengers bent down upon their knees. "Empress of Rome, all hail!" "Ha, gentles," said the maiden, "ye bear the seeming of honourable men, and the badge of envoys, what mockery is this ye do to me?" "We mock thee not, lady, but the emperor of Rome hath seen thee in his sleep, and he has neither life nor spirit left because of thee. Thou shall have of us therefore the choice, lady, whether thou wilt go with us and be made empress of Rome, or that the emperor come hither and take thee for his wife?" "Ha, lords," said the maiden, "I will not deny what you say, neither will I believe it too well. If the emperor love me, let him come here to seek me." And by day and night the messengers hied them back. And when their horses failed, they bought other fresh ones. And when they came to Rome they saluted the emperor, and asked their boon, which was given to them according as they named it. "We will be thy guides, lord," said they, "over sea and over land, to the place where is the woman whom best thou lovest, for we know her name, and her kindred, and her race." {Picture: p123.jpg} And immediately the emperor set forth with his army. And these men were his guides. Towards the Island of Britain they went over the sea and the deep. And he conquered the Island from Beli the son of Manogan, and his sons, and drove them to the sea, and went forward even unto Arvon. And the emperor knew the land when he saw it. And when he beheld the castle of Aber Sain, "Look yonder," said he, "there is the castle wherein I saw the damsel whom I best love." And he went forward into the castle and into the hall, and there he saw Kynan the son of Eudav, and Adeon the son of Eudav, playing at chess. And he saw Eudav the son of Caradawc, sitting on a chair of ivory carving chessmen. And the maiden whom he had beheld in his sleep, he saw sitting on a chair of gold. "Empress of Rome," said he, "all hail!" And the emperor threw his arms about her neck; and that night she became his bride. And the next day in the morning, the damsel asked her maiden portion. And he told her to name what she would, and she asked to have the Island of Britain for her father, from the Channel to the Irish Sea, together with the three adjacent islands to hold under the empress of Rome; and to have three chief castles made for her, in whatever places she might choose in the Island of Britain. And she chose to have the highest castle made at Arvon. And they brought thither earth from Rome that it might be more healthful for the emperor to sleep, and sit, and walk upon. After that the two other castles were made for her, which were Caerlleon and Caermarthen. And one day, the emperor went to hunt at Caermarthen, and he came so far as the top of Brevi Vawr, and there the emperor pitched his tent. And that encamping place is called Cadeir Maxen, even to this day. And because that he built the castle with a myriad of men, he called it Caervyrddin. Then Helen bethought her to make high roads from one castle to another throughout the Island of Britain. And the roads were made. And for this cause are they called the roads of Helen Luyddawc, {124} that she was sprung from a native of this island, and the men of the Island of Britain would not have made these great roads {125} for any save for her. Seven years did the emperor tarry in this Island. Now, at that time, the men of Rome had a custom that whatsoever emperor should remain in other lands more than seven years, should remain to his own overthrow, and should never return to Rome again. So they made a new emperor. And this one wrote a letter of threat to Maxen. There was nought in the letter but only this, "If thou comest, and if thou ever comest to Rome." And even unto Caerlleon came this letter to Maxen, and these tidings. Then sent he a letter to the man who styled himself emperor in Rome. There was nought in that letter also but only this, "If I come to Rome, and if I come." And thereupon Maxen set forth towards Rome with his army, and vanquished France and Burgundy, and every land on the way, and sat down before the city of Rome. A year was the emperor before the city, and he was no nearer taking it than the first day. And after him there came the brothers of Helen Luyddawc from the Island of Britain, and a small host with them, and better warriors were in that small host than twice as many Romans. And the emperor was told that a host was seen, halting close to his army and encamping, and no man ever saw a fairer or better appointed host for its size, nor more handsome standards. And Helen went to see the hosts, and she knew the standards of her brothers. Then came Kynan the son of Eudav, and Adeon the son of Eudav, to meet the emperor. And the emperor was glad because of them, and embraced them. Then they looked at the Romans as they attacked the city. Said Kynan to his brother, "We will try to attack the city more expertly than this." So they measured by night the height of the wall, and they sent their carpenters to the wood, and a ladder was made for every four men of their number. Now when these were ready, every day at mid-day the emperors went to meat, and they ceased to fight on both sides till all had finished eating. And in the morning the men of Britain took their food, and they drank until they were invigorated. And while the two emperors were at meat, the Britons came to the city, {126a} and placed their ladders against it, and forthwith they came in through the city. The new emperor had not time to arm himself when they fell upon him, and slew him and many others with him. And three nights and three days were they subduing the men that were in the city and taking the castle. And others of them kept the city, lest any of the host of Maxen should come therein, until they had subjected all to their will. Then spake Maxen to Helen Luyddawc, "I marvel, lady," said he, "that thy brothers have not conquered this city for me." {126b} "Lord, emperor," she answered, "the wisest youths in the world are my brothers. Go thou thither and ask the city of them, and if it be in their possession thou shalt have it gladly." So the emperor and Helen went and demanded the city. And they told the emperor that none had taken the city, and that none could give it him, but the men of the Island of Britain. Then the gates of the city of Rome were opened, and the emperor sat on the throne and all the men of Rome submitted themselves unto him. The emperor then said unto Kynan and Adeon, "Lords," said he, "I have now had possession of the whole of my empire. This host give I unto you to vanquish whatever region ye may desire in the world." So they set forth and conquered lands, and castles and cities. And they slew all the men, but the women they kept alive. And thus they continued until the young men that had come with them were grown grey headed, from the length of time they were upon this conquest. {Picture: p127.jpg} Then spoke Kynan unto Adeon his brother, "Whether wilt thou rather," said he, "tarry in this land, or go back into the land whence thou didst come forth?" Now he chose to go back to his own land and many with him. But Kynan tarried there with the other part, and dwelt there. And they took counsel and cut out the tongues of the women, lest they should corrupt their speech. And because of the silence of the women from their own speech, the men of Armorica are called Britons. From that time there came frequently, and still comes, that language from the Island of Britain. And this tale is called the Dream of Maxen Wledig, emperor of Rome. And here it ends. Footnotes: {7a} Add "successively." {7b} And he summoned to him. {10} Add "bespattered." {11} And it may be that I shall have as much entertainment on account of the hunting as they. {15} Good Sir. {17} There. {19} And his words reached Geraint. {22} As thou art impartial concerning the question of right between us. {27} More probably "though." The ambiguity of the original would be best expressed by "while." {36a} "Lest he should be overtaken by a piteous death." {36b} "Thine I do not consider a protection, nor thy warning a warning." {38} "Wilt thou not at last be silent? Thy protection do I not consider such." {39} "I declare to Heaven," said he, "that thy protection I do not regard as such. Hold thy peace, at last." {40} He spoke not a word, being angry. {47a} "Do thou not go to his land beyond the bridge." {47b} "I will go my way in spite of the one thou speakest of." {48a} In a very rough and bitter manner. {48b} Gereint took the road that he had meant to take; it was not the road that led to the town from the bridge that he took, but the road that led to the ground that was hard, and rugged, and high, and ridgy. {49} But it was unfair for Gereint to have to fight him, so small was he, and so difficult to take aim at, and so hard were the blows he gave. And they did not end that part of their fight until their horses fell down on their knees. {53} "To complete thy death." {64} And what she did was to call her tutor to her, and she commanded him to dress her grave every year in such a way that nothing would grow on it. {66} And there were two silver spears, sharpened, in his hand. A prince's glaive was in his hand, a cubit from hilt to edge, that would draw blood from the wind; swifter was it than. {67} Yes. And as for thee, thy head is not under thy control; curt is thy greeting. {70a} Carnwenhan. {70b} Dress. {71a} Galldovydd. {71b} Cnychwr. {71c} And Adwy. {71d} Annwas. {71e} Sinoit. {72a} Ysperin. {72b} Erinit. {74a} Llenuleawc. {74b} Gwrdival. {74c} Kai was said to be his son. {75a} Add, "And from him is Paris named." {75b} Gweir, son of Cadellin Talaryant (Cadellin of the silver brow). {76a} His flat breast was ruddy. {77a} Hwyrdyddwc, Drwgdyddwc, and Llwyrdyddwc. {77b} Cethtrwm. {78a} Gweirdathar Wenidawc. {78b} Canhwch. {78c} Arwy. {81a} "We all of us will come there," said Kai. {81b} This dialogue consists of a series of repartees, with a play upon words which it is impossible to follow in the translation. {82} "Oh man, since the sea does not allow a beautiful dead man in it, show me that dead body." "Oh woman, the one to whom the dead body belongs thou wilt see here this evening." {84a} "I promise all this, and will obtain it," said he. {84b} "Where are my bad servants and my knaves?" {85a} Knee-pan. {87} The two oxen of Gwlwlwyd Wineu. {89} The harp of Teirtu to console me that night. {92} Garselit Wyddel. {93} Moro Oerveddawc. {98a} And what he and his companions with him did was this--they crossed the three wards until he was within the fortress. {98b} Glini. {99a} Glini. {99b} Add "some of." {100} There was but one horn on each side of my head, and there were no trees here except one oak sapling. {102} And they proceeded until they came to the wall opposite to where the prisoner was, where they heard lamentations and groaning on the other side of the wall. {103} And it was piteous to hear them. And he hastened to the place. {105} Dyvnarth. {108a} Hosts of Ireland. {108b} And when all the hosts had fled, Arthur and his men went to their ship in their sight, carrying with them the cauldron full of Irish money. {108c} Llwyddeu. {109} And he only killed one of his young pigs. {110} Add "same night Arthur." {111a} Aber Tywi. {111b} Kynlas. {111c} And ever since they had crossed the Irish Sea, he had not appeared to them until then. {112a} And there was killed a young boar from among his pigs. {112b} And there was killed a young boar and a young sow. {114} But she turned again upon Kacmwri; she beat both men soundly, disarmed them, and drove them out. {116} Maxen Wledig was an emperor at Rome. And the comeliest man was he, and the wisest, and the one that was most fit to be an emperor, of all that had been before him. {117} Not for the delight of hunting went the emperor so far as that, but to make himself such a man that he would be lord over those kings. {118a} Valleys he saw, and precipices, and wondrous high rocks, and a rugged, waterless land. {118b} Barren. {119} Sparkling jewels laboriously wrought. {120} There was no joint of his bones, or cavity of his nails, not to speak of anything larger than these, that was not full of the maiden's love. {122} Waterless. {124} Helen of the Legions. {125} Legions. {126a} Over the wall into the city. {126b} That it was not for me that thy brothers conquered the city. 
19976	----	Transcribed from the 1912 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE MABINOGION TRANSLATED FROM THE RED BOOK OF HERGEST BY LADY CHARLOTTE GUEST VOL. III. LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN 11 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS MXCII {The finding of Taliesin: p0.jpg} INTRODUCTION. {Picture: p11.jpg} This third volume completes the series of Mabinogion and tales translated by Lady Charlotte Guest. As in the two preceding volumes, I have compared Lady Guest's transcript with the original text in the Red Book of Hergest, and with Dr Gwenogvryn Evans' scrupulously accurate diplomatic edition. I have, as before, revised the translation as carefully as I could. I have not altered Lady Guest's version in the slightest degree; but I have again put in the form of foot-notes what seems to me to be a better or a more literal translation. The mistranslations are fairly few in number; but some of them are quite important, such as the references to pagan baptism or to the Irish Channel. At the end of my revision I may say that I have been struck by the comparative accuracy of the transcript of the Red Book which Lady Guest used, and by the accurate thoroughness with which she translated every one of the tales. This volume contains the oldest of the Mabinogion--the four branches of the Mabinogion proper--and the kindred tale of Lludd and Llevelys. In all these we are in a perfectly pagan atmosphere, neither the introduction of Christianity nor the growth of chivalry having affected them to any extent. The Story of Taliesin is the only one in the series that is not found in the Red Book of Hergest. It is taken from very much later manuscripts, and its Welsh is much more modern. Its subject, however, is akin to that of the Mabinogion proper; if, indeed, the contest between Elphin and the bards is an echo of the contest between decaying Paganism and growing Christianity. OWEN EDWARDS. LLANUWCHLLYN, 13_th_ _September_ 1902. PWYLL PRINCE OF DYVED. Pwyll, prince of Dyved, was lord of the seven Cantrevs of Dyved; and once upon a time he was at Narberth his chief palace, and he was minded to go and hunt, and the part of his dominions in which it pleased him to hunt was Glyn Cuch. So he set forth from Narberth that night, and went as far as Llwyn Diarwyd. {11a} And that night he tarried there, and early {11b} on the morrow he rose and came to Glyn Cuch; when he let loose the dogs in the wood, and sounded the horn, and began the chace. And as he followed the dogs, he lost his companions; and whilst he listened to the hounds, he heard the cry of other hounds, a cry different from his own, and coming in the opposite direction. And he beheld a glade in the wood forming a level plain, and as his dogs came to the edge of the glade, he saw a stag before the other dogs. And lo, as it reached the middle of the glade, the dogs that followed the stag overtook it, and brought it down. Then looked he at the colour of the dogs, staying not to look at the stag, and of all the hounds that he had seen in the world, he had never seen any that were like unto those. For their hair was of a brilliant shining white, and their ears were red; and as the whiteness of their bodies shone, so did the redness of their ears glisten. And he came towards the dogs, and drove away those that had brought down the stag, and set his own dogs upon it. {Picture: p13.jpg} And as he was setting on his dogs, he saw a horseman coming towards him upon a large light grey steed, with a hunting horn about his neck, and clad in garments of grey woollen in the fashion of a hunting garb. And the horseman drew near and spoke unto him thus. "Chieftain," said he, "I know who thou art, and I greet thee not." "Peradventure," said Pwyll, "thou art of such dignity that thou shouldest not do so." "Verily," answered he, "it is not my dignity that prevents me." "What is it then, O chieftain?" asked he. "By Heaven, it is by reason of thine own ignorance and want of courtesy." "What discourtesy, Chieftain, hast thou seen in me?" "Greater discourtesy saw I never in man," said he, "than to drive away the dogs that were killing the stag, and to set upon it thine own. This was discourteous, and though I may not be revenged upon thee, yet I declare to Heaven that I will do thee more dishonour than the value of an hundred stags." "O chieftain," he replied, "if I have done ill I will redeem thy friendship." "How wilt thou redeem it?" "According as thy dignity may be, but I know not who thou art?" "A crowned King am I in the land whence I come." "Lord," said he, "may the day prosper with thee, and from what land comest thou?" "From Annwvyn," answered he; "Arawn, a King of Annwvyn, {13} am I." "Lord," said he, "how may I gain thy friendship?" "After this manner mayest thou," he said. "There is a man whose dominions are opposite to mine, who is ever warring against me, and he is Havgan, a King of Annwvyn, and by ridding me of this oppression which thou canst easily do shalt thou gain my friendship." "Gladly will I do this," said he, "show me how I may." "I will show thee. Behold thus it is thou mayest. I will make firm friendship with thee; and this will I do, I will send thee to Annwvyn in my stead, and I will give thee the fairest lady thou didst ever behold, to be thy companion, and I will put my form and semblance upon thee, so that not a page of the chamber, nor an officer, nor any other man that has always followed me shall know that it is not I. And this shall be for the space of a year from to-morrow, and then will we meet in this place." "Yes," said he; "but when I shall have been there for the space of a year, by what means shall I discover him of whom thou speakest?" "One year from this night," he answered, "is the time fixed between him and me, that we should meet at the Ford; be thou there in my likeness, and with one stroke that thou givest him, he shall no longer live. And if he ask thee to give him another, give it not, how much soever he may entreat thee, for when I did so, he fought with me next day as well as ever before." "Verily," said Pwyll, "what shall I do concerning my kingdom?" Said Arawn, "I will cause that no one in all thy dominions, neither man, nor woman, shall know that I am not thou, and I will go there in thy stead." "Gladly then," said Pwyll, "will I set forward." "Clear shall be thy path and nothing shall detain thee, until thou come into my dominions, and I myself will be thy guide!" So he conducted him until he came in sight of the palace and its dwellings. "Behold," said he, "the Court and the kingdom in thy power. Enter the Court, there is no one there who will know thee, and when thou seest {15} what service is done there, thou wilt know the customs of the Court." So he went forward to the Court, and when he came there, he beheld sleeping rooms, and halls, and chambers, and the most beautiful buildings ever seen. And he went into the hall to disarray, and there came youths and pages and disarrayed him, and all as they entered saluted him. And two knights came and drew his hunting dress from about him, and clothed him in a vesture of silk and gold. And the hall was prepared, and behold he saw the household and the host enter in, and the host was the most comely and the best equipped that he had ever seen. And with them came in likewise the Queen, who was the fairest woman that he ever yet beheld. And she had on a yellow robe of shining satin; and they washed and went to the table, and they sat, the Queen upon one side of him, and one who seemed to be an Earl on the other side. And he began to speak with the Queen, and he thought from her speech, that she was the seemliest, and most noble lady of converse and of cheer that ever was. And they partook of meat, and drink, with songs, and with feasting; and of all the Courts upon the earth, behold this was the best supplied with food and drink, and vessels of gold and royal jewels. * * * * * And the year he spent in hunting, and minstrelsy, and feasting, and diversions, and discourse with his companions, until the night that was fixed for the conflict. And when that night came, it was remembered even by those who lived in the farthest part of his dominions, and he went to the meeting, and the nobles of the kingdom with him. And when he came to the Ford, a knight arose and spake thus, "Lords," said he, "listen well. It is between two Kings that this meeting is, and between them only. Each claimeth of the other his land and territory, and do all of you stand aside and leave the fight to be between them." {Picture: p16.jpg} Thereupon the two Kings approached each other in the middle of the Ford, and encountered, and at the first thrust, the man who was in the stead of Arawn struck Havgan on the centre of the boss of his shield, so that it was cloven in twain, and his armour was broken, and Havgan himself was borne to the ground an arm's and a spear's length over the crupper of his horse, and he received a deadly blow. "O Chieftain," said Havgan, "what right hast thou to cause my death? I was not injuring thee in any thing, and I know not wherefore thou wouldest slay me. But for the love of Heaven, since thou hast begun to slay me, complete thy work." "Ah, Chieftain," he replied, "I may yet repent doing that unto thee. Slay thee who may, I will not do so." {17} "My trusty Lords," said Havgan, "bear me hence. My death has come. I shall be no more able to uphold you." "My Nobles," also said he who was in the semblance of Arawn, "take counsel and know who ought to be my subjects." "Lord," said the Nobles, "all should be, for there is no King over the whole of Annwvyn but thee." "Yes," he replied, "it is right that he who comes humbly should be received graciously, but he that doth not come with obedience, shall be compelled by the force of swords." And thereupon he received the homage of the men, and he began to conquer the country; and the next day by noon the two kingdoms were in his power. And thereupon he went to keep his tryst, and came to Glyn Cuch. And when he came there, the king of Annwvyn was there to meet him, and each of them was rejoiced to see the other. "Verily," said Arawn, "may Heaven reward thee for thy friendship towards me, I have heard of it. When thou comest thyself to thy dominions," said he, "thou wilt see that which I have done for thee." "Whatever thou hast done for me, may Heaven repay it thee." Then Arawn gave to Pwyll Prince of Dyved his proper form and semblance, and he himself took his own; and Arawn set forth towards the Court of Annwvyn; and he was rejoiced when he beheld his hosts, and his household, whom he had not seen so long; but they had not known of his absence, and wondered no more at his coming than usual. And that day was spent in joy and merriment; and he sat and conversed with his wife and his nobles. And when it was time for them rather to sleep than to carouse, they went to rest. * * * * * Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, came likewise to his country and dominions, and began to enquire of the nobles of the land, how his rule had been during the past year, compared with what it had been before. "Lord," said they, "thy wisdom was never so great, and thou wert never so kind nor so free in bestowing thy gifts, and thy justice was never more worthily seen than in this year." "By Heaven," said he, "for all the good you have enjoyed, you should thank him who hath been with you; for behold, thus hath this matter been." And thereupon Pwyll related the whole unto them. "Verily, Lord," said they, "render thanks unto Heaven that thou hast such a fellowship, and withhold not from us the rule which we have enjoyed for this year past." "I take Heaven to witness that I will not withhold it," answered Pwyll. And thenceforth they made strong the friendship that was between them, and each sent unto the other horses, and greyhounds, and hawks, and all such jewels as they thought would be pleasing to each other. And by reason of his having dwelt that year in Annwvyn, and having ruled there so prosperously, and united the two kingdoms in one day by his valour and prowess, he lost the name of Pwyll Prince of Dyved, and was called Pwyll Chief of Annwvyn from that time forward. * * * * * Once upon a time, Pwyll was at Narberth his chief palace, where a feast had been prepared for him, and with him was a great host of men. And after the first meal, Pwyll arose to walk, and he went to the top of a mound that was above the palace, and was called Gorsedd Arberth. "Lord," said one of the Court, "it is peculiar to the mound that whosoever sits upon it cannot go thence, without either receiving wounds or blows, or else seeing a wonder." "I fear not to receive wounds and blows in the midst of such a host as this, but as to the wonder, gladly would I see it. I will go therefore and sit upon the mound." And upon the mound he sat. And while he sat there, they saw a lady, on a pure white horse of large size, with a garment of shining gold around her, coming along the high way that led from the mound; and the horse seemed to move at a slow and even pace, and to be coming up towards the mound. "My men," said Pwyll, "is there any among you who knows yonder lady?" "There is not, Lord," said they. "Go one of you and meet her, that we may know who she is." And one of them arose, and as he came upon the road to meet her, she passed by, and he followed as fast as he could, being on foot; and the greater was his speed, the further was she from him. And when he saw that it profited him nothing to follow her, he returned to Pwyll, and said unto him, "Lord, it is idle for any one in the world to follow her on foot." "Verily," said Pwyll, "go unto the palace, and take the fleetest horse that thou seest, and go after her." And he took a horse and went forward. And he came to an open level plain, and put spurs to his horse; and the more he urged his horse, the further was she from him. Yet she held the same pace as at first. And his horse began to fail; and when his horse's feet failed him, he returned to the place where Pwyll was. "Lord," said he, "it will avail nothing for any one to follow yonder lady. I know of no horse in these realms swifter than this, and it availed me not to pursue her." "Of a truth," said Pwyll, "there must be some illusion here. Let us go towards the palace." So to the palace they went, and they spent that day. And the next day they arose, and that also they spent until it was time to go to meat. And after the first meal, "Verily," said Pwyll, "we will go the same party as yesterday to the top of the mound. And do thou," said he to one of his young men, "take the swiftest horse that thou knowest in the field." And thus did the young man. And they went towards the mound, taking the horse with them. And as they were sitting down they beheld the lady on the same horse, and in the same apparel, coming along the same road. "Behold," said Pwyll, "here is the lady of yesterday. Make ready, youth, to learn who she is." "My Lord," said he, "that will I gladly do." And thereupon the lady came opposite to them. So the youth mounted his horse; and before he had settled himself in his saddle, she passed by, and there was a clear space between them. But her speed was no greater than it had been the day before. Then he put his horse into an amble, and thought that notwithstanding the gentle pace at which his horse went, he should soon overtake her. But this availed him not; so he gave his horse the reins. And still he came no nearer to her than when he went at a foot's pace. And the more he urged his horse, the further was she from him. Yet she rode not faster than before. When he saw that it availed not to follow her, he returned to the place where Pwyll was. "Lord," said he, "the horse can no more than thou hast seen." "I see indeed that it avails not that any one should follow her. And by Heaven," said he, "she must needs have an errand to some one in this plain, if her haste would allow her to declare it. Let us go back to the palace." And to the palace they went, and they spent that night in songs and feasting, as it pleased them. And the next day they amused themselves until it was time to go to meat. And when meat was ended, Pwyll said, "Where are the hosts that went yesterday and the day before to the top of the mound?" "Behold, Lord, we are here," said they. "Let us go," said he, "to the mound, to sit there. And do thou," said he to the page who tended his horse, "saddle my horse well, and hasten with him to the road, and bring also my spurs with thee." And the youth did thus. And they went and sat upon the mound; and ere they had been there but a short time, they beheld the lady coming by the same road, and in the same manner, and at the same pace. "Young man," said Pwyll, "I see the lady coming; give me my horse." And no sooner had he mounted his horse than she passed him. And he turned after her and followed her. And he let his horse go bounding playfully, and thought that at the second step or the third he should come up with her. But he came no nearer to her than at first. Then he urged his horse to his utmost speed, yet he found that it availed nothing to follow her. Then said Pwyll, "O maiden, for the sake of him whom thou best lovest, stay for me." "I will stay gladly," said she, "and it were better for thy horse hadst thou asked it long since." So the maiden stopped, and she threw back that part of her head dress which covered her face. And she fixed her eyes upon him, and began to talk with him. "Lady," asked he, "whence comest thou, and whereunto dost thou journey?" "I journey on mine own errand," said she, "and right glad am I to see thee." "My greeting be unto thee," said he. Then he thought that the beauty of all the maidens, and all the ladies that he had ever seen, was as nothing compared to her beauty. "Lady," he said, "wilt thou tell me aught concerning thy purpose?" "I will tell thee," said she. "My chief quest was to seek thee." "Behold," said Pwyll, "this is to me the most pleasing quest on which thou couldst have come; and wilt thou tell me who thou art?" "I will tell thee, Lord," said she, "I am Rhiannon, the daughter of Heveydd Hen, and they sought to give me to a husband against my will. But no husband would I have, and that because of my love for thee, neither will I yet have one unless thou reject me. And hither have I come to hear thy answer." "By Heaven," said Pwyll, "behold this is my answer. If I might choose among all the ladies and damsels in the world, thee would I choose." "Verily," said she, "If thou art thus minded, make a pledge to meet me ere I am given to another." "The sooner I may do so, the more pleasing will it be unto me," said Pwyll, "and wheresoever thou wilt, there will I meet with thee." "I will that thou meet me this day twelvemonth at the palace of Heveydd. And I will cause a feast to be prepared, so that it be ready against thou come." "Gladly," said he, "will I keep this tryst." "Lord," said she, "remain in health, and be mindful that thou keep thy promise; and now will I go hence." So they parted, and he went back to his hosts and to them of his household. And whatsoever questions they asked him respecting the damsel, he always turned the discourse upon other matters. And when a year from that time was gone, he caused a hundred knights to equip themselves and to go with him to the palace of Heveydd Hen. And he came to the palace, and there was great joy concerning him, with much concourse of people and great rejoicing, and vast preparations for his coming. And the whole court was placed under his orders. And the hall was garnished and they went to meat, and thus did they sit; Heveydd Hen was on one side of Pwyll, and Rhiannon on the other. And all the rest according to their rank. And they eat and feasted and talked one with another, and at the beginning of the carousal after the meat, there entered a tall auburn-haired youth, of royal bearing, clothed in a garment of satin. And when he came into the hall, he saluted Pwyll and his companions. "The greeting of Heaven be unto thee, my soul," said Pwyll, "come thou and sit down." "Nay," said he, "a suitor am I, and I will do mine errand." "Do so willingly," said Pwyll. "Lord," said he, "my errand is unto thee, and it is to crave a boon of thee that I come." "What boon soever thou mayest ask of me, as far as I am able, thou shall have." "Ah," said Rhiannon, "Wherefore didst thou give that answer?" "Has he not given it before the presence of these nobles?" asked the youth. "My soul," said Pwyll, "what is the boon thou askest?" "The lady whom best I love is to be thy bride this night; I come to ask her of thee, with the feast and the banquet that are in this place." And Pwyll was silent because of the answer which he had given. "Be silent as long as thou wilt," said Rhiannon. "Never did man make worse use of his wits than thou hast done." "Lady," said he, "I knew not who he was." "Behold, this is the man to whom they would have given me against my will," said she. "And he is Gwawl the son of Clud, a man of great power and wealth, and because of the word thou hast spoken, bestow me upon him lest shame befall thee." "Lady," said he, "I understand not thine answer. Never can I do as thou sayest." "Bestow me upon him," said she, "and I will cause that I shall never be his." "By what means will that be?" asked Pwyll. "In thy hand will I give thee a small bag," said she. "See that thou keep it well, and he will ask of thee the banquet, and the feast, and the preparations which are not in thy power. Unto the hosts and the household will I give the feast. And such will be thy answer respecting this. And as concerns myself, I will engage to become his bride this night twelvemonth. And at the end of the year be thou here," said she, "and bring this bag with thee, and let thy hundred knights be in the orchard up yonder. And when he is in the midst of joy and feasting, come thou in by thyself, clad in ragged garments, and holding thy bag in thy hand, and ask nothing but a bagfull of food, and I will cause that if all the meat and liquor that are in these seven Cantrevs were put into it, it would be no fuller than before. And after a great deal has been put therein, he will ask thee, whether thy bag will ever be full. Say thou then that it never will, until a man of noble birth and of great wealth arise and press the food in the bag, with both his feet saying, 'Enough has been put therein;' and I will cause him to go and tread down the food in the bag, and when he does so, turn thou the bag, so that he shall be up over his head in it, and then slip a knot upon the thongs of the bag. Let there be also a good bugle horn about thy neck, and as soon as thou hast bound him in the bag, wind thy horn, and let it be a signal between thee and thy knights. And when they hear the sound of the horn, let them come down upon the palace." "Lord," said Gwawl, "it is meet that I have an answer to my request." "As much of that thou hast asked as it is in my power to give, thou shalt have," replied Pwyll. "My soul," said Rhiannon unto him, "as for the feast and the banquet that are here, I have bestowed them upon the men of Dyved, and the household, and the warriors that are with us. These can I not suffer to be given to any. In a year from to-night a banquet shall be prepared for thee in this palace, that I may become thy bride." So Gwawl went forth to his possessions, and Pwyll went also back to Dyved. And they both spent that year until it was the time for the feast at the palace of Heveydd Hen. Then Gwawl the son of Clud set out to the feast that was prepared for him, and he came to the palace, and was received there with rejoicing. Pwyll, also, the chief of Annwn came to the orchard with his hundred knights, as Rhiannon had commanded him, having the bag with him. And Pwyll was clad in coarse and ragged garments, and wore large clumsy old shoes upon his feet. And when he knew that the carousal after the meat had begun, he went towards the hall, and when he came into the hall, he saluted Gwawl the son of Clud, and his company, both men and women. "Heaven prosper thee," said Gwawl, "and the greeting of Heaven be unto thee." "Lord," said he, "May Heaven reward thee, I have an errand unto thee." "Welcome be thine errand, and if thou ask of me that which is just, thou shalt have it gladly." "It is fitting," answered he. {26} "I crave but from want, and the boon that I ask is to have this small bag that thou seest filled with meat." "A request within reason is this," said he, "and gladly shalt thou have it. Bring him food." A great number of attendants arose and begun to fill the bag, but for all that they put into it, it was no fuller than at first. "My soul," said Gwawl, "will thy bag be ever full?" "It will not, I declare to Heaven," said he, "for all that may be put into it, unless one possessed of lands, and domains, and treasure, shall arise and tread down with both his feet the food that is within the bag, and shall say, 'Enough has been put herein.'" Then said Rhiannon unto Gwawl the son of Clud, "Rise up quickly." "I will willingly arise," said he. So he rose up, and put his two feet into the bag. And Pwyll turned up the sides of the bag, so that Gwawl was over his head in it. And he shut it up quickly and slipped a knot upon the thongs, and blew his horn. And thereupon behold his household came down upon the palace. And they seized all the host that had come with Gwawl, and cast them into his own prison. And Pwyll threw off his rags, and his old shoes, and his tattered array; and as they came in, every one of Pwyll's knights struck a blow upon the bag, and asked, "What is here?" "A Badger," said they. And in this manner they played, each of them striking the bag, either with his foot or with a staff. And thus played they with the bag. Every one as he came in asked, "What game are you playing at thus?" "The game of Badger in the Bag," said they. And then was the game of Badger in the Bag first played. "Lord," said the man in the bag, "If thou wouldest but hear me, I merit not to be slain in a bag." Said Heveydd Hen, "Lord, he speaks truth. It were fitting that thou listen to him, for he deserves not this." "Verily," said Pwyll, "I will do thy counsel concerning him." "Behold this is my counsel then," said Rhiannon; "Thou art now in a position in which it behoves thee to satisfy suitors and minstrels, let him give unto them in thy stead, and take a pledge from him that he will never seek to revenge that which has been done to him. And this will be punishment enough." "I will do this gladly," said the man in the bag. "And gladly will I accept it," said Pwyll, "since it is the counsel of Heveydd and Rhiannon." "Such then is our counsel," answered they. "I accept it," said Pwyll. "Seek thyself sureties." "We will be for him," said Heveydd, "until his men be free to answer for him." And upon this he was let out of the bag, and his liegemen were liberated. "Demand now of Gwawl his sureties," said Heveydd, "we know which should be taken for him." And Heveydd numbered the sureties. Said Gwawl, "Do thou thyself draw up the covenant." "It will suffice me that it be as Rhiannon said," answered Pwyll. So unto that covenant were the sureties pledged. "Verily, Lord," said Gwawl, "I am greatly hurt, and I have many bruises. I have need to be anointed, with thy leave I will go forth. I will leave nobles in my stead, to answer for me in all that thou shall require." "Willingly," said Pwyll, "mayest thou do thus." So Gwawl went towards his own possessions. And the hall was set in order for Pwyll and the men of his host, and for them also of the palace, and they went to the tables and sat down. And as they had sat that time twelvemonth, so sat they that night. And they eat, and feasted, and spent the night in mirth and tranquillity. And the time came that they should sleep, and Pwyll and Rhiannon went to their chamber. And next morning at the break of day, "My Lord," said Rhiannon, "arise and begin to give thy gifts unto the minstrels. Refuse no one to-day that may claim thy bounty." "Thus shall it be gladly," said Pwyll, "both to-day and every day while the feast shall last." So Pwyll arose, and he caused silence to be proclaimed, and desired all the suitors and the minstrels to show and to point out what gifts were to their wish and desire. {28} And this being done the feast went on, and he denied no one while it lasted. And when the feast was ended, Pwyll said unto Heveydd, "My Lord, with thy permission I will set out for Dyved to-morrow." "Certainly," said Heveydd, "may Heaven prosper thee. Fix also a time when Rhiannon may follow thee." "By Heaven," said Pwyll, "we will go hence together." "Wiliest thou this, Lord?" said Heveydd. "Yes, by Heaven," answered Pwyll. And the next day, they set forward towards Dyved, and journeyed to the palace of Narberth, where a feast was made ready for them. And there came to them great numbers of the chief men and the most noble ladies of the land, and of these there were none to whom Rhiannon did not give some rich gift, either a bracelet, or a ring, or a precious stone. And they ruled the land prosperously both that year and the next. And in the third year the nobles of the land began to be sorrowful at seeing a man whom they loved so much, and who was moreover their lord and their foster-brother, without an heir. And they came to him. {29} And the place where they met was Preseleu, in Dyved. "Lord," said they, "we know that thou art not so young as some of the men of this country, and we fear that thou mayest not have an heir of the wife whom thou hast taken. Take therefore another wife of whom thou mayest have heirs. Thou canst not always continue with us, and though thou desire to remain as thou art, we will not suffer thee." "Truly," said Pwyll, "we have not long been joined together, and many things may yet befall. Grant me a year from this time, and for the space of a year we will abide together, and after that I will do according to your wishes." So they granted it. And before the end of a year a son was born unto him. And in Narberth was he born; and on the night that he was born, women were brought to watch the mother and the boy. And the women slept, as did also Rhiannon, the mother of the boy. And the number of the women that were brought into the chamber, was six. And they watched for a good portion of the night, and before midnight every one of them fell asleep, and towards break of day they awoke; and when they awoke, they looked where they had put the boy, and behold he was not there. "Oh," said one of the women, "the boy is lost!" "Yes," said another, "and it will be small vengeance if we are burnt or put to death because of the child." Said one of the women, "Is there any counsel for us in the world in this matter?" "There is," answered another, "I offer you good counsel." "What is that?" asked they. "There is here a stag-hound bitch, and she has a litter of whelps. Let us kill some of the cubs, and rub the blood on the face and hands of Rhiannon, and lay the bones before her, and assert that she herself had devoured her son, and she alone will not be able to gainsay us six." And according to this counsel it wast settled. And towards morning Rhiannon awoke, and she said, "Women, where is my son?" "Lady," said they, "ask us not concerning thy son, we have nought but the blows and the bruises we got by struggling with thee, and of a truth we never saw any woman so violent as thou, for it was of no avail to contend with thee. Hast thou not thyself devoured thy son? Claim him not therefore of us." "For pity's sake," said Rhiannon; "The Lord God knows all things. Charge me not falsely. {30} If you tell me this from fear, I assert before Heaven that I will defend you." "Truly," said they, "we would not bring evil on ourselves for any one in the world." "For pity's sake," said Rhiannon; "you will receive no evil by telling the truth." But for all her words, whether fair or harsh, {31a} she received but the same answer from the women. And Pwyll the chief of Annwvyn arose, and his household, and his hosts. And this occurrence could not be concealed, but the story went forth throughout the land, and all the nobles heard it. Then the nobles came to Pwyll, and besought him to put away his wife, because of the great {31b} crime which she had done. But Pwyll answered them, that they had no cause wherefore they might ask him to put away his wife, save for her having no children. "But children has she now had, therefore will I not put her away, if she has done wrong, let her do penance for it." So Rhiannon sent for the teachers and the wise men, and as she preferred doing penance to contending with the women, she took upon her a penance. And the penance that was imposed upon her was, that she should remain in that palace of Narberth until the end of seven years, and that she should sit every day near unto a horse-block that was without the gate. And that she should relate the story to all who should come there, whom she might suppose not to know it already; and that she should offer the guests and strangers, if they would permit her, to carry them upon her back into the palace. But it rarely happened that any would permit. And thus did she spend part of the year. Now at that time Teirnyon Twryv Vliant was Lord of Gwent Is Coed, and he was the best man in the world. And unto his house there belonged a mare, than which neither mare nor horse in the kingdom was more beautiful. And on the night of every first of May she foaled, and no one ever knew what became of the colt. And one night Teirnyon talked with his wife; "Wife," said he, "it is very simple of us that our mare should foal every year, and that we should have none of her colts." "What can be done in the matter?" said she. "This is the night of the first of May," said he. "The vengeance of Heaven be upon me, if I learn not what it is that takes away the colts." So he caused the mare to be brought into a house, and he armed himself, and began to watch that night. And in the beginning of the night, the mare foaled a large and beautiful colt. And it was standing up in the place. And Teirnyon rose up and looked at the size of the colt, and as he did so he heard a great tumult, and after the tumult behold a claw came through the window into the house, and it seized the colt by the mane. Then Teirnyon drew his sword, and struck off the arm at the elbow, so that portion of the arm together with the colt was in the house with him. And then did he hear a tumult and wailing, both at once. And he opened the door, and rushed out in the direction of the noise, and he could not see the cause of the tumult, because of the darkness of the night; but he rushed after it and followed it. Then he remembered that he had left the door open, and he returned. And at the door behold there was an infant boy in swaddling clothes, wrapped around in a mantle of satin. And he took up the boy, and behold he was very strong for the age that he was of. Then he shut the door, and went unto the chamber where his wife was. "Lady," said he, "art thou sleeping?" "No, Lord," said she, "I was asleep, but as thou camest in I did awake." "Behold here is a boy for thee if thou wilt," said he, "since thou hast never had one." "My Lord," said she, "What adventure is this?" "It was thus," said Teirnyon; and he told her how it all befell. "Verily, Lord," said she, "What sort of garments are there upon the boy?" "A mantle of satin," said he. "He is then a boy of gentle lineage," she replied. "My Lord," she said, "if thou wilt, I shall have great diversion and mirth. I will call my women unto me, and tell them that I have been pregnant." "I will readily grant thee to do this," he answered. And thus did they, and they caused the boy to be baptized, and the ceremony was performed there; {33} and the name which they gave unto him, was Gwri Wallt Euryn, because what hair was upon his head was as yellow as gold. And they had the boy nursed in the court until he was a year old. And before the year was over, he could walk stoutly. And he was larger than a boy of three years old, even one of great growth and size. And the boy was nursed the second year, and then he was as large as a child six years old. And before the end of the fourth year, he would bribe the grooms to allow him to take the horses to water. "My Lord," said his wife unto Teirnyon, "Where is the colt which thou didst save on the night that thou foundest the boy?" "I have commanded the grooms of the horses," said he, "that they take care of him." "Would it not be well, Lord," said she, "if thou wert to cause him to be broken in, and given to the boy, seeing that on the same night that thou didst find the boy, the colt was foaled and thou didst save him." "I will not oppose thee in this matter," said Teirnyon. "I will allow thee to give him the colt." "Lord," said she, "may Heaven reward thee; I will give it him." So the horse was given to the boy. Then she went to the grooms and those who tended the horses, and commanded them to be careful of the horse, so that he might be broken in by the time that the boy could ride him. And while these things were going forward, they heard tidings of Rhiannon and her punishment. And Teirnyon Twryv Vliant, by reason of the pity that he felt on hearing this story of Rhiannon, and her punishment, enquired closely concerning it, until he had heard from many of those who came to his court. Then did Teirnyon, often lamenting the sad history, ponder within himself, and he looked steadfastly on the boy, and as he looked upon him, it seemed to him that he had never beheld so great a likeness between father and son, as between the boy and Pwyll, the chief of Annwvyn. Now the semblance of Pwyll was well known to him, for he had of yore been one of his followers. And thereupon he became grieved for the wrong that he did, in keeping with him a boy whom he knew to be the son of another man. And the first time that he was alone with his wife, he told her, that it was not right that they should keep the boy with them, and suffer so excellent a lady as Rhiannon to be punished so greatly on his account, whereas the boy was the son of Pwyll, the chief of Annwvyn. And Teirnyon's wife agreed with him, that they should send the boy to Pwyll. "And three things, Lord," said she, "shall we gain thereby. Thanks and gifts for releasing Rhiannon from her punishment; and thanks from Pwyll, for nursing his son, and restoring him unto him; and thirdly, if the boy is of gentle nature, he will be our foster-son, and he will do for us all the good in his power." So it was settled according to this counsel. And no later than the next day was Teirnyon equipped, and two other knights with him. And the boy, as a fourth in their company, went with them upon the horse which Teirnyon had given him. And they journeyed towards Narberth, and it was not long before they reached that place. And as they drew near to the palace, they beheld Rhiannon sitting beside the horse block. And when they were opposite to her. "Chieftain," said she, "go not further thus, I will bear every one of you into the palace, and this is my penance for slaying my own son and devouring him." "Oh fair lady," said Teirnyon, "think not that I will be one to be carried upon thy back." "Neither will I," said the boy. "Truly, my soul," said Teirnyon, "we will not go." {35} So they went forward to the palace, and there was great joy at their coming. And at the palace a feast was prepared, because Pwyll was come back from the confines of Dyved. And they went into the hall and washed, and Pwyll rejoiced to see Teirnyon. And in this order they sat. Teirnyon between Pwyll and Rhiannon, and Teirnyon's two companions on the other side of Pwyll, with the boy between them. And after meat they began to carouse and to discourse. And Teirnyon's discourse was concerning the adventure of the mare and the boy, and how he and his wife had nursed and reared the child as their own. "And behold here is thy son, lady," said Teirnyon. "And whosoever told that lie concerning thee, has done wrong. And when I heard of thy sorrow, I was troubled and grieved. And I believe that there is none of this host, who will not perceive that the boy is the son of Pwyll," said Teirnyon. "There is none," said they all, "who is not certain thereof." "I declare to Heaven," said Rhiannon, "that if this be true, there indeed is an end to my trouble." {36a} "Lady," said Pendaran Dyved, "well hast thou named thy son Pryderi, and well becomes him the name of Pryderi, son of Pwyll, chief of Annwvyn." "Look you," said Rhiannon, "will not his own name become him better?" "What name has he?" asked Pendaran Dyved. "Gwri Wallt Euryn, is the name that we gave him." "Pryderi," said Pendaran, "shall his name be." "It were more proper," said Pwyll, "that the boy should take his name from the word his mother spoke when she received the joyful tidings of him." And thus was it arranged. "Teirnyon," said Pwyll, "Heaven reward thee that thou hast reared the boy up to this time, and, being of gentle lineage, {36b} it were fitting that he repay thee for it." "My Lord," said Teirnyon, "It was my wife who nursed him, and there is no one in the world so afflicted as she at parting with him. It were well that he should bear in mind what I and my wife have done for him." "I call Heaven to witness," said Pwyll, "that while I live I will support thee and thy possessions, as long as I am able to preserve my own. And when he shall have power, he will more fitly maintain them than I. {37a} And if this counsel be pleasing unto thee, and to my nobles, it shall be that, as thou hast reared him up to the present time, I will give him to be brought up by Pendaran Dyved, from henceforth. And you shall be companions and shall both be foster- fathers unto him." "This is good counsel," said they all. So the boy was given to Pendaran Dyved, and the nobles of the land were sent with him. And Teirnyon Twryv Vliant, and his companions, set out for his country, and his possessions, with love and gladness. And he went not without being offered the fairest jewels and the fairest horses and the choicest dogs; but he would take none of them. Thereupon they all remained in their own dominions. And Pryderi, the son of Pwyll the chief of Annwvyn, was brought up carefully as was fit, so that he became the fairest youth, and the most comely, and the best skilled in all good games, of any in the kingdom. And thus passed years and years, until the end of Pwyll the chief of Annwvyn's life came, and he died. And Pryderi ruled the seven Cantrevs of Dyved prosperously, and he was beloved by his people, and by all around him. And at length {37b} he added unto them the three Cantrevs of Ystrad Tywi and the four Cantrevs of Cardigan; and these were called the Seven Cantrevs of Seissyllwch. And when he made this addition, Pryderi the son of Pwyll the chief of Annwvyn, desired to take a wife. And the wife he chose was Kicva, the daughter of Gwynn Gohoyw, the son of Gloyw Wlallt {38} Lydan, the son of Prince Casnar, one of the nobles of this island. And thus ends this portion of the Mabinogion. {Picture: p38.jpg} BRANWEN THE DAUGHTER OF LLYR. {Picture: p39.jpg} Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr was the crowned king of this Island, and he was exalted from the crown of London. {39a} And one afternoon he was at Harlech in Ardudwy, at his court, and he sat upon the rock of Harlech, looking over the sea. {39b} And with him were his brother Manawyddan the son of Llyr, and his brothers by the mother's side, Nissyen and Evnissyen, and many nobles likewise, as was fitting to see around a king. His two brothers by the mother's side were the sons of Eurosswydd, by his mother, Penardun, {40} the daughter of Beli son of Manogan. And one of these youths was a good youth and of gentle nature, and would make peace between his kindred and cause his family to be friends when their wrath was at the highest; and this one was Nissyen; but the other would cause strife between his two brothers when they were most at peace. And as they sat thus, they beheld thirteen ships coming from the South of Ireland, and making towards them, and they came with a swift motion, the wind being behind them, and they neared them rapidly. "I see ships afar," said the king, "coming swiftly towards the land. Command the men of the court that they equip themselves, and go and learn their intent." So the men equipped themselves and went down towards them. And when they saw the ships near, certain were they that they had never seen ships better furnished. Beautiful flags of satin were upon them. And behold one of the ships outstripped the others, and they saw a shield lifted up above the side of the ship, and the point of the shield was upwards, in token of peace. And the men drew near that they might hold converse. Then they put out boats and came towards the land. And they saluted the king. Now the king could hear them from the place where he was, upon the rock above their heads. "Heaven prosper you," said he, "and be ye welcome. To whom do these ships belong and who is the chief amongst you?" "Lord," said they, "Matholwch king of Ireland is here and these ships belong to him." "Wherefore comes he?" asked the king, "and will he come to the land?" "He is a suitor unto thee, lord," said they, "and he will not land unless he have his boon." "And what may that be?" enquired the king. "He desires to ally himself with thee, lord," said they, "and he comes to ask Branwen the daughter of Llyr, that, if it seem well to thee, the Island of the Mighty may be leagued with Ireland and both become more powerful." "Verily," said he, "let him come to land, and we will take counsel thereupon." And this answer was brought to Matholwch. "I will go willingly," said he. So he landed, and they received him joyfully; and great was the throng in the palace that night, between his hosts and those of the court; and next day they took counsel, and they resolved to bestow Branwen upon Matholwch. Now she was one of the three chief ladies of this Island, and she was the fairest damsel in the world. And they fixed upon Aberffraw, as the place where she should become his bride. And they went thence, and towards Aberffraw the hosts proceeded; Matholwch and his host in their ships; Bendigeid Vran and his host by land, until they came to Aberffraw. And at Aberffraw they began the feast and sat down. And thus sat they. The King of the Island of the Mighty and Manawyddan the son of Llyr, on one side, and Matholwch on the other side, and Branwen the daughter of Llyr beside him. And they were not within a house, but under tents. No house could ever contain Bendigeid Vran. And they began the banquet and caroused and discoursed. And when it was more pleasing to them to sleep than to carouse they went to rest, and that night Branwen became Matholwch's bride. And next day they arose, and all they of the court, and the officers began to equip and to range the horses and the attendants, and they ranged them in order as far as the sea. And behold one day, Evnissyen, the quarrelsome man of whom it is spoken above, came by chance into the place, where the horses of Matholwch were, and asked whose horses they might be. "They are the horses of Matholwch king of Ireland, who is married to Branwen, thy sister; his horses are they." "And is it thus they have done with a maiden such as she, and moreover my sister, bestowing her without my consent? They could have offered no greater insult to me than this," said he. And thereupon he rushed under the horses and cut off their lips at the teeth, and their ears close to their heads, and their tails {42} close to their backs, and wherever he could clutch their eyelids, he cut them to the very bone, and he disfigured the horses and rendered them useless. And they came with these tidings unto Matholwch, saying that the horses were disfigured, and injured so that not one of them could ever be of any use again. "Verily, lord," said one, "it was an insult unto thee, and as such was it meant." "Of a truth, it is a marvel to me, that if they desire to insult me, they should have given me a maiden of such high rank and so much beloved of her kindred, as they have done." "Lord," said another, "thou seest that thus it is, and there is nothing for thee to do but to go to thy ships." And thereupon towards his ships he set out. And tidings came to Bendigeid Vran that Matholwch was quitting the court without asking leave, and messengers were sent to enquire of him wherefore he did so. And the messengers that went, were Iddic the son of Anarawd, and Heveydd Hir. And these overtook him and asked of him what he designed to do, and wherefore he went forth. "Of a truth," said he, "if I had known I had not come hither. I have been altogether insulted, no one had ever worse treatment than I have had here. But one thing surprises me above all." "What is that?" asked they. "That Branwen the daughter of Llyr, one of the three chief ladies of this Island, and the daughter of the King of the Island of the Mighty, should have been given me as my bride, and that after that I should have been insulted; and I marvel that the insult was not done me before they had bestowed upon me a maiden so exalted as she." "Truly, lord, it was not the will of any that are of the court," said they, "nor of any that are of the council that thou shouldest have received this insult, and as thou hast been insulted, the dishonour is greater unto Bendigeid Vran than unto thee." "Verily," said he, "I think so. Nevertheless he cannot recall the insult." These men returned with that answer to the place where Bendigeid Vran was, and they told him what reply Matholwch had given them. "Truly," said he, "there are no means by which we may prevent his going away at enmity with us, that we will not take." "Well, lord," said they, "send after him another embassy." "I will do so," said he. "Arise Manawyddan son of Llyr, and Heveydd Hir, and Unic Glew Ysgwyd, and go after him, and tell him that he shall have a sound horse for every one that has been injured. And beside that, as an atonement for the insult, he shall have a staff of silver, as large and as tall as himself, and a plate of gold of the breadth of his face. And show unto him who it was that did this, and that it was done against my will; but that he who did it is my brother, by the mother's side, and therefore it would be hard for me to put him to death. And let him come and meet me," said he, "and we will make peace in any way he may desire." The embassy went after Matholwch, and told him all these sayings in a friendly manner, and he listened thereunto. "Men," said he, "I will take counsel." So to the council he went. And in the council they considered that if they should refuse this, they were likely to have more shame rather than to obtain so great an atonement. They resolved therefore to accept it, and they returned to the court in peace. Then the pavilions and the tents were set in order after the fashion of a hall; and they went to meat, and as they had sat at the beginning of the feast, so sat they there. And Matholwch and Bendigeid Vran began to discourse; and behold it seemed to Bendigeid Vran, while they talked, that Matholwch was not so cheerful as he had been before. And he thought that the chieftain might be sad because of the smallness of the atonement which he had, for the wrong that had been done him. "Oh man," said Bendigeid Vran, "thou dost not discourse to-night so cheerfully as thou wert wont. And if it be because of the smallness of the atonement, thou shalt add thereunto whatsoever thou mayest choose, and to-morrow I will pay thee the horses." "Lord," said he, "Heaven reward thee." "And I will enhance the atonement," said Bendigeid Vran, "for I will give unto thee a cauldron, the property of which is, that if one of thy men be slain to-day, and be cast therein, to-morrow he will be as well as ever he was at the best, except that he will not regain his speech." And thereupon he gave him great thanks, and very joyful was he for that cause. And the next morning they paid Matholwch the horses as long as the trained horses lasted. And then they journeyed into another commot, where they paid him with colts until the whole had been paid, and from thenceforth that commot was called Talebolion. {Picture: p46.jpg} And a second night sat they together. "My lord," said Matholwch, "whence hadst thou the cauldron which thou hast given me?" "I had it of a man who had been in thy land," said he, "and I would not give it except to one from there." {45} "Who was it?" asked he. "Llassar Llaesgyvnewid; he came here from Ireland, with Kymideu Kymeinvoll, his wife, who escaped from the Iron House in Ireland, when it was made red hot around them, and fled hither. And it is a marvel to me that thou shouldst know nothing concerning the matter." "Something I do know," said he, "and as much as I know I will tell thee. One day I was hunting in Ireland, and I came to the mound at the head of the lake, which is called the Lake of the Cauldron. And I beheld a huge yellow-haired man coming from the lake with a cauldron upon his back. And he was a man of vast size, and of horrid aspect, and a woman followed after him. And if the man was tall, twice as large as he was the woman, and they came towards me and greeted me. 'Verily,' asked I, 'wherefore are you journeying?' 'Behold this,' said he to me, 'is the cause that we journey. At the end of a month and a fortnight this woman will have a son; and the child that will be born at the end of the month and the fortnight will be a warrior fully armed.' So I took them with me, and maintained them. And they were with me for a year. And that year I had them with me not grudgingly. But thenceforth was there murmuring, because that they were with me. For from the beginning of the fourth month they had begun to make themselves hated and to be disorderly in the land; committing outrages, and molesting and harassing the nobles and ladies; and thenceforward my people rose up and besought me to part with them, and they bade me to choose between them and my dominions. And I applied to the council of my country to know what should be done concerning them; for of their own free will they would not go, neither could they be compelled against their will, through fighting. And [the people of the country,] being in this strait, they caused a chamber to be made all of iron. Now when the chamber was ready, there came there every smith that was in Ireland, and every one who owned tongs and hammer. And they caused coals to be piled up as high as the top of the chamber. And they had the man, and the woman, and the children, served with plenty of meat and drink; but when it was known that they were drunk, they began to put fire to the coals about the chamber, and they blew it with bellows until the house was red hot all around them. Then was there a council held in the centre of the floor of the chamber. And the man tarried until the plates of iron were all of a white heat; and then, by reason of the great heat, the man dashed against the plates with his shoulder and struck them out, and his wife followed him; but except him and his wife none escaped thence. And then I suppose, lord," said Matholwch unto Bendigeid Vran, "that he came over unto thee." "Doubtless he came here," said he, "and gave unto me the cauldron." "In what manner didst thou receive them?" "I dispersed them through every part of my dominions, and they have become numerous and are prospering everywhere, and they fortify the places where they are with men and arms, of the best that were ever seen." That night they continued to discourse as much as they would, and had minstrelsy and carousing, and when it was more pleasant to them to sleep than to sit longer, they went to rest. And thus was the banquet carried on with joyousness; and when it was finished, Matholwch journeyed towards Ireland, and Branwen with him, and they went from Aber Menei, with thirteen ships and came to Ireland. And in Ireland was there great joy because of their coming. And not one great man or noble lady visited Branwen unto whom she gave not either a clasp, or a ring, or a royal jewel to keep, such as it was honourable to be seen departing with. And in these things she spent that year in much renown, and she passed her time pleasant, enjoying honour and friendship. And in the meanwhile, it chanced that she became pregnant, and in due time a son was born unto her, and the name that they gave him was Gwern the son of Matholwch, and they put the boy out to be foster-nursed, in a place where were the best men of Ireland. And behold in the second year a tumult arose in Ireland, on account of the insult which Matholwch had received in Wales, and the payment made him for his horses. And his foster-brothers, and such as were nearest unto him, blamed him openly {48a} for that matter. And he might have no peace by reason of the tumult until they should revenge upon him this disgrace. And the vengeance which they took was to drive away Branwen from the same chamber with him, and to make her cook {48b} for the court; and they caused the butcher, after he had cut up the meat, to come to her and give her every day a blow on the ear, and such they made her punishment. "Verily, lord," said his men to Matholwch, "forbid now the ships and the ferry boats and the coracles, that they go not into Wales, and such as come over from Wales hither, imprison them that they go not back for this thing to be known there." And they did so; and it was thus for no less than three years. {Picture: p49.jpg} And Branwen reared a starling in the cover of the kneading trough, and she taught it to speak, and she taught the bird what manner of man her brother was. And she wrote a letter of her woes, and the despite with which she was treated, and she bound the letter to the root of the bird's wing, and sent it towards Wales. And the bird came to this Island, and one day it found Bendigeid Vran at Caer Seiont in Arvon, conferring there, and it alighted upon his shoulder and ruffled its feathers, so that the letter was seen, and they knew that the bird had been reared in a domestic manner. Then Bendigeid Vran took the letter and looked upon it. And when he had read the letter, he grieved exceedingly at the tidings of Branwen's woes. And immediately he began sending messengers to summon the Island together. And he caused seven score and four countries to come unto him, and he complained to them himself of the grief that his sister endured. So they took counsel. And in the counsel they resolved to go to Ireland, and to leave seven men as princes here. And Caradawc the son of Bran, as the chief of them, and their seven knights. In Edeyrnion, were these men left. And for this reason were the seven knights placed in the town. {50a} Now the names of these seven were Caradawc the son of Bran, and Heveydd Hir, and Unic Glew Ysgwyd, and Iddic the son of Anarawc Gwalltgrwn, and Fodor the son of Ervyll, and Gwlch Minascwrn, and Llassar the son of Llaesar Llaesgygwyd, and Pendaran Dyved as a young page with them. And these abode as seven ministers to take charge of this Island; and Caradawc the son of Bran was the chief amongst them. Bendigeid Vran, with the hosts of which we spoke, sailed towards Ireland, and it was not far across the sea, and he came to shoal water. It was but by two rivers; the Lli and the Archan were they called; and the nations covered the sea. {50b} Then he proceeded with what provisions he had on his own back, and approached the shore of Ireland. Now the swineherds of Matholwch were upon the sea shore, and they came to Matholwch. "Lord," said they, "greeting be unto thee." "Heaven protect you," said he, "have you any news?" "Lord," said they, "we have marvellous news; a wood have we seen upon the sea, in a place where we never yet saw a single tree." "This is indeed a marvel," said he; "saw you aught else?" "We saw, lord," said they, "a vast mountain beside the wood, which moved, and there was a lofty ridge on the top of the mountain, and a lake on each side of the ridge. And the wood, and the mountain, and all these things moved." "Verily," said he, "there is none who can know aught concerning this, unless it be Branwen." Messengers then went unto Branwen. "Lady," said they, "What thinkest thou that this is?" "The men of the Island of the Mighty, who have come hither on hearing of my ill treatment and my woes." "What is the forest that is seen upon the sea?" asked they. "The yards and the masts of ships," she answered. "Alas," said they, "what is the mountain that is seen by the side of the ships?" "Bendigeid Vran, my brother," she replied, "coming to shoal water; there is no ship that can contain him in it." "What is the lofty ridge with the lake on each side thereof?" "On looking towards this Island he is wroth, and his two eyes on each side of his nose are the two lakes on each side of the ridge." The warriors and chief men of Ireland were brought together in haste, and they took counsel. "Lord," said the nobles unto Matholwch, "there is no other counsel than to retreat over the Linon, (a river which is {52a} in Ireland,) and to keep the river between thee and him, and to break down the bridge that is across the river, for there is a load-stone at the bottom of the river that neither ship nor vessel can pass over." So they retreated across the river, and broke down the bridge. Bendigeid Vran came to land, and the fleet with him by the bank of the river. "Lord," said his chieftains, "knowest thou the nature of this river, that nothing can go across it, and there is no bridge over it?" "What," said they, "is thy counsel concerning a bridge?" "There is none," said he, "except that he who will be chief let him be a bridge. I will be so," said he. And then was that saying first uttered, and it is still used as a proverb. And when he had lain down across the river, hurdles were placed upon him, and the host passed over thereby. And as he rose up, behold the messengers of Matholwch came to him, and saluted him, and gave him greeting in the name of Matholwch, his kinsman, and showed how that of his good will he had merited of him nothing but good. "For Matholwch has given the kingdom of Ireland to Gwern the son of Matholwch, thy nephew and thy sister's son. And this he places before thee, as a compensation for the wrong and despite that has been done unto Branwen. And Matholwch shall be maintained wheresoever thou wilt, either here or in the Island of the Mighty." Said Bendigeid Vran, "Shall not I myself have the kingdom? {52b} Then peradventure I may take counsel concerning your message. From this time until then no other answer will you get from me." "Verily," said they, "the best message that we receive for thee, we will convey it unto thee, and do thou await our message unto him." "I will wait," answered he, "and do you return quickly." The messengers set forth and came to Matholwch. "Lord," said they, "prepare a better message for Bendigeid Vran. He would not listen at all to the message that we bore him." "My friends," said Matholwch, "what may be your counsel?" "Lord," said they, "there is no other counsel than this alone. He was never known to be within a house, make therefore a house that will contain him and the men of the Island of the Mighty on the one side, and thyself and thy host on the other; and give over thy kingdom to his will, and do him homage. So by reason of the honour thou doest him in making him a house, whereas he never before had a house to contain him, he will make peace with thee." So the messengers went back to Bendigeid Vran, bearing him this message. And he took counsel, and in the council it was resolved that he should accept this, and this was all done by the advice of Branwen, and lest the country should be destroyed. And this peace was made, and the house was built both vast and strong. But the Irish planned a crafty device, and the craft was that they should put brackets on each side of the hundred pillars that were in the house, and should place a leathern bag on each bracket, and an armed man in every one of them. Then Evnissyen came in before the host of the Island of the Mighty, and scanned the house with fierce and savage looks, and descried the leathern bags which were around the pillars. "What is in this bag?" asked he of one of the Irish. "Meal, good soul," said he. And Evnissyen felt about it until he came to the man's head, and he squeezed the head until he felt his fingers meet together in the brain through the bone. And he left that one and put his hand upon another, and asked what was therein? "Meal," said the Irishman. So he did the like unto every one of them, until he had not left alive of all the two hundred men save one only; and when he came to him, he asked what was there? "Meal, good soul," said the Irishman. And he felt about until he felt the head, and he squeezed that head as he had done the others. And albeit he found that the head of this one was armed, he left him not until he had killed him. And then he sang an Englyn,-- "There is in this bag a different sort of meal, The ready combatant, when the assault is made By his fellow warriors, prepared for battle." Thereupon came the hosts unto the house. The men of the Island of Ireland entered the house on the one side, and the men of the Island of the Mighty on the other. And as soon as they had sat down, there was concord between them; and the sovereignty was conferred upon the boy. When the peace was concluded, Bendigeid Vran called the boy unto him, and from Bendigeid Vran the boy went unto Manawyddan, and he was beloved by all that beheld him. And from Manawyddan the boy was called by Nissyen the son of Eurosswydd, and the boy went unto him lovingly. "Wherefore," said Evnissyen, "comes not my nephew the son of my sister unto me? Though he were not king of Ireland, yet willingly would I fondle the boy." "Cheerfully let him go to thee," said Bendigeid Vran, and the boy went unto him cheerfully. "By my confession to Heaven," said Evnissyen in his heart, "unthought of by the household is the slaughter that I will this instant commit." Then he arose and took up the boy by the feet, and before any one in the house could seize hold of him, he thrust the boy headlong into the blazing fire. And when Branwen saw her son burning in the fire, she strove to leap into the fire also, from the place where she sat between her two brothers. But Bendigeid Vran grasped her with one hand, and his shield with the other. Then they all hurried about the house, and never was there made so great a tumult by any host in one house as was made by them, as each man armed himself. Then said Morddwydtyllyon, "The gad- flies of Morddwydtyllyon's Cow!" And while they all sought their arms, Bendigeid Vran supported Branwen between his shield and his shoulder. Then the Irish kindled a fire under the cauldron of renovation, and they cast the dead bodies into the cauldron until it was full, and the next day they came forth fighting men as good as before, except that they were not able to speak. Then when Evnissyen saw the dead bodies of the men of the Island of the Mighty nowhere resuscitated, he said in his heart, "Alas! woe is me, that I should have been the cause of bringing the men of the Island of the Mighty into so great a strait. Evil betide me if I find not a deliverance therefrom." And he cast himself among the dead bodies of the Irish, and two unshod Irishmen came to him, and, taking him to be one of the Irish, flung him into the cauldron. And he stretched himself out in the cauldron, so that he rent the cauldron into four pieces, and burst his own heart also. In consequence of that, the men of the Island of the Mighty obtained such success as they had; but they were not victorious, for only seven men of them all escaped, and Bendigeid Vran himself was wounded in the foot with a poisoned dart. Now the seven men that escaped were Pryderi, Manawyddan, Gluneu {56a} Eil Taran, Taliesin, Ynawc, Grudyen {56b} the son of Muryel, and Heilyn the son of Gwynn Hen. And Bendigeid Vran commanded them that they should cut off his head. "And take you my head," said he, "and bear it even unto the White Mount, in London, and bury it there, with the face towards France. And a long time will you be upon the road. In Harlech you will be feasting seven years, the birds of Rhiannon singing unto you the while. And all that time the head will be to you as pleasant company as it ever was when on my body. And at Gwales in Penvro you will be fourscore years, and you may remain there, and the head with you uncorrupted, until you open the door that looks towards Aber Henvelen, and towards Cornwall. And after you have opened that door, there you may no longer tarry, set forth then to London to bury the head and go straight forward." So they cut off his head, and these seven went forward therewith. And Branwen was the eighth with them, and they came to land at Aber Alaw, in Talebolyon, and they sat down to rest. And Branwen looked towards Ireland and towards the Island of the Mighty, to see if she could descry them. "Alas," said she, "woe is me that I was ever born; two Islands have been destroyed because of me!" Then she uttered a loud groan and there broke her heart. And they made her a four-sided grave and buried her upon the banks of the Alaw. Then the seven men journeyed forward towards Harlech, bearing the head with them; and as they went behold there met them a multitude of men and of women. "Have you any tidings?" asked Manawyddan. "We have none," said they, "save that Caswallawn, the son of Beli, has conquered the Island of the Mighty, and is crowned King in London." "What has become," said they, "of Caradawc the son of Bran, and the seven men who were left with him in this Island?" "Caswallawn came upon them, and slew six of the men, and Caradawc's heart broke for grief thereof; for he could see the sword that slew the men, but knew not who it was that wielded it. Caswallawn had flung upon him the Veil of Illusion, so that no one could see him slay the men, but the sword only could they see. And it liked him not to slay Caradawc, because he was his nephew the son of his cousin. And now he was the third whose heart had broke through grief. Pendaran Dyved, who had remained as a young page with these men, escaped into the wood," said they. Then they went on to Harlech, and there stopped to rest, and they provided meat and liquor, and sat down to eat and to drink. And there came three birds, and began singing unto them a certain song, and all the songs they had ever heard were unpleasant compared thereto; and the birds seemed to them to be at a great distance from them over the sea, yet they appeared as distinct as if they were close by; and at this repast they continued seven years. And at the close of the seventh year, they went forth to Gwales in Penvro. And there they found a fair and regal spot overlooking the ocean; and a spacious hall was therein. And they went into the hall, and two of its doors were open, but the third door was closed, that which looked towards Cornwall. "See, yonder," said Manawyddan, "is the door that we may not open." And that night they regaled themselves and were joyful. And of all they had seen of food laid before them, and of all they had heard of, they remembered nothing; neither of that, nor of any sorrow whatsoever. And there they remained fourscore years, unconscious of having ever spent a time more joyous and mirthful. And they were not more weary than when first they came, neither did they, any of them, know the time they had been there. And it was not more irksome to them having the head with them, than if Bendigeid Vran had been with them himself. And because of these fourscore years, it was called the entertaining of the noble head. The entertaining of Branwen and Matholwch was in the time that they went to Ireland. One day said Heilyn the son of Gwynn, "Evil betide me, if I do not open the door to know if that is true which is said concerning it." So he opened the door and looked towards Cornwall and Aber Henvelen. And when they had looked, they were as conscious of all the evils they had ever sustained, and of all the friends and companions they had lost, and of all the misery that had befallen them, as if all had happened in that very spot; {59a} and especially of the fate of their lord. And because of their perturbation they could not rest, {59b} but journeyed forth with the head towards London. And they buried the head in the White Mount, and when it was buried, this was the third goodly concealment; and it was the third ill-fated disclosure when it was disinterred, inasmuch as no invasion from across the sea came to this Island, while the head was in that concealment. And thus is the story related of those who journeyed over from Ireland. In Ireland none were left alive, except five pregnant women in a cave in the Irish wilderness; and to these five women in the same night were born five sons, whom they nursed until they became grown up youths. And they thought about wives, and they at the same time desired to possess them, and each took a wife of the mothers of their companions, and they governed the country and peopled it. And these five divided it amongst them, and because of this partition are the five divisions of Ireland still so termed. And they examined the land where the battles had taken place, and they found gold and silver until they became wealthy. And thus ends this portion of the Mabinogi, concerning the blow given to Branwen, which was the third unhappy blow of this Island; and concerning the entertainment of Bran, when the hosts of sevenscore countries and ten went over to Ireland, to revenge the blow given to Branwen; and concerning the seven years' banquet in Harlech, and the singing of the birds of Rhiannon, and the sojourning of the head for the space of fourscore years. {Picture: p60.jpg} MANAWYDDAN THE SON OF LLYR. {Picture: p61.jpg} When the seven men of whom we spoke above, had buried the head of Bendigeid Vran, in the White Mount in London, with its face towards France, Manawyddan gazed upon the town of London, and upon his companions, and heaved a great sigh, and much grief and heaviness came upon him. "Alas, Almighty Heaven, woe is me," he exclaimed, "there is none save myself without a resting place this night." "Lord," said Pryderi, "be not so sorrowful. Thy cousin is king of the Island of the Mighty, and though he should do thee wrong, thou hast never been a claimant of land or possessions. Thou art the third disinherited {62a} prince." "Yea," answered he, "but although this man is my cousin, it grieveth me to see any one in the place of my brother Bendigeid Vran, neither can I be happy in the same dwelling with him." "Wilt thou follow the counsel of another?" {62b} said Pryderi. "I stand in need of counsel," he answered, "and what may that counsel be?" "Seven Cantrevs remain unto me," said Pryderi, "wherein Rhiannon my mother dwells, I will bestow her upon thee and the seven Cantrevs with her, and though thou hadst no possessions but those Cantrevs only, thou couldst not have seven Cantrevs fairer than they. Kicva, the daughter of Gwynn Gloyw, is my wife, and since the inheritance of the Cantrevs belongs to me, do thou and Rhiannon enjoy them, and if thou ever desire any possessions thou wilt take these." "I do not, chieftain," said he; "Heaven reward thee for thy friendship." "I would show thee the best friendship in the world if thou wouldst let me." "I will, my friend," said he, "and Heaven reward thee. I will go with thee to seek Rhiannon and to look at thy possessions." "Thou wilt do well," he answered. "And I believe that thou didst never hear a lady discourse better than she, and when she was in her prime none was ever fairer. Even now her aspect is not uncomely." {62c} They set forth, and, however long the journey, they came at length to Dyved, and a feast was prepared for them against their coming to Narberth, which Rhiannon and Kicva had provided. Then began Manawyddan and Rhiannon to sit and to talk together, and from their discourse his mind and his thoughts became warmed towards her, and he thought in his heart he had never beheld any lady more fulfilled of grace and beauty than she. "Pryderi," said he, "I will that it be as thou didst say." "What saying was that?" asked Rhiannon. "Lady," said Pryderi, "I did offer thee as a wife to Manawyddan the son of Llyr." "By that will I gladly abide," said Rhiannon. "Right glad am I also," said Manawyddan, "May Heaven reward him who hath shewn unto me friendship so perfect as this." And before the feast was over she became his bride. Said Pwyll, "Tarry ye here the rest of the feast, and I will go into England to tender my homage unto Caswallawn the son of Beli." "Lord," said Rhiannon, "Caswallawn is in Kent, thou mayest therefore tarry at the feast, and wait until he shall be nearer." "We will wait," he answered. So they finished the feast. And they began to make the circuit of Dyved and to hunt, and to take their pleasure. And as they went through the country, they had never seen lands more pleasant to live in, nor better hunting grounds, nor greater plenty of honey and fish. And such was the friendship between those four, that they would not be parted from each other by night nor by day. And in the midst of all this he went to Caswallawn at Oxford, and tendered his homage; and honourable was his reception there, and highly was he praised for offering his homage. And after his return, Pryderi and Manawyddan feasted and took their ease and pleasure. And they began a feast at Narberth, for it was the chief palace; and there originated all honour. And when they had ended the first meal that night, while those who served them eat, they arose and went forth, and proceeded all four to the Gorsedd of Narberth, and their retinue with them. And as they sat thus, behold a peal of thunder, and with the violence of the thunderstorm, lo there came a fall of mist, so thick that not one of them could see the other. And after the mist it became light all around. And when they looked towards the place where they were wont to see cattle, and herds, and dwellings, they saw nothing now, neither house, nor beast, nor smoke, nor fire, nor man, nor dwelling; but the houses of the court empty, and desert, and uninhabited, without either man, or beast within them. And truly all their companions were lost to them, without their knowing aught of what had befallen them, save those four only. "In the name of Heaven," cried Manawyddan, "where are they of the court, and all my host beside these? Let us go and see." So they came into the hall, and there was no man; and they went on to the castle, and to the sleeping-place, and they saw none; and in the mead-cellar and in the kitchen there was nought but desolation. So they four feasted, and hunted, and took their pleasure. Then they began to go through the land and all the possessions that they had, and they visited the houses and dwellings, and found nothing but wild beasts. And when they had consumed their feast and all their provisions, they fed upon the prey they killed in hunting, {65} and the honey of the wild swarms. And thus they passed the first year pleasantly, and the second; but at the last they began to be weary. "Verily," said Manawyddan, "we must not bide thus. Let us go into England, and seek some craft whereby we may gain our support." So they went into England, and came as far as Hereford. And they betook themselves to making saddles. And Manawyddan began to make housings, and he gilded and coloured them with blue enamel, in the manner that he had seen it done by Llasar Llaesgywydd. And he made the blue enamel as it was made by the other man. And therefore is it still called Calch Lassar, [blue enamel,] because Llassar Llaesgywydd had wrought it. {Picture: p65.jpg} And as long as that workmanship could be had of Manawyddan, neither saddle nor housing was bought of a saddler throughout all Hereford; till at length every one of the saddlers perceived that they were losing much of their gain, and that no man bought of them, but he who could not get what he sought from Manawyddan. Then they assembled together, and agreed to slay him and his companions. Now they received warning of this, and took counsel whether they should leave the city. "By Heaven," said Pryderi, "it is not my counsel that we should quit the town, but that we should slay these boors." "Not so," said Manawyddan, "for if we fight with them, we shall have evil fame, and shall be put in prison. It were better for us to go to another town to maintain ourselves." So they four went to another city. "What craft shall we take?" said Pryderi. "We will make shields," said Manawyddan. "Do we know anything about that craft?" said Pryderi. "We will try," answered he. There they began to make shields, and fashioned them after the shape of the good shields they had seen; and they enamelled them, as they had done the saddles. And they prospered in that place, so that not a shield was asked for in the whole town, but such as was had of them. Rapid therefore was their work, and numberless were the shields they made. But at last they were marked by the craftsmen, who came together in haste, and their fellow-townsmen with them, and agreed that they should seek to slay them. But they received warning, and heard how the men had resolved on their destruction. "Pryderi," said Manawyddan, "these men desire to slay us." "Let us not endure this from these boors, but let us rather fall upon them and slay them." "Not so," he answered, "Caswallawn and his men will hear of it, and we shall be undone. Let us go to another town." So to another town they went. "What craft shall we take?" said Manawyddan. "Whatsoever thou wilt that we know," said Pryderi. "Not so," he replied, "but let us take to making shoes, for there is not courage among cordwainers either to fight with us or to molest us." "I know nothing thereof," said Pryderi. "But I know," answered Manawyddan; "and I will teach thee to stitch. We will not attempt to dress the leather, but we will buy it ready dressed and will make the shoes from it." So he began by buying the best cordwal that could be had in the town, and none other would he buy except the leather for the soles; and he associated himself with the best goldsmith in the town, and caused him to make clasps for the shoes, and to gild the clasps, and he marked how it was done until he learned the method. And therefore was he called one of the three makers of Gold Shoes; and, when they could be had from him, not a shoe nor hose was bought of any of the cordwainers in the town. But when the cordwainers perceived that their gains were failing, (for as Manawyddan shaped the work, so Pryderi stitched it,) they came together and took counsel, and agreed that they would slay them. "Pryderi," said Manawyddan, "these men are minded to slay us." "Wherefore should we bear this from the boorish thieves?" said Pryderi. "Rather let us slay them all." "Not so," said Manawyddan, "we will not slay them, neither will we remain in England any longer. Let us set forth to Dyved and go to see it." So they journeyed along until they came to Dyved, and they went forward to Narberth. And there they kindled a fire and supported themselves by hunting. And thus they spent a month. And they gathered their dogs around them, and tarried there one year. {Picture: p68.jpg} And one morning Pryderi and Manawyddan rose up to hunt, and they ranged their dogs and went forth from the palace. And some of the dogs ran before them and came to a small bush which was near at hand; but as soon as they were come to the bush, they hastily drew back and returned to the men, their hair bristling up greatly. "Let us go near to the bush," said Pryderi, "and see what is in it." And as they came near, behold, a wild boar of a pure white colour rose up from the bush. Then the dogs being set on by the men, rushed towards him, but he left the bush and fell back a little way from the men, and made a stand against the dogs without retreating from them, until the men had come near. And when the men came up, he fell back a second time, and betook him to flight. Then they pursued the boar until they beheld a vast and lofty castle, all newly built, in a place where they had never before seen either stone or building. And the boar ran swiftly into the castle and the dogs after him. Now when the boar and the dogs had gone into the castle, they began to wonder at finding a castle in a place where they had never before then seen any building whatsoever. And from the top of the Gorsedd they looked and listened for the dogs. But so long as they were there they heard not one of the dogs nor aught concerning them. "Lord," said Pryderi, "I will go into the castle to get tidings of the dogs." "Truly," he replied, "thou wouldst be unwise to go into this castle, which thou hast never seen till now. If thou wouldst follow my counsel, thou wouldst not enter therein. Whosoever has cast a spell over this land, has caused this castle to be here." "Of a truth," answered Pryderi, "I cannot thus give up my dogs." And for all the counsel that Manawyddan gave him, yet to the castle he went. When he came within the castle, neither man nor beast, nor boar nor dogs, nor house nor dwelling saw he within it. But in the centre of the castle floor he beheld a fountain with marble work around it, and on the margin of the fountain a golden bowl upon a marble slab, and chains hanging from the air, to which he saw no end. And he was greatly pleased with the beauty of the gold, and with the rich workmanship of the bowl, and he went up to the bowl and laid hold of it. And when he had taken hold of it his hands stuck to the bowl, and his feet to the slab on which the bowl was placed, and all his joyousness forsook him, so that he could not utter a word. And thus he stood. And Manawyddan waited for him till near the close of the day. And late in the evening, being certain that he should have no tidings of Pryderi or of the dogs, he went back to the palace. And as he entered, Rhiannon looked at him, "Where," said she, "are thy companion and thy dogs?" "Behold," he answered, "the adventure that has befallen me." And he related it all unto her. "An evil companion hast thou been," said Rhiannon, "and a good companion hast thou lost." And with that word she went out, and proceeded towards the castle according to the direction which he gave her. The gate of the castle she found open. She was nothing daunted, and she went in. And as she went in, she perceived Pryderi laying hold of the bowl, and she went towards him. "Oh my lord," said she, "what dost thou here?" And she took hold of the bowl with him; and as she did so, her hands also became fast to the bowl, and her feet to the slab, and she was not able to utter a word. And with that, as it became night, lo there came thunder upon them, and a fall of mist, and thereupon the castle vanished, and they with it. When Kicva the daughter of Gwynn Gloew saw that there was no one in the palace but herself and Manawyddan, she sorrowed so that she cared not whether she lived or died. And Manawyddan saw this. "Thou art in the wrong," said he, "if through fear of me thou grievest thus. I call Heaven to witness that thou hast never seen friendship more pure than that which I will bear thee, as long as Heaven will that thou shouldst be thus. I declare to thee that were I in the dawn of youth I would keep my faith unto Pryderi, and unto thee also will I keep it. Be there no fear upon thee, therefore," said he, "for Heaven is my witness that thou shall meet with all the friendship thou canst wish, and that it is in my power to show thee, as long as it shall please Heaven to continue us in this grief and woe." "Heaven reward thee," she said, "and that is what I deemed of thee." And the damsel thereupon took courage and was glad. "Truly, lady," said Manawyddan, "it is not fitting for us to stay here, we have lost our dogs, and we cannot get food. Let us go into England; it is easiest for us to find support there." "Gladly, lord," said she, "we will do so." And they set forth together to England. "Lord," said she, "What craft wilt thou follow? Take up one that is seemly." "None other will I take," answered he, "save that of making shoes, as I did formerly." "Lord," said she, "such a craft becomes not a man so nobly born as thou." "By that however will I abide," said he. So he began his craft, and he made all his work of the finest leather he could get in the town, and, as he had done at the other place, he caused gilded clasps to be made for the shoes. {71} And except himself all the cordwainers in the town were idle, and without work. For as long as they could be had from him, neither shoes nor hose were bought elsewhere. And thus they tarried there a year, until the cordwainers became envious, and took counsel concerning him. And he had warning thereof, and it was told him how the cordwainers had agreed together to slay him. "Lord," said Kicva, "Wherefore should this be borne from these boors?" "Nay," said he, "we will go back unto Dyved." So towards Dyved they set forth. Now Manawyddan, when he set out to return to Dyved, took with him a burden of wheat. And he proceeded towards Narberth, and there he dwelt. And never was he better pleased than when he saw Narberth again, and the lands where he had been wont to hunt with Pryderi and with Rhiannon. And he accustomed himself to fish, and to hunt the deer in their covert. And then he began to prepare some ground and he sowed a croft, and a second, and a third. And no wheat in the world ever sprung up better. And the three crofts prospered with perfect growth, and no man ever saw fairer wheat than it. And thus passed the seasons of the year until the harvest came. And he went to look at one of his crofts, and behold it was ripe. "I will reap this to-morrow," said he. And that night he went back to Narberth, and on the morrow in the grey dawn he went to reap the croft, and when he came there he found nothing but the bare straw. Every one of the ears of the wheat was cut from off the stalk, and all the ears carried entirely away, and nothing but the straw left. And at this he marvelled greatly. Then he went to look at another croft, and behold that also was ripe. "Verily," said he, "this will I reap to-morrow." And on the morrow he came with the intent to reap it, and when he came there he found nothing but the bare straw. "Oh gracious Heaven," he exclaimed, "I know that whosoever has begun my ruin is completing it, and has also destroyed the country with me." Then he went to look at the third croft, and when he came there, finer wheat had there never been seen, and this also was ripe. "Evil betide me," said he, "if I watch not here to-night. Whoever carried off the other corn will come in like manner to take this. And I will know who it is." So he took his arms, and began to watch the croft. And he told Kicva all that had befallen. "Verily," said she, "what thinkest thou to do?" "I will watch the croft to-night," said he. And he went to watch the croft. And at midnight, lo! there arose the loudest tumult in the world. And he looked, and behold the mightiest host of mice in the world, which could neither be numbered nor measured. And he knew not what it was until the mice had made their way into the croft, and each of them climbing up the straw and bending it down with its weight, and had cut off one of the ears of wheat, and had carried it away, leaving there the stalk, and he saw not a single straw there that had not a mouse to it. And they all took their way, carrying the ears with them. In wrath and anger did he rush upon the mice, but he could no more come up with them than if they had been gnats, or birds in the air, except one only, which though it was but sluggish, went so fast that a man on foot could scarce overtake it. {73} And after this one he went, and he caught it and put it in his glove, and tied up the opening of the glove with a string, and kept it with him, and returned to the palace. Then he came to the hall where Kicva was, and he lighted a fire, and hung the glove by the string upon a peg. "What hast thou there, lord?" said Kicva. "A thief," said he, "that I found robbing me." "What kind of thief may it be, lord, that thou couldst put into thy glove?" said she. "Behold I will tell thee," he answered. Then he showed her how his fields had been wasted and destroyed, and how the mice came to the last of the fields in his sight. "And one of them was less nimble than the rest, and is now in my glove; to-morrow I will hang it, and before Heaven, if I had them, I would hang them all." "My lord," said she, "this is marvellous; but yet it would be unseemly for a man of dignity like thee to be hanging such a reptile as this. And if thou doest right, thou wilt not meddle with the creature, but wilt let it go." "Woe betide me," said he, "if I would not hang them all could I catch them, and such as I have I will hang." "Verily, lord," said she, "there is no reason that I should succour this reptile, except to prevent discredit unto thee. Do therefore, lord, as thou wilt." "If I knew of any cause in the world wherefore thou shouldst succour it, I would take thy counsel concerning it," said Manawyddan, "but as I know of none, lady, I am minded to destroy it." "Do so willingly then," said she. And then he went to the Gorsedd of Narberth, taking the mouse with him. And he set up two forks on the highest part of the Gorsedd. And while he was doing this, behold he saw a scholar coming towards him, in old and poor and tattered garments. And it was now seven years since he had seen in that place either man or beast, except those four persons who had remained together until two of them were lost. "My lord," said the scholar, "good day to thee." "Heaven prosper thee, and my greeting be unto thee. And whence dost thou come, scholar?" asked he. "I come, lord, from singing in England; and wherefore dost thou enquire?" "Because for the last seven years," answered he, "I have seen no man here save four secluded persons, and thyself this moment." "Truly, lord," said he, "I go through this land unto mine own. And what work art thou upon, lord?" "I am hanging a thief that I caught robbing me," said he. "What manner of thief is that?" asked the scholar. "I see a creature in thy hand like unto a mouse, and ill does it become a man of rank equal to thine, to touch a reptile such as this. Let it go forth free." "I will not let it go free, by Heaven," said he; "I caught it robbing me, and the doom of a thief will I inflict upon it and I will hang it." "Lord," said he, "rather than see a man of rank equal to thine at such a work as this, I would give thee a pound which I have received as alms, to let the reptile go forth free." "I will not let it go free," said he, "by Heaven, neither will I sell it." "As thou wilt, lord," he answered, "except that I would not see a man of rank equal to thine touching such a reptile, I care nought." And the scholar went his way. And as he was placing the cross-beam upon the two forks, behold a priest came towards him upon a horse covered with trappings. "Good day to thee, lord," said he. "Heaven prosper thee," said Manawyddan; "thy blessing." "The blessing of Heaven be upon thee. And what, lord, art thou doing?" "I am hanging a thief that I caught robbing me," said he. "What manner of thief, lord?" asked he. "A creature," he answered, "in form of a mouse. It has been robbing me, and I am inflicting upon it the doom of a thief." "Lord," said he, "rather than see thee touch this reptile, I would purchase its freedom." "By my confession to Heaven, neither will I sell it nor set it free." "It is true, lord, that it is worth nothing to buy; but rather than see thee defile thyself by touching such a reptile as this, I will give thee three pounds to let it go." "I will not, by Heaven," said he, "take any price for it. As it ought, so shall it be hanged." "Willingly, lord, do thy good pleasure." And the priest went his way. Then he noosed the string around the mouse's neck, and as he was about to draw it up, behold, he saw a bishop's retinue, with his sumpter-horses, and his attendants. And the bishop himself came towards him. And he stayed his work. "Lord bishop," said he, "thy blessing." "Heaven's blessing be unto thee," said he, "What work art thou upon?" "Hanging a thief that I caught robbing me," said he. "Is not that a mouse that I see in thy hand?" "Yes," answered he. "And she has robbed me." "Aye," said he, "since I have come at the doom of this reptile I will ransom it of thee. I will give thee seven pounds for it, and that rather than see a man of rank equal to thine destroying so vile a reptile as this. Let it loose and thou shall have the money." "I declare to Heaven that I will not set it loose." "If thou wilt not loose it for this, I will give thee four and twenty pounds of ready money to set it free." "I will not set it free, by Heaven, for as much again," said he. "If thou wilt not set it free for this, I will give thee all the horses that thou seest in this plain, and the seven loads of baggage, and the seven horses that they are upon." "By Heaven, I will not," he replied. "Since for this thou wilt not, do so at what price soever thou wilt." "I will do so," said he. "I will that Rhiannon and Pryderi be free," said he. "That thou shall have," he answered. "Not yet will I loose the mouse, by Heaven." "What then wouldst thou?" "That the charm and the illusion be removed from the seven Cantrevs of Dyved." "This shall thou have also, set therefore the mouse free." "I will not set it free, by Heaven," said he. "I will know who the mouse may be." "She is my wife." "Even though she be, I will not set her free. Wherefore came she to me?" "To despoil thee," he answered. "I am Llwyd the son of Kilcoed, and I cast the charm over the seven Cantrevs of Dyved. And it was to avenge Gwawl the son of Clud, from the friendship I had towards him, that I cast the charm. And upon Pryderi did I revenge Gwawl the son of Clud, for the game of Badger in the Bag, that Pwyll Pen Annwn played upon him, which he did unadvisedly in the court of Heveydd Hen. And when it was known that thou wast come to dwell in the land, my household came and besought me to transform them into mice, that they might destroy thy corn. And it was my own household that went the first night. And the second night also they went, and they destroyed thy two crofts. And the third night came unto me my wife and the ladies of the court, and besought me to transform them. And I transformed them. Now she is pregnant. And had she not been pregnant thou wouldst not have been able to overtake her, but since this has taken place and she has been caught, I will restore thee Pryderi and Rhiannon; and I will take the charm and illusion from off Dyved. I have now told thee who she is. Set her therefore free." "I will not set her free, by Heaven," said he. "What wilt thou more?" he asked. "I will that there be no more charm upon the seven Cantrevs of Dyved, and that none shall be put upon it henceforth." "This thou shalt have," said he. "Now set her free." "I will not by my faith," he answered. "What wilt thou furthermore," asked he. "Behold," said he, "this will I have; that vengeance be never taken for this, either upon Pryderi or Rhiannon, or upon me." "All this shalt thou have. And truly thou hast done wisely in asking this. Upon thy head would have lit all this trouble." "Yea," said he, "for fear thereof was it, that I required this." "Set now my wife at liberty." "I will not, by Heaven," said he, "until I see Pryderi and Rhiannon with me free." "Behold, here they come," he answered. And thereupon behold Pryderi and Rhiannon. And he rose up to meet them, and greeted them, and sat down beside them. "Ah chieftain, set now my wife at liberty," said the bishop. "Hast thou not received all thou didst ask?" "I will release her gladly," said he. And thereupon he set her free. Then he struck her with a magic wand, and she was changed back into a young woman, the fairest ever seen. "Look around upon thy land," said he, "and then thou wilt see it all tilled and peopled, as it was in its best state." And he rose up and looked forth. And when he looked he saw all the lands tilled, and full of herds and dwellings. "What bondage," he enquired, "has there been upon Pryderi and Rhiannon?" "Pryderi has had the knockers of the gate of my palace about his neck, and Rhiannon has had the collars of the asses, after they have been carrying hay, about her neck." And such had been their bondage. And by reason of this bondage is this story called the Mabinogi of Mynnweir and Mynord. {79} And thus ends this portion of the Mabinogi. {Picture: p79.jpg} MATH THE SON OF MATHONWY. {Picture: p80.jpg} Math the son of Mathonwy was lord over Gwynedd, and Pryderi the son of Pwyll was lord over the one and twenty Cantrevs of the South; and these were the seven Cantrevs of Dyved, and the seven Cantrevs of Morganwc, the four Cantrevs of Ceredigiawn, and the three of Ystrad Tywi. At that time, Math the son of Mathonwy could not exist unless his feet were in the lap of a maiden, except only when he was prevented by the tumult of war. Now the maiden who was with him was Goewin, the daughter of Pebin of Dol Pebin, in Arvon, and she was the fairest maiden of her time who was known there. And Math dwelt always at Caer Dathyl, in Arvon, and was not able to go the circuit of the land, but Gilvaethwy the son of Don, and Eneyd {81} the son of Don, his nephews, the sons of his sister, with his household, went the circuit of the land in his stead. Now the maiden was with Math continually, and Gilvaethwy the son of Don set his affections upon her, and loved her so that he knew not what he should do because of her, and therefrom behold his hue, and his aspect, and his spirits changed for love of her, so that it was not easy to know him. One day his brother Gwydion gazed steadfastly upon him. "Youth," said he, "what aileth thee?" "Why," replied he, "what seest thou in me?" "I see," said he, "that thou hast lost thy aspect and thy hue; what, therefore, aileth thee?" "My lord, brother," he answered, "that which aileth me, it will not profit me that I should own to any." "What may it be, my soul?" said he. "Thou knowest," he said, "that Math the son of Mathonwy has this property, that if men whisper together, in a tone how low soever, if the wind meet it, it becomes known unto him." "Yes," said Gwydyon, "hold now thy peace, I know thy intent, thou lovest Goewin." When he found that his brother knew his intent, he gave the heaviest sigh in the world. "Be silent, my soul, and sigh not," he said. "It is not thereby that thou wilt succeed. I will cause," said he, "if it cannot be otherwise, the rising of Gwynedd, and Powys, and Deheubarth, to seek the maiden. Be thou of glad cheer therefore, and I will compass it." So they went unto Math the son of Mathonwy. "Lord," said Gwydion, "I have heard that there have come to the South some beasts, such as were never known in this island before." "What are they called?" he asked. "Pigs, lord." "And what kind of animals are they?" "They are small animals, and their flesh is better than the flesh of oxen." "They are small then?" "And they change their names. Swine are they now called." "Who owneth them?" "Pryderi the son of Pwyll; they were sent him from Annwn, by Arawn the king of Annwn, and still they keep that name, half hog, half pig." "Verily," asked he, "and by what means may they be obtained from him?" "I will go, lord, as one of twelve in the guise of bards, to seek the swine." "But it may be that he will refuse you," said he. "My journey will not be evil, lord," said he, "I will not come back without the swine." "Gladly," said he, "go thou forward." So he and Gilvaethwy went, and ten other men with them. And they came into Ceredigiawn, to the place that is now called Rhuddlan Teivi, where the palace of Pryderi was. In the guise of bards they came in, and they were received joyfully, and Gwydion was placed beside Pryderi that night. "Of a truth," said Pryderi, "gladly would I have a tale from some of your men yonder." "Lord," said Gwydion, "we have a custom that the first night that we come to the court of a great man, the chief of song recites. Gladly will I relate a tale." Now Gwydion was the best teller of tales in the world, and he diverted all the court that night with pleasant discourse and with tales, so that he charmed every one in the court, and it pleased Pryderi to talk with him. And after this, "Lord," said he unto Pryderi, "were it more pleasing to thee, that another should discharge my errand unto thee, than that I should tell thee myself what it is?" "No," he answered, "ample speech hast thou." "Behold, then, lord," said he, "my errand. It is to crave from thee the animals that were sent thee from Annwn." "Verily," he replied, "that were the easiest thing in the world to grant, were there not a covenant between me and my land concerning them. And the covenant is that they shall not go from me, until they have produced double their number in the land." "Lord," said he, "I can set thee free from these words, and this is the way I can do so; give me not the swine to-night, neither refuse them unto me, and to-morrow I will show thee an exchange for them." And that night he and his fellows went unto their lodging, and they took counsel. "Ah, my men," said he, "we shall not have the swine for the asking." "Well," said they, "how may they be obtained?" "I will cause them to be obtained," said Gwydion. Then he betook himself to his arts, and began to work a charm. And he caused twelve chargers to appear, and twelve black greyhounds, each of them white breasted, and having upon them twelve collars and twelve leashes, such as no one that saw them could know to be other than gold. And upon the horses twelve saddles, and every part which should have been of iron was entirely of gold, and the bridles were of the same workmanship. And with the horses and the dogs he came to Pryderi. {Picture: p84.jpg} "Good day unto thee, lord," said he. "Heaven prosper thee," said the other, "and greetings be unto thee." "Lord," said he, "behold here is a release for thee from the word which thou spakest last evening concerning the swine; that thou wouldest neither give nor sell them. Thou mayest exchange them for that which is better. And I will give these twelve horses, all caparisoned as they are, with their saddles and their bridles, and these twelve greyhounds, with their collars and their leashes as thou seest, and the twelve gilded shields that thou beholdest yonder." Now these he had formed of fungus. "Well," said he, "we will take counsel." And they consulted together, and determined to give the swine to Gwydion, and to take his horses and his dogs and his shields. Then Gwydion and his men took their leave, and began to journey forth with the pigs. "Ah, my comrades," said Gwydion, "it is needful that we journey with speed. The illusion will not last but from the one hour to the same to-morrow." And that night they journeyed as far as the upper part of Ceredigiawn, to the place which, from that cause, is called Mochdrev still. And the next day they took their course through Melenydd, and came that night to the town which is likewise for that reason called Mochdrev, between Keri and Arwystli. And thence they journeyed forward; and that night they came as far as that Commot in Powys, which also upon account thereof is called Mochnant, and there tarried they that night. And they journeyed thence to the Cantrev of Rhos, and the place where they were that night is still called Mochdrev. "My men," said Gwydion, "we must push forward to the fastnesses of Gwynedd with these animals, for there is a gathering of hosts in pursuit of us." So they journeyed on to the highest town of Arllechwedd, and there they made a sty for the swine, and therefore was the name of Creuwyryon given to that town. And after they had made the sty for the swine, they proceeded to Math the son of Mathonwy, at Caerdathyl. And when they came there, the country was rising. "What news is there here?" asked Gwydion. "Pryderi is assembling one and twenty Cantrevs to pursue after you," answered they. "It is marvellous that you should have journeyed so slowly." "Where are the animals whereof you went in quest?" said Math. "They have had a sty made for them in the other Cantrev below," said Gwydion. Thereupon, lo! they heard the trumpets and the host in the land, and they arrayed themselves and set forward and came to Penardd in Arvon. And at night Gwydion the son of Don, and Gilvaethwy his brother, returned to Caerdathyl; and Gilvaethwy took Math the son of Mathonwy's couch. And while he turned out the other damsels from the room discourteously, he made Goewin unwillingly remain. And when they saw the day on the morrow, they went back unto the place where Math the son of Mathonwy was with his host; and when they came there, the warriors were taking counsel in what district they should await the coming of Pryderi, and the men of the South. So they went in to the council. And it was resolved to wait in the strongholds of Gwynedd, in Arvon. So within the two Maenors they took their stand, Maenor Penardd and Maenor Coed Alun. And there Pryderi attacked them, and there the combat took place. And great was the slaughter on both sides; but the men of the South were forced to flee. And they fled unto the place which is still called Nantcall. And thither did they follow them, and they made a vast slaughter of them there, so that they fled again as far as the place called Dol Pen Maen, and there they halted and sought to make peace. And that he might have peace, Pryderi gave hostages, Gwrgi Gwastra gave he and three and twenty others, sons of nobles. And after this they journeyed in peace even unto Traeth Mawr; but as they went on together towards Melenryd, the men on foot could not be restrained from shooting. Pryderi despatched unto Math an embassy to pray him to forbid his people, and to leave it between him and Gwydion the son of Don, for that he had caused all this. And the messengers came to Math. "Of a truth," said Math, "I call Heaven to witness, if it be pleasing unto Gwydion the son of Don, I will so leave it gladly. Never will I compel any to go to fight, but that we ourselves should do our utmost." "Verily," said the messengers, "Pryderi saith that it were more fair that the man who did him this wrong should oppose his own body to his, and let his people remain unscathed." "I declare to Heaven, I will not ask the men of Gwynedd to fight because of me. If I am allowed to fight Pryderi myself, gladly will I oppose my body to his." And this answer they took back to Pryderi. "Truly," said Pryderi, "I shall require no one to demand my rights but myself." Then these two came forth and armed themselves, and they fought. And by force of strength, and fierceness, and by the magic and charms of Gwydion, Pryderi was slain. And at Maen Tyriawc, {87} above Melenryd, was he buried, and there is his grave. And the men of the South set forth in sorrow towards their own land; nor is it a marvel that they should grieve, seeing that they had lost their lord, and many of their best warriors, and for the most part, their horses and their arms. The men of Gwynedd went back joyful and in triumph. "Lord," said Gwydion unto Math, "would it not be right for us to release the hostages of the men of the South, which they pledged unto us for peace? for we ought not to put them in prison." "Let them then be set free," said Math. So that youth, and the other hostages that were with him, were set free to follow the men of the South. Math himself went forward to Caerdathyl. Gilvaethwy the son of Don, and they of the household that were with him went to make the circuit of Gwynedd as they were wont, without coming to the court. Math went into his chamber, and caused a place to be prepared for him whereon to recline, so that he might put his feet in the maiden's lap. "Lord," said Goewin, "seek now another {88} to hold thy feet, for I am now a wife." "What meaneth this?" said he. "An attack, lord, was made unawares upon me; but I held not my peace, and there was no one in the court who knew not of it. Now the attack was made by thy nephews, lord, the sons of thy sister, Gwydion the son of Don, and Gilvaethwy the son of Don; unto me they did wrong, and unto thee dishonour." "Verily," he exclaimed, "I will do to the utmost of my power concerning this matter. But first I will cause thee to have compensation, and then will I have amends made unto myself. As for thee, I will take thee to be my wife, and the possession of my dominions will I give unto thy hands." And Gwydion and Gilvaethwy came not near the court, but stayed in the confines of the land until it was forbidden to give them meat and drink. At first they came not near unto Math, but at last they came. "Lord," said they, "Good day to thee." "Well," said he, "is it to make me compensation that ye are come?" "Lord," they said, "we are at thy will." "By my will I would not have lost my warriors, and so many arms as I have done. You cannot compensate me my shame, setting aside the death of Pryderi. But since ye come hither to be at my will, I shall begin your punishment forthwith." Then he took his magic wand, and struck Gilvaethwy, so that he became a deer, and he seized upon the other hastily lest he should escape from him. And he struck him with the same magic wand, and he became a deer also. "Since now ye are in bonds, I will that ye go forth together and be companions, and possess the nature of the animals whose form ye bear. And this day twelvemonth come hither unto me." At the end of a year from that day, lo there was a loud noise under the chamber wall, and the barking of the dogs of the palace together with the noise. "Look," said he, "what is without." "Lord," said one, "I have looked; there are there two deer, and a fawn with them." Then he arose and went out. And when he came he beheld the three animals. And he lifted up his wand. "As ye were deer last year, be ye wild hogs each and either of you, for the year that is to come." And thereupon he struck them with the magic wand. "The young one will I take and cause to be baptized." Now the name that he gave him was Hydwn. "Go ye and be wild swine, each and either of you, and be ye of the nature of wild swine. And this day twelvemonth be ye here under the wall." At the end of the year the barking of dogs was heard under the wall of the chamber. And the court assembled, and thereupon he arose and went forth, and when he came forth he beheld three beasts. Now these were the beasts that he saw; two wild hogs of the woods, and a well-grown young one with them. And he was very large for his age. "Truly," said Math, "this one will I take and cause to be baptized." And he struck him with his magic wand, and he became a fine fair auburn haired youth, and the name that he gave him was Hychdwn. "Now as for you, as ye were wild hogs last year, be ye wolves each and either of you for the year that is to come." Thereupon he struck them with his magic wand, and they became wolves. "And be ye of like nature with the animals whose semblance ye bear, and return here this day twelvemonth beneath this wall." And the same day at the end of the year, he heard a clamour and a barking of dogs under the wall of the chamber. And he rose and went forth. And when he came, behold he saw two wolves, and a strong cub with them. "This one will I take," said Math, "and I will cause him to be baptized; there is a name prepared for him, and that is Bleiddwn. Now these three, such are they; "The three sons of Gilvaethwy the false, The three faithful combatants, Bleiddwn, Hydwn, and Hychdwn the Tall." Then he struck the two with his magic wand, and they resumed their own nature. "Oh men," said he, "for the wrong that ye did unto me, sufficient has been your punishment and your dishonour. Prepare now precious ointment for these men, and wash their heads, and equip them." And this was done. And after they were equipped, they came unto him. "Oh men," said he, "you have obtained peace, and you shall likewise have friendship. Give your counsel unto me, what maiden I shall seek." "Lord," said Gwydion the son of Don, "it is easy to give thee counsel; seek Arianrod, {91a} the daughter of Don, thy niece, thy sister's daughter." And they brought her unto him, and the maiden came in. "Ha damsel," said he, "art thou the maiden?" "I know not, Lord, other than that I am." Then he took up his magic wand, and bent it. "Step over this," said he, "and I shall know if thou art the maiden." Then stepped she over the magic wand, and there appeared forthwith a fine chubby yellow haired boy. And at the crying out of the boy, she went towards the door. And thereupon some small form was seen; but before any one could get a second glimpse of it, Gwydion had taken it, and had flung a scarf of velvet around it and hidden it. Now the place where he hid it was the bottom of a chest at the foot of his bed. "Verily," said Math the son of Mathonwy, concerning the fine yellow haired boy, "I will cause this one to be baptized, and Dylan is the name I will give him." So they had the boy baptized, and as they baptized him he plunged into the sea. And immediately when he was in the sea, he took its nature, and swam as well as the best fish that was therein. And for that reason was he called Dylan, the son of the Wave. Beneath him no wave ever broke. And the blow whereby he came to his death, was struck by his uncle Govannion. The third fatal {91b} blow was it called. As Gwydion lay one morning on his bed awake, he heard a cry in the chest at his feet; and though it was not loud, it was such that he could hear it. Then he arose in haste, and opened the chest; and when he opened it, he beheld an infant boy stretching out his arms from the folds of the scarf, and casting it aside. And he took up the boy in his arms, and carried him to a place where he knew there was a woman that could nurse him. And he agreed with the woman that she should take charge of the boy. And that year he was nursed. And at the end of the year, he seemed by his size as though he were two years old. And the second year he was a big child, and able to go to the court by himself. And when he came to the court, Gwydion noticed him, and the boy became familiar with him, and loved him better than any one else. Then was the boy reared at the court until he was four years old, when he was as big as though he had been eight. And one day Gwydion walked forth, and the boy followed him, and he went to the Castle of Arianrod, having the boy with him; and when he came into the court, Arianrod arose to meet him, and greeted him and bade him welcome. "Heaven prosper thee," said he. "Who is the boy that followeth thee?" she asked. "This youth, he is thy son," he answered. "Alas," said she, "what has come unto thee that thou shouldest shame me thus, wherefore dost thou seek my dishonour, and retain it so long as this?" "Unless thou suffer dishonour greater than that of my bringing up such a boy as this, small will be thy disgrace." "What is the name of the boy?" said she. "Verily," he replied, "he has not yet a name." "Well," she said, "I lay this destiny upon him, that he shall never have a name until he receives one from me." "Heaven bears me witness," answered he, "that thou art a wicked woman. But the boy shall have a name how displeasing soever it may be unto thee. As for thee, that which afflicts thee is that thou art no longer called a damsel." And thereupon he went forth in wrath, and returned to Caer Dathyl, and there he tarried that night. And the next day he arose and took the boy with him, and went to walk on the sea shore between that place and Aber Menei. And there he saw some sedges and sea weed, and he turned them into a boat. And out of dry sticks {93} and sedges he made some Cordovan leather, and a great deal thereof, and he coloured it in such a manner that no one ever saw leather more beautiful than it. Then he made a sail to the boat, and he and the boy went in it to the Port of the Castle of Arianrod. And he began forming shoes and stitching them, until he was observed from the castle. And when he knew that they of the castle were observing him, he disguised his aspect, and put another semblance upon himself, and upon the boy, so that they might not be known. "What men are those in yonder boat?" said Arianrod. "They are cordwainers," answered they. "Go and see what kind of leather they have, and what kind of work they can do." So they came unto them. And when they came he was colouring some Cordovan leather, and gilding it. And the messengers came and told her this. "Well," said she, "take the measure of my foot, and desire the cordwainer to make shoes for me." So he made the shoes for her, yet not according to the measure, but larger. The shoes then were brought unto her, and behold they were too large. "These are too large," said she, "but he shall receive their value. Let him also make some that are smaller than they." Then he made her others that were much smaller than her foot, and sent them unto her. "Tell him that these will not go on my feet," said she. And they told him this. "Verily," said he, "I will not make her any shoes, unless I see her foot." And this was told unto her. "Truly," she answered, "I will go unto him." So she went down to the boat, and when she came there, he was shaping shoes and the boy stitching them. "Ah, lady," said he, "good day to thee." "Heaven prosper thee," said she. "I marvel that thou canst not manage to make shoes according to a measure." "I could not," he replied, "but now I shall be able." Thereupon behold a wren stood upon the deck of the boat, and the boy shot at it, and hit it in the leg between the sinew and the bone. Then she smiled. "Verily," said she, "with a steady hand did the lion aim at it." "Heaven reward thee not, but now has he got a name. And a good enough name it is. Llew Llaw Gyffes be he called henceforth." Then the work disappeared in sea weed and sedges, and he went on with it no further. And for that reason was he called the third Gold-shoemaker. "Of a truth," said she, "thou wilt not thrive the better for doing evil unto me." "I have done thee no evil yet," said he. Then he restored the boy to his own form. "Well," said she, "I will lay a destiny upon this boy, that he shall never have arms and armour until I invest him with them." "By Heaven," said he, "let thy malice be what it may, he shall have arms." Then they went towards Dinas Dinllev, and there he brought up Llew Llaw Gyffes, until he could manage any horse, and he was perfect in features, and strength, and stature. And then Gwydion saw that he languished through the want of horses, and arms. And he called him unto him. "Ah, youth," said he, "we will go to-morrow on an errand together. Be therefore more cheerful than thou art." "That I will," said the youth. Next morning, at the dawn of day, they arose. And they took their way along the sea coast, up towards Bryn Aryen. And at the top of Cevn Clydno they equipped themselves with horses, and went towards the Castle of Arianrod. And they changed their form, and pricked towards the gate in the semblance of two youths, but the aspect of Gwydion was more staid than that of the other. "Porter," said he, "go thou in and say that there are here bards from Glamorgan." And the porter went in. "The welcome of Heaven be unto them, let them in," said Arianrod. With great joy were they greeted. And the hall was arranged, and they went to meat. When meat was ended, Arianrod discoursed with Gwydion of tales and stories. Now Gwydion was an excellent teller of tales. And when it was time to leave off feasting, a chamber was prepared for them, and they went to rest. In the early twilight Gwydion arose, and he called unto him his magic and his power. And by the time that the day dawned, there resounded through the land uproar, and trumpets, and shouts. When it was now day, they heard a knocking at the door of the chamber, and therewith Arianrod asking that it might be opened. Up rose the youth and opened unto her, and she entered and a maiden with her. "Ah, good men," she said, "in evil plight are we." "Yes truly," said Gwydion, "we have heard trumpets, and shouts; what thinkest thou that they may mean?" "Verily," said she, "we cannot see the colour of the ocean by reason of all the ships, side by side. And they are making for the land with all the speed they can. And what can we do?" said she. "Lady," said Gwydion, "there is none other counsel than to close the castle upon us, and to defend it as best we may." "Truly," said she, "may Heaven reward you. And do you defend it. And here you may have plenty of arms." And thereupon went she forth for the arms, and behold she returned, and two maidens, and suits of armour for two men, with her. "Lady," said he, "do thou accoutre this stripling, and I will arm myself with the help of thy maidens. Lo, I hear the tumult of the men approaching." "I will do so, gladly." So she armed him fully, and that right cheerfully. "Hast thou finished arming the youth," said he. "I have finished," she answered. "I likewise have finished," said Gwydion. "Let us now take off our arms, we have no need of them." "Wherefore?" said she. "Here is the army around the house." "Oh, lady, there is here no army." "Oh," cried she, "Whence then was this tumult?" "The tumult was but to break thy prophecy {96} and to obtain arms for thy son. And now has he got arms without any thanks unto thee." "By Heaven," said Arianrod, "thou art a wicked man. Many a youth might have lost his life, through the uproar thou hast caused in this Cantrev to-day. Now will I lay a destiny upon this youth," she said, "that he shall never have a wife of the race that now inhabits this earth." "Verily," said he, "thou wast ever a malicious woman, and no one ought to support thee. A wife shall he have notwithstanding." {Picture: p97.jpg} They went thereupon unto Math the son of Mathonwy, and complained unto him most bitterly of Arianrod. Gwydion showed him also how he had procured arms for the youth. "Well," said Math, "we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusion, to form a wife for him out of flowers. He has now come to man's stature, and he is the comeliest youth that was ever beheld." So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, {98a} and gave her the name of Blodeuwedd. After she had become his bride, and they had feasted, said Gwydion, "It is not easy for a man to maintain himself without possessions." "Of a truth," said Math, "I will give the young man the best Cantrev to hold." {98b} "Lord," said he, "what Cantrev is that?" "The Cantrev of Dinodig," he answered. Now it is called at this day Eivionydd and Ardudwy. And the place in the Cantrev where he dwelt, was a palace of his in a spot called Mur y Castell, on the confines of Ardudwy. There dwelt he and reigned, and both he and his sway were beloved by all. One day he went forth to Caer Dathyl, to visit Math the son of Mathonwy. And on the day that he set out for Caer Dathyl, Blodeuwedd walked in the court. And she heard the sound of a horn. And after the sound of the horn, behold, a tired stag went by, with dogs and huntsmen following it. And after the dogs and the huntsmen there came a crowd of men on foot. "Send a youth," said she, "to ask who yonder host may be." So a youth went, and enquired who they were. "Gronw Pebyr is this, the lord of Penllynn," said they. And thus the youth told her. Gronw Pebyr pursued the stag, and by the river Cynvael he overtook the stag and killed it. And what, with flaying the stag and baiting his dogs, he was there until the night began to close in upon him. And as the day departed and the night drew near, he came to the gate of the court. "Verily," said Blodeuwedd, "the chieftain will speak ill of us, if we let him at this hour depart to another land without inviting him in." "Yes, truly, lady," said they, "it will be most fitting to invite him." Then went messengers to meet him and bid him in. And he accepted her bidding gladly, and came to the court, and Blodeuwedd went to meet him and greeted him, and bade him welcome. "Lady," said he, "Heaven repay thee thy kindness." When they had disaccoutred themselves, they went to sit down. And Blodeuwedd looked upon him, and from the moment that she looked on him she became filled with his love. And he gazed on her, and the same thought came unto him as unto her, so that he could not conceal from her that he loved her, but he declared unto her that he did so. Thereupon she was very joyful. And all their discourse that night was concerning the affection and love which they felt one for the other, and which in no longer space than one evening had arisen. And that evening passed they in each other's company. The next day he sought to depart. But she said, "I pray thee go not from me to-day." And that night he tarried also. And that night they consulted by what means they might always be together. "There is none other counsel," said he, "but that thou strive to learn from Llew Llaw Gyffes in what manner he will meet his death. And this must thou do under the semblance of solicitude concerning him." The next day Gronw sought to depart. "Verily," said she, "I would counsel thee not to go from me to-day." "At thy instance, will I not go," said he, "albeit, I must say, there is danger, that the chief who owns the palace may return home." "To-morrow," answered she, "will I indeed permit thee to go forth." The next day he sought to go, and she hindered him not. "Be mindful," said Gronw, "of what I have said unto thee, and converse with him fully, and that under the guise of the dalliance of love, and find out by what means he may come to his death." That night Llew Llaw Gyffes returned to his home. And the day they spent in discourse, and minstrelsy, and feasting. And at night they went to rest, and he spoke to Blodeuwedd once, and he spoke to her a second time. But, for all this, he could not get from her one word. "What aileth thee," said he, "art thou well?" "I was thinking," said she, "of that which thou didst never think of concerning me; for I was sorrowful as to thy death, lest thou shouldest go sooner than I." "Heaven reward thy care for me," said he, "but until Heaven take me I shall not easily be slain." "For the sake of Heaven, and for mine, show me how thou mightest be slain. My memory in guarding is better than thine." "I will tell thee gladly," said he. "Not easily can I be slain, except by a wound. {100} And the spear wherewith I am struck must be a year in the forming. And nothing must be done towards it except during the sacrifice on Sundays." "Is this certain?" asked she. "It is in truth," he answered. "And I cannot be slain within a house, nor without. I cannot be slain on horseback nor on foot." "Verily," said she, "in what manner then canst thou be slain?" "I will tell thee," said he. "By making a bath for me by the side of a river, and by putting a roof over the cauldron, and thatching it well and tightly, and bringing a buck, and putting it beside the cauldron. Then if I place one foot on the buck's back, and the other on the edge of the cauldron, whosoever strikes me thus will cause my death." "Well," said she, "I thank Heaven that it will be easy to avoid this." No sooner had she held this discourse than she sent to Gronw Pebyr. Gronw toiled at making the spear, and that day twelvemonth it was ready. And that very day he caused her to be informed thereof. "Lord," said Blodeuwedd unto Llew, "I have been thinking how it is possible that what thou didst tell me formerly can be true; wilt thou show me in what manner thou couldst stand at once upon the edge of a cauldron and upon a buck, if I prepare the bath for thee?" "I will show thee," said he. Then she sent unto Gronw, and bade him be in ambush on the hill which is now called Bryn Kyvergyr, on the bank of the river Cynvael. She caused also to be collected all the goats that were in the Cantrev, and had them brought to the other side of the river, opposite Bryn Kyvergyr. And the next day she spoke thus. "Lord," said she, "I have caused the roof and the bath to be prepared, and lo! they are ready." "Well," said Llew, "we will go gladly to look at them." The day after they came and looked at the bath. "Wilt thou go into the bath, lord?" said she. "Willingly will I go in," he answered. So into the bath he went, and he anointed himself. "Lord," said she, "behold the animals which thou didst speak of as being called bucks." "Well," said he, "cause one of them to be caught and brought here." And the buck was brought. Then Llew rose out of the bath, and put on his trowsers, and he placed one foot on the edge of the bath and the other on the buck's back. Thereupon Gronw rose up from the hill which is called Bryn Cyvergyr, and he rested on one knee, and flung the poisoned dart and struck him on the side, so that the shaft started out, but the head of the dart remained in. Then he flew up in the form of an eagle, and gave a fearful scream. And thenceforth was he no more seen. As soon as he departed Gronw and Blodeuwedd went together unto the palace that night. And the next day Gronw arose and took possession of Ardudwy. And after he had overcome the land, he ruled over it, so that Ardudwy and Penllyn were both under his sway. Then these tidings reached Math the son of Mathonwy. And heaviness and grief came upon Math, and much more upon Gwydion than upon him. "Lord," said Gwydion, "I shall never rest until I have tidings of my nephew." "Verily," said Math, "may Heaven be thy strength." Then Gwydion set forth and began to go forward. And he went through Gwynedd and Powys to the confines. And when he had done so, he went into Arvon, and came to the house of a vassal, in Maenawr Penardd. And he alighted at the house, and stayed there that night. The man of the house and his household came in, and last of all came there the swineherd. Said the man of the house to the swineherd, "Well, youth, hath thy sow come in to-night?" "She hath," said he, "and is this instant returned to the pigs." "Where doth this sow go to?" said Gwydion. "Every day, when the sty is opened, she goeth forth and none can catch sight of her, neither is it known whither she goeth more than if she sank into the earth." "Wilt thou grant unto me," said Gwydion, "not to open the sty until I am beside the sty with thee." "This will I do, right gladly," he answered. That night they went to rest; and as soon as the swineherd saw the light of day, he awoke Gwydion. And Gwydion arose and dressed himself, and went with the swineherd, and stood beside the sty. Then the swineherd opened the sty. And as soon as he opened it, behold, she leaped forth, and set off with great speed. And Gwydion followed her, and she went against the course of a river, and made for a brook, which is now called Nant y Llew. And there she halted and began feeding. And Gwydion came under the tree, and looked what it might be that the sow was feeding on. And he saw that she was eating putrid flesh and vermin. Then looked he up to the top of the tree, and as he looked he beheld on the top of the tree an eagle, and when the eagle shook itself, there fell vermin and putrid flesh from off it, and these the sow devoured. And it seemed to him that the eagle was Llew. And he sang an Englyn. "Oak that grows between the two banks; Darkened is the sky and hill! Shall I not tell him by his wounds, That this is Llew?" Upon this the eagle came down until he reached the centre of the tree. And Gwydion sang another Englyn. "Oak that grows in upland ground, Is it not wetted by the rain? Has it not been drenched By nine score tempests? It bears in its branches Llew Llaw Gyffes!" Then the eagle came down until he was on the lowest branch of the tree, and thereupon this Englyn did Gwydion sing. "Oak that grows beneath the steep; Stately and majestic is its aspect! Shall I not speak it? That Llew will come to my lap?" And the eagle came down upon Gwydion's knee. And Gwydion struck him with his magic wand, so that he returned to his own form. No one ever saw a more piteous sight, for he was nothing but skin and bone. Then he went unto Caer Dathyl, and there were brought unto him good physicians that were in Gwynedd, and before the end of the year he was quite healed. "Lord," said he unto Math the son of Mathonwy, "it is full time now that I have retribution of him by whom I have suffered all this woe." "Truly," said Math, "he will never be able to maintain himself in the possession of that which is thy right." "Well," said Llew, "the sooner I have my right, the better shall I be pleased." Then they called together the whole of Gwynedd, and set forth to Ardudwy. And Gwydion went on before and proceeded to Mur y Castell. And when Blodeuwedd heard that he was coming, she took her maidens with her, and fled to the mountain. And they passed through the river Cynvael, and went towards a court that there was upon the mountain, and through fear they could not proceed except with their faces looking backwards, so that unawares they fell into the lake. And they were all drowned except Blodeuwedd herself, and her Gwydion overtook. And he said unto her, "I will not slay thee, but I will do unto thee worse than that. For I will turn thee into a bird; and because of the shame thou hast done unto Llew Llaw Gyffes, thou shall never show thy face in the light of day henceforth; and that through fear of all the other birds. For it shall be their nature to attack thee, and to chase thee from wheresoever they may find thee. And thou shalt not lose thy name, but shalt be always called Blodeuwedd." Now Blodeuwedd is an owl in the language of this present time, and for this reason is the owl hateful unto all birds. And even now the owl is called Blodeuwedd. Then Gronw Pebyr withdrew unto Penllyn, and he despatched thence an embassy. And the messengers he sent, asked Llew Llaw Gyffes, if he would take land, or domain, or gold, or silver, for the injury he had received. "I will not, by my confession to Heaven," said he. "Behold this is the least that I will accept from him; that he come to the spot where I was when he wounded me with the dart, and that I stand where he did, and that with a dart I take my aim at him. And this is the very least that I will accept." And this was told unto Gronw Pebyr. "Verily," said he, "is it needful for me to do thus? My faithful warriors, and my household, and my foster- brothers, is there not one among you who will stand the blow in my stead?" "There is not, verily," answered they. And because of their refusal to suffer one stroke for their lord, they are called the third disloyal tribe even unto this day. "Well," said he, "I will meet it." {Picture: p106.jpg} Then they two went forth to the banks of the river Cynvael, and Gronw stood in the place where Llew Llaw Gyffes was when he struck him, and Llew in the place where Gronw was. Then said Gronw Pebyr unto Llew, "Since it was through the wiles of a woman that I did unto thee as I have done, I adjure thee by Heaven to let me place between me and the blow, the slab thou seest yonder on the river's bank." "Verily," said Llew, "I will not refuse thee this." "Ah," said he, "may Heaven reward thee." So Gronw took the slab and placed it between him and the blow. Then Llew flung the dart at him, and it pierced the slab and went through Gronw likewise, so that it pierced through his back. And thus was Gronw Pebyr slain. And there is still the slab on the bank of the river Cynvael, in Ardudwy, having the hole through it. And therefore it is even now called Llech Gronw. A second time did Llew Llaw Gyffes take possession of the land, and prosperously did he govern it. And as the story relates, he was lord after this over Gwynedd. And thus ends this portion of the Mabinogi. HERE IS THE STORY OF LLUDD AND LLEVELYS. {Picture: p108.jpg} Beli the Great, son of Manogan, had three sons, Lludd, and Caswallawn, and Nynyaw; and according to the story he had a fourth son called Llevelys. And after the death of Beli, the kingdom of the Island of Britain fell into the hands of Lludd his eldest son; and Lludd ruled prosperously, and rebuilt the walls of London, and encompassed it about with numberless towers. And after that he bade the citizens build houses therein, such as no houses in the kingdom could equal. And moreover he was a mighty warrior, and generous and liberal in giving meat and drink to all that sought them. And though he had many castles and cities, this one loved he more than any. And he dwelt therein most part of the year, and therefore was it called Caer Ludd, and at last Caer London. And after the stranger-race came there, it was called London, or Lwndrys. Lludd loved Llevelys best of all his brothers, because he was a wise and a discreet man. Having heard that the king of France had died, leaving no heir, except a daughter, and that he had left all his possessions in her hands, he came to Lludd his brother, to beseech his counsel and aid. And that not so much for his own welfare, as to seek to add to the glory and honour and dignity of his kindred, if he might go to France to woo the maiden for his wife. And forthwith his brother conferred with him, and this counsel was pleasing unto him. So he prepared ships and filled them with armed knights, and set forth towards France. And as soon as they had landed, they sent messengers to show the nobles of France the cause of the embassy. And by the joint counsel of the nobles of France and of the princes, the maiden was given to Llevelys, and the crown of the kingdom with her. And thenceforth he ruled the land discreetly, and wisely, and happily, as long as his life lasted. After a space of time had passed, three plagues fell on the Island of Britain, such as none in the Islands had ever seen the like. The first was a certain race that came, and was called the Coranians; and so great was their knowledge, that there was no discourse upon the face of the Island, however low it might be spoken, but what, if the wind met it, it was known to them. And through this they could not be injured. The second plague was a shriek which came on every May eve, over every hearth in the Island of Britain. And this went through people's hearts, and so scared them, that the men lost their hue and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men, and the maidens lost their senses, and all the animals and trees and the earth and the waters, were left barren. The third plague was, that however much of provisions and food might be prepared in the king's courts, were there even so much as a year's provision of meat and drink, none of it could ever be found, except what was consumed in the first night. And two of these plagues, no one ever knew their cause, therefore was there better hope of being freed from the first than from the second and third. And thereupon King Lludd felt great sorrow and care, because that he knew not how he might be freed from these plagues. And he called to him all the nobles of his kingdom, and asked counsel of them what they should do against these afflictions. And by the common counsel of the nobles, Lludd the son of Beli, went to Llevelys his brother, king of France, for he was a man great of counsel and wisdom, to seek his advice. And they made ready a fleet, and that in secret and in silence, lest that race should know the cause of their errand, or any besides the king and his counsellors. And when they were made ready, they went into their ships, Lludd and those whom he chose with him. And they began to cleave the seas towards France. And when these tidings came to Llevelys, seeing that he knew not the cause of his brother's ships, he came on the other side to meet him, and with him was a fleet vast of size. And when Lludd saw this, he left all the ships out upon the sea except one only; and in that one he came to meet his brother, and he likewise with a single ship came to meet him. And when they were come together, each put his arms about the other's neck, and they welcomed each other with brotherly love. After that Lludd had shewn his brother the cause of his errand, Llevelys said that he himself knew the cause of the coming to those lands. And they took counsel together to discourse {111} on the matter otherwise than thus, in order that the wind might not catch their words, nor the Coranians know what they might say. Then Llevelys caused a long horn to be made of brass, and through this horn they discoursed. But whatsoever words they spoke through this horn, one to the other, neither of them could hear any other but harsh and hostile words. And when Llevelys saw this, and that there was a demon thwarting them and disturbing through this horn, he caused wine to be put therein to wash it. And through the virtue of the wine the demon was driven out of the horn. And when their discourse was unobstructed, Llevelys told his brother that he would give him some insects, whereof he should keep some to breed, lest by chance the like affliction might come a second time. And other of these insects he should take and bruise in water. And he assured him that it would have power to destroy the race of the Coranians. That is to say, that when he came home to his kingdom he should call together all the people both of his own race and of the race of the Coranians for a conference, as though with the intent of making peace between them; and that when they were all together, he should take this charmed water, and cast it over all alike. And he assured him that the water would poison the race of the Coranians, but that it would not slay or harm those of his own race. {Picture: p112.jpg} "And the second plague," said he, "that is in thy dominion, behold it is a dragon. And another dragon of a foreign race is fighting with it, and striving to overcome it. And therefore does your dragon make a fearful outcry. And on this wise mayest thou come to know this. After thou hast returned home, cause the Island to be measured in its length and breadth, and in the place where thou dost find the exact central point, there cause a pit to be dug, and cause a cauldron, full of the best mead that can be made, to be put in the pit, with a covering of satin over the face of the cauldron. And then, in thine own person do thou remain there watching, and thou wilt see the dragons fighting in the form of terrific animals. And at length they will take the form of dragons in the air. And last of all, after wearying themselves with fierce and furious fighting, they will fall in the form of two pigs upon the covering, and they will sink in, and the covering with them, and they will draw it down to the very bottom of the cauldron. And they will drink up the whole of the mead; and after that they will sleep. Thereupon do thou immediately fold the covering around them, and bury them in a kistvaen, in the strongest place thou hast in thy dominions, and hide them in the earth. And as long as they shall bide in that strong place, no plague shall come to the Island of Britain from elsewhere. "The cause of the third plague," said he, "is a mighty man of magic, who takes thy meat and thy drink and thy store. And he through illusions and charms causes every one to sleep. Therefore it is needful for thee in thy own person to watch thy food and thy provisions. And lest he should overcome thee with sleep, be there a cauldron of cold water by thy side, and when thou art oppressed with sleep, plunge into the cauldron." Then Lludd returned back unto his land. And immediately he summoned to him the whole of his own race and of the Coranians. And as Llevelys had taught him, he bruised the insects in water, the which he cast over them all together, and forthwith it destroyed the whole tribe of the Coranians, without hurt to any of the Britons. And some time after this Lludd caused the Island to be measured in its length and in its breadth. And in Oxford he found the central point, and in that place he caused the earth to be dug, and in that pit a cauldron to be set, full of the best mead that could be made, and a covering of satin over the face of it. And he himself watched that night. And while he was there, he beheld the dragons fighting. And when they were weary they fell, and came down upon the top of the satin, and drew it with them to the bottom of the cauldron. And when they had drunk the mead they slept. And in their sleep, Lludd folded the covering around them, and in the securest place he had in Snowdon, he hid them in a kistvaen. Now after that this spot was called Dinas Emreis, but before that, Dinas Ffaraon. And thus the fierce outcry ceased in his dominions. And when this was ended, King Lludd caused an exceeding great banquet to be prepared. And when it was ready, he placed a vessel of cold water by his side, and he in his own proper person watched it. And as he abode thus clad with arms, about the third watch of the night, lo! he heard many surpassing fascinations and various songs. And drowsiness urged him to sleep. Upon this, lest he should be hindered from his purpose and be overcome by sleep, he went often into the water. And at last, behold, a man of vast size, clad in strong, heavy armour, came in, bearing a hamper. And, as he was wont, he put all the food and provisions of meat and drink into the hamper, and proceeded to go with it forth. And nothing was ever more wonderful to Lludd, than that the hamper should hold so much. And thereupon King Lludd went after him and spoke unto him thus. "Stop, stop," said he, "though thou hast done many insults and much spoil erewhile, thou shalt not do so any more, unless thy skill in arms and thy prowess be greater than mine." {Picture: p115.jpg} Then he instantly put down the hamper on the floor, and awaited him. And a fierce encounter was between them, so that the glittering fire flew out from their arms. And at the last Lludd grappled with him, and fate bestowed the victory on Lludd. And he threw the plague to the earth. And after he had overcome him by strength and might, he besought his mercy. "How can I grant thee mercy," said the king, "after all the many injuries and wrongs that thou hast done me?" "All the losses that ever I have caused thee," said he, "I will make thee atonement for, equal to what I have taken. And I will never do the like from this time forth. But thy faithful vassal will I be." And the king accepted this from him. And thus Lludd freed the Island of Britain from the three plagues. And from thenceforth until the end of his life, in prosperous peace did Lludd the son of Beli rule the Island of Britain. And this Tale is called the Story of Lludd and Llevelys. And thus it ends. {Picture: p116.jpg} TALIESIN. {Picture: p117.jpg} In times past there lived in Penllyn a man of gentle lineage, named Tegid Voel, and his dwelling was in the midst of the Lake Tegid, and his wife was called Caridwen. And there was born to him of his wife a son named Morvran ab Tegid, and also a daughter named Creirwy, the fairest maiden in the world was she; and they had a brother the most ill-favoured man in the world, Avagddu. Now Caridwen his mother thought that he was not likely to be admitted among men of noble birth, by reason of his ugliness, unless he had some exalted merits or knowledge. For it was in the beginning of Arthur's time and of the Round Table. So she resolved, according to the arts of the books of the Fferyllt, {118a} to boil a cauldron of Inspiration and Science for her son, that his reception might be honourable because of his knowledge of the mysteries of the future state of the world. Then she began to boil the cauldron, which from the beginning of its boiling might not cease to boil for a year and a day, until three blessed drops were obtained of the grace of inspiration. And she put Gwion Bach the son of Gwreang of Llanfair in Caereinion, in Powys, to stir the cauldron, and a blind man named Morda to kindle the fire beneath it, and she charged them that they should not suffer it to cease boiling for the space of a year and a day. And she herself, according to the books of the astronomers, and in planetary hours, gathered every day of all charm-bearing herbs. And one day, towards the end of the year, as Caridwen was culling plants and making incantations, it chanced that three drops of the charmed liquor flew out of the cauldron and fell upon the finger of Gwion Bach. And by reason of their great heat he put his finger to his mouth, {118b} and the instant he put those marvel-working drops into his mouth, he foresaw everything that was to come, and perceived that his chief care must be to guard against the wiles of Caridwen, for vast was her skill. And in very great fear he fled towards his own land. And the cauldron burst in two, because all the liquor within it except the three charm-bearing drops was poisonous, so that the horses of Gwyddno Garanhir were poisoned by the water of the stream into which the liquor of the cauldron ran, and the confluence of that stream was called the Poison of the Horses of Gwyddno from that time forth. {Picture: p119.jpg} Thereupon came in Caridwen and saw all the toil of the whole year lost. And she seized a billet of wood and struck the blind Morda on the head until one of his eyes fell out upon his cheek. And he said, "Wrongfully hast thou disfigured me, for I am innocent. Thy loss was not because of me." "Thou speakest truth," said Caridwen, "it was Gwion Bach who robbed me." And she went forth after him, running. And he saw her, and changed himself into a hare and fled. But she changed herself into a greyhound and turned him. And he ran towards a river, and became a fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch chased him under the water, until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air. Then she, as a hawk, followed him and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to stoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he dropped amongst the wheat, and turned himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the wheat and scratched it with her feet, and found him out and swallowed him. And, as the story says, she bore him nine months, and when she was delivered of him, she could not find it in her heart to kill him, by reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and cast him into the sea to the mercy of God, on the twenty-ninth day of April. And at that time the weir of Gwyddno was on the strand between Dyvi and Aberystwyth, near to his own castle, and the value of an hundred pounds was taken in that weir every May eve. And in those days Gwyddno had an only son named Elphin, the most hapless of youths, and the most needy. And it grieved his father sore, for he thought that he was born in an evil hour. And by the advice of his council, his father had granted him the drawing of the weir that year, to see if good luck would ever befall him, and to give him something wherewith to begin the world. {Picture: p121.jpg} And the next day, when Elphin went to look, there was nothing in the weir. But as he turned back he perceived the leathern bag upon a pole of the weir. Then said one of the weir-ward unto Elphin, "Thou wast never unlucky until to-night, and now thou hast destroyed the virtues of the weir, which always yielded the value of an hundred pounds every May eve, and to-night there is nothing but this leathern skin within it." "How now," said Elphin, "there may be therein the value of an hundred pounds." Well! they took up the leathern bag, and he who opened it saw the forehead of the boy, and said to Elphin, "Behold a radiant brow!" {121} "Taliesin be he called," said Elphin. And he lifted the boy in his arms, and lamenting his mischance, he placed him sorrowfully behind him. And he made his horse amble gently, that before had been trotting, and he carried him as softly as if he had been sitting in the easiest chair in the world. And presently the boy made a Consolation and praise to Elphin, and foretold honour to Elphin; and the Consolation was as you may see, "Fair Elphin cease to lament! Let no one be dissatisfied with his own, To despair will bring no advantage. No man sees what supports him; The prayer of Cynllo will not be in vain; God will not violate his promise. Never in Gwyddno's weir Was there such good luck as this night. Fair Elphin, dry thy cheeks! Being too sad will not avail, Although thou thinkest thou hast no gain, Too much grief will bring thee no good; Nor doubt the miracles of the Almighty: Although I am but little, I am highly gifted. From seas, and from mountains, And from the depths of rivers, God brings wealth to the fortunate man. Elphin of lively qualities, Thy resolution is unmanly; Thou must not be over sorrowful: Better to trust in God than to forbode ill. Weak and small as I am, On the foaming beach of the ocean, In the day of trouble, I shall be Of more service to thee than 300 salmon. Elphin of notable qualities, Be not displeased at thy misfortune; Although reclined thus weak in my bag, There lies a virtue in my tongue. While I continue thy protector Thou hast not much to fear; Remembering the names of the Trinity, None shall be able to harm thee." And this was the first poem that Taliesin ever sang, being to console Elphin in his grief for that the produce of the weir was lost, and, what was worse, that all the world would consider that it was through his fault and ill-luck. And then Gwyddno Garanhir {123} asked him what he was, whether man or spirit. Whereupon he sang this tale, and said, "First, I have been formed a comely person, In the court of Ceridwen I have done penance; Though little I was seen, placidly received, I was great on the floor of the place to where I was led; I have been a prized defence, the sweet muse the cause, And by law without speech I have been liberated By a smiling black old hag, when irritated Dreadful her claim when pursued: I have fled with vigour, I have fled as a frog, I have fled in the semblance of a crow, scarcely finding rest; I have fled vehemently, I have fled as a chain, I have fled as a roe into an entangled thicket; I have fled as a wolf cub, I have fled as a wolf in a wilderness, I have fled as a thrush of portending language; I have fled as a fox, used to concurrent bounds of quirks; I have fled as a martin, which did not avail: I have fled as a squirrel, that vainly hides, I have fled as a stag's antler, of ruddy course, I have fled as iron in a glowing fire, I have fled as a spear-head, of woe to such as has a wish for it; I have fled as a fierce bull bitterly fighting, I have fled as a bristly boar seen in a ravine, I have fled as a white grain of pure wheat, On the skirt of a hempen sheet entangled, That seemed of the size of a mare's foal, That is filling like a ship on the waters; Into a dark leathern bag I was thrown, And on a boundless sea I was sent adrift; Which was to me an omen of being tenderly nursed, And the Lord God then set me at liberty." Then came Elphin to the house or court of Gwyddno his father, and Taliesin with him. And Gwyddno asked him if he had had a good haul at the weir, and he told him that he had got that which was better than fish. "What was that?" said Gwyddno. "A Bard," answered Elphin. Then said Gwyddno, "Alas, what will he profit thee?" And Taliesin himself replied and said, "He will profit him more than the weir ever profited thee." Asked Gwyddno, "Art thou able to speak, and thou so little?" And Taliesin answered him, "I am better able to speak than thou to question me." "Let me hear what thou canst say," quoth Gwyddno. Then Taliesin sang,-- "In water there is a quality endowed with a blessing; On God it is most just to meditate aright; To God it is proper to supplicate with seriousness, Since no obstacle can there be to obtain a reward from him. Three times have I been born, I know by meditation; It were miserable for a person not to come and obtain All the sciences of the world, collected together in my breast, For I know what has been, what in future will occur. I will supplicate my Lord that I get refuge in him, A regard I may obtain in his grace; The Son of Mary is my trust, great in Him is my delight, For in Him is the world continually upholden. God has been to instruct me and to raise my expectation, The true Creator of heaven, who affords me protection; It is rightly intended that the saints should daily pray, For God, the renovator, will bring them to him. * * * * * And forthwith Elphin gave his haul to his wife, and she nursed him tenderly and lovingly. Thenceforward Elphin increased in riches more and more day after day, and in love and favour with the king, and there abode Taliesin until he was thirteen years old, when Elphin son of Gwyddno went by a Christmas invitation to his uncle, Maelgwn Gwynedd, who sometime after this held open court at Christmas-tide in the castle of Dyganwy, for all the number of his lords of both degrees, both spiritual and temporal, with a vast and thronged host of knights and squires. And amongst them there arose a discourse and discussion. And thus was it said. "Is there in the whole world a king so great as Maelgwn, or one on whom Heaven has bestowed so many spiritual gifts as upon him? First, form, and beauty, and meekness, and strength, besides all the powers of the soul?" And together with these they said that Heaven had given one gift that exceeded all the others, which was the beauty, and comeliness, and grace, and wisdom, and modesty of his queen; whose virtues surpassed those of all the ladies and noble maidens throughout the whole kingdom. And with this they put questions one to another amongst themselves, Who had braver men? Who had fairer or swifter horses or greyhounds? Who had more skilful or wiser bards--than Maelgwn? Now at that time the bards were in great favour with the exalted of the kingdom; and then none performed the office of those who are now called heralds, unless they were learned men, not only expert in the service of kings and princes, but studious and well versed in the lineage, and arms, and exploits of princes and kings, and in discussions concerning foreign kingdoms, and the ancient things of this kingdom, and chiefly in the annals of the first nobles; and also were prepared always with their answers in various languages, Latin, French, Welsh, and English. And together with this they were great chroniclers, and recorders, and skilful in framing verses, and ready in making englyns in every one of these languages. Now of these there were at that feast within the palace of Maelgwn as many as four and twenty, and chief of them all, was one named Heinin Vardd. When they had all made an end of thus praising the king and his gifts, it befell that Elphin spoke on this wise. "Of a truth none but a king may vie with a king; but were he not a king, I would say that my wife was as virtuous as any lady in the kingdom, and also that I have a bard who is more skilful than all the king's bards." In a short space some of his fellows showed the king all the boastings of Elphin; and the king ordered him to be thrown into a strong prison, until he might know the truth as to the virtues of his wife, and the wisdom of his bard. Now when Elphin had been put in a tower of the castle, with a thick chain about his feet, (it is said that it was a silver chain, because he was of royal blood;) the king, as the story relates, sent his son Rhun to enquire into the demeanour of Elphin's wife. Now Rhun was the most graceless man in the world, and there was neither wife nor maiden with whom he had held converse, but was evil spoken of. While Rhun went in haste towards Elphin's dwelling, being fully minded to bring disgrace upon his wife, Taliesin told his mistress how that the king had placed his master in durance in prison, and how that Rhun was coming in haste to strive to bring disgrace upon her. Wherefore he caused his mistress to array one of the maids of her kitchen in her apparel; which the noble lady gladly did; and she loaded her hands with the best rings that she and her husband possessed. In this guise Taliesin caused his mistress to put the maiden to sit at the board in her room at supper, and he made her to seem as her mistress, and the mistress to seem as the maid. And when they were in due time seated at their supper in the manner that has been said, Rhun suddenly arrived at Elphin's dwelling, and was received with joy, for all the servants knew him plainly; and they brought him in haste to the room of their mistress, in the semblance of whom the maid rose up from supper and welcomed him gladly. And afterwards she sat down to supper again the second time, and Rhun with her. Then Rhun began jesting with the maid, who still kept the semblance of her mistress. And verily this story shows that the maiden became so intoxicated, that she fell asleep; and the story relates that it was a powder that Rhun put into the drink, that made her sleep so soundly that she never felt it when he cut from off her hand her little finger, whereon was the signet ring of Elphin, which he had sent to his wife as a token, a short time before. And Rhun returned to the king with the finger and the ring as a proof, to show that he had cut it from off her hand, without her awaking from her sleep of intemperance. The king rejoiced greatly at these tidings, and he sent for his councillors, to whom he told the whole story from the beginning. And he caused Elphin to be brought out of his prison, and he chided him because of his boast. And he spake unto Elphin on this wise. "Elphin, be it known to thee beyond a doubt that it is but folly for a man to trust in the virtues of his wife further than he can see her; and that thou mayest be certain of thy wife's vileness, behold her finger, with thy signet ring upon it, which was cut from her hand last night, while she slept the sleep of intoxication." Then thus spake Elphin. "With thy leave, mighty king, I cannot deny my ring, for it is known of many; but verily I assert strongly that the finger around which it is, was never attached to the hand of my wife, for in truth and certainty there are three notable things pertaining to it, none of which ever belonged to any of my wife's fingers. The first of the three is, that it is certain, by your grace's leave, that wheresoever my wife is at this present hour, whether sitting, or standing, or lying down, this ring would never remain upon her thumb, whereas you can plainly see that it was hard to draw it over the joint of the little finger of the hand whence this was cut; the second thing is, that my wife has never let pass one Saturday since I have known her without paring her nails before going to bed, and you can see fully that the nail of this little finger has not been pared for a month. The third is, truly, that the hand whence this finger came was kneading rye dough within three days before the finger was cut therefrom, and I can assure your goodness that my wife has never kneaded rye dough since my wife she has been." Then the king was mightily wrath with Elphin for so stoutly withstanding him, respecting the goodness of his wife, wherefore he ordered him to his prison a second time, saying that he should not be loosed thence until he had proved the truth of his boast, as well concerning the wisdom of his bard as the virtues of his wife. In the meantime his wife and Taliesin remained joyful at Elphin's dwelling. And Taliesin shewed his mistress how that Elphin was in prison because of them, but he bade her be glad for that he would go to Maelgwn's court to free his master. Then she asked him in what manner he would set him free. And he answered her,-- "A journey will I perform, And to the gate I will come; The hall I will enter, And my song I will sing; My speech I will pronounce To silence royal bards. In presence of their chief, I will greet to deride, Upon them I will break And Elphin I will free. Should contention arise, In presence of the prince, With summons to the bards For the sweet flowing song, And wizards' posing lore And wisdom of Druids. In the court of the sons of the distributor Some are who did appear Intent on wily schemes, By craft and tricking means, In pangs of affliction To wrong the innocent, Let the fools be silent, As erst in Badon's fight,-- With Arthur of liberal ones The head, with long red blades; Through feats of testy men, And a chief with his foes. Woe be to them, the fools, When revenge comes on them. I Taliesin, chief of bards, With a sapient druid's words, Will set kind Elphin free From haughty tyrant's bonds. To their fell and chilling cry, By the act of a surprising steed, From the far distant North, There soon shall be an end. Let neither grace nor health Be to Maelgwn Gwynedd, For this force and this wrong; And be extremes of ills And an avenged end To Rhun and all his race: Short be his course of life, Be all his lands laid waste; And long exile be assigned To Maelgwn Gwynedd!" After this he took leave of his mistress, and came at last to the court of Maelgwn, who was going to sit in his hall and dine in his royal state, as it was the custom in those days for kings and princes to do at every chief feast. And as soon as Taliesin entered the hall, he placed himself in a quiet corner, near the place where the bards and the minstrels were wont to come to in doing their service and duty to the king, as is the custom at the high festivals when the bounty is proclaimed. And so, when the bards and the heralds came to cry largess and to proclaim the power of the king and his strength, at the moment that they passed by the corner wherein he was crouching, Taliesin pouted out his lips after them, and played "Blerwm, blerwm," with his finger upon his lips. Neither took they much notice of him as they went by, but proceeded forward till they came before the king, unto whom they made their obeisance with their bodies, as they were wont, without speaking a single word, but pouting out their lips, and making mouths at the king, playing "Blerwm, blerwm," upon their lips with their fingers, as they had seen the boy do elsewhere. This sight caused the king to wonder and to deem within himself that they were drunk with many liquors. Wherefore he commanded one of his lords, who served at the board, to go to them and desire them to collect their wits, and to consider where they stood, and what it was fitting for them to do. And this lord did so gladly. But they ceased not from their folly any more than before. Whereupon he sent to them a second time, and a third, desiring them to go forth from the hall. At the last the king ordered one of his squires to give a blow to the chief of them named Heinin Vardd; and the squire took a broom, and struck him on the head, so that he fell back in his seat. Then he arose and went on his knees, and besought leave of the king's grace to show that this their fault was not through want of knowledge, neither through drunkenness, but by the influence of some spirit that was in the hall. And after this Heinin spoke on this wise. "Oh honourable king, be it known to your grace, that not from the strength of drink, or of too much liquor, are we dumb, without power of speech like drunken men, but through the influence of a spirit that sits in the corner yonder in the form of a child." Forthwith the king commanded the squire to fetch him; and he went to the nook where Taliesin sat, and brought him before the king, who asked him what he was, and whence he came. And he answered the king in verse. "Primary chief bard am I to Elphin, And my original country is the region of the summer stars; Idno and Heinin called me Merddin, At length every king will call me Taliesin. I was with my Lord in the highest sphere, On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of hell: I have borne a banner before Alexander; I know the names of the stars from north to south; I have been on the galaxy at the throne of the Distributor; I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain; I conveyed the divine Spirit to the level of the vale of Hebron; I was in the court of Don before the birth of Gwydion. I was instructor to Eli and Enoc; I have been winged by the genius of the splendid crosier; I have been loquacious prior to being gifted with speech; I was at the place of the crucifixion of the merciful Son of God; I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrod; I have been the chief director of the work of the tower of Nimrod; I am a wonder whose origin is not known. I have been in Asia with Noah in the ark, I have seen the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra; I have been in India when Roma was built, I am now come here to the remnant of Troia. I have been with my Lord in the manger of the ass; I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan; I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene; I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Ceridwen; I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin. I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn, For a day and a year in stocks and fetters, I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin. I have been fostered in the land of the Deity, I have been teacher to all intelligences, I am able to instruct the whole universe. I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth; And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish. Then I was for nine months In the womb of the hag Ceridwen; I was originally little Gwion, And at length I am Taliesin." And when the king and his nobles had heard the song, they wondered much, for they had never heard the like from a boy so young as he. And when the king knew that he was the bard of Elphin, he bade Heinin, his first and wisest bard, to answer Taliesin and to strive with him. But when he came, he could do no other, but play "blerwm" on his lips; and when he sent for the others of the four and twenty bards, they all did likewise, and could do no other. And Maelgwn asked the boy Taliesin what was his errand, and he answered him in song. "Puny bards, I am trying To secure the prize, if I can; By a gentle prophetic strain I am endeavouring to retrieve The loss I may have suffered; Complete the attempt, I hope, Since Elphin endures trouble In the fortress of Teganwy, On him may there not be laid Too many chains and fetters; The Chair of the fortress of Teganwy Will I again seek; Strengthened by my muse I am powerful; Mighty on my part is what I seek, For three hundred songs and more Are combined in the spell I sing. There ought not to stand where I am Neither stone, neither ring; And there ought not to be about me Any bard who may not know That Elphin the son of Gwyddno Is in the land of Artro, Secured by thirteen locks, For praising his instructor; And then I Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Shall loosen Elphin Out of a golden fetter." * * * * * "If you be primary bards To the master of sciences, Declare ye mysteries That relate to the inhabitants of the world; There is a noxious creature, From the rampart of Satanas, Which has overcome all Between the deep and the shallow; Equally wide are his jaws As the mountains of the Alps; Him death will not subdue, Nor hand or blades; There is the load of nine hundred waggons In the hair of his two paws; There is in his head an eye Green as the limpid sheet of icicle; Three springs arise In the nape of his neck; Sea-roughs thereon Swim through it; There was the dissolution of the oxen Of Deivrdonwy the water-gifted. The names of the three springs From the midst of the ocean; One generated brine Which is from the Corina, To replenish the flood Over seas disappearing; The second, without injury It will fall on us, When there is rain abroad. Through the whelming sky; The third will appear Through the mountain veins, Like a flinty banquet. The work of the King of kings. You are blundering bards, In too much solicitude; You cannot celebrate The kingdom of the Britons; And I am Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Who will loosen Elphin Out of the golden fetter." * * * * * "Be silent, then, ye unlucky rhyming bards, For you cannot judge between truth and falsehood. If you be primary bards formed by Heaven, Tell your king what his fate will be. It is I who am a diviner and a leading bard, And know every passage in the country of your king; I shall liberate Elphin from the belly of the stony tower; And will tell your king what will befall him. A most strange creature will come from the sea marsh of Rhianedd As a punishment of iniquity on Maelgwn Gwynedd; His hair, his teeth, and his eyes being as gold, And this will bring destruction upon Maelgwn Gwynedd." * * * * * "Discover thou what is The strong creature from before the flood, Without flesh, without bone, Without vein, without blood, Without head, without feet; It will neither be older nor younger Than at the beginning; For fear of a denial, There are no rude wants With creatures. Great God! how the sea whitens When first it come! Great are its gusts When it comes from the south; Great are its evaporations When it strikes on coasts. It is in the field, it is in the wood, Without hand and without foot, Without signs of old age, Though it be co-eval With the five ages or periods; And older still, Though they be numberless years. It is also so wide As the surface of the earth; And it was not born, Nor was it seen. It will cause consternation Wherever God willeth. On sea, and on land, It neither sees, nor is seen. Its course is devious, And will not come when desired. On land and on sea, It is indispensible. It is without an equal, It is four-sided; It is not confined, It is incomparable; It comes from four quarters It will not be advised, It will not be without advice. It commences its journey Above the marble rock. {136} It is sonorous, it is dumb, It is mild, It is strong, it is bold, When it glances over the land. It is silent, it is vocal, It is clamorous, It is the most noisy On the face of the earth. It is good, it is bad, It is extremely injurious. It is concealed, Because sight cannot perceive it. It is noxious, it is beneficial; It is yonder, it is here; It will discompose, But will not repair the injury; It will not suffer for its doings, Seeing it is blameless. It is wet, it is dry, It frequently comes, Proceeding from the heat of the sun, And the coldness of the moon. The moon is less beneficial, Inasmuch as her heat is less. One Being has prepared it, Out of all creatures, By a tremendous blast, To wreak vengeance On Maelgwn Gwynedd." And while he was thus singing his verse near the door there arose a mighty storm of wind, so that the king and all his nobles thought that the castle would fall upon their heads. And the king caused them to fetch Elphin in haste from his dungeon, and placed him before Taliesin. And it is said that immediately he sang a verse, so that the chains opened from about his feet. "I adore the Supreme, Lord of all animation,-- Him that supports the heaven, Ruler of every extreme, Him that made the water good for all, Him who has bestowed each gift, and blesses it;-- May abundance of mead be given Maelgwn of Anglesey, who supplies us, From his foaming meadhorns, with the choicest pure liquor. Since bees collect, and do not enjoy, We have sparkling distilled mead, which is universally praised. The multitude of creatures which the earth nourishes, God made for man, with a view to enrich him;-- Some are violent, some are mute, he enjoys them, Some are wild, some are tame; the Lord makes them;-- Part of their produce becomes clothing; For food and beverage till doom will they continue. I entreat the Supreme, Sovereign of the region of peace, To liberate Elphin from banishment, The man who gave me wine, and ale, and mead, With large princely steeds, of beautiful appearance; May he yet give me; and at the end, May God of His good will grant me, in honour, A succession of numberless ages, in the retreat of tranquillity.-- Elphin, knight of mead, late be thy dissolution!" And afterwards he sang the ode which is called "The Excellence of the Bards." "What was the first man Made by the God of heaven; What the fairest flattering speech That was prepared by Ieuav; What meat, what drink, What roof his shelter; What the first impression Of his primary thinking; What became his clothing; Who carried on a disguise, Owing to the wiles of the country, In the beginning? Wherefore should a stone be hard; Why should a thorn be sharp-pointed; Who is hard like a flint; Who is salt like brine; Who sweet like honey; Who rides on the gale; Why ridged should be the nose; Why should a wheel be round; Why should the tongue be gifted with speech Rather than another member? If thy bards, Heinin, be competent, Let them reply to me, Taliesin." And after that he sang the address which is called "The Reproof of the Bards." "If thou art a bard completely imbued With genius not to be controlled, Be thou not untractable Within the court of thy king; Until thy rigmarole shall be known, Be thou silent Heinin As to the name of thy verse, And the name of thy vaunting; And as to the name of thy grandsire Prior to his being baptized. And the name of the sphere, And the name of the element, And the name of thy language, And the name of thy region. Avaunt, ye bards above, Avaunt, ye bards below! My beloved is below, In the fetter of Arianrod. It is certain you know not How to understand the song I utter, Nor clearly how to discriminate Between the truth and what is false; Puny bards, crows of the district, Why do you not take to flight? A bard that will not silence me, Silence may he not obtain, Till he goes to be covered Under gravel and pebbles; Such as shall listen to me, May God listen to him." Then sang he the piece called "The Spite of the Bards." "Minstrels persevere in their false custom, Immoral ditties are their delight; Vain and tasteless praise they recite; Falsehood at all times do they utter; The innocent persons they ridicule; Married women they destroy, Innocent virgins of Mary they corrupt; As they pass their lives away in vanity; Poor innocent persons they ridicule; At night they get drunk, they sleep the day; In idleness without work they feed themselves; The Church they hate, and the tavern they frequent; With thieves and perjured fellows they associate; At courts they inquire after feasts; Every senseless word they bring forward; Every deadly sin they praise; Every vile course of life they lead; Through every village, town, and country they stroll; Concerning the gripe of death they think not; Neither lodging nor charity do they give; Indulging in victuals to excess. Psalms or prayers they do not use, Tithes or offerings to God they do not pay, On holidays or Sundays they do not worship; Vigils or festivals they do not heed. The birds do fly, the fish do swim, The bees collect honey, worms do crawl, Every thing travails to obtain its food, Except minstrels and lazy useless thieves. I deride neither song nor minstrelsy, For they are given by God to lighten thought; But him who abuses them, For blaspheming Jesus and his service." Taliesin having set his master free from prison, and having protected the innocence of his wife, and silenced the Bards so that not one of them dared to say a word, now brought Elphin's wife before them, and shewed that she had not one finger wanting. Right glad was Elphin, right glad was Taliesin. Then he bade Elphin wager the king, that he had a horse both better and swifter than the king's horses. And this Elphin did, and the day, and the time, and the place were fixed, and the place was that which at this day is called Morva Rhiannedd; and thither the king went with all his people, and four and twenty of the swiftest horses he possessed. And after a long process the course was marked, and the horses were placed for running. Then came Taliesin with four and twenty twigs of holly, which he had burnt black, and he caused the youth who was to ride his master's horse to place them in his belt, and he gave him orders to let all the king's horses get before him, and as he should overtake one horse after the other, to take one of the twigs and strike the horse with it over the crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw down his cap on the spot. All these things did the youth fulfil, giving a blow to every one of the king's horses, and throwing down his cap on the spot where his horse stumbled. And to this spot Taliesin brought his master after his horse had won the race. And he caused Elphin to put workmen to dig a hole there; and when they had dug the ground deep enough, they found a large cauldron full of gold. And then said Taliesin, "Elphin, behold a payment and reward unto thee, for having taken me out of the weir, and for having reared me from that time until now." And on this spot stands a pool of water, which is to this time called Pwllbair. After all this, the king caused Taliesin to be brought before him, and he asked him to recite concerning the creation of man from the beginning; and thereupon he made the poem which is now called "One of the Four Pillars of Song." "The Almighty made, Down the Hebron vale, With his plastic hands, Adam's fair form; And five hundred years, Void of any help, There he remained and lay Without a soul. He again did form, In calm paradise, From a left-side rib, Bliss-throbbing Eve. Seven hours they were The orchard keeping, Till Satan brought strife, With wiles from hell. Thence were they driven, Cold and shivering, To gain their living, Into this world. To bring forth with pain Their sons and daughters, To have possession Of Asia's land. Twice five, ten and eight, She was self-bearing, The mixed burden Of man-woman. And once, not hidden, She brought forth Abel, And Cain the forlorn, The homicide. To him and his mate Was given a spade, To break up the soil, Thus to get bread. The wheat pure and white, Summer tilth to sow, Every man to feed, Till great yule feast. An angelic hand From the high Father, Brought seed for growing That Eve might sow; But she then did hide Of the gift a tenth, And all did not sow Of what was dug. Black rye then was found, And not pure wheat grain, To show the mischief Thus of thieving. For this thievish act, It is requisite, That all men should pay Tithe unto God. Of the ruddy wine, Planted on sunny days, And on new moon nights; And the white wine. The wheat rich in grain And red flowing wine Christ's pure body make, Son of Alpha. The wafer is flesh, The wine is spilt blood, The Trinity's words Sanctify them. The concealed books From Emmanuel's hand Were brought by Raphael As Adam's gift. When in his old age, To his chin immersed In Jordan's water, Keeping a fast, Moses did obtain, In Jordan's water, The aid of the three Most special rods. Solomon did obtain, In Babel's tower, All the sciences In Asia land. So did I obtain, In my bardic books, All the sciences Of Europe and Africa. Their course, their bearing Their permitted way, And their fate I know, Unto the end. Oh! what misery, Through extreme of woe, Prophecy will show On Troia's race! A coiling serpent, Proud and merciless, On her golden wings, From Germany. She will overrun England and Scotland, From Lychlyn sea-shore To the Severn. Then will the Brython Be as prisoners, By strangers swayed, From Saxony. Their Lord they will praise, Their speech they will keep, Their land they will lose, Except wild Walia. Till some change shall come, After long penance, When equally rife The two crimes come. Britons then shall have Their land and their crown, And the strangers swarm Shall disappear. All the angel's words, As to peace and war, Will be fulfilled To Britain's race. He further told the king various prophecies of things that should be in the world, in songs, as follows. * * * * * {Picture: p143.jpg} Footnotes: {11a} Diarwya. {11b} While the day was still young. {13} Arawn, king of Annwvyn. {15} And as thou seest. {17} "It may be that I shall repent for what I have done unto thee. Seek whom thou wiliest to slay thee, I shall not slay thee." {26} "If thou wilt ask for a reasonable gift, thou shalt have it gladly." "A reasonable one, lord," answered he. {28} Pwyll rose, and caused silence to be proclaimed, to command all suitors and minstrels to show what they desired, and to tell them that every one of them would be satisfied according to his wish and desire. {29} And they summoned him to them. {30} "Wretched women," said Rhiannon, "for the sake of the God who knows everything, charge me not falsely. The God who knows everything knows that that is false." {31a} Whether she persuaded or pleaded. {31b} Unbeseeming. {33} According to the kind of baptism that was then made. {35} "Oh fair lady," said Teirnon, "it is not very likely to me that any of these will be carried on thy back." "Let who will do so," said the son, "I shall not." "Truly, my soul," said Teirnon, "neither shall we go." {36a} The Welsh is _vy'm pryder i_ (= my trouble). {36b} If he will be of gentle bearing. {37a} And if he is in power, it will be more right for him to maintain thee than it was even for me. {37b} After that. {38} Wallt. {39a} And splendid wearer of the crown of London. {39b} Over-looking the sea. {40} Penordim. {42} Mane. {45} And I am not sure it was not there he got it. {48a} Taunted him openly. {48b} Bake. {50a} On the township. {50b} There were but two rivers, Lli and Archan were they called. After that the ocean separated the kingdoms. {52a} Was. {52b} "Yes," said Bendigeid Vran, "unless I myself can get the kingship." {56a} Glivieri. {56b} Grodyeu. {59a} At that very moment. {59b} And from that hour they could not rest. {62a} Meek. {62b} Wilt thou follow another counsel? {62c} And even now thou wilt not be disappointed with her appearance. {65} Add "and fish." {71} He furnished gilded clasps for the shoes. {73} And then, half in guile and half in anger, he rushed into the midst of the mice. But he could no more keep one of them within sight than he could gnats or birds in the air, except one, which he saw was heavy with young, and which he thought could not run. {79} Knockers and Collars. {81} Eveyd. {87} Tyviawc. {88} A maiden. {91a} Aranrod _throughout_. {91b} Infamous. {93} Sea-weed. {96} Destiny. {98a} Add "according to the rite of baptism they then performed." {98b} "I will give him that one Cantrev that is best for a young man to have." {100} Blow. {111} Add "henceforth." {118a} Of the books of the magician. [Vergil = Fferyllt = magician or chemist.] {118b} Head. {121} Taliesin {123} This should be Elphin son of Gwyddno. {136} Possibly an allusion to the Cave of AEolus. 
18758	----	BY BERWEN BANKS a Novel by ALLEN RAINE Author of "A Welsh Singer," "Torn Sails," etc. 111TH THOUSAND London Hutchinson & Co. Paternoster Row CONTENTS I. BERWEN BANKS II. THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF III. THE SASSIWN IV. THE STORM V. GWYNNE ELLIS ARRIVES VI. CORWEN AND VALMAI VII. THE VICAR'S STORY VIII. THE OLD REGISTER IX. REUBEN STREET X. THE WEB OF FATE XI. THE "BLACK DOG" XII. A CLIMAX XIII. "THE BABIES' CORNER" XIV. UNREST XV. THE SISTERS XVI. DISPERSING CLOUDS XVII. HOME AGAIN XVIII. THE VELVET WALK XIX. THE MEREDITHS XX. GWLADYS XXI. INTO THE SUNSHINE BY BERWEN BANKS. CHAPTER I. BERWEN BANKS. Caer Madoc is a sleepy little Welsh town, lying two miles from the sea coast. Far removed from the busy centres of civilisation, where the battle of life breeds keen wits and deep interests, it is still, in the opinion of its inhabitants, next to London, the most important place in the United Kingdom. It has its church and three chapels, its mayor and corporation, jail, town hall, and market-place; but, more especially, it has its fairs, and awakes to spasmodic jollity on such occasions, which come pretty often--quite ten times in the year. In the interims it resigns itself contentedly to its normal state of lethargy. The day on which my story opens had seen the busiest and merriest fair of the year, and the evening found the little town looking jaded and disreputable after its few hours of dissipation, the dusty High Street being littered with scraps of paper, orange-peel, and such like _débris_. The merry-go-rounds and the "shows" had departed, the last donkey-cart had rattled out of the town, laden with empty gingerbread boxes. In the stable of the Red Dragon three men stooped in conclave over the hind foot of a horse. Deio, the ostler, and Roberts, the farrier, agreed in their verdict for a wonder; and Caradoc Wynne, the owner of the horse, straightened himself from his stooping posture with a nod of decision. "Yes, it's quite plain I mustn't ride him to-night," he said. "Well, I'll leave him under your care, Roberts, and will either come or send for him to-morrow." "Needn't do that, sir," said Roberts, "for I am going myself to Abersethin on Friday; that will give him one day's complete rest, and I'll bring him up gently with my nag." "That will do better," said the young man. "Take care of him, Deio," he added, in good, broad Welsh, "and I will pay you well for your trouble," and, with a pat on Captain's flank and a douceur in Deio's ready palm, he turned to leave the yard. Looking back from under the archway which opened into the street, with a parting injunction to Roberts to "take care of him," he turned up the dusty High Street. "Pagh!" he said, "it has been a jolly fair, but it hasn't sweetened the air. However, I shall soon have left it behind me," and he stepped out briskly towards the straggling end of the street, which merged into a wild moorland country. "_There's_ a difference between him and his father," said Deio to his companion, as they led Captain back to his stall. "See the old 'Vicare du' hunting between his coppers for a threepenny bit! Jâr i man! you would think it was a sovereign he was looking for." "Yes," said Roberts, "the old Vicare is a keen man enough, but just; always pays his bills regularly; he is not as black as they make him out to be." "No, I daresay! They say the devil isn't, either," said Deio. It was very evident the person in question was no favourite of his. Meanwhile Caradoc, or Cardo as he was called all over the country side, the "Vicare du's" only son, had begun his tramp homewards with a light heart and a brisk step. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with health and youthful energy expressed in every limb and feature, with jet black hair and sparkling eyes to match. His dark, almost swarthy face, was lighted up by a pleasant smile, which seemed ever hovering about the corners of his mouth, and which would make itself evident in spite of the moustache which threatened to hide it. The band of the local militia was practising in the open market hall as he passed, and an old Welsh air struck familiarly on his ear. "They'll wonder what's become of me at home," he thought, "or rather Betto will. I don't suppose my father would notice my absence, so long as I was home to supper. Poor old dad!" he added, and a grave look came over his face. In truth it was not a very cheerful home to which he was returning, but it _was_ home, and had been his from childhood. It had been the home also of his ancestors for generations, which, to a Welshman, means a great deal, for the ties of home are in the very roots of his being. Home draws him from the furthermost ends of the earth, and leaving it, adds bitterness even to death. His mother had died at his birth, so that the sacred word "mother" had never been more than a name to him, and he had taught himself to banish the thought of her from his mind; in fact an indescribable uneasiness always leapt up within his heart when her name was mentioned, and that was very rarely, for his father never spoke of her, and old Betto, the head servant, but seldom, and then with such evident sadness and reticence, that an undefined, though none the less crushing fear, had haunted him from childhood upwards. As he stepped out so bravely this soft spring evening, the look of disquietude did not remain long on his face. At twenty-four life has not lost its rosy tints; heart, mind, and body are fresh and free to take a share in all its opening scenes, more especially if, as in Cardo's case, love, the disturber, has not yet put in an appearance. As he reached the brow of the hill beyond the town, the white dusty road stretched like a sinuous snake over the moor before him, while on the left, the sea lay soft and grey in the twilight, and the moon rose full and bright on his right. The evening air was very still, but an occasional strain of the band he had left behind him reached his ears, and with a musical voice he hummed the old Welsh air which came fitfully on the breeze: "By Berwen's banks my love hath strayed, For many a day in sun and shade; And while she carols loud and clear, The little birds fly down to hear. "By Berwen's banks the storm rose high, The swollen river rushing by! Beneath its waves my love was drowned And on its banks my love was found!" Suddenly he was aware of a cloaked figure walking about a hundred yards in front of him. "Who's that, I wonder?" he thought, and then, forgetting its existence, he continued his song: "I'll ne'er forget that leafy shade! I'll ne'er forget that winsome maid! But there no more she carols free, So Berwen's banks are sad to me!" By and by, at a curve in the road, he again noticed the figure in front of him, and quickened his steps; but it did the same, and the distance between them was not lessened, so Cardo gave it up, and continued his song. When the strain came to a natural ending, he looked again with some interest at the grey figure ever moving on, and still seeming to keep at the same distance from him. Once more he quickened his steps, and again the figure did likewise. "Diwss anwl!" he said. "I am not going to run after an old woman who evidently does not want my company." And he tramped steadily on under the fast darkening sky. For quite three miles he had followed the vanishing form, and as he reached the top of the moor, he began to feel irritated by the persistent manner in which his fellow-traveller refused to shorten the distance between them. It roused within him the spirit of resistance, and he could be very dogged sometimes in spite of his easy manner. Having once determined, therefore, to come up with the mysterious pedestrian, he rapidly covered the ground with his long strides, and soon found himself abreast of a slim girl, who, after looking shyly aside at him, continued her walk at the same steady pace. The twilight had darkened much since he had left the town, but the moonlight showed him the graceful pose of the head, the light, springy tread, and the mass of golden hair which escaped from the red hood covering her head. Cardo took off his cap. "Good-night to you," he said. "I hope I have not frightened you by so persistently trying to catch you." "Good-night," said the girl. "Yes, indeed, you have, whatever, because I am not used to be out in the night. The rabbits have frightened me too, they are looking so large in this light." "I am sorry. It is very brave of you to walk all the way from Caer Madoc alone." "To Abersethin it is not so far," said the girl. "Do you live at Abersethin?" "Yes, not far off; round the edge of the cliffs, under Moel Hiraethog." "Oh! I know," said Cardo; "the mill in the valley?" "No, round the next shore, and up to the top of the cliff is our house." "Traeth Berwen? That is where _I_ live!" "Well, indeed!" "Yes, I am Caradoc Wynne, and I live at Brynderyn." "Oh! are you Cardo Wynne? I have heard plenty about you, and about your father, the 'Vicare du.'" "Ah! poor old dad! I daresay you have not heard much good of him; the people do not understand him." "Well, indeed, the worst I have heard of him is that he is not very kind to you; that he is making you to work on the farm, when you ought to be a gentleman." "That is not true," said Cardo, flushing in the darkness; "it is my wish to be a farmer; I like it better than any other work; it is my own free choice. Besides, can I not be a farmer and a gentleman too? Where could I be so happy as here at home, where my ancestors have lived for generations?" "Ancestors?" said the girl; "what is that?" "Oh! my grandfather and great-grandfather, and all the long dead of my family." "Yes, indeed, I see. Ancestors," she repeated, with a sort of scheduling tone, as though making sure of the fresh information; "I do not know much English, but there's good you are speaking it! Can you speak Welsh?" "Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Cardo, and his voice woke the echoes from Moel Hiraethog, the hill which they were nearing, and which they must compass before reaching the valley of the Berwen. "Ha! ha! ha! Can I speak Welsh? Why, I am Welsh to the core, Cymro glan gloyw![1] What are you?" "Oh! Welsh, of course. You can hear that by my talk." "Indeed no," said Cardo. "I did not know anyone at Traeth Berwen could speak English as well as you do." He was longing to find out who his fellow-traveller was. He saw in the dim light she was slim and fair, and had a wealth of golden hair; he saw her dress was grey and her hood was red. So much the moonlight revealed, but further than this he could not discover, and politeness forbade his asking. As if in answer to his thoughts, however, her next words enlightened him. "I am Valmai Powell, the niece of Essec Powell, the preacher." A long, low whistle escaped from the young man's lips. "By Jove!" he said. The girl was silent, but could he have seen the hot blush which spread over her face and neck, he would have known that he had roused the quick Welsh temper. He was unconscious of it, however, and strode on in silence, until they reached a rough-built, moss-grown bridge, and here they both stopped as if by mutual consent. Leaning their elbows on the mossy stone wall, they looked down to the depths below, where the little river Berwen babbled and whispered on its way to the sea. "There's a nice noise it is making down there," said Valmai. "But why do you say a bad word when I tell you my uncle's name?" "A bad word? In your presence? Not for the world! But I could not help thinking how shocked my father and your uncle would be to see us walking together." "Yes, I think, indeed," said the girl, opening a little basket and spreading its contents on the low wall. "See!" she said, in almost childish tones, and turning her face straight to the moonlight. Cardo saw, as he looked down at her, that it was a beautiful face. "See!" she said, "gingerbread that I bought in that old street they call 'The Mwntroyd.' Here is a silver ship, and here is a gold watch, and a golden girl. Which will you have?" "Well, indeed, I am as hungry as a hunter," said Cardo. "I will have the lassie, if you are sure you have enough for two." "Anwl! anwl! I have a lamb and a sheep and some little pigs in my basket." And she proceeded to spread them out and divide them; and they continued to chat as they ate their gilded gingerbread. "Suppose your uncle and my father knew we were standing on the same bridge and looking at the same moon," said Cardo, laughing. "And eating the same gingerbread," added Valmai. "My word! There would be wrath." "Wrath?" said the girl, looking thoughtfully up in her companion's face; "what is that?" "Oh, something no one could feel towards you. 'Wrath' is anger." "My uncle is angry sometimes with me, and--too--with--with--" "My father, I suppose?" said Cardo. "Yes, indeed," said the girl; "that is true, whatever. Every Wednesday evening at the prayer-meeting he is praying for the 'Vicare du,' and Betto told me last week that the Vicare is praying for my uncle on Tuesday evenings." "Oh, Lord! has it come to that?" said Cardo. "Then I'm afraid we can never hope for peace between them." They both laughed, and the girl's rippling tones mingled musically in Cardo's ears with the gurgle of the Berwen. "It is getting late," she said, "we had better go on; but I must say good-night here, because it is down by the side of the river is my way to Dinas. You will be nearer to keep on the road till you cross the valley." "No, indeed," said the young man, already preparing to help his companion over the stone stile. "I will go down by the Berwen too." "Anwl," said Valmai, clasping her hands; "it will be a mile further for you, whatever." "A mile is nothing on such a night as this." And down to the depths of the dark underwood they passed, by a steep, narrow path, down through the tangled briers and bending ferns, until they reached the banks of the stream. The path was but little defined, and evidently seldom trodden; the stream gurgled and lisped under the brushwood; the moon looked down upon it and sparkled on its ripples; and as Valmai led the way, chatting in her broken English, a strange feeling of happy companionship awoke in Cardo Wynne's heart. After threading the narrow pathway for half-a-mile or so, they reached a sudden bend of the little river, where the valley broadened out somewhat, until there was room for a grassy, velvet meadow, at the further corner of which stood the ruins of the old parish church, lately discarded for the new chapel of ease built on the hillside above the shore. "How black the ruins look in that corner," said Cardo. "Yes, and what is that white thing in the window?" said Valmai, in a frightened whisper, and shrinking a little nearer to her companion. "Only a white owl. Here she comes sailing out into the moonlight." "Well, indeed, so it is. From here we can hear the sea, and at the beginning of the shore I shall be turning up to Dinas." "And I suppose I must turn in the opposite direction to get to Brynderyn," said Cardo. "Well, I have never enjoyed a walk from Caer Madoc so much before. Will they be waiting for you at home, do you think?" "Waiting for me?" laughed the girl, and her laugh was not without a little trace of bitterness; "who is there to wait for me? No one, indeed, since my mother is dead. Perhaps to-morrow my uncle might say, 'Where is Valmai? She has never brought me my book.' Here it is, though," she continued, "safe under the crumbs of the gingerbread. I bought it in the Mwntroyd. 'Tis a funny name whatever." "Yes, a relic of the old Flemings, who settled in Caer Madoc long ago." "Oh! I would like to hear about that! Will you tell me about it some time again?" "Indeed I will," said Cardo eagerly; "but when will that be? I have been wondering all the evening how it is I have never seen you before." They had now reached the open beach, where the Berwen, after its chequered career, subsided quietly through the sand and pebbles into the sea. "Here is my path, but I will tell you," and with the sound of the gurgling river, and the plash of the waves in his ears, Cardo listened to her simple story. "You couldn't see me much before, because only six weeks it is since I am here. Before that I was living far, far away. Have you ever heard of Patagonia? Well then, my father was a missionary there, and he took me and my mother with him when I was only a baby. Since then I have always been living there, till this year I came to Wales." "Patagonia!" said Cardo. "So far away? No wonder you dropped upon me so suddenly! But how, then, did you grow up Welsh?" Valmai laughed merrily. "Grow up Welsh? Well, indeed, I don't know what have I grown up! Welsh, or English, or Spanish, or Patagonian! I am mixed of them all, I think. Where we were living there was a large settlement of Welsh people, and my father preached to them. But there were, too, a great many Spaniards, and many Spanish girls were my friends, and my nurse was Spanish, so I learnt to speak Welsh and Spanish; but English, only what I learnt from my father and from books. I don't know it quite easy yet, but I am coming better every day I think. My father and mother are dead, both of them--only a few days between them. Another kind missionary's wife brought me home, and since then I am living with my uncle. He is quite kind when he notices me, but he is always reading--reading the old books about the Druids, and Owen Glendwr, and those old times, and he is forgetting the present; only I must not go near the church nor the church people, then he is quite kind." "How curious!" said Cardo. "You have almost described my father and my home! I think we ought to be friends with so much in common." "Yes, perhaps," said the girl, looking pensively out to sea, where the sea-horses were tossing up their white manes in the moonlight. "Well, good-bye," she added, holding out her hand. "Good-bye," answered Cardo, taking the proffered hand in a firm, warm grasp. "Will we meet again soon?" he said, dropping it reluctantly. "No, I think," said Valmai, as she began the steep path up the hill. Cardo stood a moment looking after her, and as she turned to look back, he called out: "Yes, I hope." She waved her hand, and disappeared behind a broom bush. "Valmai! Valmai!" he said, as he tramped off in the opposite direction. "Yes, she is _Valmai_!" [2] [1] "A pure Welshman." A favourite expression in Wales. [2] "Like May." CHAPTER II. THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF. The Rev. Meurig Wynne, "y Vicare du," or "the black Vicar," as he was called by the country people, in allusion to his black hair and eyes, and also to his black apparel, sat in his musty study, as he had done every evening for the last twenty-five years, poring ever his old books, and occasionally jotting down extracts therefrom. He was a broad-shouldered man, tall and straight, about sixty-five years of age. His clean-shaven face was white as marble, its cold and lifeless appearance accentuated by his jet-black hair, strongly-marked eyebrows of the same dark hue, and his unusually black eyes; his nose was slightly aquiline, and his mouth well shaped, though wide; but the firm-set lips and broad nostrils, gave the whole face an expression of coldness and hardness. In fact he had a peculiarly dour and dark look, and it was no wonder that when he walked through his parish the little children left their games in the road, and hurried inside their garden gates as he passed. He was perfectly conscious of this, and it pained him, though no one guessed it except his son, who felt a tender pity for the man who led so isolated and solitary a life. The cause of his cold reserve Cardo had never been able to discover; but he somehow connected it with his mother's name, and therefore shrank from inquiring into his father's past life, preferring to let old memories sleep, rather than hear anything which might bring sorrow and pain into his life. The Vicar was evidently uneasy, as he looked up listening, with one thin finger marking the place on the page he was reading. Cardo was later than usual, and not until he had heard his son's familiar firm step and whistle did he drop once more into the deep interest of his book. As Cardo approached the house he saw the light in his father's window, and pictured to himself the cold, pale face bending over the musty books. "Poor old dad!" he murmured. Some sons would have tapped playfully at the window, but Cardo did not, he turned round the corner of the house, passing by the front door, which was closed, and did not look inviting, to the other side, where the clatter of wooden shoes and a stream of light from the open doorway made some show of cheerfulness. And there was Betto, his old nurse and his father's housekeeper, in loud, angry tones, reproving the shepherd boy who stood leaning against the door-post. "Hello! what's the matter, Betto?" said Cardo in Welsh; "what mischief has Robin been up to now?" "Machgen bach i (my dear boy!), is that you?" said Betto; "there's glad I am! You are late to-night, and I was beginning to puzzle." "Has my father missed me?" "Well, indeed, he hasn't said anything," said Betto, hunting for the frying-pan, and beginning to prepare the ham and eggs for supper. "But where's that Robin?" she added; "a clout or two with the frying-pan would not hurt his addle pate." "He has been wise, and made himself scarce; but what has he done, Betto?" "What has he done? the villain! Well, you know the sheep are grazing in the churchyard this week, and that 'mwnki' is watching them there. Well--he seated himself yesterday on a tombstone when we were in church, and whit, whit, whitted 'Men of Harlech' on his flute! and the Vicare praying so beautiful all the time, too! praying against the wiles of the devil and of Essec Powell!" "Essec Powell! What has he been doing?" "Well, machgen i, you will not believe! the boldness of those 'Methots' is something beyond! And the impidence of Essec Powell! What do you think, Caradoc? he is _praying_ for your father--out loud, mind you!--in the prayer-meeting every Wednesday evening! But there! the master is beforehand with him, for he is praying for Essec Powell on Tuesdays!" and she tossed the frizzling ham and eggs on the dish. "Come to supper, my boy," and Cardo followed her nothing loth into the gloomy parlour, lighted by one home-made mould candle, for he was hungry in spite of the ginger-bread. "Ah, Caradoc! you have come," said the Vicar, as he entered the room punctually at the stroke of ten, "what made you so late to-night?" "Well," said Cardo, "when Deio, 'Red Dragon,' led Captain out of the stable, I found the swelling on his leg had risen again, so I left him with Roberts, the farrier. He will bring him home on Friday." "You have ridden him too soon after his sprain, as I told you, but young men always know better than their elders." "Well, you were right anyway this time, father." "Yes," said his father; "as the old proverb says, 'Yr hên a wyr yr ifanc a debyg." [1] "Shouldn't wonder if it rained to-morrow, the wind has veered to the south; it will be bad for the 'Sassiwn,' won't it?" said Cardo, after a pause. "The what?" said the Vicar, looking full at his son. "The 'Sassiwn,' sir, as they call it; the Methodist Association, you know, to be held here next week." "I don't want to hear anything about it; I take no interest in the subject." "Won't you go then, father? There will be thousands of people there." "No, sir, I will not go; neither will you, I hope," answered the Vicar, and pushing his plate away, he rose, and walked stiffly out at the door and along the stone passage leading to his study. His son listened to his retreating footsteps. "As bigoted as ever, poor fellow!" he said; "but what a fool I was to mention the subject." And he continued his supper in silence. When Betto came in to clear away he had flung himself down on the hard horse-hair sofa. The mould candle lighted up but a small space in the large, cold room; there was no fire in the grate, no books or papers lying about, to beguile the tedious hour before bedtime. Was it any wonder that his thoughts should revert to the earlier hours of the evening? that he should hear again in fancy the soft voice that said, "I am Valmai Powell," and that he should picture to himself the clustering curls that escaped from the red hood? The old house, with its long passages and large rooms, was full of those nameless sounds which fill the air in the quiet of night. He heard his father's footsteps as he paced up and down in his study, he heard the tick-tack of the old clock on the stairs, the bureau creaked, the candle spluttered, but there was no human voice to break the silence, With a yawn he rose, stretching his long legs, and, throwing back his broad shoulders, made his way along the dark passage which led into the kitchen, where the farm servants were seated at supper. Betto moved the beehive chair into a cosy corner beside the fire for the young master, the men-servants all tugged their forelocks, and the women rose to make a smiling bob-curtsey. "Have some cawl,[2] Ser!" said Betto, selecting a shining black bowl and spoon. "Not to-night, after all that fried ham; but another night I want nothing better for supper." "Well, there's nothing will beat cawl, that's certain," said Ebben, the head servant, beginning with long-drawn noisy sups to empty his own bowl. "Finished the turnips to-day?" asked Cardo. "Oh, yes," said Ebben, with a slight tone of reproof in his voice; "the work goes on though you may not be at home, Ser. I consider there is no piece of land on this earth, no, nor on any other earth, better farmed than Brynderyn. Eh?" and he looked defiantly at Betto, between whom and himself there was a continual war of words. "Well, I suppose so, indeed," said Betto; "_you_ say so often enough, whatever, and what you say must be right." There was such an insidious mixture of flattery and sarcasm in her words that, for a moment Ebben was at a loss what to answer, so Malen, the milkmaid, took the opportunity of changing the subject. "There's tons of bread will be baked on Monday," she said, "ready for the Sassiwn. Jini 'bakkare' has two sacks of flour to bake, and there's seven other women in Abersethin will bake the same quantity." "At Morfa," said Shanw, "they have killed a cow and a sheep; and the tongues, and fowls, and hams will fill every oven in the parish." Betto sniffed and tossed her head scornfully. "They may well give them bread and meat," she said, "for I don't see what else they have to give them." "What else, indeed," said Shanw, ready for the frequent fray. "They won't have your hum-drum old church fregot[3], perhaps, but you come and see, and hear Hughes Bangor, Price Merthyr, Jones Welshpool. Nothing to give them, indeed! Why, Price Merthyr would send your old red velvet cushion at church flying into smithireens in five minutes. Haven't I heard him. He begins soft and low, like a cat purring on the hearth, and then he gets louder and louder, till he ends like a roaring lion. And our own preacher, Essec Powell, to begin and finish the meeting. There's busy Valmai must be. Marged Hughes is there to help, and she says--" "Oh, be quiet," said Betto, "and go along with your Valmai, and your Price Merthyr, and your hams, and lions, and things. Ach y fi! I don't want to hear about such things in a clergyman's house." "Valmai is a beauty, whatever," said Dye, the ploughboy. "I kiwked[4] at her over the hedge this morning when she was going to Caer Madoc; she's as pretty as an angel. Have you ever seen her, Ser?" "Valmai," said Cardo, prevaricating, "surely that is a new name in this neighbourhood?" "Yes, she is Essec Powell's niece come home from over the sea. She is an orphan, and they say the old man is keeping her reading and reading to him all day till she is fair tired, poor thing." "Well, it is getting late," said Cardo, "good-night." And his rising was the signal for them all to disperse, the men servants going to their beds over the hay loft or stable; while the women, leaving their wooden shoes at the bottom, followed each other with soft tread up the creaking back stairs. In the study the Vicar poured over his books, as he translated from English into Welsh the passages which interested him most. He was, like many of the inhabitants of the South Wales coast, a descendant of the Flemings, who had long ago settled there, and who have left such strong and enduring marks of their presence. Their language has long given place to a sort of doggerel English, but they have never learned to speak the language of the country except in some of the straggling border villages. Pembrokeshire, in particular, retains a complete separateness, so to speak, from the rest of the country, and is often called "Little England beyond Wales." Thus it was that the English language seemed always more natural to Meurig Wynne than the Welsh. His sermons were always thought out in that language, and then translated into the vernacular, and this, perhaps, accounted in some degree for their stiffness and want of living interest. His descent from the Flemings had the disadvantage of drawing a line of distinction between him and his parishioners, and thus added to his unpopularity. In spite of this, Cardo was an immense favourite, his frank and genial manner--inherited from his mother, who was thoroughly Welsh--making its way easily to the warm Welsh hearts. There was a deep well of tenderness, almost of pity, within him for his cold stern father, a longing to break through his reserve, a hankering after the loving ways of home life, which he missed though he had never known them. The cold Fleming had very little part in Cardo's nature, and, with his enthusiastic Welsh sympathies, he was wont to regret and disclaim his connection with these ancient ancestors. His father's pedigree, however, made it very plain that the Gwynnes of Brynderyn were descended from Gwayn, a Flemish wool merchant who had settled there in the reign of Henry I.--these settlers being protected and encouraged by the English king, who found their peaceable, industrious habits a great contrast to the turbulence and restlessness of the Welsh under their foreign yoke. Time has done but little to soften the difference between the Welsh and Flemish characters; they have never really amalgamated, and to this day the descendants of the Flemings remain a separate people in language, disposition, and appearance. In Pembrokeshire, Gower, and Radnorshire, we find them still flourishing, and for some distance along the coast northwards from Pembrokeshire there are still families, and even whole hamlets, descended from them, exhibiting traits of character and peculiarities of manner easily discernible to an observant eye. Before the Vicar retired to rest he took down from a shelf an old Bible, from which he read a chapter, and, closing the book, knelt down to pray. As he rose from his knees, the last words on his lips were, "Caradoc, my beloved son!" For the next few days the turnips and mangolds seemed even more interesting than usual to Cardo Wynne. He was up with the lark, and striding from furrow to furrow in company with Dye and Ebben, returning to a hurried breakfast, and out again on the breezy hillside before the blue smoke had begun to curl up from the thatched chimneys which marked the cluster of cottages called "Abersethin." Down there, under the cliffs, the little village slumbered, the rising sun just beginning to touch its whitewashed walls with gold, while up above, on the high lands, the "Vicare du's" fields were already bathed in the morning sunlight. As he crossed from ridge to ridge and from furrow to furrow Cardo's thoughts continually flew across the valley to the rugged hill on the other side, and to the old grey house on the cliff--the home of Essec Powell, the preacher. In vain he sought for any sign of the girl whose acquaintance he had made so unexpectedly, and he was almost tempted to believe that she was no other than a creature of his own imagination, born of the witching moonlight hour, and absorbed again into the passing shadows of night. But could he have seen through the walls of that old grey house, even now at that early hour, he would have understood what kept the preacher's niece so busily engaged that neither on the shore nor on the banks of the Berwen was there a sign of her. In the cool dairy at Dinas, and in and out of the rambling old kitchen, she was busy with her preparations for the guests who would fill the house during the Sassiwn. She bustled about, with Marged Hughes in attendance, looking very different, but every bit as charming, in her neat farm dress as she had on her visit to Caer Madoc. The sleeves of her pink cotton jacket, pushed up above the elbows, showed her white, dimpled arms; while her blue skirt or petticoat was short enough to reveal the neatly-shod feet, with their bows of black ribbon on the instep. Every house in the neighbourhood was busy with preparations of some sort. At the farmhouses the women had been engaged for days with their cooking. Huge joints of beef and ham, boiled or baked, stood ready in the cool pantries; and in the smallest cottages, where there was more than one bed, it had been prepared for some guest. "John, my cousin, is coming from 'the Works,'" [5] or "Mary, my sister, will be home with her baby." Everywhere hearts and hands were full of warm hospitality. Clergymen of the Church of England, though generally looking askance at the chapels and their swarming congregations, now, carried away by the enthusiasm of the people, consented to attend the meetings, secretly looking forward, with the Welsh love of oratory, to the eloquent sermons generally to be heard on such occasions. Cardo, ruthlessly striding through the dew-bespangled gossamer of the turnip field, heard with pleasure from Dye that the adjoining field, which sloped down to the valley, had been fixed upon for the holding of the Sassiwn. On the flat at the bottom the carpenters were already at work at a large platform, upon which the preachers and most honoured guests were to be seated; while the congregation would sit on the hillside, which reached up to the Vicar's land. At least three thousand, or even four, might be expected. All day Cardo looked over the valley with intense interest, and when the day's work was over, unable to restrain his curiosity and impatience any longer, he determined to take a closer survey of the old house on the hill, which for so many years he had seen with his outward eyes, though his inner perception had never taken account of it. At last, crossing the beach, he took his way up the steep path that led to Dinas. As he rounded a little clump of stunted pine trees he came in sight of the house, grey, gaunt, and bare, not old enough to be picturesque, but too old to look neat and comfortable, on that wind-swept, storm-beaten cliff. Its grey walls, marked with patches of damp and lichen, looked like a tear-stained face, out of which the two upstairs windows stared like mournful eyes. Downstairs, in one room, there was a little sign of comfort and adornment; crimson curtains hung at the window, inside which a few flowers grew in pots. Keeping well under the hedge of elders which surrounded the cwrt or front garden, Cardo passed round to the side--the pine end, as it is called in Wales--and here a little lattice window stood open. It faced the south, and away from the sea a white rose tree had ventured to stretch out its straggling branches. They had evidently lately been drawn by some loving hand towards the little window. A muslin curtain fluttered in the evening breeze, on which came the sound of a voice. Cardo knew it at once. It was Valmai singing at her work, and he longed to break through the elder bushes and call her attention. He was so near that he could even hear the words of her song, softly as they were sung. She was interrupted by a querulous voice. "Valmai," it said in Welsh, "have you written that?" "Oh! long ago, uncle. I am waiting for the next line." "Here it is then, child, and well worth waiting for;" and, with outstretched arm marking the cadence of its rhythm, he read aloud from a book of old poems. "There's poetry for you, girl! There's a description of Nature! Where will you find such real poetry amongst modern bards? No, no! the bards are dead, Valmai!" "Well, I don't know much about it, uncle; but isn't it a modern bard who writes: "'Come and see the misty mountains In their grey and purple sheen, When they blush to see the sunrise Like a maiden of thirteen!'" That seems very pretty, whatever." "Very pretty," growled the man's voice, "very pretty; of course it is--very pretty! That's just it; but that's all, Valmai. Pwff! you have put me out with your 'blushing maiden' and your 'purple sheen.' Let us shut up Taliesin and come to 'Drych y Pryf Oesoedd.' Now, you begin at the fifth chapter." There was a little sigh, which Cardo heard distinctly, and then the sweet voice began and continued to read until the sun sank low in the west. "It's getting too dark, uncle. Will I go and see if the cakes are done?" "No, no!" said the old man, "Gwen will look after the cakes; you light the candle, and come on with the book." How Cardo longed to spring in through the lattice window, to fling the old books away, and to draw the reader out into the gold and purple sunset--out over the breezy cliffs, and down to the golden sands; but the strong bonds of circumstances held him back. The candle was lighted, and now he could see into the room. Old Essec Powell sat beside the table with one leg thrown over the other, hands clasped, and chin in the air, lost in the deep interest of the book which his niece was reading. "He looks good for two hours longer," thought Cardo, as he saw the old man's far-away look. There was a little tone of weariness in her voice as, seating herself at the table by the open window, Valmai drew the candle nearer and continued to read. Outside in the dusky twilight Cardo was gazing his fill at the face which had haunted him ever since he had seen it on the road from Caer Madoc. Yes, it was a beautiful face! even more lovely than he imagined it to be in the dim evening light. He took note of the golden wavy hair growing low on her broad, white forehead, her darker eyebrows that reminded him of the two arches of a beautiful bridge, under which gleamed two clear pools, reflecting the blue of the sky and the glint of the sunshine, the straight, well-formed nose, the pensive, mobile mouth, the complexion of a pale pink rose, and added to this the indescribable charm of grace and manner which spread through her personality. The evening shadows darkened, the sunset glow faded, and the moon rose in a cloudless sky. The distant sound of the regular plash of the waves on the beach reached Cardo's ears. He thought of the long reaches of golden sand lying cool and grey in the moonlight, and all the romantic dreams of youth awoke within him. Was it right that Valmai should be bending over a musty book in a dimly-lit room? while outside were the velvet turf of the cliffs, the plashing waves, and the silver moonlight. But the reading still went on, the gentle voice growing a little weary and monotonous, and the white eyelids falling a little heavily over the blue eyes. Long Cardo watched and gazed, and at last, turning away, he walked moodily home. He knew his father would expect him to supper at ten o'clock punctually, and hurried his steps as he approached the house. Just in time, for Betto was placing on the table an appetising supper of cawl and bread and butter, which the two men were soon discussing silently, for the Vicar was more pre-occupied than usual, and Cardo, too, was busy with his own thoughts. Suddenly the former spoke. "Is the long meadow finished?" he said. "Yes; Dye is a splendid fellow to work, and Ebben and he together get through a good deal." "To-morrow they can clear out the barn. The next day is the market at Llanilwyn; they must go there and buy a cow which Jones Pant y rych is going to sell. I have told Ebben he is not to give more than 8 pounds for her, and that is one pound more than she is worth." Cardo was silent. To clear out the barn next day was easy enough, but to get Dye and Ebben to the market on the following day would be impossible. It was the opening of the Sassiwn, and he knew that neither of the men would be absent on that occasion, even though disobedience should cost them their place. They were both Methodists, and it had gone hard with the Vicar before he had taken them into his service; but the exigencies of farm life had compelled him to do so, as there was absolutely not one young man amongst his own congregation. To do him justice, he had forgotten for the moment that the market day at Llanilwyn would also be the Sassiwn day. "Do you remember, father, the Sassiwn begins the day after to-morrow?" "I had forgotten it, but I don't see what difference that can make to my buying a cow." "But Ebben and Dye will want to be at the meetings." A shadow crossed the old man's face. He made no answer, but continued to eat his supper in silence, and at last rose, and with a short "Good-night, Cardo," went into his study. He knew as well as his son did that it would be useless to try and persuade his servants to be absent from the meetings, and the knowledge galled him bitterly, too bitterly for words, so he was silent; and Cardo, knowing his humour, said nothing to Dye and Ebben of his father's wishes. "Poor old dad!" he sighed, as he finished his supper, "it is hard for him to see his congregation dwindled away to a mere handful, while the chapels around him arc crowded to overflowing. By Jove! there must be something wrong somewhere." As usual after supper he followed Betto into the old kitchen, where the servants were assembled for supper, and where Shanw was again holding forth, to her own delight and Betto's disgust, on the coming glories of the Sassiwn. "To-morrow evening will be the first meeting." "Will it be in the field?" asked Cardo. "Oh, no, Ser; the first is in the chapel always, and no strangers are there. Essec Powell will have to shut up his old books for a few days now, and poor Valmai will have rest. Marged Hughes says she is reading to him for hours every day, but once she can get out of his sight he forgets all about her, and goes on reading himself." "When does he prepare his sermons?" said Cardo. "Prepare his sermons!" said Shanw indignantly. "Do you think Essec Powell would write his sermon out like a clergyman and read it out like a book? No, indeed! Straight from the 'brist'--that's how Essec Powell preaches!" "What time is the first meeting next day?" "Oh, early, Ser--eight o'clock. Are you coming? Anwl! there's glad they'd be. You shall go on the platform with Price Merthyr and Jones Abertawe and all the rest." "Saul among the prophets," said Cardo, laughing, and picturing himself among the solemn-faced preachers. "No, no; that wouldn't do, Shanw. What would my father say?" "Well, well!" said Shanw, clicking her tongue against her teeth; "'ts, 'ts! 'tis pity indeed. But, there, everybody knows it is not your fault, Ser." Cardo frowned, and fell into a brown study. It wounded him to hear his father blamed, and yet in his heart of hearts he wished he would so far temper his zeal with Christian charity as to attend the meetings which were moving the hearts of the people so much. [1] "The old know, the young appear to know." [2] Leek broth. [3] Rodomontade. [4] Peeped. [5] Glamorganshire. CHAPTER III. THE SASSIWN. The Sassiwn day dawned bright and clear, and as the time for the first service drew near, the roads and lanes were thronged with pedestrians and vehicles of every description. The doors of the houses in all the surrounding villages were closed for the day, except in a few cases where illness made it impossible for the inmates to leave their beds. Everybody--man, woman, and child, including babies innumerable--turned their faces towards the sloping field which for the day was the centre of attraction. Already the grass was getting hidden by the black throng, and still the crowds arrived, seating themselves row behind row on the wild thyme and heather. The topmost corner of the field merged into a rocky wilderness of stunted heath and patches of burnt grass, studded with harebells, and this unapportioned piece of ground stretched away into the adjoining corner of the Vicar's long meadow. In the afternoon Cardo, who had virtuously kept away from the morning meetings, sauntered down to chat with Dye, who had condescended to absent himself from the third service, in order to attend to his duties on the farm. "You sit here, Mr. Cardo," he said, with a confidential wink, "on your own hedge; the Vicar can't be angry, and you will hear something worth listening to." Soon the sloping bank was crowded with its rows of human beings, all listening with intense interest to a pale, dark man, who stood on the front of the platform at the bottom of the field, and with sonorous voice delivered a short opening prayer, followed by an impassioned address. In the clear, pure air every word was distinctly heard all over the field, the surging multitude keeping a breathless silence, broken only by the singing of the birds or the call of the seagulls. Sometimes a baby would send up a little wail of fatigue; but generally the slumberous air soothed and quieted them into sleep. The prayer over, the preacher gave out the words of a well-known hymn, and with one accord the people stood up, and from those hundreds and thousands arose the swelling tones of one of those old hymns which lay hold of every Welshman's heart, its strange reminiscences, its mysterious influences swaying his whole being, and carrying him away on the wings of its rising and falling melody. His fathers and grandfathers sang it in their old thatched cabins--and, farther back, the warriors and bards of his past ancestry breathed the same tones--and, farther back still, the wind swept its first suggestions through the old oaks of the early solitudes. "Is it this, I wonder, this far-reaching into the past, which gives such moving power to the tones of an old Welsh hymn?" Thus Cardo mused, as he sat on the hedge in the spring sunshine, his eyes roaming over the dense throng now settling down to listen to the sermon, which the preacher was beginning in low, slow sentences. Every ear was strained to listen, every eye was fixed on the preacher, but Cardo could not help wondering where Valmai was. He saw Essec Powell with clasped fingers and upturned chin listening in rapt attention; he saw in the rows nearest the platform many of the wives and daughters of its occupants. Here surely would be the place for the minister's niece; but no! Valmai was nowhere to be seen. In truth, she had been completely forgotten by her uncle, who had wandered off with a knot of preachers after the hospitable dinner, provided for them at his house by Valmai's exertions and Marged Hughes' help; but he had never thought of introducing to his guests the real genius of the feast. She had snatched a hurried meal in the pantry, and, feeling rather lost and bewildered amongst the crowd of strangers, had retired to rest under the elder bushes, until called upon by Marged Hughes to help at the table, which she did at once, overcoming her shyness, and keeping as much as possible in the background. The guests had been at first too intent upon their dinners after their morning's exertions to notice the slim white figure which slipped backwards and forwards behind them, supplying every want with quick and delicate intuition, aiding Marged Hughes' clumsy attempts at waiting, so deftly, that Essec Powell's dinner was a complete success. Towards the end of the meal a young and susceptible preacher caught sight of the girl, and without ceremony opened a conversation with her. Turning to his host he asked: "And who is this fair damsel?" "Who? where?" said Essec Powell, looking surprised. "Oh! that's my niece Valmai; she is living with me since Robert my brother is dead." "Well, indeed! You will be coming to the meetings, I suppose?" "Yes," said Valmai, "I have been there all day; the singing was lovely!" "And what did you think of the preaching?" said a very fat man, in a startlingly bass voice. He was carving a fowl. "That is the important point," he said, and the wing came off unexpectedly. "Young people are apt to think most of the singing," here he re-captured the wing and landed it safely on his own plate. "Did you hear my sermon?" he asked, between the mouthfuls of the fast disappearing wing, fixing his eyes upon poor Valmai, who began to wish herself under the elder bushes again. "My text was--" but fortunately here the company rose. After a long grace they dispersed, and turned their faces once more towards the sloping field. No one noticed Valmai--no one remembered her in the hurry to return to the preaching field--no one, she thought, would know or care whether she was present or not; and as she drew on her gloves and tied on her broad-brimmed straw hat, there was a little sadness in the curves of her mouth, a little moisture in the deep blue eyes, as alone she took her way after the preachers to the hillside. As she went she recalled the last open-air meeting she had attended, nearly two years ago, in that far-off land, where her father and mother had walked with her in loving companionship, when she had been the centre of their joys and the light of their home, and as she followed the winding path, hymn-book in hand, her heart went back in longing throbs to the father and mother and the old home under the foreign sky, where love had folded her in its warm embrace; but now--she was alone! no one noticed whether she came or went, and as groups and families passed her, wending their way to the hillside, she answered their nods and greetings with pleasant kindliness, but still found herself alone! "It will always be like this now; I must learn to go alone. What can I expect when my father and mother are dead? there is no one else to care for me!" She reached the crowded field, and ought to have made her way into the front rows near the platform where she might easily have found a seat, but Valmai was shy and retiring, and seeing there was no settled place for her, kept on the outskirts of the crowd, and at last found herself on the piece of uncultivated ground which bordered the corner of the Vicar's long meadow. She seated herself on the heather at the top of the bank, the sea wind blowing round her, and tossing and tumbling the golden curls which fell so luxuriantly under her hat. All feeling of loneliness passed away as she sat there among the harebells and heather, for Valmai was young, and life was all before her, with its sweet hopes and imaginings. She was soon listening with deep interest to the eloquent and burning words which fell from the lips of the preacher; and with the harebells nodding at her, the golden coltsfoot staring up into the sky, the laughing babies sprawling about, was it any wonder that sadness fled away, and joy and love sang a paean of thankfulness in her heart? It was at this moment that Cardo caught sight of her. Unconsciously, he had been seeking her in every square yard which his eye could reach, and here she was close to him all the time. The discovery awoke a throb of pleasure within him, and with a flush upon his dark face he rose and made his way towards her. She was absently turning over the leaves of her little Welsh hymn-book as he approached, and smiling unconsciously at a toddling child who was making journeys of discovery around the furze bushes. A quick, short "Oh!" escaped her as she saw him approach, her face brightened up--yes, certainly she was glad. Cardo saw it in the mantling blush and the pleased smile as he found a seat on the grass beside her. She placed her hand in his with a whispered word of greeting, for it would not do to speak aloud in that quiet concourse of people. "Where have you been?" he asked, at last. "At home," she whispered. "Why?" "Because I hoped you would be out--" Valmai shook her head as a farmer's wife looked round at her reprovingly. Cardo attempted another remark, but she only smiled with her finger on her lips. "This is unendurable," he thought; but he was obliged to be satisfied with the pleasure of sitting beside her until the long sermon was over, and the crowd rose _en masse_ with ejaculations of delight at the moving eloquence of the preacher. "As good as ever he was!" "Splendid!" "Did you hear that remark about the wrong key?" "Oh! telling!" And amongst the murmer of approval and enthusiasm Valmai and Cardo rose. For a moment the former looked undecided, and he read her thoughts. "No--not home with the crowd, but down over the beach;" and she fell in with the suggestion, turning her face to the sea breeze and taking the path to the shore. Here the Berwen was running with its usual babbling and gurgling through the stones into the sea, the north-west wind was tossing the foam into the air, and the waves came bounding and racing up the yellow sand like children at play; the little sea-crows cawed noisily as they wheeled round the cliffs, and the sea-gulls called to their fellows as they floated over the waves or stood about the wet, shining sands. "There's beautiful, it is," said Valmai, pushing back her hat and taking long breaths of the sea wind; "only six weeks I have been here and yet I seem to have known it for ever--I suppose because from a baby I used to hear my father talking of this place. It was his old home, and he was always longing to come back." "Yes," said Cardo, "I can imagine that. I don't think I could ever be thoroughly happy away from here." "Nor I too, indeed," said Valmai, "now that I know it." "I hope you will never leave the place--you seem to belong to it somehow; and I hope I may never leave it, at least--at all events--" and he hesitated as he remembered his father's wishes--expressed many times, though at long intervals--that he should go to Australia and visit an uncle who had for many years lived there. The prospect of a voyage to the Antipodes had never been very attractive to Cardo, and latterly the idea had faded from his mind. In the glamour of that golden afternoon in spring, in Valmai's sweet companionship, the thought of parting and leaving his native country was doubly unpleasant to him. She saw the sudden embarrassment, and the flush that spread over his face. "You are going away?" she said, looking up at him. There was only inquiry in the tone. Cardo wondered if she would be sorry, and was tempted to make the most of his possible departure. "I may have to go away," he said, "though I should hate it. I never liked the idea, but now I perfectly dread it. And you," he added, "should you miss me? It is not very lively here, so perhaps even I might be missed a little." Valmai did not answer; she looked out to the horizon where the blue of the sky joined the blue of the sea, and the white breakers glinted in the sunshine. "Yes," she said presently, "I will be sorry when you go, and where are you going to? Far away? To England, perhaps?" "To Australia," replied Cardo. "Australia! Oh! then you will never come back to Traeth Berwen!" "Indeed, indeed I will, Miss Powell--you laugh at that--well--may I say Valmai, then?" "Yes; why not? Everyone is calling me Valmai, even Shoni our servant." "I may venture, then; and will you call me Cardo?" "Yes, indeed; Cardo Wynne. Cardo Wynne, everybody is calling you that, too--even the little children in the village; I have heard them say, 'Here is Cardo Wynne coming!' See, here is the path to Dinas, I must say good-bye." "Can't we have another walk along the beach? Remember, I, too, have no one to talk to!" "Oh, anwl, no! I must hurry home and get the tea for the preachers." "And then back to the meeting on the hillside?" "No; the meeting is in the chapel to-night." "But when it is over you will come back along the shore?" "Indeed, I don't know. Good-bye," she said, as she began her way up the rugged homeward path. When Cardo reached home, he found his father sitting at the tea-table. The old parlour looked gloomy and dark, the bright afternoon sun, shining through the creepers which obscured the window, threw a green light over the table and the rigid, pale face of the Vicar. "You are late Cardo; where have you been?" "In the long meadow, sir, where I could hear some of the preaching going on below, and afterwards on the beach; it is a glorious afternoon. Oh! father, I wish you would come out and breathe the fresh air; it cannot be good for you to be always in your study poring over those musty old books." "My books are not musty, and I like to spend my time according to my own ideas of what is fit and proper, and I should not think it either to be craning my neck over a hedge to listen to a parcel of Methodist preachers--" "Well, I only heard one, Price Merthyr I think they call him. He was--" "Cardo!" said his father severely, "when I want any information on the subject I will ask for it; I want you to set Dye and Ebben on to the draining of that field to-morrow--" "Parc y waun?" "Yes; Parc y waun." "Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly. He was devotedly attached to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner--a sentiment which must have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any outward sign of it. "It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself." Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit, between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face. Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow--of the few who walked in it and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath, answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then passed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road, where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery. Valmai looked round her with awe and horror. "Did these innocent-looking, simple people belong to that thronging crowd who were hurrying on to their own destruction? was she herself one of them? Cardo?--her uncle?" The thought was dreadful, her breath came and went quickly, her eyes were full of tears, and she felt as if she must rise suddenly and rush into the open air, but as she looked round the chapel she caught sight through one of the windows of the dark blue sky of night, bespangled with stars, and a glow of purer and healthier feeling came over her. She would not believe it--outside was the fresh night wind, outside was the silver moonlight, and in the words of the poet of whom she had never heard she said within herself, "No! God is in Heaven, it's all right with the world!" Her joyous nature could not brook the saddening influences of the Methodist creed, and as she passed out into the clear night air amongst the crowd of listeners, and heard their mournful sighs and their evident appreciation of the sermon, or rather sermons, for there had been two, her heart bounded with a sense of relief; joy and happiness were its natural elements, and she returned to them as an innocent child rushes to its mother's arms. Leaving the thronged road, she took the rugged path down the hillside, alone under the stars, and remembering Cardo's question, "Will you come home by the shore?" she wondered whether he was anywhere near! As she reached the bottom of the cliff and trod on the firm, hard sand below, she saw him standing in the shadow of a rock, and gazing out at the sea over which the moon made a pathway of silver. The fishing boats from Ynysoer were out like moths upon the water. They glided from the darkness across that path of light and away again into the unknown. On one a light was burning. "That is the _Butterfly_," thought Valmai, "I am beginning to know them all; and there is Cardo Wynne!" and with a spirit of mischief gleaming in her eyes and dimpling her face, she approached him quietly, her light footstep making no sound on the sand. She was close behind him and he had not turned round, but still stood with folded arms looking out over the moonlit scene. Having reached this point, Valmai's fun suddenly deserted her. What should she do next? should she touch him? No! Should she speak to him? Yes; but what should she say? Cardo! No! and a faint blush overspread her face. A mysterious newborn shyness came over her, and it was quite a nervous, trembling voice that at last said: "Mr. Wynne?" Cardo turned round quickly. "Valmai! Miss Powell!" he said, "how silently you came upon me! I was dreaming. Come and stand here. Is not that scene one to make a poet of the most prosaic man?" "Yes, indeed," answered the girl, standing beside him with a strangely beating heart, "it is beautiful! I saw the sky through the chapel window, and I was thinking it would be very nice down here. There's bright and clear the moon is!" They were walking now across the beach, at the edge of the surf. "It reminds me of something I read out to uncle last night. It was out of one of his old Welsh poets--Taliesin, or Davydd ap Gwilym, or somebody. It was about the moon, but indeed I don't know if I can put it into English." "Try," said Cardo. "'She comes from out the fold And leads her starry flock among the fields of night.'" "Yes, that is beautiful," said Cardo. "Indeed, I am glad you find something interesting in those dog-eared old books." "Dog-eared? But they are indeed," she said, laughing. "But how do you know? They may be gold and leather, and spic and span from the bookseller's, for all you know." "No, I have seen them, and have seen you reading them." "Seen me reading them? How? Where?" "Last night I was under the elder bushes, and saw you reading to your uncle. I watched you for a long time." Valmai was silent. "You are not vexed with me for that?" She was still silent; a tumult of happy thoughts filled her mind. He had found his way to Dinas! He had thought it worth while to stand under the night sky and watch her! It was a pleasant idea, and, thinking of it, she did not speak. "Tell me, Valmai, have I offended you?" "Offended me? Oh, no; why should you? But indeed it was very foolish of you, whatever. If you had come in and listened to the reading it would be better, perhaps," she said laughingly. "If I had come in, what would your uncle have said? He would have been very angry." "Well, indeed, yes; I was forgetting that. He is very hospitable, and glad to see anybody who comes in to supper; but I don't think," she added, with a more serious air, "that he would be glad to see you. He hates the Church and everything belonging to it." "Yes. How wearisome all this bigotry is. My father hates the chapels and all belonging to them." "Perhaps you and I will begin to hate each other soon," said Valmai, as they reached the boulders through which the Berwen trickled. It was absolutely necessary that Cardo should help her over the slippery stones, and with her hand in his she stepped carefully over the broad stream, subsiding into quietness as it reached the sea. At last she was safely over, and as he reluctantly dropped her hand he returned to the subject of conversation. "Will we hate each other?" Again there was no answer, and again Cardo looked down at Valmai as he pressed his question. She had taken off her hat, and was walking with her golden head exposed to the cool night breezes. It drooped a little as she answered his persistent questioning. "No, I think," she said, with her quaint Welsh accent. "No, I think, too," said Cardo; "why should we? Let us leave the hatred and malice and all uncharitableness to our elders; for you and me, down here on the sands and by the banks of the Berwen, there need be nothing but content and--and friendship." "Yes, indeed, it is nice to have friends. I left all mine behind me in my old home, and I did not think I should ever have another; but here we are across the shore, and here is the path to Dinas." "Oh, but the walk has been too short. You must come back and let us have it over again." "What! back again?" said Valmai, laughing so merrily that she woke the echoes from the cliffs. "Yes, back across those slippery stones and across the shore, and then back again to this side. I can help you, you know." Cardo's voice was very low and tender. It seemed ridiculous, but somehow he gained his point. CHAPTER IV. THE STORM. A day or two later on, the weather changed, the wind blew up in angry soughs from the south-west, and, meeting the strong flow of the spring tide, curled the green wave-tops into those small feathers of foam, always the fore-runners of rough weather. The sea-gulls let themselves go before the wind calling to each other excitedly, the little sea-crows stayed quietly at home in the safe crannies of the cliff. Old Dan Griffiths the fisherman hauled his boat further up the strand, and everything betokened the brewing of a storm, nevertheless Valmai was out early. Her small household duties had been attended to. She had skimmed the cream in the dairy, and fed the new calf; she had scattered the grain before the flocks of fowls and pigeons in the farm-yard; had brushed her uncle's coat, and, while helping him to shuffle into it, had asked him: "Are you going from home to-day, uncle?" "Yes, merch i, didn't I tell you? I am going to a meeting at Pen Morien, and won't be back to-night." "Are you going to walk?" "Why, no! ride, of course. Where's Malen?" "I think Shoni was just putting her into the cart." "Oh! I forgot to tell him," said the absent-minded man. "Tell him to saddle her, and bring her here at once." Valmai ran out, and picking her way daintily through the stubble of the farm-yard, caught sight of Shoni fastening the last buckle of Malen's cart harness. "Wants her saddled?" he said, looking hot and flustered. "Dear, dear! there never was such a man! Wasn't I settle with him yesterday to take the two pigs to the fair to be sell? There's what it is to live in the clouds!" and, grumbling, he unfastened the buckles, and soon led Malen saddled and bridled to the door. "Didn't you tell me we was to sell the pigs to-day?" he said sulkily, as soon as his master was seated safely on the saddle. Essec Powell, who had for some time been hopping about on one leg, finding it difficult to mount the spirited Malen, now looked thoughtfully at Shoni. "Pigs," he said, "pigs? Oh, of course; yes, Shoni, quite right, you shall take them to market tomorrow." "To-day is the fair; you had forgotten that, I suppose." "Well, well! next week will do," and he trotted away, Shoni looking after him with undisguised contempt. "There's a man, now," he said in English, for he was proud of his proficiency in that language. "Wass you ever see such a man? I tell you, Valmai, he would be ruined and put in gaol for debt long ago if I wasn't keep him out of it." "Yes, I think--indeed, Shoni, I am sure of it; but where is the fair to-day?" "At Llanython, of course; wasn't you hear of it? Why! you ought to be there, pranked out in your ribbons and finery, talking and laughing with the young men, and coming home in the evening with your pocket-handkerchief full of gingerbread and nuts," and he looked her over from top to toe. It had never struck him before that there was any charm in her appearance, but now he seemed to realise that she was worthy to be seen at the fair. "Yes," he said pensively, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat; "I wouldn't wonder a bit now if you wass to pick up a sweet'arr amongst the gentry, because you are beginning to speak English as good as the Vicare, and you are not quite like the girls about here, Valmai." "Am I not?" she said laughingly. "No," he said seriously; "and that's where you will be failing. There's not a chap about here will take a miladi like you for a wife. You must learn to kom over the farm-yard without picking up your skirts, and looking at your shoes to see if they are dirty, if you want to marry a farmer." "Indeed, I don't wish to marry a farmer," said Valmai, "nor anyone else who doesn't want me." Shoni again shook his head solemnly. "Yes, yes," he said, "I see how it is; s'not only the pigs, and the calves, and hens, but you too I must take to markets and fairs, or we shall never marry you," and he turned away pondering seriously over his self-imposed duties. Valmai looked after him a little wistfully. Where should she go now? How should she spend the long day? Gwen would see to the housework, and would brook no interference with her management. Nobody wanted her, and nobody thought of her, except Shoni, and to him she seemed rather a burden; or was there one who thought of her sometimes?--who cared a little for her? With heightened colour and quick step she turned from the farm-yard down the steep path which led to the river's banks, and as she made her way through the thick hazel and willow brushwood she could not quite suppress the hope that she might meet Cardo. But no, perfect solitude reigned over the Berwen. Down in the valley she could not feel the wind, but she heard its roar in the tree tops; the birds were silent, the sky was grey, and a little sadness fell over her spirits as she continued to thread her way under the tall bracken and brambles, onwards and upwards, until she at length reached the stile by the bridge upon which she and Cardo had eaten their gingerbread on the first evening of their acquaintance. The road which had that night been so quiet and deserted was now full of busy life, and as Valmai approached the stile and saw the many pedestrians and vehicles she shrank back a little, and, through the branches of a hazel bush, looked out on the passers-by, realising that all these hurrying footsteps, and faces full of interest, were turned towards the Fair at Llanython. Presently she heard the rumbling of wheels, and in a cloud of dust saw the Vicar of the next parish drive by with his two pretty daughters. Just as they reached the bridge they were overtaken by a young man, who reined in his spirited, well-groomed horse and addressed the party. At once Valmai recognised the voice, and peeping through the greenery, saw it was Cardo, stalwart and strong, with his rough freize coat and buttoned gaiters, looking every inch a gentleman-farmer. There was a bluff and hearty greeting from the clergyman as Cardo took off his hat to the two young ladies, who simpered and blushed becomingly, for Cardo Wynne was the catch of the neighbourhood; his good looks, his father's reputed wealth, and the slight air of mystery hanging over the silent "Vicare du" making quite a halo of romance around his son's personality. "Good-bye," said Mr. Hughes; "we shall see you at the fair, I suppose?" "Yes," said Cardo, "good-bye," and he reined in his horse for a moment so as to avoid riding in the cloud of dust raised by the Vicar's carriage wheels. Valmai's heart thumped loudly, for Cardo was looking at the stile, he was dismounting, and now he was leaning on the bridge lost in thought, and looking down into the green depths of the valley. There was a pleased look on his face and a gleam in his black eyes, which Valmai saw, and which made her heart beat faster and her cheek flush a more rosy red, but she shrank further back into the shade of the hazel bush, and only peeped out again when she heard by the horse's hoofs that his rider was remounting; then she ventured over the stile and looked at the retreating figure, with his broad shoulders, his firm seat, and his steady hand on his bridle as he galloped out of sight. A flood of happiness filled her heart as she re-crossed the stile and began her way again down the shady path. What mattered it that at every moment the wind rose higher, and the branches creaked and groaned above her? What mattered it that the birds were silent, and that the roar of the sea reached further than usual into the nut wood? She would go home and eat her frugal dinner of brown bread and bwdran,[1] and then she would set off to Ynysoer to spend a few hours with Nance Owen, who had nursed her as a baby before her parents had left Wales. In spite of the increasing storm she reached the beach, and turned her face towards Ynysoer, a small island or rather a promontory, which stretched out from the shore. At low tide a reef of rocks, generally known as the Rock Bridge, connected it with the mainland, but at high tide the reef was completely under water, the sea rushing in foaming breakers over it as if chafing at the restraint to its wild freedom. Had Valmai been better acquainted with the coast, she would not have dared to cross the bridge in the face of the storm which was every moment increasing in violence. The tide was down, and the rocks were bare, and the high wind helped to hurry her over the pools and craggy points. Gathering her red cloak tightly around her she made her way safely over to the island, which was a frequent resort of hers, as here she found the warm love and welcome for which her heart craved, and which was so sorely missing in her uncle's house. Amongst the sandy dunes and tussocks were scattered a few lonely cottages, in one of which Nance lived her uneventful life; its smoke-browned thatch looked little different from the rushes and coarse grass which surrounded it, for tufts of grass and moss grew on the roof also, and Nance's goat was frequently to be seen browsing on the house-top. At the open door stood Nance herself, looking out at the storm. Suddenly she caught sight of Valmai, who was making a difficult progress through the soft uneven sand, and a look of surprise and pleasure came over her face. "Oh, dear heart, is it you, indeed, come to see old Nance, and on such a day? Come in, sweetheart, out of the storm." "The storm indeed," said Valmai, in Welsh as pure as Nance's own, as the old woman drew her in to the cottage and closed the door. "Why, you know nothing about it on this side of the island, nothing of what it is in the village. The boats have all been drawn up close to the road, and the waves are dancing and prancing on the beach, I can tell you." Nance loosened her cloak and hat, and smoothed her hair with her horny hands. "There's glad I am to see you, merch fach-i, and if you have no grand friends to keep you company and no one to look after you, you have always got old Nance to love you." "Yes, I know that, Nance, indeed. What do you think of my new frock?" said the girl, holding out her skirt to the admiring gaze of the old woman, who went into raptures of admiration. "Oh, there's pretty. 'Tis fine and soft, but white, always white you are wearing--" "Yes, I like white," said Valmai. "And didn't I dress you in your first little clothes? Well I remember it." "There's just what I wanted to ask you about, Nance; I love to hear the old story." "After tea, then, merch i, for now I must go and fetch water from the well, and I must milk the goat." "I will fetch the water," said Valmai; "you can go and milk." And taking the red stone pitcher from the bench by the wall she went out, and, sheltered by the ridge of rocks behind which the cottage stood, made her way to the spring which dripped from a crack in the cliffs. While she waited for the pitcher to fill, she sang, in sheer lightness of heart, the old ballad which not only floated on the air of Abersethin and its neighbourhood, but which she had heard her mother sing in the far-off land of her childhood. "By Berwen's banks my love has strayed For many a day through sun and shade," and she paused to peep into the pitcher, but finding it only half full, continued: "And as she carolled loud and clear The little birds flew down to hear." "By Berwen's banks the storm rose high," but the pitcher was full, so, resting it on her side, she carried it home, before Nance had caught her goat. When she returned with her bowl of rich milk, Valmai was busy, with skirt and sleeves tucked up, tidying and arranging the little room; the hearth had been swept and the tea-things laid on the quaint little round table, whose black shining surface and curved legs would have delighted the heart of a collector of antique furniture. "Oh, calon fâch![2] to think your little white hands have been working for me! Now I will cut the bread and butter thin, thin--as befits a lady like you; and sorry I am that it is barley bread. I don't forget the beautiful white cakes and the white sugar you gave me at Dinas the other day! And your uncle, how is he?" "Quite well; gone to Pen Morien, and not coming home till to-morrow; but tell me now, Nance fâch, of all that happened so long ago--when I was born." "Not so long ago for me, dear heart, as for you. It is a whole life-time for you, but for me--" and the faded blue eyes filled with tears, and the wrinkled lips trembled a little as she recalled the past--"for me! I had lived my life before you were born. My husband was dead, my boy drowned, and my little Mari, the last and brightest, had suddenly withered and died before my eyes--a fever they say, perhaps it was indeed; but the sun has never shone so brightly, whatever, since then; the flowers are not so sweet--they remind me of my child's grave; the sea does not look the same--it reminds me of my boy!" and she rocked herself backwards and forwards for some time, while Valmai stroked with tender white fingers the hard, wrinkled hand which rested on her lap. "Well, indeed," said the old woman at last, "there's enough of my sorrows; let us get on to the happy time when your little life began, you and your twin sister. When you were washed and dressed and laid sleeping together in the same cradle, no one could tell which was which; but dir anwl! who cared for that? too much joy was in our hearts that your dear mother was safe. No one at least, except the grand English lady who was lodging there at your grandfather's house. Her husband was dead, and she was very rich, but she had no children; and when she heard your mother had twins, she begged of us to let her have one for her very own, and she was like thorns to us because we could not tell for sure which was the oldest." "Well, go on, Nance," said Valmai, as the old woman stopped to rake the peat embers together. "Well! then, we all thought it was a very good thing, and no doubt the Almighty had His plans about it, for how could your poor mother take two babies with her to that far-off land where your father went a missionary? Well! there was a message come to fetch the lady to the death-bed of her mother, and she only waited at Dinas long enough to see you both christened together, Valmai and Gwladys. The next day she went away, and took your little sister with her. Oh! there's crying your mother was at losing one of her little ones; but your father persuaded her it was for the best." "And what was the English lady's name?" asked Valmai. "Oh! my dear, ask it not; the hardest word you ever heard, and the longest; I could never twist my tongue round it. It is with me somewhere written out on paper, and her directions, and if she ever moved to another place she would write and tell us, she said; but that was not likely to be, because she went to her father's and grandfather's old home, and she has never written to anyone since, as far as I know." "Well, indeed," said Valmai, looking thoughtfully into the glowing embers, "I should like to see my sister, whatever." "Twt, twt," said the old woman, "there's no need for you to trouble your head about her; she has never troubled to seek you." "Does she know about me, do you think?" "That I can't tell, of course," said Nance, going to the door to have another look at the storm. "Ach y fi! it's like a boiling pot," she said; "you can never go home to-night, my child." "Oh, yes, indeed I must; I would not be away from home in my uncle's absence for the world," said Valmai, joining the old woman at the door, and looking out rather anxiously at the angry sea. "Oh, when the tide goes down at nine o'clock the moon will be up, and perhaps the storm will be over." They sat chatting over the fire until the evening shadows fell, and the moon shone fitfully between the scudding clouds. Meanwhile Cardo had ridden in to Llanython. A fair had generally much attraction for him--the merry laughter, the sociable meetings, the sound of music on the air, and the altogether festive character of the day; but on this occasion its pleasures seemed to pall, and quickly dispatching the business which had brought him there, he returned to the inn, and, mounting his horse, rode home early in the afternoon. Why he thus hurried away he never could explain. Ever since he had leant on the bridge over the Berwen in the morning he had been haunted by a feeling of Valmai's presence. Little had he guessed that she had been so near him while he looked down through the interlacing scenery which hid the river from his sight. It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon as he reached that part of the high road from which the beach was visible, and here he stopped a moment to look and wonder at the storm, which had so suddenly increased in violence. "How far up the beach at Ynysoer those breakers run! And the Rock Bridge!--I wouldn't like to cross that to-night; but surely that was a woman's figure crossing it now!" A sudden fear darted through his mind, and dismounting, he climbed to the top of the turfy bank at the side of the road to gain a better view of the coast. "Yes, a woman--a girl, surely, and a graceful girl, wearing a scarlet cloak. She carried her hat in her hand--not on her head, at all events. Surely it was not Valmai in such a storm going over by such a dangerous path? Probably a fisherman's wife or daughter!" But he gazed long and steadily before he once more resumed his ride. In hot haste he rode the rest of the way to Brynderyn. "The storm is rising," said the "Vicare du," as he joined his son at the tea-table. "Yes," said the latter, pausing in his attack upon the roast fowl to gaze at the clouds which scudded before the wind, "I expect it will be a furious gale before midnight." As soon as the meal was over he rose, and fixing his hat firmly on his head, said: "I am going down to the beach to see the waves, father. If I am not back to supper you won't be frightened?" The old man muttered something about "folly to go out in such weather," as Cardo disappeared into the stone passage. Making his way down to the beach, he found the storm raging fiercely, and, gaining the shelter of a rock, he sat down to rest and think. The sullen south-west wind moaned and shrieked as it rushed up the long beach; it lurked in the hollows of the crags, and drove the sand and foam before it. The Berwen looked yellow and muddy as it washed over its stony bed. Above all came the roar of the breakers as they dashed against the rocky sides of the island, which lay, a black mass, in the seething water a few hundred yards from the shore. He looked across the blinding spray of the waves and thought of his boat; but no, no boat would live in such a sea; besides, what ridiculous fear was this that haunted him? At so great a distance as that between the road and the island it was impossible that he could have distinguished Valmai from any other girl, and what more natural than that one of the women living on the island should be crossing the Rock Bridge. "I must be a fool to have nervous fears like a silly girl. I daresay I shall meet Valmai on the shore." But he sought in vain for any sign of her, as she had sought him in the morning. Indeed it was not likely that any tender girl would be out in such a storm--and yet--"was it Valmai?" The thought _would_ come, the fear would haunt him. He was surprised to find himself overtaken by a woman. "Dir, dir, what a storm," she remarked as she passed, hurried on her way by the driving wind. One or two of Cardo's long steps brought him up with her. "Don't you come from Ynysoer?" he said. "I think I know your face." "Yes, gwae fi![3] that I had got safe back again, but my mother is ill," she shouted, as the wind carried her words away, "and I must stay with her till tomorrow, no one could go back over the Rock Bridge to-night; though, indeed, I met a young girl crossing--" "Had she a red cloak?" asked Cardo. "Yes. She was Essec Powell's niece, and if she tries to come back to-night I wouldn't give much for her life." "Here we part--good-bye," said Cardo. "Nos da, Ser," said the woman, but her voice was drowned by the roar of the wind. "It was Valmai! I knew it was! Why did I not take my boat at once? Now it is too late; and yet," he thought, "she cannot come till the tide is low. I may get there in time. Surely she would not attempt to cross the bridge yet?" For the rest of the evening Cardo paced restlessly over the beach, buffeted by the strong wind, wetted by the spray, but still watching narrowly the bridge of rocks, which connected the island with the mainland. He knew for a certainty that Valmai was there, and he watched with intense interest the darkening island, over which the storm gathered with increasing fury. His plan was to wait until the tide went down, and then to cross the bridge himself, so as to help Valmai, or to prevent her attempting to return. After several hours' waiting in the shelter of the cliff, he saw by his watch, which he was able to decipher by occasional gleams of moonlight, that it was near upon nine o'clock. The moon was hidden at intervals by heavy storm-clouds, which were hurrying before the wind; but when her light shone out fitfully, it disclosed a scene of wild confusion; the horizon was as black as ink, the seething sea beneath was white as snow, and the sound of the wind and waves was deafening. Over the Rock Bridge the sea rushed like a mill race one moment leaving it bare and black, the next covering it again with strong rushing billows of foam. "She will not dare to return to-night," he thought, as he watched a tossing, foaming tower of spray, which rose in the centre of the bridge, where two streams of the seething waters met, and rose high in the air together. The moon had again hidden her face, and in the darkness Cardo was seized with a trembling fear. With bent and bare head (for he had long before lost his hat) he made a blind rush over the bridge. For the first few yards he got on safely, as each end was sheltered by high rocks, which stood as sentinels looking across at each other. "So far, so good," thought Cardo, standing still a moment for breath; "and now to cross this mill race!" But he was too late. Already he saw that Valmai had begun her way across. On the island side the bridge was more sheltered from the storm, and the girl was not only in a measure protected from the wind, but was also hidden from the moonlight, and it was not until she had left the shadow of the rocks and entered upon the open and unprotected reef that Cardo in a sudden absence of clouds saw in the moonlight the delicate figure wrapped in its scarlet cloak. For a moment she hesitated as she felt the full force of the wind, and in her hesitation decided upon the wrong course: she would run, she would reach the opposite rocks, and be safe before the next gust of wind came. "Good God!" said Cardo, "she is lost!" as he saw her approach with flying hair and fluttering garments towards the centre of the bridge, which was for a moment left bare, and in that moment Cardo realised how completely this stranger girl, who had seemed to drop from the clouds into his quiet, uneventful life, had taken possession of his heart. All this flashed through his mind and opened his eyes to the true state of his feelings. Instantly he was making his way towards her, with strong steps and sturdy shoulders fighting with the wind, which seemed determined to baffle his attempts to reach Valmai before the periodical recurring inrush of opposite streams should once more meet, and rise in towering strife together. Thoroughly frightened and trembling, Valmai looked in horror at the two opposing streams of water approaching her on either side, and in her terror losing her self-command, was on the point of giving herself up to the angry waters, which she felt herself too weak to withstand. At this critical moment a dark form dashed through the blinding spray--a form which she instantly recognised, and which as quickly restored courage to her sinking heart. She felt the strong arms clasped round her, but too late! for the next moment the approaching waves had met, and rising high in the air in their furious contact, had fallen with terrific force, sweeping her and her rescuer into the boiling surf. Valmai became unconscious at once, but Cardo's strong frame knew no sense of swooning nor faintness. His whole being seemed concentrated in a blind struggle to reach the land--to save Valmai, though he was fighting under terrible disadvantage. She had relaxed her grasp, and he had now to hold her safe with one arm, thus having only one with which to struggle against the suffocating, swirling waters. In a very few minutes he realised that the fight was dead against him; in spite of all his strength and his powerful frame, he was lifted and tossed about like a straw. The only thing in his favour was the fact that the tide had turned, and was even now combining with the strong wind to carry him towards a sheltered corner on the mainland. With choking breath and blinded eyes he felt himself carried on the crest of a wave, which bore him landwards, but only to be drawn back again by its receding swell. He felt he was helpless, though, had he the use of his two arms, he knew he would be able to breast the stormy waters, and gain the land in safety; but clutched in the nervous grasp of his left arm he held what was dearer to him than life itself, and felt that to die with Valmai was better than to live without her! His strength was almost gone, and with horror he felt that his grasp of the girl was more difficult to retain, as a larger wave than usual came racing towards him with foaming, curling crest. He gave himself up for lost--he thought of his old father even now poring over his books--he thought of Valmai's young life so suddenly quenched--and with one prayer for himself and her, he felt himself carried onward, tossed, tumbled over and over, but still keeping tight hold of his precious burden. He was suddenly struck by a stunning blow, which for a moment seemed to take away his senses--but only for a moment--for what was this calm? what was this quiet sense of rest? was he sinking out of life into some dim, unconscious state of being? had he seen the last of the clouds? the moon--the stormy waters? Had Valmai already slipped away from him? No; he still felt her within his grasp, and in a few moments he was able to realise the meaning of the change in his feelings. He had been carried like a shred of seaweed by that strong wave far up the beach on the mainland, and in its receding flow it had swirled him into a round cavity in the rocks, where as a boy he had often played and bathed and fished; he knew it well, and saw in a moment that he was saved! Clasping Valmai firmly, he ran up the beach, another combing, foaming wave coming dangerously near his hurrying footsteps; but in spite of the buffeting wind, he gained the shelter of the cliffs, and at last laid his burden tenderly down on the rocks. And now the fight for life was replaced by the terrible dread that Valmai might already be beyond recall. The clear, cold moon looked down between the scudding clouds upon her straightened form, the wind roared above them, and the lashing fury of the waves still filled the air; but Valmai lay white and still. Cardo looked round in vain for help; no one was near, even the fishermen had safely bolted their doors, and shut out the wild stormy night. A faint hope awoke in his heart as he remembered that Valmai had swooned before she was engulfed with him in the sea, and he set to work with renewed vigour to rub her cold hands, and press the water out of her long, drenched hair; he was soon rewarded by signs of life in the rigid form--a little sigh came trembling from her lips, her hand moved, and there was a tremor in her eyelids. Cardo placed his arm under her shoulders and, lifting her into a sitting posture, rested her head upon his breast, the movement, the change of position--something awoke her from her long swoon; was it the sense of Cardo's presence? did his earnest longing call her spirit back? for she had been close upon the shadow land. She came back slowly, dimly conscious of escaping from some deadly horror, and awakening to something pleasant, something happy. She slowly opened her eyes, and observing Cardo's strong right hand, which still held and chafed her own, while his left arm upheld her drenched form, she moved a little, and murmured: "Are you hurt?" "No," said Cardo, trembling in every limb with the excitement which he had controlled until now, and with the delight of seeing life and movement return to her, "hurt? no! only thankful to find you safe; only anxious to get you home." Valmai's voice was weak and low, and he had to bend his head over her to catch the words: "You have been near death for my sake--those dreadful waves!" "Do not think of them! I was in no danger. But I have been nearer death since I have sat here watching your slow recovery. Now, Valmai," he said, realising that every moment of exposure in her cold, drenched garments was danger to her, "be brave; give yourself up to me, and I will carry you home." But this adjuration was needless, for as he placed her gently down while he rose to his feet he felt that she was limp and powerless as a baby; he lifted her in his arms, and felt her weight no more than if he had carried a storm-beaten bird. His own drenched condition he did not consider--did not feel, while he climbed with careful footsteps up the rugged path to Dinas, lighted only by the moon, whose beams were continually obscured by the flying clouds. Pushing his way between the furze and broom bushes, he was careful to let no stray branch catch Valmai's face or hair, and as he reached the farm-yard in the rear of the house, he was delighted to feel a strong and swift motion in her frame. "Put me down, please," she whispered, "on the bench by the door." Cardo did so, reluctantly loosing his grasp of the tender form. "Now knock." And he obeyed, rapping loudly on the back door. The sound seemed to rouse the inmates at once, for, with considerable thumping and fumbling, somebody shuffled down the stairs. "Go now, I am safe," said Valmai, in a whisper. And Cardo went, but not before he had stooped down and pressed an impassioned kiss upon the little listless hands. Neither spoke. Valmai felt too weak and full of awakening happiness to trust her voice, while Cardo felt the occasion was above the necessity for any words. He waited behind the elder bushes until Gwen's full-moon face appeared in the doorway, and her ejaculations of reproachful astonishment (in which the Welsh language is prolific) showed that she had seen Valmai, and fully appreciated the urgency of the situation. "Mawredd anwl! what is the meaning of this? Where have you been? and I thinking you were in your warm bed!" "I have been to see Nance, and coming back over the Rock Bridge the sea washed me away." "Nance! Nance! all the time! What you want to go there so often? It's no wonder if you are drowned crossing that nasty place in such a storm, You are like a wet sea-gull. If you were a baby you wouldn't be more trouble," etc., etc. Cardo still waited until he saw in the kitchen the blaze of freshly-piled logs on the culm fire, Gwen's voice still reaching him in snappish, reproving tones through the closed door. Then he turned away, and though he was bodily cold and saturated with the sea water, his heart was full of warmth and a newly-awakened sense of the joy and fulness of life. [1] Oatmeal and water kept until fermentation has commenced, and then boiled into a thin porridge. [2] Dear heart. [3] Woe is me. CHAPTER V. GWYNNE ELLIS ARRIVES. For a few days, Valmai, although she had received no serious harm from her watery adventure, still felt a little languor and indisposition, which kept her a prisoner in the house. As she lay on the old shabby sofa, her time was fully occupied by reading to her uncle, books of Welsh history or the effusions of the old bards, which interested him so much. Ever and anon, while he searched for a reference or took notes of some special passage, she would fall into a dreamy reverie, a happy smile on her lips and a light in her eyes which her uncle saw not. Yes, Cardo loved her! She knew now that he did, and the world was changed. She would make haste to get well and find him again on the shore, on the cliffs, or on the banks of the Berwen. Her uncle had heard from Gwen of her drenched condition on the night of the storm, but had already forgotten the circumstance, and only recalled it when he missed her active help in some arrangement of his heavy books. "How did you get wet, merch i?" "Coming over the Rock Bridge I was, uncle. I had been to see Nance, and the storm increased so much when I was there that when I returned the waves washed right over the bridge." "Well, to be sure! Now on the next page you will find a splendid description of such a storm; go on, my girl," and Valmai continued the reading. Meanwhile, Cardo, after a good night's rest, was no whit the worse for his battle with the storm; but he was full of fears lest Valmai's more delicate frame should suffer. He rose with the dawn and made his way over the dewy grass across the valley, and into the field where Essec Powell's cows were just awaking and clumsily rising from their night's sleep under the quiet stars. The storm had disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen, and all nature was rejoicing in the birth of a new day. Gwen was already approaching with pail and milking stool as he crossed the field through which a path led to Abersethin. She dropped a bob curtsey and proceeded to settle her pail under "Corwen" and to seat herself on her low stool. "Your young mistress got very wet last night?" said Cardo, in an inquiring tone. "Yes, Ser, did you see her?" "Yes--I was crossing the bridge at the same time. Is she any the worse for her wetting?" "Not much the matter with her," said Gwen; "'tis lying down she is, a good deal,--miladi is a bit lazy, I think," and with this scant information he had perforce to be content. When he returned to Brynderyn to breakfast, he found his father looking somewhat discomposed as he read and re-read a letter which he had just received. He made no comment upon its contents, however, but looking up said: "You must have found the storm very interesting, Cardo; what kept you out so late?" He did not add that he had paced up and down for an hour in his bedroom after retiring for the night, peering out into the darkness in great anxiety for his son's safety. "Very interesting, father; nothing less than a ducking on the Rock Bridge! The storm was raging furiously there, and a girl was crossing in the midst of it; she was in some danger, and I was able to help her to cross in safety." "One of our congregation?" asked the old man. "By Jove! no, father; there isn't one girl under seventy in our congregation!" "A Methodist, then, I suppose--one of Essec Powell's lot?" "Yes," said Cardo, beginning to redden; "but surely you wouldn't let a woman be drowned without making an effort to save her because she was a Methodist?" "I did not say so, Cardo; but certainly I should prefer my son's risking his life for a member of the church." Cardo made a gesture of impatience which his father saw and felt. It irritated him, and, fixing his eyes steadily on his son's face, he said: "I don't know how it is, but of late that subject has frequently been on your tongue. I have no cause to love the Methodists, and I hope they are not now going to add to my reasons for disliking them by coming between me and my son. I simply wish you not to mention them to me, Cardo--that is not much to ask." "I will not, father," said Cardo, pushing his plate away; "I will never mention them to you again--" "Good!" replied his father. "I have a letter here which I would like to read to you, but not this morning, as I am very busy." "All right, father--in the afternoon," said Cardo; and when Betto appeared to clear away the breakfast things he was lost in a profound reverie, his long legs stretched out before him and his hands buried deep in his pocket. Betto tried in vain to recall him to outward surroundings by clattering her china and by sundry "h'ms" and coughs, but Cardo still remained buried in thought and jingling his money in his pocket. At last she _accidentally_ jerked his head with her elbow. "Hello, Betto! what is the matter?" "My dear boy," said Betto, "did I hurt you? Where were you so late last night?" "Oh, out in the storm. Have you seen my wet clothes? I flung them out through my bedroom window; you will find them in a heap on the garden wall." "Wet clothes? Caton pawb! did you get in the sea then?" "Oh, yes! tumbled over and over like a pebble on the beach," he said, rising; "but you know such duckings are nothing to me; I enjoy them!" Betto looked after him with uplifted hands and eyes. "Well, indeed! there never was such a boy! always in some mischief; but that's how boys are!" Cardo went out whistling, up the long meadow to the barren corner, where the furze bushes and wild thyme and harebells still held their own against the plough and harrow; and here, sitting in deep thought, and still whistling in a low tone, he held a long consultation with himself. "No! I will never try again!" he said at last, as he rose and took his way to another part of the farm. In the afternoon he entered his father's study, looking, in his manly strength, and with his bright, keen eyes, out of keeping with this dusty, faded room. His very clothes were redolent of the breezy mountain-side. Meurig Wynne still pored over apparently the self-same books which he was studying when we first saw him. "Sit down, Cardo," he said, as his son entered; "I have a good deal to say to you. First, this letter," and he hunted about amongst his papers. "It is from an old friend of mine, Rowland Ellis of Plas Gwynant. You know I hear from him occasionally--quite often enough. It is waste of stamps, waste of energy, and waste of time to write when you have nothing special to say. But he has something to say to-day. He has a son, a poor, weak fellow I have heard, as far as outward appearance and bodily health go--a contrast to you, Cardo--but a clever fellow, a senior wrangler, and an M.A. of his college. He has just been ordained, and wants to recruit his health before he settles down to a living which is in the gift of his uncle, and which will be vacant in a short time; and as he offers very good remuneration, I don't see why he shouldn't come here. He would be a companion to you. What do you say to it?" "As far as I am concerned, let him come by all means, if you wish it, father; it can make no difference to me." "Indeed it will, though! You will have to show him about the neighbourhood, and lay yourself out to make his stay here as pleasant as possible, for he will pay well." "Pay!" said Cardo, with a frown, his sense of hospitality chafing under the idea. "Pay! that spoils it all. If you take my advice in the matter, you will write to your friend, and tell him to send his son here by all means, but decline to take any remuneration." "Cardo, you are a fool! Do you think I would take a stranger into my house, to have him always at my table, upsetting all my domestic arrangements, for nothing? You ought to know me better. Fortunately for you, with your pride and extravagant ideas, I am here to look after affairs, and hitherto, thank God, I have been quite capable of doing so! I only consulted you on the matter because I wanted to know what chance there was of your making yourself agreeable to the young man, as I cannot be bothered with him." "Oh, well, that is settled," said Cardo. "I shall be glad of a companion, and will do my best to make him happy. I hope he'll be a jolly fellow." "Jolly fellow? I hope he will be a steady young man, and a fit companion for you. You don't seem to think of the necessity of that!" "I leave that to you, sir," said Cardo, with a humorous smile. "I should never dream of questioning your prudence in the matter." The old man nervously fingered his papers. "Well, that is settled. I will not keep you longer from your fishing or your rowing--which is it to-day, Cardo?" and he raised his black eyebrows, and spoke with a slight sneer. Cardo laughed good-naturedly. "Neither fishing nor boating to-day, sir. No! it's that field of swedes this afternoon," and he turned away with his hands dug deep in his pockets. "A bad habit, Cardo! An industrious man never walks about with his hands in his pockets." "All right, father! here goes for the swedes; and you bet I won't have my hands in my pockets there. I flatter myself I can do good work as well as any man." His father looked after him with a curious wistfulness. "A fine fellow!" he said to himself, as Cardo's steps receded along the passage. "Not much fault to be found with him! How can I spare him? But he must go--he must go." Meanwhile Cardo, no longer with his hands in his pockets, stood in the swede field directing Shoni and Dye, and not only directing, but often taking his share in the weeding or hoeing. He was full of interest in the farming operations, which, in truth, were thoroughly congenial to his tastes. "Bless the turnips and mangolds," he would often say; "at least they take you out under the blue sky, and into the fresh air." He pondered upon the proposed addition to his father's household. Suddenly an unpleasant thought seemed to strike him, for his face flushed, and he gave a long, low whistle. "Phew! I never thought of that! Why! I shall never have an hour with Valmai with this confounded wrangler at my heels! Deuce anwl! how shall I manage it? one thing only I know, no power on earth--not even an 'M.A.'--shall keep me from her." But neither that day nor the next was Valmai to be seen. It was two or three days before she was able to throw off entirely the languor which followed her immersion in the sea; but on the evening of the third day, as the sun drew near its setting, she once more roamed down the path to the beach, a new light in her eyes and a warmer glow on her cheek. The long shadows of evening stretched over the shore, and the sun sank low in the western sky, all flooded with crimson, and purple, and pale yellow, as she flung herself down under a towering rock, still a little languid, but full of an inrushing tide of happiness. The green waves came rolling in, their foaming crests catching the rosy pink of the sunset; the sea-gulls sailed lazily home from their day's fishing. The sheep on the hillside were folded, and the clap clap of the mill in the valley came on the breeze. Valmai sat long gazing at the crimson pathway over the sea, both heart and soul filled to over-flowing with the beauty of the sunset hour. Not even Cardo's presence was missed by her, for she knew now that he loved her; she knew that sooner or later she should meet him, should see him coming, through the golden sunlight of the morning, or in the crimson glory of the evening, with buoyant steps and greeting hands towards her; and almost as the thought crossed her mind, a sound fell on her ear which brought the red blood mantling to her cheek. Thud, thud on the sands; it was surely his footsteps, and in another moment Cardo was beside her. "At last, Valmai!" he said, stretching out both hands to clasp her own as she rose to meet him, "at last! Where have you been the last three years? do not say they have been days! are you well and none the worse for your wetting?" and still holding her hands in his, he made her sit again on the rock, while he stretched himself on the dry sand at her feet. A little silence fell upon them both--a strange constraint which was new to them, and which Valmai was the first to break. "I ought to be thanking you for saving my life, Cardo Wynne; but indeed I have no words to speak my thanks. I know I owe my life to you. What will I say?" "Nothing," he said, leaning on his elbows and looking up into her face, "nothing; there is no need for thanks, for I could not help myself. It was the simplest thing; seeing you in danger I helped you out of it, for, Valmai," and here his voice sank low and trembled a little, "it is like this with me, and you must know it; had you been washed away by those cruel waves, there would have been no Cardo Wynne here to-night! I could not live without you! And you--Valmai, how is it with you?" Her head drooped very low. Cardo, lying on the sands, looked up into the blushing face; but still she made no answer. Starting to his feet, he stretched out both hands to her, and said: "Come, fanwylyd;[1] let us walk together--I cannot rest. Valmai, tell me, have I the same place in your heart that you have in mine? Place in my heart! Good heavens! There is no room there for anything else. You own it all, Valmai; you sway my very being! Have you no comfort to give me? Speak to me, dearest." "Cardo," said Valmai, "can I give you what you have already stolen from me? I was alone and friendless when I met you that night in the moonlight, now I am happy though my heart has gone from me. What shall I say more? my English is not very good." "But you can say, 'Cardo, I love you.' Say that again." "Yes, I can say that, whatever." "Say it, then, Valmai." "Oh, well, indeed! You know quite well that I love you. Cardo, I love you." And to the sound of the plashing waves the old, old story was told again. He had asked, while he held her face between both hands, gazing earnestly into the blue eyes, "Does this golden sky look down to-night upon any happier than we two?" and with her answer even he was satisfied. An hour later the moon added her silver glory to the scene, and under her beams they continued long walking up and down, lingering by the surf, whispering though there was no one to hear. They parted at last under the elder bushes at Dinas. Cardo was right. In all Wales there were not that night two happier hearts than theirs. No fears for the future, no dread of partings, no thought of life's fiery trials, which were even now casting their shadows before them. Valmai lay long awake that night, thinking of her happiness and blushing, even in the darkness, as she remembered Cardo's burning words of love; and he went home whistling and even singing in sheer exuberance of joy. Forgotten his father's coldness; forgotten his bare, loveless home; forgotten even the wrangler who was coming to trouble him; and forgotten that nameless shadow of parting and distance, which had hovered too near ever since he had met Valmai. She loved him, so a fig for all trouble! They had pledged their troth on the edge of the waves, and they thought not of the mysterious, untried sea of life which stretched before them. Early in the following week Cardo drove to Caer Madoc to meet the mail-coach, which entered the town with many blasts of the horn, and with much flourishing of whip, at five o'clock every evening. In the yard of the Red Dragon he waited for the arrival of his father's guest. At the appointed time the coach came rattling round the corner, and, as it drew up on the noisy cobble stones, a pale, thin face emerged from the coach window and looked inquiringly round. "Mr. Gwynne Ellis, I suppose?" said Cardo, approaching and helping to tug open the door. "Yes," said a high but pleasant voice, "and I suppose you are Mr. Wynne's son," and the two young men shook hands. They were a complete contrast to each other. Cardo, tall and square--the new-comer, rather short and thin, but with a frank smile and genial manner which gave a generally pleasant impression. He wore gold spectacles, and carried a portfolio with all an artist's paraphernalia strapped together. "Too precious to be trusted amongst the luggage, I suppose," said Cardo. "You are right! As long as I have my painting materials safe, I can get along anywhere; but without them I am lost." And he busied himself in finding and dragging down his luggage. In less than ten minutes the two young men had left Caer Madoc behind, and were fast lessening the distance between them and Brynderyn. "Very kind of you to meet me; and what a splendid horse," said Gwynne Ellis. "Carries his head well, and a good stepper." "Fond of horses?" asked Cardo. "Oh! very," said the high-toned voice; "riding and painting are the chief delights of my life--" "We can give you plenty of riding--'Jim,' here, is always at your service; and as for the painting--well, I know nothing about it myself, but I think I can show you as pretty bits of scenery as you ever saw within the four sides of a gilt frame." And as they drew near the top of the moor, where they caught sight of the long stretch of coast, with its bays and cliffs and purple shadows, the new-comer was lost in admiration. Cardo, who had been accustomed all his life to the beauties of the coast, was amused at his friend's somewhat extravagant exclamations. "Oh, charming!" he said taking off his glasses and readjusting them on his well-shaped nose; "see those magnificent rocks--sepia and cobalt; and that cleft in the hills running down to the shore--ultra marine; and what a flood of crimson glory on the sea--carmine, rose madder--and--er--er--" "By Jove! it will be a wonderful paint box that can imitate those colours," said Cardo, with a nod at the sunset. "Ah, true!" said Gwynne Ellis, "one would need a spirit brush dipped in ethereal fire, "'A broad and ample road whose dust is gold, Open, ye heavens! your living doors--'" "That is very pretty," said Cardo, "but I am not much acquainted with English poetry--a farmer's life, you know, is too busy for that sort of thing." "I suppose so; but a farmer's life _is_ poetry itself, in its idyllic freshness and purity." Cardo shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know so much about that, but it is a life that suits me. I was meant for a farmer, I am sure--couldn't soar much above turnips and hay, you know. See here, now, there's a crop of hay to gladden a farmer's heart! In a week or two we shall have it tossed about in the sun, and carried down through the lanes into the haggard, and the lads and lasses will have a jolly supper in the evening, and will give us some singing that will wake the echoes from Moel Hiraethog yonder. Then the lanes are at their best, with the long wisps of sweet hay caught on the wild rose bushes." "Aha! my friend, I see I am right," said Ellis, "and a farmer is a poet, whether he knows it or not." Cardo laughed heartily, as they alighted at the front door. "Tell my father that--do. Cardo Wynne a poet! that is something new, indeed!" Here Mr. Wynne, followed by Betto, joined the group. The former, though in his usual undemonstrative manner, made the new-comer welcome, and Betto in her excitement was so lavish with her bob curtseys, that Cardo came in for a few, until he recalled her to her senses by gravely taking off his hat to her, at which she winked and nudged him with her elbow, as she flew about in the exuberance of her hospitality. Seated at the tea-table, the three men soon became quite at their ease. "We are plain people," said Mr. Wynne; "I hope you will not find us too primitive in our ways." "Nothing can be too simple for me, sir," said the visitor, in his high-pitched voice, and speaking a little through his nose. "What can be more idyllic than to drive through the glowing sunset, and find such a meal as this waiting for me--broiled fish, cream, honey?" Meurig Wynne reflected with satisfaction that none of these luxuries were expensive. "I hope you will get strong here," he said; "the air is pure and bracing, and you can roam about where you please. If you prefer riding, you can always have 'Captain' or 'Jim.' I want to sell 'Jim,' but if I don't get 40 pounds for him, I shall keep him till September fair." Gwynne Ellis put down his knife and fork, and sat gazing silently at the fair scene which lay stretched before him. "What's the matter? said Cardo. "Oh! exquisite charming! That view alone is worth coming down for! See those purple shadows! see that golden light on the gorse bushes!" "Well," said Mr. Wynne, rising, "I must return to my study, and leave you young men to finish your meal together." Cardo, though amused at, and somewhat despising his friend's sentimental enthusiasm, yet on the whole did not dislike him. "Oh! I believe the fellow is all right," he thought, when they had parted for the night; "in fact, I rather like him; and, by Jove! I had forgotten all about his being a wrangler! There's no conceit about him anyway; if there had been, I should have had to pitch him out of the dogcart--upset him into the sea or something--but I think he is all right." And he went satisfied to his bed, and slept the sleep of the just, or, at all events--of the busy farmer! [1] Beloved. CHAPTER VI. CORWEN AND VALMAI. Gwynne Ellis soon found himself quite at home at Brynderyn, and enjoyed the freedom and variety of his life in its picturesque neighbourhood. To Cardo, who had hitherto been so much alone, his presence was a very pleasant change, and though Ellis was a complete contrast to himself in every way, he liked him, and felt the advantage of companionship; more especially in the evenings, when, his father shut up in his study, and the old parlour but dimly lighted, he had always found the time hang rather heavily. He was wont to relieve the tedium of the evening hour by strolling into the kitchen, sitting in the rush chair, always looked upon as the young master's, and freely entering into the games or gossip of the farm-servants. He was much amused at the enthusiasm and romance of his new-found friend, who, coming from a populous and uninteresting border country, was charmed by the unconventional ways of the Welsh coast. He threw a glamour of poetry and romance over the most commonplace incidents; and Cardo, to tease him, would often assume a stolid and unimpressionable manner that he was far from feeling. On the whole, they pulled well together, and the acquaintance, begun accidentally, bid fair to become a lifelong friendship. Immediately after breakfast every morning, Gwynne Ellis, armed with brushes, palettes, and divers other encumbrances, would ramble away over shore or cliff, bringing with him in the evening the most beautiful scenes and views of the neighbourhood, which his deft brush had transferred to the pages of his portfolio. He was a true artist, and, moreover, possessed one admirable trait, generally lacking in inferior artists, namely, humility! And as he held up for Cardo's inspection an exquisite sketch of sea and sky and tawny beach, he waited anxiously for his criticisms, having found out that though his friend was no artist himself, his remarks were always regulated by good taste and common sense. "_That_ Nance's cottage?" Cardo was saying to-night as he sat in the rush chair by the fire in the farm kitchen--Ellis on a bench beside him, the little round table supporting the portfolio before them, "that cosy, picturesque-looking cottage Nance's! those opal tints over sea and sky--that blue smoke curling from the chimney, and that crescent moon rising behind the hill! Come, Ellis, you have given us a dose this time!" "Dose of what?" said Ellis, putting on his gold-rimmed glasses. "Why! of romance--of poetry--of imagination of course!" "Give you my word, my dear fellow, that's how it appears to me. You are blind, dead to the beauties which surround you. Now, what would that scene appear like to you?" Cardo laughed. "Why, exactly what it appeared to you, Ellis, only I like to tease you. I see all these beauties, old chap, though I lack the power to pourtray them as you do." "I believe you, Cardo, though I doubt if you realise the blessing you enjoy in living amongst such picturesque scenes. To me, coming from a flat, uninteresting country, it seems a privilege to thank God for on your knees." "Perhaps I feel it as much as you do, Ellis, though I couldn't put it into words, all I know is, I had rather live here on five shillings a week than I would on five pounds elsewhere." "You are a matter-of-fact fellow. Five shillings a week indeed! and five pounds--worse! If you were not so much bigger and stronger than me I'd knock you down, Cardo. Come, let us have a stroll in the moonlight." And they went out, the one to rhapsodise and to quote poetry; the other to shock his friend with his plain, unvarnished remarks, while his eyes and thoughts crossed the valley, and followed the moonlight which lightened up the old grey house looking down from the opposite hill. "Where was Valmai?" He had caught a glimpse of her in the afternoon as he returned from Abersethin, the path to which led him through Essec Powell's fields. Caught a glimpse of her only, for as ill luck would have it, as he crossed one corner of the field she was reaching the gate at the further corner. Other maidens wore white frocks and straw hats, but his heart told him that this was no other than Valmai. He could hear her singing as she went, a long wreath of ox-eyed daisies trailing behind her, the gate open and she was gone; but surely here were signs of her recent presence, for round the horns of Corwen, the queen of the herd of cows, was wreathed the rest of the daisy chain. She was a beautiful white heifer, with curly forehead and velvet ears. As Cardo approached and patted her neck, she looked softly at him out of her liquid brown eyes shaded with long black lashes. "She is a beauty!" said Cardo, looking at her with the critical eye of a farmer, "and worthy to be Valmai's pet. What a picture for Ellis to paint! Valmai and Corwen. By Jove, I'll try to manage it." Gwynne Ellis was delighted when Cardo broached the subject as they roamed over the cliff in the moonlight. "Can you paint animals and--er--er--human beings as well as you can scenery, Ellis?" "Not quite, perhaps, but still pretty well. You liked that sketch of 'The priest and the girl at the confessional,' didn't you?" "Yes--very much. Well, now, what do you say to a pretty white cow and her mistress?" "Oh! 'a pretty girl milking her cow'--a charming subject. Show it me, Cardo--not Betto, now--you don't mean Betto? though, 'pon my word, I have seen her look very picturesque on the milking stool." "No, no, no! Caton pawb! man, I'll show you a prettier picture than that. She's a lovely creature! with brown velvet eyes, her forehead all covered with little round curls." "What! a friz?" "Well, if you like to call it so. Lovely ears and a little soft nose, the whole surmounted by a pair of short brown horns." "Good heavens! the woman?" "Why, no! the cow, of course!" "Oh, I see; the friz and the brown eyes belong to a cow then,--but what of her mistress? My dear fellow, don't waste all your poetry on the cow." "As I haven't much to spare, you think. Well, her mistress is--Valmai!" and Cardo lifted his hat as he spoke. Gwynne Ellis took two or three long puffs at his pipe, and looked curiously at Cardo, who stood looking over at the glimmering light in one of the windows at Dinas. "Cardo Wynne, I am beginning to understand you; I have mistaken the whole situation. Here have I been thinking myself the only man in the place capable of appreciating its beauties properly--the only poetic and artistic temperament amongst you all--and I gradually awake to find myself but a humdrum, commonplace man of the world, who has dropped into a nest of sweet things: earth, sea, and sky combining to form pictures of beauty; picturesque rural life; an interesting and mysterious host; an idyllic cow; a friend who, though unable, or perhaps unwilling, to express his enthusiasm, yet thoroughly feels the poetry of life; and, better than all, I find myself in close touch with a real romantic love affair! Now, don't deny it, my dear fellow; I see it all--I read it in your eyes--I know all about it. The pretty cow's lovely mistress; and her name is--Valmai! How tender! My Welsh is rather rusty, but I know that means 'sweet as May.' Oh, Cardo Wynne, what a lucky dog you are!" Cardo was still silent, and his friend continued, pointing to Dinas: "And there she dwells (haven't I seen your eyes attracted there continually? Of course, there's the glimmer of her lamp!) high on the breezy cliff, with the pure sea wind blowing around her, the light and joy of her father's home, and soon to fly across the valley and lighten up another home." "Oh, stop, stop, for mercy's sake!" said Cardo. "Your Pegasus is flying away with you to-night, Ellis. Your imagination is weaving a picture which is far beside the truth. You have not guessed badly. I do love Valmai, Corwen's mistress, and I wish to God the rest of the picture were true." "Pooh! my dear fellow, 'the course of true love,' you know, etc., etc. It will all come right in time, of course; these things always do. I'll manage it all for you. I delight in a love affair, especially one that's got a little entangled, you know." "Here it is, then," said Cardo. "Valmai has neither father nor mother, and lives up there with an old uncle, who takes no more notice of her than he does of his cows or his sheep, but who would be quite capable of shutting her up and feeding her on bread and water if he knew that she ever exchanged greetings with a Churchman, for he is a Methodist preacher and her guardian to boot." A long-drawn whistle was Gwynne Ellis's only answer, but he rubbed his hands gleefully. "Then," continued Cardo, "on this side of the valley there is my father, shut up with his books, taking no interest in anything much except his church and his farm, but with a bigoted, bitter hatred of all dissenters, especially Methodists, and most especially of the Methodist preacher. Why, Ellis, they convene public meetings on purpose to pray for each other, and I believe if my father knew that I loved Essec Powell's niece he would _break his heart_. Therefore, I cannot tell him--it is impossible; but it is equally impossible for me, as long as I have any being, to cease to love Valmai. Now, there! what way do you see out of that maze?" "Many ways," said Ellis, rubbing his hands with delight. "My dear fellow, you have pitched upon the right person. I'll help you out of your difficulties, but you must let me see her." "All right!--to-morrow!" said Cardo, as they neared Brynderyn. When their voices reached the Vicar's ears, he paused in his reading, and a look of pleasure softened his white face, but only for an instant, for as the young men passed the window a dark and mournful look chased away the momentary softness. "Soon!" he said, "soon I will tell him he ought to be prepared--I _will_ tell him!" It was no easy matter next day to find Valmai, though Cardo and Gwynne Ellis sought for her over shore and cliff and by the brawling Berwen. They were returning disconsolate through the turnip fields at noon, when Cardo caught sight of a red spot in the middle of a corn-field. "There she is, Ellis," he said, turning round; "have we time to go back?" "What! that little scarlet poppy in the corn?" "Yes; it is Valmai's red hood; she wears it sometimes, and sometimes a broad-brimmed white hat." Ellis looked at his watch. "Too late to go back now; it is close upon one o'clock." "Deucedly provoking!" said Cardo; "we will try again after dinner." But after dinner they seemed to be no more successful, although they found their way into the very field where they had seen the red hood. "Let us follow the path," said Ellis stoutly; "it seems to lead straight by the back of the house, and that old ivy-covered barn looks tempting, and suggestive of a beautiful sketch." Cardo hesitated. "Come along, Cardo; not all the Methodist preachers in the world can frighten me back when I am on the track of a pretty picture." In the old ivy-covered barn they found Valmai. The big door was open, and in the dim, blue light of the shady interior, Shoni and she were busily engaged with Corwen, who had been ailing since the previous evening. Ellis was instantly struck by the picturesque beauty of the group before him. Corwen, standing with drooping head, and rather enjoying her extra petting; Shoni, with his brawny limbs and red hair, patting her soft, white flanks, and trying, with cheerful chirrups, to make her believe she was quite well again. Valmai stood at her head, with one arm thrown round her favourite's neck, while she kissed the curly, white forehead, and cooed words of endearment into the soft, velvet ears. "Darling beauty! Corwen fâch!" Here Gwynne Ellis, irresistibly attracted by the scene before him, boldly entered the barn. The girl looked up surprised as he approached, hat in hand. "A thousand apologies," he said, "for this intrusion; but my friend and I were roaming about in search of something to paint, and my good fortune led me here; and again I can only beg a hundred pardons." "One is enough," said Shoni sulkily. "What you want?" The painting paraphernalia strapped on Gwynne Ellis's back had not made a favourable impression upon Shoni. He took him for one of the "walking tramps" who infested the neighbourhood, and made an easy living out of the hospitable Welsh farmers. Valmai saw Shoni's mistake, and rebuked him in Welsh. "There is nothing to pardon," she said, turning to Mr. Ellis, "and if there is anything here that you would like to paint, I am sure my uncle would be quite willing. Will I go and ask him?" "Thank you very much; but if you go, the picture will be spoiled!" But Valmai, taking no notice of the implied compliment, began her way to the big door. "This lovely white cow! do you think your uncle would allow me to paint her?" "Oh! yes, I am sure, indeed!" said Valmai, turning round; "but not to-day, she has been ill--to-morrow she will be out in the field, and then I will make a daisy chain for her, and she will look lovely in a picture." And she passed out into the sunshine. Gwynne Ellis heard a long-drawn "Oh!" of pleased surprise as she discovered Cardo hovering about the door, and he considerately entered into conversation with Shoni, endeavouring to express himself in his mother-tongue, but with that hesitation and indistinctness common to the dwellers in the counties bordering upon England, and to the "would-be genteel" of too many other parts of Wales, who, perfectly unconscious of the beauty of their own language, and ignorant of its literature, affect English manners and customs, and often pretend that English is more familiar to them than Welsh, a fatuous course of conduct which brings upon them only the sarcasm of the lower classes, and the contempt of the more educated. "What you is clabbering about, man?" said Shoni indignantly. "Keep to the English if that is your language, 'coss me is spoke English as well as Welsh." "Yes, I see you do," said Ellis, "and I am thankful to meet with a man so learned. To know two languages means to look at everything from two points of view--from two sides, I mean. A man who knows two languages knows half as much again of everything as a man who can only speak one." Shoni scratched his head; he was mollified by the stranger's evident appreciation of his learning, but thought it necessary to keep his wits about him. "With these foreigns, you know, you never know wherr they arr--these English, you know," he was wont to say, "nor wherr they arr leading you to." "What wass you walk about the country for?" was his next remark. "Ah, that's it now! You are a sensible man; you come to the point at once. Well, I am very fond of making pictures." "Sell them?" "Oh no, just for my own pleasure; every man has his--" "Crack!" said Shoni. "Yes, crack, if you like," said Ellis, laughing, and opening his portfolio; "here are some of my cracks." And they drew near the doorway, leaving Corwen much dissatisfied at the cessation of attentions. Cardo and Valmai had disappeared. Shoni was fast losing his head to this fellow with the high nose and high voice, who evidently knew a sensible man when he saw him. "There is Nance Owen's cottage," said the artist, "at the back of the island; do you recognise it?" Shoni was lost in admiration, but did not think it wise to show it, so he stood silent for some time, with his hands under his coat tails and his red-bearded chin first turned to one side and then to the other, as he looked with critical eyes at the pictures. "It's the very spit of the place," he said at last; "let's see another." And Ellis picked out his masterpiece. "That's Ogo Wylofen," he said. "Ach y fi!" said Shoni, with a shudder, "wherr you bin when you painted that?" "At the mouth of the cave in a boat. It is magnificent, that rushing water, those weird wailings, and the mysterious figures of spray which pass up into the dark fissures." But this was far above Shoni's head. "Caton pawb, man!" he said, "not me would go in a boat to that hole for the world. It is a split in the earth, and those are ghosts or witches or something that walk in and out there; but anwl! anwl! you must be a witch yourself, I think, to put those things on paper. Oh, see that red sun, now, and the sea all red and yellow! Well, indeed!" "Well, now," said Ellis, "I want to have a picture of Corwen." "Yes, to-morrow, in the field, and me standing by her. I will put on my new gaiters." "The young lady has gone to ask your master's consent." "The master!" said Shoni, locking the barn door; "pooh! 'sno need to ask him. You kom to-morrow and make a picksher on Corwen and me. Wherr you stop?" "At Brynderyn." "With the Vicare du? Oh, jâr i!" said Shoni, taking off his hat to scratch his head, "there's a pity now. Essec Powell will nevare be willing for that; but nevare you mind, you kom. Here's Valmai." Cardo was nowhere to be seen. "I asked my uncle, sir," she said, "but I am sorry to say when he heard you were the Vicar's friend he was not willing, but he did not say no." "Twt, twt," said Shoni, interrupting, "you wass no need to ask Essec Powell. The gentleman is kom to-morrow to make a picksher on Corwen and me." Valmai could not resist a smile at Shoni's English, which broke the ice between her and Gwynne Ellis; and as Shoni disappeared round the corner of the barn, she gave him her hand, frankly saying: "Good-bye, Mr. Ellis; I must go in to tea." "Good-bye," he said, "I will venture to bring my paints to-morrow to Corwen's field. And you--you will keep your promise to come and make the daisy chain?" "Well, indeed, I can't promise, but I will try, whatever." "And then you will honour me by looking over my portfolio." "And the Vicar objects to that girl," he exclaimed to himself, as he proceeded down the path to the shore. "What a sweet, sensitive mouth! Oh, Cardo, Cardo Wynne, I can only say, as I said before, you are a lucky dog!" He had wondered what had become of Cardo, but with his full appreciation of a secret love-affair, had had too much tact to ask Valmai, and was not much surprised to find him lying at full length on the sandy beach. "Well, Wynne," he said, pretending to sulk a little, "you _did_ leave me in the lurch." "Leave you in the lurch! my dear fellow, do forgive me. To tell the truth I forgot all about you until Valmai went indoors to find her uncle. I waited to see if she would come out again, but she never did. I believe she was waiting until I had gone; she's dreadfully chary of her company." "Another charm," said Ellis; "one would get tired of an angel who was always _en evidence_. She is an ideal girl. Tell me when you are going to retire, old fellow, and then I will try my luck. That sweet mouth, though the delight of a lover, is the despair of an artist." Cardo sighed. "Well, she came back after you were gone, then, and shook hands with me, but said her uncle did not seem delighted to hear I was the Vicar's friend." "Of course not." "But I made love to Shoni and gained his consent, and he is the real master there, I fancy." "You did?" said Cardo, lost in admiration of his friend's shrewdness. "I did," said Ellis. "To-morrow I am to go to the field and paint Corwen and Valmai has promised to come and make a daisy chain for the occasion." "Has she indeed?" said Cardo, with great interest. "She would not promise me. I believe she loves to see me miserable." "Well, cheer up," said Ellis, "for I shall be a precious long time at those curls of Corwen's and those expressive brown eyes. Shoni, I know, will stick to me like a leech, but you and Valmai, I expect, will meanly desert me again." Next day Valmai was as good as her word, for, as the young men entered the field at one corner, she appeared at the gate in the other, and as she came towards them, Gwynne Ellis was struck anew by the beauty and freshness of her appearance. She wore a simple white frock, her fair, broad forehead was shaded by a white sun-bonnet, and she carried a wreath of moon daisies, which she flung over Corwen's neck who was grazing peacefully among the buttercups, ignorant of the honour awaiting her. Valmai nodded playfully to Cardo and his friend as they drew near, and, taking Corwen's soft, white ear, drew her towards them with many endearing terms. "Come then, my queen, dere di, come along, then, and show your beautiful brown eyes, and your pretty white curls. Here we are, Mr. Ellis; will we do?" and, holding up her white frock, she made a demure little curtsey to the two young men, while Shoni, also arriving on the scene, looked at her with amused surprise, not unmixed with reproof. "Iss you must excuse Valmai, gentlemen," he said, tugging his red forelock; "she iss partly a foreign, and not know our manners about here." "Oh, we'll excuse her," said Gwynne Ellis, while Cardo clasped her hand and gazed rapturously at the blushing face under the white bonnet. "I wass want her," said Shoni, with a jerk of his thumb towards Valmai, "to put on her best frock, but no!" and he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, "there's odd things woman are! 'ts 'ts!" "Well, indeed," said Valmai, "I did not think a smart gown would suit the fields, whatever!" "Couldn't be better, Miss Powell," said Ellis, arranging his group, and introducing Shoni as a shadowy background. With a few deft touches of his brush he had drawn the outlines of his picture, with good-natured artfulness devoting much time to finishing off Corwen and dismissing Valmai and Cardo. "Now you two can go," he said, "but I can't do without Shoni. A little black spot at the back of that ear?" "No, no--brown," said Shoni, delighted to be of such importance, "and the same brown smot on the nother ear, and that's the only smot upon her!" He watched with intense interest the progress of the picture, calling the artist's attention to all Corwen's good points as though he were appraising her at a cattle sale, and an hour passed away quickly both to the artist and Shoni; but to Cardo and Valmai, what a golden hour! to stroll away together over the soft grass studded with buttercups, down to the edge of the cliffs, where they sat among the gorze bushes looking out at the rippling blue bay, silent from sheer happiness, but taking in unconsciously the whole beauty of the scene, for it was engraved upon their minds and often recalled in after years. "There!" said Gwynne Ellis at length, closing his portfolio with a snap, "I can finish the rest at home--" "Iss, iss," said Shoni, "iss not so much otts about Valmai." "And to-morrow I will finish your gaiters, Shoni." "Very well, sir; pliss you remember, seven buttons on both of the two legs." CHAPTER VII. THE VICAR'S STORY. The spring had gone; summer had taken her place and was spreading all her wealth of beauty over the scene. The sea lay shimmering in the golden sunshine, the little fishing-boats flitted about the bay like white-winged butterflies. On the yellow sands the waves splashed lazily; up on the cliffs the sea crows cawed noisily, and the sea-gulls sailed high in the air, and day after day Gwynne Ellis sought and found some new scene of beauty to transfer to his portfolio. Every day he trudged away in the morning and returned late in the evening, fast gaining strength and health, and bidding fair soon to rival Cardo in his burly breadth of chest. And where was Cardo through all this summer weather? The duties of his farm were never very onerous, as, under Ebben's practical management and his father's careful eye all the work was carried on regularly, and he well knew that with every year, and with their inexpensive menage, his father's riches were increasing, and that there was no real reason why he should work at all; but he was one of those to whom idleness was intolerable. True! he could lie on the sands with his hat over his face for an hour sometimes, listening to the plashing waves and the call of the sea-birds; he could sail in his boat on the bay for many a sunny afternoon, the sails flapping idly in the breeze, while he with folded hands leant against the mast, lost in thought, his eyes narrowly scanning the cliffs and rocks around for some sign of Valmai, and sometimes rewarded by a glimpse of her red hood or a wave of her handkerchief; but for the lounging laziness which shirks work, and shrinks from any active exertion, he had nothing but contempt. Dye always averred "that the work never went so well as when the young master helped at it." "Twt, twt, he is like the rest of the world these days," said Ebben, "works when he likes, and is idle when he likes. When I was young--" etc. etc. When the haymaking began he was everywhere in request, and entered with much energy into the work of the harvest. Early and late he was out with the mowers, and, at a push, with his strong shoulders and brawny arms could use the scythe as well as any of the men. The Vicar paid occasional visits to the hayfields, and Betto was busy from morning to night filling the baskets with the lunch of porridge and milk, or the afternoon tea for the haymakers, or preparing the more substantial dinner and supper. "What's Dinas thinking of?" said Ebben, drying his heated face; "not begun to mow yet?" "Begin to-morrow," answered Dye. "Essec Powell forgot it was hay harvest, until Valmai pulled him out by the coat, and made him look over the gate." "Hast seen the picture," said Ebben, "Mr. Ellis has made of her and Corwen? Splendid!" "No," said Dye; "has he? What will the Vicare say? Jâr-i! there'll be black looks!" But Gwynne Ellis had been wiser than to show his sketch to the Vicar; he was learning like Cardo that if there was to be peace at Brynderyn, neither Essec Powell nor his flock nor his family must be mentioned. The last full wain of sweet scented hay had been carted into the haggard, amidst the usual congratulatory comments of the haymakers, who had afterwards trooped into the farm-yard, where, under the pale evening sky, with the sunset glow behind them, and the moon rising full before them, they seated themselves at the long supper table prepared by Betto and Shan in the open yard. First the bowls were filled with the steaming cawl, and then the wooden platters were heaped with the pink slices of home-cured bacon, and mashed up cabbages. Last of all came the hunches of solid rice pudding, washed down by "blues" [1] of home-brewed ale; and the talk and the laughter waxed louder and merrier, as they proceeded with their meal. Gwynne Ellis sat perched on the wall under the elder tree sketching the group, and evidently affording them much amusement. The Vicar looked at them through his study window, but Cardo, who had worked hard all day in the field, was absent. Down in the shady path by the Berwen, he and Valmai walked and sang together. Of course she could sing, with the clear, sweet voice and the correct ear common to most Welshwomen, and Cardo sharing also in the national gift, their voices frequently blended together in song, and the sylvan valley often echoed to the tones of their voices, more especially in the old ballad, which tradition said had been composed by a luckless shepherd who had lived in this valley, "By Berwen's banks my love hath strayed," etc. The June roses bent down towards them, the trailing honeysuckle swept her cheek, and as the sunset faded and the clear moon rose in the sky their voices were low and tender. "I have seen so little of you lately, Valmai." "So little!" said the girl, in feigned astonishment. "Indeed you are a greedy man. How oftentimes has Gwen called me and I have been absent, and even my uncle asked me yesterday, 'Where dost spend thy time, child; on the shore?' and I said, 'Yes, uncle, and by the Berwen.'" "How strange it is," said Cardo, "that no one seems to come here but you and me, and how fortunate." "Well, indeed," returned the girl, "there was scarcely any path here till I came, the ferns and nut trees had quite shut it up." "Yes," said Cardo, "I always thought it was a thicket, though I often roamed the other side of the stream. And now the dear little dell is haunted by a sweet fairy, who weaves her spells and draws me here. Oh, Valmai, what a summer it is!" "Yes," she said, bending her head over a moon-daisy, from which she drew the petals one by one. "Loves me not," she said, as she held the last up for Cardo's inspection with a mischievous smile. "It's a false daisy, love," he said, drawing her nearer to him, "for if my heart is not wholly and entirely yours, then such a thing as _love_ never existed. Look once more into my eyes, cariad anwl,[2] and tell me you too feel the same." "Oh, Cardo, what for will I say the same thing many times?" "Because I love to hear you." The girl leant her cheek confidingly on his breast, but when he endeavoured to draw her closer and press a kiss upon the sweet mouth, she slipped away from his arms, and, shaking her finger at him playfully, said, "No, no, one kiss is enough in a week, whatever--indeed, indeed, you shan't have more," and she eluded his grasp by slipping into the hazel copse, and looking laughingly at him through its branches. "Oh, the cross man," she said, "and the dissatisfied. Smile, then, or I won't come out again." "Come, Valmai, darling, you tantalise me, and I begin to think you are after all a fairy or a wood nymph, or something intangible of that kind." "Intangible, what is that?" she said, returning to his side with a little pucker on her brow. "Oh, if you begin to call me names, I must come back; but you must be good," as Cardo grasped her hand, "do you hear, and not ask for kisses and things." "Well, I won't ask for kisses and things," said Cardo, laughing, "until--next time." And thus, while Essec Powell was lost in dreams of the old bards and druids, and the Vicar counted his well-garnered hayricks, these two walked and sang in the mazes of the greenwood, the soft evening sky above them, the sweet sea-breezes around them, and talked the old foolish delicious words of love and happiness. What wonder was it that, as alone under the stars, they returned to the haunts of men, the links of the love that bound them to each other grew stronger and stronger; and that to Valmai, as they parted on the shore, all of earthly delight seemed bound up in Cardo; and to him, as he watched the lithe, graceful figure climbing up the rugged path to the cliffs, all the charm and beauty of life seemed to go with her. After supper, at which the Vicar had been more silent than usual, he rose, and for a moment stood still, and, looking at his son, seemed about to speak, but appearing to change his mind, after a curt good-night, he walked away through the long stone passage with his usual firm step. He was so regular and fixed in his habits that even this little hesitation in his manner surprised Cardo, but he had not much time for conjecture, as his father's voice was heard at the study door. "Caradoc," he called, "I want to speak to you." Cardo cast an involuntary glance of astonishment at Gwynne Ellis as he rose from the table and put his pipe back on its bracket. "I think I shall go to bed," said Ellis, leaning back with a yawn and a stretch. "I have been on my legs all day, and a jolly day it has been!" The Vicar was standing at the study door holding it a little ajar; he opened it wide for his son's entrance, and closed it carefully before he seated himself in his usual place by the writing-table. "Shall I light your candles, father?" "Yes--one will do." And, while Cardo busied himself with the candle and matches, and drew down the blinds, his father fumbled amongst his papers and coughed awkwardly. "Sit down, Cardo. I have something to say to you which I have been wanting to say for some time, and which I hope will give you pleasure." Cardo said nothing, his attention being rivetted upon his father's countenance; the marble face seemed whiter than usual, the deep shadows round the eyes darker and--was it fancy?--or were the lips whiter? "What is it, father?" said Cardo, at last pitying the old man's evident nervousness; "no bad news, I hope?" "Bad news!" said the Vicar, with a forced smile, which disclosed a row of large and rather yellow teeth. "Didn't I say I hoped it would please you?" "Yes, I forgot, sir." "Well, it is this: you live a very quiet, monotonous life here, and though it has many advantages, perhaps to a young man it would also appear to have many drawbacks. You have lately had Mr. Gwynne Ellis's company, which I am glad to see you have thoroughly appreciated. I should have been annoyed, had it been otherwise, considering that it was not without some change of my usual domestic ways that I was able to arrange this little matter for you. I own I should not like you to imbibe all his ideas, which I consider very loose and unconstitutional; but on the whole, I have liked the young man, and shall be sorry when he leaves, more particularly as he pays well." Cardo winced. "I am very happy working on the farm, and if I have appeared discontented, my looks have belied me." "No, no," said his father, tapping with his finger on the open page before him. "No! you seem to have a fund of animal spirits; but I am quite aware that your life is uneventful and dull, and I think a young man of your er--er--" (he was going to say "prospects," but thought that would not be politic), "well, a young man of your position should see a little of the world." "My position is that of a farmer, sir, and few farmers can afford to travel about and see the world." "Certainly not, certainly not; and for heaven's sake don't run away with the idea that I can afford it any better than other poor vicars or farmers; but knowing that you have a 100 pounds a year of your own, Cardo, which, by the by, you never spend much of, and which I am glad to hear you are already beginning to save up, I thought it well to suggest to you a little holiday, a little break in your occupation." "Once for all, sir, I have no wish to travel, so do not trouble your head about me; I am perfectly contented and happy." There was a moment's silence, except for the Vicar's tapping fingers, and when he next spoke there was a little shake in his voice and a little droop in his straight back. "Well," he said at length, "if that is the case, I need not expect you to accede to my proposals. When a young man is contented and happy, it is not to be expected he will alter his mode of life to please an old man." "And that man his father! Indeed it is," said Cardo, standing up and taking his favourite attitude, with his elbow on the mantelpiece. "Why do you keep me at arm's length? Why do you not tell me plainly what I can do for you, father? There is nothing I would not do, nothing I would not sacrifice, that is--" and he made a mental reservation concerning Valmai. "That is--nothing except what I am about to ask you, I suppose?" said the old man. The words were not amiable. They might have angered another man; but Cardo detected a tremor in the voice and an anxious look in the eyes which softened their asperity. "What do you want me to do, sir?" "In plain words, I want you to go to Australia." "Australia!" gasped Cardo. "In heaven's name, what for, sir?" "I have often told you that some day I would wish you to go to Australia, Cardo. If you cannot afford your own expenses, I will help you In fact--er--er--I will place funds at your disposal which shall enable you to travel like a gentleman, and to reap every advantage which is supposed to accrue from travel and seeing the world." Cardo way speechless from astonishment, not so much at the idea of banishment to the Antipodes--for his father had sometimes, though at long intervals, hinted at this idea--but at the unusual coolness with which he had alluded to such a lavish expenditure of money; and as he looked at his father with an earnest, inquiring gaze, the old man seemed to shrink under the scrutiny. At last, turning away from the table, and placing both hands on his knees, he continued in an altered tone: "Sit down again, Cardo, and I will tell you the story of my life, and then you shall tell me whether you will go to Australia or not." His son sat down again and listened eagerly. He had always longed to hear something of his father's early life; he had always rebelled against the cold barrier of mystery which seemed to enshroud him and separate him from his only son. "Well, to begin at the beginning," said the Vicar, fixing his eyes on one spot on the carpet, "there was a time when I was young--perhaps you can hardly realise that," he said suddenly, looking up; "but strange as it may seem to you, it is a fact. I once was young, and though never so gay and light-hearted as you still I was happy in my own way, and fool enough to expect that life had for me a store of joys and pleasures, just as you do now. I was doomed, of course, to bitter disappointment, just as you will be. Well, I had one trouble, and that was the fear that I might be appointed to a curacy which would take me away from my old home, and I was greatly relieved when I was appointed to this living through the influence of an old friend of my father's. When I entered upon my new duties, I found the old church filled with a hearty and friendly congregation; but soon afterwards that Methodist Chapel was built on the moor, and that rascal Essec Powell became its minister, and from that day to this he has been a thorn in the flesh to me. My father died about a year after I was ordained, and I found the old house rather lonely with only Betto, who was then young, to look after my domestic affairs. My farm I found a great solace. About this time I met your mother, Agnes Powell. Her uncle and aunt had lately come to live in the neighbourhood, accompanied by their daughter Ellen and their niece--your mother. The two girls were said to be wealthy, and seemed to be as much attached to each other as though they had been sisters. I don't remember much about Ellen Vaughan's appearance, in fact I scarcely noticed her, for I had fallen passionately in love with Agnes Powell. Are you listening, Caradoc?" "Yes, indeed, sir," he said breathlessly, "I have thirsted for this knowledge so long." "You have! well, then, listen. I loved your mother with a frantic mad devotion, though I killed her." Cardo started. "Yes, I killed her; not by a cruel blow, or murderous attack, but quite as surely and as cruelly. I told you I had not your gay and lively disposition. I might have added that I was sensitive and suspicious to an intense degree, and from my first acquaintance with your mother until the day I married her, I was always restless and uneasy, hating and fearing every man who approached her." He reached a glass of water which stood on the table, and, having drunk some, looked again at his son. "You see, Caradoc, if I have withheld this information from you long, I am telling you everything now. Just about this time my brother Lewis, who had for some years been settled in Scotland to learn farming, came home to Brynderyn, although I, being the elder son, was the owner of the place. Lewis had a small annuity settled upon him. As I was on the eve of being married, he was much interested in my affairs, and spoke of his admiration of Agnes in such glowing terms, that I felt, and, I fear, showed some resentment. However, as he was well acquainted with my suspicious nature, he was not offended, but laughed me out of my doubts for the time--for the time," he repeated, again fixing his eyes on the spot on the carpet. "Bear in mind, Cardo, through every word of this history, that the suspicion and mistrust of my nature amounted almost to insanity. I see it now, and, thank God, have conquered it in some measure. Well, we were married. Lewis was my groomsman, and Ellen Vaughan was the bridesmaid. It was a very quiet wedding, as Mrs. Vaughan was in very bad health--in fact, she died soon after our marriage, and Agnes seemed to feel the loss of her aunt so acutely that I was jealous and angry, and she saw that I was so, and endeavoured to hide her tears, poor child! poor child! I don't think her uncle ever liked me, or approved of our marriage. Happily he had no control over Agnes's fortune, or I believe she would never have had a penny of it; but I think he might have trusted me there, for I have nursed it--yes and doubled it," he mumbled, as though forgetting he was speaking to anyone but the carpet. "Well, let me see--where was I?" "But my mother, sir?" interrupted Cardo; "tell me something about her--was she pretty?" "Yes, she was beautiful, very lovely, with a foreign Spanish look in her eyes--you have the same, I think, Cardo. There was a tradition of Spanish blood in the family." "And had she a Spanish temper, sir? quick and hasty, I mean." "No, no, quite the contrary; a sweet and amiable temper, but certainly with a good deal of pride, which resented a suspicion like a blow," and the old man sighed heavily. "My brother Lewis made his home at Brynderyn, while he was looking about for some suitable opening for his farming operations, and here in the midst of my newly-found happiness, with hope and love shedding their beams around me, I allowed the first insidious entrance of the serpent of distrust and jealousy of my wife into my heart. My brother Lewis was very unlike me in appearance and disposition, being of a frank and genial manner, and trustful to a fault. I think you inherit that trait from him; be careful of it, Caradoc, or you will be cheated by every man you meet. Not that I would have you follow my example--God forbid! but there is a happy mean, a safe path between these two traits of character." The Vicar was beginning to enjoy the recital of his long past troubles, and the thought flashed through his mind that he would have lightened his burden had he sooner confided in his son. The conduct which seemed so black and stained, when brooded over alone in his study, did not seem quite so heinous when put into plain words and spread out in the light. "Well," he continued, "in spite of my jealous temper, the first few months of our wedded life were very happy, and it was not until I had begun to notice that a very intimate friendship existed between my young wife and my brother, that my suspicions were aroused with regard to them; but once alive to this idea, every moment of my life was poisoned by it. I kept a close but secret watch upon their actions, and soon saw what I considered a certain proof that the love they felt for each other was more than, and different to, that which the relationship of brother and sister-in-law warranted. Betto noticed it, too, for she has ever been faithful and true to me. She came to me one day, and seriously advised me to get rid of my brother Lewis, refusing to give any reason for her advice; but I required no explanation. You say nothing, Caradoc, but sit there with a blacker look on your face than I have ever seen before." "I am listening, father, and waiting for some excuse for your jealous suspicions." "I have very little to give but you shall have the story in its naked truth. I was devotedly attached to my brother; from childhood we had been all in all to each other, and the difference in our dispositions seemed only to cement more closely the bond of union between us; but now my love seemed turned to hatred, and I only waited to make my fears a certainty to turn him out of my house. Although I was anxious to hide my suspicions for a time, I could not refrain from sneering taunts about men who spent a life of idleness while others worked. Lewis opened his blue eyes in astonishment, and his frank, open countenance wore a hurt and puzzled look; but he did not go. He bore my insults, and yet haunted the house, and lingered round the west parlour, now shut up, but where your mother always sat. I found it impossible to hide entirely from Agnes my doubts of her love, and I soon saw that my involuntarily altered manner had made a corresponding change in hers. The proud spirit within her was roused, and instead of endeavouring to soothe my suspicions, and show me my mistake, she went on her way apparently unheeding, holding her head high, and letting me form my own opinion of her actions. I ought to have told you that her uncle had been so annoyed at her marriage with me that he had forbidden her to enter his doors again; and of this I was not sorry, though it roused my anger so much that I added my injunctions to the effect that if she wished to please me she would break off all acquaintance with her cousin, Ellen Vaughan. This, however, she would not promise to do, and it was the first beginning of the rift, which afterwards widened into a chasm between us. Her cousin also was too much attached to her to be easily alienated from her, and the two girls met more frequently than either her uncle or I were aware of. There was another girl, too--I forget her name--but she was a sister of Essec Powell's. Agnes and she had been schoolmates and bosom friends, and they were delighted to meet here by accident, and I soon found that my wife continually resorted to Essec Powell's house to pour out her sorrows into the bosom of her friend; but this I could not allow. To visit the house of my bitterest enemy--to make a friend of his sister, was a glaring impropriety in a clergyman's wife, and I cannot even now feel any compunction at having put a stop to their intercourse--if, indeed, I succeeded in doing so. A cold cloud seemed to have fallen between me and your mother; and as for my brother, we scarcely spoke to each other at meals, and avoided each other at all other times. Still Lewis stayed on, with that puzzled look on his face, and still Agnes went through her daily duties with a proud look and a constrained manner. "Poor Betto looked anxiously from one to the other of us, and I kept my still and silent watch. My heart was breaking with distrust of my wife, and hatred of my brother; but I never spoke of my failing trust in them both. I brooded upon it night and day, and my life became a hell upon earth. "One day in the early spring, about a month before you were born, Caradoc, I had been to a funeral at the old church; and hearing of the serious illness of a parishioner who lived on the high road to Abersethin, I followed the path on the left side of the Berwen, and as I neared the bridge which crosses the valley on the top, I suddenly came upon Agnes, who was sitting on a boulder by the side of the brook, and as I approached I saw her dry her eyes hurriedly. She rose from her seat, and her colour came and went as she looked at me. I longed to take her in my arms and press her to my heart, for she looked pale and sorrowful." An exclamation from Cardo interrupted him. "It pains you, Caradoc--it pains me--it pained me then--it will pain me as long as I have any being. I may be forgiven hereafter, but it cannot cease to pain me. "'Agnes,' I said, 'are you not straying very far from home?' "'I came for a walk,' she answered; 'it is a lovely day!' "'I did not know you could walk so far,' I said. 'Last evening when I asked you to come down to the shore with me, you said it was too far!' "'Yesterday, Meurig, I was feeling very ill; to-day I am better.' "Her lip quivered a little, and she looked round uneasily, I thought. "I said, 'I am going to see old Shôn Gweydd, or I would walk back with you; but perhaps you don't mind going alone.' "'Oh, no, not at all,' she said, as she began her way back by the Berwen. "I went my way with a heavy heart, and as I entered Shôn Gweydd's house (it was a little way down the road) I looked back at the bridge, and saw a girl cross the stile and go down into the valley. It was Ellen Vaughan, and no doubt Agnes had been waiting for her; but when in returning I met my brother Lewis coming over the same stile into the high road, my whole soul was filled with anger, and I passed the brother whom I had loved so tenderly with a short, cold remark about the weather, and I reached Brynderyn consumed with jealousy and bitter hatred. "The same evening, Agnes was sitting at her work at the bay window of the west parlour, while I was busily writing in the old farm parlour which we now use. Lewis entered with the strained and saddened look which he had worn in my presence latterly; he reached a book from the bookshelf, and sauntered in through the stone passage into the west parlour. In a moment I had risen and followed him, and, walking carefully on the carpet which covered it, then, reached the door of the sitting-room without being heard, and through the chink of the half-open door I saw my brother stoop down and whisper something confidentially in my wife's ear. "I entered the room immediately afterwards, and Lewis made some casual remark about the sunset, while Agnes went on quietly sewing. How to endure my agony of mind I knew not, for I now felt convinced that my doubts were warranted; but I was determined to control my feelings and restrain any expression of anger until after the birth of her child, which was fast approaching, as I still loved her too much to endanger her health, and I knew that if once the floodgates of my anger were opened the storm of passion would be beyond my control. "On the following Sunday Agnes came to church for the last time, and after the service I went into the vestry to take off my gown; and as I followed the stream of worshippers leaving the porch, I saw her joined by Lewis, who walked with her towards the lych gate, and before I reached them I distinctly saw him place a note in her hand. She quickly put it in her pocket, and, with a friendly and satisfied nod, he turned round to speak to a neighbouring farmer. "The blood surged through my veins"--and the old man rose from his chair and stood before his son, who sat with his elbow on the table. Unconsciously the Vicar seemed to take the position of a prisoner before his judge; his hands were clenched nervously, and as he spoke he drew his handkerchief over his damp face. "Yes," he said, "my blood surged through my veins, but even then I did not speak a word of complaint or anger. Had I done so, I might have been spared the years of anguish and remorse which have been my share since then. "I walked home silently by my wife's side, forcing myself to make some casual remark. She answered as coldly. And thus passed away our only chance of explanation and reconciliation. You are silent, Caradoc; you do not like to speak the condemnation and the contempt which you feel for your father." "Father," said Cardo, "I feel nothing but pity for you and pity for my poor mother. As for my uncle--" "Wait, wait, Cardo; let me finish my story. That was the last time your mother came to church. In a short time afterwards you were born, and during the intervening time I struggled harder than ever, not to forgive, but to drop my wife entirely out of my life. I tried to ignore her presence, to forget that she had ever been dear to me; but I give you my word, Cardo, I _never_ spoke a harsh or accusing word to her. I simply dropped her as far as possible out of my life; and she, though growing paler and thinner each day, still held her head up proudly; and while I seemed to ignore her presence--though, God knows, not a look nor a movement escaped me--Lewis was incessant in his tender attention to her. "I had loved my brother passionately, fondly, and the feeling of bitter hatred which now took possession of me tore my very heart-strings, for, in spite of my suspicious and jealous nature, I loved these two--my wife and my brother--with an intensity few would have believed me capable of. Have I made this plain to you, Cardo? At last one evening, just at this time of the year, and at this hour of the day, Betto brought you to me in her arms. She had tears on her face, and as she looked down at her little white bundle, I noticed that a tear fell on your little hand. I did not like it, Cardo; though I thought I was perfectly indifferent to my child, I shrank from the sight of the tear on your hand, and hoped it did not prognosticate evil for you. "Agnes was too ill to see me until the next day, when Betto said she was calling for me. I rose and went at once; but on the stairs, coming down to meet me, was a girl, whose face I recognised at once as that of Essec Powell's sister. I felt great indignation at the sight, as Agnes knew my intense dislike to the Methodist preacher, and, drawing back for her to pass, I said, 'I did not expect to meet a stranger in my own house at such a time, and I must beg that it may not happen again.' "The girl passed on, with an angry flush upon her face. Betto gently drew me into an adjoining bedroom, and, with a troubled face, implored me not to give way to angry feelings. 'Be gentle to her,' she said; 'poor thing, she's as frail as an eggshell. Wait till she is well, master, and then--I pray God may bring some light out of this darkness.' "I only nodded, and went gently into the sickroom. Agnes was lying propped up by pillows, her face almost as white as they. Her eyes were closed, as she had not heard my careful footsteps. I looked at her intently, while all sorts of thoughts and longings passed through my mind. At last the intensity of my gaze seemed to awaken her, for she opened her eyes, and for a moment there was a tremor on her lips. "'Meurig,' she said, and she put out her hand, which I took in mine. Even while I held her hand I noticed on her bed a bunch of sweet violets which I had seen Lewis gather in the morning.--'Meurig, why have you been cold to me?' she asked, while her hand still lay in mine. 'If I have ever done anything to displease you, will you not forgive me, and kiss your little child?' and she looked down at your little head lying on her arm beside her. Oh, Caradoc, God alone knows the tumult of feelings which overwhelmed me. I cannot describe them! I stooped and kissed your little black head, and more, I stooped and kissed her pale forehead. "'I forgive you,' I said. "'Is that all?' she said. "And as I hesitated, the old haughty flush rose to her forehead, and turning her head on her pillow, she said, 'I am tired now, and want to sleep.' "So I turned away and closed the door gently, and I never saw her alive again, for that night she died suddenly. Swiftly the Angel of Death came, _at her call_. I believe it, Caradoc, for Dr. Hughes who was sent for hurriedly, declared he knew of no reason why she should not have lived. "'I think she would have recovered, Wynne,' he said, 'had she wished to; but where there is no wish to live sometimes the powers of life fail, and the patient dies. Why she did not wish to live _I_ do not know--perhaps _you_ do,' and my old friend turned from me with a coldness in his manner, which has remained there ever since." The Vicar sank into his chair again, as if the memory of his early trials had fatigued him, and Cardo, rising and approaching him, drew his hand gently over his black hair besprinkled with white. His son's tenderness seemed to reach the old man's heart. Burying his face in his hands he gulped down a sob before he continued: "Wait a minute, Cardo, you will not pity me when you have heard all my story. With the earliest dawn I rushed out of the house, which seemed to stifle me. I longed for the cool morning breezes, and God forgive me, if I thought too with longing of the cool sandy reaches that lay under the rippling waters of the bay! On the brow of the hill I met Essec Powell, who was out early to see a sick cow, and there, while my heart was sore to agony, and my brain was tortured to distraction, that man reproached me and insolently dared to call me to account for 'my inhuman conduct to my wife!' "'Ach y fi! What are you? he said, with his strong Welsh accent, 'are you man or devil?' and he tore open the wounds which were already galling me unbearably. 'You bring a young girl from a happy home, where she was indulged and petted, and in a year's time you have broken her spirit, and you will break her heart. Because her brute of an uncle forbids his own daughter to go near her--my sister, her old schoolfellow, goes to see her in her trouble, and you turn her out of your house. I have longed for the opportunity of telling you what I thought of you, and of what all the world thinks of you.' "I was a strong man, and he was a weak and shrivelled creature; I could have tossed him over the rocks into the sea below. It required a very strong effort to control my fury, but I did do so, and I turned away without answering him, except by a cold, haughty look. I hated him, Caradoc, and I have hated him ever since. He had not then heard of Agnes's death, but the news flew fast through the neighbourhood, and I knew I was everywhere looked upon as her murderer! "As I returned to my miserable home, I saw a man on horseback come out at the back gate. It was one of Colonel Vaughan's servants. I wondered what brought him there so early, but went in at the front gate to avoid meeting him. The house was very silent with its drawn blinds. "When Betto came in with pale, tearful face, I asked her what had brought Colonel Vaughan's servant there so early. "'A very strange thing, sir,' she said. 'He came to ask if Miss Vaughan was here? Colonel Vaughan was in great distress--if you call tearing about and swearing being in great distress--that was what Sam said, sir--because Miss Vaughan is nowhere to be found. Dir anwl! a strange thing, indeed, sir!' "I was too miserable to pay much attention to her gossip, and began my breakfast alone, for Lewis had not appeared, and I dreaded to see him. I had thought it strange that in the turmoil of the night before, with the hurried footsteps and the arrival of the doctor's gig, my brother had not been disturbed, and he was apparently still sleeping. I shall never forget that long, long day. I thought my misery was beyond human endurance; little did I think that ere night it would be increased tenfold. "I had refused to leave this room, though Betto had done her best to persuade me to eat the dinner which she had prepared She was always quick to read my thoughts and understand my feelings. "'You would be quite as much alone in the parlour, sir, as you are here;' she said, 'for I can see nothing of Mr. Lewis. Indeed, I have been into his room, and I see he has not slept there last night,' and she flung her apron over her head, and swayed backwards and forwards crying 'Oh, anwl! beth na i!'[3] and she slowly and tremblingly drew a note out of her pocket and handed it to me. 'Perhaps that will tell you something, sir.' "'Where did you find this?' I said, "I found it on her bed after she died. Mr. Lewis had sent it by Madlen the nurse.' "I tore the note open--I never dreamt it was dishonourable, neither do I now--and read the words which began the awakening that was to come with such force and bitterness. They were these: "'MY DEAR AGNES,--My warmest congratulations upon the birth of your little one, and my deepest thanks for all your kindness to me and dear Nellie. Without your help we should never have been united. Good-bye, and may God grant us all a happy meeting at some future time. "'Your ever grateful and devoted friends, "'LEWIS WYNNE and ELLEN VAUGHAN.' "I stared at the letter in a maze of troubled thought, the feeling uppermost in my mind being 'too late! too late! gone for ever, my beloved wife! and alienated from me for ever my little less loved brother!' "'And this, sir,' said Betto, drawing another letter from her pocket, 'I found on Mr. Lewis's table. I think it is directed to you.' "I hastily tore that open also, and read words that I cannot even now bring myself to repeat. They were too bitter in their tender upbraiding, in their innocent ignorance of my suspicions. They spoke of a love whose existence I had not guessed; of his devotion to Ellen Vaughan, my wife's cousin; of his deep gratitude to Agnes for her unfailing kindness to him and to his beloved Ellen; of his deep distress at my evident dislike of him. "'What has come between us, Meurig?' he said. 'What has become of the faithful love of so many years? Is it possible you have grudged me the shelter of your roof and the food that I have eaten? I can scarcely believe it, and yet I fear it is true. Enclosed I leave you a cheque which will pay for anything I may have cost you; further than that I can only thank you for your, I fear, unwilling hospitality, and pray that some day we may meet, when this mysterious cloud, which I have deplored so much, may have cleared away. "'When you read this, Ellen and I will have been married at St. Jorwerth's Church at Caer Madoc, and shall, I hope, have sailed for Australia, where you know I have long wished to go.' "'Betto,' I said, 'is she lying dead and still upstairs?' "'Yes, master, poor angel! still enough and white enough in her coffin! Why, sir, why?' "'Because I wonder she does not come down and reproach us, for we have been wronging her from beginning to end, Betto! These letters prove to me that my brother--my beloved, innocent brother--was deeply in love with her cousin, Ellen Vaughan, and she, in the tenderness of her heart, helped to bring about their union, and was the means of delivering the letters which they wrote to each other. They were married this morning at Caer Madoc Church, and have probably already sailed for Australia.' "Betto left me, sobbing bitterly. I think she has never forgiven herself; neither can I forgive myself, Cardo. As the years went on, my sorrow only deepened, and an intense longing arose in my heart for the friendship of the brother who had been so much to me for so many years. I wrote to him, Caradoc--a humble, penitent letter, beseeching his forgiveness even as a man begs for his life. He has never answered my letter. I know he is alive and thriving, as he writes sometimes to Dr. Hughes; but to me he has never sent a message or even acknowledged my letter, and I thirst for his forgiveness--I cannot die without it. "I have long cherished the thought that when you came to man's estate I would send you to him. I would send the best of earthly treasure that I possess--my only son--to plead for me, to explain for me, and to bring back his love and forgiveness. Now, Cardo, will you go?" "I will, father," said Cardo, rising and placing his hand in his father's. "And can you think over what I have told you and still retain a little love and pity for your old father?" "Father, I feel nothing but the deepest sorrow and pity for you both--father and mother. I don't know which is to be pitied most. Thank you for telling me all this, it explains so much that has puzzled me--it accounts for your sadness and gloom--and--and your apparent coldness. I will go to Australia, and, please God, I will bring back my uncle's love and forgiveness to you." "God bless you, my boy, and good-night." There was a warm hand-clasp, and Cardo left his father sitting by the flickering candle, which had burnt down to its socket. [1] A blue mug containing a little over half a pint. [2] Dear sweetheart. [3] "Oh, dear! what shall I do?" CHAPTER VIII. THE OLD REGISTER. The summer had passed, with all its charms of June roses and soft July showers, with its sweet, long days of sunshine, and its soft, west winds brine-laden, its flights of happy birds, and its full promise in orchard and corn-field. Cardo and Valmai still haunted the woods by the Berwen, and walked along its banks, or sat listening to its trickling music as it hastened down to the sea; but there was a sadder look on both their faces. Cardo had new lines about his mouth, and Valmai had a wistful look in her blue eyes; both had an unaccountable premonition of something sorrowful to come. "Oh, I am afraid of something," the girl had said one day, as she sat beside her lover, throwing pebbles into the brook, "something worse even than this terrible parting, which must come next month. What is it, Cardo? What is hanging over us? Something that darkens the sunlight and dims the moonlight to me? Are we parting for ever, do you think?" "Nonsense, dearest," said Cardo cheerfully, though the little pucker between his eyes seemed to speak of the same anxiety and fear. "Isn't the separation which we must bear enough to account for all sorts of fears and depressing thoughts? It is that only which dims the sunshine to me, and makes me feel as if I were losing all the light and happiness out of my life; but let us cast our fears to the wind, Valmai, for a year will see all our troubles over; in a year's time I shall have returned, bringing, I hope, reconciliation and love to my dear old father--peace for his last days, Valmai. It is worth trying for, is it not?" "Yes, yes; no doubt your presence will be more effectual than a letter." "He thinks, too," said Cardo, "that a little travel by land and sea will brighten my life which he imagines must be so monotonous on this lonely west coast. He doesn't know of the happy hours we spend here on the banks of the Berwen, but when I return with loving greetings from his brother, and, who knows, perhaps bringing that brother with me in person, then, Valmai, while his heart is softened and tender, I will tell him of our love, I will ask his consent to our marriage, and if he refuses, then we must take our own way and be married without his consent. There is the thatch house just above the mill already waiting for us--it is my own, you know; and although old Sianco and his wife don't make much of it, think how lovely you and I would make it. Think of me sitting in the thatched porch behind those roses smoking, and you looking out through those pretty little lattice windows under the eaves." Valmai sighed and blushed. "Oh, what dreams, Cardo; I cannot reach so far. My thoughts stop short at the long winter, when that glistening sea will be tossing and frothing under the fierce north-west wind. Oh, I know how it looks in the winter; and then to think that all that lies between me and you. What a trouble has come upon us when all seemed so bright and glorious." "Yes, I have brought sorrow and unrest into your peaceful life. Will you give me up; will you break the bonds that are between us; and once more be free and happy?" "Cardo," was all her answer, in a pained tone, as she placed her hand in his, "what are you talking about?" "Nonsense, love, foolish nonsense. I know too well that nothing on earth or heaven can break the bonds that bind us to each other. And this terrible parting. I could bear it far more easily if you were mine, my very own, my wife, Valmai. Then I should feel that nothing could really part us. Can it not be? Can we not be married here quietly in the old church, with none but the sea-breezes and the brawling Berwen for company?" "And the old white owl to marry us, I suppose. Oh, Cardo, another dream. No, no; wait until you return from that dreadful Australia, and then--" "And then," said Cardo, "you will not say no." "No," said the girl, looking frankly into his eager face, "I will not say no. But I must go; I am late. Shoni begins to ask me suspiciously, 'Wherr you going again, Valmai?' I am sure we could not go on much longer meeting here without his interference." "How dreadful to have Shoni's red hair and gaitered legs dogging our footsteps in this fairy dell." "To whom does this sweet valley belong, Cardo? To you?" "To my father. If it ever comes into my possession, it will be so guarded that no stray foot shall desecrate its paths." Cardo was not without hope of being able to overcome Valmai's reluctance to be married before he left the country, and as he and Gwynne Ellis returned one day from a sail he broached the subject to his friend. "To-morrow will be the first of September," he said, as he watched the bulging sail and the fluttering pennon against the blue sky. "Yes," answered Ellis, "I am sorry my holiday is coming to a close." "I don't see why you should leave, although I am obliged to go." "Oh, it will be quite time for me; everything jolly comes to an end some time or other." "True," said Cardo, with a sigh. "Well, you heave a sigh, and you look as grave and solemn as any of Essec Powell's congregation, and, upon my word, I don't see what you've got to look so glum about. Here you are, engaged to the prettiest girl in Wales; just going out for a year's travel and enjoyment before you settle down as a married man in that idyllic thatched cottage up the valley--a year to see the world in--and a devoted father (for he is that, Cardo, in spite of his cold ways) waiting to greet you when you come back. And Valmai Powell following every step you take with her loving and longing thoughts. No, no, Cardo; you have nothing to pull such a long face about. On the contrary, as I have said before, you are a lucky dog." (Cardo grunted.) "Besides, you are not obliged to go. It seems to me rather a quixotic affair altogether, and yet, by Jove! there is something in it that appeals to the poetic side of my nature. You will earn your father's undying gratitude, and in the first gush of his happiness you will gain his consent to your marriage with Valmai. Not a bad--rather a clever little programme." "Oh, it is all very well for you to talk like that, Ellis; but nothing you say can lessen the bitterness of parting from Valmai. It is my own wish to go, and nothing shall prevent me; but I could bear the separation with much more fortitude if only--" And he stopped and looked landwards, where the indistinct grey blur was beginning to take the pattern of fields and cliffs and beach. "If what?" said Ellis, shifting the sail a little. "If only I were married to Valmai." "Phew! what next?" said Ellis, "married! Cardo Wynne, you are bringing things to a climax. My dear fellow, it would be far harder to part from a wife of a week than from a sweetheart of a year. That's my idea of wedded bliss, you see." "Nonsense; it would not!" said Cardo. "It would give me a sense of security--a feeling that, come fair or come foul, nothing could really come between me and Valmai; and besides, I should not want her to be the wife of a week--I should be satisfied to be married even on the morning of my departure. Come, Ellis, be my friend in this matter. You promised when I first told you of my love for Valmai that you would help us out of our difficulties. You are an ordained priest; can you not marry us in the old church on the morning of the 14th? You know the _Burrawalla_ sails on the 15th, and I go down to Fordsea the day before, but not till noon. Can you not marry us in the morning?" "Has Valmai consented?" asked Ellis, sinking down in the prow of the boat and looking seriously at his companion. "I--I--have not pressed the question, but if she agrees, will you do it?" "Do it? My dear fellow, you talk as if it were a very simple affair. Do it, indeed! Where are the banns?" "I would buy a license." "And the ring?" "At Caer Madoc." And Cardo began to look in deadly earnest. "And what about the witnesses?" "I have even thought of that. Are not your two friends, Wilson and Chester, coming to Abersethin next week?" "So they are," said Ellis, "to stay until I leave. The very thing. They will be delighted with such a romantic little affair. But, Cardo, how about my duty to your father, who has been a very kind friend to me?" "Well," said Cardo, "shall you be doing me an unkindness or the reverse when you make Valmai my wife? Is she not all that a woman can be? has she not every virtue and grace--" "Oh, stop, my dear fellow! don't trouble to go through the inventory. I'll allow you at once she is perfect in mind, body, and soul--and the man to whom I marry her will owe me an eternal debt of gratitude!" "True, indeed!" said Cardo, beginning energetically to lower the sails, and guide the boat safely to shore. He said no more, until, after a tramp over the beach, both buried in their own thoughts, they drew near the path to Brynderyn. "You will help me, then, at the old church on the morning of the fourteenth?" "I will," said Ellis. Before that morning arrived, Cardo had won from Valmai a frightened and half-reluctant consent. She was no longer a child, but seemed to have matured suddenly into a woman of calm and reflective character, as well as of deep and tender feeling. To be married thus hurriedly and secretly! How different to the beautiful event which she had sometimes pictured for herself! Where was the long, white veil? Where were the white-robed bridesmaids? Where were the smiling friends to look on and to bless? There would be none of these indeed, but then--there would be Cardo! to encourage and sustain her--to call her wife! and to entrust his happiness to her. Yes, she would marry him; she would be true to him--neither life nor death should shake her constancy--no power should draw from her lips the sweet secret of their marriage, for Cardo had said, "It must be a secret between us, love, until I return and tell my father myself--can you promise that, Valmai?" and with simple earnestness she had placed her hand in his, saying, "I promise, Cardo." And well might he put his trust in her, for, having given that word of promise, no one who knew her (they were very few) could doubt that she would keep it both in the letter and in the spirit. The morning of the fourteenth dawned bright and clear, but as Cardo threw up his window and looked over the shining waters of the bay he saw that on the horizon gray streaky clouds were rising, and spreading fan-like upwards from one point, denoting to his long-accustomed eye that a storm was brewing. "Well! it is September," he thought, "and we must expect gales." He dressed hurriedly though carefully, and was soon walking with springy step across the beach, and up the valley to the old church. He cast a nervous glance towards Dinas, wondering whether Valmai would remember her promise--fearing lest she might have overslept herself--that Essec Powell or Shoni might have discovered her intentions and prevented their fulfilment; perhaps even she might be shut up in one of the rooms in that gaunt, grey house! Nothing was too unreasonable or unlikely for his fears, and as he approached the church he was firmly convinced that something had happened to frustrate his hopes; nobody was in sight, the Berwen brawled on its way, the birds sang the ivy on the old church tower glistened in the sunshine, and the sea-gulls sailed overhead as usual. It had been decided the night before that Gwynne Ellis should leave the house alone at his usual early hour, and that his friends should come by the high road from Abersethin, and down by the river-path to the church. They were not to stand outside, but to enter the church at once, to avoid any possible observation; but in spite of this prior arrangement Cardo wondered why no one appeared. "Can Gwynne Ellis be late? or those confounded fellows from Abersethin have forgotten all about it, probably? It's the way of the world!" As he crossed the stepping-stones to the church he felt sure there would be no wedding, and that he would have to depart at midday still a bachelor, leaving Valmai to all sorts of dangers and trials! When he entered the porch, however, and pushed open the door of the church, in the cool green light inside, he found his three friends waiting for him. "I wonder why she doesn't come," he said, turning back to look up the winding path through the wood; "it's quite time." "Yes, it is quite time," said Ellis. "I will go and put on my surplice. You three can sit in that ricketty front pew, or range yourselves at the altar rail, in fact--there she is coming down the path, you won't be kept long in suspense." And as the three young men stood waiting with their eyes fixed upon the doorway, Valmai appeared, looking very pale and nervous. Gwynne Ellis had already walked up the church, and was standing inside the broken altar rails. Valmai had never felt so lonely and deserted. Alone amongst these strangers, father! mother! old friends all crowded into her mind; but the memory of them only seemed to accentuate their absence at this important time of her life! She almost failed as she walked up with faltering step, but a glance at Cardo's sympathetic, beaming face restored her courage, and as she took her place by his side she regained her composure. Before the simple, impressive service was over she was quite herself again, and when Cardo took her hand in his in a warm clasp, she returned the pressure with a loving smile of confidence and trust, and received the congratulations of Gwynne Ellis and his two friends with a smiling though blushing face. The two strangers, never having seen her before, were much struck by her beauty; and indeed she had never looked more lovely. She wore one of her simple white frocks, and the white hat which had been her best during the summer, adorned only with a wreath of freshly gathered jessamine, a bunch of which was also fastened at her neck. With the addition of a pair of white gloves which Cardo had procured for her, she looked every inch a bride. She wore no ornament save the wedding ring which now glistened on her finger. "Let us do everything in order," said Ellis. "Take your wife down to the vestry." Cardo drew her hand through his arm, and at the word "wife," pressed it gently to his side, looking smilingly down at the blushing face beside him. When they reached the vestry, whose outer wall in the old tower was lying crumbling on the grass outside, while the two young men chatted freely with the bride and bridegroom, they were joined by Gwynne Ellis, carrying an old and time-worn book under his arm. Cardo gasped, "I never thought of the register; it is kept in the new church! Is it absolutely necessary, Ellis? What shall we do? What have you there?" "Why, the old register, of course! I furraged it out last night from that old iron chest inside the altar rails. There is another there, going back to the last century, I should think. I must have a look at them; they will be interesting." "Ellis, you are a friend in need," said Cardo. "I had never thought of this part of the ceremony." "No, be thankful you had a cool and collected head to guide you. See, here is a blank space at the bottom of one of these musty pages. It won't be at all _en règle_ to insert your marriage here; but I dare not bring the new register out of the other church; moreover, there may be another wedding soon, and then yours would be discovered." "What a genius you are!" said Cardo, while Gwynne Ellis wrote out in bold, black characters, under the faded old writing on the rest of the page, the certificate of Cardo and Valmai'a marriage. "There, you have tied a knot with your tongue that you can't untie with your teeth! Here is your marriage certificate, Mrs. Wynne. I need not tell you to keep it safely." Suddenly there was a rustling sound above them, which startled them all, and Cardo grasped Valmai hastily, to the great amusement of the young men. It was the white owl, who had solemnly watched the proceedings in the vestry, and now thought it time to take her flight through the broken wall. "There Cardo," said Valmai, "I said the white owl would be at our wedding, and the sea breeze, and the Berwen; I heard them both while you were writing your name." "Well now," said Gwynne Ellis, "Wilson, Chester, and I will leave you both, as I know what a short time you will have together." And with many congratulations and good wishes, the three young men left the old church, leaving Cardo and Valmai to their last words before parting. There was a ricketty, worm-eaten bench in the vestry, and here they sat down together. Cardo trying to keep up a cheerful demeanour, as he saw her face sadden and her eyes fill with tears. "How lovely you look, my darling," he said. "How did you manage to escape Shoni's shrewd eyes in such finery?" "I put my scarlet cloak on and drew the hood over my head, and it tumbled my hair," she said, with a little wan smile. Already the glamour of the wedding was giving way to the sorrow of parting. "I had my hat under my cloak. Oh, anwl! I am getting quite a deceitful girl!" Cardo winced; was he sullying the pure soul? But there was no time for retrospection, the minutes were fleeting rapidly by, he had to return to his breakfast with his father, who would expect his last hours to be spent with him. "When do you start from Brynderyn?" she asked, her voice growing lower and more sorrowful. "At two o'clock, love, punctually; the cart has already gone with my luggage. Valmai, how can I part from you--how can I leave you, my beloved, my wife?" "Oh, Cardo, Cardo!" was all her answer. She buried her face in her hands, and the tears trickled through her fingers. Cardo drew them away tenderly. "There is a tear on your ring, dear," he said, kissing it, "that must not be; let that at all events be the emblem of meeting and happiness and joy. Think, Valmai, only a year, and I shall come and claim you for my own! Confess, dearest, that it is a little solace that we are united before we are parted, that, whatever happens, you are my wife and I am your husband." "Yes, indeed; indeed, it is my only solace, and I am going to be brave and hopeful. My ring I must not wear on my finger; but see, I have brought a white satin ribbon to tie it round my neck; it shall always be there until you take it off, and place it on my finger again." "And you will keep our secret until I return, darling?" "Yes," said Valmai impressively, "_until you come back, Cardo, and give me leave to reveal it_." "We must part, fanwylyd; my father must not miss me." "No, no--go, I will not keep you back." There was a long, passionate embrace, during which the white owl flapped in again to her nest. "Good-bye and good-bye, darling, and farewell until we meet again." "Leave me here, Cardo. Good-bye, dearest husband!" And so they parted, and, in the memory of both, for many a long year the sound of the Berwen held a place, and the flap of the white owl's wings brought back to Valmai memories of pain and happiness, mixed together in a strange tumult. Slowly she made her way up the path to Dinas, the scarlet cloak was taken out from the bush under which it had been hidden, and, enveloped in its folds, she entered the house. Going up to her own room, she took off the sacred wedding dress, and, folding it carefully, laid it away with its bunch of jessamine, while she donned another much like it, but of a warmer material, for she loved white, and seldom appeared in a coloured dress. With Cardo the hours slipped by quickly. His father had many last directions to give him, and Betto had endless explanations to make. "You will find your gloves in your pocket, Mr. Cardo, and your clean handkerchiefs are in the leather portmanteau; but only six are by themselves in the little black bag." Gwynne Ellis had accompanied his friends to their lodgings at Abersethin, and after breakfast returned to Brynderyn; they had all been charmed with the bride's appearance. "By Jove! Ellis," Chester had said, "I think I envy that Wynne in spite of the parting. I have never seen such a lovely bride!" "Any more pearls of the sort to be found in this out-of-the-way place?" asked Wilson. "No, I have seen none," said Ellis; "and I doubt if you will find one anywhere," for he was an enthusiastic admirer of Valmai. "I have quite enjoyed the part we have taken in this romantic little affair--eh, Wilson?" "Ra--ther!" he replied. "But don't forget it is to be a dead secret," said Ellis, as he left the door. "Oh! honour bright!" At two o'clock punctually Cardo and his father seated themselves in the light gig, which was the only carriage the Vicar affected, and when Betto had bid him a tearful good-bye, with all the farm-servants bobbing in the background, Gwynne Ellis, grasping his hand with a warm pressure, said: "Good-bye, Wynne, and God bless you! I shall look forward with great pleasure to meeting you again when you return from Australia. I shall stay here a week or two at your father's invitation." "Yes," said the Vicar, in a wonderfully softened tone, "it would be too trying to have the house emptied at one blow." As they drove along the high road together and crossed the little bridge over the Berwen Valley, the Vicar, pointing with his whip, drew Cardo's attention to the stile beside the bridge. "This is the stile which I saw Ellen Vaughan crossing the day I met your mother waiting for her. I met my brother afterwards, and oh! how blinded I was! But there, a man who is carried away by his passions is like a runaway horse, which, they say, becomes blind in the eagerness of his flight." It was needless to call Cardo's attention to the stile. His first meeting with Valmai was so intimately connected with it; and as he crossed the bridge, he called to mind how they had shared their gingerbread under the light of the moon. "Perhaps you never noticed there was a stile there?" said the Vicar. "Yes," said Cardo, turning round to take a last look at it and the bridge, and--was it fancy, or did he see something waving in the wind? For a moment he laid his hand on the reins with the idea of running back to see, but "Jim" was fresh, and, resenting the check, swerved uncomfortably aside. "Let him go," said the Vicar. "What do you want?" "Nothing, sir. For a moment I thought I would go back and take a last look at the valley; but never mind, let us go on. How black it looks in front!" "A storm rising, I think," said his father. "Yes. There will be a gale from the north-west; we shall catch it on the _Burrawalla_, I expect. Well, I have often wished to see a storm at sea." His father did not answer, but looked gloomily on at the gathering darkness in front. He was full of fears for his son's safety, but it was not his nature to speak openly of any tender feelings. His late confession, although it had comforted and soothed him, was yet a mystery to himself, and he thought of it with a kind of awkward surprise and something like resentment. He was, however, unusually talkative and even gentle as they drove on together. When at last he had seen Cardo fairly off in the coach, with his luggage piled on the top, he turned homewards with a heavy foreboding at his heart. Should he ever see his son again? Had he sent him from his native land to be lost to him for ever? And how willingly he had given in to his father's wishes! But, certainly there was nothing to attract him to his home--nothing but his love for a surly old father! "A fine fellow!" he soliloquised, with a side jerk of his head. "A fine fellow! a son to be proud of!" And when Gwynne Ellis joined him at tea, they vied with each other in their praises of Cardo's character. If Cardo had followed his impulse and returned to look over the stile, he would have found on the mossy hedge inside a little white heap of misery. For Valmai, who had watched for an hour to catch a last glimpse of him, had been frightened when she saw the "Vicare du" looking towards the stile, and evidently drawing Cardo's attention to it; she had shrunk back until they had passed, and then standing on the hedge, had waved a last good-bye, and immediately afterwards slipped down in an abandonment of grief. She remained for some time sobbing and moaning on the grass, until at last her passion of tears subsided. Almost suddenly growing calmer, she stood up, and, not attempting to dry her eyes, let the tears roll slowly down her cheeks. She clasped her hands, and tried to steady her voice as, looking up at the flying clouds above her, she spoke words of encouragement to herself. "Valmai," she said, "you must learn to bear your sorrow in silence; you are no longer a girl--you are a wife! and you must be a brave and good woman!" For a moment she continued to look steadily up at the clouds and beyond them into the depths of blue sky which showed here and there between the storm rifts, then she quietly put on her hat and returned down the well-known path to the river, and with steady, set face and firm step made her way homeward. When her uncle appeared at the tea-table, he carried two large books under his arm, and when the meal was over the lamp was lighted and the red curtains drawn. Up here on the cliffs the wind was already blowing furiously; it roared in the chimneys, and found its way in through every chink in the badly-fitting windows. "Now, let me see--chap. xii.--Valmai, have you found it? St. Antwn's sermon to the fishes," and he settled himself in his usual position, with legs crossed, head thrown back, listening with evident pleasure, while Valmai read and read, her thoughts defying control, and for ever following Cardo on his journey. "Oh, how the wind is shrieking, uncle; it is like a human creature in pain!" "Wind?" said the old man, looking with dreamy eyes at the girl so full of hopes and fears--"storm? Well, it does blow a little, but it's nothing. Go on, Valmai, you are not reading so good as usual," and once more she applied herself to the page, and endeavoured to keep her thoughts from roaming. CHAPTER IX. REUBEN STREET. All night the storm increased in violence, blowing straight from the north-west with an incessant fury which tossed and tore the waters of the bay. Against the black cliffs the foaming waves hurled themselves like fierce animals leaping up to reach their prey, but the adamant rocks, which had defied their rage for centuries, still stood firm, and flung them back panting and foaming into the swirling depths below, to rise again with ever-increasing strength, until the showers of spray reached up even to the grassy slopes on which the sheep huddled together. Valmai had lain with wide-open eyes through the long hours of the night, listening with a shrinking fear to every fresh gust which threatened to sweep the old house away. No raging storm or shrieking wind had ever before done more than rouse her for a moment from the sound sleep of youth, to turn on her pillow and fall asleep again; but to-night she could not rest, she was unnerved by the strain and excitement of the day, and felt like some wandering, shivering creature whose every nerve was exposed to the anger of the elements. When at last it was time to rise and prepare her uncle's breakfast, she felt beaten and weary, and looked so pale and hollow-eyed, that Shoni, who was fighting his way in at the back door as she appeared, exclaimed in astonishment. "What's the matter with you, Valmai? You bin out in the storm all night?" "Almost as bad, indeed, Shoni; there's a dreadful wind it is." "Oh, 'tis not come to the worst yet," said Shoni. The doors continued to bang and the windows to rattle all through that day and the greater part of the next, and it was not till the evening of the third day that Valmai ventured to put on her cloak and pay a visit to Nance's cottage. The tide was low as she crossed the Rock Bridge, and there was no danger, therefore, from the waves. On her return she recalled the events of the last storm, when Cardo's strong arm had saved her from death. Her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered a little as she remembered that night; but she set herself bravely to struggle with her sorrow, and to look forward with hope and joy to the future. When she entered the little parlour, which her neat fingers had transformed into a nest of cosy comfort, she found her uncle standing at the table, looking dazed and helpless. "Oh, Valmai!" he said, "here's a letter from John, my brother, and indeed I don't know what am I to do." "What is the matter, uncle? Is he ill?" "Yes, he is very ill. He has broke his leg, and he got no one to look after his house; and he is asking will you go down to take care of him. Will you go, Valmai? He got lot of money. I will drive you down to Caer Madoc to the coach. That will take you to the station to meet the train, and you will be in Fordsea by four o'clock to-morrow." Fordsea! What visions crowded round the name. Cardo had been there so lately, and now where was he? Out on that stormy sea, every moment increasing the distance between them. "I will go if you like, uncle, and nurse him until he gets well." "There's a good gel, indeed; and you will kom back to me again, 'cos I am used to you now, and you are reading very nice to me, and saving a great deal of my old eyes. He got a servant," he added, "but she is only an ole ooman, coming in in the morning and going home in the evening." "Oh, yes, I will manage very well," said Valmai. She grasped at the idea of change of scene and life, hoping it would help her to regain her peace of mind. So the next day saw her on her way to Caer Madoc, driven by her uncle in the rickety old gig which had carried him on his preaching expeditions for years. Along the high road Malen bore them at a steady trot, and when Valmai took her place in the coach, and bid her uncle good-bye, she called to mind that only two days ago Cardo had been its occupant, and her heart was full of wistful longings. Yes, she felt she was a foolish girl, but she was always intending to grow into a sensible and useful _wife_; and, with this virtuous intention in her mind, she tried to banish all vain regrets, and a serious, composed little look came over her mouth. Arrived at Fordsea, she sought for her uncle's house, it was in Reuben Street, she knew, and not far from the docks. Reaching the roadway, she caught sight of the foaming white waves in the harbour, and wondered how far the _Burrawalla_ had already got on her way towards the Antipodes. "Captain Powell of _The Thisbe_?" said a lounging sailor who was passing, with his hands in his pockets and his cap very much at the back of his head. "Yes, miss, Aye knows him well. It's not far from here, and Ay'll be passing his door. Will Aye carry your bag?" And, not waiting for an answer, he hoisted it on his shoulder, and signed to her to follow him. He was right; she had not far to go before she reached the little, uneven row of houses called Reuben Street, at one of which an old woman, with bucket and cloth, was preparing to wash the doorstep. "Here's the young leddy come," said the sailor, pushing the portmanteau into the passage. "Will I pay you something?" said Valmai, nervously fingering her purse. "Aw naw, nawthin' at all," said the sailor, hurrying away, with a flush on his face that showed her her hesitation had not been unwarranted. In fact, Jim Harris considered himself a "friend of the family," and had gone to the station with the express intention of meeting the "young leddy." Having for years sailed under Captain Powell, he still haunted his house whenever he was on dry land. Every morning he went in to shave him, and in the evening he mixed his toddy for him and made him comfortable for the night, expecting and receiving no more than the friendship and grateful thanks of the old man who had, not so long ago, been his captain. Having deposited the portmanteau, Valmai had scarcely time to thank him before he had slouched away with a polite touch of his cap. "My uncle lives here? Captain Powell." "Yes, miss, and thank the Lord you've come, for Ay've bin ewt on the road looking for you twenty taimes to-day, though Ay towld him you couldn't come afore the train. There he is, knocking again. You go up to him, miss, that's all he wants. Ay'll bring your bag up, honey. There's your room, raight a-top of the stayurs; and there's your uncle's door on the first landing. Ye'll hear him grumbling." And, following these instructions, Valmai knocked at the first door she came to. "Come in, and be tarnished to you," said an extraordinarily gruff voice; and, almost before she had time to enter the room, a heavy book came flying at her. Fortunately, it missed its aim, and she stood for a moment irresolute at the door, while her uncle, without looking at her, continued to rail at his much-enduring domestic, whom he was accustomed to manage by swearing at and flattering in turns. His voice was a guttural rumbling, which seemed to come from some cavernous bronchial depths. "Ain't the little gel come yet?" "Uncle, here I am," said Valmai, approaching the bed with a frightened look, though she tried to put on a placid smile. The shaggy head turned on its pillow. "Hello and so you are; in spite of that old witch saying for the last hour that you couldn't 'acome yet. Come here, my beauty, and shake hands with your old uncle. Ay've got one hand, you see, to shake with you." "Yes, uncle, and to throw books at me when I come in." There was a low, gurgling laugh, which deepened the colour in the old man's face so much that Valmai, fearing he was going to have a fit, hastened to say something quiet and calming. "I came as soon as I could, uncle. We were so sorry to hear of your accident. How did it happen?" "The Lord knows, my dear, Ay don't, for Ay've walked up that street four or five times every day the last faive years, and never done such a thing afore. But there--" and he began to gurgle again, to Valmai's horror, "there must always be a beginning to everything, so Ay slipped on a d--d stone, somehow or other, and, being no light weight, broke my leg, and sprained my wrist into the bargain. Take off your things, may dear. Are you up for nursing an old man till he's well again?" "Indeed, I'll do my best, whatever," said Valmai, taking off her hat and cloak. "Uncle Essec said I was to stay until you were quite well." "That's raight. Ay knew you'd come, my gel, though that old devil wanted me to think that perhaps you wouldn't. 'She'll come,' ay sez, 'and if she's like her father she'll come almost afore she's asked.' So ready, he was; and so kind. And how's old Essec? Got his nose buried in them mouldy books same as ever?" "Just the same," said Valmai. "Shall I take my things to my own room?" "Yes, may dear. It's the little room a-top of this. Where's that old hag now? She ought to be here to show you your room," and reaching a heavy stick, which stood by his bedside, he knocked impatiently on the bare boarded floor, calling Mrs. Finch! Mrs. Finch! so loudly at the same time, that Valmai seriously feared he would burst a blood vessel. "Deaf as a post," he said, gasping. "Leave it to me, uncle; don't tire yourself. She has shown me my room, and there she is taking my bag up. Now, see how quickly I'll be back, and bring you a nice cup of tea, and one for myself in the bargain, for I am famishing," and she left the room with a cheerful nod towards the old man. "Bless her purty face!" said the rumbling voice when the door was closed. "Ay don't want her cup o' tea! Never could bear the slosh, but Ay'm blest if Ay won't drink it to the dregs to please her." In a very short time Valmai returned, carrying a tray laid out neatly with tea-things for two; and, drawing a little round table towards the bed, placed the tray upon it, while Mrs. Finch brought in some slices of cold ham. "There, you see," said Valmai, "I'm making myself quite at home. I asked Mrs. Finch for that ham." "Of course you did, may dear! Didn't Ay tell you, you old addlepate," he said, turning to poor Mrs. Finch, whose only desire seemed to be to find a place for the ham and get out of the room--"didn't Ay tell you the lil gel would come?" "Iss you did--many taimes to-day," said Mrs. Finch, while the old man fumbled about for another book to throw after her. Valmai laughed, but chided gently; "Oh, poor old thing, uncle! She flew about like lightning to get the tea ready. Now, here's a lovely cup of tea!" "Ah! It do smell beautiful!" And he allowed himself to be raised up on his pillow, while he drank the tea down at a gulp. "Bravo! uncle," said Valmai; "ready for another?" "Another! Oh, dash it, no; one's enough, may dear. 'Twas very naice and refreshing. Now you have your tea, and let me look at you." And as Valmai partook of her tea and bread and butter and ham, even his hospitable feelings were satisfied. "Now I'm going to ring for Mrs. Finch to take these things away, uncle; no more books, mind!" "No, no," he said, laughing; "she's had four to-day, and a pair of slippers, and that'll do for one day. After all, she's a good ole sole! though why sole more than whiting or mackerel Ay never could make ewt. She knows me and my ways, may dear, and Ay pay her well. Eight shillings a week regular! and she only comes at ten and leaves at faive. Oh! bless you, _she_ knows when she's well off, or she wouldn't put up with the books and slippers. Ay know 'em!" he added, with a shrewd wink, which set Valmai laughing again. When Mrs. Finch came in for the tray he was quite amiable. "Well, ole gel," he said, "this is the night for your wages, isn't it?" "Iss, sir," said the woman, with a sniff and a bob curtsey. "There's my purse. Count it out to her, may dear. Eight shillings, every penny, and there's a shilling overhead for good luck, Mrs. Finch, becos the lil gel has come to manage the ship for us. Now remember, she's capting now and you're the mate." "Iss, sir, and thank you," said Mrs. Finch, disappearing with practised celerity through the doorway. And so Valmai took her place at once as "captain" of her uncle's house, and, in spite of his gruff ways and his tremendous voice, she felt more at home with him than with Essec Powell, for here her presence was valued, and she felt sure that she had a place in the old man's warm heart. She slept heavily through the next night, and in the morning awoke refreshed, and with a feeling of brightness and cheerfulness which she had not expected to feel so soon. Her new life would give her plenty to do, to fill up every hour and to drive out all useless regrets and repinings. Deep in her heart lay the one unsatisfied longing. Nothing could alter that; nothing could heal the wound that Cardo's departure had made except the anticipation of his return. Yes, that day would come! and until then she would bear her sorrow with a brave heart and smiling face. The weather continued rough and stormy, and, looking out from her bedroom window, the grey skies and windswept streets made no cheerful impression upon her. The people, the hurrying footsteps, and the curious Pembrokeshire accent, gave her the impression of having travelled to a foreign country, all was so different to the peaceful seclusion of the Berwen banks. It was a "horrid dull town," she thought and with the consciousness of the angry white harbour which she had caught sight of on her arrival, her heart sank within her; but she bravely determined to put a good face on her sorrow. On the second morning after her arrival she was sitting on the window-seat in her uncle's room, and reading to him out of the newspaper, when the bang of the front door and a quick step on the stair announced the doctor's arrival. "Well, captain," he said, "and how is the leg getting on?" He was a bright, breezy-looking man, who gave one the impression of being a great deal in the open air, and mixing much with the "sailoring." Indeed, he was rather nautical in his dress and appearance. "You have a nurse, I see," he added, looking at Valmai with a shrewd, pleasant glance. "Yes," said the captain, "nurse and housekeeper in one. She is may niece, poor Robert's daughter, you know." "Ah! to be sure," said the doctor, shaking hands with her. "He went out as a missionary, didn't he?" "Yes, to Patagonia, more fool he," said the captain. "Leaving his country for the sake of them niggers, as if there wasn't plenty of sinners in Wales for him to preach to. But there, he was a good man, and Ay'm a bad 'un," and he laughed, as though very well satisfied with this state of affairs. "Have you heard the news?" said the doctor, while he examined the splints of the broken leg. "No, what is it?" rumbled the captain. "Why, the _Burrawalla_ has put back for repairs, Just seen her tugged in--good deal damaged; they say, a collision with the steam-ship, _Ariadne_. "By gosh! that's bad. That's the first accident that's ever happened to Captain Owen, and he's been sailing the last thirty years to my knowledge. Well, Ay'm tarnished, but Ay'm sorry." "Always stops with you?" inquired the doctor. "Yes, has all his life. There's the little back parlour and the bedroom behind it always kept for him." "Well, you are going on very nicely. Now for the wrist." The captain winced a little and swore a good deal while his wrist was under manipulation. It evidently pained him more than the broken leg. "What the blazes are your about, doctor? Leave it alone--do." "Come, come, now that's all over. You must mind and keep it very quiet. No shying of books and things, remember. Well, good-bye; come and see you again to-morrow. I daresay you'll see Captain Owen by and by. Good-bye, my dear," turning to Valmai, "take care of your uncle." And like a gust of wind he ran down the stairs, banged the front door, and was gone. Valmai had dropped her paper and listened breathlessly to his communications, and she was sitting, pale and silent, as a tumult of exciting thoughts rushed into her mind. "The _Burrawalla_ come back! damaged! a collision! And Cardo, where was he? Was it possible that the dull grey town contained her lover?" "Well, to be sure, here's a pretty kettle of fish," said her uncle, using strong compulsion to adapt his words to the squeamishness of a "lil gel." "Here's the _Burrawalla_, Valmai, put back for repairs, may friend Captain Owen's ship, you know. Sech a thing has never happened afore. You'll have to put his rooms ready, may dear, and laight a fayer by 'm by, for he's sure to be here to-night. You'll look after him, won't you?" "Yes, uncle, I'll do my best, whatever. I had better go and get his sheets aired at once." And she left the room, glad to hide her pale face and trembling hands from her uncle. Once outside the bedroom door, she crossed her hands on her bosom, as though to stop the tumultuous beating of her heart. What was going to happen? Should she hear Cardo's name from Captain Owen? Could she find her way to the docks? and as a gleam of sunlight shone in through the little window in the linen cupboard, she thought what a bright and happy place Fordsea was after all. She hurried through her domestic preparations, and then, after a consultation with her uncle, made an expedition into the market, ordering supplies for the following days. When she returned, the front door was open, and, entering the passage, she heard loud voices in her uncle's room, and gently pushing the door open, saw a rough-bearded, blue-eyed man standing by the bedside. "Well, that's all settled, then; you'll let the young man have my rooms? 'Twill only be for two or three days. And this is your niece? Well, upon my word, I begin to repent of my bargain. Hard lines for me! to be tied to the docks night and day to watch those repairs, while my young friend comes here to be taken care of and fussed about by my old friend and such a pretty girl." Valmai felt disappointed; she had hoped to learn something from their guest of Cardo and his whereabouts. "I am sorry," she said, as he took his departure, "that you can't stay here." The gallant captain taking her hand, looked admiringly at the blushing face. "By Jove, and so am I; but dooty is dooty, my dear, especially your dooty to your ship. Good-bye, come and see you again soon." And once more Valmai was left to conflicting emotions. The day passed quickly, while she divided her attention between her uncle's wants and her preparations for the guest who was to arrive about six o'clock. Mrs. Finch would prepare the tea and roast the fowl which was to accompany it, and Valmai added little dainty touches of flowers and lights for the table. "We won't light the candles till he knocks at the door; and when he has once sat down to his meal, I can manage about taking it out; but I am very nervous. I wonder what he will be like." Her uncle knocked and called incessantly, giving fresh directions and asking innumerable questions, in his anxiety that his friend's friend should be made comfortable under his roof. At last everything was ready, a bright fire burning in the grate threw its glow through the open door of the adjoining bedroom, and flickered on the prettily-arranged dressing-table. All looked cosy and home-like, and when everything was completed, Valmai retired to put on a fresh frock of white serge. "His name is Gwynn," said her uncle at last, while she listened breathlessly to the opening of the front door, and the entrance of the stranger. "This is Captain Powell's house?" said a voice which set Valmai's pulses throbbing, and all the blood in her body rushed to her face and head. For a moment she felt dizzy, and she all but dropped the tray which she was holding for her uncle. "Don't you be afraid, may dear," said the captain consolingly. "Captain Owen tells me he's a ra-al gentleman, and they are always easily pleased. He won't look at you, may dear; but, by Jingo, if he does, Ay'm not ashamed of you. Now, you go down, and make a nice curtsey, may dear, not like Mrs. Finch makes it, you know, but as, Ay bet, you have larnt it at the dancing school; a scrape behind with one foot, you know, and hold your frock with two hands, and then say, 'My uncle hopes you will make yourself quite at home, sir.'" "Oh, uncle!" said Valmai, in despair, "he's not come out yet from his bedroom. Won't I wait till he is seated down at his tea, and till Mrs. Finch has gone?" "Well, confound the ole 'ooman," said the captain, knocking violently on the floor, "where is she now? Why don't she come and tell me how he's getting on? Roast fowl nicely browned, may dear? Egg sauce?" "Yes, and sausages, uncle. There, he is come out now, and Mrs. Finch is taking the fowl in; he is saying something to her and laughing. Now he is quite quiet," said the girl. "Of course; he's attending to business." And for the next quarter of an hour, Valmai had the greatest difficulty in restraining her uncle's impatience. "Let him have time to finish, uncle!" "Yes, yes; of course, may dear, we'll give him time." "I can now hear Mrs. Finch say, Is there anything else, sir? So she is going. Yes, there, she has shut the front door. Oh, dear, dear! Now if he rings, I _must_ go in." "Oh, dear, dear," said the captain, in an irritable voice, "what is there to oh, dear, dear, about? You go down and do as Ay tell you, and you can just say, as the ladies do, you know, 'I hope your tea is to your laiking, sir.' Go now, at once." And as she went, with hesitating footsteps, he threw an encouraging "Good gel" after her. CHAPTER X. THE WEB OF FATE. Arrived on the door-mat of the little parlour, where Cardo Wynne was coming to an end of a repast, which showed by its small remnants that it had been thoroughly appreciated, Valmai fell into a tremor of uncertainty. Was it Cardo? Yes, she could not be mistaken in the voice; but how would he take her sudden appearance? Would he be glad? Would he be sorry? And the result of her mental conflict was a very meek, almost inaudible knock. "Come in," shouted Cardo from within. Another pause, during which Cardo said, "Why the deuce don't you come in?" The door was slowly opened, and there appeared Valmai, blushing and trembling as if she had been caught in some delinquency. For a moment Cardo was speechless with astonishment, but not for long, for, in answer to Valmai's apologetic, "Oh! Cardo, it's me; it's only me, whatever!" she was folded in his arms, and pressed so close to his heart that her breath came and went in a gasp half of fright and half of delight. "Gracious heavens! What does it mean?" he said, holding her at arms' length. "My own little wild sea-bird! My little white dove! My darling, my wife! Where have you flown from? How are you here?" They were interrupted by a thundering knock on the floor above them. Cardo started. "What is that?" he said. Valmai laughed as she somewhat regained her composure. "It is Uncle John," she said. "Wait while I run up to him, and then I will come back and explain everything." "Uncle John!" said Cardo in bewilderment, as he saw through the doorway the graceful white figure flit up the narrow stairs. "Uncle John! Can that be Captain Powell? Of course, old Essec's brother, no doubt. I have heard they are Pembrokeshire people." "Well, how is he getting on?" said the old man, as Valmai entered blushing. "Oh, all right, uncle! there isn't much of the fowl left, so I'm sure he enjoyed it." "That's raight, may gel, that's raight. Now make him as comfortable as you can. May jar of tobacco is down there somewhere, and there's a bottle of whisky in the corner cupboard. Ay hear Jim Harris coming to the door; now don't disturb me any more, and tell Mr. Gwyn Ay'll be happy to see him tomorrow. Now, mind, no larks." "No what?" said Valmai, with puckered eyebrows. "Larks, larks! Don't you know what 'larks' are, child? Ay bet you do, with that pretty face of yours." Valmai still looked puzzled. "Well, 'high jinks,' then; flirtation, then; will that suit your ladyship?" "Oh, flirtation! Very well, uncle, good-night." And after a kiss and another "good gel," Valmai passed Jim at the doorway, and went slowly downstairs. Cardo stood at the bottom awaiting her with wide open arms. "Come, come, Valmai; how slow you are, fanwylyd. I am waiting for you. What made you step so slowly down the stairs?" he said, as he drew her towards him; "you should have flown, dearest." "I was thinking," said Valmai. "And of what?" "Thinking whether I had told uncle an untruth. He said, 'no flirtations,' 'larks;' he called it; and I said, 'Very well, uncle,' and I was wondering whether husband and wife could flirt." Cardo laughed heartily. "Come and sit by me, Valmai," he said, "and let us see. Come and explain to me how, in the name of all that is wonderful and delightful, I find you here, with your head nestled on my shoulder, instead of being separated from me by wind and wave, as, in the natural course of events, you should have been?" "Well, you see, Cardo, when you passed the stile on Thursday (oh, that sad Thursday!)"--Cardo shared in the shiver which shook her--"I was there, to catch a last glimpse of you; but I was afraid to show myself because of the 'Vicare du,' so I shrank down behind the hedge till you had passed, and then I stood up and waved my handkerchief, and then you were gone; and I fell down on the moss, and cried dreadfully. Oh, Cardo, I did feel a big rent in my heart. I never thought it was going to be mended so soon; and I roamed about all day, and tried hard to keep my sorrow out of my thoughts, but I couldn't; it was like a heavy weight here." And she crossed her hands on her bosom. "All that day, and all the next, I went about from place to place, but _not_ to the Berwen, I could not walk there without you; and the next morning, when I came back from Ynysoer, where I had been to see Nance, I found my uncle reading a letter. It was from Jim Harris, the sailor, who does everything for Uncle John, to say he had broken his leg, and would I come and nurse him? And indeed, I was very glad, whatever, to have something to do; so I came at once. Uncle Essec drove me to Caer Madoc, and I thought what a dull, grey town Fordsea was, until this morning when the doctor came and said the _Burrawalla_ had come back for repairs; and then the sun seemed to shine out, and when I went out marketing, I could not think how I had made such a mistake about Fordsea. It is the brightest, dearest place!" "It is Paradise," said Cardo. "There's Jim Harris going! I must go and lock the door." "Everything is all raight, miss, and Ay wish you good-night," said Jim, as he went out. He went through the same formula every night. "Now for my part of the story," said Cardo, when she returned. "First let me take the tea-things away, Cardo." "No, no, bother the tea-things; let them be for a while, Valmai. I forbid your carrying them away at present, and, you know, you have promised to obey." "Yes, indeed, and to love you, and no one ever did love anybody as much as I love you. Oh, I am sure of it. No, indeed, Cardo. Not more, whatever, but you know, you know," and her head drooped low, so that he had to raise her chin to look into her face. "I know what? I know you are my wife, and no earthly power can separate us now. Where is your ring, dearest? It should be on this little finger." "No, it is here," and Valmai pressed her hand on her neck; "you know I was to wear it here instead of on my finger until next year." "Until I came back, darling; and until I took it off myself and placed it on your finger. Come, wifie, where is it?" Valmai allowed herself to be persuaded, and Cardo, undoing the white satin ribbon, drew off the ring, and placed it on her finger. She looked at it thoughtfully. "Am I, then, really your wife, Cardo?" "Really and truly, Valmai; signed, sealed, and delivered," he said; "and let me see the man who dares to come between us!" and his black eyes flashed with a look of angry defiance which Valmai had not seen there before. "Oh, anwl! I hope your eyes will never look like that at me," she said. "But they will," said Cardo, laughing, "if you are the culprit who tries to divide us. You don't know how fierce I can be." "Please, sir, can I take the tea-things now?" "On condition that you come back at once. No, let me carry them out for you, dearest; you shall not begin by waiting upon me." "Oh, but I must, Cardo, for old Mrs. Finch goes home when she has brought the tea in always." And she laughed merrily at Cardo's clumsy efforts at clearing away. As she opened the door into the passage a tremendous roaring and snorting filled the air. "What on earth is that?" said Cardo. "It is my uncle snoring, and if you dropped that tray (which I am afraid you will) the clatter wouldn't awake him." "Good old man! let him rest, then. You are not going to wash up those things?" "No, Mrs. Finch will do that in the morning. And now, Cardo, I must do what my uncle told me to do," she said, as they returned into the cosy parlour, glowing with the light of the blazing fire; and, holding up her dress with her two fingers, she made a prim little curtsey, and said: "I hope your tea has been to your liking, sir? And now for the rest of my duty. Here is his jar of tobacco, and here is the kettle on the hob, and here is the bottle of whisky, and here are the slippers which I had prepared for you." "Little did I think, Valmai, it was you who had made everything look so cosy and sweet for me--these flowers on the table and all those pretty fal-lals on my dressing-table. Little did I think it was my little wife who had prepared them all for me. But as I entered the front door a strange feeling of happiness and brightness came over me." "And I knew the first tone of your voice, Cardo. Oh, I would know it anywhere--among a thousand." There were innumerable questions for the one to ask and the other to answer as they sat in the glowing firelight. First, there was the description of the repairs required by Captain Owen's ship--"Blessed repairs, Valmai!"--and the extraordinary special Providence which had caused the ss. _Ariadne_ to collide at midships with the _Burrawalla_, and, moreover, so to damage her that Cardo's berth and those of the three other inmates of his cabin would alone be disturbed by the necessary repairs. "Captain Owen thinks we shall be ready to sail in three days, so it is not worth while writing to my father," said Cardo. "The thick fog which looked so dismal as I drove into Caer Madoc with him--how little I guessed it would culminate in the darkness which brought about the collision, and so unite me with my beloved wife. Valmai, if Providence ever arranged a marriage, it was yours and mine, dearest." "But, Cardo--" "'But me no buts,' my lovely white sea-bird. Nothing can alter the fact that you are my own little wife." "Yes, I know," said Valmai, "but if you love me as much as you say you do, grant me one request, Cardo." "A hundred, dearest; what is it?" "Well, we have had to be deceitful and secret--more so than I have ever been in my life. We could not help it; but now, here, let us be open. Give me leave to tell my uncle the truth." "Valmai! he will write at once to his brother, and the news will reach my father, and it will break his heart to find I have deceived him. No, let me be the first to tell him. I shall have no hesitation in doing so when I return this time next year." "But, Cardo, dear old Uncle John is quite a different sort of man to my Uncle Essec or to your father. I know he would never, never divulge our secret; he is kindness itself, and would, I know, feel for us. And it would be such a comfort to me to know that we had been open and above-board where it was possible to be so. Cardo, say yes." "Yes, yes, yes, dearest, I know, I feel you are right, so tell him the whole truth. Oh, how proud I should be to tell the whole world were it possible, and how proud I _shall_ be when I return, to publish abroad my happiness. But until then, Valmai, you will keep to your promise of perfect secrecy? for I would not for all the world that my father should hear of my marriage from any lips but my own. You promise, dearest?" "Cardo, I promise," and Valmai looked pensively into the fire. "A year is a long time," she said, "but it will come to an end some time." "Don't call it a year. I don't see why I should not be back in eight or nine months." The kettle sang and the bright fire gleamed, the old captain snored upstairs, and thus began for Valmai and Cardo that fortnight of blissful happiness, which bore for both of them afterwards such bitter fruits; for upon overhauling the _Burrawalla_ it was discovered that she had sustained more injury than was at first suspected, and the two or three days' delay predicted by Captain Owen were lengthened out to a full fortnight, much to the captain's chagrin and the unspeakable happiness of Cardo and Valmai. Next day at eleven A.M. Captain Powell was lying in state, not with the trappings of mourning around him, but decked out in a brilliant scarlet dressing-gown, a yellow silk handkerchief bound round his head for a night-cap. Jim Harris had just shaved him, and as he left the room had said: "There, capting, the Prince of Wales couldn't look no better." Valmai flitted about, putting the finishing touches to her uncle's gorgeous toilet. "Do Ay look all raight, may dear?" "Oh, splendid, uncle, only I would like you better in your plain white night shirt and my little gray shawl pinned over you." "Oh, go 'long! with your shawls and your pins! You wait another month and Ay'll be kicking may heels about on the quay free from all these old women's shawls and dressing-gowns and things. Now, you go and call the young man up." And Valmai went and soon returned, bringing Cardo with her. "Well, Mr. Gwyn, and how are you? Very glad to see you, sir, under may roof. Hope you slept well, and that the lil gel has given you a good breakfast." "Oh, first rate, sir," said Cardo, shaking hands and taking the chair which Valmai placed for him beside the bed. "Well, now, here's a quandary, the _Burrawalla_ is in! but it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and since you must be delayed, Ay'm very glad it has landed you here." "The delay is of no consequence to me; and it's a wind I shall bless all my life." "Well, Ay don't know what Captain Owen would say to that nor the owners nayther. They wouldn't join in your blessings, I expect." Cardo felt he had made a mistake, and looked at Valmai for inspiration. "Mr. Wynne was rather hurried away, uncle, so he was not sorry to come back." Cardo nodded his thanks to Valmai, and the captain and he were soon chatting unconstrainedly, and when at last Cardo accepted a cigar from a silver case which the captain drew from under his pillow, his conquest of the old man's heart was complete. "If Ay _am_ cooped up here in bed," he said, "Ay'm not going to be denied may smoke, nor yet may glass of toddy, though the doctor trayed hard to stop it. 'Shall Ay mix it a little weaker, sir?' sez Jim Harris. None of your tarnished nonsense, Ay sez, you mix it as usual. Ay've stuck to my toddy (just one glass or two at naight) for the last thirty years, and it's not going to turn round on me, and do me harm now. Eh, Mr. Gwyn?" Cardo lighted his cigar with an apology to Valmai. "Oh, she's used to it," said the captain, "and if she don't like it, she can go downstairs; you'll want to see about Mr. Gwyn's dinner, may dear." "No, no, sir," said Cardo, "certainly not. I dine every day with all the other passengers on board the _Burrawalla_. I shall come back to my tea, and I hope your niece will always sit down to her tea and breakfast with me." "Oh, well, if you laike. She's quaite fit to sit down with any nobleman in the land." Later on in the day, Valmai, sitting on the window-seat reading out to her uncle from the daily paper, suddenly laid it aside. "Rather a dull paper to-day, uncle!" "Yes, rather, may dear; but you are not reading as well as usual;" and she wasn't, for in truth she was casting about in her mind for a good opening for her confession to her uncle. "Suppose you sing me a song, may dear!" And she tried-- "By Berwen's banks my love hath strayed For many a day in sun and shade, And as she carolled loud and clear The little birds flew down to hear." "That don't go as well as usual, too," said her uncle, unceremoniously cutting short the ballad. "Haven't you any more news to give me?" "Shall I tell you a story, uncle?" "Well, what's it about, may dear? Anything to pass the taime! Ay'm getting very taired of lying abed." "Well then, listen uncle; it's a true story." "Oh, of course," said the old man. "'Is it true, mother?' Ay used to ask when she told us a story. 'Yes, of course,' she'd say, 'if it didn't happen in this world, it happened in some other,' so, go on, may dear." "Well," said Valmai, laughing rather nervously, "this happened in this world, whatever! Once upon a time, there was a young girl who was living on a wild sea-coast. It was very beautiful, but she was very lonely sometimes, for she had no father nor mother, nor sister nor brother." "Poor thing," said the old man. "Yes, certainly, she was very lonely," continued Valmai; "but one day she met a young man, bright and brave and true." "Handsome?" "Yes, handsome, with sparkling black eyes, and--and--oh, very handsome! and they loved each other truly, and--and--" "Yes, yes! skip that. Ay know that. Go on." "You can imagine that the poor lonely girl gave all her heart to her lover, as there was no one else who cared for it; and so the days were going by, and they were all in all to each other. But he had a stern, morose father, and she had a cold and selfish uncle; and these two men hated each other with a deadly hatred, just like a story book." "Yes, Ay know," said the old man; "like Romeo and Juliet, you know." "Perhaps, indeed," said Valmai; "but anyway, they dare not tell anyone of their love, for they knew that the old father would never agree to their being married, and the young man was very fond of his father, although he was so dark and dour. At last, suddenly, he told his son that he wanted him to go a long way off on business for him, and, wishing to please him, he agreed to go." "More fool he!" said the captain. "Ay wouldn't 'a gone." "But he promised, and he hoped that when he had given his father this proof of his love, he would give his consent to his marriage." "Was he rich?" "Yes, rather, I think." "Well, why in the name of common sense didn't he defy his tarnished old father, and marry the girl he liked?" "You'll see, uncle; wait a minute. The days passed on, and their parting was drawing near, and the nearer it came the more miserable they were; and at last the lover begged his sweetheart to marry him, so that he might feel, when he was far away, that she was really his wife whatever might happen. Well, they were married the very morning on which he left; married in an old, deserted church by a young clergyman, who was a good and true friend to them." "A jolly nice man he must have bin!" "Yes, indeed, he was." "You are making it all up in your head, Ay know. But what did they do next?" "Well, as soon as they were married, they kissed and said good-bye with breaking hearts." "Oh, dash it!" said the captain, "Ay'd have managed it better than that, anyhow." "But they didn't. The bridegroom sailed away, for the country he was going to was miles and miles and miles over the sea, and the poor bride was left at home with her sorrow. But soon afterwards she went to live with another relation, a dear old man--the best, the kindest, the tenderest, the jolliest old man in the world. In fact, he had only one fault, and that was that he sometimes used a bad word." "Poor old chap!" said the captain. "You mustn't be too hard upon him for that, Valmai, becos Ay dare say he couldn't help it. P'r'aps you wouldn't believe it now, but there was a taime when Ay swore like a trooper; and it grew upon me so much that Ay d--d everything!--even the milk for breakfast--and Ay'm dashed if Ay could stop it, Valmai. May poor mother was alive then, and she sez to me one day with tears in her eyes, 'Tray, may boy, to leave off swearing; it is killing me,' she sez, with her sweet, gentle voice. So Ay sez to mayself, 'John,' Ay sez, 'you are a d--d fool. You're killing your mother with your foolish swears. Pull up short,' sez Ay, 'and tray and faind some other word that'll do.' So Ay fixed upon 'tarnished,' and Ay'm dashed if may mother wasn't perfectly satisfayed. It's a grand word! Puts you in mind of tar and 'tarnal and tarpauling, and lots of shippy things. 'Twas hard to get used to it at first; but 'pon may word now, may dear, it comes as nat'ral as swearing. But there! go on with the story. Where were we?" Valmai was a little bewildered by the captain's reminiscences. "Well, we had just come to where the girl, or rather the young wife, had gone to live with her other uncle. Here she would have been as happy as the day is long, had it not been for the continual sorrow for her lover." The captain began to look a little suspicious, but Valmai hastened to prevent further interruptions. "But now comes the wonderful part of the story, uncle. A dreadful storm arose, and a thick fog came on, and the ship in which the bridegroom sailed was so damaged that she had to put back for repairs. The young man found lodgings in the town, and what house do you think he came to? but the very one where the bride lived with her dear old uncle, and they made up their minds to tell him everything, and to throw themselves on his generosity. Dear uncle, what do you think of my story?" "Dashed if Ay didn't begin to think it was me you meant by the old man. But child, child, you are not going to cheat that kind old uncle, and tell him a pack of lies, and laugh at him. You are not the bride?" "Yes, uncle," said Valmai, with blushing face and drooping eyelids. "And Mr. Gwyn is the bridegroom?" "Yes. His name is Wynne, not Gwyn." "And you knew nothing about it until he came here yesterday?" "Nothing; but that he had sailed in the _Burrawalla_, and when I heard she had returned a wild hope came to me, and when I heard his voice in the passage I could have fainted with joy." "And you are both united under may roof? and are man and wife?" "Yes. Oh, uncle, don't be angry! It was not our own doing. It was Providence who sent him back to me from the storm and fog. _Don't_ be angry." "Angry, child!" said the old man, almost lifting himself up in his bed; "why Ay'm tarnished if anything so jolly ever happened in may laife before. And to think we have dodged the old father! and the old uncle! Why, that must be Essec!" and this discovery was followed by a burst of rumbling laughter, which set Valmai more at her ease. "But never mind who he is, here you are, and here you shall be happy. Ay'll take your parts, may dears. Ay'll see that nothing comes between you any more." "And you will keep our secret, uncle, until Cardo comes back?" "Of course, child. We mustn't tell anyone, for fear it will get round to the old father's ears. Bay the bay, who is he?" "Mr. Wynne, the Vicar of the parish, the 'Vicare du' they call him, from his black looks." "The 'Vicare du!'" said the captain, "why! he is rolling in money! You've done a tidy little job for yourself, may gel, and your old Uncle John will befriend you." Here Mrs. Finch opened the door, and, with a sniff, said, "The gentleman's come back, and he wants to know can he see Miss Powell?" The captain fell into another fit of laughter, while Mrs. Finch stared at him in astonishment. "Tell him to come up," he said, at last, "you gaping old gudgeon, what you standing staring there for? Send Mr. Wynne up. Tell him the lady is here, and Ay want to see him." In a few moments Cardo bounded up, three steps at a time, but not without fears as to the effect of Valmai's revelation, for she had whispered to him as she had let him out at the front door: "I am going up to tell him now." "Well Ay never!" said the Captain, with pretended severity; "how dare you show your face to me after stealing may lil gel from under may very nose? Come here, you rascal, and shake hands over it! Wish you joy, may dear fellow! And the lil one, where is she? Come here, you lil fool! What are you hiding there for? Come and put your hand in your husband's. There now! that's something like it. And God bless you. So you're husband and wife, are ye?" looking critically from one to the other. "Well, ye're a jolly good-looking pair! And so ye're married, are ye?" "With your permission, sir," said Cardo, laughing, "and with your blessing upon us. I am so thankful to feel I shall not be leaving Valmai without a friend when I sail." "No, no, not without a friend. Ay'll stick to her. But, look here, keep it all dark from old Finch!" And he seemed bursting with the importance and pleasure of his secret. "You go down to your tea, may dears; Ay ain't going to be a selfish old uncle. No, no, go along with you, both of you, and send old Finch up to me. But look here!" he called after them, in a hoarse whisper, "mum's the word!" The sun shone brilliantly, and the weather seemed to repent of its late burst of temper. Never had there been such a lovely September! Never had the harbour glistened so brightly in the sunshine, and never since he had broken his leg had the captain laughed so heartily or enjoyed himself so thoroughly as he did during the fortnight which followed, when Cardo read to him out of the newspaper and Valmai sang at her work about the house. Captain Owen came in every day with news of the repairs. "Well, Mr. Wynne," he said one morning, "I am happy to tell you we shall sail to-morrow afternoon." Cardo's heart sank, and Valmai turned very pale. "Your cabin is being refitted to-day, and I shall be glad if you can come on board by four o'clock to-morrow afternoon. There's every promise of fine weather. No more fogs, no more collisions, I hope." "I'll take care to be on board in good time," Cardo said. "Tarnished if Ay won't be awful dull without you!" said Captain Powell. "He's been as jolly, and as much at home here as you would yourself, Owen! He's read to me and he's brought me cigars, and always with a smile on his face; and Ay hope he's bin comfortable here." "Thoroughly, indeed," said Cardo. "I shall never forget the fortnight I have passed under your roof." "The lil gel has done her best, Ay know," said his host. "A year I think you said you were going out for," said Captain Owen. "Well, I hope to be away only eight or nine months; certainly not longer than a year," said Cardo. And while the two old sea captains bade their last good-byes and good wishes to each other, Cardo slipped out to find Valmai, who had quietly disappeared. She was sitting on the old red sofa in the little back parlour in an abandonment of grief. "Oh! Cardo, Cardo, it has come! Now in reality it has come!" Cardo drew her towards him. "Cheer up, darling," he said. "You'll be brave for my sake, won't you?" "Yes," she said, trying to check her sobs, "this is the last time I am going to be weak and childish. To-morrow I will be strong and brave and womanly. You will see, Cardo, a bright, courageous wife to cheer her husband at parting, and to bid him look forward with hope to meeting again. Oh! I know quite well what I ought to be." "You are perfection in my eyes, f'anwylyd--that is what makes the parting with you so cruel. Gwynne Ellis was quite right when he said that it would be much harder to part with a wife of a week than a sweetheart of a year." CHAPTER XI. THE "BLACK DOG." During the next few weeks, Cardo Wynne was generally to be seen pacing the deck of the _Burrawalla_, playing with the children or chatting with some of the passengers. He walked up and down, with his hands sunk deep in his pockets, and cap tied firmly under his chin, for there was a pretty stiff breeze blowing, which developed later on in the voyage into the furious gales and storms which made that autumn so memorable for its numerous wrecks and casualties. Cardo was a great favourite on board, his frank and genial manner, the merry twinkle of his eye, and his tender politeness to the very old or the very young had won all hearts. With good-natured cheerfulness he entered into the plans and pastimes of the youthful part of the community, so that he had made a favourable impression upon all, from the cabin boy to the captain, and from the old general, who seldom left his berth, to the big black retriever, who was making his third voyage with his master to the Antipodes. "Always a pleasant smile on his face when you speak to him," said one of the ladies to a friend one day; "but I think he has a rather sad look sometimes, when he is pacing up and down with his hands in his pockets." "Yes," said the other, with a sentimental air, "I wonder what he is thinking of at those times! I'll make love to the captain, and see if I can find out something about him, they seem very intimate. We must try and cheer him up, dear." "He doesn't seem to want much cheering up now," said her friend, as Cardo passed them with two other young men, who were enjoying a story told by one of them, Cardo's merry laugh being loudest and heartiest of the three. But--there was a sober, wistful look on his face sometimes which was not habitual to it, and as the days slipped on, he might often be seen, leaning over the side of the vessel with an anxious pucker on his forehead. The parting with Valmai had, of course, been a trying ordeal. With the fervour of a first and passionate love, he recalled every word she had spoken, every passing shade of thought reflected on her face, and while these reveries occupied his mind, there was a tender look in the deep black eyes and a smile on his lips. But these pleasant memories were apparently often followed by more perplexing thoughts. One afternoon he had been standing for some time lost in a dream, while he looked with eyes that saw nothing over the heaving waters to the distant horizon, when the captain's voice at his elbow recalled him to his surroundings. "You are looking at the very point of the wind, the very eye of the storm." "The storm!" said Cardo, starting; "are we going to have one?" The captain looked critically in the direction towards which they were sailing. "Dirty weather coming, I think." "Yes, I see," said Cardo; "I had not noticed it before, though. How inky black the sky is over there! And the sea as black, and that white streak on the line of the horizon!" "We shall have a bit of a toss," said the captain. "Couldn't expect to get to Australia on a mill pond." "Mill pond do you call the swells we have had the last few days?" "Almost," replied the captain, leaving him unceremoniously, and shouting some orders to his crew. Thus left, Cardo fell again into a deep reverie. Yes, it looked black before them! "But I have always wished to see a storm at sea, and if I only had Valmai with me, I should be joyous and exultant; but instead of that, I am alone, and have a strange foreboding of some evil to come. I can't be well, though I'm sure I don't know where I ail, for I feel alright, and I eat like a horse." "Come, Mr. Wynne," said one of the ladies, who had marked his serious looks, "we must really call you to account! You have fallen into a brown study again. You must let us cheer you up. We can't have the very life of the party losing his spirits. Now if you had left your wife at home, as Mr. Dawson has!" "I have done that," said Cardo, "but I am not at all likely to fall into low spirits. I have never in my life known what that means; but a man, more especially a married man, must have his moments of serious thought sometimes." "Yes, of course," said the lady, with a considerable diminution of interest in "the handsome Mr. Wynne!" "You have left your little ones too, I suppose?" "No," said Cardo, laughing, "I have none." "Ah, indeed, that's a pity!" and she took the first opportunity of joining her friend, and telling her of her discovery. Cardo continued to look out to sea. No, bad enough to leave Valmai, but "little ones"? Would that time ever come? and as he pondered, a fresh idea seemed to strike him. It was evidently a painful one, it stung him like the lash of a whip, and clenching his hands, and muttering something between his teeth, he roused himself hastily, and joined a party of young people, who were amusing themselves with the pranks of a little boy, who, delighted with the notice taken of him, strutted about and gave his orders, in imitation of the captain. "Oh, here's Mr. Wynne," said the little urchin, and in a moment he was lifted on to Cardo's shoulder, whooping with delight, and for the next hour, the laugh was loudest and the fun most furious where Cardo and his little friend were located. Before long, however, the storm was upon them. Masts creaked and cordage rattled; the sails had been lowered, and everything made safe, and Captain Owen, standing on the bridge, looked energetic, and "fit" to fight with the storm-fiend. The ladies soon retired, and many of the gentlemen followed them below, some of the younger and hardier remaining on deck. Amongst them was Cardo, who watched the fury of the elements as the wind tore down upon them. Once, as the captain passed him, he asked, "Is there any danger?" "I see none," was the laconic reply. It satisfied Cardo, and he gave himself up to watch the grandeur of the storm. It was natural that the thought of Valmai should enter his mind, and that he should long for her presence; but it was not natural that he, a young and healthy man, in the first flush of his manhood, should feel this strange depression, this dark cloud hanging over him, whenever he thought of his young wife. It was unlike Cardo. If his life had been devoid of any special interest or excitement, it had at least been free from care. Not even his lonely childhood, or his dull, old home had dimmed the brightness and elasticity of his spirits. He had never had a cobweb in his brain, and this haunting shadow which followed every sweet memory of his wife was beginning to rouse his resentment, and while the storm raged around him, and the ship ploughed her way through the seething waters, Cardo Wynne, set himself with manful determination to face the "black dog" which had haunted him lately; and somewhat in this groove ran his thoughts. "Valmai, sweet Valmai, I have left her; it could not be helped. I will return to her on the wings of love as soon as I have fulfilled my father's wishes." But a year--had he provided fully and properly for her happiness during that time? Money, amply sufficient, he had left in her uncle's keeping for her, as she had firmly refused to accept it herself. "I shall not want it; I have plenty for myself. I have twenty gold sovereigns in my little seal purse at home, and I shall receive my next quarter's allowance soon. No, no, Cardo, no money until we set up house-keeping," and he had acceded to her wishes; but had, unknown to her, left a cheque in her uncle's keeping. "Why did I claim from her that promise of secrecy? What if circumstances might arise which would make it impossible for her to keep it?" He knew that having given her promise to him, she would rather die than break it. He had acted the part of a selfish man, who had no thought, but of his own passionate love; the possible consequences to her had not before occurred to his mind. But now, in the stress of the storm, while the thunder rolled above him, and the lightning flashed over the swirling waters, everything seemed clear and plain. He had done wrong, and he would now face the wrong. Their happy meeting at Fordsea, as blissful as it was unexpected, might be followed by times of trouble for Valmai--times when she would desire to make known her marriage; and he had left her with an embargo upon her only means of escape out of a difficulty. Yes, the path was plain, he would write to her and release her from her promise of secrecy. Better by far that his father should be angered than that Valmai should suffer. Yes, it was plain to him now; he had left the woman he loved in the anomalous position of a married woman without a husband. What trying scenes might she not pass through! What bitter fruits might not their brief happiness bear! The next day they had cleared the storm, its fury having been as short-lived as it was sudden. The sea was gradually quieting down, and the sun shone out bravely. The sails were unfurled and the _Burrawalla_ once more went gaily on her way. Cardo had spent all the morning in writing; he would send his letter by the first opportunity. It was full of all the tender expressions of love that might be expected under the circumstances. His pen could scarcely keep up with the flow of his thoughts. "I have done wrong in making you promise to keep our marriage a secret," he wrote, "and I repent bitterly of my thoughtlessness. Many things might happen which would make it absolutely necessary that you should disclose it. For instance, your uncle might die; what would then become of you? Certainly you would have your good old Uncle John to fall back upon, and he is a host in himself. If any circumstances should arise which would make it desirable for you to do so, remember, dearest, it is my express wish that you should make known to all the world that you are Valmai Wynne, the beloved wife of Caradoc Wynne." Page after page was written with the lavish fervour of a first love-letter, very interesting to the writer no doubt, but which we will leave to the privacy of the envelope which Cardo addressed and sealed with such care. He placed it in his desk, not expecting that the opportunity for sending it would so soon arrive. In the course of the afternoon, there was some excitement on board, for a large homeward bound ship was sighted, which had been a good deal damaged by the storm. She had been driven before the wind, and had borne the brunt of the gale before it had reached the _Burrawalla_, having sprung a leak which considerably impeded her course. She hove to within hailing distance, and received the aid which the better condition of Captain Owen's ship enabled him to confer. She was _The Dundee_ (Captain Elliotson), bound for Liverpool. All letters were delivered to her keeping, and the ships went on their way, but to what different destinations. _The Dundee_, after a stormy passage, was wrecked off the coast of France. The captain and crew were saved, but the ship became a total wreck, sinking at last in deep water; and thus Cardo's letter never reached Valmai. Its transmission, however, relieved him of much of the uneasiness which had hung over him, and his usual cheerfulness returned in a great measure. Meanwhile, Valmai hoped and longed for the promised letter. "Why does he not write, I wonder?" was the question continually uppermost in her thoughts. The voyage of the _Burrawalla_ was, on the whole, prosperous, although, towards the end, she was much delayed by adverse winds, so that Sydney harbour was not reached until the end of the fourth month. A further and unexpected delay arose from the illness of a passenger who occupied a berth in Cardo's cabin, and as they were nearing their destination he died of typhoid fever. Consequently the _Burrawalla_ was put into quarantine, of course to the great annoyance and inconvenience of all on board. "You are not looking well, Mr. Wynne," said the doctor one day. "Oh, I'm alright," said Cardo, "only impatient to get on shore. I feel perfectly well. Why, my dear doctor, I have never had a day's illness in my life, as far as I can remember." "I can believe that," said the doctor; "and what a splendid sailor you have been. But still, let me know if you are not feeling well." It was quite true that Cardo had latterly experienced some sensations to which he had hitherto been a stranger--frequent headaches and loss of appetite; but, being of a very hardy temperament, he tried to ignore the unpleasant symptoms, and waited for the end of the quarantine with feverish impatience. When at last they were allowed to land, he was amongst the liveliest and most energetic of the passengers. He drove at once to the Wolfington Hotel, to which he had been recommended by Captain Owen. As he stepped out of the cab, the portico of the hotel seemed strangely at loggerheads with the rest of the building, He managed, however, to get safely inside the hall, and, after engaging a bedroom, followed his conductor up the stairs, though each step seemed to rise to meet his foot in an unaccountable manner. "A long sea voyage doesn't suit me, that's certain," he soliloquised, as he entered the room and busied himself at once with his luggage. He took off the labels with the intention of substituting fresh ones addressed to his uncle's farm, deciding not to stay a day longer than was necessary in Sydney, but to make inquiries at once as to the best way of getting to Broadstone, Priory Valley. He still fought bravely against the feeling of lassitude and nausea which oppressed him, and went down to his lunch with a bold front, although the place seemed floating around him. But in vain did the odour of the Wallaby soup ascend to his nostrils; in vain was the roast fowl spread before him. He scarcely tasted the viands which the attentive waiter continued to press upon him; and at last, pushing his plate away, he rose from the table. "I shall want writing materials and some labels on my return," he said, as he left the room with a somewhat unsteady step. "On the razzle-dazzle last night, I expect," said the waiter, with a wink at his fellow. The fresh air seemed to relieve Cardo, in some degree, of the weight which dragged him down; he was even well enough to notice that the uneven streets were more like those of an old-fashioned English town than anything he had expected to find in Australia. But this feeling of relief did not last long. In the street which led down to the quay he observed a chemist's shop, and, entering it, asked for a "draught or pick-me-up" of some kind. "I feel awfully seedy," he said, sinking into a chair. "Yes, you look it," said the chemist; "what's wrong?" "I think I must give in," said Cardo, "for I believe I am sickening for typhoid fever." The chemist looked grave. "I advise you to go home at once, and to bed." "Yes," replied Cardo, trying to rise to the emergency, and still manfully struggling against the disease which threatened him. "Yes, I will go home," he said again, walking out of the shop. He took the wrong turning however, going down towards the harbour, instead of returning to the hotel, and he was soon walking under a burning sun amongst the piled-up bales and packages on the edge of the quay. A heavy weight seemed to press on his head, and a red mist hung over everything as he walked blindly on. At a point which he had just reached, a heap of rough boxes obstructed his path, and at that moment a huge crank swung its iron arm over the edge of the dock, a heavy weight was hanging from it, and exactly as Cardo passed, it came with a horizontal movement against the back of his head with terrible force, throwing him forward insensible on the ground. The high pile of boxes had hidden the accident from the crowd of loungers and pedestrians who might otherwise have noticed the fall. The sudden lurch with which he was thrown forward jerked his pocket-book from the breast-pocket of his coat, and it fell to the ground a foot or two in front of him. It was instantly picked up by a loafer, who had been leaning against the pile of boxes, and who alone had witnessed the accident; he immediately stooped to help the prostrate man, and finding him pale and still, shouted for assistance, and was quickly joined by a knot of "larrikins," who dragged the unconscious man a little further from the edge of the quay. It was not long before a small crowd had gathered round, the man who had first observed him making a safe escape in the confusion, Cardo's pocket-book carefully hidden under his tattered coat. "Better take him up to Simkins the chemist," said a broad-shouldered sailor; and, procuring a stretcher, they carried their unconscious burden to the chemist's shop. "Why, let me see," said Mr. Simkins; "surely this is the gentleman who called here a few minutes ago. I told him to go home, and he said he would; but I noticed he turned down towards the quay; poor fellow, bad case, I'm afraid. He said he thought he was sickening for typhoid fever, and he's about right, I think." "What shall we do with him?" said the sailor. "See if you can find a card or letter in his pockets? Nothing," he added, as together they searched Cardo's pockets, "not a card, nor a letter, nothing but this bunch of keys, and some loose gold and silver." There was no clue to the stranger's identity, except the marking on his clothing. "Here's C. W. on his handkerchief--Charles Williams, perhaps; well, he ought to be attended to at once, if he ain't dead already," said another. "Yes, a good thing the hospital is so near," said the chemist. "You had better leave his money here, and tell Dr. Belton that you have done so. My brother is his assistant. I daresay we shall hear more about him from him." "Now, then, boys; heave up, gently, that's it," and Cardo was carried out of the shop to the hospital in an adjoining street. Here, placed on a bed in one of the long wards, doctors and nurses were soon around him; but Cardo lay white and still and unconscious. One of the bearers had mentioned typhoid fever, and Dr. Belton looked grave and interested as he applied himself to the examination of the patient. "My brother has been here," said his assistant; "this man had just been in to his shop, and said he believed he was sickening for typhoid, and it wasn't ten minutes before he was picked up on the quay." "The heat of the sun, I expect, was too much for him under the circumstances," said Dr. Belton. "A plain case of sunstroke, I think." "This money was found in his pocket," said Simkins, handing over five sovereigns and fifteen shillings in silver; "this bunch of keys, too, and his watch; but no card or letter to show who he is." "Fine young fellow," said Dr. Belton; "splendid physique, but looks like a bad attack." Restoratives were tried, but with no effect; Cardo still lay like a dead man. "Very strange," said the doctor, when next day he found the patient in the same unconscious condition. "Few constitutions would be able to fight against two such serious diseases." "Sunstroke as well as typhoid?" said Mr. Simkins. "Yes, I have no doubt of it. Curious combination of evils." "Poor chap!" said Simkins, "no constitution could survive that." "Nothing is impossible," said the doctor, "very interesting case; keep up the strength, nurse." Everything was done that was possible for poor Cardo; the nurses were unremitting in their care and attention, but nothing roused him from his trance-like stupor. During the course of the day, the news of the finding of an unknown man on the quay reached the Wolfington Hotel, where the waiter, with another knowing wink and shake of the head, said, "On the razzle-dazzle again, I expect. Must be the same man." And he proceeded upstairs to examine the luggage, from which Cardo had removed the labels intending to redirect them to his uncles house. There was no letter or paper found to indicate the name of the owner, even the initials C. W. gave no clue. "What was the man's name?" said the waiter to Mr. Simkins, who happened to call the following morning. "Don't know. Charles Williams he is called at the hospital. There was no clue to his identity, but just the letters C. W. on his linen." "Then, no doubt, his luggage is here," said the waiter. "All his things are marked C. W., and, from your description, it must be the same man." "Well, my brother will speak to Dr. Belton about it, and he will arrange to have it taken care of; he already has his money and his watch." And so Cardo Wynne slipped out of his place in the outside world and was soon forgotten by all except those connected with the hospital. In three weeks the fever had run its course, and, to the astonishment of the nurses and doctors, Cardo still lived. "Extraordinary vitality! Has he never spoken a word?" "Never a sound or a word until he began moaning to-day." "Good sign, this moaning. Mind, keep up his strength." And gradually, under the constant care of Doctor Belton, who was much interested in the case, Cardo, or Charles Williams as he was now called, recovered strength of body; and, to a slight extent, restoration to consciousness; for though he lay inert and motionless, his lips moved incessantly in a low muttering or whispering, in which the nurses in vain endeavoured to find a clue to the mystery of his illness. CHAPTER XII. A CLIMAX. A bitter north wind, laden with sleet and rain, blew over Abersethin Bay, tearing the surface into streaks of foam. The fishing boats were drawn up on the grassy slope which bordered the sandy beach, and weighted with heavy stones. The cottage doors were all closed, and if a stray pedestrian was anywhere to be seen, he was hurrying on his way, his hands in his pockets and his cap tied firmly under his chin. On the cliffs above, the wind swirled and rushed, blowing the grass all one way and sweeping over the stunted thorn bushes. In the corners under the hedges, the cows and horses sheltered in little groups, and the few gaunt trees which grew on that exposed coast groaned and creaked as they bent away from the storm. At Dinas the wind blew with bitter keenness through every chink and cranny, roaring and whistling round the bare gray house, rattling the doors and windows with every angry gust. In the little parlour at the back of the house it was not heard so plainly. A bright fire burned in the grate, and the crimson curtains gave it a look of warmth and comfort which Essec Powell unconsciously enjoyed. He was sitting in his arm-chair and in his favourite position, listening with great interest to Valmai, who was reading aloud in Welsh from the "Mabinogion." The tale was of love and chivalry, and it should have interested the girl more than it did the old man who listened with such attention, but her thoughts refused to follow the thread of the story. She stopped occasionally to listen to the wind as it howled in the chimney. All through the short, dark afternoon she read with untiring patience, until at last, when the light was fading, Gwen brought in the tea and put an end to the reading for a time. Valmai had stayed at Fordsea until her uncle had quite recovered from his accident; and the New Year was well on its way before he had wished her good-bye at the station. She left him with real sorrow, and the old feeling of loneliness and homelessness returned to her heart. He had received her with such warmth, and had so evidently taken her into his life, that the friendless girl had opened her heart wide to him; and as his rough, hairy hand rested on the window of the carriage in which she sat, she pressed her lips upon it in a loving good-bye. There were tears in the kind old eyes, as he stood waiting for the train to move. "Won't you write, sometimes, uncle?" she asked. "Well, Ay won't promise that, indeed, may dear; for there's nothing Ay hate more than wrayting a letter; but Ay'll come and see you as soon as you have a house of your own. And don't you forget to look out for a little cottage for me at Abersethin. Ay'm determined to end my days near you, and _you know who_." "Oh! there's lovely it will be, uncle, to have you to run to whenever anything vexes me, but nothing ever will vex me then." "No, no; of course, may dear, we'll all be jolly together. Good-bay, good-bay." And the train moved out of the station. Two months afterwards we find Valmai at Dinas, and reading to her Uncle Essec as usual. She busied herself with the preparations for tea, lighting the lamp and placing the buttered toast in front of the fire until he should awake from his dreams, and descend to real life. While the tea was "brewing," she sank back into her chair and fell into a deep reverie. She was as fair as ever, the golden hair drawn back from the white, broad brows, but the eyes were full of anxious thought, and there was a little wistful sadness about the lines of the mouth. She was paler, and did not move about her duties with the same lightness and grace which belonged to her when we last saw her. She seemed in no hurry to disturb her uncle's dozing dreams, until at last Gwen came hastily in. "Well, indeed! What are you two doing here? There's quiet you are!" Valmai started, rousing herself and her uncle. "Yes. Come to tea, uncle. I was thinking, Gwen." "Oh, yes; thinking, thinking," said Gwen, with an insolent sneer. "You may think and think--you are always thinking now; and what about, I should like to know?" and, with a shrewd shake of her head, she left the room. A crimson tide overspread Valmai's face and neck, and, fading away, left her paler than before. She stood for a moment with her hands clasped, and pressed on her bosom, looking at the door through which Gwen had just passed, and then seating herself at the table, her eyes suffused with tears, she began to pour out her uncle's tea. "That's a fine piece, Valmai," he said, "how Clwyn went away and never came back again, till the sea washed him one day at Riana's feet." "Yes," said the girl, in a low voice. "Won't you eat your toast, uncle?" "Oh, yes, to be sure," said the old man, beginning on the buttered toast which she placed before him. When tea was over, the "Mabinogion" were brought out again and Valmai continued to read till her uncle fell asleep. Then leaving him to Gwen's care, she gladly retired for the night into her own little bedroom. Here she might think as much as she liked, and well she availed herself of that privilege. Here she would sit alone for hours every day, with her head bent over some bit of work, her busy fingers pleating and stitching, while her thoughts took wing over the leaden wintry sea before her. Away and away, in search of Cardo. Where was he? Why did he not write to her? Would he ever come? Would he ever write? And with weary reiteration she sought out every imaginary reason for his long silence. New hopes, new fears had of late dawned in her heart, at first giving rise to a full tide of happiness and joy, the joy that comes with the hope of motherhood--woman's crowning glory; but the joy and happiness had gradually given place to anxiety and fear, and latterly, since it had become impossible for her to hide her condition from those around her, she was filled with trouble and distressing forebodings, Her sensitive nature received continual wounds. Suspicious looks and taunting sneers, innuendos and broad suggestions all came to her with exceeding bitterness. She knew that every day the cloud which hung over her grew blacker and heavier. Where should she turn when her uncle should discover her secret? In the solitude of her room she paced backwards and forwards, wringing her hands. "What will I do? what will I do? He said he would return in seven or eight months--a year at furthest. Will he come? will he ever come?" And, gazing out over the stormy sea, she would sob in utter prostration of grief. Every day she walked to Abersethin and haunted the post-office. The old postmaster had noticed her wistful looks of disappointment, and seemed to share her anxiety for the arrival of a letter--who from, he did not know for certain, but he made a very good guess, for Valmai's secret was not so much her own only as she imagined it to be. Her frequent meetings with Cardo, though scarcely noticed at the time, were remembered against her; and her long stay at Fordsea, with the rumour of Cardo's return there, decided the feeling of suspicion which had for some time been floating about. There had been a whisper, then mysterious nods and smiles, and cruel gossip had spread abroad the evil tidings. Valmai bore all in patient silence. Her longing for Cardo's return amounted almost to an agony, yet the thought of explaining her position, and clearing her name before the world, never entered her head, or, if it did, was instantly expelled. No; the whole world might spurn her; she might die; but to reveal a secret which Cardo had desired her to keep, seemed to her faithful and guileless nature an unpardonable breach of honour. Gwen, who had not been immaculate herself, was her cruellest enemy, never losing an opportunity of inflicting a sting upon her helpless victim, whose presence in the household she had always resented. The day following Gwen's sneering remark, Valmai took her daily walk to Abersethin post-office. The old man beamed at her over his counter. "Letter come at last, miss," he said. And her heart stood still. She was white to the lips as she sat down on a convenient sack of maize. "It is a long walk," said the postmaster, hunting about for the letter. "Dear me, wherrs I put it?" And he looked in a box of bloaters and a basket of eggs. "Here it is. I 'member now; I put it safe with the cheese was to go to Dinas." Valmai took it with trembling fingers; it had a deep black edge. "It is not for me," she said. "Indeed! I was not notice that. I was only see 'Powell, Dinas.' I am sorry, miss, fâch; but you must cheer up," he added, seeing the gathering tears; "it's never so dark that the Lord can't clear it up." "No," said Valmai, rising from her seat. "Thank you; good-bye." And, blinded by her tears, she passed out into the driving wind and sleet. Perhaps the letter bore some news of Cardo! Perhaps bad news, for it had a black edge! She drew her red cloak tightly around her and once more bravely faced the buffeting wind which swept the path before her, and with fitful gusts threatened to lift her off her feet. When she reached Dinas, Gwen was already laying the dinner in the little parlour. "You have been a long time," she said. "Where have you been? To the post again to-day? You never used to go to the post, Valmai." The girl did not answer, but sat down breathless on the sofa. "Where is uncle? I have a letter for him." And as she spoke her uncle entered. "A letter for me? Well, indeed! What can it be?" Essec Powell's correspondence was very limited; he hated writing, and never answered a letter which could possibly be ignored. He adjusted his spectacles, and after turning the envelope in every direction, opened it. "Reuben Street, Fordsea," he began. "Oh, dear, dear! here's writing! Caton pawb! I could write better myself. Read it, Valmai." And she obeyed. "REV. ESSEC POWELL, "DEAR SIR,--I am grieve more than words can say to tell you this sad news, and I hope you will prepare for the worst. Becos your brother, Captain John Powell, No. 8 Reuben Street, Fordsea, was drownded yesterday in the harbour, and I have loast the best frind ever I had and ever I will have. Please to tell Miss Powell the sad news, and please to tell her that Captain Powell was oleways talking great deal about her, and was missing her very much. Oh, we shall never see nobody like him again. He went out in a small boat with two frinds to the steamer Penelope, Captain Parley, and coming back the boat was capsize and the three gentlemen was upset in the water. One was saved, but Captain Powell and Mr. Jones was drownded. Please to come and see about the funeral as soon as you can. "I remain in great sorrow, "Yours truly, "JAMES HARRIS." Valmai's trembling voice failed, and letting the letter drop, she covered her face with her hands and burst into a flood of tears, as she realised that her best friend had slipped away from her. In the trouble and anxiety which had latterly clouded her life, she had often been comforted by the thought that at all events there was one warm heart and home open to her, but now all was lost, and her loneliness and friendlessness pressed heavily upon her. Sob after sob shook her whole frame. Essec Powell picked up the letter, and read it again. "Well, well," he said, "to think that John, my brother, should go before me! Poor fellow, bâch! To be taken so suddenly and unprepared as he was." "Oh, no, uncle," said Valmai, between her sobs, "he was not unprepared. There never was a kinder soul, a more unselfish man, nor a more generous. Oh, you don't know how good he was to the poor, how kind and gentle to every one who suffered! Oh, God has him in His safe keeping somewhere!" "Well, well," said Essec Powell, sitting down to his dinner, "we won't argue about it now, but some day, Valmai, I would like to explain to you the difference between that natural goodness and the saving grace which is necessary for salvation. Come to dinner, Valmai. I wonder how much did he leave? When is the funeral?" he said, addressing Gwen. "You've got to go down and settle that," she answered. "Will I tell Shoni to put the gig ready?" "Yes, yes. I better go. I will be back by Sunday." "James Harris will help you in every way, uncle, and will settle everything for you." "Oh! very well, very well. Tis a pity about the 'Mabinogion,' too; but we'll go on with them next week, Valmai." Shoni and Gwen continued until bedtime to discuss with unction every item of information past, possible, or prospective, connected with the death of the old Captain, while Valmai lay on the old red sofa, and thought sadly of her loss. "There's sudden," said Gwen, "but 'twill be a good thing for the master, whatever!" Valmai lay awake far into the night recalling with tears the kindness and even tenderness of her old uncle. On the following Saturday Essec Powell returned from the funeral, and as he stepped out of the gig at the door, his face wore an unusual expression which Valmai noticed at once. He seemed more alive to the world around him; there was a red spot on each cheek, and he did not answer his niece's low greeting, but walked into the parlour with a stamping tread very unlike his usual listless shuffle. "Are you tired, uncle?" the girl asked gently. "No, I am not tired; but I am hurt and offended with you, Valmai. You are a sly, ungrateful girl, and it is very hard on me, a poor, struggling preacher very badly paid, to find that my only brother has left all his worldly goods to you, who are already well provided for. What do you think yourself? Wasn't it a shame on you to turn him against his brother?" "Oh, I never did," said Valmai; "I never thought of such a thing! Dear, dear Uncle John! I didn't want his money, I only wanted his love." "What is the matter?" said Gwen, coming in. "Matter enough," said her master, in angry, stammering tones. "John, my brother, has left all his money to this Judas of a girl! A hundred and fifty pounds a year, if you please! and only a paltry 100 pounds to me, and the same to Jim Harris, the sailor. Ach y fi! the greediness of people is enough to turn on me." Between Gwen's exclamations and Essec Powell's angry harping on the same string, the evening was made miserable to Valmai, and she was glad enough to escape to her bedroom. The next day she awoke with a throbbing headache. "You are not going to chapel to-day, I suppose?" said Gwen. "No, my head aches too badly. I have never missed before, but to-day I think I will rest at home." "Yes, rest at home, certainly," said Gwen. "You ought to have stopped at home long ago; in my opinion, it would be more decent." Her meaning was too plain, and Valmai's head drooped as she answered: "Perhaps it would have been wiser, considering all things." "Considering all things, indeed!" sneered Gwen. "Yes, they will turn you out of the 'Sciet, because when the calf won't go through the scibor door he has to be pushed out!" And with a toss of her head she carried the tray away. It was a miserable day for Valmai, and not even after events of more bitterness were able to efface it from her memory. She roamed about the house restlessly, and round the garden, which was beginning to show signs of the budding life which had slept through the storms and snows of winter. Already in a sheltered corner she detected the scent of violets, an early daffodil nodded at her, a bee hummed noisily, and a sweet spring breeze swept over the garden. What memories it awoke within her! How long ago it seemed since she and Cardo had roamed together by the Berwen! Years and years ago, surely! Her reverie was disturbed by Shoni, who, coming back early from chapel, had found his way into the garden. "You wass quite right not to go to chapel this morning," he said. "Don't go to-night again, neither!" "No," said Valmai, "I won't. But why, Shoni?" "Why?" he said, "because you better not. John Jones and William Hughes, the deacons, is bin speaking to master about you, and next week is the 'Sciet,[1] and you will be turn out." Valmai turned a shade paler; she knew the disgrace this excommunication implied; but she only turned with a sigh towards the house, Shoni marching before her with the air of a man who felt he had performed a disagreeable duty. Essec Powell had stopped to dine with a farmer living near the chapel, and did not return home until near tea-time. Then burst upon the girl the storm she had so long dreaded; her uncle's anger had already been roused by his brother's "will," and his feelings of greed and spite had been augmented by the information imparted to him by his deacons. "How dare you?" he said. His eyes flashed with anger, and his voice trembled with the intensity of his fury. Valmai, who was arranging something on the tea-table, sank down on a chair beside it; and Gwen, carrying a slice of toast on a fork, came in to listen. To hear her master speak in such excited tones was an event so unusual as to cause her not only astonishment but pleasure. Shoni, too, was attracted by the loud tones, and stood blocking up the doorway. Valmai flung her arms on the table, and leant her head upon them, sobbing quietly. "Are you not ashamed of yourself?" thundered the old man. "Sitting at my table, sleeping under my roof, and attending my chapel--and all the time to be the vile thing that you are! Dear Uncle John, indeed! what would your dear Uncle John say of you now? You fooled him as you have fooled me. Do you think I can bear you any longer in the house with me?" There was no answer from Valmai, and the old man, angered by her silence, clutched her by the arm and shook her violently. "Stop there!" said Shoni, taking a step forward, and thrusting his brawny arm protectingly over the girl's bent head. "Stop there! Use as many bad words as you like, Essec Powell, but if you dare to touch her with a finger, I'll show you who is the real master here." "She is a deceitful creature, and has brought shame and dishonour on my name!" stammered the old man. "Am I, a minister of religion, any longer to harbour in my house such a huzzy? _No_; out you go, madam! Not another night under my roof!" "Will you send her out at this late hour?" said Shoni. "Where is she to go?" "I don't care where she goes! She has plenty of money--money that ought to belong to me. Let her go where she likes, and let her reap the harvest that her conduct deserves. Remember, when I come back from chapel to-night I will expect the house to be cleared of you." Valmai rose wearily from the table, and went up the stairs to her own room, where she hastily gathered a few things together into a light basket, her heavier things she had packed some time before in readiness for some such sudden departure as this. Meanwhile, in the parlour below the sturdy Shoni faced his irate master. "Man," he said, "are you not ashamed of yourself?" "How dare you speak to me in that tone?" said the old man. "Because I owe you two or three hundred pounds you forget your position here." "No," said Shoni, "I don't forget, and I'll remind you sooner than you think if you don't behave yourself! Man! you haven't learnt the ABC of religion, though you are a 'preacher.' Christ never taught you that way of treating a fallen woman. Shame upon you! And your own brother's child! But I'll see she's taken care of, poor thing! And the villain who has brought this misery upon her shall feel the weight of this fist if ever he returns to this country; but he won't; he has got safe away, and she has to bear the shame, poor thing! Wait till I tell the 'Vicare du' what I think of his precious son." "The 'Vicare du'?" said the old man, turning white with rage. "Do you mean to say that his son has been the cause of this disgrace? I'll thrash her within an inch of her life!" and he made a rush towards the door. "Sit down," said Shoni, taking him by the arm and pushing him back into his easy-chair, "sit down, and calm yourself, before you stand up and preach and pray for other people. Tis for yourself you ought to pray." "True, Shoni, true. I am a miserable sinner like the rest, but don't let me see that girl again." "Put her out of your thoughts," said Shoni; "I'll see to her." And as Valmai came silently down the stairs, he opened the front door for her, and quietly took her basket from her. "Well, howyr bâch!" said Gwen, looking after them, "there's attentions! We'd better all walk in the wrong path!" and she banged the door spitefully, and returned to the parlour to arrange her master's tea. "And, now, where are you going to, my dear?" said Shoni kindly. "Will you come to Abersethin? Jane, my sister, will give you lodgings; she is keeping a shop there." "No, no, Shoni," said the girl, "you are kind, indeed, and I will never forget your kindness; but I will go to Nance, on the island; she will take me in, I know." "Will she?" said Shoni. "Then you could not go to a better place. 'Tis such lonesome place, the pipple will forget you there." "Oh, I hope so," said Valmai; "that is all I desire." "The tide will be down. We can get there easy, only 'tis very cold for you." "No, I like the fresh night-wind." "Well, my dear," said Shoni, "I daresay your uncle will be shamed of himself to-morrow, and will be wanting you to kom back. I will bring the gig for you; 'tis a long walk." "No, never, Shoni; I will never go back there again, so don't bring the gig for me; but if you will kindly send my big box to the Rock Bridge, I will send somebody across for it." "'S' no need for you to do that. I will take it down to the shore on the whilbare and row it over in Simon Lewis's boat. I will kom before dawn tomorrow, then no one will know where you are. I'll put it out on the rocks before Nance's house and carry it up to her door." "Thank you, thank you, Shoni; but wouldn't tonight be better?" "Oh, no; Sunday to-night," said Shoni, in quite another tone. He waited until he saw Nance's door opened in response to Valmai's timid knock, and then made his way back over the Rock Bridge at once before the tide turned. When Nance opened her door and saw the figure of a woman standing there, she was at first surprised, for the dress struck her at once as not being that of a peasant. "Nance, fâch! it is I!" said Valmai. "You will let me in?" "Let you in! yes, indeed. Haven't I been longing to see you all day! Come in, my child, from this bitter wind; come in and get warm. I see you have brought your basket, that means you are going to stay the night. Right glad I am. You will have the little bed in the corner. Keep your red cloak on, dear little heart, because the wind is blowing in cold here at nights, and you have been used to warm rooms. I am well used to cold, and sickness, and discomfort." "But, Nance--" and then the terrible revelation had to be made, the truth had to be told, and then the loving arms were clasped round the sorrowful girl, and words of comfort and hope were whispered into her ear. No reproaches, no cruel taunts here; nothing but the warmth of human sympathy, and the loving forgiveness of a tender pure woman. In the early dawn, while Valmai still slept, Shoni's "yo-hoy!" was heard from the rocks, through which he was guiding his boat. Nance opened her door, and, in the gray of the morning, the "big box" was brought in and safely deposited in the tiny bedroom, which it nearly filled. "Good-bye," said Shoni. "Take care of her, and if she wants anything get it for her, and remember I will pay you." And he rowed away, and was busily ploughing when Gwen went out to milk the cows in the morning. "Where is she gone?" she asked. "That shameful girl." "Gone away," said Shoni shortly, and Gwen knew it was useless trying to get anything more out of him. Thus Valmai slipped quietly out of her old life, though for some time she was the subject of much gossip in the neighbourhood. It was not long before Shoni found an opportunity of speaking to the Vicar, and as he saw the effect of his tidings upon the cold, hard man, a feeling of pity stirred within him. "Is this all news to you?" he said. "Didn't you know that your son was haunting the footsteps of this innocent girl, to bring her to ruin?" "Had I known," said the Vicar, in a stern voice, "that my son held any communication with the Methodist preacher's family, however innocent it might be, I would have closed my doors against him." "Where is he?" asked Shoni, clenching his fist. "I don't know," said the Vicar, turning away. Shoni called after him, "When he comes back he'll feel the weight of this fist, if it's twenty years to come." [1] Society meeting. CHAPTER XIII. "THE BABIES' CORNER." A glorious summer was once more brooding over sea and land, when one morning, in Nance's cottage, a feeble wail was heard; a sound which brought a flood of happiness to Valmai, for nothing could wholly crush the joyous welcome of a mother's heart. For a little while the past months of sorrow and weariness were forgotten. The bitter disappointment caused by Cardo's silence, lying deep below the surface, was of so mysterious a nature that she scarcely found words to express it even to herself. That he was false, that he had forgotten her, never entered her mind. Some dire misfortune had befallen him; some cruel fate detained him. Was it sickness? Was it death? There was nothing for her but to bear and to wait; and God had sent this tiny messenger of love to help and comfort her in her weary waiting. She still believed that Cardo would return; he had promised, and if he were living he would keep his promise--of this she felt certain. Secure from the sneers and scornful glances of the world, alone in Nance's cottage, her heart awoke afresh to the interests of life. Her baby boy was bright and strong, and she watched with delight his growing likeness to Cardo; the black hair, the black eyes, and the curve on the rosebud mouth, which reminded her so much of his smile. Nance wondered much at the girl's cheerfulness, and sometimes felt it her duty to remind her, by look or tone, of the sorrow connected with her child's birth. "Look at him, Nance. See these lovely little feet, and there's strong he is!" "Yes, druan bâch,[1] he is a beautiful boy, indeed," she would answer with a sigh, drawing her wrinkled finger over the fresh soft cheek. Valmai began to chafe at the want of brightness which surrounded her little one's life. She was proud of him, and wished to take him into the village. "No, my child," said Nance gently, "you had better not." "Why not?" was on Valmai's lips, but she hesitated. A deep blush crimsoned her face. "My boy has nothing to be ashamed of," she said, with a proud toss of her head. "When is he to be christened?" was Nance's next question. "September." "September!" gasped the old woman, "he will be three months old; and what if anything should happen to him before then?" "Nothing _shall_ happen to him," said Valmai, folding him to her heart. "My life and my body are larger than his, and they will both have to go before any harm reaches him." "There's a foolish thing to say," said Nance, "and I wonder at you, merch i. You ought to know by this time that we are clay in the hands of the Potter. Little heart, he ought to be christened, and have a name of his own." "He can be 'Baby' till September, and then he will be christened." "And why, September, child?" Here Valmai took refuge in that silence which had been her only resource since Cardo's departure. She would be perfectly silent. She would make no answer to inquiries or taunts, but would wait patiently until he returned. September! What glowing pictures of happiness the word brought before her mind's eye. Once more to stroll with Cardo by Berwen banks! Once more to linger in the sunshine, and rest in the shade; to listen to the Berwen's prattling, to the whispering of the sea-breeze. Such happiness, she thought, was all in store for her when Cardo came home in September; and the words, "When Cardo comes home in September," rang in her ears, and filled her heart and soul. Yes, the long weary months of waiting, the sorrow and the pain, the cruel words, and the sneering glances, were all coming to an end. She had kept her promise, and had never spoken a word to implicate Cardo, or to suggest that the bond of marriage had united them. He would come home, at latest in a year, and remove every sorrow; and life would be one long shining path of happiness from youth to age. The light returned to her eyes, and the rose to her cheek; her step was once more light and springy, as she paced the lonely shore, dressed in her favourite white serge, and carrying her little white-robed baby in her arms. She was an object of great interest to the inhabitants of the fishing village on the other side of the island, and they often found an excuse (more especially the young sailor lads) to pass by the cottage, and to stop at the open door for a drink of water or a chat with Nance. They were as loud in their condemnation of her faithless lover as in admiration of her beauty and pleasant manners. Once more life seemed full of promise and hope for her, until one day when the bay was glistening in the sunshine, and the sea-gulls, like flecks of snow, flew about the rocks; the soft waves plashing gently between the boulders, a little cloud arose on her horizon. Her baby was fretful and feverish, and Nance had roused her fears. "He is too fat, merch i," she said, "and if he had any childish illness it would go hard with him." Valmai had taken fright at once. "Can you take care of him, Nance, while I go to Abersethin and fetch Dr. Hughes?" she asked. "Yes, but don't be frightened, cariad; I daresay he will laugh at us, and say there is nothing the matter with the child." "Being laughed at does not hurt one," said Valmai, as she tied on her hat. "I will bring him back with me if possible." She took a long look at the baby, who lay with flushed face on Nance's knees, and ran with all speed across the Rock-Bridge, from which the tide was just receding, up the straggling street of Abersethin, and through the shady lane, which led to the doctor's house. There was great peering and peeping from the kitchen window, as Valmai made her progress between the heaps of straw in the farm-yard to the back door, which stood open. The doctor's wife, who had her arms up to her elbows in curds and whey, looked up from her cheese-tub as she appeared at the door. "Dear me, Miss Powell! Well, indeed, what's the matter?" "Oh, it's my baby, Mrs. Hughes! Can Dr. Hughes come with me at once?" "There's a pity, now," said Mrs. Hughes; "he is gone to Brynderyn. Mr. Wynne is not well. Grieving, they say, about his son." Valmai blushed, and Mrs. Hughes was pleased with her success. "When will he be back, d' you think?" "Not till evening, I'm afraid. But there's Mr. Francis, the assistant--shall I call him? he is very clever with children. Here he is. Will you go with Miss Powell, to see--h'm--a baby which she is taking a great interest in on Ynysoer?" "Yes, certainly," said the young assistant, colouring, for he had heard Valmai's story, and never having seen her, was now rather bewildered by her beauty, and the awkwardness of the situation. "Oh, thank you; can you come at once?" said Valmai. "At once," said the young man. "Is the child very ill?" "Indeed, I hope not," said Valmai; "he is very flushed and restless." "Whose child is it?" "Good-bye, Mrs. Hughes. It is mine," she added, in a clear voice, as they left the kitchen door together. "Wel, anwl, anwl! there's impidence," said one of the servants, looking after them. "It is mine! As bold as brass. Well, indeed!" "Yes, I must say," said her mistress, with a sniff, "she might show a little more shamefacedness about it." "There's a beauty, she is," said Will the cowman, coming in. "Beauty, indeed!" said the girl. "A pink and white face like a doll!" "Her beauty has not done her much good, whatever," said Mrs. Hughes, as she finished her curds and dried her arms. Meanwhile Valmai and the doctor were walking rapidly down the lane to the shore. "Dan, will you take us across?" said Valmai to a man who stood leaning against the corner of the Ship Inn. "With every pleasure, miss fâch; you've been out early," he said, as he pushed out his boat, and, seeing the doctor--"if you please, miss, I hope there's nobody ill at Nance's?" "Yes," said Valmai, hesitating, "the little one is ill." She did not say, "my baby," as she had done at the doctor's. At the first contact with the world beyond Ynysoer, where she had been so long secluded and sheltered, a feeling of nervous shyness began to over-shadow her. "Dear, dear!" was all Dan's answer, Once on the island, Mr. Francis found it difficult to keep up with Valmai's hurrying steps. He was full of pity for the beautiful girl beside him, so young and so friendless, and was anxious to serve her, and to cure her child if possible. As they entered the cottage together, Nance endeavoured gently to prevent Valmai's approaching the child. "Not you, my dear, not you; let the doctor see him." Mr. Francis was already attending to the little sufferer. "No," he said, looking backwards, "not you, Miss Powell; let me manage him." Valmai turned white to the lips, and, gently putting the old woman aside, took her place at the bedside, where a pitiful sight met her eyes. Her little one lay in the terrible throes of "convulsions," and again the doctor tried to banish Valmai from the scene. "Let me be," she said, in a quiet voice, which astonished the young man. "Let me be; I am used to trouble." And passing her arm under the little struggling frame, she supported it until the last gasp put an end to its sufferings. Mr. Francis took the child into his own arms and laid it on the bed, turning his attention to Valmai, who had fallen fainting on the floor. "Poor thing! poor thing!" said the tender-hearted young man. "It is a pity she cannot remain unconscious." But he applied the usual restoratives, and she soon opened her eyes, while Nance straightened the folds of the little night-gown with loving fingers, tears coursing each other down her wrinkled face. "Oh, dear heart! how will she bear it?" Mr. Francis was silently bathing the girl's forehead. "You are better now?" he asked. "Yes," she said; "thank you. You have been very kind, but do not trouble to stay longer; I am quite well," and she slowly rose from the settle. "I will go now," said the young man. "You would like to be alone, but I will call in the afternoon. You will want someone to--to--make arrangements for you." "Arrangements? To have my little one buried? Yes, yes, of course. I shall be thankful, indeed." "Here, or at Penderin?" "Oh, here--in the 'rock' churchyard." "I will go at once," and he went out, gently closing the door upon the two women in their sorrow. In the afternoon he came again, and, being a man of very warm feelings, dreaded the scene of a woman's tears and sobs, though he longed to soothe and comfort the girl who so much interested him. But there were no tears or wailings awaiting him. Valmai sat in the low rush chair in stony despair, her hands clasped on her lap, her face white as her dress, her blue eyes dry, and with a mute, inquiring gaze in them, as though she looked around for an explanation of this fresh misery. He did not tell her more than was necessary of his interview with the Vicar. The child was supposed to be illegitimate as well as unbaptised, and could not, therefore, be allowed to sleep his last sleep in the company of the baptised saints. Old Shôn, the sexton, was already digging the little grave in a corner of the churchyard relegated to such unconsidered and unwelcomed beings as this. However, it was a sunny corner, sheltered from the sea-wind, and the docks and nettles grew luxuriantly there. Such dry-eyed, quiet grief amongst the emotional Welsh was new to the doctor, and he knew that if tears did not come to her relief her health would suffer, so he gently tried to make her talk of her little one. "I saw you had tried a hot bath, or I would have recommended it," he said. "Yes, Nance had." "I truly sympathise with you; he was a fine child." "Yes, he is a beautiful child," said Valmai. "I am sorry to wound your feelings, but what day would you wish him to be buried?" "Oh, any day; it makes no difference now." "To-day is Friday. Shall we say Monday, then?" "Yes, Monday will do. At what time?" said Valmai. "At four o'clock." Nance was crying silently. "Mrs. Hughes wants to know if you will come and stay with her till after Monday. I have my gig at Abersethin, and can row you over now." Valmai smiled, and the sadness of that smile remained in Mr. Francis' memory. "No," she said, shaking her head slowly, "I will not leave my baby until he is buried, but thank her for me, and thank you, oh, so much. I did not know there was so much kindness left in the world." As she spoke the tears gathered in her eyes, and, throwing her arms over the feet of the little dead child, she rested her head upon them, and broke into long, deep sobs. Mr. Francis, more content, went quietly out of the house, and did not see Valmai again until on Monday he met the funeral in the churchyard. Valmai, to the horror of Nance and her friends, wore her usual white dress. She had a bunch of white jessamine in her hand, and, as the little coffin disappeared from sight, she showered the flowers upon it. Nance was too infirm to accompany her, so that she stood alone beside the grave, although surrounded by the fisher folk of the island. She sobbed bitterly as she heard the heavy clods fall on the coffin, and when at last everything was over, and it was time to move away, she looked round as if for a friend; and Mr. Francis, unable to resist the pleading look, pushed his way towards her, and, quietly drawing her arm within his own, led her homewards down the grassy slope to the shore, over the rough, uneven sand, and in at the humble cottage door. Nance received her with open arms, into which Valmai sank with a passionate burst of tears, during which Mr. Francis went out unnoticed. [1] Poor little fellow. CHAPTER XIV. UNREST. The summer months had passed away, and September had come and gone, and yet Cardo had not arrived. Valmai had trusted with such unswerving faith that in September all her troubles would be over--that Cardo would come to clear her name, and to reinstate her in the good opinion of all her acquaintances; but as the month drew to its close, and October's mellow tints began to fall on all the country-side, her heart sank within her, and she realised that she was alone in the world, with no friend but Nance to whom to turn for advice or sympathy. A restless feeling awoke in her heart--a longing to be away from the place where every scene reminded her of her past happiness and her present sorrow. Every day she visited the little grave in the churchyard, and soon that corner of the burying-ground, which had once been the most neglected, became the neatest and most carefully tended. For her own child's sake, all the other nameless graves had become sacred to Valmai; she weeded and trimmed them until the old sexton was proud of what he called the "babies' corner." A little white cross stood at the head of the tiny grave in which her child lay, with the words engraved upon it, "In memory of Robert Powell ----." A space was left at the end of the line for another name to be added when Cardo came home, and the words, "Born June the 30th; died August the 30th," finished the sad and simple story. Nance, too, who seemed to have revived a good deal latterly, often brought her knitting to the sunny corner, and Valmai felt she could safely leave her grassy garden to the care of her old friend. "You are better, Nance," she said one day, when she had been sitting long on the rocks gazing out to sea, in one of those deep reveries so frequent with her now, "and if I paid Peggi 'Bullet' for living with you and attending to you, would you mind my going away? I feel I cannot rest any longer here; I must get something to do--something to fill my empty hands and my empty heart." "No, calon fâch," said Nance the unselfish, "I will not mind at all, I am thinking myself that it is not good for you to stay here brooding over your sorrow. Peggi 'Bullet' and I have been like sisters since the time when we were girls, and harvested together, and went together to gather wool on the sheep mountains. You have made me so rich, too, my dear, that I shall be quite comfortable; but you will come and see me again before very long, if I live?" "Oh, yes, Nance. People who have asthma often live to be very old. You know that, wherever I am, I will be continually thinking of you, and of the little green corner up there in the rock churchyard; and I will come back sometimes to see you." "But where will you go, my dear?" "To my sister. Ever since this trouble has come upon me I have longed for a sister's love, and now I think I will go to her I will tell her all my troubles, and ask her to help me to find employment." "Perhaps she has never heard of you--what do I know?--and perhaps she will spurn you when she hears your story. If she does, come back to old Nance, my dear; her arms will always be open to receive you. Yes, begin the world again. Caton pawb! you are only twenty now You have your life before you; you may marry, child, in spite of all that has happened." "_Nance!_" said Valmai, and the depth of reproach and even injury in her voice made plain to Nance that she must never suggest such a thing again. "Don't be angry with me, my dear!" "Angry with you! No, I am only thinking how little you know--how little you know. But where shall I find my sister? You said once you had her address, where is it?" "Oh, anwl! I don't know. Somewhere in the loft--" and Nance looked up at the brown rafters. "I haven't seen it for twenty years, but it's sure to be there, I remember, then somebody wrote it out for me, and I tied it up with a packet of other papers. They are in an old teapot on the top of the wall under the thatch, just there, my child, over the door. You must get the ladder and go up. It is many a long year since I have climbed up there." But Valmai's agile limbs found no great difficulty in reaching the brown boards which lay loosely across the rafters. "Now, straight along, my dear." "It is very dark, but I have found it," and coming down the ladder backwards, she placed the cracked and dust-begrimed teapot on the table. "Oh, how brown and faded the papers are! Nance, what is this? I do believe it is your marriage certificate!" "Very likely, my dear, and you will find the bill for my husband's funeral, too; and a pattern of my scarlet 'mantell,' the one I nursed my children in; oh! I thought a lot of that, and here it is still, you see, folded over my shoulders." "What is this? You had bad ink, but I think it must be the address. Let me see, here is 'Mrs. Besborough Power.'" "I knew it was a hard, long name," said the old woman. "'Carne,' but the last word, oh, Nance, what is it? It begins with M o, and ends with r e--r e is the end of the shire, of course. Merionithshire? No, it is M o, so must be Monmouthshire or Montgomeryshire, stay, there is a t in the middle. Mrs. Besborough Power, Carne--I will try Carne anyway," and next day she wrote to her sister addressing the letter: Miss Gwladys Powell, c/o Mrs. Besborough Power, Carne, Montgomeryshire. In a few days her letter was returned. "Not known," said Valmai; "then we have not read the address aright. I will go myself, Nance. I will go next week." And the following days were occupied with arrangements for her departure and Nance's comfort during her absence. On one of these latter days Mr. Francis came in. "I am glad you have come to-day," said Valmai, holding out her hand. "I wanted to thank you before I left for all your kindness to me, and to ask you to continue to see Nance sometimes." "Are you going to leave us, then?" said the young man, in a disappointed tone. He had felt deeply interested in the girl who bore her desertion and sorrow with such patience, and had unconsciously been looking forward to a continuance of the friendship begun between them. "You are not going away for long, I hope?" "Yes, for long; possibly for ever, except for a hasty visit to Nance sometimes I shall trust her to you, Mr. Francis, and I hope you will be as kind to her as you have been to me." "Certainly I will; but do not talk of kindness. It has been a great privilege to me, and a pleasure to know you, and I hope in the future if I can be of any service to you, you will let me know." Valmai took out her purse nervously, she hesitated to speak of remuneration to this kind friend. "You are not going to wound me," he said, gently laying his hand on her purse, "by offering to pay me?" "No, no," said Valmai; "only for the future, for your care of Nance." "There will be nothing much to do for her, I think; just a call in passing and a few cheering words, and _they_ don't cost much." And he rose to go. "Good-bye, then," said Valmai. "I shall never forget your kindness." "Good-bye," said Mr. Francis, holding her hand for a moment. He seemed about to say something more, but changed his mind, and abruptly left the house. The next day was Valmai's last in Nance's cottage. She rose early, and, after her simple breakfast, put on her white hat, and, kissing the old woman tenderly, said: "I am going out for a few hours; there are one or two people I want to see--Peggi Bullet, and Shôn, the sexton. Then I am going to cross the Rock Bridge." She did not tell Nance that her chief object was to pay a last visit to her old haunts by the Berwen. After making all arrangements with Peggi Bullet and Shôn, she took her way across the bridge. The year that had passed since Cardo had left her, with its varied experiences and trials, the bitter sense of loneliness and desertion, the pains and the delights of motherhood, the desolation and sorrow of bereavement, all had worked a change in the simple girl's character, that now surprised even herself, and she thankfully realised that her troubles had at all events generated a strength which enabled her to act for herself and attend to matters of business which had before been unapproachable mysteries to her. She shrank a little as she met the bold, admiring gaze of a knot of sailors, who stood at the door of the Ship Inn, where she explained to the buxom landlady that she wanted the car to meet her at the Rock Bridge on the following morning at ten. "Yes, miss fâch, and Jackie will drive you safe; but, indeed, there's long time since we saw you! You never come to see us now, and there's many warm hearts on this side the Rock Bridge as on the island, I can tell you." "Yes, indeed, I know, and I thank you all," said Valmai, as she went out again into the sunshine. The sailors were gone now, and she was free to make her way over the golden sands so often trodden by her and Cardo. Every boulder, every sandy nook, every wave that broke, brought its own sad memories. She turned up the path by the Berwen, which led to the old church, carefully avoiding even a glance at the tangled path on the other side of the river, which she and Cardo had made their own. Pale and dry-eyed, she pressed her hands on her bosom as if to still the aching throbbing within. Every step that brought her nearer to the old church increased the dull aching that weighed her down; but still she pressed on, longing, yet dreading, to see the spot on which she and Cardo had made their vows together on that sunny morning which seemed so long ago. As she entered the porch, she disturbed the white owl, who emerged from the ivy with a flap of her great wings, and sailed across the Berwen. The worm-eaten door of the church stood wide open. Entering the aisle with light footsteps, she approached the altar rails. The light was very dim in the chancel, as every year the ivy grew thicker over the windows. Surely in that dark corner within the rails some black object stood, something blacker and darker than the shadow itself, and she stood still for a moment, startled. Yes, there was a sound of heavy breathing and the rustling of paper. She drew nearer, even close to the altar rails, and, as her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she saw a man, who stooped over a musty, tattered book. The sound of her footstep attracted his attention, and as he rose from his stooping position, Valmai recognised the marble face and the black eyebrows of the "Vicar du." He was looking at one of the leaves in the old registry book, and for a moment as he raised his eyes to the silent, white figure before the altar, he took her for a ghostly visitant; but Valmai, with a sudden inrush of recognition, clasped her hands, a faint exclamation escaped her lips, and the "Vicare du" knew it was no spirit who stood trembling before him. For a moment both were speechless--then pointing to the page before him, he asked in a husky voice, "What is the meaning of this?" and from beginning to end he read, with this strange hoarseness in his voice, the entry of his son's marriage to Valmai. Not a word escaped him, not even the date, nor the names of the witnesses. Then he turned his black eyes upon her once more, and repeated his question. "What is the meaning of this? I have heard of your shame, of your dishonour--of the disgraceful way in which you have entrapped my poor boy. But what is this farce enacted here? How dare you enter the House of God and forge this ridiculous statement? Where is my son, whom you have lured to destruction?" Valmai was shaken like a reed by this sudden and unexpected meeting, and the outburst of feeling exhibited by the "Vicare du" awoke in her own heart such a tumult of doubt and suspense, that she could no longer restrain the tears which for days she had kept in check; long, silent sobs heaved her bosom, she covered her face with her hands, and the tears trickled through her fingers, but she made no answer. "Speak, girl," said the Vicar, "have you nothing to say for yourself? no excuse to make for your conduct? My son and I lived in perfect happiness together until you came to this neighbourhood; now you have led a young man on to his ruin and broken the heart of an old man--for this," he said, tapping the register with a trembling finger, "this is a lie--a forgery--a foolish piece of deceit, not worth the paper on which it is written!" Still Valmai spoke not a word. Oh, what happiness it would have been to throw herself at the old man's feet, and to confess everything, here, where Cardo and she had plighted their troth--to have told him of her ignorance of his fate, of her distracted longing for his return. Surely, surely he would have forgiven her! She was torn with conflicting feelings. But, no! Had she borne the contempt and scorn of all her acquaintances and friends to break down now, and disclose her secret to the man of all others from whom Cardo desired to keep the knowledge of it? No, she would die rather than divulge it--and with an earnest prayer for strength she remained silent, for in silence alone she had taken refuge since her troubles had come upon her. "Speak, girl, I implore you! Tell me, is this true?" His voice trembled, and he came a step nearer to her. "Tell me that it is true, and I will forgive you and him, for I shall then have a hope that his love for you will bring him home, though he has no love for me." And completely overcome by his feeling's he dropped on his knees by the table, and, leaning his head on his arms, broke into a torrent of tears. "Oh, Cardo, Cardo, my boy!" he cried. "Come back to me." There was no answer from Valmai, and when he raised his head again she was gone. At the words, "Oh! Cardo, Cardo," she had fled down the aisle, out into the golden sunshine, down the rugged path to the shore, where behind a huge boulder she flung herself down on the sands, crying out in a long pent-up agony of tears, "Oh Cardo, Cardo, come back!" The morning hours passed on, and noontide drew near. The "Vicare du" emerged from the church porch, pale and calm as usual. He looked at his watch as he came out into the sunshine, and followed the same path over which Valmai had sped an hour before. He had replaced the old registry book in the rusty, iron chest, had closed the door methodically, and when he had disappeared through the trees the white owl had flapped back into the tower, and the dimly-lighted church which had been the scene of such stormy human feelings was once more silent and deserted. At noontide, too, Valmai had regained her composure, and had risen from her attitude of despair with a pale face and eyes which still showed traces of their storm of tears. Next day she bade her faithful Nance good-bye, leaving with her a promise to write as soon as she was settled in some place that she could call "home," and to return for a few days in the spring. Arrived at Caer Madoc, she took her place in the coach in which she had journeyed a year before; and reaching the station at Blaennôs, soon arrived at Fordsea. Leaving her luggage at the station, she made her way into the well-remembered town. There was the white-flashing harbour, here was the crooked Reuben Street, and here the dear little house once occupied by her uncle, where she and Cardo had spent their happy honeymoon. Yes, she remembered it all; but she held her head up bravely, and crushed down every tender memory, hardening her heart, and setting herself to attend to the business of the hour. In the broad High Street she easily found the shining brass plate which bore the words, "Mr. William Lloyd, Solicitor," and she entered the office with as business-like an air as she could assume. "Can I see Mr. William Lloyd himself?" "You see him, madam; I am he," said a middle-aged, pleasant-faced man, who met her in the doorway. "I was just going out, but if your business is not likely to keep us long--" "I don't think so," said Valmai. "I am the niece of Captain Powell, who used to live in Reuben Street. He once told me you were his lawyer, and I have heard that in his will he has left me some money." "Bless me! You are his niece Valmai! Of course. I have been wondering when you would turn up, and was really beginning to think I must advertise for you. I have written to your uncle at Abersethin, but have had no reply." "He never writes if he can help it. I am very ignorant of money matters and business ways," said Valmai, as Mr. Lloyd handed her a chair, "but would like to know in plain words how much my dear uncle has left me, as I am leaving this part of the country to-morrow." "Not going out of England, I suppose?" said the lawyer. "No, oh no; not even out of Wales." "Well, I have your uncle's will here, and I can read it to you at once." "No, indeed," said Valmai, "I don't think I want to hear it read. I know from dear Uncle John's perfect faith in you that I can trust you. If you will only tell me plainly how much money I can have now, and how I am to receive it in the future, I shall be quite satisfied; and if I owe you anything you can deduct it, please." Mr. Lloyd smiled and shook his head at this unbusiness-like proposal. "Well," he said, "young ladies can't be expected to know much of business ways, but I should certainly like to go into the accounts with you at the first opportunity. He has left you the bulk of his property, the income of which is about 150 pounds a year; and, after deducting the legacies and my costs and all expenses, I shall have in hand about 300 pounds for you." "Three hundred pounds," said Valmai, "what a lot of money! Could you take care of it for me, Mr. Lloyd? and let me send to you for it when I want it," she added nervously. "Certainly, my dear young lady, and I will send you a statement of accounts as soon as possible." After a few more business arrangements Valmai left the office, feeling she had quite acted up to her new _rôle_ of an independent woman of business. Making her way to a quiet hotel, the landlord of which she remembered had been an intimate acquaintance of her uncle's, she procured a bed there for the night, and in the morning arose with the feeling that the dear old past was dead, and that a new and unlovely life lay before her. CHAPTER XV. THE SISTERS. In the spacious, handsomely-furnished drawing-room of a large country-house, two ladies sat on a quiet evening in autumn. The large bay window looked out over extensive grounds to the blue hills beyond. In the pale evening sky the crescent moon hung like a silver boat, the trees in the quiet air looked black as if drawn in ink. In the grate a large wood fire crackled, which the elder lady seemed much to enjoy as she rubbed her hands one over another on her knee, and spoke in a low, purring tone. The younger occupant of the room was a girl about twenty years of age; she was fair and fragile-looking compared with her portly companion, who was rather florid in complexion. "Put your work away, my dear," said the elder lady; "it is getting too dark for you to see." "This is the last petal, auntie," said the girl, still bending her head with its wealth of golden hair over her work. At last with a satisfied "There!" she laid it on the table and turned towards the bay window, through which might be seen a fair view of the park, with its undulating knolls and clumps of trees, between which wound in flowing curves the well-kept drive leading to the high road. "You had better ring for the lights, Gwladys," said the elder lady, as she settled herself to what she called "five minutes' snooze," a slumber which generally lasted till dinner-time. "There is a carriage coming down the drive; what can it be, auntie?" But auntie was already in dreamland, and Gwladys stood still at the window watching with curiosity the vehicle which drew nearer and nearer. "The fly from the Red Dragon at Monmouth! who can it be?" and her blue eyes opened wide as she saw alighting from it a girl in a quiet black travelling dress. "She's young and has golden hair like mine--a dressmaker, probably, for one of the servants, but she would scarcely come to the front door." Before she had time to conjecture further, the door was opened by a servant man, who seemed rather flustered as the visitor entered quickly, unannounced. She had merely asked him, "Miss Gwladys Powell lives here?" and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, had walked into the hall and followed the puzzled man to the drawing-room door. As she entered the room in the dim twilight, Gwladys stood still with astonishment, while William so far forgot himself as to stand open-mouthed with his hand on the door-handle, until Gwladys said, "The lamps, William," when he disappeared suddenly. The visitor stood for one moment frightened and doubtful. "I am Valmai," she said, approaching Gwladys with her hands extended. "Valmai?" said Gwladys, taking both the offered hands. "I don't know the name--but--surely, surely, we are sisters! You are my twin-sister. Oh, I have heard the old story, and have longed for and dreamt of this meeting all my life," and in a moment the two girls were clasped to each other's hearts. Gwladys seemed more unnerved by the meeting than Valmai, for she trembled with eagerness as she drew the new-comer nearer to the window, where the evening light shone upon the fresh pure face, so completely the image of her own, that both were impelled over and over again to renew their embraces, and to cling closely together. When William entered with the lights, they were seated on the sofa with clasped hands, and arms thrown round each other's necks. "Please, m'm, is the carriage to go or to stay?" "Oh, to go--to go, of course," said Gwladys, rising to her feet. "I have paid him," said Valmai; "but I couldn't be sure, you know, whether--whether--" "No, darling, of course. Auntie, auntie, awake and see who has come." Mrs. Besborough Power blinked lazily. "Dinner?" she said. "No, no, auntie, not for another hour, it is only seven o'clock; but do wake up and see who has come." But the sight of the strange girl had already recalled her aunt to her senses; her beady black eyes were fixed upon her, and her high-bridged nose seemed to be aiding them in their inquiries, as she pressed her lips together, and sniffed in astonishment. "Gwladys," she said, "is it possible that I have invited anyone to dinner, and then forgotten it?" Gwladys had removed her sister's hat, and as she stood now before Mrs. Power, in the full light of the lamp and the fire, that poor lady was smitten by the same bewilderment which had taken possession of William at the front door. She could only ejaculate: "Gracious goodness, Gwladys! What is the meaning of this? Who is it, child? and which are you? Are you this one or that one? For heaven's sake say something, or I shall be quite confused." "It's Valmai, auntie, my twin-sister, though you could not remember her name, but of whom I have thought often and often. Auntie, you will welcome her for my sake? Is she not the very image of me? alike--nay, not so, but the same, the very same, only in two bodies. Oh, Valmai! Valmai! why have we been separated so long?" and, sinking into a chair, she trembled with agitation. Mrs. Power held her hands out, though not very cordially. She was beginning to arrange her ideas. "Welcome her! Why, of course, of course. How do you do, my dear? Very glad to see you, I am sure, though I can't think where you have dropped from. Gwladys, calm yourself; I am surprised at you. I thought you were in Figi, or Panama, or Macedonia, or some place of that kind." "Patagonia," said Valmai, smiling. "My parents both died there, and I have come home to live in Wales again--" "Well, to be sure," said Mrs. Power, rubbing one hand over another, her favourite action. "Come, Gwladys, don't cry--don't be silly; as your sister is here, she will stay with us a week or so. Can you, my dear?" "Yes," said Valmai, whose clear mind quickly drew its own conclusions and formed its own plans. "Yes, indeed, I hoped you would ask me to stay a week or so; but do not think I am come to be dependent on you. No, I am well off, but I had an intense longing to see my sister; and having no ties or claims upon me, I made up my mind to find her out before I settled down into some new life." Alas, poor human nature! The few words, "I am well off," influenced Mrs. Besborough Power at once in her reception of the friendless girl. "Of course, my dear, stay as long as you like. Go upstairs now and take your things off, and after dinner you shall tell us all your story." And arm-in-arm the two girls left the room, "like twin cherries on a stalk." The resemblance between them was bewildering; every line of feature, every tone of colouring was the same. "Let us stand together before this cheval glass," said Gwladys, "and have a good look at each other. Oh, Valmai, my beloved sister, I feel as if I had known you all my life, and could never bear to part with you." And as they stood side by side before the glass, they were themselves astonished, puzzled, and amused at the exact likeness of one to the other. The same broad forehead, in which, at the temples, the blue veins showed so plainly, the same depth of tenderness in the blue eyes, the same slender neck, and the same small hands; the only difference lay in the expression, for over Gwladys's upper lip and half-drooped eyelids hovered a shade of pride and haughtiness which was absent from Valmai's countenance. "Oh, see," she said playfully, "there is a difference--that little pink mole on my arm. Valmai, you haven't got it." "No," said Valmai, critically examining her wrist, with rather a dissatisfied look, "I haven't got that; but in everything else we are just alike. How lovely you are, Gwladys." "And you, Valmai, how sweet." And again they embraced each other. "I have no dress to change for dinner, dear. Do you dress?" "Oh, only just a little, and I won't at all this evening. How strange we should both be in mourning, too! Mine is for Mrs. Power's sister. Who are you wearing black for?" A hot blush suffused Valmai's face and neck as she answered slowly: "I am not in mourning, but thought black would be nice to travel in. I generally wear white." "How strange! so do I," said Gwladys; "white or something very light. Shall we go down, dear? Would you like a bedroom to yourself, or shall we sleep together?" "Oh, let us sleep together!" And with arms thrown over each other's shoulders, they descended the broad staircase, just as Mrs. Power, in answer to William's summons, was crossing the hall to the dining-room. "Here we are, auntie, or here I am and here is she." "Come along, then, my dears." "Well, indeed, I never did," said William, when he entered the kitchen; "no, I never, never did see such a likeness between two young leddies. They are the same picture as each other! And missus says to me, 'William,' she says, 'this is Miss Gwladys's sister, her twin-sister,' she says, 'Miss Valmai Powell.' And I couldn't say nothing, if you believe me, with my eyes as big as saucers. Ach y fi! there's an odd thing!" In the drawing-room after dinner there were endless questions and answers, each one seeming to find in the other's history a subject of the deepest interest. Mrs. Besborough Power, especially, with her nose in the air, sometimes looking over her spectacles, and sometimes under them, sometimes through them, did not hesitate to question Valmai on the minutest particulars of her life hitherto--questions which the latter found it rather difficult to answer without referring to the last eighteen months. "H'm!" said Mrs. Power, for the twentieth time, "and ever since your father's death you have been living with your uncle?" "With my uncles, first one and then the other; and the last few months with dear Nance, my old nurse." "What! Nance Owen? Is she alive still?" "Yes; she is, indeed." "She must be very old now?" "Yes, and frail; but as loving and tender as ever." And so on, and so on, until bed-time; and the two girls were once more together in their bedroom. The maid, who was deeply interested in the strange visitor, lingered about the toilet-table a little unnecessarily, until Gwladys, in a voice which, though not unkind, showed she was more accustomed to command than Valmai, said: "That will do, thank you, I will do my own hair to-night. My sister and I wish to talk." And, having dismissed Maria, she drew two cosy chairs round the wood fire. "Come along, Valmai, now we can chat to our heart's content." And soon, with feet on fender and hair unloosed, the sisters talked and talked, as if making up for the long years of silence which had divided them. "And how happy that neither of us is married," said Gwladys. "We might never have met then, dear." "Possibly," said Valmai. "And what a good thing we haven't the same lover to quarrel about." "Yes," said Valmai, rather absently. She was struggling hard with the tumult of feelings which she had hitherto restrained, endeavouring to smile and laugh as the occasion required; but now the tide of emotions, which had been pent up all day, threatened to burst its bonds. "What is it, dear?" said Gwladys. "What makes your voice tremble so? There is something you are hiding from me?" and, flinging herself down on the hearth-rug at Valmai's feet, she clasped her arms around her knees, and leant her head on her lap, while Valmai, giving way to the torrent of tears which had overpowered her, bent her own head over her sister's until their long unbound hair was mingled together. "Oh, Gwladys! Gwladys!" she said, between her sobs, "yes, I have hidden something from you. Something, oh, everything--the very point and meaning of my life. And I must still hide it from you. Gwladys, can you trust me? Can you believe your sister is pure and good when she tells you that the last eighteen months of her life must be hidden from you? Not because they contain anything shameful, but because circumstances compel her to silence." The effect of these words upon Gwladys was, at first, to make her rigid and cold as stone. She drew herself away from her sister, gently but firmly, and, standing before her with blanched face and parched lips, said: "I thought it was too good to be true; that I, who have so longed for a sister's love, should have my desire so fully satisfied seemed too good for earth, and now I see it was. There is a secret between us, a shadow, Valmai; tell me something more, for pity's sake!" "I will tell you all I can, Gwladys, the rest I must keep to myself, even though you should spurn me and cast me from you to-morrow, for I have promised one who is dearer to me than life itself, and nothing shall make me break that promise. Gwladys, I have loved, but--but I have lost." "I know very little of the world," said Gwladys, speaking in cold tones, "and still less of men; but the little I know of them has made me despise them. Three times I have been sought in marriage, and three times I have found something dishonourable in the men who said they loved me. Love! What do men know of love? Fortunately my heart was untouched; but you, Valmai, have been weaker. I see it all--oh! to my sorrow I see it all! You have believed and trusted, and you have been betrayed? Am I right?" "Yes, and no; I have loved and I have trusted, but I have not been betrayed. He will come back to me, Gwladys--I know he will, some time or other--and will explain the meaning of this long silence. Meanwhile I must go on bearing and waiting." "Look into my eyes, Valmai," said Gwladys, kneeling once more before her sister. And Valmai looked full into the blue orbs, the counterpart of her own, with fearless, open gaze. "Now speak," said Gwladys, taking her sister's hand, and holding it on her own fast-beating heart; "now tell me, here as we kneel together before the All-seeing God and His holy angels, do you know of any reason why we two, when we have dropped these bodies, should not stand in equal purity before the Throne of God?" "Before God there is none! Of course, Gwladys, my heart is full of the frailties and sin belonging to our human nature; but I understand what you mean; and again I say, there is none!" "I will believe you, darling," said her sister, throwing her arms around her, "I will believe you, dearest; I will take you into my warm heart, and I will cling to you for ever!" "But I must go, Gwladys; I want to find some home where I can make myself useful, and where I can fill my mind and hands with work until--until--" "Until when, dear?" said Gwladys. Valmai rose with a troubled face and tearful eyes, and, stretching out her hands, she gazed over them into the far distance, with a dreamy look which gradually changed into a brightening smile. "Until the happy future comes! It will come some day, Gwladys, and then you will be glad you trusted your sister." "Then to-night, dear," said Gwladys, "we will bury the last eighteen months. I will never think of them or allude to them until you choose to enlighten me. One thing only, Valmai," she added, "forget _that man_--learn to despise him as I do; here is the fourth on my list! Let us go to bed, dear; we are both tired." And the two sisters were soon sleeping side by side, so much alike in every feature and limb, that no one looking at them would have been able to distinguish one from the other. "What a strange thing," said Mrs. Power, a few days afterwards, as they roamed about the grounds together, "that the Merediths should have written to me just the day before you came! My dear, I think it will be a delightful home for you. True, Mifanwy is an invalid, and you will be her companion; but then they are advised to amuse her as much as possible, and she sees a good deal of life, often going about from one place to another. Let me see! they will get my letter to-morrow, and I have no doubt they will write by return of post; but we can't spare you for a month, dear. You know you promised us that!" And the old lady purred on, walking between the twins, and much interested in her plans. "Yes, indeed," said Valmai, "I shall be thankful for such a situation; it is just what I would have chosen for myself, whatever." "'Whatever' and 'indeed' so often is very Welshy, my love," said Mrs. Power, with a sniff of disapproval. "Yes, I am afraid, indeed," said the girl; "but you should have heard me two years ago. I could scarcely speak any English then!" "Well, my dear, I hope Gwladys won't catch your Welsh accent; but the Merediths have it very strongly themselves." "Oh! I hope they will like me," said Valmai. "I must not count my chickens before they are hatched!" But they were hatched, and in this matter everything turned out well for Valmai. The Merediths, who lived in an adjoining county, had for some time been looking out for a companion for their eldest and invalid daughter. They were delighted, therefore, when Mrs. Besborough Power's letter arrived telling them of Gwladys's meeting with her twin-sister, and of the latter's desire to find some situation of usefulness; and in less than a month Valmai was domiciled amongst them, and already holding a warm place in their regard. Mifanwy opened her heart to her at once, and seemed every day to revive under the influence of her bright companionship; and her parents, delighted with the change which they began to perceive in their daughter, heaped kindnesses and attention upon Valmai, who was soon looked upon as one of the family; even Gwen and Winifred, the two younger girls, taking to her in a wonderful manner. Yes! Valmai was outwardly happy and fortunate. She hid from every eye the sorrow which lay at the bottom of her heart like a leaden weight, and little did those around her guess that every night, in the privacy of her own room, she drew from her bosom a plain gold ring, and, laying it on the bed before her, prayed over it with clasped hands and streaming eyes. Gwladys and she corresponded very regularly, and she frequently went to Carne for a few days' change when Mifanwy was well enough to spare her; always regretted by the whole family when she left, and warmly welcomed when she returned. CHAPTER XVI. DISPERSING CLOUDS. Two months had slipped away, and still Charles Williams remained a patient in the Westlake Hospital at Sydney. At length, after a consultation of the doctors, it was proposed that he should be consigned to the workhouse infirmary. "We can't keep him here forever," said Dr. Emerton; "and as all the beds will be wanted with this outbreak of diphtheria, I see nothing else to be done." "Well," said Dr. Belton, "I am deeply interested in his case, and if you agree, I will take him under my own particular charge. You know I have a few rooms set apart for such cases in my house at Brookmere. I will take him there, and see what I can do for him." "Very kind of you, I am sure," said Dr. Emerton. "You can afford that sort of thing--I can't. I should have sent him to the infirmary, where he would be under Dr. Hutchinson's care; but, of course, he will be better off in your private hospital." And one day in the following week, Dr. Belton took home with him the invalid, whose case he had already described to his wife and children, so that when the stooping figure emerged from the carriage leaning heavily on the arm of the nurse who accompanied him, he was received with kindness and warmth, Mrs. Belton herself meeting him with outstretched hands of welcome. "Very glad to see you, Mr. Williams. You will soon get better here, I think." Cardo looked at her with no intelligence in his eyes. "Yes, thank you," was all he said, as he passed with his nurse into the bright, cosy room relegated to the use of the patients, who were so fortunate, or so unfortunate as to arouse more than usual interest in Dr. Belton's mind. "Now, nurse," said the doctor, "give him a good tea, and a little of that cold quail, and after tea I will come and have a chat with him." Later on in the evening he kept his word and found Cardo sunk in the depths of an arm-chair, watching with lack-lustre eyes, while the Dr.'s two boys tried their skill at a game of bagatelle. "Well, Williams, and how are you now? tired, eh?" he asked. "Yes," said Cardo, turning his eyes upon the doctor with a look of bewilderment, which reminded him of the look of dumb inquiry in the eyes of a troubled dog. "You will like this better than the hospital I am sure. Do you love children?" "No," was Cardo's laconic reply, at which the doctor smiled. He tried many subjects but failed to get any further answer than "yes" or "no." Most men would have been discouraged when several weeks passed over, and still his patient showed very little signs of improvement. It is true, now he would answer more at length, but he was never heard to volunteer a remark, though he sat for hours in what looked like a "brown study," in which probably only indistinct forms and fantastic shapes passed before his mind's eye. And latterly the doctor too had frequently been observed to fall into a reverie, while his eyes were fixed on Charles Williams's motionless attitude. After much thought, he would sit beside his patient and try to interest him in something going on around him. Indeed, Cardo's gentle ways, together with his handsome person, had endeared him to all who came in contact with him, and there was not one in the house, from the cook in the kitchen to Dr. Belton's youngest child, who would not have rejoiced to see health restored to the invalid. One evening, when Jack, a boy of twelve, returned from school, he came bounding into the room in which Cardo sat with his eyes fixed on a newspaper, which he had not turned nor moved for an hour, Sister Vera sitting at the window with her work. "See, Mr. Williams," said the boy, "what Meta Wright gave me, some gilded gingerbread! isn't it pretty? I have eaten a pig and a lamb--now there is a ship for you." Cardo put down the paper, and taking the gingerbread in his thin fingers, looked at it with eyes that gradually filled with tears. "Gingerbread?" he said, looking next at the boy, "gilded gingerbread in the moonlight!" Sister Vera's eyes and ears were instantly on the alert, while she made a sign of silence to the boy. Cardo continued to look at the gingerbread. Suddenly he held up his finger and seemed to listen intently. "Hush!" he whispered, "do you hear the Berwen?" and he ate his gingerbread slowly, sighing heavily when it was finished. This was good news for Dr. Belton, told garrulously at tea by his young son, and more circumstantially by Sister Vera; but for long afterwards there was no further sign of improvement in Cardo. It was not until three more months had passed that another sign of reviving memory was seen in him, and again it was Jack who awoke the sleeping chord. "Isn't it a shame?" he said, excitedly running into the room one day; "mother is cutting Ethel's hair; says she's getting headaches from the weight of it. Rot, I call it! See what a lovely curl I stole," and he handed it to Cardo, who first of all looked at it with indifference, but suddenly clutching it, curled it round his finger, and became very excited. "Whose is it?" said Sister Vera, standing over him. His lips trembled and with a husky voice he said. "Valmai--" The sound of the name seemed to charm his ear, for he continued to speak it in all sorts of varying tones--sometimes in whispering tones of love--at others in loud and imploring accents. "Oh, Valmai, Valmai!" he called, and when Dr. Belton entered the room, he held out his hands towards him, and in a beseeching voice cried, "Valmai! Valmai!" There was no rest for anyone in the hospital that night, for all night long the house echoed with the cry of "Valmai! Valmai!" On the following morning, endeavouring to create some distraction from this ever-recurring cry, Dr. Belton drove his patient with him for some miles into the bush; the fresh air and motion seemed to quiet his brain, and he fell into the silent stupor so constantly hanging over him. "Come, Williams," said the doctor at last, as they emerged into a well-kept road leading up to a handsome house which stood on a rising ground before them, surrounded by its broad acres of well-cultivated land. "You must brighten up now, for I am going to take you to see an old friend of mine. Why, here he is!" and they were greeted by a jovial shout as a portly, pleasant-faced man caught them up. "Hello! doctor, glad to see you; you havent honoured us with a visit for some time." "I have been so busy lately, and even now you see I have brought a patient with me. I thought a little change would do him good." "Of course, of course! the more the merrier. I'll ride on and prepare Nellie for your coming," and off he galloped on his well-kept, spirited horse, looking as he felt, perfectly at home in the saddle. "Nellie," a sweet-looking lady with a brunette's face, which retained much of the beauty of youth, although she had now attained to middle age, was as hearty as her husband in her greeting. "So glad to see you--you are just in time for dinner; for a wonder Lewis is punctual today." She shook hands with Cardo, and placed a chair for him at the well-filled table. He took his seat with a pleasant smile, but soon fell into his usual dreamy state, which the company at a sign from Dr. Belton took no notice of. "I do believe, Williams," said Dr. Belton at last, "that I have never introduced you to my friends. These are Mr. and Mrs. Wynne." Cardo looked up almost eagerly. "Cardo Wynne?" he said. "No," said the doctor; "Mr. Lewis Wynne. But do you know that name?" "Yes, Cardo Wynne." "Is that your name?" asked the shrewd doctor. "Yes, Cardo Wynne." "Merciful goodness!" said the host, in excited astonishment, which his wife seemed in a great measure to share, "that is the name of my brother's son, Caradoc, commonly called Cardo Wynne; that is what Dr. Hughes told us, Nellie, didn't he?" "Yes, I have often thought of the name and wondered what he was like. How sad," she said, "and such a handsome fellow, too." "Caradoc!" Dr. Belton called suddenly. "Yes," said Cardo, with one of his pleasant smiles, "Cardo Wynne, Brynderyn." "Good heavens!" said Mr. Wynne, "there can be no doubt about it; that is my brother's home." And both he and Dr. Belton, aided by Mrs. Wynne's gentle suggestions, made every endeavour to elicit further information from Cardo, but in vain. He had fallen again into an apparently unconscious and deadened stupor. "Sunstroke, did you say? are you sure of that, Belton?" "Not at all," said the doctor; "in fact, I have had serious doubts of it lately, and to-day's experience decides me. I will have a thorough examination of his skull." "I will ride in to-morrow, to hear what further discoveries you have made," said Mr. Wynne. And Dr. Belton returned home early, leaving his host and hostess deeply interested. Calling Sister Vera to him he told her of his plans. "I have long thought it possible that poor fellow might have had a blow of some kind on his head, and that he is still suffering from the effects of it. I shall at once administer an anaesthetic and have a thorough examination of his head. The idea of sunstroke was so confirmed by the symptoms when he was brought to the hospital that no one thought of anything else." "How soon?" asked the nurse. "To-morrow--three o'clock." And the next afternoon, Cardo's head was thoroughly examined, with the result that Dr. Belton soon found at the back of the skull near the top a small but undoubted indentation. "Of course," he said, "we must have been blind not to guess it before; but we are blind sometimes--very blind and very stupid." Cardo was kept under the influence of a sedative that night, and next day Dr. Belton, with the promptness of action which he now regretted he had not sooner exercised, procured the help of one of the most noted specialists in Sydney, and an operation was successfully performed. Mr. and Mrs. Wynne's visits of inquiry and sympathy were of almost daily occurrence during the next month, while Cardo in the darkened, quiet room, slowly regained his powers of mind and body. It was a very slow progress, though it did not seem to be wholly unsatisfactory to Dr. Belton. That good man, after weeks, nay months, of anxious interest, was, however, at last rewarded by the pleasant spectacle of a young and ardent temperament gradually re-awakening to the joys of life. The mind which had been darkened for so long could not be expected to regain its elasticity and spring at once, in an hour, or a day. But it was evident to the doctor that the healing process which had begun would continue, unless retarded by some unforeseen accident. Gradually the children were admitted into his presence, and while they played with Cardo, Mrs. Belton came and chatted with Sister Vera. A few days later on Mr. and Mrs. Wynne entered through the verandah with Dr. Belton, and although Cardo looked a little flustered and puzzled, the pleasant smile and warm clasp of the hand with which he greeted them showed there was no great depth of distrust or fear in his mind. His uncle and aunt possessed much good sense and judgment, and did not hurriedly thrust the recognition of themselves upon their nephew, but waited patiently, and let it dawn gradually upon him. One afternoon, while Cardo, accompanied by his uncle and aunt, were walking up and down the verandah conversing on things in general, in a friendly and unconstrained manner, he suddenly stopped, and looking full into his uncle's face, said: "Uncle Lewis, I cannot imagine how you and I have come here together; some things seem so very clear to me, and others so dim and indistinct." "But every day they grow clearer, do they not?" "Yes, I think so. Have I been ill?" "Yes, my dear fellow," said his uncle, gently laying his hand on his arm, "you have been very ill, and your recovery depends entirely upon your keeping your mind calm and restful. Do not attempt to remember anything that does not come clearly into your mind; in fact, live in the present as much as you can, and the past will come back to you gradually." At this moment Dr. Belton appeared on the verandah, having just returned from a visit to one of the Sydney hospitals. After greeting his friends, he sat down on a rustic chair, and with a stretch and a yawn brought out from his coat pocket a leather pocket-book which he flung across to Cardo. "There, Cardo, is that yours?" "Yes," he answered, carelessly taking the pocketbook and placing it in his pocket. "Come, you have disposed of it quickly; look at it again." Cardo drew it out once more, and, looking at it more carefully, said: "I do not remember where I dropped it; but I do remember being in a hot, scorching atmosphere, and feeling a terrific blow on my head, and then--nothing more but cloud and darkness, until I awoke here to light and memory, though that sometimes fails me, for I cannot remember exactly what happened before that day of burning heat." "Well! the blow on your head and the loss of your pocket-book I can explain, for to-day in the Eastlake Hospital, I was with a dying man, who confessed that about a year and a half ago he was standing idly on the docks, when he saw a gentleman suddenly struck on the back of his head by the swinging arm of a huge crane, used for lifting heavy weights to and from the shipping. The young man fell forward, his pocket-book--that one I have just given you--fell out of his pocket, and was pounced upon by the man who died to-day. That was you, Cardo Wynne; you were struck down insensible by the iron bar, and while you were quickly surrounded by a crowd and carried to the hospital, the man escaped with your pocket-book. He returned it to me with great penitence, having spent all your money, I am afraid; but your papers, I think, are intact, and I see you have in it a letter of credit upon the Bank of Australasia." "Why, yes," said Cardo, "I remember coming to the harbour in a ship. What was it called? The _Burrawalla_!" and as he fingered the papers in the pocket-book, and came upon his father's signature, Meurig Wynne, he became much excited, and hunted eagerly until he found a folded paper, out of which he drew a long curl of golden hair. "Valmai!" he said, "oh, Valmai, Valmai!" and dropping on to a seat, he covered his face with his hands, and through his fingers trickled some silent tears. "I must forbid any more excitement for the present," said the doctor; "let us go in to dinner." And as they gathered round the table, Cardo took his seat next to his uncle, with more cheerfulness and alacrity than usual. The thread of memory, once awakened, never wholly slept again. Daily and almost hourly memories of the past returned to him, and as he gained bodily and mental strength, he gradually unfolded to his uncle the incidents which had preceded his coming to Australia. When Lewis Wynne became fully aware of his brother's deep-seated affection for him, and of the penitence and remorse which had darkened his life, he was filled with an impatient anxiety to return to the land of his birth and the brother whom he had loved so much. Indeed, before his acquaintance with his nephew, he had already begun to arrange his affairs with the intention of disposing of his property in Australia, for he had prospered in all his undertakings, and was now a wealthy man. It was delightful news therefore to Cardo when his uncle one day appeared at Dr. Belton's, with the information that he had concluded a satisfactory sale of his property. "So we'll go back together, old boy," he said, slapping Cardo on the back in his usual jovial manner; "you can write to your father, and tell him to look out for a house for Nellie and me." "I will write to him to-day," said Cardo; "poor old dad, poor old dad! What he must have suffered! I only hope the suspense has not killed him!" "Well, if he is alive," said his uncle, "your good news will make up to him for all the past! We'll have some happy days in the old country yet. You must get married, Cardo, and settle down near us!" "I am married," said Cardo, with a whole-hearted laugh at Dr. Belton's look of astonishment. "Married!" said the doctor, "I never suspected that! I did think that long golden curl pointed to some love-affair." "It did, indeed," said Cardo; "it is one of my sweet wife Valmai's curls!" "Where is she now?" said Mr. Wynne, "with your father?" "No," he said, with a more serious look, "living with her uncle. The truth is, my father knows nothing about our marriage, and I have only yesterday written to tell him the whole truth; and now that I am able to add the delightful news that you are returning with me, I think it will soften his heart, and he will forgive our secrecy." "What objection has he to the lady?" "She is the Methodist minister's niece." At this remark Lewis Wynne burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "The richest thing I ever heard of. Ha, ha, ha! Meurig Wynne's son married to a Methodist preacher's niece. My dear boy, he'll never give his consent. Why, he hated them like the very devil himself, and now you expect him to agree to your marrying a Methodist." "He'll have to," said Cardo, "and I think he will." "Never, my boy, never," said Lewis, rubbing his hands gleefully. "I expect we shall have some exciting times down there, Nellie?" "Yes; there will be one thing missing, and that will be dear Agnes." "It will always be a mystery to me," said Lewis Wynne, "how I missed your father's letter, although certainly I was roaming about a good deal at the time, and afterwards never hearing my brother's name from Dr. Hughes, who wrote occasionally, I naturally thought he was still keeping up his unaccountable anger against me; and the busy life of an Australian station soon occupied my life entirely; but, hurrah! for old Cymry now. We'll go back and make it all right, Cardo." And in less than a month from this time, a very bright and cheerful party went on board the fast sailing steamer _Wellingtonia_. Mr. and Mrs. Wynne especially were full of life and spirits. Dr. Belton went on board with them, and when the last good-byes were said, he declared that Cardo's leaving would cause a great blank in his life, as not only had he been greatly interested in the young man as "a case," but he had also grown much attached to him as a friend. The bell rang, the gangway was raised, and the _Wellingtonia_ moved from the side of the quay; and when at last they had fairly bid good-bye to Australia, they turned to look at each other, and to realise that another leaf in the book of life had been turned over. Cardo was full of the brightest hopes, but shaded by anxiety, for he knew now that two whole years had passed away since he bade good-bye to Valmai on the quay at Fordsea. What had been her fate since then? How had she borne his long and unexplained absence and silence? And as he paced up and down the deck he was full of troubled thought, as well as of bright hopes and anticipations. "She must think me dead, but she will soon hear; in another week she will receive my letter, and, oh! I will make up to her in the future for all she may have suffered. Valmai, my darling! I am coming back to you, to kiss away your tears, and to shield you from every trouble in the future!" CHAPTER XVII. HOME AGAIN. A cold, biting, north wind blew over Abersethin one morning in November, the sea tossed and tumbled its sand-stained waves in the bay, the wind carrying large lumps of yellow foam far up over the beach, and even to the village street, where the "Vicare du" was making a difficult progress towards the post-office, his hat tied firmly on, his hands buried deep in his pockets, and his long, black cloak flapping behind him. He walked on bravely. Every day he tramped over the sandy beach, under the cliffs, and down the village street to the post-office; this was quite a change in his habits, which drew many comments from the gossiping villagers. "Well, well; he might have been kinder to his son when he had him with him; he'll never have the chance again," said Peggi "bakkare," peering through her tiny, foam-flecked window. "No," said Madlen, who had come in for a loaf; "having got safe away 'tisn't likely the young man will turn up here again, and small blame to him considering everything." "No, indeed, Madlen fâch; serve the old Vicare right; but 'tis a pity for the poor girl, whatever." "And where is she, I wonder?" "Well, now," said Madlen, "Mary, my sister, was coming home from Caer Madoc last week, and on the roadside there was a tent of gypshwns; it was dark and they had a fire, and there, sitting by the fire, was a girl the very picture of Valmai." "Dir anwl! I daresay it was her, indeed; but yet, I thought she was too much of a lady to join the gypshwns. Well, well; strange things do happen." And the story of Valmai having been seen in the tent of the gypshwns was spread abroad in the village, not that any one believed it, but it was, at all events, better than no news, and was a little spicy condiment in the daily fare of gossip. "My papers," said the "Vicare du" laconically to the postmaster. "Is your wife better?" "Iss thank you, sir, and here is a letter for you--from Australia, I think." The Vicar took it without any show of feeling, though his heart had given a sudden bound at the postman's news. "Stormy day," he said, as he passed out of the narrow doorway. He was longing to get home, but he would not hurry his step. He stopped and looked impatiently as he heard the postman call after him. "There is another letter from Australia, sir, but I dunno where was I to send it. Here it is, sir." And he touched his hat apologetically as he handed a second letter to him. "Yes; my son's handwriting, I see. I will take charge of it." He gasped for breath, though the postman saw no sign of emotion, and, as he bent his head against the wind, he read the address on the second letter. "Mrs. Caradoc Wynne, c/o Rev. Meurig Wynne, Brynderyn, Abersethin, Cardiganshire, Wales." "Oh, my God, I thank Thee," were the only words that escaped the Vicar's lips while he hurried home through the brewing storm, the letters clutched in his hand and pressed against his breast; but these words were repeated several times. At last, in the quiet of his study, he opened his son's letter and hungrily devoured every word of its contents twice over. After its perusal he took up the second letter, and, with visible emotion, poured over every line of the address, turning the envelope over and over, and pondering in deep but silent thought, from which Betto's knock, announcing dinner, startled him. As he stood for a moment to say grace, before sitting down to his meal, Betto raised her eyes to his face, and was so startled by the changed and softened look that, with round eyes of surprise, she asked: "Mishtir bâch! what is it?" "Mr. Cardo is coming home." And Betto, quite overcome, plumped herself down on the sofa, throwing her apron over her head and shedding some surreptitious tears of sympathy; while the Vicar, forgetting his dinner, recounted to her the chief incidents of his son's absence--his long illness, and subsequent loss of memory--Betto following the tale with a running accompaniment of ejaculations. "And this, Betto," said her master, slowly laying the other letter on the table before her, "look at it--but I forgot you can't read English." "Howyer bâch! not I." "Well, it is addressed to 'Mrs. Caradoc Wynne.' Did you know anything of this?" Betto's face exhibited a succession of expressions, which followed each other like dissolving views, astonishment, indignation, fear of her master's displeasure, determination to champion Cardo in any course of combat, all ending in a broad grin of delight as she saw an unaccustomed curve on the Vicar's lips. "Did I know it? No; if I had, I wouldn't have had words with so many people in the village. Oh! my boy, bâch! didn't I always say he was a gentleman!" And her varied emotions culminated in a rain of tears. "Twt, twt!" said the Vicar, clearing his throat, "no nonsense, Betto; bring me the potatoes." And that meal was finished with more cheerfulness than had lightened up that dark old room for many a long year. From that day forth the Vicar seemed to gain strength and gladness with every hour. He took long walks in his parish, and showed more tender sympathy with the ailments and troubles of his ancient congregation. The wonderful change in the "Vicare du" was the subject of remark at many a cottage hearth, and in many a roadside conversation. "Oh! it's his son's coming home that has brightened him up so much; and John Jones, postmaster, says he took the other letter as meek as a lamb. But what has he done with it nobody knows. John Jones is saying that it has never been posted again, so he must have got it still." "Well, well! how can he post it when nobody knows where Mrs. Caradoc Wynne is?" "Mrs. Caradoc Wynne, indeed! Phrutt!" * * * * * * Early in the New Year, when the bare, brown hills had thrown off their mantle of snow, and the blue waters of the bay were glinting in the sunshine, and the starry, golden celandines looked up fearlessly from every bank and hedge, a heavily-laden carriage, drawn by a pair of strong horses, rolled along the dry, hard road from Caer Madoc towards Abersethin. Its occupants looked at every scene with interest, recalling reminiscences of former days at every turn of the road, and looking out eagerly for the chimneys of the village, which lay at the bottom of the valley. The travellers were Cardo and Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Wynne. As the carriage left the firm, high road, and began to descend one of the stony lanes which led to the shores below, Cardo became silent and thoughtful; he had hitherto been the life of the party. Returning home in perfect health and spirits, he had given the rein to his fancy, and was full of buoyant hopes and joyful anticipations. The Vicar, apprised of their coming, was watching at the gate--indeed, had been there more or less since breakfast, and it was now nearly noon. Betto flew about with amazing agility, considering her size and weight, dusting a chair, smoothing her apron, shading her eyes with her hand, and peering towards the brow of the hill for some signs of their coming. At last they arrived, and it would be useless to try to describe that happy meeting. The Vicar seemed overwhelmed with joy, not only to receive once more his beloved son, but also to clasp the hand of the brother whom he thought had been estranged from him for ever! It was quite an hour or two before they had all calmed down. "We sha'n't keep this fellow long with us," said Lewis Wynne, indicating Cardo with a jerk of his thumb; "he can scarcely take his eyes off that ramshackle old house up there on the cliff; naturally he is longing to see his wife. You must make no objection, Meurig." "None. I have no wish to do so." "Nellie and I," continued his brother, "are quite looking forward to see our niece--of course we make all allowance for the rhapsodies of a lover; but discounting all that, I really think, Meurig, he has found a pearl in that old, rough oyster-shell of a house." "Wait a moment, Cardo," said his father, as he saw his son hunting about for his hat. "I am afraid I have a disappointment in store for you," and from his breast-pocket he drew out, and handed to Cardo, his own letter to Valmai. Cardo's face blanched, as with trembling fingers he turned the envelope round and round. "What is the meaning of this, father?" he asked at last an angry flush rising to his pale face, "Did I count too much upon your forgiveness when I asked you to give this to Valmai?" "No, my dear boy, I would gladly have given it to her, and I grieve for your disappointment, but she has left this neighbourhood many, many months, and nobody knows where she has gone." "Gone!" was all Cardo could exclaim, as he flung himself into a chair and hid his face in his hands. "Yes. Much has happened since you left, and you may as well know it now. There is nothing to hide from your uncle and aunt?" "No, no, tell me at once." "Well, much had happened before she left." Here Cardo started up excitedly. "Why, she has gone to her Uncle John, of course. Where else should she go, dear innocent, without another friend in the world?" The Vicar shook his head. "She is not there, Cardo, for he died some months ago and left all his money to his niece." But Cardo heard not the latter information. He was stunned by the news of old Captain Powell's death; he had never thought of this possibility, and was thrown into despair by the blow. Valmai wandering about the world friendless and alone! The thought was distracting, and in desperation he rushed out of the house. "Poor fellow," said Lewis Wynne, "this is a terrible blow to him." "Yes, yes, indeed! Perhaps he will be able to get some clue in the village." Cardo flew over the beach and up the well-known path to Dinas. Shoni was standing in the farm-yard. "Caton pawb! wass it you, Cardo Wynne?" he said. "Well, I was swear to make you feel the weight of my fist; but if the news is true that Valmai is marry to you, I will shake hands instead." Cardo wrung his hand. "Yes, yes, man, she is my wife, safe and sound--but where is she? Tell me for heaven's sake where has she gone?" "Well, indeed, that I donno--Essec Powell donno--an' nobody know. You look here now," said Shoni, "an' if you listen to me you will see everything quite plain. After you gone away Valmai wass go down to Fordsea to take care on her uncle, John Powell. He wass broke his leg, and when he cum better Valmai cum back to Dinas." "Well," said Cardo, "what then? Tell me in Welsh, you'll get on quicker." But Shoni indignantly declined to give up the language which he considered he had so completely mastered. "What then!" he continued severely, "you know very well what then. It wass three or four months before she cum back from Fordsea, and she wass look pale and thin and every day more like a spirit angel. Well, everybody see very soon what wass the matter with her, and at last somebody told Essec Powell. It was just the same time Captain Powell died, and when Essec Powell cum home from the funeral and find out his brother leave all his money to Valmai he go to chapel and somebody tell him about Valmai--" "What about Valmai?" said Cardo. "That she was gone, like many another, over the side of the path." "For heaven's sake, tell me what are you driving at?" "I am telling you if you wass quiet and let me alone. That night Essec Powell cum home from chapel in a devil of temper, and he call Valmai a thief to steal his brother's money from him, and worse names than that, an' he turn her out of the house that night, pwr thing, pwr thing!" Cardo groaned and clenched his fists. "Well! the wind wass blowing, and the snow wass fallin' shockin', and I could not let her carry her big bundle of clothes and she in the condition she wass--" "Condition?" gasped Cardo, "what do you mean?" Shoni looked at him with keen, searching eyes. "Cardo Wynne," he said, "I wass ussed to think you an honest, straightforward man, though you wass a churchman, and are you mean to tell me now that you donno that Valmai Powell have a small child on the 30th June last year?" "As God is my witness, Shoni, this is the first breath I have heard of such a thing; but she was my wife, why then should her uncle have turned her out?" "But she nevare tell us that, see you, she nevare speak a word about that, and only now lately Betto have told that the Vicare wass tell her she was marry to you! and everybody is wonder why she didn't tell before, instead of bear the nasty looks and words of the women. Oh! I can tell you Gwen here look pretty flat when she hear the news she wass married, and I did laugh in the corner of my mouth, 'cos she bin so nasty to Valmai. Well! I went with her over the Rock Bridge, and we go to Nance's cottage, and she cry, and Nance cry, and there I leave them, and the next morning before the sun is thinking to get up, I take her box and the rest of her clothes over in a boat, and she and Nance kom out early to meet me--and for long time nobody knew she wass there--and there her small child wass born. Here, sit down, sir, on my wheelbarrow; this news is shake you very much, I see." Cardo felt compelled to take the proffered seat on the wheelbarrow, so completely overcome was he by Shoni's information. "Go on, Shoni," he said, "make haste." "Well! she wass walk up and down the shore, and always looking out over the sea; the sailors wass often watch her. 'She may look and look,' they say, 'but he will nevare kom back!' And at last her child die." "Oh, God," said Cardo, "Valmai to suffer all this and I not with her!" "Where wass you, then?" said Shoni, "and why you not kom back?" "Because I was ill in hospital. I caught typhoid fever, and I had concussion of the brain, and I lay unconscious for many long weeks, nay, months. As soon as I came to myself, Shoni, I came home, and I often wished I had the wings of the birds which flew over the ship, and would reach land before us!" "Well, well, well," said Shoni, "I dunno what wass that illness you had, but it must be very bad by the name of it; but whatever, my advice to you is, go to Nance, perhaps she will tell you something, though she won't tell nobody else." "Yes, yes, I am going at once. Thank you, Shoni; you have been kind to her, and I can never forget it." And he jumped up and unceremoniously left his companion staring after him. "Diwx anwl!" said Shoni, returning to his Welsh, "he goes like a greyhound; good thing I didn't offer to go with him!" Cardo made short work of the green slopes which led down to the valley, and shorter still of the beach below. He jumped into a boat with a scant apology to Jack Harris, the owner, who with a delighted smile of recognition, and a polite tug at his cap, took the oar and sculled him across. "I am looking for my wife, Jack, so don't expect me to talk." "No, indeed, sir, I have heard the strange story, and I hope you will find her, and bring the pretty young lady back with you, sir; she was disappear from here like the sea mist." Nance was perfectly bewildered when Cardo appealed to her for information, and her delight at his return to clear her darling's name knew no bounds. She brought out her best teacups, settled the little black teapot in the embers, and gradually drew her visitor into a calmer frame of mind. His questions were endless. Every word that Valmai had said, every dress she had worn, every flower she had planted in the little garden were subjects of interest which he was never tired of discussing. But of deeper interest than flowers or dresses was Nance's account of the tiny angel, who came for a short time to lighten the path of the weary girl, and to add to her difficulties. "And she gave it up so meekly, so humbly, as if she could _see_ the beautiful angels who came to fetch it. It laid there on the settle in its little white nightgown, and she was sitting by it without crying, but just looking at it, sometimes kissing the little blue lips. Dr. Francis was very kind, and did everything about the funeral for her. It is buried up here in the rock churchyard, in the corner where they bury all the nameless ones, for we thought he had no father, you see, sir, and we knew it was unbaptised. She would not have it christened. She was waiting for you to come home, for she would not tell its name, saying, 'Baby will do for him till his father comes home,' and 'Baby' he was, pertws bâch." Cardo sat listening, with his hands shading his eyes. "And now, here's the directions, sir," she said, as Peggi Bullet returned from the well. "Here you, Peggi fâch, you are so nimble, you climb up the ladder and bring the old teapot down." And the nimble woman of seventy soon laid before them the old cracked teapot, out of which Nance drew the same faded address which she had once shown to Valmai. "It is horribly faint," said Cardo, a fresh tremor rising in his heart. "Here it is now," said Nance, placing her shrivelled finger on the paper. "This is where she went from here, when all this trouble came upon her, and everybody pointed the finger of scorn at her; and when she had given up the hope that you would ever come back, sir, she turned to her sister, dear child!" "I never knew she had a sister!" "No, nor she didn't know much about her; but I knew, and I told her. Born the same time they were, and a grand lady, who was lodging at Essec Powell's at the time, took the sister away with her, and brought her up as her own daughter, and we have never heard of her since. 'But I will find her, Nance,' she said. 'I _will_ find her! I know I will!'" "But have you never heard from her?" "Well, indeed, there was a letter," said Nance, "came soon after she left. Dr. Francis read it to me, and I think I put it in that teapot, but I am not sure; indeed, perhaps Peggie has thrown it away." "And what did she say?" "'Oh!' she said, 'I have found my sister, Nance, and you must not be unhappy about me, everybody is so kind to me. If anyone comes to ask for me, say I am here,' but she didn't say where!" "But the address was at the top of the letter," said Cardo. "Oh, anwl! I daresay it was. I never thought of that! There's a pity now; but try again to read that--she read it." "Well, let me see," said Cardo, taking the faded paper to the window. "Mrs. Besborough Power?" "That's it!" said Nance. "Carew?" "No; that's not right." "Carne?" "Yes; that's what she called it." "Montgomeryshire?" "No; she wrote there and the letter was sent back." "Then it must be Monmouthshire!" And with this scant information, and a very heavy heart, Cardo left the cottage, and, telling Jack Harris to meet him at the other side of the island, he made his way up the path which led to the little burying-ground behind the Rock Church. "Poor fellow!" said Peggi Bullet, looking after him, "you can't measure sorrow by the length of a man." He stepped over the low wall which divided it from the coarse grass of the cliffs, and immediately found himself in a sunny corner. The little grassy mounds were numerous, few had headstones; but one, marked by a little white cross, had evidently received much care and attention. The grass was soft and fine as velvet. Cardo approached it with sorrowful reverence; he stooped to read the inscription. "In memory of Robert Powell ----. Born, June 30th. Died, August 30th." The blank space puzzled him for a moment, but, as he stood with folded arms looking down at the little mound, a sudden revelation seemed to flood his mind and enlighten him more thoroughly than all that he had hitherto heard and done. She had kept faithfully--ah, too faithfully--her promise to hide the secret of their marriage until he should come himself to reveal it. How selfish, how thoughtless he had been. Was it possible that his first letter to her, as well as his last, might have miscarried? What had she not suffered? Alone, friendless, disgraced in the eyes of the world. Motherhood, death, the bitterness of feeling herself deserted--all--all had been tasted by her for whom he would willingly have laid down his life; and he registered a solemn vow that the devotion and love of his whole life should henceforth shield her and guard her from every sorrow as far as in him lay. He turned away from the little grave with a curious yearning in his heart. His own and Valmai's child! Strange and new feelings awoke within him as he crossed the rocky ridge running through the island, and began his way down to the other side to the scattered fishing village, where Jack Harris met him and quickly rowed him across to Abersethin. Here his first visit was to the stone-cutter's. Morris Jones received him with the usual exclamations. "Howyr bâch! well, well! there's glad I am to see you, sir!" And he shook Cardo's hand vigorously. "And, oh, dear, dear; there's sorry I am you didn't come sooner, sir, before the poor young leddy went away. She was broke her heart too much to stop after her small child was buried--and a beautiful boy he was too, sir, the very picture of you." "You cut that inscription on the little cross, Morris?" "Iss, sir, I did; with my own hands, and I don't think you get it better done--no, not in Paddington itself." "No--it is excellent. But the gap after 'Robert Powell'; you must add 'Wynne' to it at once." "That's it, sir, that's it! before next Sunday it shall be done. I hope you will find the young leddy, sir." "My wife, Morris." "Iss, iss, sir; there's glad I was to hear that." And, as Cardo left, and passed through the rest of the village, the same warm wish followed him from many a cottage window, and from every group of fishermen whom he passed on the way. "He has not forgotten his pleasant manners, whatever," said the men, as he greeted them all with his usual frank and genial smile. "No; nor he hasn't lost his good looks," said the women. "Though, indeed, his heart must be heavy now, druan bâch." [1] "Well," said the Vicar next morning, as Cardo drove off to Caer Madoc to catch the train at the nearest station, "I mustn't grumble at losing him so soon; he is doing the right thing, poor fellow, and I hope in my heart he may find his wife and bring her home. What a happy party we shall be! The only thorn in my flesh will be Essec Powell; I don't think I can ever get over my dislike to that man." "Oh, nonsense," said his brother, "let us all three go up there to-day, and take the bull by the horns, and make friends with him." And after breakfast, the Vicar, though with a bad grace, buttoned up his long black coat, and took his way, accompanied by his brother and his wife, up the steep path to Dinas. It was an early hour certainly, not yet eleven o'clock; but "calling" was unknown at Abersethin, and it was not the unseasonableness of the hour which made Shoni stare as the three visitors entered the "clos" or farm-yard. "Well, diwedd anwl!" he said, barely escaping an oath, "here's the 'Vicare du'! I know him by his coat tails, and his tallow face, and no doubt that is Lewis Wynne and his wife with him;" (for village gossip had already spread abroad the news of the arrivals at Brynderyn). "Well, indeed," he continued, "the preacher on Sunday night told us the end of the world was coming, and now I believe it!" and he put down his wheel-barrow, and stood stock still while the visitors approached. "Borau-da!" [2] said the Vicare, in a constrained voice. "Borau-da," was all Shoni's answer, and seeing a dogged look come into his face, Lewis Wynne took the lead in the conversation. "How are you, Shoni? Do you remember the jolly day we had, you and I, out fishing when we ought to have been at school?" "Yes, I do indeed, sir, and the lot of fish we caught." "Yes, and the thrashing we got for it afterwards! But we want to see your master, Shoni." "Essec Powell?" "Yes--Essec Powell, is he too busy?" Shoni hid his face behind his sleeve, while he indulged in a cackle. "Has he company, then?" "Oh, very good company--plenty of company! he got Taliesin--Owen Glyndwr--Iolo Morganwg and all the rest of them! and he's quite happy in their company. But once he comes down to live with us he's as rough and prickly as a birch-broom. Indeed he wass nevver used to be like this whatever; 'tis ever since his brother John die, and leave all his money to Valmai." "You must try to call her Mrs. Caradoc Wynne now, Shoni," said the Vicar, with a smile. "Yes, indeed, sir," said Shoni, quickly thawing; "there's nobody in Abersethin but won't be glad to see Val--Mrs. Wynne home again; it bin very dull here without her, ever since she gone away." Meanwhile Mrs. Wynne had knocked at the door and had been confronted by Essec Powell himself, who presented such an extraordinary appearance that she had some difficulty in composing her face to a proper degree of gravity. His trousers of brown cloth, burnt at the knees into a green hue, were turned up above each ankle, exhibiting his blue woollen stockings and a tattered pair of black cloth shoes, his coat was of black cloth, very much frayed at the collar and cuffs, his white hair flew about in all directions, as the draught from the back door swirled in when the front door was opened. He had his finger in the leaves of an old book, and with a far-away look in his blue eyes, all he could say was a bewildered, "Eh!" "The Vicar is coming to see you, Mr. Powell--" "What Vicar? What, the 'Vicare du'?" and at this moment the Vicar appeared, and held out his hand. Essec Powell stared in astonishment, and carefully exchanging his book from his right to his left hand, and glancing to see that his finger was on the right passage, he rather ungraciously shook hands with his visitor. "Well," he said, "there's a thing I never thought I would do in this world." "Oh, well, come," said Lewis Wynne's jovial voice. "You meant to do it in the next world evidently, so we may as well begin here." "Will you come in?" and the old man awkwardly ushered them into the little back parlour, which Valmai's busy fingers had transformed from its original bareness into a cosy home-room. "Oh, what a dear little room," said Mrs. Wynne as she entered. The table was littered with books and papers, a gleam of sunlight shining through the crimson curtains giving a warm glow to the whole room. "Yes," said Essec Powell, looking round with the air of a stranger, "it has nice bookshelves, and a nice light for reading; but I miss that girl shocking, shocking," he repeated; "got to look out for every passage now, and I was used to her somehow, you see; and I haven't got anybody else, and I wish in my heart she would come back again." "That, I am afraid," said the Vicar, "can never be; perhaps both you and I, Mr. Powell, have forgotten too much that, while we are going down the stream of life, the young people are going up, and are building their own hopes and interests; and I called to-day to see whether we could not agree--you and I--to think more of the young people's happiness for the future, and less of our own ease or our own sorrows." "It's very well for you to talk," said Essec Powell. "You are a rich man--I am poor; everything you see here belongs to Shoni, and it is very hard that Valmai should have all my brother's money, and I be left with none." "I think it is hard," said Mr. Lewis Wynne, "and as my nephew will be a very wealthy man, I am certain that he and his wife will be willing to pay you every year the amount which you lost by your brother's will." "You think that?" said Essec Powell; "150 pounds a year--you think they would give me that?" "I am sure they would; in fact, I can give you my word for it." "Well, indeed," he said, laying his book upside down carefully on the table, "that will make me a happy man. I can soon pay off Shoni, and then I can sleep at night without feeling that my servant is my master; and, more than all, I can give all my time to my book that I am writing." "What is it?" said the Vicar, no longer able to restrain his interest in the old books which littered the table. "Well, it is the history of our own county from as far back as I can trace it; and, oh! you wouldn't believe," he said, "how many interesting facts I have gathered together. I was not meant for a preacher, and I am getting too old and worn-out to travel about the country. I would like to give up preaching and spend all my time with my books. And with 150 pounds a year! Why, I would be a prince indeed!" "Well, you may tell your congregation next Sunday," said Lewis Wynne, "that they had better take heed to their own ways now, for that you are going to retire from the ministry." "And thank God for that," said Essec Powell; "it will be enough for me to look after my own wicked ways. Indeed, I feel I am not fit to teach others ever since I turned Valmai out of the house." "I see you have here 'Mona Antiqua,'" said the Vicar. "I have a copy in very good preservation, and I am sure I might be able to give you a good many interesting facts for your book gathered from some old MSS. which I found stowed away in the old church tower." "Can you, now? can you, indeed?" And the two antiquarians bent with deep interest over the musty books on the table. Two hours slipped away very pleasantly to the two old men before the visitors took their departure. At the door Essec Powell held Lewis Wynne's hand for a moment. "Do you think the little gel will forgive me? and do you think the young fellow will find her?" "Yes, I think he will; and if all he says of her be true, I am sure she will forget and forgive the past. Of course, you had some excuse, in the mystery and doubt surrounding her at the time." "Two hours you bin there," said Shoni, as they passed him in the yard. "I wass just kom in to see if you wass all asleep. Good-bye, sir." He touched his hat respectfully to the Vicar; and as he returned to the house to dinner he muttered to himself several times: "End of the world! I am sure of it! End of the world!" [1] Poor fellow. [2] Good-morning. CHAPTER XVIII. THE VELVET WALK. "Are you going out so late, dear?" said Mrs. Power, as she crossed the hall, where Gwladys was reaching a wrap from some hooks on the wall. "Yes, auntie, such a lovely evening--quite like spring; I can't resist it. I will put on the cloak Valmai left, and I shall be quite warm." "Yes, and the very image of her," said Mrs. Power, looking after her through the glass of the front door. It was one of those tender evenings that visit us sometimes at the beginning of the year to remind us that spring is not far distant, and to make us forget that the cold March winds are yet in store for us. Gwladys drew the red hood over her head and walked briskly in the direction of the lake, which lay buried in the fir wood behind the house. The path which led towards it was called "The Velvet Walk," being overgrown with a carpet of moss. The sun had just set, and the pale blue sky was cloudless and serene as on a summer evening; but here, in the shadow of the trees, the darkness was falling fast. Over the fir tree tops one golden star hung like a jewel in the sky. Gwladys walked with face upturned and eyes fixed upon its sparkling brilliancy, and so lost was she in admiration of its beauty, that she was quite unconscious of a hurrying figure who followed close upon her steps. It was Cardo, who, as he walked along the drive towards the house, had caught sight of a gleam of scarlet between the fir trees. "Valmai!" he said, with a bound of the heart, and a flood of love and happiness taking the place of the anxious doubts which had filled him since his return home. He hastened past the front of the house and entered "The Velvet Walk" to find the scarlet cloak but a little way in front of him, and Valmai, as he thought, walking with gaze upturned to the brilliant evening star. "At last, my darling!" he said, but softly, for he would surprise her. He would approach nearer and call her name, and then she would turn, and he would see the love-light in those starry eyes, of which he had dreamed at night and longed for by day. He was close upon her, but his footsteps made no sound on the velvet carpet. "Valmai!" he said at last, and stood with wide-open arms and a rapturous smile on his lips. But at the sound of his voice the girl darted forward a few steps before she turned round and faced the stranger. Her first look was of astonishment and fright, immediately followed by one of indignation. "Valmai, my darling, I have frightened you," he said, but dropping his arms and the smile dying out of his face; for before the girl had opened her lips to speak, he saw the flush of indignation and the haughty look which passed over her face. "Back!" she said, holding up her hand as if to keep him away; "not a step nearer. And what if I am Valmai? What is she to you after all these months of cruel neglect?" Cardo stood still. Was this the meeting he had pictured to himself a thousand times? Had her troubles unhinged her mind? Was she distraught? "What is it, Valmai, my darling, that has changed you so? What is that cold, haughty look on your face? I am Cardo, dearest--your own Cardo! come back to explain everything to you, and to clasp you in his loving arms," and again he approached as if to embrace her. "Stand back," said Gwladys once more. "If you come a step nearer, I will call for help from the house." "No, no," said Cardo, "do not do that. I will obey you, dearest; but tell me what is the meaning of this change in you? Oh, Valmai! has your love indeed perished? Have you forgotten the happy past, the walks by the Berwen, the fortnight at Fordsea? I have been ill, dearest--have lain unconscious for months in a hospital; but I swear that, from the moment I left you until now, every conscious thought, every fibre of my being, every chord of memory has been faithful to you, and to you alone! Come and sit on this bench. Five minutes will explain all to you, and I will not believe that my Valmai can have become the cold and heartless girl you seem to be." But Gwladys continued standing, and looking at him with eyes in which scorn and contempt were but too plainly visible. "Good heavens, Valmai!" said Cardo, with clenched hands, the cold sweat breaking out on his face; "do you remember it is a man's very soul you are trifling with? Do you know what a man's heart is? what his love means--such love as mine?" "Such love as yours!" said Gwladys coldly. "Such love, indeed! that could lead an innocent girl into the path of deceit and dishonour; that could leave her then to bear desertion and the cold scorn of the world, alone and friendless; and now to return, and expect to find her unchanged and still blinded to the truth!" "Valmai!" said Cardo, his hot Welsh blood suffusing his dark face with passion, "you could never have loved me. Do the strong bonds that united us count for nothing? Does that little green mound in the churchyard count for nothing? No! you never could have loved me; and yet--you did!" "If I ever did," said Gwladys, "the love is dead. I feel no more interest in you now than I do in yonder ploughman." "Girl, you are my wife," said Cardo, who was trembling with a mixture of anger and wounded love. "You are mine by every law of God and man, and I will not let you go." Then suddenly changing into a tone of excited entreaty, he said, "Come, darling, trust me once more, and I will bring back the light of love into those frozen eyes, and I will kiss back warmth into those haughty lips." "Away!" said Gwladys. "Do you wish, then, never to see me again?" "Never!" she said. "My greatest wish is never to see you or hear of you again!" Cardo sank on the garden seat, feeling himself more perfectly unmanned than he had ever been before. He had built such fair castles of hope, the ruin was so great; he had dreamt such dreams of happiness--and the awakening was so bitter! Gwladys saw the storm of feeling which had overwhelmed him, and for a moment her voice softened. "I am sorry for you," she said; "but I have given you my answer." The slight tone of tenderness in her voice seemed to restore Cardo to life. He crossed the velvet path, and, laying hold of her hands, which she in vain tried to wrest from his grasp. "You are mine!" he said, "and I challenge heaven and earth to take you from me!" "It is base and dishonourable," said Gwladys, still struggling in his grasp, "to frighten a friendless girl and force your presence upon her." But Cardo's grasp was suddenly relaxed. Dropping his arms at his sides, and going back a step or two, he stood aside to let her pass. His long-tried temper had over-mastered him, as with a scornful voice he spoke for the last time. "One word before you go--dishonourable! not even _you_ shall call me that twice. Some strange cloud is over you--you are not the same Valmai that walked with me beside the Berwen. You cannot kill my love, but you have turned it to-night into gall and bitterness. I will _never_ intrude my presence upon you again. Go through life if you can, forgetting the past; I will never disturb the even tenor of your way. And if, in the course of time, we may cross each other's paths, do not fear that I, by word or sing, will ever show that we have met before." "I hold you to that promise," said Gwladys haughtily. And she passed on in the deepening twilight, under the fir trees, Cardo looking after her with an aching heart. She met Mrs. Power on the stairs. "You have been a long time, dear; I hope you haven't taken cold." "Oh! no, I will be down directly; it must be near dinner-time." She walked steadily up the broad staircase, and into her own room; but once there, she threw herself on the couch, and buried her face in the cushions. "Oh! Valmai, my sister!" she sobbed, "what have I not borne for you to-night! I have kept to my determination; but oh! I did not know it would be so hard! You shall never more be troubled with this man; you are beginning to find peace and joy in life, and you shall never again be exposed to his cruel wiles. But oh! Valmai, having seen him I forgive you; he can pretend to be passionately and truly in love with you! but he is false, like every other man! He left you in despair and disgrace; or what did he mean by 'the little mound in the churchyard'? Oh! Valmai, what have you suffered? But now I have saved you, darling, from further temptation from him. God grant my cruel deception may bear good fruit for you, my sister!" It was late on the evening of the next day when Cardo reached Caer Madoc, and, hiring a carriage from there, was driven over the old familiar road to Abersethin. The wind blue keenly over the brown, bare hills, the grey clouds hurried from the north over the pale evening sky, one brilliant star shone out like a golden gem before him. Once he would have admired its beauty, now the sight of it only awoke more poignantly the memory of his meeting with Valmai in the "Velvet Walk," and with a frown he withdrew his gaze from it. Here was the spot where he had first seen her! here was the bridge upon which they had shared their ginger-bread! and oh! cruellest of all sounds, there was the Berwen gurgling and lisping below, as though there were no breaking hearts in the world! On the brow of the hill they saw the lights of Brynderyn. "I will get out here," he said; "you need not drive down these rough roads; I shall enjoy the walk." And as he paid his fare, the driver wondered "what had come to Mr. Cardo Wynne, who was used to be such a jolly young man! That voyage to Owstrallia done him no good whatever!" And as he turned his carriage round, he muttered to himself, with a shake of his head, "I heard some odd story about him and that purty young niece of Essec Powell's the preacher." Arrived at Brynderyn, Cardo found his father and uncle and aunt seated round a blazing fire in the old parlour, which had not looked so cheerful for years. They had been recalling old memories and events of the past, and when Cardo's footsteps were heard in the passage, they turned with expectant eyes towards the door. When he entered the room, pushing his fingers through his hair as was his habit, he was silent and grave. "Well, well!" said the whole party at once, "have you found Valmai?" "Yes, father, I have found my wife," he answered, in measured and serious tones; "but she is unforgiving, and refuses to have anything more to say to me. In fact, I have heard from her own lips that she no longer loves me! There is nothing more to be said. I have come back to my old home, to work again on the farm, to try to pick up the threads of my past life, and to make your life happier for my presence." "Cardo, my dear boy," said the old man, rising as if in reverence for his son's grief, "is this possible? I do indeed feel for you." "Oh, nonsense," said Lewis Wynne, "it is only a lover's quarrel; you will make it up before long. I will go to the girl, and make it all right for you." "If you wish to do me a kindness, uncle, and you, too, dear aunt, you will never mention the subject to me or to anyone else. It is a thing of the past; let us bury it out of sight and hearing." "We will do what you wish, my dear boy; but I am afraid, amongst these gossiping villagers, you will often hear the subject alluded to in joke or in earnest." "Oh! I quite expect that," said Cardo, with an attempt at a laugh, but it was a sorry attempt. "I am not going to play the _rôle_ of a love-sick swain, my grief will be buried too deep for a careless touch to reach it, and I hope I shall not forget I am a man. I have also the comfort of knowing that my sorrow is the consequence of my misfortunes and not of my faults." Soon things seemed to fall into the old groove at Brynderyn, as far as Cardo and his father were concerned, except that that which had been wanting before, namely, a warm and loving understanding between them, now reigned in both their hearts, and sweetened their daily intercourse. The west parlour and all the rooms on that side of the house, which had been unused for so many years, were opened up again, and delivered over to the care of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Wynne, who kept their own establishment there, thus avoiding the necessity of interfering with Meurig Wynne's eccentric habits, and still enabling them to meet round the cheerful hearth in the evening, or whenever they chose. As for Cardo, he threw all his energies into the busy work of the farm--the earliest in the field in the morning, the latest to leave it at night, nothing was too small for his supervision, no work was too hard for him to undertake; and though he declared he was well, quite well, still, it was evident to those around him that he was overtaxing his strength. The flashing light had gone out of those black eyes, the spring from his gait, the softness from his voice. He paid frequent visits to Nance's cottage, always returning across the corner of the churchyard. The stone-cutter had kept his promise, and had added the surname of "Wynne" on the little cross, and Cardo read it over and over again, with a sort of pleasurable sorrow. The banks of the Berwen he avoided entirely, the thought of wandering there alone was intolerable to him. Every bird which sang, every flower that nodded at him, the whispering river, everything would ask him, "Where is Valmai?" And what answer could he give to his own aching heart which echoed the question, "Where is Valmai? Gone--worse than gone! changed, she whom I thought was the counterpart of my own unchangeable nature. No, no, anywhere but by the banks of the Berwen!" And he plodded on at his work, doing his best to regain the placid calmness, though not the bright joyousness of his life, before he met Valmai. But in vain; the summer found him languid and depressed in spirits. It was Shoni who first suggested to him the idea of a change of scene and companionship. A strange friendship had grown up between these two men. Shoni had been kind and tender to Valmai in her sorrow, and seemed to belong to the bright, happy past which was gone for ever. "Where that Mr. Gwynne Ellis wass ussed to be with you at Brynderyn? Very good sort, indeed! Why you not go and stop with him a bit, and bring him back here with you?" Cardo thought the matter over silently, while Shoni whittled a stake for a hay band. "I think I will, Shoni; I feel I must go away from here for a time." "Yes, you so rich there's no need for you to work like you do." "No--that's the worst of it," said Cardo; "I feel my hard work is benefiting nobody." "Iss, benefit you, cos it help to fill your mind." "Yes, but I am tired of myself," and Cardo heaved a deep sigh. "Well, it's no use grumbling and grunting, Shoni, and if you don't see me about next week you will know where I am gone to." "Yes--but, indeed, I am thinking Essec Powell will miss you. He think now s'no one like you in the world, 'he help me a lot, Shoni,' he say, 'with his Latin and his Greek,' and the Vicare, he says, 'it wass wonderful how many books he got on his shelfs!' and indeed I think," continued Shoni, "the two old men will live much longer now they got their noses over the same old book so often!" "I hope so," said Cardo, "and I am glad to think that the provision we have made for him has taken the sting out of his brother's 'will.'" And he went homewards as broad-shouldered and as handsome as ever, but not whistling or humming as was his wont. His father, who saw how utterly his son was failing in his endeavour to regain his peace of mind, fell in with his proposal of a visit to Gwynne Ellis with great willingness. "The very thing, Cardo, and bring him back with you if you can; he was a nice fellow on the whole in spite of his radical ideas." Once more Cardo took his way from Caer Madoc to the little wayside station which connected that secluded neighbourhood with the busy, outside world. He had written to Gwynne Ellis to inform him of his coming, and had received a warm and welcoming answer to his letter. "Come, my dear fellow; I shall be delighted to receive you in my diggings, and bring some of the poetry and charm of your lovely neighbourhood with you if you can, for this place is flat, and dull, and gray. But, by the by, I haven't told you I am likely to be removed very soon to a good, fat living, old boy, near Monmouth--but I will tell you all about it when we meet." Gwynne Ellis's present abode was on the borders of Gloucestershire, and here Cardo found him waiting for him at the station. "It's only a mile, and I thought you would like a walk, so I have told the boy to fetch your luggage in the donkey cart." "A walk will be very acceptable after sitting all day cooped up in a railway-carriage." "Well, now, tell me all about your wife. You know I have heard nothing since that one letter you wrote after you turned up again. What adventures you have had, my dear fellow! and wasn't Valmai overjoyed to see you back again?" "No, Ellis, and that is all I can say to you now. It is a long story, and I would rather wait until later in the evening." "All right, old fellow, in the smoking-room to-night." And in the smoking-room that night they sat late, Cardo opening his heart to his friend, recounting to him the tale of his unfortunate illness in Australia, his return home, and the unexpected blow of Valmai's unrelenting anger and changed feelings towards him, culminating in her utter rejection of him, and refusal to live with him. "Astounding!" said Gwynne Ellis, "I will not believe it. It is a moral impossibility that that loving nature and candid mind, could ever so change in their characteristics, as to refuse to listen to reason, and that from the lips of one whom she loved so passionately, as she did you." "That is my feeling," said Cardo, "but alas! I have her own words to assure me of the bitter truth. 'If I ever loved you,' she said, 'I have ceased to do so, and I feel no more love for you now, than I do for yonder ploughman.' In fact, Ellis, I could not realise while I was speaking to her that she was the same girl. It was Valmai's lovely outward form, indeed, but the spirit within her seemed changed. Are such things possible?" Ellis puffed away in silence for some seconds before he replied: "Anything--everything is possible now-a-days; there is such a thing as hypnotism, thought transference--obsession--what will you? And any of these things I will believe sooner, than that Valmai Wynne can have changed. Cheer up, old fellow! I was born to pilot you through your love affairs, and now here's a step towards it." And from a drawer in his escritoire he drew out an ordnance map of the county of Monmouth. "Now, let me see, where lies this wonderful place, Carne Hall, did you call it? I thought so; here it is within two miles of my new church. In a month I shall be installed into that 'living,' and my first duty when I get there shall be to find out your wife, Cardo, and to set you right in her estimation." "Never," said Cardo; "she has encased herself in armour of cold and haughty reserve, which not even your persuasive and cordial manners will break through." "Time will show; I have a firm conviction, that I shall set things straight for you, so cheer up my friend, and await what the wonderful Gwynne Ellis can do for you. But you look very tired." "Yes, I will go to bed," said Cardo. "And to-morrow we'll have a tramp round the parish, and visit some of the old fogies in their cottage. A mongrel sort, neither Welsh nor English; not so interesting as your queer-looking old people down at Abersethin. Good-night." CHAPTER XIX. THE MEREDITHS There is no part of Wales more rural and unspoilt by the inroads of what is called "civilisation" than some of the secluded valleys lying between the Radnorshire hills. Here Nature still holds her own, and spreads her pure and simple charms before us. Large tracts of moor and rushy fen are interspersed with craggy hills, rising one behind another in lovely shades of purple and blue; and far from the haunts of men, or at all events of town men, many acres of uncultivated land are still tenanted by the wild mountain pony and the picturesque gipsy. On the edge of one of these moors stood a quaint old family mansion, surrounded by extensive grounds and woods. In front lay a descending plain of varied beauty, green meadows, winding streams, and placid lakelets; behind it, the wild vales and moor stretched up to the brown and blue hills. Colonel Meredith had lived there all his life, his ancestors before him, and here it was that Valmai had found a home as companion to the delicate eldest daughter of the family, who was delighted to find in her so congenial a friend. Her beauty had made a great impression upon the whole amiable family, as good looks often do upon people who cannot boast of the same advantages. It was a good thing that the girl had no vanity in her character, for her charms were continually brought before her in the household. Her pet name was "Beauty," and Colonel Meredith was fond of dilating upon her attractions of person wherever he went. Cecil, a boy of sixteen, was completely her slave, and considered himself the victim of a hopeless passion; while the girls vied with each other in their love and adulation of their friend, so Valmai led at least an outwardly calm and happy life. Her character had developed rapidly during the last two years, and she found herself, to her own surprise, possessed of a power of repression and a control over her emotions which she would have thought impossible a few years earlier. The memory of Cardo, the glamour of their rural courtship, the bliss of their honeymoon, his departure and her subsequent sorrows, were kept locked in the deepest recesses of her soul, and only recalled during the silent hours of the night. She had become less impatient of the stripes of sorrow; she had taken the "angel of suffering" to her heart with meek resignation, endeavouring to make of her a friend instead of an enemy, and she reaped the harvest always garnered by patience and humility. But forgotten? No, not a tender word--not a longing wish--not a bitter regret was forgotten! She seemed to lead two separate lives--one, that of the petted and admired friend of the Merediths; the other, that of the lonely, friendless girl who had lost all that made life dear to her. Gwladys's love alone comforted her, and the frequent visits which they paid to each other were a source of great happiness to both. Her invalid charge soon benefited much by her presence, and was really so far recovered that there was scarcely any further need for Valmai's companionship, but she was glad to stay on as a visitor and friend of the family. She was reading to Miss Meredith one evening in the verandah, when Gwen and Winifred came bounding up the steps from the lawn, hatless and excited. "Oh, fancy, Beauty; we are going to have a visitor--a young man, too! a friend of Dr. Belton's in Australia; he is travelling about somewhere, and will come here to-morrow. Won't it be jolly? He writes to say he is bringing a note of introduction from Dr. Belton, who wished him to call and give us a personal account of him. I don't tell you, Mifanwy, anything about it, because you are quite above these things; but Winnie and I are looking forward to see Cecil's black looks when the stranger falls in love with Beauty, which he will do, of course!" "When you stop to take breath I will ask a question," said the more sober Mifanwy. "What is the young man's name?" "Oh, I don't know," said Gwen. "Papa stuffed the letter in his pocket, and he has driven off to Radnor, and won't be back till dinner to-morrow evening. Probably he will drive the young man with him from the station. Larks, isn't it? I hope he will be a good tennis player." And she waltzed down the verandah as she went. "What a girl!" said Mifanwy. Valmai smiled pensively. The word "Australia" had wakened sad memories, which had to be controlled and driven back at once. "Let us go in; it is getting late for you," she said. And they passed through a French window into the unlighted drawing-room. The next evening Colonel Meredith returned, and, as Gwen had foretold, brought with him the expected visitor. The girl ran excitedly into Valmai's room. "He is awfully handsome, dear. I have just taken a peep at him through the hall window as he alighted. He'll be seated opposite to you at dinner, but _next_ to _me_, and I mean to make the best of my opportunity. You'll see how charming I can be in spite of my plain face." And off she went, singing as usual, to return in another moment and ask: "What dress are you going to wear, Beauty? That soft white cashmere? Oh, you look sweet in that, but I bet you a button that I'll cut you out to-night." As Valmai sat down at the dinner-table she was conscious that the stranger sat opposite to her, and, looking across at him, met the eyes of Cardo Wynne! A sharp spasm darted through her heart, for at the moment in which she had met his gaze she had seen his look averted from her; and the long-cherished hopes of months and faith in his constancy, held to through so many discouraging circumstances, gave way at a glance, for well she knew that Cardo had recognised her, and at the same moment had avoided her eyes, and had turned to make a remark to his neighbour Gwen. She bent her head over some trifling adjustment of her waistband, while the hot flush of wounded love and pride rose to her face, to give place to a deathly pallor as she realised that this was the outcome of all her hopes and longings. Fortunately the pink tints of the lamp-shade hid her face, and equally it befriended Cardo, for, on seeing before him Valmai in all the beauty with which his imagination and his memory had endowed her, he had felt his heart stand still and his face blanch to the lips. How he gained sufficient self-control to make a casual remark to his neighbour he never could understand, but he did; and while he was recalling the scene in "The Velvet Walk," and his promise to Valmai "that should he ever meet her again she need fear no sign of recognition from him," Gwen chattered on with volubility. All he heard was: "Oh, you positively must fish, you know, for there is nothing else to be done here. One day you must fish, next day you ride or drive, next day you fish again; and that's all, except tennis. Winnie and I do nothing else. In the evening Beauty sings to us, and there's beautifully she sings. You'll be charmed with her voice--sweet, old Welsh airs, you know--" "Hush, Gwen; stop that chatter. I want to ask Mr. Wynne something about Dr. Belton." "Oh, papa! all the way from the station, and you didn't ask him about Dr. Belton!" Cardo was thankful to have to talk to Colonel Meredith, for it enabled him to turn his head aside, though still he was conscious of that white figure opposite him, with the golden head and the deep blue eyes. She had regained her composure, and was talking calmly to the curate, who was laying before her his plans for a Sunday school treat. It is one of the bitter trials of humanity that it has to converse about trifles while the heart is breaking. If only the tortured one could rush away to some lonely moor, there to weep and wail to his heart's content, the pain would not be so insufferable; but in life that cannot be, and Valmai smiled and talked platitudes with a martyr's patience. In the drawing-room, after dinner, she buried herself in the old, red arm-chair, setting herself to endure her misery to the bitter end. When Cardo entered with Colonel Meredith, Cecil, and the curate, she had passed from agonised suffering to the cold insensibility of a stone. She knew she would wake again when the evening was over, and she was alone with her sorrow; but now she had but to bear and wait. It would be impossible to describe Cardo's feelings; indeed, he felt, as he entered the room, and saw that white figure in the crimson chair, that he had already passed through the bitterness of death. "Nothing more can hurt me," he thought; "after this I can defy every evil power to do me harm!" And he stood in his old attitude with his elbow leaning on the mantelpiece, while he answered Gwen's frivolous, and Winifred's sentimental, questions. "Are you fond of music?" one of them said at last. "Yes? Oh! Beauty, dear, do come and sing to us--that sweet ballad you sing so often, you know--'By Berwen Banks'." "Not to-night," said a soft voice from the armchair. "I am tired, Gwen. You sing, dear." "Well, I'll sing that, if you won't." And she sang it; and Valmai and Cardo, "so near and yet so far," estranged and miserable, listened to every word, which fell on their memories like searing drops of molten lead. "By Berwen's banks my love has strayed For many a day in sun and shade; And when she carolled loud and clear The little birds flew down to hear. "By Berwen's banks the storm rode high, The swollen river rushing by; And in its waves my love was drowned, And on its banks my love was found. "I'll ne'er forget that leafy shade, I'll ne'er forget that winsome maid; But there no more she carols free, So Berwen's banks are sad to me!" At the last words, during the acclamations of the family, Valmai rose, unable to bear more. There was a little cry and a soft fall by the side of the red chair, and she lay in a white, unconscious heap on the floor. "Oh! Beauty, darling!" cried Gwen and Winifred, in a breath, while they flew towards her. Cardo, too, had instinctively rushed towards the fallen figure. He lifted her in his strong arms as though she had been a feather-weight. "Oh! thank you, Mr. Wynne," said Mrs. Meredith; "this way, please, to her own room at once, where we can lay her on the couch." And with the whole family forming a _queue_ behind them, even the curate standing on the mat at the bottom, Cardo bore her up the staircase and into the room which Mrs. Meredith indicated. During a little distraction, caused by Gwen's pommelling of the sofa cushions, Cardo for a moment lost control over his feelings, and he pressed Valmai's form convulsively to his breast as he stooped to lay her down on the couch. He was quickly edged away by the fluttering womenkind who pressed round, each with her own restorative; a little sigh from Valmai told him that she was already recovering, and casting one lingering look of love on the white figure, he made his way downstairs, and joined the other gentlemen, who had straggled back into the drawing-room. He listened absently to the different conjectures as to what had caused Valmai's faint. "Never knew her do such a thing before!" said Colonel Meredith. "Can't think what it was; but I do remember once she burst into tears when she was singing some old Welsh ballad--that very one, I think--yes--'By Berwen Banks'--strange coincidence!" In a little while the ladies returned also. "She is all right now," they said, "and quite ashamed of herself; she has had a glass of wine and a biscuit, and insisted upon our leaving her--in fact, she turned us all out of the room and bolted the door." "Isn't she a lovely girl, Mr. Jones?" "Oh! yes, indeed--yes--very, indeed!" and Mrs. Meredith was delighted to have an excuse for dilating on her visitor's charms of person and character; while Cardo set himself to work to deliver himself of every message which Dr. Belton had entrusted to him. He bore Colonel Meredith's cross-examination with unflinching patience, and even suggested fresh topics of inquiry, for, while he had carried Valmai up the stairs he had come to the determination to leave the house before he saw her again. The strain of the situation was more than he could bear. To live under the same roof with her, and not to claim her for his own was impossible--to adhere to the terms of his promise, never to allude to his former acquaintance with her was utterly beyond his power. "Base--dishonourable!" Could it have been Valmai who spoke to him in these terms? or was he the victim of some strange hallucination? When at last the evening came to an end, he thankfully lighted his candle at the hall table, the whole family hovering round with various hopes that "he would sleep well," "that he didn't mind a feather-bed," "that he didn't mind the sun shining in in the morning." "You can close the shutters, you know. Good-night." "What time does the post come in the morning?" he asked. "Oh! at seven o'clock; you can have your letters brought up if you wish; but we always like to have them on our plates at breakfast. Bob will bring yours up." "If it's no trouble," said Cardo. There was a whole chorus of "certainly not!" "of course not!" under cover of which he made his way safely round the turning on the stair-case. He stepped wearily up the second flight of stairs; there was her room! and he groaned almost audibly as he turned into his own. Inside that bolted door, a listening ear had caught every vibration of his footstep, every tone of his voice, and a tear-stained face was now raised in agonised prayer, over folded hands which held in their clasp a ring hung on a white satin ribbon. The exclamations of disappointment and regret next morning, when Cardo's empty seat at the breakfast table disclosed their guest's absence, were loud as they were sincere. "How unfortunate!" said Colonel Meredith. "I meant to have taken him out fishing to-day; there was a little rain in the night and the Ithon would have been perfect for trout to-day. Here's his note:-- "DEAR COLONEL MEREDITH--I am grieved to say that some unexpected circumstances necessitate my leaving your hospitable roof and returning home to Cardiganshire at once. I shall walk to the station and catch the 7.30 train. Please tender my heart-felt thanks to Mrs. Meredith, and all the other members of your family for their kindness and hospitality. I hope to call upon them at another time, and express my regrets and thanks in person. "With many thanks to you also, "I remain, "Yours truly, "CARADOC WYNNE." Colonel Meredith was reading the last words as Valmai entered and took her place at the breakfast table. "Isn't it a shame, Beauty," said Gwen. "Just as I was beginning to make a favourable impression upon him, too! There must have been something in the letter Bob took up to him this morning." "Oh, of course," said her father; "fine young fellow--very!" "Awfully handsome, I call him," said Winifred; "such a sparkle in his eyes!" "Beauty wasn't smitten," said Gwen. "On the contrary, she was so smitten she fainted," said Winnie; "you are still rather pale, dear. Papa, wouldn't it be a jolly day for a picnic by the Ithon?" "Yes," said the Colonel; "bring your lunch down in the brake, and we'll light a fire by the carn, and broil the fish, for I am sure we shall get a basketful to-day--eh! eh! Cecil?" "Yes--and the drive will do Miss Powell good," said the lad, who was in good spirits from having so easily got rid of Cardo. And after breakfast they all drove off to the picnic, and Cardo's arrival and his departure were forgotten by all save one. CHAPTER XX. GWLADYS. The week that followed Gwynne Ellis's induction to his new living had been too full of business to allow him to call upon his near neighbours, the most influential member of his congregation, Mrs. Besborough Power of Carne Hall; but soon afterwards he began to look around him and make acquaintance with his parishioners. The Vicarage was large and his ideas of furnishing were limited, so that after arranging and rearranging every room in the house he still looked at them with a dissatisfied air. "I don't know how it is, father; in spite of all this handsome furniture you have given me, there seems something wanting, doesn't there?" "Don't see it," said the old man, "unless it is that wonderful piece of furniture--a wife--you want." "Perhaps, but that will have to wait," and as he drew his handkerchief over the shining face of the sideboard he thought within himself, "Where shall I find one? There are not two Valmai's in the world, and I declare she has spoiled me for every other woman. By the by, I must call on Mrs. Besborough Power, and see if I can't bring her visitor into a better frame of mind." The next day saw him entering the pleasant drawing-room at Carne Hall, where Mrs. Power was as usual dozing in her arm-chair, with a piece of wool-work in her hand, upon which she sometimes worked a few stitches while she purred a little remark to Gwladys, who sat nearer the window, making believe to work also. She had already remarked, "Auntie, this is the new Vicar, I am sure," when the door opened and Gwynne Ellis entered. Having shaken hands with Mrs. Power, he turned to Gwladys with a smile of greeting. "Valmai!" he said, "I beg pardon--Mrs.--" "No," said Gwladys, drawing herself up, "I am Gwladys Powell, Valmai's sister--but do you know her?" "Know her? well!" said Gwynne Ellis; "but I have never seen such an extraordinary likeness." "Yes," said Mrs. Power, "they are twins, and apart, it is almost impossible to distinguish one from the other." "Where is she?" he asked, "is she here?" "No," answered Gwladys, "she has been here, but is now staying with some friends of ours in Radnorshire." "Ah! I see, I am sorry; I should like to have seen her, but I can scarce say I miss her while you are present, for I certainly see no difference between you." Gwladys was more talkative than usual. She and Mrs. Power were pleasantly impressed, and congratulated themselves upon having gained an agreeable addition to their very limited social circle in the person of their new Vicar. "This is a charming neighbourhood. I saw by a little glint of sunshine, as I came up the drive, that you have a pond or lake in that firwood; and that is always tempting to an artist. Do you draw, Miss Powell?" "Yes," said Gwladys. "My efforts are very humble, but I have one drawing of the lake." And she fetched it from a portfolio. "Show him all your drawings, dear," said Mrs. Power; "or, better still, would you like to see the lake, Mr Ellis?" "If it would not tire Miss Powell to show it me--" "Oh, no! I can take you by it to the west gate, it will shorten your way home." "But not yet, here is tea," said Mrs. Power; and they were soon chatting over all the parish news. At last Ellis rose to go, and Gwladys, putting on a broad-brimmed straw hat, passed out before him through the window--Mrs. Power detaining them with endless directions as to where to stop, where to turn to look at the sun through the fir trees, where to look back for a view of the house, etc., etc. "This walk is lovely," said Ellis, as he watched the graceful movements of his companion, who glided over the velvet carpet of moss with noiseless footsteps, reminding him of a guardian spirit who walked silently beside some hum-drum man of the world. "I wonder Valmai never mentioned you to me," she said. "Did she not?" he asked thoughtfully. "Did she never mention Abersethin, Brynderyn, and the Berwen?" "No, they are all strange names to me, except Abersethin; she lived there after her return from Patagonia." Ellis was lost in thought again. "I should like to have seen her; I have something important to discuss with her." "She is coming here the week after next, and then you can speak to her about this interesting subject," said Gwladys. And Ellis thought he saw a look of displeasure on the lovely face. Certainly he had never seen that in Valmai; but then, on the contrary, there was a high-souled nobility of purpose in his present companion's looks which was absent in Valmai. "I daresay when I have seen her she will tell you about all these places." "My sister shall do as she pleases," said Gwladys, a sweet smile chasing away the momentary look of anger; "it will make no difference in our love for each other--she is part of me, and the best part; I am part of her, and the worst part." When they reached the west gate, both were surprised to find that half-an-hour had slipped away. "I will bring my portfolio," said Ellis, as he took his leave, "and you will help me to find the best view of the lake." During the next fortnight, Mrs. Power received frequent calls from the new Vicar; she was delighted with her neighbour, and did everything in her power to make his visits as pleasant to him as they were to herself. His paintings were a never-ending source of interest and admiration to her, and when he proposed to make a sketch of the lake, with its background of fir trees, and glint of blue sky, she was charmed with the idea, and almost every day she and Gwladys accompanied him down the "Velvet Walk" and settled him to his painting, and Gwladys was sent on frequent journeys of inspection during the afternoon. "Go and see how he is progressing, dear." And she would go and linger over the picture with comments and praise; but it must be confessed that the drawing progressed more rapidly during her absence than during these visits of inspection. One afternoon she came running down the "Velvet Walk" with an open letter in her hand, and a distressed look in her eyes. "Oh, Mr. Ellis! such a disappointment! Valmai is not coming this week. She has been feeling unwell lately, and the doctor advises a thorough change for her, so she and Mifanwy Meredith are thinking of going to Switzerland. Hear what she says:--'Mifanwy is longing for the Swiss lakes and mountains, and wishes me to accompany her. I suppose I may as well do so; but I must first make a hurried journey down to Abersethin, and to see you on my way back. I hear from Dr. Francis that dear old Nance is very ill, and it will depend upon how I find her whether I go to Switzerland or not." "Now, isn't that vexing! You would feel for me if you knew what Valmai is to me! I seem to love her with all the accumulation of love which had missed its object for so many long years before we met." Gwynne Ellis was looking seriously into the distance. "I do feel for you, Miss Powell; but don't think me a brute if I say I am not sorry she's gone--something good may come of it." "I can't understand you," she said, seating herself on a log in front of him. "You have never told me how you became acquainted with her. Have you known her from childhood?" "Oh, dear, no," said Ellis, laying aside his painting, and stretching himself on the mossy bank. "I will tell you all about it; it is very simple. Being rather out of health about two years ago, I went down to Abersethin to stay at the Vicar's house, he being an old friend of my father's. I found his son, Caradoc Wynne, a fine fellow--a splendid specimen of a Welsh country gentleman--and he and I became great friends during the three months that I spent there." Gwladys's blue eyes opened in astonishment. "Caradoc Wynne?" she said, in an anxious tone, which surprised her companion. "Yes. Generally known as Cardo Wynne at Abersethin. I found him over head and ears in love with Valmai Powell--your sister, it seems, though I had no idea she had a sister. His rhapsodies about her amused me at first; but when I saw how deeply in earnest he was, I sympathised with him, and took a great interest in the progress of their courtship. His father and her uncle--one being the Vicar of the parish, and the other a Methodist preacher--hated each other with a deadly hatred--but you are looking pale," he said anxiously. "What is it? Am I saying anything to disturb you?" "Oh, yes! but go on. Tell me about this Cardo Wynne." "Well, it's a sad story. They were married; I married them without the knowledge of the two opinionated old men--I hope I sha'n't fall too low in your estimation, Miss Powell." "Oh! no, no! go on, please. Every word you say is like water to a thirsty man. They were married?" "Yes, safe enough; and straight from the church porch they separated, for he was leaving for Australia that afternoon at his father's earnest request, with the idea of making peace between him and a brother whom he had offended many years ago. Well, I heard no more of Cardo for nearly two years, when I received a letter from him from Australia, telling me of the series of misfortunes which had detained him there so long. First of all, a serious attack of typhoid fever, and a blow on the head which occasioned concussion of the brain. He was carried unconscious to a hospital, and remained there many months, utterly oblivious of all around him, as no operation had been attempted on his skull, nobody knowing of the blow he had received. One of the visiting doctors at the hospital took him home with him as an 'interesting case,' and then he discovered the indented bit of bone which was pressing upon the brain, and causing first the unconsciousness, and afterwards a complete lapse of memory. Poor old Cardo! the jolliest fellow in the world. What must he have felt when memory returned after a successful operation, and he realised that Valmai and his father were utterly ignorant of his whereabouts." "Oh, stop, stop," said Gwladys, "oh! what shall I do? Mr. Ellis, I dread to hear the end, and yet I must; go on, please." "Well, it's very sad. Poor old Cardo returned home at once, and finding Valmai gone from Abersethin made his way up here. Did you see him?" Gwladys could scarcely gasp "Yes!" "Then no doubt you know how she repulsed him, and taunted him with wilful desertion of her--desertion, indeed! that honest Cardo, whose very soul was bound up in her! Had I not heard it from his own lips, I could never have believed that Valmai would have used the words 'base and dishonourable' to Cardo Wynne. He is broken-hearted, and really, if she perseveres in this unwarranted indignation, I think it will kill him; and that is why I wanted to see her, for I still believe there must be some mistake." "Mistake! yes, yes, a horrible mistake. She never saw him at all. It was I who spoke those cruel words to him!" "Miss Powell! you! how can I believe such a thing?" "Yes, yes, you must believe," she said, wringing her hands, "it is I who have broken my sister's heart--the sister whom I would die to save a moment's pain." And she rose to her feet, though her limbs trembled with excitement. "It is my turn now to tell my story, and when I have finished you will despise me, and you will have good reason." "Never!" he said, "I can never feel anything towards you but--but--what I must not dare to tell you." A vivid blush swept over Gwladys's face; but the troubled look returned, as Ellis, gently taking her hand, led her back to the log of wood, and sitting beside her, said: "Now, tell me everything." "I must go a long way back," she said, "and begin with my own uninteresting affairs. You know that Mrs. Power looks upon me as her own daughter, and has expressed her intention of leaving me all her money. Money! hateful money! the one thing I never cared about. I should be happier far in a little cottage than I am here surrounded by all these luxuries--it is true, Mr. Ellis, my tastes are simple." "Certainly, you would grace a cottage or a palace alike," he said, almost under his breath; "but we must all accept the position in which we are placed, and do our best in that." "Well," resumed Gwladys, "I have had three proposals of marriage, and on each occasion my aunt pressed me to accept the offer. I refused to do so, unless I were allowed time and opportunity to make the most exhaustive inquiries as to my disinterested lover's antecedents. My heart not being touched, I was able to do so dispassionately, and in each case I discovered something dishonourable in their characters. One I found was on the brink of pecuniary ruin, I therefore considered I had a right to think he loved my fortune and not myself. The next, though a man of honour and probity, I found had such an ungovernable temper that his own sisters failed to live with him. The third was a widower. He had broken his wife's heart by his cruelty, and since her death his life had been one long scene of dissipation. Was it any wonder that I rejected them all? and learnt to distrust and almost to hate every man? "When Valmai came here I soon found out enough of her story to prove to me, as I thought, that she had been weak where I had been strong; that she had given her heart, with all its precious love, to one of the same type of manhood as it had been my ill-fortune to meet; and when, one evening as I walked here by the lake, a young man followed me and addressed me as Valmai, the only feeling that rushed into my mind and possessed my whole being might be expressed in these words--'Here is the murderer of my sister's happiness; at any risk I will keep him from her. She is happy and calm now; he shall never again disturb her peace of mind, if I can help it.' "He was so completely under the illusion that I was Valmai that I had no occasion to tell a lie, and I only spoke the truth when I told him that I hated him, and that my greatest desire was never to see his face again. He was wounded to the quick. I saw it, I realised it all, and, oh, I felt for him, for there was something open and winsome about him--something that tempted me to trust him; but I hardened my heart, and I added him to my list of unworthy men. I left him here and went into the house, feeling utterly miserable; but I comforted myself with the thought that I had done Valmai good service. And now--oh, now!--I am more miserable than ever; for I see what harm I have done. I meant to do good, Mr. Ellis, believe me. I thought I was doing dear Valmai a real kindness, and now what shall I do? I have ruined her hopes of happiness, and I have lost your good opinion and friendship." "Never!" said Ellis. "I see exactly how you felt, and can enter into your feelings thoroughly; it only grieves me to think what a low opinion you have formed of men in general." "You see," said Gwladys, bending her head, "I have led such a retired life, and have known so few men--none intimately, except those three." "Let me dare, then, to hope that in time you will come to believe that all men are not like the miserable specimens whom you have met. Will you believe that _I_, at least, am only _sorry_ to hear you will be so rich? I cannot expect you to believe me, but it is the truth." "Yes, I believe you," she said. "Then let us see what we can do to retrieve your mistake. Will you take my word for it that Cardo Wynne is all that is honourable and true?" "Yes, oh, yes; I am sure he would not be your friend if he were not so." "Then the path is easy and plain before us. You will write to Valmai, and I will write to Cardo, and the cloud that has darkened their path lately will be swept away, and your hand and mine will be permitted to let in the light." "I don't deserve such happiness," she said. Ellis felt tempted to say, "Yes, your deep love for your sister made you do this, and it richly deserves this fulfilment of its endeavours," but he did not, and the omission was noticed by Gwladys, but it did not tell against him. They sat some time in silent thought, Gwladys's little foot tossing up the moss. "I have not told auntie, but I should like to do so now." "I think you are right," said Ellis, gathering his painting paraphernalia together; "let us go and tell her at once." There was something delightful even in the simple fact of "going together" to tell Mrs. Power the story of Valmai's sorrow and Gwladys's mistake, and when he left it was with the clear understanding that they should not let a day pass without enlightening Cardo and Valmai. CHAPTER XXI. INTO THE SUNSHINE, There was quite a chorus of regrets and good-byes in the quiet little country station from which Valmai started on her journey to Cardiganshire. "Good-bye, Miss Powell," said Colonel Meredith, who had driven her down to meet the train, accompanied by his whole family. "No one will lament your absence or rejoice at your return more than I shall, not excepting this sentimental young man," and he pointed to Cecil, who was putting on an air of even greater dejection than usual. He did not deign to answer his father except by a look of indignation that set Gwen and Winifred laughing; but when the train was absolutely moving, he managed to secure the last hand-clasp, and leave a bunch of forget-me-nots in Valmai's hand. "Good-bye, Beauty, darling," shouted Gwen; while all the others joined in a chorus of "Write soon!" Valmai placed the flowers in her waistband with an amused smile. "Poor boy," she thought. "What a good thing it rained last night; there will be splendid fishing to-day in the Ithon, and he will forget all about me if he gets his basket full." And she settled herself down comfortably in the corner of the carriage, and proceeded to open a letter which she had found on her plate at breakfast, but which she had hitherto found no time to read. It was from Gwladys, she knew, but she was somewhat astonished at its length, and turning over the leaves once or twice saw it was very closely written and had many words underlined. "What can it be about?" was her thought as she read the first words, "My own beloved sister--" There was no one in the carriage to notice the varied expressions on her face as she read the closely-written pages; but had anyone been there to see the rapturous happiness which lightened up her features and brightened her eyes as she drew towards the conclusion, they would have wondered what joyful information could have so entranced and delighted the girl who entered the carriage, although with a serene and peaceful countenance, yet with a certain plaintive wistfulness in the shadows of her blue eyes, which betokened no exemption from the ordinary fate of mankind. But now! what unspeakable joy, what ecstatic delight seemed to infuse fresh life and vigour to the fragile, graceful form! For a few moments she crossed her hands on her bosom, and with closed eyes remained silent; then, starting up and pacing backwards and forwards in the limited space of a railway carriage, she gave the rein to her delight and let her thoughts drop out in words of uncontrolled expression. "Cardo, oh, Cardo! what happiness for me at last, and for you, dearest--it shall be for you, too! Oh, I see it all. He sought me out and found Gwladys, and the strong, strange likeness between us deceived him, though I cannot think how that was possible. Did he not feel the difference? Let me see--what does she say?" And again she read Gwladys's repentant, beseeching words. "Can you ever forgive me, darling? I tried to look as like you as possible, and I tried to be as harsh as I could at the same time. 'If I ever loved you,' I said, 'I have ceased to do so, and my greatest wish is never to see you again.'" "Oh! how dreadful," said Valmai, "how could he bear it? and how he must have suffered since then; but I will make it all up to him, and now I understand his conduct the other evening. Oh, you slow old puffing engine, make haste, and take me to Blaenos Station, then there will be a whole hour in that crawling coach, and then comes dear Caer Madoc! and oh! it is market day. Cardo always drives in with Dr. Hughes on that day, and walks home in the evening. I will walk! It will be like that dear, happy night when we first met!" And at last her excitement calming down, she settled herself again into her corner, and while she sat silent and immovable, she followed out from beginning to end the incidents of the last few weeks. Although Gwladys's mistaken interference had caused her such deep sorrow, and such a bitter experience as that of Cardo's avoidance of her at the Merediths, she felt nothing but pity for the sister whom she knew would have sacrificed life itself to save her from trouble. As the train sped onwards, between the blue hills and by the silver streams, her thoughts outran its speed, and in fancy she saw Cardo hurrying along the high road to meet her at Caer Madoc. And he as he drove along beside Dr. Hughes, was full of tender longings and thoughts of her. She seemed to fill the air around him, she seemed to press upon his inner consciousness with such vividness, that he felt it difficult to restrain his voice, and prevent himself from calling her name aloud. At last, the evening shadows began to fall over sleepy Caer Madoc, and Valmai, alighting from the coach in the "Red Dragon" yard, looked round hurriedly. With her, too, the impression of Cardo's presence had been so vivid, that she almost expected to see him waiting for her; but no Cardo was to be seen! After leaving her luggage in the ostler's charge, she hastened out through the old archway which opened into the High Street. "No, I prefer walking, thank you; you can send my luggage on to-morrow," she said to the kindly officious man, who followed her to offer his services as driver, and she turned up the street with a heart full of exultant hopes. Here were the last straggling houses that reached up the hilly street, leading to the moor. Her steps were light and springy, as she followed the familiar road, now almost deserted by the last pedestrians returning from the market. The sun had set behind the sea, which she already saw stretching away to the west, a soft grey haze enfolded the hills which rose before her, and the moon was rising to her right and blending her silver light with that of the departed sun, which still left a golden glow over the west. Valmai walked on steadily until she reached the first milestone, and sitting down beside it, she rested awhile, almost hidden by its shadow. It was not one of the modern insignificant, square-cut, stiff stones, but a solid boulder of granite, one of the many strewn about the moor. She listened breathlessly to the different sounds that reached her ears, sounds which seemed to awake in the stillness, as she listened. There was a faint and distant rumbling of wheels in the town behind her, and surely some strains of music, which carried her back in memory to another evening in the past! Down below the cliffs on her left she heard the mysterious whispering of the sea; in the little coppice across the road a wood-pigeon cooed her soft "good-night"; and away in the hay-fields, stretching inland, she heard the corncrakes' grating call; but no human footstep broke the silence of night. Surely Cardo would have gone to market on such a lovely day! or, who knows? perhaps he was too sad to care for town or market? But hark! a footstep on the hard, dry road. She listened breathlessly as it drew nearer in the gathering grey of the twilight. Steadily it tramped, tramped on, and peeping round the milestone, Valmai at last saw a grey figure emerge from the haze. It was Cardo, she felt sure, and rising at once, she hurried some distance on the road in a sudden feeling of nervousness. The steady tramp, tramp came ever nearer, and, looking through the increasing shadows, she saw distinctly the well-remembered form, the broad shoulders, the firmly-knit frame, and in a fresh access of nervousness she hurried on again--putting off the moment of recognition which she longed for, and endeavouring to reach a hollow in the high bank, where she might lie hidden until she had regained courage and calmness. Meanwhile Cardo, who had driven in to the market with Dr. Hughes in the morning, had started on his homeward journey just as Valmai was leaving the town behind her. It had been a lovely day, he had had pleasant company, and had transacted his business satisfactorily; but a deep and settled gloom seemed to have fallen upon him, which he was powerless to shake off. Through the whole tenor of his life ran the distracting memory of Valmai's unrelenting anger in the Velvet Walk, and of the bitterness of the subsequent meeting at Colonel Meredith's. As he stepped along through the summer twilight, and saw the silver moon which hung above him, his thoughts flew back to the first evening of his acquaintance with her. Ah! how long ago it seemed, and yet how everything pertaining to that evening seemed to repeat itself. There were the strains of the militia band throbbing on the quiet evening air, just as they did on that eventful evening; and there was even a grey female figure hurrying before him as before, and Cardo smiled bitterly as he thought how different everything was, in spite of the curious "harking back" of all the small circumstances. Awaking from a reverie, he missed the grey figure; but forgetting her at once, and again absorbed in thought, he had passed the hollow in the bank, when a soft voice followed him on the breeze. "Cardo!" Instantly he turned, and standing still as a statue, watched with eagerness a grey form which seemed to rise from the hedge. He heard his own heart beat loudly, and in the still night air he heard the sough of the sea, and the harsh call of the corncrake. Again the voice said, "Cardo!" very low and trembling. With one bound he was beside the speaker, and in the light of the moon Valmai stood plainly revealed. The sweet eyes glistened as of old, and the night breeze played with the little curls of gold which escaped from their restraining coiffure. She held out her hands, and in a moment Cardo's strong arms were around her. "My wild sea-bird," he said, in a passionate whisper, "have you flown back to me? Valmai, my darling, what does it mean? Have you forgiven me? Have you repented of those cruel words, dearest? Oh, say it was not my Valmai who called me 'base and dishonourable.' Speak dearest," he said, while he showered kisses upon the uncovered head which leant upon his breast. "It was not your Valmai, Cardo. How could you think it possible? It was not I whom you saw in the Moss Walk. I did not know till to-day, this very day, that those cruel words were spoken." "Let us sit here, my beloved; give me your hand; let me try to realise this bewildering joy." And hand in hand they sat on the grassy bank, while the corn-crake called, and the sea heaved and whispered behind them. There, under the golden moon, with endless questions and reiteration of answers, Valmai told her story and Cardo told his, until the moon rode high in the sky. Again and again Cardo pressed her to his heart, and again and again she took his brown hands in her own and laid her cheek upon them. "Oh, Cardo! is it true? or is it all a dream? So suddenly to leave my sadness and sorrow behind, and to awake to this blessed reality!" And as they rose to pursue their walk together, Cardo drew her arm through his, as if afraid for a moment to loosen his hold of her. "But your sister, dearest, is _not_ like you! How could I have been deceived? How could I, for one moment, have thought my gentle darling would say such cruel things? No, no! you are utterly unlike each other, though so strangely alike." "Well, indeed, Cardo bâch! when you know her you will see how sweet and beautiful she is! how much wiser and more noble than I! It was her great love for me, and her desire that I should be happy, that made her act as she did; and to-morrow you must read her penitent letter, and learn to forgive her, and to love her for my sake." "I will--I will, love; I will forgive anybody, anything, and will love the whole world now that I have you back again. But oh, Valmai, my beloved, how shall I ever make up to you for all you have gone through? I know now you never received my letter written on the _Burrawalla_, and sent by _The Dundee_, for I have heard of her sad fate. In that, dearest, I retracted my request that you should keep our marriage a secret, and you would have been saved all the sorrow you have borne had you received it. But I will make up to you, dearest, if the devotion of a lifetime can do so." "This is happiness enough to make up for anything," said Valmai; "and I am glad I was able to keep my promise." "Faithful friend, and trustful wife!" answered Cardo. "Ah! no," continued Valmai; "I shall never regret having kept my promise! Indeed, I never felt tempted to break it, except one day, when, in the old church, I met your father face to face. Never shall I forget the agonising longing I felt to throw myself at his feet and tell him all, and mingle my tears with his." "He has told me all about it, love, and how he thought it was an angel, when he first saw you standing there. But let us leave all tales of sorrow for another day; to-night is for love only, for rapturous joy! Are we not together, love? and what does anything else matter?" "Nothing, nothing," answered Valmai, in words which lost none of their depth of feeling from being spoken in soft, low tones. In silence, which was more eloquent than words, they pursued their way till they reached the bridge over the Berwen; and as they leant over its side, and looked into the depths of the woods beneath them, they recalled all the circumstances of their first meeting. "I wish I had bought some gingerbread in the Mwntroyd, Cardo, so that we might eat it here together. Ah! how it all comes back to me!" And as they leant over the bridge he held her hand in his, and with eyes which sought each other's in the moonlight, they let the time slip by unheeded. The only sound that rose upon the still night air was the babbling of the Berwen. When at last both had told their story, and every question and answer had again and again been renewed, and all its side bearings and suggestions had been satisfactorily explained, the sweet, lisping sounds of the river flooded their souls with its music. "Oh, Cardo! to think we can once more sing together. How different to that miserable evening at Colonel Meredith's, when you stood aloof, and Gwen sang the dear old song. I thought it would kill me." "And I, darling, when I carried you up in my arms, what did I feel?" "Well, indeed, I don't know; but we have had a dreadful experience, whatever." And presently Valmai began to hum "By Berwen Banks," Cardo irresistibly joining in with his musical bass, and once again the old ballad floated down the valley and filled the night with melody. "We ought to be going now, or we shall be shut out. I know Nance will be gone to bed already, but, certainly, there is not much distance between her bed and the door." "Nance!" said Cardo. "No, indeed, my wild sea-bird. I have caught you now, and never again will I part with you. Home to Brynderyn, dearest, with me, where my father is longing to fold you in his arms." "Anywhere with you, Cardo." And down by the Berwen they took their way, by the old church, where the white owl hooted at them as they passed, and down to the shore, where the waves whispered their happy greetings. The "Vicare du," as he sat by his study fire that night, was lost in thought. A wonderful change had come over his countenance, the gloom and sternness had disappeared, and a softened and even gentle look had taken their place. A smile of eager interest crossed his face as he heard the crunching of the gravel, which announced his son's return. Betto was already opening the door, and a cry of surprise and gladness woke an echo in the old man's heart as he hurried along the stone passage into the parlour. Cardo came in to meet him, leading Valmai, who hung back a little timidly, looking nervously into the Vicar's pale face. But the look she saw there banished all her fears, and in another moment she was clasped in his arms, and in all Wales no happier family drew round their evening meal that night than the Wynnes of Brynderyn. There is nothing more to be said, except that Gwynne Ellis's letter awaited Cardo's home-coming, and it shall speak for itself. "DEAR WYNNE,--I write with such mixed feelings, and at the same time in such a hurry to catch the first possible post, that probably you will think my letter is a little 'mixed' too. You will guess what was my astonishment, when calling upon Mrs. Power, to find--not Valmai, but her twin-sister, Miss Gwladys Powell! My dear Wynne, I was struck dumb by the likeness between them. I waited eagerly for Valmai's arrival, which they were daily expecting, and it was not until I heard she was going to Cardiganshire instead that I mentioned to Gwladys your marriage to her sister, and the cruel manner in which she had received you after your long absence. Then came the explanation, which, no doubt, ere this you have received from Valmai's own lips, for I know that to-morrow she will see you, having received her sister's letter in the morning; and the veil will be lifted, and all your sorrow will disperse like the baseless fabric of a dream. You will see already how Gwladys, dreading your influence upon the sister whom she thought you had deceived and deserted, was tempted, by your mistaking her for Valmai, to impersonate her, and to drive you away from her presence. Her sorrow and repentance are greater than the occasion demands, I think, for, after all, it was her deep love for her sister which made her act in this way; and I am sure that, when you and Valmai have been reunited and all your joys return, you will have no room in your hearts for anger against Gwladys. She is the most lovely girl I have ever seen, except your wife, and her mind and heart are quite worthy of her beautiful face; indeed, my dear Cardo, she is what I once thought was not to be found--a second Valmai! In fact I love her, and I am not without a faint hope that my love is returned. Remember me to Shoni, and tell him I hope to see him again next spring. And what if I bring Gwladys down, and we all roam by the Berwen together?--not Shoni! What can I add more, except that I hope this delicious programme may be carried out? "Yours as of old, "GWYNNE ELLIS." 
20012	----	Transcribed from the 1890 Phillipson & Golder edition by David Price, ccx074@pglaf.org The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book. _REVISED EDITION_. 1890. Chester: PRINTED FOR THE COMPILER BY PHILLIPSON & GOLDER, EASTGATE ROW. {W. Gladstone. Photographed by John Moffat, Edinburgh. 1884: p0.jpg} ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Note as to the Illustrations. The Views of the Castle Gate and of Broughton Lodge are taken from Blocks kindly lent for the purpose of this publication by the Proprietor of the _Leisure Hour_. And for the View of the House and Flower-garden I am indebted to the courtesy of the Proprietors of _Harpers Magazine_. W. H. G. Regulations as to Hawarden Park and Old Castle. Visitors are allowed to use the Gravel Drives through the Park and Wood between Noon and Sunset. Persons exceeding this permission and not keeping to the Carriage Road will be deemed Trespassers. The Park is closed on Good Friday and Whit-Monday. Dogs not admitted. _Excursion parties can only be received by special permission_, _and not later in the year than the first Monday in August_. _The House is in no case shown_. Hawarden Village and Manor. Hawarden, in Flintshire, lies 6 miles West of Chester, at a height of 250 feet, overlooking a large tract of Cheshire and the Estuary of the Dee. It is now in direct communication with the Railway world by the opening of the Hawarden and Wirral lines. It is also easily reached from Sandycroft Station, or from Queen's Ferry, (1.5 m.)--whence the Church is plainly seen--or again from Broughton Hall Station (2.25m.). The Glynne Arms offers plain but comfortable accommodation. There are also some smaller hostelries, and a Coffee House called "The Welcome." The Village consists of a single street, about half a mile in length. Two Crosses formerly stood in it; the Upper and the Lower, destroyed in 1641. The site of the Lower Cross, at the eastern end, is marked by a Lime tree planted in 1742. Here stood the Parish Stocks, long since perished. More durable, but grotesque in its affectation of Grecian architecture, may be seen close by, the old House of Correction. This spot is still called the Cross Tree. The Fountain opposite the Glynne Arms is designed as a Memorial of the Golden Wedding of the Right Hon. W. E. and Mrs. Gladstone. A little lower down is the new Police Office; and further on is the Institute, containing mineralogical and other specimens, together with a good popular library. In Doomsday Book, Hawarden appears as a Lordship, with a church, two ploughlands--half of one belonging to the church--half an acre of meadow, a wood two leagues long and half a league broad. The whole was valued at 40 shillings; yet on all this were but four villeyns, six boors, and four slaves: so low was the state of population. It was a chief manor, and the capital one of the Hundred of Atiscross, extending from the Dee to the Vale of Clwyd, and forming part of Cheshire. The name is variously spelt in the old records. In Doomsday Book it is Haordine; elsewhere it is Weorden or Haweorden, Harden, HaWordin, Hauwerthyn, Hawardin and Hawardine. It is pretty clearly derived from the Welsh _Din_ or _Dinas_, castle on a hill (although some attribute to it a Saxon derivation), and was no doubt, like the mound called Truman's Hill, west of the church, in the earliest times a British fortification. No Welsh is spoken in Hawarden. By the construction of Offa's Dyke about A.D. 790, stretching from the Dee to the Wye and passing westwards of Hawarden, the place came into the Kingdom of Mercia, and at the time of the Invasion from Normandy is found in the possession of the gallant Edwin. It would appear, however, from the following story, derived, according to Willett's History of Hawarden, from a Saxon MS., that in the tenth century the Welsh were in possession. "In the sixth year of the reign of Conan, King of North Wales, there was in the Christian Temple at a place called Harden, in the Kingdom of North Wales, a Roodloft, in which was placed an image of the Virgin Mary, with a very large cross, which was in the hands of the image, called Holy Rood. About this time there happened a very hot and dry summer; so dry that there was not grass for the cattle; upon which most of the inhabitants went and prayed to the image or Holy Rood, that it would cause it to rain, but to no purpose. Among the rest, the Lady Trawst (whose husband's name was Sytsylht, a nobleman and governor of Harden Castle) went to pray to the said Holy Rood, and she praying earnestly and long, the image or Holy Rood fell down upon her head and killed her; upon which a great uproar was raised, and it was concluded and resolved upon to try the said image for the murder of the said Lady Trawst, and a jury was summoned for this purpose, whose names were as follows:-- Hincot of Hancot, Span of Mancot, Leech and Leach, and Cumberbeach. Peet and Pate, with Corbin of the gate, Milling and Hughet, with Gill and Pughet." The Jury--so continues the story--found the Holy Rood guilty of wilful murder, and the sentence was proposed that she should be hanged. This was opposed by Span, who suggested that, as they wanted rain, it would be best to drown her. This, again, was objected to by Corbin, who advised to lay her on the sands of the river and see what became of her. This was done, with the result that the image was carried by the tide to some low land near the wall of Caerleon--(supposed to be Chester)--where it was found by the Cestrians drowned and dead, and by them buried at the gate where found, with this inscription:-- The Jews their God did crucify, The Hardeners theirs did drown, 'Cos, with their wants she'd not comply, And lies under this cold stone. Hence the said low land, or island, as it may have been, is supposed to have got the name of the Rood-Eye, or Roodee as at present. After the Conquest, Hawarden was included in the vast grant made by William to his kinsman, Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, which included Cheshire and all the seaboard as far as Conway. The Earl had his residence at Chester, and there held his Courts and Parliament. His sword of dignity, referred to in the heading of Common Law Indictments, is preserved in the British Museum. Among the earliest residents at Hawarden occurs the name of Roger Fitzvalence, son of one of the Conqueror's followers; subsequently it continued in the possession of the Earls of Chester till the death of Ranulf de Blundeville, the last earl, in 1231, when, with Castle Rising and the 'Earl's Half' in Coventry, it passed, through his sister Mabel, to her descendants, the Montalts. The Barons de Monte Alto, sometimes styled de Moaldis or Mohaut (now Mold, 6 miles from Hawarden, where the mound of the castle remains), were hereditary seneschals of Chester and lords of Mold. Roger de Montalt inherited Hawarden, Coventry, and Castle Rising, and married Julian, daughter of Roger de Clifford, Justiciary of Chester and North Wales, who was captured at the storming of the Castle by Llewelyn, in 1281. Robert de Montalt the last lord, died childless {8} in 1329, when the barony became extinct. He it was who signed the celebrated letter to the Pope in 1300 as Dominus de Hawardyn. Robert de Montalt bequeathed his estates to Isabella, Queen of Edward II., and Hawarden afterwards passed by exchange, in 1337, to Sir William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. From that family it reverted in 1406, by attainder, to the Crown, and in 1411 was granted by Henry IV. to his second son, Thomas, Duke of Clarence. Clarence dying without issue in 1420, it reverted once more to the Crown, but finally, in 1454, passed to Sir Thomas Stanley, Comptroller of the Household and afterwards Lord Stanley, whose son became the first Earl of Derby. In 1495, Henry VII. honoured Hawarden with a visit, and made some residence here for the amusement of stag-hunting, but his primary motive was to soothe the Earl (husband to Margaret, the King's mother) after the ungrateful execution of his brother, Sir William Stanley. {9a} Hawarden remained in the possession of the Stanleys for nearly 200 years. William, the sixth Earl, when advanced in years, surrendered the property to his son James, reserving to himself 1000 pounds a year, and retiring to a convenient house {9b} near the Dee, spent there the remainder of his life, and died in 1642. James, distinguished for his learning and gallantry, warmly espoused the cause first of Charles I. and afterwards that of his son. Under his roof Charles, when a fugitive, halted on his way from Chester to Denbigh, on Sept. 25, 1645. After the battle of Worcester, in 1657, James was taken prisoner, tried by Court Martial, and executed at Bolton in the same year. In 1653, the Lordship of Hawarden was purchased from the agents of sequestration by Serjeant (afterwards Chief Justice) Glynne; and in 1661 the sale was confirmed by Charles, Earl of Derby. The Glynnes are first heard of at Glyn Llivon, in Carnarvonshire, in 1567. They trace their descent, however, much further back, to Cilmin Droed Dhu (Cilmin of the Black Foot), who came into Wales from the North of Britain with his uncle Mervyn, King of the Isle of Man, who married Esyllt, heiress of Conan, King of North Wales, about A.D. 830. The territory allotted to him extended from Carnarvon to beyond Clynnog. Edward Llwyd was the first to assume the name of Glynne, which his descendants continued till the male succession ended in John Glynne, whose daughter and heiress, Frances, married Thomas Wynne of Bodnau, created a baronet in 1742. His son, Sir John, is said to have pulled down the old strong mansion of Cilmin, and erected the present one. His son again, Sir Thomas, was created a Peer of Ireland for his services in the American war, whose descendant is the present Lord Newborough. The father of the Serjeant was Sir William Glynne, Knight, 21st in descent from Cilmin Droed Dhu. The Serjeant early espoused the cause of the popular party, perhaps rather from ambition than from principle. His abilities were soon recognized, and while still young he became High Steward of Westminster and Recorder of London. In 1640 he was elected Member for Westminster as a strong Presbyterian. He was actively concerned in conducting the charge against Lord Strafford. In 1646 he opposed in Parliament Cromwell's Self-denying Ordinance, and was thrown into prison. He found means, however, to get reconciled to Cromwell in 1648, and became one of his Council and Serjeant-at-law. In 1654 he became Chamberlain of Chester, and in the following year succeeded Rolle as Lord Chief Justice--which office he discharged with credit. {10} In 1656 he was returned for Carnarvonshire, and in the Rump Parliament he sat again for Westminster. Meanwhile he contrived to ingratiate himself with the opposite side, and in 1660 we find him assisting on horseback at the coronation of Charles II. He now resigned the Chief Justiceship, made himself very useful in settling legal difficulties consequent upon the usurpation, and became as loyal as any cavalier: the King, as a mark of his favour, {11a} bestowing a baronetcy upon his son in 1661. He possessed Henley Park, {11b} in Surrey, and an estate at Bicester, in Oxfordshire, (of which church, as well as Ambrosden, he was patron) where the family resided. He died at his house in Westminster in 1666, and was buried in a vault beneath the altar of S. Margaret's Church. His son, Sir William Glynne, the first baronet, sat in Parliament for Woodstock, and died in 1721. It was not till 1723 that the Glynnes moved to Hawarden, from Bicester. An old stone records the building of a house in Broadlane in 1727. In 1732 Sir John Glynne, nephew of Sir William, married Honora Conway, co-heiress with her sister Catherine of the Ravenscrofts of Bretton and Broadlane, an old family connected with Hawarden for many generations. {11c} This lady was the great great grand- daughter of Sir Kenelm Digby, and with her one-half of the Ravenscroft lands came into possession of the Glynnes; the other half in Bretton passing eventually to the Grosvenors. She died in 1769. In 1752 Sir John built a new house at Broadlane, which has since been the residence of the family. Though not the founder of the _family_, Sir John Glynne may fairly be considered the founder of the _place_, and of the estate in its modern sense. Though he sat for five Parliaments for the Borough of Flint, he devoted himself largely to domestic concerns and to the improvement of his property by inclosure, drainage, and otherwise. The present beauty of the Park is in a great measure due to his energy and foresight. Upon the acquisition of Broadlane Hall, he at once took in hand the re-planting of the demesne, {12} first in Broadlane and about the Old Castle, and in 1747 on the Bilberry Hill. He also turned his attention to the developement of the minerals on the estate, and attempted the carriage of coals to Chester by water. He died in 1777. His Grandson, Sir S. R. Glynne, married in 1806 the Hon. Mary Neville, daughter of Lord Braybrooke and of Catherine, sister to George, Marquess of Buckingham, and by her had four children: Stephen, eighth and last Baronet, born September 22, 1807; Henry, Rector of Hawarden born September 9th, 1810; Catherine, now Mrs. Gladstone, born January 6, 1812; and Mary, afterwards Lady Lyttelton, born July 22, 1813. He died in 1815 at the age of 35 years, and of his children Mrs. Gladstone alone survives. Sir Stephen, the last Baronet, died unmarried in 1874, surviving his brother the Rector only two years; and the Lordship of the Manor, together, by a family arrangement, with the estates, then devolved upon the present owner. {Catherine Gladstone. Photographed by G. Watmough Webster, Chester: p12.jpg} The Old Castle. The Ruins of Hawarden Castle occupy a lofty eminence, guarded on the S. by a steep ravine, and on the other sides by artificial banks and ditches, partly favoured by the formation of the ground. The space so occupied measures about 150 yards in diameter. Upon the summit stands the Keep, towering some 50 feet above the main ward, and some 200 feet above the bottom of the ravine. "The place presents," says Mr. G. T. Clark, "in a remarkable degree the features of a well-known class of earthworks found both in England and in Normandy. This kind of fortification by mound, bank and ditch was in use in the ninth, tenth, and even in the eleventh centuries, before masonry was general. {13} The mound was crowned with a strong circular house of timber, such as in the Bayeaux tapestry the soldiers are attempting to set on fire. The Court below and the banks beyond the ditches were fenced with palisades and defences of that character." It was usual after the Conquest to replace these old fortifications with the thick and massive masonry characteristic of Norman Architecture. Hawarden, however, bears no marks of the Norman style though the Keep is unusually substantial. It appears, according to the best authorities, {14} to be the work of one period, and that, probably, the close of the reign of Henry III. or the early part of that of Edward I. Hence Roger Fitzvalence, the first possessor after the Conquest, and the Montalts, who held it by Seneschalship to Hugh Lupus, must have been content to allow the old defences to remain, as any masonry constructed by them could scarcely have been so entirely removed as to show no trace of the style prevalent at the time. The Keep is circular, 61 feet in diameter, and originally about 40 feet high. The wall is 15 feet thick at the base, and 13 feet at the level of the rampart walk--dimensions of unusual solidity even at the Norman period, and rare indeed in England under Henry III. or the Edwards. The battlements have been replaced by a modern wall, but the junction with the old work may be readily detected. In the Keep were two floors--the lower, no doubt, a store room without fire-place or seat--the upper a state room lighted from three recesses and entered from the portcullis chamber. Next to this last is the Chapel, or rather _Sacrarium_, with a cinquefoil- headed doorway, and a small recess for a piscina, with a projecting bracket and fluted foot. Against the West wall is a stone bench, and above it a rude squint through which the elevation of the Host could be seen from the adjoining window recess. Of the two windows, one is square, the other lancet-headed. The altar is modern. There is a mural gallery in the thickness of the wall running round nearly the whole circle of the Keep, and with remarkably strong vaulting. Descending from the Keep and inclosing the space below, were two walls or curtains, as they are technically called. That on the N. side, 7 feet thick and 25 feet high, is still tolerably perfect, and within it lay the way between the Keep and the main ward. Of the South curtain only a fragment remains attached to the Keep. The entrance to the court-yard--now the so-called bowling-green--was on the N. side. On the South side, on the first floor (the basement being probably a cellar), was the Hall, 30 feet high from its timber floor to the wall plate. Two lofty windows remain and traces of a third, and between them are the plain chamfered corbel whence sprung the open roof. Below the hall is seen a small _ambry_ or cupboard in the wall. Outside the curtain on the East side, where the visitor ascends to the Courtyard, are remains of a kitchen and other offices with apartments over, resting upon the scarp of the ditch. From the N.E. angle of the curtain projects a spur work protected by two curtains, one of which, 4 feet thick and 24 feet high, only remains, with a shouldered postern door opening on the scarp of the ditch at its junction with the main curtain. This spur work was the entrance to the Castle, and contains a deep pit, now called the Dungeon, and a Barbican or Sally-port beyond. The pit is 12 feet deep and measures 27 feet x 10 feet across. It may possibly have served the double purpose of defence and of water supply--there being no other apparent source. In the footbridge across the pit may have been a trap-door, or other means for suddenly breaking communication in case of need. Overhead probably lay the roadway for horsemen with a proper drawbridge. The thickness of the walls indicates their having been built to a considerable height, sufficient probably to form parapets masking the passage of the bridge. In the mound beyond, or counterscarp, was the gate-house and Barbican, containing a curious fan-shaped chamber up a flight of steps. While the earth-works surrounding the Castle are the oldest part of the fortifications--possibly, thinks Mr. Clark, of the tenth century--the dressed masonry and the different material of the Barbican and Dungeon- pit, together with some of the exterior offices, show them to be of somewhat later date than the main building. They have, in fact, as Mr. Clark remarks, more of an unfinished than a partially destroyed appearance. The squared and jointed stones, so easily removable and ready to hand, {16} proved no doubt a tempting quarry to subsequent owners of Hawarden, who perhaps shared the faults of a period when neither the architectural nor historical value of ancient remains was generally appreciated. It now remains to trace the history of the Castle, so far as it is known to us. In 1264 a memorable conference took place within its walls between Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, at which each promised to aid the other in promoting the execution of their respective plans. The King, who, with the Prince of Wales, was the Earl's prisoner, was compelled to renounce his rights, and the Castle was given up to Llewelyn. On the suppression of de Montfort's rebellion the Castle reverted to the Crown, and Llewelyn was called upon by the Papal Legate, Ottoboni, to surrender it. This he at first declined, but being deserted by the Earl, who at the same time, in order to put an end to the conflict, offered to him his daughter Eleanor in marriage agreed afterwards to a treaty by which the Castle was to be destroyed, and Robert de Montalt to be reinstated in the possession of his lands in Hawarden, but to be restrained from restoring the fortification for thirty years. This stipulation appears to have been violated, for in 1281 the Welsh rebelled, and under David and Llewelyn (who then made up their quarrel), an attack was made by night upon the Castle, then styled Castrum Regis, which was successful. Roger de Clifford, Justiciary of Chester, was taken prisoner, and the Castle with much bloodshed and cruelty stormed and partly burnt on Palm Sunday. The outrage was repeated in the next year (Nov. 6th, 1282), when the Justice's elder son, also Roger Clifford, was slain. Soon after this Llewelyn died, Wales was entirely subjugated, and David executed as a traitor. To this period may most probably be assigned the present structure. A Keep, such as that now standing is not likely to have been successfully assaulted in two successive years; nor does internal evidence favour the idea that it was the actual work taken by the Welsh. Robert, the last of the Montalts, was a wealthy man, and in all probability it was during his Lordship, between 1297 and 1329, that the Castle, as we now see it, was built. Though the unusual thickness of the walls of the Keep might be thought more in keeping with the Norman period, the general details, as already stated, the polygonal mural gallery and interior, and the entrance, evidently parts of the original work, are very decidedly Edwardian. Of the subsequent history of the Castle, we have unfortunately nothing to record until we come to the Civil War between Charles the First and the Parliament. On Nov. 11th, 1643, Sir William Brereton, who had declared for the Parliament, appeared with his adherents at Hawarden Castle, where he was welcomed by Robert Ravenscroft and John Aldersey, who had charge of it in the name of the King. Sir William established himself in the Castle, and harassed the garrison of Chester, which was for the King, by cutting off the supplies of coals, corn and other provisions, which they had formerly drawn from the neighbourhood. Meanwhile the Archbishop of York, writing from Conway to the Duke of Ormond announced the betrayal of the Castle and appealed for assistance. In response to this a force from Ireland was landed at Mostyn in the same month, and employed to reduce the fortress, garrisoned by 120 men of Sir Thomas Middleton's Regiment. The garrison received by a trumpet a verbal summons to surrender, which gave occasion to a correspondence, followed by a further and more peremptory summons from Captain Thomas Sandford, which ran as follows:-- Gentlemen: I presume you very well know or have heard of my condition and disposition; and that I neither give nor take quarter. I am now with my Firelocks (who never yet neglected opportunity to correct rebels) ready to use you as I have done the Irish; but loth I am to spill my countrymen's blood: wherefore by these I advise you to your fealty and obedience towards his Majesty; and show yourselves faithful subjects, by delivering the Castle into my hands for His Majesty's use--otherwise if you put me to the least trouble or loss of blood to force you, expect no quarter for man woman or child. I hear you have some of our late Irish army in your company: they very well know me and that my Firelocks use not to parley. Be not unadvised, but think of your liberty, for I vow all hopes of relief are taken from you; and our intents are not to starve you but to batter and storm you and then hang you all, and follow the rest of that rebellious crewe. I am no bread-and-cheese rogue, but as ever a Loyalist, and will ever be while I can write or name THOMAS SANDFORD, Nov, 28, 1643. Captain of Firelocks. I expect your speedy answer this Tuesday night at Broadlane Hall, where I am now, your near neighbour. Reinforcements having arrived from Chester, this was followed by a brisk attack on the 3rd December, whereupon the garrison being short of provisions, a white flag was hung out from the walls, and the Castle surrendered on the following day to Sir Michael Emley. It was held by the Royalists for two years, but after the surrender of Chester, in Feb. 1646, Sir William Neal, the governor, capitulated (after receiving the King's sanction--then at Oxford--) to Major-General Mytton after a month's siege. It was probably during these operations that the specimens of stone and iron cannon balls still remaining were used. An entry in the Commons' Journals refers to this last event, dated 16th March, 1645. Ordered: That Mr. Fogge the Minister shall have the sum of 50 pounds bestowed upon him for his pains in bringing the good news of the taking of the Castle of Hawarden; and that the Committee of Lords and Commons for advance of Moneys at Haberdashers' Hall do pay the same accordingly. The Lords' concurrence to be desired herein. In the following year there is an Order "That the Castles of Hawarden, Flint, and Ruthland be disgarrisoned and demolished, all but a tower in Flint Castle, to be reserved for a gaol for the County"; and a confirmation of it follows in the next year, dated 19th July, 1647. These orders were no doubt forthwith executed, and of Flint and Rhuddlan little now remains. At Hawarden gunpowder has been used to blow up portions of the Keep. Sir William Glynne, son of the Chief Justice, twenty or thirty years later, carried further the work of destruction. Sir John Glynne, too, is said to have made free with the materials of the Castle, and certain it is that a vast amount has been carted away and used up in walls and for other purposes. His successors, however, have done their utmost to make amends for these ravages, and to preserve the ruins from further injury. The entrance and the winding stair by which the visitor mounts to the top of the Keep are a restoration skilfully effected not long ago under the direction of Mr. Shaw of Saddleworth. The view embraces a wide range of country, North, East, and South, extending from Liverpool to the Wrekin: on the West it is bounded by Moel Fammau or Queen Mountain, on the summit of which is seen the remnant of the fallen obelisk raised to commemorate the 50th year of the reign of George III. Round about lie the Woods and the Park, presenting a happy mixture of wild and pastoral beauty; while close beneath the Old stands the New Castle, affecting in its turreted outline some degree of congruity with its prototype, but much more contrasting with it in its home-like air, and the luxury of its lawns and flower-beds. Not less striking is the view of the Ruins from below. Here judgment and taste have combined with great natural advantages of position to produce an exceedingly picturesque effect. From the flower garden a wide sweep of lawn, flanked by majestic oaks and beeches, carries the eye up to the foot-bridge crossing the moat, thence to the ivy-mantled walls which overhang it, and upward again to the flag-topt tower that crowns the height. Clusters of ivy, and foliage here and there intervening, serve to soften and beautify the mouldering remains. The scene brings to our minds the words of the poet-- "The old order changeth, yielding place to new"; and, conscious as we may be that society in our day has its dangers and disorders of a different and more insidious kind, we are thankful that our lot is not cast in the harsh and troublous times of our history. All around us the former scenes of rapine and violence are changed to fertility and peace. The Old Castle serves well to illustrate the contrast. Its hugely solid walls, reared 600 years ago with so much pains and skill to repel the invader and to overawe the lawless, have played their part, and are themselves abandoned to solitude and decay. Within the arches which once echoed to the clang of arms the owls have their home; while the rooks from the tree-tops around seem to chant the _requiem_ of the past. {Ruins of Old Castle: p21.jpg} The Church. {The Church: p22.jpg} Hawarden Church, with its large graveyard attached, finely situated overlooking the estuary of the Dee, is supposed to have been built about A.D. 1275, and has much solidity and dignity of structure. The patron saint is S. Deiniol, founder of the Collegiate monastery at Bangor, and about A.D. 550 made first Bishop of that See. In the old records he is styled one of the three "Gwynvebydd" or holy men of the Isle of Britain. He was buried in Bardsey Island. A place still called "Daniel's Ash"--perhaps a corruption of Deiniol--may be the very spot where he gathered his disciples round him. Two Dedication festivals are observed, the one on S. Deiniol's Day, December 10th, the other on the Sunday after Holy Cross Day, September 14th. The Church has a central tower containing six bells, {23a} a chancel with a south aisle called the Whitley Chancel (after the Whitleys of Aston), and a nave with blind clerestory and two aisles. There is a division in the roof between the chancel and the nave which has the appearance of a transept, but not extended beyond the line of the aisles. The axis of the chancel deviates from that of the nave. In 1764 the nave and aisles were newly pewed in place of the old benches, and the floor flagged instead of being strewn with rushes. In 1810 a gallery was erected at the west end and an organ placed in it; the gallery was enlarged and a new organ purchased in 1836. {23b} Great improvements were made about the year 1855 by the Rev. Henry Glynne, Rector: the organ and singers were removed from the west to the east end, the pews converted into open seats, and the cumbrous "three decker" pulpit and reading desk {24a} exchanged for simpler furniture. Unfortunately on the 29th October, 1857, a disastrous fire occurred, almost entirely destroying the roof and fittings of the Church. Its restoration was at once placed in the hands of Sir Gilbert Scott, architect, who improved the occasion by adding the small spire which now with excellent effect crowns the otherwise somewhat stunted tower. An organ chamber was now added on the N. side of the chancel, and on the 14th July, 1859, with Sermons from the late Bishop Wilberforce, Dean Hook and others, the Church was re-opened. The whole expenditure was about 8000 pounds. The Reredos is a representation of the Last Supper in alabaster, and was erected as a memorial to the Rev. Henry Glynne, Rector of the Parish for 38 years. In the side chancel {24b} under the 'Vine' window, is a recumbent figure of his brother, Sir Stephen Glynne, who died two years later in 1874--a beautiful work by Noble. To his memory also were given by the parishioners the wrought-iron gates at the main entrance to the Churchyard. Upon the altar table stands a handsome brass cross mounted on _rosso antico_ the gift of the parishioners to the present Rector. The old Communion plate was twice stolen, viz., on April 13th, 1821, when it was recovered, being found beaten flat and buried near the Higher Ferry; and finally in 1859. The Churchyard was enlarged in 1859, by gift of the late Rector. The old Cross which stood in the Churchyard in 1663, has disappeared: possibly the Sun-dial now occupies its place. The Parish Register dates from the year 1585; and the list of Rectors goes back to 1180. The Living is what is termed 'a Peculiar,' and was formerly exempt from Episcopal jurisdiction. The Rectors granted marriage licenses, proved wills, and had their own consistorial Courts and Proctors. The Court was held in the Eastern Bay of the Chancel Aisle: the seal, still used, represents Daniel in the Lion's Den, with the legend 'Sigillum peculiaris et exemptae jurisdictionis de Hawarden'. These privileges, originally granted by the Pope, were continued at the Reformation; but in 1849 the Parish was definitely attached to the Diocese of S. Asaph, and the power of granting marriage licenses now alone remains. The Tithes were in 1093, granted by Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, to the Monks of S. Werburgh. In 1288 Pope Nicholas the 3rd, granted them to King Edward the 1st, for six years. They were then valued at 13 pounds 6s. 8d. At the Reformation they were estimated at 66 pounds 6s. 5.5d. The Rectory was greatly enlarged by the Hon. George Neville Grenville, Rector from 1814 to 1834, and afterwards Dean of Windsor. The garden comprises nearly six acres and is charmingly laid out. A list of Rectors of Hawarden is appended. Up to the middle of the 15th century exchanges were very frequent. 1180. William de Montalt 1209. Ralph de Montalt 1216. Hugh William 1272. Roger Richard de Osgodly 1315. William de Melton 1317. John Walewayn 1331. Thomas de Boynton 1333. Roger de Gildesburgh 1344. John de Baddeley 1350. James de Audlegh 1353. John Bexsyn 1357. Robert de Coningham 1368. William Pectoo 1391. Roger de Davenport Henry Merston 1423. Marmaduke Lumley 1425. John Millyngton 1466. James Stanley 1478. Matthew Fowler 1487. James Stanley 1505. Randolph Pool 1557. Arthur Swift 1561. Thomas Jackson 1605. John Phillips D.D. 1633. Thomas Draycott 1636. Robert Browne 1638. Christopher Pasley D.D. 1640. Edward Bold 1655. Lawrence Fogge D.D. 1664. Orlando Fogge 1666. John Price D.D. 1685. Beaumont Percival D.D. 1714. B. Gardiner 1726. Francis Glynne 1728. John Fletcher 1742. Richard Williams 1770. Stephen Glynne 1780. Randolph Crewe 1814. George Neville-Grenville 1834. Henry Glynne 1872. Stephen E. Gladstone {Interior of Church: p26.jpg} The Modern Residence and Park. The modern Residence was built in 1752 upon the site of Broadlane Hall, the seat of the Ravenscrofts, an old house of wood and plaster, which came into Sir John Glynne's possession by his marriage with Honora Conway, daughter of Henry Conway and Honora Ravenscroft. Originally a square brick house, it was afterwards in 1809 extended by the addition of the Library on the West side and of the Kitchen and other offices on the East; the whole being cased in stone {27} and castellated. The entrance was now turned from the S. to the N. front--the turnpike road, which passed in front of the house and along the Moat to the Village, having been diverted in 1804--and the present Flower-garden constructed with the old Thorn-tree in the centre. Quite recently has been added the block at the N.W. angle of the house, containing Mr. Gladstone's Study, or, as he calls it, the 'Temple of Peace.' {House and Flower Garden: p27.jpg} The most striking feature about this room is that (to use the phrase of a writer in Harper's Magazine) it is built about with bookcases. Instead of being ranged along the wall in the usual way, they stand out into the room at right angles, each wide enough to hold a double row facing either way. Intervals are left sufficient to give access to the books, and Mr. Gladstone prides himself upon the economy of space obtained by this arrangement. His Library numbers near 20,000 volumes, many of which have overflowed into adjoining rooms, where they are similarly stored. Of this number Theology claims a large proportion; Homer, Dante, {28a} and Shakespeare also have their respective departments, and any resident visitor is at liberty, on entering his or her name in a book kept for the purpose, to borrow any volume at pleasure. Three writing-tables are seen. At one Mr. Gladstone sits when busy in political work and correspondence; the second is reserved for literary and especially, Homeric studies; the third is Mrs. Gladstone's. "It is," remarked Mr. Gladstone to the writer above mentioned, with a wistful glance at the table where 'Vaticanism' and 'Juventus Mundi' were written, "A long time since I sat there." About the room are to be seen busts and photographs of old friends and colleagues--Sidney Herbert, the Duke of Newcastle, Canning, Tennyson, Lord Richard Cavendish, and others, while in the corners lurk numerous walking sticks and axes. Adjoining Mr. Gladstone's room is the Library of the house--a well-proportioned and comfortable room, well stored with books, prominent among which topography and ecclesiology testify to the predelictions of the late owner, Sir Stephen Glynne. {28b} There are some good family portraits and other pictures, among which are specimens of Sir Peter Lely, Snyders, and a very fine likeness of Sir Kenelm Digby by Vandyke. There is a fine picture by Millais of Mr. Gladstone and his grandson, {29a} painted in 1889, and another good portrait of him by the late F. Holl; also a much-admired likeness of Mrs. Gladstone by Herkomer. Shading the windows of Mr. Gladstone's Study is a singular circle of limes of some 20 feet in diameter, which goes by the name of Sir John Glynne's Dressing-Room. Mounting the slope towards the old castle is the Broad Walk, terminating in an artificial amphitheatre at the top, made by Sir John Glynne to give employment in a time of distress. The grounds abound in fine trees, {29b} and in rhododendrons which in spring form masses of bloom. In 1819, Prince Leopold, the late King of the Belgians, visited the Castle; and the small wooden door on the south side of the Ruins is still called after him. The Visitors' Book at the Lodge also records, in autograph, the names of Her Gracious Majesty, as Princess Victoria, and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, in or about the year 1833. In the palmy days of the Royal British Bowmen the Castle was the frequent scene of bow-meetings; the peculiar green costumes and feathers worn by both the ladies and gentlemen competitors contributing to the picturesque effect of these gatherings. Simultaneously with one of these Archery Meetings, in the year, we believe, 1835, was held a Fancy Bazaar, commemorated in some admirable lines by Mr. R. E. Warburton of Arley Hall, which will be read with pleasure in connection with more recent bazaars held in the same place. While tents are pitched in Hawarden's peaceful vale, And harmless shafts the platted targe assail; While now the bow (the archers more intent On making love than making war) is bent; Beneath those towers, where erst their fathers drew In deadly conflict bows of tougher yew; Lo! Charity, a native of the skies, Whose smile betrays her through a vain disguise, Mounts the steep hill, and 'neath th' o'erhanging wall, The canvass stretch'd in triumph, plants her stall; In gay profusion o'er the counter pours Her glittering wares and ranges all her stores. Beneath the magic of her touch behold Transformed at once the warlike aims of old! The mighty falchion to a penknife shrinks, The mailed meshes from the purse's links; The sturdy lance a bodkin now appears, A bunch of tooth-picks once a hundred spears; A painted toy behold the keen-edged axe! See men of iron turned to dolls of wax! The once broad shield contracted now in span Raised as a screen or fluttered as a fan; The gleaming helm a hollow thimble proves, And weighty gauntlets dwindle into gloves. The plumes that winged the arrow through the sky, Waft to and fro the shuttlecock on high; Two trusty swords are into scissors cross'd, And dinted breastplates are in corsets lost; While dungeon chains to gentler use consigned, Now silken laces, tighten stays behind. Approach! nor weapons more destructive fear, Where'er ye turn, than pins and needles here. While hobbling Age along the pathway crawls, By aid of crutch to scale the Castle's walls: With eager steps advance, ye generous youths, Draw purses all, and strip the loaded booths. Bear each away some trophy from the steep, Take each a keepsake ere ye quit the keep! Come, every stranger, every guest draw nigh! No peril waits you save from beauty's eye. Hard by the Castle and across the yard will be found Mrs. Gladstone's Orphanage, containing from 20 to 30 boys. Close by is a little Home of Rest established by Mrs. Gladstone, for old and infirm women. The house in which the orphans are lodged is called Diglane, and was formerly the residence of the Crachley family. It was sold to Sir John Glynne in 1749. {Gateway--Castle, shewing Orphanage: p31.jpg} The Park is about 250 acres in extent, to which have to be added the Bilberry Wood and Warren Plantations. It is divided into two parts by a ravine passing immediately under the old Castle and traversing its entire length. The further side is called the Deer Park, inclosed and stocked by Sir John Glynne in 1739. Its banks and glades, richly timbered, and overgrown with bracken, afford from various points beautiful views over the plain of Chester, with the bold projections of the Frodsham and Peckforton hills. Along the bottom of the hollow flows Broughton brook. Two Waterfalls occur in its course through the Park: the lower is called the Ladies' Fall: near the upper one stood a Mill, now removed, the erection of which is commemorated by a large stone, bearing the following inscription: "Trust in God for Bread, and to the King for Justice, Protection and Peace. This Mill was built A.D. 1767 By Sir John Glynne, Bart., Lord of this Manor: Charles Howard Millwright. Wheat was at this year 9s. and Barley at 5s. 6d. a Bushel. Luxury was at a great height, and Charity extensive, but the pool were starving, riotous, and hanged." Between this spot and the "Old Lane," a sandy gully, lined with old beeches, and once the road to Wrexham--now tenanted by rabbits--are two large oaks, 17 and 18 feet in circumference respectively. Another tree, a beautiful specimen of the _fagus pendula_, or feathering beech, a great favourite with Mr. Gladstone, deserves attention. It stands a few yards from the iron railing near the moat of the old Castle, and measures 17ft. 11 in. round. The sycamores at Hawarden are particularly fine. Nor should the visitor omit seeing the noble grove of beeches at the Ladies' Fall. The road which descends the steep hill under the Old Castle and crosses the brook, leads up through the Park to the Bilberry Wood. Twenty minutes' walk through the wood brings one to the "Top Lodge" (1.75 miles from the Castle). From this point either the walk may be continued through the further plantations to the pretty Church of St. John's at Penymynydd, {32a} or, if necessary Broughton Hall Station, 2.5 miles distant, may be gained direct. The inclosures and the plantations on this portion of the estate, called the Warren, were made in 1798, and command some very fine views. The high road through Pentrobin and Tinkersdale offers a pleasant return route to Hawarden. Everyone has heard of Mr. Gladstone's prowess as a woodcutter, and to some it may even have been matter of surprise to see no scantiness of trees in the Park at Hawarden. It is true that he attacks trees with the same vigour as he attacks abuses in the body politic, {32b} but he attacks them on the same principle--they are blemishes and not ornaments. No one more scrupulously respects a sound and shapely tree than Mr. Gladstone; and if he is prone to condemn those that show signs of decay, he is always ready to listen to any plea that may be advanced on their behalf by other members of the family. In this, as in other matters, doubtful points will of course arise; but there can be no question that a policy of inert conservatism is an entire mistake. Besides the natural growth and decay of trees, a hundred other causes are ever at work to affect their structure and appearance; and the facts of the landscape, thus continually altering, afford sufficient occupation for the eye and hand of the woodman. It was late in life that Mr. Gladstone took to woodcutting. Tried first as an experiment, it answered so admirably the object of getting the most complete exercise in a short time that, though somewhat slackened of late, it has never been abandoned. His procedure is characteristic. No exercise is taken in the morning, save the daily walk to morning service but between 3 and 4 in the afternoon he sallies forth, axe on shoulder, accompanied by one or more of his sons. The scene of action reached, there is no pottering; the work begins at once, and is carried on with unflagging energy. Blow follows blow, delivered with that skill which his favourite author {33a} reminds us is of more value to the woodman than strength, together with a force and energy that soon tells its tale on the tree * * * * Illa usque minatur Et tremefacta comam concusso vertice nutat, Vulneribus donec paulatim evicta supremum Congemuit, traxitque jugis avulsa ruinam. _Virgil OEn II._ 626 "It still keeps nodding to its doom, Still bows its head and shakes its plume, Till, by degrees o'ercome, one groan It heaves, and on the hill lies prone." _Conington's Translation_. At the advanced age he has now attained, it can hardly be expected that Mr. Gladstone can very frequently indulge in what has been his favourite recreation for the past twenty-five years. The present winter {34} however saw the fall of at least one large tree, in which he took a full share--a Spanish chestnut, measuring 10ft. at the top of the face, and those who were present can testify to the undiminished vigour with which the axe was wielded on that occasion. Parish and District of Hawarden. The Parish of Hawarden is a very extensive one, containing upwards of 17,000 acres, with a population, according to the census of 1871, of 7088. Sixteen townships are included in it; Hawarden, Broadlane, Mancot Aston, Shotton, Pentrobin, Moor, Rake, Manor, Bannel, Bretton, Broughton, Ewloe Wood, Ewloe Town, Saltney and Sealand. To provide for the spiritual wants of so large a district, four daughter churches have been built--viz.: S. Matthew's, Buckley, {35a} in 1822, S. Mary's, Broughton, {35b} in 1824, S. Johns, Penymynydd, {35c} in 1843, and S. Bartholomew's, Sealand, in 1867. The work of the Parish Church is now further supplemented by three new School-chapels at Shotton, Sandycroft and Ewloe. The chief portion of Saltney, and the district of Buckley, have been recently separated from Hawarden for ecclesiastical purposes. {Lodge Gate--Broughton Approach: p35.jpg} The Rector of Hawarden has also to provide for the management and support of eight National Schools, involving an annual expenditure of 1460 pounds. The requirements of the Education Act of 1870 involved an outlay of 4300 pounds raised entirely from local sources. The patronage of the living is vested in the Lord of the Manor. {36} The Rev. S. E. Gladstone, the present Rector, was appointed by the late Sir Stephen Glynne in 1872. The Grammar School is finely situated, near the Church, and has accommodation for 50 scholars, inclusive of 20 boarders. The income from endowment is 24 pounds. The temporary building adjoining contains a portion of the Library of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. The land about Hawarden varies much in quality. The best lies towards the river and on Saltney, where are large and well cultivated farms. On the higher ground in Pentrobin the soil is poorer; here however are found holdings that have remained in the same family for generations. The land is mainly arable; but little cheese being now made. About one mile and a half from Hawarden on the road to Northop, lie ensconced in a wood the scant remains of the old Castle of Ewloe--the scene of a battle between the English and Welsh in 1157, in which the former were defeated by David and Conan, sons of Owen Gwynedd. The district is rich in beds of coal and clay. The former have been worked from an early period when the coal was mostly sent to Chester; but the difficulties of carriage before the turnpike road was made, and especially of draining the mines, which before steam-engines came into use was attempted to be done by means of levels, {37} were a serious impediment to that development which under more favourable conditions has since taken place. Formerly the only means of getting the minerals of the district away, was a horse tramway from Buckley to Queensferry. In 1862 however was opened the Wrexham and Connah's Quay Railway,--Mrs. Gladstone cutting the first sod, and an address from the Corporation of Wrexham being at the same time presented to Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. This line is now carried through Hawarden, and, when connected with Birkenhead and Liverpool by the Mersey Tunnel, now happily completed, is destined in all probability to become one of importance beyond the limits of the immediate district. Clay has been extensively worked in Buckley, where the Messrs. Hancock's famous fire-brick is made. Mention may also be made of the white bricks made by the Aston Hall Coal and Brick Company, which are in great favour with builders on account of their powers of resisting the weather and of retaining their colour. A clay, resembling _terra cotta_ when burnt, has also been found on Saltney. At Sandycroft, on the river bank, are the Ironworks belonging to Messrs. Taylor, where mining and other machinery is made. The present course of the River below Chester, is called the New Cut, and was completed under Act of Parliament, in 1737, by the River Dee Company, who have lately handed over their interest in the River to a newly formed Conservancy Board. The River, which before wandered over a large tract, was thus confined to the present channel, and a large reclamation of land effected. In compensation for the loss of rights of pasturage, 200 pounds is paid yearly by the Company to Trustees for the benefit of the Freeholders of the Manor of Hawarden; 50 pounds is also paid yearly for the repair of the south bank. This was followed by the inclosure of Saltney Marsh, in 1778. Possessing as it does a greater depth of water over the bar than the Mersey, and provided with ample railway communication with the great industrial centres, it is probable that the Dee may ere long become a far more important river as a vehicle of commerce than heretofore. Of still more importance to Hawarden is the establishment of direct communication with Liverpool already referred to, in place of the present circuitous route by Chester and Runcorn. By the new Swing Railway Bridge across the Dee, direct access will be given to Birkenhead and Liverpool by the Mersey Tunnel across the Wirral; such communication will not only stimulate and develop to the utmost the natural resources of the district, but will offer residential facilities, beneficial, as it may be hoped, alike to town and country. {Map of Hawarden: p38.jpg} PHILLIPSON AND GOLDER, PRINTERS, CHESTER. Footnotes: {8} He was buried at Shuldham, in Norfolk. {9a} Pennant. Sir W. Stanley had rendered the most valuable service to the King at the battle of Bosworth; yet, upon suspicion of his favouring the cause of Perkin Warbeck, the King had him seized at his castle at Holt and beheaded. {9b} This may have been the house known as "The Manor," now occupied by Mr. Bakewell Bower of the Manor Farm. {10} See Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices. {11a} The Letters Patent recite also the service rendered to the King by the furnishing a sum of money sufficient for the maintenance of thirty soldiers for three years in the Plantation of Ulster. {11b} Henley Park was left to John Glynne, (son of the Chief Justice by his second wife,) through whom it passed by marriage to Francis Tilney, Esq. {11c} We find Hugh Ravenscroft mentioned as Steward of the Lordships of Hawarden and Mold, about the year 1440. Thomas Ravenscroft, father of Honora, afterwards Lady Glynne, by his wife Honora Sneyd of Keel Hall, Staffordshire, was a Member of Parliament, and died in 1698, aged 28. There is a monument to him in Hawarden Church. {12} Pennant learnt that the timber had been valued in 1665 at 5000 pounds and subsequently sold. {13} Between 1830 and 1840 the Norman Archaeological Society visited the sites of all the Castles of the Barons who had gone over to England with William the Conqueror, and in none of them found any masonry older than the second half of the eleventh century. {14} _e.g._ Mr. G. T. Clark and Mr. J. H. Parker, from whom this account is chiefly derived. {16} The uncommon strength and tenacity of the ancient mortar used in the Castle was especially conspicuous in the Keep prior to the recent restorations. In one place an enormous mass of masonry remained suspended without other support than its own coherence and adhesion. For security this has now been underpinned. {23a} In 1563 there were five bells. In 1740 they were sold and six new ones purchased from Abel Rudhall of Gloucester, at a cost of 628 pounds. They bear the following inscriptions, with the initials of the maker and the date 1745 in each case: No. 1. Peace and good neighbourhood. ,, 2. Prosperity to all our benefactors. ,, 3. Prosperity to this Parish. ,, 4. I to the Church the living call, And to the grave do summon all. ,, 5. Geo Hope, Churchwarden. Thos Fox, Sidesman. ,, 6. Abel Rudhall of Gloucester cast us all. {23b} There is a curious carved oaken slab, 4ft high, surmounted by a cross, which forms part of the present Reading Desk. On the cross is an eagle, with a vine branch and grapes above, and with a scroll in his beak inscribed, In Domino confido. The pillar was probably in commemoration of a maiden daughter of Randolph Pool, Rector in 1537. {24a} Its peculiarity consisted in its accommodating two officiating clergymen simultaneously. The Clerk's Desk was, as usual, below. {24b} This Chancel, called the Whitley Chancel, was restored and decorated in 1885, by the munificence of H. Hurlbutt, Esq., of Dee Cottage, from the designs of Mr. Frampton, and under the superintendence of Mr. Douglas, Architect, Chester. The same gentleman erected the Lych Gate at the North entrance to the Churchyard. {27} From Tinkersdale Quarry. {28a} Dante is one of the four authors to whom Mr. Gladstone attributes the greatest _formative_ influence on his own mind; the other three being Aristotle, Bishop Butler, and S. Augustine. {28b} Sir S. Glynne was one of the highest authorities on English Ecclesiology. He visited and described in a series of Note Books, which are carefully preserved, nearly the whole of the old parish churches in the country. His Notes of the Churches of Kent are published by Murray. He died in 1874, at the age of 66. There is a good portrait of him by Roden. {29a} Eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Gladstone. {29b} Sir John Glynne has recorded that only one tree was standing about the place in 1730. This is supposed to be the large spreading oak adjoining the Flower Garden. {32a} This Church contains some noteworthy frescoes and other mural decorations, the work of the Rev. John Troughton, sometime curate in charge. {32b} A wag is said to have scratched on the stump of a tree at Hawarden the following couplet: "No matter whether oak or birch-- They all go like the Irish Church." {33a} _Homer_. _Iliad_ xxili. 315 "By skill far more than strength the woodman fells The sturdy oak." _Ld. Derby's Translation_ {34} 1889-1890. {35a} Buckley Church, towards which a grant of 4000 pounds was made by the Commissioners for Church building, was designed by Mr. John Gates of Halifax, and holds 740 persons. The first stone was laid by the youthful hands of Sir S. R. Glynne and his Brother Henry, afterwards Rector, and the Consecration was performed nine months afterwards, by the Bishop of Chester, Dr. Gardiner, Prebendary of Lichfield, preaching the Sermon. The Schools and Parsonage had been previously erected by the exertions of the Hon. and Rev. George Neville Grenville (afterwards Dean of Windsor), at a cost of about 2000 pounds. {35b} Much improved by the recent addition of a Chancel, the gift of W. Johnson, Esq., of Broughton Hall. {35c} Built by Sir S. R. Glynne: Vicarage and Schools by Lady Glynne. {36} In the Journals of the House of Commons occurs the following entry, dated 23rd February, 1646:--"An Ordinance from the Lords for Mr. Bold, a Minister, to be instituted into the Church of Hawarden, in Flintshire." {37} On the 1st October, 1770, assembled a grand Procession, with coloured cockades, to start the opening of a Level, designed to be driven one mile and three quarters in length and eighty yards deep "in order" (so the notice ran) "to lay dry a body of coal for future ages." The wages were to be, for boys and lads employed about the horses, and windlasses--26 in number, 6d. a day, smiths, carpenters and labourers, above ground generally--42 in number, 1/4 a day, underground laboures 42, Cutters 68 in number, 1/6 a day, underground stewards 10 in number, 1/6 a day. At this date the price of coal at the pit's mouth was not less than 16/- a ton, or fully double what it is at present. The course of this notable work which effectually drained the Hollin seam of coal may still be traced for a long distance by its succession of ventilating shafts, finally issuing in the ravine called Kearsley, and discharging its waters into the brook. 
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20096	----	This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler. WELSH FOLK-LORE a collection by the Rev. Elias Owen, M.A., F.S.A. CONTENTS TITLE PAGE i PREFACE iii-vi INDEX vii-xii ESSAY 1-352 LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS 353-359 WELSH FOLK-LORE A COLLECTION OF THE FOLK-TALES AND LEGENDS OF NORTH WALES BEING THE PRIZE ESSAY OF THE NATIONAL EISTEDDFOD 1887, BY THE REV. ELIAS OWEN, M.A, F.S.A. PREFACE To this Essay on the "Folk-lore of North Wales," was awarded the first prize at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, held in London, in 1887. The prize consisted of a silver medal, and 20 pounds. The adjudicators were Canon Silvan Evans, Professor Rhys, and Mr Egerton Phillimore, editor of the _Cymmrodor_. By an arrangement with the Eisteddfod Committee, the work became the property of the publishers, Messrs. Woodall, Minshall, & Co., who, at the request of the author, entrusted it to him for revision, and the present Volume is the result of his labours. Before undertaking the publishing of the work, it was necessary to obtain a sufficient number of subscribers to secure the publishers from loss. Upwards of two hundred ladies and gentlemen gave their names to the author, and the work of publication was commenced. The names of the subscribers appear at the end of the book, and the writer thanks them one and all for their kind support. It is more than probable that the work would never have been published had it not been for their kind assistance. Although the study of Folk-lore is of growing interest, and its importance to the historian is being acknowledged; still, the publishing of a work on the subject involved a considerable risk of loss to the printers, which, however, has been removed in this case, at least to a certain extent, by those who have subscribed for the work. The sources of the information contained in this essay are various, but the writer is indebted, chiefly, to the aged inhabitants of Wales, for his information. In the discharge of his official duties, as Diocesan Inspector of Schools, he visited annually, for seventeen years, every parish in the Diocese of St. Asaph, and he was thus brought into contact with young and old. He spent several years in Carnarvonshire, and he had a brother, the Revd. Elijah Owen, M.A., a Vicar in Anglesey, from whom he derived much information. By his journeys he became acquainted with many people in North Wales, and he hardly ever failed in obtaining from them much singular and valuable information of bye-gone days, which there and then he dotted down on scraps of paper, and afterwards transferred to note books, which still are in his possession. It was his custom, after the labour of school inspection was over, to ask the clergy with whom he was staying to accompany him to the most aged inhabitants of their parish. This they willingly did, and often in the dark winter evenings, lantern in hand, they sallied forth on their journey, and in this way a rich deposit of traditions and superstitions was struck and rescued from oblivion. Not a few of the clergy were themselves in full possession of all the quaint sayings and Folk-lore of their parishes, and they were not loath to transfer them to the writer's keeping. In the course of this work, the writer gives the names of the many aged friends who supplied him with information, and also the names of the clergy who so willingly helped him in his investigations. But so interesting was the matter obtained from several of his clerical friends, that he thinks he ought in justice to acknowledge their services in this preface. First and foremost comes up to his mind, the Rev. R. Jones, formerly Rector of Llanycil, Bala, but now of Llysfaen, near Abergele. This gentleman's memory is stored with reminiscences of former days, and often and again his name occurs in these pages. The Rev. Canon Owen Jones, formerly Vicar of Pentrefoelas, but now of Bodelwyddan, near Rhyl, also supplied much interesting information of the people's doings in former days, and I may state that this gentleman is also acquainted with Welsh literature to an extent seldom to be met with in the person of an isolated Welsh parson far removed from books and libraries. To him I am indebted for the perusal of many MSS. To the Rev. David James, formerly Rector of Garthbeibio, now of Pennant, and to his predecessor the Rev. W. E. Jones, Bylchau; the late Rev. Ellis Roberts (Elis Wyn o Wyrfai); the Rev. M. Hughes, Derwen; the Rev. W. J. Williams, Llanfihangel-Glyn-Myfyr, and in a great degree to his aged friend, the Rev. E. Evans, Llanfihangel, near Llanfyllin, whose conversation in and love of Welsh literature of all kinds, including old Welsh Almanacks, was almost without limit, and whose knowledge and thorough sympathy with his countrymen made his company most enjoyable. To him and to all these gentlemen above named, and to others, whose names appear in the body of this work, the writer is greatly indebted, and he tenders his best thanks to them all. The many books from which quotations are made are all mentioned in connection with the information extracted from their pages. Welsh Folk-lore is almost inexhaustible, and in these pages the writer treats of only one branch of popular superstitions. Ancient customs are herein only incidentally referred to, but they are very interesting, and worthy of a full description. Superstitions associated with particular days and seasons are also omitted. Weather signs are passed over, Holy wells around which cluster superstitions of bye-gone days form no part of this essay. But on all these, and other branches of Folk-lore, the author has collected much information from the aged Welsh peasant, and possibly some day in the uncertain future he may publish a continuation of the present volume. He has already all but finished a volume on the Holy Wells of North Wales, and this he hopes to publish at no very distance period. The author has endeavoured in all instances to give the names of his informants, but often and again, when pencil and paper were produced, he was requested not to mention in print the name of the person who was speaking to him. This request was made, not because the information was incorrect, but from false delicacy; still, in every instance, the writer respected this request. He, however, wishes to state emphatically that he has authority for every single bit of Folk-lore recorded. Very often his work was merely that of a translator, for most of his information, derived from the people, was spoken in Welsh, but he has given in every instance a literal rendering of the narrative, just as he heard it, without embellishments or additions of any kind whatsoever. ELIAS OWEN _Llanyblodwel Vicarage_, _St. Mark's Day_, _1896_. INDEX Aberhafesp, Spirit in Church of 169 _Angelystor_, announcing deaths 170 AEschylus' Cave-dwellers 113 _Annwn_, _Gwragedd_ 3 134 Annwn, Plant 3 Antagonism between Pagan faiths 160 161 181 _Animal Folk-Lore_ 308-352 Ass 337 Bee 337-340 Birds Singing 310 Flocking 310 Blind worm 352 Cat 321 323 340-342 Cow 129-137 342 Crow 304 314-315 Crane 321 Crickets 342-3 Cuckoo 317-321 Cock 310 321 Duck 321 Eagle 321 Flying Serpent 349 Frog 281 Fox 193 Goose 304 305 312 Goatsucker 322 Haddock 345 Hare 343-345 Heron 321 323 Hen 305 322 Hedgehog 345 Horse 346 Jackdaw 324 Ladybird 347 Magpie 324-327 Mice 348 Mole 348 Owl 304 327 Peacock 327 Pigeon 327 Pigs 348 Raven 304 328 Rook, Crow 304 314 316 316 Robin Redbreast 329 332 Seagull 329 330 Sawyer, Tit 331 Snakes 348-350 Slowworm 352 Sheep 351 Swallow 330 331 Swan 331 Swift 331 Spider 351 Squirrel 351 Tit-Major 331 Woodpigeon 333-336 Woodpecker 336 Wren 331-333 Yellowhammer 337 All Hallow Eve, Nos Glan Gaua 95 Spirits abroad 138-9 168-70 Divination on 280-1 286 288-9 Apparitions 181-209 293-297 Applepip divination 290 Arawn 128 _Avanc_ 133 "_Bardd Cwsg_, _Y_" 144 284 285 Baring-Gould--Spirit leaving body 293 Piper of Hamelin 307 Beaumaris spirit tale 293 Bell, Hand, used at funerals 171-2 Corpse 172 Passing 171-2 Veneration for 172 Devil afraid of 171 Ringing at storms 173 Spirits flee before sound of 173 Bella Fawr, a witch 223 Betty'r Bont, a witch 236 240 Belief in witchcraft 217 Bennion, Doctor 216 Bees, Buying a hive of 337 Swarming 338 Strange swarm 339 Deserting hive 339 Hive in roof of house 339 Informing bees of a death 339 Putting bees into mourning 340 Stolen 340 _Bendith y Mamau_ 2 Bible, a talisman 151 245 248 Bible and key divination 288 Bingley's North Wales--Knockers 121 Birds singing in the night 305 before February 310 Flocking in early Autumn 310 Feathers of 310 Blindworm 352 Boy taken to Fairyland 48 _Brenhin Llwyd_ 142 Bryn Eglwys Man and Fairies 36 "_British Goblins_," Fairy dances 94 97 "_Brython_, _Y_," Fairies' revels 95 Burne's, Miss, Legend of White Cow 131-2 Burns, Old Nick in Kirk 168 Nut divination 289 _Canwyll Corph_, see Corpse Candle, Canoe in Llyn Llydaw 28 Card-playing 147-151 Cat, Fable of 323 Black, unlucky, &c 321 341 indicates weather 340 Black, drives fevers away 341 May, brings snakes to house 341 Witches taking form of 224 Caesar's reference to Celtic Superstitions 277 310 343 _Careg-yr-Yspryd_ 212 _Careg Gwr Drwg_ 190 Caellwyngrydd Spirit 214 Cave-dwellers 112-13 _Ceffyl y Dwfr_, the Water Horse 138-141 _Cetyn y Tylwyth Teg_ 109 Ceridwen 234 Cerrig-y-drudion Spirit Tale 294 Cerrig-y-drudion, Legend of Church 132 _Ceubren yr Ellyll_, Legend of 191 Changelings, Fairy 51-63 Churches built on Pagan sites 160 Mysterious removal of 174-181 Chaucer on Fairies 89 Charms 238-9 258 262 276 Charm for Shingles 262-3 Toothache 264-266 Whooping Cough 266 Fits 266 Fighting Cocks 267 312 Asthma 267 Warts 267-8 Stye 268 Quinsy 268 Wild wart 268 Rheumatism 269 Ringworm 269 Cattle 269-272 Stopping bleeding 272 Charm with Snake's skin 273 Rosemary 273-4 Charm for making Servants reliable 272 Sweethearts 281 Charm of Conjurors 239-254 Charm for Clefyd y Galon, or Heart Disease 274 _Clefyd yr Ede Wlan_, or Yarn Sickness 275 Christmas Eve, free from Spirits 192 Churns witched 238 _Clefyd y Galon_ 274 _Clefyd yr Ede Wlan_ 275 Crickets in House lucky 342 Deserting house unlucky 343 Crane, see Heron _Coblynau_, Knockers 112-121 _Coel Ede Wlan_, or Yarn Test 283 Corpse Candle 298-300 Cock, unlawful to eat 343 Devil in form of 310 Offering of 311 Crowing of, at doors 311 Crowing at night 298 Crowing drives Spirits away 311 Charm for Fighting 312 White, unlucky 321 341 Crow 304 314 315 Conjurors 251-262 Charms of 239 254 258-260 Tricks of 255 257 260-1 Cow, Dun 129 131 137 Legend of White 131 Freckled 130-1 Fairy Stray 134-137 Witched 243 _Cyhyraeth_, Death Sound 302 Cynon's Ghost 212 Cuckoo Superstitions 317-321 _Cwn Annwn_ 125-129 Dancing with Fairies 36-39 Davydd ab Gwilym and the Fairies 3 24 Death Portents 297-307 _Deryn Corph_, Corpse Bird 297 Devil 143-192 Devil's Tree 185 Bridge 190 Kitchen 190 Cave 191 Door 170 Destruction of Foxes 193 Dick Spot 212 255 256 Dick the Fiddler 84 Divination 279-290 Candle and Pin 287 _Coel Ede Wlan_, or Yarn Test 283 Frog stuck with Pins 281 Grass 288 Hemp Seed 286 Holly Tree 288 Key and Bible 288 Lovers' 289-90 Nut 289 Pullet's Egg 286 Snail 280 St. John's Wort 280 _Troi Crysau_, Clothes Drying 285 _Twca_, or Knife 284 Washing at Brook 285 Water in Basin 287 Dogs, Hell 125 127 Sky 125 127 Fairy 49 81 83 125 Dwarfs of Cae Caled 97 Droich 113-121 _Dyn Hysbys_ 209 259 _Drychiolaeth_, Spectre 301 302 Eagle, Superstitions about 263-4 321 _Erdion Banawg_ 131 _Ellyll_ 3 4 111 191 _Dan_ 112 _Ellyllon_, _Menyg_ 111 _Bwyd_ 111 Elf Dancers of _Cae Caled_ 98-100 Stones 110 Shots 110-11 Elidorus, the Fairies and 32-35 Epiphany 285-6 Evil Eye 219 Fable of Heron, Cat, and Bramble 323 Magpie and Woodpigeon 335 Robin Redbreast 329 Sea Gull 329 Famous Witches-- Betty'r Bont 236 240 Bella Fawr 223 Moll White 229 232 Pedws Ffoulk 242 Fabulous Animals, see Mythic Beings Fairies, Origin of 1 2 35 36 Chaucer's reference to 89 Shakespeare's reference to 72 96 97 Milton's reference to 86 Fairies inveigling Men 36-44 Working for Men 85-87 Carrying Men in the air 100-102 in Markets and Fairs 108 Binding Men 112 Children offered to Satan by 63 Love of Truth 35 Grateful 72 Fairy Animals 81-3 124-5 129-132 Dances 87-97 Tricks 100-103 Knockers 112-124 Ladies marrying Men 5-24 Changelings 51-63 Implements 109-112 Men captured 104-107 Mothers and Human Midwives 63-67 Money 82-84 Riches and Gifts 72-81 Visits to human abodes 68-71 Families descended from 6 28 Fetch 294 Fire God 152 Fish, Satan in 153 Flying Serpent 349 Foxglove 111 Frog Divination 281 _Fuwch Frech_ 129-132 _Gyfeiliorn_ 129 134-137 _Ffynnon y Fuwch Frech_ 130 _Elian_ 216 _Oer_ 223 Gay, Nut divination 289 Giraldus Cambrensis 27 32 182 reference to Witches 233-236 Ghost, see Spirit Ghost in Cerrigydrudion Church 132 Aberhafesp Church 169 Powis Castle 204 revealing Treasures 202 at Gloddaeth 193-4 Nannau Park 191 Tymawr 195 Frith Farm 196 Pontyglyn 197 Ystrad Fawr 197-8 Ty Felin 198 Llandegla 199 Llanidloes 199-200 Llawryglyn 348 Clwchdyrnog 202 Llanwddyn 212 David Salisbury's 201 Cynon's 212 Squire Griffiths' 200 Sir John Wynne's 211 Raising 215 Visiting the Earth 192 Glain Nadroedd 350 Goat-sucker 322 Goblins, different kinds of 5 97 Golden Chair 77 Goose flying over House 304 laying small egg 305 egg laying 312 Gossamer 112 _Gwiber_, Flying Serpent 349 _Gwion Bach_ 234 _Gwragedd Annwn_ 3 _Gwrach y Rhibyn_ 142 _Gwr Cyfarwydd_ 38 55 257 259 _Gwyddelod_ 80 _Gwyll_ 4 _Gwylliaid Cochion_ 4 5 6 25 26 Haddock, why so marked 345 Hag, Mist 142 Hare 227-230 236 343-345 crossing the road 230 Caesar's reference to 343 Giraldus Cambrensis on hags changing themselves to 233 hares Man changed to a 236 Witch hunted in form of 230-233 Witch shot in the form of 228 S. Monacella, the patroness of hares 345 Harper and Fairies 91 Hedgehog sucking Cows 345 fee for destroying the 346 Hen Chrwchwd, a humpbacked fiend 142 Hen laying two eggs 305 March Chickens 322 Sitting 322 Hindu Fairy Tale 6-8 Heron, sign of weather changing 321 323 Fable of 323-4 Horse, Water, a mythic animal 138 White, lucky 346 Headless 155 Shoe Charm 246 Huw Llwyd, Cynfael, and Witches 224-227 Huw Llwyd and Magical Books 252 Hu Gadarn and the Avanc 133 Ignis Fatuus 112 Jackdaw considered sacred 324 _Jack Ffynnon Elian_ 216 Knockers, or Coblynau 4 97 in Mines 112-121 Ladybird, Weather Sign 347 Lady Jeffrey's Spirit 199 Lake Dwellers 27 28 Llanbrynmair Conjuror 258-9 Llangerniew Spirit 170 Llandegla Spirit 199 Llanddona Witches 222-3 Laying Spirits 209-215 Laws against Witches 218 _Llyn y Ddau Ychain Banawg_ 132 Legends-- _Careg Gwr Drwg_ 190 _Ceubren yr Ellyll_ 191 Fairy Changelings 51-63 _Dafydd Hiraddug_ 158-160 Devil's Bridge 190 Freckled Cow, or _Y Fuwch Frech_ 130 Fairy Marriages 5-24 Fairies inveigling Mortals 32-50 Fairies and Midwives 63-67 Flying Snake 349 Removal of Churches 174-181 Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr 10 Ghosts, see Ghost Spirits, see Spirit Satan or Devil, see Satan _Lledrith_, or Spectre 303 _Llysiau Ifan_, St. John's Wort 280 _Llyn y Geulan Goch_ Spirit 162-166 _Llyn Llion_ 133 Magpie teaching Wood Pigeon to make Nest 335 Superstitions 324-327 Magician's Glass 255 Marriages, Fairy 44-48 Man dancing with Fairies 90 91 witnessing a Fairy dance 90 93 taken away by Fairies 32 36 37 101-102 turned into a Hare 236 turned into a Horse 236 May-day Revels 95 Evil Spirits abroad 168 Mermaids 142 Monacella, S. 345 Moles, Weather Sign 318 Moll White, a Witch 229 232 _Meddygon Myddvai_, Physicians 6 23 24 Mythic Beings-- _Avanc_ 133 _Ceffyl y Dwfr_, Water Horse 138 _Cwn Annwn_, Dogs of the Abyss 125 _Cwn Bendith y Mamau_, Fairy Dogs 125 _Cwn Wybir_, Sky Dogs 125 127 Dragon, or Flying Serpent 349-50 Fairies, see Fairy _Fuwch Frech_, Fairy Cow 129-134 _Fuwch Gyfeiliorn_ 134-137 _Gwrach y Rhibyn_, Mist Hag 142 Knockers, see above Mermaids and Mermen 142 Torrent Spectre 141 _Ychain Banawg_ 130-133 _Y Brenhin Llwyd_, the Grey King 142 Mysterious removal of Churches-- Llanllechid 174 Corwen 174 Capel Garmon 175 Llanfair D. C. 175 Llanfihangel Geneu'r Glyn 176 Wrexham 177 Llangar 179 Denbigh 180 Names given to the Devil 191-2 Nightmare 237 North door of Churches opened at Baptisms 171 North door of Churches opened for Satan to go out 170 North side of Churchyard unoccupied 171 _Nos Glan Gaua_ 95 138-9 168-170 280 281 286 288-89 _Ogof Cythreuliaid_ Devils' Cave 191 Ogwen Lake, Tale of Wraith 292 Old Humpbacked, Mythic Being 142 Omen, see Divination 279-290 Owl 304 327 Pan, prototype of Celtic Satan 146 Passing Bell 171-2 Peacock, Weather Sign 327 Pedwe Ffoulk, a Witch 242 Pellings, Fairy Origin 6 13 Pentrevoelas Legend 8 Physicians of Myddfai 6 23 24 Pig Superstitions 154 348 Pigeon Superstitions 327 Pins stuck in "Witch's Butter" 249 Places associated with Satan 190-1 _Plant Annwn_ 3 4 Poocah, Pwka, Pwca 121-124 138-40 Raven 304 328 Rhamanta, see Divination, 279-290 on Hallow Eve 281 _Rhaffau'r Tylwyth Teg_, Gossamer 112 _Rhys Gryg_ 24 Robin Redbreast 329 332-3 Rook, see Crow Rooks deserting Rookery 316 building new Rookery 316 Sabbath-breaking punished 152-157 Satan, see Apparitions and Devil afraid of Bell-sounds 171 appearing to Man carrying Bibles 183 appearing to a Minister 184 appearing to a Man 185 appearing to a Sunday-breaker 152-3 appearing to a Sunday traveller 153 appearing as a lovely Maid 186 appearing to a young Man 188 appearing to a Collier 189 appearing to a Tippler 156-7 carrying a Man away 187 in form of a Pig 166 in form of a Fish 153 disappearing as a ball or wheel of fire 148 150 and Churches 160-170 outwitted 157-160 playing Cards 147 148 149 snatching a Man up into the air 150 Sawyer Bird, Tit-Major 331 Seagull, a Weather Sign 329-30 Seventh Daughter 250 Son 266 Shakespeare's Witches 219 220 221 Sheep, Black 351 Satan cannot enter 351 Sir John Wynne 211 Slowworm 352 Snakes 348 Flying 349 Snake Rings 350 Spells, how to break 244-251 Spectral Funeral 301-2 Spirit, see Ghost Spirit laying 209-211 Spirits laid for a time 164 199 200 210 212 allowed to visit the earth 168 sent to the Red Sea 193 209 210 214 sent to Egypt 211 riding Horses 202 Spirit ejected from Cerrig-y-drudion Church 132 Llanfor Church 152-166 Llandysilio Church 166-7 Spirit in Llangerniew Church 170 Aberhafesp Church 169 Llandegla 199 Lady Jeffrey's 199-200 calling Doctor 294 St. John's Eve 52 95 168 280 St. David 299 307 Spiritualism 290-297 Spirit leaving body 291-293 Spider 351 Squirrel hunting 351-2 Swallow forsaking its nest 330 Breaking nest of 331 Swan, hatching eggs of 381 Swift, flying, Weather Sign 331 _Swyno'r 'Ryri_ 254 262 263-4 Taboo Stories 6 8-24 Tegid 306 Tit-Major, Weather Sign 331 _Tolaeth_ 303 Tobit, Spirit tale 182 210 Torrent Spectre 141 Transformation 227 234-237 Transmigration 276-279 _Tylwyth Teg_, see Fairies Van Lake Fairy tale 16-24 Voice calling a Doctor 294 Water Horse 138-141 Water Worship 161 Welsh Airs 84 88 _Aden Ddu'r Fran_ 84 _Toriad y Dydd_ 88 Williams, Dr. Edward, and Fairies 97 Witches 216-251 Llanddona 222-3 transforming themselves into cats 224-226 transforming themselves into hares 227-235 hunted in form of hare 230-233 killed in form of hare 228 in churn in form of hare 229 cursing Horse 242 cursing Milk 238-9 cursing Pig 238 how tested 250-1 Spells, how broken 244-250 Punishment of 243 Laws against 218 Wife snatching 29 Woodpecker, Weather Sign 336 Woodpigeon 333-336 Wraith 292 294 308 Wren, unlucky to harm 331-2 Hunting the 332 Curse on breaker of nest 333 _Wyn Melangell_ 345 _Ystrad Legend_ 12 Yarn Sickness 275-6 Test 283-4 _Yspryd Cynon_ 212 _Ystrad Fawr_ 197-8 THE FAIRIES. ORIGIN OF THE FAIRIES. (Y TYLWYTH TEG.) The Fairy tales that abound in the Principality have much in common with like legends in other countries. This points to a common origin of all such tales. There is a real and unreal, a mythical and a material aspect to Fairy Folk-Lore. The prevalence, the obscurity, and the different versions of the same Fairy tale show that their origin dates from remote antiquity. The supernatural and the natural are strangely blended together in these legends, and this also points to their great age, and intimates that these wild and imaginative Fairy narratives had some historical foundation. If carefully sifted, these legends will yield a fruitful harvest of ancient thoughts and facts connected with the history of a people, which, as a race, is, perhaps, now extinct, but which has, to a certain extent, been merged into a stronger and more robust race, by whom they were conquered, and dispossessed of much of their land. The conquerors of the Fair Tribe have transmitted to us tales of their timid, unwarlike, but truthful predecessors of the soil, and these tales shew that for a time both races were co-inhabitants of the land, and to a certain extent, by stealth, intermarried. Fairy tales, much alike in character, are to be heard in many countries, peopled by branches of the Aryan race, and consequently these stories in outline, were most probably in existence before the separation of the families belonging to that race. It is not improbable that the emigrants would carry with them, into all countries whithersoever they went, their ancestral legends, and they would find no difficulty in supplying these interesting stories with a home in their new country. If this supposition be correct, we must look for the origin of Fairy Mythology in the cradle of the Aryan people, and not in any part of the world inhabited by descendants of that great race. But it is not improbable that incidents in the process of colonization would repeat themselves, or under special circumstances vary, and thus we should have similar and different versions of the same historical event in all countries once inhabited by a diminutive race, which was overcome by a more powerful people. In Wales Fairy legends have such peculiarities that they seem to be historical fragments of by-gone days. And apparently they refer to a race which immediately preceded the Celt in the occupation of the country, and with which the Celt to a limited degree amalgamated. NAMES GIVEN TO THE FAIRIES. The Fairies have, in Wales, at least three common and distinctive names, as well as others that are not nowadays used. The first and most general name given to the Fairies is "_Y Tylwyth Teg_," or, the Fair Tribe, an expressive and descriptive term. They are spoken of as a people, and not as myths or goblins, and they are said to be a fair or handsome race. Another common name for the Fairies, is, "_Bendith y Mamau_," or, "The Mothers' Blessing." In Doctor Owen Pughe's Dictionary they are called "Bendith _eu_ Mamau," or, "_Their_ Mothers' Blessing." The first is the most common expression, at least in North Wales. It is a singularly strange expression, and difficult to explain. Perhaps it hints at a Fairy origin on the mother's side of certain fortunate people. The third name given to Fairies is "_Ellyll_," an elf, a demon, a goblin. This name conveys these beings to the land of spirits, and makes them resemble the oriental Genii, and Shakespeare's sportive elves. It agrees, likewise, with the modern popular creed respecting goblins and their doings. Davydd ab Gwilym, in a description of a mountain mist in which he was once enveloped, says:-- Yr ydoedd ym mhob gobant _Ellyllon_ mingeimion gant. There were in every hollow A hundred wrymouthed elves. _The Cambro-Briton_, v. I., p. 348. In Pembrokeshire the Fairies are called _Dynon Buch Teg_, or the _Fair Small People_. Another name applied to the Fairies is _Plant Annwfn_, or _Plant Annwn_. This, however, is not an appellation in common use. The term is applied to the Fairies in the third paragraph of a Welsh prose poem called _Bardd Cwsg_, thus:-- Y bwriodd y _Tylwyth Teg_ fi . . . oni bai fy nyfod i mewn pryd i'th achub o gigweiniau _Plant Annwfn_. Where the _Tylwyth Teg_ threw me . . . if I had not come in time to rescue thee from the clutches of _Plant Annwfn_. _Annwn_, or _Annwfn_ is defined in Canon Silvan Evans's Dictionary as an abyss, Hades, etc. _Plant Annwn_, therefore, means children of the lower regions. It is a name derived from the supposed place of abode--the bowels of the earth--of the Fairies. _Gwragedd Annwn_, dames of Elfin land, is a term applied to Fairy ladies. Ellis Wynne, the author of _Bardd Cwsg_, was born in 1671, and the probability is that the words _Plant Annwfn_ formed in his days part of the vocabulary of the people. He was born in Merionethshire. _Gwyll_, according to Richards, and Dr. Owen Pughe, is a Fairy, a goblin, etc. The plural of _Gwyll_ would be _Gwylliaid_, or _Gwyllion_, but this latter word Dr. Pughe defines as ghosts, hobgoblins, etc. Formerly, there was in Merionethshire a red haired family of robbers called _Y Gwylliaid Cochion_, or Red Fairies, of whom I shall speak hereafter. _Coblynau_, or Knockers, have been described as a species of Fairies, whose abode was within the rocks, and whose province it was to indicate to the miners by the process of knocking, etc., the presence of rich lodes of lead or other metals in this or that direction of the mine. That the words _Tylwyth Teg_ and _Ellyll_ are convertible terms appears from the following stanza, which is taken from the _Cambrian Magazine_, vol. ii, p. 58. Pan dramwych ffridd yr Ywen, Lle mae _Tylwyth Teg_ yn rhodien, Dos ymlaen, a phaid a sefyll, Gwilia'th droed--rhag dawnsva'r _Ellyll_. When the forest of the Yew, Where _Fairies_ haunt, thou passest through, Tarry not, thy footsteps guard From the _Goblins'_ dancing sward. Although the poet mentions the _Tylwyth Teg_ and _Ellyll_ as identical, he might have done so for rhythmical reasons. Undoubtedly, in the first instance a distinction would be drawn between these two words, which originally were intended perhaps to describe two different kinds of beings, but in the course of time the words became interchangeable, and thus their distinctive character was lost. In English the words Fairies and elves are used without any distinction. It would appear from Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, vol. II., p. 478., that, according to Gervase of Tilbury, there were two kinds of Goblins in England, called _Portuni_ and _Grant_. This division suggests a difference between the _Tylwyth Teg_ and the _Ellyll_. The _Portuni_, we are told, were very small of stature and old in appearance, "_statura pusilli_, _dimidium pollicis non habentes_," but then they were "_senili vultu_, _facie corrugata_." The wrinkled face and aged countenance of the _Portuni_ remind us of nursery Fairy tales in which the wee ancient female Fairy figures. The pranks of the _Portuni_ were similar to those of Shakespeare's Puck. The species _Grant_ is not described, and consequently it cannot be ascertained how far they resembled any of the many kinds of Welsh Fairies. Gervase, speaking of one of these species, says:--"If anything should be to be carried on in the house, or any kind of laborious work to be done, they join themselves to the work, and expedite it with more than human facility." In Scotland there were at least two species of elves, the _Brownies_ and the _Fairies_. The Brownies were so called from their tawny colour, and the Fairies from their fairness. The _Portuni_ of Gervase appear to have corresponded in character to the Brownies, who were said to have employed themselves in the night in the discharge of laborious undertakings acceptable to the family to whose service they had devoted themselves. The Fairies proper of Scotland strongly resembled the Fairies of Wales. The term _Brownie_, or swarthy elve, suggests a connection between them and the _Gwylliaid Cochion_, or Red Fairies of Wales. FAIRY LADIES MARRYING MORTALS. In the mythology of the Greeks, and other nations, gods and goddesses are spoken of as falling in love with human beings, and many an ancient genealogy began with a celestial ancestor. Much the same thing is said of the Fairies. Tradition speaks of them as being enamoured of the inhabitants of this earth, and content, for awhile, to be wedded to mortals. And there are families in Wales who are said to have Fairy blood coursing through their veins, but they are, or were, not so highly esteemed as were the offspring of the gods among the Greeks. The famous physicians of Myddfai, who owed their talent and supposed supernatural knowledge to their Fairy origin, are, however, an exception; for their renown, notwithstanding their parentage, was always great, and increased in greatness, as the rolling years removed them from their traditionary parent, the Fairy lady of the Van Pool. The _Pellings_ are said to have sprung from a Fairy Mother, and the author of _Observations on the Snowdon Mountains_ states that the best blood in his veins is fairy blood. There are in some parts of Wales reputed descendants on the female side of the _Gwylliaid Cochion_ race; and there are other families among us whom the aged of fifty years ago, with an ominous shake of the head, would say were of Fairy extraction. We are not, therefore, in Wales void of families of doubtful parentage or origin. All the current tales of men marrying Fairy ladies belong to a class of stories called, technically, Taboo stories. In these tales the lady marries her lover conditionally, and when this condition is broken she deserts husband and children, and hies back to Fairy land. This kind of tale is current among many people. Max Muller in _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii, pp. 104-6, records one of these ancient stories, which is found in the Brahma_n_a of the Ya_g_ur-veda. Omitting a few particulars, the story is as follows:-- "Urvasi, a kind of Fairy, fell in love with Pururavas, the son of Ida, and when she met him she said, 'Embrace me three times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you without your royal garments, for this is the manner of women.' In this manner she lived with him a long time, and she was with child. Then her former friends, the Gandharvas, said: 'This Urvasi has now dwelt a long time among mortals; let us see that she come back.' Now, there was a ewe, with two lambs, tied to the couch of Urvasi and Pururavas, and the Gandharvas stole one of them. Urvasi said: 'They take away my darling, as if I had lived in a land where there is no hero and no man.' They stole the second, and she upbraided her husband again. Then Pururavas looked and said: 'How can that be a land without heroes and men where I am?' And naked, he sprang up; he thought it too long to put on his dress. Then the Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, and Urvasi saw her husband naked as by daylight. Then she vanished; 'I come back,' she said, and went. Pururavas bewailed his love in bitter grief. But whilst walking along the border of a lake full of lotus flowers the Fairies were playing there in the water, in the shape of birds, and Urvasi discovered him and said:-- 'That is the man with whom I dwelt so long.' Then her friends said: 'Let us appear to him.' She agreed, and they appeared before him. Then the king recognised her, and said:-- 'Lo! my wife, stay, thou cruel in mind! Let us now exchange some words! Our secrets, if they are not told now, will not bring us back on any later day.' She replied: 'What shall I do with thy speech? I am gone like the first of the dawns. Pururavas, go home again, I am hard to be caught, like the wind.'" The Fairy wife by and by relents, and her mortal lover became, by a certain sacrifice, one of the Gandharvas. This ancient Hindu Fairy tale resembles in many particulars similar tales found in Celtic Folk-Lore, and possibly, the original story, in its main features, existed before the Aryan family had separated. The very words, "I am hard to be caught," appear in one of the Welsh legends, which shall be hereafter given:-- Nid hawdd fy nala, I am hard to be caught. And the scene is similar; in both cases the Fairy ladies are discovered in a lake. The immortal weds the mortal, conditionally, and for awhile the union seems to be a happy one. But, unwittingly, when engaged in an undertaking suggested by, or in agreement with the wife's wishes, the prohibited thing is done, and the lady vanishes away. Such are the chief features of these mythical marriages. I will now record like tales that have found a home in several parts of Wales. WELSH LEGENDS OF FAIRY LADIES MARRYING MEN. 1. _The Pentrevoelas Legend_. I am indebted to the Rev. Owen Jones, Vicar of Pentrevoelas, a mountain parish in West Denbighshire, for the following tale, which was written in Welsh by a native of those parts, and appeared in competition for a prize on the Folk-Lore of that parish. The son of Hafodgarreg was shepherding his father's flock on the hills, and whilst thus engaged, he, one misty morning, came suddenly upon a lovely girl, seated on the sheltered side of a peat-stack. The maiden appeared to be in great distress, and she was crying bitterly. The young man went up to her, and spoke kindly to her, and his attention and sympathy were not without effect on the comely stranger. So beautiful was the young woman, that from expressions of sympathy the smitten youth proceeded to words of love, and his advances were not repelled. But whilst the lovers were holding sweet conversation, there appeared on the scene a venerable and aged man, who, addressing the female as her father, bade her follow him. She immediately obeyed, and both departed leaving the young man alone. He lingered about the place until the evening, wishing and hoping that she might return, but she came not. Early the next day, he was at the spot where he first felt what love was. All day long he loitered about the place, vainly hoping that the beautiful girl would pay another visit to the mountain, but he was doomed to disappointment, and night again drove him homewards. Thus daily went he to the place where he had met his beloved, but she was not there, and, love-sick and lonely, he returned to Hafodgarreg. Such devotion deserved its reward. It would seem that the young lady loved the young man quite as much as he loved her. And in the land of allurement and illusion (yn nhir hud a lledrith) she planned a visit to the earth, and met her lover, but she was soon missed by her father, and he, suspecting her love for this young man, again came upon them, and found them conversing lovingly together. Much talk took place between the sire and his daughter, and the shepherd, waxing bold, begged and begged her father to give him his daughter in marriage. The sire, perceiving that the man was in earnest, turned to his daughter, and asked her whether it were her wish to marry a man of the earth? She said it was. Then the father told the shepherd he should have his daughter to wife, and that she should stay with him, until he should strike her with _iron_, and that, as a marriage portion, he would give her a bag filled with bright money. The young couple were duly married, and the promised dowry was received. For many years they lived lovingly and happily together, and children were born to them. One day this man and his wife went together to the hill to catch a couple of ponies, to carry them to the Festival of the Saint of Capel Garmon. The ponies were very wild, and could not be caught. The man, irritated, pursued the nimble creatures. His wife was by his side, and now he thought he had them in his power, but just at the moment he was about to grasp their manes, off they wildly galloped, and the man, in anger, finding that they had again eluded him, threw the bridle after them, and, sad to say, the bit struck the wife, and as this was of _iron_ they both knew that their marriage contract was broken. Hardly had they had time to realise the dire accident, ere the aged father of the bride appeared, accompanied by a host of Fairies, and there and then departed with his daughter to the land whence she came, and that, too, without even allowing her to bid farewell to her children. The money, though, and the children were left behind, and these were the only memorials of the lovely wife and the kindest of mothers, that remained to remind the shepherd of the treasure he had lost in the person of his Fairy spouse. Such is the Pentrevoelas Legend. The writer had evidently not seen the version of this story in the _Cambro-Briton_, nor had he read Williams's tale of a like occurrence, recorded in _Observations on the Snowdon Mountains_. The account, therefore, is all the more valuable, as being an independent production. A fragmentary variant of the preceding legend was given me by Mr. Lloyd, late schoolmaster of Llanfihangel-Glyn-Myfyr, a native of South Wales, who heard the tale in the parish of Llanfihangel. Although but a fragment, it may not be altogether useless, and I will give it as I received it:-- Shon Rolant, Hafod y Dre, Pentrevoelas, when going home from Llanrwst market, fortunately caught a Fairy-maid, whom he took home with him. She was a most handsome woman, but rather short and slight in person. She was admired by everybody on account of her great beauty. Shon Rolant fell desperately in love with her, and would have married her, but this she would not allow. He, however, continued pressing her to become his wife, and, by and by, she consented to do so, provided he could find out her name. As Shon was again going home from the market about a month later, he heard some one saying, near the place where he had seized the Fairy-maid, "Where is little Penloi gone? Where is little Penloi gone?" Shon at once thought that some one was searching for the Fairy he had captured, and when he reached home, he addressed the Fairy by the name he had heard, and Penloi consented to become his wife. She, however, expressed displeasure at marrying a dead man, as the Fairies call us. She informed her lover that she was not to be touched with _iron_, or she would disappear at once. Shon took great care not to touch her with _iron_. However, one day, when he was on horseback talking to his beloved Penloi, who stood at the horse's head, the horse suddenly threw up its head, and the curb, which was of _iron_, came in contact with Penloi, who immediately vanished out of sight. The next legend is taken from Williams's _Observations on the Snowdon Mountains_. His work was published in 1802. He, himself, was born in Anglesey, in 1738, and migrated to Carnarvonshire about the year 1760. It was in this latter county that he became a learned antiquary, and a careful recorder of events that came under his notice. His "Observations" throw considerable light upon the life, the customs, and the traditions of the inhabitants of the hill parts and secluded glens of Carnarvonshire. I have thought fit to make these few remarks about the author I quote from, so as to enable the reader to give to him that credence which he is entitled to. Williams entitles the following story, "A Fairy Tale," but I will for the sake of reference call it "The Ystrad Legend." 2. _The Ystrad Legend_. "In a meadow belonging to Ystrad, bounded by the river which falls from Cwellyn Lake, they say the Fairies used to assemble, and dance on fair moon-light-nights. One evening a young man, who was the heir and occupier of this farm, hid himself in a thicket close to the spot where they used to gambol; presently they appeared, and when in their merry mood, out he bounced from his covert and seized one of their females; the rest of the company dispersed themselves, and disappeared in an instant. Disregarding her struggles and screams, he hauled her to his home, where he treated her so very kindly that she became content to live with him as his maid servant; but he could not prevail upon her to tell him her name. Some time after, happening again to see the Fairies upon the same spot, he heard one of them saying, 'The last time we met here, our sister _Penelope_ was snatched away from us by one of the mortals!' Rejoiced at knowing the name of his _Incognita_, he returned home; and as she was very beautiful, and extremely active, he proposed to marry her, which she would not for a long time consent to; at last, however, she complied, but on this condition, 'That if ever he should strike her with iron, she would leave him, and never return to him again.' They lived happily for many years together, and he had by her a son, and a daughter; and by her industry and prudent management as a house-wife he became one of the richest men in the country. He farmed, besides his own freehold, all the lands on the north side of Nant-y-Bettws to the top of Snowdon, and all Cwmbrwynog in Llanberis; an extent of about five thousand acres or upwards. Unfortunately, one day Penelope followed her husband into the field to catch a horse; and he, being in a rage at the animal as he ran away from him, threw at him the bridle that was in his hand, which unluckily fell on poor Penelope. She disappeared in an instant, and he never saw her afterwards, but heard her voice in the window of his room one night after, requesting him to take care of the children, in these words:-- Rhag bod anwyd ar fy mab, Yn rhodd rhowch arno gob ei dad, Rhag bod anwyd ar liw'r cann, Rhoddwch arni bais ei mam. That is-- Oh! lest my son should suffer cold, Him in his father's coat infold, Lest cold should seize my darling fair, For her, her mother's robe prepare. These children and their descendants, they say, were called _Pellings_; a word corrupted from their mother's name, Penelope." Williams proceeds thus with reference to the descendants of this union:-- "The late Thomas Rowlands, Esq., of Caerau, in Anglesey, the father of the late Lady Bulkeley, was a descendant of this lady, if it be true that the name _Pellings_ came from her; and there are still living several opulent and respectable people who are known to have sprung from the _Pellings_. The best blood in my own veins is this Fairy's." This tale was chronicled in the last century, but it is not known whether every particular incident connected therewith was recorded by Williams. _Glasynys_, the Rev. Owen Wynne Jones, a clergyman, relates a tale in the _Brython_, which he regards as the same tale as that given by Williams, and he says that he heard it scores of times when he was a lad. _Glasynys_ was born in the parish of Rhostryfan, Carnarvonshire, in 1827, and as his birth place is not far distant from the scene of this legend, he might have heard a different version of Williams's tale, and that too of equal value with Williams's. Possibly, there were not more than from forty to fifty years between the time when the older writer heard the tale and the time when it was heard by the younger man. An octogenarian, or even a younger person, could have conversed with both Williams and _Glasynys_. _Glasynys's_ tale appears in Professor Rhys's _Welsh Fairy Tales_, _Cymmrodor_, vol. iv., p. 188. It originally appeared in the _Brython_ for 1863, p. 193. It is as follows:-- "One fine sunny morning, as the young heir of Ystrad was busied with his sheep on the side of Moel Eilio, he met a very pretty girl, and when he got home he told the folks there of it. A few days afterwards he met her again, and this happened several times, when he mentioned it to his father, who advised him to seize her when he next met her. The next time he met her he proceeded to do so, but before he could take her away, a little fat old man came to them and begged him to give her back to him, to which the youth would not listen. The little man uttered terrible threats, but he would not yield, so an agreement was made between them that he was to have her to wife until he touched her skin with iron, and great was the joy both of the son and his parents in consequence. They lived together for many years, but once on a time, on the evening of Bettws Fair, the wife's horse got restive, and somehow, as the husband was attending to the horse, the stirrups touched the skin of her bare leg, and that very night she was taken away from him. She had three or four children, and more than one of their descendants, as _Glasynys_ maintains, were known to him at the time he wrote in 1863." 3. _The Llanfrothen Legend_. I am indebted to the Rev. R. Jones, Rector of Llanycil, Bala, for the following legend. I may state that Mr. Jones is a native of Llanfrothen, Merionethshire, a parish in close proximity to the scene of the story. Mr. Jones's informant was his mother, a lady whose mind was well stored with tales of by-gone times, and my friend and informant inherits his mother's retentive memory, as well as her love of ancient lore. A certain man fell in love with a beautiful Fairy lady, and he wished to marry her. She consented to do so, but warned him that if he ever touched her with iron she would leave him immediately. This stipulation weighed but lightly on the lover. They were married, and for many years they lived most happily together, and several children were born to them. A sad mishap, however, one day overtook them. They were together, crossing Traethmawr, Penrhyndeudraeth, on horseback, when the man's horse became restive, and jerked his head towards the woman, and the bit of the bridle touched the left arm of the Fairy wife. She at once told her husband that they must part for ever. He was greatly distressed, and implored her not to leave him. She said she could not stay. Then the man, appealing to a mother's love for her children, begged that she would for the sake of their offspring continue to dwell with him and them, and, said he, what will become of our children without their mother? Her answer was:-- Gadewch iddynt fod yn bennau cochion a thrwynau hirion. Let them be redheaded and longnosed. Having uttered these words, she disappeared and was never seen afterwards. No Welsh Taboo story can be complete without the pretty tale of the Van Lake Legend, or, as it is called, "The Myddfai Legend." Because of its intrinsic beauty and worth, and for the sake of comparison with the preceding stories, I will relate this legend. There are several versions extant. Mr. Wirt Sikes, in his _British Goblins_, has one, the _Cambro-Briton_ has one, but the best is that recorded by Professor Rhys, in the _Cymmrodor_, vol. iv., p. 163, in his _Welsh Fairy Tales_. There are other readings of the legend to be met with. I will first of all give an epitome of the Professor's version. 4. _The Myddvai Legend_. A widow, who had an only son, was obliged, in consequence of the large flocks she possessed, to send, under the care of her son, a portion of her cattle to graze on the Black Mountain near a small lake called Llyn-y-Van-Bach. One day the son perceived, to his great astonishment, a most beautiful creature with flowing hair sitting on the unruffled surface of the lake combing her tresses, the water serving as a mirror. Suddenly she beheld the young man standing on the brink of the lake with his eyes rivetted on her, and unconsciously offering to herself the provision of barley bread and cheese with which he had been provided when he left his home. Bewildered by a feeling of love and admiration for the object before him, he continued to hold out his hand towards the lady, who imperceptibly glided near to him, but gently refused the offer of his provisions. He attempted to touch her, but she eluded his grasp, saying Cras dy fara; Nid hawdd fy nala. Hard baked is thy bread; It is not easy to catch me. She immediately dived under the water and disappeared, leaving the love-stricken youth to return home a prey to disappointment and regret that he had been unable to make further acquaintance with the lovely maiden with whom he had desperately fallen in love. On his return home he communicated to his mother the extraordinary vision. She advised him to take some unbaked dough the next time in his pocket, as there must have been some spell connected with the hard baked bread, or "Bara Cras," which prevented his catching the lady. Next morning, before the sun was up, the young man was at the lake, not for the purpose of looking after the cattle, but that he might again witness the enchanting vision of the previous day. In vain did he glance over the surface of the lake; nothing met his view, save the ripples occasioned by a stiff breeze, and a dark cloud hung heavily on the summit of the Van. Hours passed on, the wind was hushed, the overhanging clouds had vanished, when the youth was startled by seeing some of his mother's cattle on the precipitous side of the acclivity, nearly on the opposite side of the lake. As he was hastening away to rescue them from their perilous position, the object of his search again appeared to him, and seemed much more beautiful than when he first beheld her. His hand was again held out to her, full of unbaked bread, which he offered to her with an urgent proffer of his heart also, and vows of eternal attachment, all of which were refused by her, saying Llaith dy fara! Ti ni fynna. Unbaked is thy bread! I will not have thee. But the smiles that played upon her features as the lady vanished beneath the waters forbade him to despair, and cheered him on his way home. His aged parent was acquainted with his ill success, and she suggested that his bread should the next time be but slightly baked, as most likely to please the mysterious being. Impelled by love, the youth left his mother's home early next morning. He was soon near the margin of the lake impatiently awaiting the reappearance of the lady. The sheep and goats browsed on the precipitous sides of the Van, the cattle strayed amongst the rocks, rain and sunshine came and passed away, unheeded by the youth who was wrapped up in looking for the appearance of her who had stolen his heart. The sun was verging towards the west, and the young man casting a sad look over the waters ere departing homewards was astonished to see several cows walking along its surface, and, what was more pleasing to his sight, the maiden reappeared, even lovelier than ever. She approached the land and he rushed to meet her in the water. A smile encouraged him to seize her hand, and she accepted the moderately baked bread he offered her, and after some persuasion she consented to become his wife, on condition that they should live together until she received from him three blows without a cause, Tri ergyd diachos, Three causeless blows, when, should he ever happen to strike her three such blows, she would leave him for ever. These conditions were readily and joyfully accepted. Thus the Lady of the Lake became engaged to the young man, and having loosed her hand for a moment she darted away and dived into the lake. The grief of the lover at this disappearance of his affianced was such that he determined to cast himself headlong into its unfathomed depths, and thus end his life. As he was on the point of committing this rash act, there emerged out of the lake two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and strength of youth. This man addressed the youth, saying that, as he proposed to marry one of his daughters, he consented to the union, provided the young man could distinguish which of the two ladies before him was the object of his affections. This was no easy task, as the maidens were perfect counterparts of each other. Whilst the young man narrowly scanned the two ladies and failed to perceive the least difference betwixt the two, one of them thrust her foot a slight degree forward. The motion, simple as it was, did not escape the observation of the youth, and he discovered a trifling variation in the mode in which their sandals were tied. This at once put an end to the dilemma, for he had on previous occasions noticed the peculiarity of her shoe-tie, and he boldly took hold of her hand. "Thou hast chosen rightly," said the Father, "be to her a kind and faithful husband, and I will give her, as a dowry, as many sheep, cattle, goats, and horses, as she can count of each without heaving or drawing in her breath. But remember, that if you prove unkind to her at any time and strike her three times without a cause, she shall return to me, and shall bring all her stock with her." Such was the marriage settlement, to which the young man gladly assented, and the bride was desired to count the number of sheep she was to have. She immediately adopted the mode of counting by fives, thus:--One, two, three, four, five,--one, two, three, four, five; as many times as possible in rapid succession, till her breath was exhausted. The same process of reckoning had to determine the number of goats, cattle, and horses, respectively; and in an instant the full number of each came out of the lake, when called upon by the Father. The young couple were then married, and went to reside at a farm called Esgair Llaethdy, near Myddvai, where they lived in prosperity and happiness for several years, and became the parents of three beautiful sons. Once upon a time there was a christening in the neighbourhood to which the parents were invited. When the day arrived the wife appeared reluctant to attend the christening, alleging that the distance was too great for her to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses from the field. "I will," said she, "if you will bring me my gloves which I left in our house." He went for the gloves, and finding she had not gone for the horse, he playfully slapped her shoulder with one of them, saying "_dos_, _dos_, go, go," when she reminded him of the terms on which she consented to marry him, and warned him to be more cautious in the future, as he had now given her one causeless blow. On another occasion when they were together at a wedding and the assembled guests were greatly enjoying themselves the wife burst into tears and sobbed most piteously. Her husband touched her on the shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping; she said, "Now people are entering into trouble, and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the _second_ time stricken me without a cause." Years passed on, and their children had grown up, and were particularly clever young men. Amidst so many worldly blessings the husband almost forgot that only _one_ causeless blow would destroy his prosperity. Still he was watchful lest any trivial occurrence should take place which his wife must regard as a breach of their marriage contract. She told him that her affection for him was unabated, and warned him to be careful lest through inadvertence he might give the last and only blow which, by an unalterable destiny, over which she had no control, would separate them for ever. One day it happened that they went to a funeral together, where, in the midst of mourning and grief at the house of the deceased, she appeared in the gayest of spirits, and indulged in inconsiderate fits of laughter, which so shocked her husband that he touched her, saying--"Hush! hush! don't laugh." She said that she laughed because people when they die go out of trouble, and rising up, she went out of the house, saying, "The last blow has been struck, our marriage contract is broken, and at an end. Farewell!" Then she started off towards Esgair Llaethdy, where she called her cattle and other stock together, each by name, not forgetting, the "little black calf" which had been slaughtered and was suspended on the hook, and away went the calf and all the stock, with the Lady across Myddvai Mountain, and disappeared beneath the waters of the lake whence the Lady had come. The four oxen that were ploughing departed, drawing after them the plough, which made a furrow in the ground, and which remains as a testimony of the truth of this story. She is said to have appeared to her sons, and accosting Rhiwallon, her firstborn, to have informed him that he was to be a benefactor to mankind, through healing all manner of their diseases, and she furnished him with prescriptions and instructions for the preservation of health. Then, promising to meet him when her counsel was most needed, she vanished. On several other occasions she met her sons, and pointed out to them plants and herbs, and revealed to them their medicinal qualities or virtues. So ends the Myddvai Legend. A variant of this tale appears in the form of a letter in the _Cambro-Briton_, vol. ii, pp. 313-315. The editor prefaces the legend with the remark that the tale "acquires an additional interest from its resemblance in one particular to a similar tradition current in Scotland, wherein certain beasts, brought from a lake, as in this tale, play much the same part as is here described." The volume of the _Cambro-Briton_ now referred to was published in 1821 and apparently the writer, who calls himself _Siencyn ab Tydvil_, communicates an unwritten tradition afloat in Carmarthenshire, for he does not tell us whence he obtained the story. As the tale differs in some particulars from that already given, I will transcribe it. 5. _The Cambro-Briton version of the Myddvai Legend_. "A man, who lived in the farm-house called Esgair-llaethdy, in the parish of Myddvai, in Carmarthenshire, having bought some lambs in a neighbouring fair, led them to graze near _Llyn y Van Vach_, on the Black Mountains. Whenever he visited the lambs, three most beautiful female figures presented themselves to him from the lake, and often made excursions on the boundaries of it. For some time he pursued and endeavoured to catch them, but always failed; for the enchanting nymphs ran before him, and, when they had reached the lake, they tauntingly exclaimed, Cras dy fara, Anhawdd ein dala, which, with a little circumlocution, means, 'For thee, who eatest baked bread, it is difficult to catch us.' One day some moist bread from the lake came to shore. The farmer devoured it with great avidity, and on the following day he was successful in his pursuit and caught the fair damsels. After a little conversation with them, he commanded courage sufficient to make proposals of marriage to one of them. She consented to accept them on the condition that he would distinguish her from her two sisters on the following day. This was a new, and a very great difficulty to the young farmer, for the fair nymphs were so similar in form and features, that he could scarcely perceive any difference between them. He observed, however, a trifling singularity in the strapping of her sandal, by which he recognized her the following day. Some, indeed, who relate this legend, say that this Lady of the Lake hinted in a private conversation with her swain that upon the day of trial she would place herself between her two sisters, and that she would turn her right foot a little to the right, and that by this means he distinguished her from her sisters. Whatever were the means, the end was secured; he selected her, and she immediately left the lake and accompanied him to his farm. Before she quitted, she summoned to attend her from the lake seven cows, two oxen, and one bull. This lady engaged to live with him until such time as he would strike her three times without cause. For some years they lived together in comfort, and she bore him three sons, who were the celebrated Meddygon Myddvai. One day, when preparing for a fair in the neighbourhood, he desired her to go to the field for his horse. She said she would; but being rather dilatory, he said to her humorously, '_dos_, _dos_, _dos_,' i.e., 'go, go, go,' and he slightly touched her arm _three times_ with his glove. As she now deemed the terms of her marriage broken, she immediately departed, and summoned with her her seven cows, her two oxen, and the bull. The oxen were at that very time ploughing in the field, but they immediately obeyed her call, and took the plough with them. The furrow from the field in which they were ploughing, to the margin of the lake, is to be seen in several parts of that country to the present day. After her departure, she once met her two sons in a Cwm, now called _Cwm Meddygon_ (Physicians' Combe), and delivered to each of them a bag containing some articles which are unknown, but which are supposed to have been some discoveries in medicine. The Meddygon Myddvai were Rhiwallon and his sons, Cadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion. They were the chief physicians of their age, and they wrote about A.D. 1230. A copy of their works is in the Welsh School Library, in Gray's Inn Lane." Such are the Welsh Taboo tales. I will now make a few remarks upon them. The _age_ of these legends is worthy of consideration. The legend of _Meddygon Myddvai_ dates from about the thirteenth century. Rhiwallon and his sons, we are told by the writer in the _Cambro-Briton_, wrote about 1230 A.D., but the editor of that publication speaks of a manuscript written by these physicians about the year 1300. Modern experts think that their treatise on medicine in the _Red Book of Hergest_ belongs to the end of the fourteenth century, about 1380 to 1400. _Dafydd ab Gwilym_, who is said to have flourished in the fourteenth century, says, in one of his poems, as given in the _Cambro-Briton_, vol. ii., p. 313, alluding to these physicians:-- "Meddyg, nis gwnai modd y gwnaeth Myddfai, o chai ddyn meddfaeth." "A Physician he would not make As Myddvai made, if he had a mead fostered man." It would appear, therefore, that these celebrated physicians lived somewhere about the thirteenth century. They are described as Physicians of Rhys Gryg, a prince of South Wales, who lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. Their supposed supernatural origin dates therefore from the thirteenth, or at the latest, the fourteenth century. I have mentioned _Y Gwylliaid Cochion_, or, as they are generally styled, _Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy_, the Red Fairies of Mawddwy, as being of Fairy origin. The Llanfrothen Legend seems to account for a race of men in Wales differing from their neighbours in certain features. The offspring of the Fairy union were, according to the Fairy mother's prediction in that legend, to have red hair and prominent noses. That a race of men having these characteristics did exist in Wales is undoubted. They were a strong tribe, the men were tall and athletic, and lived by plunder. They had their head quarters at Dinas Mawddwy, Merionethshire, and taxed their neighbours in open day, driving away sheep and cattle to their dens. So unbearable did their depredations become that John Wynn ap Meredydd of Gwydir and Lewis Owen, or as he is called Baron Owen, raised a body of stout men to overcome them, and on Christmas Eve, 1554, succeeded in capturing a large number of the offenders, and, there and then, some hundred or so of the robbers were hung. Tradition says that a mother begged hard for the life of a young son, who was to be destroyed, but Baron Owen would not relent. On perceiving that her request was unheeded, baring her breast she said:-- Y bronau melynion hyn a fagasant y rhai a ddialant waed fy mab, ac a olchant eu dwylaw yn ngwaed calon llofrudd eu brawd. These yellow breasts have nursed those who will revenge my son's blood, and will wash their hands in the heart's blood of the murderer of their brother. According to _Pennant_ this threat was carried out by the murder of Baron Owen in 1555, when he was passing through the thick woods of Mawddwy on his way to Montgomeryshire Assizes, at a place called to this day _Llidiart y Barwn_, the Baron's Gate, from the deed. Tradition further tells us that the murderers had gone a distance off before they remembered their mother's threat, and returning thrust their swords into the Baron's breast, and washed their hands in his heart's blood. This act was followed by vigorous action, and the banditti were extirpated, the females only remaining, and the descendants of these women are occasionally still to be met with in Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire. For the preceding information the writer is indebted to _Yr Hynafion Cymreig_, pp. 91-94, _Archaeologia Cambrensis_, for 1854, pp. 119-20, _Pennant_, vol. ii, pp. 225-27, ed. Carnarvon, and the tradition was told him by the Revd. D. James, Vicar of Garthbeibio, who likewise pointed out to him the very spot where the Baron was murdered. But now, who were these _Gwylliaid_? According to the hint conveyed by their name they were of Fairy parentage, an idea which a writer in the _Archaeologia Cambrensis_, vol. v., 1854, p. 119, intended, perhaps, to throw out. But according to _Brut y Tywysogion_, _Myf. Arch_., p. 706, A.D. 1114, Denbigh edition, the _Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy_ began in the time of Cadwgan ab Bleddyn ab Cynvyn. From Williams's _Eminent Welshmen_, we gather that Prince Cadwgan died in 1110, A.D., and, according to the above-mentioned _Brut_, it was in his days that the Gwylliaid commenced their career, if not their existence. Unfortunately for this beginning of the red-headed banditti of Mawddwy, Tacitus states in his Life of Agricola, ch. xi., that there were in Britain men with red hair who he surmises were of German extraction. We must, therefore, look for the commencement of a people of this description long before the twelfth century, and the Llanfrothen legend either dates from remote antiquity, or it was a tale that found in its wanderings a resting place in that locality in ages long past. From a legend recorded by _Giraldus Cambrensis_, which shall by and by be given, it would seem that a priest named Elidorus lived among the Fairies in their home in the bowels of the earth, and this would be in the early part of the twelfth century. The question arises, is the priest's tale credible, or did he merely relate a story of himself which had been ascribed to some one else in the traditions of the people? If his tale is true, then, there lived even in that late period a remnant of the aborigines of the country, who had their homes in caves. The Myddvai Legend in part corroborates this supposition, for that story apparently belongs to the thirteenth century. It is difficult to fix the date of the other legends here given, for they are dressed in modern garbs, with, however, trappings of remote times. Probably all these tales have reached, through oral tradition, historic times, but in reality they belong to that far-off distant period, when the prehistoric inhabitants of this island dwelt in Lake-habitations, or in caves. And the marriage of Fairy ladies, with men of a different race, intimates that the more ancient people were not extirpated, but were amalgamated with their conquerors. Many Fairy tales in Wales are associated with lakes. Fairy ladies emerge from lakes and disappear into lakes. In the oriental legend Pururavas came upon his absconding wife in a lake. In many Fairy stories lakes seem to be the entrance to the abodes of the Fairies. Evidently, therefore, those people were lake-dwellers. In the lakes of Switzerland and other countries have been discovered vestiges of Lake-villages belonging to the Stone Age, and even to the Bronze Age. Perhaps those that belong to the Stone Age are the most ancient kind of human abodes still traceable in the world. In Ireland and Scotland these kinds of dwellings have been found. I am not in a position to say that they have been discovered in Wales; but some thirty years ago Mr. Colliver, a Cornish gentleman, told the writer that whilst engaged in mining operations near Llyn Llydaw he had occasion to lower the water level of that lake, when he discovered embedded in the mud a canoe formed out of the trunk of a single tree. He saw another in the lake, but this he did not disturb, and there it is at the present day. The late Professor Peter of Bala believed that he found traces of Lake-dwellings in Bala Lake, and the people in those parts have a tradition that a town lies buried beneath its waters--a tradition, indeed, common to many lakes. It is not therefore unlikely that if the lakes of Wales are explored they will yield evidences of lake-dwellers, and, however unromantic it may appear, the Lady of the Van Lake was only possibly a maiden snatched from her watery home by a member of a stronger race. In these legends the lady does not seem to evince much love for her husband after she has left him. Possibly he did not deserve much, but towards her children she shows deep affection. After the husband is deserted, the children are objects of her solicitation, and they are visited. The Lady of the Van Lake promised to meet her son whenever her counsel or aid was required. A like trait belongs to the Homeric goddesses. Thetis heard from her father's court far away beneath the ocean the terrible sounds of grief that burst from her son Achilles on hearing of the death of his dear friend Patroclus, and quickly ascended to earth all weeping to learn what ailed her son. These Fairy ladies also show a mother's love, immortal though they be. The children of these marriages depart not with their mother, they remain with the father, but she takes with her her dowry. Thus there are many descendants of the Lady of the Van Lake still living in South Wales, and as Professor Rhys remarks--"This brings the legend of the Lady of the Van Lake into connection with a widely spread family;" and, it may be added, shows that the Celts on their advent to Wales found it inhabited by a race with whom they contracted marriages. The manner in which the lady is seized when dancing in the Ystrad Legend calls to mind the strategy of the tribe of Benjamin to secure wives for themselves of the daughters of Shiloh according to the advice of the elders who commanded them,--"Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you everyone his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin," Judges, ch. xxi. The rape of the Sabine women, who were seized by the followers of Romulus on a day appointed for sacrifice and public games, also serves as a precedent for the action of those young Welshmen who captured Fairy wives whilst enjoying themselves in the dance. It is a curious fact, that a singular testimony to wife snatching in ancient times is indicated by a custom once general, and still not obsolete in South Wales, of a feigned attempt on the part of the friends of the young woman about to get married to hinder her from carrying out her object. The Rev. Griffith Jones, Vicar of Mostyn, informed the writer that he had witnessed such a struggle. The wedding, he stated, took place at Tregaron, Cardiganshire. The friends of both the young people were on horseback, and according to custom they presented themselves at the house of the young woman, the one to escort her to the church, and the other to hinder her from going there. The friends of the young man were called "_Gwyr shegouts_." When the young lady was mounted, she was surrounded by the _gwyr shegouts_, and the cavalcade started. All went on peaceably until a lane was reached, down which the lady bolted, and here the struggle commenced, for her friends dashed between her and her husband's friends and endeavoured to force them back, and thus assist her to escape. The parties, Mr. Jones said, rode furiously and madly, and the struggle presented a cavalry charge, and it was not without much apparent danger that the opposition was overcome, and the lady ultimately forced to proceed to the church, where her future husband was anxiously awaiting her arrival. This strange custom of ancient times and obscure origin is suggestive of the way in which the stronger party procured wives in days of old. Before the marriage of the Fairy lady to the mortal takes place, the father of the lady appears on the scene, sometimes as a supplicant, and at others as a consenting party to the inevitable marriage, but never is he depicted as resorting to force to rescue his daughter. This pusillanimity can only be reasonably accounted for by supposing that the "little man" was physically incapable of encountering and overcoming by brute force the aspirant to the hand of his daughter. From this conduct we must, I think, infer that the Fairy race were a weak people bodily, unaccustomed and disinclined to war. Their safety and existence consisted in living in the inaccessible parts of the mountains, or in lake dwellings far removed from the habitations of the stronger and better equipped race that had invaded their country. In this way they could, and very likely did, occupy parts of Wales contemporaneously with their conquerors, who, through marriage, became connected with the mild race, whom they found in possession of the land. In the Welsh legends the maid consents to wed her capturer, and remain with him until he strikes her with _iron_. In every instance where this stipulation is made, it is ultimately broken, and the wife departs never to return. It has been thought that this implies that the people who immediately succeeded the Fair race belonged to the Iron Age, whilst the fair aborigines belonged to the Stone or Bronze age, and that they were overcome by the superior arms of their opponents, quite as much as by their greater bodily strength. Had the tabooed article been in every instance _iron_, the preceding supposition would have carried with it considerable weight, but as this is not the case, all that can be said positively is, that the conquerors of the Fair race were certainly acquainted with iron, and the blow with iron that brought about the catastrophe was undoubtedly inflicted by the mortal who had married the Fairy lady. Why iron should have been tabooed by the Fairy and her father, must remain an open question. But if we could, with reason, suppose, that that metal had brought about their subjugation, then in an age of primitive and imperfect knowledge, and consequent deep superstition, we might not be wrong in supposing that the subjugated race would look upon iron with superstitious dread, and ascribe to it supernatural power inimical to them as a race. They would under such feelings have nothing whatever to do with iron, just as the benighted African, witnessing for the first time the effects of a gun shot, would, with dread, avoid a gun. By this process of reasoning we arrive at the conclusion that the Fairy race belonged to a period anterior to the Iron Age. With one remark, I will bring my reflections on the preceding legends to an end. Polygamy apparently was unknown in the distant times we are considering. But the marriage bond was not indissoluble, and the initiative in the separation was taken by the woman. MEN CAPTURED BY FAIRIES. In the preceding legends, we have accounts of men capturing female Fairies, and marrying them. It would be strange if the kidnapping were confined to one of the two races, but Folk-Lore tells us that the Fair Family were not innocent of actions similar to those of mortals, for many a man was snatched away by them, and carried off to their subterranean abodes, who, in course of time, married the fair daughters of the _Tylwyth Teg_. Men captured Fairy ladies, but the Fairies captured handsome men. The oldest written legend of this class is to be found in the pages of _Giraldus Cambrensis_, pp. 390-92, Bohn's edition. The Archdeacon made the tour of Wales in 1188; the legend therefore which he records can boast of a good old age, but the tale itself is older than _The Itinerary through Wales_, for the writer informs us that the priest Elidorus, who affirmed that he had been in the country of the Fairies, talked in his old age to David II., bishop of St. David, of the event. Now David II. was promoted to the see of St. David in 1147, or, according to others, in 1149, and died A.D. 1176; therefore the legend had its origin before the last-mentioned date, and, if the priest were a very old man when he died, his tale would belong to the eleventh century. With these prefatory remarks, I will give the legend as recorded by Giraldus. 1. _Elidorus and the Fairies_. "A short time before our days, a circumstance worthy of note occurred in these parts, which Elidorus, a priest, most strenuously affirmed had befallen to himself. When a youth of twelve years, and learning his letters, since, as Solomon says, 'The root of learning is bitter, although the fruit is sweet,' in order to avoid the discipline and frequent stripes inflicted on him by his preceptor, he ran away and concealed himself under the hollow bank of the river. After fasting in that situation for two days, two little men of pigmy stature appeared to him, saying, 'If you will come with us, we will lead you into a country full of delights and sports.' Assenting and rising up, he followed his guides through a path, at first subterraneous and dark, into a most beautiful country, adorned with rivers and meadows, woods and plains, but obscure, and not illuminated with the full light of the sun. All the days were cloudy, and the nights extremely dark, on account of the absence of the moon and stars. The boy was brought before the King, and introduced to him in the presence of the court; who, having examined him for a long time, delivered him to his son, who was then a boy. These men were of the smallest stature, but very well proportioned in their make; they were all of a fair complexion, with luxuriant hair falling over their shoulders like that of women. They had horses and greyhounds adapted to their size. They neither ate flesh nor fish, but lived on milk diet, made up into messes with saffron. They never took an oath, for they detested nothing so much as lies. As often as they returned from our upper hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies; they had no form of public worship, being strict lovers and reverers, as it seemed, of truth. The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way he had first gone, sometimes by another; at first in company with other persons, and afterwards alone, and made himself known only to his mother, declaring to her the manners, nature, and state of that people. Being desired by her to bring a present of gold, with which that region abounded, he stole, while at play with the king's son, the golden ball with which he used to divert himself, and brought it to his mother in great haste; and when he reached the door of his father's house, but not unpursued, and was entering it in a great hurry, his foot stumbled on the threshold, and falling down into the room where his mother was sitting, the two pigmies seized the ball which had dropped from his hand and departed, showing the boy every mark of contempt and derision. On recovering from his fall, confounded with shame, and execrating the evil counsel of his mother, he returned by the usual track to the subterraneous road, but found no appearance of any passage, though he searched for it on the banks of the river for nearly the space of a year. But since those calamities are often alleviated by time, which reason cannot mitigate, and length of time alone blunts the edge of our afflictions and puts an end to many evils, the youth, having been brought back by his friends and mother, and restored to his right way of thinking, and to his learning, in process of time attained the rank of priesthood. Whenever David II., Bishop of St. David's, talked to him in his advanced state of life concerning this event, he could never relate the particulars without shedding tears. He had made himself acquainted with the language of that nation, the words of which, in his younger days, he used to recite, which, as the bishop often had informed me, were very conformable to the Greek idiom. When they asked for water, they said 'Ydor ydorum,' which meant 'Bring water,' for Ydor in their language, as well as in the Greek, signifies water, whence vessels for water are called Adriai; and Dwr, also in the British language signifies water. When they wanted salt they said 'Halgein ydorum,' 'Bring salt.' Salt is called al in Greek, and Halen in British, for that language, from the length of time which the Britons (then called Trojans and afterwards Britons, from Brito, their leader) remained in Greece after the destruction of Troy, became, in many instances, similar to the Greek." This legend agrees in a remarkable degree with the popular opinion respecting Fairies. It would almost appear to be the foundation of many subsequent tales that are current in Wales. The priest's testimony to Fairy temperance and love of truth, and their reprobation of ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies, notwithstanding that they had no form of public worship, and their abhorrence of theft intimate that they possessed virtues worthy of all praise. Their abode is altogether mysterious, but this ancient description of Fairyland bears out the remarks--perhaps suggested the remarks, of the Rev. Peter Roberts in his book called _The Cambrian Popular Antiquities_. In this work, the author promulgates the theory that the Fairies were a people existing distinct from the known inhabitants of the country and confederated together, and met mysteriously to avoid coming in contact with the stronger race that had taken possession of their land, and he supposes that in these traditionary tales of the Fairies we recognize something of the real history of an ancient people whose customs were those of a regular and consistent policy. Roberts supposes that the smaller race for the purpose of replenishing their ranks stole the children of their conquerors, or slyly exchanged their weak children for their enemies' strong children. It will be observed that the people among whom Elidorus sojourned had a language cognate with the Irish, Welsh, Greek, and other tongues; in fact, it was similar to that language which at one time extended, with dialectical differences, from Ireland to India; and the _Tylwyth Teg_, in our legends, are described as speaking a language understood by those with whom they conversed. This language they either acquired from their conquerors, or both races must have had a common origin; the latter, probably, being the more reasonable supposition, and by inference, therefore, the Fairies and other nations by whom they were subdued were descended from a common stock, and ages afterwards, by marriage, the Fairies again commingled with other branches of the family from which they had originally sprung. Omitting many embellishments which the imagination has no difficulty in bestowing, tradition has transmitted one fact, that the _Tylwyth Teg_ succeeded in inducing men through the allurements of music and the attractions of their fair daughters to join their ranks. I will now give instances of this belief. The following tale I received from the mouth of Mr. Richard Jones, Ty'n-y-wern, Bryneglwys, near Corwen. Mr. Jones has stored up in his memory many tales of olden times, and he even thinks that he has himself seen a Fairy. Standing by his farm, he pointed out to me on the opposite side of the valley a Fairy ring still green, where once, he said, the Fairies held their nightly revels. The scene of the tale which Mr. Jones related is wild, and a few years ago it was much more so than at present. At the time that the event is said to have taken place the mountain was unenclosed, and there was not much travelling in those days, and consequently the Fairies could, undisturbed, enjoy their dances. But to proceed with the tale. 2. _A Bryneglwys Man inveigled by the Fairies_. Two waggoners were sent from Bryneglwys for coals to the works over the hill beyond Minera. On their way they came upon a company of Fairies dancing with all their might. The men stopped to witness their movements, and the Fairies invited them to join in the dance. One of the men stoutly refused to do so, but the other was induced to dance awhile with them. His companion looked on for a short time at the antics of his friend, and then shouted out that he would wait no longer, and desired the man to give up and come away. He, however, turned a deaf ear to the request, and no words could induce him to forego his dance. At last his companion said that he was going, and requested his friend to follow him. Taking the two waggons under his care he proceeded towards the coal pits, expecting every moment to be overtaken by his friend; but he was disappointed, for he never appeared. The waggons and their loads were taken to Bryneglwys, and the man thought that perhaps his companion, having stopped too long in the dance, had turned homewards instead of following him to the coal pit. But on enquiry no one had heard or seen the missing waggoner. One day his companion met a Fairy on the mountain and inquired after his missing friend. The Fairy told him to go to a certain place, which he named, at a certain time, and that he should there see his friend. The man went, and there saw his companion just as he had left him, and the first words that he uttered were "Have the waggons gone far." The poor man never dreamt that months and months had passed away since they had started together for coal. A variant of the preceding story appears in the _Cambrian Magazine_, vol. ii., pp. 58-59, where it is styled the Year's Sleep, or "The Forest of the Yewtree," but for the sake of association with like tales I will call it by the following title:-- 3. _Story of a man who spent twelve months in Fairyland_. "In Mathavarn, in the parish of Llanwrin, and the Cantrev of Cyveilioc, there is a wood which is called _Ffridd yr Ywen_ (the Forest of the Yew); it is supposed to be so called because there is a yew tree growing in the very middle of it. In many parts of the wood are to be seen green circles, which are called 'the dancing places of the goblins,' about which, a considerable time ago, the following tale was very common in the neighbourhood:-- Two servants of John Pugh, Esq., went out one day to work in the 'Forest of the Yew.' Pretty early in the afternoon the whole country was so covered with dark vapour, that the youths thought night was coming on; but when they came to the middle of the 'Forest' it brightened up around them and the darkness seemed all left behind; so, thinking it too early to return home for the night, they lay down and slept. One of them, on waking, was much surprised to find no one there but himself; he wondered a good deal at the behaviour of his companion, but made up his mind at last that he had gone on some business of his own, as he had been talking of it some time before; so the sleeper went home, and when they inquired after his companion, he told them he was gone to the cobbler's shop. The next day they inquired of him again about his fellow-servant, but he could not give them any account of him; but at last confessed how and where they had both gone to sleep. Alter searching and searching many days, he went to a '_gwr cyvarwydd_' (a conjuror), which was a very common trade in those days, according to the legend; and the conjuror said to him, 'Go to the same place where you and the lad slept; go there exactly a year after the boy was lost; let it be on the same day of the year, and at the same time of the day, but take care that you do not step inside the Fairy ring, stand on the border of the green circles you saw there, and the boy will come out with many of the goblins to dance, and when you see him so near to you that you may take hold of him, snatch him out of the ring as quickly as you can.' He did according to this advice, and plucked the boy out, and then asked him, 'if he did not feel hungry,' to which he answered 'No,' for he had still the remains of his dinner that he had left in his wallet before going to sleep, and he asked 'if it was not nearly night, and time to go home,' not knowing that a year had passed by. His look was like a skeleton, and as soon as he had tasted food he was a dead man." A story in its main features similar to that recorded in the _Cambrian Magazine_ was related to me by my friend, the Rev. R. Jones, Rector of Llanycil. I do not think Mr. Jones gave me the locality where the occurrence is said to have taken place; at least, if he did so, I took no note of it. The story is as follows:-- 4. _A man who spent twelve months and a day with the Fairies_. A young man, a farm labourer, and his sweetheart were sauntering along one evening in an unfrequented part of the mountain, when there appeared suddenly before them two Fairies, who proceeded to make a circle. This being done, a large company of Fairies accompanied by musicians appeared, and commenced dancing over the ring; their motions and music were entrancing, and the man, an expert dancer, by some irresistible power was obliged to throw himself into the midst of the dancers and join them in their gambols. The woman looked on enjoying the sight for several hours, expecting every minute that her lover would give up the dance and join her, but no, on and on went the dance, round and round went her lover, until at last daylight appeared, and then suddenly the music ceased and the Fairy band vanished; and with them her lover. In great dismay, the young woman shouted the name of her sweetheart, but all in vain, he came not to her. The sun had now risen, and, almost broken-hearted, she returned home and related the events of the previous night. She was advised to consult a man who was an adept in the black art. She did so, and the conjuror told her to go to the same place at the same time of the night one year and one day from the time that her lover had disappeared and that she should then and there see him. She was farther instructed how to act. The conjuror warned her from going into the ring, but told her to seize her lover by the arm as he danced round, and to jerk him out of the enchanted circle. Twelve months and a day passed away, and the faithful girl was on the spot where she lost her lover. At the very moment that they had in the first instance appeared the Fairies again came to view, and everything that she had witnessed previously was repeated. With the Fairy band was her lover dancing merrily in their midst. The young woman ran round and round the circle close to the young man, carefully avoiding the circle, and at last she succeeded in taking hold of him and desired him to come away with her. "Oh," said he, "do let me alone a little longer, and then I will come with you." "You have already been long enough," said she. His answer was, "It is so delightful, let me dance on only a few minutes longer." She saw that he was under a spell, and grasping the young man's arm with all her might she followed him round and round the circle, and an opportunity offering she jerked him out of the circle. He was greatly annoyed at her conduct, and when told that he had been with the Fairies a year and a day he would not believe her, and affirmed that he had been dancing only a few minutes; however, he went away with the faithful girl, and when he had reached the farm, his friends had the greatest difficulty in persuading him that he had been so long from home. The next Fairy tale that I shall give akin to the preceding stories is to be found in _Y Brython_, vol. iii., pp. 459-60. The writer of the tale was the Rev. Benjamin Williams, whose bardic name was Gwynionydd. I do not know the source whence Mr. Williams derived the story, but most likely he obtained it from some aged person who firmly believed that the tale was a true record of what actually occurred. In the _Brython_ the tale is called: "Y Tylwyth Teg a Mab Llech y Derwydd," and this title I will retain, merely translating it. The introduction, however, I will not give, as it does not directly bear on the subject now under consideration. 5. _The Son of Llech y Derwydd and the Fairies_. The son of Llech y Derwydd was the only son of his parents and heir to the farm. He was very dear to his father and mother, yea, he was as the very light of their eyes. The son and the head servant man were bosom friends, they were like two brothers, or rather twins. As they were such close friends the farmer's wife was in the habit of clothing them exactly alike. The two friends fell in love with two young handsome women who were highly respected in the neighbourhood. This event gave the old people great satisfaction, and ere long the two couples were joined in holy wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant man obtained a convenient place to live in on the grounds of Llech y Derwydd. About six months after the marriage of the son, he and the servant man went out to hunt. The servant penetrated to a ravine filled with brushwood to look for game, and presently returned to his friend, but by the time he came back the son was nowhere to be seen. He continued awhile looking about for his absent friend, shouting and whistling to attract his attention, but there was no answer to his calls. By and by he went home to Llech y Derwydd, expecting to find him there, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the grief of the family throughout the night, but it was even greater the next day. They went to inspect the place where the son had last been seen. His mother and his wife wept bitterly, but the father had greater control over himself, still he appeared as half mad. They inspected the place where the servant man had last seen his friend, and, to their great surprise and sorrow, observed a Fairy ring close by the spot, and the servant recollected that he had heard seductive music somewhere about the time that he parted with his friend. They came to the conclusion at once that the man had been so unfortunate as to enter the Fairy ring, and they conjectured that he had been transported no one knew where. Weary weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the absent man. The little one grew up the very image of his father, and very precious was he to his grandfather and grandmother. In fact, he was everything to them. He grew up to man's estate and married a pretty girl in the neighbourhood, but her people had not the reputation of being kind-hearted. The old folks died, and also their daughter-in-law. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Llech y Derwydd saw a tall thin old man with beard and hair as white as snow, who they thought was a Jew, approaching slowly, very slowly, towards the house. The servant girls stared mockingly through the window at him, and their mistress laughed unfeelingly at the "old Jew," and lifted the children up, one after the other, to get a sight of him as he neared the house. He came to the door, and entered the house boldly enough, and inquired after his parents. The mistress answered him in a surly and unusually contemptuous manner, and wished to know "What the drunken old Jew wanted there," for they thought he must have been drinking or he would never have spoken in the way he did. The old man looked at everything in the house with surprise and bewilderment, but the little children about the floor took his attention more than anything else. His looks betrayed sorrow and deep disappointment. He related his whole history, that, yesterday he had gone out to hunt, and that he had now returned. The mistress told him that she had heard a story about her husband's father, which occurred before she was born, that he had been lost whilst hunting, but that her father had told her that the story was not true, but that he had been killed. The woman became uneasy and angry that the old "Jew" did not depart. The old man was roused and said that the house was his, and that he would have his rights. He went to inspect his possessions, and shortly afterwards directed his steps to the servant's house. To his surprise he saw that things there were greatly changed. After conversing awhile with an aged man who sat by the fire, they carefully looked each other in the face, and the old man by the fire related the sad history of his lost friend, the son of Llech y Derwydd. They conversed together deliberately on the events of their youth, but all seemed like a dream. However, the old man in the corner came to the conclusion that his visitor was his dear friend, the son of Llech y Derwydd, returned from the land of the Fairies after having spent there half a hundred years. The old man with the white beard believed the story related by his friend, and long was the talk and many were the questions which the one gave to the other. The visitor was informed that the master of Llech y Derwydd was from home that day, and he was persuaded to eat some food; but, to the horror of all, when he had done so, he instantly fell down dead. Such is the story. The writer adds that the tale relates that the cause of this man's sudden death was that he ate food after having been so long in the land of the Fairies, and he further states that the faithful old servant insisted on his dead friend's being buried with his ancestors, and the rudeness of the mistress of Llech y Derwydd to her father-in-law brought a curse upon the place and family, and her offence was not expiated until the farm had been sold nine times. The next tale that I shall relate is recorded by _Glasynys_ in _Cymru Fu_, pp. 177-179. Professor Rhys in his _Welsh Fairy Tales_, _Y Cymmrodor_, vol. v., pp. 81-84, gives a translation of this story. The Professor prefaces the tale with a caution that _Glasynys_ had elaborated the story, and that the proper names were undoubtedly his own. The reverend author informs his readers that he heard his mother relate the tale many times, but it certainly appears that he has ornamented the simple narrative after his own fashion, for he was professedly a believer in words; however, in its general outline, it bears the impress of antiquity, and strongly resembles other Welsh Fairy tales. It belongs to that species of Fairy stories which compose this chapter, and therefore it is here given as translated by Professor Rhys. I will for the sake of reference give the tale a name, and describe it under the following heading. 6. _A young man marries a Fairy Lady in Fairy Land, and brings her to live with him among his own people_. "Once on a time a shepherd boy had gone up the mountain. That day, like many a day before and after, was exceedingly misty. Now, though he was well acquainted with the place, he lost his way, and walked backwards and forwards for many a long hour. At last he got into a low rushy spot, where he saw before him many circular rings. He at once recalled the place, and began to fear the worst. He had heard, many hundreds of times, of the bitter experiences in those rings of many a shepherd who had happened to chance on the dancing-place or the circles of the Fair Family. He hastened away as fast as ever he could, lest he should be ruined like the rest; but though he exerted himself to the point of perspiring, and losing his breath, there he was, and there he continued to be, a long time. At last he was met by a little fat old man with merry blue eyes, who asked him what he was doing. He answered that he was trying to find his way homeward. 'Oh,' said he, 'come after me, and do not utter a word until I bid thee.' This he did, following him on and on until they came to an oval stone, and the little old fat man lifted it, after tapping the middle of it three times with his walking stick. There was there a narrow path with stairs to be seen here and there, and a sort of whitish light, inclining to grey and blue, was to be seen radiating from the stones. 'Follow me fearlessly,' said the fat man, 'no harm will be done thee.' So on the poor youth went, as reluctantly as a dog to be hanged; but presently a fine-wooded, fertile country spread itself out before them, with well arranged mansions dotting it over, while every kind of apparent magnificence met the eye, and seemed to smile in its landscape; the bright waters of its rivers meandered in twisted streams, and its hills were covered with the luxuriant verdure of their grassy growth, and the mountains with a glossy fleece of smooth pasture. By the time they had reached the stout gentleman's mansion, the young man's senses had been bewildered by the sweet cadence of the music which the birds poured forth from the groves, then there was gold there to dazzle his eyes and silver flashing on his sight. He saw there all kinds of musical instruments and all sorts of things for playing, but he could discern no inhabitant in the whole place; and when he sat down to eat, the dishes on the table came to their places of themselves and disappeared when one had done with them. This puzzled him beyond measure; moreover, he heard people talking together around him, but for the life of him he could see no one but his old friend. At length the fat man said to him, 'Thou canst now talk as much as it may please thee;' but when he attempted to move his tongue it would no more stir than if it had been a lump of ice, which greatly frightened him. At this point, a fine old lady, with health and benevolence beaming in her face, came to them and slightly smiled at the shepherd. The mother was followed by her three daughters, who were remarkably beautiful. They gazed with somewhat playful looks at him, and at length began to talk to him, but his tongue would not wag. Then one of the girls came to him, and, playing with his yellow and curly locks, gave him a smart kiss on his ruddy lips. This loosened the string that bound his tongue, and he began to talk freely and eloquently. There he was, under the charm of that kiss, in the bliss of happiness, and there he remained a year and a day without knowing that he had passed more than a day among them, for he had got into a country where there was no reckoning of time. But by and by he began to feel somewhat of a longing to visit his old home, and asked the stout man if he might go. 'Stay a little yet,' said he, 'and thou shalt go for a while.' That passed, he stayed on; but Olwen, for that was the name of the damsel that had kissed him, was very unwilling that he should depart. She looked sad every time he talked of going away, nor was he himself without feeling a sort of a cold thrill passing through him at the thought of leaving her. On condition, however, of returning, he obtained leave to go, provided with plenty of gold and silver, of trinkets and gems. When he reached home, nobody knew who he was; it had been the belief that he had been killed by another shepherd, who found it necessary to betake himself hastily far away to America, lest he should be hanged without delay. But here is Einion Las at home, and everybody wonders especially to see that the shepherd had got to look like a wealthy man; his manners, his dress, his language, and the treasure he had with him, all conspired to give him the air of a gentleman. He went back one Thursday night, the first of the moon that month, as suddenly as he had left the first time, and nobody knew whither. There was great joy in the country below when Einion returned thither, and nobody was more rejoiced at it than Olwen, his beloved. The two were right impatient to get married, but it was necessary to do that quietly, for the family below hated nothing more than fuss and noise; so, in a sort of a half-secret fashion, they were wedded. Einion was very desirous to go once more among his own people, accompanied, to be sure, by his wife. After he had been long entreating the old man for leave, they set out on two white ponies, that were, in fact, more like snow than anything else in point of colour; so he arrived with his consort in his old home, and it was the opinion of all that Einion's wife was the handsomest person they had anywhere seen. Whilst at home, a son was born to them, to whom they gave the name of Taliesin. Einion was now in the enjoyment of high repute, and his wife received proper respect. Their wealth was immense, and soon they acquired a large estate; but it was not long till people began to inquire after the pedigree of Einion's wife--the country was of opinion that it was not the right thing to be without a pedigree. Einion was questioned about it, without his giving any satisfactory answer, and one came to the conclusion that she was one of the Fair Family (_Tylwyth Teg_). 'Certainly,' replied Einion, 'there can be no doubt that she comes from a very fair family, for she has two sisters who are as fair as she, and if you saw them together, you would admit that name to be a capital one.' This, then, is the reason why the remarkable family in the land of charm and phantasy (_Hud a Lledrith_) are called the Fair Family." 7. _A Boy taken to Fairy Land_. Mrs. Morris, of Cwm Vicarage, near Rhyl, told the writer the following story. She stated that she had heard it related in her family that one of their people had in childhood been induced by the Fairies to follow them to their country. This boy had been sent to discharge some domestic errand, but he did not return. He was sought for in all directions but could not be found. His parents came to the conclusion that he had either been murdered or kidnapped, and in time he was forgotten by most people, but one day he returned with what he had been sent for in his hand. But so many years had elapsed since he first left home, that he was now an old grey-headed man, though he knew it not; he had, he said, followed, for a short time, delightful music and people; but when convinced, by the changes around, that years had slipped by since he first left his home, he was so distressed at the changes he saw that he said he would return to the Fairies. But alas! he sought in vain for the place where he had met them, and therefore he was obliged to remain with his blood relations. The next tale differs from the preceding, insomuch that the seductive advances of the Fairies failed in their object. I am not quite positive whence I obtained the story, but this much I know, that it belongs to Pentrevoelas, and that a respectable old man was in the habit of repeating it, as an event in his own life. _A Man Refusing the Solicitations of the Fairies_. A Pentrevoelas man was coming home one lovely summer's night, and when within a stone's throw of his house, he heard in the far distance singing of the most enchanting kind. He stopped to listen to the sweet sounds which filled him with a sensation of deep pleasure. He had not listened long ere he perceived that the singers were approaching. By and by they came to the spot where he was, and he saw that they were marching in single file and consisted of a number of small people, robed in close-fitting grey clothes, and they were accompanied by speckled dogs that marched along two deep like soldiers. When the procession came quite opposite the enraptured listener, it stopped, and the small people spoke to him and earnestly begged him to accompany them, but he would not. They tried many ways, and for a long time, to persuade him to join them, but when they saw they could not induce him to do so they departed, dividing themselves into two companies and marching away, the dogs marching two abreast in front of each company. They sang as they went away the most entrancing music that was ever heard. The man, spell-bound, stood where he was, listening to the ravishing music of the Fairies, and he did not enter his house until the last sound had died away in the far-off distance. Professor Rhys records a tale much like the preceding. (See his _Welsh Fairy Tales_, pp. 34, 35.) It is as follows:--"One bright moonlight night, as one of the sons of the farmer who lived at Llwyn On in Nant y Bettws was going to pay his addresses to a girl at Clogwyn y Gwin, he beheld the Tylwyth enjoying themselves in full swing on a meadow close to Cwellyn Lake. He approached them and little by little he was led on by the enchanting sweetness of their music and the liveliness of their playing until he got within their circle. Soon some kind of spell passed over him, so that he lost his knowledge of every place, and found himself in a country the most beautiful he had ever seen, where everybody spent his time in mirth and rejoicing. He had been there seven years, and yet it seemed to him but a night's dream; but a faint recollection came to his mind of the business on which he had left home, and he felt a longing to see his beloved one: so he went and asked permission to return home, which was granted him, together with a host of attendants to lead him to his country; and, suddenly, he found himself, as waking from a dream, on the bank where he had seen the Fairy Family amusing themselves. He turned towards home, but there he found everything changed: his parents were dead, his brothers could not recognize him, and his sweetheart was married to another man. In consequence of such changes, he broke his heart, and died in less than a week after coming back." Many variants of the legends already related are still extant in Wales. This much can be said of these tales, that it was formerly believed that marriages took place between men and Fairies, and from the tales themselves we can infer that the men fared better in Fairy land than the Fairy ladies did in the country of their earthly husbands. This, perhaps, is what might be expected, if, as we may suppose, the Fair Tribe were supplanted, and overcome, by a stronger, and bolder people, with whom, to a certain extent, the weaker and conquered or subdued race commingled by marriage. Certain striking characteristics of both races are strongly marked in these legends. The one is a smaller and more timid people than the other, and far more beautiful in mind and person than their conquerors. The ravishing beauty of the Fairy lady forms a prominent feature in all these legends. The Fairies, too, are spoken of as being without religion. This, perhaps, means nothing more than that they differed from their conquerors in forms, or objects of worship. However this might be, it would appear that their conquerors knew but little of that perfect moral teaching which made the Fairies, according to the testimony of Giraldus, truthful, void of ambition, and honest. It must, however, be confessed, that there is much that is mythical in these legends, and every part cannot well be made to correspond with ordinary human transactions. It is somewhat amusing to note how modern ideas, and customs, are mixed up with these ancient stories. They undoubtedly received a gloss from the ages which transmitted the tales. In the next chapter I shall treat of another phase of Fairy Folk-lore, which will still further connect the Fair Race with their conquerors. FAIRY CHANGELINGS. It was firmly believed, at one time, in Wales, that the Fairies exchanged their own weakly or deformed offspring for the strong children of mortals. The child supposed to have been left by the Fairies in the cradle, or elsewhere, was commonly called a changeling. This faith was not confined to Wales; it was as common in Ireland, Scotland, and England, as it was in Wales. Thus, in Spenser's _Faery Queen_, reference is made in the following words to this popular error:-- And her base Elfin brood there for thee left; Such, men do chaungelings call, so chaung'd by Faeries theft. _Faery Queen_, Bk. I, c. 10. The same superstition is thus alluded to by Shakespeare:-- A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king, She never had so sweet a changeling. _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act II., Sc. 1. And again, in another of his plays, the Fairy practice of exchanging children is mentioned:-- O, that it could be prov'd, That some night-tripping Fairy had exchanged In cradle-clothes our children, where they lay, And call'd mine, Percy, his Plantagenet: Then would I have his Harry, and he mine. _Henry IV_., Pt. 1., Act I, Sc. 1. In Scotland and other countries the Fairies were credited with stealing unbaptized infants, and leaving in their stead poor, sickly, noisy, thin, babies. But to return to Wales, a poet in _Y Brython_, vol. iii, p. 103, thus sings:-- Llawer plentyn teg aeth ganddynt, Pan y cym'rynt helynt hir; Oddi ar anwyl dda rieni, I drigfanau difri dir. Many a lovely child they've taken, When long and bitter was the pain; From their parents, loving, dear, To the Fairies' dread domain. John Williams, an old man, who lived in the Penrhyn quarry district, informed the writer that he could reveal strange doings of the Fairies in his neighbourhood, for often had they changed children with even well-to-do families, he said, but more he would not say, lest he should injure those prosperous families. It was believed that the Fairies were particularly busy in exchanging children on _Nos Wyl Ifan_, or St. John's Eve. There were, however, effectual means for protecting children from their machinations. The mother's presence, the tongs placed cross-ways on the cradle, the early baptism of the child, were all preventives. In the Western Isles of Scotland fire carried round a woman before she was churched, and round the child until he was christened, daily, night and morning, preserved both from the evil designs of the Fairies. (Brand, vol. ii, p. 486.) And it will be shortly shewn that even after an exchange had been accomplished there were means of forcing the Fairies to restore the stolen child. It can well be believed that mothers who had sickly or idiotic babies would, in uncivilized places, gladly embrace the idea that the child she nursed was a changeling, and then, naturally enough, she would endeavour to recover her own again. The plan adopted for this purpose was extremely dangerous. I will in the following tales show what steps were taken to reclaim the lost child. Pennant records how a woman who had a peevish child acted to regain from the Fairies her own offspring. His words are:--"Above this is a spreading oak of great antiquity, size, and extent of branches; it has got the name of _Fairy Oak_. In this very century (the eighteenth) a poor cottager, who lived near the spot, had a child who grew uncommonly peevish; the parents attributed this to the _Fairies_, and imagined that it was a changeling. They took the child, put it into a cradle, and left it all night beneath the tree, in hopes that the _Tylwyth Teg_, or _Fairy Family_, or the Fairy folk, would restore their own before the morning. When morning came, they found the child perfectly quiet, so went away with it, quite confirmed in their belief."--_History of Whiteford_, pp. 5, 6. These people by exposing their infant for a night to the elements ran a risk of losing it altogether; but they acted in agreement with the popular opinion, which was that the Fairies had such affection for their own children that they would not allow them to be in any danger of losing their life, and that if the elfin child were thus exposed the Fairies would rescue it, and restore the exchanged child to its parents. The following tale exhibits another phase of this belief. The story is to be found in the _Cambrian Magazine_, vol. ii., pp. 86, 87. 1. "_The Egg Shell Pottage_." "In the parish of Treveglwys, near Llanidloes, in the county of Montgomery, there is a little shepherd's cot, that is commonly called Twt y Cwmrws (the place of strife) on account of the extraordinary strife that has been there. The inhabitants of the cottage were a man and his wife, and they had born to them twins, whom the woman nursed with great care and tenderness. Some months afterwards indispensable business called the wife to the house of one of her nearest neighbours; yet, notwithstanding she had not far to go, she did not like to leave her children by themselves in their cradle, even for a minute, as her house was solitary, and there were many tales of goblins or the '_Tylwyth Teg_' (the Fair Family or the Fairies) haunting the neighbourhood. However, she went, and returned as soon as she could; but on coming back she felt herself not a little terrified on seeing, though it was mid-day, some of 'the old elves of the blue petticoat,' as they are usually called; however, when she got back to her house she was rejoiced to find everything in the state she had left it. But after some time had passed by, the good people began to wonder that the twins did not grow at all, but still continued little dwarfs. The man would have it that they were not his children; the woman said that they must be their children, and about this arose the great strife between them that gave name to the place. One evening when the woman was very heavy of heart she determined to go and consult a _Gwr Cyfarwydd_ (i.e., a wise man, or a conjuror), feeling assured that everything was known to him, and he gave her his counsel. Now there was to be a harvest soon of the rye and oats; so the wise man said to her:--'When you are preparing dinner for the reapers empty the shell of a hen's egg, and boil the shell full of pottage and take it out through the door as if you meant it for a dinner to the reapers, and then listen what the twins will say; if you hear the children speaking things above the understanding of children, return into the house, take them, and throw them into the waves of Llyn Ebyr, which is very near to you; but if you don't hear anything remarkable, do them no injury.' And when the day of the reaping came, the woman did as her adviser had recommended to her; and as she went outside the door to listen, she heard one of the children say to the other:-- Gwelais vesen cyn gweled derwen, Gwelais wy cyn gweled iar, Erioed ni welais verwi bwyd i vedel Mewn plisgyn wy iar! Acorns before oak I knew, An egg before a hen, Never one hen's egg-shell stew Enough for harvest men! On this the mother returned to her house and took the two children, and threw them into the Llyn, and suddenly the goblins in their trousers came to save their dwarfs, and the woman had her own children back again, and thus the strife between her and her husband ended." The writer of the preceding story says that it was translated almost literally from Welsh, as told by the peasantry, and he remarks that the legend bears a striking resemblance to one of the Irish tales published by Mr. Croker. Many variants of the legend are still extant in many parts of Wales. There is one of these recorded in Professor Rhys's _Welsh Fairy Tales_, _Y Cymmrodor_, vol. iv., pp. 208-209. It is much like that given in the _Cambrian Magazine_. 2. _Corwrion Changeling Legend_. Once on a time, in the fourteenth century, the wife of a man at Corwrion had twins, and she complained one day to the witch who lived close by, at Tyddyn y Barcut, that the children were not getting on, but that they were always crying, day and night. 'Are you sure that they are your children?' asked the witch, adding that it did not seem to her that they were like hers. 'I have my doubts also,' said the mother. 'I wonder if somebody has changed children with you,' said the witch. 'I do not know,' said the mother. 'But why do you not seek to know?' asked the other. 'But how am I to go about it?' said the mother. The witch replied, 'Go and do something rather strange before their eyes and watch what they will say to one another.' 'Well I do not know what I should do,' said the mother. 'Oh,' said the other, 'take an egg-shell, and proceed to brew beer in it in a chamber aside, and come here to tell me what the children will say about it.' She went home and did as the witch had directed her, when the two children lifted their heads out of the cradle to see what she was doing, to watch, and to listen. Then one observed to the other:--'I remember seeing an oak having an acorn,' to which the other replied, 'And I remember seeing a hen having an egg,' and one of the two added, 'But I do not remember before seeing anybody brew beer in the shell of a hen's egg.' The mother then went to the witch and told her what the twins had said one to the other, and she directed her to go to a small wooden bridge not far off, with one of the strange children under each arm, and there to drop them from the bridge into the river beneath. The mother went back home again and did as she had been directed. When she reached home this time, to her astonishment, she found that her own children had been brought back." There is one important difference between these two tales. In the latter, the mother drops the children over the bridge into the waters beneath, and then goes home, without noticing whether the poor children had been rescued by the goblins or not, but on reaching her home she found in the cradle her own two children, presumably conveyed there by the Fairies. In the first tale, we are informed that she saw the goblins save their offspring from a watery grave. Subjecting peevish children to such a terrible ordeal as this must have ended often with a tragedy, but even in such cases superstitious mothers could easily persuade themselves that the destroyed infants were undoubtedly the offspring of elfins, and therefore unworthy of their fostering care. The only safeguard to wholesale infanticide was the test applied as to the super-human precociousness, or ordinary intelligence, of the children. Another version of this tale was related to me by my young friend, the Rev. D. H. Griffiths, of Clocaenog Rectory, near Ruthin. The tale was told him by Evan Roberts, Ffriddagored, Llanfwrog. Mr. Roberts is an aged farmer. 3. _Llanfwrog Changeling Legend_. A mother took her child to the gleaning field, and left it sleeping under the sheaves of wheat whilst she was busily engaged gleaning. The Fairies came to the field and carried off her pretty baby, leaving in its place one of their own infants. At the time, the mother did not notice any difference between her own child and the one that took its place, but after awhile she observed with grief that the baby she was nursing did not thrive, nor did it grow, nor would it try to walk. She mentioned these facts to her neighbours, and she was told to do something strange and then listen to its conversation. She took an egg-shell and pretended to brew beer in it, and she was then surprised to hear the child, who had observed her actions intently, say:-- Mi welais fesen gan dderwen, Mi welais wy gan iar, Ond ni welais i erioed ddarllaw Mewn cibyn wy iar. I have seen an oak having an acorn, I have seen a hen having an egg, But I never saw before brewing In the shell of a hen's egg. This conversation proved the origin of the precocious child who lay in the cradle. The stanza was taken down from Roberts's lips. But he could not say what was done to the fairy changeling. In Ireland a plan for reclaiming the child carried away by the Fairies was to take the Fairy's changeling and place it on the top of a dunghill, and then to chant certain invocatory lines beseeching the Fairies to restore the stolen child. There was, it would seem, in Wales, a certain form of incantation resorted to to reclaim children from the Fairies, which was as follows:--The mother who had lost her child was to carry the changeling to a river, but she was to be accompanied by a conjuror, who was to take a prominent part in the ceremony. When at the river's brink the conjuror was to cry out:-- Crap ar y wrach-- A grip on the hag; and the mother was to respond-- Rhy hwyr gyfraglach-- Too late decrepit one; and having uttered these words, she was to throw the child into the stream, and to depart, and it was believed that on reaching her home she would there find her own child safe and sound. I have already alluded to the horrible nature of such a proceeding. I will now relate a tale somewhat resembling those already given, but in this latter case, the supposed changeling became the mainstay of his family. I am indebted for the _Gors Goch_ legend to an essay, written by Mr. D. Williams, Llanfachreth, Merionethshire, which took the prize at the Liverpool Eisteddfod, 1870, and which appears in a publication called _Y Gordofigion_, pp. 96, 97, published by Mr. I. Foulkes, Liverpool. 4. _The Gore Goch Changeling Legend_. The tale rendered into English is as follows:--"There was once a happy family living in a place called Gors Goch. One night, as usual, they went to bed, but they could not sleep a single wink, because of the noise outside the house. At last the master of the house got up, and trembling, enquired 'What was there, and what was wanted.' A clear sweet voice answered him thus, 'We want a warm place where we can tidy the children.' The door was opened when there entered half full the house of the _Tylwyth Teg_, and they began forthwith washing their children. And when they had finished, they commenced singing, and the singing was entrancing. The dancing and the singing were both excellent. On going away they left behind them money not a little for the use of the house. And afterwards they came pretty often to the house, and received a hearty welcome in consequence of the large presents which they left behind them on the hob. But at last a sad affair took place which was no less than an exchange of children. The Gors Goch baby was a dumpy child, a sweet, pretty, affectionate little dear, but the child which was left in its stead was a sickly, thin, shapeless, ugly being, which did nothing but cry and eat, and although it ate ravenously like a mastiff, it did not grow. At last the wife of Gors Goch died of a broken heart, and so also did all her children, but the father lived a long life and became a rich man, because his new heir's family brought him abundance of gold and silver." As I have already given more than one variant of the same legend, I will supply another version of the Gors Goch legend which appears in _Cymru Fu_, pp. 177-8, from the pen of the Revd. Owen Wyn Jones, _Glasynys_, and which in consequence of the additional facts contained in it may be of some value. I will make use of Professor Rhys's translation. (See _Y Cymmrodor_, vol. v., pp. 79-80.) 5. _Another Version of the Gors Goch Legend_. "When the people of the Gors Goch one evening had gone to bed, lo! they heard a great row and disturbance around the house. One could not at all comprehend what it might be that made a noise that time of night. Both the husband and the wife had waked up, quite unable to make out what there might be there. The children also woke but no one could utter a word; their tongues had all stuck to the roofs of their mouths. The husband, however, at last managed to move, and to ask, 'Who is there? What do you want?' Then he was answered from without by a small silvery voice, 'It is room we want to dress our children.' The door was opened, and a dozen small beings came in, and began to search for an earthen pitcher with water; there they remained for some hours, washing and titivating themselves. As the day was breaking they went away, leaving behind them a fine present for the kindness they had received. Often afterwards did the Gors Goch folks have the company of this family. But once there happened to be a fine roll of a pretty baby in his cradle. The Fair Family came, and, as the baby had not been baptized, they took the liberty of changing him for one of their own. They left behind in his stead an abominable creature that would do nothing but cry and scream every day of the week. The mother was nearly breaking her heart, on account of the misfortune, and greatly afraid of telling anybody about it. But everybody got to see that there was something wrong at Gors Goch, which was proved before long by the mother dying of longing for her child. The other children died broken-hearted after their mother, and the husband was left alone with the little elf without anyone to comfort them. But shortly after, the Fairies began to resort again to the hearth of the Gors Goch to dress children, and the gift which had formerly been silver money became henceforth pure gold. In the course of a few years the elf became the heir of a large farm in North Wales, and that is why the old people used to say, 'Shoe the elf with gold and he will grow.'" (_Fe ddaw gwiddon yn fawr ond ei bedoli ag aur_.) It will be observed that this latter version differs in one remarkable incident from the preceding tale. In the former there is no allusion to the fact that the changed child had not been baptized; in the latter, this omission is specially mentioned as giving power to the Fairies to exchange their own child for the human baby. This preventive carries these tales into Christian days. Another tale, which I will now relate, also proves that faith in the Fairies and in the efficacy of the Cross existed at one and the same time. The tale is taken from _Y Gordofigion_, p. 96. I will first give it as it originally appeared, and then I will translate the story. 6. _Garth Uchaf, Llanuwchllyn_, _Changeling Legend_. "Yr oedd gwraig Garth Uchaf, yn Llanuwchllyn, un tro wedi myned allan i gweirio gwair, a gadael ei baban yn y cryd; ond fel bu'r anffawd, ni roddodd yr efail yn groes ar wyneb y cryd, ac o ganlyniad, ffeiriwyd ei baban gan y Tylwyth Teg, ac erbyn iddi ddyfod i'r ty, nid oedd yn y cryd ond rhyw hen gyfraglach o blentyn fel pe buasai wedi ei haner lewygu o eisiau ymborth, ond magwyd ef er hyny." The wife of Garth Uchaf, Llanuwchllyn, went out one day to make hay, and left her baby in the cradle. _Unfortunately_, _she did not place the tongs crossways on the cradle_, and consequently the Fairies changed her baby, and by the time she came home there was nothing in the cradle but some old decrepit changeling, which looked is if it were half famished, but nevertheless, it was nursed. The reason why the Fairies exchanged babies with human beings, judging from the stories already given, was their desire to obtain healthy well-formed children in the place of their own puny ill-shaped offspring, but this is hardly a satisfactory explanation of such conduct. A mother's love is ever depicted as being so intense that deformity on the part of her child rather increases than diminishes her affection for her unfortunate babe. In Scotland the difficulty is solved in a different way. There it was once thought that the Fairies were obliged every seventh year to pay to the great enemy of mankind an offering of one of their own children, or a human child instead, and as a mother is ever a mother, be she elves flesh or Eve's flesh, she always endeavoured to substitute some one else's child for her own, and hence the reason for exchanging children. In Allan Cunningham's _Traditional Tales_, Morley's edition, p. 188, mention is made of this belief. He writes:-- "'I have heard it said by douce Folk,' 'and sponsible,' interrupted another, 'that every seven years the elves and Fairies pay kane, or make an offering of one of their children, to the grand enemy of salvation, and that they are permitted to purloin one of the children of men to present to the fiend,' 'a more acceptable offering, I'll warrant, than one of their own infernal blood that are Satan's sib allies, and drink a drop of the deil's blood every May morning.'" The Rev. Peter Roberts's theory was that the smaller race kidnapped the children of the stronger race, who occupied the country concurrently with themselves, for the purpose of adding to their own strength as a people. Gay, in lines quoted in Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, vol. ii., p. 485, laughs at the idea of changelings. A Fairy's tongue ridicules the superstition:-- Whence sprung the vain conceited lye, That we the world with fools supply? What! Give our sprightly race away For the dull helpless sons of clay! Besides, by partial fondness shown, Like you, we dote upon our own. Where ever yet was found a mother Who'd give her booby for another? And should we change with human breed, Well might we pass for fools, indeed. With the above fine satire I bring my remarks on Fairy Changelings to a close. FAIRY MOTHERS AND HUMAN MIDWIVES. Fairies are represented in Wales as possessing all the passions, appetites, and wants of human beings. There are many tales current of their soliciting help and favours in their need from men and women. Just as uncivilized nations acknowledge the superiority of Europeans in medicine, so did the Fairies resort in perplexing cases to man for aid. There is a class of tales which has reached our days in which the Fairy lady, who is about to become a mother, obtains from amongst men a midwife, whom she rewards with rich presents for her services. Variants of this story are found in many parts of Wales, and in many continental countries. I will relate a few of these legends. 1. _Denbighshire Version of a Fairy Mother and Human Midwife_. The following story I received from the lips of David Roberts, whom I have previously mentioned, a native of Denbighshire, and he related the tale as one commonly known. As might be expected, he locates the event in Denbighshire, but I have no recollection that he gave names. His narrative was as follows:-- A well-known midwife, whose services were much sought after in consequence of her great skill, had one night retired to rest, when she was disturbed by a loud knocking at her door. She immediately got up and went to the door, and there saw a beautiful carriage, which she was urgently requested to enter at once to be conveyed to a house where her help was required. She did so, and after a long drive the carriage drew up before the entrance to a large mansion, which she had never seen before. She successfully performed her work, and stayed on in the place until her services were no longer required. Then she was conveyed home in the same manner as she had come, but with her went many valuable presents in grateful recognition of the services she had rendered. The midwife somehow or other found out that she had been attending a Fairy mother. Some time after her return from Fairy land she went to a fair, and there she saw the lady whom she had put to bed nimbly going from stall to stall, and making many purchases. For awhile she watched the movements of the lady, and then presuming on her limited acquaintance, addressed her, and asked how she was. The lady seemed surprised and annoyed at the woman's speech, and instead of answering her, said, "And do you see me?" "Yes, I do," said the midwife. "With which eye?" enquired the Fairy. "With this," said the woman, placing her hand on the eye. No sooner had she spoken than the Fairy lady touched that eye, and the midwife could no longer see the Fairy. Mrs. Lowri Wynn, Clocaenog, near Ruthin, who has reached her eightieth year, and is herself a midwife, gave me a version of the preceding which differed therefrom in one or two particulars. The Fairy gentleman who had driven the woman to and from the Hall was the one that was seen in the fair, said Mrs. Wynn, and he it was that put out the eye or blinded it, she was not sure which, of the inquisitive midwife, and Lowri thought it was the left eye. 2. _Merionethshire Version of the Fairy Mother and Human Midwife_. A more complete version of this legend is given in the _Gordofigion_, pp. 97, 98. The writer says:-- "Yr oedd bydwraig yn Llanuwchllyn wedi cael ei galw i Goed y Garth, sef Siambra Duon--cartref y Tylwyth Teg--at un o honynt ar enedigaeth baban. Dywedasant wrthi am gymeryd gofal rhag, cyffwrdd y dwfr oedd ganddi yn trin y babi yn agos i'w llygaid; ond cyffyrddodd y wraig a'r llygad aswy yn ddigon difeddwl. Yn y Bala, ymhen ychydig, gwelai y fydwraig y gwr, sef tad y baban, a dechreuodd ei holi pa sut yr oeddynt yn Siambra Duon? pa fodd yr oedd y wraig? a sut 'roedd y teulu bach i gyd? Edrychai yntau arni yn graff, a gofynodd, 'A pha lygad yr ydych yn fy ngweled i?' 'A hwn,' ebe hithau, gan gyfeirio at ei llygad aswy. Tynodd yntau y llygad hwnw o'i phen, ac yna nis gallai'r wraig ei ganfod." This in English is:-- There was a midwife who lived at Llanuwchllyn, who was called to Coed y Garth, that is, to Siambra Duon, the home of the Tylwyth Teg, to attend to one of them in child birth. They told her to be careful not to touch her eyes with the water used in washing the baby, but quite unintentionally the woman touched her left eye. Shortly afterwards the midwife saw the Fairy's husband at Bala, and she began enquiring how they all were at Siambra Duon, how the wife was, and how the little family was? He looked at her intently, and then asked, "With which eye do you see me?" "With this," she said, pointing to her left eye. He plucked that eye out of her head, and so the woman could not see him. With regard to this tale, the woman's eye is said to have been plucked out; in the first tale she was only deprived of her supernatural power of sight; in other versions the woman becomes blind with one eye. Professor Rhys in _Y Cymmrodor_, vol. iv., pp. 209, 210, gives a variant of the midwife story which differs in some particulars from that already related. I will call this the Corwrion version. 3. _The Corwrion Version_. One of the Fairies came to a midwife who lived at Corwrion and asked her to come with him and attend on his wife. Off she went with him, and she was astonished to be taken into a splendid palace. There she continued to go night and morning to dress the baby for some time, until one day the husband asked her to rub her eyes with a certain ointment he offered her. She did so and found herself sitting on a tuft of rushes, and not in a palace. There was no baby, and all had disappeared. Some time afterwards she happened to go to the town, and whom should she see busily buying various wares but the Fairy on whose wife she had been attending. She addressed him with the question, "How are you, to-day?" Instead of answering her he asked, "How do you see me?" "With my eyes," was the prompt reply. "Which eye?" he asked. "This one," said she, pointing to it; and instantly he disappeared, never more to be seen by her. There is yet one other variant of this story which I will give, and for the sake of reference I will call it the Nanhwynan version. It appears in the _Brython_, vol. ix., p. 251, and Professor Rhys has rendered it into English in _Y Cymmrodor_, vol. ix., p. 70. I will give the tale as related by the Professor. 4. _The Nanhwynan Version_. "Once on a time, when a midwife from Nanhwynan had newly got to the Hafodydd Brithion to pursue her calling, a gentleman came to the door on a fine grey steed and bade her come with him at once. Such was the authority with which he spoke, that the poor midwife durst not refuse to go, however much it was her duty to stay where she was. So she mounted behind him, and off they went like the flight of a swallow, through Cwmllan, over the Bwlch, down Nant yr Aran, and over the Gadair to Cwm Hafod Ruffydd, before the poor woman had time to say 'Oh.' When they had got there she saw before her a magnificent mansion, splendidly lit up with such lamps as she had never before seen. They entered the court, and a crowd of servants in expensive liveries came to meet them, and she was at once led through the great hall into a bed-chamber, the like of which she had never seen. There the mistress of the house, to whom she had been fetched, was awaiting her. She got through her duties successfully, and stayed there until the lady had completely recovered; nor had she spent any part of her life so merrily. There was there nought but festivity day and night: dancing, singing, and endless rejoicing reigned there. But merry as it was, she found she must go, and the nobleman gave her a large purse, with the order not to open it until she had got into her own house; then he bade one of his servants escort her the same way she had come. When she reached home she opened the purse, and, to her great joy, it was full of money, and she lived happily on those earnings to the end of her life." Such are these tales. Perhaps they are one and all fragments of the same story. Each contains a few shreds that are wanting in the others. All, however, agree in one leading idea, that Fairy mothers have, ere now, obtained the aid of human midwives, and this one fact is a connecting link between the people called Fairies and our own remote forefathers. FAIRY VISITS TO HUMAN ABODES. Old people often told their children and servant girls, that one condition of the Fairy visits to their houses was cleanliness. They were always instructed to keep the fire place tidy and the floor well swept, the pails filled with water, and to make everything bright and nice before going to bed, and that then, perhaps, the Fairies would come into the house to dance and sing until the morning, and leave on the hearth stone a piece of money as a reward behind them. But should the house be dirty, never would the Fairies enter it to hold their nightly revels, unless, forsooth, they came to punish the slatternly servant. Such was the popular opinion, and it must have acted as an incentive to order and cleanliness. These ideas have found expression in song. A writer in _Yr Hynafion Cymreig_, p. 153, sings thus of the place loved by the Fairies:-- Ysgafn ddrws pren, llawr glan dan nen, A'r aelwyd wen yn wir, Tan golau draw, y dwr gerllaw, Yn siriaw'r cylchgrwn clir. A light door, and clean white floor, And hearth-stone bright indeed, A burning fire, and water near, Supplies our every need. In a ballad, entitled "The Fairy Queen," in Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, Nichols's edition, vol. iii., p. 172, are stanzas similar to the Welsh verse given above, which also partially embody the Welsh opinions of Fairy visits to their houses. Thus chants the "Fairy Queen":-- When mortals are at rest, And snoring in their nest, Unheard, and un-espy'd, Through key-holes we do glide; Over tables, stools, and shelves, We trip it with our Fairy elves. And, if the house be foul With platter, dish, or bowl, Upstairs we nimbly creep, And find the sluts asleep: There we pinch their arms and thighs; None escapes, nor none espies. But if the house be swept And from uncleanness kept, We praise the household maid, And duely she is paid: For we use before we goe To drop a tester in her shoe. It was not for the sake of mirth only that the Fairies entered human abodes, but for the performance of more mundane duties, such as making oatmeal cakes. The Rev. R. Jones, Rector of Llanycil, told me a story, current in his native parish, Llanfrothen, Merionethshire, to the effect that a Fairy woman who had spent the night in baking cakes in a farm house forgot on leaving to take with her the wooden utensil used in turning the cakes on the bake stone; so she returned, and failing to discover the lost article bewailed her loss in these words, "Mi gollais fy mhig," "I have lost my shovel." The people got up and searched for the lost implement, and found it, and gave it to the Fairy, who departed with it in her possession. Another reason why the Fairies frequented human abodes was to wash and tidy their children. In the Gors Goch legend, already given, is recorded this cause of their visits. Many like stories are extant. It is said that the nightly visitors expected water to be provided for them, and if this were not the case they resented the slight thus shown them and punished those who neglected paying attention to their wants. But tradition says the house-wives were ever careful of the Fairy wants; and, as it was believed that Fairy mothers preferred using the same water in which human children had been washed, the human mother left this water in the bowl for their special use. In Scotland, also, Fairies were propitiated by attention being paid to their wants. Thus in Allan Cunningham's _Traditional Tales_, p. 11, it is said of Ezra Peden:--"He rebuked a venerable dame, during three successive Sundays for placing a cream bowl and new-baked cake in the paths of the nocturnal elves, who, she imagined, had plotted to steal her grandson from the mother's bosom." But in the traditions of the Isle of Man we obtain the exact counterpart of Welsh legends respecting the Fairies visiting houses to wash themselves. I will give the following quotation from _Brand_, vol. ii., p. 494, on this point:-- "The Manks confidently assert that the first inhabitants of their island were Fairies, and that these little people have still their residence among them. They call them _the good people_, and say they live in wilds and forests, and on mountains, and shun great cities because of the wickedness acted therein. All the houses are blessed where they visit for they fly vice. A person would be thought impudently profane who should suffer his family to go to bed without having first set a tub, or pail full of clean water for the guests to bathe themselves in, which the natives aver they constantly do, as soon as the eyes of the family are closed, wherever they vouchsafe to come." Several instances have already been given of the intercourse of Fairies with mortals. In some parts of Wales it is or was thought that they were even so familiar as to borrow from men. I will give one such tale, taken from the _North Wales Chronicle_ of March 19th, 1887. _A Fairy Borrowing a Gridiron_. "The following Fairy legend was told to Mr. W. W. Cobb, of Hilton House, Atherstone, by Mrs. Williams, wife of Thomas Williams, pilot, in whose house he lodged when staying in Anglesey:--Mary Roberts, of Newborough, used to receive visits once a week from a little woman who used to bring her a loaf of bread in return for the loan of her gridiron (gradell) for baking bread. The Fairy always told her not to look after her when she left the house, but one day she transgressed, and took a peep as the Fairy went away. The latter went straight to the lake--Lake Rhosddu--near the house at Newborough, and plunged into its waters, and disappeared. This took place about a century ago. The house where Mary Roberts lived is still standing about 100 yards north of the lake." Compare the preceding with the following lines:-- If ye will with Mab finde grace, Set each platter in its place; Rake the fire up and set Water in ere sun be set, Wash your pales and cleanse your dairies, Sluts are loathsome to the Fairies; Sweep your house; who doth not so, Mab will pinch her by the toe. _Herrick's Hesperides_, 1648. (See _Brand_, vol. ii., p. 484.) _Fairy Riches and Gifts_. The riches of the Fairies are often mentioned by the old people, and the source of their wealth is variously given. An old man, who has already been mentioned, John Williams, born about 1770, was of opinion that the Fairies stole the money from bad rich people to give it to good poor folk. This they were enabled to do, he stated, as they could make themselves invisible. In a conversation which we once had on this subject, my old friend posed me with this question, "Who do you think robbed . . . of his money without his knowledge?" "Who do you think took . . . money only twenty years ago?" "Why, the Fairies," added he, "for no one ever found out the thief." Shakespeare, in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, A. iii., S. 1, gives a very different source to the Fairy riches:-- I will give thee Fairies to attend on thee, And they _shall fetch thee jewels from the deep_. Without inquiring too curiously into the source of these riches, it shall now be shown how, and for what services, they were bestowed on mortals. Gratitude is a noble trait in the Fairy character, and favours received they ever repaid. But the following stories illustrate alike their commiseration, their caprice, and their grateful bounty. _The Fairies Placing Money on the Ground for a Poor Man_. The following tale was told me by Thomas Jones, a small mountain farmer, who occupies land near Pont Petrual, a place between Ruthin and Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr. Jones informed me that he was acquainted with all the parties mentioned in the tale. His story was as follows:-- A shoemaker, whose health would not permit him to pursue his own trade, obtained work in a tanyard at Penybont, near Corwen. The shoemaker lived in a house called Ty'n-y-graig, belonging to Clegir isa farm. He walked daily to his employment, a distance of several miles, because he could not afford to pay for lodgings. One day, he noticed a round bit of green ground, close to one of the gates on Tan-y-Coed farm, and going up to it discovered a piece of silver lying on the sward. Day after day, from the same spot, he picked up a silver coin. By this means, as well as by the wage he received, he became a well-to-do man. His wife noticed the many new coins he brought home, and questioned him about them, but he kept the secret of their origin to himself. At last, however, in consequence of repeated inquiries, he told her all about the silver pieces, which daily he had picked up from the green plot. The next day he passed the place, but there was no silver, as in days gone by, and he never discovered another shilling, although he looked for it every day. The poor man did not live long after he had informed his wife whence he had obtained the bright silver coins. _The Fairies and their Chest of Gold_. The following tale I obtained from the Rev. Owen Jones, Vicar of Pentrevoelas. The scene lies amongst the wildest mountains of Merionethshire. David, the weaver, lived in a house called Llurig, near Cerniogau Mawr, between Pentrevoelas and Cerrig-y-Drudion. One day David was going over the hill to Bala. On the top of the Garn two Fairies met him, and desired him to follow them, promising, if he would do so, that they would show him a chest filled with gold, and furthermore, they told him that the gold should be his. David was in want of money, and he was therefore quite willing to follow these good natured Fairies. He walked many miles with them across the bleak, bare mountain, and at last, descending from the summit, they reached a deep secluded glen, lying at the foot of the mountain, and there the Fairies exposed to his view a chest, which had never before been seen by mortal eye, and they informed him that it was his. David was delighted when he heard the good news, and mentally bade farewell to weaving. He knew, though, from tradition, that he must in some way or other, there and then, take possession of his treasure, or it would disappear. He could not carry the chest away, as it was too heavy, but to show his ownership thereto he thrust his walking stick into the middle of the gold, and there it stood erect. Then he started homewards, and often and again, as he left the glen, he turned round to see whether the Fairies had taken his stick away, and with it the chest; but no, there it remained. At last the ridge hid all from view, and, instead of going on to Bala, he hastened home to tell his good wife of his riches. Quickly did he travel to his cottage, and when there it was not long before his wife knew all about the chest of gold, and where it was, and how that David had taken possession of his riches by thrusting his walking stick into the middle of the gold. It was too late for them to set out to carry the chest home, but they arranged to start before the sun was up the next day. David, well acquainted with Fairy doings, cautioned his wife not to tell anyone of their good fortune, "For, if you do," said he, "we shall vex the Fairies, and the chest, after all, will not be ours." She promised to obey, but alas, what woman possesses a silent tongue! No sooner had the husband revealed the secret to his wife than she was impatient to step to her next door neighbour's house, just to let them know what a great woman she had all at once become. Now, this neighbour was a shrewd miller, called Samuel. David went out, to attend to some little business, leaving his wife alone, and she, spying her opportunity, rushed to the miller's house, and told him and his wife every whit, and how that she and David had arranged to go for the chest next morning before the sun was up. Then she hurried home, but never told David where she had been, nor what she had done. The good couple sat up late that night, talking over their good fortune and planning their future. It was consequently far after sunrise when they got up next day, and when they reached the secluded valley, where the chest had been, it had disappeared, and with it David's stick. They returned home sad and weary, but this time there was no visit made to the miller's house. Ere long it was quite clearly seen that Samuel the miller had come into a fortune, and David's wife knew that she had done all the mischief by foolishly boasting of the Fairy gift, designed for her husband, to her early rising and crafty neighbour, who had forestalled David and his wife, and had himself taken possession of the precious chest. _The Fairy Shilling_. The Rev. Owen Jones, Pentrevoelas, whom I have already mentioned as having supplied me with the Folk-lore of his parish, kindly gave me the following tale:-- There was a clean, tidy, hardworking woman, who was most particular about keeping her house in order. She had a place for everything, and kept everything in its place. Every night, before retiring to rest, she was in the habit of brushing up the ashes around the fire place, and putting a few fresh peat on the fire to keep it in all night, and she was careful to sweep the floor before going to bed. It was a sight worth seeing to see her clean cottage. One night the Fairies, in their rambles, came that way and entered her house. It was just such a place as they liked. They were delighted with the warm fire, the clean floor and hearth, and they stayed there all night and enjoyed themselves greatly. In the morning, on leaving, they left a bright new shilling on the hearthstone for the woman. Night after night, they spent in this woman's cottage, and every morning she picked up a new shilling. This went on for so long a time that the woman's worldly condition was much improved. This her neighbours with envy and surprise perceived, and great was their talk about her. At last it was noticed that she always paid for the things she bought with new shilling pieces, and the neighbours could not make out where she got all these bright shillings from. They were determined, if possible, to ascertain, and one of their number was deputed to take upon her the work of obtaining from the woman the history of these new shillings. She found no difficulty whatever in doing so, for the woman, in her simplicity, informed her gossip that every morning the coin was found on the hearthstone. Next morning the woman, as usual, expected to find a shilling, but never afterwards did she discover one, and the Fairies came no more to her house, for they were offended with her for divulging the secret. This tale is exactly like many others that may be heard related by old people, in many a secluded abode, to their grandchildren. A lesson constantly inculcated by Fairy tales is this--Embrace opportunities as they occur, or they will be lost for ever. The following stories have reference to this belief. _The Hidden Golden Chair_. It is a good many years since Mrs. Mary Jones, Corlanau, Llandinorwig, Carnarvonshire, told me the following tale. The scene of the story is the unenclosed mountain between Corlanau, a small farm, and the hamlet, Rhiwlas. There is still current in those parts a tale of a hidden golden chair, and Mrs. Jones said that it had once been seen by a young girl, who might have taken possession of it, but unfortunately she did not do so, and from that day to this it has not been discovered. The tale is this:-- There was once a beautiful girl, the daughter of poor hardworking parents, who held a farm on the side of the hill, and their handsome industrious daughter took care of the sheep. At certain times of the year she visited the sheep-walk daily, but she never went to the mountain without her knitting needles, and when looking after the sheep she was always knitting stockings, and she was so clever with her needles that she could knit as she walked along. The Fairies who lived in those mountains noticed this young woman's good qualities. One day, when she was far from home, watching her father's sheep, she saw before her a most beautiful golden chair. She went up to it and found that it was so massive that she could not move it. She knew the Fairy-lore of her neighbourhood, and she understood that the Fairies had, by revealing the chair, intended it for her, but there she was on the wild mountain, far away from home, without anyone near to assist her in carrying it away. And often had she heard that such treasures were to be taken possession of at once, or they would disappear for ever. She did not know what to do, but all at once she thought, if she could by attaching the yarn in her hand to the chair connect it thus with her home, the chair would be hers for ever. Acting upon this suggestion she forthwith tied the yarn to the foot of the chair, and commenced unrolling the ball, walking the while homewards. But long before she could reach her home the yarn in the ball was exhausted; she, however, tied it to the yarn in the stocking which she had been knitting, and again started towards her home, hoping to reach it before the yarn in the stocking would be finished, but she was doomed to disappointment, for that gave out before she could arrive at her father's house. She had nothing else with her to attach to the yarn. She, however, could now see her home, and she began to shout, hoping to gain the ear of her parents, but no one appeared. In her distress she fastened the end of the yarn to a large stone, and ran home as fast as she could. She told her parents what she had done, and all three proceeded immediately towards the stone to which the yarn had been tied, but they failed to discover it. The yarn, too, had disappeared. They continued a futile search for the golden chair until driven away by the approaching night. The next day they renewed their search, but all in vain, for the girl was unable to find the spot where she had first seen the golden chair. It was believed by everybody that the Fairies had not only removed the golden chair, but also the yarn and stone to which the yarn had been attached, but people thought that if the yarn had been long enough to reach from the chair to the girl's home then the golden chair would have been hers for ever. Such is the tale. People believe the golden chair is still hidden away in the mountain, and that some day or other it will be given to those for whom it is intended. But it is, they say, no use anyone looking for it, as it is not to be got by searching, but it will be revealed, as if by accident, to those fated to possess it. _Fairy treasures seen by a Man near Ogwen Lake_. Another tale, similar to the preceding one, is told by my friend, Mr. Hugh Derfel Hughes, in his Hynafiaethau Llandegai a Llanllechid, pp. 35, 36. The following is a translation of Mr. Hughes's story:-- It is said that a servant man penetrated into the recesses of the mountains in the neighbourhood of Ogwen Lake, and that he there discovered a cave within which there was a large quantity of brazen vessels of every shape and description. In the joy of his heart at his good fortune, he seized one of the vessels, with the intention of carrying it away with him, as an earnest that the rest likewise were his. But, alas, it was too heavy for any man to move. Therefore, with the intention of returning the following morning to the cave with a friend to assist him in carrying the vessels away, he closed its month with stones, and thus he securely hid from view the entrance to the cave. When he had done this it flashed upon his mind that he had heard of people who had accidentally come across caves, just as he had, but that they, poor things, had afterwards lost all traces of them. And lest a similar misfortune should befall him, he determined to place a mark on the mouth of the cave, which would enable him to come upon it again, and also he bethought himself that it would be necessary, for further security, to indicate by some marks the way from his house to the cave. He had however nothing at hand to enable him to carry out this latter design, but his walking stick. This he began to chip with his knife, and he placed the chips at certain distances all along the way homewards. In this way he cut up his staff, and he was satisfied with what he had done, for he hoped to find the cave by means of the chips. Early the next morning he and a friend started for the mountain in the fond hope of securing the treasures, but when they arrived at the spot where the chip-marked pathway ought to begin, they failed to discover a single chip, because, as it was reported--"They had been gathered up by the Fairies." And thus this vision was in vain. The author adds to the tale these words:--"But, reader, things are not always to be so. There is a tradition in the Nant, that a Gwyddel is to have these treasures and this is how it will come to pass. A Gwyddel Shepherd will come to live in the neighbourhood, and on one of his journeys to the mountain to shepherd his sheep, when fate shall see fit to bring it about, there will run before him into the cave a black sheep with a speckled head, and the Gwyddel shepherd will follow it into the cave to catch it, and on entering, to his great astonishment, he will discover the treasures and take possession of them. And in this way it will come to pass, in some future age, that the property of the Gwyddelod will return to them." _The Fairies giving Money to a Man for joining them in their Dance_. The following story came to me through the Rev. Owen Jones, Vicar of Pentrevoelas. The occurrence is said to have taken place near Pentrevoelas. The following are the particulars:-- Tomas Moris, Ty'n-y-Pant, returning home one delightful summer night from Llanrwst fair, came suddenly upon a company of Fairies dancing in a ring. In the centre of the circle were a number of speckled dogs, small in size, and they too were dancing with all their might. After the dance came to an end, the Fairies persuaded Tomas to accompany them to Hafod Bryn Mullt, and there the dance was resumed, and did not terminate until the break of day. Ere the Fairies departed they requested their visitor to join them the following night at the same place, and they promised, if he would do so, to enrich him with gifts of money, but they made him promise that he would not reveal to any one the place where they held their revels. This Tomas did, and night after night was spent pleasantly by him in the company of his merry newly-made friends. True to their word, he nightly parted company with them, laden with money, and thus he had no need to spend his days as heretofore, in manual labour. This went on as long as Tomas Moris kept his word, but alas, one day, he divulged to a neighbour the secret of his riches. That night, as usual, he went to Hafod Bryn Mullt, but his generous friends were not there, and he noticed that in the place where they were wont to dance there was nothing but cockle shells. In certain parts of Wales it was believed that Fairy money, on close inspection, would be found to be cockle shells. Mrs. Hugh Jones, Corlanau, who has already been mentioned, told the writer that a man found a crock filled, as he thought when he first saw it, with gold, but on taking it home he discovered that he had carried home from the mountain nothing but cockle shells. This Mrs. Jones told me was Fairy money. _The Fairies rewarding a Woman for taking care of their Dog_. Mention has already been made of Fairy Dogs. It would appear that now and again these dogs, just like any other dogs, strayed from home; but the Fairies were fond of their pets, and when lost, sought for them, and rewarded those mortals who had shown kindness to the animals. For the following tale I am indebted to the Rev. Owen Jones. One day when going home from Pentrevoelas Church, the wife of Hafod y Gareg found on the ground in an exhausted state a Fairy dog. She took it up tenderly, and carried it home in her apron. She showed this kindness to the poor little thing from fear, for she remembered what had happened to the wife of Bryn Heilyn, who had found one of the Fairy dogs, but had behaved cruelly towards it, and consequently had fallen down dead. The wife of Hafod y Gareg therefore made a nice soft bed for the Fairy dog in the pantry, and placed over it a brass pot. In the night succeeding the day that she had found the dog, a company of Fairies came to Hafod y Gareg to make inquiries after it. The woman told them that it was safe and sound, and that they were welcome to take it away with them. She willingly gave it up to its masters. Her conduct pleased the Fairies greatly, and so, before departing with the dog, they asked her which she would prefer, a clean or a dirty cow? Her answer was, "A dirty one." And so it came to pass that from that time forward to the end of her life, her cows gave more milk than the very best cows in the very best farms in her neighbourhood. In this way was she rewarded for her kindness to the dog, by the Fairies. FAIRY MONEY TURNED TO DROSS. Fairies' treasure was of uncertain value, and depended for its very existence on Fairy intentions. Often and again, when they had lavishly bestowed money on this or that person, it was discovered to be only leaves or some equally worthless substance; but people said that the recipients of the money richly deserved the deception that had been played upon them by the Fairies. In this chapter a few tales shall be given of this trait of Fairy mythology. 1. _A Cruel Man and a Fairy Dog_. The person from whom the following tale was derived was David Roberts, Tycerrig, Clocaenog, near Ruthin. A Fairy dog lost its master and wandered about here and there seeking him. A farmer saw the dog, and took it home with him, but he behaved very unkindly towards the wee thing, and gave it little to eat, and shouted at it, and altogether he showed a hard heart. One evening a little old man called at this farmer's house, and inquired if any stray dog was there. He gave a few particulars respecting the dog, and mentioned the day that it had been lost. The farmer answered in the affirmative, and the stranger said that the dog was his, and asked the farmer to give it up to him. This the farmer willingly did, for he placed no value on the dog. The little man was very glad to get possession of his lost dog, and on departing he placed a well filled purse in the farmer's hand. Some time afterwards the farmer looked into the purse, intending to take a coin out of it, when to his surprise and annoyance he found therein nothing but leaves. Roberts told the writer that the farmer got what he deserved, for he had been very cruel to the wee dog. Another tale much like the preceding one, I have heard, but I have forgotten the source of the information. A person discovered a lost Fairy dog wandering about, and took it home, but he did not nurse the half-starved animal, nor did he nourish it. After a while some of the Fairy folk called on this person to inquire after their lost dog, and he gave it to them. They rewarded this man for his kindness with a pot filled with money and then departed. On further inspection, the money was found to be cockle shells. Such lessons as these taught by the Fairies were not without their effect on people who lived in days gone by. 2. _Dick the Fiddler and the Fairy Crown-Piece_. For the following story I am indebted to my friend, Mr Hamer, who records it in his "Parochial account of Llanidloes," published in the _Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. x., pp. 252-3-4. Mr Hamer states that the tale was related to him by Mr. Nicholas Bennett, Glanrafon, Trefeglwys. "Dick the Fiddler was in the habit of going about the country to play at merry-makings, fairs, etc. This worthy, after a week's _fuddle_ at Darowen, wending his way homeward, had to walk down 'Fairy Green Lane,' just above the farmstead of Cefn Cloddiau, and to banish fear, which he felt was gradually obtaining the mastery over him, instead of whistling, drew out from the skirt pocket of his long-tailed great coat his favourite instrument. After tuning it, be commenced elbowing his way through his favourite air, _Aden Ddu'r Fran_ (the Crow's Black Wing). When he passed over the green sward where the _Tylwyth Teg_, or Fairies, held their merry meetings, he heard something rattle in his fiddle, and this something continued rattling and tinkling until he reached Llwybr Scriw Riw, his home, almost out of his senses at the fright caused by that everlasting 'tink, rink, jink,' which was ever sounding in his ears. Having entered the cottage he soon heard music of a different kind, in the harsh angry voice of his better half, who justly incensed at his absence, began lecturing him in a style, which, unfortunately, Dick, from habit, could not wholly appreciate. He was called a worthless fool, a regular drunkard and idler. 'How is it possible for me to beg enough for myself and half a house-full of children nearly naked, while you go about the country and bring me nothing home.' 'Hush, hush, my good woman,' said Dick, 'see what's in the blessed old fiddle.' She obeyed, shook it, and out tumbled, to their great surprise, a five-shilling piece. The wife looked up into the husband's face, saw that it was 'as pale as a sheet' with fright: and also noting that he had such an unusually large sum in his possession, she came to the conclusion that he could not live long, and accordingly changed her style saying, 'Good man go to Llanidloes to-morrow, it is market-day and buy some shirting for yourself, for it may never be your good fortune to have such a sum of money again.' The following day, according to his wife's wishes, Dick wended his way to Llanidloes, musing, as he went along, upon his extraordinary luck, and unable to account for it. Arrived in the town, he entered Richard Evans's shop, and called for shirting linen to the value of five shillings, for which he gave the shopkeeper the crown piece taken out of the fiddle. Mr. Evans placed it in the till, and our worthy Dick betook himself to Betty Brunt's public-house (now known as the Unicorn) in high glee with the capital piece of linen in the skirt pocket of his long-tailed top coat. He had not, however, been long seated before Mr. Evans came in, and made sharp enquiries as to how and where he obtained possession of the crown piece with which he had paid for the linen. Dick assumed a solemn look, and then briefly related where and how he had received the coin. 'Say you so,' said Evans, 'I thought as much, for when I looked into the till, shortly after you left the shop, to my great surprise it was changed into a heap of musty horse dung.'" FAIRIES WORKING FOR MEN. It was once thought that kind Fairies took compassion on good folk, who were unable to accomplish in due time their undertakings, and finished in the night these works for them; and it was always observed that the Fairy workman excelled as a tradesman the mortal whom he assisted. Many an industrious shoemaker, it is said, has ere this found in the morning that the Fairies had finished in the night the pair of shoes which he had only commenced the evening before. Farmers too, who had in part ploughed a field, have in the morning been surprised to find it finished. These kind offices, it was firmly believed, were accomplished by Fairy friends. Milton in _L'Allegro_ alludes to this belief in the following lines:-- Tells how the drudging Goblin swet, To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, That ten day-labourers could not end. MILTON, _L'Allegro_, lines 105-9. In Scotland the sprite, or Fairy, called Browny, haunted family abodes, and did all manner of work in the night for those who treated him kindly. In England, Robin Goodfellow was supposed to perform like functions. Thus sings Robin:-- Yet now and then, the maids to please, At midnight I card up their wooll; And while they sleepe, and take their ease, With wheel to threads their flax I pull. I grind at mill Their malt up still; I dress their hemp, I spin their tow. If any 'wake. And would me take, I wend me, laughing, ho, ho, ho! _Percy's Reliques_, vol. iii., p. 169. Welsh Fairies are not described as ordinarily inclined to lessen men's labours by themselves undertaking them; but there are a few tales current of their having assisted worthy persons in their manual works. Professor Rhys records one of these stories in _Y Cymmrodor_, vol. iv. 210. He writes thus:-- "One day Guto, the Farmer of Corwrion, complained to his wife that he was in need of men to mow his hay, and she answered, 'Why fret about it? look yonder! there you have a field full of them at it, and stripped to their shirt sleeves.' When he went to the spot the sham workmen of the Fairy family had disappeared. This same Guto, or somebody else, happened another time to be ploughing, when he heard some person he could not see calling out to him, 'I have got the _bins_ (that is the _vice_) of my plough broken.' 'Bring it to me,' said the driver of Guto's team, 'that I may mend it.' When they brought the furrow to an end, there they found the broken vice, and a barrel of beer placed near it. One of the men sat down and mended it. Then they made another furrow, and when they returned to the spot they found there a two-eared dish, filled to the brim with _bara a chwrw_, or bread and beer." FAIRY DANCES. The one occupation of the Fairy folk celebrated in song and prose was dancing. Their green rings, circular or ovoidal in form, abounded in all parts of the country, and it was in these circles they were said to dance through the livelong night. In "_Can y Tylwyth Teg_," or the Fairies' Song, thus they chant:-- O'r glaswellt glen a'r rhedyn man, Gyfeillion dyddan, dewch, E ddarfu'r nawn--mae'r lloer yu llawn, Y nos yn gyflawn gewch; O'r chwarau sydd ar dwyn y dydd, I'r Dolydd awn ar daith. Nyni sydd lon, ni chaiff gerbron, Farwolion ran o'n gwaith. _Yr Hynafion Cymraeg_, p. 153. From grasses bright, and bracken light, Come, sweet companions, come, The full moon shines, the sun declines, We'll spend the night in fun; With playful mirth, we'll trip the earth, To meadows green let's go, We're full of joy, without alloy, Which mortals may not know. The spots where the Fairies held their nightly revels were preserved from intrusion by traditional superstitions. The farmer dared not plough the land where Fairy circles were, lest misfortune should overtake him. Thus were these mythical beings left in undisturbed possession of many fertile plots of ground, and here they were believed to dance merrily through many a summer night. Canu, canu, drwy y nos, Dawnsio, dawnsio, ar waen y rhos, Yn ngoleuni'r lleuad dlos; Hapus ydym ni! Pawb o honom sydd yn llon, Heb un gofid dan ei fron: Canu, dawnsio, ar y ton-- Dedwydd ydym ni! Singing, singing, through the night, Dancing, dancing, with our might, Where the moon the moor doth light: Happy ever we! One and all of merry mien, Without sorrow are we seen, Singing, dancing on the green: Gladsome ever we! _Professor Rhys's Fairy Tales_. These words correctly describe the popular opinion of Fairy dance and song, an opinion which reached the early part of the present century. Since so much has reached our days of Fairy song and dance, it is not surprising that we are told that the beautiful Welsh melody, _Toriad y Dydd_, or the Dawn of Day, is the work of a Fairy minstrel, and that this song was chanted by the Fairy company just as the pale light in the east announced the approach of returning day. Chaucer (1340 c. to 1400 c.), alluding to the Fairies and their dances, in his 'Wife of Bath's Tale,' writes:-- In olde dayes of King Artour, Of which the Bretons speken gret honour, All was this lond ful-filled of Faerie; The elf-quene with hire joly compagnie Danced ful oft in many a grene mede. This was the old opinion as I rede; I speke of many hundred yeres ago; But now can no man see non elves mo. Tyrwhitt's Chaucer i., p. 256. In the days of the Father of English poets, the elves had disappeared, and he speaks of "many hundred yeres ago," when he says that the Fairy Queen and her jolly company danced full often in many a green meadow. Number 419 of the Spectator, published July 1st, 1712, states that formerly "every large common had a circle of Fairies belonging to it." Here again the past is spoken of, but in Wales it would seem that up to quite modern days some one, or other, was said to have seen the Fairies at their dance, or had heard of some one who had witnessed their gambols. Robert Roberts, Tycerrig, Clocaenog, enumerated several places, such as Nantddu, Clocaenog, Craig-fron-Bannog, on Mynydd Hiraethog, and Fron-y-Go, Llanfwrog, where the Fairies used to hold their revels, and other places, such as Moel Fammau, have been mentioned as being Fairy dancing ground. Many an aged person in Wales will give the name of spots dedicated to Fairy sports. Information of this kind is interesting, for it shows how long lived traditions are, and in a manner, places associated with the Fair Tribe bring these mysterious beings right to our doors. I will now relate a few tales of mortals witnessing or joining in Fairy dances. The first was related to me by David Roberts. The scene of the dance was the hill side by Pont Petrual between Ruthin and Cerrig-y-Drudion. 1. _A Man who found himself on a Heap of Ferns after joining in a Fairy Dance_. A man who went to witness a Fairy dance was invited to join them. He did so, and all night long he greatly enjoyed himself. At the break of day the company broke up, and the Fairies took their companion with them. The man found himself in a beautiful hall with everything he could desire at his command, and here he pleasantly passed the time ere he retired to rest. In the morning when he awoke, instead of finding himself on a couch in Fairy Hall, be found himself lying on a heap of fern on the wild mountain side. Although somewhat unfortunate, this man fared better than most men who joined the Fairy dances. 2. _The Fairies threw dust into a Man's Eyes who Saw them Dance_. This tale is taken from _Cymru Fu_, p. 176, and is from the pen of _Glasynys_. I give it in English. William Ellis, of Cilwern, was once fishing in Llyn Cwm Silin on a dark cloudy day, when he observed close by, in the rushes, a great number of men, or beings in the form of men, about a foot high, jumping and singing. He watched them for hours, and he never heard in all his life such singing. But William went too near them, and they threw some kind of dust into his eyes, and whilst he was rubbing his eyes, the little family disappeared and fled somewhere out of sight and never afterwards was Ellis able to get a sight of them. The next tale _Glasynys_ shall relate in his own words. It appears in _Cymru Fu_ immediately after the one just related. 3. _A Man Dancing with the Fairies for Three Days_. "Y mae chwedl go debyg am le o'r enw Llyn-y-Ffynonau. Yr oedd yno rasio a dawnsio, a thelynio a ffidlo enbydus, a gwas o Gelli Ffrydau a'i ddau gi yn eu canol yn neidio ac yn prancio mor sionc a neb. Buont wrthi hi felly am dridiau a theirnos, yn ddi-dor-derfyn; ac oni bai bod ryw wr cyfarwydd yn byw heb fod yn neppell, ac i hwnw gael gwybod pa sut yr oedd pethau yn myned yn mlaen, y mae'n ddiddadl y buasai i'r creadur gwirion ddawnsio 'i hun i farwolaeth. Ond gwaredwyd of y tro hwn." This in English is as follows:-- "There is a tale somewhat like the preceding one told in connection with a place called Llyn-y-Ffynonau. There was there racing and dancing, and harping and furious fiddling, and the servant man of Gelli Ffrydau with his two dogs in their midst jumping and dancing like mad. There they were for three days and three nights without a break dancing as if for very life, and were it not that there lived near by a conjuror, who knew how things were going on, without a doubt the poor creature would have danced himself to death. But he was spared this time." The next tale I received from Mr. David Lloyd, schoolmaster, Llanfihangel-Glyn-Myfyr, and he heard it in that parish. 4. _A Harper and the Fairies_. There once lived in a remote part of Denbighshire, called Hafod Elwy, an old harper, named Shon Robert, who used to be invited to parties to play for the dancers, or to accompany the singers. One evening he went to Llechwedd Llyfn, in the neighbourhood of Cefn Brith, to hold a merry meeting, and it was late before the lads and lasses separated. At last the harper wended his way homeward. His path was over the bare mountain. As he came near a lake called Llyndau-ychain, he saw on its verge a grand palace, vividly illuminated. He was greatly surprised at the sight, for he had never seen such a building there before. He, however, proceeded on his way, and when he came in front of this beautiful palace he was hailed by a footman, and invited to enter. He accepted the invitation, and was ushered into a magnificent room, where a grand ball was being held. The guests surrounded the harper and became very friendly, and, to his wonder, addressed him by name. This hall was magnificently furnished. The furniture was of the most costly materials, many things were made of solid gold. A waiter handed him a golden cup filled with sparkling wine, which the harper gladly quaffed. He was then asked to play for the company, and this he did to the manifest satisfaction of the guests. By and by one of the company took Shon Robert's hat round and collected money for the harper's benefit, and brought it back to him filled with silver and gold. The feast was carried on with great pomp and merriment until near the dawn of day, when, one by one, the guests disappeared, and at last Shon was left alone. Perceiving a magnificent couch near, he laid himself thereon, and was soon fast asleep. He did not awake until mid-day, and then, to his surprise, he found himself lying on a heap of heather, the grand palace had vanished away, and the gold and silver, which he had transferred from his hat the night before into his bag, was changed to withered leaves. The following tale told me by the Rev. R. Jones shows that those who witness a Fairy dance know not how time passes. 5. _A Three Hours Fairy Dance seeming as a Few Minutes_. The Rev. R. Jones's mother, when a young unmarried woman, started one evening from a house called Tyddyn Heilyn, Penrhyndeudraeth, to her home, Penrhyn isaf, accompanied by their servant man, David Williams, called on account of his great strength and stature, Dafydd Fawr, Big David. David was carrying home on his back a flitch of bacon. The night was dark, but calm. Williams walked somewhat in the rear of his young mistress, and she, thinking he was following, went straight home. But three hours passed before David appeared with the pork on his back. He was interrogated as to the cause of his delay, and in answer said he had only been about three minutes after his young mistress. He was told that she had arrived three hours before him, but this David would not believe. At length, however, he was convinced that he was wrong in his time, and then he proceeded to account for his lagging behind as follows:-- He observed, he said, a brilliant meteor passing through the air, which was followed by a ring or hoop of fire, and within this hoop stood a man and woman of small size, handsomely dressed. With one arm they embraced each other, and with the other they took hold of the hoop, and their feet rested on the concave surface of the ring. When the hoop reached the earth these two beings jumped out of it, and immediately proceeded to make a circle on the ground. As soon as this was done, a large number of men and women instantly appeared, and to the sweetest music that ear ever heard commenced dancing round and round the circle. The sight was so entrancing that the man stayed, as he thought, a few minutes to witness the scene. The ground all around was lit up by a kind of subdued light, and he observed every movement of these beings. By and by the meteor which had at first attracted his attention appeared again, and then the fiery hoop came to view, and when it reached the spot where the dancing was, the lady and gentleman who had arrived in it jumped into the hoop, and disappeared in the same manner in which they had reached the place. Immediately after their departure the Fairies vanished from sight, and the man found himself alone and in darkness, and then he proceeded homewards. In this way he accounted for his delay on the way. In Mr. Sikes's _British Goblins_, pp. 79-81, is a graphic account of a mad dance which Tudur ap Einion Gloff had with the Fairies, or Goblins, at a place called Nant-yr-Ellyllon, a hollow half way up the hill to Castell Dinas Bran, in the neighbourhood of Llangollen. All night, and into the next day, Tudur danced frantically in the Nant, but he was rescued by his master, who understood how to break the spell, and release his servant from the hold the Goblins had over him! This he did by pronouncing certain pious words, and Tudur returned home with his master. Mr. Evan Davies, carpenter, Brynllan, Efenechtyd, who is between seventy and eighty years old, informed the writer that his friend John Morris told him that he had seen a company of Fairies dancing, and that they were the handsomest men and women that he had ever seen. It was night and dark, but the place on which the dance took place was strangely illuminated, so that every movement of the singular beings could be observed, but when the Fairies disappeared it became suddenly quite dark. Although from the tales already given it would appear that the Fairies held revelry irrespective of set times of meeting, still it was thought that they had special days for their great banquets, and the eve of the first of May, old style, was one of these days, and another was _Nos Wyl Ifan_, St. John's Eve, or the evening of June 23rd. Thus sings _Glasynys_, in _Y Brython_, vol. iii. p. 270:-- _Nos Wyl Ifan_. _Tylwyth Teg_ yn lluoedd llawen, O dan nodded tawel Dwynwen, Welir yn y cel encilion, Yn perori mwyn alawon, Ac yn taenu hyd y twyni, Ac ar leiniau'r deiliog lwyni, _Hud a Lledrith_ ar y glesni, Ac yn sibrwd dwyfol desni! I am indebted to my friend Mr Richard Williams, F.R.H.S., Newtown, Montgomeryshire, for the following translation of the preceding Welsh lines:-- The Fairy Tribe in merry crowds, Under Dwynwen's calm protection, Are seen in shady retreats Chanting sweet melodies, And spreading over the bushes And the leafy groves Illusion and phantasy on all that is green, And whispering their mystic lore. May-day dances and revelling have reached our days, and probably they have, like the Midsummer Eve's festivities, their origin in the far off times when the Fairy Tribe inhabited Britain and other countries, and to us have they bequeathed these Festivals, as well as that which ushers in winter, and is called in Wales, _Nos glan gaua_, or All Hallow Eve. If so, they have left us a legacy for which we thank them, and they have also given us a proof of their intelligence and love of nature. But I will now briefly refer to Fairy doings on _Nos Wyl Ifan_ as recorded by England's greatest poet, and, further on, I shall have more to say of this night. Shakespeare introduces into his _Midsummer Night's Dream_ the prevailing opinions respecting Fairies in England, but they are almost identical with those entertained by the people of Wales; so much so are they British in character, that it is no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that he must have derived much of his information from an inhabitant of Wales. However, in one particular, the poet's description of the Fairies differs from the more early opinion of them in Wales. Shakespeare's Fairies are, to a degree, diminutive; they are not so small in Wales. But as to their habits in both countries they had much in common. I will briefly allude to similarities between English and Welsh Fairies, confining my remarks to Fairy music and dancing. To begin, both danced in rings. A Fairy says to Puck:-- And I serve the Fairy Queen To dew her orbs upon the green. _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act II., S I. And allusion is made in the same play to these circles in these words:-- If you will patiently dance in our round And see our moonlight revels, go with us. Act II., S. I. Then again Welsh and English Fairies frequented like spots to hold their revels on. I quote from the same play:-- And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen. Act II., S. I. And again:-- And never since the middle summer's spring Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead By paved fountain or by rushy brook Or by the beached margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind. Act II., S. I And further the Fairies in both countries meet at night, and hold their Balls throughout the hours of darkness, and separate in early morn. Thus Puck addressing Oberon:-- Fairy King, attend and hark; I do hear the morning lark. Act IV., S. I. Now until the break of day Through this house each Fairy stray . . . . . . . . . . . . Trip away, make no stay, Meet we all at break of day. Act V., S. I. In the Welsh tales given of Fairy dances the music is always spoken of as most entrancing, and Shakespeare in felicitous terms gives utterance to the same thought-- Music, lo! music, such as charmeth sleep. I am indebted to the courtesy of the Rev. R. O. Williams, M.A., Vicar of Holywell, for the following singular testimony to Fairy dancing. The writer was the Rev. Dr. Edward Williams, at one time of Oswestry, and afterwards Principal of the Independent Academy at Rotherham in Yorkshire, who was born at Glan Clwyd, Bodfari, Nov. 14th, 1750, and died March 9, 1813. The extract is to be seen in the autobiography of Dr. Williams, which has been published, but the quotation now given is copied from the doctor's own handwriting, which now lies before me. It may be stated that Mr. Wirt Sikes, in his _British Goblins_, refers to the Dwarfs of Cae Caled, Bodfari, as Knockers, but he was not justified, as will be seen from the extract, in thus describing them. For the sake of reference the incident shall be called--The Elf Dancers of Cae Caled. _The Elf Dancers of Cae Caled_. Dr. Edward Williams, under the year 1757, writes as follows:-- "I am now going to relate a circumstance in this young period of my life which probably will excite an alternate smile and thoughtful reflection, as it has often done in myself, however singular the fact and strong the evidence of its authenticity, and, though I have often in mature age called to my mind the principles of religion and philosophy to account for it, I am forced to class it among my _unknowables_. And yet I may say that not only the fact itself, but also the consideration of its being to my own mind inexplicable, has afforded some useful reflections, with which this relation need not be accompanied. "On a fine summer day (about midsummer) between the hours of 12 at noon and one, my eldest sister and myself, our next neighbour's children Barbara and Ann Evans, both older than myself, were in a field called Cae Caled near their house, all innocently engaged at play by a hedge under a tree, and not far from the stile next to that house, when one of us observed on the middle of the field a company of--what shall I call them?--_Beings_, neither men, women, nor children, dancing with great briskness. They were full in view less than a hundred yards from us, consisting of about seven or eight couples: we could not well reckon them, owing to the briskness of their motions and the consternation with which we were struck at a sight so unusual. They were all clothed in red, a dress not unlike a military uniform, without hats, but their heads tied with handkerchiefs of a reddish colour, sprigged or spotted with yellow, all uniform in this as in habit, all tied behind with the corners hanging down their backs, and white handkerchiefs in their hands held loose by the corners. They appeared of a size somewhat less than our own, but more like dwarfs than children. On the first discovery we began, with no small dread, to question one another as to what they could be, as there were no soldiers in the country, nor was it the time for May dancers, and as they differed much from all the human beings we had ever seen. Thus alarmed we dropped our play, left our station, and made for the stile. Still keeping our eyes upon them we observed one of their company starting from the rest and making towards us with a running pace. I being the youngest was the last at the stile, and, though struck with an inexpressible panic, saw the _grim elf_ just at my heels, having a full and clear, though terrific view of him, with his ancient, swarthy, and grim complexion. I screamed out exceedingly; my sister also and our companions set up a roar, and the former dragged me with violence over the stile on which, at the instant I was disengaged from it, this warlike Lilliputian leaned and stretched himself after me, but came not over. With palpitating hearts and loud cries we ran towards the house, alarmed the family, and told them our trouble. The men instantly left their dinner, with whom still trembling we went to the place, and made the most solicitous and diligent enquiry in all the neighbourhood, both at that time and after, but never found the least vestige of any circumstance that could contribute to a solution of this remarkable phenomenon. Were any disposed to question the sufficiency of this quadruple evidence, the fact having been uniformly and often attested by each of the parties and various and separate examinations, and call it a childish deception, it would do them no harm to admit that, comparing themselves with the scale of universal existence, beings with which they certainly and others with whom it is possible they may be surrounded every moment, they are but children of a larger size. I know but few less credulous than the relator, but he is no Sadducee. 'He who hath delivered will yet deliver.'" My friend, Mr. R. Prys Jones, B.A., kindly informs me that he has several intelligent boys in his school, the Boys' Board School, Denbigh, from Bodfari, and to them he read the preceding story, but not one of them had ever heard of it. It is singular that the story should have died so soon in the neighbourhood that gave it birth. FAIRY TRICKS WITH MORTALS. It was formerly believed in Wales that the Fairies, for a little fun, sportively carried men in mid air from place to place, and, having conveyed them to a strange neighbourhood, left them to return to their homes as best they could. Benighted travellers were ever fearful of encountering a throng of Fairies lest they should by them be seized, and carried to a strange part of the country. Allusion is made to this freak of the Fairies in the _Cambro-Briton_, vol. i., p. 348:-- "And it seems that there was some reason to be apprehensive of encountering these 'Fair people' in a mist; for, although allowed not to be maliciously disposed, they had a very inconvenient practice of seizing an unwary pilgrim, and hurrying him through the air, first giving him the choice, however, of travelling above wind, mid-wind, or below wind. If he chose the former, he was borne to an altitude somewhat equal to that of a balloon; if the latter, he had the full benefit of all the brakes and briars in his way, his contact with which seldom failed to terminate in his discomfiture. Experienced travellers, therefore, always kept in mind the advice of Apollo to Phaeton (In medio tutissimus ibis) and selected the middle course, which ensured them a pleasant voyage at a moderate elevation, equally removed from the branches and the clouds." This description of an aerial voyage of a hapless traveller through Fairy agency corresponds with the popular faith in every particular, and it would not have been difficult some sixty, or so, years back, to have collected many tales in various parts of Wales of persons who had been subjected to this kind of conveyance. The first mention that I have been able to find of this Fairy prank is in a small book of prose poetry called _Gweledigaeth Cwrs y Byd_, or _Y Bardd Cwsg_, which was written by the Revd. Ellis Wynne (born 1670-1, died 1734), rector of Llanfair, near Harlech. The "Visions of the Sleeping Bard" were published in 1703, and in the work appear many superstitions of the people, some of which shall by and by be mentioned. In the very commencement of this work, the poet gives a description of a journey which he had made through the air with the Fairies. Addressing these beings, he says:--"Atolwg, lan gynnulleidfa, yr wyf yn deall mai rhai o bell ydych, a gymmerwch chwi Fardd i'ch plith sy'n chwennych trafaelio?" which in English is--"May it please you, comely assembly, as I understand that you come from afar, to take into your company a Bard who wishes to travel?" The poet's request is granted, and then he describes his aerial passage in these words:-- "Codasant fi ar eu hysgwyddau, fel codi Marchog Sir; ac yna ymaith a ni fel y gwynt, tros dai a thiroedd, dinasoedd a theyrnasoedd, a moroedd a mynyddoedd, heb allu dal sylw ar ddim, gan gyflymed yr oeddynt yn hedeg." This translated is:-- "They raised me on their shoulders, as they do a Knight of the Shire, and away we went like the wind, over houses and fields, over cities and kingdoms, over seas and mountains, but I was unable to notice particularly anything, because of the rapidity with which they flew." What the poet writes of his own flight with the Fairies depicts the then prevailing notions respecting aerial journeys by Fairy agencies, and they bear a striking resemblance to like stories in oriental fiction. That the belief in this form of transit survived the days of _Bardd Cwsg_ will be seen from the following tale related by my friend Mr. E. Hamer in his Parochial Account of Llanidloes:-- _A Man Carried Through the Air by the Fairies_. "One Edward Jones, or 'Ned the Jockey,' as he was familiarly called, resided, within the memory of the writer, in one of the roadside cottages a short distance from Llanidloes, on the Newtown road. While returning home late one evening, it was his fate to fall in with a troop of Fairies, who were not pleased to have their gambols disturbed by a mortal. Requesting him to depart, they politely offered him the choice of three means of locomotion, viz., being carried off by a 'high wind, middle wind, or low wind.' The jockey soon made up his mind, and elected to make his trip through the air by the assistance of a high wind. No sooner had he given his decision, than he found himself whisked high up into the air and his senses completely bewildered by the rapidity of his flight; he did not recover himself till he came in contact with the earth, being suddenly dropped in the middle of a garden near Ty Gough, on the Bryndu road, many miles distant from the spot whence he started on his aerial journey. Ned, when relating this story, would vouch for its genuineness in the most solemn manner, and the person who narrated it to the writer brought forward as a proof of its truth, 'that there was not the slightest trace of any person going into the garden while Ned was found in the middle of it.'" Montgomeryshire Collections, vol. x., p. 247. Mr. Hamer records another tale much like the foregoing, but the one I have given is a type of all such stories. Fairy illusion and phantasy were formerly firmly believed in by the inhabitants of Wales. Fairies were credited with being able to deceive the eyesight, if not also the other senses of man. One illustrative tale of this kind I will now record. Like stories are heard in many parts. The following story is taken from _Y Gordofigion_, p. 99, a book which has more than once been laid under contribution. FAIRY ILLUSIONS. "Ryw dro yr oedd brodor o Nefyn yn dyfod adref o ffair Pwllheli, ac wrth yr Efail Newydd gwelai _Inn_ fawreddog, a chan ei fod yn gwybod nad oedd yr un gwesty i fod yno, gofynodd i un o'r gweision os oedd ganddynt ystabl iddo roddi ei farch. Atebwyd yn gadarnhaol. Rhoddwyd y march yn yr ystabl, ac aeth yntau i mewn i'r ty, gofynodd am _beint_ o gwrw, ac ni chafodd erioed well cwrw na'r cwrw hwnw. Yn mhen ychydig, gofynodd am fyned i orphwys, a chafodd hyny hefyd. Aeth i'w orweddle, yr hwn ydoedd o ran gwychder yn deilwng i'r brenhin; ond wchw fawr! erbyn iddo ddeffro, cafodd ei hun yn gorwedd ar ei hyd mewn tomen ludw, a'r ceffyl wedi ei rwymo wrth bolyn clawdd gwrysg." This in English is as follows:--"Once upon a time a native of Nefyn was returning from Pwllheli fair, and when near Efail Newydd he saw a magnificent Inn, and, as he knew that no such public-house was really there, he went up to it and asked one of the servants whether they had a stable where he could put up his horse. He was answered in the affirmative. The horse was placed in the stable, and the man entered the house and asked for a pint of beer, which he thought was the best he had ever drunk. After awhile he inquired whether he could go to rest. This also was granted him, and he retired to his room, which in splendour was worthy of the king. But alas! when he awoke he found himself sleeping on his back on a heap of ashes, and the horse tied to a pole in the hedge." FAIRY MEN CAPTURED. There are many tales current of wee Fairy men having been captured. These tales are, however, evidently variants of the same story. The dwarfs are generally spoken of as having been caught by a trapper in his net, or bag, and the hunter, quite unconscious of the fact that a Fairy is in his bag, proceeds homewards, supposing that he has captured a badger, or some other kind of vermin, but, all at once, he hears the being in the bag speak, and throwing the bag down he runs away in a terrible fright. Such in short is the tale. I will proceed to give several versions of this story. 1. _Gwyddelwern Version_. The following tale was told by Mr. Evan Roberts, Ffridd Agored, a farmer in the parish of Llanfwrog. Roberts heard the story when he was a youth in the parish of Gwyddelwern. It is as follows:-- A man went from his house for peat to the stack on the hill. As he intended to carry away only a small quantity for immediate use, he took with him a bag to carry it home. When he got to the hill he saw something running before him, and he gave chase and caught it and bundled it into the bag. He had not proceeded far on his way before he heard a small voice shout somewhere near him, "Neddy, Neddy." And then he heard another small voice in the bag saying, "There is daddy calling me." No sooner did the man hear these words than in a terrible fright he threw the bag down, and ran home as fast as he could. 2. _The Llandrillo Version_. I am indebted for the following tale to Mr. E. S. Roberts, schoolmaster, Llantysilio, near Llangollen:-- Two men whilst otter-hunting in Gwyn Pennant, Llandrillo, saw something reddish scampering away across the ground just before them. They thought it was an otter, and watching it saw that it entered a hole by the side of the river. When they reached the place they found, underneath the roots of a tree, two burrows. They immediately set to work to catch their prey. Whilst one of the men pushed a long pole into one of the burrows, the other held the mouth of a sack to the other, and very shortly into the sack rushed their prey and it was secured. The men now went homewards, but they had not gone far, ere they heard a voice in the bag say, "My mother is calling me." The frightened men instantly threw the sack to the ground, and they saw a small man, clothed in red, emerge therefrom, and the wee creature ran away with all his might to the brushwood that grew along the banks of the river. 3. _The Snowdon Version_. The following tale is taken from _Y Gordofigion_, p. 98:-- "Aeth trigolion ardaloedd cylchynol y Wyddfa un tro i hela pryf llwyd. Methasant a chael golwg ar yr un y diwrnod cyntaf; ond cynllwynasant am un erbyn trannoeth, trwy osod sach a'i cheg yn agored ar dwll yr arferai y pryf fyned iddo, ond ni byddai byth yn dyfod allan drwyddo am ei fod yn rhy serth a llithrig. A'r modd a gosodasant y sach oedd rhoddi cortyn trwy dyllau yn ei cheg, yn y fath fodd ag y crychai, ac y ceuai ei cheg pan elai rhywbeth iddi. Felly fu; aeth pawb i'w fan, ac i'w wely y noson hono. Gyda'r wawr bore dranoeth, awd i edrych y sach, ac erbyn dyfod ati yr oedd ei cheg wedi crychu, yn arwydd fod rhywbeth oddifewn. Codwyd hi, a thaflodd un hi ar ei ysgwydd i'w dwyn adref. Ond pan yn agos i Bryn y Fedw wele dorpyn o ddynan bychan yn sefyll ar delpyn o graig gerllaw ac yn gwaeddi, 'Meirig, wyt ti yna, dwad?' 'Ydwyf,' attebai llais dieithr (ond dychrynedig) o'r sach. Ar hyn, wele'r helwyr yn dechreu rhedeg ymaith, a da oedd ganddynt wneyd hyny, er gadael y sach i'r pryf, gan dybied eu bod wedi dal yn y sach un o ysbrydion y pwll diwaelod, ond deallasant ar ol hyny mai un o'r Tylwyth Teg oedd yn y sach." The tale in English reads thus:--"Once the people who lived in the neighbourhood of Snowdon went badger-hunting. They failed the first day to get sight of one. But they laid a trap for one by the next day. This they did by placing a sack's open mouth with a noose through it at the entrance to the badger's den. The vermin was in the habit of entering his abode by one passage and leaving it by another. The one by which he entered was too precipitous and slippery to be used as an exit, and the trappers placed the sack in this hole, well knowing that the running noose in the mouth of the sack would close if anything entered. The next morning the hunters returned to the snare, and at once observed that the mouth of the sack was tightly drawn up, a sign that there was something in it. The bag was taken up and thrown on the shoulders of one of the men to be carried home. But when they were near Bryn y Fedw they saw a lump of a little fellow, standing on the top of a rock close by and shouting, 'Meirig, are you there, say?' 'I am,' was the answer in a strange but nervous voice. Upon this, the hunters, throwing down the bag, began to run away, and they were glad to do so, although they had to leave their sack behind them, believing, as they did, that they had captured one of the spirits of the bottomless pit. But afterwards they understood that it was one of the Fairy Tribe that was in the sack." There was at one time a tale much like this current in the parish of Gyffylliog, near Ruthin, but in this latter case the voice in the bag said, "My father is calling me," though no one was heard to do so. The bag, however, was cast away, and the trapper reported that he had captured a Fairy! 4. _The Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd Version_. Mr. Evan Davies, carpenter, Bryn Llan, Efenechtyd, told the writer that Robert Jones, innkeeper, in the same parish, told him the following tale, mentioning at the same time the man who figures in the narrative, whose name, however, I have forgotten. The story runs thus:-- A man, wishing to catch a fox, laid a bag with its mouth open, but well secured, at the entrance to a fox's den in Coed Cochion, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd parish, and hid himself to await the result. He had seen the fox enter its lair, and he calculated that it would ere long emerge therefrom. By and by, he observed that something had entered the bag, and going up to it, he immediately secured its mouth, and, throwing the bag over his shoulder, proceeded homewards, but he had not gone far on his way before he heard someone say, "Where is my son John?" The man, however, though it was dark, was not frightened, for he thought that possibly some one was in search of a lad who had wandered from home. He was rather troubled to find that the question was repeated time after time by some one who apparently was following him. But what was his terror when, ere long, he heard a small voice issue from the bag he was carrying, saying "There is dear father calling me." The man in a terrible fright threw the bag down, and ran away as fast as his feet could carry him, and never stopped until he reached his home, and when he came to himself he related the story of his adventure in the wood to his wife. FAIRIES IN MARKETS AND FAIRS. It was once firmly believed by the Welsh that the Fairy Tribe visited markets and fairs, and that their presence made business brisk. If there was a buzz in the market place, it was thought that the sound was made by the Fairies, and on such occasions the farmers' wives disposed quickly of their commodities; if, however, on the other hand, there was no buzz, the Fairies were absent, and there was then no business transacted. Mr. Richard Jones, Ty'n-y-Wern, Bryneglwys, who, when a youth, lived in Llanbedr parish, near Ruthin, informed the writer that his mother, after attending a market at Ruthin, would return home occasionally with the sad news that "They were not there," meaning that the Fairies were not present in the market, and this implied a bad market and no sweets for Richard. On the other hand, should the market have been a good one, she would tell them that "They filled the whole place," and the children always had the benefit of their presence. This belief that the Fairies sharpened the market was, I think, general. I find in _Y Gordofigion_, p. 97, the following words:-- "Byddai y Tylwyth Teg yn arfer myned i farchnadoedd y Bala, ac yn gwneud twrw mawr heb i neb eu gweled, ac yr oedd hyny yn arwydd fod y farchnad ar godi," which is:-- The Fairies were in the habit of frequenting Bala markets, and they made a great noise, without any one seeing them, and this was a sign that the market was sharpening. NAMES OF THINGS ATTRIBUTED TO THE FAIRIES. Many small stone utensils found in the ground, the use, or the origin, of which was unknown to the finders, were formerly attributed to the Fairies. Thus, flint arrow-heads were called elf shots, from the belief that they once belonged to Elves or Fairies. And celts, and other stone implements, were, by the peasants of Wales and other places, ascribed to the same small folk. Very small clay pipes were also attributed to the same people. All this is curious evidence of a pre-existing race, which the Celts supplanted, and from whom, in many respects, they differed. Although we cannot derive much positive knowledge from an enumeration of the articles popularly associated with the Fairies, still, such a list, though an imperfect one, will not be void of interest. I will, therefore, describe certain pre-historic remains, which have been attributed to the aboriginal people of Britain. _Fairy Pipes_. _Cetyn y Tylwyth Teg_, or Fairy Pipes, are small clay pipes, with bowls that will barely admit the tip of the little finger. They are found in many places, generally with the stem broken off, though usually the bowl is perfect. A short time ago I stayed awhile to talk with some workmen who were engaged in carting away the remains of a small farm house, once called _Y Bwlch_, in the parish of Efenechtyd, Denbighshire, and they told me that they had just found a Fairy Pipe, or, as they called it, _Cetyn y Tylwyth Teg_, which they gave me. A similar pipe was also picked up by Lewis Jones, Brynffynon, on Coed Marchan, in the same parish, when he was enclosing a part of the mountain allotted to his farm. In March, 1887, the workmen employed in taking down what were at one time buildings belonging to a bettermost kind of residence, opposite Llanfwrog Church, near Ruthin, also discovered one of these wee pipes. Pipes, identical in shape and size, have been found in all parts of Wales, and they are always known by the name of _Cetyn y Tylwyth Teg_, or Fairy Pipes. In Shropshire they have also been discovered in the Fens, and the late Rev. Canon Lee, Hanmer, had one in his possession, which had been found in those parts, and, it was called a Fairy Pipe. _Fairy Whetstone_. The small spindle whorls which belong to the stone age, and which have been discovered in the circular huts, called _Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod_, which are the earliest remains of human abodes in Wales, are by the people called Fairy Whetstones, but, undoubtedly, this name was given them from their resemblance to the large circular whetstone at present in common use, the finders being ignorant of the original use of these whorls. _Fairy Hammer and Fairy or Elf Stones_. Stone hammers of small size have been ascribed to the Fairies, and an intelligent Welsh miner once told the writer that he had himself seen, in a very ancient diminutive mine level, stone hammers which, he said, had once belonged to the Fairies. Other pre-historic implements, as celts, have been denominated Fairy remains. Under this head will come flint, or stone arrow-heads. These in Scotland are known by the name Elf Shots or Fairy Stones. Pennant's _Tour in Scotland_, 1769, p. 115, has the following reference to these arrow-heads:-- "_Elf Shots_, i.e., the stone arrow-heads of the old inhabitants of this island, are supposed to be weapons shot by Fairies at cattle, to which are attributed any disorders they have." Jamieson states in his Dictionary, under the heading Elf Shot:--"The _Elf Shot_ or _Elfin Arrow_ is still used in the Highlands as an amulet." Tradition, in thus connecting stone implements with the Fairies, throws a dim light on the elfin community. But evidence is not wanting that the Celts themselves used stone utensils. The things which shall now be mentioned, as being connected with the Fairies, owe their names to no foundation in fact, but are the offspring of a fanciful imagination, and are attributed to the Fairies in agreement with the more modern and grotesque notions concerning those beings and their doings. This will be seen when it is stated that the Fox Glove becomes a Fairy Glove, and the Mushroom, Fairy Food. _Ymenyn y Tylwyth Teg, or Fairy Butter_. I cannot do better than quote Pennant on this matter. His words are:-- "Petroleum, rock oil, or what the Welsh call it, _Ymenin tylwyth teg_, or Fairies' butter, has been found in the lime stone strata in our mineral country. It is a greasy substance, of an agreeable smell, and, I suppose, ascribed to the benign part of those imaginary beings. It is esteemed serviceable in rheumatic cases, rubbed on the parts affected. It retains a place in our dispensary." Pennant's _Whiteford_, p. 131. _Bwyd Ellyllon_, _or Goblins' Food_. This was a kind of fungus or mushroom. The word is given in Dr. Owen Pughe's dictionary under the head _Ellyll_. _Menyg y Tylwyth Teg_, _Or Fairy Gloves_. The Fox Glove is so called, but in Dr. Owen Pughe's dictionary, under the head _Ellyll_, the Fox Glove is called _Menyg Ellyllon_. _Yr Ellyll Dan_, _or Goblin Fire_. The Rev. T. H. Evans, in his _History of the Parish of Llanwddyn_, states that in that parish "Will of the Wisp" is called "_Yr Ellyll Dan_." This is indeed the common name for the _Ignis fatuus_ in most, if not in all parts of Wales, but in some places where English is spoken it is better known by the English term, "Jack o' Lantern," or "Jack y Lantern." _Rhaffau'r Tylwyth Teg_, _or the Ropes of the Fairies_. Professor Rhys, in his Welsh Fairy Tales--_Y Cymmrodor_ vol. v., p. 75--says, that gossamer, which is generally called in North Wales _edafedd gwawn_, or _gwawn_ yarn, used to be called, according to an informant, _Rhaffau'r Tylwyth Teg_, that is to say, the Ropes of the Fair Family, thus associating the Fairies with marshy, or rushy, places, or with ferns and heather as their dwelling places. It was supposed that if a man lay down to sleep in such places the Fairies would come and bind him with their ropes, and cover him with a gossamer sheet, which would make him invisible, and incapable of moving. FAIRY KNOCKERS, OR COBLYNAU. The _Coblynau_ or _Knockers_ were supposed to be a species of Fairies who had their abode in the rocks, and whose province it was to indicate by knocks, and other sounds, the presence of ore in mines. It would seem that many people had dim traditions of a small race who had their dwellings in the rocks. This wide-spread belief in the existence of cave men has, in our days, been shown to have had a foundation in fact, and many vestiges of this people have been revealed by intelligent cave hunters. But the age in which the cave men lived cannot even approximately be ascertained. In various parts of Wales, in the lime rock, their abodes have been brought to light. It is not improbable that the people who occupied the caves of ancient days were, in reality, the original Fairy Knockers. These people were invested, in after ages, by the wonder-loving mind of man, with supernatural powers. AEschylus, the Greek tragic poet, who died in the 69th year of his age, B.C. 456, in _Prometheus Vinctus_, refers to cave dwellers in a way that indicates that even then they belonged to a dateless antiquity. In Prometheus's speech to the chorus--[Greek]--lines 458-461, is a reference to this ancient tradition. His words, put into English, are these:--"And neither knew the warm brick-built houses exposed to the sun, nor working in wood, _but they dwelt underground_, like as little ants, _in the sunless recesses of caves_." The above quotation proves that the Greeks had a tradition that men in a low, or the lowest state of civilization, had their abodes in caves, and possibly the reference to ants would convey the idea that the cave dwellers were small people. Be this as it may, it is very remarkable that the word applied to a _dwarf_ in the dialects of the northern countries of Europe signifies also a _Fairy_, and the dwarfs, or Fairies, are there said to inhabit the rocks. The following quotation from Jamieson's _Scottish Dictionary_ under the word _Droich_, a dwarf, a pigmy, shows this to have been the case:-- "In the northern dialects, _dwerg_ does not merely signify a dwarf, but also a _Fairy_! The ancient Northern nations, it is said, prostrated themselves before rocks, believing that they were inhabited by these pigmies, and that they thence gave forth oracles. Hence they called the echo _dwergamal_, as believing it to be their voice or speech. . . They were accounted excellent artificers, especially as smiths, from which circumstance some suppose that they have received their name . . . Other Isl. writers assert that their ancestors did not worship the pigmies as they did the _genii_ or spirits, also supposed to reside in the rocks." Bishop Percy, in a letter to the Rev. Evan Evans (_Ieuan Prydydd Hir_), writes:-- "Nay, I make no doubt but Fairies are derived from the _Duergar_, or Dwarfs, whose existence was so generally believed among all the northern nations." _The Cambro-Briton_, vol. i., p. 331. And again in Percy's _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_, vol. iii., p. 171, are these remarks:-- "It is well known that our Saxon ancestors, long before they left their German forests, believed in the existence of a kind of diminutive demons, or middle species between men and spirits, whom they called _Duergar_, or Dwarfs, and to whom they attributed wonderful performances, far exceeding human art." Pennant, in his _Tour in Scotland_, 1772, pp. 55-56, when describing the collieries of Newcastle, describes the Knockers thus:-- "The immense caverns that lay between the pillars exhibited a most gloomy appearance. I could not help enquiring here after the imaginary inhabitant, the creation of the labourer's fancy, The swart Fairy of the mine; and was seriously answered by a black fellow at my elbow that he really had never met with any, but that his grandfather had found the little implements and tools belonging to this diminutive race of subterraneous spirits. The Germans believed in two species; one fierce and malevolent, the other a gentle race, appearing like little old men, dressed like the miners, and not much above two feet high; these wander about the drifts and chambers of the works, seem perpetually employed, yet do nothing. Some seem to cut the ore, or fling what is cut into vessels, or turn the windlass, but never do any harm to the miners, except provoked; as the sensible Agricola, in this point credulous, relates in his book, _de Animantibus Subterraneis_." Jamieson, under the word _Farefolkis_, writes:--"Besides the Fairies, which are more commonly the subject of popular tradition, it appears that our forefathers believed in the existence of a class of spirits under this name that wrought in the mines;" and again, quoting from a work dated 1658, the author of which says:-- "In northerne kingdomes there are great armies of devils that have their services which they perform with the inhabitants of these countries, but they are most frequent in rocks and _mines_, where they break, cleave, and make them hollow; which also thrust in pitchers and buckets, and carefully fit wheels and screws, whereby they are drawn upwards; and they show themselves to the labourers, when they list, like phantoms and ghosts." The preceding quotations from Pennant and Jamieson correspond with the Welsh miners' ideas of the _Coblynau_, or Knockers. There is a difficulty in tracing to their origin these opinions, but, on the whole, I am strongly inclined to say that they have come down to modern times from that remote period when cave-men existed as a distinct people. But now let us hear what our Welsh miners have to say about the _Coblynau_. I have spoken to several miners on this subject, and, although they confessed that they had not themselves heard these good little people at work, still they believed in their existence, and could name mines in which they had been heard. I was told that they are generally heard at work in new mines, and that they lead the men to the ore by knocking in its direction, and when the lode is reached the knocking ceases. But the following extracts from two letters written by Lewis Morris, a well-known and learned Welshman, fully express the current opinion of miners in Wales respecting Knockers. The first letter was written Oct. 14, 1754, and the latter is dated Dec. 4, 1754. They appear in Bingley's _North Wales_, vol. ii., pp. 269-272. Lewis Morris writes:-- "People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature (which, in other words, are the powers of the author of nature), will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the existence of _Knockers_ in mines, a kind of good natured impalpable people not to be seen, but heard, and who seem to us to work in the mines; that is to say, they are the types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents, which happen to us. The barometer falls before rain, or storms. If we do not know the construction of it, we should call it a kind of dream that foretells rain; but we know it is natural, and produced by natural means, comprehended by us. Now, how are we sure, or anybody sure, but that our dreams are produced by the same natural means? There is some faint resemblance of this in the sense of hearing; the bird is killed before we hear the report of the gun. However this is, I must speak well of the _Knockers_, for they have actually stood my good friends, whether they are aerial beings called spirits, or whether they are a people made of matter, not to be felt by our gross bodies, as air and fire and the like. "Before the discovery of the _Esgair y Mwyn_ mine, these little people, as we call them here, worked hard there day and night; and there are abundance of honest, sober people, who have heard them, and some persons who have no notion of them or of mines either; but after the discovery of the great ore they were heard no more. "When I began to work at Llwyn Llwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time that they frightened some young workmen out of the work. This was when we were driving levels, and before we had got any ore; but when we came to the ore, they then gave over, and I heard no more talk of them. "Our old miners are no more concerned at hearing them _blasting_, boring holes, landing _deads_, etc., than if they were some of their own people; and a single miner will stay in the work, in the dead of the night, without any man near him, and never think of any fear or of any harm they will do him. The miners have a notion that the _Knockers_ are of their own tribe and profession, and are a harmless people who mean well. Three or four miners together shall hear them sometimes, but if the miners stop to take notice of them, the _Knockers_ will also stop; but, let the miners go on at their work, suppose it is _boring_, the _Knockers_ will at the same time go on as brisk as can be in landing, _blasting_, or beating down the _loose_, and they are always heard a little distance from them before they come to the ore. "These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, though we cannot, and do not pretend to account for them. We have now very good ore at _Llwyn Llwyd_, where the _Knockers_ were heard to work, but have now yielded up the place, and are no more heard. Let who will laugh, we have the greatest reason to rejoice, and thank the _Knockers_, or rather God, who sends us these notices." The second letter is as follows:-- "I have no time to answer your objection against _Knockers_; I have a large treatise collected on that head, and what Mr. Derham says is nothing to the purpose. If sounds of voices, whispers, blasts, working, or pumping, can be carried on a mile underground, they should always be heard in the same place, and under the same advantages, and not once in a month, a year, or two years. Just before the discovery of ore last week, three men together in our work at _Llwyn Llwyd_ were ear-witnesses of _Knockers_ pumping, driving a wheelbarrow, etc.; but there is no pump in the work, nor any mine within less than a mile of it, in which there are pumps constantly going. If they were these pumps that they had heard, why were they never heard but that once in the space of a year? And why are they not now heard? But the pumps make so little noise that they cannot be heard in the other end of _Esgair y Mwyn_ mine when they are at work. "We have a dumb and deaf tailor in this neighbourhood who has a particular language of his own by signs, and by practice I can understand him, and make him understand me pretty well, and I am sure I could make him learn to write, and be understood by letters very soon, for he can distinguish men already by the letters of their names. Now letters are marks to convey ideas, just after the same manner as the motion of fingers, hands, eyes, etc. If this man had really seen ore in the bottom of a sink of water in a mine, and wanted to tell me how to come at it, he would take two sticks like a pump, and would make the motions of a pumper at the very sink where he knew the ore was, and would make the motions of driving a wheelbarrow. And what I should infer from thence would be that I ought to take out the water and sink or drive in the place, and wheel the stuff out. By parity of reasoning, the language of _Knockers_, by imitating the sound of pumping, wheeling, etc., signifies that we should take out the water and drive there. This is the opinion of all old miners, who pretend to understand the language of the _Knockers_. Our agent and manager, upon the strength of this notice, goes on and expects great things. You, and everybody that is not convinced of the being of _Knockers_, will laugh at these things, for they sound like dreams; so does every dark science. Can you make any illiterate man believe that it is possible to know the distance of two places by looking at them? Human knowledge is but of small extent, its bounds are within our view, we see nothing beyond these; the great universal creation contains powers, etc., that we cannot so much as guess at. May there not exist beings, and vast powers infinitely smaller than the particles of air, to whom air is as hard a body as the diamond is to us? Why not? There is neither great nor small, but by comparison. Our _Knockers_ are some of these powers, the guardians of mines. "You remember the story in Selden's Table-Talk of Sir Robert Cotton and others disputing about Moses's shoe. Lady Cotton came in and asked, 'Gentlemen, are you sure it _is_ a shoe?' So the first thing is to convince mankind that there is a set of creatures, a degree or so finer than we are, to whom we have given the name of _Knockers_ from the sounds we hear in our mines. This is to be done by a collection of their actions well attested, and that is what I have begun to do, and then let everyone judge for himself." The preceding remarks, made by an intelligent and reliable person, conversant with mines, and apparently uninfluenced by superstition, are at least worthy of consideration. The writer of these interesting letters states positively that sounds were heard; whether his attempt to solve the cause of these noises is satisfactory, and conclusive, is open to doubt. We must believe the facts asserted, although disagreeing with the solution of the difficulty connected with the sounds. Miners in all parts of England, Scotland, Wales, Germany, and other parts, believe in the existence of _Knockers_, whatever these may be, and here, as far as I am concerned, I leave the subject, with one remark only, which is, that I have never heard it said that anyone in Wales ever _saw_ one of these _Knockers_. In this they differ from Fairies, who, according to popular notions, have, time and again, been seen by mortal eyes; but this must have been when time was young. The writer is aware that Mr. Sikes, in his _British Goblins_, p. 28, gives an account of _Coblynau_ or _Knockers_ which he affirms had been seen by some children who were playing in a field in the parish of Bodfari, near Denbigh, and that they were dancing like mad, and terribly frightened the children. But in the autobiography of Dr. Edward Williams, already referred to, p. 98, whence Mr. Sikes derived his information of the Dwarfs of Cae Caled, they are called "_Beings_," and not _Coblynau_. Before concluding my remarks on Fairy Knockers I will give one more quotation from Bingley, who sums up the matter in the following words:-- "I am acquainted with the subject only from report, but I can assure my readers that I found few people in Wales that did not give full credence to it. The elucidation of these extraordinary facts must be left to those persons who have better opportunities of inquiring into them than I have. I may be permitted to express a hope that the subject will not be neglected, and that those who reside in any neighbourhood where the noises are heard will carefully investigate their cause, and, if possible, give to the world a more accurate account of them than the present. In the year 1799 they were heard in some mines in the parish of Llanvihangel Ysgeiviog, in Anglesea, where they continued, at intervals, for some weeks." Bingley's _North Wales_, vol. ii., p. 275. In conclusion, I may remark that in living miners' days, as already stated, Knockers have not been heard. Possibly Davy's Safety Lamp and good ventilation have been their destruction. Their existence was believed in when mining operations, such as now prevail, were unknown, and their origin is to be sought for among the dim traditions that many countries have of the existence of small cave men. _The Pwka_, _or Pwca_. Another imaginary being, closely allied to the Fairy family, was the _Pwka_. He seems to have possessed many of the mischievous qualities of Shakespeare's Puck, whom, also, he resembled in name, and it is said that the _Pwka_, in common with the _Brownie_, was a willing worker. The Rev. Edmund Jones in his _Book of Apparitions_ gives an account of one of these goblins, which visited the house of Job John Harry, who lived at a place called the Trwyn, and hence the visitor is called Pwka'r Trwyn, and many strange tales are related of this spirit. The writer of the _Apparitions_ states that the spirit stayed in Job's house from some time before Christmas until Easter Wednesday. He writes:--"At first it came knocking at the door, chiefly by night, which it continued to do for a length of time, by which they were often deceived, by opening it. At last it spoke to one who opened the door, upon which they were much terrified, which being known, brought many of the neighbours to watch with the family. T. E. foolishly brought a gun with him to shoot the spirit, as he said, and sat in the corner. As Job was coming home that night the spirit met him, and told him that there was a man come to the house to shoot him, 'but,' said he, 'thou shalt see how I will beat him.' As soon as Job was come to the house stones were thrown at the man that brought the gun, from which he received severe blows. The company tried to defend him from the blows of the stones, which did strike him and no other person; but it was in vain, so that he was obliged to go home that night, though it was very late; he had a great way to go. When the spirit spoke, which was not very often, it was mostly out of the oven by the hearth's side. He would sometimes in the night make music with Harry Job's fiddle. One time he struck the cupboard with stones, the marks of which were to be seen, if they are not there still. Another time he gave Job a gentle stroke upon his toe, when he was going to bed, upon which Job said, 'Thou art curious in smiting,' to which the spirit answered, 'I can smite thee where I please.' They were at length grown fearless and bold to speak to it, and its speeches and actions were a recreation to them, seeing it was a familiar kind of spirit which did not hurt them, and informed them of some things which they did not know. One old man, more bold than wise, on hearing the spirit just by him, threatened to stick him with his knife, to which he answered, 'Thou fool, how can thou stick what thou cannot see with thine eyes.' The spirit told them that he came from Pwll-y-Gaseg, _i.e_., Mare's Pit, a place so called in the adjacent mountain, and that he knew them all before he came there. . . . On Easter Wednesday he left the house and took his farewell in these words:--'Dos yn iack, Job,' _i.e_., 'Farewell, Job,' to which Job said, 'Where goest thou?' He was answered, 'Where God pleases.'" The Pwka was credited with maliciously leading benighted men astray. He would appear with a lantern or candle in hand, some little distance in front of the traveller, and without any exertion keep ahead of him, and leading him through rocky and dangerous places, would suddenly, with an ironical laugh blow out the candle, and disappear, and leave the man to his fate. The following tale, taken from Croker's _Fairy Legends of Ireland_, vol. ii., pp. 231-3, well illustrates this mischievous trait in the character of the Pwka. The writer has seen the tale elsewhere, but as it differs only slightly from that recorded by Croker, he gives it in the words of this author. His words are as follows:-- "Cwm Pwcca, or the Pwcca's Valley, forms part of the deep and romantic glen of the Clydach, which, before the establishment of the iron works of Messrs. Frere and Powell, was one of the most secluded spots in Wales, and therefore well calculated for the haunt of goblins and fairies; but the bustle of a manufactory has now in a great measure scared these beings away, and of late it is very rarely that any of its former inhabitants, the Pwccas, are seen. Such, however, is their attachment to their ancient haunt, that they have not entirely deserted it, as there was lately living near this valley a man who used to assert that he had seen one, and had a narrow escape of losing his life, through the maliciousness of the goblin. As he was one night returning home over the mountain from his work, he perceived at some distance before him a light, which seemed to proceed from a candle in a lantern, and upon looking more attentively, he saw what he took to be a human figure carrying it, which he concluded to be one of his neighbours likewise returning from his work. As he perceived that the figure was going the same way with himself, he quickened his pace in order that he might overtake him, and have the benefit of his light to descend the steep and rocky path which led into the valley; but he rather wondered that such a short person as appeared to carry the lantern should be able to walk so fast. However, he re-doubled his exertions, determined to come up with him, and although he had some misgivings that he was not going along the usual track, yet he thought that the man with the lantern must know better than himself, and he followed the direction taken by him without further hesitation. Having, by dint of hard walking, overtaken him, he suddenly found himself on the brink of one of the tremendous precipices of Cwm Pwcca, down which another step would have carried him headlong into the roaring torrent beneath. And, to complete his consternation, at the very instant he stopped, the little fellow with the lantern made a spring right across the glen to the opposite side, and there, holding up the light above his head, turned round and uttered with all his might a loud and most malicious laugh, upon which he blew out his candle, and disappeared up the opposite hill." This spirit is also said to have assisted men in their labours, and servant girls and servant men often had their arduous burdens lightened by his willing hands. But he punished those who offended him in a vindictive manner. The Pwka could hide himself in a jug of barm or in a ball of yarn, and when he left a place, it was for ever. In the next chapter I will treat of another phase of legendary lore, which, although highly imaginative, seems to intimate that the people who transmitted these tales had some knowledge, though an exaggerated one, of a people and system which they supplanted. FAIRY, OR MYTHIC ANIMALS. From the Myddvai Legend it would appear that the Fairies possessed sheep, cattle, goats, and horses, and from other tales we see that they had dogs, etc. Their stock, therefore, was much like that of ordinary farmers in our days. But Fairy animals, like their owners, have, in the course of ages, been endowed with supernatural powers. In this chapter shall be given a short history of these mythical animals. _Cwn Annwn_, _or Dogs of the Abyss_. The words _Cwn Annwn_ are variously translated as Dogs of Hell, Dogs of Elfinland. In some parts of Wales they are called _Cwn Wybir_, Dogs of the Sky, and in other places _Cwn Bendith Y Mamau_. We have seen that "_Bendith y Mamau_" is a name given to the Fairies, and in this way these dogs become Fairy Dogs. A description of these Fairy dogs is given in _Y Brython_, vol. iii p. 22. Briefly stated it is as follows:--_Cwn Bendith y Mamau_ were a pack of small hounds, headed by a large dog. Their howl was something terrible to listen to, and it foretold death. At their approach all other dogs ceased barking, and fled before them in terror, taking refuge in their kennels. The birds of the air stopped singing in the groves when they heard their cry, and even the owl was silent when they were near. The laugh of the young, and the talk at the fireside were hushed when the dreadful howl of these Hell hounds was heard, and pale and trembling with fear the inmates crowded together for mutual protection. And what was worse than all, these dogs often foretold a death in some particular family in the neighbourhood where they appeared, and should a member of this family be in a public-house, or other place of amusement, his fright would be so great that he could not move, believing that already had death seized upon some one in his house. The Fairy dogs howled more at Cross-roads, and such like public places, than elsewhere. And woe betide any one who stood in their way, for they bit them, and were likely even to drag a man away with them, and their bite was often fatal. They collected together in huge numbers in the churchyard where the person whose death they announced was to be buried, and, howling around the place that was to be his grave, disappeared on that very spot, sinking there into the earth, and afterwards they were not to be seen. A somewhat different description of _Cwn Annwn_ is given in the _Cambro-Briton_, vol. i., p. 350. Here we are told that "these terrific animals are supposed to be devils under the semblance of hunting dogs . . . and they are usually accompanied by fire in some form or other. Their appearance is supposed to indicate the death of some friend or relative of the person to whom they shew themselves. They have never been known to commit any mischief on the persons of either man or woman, goat, sheep, or cow, etc." In Motley's _Tales of the Cymry_, p. 58, that author says:--"I have met with but a few old people who still cherished a belief in these infernal hounds which were supposed after death to hunt the souls of the wretched to their allotted place of torment." It was, however, once firmly and generally believed, that these awful creatures could be heard of a wild stormy night in full cry pursuing the souls of the unbaptized and unshriven. Mr. Chapman, Dolfor, near Newtown, Montgomeryshire, writes to me thus:--"These mysterious animals are never seen, only heard. A whole pack were recently heard on the borders of Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire. They went from the Kerry hills towards the Llanbadarn road, and a funeral quickly followed the same route. The sound was similar to that made by a pack of hounds in full cry, but softer in tone." The Rev. Edmund Jones, in his work entitled "An Account of Apparitions of Spirits in the county of Monmouth," says that, "The nearer these dogs are to a man, the less their voice is, and the farther the louder, and sometimes, like the voice of a great hound, or like that of a blood hound, a deep hollow voice." It is needless to say that this gentleman believed implicitly in the existence of _Cwn Annwn_, and adduces instances of their appearance. The following is one of his tales:-- "As Thomas Andrews was coming towards home one night with some persons with him, he heard, as he thought, the sound of hunting. He was afraid it was some person hunting the sheep, so he hastened on to meet, and hinder them; he heard them coming towards him, though he saw them not. When they came near him, their voices were but small, but increasing as they went from him; they went down the steep towards the river _Ebwy_, dividing between this parish and _Mynyddislwyn_, whereby he knew they were what are called _Cwn wybir_ (Sky dogs), but in the inward part of Wales _Cwn Annwn_ (Dogs of Hell). I have heard say that these spiritual hunting-dogs have been heard to pass by the eaves of several houses before the death of someone in the family. Thomas Andrews was an honest, religious man, and would not have told an untruth either for fear or for favour." The colour of these dogs is variously given, as white, with red ears, and an old man informed Mr. Motley that their colour was blood-red, and that they always were dripping with gore, and that their eyes and teeth were of fire. This person confessed that he had never seen these dogs, but that he described them from what he had heard.--_Tales of the Cymry_, p. 60. There is in _The Cambro-Briton_, vol. ii., p. 271, another and more natural description of _Cwn Annwn_. It is there stated that Pwyll, prince of Dyved, went out to hunt, and:-- "He sounded his horn and began to enter upon the chase, following his dogs and separating from his companions. And, as he was listening to the cry of his pack, he could distinctly hear the cry of another pack, different from that of his own, and which was coming in an opposite direction. He could also discern an opening in the wood towards a level plain; and as his pack was entering the skirt of the opening, he perceived a stag before the other pack, and about the middle of the glade the pack in the rear coming up and throwing the stag on the ground; upon this be fixed his attention on the colour of the pack without recollecting to look at the stag; and, of all the hounds in the world he had ever seen, he never saw any like them in colour. Their colour was a shining clear white, with red ears; and the whiteness of the dogs, and the redness of their ears, were equally conspicuous." We are informed that these dogs belonged to Arawn, or the silver-tongued King of Annwn, of the lower or southern regions. In this way these dogs are identified with the creatures treated of in this chapter. But their work was less weird than soul-hunting. A superstition akin to that attached to _Cwn Annwn_ prevails in many countries, as in Normandy and Bretagne. In Devonshire, the Wish, or Wisked Hounds, were once believed in, and certain places on Dartmoor were thought to be their peculiar resort, and it was supposed that they hunted on certain nights, one of which was always St. John's Eve. These terrible creations of a cruel mind indicate a phase of faith antagonistic to, and therefore more ancient than, Christianity. With another quotation from _Tales of the Cymry_ (p. 61-62), I will conclude my remarks:-- "In the north of Devon the spectral pack are called Yesh hounds and Yell hounds. There is another legend, evidently of Christian origin, which represents them in incessant pursuit of a lost spirit. In the northern quarter of the moor the Wish hounds, in pursuit of the spirit of a man who had been well known in the country, entered a cottage, the door of which had been incautiously left open, and ran round the kitchen, but quietly, without their usual cry. The Sunday after the same man appeared in church, and the person whose house the dogs had entered, made bold by the consecrated place in which they were, ventured to ask why he had been with the Wish hounds. 'Why should not my spirit wander,' he replied, 'as well as another man's?' Another version represents the hounds as following the spirit of a beautiful woman, changed into the form of a hare; and the reader will find a similar legend, with some remarkable additions, in the Disquisitiones Magicae of the Jesuit Delrio, lib. vi., c.2." The preceding paragraph is from the pen of "R.J.K.," and appears in the _Athenaeum_, March 27, 1847, Art. Folk-lore. _The Fairy Cow_. There are many traditions afloat about a wonderful cow, that supplied whole neighbourhoods with milk, which ceased when wantonly wasted. In some parts of England this is called the Dun Cow; in Shropshire she becomes also the _White Cow_; in Wales she is, _Y Fuwch Frech_, or _Y Fuwch Gyfeiliorn_. This mystic cow has found a home in many places. One of these is the wild mountain land between Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr and a hamlet called Clawdd Newydd about four miles from Ruthin. About midway between these two places is a bridge called Pontpetrual, and about half a mile from the bridge to the north is a small mountain farm called _Cefn Bannog_, and near this farm, but on the unenclosed mountain, are traces of primitive abodes, and it was here that, tradition says, the _Fuwch Frech_ had her home. But I will now give the history of this strange cow as I heard it from the mouth of Thomas Jones, Cefn Bannog. _Y Fuwch Frech_. _The Freckled Cow_. In ages long gone by, my informant knew not how long ago, a wonderful cow had her pasture land on the hill close to the farm, called Cefn Bannog, after the mountain ridge so named. It would seem that the cow was carefully looked after, as indicated by the names of places bearing her name. The site of the cow house is still pointed out, and retains its name, _Preseb y Fuwch Frech_--the Crib of the Freckled Cow. Close to this place are traces of a small enclosure called _Gwal Erw y Fuwch Frech_, or the Freckled Cow's Meadow. There is what was once a track way leading from the ruins of the cow house to a spring called _Ffynon y Fuwch Frech_, or the Freckled Cow's Well, and it was, tradition says, at this well that the cow quenched her thirst. The well is about 150 yards from the cow house. Then there is the feeding ground of the cow called, _Waen Banawg_, which is about half a mile from the cow house. There are traces of walls several feet thick in these places. The spot is a lonely one, but ferns and heather flourish luxuriantly all about this ancient homestead. It is also said that this cow was the mother of the _Ychain Banawg_, or large-horned oxen. But now to proceed to the tradition that makes the memory of this cow dear to the inhabitants of the Denbighshire moorland. Old people have transmitted from generation to generation the following strange tale of the Freckled Cow. Whenever any one was in want of milk they went to this cow, taking with them a vessel into which they milked the cow, and, however big this vessel was, they always departed with the pail filled with rich milk, and it made no difference, however often she was milked, she could never be milked dry. This continued for a long time, and glad indeed the people were to avail themselves of the inexhaustible supply of new milk, freely given to them all. At last a wicked hag, filled with envy at the people's prosperity, determined to milk the cow dry, and for this purpose she took a riddle with her, and milked and milked the cow, until at last she could get no more milk from her. But, sad to say, the cow immediately, upon this treatment, left the country, and was never more seen. Such is the local history of the Freckled Cow. Tradition further states that she went straight to a lake four miles off, bellowing as she went, and that she was followed by her two children the _Dau Eidion Banawg_, the two long-horned oxen, to _Llyn dau ychain_, the Lake of the Two Oxen, in the parish of Cerrig-y-drudion, and that she entered the lake and the two long-horned oxen, bellowing horribly, went, one on either side the lake, and with their mother disappeared within its waters, and none were ever afterwards seen. Notwithstanding that tradition buries these celebrated cattle in this lake, I find in a book published by Dr. John Williams, the father of the Rev. John Williams, M.A., Vicar of Llanwddyn, in the year 1830, on the "Natural History of Llanrwst," the following statement. The author in page 17, when speaking of _Gwydir_, says:-- "In the middle court (which was once surrounded by the house), there is a large bone, which appears to be the rib of some species of whale, but according to the vulgar opinion, it is the rib of the Dun Cow (_y Fuwch Frech_), killed by the Earl of Warwick." It may be stated that Llanrwst is not many miles distant from Cerrig-y-drudion and yet we have in these places conflicting traditions, which I will not endeavour to reconcile. The Shropshire tale of the Fairy Cow is much the same as the preceding. There she is known as _The White Cow of __Mitchell's Fold_. This place is situated on the Corndon Hill, a bare moorland in the extreme west of Shropshire. To this day there is to be seen there a stone circle known as Mitchell's Fold. The story of the Shropshire Cow is this. There was a dire famine in those parts, and the people depended for support on a beautiful white cow, a Fairy cow, that gave milk to everybody, and it mattered not how many came, there was always enough for all, and it was to be so, so long as every one who came only took one pailful. The cow came night and morning to be milked, and it made no difference what size the vessel was that was brought by each person, for she always gave enough milk to fill it, and all the other pails. At last, there came an old witch to Mitchell's Fold, and in spite and malice she brought a riddle and milked the cow into it; she milked and milked, and at last she milked her dry, and after that the cow was never seen. Folk say she was turned into a stone. I am indebted to Miss Burne's _Shropshire Folk-Lore_ for the particulars above given. A like tale is to be heard in Warwickshire, and also in Lancashire, near Preston, where the Dun cow gave freely her milk to all in time of drought, and disappeared on being subjected to the treatment of the Welsh and Shropshire cow. Mr. Lloyd, Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr, gave me a different tale of the _Dau ychain Banawg_ to that already related. His story is as follows:-- _The Legend of Llyn y ddau ychain_. The speckled cow had two calves, which, when they grew up, became strong oxen. In those days there was a wicked spirit that troubled Cerrig-y-drudion Church, and the people greatly feared this spirit, and everybody was afraid, even in the day-time, to pass the church, for there, day after day, they saw the evil one looking out of the church windows and grinning at them. They did not know what to do to get rid of this spirit, but at last they consulted a famous conjuror, who told them that no one could dislodge their enemy but the _Dau ychain Banawg_. They knew of the two long-horned cattle which fed on Waen Banawg. There, therefore, they went, and brought the powerful yoke to the church. After considerable difficulty they succeeded in dislodging the spirit, and in securing it to a sledge to which these oxen were yoked, and now struggling to get free, he was dragged along by the powerful oxen towards a lake on Hiraethog Mountain, but so ponderous was their load and so fearful was the spirit's contentions that the sledge ploughed the land between the church and the lake as they went along, leaving in the course that they took deep furrows, and when they came to the hill so terrible were the struggles of the oxen to get along that the marks of their hoofs were left in the rocks where they may still be seen. When at last they reached the lake the spirit would not yield, and therefore oxen, sledge, and spirit were driven into the lake, and thus was the country rid of the evil one, and hence the name of the lake--the Lake of the Two Oxen--for the oxen likewise perished in the lake. The foregoing legend is evidently founded on the older and more obscure story of Hu Gardarn, or Hu the Mighty, who with his _Dau ychain Banawg_ drew to land the _avanc_ out of _Llyn Llion_, so that the lake burst out no more to deluge the earth. For, be it known, it was this _avanc_ that had occasioned the flood. However, there is a rival claimant for the honour of having destroyed the _avanc_, whatever that might have been, for, in Hindu Mythology, Vishnu is credited with having slain the monster that had occasioned the Deluge. This last bit of Folk-lore about Hu Gadarn, which is found in the _Triads_, shows how widespread, and how very ancient, Welsh tales are. Hu Gadarn is by some writers identified with Noah. He was endowed, it would seem, with all the qualities of the gods of the Greeks, Egyptians, and Orientals, and his name is applied by the Welsh poets of the middle ages to the Supreme Being. _Y Fuwch Gyfeiliorn_. _The Stray Cow_. The history of the Fairy Stray Cow appears in _Y Brython_, vol. iii., pp. 183-4. The writer of the story states that he obtained his materials from a Paper by the late Dr. Pugh, Penhelyg, Aberdovey. The article alluded to by Gwilym Droed-ddu, the writer of the account in the _Brython_, appeared in the _Archaeologia Cambrensis_ for 1853, pp. 201-5. The tale, as given by Dr. Pugh, is reproduced by Professor Rhys in his Welsh Fairy Tales, and it is much less embellished in English than in Welsh. I will quote as much of the Doctor's account as refers to the Stray Cow. "A shrewd old hill farmer (Thomas Abergroes by name), well skilled in the folk-lore of the district, informed me that, in years gone by, though when, exactly, he was too young to remember, those dames (_Gwragedd Annwn_) were wont to make their appearance, arrayed in green, in the neighbourhood of Llyn Barfog, chiefly at eventide, accompanied by their kine and hounds, and that, on quiet summer nights in particular, these ban-hounds were often to be heard in full cry, pursuing their prey--the souls of doomed men dying without baptism and penance--along the upland township of Cefnrhosucha. Many a farmer had a sight of their comely, milk-white kine; many a swain had his soul turned to romance and poesy by a sudden vision of themselves in the guise of damsels arrayed in green, and radiant in beauty and grace; and many a sportsman had his path crossed by their white hounds of supernatural fleetness and comeliness, the _Cwn Annwn_; but never had any one been favoured with more than a passing view of either, till an old farmer residing at Dyssyrnant, in the adjoining valley of Dyffryn Gwyn, became at last the lucky captor of one of their milk-white kine. The acquaintance which the _Gwartheg y Llyn_, the kine of the lake, had formed with the farmer's cattle, like the loves of the angels for the daughters of men, became the means of capture; and the farmer was thereby enabled to add the mystic cow to his own herd, an event in all cases believed to be most conducive to the worldly prosperity of him who should make so fortunate an acquisition. Never was there such a cow, never were there such calves, never such milk and butter, or cheese; and the fame of the _Fuwch Gyfeiliorn_, the stray cow, was soon spread abroad through that central part of Wales known as the district of Rhwng y ddwy Afon, from the banks of the Mawddach to those of the Dofwy (Dovey)--from Aberdiswnwy to Abercorris. The farmer, from a small beginning, rapidly became, like Job, a man of substance, possessed of thriving herds of cattle--a very patriarch among the mountains. But, alas! wanting Job's restraining grace, his wealth made him proud, his pride made him forget his obligation to the elfin cow, and fearing she might soon become too old to be profitable, he fattened her for the butcher, and then even she did not fail to distinguish herself, for a more monstrously fat beast was never seen. At last the day of slaughter came--an eventful day in the annals of a mountain farm--the killing of a fat cow, and such a monster of obesity. No wonder all the neighbours were gathered together to see the sight. The old farmer looked upon the preparations in self-pleased importance; the butcher felt he was about no common feat of his craft, and, baring his arm, he struck the blow--not now fatal, for before even a hair had been injured, his arm was paralysed, the knife dropped from his hand, and the whole company was electrified by a piercing cry that awakened an echo in a dozen hills, and made the welkin ring again; and lo and behold! the whole assemblage saw a female figure, clad in green, with uplifted arms, standing on one of the rocks overhanging Llyn Barfog, and heard her calling with a voice loud as thunder:-- 'Dere di velen Einion, Cyrn cyveiliorn--braith y Llyn, A'r voel Dodin, Codwch, dewch adre.' 'Come thou Einion's yellow one, Stray horns--speckled one of the Lake, And the hornless Dodin, Arise, come home.' And no sooner were these words of power uttered, than the original lake cow, and all her progeny to the third and fourth generations, were in full flight towards the heights of Llyn Barfog, as if pursued by the evil one. Self-interest quickly roused the farmer, who followed in pursuit, till, breathless and panting, he gained an eminence overlooking the lake, but with no better success than to behold the green-attired dame leisurely descending mid-lake, accompanied by the fugitive cows, and her calves formed in a circle around her; they tossed their tails, she waved her hands in scorn, as much as to say, 'You may catch us, my friend, if you can,' as they disappeared beneath the dark waters of the lake, leaving only the yellow water-lily to mark the spot where they vanished, and to perpetuate the memory of this strange event. Meanwhile, the farmer looked with rueful countenance upon the spot where the elfin herd disappeared, and had ample leisure to deplore the effects of his greediness, as with them also departed the prosperity which had hitherto attended him, and he became impoverished to a degree below his original circumstances, and in his altered circumstances few felt pity for one who, in the noontide flow of prosperity, had shown himself so far forgetful of favours received, as to purpose slaying his benefactor." Thus ends Dr. Pugh's account of the Stray Cow. A tale very much like the preceding is recorded of a Scotch farmer. It is to be found in vol. ii., pp. 45-6, of Croker's _Fairy Legends of Ireland_, and is as follows:-- "A farmer who lived near a river had a cow which regularly every year, on a certain day in May, left the meadow and went slowly along the banks of the river till she came opposite to a small island overgrown with bushes; she went into the water and waded or swam towards the island, where she passed some time, and then returned to her pasture. This continued for several years; and every year, at the usual season, she produced a calf which perfectly resembled the elf bull. One afternoon, about Martinmas, the farmer, when all the corn was got in and measured, was sitting at his fireside, and the subject of the conversation was, which of the cattle should be killed for Christmas. He said: 'We'll have the cow; she is well fed, and has rendered good services in ploughing, and filled the stalls with fine oxen, now we will pick her old bones.' Scarcely had he uttered these words when the cow with her young ones rushed through the walls as if they had been made of paper, went round the dunghill, bellowed at each of her calves, and then drove them all before her, according to their age, towards the river, where they got into the water, reached the island, and vanished among the bushes. They were never more heard of." _Ceffyl y Dwfr_. _The Water Horse_. The superstition respecting the water-horse, in one form or other, is common to the Celtic race. He was supposed to intimate by preternatural lights and noises the death of those about to perish by water, and it was vulgarly believed that he even assisted in drowning his victims. The water-horse was thought to be an evil spirit, who, assuming the shape of a horse, tried to allure the unwary to mount him, and then soaring into the clouds, or rushing over mountain, and water, would suddenly vanish into air or mist, and precipitate his rider to destruction. The Welsh water-horse resembles the Kelpie of the Scotch. Jamieson, under the word _Kelpie_, in his _Scottish Dictionary_, quoting from various authors, as is his custom, says:-- "This is described as an aquatic demon, who drowns not only men but ships. The ancient Northern nations believed that he had the form of a horse; and the same opinion is still held by the vulgar in Iceland. "Loccenius informs us that in Sweden the vulgar are still afraid of his power, and that swimmers are on their guard against his attacks; being persuaded that he suffocates and carries off those whom he catches under water." "Therefore," adds this writer, "it would seem that ferry-men warn those who are crossing dangerous places in some rivers not so much as to mention his name; lest, as they say, they should meet with a storm and be in danger of losing their lives. Hence, doubtless, has this superstition originated; that, in these places formerly, during the time of paganism, those who worshipped their sea-deity _Nekr_, did so, as it were with a sacred silence, for the reason already given." The Scotch Kelpie closely resembled the Irish Phoocah, or Poocah, a mischievous being, who was particularly dreaded on the night of All Hallow E'en, when it was thought he had especial power; he delighted to assume the form of a black horse, and should any luckless wight bestride the fiendish steed, he was carried through brake and mire, over water and land at a bewildering pace. Woe-betide the timid rider, for the Poocah made short work of such an one, and soon made him kiss the ground. But to the bold fearless rider the Poocah submitted willingly, and became his obedient beast of burden. The following quotation from the _Tales of the Cymry_, p. 151, which is itself an extract from Mrs. S. C. Hall's _Ireland_, graphically describes the Irish water fiend:-- "The great object of the Poocah seems to be to obtain a rider, and then he is in all his most malignant glory. Headlong he dashes through briar and brake, through flood and fall, over mountain, valley, moor, and river indiscriminately; up and down precipice is alike to him, provided he gratifies the malevolence that seems to inspire him. He bounds and flies over and beyond them, gratified by the distress, and utterly reckless and ruthless of the cries, and danger, and suffering of the luckless wight who bestrides him." Sometimes the Poocah assumed the form of a goat, an eagle, or of some other animal, and leaped upon the shoulders of the unwary traveller, and clung to him, however frantic were the exertions to get rid of the monster. Allied to the water-horse were the horses upon which magicians in various lands were supposed to perform their aerial journeys. It was believed in Wales that the clergy could, without danger, ride the water-horse, and the writer has heard a tale of a clergyman, who, when bestride one of these horses, had compassion on his parish clerk, who was trudging by his side, and permitted him to mount behind him, on condition that he should keep silence when upon the horse's back. For awhile the loquacious parish clerk said no word, but ere long the wondrous pace of the horse caused him to utter a pious ejaculation, and no sooner were the words uttered than he was thrown to the ground; his master kept his seat, and, on parting with the fallen parish official, shouted out, "Serve you right, why did you not keep your noisy tongue quiet?" The weird legends and gloomy creations of the Celt assume a mild and frolicsome feature when interpreted by the Saxon mind. The malevolent Poocah becomes in England the fun-loving Puck, who delights in playing his pranks on village maidens, and who says:-- I am that merry wanderer of the night; Jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal; And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab; And when she drinks against her lips I bob, And on her withered dew-lap pour the ale. _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act I, Sc. I. The _Ceffyl-y-Dwfr_ was very different to Chaucer's wonderful brass horse, which could be ridden, without harm, by a sleeping rider:-- This steed of brasse, and easilie and well Can in the space of a day naturel, This is to say, in foure and twenty houres, Where so ye lists, in drought or elles showers, Baren yours bodie into everie place, In which your hearte willeth for to pace, Withouten wemme of you through foul or fair, Or if you liste to flee as high in th' aire As doth an eagle when him liste to soare, This same steed shall bear you evermore, Withouten harm, till ye be there you leste, Though that ye sleepen on his back or reste; And turn againe with writhing of a pinne, He that it wroughte he coulde many a gin, He waited many a constellation, Ere he had done this operation. _Chaucer's Squire's Tale_, 137-152. The rider of the magic horse was made acquainted with the charm that secured its obedience, for otherwise he took an aerial ride at his peril. This kind of invention is oriental, but it is sufficiently like the Celtic in outline to indicate that all figments of the kind had undoubtedly a common origin. I have seen it somewhere stated, but where I cannot recall to mind, that, the Water Horses did, in olden times, sport, on the Welsh mountains, with the puny native ponies, before they became a mixed breed. It was believed that the initiated could conjure up the River Horse by shaking a magic bridle over the pool wherein it dwelt. There is much curious information respecting this mythic animal in the _Tales of the Cymry_ and from this work I have culled many thoughts. _The Torrent Spectre_. This spectre was supposed to be an old man, or malignant spirit, who directed, and ruled over, the mountain torrents. He delighted in devastating the lands. His appearance was horrible to behold, and it was believed that in the midst of the rushing stream his terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a mist always surrounded him. Davies, in his _Mythology of the Druids_, says that believers in this strange superstition are yet to be met with in Glamorganshire. Davies was born in the parish of Llanvareth, Radnorshire, in 1756, and died January 1st, 1831. _Gwrach y Rhibyn_, _or Hag of the Mist_. Another supernatural being associated with water was the _Gwrach y Rhibyn_. She was supposed to reside in the dripping fog, but was seldom, if ever seen. It was believed that her shriek foretold misfortune, if not death, to the hearer, and some even thought that, in a shrill tenor, and lengthened voice, she called the person shortly to die by name. _Yr Hen Chrwchwd_, or The Old Humpbacked, a fiend in the shape of an old woman, is thought to be identical with this _Gwrach y Rhibyn_. In Carmarthenshire the spirit of the mist is represented, not as a shrivelled up old woman, but as a hoary headed old man, who seats himself on the hill sides, just where the clouds appear to touch them, and he is called _Y Brenhin Llwyd_, or The Grey King. I know not what functions this venerable personage, or king of the mist, performed, unless it were, that he directed the mist's journey through the air. _Mermaids and Mermen_. It is said that these fabulous beings frequented the sea-coasts of Wales to the great danger of the inhabitants. The description of the Welsh mermaid was just as it is all over the world; she is depicted as being above the waist a most lovely young woman, whilst below she is like a fish with fins and spreading tail. Both mermen and mermaids were fond, it is said, of combing their long hair, and the siren-like song of the latter was thought to be so seductive as to entice men to destruction. It was believed that beautiful mermaids fell in love with comely young men and even induced them to enter their abodes in the depth of the sea. I heard the following tale, I believe in Carnarvonshire, but I have no notes of it, and write from memory. A man captured a mermaid, and took her home to his house, but she did nothing but beg and beg to be allowed to return to the sea, but notwithstanding her entreaties her captor kept her safe enough in a room, and fastened the door so that she could not escape. She lingered several days, pitifully beseeching the man to release her, and then she died. But ever after that event a curse seemed to rest upon the man, for he went from bad to worse, and died miserably poor. It was always considered most unlucky to do anything unkind to these beings. Fear acted as a powerful incentive, in days of old, to generous conduct. For it was formerly believed that vengeance ever overtook the cruel. An Isle of Man legend, related by Waldron, in his account of the Isle of Man, and reproduced by Croker, vol. i., p. 56, states, that some persons captured a mermaid, and carried her to a house and treated her tenderly, but she refused meat and drink, neither would she speak, when addressed, though they knew these creatures could speak. Seeing that she began to look ill, and fearing some great calamity would befall the island if she died, they opened the door, after three days, and she glided swiftly to the sea side. Her keeper followed at a distance and saw her plunge into the sea, where she was met by a great number of her own species, one of whom asked her what she had seen among those on land, to which she answered, "Nothing, but that they are so ignorant as to throw away the very water they boil their eggs in." STORIES OF SATAN, GHOSTS, ETC. Although Max Muller, in _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii., p. 238, states that "The Aryan nations had no Devil," this certainly cannot at present be affirmed of that branch of the Celtic race which inhabits Wales. In the Principality the Devil occupies a prominent position in the foreground of Welsh Folk-Lore. He is, however, generally depicted as inferior in cunning and intellect to a bright-witted Welshman, and when worsted in a contest he acknowledges his inferiority by disappearing in a ball or wheel of fire. Men, it was supposed, could sell themselves to the Evil One for a term of years, but they easily managed to elude the fulfilment of the contract, for there was usually a loop-hole by which they escaped from the clutches of the stupid Devil. For instance, a man disposes of his soul for riches, pleasures, and supernatural knowledge and power, which he is to enjoy for a long number of years, and in the contract it is stipulated that the agreement holds good if the man is buried either _in_ or _outside_ the church. To all appearance the victim is irretrievably lost, but no, after enjoying all the fruits of his contract, he cheats the Devil of his due, by being buried _in_ or _under_ the church walls. In many tales Satan is made to act a part detrimental to his own interests; thus Sabbath breakers, card players, and those who practised divination, have been frightened almost to death by the appearance of the Devil, and there and then, being terrified by the horrible aspect of the enemy, they commenced a new life. This thought comes out strongly in _Y Bardd Cwsg_. The poet introduces one of the fallen angels as appearing to act the part given to the Devil, in the play of Faust, when it was being performed at Shrewsbury, and this appearance drove the frequenters of the theatre from their pleasures to their prayers. His words are:-- "Dyma walch, ail i hwnw yn y Mwythig, y dydd arall, ar ganol interlud Doctor Ffaustus; a rhai . . . pan oeddynt brysuraf, ymddangosodd y diawl ei hun i chwareu ei bart ac wrth hynny gyrodd bawb o'i bleser i'w weddiau." In English this is:--"Here's a fine fellow, second to that at Shrewsbury, who the other day, when the interlude of Doctor Faustus was being acted, in the middle of the play, all being busily engaged, the devil himself appeared to take his own part, and by so doing, drove everyone from pleasure to prayer." The absurd conduct of the Evil Spirit on this occasion is held up to ridicule by the poet, but the idea, which is an old one, that demons were, by a superior power, obliged to frustrate their own designs, does not seem to have been taken into consideration by him. He depicts the Devil as a strange mixture of stupidity and remorseless animosity. But this, undoubtedly, was the then general opinion. The bard revels in harrowing descriptions of the tortures of the damned in Gehenna--the abode of the Arch-fiend and his angels. This portion of his work was in part the offspring of his own fervid imagination; but in part it might have been suggested to him by what had been written already on the subject; and from the people amongst whom he lived he could have, and did derive, materials for these descriptions. In any case he did not outrage, by any of his horrible depictions of Pandemonium, the sentiments of his fellow countrymen, and his delineation of Satan was in full accord with the popular opinion of his days. The bard did not create but gave utterance to the fleeting thoughts which then prevailed respecting the Devil. Indeed there does not seem to be in Wales any distinct attributes ascribed to Satan, which are not also believed to be his specialities in other countries. His personal appearance is the same in most places. He is described as being black, with horns, and hoofs and tail, he breathes fire and brimstone, and he is accompanied with the clank of chains. Such was the uncouth form which Satan was supposed to assume, and such was the picture drawn of him formerly in Wales. There is a strong family likeness in this description between Satan and _Pan_, who belongs to Greek and Egyptian mythology. Pan had two small horns on his head, his nose was flat, and his legs, thighs, tail, and feet were those of a goat. His face is described as ruddy, and he is said to have possessed many qualities which are also ascribed to Satan. His votaries were not encumbered with an exalted code of morality. The _Fauni_, certain deities of Italy, are also represented as having the legs, feet, and ears of goats, and the rest of the body human, and the _Satyri_ of the Greeks are also described as having the feet and legs of goats, with short horns on the head, and the whole body covered with thick hair. These demigods revelled in riot and lasciviousness. The satyrs attended upon Bacchus, and made themselves conspicuous in his orgies. The Romans called their satyrs Fauni, Panes, and Sylvani. It is difficult to ascertain whether the Celt of Britain obtained through the Romans their gross notions of the material body of Satan, or whether it was in later times that they became possessed of this idea. It may well have been that the Fauni, and other disreputable deities of the conquerors of the world, on the introduction of Christianity were looked upon as demons, and their forms consequently became fit representations of the Spirit of Evil, from whom they differed little, if any, in general attributes. In this way god after god would be removed from their pedestals in the world's pantheon, and would be relegated to the regions occupied by the great enemy of all that is pure, noble, and good in mankind. Thus the god of one age would become the devil of the succeeding age, retaining, nevertheless, by a cruel irony, the same form and qualities in his changed position that he had in his exalted state. It is by some such reasoning as the preceding that we can account for the striking personal resemblance between the Satan of mediaeval and later times and the mythical deities already mentioned. Reference has been made to the rustic belief that from his mouth Satan emits fire and brimstone, and here again we observe traces of classic lore. The fabulous monsters, Typhaeus, or Typhon, and Chimaera, are probably in this matter his prototypes. It is said that real flames of devouring fire darted from the mouth and eyes of Typhon, and that he uttered horrible yells, like the shrieks of different animals, and Chimaera is described as continually vomiting flames. Just as the gods of old could assume different shapes, so could Satan. The tales which follow show that he could change himself at will into the form of a lovely woman, a mouse, a pig, a black dog, a cock, a fish, a headless horse, and into other animals or monstrous beings. But the form which, it is said, he usually assumed to enable him to escape when discovered in his intrigues was a ball or hoop of fire. The first series of tales which I shall relate depict Satan as taking a part in the pastimes of the people. _Satan Playing Cards_. A good many years ago I travelled from Pentrevoelas to Yspytty in company with Mr. Lloyd, the then vicar of the latter parish, who, when crossing over a bridge that spanned a foaming mountain torrent, called my attention to the spot, and related to me the following tale connected with the place:-- A man was returning home late one night from a friend's house, where he had spent the evening in card playing, and as he was walking along he was joined by a gentleman, whose conversation was very interesting. At last they commenced talking about card playing, and the stranger invited the countryman to try his skill with him, but as it was late, and the man wanted to go home, he declined, but when they were on the bridge his companion again pressed him to have a game on the parapet, and proceeded to take out of his pocket a pack of cards, and at once commenced dealing them out; consequently, the man could not now refuse to comply with the request. With varying success game after game was played, but ultimately the stranger proved himself the more skilful player. Just at this juncture a card fell into the water; and in their excitement both players looked over the bridge after it, and the countryman saw to his horror that his opponent's head, reflected in the water, had on it _two horns_. He immediately turned round to have a careful look at his companion; he, however, did not see him, but in his place was a _ball of fire_, which flashed away from his sight. I must say that when I looked over the bridge I came to the conclusion that nothing could have been reflected in the water, for it was a rushing foaming torrent, with no single placid spot upon its surface. Another version of the preceding tale I obtained from the Rev. Owen Jones. In this instance the _cloven foot_ and not the _horned head_ was detected. The scene of this tale is laid in the parish of Rhuddlan near Rhyl. _Satan Playing Cards at a Merry Meeting_. It was formerly a general custom in Wales for young lads and lasses to meet and spend a pleasant evening together in various farmhouses. Many kinds of amusements, such as dancing, singing, and card playing, were resorted to, to while away the time. The Rev. Owen Jones informed me that once upon a time a merry party met at Henafon near Rhuddlan, and when the fun was at its height a gentleman came to the farm, and joined heartily in all the merriment. By and by, card playing was introduced, and the stranger played better than any present. At last a card fell to the ground, and the party who picked it up discovered that the clever player had a cloven foot. In his fright the man screamed out, and immediately the Evil One--for he it was that had joined the party--transformed himself into a wheel of fire, and disappeared up the chimney. For the next tale I am also indebted to my friend the Rev. Owen Jones. The story appears in a Welsh MS. in his possession, which he kindly lent me. I will, first of all, give the tale in the vernacular, and then I will, for the benefit of my English readers, supply an English translation. _Satan Playing Cards on Rhyd-y-Cae Bridge_, _Pentrevoelas_. "Gwas yn y Gilar a phen campwr ei oes am chwareu cardiau oedd Robert Llwyd Hari. Ond wrth fyn'd adre' o Rhydlydan, wedi bod yn chwareu yn nhy Modryb Ann y Green, ar ben y lou groes, daeth boneddwr i'w gyfarfod, ag aeth yn ymgom rhyngddynt. Gofynodd y boneddwr iddo chware' _match_ o gardiau gydag e. 'Nid oes genyf gardian,' meddai Bob. 'Oes, y mae genyt ddau ddec yn dy bocet,' meddai'r boneddwr. Ag fe gytunwyd i chware' _match_ ar Bont Rhyd-y-Cae, gan ei bod yn oleu lleuad braf. Bu y boneddwr yn daer iawn arno dd'od i Blas Iolyn, y caent ddigon o oleu yno, er nad oedd neb yn byw yno ar y pryd. Ond nacaodd yn lan. Aed ati o ddifrif ar y bont, R. Ll. yn curo bob tro. Ond syrthiodd cardyn dros y bont, ac fe edrychodd yntau i lawr. Beth welai and carnau ceffyl gan y boneddwr. Tyngodd ar y Mawredd na chwareuai ddim chwaneg; ar hyn fe aeth ei bartner yn olwyn o dan rhyngddo a Phlas Iolyn, ac aeth yntau adre' i'r Gilar." The English of the tale is as follows:-- Robert Llwyd Hari was a servant in Gilar farm, and the champion card player of his day. When going home from Rhydlydan, after a game of cards in Aunty Ann's house, called the Green, he was met at the end of the cross-lane by a gentleman, who entered into conversation with him. The gentleman asked him to have a game of cards. "I have no cards," answered Bob. "Yes you have, you have two packs in your pocket," answered the gentleman. They settled to play a game on the bridge of Rhyd-y-Cae, as it was a beautiful moonlight night. The gentleman was very pressing that they should go to Plas Iolyn, because they would find there, he said, plenty of light, although no one was then living at the place. But Bob positively refused to go there. They commenced the game in downright good earnest on the bridge, R. Ll. winning every game. But a card fell over the bridge into the water, and Bob looked over, and saw that the gentleman had hoofs like a horse. He swore by the Great Being that he would not play any longer, and on this his partner turned himself into a _wheel of fire_, and departed bowling towards Plas Iolyn, and Bob went home to Gilar. _Satan Snatching a Man up into the Air_. It would appear that poor Bob was doomed to a sad end. His last exploit is thus given:-- "Wrth fyned adre o chware cardia, ar Bont Maesgwyn gwelai Robert Llwyd Hari gylch crwn o dan; bu agos iddo droi yn ol, cymerodd galon eilwaith gan gofio fod ganddo Feibl yn ei boced, ac i ffordd ag e rhyngddo a'r tan, a phan oedd yn passio fe'i cipiwyd i fyny i'r awyr gan y Gwr Drwg, ond gallodd ddyweyd rhiw air wrth y D---, gollyngodd ef i lawr nes ydoedd yn disgyn yn farw mewn llyn a elwir Llyn Hari." Which in English is as follows:-- When going home from playing cards, on Maesgwyn Bridge Robert Llwyd Hari saw a hoop of fire; he was half inclined to turn back, but took heart, remembering that he had a Bible in his pocket. So on he went, and when passing the fire he was snatched up into the air by the Bad Man, but he was able to utter a certain word to the D---, he was dropped down, and fell dead into a lake called Harry's Lake. Many tales, varying slightly from the preceding three stories, are still extant in Wales, but these given are so typical of all the rest that it is unnecessary to record more. It may be remarked that card playing was looked upon in the last century--and the feeling has not by any means disappeared in our days--as a deadly sin, and consequently a work pleasing to the Evil One, but it appears singular that the aid of Satan himself should have been invoked to put down a practice calculated to further his own interests. The incongruity of such a proceeding did not apparently enter into the minds of those who gave currency to these unequal contests. But in the tales we detect the existence of a tradition that Satan formerly joined in the pastimes of the people, and, if for card playing some other game were substituted, such as dancing, we should have a reproduction of those fabulous times, when satyrs and demigods and other prototypes of Satan are said to have been upon familiar terms with mortals, and joined in their sports. The reader will have noticed that the poor man who lost his life in the Lake thought himself safe because he had a Bible in his pocket. This shows that the Bible was looked upon as a talisman. But in this instance its efficacy was only partial. I shall have more to say on this subject in another part of this work. Satan in the preceding tales, and others, which shall by and by be related, is represented as transforming himself into a ball, or wheel of fire--into fire, the emblem of an old religion, a religion which has its votaries in certain parts of the world even in this century, and which, at one period in the history of the human race, was widespread. It is very suggestive that Satan should be spoken of as assuming the form of the Fire God, when his personality is detected, and the hint, conveyed by this transformation, would imply that he was himself the Fire God. Having made these few comments on the preceding tales, I will now record a few stories in which Satan is made to take a role similar to that ascribed to him in the card-playing stories. In the following tales Satan's aid is invoked to bring about a reformation in the observance of the Sabbath day. _Satan frightening a Man for gathering Nuts on Sunday_. The following tale was related to me by the Rev. W. E. Jones, rector of Bylchau, near Denbigh:-- Richard Roberts, Coederaill, Bylchau, when a young man, worked in Flintshire, and instead of going to a place of worship on Sunday he got into the habit of wandering about the fields on that day. One fine autumn Sunday he determined to go a-nutting. He came to a wood where nuts were plentiful, and in a short time he filled his pockets with nuts, but perceiving a bush loaded with nuts, he put out his hand to draw the branch to him, when he observed a hairy hand stretching towards the same branch. As soon as he saw this hand he was terribly frightened, and without turning round to see anything further of it, he took to his heels, and never afterwards did he venture to go a-nutting on Sunday. Richard Roberts told the tale to Mr. Jones, his Rector, who tried to convince Roberts that a monkey was in the bush, but he affirmed that Satan had come to him. _Satan taking possession of a man who fished on Sunday_. The following tale is in its main features still current in Cynwyd, a village about two miles from Corwen. The first reference to the story that I am acquainted with appeared in an essay sent in to a local Eisteddfod in 1863. The story is thus related in this essay:-- "About half a mile from Cynwyd is the 'Mill Waterfall,' beneath which there is a deep linn or whirlpool, where a man, who was fishing there on Sunday, once found an enormous fish. 'I will catch him, though the D---l take me,' said the presumptuous man. The fish went under the fall, the man followed him, and was never afterwards seen." Such is the tale, but it is, or was believed, that Satan had changed himself into a fish, and by allurement got the man into his power and carried him bodily to the nethermost regions. _Satan appearing in many forms to a Man who Travelled on Sunday_. I received the following tale from my deceased friend, the Rev. J. L. Davies, late Rector of Llangynog, near Llanfyllin, Montgomeryshire, and he obtained it from William Davies, the man who figures in the story. As a preface to the tale, it should be stated that it was usual, some years ago, for Welsh labourers to proceed to the harvest in England, which was earlier there than in Wales, and after that was finished, they hastened homewards to be in time for their own harvest. These migratory Welsh harvestmen are not altogether extinct in our days, but about forty years ago they were much more common than they are at present. Then respectable farmers' sons with sickles on their backs, and well filled wallets over their shoulders, went in companies to the early English Lowlands to hire themselves as harvest labourers. My tale now commences:-- William Davies, Penrhiw, near Aberystwyth, went to England for the harvest, and after having worked there about three weeks, he returned home alone, with all possible haste, as he knew that his father-in-law's fields were by this time ripe for the sickle. He, however, failed to accomplish the journey before Sunday; but he determined to travel on Sunday, and thus reach home on Sunday night to be ready to commence reaping on Monday morning. His conscience, though, would not allow him to be at rest, but he endeavoured to silence its twittings by saying to himself that he had with him no clothes to go to a place of worship. He stealthily, therefore, walked on, feeling very guilty every step he took, and dreading to meet anyone going to chapel or church. By Sunday evening he had reached the hill overlooking Llanfihangel Creuddyn, where he was known, so he determined not to enter the village until after the people had gone to their respective places of worship; he therefore sat down on the hill side and contemplated the scene below. He saw the people leave their houses for the house of God, he heard their songs of praise, and now he thinks he could venture to descend and pass through the village unobserved. Luckily no one saw him going through the village, and now he has entered a barley field, and although still uneasy in mind, he feels somewhat reassured, and steps on quickly. He had not proceeded far in the barley field before he found himself surrounded by a large number of small pigs. He was not much struck by this, though he thought it strange that so many pigs should be allowed to wander about on the Sabbath day. The pigs, however, came up to him, stared at him, grunted, and scampered away. Before he had traversed the barley field he saw approaching him an innumerable number of mice, and these, too, surrounded him, only, however, to stare at him, and then to disappear. By this Davies began to be frightened, and he was almost sorry that he had broken the Sabbath day by travelling with his pack on his back instead of keeping the day holy. He was not now very far from home, and this thought gave him courage and on he went. He had not proceeded any great distance from the spot where the mice had appeared when he saw a large greyhound walking before him on the pathway. He anxiously watched the dog, but suddenly it vanished out of his sight. By this the poor man was thoroughly frightened, and many and truly sincere were his regrets that he had broken the Sabbath; but on he went. He passed through the village of Llanilar without any further fright. He had now gone about three miles from Llanfihangel along the road that goes to Aberystwyth, and he had begun to dispel the fear that had seized him, but to his horror he saw something approach him that made his hair stand on end. He could not at first make it out, but he soon clearly saw that it was a horse that was madly dashing towards him. He had only just time to step on to the ditch, when, horrible to relate, a headless white horse rushed past him. His limbs shook and the perspiration stood out like beads on his forehead. This terrible spectre he saw when close to Tan'rallt, but he dared not turn into the house, as he was travelling on Sunday, so on he went again, and heartily did he wish himself at home. In fear and dread he proceeded on his journey towards Penrhiw. The most direct way from Tan'rallt to Penrhiw was a pathway through the fields, and Davies took this pathway, and now he was in sight of his home, and he hastened towards the boundary fence between Tan'rallt and Penrhiw. He knew that there was a gap in the hedge that he could get through, and for this gap he aimed; he reached it, but further progress was impossible, for in the gap was a lady lying at full length, and immovable, and stopping up the gap entirely. Poor Davies was now more thoroughly terrified than ever. He sprang aside, he screamed, and then he fainted right away. As soon as he recovered consciousness, he, on his knees, and in a loud supplicating voice, prayed for pardon. His mother and father-in-law heard him, and the mother knew the voice and said, "It is my Will; some mishap has overtaken him." They went to him and found he was so weak that he could not move, and they were obliged to carry him home, where he recounted to them his marvellous experience. My clerical friend, who was intimately acquainted with William Davies, had many conversations with him about his Sunday journey, and he argued the matter with him, and tried to persuade him that he had seen nothing, but that it was his imagination working on a nervous temperament that had created all his fantasies. He however failed to convince him, for Davies affirmed that it was no hallucination, but that what he had seen that Sunday was a punishment for his having broken the Fourth Commandment. It need hardly be added that Davies ever afterwards was a strict observer of the Day of Rest. The following tale, taken from _A Relation of Apparitions_, etc., by the Rev. Edmund Jones, inculcates the same lesson as that taught by the previous tales. I will give the tale a title. _The Evil Spirit appearing to a Man who frequented Alehouses on Sunday_. Jones writes as follows:--"W. J. was once a Sabbath-breaker at _Risca_ village, where he frequently used to play and visit the alehouses on the Sabbath day, and there stay till late at night. On returning homeward he heard something walking behind him, and turning to see what it was he could see the likeness of a man walking by his side; he could not see his face, and was afraid to look much at it, fearing it was an evil spirit, as it really was, therefore he did not wish it good night. This dreadful dangerous apparition generally walked by the left side of him. It afterwards appeared like a great mastiff dog, which terrified him so much that he knew not where he was. After it had gone about half a mile, it transformed itself into a great fire, as large as a small field, and resembled the noise which a fire makes in burning gorse." This vision seems to have had the desired effect on W. J. for we are told that he _was once_ a Sabbath breaker, the inference being, that he was not one when the Rev. Edmund Jones wrote the above narrative. Tales of this kind could be multiplied to almost any extent, but more need not be given. The one idea that runs through them all is that Satan has appeared, and may appear again, to Sabbath breakers, and therefore those who wish to avoid coming in contact with him should keep the Sabbath day holy. _Satan Outwitted_. In the preceding tales the Evil One is depicted as an agent in the destruction of his own kingdom. He thus shows his obtuseness, or his subordination to a higher power. In the story that follows, he is outwitted by a Welshman. Many variants of this tale are found in many countries. It is evident from this and like stories, that it was believed the Spirit of Evil could easily be circumvented by an intelligent human being. The tale is taken from _Y Brython_, vol. v., p. 192. I when a lad often heard the story related, and the scene is laid in Trefeglwys, Montgomeryshire, a parish only a few miles distant from the place where I spent my childhood. The writer in _Y Brython_, speaking of _Ffinant_, says that this farm is about a mile from Trefeglwys, on the north side of the road leading to Newtown. He then proceeds as follows:-- "Mae hen draddodiad tra anhygoel yn perthyn i'r lie hwn. Dywedir fod hen ysgubor yn sefyll yn yr ochr ddeheuol i'r brif-ffordd. Un boreu Sul, pan ydoedd y meistr yn cychwyn i'r Eglwys, dywedodd wrth un o'i weision am gadw y brain oddi ar y maes lle yr oedd gwenith wedi ei hau, yn yr hwn y safai yr hen ysgubor. Y gwas, trwy ryw foddion, a gasglodd y brain oll iddi, a chauodd arnynt; yna dilynodd ei feistr i'r Eglwys; yntau, wrth ei weled yno, a ddechreuodd ei geryddu yn llym. Y meistr, wedi clywed y fath newydd, a hwyliodd ei gamrau tua'i gartref; ac efe a'u cafodd, er ei syndod, fel y crybwyllwyd; ac fe ddywedir fod yr ysgubor yn orlawn o honynt. Gelwir y maes hwn yn _Crow-barn_, neu Ysgubor y brain, hyd heddyw. Dywedir mai enw y gwas oedd Dafydd Hiraddug, ac iddo werthu ei hun i'r diafol, ac oherwydd hyny, ei fod yn alluog i gyflawni gweithredoedd anhygoel yn yr oes hon. Pa fodd bynag, dywedir i Dafydd fod yn gyfrwysach na'r hen sarff y tro hwn, yn ol y cytundeb fu rhyngddynt. Yr ammod oedd, fod i'r diafol gael meddiant hollol o Ddafydd, os dygid ei gorff dros erchwyn gwely, neu trwy ddrws, neu os cleddid ef mewn mynwent, neu mewn Eglwys. Yr oedd Dafydd wedi gorchymyn, pan y byddai farw, am gymmeryd yr afu a'r ysgyfaint o'i gorff, a'i taflu i ben tomen, a dal sylw pa un ai cigfran ai colomen fyddai yn ennill buddugoliaeth am danynt; os cigfran, am gymmeryd ei gorff allan trwy waelod ac nid dros erchwyn y gwely; a thrwy bared ac nid trwy ddrws, a'i gladdu, nid mewn mynwent na llan, ond o dan fur yr Eglwys; ac i'r diafol pan ddeallodd hyn lefaru, gan ddywedyd:-- Dafydd Hiraddug ei ryw, _Ffals_ yn farw, _ffals_ yn fyw." The tale in English is as follows:-- There is an incredible tradition connected with this place Ffinant, Trefeglwys. It is said that an old barn stands on the right hand side of the highway. One Sunday morning, as the master was starting to church, he told one of the servants to keep the crows from a field that had been sown with wheat, in which field the old barn stood. The servant, through some means, collected all the crows into the barn, and shut the door on them. He then followed his master to the Church, who, when he saw the servant there, began to reprove him sharply. But the master, when he heard the strange news, turned his steps homewards, and found to his amazement that the tale was true, and it is said that the barn was filled with crows. This barn, ever afterwards was called _Crow-barn_, a name it still retains. It is said that the servant's name was Dafydd Hiraddug, and that he had sold himself to the devil, and that consequently, he was able to perform feats, which in this age are considered incredible. However, it is said that Dafydd was on this occasion more subtle than the old serpent, even according to the agreement which was between them. The contract was, that the devil was to have complete possession of Dafydd if his corpse were taken over the side of the bed, or through a door, or if buried in a churchyard, or inside a church. Dafydd had commanded, that on his death, the liver and lights were to be taken out of his body and thrown on the dunghill, and notice was to be taken whether a raven or a dove got possession of them; if a raven, then his body was to be taken away by the foot, and not by the side of the bed, and through the wall, and not through the door, and he was to be buried, not in the churchyard nor in the Church, but under the Church walls. And the devil, when he saw that by these arrangements he had been duped cried, saying:-- Dafydd Hiraddug, badly bred, False when living, and false when dead. Such is the tale. I now come to another series of Folk-Lore stories, which seem to imply that in ancient days rival religions savagely contended for the supremacy, and in these tales also Satan occupies a prominent position. _Satan and Churches_. The traditional stories that are still extant respecting the determined opposition to the erection of certain churches in particular spots, and the removal of the materials during the night to some other site, where ultimately the new edifice was obliged to be erected, and the many stories of haunted churches, where evil spirits had made a lodgment, and could not for ages be ousted, are evidences of the antagonism of rival forms of paganism, or of the opposition of an ancient religion to the new and intruding Christian Faith. Brash in his _Ogam Inscribed Stones_, p. 109, speaking of Irish Churches, says:-- "It is well known that many of our early churches were erected on sites professedly pagan." The most ancient churches in Wales have circular or ovoidal churchyards--a form essentially Celtic--and it may well be that these sacred spots were dedicated to religious purposes in pagan times, and were appropriated by the early Christians,--not, perhaps, without opposition on the part of the adherents of the old faith--and consecrated to the use of the Christian religion. In these churchyards were often to be found holy, or sacred wells, and many of them still exist, and modes of divination were practised at these wells, which have come down to our days, and which must have originated in pre-Christian or pagan times. It is highly probable that the older faith would for a while exist concurrently with the new, and mutual contempt and annoyance on the part of the supporters of the respective beliefs would as naturally follow in those times as in any succeeding age, but this fact should be emphasised--that the modes of warfare would correspond with the civilized or uncivilized state of the opponents. This remark is general in its application, and applies to races conquered by the Celts in Britain, quite as much as to races who conquered the Celt, and there are not wanting certain indications that the tales associated with Satan belong to a period long anterior to the introduction of Christianity. Certain classes of these tales undoubtedly refer to the antagonism of beliefs more ancient than the Christian faith, and they indicate the measures taken by one party to suppress the other. Thus we see it related that the Evil Spirit is forcibly ejected from churches, and dragged to the river, and there a tragedy occurs. In other words a horrible murder is committed on the representative of the defeated religion. The very fact that he loses his life in a river--in water--in an object of wide spread worship--is not without its significance. We have seen in the legend of the Evil Spirit in Cerrig-y-drudion Church, p. 133,--that it was ejected, after a severe struggle, from the sacred building--that it was dragged to the lake, where it lost its life, by two _Ychain Banawg_--that they, and it, perished together in the lake:--Now these _Ychain Banawg_ or long-horned oxen, huge in size and strong of limb, are traditional, if not fabulous animals, and this one incident in the legend is enough to prove its great antiquity. Undoubtedly it dates from remote pre-Christian times, and yet the tale is associated with modern ideas, and modes of expression. It has come down to us along the tide of time, and has received its colouring from the ages it has passed through. Yet on the very surface of this ancient legend we perceive it written that in days of old there was severe antagonism between rival forms of pagan faith, and the manner in which the weaker--and perhaps the more ancient--is overcome, is made clear. The instrument used is brute force, and the vanquished party is _drowned_ or, in the euphonious language of the tales, _is laid_. There are many stories of spirits that have been cast out of churches, still extant in Wales, and one of the most famous of these is that of Llanfor Church, near Bala. It resembles that of Cerrig-y-drudion. I have succeeded in obtaining several versions of this legend. I am indebted for the first to Mr. R. Roberts, Clocaenog, a native of Bala. _The Ejectment of the Evil Spirit from Llanfor Church_. Mr. Roberts states that his grandmother, born in 1744, had only traditions of this spirit. He was said to have worn a three-cocked hat, and appeared as a gentleman, and whilst divine service was performed he stood up in the church. But at night the church was lit up by his presence, and the staves between the railings of the gallery were set in motion, by him, like so many spindles, although they were fast in their sockets. He is not reported to have harmed any one, neither did he commit any damage in the church. It is said, he had been seen taking a walk to the top of _Moel-y-llan_, and although harmless he was a great terror to the neighbourhood, and but few would venture to enter the church alone. Mr. Roberts was told that on a certain occasion a vestry was held in a public house, that stood on the north side of the church, not a vestige of which now remains, but no one would go to the church for the parish books. The landlady had the courage to go but no sooner had she crossed the threshold than the Evil Spirit blew the light out; she got a light again, but this also was blown out. Instead of returning for another light, she went straight to the coffer in the dark, and brought the books to the house, and that without any molestation. Mr. Roberts states that as the Spirit of darkness became more and more troublesome, it was determined to have him removed, and two gentlemen skilled in divination were called _to offer him to Llyn-y-Geulan-Goch_. These men were procured and they entered the church in the afternoon and held a conversation with the Spirit, and in the end told him that they would call at such an hour of the night to remove him to his rest. But they were not punctual and when they entered they found him intractable, however, he was compelled to submit, and was driven out of the church in the form of a cock, and carried behind his vanquisher on horseback, and thrown into _Llyn-y-Geulan-Goch_. According to tradition the horse made the journey from the church to the pool by two leaps. The distance was two fields' breadth. On their arrival at the river side, a terrible struggle ensued, the Fiend would not submit to be imprisoned, and he made a most determined attempt to drag his captors into the water. He, however, by and by, agreed to enter his prison on the condition that they would lie on their faces towards the ground when he entered the river, this they did, and the Spirit with a splash jumped into the water. Mr. Roberts further states, that there was a tradition in those parts, that the horse which carried the Devil to the river left the impression of his hoof in a stone by the river side, but Mr. Roberts assures me that he could never discover this stone, nor did he know of any one who had seen it. The case of the imprisoned Spirit was not hopeless--tradition says he was to remain in the pool only until he counted all the sand in it. It would almost appear that he had accomplished his task, for Mr. Roberts says that he had heard that his father's eldest brother whilst driving his team in the dead of night through Llanfor village saw two pigs walking behind the waggon. He thought nothing of this, and began to apply his whip to them, but to no purpose, for they followed him to _Llyn-y-Geulan-Goch_, and then disappeared. There was in these latter times some dispute as to the Spirit being still in the pool. This, however, has been settled in the affirmative. A wise man, in company with others, proceeded to the river, and threw a stone with writing on it into the pool, but nothing came of it, and he then affirmed there was no spirit there. This the people would not believe, so he threw another stone into the water, and now the river boiled up and foamed. "Yes," said the sceptic, "he is there, and there he will remain for a long time." Such is Mr. Roberts's account. _Llyn-y-Geulan-Goch_ is a pool in the river Dee, about a quarter of a mile from Llanfor village. For the purpose of shewing how variously tales are narrated, I will give another version of this haunted church, which was taken down by me from the mouth of an aged woman, a native of the village, whose life had been spent among her own people, and who at present lives in a little cottage on the road side between Llanfor Rectory and Bala. Her name is Ann Hughes, she firmly believes the story, but she could not tell how long ago the spirit was driven out of the church, though she thought it was in her grandfather's days. Her tale was as follows:-- The Evil Spirit was heard but not seen by the people, and he was in the habit of coming down the pathway leading from Rhiwlas to the church, making a great noise, as if dragging after him chains, or wheeling a wheelbarrow, and he went straight into the church, and there he stayed all night lighting up the church and making a great noise, as though engaged in manual labour. There was then a pathway leading to a row of houses situated in the church yard on the north side, and the people who occupied those cottages dared not leave them the live-long night, in fact the whole village avoided that, and every other path in the neighbourhood of the church, whilst the Spirit was in the church, and every one could see when he was there. At last the disturbance was so great that the parson and another man determined to lay the Spirit, and therefore one night they walked three times round the church, and then went into it, and by and by three men were seen emerging from the church and they walked into the public house through the door that opened into the church yard and they went together into the little parlour. The parson had already given instructions that no one was to come to them on any account, nor even to try to get a glimpse of them; but there was a man in the house who went to the keyhole of the parlour and, looking into the room, saw distinctly three men sitting round the table. No sooner, however, had he done so than the parson came out and said if anyone looked through the keyhole again their plans would be frustrated. This put a stop to all further inquisitiveness, and their deliberations were not again interrupted. Ann Hughes could not tell me what plan was adopted to get rid of the Evil Spirit, but she knew this much, that he was laid in _Llyn-y-Geulan-Goch_, and that he was to remain there until a lighted candle, which was hidden somewhere in the church, when the Spirit was overcome, should go out. Often and again had she searched for this taper, but failed to discover it, but she supposes it is still burning somewhere, for the Evil One has not yet escaped from the pool. There is a version of the ejectment of Llanfor Spirit given in _Y Gordofigion_, p. 106, which is somewhat as follows:-- Llanfor Spirit troubled the neighbourhood of Bala, but he was particularly objectionable and annoying to the inhabitants of Llanfor, for he had taken possession of their Church. At last, the people were determined to get rid of him altogether, but they must procure a mare for this purpose, which they did. A man riding on the mare entered the Church with a friend, to exorcise the Spirit. Ere long this man emerged from the Church with the Devil seated behind him on the pillion. An old woman who saw them cried out, "Duw anwyl! Mochyn yn yr Eglwys"--"Good God! A pig in the Church." On hearing these words the pig became exceedingly fierce, because the silence had been broken, and because God's name had been used, and in his anger he snatched up both the man and the mare, and threw them right over the Church to the other side, and there is a mark to this day on a grave stone of the horse's hoof on the spot where she lit. But the Spirit's anger was all in vain, for he was carried by the mare to the river, and laid in _Llyn-y-Geulan-Goch_, but so much did the poor animal perspire whilst carrying him, that, although the distance was only a quarter of a mile, she lost all her hair. Tales very much like the preceding are related of many churches in Wales. The details differ, but in general outlines they are alike. I will give one other story of this kind. _An Evil Spirit in Llandysilio Church, Montgomeryshire_. The history of this Spirit's proceedings is given in _Bye-Gones_, Vol. ii, p. 179, and the writer's fictitious name is _Gypt_. "This church," says _Gypt_, "was terribly troubled by a Spirit in times gone by, so I was informed by a person who took me over the church, and, being curious to hear the story, my guide related the following:-- "To such extremes had things come that it was resolved to send for a well known and expert person to lay the Spirit. But the Spirit nearly overcame the expert, and the fight continued hard and fast for a long time. The ghost layer came out often for fresh air and beer, and then was plainly seen, from his bared arms and the perspiration running down his face, that there was a terrible conflict going on within the church. At last success crowned the effort, and the Spirit, not unlike a large fly, was put into a bottle and thrown into a deep pool in the River Verniew, where it remains to this day, and the church was troubled no more." _Gypt_ adds:--"As a proof of the truth of the story, my informant showed me the beams which were cracked at the time the Spirit troubled the church." In these tales we have a few facts common to them all. An Evil Spirit troubles the people, and makes his home nightly in the church, which he illuminates. His presence there becomes obnoxious, and ultimately, either by force or trickery, he is ejected, and loses his life, or at least he is deposited by his captors in a lake, or pool of water, and then peace and quietness ensue. There is a good deal that is human about these stories when stripped of the marvellous, which surrounds them, and it is not unreasonable to ask whether they had, or had not, a foundation in fact, or whether they were solely the creations of an imaginative people. It is not, at least, improbable that these ghostly stories had, in long distant pre-historic times, their origin in fact, and that they have reached our days with glosses received from the intervening ages. They seem to imply that, in ancient times, there was deadly antagonism between one form of Pagan worship and another, and, although it is but dimly hinted, it would appear that fire was the emblem or the god of one party, and water the god of the other; and that the water worshippers prevailed and destroyed the image, or _laid_ the priest, of the vanquished deity in a pool, and took possession of his sacred enclosures. It was commonly believed, within the last hundred years or so, that Evil Spirits at certain times of the year, such as St. John's Eve, and May Day Eve, and All Hallows' Eve, were let loose, and that on these nights they held high revelry in churches. This is but another and more modern phase of the preceding stories. This superstitious belief was common to Scotland, and everyone who has read Burns has heard of Alloway Kirk, and of the "unco sight" which met _Tam o' Shanter's_ eye there, who, looking into the haunted kirk, saw witches, Evil Spirits, and Old Nick himself. Thus sings the poet:-- There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gi'e them music was his charge. But in Wales it was believed that a Spirit--an evil one--certainly not an Angel of Light, revealed, to the inquisitive, coming events, provided they went to the church porch on _Nos G'lan Geua_', or All-Hallows' Eve, and waited there until midnight, when they would hear the Spirit announce the death roll for the coming year. Should, however, no voice be heard, it was a sign that no death would occur within the twelve succeeding months. A couple of tales shall suffice as illustrative of this superstition. _A Spirit in Aberhafesp Church announcing the death of a person on Nos G'lan Geua'_. Mr. Breeze, late governor of the Union House at Caersws, told me that he had heard of a person going to Aberhafesp Church porch, on All-Hallows' Eve, to ascertain whether there would be a death in that parish in the coming year. A couple of men, one of whom, I believe, Mr. Breeze said was his relative, went to the church porch before twelve o'clock at night, and sat there a length of time without hearing any sound in the church; but about the midnight hour, one of the men distinctly heard the name of his companion uttered by a voice within the church. He was greatly terrified, and, addressing his friend, he found that he had fallen asleep, and that, therefore, fortunately he had not heard the ominous voice. Awaking his companion, he said--"Let's go away, it's no use waiting here any longer." In the course of a few weeks, there was a funeral from the opposite parish of Penstrowed, and the departed was to be buried in Aberhafesp Church yard. The River Severn runs between these two parishes, and there is no bridge nearer than that which spans the river at Caersws, and to take the funeral that way would mean a journey of more than five miles. It was determined, therefore, to ford the river opposite Aberhafesp Church. The person who had fallen asleep in the porch volunteered to carry the coffin over the river, and it was placed on the saddle in front of this person, who, to save it from falling, was obliged to grasp it with both arms; and, as the deceased had died of an infectious fever, the coffin bearer was stricken, and within a week he too was a dead man, and he was the first parishioner, as foretold by the Spirit, who died in the parish of Aberhafesp that year. According to Croker, in _Fairy Legends of Ireland_, vol. II., p. 288, the Irish at Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, after decorating the graves of their ancestors:--"Also listen at the church door in the dark, when they sometimes fancy they hear the names called over in church of those who are destined shortly to join their lost relatives in the tomb." It is not difficult to multiply instances of Spirits speaking in churches, for legendary stories of this kind were attached to, or were related of, many churches in Wales. One further tale therefore, shall suffice. _A Spirit in Llangerniew Church_, _Denbighshire_. There was a tradition in this parish that on All-Hallows' Eve a Spirit announced from the altar the names of those who were doomed to die in the coming year. The Spirit was locally called _Angelystor_. Those who were anxious to know whether they or their neighbours had a longer time to live stood underneath the east window on that eve, and anxiously listened for the dreaded revelation. It is related of a tailor, who was reckoned a wit, and affected disbelief in the Spirit story, that he announced his intention to prove the thing a myth, and so, one _Nos G'lan Geua'_, Shon Robert, as he was called, proceeded to the church just before midnight, and, to his horror, he heard his own name--"Shon ap Robert," uttered by the Spirit. "Hold, hold!" said the tailor, "I am not quite ready!" But, ready or not ready, it made no difference to the messenger of death, for that year the tailor died. According to rustic opinion, demons were, from sinister motives, much given to frequenting churches; still it was thought that as the Priest entered the sacred building by the south door these Spirits were obliged to make their exit through the north door, which was called in consequence the Devil's Door; and this door was opened, and left open awhile, to enable these Evil Spirits to escape from the church, before divine service commenced. In agreement with this notion, the north side of church yards was designated the Domain of Demons, and, by association of ideas, no one formerly was buried in this side, but in our days the north part of the church yard--where the space in the other parts has already been occupied--is used for interments, and the north doors in most old churches have been built up. Formerly, at baptisms, the north church door was, in Wales, left open, and that too for the same reason that it was opened before the hours of prayer. But these superstitions have departed, as intimated by the blocking up of north church doors. _Satan and Bell Ringing_. Durand, according to Bourne, in his _Antiquities of the Common People_, ed. 1725, p. 17, was of opinion that Devils were much afraid of bells, and fled away at the sound of them. Formerly, in all parts of Wales, the passing bell was tolled for the dying. This is a very ancient custom being alluded to by the Venerable Bede-- When the bell begins to toll, Lord, have mercy on the soul. A small hand bell was also rung by the parish clerk as he preceded the funeral procession, and the church bell was tolled before, at, and after the burial. I do not know whether this was done because the people, entertaining Durand's opinion, wished to save the souls and bodies of their departed friends from Satan. Reference is often made to small handbells in parish terriers, and they are enumerated in those documents with other church property. Thus, in Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd terrier, 1729, among the articles mentioned as belonging to the church is a small bell:-- "A little bell to be rung before the corps." In Rhuddlan terrier, 1791, we find:-- "One small bell, and another small corps bell." I may say that there is hardly a terrier belonging to a Church in North Wales which does not mention this portable handbell. Although the modern reason given for their use at funerals was, that all impediments might be removed from the roads before the funeral procession arrived, still it is probable that the custom at one time meant something more than this. The custom does not at present exist. _Giraldus Cambrensis_ thus alludes to these handbells:-- "I must not omit that the portable bells . . . were held in great reverence by the people and clergy both in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; insomuch that they had greater regard for oaths sworn on these than on the gospels."--Bohn's Edition, p. 146. As it was thought that the Passing Bell was originally intended to drive away the Evil Spirit hovering about in readiness to seize the soul of the deceased, so it might have been thought that the tolling of these handbells at funerals kept the Great Enemy away from the body about to be consigned to consecrated ground. But from a couple of lines quoted by Bourne, p. 14, from Spelman, in which all the ancient offices of bells seem to be included, it does not appear that this opinion was then current. The lines are:-- Laudo Deum verum, Plebem voco, congrego Clerum, Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, Festa decoro. I praise the true God, call the people, convene the Clergy, Lament the dead, dispel pestilence, grace Festivals. There is nothing in these lines corroborative of Durand's opinion, but as I do not know the age of the lines I cannot controvert his opinion, but if it was believed that the tolling of a bell could drive away pestilence, well can it be understood that its sound could be credited with being inimical to Evil Spirits, and that it sent them away to other places to seek for rest. It certainly was an opinion, according to Croker, entertained in Ireland and elsewhere, that the dwarfs or fairies, were driven away from places by the ringing of the bells of churches, and Croker in his _Fairy Legends of Ireland_, vol. ii., p. 106, states that Thiele collected traditions according to which the Troldes leave the country on the ringing of bells, and remain away. Thus these mythic beings are confounded with Satan; indeed Croker remarks (vol. i., p. 46) "The notion of fairies, dwarfs, brownies, etc., being excluded from salvation, and of their having formed part of the crew that fell with Satan, seems to be pretty general all over Europe." He instances Ireland, Denmark, and Spain. Bells certainly were objects of great superstition. In Dyer's _English Folk-Lore_, p. 264, it is stated that--Wynkin de Worde tells us that bells are rung during thunder storms, to the end that fiends and wicked Spirits should be abashed and flee and cease the moving of the tempest. Croker also remarks in vol. ii., p. 140, of the above-named work:--"The belief in fairies and Spirits prevailed over all Europe long before the introduction of Christianity. The teachers of the new faith endeavoured to abolish the deeply-rooted heathenish ideas and customs of the people, by representing them as sinful and connected with the Devil." In this way the Devil inherited many attributes that once belonged to the Fairies, and these beings were spoken of as Evil Spirits, Fiends, or Devils. I now come to another kind of Welsh Folk-Lore associated with fairies, Evil Spirits, or some mysterious power, that is the removal of churches from one site to another. The agency employed varies, but the work of the day disappeared in the night, and the materials were found, it is said, the next morning, on the spot where the church was to be erected. _Mysterious Removal of Churches_. I. LLANLLECHID CHURCH. There was a tradition extant in the parish of Llanllechid, near Bangor, Carnarvonshire, that it was intended to build a church in a field called Cae'r Capel, not far from Plasuchaf Farm, but it was found the next morning that the labours of the previous day had been destroyed, and that the materials had been transported in the night to the site of the present church. The workmen, however, carried them all back again, and resumed their labours at Cae'r Capel, but in vain, for the next day they found their work undone, and the wood, stones, etc., in the place where they had found them when their work was first tampered with. Seeing that it was useless fighting against a superior power, they desisted, and erected the building on the spot indicated by the destroyers of their labours. I asked the aged, what or who it was that had carried away the materials: some said it was done by Spirits, others by Fairies, but I could obtain no definite information on the point. However, they all agreed that the present site was more convenient for the parishioners than the old one. Many legends of this kind are current in Wales. They are all much alike in general outline. A few only therefore shall be mentioned. II. CORWEN CHURCH. In Thomas's _History of the Diocese of St. Asaph_, p. 687, the legend connected with the erection of the present church is given as follows:--"The legend of its (Corwen Church) original foundation states that all attempts to build the church in any other spot than where stood the 'Carreg y Big yn y fach rewlyd,' i.e., 'The pointed stone in the icy nook,' were frustrated by the influence of certain adverse powers." No agency is mentioned in this narrative. When questioned on such a matter, the aged, of forty years ago, would shake their heads in an ominous kind of manner, and remain silent, as if it were wrong on their part to allude to the affair. Others, more bold, would surmise that it was the work of a Spirit, or of the Fairies. By and by I shall give Mr. A. N. Palmer's solution of the mystery. III. CAPEL GARMON CHURCH. A legend much like the preceding is current respecting Capel Garmon Church. I will give the story in the words of my friend, the Rev. Owen Jones, Pentrevoelas, who writes to me thus:-- "The tradition is that Capel Garmon Church was to have been built on the side of the mountain just above the present village, near the Well now called Ffynnon Armon, but the materials carried there in the daytime were in a mysterious manner conveyed by night to the present site of the church." IV. LLANFAIR DYFFRYN CLWYD. For the following legend, I am indebted to Mr. R. Prys Jones, who resided for several years in the parish of Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd. In answer to a letter from me respecting mysterious removal of churches, Mr. Jones writes as follows:-- "We have the same tradition in connection with a place not very far from Llanfair village. It was first intended to erect Llanfair Church on the spot where Jesus Chapel now stands, or very near to it. Tradition ascribes the failure of erecting the structure to a phantom in the shape of _a sow's head_, destroying in the night what had been built during the day. The farm house erected on the land is still called _Llanbenwch_"--Llan-pen-hwch, i.e., the _Llan_, _or church_, _of the Sow's Head_. In this tale the agent is a sow, and Mr. Gomme in the _Antiquary_, vol. iii. p. 9, records a like story of Winwick Parish Church, Lancashire. He states that the founder had destined a different site for this church, "but after progress had been made at the original foundation, at night time, 'a pig' was seen running hastily to the site of the new church, crying or screaming aloud We-ee-wick, we-ee-wick, we-ee-wick.' Then taking up a stone in his mouth he carried it to the spot sanctified by the death of St. Oswald, and thus succeeded in removing all the stones which had been laid by the builders." V. LLANFIHANGEL GENEU'R GLYN. The traveller who has gone to Aberystwyth by the Cambrian Line has, most probably, noticed on the left hand side, shortly after he has left Borth, a small church, with a churchyard that enters a wood to the west of the church, the grave stones being seen among the trees. There is in connection with this church a legend much like those already given. I am indebted to the Rev. J. Felix, vicar of Cilcen, near Mold, for the following account of the transaction. "It was intended to build Llanfihangel Church at a place called Glanfread, or Glanfread-fawr, which at present is a respectable farm house, and the work was actually commenced on that spot, but the portion built during the day was pulled down each night, till at last a Spirit spoke in these words:-- Llanfihangel Geneu'r Glyn, Glanfread-fawr gaiff fod fan hyn. Llanfihangel Geneu'r Glyn, Glanfread-fawr shall stand herein," intimating that the church was to be built at Geneu'r Glyn, and that Glanfreadfawr farm house was to occupy the place where they were then endeavouring to build the church. The prophecy, or warning, was attended to, and the church erection abandoned, but the work was carried out at Geneu'r Glyn, in accordance with the Spirit's direction, and the church was built in its present position. VI. WREXHAM CHURCH. The following extract is from Mr. A. Neobard Palmer's excellent _History of the Parish Church of Wrexham_, p. 6:--"There is a curious local tradition, which, _as I understand it_, points distinctly to a re-erection of one of the earlier churches on a site different from that on which the church preceding it had stood." "According to the tradition just mentioned, which was collected and first published by the late Mr. Hugh Davies, the attempt to build the church on another spot (at Bryn-y-ffynnon as 't is said), was constantly frustrated, that which was set up during the day being plucked down in the night. At last, one night when the work wrought on the day before was being watched, the wardens saw it thrown suddenly down, and heard a voice proceeding from a Spirit hovering above them which cried ever 'Bryn-y-grog!' 'Bryn-y-grog!' Now the site of the present church was at that time called 'Bryn-y-grog' (Hill of the Cross), and it was at once concluded that this was the spot on which the church should be built. The occupier of this spot, however, was exceedingly unwilling to part with the inheritance of his forefathers, and could only be induced to do so when the story which has just been related was told to him, and other land given him instead. The church was then founded at 'Bryn-y-grog,' where the progress of the work suffered no interruption, and where the Church of Wrexham still stands." Mr. Palmer, having remarked that there is a striking resemblance between all the traditions of churches removed mysteriously, proceeds to solve the difficulty, in these words:-- "The conclusions which occurred to me were, that these stories contain a record, imaginative and exaggerated, of real incidents connected with the history of the churches to which each of them belongs, and that they are _in most cases_ reminiscences _of an older church which once actually stood on another site_. The destroying powers of which they all speak were probably human agents, working in the interest of those who were concerned in the transference of the site of the church about to be re-built; while the stories, as a whole, were apparently concocted and circulated with the intention of overbearing the opposition which the proposed transference raised--an opposition due to the inconvenience of the site proposed, to sacred associations connected with the older site, or to the unwillingness of the occupier to surrender the spot selected." This is, as everything Mr. Palmer writes, pertinent, and it is a reasonable solution, but whether it can be made to apply to all cases is somewhat doubtful. Perhaps we have not sufficient data to arrive at a correct explanation of this kind of myth. The objection was to the _place_ selected and not to the _building_ about to be erected on that spot; and the _agents_ engaged in the destruction of the proposed edifice differ in different places; and in many instances, where these traditions exist, the land around, as regards agricultural uses, was equally useful, or equally useless, and often the distance between the two sites is not great, and the land in our days, at least, and presumably in former, belonged to the same proprietor--if indeed it had a proprietor at all. We must, therefore, I think, look outside the occupier of the land for objections to the surrender of the spot first selected as the site of the new church. Mr. Gomme, in an able article in the _Antiquary_, vol. iii., p. 8-13, on "Some traditions and superstitions connected with buildings," gives many typical examples of buildings removed by unseen agencies, and, from the fact that these stories are found in England, Scotland, and other parts, he rightly infers that they had a common origin, and that they take us back to primitive times of British history. The cause of the removal of the stones in those early times, or first stage of their history, is simply described as _invisible agency_, _witches_, _fairies_; in the second stage of these myths, the supernatural agency becomes more clearly defined, thus:--_doves_, _a pig_, _a cat_, _a fish_, _a bull_, do the work of demolishing the buildings, and Mr. Gomme remarks with reference to these animals:--"Now here we have some glimmer of light thrown upon the subject--the introduction of animal life leads to the subject of animal sacrifice." I will not follow Mr. Gomme in this part of his dissertation, but I will remark that the agencies he mentions as belonging to the first stage are identical in Wales, England, and Scotland, and we have an example of the second stage in Wales, in the traditions of Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, and of Llangar Church, near Corwen. VII. LLANGAR CHURCH. "The tradition is that Llangar Church was to have been built near the spot where the Cynwyd Bridge crosses the Dee. Indeed, we are told that the masons set to work, but all the stones they laid in the day were gone during the night none knew whither. The builders were warned, supernaturally, that they must seek a spot where on hunting a 'Carw Gwyn' (white stag) would be started. They did so, and Llangar Church is the result. From this circumstance the church was called Llan-garw-gwyn, and from this name the transition to Llangar is easy."--_Gossiping Guide to Wales_, p. 128. I find in a document written by the Rural Dean for the guidance of the Bishop of St. Asaph, in 1729, that the stag was started in a thicket where the Church of Llangar now stands. "And (as the tradition is) the boundaries of the parish on all sides were settled for 'em by this poor deer, where he was forc'd to run for his life, there lye their bounds. He at last fell, and the place where he was killed is to this day called _Moel y Lladdfa_, or the _Hill of Slaughter_." VIII. ST. DAVID'S CHURCH, DENBIGH. There is a tradition connected with Old St. David's Church, Denbigh, recorded in Gee's _Guide to Denbigh_, that the building could not be completed, because whatever portion was finished in the day time was pulled down and carried to another place at night by some invisible hand, or supernatural power. The party who malignantly frustrates the builders' designs is in several instances said to have been the Devil. "We find," says Mr. William Crossing, in the _Antiquary_, vol. iv., p. 34, "that the Church of Plymton St. Mary, has connected with it the legend so frequently attached to ecclesiastical buildings, of the removal by the _Enemy of Mankind_ of the building materials by night, from the spot chosen for its erection to another at some distance." And again, Mr A. N. Palmer, quoting in the _Antiquary_, vol. iv., p. 34, what was said at the meeting of the British Association, in 1878, by Mr. Peckover, respecting the detached Tower of the Church of West Walton, near Wisbech, Norfolk, writes:--"During the early days of that Church the Fenmen were very wicked, and the _Evil Spirit_ hired a number of people to carry the tower away." Mr. W. S. Lach-Szyrma, in the _Antiquary_, vol. iii., p. 188, writes:--"Legends of _the Enemy of Mankind_ and some old buildings are numerous enough--e.g., it is said that as the masons built up the towers of Towednack Church, near St. Ives, the _Devil_ knocked the stones down; hence its dwarfed dimensions." The preceding stories justify me in relegating this kind of myth to the same class as those in which spirits are driven from churches and _laid_ in a neighbouring pool; and perhaps in these latter, as in the former, is dimly seen traces of the antagonism, in remote times, between peoples holding different religious beliefs, and the steps taken by one party to seize and appropriate the sacred spots of the other. _Apparitions of the Devil_. To accomplish his nefarious designs the Evil Spirit assumed forms calculated to attain his object. The following lines from Allan Cunningham's _Traditional Tales_, p. 9, aptly describe his transformations:-- Soon he shed His hellish slough, and many a subtle wile Was his to seem a heavenly spirit to man, First, he a hermit, sore subdued in flesh, O'er a cold cruse of water and a crust, Poured out meet prayers abundant. Then he changed Into a maid when she first dreams of man, And from beneath two silken eyelids sent, The sidelong light of two such wondrous eyes, That all the saints grew sinners . . . Then a professor of God's word he seemed, And o'er a multitude of upturned eyes Showered blessed dews, and made the pitchy path, Down which howl damned Spirits, seem the bright Thrice hallowed way to Heaven; yet grimly through The glorious veil of those seducing shapes, Frowned out the fearful Spirit. S. Anthony, in the wilderness, as related in his life by S. Athanasius, had many conflicts in the night with the powers of darkness, Satan appearing personally to him, to batter him from the strongholds of his faith. S. Dunstan, in his cell, was tempted by the Devil in the form of a lovely woman, but a grip of his nose with a heated tongs made him bellow out, and cease his nightly visits to that holy man. Ezra Peden, as related by Allan Cunningham, was also tempted by one who "was indeed passing fair," and the longer he looked on her she became the lovelier--"_owre lovely for mere flesh and blood_," and poor Peden succumbed to her wiles. From the book of Tobit it would appear that an Evil Spirit slew the first seven husbands of Sara from jealousy and lust, in the vain hope of securing her for himself. In Giraldus Cambrensis's _Itinerary through Wales_, Bohn's ed., p. 411 demons are shown to possess those qualities which are ascribed to them in the Apocryphal book of Tobit. There is nothing new, as far as I am aware, respecting the doings of the Great Enemy of mankind in Welsh Folk-Lore. His tactics in the Principality evince no originality. They are the usual weapons used by him everywhere, and these he found to be sufficient for his purposes even in Wales. Gladly would I here put down my pen and leave the uncongenial task of treating further about the spirits of darkness to others, but were I to do so, I should be guilty of a grave omission, for, as I have already said, ghosts, goblins, spirits, and other beings allied to Satan, occupy a prominent place in Welsh Folk-Lore. Of a winter's evening, by the faint light of a peat fire and rush candles, our forefathers recounted the weird stories of olden times, of devils, fairies, ghosts, witches, apparitions, giants, hidden treasures, and other cognate subjects, and they delighted in implanting terrors in the minds of the listeners that no philosophy, nor religion of after years, could entirely eradicate. These tales made a strong impression upon the imagination, and possibly upon the conduct of the people, and hence the necessity laid upon me to make a further selection of the many tales that I have collected on this subject. I will begin with a couple of stories extracted from the work of the Rev. Edmund Jones, by a writer in the _Cambro-Briton_, vol. ii., p. 276. _Satan appearing to a Man who was fetching a Load of Bibles_, _etc._ "A Mr. Henry Llewelyn, having been sent to Samuel Davies, of Ystrad Defodoc Parish, in Glamorganshire, to fetch a load of books, viz., Bibles, Testaments, Watts's Psalms, Hymns, and Songs for Children, said--Coming home by night towards Mynyddustwyn, having just passed by Clwyd yr Helygen ale-house, and being in a dry part of the lane--the mare, which he rode, stood still, and, like the ass of the ungodly Balaam, would go no farther, but kept drawing back. Presently he could see a living thing, round like a bowl, rolling from the right hand to the left, and crossing the lane, moving sometimes slow and sometimes very swift--yea, swifter than a bird could fly, though it had neither wings nor feet,--altering also its size. It appeared three times, less one time than another, seemed least when near him, and appeared to roll towards the mare's belly. The mare would then want to go forward, but he stopped her, to see more carefully what manner of thing it was. He staid, as he thought, about three minutes, to look at it; but, fearing to see a worse sight, he thought it high time to speak to it, and said--'What seekest thou, thou foul thing? In the name of the Lord Jesus, go away!' And by speaking this it vanished, and sank into the ground near the mare's feet. It appeared to be of a _reddish oak colour_." In a footnote to this tale we are told that formerly near Clwyd yr Helygen, the Lord's Day was greatly profaned, and "it may be that the Adversary was wroth at the good books and the bringer of them; for he well knew what burden the mare carried." The editor of the _Cambro-Briton_ remarks that the superstitions recorded, if authentic, "are not very creditable to the intelligence of our lower classes in Wales; but it is some satisfaction to think that none of them are of recent date." The latter remark was, I am sorry to say, rather premature. One other quotation from the same book I will here make. _The Devil appearing to a Dissenting Minister at Denbigh_. "The Rev. Mr. Thomas Baddy, who lived in Denbigh Town, and was a Dissenting Minister in that place, went into his study one night, and while he was reading or writing, he heard some one behind him laughing and grinning at him, which made him stop a little--as well indeed it might. It came again, and then he wrote on a piece of paper, that devil-wounding scripture, 1st John, 3rd,--'For this was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the Devil,'--and held it backwards from him, when the laughing ceased for ever; for it was a melancholy word to a scoffing Devil, and enough to damp him. It would have damped him yet more, if he had shewn him James, ii. 19--'The devils believe and tremble.' But he had enough for one time." The following objectless tale, still extant, I believe, in the mountainous parts of Denbighshire, is another instance of the credulity in former days of the people. _Satan seen Lying right across a Road_. The story related to me was as follows:--Near Pentrevoelas lived a man called John Ty'nllidiart, who was in the habit of taking, yearly, cattle from the uplands in his neighbourhood, to be wintered in the Vale of Clwyd. Once, whilst thus engaged, he saw lying across the road right in front of him and the cattle, and completely blocking up the way, Satan with his head on one wall and his tail on the other, moaning horribly. John, as might be expected, hurried homewards, leaving his charge to take their chance with the Evil One, but long before he came to his house, the odour of brimstone had preceded him, and his wife was only too glad to find that it was her husband that came through the door, for she thought that it was someone else that was approaching. _The Devil's Tree by Eglwys Rhos_, _near Llandudno_. At the corner of the first turning after passing the village of Llanrhos, on the left hand side, is a withered oak tree, called by the natives of those parts the Devil's Tree, and it was thought to be haunted, and therefore the young and timid were afraid to pass it of a dark night. The Rev. W. Arthur Jones, late Curate of the parish, told me that his horse was in the habit of shying whenever it came opposite this blighted tree, and his servant accounted for this by saying that the horse saw something there which was invisible to the sight of man. Be this as it may, the tree has an uncanny appearance and a bad reputation, which some years ago was greatly increased by an occurrence that happened there to Cadwaladr Williams, a shoemaker, who lived at Llansantffraid Glan Conway. Cadwaladr was in the habit of carrying his work home to Llandudno to his customers every Saturday night in a wallet, and with the money which they paid him he bought eatables for the coming week, and carried shoes to be patched in one end of the wallet, and groceries, etc., in the other end, and, by adjusting the wallet he balanced it, and carried it, over his shoulders, home again. This shoemaker sometimes refreshed himself too freely before starting homewards from Llandudno, and he was in the habit of turning into the public house at Llanrhos to gain courage to pass the Devil's Tree. One Saturday night, instead of quietly passing this tree on the other side, he walked fearlessly up to it, and defied the Evil One to appear if he were there. No sooner had he uttered the defiant words than something fell from the tree, and lit upon his shoulders, and grasped poor Cadwaladr's neck with a grip of iron. He fought with the incubus savagely to get rid of it, but all his exertions were in vain, and so he was obliged to proceed on his journey with this fearful thing clinging to him, which became heavier and heavier every step he took. At last, thoroughly exhausted, he came to Towyn, and, more dead than alive, he reached a friend's door and knocked, and oh, what pleasure, before the door was opened the weight on his back had gone, but his friend knew who it was that Cadwaladr had carried from the Devil's Tree. _Satan appearing as a Lovely Maiden_. The following story I received from the Rev. Owen Jones, Pentrevoelas. As regards details it is a fragment. A young man who was walking from Dyserth to Rhyl was overtaken by a lovely young lady dressed in white. She invited conversation, and they walked together awhile talking kindly, but, when they came opposite a pool on the road side she disappeared, in the form of a ball of fire, into the water. All that has reached our days, in corroboration of this tale, is the small pool. The next tale was told me by the Rev. R. Jones, Rector of Llanycil. Mr. Jones gave names and localities, which I have indicated by initials. _A Man carried away by the Evil One_. W. E., of Ll--- M---, was a very bad man; he was a brawler, a fighter, a drunkard. He is said to have spat in the parson's face, and to have struck him, and beaten the parish clerk who interfered. It was believed that he had sold himself to work evil, and many foul deeds he committed, and, what was worse, he gloried in them. People thought that his end would be a shocking one, and they were not disappointed. One night this reprobate and stubborn character did not return home. The next day search was made for him, and his dead body was found on the brink of the river. Upon inspecting the ground, it became evident that the deceased had had a desperate struggle with an unknown antagonist, and the battle commenced some distance above the _ceunant_, or _dingle_, where the body was discovered. It was there seen that the man had planted his heels deep into the ground, as if to resist a superior force, intent upon dragging him down to the river. There were indications that he had lost his footing; but a few yards lower down it was observed that his feet had ploughed the ground, and every step taken from this spot was traceable all down the declivity to the bottom of the ravine, and every yard gave proof that a desperate and prolonged struggle had taken place along the whole course. In one place an oak tree intercepted the way, and it was seen that a bough had its bark peeled off, and evidently the wretched man had taken hold of this bough and did not let go until the bark came off in his hands, for in death he still clutched the bark. The last and most severe struggle took place close to the river, and here the body was dragged underneath the roots of a tree, through a hole not big enough for a child to creep through, and this ended the fight. Mr. Jones stated that what was most remarkable and ominous in connection with this foul work was the fact that, although footprints were seen in the ground, they were all those of the miserable man, for there were no other marks visible. From this fact and the previous evil life of this wretched creature, the people in those parts believed that the fearful struggle had taken place between W. E. and the Evil One, and that he had not been murdered by any man, but that he was taken away by Satan. The next tale is a type of many once common in Wales, and as in one respect it connects these tales, or at least this particular one, with Fairy stories, I will relate it. _Satan appearing to a Young Man_. A young man, who had left Pentrevoelas to live in a farm house called Hafod Elwy, had to go over the hills to Denbigh on business. He started very early, before the cock crew, and as it was winter, his journey over the bleak moorlands was dismal and dreary. When he had proceeded several miles on his journey an unaccountable dread crept over him. He tried to dispel his fear by whistling and by knocking the ground with his walking stick, but all in vain. He stopped, and thought of returning home, but this he could not do, for he was more afraid of the ridicule of his friends than of his own fear, and therefore he proceeded on his journey and reached Pont Brenig, where he stopped awhile, and listened, thinking he might see or hear someone approaching. To his horror, he observed, through the glimmering light of the coming day, a tall gentleman approaching, and by a great exertion he mastered his feelings so far as to enable him to walk towards the stranger, but when within a few yards of him he stood still, for from fright he could not move. He noticed that the gentleman wore grey clothes, and breeches fastened with yellow buckles, on his coat were two rows of buttons like gold, his shoes were low, with bright clasps to them. Strange to say, this gentleman did not pass the terrified man, but stepped into the bog and disappeared from view. Ever afterwards, when this man passed the spot where he had met the Evil One, he found there money or other valuables. This latter incident connects this tale with Fairy Folk-Lore, as the Fair People were credited with bestowing gifts on mortals. _Satan appearing to a Collier_. John Roberts of Colliers' Row, Cyfartha, Merthyr, was once going to Aberdare over the mountain. On the top of the hill he was met by a handsome gentleman, who wore a three-cocked hat, a red waistcoat, and a blue coat. The appearance of this well dressed man took John Roberts's fancy; but he could not understand why he should be alone on Aberdare mountain, and, furthermore, why he did not know the way to Aberdare, for he had asked Roberts to direct him to the town. John stared at the gentleman, and saw clearly a cloven foot and a long tail protruding underneath the blue coat, and there and then the gentleman changed himself into a _pig_, which stood before John, gave a big grunt, and then ran away. I received the story from a lady to whom Roberts related it. All these tales belong to modern times, and some of them appear to be objectless as well as ridiculous. There are a few places in Wales which take their names from Satan. The _Devil's Bridge_ is so called from the tradition that it was erected by him upon the condition that the first thing that passed over it should be his. In his design he was balked, for his intended victim, who was accompanied by his faithful dog, threw a piece of bread across the bridge after which the dog ran, and thus became the Devil's property, but this victim Satan would not take. _The Devil's Kitchen_ is a chasm in the rock on the west side of Llyn Idwal, Carnarvonshire. The view through this opening, looking downwards towards Ogwen Lake, is sublime, and, notwithstanding its uncanny name, the Kitchen is well worthy of a visit from lovers of nature. From the following quotation, taken from _Y Gordofigion_, p. 110, it would appear that there is a rock on the side of Cader Idris called after the Evil One. The words are:-- "Mae ar dir Rhiwogo, ar ochr Cader Idris, graig a elwir. '_Careg-gwr-drwg_,' byth ar ol y Sabboth hwnw pan ddaeth yno at drigolion plwyfydd Llanfihangel Pennant ac Ystradgwyn, pan oeddynt wedi ymgasglu i chwareu cardiau, a dawnsio; ac y rhoddodd dro o amgylch y graig gan ddawnsio, ac y mae ol ei draed ar y graig eto." This in English is as follows:--There is on the land belonging to Rhiwogo, on the side of Cader Idris, a rock called _The Rock of the Evil One_, so named ever after that Sabbath, when he came there to join the parishioners of Llanfihangel Pennant and Ystradgwyn, who had gathered together to play cards and dance, and there he danced around the rock, and to this day the marks of his feet are to be seen in the rock. There were, perhaps are, in Pembrokeshire, two stones, called the Devil's Nags, which were haunted by Evil Spirits, who troubled the people that passed that way. _Ceubren yr Ellyll_, the Hobgoblin's Hollow Tree, a noble oak, once ornamented Nannau Park, Merionethshire. Tradition says that it was within the trunk of this tree that Glyndwr buried his cousin, Howel Sele, who fell a victim to the superior strength and skill of his relative. Ever after that sad occurrence the place was troubled, sounds proceeded out of the tree, and fire hovered over it, and, according to a writer in _The Cambro-Briton_, vol. i., p. 226:-- E'en to this day, the peasant still With cautious fear treads o'er the ground; In each wild bush a spectre sees, And trembles at each rising sound. One of the caves in Little Orme's Head, Llandudno, is known as _Ogof Cythreuliaid_, the Cave of Devils. From the preceding names of places, which do not by any means exhaust the list, it will be seen that many romantic spots in Wales are associated with Demons. There are also sayings in Welsh connected with the Evil One. Thus, in our days may be heard, when it rains and the sun shines at the same time, the expression, "_Mae'r Gwr Drwg yn waldio'i wraig_"--the Devil is beating his wife. Besides the Biblical names, by which Satan is known, in Wales, there are several others in use, not to be found in the Bible, but it would seem that these names are borrowed being either importations or translations; in fact, it is doubtful, whether we possess any exclusively Welsh terms applied solely to the Devil. _Andras_ or _Andros_ is common in North Wales for the Evil One. Canon Silvan Evans in his Welsh Dictionary derives this word from _an_, without, and _gras_, grace; thus, the word becomes synonymous with gracelessness, and he remarks that, although the term is generally rendered devil, it is much softer than that term, or its Welsh equivalent _diawl_. _Y Fall_ is another term applied to Satan in Wales. Dr. Owen Pugh defines the word as what is squabby, bulky. The most common expressions for the devil, however, are _Cythraul_, and _diawl_, or _diafol_, but these two last named words are merely forms of Diabolos. Other expressions, such as Old Nick, Old Harry, have found a home in Wales. _Y gwr drwg_, the bad man, _Gwas drwg_, the wicked servant, _Yr yspryd drwg_, the wicked spirit, _Yr hen fachgen_, the old boy, and such like expressions, are also common. Silly women frighten small children by telling them that the _Bo_, the _bogey_, the _bogey bo_, or _bolol_, etc., will take them away if they are not quiet. _Ghosts_, _or Spirits_. Ghosts, or Spirits, were supposed to be the shades of departed human beings who, for certain reasons, were permitted to visit either nightly, or periodically, this upper world. The hour that Spirits came to the earth was mid-night, and they remained until cock-crowing, when they were obliged to depart. So strongly did the people believe in the hours of these visits, that formerly no one would stay from home later than twelve o'clock at night, nor would any one proceed on a journey, until chanticleer had announced that the way was clear. Christmas Eve, however, was an exception, for during that night, no evil Spirit could appear. It was thought that if two persons were together, one only could see the Spirit, to the other he was invisible, and to one person only would the Spirit speak, and this he would do when addressed; otherwise, he remained silent. Ghosts re-visited the world to reveal hidden treasures, and the murdered haunted the place where their unburied bodies lay, or until vengeance overtook the murderer, and the wicked were doomed to walk the earth until they were laid in lake, or river, or in the Red Sea. The presence of Spirits was announced by a clanking of chains, by shrieks, or other horrible noises, and dogs, and horses, were credited with the power of seeing Spirits. Horses trembled and perspired at their presence, and dogs whined and crouched at their approach. The tales which I shall now relate throw a glimmering light on the subject now under consideration. _The Gloddaeth Ghost_. The following tale was told the Rev. Owen Jones, Pentrevoelas, by Thomas Davies, Tycoch, Rhyl, the hero in the story. I may say that Gloddaeth Wood is a remnant of the primaeval forest that is mentioned by Sir John Wynn, in his _History of the Gwydir Family_, as extending over a large tract of the country. This wood, being undisturbed and in its original wild condition, was the home of foxes and other vermin, for whose destruction the surrounding parishes willingly paid half-a-crown per head. This reward was an inducement to men who had leisure, to trap and hunt these obnoxious animals. Thomas Davies was engaged in this work, and, taking a walk through the wood one day for the purpose of discovering traces of foxes, he came upon a fox's den, and from the marks about the burrow he ascertained that there were young foxes in the hole. This was to him a grand discovery, for, in anticipation, cubs and vixen were already his. Looking about him, he noticed that there was opposite the fox's den a large oak tree with forked branches, and this sight settled his plan of operation. He saw that he could place himself in this tree in such a position that he could see the vixen leave, and return to her den, and, from his knowledge of the habits of the animal, he knew she would commence foraging when darkness and stillness prevailed. He therefore determined to commence the campaign forthwith, and so he went home to make his preparations. I should say that the sea was close to the wood, and that small craft often came to grief on the coast. I will now proceed with the story. Davies had taken his seat on a bough opposite the fox's den, when he heard a horrible scream in the direction of the sea, which apparently was that of a man in distress, and the sound uttered was "Oh, Oh." Thus Davies's attention was divided between the dismal, "Oh," and his fox. But, as the sound was a far way off, he felt disinclined to heed it, for he did not think it incumbent on him to ascertain the cause of that distressing utterance, nor did he think it his duty to go to the relief of a suffering fellow creature. He therefore did not leave his seat on the tree. But the cry of anguish, every now and again, reached his ears, and evidently, it was approaching the tree on which Davies sat. He now listened the more to the awful sounds, which at intervals reverberated through the wood, and he could no longer be mistaken--they were coming in his direction. Nearer and nearer came the dismal "Oh! Oh!" and with its approach, the night became pitch dark, and now the "Oh! Oh! Oh!" was only a few yards off, but nothing could be seen in consequence of the deep darkness. The sounds however ceased, but a horrible sight was presented to the frightened man's view. There, he saw before him, a nude being with eyes burning like fire, and these glittering balls were directed towards him. The awful being was only a dozen yards or so off. And now it crouched, and now it stood erect, but it never for a single instant withdrew its terrible eyes from the miserable man in the tree, who would have fallen to the ground were it not for the protecting boughs. Many times Davies thought that his last moment had come, for it seemed that the owner of those fiery eyes was about to spring upon him. As he did not do so, Davies somewhat regained his self possession, and thought of firing at the horrible being; but his courage failed, and there he sat motionless, not knowing what the end might be. He closed his eyes to avoid that gaze, which seemed to burn into him, but this was a short relief, for he felt constrained to look into those burning orbs, still it was a relief even to close his eyes: and so again and again he closed them, only, however, to open them on those balls of fire. About 4 o'clock in the morning, he heard a cock crow at Penbryn farm, and at the moment his eyes were closed, but at the welcome sound he opened them, and looked for those balls of fire, but, oh! what pleasure, they were no longer before him, for, at the crowing of the cock, they, and the being to whom they belonged, had disappeared. _Tymawr Ghost_, _Bryneglwys_. This Ghost plagued the servants, pinched and tormented them, and they could not get rest day nor night; such was the character of this Ghost as told me by Mr. Richard Jones, Ty'n-y-wern. But, said I, what was the cause of his acts, was it the Ghost of anyone who had been murdered? To this question, Jones gave the following account of the Ghost's arrival at Tymawr. A man called at this farm, and begged for something to eat, and as he was shabbily dressed, the girls laughed at him, and would not give him anything, and when going away, he said, speaking over his shoulder, "You will repent your conduct to me." In a few nights afterwards the house was plagued, and the servants were pinched all night. This went on days and days, until the people were tired of their lives. They, however, went to Griffiths, Llanarmon, a minister, who was celebrated as a Layer of Ghosts, and he came, and succeeded in capturing the Ghost in the form of a spider, and shut him up in his tobacco box and carried him away, and the servants were never afterwards plagued. _Ffrith Farm Ghost_. I am indebted to Mr. Williams, schoolmaster, Bryneglwys, for the history of this Ghost. It was not known why Ffrith farm was troubled by a Ghost; but when the servants were busily engaged in cheese making the Spirit would suddenly throw mortar, or filthy matter, into the milk, and thus spoil the curds. The dairy was visited by the Ghost, and there he played havoc with the milk and dishes. He sent the pans, one after the other, around the room, and dashed them to pieces. The terrible doings of the Ghost was a topic of general conversation in those parts. The farmer offered a reward of five pounds to anyone who would lay the Spirit. One Sunday afternoon, about 2 o'clock, an aged priest visited the farm yard, and in the presence of a crowd of spectators exorcised the Ghost, but without effect. In fact, the Ghost waved a woman's bonnet right in the face of the priest. The farmer then sent for Griffiths, an Independent minister at Llanarmon, who enticed the Ghost to the barn. Here the Ghost appeared in the form of a lion, but he could not touch Griffiths, because he stood in the centre of a circle, which the lion could not pass over. Griffiths persuaded the Ghost to appear in a less formidable shape, or otherwise he would have nothing to do with him. The Ghost next came in the form of a mastiff, but Griffiths objected even to this appearance; at last, the Ghost appeared as a fly, which was captured by Griffiths and secured in his tobacco box, and carried away. Griffiths acknowledged that this Ghost was the most formidable one that he had ever conquered. From this tale it would appear that some ghosts were more easily overcome than others. _Pont-y-Glyn Ghost_. There is a picturesque glen between Corwen and Cerrig-y-Drudion, down which rushes a mountain stream, and over this stream is a bridge, called Pont-y-Glyn. On the left hand side, a few yards from the bridge, on the Corwen side, is a yawning chasm, through which the river bounds. Here people who have travelled by night affirm that they have seen ghosts--the ghosts of those who have been murdered in this secluded glen. A man who is now a bailiff near Ruthin, but at the time of the appearance of the Ghost to him at Pont-y-Glyn was a servant at Garth Meilio--states that one night, when he was returning home late from Corwen, he saw before him, seated on a heap of stones, a female dressed in Welsh costume. He wished her good night, but she returned him no answer. She, however, got up and proceeded down the road, which she filled, so great were her increased dimensions. Other Spirits are said to have made their homes in the hills not far from Pont-y-Glyn. There was the Spirit of Ystrad Fawr, a strange Ghost that transformed himself into many things. I will give the description of this Ghost in the words of the author of _Y Gordofigion_. _Ysbryd Ystrad Fawr_. "Yr oedd Ysbryd yn Ystrad Fawr, ger Llangwm, yn arfer ymddangos ar brydiau ar lun twrci, a'i gynffon o'i amgylch fel olwyn troell. Bryd arall, byddai yn y coed, nes y byddai y rhai hyny yn ymddangos fel pe buasent oll ar dan; bryd arall, byddai fel ci du mawr yn cnoi asgwrn."--_Y Gordofigion_, p. 106. _Ystrad Fawr Ghost_ in English is as follows:-- There was a Ghost at Ystrad Fawr, near Llangwm, that was in the habit of appearing like a turkey with his tail spread out like a spinning wheel. At other times he appeared in the wood, when the trees would seem as if they were on fire, again he would assume the shape of a large black dog gnawing a bone. _Ty Felin Ghost_, _Llanynys_. An exciseman, overtaken by night, went to a house called Ty Felin, in the parish of Llanynys, and asked for lodgings. Unfortunately the house was a very small one, containing only two bedrooms, and one of these was haunted, consequently no one dared sleep in it. After awhile, however, the stranger induced the master to allow him to sleep in this haunted room; he had not been there long before a Ghost entered the room in the shape of a travelling Jew, and the Spirit walked around the room. The exciseman tried to catch him, and gave chase, but he lost sight of the Jew in the yard. He had scarcely entered the room, a second time, when he again saw the Ghost. He again chased him, and lost sight of him in the same place. The third time he followed the Ghost, he made a mark on the yard, where the Ghost vanished and went to rest, and was not again troubled. He got up early and went his way, but, before long, he returned to Ty Felin accompanied by a policeman, whom he requested to dig in the place where his mark was. This was done, and, underneath a superficial covering, a deep well was discovered, and in it a corpse. On examining the tenant of the house, he confessed that a travelling Jew, selling jewelry, etc., once lodged with him, and that he had murdered him, and cast his body in the well. _Llandegla Spirit_. The tale of this Spirit was given me by Mr. Roberts, late Schoolmaster of Llandegla. A small river runs close to the secluded village of Llandegla, and in this mountain stream under a huge stone lies a wicked Ghost. The tale is as follows:-- The old Rectory at Llandegla was haunted; the Spirit was very troublesome; no peace was to be got because of it; every night it was at its work. A person of the name of Griffiths, who lived at Graianrhyd, was sent for to lay the Ghost. He came to the Rectory, but the Spirit could not be overcome. It is true Griffiths saw it, but in such a form that he could not approach it; night after night, the Spirit appeared in various forms, but still the conjurer was unable to master it. At last it came to the wise man in the form of a fly, which Griffiths immediately captured, and placed in a small box. This box he buried under a large stone in the river, just below the bridge, near the Llandegla Mills, and there the Spirit is to remain until a certain tree, which grows by the bridge, reaches the height of the parapet, and then, when this takes place, the Spirit shall have power to regain his liberty. To prevent this tree from growing, the school children, even to this day, nip the upper branches, and thus retard its upward growth. Mr. Roberts received the story I have given, from the old Parish Clerk, John Jones the weaver, who died a few years ago. _Lady Jeffrey's Spirit_. This lady could not rest in her grave because of her misdeeds, and she troubled people dreadfully; at last she was persuaded or enticed to contract her dimensions, and enter into a bottle. She did so, after appearing in a good many hideous forms; but when she got into the bottle, it was corked down securely, and the bottle was cast into the pool underneath the Short bridge, Llanidloes, and there the lady was to remain until the ivy that grew up the buttresses should overgrow the sides of the bridge, and reach the parapet. The ivy was dangerously near the top of the bridge when the writer was a schoolboy, and often did he and his companions crop off its tendrils as they neared the prescribed limits for we were all terribly afraid to release the dreaded lady out of the bottle. In the year 1848, the old bridge was blown up, and a new one built instead of it. A schoolfellow, whom we called Ben, was playing by the aforesaid pool when the bridge was undergoing reconstruction, and he found by the river's side a small bottle, and in the bottle was a little black thing, that was never quiet, but it kept bobbing up and down continually, just as if it wanted to get out. Ben kept the bottle safely for a while, but ere long he was obliged to throw it into the river, for his relations and neighbours came to the conclusion that that was the very bottle that contained Lady Jeffrey's Spirit, and they also surmised that the little black restless thing was nothing less than the lady herself. Ben consequently resigned the bottle and its contents to the pool again, there to undergo a prolonged, but unjust, term of imprisonment. _Pentrevoelas_.--_Squire Griffith's Ghost_. A couple of workmen engaged at Foelas, the seat of the late Squire Griffiths, thought they would steal a few apples from the orchard for their children, and for this purpose one evening, just before leaving off work, they climbed up a tree, but happening to look down, whom should they see but the Squire, wearing his three-cornered hat, and dressed in the clothes he used to wear when alive, and he was leaning against the trunk of the tree on which they were perched. In great fright they dropped to the ground and took to their heels. They ran without stopping to Bryn Coch, but there, to their horror, stood the Squire in the middle of the road quietly leaning on his staff. They again avoided him and ran home every step, without looking behind them. The orchard robbers never again saw their late master, nor did they ever again attempt to rob the orchard. _David Salisbury's Ghost_. I will quote from _Bye-Gones_, vol. iii., p. 211, an account of this Spirit. "There was an old Welsh tradition in vogue some fifty years ago, that one David Salisbury, son of _Harri Goch_ of Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, and grandson to Thomas Salisbury hen of Lleweni, had given considerable trouble to the living, long after his remains had been laid in the grave. A good old soul, Mr. Griffiths of Llandegla, averred that he had seen his ghost, mounted upon a white horse, galloping over hedges and ditches in the dead of night, and had heard his 'terrible groans,' which, he concluded, proceeded from the weight of sin troubling the unhappy soul, which had to undergo these untimely and unpleasant antics. An old Welsh ballad entitled 'Ysbryd Dafydd Salbri,' professed to give the true account of the individual in question, but the careful search of many years has failed me in securing a copy of that horrible song. GORONWY IFAN." This Spirit fared better than most of his compeers, for they, poor things, were, according to the popular voice, often doomed to ride headless horses, which madly galloped, the livelong night, hither and thither, where they would, to the great terror of the midnight traveller who might meet this mad unmanageable creature, and also, as it would seem, to the additional discomfort of the unfortunate rider. It is, or was believed in Gyffylliog parish, which is in the recesses of the Denbighshire mountains, four or five miles to the west of Ruthin, that the horses ridden by Spirits and goblins were real horses, and it was there said when horses were found in their stables at dawn in a state of perspiration that they had been taken out in the night and ridden by Spirits about the country, and hence their jaded condition in the morning. It was also thought that the horses found in the morning in their pasture ground with tangled manes and tails, and bodies covered with mud, had been during the night used by Spirits, who rushed them through mire and brier, and that consequently they presented the appearance of animals who had followed the hounds in a long chase through a stiff country. There is a strong family likeness between all Ghost stories, and a lack of originality in their construction, but this suggests a common source from which the majority of these fictions are derived. I now come to another phase of Spirit Folk-Lore, which has already been alluded to, viz., the visits of Ghosts for the purpose of revealing hidden treasures. The following tale, which I took down from the mouth of John Rowland, at one time the tenant of Plas-yn-llan, Efenechtyd, is an instance of this kind of story. _A Ghost Appearing to point out Hidden Treasures_. There is a farm house called Clwchdyrnog in the parish of Llanddeusant, Anglesey, which was said to have been haunted by a Spirit. It seems that no one would summon courage to speak to the Ghost, though it was seen by several parties; but one night, John Hughes, Bodedern, a widower, who visited the house for the purpose of obtaining a second Mrs. Hughes from among the servant girls there, spoke to the Ghost. The presence of the Spirit was indicated by a great noise in the room where Hughes and the girl were. In great fright Hughes invoked the Spirit, and asked why he troubled the house. "Have I done any wrong to you," said he, addressing the Spirit. "No," was the answer. Then he asked if the girl to whom he was paying his attentions was the cause of the Spirit's visit, and again he received the answer, "No." Then Hughes named individually all the inmates of the house in succession, and inquired if they were the cause of the Spirit's visits, and again he was answered in the negative. Then he asked why, since no one in the house had disturbed the Spirit, he came there to disturb the inmates. To this pertinent question the Spirit answered as follows:--"There are treasures hidden on the south side of Ffynnon Wen, which belong to, and are to be given to, the nine months old child in this house: when this is done, I will never disturb this house any more." The spot occupied by the treasure was minutely described by the Spirit, and Hughes promised to go to the place indicated. The next day, he went to the spot, and digging into the ground, he came upon an iron chest filled with gold, silver, and other valuables, and all these things he faithfully delivered up to the parents of the child to be kept by them for him until he should come of age to take possession of them himself. This they faithfully did, and the Spirit never again came to the house. John Rowland, my informant, was a native of Anglesey, and he stated that all the people of Llanddeusant knew of the story which he related to me. He was eighty-three years old at the time he told me the tale, and that was in October, 1882. But one of the most singular tales of the appearance of a Ghost is recorded in the autobiography of the grandfather of the late Mr. Thomas Wright, the well-known Shropshire antiquary. Mr. Wright's grandfather was a Methodist, and in the early days of that body the belief in apparitions was not uncommon amongst them. The story was told Mr. Wright, sen., in 1780, at the house, in Yorkshire, of Miss Bosanquet (afterwards the wife of Fletcher of Madeley), by Mr. John Hampson, sen., a well-known preacher among the Methodists, who had just arrived from Wales. As the scene of the tale is laid in Powis Castle, I will call this visitation _The Powis Castle Ghost revealing a Hidden Box to a Woman_. The following is the narrative:--It had been for some time reported in the neighbourhood that a poor unmarried woman, who was a member of the Methodist Society, and had become serious under their ministry, had seen and conversed with the apparition of a gentleman, who had made a strange discovery to her. Mr. Hampson, being desirous to ascertain if there was any truth in the story, sent for the woman, and desired her to give him an exact relation of the whole affair from her own mouth, and as near the truth as she possibly could. She said she was a poor woman, who got her living by spinning hemp and line; that it was customary for the farmers and gentlemen of that neighbourhood to grow a little hemp or line in a corner of their fields for their own home consumption, and as she was a good hand at spinning the materials, she used to go from house to house to inquire for work; that her method was, where they employed her, during her stay to have meat, and drink, and lodging (if she had occasion to sleep with them), for her work, and what they pleased to give her besides. That, among other places, she happened to call one day at the Welsh Earl of Powis's country seat, called Redcastle, to inquire for work, as she usually had done before. The quality were at this time in London, and had left the steward and his wife, with other servants, as usual, to take care of their country residence in their absence. The steward's wife set her to work, and in the evening told her that she must stay all night with them, as they had more work for her to do next day. When bedtime arrived, two or three of the servants in company, with each a lighted candle in her hand, conducted her to her lodging. They led her to a ground room, with a boarded floor, and two sash windows. The room was grandly furnished, and had a genteel bed in one corner of it. They had made her a good fire, and had placed her a chair and a table before it, and a large lighted candle upon the table. They told her that was her bedroom, and she might go to sleep when she pleased. They then wished her a good night and withdrew altogether, pulling the door quickly after them, so as to hasp the spring-sneck in the brass lock that was upon it. When they were gone, she gazed awhile at the fine furniture, under no small astonishment that they should put such a poor person as her in so grand a room and bed, with all the apparatus of fire, chair, table, and candle. She was also surprised at the circumstance of the servants coming so many together, with each of them a candle. However, after gazing about her some little time, she sat down and took a small Welsh Bible out of her pocket, which she always carried about with her, and in which she usually read a chapter--chiefly in the New Testament--before she said her prayers and went to bed. While she was reading she heard the room door open, and turning her head, saw a gentleman enter in a gold-laced hat and waistcoat, and the rest of his dress corresponding therewith. (I think she was very particular in describing the rest of his dress to Mr. Hampson, and he to me at the time, but I have now forgot the other particulars). He walked down by the sash-window to the corner of the room and then returned. When he came to the first window in his return (the bottom of which was nearly breast-high), he rested his elbow on the bottom of the window, and the side of his face upon the palm of his hand, and stood in that leaning posture for some time, with his side partly towards her. She looked at him earnestly to see if she knew him, but, though from her frequent intercourse with them, she had a personal knowledge of all the present family, he appeared a stranger to her. She supposed afterwards that he stood in this manner to encourage her to speak; but as she did not, after some little time he walked off, pulling the door after him as the servants had done before. She began now to be much alarmed, concluding it to be an apparition, and that they had put her there on purpose. This was really the case. The room, it seems, had been disturbed for a long time, so that nobody could sleep peaceably in it, and as she passed for a very serious woman, the servants took it into their heads to put the Methodist and Spirit together, to see what they would make of it. Startled at this thought, she rose from her chair, and kneeled down by the bedside to say her prayers. While she was praying he came in again, walked round the room, and came close behind her. She had it on her mind to speak, but when she attempted it she was so very much agitated that she could not utter a word. He walked out of the room again, pulling the door after him as before. She begged that God would strengthen her and not suffer her to be tried beyond what she was able to bear. She recovered her spirits, and thought she felt more confidence and resolution, and determined if he came in again she would speak to him, if possible. He presently came in again, walked round, and came behind her as before; she turned her head and said, "Pray, sir, who are you, and what do you want?" He put up his finger, and said, "Take up the candle and follow me, and I will tell you." She got up, took up the candle, and followed him out of the room. He led her through a long boarded passage till they came to the door of another room, which he opened and went in. It was a small room, or what might be called a large closet. "As the room was small, and I believed him to be a Spirit," she said, "I stopped at the door; he turned and said, 'Walk in, I will not hurt you.' So I walked in. He said, 'Observe what I do.' I said, 'I will.' He stooped, and tore up one of the boards of the floor, and there appeared under it a box with an iron handle in the lid. He said, 'Do you see that box?' I said, 'Yes, I do.' He then stepped to one side of the room, and showed me a crevice in the wall, where, he said, a key was hid that would open it. He said, 'This box and key must be taken out, and sent to the Earl in London' (naming the Earl, and his place of residence in the city). He said, 'Will you see it done?' I said, 'I will do my best to get it done.' He said, 'Do, and I will trouble the house no more.' He then walked out of the room and left me." (He seems to have been a very civil Spirit, and to have been very careful to affright her as little as possible). "I stepped to the room door and set up a shout. The steward and his wife, and the other servants came to me immediately, all clung together, with a number of lights in their hands. It seems they had all been waiting to see the issue of the interview betwixt me and the apparition. They asked me what was the matter? I told them the foregoing circumstances, and showed them the box. The steward durst not meddle with it, but his wife had more courage, and, with the help of the other servants, lugged it out, and found the key." She said by their lifting it appeared to be pretty heavy, but that she did not see it opened, and therefore did not know what it contained; perhaps money, or writings of consequence to the family, or both. They took it away with them, and she then went to bed and slept peaceably till the morning. It appeared afterwards that they sent the box to the Earl in London, with an account of the manner of its discovery and by whom; and the Earl sent down orders immediately to his steward to inform the poor woman who had been the occasion of this discovery, that if she would come and reside in his family, she should be comfortably provided for for the remainder of her days; or, if she did not choose to reside constantly with them, if she would let them know when she wanted assistance, she should be liberally supplied at his Lordship's expense as long as she lived. And Mr. Hampson said it was a known fact in the neighbourhood that she had been so supplied from his Lordship's family from the time the affair was said to have happened, and continued to be so at the time she gave Mr. Hampson this account. Such is the tale. I will make no comments on it. Many similar stories are extant. After one more tale, I will leave these Spirit stories, and I will then relate how troublesome Ghosts were laid. The Spirits of the preceding tales were sent from the unseen world to do good, but the Spirit of the maiden who gives a name to a Welsh lake, cried out for vengeance; but history does not inform us that she obtained satisfaction. There is a lake in Carnarvonshire called _Llyn-Nad-y-Forwyn_, or the Lake of the Maiden's Cry, to which is attached the following tale. I will call the tale _The Spirit of Llyn-Nad-y-Forwyn_. It is said that a young man was about to marry a young girl, and on the evening before the wedding they were rambling along the water's side together, but the man was false, and loved another better than the woman whom he was about to wed. They were alone in an unfrequented country, and the deceiver pushed the girl into the lake to get rid of her to marry his sweetheart. She lost her life. But ever afterwards her Spirit troubled the neighbourhood, but chiefly the scene of her murder. Sometimes she appeared as a ball of fire, rolling along the river Colwyn, at other times she appeared as a lady dressed in silk, taking a solitary walk along the banks of the river. At other times, groans and shrieks were heard coming out of the river--just such screams as would be uttered by a person who was being murdered. Sometimes a young maiden was seen emerging out of the waters, half naked, with dishevelled hair, that covered her shoulders, and the country resounded with her heart-rending crying as she appeared in the lake. The frequent crying of the Spirit gave to the lake its name, Llyn-Nad-y-Forwyn. _Spirit Laying_. It must have been a consolation to those who believed in the power of wicked Spirits to trouble people, that it was possible to lay these evil visitors in a pool of water, or to drive them away to the Red Sea, or to some other distant part of the world. It was generally thought that Spirits could be laid by a priest; and there were particular forms of exorcising these troublesome beings. A conjuror, or _Dyn Hysbys_, was also credited with this power, and it was thought that the prayer of a righteous man could overcome these emissaries of evil. But there was a place for hope in the case of these transported or laid Spirits. It was granted to some to return from the Red Sea to the place whence they departed by the length of a grain of wheat or barley corn yearly. The untold ages that it would take to accomplish a journey of four thousand miles thus slowly was but a very secondary consideration to the annihilation of hope. Many were the conditions imposed upon the vanquished Spirits by their conquerors before they could be permitted to return to their old haunts, and well might it be said that the conditions could not possibly be carried out; but still there was a place for hope in the breast of the doomed by the imposition of any terminable punishment. The most ancient instance of driving out a Spirit that I am acquainted with is to be found in the Book of Tobit. It seems to be the prototype of many like tales. The angel Raphael and Tobias were by the river Tigris, when a fish jumped out of the river, which by the direction of the angel was seized by the young man, and its heart, and liver, and gall extracted, and, at the angel's command carefully preserved by Tobias. When asked what their use might be, the angel informed him that the smoke of the heart and liver would drive away a devil or Evil Spirit that troubled anyone. In the 14th verse of the sixth chapter of Tobit we are told that a devil loved Sara, but that he did no harm to anyone, excepting to those who came near her. Knowing this, the young man was afraid to marry the woman; but remembering the words of Raphael, he went in unto his wife, and took the ashes of the perfumes as ordered, and put the heart and liver of the fish thereupon, and made a smoke therewith, the which smell, when the Evil Spirit had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him. Such is the story, many variants of which are found in many countries. I am grieved to find that Sir John Wynne, who wrote the interesting and valuable _History of the Gwydir Family_, which ought to have secured for him kindly recognition from his countrymen, was by them deposited after death, for troubling good people, in Rhaiadr y Wenol. The superstition has found a place in Yorke's _Royal Tribes of Wales_. The following quotation is from the _History of the Gwydir Family_, Oswestry Edition, p. 7:-- "Being shrewd and successful in his dealings, people were led to believe he oppressed them," and says Yorke in his _Royal Tribes of Wales_, "It is the superstition of Llanrwst to this day that the Spirit of the old gentleman lies under the great waterfall, Rhaiadr y Wennol, there to be punished, purged, spouted upon and purified from the foul deeds done in his days of nature." This gentleman, though, is not alone in occupying, until his misdeeds are expiated, a watery grave. There is hardly a pool in a river, or lake in which Spirits have not, according to popular opinion, been laid. In our days though, it is only the aged that speak of such matters. A Spirit could in part be laid. It is said that Abel Owen's Spirit, of Henblas, was laid by Gruffydd Jones, Cilhaul, in a bottle, and buried in a _gors_ near Llanrwst. This Gruffydd Jones had great trouble at Hafod Ucha between Llanrwst and Conway, to lay a Spirit. He began in the afternoon, and worked hard the whole night and the next day to lay the Spirit, but he succeeded in overcoming a part only of the Spirit. He was nearly dead from exhaustion and want of food before he could even master a portion of the Spirit. The preceding is a singular tale, for it teaches that Spirits are divisible. A portion of this Spirit, repute says, is still at large, whilst a part is undergoing purification. The following tale was told me by my friend, the Rev. T. H. Evans, Vicar of Llanwddyn. _Cynon's Ghost_. One of the wicked Spirits which plagued the secluded Valley of Llanwddyn long before it was converted into a vast reservoir to supply Liverpool with water was that of _Cynon_. Of this Spirit Mr. Evans writes thus:--"_Yspryd Cynon_ was a mischievous goblin, which was put down by _Dic Spot_ and put in a quill, and placed under a large stone in the river below Cynon Isaf. The stone is called '_Careg yr Yspryd_,' the Ghost Stone. This one received the following instructions, that he was to remain under the stone until the water should work its way between the stone and the dry land." The poor Spirit, to all appearance, was doomed to a very long imprisonment, but _Dic Spot_ did not foresee the wants and enterprise of the people of Liverpool, who would one day convert the Llanwddyn Valley into a lake fifteen miles in circumference, and release the Spirit from prison by the process of making their Waterworks. I might here say that there is another version current in the parish besides that given me by Mr. Evans, which is that the Spirit was to remain under the stone until the river was dried up. Perhaps both conditions were, to make things safe, imposed upon the Spirit. _Careg yr Yspryd_ and Cynon Isaf were at the entrance to the Valley of Llanwddyn, and down this opening, or mouth of the valley, rushed the river--the river that was to be dammed up for the use of Liverpool. The inhabitants of the valley knew the tradition respecting the Spirit, and they much feared its being disturbed. The stone was a large boulder, from fifteen to twenty tons in weight, and it was evident that it was doomed to destruction, for it stood in the river Vyrnwy just where operations were to commence. There was no small stir among the Welsh inhabitants when preparations were made to blast the huge Spirit-stone. English and Irish workmen could not enter into the feeling of the Welsh towards this stone, but they had heard what was said about it. They, however, had no dread of the imprisoned Spirit. In course of time the stone was bored and a load of dynamite inserted, but it was not shattered at the first blast. About four feet square remained intact, and underneath this the Spirit was, if it was anywhere. The men were soon set to work to demolish the stone. The Welshmen expected some catastrophe to follow its destruction, and they were even prepared to see the Spirit bodily emerge from its prison, for, said they, the conditions of its release have been fulfilled--the river had been diverted from its old bed into an artificial channel, to facilitate the removal of this and other stones--and there was no doubt that both conditions had been literally carried out, and consequently the Spirit, if justice ruled, could claim its release. The stone was blasted, and strange to relate, when the smoke had cleared away, the water in a cavity where the stone had been was seen to move; there was no apparent reason why the water should thus be disturbed, unless, indeed, the Spirit was about to appear. The Welsh workmen became alarmed, and moved away from the place, keeping, however, their eyes fixed on the pool. The mystery was soon solved, for a large frog made its appearance, and, sedately sitting on a fragment of the shattered stone, rubbed its eyes with its feet, as if awaking from a long sleep. The question was discussed, "Is it a frog, or the Spirit in the form of a frog; if it is a frog, why was it not killed when the stone was blasted?" And again, "Who ever saw a frog sit up in that fashion and rub the dust out of its eyes? It must be the Spirit." There the workmen stood, at a respectful distance from the frog, who, heedless of the marked attention paid to it, continued sitting up and rubbing its eyes. They would not approach it, for it must be the Spirit, and no one knew what its next movement or form might be. At last, however, the frog was driven away, and the men re-commenced their labours. But for nights afterwards people passing the spot heard a noise as of heavy chains being dragged along the ground where the stone once stood. _Caellwyngrydd Spirit_. This was a dangerous Spirit. People passing along the road were stoned by it; its work was always mischievous and hurtful. At last it was exorcised and sent far away to the Red Sea, but it was permitted to return the length of a barley corn every year towards its lost home. From the tales already given, it is seen that the people believed in the possibility of getting rid of troublesome Spirits, and the person whose aid was sought on these occasions was often a minister of religion. We have seen how Griffiths of Llanarmon had reached notoriety in this direction, and he lived in quite modern times. The clergy were often consulted in matters of this kind, and they were commonly believed to have power over Spirits. The Rev. Walter Davies had great credit as a Spirit layer, and he lived far into the present century. Going further back, I find that Archdeacon Edmund Prys, and his contemporary and friend, Huw Llwyd, were famous opponents of Evil Spirits, and their services are said to have been highly appreciated, because always successful. The manner of laying Spirits differed. In this century, prayer and Bible reading were usually resorted to, but in other days, incantation was employed. We have seen how Griffiths surrounded himself with an enchanted circle, which the Spirit could not break through. This ring was thought to be impervious to the Ghost tribe, and therefore it was the protection of the person whom it surrounded. The Spirit was invoked and commanded to depart by the person within the magic ring and it obeyed the mandate. Sometimes it was found necessary to conduct a service in Church, in Latin by night, the Church being lit up with consecrated candles, ere the Ghost could be overcome. When Spirits were being laid, we are told that they presented themselves in various forms to the person engaged in laying them, and that ultimately they foolishly came transformed into some innocuous insect or animal, which he was able to overcome. The simplicity of the Ghosts is ridiculous, and can only be understood by supposing that the various steps in the contest for the mastery are not forthcoming, that they have been lost. These various metamorphoses would imply that transmigration was believed in by our forefathers. _Ghost Raising_. If the possibility of Ghost Laying was believed in, so also was the possibility of raising Evil Spirits. This faith dates from olden times. Shakespeare, to this, as to most other popular notions, has given a place in his immortal plays. Speaking rightly in the name of "Glendower," a Welshman, conversant with Ghosts and Goblins, the poet makes him say:-- "I can call Spirits from the vasty deep." _Henry the Fourth_, Act III., S. 1. And again in the same person's mouth are placed these words:-- "Why, I can teach you, cousin, _to command the devil_." The witches in Macbeth have this power ascribed to them: I'll catch it ere it come to ground: And that, distilled by magic sleights, _Shall raise such artificial Sprites_, _As by the strength of their illusion_ Shall draw him on to his confusion. _Macbeth_, Act III., S. 5. This idea has continued right to our own days, and adepts in the black art have affirmed that they possess this power. Doctor Bennion, a gentleman well known in his lifetime in and about Oswestry, was thought to be able to raise Devils. I find in the history of _Ffynnon Elian_, p. 12, that the doctor visited John Evans, the last custodian of the well, and taught him how to accomplish this feat. For the benefit of those anxious to obtain this power, I will give the doctor's recipe:--"Publish it abroad that you can raise the Devil, and the country will believe you, and will credit you with many miracles. All that you have to do afterwards is to be silent, and you will then be as good a raiser of Devils as I am, and I as good as you." Evans confesses that he acted according to the astute doctor's advice, and he adds--"The people in a very short time spoke much about me, and they soon came to intrust everything to me, their conduct frightened me, for they looked upon me as if I were a god." This man died August 14th, 1858. _Witches and Conjurors_. From and before the days of King Saul, to the present moment, witches have held dreaded sway over the affairs of man. Cruel laws have been promulgated against them, they have been murdered by credulous and infuriated mobs, they have lost their lives after legal trial, but still, witches have lived on through the dark days of ignorance, and even in these days of light and learning they have their votaries. There must be something in the human constitution peculiarly adapted to the exercise of witchcraft, or it could not have lived so long, nor could it have been so universal, as it undoubtedly is, unless men lent themselves willingly to its impositions. It is curious to notice how good and enlightened men have clung to a belief in witchcraft. It is, consequently, not to be wondered at that the common people placed faith in witches and conjurors when their superiors in learning professed a like faith. I have often spoken to intelligent men, who did not scruple to confess that they believed in witches and conjurors, and they adduced instances to prove that their faith had a foundation in fact. Almost up to our days, the farmer who lost anything valuable consulted a conjuror, and vowed vengeance on the culprit if it were not restored by such and such a time, and invariably the stolen property was returned to its owner before the specified period had expired. As detectives, the conjurors, therefore, occupied a well-defined and useful place in rural morality, and witches, too, were indirectly teachers of charity, for no farm wife would refuse refreshments to the destitute lest vengeance should overtake her. In this way the deserving beggar obtained needed assistance from motives of self-preservation from benefactors whose fears made them charitable. But, if these benefits were derived from a false faith, the evils attending that faith were nevertheless most disastrous to the community at large, and many inhuman Acts were passed in various reigns to eradicate witchcraft. From the wording of these Acts it will be seen what witches were credited with doing. An Act passed 33 Henry VIII. adjudged all witchcraft and sorcery to be felony. A like Act was passed 1 James, c.12, and also in the reign of Philip and Mary. The following is an extract:-- "All persons who shall practise invocation, or conjuration, of wicked spirits, any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed, or destroyed, shall, with their aiders, and abettors, be accounted felons, without benefit of clergy; and all persons practising any witchcraft, etc., whereby any person shall happen to be wasted, consumed, or lamed in his or her body, or members, or whereby any goods, or chattels, shall be destroyed, wasted, or impaired, shall, with their counsellors, and aiders, suffer for the first offence one year's imprisonment and the pillory, and for the second the punishment of felony without the clergy." . . . "If any person shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil or wicked spirit, or _take up any dead man_, _woman_, _or child out of his_, _her_, _or their grave_; or, the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person to be employed in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, etc., _he shall suffer death as a felon_, without benefit of clergy." The law of James I. was repealed in George II.'s. reign, but even then persons pretending to use witchcraft, tell fortunes, or discover stolen goods, by skill in the occult sciences, were to be punished by a year's imprisonment; and by an Act, 5 George IV., c.83, any person or persons using any subtle art, means, or device, by palmistry, or otherwise, to deceive his Majesty's subjects, were to be deemed rogues and vagabonds, and to be punished with imprisonment and hard labour. Acts of Parliament did not succeed in eradicating witchcraft. Its power has waned, but it still exercises an influence, shadowy though it be, on certain minds, though in its grosser forms it has disappeared. Formerly, ailments of all kinds, and misfortunes of every description, were ascribed to the malignant influence of some old decrepit female, and it was believed that nature's laws could be changed by these witches, that they could at will produce tempests to destroy the produce of the earth, and strike with sickness those who had incurred their displeasure. Thus Lady Macbeth, speaking of these hags, says:-- "I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further they made themselves air, into which they vanished." _Macbeth_, Act. i, S. 5. The uncanny knowledge possessed by witches was used, it was thought, to injure people, and their malice towards good, hard-working, honest folk was unmistakable. They afflicted children from sheer love of cruelty, and bewitched animals gratuitously, or for slights which they supposed their owners had shown towards them; consequently their knowledge was considered to be greatly inimical to others, and particularly baneful to the industrious, whom witches hated. There was hardly a district that had not its witches. Children ran away when they saw approaching them an aged woman, with a red shawl on, for they believed she was a witch, who could, with her evil eye, injure them. It was, however, believed that the machinations of witches could be counteracted in various ways, and by and by some of these charms shall be given. Life would have been intolerable but for these antidotes to witchcraft. Shakespeare's knowledge of Welsh Folk-lore was extensive and peculiarly faithful, and what he says of witches in general agrees with the popular opinion respecting them in Wales. I cannot do better than quote from this great Folk-lorist a few things that he tells us about witches. Mention has been made of witches taking dead bodies out of their graves to make use of them in their enchantments, and Shakespeare, in his description of the witches' cauldron, shows that they threw into the seething pot many portions of human beings. The first witch in _Macbeth_ says:-- Round about the cauldron go, In the poisoned _entrails_ throw. The third witch mentions other things that are thrown into the pot, as:-- Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches' mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digged i' the dark, _Liver of blaspheming Jew_, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, _Nose of Turk_, _and Tartar's lips_, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-delivered by a drab. _Macbeth_, A. IV., S. 1. It was thought that witches could change themselves, and other people, into the form of animals. In Wales, the cat and the hare were the favourite animals into which witches transformed themselves, but they did not necessarily confine themselves to these animals. They were able to travel in the air on a broom-stick; make children ill; give maids the nightmare; curse with madness, animals; bring misfortune on families; hinder the dairy maid from making butter; and many more imaginary things were placed to their credit. The personal appearance of witches, as given by Shakespeare, corresponds exactly with the Welsh idea of these hags. On this subject the poet writes:-- What are these _So wither'd and so wild in their attire_ That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, And yet are on't?--Live you? Or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her chappy fingers laying Upon her skinny lips:--you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so. _Macbeth_, Act I., S. 3. A striking and pathetic portrait of a witch, taken from _Otway's Orphan_, Act. II., is given in No. 117 of the _Spectator_. It is so true to life and apposite to our subject that I will quote it:-- In a close lane, as I pursu'd my journey, I spy'd a wrinkled hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself. Her eyes with scalding-rheum were gall'd, and red, Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seemed wither'd, And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt The tatter'd remnant of an old striped hanging, Which served to keep her carcass from the cold; So there was nothing of a piece about her. Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patched, With different colour'd rags, black, red, white, yellow. And seem'd to speak variety of wretchedness. A picture such as this is enough to create sympathy and charity in a selfish heart, but in those dark days, when faith in witchcraft prevailed, such a poor old decrepit woman inspired awe, and was shunned as a malicious evil-doer by all her neighbours. _Llanddona Witches_. There is a tradition in the parish of Llanddona, Anglesey, that these witches, with their husbands, had been expelled from their native country, wherever that was, for practising witchcraft. They were sent adrift, it is said, in a boat, without rudder or oars, and left in this state to the mercy of the wind and the wave. When they were first discovered approaching the Anglesey shore, the Welsh tried to drive them back into the sea, and even after they had landed they were confined to the beach. The strangers, dead almost from thirst and hunger, commanded a spring of pure water to burst forth on the sands. This well remains to our days. This miracle decided their fate. The strangers were allowed, consequently, to land, but as they still practised their evil arts the parish became associated with their name, and hence the _Witches of Llanddona_ was a term generally applied to the female portion of that parish, though in reality it belonged to one family only within its boundaries. The men lived by smuggling and the women by begging and cursing. It was impossible to overcome these daring smugglers, for in their neckerchief was a fly, which, the moment the knot of their cravats was undone, flew right at the eye of their opponents and blinded them, but before this last remedy was resorted to the men fought like lions, and only when their strength failed them did they release their familiar spirit, the fly, to strike with blindness the defenders of the law. The above-mentioned tradition of the coming of these witches to Anglesey is still current in the parish of Llanddona, which is situated on the north coast of Anglesey. It was thought that the witching power belonged to families, and descended from mothers to daughters. This was supposed to be the case with the witches of Llanddona. This family obtained a bad report throughout the island. The women, with dishevelled hair and bared breasts, visited farm houses and requested charity, more as a right than a favour, and no one dared refuse them. _Llanddona Witches_ is a name that is not likely soon to die. Taking advantage of the credulity of the people, they cursed those whom they disliked, and many were the endeavours to counteract their maledictions. The following is one of their curses, uttered at _Y Ffynon Ocr_, a well in the parish of Llanddona, upon a man who had offended one of these witches:-- Crwydro y byddo am oesoedd lawer; Ac yn mhob cam, camfa; Yn mhob camfa, codwm; Yn mhob codwm, tori asgwrn; Nid yr asgwrn mwyaf na'r lleiaf, Ond asgwrn chwil corn ei wddw bob tro. The English is as follows, but the alliteration and rhythm of the Welsh do not appear in the translation:-- May he wander for ages many; And at every step, a stile; At every stile, a fall; At every fall, a broken bone; Not the largest, nor the least bone, But the chief neck bone, every time. This curse seemed to be a common imprecation, possibly belonging to that family. Such was the terror of the _Llanddona Witches_ that if any of them made a bid for a pig or anything else, in fair or market, no one else dared bid against them, for it was believed they would witch the animal thus bought. There were also celebrated witches at Denbigh. _Bella Fawr_ (Big Bella) was one of the last and most famous of her tribe in that town, and many other places were credited with possessing persons endowed with witching powers, as well as those who could break spells. The following tales of the doings of witches will throw light upon the matter under consideration. _Witches transforming themselves into Cats_. One of the forms that witches were supposed to change themselves into was that of a cat. In this metamorphosed state they were the more able to accomplish their designs. The following tale, illustrative of this belief, was told me by the Rev. R. Jones, Rector of Llanycil, Bala. On the side of the old road, between Cerrig-y-drudion and Bettws-y-Coed--long before this latter place had become the resort of artists--stood an inn, which was much resorted to, as it was a convenient lodging house for travellers on their way to Ireland. This inn stood near the present village of Bettws-y-Coed. Many robberies occurred here. Travellers who put up there for the night were continually deprived of their money, and no one could tell how this occurred, for the lodgers were certain that no one had entered their rooms, as they were found locked in the morning just as they were the night before. The mystery was, therefore, great. By and by, one of those who had lost his money consulted _Huw Llwyd_, who lived at Cynvael, in the parish of Festiniog, and he promised to unravel the mystery. Now, Huw Llwyd had been an officer in the army, and, equipped in his regimentals, with sword dangling by his side, he presented himself one evening at the suspected inn, and asked whether he could obtain a room and bed for the night; he represented himself as on his way to Ireland, and he found no difficulty in obtaining a night's lodging. The inn was kept by two sisters of prepossessing appearance, and the traveller made himself most agreeable to these ladies, and entertained them with tales of his travels in foreign parts. On retiring for the night he stated that it was a habit with him to burn lights in his room all night, and he was supplied with a sufficient quantity of candles to last through the night. The request, as Hugh Llwyd was a military man, did not arouse suspicion. Huw retired, and made his arrangements for a night of watching. He placed his clothes on the floor within easy reach of his bed, and his sword unsheathed lay on the bed close to his right hand. He had secured the door, and now as the night drew on he was all attention; ere long two cats stealthily came down the partition between his room and the next to it. Huw feigned sleep, the cats frisked here and there in the room, but the sleeper awoke not; they chased each other about the room, and played and romped, and at last they approached Huw's clothes and played with them, and here they seemed to get the greatest amusement; they turned the clothes about and over, placing their paws now on that string, and now on that button, and ere long their paws were inserted into the pockets of his clothes, and, just as one of the cats had her paw in the pocket that contained Huw Llwyd's purse, he like lightning struck the cat's paw with his sword. With terrible screams they both disappeared, and nothing further was seen of them during the night. Next morning, only one of the sisters appeared at the breakfast table. To the traveller's enquiry after the absent lady of the house, her sister said that she was slightly indisposed, and could not appear. Huw Llwyd expressed regret at this, but, said he--"I must say good-bye to her, for I greatly enjoyed her company last night." He would not be refused, so ultimately he was admitted to her presence. After expressing his sympathy and regret at her illness, the soldier held out his hand to bid good-bye to the lady. She put out her left hand; this Huw refused to take, averring that he had never taken a left hand in his life, and that he would not do so now. Very reluctantly, and with evident pain, she put out her right hand, which was bandaged, and this fact cleared up the mystery connected with the robberies. These two ladies were two witches, who in the form of cats had robbed travellers who lodged under their roof. Huw, when he made this discovery said--"I am Huw Llwyd of Cynvael, and I warn you of the risk you have incurred by your thefts, and I promise you I will not let you off so easily the next time I have need to visit you." The preceding tale is circumstantial, but unfortunately similar tales are current in other places, as shown by the following quotation:-- "The last instance of national credulity on this head was the story of the witches of Thurso, who, tormenting for a long time an honest fellow under the usual form of a cat, at last provoked him so that one night he put them to flight with his broad sword and _cut off the leg_ of one less nimble than the rest. On his taking it up, to his amazement _he found it belonged to a female of his own species_, and next morning discovered the owner, an old hag, with only the companion leg to this." _Brand's Popular Antiquities_, pp. 318-319. _The Witches' Revenge on Huw Llwyd_. Several months after the occurrence recorded above of Huw Llwyd, when he had just started from his home one Sunday morning to go to his Church to officiate there, for he was the parson of Llan Festiniog, he observed that the Bettws-y-Coed ladies were approaching his house, and he perceived that their object was to witch him. He knew full well that as long as his back was turned towards them he was in their power, but that when he faced them they could do him no harm; so; to avoid their evil influence, and to frustrate their designs, he faced them, and walked backwards every step from Cynvael to the Llan, and in this way he escaped being injured by his female enemies. But this was not all. Huw Llwyd knew that when he reached the Church porch he was beyond witchcraft's reach. Having arrived there he shouted out--"I defy you now, and before I leave the Church I will make you that you can never again witch anyone." He was as good as his word, for by his skill in the black art, he deprived those two ladies, ere he left the Church, of their power to witch people, and during the rest of their lives they were like other women. Huw Llwyd, who was born 1533, and died 1620, was a clergyman, and it was generally believed that priests could counteract the evils of the enemy of mankind. The wide-spread belief of witches being able to transform themselves into animals is shown in the legends of many countries, and, as in the case of fairy stories, the same tale, slightly changed, may be heard in various places. The possibility of injuring or _marking_ the witch in her assumed form so deeply that the bruise remained a mark on her in her natural form was a common belief. A tale in certain points like the one recorded of Huw Llwyd and the witches who turned themselves into cats is to be heard in many parts of Wales. It is as follows. I quote the main facts from my friend Mr. Hamer's account of Llanidloes, published in the _Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. x., p. 243:-- _A Witch transformed into a Hare injured by one whom she tormented_. "An old woman, thought to be a witch, was said by a neighbour to be in the habit of visiting her nightly in the shape of a hare, and that in consequence she was deprived of her rest. The witch came to her bed, as a hare, and crossed it, and the tormented one was determined to put an end to this persecution. For this purpose she procured a hammer, which she placed under her pillow when she retired to rest. That night the old witch, unaware of the reception awaiting her, paid her usual visit to her victim. But the instant she jumped on the bed she received a stunning blow on the head, and, it need not be added, disappeared. Next morning, a friend of the persecuted woman, who was in the secret of the whole case, on some pretext paid the old woman, the supposed witch, a visit, and she was greatly astonished to find her laid up, suffering from a frightful black eye, which her visitor believed to be the result of the blow dealt her with the hammer on the previous night." _A Witch shot when in the form of a Hare_. The following tale was told me by the Rev. R. Jones, Rector of Llanycil:-- An old woman was evicted from a small farm, which she and her family had held for many years. She was naturally greatly annoyed at such conduct on the part of the landlord, and of the person who supplanted her. However, she procured a small cottage close by her late home, and there she lived. But the interloper did not get on, for she was troubled by a hare that came nightly to her house. A labouring man, when going to his work early in the morning, time after time saw a hare going from the farm towards the cottage occupied by this old woman, and he determined to shoot this hare. He procured an old gun, and loaded it with pebbles instead of shot, and awaited the approach of the hare. It came as usual, the man fired, and the hare rolled over and over, screaming and making a terrible noise. He, however, did not heed this much, for hares, when shot, do scream, and so he went to secure the hare, but when he attempted to seize it, it changed into all shapes, and made horrible sounds, and the man was so terrified that he ran away, and he was very glad to get away from the scene of this shocking occurrence. In a few days afterwards the old woman who occupied the cottage was found dead, and it was noticed by the woman who laid her out that her arm and shoulder were riddled with pebbles. It was thought that she was a witch, and that she had troubled the people who had deprived her of her farm, and that she did so in the shape of a hare, and no one doubted that the injury inflicted on the old woman was anything more than the shot of the man, who supposed that he had killed a hare, when in reality he shot and killed the old woman. The farmer was never troubled after the death of the woman whom he had supplanted. Many variants of this tale are still extant. The parish clerk of Llangadfan, a mountainous parish in Montgomeryshire, gave me one, which he located in Nant-yr-eira, but as it is in its main points much like the preceding, I will not relate it. _A Witch in the form of a Hare in a Churn_. In the _Spectator_, No. 117, are these words:-- "If the dairy-maid does not make her butter come so soon as she would have it, _Moll White_ (a supposed witch) is at the bottom of the churn." Until very lately I had thought that the milk only was considered bewitched if it could not be churned, and not that the witch herself was at the bottom of the churn. But I have been disabused of this false notion, for the Rector of Llanycil told me the following story, which was told him by his servant girl, who figures in the tale. When this girl was servant at Drws-y-nant, near Dolgelley, one day, the milk would not churn. They worked a long time at it to no purpose. The girl thought that she heard something knocking up and down in the churn, and splashing about. She told her master there was something in the churn, but he would not believe her; however, they removed the lid, and out jumped a large hare, and ran away through the open door, and this explained all difficulties, and proved that the milk was bewitched, and that the witch herself was in the churn in the shape of a hare. This girl affirmed that she had seen the hare with her own eyes. As the hare was thought to be a form assumed by witches it was impossible for ordinary beings to know whether they saw a hare, or a witch in the form of a hare, when the latter animal appeared and ran before them along the road, consequently the hare, as well as the witch, augured evil. An instance of this confusion of ideas was related to the writer lately by Mr. Richard Jones, Tyn-y-wern, Bryneglwys. _A Hare crossing the Road_. Mr. Jones said that when he was a lad, he and his mother went to Caerwys fair from the Vale of Clwyd, intending to sell a cow at the fair. They had not gone far on their way before a large hare crossed the road, hopping and halting and looking around. His mother was vexed at the sight, and she said--"We may as well go home, Dick, for no good will come of our journey since that old witch crosses our path." They went on, though, and reached Caerwys in safety, but they got no bid for the cow, although they stayed there all day long. _A Witch in the form of a Hare hunted by a Black Greyhound_. The writer has heard variants of the following tale in several parts of Wales:-- An old woman, credited to be a witch, lived on the confines of the hills in a small hut in south Carnarvonshire. Her grandson, a sharp intelligent lad, lived with her. Many gentlemen came to that part with greyhounds for the purpose of coursing, and the lad's services were always in requisition, for he never failed in starting a hare, and whenever he did so he was rewarded with a shilling. But it was noticed that the greyhounds never caught the hare which the lad started. The sport was always good, the race long and exciting, but the hare never failed to elude her pursuers. Scores of times this occurred, until at last the sportsmen consulted a wise man, who gave it as his opinion that this was no ordinary hare, but a witch, and, said he--"She can never be caught but by a black greyhound." A dog of this colour was sought for far and near, and at last found and bought. Away to the hills the coursers went, believing that now the hare was theirs. They called at the cottage for the lad to accompany them and start the prey. He was as ready as ever to lead them to their sport. The hare was soon started, and off the dog was slipped and started after it, and the hare bounded away as usual, but it is now seen that her pursuer is a match for her in swiftness, and, notwithstanding the twistings and windings, the dog was soon close behind the distressed hare. The race became more and more exciting, for hound and hare exerted themselves to their very utmost, and the chase became hot, and still hotter. The spectators shout in their excitement--"_Hei! ci du_," ("_Hi! black dog_,") for it was seen that he was gaining on his victim. "_Hei! Mam_, _gu_," ("_Hei! grandmother_, _dear_,") shouted the lad, forgetting in his trouble that his grandmother was in the form of a hare. His was the only encouraging voice uttered on behalf of the poor hunted hare. His single voice was hardly heard amidst the shouts of the many. The pursuit was long and hard, dog and hare gave signs of distress, but shouts of encouragement buoyed up the strength of the dog. The chase was evidently coming to a close, and the hare was approaching the spot whence it started. One single heart was filled with dread and dismay at the failing strength of the hare, and from that heart came the words--"_Hei! Mam gu_" ("_Hi! grandmother_, _dear_.") All followed the chase, which was now nearing the old woman's cottage, the window of which was open. With a bound the hare jumped through the small casement into the cottage, but the black dog was close behind her, and just as she was disappearing through the window, he bit the hare and retained a piece of her skin in his mouth, but he could not follow the hare into the cottage, as the aperture was too small. The sportsmen lost no time in getting into the cottage, but, after much searching, they failed to discover puss. They, however, saw the old woman seated by the fire spinning. They also noticed that there was blood trickling from underneath her seat, and this they considered sufficient proof that it was the witch in the form of a hare that had been coursed and had been bitten by the dog just as she bounded into the cottage. It was believed in England, as well as in Wales, that witches were often hunted in the shape of hares. Thus in the _Spectator_, No. 117, these words occur:-- "If a hare makes an unexpected escape from the hounds the huntsman curses _Moll White_ (the witch)!" "Nay," (says Sir Roger,) "I have known the master of the pack, upon such an occasion, send one of his servants to see if _Moll White_ had been out that morning." In _Yorkshire Legends and Traditions_, p. 160, is a tale very much like the one which is given above. It is as follows:-- "There was a hare which baffled all the greyhounds that were slipped at her. They seemed to have no more chance with her than if they coursed the wind. There was, at the time, a noted witch residing near, and her advice was asked about this wonderful hare. She seemed to have little to say about it, however, only she thought they had better let it be, but, above all, they must take care how they slipped a _black_ dog at it. Nevertheless, either from recklessness or from defiance, the party did go out coursing, soon after, with a black dog. The dog was slipped, and they perceived at once that puss was at a disadvantage. She made as soon as possible for a stone wall, and endeavoured to escape through a sheep-hole at the bottom. Just as she reached this hole the dog threw himself upon her and caught her in the haunch, but was unable to hold her. She got through and was seen no more. The sportsmen, either in bravado or from terror of the consequences, went straight to the house of the witch to inform her of what had happened. They found her in bed, hurt, she said, by a fall; but the wound looked very much as if it had been produced by the teeth of a dog, and it was on a part of the woman corresponding to that by which the hare had been seized by the black hound before their eyes." _Early reference to Witches turning themselves into Hares_. The prevalence of the belief that witches could transform themselves into hares is seen from a remark made by _Giraldus Cambrensis_ in his topography of Ireland. He writes:-- "It has also been a frequent complaint, from old times, as well as in the present, _that certain hags in Wales_, as well as in Ireland and Scotland, _changed themselves into the shape of hares_, that, sucking teats under this counterfeit, they might stealthily rob other people's milk." _Giraldus Cambrensis_, Bohn's Edition, p. 83. This remark of the Archdeacon's gives a respectable antiquity to the metamorphosis of witches, for it was in 1185 that he visited Ireland, and he tells us that what he records had descended from "old times." The transformation fables that have descended to us would seem to be fossils of a pagan faith once common to the Celtic and other cognate races. It was not thought that certain harmless animals only could become the temporary abode of human beings. Even a wolf could be human under an animal form. Thus _Giraldus Cambrensis_ records that a priest was addressed in Ireland by a wolf, and induced to administer the consolations of his priestly office to his wife, who, also, under the shape of a she-wolf was apparently at the point of death, and to convince the priest that she was really a human being the he-wolf, her husband, tore off the skin of the she-wolf from the head down to the navel, folding it back, and she immediately presented the form of an old woman to the astonished priest. These people were changed into wolves through the curse of one Natalis, Saint and Abbot, who compelled them every seven years to put off the human form and depart from the dwellings of men as a punishment for their sins. (See _Giraldus Cambrensis_, Bohn's Edition, pp. 79-81.) _Ceridwen and Gwion_ (_Gwiawn_) _Bach's Transformation_. But a striking instance of rapid transition from one form to another is given in the _Mabinogion_. The fable of Ceridwen's cauldron is as follows:-- "Ceridwen was the wife of Tegid Voel. They had a son named Morvran, and a daughter named Creirwy, and she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and they had another son named Avagddu, the ugliest man in the world. Ceridwen, seeing that he should not be received amongst gentlemen because of his ugliness, unless he should be possessed of some excellent knowledge or strength . . . . ordered a cauldron to be boiled of knowledge and inspiration for her son. The cauldron was to be boiled unceasingly for one year and a day until there should be in it three blessed drops of the spirit's grace. "These three drops fell on the finger of Gwion Bach of Llanfair Caereinion in Powis, whom she ordered to attend to the cauldron. The drops were so hot that Gwion Bach put his finger to his mouth; no sooner done, than he came to know all things. Now he _transformed himself into a hare_, and ran away from the wrath of Ceridwen. She also _transformed herself into a greyhound_, and went after him to the side of a river. Gwion on this jumped into the river and transformed himself into a fish. She also transformed herself into an otter-bitch, and chased him under the water until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air; she, as a hawk, followed him, and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to swoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he dropped among the wheat and buried himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the wheat and scratched it with her feet, and found him and swallowed him." The tale of Ceridwen, whose fame was such that she can without exaggeration be styled the goddess of witches, resembles in part the chase of the witch-hare by the black dog, and probably her story gave rise to many tales of transformations. I now come to another kind of transformation. It was believed by the aged in Wales that witches could not only turn themselves into hares, but that by incantation they could change other people into animals. My friend, the Rev. T. Lloyd Williams, Wrexham, lodged whilst he was at Ystrad Meurig School with a Mrs. Jones, Dolfawr, who was a firm believer in "Rhibo" or Rheibo, or witching, and this lady told my friend the following tales of _Betty'r Bont_, a celebrated witch in those parts. _A Man turned into a Hare_. One of the servant men at Dolfawr, some years before Mr. Williams lodged there, laughed at Betty'r Bont's supposed power. However, he lived to repent his folly. One night after he had gone to bed he found that he had been changed into a hare, and to his dismay and horror he saw a couple of greyhounds slipped upon him. He ran for bare life, and managed to elude his pursuers, and in a terrible plight and fright he ran to Dolfawr, and to his bed. This kind of transformation he ever afterwards was subjected to, until by spells he was released from the witch's power over him. _A Man changed into a Horse_. Mr. Williams writes of the same servant man who figures in the preceding tale:--"However, after that, she (Betty'r Bont) turned him into a grey mare, saddled him, and actually rode him herself; and when he woke in the morning, he was in a bath of perspiration, and positively declared that he had been galloping all night." Singularly enough _Giraldus Cambrensis_ mentions the same kind of transformation. His words are:-- "I myself, at the time I was in Italy, heard it said of some districts in those parts, that there the stable-women, who had learnt magical arts, were wont to give something to travellers in their cheese, which transformed them into beasts of burden, so that they carried all sorts of burdens, and after they had performed their tasks, resumed their own forms."--Bohn's Edition, p. 83. From Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, p. 225, I find that a common name for _nightmare_ was _witch-riding_, and the night-mare, he tells us, was "a spectre of the night, which seized men in their sleep and suddenly deprived them of speech and motion," and he quotes from Ray's Collection of Proverbs:-- "Go in God's name, so _ride_ no witches." I will now leave this subject with the remark that people separated by distance are often brought together by their superstitions, and probably, these beliefs imply a common origin of the people amongst whom these myths prevail. The following tales show how baneful the belief in witchcraft was; but, nevertheless, there was some good even in such superstitions, for people were induced, through fear of being witched, to be charitable. _A Witch who turned a Blue Dye into a Red Dye_. An old hag went to a small farmhouse in Clocaenog parish, and found the farmer's wife occupied in dyeing wool blue. She begged for a little wool and blue dye. She was informed by Mrs. --- that she was really very sorry that she could not part with either, as she had only just barely enough for her own use. The hag departed, and the woman went on with her dyeing, but to her surprise, the wool came out of the pot dyed red instead of blue. She thought that possibly it was the dye that was to blame, and so she gave up for the night her employment, and the next day she went to Ruthin for a fresh supply of blue to finish her work, but again she failed to dye the wool blue, for red, and not blue, was the result of her dyeing. She, in surprise, told a neighbour of her unaccountable failure to dye her wool blue. This neighbour asked her if she had been visited by anyone, and she in answer told her that old so and so had been at her house begging. "Ah," was the response, "I see how it is you can never dye that wool blue, you have been witched, send the red wool and the part that you have not touched here to me, and I will finish the work for you." This was done, and the same colour was used by both women, but now it became blue, whilst with the other, it was red. This tale was told me by a gentleman who does not wish his name to appear in print, as it would lead to the identification of the parties mentioned, and the descendants of the supposed witch, being respectable farmers, would rather that the tale of their canny grandmother were forgotten, but my informant vouches for the truth of the tale. _A Pig Witched_. A woman sold a pig at Beaumaris to a man called Dick y Green; she could not that day sell any more, but the following market day she went again to Beaumaris. Dick was there waiting her appearance, and he told her that the pig he bought was bewitched and she must come with him to undo the curse. Away the woman went with Dick, and when they came to the pig she said, "What am I to do now, Dick?" "Draw thy hand seven times down his back," said Dick, "and say every time, '_Rhad Duw arnat ti_,'" i.e., "The blessing of God be on thee." The woman did so, and then Dick went for physic for the pig, which recovered. _Milk that would not churn_, _and the steps taken to counteract the malice of the Witch that had cursed the churn and its contents_. Before beginning this tale, it should be said that some witches were able to make void the curses of other witches. Bella of Denbigh, who lived in the early part of the present century, was one of these, and her renown extended over many counties. I may further add that my informant is the Rev. R. Jones, whom I have often mentioned, who is a native of Llanfrothen, the scene of the occurrences I am about to relate, and that he was at one time curate of Denbigh, so that he would be conversant with the story by hearsay, both as to its evil effects and its remedy. About the year 1815 an old woman, supposed to be a witch, lived at Ffridd Ucha, Llanfrothen, and she got her living by begging. One day she called at Ty mawr, in the same parish, requesting a charity of milk; but she was refused. The next time they churned, the milk would not turn to butter, they continued their labours for many hours, but at last they were compelled to desist in consequence of the unpleasant odour which proceeded from the churn. The milk was thrown away, and the farmer, John Griffiths, divining that the milk had been witched by the woman who had been begging at their house, went to consult a conjuror, who lived near Pwllheli. This man told him that he was to put a red hot crowbar into the milk the next time they churned. This was done, and the milk was successfully churned. For several weeks the crowbar served as an antidote, but at last it failed, and again the milk could not be churned, and the unpleasant smell made it again impossible for anyone to stand near the churn. Griffiths, as before, consulted the Pwllheli conjuror, who gave him a charm to place underneath the churn, stating, when he did so, that if it failed, he could render no further assistance. The charm did not act, and a gentleman whom he next consulted advised him to go to Bell, or Bella, the Denbigh witch. Griffiths did so, and to his great surprise he found that Bell could describe the position of his house, and she knew the names of his fields. Her instructions were--Gather all the cattle to Gors Goch field, a meadow in front of the house, and then she said that the farmer and a friend were to go to a certain holly tree, and stand out of sight underneath this tree, which to this day stands in the hedge that surrounds the meadow mentioned by Bell. This was to be done by night, and the farmer was told that he should then see the person who had injured him. The instructions were literally carried out. When the cows came to the field they herded together in a frightened manner, and commenced bellowing fearfully. In a very short time, who should enter the field but the suspected woman in evident bodily pain, and Griffiths and his friend heard her uttering some words unintelligible to them, and having done so, she disappeared, and the cattle became quiet, and ever after they had no difficulty in churning the milk of those cows. The two following tales were told the writer by the Rev. T. Lloyd Williams, Wrexham. The scene of the stories was Cardiganshire, and Betty'r Bont was the witch. _A Witch who was refused a Goose_, _and her revenge_. A witch called at a farm when they were feathering geese for sale, and she begged much for one. She was refused, but it would have been better, according to the tale, had her request been granted, for they could not afterwards rear geese on that farm. Another version of the preceding tale is, that the same witch called at a farm when the family was seated at dinner partaking of a goose; she requested a taste, but was refused, when leaving the house door she was heard to mutter, "Let there be no more geese at . . ." and her curse became a fact. _A Witch refused Butter_, _and the consequence_. An old hag called at a farm and begged the wife to sell her a pound of butter. This was refused, as they wanted to pot the butter. The witch went away, therefore, empty handed. The next day when the maid went to the fields for the cows she found them sitting like cats before a fire, with their hind legs beneath them. I am indebted to my friend Mr. Lloyd Williams for this tale. A friend told me the following tale. _A Witch's Revenge_, _and her Discomfiture_. An old beggar woman was refused her requests by a farmer's wife, and it was noticed that she uttered words that might have been a threat, when going away from the door, and it was also observed that she picked up a few straws from the yard and carried them away with her. In the course of a few days, a healthy calf died, and the death of several calves followed in rapid succession. These misfortunes caused the wife to remember the old woman whom she had sent away from her door, and the farmer came to the conclusion that his cattle had been witched by this old woman, so he went to a conjuror, who told him to cut out the heart of the next calf that should die, and roast it before the fire, and then, after it had been properly roasted, he was to prick it all over with a fork, and if anyone should appear as a beggar, they were to give her what she asked. The instructions were carried out literally, and just as the heart was being pricked, the old woman whom the wife had driven away came up to the house in a dreadful state, and rushing into the house, said--"In the name of God, what are you doing here?" She was told that they were doing nothing particular, and while the conversation was being carried on, the pricking operation was discontinued and the old hag became less excited, and then she asked the farmer kindly to give her a few potatoes, which he gladly did, and the old woman departed; and no more calves died after that. Tales of the kind related above are extremely common, and might be multiplied to almost any extent. It would seem that the evil influence of witches was exerted not only at times when they were refused favours, but that, at will, they could accomplish mischief. Thus I have heard it said of an old woman, locally supposed to be a witch, that her very presence was ominous of evil, and disaster followed wherever she went; if she were inclined to work evil she was supposed to be able to do so, and that without any provocation. I will give one tale which I heard in Garthbeibio of this old hag's doings. _A Horse Witched_. Pedws Ffoulk, a supposed witch, was going through a field where people were employed at work, and just as she came opposite the horse it fell down, as if it were dead. The workmen ran to the horse to ascertain what was the matter with it, but Pedws went along, not heeding what had occurred. This unfeeling conduct on her part roused the suspicion of the men, and they came to the conclusion that the old woman had witched the horse, and that she was the cause of its illness. They, therefore, determined to run after the woman and bring her back to undo her own evil work. Off they rushed after her, and forced her back to the field, where the horse was still lying on the ground. They there compelled the old creature to say, standing over the horse, these words--"_Duw arno fo_" (God be with him). This she did, and then she was allowed to go on her way. By and by the horse revived, and got upon his feet, and looked as well as ever, but this, it was thought, would not have been the case had not the witch undone her own curse. In Anglesey, as I was informed by my brother, the late Rev. Elijah Owen, Vicar of Llangoed, it was believed that witches made void their own curses of animals by saying over them "_Rhad Duw ar y da_" (The Blessing of God be on the cattle). _Cows and Horses Witched_. The writer was told the name of the farm where the following events were said to have taken place, but he is not quite sure that his memory has not deceived him, so he will only relate the facts without giving them a locality. A farmer had a good mare that went mad, she foamed at the mouth, rushed about the stall, and died in great agony. But this was not all, his cows kept back their milk, and what they could extract from them stank, nor could they churn the milk, for it turned into froth. A conjuror was consulted, and the farmer was told that all this evil had been brought about by a witch who had been refused milk at his door, and her mischief was counteracted by the conjuror thus consulted. Occasionally we hear of injured persons retaliating upon the witches who had brought about their losses. This, however, was not often attempted, for people feared the consequences of a failure, but it was, nevertheless, supposed to be attainable. I will relate a few instances of this punishment of witches for their evil doings. _Witches Punished_. A neighbour, who does not wish to have his name recorded, states that he can vouch for the incidents in the following tale. A farmer who lost much stock by death, and suspected it was the work of an old hag who lived in his neighbourhood, consulted a conjuror about the matter, and he was told that his suspicions were correct, that his losses were brought about by this old woman, and, added the conjuror, if you wish it, I can wreak vengeance on the wretch for what she has done to your cattle. The injured farmer was not averse to punishing the woman, but he did not wish her punishment to be over severe, and this he told the conjuror, but said he, "I should like her to be deprived of the power to injure anyone in future." This was accomplished, my informant told me, for the witch-woman took to her bed, and became unable to move about from that very day to the end of her life. My informant stated that he had himself visited this old woman on her sick bed, and that she did not look ill, but was disinclined to get up, and the cause of it all was a matter of general gossip in the neighbourhood, that she had been cursed for her evil doings. Another tale I have heard is that a conjuror obliged a witch to jump from a certain rock into the river that ran at its foot, and thus put an end to her life. Rough punishment was often inflicted upon these simple old women by silly people. The tales already given are sufficiently typical of the faith of the credulous regarding witches, and their ability to work out their evil desires on their victims. I will now proceed briefly to relate other matters connected with witchcraft as believed in, in all parts of Wales. _How to break_, _or protect people from_, _a Witch's Spell_. There were various ways of counteracting the evils brought upon people by witches. 1. The intervention of a priest or minister of religion made curses of none effect. The following tale was told me by my friend the Rector of Rhydycroesau. When Mr. Jones was curate of Llanyblodwel a parishioner sent to ask the "parson" to come to see her. He went, but he could not make out what he had been sent for, as the woman was, to all appearance, in her usual health. Perceiving a strong-looking woman before him he said, "I presume I have missed the house, a sick person wished to see me." The answer was, "You are quite right, Sir, I sent for you, I am not well; I am troubled." In the course of conversation Mr. Jones ascertained that the woman had sent for him to counteract the evil machinations of her enemy. "I am witched," she said, "and a parson can break the spell." The clergyman argued with her, but all to no purpose. She affirmed that she was witched, and that a clergyman could withdraw the curse. Finding that the woman was obdurate he read a chapter and offered up a prayer, and wishing the woman good day with a hearty "God bless you," he departed. Upon a subsequent visit he found the woman quite well, and he was informed by her, to his astonishment, that he had broken the spell. 2. Forcing the supposed witch to say over the cursed animals, "_Rhad Duw ar y da_" ("God's blessing be on the cattle"), or some such expressions, freed them from spells. An instance of this kind is related on page 242, under the heading, "A Horse Witched." 3. Reading the Bible over, or to, the bewitched freed them from evil. This was an antidote that could be exercised by anyone who could procure a Bible. In an essay written in Welsh, relating to the parishes of Garthbeibio, Llangadfan, and Llanerfyl, in 1863, I find the following:-- "Gwr arall, ffarmwr mawr, a chanddo fuwch yn sal ar y Sabbath, ar ol rhoddi _physic_ iddi, tybiwyd ei bod yn marw, rhedodd yntau i'r ty i nol y Bibl, _a darllenodd bennod iddi_;" which rendered into English, is:-- Another man, a large farmer, having a cow sick on the Sabbath day, after giving her physic, supposing she was dying, ran into the house to fetch the Bible, and _read a chapter to her_. 4. A Bible kept in a house was a protection from all evil. This was a talisman, formerly only within the reach of the opulent. Quoting again from the essay above referred to, I find these words:-- "Byddai ambell Bibl mewn _ty mawr_ yn cael ei gadw mewn cist neu goffr a chlo arno, tuag at gadw y ty rhag niwaid." That is:-- A Bible was occasionally kept in the bettermost farms in a chest which was locked, to protect the house from harm. 5. A ring made of the mountain ash acted as a talisman. Rings made of this wood were generally placed under the doorposts to frustrate the evil designs of witches, and the inmates dwelt securely when thus protected. This tree was supposed to be a famous charm against witchcraft. Mrs. Susan Williams, Garth, a farm on the confines of Efenechtyd parish, Denbighshire, told the writer that E. Edwards, Llwynybrain, Gwyddelwern, was famous for breaking spells, and consequently his aid was often required. Susan stated that they could not churn at Foel Fawn, Derwen. They sent for Edwards, who came, and offered up a kind of prayer, and then placed a ring made of the bark or of the wood of the mountain ash (she could not recollect which) underneath the churn, or the lid of the churn, and thus the spell was broken. 6. A horse-shoe found on a road or field, and nailed either on or above the door of a house or stable, was considered a protection from spells. I have seen horse-shoes hanging by a string above a door, and likewise nailed with the open part upwards, on the door lintel, but quite as often I have observed that the open part is downwards; but however hung, on enquiry, the object is the same, viz., to secure luck and prevent evil. 7. Drawing blood from a witch or conjuror by anyone incapacitated these evil doers from working out their designs upon the person who spilt their blood. I was told of a tailor's apprentice, who on the termination of his time, having heard, and believing, that his master was a conjuror, when saying good-bye doubled up his fingers and struck the old man on the nose, making his blood spurt in all directions. "There, master," said he, "there is no ill will between us, but you can now do me no harm, for I have drawn your blood, and you cannot witch me." 8. Drawing blood from a bewitched animal breaks the spell. In the days of my youth, at Llanidloes, a couple of valuable horses were said to be bewitched, and they were bled to break the spell. If blood could not be got from horses and cattle, it was considered to be a positive proof that they were bewitched, and unless the spell could be broken, nothing, it was said, could save them from death. 9. It was generally thought that if a witch said the word "God" to a child or person, whom she had bewitched, it would "undo her work." My friend Mr. Edward Hamer, in his "Parochial Account of Llanidloes," published in _The Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. x., p. 242, records an instance of this belief. His words are:-- "About fifty years ago the narrator was walking up Long Bridge Street, when he saw a large crowd in one of the yards leading from the street to a factory. Upon making his way to the centre of this crowd, he saw an old woman in a 'fit,' real or feigned, he could not say, but he believed the latter, and over her stood an angry, middle-aged man, gesticulating violently, and threatening the old dame, that he would hang her from an adjacent beam if she would not pronounce the word 'God' to a child which was held in its mother's arms before her. It was in vain that the old woman protested her innocence; in vain that she said that by complying with his request she would stand before them a confessed witch; in vain that she fell into one fit after another, and prayed to be allowed to depart; not a sympathising face could she for some time see in the crowd, until the wife of a manufacturer, who lived close by, appeared on the scene, who also pleaded in vain on her behalf. Terrified beyond all measure, and scarcely knowing what she did, the old woman mumbled something to the child. It smiled. The angry parents were satisfied the spell was broken, the crowd dispersed, and the old woman was allowed to depart quietly." 10. The earth from a churchyard sprinkled over any place preserved it from spells. Mr. Roberts, Plas Einion, Llanfair D. Clwyd, a very aged farmer, told me that when a certain main or cock fighting had been arranged, his father's servant man, suspecting unfair play, and believing that his master's birds had been bewitched, went to the churchyard and carried therefrom a quantity of consecrated earth, with which he slyly sprinkled the cock pit, and thus he averted the evil, and broke the spell, and all the birds fought, and won, according to their deserts. 11. Anything taken into a church belonging to a farm supposed to be cursed broke the spell or curse laid upon the place from which that thing was taken. About twenty years ago, when the writer was curate of Llanwnog, Montgomeryshire, a Mrs. Hughes, a farmer's wife, who was a firm believer in omens, charms, and spells, told me that she knew nothing would come of the spell against so and so, and when asked to explain the matter, she said that she had seen straw taken from that farm to kindle the fire in the church, and thus, she said, the spell was broken. 12. A pin thrust into "Witch's Butter" would cause the witch to undo her work. "Witch's Butter" is the name given to a kind of fungus that grows on decayed wood. The fungus resembles little lumps of butter, and hence its name. Should anyone think himself witched, all that he has got to do is to procure "witch's butter," and then thrust a pin into it. It was thought that this pin penetrated the wicked witch, and every pin thrust into the fungus went into her body, and thus she was forced to appear, and undo her mischief, and be herself relieved from bodily pain by relieving others. 13. A conjuror's charm could master a witch's spell. It was thought that when a person was under a witch's spell he could get relief and punish the witch by procuring a charm from a conjuror. This charm was a bit of paper, often covered with illegible writing, but whatever was on it made no great difference, for the persons who procured the charms were usually illiterate. The process was as follows:--The party cursed took the charm, and thrust a pin through it, and having waited awhile to see whether the witch would appear or not, proceeded to thrust another pin through the paper, and if the witch were tardy in appearing, pin after pin was thrust into the paper, and every pin, it was thought, went into the body of the spiteful hag, and brought her ultimately to the house where her curse was being broken, in shocking pain, and when there it was believed she would say-- "Duw gatto bobpeth ag a feddwch chwi." God preserve everything which you possess. 14. Certain plants were supposed to possess the power of destroying charms. The Rev. D. James, Rector of Garthbeibio, was asked by Evan Williams, the Voel, a parishioner, whether he feared witches, and when answered in the negative, his interrogator appeared surprised; however, awhile afterwards, Williams went to the Rectory, and told the rector that he knew why he did not fear witches, and proceeded to tell him that he had seen a plant in the front of the rectory that protected the house from charms. This was what he called, _Meipen Fair_. In some parts of England the snapdragon is supposed to possess a like virtue, and also the elder tree. Mr. Davies, schoolmaster, Llangedwyn, informed the writer that at one time hyssop was hung on the inside of the house door to protect the inmates from charms. 15. The seventh daughter could destroy charms. The seventh son was thought to possess supernatural power, and so also was the seventh daughter, but her influence seems to have been exerted against witchcraft. 16. The sign of the cross on the door made the inmates invulnerable, and when made with the finger on the breast it was a protection from evil. The sign of the cross made on the person was once common in Wales, and the advice given by the aged when a person was in any difficulty was "_ymgroesa_," cross yourself. The custom of crossing the door on leaving the house lingered long in many places, and, I think, it is not altogether given up in our days. 17. Invoking the aid of the Holy Trinity. This was resorted to, as seen in the charm given on page 270, when animals were witched. _The way to find out whether a Hag is a Witch or not_. It was generally supposed that a witch could not pray, and one way of testing her guilty connection with the evil one was to ascertain whether she could repeat the Lord's Prayer correctly. If she failed to do so, she was pronounced to be a witch. This test, as everyone knows, must have been a fallacious one, for there are good living illiterate people who are incapable of saying their _Pader_; but such was the test, and failure meant death. Some fifty years ago, when the writer was a lad in school, he noticed a crowd in Short Bridge Street, Llanidloes, around an aged decrepit woman, apparently a stranger from the hill country, and on inquiring what was going on, he was told that the woman was a suspected witch, and that they were putting her to the test. I believe she was forced to go on her knees, and use the name of God, and say the Lord's Prayer. However, the poor frightened thing got successfully through the ordeal, and I saw her walk away from her judges. Another manner for discovering a witch was to weigh her against the Church Bible; if the Bible went up, she was set at liberty, if, on the other hand, she were lighter than the Bible, she was a witch, and forfeited her life. Swimming a witch was another method, and this was the one generally resorted to. The suspected person was taken to a river or pool of water, her feet and hands were tied, and she was thrown in; if she sank she was innocent, if she floated she was a witch, and never reached the bank alive. Such as the preceding were some of the ridiculous trials to which poor, badly clad, aged, toothless, and wrinkled women were put by their superstitious neighbours to ascertain whether these miserable women were in league with the devil. CONJURORS. 1. It was formerly believed that men could sell themselves to the devil, and thus become the possessors of supernatural power. These men were looked upon as malicious conjurors. 2. Another species of conjurors practised magical arts, having obtained their knowledge from the study of books. These were accounted able to thwart the designs of evil workers of every description. 3. There was another class of men supposed to have obtained strange power from their ancestors. They were looked upon as charmers and conjurors by descent. 1. Those who belonged to the first-mentioned class were not in communion with the Church, and the first step taken by them to obtain their object was to unbaptize themselves. The process was as follows:--The person who wished to sell himself to the devil went to a Holy Well, took water therefrom three times into his mouth, and spurted it out in a derisive manner, and thus having relieved himself, as it was thought, of his baptismal vow, he was ready and fit to make a contract with the evil one. 2. The second kind of conjurors obtained their knowledge of the occult science from the study of books. Generally learned men were by the ignorant supposed to possess uncanny power. When the writer lived in Carnarvonshire he was informed that Owen Williams, Waenfawr, had magical books kept in a box under lock and key, and that he never permitted anyone to see them. Poor Owen Williams, I wonder whether he knew of the popular rumour! The following tale of Huw Llwyd's books I obtained from the Rev. R. Jones, rector of Llanycil. _Huw Llwyd and his Magical Books_. The story, as it has reached our days, is as follows:--It is said that Huw Llwyd had two daughters; one of an inquisitive turn of mind, like himself, while the other resembled her mother, and cared not for books. On his death bed he called his learned daughter to his side, and directed her to take his books on the dark science, and throw them into a pool, which he named, from the bridge that spanned the river. The girl went to Llyn Pont Rhyd-ddu with the books, and stood on the bridge, watching the whirlpool beneath, but she could not persuade herself to throw them over, and thus destroy her father's precious treasures. So she determined to tell him a falsehood, and say that she had cast them into the river. On her return home her father asked her whether she had thrown the books into the pool, and on receiving an answer in the affirmative, he, inquiring whether she had seen anything strange when the books reached the river, was informed that she had seen nothing. "Then," said he, "you have not complied with my request. I cannot die until the books are thrown into the pool." She took the books a second time to the river, and now, very reluctantly, she hurled them into the pool, and watched their descent. They had not reached the water before two hands appeared, stretched upward, out of the pool, and these hands caught the books before they touched the water and, clutching them carefully, both the books and the hands disappeared beneath the waters. She went home immediately, and again appeared before her father, and in answer to his question, she related what had occurred. "Now," said he, "I know you have thrown them in, and I can now die in peace," which he forthwith did. 3. Hereditary conjurors, or charmers, were thought to be beneficial to society. They were charmers rather than conjurors. In this category is to be reckoned:-- (a) The seventh son of a family of sons, born the one after the other. (b) The seventh daughter in a family of daughters, born in succession, without a brother between. This person could undo spells and curses, but she could not herself curse others. (c) The descendants of a person, who had eaten eagles' flesh could, for nine generations, charm for the shingles, or, as it is called in Welsh, _Swyno'r 'Ryri_. Conjurors were formerly quite common in Wales; when I say common, I mean that there was no difficulty in obtaining their aid when required, and they were within easy reach of those who wished to consult them. Some became more celebrated than others, and consequently their services were in greater requisition; but it may be said, that each district had its wise man. The office of the conjuror was to counteract the machinations of witches, and to deliver people from their spells. They were looked upon as the natural enemies of witches. Instances have already been given of this antagonism. But conjurors could act on their own account, and if they did not show the same spiteful nature as witches, they, nevertheless, were credited with possessing great and dangerous power. They dealt freely in charms and spells, and obtained large sums of money for their talismanic papers. They could, it was believed, by their incantations reveal the future, and oblige light-fingered people to restore the things they had stolen. Even a fishing rod made by a conjuror was sure to bring luck to the fisherman. Lovers and haters alike resorted to the wise man to attain through his aid their object. There were but few, if any, matters beyond their comprehension, and hence the almost unbounded confidence placed in these impostors by the superstitious and credulous. Strange as it may seem, even in this century there are many who still consult these deceivers, but more of this by and by. I will now relate a few tales of the doings of these conjurors, and from them the reader can infer how baneful their influence was upon the rustic population of Wales. _The Magician's Glass_. This glass, into which a person looked when he wished to solve the future, or to ascertain whom he or she was to marry, was used by Welsh, as well as other magicians. The glass gave back the features of the person sought after, and reflected the future career of the seeker after the hidden future. It was required that the spectator should concentrate all his attention on the glass, and, on the principle that they who gazed long should not gaze in vain, he obtained the desired glimpse. _Cwrt Cadno_, already referred to, professed to have such a glass. But, the magician's glass is an instrument so often mentioned in connection with necromancy in all parts of the world, that more need not be said of it. I will now give a few stories illustrative of the conjuror's power. _A Conjuror's Punishment of an Innkeeper for his exorbitant charges_. A famous conjuror, Dick Spot, was on his way to Llanrwst, and he turned into a public house at Henllan for refreshments. He called for a glass of beer and bread and cheese, and was charged tenpence for the same, fourpence for the beer, and sixpence for the bread and cheese. This charge he considered outrageous, but he paid the demand, and before departing he took a scrap of paper and wrote on it a spell, and hid it under the table, and then went on his way. That evening, soon after the landlord and landlady had retired for the night, leaving the servant girl to clear up, they were surprised to hear in the kitchen an unaccountable noise; shouting and jumping was the order of the day, or rather night, in that room. The good people heard the girl shout at the top of her voice-- "Six and four are ten, Count it o'er again," and then she danced like mad round and round the kitchen. They sternly requested the girl to cease yelling, and to come to bed, but the only answer they received was-- "Six and four are ten, Count it o'er again," and with accelerated speed she danced round and round the kitchen. The thought now struck the landlord that the girl had gone out of her mind, and so he got up, and went to see what was the matter with her, with the intention of trying to get her away from the kitchen. But the moment he placed his foot in the kitchen, he gave a jump, and joined the girl in her mad dance, and with her he shrieked out-- "Six and four are ten, Count it o'er again." So now the noise was doubled, and the good wife, finding that her husband did not return to her, became very angry, if not jealous. She shouted to them to cease their row, but all to no purpose, for the dancing and the shouting continued. Then she left her bed and went to the kitchen door, and greatly disgusted she was to see her husband and maid dancing together in that shameless manner. She stood at the door a moment or two observing their frantic behaviour, and then she determined forcibly to put a stop to the proceedings, so into the room she bounded, but with a hop and a jump she joined in the dance, and sang out in chorus with the other two-- "Six and four are ten, Count it o'er again." The uproar now was great indeed, and roused the neighbours from their sleep. They from outside heard the mad dance and the words, and guessed that Dick Spot had been the cause of all this. One of those present hurried after the conjuror, who, fortunately, was close at hand, and desired him to return to the inn to release the people from his spell. "Oh," said Dick, "take the piece of paper that is under the table and burn it, and they will then stop their row." The man returned to the inn, pushed open the door, rushed to the table, and cast the paper into the fire, and then the trio became quiet. But they had nearly exhausted themselves by their severe exertions ere they were released from the power of the spell. _A Conjuror and Robbers_. A conjuror, or _Gwr Cyfarwydd_, was travelling over the Denbighshire hills to Carnarvonshire; being weary, he entered a house that he saw on his way, and he requested refreshments, which were given him by a young woman. "But," said she, "you must make haste and depart, for my brothers will soon be here, and they are desperate men, and they will kill you." But no, the stranger was in no hurry to move on, and though repeatedly besought to depart, he would not do so. To the great dread and fear of the young woman, her brothers came in, and, in anger at finding a stranger there, bade him prepare for death. He requested a few minutes' respite, and took out a book and commenced reading it. When he was thus engaged a horn began growing in the centre of the table, and on this the robbers were obliged to gaze, and they were unable even to move. The stranger went to bed, and found the robbers in the morning still gazing at the horn, as he knew they would be, and he departed leaving them thus engaged, and the tale goes, that they were arrested in that position, being unable to offer any resistance to their captors. There are several versions of the Horn Tale afloat; instead of being made to grow out of a table, it was made to grow out of a person's head or forehead. There is a tradition that Huw Llwyd was able to do this wonderful thing, and that he actually did it. _The Conjuror and the Cattle_. R. H., a farmer in Llansilin parish, who lost several head of cattle, sent or went to Shon Gyfarwydd, who lived in Llanbrynmair, a well-known conjuror, for information concerning their death, and for a charm against further loss. Both were obtained, and the charm worked so well that the grateful farmer sent a letter to Shon acknowledging the benefit he had derived from him. This Shon was a great terror to thieves, for he was able to spot them and mark them in such a way that they were known to be culprits. I am indebted to Mr. Jones, Rector of Bylchau, near Denbigh, for the three following stories, in which the very dread of being marked by Shon was sufficient to make the thieves restore the stolen property. _Stolen property discovered through fear of applying to the Llanbrynmair Conjuror_. Richard Thomas, Post Office, Llangadfan, lost a coat and waistcoat, and he suspected a certain man of having stolen them. One day this man came to the shop, and Thomas saw him there, and, speaking to his wife from the kitchen in a loud voice, so as to be heard by his customer in the shop, he said that he wanted the loan of a horse to go to Llanbrynmair. Llanbrynmair was, as we know, the conjuror's place of abode. Thomas, however, did not leave his house, nor did he intend doing so, but that very night the stolen property was returned, and it was found the next morning on the door sill. _Reclaiming stolen property through fear of the Conjuror_. A mason engaged in the restoration of Garthbeibio Church placed a trowel for safety underneath a stone, but by morning it was gone. Casually in the evening he informed his fellow workmen that he had lost his trowel, and that someone must have stolen it, but that he was determined to find out the thief by taking a journey to Llanbrynmair. He never went, but the ruse was successful, for the next morning he found, as he suspected would be the case, the trowel underneath the very stone where he had himself placed it. _Another similar Tale_. Thirty pounds were stolen from Glan-yr-afon, Garthbeibio. The owner made known to his household that he intended going to Shon the conjuror, to ascertain who had taken his money, but the next day the money was discovered, being restored, as was believed, by the thief the night before. These stories show that the ignorant and superstitious were influenced through fear, to restore what they had wrongfully appropriated, and their faith in the conjuror's power thus resulted, in some degree, in good to the community. The _Dyn Hyspys_ was feared where no one else was feared, and in this way the supposed conjuror was not altogether an unimportant nor unnecessary member of society. At a time, particularly when people are in a low state of civilization, or when they still cling to the pagan faith of their forefathers, transmitted to them from remote ages, then something can be procured for the good of a benighted people even through the medium of the _Gwr Cyfarwydd_. Events occurred occasionally by a strange coincidence through which the fame of the _Dyn Hyspys_ became greatly increased. An event of this kind is related by Mr. Edward Hamer. He states that:-- "Two respectable farmers, living in the upper Vale of the Severn (Cwm Glyn Hafren), and standing in relationship to each other of uncle and nephew, a few years ago purchased each a pig of the same litter, from another farmer. When bought, both animals were, to all appearance, in excellent health and condition, and for a short time after their removal to their new homes both continued to improve daily. It was not long, however, before both were taken ill very suddenly. As there appeared something very strange in the behaviour of his animal, the nephew firmly believed that he was 'witched,' and acting upon this belief, set out for the neighbouring conjuror. Having received certain injunctions from the 'wise man,' he returned home, carried them out, and had the satisfaction of witnessing the gradual recovery of his pig. The uncle paid no attention to the persuasions and even entreaties of his nephew; he would not believe that his pig was 'witched,' and refused to consult the conjuror. The pig died after an illness of three weeks; _and many thought the owner deserved little sympathy for manifesting so much obstinacy and scepticism_. These events occurred in the spring of the year 1870, and were much talked of at the time."--_Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. x., p. 240. Conjurors retained their repute by much knavery and collusion with others. Tales are not wanted that expose their impostures. The Rev. Meredith Hamer, late of Berse, told me of the following exposure of a conjuror. I know not where the event occurred, but it is a typical case. _A Conjuror's Collusion exposed_. This man's house consisted of but few rooms. Between the kitchen and his study, or consulting room, was a slight partition. He had a servant girl, whom he admitted as a partner in his trade. This girl, when she saw a patient approach the house, which she was able to do, because there was only one approach to it, and only one entrance, informed her master of the fact that someone was coming, and he immediately disappeared, and he placed himself in a position to hear the conversation of the girl with the person who had come to consult him. The servant by questioning the party adroitly obtained that information respecting the case which her master required, and when she had obtained the necessary information, he would appear, and forthwith tell the stranger that he knew hours before, or days ago, that he was to have the visit now paid him, and then he would relate all the particulars which he had himself heard through the partition, to the amazement of the stranger, who was ignorant of this means of communication. At other times, if a person who wished to consult him came to the house when the conjuror was in the kitchen, he would disappear as before, stating that he was going to consult his books, and then his faithful helper would proceed to extort the necessary information from the visitor. On this, he would re-appear and exhibit his wonderful knowledge to the amazed dupe. On one occasion, though, a knowing one came to the conjuror with his arm in a sling, and forthwith the wise man disappeared, leaving the maid to conduct the necessary preliminary examination, and her visitor minutely described how the accident had occurred, and how he had broken his arm in two places, etc. All this the conjuror heard, and he came into the room and rehearsed all that he had heard; but the biter was bitten, for the stranger, taking his broken arm out of the sling, in no very polite language accused the conjuror of being an impostor, and pointed out the way in which the collusion had been carried out between him and his maid. This was an exposure the conjuror had not foreseen! _The Conjuror's Dress_. Conjurors, when engaged in their uncanny work, usually wore a grotesque dress and stood within a circle of protection. I find so graphic a description of a doctor who dealt in divination in Mr. Hancock's "History of Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant" that I will transcribe it:--"He" (the raiser of the devils) "was much resorted to by the friends of parties mentally deranged, many of whom he cured. Whenever he assumed to practise the 'black art,' he put on a most grotesque dress, a cap of sheepskin with a high crown, bearing a plume of pigeons' feathers, and a coat of unusual pattern, with broad hems, and covered with talismanic characters. In his hand he had a whip, the thong of which was made of the skin of an eel, and the handle of bone. With this he drew a circle around him, outside of which, at a proper distance, he kept those persons who came to him, whilst he went through his mystic sentences and performances."--_Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. vi, pp. 329-30. CHARMS. The cure of diseases by charms is generally supposed to be a kind of superstition antagonistic to common sense, and yet there are undoubted cases of complete cures through the instrumentality of charms. Warts are, undoubtedly, removed by the faith of those persons who suffer from them in the power of the charmer and his charms. The writer has had innumerable instances of the efficacy of wart charms, but it is not his intention to endeavour to trace the effect of charms on highly sensitive people, but only to record those charms that he has seen or heard of as having been used. _Swyno'r 'Ryri_ (_Charming the Shingles_). The shingles is a skin disease, which encircles the body like a girdle, and the belief was that if it did so the patient died. However, there was a charm for procuring its removal, which was generally resorted to with success; but the last person who could charm this disease in Montgomeryshire lies buried on the west side of the church at Penybontfawr, and consequently there is no one now in those parts able to charm the shingles. The inscription on his tombstone informs us that Robert Davies, Glanhafon Fawr, died March 13th, 1864, aged 29, so that faith in this charm has reached our days. It was believed that the descendants of a person who had eaten eagle's flesh _to the ninth generation_ could charm for shingles. The manner of proceeding can be seen from the following quotation taken from "The History of Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant," by Mr. T. W. Hancock, which appears in vol. vi., pp. 327-8 of the _Montgomeryshire Collections_. _A Charm for the Shingles_. "This custom (charming for the shingles) was more prevalent in this parish than in any other in Montgomeryshire. A certain amount of penance was to be done by the sufferer, who was to go to the charmer in the morning fasting, and he was also to be fasting. The mode of cure was simple--the charmer breathed gently on the inflamed part, and then followed a series of little spittings upon and around it. A few visits to the charmer, or sometimes a single one, was sufficient to effect a cure. "The power of charming for the ''Ryri' is now lost, or in any event has not been practised in this parish, for several years past. The possession of this remarkable healing power by the charmer was said to have been derived from the circumstance _of either the charmer himself_, _or one of his ancestors within the ninth degree_, _having eaten of the flesh of the eagle_, the virtue being, it was alleged, transmitted from the person who had so partaken to his descendants for nine generations. The tradition is that the disorder was introduced into the country by a malevolent eagle. "Some charmers before the operation of spitting, muttered to themselves the following incantation:-- Yr Eryr Eryres Mi a'th ddanfonais Dros naw mor a thros naw mynydd, A thros naw erw o dir anghelfydd; Lle na chyfartho ci, ac na frefo fuwch, Ac na ddelo yr eryr byth yn uwch." Male eagle, female eagle, I send you (by the operation of blowing, we presume) Over nine seas, and over nine mountains, And over nine acres of unprofitable land, Where no dog shall bark, and no cow shall low, And where no eagle shall higher rise." The charmer spat first on the rash and rubbed it with his finger over the affected parts, and then breathed nine times on it. Jane Davies, an aged woman, a native of Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant, with whom I had many long conversations on several occasions, told the narrator that she had cut a cat's ear to get blood, wherewith to rub the patient's breast who was suffering from the shingles, to stop its progress, until the sufferer could be visited by the charmer, and she said that the cat's blood always stopped it spreading. There were several charms for many of the ailments to which man is subject, which were thought to possess equal curative virtues. _Toothache charms_. By repeating the following doggerel lines the worst case of toothache could be cured-- Peter sat on a marble stone, Jesus came to him all alone. What's up, Peter? The toothache, my lord; Rise up Peter, and be cured of this pain, And all those _who carry these few lines_ for my sake. This charm appeared in the _Wrexham Advertiser_ as one that was used in _Coedpoeth_ and _Bwlch Gwyn_. But the words appear in "_Y Gwyliedydd_" for May, 1826, page 151. The Welsh heading to the charm informs us that it was obtained from an Irish priest in County Cork, Ireland. The words are:-- Fel yr oedd Pedr yn eistedd ar faen Mynor, Crist a ddaeth atto, ac efe yn unig. Pedr, beth a ddarfu i ti? Y Ddanodd, fy Arglwydd Dduw. Cyfod, Pedr, a rhydd fyddi; A bydd pob dyn a dynes iach oddiwrth y ddanodd Y rhai a gredant i'r geiriau hyn, Yr wyf fi yn gwneuthur yn enw Duw. The first two lines of the English and Welsh are the same but the third and succeeding lines in Welsh are as follows:-- Peter, what is the matter? The toothache, my Lord God. Rise Peter, and thou shalt be cured; And every man and woman who believes these words Shall be cured of the toothache, Which I perform in the name of God. Another version of this charm was given me by Mrs. Reynolds, Pembroke House, Oswestry-- As Jesus walked through the gates of Jerusalem, He saw Peter weeping. Jesus said unto him, why weepest thou? I have got the toothache. Jesus touched his tooth, And Jesus said, have faith and believe, Thy tooth shall ache no more. I return you humble and hearty thanks For the blessing which you have bestowed on me. A young man told me that his brother once suffered greatly from toothache, and a woman gave him a charm like the above, written on paper. He rubbed the charm along the tooth, and he kept it in his pocket until it crumbled away, and as long as he preserved it he never was troubled with the toothache. _Rosemary Charm for Toothache_. "Llosg ei bren (Rhosmari) hyd oni bo yn lo du, ac yna dyro ef mewn cadach lliain cry, ac ira dy ddanedd ag ef; ac fo ladd y pryfed, ac a'u ceidw rhag pob clefyd."--_Y Brython_, p. 339. "Burn a Rosemary bough until it becomes black, and then place it in a strong linen cloth, and anoint thy teeth with it, and it will kill the worm, and preserve thee from every kind of fever." It was thought at one time that toothache was caused by a worm in the tooth, as intimated above. _Whooping Cough Charm_. Children suffering from whooping cough were taken to a seventh son, or lacking a seventh son of sons only, to a fifth son of sons only, who made a cake, and gave it to the sufferers to be eaten by them, and they would recover. The visit was to be thrice repeated. Bread and butter were sometimes substituted for the cake. The writer has been told of instances of the success of this charm. Another charm was--buy a penny roll, wrap it in calico, bury it in the garden, take it up next day. The sufferer from whooping-cough is then to eat the roll until it is consumed. _Charm for Fits_. A ring made out of the offertory money was a cure for fits. About the year 1882 the wife of a respectable farmer in the parish of Efenechtyd called at the rectory and asked the rector's wife if she would procure a shilling for her from the offering made at Holy Communion, out of which she was going to have a ring made to cure her fits. This coin was to be given unsolicited and received without thanks. The Rev. J. D. Edwards, late vicar of Rhosymedre, informed the writer that his parishioners often obtained silver coins from the offertory for the purpose now named. So as to comply with the conditions, the sufferers went to Mrs. Edwards some time during the week before "Sacrament Sunday," and asked her to request Mr. Edwards to give him or her a shilling out of the offertory, and on the following Monday the afflicted person would be at the Vicarage, and the Vicar, having already been instructed by Mrs. Edwards, gave the shilling without uttering a word, and it was received in the same manner. Another charm for fits was to procure a human being's skull, grind it into powder, and take it as medicine. _Charm for Cocks about to fight_. The charm consisted of a verse taken from the Bible, written on a slip of paper, wrapped round the bird's leg, as the steel spurs were being placed on him. The verse so employed was, Eph. vi., 16:--"Taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked." William Jones, Pentre Llyffrith, Llanfyllin, was a celebrated cock charmer. There was also a well-known charmer who lived at Llandegla, Denbighshire, who refused a charm to a certain man. When asked why he had not complied with his request, he said--"He will not need charms for his birds, for he will be a dead man before the main comes off." This became true, for the man died, as foretold. _Charm for Asthma_. Place the Bible for three successive nights under the bolster of the sufferer, and it will cure him. _Charms for Warts_. 1. Drop a pin into a holy well and your warts will disappear, but should anyone take the pin out of the well, the warts you have lost will grow on his fingers. 2. Rub the warts with the inside of a bean pod, and then throw the pod away. 3. Take wheat on the stalk, rub the warts with the wheat's beard or bristles at the end of the ear, take these to four crosses or roads that cross each other, bury the straw, and the warts will decay with the decay of the straw. 4. Rub the warts with elderberry leaves plucked by night, and then burn them, and the warts will disappear. 5. Rub the warts with a bit of flesh meat, wrap the flesh up in paper, throw it behind your back, and do not look behind you to see what becomes of it, and whoever picks it up gets your warts. 6. Take a snail and pierce it through with a thorn, and leave it to die on the bush; as it disappears so will your warts. _Charm for removing a Stye from the eye_. Take an ordinary knitting needle, and pass it back and fore over the stye, but without touching it, and at the same time counting its age, thus--One stye, two styes, three styes, up to nine, and then reversing the order, as nine styes, eight styes, down to one stye, and _no_ stye. This counting was to be done in one breath. If the charmer drew his breath the charm was broken, but three attempts were allowed. The stye, it was alleged, would die from that hour, and disappear in twenty-four hours. _Charms for Quinsy_. Apply to the throat hair cut at midnight from the black shoulder stripe of the colt of an ass. _Charming the Wild Wart_. Take a branch of elder tree, strip off the bark, split off a piece, hold this skewer near the wart, and rub the wart three or nine times with the skewer, muttering the while an incantation of your own composing, then pierce the wart with a thorn. Bury the skewer transfixed with the thorn in a dunghill. The wart will rot away just as the buried things decay. _Charm for Rheumatism_. Carry a potato in your pocket, and when one is finished, supply its place with another. _Charm for removing the Ringworm_. 1. Spit on the ground the first thing in the morning, mix the spittle with the mould, and then anoint the ringworm with this mixture. 2. Hold an axe over the fire until it perspires, and then anoint the ringworm with the sweat. _Cattle Charms_. Mr. Hamer in his "Parochial Account of Llanidloes" published in _The Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol x., p. 249, states that he has in his possession two charms that were actually used for the protection of live stock of two small farms. One of them opens thus:-- "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen . . . and in the name of Lord Jesus Christ my redeemer, that I will give relief to --- creatures his cows, and his calves, and his horses, and his sheep, and his pigs, and all creatures that alive be in his possession, from all witchcraft and from all other assaults of Satan. Amen." Mr. Hamer further states that:-- "At the bottom of the sheet, on the left, is the magical word, _Abracadabra_, written in the usual triangular form; in the centre, a number of planetary symbols, and on the right, a circular figure filled in with lines and symbols, and beneath them the words, 'By Jah, Joh, Jab.' It was the custom to rub these charms over the cattle, etc. a number of times, while some incantation was being mumbled. The paper was then carefully folded up, and put in some safe place where the animals were housed, as a guard against future visitations." In other cases the charm was worn by the cattle, as is shown by the following tale:-- _Charm against Foot and Mouth Disease_. The cattle on a certain farm in Llansilin parish suffered from the above complaint, and old Mr. H--- consulted a conjuror, who gave him a written charm which he was directed to place on the horns of the cattle, and he was told this would act both as a preventive and a cure. This farmer's cattle might be seen with the bit of paper, thus procured, tied to their horns. My informant does not wish to be named, nor does she desire the farmer's name to be given, but she vouches for the accuracy of her information, and for my own use, she gave me all particulars respecting the above. This took place only a few years ago, when the Foot and Mouth Disease first visited Wales. I obtained, through the kindness of the Rev. John Davies, vicar of Bryneglwys, the following charm procured from Mr. R. Jones, Tynywern, Bryneglwys, Denbighshire, who had it from his uncle, by whom it was used at one time. _Yn enw y Tad_, _a'r Mab_, _a'r Ysbryd_. Bod I grist Iesu y gysegredig a oddefe ar y groes, Pan godaist Sant Lasarys o'i fedd wedi farw, Pan faddeuaist Bechodau I fair fagdalen, a thrygra wrthyf fel bo gadwedig bob peth a henwyf fi ag a croeswyf fi ++++ trwy nerth a rhinwedd dy eiriau Bendigedig di fy Arglwydd Iesu Crist. Amen. Iesu Crist ain harglwydd ni gwared ni rhag pop rhiwogaeth o Brofedigaeth ar yabrydol o uwch deiar nag o Is deiar, rhag y gythraelig o ddun nei ddynes a chalon ddrwg a reibia dda ei berchenog ei ddrwg rhinwedd ei ddrwg galon ysgymynedig a wahanwyd or ffydd gatholig ++++ trwy nerth a rhinwedd dy eiriau Bendigedig di fy Arglwydd Iesu Crist. Amen. Iesu Crist ain harglwydd ni Gwared ni rhag y glwy ar bar, ar Llid, ar genfigain ar adwyth . . . ar Pleined Wibrenon ar gwenwyn deiarol, trwy nerth a rhinwedd dy eiriau Bedigedig di Fy Arglwydd Iesu Crist. Amen. It was somewhat difficult to decipher the charms and four words towards the end are quite illegible, and consequently they are omitted. The following translation will show the nature of the charm:-- _In the Name of the Father_, _the Son_, _and the Spirit_. May Christ Jesus the sanctified one, who suffered death on the cross, When thou didst raise Lazarus from his tomb after his death, When Thou forgavest sins to Mary Magdalen, have mercy on me, so that everything named by me and crossed by me ++++ may be saved by the power and virtue of thy blessed words my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Jesus Christ our Lord save us from every kind of temptation whether spiritual above the earth or under the earth, from the devilish man or woman with evil heart who bewitcheth the goods of their owner; his evil virtue, his evil excommunicated heart cut off from the Catholic Faith ++++ by the power and virtue of thy blessed words my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Jesus Christ our Lord save us from the disease and the affliction, and the wrath, and the envy, and the mischief, and the . . . and the planet of the sky and the earthly poison, by the power and virtue of Thy blessed words, my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The mark ++++ indicates that crosses were here made by the person who used the charm, and probably the words of the charm were audibly uttered. _Another Cattle Charm Spell_. Mr. Hughes, Plasnewydd, Llansilin, lost several head of cattle. He was told to bleed one of the herd, boil the blood, and take it to the cowhouse at midnight. He did so, and lost no more after applying this charm. _A Charm for Calves_. If calves were scoured over much, and in danger of dying, a hazel twig the length of the calf was twisted round the neck like a collar, and it was supposed to cure them. _A Charm for Stopping Bleeding_. Mrs. Reynolds, whom I have already mentioned in connection with a charm for toothache, gave me the following charm. It bears date April 5, 1842:-- Our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ was born at Bethlehem, By the Virgin Mary, Baptized in the River Jordan, By St. John the Baptist. He commanded the water to stop, and it obeyed Him. And I desire in the name of Jesus Christ, That the blood of this vein (or veins) might stop, As the water did when Jesus Christ was baptized. Amen. _Charm to make a Servant reliable_. "Y neb a fyno gael ei weinidog yn gywir, doded beth o'r lludw hwn yn nillad ei weinidog ac efe a fydd cywir tra parhao'r lludw."--_Y Brython_, vol. iii., p. 137. Which is:--Whosoever wishes to make his servant faithful let him place the ashes (of a snake) in the clothes of his servant, and as long as they remain there he will be faithful. There are many other wonderful things to be accomplished with the skin of an adder, or snake, besides the preceding. The following are recorded in _Y Brython_, vol. iii., p. 137. _Charms performed with Snake's Skin_. 1. Burn the skin and preserve the ashes. A little salve made out of the ashes will heal a wound. 2. A little of the ashes placed between the shoulders will make a man invulnerable. 3. Whoso places a little of the ashes in the water with which he washes himself, should his enemies meet him, they will flee because of the beauty of his face. 4. Cast a little of the ashes into thy neighbour's house, and he will leave it. 5. Place the ashes under the sole of thy foot, and everybody will agree with thee. 6. Should a man wrestle, let him place some of the ashes under his tongue, and no one can conquer him. 7. Should a man wish to know what is about to occur to him, let him place a pinch of the ashes on his head, and then go to sleep, and his dreams will reveal the future. 8. Should a person wish to ascertain the mind of another, let him throw a little of the ashes on that person's clothes, and then let him ask what he likes, the answer will be true. 9. Has already been given above. (See page 272). 10. If a person is afraid of being poisoned in his food, let him place the ashes on the table with his food, and poison cannot stay there with the ashes. 11. If a person wishes to succeed in love, let him wash his hands and keep some of the ashes in them, and then everybody will love him. 12. The skin of the adder is a remedy against fevers. _The Charms performed with Rosemary_. Rosemary dried in the sun and made into powder, tied in a cloth around the right arm, will make the sick well. The smoke of rosemary bark, sniffed, will, even if you are in gaol, release you. The leaves made into salve, placed on a wound, where the flesh is dead, will cure the wound. A spoon made out of its wood will make whatever you eat therewith nutritious. Place it under the door post, and no snake nor adder can ever enter thy house. The leaves placed in beer or wine will keep these liquids from becoming sour, and give them such a flavour that you will dispose of them quickly. Place a branch of rosemary on the barrel, and it will keep thee from fever, even though thou drink of it for a whole day. Such were some of the wonderful virtues of this plant, as given in the _Brython_, vol. iii., p. 339. _Charm for Clefyd y Galon_, _or Heart Disease_. The Rev. J. Felix, vicar of Cilcen, near Mold, when a young man lodged in Eglwysfach, near Glandovey. His landlady, noticing that he looked pale and thin, suggested that he was suffering from Clefyd y galon, which may be translated as above, or love sickness, a complaint common enough among young people, and she suggested that he should call in David Jenkins, a respectable farmer and a local preacher with the Wesleyans, to cure him. Jenkins came, and asked the supposed sufferer whether he believed in charms, and was answered in the negative. However, he proceeded with his patient as if he had answered in the affirmative. Mr Felix was told to take his coat off, he did so, and then he was bidden to tuck up his shirt above his elbow. Mr. Jenkins then took a yarn thread and placing one end on the elbow measured to the tip of Felix's middle finger, then he told his patient to take hold of the yarn at one end, the other end resting the while on the elbow, and he was to take fast hold of it, and stretch it. This he did, and the yarn lengthened, and this was a sign that he was actually sick of heart disease. Then the charmer tied this yarn around the patient's left arm above the elbow, and there it was left, and on the next visit measured again, and he was pronounced cured. The above information I received from Mr. Felix, who is still alive and well. There were various ways of proceeding in this charm. Yarn was always used and the measurement as above made, and sometimes the person was named and his age, and the Trinity was invoked, then the thread was put around the neck of the sick person, and left there for three nights, and afterwards buried in the name of the Trinity under ashes. If the thread shortened above the second joint of the middle finger there was little hope of recovery; should it lengthen that was a sign of recovery. _Clefyd yr Ede Wlan or Yarn Sickness_. About twenty years ago, when the writer was curate of Llanwnog, Montgomeryshire, a young Welsh married woman came to reside in the parish suffering from what appeared to be that fell disease, consumption. He visited her in her illness, and one day she appeared much elated as she had been told that she was improving in health. She told the narrator that she was suffering from _Clwyf yr ede wlan_ or the woollen thread sickness, and she said that the yarn had _lengthened_, which was a sign that she was recovering. The charm was the same as that mentioned above, supplemented with a drink made of a quart of old beer, into which a piece of heated steel had been dipped, with an ounce of meadow saffron tied up in muslin soaked in it, taken in doses daily of a certain prescribed quantity, and the thread was measured daily, thrice I believe, to see if she was being cured or the reverse. Should the yarn shorten it was a sign of death, if it lengthened it indicated a recovery. However, although the yarn in this case lengthened, the young woman died. The charm failed. Sufficient has been said about charms to show how prevalent faith in their efficiency was. Ailments of all descriptions had their accompanying antidotes; but it is singularly strange that people professing the Christian religion should cling so tenaciously to paganism and its forms, so that even in our own days, such absurdities as charms find a resting-place in the minds of our rustic population, and often, even the better-educated classes resort to charms for obtaining cures for themselves and their animals. But from ancient times, omens, charms, and auguries have held considerable sway over the destinies of men. That charming book, _Plutarch's Lives_, abounds with instances of this kind. Indeed, an excellent collection of ancient Folk-lore could easily be compiled from extant classical authors. Most things die hard, and ideas that have once made a lodgment in the mind of man, particularly when they are connected in any way with his faith, die the very hardest of all. Thus it is that such beliefs as are treated of in this chapter still exist, and they have reached our days from distant periods, filtered somewhat in their transit, but still retaining their primitive qualities. We have not as yet gathered together the fragments of the ancient religion of the Celts, and formed of them a consistent whole, but evidently we are to look for them in the sayings and doings of the people quite as much as in the writings of the ancients. If we could only ascertain what views were held respecting any particular matter in ancient times, we might undoubtedly find traces of them even in modern days. Let us take for instance only one subject, and see whether traces of it still exist. Caesar in his _Commentaries_ states of the Druids that, "One of their principal maxims is that the soul never dies, but that after death it passes into the body of another being. This maxim they consider to be of the greatest utility to encourage virtue and to make them regardless of life." Now, is there anything that can be associated with such teaching still to be found? The various tales previously given of hags turning themselves and others into various kinds of animals prove that people believed that such transitions were in life possible, and they had only to go a step further and apply the same faith to the soul, and we arrive at the transmigration of souls. It is not my intention to make too much of the following tale, for it may be only a shred, but still as such it is worthy of record. A few years ago I was staying at the Rectory, Erbistock, near Ruabon, and the rector, the Rev. P. W. Sparling, in course of conversation, said that a parishioner, one Betsy Roberts, told him that she knew before anyone told her, that a certain person died at such and such a time. The rector asked her how she came to know of the death if no one had informed her, and if she had not been to the house to ascertain the fact. Her answer was, "I knew because I saw a hare come from towards his house and cross over the road before me." This was about all that the rector could elicit, but evidently the woman connected the appearance of the hare with the death of the man. The association of the live hare with the dead man was here a fact, and possibly in the birthplace of that woman such a connection of ideas was common. Furthermore, it has often been told me by people who have professed to have heard what they related, that being present in the death chamber of a friend they have heard a bird singing beautifully outside in the darkness, and that it stopped immediately on the death of their friend. Here again we have a strange connection between two forms of life, and can this be a lingering Druidic or other ancient faith? In the _Dictionary of the Welsh Language_ by the Rev. Canon Silvan Evans, part i., p. 8, under the word _Abred_, we have an exhaustive statement on the subject of transmigration, which I will take the liberty to transcribe, for it certainly throws light on the matter now treated of. "_Abred_ . . . 1. The state or condition through which, by a regular upward gradation, all animated beings pass from the lowest point of existence in which they originate, towards humanity and the highest state of happiness and perfection. All the states of animation below that of humanity are necessarily evil; in the state of humanity, good and evil are equally balanced; and in all the states above humanity, good preponderates and evil becomes impossible. If man, as a free agent, attaches himself to evil, he falls in death into such an animal state of existence as corresponds with the turpitude of his soul, which may be so great as to cast him down into the lowest point of existence, from which he shall again return through such a succession of animal existences as is most proper to divest him of his evil propensities. After traversing such a course, he will again rise to the probationary state of humanity, where according to contingencies he may rise or fall; yet, should he fall, he shall rise again, and should this happen for millions of ages, the path of happiness is still open to him, and will so remain to all eternity, for sooner or later he will infallibly arrive at his destined station or happiness, from which he can never fall. This doctrine of metamorphosis or evolution, attributed to the Druids and the Welsh bards, is succinctly but fully stated by its hierophant, Iolo Morganwg, in his 'Poems' (1794), ii., 195-256, and elucidated by documents which had not previously been made public, but of which none are of an early date." Thus writes the Welsh lexicographer on this matter. The word _abred_ is archaic, as is the idea for which it stands; but as already said, very little has been lost of ideas which were once the property of kindred races; so here we have no exception to the general rule, though the word _abred_ and the theory it represented come down to modern times strengthless, resembling the lifeless mummy of an Egyptian king that once represented a living people and principle. Still, the word and the idea it stands for have descended, in form, to our days, and tell us something about the faith of our forefathers regarding the immortality of the soul. RHAMANTA, OR OMEN SEEKING. _Rhamanta_ was a kind of divination that could be resorted to without the intervention of any outside party, by anyone wishful to ascertain the future with reference to herself or himself. It differed, therefore, from the preceding tales of conjurors or witches, insomuch that the services of neither of these parties were required by the anxious seekers of coming events. They could themselves uplift the veil, using, however, for this purpose certain means, which were credited with possessing the power of opening to their view events which were about to happen. As there was something uncanny in this seeking for hidden information, young women generally in companies of three sought for the information their inquisitiveness required. This was usually done in the dead of night, and twelve o'clock was the hour when they resorted to their incantations. Some of the expedients adopted were harmless, though silly; others were cruel. To the effective carrying out of the matter it was generally necessary that at least one of the party should have slept within the year on an oat-straw bed, or a bed made of the leaves of mountain ash, mixed with the seeds of a spring fern, and a pillow of Maiden Hair. The nights generally resorted to for the purpose mentioned above were All Hallow Eve, S. John's Eve, and Mayday Eve, but there were other times also when the lovesick could get a glimpse of their life partners. I have said that some of the means employed were innocent and others cruel. Before proceeding I will record instances of both kinds. It was thought that if a young woman placed a snail under a basin on _Nos Wyl Ifan_, S. John's Eve, it would by its movements trace the name of her coming husband underneath, or at least his initials. One can very well imagine a young woman not over particular as to form, being able to decipher the snail's wanderings, and making them represent her lover's name. Should the snail have remained immovable during the night, this indicated her own or her lover's death; or at the least, no offer of marriage in the coming year. It was usual for young women to hunt for _Llysiau Ifan_ (S. John's Wort) on _Nos Wyl Ifan_, at midnight, and it was thought that the silvery light of a glow-worm would assist them in discovering the plant. The first thing, therefore, was to search for their living lanthorn. This found, they carried the glow-worm in the palm of the hand, and proceeding in their search they sought underneath or among the fern for St. John's Wort. When found, a bunch was carried away, and hung in the young woman's bedroom. If in the morning the leaves appeared fresh, it was a sign that she should be married within the year; if, however, the leaves were found hanging down or dead, this indicated her death, or that she was not to get a husband within that year. We can well understand that a sharp young person would resort to means to keep the plant alive, and thus avert what she most feared. The following instance of _Rhamanta_ I received from a young woman who witnessed the work done. She gave me the name of the party, but for special reasons I do not supply names. A young woman was madly in love with a young man, and she gave the servant man a jug of beer for procuring a frog for her. This he did; and she took the poor creature to the garden, and thrust several pins into its back. The tortured creature writhed under the pain, but the cruel girl did not cease until the required number had been inserted. Then she placed the frog under a vessel to prevent its escape, and turning to my informant, she said, "There, he will now come to our house this evening." The man certainly came, and when he entered she smiled at my informant, and then both went together to the lacerated frog, and the pins were extracted one by one from its back, and the wounded animal was set at liberty. My informant said that the hard-hearted girl mumbled something both when inserting and extracting the pins. It was believed that the spirit of a person could be invoked and that it would appear, after the performance of certain ceremonies, to the person who was engaged in the weird undertaking. Thus a young woman who had gone round the church seven times on All Hallow Eve came home to her mistress, who was in the secret that she was going to _rhamanta_, and said, "Why did you send master to frighten me?" But the master had not left the house. His wife perceived that it was the spirit of her husband that had appeared to the girl, and she requested the girl to be kind to her children, "for," said she, "you will soon be mistress here." In a short time afterwards the wife died, and the girl became her successor. I obtained the preceding tale from the Rev. P. Edwards, son of the Rector of Llanwyddelan, Montgomeryshire, and the lady who related the tale of herself to Mr. Edwards said the occurrence took place when she was servant girl. There are several versions of the above tale to be met with in many places in Wales. I will give one, omitting names, from my work on "_Old Stone Crosses_," p. 203:--"An aged woman in Gyffylliog parish, who is still alive (1886), saw her husband by _rhamanta_; and so did her fellow-servant. I am indebted to Mr. Jones, Woodland Farm, to whom the woman related it, for the story I am about to give. When young women, she and her fellow-servant, in accordance with the practice of the country, determined to obtain a sight of the men whom they were to marry. The mistress was let into the secret that that night one of the two was going to raise the veil of the future, and the other the following night. As the clock began striking twelve the fellow-servant began striking the floor with a strap, repeating the doggerel lines "Am gyd-fydio i gyd-ffatio," and almost immediately she saw her master come down stairs. The girl innocently the next day asked her mistress why she had sent her master down stairs to frighten her. The answer of her mistress was, 'Take care of my children.' This girl ultimately married her master. The next night it was the other girl's turn, and she saw a dark man, whom she had never seen before; but in the course of a week or so, a stranger came into the farmyard, and she at once perceived that it was the person whom she had seen when divining. Upon inquiry, she ascertained that he was a married man, but in time his wife died, and the girl became his wife." There were several ways of proceeding by young girls who were anxious to ascertain whom they were to marry. One of these was by means of yarn. This divination was usually performed by two young girls after the family had retired for the night. It has been called _Coel ede wlan_, or the yarn test, and under this name I will describe the process. _Coel Ede Wlan_, _or the Yarn Test_. Two young women took a ball of yarn and doubled the threads, and then tied tiny pieces of wood along these threads so as to form a miniature ladder. Then they went upstairs together, and opening the window threw this artificial ladder to the ground, and then the one who was performing the incantation commenced winding the yarn back, saying the while:-- "Y fi sy'n dirwyn Pwy sy'n dal?" I am winding, Who is holding? This was done three times, and if no lover made his appearance, then for that year her chances of marriage were gone. The next evening the other girl in the same manner tried her fortune, and possibly better luck would attend her trial. It was believed that the spirit of the coming husband would mount this ladder and present himself to his future wife. The Rev. R. Jones, rector of Llanycil, told me the following tale. Two young men from Festiniog went to court two young girls in the parish of Maentwrog, servants at a farm called Gellidywyll. As they were going towards the farm one of them said, "Let me rest awhile." He at once seated himself on the ground, and apparently he fell asleep immediately. This surprised his friend, but he was thoroughly frightened when he saw _a blue light emanate_ from his mouth, and he attempted to awaken the man, but he failed to arouse him, he seemed as if dead. However, after awhile, the blue light was seen returning, and it entered the mouth of the sleeper, and he instantly awoke, and they proceeded together towards Gellidywyll. At the very time that the man felt an irresistible inclination to sleep, his love had used the yarn incantation, and the unconscious man during his short sleep dreamt that he had seen his sweetheart in the window, and the girl said that he had appeared to her at the window. In a few months after this proof of true love they were married. Another form of incantation was to walk around the church seven or nine times on certain nights. This I will call the _Twca Test_ or _Knife Test_. This was a very common form of incantation. _Divination with the Twca or Knife_. The proceeding was as follows:--The party who wished to know whom he, or she, was to marry, went to the church secretly and walked around it seven times, repeating the while these words:-- "Dyma'r Twca, Lle mae'r wain?" Here's the knife, Where's the sheath? And it was thought that the spirit of his or her life partner would appear to the person who held the knife, with the sheath in his or her hand, and that it would be found that the one fitted the other exactly. I have been told by a person who resorted to this test that if the person was to become a wife, her lover would certainly appear to her; if she was to die an old maid then a coffin would meet her. The superstition is mentioned in _Bardd Cwsg_-- "Fe glywai rai yn son am fyned i droi o gwmpas yr Eglwys i weled eu cariadau, a pheth a wnaeth y catffwl ond ymddangos i'r ynfydion yn ei lun ei hun." That is in English:-- "He heard some persons talking of going round the church to see their sweethearts, but what did the stupid one (the devil) do, but appear to the foolish things in his own person." _The Washing Test_. Another well-known and often practised form of divination was for a young woman to take an article to wash, such as a stocking, to the water-spout or _pistyll_, and with her she carried two pieces of wood wherewith to strike the article which was being washed. She went on her knees and commenced striking the stocking, saying the while:-- "Am gyd-fydio i gyd-ffatio." We'll live together to strike together. It was thought that her future husband would then appear, take hold of the other piece of wood, and join her in her work; should the wraith appear, a marriage within six months followed. _Troi Crysau or Clothes Drying Test_. Young maidens washed linen after the household had retired, and placed the articles by the fire to dry, and then watched to see who should come at midnight to turn the clothes. In this case, again, the evil one is said to have entered the kitchen to perform this work for the young woman, and also it is affirmed that a coffin has, ere this, moved along through the room, a sure prognostication that she was doomed to die single. _Bardd Cwsg_ mentions this practice. He writes in the third part of his book, where a devil is accused in the Parliament of Hell, thus:--"Aeth nos _Ystwyll_ ddiweddaf i ymweled a dwy ferch ieuanc yng Nghymru _oedd yn troi crysau_, ac yn lle denu'r genethod i faswedd, yn rhith llanc glandeg, myned ag elor i sobreiddio un; a myned a thrwst rhyfel at y llall mewn corwynt uffernol." "He went on the night of _Epiphany_ to visit two young girls in Wales, who were turning shirts, and, instead of enticing them to folly, in the form of a handsome young man, he took to the one a coffin to sober her, and to the other he appeared in a hellish whirlwind, with a horrible noise." Happy, however, is the young woman should the man she loves appear, for he is to be her husband. _Hemp Seed Sowing_. A young married woman, a native of Denbighshire, told me that if a young woman sowed hemp seed, the figure of her lover would appear and follow her. This was to be done by night on Hallow Eve. I find from _English Folk-Lore_, p. 15, that this divination is practised in Devonshire on St. Valentine's Eve, and that the young woman runs round the church repeating, without stopping, the following lines:-- "I sow hempseed, hempseed I sow, He that loves me best Come, and after me now." _Sage Gathering_. A young person who went of a night to the garden, and stripped the leaves of the sage tree, would, as the clock struck twelve, be joined by her lover. This was to be done on All Hallow Eve. _Pullet's Egg Divination_. Mr. J. Roberts, Plas Einion, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, told me the following:--When he was a young man, he, his sister, and the servant man, formed a company to find out by divination their future life partners. They procured a pullet's egg, it was emptied into a cup, to this was added flour and salt, in equal proportions, these ingredients were mixed together, made into three small cakes, and baked. They all ate one half of their cake, and the other half was placed in their respective stockings, to be placed under their bolsters. They went upstairs backward, and thus to bed, preserving the while, absolute silence. It was believed, he said, that they should that night, in their dreams, if everything were carried out properly, see their partners, who would come to their bedsides to offer them a drink of water. _The Candle and Pin Divination_. The process is as follows:--A couple of young women meet, and stick pins in a candle, and if the divination acts properly the last pin drops out of the candle at 12 o'clock at night, and then the future husband of the girl to whom that pin belongs appears. I must not name the lady whom I am indebted to for the following information, but she told me that when she was a young woman, she, and her friend, took part in this prying into the future, and exactly at 12 o'clock her companion's pin fell out of the candle, and at that very instant there was a knocking at the door, and in great fright both ran upstairs, but the knocking continued, and her friend put her head out of the window to enquire who was there, and my informant told me that the man at the door became her friend's husband, though at the time they were consulting the future she was desperately in love with another man. There were other ways in which people could _Rhamant_. Enough has been said on this subject, but there are other practices resorted to, having much the same object in view, which I will now relate. _To ascertain the condition of the Person whom you are to Marry_. _Water in Basin Divination_. Should young persons wish to know whether their husbands were to be bachelors, or their wives spinsters, the following test was to be resorted to:-- Three persons were necessary to carry out the test. These three young ladies were to join in the undertaking and they were to proceed as follows:--On _Nos Calan Gauaf_, All Hallow Eve, at night, three basins were to be placed on a table, _one filled with clear spring water_, _one with muddy water_, _and the other empty_. The young ladies in turn were led blindfolded into the room, and to the table, and they were told to place their hands on the basins. She who placed her hand on the clear spring water was to marry a bachelor, whilst the one who touched the basin with muddy water was to wed a widower, and should the empty basin be touched it foretold that for that person a life of single blessedness was in store. _Hairs of a Lover found under a Holly Tree_. This test is to be carried out on All Hallow Eve. The young person walks backwards to a holly tree, takes a handful of grass from underneath it, and then carries the leaves to the light, and she then sees among the grass several hairs of her true lover. _The Bible and Key Divination_. A key is taken, and placed on the 16th verse of the 1st chapter of Ruth:--"And Ruth said, intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." The Bible is then closed with that part of the key that enters the lock on this verse. The person who wishes to look into the future takes the garter off his left leg, and then ties the Bible round with his garter, which also passes through the loop of the key. He has with him a friend who joins in carrying out the test. Both men place one of their big or central fingers on the key underneath the loop, and press the key, so as to keep the Bible steady and the key from falling. Then the man, who does not consult the future, reads the verse above written, and should the Bible turn towards the other man, it is an affirmative answer that the young lady he loves will accept him. The writer received this account from a man who had himself consulted the future by the Bible and Key. _Testing a Lover's Love by Cracking of Nuts_. This divination is common to many countries, but the writer knows that it is resorted to on _All Hallows Eve_ in Denbighshire by young ladies, partly, it may be in fun, and partly in earnest. The plan of proceeding is as follows:--Nuts are placed on the bars of the fire grate, equal in number to the young lady's lovers, and the nut that cracks first, and jumps off the bar, represents her true love. She has, of course fixed in her mind the lover each nut stands for. So common is this test that in the North of England _All Hallows Eve_ is called "_Nutcrack night_." _Gay_ describes the ceremony:-- Two hazel nuts I throw into the flame And to each nut I give a sweetheart's name; This with the loudest bounce me sore amazed, That in a flame of brightest-colour blazed; As blazed the nut, so may thy passions grow, For 'twas thy nut that did so brightly glow. _Burns_, in his poem of _Hallowe'en_ also mentions the nut divination. The auld guidwife's weel-hoordet nits Are round an' round divided, An' monie lads' and lasses' fates Are there that night decided; Some kindle, couthie, side by side, An' burn thegither trimly; Some start awa' wi' saucy pride, And jump out-owre the chimlie Fu' high that night. Jean slips in twa' wi' tentie e'e; Wha 'twas, she wadna tell; But this is Jock, an' this is me, She says in to hersel': He bleez'd owre her, and she owre him, As they wad never mair part; 'Till, fuff! he started up the lum, An' Jean had e'en a sair heart To see't that night. _The Apple Pip Trial of Lovers_. The fair lady takes as many pips as she has lovers, and these she places on the point of a knife, which she inserts between the bars of the fire grate. Each pip represents a lover, and the pip that swells out and jumps into the fire indicates that he is the best lover for whom the pip stands. SPIRITUALISM. The next subject I shall treat of is curious, and partakes of the nature of spiritualism. I hardly know by what other word to describe it, therefore I will give particulars, so as to make the matter intelligible to the reader, and call it "Spiritualism." It was believed that it was possible for the spirit to leave the body, and then, after an absence of some time, to return again and re-enter it. The form the spirit assumed when it quitted the body was a bluish light like that of a candle, but somewhat longer. This light left the body through the mouth, and re-entered the same way. The writer was informed by a certain female friend at Llandegla that she had seen a bluish light leave the mouth of a person who was sick, light which she thought was the life, or spirit of that person, but the person did not immediately die. For another tale of this kind I am indebted to Mr. R. Roberts, who lives in the village of Clocaenog, near Ruthin. He was not himself a witness of the occurrence, but vouches for the accuracy of the report. It is as follows:-- _A Spirit leaving and re-entering the body_. A man was in love with two young girls, and they were both in love with him, and they knew that he flirted with them both. It is but natural to suppose that these young ladies did not, being rivals, love each other. It can well be believed that they heartily disliked each other. One evening, according to custom, this young man spent the night with one of his sweethearts, and to all appearance she fell asleep, or was in a trance, for she looked very pale. He noticed her face, and was frightened by its death-like pallor, but he was greatly surprised to see _a bluish flame proceed out of her mouth_, and go towards the door. He followed this light, and saw it take the direction of the house in which his other love lived, and he observed that from that house, too, a like light was travelling, as if to meet the light that he was following. Ere long these lights met each other, and they apparently fought, for they dashed into each other, and flitted up and down, as if engaged in mortal combat. The strife continued for some time, and then the lights separated and departed in the direction of the respective houses where the two young women lived. The man returned to the house of the young woman with whom he was spending the night, following close on the light, which he saw going before him, and which re-entered her body through her mouth; and then she immediately awoke. Here, presumedly, these two troubled young ladies met in a disembodied form to contend for the possession of this young man. A tale much like the preceding occurs on page 283. There is something akin to this spectral appearance believed in in Scotland, where the apparition is called _Wraith_, which word is defined in _Jameson's Etymological Dictionary_, published by Gardner, 1882, thus:-- "_Wraith_, _etc_.: Properly an apparition in the exact likeness of a person, supposed by the vulgar to be seen before, or soon after, death." This definition does not correspond exactly to what has been said of the Welsh spirit appearance, but it teaches the possibility, or shows the people's faith in the possibility, of the soul's existence apart from the body. It would seem that in Scotland this spectre is seen before, or after, death; but the writer has read of a case in which the _wraith_ of a person appeared to himself and was the means of saving his life, and that he long survived after his other self had rescued him from extreme danger. Lately a legend of Lake Ogwen went the round of the papers, but the writer, who lived many years in the neighbourhood of that lake, never heard of it until he saw it in the papers in 1887. As it bears on the subject under consideration, I will in part transcribe the story:-- "On one of these occasions a friend who had known something of the Welsh gipsies repeated to Rossetti an anecdote which had been told him as a 'quite true fack' by a Romani girl--an anecdote touching another Romani girl _whose wraith had been spirited away in the night from the_ '_camping place_' by the incantations of a wicked lover, had been seen rushing towards Ogwen Lake in the moonlight, 'While all the while that 'ere same chavi wur asleep an' a-sobbin' in her daddy's livin' waggin.'"--_Bye-Gones_, Ap. 13, 1887. This tale resembles in many respects the one given on page 291, for there is in both a lover and a sleeping girl, and the girl does not die, but there are minor differences in the tales, as might be expected. In Germany like tales are current. Baring-Gould, in his _Myths of the Middle Ages_, pp. 423-4, says:-- "The soul in German mythology is supposed to bear some analogy to a mouse. In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, a servant girl fell asleep whilst her companions were shelling nuts. They observed _a little red mouse creep out of her mouth_ and run out of the window. One of the fellows present shook the sleeper but could not wake her, so he moved her to another place. Presently the mouse ran back to the former place and dashed about seeking the girl; not finding her, it vanished; at the same moment the girl died." One other tale on this subject I will give, which appeared in the _North Wales Chronicle_ for April 22, 1883, where it is headed-- _A Spiritualistic Story from Wales_. "In an article relating to spiritualism in the February number of the _Fortnightly Review_, a story was told which is here shortened. The anecdote is given on the authority of a Welsh gentleman named Roberts, who resided at Cheetham, near Manchester, and the scene of the adventure is Beaumaris, the date 184--. The narrator was then an apprentice in a draper's shop. His master was strict, and allowed his apprentice but half an hour for dinner, which he had to take at his lodgings, some distance away from the shop. At whatever time he left the shop he had to be back there punctually at half past twelve. One day he was late, and while hastily swallowing his meat, his aunt being at the table, he looked up and saw that the clock pointed to _half past_ twelve! He was thunderstruck, and, with the fear of his master before him, all but lost consciousness, and was indeed in a dazed state for a few minutes, as was noticed by those at the table. Shaking this off by an effort, he again looked at the clock, and, to his relief and astonishment, saw that the hands only pointed to a _quarter past_ twelve. Then he quickly finished his dinner and returned to the shop at the appointed time. There he was told that at a _quarter past_ twelve he had returned to the shop, put up his hat, moved about in an absent manner, had been scolded, and had thereupon put on his hat again and walked out. Several persons on the one hand corroborated this story, whilst on the other his aunt was positive that, although at that moment he had fallen into a strange fit of abstraction, he had never left the table. This is the narrative, attested by a gentleman now living. The year 184-- is not so far back; perhaps there are still those residing on the upper side of the turf at Beaumaris who remember the circumstance." This tale in its nature is not unlike the others herein given. It belongs to the supernatural side of life. However improbable these stories may appear, they point to the notion that spirits can exist independently of the body. The Irish _fetch_, the Scotch _wraith_, and the Welsh _Canwyll Corph_, are alike in their teaching, but of this latter I shall speak more particularly when treating of death portents. _A Doctor called from his bed by a Voice_. Mr. Hugh Lloyd, Llanfihangel-Glyn-Myfyr, who received the story from Dr. Davies, the gentleman who figures in the tale, informed me of the following curious incidents:-- Doctor Davies, of Cerrig-y-drudion, had gone to bed and slept, but in the night he heard someone under his bedroom window shout that he was wanted in a farmhouse called Craigeirchan, which was three miles from the doctor's abode, and the way thereto was at all times beset with difficulties, such as opening and shutting the many gates; but of a night the journey to this mountain farm was one that few would think of taking, unless called to do so by urgent business. The doctor did not pay much attention to the first request, but he lay quietly on the bed listening, and almost immediately he heard the same voice requesting him to go at once to Craigeirchan, as he was wanted there. He now got up to the window, but could not see anyone; he therefore re-entered his bed, but for the third time he heard the voice telling him to go to the farm named, and now he opened the window and said that he would follow the messenger forthwith. The doctor got up, went to the stable, saddled the horse, and off he started for a long dismal ride over a wild tract of mountain country; such a journey he had often taken. He was not surprised that he could not see, nor hear, anyone in advance, for he knew that Welsh lads are nimble of foot, and could, by cutting across fields, etc., outstrip a rider. At last he neared the house where he was wanted, and in the distance he saw a light, and by this sign he was convinced that there was sickness in the house. He drove up to the door and entered the abode, to the surprise but great joy of the inmates. To his inquiry after the person who had been sent for him, he was told that no one had left the house, nor had anyone been requested by the family to go to the doctor. But he was told his services were greatly wanted, for the wife was about to become a mother, and the doctor was instrumental in saving both the life of the child and mother. What makes this tale all the more curious is the fact, that the doctor was an unbeliever in such things as ghosts, etc., and he had often enjoyed a quiet laugh over the tales he heard of a supernatural kind. Mr. Lloyd asked the doctor whether he had heard of the woman's condition, but he affirmed he was ignorant of everything connected with the place and family. _Another Tale of a Doctor_. I received the following tale from the Rev. Philip Edwards, formerly curate at Selattyn, near Oswestry:-- There was, or perhaps is--for my informant says he believes the lady is still alive--in a place called Swyddffynnon, Cardiganshire, a Mrs. Evans, who had a strange vision. Mr. Edwards's father called one evening upon Mrs. Evans, and found her sitting by the fire in company with a few female friends, greatly depressed. On enquiring as to the cause of her distress, she stated that she had had a strange sight that very evening. She saw, she said, in the unoccupied chamber at the further end of the house, a light, and, whilst she was wondering what light it was, she observed a tall, dark, stranger gentleman, who had a long, full beard, enter the house and go straight to the room where the light was, but before going in he took off his hat and placed it on the table; then he took off his gloves and threw them into the hat, and then he placed his riding whip across the hat, and without uttering a single word he entered the lit-up room. Shortly afterwards she saw the stranger emerge from the room and leave the house, and on looking again towards the room she saw that the light had disappeared. It was, she said, this apparition that had disconcerted her. Some time after this vision Mrs. Evans was in a critical state, and as she lived far away from a doctor my informant's father was requested to ride to Aberystwyth for one. He found, however, that the two doctors who then resided in that town were from home. But he was informed at the inn that there was a London doctor staying at Hafod. He determined, whether he could or could not, induce this gentleman to accompany him to Swyddffynnon, to go there. The gentleman, on hearing the urgency of the case, consented to visit the sick woman. Mr. Edwards and the doctor rode rapidly to their destination, and Mr. Edwards was surprised to find that the doctor did everything exactly as had been stated by Mrs. Evans. There was also a light in the chamber, for there the neighbours had placed the still-born child, and it was the providential help of the London doctor that saved Mrs. Evans's life. I may add that the personal appearance of this gentleman corresponded with the description given of him by Mrs. Evans. DEATH PORTENTS. These are common, in one form or other, to all nations. I will give a list of those which were formerly in high repute in Wales. _The Corpse Bird_, _or Deryn Corph_. This was a bird that came flapping its wings against the window of the room in which lay a sick person, and this visit was considered a certain omen of that person's death. The bird not only fluttered about the lighted window, but also made a screeching noise whilst there, and also as it flew away. The bird, singled out for the dismal honour of being a death prognosticator, was the tawny, or screech owl. Many are the instances, which have been told me by persons who heard the bird's noise, of its having been the precursor of death. This superstition is common to all parts of Wales. _A Crowing Hen_. This bird, too, is supposed to indicate the death of an inmate of the house which is its home; or, if not the death, some sore disaster to one or other of the members of that family. The poor hen, though, as soon as it is heard crowing, certainly foretells its own death, for no one will keep such an uncanny bird on the premises, and consequently the crowing hen loses its life. It is a common saying that-- A whistling woman, and a _crowing hen_, Are neither good for God nor men. Should a hen lay a small egg it was to be thrown over the head, and over the roof of the house, or a death would follow. _A Cock Crowing in the Night_. This, too, was thought to foretell a death, but whose death, depended on the direction of the bird's head whilst crowing. As soon as the crowing was heard someone went to ascertain the position of the cock's head, and when it was seen that his head was turned from their own house towards someone else's abode, the dwellers in that house slept in peace, believing that a neighbour, and not one of themselves, was about to die. It was supposed, that to make the prognostication sure, the cock would have to crow three times in succession before or about midnight, and in the same direction. _The Corpse Candle--Canwyll Corph_. The corpse candle, or _canwyll corph_, was a light like that of a candle, which was said to issue from the house where a death was about to occur, and take the course of the funeral procession to the burial place. This was the usual way of proceeding, but this mysterious light was also thought to wend its way to the abode of a person about to die. Instances could be given of both kinds of appearances. I have met with persons in various parts of Wales who told me that they had seen a corpse candle. They described it as a pale bluish light moving slowly along a short distance above the ground. Strange tales are told of the course the light has taken. Once it was seen to go over hedges and to make straight for the churchyard wall. This was not then understood, but when the funeral actually took place the ground was covered with snow, and the drift caused the procession to proceed along the fields and over the hedges and churchyard wall, as indicated by the corpse candle. It was ill jesting with the corpse candle. The Rev. J. Jenkins, Vicar of Hirnant, told me that a drunken sailor at Borth said he went up to a corpse candle and attempted to light his pipe at it, but he was whisked away, and when he came to himself he discovered that he was far off the road in the bog. The Rev. Edmund Jones, in his book entitled _A Relation of Ghosts and Apparitions_, _etc_., states:-- "Some have seen the resemblance of a skull carrying the candle; others the shape of the person that is to die carrying the candle between his fore-fingers, holding the light before his face. Some have said that they saw the shape of those who were to be at the burying." Those who have followed the light state that it proceeded to the church, lit up the building, emerged therefrom, and then hovered awhile over a certain spot in the churchyard, and then sank into the earth at the place where the deceased was to be buried. There is a tradition that St. David, by prayer, obtained the corpse candle as a sign to the living of the reality of another world, and that originally it was confined to his diocese. This tradition finds no place in the Life of the Saint, as given in the _Cambro-British Saints_, and there are there many wonderful things recorded of that saint. It was thought possible for a man to meet his own Candle. There is a tale of a person who met a Candle and struck it with his walking-stick, when it became sparks, which, however, re-united. The man was greatly frightened, became sick, and died. At the spot where he had struck the candle the bier broke and the coffin fell to the ground, thus corroborating the man's tale. I will now record one tale not of the usual kind, which was told me by a person who is alive. _Tale of a Corpse Candle_. My informant told me that one John Roberts, Felin-y-Wig, was in the habit of sitting up a short time after his family had retired to rest to smoke a quiet pipe, and the last thing he usually did before retiring for the night was to take a peep into the night. One evening, whilst peering around, he saw in the distance a light, where he knew there was no house, and on further notice he observed that it was slowly going along the road from Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch towards Felin-y-Wig. Where the road dipped the light disappeared, only, however, to appear again in such parts of the road as were visible from John Roberts's house. At first Roberts thought that the light proceeded from a lantern, but this was so unusual an occurrence in those parts that he gave up this idea, and intently followed the motions of the light. It approached Roberts's house, and evidently this was its destination. He endeavoured to ascertain whether the light was carried by a man or woman, but he could see nothing save the light. When, therefore, it turned into the lane approaching Roberts's house, in considerable fear he entered the house and closed the door, awaiting, with fear, the approach of the light. To his horror, he perceived the light passing through the shut door, and it played in a quivering way underneath the roof, and then vanished. That very night the servant man died, and his bed was right above the spot where the light had disappeared. _Spectral Funerals_, _or Drychiolaeth_. This was a kind of shadowy funeral which foretold the real one. In South Wales it goes by the name _toilu_, _toili_, or _y teulu_ (the family) _anghladd_, unburied; in Montgomeryshire it is called _Drychiolaeth_, spectre. I cannot do better than quote from Mr. Hamer's _Parochial Account of Llanidloes (Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. x., p. 256), a description of one of these phantom funerals. All were much alike. He writes:-- "It is only a few years ago that some excitement was caused amongst the superstitious portion of the inhabitants by the statement of a certain miner, who at the time was working at the Brynpostig mine. On his way to the mine one dark night, he said that he was thoroughly frightened in China Street on seeing a spectral funeral leaving the house of one Hoskiss, who was then very ill in bed. In his fright the miner turned his back on the house, with the intention of going home, but almost fainting he could scarcely move out of the way of the advancing procession, which gradually approached, at last surrounded him, and then passed on down Longbridge Street, in the direction of the church. The frightened man managed with difficulty to drag himself home, but he was so ill that he was unable to go to work for several days." The following weird tale I received from the Rev. Philip Edwards, whom I have already mentioned (p. 282). I may state that I have heard variants of the story from other sources. While the Manchester and Milford Railway was in course of construction there was a large influx of navvies into Wales, and many a frugal farmer added to his incomings by lodging and boarding workmen engaged on the line. Several of these men were lodged at a farm called Penderlwyngoch, occupied by a man named Hughes. One evening when the men were seated round the fire, which burned brightly, they heard the farm dogs bark, as they always did at the approach of strangers. This aroused the attention of the men, and they perceived from the furious barking of the dogs that someone was coming towards the house. By-and-by they heard the tramp of feet, mingled with the howling of the frightened dogs, and then the dogs ceased barking, just as if they had slunk away in terror. Before many minutes had elapsed the inmates heard the back door opened, and a number of people entered the house, carrying a heavy load resembling a dead man, which they deposited in the parlour, and all at once the noise ceased. The men in great dread struck a light, and proceeded to the parlour to ascertain what had taken place. But they could discover nothing there, neither were there any marks of feet in the room, nor could they find any footprints outside the house, but they saw the cowering dogs in the yard looking the picture of fright. After this fruitless investigation of the cause of this dread sound, the Welsh people present only too well knew the cause of this visit. On the very next day one of the men who sat by the fire was killed, and his body was carried by his fellow-workmen to the farm house, in fact everything occurred as rehearsed the previous night. Most of the people who witnessed the vision are, my informant says, still alive. _Cyhyraeth--Death Sound_. This was thought to be a sound made by a crying spirit. It was plaintive, yet loud and terrible. It made the hair stand on end and the blood become cold; and a whole neighbourhood became depressed whenever the awful sound was heard. It was unlike all other voices, and it could not be mistaken. It took in its course the way the funeral procession was to go, starting from the house of the dead, and ending in the churchyard where the deceased was to be buried. It was supposed to announce a death the morning before it occurred, or, at most, a few days before. It was at one time thought to belong to persons born in the Diocese of Llandaff, but it must have travelled further north, for it is said to have been heard on the Kerry Hills in Montgomeryshire. The function of the _Cyhyraeth_ was much the same as that of the Corpse Candle, but it appealed to the sense of sound instead of to the sense of sight. Dogs, when they heard the distressing sound of the _Cyhyraeth_, showed signs of fear and ran away to hide. _Lledrith--Spectre of a Person_. This apparition of a friend has in the Scotch wraith, or Irish fetch its counterpart. It has been said that people have seen friends walking to meet them, and that, when about to shake hands with the approaching person, it has vanished into air. This optical illusion was considered to be a sign of the death of the person thus seen. _Tolaeth--Death Rapping or Knocking_. The death rappings are said to be heard in carpenters' workshops, and that they resembled the noise made by a carpenter when engaged in coffin-making. A respectable miner's wife told me that a female friend told her, she had often heard this noise in a carpenter's shop close by her abode, and that one Sunday evening this friend came and told her that the _Tolaeth_ was at work then, and if she would come with her she should hear it. She complied, and there she heard this peculiar sound, and was thoroughly frightened. There was no one in the shop at the time, the carpenter and his wife being in chapel. Sometimes this noise was heard by the person who was to die, but generally by his neighbours. The sounds were heard in houses even, and when this was the case the noise resembled the noise made as the shroud is being nailed to the coffin. _A Raven's Croaking_. A raven croaking hoarsely as it flew through the air became the angel of death to some person over whose house it flew. It was a bird of ill omen. _The Owl_. This bird's dismal and persistent screeching near an abode also foretold the death of an inmate of that house. _A Solitary Crow_. The cawing of a solitary crow on a tree near a house indicates a death in that house. _The Dog's Howl_. A dog howling on the doorsteps or at the entrance of a house also foretold death. The noise was that peculiar howling noise which dogs sometimes make. It was in Welsh called _yn udo_, or crying. _Missing a Butt_. Should a farmer in sowing wheat, or other kind of corn, or potatoes, or turnips, miss a row or butt, it was a token of death. _Stopping of a Clock_. The unaccountable stopping of the kitchen clock generally created a consternation in a family, for it was supposed to foretell the death of one of the family. _A Goose Flying over a House_. This unusual occurrence prognosticated a death in that house. _Goose or Hen Laying a Small Egg_. This event also was thought to be a very bad omen, if not a sign of death. _Hen laying Two Eggs in the same day_. Should a hen lay two eggs in the same day, it was considered a sign of death. I have been told that a hen belonging to a person who lived in Henllan, near Denbigh, laid an egg early in the morning, and another about seven o'clock p.m. in the same day, and the master died. _Thirteen at a Table_. Should thirteen sit at a table it was believed that the first to leave would be buried within the year. _Heather_. Should any person bring heather into a house, he brought death to one or other of the family by so doing. _Death Watch_. This is a sound, like the ticking of a watch, made by a small insect. It is considered a sign of death, and hence its name, _Death Watch_. A working man's wife, whose uncle was ill in bed, told the writer, that she had no hopes of his recovery, because death ticks were heard night and day in his room. The man, who was upwards of eighty years old, died. _Music and Bird Singing heard before Death_. The writer, both in Denbighshire and Carnarvonshire, was told that the dying have stated that they heard sweet voices singing in the air, and they called the attention of the watchers to the angelic sounds, and requested perfect stillness, so as not to lose a single note of the heavenly music. A young lad, whom the writer knew--an intelligent and promising boy--whilst lying on his death-bed, told his mother that he heard a bird warbling beautifully outside the house, and in rapture he listened to the bird's notes. His mother told me of this, and she stated further, that she had herself on three different occasions previously to her eldest daughter's death, in the middle of the night, distinctly heard singing of the most lovely kind, coming, as she thought, from the other side of the river. She went to the window and opened it, but the singing immediately ceased, and she failed to see anyone on the spot where she had imagined the singing came from. My informant also told me that she was not the only person who heard lovely singing before the death of a friend. She gave me the name of a nurse, who before the death of a person, whose name was also given me, heard three times the most beautiful singing just outside the sick house. She looked out into the night, but failed to see anyone. Singing of this kind is expected before the death of every good person, and it is a happy omen that the dying is going to heaven. In the _Life of Tegid_, which is given in his _Gwaith Barddonawl_, p. 20, it is stated:-- "Yn ei absenoldeb o'r Eglwys, pan ar wely angeu, ar fore dydd yr Arglwydd, tra yr oedd offeiriad cymmydogaethol yn darllen yn ei le yn Llan Nanhyfer, boddwyd llais y darllenydd gan fwyalchen a darawai drwy yr Eglwys accen uchel a pherseiniol yn ddisymwth iawn. . . . Ar ol dyfod o'r Eglwys cafwyd allan mai ar yr amser hwnw yn gywir yr ehedodd enaid mawr Tegid o'i gorph i fyd yr ysprydoedd." Which translated is as follows:-- In his absence from Church, when lying on his deathbed, in the morning of the Lord's Day, whilst a neighbouring clergyman was taking the service for him in Nanhyfer Church, the voice of the reader was suddenly drowned by the beautiful song of a thrush, that filled the whole Church. . . . It was ascertained on leaving the church that at that very moment the soul of Tegid left his body for the world of spirits. In the _Myths of the Middle Ages_, p. 426, an account is given of "The Piper of Hamelin," and there we have a description of this spirit song:-- Sweet angels are calling to me from yon shore, Come over, come over, and wander no more. Miners believe that some of their friends have the gift of seeing fatal accidents before they occur. A miner in the East of Denbighshire told me of instances of this belief and he gave circumstantial proof of the truth of his assertion. Akin to this faith is the belief that people have seen coffins or spectral beings enter houses, both of which augur a coming death. In _The Lives of the Cambro-British Saints_, p. 444, it is stated that previously to the death of St. David "the whole city was filled with the music of angels." The preceding death omens do not, perhaps, exhaust the number, but they are quite enough to show how prevalent they were, and how prone the people were to believe in such portents. Some of them can be accounted for on natural grounds, but the majority are the creation of the imagination, strengthened possibly in certain instances by remarkable coincidences which were remembered, whilst if no death occurred after any of the omens, the failure was forgotten. BIRDS AND BEASTS. Folk-lore respecting animals is common in Wales. It has been supposed that mountainous countries are the cradles of superstitions. But this is, at least, open to a doubt; for most places perpetuate these strange fancies, and many of them have reached our days from times of old, and the exact country whence they came is uncertain. Still, it cannot be denied that rugged, rocky, sparsely inhabited uplands, moorlands, and fens, are congenial abodes for wild fancies, that have their foundation in ignorance, and are perpetuated by the credulity of an imaginative people that lead isolated and solitary lives. The bleating of the sheep, as they wander over a large expanse of barren mountain land, is dismal indeed, and well might become ominous of storms and disasters. The big fat sheep, which are penned in the lowlands of England, with a tinkling bell strapped to the neck of the king of the flock, convey a notion of peace and plenty to the mind of the spectator, that the shy active mountain sheep, with their angry grunt and stamping of their feet never convey. Still, these latter are endowed with an instinct which the English mutton-producer does not exercise. Welsh sheep become infallible prognosticators of a change of weather; for, by a never failing instinct, they leave the high and bare mountain ridges for sheltered nooks, and crowd together when they detect the approach of a storm. Man does not observe atmospheric changes as quickly as sheep do, and as sheep evidently possess one instinct which is strongly developed and exercised, it is not unreasonable to suppose that man in a low state of civilisation might credit animals with possessing powers which, if observed, indicate or foretell other events beside storms. Thus the lowly piping of the solitary curlew, the saucy burr of the grouse, the screech of the owl, the croaking of the raven, the flight of the magpie, the slowly flying heron, the noisy cock, the hungry seagull, the shrill note of the woodpecker, the sportive duck, all become omens. Bird omens have descended to us from remote antiquity. Rome is credited with having received its pseudo-science of omens from Etruria, but whence came it there? This semi-religious faith, like a river that has its source in a far distant, unexplored mountain region, and meanders through many countries, and does not exclusively belong to any one of the lands through which it wanders; so neither does it seem that these credulities belong to any one people or age; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to trace to their origin, omens, divination, magic, witchcraft, and other such cognate matters, which seem to belong to man's nature. Readers of Livy remember how Romulus and Remus had recourse to bird omens to determine which of the brothers should build Rome. Remus saw six vultures, and Romulus twelve; therefore, as his number was the greater, to him fell the honour of building the famous city. But this was not the only bird test known to the Romans. Before a battle those people consulted their game fowl to ascertain whether or not victory was about to attend their arms. If the birds picked up briskly the food thrown to them victory was theirs, if they did so sluggishly the omen was unpropitious, and consequently the battle was delayed. Plutarch, in his "Life of Alexander," gives us many proofs of that great general's credulity. The historian says:--"Upon his (Alexander's) approach to the walls (of Babylon) he saw a great number of crows fighting, some of which fell down dead at his feet." This was a bad sign. But I will not pursue the subject. Enough has been said to prove how common omens were. I will now confine my remarks to Wales. _Birds singing before February_. Should the feathered songsters sing before February it is a sign of hard, ungenial weather. This applies particularly to the blackbird and throstle. The following lines embody this faith:-- Os can yr adar cyn Chwefror, hwy griant cyn Mai. If birds sing before February, they will cry before May. Thus their early singing prognosticates a prolonged winter.--_Bye-Gones_, vol. i., p. 88. _Birds flocking in early Autumn_. When birds gather themselves together and form flocks in the early days of autumn, it is thought to foretell an early and severe winter. On the other hand, should they separate in early spring, and again congregate in flocks, this shews that hard weather is to be expected, and that winter will rest on the lap of May. _Birds' Feathers_. Feather beds should be made of domestic birds' feathers, such as geese, ducks, and fowls. Wild fowl feathers should not be mixed with these feathers; for, otherwise, the sick will die hard, and thus the agony of their last moments will be prolonged. _The Cock_. Caesar, Bk. v., c.12, tells us that the Celtic nation did not regard it lawful to eat the cock. It was thought that the devil assumed occasionally the form of a cock. It is said that at Llanfor, near Bala, the evil spirit was driven out of the church in the form of a cock, and laid in the river Dee. Formerly the cock was offered to the water god. And at certain Holy Wells in Wales, such as that in the parish of Llandegla, it was customary to offer to St. Tecla a cock for a male patient, and a hen for a female. A like custom prevailed at St. Deifer's Well, Bodfari. Classical readers may remember that Socrates, before his death, desired his friend Crito to offer a cock to AEsculapius. "Crito," said he, and these were his last words, "we owe a cock to AEsculapius, discharge that debt for me, and pray do not forget it;" soon after which he breathed his last. In our days, the above-mentioned superstitions do not prevail, but the cock has not been resigned entirely to the cook. By some means or other, it still retains the power of announcing the visit of a friend; at least, so says the mountain farmer's wife. The good-wife in North Wales, when the cock comes to the door-sill and there crows many times in succession, tells her children that "Some one is coming to visit us, I wonder who it is." Before nightfall a friend drops in, and he is informed that he was expected, that the cock had crowed time after time by the door, and that it was no good sending him away, for he would come back and crow and crow, "and now," adds she, "you have come." "Is it not strange," says the good woman, "that he never makes a mistake," and then follows a word of praise for chanticleer, which the stranger endorses. However much the hospitable liked to hear their cock crow in the day time, he was not to crow at night. But it was formerly believed that at the crowing of the cock, fairies, spirits, ghosts, and goblins rushed to their dread abodes. Puck was to meet the Fairy King, "ere the first cock crow." _Cock-fighting_. Cock-fighting was once common in Wales, and it was said that the most successful cock-fighters fought the bird that resembled the colour of the day when the conflict took place; thus, the blue game-cock was brought out on cloudy days, black when the atmosphere was inky in colour, black-red on sunny days, and so on. Charms for cocks have already been mentioned (p. 267). These differed in different places. In Llansantffraid, Montgomeryshire, a crumb from the communion table, taken therefrom at midnight following the administration of the Holy Communion, was an infallible charm. This was placed in the socket of the steel spur, which was then adjusted to the natural spur.--_Bye-Gones_, vol. i., p. 88. _The Goose_. Should a goose lay a soft egg, a small egg, or two eggs in a day, it is a sign of misfortune to the owner of that goose. An old woman in Llandrinio parish, Montgomeryshire, who lived in a cottage by the side of the Severn, and who possessed a breed of geese that laid eggs and hatched twice a year, when I asked her the time that geese should begin to lay, said:-- Before St. Valentine's Day Every good goose will lay. and she added:-- By St. Chad, Every good goose, and bad. St. Chad's Day is March the 2nd. Mr. Samuel Williams, Fron, Selattyn, gave me the following version of the above ditty:-- On Candlemas Day, Every good goose begins to lay. Another rendering is:-- Every good goose ought to lay On Candlemas Day. Candlemas Day is February 2nd. Geese should sit so as to hatch their young when the moon waxes and not when it wanes, for, otherwise, the goslings would not thrive. The lucky one in the family should place the eggs for hatching under the goose or hen. For the following paragraph I am indebted to "Ffraid," a writer in _Bye-Gones_, vol. i., p. 88:-- "The goose is thought to be a silly bird, and hence the expression, 'You silly goose,' or 'You stupid goose,' as applied to a person. The falling snow is believed to be the effect of celestial goose-feathering, and the patron of geese--St. Michael--is supposed to be then feathering his proteges. The first goose brought to table is called a Michaelmas goose; a large annual fair at Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant is called 'Ffair y cwarter Gwydd,' the quarter goose fair. Seven geese on grass land are supposed to eat as much grass as will keep a cow. Permanent grass land is called 'Tir Gwydd,' goose land. A bed of goose feathers is required to complete a well-furnished house. The fat of geese, called 'goose-oil,' is a recipe for many ailments. A small bone in the head of a goose, called the 'goose's tooth,' is carried in the pocket for luck, and is a sure preventative against toothache." Much of the above paragraph is common to most parts of Wales, but the writer used to be told, when he was a lad, that the snow was caused by "the old woman feathering her geese," and a Michaelmas goose was called a green goose, as well as a "Michaelmas goose." _The Crow_. The crow figures much in Welsh folk-lore. In many ways he is made to resemble the magpie; thus, when one crow or one magpie was seen, it was thought to foretell misfortune, as implied by the saying:-- Un fran ddu, Lwc ddrwg i mi. But should the spectator shout out in a defiant way:-- Hen fran ddu, Gras Duw i mi, no harm would follow. The former lines in English would be:-- One crow I see, Bad luck to me. But this foretold evil, brought about by the old black crow, could be counteracted by repeating the following words, (a translation of the second couplet), with a pause between each line, and thus the last line would assume the form of a prayer:-- Old Black Crow! God, grace bestow; or the evil could be hurled back upon the Old Black Crow by the repetition of these words:-- Hen fran ddu, Gras Duw i mi, Lwc ddrwg i ti. Freely translated, these lines would be:-- Old Black Crow! God's grace to me, Bad luck to thee. In the English-speaking parts of Wales, such as along the borders of Montgomeryshire, adjoining Shropshire, I have heard the following doggerel lines substituted for the Welsh:-- Crow, crow, get out of my sight, Before I kill thee to-morrow night. The bad luck implied by the appearance of one crow could also be overcome, as in the case of the magpie, by making a cross on the ground, with finger or stick. Although one crow implied bad luck, two crows meant good luck; thus we have these lines:-- Dwy fran ddu, Lwc dda i mi. Two black crows, Good luck to me. Many prognostications were drawn from the appearance of crows. A crow seen on the highest branch of a tree implied that the person seeing it should shortly see his or her sweetheart. The manner in which they flew foretold a wedding or a burying. When they fly in a long line there is to be a wedding, if crowded together a funeral. There is a common expression in Montgomeryshire--"Dwy fran dyddyn"--"The two crows of the farm"--just as if each farm had its two crows, either as guardians of the farm--for two crows implied good luck--or as if they were located by couples in various places, which places became their feeding ground and homes. This, however, is not true of rooks, which feed in flocks and roost in flocks. _Crows' Feathers_. In Montgomeryshire it was, at one time, supposed that if a person picked up a crow's feather he was sure to meet a mad dog before the day was over. But in other parts it was considered lucky to find a crow's feather, if, when found, it were stuck on end into the ground. This superstition lingered long in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr, a remote, hilly parish in Denbighshire. Some years ago, crows' wing or tail feathers could be seen stuck upright in the ground in many parts of Wales, but at present such a thing cannot be seen. The practice and the superstition have come to an end. _A Rookery deserted was a sign of bad luck_, _but when they nested near a house it was a sign of good luck_. The writer visited, in the year 1887, a gentleman's park, where for generations the rooks had made a lodgment, and by several persons his attention was called to the ominous fact that the rooks had left the ancestral trees which ornamented the spacious and well-wooded park, and had even carried their nests away with them. He was informed that the desertion boded no good to the highly respected family that occupied that ancient seat. The writer also visited a friend, who lives in an ancient abode, a mile or two from the rook-rejected park, and, with a smile, he was informed by the lady of the house that a colony of rooks had taken possession of the trees that surrounded her house. He gladly wished her luck, to which she responded--"It has been a long time coming." Both these places are in East Denbighshire. The writer remembers a case in which a rookery was deserted just before misfortune fell upon the gentleman who occupied the house around which grew the trees occupied by the rooks. This gentleman one morning noticed the rooks carrying away their nests to a new home. Se called his servant man to him, and desired him to go after the rooks and destroy their nests in their new abode, in the fond hope that they would thus be induced to return to their old home. This was done more than once, but the rooks would not take the hint; they persisted in gathering up the scattered sticks that strewed the ground, but these they replaced in the trees above, which now had become their new home. When it was found that they would not return, the man desisted, and his master, as he had feared, met with dire misfortune shortly afterwards (see p. 304). _The Cuckoo_. _Y Gog_. The cuckoo is a sacred bird. It is safe from the gamekeeper's gun. Its advent is welcomed with pleasure. "Have you heard the cuckoo?" is a question put by the fortunate person who first hears its notes to every person he meets. When it is ascertained that the cuckoo has arrived, parents give their children pence for luck, and they themselves take care not to leave their houses with empty pockets, for should they do so, those pockets, if the cuckoo is heard, will be empty all the year. Those who hear the cuckoo for the first time thrust immediately their hand in their pockets, and turn their money, or toss a piece into the air, and all this is for luck for the coming year ushered in by the cheering sound of the cuckoo's notes. It is believed that the cuckoo is in our country for several days before its welcome two notes are heard, and that the cause of its huskiness is, that it is tired, and has not cleared its voice by sucking birds' eggs. Generally the cuckoo is heard for the first time yearly about the same place, and the hill tops not far from the abodes of man are its favourite resort. Thus we have the ditty:-- Cynta' lle y can y cogydd, Yw y fawnog ar y mynydd. The place where first the cuckoo sings, Is by the peat pits on the hills. The cuckoo is supposed to be accompanied by the wry-neck, hence its name, "Gwas-y-gog," the cuckoo's servant. The wryneck was thought to build the nest, and hatch and feed the young of the cuckoo. Many superstitions cluster round the cuckoo; thus, should a person be in doubt as to the way to take, when going from home, to secure success in life, he, or she, waits for the cuckoo's return, and then should the bird be heard for the first time, singing towards the east, as it flies, that is the direction to take, or any other direction as the case may be; and it is, or was, even thought that the flight of the cuckoo, singing as it flies before a person, for the first time in the year, indicated a change of abode for that person, and the new home lay in the direction in which the cuckoo flew. Should the cuckoo make its appearance before the leaves appear on the hawthorn bush, it is a sign of a dry, barren year. Os can y gog ar ddrain-llwyn llwm, Gwerth dy geffyl a phryn dy bwn. If the cuckoo sings on a hawthorn bare, Sell thy horse, and thy pack prepare. The Welsh words I heard at Llanuwchllyn, a good many years ago, just as the cuckoo's voice was heard for the first time in those parts, and there were then no leaves out on the hedgerows. I do not recollect whether the prophecy became true, but it was an aged Welshman that made use of the words. Another version of the same is heard in Llanwddyn parish:-- Os can y gog ar bincyn llwm, Gwerth dy geffyl a phryn dy bwn. If the cuckoo sings on a sprig that's bare, Sell thy horse, and thy pack prepare. The latter ditty suits a hilly country, and the former applies to the low lands where there are hedgerows. The early singing of the cuckoo implies a plentiful crop of hay, and this belief is embodied in the following ditty:-- Mis cyn Clamme can y coge, Mis cyn Awst y cana' inne. That is:-- If the cuckoo sings a month before May-day, I will sing a month before August. _Calan Mai_, May-day, abbreviated to _Clamme_, according to the Old Style, corresponds with our 12th of May, and the above saying means, that there would be such an abundant hay harvest if the cuckoo sang a month before May-day, that the farmer would himself sing for joy on the 12th of July. It was the custom in the uplands of Wales to begin the hay harvest on the 1st of July. The above I heard in Montgomeryshire, and also the following:-- Mis cyn Clamme can y coge, Mis cyn hynny tyf mriallu. That is:-- If the cuckoo sings a month before May-day, Primroses will grow a month before that time. I do not know what this means, unless it implies that early primroses foretell an early summer. But, speaking of the song of the cuckoo, we have the following lines:-- Amser i ganu ydi Ebrill a Mai, A hanner Mehefin, chwi wyddoch bob rhai. This corresponds somewhat with the English:-- The cuckoo sings in April, The cuckoo sings in May, The cuckoo sings to the middle of June, And then she flies away. In Mochdre parish, Montgomeryshire, I was told the following:-- In May she sings all day, In June she's out of tune. The following Welsh lines show that the cuckoo will not sing when the hay harvest begins:-- Pan welith hi gocyn, Ni chanith hi gwcw. When she sees a heap, Silence she will keep. In certain parts of Wales, such as Montgomeryshire, bordering on Shropshire, it is thought that the cuckoo never sings after Midsummer-day. This faith finds corroborative support in the following lines:-- The cuckoo sings in April, The cuckoo sings in May, The cuckoo sings in Midsummer, But never on that day. In Flintshire, in Hawarden parish, it is believed that she mates in June, as shown by these words:-- The cuckoo comes in April, The cuckoo sings in May, The cuckoo mates in June, And in July she flies away. In Montgomeryshire I have often heard these lines:-- The cuckoo is a fine bird, She sings as she flies, She brings us good tidings, And never tells us lies; She sucks young birds' eggs, To make her voice clear, And the more she sings "Cuckoo," The summer is quite near. The last two lines are varied thus:-- And then she sings, "Cuckoo" Three months in every year. Or:-- And when she sings "Cuckoo" The summer is near. The cuckoo was credited with sucking birds' eggs, to make room for her own, as well as to acquire a clear voice. Perhaps the rustic belief is at fault here. The writer has seen a cuckoo rise from the ground with an egg in her mouth, but he has seen it stated that the cuckoo always lays her eggs on the ground, and carries them in her mouth until she discovers a nest wherein to deposit them, and when she has done this her mother's care is over. _A White Cock_. A white cock was looked upon as an unlucky bird, thus:-- Na chadw byth yn nghylch dy dy, Na cheiliog gwyn, na chath ddu. Never keep about thy house, A white cock, nor black cat. _Crane_. The crane is often mistaken for the heron. When the crane flies against the stream, she asks for rain, when with the stream she asks for fair weather. This bird is said to be thin when the moon wanes, and fat at the waxing of the moon. _Ducks_. When ducks sportively chase each other through the water, and flap their wings and dive about, in evident enjoyment of their pastime, it is a sign that rain is not far off. _Eagle_. Persons who had eaten eagle's flesh had power to cure erysipelas, and this virtue was said by some to be transmitted to their descendants for ever, whilst others affirmed it only lasted for nine generations. See page 263, where this subject is fully treated. _The Goat Sucker_. A curious notion prevailed respecting this bird, arrived at, presumably, in consequence of its peculiar name--the _goat sucker_--viz., that it lives on the milk of the goat, which it obtains by sucking the teats of that animal. _Putting Hens to Sit_. Placing the eggs in the nest for hens, geese, and ducks to sit on was considered an important undertaking. This was always done by the lucky member of the family. It was usual to put fowl to sit so as to get the chick out of the egg at the waxing, and not at the waning, of the moon. It was thought that the young birds were strong or weak according to the age of the moon when they were hatched. March chickens were always considered the best. A game bird hatched in March was thought to be stronger and more plucky than those that broke their shells in any other month, and, further, to obtain all extraneous advantages, that bird which was hatched at full moon began life with very good prospects. A singular custom prevailed at Llansantffraid, Montgomeryshire, when putting hens, and other fowl, to sit. I obtained the information from the late Vicar, the Rev. R. H. M. Hughes, M.A., an observant gentleman, who took a lively interest in all matters connected with his parish. I was staying with him, and he made the remark that in his parish it was considered lucky to place the hen, when she first began to sit, with her head towards the church. This the cottagers in the village could easily do, for the parish church was in their midst. I do not know whether this kind of proceeding prevailed in other places. The number of eggs placed under a hen varied with her size, but one general rule was followed, viz., an odd number of eggs was always placed under her; eleven or thirteen was the usual number, but never ten or twelve. _The Heron_. The heron as it flies slowly towards the source of a river is said to be going up the river to bring the water down, in other words, this flight is a sign of coming rain. The same thing is said of the crane. _Fable of why the Heron frequents the banks of rivers and lakes_. It is from thirty to forty years ago that I heard the fable I am about to relate, and the circumstances under which I heard it are briefly as follows. I was walking towards Bangor from Llanllechid, when I saw a farmer at work hedging. I stopped to chat with him, and a bramble which had fastened itself on his trousers gave him a little trouble to get it away, and the man in a pet said, "Have I not paid thee thy tithe?" "Why do you say those words, Enoch?" said I, and he said, "Have you not heard the story?" I confessed my ignorance, and after many preliminary remarks, the farmer related the following fable:-- The heron, the cat, and the bramble bought the tithe of a certain parish. The heron bought the hay, mowed it, harvested it, and cocked it, and intended carrying it the following day, but in the night a storm came on, and carried the hay away, and ever since then the heron frequents the banks of the rivers and lakes, looking for her hay that was carried away, and saying "Pay me my tithe." The cat bought the oats, cut them, and even threshed them, and left them in the barn, intending the following day to take them to the market for sale. But when she went into the barn, early the next morning, she found the floor covered with rats and mice, which had devoured the oats, and the cat flew at them and fought with them, and drove them from the barn, and this is why she is at enmity with rats and mice even to our day. The bramble bought the wheat, and was more fortunate than the heron and cat, for the wheat was bagged, and taken to the market and sold, but sold on trust, and the bramble never got the money, and this is why it takes hold of everyone and says "Pay me my tithe," for it forgot to whom the wheat had been sold. _The Jackdaw_. This bird is considered sacred, because it frequents church steeples and builds its nest there, and it is said to be an innocent bird, though given to carrying off things and hiding them in out-of-the-way places. When ignorance of a fault is pleaded, it is a common saying--"I have no more knowledge of the fact than the Devil has of the jackdaw" (see _Bye-Gones_, Vol. I., 86). The Devil evidently will have nothing to do with this bird, because it makes its home in the church steeple, and he hates the church and everything belonging to it. _The Magpie_. The magpie was considered a bird of ill-omen. No one liked to see a magpie when starting on a journey, but in certain parts of Montgomeryshire, such as the parish of Llanwnog, _if the magpie flew from left to right it foretold good luck_; in other parts, such as Llansantffraid, if seen at all, it was considered a sign of bad luck. However, fortunately, a person could make void this bad luck, for he had only to spit on the ground, and make a cross with his finger, or stick, through the spittle, and boldly say-- "Satan, I defy thee," and the curse, or bad luck, indicated by the appearance of the magpie, could not then come. The number of magpies seen implied different events. It was a common saying:-- One's grief, two's mirth, Three's a marriage, four's a birth; and another rendering of the above heard in Montgomeryshire was:-- One for bad luck, Two for good luck, Three for a wedding, Four for a burying. Another ditty is as follows:-- One's joy, two's greet (crying), Three's a wedding, four's a sheet (death). As stated above, one is grief, or bad luck, if it flies from right to left, but if from left to right it implied success or joy. So these various readings can only be reconciled by a little verbal explanation, but "four's a birth" cannot be made to be an equivalent to "four's a sheet," a winding sheet, or a burying, by any amount of ingenuity. Should a magpie be seen stationary on a tree, it was believed that the direction in which it took its flight foretold either success or disaster to the person who observed it. If it flew to the left, bad luck was to follow; if to the right, good luck; if straight, the journey could be undertaken, provided the bird did not turn to the left whilst in sight, but disappeared in that direction. I heard the following tale in Denbighshire:--In days of old, a company of men were stealthily making their way across the country to come upon the enemy unawares. All at once they espied a magpie on a tree, and by common consent they halted to see which way it would take its flight, and thus foretell the fortune which would attend their journey. One of the party, evidently an unbeliever in his comrades' superstition, noiselessly approached the bird, and shot it dead, to the great horror of his companions. The leader of the party, in great anger, addressed the luckless archer--"You have shot the bird of fate, and you shall be shot." The dauntless man said, "I shot the magpie, it is true, but if it could foretell our fate, why could it not foresee its own?" The archer's reasoning was good, but I do not know whether people were convinced by logic in those distant times, any more than they are in ours. I will relate one other tale of the magpie, which I heard upwards of twenty years ago in the parish of Llanwnog, Montgomeryshire. I was speaking to a farmer's wife--whose name it is not necessary to give, as it has nothing to do with the tale--when a magpie flew across our view. "Ah!" she ejaculated, "you naughty old thing, what do you want here?" "I see," said I, "you think she brings bad luck with her." "Oh, yes," was the response, "I know she does." "What makes you so positive," said I, "that she brings bad luck with her?" My question elicited the following story. My friend commenced:--"You know the brook at the bottom of the hill. Well, my mother met with very bad luck there, a good many years ago, and it was in this way--she was going to Newtown fair, on our old horse, and she had a basket of eggs with her. But, just as she was going to leave the 'fould,' a magpie flew before her. We begged of her not to go that day--that bad luck would attend her. She would not listen to us, but started off. However, she never got further than the brook, at the bottom of the hill, for, when she got there, the old mare made straight for the brook, and jerked the bridle out of mother's hand, and down went the mare's head to drink, and off went the basket, and poor mother too. All the eggs were broken, but I'm glad to say mother was not much the worse for her fall. But ever since then I know it is unlucky to see a magpie. But sir," she added, "there is no bad luck for us to-day, for _the magpie flew from left to right_." The magpie was thought to be a great thief, and it was popularly supposed that if its tongue were split into two with silver it could talk like a man. The cry of the magpie is a sign of rain. To man its dreaded notes indicated disaster, thus:-- Clyw grechwen nerth pen, iaith pi--yn addaw Newyddion drwg i mi. List! the magpie's hoarse and bitter cry Shows that misfortune's sigh is nigh. If this bird builds her nest at the top of a tree the summer will be dry; if on the lower branches, the summer will be wet. _The Owl_. The hooting of an owl about a house was considered a sign of ill luck, if not of death. This superstition has found a place in rhyme, thus:-- Os y ddylluan ddaw i'r fro, Lle byddo rhywun afiach Dod yno i ddweyd y mae'n ddinad, Na chaiff adferiad mwyach. If an owl comes to those parts, Where some one sick is lying, She comes to say without a doubt, That that sick one is dying. _Peacock_. The peacock's shrill note is a sign of rain. Its call is supposed to resemble the word _gwlaw_, the Welsh for rain. _Pigeon_. If the sick asks for a pigeon pie, or the flesh of a pigeon, it is a sign that his death is near. If the feathers of a pigeon be in a bed, the sick cannot die on it. _The Raven_. The raven has ever enjoyed a notoriously bad name as a bird of ill-omen. He was one of those birds which the Jews were to have in abomination (Lev., xi., 5-13). But other nations besides the Jews dreaded the raven. The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under thy battlements. _Macbeth_, Act i., s. 5. Thus wrote Shakespeare, giving utterance to a superstition then common. From these words it would seem that the raven was considered a sign of evil augury to a person whose house was about to be entered by a visitor, for his croaking forebode treachery. But the raven's croaking was thought to foretell misfortune to a person about to enter another's house. If he heard the croaking he had better turn back, for an evil fate awaited him. In Denmark the appearance of a raven in a village is considered an indication that the parish priest is to die, or that the church is to be burnt down that year. (_Notes and Queries_, vol. ii., second series, p. 325.) The Danes of old prognosticated from the appearance of the raven on their banners the result of a battle. If the banner flapped, and exhibited the raven as alive, it augured success; if, however, it moved not, defeat awaited them. In Welsh there is a pretty saying:-- Duw a ddarpar i'r fran. God provides for the raven. But this, after all, is only another rendering of the lovely words:-- Your heavenly Father feedeth them. Such words imply that the raven is a favoured bird. (See p. 304). _Robin Redbreast_. Ill luck is thought to follow the killer of dear Robin Redbreast, the children's winter friend. No one ever shoots Robin, nor do children rob its nest, nor throw stones at it. Bad luck to anyone who does so. The little bird with its wee body endeavoured to staunch the blood flowing from the Saviour's side, and it has ever since retained on its breast the stain of His sacred blood, and it consequently enjoys a sacred life. It is safe from harm wherever English is spoken. There is another legend, which is said to be extant in Carmarthenshire, accounting for the Robin's _red breast_. It is given in _Bye-Gones_, vol. i., p. 173, from Mr. Hardwick's _Traditions_, _Superstitions_, _Folk-lore_, _etc_.:--"Far, far away, is a land of woe, darkness, spirits of evil, and fire. Day by day does the little bird bear in its bill a drop of water to quench the flame. So near to the burning stream does he fly that his dear little feathers are scorched; and hence is he named Bronchuddyn (qu. Bronrhuddyn), i.e., breast-burned, or breast-scorched. To serve little children, the robin dares approach the infernal pit. No good child will hurt the devoted benefactor of man. The robin returns from the land of fire, and therefore he feels the cold of winter far more than the other birds. He shivers in brumal blasts, and hungry he chirps before your door. Oh, my child, then, in pity throw a few crumbs to poor red-breast." _The Sea Gull_. It is believed that when sea gulls leave the sea for the mountains it is a sign of stormy weather. A few years ago I was walking from Corwen to Gwyddelwern, and I overtook an aged man, and we entered into conversation. Noticing the sea gulls hovering about, I said, there is going to be a storm. The answer of my old companion was, yes, for the sea gull says before starting from the sea shore:-- Drychin, drychin, Awn i'r eithin; and then when the storm is over, they say one to the other, before they take their flight back again to the sea:-- Hindda, hindda, Awn i'r morfa. which first couplet may be translated:-- Foul weather, foul weather, Let's go to the heather; and then the two last lines may be rendered:-- The storm is no more, Let's go to the shore. This was the only occasion when I heard the above stanza, and I have spoken to many aged Welshmen, and they had not heard the words, but every one to whom I spoke believed that the sea gulls seen at a distance from the sea was a sign of foul weather. _The Swallow_. The joy with which the first swallow is welcomed is almost if not quite equal to the welcome given to the cuckoo. "One swallow does not make a summer" is an old saw. There is a superstition connected with the swallow that is common in Wales, which is, that if it forsakes its old nest on a house, it is a sign of ill luck to that house. But swallows rarely forsake their old nests, and shortly after their arrival they are busily engaged in repairing the breaches, which the storms of winter or mischievous children have made in their abodes; and their pleasant twitterings are a pleasure to the occupants of the house along which they build their nests, for the visit is a sign of luck. The flight of the swallow is a good weather sign. When the swallow flies high in the air, it is a sign of fair weather; when, on the other hand, it skims the earth, it is a sign of rain. It was a great misfortune to break a swallow's nest, for-- Y neb a doro nyth y wenol, Ni wel fwyniant yn dragwyddol. Whoever breaks a swallow's nest, Shall forfeit everlasting rest. _The Swan_. The eggs of the swan are hatched by thunder and lightning. This bird sings its own death song. _The Swift_. This bird's motions are looked upon as weather signs. Its feeding regions are high up in the air when the weather is settled for fair, and low down when rain is approaching. Its screaming is supposed to indicate a change of weather from fair to rain. _Tit Major_, _or Sawyer_. The Rev. E. V. Owen, Vicar of Llwydiarth, Montgomeryshire, told me that the Tit's notes are a sign of rain, at least, that it is so considered in his parish. The people call the bird "Sawyer," and they say its notes resemble in sound the filing of a saw. A man once said to my friend:--"I dunna like to hear that old sawyer whetting his saw." "Why not," said Mr. Owen. "'Cause it'll rain afore morning," was the answer. This bird, if heard in February, when the snow or frost is on the ground, indicates a breaking up of the weather. Its sharp notes rapidly repeated several times in succession are welcome sounds in hard weather, for they show that spring is coming. _The Wren_. The Wren's life is sacred, excepting at one time of the year, for should anyone take this wee birdie's life away, upon him some mishap will fall. The wren is classed with the Robin:-- The robin and the wren Are God's cock and hen. The cruel sport of hunting the wren on St. Stephen's Day, which the writer has a dim recollection of having in his boyhood joined in, was the one time in the year when the wren's life was in jeopardy. The Rev. Silvan Evans, in a letter to the _Academy_, which has been reproduced in _Bye-Gones_, vol. vii., p. 206, alludes to this sport in these words:-- "Something similar to the 'hunting of the wren' was not unknown to the Principality as late as about a century ago, or later. In the Christmas holidays it was the custom of a certain number of young men, not necessarily boys, to visit the abodes of such couples as had been married within the year. The order of the night--for it was strictly a nightly performance--was to this effect. Having caught a wren, they placed it on a miniature bier made for the occasion, and carried it in procession towards the house which they intended to visit. Having arrived they serenaded the master and mistress of the house under their bedroom window with the following doggerel:-- Dyma'r dryw, Os yw e'n fyw, Neu dderyn to I gael ei rostio. That is:-- Here is the wren, If he is alive, Or a sparrow To be roasted. If they could not catch a wren for the occasion, it was lawful to substitute a sparrow (ad eryn to). The husband, if agreeable, would then open the door, admit the party, and regale them with plenty of Christmas ale, the obtaining of which being the principal object of the whole performance." The second line in the verse, "_Os yw e'n fyw_," intimates that possibly the wren is dead--"If he is alive." This would generally be the case, as it was next to impossible to secure the little thing until it had been thoroughly exhausted, and then the act of pouncing upon it would itself put an end to its existence. Perhaps the English doggerel was intended to put an end to this cruel sport, by intimating that the wee bird belonged to God, was one of His creatures, and that therefore it should not be abused. There is a Welsh couplet still in use:-- Pwy bynnag doro nyth y dryw, Ni chaiff ef weled wyneb Duw. Whoever breaks a wren's nest, Shall never see God's face. This saying protects the snug little home of the wren. Much the same thing is said of the Robin's nest, but I think this was put, "Whoever robs a robin's nest shall go to hell." Another Welsh couplet was:-- Y neb a doro nyth y dryw, Ni chaiff iechyd yn ei fyw. Whoever breaks the wren's nest, Shall never enjoy good health. Although the robin and the wren were favourites of heaven, still it was supposed that they were under some kind of curse, for it was believed that the robin could not fly through a hedge, it must always fly over, whilst on the other hand, the wren could not fly over a hedge, but it was obliged to make its way through it. (See Robin, p. 329). _The Wood Pigeon_. The thrice repeated notes of five sounds, with an abrupt note at the end, of which the cooing of the wood pigeon consists, have been construed into words, and these words differ in different places, according to the state of the country, and the prevailing sentiments of the people. Of course, the language of the wood pigeon is always the language of the people amongst whom he lives. He always speaks Welsh in Wales, and English in England, but in these days this bird is so far Anglicised that it blurts out English all along the borders of Wales. In the cold spring days, when food is scarce and the wood pigeon cold, it forms good resolutions, and says:-- Yn yr haf Ty a wnaf; Gwnaf. In the summer I'll make a house; I will. However, when the summer has come with flower, and warmth, the wood pigeon ridicules its former resolution and changes its song, for in June it forgets January, and now it asks:-- Yn yr ha' Ty pwy wna'? Pwy? In the summer Who'll make a house? Who? For then a house is quite unnecessary, and the trouble to erect one great. The above ditty was told me by the Rev. John Williams, Rector of Newtown, a native of Flintshire. In the English counties bordering upon Wales, such as Herefordshire, the wood pigeon encouraged Welshmen to drive off Englishmen's cattle to their homes, by saying:-- Take two cows, Taffy, Take two cows, Taffy, Take two. and ever since those days the same song is used; but another version is:-- Take two cows Davy, Take two cows Davy, Two. The late Rev. R. Williams, Rector of Llanfyllin, supplied me with the above, and he stated that he obtained it from Herefordshire. In the uplands of Denbighshire the poor wood pigeon has a hard time of it in the winter, and, to make provision for the cold winter days, he, when he sees the farmer sowing spring seeds, says:-- Dyn du, dyn da, Hau pys, hau ffa, Hau ffacbys i ni Fwyta. which rendered into English is:-- Black man, good man, Sow peas, sow beans, Sow vetches for us To eat. Mr. Hugh Jones, Pentre Llyn Cymmer, a farmer in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr, a descendant of the bard Robert Davies, Nantglyn, supplied me with the preceding ditty. _The Magpie teaching a Wood Pigeon how to make a nest_. The wood pigeon makes an untidy nest, consisting of a few bits of twigs placed one on the other without much care. There is a fable in the Iolo MSS., p. 159, in Welsh, and the translation appears on page 567 in English, as follows:-- The magpie, observing the slight knowledge of nest building possessed by the wood pigeon, kindly undertook the work of giving his friend a lesson in the art, and as the lesson proceeded, the wood pigeon, bowing, cooed out:-- _Mi wn_! _Mi wn_! _Mi wn_! I know! I know! I know! The instructor was at first pleased with his apt pupil, and proceeded with his lesson, but before another word could be uttered, the bird swelling with pride at its own importance and knowledge, said again:-- I know! I know! I know! The magpie was annoyed at this ignorant assurance, and with bitter sarcasm said: "Since you know, do it then," and this is why the wood pigeon's nest is so untidy in our days. In its own mind it knew all about nest building, and was above receiving instruction, and hence its present clumsy way of building its nest. This fable gave rise to a proverb, "As the wood pigeon said to the magpie: 'I know.'" It is believed that when wood pigeons are seen in large flocks it is a sign of foul weather. _Woodpecker_. The woodpecker's screech was a sign of rain. This bird is called by two names in Welsh which imply that it foretold storms; as, _Ysgrech y coed_, the wood screech, and _Caseg y drycin_, the storm mare. These names have found a place in Welsh couplets:-- "Ysgrech y coed! Mae'r gwlaw yn dod." The Woodpecker's cry! The rain is nigh. _Bardd Nantglyn_, Robert Davies, Nantglyn, has an englyn to the woodpecker:-- "I Gaseg y Drycin." "Och! rhag Caseg, greg rwygiant,--y drycin, Draw accw yn y ceunant, Ar fol pren, uwch pen pant, Cyn 'storm yn canu 'sturmant." Barddoniaeth R. Davies, p. 61. My friend Mr. Richard Williams, Celynog, Newtown, translates this stanza as follows:-- Ah! 'tis the hoarse note of the Woodpecker, In yonder ravine, On the round trunk of a tree, above the hollow, Sounding his horn before the coming storm. _Yellow Hammer_. (_Penmelyn yr Eithin_). There is a strange belief in Wales that this bird sacrifices her young to feed snakes. _Ass_. The stripe over the shoulders of the ass is said to have been made by our Lord when He rode into Jerusalem on an ass, and ever since the mark remains. It was thought that the milk of an ass could cure the "decay," or consumption. This faith was common fifty years ago in Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire. I do not know whether it is so now. People then believed that ass's milk was more nutritious than other kind of food for persons whose constitutions were weak. _The Bee_. The little busy bee has been from times of old an object of admiration and superstition. It is thought that they are sufficiently sensitive to feel a slight, and sufficiently vindictive to resent one, and as they are too valuable to be carelessly provoked to anger, they are variously propitiated by the cottager when their wrath is supposed to have been roused. It is even thought that they take an interest in human affairs; and it is, therefore, considered expedient to give them formal notice of certain occurrences. _Buying a Hive of Bees_. In the central parts of Denbighshire people suppose that a hive of bees, if bought, will not thrive, but that a present of a hive leads to its well-doing. A cottager in Efenechtyd informed the writer that a friend gave her the hive she had, and that consequently she had had luck with it; but, she added, "had I bought it, I could not have expected anything from it, for bought hives do badly." This was in the centre of Denbighshire. _Time of Bee Swarming_. The month in which bees swarm is considered of the greatest importance, and undoubtedly it is so, for the sooner they swarm, the longer their summer, and therefore the greater the quantity of honey which they will accumulate. A late swarm cannot gather honey from every opening flower, because the flower season will have partly passed away before they leave their old home. This faith has found expression in the following lines:-- A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay; A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon; A swarm of bees in July Is not worth a fly. These words are often uttered by cottagers when a swarm takes place in the respective months named in the lines. It is really very seldom that a swarm takes place in our days in May, and many a swarm takes place in July which is of more value than a fly, But however, be this as it may, the rhyme expresses the belief of many people. _The Day of Swarming_. Sunday is the favourite day for bee swarming. Country people say, when looking at their bees clustering outside the hive, and dangling like a rope from it, "Oh, they won't swarm until next Sunday," and it is true that they are often right in their calculations, for bees seem to prefer the peaceful Day of Rest to all other days for their flight. The kettle and pan beating are often heard of a Sunday in those parts of the country where bees are reared. It is possible that the quietness of the day, and the cessation of every-day noise, is appreciated by the little creatures, and that this prevailing stillness entices them to take then their flight from their old home to seek a new one. _Luck comes with a Strange Swarm_. It is considered very lucky indeed to find that a strange swarm of bees has arrived in the garden, or tree, belonging to a cottager. The advent of the bees is joyfully welcomed, and the conversation of the neighbours on such an occasion intimates that they think that good fortune has come with them to the person whom they have condescended to honour with their presence. Occasionally, if bees settle down on property of doubtful ownership, a good deal of wrangling and bad feeling arises between the rival claimants for their possession. _It is considered unlucky for Bees to fly away from their owner_. As the coming of a strange swarm of bees is indicative of good luck to the person to whom they come, so the decamping of a swarm shows that misfortune is about to visit the person whom they leave. _Bees in a Roof_. It was thought lucky when bees made their home in the roof, or indeed in any part of a house, and this they could easily do when houses were thatched with straw. Many a swarm of bees found shelter in the roofs of ancient churches, but in our days bees are seldom found in either houses or churches. _Informing Bees of a Death in a Family_. Formerly it was the custom to tell the bees of a death in the family. The head of the house whispered the news to the bees in the hive. If this were neglected, it was thought that another death would soon follow the previous one. Instead of speaking to the bees, it was the custom, in some parts of Wales, to turn the bee-hive round before starting the funeral. This was always done by the representative of the family, and it also was thought to be a protection against death. Mrs. Jones, Rhydycroesau Rectory, informed me that an old man, David Roberts of Llanyblodwel, once came to her in deep grief, after the funeral of his grandchild, because he had forgotten to turn the bee-hive before the funeral started for the church. He said that he was in such distress at the loss of the child, that he had neglected to tell the bees of the death, and, said he, some other member of the family is now sure to go. He informed Mrs. Jones that he had turned the hive at the death of his old woman, and that consequently no death had followed hers in his family. _Putting Bees in Mourning_. This is done after a death in a family, and the bees are put into mourning by tying a piece of black ribbon on a bit of wood, and inserting it into the hole at the top of the hive. _Stolen Bees_. It was believed that stolen bees would not make honey, and that the hive which had been stolen would die. _A Swarm entering a House_. Should a swarm enter a house, it was considered unlucky, and usually it was a sign of death to someone living in that house. The culture of bees was once more common than it is, and therefore they were much observed, and consequently they figure in the folk-lore of most nations. _Cat_. The cat was thought to be a capital weather glass. If she stood or lay with her face towards the fire, it was a sign of frost or snow; if she became frisky, bad weather was near. If the cat washed her face, strangers might be expected; and if she washed her face and ears, then rain was sure to come. A _black_ cat was supposed to bring luck to a house, thus:-- Cath ddu, mi glywais dd'wedyd, A fedr swyno hefyd, A chadw'r teulu lle mae'n hyw O afael pob rhyw glefyd. A black cat, I've heard it said, Can charm all ill away, And keep the house wherein she dwells From fever's deadly sway. Cats born in May, or May cats, were no favourites. They were supposed to bring snakes or adders into the house. This supposition has found utterance:-- Cathod mis Mai Ddaw a nadrodd i'r tai. Cats born in May Bring snakes to the house. In some parts the black cat was otherwise thought of than is stated above, for this injunction is heard:-- Na chadw byth yn nghylch dy dy Na cheiliog gwyn na chath ddu. Never keep about thy house A white cock or _black_ puss. Cats are so tenacious of life that they are said to have nine lives. We have already spoken of witches transforming themselves into cats. A singular superstition connected with cats is the supposition that they indicate the place to which the dead have gone by ascending or descending trees immediately after the death of a person. The Rev. P. W. Sparling, Rector of Erbistock, informed me that one day a parishioner met him, and told him that his brother, who had lately died, was in hell, and that he wished the Rector to get him out. Mr. Sparling asked him how he knew where his brother was, and in answer the man said that he knew, because he had seen his brother in the form of a white cat descend a tree immediately after his death. On further inquiry, the man stated that since the cat came _down the tree_, it was a sign that his brother had gone down to hell; but had the cat _gone up the tree_, it would have shown that he had gone up to heaven. I have heard it stated, but by whom I have forgotten, that if a _black_ cat leaves a house where a person dies, immediately after that person's death, it shows he has gone to the bad place; but if a white cat, that he has gone to heaven. _Cows._ _Cows Kneeling on Christmas Morn._ In the upland parishes of Wales, particularly those in Montgomeryshire, it was said, and that not so long ago, that cows knelt at midnight on Christmas eve, to adore the infant Saviour. This has been affirmed by those who have witnessed the strange occurrence. Cows bringing forth two calves are believed to bring luck to a farmer; but in some parts of Wales a contrary view is taken of this matter. If the new born calf is seen by the mistress of the house with its head towards her, as she enters the cowhouse to view her new charge and property, it is a lucky omen, but should any other part of the calf present itself to the mistress's view, it is a sign of bad luck. Witches were thought to have great power over cows, and it was not unusual for farmers to think that their cows, if they did not thrive, had been bewitched. _Crickets_. It is lucky to have crickets in a house, and to kill one is sure to bring bad luck after it. If they are very numerous in a house, it is a sign that peace and plenty reign there. The bakehouse in which their merry chirp is heard is the place to bake your bread, for it is a certain sign that the bread baked there will turn out well. An aged female Welsh friend in Porthywaen told me that it is a sign of death for crickets to leave a house, and she proved her case by an apt illustration. She named all the parties concerned in the following tale:--"There were hundreds of crickets in . . . house; they were 'sniving,' swarming, all about the house, and were often to be seen outside the house, or at least heard, and some of them perched on the wicket to the garden; but all at once they left the place, and very soon afterwards the son died. The crickets, she said, knew that a death was about to take place, and they all left that house, going no one knew where." It was not thought right to look at the cricket, much less to hurt it. The warm fireplace, with its misplaced or displaced stones, was not to be repaired, lest the crickets should be disturbed, and forsake the place, and take with them good luck. They had, therefore, many snug, warm holes in and about the chimneys. Crickets are not so plentiful in Wales as they once were. _Hare_. _Caesar_, bk. v., ch. xii., states that the Celts "do not regard it lawful to eat the _hare_, the cock, and the goose; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure." This gives a respectable age to the superstitions respecting these animals. Mention has already been made of witches turning themselves into hares. This superstition was common in all parts of North Wales. The Rev. Lewis Williams, rector of Prion, near Denbigh, told me the following tales of this belief:--A witch that troubled a farmer in the shape of a hare, was shot by him. She then transformed herself into her natural form, but ever afterwards retained the marks of the shot in her nose. Another tale which the same gentleman told me was the following:--A farmer was troubled by a hare that greatly annoyed him, and seemed to make sport of him. He suspected it was no hare, but a witch, so he determined to rid himself of her repeated visits. One day, spying his opportunity, he fired at her. She made a terrible noise, and jumped about in a frightful manner, and then lay as if dead. The man went up to her, but instead of a dead hare, he saw something on the ground as big as a donkey. He dug a hole, and buried the thing, and was never afterwards troubled by hare or witch. In Llanerfyl parish there is a story of a cottager who had only one cow, but she took to Llanfair market more butter than the biggest farmer in the parish. She was suspected of being a witch, and was watched. At last the watcher saw a hare with a tin-milk-can hanging from its neck, and it was moving among the cows, milking them into her tin-can. The man shot it, and it made for the abode of the suspected witch. When he entered, he found her on the bed bleeding. It was supposed that there was something uncanny about hares. Rowland Williams, Parish Clerk, Efenechtyd, an aged man, related to me the following tale, and he gave the name of the party concerned, but I took no note of the name, and I have forgotten it:--A man on his way one Sunday to Efenechtyd Church saw a hare on its form. He turned back for his gun, and fired at the hare. The following Sunday he saw again a hare on the very same spot, and it lifted its head and actually stared at him. The man was frightened and went to church; the third Sunday he again saw a hare on the very same form, and this hare also boldly looked at him. This third appearance thoroughly convinced the man that there was something wrong somewhere, and he afterwards avoided that particular place. The pretty legend of Melangell, called Monacella, the patroness of hares, is well known. One day the Prince of Powis chased a hare, which took refuge under the robe of the virgin Melangell, who was engaged in deep devotion. The hare boldly faced the hounds, and the dogs retired to a distance howling, and they could not be induced to seize their prey. The Prince gave to God and Melangell a piece of land to be henceforth a sanctuary. The legend of the hare and the saint is represented in carved wood on the gallery in the church of Pennant. Formerly it belonged to the screen. Hares were once called in the parish of Pennant Melangell _Wyn Melangell_, or St. Monacella's lambs. Until the last century no one in the parish would kill a hare, and it was believed that if anyone cried out when a hare was being pursued, "God and St. Monacella be with thee," it would escape. _Haddock_. The haddock has a dark spot on each side its gills, and superstition ascribes these marks to the impression of S. Peter's thumb and finger, when he took the tribute money out of the mouth of a fish of the same species in the sea of Galilee. _Hedgehog_. It was believed that hedgehogs sucked cows, and so firmly were the people convinced of this fact, that this useful little animal was doomed to death, and I have seen in many Churchwardens' accounts entries to the effect that they had paid sums of money for its destruction. The amount given in most parishes was two pence. I will give a few entries, from many that I have by me, to show that parishes paid this sum for dead hedgehogs. In Cilcen Churchwardens' Accounts for the year 1710 I find the following entry:-- To Edward Lloyd for killing a hedgehog 00. 00. 02. One hundred years afterwards I find in Llanasa Churchwardens' Accounts for 1810-1811 this entry:-- 9 hedgogs ... ... ... 1. 6. It was thought, should the cow's teats be swollen of a morning, that she had been sucked the previous night by a hedgehog. Formerly dead hedgehogs could be seen in company with foxes, polecats, and other vermin suspended from the boughs of the churchyard yew trees, to prove that the Churchwardens paid for work actually done. _Horse_. A white horse figures in the superstition of school children. When the writer was a lad in school at Llanidloes, it was believed that if a white horse were met in the morning it was considered lucky, and should the boy who first saw the horse spit on the ground, and stealthily make the sign of a cross with his toe across the spittle, he was certain to find a coin on the road, or have a piece of money given to him before the day was over; but he was not to divulge to anyone what he had done, and for the working of the charm it was required that he should make sure that the horse was perfectly white, without any black hairs in any part of the body. In Welshpool a like superstition prevails. Mr. Copnall, the master of the Boys' National School in that town, has kindly supplied me with the following account of this matter:--"It is lucky to meet a white horse on the road, if, when you meet it, you spit three times over your little finger; if you neglect this charm you will be unlucky. I asked the children if it signified whether it was the little finger on the right or left hand; some boys said the left, but the majority said it made no difference which hand." It was said that horses could see spirits, and that they could never be induced to proceed as long as the spirit stood before them. They perspired and trembled whilst the spirit blocked the way, but when it had disappeared, then the horses would go on. _Lady-bird_. This pretty spotted little beetle was used formerly in the neighbourhood of Llanidloes as a prognosticator of the weather. First of all the lady-bird was placed in the palm of the left hand, or right; I do not think it made any difference which hand was used, and the person who held it addressed it as follows:-- Iar fach goch, gwtta, Pa un ai gwlaw, neu hindda? and then having said these words, the insect was thrown skywards, the person repeating the while-- Os mai gwlaw, cwympa lawr, Os mai teg, hedfana; which in English would be-- Lady-bird, lady-bird, tell to me What the weather is going to be; If fair, then fly in the air, If foul, then fall to the ground. The first two lines were said with the beetle in the hand, and the last two whilst it was thrown upwards; if it came to the ground without attempting to fly, it indicated rain; if, however, when thrown into the air it flew away, then fair weather was to be expected. The writer has often resorted to this test, but whether he found it true or false he cannot now say. _Mice_. A mouse nibbling clothes was a sign of disaster, if not death, to the owner. It was thought that the evil one occasionally took the form of a mouse. Years ago, when Craig Wen Farm, Llawr-y-glyn, near Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire was haunted--the rumour of which event I well remember--the servant girl told her mistress, the tenant of the farm, that one day she was going through the corn field, and that a mouse ran before her, and she ran after it to catch it, but that when she was opposite the barn, _the mouse stopped and laughed at her_, and ran into a hole. The mouse, therefore, was the evil spirit, and the cause of all the mischief that followed. _Moles_. Moles are said to have no eyes. If mole hills move there will be a thaw. By the moving of mole hills is meant bits of earth tumbling off the mound. A labourer in Llanmerewig parish, Montgomeryshire, called my attention to this fact. It was a frosty day, and apparently no change was near, but it will thaw, said he, and certain I am, that by the next morning a thaw had set in. _Pigs_. Pigs used to be credited with the power of seeing the wind. Devils were fond of assuming the form of, or entering into, pigs. Pigs littered in February could not be reared. This I was told by a native of Llansantffraid, Montgomeryshire. _The Snake_, _Serpent_. The snake was supposed to be able to understand what men said. A tale was told me by an aged man at Penrhos, Montgomeryshire, of an event which took place in the last century. His father, he said, saw a number of snakes, or _nethers_, as he called them, basking in the sun, and he said when passing them, "I will make you jump to-morrow." The next day he, provided with a rod, passed the spot, but no adder could be seen. The next day he passed again the same spot without his rod, and the man was now obliged to run for his life, so furiously did the snakes attack him. Traditions of Flying Snakes were once common in all parts of Wales. _Flying Serpents_. The traditional origin of these imaginary creatures was that they were snakes, which by having drunk the milk of a woman, and by having eaten of bread consecrated for the Holy Communion, became transformed into winged serpents or dragons. These dangerous creatures had their lurking places in many districts, and they attacked everyone that crossed their paths. There was said to have been one such den on Moel Bentyrch. Old Mrs. Davies, Plas, Dolanog, who died 1890, aged 92, told the Rev. D. R. Evans, B.A., son of the Vicar of Dolanog, that once, when she was a young woman, she went to Llanfair market, and on the way she sat on a stile, and she saw smoke and fire issuing from a hole on Moel Bentyrch, where the _Gwiber_, or Flying Serpent, had its abode. She ran, and never stopped until she had placed a good distance between her and the hill. She believed that both the smoke and fire were caused by the serpent. There is also a tradition still current in Dolanog that this flying serpent was destroyed by wrapping some red material round a post into which sharp nails were driven. The serpent, attacking this post with furious onslaughts, was lacerated by the sharp spikes, and died. A like tradition is current in Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant in connection with the _Post Coch_, or _Post-y-Wiber_, or Maen Hir y Maes-Mochnant. Mr. Hancock in his "History of Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant," writes as follows:-- "The legend connected with this stone pillar is, that it was raised in order to prevent the devastation which a winged serpent or dragon (a _Wiber_) was committing in the surrounding country. The stone was draped with scarlet cloth, to allure and excite the creature to a furor, scarlet being a colour most intolerably hateful and provoking to it. It was studded with iron spikes, that the reptile might wound or kill itself by beating itself against it. Its destruction, it is alleged, was effected by this artifice. It is said to have had two lurking places in the neighbourhood, which are still called _Nant-y-Wiber_, one at Penygarnedd, the other near Bwlch Sychtyn, in the parish of Llansilin, and this post was in the direct line of its flight. Similar legends referring to winged serpents exist in various parts of Wales. In the adjoining parish of Llanarmon-Dyffryn-Ceiriog there is a place called _Sarffle_ (the serpent's hole)."--_Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. ix., 237. _Snake Rings_, _or Glain Nadroedd_. Mention is made in _Camden_ of snake rings. Omitting certain remarks not connected with the matter directly, he writes:--"In some parts of Wales we find it a common opinion of the vulgar that about Midsummer Eve (though in the time they do not all agree) 'tis usual for snakes to meet in companies, and that by joyning heads together and hissing, a kind of Bubble is form'd like a ring about the head of one of them, which the rest by continual hissing, blow on till it comes off at the tail, and then it immediately hardens, and resembles a glass ring; which whoever finds (as some old women and children are persuaded) shall prosper in all his undertakings." The above quotation is in Gibson's additions to Camden, and it correctly states the popular opinion. Many of these rings formerly existed, and they seemed to be simply glass rings. They were thought to possess many healing virtues, as, for instance, it could cure wens and whooping cough, and I believe I have heard it said that it could cure the bite of a mad dog. _Sheep_. It was thought that the devil could assume any animal's form excepting that of the sheep. This saying, however, is somewhat different from what a farmer friend told me of _black sheep_. He said his father, and other farmers as well, were in the habit of killing all their black lambs, because they were of the same colour as the devil, and the owners were afraid that Satan had entered, or would enter into them, and that therefore these sheep were destroyed. He stated that his father went on his knees on the ground and prayed, either before or after he had killed the black lambs. It is a common saying that the black sheep is the ringleader of all mischief in a flock of sheep. The expression, "He is a black sheep," as applied to a person, conveys the idea that he is a worthless being, inclined to everything that is bad. It is even now in country places thought to be a lucky omen if anyone sees the head of the first spring lamb towards him. This foretells a lucky and prosperous year to the person whose eyes are thus greeted. _Spider_. The long-legged spider, or, as it is generally called in Wales, the Tailor, is an object of cruel sport to children. They catch it, and then handle it roughly, saying the while:-- Old Harry long-leg Cannot say his prayers, Catch him by the right leg, Catch him by the left leg. And throw him down stairs; and then one leg after the other is plucked off, and the poor creature is left to die miserably. This was done in Llanidloes. _The Squirrel_. Hunting this sprightly little animal became at Christmas the sport of our rustic population. A number of lads gathered together, and proceeded to the woods to hunt the squirrel. They followed it with stones and sticks from tree to tree, shouting and screaming, to frighten it on and on, until it was quite unable to make further progress, and then they caught it. The writer, when a lad, has often joined in this cruel hunt, but whether the squirrel was killed when caught he is unable to recall to mind. Generally it escaped. _The Blind Worm_, _or Slow Worm_. This reptile is a snake, varying from twelve to eighteen inches long. Its head is small, and its movements very rapid. At the slightest noise, it darts away in a moment, and hides among rocks, stones, or rank grass. It is said to have no eyes, but this is a popular mistake--hence, however, its name, _Blind Worm_. This beautiful timid creature is often wantonly cut into pieces by its cruel and mistaken captors, for they credit it with the possession of evil propensities. It is said that, could it see, it would be a formidable enemy to man and beast. This supposition has found strength and sanction in doggerel verse. The Blind Worm is said to address the adder as follows:-- If I could see, As well as thee, Man nor beast Should ne'er pass me. Another version of these lines, heard in Shropshire, on the borders of Wales, is:-- If I had one eye, As thou hast two, No man should live, Nor beast should loo (low). These doggerel lines indicate clearly the dread in which this innocent snake is held. LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. A Acton, T. A., Regent Street, Wrexham Adcane, Miss, Plas Llanfawr, Holyhead Andrews, Mr Wm., _The Hull Press_, 1, Dock Street, Hull Arnold, Prof. E. P., M.A., 10, Bryn Teg, Bangor B Ballinger, John, Mr., Cardiff Free Library, Cardiff Barnes, J. R., Esq., The Quinta, Chirk Bennett, Edgar, Esq., 2, Court Ash, Yeovil Bennett, N., Esq., Glanyrafon, Llanidloes Bangor, The Lord Bishop of, The Palace, Bangor, N.W. Bowen, Alfred E., Esq., Town Hall, Pontypool Bryan, B., Esq., Pen-lan, Ruthin Bryan, R. F., Esq., Bury, Mrs., Ellesmere, Shropshire C Chapman, Henry, Mr., Dolfor School, Near Newtown Cunliffe, R., Esq., Llanrhaiadr Hall, Denbigh D Daniels, Rev. 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M., M.A., The Vicarage, Bagillt Owen, Mr, School House, Burton, Gresford Owen, E. H., Esq., F.S.A., Ty Coch, Nr. Carnarvon Owen, Rev. E. J., Penmaen Villa, Llanfairfechan, Carnarvonshire Owen, Rev, T., B.A., Curate, Rhosllanerchrugog, Ruabon Owen, Hon. Mrs. Bulkeley, Tedsmore Owen, Isambard, M.D., 5, Hertford Street, Mayfair, London, W. Owen, Rev. W. P., B.A., Curate, Holy Trinity, Oswestry Owen, T. Morgan, Esq., H.M.I. of Schools, Bronwylfa, Rhyl, 4 copies Owen, Rev. T. W., M.A., Empingham Rectory, Rutlandshire Owen, A. C. Humphreys, Esq., Glansevern, Garthmyl, Mont. Owen, Morris, Esq., Market Street, Carnarvon Owen, Rev. J., Dyserth Vicarage, Rhyl Owen, Rev. W. D., B.A., Gwernaffield Vicarage, Mold. P Palmer, Alfred Neobard, 19, King Street, Wrexham Parkins, Trevor, Esq, M.A., Gresford Parkins, W. T., Esq., M.A., Glasfryn, Gresford, Wrexham Parry, H., Glyn Mare, Conway Pennant, Hon. Gertrude Douglas, Hans Place, London, S.W. Pennant, P. P., Esq., Nantlys, St. Asaph Phillips, Rev. John Pierce, W., Board School, Holywell Pierce, Mr Ellis, Bookseller, Dolyddelen Pierce, W. M., National School, Denbigh Price, Mr., School House, Bryneglwys, Corwen Prichard, Thos., Esq., Llwydiarth Esgob, Llanerchymedd, R.S.O., Anglesey Probert, Mr John, Castle Estate Office, Ruthin Pryce, The Ven. Archdeacon, Trefdraeth Rectory, Anglesey R Rees, Miss M., Clifton House, Denbigh Rees, Mr., School House, Nerquis, Mold Reece, Rev. T. F., B.A., Llanfwrog Rectory, Ruthin Reichel, H. R., Esq., Pen'rallt, Bangor Reynolds, Llywarch, Old Church Place, Merthyr Tydfil Richardson, The Rev. Chancellor William, M.A., The Rectory, Corwen Roberts, Rev. J., Fron, Garthmyl, Mont. Roberts, Mr W. S., School House, Cwmddu, Crickhowel, S. Wales Roberts, Rev. E. S., B.A., Curate of Penarth, Cardiff Roberts, G. W., Esq., M.D., Denbigh Roberts, Rev. J. R., B.A., Curate of St. James's, Bangor Roberts, Rev. R., Curate, Blaenau Festiniog Roberts, Mr. W. Ll., Penyceunant, Penybont Fawr, Llanrhaiadr, Oswestry Roderick, Rev. E. M., M.A., The Vicarage, Mold Rowden, Mr B., Rose Cottage, Maesydre, Mold Rowlands, Rev. D., M.A., Normal College, Bangor S Selby, Mr. Jas. P., School House, Trevor, Ruabon Shelby, Mr. T. F., 11, Cross Street, Rhosddu, Wrexham St. Davids, The Lord Bishop, Abergwili Palace, Carmarthen St. Asaph, Right Rev. Lord Bishop of, The Palace, St. Asaph Swansea, The Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop, The Vicarage, Carmarthen T Taylor, Henry, Esq., F.S.A., Angar Park, Chester Thomas, Rev. D. J., M.A., Vice Principal, The College, Winchester Thomas, D. Lleufer, Esq., Cefn Hendre, Llandilo Thomas, Ven. Archdeacon, Meifod Vicarage, Welshpool Thomas, Rev. J. W., M.A., Rhosymedre Vicarage, Ruabon Thomas, Rev. J. W., M.A., Bwlchycibau, Oswestry Thomas, Miss, Park Mostyn, Denbigh Thomas, Rev. H. E., Assistant Curate, Llangollen Thomas, Rev. J. Howell, B.A., Curate of Brymbo, Wrexham Turnour, Dr. A. E., Denbigh V Vaughan, Rev. T. H., B.A., Curate, Rhyl Venables, R. G., Esq., Ludlow W Walmsley, James, Esq., Plas-y-nant, Ruthin West, Neville, Esq., Glanyrafon, Llanyblodwel, Oswestry West, W. Cornwallis, M.P., Ruthin Castle, Ruthin Whittington, Rev. W. P., The Grammar School, Ruthin Williams, Rev. R. A., Waenfawr Vicarage, near Carnarvon Williams, Rev. Lewis, Vicar of Prion, Denbigh Williams, Rev. R. O., M.A., The Vicarage, Holywell Williams, Rev. David, Llandyrnog Rectory, Denbigh Williams, Rev. E. O., Melidan Vicarage, Rhyl Williams, Rev. T. T., B.A., Penloin, Llanrwst Williams, Mr. T., Islawrdref Board School, Near Dolgelley Williams, W. Llewellyn, Esq., Brown Hill, Llangadock, S. Wales Williams, Rev. Lloyd, B.A., Organizing Sec., S.P.C.K., Wrexham Williams, Rev. T. Ll., M.A., The Vicarage, St. Asaph Williams, Rev. G., M.A., Trefonen Williams, W. P., Esq., Caer Onen, Bangor Williams, Mr. T. Ll., 64, Love Lane, Denbigh Williams, Mr. R., 106, Clarence Street, Lower Broughton, Manchester Wilson, Capt. Hy., Hope, Mold Wilson, Alfred, Bookseller, 18, Gracechurch Street, London, E.C. Wood, R. H., Esq. F.S.A., Pantglas, Trawsfynydd Wykes, Mr C. H., Board School, Rhosddu, Wrexham Wynne, Miss F. E., 62, Park Street, Grosvenor Square, London 
24947	----	None 
35611	----	THE GREAT RETURN By ARTHUR MACHEN AUTHOR OF "THE BOWMEN" PUBLISHED IN LONDON BY THE FAITH PRESS, AT THE FAITH HOUSE, 22, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1915 BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE BOWMEN THE HILL OF DREAMS THE HOUSE OF SOULS [including "The Great God Pan" and "The Three Impostors"] HIEROGLYPHICS THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY DR. STIGGINS To D.P.M. CONTENTS I. THE RUMOUR OF THE MARVELLOUS II. ODOURS OF PARADISE III. A SECRET IN A SECRET PLACE IV. THE RINGING OF THE BELL V. THE ROSE OF FIRE VI. OLWEN'S DREAM VII. THE MASS OF THE SANGRAAL GREAT RETURN CHAPTER I THE RUMOUR OF THE MARVELLOUS There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper. I often think that the most extraordinary item of intelligence that I have read in print appeared a few years ago in the London Press. It came from a well known and most respected news agency; I imagine it was in all the papers. It was astounding. The circumstances necessary--not to the understanding of this paragraph, for that is out of the question--but, we will say, to the understanding of the events which made it possible, are these. We had invaded Thibet, and there had been trouble in the hierarchy of that country, and a personage known as the Tashai Lama had taken refuge with us in India. He went on pilgrimage from one Buddhist shrine to another, and came at last to a holy mountain of Buddhism, the name of which I have forgotten. And thus the morning paper. His Holiness the Tashai Lama then ascended the Mountain and was transfigured.--Reuter. That was all. And from that day to this I have never heard a word of explanation or comment on this amazing statement. * * * * * There was no more, it seemed, to be said. "Reuter," apparently, thought he had made his simple statement of the facts of the case, had thereby done his duty, and so it all ended. Nobody, so far as I know, ever wrote to any paper asking what Reuter meant by it, or what the Tashai Lama meant by it. I suppose the fact was that nobody cared two-pence about the matter; and so this strange event--if there were any such event--was exhibited to us for a moment, and the lantern show revolved to other spectacles. This is an extreme instance of the manner in which the marvellous is flashed out to us and then withdrawn behind its black veils and concealments; but I have known of other cases. Now and again, at intervals of a few years, there appear in the newspapers strange stories of the strange doings of what are technically called _poltergeists_. Some house, often a lonely farm, is suddenly subjected to an infernal bombardment. Great stones crash through the windows, thunder down the chimneys, impelled by no visible hand. The plates and cups and saucers are whirled from the dresser into the middle of the kitchen, no one can say how or by what agency. Upstairs the big bedstead and an old chest or two are heard bounding on the floor as if in a mad ballet. Now and then such doings as these excite a whole neighbourhood; sometimes a London paper sends a man down to make an investigation. He writes half a column of description on the Monday, a couple of paragraphs on the Tuesday, and then returns to town. Nothing has been explained, the matter vanishes away; and nobody cares. The tale trickles for a day or two through the Press, and then instantly disappears, like an Australian stream, into the bowels of darkness. It is possible, I suppose, that this singular incuriousness as to marvellous events and reports is not wholly unaccountable. It may be that the events in question are, as it were, psychic accidents and misadventures. They are not meant to happen, or, rather, to be manifested. They belong to the world on the other side of the dark curtain; and it is only by some queer mischance that a corner of that curtain is twitched aside for an instant. Then--for an instant--we see; but the personages whom Mr. Kipling calls the Lords of Life and Death take care that we do not see too much. Our business is with things higher and things lower, with things different, anyhow; and on the whole we are not suffered to distract ourselves with that which does not really concern us. The Transfiguration of the Lama and the tricks of the _poltergeist_ are evidently no affairs of ours; we raise an uninterested eyebrow and pass on--to poetry or to statistics. * * * * * Be it noted; I am not professing any fervent personal belief in the reports to which I have alluded. For all I know, the Lama, in spite of Reuter, was not transfigured, and the _poltergeist_, in spite of the late Mr. Andrew Lang, may in reality be only mischievous Polly, the servant girl at the farm. And to go farther: I do not know that I should be justified in putting either of these cases of the marvellous in line with a chance paragraph that caught my eye last summer; for this had not, on the face of it at all events, anything wildly out of the common. Indeed, I dare say that I should not have read it, should not have seen it, if it had not contained the name of a place which I had once visited, which had then moved me in an odd manner that I could not understand. Indeed, I am sure that this particular paragraph deserves to stand alone, for even if the _poltergeist_ be a real _poltergeist_, it merely reveals the psychic whimsicality of some region that is not our region. There were better things and more relevant things behind the few lines dealing with Llantrisant, the little town by the sea in Arfonshire. Not on the surface, I must say, for the cutting I have preserved it--reads as follows:-- LLANTRISANT.--The season promises very favourably: temperature of the sea yesterday at noon, 65 deg. Remarkable occurrences are supposed to have taken place during the recent Revival. The lights have not been observed lately. "The Crown." "The Fisherman's Rest." The style was odd certainly; knowing a little of newspapers. I could see that the figure called, I think, _tmesis_, or cutting, had been generously employed; the exuberances of the local correspondent had been pruned by a Fleet Street expert. And these poor men are often hurried; but what did those "lights" mean? What strange matters had the vehement blue pencil blotted out and brought to naught? That was my first thought, and then, thinking still of Llantrisant and how I had first discovered it and found it strange, I read the paragraph again, and was saddened almost to see, as I thought, the obvious explanation. I had forgotten for the moment that it was war-time, that scares and rumours and terrors about traitorous signals and flashing lights were current everywhere by land and sea; someone, no doubt, had been watching innocent farmhouse windows and thoughtless fanlights of lodging houses; these were the "lights" that had not been observed lately. I found out afterwards that the Llantrisant correspondent had no such treasonous lights in his mind, but something very different. Still; what do we know? He may have been mistaken, "the great rose of fire" that came over the deep may have been the port light of a coasting-ship. Did it shine at last from the old chapel on the headland? Possibly; or possibly it was the doctor's lamp at Sarnau, some miles away. I have had wonderful opportunities lately of analysing the marvels of lying, conscious and unconscious; and indeed almost incredible feats in this way can be performed. If I incline to the less likely explanation of the "lights" at Llantrisant, it is merely because this explanation seems to me to be altogether congruous with the "remarkable occurrences" of the newspaper paragraph. After all, if rumour and gossip and hearsay are crazy things to be utterly neglected and laid aside: on the other hand, evidence is evidence, and when a couple of reputable surgeons assert, as they do assert in the case of Olwen Phillips, Croeswen, Llantrisant, that there has been a "kind of resurrection of the body," it is merely foolish to say that these things don't happen. The girl was a mass of tuberculosis, she was within a few hours of death; she is now full of life. And so, I do not believe that the rose of fire was merely a ship's light, magnified and transformed by dreaming Welsh sailors. * * * * * But now I am going forward too fast. I have not dated the paragraph, so I cannot give the exact day of its appearance, but I think it was somewhere between the second and third week of June. I cut it out partly because it was about Llantrisant, partly because of the "remarkable occurrences." I have an appetite for these matters, though I also have this misfortune, that I require evidence before I am ready to credit them, and I have a sort of lingering hope that some day I shall be able to elaborate some scheme or theory of such things. But in the meantime, as a temporary measure, I hold what I call the doctrine of the jig-saw puzzle. That is: this remarkable occurrence, and that, and the other may be, and usually are, of no significance. Coincidence and chance and unsearchable causes will now and again make clouds that are undeniable fiery dragons, and potatoes that resemble Eminent Statesmen exactly and minutely in every feature, and rocks that are like eagles and lions. All this is nothing; it is when you get your set of odd shapes and find that they fit into one another, and at last that they are but parts of a large design; it is then that research grows interesting and indeed amazing, it is then that one queer form confirms the other, that the whole plan displayed justifies, corroborates, explains each separate piece. So, it was within a week or ten days after I had read the paragraph about Llantrisant and had cut it out that I got a letter from a friend who was taking an early holiday in those regions. "You will be interested," he wrote, "to hear that they have taken to ritualistic practices at Llantrisant. I went into the church the other day, and instead of smelling like a damp vault as usual, it was positively reeking with incense." I knew better than that. The old parson was a firm Evangelical; he would rather have burnt sulphur in his church than incense any day. So I could not make out this report at all; and went down to Arfon a few weeks later determined to investigate this and any other remarkable occurrence at Llantrisant. CHAPTER II ODOURS OF PARADISE I went down to Arfon in the very heat and bloom and fragrance of the wonderful summer that they were enjoying there. In London there was no such weather; it rather seemed as if the horror and fury of the war had mounted to the very skies and were there reigning. In the mornings the sun burnt down upon the city with a heat that scorched and consumed; but then clouds heavy and horrible would roll together from all quarters of the heavens, and early in the afternoon the air would darken, and a storm of thunder and lightning, and furious, hissing rain would fall upon the streets. Indeed, the torment of the world was in the London weather. The city wore a terrible vesture; within our hearts was dread; without we were clothed in black clouds and angry fire. It is certain that I cannot show in any words the utter peace of that Welsh coast to which I came; one sees, I think, in such a change a figure of the passage from the disquiets and the fears of earth to the peace of paradise. A land that seemed to be in a holy, happy dream, a sea that changed all the while from olivine to emerald, from emerald to sapphire, from sapphire to amethyst, that washed in white foam at the bases of the firm, grey rocks, and about the huge crimson bastions that hid the western bays and inlets of the waters; to this land I came, and to hollows that were purple and odorous with wild thyme, wonderful with many tiny, exquisite flowers. There was benediction in centaury, pardon in eye-bright, joy in lady's slipper; and so the weary eyes were refreshed, looking now at the little flowers and the happy bees about them, now on the magic mirror of the deep, changing from marvel to marvel with the passing of the great white clouds, with the brightening of the sun. And the ears, torn with jangle and racket and idle, empty noise, were soothed and comforted by the ineffable, unutterable, unceasing murmur, as the tides swam to and fro, uttering mighty, hollow voices in the caverns of the rocks. * * * * * For three or four days I rested in the sun and smelt the savour of the blossoms and of the salt water, and then, refreshed, I remembered that there was something queer about Llantrisant that I might as well investigate. It was no great thing that I thought to find, for, it will be remembered, I had ruled out the apparent oddity of the reporter's-or commissioner's?--reference to lights, on the ground that he must have been referring to some local panic about signalling to the enemy; who had certainly torpedoed a ship or two off Lundy in the Bristol Channel. All that I had to go upon was the reference to the "remarkable occurrences" at some revival, and then that letter of Jackson's, which spoke of Llantrisant church as "reeking" with incense, a wholly incredible and impossible state of things. Why, old Mr. Evans, the rector, looked upon coloured stoles as the very robe of Satan and his angels, as things dear to the heart of the Pope of Rome. But as to incense! As I have already familiarly observed, I knew better. But as a hard matter of fact, this may be worth noting: when I went over to Llantrisant on Monday, August 9th, I visited the church, and it was still fragrant and exquisite with the odour of rare gums that had fumed there. * * * * * Now I happened to have a slight acquaintance with the rector. He was a most courteous and delightful old man, and on my last visit he had come across me in the churchyard, as I was admiring the very fine Celtic cross that stands there. Besides the beauty of the interlaced ornament there is an inscription in Ogham on one of the edges, concerning which the learned dispute; it is altogether one of the more famous crosses of Celtdom. Mr. Evans, I say, seeing me looking at the cross, came up and began to give me, the stranger, a resume--somewhat of a shaky and uncertain resume, I found afterwards--of the various debates and questions that had arisen as to the exact meaning of the inscription, and I was amused to detect an evident but underlying belief of his own: that the supposed Ogham characters were, in fact, due to boys' mischief and weather and the passing of the ages. But then I happened to put a question as to the sort of stone of which the cross was made, and the rector brightened amazingly. He began to talk geology, and, I think, demonstrated that the cross or the material for it must have been brought to Llantrisant from the south-west coast of Ireland. This struck me as interesting, because it was curious evidence of the migrations of the Celtic saints, whom the rector, I was delighted to find, looked upon as good Protestants, though shaky on the subject of crosses; and so, with concessions on my part, we got on very well. Thus, with all this to the good, I was emboldened to call upon him. I found him altered. Not that he was aged; indeed, he was rather made young, with a singular brightening upon his face, and something of joy upon it that I had not seen before, that I have seen on very few faces of men. We talked of the war, of course, since that is not to be avoided; of the farming prospects of the county; of general things, till I ventured to remark that I had been in the church, and had been surprised, to find it perfumed with incense. "You have made some alterations in the service since I was here last? You use incense now?" The old man looked at me strangely, and hesitated. "No," he said, "there has been no change. I use no incense in the church. I should not venture to do so." "But," I was beginning, "the whole church is as if High Mass had just been sung there, and--" He cut me short, and there was a certain grave solemnity in his manner that struck me almost with awe. "I know you are a railer," he said, and the phrase coming from this mild old gentleman astonished, me unutterably. "You are a railer and a bitter railer; I have read articles that you have written, and I know your contempt and your hatred for those you call Protestants in your derision; though your grandfather, the vicar of Caerleon-on-Usk, called himself Protestant and was proud of it, and your great-grand-uncle Hezekiah, _ffeiriad coch yr Castletown_--the Red Priest of Castletown--was a great man with the Methodists in his day, and the people flocked by their thousands when he administered the Sacrament. I was born and brought up in Glamorganshire, and old men have wept as they told me of the weeping and contrition that there was when the Red Priest broke the Bread and raised the Cup. But you are a railer, and see nothing but the outside and the show. You are not worthy of this mystery that has been done here." I went out from his presence rebuked indeed, and justly rebuked; but rather amazed. It is curiously true that the Welsh are still one people, one family almost, in a manner that the English cannot understand, but I had never thought that this old clergyman would have known anything of my ancestry or their doings. And as for my articles and such-like, I knew that the country clergy sometimes read, but I had fancied my pronouncements sufficiently obscure, even in London, much more in Arfon. But so it happened, and so I had no explanation from the rector of Llantrisant of the strange circumstance, that his church was full of incense and odours of paradise. * * * * * I went up and down the ways of Llantrisant wondering, and came to the harbour, which is a little place, with little quays where some small coasting trade still lingers. A brigantine was at anchor here, and very lazily in the sunshine they were loading it with anthracite; for it is one of the oddities of Llantrisant that there is a small colliery in the heart of the wood on the hillside. I crossed a causeway which parts the outer harbour from the inner harbour, and settled down on a rocky beach hidden under a leafy hill. The tide was going out, and some children were playing on the wet sand, while two ladies--their mothers, I suppose--talked together as they sat comfortably on their rugs at a little distance from me. At first they talked of the war, and I made myself deaf, for of that talk one gets enough, and more than enough, in London. Then there was a period of silence, and the conversation had passed to quite a different topic when I caught the thread of it again. I was sitting on the further side of a big rock, and I do not think that the two ladies had noticed my approach. However, though they spoke of strange things, they spoke of nothing which made it necessary for me to announce my presence. "And, after all," one of them was saying, "what is it all about? I can't make out what is come to the people." This speaker was a Welshwoman; I recognised the clear, over-emphasised consonants, and a faint suggestion of an accent. Her friend came from the Midlands, and it turned out that they had only known each other for a few days. Theirs was a friendship of the beach and of bathing; such friendships are common, at small seaside places. "There is certainly something odd about the people here. I have never been to Llantrisant before, you know; indeed, this is the first time we've been in Wales for our holidays, and knowing nothing about the ways of the people and not being accustomed to hear Welsh spoken, I thought, perhaps, it must be my imagination. But you think there really is something a little queer?" "I can tell you this: that I have been in two minds whether I should not write to my husband and ask him to take me and the children away. You know where I am at Mrs. Morgan's, and the Morgans' sitting-room is just the other side of the passage, and sometimes they leave the door open, so that I can hear what they say quite plainly. And you see I understand the Welsh, though they don't know it. And I hear them saying the most alarming things!" "What sort of things? "Well, indeed, it sounds like some kind of a religious service, but it's not Church of England, I know that. Old Morgan begins it, and the wife and children answer. Something like; 'Blessed be God for the messengers of Paradise.' 'Blessed be His Name for Paradise in the meat and in the drink.' 'Thanksgiving for the old offering.' 'Thanksgiving for the appearance of the old altar,' 'Praise for the joy of the ancient garden.' 'Praise for the return of those that have been long absent.' And all that sort of thing. It is nothing but madness." "Depend upon it," said the lady from the Midlands, "there's no real harm in it. They're Dissenters; some new sect, I dare say. You know some Dissenters are very queer in their ways." "All that is like no Dissenters that I have ever known in all my life whatever," replied the Welsh lady somewhat vehemently, with a very distinct intonation of the land. "And have you heard them speak of the bright light that shone at midnight from the church?" CHAPTER III A SECRET IN A SECRET PLACE Now here was I altogether at a loss and quite bewildered. The children broke into the conversation of the two ladies and cut it all short, just as the midnight lights from the church came on the field, and when the little girls and boys went back again to the sands whooping, the tide of talk had turned, and Mrs. Harland and Mrs. Williams were quite safe and at home with Janey's measles, and a wonderful treatment for infantile earache, as exemplified in the case of Trevor. There was no more to be got out of them, evidently, so I left the beach, crossed the harbour causeway, and drank beer at the "Fishermen's Rest" till it was time to climb up two miles of deep lane and catch the train for Penvro, where I was staying. And I went up the lane, as I say, in a kind of amazement; and not so much, I think, because of evidences and hints of things strange to the senses, such as the savour of incense where no incense had smoked for three hundred and fifty years and more, or the story of bright light shining from the dark, closed church at dead of night, as because of that sentence of thanksgiving "for paradise in meat and in drink." For the sun went down and the evening fell as I climbed the long hill through the deep woods and the high meadows, and the scent of all the green things rose from the earth and from the heart of the wood, and at a turn of the lane far below was the misty glimmer of the still sea, and from far below its deep murmur sounded as it washed on the little hidden, enclosed bay where Llantrisant stands. And I thought, if there be paradise in meat and in drink, so much the more is there paradise in the scent of the green leaves at evening and in the appearance of the sea and in the redness of the sky; and there came to me a certain vision of a real world about us all the while, of a language that was only secret because we would not take the trouble to listen to it and discern it. It was almost dark when I got to the station, and here were the few feeble oil lamps lit, glimmering in that lonely land, where the way is long from farm to farm. The train came on its way, and I got into it; and just as we moved from the station I noticed a group under one of those dim lamps. A woman and her child had got out, and they were being welcomed by a man who had been waiting for them. I had not noticed his face as I stood on the platform, but now I saw it as he pointed down the hill towards Llantrisant, and I think I was almost frightened. He was a young man, a farmer's son, I would say, dressed in rough brown clothes, and as different from old Mr. Evans, the rector, as one man might be from another. But on his face, as I saw it in the lamplight, there was the like brightening that I had seen on the face of the rector. It was an illuminated face, glowing with an ineffable joy, and I thought it rather gave light to the platform lamp than received light from it. The woman and her child, I inferred, were strangers to the place, and had come to pay a visit to the young man's family. They had looked about them in bewilderment, half alarmed, before they saw him; and then his face was radiant in their sight, and it was easy to see that all their troubles were ended and over. A wayside station and a darkening country, and it was as if they were welcomed by shining, immortal gladness--even into paradise. * * * * * But though there seemed in a sense light all about my ways, I was myself still quite bewildered. I could see, indeed, that something strange had happened or was happening in the little town hidden under the hill, but there was so far no clue to the mystery, or rather, the clue had been offered to me, and I had not taken it, I had not even known that it was there; since we do not so much as see what we have determined, without judging, to be incredible, even though it be held up before our eyes. The dialogue that the Welsh Mrs. Williams had reported to her English friend might have set me on the right way; but the right way was outside all my limits of possibility, outside the circle of my thought. The palæontologist might see monstrous, significant marks in the slime of a river bank, but he would never draw the conclusions that his own peculiar science would seem to suggest to him; he would choose any explanation rather than the obvious, since the obvious would also be the outrageous--according to our established habit of thought, which we deem final. * * * * * The next day I took all these strange things with me for consideration to a certain place that I knew of not far from Penvro. I was now in the early stages of the jig-saw process, or rather I had only a few pieces before me, and--to continue the figure my difficulty was this: that though the markings on each piece seemed to have design and significance, yet I could not make the wildest guess as to the nature of the whole picture, of which these were the parts. I had clearly seen that there was a great secret; I had seen that on the face of the young farmer on the platform of Llantrisant station; and in my mind there was all the while the picture of him going down the dark, steep, winding lane that led to the town and the sea, going down through the heart of the wood, with light about him. But there was bewilderment in the thought of this, and in the endeavour to match it with the perfumed church and the scraps of talk that I had heard and the rumour of midnight brightness; and though Penvro is by no means populous, I thought I would go to a certain solitary place called the Old Camp Head, which looks towards Cornwall and to the great deeps that roll beyond Cornwall to the far ends of the world; a place where fragments of dreams--they seemed such then--might, perhaps, be gathered into the clearness of vision. It was some years since I had been to the Head, and I had gone on that last time and on a former visit by the cliffs, a rough and difficult path. Now I chose a landward way, which the county map seemed to justify, though doubtfully, as regarded the last part of the journey. So I went inland and climbed the hot summer by-roads, till I came at last to a lane which gradually turned turfy and grass-grown, and then on high ground, ceased to be. It left me at a gate in a hedge of old thorns; and across the field beyond there seemed to be some faint indications of a track. One would judge that sometimes men did pass by that way, but not often. It was high ground but not within sight of the sea. But the breath of the sea blew about the hedge of thorns, and came with a keen savour to the nostrils. The ground sloped gently from the gate and then rose again to a ridge, where a white farmhouse stood all alone. I passed by this farmhouse, threading an uncertain way, followed a hedgerow doubtfully; and saw suddenly before me the Old Camp, and beyond it the sapphire plain of waters and the mist where sea and sky met. Steep from my feet the hill fell away, a land of gorse-blossom, red-gold and mellow, of glorious purple heather. It fell into a hollow that went down, shining with rich green bracken, to the glimmering sea; and before me and beyond the hollow rose a height of turf, bastioned at the summit with the awful, age-old walls of the Old Camp; green, rounded circumvallations, wall within wall, tremendous, with their myriad years upon them. * * * * * Within these smoothed, green mounds, looking across the shining and changing of the waters in the happy sunlight, I took out the bread and cheese and beer that I had carried in a bag, and ate and drank, and lit my pipe, and set myself to think over the enigmas of Llantrisant. And I had scarcely done so when, a good deal to my annoyance, a man came climbing up over the green ridges, and took up his stand close by, and stared out to sea. He nodded to me, and began with "Fine weather for the harvest" in the approved manner, and so sat down and engaged me in a net of talk. He was of Wales, it seemed, but from a different part of the country, and was staying for a few days with relations--at the white farmhouse which I had passed on my way. His tale of nothing flowed on to his pleasure and my pain, till he fell suddenly on Llantrisant and its doings. I listened then with wonder, and here is his tale condensed. Though it must be clearly understood that the man's evidence was only second-hand; he had heard it from his cousin, the farmer. So, to be brief, it appeared that there had been a long feud at Llantrisant between a local solicitor, Lewis Prothero (we will say), and a farmer named James. There had been a quarrel about some trifle, which had grown more and more bitter as the two parties forgot the merits of the original dispute, and by some means or other, which I could not well understand, the lawyer had got the small freeholder "under his thumb." James, I think, had given a bill of sale in a bad season, and Prothero had bought it up; and the end was that the farmer was turned out of the old house, and was lodging in a cottage. People said he would have to take a place on his own farm as a labourer; he went about in dreadful misery, piteous to see. It was thought by some that he might very well murder the lawyer, if he met him. They did meet, in the middle of the market-place at Llantrisant one Saturday in June. The farmer was a little black man, and he gave a shout of rage, and the people were rushing at him to keep him off Prothero. "And then," said my informant, "I will tell you what happened. This lawyer, as they tell me, he is a great big brawny fellow, with a big jaw and a wide mouth, and a red face and red whiskers. And there he was in his black coat and his high hard hat, and all his money at his back, as you may say. And, indeed, he did fall down on his knees in the dust there in the street in front of Philip James, and every one could see that terror was upon him. And he did beg Philip James's pardon, and beg of him to have mercy, and he did implore him by God and man and the saints of paradise. And my cousin, John Jenkins, Penmawr, he do tell me that the tears were falling from Lewis Prothero's eyes like the rain. And he put his hand into his pocket and drew out the deed of Pantyreos, Philip James's old farm that was, and did give him the farm back and a hundred pounds for the stock that was on it, and two hundred pounds, all in notes of the bank, for amendment and consolation. "And then, from what they do tell me, all the people did go mad, crying and weeping and calling out all manner of things at the top of their voices. And at last nothing would do but they must all go up to the churchyard, and there Philip James and Lewis Prothero they swear friendship to one another for a long age before the old cross, and everyone sings praises. And my cousin he do declare to me that there were men standing in that crowd that he did never see before in Llantrisant in all his life, and his heart was shaken within him as if it had been in a whirl-wind." I had listened to all this in silence. I said then: "What does your cousin mean by that? Men that he had never seen in Llantrisant? What men?" "The people," he said very slowly, "call them the Fishermen." And suddenly there came into my mind the "Rich Fisherman" who in the old legend guards the holy mystery of the Graal. CHAPTER IV THE RINGING OF THE BELL So far I have not told the story of the things of Llantrisant, but rather the story of how I stumbled upon them and among them, perplexed and wholly astray, seeking, but yet not knowing at all what I sought; bewildered now and again by circumstances which seemed to me wholly inexplicable; devoid, not so much of the key to the enigma, but of the key to the nature of the enigma. You cannot begin to solve a puzzle till you know what the puzzle is about. "Yards divided by minutes," said the mathematical master to me long ago, "will give neither pigs, sheep, nor oxen." He was right; though his manner on this and on all other occasions was highly offensive. This is enough of the personal process, as I may call it; and here follows the story of what happened at Llantrisant last summer, the story as I pieced it together at last. It all began, it appears, on a hot day, early in last June; so far as I can make out, on the first Saturday in the month. There was a deaf old woman, a Mrs. Parry, who lived by herself in a lonely cottage a mile or so from the town. She came into the market-place early on the Saturday morning in a state of some excitement, and as soon as she had taken up her usual place on the pavement by the churchyard, with her ducks and eggs and a few very early potatoes, she began to tell her neighbours about her having heard the sound of a great bell. The good women on each side smiled at one another behind Mrs. Parry's back, for one had to bawl into her ear before she could make out what one meant; and Mrs. Williams, Penycoed, bent over and yelled: "What bell should that be, Mrs. Parry? There's no church near you up at Penrhiw. Do you hear what nonsense she talks?" said Mrs. Williams in a low voice to Mrs. Morgan. "As if she could hear any bell, whatever." "What makes you talk nonsense your self?" said Mrs. Parry, to the amazement of the two women. "I can hear a bell as well as you, Mrs. Williams, and as well as your whispers either." And there is the fact, which is not to be disputed; though the deductions from it may be open to endless disputations; this old woman who had been all but stone deaf for twenty years--the defect had always been in her family--could suddenly hear on this June morning as well as anybody else. And her two old friends stared at her, and it was some time before they had appeased her indignation, and induced her to talk about the bell. It had happened in the early morning, which was very misty. She had been gathering sage in her garden, high on a round hill looking over the sea. And there came in her ears a sort of throbbing and singing and trembling, "as if there were music coming out of the earth," and then something seemed to break in her head, and all the birds began to sing and make melody together, and the leaves of the poplars round the garden fluttered in the breeze that rose from the sea, and the cock crowed far off at Twyn, and the dog barked down in Kemeys Valley. But above all these sounds, unheard for so many years, there thrilled the deep and chanting note of the bell, "like a bell and a man's voice singing at once." They stared again at her and at one another. "Where did it sound from?" asked one. "It came sailing across the sea," answered Mrs. Parry quite composedly, "and I did hear it coming nearer and nearer to the land." "Well, indeed," said Mrs. Morgan, "it was a ship's bell then, though I can't make out why they would be ringing like that." "It was not ringing on any ship, Mrs. Morgan," said Mrs. Parry. "Then where do you think it was ringing?" "Ym Mharadwys," replied Mrs. Parry. Now that means "in Paradise," and the two others changed the conversation quickly. They thought that Mrs. Parry had got back her hearing suddenly--such things did happen now and then--and that the shock had made her "a bit queer." And this explanation would no doubt have stood its ground, if it had not been for other experiences. Indeed, the local doctor who had treated Mrs. Parry for a dozen years, not for her deafness, which he took to be hopeless and beyond cure, but for a tiresome and recurrent winter cough, sent an account of the case to a colleague at Bristol, suppressing, naturally enough, the reference to Paradise. The Bristol physician gave it as his opinion that the symptoms were absolutely what mighty have been expected. "You have here, in all probability," he wrote, "the sudden breaking down of an old obstruction in the aural passage, and I should quite expect this process to be accompanied by tinnitus of a pronounced and even violent character." * * * * * But for the other experiences? As the morning wore on and drew to noon, high market, and to the utmost brightness of that summer day, all the stalls and the streets were full of rumours and of awed faces. Now from one lonely farm, now from another, men and women came and told the story of how they had listened in the early morning with thrilling hearts to the thrilling music of a bell that was like no bell ever heard before. And it seemed that many people in the town had been roused, they knew not how, from sleep; waking up, as one of them said, as if bells were ringing and the organ playing, and a choir of sweet voices singing all together: "There were such melodies and songs that my heart was full of joy." And a little past noon some fishermen who had been out all night returned, and brought a wonderful story into the town of what they had heard in the mist and one of them said he had seen something go by at a little distance from his boat. "It was all golden and bright," he said, "and there was glory about it." Another fisherman declared "there was a song upon the water that was like heaven." And here I would say in parenthesis that on returning to town I sought out a very old friend of mine, a man who has devoted a lifetime to strange and esoteric studies. I thought that I had a tale that would interest him profoundly, but I found that he heard me with a good deal of indifference. And at this very point of the sailors' stories I remember saying: "Now what do you make of that? Don't you think it's extremely curious?" He replied: "I hardly think so. Possibly the sailors were lying; possibly it happened as they say. Well; that sort of thing has always been happening." I give my friend's opinion; I make no comment on it. Let it be noted that there was something remarkable as to the manner in which the sound of the bell was heard--or supposed to be heard. There are, no doubt, mysteries in sound as in all else; indeed, I am informed that during one of the horrible outrages that have been perpetrated on London during this autumn there was an instance of a great block of workmen's dwellings in which the only person who heard the crash of a particular bomb falling was an old deaf woman, who had been fast asleep till the moment of the explosion. This is strange enough of a sound that was entirely in the natural (and horrible) order; and so it was at Llantrisant, where the sound was either a collective auditory hallucination or a manifestation of what is conveniently, if inaccurately, called the supernatural order. For the thrill of the bell did not reach to all ears--or hearts. Deaf Mrs. Parry heard it in her lonely cottage garden, high above the misty sea; but then, in a farm on the other or western side of Llantrisant, a little child, scarcely three years old, was the only one out of a household of ten people who heard anything. He called out in stammering baby Welsh something that sounded like "Clychau fawr, clychau fawr"--the great bells, the great bells--and his mother wondered what he was talking about. Of the crews of half a dozen trawlers that were swinging from side to side in the mist, not more than four men had any tale to tell. And so it was that for an hour or two the man who had heard nothing suspected his neighbour who had heard marvels of lying; and it was some time before the mass of evidence coming from all manner of diverse and remote quarters convinced the people that there was a true story here. A might suspect B, his neighbour, of making up a tale; but when C, from some place on the hills five miles away, and D, the fisherman on the waters, each had a like report, then it was clear that something had happened. * * * * * And even then, as they told me, the signs to be seen upon the people were stranger than the tales told by them and among them. It has struck me that many people in reading some of the phrases that I have reported, will dismiss them with laughter as very poor and fantastic inventions; fishermen, they will say, do not speak of "a song like heaven" or of "a glory about it." And I dare say this would be a just enough criticism if I were reporting English fishermen; but, odd though it may be, Wales has not yet lost the last shreds of the grand manner. And let it be remembered also that in most cases such phrases are translated from another language, that is, from the Welsh. So, they come trailing, let us say, fragments of the cloud of glory in their common speech; and so, on this Saturday, they began to display, uneasily enough in many cases, their consciousness that the things that were reported were of their ancient right and former custom. The comparison is not quite fair; but conceive Hardy's old Durbeyfield suddenly waking from long slumber to find himself in a noble thirteenth-century hall, waited on by kneeling pages, smiled on by sweet ladies in silken côtehardies. So by evening time there had come to the old people the recollection of stories that their fathers had told them as they sat round the hearth of winter nights, fifty, sixty, seventy years; ago; stories of the wonderful bell of Teilo Sant, that had sailed across the glassy seas from Syon, that was called a portion of Paradise, "and the sound of its ringing was like the perpetual choir of the angels." Such things were remembered by the old and told to the young that evening, in the streets of the town and in the deep lanes that climbed far hills. The sun went down to the mountain red with fire like a burnt offering, the sky turned violet, the sea was purple, as one told another of the wonder that had returned to the land after long ages. CHAPTER V THE ROSE OF FIRE It was during the next nine days, counting from that Saturday early in June the first Saturday in June, as I believe--that Llantrisant and all the regions about became possessed either by an extraordinary set of hallucinations or by a visitation of great marvels. This is not the place to strike the balance between the two possibilities. The evidence is, no doubt, readily available; the matter is open to systematic investigation. But this may be said: The ordinary man, in the ordinary passages of his life, accepts in the main the evidence of his senses, and is entirely right in doing so. He says that he sees a cow, that he sees a stone wall, and that the cow and the stone wall are "there." This is very well for all the practical purposes of life, but I believe that the metaphysicians are by no means so easily satisfied as to the reality of the stone wall and the cow. Perhaps they might allow that both objects are "there" in the sense that one's reflection is in a glass; there is an actuality, but is there a reality external to oneself? In any event, it is solidly agreed that, supposing a real existence, this much is certain--it is not in the least like our conception of it. The ant and the microscope will quickly convince us that we do not see things as they really are, even supposing that we see them at all. If we could "see" the real cow she would appear utterly incredible, as incredible as the things I am to relate. Now, there is nothing that I know much more unconvincing than the stories of the red light on the sea. Several sailors, men on small coasting ships, who were working up or down the Channel on that Saturday night, spoke of "seeing" the red light, and it must be said that there is a very tolerable agreement in their tales. All make the time as between midnight of the Saturday and one o'clock on the Sunday morning. Two of those sailormen are precise as to the time of the apparition; they fix it by elaborate calculations of their own as occurring at 12.20 a.m. And the story? A red light, a burning spark seen far away in the darkness, taken at the first moment of seeing for a signal, and probably an enemy signal. Then it approached at a tremendous speed, and one man said he took it to be the port light of some new kind of navy motor-boat which was developing a rate hitherto unheard of, a hundred or a hundred and fifty knots an hour. And then, in the third instant of the sight, it was clear that this was no earthly speed. At first a red spark in the farthest distance; then a rushing lamp; and then, as if in an incredible point of time, it swelled into a vast rose of fire that filled all the sea and all the sky and hid the stars and possessed the land. "I thought the end of the world had come," one of the sailors said. And then, an instant more, and it was gone from them, and four of them say that there was a red spark on Chapel Head, where the old grey chapel of St. Teilo stands, high above the water, in a cleft of the limestone rocks. And thus the sailors; and thus their tales are incredible; but they are not incredible. I believe that men of the highest eminence in physical science have testified to the occurrence of phenomena every whit as marvellous, to things as absolutely opposed to all natural order, as we conceive it; and it may be said that nobody minds them. "That sort of thing has always been happening," as my friend remarked to me. But the men, whether or no the fire had ever been without them, there was no doubt that it was now within them, for it burned in their eyes. They were purged as if they had passed through the Furnace of the Sages, governed with Wisdom that the alchemists know. They spoke without much difficulty of what they had seen, or had seemed to see, with their eyes, but hardly at all of what their hearts had known when for a moment the glory of the fiery rose had been about them. For some weeks afterwards they were still, as it were, amazed; almost, I would say, incredulous. If there had been nothing more than the splendid and fiery appearance, showing and vanishing, I do believe that they themselves would have discredited their own senses and denied the truth of their own tales. And one does not dare to say whether they would not have been right. Men like Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge are certainly to be heard with respect, and they bear witness to all manner of apparent eversions of laws which we, or most of us, consider far more deeply founded than the ancient hills. They may be justified; but in our hearts we doubt. We cannot wholly believe in inner sincerity that the solid table did rise, without mechanical reason or cause, into the air, and so defy that which we name the "law of gravitation." I know what may be said on the other side; I know that there is no true question of "law" in the case; that the law of gravitation really means just this: that I have never seen a table rising without mechanical aid, or an apple, detached from the bough, soaring to the skies instead of falling to the ground. The so-called law is just the sum of common observation and nothing more; yet I say, in our hearts we do not believe that the tables rise; much less do we believe in the rose of fire that for a moment swallowed up the skies and seas and shores of the Welsh coast last June. And the men who saw it would have invented fairy tales to account for it, I say again, if it had not been for that which was within them. They said, all of them, and it was certain now that they spoke the truth, that in the moment of the vision, every pain and ache and malady in their bodies had passed away. One man had been vilely drunk on venomous spirit, procured at "Jobson's Hole" down by the Cardiff Docks. He was horribly ill; he had crawled up from his bunk for a little fresh air; and in an instant his horrors and his deadly nausea had left him. Another man was almost desperate with the raging hammering pain of an abscess on a tooth; he says that when the red flame came near he felt as if a dull, heavy blow had fallen on his jaw, and then the pain was quite gone; he could scarcely believe that there had been any pain there. And they all bear witness to an extraordinary exaltation of the senses. It is indescribable, this; for they cannot describe it. They are amazed, again; they do not in the least profess to know what happened; but there is no more possibility of shaking their evidence than there is a possibility of shaking the evidence of a man who says that water is wet and fire hot. "I felt a bit queer afterwards," said one of them, "and I steadied myself by the mast, and I can't tell how I felt as I touched it. I didn't know that touching a thing like a mast could be better than a big drink when you're thirsty, or a soft pillow when you're sleepy." I heard other instances of this state of things, as I must vaguely call it, since I do not know what else to call it. But I suppose we can all agree that to the man in average health, the average impact of the external world on his senses is a matter of indifference. The average impact; a harsh scream, the bursting of a motor tyre, any violent assault on the aural nerves will annoy him, and he may say "damn." Then, on the other hand, the man who is not "fit" will easily be annoyed and irritated by someone pushing past him in a crowd, by the ringing of a bell, by the sharp closing of a book. But so far as I could judge from the talk of these sailors, the average impact of the external world had become to them a fountain of pleasure. Their nerves were on edge, but an edge to receive exquisite sensuous impressions. The touch of the rough mast, for example; that was a joy far greater than is the joy of fine silk to some luxurious skins; they drank water and stared as if they had been _fins gourmets_ tasting an amazing wine; the creak and whine of their ship on its slow way were as exquisite as the rhythm and song of a Bach fugue to an amateur of music. And then, within; these rough fellows have their quarrels and strifes and variances and envyings like the rest of us; but that was all over between them that had seen the rosy light; old enemies shook hands heartily, and roared with laughter as they confessed one to another what fools they had been. "I can't exactly say how it has happened or what has happened at all," said one, "but if you have all the world and the glory of it, how can you fight for fivepence?" * * * * * The church of Llantrisant is a typical example of a Welsh parish church, before the evil and horrible period of "restoration." This lower world is a palace of lies, and of all foolish lies there is none more insane than a certain vague fable about the mediæval freemasons, a fable which somehow imposed itself upon the cold intellect of Hallam the historian. The story is, in brief, that throughout the Gothic period, at any rate, the art and craft of church building were executed by wandering guilds of "freemasons," possessed of various secrets of building and adornment, which they employed wherever they went. If this nonsense were true, the Gothic of Cologne would be as the Gothic of Colne, and the Gothic of Arles like to the Gothic of Abingdon. It is so grotesquely untrue that almost every county, let alone every country, has its distinctive style in Gothic architecture. Arfon is in the west of Wales; its churches have marks and features which distinguish them from the churches in the east of Wales. The Llantrisant church has that primitive division between nave and chancel which only very foolish people decline to recognise as equivalent to the Oriental iconostasis and as the origin of the Western rood-screen. A solid wall divided the church into two portions; in the centre was a narrow opening with a rounded arch, through which those who sat towards the middle of the church could see the small, red-carpeted altar and the three roughly shaped lancet windows above it. The "reading pew" was on the outer side of this wall of partition, and here the rector did his service, the choir being grouped in seats about him. On the inner side were the pews of certain privileged houses of the town and district. On the Sunday morning the people were all in their accustomed places, not without a certain exultation in their eyes, not without a certain expectation of they knew not what. The bells stopped ringing, the rector, in his old-fashioned, ample surplice, entered the reading-desk, and gave out the hymn: "My God, and is Thy Table spread." And, as the singing began, all the people who were in the pews within the wall came out of them and streamed through the archway into the nave. They took what places they could find up and down the church, and the rest of the congregation looked at them in amazement. Nobody knew what had happened. Those whose seats were next to the aisle tried to peer into the chancel, to see what had happened or what was going on there. But somehow the light flamed so brightly from the windows above the altar, those being the only windows in the chancel, one small lancet in the south wall excepted, that no one could see anything at all. "It was as if a veil of gold adorned with jewels was hanging there," one man said; and indeed there are a few odds and scraps of old painted glass left in the eastern lancets. But there were few in the church who did not hear now and again voices speaking beyond the veil. CHAPTER VI OLWEN'S DREAM The well-to-do and dignified personages who left their pews in the chancel of Llantrisant Church and came hurrying into the nave could give no explanation of what they had done. They felt, they said, that they had to go, and to go quickly; they were driven out, as it were, by a secret, irresistible command. But all who were present in the church that morning were amazed, though all exulted in their hearts; for they, like the sailors who saw the rose of fire on the waters, were filled with a joy that was literally ineffable, since they could not utter it or interpret it to themselves. And they too, like the sailors, were transmuted, or the world was transmuted for them. They experienced what the doctors call a sense of _bien être_ but a _bien être_ raised, to the highest power. Old men felt young again, eyes that had been growing dim now saw clearly, and saw a world that was like Paradise, the same world, it is true, but a world rectified and glowing, as if an inner flame shone in all things, and behind all things. And the difficulty in recording this state is this, that it is so rare an experience that no set language to express it is in existence. A shadow of its raptures and ecstasies is found in the highest poetry; there are phrases in ancient books telling of the Celtic saints that dimly hint at it; some of the old Italian masters of painting had known it, for the light of it shines in their skies and about the battlements of their cities that are founded on magic hills. But these are but broken hints. It is not poetic to go to Apothecaries' Hall for similes. But for many years I kept by me an article from the _Lancet_ or the _British Medical Journal_--I forget which--in which a doctor gave an account of certain experiments he had conducted with a drug called the Mescal Button, or Anhelonium Lewinii. He said that while under the influence of the drug he had but to shut his eyes, and immediately before him there would rise incredible Gothic cathedrals, of such majesty and splendour and glory that no heart had ever conceived. They seemed to surge from the depths to the very heights of heaven, their spires swayed amongst the clouds and the stars, they were fretted with admirable imagery. And as he gazed, he would presently become aware that all the stones were living stones, that they were quickening and palpitating, and then that they were glowing jewels, say, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, opals, but of hues that the mortal eye had never seen. That description gives, I think, some faint notion of the nature of the transmuted world into which these people by the sea had entered, a world quickened and glorified and full of pleasures. Joy and wonder were on all faces; but the deepest joy and the greatest wonder were on the face of the rector. For he had heard through the veil the Greek word for "holy," three times repeated. And he, who had once been a horrified assistant at High Mass in a foreign church, recognised the perfume of incense that filled the place from end to end. * * * * * It was on that Sunday night that Olwen Phillips of Croeswen dreamed her wonderful dream. She was a girl of sixteen, the daughter of small farming people, and for many months she had been doomed to certain death. Consumption, which flourishes in that damp, warm climate, had laid hold of her; not only her lungs but her whole system was a mass of tuberculosis. As is common enough, she had enjoyed many fallacious brief recoveries in the early stages of the disease, but all hope had long been over, and now for the last few weeks she had seemed to rush vehemently to death. The doctor had come on the Saturday morning, bringing with him a colleague. They had both agreed that the girl's case was in its last stages. "She cannot possibly last more than a day or two," said the local doctor to her mother. He came again on the Sunday morning and found his patient perceptibly worse, and soon afterwards she sank into a heavy sleep, and her mother thought that she would never wake from it. The girl slept in an inner room communicating with the room occupied by her father and mother. The door between was kept open, so that Mrs. Phillips could hear her daughter if she called to her in the night. And Olwen called to her mother that night, just as the dawn was breaking. It was no faint summons from a dying bed that came to the mother's ears, but a loud cry that rang through the house, a cry of great gladness. Mrs. Phillips started up from sleep in wild amazement, wondering what could have happened. And then she saw Olwen, who had not been able to rise from her bed for many weeks past, standing in the doorway in the faint light of the growing day. The girl called to her mother: "Mam! mam! It is all over. I am quite well again." Mrs. Phillips roused her husband, and they sat up in bed staring, not knowing on earth, as they said afterwards, what had been done with the world. Here was their poor girl wasted to a shadow, lying on her death-bed, and the life sighing from her with every breath, and her voice, when she last uttered it, so weak that one had to put one's ear to her mouth. And here in a few hours she stood up before them; and even in that faint light they could see that she was changed almost beyond knowing. And, indeed, Mrs. Phillips said that for a moment or two she fancied that the Germans must have come and killed them in their sleep, and so they were all dead together. But Olwen called, out again, so the mother lit a candle and got up and went tottering across the room, and there was Olwen all gay and plump again, smiling with shining eyes. Her mother led her into her own room, and set down the candle there, and felt her daughter's flesh, and burst into prayers and tears of wonder and delight, and thanksgivings, and held the girl again to be sure that she was not deceived. And then Olwen told her dream, though she thought it was not a dream. She said she woke up in the deep darkness, and she knew the life was fast going from her. She could not move so much as a finger, she tried to cry out, but no sound came from her lips. She felt that in another instant the whole world would fall from her--her heart was full of agony. And as the last breath was passing her lips, she heard a very faint, sweet sound, like the tinkling of a silver bell. It came from far away, from over by Ty-newydd. She forgot her agony and listened, and even then, she says, she felt the swirl of the world as it came back to her. And the sound of the bell swelled and grew louder, and it thrilled all through her body, and the life was in it. And as the bell rang and trembled in her ears, a faint light touched the wall of her room and reddened, till the whole room was full of rosy fire. And then she saw standing before her bed three men in blood-coloured robes with shining faces. And one man held a golden bell in his hand. And the second man held up something shaped like the top of a table. It was like a great jewel, and it was of a blue colour, and there were rivers of silver and of gold running through it and flowing as quick streams flow, and there were pools in it as if violets had been poured out into water, and then it was green as the sea near the shore, and then it was the sky at night with all the stars shining, and then the sun and the moon came down and washed in it. And the third man held up high above this a cup that was like a rose on fire; "there was a great burning in it, and a dropping of blood in it, and a red cloud above it, and I saw a great secret. And I heard a voice that sang nine times, 'Glory and praise to the Conqueror of Death, to the Fountain of Life immortal.' Then the red light went from the wall, and it was all darkness, and the bell rang faint again by Capel Teilo, and then I got up and called to you." The doctor came on the Monday morning with the death certificate in his pocket-book, and Olwen ran out to meet him. I have quoted his phrase in the first chapter of this record: "A kind of resurrection of the body." He made a most careful examination of the girl; he has stated that he found that every trace of disease had disappeared. He left on the Sunday morning a patient entering into the coma that precedes death, a body condemned utterly and ready for the grave. He met at the garden gate on the Monday morning a young woman in whom life sprang up like a fountain, in whose body life laughed and rejoiced as if it had been a river flowing from an unending well. * * * * * Now this is the place to ask one of those questions--there are many such--which cannot be answered. The question is as to the continuance of tradition; more especially as to the continuance of tradition among the Welsh Celts of today. On the one hand, such waves and storms have gone over them. The wave of the heathen Saxons went over them, then the wave of Latin mediævalism, then the waters of Anglicanism; last of all the flood of their queer Calvinistic Methodism, half Puritan, half pagan. It may well be asked whether any memory can possibly have survived such a series of deluges. I have said that the old people of Llantrisant had their tales of the Bell of Teilo Sant; but these were but vague and broken recollections. And then there is the name by which the "strangers" who were seen in the market-place were known; that is more precise. Students of the Graal legend know that the keeper of the Graal in the romances is the "King Fisherman," or the "Rich Fisherman"; students of Celtic hagiology know that it was prophesied before the birth of Dewi (or David) that he should be "a man of aquatic life," that another legend tells how a little child, destined to be a saint, was discovered on a stone in the river, how through his childhood a fish for his nourishment was found on that stone every day, while another saint, Ilar, if I remember, was expressly known as "The Fisherman." But has the memory of all this persisted in the church-going and chapel-going people of Wales at the present day? It is difficult to say. There is the affair of the Healing Cup of Nant Eos, or Tregaron Healing Cup, as it is also called. It is only a few years ago since it was shown to a wandering harper, who treated it lightly, and then spent a wretched night, as he said, and came back penitently and was left alone with the sacred vessel to pray over it, till "his mind was at rest." That was in 1887. Then for my part--I only know modern Wales on the surface, I am sorry to say--I remember three or four years ago speaking to my temporary landlord of certain relics of Saint Teilo, which are supposed to be in the keeping of a particular family in that country. The landlord is a very jovial, merry fellow, and I observed with some astonishment that his ordinary, easy manner was completely altered as he said, gravely, "That will be over there, up by the mountain," pointing vaguely to the north. And he changed the subject, as a Freemason changes the subject. There the matter lies, and its appositeness to the story of Llantrisant is this: that the dream of Olwen Phillips was, in fact, the Vision of the Holy Graal. CHAPTER VII THE MASS OF THE SANGRAAL "_FFEIRIADWYR Melcisidec! Ffeiriadwyr Melcisidec!_" shouted the old Calvinistic Methodist deacon with the grey beard. "Priesthood of Melchizedek! Priesthood of Melchizedek!" And he went on: "The Bell that is like _y glwys yr angel ym mharadwys_--the joy of the angels in Paradise--is returned; the Altar that is of a colour that no men can discern is returned, the Cup that came from Syon is returned, the ancient Offering is restored, the Three Saints have come back to the church of the _tri sant_, the Three Holy Fishermen are amongst us, and their net is full. _Gogoniant, gogoniant_--glory, glory!" Then another Methodist began to recite in Welsh a verse from Wesley's hymn. God still respects Thy sacrifice, Its savour sweet doth always please; The Offering smokes through earth and skies, Diffusing life and joy and peace; To these Thy lower courts it comes And fills them with Divine perfumes. The whole church was full, as the old books tell, of the odour of the rarest spiceries. There were lights shining within the sanctuary, through the narrow archway. This was the beginning of the end of what befell at Llantrisant. For it was the Sunday after that night on which Olwen Phillips had been restored from death to life. There was not a single chapel of the Dissenters open in the town that day. The Methodists with their minister and their deacons and all the Nonconformists had returned on this Sunday morning to "the old hive." One would have said, a church of the Middle Ages, a church in Ireland today. Every seat--save those in the chancel --was full, all the aisles were full, the churchyard was full; everyone on his knees, and the old rector kneeling before the door into the holy place. Yet they can say but very little of what was done beyond the veil. There was no attempt to perform the usual service; when the bells had stopped the old deacon raised his cry, and priest and people fell down on their knees as they thought they heard a choir within singing "Alleluya, alleluya, alleluya." And as the bells in the tower ceased ringing, there sounded the thrill of the bell from Syon, and the golden veil of sunlight fell across the door into the altar, and the heavenly voices began their melodies. A voice like a trumpet cried from within the brightness. _Agyos, Agyos, Agyos._ And the people, as if an age-old memory stirred in them, replied: _Agyos yr Tâd, agyos yr Mab, agyos yr Yspryd Glan. Sant, sant, sant, Drindod sant vendigeid. Sanctus Arglwydd Dduw Sabaoth, Dominus Deus._ There was a voice that cried and sang from within the altar; most of the people had heard some faint echo of it in the chapels; a voice rising and falling and soaring in awful modulations that rang like the trumpet of the Last Angel. The people beat upon their breasts, the tears were like rain of the mountains on their cheeks; those that were able fell down flat on their faces before the glory of the veil. They said afterwards that men of the hills, twenty miles away, heard that cry and that singing, roaring upon them on the wind, and they fell down on their faces, and cried, "The offering is accomplished," knowing nothing of what they said. There were a few who saw three come out of the door of the sanctuary, and stand for a moment on the pace before the door. These three were in dyed vesture, red as blood. One stood before two, looking to the west, and he rang the bell. And they say that all the birds of the wood, and all the waters of the sea, and all the leaves of the trees, and all the winds of the high rocks uttered their voices with the ringing of the bell. And the second and the third; they turned their faces one to another. The second held up the lost altar that they once called Sapphirus, which was like the changing of the sea and of the sky, and like the immixture of gold and silver. And the third heaved up high over the altar a cup that was red with burning and the blood of the offering. And the old rector cried aloud then before the entrance: _Bendigeid yr Offeren yn oes oesoedd_--blessed be the Offering unto the age of ages. And then the Mass of the Sangraal was ended, and then began the passing out of that land of the holy persons and holy things that had returned to it after the long years. It seemed, indeed, to many that the thrilling sound of the bell was in their ears for days, even for weeks after that Sunday morning. But thenceforth neither bell nor altar nor cup was seen by anyone; not openly, that is, but only in dreams by day and by night. Nor did the people see Strangers again in the market of Llantrisant, nor in the lonely places where certain persons oppressed by great affliction and sorrow had once or twice encountered them. * * * * * But that time of visitation will never be forgotten by the people. Many things happened in the nine days that have not been set down in this record--or legend. Some of them were trifling matters, though strange enough in other times. Thus a man in the town who had a fierce dog that was always kept chained up found one day that the beast had become mild and gentle. And this is odder: Edward Davies, of Lanafon, a farmer, was roused from sleep one night by a queer yelping and barking in his yard. He looked out of the window and saw his sheep-dog playing with a big fox; they were chasing each other by turns, rolling over and over one another, "cutting such capers as I did never see the like," as the astonished farmer put it. And some of the people said that during this season of wonder the corn shot up, and the grass thickened, and the fruit was multiplied on the trees in a very marvellous manner. More important, it seemed, was the case of Williams, the grocer; though this may have been a purely natural deliverance. Mr. Williams was to marry his daughter Mary to a smart young fellow from Carmarthen, and he was in great distress over it. Not over the marriage itself, but because things had been going very badly with him for some time, and he could not see his way to giving anything like the wedding entertainment that would be expected of him. The wedding was to be on the Saturday--that was the day on which the lawyer, Lewis Prothero, and the farmer, Philip James, were reconciled--and this John Williams, without money or credit, could not think how shame would not be on him for the meagreness and poverty of the wedding feast. And then on the Tuesday came a letter from his brother, David Williams, Australia, from whom he had not heard for fifteen years. And David, it seemed, had been making a great deal of money, and was a bachelor, and here was with his letter a paper good for a thousand pounds: "You may as well enjoy it now as wait till I am dead." This was enough, indeed, one might say; but hardly an hour after the letter had come the lady from the big house (Plas Mawr) drove up in all her grandeur, and went into the shop and said, "Mr. Williams, your daughter Mary has always been a very good girl, and my husband and I feel that we must give her some little thing on her wedding, and we hope she'll be very happy." It was a gold watch worth fifteen pounds. And after Lady Watcyn, advances the old doctor with a dozen of port, forty years upon it, and a long sermon on how to decant it. And the old rector's old wife brings to the beautiful dark girl two yards of creamy lace, like an enchantment, for her wedding veil, and tells Mary how she wore it for her own wedding fifty years ago; and the squire, Sir Watcyn, as if his wife had not been already with a fine gift, calls from his horse, and brings out Williams and barks like a dog at him, "Goin' to have a weddin', eh, Williams? Can't have a weddin' without champagne, y' know; wouldn't be legal, don't y' know. So look out for a couple of cases." So Williams tells the story of the gifts; and certainly there was never so famous a wedding in Llantrisant before. All this, of course, may have been altogether in the natural order; the "glow," as they call it, seems more difficult to explain. For they say that all through the nine days, and indeed after the time had ended, there never was a man weary or sick at heart in Llantrisant, or in the country round it. For if a man felt that his work of the body or the mind was going to be too much for his strength, then there would come to him of a sudden a warm glow and a thrilling all over him and he felt as strong as a giant, and happier than he had ever been in his life before, so that lawyer and hedger each rejoiced in the task that was before him, as if it were sport and play. And much more wonderful than this or any other wonders was forgiveness, with love to follow it. There were meetings of old enemies in the market-place and in the street that made the people lift up their hands and declare that it was as if one walked the miraculous streets of Syon. * * * * * But as to the "phenomena," the occurrences for which, in ordinary talk, we should reserve the word "miraculous"? Well, what do we know? The question that I have already stated comes up again, as to the possible survival of old tradition in a kind of dormant, or torpid, semi-conscious state. In other words, did the people "see" and "hear" what they expected to see and hear? This point, or one similar to it, occurred in a debate between Andrew Lang and Anatole France as to the visions of Joan of Arc. M. France stated that when Joan saw St. Michael, she saw the traditional archangel of the religious art of her day, but to the best of my belief Andrew Lang proved that the visionary figure Joan described was not in the least like the fifteenth-century conception of St. Michael. So, in the case of Llantrisant, I have stated that there was a sort of tradition about the Holy Bell of Teilo Sant; and it is, of course, barely possible that some vague notion of the Graal Cup may have reached even Welsh country folks through Tennyson's Idylls. But so far I see no reason to suppose that these people had ever heard of the portable altar (called Sapphirus in William of Malmesbury) or of its changing colours "that no man could discern." And then there are the other questions of the distinction between hallucination and vision, of the average duration of one and the other, and of the possibility of collective hallucination. If a number of people all see (or think they see) the same appearances, can this be merely hallucination? I believe there is a leading case on the matter, which concerns a number of people seeing the same appearance on a church wall in Ireland; but there is, of course, this difficulty, that one may be hallucinated and communicate his impression to the others, telepathically. But at the last, what do we know? 
37180	----	PENELOPE BRANDLING By VERNON LEE A TALE OF THE WELSH COAST IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE M CM III TO AUGUSTINE BULTEAU THIS STORY OF NORTHERN WRECKERS, IN RETURN FOR A PIECE OF PARIAN MARBLE PICKED UP IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SURF AT PALO GRANDFEY, NEAR F., IN SWITZERLAND. _May_ 15, 1822. Having reached an age when the morrow is more than uncertain, and knowing how soon all verbal tradition becomes blurred and distorted, I, Sophia Penelope, daughter of Jacques de Morat, a cadet of the Counts of that name, sometime a captain in the service of King Louis XV., and of Sophia Hamilton, his wife; and furthermore, widow of the late Sir Eustace Brandling, ninth baronet, of St. Salvat's Castle, in the county of Glamorgan, have yielded to the wishes of my dear surviving sons, and am preparing to consign to paper, for the benefit of their children and grandchildren, some account of those circumstances in my life which decided that the lot of this family should so long have been cast in foreign parts and remote colonies, instead of in its ancestral and legitimate home. I can the better fulfil this last duty to my dear ones, living and dead, that I have by me a journal which, as it chanced, I was in the habit of keeping at that period; and require to draw upon my memory only for such details as happen to be missing in that casual record of my daily life some fifty years ago. And first of all let me explain to my children's children that I began to keep this journal two years after my marriage with their grandfather, with the idea of sending it regularly to my dearest mother, from whom, for the first time in my young life, I was separated by my husband's unexpected succession and our removal from Switzerland to his newly-inherited estates in Wales. Let me also explain that before this event, which took place in the spring of seventeen hundred and seventy-two, Sir Eustace Brandling was merely a young Englishman of handsome person, gentlemanly bearing, an uncommon knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and a most blameless and amiable temper, but with no expectations of fortune in the future, and only a modest competence in the present. So that it was regarded in our Canton and among our relations as a proof of my dear mother's high-flown and romantic temper, and of the unpractical influence of the writings of Rousseau and other philosophers, that she should have allowed her only child to contract such a marriage. And at the time of its celebration it did indeed appear improbable that we should ever cease residing with my dearest mother on her little domain of Grandfey; still more that our existence of pastoral and philosophic happiness should ever be exchanged for the nightmare of dishonour and misery which followed it. The beginning of our calamities was, as I said, on the death of Sir Thomas Brandling, my husband's only brother. I have preserved a most vivid recollection of the day which brought us that news, perhaps because, looked back upon ever after, it seemed the definite boundary of a whole part of our life, left so quickly and utterly behind, as the shore is left even with the first few strokes of the oars. My dear mother and I were in the laundry, where the maids were busy putting by the freshly ironed linen. My mother, who was ever more skilful with her hands, as she was nimbler in her thoughts, than I, had put aside all the most delicate pieces and the lace to dress and iron herself; while I, who had made a number of large bundles of lavender (our garden had never produced it in so great profusion), was standing on a chair and placing them in the shelves of the presses, between each bale of sheets and table linen which the maids had lifted up to me. When, looking through the open glass door, I saw Vincent, the farm servant, hurrying along the lime walk, and across the kitchen garden, and waving a packet at us. He had been to the city to buy sugar, I remember, for the raspberry jam, which my mother, an excellent cook, had decided to sweeten a second time, for fear of its turning. "He seems very excited," said my mother, looking out. "I declare he has a book or packet, perhaps it is the _Journal des Savants_ for Eustace, or that opera by Monsieur Gluck, which your uncle promised you. I hope he has not forgotten the nutmegs." I write down these childish details because I cherished them for years, as one might cherish a blade of grass or a leaf, carelessly put as a marker in a book, and belonging to a country one will never revisit. "It is a letter for Eustace," said my mother, "and very heavy too. I am glad Vincent had more money than necessary, for it must have cost a lot at the post." And going under my husband's laboratory window she asked whether he wanted the letter at once, or would wait to open it at dinner time. "I am only cleaning my instruments," he answered, "let me have the letter now." His voice, as I hear it through all those years, sounds so happy and boyish. It was altered, and it seemed at the time naturally enough, when he presently came down to the laundry and said very briefly, "My brother is dead ... it is supposed a stab from a drunken sailor at Bristol. A shocking business. It is my Uncle Hubert who writes." He had sat down by the ironing table and spoke in short, dry sentences. There was something extraordinary about his voice, not grief, but agitation, which somehow made it utterly impossible for me to do what would have been natural under the circumstances, to put my arms round his neck and tell him I shared his trouble. Instead of which every word he uttered seemed to ward me off as with the sword's point, and to cover himself, as a fencer covers his vitals. "Get some brandy for him, Penelope. He is feeling faint," said my mother, tossing me her keys. I obeyed, feeling that she understood and I did not, as often happened between us. I was a few minutes away, for I had to cross the yard to the dwelling house, and then I found that my mother had given me the wrong keys. I filled a glass from a jar of cherries we had just put up, and returned to the laundry. My husband was white, but did not look at all faint. He was leaning his elbow on the deal table covered with blanket, and nervously folding and stretching a ruffle which lay by the bowl of starch. When I came in he suddenly stopped speaking, and my mother saw that I noticed it. "Eustace was saying, my dear," she said, "that he will have to go--almost immediately--to England, on account of the property. He wanted to go on alone, and fetch you later, when things should be a little to rights. But I was telling him, Penelope, that I felt sure you would recognise it as your duty to go with him from the very first, and help him through any difficulties." My dear mother had resumed her ironing; and as she said these last words, her voice trembled a little, and she stooped very attentively over the cap she was smoothing. Eustace was sitting there, so unlike himself suddenly, and muttered nervously, "I really can see no occasion, Maman, for anything of the sort." I cannot say what possessed me; I verily think a presentiment of the future. But I put down the plate and glass, looked from my mother to my husband, and burst into a childish flood of tears. I heard my husband give a little peevish "Ah!" rise, leave the room, and then bang the door of his laboratory upstairs behind him. And then I felt my dear mother's arms about me, and her kiss on my cheek. I mopped my eyes with my apron, but at first I could not see properly for the tears. When I was able to see again what struck me was the scene through the long window, open down to the ground. It was a lovely evening, and the air full of the sweetness of lime blossom. The low sunlight made the plaster of our big old house a pale golden, and the old woodwork of its wooden eaves, wide and shaped like an inverted boat, as is the Swiss fashion, of a beautiful rosy purple. The dogs were lying on the house steps, by the great tubs of hydrangeas and flowering pomegranates; and beyond the sanded yard I could see the bent back of Vincent stooping among the hives in the kitchen garden. The grass beyond was brilliant green, all powdered with hemlock flower; and the sun made a deep track in the avenue, along which the cows were trotting home to be milked. I felt my heart break, as once or twice I had foolishly done as a child, and in a manner in which I have never felt it again despite all my later miseries. I suppose it was that I was only then really ceasing to be a child, though I had been married two years. It was evidently in my mother's thoughts, for she followed my glance with hers, and then said very solemnly, and kissing me again (she had not let go of me all this while), "My poor little Penelope! you must learn to be a woman. You will want all your strength and all your courage to help your husband." That was really the end, or the beginning. There were some weeks of plan-making and preparations, a bad dream which has faded away from my memory. And then, at the beginning of August of that year--1772--my husband and I started from Grandfey for St. Salvat's. I _September_ 29, 1772. This is my first night in what, henceforward, is going to be my home. The thought should be a happy and a solemn one; but it merely goes on and on in my head like the words of a song in some unknown language. Eustace has gone below to his uncles; and I am alone in this great room, and also, I imagine, in the whole wing of this great house. The wax lights on the dressing-table, and the unsnuffed dip with which the old housekeeper lit us through endless passages, leave all the corners dark. But the moonlight pours in through the vast, cage-like window. The moon is shining on a strip of sea above the tree-tops, and the noise of the sea is quite close; a noise quite unlike that of any running water, and methinks very melancholy and hopeless in expression. I tried to enjoy it like a play, or a romance which one reads; and indeed, the whole impression of this castle is marvellously romantic. When Eustace had unstrapped my packages, and in his tender manner placed all my little properties in order, he took me in his arms, meaning thereby to welcome me to my new home and the house of his fathers. We were standing by the window, and I tried, foolishly it seems, to hide my weakness of spirit (for I confess to having felt a great longing to cry) by pointing to that piece of moonlit sea, and repeating a line of Ossian, at the beginning of the description of the pirates crossing the sea to the house of Erved. Foolishly, for although that passage is a favourite with Eustace, indeed one we often read during our courtship, he was annoyed at my thinking of such matters, I suppose, at such a moment; and answered with that kind of irritated deprecation that is so new to me; embracing me indeed once more, but leaving me immediately to go to his uncles. Foolish Penelope! It is this no doubt which makes me feel lonely just now; and I can hear you, dearest mother, chiding me laughingly, for giving so much weight to such an incident. Eustace will return presently, as gentle and sympathising as ever, and all will be right with me. Meanwhile, I will note down the events of this day, so memorable in my life. We seemed to ride for innumerable hours, I in the hired chaise, and my husband on the horse he had bought at Bristol. The road wound endlessly up and down, through a green country, with barely a pale patch of reaped field, and all veiled in mist and driving rain. There seemed no villages anywhere, only at distances of miles, a scant cottage or two of grey stone and thatch; and once or twice during all those hours, a desolate square tower among distant trees; and all along rough hedges and grey walls with stones projecting like battlements. Inland mountain lines like cliffs, dim in the rain; and at last, over the pale green fields, the sea--quite pale, almost white. We had to ask our way more than once, losing it again in this vague country without landmarks, where everything appeared and disappeared in mist. I had begun to feel as if St. Salvat's had no real existence, when Eustace rode up to the chaise window and pointed out the top of a tower, and a piece of battlemented wall, emerging from the misty woods, and a minute after we were at a tall gate tower, with a broken escutcheon and a drawbridge, which clanked up behind us so soon as we were over. We stopped in a great castle yard, with paved paths across a kind of bowling green, and at the steps of the house, built unevenly all round, battlemented and turreted, with huge projecting windows made of little panes. There were a lot of men upon the steps, who surrounded the postchaise; they were roughly and variously dressed, some like fishermen and keepers, but none as I had hitherto seen the gentlemen of this country. But as we stopped, another came down the steps with a masterful air, pushed them aside, opened the chaise, lifted me out, and made me a very fine bow as I stood quite astonished at the suddenness of his ways. He was dressed entirely in black broadcloth, with a frizzled wig and bands, as clergymen are dressed here, and black cloth gaiters. "May it please the fair Lady Brandling," he said, with a fine gesture, "to accept the hearty welcome of her old Uncle Hubert, and of her other kinsmen." The others came trooping round awkwardly, with little show of manners. But the one called Hubert, the clergyman, gave me his arm, waived them away, said something about my being tired from the long ride, and swept, nay, almost carried me up the great staircase and through the passages to the room where dinner was spread. Of this he excused himself from partaking, alleging the lateness of the hour and his feeble digestion; but he sat over against my husband and me while we were eating, drank wine with me, and kept up a ceaseless flow of conversation, rather fulsomely affable methought and packed with needless witticisms; but which freed me from the embarrassment produced by the novelty of the situation, by my husband's almost utter silence, and also, I must add, by the man's own scrutinising examination of me. I was heartily glad when, the glasses being removed, he summoned the housekeeper, and with another very fine bow, committed me to her charge. Eustace begged to be excused for accompanying me to my chamber, and promised to return and drink his wine presently with his kinsmen. And now, dear mother, I have told you of our arrival at St. Salvat's; and I have confessed to you my childish fear of I know not what. "Mere bodily fatigue!" I hear you briskly exclaiming, and chiding me for such childish feelings. But if you were here, dearest mother, you would take me also in your arms, and I should know that you knew it was not all foolishness and cowardice, that you would know what it is, for the first time in my little life, to be without you. _October_ 5, 1772. It has stopped raining at last, and Eustace, who is again the kindest and most considerate of men, has taken me all over the castle and the grounds, or at least a great part. St. Salvat's is even more romantically situated than I had thought; and with its towers and battlements hidden in deep woods, it makes one think of castles, like that of Otranto, which one reads of in novels; nay, I was the more reminded of the latter work of fiction (which Eustace believes to be from the pen of the accomplished Mr. Walpole, whom we knew in Paris), that there are, let into the stonework on either side of the porch, huge heads of warriors, filleted and crowned with laurel, which though purporting to be those of the Emperors Augustus and Trajan, yet look as if they might fit into some gigantic helmet such as we read of in that admirable tale. From the house, which has been built at various times (Eustace is of opinion mainly in the time of the famous Cardinal Wolsey, as the architecture, it appears, is similar to that of His Majesty's palace at Hampton Court), into the old castle; from the house, as I say, the gardens descend in great terraces and steps into the woods and to the sea. The gardens are indeed very much neglected, and will require no doubt, a considerable expenditure of labour; but I am secretly charmed by their wild luxuriance: a great vine and a pear tree hang about the mullioned windows almost unpruned, and the box and bay trees have grown into thickets in the extraordinary kindliness of this warm, moist climate. There is in the middle of the terraces, a pond all overgrown with lilies, and with a broken leaden statue of a nymph. Here, when he was a child, Eustace was wont to watch for the transformation into a fairy of a great water snake which was said to have lived in that pond for centuries; but I well remember his awakening my compassion by telling me how, one day, his brother Thomas, wishing to displease him, trapped the poor harmless creature and cruelly skinned it alive. "That is the place of my poor water snake," Eustace said to-day; and it was the first time since our coming, that he has alluded to his own or his family's past. Poor Eustace! I am deeply touched by the evident painful memories awakened by return to St. Salvat's, which have over-clouded his reserved and sensitive nature, in a manner I had not noticed (thank Heaven) since our marriage. But to return to the castle, or rather its grounds. What chiefly delights my romantic temper are the woods in which it is hidden, and its singular position, on an utterly isolated little bay of this wild and dangerous coast. You go down the terraces into a narrow ravine, lined with every manner of fern, and full of venerable trees; past the little church of which our Uncle Hubert is the incumbent, alongside some ruined buildings, once the quarters of the Brandlings' troopers, across a field full of yellow bog flowers, and on to a high wall. And on the other side of that wall, quite unexpected, is the white, misty sea, dashing against a bit of sand and low pale rocks, where our uncles' fishing boats are drawn up, and chafing, further off against the sunken reefs of this murderous coast. And to the right and the left, great clumps of wind-bent trees and sharp cliffs appear and disappear in the faint, misty sunshine. As we stood on the sea wall, listening to the rustle of the waves, a ship, with three masts and full sail, passed slowly at a great distance, to my very great pleasure. "Where is she going, do you know?" I asked rather childishly. "To Bristol," answered Eustace curtly. "It is perhaps, some West Indiaman, laden with sugar, and spirits, and coffee and cotton. All the vessels bound for Bristol sail in front of St. Salvat's." "And is not the coast very dangerous?" I asked, for the sight of that gallant ship had fascinated me. "Are there not wrecks sometimes along those reefs we see there?" "Sometimes!" exclaimed Eustace sadly. "Why at seasons, almost daily. All that wood which makes the blue flame you like so much, is the timber of wrecked vessels, picked up along this coast." My eye rested on the boats drawn up on the sand of the little cove: stout black boats, such as Eustace had pointed out to me at Bristol as pilchard boats. "And when there is a wreck?" I asked, "do your uncles go out to save the poor people with those boats?" "Alas, dear Lady Brandling," answered an unexpected voice at my elbow, "it is not given to poor weak mortals like us to contend with the decrees of a just, though wrathful Providence." I turned round and there stood, leaning on the sea wall, with his big liquorice-coloured eyes fixed on me, and a smile (methought) of polite acquiescence in shipwrecks, our uncle, the Reverend Hubert, in his fine black coat and frizzled white wig. _October_ 12, 1772. We have been here over a fortnight now, and although it feels as if I never could grow accustomed to all this strangeness, it seems months; and those years at Grandfey, all my life before my marriage, and before our journey, a vivid dream. Where shall I begin? During the first week Eustace and I had our meals, as seemed but natural, in the great hall with his uncles and his one cousin. For two days things went decently enough. The uncles--Simon, Edward, Gwyn, David, and the cousin, Evan, son of David, were evidently under considerable restraint, and fear (methought) of the Reverend Hubert, who seems somehow a creature from another planet. The latter sat by Eustace and me, at the high end of the table; the others, and with them the Bailiff Lloyd, at the lower. The service was rough but clean, and the behaviour, although gloomily constrained, decent and gentlemanly. But little by little a spirit of rebellion seemed to arise. It began by young Evan, a sandy-haired lad of seventeen, coming to dinner with hands unwashed and red from skinning, as he told us, an otter; and on the Reverend Hubert bidding him go wash before appearing in my presence, his father, David, taking his part, forcing the lad into his chair, and saying something in the unintelligible Welsh language, which contained some rudeness towards me, for he plainly nodded in my direction and struck the table with his fist. At this the Reverend Hubert got up, took the boy Evan by the shoulders and led him to the door, without one of the party demurring. "The lovely Lady Brandling," he said, turning to me as he resumed his place, "must forgive this young Caliban, unaccustomed like the one of the play, to beautiful princesses." I notice he loves to lard his speech with literary reminiscences, and is indeed a better read person than one would expect to meet in such a place. This was, however, only the beginning. Uncle David appeared next night undoubtedly in liquor, and was with difficulty constrained to decent behaviour. Simon, a heavy, lubberly creature, arrived all covered with mud, in shirtsleeves, and smelling vilely of stale fish. Then it was the turn of Edward, a great black man, with a scar on his cheek, to light his pipe at table, and pinch the Welsh serving wench as she passed, and whisper to her in Welsh some jest which made the others roar. Eustace and Hubert, between whom I sat at the far end, pretended not to notice, though Eustace reddened visibly, and Hubert took an odd green colour, which seems to be the complexion of his anger. And then while our clergyman uncle and Eustace busily fell to discussing literature, and even (in a manner which, under other circumstances, would have made me laugh) quoting the classics, the conversation at the lower end became loud and violent in Welsh. "They are discussing the likelihood of a shoal of pilchards," said Hubert to me with a faint uneasy smile. "My brothers, I grieve to say, dear Lady Brandling, are but country bred, and very rough diamonds; and the Saxon, as they call our Christian language, is a difficulty to their heathenishness." "So great a difficulty, apparently," I answered, suddenly rising from the table, for I felt indignant with the want of spirit of my two gentlemen, "that methinks I shall in future leave them to their familiar Welsh, and order my meals in my parlour, where you two gentlemen may, if you choose, have them with me." Eustace turned crimson, bit his lip; Uncle Hubert went very green; and I own I myself was astonished at my decision of tone and attitude: it was like an unknown _me_ speaking with my voice. Contrary to my expectation, neither Eustace nor Hubert manifested any vexation with me. We went upstairs and sat down to cards as if nothing had happened. But the next day Hubert brought me a long message of apology, which I confess sounded very much of his making up, from Uncle David. But added that he quite agreed that it was better that Eustace and I should have our meals above, "and leave the hogs to their wash." "Only," he said, with that politeness which I like so little (though Heaven knows politeness ought to be a welcome drug in this place), "I trust my dear young niece will not cast me out of the paradise I have, after so many years, tasted of; and allow her old rough Uncle Hubert occasionally to breathe the air of refinement she has brought to this castle." Yet I notice he has but rarely eaten with Eustace and me; coming up, however, to drink wine (or pretend, for he never empties his glass and complains he has but a weak head), or play cards, or hear me sing to the harpsichord, a performance of which he seems inordinately fond. I cannot help wondering what Eustace and he discuss, besides literature, over their wine. For Eustace must surely intend, sooner or later, to resume his position of master of St. Salvat's, and dispose, some way, of the crew of Caliban uncles. _October_ 18, 1772. I ought to say something to my dear mother (though I am getting doubtful of distressing her with my small and temporary troubles) about the domestic economy of St. Salvat's. This is odd enough, to my thinking. The greater part of the castle is unoccupied, and from what I have seen, quite out of repair; nor should I have deemed it possible that so many fine dwelling-rooms could ever have been filled and choked up, as is here the case, with lumber, and, indeed, litter, of all kinds. The uncles, all except Hubert, are lodged in the great south wing, and I should guess in a manner more suitable to their looks than to their birth, while Eustace and I occupy his mother's apartments, done up in the late reign, in the north wing looking on the sea. The centre of the castle is taken up by the great hall, going from ground to ceiling, so that the two halves are virtually isolated; certainly isolated so far as I am concerned, since the fear of eavesdropping on my uncles' brawling has already stopped my using the gallery which runs under the ceiling of the hall, and connects my apartments with the main staircase. The dairy, still-room, pantry, and even the kitchen are in outhouses, from which the serving men bring in the food often in pouring rain in an incredibly reckless manner. I say "serving men," because one of the peculiarities of St. Salvat's (for I can scarce believe it to be an universal practice in England or even in Wales) is the predominance of the male sex. But let not your fancy construe this as a sign of grandeur, or conjure up bevies of lacqueys in long coats and silver badges! Like master, like man; the men at St. Salvat's have the same unkempt, sea-wolfish look as the masters, are equally foul in their habits and possess even less English. By some strange freak the cook only is not of these parts, indeed, a mulatto, knowing only Spanish. "All good sea-faring folk, able to man the boats on a stormy night," explained Uncle Gwyn, as if it were quite natural that the castle of St. Salvat's should be a headquarters of pilchard fishing! I have only seen the mulatto at a distance, and at first believed him to be an invention of Uncle Simon's, the wag of the family, who informed me he had him off a notorious pirate ship, where he had learnt to grill d----d French frogs during the late war and serve them up with capers. The small number of women servants is scarce to be regretted, judging by the few there are. Though whether, indeed, these sluts should be judged at all as serving women I feel inclined to doubt; for no secret is made of the dairymaid and the laundress being the sultanas of Uncles Simon and Gwyn, with whom they often sit to meals; while the little waiting wench at first allotted to me was too obviously courted by the oaf Evan to be kept in my service. Uncle Hubert had indeed thought it needful to explain to me that the gentry of these parts all live worse than heathens, and has attempted (but the subject gave me little satisfaction) to confirm this by the _chronique galante_ of the neighbourhood; 'tis wonderful how quick the man is at taking a hint, and adapting his views to his listeners', at least to mine. To come back to the maids, if such a name can be applied here, I find the only reputable woman in the castle (her age, and something in her manner give her a claim to such an adjective) is Mrs. Davies, the supposed housekeeper, who now attends on my (luckily very simple) wants. She was the foster-mother and nurse of my brother-in-law, the late Baronet; and 'tis plain there was no love lost betwixt Eustace and her. Indeed, I seem to guess she may have helped to make his infancy the sad and solitary one it was. Yet, for all this suspicion, and a confused impression (which I can't account for) that the woman is set over us to spy, I am bound to say that of all people here, not excepting Uncle Hubert here, Mrs. Davies is the one most to my taste. She has been notably beautiful, and despite considerable age, has an uncommon active and erect bearing; and there is about her harsh, dark face, and silent, abrupt manners, something which puts me at ease by its strength and straightforwardness. This seems curious after saying she has been _set to spy_; but 'tis my impression that in this heathenish country spying, aye, and I can fancy robbing and murdering, might be done with a clean conscience as a duty towards one's masters; and Hubert, and the memory of Sir Thomas, are the real masters, and not Eustace and I.... Will it always be so? Things look like it; and yet, at the bottom of my soul, I find a hope, almost an expectation, that with God's grace I shall clean out this Augean stable, and burn out these wasp's nests.... _October_ 29. On my asking about prayers, a practice I had noticed in every family since my arrival in England, Uncle Hubert excused himself by explaining that most of the common folk about here had followed Mr. Wesley's sect, and for the rest few of the household understood English. The same reason methought prevented his fulfilling his clergyman's office in public; and when three Sundays had passed, I got to think that the church in the glen was never opened at all. To my surprise last night, being Saturday, the Reverend Hubert invited us very solemnly to Divine Service the following morning; invited, for his manner was very much that of a man requesting one's company at a concert or theatrical entertainment. I am just returned, and I confess my astonishment. Uncle Hubert, though in a style by no means to my taste, and with no kind of real religious spirit, is undoubtedly a preacher of uncommon genius, nor was there any possibility, methought, that his extempore sermon was learned by heart. The flowing rhetorical style, more like that of Romish divines, was of a piece also with his conversation, and he had the look of enjoyment of one conscious of his own powers. I own the interest of the performance (for such I felt it) was so great that it was only on reflection I perceived the utter and almost indecent inappropriateness thereof. Despite the lack of English, the entire household, save the mulatto, were present, mostly asleep in constrained attitudes; and the other uncles, all except David and Gwyn, lay snoring in their pews. My own impression was oddly disagreeable; but on the service ending, I brought myself to compliment our uncle. "You should have been a bishop," I said, "at your age, Uncle Hubert." He sighed deeply, "A bishop? I ought to have--I might have been--everything, anything--save for this cursed place and my own weakness. But doubtless," he added, hypocritically, "it is a just decree of Providence that has decided thus. But it is hard sometimes. There are two natures in us, occasionally, and the one vanquishes and overwhelms the other. In me," and here he began to laugh, "the fisherman for pilchards has got the better of the fisherman for souls." "Fishing appears to have wondrous attractions," I answered negligently. He turned and looked at me scrutinisingly. "We have all had the passion, we Brandlings," he said, "except that superfine gentleman yonder," nodding at Eustace. And added, in a loud, emphatic voice, "And none of us has been a more devoted fisherman, you will admit, dear Eustace, than your lamented father." Eustace, I thought, turned pale, but it might have been the greenish light through the bottle-glass windows of the little church, on whose damp floor we three were standing before the tombs of the Brandlings of former times, quaint pyramids of kneeling figures, sons and daughters tapering downwards from the kneeling father and mother; and recumbent knights, obliterated by centuries in the ruined roofless chapel, so that the dog at their feet, the sword by their side, let alone their poor washed features, were scarce distinguishable.... "They look like drowned people," I said, and indeed the green light through the trees and the bottle glass, and the greenish damp stains all round, made the church seem like a sea cave, with the sea moaning round it. "Where have you seen drowned people, Penelope?" asked Eustace, and I felt a little reproved for the horridness of my imaginings. "Nowhere," I hastily answered; "just a fancy that passed through my head. And you said there are so many wrecks on this coast, you know." "We are all wrecks on the ocean of Time," remarked the Reverend Hubert, "overwhelmed by its flood." "You are the bishop now," I laughed, "not the pilchard fisher," and we went through the damp churchyard of huddled grassy mounds and crooked gravestones under the big trees of the glen. "Eustace," I said that evening, "I wish I might not be buried down there," and then, considering that all his ancestors were, I felt sorry. But he clasped my arm very tenderly, and exclaimed with a look of deep pain, "For God's sake do not speak of such things, my love. Even in jest the words make me feel faint and sick." Poor Eustace! I fear he is not well; and that what he has found at St. Salvat's is eating into his spirits. _November_ 15, 1772. I have been feeling doubtful, for some days past, whether to send my diary regularly to my mother, lest she should be distressed (at that great distance) by my account of this place and our life here. Yet I felt as if something had suddenly happened, a window suddenly closed or a door slammed in my face, when Eustace begged me to-day to be very reserved in anything I wrote in my letters. "These country postmasters," he said, not without hesitation, "are not to be trusted with any secrets; they are known to amuse their leisure and entertain their gossips with the letters which pass through their hands." He laughed, but not very naturally. "Some day," he said, "I will be sending a special messenger to Cardiff, and then your diary--for I know that you are keeping one--shall go to your mother. But for the present I would not say more than needful about ... about our surroundings, my dear Penelope." I felt childishly vexed. "'Tis that hateful Uncle Hubert;" I cried, "that reads our letters, Eustace! I feel sure of it!" "Nonsense," answered Eustace. "I tell you that it is a well-known habit among postmasters and postmistresses in this country," and he went away a little displeased, as I thought. My poor journal! And yet I shall continue writing it, and perhaps even more frankly now it will be read only by me; for while I write I seem to be talking to my dearest mother, and to be a little less solitary.... II _December_ 21, 1772. Winter has come on: a melancholy, wet and stormy winter, without the glitter of snow and ice; and with the sea moaning or roaring by turns. I think with longing (though I hope poor Eustace does not guess how near I sometimes am to crying for homesickness) of our sledging parties with the dear cheerful neighbours at Grandfey; of the skating on the ponds, and the long walks on the crisp frozen snow, when Eustace and I would snowball or make long slides, laughing like children. At St. Salvat's there are no neighbours; or if there are (but the nearest large house is ten miles off, and belongs to a noble lord who never leaves London) they do not show themselves. I do not even know what there is or is not in the country that lies inland; in fact, since our coming, I have never left the grounds and park of St. Salvat's, nor gone beyond the old fortified walls which encircle them. My very curiosity has gradually faded. I have never pressed Hubert for the saddle horse and the equipage (the coach-house contains only broken-down coaches of the days of King George I.) which he promised rather vaguely to procure for me on our first coming; I have no wish to pass beyond that drawbridge; like a caged bird, I have grown accustomed to my prison. Since the bad weather I have even ceased my rambles in the shrubberies and on the grass-grown terraces: the path to the sea has been slippery with mud; besides I hate that melancholy winter sea, always threatening or complaining. I stay within doors for days together, without pleasure or profit, reading old plays and novels which I throw aside, or putting a few stitches into useless tambour work; I who could formerly not live a day within doors, nor do whatever I set to do without childish strenuousness! These two or three days past I have been trying to find diversion in reading the history of these parts, where the Brandlings--kings of this part of Wales in the time of King Arthur, crusaders later, and great barons fighting at Crecy and at Agincourt--once played so great a part, and now they have dwindled into common smugglers, for 'tis my growing persuasion that such is the real trade hidden under the name of pilchard fishing--defrauders of the King's Exchequer, and who knows? for all Hubert's rank as magistrate, no better than thieves and outlawed ruffians. Hubert has been showing me the family archives. He lays great store by all these deeds and papers, and one is surprised in a house so utterly given over to neglect, to find anything in such good order. He saved the archives himself he tells me, when (as I have always forgotten to note down) the library of the castle was burnt down on the occasion of my late brother-in-law's _wake_; a barbarous funereal feast habitual in these parts, and during which a drunken guest set fire to the draperies of the coffin. I did not ask whether the body of Sir Thomas, which had been brought by sea from Bristol after his violent end there, had been destroyed in this extraordinary pyre; and I judge that it was from Eustace's silence and Hubert's evident avoidance of the point. Perhaps he is conscious that his efforts were directed to a different object, for it is well nigh miraculous how he should have saved those shelves full of documents and all that number of valuable books bound with the Brandling arms. "You must have risked your life in the flames!" I exclaimed with admiration at the man's heroism. He bid me look at his hands, which indeed bear traces of dreadful burning. "I care about my ancestors," he answered, "perhaps more, to say the truth, than for my living kinsfolk. Besides," he added, "I ought to say that I had taken the precaution to remove the most valuable books before giving over the library to their drunken rites. As it was, they burnt my poor dead nephew to ashes like the phoenix of the Poets, only that he, poor lad, will not arise from them till the day of judgment!" _January_ 12, 1773. A horrid circumstance has just happened, and oddly enough in that same library which had been burnt, all but its ancient walls, at my brother-in-law's funeral, I had persuaded Eustace to turn it into a laboratory, for I think a certain melancholy may be due to the restless idleness in which he has been living ever since we came here. In building one of the furnaces the masons had to make a deep cavity in the wall; and there, what should appear, but a number of skeletons, nine or ten, walled up erect in the thickness of the masonry. I was taking the air on the terrace outside, and hearing the men's exclamations, ran to the spot. It was a ghastly sight. But my uncle Simon, who was smoking his pipe in the great empty room, burst into uncontrollable laughter over my horror; and going up to a little heap of mouldering bones which had fallen out with the plaster, picked up a green and spongy shin and brought it to me. "Here's some material for Eustace ready to hand!" he cried with a vile oath. "Let him try whether he can bring these pretty fellows to life again in his devil's cooking pots," and he thrust the horrid object under my nose. At this moment Hubert appeared, and, with his wolf's eyes, took in all at a glance. "Fie, fie," he cried, striking that horrid relic out of his brother's hand, "are these fit sights for a lady, you hog, Simon?" and taking me brusquely by the hand, leads me away, and, in the pantry, tries to make me swallow a dose of brandy, with much petting and cosseting. "Our ancestors, dear Lady Brandling (for so he affects to call me), were but rough soldiers, though princes of these parts; and the relics of their games scarce fit for your pretty eyes. But have a sup of brandy, my dear, 'twill set you right." I loathed the mealy-mouthed black creature, methought, worse than drunken Simon, and worse almost than those horrid dead men. "No, thank you, uncle," I said, "my stomach is stronger than you think. My ancestors also were soldiers--soldiers on the field of battle--though I never heard of their bricking up their enemies in the house wall." "Nay, nay," he cried, "but that was an evil habit of those days, dear Lady Brandling, hundreds and thousands of years ago, when we were sovereign princes." "Hundreds and thousands of years ago?" I answered, for I hated him at that moment, "ah well, I had thought it was scarce so far removed from us as all that." _January_ 31, 1773. A curious feeling has been tormenting me of late, of self-reproach for I scarce know what, of lack of helpfulness, almost of disloyalty towards my husband. Since we have been here, indeed I think ever since the first announcement of Sir Thomas's death, Eustace has altered in his manner towards me; a whole side of his life has, I feel, been hidden from me. Have I a right to it? This is what has been debating in my mind. A man may have concerns which it is no duty of his to share with a wife; not because she is only a wife, and he a husband, for my dear Eustace's mind is too enlightened and generous, too thoroughly imbued with the noble doctrines of our days, to admit of such a difference. But there is one of my mother's sayings which has worked very deeply into my mind. It was on the eve of my wedding. "Remember, dear little Penelope," she said, "that no degree of love, however pure, noble, and perfect, can really make two souls into one soul. All appearance to the contrary is a mere delusion and dangerous. Every human soul has its own nature, its necessary laws, and demands liberty and privacy to develop them; and were this not the case, no soul, however loving and courageous, could ever help another, for it would have no strength, no understanding, no life, with which to bring help. Remember this, my child, till the moment come when you shall understand it, and, I hope, act in the light of its comprehension." Well, methinks that ever since that day when the letter arrived which changed our destiny, I have not merely remembered, but learned to understand these words. So that I have fought against the soreness of feeling that, on some matters at least, I was excluded from my husband's confidence. After two years of such utter openness of heart as has existed between us three--our mother, Eustace, and, younger and weaker though I felt, myself--such free discussion of all ideas and interests, of his scientific work, even to details which I could not grasp, after this there is undoubtedly something strange in the absolute reserve, indeed the utter silence, he maintains about everything concerning his family, his property, and our position and circumstances, the more so that, at the time of our marriage he often confided to me details connected with it. Thus, in that past which seems already so remote, he has often described to me this very house, these very rooms, told me his childish solitude and terrors, and spoken quite freely of the unhappy life of his mother by the side of his cruel and violent father, and among his father's brutal besotted companions; he had told me of the horrid heartlessness with which his only brother played upon his sensitiveness and abused his weakness, and of the evil habits, the odious scenes of intemperance and violence from which he was screened by his poor mother, and finally saved by her generous decision to part with him and have him educated abroad. He had mentioned the continual brawls of his uncles. But since his succession to the property, never a word has alluded to any of these things, nor to the knowledge he had given me of them. Once or twice, when I have mentioned, quite naturally, his dead brother, his mother (I am actually occupying her apartments, sleeping in her bed, and only yesterday Eustace spent the afternoon mending and tuning her harpsichord for me), he has let the subject drop, or diverted the conversation in an unmistakable manner. Nay, what is more significant, and more puzzling, Eustace has never given me a clue to whether he knew of the arrangements, the life, we should find here; before our arrival, he had never mentioned that the castle was, to all intents and purposes, in the hands of his kinsmen; nor has he dropped a word in explanation of so extraordinary a circumstance. And I have never asked him whether he knew to what manner of life he was bringing me, whether he intends it to continue, what are his reasons and plans. I have respected his reserve. But have I been perfectly loyal in hiding my wonder, my disappointment, my sorrow? _February_ 5, 1773. I cannot make up my mind about Uncle Hubert. Is he our fellow-victim or the ringleader of this usurping gang of ruffians? The more I see, the more I hesitate upon the point. But, as time goes on, I hesitate less and less in my dislike of him, although I own it often seems unreasonable and ungrateful. The man not only tries to make himself agreeable to us, but I almost think he feels kindly. He has a real appreciation of Eustace's genius; and, indeed, it is this, most likely, which sometimes causes me to think well, though I fear never _kindly_, of him. It is quite wonderful how he lights up whenever he can get Eustace (no easy matter) to speak on philosophic subjects; it is a kind of transfiguration, and all the obliquity and fawningness about the creature vanishes. He has a good knowledge of mathematics, Eustace tells me, is a skilful mechanic, and would evidently enjoy assisting my husband in his experiments if he would let him. Towards myself he has, I do believe, a kind of sentiment, and what is worse, of paternal sentiment! _Worse_ because my whole nature recoils from him. He is most passionately fond of music, plays fairly on the viol, and takes quite a childish pleasure in making me sing and play. I ought indeed to be grateful towards him, for his presence, although distasteful I think to both of us, is a boon, in so far as it relieves the strain of feeling that there is a secret--a something which has come between my husband and me. Alas, alas! that the presence of a third person, of a person such as Hubert, should ever have come to be a boon! But I dare not face this thought. It is worse than any of the bad realities and bad probabilities of this bad place. If only Hubert would not make me presents, forcing me thus to feel how hugely I hate having to accept anything from him. It began (almost as a bribe, methought) in the shape of a fine gold watch and equipage the very day after Uncle Edward's misbehaviour. Then, some time after, a cut of handsome Lyons brocade, enough for a gown, though Heaven knows there is no occasion for such finery at St. Salvat's! And this evening, after listening to me through some songs of Monsieur Piccini, and teaching me some of the plaintive airs of the Welsh peasantry, the man drew from his coat a fine shagreen case, which proved to contain a string of large and very regularly shaped and sorted pearls. I felt I could not bear it. "Are they pearls of my mother-in-law's?" I asked without thanking him, and in a tone anything, I fear, but grateful. Instead of being angry and turning green, as I expected, Uncle Hubert looked merely very much hurt and answered: "Had they been heirlooms it would have been your husband, not your uncle, to hand them you. Eustace is the head of the family, not I." "The less said about the family and its head," I answered hotly, "the better, Uncle Hubert," and I felt sorry the moment after. "I do not deny it," he replied very quietly, in a manner which cut me to the quick. "At any rate these pearls are _mine_, and I hope you will accept them from me as a token of admiration and regard--or," and he fell back into his cringing yet bantering manner which I hate so, "shall we say, as is written on the fairing cups and saucers, 'A present for a good girl from Bristol.'" How I hate Uncle Hubert! I had left the pearls on the harpsichord. This morning I found the green shagreen case on the dressing table; Hubert evidently refuses to let me off his present. But I doubt whether I shall ever muster up civility enough to wear them. 'Tis a pity, for lack of wearing makes pearls tarnish. I have just opened the case to look at them. This is very curious. The case is new, has the smell of new leather; and the diamond clasp looks recently furbished, even to a little chalk about it. But--the man must be oddly ignorant in such matters--the pearls, seen by daylight, have evidently not come from a jeweller's. For they are yellow, tarnished, unworn for years; they have been lying in this house, and, heirlooms or not, there is something wrong about them. I have been glad of a pretext, however poor, of returning them. "Uncle Hubert," I said, handing him the case, "you must put these pearls in a box with holes in it, and put them back in the sea." I never saw so strange a look in a man's face. "Back in the sea! What do you mean, dear Lady Brandling?" he cries. "Why do you suspect these pearls of coming from the sea?" "All pearls _do_ come from the sea, I thought, and that's why sea water cures them when they have got tarnished from lack of wearing." He burst into an awkward laugh, "To think," he says, "that I had actually forgotten that pearls were not a kind of stone, that they came out of shell fish." _February_ 20, 1773. God help me and forgive my ingratitude for the great, unspeakable blessing He has given me. But this also, it would seem, is to become a source of estrangement between me and Eustace. Ever since this great hope has arisen in my soul, there has come with it the belief also that this child, which he used so greatly to long for (vainly trying to hide his disappointment out of gentleness towards me) would bring us once more together. Perhaps it was wicked graspingness to count upon two happinesses when one had been granted to me. Be this as it may, my ingratitude has been horribly chastened. I told my husband this morning. He was surprised; taken aback; but gave no sign of joy. "Are you quite sure?" he repeated anxiously. And on my reiterating my certainty, he merely ejaculated, "Ah ... 'tis an unfortunate moment," and added, catching himself up, "the best will be that I send you, when the time approaches, to Bristol or to Bath. I shall be sure of your being well seen to there." I nearly burst into tears, not at this proposal, but at the evident manner in which the thought of our child suggested only small difficulties and worries to his mind. "To Bristol! to Bath!" I exclaimed, "and you speak as if you intended leaving me there alone! But Eustace, why should not our child be born in your house and mine?" I felt my eyes blaze with long pent up impatience. "Because, my dear little Penelope," he answered coldly and sharply, "it is the custom of _your country and mine_ that ladies of your condition should have every advantage of medical skill and attendance, and therefore remove to town for such purpose." "Would it not be worth while to break through such a habit," I asked, "to have a physician here at the proper time? Besides," I added, "I promised, and in your presence, that should this event ever take place, I should send for my mother." "I shall be delighted," he answered, always in the same tone, "if my mother-in-law finds it worth while to make so great a journey as that from Switzerland to Bath--for Bath is the more suitable place, upon consideration. But seeing that, as I have twice said before, you will have every care you may require, I really think the suggestion would be a mere indiscretion--to all parties." He was busy arranging the instruments in his laboratory. I should have left him; but I felt my heart swell and overflow, and remained standing by him in silence. "It is too cold for you here," he said very tenderly after a moment, "had you not better go back to your rooms?" I could not answer. But after a moment, "Eustace, Eustace!" I cried, "don't you care? Aren't you glad? Why do you talk only of plans and difficulties? Why do you want to send me away, to leave me all alone when our child is born?" He gave a sigh, partly of impatience. "Do not let us discuss this again, dear Penelope," he said, "and oblige me by not talking nonsense. Of course I am glad; it goes without saying. And if I send you away--if I deprive myself of the joy of being with you, believe me, it is because I cannot help it. My presence is required here. And now," he added, putting his arm round my waist, but with small genuine tenderness, methought, "now let us have done with this subject, my dear, and do me the kindness to return to your warm room." O God, O God, take pity on my loneliness! For with the dearest of mothers, and what was once the kindest of husbands, and the joy of this coming child, I am surely the loneliest of women! _February_ 27, 1773. God forgive me, I say again, and with greater reason, for I now recognise that my sense of loneliness and of estrangement; all my selfish misery, has been the fruit of my own lack of courage and of loving kindness. This child, though yet unborn, has brought me strength and counsel; the certainty of its existence seems, in a way, to have changed me; and I look back upon myself such as I was but a few weeks ago, as upon some one different, an immature girl, without responsibilities or power to help. And now I feel as if I _could_ help, and as if I must. For I am the stronger of the two. What has befallen Eustace? I can but vaguely guess; yet this I know, that without my help Eustace is a lost man; his happiness, his courage, his honour, going or gone. My mother used to tell us, I remember, the legend of a clan in her own country, where the future chieftain, on coming of age, was put into possession of some secret so terrible that it turned him from a light-hearted boy into a serious and joyless man. St. Salvat's has wrought on Eustace in some similar manner. On arriving here, or, indeed, before arriving, he has learned something which has poisoned his life and sapped his manhood. What that something is, I can in a measure guess, and it seems to me as if I ought to help him either to struggle with or else to bear it, although _bearing it_ seems little to my taste. It is some time since I have seen through the silly fiction of the pilchard fishery of St. Salvat's; and although I have not been out of my way to manifest this knowledge, I have not hidden it, methinks, from Eustace or even from Uncle Hubert. The rooms and rooms crammed with apparent lumber, the going and coming of carriers' wagons (so that my husband's cases of instruments and my new _pianoforte_ arrived from Bristol as by magic), the amount of money (the very maids gambling for gold in the laundry) in this beggarly house; and the nocturnal and mysterious nature of the fishing expeditions, would open the eyes even of one as foolish and inexperienced as I; nor is any care taken to deceive me. St. Salvat's Castle is simply the headquarters of the smuggling business, presided over by my uncles and doubtless constituting the chief resource of this poor untilled corner of the world. Breaking His Majesty's laws and defrauding his Exchequer are certainly offences; but I confess that they seem to me pardonable ones, when one thinks of the deeds of violence by which our ancestors mostly made their fortunes, let alone the arts of intrigue by which so many of our polished equals increase theirs. Perhaps it was being told the prowess of our Alpine smugglers, carrying their packs through snow-fields and along hidden crevasses, and letting themselves down from immeasurable rocks; perhaps it was these stories told to me in my childhood by the farm servants which have left me thus lax in my notions. This much I know, that the certainty of the uncles being smugglers, even if smuggling involve, as it must, occasional acts of violence against the officers of the Excise, does not increase the loathing which I feel towards the uncles. Nor would this fact, taken in itself, suffice to explain Eustace's melancholy. What preys upon his mind must rather be the disgust and disgrace of finding his house and property put to such uses by such men. For Eustace is a man of thought, not of action; and I can understand that the problem how to change this order of things must weigh upon him in proportion as he feels himself so little fitted for its solution. With this is doubtless mingled a sense of responsibility towards me, and perhaps (for his dreamer's conscience is most tender) of exaggerated shame for bringing me here. If this be as I think, it is for me to help my husband to break the bad spell which St. Salvat's has cast over him. And I will and can! The child will help me. For no child of mine shall ever be born into slavery and disgrace such as, I feel, is ours. III _April_ 10, 1773. The spring gales have begun, and with them the "fishing" as it is called, has become constant. Rough weather, I suppose, is favourable to the smuggling operations, as it leaves this terrible coast in the hands of those who know every inch of its reefs and rocks and quicksands, and who possess the only safe landing-place for miles, the little cove beyond the churchyard in the glen. Be this as it may, these expeditions have left the castle wonderfully peaceful; the sound of brawling no longer rises perpetually from the big hall and the courtyards. The uncles are away for days and nights at a time, taking with them every male creature about the place. Even Hubert, seized, as he says, by a fit of his master passion, has not appeared for days. The sluttish maids and the old rheumatic gardener are lodged in the outhouses, or are taking a holiday in the neighbouring villages; and the house has been, methinks, given over to ourselves and Mrs. Davies, who waits assiduously in her silent manner, and no doubt keeps the uncles informed of all our doings. It is three days that Eustace and I have been alone together. But the knowledge of what he will not confess, and of what I have not the courage to ask, sits between us at meals, makes us constrained during our walks, even like the presence of a living stranger. _April_ 20, 1773. The gales have been getting worse and worse; and the sound of the sea, the wind in the trees and chimneys, has been filling the castle with lamentation. This evening, at the harpsichord, I could no longer hear, or at least no longer listen to, my own voice. I shut the instrument and sat idle by the fire, while every beam and rafter strained and groaned like the timbers of a ship in the storm. My husband also was quite unstrung. He walked up and down, without a word. Suddenly a thought entered my mind; it is extraordinary and inhuman that it should not have done so before. "I hope Hubert and the uncles are not out to-night," I said. Eustace stopped in his walking, straight before the fire and stared long into it. "Perhaps they have returned already," he answered. "I hope so," and with the excuse of some notes to put in order in his study, he bid me good-night and hoped I should go to bed soon. But shall I be able to sleep on such a night! _April_ 21st. I understand now. But, Good God, what new and frightful mysteries and doubts! It was late when I went to bed last night; and, against all expectation, I fell into a heavy sleep. I was awakened out of dreams of shipwreck by a great light in my eyes. The moon had risen, almost full, and dispelled the clouds. And the storm was over. Indeed, I think it was the stillness, after so many days of raging noise, which had wakened me as much as the moonlight. I was alone; for Eustace, these weeks past, has slept in the closet next door, as he reads deep into the night and says my condition requires unbroken rest. It was so beautiful and peaceful, I seemed drawn into the light. I rose and stood in the big uncurtained window, which, with its black mullions casting their shadows on the floor, looked more than ever like a great glass cage. It was so lovely and mild that I threw back a lattice and looked out: the salt smell and the sea breeze left by the storm rushed up and met me. Beyond the trees the moonlight was striking upon the white of the breakers, for though the gale was over the sea was still pounding furiously upon the reefs. My eyes had sought at first the moon, the moonlit offing; to my amazement, they fell the next instant on a great ship quite close to shore. She seemed in rapid movement, pitching and rolling with all her might; but after a moment I noticed that she did not move forward, but remained stationary above the same tree tops. She seemed enchanted, or rather she looked like some captive creature struggling desperately to get free. I was too much taken up by the strangeness of the sight to reflect that no sane crew would have anchored in such a spot, and no anchorage have held in the turmoil of such a sea. Moreover, I knew too little of such matters to guess that the ship must have run upon one of the reefs, and that every breaker must lift her up to crash and shiver herself upon its sawlike edge; indeed I had no notion of any danger; and when I saw lights on the ship, and others moving against her hull, my only thought was that I was watching the smugglers at their work. As I did so, a sudden doubt, of which I felt ashamed, leaped into my mind; and, feeling indignant with myself the while, I crept to the door of the dressing-room. Was Eustace there? I noiselessly turned the handle and pushed open the door. I cannot say what were my feelings, whether most of shame or of a kind of terror when, by the light of a lamp, I saw my husband kneeling by the side of his camp bed, with his head buried in the pillow, like a man in agony. He was completely dressed. On hearing the door open he started to his feet and cried in a terrible voice "What do you want with me?" I was overwhelmed with shame at my evil thoughts. "O Eustace," I answered foolishly, and without thinking of the bearing of my words, "the ship! I only wanted to call you to look at the ship." He paid no attention to my presence. "The ship! The ship!" he cries--"is she gone?" and rushes to the window. The ship, sure enough, was gone. Where she had been her three great masts still projected from the water. Slowly they disappeared, and another sharp black point, which must have been her bowsprit as she heeled over, rose and sank in its turn. How long we stood, Eustace and I, silently watching, I cannot tell. "There were lights alongside," I exclaimed, "the uncles' boats must have been there. There has been time to save the crew. O Eustace, let us run down and help!" But Eustace held me very tight. "Do not be a fool, Penelope. You will catch your death of cold and endanger the child. The people of the ship are saved or drowned by this time." _June_ 12, 1773. But a few months ago I wrote in this diary that no child of mine should ever be born into slavery and dishonour. Alas, poor foolish Penelope! What ill-omened words were those! And yet I cannot believe that God would have visited their presumptuousness upon me with such horrid irony. May God, who knows all things, must know that those words were even more justified than I dreamed of at the time: the slavery and dishonour surpassing my most evil apprehensions. Indeed, may it not be that in taking away our child while yet unborn He did so in His mercy to it and to its wretched parents? Surely. And if my husband surprised me, some months back, by his indifference in the face of what we were about to gain, 'tis he, perhaps, who is surprised in his turn at the strange resignation with which I take my loss. For indeed, I am resigned, am acquiescent, and, below the regrets which come shuddering across me, I feel a marvellous peacefulness in the depths of my being. No! no child should ever be born in such a house, into such a life as this.... * * * * * I am still shattered in body (I understand that for days recovery was given up as hopeless), and my mind seems misty, and like what a ghost's might be, after so many hours of unconsciousness, and of what, had it endured, would have been called death. But little by little shreds of recollection are coming back to me, and I will write them down. Some strangely sweet ones. The sense, even as life was slipping away, that all Eustace's love and tenderness had returned; that it was he (for no physician could be got, or was allowed, in this dreadful place) he himself who wrestled for me with death, and brought me back to life. Moments return to my memory of surpassing, unspeakable sweetness, which penetrated through all pain: being lifted in his arms, handled like a child; seeing his eyes, which seemed to hold and surround me like his arms; and hearing his words as when he thanked God, over and over again, and almost like one demented, for having caused him to study medicine. I felt I was re-entering life upon the strong, full tide of incomparable love. Let me not seem ungrateful, for I am not. Most strangely there has mingled in this great flood of life-giving tenderness the sense also of the affection of poor Mrs. Davies. I call her _poor_, because there is, I know not why, something oddly pathetic in her sudden devotion to me. When I met her wild eyes grown quite tender and heard her crooning exclamations in her unintelligible language, I had, even in the midst of my own weakness, the sort of half pitying gratitude which we feel for the love of an animal, of something strong and naturally savage, grown very gentle towards one. _July_ 5, 1773. Is that hideous thing true? Did it ever happen? Or is some shred of nightmare returning ever and again out of the black depths of my sickness? It comes and goes, and every time new doubts--hope it may be a dream, fear it may be reality--come with it. It was three days after the shipwreck; the weather had calmed, and for the first time I ventured abroad into the park. That much and a little more is real, and bears in my mind the indescribable quality of certainty. I had wandered down the glen and through the churchyard, and I remember pausing before the great stone cross, covered with curious basket work patterns, and wondering whether when it was made--a thousand years ago--women about to be mothers had felt as great perplexity and loneliness as I, and at the same time, as great joy. I crossed the piece of boggy meadow, vivid green in the fitful sunshine, and climbed upon the sea-wall and sat down. I was tired; and the solitude, the sunshine, the faint silken rustle of the sea on the reefs, the salt smell--all filled me with a languid happiness quite unspeakable. All this I know, I am certain of, as the scratching of my pen; in fact, those moments on the sea-wall are, in a manner, the latest thing of which I have vivid certainty; all that came later--my illness, the news of my miscarriage, my recovery, and even this present moment, seeming comparatively unreal. I do not know how long I may have sat there. I was listening to the sea, to the wind in my hair, and watching the foam running in little feathery balls along the sand, when I heard voices, and saw three men wading among the rocks a little way off, as if in search of something. My eyes followed them lazily, and then I saw close under me, what I had taken at first for a heap of seaweed and sea refuse cast upon the sand, but which, as my eyes fixed it, became--or methought it became--something hideous and terrible; so that for very horror I could not shriek. And then, while my eyes were fixed on it, methought (for as I write it seems a dream) the three men waded over in its direction, and one silently pointed it out to the other. They came round, one turned a moment, and instead of a human face, I saw under his looped-up hat a loosely fitting black mask. Then they gathered round that thing the three of them, and touched it with a boat-hook, muttering to each other. Then one stooped down and did I know not what, stuffing, as he did so, something into the pockets of his coat, and then put out a hand to one of his companions, receiving back something narrow, which caught a glint of sun. They all three stooped together; methought the water against the sands and the pale foam heaps suddenly changed colour, but that must surely be my nightmare. "Better like that," a voice said in English. Between them they raised the thing up and carried it through the shallow water to a boat moored by the rocks. And then my voice became loosened. I gave a cry, which seemed to echo all round, and I jumped down from the sea-wall, and flew across the meadow and tore up the glen, till I fell full length by the neglected pond with the broken leaden nymph. For as they took _it_ up, the thing had divided in two, and somehow I had known the one was a mother and the other a child; one was I, and the other I still carried within me. And the voice which had said "Better like that" was Hubert's. But as I write, I know it must have been a vision of my sickness. * * * * * "Eustace," I asked, "how did it begin? Did I dream--or did you find me lying by the fountain on the terrace--the fountain of your poor water snake?" "Forget it, dearest," Eustace said, very quietly and sweetly, and with the old gentle truthfulness in his eyes. "You must have over-walked that hot morning and got a sunstroke or fainted with fatigue. We did find you by the fountain--that is to say, our good Mrs. Davies did." And Davies merely nodded. _July_ 15, 1773. Shall I ever know whether it really happened? Methinks that had I certainty I could face, stand up to, it. But to go on sinking and weltering in this hideous doubt! _August_ 1, 1773. The certainty has come; and God in Heaven, what undreamed certainties besides! I did not really want it, though I told myself I did. For I felt that Mrs. Davies knew, that she was watching her opportunity to tell me; and I, a coward, evading what I must some day learn. At last it has come. It was this morning. This morning! It seems weeks and months ago--a whole lifetime passed since! She was brushing my hair, one of the many services required by my weakness, and which she performs with wonderful tenderness. We saw one another's face, but only reflected in the mirror; and I recognised when she was going to speak. "Lady Brandling," she said in her odd Welsh way--"Lady Brandling fell ill because she saw some things from the sea-wall." I knew what she meant--for are not my own thoughts for ever going over that same ground? But the sense of being surrounded by enemies, the whole horrid mystery about this accursed place, have taught me caution and even cunning. Davies has been as a mother to me in my illness; but I remembered my first impression of her unfriendliness towards Eustace and me, and of her being put to spy upon us. So I affected not to understand; and indeed, her singular mixture of English and Welsh, her outlandish modes of address, gave some countenance to the pretence. "What do you mean, Davies?" I asked, but without looking up in the glass for fear of meeting her eyes there. "What has the sea-wall to do with my illness? It was not there you found me when I fainted. You told me it was by the fountain." The old woman took a paper from her stays, and out of it a muddy piece of linen which she spread out on the dressing-table in front of me. It was a handkerchief of mine; and I understood that she had found it, treasured it as a sign of what I had witnessed. The place, the moment, might mean my death-warrant; for what I thought I saw had been really seen. "It was on the sea-wall the morning that Lady Brandling fainted in the shrubbery," she answered. And I felt that her eyes were on my face, asking what I had seen that day. I made a prodigious effort over myself. "And why have you kept it in that state instead of washing it? Did you--was it picked up then or only now? _I suppose some one else found it?"_ Merciful God! how every word of that last sentence beat itself out in my heart and throat!--and yet I heard the words pronounced lightly, indifferently. "I picked it up myself, my lady," answered Mrs. Davies. "I went down to the sea-wall after I had put Lady Brandling to bed. I thought she might have left something there. I thought I should like to go there before the others came. I thought Lady Brandling had seen something. I want Lady Brandling to tell me truly if she saw something on the sea-wall." I felt it was a struggle, perhaps a struggle for life and death between her and me. I took a comb in my hand, to press it and steady me; and I looked up in the mirror and faced Davies's eyes, ready, I knew, to fix themselves on mine. "Perhaps I may answer your question later, Davies," I said. "But first you must answer mine: am I right in thinking that you were set to spy upon my husband and me from the moment we first came to St. Salvat's?" A great change came over Davies's face. Whatever her intentions, she had not expected this, and did not know how to meet it. I felt that, were her intentions evil, I now held her in my hands, powerless for the time being. But to my infinite surprise, and after only a short silence, she looked into my eyes quite simply and answered without hesitating. "Lady Brandling is right. I was set to spy on Lady Brandling at the beginning. I did not love Lady Brandling at the beginning; her husband was taking the place of Sir Thomas. But I love Lady Brandling now." I could have sworn that it was true, for she has shown it throughout my illness. But I kept my counsel and answered very coldly, "It is not a question whether you love me or not, Davies. You acknowledge that you were the spy of Mr. Hubert and his brothers. And if you were not spying for their benefit, why were you watching me as I came up the glen the day I was taken ill? Why did you go to the sea-wall to see in case I had left anything behind; and why did you treasure this handkerchief as a proof that I had been there?" Mrs. Davies hesitated; but only, I believe, because she found it difficult to make her situation clear. "Lady Brandling must try and understand," she answered. "I was not spying for Mr. Hubert. I have not spied for Mr. Hubert for a long while. I kept the handkerchief to show Lady Brandling that I knew what had made her faint that day. Also to show her that others did not know. Lady Brandling is safe. She must know that they do not yet know. If they know what Lady Brandling perhaps shall have seen, Lady Brandling and her husband are dead people, like the people in the ship; dead like Sir Thomas." Dead like Sir Thomas! I repeated to myself. But I still kept my eyes fixed on hers in the glass, where she stood behind me, brush in hand. "Davies," I said, "you must explain if I am to understand. You tell me you love me now though you did not love me at first. You tell me you were placed to spy over me by Mr. Hubert, and you tell me that you were not spying for him when you went to see whether I had left anything on the sea-wall. You have been good and kind beyond words during my sickness, and I desire to believe in you. But I dare not. Why should I believe that you have really changed so completely? Why should I believe that you are with _me_, and against _them_?" Mrs. Davies's face changed strangely. It seemed to me to express deep perplexity and almost agonised helplessness. She twisted her fingers and raised her shoulders. She was wrestling with my unbelief. Suddenly she leaned over the dressing table close to me. "Listen," she said. "I have learned things since then. Hubert told me lies, but I learned. I am against _them_ because I know they tried to kill my son." A look of incredulity must have passed over my face, for she added, "Aye; they only tried to kill one of my sons, Hugh, who I thought had gone overboard, whom they thought they had drowned, but who has come and told me. But--" and she fixed her eyes on mine, "they _did_ kill my other son; I know that now. My other son of the heart, not the belly. And that son, my Lady, was your brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Brandling." And then Davies made a strange imperious gesture, and I must needs listen to her talk. I have since pieced it together out of her odd enigmatic sentences. My late brother-in-law, after years of passive connivance in _their_ doings, which paid for his debaucheries in foreign lands, became restive, or was suspected by his uncles, and condemned by them to death as a danger to their evil association. Sir Thomas was decoyed home, and, according to their habit in case of mutiny, taken out, a prisoner, to the deepest part of the channel, and drowned. The report was spread that he had been killed in a drunken brawl at Bristol, a show of legal proceedings was instituted by his uncle in that city (naturally to no effect, there being no murderer there to discover), and a corpse brought back by them for solemn burial at St. Salvat's. But instead of being interred in the family vault, the body of the false Sir Thomas was destroyed by the burning of the Chapel during his wake. The suspicions of Mrs. Davies appeared to have been awakened by this fact, and by the additional one that she was not allowed to see the corpse of her beloved foster-son. Her own son Hugh, Sir Thomas's foster brother, disappeared about this time; and Hubert appears to have made the distracted mother believe that her own boy was the murderer of Sir Thomas, and had met with death at his hands; the whole unlikely story being further garnished for the poor credulous woman with a doubt that the murder of her foster-son had been, in some manner, the result of a conspiracy to bring about the succession of my husband. All this she seems to have believed at the time of our coming, and for this reason to have lent herself most willingly to spy upon my husband and me, in hopes of getting the proofs of his guilt. But her suspicions gradually changed, and her whole attitude in the matter was utterly reversed when, a few days before the wreck of the great Indiaman and my adventure on the sea-wall, her son, whom she believed dead, had stolen back in disguise and told her of an expedition in which the uncles had carried a man to the high seas, gagged and bound, and drowned him: a man who was not one of their crew and whose stature and the colour of whose hair answered to those of the nominal master of St. Salvat's. Her son, in an altercation over some booty, had let out his suspicion to my uncles, and had escaped death only by timely flight masked under accidental drowning from a fishing boat. Since this revelation Davies's devotion to the dead Sir Thomas had transferred itself to Eustace and me, and her one thought had become revenge against the men who had killed her darling. Davies told me all this, as I said, in short, enigmatic sentences; and I scarcely know whether her tale seemed to me more inevitably true or more utterly false in its hideous complication of unlikely horrors. When she had done: "Davies," I ask her solemnly, "you have been a spy, you have, by your saying, been the accomplice of the most horrid criminals that ever disgraced the world. Why should I believe one word of what you tell me?" Davies hesitated as before, then looked me full in the face "If Lady Brandling cannot believe what it is needful that she should believe, let her ask her husband whether I am telling her a lie. Lady Brandling's husband knows, and he is afraid of telling _her_ because he is afraid of them." Davies had been kneeling by the dressing-table, as if to make herself heard to me without speaking above a whisper. I mustered all my courage, for these last words touched me closer, filled me with a far more real and nearer horror than all her hideous tales. "Davies," I said, "kindly finish brushing my hair. When it is brushed I can do it up myself; and you may go and wash that handkerchief." The old woman rose from her knees without a word, and finished brushing my hair very carefully. Then she handed me the hairpins and combs ceremoniously. As she did so she murmured beneath her breath: "Lady Brandling is a courageous lady. I love Lady Brandling for her courage." She curtsied and withdrew. When the door was well closed on her I felt I could bear the strain no more; I leaned my head on the dressing table and burst into a flood of silent tears. At that moment Eustace came in. "Good God!" he said, "what is the matter?" taking my hand and trying to raise me up. But I hid my face. "Oh, Eustace," I answered, "when I think of our child!" But what I was saying, God help me, was not true. _October_ 1, 1773. What frightful suspicions are these which I have allowed to creep insidiously into my mind! Did he or did he not know? Does he know yet? Every time we meet I feel my eyes seeking his face, scanning his features, and furtively trying to read their meaning, alas! alas! as if he were a stranger. And I spend my days piecing together bits of the past, and every day they make a different and more perplexing pattern. I remember his change of manner on receiving the news of his brother's death, and the gloom which hung over him during our journey and after our arrival here. I thought then that it was the unexpected return to the scenes of his unhappy childhood; and that his constraint and silence with me were due to his difficulty in dealing with the shocking state of things he found awaiting him. It seemed natural enough that Eustace, a thinker, a dreamer even, should feel harassed at his inability to clean out this den of iniquity. But why have remained here? Good God, is my husband a mere pensioner of all this hideousness, as his wretched brother seems to have been? And even for that miserable debauched creature the day came when he turned against his masters, and faced death, perhaps like a gentleman. Death.... How unjust I am grown to Eustace! I ought to try and put myself in his place, and see things as he would see them, not with the horrified eyes of a stranger. Like me, he may have believed at first that St. Salvat's was merely a nest of smugglers.... Or he may have had only vague fears of worse, haunting him like bad dreams of his childhood.... Besides, this frightful trade in drowned men and their goods has, from what Davies tells me, been for centuries the chief employment of this dreadful coast. Whole villages, and several of the first families of the country, practised it turn about with smuggling. Davies was ready with a string of names, she expressed no special horror and her conscience perhaps represents that of these people; an unlawful trade, but not without its side of peril, commending it to barbarous minds like highway robbery or the exploits of buccaneers, whom popular ballads treat as heroes. But why have I recourse to such explanations? Men, even men as noble as my husband, are marvellously swayed by all manner of notions of honour, false and barbarous, often causing them to commit crimes in order to screen those of their blood or of their class. Some words of Hubert's keep recurring in my memory, to the effect that all the Brandlings were given up to what the villain called pilchard fishing, and _none more devotedly than Eustace's own father_. I remember and now understand the tone in which he added "all of us Brandlings except this superfine gentleman here." Those words meant that however great his horror of it all, Eustace could not break loose from that complicity of silence. For to expose the matter would be condemning all his kinsmen to a shameful death, to the public gallows; it would be uncovering the dishonour of his dead brother, of his father, and all his race.... What right have I to ask my husband to do what no other man would do in his place? But perhaps he does not know, or is not certain yet.... To what a size have I allowed my horrid suspicions to grow! Behold me finding excuses for an offence which very likely has never been committed; and while seemingly condoning, condemning my husband in my mind, without giving him a chance of self-defence! What a confusion of disloyalty and duplicity my fears have bred in my soul! Anything is better than this; I owe it to Eustace to tell him my suspicions, and I _will_ tell him. _November_ 2, 1773. I have spoken. O marvellous, most unexpected reward of frankness and loyalty, however tardy! The nightmare has vanished, leaving paradise in my soul. For inconceivable as it seems, this day, on which I learned that we are prisoners, already condemned most likely, and at best doomed to die before very long, this day has been of unmixed, overflowing joy, such as I never knew or dreamed of. Eustace, beloved, that ever I could have doubted you! And yet that very doubt, that sin against our love is what has brought me such blissful certainty. And even the shameful question, asked with burning cheeks, "Did you know all?" has been redeemed, transfigured, and will remain for ever in my soul like the initial bars of some ineffably tender and triumphant piece of music. Let me go over it once more, our conversation, Love; feel it all over again, feel it for ever and ever. When I had spoken those words, Eustace, you took my hand, and looked long into my face. "My poor Penelope," you said, "what dreadful thoughts my cowardice and want of faith have brought upon you! Why did I not recognise that your soul was strong enough to bear the truth? You ought to have learned it from me, as soon as I myself felt certain of it, instead of my running the risk of your discovering it all alone, you poor, poor little child!" Were ever those small words spoken so greatly? Has any man been such a man in his gentleness and humility? And then you went on, beloved, and I write down your words in order to feel them once more sinking into my heart. "But Penelope," you said, "'twas not mere unmanly shirking, though there may have been some of that mixed with it. My fault lies chiefly in not having been able to do without you, dearest, not having left you safe with your mother while I came over to this accursed place; and in putting the suspicions I had behind me in order to bring you here. Nothing can wipe out that, and I am paying the just price of my weakness, and seeing you pay it!... But once here, Penelope, and once certain of the worst, it was impossible for me to tell you the truth. Impossible, because I knew that if you knew what I had learned, it would be far more difficult for me to get you away, to get you to leave me behind in this hideous place. Do you remember when I proposed sending you to Bath for our child's birth? It seemed the last chance of saving you, and you resisted and thought me cruel and unloving! How could I say 'Go! because your life may any day be forfeited like mine, and go alone! because--well--because I am a hostage, a man condemned to death if he stir, a prisoner as much as if I were chained to the walls of this house.' Had I said that, you would have refused to go, Penelope. But now, my dear...." And you bent down and kissed me very mournfully. "But now, Eustace," I answered, and I heard that my voice was solemn, "but now I can stay with you, because I know as much as you do, and they will soon know that I do so, even if they do not know yet. I may stay with you, because I am a prisoner like you, and condemned like you. We can live, because we have to die--together." Eustace, you folded me in your arms and I felt you sob. But I loosened your hands and kissed them one by one, and said, "Nay, Eustace, why should you grieve? Do we not love each other? Are we not together, quite together, and together for always?" We are standing by the big window in my room, and as we clasped one another, our eyes, following each other's, rested on the sea above the tree tops. It was a silvery band under a misty silver sunset; very sweet and solemn. Our souls, methought, were sailing in its endless peacefulness. For the first time, I was aware of what love is; I seemed to understand what poetry is about and what music means; death, which hung over us, was shrunk to its true paltriness, and the eternity of life somehow revealed all in one moment. I have known happiness. I thank God, and beloved, I thank thee also. IV Here ends the diary kept half a century ago by the woman of twenty-two, who was once myself. Those of whom it treats, my mother, my husband, poor faithful Davies and the wretched villains of St. Salvat's, have long since ceased to live, and those for whose benefit I gather together these memories--my sons and daughters, were not yet born at the time this diary deals with. In order to complete my story I can, therefore, seek only in my own solitary memory; and, standing all alone, look into that far away past which only my own eyes and heart are left to descry. * * * * * After the scene with which my diary closes, and when we could compare all that each of us knew of our strange situation, it appeared to my husband and me that we had everything to gain, and at all events nothing to lose (since we knew our lives in jeopardy) by a desperate attempt to escape from what was virtually our prison. Eustace had summed up our position when he had said that we were hostages in the hands of the uncles. For these villains, unconscious of any bonds of family honour, made sure that our escape would infallibly bring about the exposure of their infamous practices. It appears that after the murder of my brother-in-law, whom the most violent of the gang had put to death on a mere threat of betrayal, the uncles had taken for granted that Eustace would accept some manner of pension as his brother had done, and like him, leave St. Salvat's in their undisputed possession. And they had been considerably nonplussed when my husband declared his intention of returning to Wales. The perception of the blunder they had committed in getting rid of my brother-in-law, made them follow the guidance of Hubert, who had opposed the murder of Sir Thomas, if not from humanity, at all events from prudence. It was Hubert's view that since Eustace refused to stay away, no difficulties should be put in the way of his coming, but on the contrary, that he be taken, so to speak, in a trap, and once at St. Salvat's, persuaded or compelled into becoming a passive, if not an active, accomplice. Hubert had therefore written so pressingly about the need of putting the property to rights, of making a new start at St. Salvat's, and of therefore bringing me and settling at once in the place, that Eustace had judged the rumours concerning the real trade of his kinsmen, and his own childish suspicions, to have been mere exaggeration, and imagined that the uncles, brought to order by so superior a man as Hubert, were perhaps even willing to abandon the dangerous business of smuggling which had been carried on almost avowedly during the lifetime of his father. Such was the trap laid by Hubert; and Eustace, partly from guilelessness and partly from a sense of duty to St. Salvat's, walked straight in, carrying me with him as an additional pledge to evil fortune. He was scarcely in, when the door, like the drawbridge which had risen after our entry into that frightful place, closed and showed him he was a prisoner. It was Hubert's plan to make use of our presence (which, moreover, put an end to his own isolation among those besotted villains) in order to remove whatever suspicions might exist in the outside world. The presence of a studious and gentlemanly owner, of a young wife and possible children, was to make people believe that a new leaf had been turned over at St. Salvat's, and that the old former pages of its history were not so shocking as evil reports had had it. So, during the first weeks after our arrival, and while the brothers were being coerced into an attempt at decent behaviour, Eustace was being importuned with every kind of plan which should draw him into further complicity, and compromise him along with the rest of the band. Hubert, being a clergyman, had since his elder brother's death, also been the chief magistrate of the district; and, shocking to relate, this wrecker and murderer had sat in judgment on poachers and footpads. Having made use of this position to silence any inclination to blab about St. Salvat's, he was apprehensive of this scandal getting to headquarters, and therefore desirous of putting in his place a man as clear of suspicion and as obviously just as Eustace, yet whom he imagined he could always coerce in all vital matters. But Eustace saw through this fine scheme at once, and resolutely refused to become a magistrate in Hubert's place. This was the first hint Hubert received that it was useless to seek an accomplice in his nephew; and this recognition speedily grew into a fear lest Eustace might become a positive danger, particularly if he ever learned for certain that Sir Thomas had not been murdered at Bristol, but at St. Salvat's. The situation was made more critical by the fact that on discovering what manner of place the castle really was, Eustace had declared with perfect simplicity, his intention of taking me back to my mother. It was then he had learned in as many words, that both he and I were prisoners, and that he, at all events, would never leave St. Salvat's alive. Thus the terrible months had been spent in gauging the depth of his miserable situation, in making and unmaking plans for my escape, for sending me away without letting me guess the real reason, all of which had been frustrated by my miscarriage and the long illness following upon it. And meanwhile, Eustace had had to endure the constant company of his gaoler Hubert, the wretch's occasional attempts to compromise him in the doings of the gang; and what was horridest of all, Hubert's very sincere pleasure in our presence and conversation, and his ceaseless attempts to strike up some kind of friendship. Now, the discovery that I was aware of the frightful mysteries of the place, had entirely altered our position: first, because it was probable that the uncles now considered me as much of a danger as my husband, and therefore as an equally indispensable hostage; and secondly, because it was evident that I could no longer be induced to leave St. Salvat's by myself. Our only remaining hope was flight. But how elude the vigilance of our gaolers and overcome the obstacles they had built up around us? Day after day, and night after night, Eustace and I went over and over our possibilities; but they seemed to diminish, and difficulties to increase, the more we discussed them. The house and grounds were guarded, and our actions spied upon. We were cut off from the outer world, for we had long since understood that our letters, even when despatched, were intercepted and read by Hubert. But the worst difficulty almost was the lack of money. For some months past, Hubert had taken to doling it out only in trifling sums and on our asking for it, and he supplied our needs and even fancies with such lavishness, forestalling them in many instances, that a request for any considerable sum would have been tantamount to an intimation of our intended flight. Such were the external obstacles; I found, moreover, that there were other ones in the character and circumstances of my poor fellow prisoner. My husband's natural incapacity for planning active measures and taking sudden decisions, was not at all diminished, but the reverse, by his fear for my safety. And his indecision was aggravated by all manner of scruples; for he considered it cowardly to leave St. Salvat's in the undisputed possession of the villains who usurped it; and he wavered between a wish to punish the murder of his brother and that prejudice (which I had rightly divined) against exposing his kinsmen and his dead father to public infamy, however well earned by them. This miserable state of doubt and fear was brought to a sudden close, as I vaguely expected it would, by a new move on the part of our adversaries. It was in the spring of 1774, and we had been at St. Salvat's about eighteen months, which felt much more like as many years. One evening after supper, as I sat in my room idly listening to the sound, now so terrible to me, of the sea on the rocks, I was suddenly aroused by the sound, no less frightful to my ears, of the brawling of the uncles below. I rose in alarm, for my apartments were completely isolated from the part of the house which they occupied, and for months past all the intermediate doors had been kept carefully closed by the tacit consent of both parties. The noise became greater; I could distinguish the drunken voices of Simon and Richard, and a sharp altercation between the other ones, and just as I had stepped, beyond my own door, I heard a horrid yell of curses, a scuffle, and the door opposite, which closed the main staircase, flew open, and what was my astonishment when my husband appeared, pushed forward, or rather hurled along by Hubert. The latter shouted to me to go back, and having thrust Eustace into my room, he disappeared as suddenly as he had come, slamming the doors after him. As he did so I heard the key click; he had locked us in. My husband was in a shocking condition, his clothes torn half off him, his hair in disorder, and the blood dripping from his arm. "Do not be frightened," he cried, "'tis merely a comedy of those filthy villains," and he showed me that his wound was merely a long scratch. "They want to frighten us," he added, "the drunken brutes wanted to force me through some beastly form of initiation into their gang. Faugh!" and he looked at his arm, which I was washing; "they did it with a broken bottle, the hogs! And as to Hubert, and his fine saving me from their clutches, that, I take it, was mere play-acting too, the most sickening part of the business, and meant only to give you a scare." Eustace had thrown himself gloomily into a chair, and I had never seen him before with such a look of disgust and indignation. I was by no means as certain as he that no serious mischief had been intended, or that Hubert had not saved him from real danger. But that new look in him awoke a sudden hope in me, and I determined to strike while the iron was hot. "Eustace," I said very gravely as I bound a handkerchief round his arm, "if your impression is correct, this is almost the worst of our misery. Certainly no child of mine shall ever be born into such ignominy as this. It is high time we went. Better to die like decent folk than allow ourselves to be hacked about by these drunken brutes and pushed through doors by a theatrical villain like Hubert." "You are right, Penelope," he answered, burying his face in his chair. "I have been a miserable coward." And, to my horror, I heard him sob like a child who has been struck for the first time. That decided me. But what to do? A desperate resolution came to me. As Davies was brushing my hair that night, I looked at her once more in the mirror, and, assuming the most matter-of-fact tone I could muster, "Davies," I said, "Sir Eustace and I have decided on leaving St. Salvat's, and we are taking you with us on our travels; unless you should prefer to betray us to Mr. Hubert, which is the best thing you can do for yourself." What made me say those last words? Was it a desire to threaten, a stupid, taunting spirit, or the reckless frankness of one who thought herself doomed? Would it might have been the latter. But of all the things which I would give some of my life to cancel, those words are the foremost; and remorse and shame seize me as I write them. But instead of answering these, the faithful creature threw herself on her knees and covered my hand with kisses. "All is ready," she said after a moment, "and Lady Brandling will start on Saturday." She had been watching and planning for weeks, and had already thought out and prepared every detail of our flight with extraordinary ingenuity. She placed the savings of her whole lifetime at our service, a considerable sum, and far beyond our need; and she had contrived to communicate with her son, the one who had every good reason to bear a grudge to the villains of St. Salvat's. My husband and I were to walk on foot, and separately, out of the grounds; horses were to meet us at a given point of the road, and take us, not to Swansea or Bristol, as would be expected, but to Milford, there to embark for Ireland, a country where all trace of us would easily be lost, and whence we could easily re-enter England or take ship for the Continent, as circumstances should dictate at the moment. The next Saturday had been fixed upon for our flight, because Davies knew that the uncles would be away on an important smuggling expedition in a distant part of the coast. The maids, very few in number, and any of the servants left behind, Davies had undertaken to intoxicate or drug into harmlessness. Only one evil chance remained, and that we none of us dared to mention: what if Hubert, as is sometimes the case, should stay behind? I do not know how I contrived to live through the three days which separated us from Saturday; there are, apparently, moments in our lives so strangely unlike all others, so unnatural to our whole being, that the memory refuses to register them or even bear their trace. All I know is that Eustace spent all his time in his laboratory, constructing various appliances, an occupation which I explained as imposed upon himself in order to deaden any doubts or scruples, such as were natural to his character, for the only opposition he had made to our plan of escape was on the score that it meant leaving St. Salvat's in the hands of the uncles. At last came Friday night. Friday, June 26, 1774, Davies had brought us word that the uncles had gone down to the boats, taking all the available men with them, save an old broken-down ship's carpenter, who lived with the keeper in the gate tower, and the husband of one of the sluttish women, who lay sick of the quinsy in the outhouse containing the offices. Only, only, Hubert remained! Had his suspicion been awakened? Was he detained on business? Was he ailing? Methought it was the first of these possibilities. For on Friday morning he came to my apartments, which was not his wont, early in the day and offered to pay me a visit. But Davies had the presence of mind to answer that I was sick, and lest he should doubt it, to force me to bed at once, and borrow certain medicines from him. After this he sought for Eustace, and finding him busy among his chemical instruments, his suspicions, if he had any, were quieted; and, having dined, he went down to his own small boat, a very fast sailer, and which he managed alone, often outstripping the heavier boats of his brothers and nephew. The ground was now clear. My husband remained, I believe, in his laboratory; Davies went down to supper with the maids, whom she had undertaken to drug; we were to meet again in my room at daybreak. I cannot say for sure, but I believe I spent that night trying to pray and waiting for daylight. The month was June and day came early;... a dull day, thin rain streamed down continuously, hushing everything, even the sea on the rocks becoming inaudible; only, I remember, a bird sang below my window, and the notes he sang long ran in my ears and tormented me. I had sewn some diamonds and some pieces of gold into my clothes, and those of my husband and of Davies. I stuffed a few valuables, very childishly chosen, for I took my diary, some of Eustace's love-letters, and the little cap I had knitted for the baby who was never born, into my pockets. And I waited. Presently Eustace came; he had a serviceable sword, a large knife, and a pair of pistols in his great coat; he handed me a smaller pistol, showed me that it was primed, and gave me at the same time a little folded white paper. "You are a brave woman, Penelope," he said, kissing me, "and I know there is no likelihood of your using either of these things rashly or in a moment of panic. But our enterprise is uncertain; we may possibly be parted, and I have no right to let you fall alive into the hands of those villains." Then, he sat down at my work-table and began drawing on a sheet of paper, while I looked out of the window and listened to the unvarying song of that bird. Davies did not come, and it was broad daylight. But neither of us ventured to remark on this fact or to speak our fears. Then, after about half an hour's fruitless waiting Eustace declared that we must have misunderstood Davies's instructions, and insisted, much against my wishes, upon going down to see whether she was not waiting for us below. A secret fear had seized my husband that the old woman, whom I had now got to trust quite absolutely, might after all have remained from first to last a spy of Hubert's. As Eustace left he turned round and said, "Remember what you have in your pocket, Penelope; and if I do not return within ten minutes, come down the main staircase and sing the first bars of '_Phyllis plus avare que tendre_' I shall be on the watch for it." I hated his foolish obstinacy: far better, I thought, have awaited Davies in the appointed place, and together. I thought so all the more when, after some ten minutes had elapsed, a light rap came on the wainscot door near my bed, the door leading to the back staircase, and opposite to the one by which Eustace had taken his departure. "Come in, Davies," I said joyfully. "It is not Davies, dear Lady Brandling," said a voice which made me feel suddenly sick; and in came Hubert, bowing. He was dressed with uncommon neatness, not in his fisherman's clothes, but as a clergyman, and, what was by no means constantly the case with him, he was fresh shaven. In a flash I understood that he had returned overnight, or perhaps not gone away at all. "It is not Davies," he repeated, "but I have come with her excuses to your ladyship; a sudden ailment, and one from which it is not usual to recover at her, or indeed, any age, prevents her waiting on you. I have been giving her some of the consolations of religion, and hearing her confession, a practice I by no means reject as Popish," and the villain smiled suavely. "And now, as she can no longer benefit by my presence, I thought I would come and make her excuses, and offer myself, though unskilful, to pack your ladyship's portmanteau in her place." "You have killed Davies!" I exclaimed, springing up from the sofa on which I was seated. Hubert made a deprecatory gesture and forcing me down again seated himself insolently close to me. "Fie, fie!" he said, "those are not words for a pretty young lady to use to her old uncle. Have you not learned your Catechism, my dear? It is said there, 'Thou shalt not kill,' meaning thereby, kill anything save vermin. And, by the way," continues the villain, taking my arm and preventing my rising, "that's just what I want to talk about. I have a prejudice against killing members of my own family, a prejudice not shared by my brothers, worse luck to the sots, or else you would not be Lady Brandling as yet, and that poor, silly coxcomb of a Thomas would still be enjoying his glass and his lass. I hate a scandal, and intend to avoid one; also, I am genuinely attached to you and to your husband, for though a milksop, he is a man of parts and education, and I relish his conversation. Yes, my dear. I know what you are going to ask! The precious Eustace is quite safe, without a scratch in any part of his gentlemanly white body; and no harm shall come to him--on one condition: That you, my pretty vixen, for you are a _virago_, a warlike lady, my dear niece, that you swear very solemnly that neither you nor he will ever again attempt to leave St. Salvat's." He had taken my hand and was looking in my eyes with a villainous expression. "What do you say to that?" he went on. "I know you to be a woman of spirit and of honour, bound by an oath, and capable of making your husband respect it. You have nothing to gain by refusing. You are alone with me in this house. Your faithful Davies is as dead as a door-nail. Your virtuous spouse is quite safe downstairs, for I have taken the precaution to relieve him of all those dangerous swords and pistols of his, which a learned man might hurt himself with. I give you five minutes to make up your mind. If you accept my terms, you and Sir Eustace Brandling shall live honoured and happy at St. Salvat's among your obliged kinsmen. If you refuse, I shall, very reluctantly, hand over your husband to my brothers' tender mercies when they return home presently; and, as they do not know how to behave to a lady, I shall myself make it a point to act as a man of refinement and a tender heart should act towards a very pretty little shrew," and the creature dared to touch me with his lips upon my neck. I shrank back upon the sofa half paralysed, and with not strength enough to grow hot and crimson. Hubert rose, locked the doors, and, to my relief, sat down to the harpsichord, on which he began to pick out a tune. It was that very "_Phyllis plus avare que tendre_," which I had sung to my husband and him some days before. Was it a coincidence; or had he overheard us appoint it as a signal, and was he mocking and torturing Eustace as well as me? "An elegant little air, egad," he says, "I wish I could remember the second part. Don't let my strumming disturb you. You have still four minutes to think over your answer, dear Lady Brandling." The familiar notes aroused me from my stupor. I got up and walked slowly to the harpsichord, at which Hubert was lolling and strumming. "Well, my dear?" he asks insolently, and the notes seemed to ooze out from under his fingers, "have I got the tune right? Is that it?" "The tune," I answered, "is this: Mr. Hubert Brandling, in the name of God Almighty, whose ministry you have defiled, and whose law you have placed yourself outside, I take it upon myself to judge and put you to death as a wrecker and a murderer." I drew Eustace's pistol from my pocket, aimed steadily and fired. I was half stunned by the report; but through the smoke of my own weapon, I saw Hubert reel and fall across the harpsichord, whose jangling mingled with his short, sharp cry. Even after fifty years, I quite understand how I did _that_, and when I recall it all, I feel that, old as I am, I would do it over again. What I cannot explain is what I did afterwards, nor the amazing coolness and clearness of head which I enjoyed at that moment. For without losing a minute I went to the harpsichord, and despite the horrid, hot trickle all over my hands, I turned out his pockets and took his keys. Then I left the room, locked it from the outside, and went downstairs singing that French shepherd's song at the top of my voice. The fearful stillness was beginning to frighten me, when, just as I felt my throat grow dry and my voice faint, the same tune answered me in a low whistle, from out of Hubert's study. I knew my husband's whistle, and yet the fact of Hubert's room, the fact that Hubert had been strumming that tune, filled me, for the first time, with horror. But I found the key on the bunch, and unlocked the door. Eustace was seated in an arm chair, unbound, but his clothes torn as after a scuffle. "Eustace," I said, "I--I have killed Hubert." But to my astonishment he barely gave me time to utter the words; and starting from the chair: "Quick, quick!" he cries, "there is not a moment to lose. Another ten minutes and we also are dead!" and seizing my arm he drags me away, down the remaining stairs, out by the main door and then at a run across the yard and up into the dripping shrubbery. "Eustace, Eustace!" I cried breathless, "this is not the way; we shall be seen from the stables." "No matter," he answered hoarsely, and dragging, almost carrying, me along, "run, Penelope, for our lives." After about five minutes of desperate and, it seemed to me, random and mad climbing up through the wet bushes, he suddenly stopped and drew forth his watch. "Where is Davies? At the turn of the road? Not in the house, at least, there is no one in the house? No one except--except that dead man?" I thought that fear had made him lose his wits, and I dared not tell him that besides that dead man, the house held also a dead woman, our poor, faithful Davies. "She is out of danger," I answered. We had, by some miracle, found our way to a place where the wall, which fortified St. Salvat's, was partly broken at the top, and overgrown by bushes. With a decision I should never have expected from him, and an extraordinary degree of strength and agility, my husband climbed on to the wall, pulled me up, let himself drop into the dry ditch beyond, and received me in his arms. Then, seizing me again by the hand, we started off once more at a mad run through the wood, stumbling and tearing ourselves against the branches. "Up the knoll!" he repeated. "I must see! I must see!" And he seemed to me quite mad. Once at the top of the knoll, he stopped. It was wooded all the way up, but just here was an open space of grass burrowed by rabbits and set with stunted junipers. It was full in sight of St. Salvat's, and if ever there could be a dangerous place to stop in, it was this. But Eustace pointed to the wet grass, "Sit down," he said, and sat down himself, after looking at his watch again. "There are five minutes more," he repeated, remaining, despite my entreaties, seated on the soft ground among the rabbit holes, his face turned to St. Salvat's. "You are sure Davies is safe?" he asked, again drawing out his watch. "Davies is dead," I answered, counting on the effect it would have on him, "Hubert had murdered her ... before ... I...." Eustace's eye kindled strangely. "Ah! is it so?" he cried, "Then poor Davies will have a splendid funeral! All I regret is that that villain should share in the honour." So saying, he started up on to his feet, and pulling out his watch, looked from it to the towers and battlements nestled in the trees of the hollow beneath us. "Half past seven less a minute, less half a minute, less ... Now!" he cried. As if he had shouted a word of command, an enormous sheet of flame leapt up into the air, like the flash at a cannon's mouth; the hill shook and the air bellowed, and we fell back half stunned. When I could see once more, my husband was standing at the brink of the knoll, his arms folded, and looking calmly before him. The outline of towers and battlements had entirely disappeared; and only the skeletons of the great trees, black and branchless, stood out like the broken masts of wrecked vessels against the distant pale and misty sea. "I have burnt out their nest. My house shall be polluted no more," said my husband very quietly. And then, kissing me as we stood on the brink of the green sward, with the rain falling gently upon us, "Come, Penelope," he added taking my hands, "we are outlaws and felons; but we have saved our liberty and our honour." And, hand in hand, we walked swiftly but quietly towards the high road to Milford. * * * * * The foregoing pages are sufficient record for those of my children and grandchildren who have heard the tale from my lips, and sufficient explanation for the remoter posterity of Eustace Brandling and myself, of the mystery which overhung their family in the latter part of the eighteenth century. I have only a few legal details to add. By the explosion which my husband's skill in chemistry and mechanics had enabled him to procure and to time, all the main buildings of St. Salvat's Castle had been utterly destroyed; hiding in their ruins the fate alike of the faithful Davies and of the atrocious Hubert; and hiding, for anything, that was known to the contrary, two other presumable victims--my husband and myself. The gang of villains, deprived of its headquarters, and deprived of its master spirit, speedily fell to pieces. Richard and Gwyn appear to have come to a violent end in quarrelling over the booty of the last wicked expedition; Simon and Evan, and some of their followers ended in prison, on a charge of pillaging the ruins and digging for treasure while the property, in the absence of it master, was still in the hands of the law; but it is probable that this condemnation was intended to save them from a worse punishment, as the authorities gradually got wind of the real trade which had been carried on in the castle. From the villains of St. Salvat's Eustace and I were now safe. But we had taken the law into our own hands; and the justice which had been unable to defend us while innocent, was bound to punish our acts towards the guilty. My husband's words had been true: he and I were outlaws and felons. Our case was privily placed before the King and his ministers, when we had left England and had rejoined my mother in her country. In consideration of the unusual circumstances it was decided that the baronetcy should not lapse, nor the lands be forfeited to the Crown, but be held over for our possible heirs, while ourselves should be accounted as mysteriously disappeared, and forbidden to enter the kingdom. So we wandered for many years in the new world and the old; and it was far from St. Salvat's that our children were successively born. And it was only on the death of my dear husband, which occurred in 1802, that a Brandling, our eldest son, reappeared and claimed his title and inheritance. It was the wish of my son Piers that I should accompany him and his wife to England, and help to rebuild the home which I had helped to destroy. But the recollection of the place had only grown in terror, and I have ever adhered to my resolution not to set eyes on it again. I have spent the years of my widowhood at Grandfey, my dear dead mother's little property in Switzerland, where Eustace and I had been so happy before he succeeded to St. Salvat's. And it is at Grandfey, among the meadows again white with hemlock and the lime avenues again in blossom, that I await, amid the sound of cowbells and of mountain streams, Death, who had held me in his clutches fifty years ago in that castle hidden among the trees above the white wailing Northern sea. 
37502	----	CLIMBING IN THE BRITISH ISLES _WALES AND IRELAND_ CLIMBING IN THE BRITISH ISLES _3 vols. 16mo. Sold separately._ I.--ENGLAND. By W. P. HASKETT SMITH, M.A., Member of the Alpine Club. With 23 Illustrations by Ellis Carr, Member of the Alpine Club, and 5 Plans. 3_s._ 6_d._ II.--WALES AND IRELAND. By W. P. HASKETT SMITH, M.A., and H. C. HART, Members of the Alpine Club. With 31 Illustrations by ELLIS CARR and others, and 9 Plans. 3_s._ 6_d._ III.--SCOTLAND. [_In preparation._] London and New York: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. CLIMBING IN THE BRITISH ISLES _II--WALES AND IRELAND_ =WALES= BY W. P. HASKETT SMITH, M.A. Member of the Alpine Club =IRELAND= BY H. C. HART Member of the Alpine Club; Fellow of the Linnean Society Member of the Royal Irish Academy, etc. WITH THIRTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELLIS CARR Member of the Alpine Club _and others_ AND NINE PLANS LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1895 _All rights reserved_ PREFACE The present volume is intended to deal with all parts of the British Isles except England, which was the subject of Vol. I., and Scotland, to which Vol. III. will be devoted. Nothing is here said about the _Isle of Man_ or the Channel Islands, because it would, no doubt, be considered absurd to advise anyone to visit those islands whose main object was the acquisition of mountaineering skill. Pretty as the former island is, its hills are nothing more than hills, except where they are also railways or tea gardens; and even on its cliffs, which are especially fine at the southern end, comparatively little climbing will be found. In the _Channel Islands_, on the other hand, the granite cliffs, though very low, being usually only 100-200 ft. high, abound in instructive scrambles. Many such will be found in Guernsey, Jersey, and especially in Sark, but the granite is not everywhere of equally good quality. The _Scilly Isles_, again, are by no means to be despised by climbers, especially by such of them as can enjoy knocking about in a small boat, which is almost the only means of getting from climb to climb. The granite forms are somewhat wilder and more fantastic than those in the Channel Islands. Peninnis Head is only one of many capital scrambling grounds. An article by Dr. Treves[1] gives a very good idea of the kind of thing which may be expected. If anyone should think of proceeding, under the guidance of this volume, to regions with which he is so far unacquainted, he will naturally ask how the climbing here described compares with the climbing in other parts of Britain or of Europe. How does Wales, for instance, stand with regard to Cumberland or the Alps? On this point some good remarks will be found in the _Penny Magazine_, vii., p. 161 (1838), where the writer assigns to the more northern hills a slight superiority over Wales. An impression prevails among those who know both that the weather of N. Wales is, if possible, more changeable than that of the Lakes. Climbers will notice this chiefly in winter, when the snow on the Welsh mountains less frequently settles into sound condition. Perhaps sudden changes of temperature are partly to blame for the greater frequency in Wales of deaths from exposure. Winter climbing is very enjoyable, but proper precautions must be taken against the cold. A writer on Wales some 300 years ago observes that 'the cold Aire of these Mountainous Regions by an Antiperistasis keeps in and strengthens the internall heat;' but a good woollen sweater, a warm cap to turn down over the ears and neck, and three pairs of gloves, two pairs on and one pair dry in the pocket, will be found quite as effectual. Dangers, however, cease not with the setting sun, and many who have defied frost-bite during the day fall an easy prey to rheumatism in bed at night. A groundless terror of the Welsh language keeps many away from Wales. The names are certainly of formidable appearance, and Barham's lines are hardly an exaggeration. [1] _Boy's Own Paper_, May 5, 1894. For the vowels made use of in Welsh are so few That the A and the E and the I, O, and U Have really but little or nothing to do. And the duty, of course, falls the heavier by far On the L and the H, and the N and the R. The first syllable PEN is pronounceable; then Come two LL and two HH, two FF, and an N. But appalling words like 'Slwch Twmp' or 'Cwmtrwsgl' lose half their venom when it is explained that W is only a way of writing OO. In spite of its apparent complication the language is so simple and systematic that anyone can learn enough in a quarter of an hour to enable him to pronounce with ease and moderate accuracy any place-name with which he is likely to meet. Irish is less regular, but wonderfully rich in expressions for slightly varying physical features, while the Manx names are more interesting than the hills by which they are borne. In comparison with the Alps what was said in Vol. I. of Cumberland applies equally well to Wales, and nearly as well to Kerry or Donegal. The most striking peculiarity of Irish mountains is, next to the size of the bogs, the large amount of car-driving which has to be done before and after the day's work. But this is an intrusion on the province of another. Old Thomas Fuller, on sitting down to write a detailed account of Wales, which he had never seen, genially remarked that 'it matters not how meanly skilled a writer is so long as he hath knowing and communicative friends.' That precisely describes the Editor's position, especially with regard to Ireland, to the treatment of which no other man could have brought knowledge at once so wide and so accurate as Mr. Hart. Unfortunately he, like his own 'carrabuncle,' was somewhat elusive. After months of mysterious silence he would glide into sight, great with solid mountaineering matter, gleaming with pearls of botany and gems of geologic lore; but, alas! in another moment the waters of bronchitis, or influenza, or inertia would close over the mysterious monster's back, and he would glide away into unknown depths where the harpoon of the penny post was harmless and telegrams tickled him in vain. Now the carrabuncle is caught at last, and readers will be well repaid for a few months' delay. They will be astonished that one pair of eyes could take in so much, and that one pair of legs could cover so much ground. Among many other 'knowing and communicative friends' the Editor would especially dwell on his indebtedness to Mr. F. H. Bowring and to Mr. O. G. Jones. The latter has contributed the whole of the section dealing with the Arans and Cader Idris, and his minute knowledge of that region will be evident from the fact that the quantity which our space has allowed us to print represents less than half of the matter originally supplied by him. For most of the sketches we are again indebted to Mr. Ellis Carr, for a striking view of Tryfaen to Mr. Colin Phillips, and for the remainder (taken under most cruel conditions of weather) to Mr. Harold Hughes of Bangor. W. P. H. S. _August 1895._ CLIMBING IN THE BRITISH ISLES WALES WHERE TO STAY =Aber.=--This station on the Chester and Holyhead Railway is in no sense a centre for mountaineers, though a good deal of work _may_ be done from it. We ourselves 'in our hot youth, when George the Third was King,' and a dozen miles extra tramping at the end of a day was a mere trifle, managed to do many of the mountains of North Wales from it. Its only attraction is a pretty valley, at the head of which are some not very striking waterfalls. The surrounding rocks have, however, been the scene of a surprising number of accidents. Most of these have been caused by slipping on the path which crosses the steep slope of the eastern bank and leads to the head of the main fall. Such was the fatal accident on April 13, 1873, to Mr. F. T. Payne, a barrister. His sight was very defective, and this fact goes far towards accounting for the accident.[2] [2] The _Times_, April 16, 1873, p. 6. In 1876 a very similar case occurred. A young man called Empson, who was staying at Llanfairfechan, was killed in descending, apparently at the very same spot.[3] [3] The _Times_, September 9, 1876, p. 8. In April 1885 Mr. Maitland Wills, described as an expert mountaineer, while walking with two friends from Capel Curig to Aber, fell near the same spot, and was instantly killed.[4] [4] _Ibid._ April 7, 1885, p. 7. In August of the same year Mr. Paget, the Hammersmith Police Magistrate, fell and was severely hurt.[5] And these by no means exhaust the list of casualties, which is, perhaps, only second in length to that of Snowdon itself. It may be mentioned that there is a climb or two on the west and steeper side of the falls. [5] _Ibid._ August 3, 1885, p. 10. * * * * * =Bala=, reached from London in about 7 hours by the Great Western line, is a very pleasant place to stop at on entering Wales, being situated at the foot of the finest natural sheet of water in the Principality, and having railway facilities in three directions. By the aid of the rail Cader Idris, the Arans, and the Rhinogs can be easily got at. For the first mountains Dolgelly, for the second Drwsynant and Llanuwchllyn, for the third Maentwrog would be the best stations. This is also the best place for Arenig Fawr, which can be done on foot all the way, or better by taking the train to Arenig station and returning by rail from Llanuwchllyn after crossing the hill. Lord Lyttelton made Bala famous last century. What he said of it will sufficiently appear from some lines (long since erased by the indignant ladies of Bala) which were once to be seen in a visitors' book here:-- Lord Lyttelton of old gave out To all the world that Bala trout Have all the sweetness that pervades The laughing lips of Bala's maids. Which did his Lordship mean to flout? For fact it is that Bala trout (Ask any fisherman you meet) Are bad to catch, but worse to eat. O Maid of Bala, ere we part, 'Tis mine to bind thy wounded heart; And in thy favour testify-- Though seldom sweet, thou'rt never shy! There is, however, one objection to this epigram, for the poet talks of trout and the peer of Gwyniad; let us, therefore, hope that in regard to the fair as well as the fish the poet's harsh judgment was equally unsound. * * * * * =Barmouth=, a capital place from which to visit the Rhinog range and Cader Idris; and the Cambrian Railway extends the range of operations in three directions, so that even Snowdon is within the possibilities of a single day's excursion. There is excellent climbing practice to be had, not only just outside the town, but actually within it. * * * * * =Beddgelert= (i.e. 'Gelert's Grave') is one of the gates of Snowdonia, and it is the gate by which the judicious will enter. It is, moreover, perhaps the prettiest mountain resort in Wales. Penygwrhyd is more central for climbers pure--and simple--but has no pretensions to beauty of situation; Llanberis has its railway facilities, its quarries, and its trippers; Bettws y Coed is delicious, but it is right away from the mountains. For combination of the beauties of mountain, water, and wooded plain Dolgelly is the only rival of Beddgelert. Snowdon on the north, Moel Hebog on the west, and Cynicht and Moelwyn on the east are enough to make the fortune of any place as a mountaineer's abode, even if there were no Pass of Aberglaslyn close by. The nearest station is Rhyd-ddu, on the Snowdon Ranger line, nearly 4 miles off, and it is uphill nearly all the way. To Portmadoc, on the other hand, the distance is greater, 6 or 7 miles, but the road is fairly level, and nearly every step of it is beautiful, both in winter and in summer. Indeed, there was a time when winter in this romantic village was more enjoyable than summer, for in warm weather the eye was much obstructed by the hand which held the nose; but that was many years ago. The ascent of Snowdon from this side used to be the most frequented, but in the race for popularity it has long been distanced by Llanberis. It is a good path, and easily found. The start is made along the Carnarvon road for some three miles to the Pitt's Head; then up the hill to the right to Llechog, and across the once dreaded Bwlch y Maen. A more direct and very fine route leads straight up and over the ridge of Yr Aran, joining the regular path just short of Bwlch-y-Maen. By going up the Capel Curig some 3½ miles, and taking the turn to the left more than half a mile beyond Llyn y Ddinas, Sir Edward Watkin's path up Cwmyllan may be utilised; but at the cost of 3½ miles' extra walking along the same road the far finer ascent by Cwm Dyli may be made. This is the same as that from Penygwrhyd, but with the advantage of including the lowest portion and waterfalls of Cwm Dyli, which are extremely fine. The classical climbs of Snowdonia are within reach for good walkers, but others will find abundance of opportunities for practice within a mile or two, and for the Garnedd Goch range (which has in it some choice bits) there is no better base. The road to Portmadoc on the south and to Penygwrhyd on the north are not only among the most beautiful in the kingdom, but present the most alluring of problems to the rock climber within a stone's throw. There is a corner of the road about 6 miles from Beddgelert where Crib Goch shows over a foot-hill of Lliwedd, and a rocky ridge runs down from the east almost on to the road. This ridge, though broken, bears some very choice bits, including a certain wide, short chimney facing south. A separate guide-book to this place (by J. H. Bransby) appeared in 1840, and there have been several since, among the best being one published at the modest price of one penny by Abel Heywood. The place plays a great part in Charles Kingsley's _Two Years Ago_, and it was at the 'Goat' Inn here that George Borrow was so furious at the want of deference with which his utterances were received by the company. * * * * * =Benglog=, at the foot of Llyn Ogwen and the head of Nant Ffrancon, is only second to Penygwrhyd as a climbing centre, but, unfortunately, the accommodation is so very scanty--Ogwen Cottage, the only house, having no more than two bedrooms--that the place is little used. For Tryfaen, the Glyders, the Carnedds, Twll Du, and the Elider range it is preferable to any other place, and beautiful problems are to be found by the climber literally within a stone's throw of the door. It is about 5 miles from Bethesda station on the north and the same distance from Capel Curig on the east, all three places being on the great Holyhead Road. Penygwrhyd is 2 hours away, whether by road (9 miles) or over the hill. In the latter case the shortest route is by the col which separates Tryfaen and Glyder Fach, and then over the shoulder east of the latter mountain. To Llanberis the way lies by Twll Du and Cwm Patric, and though much longer than the last could probably be done in nearly as short a time. * * * * * =Bethesda= is 5 miles from Benglog, and that much further from all the best climbing. See, however, p. 18. * * * * * =Capel Curig= (600 ft. above sea level) is 5½ miles from Bettws y Coed railway station, 4 miles from Penygwrhyd, and 5 from Benglog, is a very good centre for strong walkers. Most of the best climbs are within reach, but none very near. For Snowdon Penygwrhyd is much nearer; Benglog is better for the Glyders and the Carnedds; so that, while being pretty good for nearly all, Capel Curig is not the best starting-place for any. It has no exclusive rights, except over Moel Siabod on the south and the wild unfrequented district in the opposite direction, which lies at the back of Carnedd Llewelyn. Hutton, who visited it at the beginning of the century, calls it 'an excellent inn in a desert.' The Alpine Club had a meeting here in 1879. * * * * * =Dinas Mawddwy=, reached by rail from Machynlleth, is a pleasant, secluded spot amid mountainous surroundings, but not conveniently situated for climbing anything but Aran Mawddwy. All the advantages of the place may be equally well enjoyed from Machynlleth. Old Pennant records how in his rash youth he used to toboggan down the peat paths of Craig y Dinas, 'which,' says he, 'I now survey with horror.' A Welsh bard, whose poems must have been neglected in the place, declares that it was notable for three things--blue earth, constant rain, and hateful people. * * * * * =Dolgelly=, which ends in _-eu_ in many old books, in _-ey_ on the one side and in _-y_ on the other of the modern railway station, and is commonly pronounced by the residents as if it ended in _-a_, is said to mean 'hazel dale,' a name which the place can hardly be said to live up to. There is, however, no doubt that it is one of the prettiest places in Wales and one of the pleasantest to stop at. In the first place the communications are very good, for by the Great Western Railway there is a capital service to Shrewsbury and London, while on the seaward side the Cambrian Railway puts Barmouth and Portmadoc on the one side, and Machynlleth and Aberystwith on the other, within easy reach. There is good scenery on all sides of it, while for Cader Idris, the Aran Mountains, and the Rhinog range there is no better centre. Many people have an objection to going up and down a mountain by the same route, and have an equal horror of the long grind round the foot of it, which is the result of going down a different side of the mountain if you want to return to your starting-point. At Dolgelly you enjoy the advantage of being able to take a train to the far side of your mountain, so as to come back over the top and straight on down to your sleeping-place. For instance, a very fine way of doing Aran Benllyn and Aran Mawddwy is to go by the Great Western to Llanuwchllyn and then come back along the ridge of both mountains. In the same way one can begin a day on the Rhinogs by rail, walking from Llanbedr or Harlech to Cwm Bychan, and so over the Rhinogs and Llethr, and down to Dolgelly again. Even Cader Idris is rendered more enjoyable if the train be taken to Towyn and Abergynolwyn, whence the walk by Talyllyn and up to the summit by way of Llyn y Cae is in turn pretty and impressive. As a rule it is far better to go out by train and come back on foot than to reverse the process, and for two reasons--first, by taking the train at once you make sure of your ride, and have the remainder of the day freed from anxiety and the fear of just missing the last train a dozen miles from home, with less than an hour of daylight remaining; secondly, if you don't miss the train it is because you have come along at racing pace. You are in consequence very hot, and have to stand about in a draughty station till the train (which is twenty minutes late) arrives and then follows half an hour's journey with wet feet, for wet feet and walking on Welsh hills are very close friends indeed. There used to be a saying about Dolgelly that the town walls there are six miles high. Of course this refers mainly to the long mural precipice which forms the north point of Cader Idris. Abundant climbing is to be found on this 'wall,' which, with a small part of Aran Mawddwy and a few short, steep bits along the course of the river Mawddach, constitutes the best rock-work in the immediate vicinity of Dolgelly. * * * * * =Ffestiniog=, a very pleasant place to stay at, with good communications by rail with Bala, Bettws y Coed, and Portmadoc. There are climbs near--e.g. on the Manods and on Moelwyn--but on a small scale, the good ones being mostly destroyed by the colossal slate quarries. _Blaenau Ffestiniog_ is the more central and less beautiful; the old village (3 miles away) is far pleasanter. The Cynfael Falls, about a mile off, include the well-known 'Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit,' and are very pretty, but have been almost as fatal as those at Aber. Readers will probably remember the death of Miss Marzials at this spot.[6] [6] The _Times_, August 25, 1885, p. 6, and August 27, p. 8. See also the _Times_, October 2, 1837, p. 3. * * * * * =Llanberis= (i.e. 'Church of Peris'), being a station on a railway which has a good service from England, is the most accessible of all the mountain resorts in Wales. As a consequence of these facilities the place is often intolerably overrun, especially during the late summer and autumn. The true lover of the mountains flees the spot, for the day-tripper is a burden and desire fails. Whether the railway will have the power to make things worse in this respect we cannot yet decide, but it seems unlikely. It is only of late years that Llanberis has possessed the most popular road up Snowdon. The opening of the road over the pass in 1818 did a great deal, and the visit of H.M. the Queen in 1832 did still more to make the place popular, and the pony path up Snowdon and the railway settled the matter. The other mountains which may readily be ascended from here are those in the Elider and Glyder ranges, while climbing is nearly confined to the rocks on both sides of the pass, which includes some work of great excellence. As early as 1845 a separate guide-book for this place was published by J. H. Bransby. Now there are several. * * * * * =Machynlleth= (pronounced roughly like 'Mahuntly,' and by the rustics very like 'Monkley') lies midway between Plynlimon and Cader Idris, and within reach of both, yet can hardly claim to be a centre for mountaineers. Of submontane walks and scenery it commands a surprising variety, having railway facilities in half a dozen directions. This makes it a capital place for a long stay, varied by an occasional night or two at places like Rhayader, Dolgelly, Barmouth, or Beddgelert. The best way of doing Aran Mawddwy is by way of Dinas Mawddwy, and the ascent of Cader Idris from Corris railway station, returning by way of Abergynolwyn, makes a most enjoyable day. * * * * * =Nantlle=, once a very pretty place, is now little more than an intricate system of slate quarries. A low pass (Drws y Coed) separates it from Snowdon, of which Wilson took a celebrated picture from this side. There are some nice little climbs on both sides of the pass and on Garnedd Goch, which runs away to the southward of it. Nantlle has a station, but Penygroes, the junction, is so near as to make it a more convenient stopping-place. Anyone staying at Criccieth can make a good day by taking the train to Nantlle, and returning along Garnedd Goch or over Moel Hebog. Snowdon too is within easy reach. * * * * * =Penygwrhyd.=--In Beddgelert Church is a monument 'to the memory of Harry Owen, for forty-four years landlord of the inn at Penygwrhyd and guide to Snowdon: born April 2, 1822; died May 5, 1891.' Harry Owen it was who did for Penygwrhyd what Will Ritson did for Wastdale Head and Seiler for Zermatt. Intellectually, perhaps, he was not the equal of either of the other two, but there was a straightforward cordiality about him which made all lovers of the mountains feel at once that in his house they had a home to which they could return again and again with ever renewed pleasure. The house stands at the foot of the east side of the Llanberis Pass, at the junction of the roads from Capel Curig (4 miles), Beddgelert (8 miles), and Llanberis (6 miles), and at the central point of three mountain groups--Snowdon (the finest and boldest side), the Glyders, and Moel Siabod. The last is of small account, but the other two groups contain some--one may almost say most--of the best climbing and finest scenery in Wales. Most people come to the inn by way of Bettws y Coed and many from Llanberis; but by far the finest approach is that from Beddgelert, and by this way the first approach at any rate ought always to be made. Ascents and climbs innumerable may be made from here, and many valuable notes on climbs may be found here in a certain volume secured from the profane mob by lock and key. In the same volume also several sets of verses occur much above the ordinary tourist level, among them being a very smart study of the climbing class in the style of Walt Whitman, and a few telling alphabetic distichs of which _habitués_ will recognise the force. K--for the Kitchen, where garments are dried; L--for the Language we use when they're fried; O--for the Owens, whom long may we see; P--for the Pudding we call P.Y.G. S is for Snowdon, that's seen from afar; T--for the Tarts on the shelf in the bar. The visitors' book proper also contains entries of some interest, including some lines (given at length in the _Gossiping Guide_) written by Charles Kingsley, Tom Taylor, and Tom Hughes, chiefly remarkable for their breezy good temper. The lines are printed, together with a mass of very poor stuff taken from the same source, in a little book called _Offerings at the Foot of Snowdon_.[7] The inn and the Owens play an important part in Kingsley's novel _Two Years Ago_. Forty or fifty years ago there was a constant visitor at this inn who might have claimed the invention of the place as a climbing centre. He corresponded in profession, and also in age, to the Rev. James Jackson, the Cumbrian 'Patriarch.' He had a mania for ridge-walking, or, as he termed it, 'following the sky line.' His name I could never learn. [7] Tremadoc, 1875. * * * * * =Rhayader= (_The Waterfall_, i.e. of the river Wye, pronounced here 'Rhay-' and not 'Rhy-,' as in North Wales) is a very convenient centre for much scenery which is of great interest to the geologically-minded mountaineer, though the hills are of no great height. The Cambrian Railway has a station here, and makes an expedition to the Brecon Beacons or to the very interesting Black Mountains a very simple matter, while on the way a good deal may be seen of two of the most beautiful rivers in Britain, the Wye and the Usk. Aberedw Rocks and Cwm Elan are quite near, and so is Nant Guillt, with its memories of Shelley, beloved of all who love the mountains, though perhaps few would have cared to be on the same rope with that somewhat erratic genius. Where the Wye enters the Vale of Rhayader there are some remarkably fine rocks (chiefly in the 'Lower Llandovery' formation). Mackintosh calls it 'a deep basin surrounded by very precipitous slopes, which on the side most distant from the river channel present one of the finest and loftiest rocky cliffs in the principality.' The Birmingham Water Works have influenced the town for good in one respect only: they have introduced a barber, who at the end of each week mows navvies' cheeks by the acre. * * * * * =Snowdon Ranger=, a small inn on the west side of Snowdon, readily reached by rail from Carnarvon or coach from Beddgelert, or again by an easy and interesting walk over the low pass of Drws y Coed from Penygroes station. It commands one of the simplest ascents of Snowdon, but by no means the most interesting. Good climbing may be found near it on Clogwyndurarddu, on Mynydd Mawr, on both sides of Drws y Coed, and on the Garnedd Goch range, but none are on a very large scale. In the history of Welsh mountaineering it holds a place, having long been the most usual starting-point for the ascent of Snowdon, and all the early travellers came here. Cradock (1770) calls it 'a small thatched hut at the foot of the mountain (Snowdon), near a lake which they call Llyn Cychwhechlyn (i.e. Quellyn), which I leave you to pronounce as well as you are able. We procured a number of blooming country girls to divert us with their music and dancing.' Even these delights, however, could not keep travellers from drifting away towards Beddgelert--a change which, as readers of _Wild Wales_ will remember, had already become marked when Borrow had his interview with the Snowdon guide forty years ago. The early accounts often speak of this place as Bronyfedw (a name which still survives), and for many years there used to be a kind of 'personally conducted' (Hamer's) ascent of Snowdon from Carnarvon once a week by this route. * * * * * =Tanybwlch.=--Wyndham, Pennant, and, indeed, nearly all the early explorers of Wales stayed at this very pleasant place. At that time the highroad from Dolgelly to Beddgelert and Carnarvon passed the door; but the railway having now superseded the post chaise has left the place somewhat out in the cold. It has, however, some assistance from the 'toy' line to Ffestiniog, and is a pretty little place, though Moelwyn, Cynicht, Moel Siabod, and the Rhinogs are all the mountains which it can command. For those coming from England the best station is Maentwrog Road, on the G.W.R. line from Bala. WHERE TO CLIMB =Anglesey.=--The extreme flatness of the island perhaps gives an increased effect to its fine rock scenery about the Stacks, which will be respected by climbers as perhaps the earliest school of their art in Wales. An old description of the egg-takers here contains some interesting sentences which are not wholly devoid of point even for climbers of the present day. 'The gains bear no tolerable proportion to the danger incurred. The adventurers, having furnished themselves with every necessary implement, enter on the terrific undertaking. Two--for this is a trade in which co-partnership is absolutely necessary--take a station. He whose superior agility renders it eligible prepares for the rupestrian expedition. Dangerous employ! a slip of the foot or the hand would in an instant be fatal to both. To a stranger this occupation appears more dangerous than it really is. In persons habituated to bodily difficulty the nervous system becomes gradually braced, and the solids attain that state of rigidity which banishes irritability, while the mind, accustomed to danger, loses that timidity which frequently leads to the dreaded disaster. Fact demonstrates to what an extent difficulty and danger may be made subordinate to art and perseverance.' This is the voice of truth, but the solids nowadays (owing possibly to the fluids or to the want of them) do not banish their irritability completely. * * * * * =Carnarvonshire.=--Both in the quality and the quantity of its climbs this county leaves the rest of Wales far behind. Its superiority is even more marked than that of Cumberland over the rest of England. Snowdon, the Glyders, and the Carnedds would alone be sufficient to establish this; but there are numbers of less important elevations which would have a great reputation in almost any other county. The chief mountain centres are Penygwrhyd, Beddgelert, Llanberis, and Snowdon Ranger, all four lying at the foot of Snowdon, Benglog (Ogwen Cottage), Capel Curig, and Ffestiniog. The appearance of the county must be greatly changed since Leland's time. He tells us that 'the best wood of Caernarvonshire is by Glinne Kledder and by Glin Llughy and by Capel Kiryk and at Llanperis. More upwarde be Eryri Hilles, and in them ys very little corne. If there were the Deere would destroy it.' The destruction of this wood has greatly injured the beauty of the valleys round Snowdon, Nant Gwynant being the only one where it remains in any quantity. * * * * * =Penmaenmawr= (1,553 ft.) is far from being a difficult mountain. The ancient Britons had a fort on the top of it, and it was ascended 'by a person of quality in the reign of Charles II.,' but it is scarcely a paradox to say that it was the greatest obstacle to knowledge of Welsh mountains during last century. The highroad from Chester crossed it, and our ancestors used to go rolling off it down into the sea, and did not like it. Therefore a journey to Wales was a great and a rare feat. All the early travellers dilate upon its terrors. In 1795 Mr. T. Hucks, B.A., gives a ludicrous account of his ascent, which was actually made without a guide. 'We rashly took the resolution to venture up this stupendous mountain without a guide, and therefore unknowingly fixed upon the most difficult part to ascend, and consequently were continually impeded by a vast number of unexpected obstructions. At length we surmounted every danger and difficulty, and safely arrived at the top.... In the midst of my melancholy cogitations I fully expected that the genius of the mountain would have appeared to me in some formidable shape and have reproached me with rashly presuming to disturb the sacred silence of his solitary reign.' Penmaenmawr was not a frequented tourist resort in those days. The genius would not expect much sacred silence now. The writer knows of no continuous climb on the mountain, though he has often had a scramble on it. * * * * * =The Carnedd Group.=--=Carnedd Dafydd= (3,426 ft.), said to have been named after David the brother of Prince Llewelyn, rises on the north of Llyn Ogwen and on the west of the river which flows from it. The view, looking southward across Llyn Ogwen at the bold northern front of the Glyder group, is one of the grandest in Wales. That to the north-west is to a great extent cut off by Carnedd Llewelyn. The usual starting-points are Bethesda, Ogwen Cottage, and Capel Curig, though strong walkers occasionally attack the mountain from the Conway valley on the west and from Aber on the sea coast. From Bethesda the most direct way to the summit is to steer south-east and straight at the mountain, which is full in view. The distance is 3½ miles, and an active traveller, if by any accident he extricates himself speedily from Bethesda, may reach the summit in two hours. On the other hand he is quite as likely to find himself, at the end of the two hours, still wandering sadly up and down the by-lanes of that maze-like village. The natives are polite, and would willingly give any information; but they cannot speak English, and they do not possess the information. There is only one street which leads anywhere in particular, only one which can be known at sight and followed fearlessly when known. It is the Holyhead road, and to get from one house in Bethesda to another it is said that even the inhabitants find it safest to make for the Holyhead road at once, and thus secure an intelligible base of operations. The route up Carnedd Dafydd by way of Penyroleuwen begins with over two miles of this road, and is, consequently, a very sound opening. It is only necessary to turn off at Tynymaes, on the left hand, and strike up the hill and along the ridge to Braichddu, overlooking the tarn of Ffynnon y Lloer. A sharp turn is now made to the left along the shoulder, and the great cairn which marks the summit is soon reached. The route from Capel Curig is very easily found. Three and a half miles along the Bangor road, after crossing the river Llugwy, and just before a chapel, a path strikes off on the right-hand side towards a farmhouse. Half a mile along this path strike up the hill to the left, travelling at first about north by compass, and afterwards, as the hill is mounted, inclining more to the west. A less popular route, but perhaps shorter and more easily found in mist, and certainly more effective in point of scenery, leaves the highroad about a furlong short of Ogwen Lake. Pass a farm and follow a stream for a mile up to Ffynnon Lloer; from the head of the pool pick your way through some rough ground to the left hand up on to Braichddu, when the view of the Glyders bursts upon you suddenly with great effect, and, on turning to the right to make the final mount to the Carnedd, some good peeps may be had down the confused rocks of Craig yr Ysfa. From Ogwen Cottage the last route is often the best, especially when the party contains some weak members, as the direct line from the foot of the lake is exceedingly steep. The climbs on this mountain are practically limited to Cefnysgolion Duon on the north and Craig yr Ysfa on the west, overlooking Nantffrancon. _Cefnysgolion Duon_--i.e. 'The Black Ladders,' by which name it is commonly known--might be forced into meaning 'The Black Schools,' and this sense greatly bewildered a learned native, who observes, 'It is impossible to imagine a spot less suited to the operations of the school-master.' But we can assure him that as a school for climbers it leaves little to be desired. Perhaps 'Black Pinnacles' would be a better rendering, 'ysgol' being often used in that sense, the comparison referring to a step-ladder, seen sideways, so as to present the shape of an isosceles triangle. The crags are on the south side of Cwm Llafar, the great hollow between the two Carnedds, and there is nothing to do but to follow up from Bethesda the stream which flows down it. In other words, the true line is almost parallel to and about half a mile north of the most direct route to the top of Carnedd Dafydd. As advance is made the slope between the two routes becomes more and more rocky, and when the Ladders themselves come fairly in view the scene is a very grand one. There are two conspicuous gullies, divided by a stretch of rock which looks almost unclimbable. The right-hand or western gully is very steep, and having often quite a stream in it, is then decidedly hard, and requires considerable care in winter. The other gully slopes away sharply to the left, behind a slight projection, and has only one pitch in it, but that is really good. Two ways here present themselves of climbing along the left-hand wall at two different levels, neither of them too easy, or else the gully may be deserted altogether, as the left bank forms a ridge which offers easy but delightful climbing all over it, the hold suddenly becoming magnificent. East of this ridge the hold is still good, but the rocks dwindle in size, until, in the centre of the col between the Carnedds, they wholly disappear. This noble crag has never been much frequented by climbers, though in 1879 about a dozen members of the Alpine Club took it on their way from Bangor to Capel Curig.[8] [8] _Alpine Journal_, vol. ix. p. 384. Some years before 1869[9] a Birmingham Scripture Reader fell over it, and was, of course, killed. [9] Mackintosh, p. 809. _Craig yr Ysfa._--These rugged and in parts highly romantic rocks have attracted but few climbers. A hardworking group of Bangor enthusiasts have done about all the work that has been done here. In November 1894 J. M. A. T., H. H., H. E., and J. S., quitting the road just beyond the eighth milestone from Bangor, reached, in twenty minutes, the mouth of a gully, broad except where it narrows into a gorge, about half-way up. The climbing on the left of the stream is quite easy, on its right less so; but in either case the stream has to be abandoned at the first waterfall, which is quite impracticable when there is any quantity of water falling. One may climb out to the right by a small tributary gully, or up the buttress of rock to the right, and thus turn the lower fall as well as the upper fall, which is a small edition of the Devil's Kitchen. Near the edge of the cliff, on the left of the gorge, is a large tabular rock, which forms the postern to a narrow passage back into the gully, which soon broadens out and leaves a choice of routes; the left-hand branch should be taken by preference, as it contains a rather difficult pitch, above which the ascent to the top of the ridge is simple. [Illustration: A GULLY ON CRAIG YR YSFA] A second gully lies a few hundred yards nearer Ogwen Lake, and contains, besides cascades, two distinct waterfalls, of which the first may be surmounted by a small but not easy chimney close to it on the left, which is also the side for attacking the second difficulty. Here a necessary grass ledge above the level of the top of the fall was loosened by heavy rain, and stopped the progress of the above party, who completed the ascent by climbing out to the left. The craggy portion is just over one mile long. Towards the head of Nant Ffrancon the rocks come lower, and are more fantastic, affording a great variety of fine problems, though few continuous climbs. * * * * * =Carnedd Llewelyn= (3,484 ft.) is the second highest of the Welsh mountains. The last Government Survey gave it a slight lift, and at the same time slightly reduced Snowdon, causing a rumour to go abroad, alarming to conservative minds, that the latter had forfeited its pride of place. This would have been a real misfortune, as the old-established favourite is beyond all question the finest mountain of the two. Only imagine the feelings of a poor peak abandoned in its old age, without cheap trippers, without huts, without a railway, without Sir Edward Watkin. The blow would have been too cruel! The near views from Carnedd Llewelyn are not remarkable. They consist mainly of the crags of Yr Elen and those of the grand north face of Carnedd Dafydd, which, however, practically conceal the Glyders, and these again cut off most of Snowdon. But the seaward view is very fine, and with regard to the very distant places, such as the Cumberland Fells, this mountain has a great advantage over Snowdon both 'to see and to be seen.' Perhaps the extra 7½ miles make the difference, but it is a fact that for once that Snowdon is to be made out from Scafell or Great Gable, Carnedd Llewelyn can be seen half a dozen times. For the ascent Bethesda is the nearest. Several ways present themselves, and whichever the traveller takes he will think that he has taken the boggiest. One way is straight up Cwm Llafar to the ridge (Bwlchcyfrwydrum) between the two Carnedds, or inclining left one mile short of this ridge one soon reaches the ridge connecting our mountain with Yr Elen, on the other side of which are some fine crags. The ascent by way of Cwm Caseg, the next valley to the north, is equally simple and affords a good view of these crags from below. In thick weather the long lonely walk from Aber is an education in itself to the mountain rambler, while from Talycafn station, on the north-west, a good road comes to within a mile and a half E.S.E. of the summit. The Capel Curig ascent is perhaps the least interesting of all; by it the two Carnedds are usually combined. Either the ascent or the return should be made along the Pen Helig ridge, with regard to the terrors of which the guide-books have used language as exaggerated as the descriptions of Striding Edge on Helvellyn. In winter, however, there is sometimes pretty work here. _Climbs._--A few rocks will be found round the remarkable tarns of Llyndulyn and Melynllyn, on the north-east side of the mountain, and on the west side of Llyn Eigiau. Better still are the rocks near where the Talycafn road ends by a slate quarry in the rocks of Elicydu (apparently marked as Pen Helig by the Ordnance Surveyors); but best of all is the north-east side of Yr Elen, where there is a sort of small edition of the Black Ladders, with the same sunless aspect, so that it often keeps its snow in the same way till quite late in the year. In winter, however, the grand cwm which lies due east of the Carnedd offers splendid snow scenes and snow work. Some years ago a quarryman was lost in the snow, and an upright stone on the north ridge of the mountain marks the spot. One of the earliest ascents of the mountain was that made in 1630 by Johnson, who evidently had the spirit of the mountaineer in him, for he pressed his guide to take him to the more precipitous places, alleging the love of rare plants. That worthy, however, declined to go, alleging the fear of eagles. Mackintosh too had a difficulty here with his guide during a winter's day excursion. But his fears seem to have been entirely without reasonable cause, and he was not so near to being robbed or murdered as he at one time fancied. Mr. Paterson's charming book _Below the Snow Line_ describes the route from Llanfairfechan in wild weather. In the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1771 will be found noted an ascent which satisfied the climber and his water-level that the summit was higher than that of Snowdon. Pennant too made the ascent, but came to an opposite conclusion on this point. * * * * * =Elider Group.=--=Carnedd y Filiast= (i.e. 'Cairn of the Female Greyhound') is a feature on the west side of Nant Ffrancon, on account of the very remarkable slabs which it exhibits on that side. A hundred and twenty-five years ago Pennant was told here that 'if the fox in extreme danger takes over them in wet weather he falls down and perishes.' Certainly they are dangerous enough to a less sure-footed animal--man--and are best left alone, especially when there is any ice about. The nearest place from which to start is Bethesda. Another hill of the same name lies to the north of Bala. * * * * * =Foelgoch.=--A spur running north-west from Glyder Fawr forms the western bank of Nant Ffrancon, and nearly three miles along this ridge is Foelgoch (i.e. 'Red Hill'). It has a steep western side towards the head of Cwm Dudodyn, and on the other side a very steep rocky recess facing Llyn Idwal. Llanberis and Bethesda stations are about equally distant. From the former place it is seldom visited, except before or after the ascent of Elidyr Fawr. On August 6, 1886, E. K. writes, 'There is excellent scrambling to be had about this mountain, and some really difficult work.' On September 29, 1894, a party of three climbed from Nant Ffrancon. The break in the ridge may be reached either by following the ridge itself or from the cwms on either side of it. The ascent thence to the summit offers easy but steep climbing if the crest of the ridge be scrupulously adhered to. Passing over the summit of Y Garn the descent was made down the southern ridge of Cwm Clyd, which gives a good scramble along its barren arête. [Illustration: TWLL DU (looking down through it to Llyn Idwal and Llyn Ogwen)] * * * * * =Y Garn= (3,104 ft.), near the head of Nant Ffrancon, on the west side, is little visited, but has some very good rock on it. Benglog is much the nearest place. The well-known Twll Du may almost be said to be on it, and is practically the division between it and Glyder Fawr. * * * * * =Twll Du= (i.e. 'Black Pit'), commonly called the 'Devil's Kitchen,' is a remarkable chasm in the line of cliff which faces the head of Llyn Idwal on the south-west, being a northerly continuation of Glyder Fawr. From Benglog, which is much the nearest place, there is little choice of route; either side of Llyn Idwal will do, but the west side is rather less boggy. Keeping well up you pass the head of Idwal until you bring it on with the head of Llyn Ogwen, and then about 500 ft. above the former you find yourself at the foot of this grand fissure. In dry weather all but the highest patch can be easily ascended; after rain it is sometimes difficult to enter the place at all. In the summer of 1893, which was extraordinarily dry, a young fellow claimed to have done it single-handed, but it was supposed by some that he had mistaken the place. During the intense cold of March 1895 an extraordinary _tour de force_ was accomplished here by J. M. A. T. and H. H., who cut their way up the frozen waterfall, and thus accomplished what was probably the first ascent of this formidable chasm. The height of the final pitch in its normal condition is about 53 ft., measured from the top of the block down to the surface of the pool below. When the climb above described was made, no doubt much of this height was filled up by snow and ice, yet the remainder was not surmounted in less than 7 hours, so that the average rate of progress must have been about 5 ft. per hour. The total time from Benglog to the top of the Kitchen was 8½ hours. The party descended in the dark to Llanberis in 3 hours more, having left Ogwen in the morning at 10 o'clock. Those who approach from Upper Llanberis by way of Cwm Patric or from Penygwrhyd over the shoulder west of Glyder Fawr, and, in fact, all who do not come by way of Benglog, have to descend the high cliff out of which the Kitchen is cut. The only convenient passage starts about a furlong to the south of the Kitchen, and is very awkward at night or in mist. It begins as a wide, straight trough (the largest and most regular of two or three), which slopes gently downwards and towards Benglog. Presently it takes a more northerly direction and becomes a steep, wide slope of scree following the line of cliff to the great blocks of fallen stones which mark the mouth of the chasm. An active man can return from the lower to the upper exit of the chimney in ten minutes, and the descent could, of course, be done in even less time. In dry weather there is but one slight difficulty before reaching the grand crux at the head. It can be climbed by passing into a cavern and up to the left, but the easier, and after heavy rain the only practicable, way is up the side-wall just to the left of the choke-stone on to a broad ledge. A little way above this a huge slab, fallen from above, is seen leaning against the wall on the right. The passage to the right of it can always be made, however strong the stream on the left hand may be. The climb to the top of this slab is very neat, and, besides affording a capital view of the situation, is about all the consolation left for the ardent explorer, who will seldom succeed in penetrating any further. There are, however, two possible lines of advance, both on the left-hand wall, one well in under the colossal cap-stone, which hangs 50 ft. overhead, and the other outside, nearly opposite the great slab. By the latter route 20 ft. or 30 ft. can be climbed with some little difficulty, but the traverse to the right would no doubt prove a very ticklish operation. Cliffe, in June 1843, penetrated to the foot of the final obstacle, and gives a very good description of it. [Illustration: TWLL DU (looking up from within)] * * * * * =Glyder Group.=--=Glyder Fach= (3,262 ft.), though called 'the lesser,' is far finer than its brother peak, so much so that many have found great difficulty in believing that the Ordnance Surveyors were right in ascribing 17 ft. of superiority to the more lumpy western summit. One might be tempted to build a 20-ft. cairn but for the fear of spoiling the great glory of Glyder Fach, the chaos of rocks on its summit. The present cairn was not in existence ten years ago, and must have been built about 1887. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE GLYDERS AND TRYFAEN] _Ascents._--From Benglog the most interesting ascent is by the Gribin ridge, between Idwal and Bochllwyd. It involves a slight descent (about 150 ft.) after reaching the ridge, but it is less fatiguing than that by Bwlch Tryfaen and the steep rough screes on the right hand beyond it. From Penygwrhyd you mount behind the inn, crossing the bog as you best can towards a wall which goes straight up the hill. When the direction of the wall changes you make a compromise midway between the old and the new, and very soon come on to a line of cairns which continues right on to the boggy tableland above. Tryfaen top now appears over the hill, and as soon as it is fairly lifted you bear to the left and up a stony slope to the cairn. From Capel Curig it is a simple matter to follow the ridge of Cefn y Capel, but quicker to keep along the highroad past the Llynian Mymbyr, and then strike up a grass slope to the right. As often as not both Glyders are ascended in one expedition; the dip between the two is only 300 ft., the distance is under a mile, and stones are the only obstacles. [Illustration: SUMMIT OF GLYDER FACH] _Climbs._--The north face of this mountain is remarkably fine and contains all the climbing there is. At the east end is the bristly ridge leading down to Bwlch Tryfaen. This is stimulating, but not difficult. In the centre of the face there is a large gully, ascended in November 1894 by J. M. A. T., H. H., and H. E. They did not find it necessary to use the rope. The lofty pitch at the foot of the eastern gully is decidedly hard. (J. M. A. T.) In May 1888 W. E. C., A. E., E. B., and E. K. found and ascended a gully close under the west side of Castell Gwynt, and add that they reached Penygwrhyd by way of Cwm Graianog. The last statement is very mysterious. About the Castell itself (the rugged pile of rocks between the two Glyders, marked by its slender outstanding 'sentinel'), and about the summit of the Fach, there are some good scrambles on a small scale. [Illustration: CASTELL GWYNT AND GLYDER FAWR] Directly under the top stone is the minimum thermometer, which has been kept there for some years.[10] The most interesting thing on the whole mountain is undoubtedly the pile of stones on the top. According to the bard Taliesin it is the burial-place of a mighty warrior, one Ebediw. If a kind of Stonehenge was erected there to his memory and afterwards got upset by an earthquake it might account for present appearances. Edward Lhwyd, the great antiquary, was particularly struck by them 200 years ago, and his description and remarks are equally applicable to-day. [10] See the _Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society_ for April 1893, xix. No. 86, for a summary of the temperatures thus recorded. [Illustration: ROCKS ON GLYDER FACH] 'On the utmost top of the Glyder,' he says, 'I observed prodigious heaps of stones, many of them of the largeness of those of Stonehenge, but of all the irregular shapes imaginable, and all lying in such confusion as the ruins of any building can be supposed to do.... Had they been in a valley I had concluded they had fallen from the neighbouring rocks ... but, being on the highest part of the hill, they seemed to me much more remarkable.' He goes on to remark upon a precipice which has not been identified (see _Esgair Felen_). 'On the west side of the same hill there is, amongst many others, one naked precipice (near or one of the Trigfylchau, but distinguished by no particular name), as steep as any I have seen, but so adorned with numerous equidistant pillars, and these again slightly crossed at certain joints. 'Twas evident that the gullies or interstices were occasioned by a continued dropping of water down this cliff.' Trigfylchau, by the way (i.e. 'Twisting Gaps'), is a name which does not seem to be known at the present day. Lhwyd's description fired the curiosity of the travellers who explored Wales nearly a century later, and the amusing part of it is that they could not find this wonderful mountain, or even hear of it from the intelligent natives. Cradock (1770) found an aged man, who told him that the mountain was 'now called the Wythwar (Wyddfa),' which stands 'a few miles south of the parish of Clynog;' and H. P. Wyndham went further by identifying it with 'the mountain called Ryvil in Speed's map' (i.e. Yr Eifl). It shows how little the natives knew about their mountains until the travellers came and taught them. Pennant made the ascent, and gives a picture of the summit. Bingley also went up, and gives a good description. Kingsley's fine description, in _Two Years Ago_, of Elsley's ascent really applies mainly to Glyder Fach, though he only mentions the Fawr. Elsley's descent, by the way, was apparently into Bochllwyd by way of Castell Gwynt. * * * * * [Illustration: GLYDER FAWR, NORTH FACE] =Glyder Fawr= (3,279 ft.).--The meaning of the name is a mystery. One Welsh scholar gravely tells us that the real name is Clydar, which at once yields the obviously suitable meaning of a 'well-shaded ploughed ground.' Either of these epithets would be quite as appropriate to the Sahara itself, for the two Glyders are among the barest and rockiest mountains in all Wales. The two roads which lead from Capel Curig, one over the Pass of Llanberis and the other through Nant Ffrancon to Bangor, enclose between them the whole of the Glyder group, forming a singular figure, which recalls Menenius Agrippa's description of the Second Citizen as 'the great toe of this assembly.' The toe is slightly bent; Penygwrhyd is the knuckle, Capel Curig the tip of the nail, and Benglog (the head of Nant Ffrancon) is just in the inside bend. The highest point of the group lies practically in a straight line with Snowdon and Carnedd Llewelyn, and, roughly speaking, midway between them. Of Snowdon it commands a profoundly impressive view, and is in turn itself best seen from the Carnedds. Both Glyders are very frequently ascended from Penygwrhyd, Llanberis, Capel Curig, and Ogwen. The simplest way up is from the top of the Llanberis Pass, from which a ridge leads to the summit. This is, perhaps, the best way if the start be made from any place not on the north side, though from Penygwrhyd the route may be boggily abbreviated by making up the little valley to the north-west. From Ogwen the usual ascent passes near Twll Du, though the ridge separating the Idwal and Bochllwyd lakelets is sometimes chosen, and certainly affords a greater variety of fine views. Climbing on this mountain is practically confined to its northern face, and even there very little has been done. There are also a few rocks on the west side. The climbing-book at Penygwrhyd contains very few references to it. At Easter in 1884 H. and C. S. mention that they enjoyed fine glissades down the snow slopes on the north-west side to Llyn y Cwn, but the first real climb recorded therein is that of the big gully in the north face, made on November 25, 1894, by J. M. A. T., H. H., and H. E. From the far end of Llyn Idwal a long scree leads up to the mouth of the gully, which may be identified from a distance by the pitch which blocks it about half-way up and a broad strip of grass outside it on the west. The point to make for is the head of a wall which runs up from the extreme south end of the llyn to the corner of a huge mass of bare smooth rock. If the traveller reaches this point without being engulfed in the boggy ground which fringes the llyn he will now continue in the same general direction as the wall, and soon sees the gully just before him. A kind of trough, probably produced by weathering of the rock, is now seen on the left, and this, as it appeared more interesting than the steep grass of the central part of the gully, was followed at first by the above-mentioned party. The trough is very easy at the foot, and has good holds, which higher up incline outwards, and become less and less prominent until at last progress becomes a question of delicacy and circumspection. Before the trough came entirely to an end the party traversed into the gully, but even there found the ascent to the pitch far from easy. Utilising the full length of their 80-ft. rope, and moving only one at a time, they reached the cave under the big pitch. Here it appeared hopeless to climb out on either side, and recourse had to be taken to engineering of the same kind which was successfully put in practice some years ago on Dow Crags, in Lancashire, by a very scientific band of brothers. Similar success crowned the efforts of this party, and brilliant gymnastics on the part of the leader landed them safely at the top of this difficulty. From this point the remainder of the climb has a deceptively easy appearance. Some 80 ft. higher up the difficulties begin again, and continue up to a small pitch just below the top. On one stretch it was found necessary to adopt a compromise between the wisdom of the serpent and the aimlessness of the crab, advancing by lateral jerks in a semi-recumbent attitude. Possibly these extreme measures would not have been necessary but for the fact that on this occasion the conclusion of a spell of three weeks of incessant rain was chosen as a suitable opportunity for attacking this face of the Glyder. It was the opinion of the party that the climb--at any rate in its then condition--is incontestably more difficult than that of the western buttress of Lliwedd. The time taken was 4 hours, including a short halt for luncheon. [Illustration: WESTERN GULLY IN NORTH FACE OF GLYDER FAWR] This gully is the more westerly of two. The other one was climbed in May 1895 by J. M. A. T., H. H., and W. E. One of the party says of it, 'We soon came to some rather difficult rocks; we climbed them close under the right-hand wall--a really stiff little bit. The gully here is still quite broad, and on the left side of it we saw another way, which looked much easier. We found no special difficulty in the jammed stone which looks from below such a formidable obstacle. Two of us climbed it on the right; the third man circumvented it on the left. From this point to the summit is excellent throughout, the rocks being steep, the holds strong, well defined, and most conveniently distributed. In my opinion it is the best thing on the Glyders, and it can be done by a single man.' Still further east a narrow crack gives a very steep but easy rock staircase, while west of the gully first described is another with two pitches, of which the lower is harder and the upper easier than they look. The 60 ft. just above the latter are climbed by means of slight rugosities in the left-hand wall. It is somewhat curious that when, in February 1873, Glyder Fawr was crossed from Ogwen by way of Twll Du, with John Roberts as guide, it was recorded in the _Alpine Journal_[11] as something of a feat and something of an eccentricity. Twenty years have made a great change, and now, about Christmas or Easter, the snow on these hills is marked by tracks in many directions. [11] Vol. vi. p. 195. * * * * * [Illustration: LLYN IDWAL _a_, The gullies of Glyder Fawr. _b_, Descent to the foot of Twll Du. _c_, Twll Du.] =Esgair Felen= (i.e. 'The Yellow Shank').--In August 1893 G. W. de T. found very good rocks and gullies on this shoulder of Glyder Fawr. Ascending from just above the cromlech stone in Llanberis Pass, the buttress immediately above can be climbed on the right or south-west side. The upper half may be climbed by a narrow gully, too narrow at first to enter, and giving little hold for hands or feet, and that little not sound. Apparently the leader climbed up a little way, and then the rest of the party climbed up the leader. They found good climbing without special difficulty among the rocks on the top of the great gully in the centre. It is somewhere in this neighbourhood that we must look for the mysterious precipice of which Edward Lhwyd wrote two hundred years ago as being strikingly columnar in structure, and possibly identical with 'one of the Tregvylchau or Treiglvylcheu.' He says it is part of the Glyder, and faces west. Perhaps it is about the east side of Cwm Patric. As seen from well down the Llanberis Pass these rocks have a very striking appearance. The term 'esgair' is very commonly applied to long straight projections from higher mountains. Instances of its use are E. Weddar, E. Yn-Eira, E. Geiliog, E. Hir, and E. Galed. * * * * * [Illustration: TRYFAEN FROM THE EAST (Sketched by Colin B. Phillip)] =Tryfaen= (3,010 ft.), not to be confounded with the hill of the same name on the Llanberis side of Snowdon, or the other near Bettws Garmon, is the most remarkable rock mountain in Wales; it has two pillar stones on its summit, from which it is often said that the name (= 'three rocks') is derived. In answer to this it is enough to point out that the assumed third stone is not there, and could not have disappeared without a trace, while the name would equally well mean 'three peaks,' which the mountain certainly has when viewed from either east or west. The Welsh dictionaries give a word 'tryfan' with the sense of 'anything spotted through,' and, whether or not this has anything to do with the origin of the name, the component rocks certainly are quartz-speckled in a most extraordinary manner. The mountain is practically a ridge of rock running in a southerly direction from the head of Llyn Ogwen towards Glyder Fach, from which it is separated by a sharp dip, Bwlch Tryfaen. This dip, which may be reached either from Cwm Bochllwyd on the west or from Cwm Tryfaen on the east, offers by far the easiest ascent of the mountain. The best starting-point for Tryfaen is Ogwen Cottage, at Benglog, from which Llynbochllwyd is reached in 25 and the said dip in 45 minutes; so that, if need were, the whole height (2,000 ft.) and distance (1½ mile) to the summit could be attained within the hour. From Capel Curig, on the other hand, there is a good hour's walking before the highroad is left, beyond Gallt y Gogof, which Borrow calls Allt y Gôg (Cuckoo Cliff), and even then the traveller has about as far to go as if he were starting from Benglog. Most of the Tryfaen climbs being on the east side they can be reached from Capel Curig with much less exertion than from Penygwrhyd, the route from which involves a long, rugged ascent, hot after the sun has risen and ankle-breaking after it has set. _Climbs._--These are extraordinarily abundant, and the hold is nearly everywhere gritty and good. The most popular climbs are: 1. The east side, including especially the two gullies on either side of the summit known as the North and South Gullies. 2. The north ridge up from the head of Llyn Ogwen. 3. The west side. _The South Gully_, climbed by R. W. (1887). The first ascent noticed in the _Book of Penygwrhyd_ being that of H. G. G. and W. in 1890. On September 5, 1891, H. G. G. and E. B. T. offered some clear notes on the subject, to the following effect: The first difficulty consists of three or four jammed stones, each slightly overhanging the one beneath, with a total height of about 10 ft. It can be passed by keeping to the right close to the obstacle, but would not be easy in wet weather for any climber single-handed. At the place where the gully divides the left-hand or nearer division is not difficult. The broad division was found impracticable by a party of four on September 4, 1891, the large smooth rocks at the top being very wet. This place was climbed in 1890 by Messrs. G. and W. by keeping to the extreme right close to the wall of the gully, and then returning along a narrow ledge. It was an awkward place. There is nothing above where the two gullies unite that offers any real difficulty. The North Gully is the more difficult of the two if the immediate centre is to be followed; but it is always practicable to break out on the face to the right. The difficulties of the South Gully are not so severe, but such as they are they must be climbed, as there is no lateral escape. Under date of June 9, 1894, a very clear account is given by J. M. A. T., J. R. S., and H. E. At the first obstacle the first man climbed up into the hole formed by the projection of the topmost rock, but, as the next beneath slopes outwards and downwards, found it impossible to relinquish a crouching posture. The pitch was abandoned. The right-hand rocks close by were taken, and the gully rejoined without difficulty. At the fork the northern branch was chosen. It can scarcely be called a gully; the water trickles down over the crags in several places, but there is no main or well-defined channel. A pinnacle is soon seen on the right, and here the climbing becomes difficult; the footholds are far apart, and the small tufts of grass, which were then wet and slippery, cannot be trusted. The course taken was to the extreme left, and as far as possible from the pinnacle, and in this respect it differs from that taken by Messrs. H. G. G. and W. in 1890. A firm, flat grass-covered shelf, at least a yard square, is seen in a straight line up above, and as soon as the first man has reached this a rope can be used to advantage. A steep rock some 12 ft. in height and of ordinary difficulty remains, and the climb thence to the summit is quite simple. By keeping to the left a cavern is reached, the further end of which opens like a trap door upon the summit; this interesting method of concluding the ascent should not be missed. On August 25, 1892, G. B. B. with Mr. and Mrs. T. R. climbed the five pitches of the South Gully, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_; _a_ by the right-hand wall, _b_ in the centre, _c_ by divergence to the right-hand branch and return to the left over a narrow ledge, _d_ and _e_ in the centre or slightly on one side of the face. The gully was never left. Time, about 90 minutes. _North Gully._--This appears to have been climbed in 1888 by R. W. and T. W. Writing on September 5, 1891, H. G. G. and E. B. T. gave the following hints:-- The first difficulty is at the bottom, below the level of any part of the South Gully, and might easily be missed if the horizontal track be followed. On August 30, 1891, these gentlemen found the middle of this (after very wet weather) quite impracticable, and the smooth rock on the right hand, lying at a very high angle, was also wet and very difficult. Either might possibly be passed in a dry season, the rock almost certainly. The next point of note is a very large lodged stone. Going under this they passed through the hole above, one climbing on the other's shoulder and afterwards giving him help from above. The passage was not easy. The next difficulty is made up of two lodged stones about 10 ft. apart. The first might be passed in dry weather. A tempting ledge to the left was climbed without result; ultimately they rounded the obstacle by keeping to the right. On September 19 W. E. C., H. R. B., and M. K. S. ascended the North Gully. They describe it as containing seven pitches, two of which are caverns. They believed that this gully had only once been climbed clean before--namely, in the autumn of 1888, by Messrs. R. W. and T. W. On April 1, 1892, H. B. D., F. W. G., and A. M. M., with Mrs. D. and Mrs. C., ascended the North Gully in 2 hours 10 minutes. The last pitch gave some trouble. In August 1892 W. H. P. and G. B. B. climbed all the pitches of the North Gully clean, taking the sixth from the bottom by the right side and the rocks straight to the summit stones, from where the gully divides. Time, 91 minutes. There is a singular difference of opinion among climbers as to the relative difficulty of these two climbs. Varying conditions of rocks and climbers may partly account for this. Without pretending to decide the matter either way the writer would give it as his experience that unusual conditions more readily affect the southern for evil and the northern for good. For instance, wet or ice makes the former very nasty without altering the latter to the same extent, while really deep and good snow moderately improves the former but converts the latter into a delusion and a mockery, for it ceases altogether to be a climb at all, and becomes a mere snow walk. Even then it is worth doing if it were only to see the wonderful convoluted strata, in the case of more than one great block imitating the rings in the trunk of a tree. _Nor'-Nor' Gully._--On September 18, 1891, Messrs. W. E. C., G. S., and M. K. S. ascended a gully leading on to the north ridge of Tryfaen just to the north of the most northerly of the three peaks. The gully contains three pretty pitches, all of which were climbed, but two of them can be turned. There is yet a fourth gully, still further north, but it has only one obstacle in it, and more scree than anyone can possibly want. So much attention has been devoted to these gullies during the last few years that the ridges which separate them have been unduly neglected. To the writer at least they have always seemed to offer better climbing than any of the gullies, and that of a kind which is very much less common. The ridges on either side of the North Gully are especially fine, and would satisfy the most exacting but for one thing, and that is that the hold is almost too good. _The North Ridge_, from the head of Llyn Ogwen, is of very imposing appearance, and was long spoken of with bated breath. In reality it is a fine but very simple and safe approach to the summit. The gluttonous climbers of the present day will probably complain that it is not a climb at all, but, though the difficulties, such as they are, can all be turned, the more enterprising members of a party can always find abundant outlets for their energies in numerous wayside problems. Some of the rocks are very fantastic in shape; one projecting horizontally bears a resemblance to a crocodile and can be easily recognised from the east. Highly crystalline quartz veins render the rock surfaces even rougher than they would otherwise be, and in a few places the face of the rock is covered with egg-like projections, each containing a core of quartz. At a little distance they look like huge barnacles; their real nature may be left to the geologists. On reaching the heads of the principal gullies the climber will fall in with some capital rocks on or beside his path along the ridge. At the very top he cannot fail even in mist to recognise the two upright rectangular stones, which are so conspicuous from afar. The feat of jumping from one to the other, by the performance of which Mr. Bingley's friend made that eminent traveller's 'blood chill with horror' nearly a hundred years ago, is not as difficult as it has been represented to be, and the danger of falling over the precipice in case of failure is purely imaginary. The unskilful leaper would merely fall on to the rough stones at the base of the pillars. Of the two jumps, that from north to south is the easier. Bingley's guide, perhaps anxious to cap the Saxon's feat, told him that 'a female of an adjoining parish was celebrated for having often performed this daring leap.' Large as the pillars are it is difficult to believe that they were placed in the position they occupy by unassisted nature; they seem too upright, too well squared, and too level-topped; with a cross-piece on the top they would form a nobly-placed 'trilithon,' of which any 'dolmen-builder' might be proud. _The West Side._--A great part of this is occupied by a series of huge slabs, which have been compared by F. H. B. to Flat Crags on Bow Fell. In places luxuriant heather artfully conceals sudden drops and rolling stones on account of which several tempting descents on this side will prove annoying. The only important gully is well seen from Benglog. To reach it strike south-east by the highroad at a point about half a mile east of Benglog. About half-way up the gully trends away to the left, and comes out at a deep notch in the summit ridge. Excellent scrambling again may be found by climbing up eastward from the shore of Bochllwyd. * * * * * [Illustration: TRYFAEN FROM THE NORTH-WEST.] =Moel Siabod= (2,860 ft.) is ascended most easily from Capel Curig, but Dolwyddelan and Penygwrhyd are only slightly more distant, though considerably more boggy. The ascent is worth making, for the sake of the excellent view of Snowdon. The east side is by far the most abrupt, and here a few good crags are found. From this side also the mountain looks its best, but even seen from the west, the tamer side, it is, especially when snow-clad and lit by the setting sun, a remarkably effective feature in the landscape. Readers of 'Madoc,' if such indeed there be, may remember that Southey was benighted on the hills around Dolwyddelan. In that episode Moel Siabod may well have played a part. About the year 1830 Mr. Philip Homer was benighted on it, and died of exhaustion. Mention of this accident is made both by Roscoe (1836) and by Cliffe, who says he heard many details from an eye-witness. The body was taken to Capel Curig and buried there. * * * * * =Snowdon= (3,560 ft.) is the loftiest peak in this island south of Scotland, and one of the most beautiful that is to be seen anywhere. The name seems to have originally described a whole district which the Welsh called Craig Eryri (variously rendered 'rock of eagles' and 'rock of snow'). The peak itself is called Y Wyddfa (pronounced 'E Withva'), which is usually translated 'place of presence' or 'of recognition;' but the splendid suppleness of the Welsh language admits of rival renderings, such as 'place of shrubs or trees,' with which may be compared the name Gwyddallt--i.e. 'woody cliff;' and even, as a non-climber once observed, on seeing a panting form appear at the top of a gully on Clogwyn Garnedd, 'place for a goose.' Leland speaks of 'the greate Withaw hille,' and says 'all Cregeryri is Forest,' and, in another place, 'horrible with the sight of bare stones as Cregeryri be.' [Illustration] Snowdon may be climbed from many points. The nearest inns are Penygwrhyd, Beddgelert, Snowdon Ranger, and Llanberis. The peculiarity of Snowdon consists in the huge cwms which radiate from its summit, and these will be found described in their order, following the course of the sun, and the climbs to be found in each will be indicated. Books on Snowdon are simply countless, and the same remark applies to the pictures which have been taken of it and the panoramas which have been drawn from it. Unfortunately a very large number of fatal accidents have taken place on this mountain, and an interesting but somewhat incomplete article on this subject will be found in _Chambers's Journal_ for May 1887. The Mr. Livesey there mentioned as having been killed by lightning seems to have been really named Livesley, and was of Ashton, in Mackerfield, Lancashire. This occurred on Sunday, September 21, 1884 (the _Times_, September 23). * * * * * [Illustration: CWM GLAS AND THE PARSON'S NOSE, FROM THE WEST] =Cwm Glas.=--As there are three or four tarns on Snowdon called Llyn Glas, so the name of Cwm Glas appears to have been confusingly popular. Cwm Glas proper lies immediately under Crib y Ddysgl, and Crib Goch on the north side; but, to say nothing of the next hollow to the west, which is called Cwm Glas Bach (i.e. little), a recess lying just north of both is called by the same name, and it would appear, from some of the early topographers, that they understood the term to comprehend the whole valley which forms the west approach to the Llanberis Pass. The proper cwm can only be reached from Llanberis or from Penygwrhyd. From the latter (the usual starting-point) the simplest, though not the shortest, way is to go over the pass and down to Pontygromlech, and there, instead of crossing by the bridge, bear away to the left, and up into the cwm. Experts can save something by striking off much earlier near the top of the pass. Those who come from Llanberis will leave the highroad at a point 3½ miles from the station and about half a mile short of the cromlech. Before the two pools come into sight several short but striking pieces of rock are met with, and, indeed, the rock scenery on all sides is extremely fine. Many people come here for that reason alone, and are content to see the rocks without climbing them. For them there is an easy way up to join the Llanberis path by way of the grassy slope west of the Parson's Nose, of which more anon. Between the two a second ridge is seen, smaller than the Nose, and roughly parallel to it, leading out on to Ddysgl, much further up. Not far from this Mr. F. R. Wilton died in 1874 (see _Crib y Ddysgl_) and Mr. Dismore was killed in 1882. * * * * * =Parson's Nose.=--The best known climb in Cwm Glas is on the rock called Clogwyn y Person (i.e. 'Parson's Cliff'), alias the =Parson's Nose=. It is a spur of Crib y Ddysgl, and is easily identified by its projecting in a northerly direction between the two little pools in Cwm Glas. No one seems to know the origin of the name; possibly it may have been scaled by the famous climbing cleric who haunted Snowdonia half a century ago. The most striking feature of this fine arête is the wonderful excellence of the hold. Faces crossed by precarious-looking ledges are found on a closer inspection to have behind those ledges deep, narrow, vertical rifts, affording the perfection of hand-hold, while the rock surface itself is so prickly and tenacious that boot-nails grip splendidly, and the only difficulty for the fingers is that some of them are apt to get left behind on the rocks. It may be climbed direct up the face, either from the very foot or from a point more to the right and some 30 ft. higher up. The height of the initial climb is something like 100 ft. Again, there is a gully on each side of the actual Nose, and it is usually climbed by one or other of these. The western gully is blocked above by an overhanging rock, over or under which it is necessary to climb or crawl. The gully on the opposite or east side is longer, and generally much wetter, and is on that account considered more difficult either to go up or to come down. The three ascents unite close to the cairn. Above the cairn the ridge continues, broken by only two respectable pitches, and leads on to the great tower on Crib y Ddysgl, some 1,200 ft. above the beginning of the climb. It is not, however, necessary, in order to get up out of Cwm Glas on to the main ridge, to climb the Nose at all; by proceeding west and over some white quartz slabs, close under the ridge, and then turning left, one can get out easily a few feet from the top of the Nose, or nearly the same point may be reached from the east side, only it will be after a less interesting and generally somewhat wetter ascent. If a climb is desired when the gullies are in a dangerous condition, there is a place further to the right than the right-hand or west gully where a very steep but safe scramble among big blocks leads up on to the bridge of the Nose. The following ascents are noted in the book at Penygwrhyd, that by T. W. and R. W. being probably the first:-- _1887, September 18._--W. E. C. and A. E. _1890, June 21._--W. P. and G. B. B. tried the Parson's Nose, and, climbing the cleft from the south side, crawled between the rocks which block its upper part, then up the crags to the right for a short distance. _1892, April 2._--A party which had ascended the north gully of Tryfaen the day before ascended the Parson's Nose up the ridge, starting from the cleft. About 50 ft. above it a wall of rock is met which must be climbed either round a corner on the right hand or up a steep chimney on the left. The latter route was chosen, but a large stone (the middle one of three on the left side of the chimney) slipped, and remained in a dangerous position. _1892, August._--W. H. P. and G. B. B. climbed the 'wall of rock' straight up, which they thought easier than the chimney to the left or the green gully to the right. _September 23._--Mrs. H., Miss B., and a large party of gentlemen climbed the Parson's Nose by the gully on the Llanberis side and the jammed stone. Bingley visited this cwm at the close of last century, and gives a good description of it. He was much impressed by Caddy of Cwm Glas, the strong woman. Her real name, by the way, was Catherine Thomas. Cwm Glas Bach also has some fine rocks, and from the head of it up to Cyrn Las a good climb may be had. * * * * * =Crib Goch= ('The Red Ridge') stretches down westward from Crib y Ddysgl to about opposite the summit of the Pass of Llanberis. The name is sometimes used for the whole length of both cribs. This is admitted on all hands to be inaccurate, if convenient, but there is some difference of opinion as to where the line of demarcation should be drawn. Some say at Bwlch Goch (2,816 ft.), while others put it a quarter of a mile or more further west. About 500 yards east of the Bwlch, at almost the highest point (3,023 ft.) of the ridge, a side-ridge strikes away to the north, while the main line continues eastward. The well-known pinnacles (including the 'Crazy' one) are close to Bwlch Goch, and on the north side of the ridge overlooking Cwm Glas. The southern side, sloping into Cwm Dyli, though very steep, is much less precipitous and rocky than the other. [Illustration: CRIB GOCH (Snowdon beyond)] _Starting Points._--Penygwrhyd and Gorphwysfa have almost a monopoly of Crib Goch, because for all other places--such as Llanberis, Beddgelert, Capel Curig, or Bettws y Coed--the distance from Gorphwysfa has simply to be added as so many extra miles along a highroad. In the case of Capel Curig this makes very little difference, seeing that Penygwrhyd lies on the direct route for any ascent of Snowdon, and to the latter there is no nobler approach than that along this ridge. Some have thought it sensational, and many have described its terrors in very sensational language; in fact, it takes the place which among the English lakes is filled by the far less striking Striding Edge on Helvellyn; but in truth, though it is the sort of place where ice, mist, and high wind may encroach to some extent on the margin of safety, to a steady head and foot there is no danger whatever. As for the hands, they are hardly required at all, though for those who like it plenty of real climbing can be had on the way. [Illustration: PINNACLES OF CRIB GOCH] Any mountaineer worthy of the name will admit that the ridge walk up Snowdon by Lliwedd and down by Crib Goch is for its length one of the finest in Europe. The mere gymnast also finds here plenty of enjoyment and almost infinite variety. He may mount by the east ridge or by the north ridge, or in the corner between the two. Again, the north ridge may be reached by either of two gullies in its eastern flank. Of these two gullies the more southerly is the steepest and longest, and may be recognised at some distance by a peculiar split or gap, while the other and more northerly, formed in rock of most cutting quality, offers a convenient passage to the foot of the steep part of the north ridge, from which point there is, if required, an easy descent into Cwm Glas. The north ridge gives a short, pleasant scramble, and is somewhat sheltered from southerly winds, which are sometimes an annoyance on the east ridge. Further west there are several good gullies on the Cwm Glas side, especially round about the pinnacles. The Crazy Pinnacle may be ascended either on the north-east or on the south-west side. The former is now more favoured since the fall of a certain large stone on the latter, which gave a useful hold in former days. Thirty years ago this ridge was almost unknown. A writer of 1833 seems to imply that it had been ascended by saying that 'the passage of it is hazardous, from the shortness and slippery quality of the grass at those seasons of the year when the mountain may be approached;' but this is evidently a mere misapplication of what others had said about Clawdd Goch (Bwlch y Maen), on the other side of the mountain, and we do not hear of anyone climbing here before C. A. O. B. (1847) and F. H. B. a few years later. Between 1865 and 1875 it became better known, and in the books at Penygwrhyd we find it recorded that in April 1884 H. and C. S. climbed from Cwm Dyli, thence along the ridge by Crib y Ddysgl to the summit of Y Wyddfa. In 1887, on June 30, E. K. climbed Crib Goch from Cwm Glas by the gully to the left of the outstanding or Crazy Pinnacle. Near the top two big stones are jammed in, and this compelled him to leave the gully; but on June 29, 1890, G. S. S. found these stones climbable by the aid of a crack in the rocks on the left hand. From this point the ridge can be reached by taking to the rocks on the right. They are sound, which is more than can be said for those on the left of the gully a little farther down. [Illustration: PART OF CRIB GOCH] On July 31 and August 2 E. K. scrambled up the other gullies nearer Bwlch Goch, and found them easier than the first, which is the main one seen from Cwm Glas. He pronounced these climbs well worth trying, but not fit for beginners. On June 17, 1890, W. P. and G. B. B. ascended to Bwlch Goch, and bearing round the foot of the first pinnacle, climbed the gully between the first and the second. They found the holding good, but the rocks by which the gully is blocked somewhat difficult to pass. In 1894, on September 14, W. E. C., S., and B. climbed Crib Goch to the central cairn from Cwm Glas. On December 9, 1894, J. M. A. T., H. H., and H. E. climbed the face from Cwm Glas beside an insignificant watercourse, reaching the ridge at the ruined cairn, then, passing along to the Crazy Pinnacle, scrambled down the gully on the Llanberis Pass side of it. The latter climb they describe as short but excellent, and the former as also good. No more climbs here are described in the _Book of Penygwrhyd_, but many others have been made. The truth is that for the last quarter of a century hardly a climber has visited Wales without making Crib Goch a primary object, and consequently there is not a climb on it whereof men say 'See, this is new.' * * * * * =Crib y Ddysgl.=--The name is pronounced practically 'Cribbythiskle,' and sometimes written 'Distyl,' a spelling probably due to a desire to support the common derivation of the name from 'destillare' i.e. 'dripping ridge.' The climate of Wales, however, is not such as to make any ridge remarkable merely because it drips, and moreover the derivation will not account for the other instances of the word. For instance, two or three miles west of the Pitt's Head we have Trum y Ddysgyl, and the proximity to it of Cwmtrwsgyl suggests that some distinction is expressed by the penultimate syllables. Attempts to derive the name from 'disgl' (= 'dish') seem equally futile. Possibly the explanation may be found in the word 'dysgwyl' ('watch,' 'expect') (compare Disgwylfa, in Cardiganshire), which would make it parallel to names like Lookingstead, &c. The highest point of Crib y Ddysgl is called Carnedd Ugain, and is a worthy rival of Y Wyddfa itself, being, according to the Ordnance surveyors, only 69 ft. lower--viz. 3,491 ft.--and from some points of view a really beautiful peak. From the highest point a narrow crest runs due east, reaching in about a quarter of a mile the huge buttress called Clogwyn y Person, which comes up out of Cwm Glas and has been described with it. This part is sometimes spoken of as the Gribin, a name which the large Ordnance map does not give, and I know of no other authority for it, though it is quite a likely place to bear the name. The main ridge continues east until it joins Crib Goch. The ridge, though sharp, is not a likely place for an accident to a climber, and, indeed, no accident seems to have occurred actually on the ridge, but more than one death has taken place close by. On August 10, 1874, a young man of great promise, Mr. Frederick Roberts Wilton, son of Mr. Robert Wilton, of Doncaster,[12] and a master in the City of London School, ascended Snowdon from Llanberis, and seems to have asked his way to Capel Curig, and to have been informed (not quite accurately) that he must turn to the right 'near the spring,' which is a good bit beyond the proper point of divergence from the Llanberis path. His body was ultimately found a fortnight later 'in the slippery course of a small mountain stream which descends sharply from the most southerly branch of the miners' path immediately below Crib y Ddysgl into the basin known as Cwm Glas. Evidently he had gone down a steep shingly slope with a wall of rock on his right hand over the entrance of a rocky watercourse.' These details are taken from a letter of his colleague, Mr. W. G. Rushbrooke. As the body was found in a posture of repose, and there was no sign of any injury sufficient to cause death, there is some reason to fear that this unfortunate gentleman died of exposure. For further details see the _Times_ for August 22, 24, 26, and 28, 1874. [12] See the _Doncaster Chronicle_. Another death from exposure took place here in the following year--namely, that of Mr. Edward Grindley Kendall, of Crosby, near Leicester, of whom something will be said under the head of _Cwm Dyli_. * * * * * =Cwm Dyli= (pronounced 'Dully') is the great eastern recess of Snowdon, and universally admitted to be the finest thing of the kind in Wales. The long sharp ridge of Crib Goch and Crib y Ddysgl bounds it on the north, while the almost equally fine, though less regular, ridge and majestic crags of Lliwedd shut it in on the south. It contains Llyn Llydaw (Hluddow), the largest lake, and Glaslyn, the finest tarn on the whole mountain, and is one reason why the ascent of Snowdon from Capel Curig is the finest of all. The stream forms some fine cascades (800 ft. above sea level) in its descent to the Vale of Gwynant. Half a mile above these cascades Clogwyn Aderyn, on the north bank of the stream, and Clogwyn Penllechen, between it and Llyn Teyrn (1,238 ft.), have a climb or two on them. At this llyn the path from Gorphwysfa comes in, and along it the great majority of people enter the cwm. The next landmark as we ascend is Llyn Llydaw (1,416 ft.), nearly a mile long, the elevation of which so close an observer as Cliffe over-estimated by more than 1,000 ft. Climbers bound for Lliwedd leave the lake entirely on the right, and find a foot-bridge close to the exit of the stream from it. The path to Snowdon crosses the lake by a stone causeway, which is rarely submerged by floods. From the head of Llyn Llydaw there is a steep rise--555 ft. in a quarter of a mile--to the tarn called Glaslyn (1,971 ft.) Between this and the sky line at the head of the cwm, 1,290 ft. higher, only one more hollow remains, called Pantylluchfa, and here the crags of Clogwyn y Garnedd show up magnificently. It may be mentioned that many people get hopelessly confused in reading or giving descriptions of Snowdon, because they fail to distinguish Glaslyn, here, from Llyn Glas, half a mile to the north of it, in Cwm Glas, and another Llyn Glas less than a mile due west in Cwm Clogwyn. If they know Glaslyn they naturally assume that it must be in Cwm Glas, and if they know Cwm Glas they place Glaslyn in it. Some of the confusion would be avoided if the latter were called by what would seem to be its older and true name--Llynffynnonglas. [Illustration: SNOWDON FROM GLASLYN _a_, Bwlch y Snethan. _b_, Summit, with Clogwyn y Garnedd below. _c_, Junction of paths from Penygwrhyd and Llanberis.] Cwm Dyli was the scene in 1875 of one of the strangest of all the disasters which have happened on the mountain. The victim was Mr. Edward Grindley Kendal, of Crosby, near Leicester, who on June 11 left Gwynant Valley in order to ascend Snowdon. Nothing more was heard of him or his till the end of that month, when a Mr. and Mrs. David Moseley, descending with a guide, found on the edge of Llyn Llydaw a wet and mouldy pair of boots, each containing a stocking marked 'Kendal' and a garter. It was at once surmised that the missing man had been wading and become engulfed in quicksands, which were stated to be numerous. His friends went so far as to employ a professional diver to explore the bottom of the lake, though it would seem that if the body was in the water simpler means would have answered the purpose, and if it was below the water the diver could neither find it nor follow it. At any rate he did not find it, because it was not there. It was found about ten days later on Crib y Ddysgl uninjured--it was identified by Mr. Ison, brother-in-law of the deceased and the jury at Llanberis found a verdict of 'death from exposure.' It was not precisely stated on what part of Crib y Ddysgl the body was found, and nothing transpired as to the condition of the feet; but it is simply amazing to anyone familiar with the character of the ground that a bare-footed man should ever have got so far. Why he did it and how he did it will always remain among the mysteries of Snowdon.[13] Other deaths have taken place in this cwm, for which see under _Lliwedd_ and _Clogwyn y Garnedd_. [13] The _Times_, July 2, 6, 8, and 15, 1875. It is curious that two of the lakes in this valley are among those mentioned 200 years ago by the learned Edward Lhwyd as 'distinguished by names scarce intelligible to the best Criticks in the British.' * * * * * =Clogwyn y Garnedd y Wyddfa=--i.e. 'the Precipice under the Cairn of Snowdon'--has been commonly known by the first three words only for at least 200 years. It is one of the grandest cliffs on Snowdon, and gives very fine climbing. For more than two centuries this precipice has been famous as a refuge for rare ferns and plants. The guide William Williams, well known as a botanist, lost his life here while in search of the Woodsia; so at least says Mr. T. G. Bonney, though he is far from accurate in the date of the accident, which, writing in 1874, he describes as having taken place 'some twenty years ago.' The actual date was June 19, 1861.[14] The old guide had taken up a lady and gentleman from Llanberis, and went from the top alone to gather ferns. The fall was 'down a declivity of three hundred yards.' The body was found at the foot of the precipice, after 'scouts' had been sent out. He had fallen from the point where the slope suddenly changes from about 45° to, perhaps, 75° or 80°. The spot where he slipped was for many years, and perhaps still is, marked by a white stone. [14] See the _Times_, June 25, 1861. On the shore of Glaslyn, at the south-west corner, there is a small cross of wood marking the spot where the body of Mr. Maxwell Haseler was found. He was making for Snowdon by the Lliwedd ridge, and fell from a short distance above Bwlch y Saethau. The party seem to have been well equipped, and contained members of experience, who were not without ropes and axes. They started on January 26, 1879, for Snowdon by Lliwedd, and, after lunching about 1 P.M. on Bwlch y Saethau, proceeded in the direction of Snowdon. Mr. Haseler took a separate course, more to the right hand, and almost immediately seems to have slipped and fallen. His body was found next morning by the shore of Glaslyn, and it was reckoned that he had fallen some 600 or 700 ft. The inquest was held at Penygwrhyd. The victim of this accident was only twenty-three years old.[15] [15] The _Times_, January 29 and February 7, 1879; _Chambers's Journal_, May 7, 1887. The following notes are among the records of Penygwrhyd:-- On September 23, 1887, W. E. C. and A. E. ascended Snowdon from Glaslyn by the first gully on Clogwyn y Garnedd. In 1890, on June 20, W. P. and G. B. B. descended from Snowdon to Haseler's Cross by the gully immediately above it in Clogwyn y Garnedd. In 1890, on September 27, F. W. J. found an excellent gully climb, possibly that referred to in the note of September 23, 1887. He started from Glaslyn, keeping to the right edge of the lake, and, facing towards Bwlch y Saethau, saw a gully choked by jammed stones (five in number), beginning almost from the foot. It has often been climbed. The most interesting and difficult piece is where a large stone roofs a cavern some 15 ft. high. In it there is a kind of skylight, through which the climber must go by an indescribable twist of the body. From the bottom of the gully to the huts where the climb ends is 900 ft., all except a portion of the upper end being narrow gully, and the rest a scramble over rocks. On December 13, 1891, Mrs. H. ascended the big Clogwyn y Garnedd gully direct to the summit of Snowdon. On September 24, 1892, Miss B. and a large party of gentlemen climbed (second lady's ascent) the Clogwyn y Garnedd gully through the cavern. In May 1893 a party climbed up by this and down by the next gully, on the north, which has its head just below the huts. In September 1893 the two Misses T. descended the great gully in 1 hour 25 minutes. In 1894, on September 14, Messrs. W. E. C., S., and B. descended the face of Clogwyn y Garnedd to the left of the big gully. * * * * * [Illustration: SNOWDON FROM THE NORTH, WITH LLIWEDD ON THE LEFT] =Lliwedd= (2,947 ft.) stretches away eastward from the summit of Snowdon, dividing Cwm Dyli on the north from Cwm y Llan on the south. Strictly speaking, perhaps the name only applies to the central portion, where its magnificent northern crags overlook the head of Llyn Llydaw, but, as in the case of Crib Goch, the significance of the name has been enlarged, and it is frequently used to denote the whole length of the ridge. At the Nant Gwynant end a transverse ridge, called Gallt y Wenallt, bears near its base some remarkably fine rocks, on which there is very good climbing. West of the Gallt a side valley, called Cwm Merch, runs nearly due south, and beyond this Cwm Lliwedd proper begins. The southern slope of it is steep, but that to the north is imposingly precipitous. It is, in fact, unsurpassed in Wales. Advancing in the direction of Snowdon, the cliffs become less sheer and the crest less broken, and as soon as the highest point of Crib Goch is 'on with' the head of Llydaw Bwlch Ciliau offers a rough descent into Cwm Dyli. Next on the west comes the Criman, corresponding geographically to Clogwyn y Person on Ddysgl, but more broken; beyond them Bwlch y Saethau (i.e. _Arrows Gap_), leading down to the head of Glaslyn. The last quarter of a mile up to the top of Snowdon is very steep, rising nearly 1,000 ft. in that distance. It was here that Mr. Maxwell Haseler, in 1879, lost his life by keeping too much to the right. [Illustration: LLIWEDD FROM THE NORTH-WEST.] In August 1872 Mr. T. H. Murray Browne and Mr. W. R. Browne, the discoverers of the Scafell Pinnacle, saw the merits of this climb, and attacked it without success. Public attention was first drawn to Lliwedd as a climbing-ground by the ascent made in 1883 by Messrs. T. W. Wall and A. H. Stocker, and thus described by the former in the _Alpine Journal_:[16]-- [16] Vol. xi. p. 239. 'This northern face consists of four buttresses, with three fairly well-defined couloirs between them. The summit ridge has two peaks, of which the western, nearer Snowdon, is the higher by a few feet. In January 1882 from the summit of Crib Goch Mr. A. H. Stocker and myself were struck by the grand appearance of the Lliwedd cliffs, and hearing from Owen, the landlord of the Penygwrhyd Hotel, that the northern face had never been climbed, the desire to make the first ascent naturally came upon us. On the 10th we made our first attempt by the central couloir, which leads up to the depression between the two summits. As it was raining the whole day the rocks were in an abominable state, and it was with the greatest difficulty that we managed to get up about 150 ft.' On January 3, 1883, they tried again. 'On January 4, after carefully observing the rocks of the buttress to the west of the central couloir, we came to the conclusion that it might be possible to cross the face in an upward direction from east to west, and then strike straight up. At 11.15 A.M. we got on the rocks, beginning from the lower of two dark green patches seen from below. From this a ledge runs up to the right, and if it had only been continuous Lliwedd would present no very great difficulties. Unfortunately this was not the case; there were most formidable-looking gaps in it, and the ledges above and below were tacked on to it by smooth and almost perpendicular gullies. Three bits in particular may be mentioned as far the hardest, although they are more or less typical of these crags, which nowhere offer 20 consecutive yards of easy rock-work. The first difficulty which presented itself was where the ledge was broken by a bold face of rock. One of us was pushed to the top of the smooth part, and finding that he could not descend to the ledge on the other side, he ascended a little higher, anchored himself firmly to the rocks, assisted his companion up, and let him down to the required ledge; then, throwing the rope over a pinnacle, he gave both ends to his companion to hold tight, and slid down the 40 ft. of rope to join him. After a few yards of easier work we came to a ledge about 6 inches wide and 4 yards long; the rock above was nearly perpendicular, with no hand-hold, and there was nothing below. It was the only way; we could not turn it, and somehow we got over, but neither of us wishes to be there again. From that ever-to-be-remembered ledge the climbing was grand work up to the point where we had to turn from a westerly direction to go straight up the face. Here there was one nasty corner. A narrow ledge about 2 inches wide had below it a sloping face of rock with three minute cracks in it. One of us had crossed this in safety, and so assumed a position in which the rope would have been of very little use. He was then opposed by a steep bit, topped by 4 ft. of perpendicular rock, with a very steep slope of heather above. At the moment that his last foot left the highest peg of rock his other knee slipped, and the heather, grass, and earth began to give way in his left hand. It was an awkward moment, for the other man was not well situated for supporting a jerk at the end of 30 ft. of rope, which would mean a fall of about 50 ft. Happily the other knee got on the heather and the axe held firm in the earth. Our difficulties were then over. The rocks grew less and less difficult as we ascended, and after 4½ hours of incessant work up 850 ft. of rocks we found ourselves on the summit ridge, exactly 13 yards from the cairn. [Illustration: LLIWEDD FROM LLYN LLYDAW _a_, East buttress. _b_, Central gully. _c_, West buttress. _d_, Slanting gully.] 'It may be mentioned that the only real difficulties lie in the first 200 ft.; above that point the mountain presents rock-work of a very high order, but nothing stupendously difficult, the rock being very firm. 'Future climbers will probably find that of the three couloirs the western is comparatively easy; the central may perhaps be ascended by climbing the lower rocks on the right, and the eastern by a long détour to the left. The buttress to the left of the central couloir looks as difficult as rocks possibly can look. But there is a chance that a careful search among the rocks to the left of the central couloir might reward a rock-climber with an exciting and successful scramble. In any case the whole northern face is distinctly difficult.' Under the date of April 12, 1884, we find recorded by H. S. and C. S. an ascent of Lliwedd by the ridge from Llyn Llydaw, which is apparently nothing more than the ordinary walk, but in 1887, early in April, is an important note in the hand of Mr. Stocker. '_Hints for the Ascent of Lliwedd by the North Face._ (N.B. Lliwedd consists of two peaks--the eastern and western buttress--with a well-defined gully running up between them.) '1. _Ascent of Western Buttress to the Right of Central Gully._--Make for the lower of two green patches easily seen from below just to the right of the foot of the central gully. From it work upwards to the right to the second green patch; then again upwards, still to the right, to a very small, steep green slope. From this the climb is almost straight up, inclining a little to the left at first. This will land the climber a few yards to the west of the cairn. '2. _Ascent by Central Gully and Western Buttress._--Go up the gully till the foot of the steep bit is reached; then climb out of the gully by ledges on the right on to the western buttress. As soon as possible make straight up the face, keeping the gully a little to the left. This will land the climber at the cairn. 'No. 2 is an easier climb than No. 1. All through the hand and foot hold is very good. The chief difficulties lie in the first 200 ft. after leaving the gully. The upper part is fairly easy. The whole climb is about 850 ft.' In 1887, April 11, O. E. and T. V. S. ascended Lliwedd by the central gully at first and afterwards in a line rather left of the summit. Time, under 3½ hours. In September 1887 W. E. C. and A. E. climbed Lliwedd by Mr. Stocker's second route in 1 hour 23 minutes from base to cairn, and subjoined a list of previous ascents, viz.-- First attempt. T. H. M. B. and W. R. B., August 1872 (Vis. Bk.) January 7, 1883, Messrs. Stocker and Wall, by route 1. April 24, 1884, Messrs. A. H. S. and P., by route 2. April 11, 1887, Messrs. O. E. and T. V. S., by route 2. September 10, 1887, Mr. R. W., by route 1. September 20, 1887, Messrs. W. E. C. and A. E., by route 2. On May 20, 1888, Mr. Alfred Evans and two friends, W. E. C. and -- K., left Penygwrhyd at 10 A.M., crossed the northern arête of Crib Goch and Cwm Glas, and climbed Clogwyn Person and by Crib y Ddysgl to the top of Snowdon. Evans and K. then descended by the second or third gully from Bwlch Glas on Clogwyn y Garnedd to the head of Llyn Llydaw. C., E., and K. started up the central gully of Lliwedd at 5.5 P.M. At the bottom, and for some distance up, the rocks are water-worn and but little broken up, and the water flowing down rendered this part difficult. At the moment when C. was about 300 ft. above the scree Evans was about 80 ft. below him, and could not advance. C., therefore, went down 3 or 4 ft. and rested. Evans then tried to get out of the gully by the ledge mentioned in Mr. Stocker's account. This ledge is divided in two parts by a huge outstanding buttress with very scanty footing. Both men passed this; then Evans lowered himself by K.'s ankle on to a rocky foothold and tried to work to the right, but after doing 5 or 6 ft.--half the requisite distance--his feet slipped, his arms were unable to support him, and he fell on his feet about 5 yards on to the edge of a steeply sloping grass ledge running up to this part of the cliff. From this point in four or five terrible leaps he fell over and over, a total distance of 200 ft., to the screes below. The accident happened at 6.55 P.M., and K. is stated to have descended to the body, a distance of 200 ft. of the most awkward climbing in the whole gully, in the space of 5 minutes. This is hardly credible, but under such circumstances people do not judge time accurately. This accident need never have happened. If ever a party courted disaster it was done on this occasion. A cross was erected by friends of Mr. Evans on the spot where his body was found, but being much damaged by stones it had to be removed in 1892 to a rocky knoll not far off, where its position is more secure. It records the age of Mr. Evans as 24. On June 10, 1889, M., A. L. M., and B. climbed the north face of Lliwedd by the rocks of the western buttress, keeping close to the central gully almost the whole of the way. On January 1, 1893, F. P., F. W. O., and H. J. R. ascended the north face of Lliwedd by the western buttress, starting just to the right of the central gully, and coming up at the cairn. Time, 3 hours. At Easter 1893 H. G. G. and -- W. climbed by the central gully and the western buttress, coming out at the cairn, in 3 hours 5 minutes, all the rocks being dry. On April 7, 1893, T. H. M. climbed the north-west face alone in 2½ hours: he found two difficult spots near where Messrs. G. and W. scratched their initials on the rocks. Everything was dry. On September 14, 1894, W. E. C. and M. K. S. ascended the central gully for about 200 ft., then went up the western buttress, and crossed the gully again to the eastern buttress, about 300 ft. below the top, reaching the summit in 2 hours and 20 minutes. On October 14, 1894, J. M. A. T., H. H., and H. E. ascended the central gully to a point apparently beyond that where others have broken out upon the face, and continued up a steep stretch of rock by taking a narrow gutter between the centre and right wall, the upper part being found difficult. A broad ledge brought them to a similar reach, where the outward slope of the holds became more and more pronounced. Finding the rocks above quite impassable, the party descended by means of an iron claw, which had to be left, and then by a ledge in the right wall and an awkward corner got out on the face of the west buttress. Here they found the ledges narrow and the crags extremely steep, but working upwards and tending to the right they crossed an incipient gully by an awkward stride, and thereafter met with only ordinary difficulties, but on passing a cleft which opens into the gully enjoyed a magnificent view of the latter, and struck the summit at the cairn. They pronounced the climb to be quite impossible for one man. _The Slanting Gully._--This gully, on the west side of the western buttress, is easily identified, being the next one to the west of the great central gully and a striking feature of the north face of Lliwedd. It is clearly marked all the way up, and is most readily approached by crossing diagonally up the screes below the great gully and then skirting the base of the rocks of the western buttress. This gully was attacked on January 9, 1894, by Messrs. F. O. W., C. W. N., E. H. K., and H. K. It was then frozen up and covered with snow to a depth varying from a few inches to 3 ft. In 4 hours an estimated height of 350 or 400 ft. above the starting-point was attained, the whole of this distance, with the exception of a few steps in deep snow, having to be climbed. The party kept in the gully the whole way, usually close against the rocks on the western side. Progress was finally arrested at a point where the gully becomes, for some distance, a mere crack, formed by the western rocks overhanging an almost smooth slab, where hold for hand or foot seems almost entirely wanting. With longer time at disposal it seemed possible that this difficulty might have been surmounted by wriggling up inside the crack, or by a dangerous scramble on the face of the slab. Two members of the party were provided with crampons, and derived great steadiness and safety from their use. The uniformly steep angle at which this gully lies may be gathered from the fact that a rücksack dropped from the highest point was picked up at the starting-point on the return. It was the opinion of most of the party that the condition of the snow and rocks was, on the whole, favourable for climbing, as the ice and snow gave some assistance in places which without them might have been still more difficult. The next attempt is valuable, as notes were taken on the heights of some of the obstacles. On March 26, 1894, the gully was attacked by J. C. M., O. M., and W. P. from the screes (2,300 ft.) at 1.55 P.M. They arrived in the cave (2,690 ft.) at 5 P.M. They considered the conditions favourable, except that the snow was melting, but found the climbing difficult all the way. At about 2,500 ft. a chimney 70 ft. high had to be squirmed up. They were of opinion that the gully could not be climbed direct, and all their efforts to break out on either side were frustrated. The climbing does not, as in the central gully, become more easy as progress is made; on the contrary, the difficulties increase. The party carried two ropes, one of 50 ft. and one of 80 ft., and at one place had to use the full length of both together. The descent took 2 hours. On Thursday, August 30, 1894, this gully cost a valuable life. Mr. J. Mitchell, of Oxford, an assistant editor of the _New Historical English Dictionary_, started from the foot at about 2 P.M. The first pitch was quickly ascended, and he then proceeded, apparently without difficulty, to the foot of the long chimney, which he passed by means of the face. On reaching the top he waved his handkerchief, and, being asked what it was like, replied that it was very stiff. Not long after he was seen in a cave, which the lookers-on (probably in error) identified with the highest point reached by previous climbers. From this he climbed with great difficulty to the top, as it appeared from below, of a long chasm, with his head just below an overhanging rock, upwards of 150 ft. above the cave, and after more than half an hour of fruitless endeavour to make further progress he fell at 4.30 P.M., and was killed on the spot. The body was found at the above-mentioned cave, and was brought down by four quarrymen at great personal risk. The lesson which should be drawn from this is, that if a man will insist on climbing alone he should not choose for his attack climbs which parties of greater skill and experience than his own have found to be beyond their powers. * * * * * =Cwm y Llan.=--This large cwm stretches away from Snowdon top to the south-east between Yr Aran and Lliwedd. The scenery consists mainly of the South Snowdon Slate Works, which occupy the centre of the valley, at a height of about 1,100 ft., and of Sir Edward Watkin's road up Snowdon. There is very little climbing, though some parts of Geuallt and Aran are very steep. On the Lliwedd side there is a good rock (Craig Ddu), not far from the slate works, and others rather smaller near the exit of the valley, while at the head, near Bwlch y Maen, almost under Snowdon and near Bwlch y Saethau, some difficult passages occur. The slate quarry here must not be confused with 'Cwm y Llan slate quarry,' which is not in this valley at all, but on the western slope of Aran, about a third of a mile beyond Bwlch Cwm y Llan. This little pass (about 1,700 ft.) is very useful to anyone who, after a climb on Lliwedd, wishes to reach the nearest railway station, for Pont Rhyd-ddu is very much nearer than Llanberis and can be reached without climbing over Snowdon summit. From the top of Lliwedd the pass is in full view, and a stone wall is seen stretching half-way from it towards two little reservoirs which are some 600 yards higher up the valley than the slate works. It is a mile and a half from Lliwedd by way of these reservoirs to the top of the bwlch, which will hardly be reached within half an hour. From the bwlch a fair path on the right bank of the stream leads towards Llynygader, and soon crosses the path from Snowdon to Beddgelert. By keeping round the hill to the right the Carnarvon highroad (which is easily seen from above) is gradually neared. The distance from the bwlch direct to the station may be covered in three-quarters of an hour, making in all 1¼ hour from Lliwedd, as compared with at least 2½ hours which would be required to reach Llanberis from the same point. * * * * * =Cwm Creigiog= is a shallow and unimportant hollow on the south-west side of Snowdon, lying between Aran and the ordinary Beddgelert path to the summit. The cwm has no attractions for a climber, yet at least one life has been lost in it. This was in the winter of 1859, when a Mr. Cox is said to have ascended Snowdon from Llanberis, and to have become exhausted on the way down to Beddgelert, between Llechog and the farm called Fridduchaf. His foolish guide left him alone and went in search of food, with the result, which in such cases usually follows, of finding his unfortunate employer dead on his return. The spot is marked by a heap of stones. Mr. Baddeley says it 'marks the spot where a tourist lost his life from exhaustion in 1874'--perhaps a mistake arising out of a death of the same kind in that year on quite another part of the mountain. * * * * * =Clogwyndur Arddu= ('Black Precipice') is the magnificent ridge which divides Cwm Clogwyn on the south from Cwm Brwynog on the north, being the western buttress of Y Wyddfa, or more strictly of Carnedd Ugain. The ascent from the Snowdon Ranger traverses nearly the whole length of the ridge, which broadens out at its western end into Moel y Cynghorion, beyond which again is the low pass of Bwlch Maes y Cwm (1,100 ft.), giving an easy passage from Llanberis to Snowdon Ranger and Beddgelert. The cliffs on the north side of the ridge are grand, and have been concerned in more than one fatal accident. In 1846 the Rev. Henry Wellington Starr, B.A., of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, eldest son of Mr. George Starr, of Hilperton, Wiltshire, and then a curate in Northampton, left Dolbadarn Inn on September 6 to ascend Snowdon. He failed to return, and on inquiry being made by his friends people came forward with evidence which seemed to show that he had reached the top of Snowdon, then descended to Gorphwysfa, crossed the head of Llanberis Pass, and ascended Glyder Fawr. At that point a guide professed to have met him, and brought him about half-way down, particularly noting that he wore a single glove, corresponding exactly to another which he had left with his luggage at the hotel. Search was made in every direction, but it was not till the beginning of June in the following year that any light was thrown on the mystery. On that day some of the clothes were found accidentally by William Hughes, a huntsman, who was exercising his dogs, apparently on Moel Cynghorion, and next day, on further search being made, the skeleton was discovered buried under gravel. His purse and chain were found, but his watch and ring were gone. It appears from the evidence of Griffith Ellis, of Llanberis, who found part of the remains, that the deceased had fallen over the cliff of Clogwyn Coch, on Moel Cynghorion, while ascending from Llyn Cwellyn--that is, by the 'Snowdon Ranger' route.[17] [17] The _Times_, 1846, October 14, October 24, October 30, November 3, and 1847, June 5; the _Globe_, October 1846; _Chambers's Journal_, May 1887. In 1859 a fatal accident took place near the eastern end of the ridge. The victim, George Henry Frodsham, a clerk in Liverpool, described as a young man of very fine physique, arrived at Llanberis on Saturday, August 13, accompanied by his cousin, F. A. Nicholson, and four friends, T. Clayhills, J. Snape, J. Goodiear, and A. Gardner. It was midnight, but they started off at once for Snowdon. They got as far as the 'half-way house,' where the proper path turns left, and up towards Cyrn Las; they, however, took the right-hand fork, which leads to the old copper level above Llyn du'r Arddu. Struggling up the rocks from the mine, Frodsham, encumbered by an umbrella and a bag, and being, moreover, in the dark, slipped and fell, unknown to his friends, who returned to the proper path and gained the summit. His cousin is said to have searched for him continuously from 4 A.M. on Sunday to 9 P.M. on Monday. At 6 A.M. on Tuesday the body was found by W. Owen; the skull was fractured both at the top and at the back, and the bag and umbrella were found 200 yards higher up, indicating that distance as the extent of his fall. A sapient jury drew from this sad event the moral that a guide should be employed as a safeguard against sudden mists; but few men need fear mists less than those who choose to climb when it is pitch dark. It may be said that this party neglected no precaution which is likely to ensure a fatal accident--inexperience, fatigue, darkness, difficult rocks, the burden of bags and umbrellas. * * * * * =Llechog= (i.e. 'Flat, Slabby Place').--There are two ridges of this name on Snowdon; one is traversed by the ordinary route from Beddgelert and that from Rhyd-ddu, and is precipitous on its curving north front; the other forms the western wall of Cwm Glas Bach, and is traversed for some distance by the pony path from Llanberis. Towards the Llanberis Pass road it presents a fine rocky ridge, very steep and lofty, on which good climbing may here and there be found. * * * * * =Moel Eilio= (2,382 ft.), less than three miles south-west of Llanberis station, has a namesake on the west side of the river Conway, not far from Llanrwst. The name is sometimes spelt Aeliau. The view from the top is extremely fine; the ascent is easy, and, as there is a railway on each side of it, access to the foot of it is very simple. The rockiest side is towards the east. Early in the century a poor little fellow named Closs, while trying to follow his mother from Bettws Garmon to Llanberis, was lost on this mountain. The story is told by H. L. Jones (1829) in his finely illustrated book, and by Wright (1833) and Bennett (1838). The last-named gives his epitaph. * * * * * =Garnedd Goch Range.=--=Garnedd Goch= (2,315 ft.) (i.e. 'The Red Cairns') is a very rugged and unfrequented range of hills lying to the west of Beddgelert. The huge Nantlle slate quarries on the north side of it have spoilt some very pretty scenery and some very pretty climbs. Beddgelert and Snowdon Ranger are good starting-points, and better still is Penygroes station, on the line from Portmadoc to Carnarvon. * * * * * =Moel Hebog= ('Hawk Hill,' 2,578 ft.) seems to have been ascended last century by Lord Lyttelton, by the Ordnance surveyors, and in August 1857 by Mr. J. H. Cliffe, who in his book (published 1860) gives a clear description of his ascent. In his opinion one of the cairns on the summit was then 'very ancient.' It is essentially a Beddgelert mountain, but can be conveniently taken from many other places at the cost of more time, as, for instance, from Snowdon Ranger on the north, Tremadoc and Criccieth on the south, and Brynkir station on the west. A man in the pink of condition who knows the way well can get to the top from Beddgelert in about three-quarters of an hour, but most people take 1½ or 2 hours. The horizontal distance is under 2 miles, nearly the same as that from Wastdale Head to Scafell Pike; but the vertical height is less by one-quarter. The proper route is very simple. A shoulder runs down north-west on to the Carnarvon road, and the ridge of it, after being reached by proceeding due west from Beddgelert, is followed straight to the top. This shoulder may, of course, be used by those who approach from the Snowdon Ranger, but for them a better plan is to take, about ¼ mile after passing the Pitt's Head, a road which continues on the right bank of the stream to Glan y Gors, a few yards beyond which a turning on the right leads across a side stream and past the farm of Hafod Ryffydd to the foot of Cwm Meillionen, and, by following either the cwm or the ridge on the left hand, the top of Moel Hebog is easily reached. The routes from Tremadoc, Criccieth, and Brynkir all take the dull side of the mountain; but this disadvantage is counterbalanced by the increased effect which this gives to the view of Snowdon on reaching the top, and to the peep down into the valley of Beddgelert, below. The most difficult way to hit off is that from Nantlle, but in point of rock scenery it is the finest of all, and was chosen by the Alpine Club for their excursion when they met here in 1883. * * * * * =Mynydd Mawr= (i.e. 'Great Mountain') rises just opposite to and west of the Snowdon Ranger Inn. The noble crag Castell Cidwm (i.e. castle of the wolf or robber) runs steeply down to Llyn Cwellyn, and well deserves a visit. Borrow, on seeing it from the south, was reminded of Gibraltar. Craig y Bera also, which overhangs Drws y Coed, is part of this mountain, and has some very striking rock scenery. Denbigh. This county has little climbing. A few rocks near Bettws y Coed offer short climbs, which are more satisfactory than the limestone rocks of Orme's Head, near Llandudno, or of the Eglwyseg cliffs, near Llangollen; but we find in =Dinas Bran=, close by, an extremely steep, castle-crowned hill, and much favoured by picnickers. It seems, however, to have been the scene of some early climbing, made too, quite properly, with the rope. Leland says, 'Ther bredith in the Rok Side that the Castelle stondith on every yere an Egle. And the Egle doth sorely assaut hym that distroith the Nest goyng down in one Basket and having a nother over his Hedde to defend the sore Stripe of the Egle.' Under such circumstances a climber ought to find St. Paul a better patron saint than St. Martin. Montgomeryshire. =Berwyn Mountains.=--The name is said to signify 'White Tops' (Bera-gwen). The range runs parallel to the river Dee, forming its south bank for many miles. It is not lofty, Moel Sych (2,716 ft.) and Cader Fronwen (2,573 ft.) being the highest points. The individual hills are not of striking form, and are really little more than high heathery moors, on which large numbers of grouse breed, but there are many points on the south-east side where small but striking rocks are found, chiefly about the heads of cwms hollowed out of the 'Llandeilo' and 'Bala' strata. These cwms are occasionally visited for the sake of the waterfalls, two or three of which are exceedingly fine. The rocks at Llangynog would be remarkably good if they had not fallen a prey to the spoilers in the form of quarrymen. Merionethshire. Merioneth mountains and shire Cardigan To travel over will tire horse and man, says Taylor, the Water Poet, and, indeed, as a climbing county it is only second to Carnarvon, and contains such fine mountains as Cader Idris, the Arans, and the Rhinogs. The climbing capital is Dolgelly, though the excellent service of the Cambrian Railway makes it easy to scale almost any mountain from almost any place in the county. The reason of this is that all the places of resort are near the coast, and the mountains are not far inland, so that the railway following the coast puts them all in communication with each other, and it is almost equally convenient to stay at Barmouth, Harlech, Towyn, Aberdovey, or Machynlleth. Indeed, this is almost the only county where railways are cheerfully accepted by the mountaineer as friends and not as enemies. He does not love them at Bettws y Coed, he loathes them at Llanberis, but here they are unobtrusive and at the same time supremely useful. * * * * * =Aberglaslyn.=--Through this beautiful defile lies the only correct approach to Snowdon. It is a true mountain scene, somehow suggesting Scotland rather than Wales, and of such beauty that, according to the story, three Cambridge dons, who went round Wales criticising nature and deducting marks for every defect, unanimously awarded full marks to this. There is fairly good practice climbing on both sides of it, but not very steep, in spite of the fears of some of the early travellers, who (like Hutton in 1803) thought the sides would close before they got through, and reached Beddgelert with a sense of relief. It was one of the earliest scenes in Wales which the taste of last century admitted to be picturesque. Sandby's view was taken about 120 years ago. * * * * * =Cnicht= or =Cynicht= (2,265 ft.), =Moel Wyn= (2,529 ft.)--Mr. J. H. Cliffe ascended the former on September 4, 1857, and declared that he could only hear of one man who had preceded him (the climbing clergyman). Under certain aspects and conditions it is one of the most striking mountains in Wales, owing to its sharp, conical form, but it bears very little really good rock. Beddgelert is the best place from which to ascend, and if the old and higher road to Maentwrog be taken to ¼ mile short of the tramway in Cwm Croesor, a ridge on the left hand can be followed right up to the peak without fear of mistake. If the ascent of Moel Wyn be included it adds less than an hour to the time taken by the last expedition. On the other hand, if Moel Wyn is ascended from Tanygrisiau, on the Ffestiniog line, it is equally easy to take in Cynicht. * * * * * =Rhinog Fawr= (2,362 ft.--just north of Rhinog Fach) is one of the most striking of the rocky hills which rise behind Harlech. It is more visited than would otherwise be the case because the pretty lake of Cwm Bychan and the famous pass of Bwlch Drws Ardudwy, both places of considerable resort, lie at its feet, one on either side. It is one of the barest and most rocky mountains in all Wales, and yet it has hardly anywhere on it a crag of respectable height. Little nameless problems, however, abound, and men who are content to enjoy a day's promiscuous scrambling, without accomplishing any notorious climb about which they will afterwards be able to boast, may be recommended to ramble over Rhinog Fawr. _Easy Ascents._--Several stations on the Cambrian line are convenient for the start, especially Harlech and Llanbedr. Vehicles can be got in summer to take visitors to near Cwm Bychan (about 5 miles), from the east end of which to reach the top of the mountain requires a long hour, by way of the lakelet of Gloywlyn and up the western slope of the mountain. From Dolgelly the way is not so easy to find. Bwlch Drws Ardudwy, the pass between the two Rhinogs, is the first place to make for, and for this the best plan is to go by the Precipice Walk or by the Trawsfynydd highroad to the Camlan stream, which comes in on the left half a mile or more beyond Tynygroes Inn. A path follows the stream for nearly 3 miles to a slate quarry, which can also be reached rather more quickly by crossing the bridge at Penmaenpool, especially if the train be used as far as that station. Half a mile up the stream beyond the quarry the course leaves the brook and strikes away north-north-west round Rhinog Fach, rising as little as may be, so as to join the track up Bwlch Drws Ardudwy. From the head of the pass, rugged as it looks, a way may be picked northward to the east slope of the summit, but many people prefer to descend to the west a long way, so as to strike the easier south-western shoulder. A yet simpler route than the last, but, as involving 3 miles more of the hateful Trawsfynydd road, intolerable unless a carriage be taken, turns out of the route to the left half a mile beyond the ninth milestone, and makes for the north side of Rhinog Fawr. The path for nearly 3 miles is that which leads to Bwlch Drws Ardudwy, and is quitted just after passing through a wall. The stream on the right hand is now followed up to the pool at its head, until a turn to the left and south brings the pedestrian up on to the summit. This route may also be used from Trawsfynydd (where the Great Western have a station very useful for Ffestiniog on one side and Bala on the other), and there is no better place to start from if climbing is wanted, for of that there is plenty to be found in Craig Ddrwg, the ridge which stretches away to the north. In winter this range is very fine, but as stern and desolate as it is possible to imagine anything. The writer has reason to remember that here, in January 1895, he experienced the most intense cold that he has met with in Great Britain. * * * * * =Arenig Fawr= (2,800 ft.) is called 'Rennig' by Daines Barrington, who, writing in 1771, adds that it 'is commonly considered as the fifth mountain of North Wales in point of height.' The ascent from Arenig station, on the Great Western Railway, between Bala and Ffestiniog, is very easy, as the rise is only 1,700 ft., and the distance about 1¾ mile. The usual and most expeditious way of making the ascent is by proceeding westward from the station for ¼ mile to the farm of Milltergerrig, but for scenery and for climbing an opposite direction should be taken for nearly a mile, till the stream is struck which issues from Llyn Arenig, really a very fine tarn and backed by most respectable cliffs. Further south than the tarn again good rocks will be found. The usual, and indeed the proper, way of dealing with this mountain is to traverse it from north to south, ending up at Llanuwchllyn station, on the Great Western line from Bala to Dolgelly. The eastward view is extremely fine, and superior by far to that from many of the highest points in Wales. This was one of our earliest mountain meteorological stations, as it was here that the Hon. Daines Barrington conducted his experiments on rainfall in 1771.[18] [18] See the _Philosophical Transactions_, p. 294, of that year. Its height, too, was measured, as Pennant (1781) tells us, by Mr. Meredith Hughes, a surveyor of Bala. One of the ancient Welsh writers mentions this mountain in a most contemptuous manner. Borrow alludes to this, and remarks that upon him, on the contrary, none of all the hills which he saw in Wales made a greater impression. * * * * * =The Arans.=--This mountain is the highest in Merionethshire, and by many wrongly considered the second highest in Wales. It lies between the Berwyns and Cader Idris. Like the latter, it is of volcanic trap rock, heavily speckled in parts with quartz, and exposed on the east side, where it has been subjected to much weathering. There is a good deal of old _débris_ from the face, that is now grass-covered. [Illustration] The road between the Aran and the outlying hills of the Berwyn is over 1,900 ft. high; we have, however, to descend to 860 ft. in passing from the Aran to Cader Idris. The main ridge runs almost exactly north and south for 6 miles, its west side--a large tract of marshy moorland--sloping down gently to the vales of Dyfrdwy (= the goddess's water; sometimes called the Little Dee) and Wnion, and its east side, irregularly escarped, falling for the most part very rapidly for the first thousand feet. Its ridge culminates in two peaks 1½ mile apart, Aran Benllyn (2,902 ft.) and Aran Fawddwy (2,970 ft.) The word _Aran_ means an 'alp,' or a 'high place;' _Mawdd_ is said to mean 'spreading,' and the terminations _ach_ or _wy_ mean 'water.' _Aran Benllyn_ was one of several of which the height was measured in Pennant's time by 'the ingenious Mr. Meredith Hughes, of Bala,' who made it out to be 30 yards less than Cader Idris. In April 1881 the Alpine Club had one of their informal meetings at Bala, and chose the east front of the Aran as their route from there to Dolgelly. The ordinary ascents of the Aran are effected from Llanuwchllyn in 2 hours, from Drws y Nant in 1¼ hour, and from Dinas Mawddwy in about 3 hours. _Rock Climbs._--These are never extensive, though there are many little pieces that require much ingenuity to surmount. Excepting for a few boulder climbs on the ridge itself the crag work is confined to the east face of the mountains, the side overlooking Lliwbran and Craiglyn Dyfi. Climbers are often asked, where can a man start practising rock work? The Arans are first-rate for this. Whatever the difficulty on the mountain a few minutes' traversing will generally take one out of it, if direct ascent or descent be considered undesirable. The mountain face is so broken up that we have no gullies or arêtes separated by impossible walls of rock from the easy parts of the mountain. In short, from the enthusiastic shin-scraper's point of view the architecture of the Aran face is defective. (_a_) _From Lliwbran._--The rocks rising from Lliwbran are columnar in structure, and by the time a generation of climbers have torn away the grass from the holds they will show up plenty of neat little problems from 50 to 100 ft. high. Looking up from the lake the crag, which is a high dependence of Aran Benllyn, shows on the right an almost unrelieved slabbiness at an easy angle, which gives good practice in small footholds. Up to the centre of the crag is a steep grass gully, in a line with a large boulder down near the lake, with an overhanging wall that blocks the direct ascent of the gully, and with a fine clean-cut buttress on the left. We may creep up the corner of the wall on the left, or circumvent it by traversing round to the right. The route to the ridge from the big boulder is easiest up an oblique gully just invisible from it. Between our crag and the summit of the Benllyn is an easy walk due east down to the green shoulder south of Lliwbran, that takes us quickly by Nant y Barcud and Cwm Croes to the Twrch valley and the main road. This descent to Llannwchllyn, though not direct, recommends itself in wet or misty weather, and is in any case worth taking as a variant. Aran Benllyn itself offers nothing on its broken escarpments; though the face shows up rather well in profile from a distance, the climber need scarcely use his hands in zigzagging up the face to the cairn. The view from the summit justifies our traversing the peak on the way to Aran Fawddwy. It includes the length of Bala lake and a goodly extent of Llyn Fyrnwy, and the outline of Aran Fawddwy shows up magnificently. Passing along the ridge to the south of Benllyn we keep up at a high level for the whole distance of 1½ mile to Aran Fawddwy, the greatest depression being less than 250 ft. below Benllyn. If we bear to the left, just dipping below the ridge, we pass along the foot of an overhanging mass of rock of considerable length that is undercut in a remarkable fashion. There are many places along it where one may shelter comfortably in bad weather. It is difficult to climb up the rock direct, but towards its south extremity we may work up into a small cave and climb out by the left on to the ridge again. Five minutes then bring us to a fine cairn that marks an easy descent to Craiglyn Dyfi, the source of the Dyfi river, with a good view of the best rocks on Aran Fawddwy. The final ascent of this peak begins after a few feet of descent to a wall that crosses the ridge at its lowest. (_b_) _On Craiglyn Dyfi._--A small terrace at about the level of the wall just referred to leads round the rocks to the left into a large scree gully, which offers good sport in snowy weather. Half-way along this terrace is a 'problem' of unusual severity--a narrow crack in an overhanging face, with very scanty hand-holds where the crack closes, some 20 ft. up the face. The pleasantest bit of scrambling is on to the summit of Aran Fawddwy from the lake, by the arête that is seen in outline from the large cairn on the ridge, from which point the two vertical portions of the arête are well marked. It can be reached easily from the lake, or we may descend from the cairn for some 600 ft., and then traverse across to the south till a small gully is passed that shows a cave pitch at its lower extremity. The rock arête forms the south side of this gully and runs up for 400 ft. It reminds us of the easy climb up Tryfaen from the Glyder side, though in one or two places we have difficulties here, whereas there are none on the Tryfaen scramble. It begins below the level of the cave, and after passing over rough rocks at an easy angle we come to a fine wall with a wide crack up it on the left. A huge splintered block is fixed in the lower part of the crack, and we may surmount the block and just squeeze in, passing out on to the roof. There are one or two variations possible here. In fact, instead of starting on the arête we might pass up the gully to the cave. It has mossy walls and a dripping interior. It is marked by a small pile of stones on the right and a well-bleached sheep's skeleton in the gully just above. The pitch may be taken on the left by steep wet grass, which is unpleasant, or we can attack it direct. We go well inside, and with back to the right we find good holds on the left, thus working up until the roof itself offers hold for both hands. From here it is best to pass on to the arête a few feet below the crack above described. The way is then easy, but interesting, and leads to a straight-up crack in a wall in front of us that has to be negotiated. It looks severe, but the surface of the rock is so rough that no real trouble is experienced with it. The crack is much more formidable to descend. Shortly after this we find ourselves out on the open face again, the gully on the left having disappeared, and only a few crags above us marking the summit of the mountain. Striking directly upwards we reach the top in a quarter of an hour, the last 25 ft. being, if we choose, by way of a chimney, that begins with some difficulty and lands us just to the left of the large cairn that marks the highest point. (_c_) _By Llaithnant._--Passing due south of the Aran Fawddwy cairn, along the route to Dinas, we see a fine rock in front between us and the near end of the Dyrysgol ridge, forming the head of Llaithnant. It is marked by an overhanging rock half-way down the left-hand ridge. A steep and wet scree gully leads down to the valley, and we may go part of the way down until we are about 100 ft. below the overhanging block. Here we can strike across to the arête, and keeping close to the gully on our right have 250 ft. of fairly good scrambling. We skirt close under the big boulder, and passing to the right of it (a traverse can also be managed on the left, lower down) clamber over rather loose rock to the grass terrace above the pitch. Then good rock follows, and bearing towards the right we come in sight of a square-walled chimney overlooking the main gully, marked by small cairns at top and bottom. Its holds are all on the left, so we back up on the right and find ourselves close to the main ridge again. Another chimney still further to the right might be taken, but it is always very wet; the two pitches in it are both very small, and it is only interesting when ice is about. A grass gully separates our arête from a few rocks nearer Dyrysgol, which are of basaltic character and rather interesting to descend. * * * * * =Cader Idris.=--The name ('Chair of Idris') includes the whole mountain range, some 7 miles long, that separates the Mawddach from the Dysynni. It is a continuation of the outcrop of volcanic trap rock that stretches from the Arans down to Cardigan Bay, and, as usual with such mountains, its volcanic origin has had much to do with its grand scenery. The range runs in an E.N.E. direction from the sea south of Barmouth, and reaches its greatest elevation at Pen y Gader (2,929 ft.) It forms two other noteworthy peaks on the chain, Tyrran Mawr (2,600 ft.), 2 miles to the south-west, and Mynydd Moel (2,800 ft.), 1½ mile to the north-east. The north side presents a fairly even front of precipitous rock for 3½ miles. Near the highest point, however, a huge amphitheatre of rock, a thousand feet in height, suggesting a volcanic crater half fallen away, breaks the continuity of the ridge, and contributes the finest bit of mountain scenery that this side of Cader can offer. Probably this hollow suggested first the name of 'Cader,' though there is a recess on the summit ridge that is usually taken to be the seat in question. But the mountain can show something even better on the south side. Its high dependency Mynydd Pencoed joins the main ridge almost at the summit of Pen y Gader, and its extremity Craig y Cae forms with Cader itself another crater-like hollow, which, with Llyn y Cae lying at the foot of the crags, is even wilder and more magnificent than the one on the north side. Excepting the crags in this cwm the south side of Cader consists of steep grass slopes, and the general aspect of the mountain is uninteresting. An account is published in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (vol. xxxviii. p. 147) of an ascent of the mountain in 1767 by L. N. Cader Idris was also climbed in 1863 by Prince Arthur. Several members of the Alpine Club worked their way up the direct route from Llyn y Gader in 1881, and there is some mention in the _Alpine Journal_ (vol. xii.) of a few ascents by Mr. H. Willink. The gullies along the north face of the mountain were explored for many years by F. H. B. The wandering Borrow wordily describes a night adventure on Cader Idris. A pleasantly-written chapter on it may be found in Paterson's _Mountaineering Below the Snow Line_, and just recently an article has appeared on the same subject in the _Scottish Mountaineering Journal_. This latter article has a good general view of the whole length of the north face. On the north face, between Pen y Gader and Cyfrwy, a tailor named Smith, of Newport, met his death by a fall from the crags in 1864. His body was not found until the following spring. There is another Pen y Gader in South Wales, the highest point in the Black Forest of Carmarthen (2,630 ft.); also between Y Foel Fras and the Conway River a hill goes by the same name. The ordinary excursions up the mountain are made from Dolgelly, by the Foxes' Path, in 2¼ hours; by the Bridle Path, in 2¾ hours, or by Mynydd Moel in 3 hours; from Arthog, easily reached by train from Barmouth, in 3 hours; from Tal y Llyn in 2 hours; and from Towyn in 4 hours. The walk up from Towyn is by the Dysynni valley and the _Bird Rock_. This has a very bold and steep front, broken up by narrow ledges. It can be ascended with different degrees of ease, and is worth climbing for the view. The rock is named from its usual frequenters, the kite, hawk, and cormorant showing up in large numbers on the face. _Rock Climbs._--(_a_) _On Mynydd Moel._--These are all fairly easy in dry weather, and are worth exploring on a slack day. Standing at the eastern corner of the little square Llyn Aran, we notice the highest point of Mynydd Moel to the west. A fine-looking arête leads up to it from the north, with a well-marked pinnacle apparently half-way up the climb. This we shall call the north ridge. A prominent pillar of unusual steepness is seen to our left, reaching to the height of the Ceu Graig ridge. Its eastern side is cut into by a narrow gully that seems from below to pass behind the pillar. To the right of the Ceu Graig pillar is seen another gully, looking steep but grassy; it is found to offer a pleasant route on to the ridge. Above the upper screes at the foot of the higher crags several ascents may be planned from below. The best is marked by two oblique chimneys that start upwards to the left. Between this and the north ridge a large scree gully leads up to the highest part of the mountain, and from it on the right several short scrambles on good slabby rocks are obtainable. [Illustration: CRAIG ADERYN (BIRD ROCK)] The first of the Ceu Graig gullies, counting from left to right, is to the left of the pillar, and takes three-quarters of an hour to ascend from the lake. It starts with a water slide that we take on the right, and we pass back into the gully immediately afterwards. Then the ascent of an easy chimney makes us a little wet if the weather has been rainy, and a pitch appears just above. This can be taken on the right or left. The right-hand route gives us wet rocks; the left leads up a side chimney, and back into the gully by an awkward grass traverse. After this the gully divides, and leads us to the neck that joins on to the pillar on our right. The steep outside face of the pillar can be ascended, but is rather dangerous. It is a sample of mantelpiece climbing, but the holds are mostly of grass and heather, and some of the steps are long. The next gully, a short distance to the right of the pillar, is more open than the first, and is less steep. Some water is generally coming down. The first obstacle is a wide cavern, that can be mounted immediately to the left or avoided by passing up the easy open chimney on that side of the gully. The second is a waterfall, and that also is by preference passed on the left; the difficulty finishes with a short corkscrew chimney. From this we emerge on to the open face of the mountain, and a few feet of good rock bring us to the main ridge. We are now at about the level of the upper limit of scree on the Mynydd Moel face, and a traverse can be effected round to the oblique chimney already referred to. In doing so we pass first a scree gully and then an inviting cleft up to the left, but this is found to lose its interest after the first 20 ft. The oblique chimneys can be recommended for beginners, as the climbing is only about 250 ft.; the rocks are very good, and the angle about 45°. Water comes down the gully, but does not offer any trouble, except, perhaps, at the first obstacle. If this is taken direct we climb up the right wall, which overhangs, and cling sufficiently close to permit the water to pass behind us. The second pitch is taken on the right, the rock being so much undercut that we can pass behind the water. After this a little more scrambling leads to a scree and an easy finish. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF CADER IDRIS] The north ridge is somewhat disappointing. It works well up to the pinnacle, which may also be approached by a dilapidated chimney on the left. But just above this, where another ridge joins from the north-west, it becomes a mere walk along the edge of a cliff. Perhaps the neatest way of descending this cliff is by a very narrow vertical chimney, marked at top and bottom by small piles of stones, a little to the north of the big scree gully, and close to the highest point of Mynydd Moel. (_b_) _West of Mynydd Moel._--Here the north cliff is very much broken. There are innumerable scree gullies up the face, but the rock ridges in between them have no good features. There are one or two pinnacles just below the ridge, easy to reach from above, but difficult from below. One especially is worth a scramble, about 5 minutes' walk from Mynydd Moel; a thin and uncommonly difficult chimney leads up its outside face. (_c_) _On Pen y Gader._--The central gully up Pen y Gader is a prominent feature of this face of the mountain. It was climbed many years ago, but no definite account of its early history has been obtained. It is in three obvious portions, as indicated in the illustration, and is generally wet. The two shelves that divide the climb stretch obliquely upwards to the right across the whole face, and may be reached in a great variety of ways. Nevertheless the only good climbing is in the two lower portions of the main gully. The first piece takes us on to the shelf with about 70 ft. of climbing. The gully narrows considerably, and we are forced on to the right-hand side and up a steep and smooth slope of water-worn rock. Then we cross over the water to the left, and effect an easy exit on to the ledge. We next scramble over some irregular blocks and into a narrow recess at the foot of the second pitch. This is a narrow chimney, very pleasant in dry weather, landing us in 50 ft. on to the second ledge. From here the ground is more open, and the climbing is of a slight character to the summit, except in winter, when the whole gully is apt to be heavily glazed. Under such circumstances the lowest pitch is almost dangerous. The first pitch may be varied by striking up from the screes a few yards to the left of the main gully, by the cleft shown in the illustration. The second can be quitted altogether, and the columnar rocks to the west taken in a variety of ways; and all along the upper corridor will be found short pitches leading to the summit ridge. (_d_) _On Cyfrwy._--There are two well-defined arêtes leading up close to the summit of Cyfrwy. The first _a a_ is in an easterly direction, and may be seen in profile from the direction of Pen y Gader. This is easily recognisable by the curious truncated pinnacle or tower some way up. The second bears up from the north, and also shows a pinnacle, but of smaller dimensions. Beyond the two arêtes the climbing on Cyfrwy is inferior, but between them there are a few interesting routes up the crags. [Illustration: CADER IDRIS (seen across Llyn y Gader)] The terrace _e e_ is easily reached from the screes. From it there are two definite climbs, one _b b_ up a gully to the left, that leads out on to the east arête, the other _c c_ up a more open gully that passes to the summit ridge. It is possible that the notch between the great tower and the east arête can be reached from this side, but the upper part looks difficult. The east arête was climbed in about 1888 by the writer. The first recorded ascent was in January 1891 (H. K., W. E. S., and O. G. J.), and the first ascent by a lady in August 1891 (Miss L. G., K. W. D., and O. G. J.) [Illustration: THE CYFRWY CLIMBS, FROM THE NORTH.] It can be followed all the way up. The tower is best turned on the right, and the vertical wall of 40 ft. that immediately follows is climbed direct from the little gap, with just a slight divergence to the left. The only serious difficulty on the arête is a wall of rock 100 ft. higher up. It can be surmounted by a thin cleft, the jammed stones in which are unsafe; or by working up the face a little to the left. The situation is very exposed. This, and any other bad bits, can generally be avoided by climbing down to the scree gully on our left. Near the top of the arête we pass the exit of the chimney _b b_, which descends steeply to the right. [Illustration: CYFRWY ARÊTES (The northern is seen in profile, the eastern is much foreshortened)] The north arête has probably not been climbed, but the gullies on each side have been taken. They call for no special comment. The one to the right is worth ascending for the view of the fine rocks on this face. It is mostly scree with a small pitch near the top, and was once marked above by a little cairn. It is admirable when hard snow is about. The gully _c c_ to the left is very open and risky, consisting of a series of shelves formed by the falling away of the porphyritic pillars that characterise the face. The climb _b b_ is rather better. The scrambling from the terrace is easy but steep, until a large overhanging boulder entirely blocks the way. We then climb up the vertical wall on the left and traverse back to the gully. It finishes very abruptly on the narrow upper ridge of the east arête, and in a most unexpected way we find ourselves looking down to Llyn y Gader with the face of Pen y Gader directly opposite. There are a few short climbs on the face of Tyrrau Mawr, but nothing very definite can be picked out. (_e_) _On Craig y Cae._--The great gully of Mynydd Pencoed was climbed for the first time on May 18, 1895 (W. P. H. S., E. L. W. H. S., and O. G. J.) It is by far the finest climb in the Cader district; the work in it is as varied as in any of the more familiar gullies in the neighbourhood of Snowdon, and the rock scenery in its upper portion can scarcely be surpassed on British soil. The upper part of the gully attracted the attention of the writer in 1890, but it was not until April 1895 that he made any attempt to enter the gully at its lower extremity. Then he succeeded in forcing his way over the first pitch, but the great rush of water coming down the gully made the second pitch impossible, and the untimely fracture of an ice axe prompted a temporary withdrawal. On the day when the successful attempt was made the rocks were unusually dry. In wet weather the difficulties of the climb are likely to be very much increased, more especially in the narrower pitches, where the route chosen by the climber is identical in position with that chosen by the water, though opposite in direction so long as valour needs diluting down to discretion. It seems probable that grass traverses may be found to circumvent the lower pitches. The first and second, for example, may be avoided by traversing into the gully from the left, over the grassy buttress that supports the Pencoed Pillar. The third pitch may be passed immediately on the left, if one treats the loose soil with due consideration. The fourth and fifth seem from above to permit an alternative route up to the right, over steep grass and back to the gully by a treacherous-looking upward traverse to the left. From here the three remaining pitches directly up the gully offer the simplest solution to the rest of the problem; variations to the left and right have been freely suggested, but are still untested. [Illustration: LLYN Y CAE (OR CAU) AND CRAIG Y CAE (FROM CADER IDRIS)] The climbing starts within 200 ft. of the level of Llyn y Cae, with a short pitch some 12 ft. high, marked above by a cairn of stones. The second pitch begins almost immediately, and must be taken direct, the roof of the cave in its upper portion to be approached by a serpentine squirm of the body after the cave is entered, up the thin crack on the right. The third pitch is ferocious in aspect, but uncertain in action, on account of the poor quality of its material. It consists of a large cavern with a pendulous mass of brittle rock hanging down from the roof somewhat to the left. The cavern is penetrated as far as possible on this side, and then, with back to the hanging rock and feet on a hold invisible from below, a passage may be effected outwards to the firm hand-holds in the open. A jammed stone with débris attached, in the most handy situation at the corner of the exit, is best left alone. Soon after this we approach a long narrow chimney close to the left wall of the gully. It is about 35 ft. in length, and the upper part gives trouble. But a very fine foothold some 12 ft. up gives breathing space for the final portion. Then the interest ceases for a while, as we mount some 130 ft. of scree and smooth rocky slabs at an easy angle. This is an excellent arrangement, for the fifth pitch, that now comes on, is likely to demand all our powers of admiration for a while. It consists of a cavern divided by two steep buttresses into three parts, side by side, the middle one being most open to inspection but most difficult to approach directly. Immediately above the left-hand portion a vertical chimney rises some 40 ft., its lower end projecting well over the cave and manifesting no direct route of approach from below. To get to the foot of this chimney is the chief difficulty. The method adopted was rather intricate, and probably permitted much improvement. It has, however, the advantage that the leader need not climb straight away the full 80 or 90 ft. without a halt. He first penetrates as far as possible into the cave on the left, until the roof bars further progress. Then he traverses over a dangerously smooth and wet slab, with no perceptible foothold, to the middle portion of the cavern. From here he works upwards and outwards until with a long stride he steps out on to a little ledge on the right wall of the gully. Here a hole through a large block enables him to manipulate the rope with safety, and the second man can join him. The second may reach the terrace more directly, if the rope is available, by working directly up the middle of the gully till the level of the ledge is reached; but the climbing is very uncertain, on account of the treacherous footholds. From the ledge the leader passes back across the centre and over a notched curtain of rock into the upper chimney. Here there is no doubt as to the route; a resting-place is afforded for a moment by a little cave, through the roof of which only the thinnest can hope to wriggle. The edge of this roof is mounted on the right, and a few feet higher a jammed block that dominates the pitch is turned on the right, up some rather treacherous grass that needs very careful treatment. The writer would like to add a word of advice to this already lengthy description of the pitch. Don't attempt to qualify for the through route of the little cave by slipping downwards and jamming in the chimney. The three remaining pitches are short and near together, the last one finishing a few feet below the summit of the ridge, some 850 ft. above the lake. _East Gully._--The gully immediately to the east of the Pencoed Pillar was first climbed on May 19, 1895 (W. P. H. S., W. E. S., and O. G. J.) As seen from the opposite shores of the lake it presents a striking appearance, the middle part looking very difficult. It starts higher up the face than the western climb (about 440 ft. above the lake), and finishes on the ridge at a somewhat lower level than the top of the latter (870 ft. above lake). Thus the climbing is much reduced, and the whole ascent can be accomplished in an hour by a party of three. The scrambling in it is almost continuous, and towards the middle, where the rock walls close in the gully, the route is very steep, though none of the pitches are severe. We begin with oblique slabs of rock rather inclined to be wet. Then the direct route lies over a block of rock with uncertain holds, but a cleft to the left promises much better, and a traverse at the top leads back easily to the gully again. The scrambling is very pleasant where the right wall begins to overhang, and remains interesting till the gully divides. From here screes lead up each part to the crest of the ridge, but a small rock arête separating the two branches give us climbing all the way. Still more to the east is a shorter gully, composed for the most part of scree, that can be taken in 20 minutes. It has two pitches, the upper one requiring a rope. The first is taken up on either side, and is only about 12 ft. high. The second is a cave pitch with a very fine interior. The ascent is effected by backing up the rather loose walls of the cave, and then bearing out to the left and over the obstacle. From here to the summit is nothing but scree. The gully is afflicted with the near neighbourhood of badly weathered rocks, and shows signs of having been quite recently bombarded from the crags on the left. These three gullies on Mynydd Pencoed represent all the climbing that has as yet been attempted on the south side of Cader. It is much to be hoped that a few interesting routes will yet be found between the pillar and the small col that represents the lowest portion of Craig y Cau, and the account of what has been done may induce others to visit this unfrequented region. To the same end it might be advisable to throw out the remark that the Pencoed Pillar, some 700 ft. high, looks quite inaccessible from the grassy buttress at its foot. South Wales. It is scarcely worth while to enumerate the southern counties, as all alike are destitute of climbs, except upon the sea cliffs. Some of these are remarkably bold and picturesque, especially about Lydstep (Tenby) and St. David's Head; but they cannot compare in any way with those of Ireland, and least of all for climbing purposes, being mainly of limestone. Just north of Aberystwith are some highly curious rocks, giving a climb or two. Some twenty years ago a schoolboy was killed by falling from them. Of the inland rocks it will be sufficient to mention a few. * * * * * [Illustration: CLIFFS NEAR LYDSTEP (TENBY)] =The Brecon Beacons= (2,910 ft.), in Brecknockshire (which name the travellers of old, with some justice, modified to 'Breakneckshire'), are sandstone peaks of very striking outline. Indeed, Mackintosh (who saw them from the east) says, 'I was more impressed than I have been with any mountain in Wales. Their outline excited a very unusual idea of sublimity.' Brecon is the best starting-point, and it is a good plan, though by no means necessary, to drive to the Storey Arms inn (1,400 ft.), eight miles towards Merthyr, or to go by train to Torpantau, and thus avoid walking over any part of the way twice. [Illustration: CLIFFS NORTH OF ABERYSTWITH] The way is easy, and easily found; but a wary eye should be kept upon the streams, which in this part of Wales are surprisingly rapid and copious. A curious notion once prevailed that nothing would fall from the top of this hill. Many years ago an unfortunate picnicker disproved this. See the _Times Index_, but the statement there made that he fell 12,000 ft. is somewhat startling. * * * * * =The Black Mountains=, a wide stretch of charming hill-walking, have little to attract the mere climber, nor will he find much on such hills as the bastion-like =Blorenge= (1,720 ft.), in spite of their possessing caps of 'mill-stone grit.' * * * * * =Plynlimon= (2,469 ft.) is seldom mentioned except with derision. _The Beauties of Wales_ (1818) does indeed speak of 'the towering summit which bears the name of Plinlimmon,' and quotes the equally appropriate description given by Philips-- That cloud-piercing hill Plinlimmon from afar the traveller kens, Astonished how the goats their shrubby browse Gnaw pendent. But, in truth, the great difficulty which travellers have, whether far or near, is to ken it at all; and many of them have vented their disappointment in words of bitter scorn. Pennant (1770) candidly admits that he never saw it, which is easily understood, for the mountain is neither easy to see nor worth looking at when seen. The ascent is a protracted bog-walk. It was made in 1767[19] by L. N., but Taylor, the Water Poet (1652), sensibly calls it Tall Plinillimon, Which I no stomach had to tread upon. [19] _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1768. An amusing notice used to be seen at Steddfa Gurig (then an inn), 2½ miles south of the summit, and 13¼ miles by road from Llanidloes: 'The notorious hill Plinlimon is on the premises.' This place, being 1,358 ft. above the sea, is the best starting-point for the ascent of the mountain, and coaches run past it from Llanidloes. * * * * * =Aberedw Rocks= are fairly typical of the kind of climbing which is to be found in South Wales. The rocks being quite close to the station of that name on the Cambrian Railway, are brought within easy reach of Rhayader and Builth Wells on the north and of Brecon on the south. Three or four rock terraces, 15 to 20 ft. high, break the slope of the hill beside the railway, and a sort of rocky cove penetrates it as well. Bits here and there are not unlike the 'chimneys' on Slieve League, but the material is more friable, resembling loose walls of very inferior slaty fragments. A few harder masses stand out picturesquely as small pinnacles, especially in the cove, near the head of which a lofty bulging piece of rock has a vertical rift in it, which for a few feet offers quite a difficult climb. The river =Edw= (close by) has extremely steep, cliff-like banks, and these are a common feature in other tributaries of the Wye. The =Bachwy=, for instance, has a gorge which, seen as the writer has seen it during a winter flood, is profoundly impressive. Malkin's description (1804) should not be missed. He found 'rudely-shaped eccentricities of nature, with all the mysterious gloom of vulgar and traditional ascription,' 'dwarfishly fructified rock,' 'features all of a revolting cast,' and 'a prospect rude and unchastised.' The =Irvon=, again, has sides so rocky as to be chosen by the falcon for nesting. * * * * * =Cwm Elan=, 5 or 6 miles from Rhyader, is a very pretty spot, and the gorge of Cefn Coch is exceedingly striking. Mackintosh says that the height is not less than 800 ft., and the cliffs are in many parts mural and quite perpendicular. He declared that, while the cliffs on the left-hand side of the river are very fine, he had seen nothing to surpass those on the right. This from a hill traveller of his experience is remarkably high praise. The writer has only visited these rocks once, and has never attempted to climb there, nor, indeed, has he ever heard of anyone else doing so. The Birmingham reservoir is to submerge several miles of this cwm and the two houses in which Shelley stayed. * * * * * =Stanner Rocks= are quite near the station of the same name on the branch of the Great Western from Leominster to New Radnor, and on the north side of the railway. The material of which they are composed is superior for climbing purposes to the soft shaly stuff so common in South Wales, being the same eruptive trap rock which forms the hills of Hunter, Worsel, and Old Radnor, and has metamorphosed the surrounding limestone. These rocks narrowly miss being a good climb. The train from Leominster takes about 50 minutes. Near New Radnor is a precipice down which Cliffe (1854) mentions that a gentleman rode, and he also records that another climbed the fall called _Waterbreakitsneck_. IRELAND =Introduction.=--Climbing in Ireland, in the sense in which it is understood in Switzerland, is, of course, unknown, although during a winter of happily rare occurrence, such as that of 1894-5, abundant snow and ice-slope work is no doubt obtainable. It would be accompanied, however, by extreme cold and days of too short a duration for work. Nor can Ireland boast of such arenas for cliff-climbing as the Lake District, or the Cuchullins in Skye. There is no Pillar Rock, no Old Man of Dearg. But there are ample opportunities for acquiring the art of mountain craft, the instinct which enables the pedestrian to guide himself alone from crest to crest, from ridge to ridge, with the least labour. He will learn how to plan out his course from the base of cliff or gully, marking each foot and hand grip with calm attention; and, knowing when to cease to attempt impossibilities, he will learn to trust in himself and acquire that most necessary of all climbers' acquirements a philosophic, contemplative calm in the presence of danger or difficult dilemmas. If the beginner is desirous of rock practice, or the practised hand requires to test his condition, or improve his form, there is many a rocky coast where the muscles and nerves and stamina can be trained to perfection. Kerry and Donegal are competent to form a skilled mountaineer out of any capable aspirant. Ice and snow craft is an accomplishment which must of course be acquired elsewhere. Much of the best scenery in Ireland is available only to the mountaineer. Macgillicuddy's Reeks can hardly be appreciated in less than a week's exploration. Even after three weeks spent amongst them we have wished for more. Donegal alone requires lengthened attention, and there a much longer period will be profitably spent. The climbing described in the following pages was chiefly undertaken with the object, or excuse, of botanical discovery. All the mountain experiences, except where the contrary is stated, represent the personal--usually the solitary--experiences of the writer. Of roped climbing the author has had no experience outside the Alps. Being tied up in a package and lowered from a cliff to a bird's nest, though not climbing, is, no doubt, a feat requiring nerve and dexterity; but when the nest of the raven, peregrine, or chough is in view, and ropes and companions are 'out of all ho,' and it appears improbable such a chance will come again, the eager naturalist will indeed rejoice that his nerve and dexterity are not wholly dependent on the comfortable security of a friendly cable round his waist. To the botanist such accomplishments are even more essential. A knowledge of rocks--what to trust, what to mistrust, what to attack vertically (such as granite and quartzose usually), what to deal with by their ledges (such as limestone often and sandstone still oftener), what to avoid altogether (such as trap, chalk, and decomposing basalt), a knowledge of the elementary principles of guidance under varying conditions of weather--can be gleaned from the mountain and sea coast cliffs in Ireland, not, perhaps, to such an extent as to produce an expert, but quite enough to lay the requisite groundwork of one. Form and condition, nerve and activity, will develop in company, and with them the love for the art will grow, and nothing beyond a little local education will be wanting to enable him to follow upon their arduous undertakings real proficients in mountain craft. Any words that can induce the skilled mountaineers of England and Scotland to test the merits of an Irish welcome, of Irish scenery, and of the bracing combination of Atlantic and mountain air in the western counties will have been written to good purpose. * * * * * =Antrim.=--The highest hills are Trostan (1,810 ft.) and Slieveanea (1,782 ft.) The formation is almost entirely trap or basalt, and there is no cliff-climbing, the rock being crumbly and unsafe. Around the coast there is a belt of cretaceous rocks, forming in some places, as at the Giant's Causeway (White Rocks) and at Fair Head, bold cliffs of chalk or rotten trap. On Fair Head, 640 ft. high, there is a magnificent view. Cyclopean columns of greenstone crown a talus always heavy on the Antrim cliffs, owing to their friable nature. There is a fissure known as the Grey Man's Path on the west side of this Head, in the face of the cliff, by which it is possible to descend and inspect the foot of the columnar prisms. [Illustration: THE TARTAR ROCK (on Fair Head)] The Antrim glens and the Antrim coast road are deservedly famous for their lovely scenery, and excellent accommodation is everywhere obtainable. Of the glens _Glenariff_ is, perhaps, the gem. It is hemmed in by cliffs 1,000 ft. high, with mural summits. Glenarm is equally beautiful, though in a more tranquil and gentle way. On the north and south sides of the Bay there are considerable precipices. From Fair Head the prospect is singularly fine. The Head is columnar basalt. Fair Head is approached from Ballycastle on the west. West of Ballycastle again, about the same distance, is the well-known rocky islet of Carrig-a-Rede, which is severed from the mainland by a chasm nearly a hundred feet deep, spanned by a very slight swinging or flying bridge, which in a storm is not inviting. On this basaltic islet an interesting climb round the cliffs may be had, and the rock is secure enough on the west and north sides. From Ballintoy, which is close to Carrig-a-Rede, it is a magnificent cliff walk to the Causeway; and from the Causeway to Portrush the rocky coast scenery is full of interest. Many places will invite a scramble. Below the road, which is adorned with an electric railway, numerous difficult places occur, and several little valleys permit a descent to the sea and a swim. A few miles west of the Causeway the coast becomes low to Portrush, the golfing centre, with its excellent hotel. At Portrush, or near it, at White Park Bay, the white cretaceous rocks are capped by frowning basalt, and the contrast of colours is most striking. It is not necessary to describe the well-known _Giant's Causeway_. _Pleaskin Head_ is the finest feature in its cliff scenery, but unfit for climbing, owing to the crumbling, weathering nature of its beds of lava and iron ore. More fine sea cliffs are found in the Gobbins, on Island Magee. Antrim, with all its lovely cliff and glen scenery, and all its good hotels, is not a mountaineer's county, like Kerry, Donegal, or Wicklow. It is more highly cultivated and more civilised than a climber with a proper sense of his calling could possibly approve of. It suggests driving, bicycling, picnics, good dinners, and evening dress more than knickers and hard work. We will turn our attention, therefore, to _the_ mountain county of Ireland. * * * * * =Donegal= has some of the highest and finest mountains in Ireland, and the extent of mountainous country is larger than in any other part of Ireland. No maritime mountain and cliff combined can approach Slieve League, in Donegal, and if the coast cliffs of Mayo have a continuous grandeur that excels any similar stretch in Donegal, there are many higher and finer cliffs on the Donegal coast, in endless succession and variety from Inishowen Head, on Lough Swilly, to the south-west coast. The Donegal mountains form four groups--(1) _Inishowen Mountains_; (2) _Donegal Highlands_; (3) _South-West Donegal_; (4) _South Donegal_. _Inishowen Group._--_Slieve Snacht_, the highest point, has no interest, except its view, and the same remark applies to _Rachtin More_, the next highest. Both are composed of barren quartzite. _Bulbin_ has a schistose escarpment looking north-west, of some 300 ft., reaching almost to the summit, and terminating in a short talus and a heather-clad slope. It is a very picturesque little mountain, and possesses some interesting plants. Inishowen is deficient in accommodation. North of Buncrana there are but one or two inns that will tempt a visitor to return. Accommodation can be obtained at Carndonagh and Culdaff, and at Malin Head there is a house that receives visitors by arrangement. Malin Head is the proper place from whence to explore the cliffs of Inishowen, and Glennagiveny, under Inishowen Head, to its north, contains lodging-houses also. The coast line of Inishowen is in many parts wild and magnificent. Inishowen Head affords excellent climbing. The cliffs are from 300 to 400 ft. in height, and various traverses, ascents, and descents can be made between Stroove and Glennagiveny. The Head is in reach of Moville, where there is a good inn. Further to the north-west the cliffs increase in height. From Glengad Head, a little north-west of Culdaff, to Stookaruddan a series of precipitous headlands (500 to 800 ft.) faces the ocean, looking a little east of north. The walk along this coast from Culdaff to Malin Head, although laborious, on account of the steep-sided inlets, is well worth the trouble. The rugged boldness of Malin Head is most fascinating, and in a storm it is superbly grand. At this point the cliffs have fallen to a low elevation. The finest bit is at a place about half-way between Glengad and Stookaruddan. Having put up for the night at Malin Head, if possible, if not at Malin or Carndonagh (the latter for choice), Dunaff Head, guarding the eastern entrance to Lough Swilly, should be visited. Lough Swilly is the finest oceanic inlet round the whole coast of Ireland. The eastern cape, about 700 ft. high, terminates in a range of bold precipices over 600 ft. high for some distance. It is a most enchanting bit of sea cliff. In variety of shape, sheerness of descent, and picturesque grouping and surroundings it is hard to match. The cliffs can be descended at the nose of Dunaff to an outer rocky continuation, provided there is no storm. In stormy weather this rock, of perhaps a hundred feet, is completely swept by surf. There is a steep gully in another place on the south side, which admits of a descent to the water's edge. For most of their length, however, these cliffs are quite impracticable. For some distance downwards all seems to go well, but the pelting of detritus from above and Atlantic surf from below render the lower parts as smooth as marble and straight as a wall into the water. Here and there the inner bluffs are more practicable, and from a boat, in very calm weather, a study of the cliffs would probably reveal more than the scrutiny from above, which is usually alone possible. South of Dunaff Head, up Lough Swilly, the precipitous coast of the Erris Mountains gives a most enjoyable stretch of rough work. It is often possible to descend to the sea, and having done so a difficult climb is often preferable to a tiresome ascent to the headland surmounting one of the numerous creeks. Across the Lough we find ourselves in the lovely peninsula of Fanet, the coast of which is admirably adapted for rock practice. The highest sea cliff is the Bin, a conspicuous headland 350 ft. high and very precipitous. It can, however, be scaled without much difficulty in one place, a few feet from the summit towards the south. Other parts of it appear practicable, and at low tide the base can be completely compassed--a wild bit of work if there is a sea on. There is an admirable hotel at Portsalon, with a famous golf links, about half-way between this cliff and Knockalla Mountains. The whole coast from Portsalon to the Bin is studded with cliffs, caves, and remarkably beautiful natural arches. The rock of Fanet is almost entirely quartzite, a metamorphosed sandstone, often pure and glittering quartz. It is firm and safe, but the absence of stratification renders it difficult to negotiate. This barren rock (it disintegrates to silex) is very common in Donegal, and is identical with that of the Twelve Benns, in Connemara. Before leaving Lough Swilly the remarkable view from Dunaff Head should be referred to. On a clear day the Paps of Jura, the Mull of Cantire, and even the Isles of Arran and Islay, can be seen in Scotland over the low Malin Head. Westwards, in a noble succession, lies the grand series of the outer Donegal capes. Fanet Head, Melmore Head, Breaghy Head, Horn Head, Tory Island, and the Bloody Foreland are all in view, and south-westwards the 'Donegal Highlands' look so imposing that an immediate expedition to them will probably be decided upon. Across the peninsula which lies between Mulroy Water and Lough Swilly there is a most comfortable inn at the Rosapenna Golf Links. It is an extremely pretty wooden structure, brought by the philanthropic Lord Leitrim, whose loss the district will never cease to deplore, from Norway, and the complete success of it makes one wonder that this sort of structure is not more often adopted. From Rosapenna expeditions can be made to cliffs and coast in all directions. _Horn Head_ is a grand range of sea cliffs, ten or twelve miles in extent, which are the largest breeding-place in Ireland for sea fowl. There are a few places where a descent is possible, and a careful exploration (with the proprietor's permission) will be certain to yield excellent climbing. The rock is as firm as iron in most places. Most of the climbing the writer has done on these cliffs has been from a boat upwards in search of sea fowls' eggs. One especially remembered one, after green cormorants' nests, at the entrance to that most noble cave the Gap of Doonmore, was of great difficulty. The absolutely reliable rock had very slight 1-1½-in. ledges, and the latter part of the climb was slightly overhanging. The nests were reached, however. All round this Head excellent rock-climbing, coupled with magnificent scenery, is available. At the base of the cliffs, not far from the proprietor's dwelling-place, there is a little bay with a cave above the reach of the tide. Here a man once saved his life by climbing. My friend, Mr. Charles Stewart, the proprietor of the Horn Head estates, writes:-- 'I think it was the year 1876 that my man John Stewart was over three weeks in the cave watching my salmon, without the boat being able to go to him. The cliffs above were 600 ft. high. He could easily climb up about 100 ft., most of it cliff-climbing with a little grass. After that there is a very difficult piece of cliff, almost perpendicular, of about 40 ft. It is easy enough to get down to this point from the top. A man went down and lowered a rope to him, but he could not come up straight, as the cliff overhung too much. He tied the rope round him and climbed up in a zigzag way. He was half an hour climbing this short piece, and was very exhausted, with his hands badly cut and bleeding. He had with him his son, a boy of about twelve years old. He had rope about 10 ft. long from his waist to the boy, who slipped twice on the way up, each time very nearly taking his father with him. About five years afterwards the boy was looking for eggs in the cliffs, and fell about 500 ft. to a shingly beach, rolling the first part of the way down a steep grassy bank for about 100 ft., and then a sheer drop of 150 ft. to another grassy bank where a small holly bush grows. When picked up (of course quite dead) he had a holly branch in his hand.' There is a comfortable hotel at Dunfanaghy, immediately inland of Horn Head. From Dunfanaghy Tory Island can be visited in calm weather--an interesting boating trip. It is fifteen or twenty miles to the north of west, and Horn Head has to be passed on the way, giving an opportunity of surveying its cliffs. There is a cliff or buttress (called, I believe, Tormore) which the islanders point out, that is somewhat difficult to climb upon. Once on the summit the successful cragsman can have any wish he may pine for. The highest point of the island is under 300 ft. The inhabitants disregard the payment of all rents, taxes, &c. The turreted and bold contour of Tory renders it a great embellishment to the north-west coast. It is visible from all elevations for a considerable distance. Seen in a sunset its richly reddish-coloured granites light up with a warm and lovely glow. It formerly possessed monastic or other religious institutions, and several ruins of small churches or oratories are still visible. It abounds with legends--a home of superstition and folk-lore. From the neighbourhood of Dunfanaghy the most attractive objects upon the horizon are the mountains of the Donegal Highlands, _Muckish_ and _Errigal_ being especially conspicuous. _Muckish_ ('Pig's Back,' 2,200 ft.) is about 7 miles from Dunfanaghy. It is flat-topped, with short rotten cliffs on the north and west sides. _Errigal_ (an oratory or small church) is more interesting. The summit is pointed, bifid, and hardly large enough for more than two persons. It is composed chiefly of disintegrating quartzite, flanked on the west by igneous rocks. Between Errigal and Muckish (about 6 miles) lie the pointed summits of _Aghla Beg_ (1,860 ft.) and _Aghla More_ (1,916 ft.) The largest of many lakes is Alton Lough, where the writer was once solemnly cautioned against swimming, on account of the 'Phouea,' which lived there and used to mingle with the cattle as a cow and lure one down into the depths. So would he do with mankind. Numerous swims in that lake have weakened this prognostication. Above Alton Lough, on its south-west side, are the cliffs of _Beaghy_ (1,200 ft.), which afford a nice bit of climbing. All these hills can be gone over in a day, though some (especially Errigal) will ask a second visit. About 4 miles from the base of Errigal is the excellent fishing inn at Gweedore. From Dunfanaghy over the summit of Muckish, Aghla, Beaghy, and Errigal down to Gweedore is a bit of mountaineering which can be most thoroughly recommended. Gweedore should be made a head-quarters for a few days; and the comfort obtained at the close of the day will be well earned and appreciated. The Poisoned Glen, six miles from Gweedore, is a stern and barren scene of almost sheer, polished granite cliffs, nearly 1,000 feet above the base of the glen. The south-west corner of the glen is the most precipitous. Several deep, black, narrow gorges cut deeply into the granite. Some, particularly one at the corner of a commanding buttress on the south side, about half-way up the glen, are of considerable difficulty. Wedged boulders occur frequently. The worst bit is the final struggle to the crest of the ridge, which slopes south-westward to the summit of Slieve Snacht. It will be found necessary in one place to break out of this gully on to the face, and it should only be attempted in dry weather. A full day may be spent going up one gully and down another on the south-west side of the glen. Often the descent is far easier, a jump of 12 or 15 ft. down to the shingly soft bed of the gully clearing an obstacle difficult to breast upwards. The most glaciated spots in Donegal are this glen and _Slieve Snacht_, a rounded hump of granite. By proceeding to the head of the Poisoned Glen, past the Gweedore Lakes, and past the prettily wooded Dunlewy Lake which lies abreast of the Glen, up the winding stream in its base, and taking the ravine in its apex, we reach a pass known as Ballaghgeeha Gap ('Windy Pass'). From this point it is a short walk across a valley to a road, visible from the pass, which follows the Gweebarra valley south-west down to Doochary. Taking it in the opposite direction, it leads into Glenbeagh, a gorge about eight miles long, with a lake enclosed by steep cliffs on its west shore. On its right a beautifully wooded mountain slope contains the seat of the proprietor, Glenbeagh Castle. This valley is crossed at its mouth by the main road to Gweedore, some 10 miles away, and the circuit described is one of the most beautiful mountain walks imaginable. In order to vary this, and save the road work home, a scramble along the west shore of the lake may be effected to the granite cliffs opposite Glenbeagh Castle, known as Keamnacally. In several places an ascent can be effected of about 1,000 ft. The crest of the cliff leads up by a gradual slope to the summit of Dooish, 2,147 ft. This point is in a straight line for Gweedore from Glenbeagh, and if the mountaineer wants more work the summit of Errigal lies in the same bee-line. _Lough Salt_ (1,546 ft.), a conspicuous hill, was ascended and described by Otway about seventy years ago, in the language of that period (_Scenes and Sketches in Ireland_). He adds some quaint legends about two of the lakes. Into one of these St. Patrick banished the last Irish snake, a rebellious animal that gave him much anxiety. _Gweedore to Carrick._--The pedestrian had better omit the north coast, and proceed westwards round the coast to _Dungloe_. Aranmore Island, with its handsome red granites, shows some fine cliffs, especially those at its north-west end, between Torneady and the lighthouse. In the bay formed by these cliffs a grand tooth or monolith stands isolated and vertical, about 100 ft. in height. The cliffs are from 400 to nearly 600 ft., and some rise perpendicularly from the water. The best point to visit Aran from is Burton Port, about 3 miles off. Skilled boatmen are required, as the passage is winding, amongst islets, rocks, rapid tide currents, and shallows. Aranmore, like many other Atlantic islands, slopes inland or eastward, and faces the Atlantic with a wall of cliffs. The coast north of it is wild and beautiful, with interesting physical features. Across Umfin Island runs a gruesome cleft, through which a heavy sea tears its way in fury, meeting the sea from the other end in frantic commotion. Further east, on Horn Head, is the famous MacSwyne's Gun, for many years a signal to the whole county that a furious sea was raging at the Horn. It is a 'puffing hole' on a large scale, but the little rift, ever widening, has slowly silenced all, or nearly so. On this Head also is the famous _Marble Arch_, Tempul Breagha, jutting out into the sea. At Dungloe good quarters and excellent fishing, as usual, are obtainable. From Dungloe the road lies through Doochary, Glenties, and Ardara to Carrick. Each of these last villages has a good inn. The best plan is to break the journey at Ardara, and take the magnificent coast walk or climb into Carrick, a good day's work. As far as Maghera the way is plain along a low sandy coast. West of this lies Maum Glen, whose cliffs are precipitous enough, and if the glen be crossed a mile inland it is a steep descent and ascent, though devoid of difficulty. Following the coast, there is a track near the water's margin for some distance. Soon the precipices forming the north face of Slieve-a-Tooey are reached. If the tide is low the base can be followed a long way with one or two ugly corners. The cliffs are up to 1,000 ft. (Slieve-a-Tooey 1,692), but can be ascended in various places, and the land lowers again at Port. All along the scenery is of the most impressive character. Outside Port lies Tormore Island, one of a group of boulders, a rock which, though hardly half a mile round its base, is a tremendous sea fowl breeding-place, second only to Horn Head. At low water Tormore can be reached from the shore, and it is scaled in many places by lads in search of eggs. One native was on the Great Tor when a storm arose, and cut him off from the shore and from all help. After a week he died of starvation and exposure. It is, perhaps, about 500 to 600 ft. high. Pursuing our way along the ever-varying cliffs, most interesting in a storm, the curious promontory called Sturrell is reached in about 4 miles. The knife-edged saddle is very rotten, but leads to a firm block of rock nearly 1,000 ft. above the sea. So defiant is the challenge of this rock that no cragsman can pass it by. The passage is not pleasant, yet even on a second visit the writer was powerless to resist temptation. The tottering wall of rotten rock gives the impression that the whole connection may slither down. Considering what desperate Atlantic storms this crumbling cliff withstands annually, such fears must be exaggerated. Nevertheless it would be improper to recommend this climb. It is dangerous as well as difficult, very exciting, and exceedingly delightful--after it is over. The rock along this northern side of the mountainous promontory of Banagh is chiefly quartzite, but in some places, as Sturrell, a rotten schist. About a mile south of Sturrell another and a grander headland is reached, that of Glen Head. It is 600 ft. of cliff, and deservedly famous. It is easily visited from Carrick Hotel, about 7 miles off. On much of the southern side a descent is practicable. From Glen Head to the road to Carrick is a short walk. At this hotel we are at the inland base of a renowned sea precipice. _Slieve League_ (1,972 ft.), whose southern face descends from the summit almost precipitously to the Atlantic, is perhaps the finest ocean cliff in Europe. The ascent from the hotel, almost at sea level, is easy. It is best to drive down to Teelin Bay, and strike up the mountain westwards along the coast. Carrigan Head is soon reached, and from a point north of it, on the south side of Bunglass, the finest view of Slieve League is obtained. This gradual ascent to about 1,000 ft. is a glorious experience. [Illustration: GLEN HEAD] From the southern Bunglass cliffs the view of the richly-coloured precipices opposite is superb. This colouring is a remarkable feature. The cliff is well-nigh sheer for 1,000 ft., descending straight from a heathery brink. With the exception of the wonderful cliff seen in Yellowstone Park from 'Inspiration Point,' the writer could name no rock-face with such an assemblage of hues. Dolerites, diorites, quartzites, schists, and conglomerates all help to form this remarkable mountain. Below the Atlantic lights up and enhances the whole scene. Though usually breaking into heavy surge it is sometimes as smooth as glass, and then the visitor should secure a boat at Teelin (or Towney Bay), and row beneath, viewing the caves. One of these, with a small entrance and a vast interior, gives forth appalling reverberating echoes to a horn or a gun. At Bunglass there is a track leading down to the sea, and a swim rewards the descent. Crossing the heavy-shingled foreshore to the base of the opposite cliffs, there is a gully which appears practicable from below, and leads to the very crest of the cliffs. The violence of storms and the pitiless pelting of surf below and dislodged fragments from above have cemented the steep floor of this slit into an uncompromising hardness. The writer tried it, passed one or two bad places, and was rejoiced beyond measure to reach the bottom with unbroken bones. From the summit of Bunglass cliffs, at a point a little north of the Eagle's Nest, at an altitude of 1,000 ft., it is practicable to traverse the whole face of Slieve, at about the middle height, 700 to 1,000 ft. above sea level, from end to end, to the bluffs of Leahan. In two or three places the ocean edge can be reached, besides the point already mentioned. In search of botanical specimens we have climbed them in all directions. There is a track (of a sort) to the sea at one place between the Eagle's Nest and the One Man's Pass. While scrambling along the sea face this track was discovered amongst steep heather, bracken, and bear-berry, and a footprint showed it to be a human resort. Finally an old man and a little boy emerged from the ocean brink, loaded with samphire, both inside and outside, and eating it as they rested on their climb. Vastly surprised at the appearance of the only stranger they had ever seen there, they eagerly besought him to remove his boots--a suggestion declined with thanks. Samphire boiled with milk is a cure for a cough, but it was a novelty to see it eaten raw. This track is called Thone-na-culliagh ('Back of the Grouse'). It took the writer three summer days to complete this traverse from end to end of the median height of Slieve League. Several nasty ravines, iron-floored and steep-edged, had to be crossed. At the close of each day an ascent had to be discovered--an anxious undertaking, as the return invariably seemed too dreadful to contemplate. The point relinquished at the close of each day was religiously repaired to on the following. Excessively steep slopes of cemented gravel, grass, or crumbling rock, half held together by heather, are the usual difficulties. But in four or five places odd right-angled walls of horizontal, loosely-balanced blocks of slaty schist jut out right across the face of the cliff, the legs of the angle being sheer to the sea and horizontal above. The blocks lie loose upon each other, and are not always large enough to give one a sense of anything except the rickets. Usually it was possible to climb beside these buttresses, and, balancing by them, get over in gingerly fashion. But one--the largest--had to be climbed on equilibristic principles. Sheep tracks follow the face of the cliff in some places. Where a sheep can go a man can go, though he may not like jumps from bad footing to worse landing, where even sheep occasionally come to grief. Accordingly a track going horizontally here looked encouraging to the writer, till a flock of wild goats, signally scared, put his confidence to flight, for a wild goat will lead a man where he may find it necessary to make a prolonged halt. However the goat track vanished upward, and the seven-mile traverse was successfully completed to the Eagle's Nest. From the summit of Slieve League there is a fine oceanic view of island, headland, bay, and cliff. South-east of the summit, at a slightly lower altitude, is the _One Man's Pass_, about the terrors of which a great deal of rubbish has been written. It is a steep, narrow, short ridge of firm rock, which any mountaineer would walk up or down with his hands in his pockets. In a storm he would, however, adopt a worm-like attitude. The sides are very steep, but practicable both seaward and inland. It commands a superb view. Among the legends connected with Slieve League one about a Spaniard, a priest, and a pony is the most captivating (see _The Donegal Highlands_). [Illustration: ONE MAN'S PASS] Slieve League is capped by the remnants of outlying beds of lower carboniferous age, conglomerates, with fossil plant remains. Botanically also this mountain is most interesting, rivalling Ben Bulben for first place as a habitat for mountain plants in Ireland. There is an interesting feature visible from the summit--a group of spire-like pinnacles, close below the crest of the ridge. These are known as the 'chimneys,' and form an attractive assemblage. They are of the same nature as the flying buttresses already spoken of. [Illustration: THE CHIMNEYS (SLIEVE LEAGUE)] Slieve League takes its name from 'liag' (flag). There is a flag formation near the summit. Bunglass is 'Green River Mouth,' but a modern guide-book translates Bunglass 'Beautiful View,' a ludicrous error explained by the fact that the point which gives so noble a prospect of Bunglass is known as Awark More ('Great View'). _Croagh Gorm_ and _Blue Stack Mountains_ lie north and west of Barnesmore Gap and above Lough Eske, reaching nearly to Glenties, Lough Eske being about 30 miles east of Slieve League. The coast eastwards from Slieve League becomes suddenly low, and the formation changes to carboniferous limestone, which occupies a broad belt round Donegal Bay. The Blue Stack group is about 7 miles across. _Blue Stack_ (2,219 ft.) lies above Lough Eske and is granite, although the Lough itself lies in the limestone. About Lough Belshade, which lies north of Lough Eske, about half-way up the east side of Blue Stack, the granite is precipitous, and one bold bluff west of this lake (Belshade), with a sort of little cave in its face, may be taken in the ascent of the mountain. Most of the granite portions of the range are rounded, flowing, gently contoured, barren slopes of bare rock, sometimes at low elevations becoming steep and difficult. The ascent of Blue Stack from Lough Eske should on no account be missed. The lake is about 10 miles round, and most beautifully situated at the southern base of a bold mass of rugged, desolate granitic bosses and cliffs, cleft by a few fairly steep ravines. In direct contrast to this sombre scene is the west shore of the lake, which is girt with timber, chiefly natural. Ardnamona is the nearest portion of this sylvan scene to the mountain base, and the whole basin is admirably sheltered by the surrounding mountains from the violent storms which of late years have been more destructive than ever. From the road above Ardnamona, looking down over it upon Lough Eske and its solemn background, the view is perfect. It is a sort of compact Killarney, which the eye and mind will long feast upon. North-west of Blue Stack, a couple of miles from it, lies _Lavagh More_ (2,211 ft.), a fine upstanding lump of turf-covered schists. Schists and sandstones constitute the greater part of these hills. From Lavagh More, descending southwards, by a series of lakes, the head of the Shrule River is reached, in a valley with a precipitous northern side, which gives difficult bits of crag work. In this valley at the northern end lies a waterfall known as the Grey Mare's Tail. The Blue Stack Mountains are best explored from Donegal on the south or Glenties on the west, in both of which places there are comfortable inns. It is best to drive to the head of Lough Eske, and it is a fine walk from that, including most of the tops, down to Martin's Bridge, 3 miles from Glenties, over Blue Stack, Lavagh More, and Silver Hill. In the mountainous district around Glenties other excursions are available. A walk to be recommended is from Barnesmore Gap (drive of 7 miles from Donegal) across the Croagh Gorm and Blue Stack summits to Glenties. Barnesmore Gap should by all means be visited. The mountains on either side rise 1,500 to 1,700 ft., not quite precipitously, but with bluffs, heavy boulders, and steep rocky faces. Cæsar Otway gives a highly-coloured description of this impressive scene. Another way to explore the group is to follow up the course of the Reelan water through a peculiarly secluded and remote valley. From Glenties to Ardara is about 4 miles, and the latter village is a capital halting place. Fishing and fowling can be had. The road from Ardara to Carrick, about 10 miles, passes up the wild, grand gorge of Glen Gesh by a zigzag road, reminding one of some of the Swiss ascents. For the sake of the varied scenery obtained by these doublings it is almost preferable to stick to the road till near the summit. On the south side of this glen it is bounded by a range known as _Altnadewon_ or _Croaghnagcaragh_ (_Reek_, 'hill of the thicket'). A steep rock face extends from the main road at the 'nock of the Ballagh,' or Pass, which forms a wide amphitheatre on the north face of the highest point of this range (1,652 ft.) For some distance it is by no means easy to scale this declivity. Towards the southern verge of the county the coast is low and flat, but the bold precipitous face of Ben Bulben looks highly attractive. Before leaving Donegal it will be well to mention one useful hint. The Ordnance maps of this county show 100-ft. contours, which are of the utmost advantage upon any excursion, as the height of any point attained by the pedestrian may be fixed within a hundred feet. Very few other parts of Ireland are thus favoured. * * * * * =The Ben Bulben Range= lies in the northern part of Sligo and Leitrim; a most conspicuous object in the landscape viewed from Slieve League across Donegal Bay. The shapely escarpment of the nearest point looks, indeed, as if it belonged to Donegal, which is 7 miles away. This portion consists of _Cloughcorragh_ (2,007 ft.) and _Ben Whiskin_ (1,666 ft.) These mountains are almost entirely carboniferous limestone. Much of the group is an elevated plateau, girt round on all sides, or nearly so, by limestone precipices, usually some hundreds of feet high, rising from a long steep slope of débris. The height of the cliff edges is about 1,600 ft., of which the talus occupies about two-thirds. The cliffs are fine, but consist largely of insecure blocks. Occasionally a fissure occurs, permitting ascent or descent, and some very steep ones are used on the south side of the range by turf-cutters. In consequence of this formation the pedestrian may find himself following a long series of cliff edges, without being able to discover a way of descent. To examine the cliffs the proper course is to follow the sheep walk, which usually occurs at the base of the precipices above the talus. The walk across the range, from Bundoran to Sligo, is full of interest to a mountaineer, and the descent into the valley north of Sligo from _King's Mountain_ is one that will never be effaced from his memory. It is not easy to find the passages leading down. The valley is a vast amphitheatre almost enclosed by cliffs, sheer and, including talus, about 1,000 ft. high. It is always a pleasant experience to follow the crest of a line of limestone cliffs. Similar cliffs on a smaller scale are those of Moher and Aran, in the county Clare. It is probably owing to the fissures and laminations of the limestone, which afford a perfect system of internal drainage, that such cliffs are not only dry and clean, but also free from the gullies and valleys which, causing frequent ups and downs, sometimes render cliff walks extremely fatiguing--near Waterford, for example. Again, limestone grows no heather and forms little peat, so that the usual footing is clean grass sod--very pleasant after hummocky tussocks--and yielding 'quaas.' For these mountains Kinlough is perhaps the most convenient centre. Manor Hamilton and Dromahaire may also be utilised, but Bundoran and Sligo, though the latter commands the beautiful Lough Gill, are too distant from the hills. It may be mentioned here that there are various attractions in Northern Ireland outside the scope of this work. Fishing is always in reach, and of late years golf has thriven apace. No finer links exist than those of Portsalon, Rosapenna, Portrush, and Newcastle, and there are many others of growing excellence. Ben Bulben is famous for its mountain flora, a valuable report on which, by Messrs. Barrington and Cowell, has been published by the Royal Irish Academy. * * * * * =Mayo.= Here are the highest mountains in the west of Ireland, Mweelrea (2,688 ft.) and Nephin (2,646 ft.) [Illustration: MAYO AND CONNEMARA] _Nephin_ is a round, isolated lump of quartzite, becoming schistose, rapidly disintegrating on a northern spur, where the only declivities occur. For the mountaineer it is both distant and unattractive, but on clear days--which are rare--there is an extensive view. About 10 miles west of Nephin the axis of the Corslieve range is struck near the middle of its almost north and south direction. This chain of hills includes Laghdantybaun (2,369 ft.), at the northern end, Corslieve (1,785 ft.), Nephinbeg (2,065 ft.), and several others over 2,000 ft. The chain is about 15 miles in length, terminating near Newport, where fairly comfortable accommodation can be had. The northern hills are slate or sandstone, the southern quartzite. It is an interesting range, and the scenery is wild and rugged, but there is little true climbing. The best way to approach them is to drive from Leenane Inn to the Deel River, due north, and then strike west over a wet bog, full of dunlins, plover, and curlew. _Achill Island_ is about 15 miles west of Newport. The mountainous peninsula of Curraun Achill intervenes, and is about 7 miles across, rising to a tableland of 1,300 to 1,500 ft. in height, composed chiefly of horizontally-stratified sandstones and conglomerates, not very safe, but pleasant enough to follow along by the terraces on its north-eastern edge. Juniper is remarkably abundant here, and, at lower levels, Mediterranean heath. On Achill Island there is a comfortable hotel at the 'missionary settlement,' which is about 10 miles from the ferry. The settlement is at the base of Slieve More (2,204 ft.), the highest point of Achill. This mountain is well worthy of a visit, but far finer are the noble cliffs at Croghaun, about 5 miles west of Slieve More and 2,192 ft. above sea level. [Illustration: ACHILL HEAD] Achill is mainly quartzite, which rock invariably looks and is barren and forbidding. There are several points along these cliffs where a descent to the sea is practicable, and plenty of climbing is obtainable along the face of Croghaun, which may be traversed in all directions, the cliffs having the appearance and repute of being more inaccessible than they really are. The rock (quartzite) is broken into screes and heavy shingle in many places. _Croaghpatrick_ (2,510 ft.), famous for its unrivalled view, and formerly called 'The Reek,' has a northern face of precipitous declivities where the quartzite formation (as on Nephin) gives place to schists and shales. The view to the north of Clew Bay, with its hundreds of islets and Achill beyond, is unsurpassably lovely. The climbing is more of a 'slither' amongst rotten footing or shingle on the northern side. The summit is crowned with numerous cairns, being a famous 'pattern.' The beautiful St. Dabeoc's or Connemara heath abounds. Westport, at its foot, has an excellent hotel, and it is better to return here from Achill, or vice versa. _Mweelrea._--Unlike the quartzite mountains, which are usually conical or dome-shaped, Mweelrea is of a totally different structure. Composed of Silurian slates chiefly, it forms an extensive tableland at the north of Killary Fiord, in the south-west corner of Mayo. It is intersected by three principal valleys, radiating at about equal angles from Doo Lough. One--that of Delphi and Bundorragha--runs southward to the Killary. Another--that of the Glenummera river and Owenduff river--has an easterly trend to the Eriff. The third valley is that of Doo Lough, Lough Cullin, and Lough Connel, which runs north-west to the sea. The names of many of these points, such as Delphi Mountain, the highest above Doo Lough, and Loughty Mountain, its elevated eastern spur, ending in Glen Laur--are not given on the Ordnance map, and were obtained from the natives. Error easily arises in nomenclature. A hill or ridge may have a name known to a few, or belonging to one slope, or to a people living on one side. Again, it may lie along the boundary of two town lands, and each may give its name to one side of it. Moreover the pronunciation is a study in itself. Near Newport there is a district called on the map Burrishoole, and a bay named Bellacragher. These are pronounced 'Brizzool' and 'Ballycroy.' The Mweelrea group consists of a series of plateaux, bounded by long ranges of precipices, ridges, and gullies, often ending in sheer ravines. Mweelrea itself fronts the mouth of Killary Fiord, curving in a grand tabular ridge, 2,600 ft. high, above two small lakes at 1,200 ft. The pass of Delphi and Doo Lough are the most imposing scenes in the west of Ireland for wildness and sombre grandeur. The climbing is of varying difficulty. Between their bases and the screes below tempting ledges wind upwards, but here the strata are almost vertical, rendering them extremely treacherous. A nasty fall impressed this peculiarity on the writer's memory. In other places the rock is sandstone, mixed with decomposing conglomerates--a formation worse to scale than any except the miocene trap rocks of the Antrim coast. There is one interesting and difficult climb. A lake--Glencullin ('Glen of Hollies') Lake--lies immediately north of Doo Lough. A stream runs into the south-west corner of this lake out of Glencullin, starting from a series of black, sunless precipices, seamed with gorges and well-nigh 2,000 ft. high. These can be climbed by two gorges at least from base to summit. The name of these cliffs is Asko Keeran ('Ridge of Mountain Ash'), and when the crest is gained a fine walk is the reward, over Ben Bury (2,610 ft.) to the highest point, Mweelrea (2,688 ft.), along a curved ridge one to two miles long. One portion of the Mweelrea system--that which lies immediately east of Fin Lough or Delphi--is known as Ben Gorm, or Kead-na-binnian. The cliffs upon this mountain are formed chiefly of gneiss, which breaks up into blocks, owing to numerous transverse fissures across the lamination. These blocks lie on one another, often on a steep slope, owing to the roughness of their surfaces, which prevents their sliding. They are then more dangerous even than slaty rocks, since this very roughness beguiles a climber into feeling that the footing is safe at a steeper angle than on the smoother surfaces, while the rocks are merely in unstable equilibrium. Maamtrasna, Slieve Partry, the Formnamore Mountains, or Letterbrickaun ('Wet Hill of Badgers'), abut upon the head of Killary Fiord. The highest points, or rather flats, are Devils Mother (2,131 ft.), Maamtrasna (Formnamore) (2,239 and 2,209 ft.) They are chiefly composed of sandstone and sandstone conglomerate, and form a series of high barren tablelands, dotted with pools, and of no interest whatever. The above group, as well as Mweelrea, is within easy reach of the excellent Leenane Inn at Killary. _Cliffs._--Of the numerous magnificent cliffs on the western seaboard of Ireland none, in the writer's opinion, excel those of North Mayo. Certain aspects of Slieve League are grander, the cliffs of Moher are more splendidly symmetrical, Horn Head, Dunaff Head, Achill, all have their glories, but the Mayo cliffs are unmatched for extent and variety. From Ballina by Ballycastle to Belmullet, round the coast, is the finest sea-cliff walk the writer has ever experienced. For three days there was no cessation of variety in shape, in sculpture, in colouring of the precipices, always lofty and always plunging into a surf-like snow beneath, fringing the blue ocean outside. Occasionally, but rarely, ravines occur, leading to some tiny rock-bound bay. The coast here for many miles is higher than the land inside, and the streams flow away from the sea to the south, and then west to the Atlantic. Perhaps the most hopeless area of undrainable bog in Ireland lies in Western and North-Western Mayo. Although it was impossible to omit mention of these cliffs, they are not for the climber. They are too sheer, and, what is worse, there is no accommodation. From Ballycastle west to Belderg is within reach. But it is west of Belderg that the cliffs are grandest, as at Glinsk, Doonmara, and Benwee Head. Without the happy fortune which enabled the writer to use a shooting lodge, located west of Belderg, the distances would have been impossible without camping out. From Belderg to Belmullet the rock is chiefly a hard and reliable quartzite, often seamed with dykes of basalt. Numerous needle-shaped islets, stacks, and stookawns occur. The whole coast abounds with sea fowl, and is singularly free from human influence, since the absence of bays, strands, or harbours renders long stretches of it uninhabitable even for fishermen. Otway's _Sketches in Erris and Tyrawley_ (1841) should be read. * * * * * =Galway Mountains.=--The Galway Mountains, besides the Maamtrasna range, spoken of above, are _Maamturk range_, _Benchoona_, _Bennabeola_ or _Twelve Bens_ (or 'Pins'). _Maamturk range_, including the hills which form such a conspicuous feature in Joyce's Country, extend, roughly speaking, from the Killary Hotel south-east to Lough Shindilia, at the Half-way House on the coach road from Clifden to Galway. It forms a zigzag series of beehive-shaped domes, connected by ridges, which are frequently 500 ft. to 1,000 ft. below the neighbouring summits. Usually these connecting ridges are set at angles with the tops quite at variance with the main axis of the chain, and are invisible from the summits, so that compass bearings are most misleading. These truncated mounds are composed mainly of gneiss, sometimes of quartzite, and in the northern portion the chain becomes more fertile and of a clayey, schistose nature. They are very similar to the Twelve Bens, save that the latter have their conical tops still adhering, apparently showing that this elongated line was more vulnerable than the self-protecting 'Pins' cluster. This chain is singularly barren, but so bold and conspicuous a feature in the landscape claims exploration. The writer once traversed the whole length of summits from the Half-way House to Leenane in a walk, or climb, for about 14 hours. The going is often excessively rugged and wearisome, owing to the loose detritus of heavy, angular quartzose blocks. An occasional oasis, as at Maumeen, charms the eye with its verdure and some botanical treasures. Near this an hotel once existed, but at present there is nothing nearer than Glendalough or Leenane, at the extreme ends of the range. Many a stiff bit of climbing, short and sharp, was met with on this most severe day's work, in making growingly reckless short cuts from summit to summit. From Leckavrea to the Killary there are about fifteen distinct summits, averaging 2,000 ft. in height. _Benchoona_ (1,975 ft.), a northern outlier of the Twelve Bens, lies at the mouth of the Killary, opposite Mweelrea. Killary Harbour or Fiord runs inland eastwards for some 15 miles. Benchoona is gneissose, with two summits, close on 2,000 ft., and a lake lies between them. Several Alpine plants occur among the north-east cliffs. The rock here is uncommonly dangerous to climb, being loosely constructed and apt to disintegrate in unexpectedly massive segments. On such an occasion, although against the dogma of climbing, a swift and sudden jump or spring is sometimes the only escape. The block--perhaps a ton or two in weight--which is quietly sliding, or more probably overturning, with its captive, yields momentum enough for a final kick to clear out altogether to any preferable station. These rocks are unfit to climb, and will only be meddled with for some special purpose. _Twelve Bens_ (2,391 ft.), within easy access of first-class hotels in Connemara, are huddled together in beautiful confusion, and offer problems of special interest in their puzzling geography and watershed system. Bennabeola is entered by no roads of any great penetration, but there are several valleys forming arteries with its very heart. Of these Glen Inagh from the east, Glen Coaghan from the south, and Owenglin from the west are the most important. The best method is to select a glen--Glen Coaghan for choice--and work to its head. Two or three summits will then probably lie equidistant. Most of these summits are of quartzite, with short heavy screes, white and extremely barren. The most interesting climb is upon the north of Muckanaght (2,150 ft.), which is connected with Benfree by a ridge at about 1,000 ft. The cliffs lie about 1,300 to 1,800 ft., and from near their upper edge to the summit (2,150 ft.) is a steep and perilous grassy slope. Muckanaght is about 2½ miles from the lovely Kylemore Lake. Two 'Pins,' Benbaunbeg and Benfree, intervene. The peak itself is connected by ridges with Bencullagh and Benbaun South. From Muckanaght the heart of Bennabeola is laid bare, and, given a clear day, no better point of vantage could be desired. The Twelve Bens are in the heart of some of the loveliest scenery in the world, full of varied and interesting scrambles, and botanically they are pre-eminently the richest in mountain plants in Connaught, Croaghpatrick coming next. * * * * * =Clare.=--_The Cliffs of Moher_ may be visited from excellent quarters at Lisdoonvarna (the 'Fort in the Gap'), in the north-west of Clare, a district known as the Burren. This district is formed of the carboniferous limestone which occupies most of Central Ireland. This formation, replete with carboniferous fossils, is remarkably monotonous and symmetrical. When it occurs in a cliff formation, as at Moher, or the south-western sides of the Aran Islands, it forms a sheer wall, absolutely vertical, to the sea, or else it is arranged in a series of terraces, like gigantic steps. Very rarely a chasm occurs, connecting two terraces. More often it is possible, by means of slight protruding ledges, to ascend an almost vertical face, since the rock is invariably either absolutely safe or easy to test. Sometimes, as at the southern end of the Moher cliffs, isolated pillars of rock occur, which are most pleasing to climb and pleasant to remain perched upon when climbed. These rocky surfaces of Aran and Burren are very tiresome and difficult to traverse, as the fissures (2-12 in. in width) between the blocks are often adjacent. The rock is usually cut into slabs, generally rectangular in shape. The loose blocks are piled by the inhabitants into tottering walls, which are difficult either to cross or upset with safety. The easiest way is to ascend gently and then jump with a kick behind. On Aran especially the going is most laborious. [Illustration: CLIFFS OF MOHER] As an instance of the sheerness of these cliffs on Aran boys may be seen fishing with a rodless line from their edge, 200 ft. above the water. Inland these cliffs run gradually in a series of irregular declivities, a gently sloping flagged platform to low levels. Much is done here by the natives in the way of egg-collecting, with the assistance of ropes, the eggs being chiefly those of guillemots, gulls, and razor-bills, and required for food. The cliff scenery of Moher is superb and unequalled. It has not the variety of stack, needle, ravine, that other formations have, but its very regularity is most harmoniously imposing. On the other hand, the brilliant and varying colouring of North Mayo or Slieve League, in Donegal, is entirely absent. The Aran Islands are visited from Galway by steamer. There is an hotel on the north island. They are full of ethnological and archæological interest. * * * * * =Co. Down.= _Mourne Mountains._--This chain of granite hills covers an elliptic space of about 15 miles by 6, the longer axis stretching from Newcastle to Rosstrevor, where there are excellent hotels. From either point to the other is a day's walk that will well repay the labour, and can be made to include all the principal summits. The descent to Newcastle, through Donard Lodge woods, by the waterfall, is very pretty, and by varying the night's accommodation a still more beautiful route lies through Tollymore Park to Bryansford, where good quarters are obtainable. [Illustration: MOURNE MOUNTAINS] The highest points lie at the Newcastle or north-east extremity of the group. The southern portions are less interesting, and the western flanks are very dreary. These hills, being of granite, have few precipices, many rounded summits, sloping sides, and heavy screes, of the usual uncomfortable angular nature. The 'Eagle's Cliff,' a mile to the north of Slieve Donard, affords some climbing, and a little rock exercise can be had at 'the Castles,' lying on a spur of Slieve Commedagh, to the west of Slieve Donard, below it and half a mile away. Slieve Bingian, in the south-east of the range, has a little easy climbing. There is also a considerable cliff on a shoulder north-west of Slieve Meel-more. It is known as Spellick, and is easily visited from Bryansford. It is worth examination, but the writer has not climbed it. The view from Slieve Donard is, of course, famous. The ascent from Bryansford, through Tullymore Park, taking Slieve Commedagh and the Castles _en route_, is perhaps the finest walk, so far as scenery is concerned, to be had in this picturesque cluster of mountains. * * * * * =Co. Dublin.=--_Lambay_ is an island abounding in sea fowl and wild flowers, about 2½ miles from the nearest point of land, and about 10 miles north-east of Dublin. It is best approached by boat from Donabate, or less conveniently from Howth, Malahide, Rush, or Skerries. The cliffs reach about 250 ft., and are practically sheer in many places, as on the north-east side at Freshwater Bay, or a little west of it, and on the south-east cliffs below Raven's Well. Several most interesting climbs are to be obtained on it. The best are on those cliffs west of Freshwater Bay. About 30 ft. above the water's edge at high-water mark there is a narrow and deep horizontal fissure, which in May is packed with breeding sea fowl. The ornithological visitor will at once feel it his duty to reach that fissure. The writer's first visit to Lambay was made in the company of one Dykes, known to be the best clifter on Howth. He pronounced this fissure inaccessible. There is a bend in the cliffs leading to the right-hand extremity of the fissure. Here lay the only chance, and the first two grips out of the boat are easy enough, raising one 6 or 8 ft. (or perhaps 15 if the tide is out) above the water. After that there are two enormous stretches, with practically no foothold. If these two points are passed, the fissure is in reach, and an ugly wriggle will land the unwelcome intruder on his anterior surface upon the narrow ledge forming its base. Dykes meantime was highly encouraging, calling out, 'Madness,' 'Break your neck,' 'You can never get down.' The climber had, however, an original plan of descent, and having, with considerable difficulty, divested himself of his garments, he dropped them first into the boat and then himself into the water. On revisiting these cliffs ten years later, and pointing out this climb to a very good rock-man, he failed to see how the climb was done, and so it had to be done again. This time, however, the tide was out, and on stripping to take the plunge it became at once apparent that a rock exactly in the line of descent was too near the surface. To climb down had always appeared dangerous, on account of the lack of foothold and the very awkward nature of the backward movement out of the fissure. So an attempt was made on the wall above. It is marvellous how a naked man can adhere to a cliff. For a full hour an unhappy preadamite man writhed and glued himself against the face of that cliff, descending and reascending by new lines, but always checked by a straight wall about 150 ft. up. Anything appeared better than that hateful descent. Some friends ran to a coastguard station a mile or more away for a rope. However before they reappeared the descent was faced and safely accomplished. This sketch will serve to show that high mountains are by no means necessary for the practice of rock-climbing, the very best of which is constantly attainable along the coast. Owing to the working of the ocean waves unsafe pieces are almost certainly removed, and the cliff, at its lower parts at any rate, is invariably firm and safe. It is fine sport to choose a steep rocky coast at, say, half-tide in spring, and travel between high and low water marks as far as may be during the six hours. It should be a point of honour not to ascend, but if forced to take to the water excellent practice and much amusement is obtainable in this way, and the slippery nature of the rock teaches sureness of foot. Nailed boots are, of course, indispensable. The geological formation of Lambay is principally felstone porphyry. Some stratified Silurian shales and limestone occur, and there is a small sheet of old red sandstone, with conglomerates. The rock is in general hard and reliable. _Howth_ is a promontory with a village about 9 miles from Dublin, for the people of which it is a favourite resort. From Balscaddan Bay, on the north, to an almost opposite point, Drumleck Point, on the south, the east coast is composed of cliffs (200-300 ft.), sometimes abrupt, sometimes ending above in grass slopes, very slippery in hot weather, which have caused many accidents. A very interesting scramble, with many nasty traverses over these steep grass slopes, may be had round Howth Head. Keeping to the upper edge of the rocks, it is necessary to ascend once at Kilrock, but after that the whole headland may be climbed at about the medium height of the cliffs. On the way a 'needle' or 'stack' will here and there attract attention, and perhaps seem worth assaulting. About Piper's Gut a small gully is difficult to pass. North of that a saddle rock leads to a pinnacle, but it is of rotten rock. The cliffs of this part of Howth are exceedingly picturesque, but in some places they are extremely unsafe. From Howth, on a very clear day, the Welsh hills, apparently those about Penmaenmawr, are visible. _Ireland's Eye._ A small rocky island, 340 ft. high, about a mile north of Howth. At its north-east corner there is a bold columnar rock with a tabular summit, partly severed from the island. On its outer face it is very sheer, and to gain the summit is a very short but interesting and somewhat difficult climb. The return is not so bad, as a sidelong spring saves a portion of the worst bit. * * * * * =Wicklow.=--Wicklow forms the third county in Ireland in which the mountains rise to a height of over 3,000 ft., Kerry and Tipperary being the other two. The higher mountains lie in the broad band of granite formation which extends in a nearly southerly direction from near Dublin through Wicklow and Carlow counties. Being granite they are as a rule round masses of wide extent, often covered with peat bogs; so that although Wicklow contains the most continuous extent of elevated (over 1,000 ft.) moorland in Ireland, there are few cliffs of any consequence, and no peaks or summits presenting upon any side material of interest to the rock-climber. Nevertheless there are fine stretches of mountain, affording excellent training ground. What cliffs there are occupy the most lovely scenery in one of the loveliest Irish counties. _Powerscourt Waterfall._--The rocks to the left of the fall, which is kindly left open to the public by Lord Powerscourt, the popular landlord, are nasty, especially in wet or frosty weather. Although not much over 250 feet in height several lives have been lost in this ascent, chiefly, no doubt, owing to the inexperience of the unfortunate visitors. This dangerous though tempting portion has been for several years railed off, and is not supposed to be trespassed upon. During the severe winter of the present year (February 1895) the waterfall presented an Arctic appearance. An interesting account of an ascent of it, or rather of the above-mentioned rocks, was sent to an Irish paper in that month. The climb was effected by a friend of the writer's (a member of the Alpine Club) and another, with ropes and ice axes. The cliff was covered with ice and snow. The same party ascended Djonce (2,384 ft.), which lies above the waterfall, during a blizzard at a temperature of 18°, upon the same day. Unhappily a very few days afterwards a promising young life was lost upon these very rocks. The falls are visited by very large numbers of holiday-makers. The rocks of Powerscourt, which lie against the Wicklow granites, are composed of metamorphic beds of gneiss and schists. Powerscourt is about 7 miles from Bray. _Tonelagee Mountain_ ('Back to the Wind' Mountain) (2,694 ft.), a round mass of moorland, has on the northern shoulder a crater-like valley, containing a tarn, Lough Ouler, and cliffs of schistose, some 400 to 500 ft. high, descending from near the summit to the margin of the lake. An interesting scramble may be made from the Military Road, about a mile above Glenmacanass Waterfall, which lies some 6 miles from Glendalough Hotel; but a short cut to Lough Ouler is easily found by going up the Glendasan valley 3 miles towards Wicklow Gap, and then striking up northwards over the shoulder of Tonelagee. Wicklow county is very poor in highland plants, and these cliffs alone possess species of any interest. Other cliffs in county Wicklow are those of Luggielaw ('Hollow of the Hill'), above Lough Tay; the Eagle's Nest, above Lower Lough Bray; a small series of bluffs above Lough Nahanagan, and the Prisons of Lugnaquilia. In winter the latter, lying high (2,700 to 3,039 ft.), afford excellent glissading and cornice work. But, unless the season is severe there is too much heavy trudging to be done. All the above precipices lie in most attractive scenery, nor must the famous cliff above Glendalough, containing St. Kevin's Bed, be omitted. But none of them affords desirable scope for climbing practice. The granite 'Prisons' of Lugnaquilia are attractive in appearance, but all the cliff faces are ready to drop to pieces. Mullaghclevaun ('Summit with the Cradle' or 'Creel'), 2,783 ft., contains no climbing. Since Wicklow affords the nearest opportunities to Dublin mountaineers, we may mention a few one-day walks from that city which have been accomplished by the writer. Practically the only artery through these mountains is the _Military Road_, constructed after the rebellion of 1798 to connect a series of now disused barracks. This road, from 'Billy's Bridge' at Upper Rathfarnham, about 5 miles from Dublin, is over 35 miles to Aughavanagh. It passes through an almost uninhabited country, and much of it lies from 1,000 to 1,500 feet above sea level, and it is the pedestrian's main anxiety to regain the comparative security of the Military Road before night sets in on the wide stretches of tussocky moorland. To clear the suburbs it is well to take the tram to Terenure (3 miles). Terenure; Ballinascorney Gap; Coronation Plantation (3 to 3¼ hours); Sally Gap; Military Road; Lough Bray (5 hours); back to Terenure (7½ hours: 34 miles). Terenure; Lough Ouler; Tonelagee summit (6 hours); Mullaghclevaun summit (7½ hours); Ballysmutton (9½ hours); home by Ballinascorney Gap (13½ hours: 48 miles). From Bray this walk is about 5 miles shorter. Bray, over Bray Head, Little Sugarloaf, Big Sugarloaf (1,680 ft.), Djonce Mountain (2,384 ft.), and Kippure (2,473 ft.); Lough Bray, by Military Road, to Terenure: about 11 hours. Terenure; Ballinascorney Gap; Seacaun; Kippure; Lough Bray; Terenure (about 8 hours). Terenure; Lough Bray; Kippure (2½ hours); Gravale (2,352 ft.); Duff Hill (2,364 ft.--very heavy going); Mullaghclevaun summit (6 hours); Tonelagee summit (7½ hours); Lough Ouler; Military Road; Terenure (14 hours; about 50 miles). Glendalough; Dublin (7¾ hours); Glendasan; Wicklow Gap; summit of Tonelagee (11 hours); summit of Mullaghclevaun; Clevaun Lake; Ballymullagh old road; across Liffey at Ballysmutton bridge; Ballinascorney Gap; Terenure (20 hours, including rests and delays by bog; 62 miles). Terenure; Lough Bray (3 hours); Laragh (7½ hours); Glenmalure; Drumgoff Hotel (9 hours 5 minutes--1½ hour's rest); Lugnaquilia (3,039 ft., 12¾ hours); Tonelagee summit (16¼ hours); Mullaghclevaun summit (17 hours 40 minutes); Ballysmutton farm (19 hours 40 minutes--35 min. rest); Ballinascorney Gap; Terenure (23 hours 50 minutes; 75 miles). The ascent of Lugnaquilia direct from Glendalough, over Lugduff, round the head of Glenmalure, and up by Kelly's Lough is perhaps the finest walk in Wicklow. It is a fine day's walk along the coast from Bray to Arklow, or Bray to New Rath Bridge, and thence by the Devil's Glen to Glendalough. In a wild, uncultivated county, like Wicklow, experience in the use of map and compass may be gained by setting a course from Woodenbridge to Glendalough, about 12 miles, or from Glendalough to the Scalp or Sugarloaf, on the way to Dublin, some 40 miles. * * * * * =Kerry.=--_Brandon_ (3,127 ft.) is of the same formation as that of the Reeks, i.e. the lower old red sandstone. The Brandon rocks are, in general, hard grits, firm and good to climb. The accommodation on this promontory of Corkaguiny is no doubt improved since the construction of Mr. Balfour's light railway from Tralee to Dingle; but Dingle lies 8 miles to the south of Brandon. I obtained very inferior accommodation at Cloghane, on an inlet at the eastern base of the mountain; and cleaner and better, but not so convenient, from a coastguard at Ballydavid, to the west of Brandon. For the other mountains on the promontory, Castle Gregory is centrally situated, but in all these cases (except Dingle) it is highly advisable to make previous arrangements and supplement the native fare with a hamper. The coast of the Brandon promontory (which was traversed throughout) is often highly precipitous; indeed, from Cloghane on the north to Anniscaul on the south the western extremity is almost entirely so, and many stiff bits of climbing were accomplished, whether in pursuit of scenery, of a direct course, of objects of natural history, or, perhaps, more frequently out of what an Irishman would call 'natural divilment.' A few years ago no language would have sufficed in abuse of the accommodation at Anniscaul, but, as it is now a railway station, no doubt this is all changed. [Illustration: KERRY] _Brandon Peak and Brandon Summit._--The most enjoyable way to make the first acquaintance with these mountains is to ascend Connor Hill, to the north-west of Dingle, and follow the ridge by Beenduff, Ballysitteragh, Geashane, and Brandon Peak to the summit. The peak is about 400 ft. lower than and a little south of Brandon proper. Along this ridge, looking north and north-west, there is a fine rocky face before reaching the peak. After that point a range of cliffs, several hundred feet in altitude, meets the loftier cliffs above Lake Nalacken, looking east. At the head of the Feany valley, under Brandon, these cliffs afford an interesting descent. The range gives plenty of practice in rock work. Alpine plants occur mainly on the north and north-east cliffs, and are more numerous than on the loftier Reeks. _Brandon from Cloghane._--From Cloghane the ascent may be made amongst fine cliffs and rock-climbing, by making south-east for Lough Cruttia, the largest lake under Brandon to its east. It is better to follow the road southwards a mile or two, to save uninteresting moorland. From this lake it is a short distance to the north-west of Lough Nalacken, and by striking in east at once to the cliffs a good climb is obtainable. Lough Cruttia is about 700 ft. above sea level. Between the upper lough and the cliffs the surface is a desolate extent of polished naked grits, strewn with boulders. Crossing this a somewhat dangerous gully leads up to the cliffs at about 1,650 ft. The ascent of this is about 300 ft., and a stiff climb and afterwards some 400 ft. of cliffs may be tackled in various ways. There are numerous ledges, and it is the best botanical ground in the mountains. The cliffs 'go' splendidly. In a lake south of the two mentioned above, locally named Lough Bawn, or the 'White Lake,' lives the enormous 'carrabuncle.' It appears fitfully at night, glittering like silver in the water with gold and silver and precious stones hanging to it galore. It is partly covered with shells, which are lined with gold. Upon one occasion several men went to the lake at night and dived in oilskins to catch this valuable monster. They did not catch him; but pearl mussels, no doubt shed from the carrabuncle, are found in the lake. _Brandon Point and Brandon Head._--From Cloghane it is a fine hard walk right round Brandon Point and Brandon Head. At the cliffs of Slieveglass (1,050 ft.) a bay of extreme grandeur is opened, bound on three sides by lofty precipices and with a depth and sea frontage of about half a mile. There is a shepherd's settlement, Arraghglin, on the coast, which has to be closely approached. A more bleak habitation can hardly be conceived; neither road nor even track leads to it. It is now several hours' work to round the sea face of Brandon Head, at altitudes varying from 500 to 1,200 ft., to Ballydavid. If accommodation has not been arranged for here the walk to Dingle will be found most wearisome, and at all trouble a car should be provided. _Macgillicuddy's Reeks_ contain the highest summits in Ireland. They extend from the Gap of Dunloe, the eastern extremity, to the Beenbane spur near Glencar, about 10 miles west from the Gap. The scenery is magnificent. From Lake Auger, in the Gap, the climber ascends at once by a series of precipitous bluffs to an elevation of about 2,000 ft. Still ascending along a serrated ridge, an elevation of about 3,000 ft. is reached above Lough Cummeenapeasta, about 2½ miles west of the Gap of Dunloe. For several miles this ridge can be traversed at about the above altitude. The ridge frequently becomes a mere knife-edge, and in several places descends abruptly and precipitously to some of the numerous tarns and cooms nestling 1,000 to 1,500 ft. below. A more perfect mountain excursion can hardly be conceived. The ridge carries us to the shoulder of Carran Tuohill, and from its summit a northern branch extends to Beenkeragh (3,314 ft.) and to Skregmore (2,790 ft.) The axis proper continues to Caher (3,200 ft.) and Curraghmore (2,680 ft.) Here we reach a gap connecting Cummeenacappul (Horse's Valley) with the Valleys of Caragh and Cummeenduff, or the Black Valley. West of it is the Beenbane spur, a lower elevation of no interest. The Reeks are chiefly composed of hard green and purple grits, and sandstone of old red sandstone age. The rocks are generally firm and safe to climb amongst. There is a comfortable angler's hotel at Glencar, at the western end of the Reeks. This is the best adapted for the immediate neighbourhood of the higher points, but to reach some of the most interesting climbing it is better to distribute one's attentions equally between Killarney and Glencar. From Killarney (Railway Hotel) two methods are available--one by car to the Gap of Dunloe, or further to the Hag's Glen, up a steep mountain road, and from either of these as starting-point some excellent rock work is available. From the Gap as starting-point a long day can be spent, descending at night to Glencar Hotel. The other method is to boat from Killarney (enjoying exquisite scenery) to Lord Brandon's cottage at the western extremity of the upper lake. Here begins a long, dull ascent, rewarded by the splendid view from the ridge into the heart of the Reeks. Or these routes can be reversed. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF KILLARNEY] Guides swarm here. None of these have the slightest knowledge of climbing, and should one be engaged the first deviation from the easiest ascent, or departure into gully or ravine, will put a conclusion to his services. A wiry, bragging, long-legged shepherd undertook to accompany the writer by any ascent he selected from the Hag's Glen to Carran Tuohill, to be paid five shillings at the summit. At the foot of the first gully, with many heart-felt remonstrances and gesticulations, he disappeared, not even thinking it worth while to make an easier ascent. On this account it is all the more necessary to be unfailingly provided with the Ordnance map and a thoroughly good compass. An aneroid barometer is also of great assistance, especially in mist, for a knowledge of the altitude often enables a lake or a peak to be identified. _Cumloughra_ (3,100 ft.)--Starting from Glencar Hotel, a few tedious miles bring us across a country road to Lake Acoose (507 ft.) Passing round the south edge of the lake, a ridge (about 900 ft.) is crossed, and ere long Lake Eighter, at the entrance to Cumloughra (1,500 ft.), is reached. If we pass along the shores of the lake to the south-western edge, a few hundred feet up an open gully brings us to a series of cliffs south-west from Cumloughra lake. The rock is sound, and a fine, almost vertical ascent of 1,000 ft. may be made, striking the ridge of Caher (3,000 ft.) 200 ft. below the summit. It is a severe climb and very long, entailing many zigzags. There is no main gully to adhere to, and the cliffs are less impracticable than they look. Along the west side of the two lakes the cliffs are easier. _Carran Tuohill_ (3,414 ft.)--Cars from Killarney stop at the Geddagh River. Cross it, sweep to the right and back, and then follow the valley by a fair path between two lakes to the Devil's Ladder and up it to the _col_. The summit is then on the right hand. The writer was once fortunate enough to ascend this summit through a cloud layer of about 1,500 ft. thick, which ceased a short distance below the summit. Above was a clear blue sky, and peering out of the dense white, snowlike bed of mist Caher and Brandon (the latter 30 miles to the north-west, the former not a mile away) alone were visible--a never to be forgotten sight, which seemed shut out entirely from earthly considerations. Descending _into_ the clouds, the ridge leading southwards towards Cummeenoughter, or Devil's Looking Glass (Upper Coom), was taken by mistake, and an exceedingly nasty traverse across huge, dangerously sloping slabs was necessary in order to regain Carran Tuohill and find the Caher ridge. _Beenkeragh_ (3,100 ft.)--Between Beenkeragh and Skregmore (2,600 ft.) there lies an inviting glen, sunk in black precipices. These cliffs are to be avoided. At several points an attempt was made to scale them, but the rock is most rotten. Near Beenkeragh is a ridge running a little west of north for half a mile, and bounding the Devil's Looking Glass and the Hag's Glen on their west. This ridge is reached by an easy gully known as the _Devil's Ladder_, about 300 ft. below Beenkeragh. _Devil's Looking Glass_ (Cummeenoughter). This tarn lies at the head of the Hag's Glen, at an elevation of 2,500 ft. It is three-parts encircled by a fine series of cliffs. At the western corner of this bold girth of precipices the finest view in the Reeks may be obtained, looking over the Looking Glass, and the lakes below in the Hag's Glen, across heights and peaks and valleys to Cummeenapeasta. Excellent climbing is to be had here. The rock is a purple sandstone, and one shoulder of an inaccessible appearance can be climbed throughout, owing to the firmness of grip and the recurrence of suggestive little footholds. _Lake Auger_ (Gap of Dunloe).--These cliffs terminate upwards in the Bull's Mountain at about 1,500 ft. The lake is about 350 ft. above sea level. Almost immediately after leaving the lake we come upon a series of bluffs and terraces occasionally communicating with one another, but more often uniting to form smooth-faced walls. Great care and discrimination have to be exercised in selecting ledges that do not terminate upon such faces, as there is little hand grip, and turning to retrace one's steps is most unpleasantly difficult and dangerous. The climbing here is most excellent and exciting, but the writer often felt sorely in need of a companion and a rope. It is in such places as these, inaccessible to sheep and goats, that hawkweeds occur, and in search of these, places were reached which rendered the summit of Bull's Mountain (when gained) extremely welcome. _The Hag's Glen._--Making the ascent from here to the westward, we reach another valley between Hag's Glen and Old Finglas River. At about 1,800 ft. a very black gully leads up to the main ridge from its northern side. It is occasionally blocked with huge masses of rock, which render détours along the boundary walls necessary, and, as is often the case, it becomes very difficult afterwards to regain the gully. This gully is a very tough climb. The Hag's teeth (there are two) are conical knobs of no difficulty, along a ridge running into the glen. _Lake Googh_ (1,600 ft.)--This lake lies on the south side of the main axis of the Reeks. Above it rises to the northwards a series of coombs, or high-lying valleys, which can be traversed by separate and often interesting scrambles till the main ridge is reached. This is a very interesting ascent. It is often rather a matter of chance whether the gully selected will be available to its end for the next coomb level, and a retracement of steps will frequently have to be effected. Nothing is less pleasing than to have to go back down a gully which it was a small triumph to have ascended in safety. This valley is singularly dark, damp, and grand; and it is more rich in ferns than any other portion of the Reeks. _Cloon Lake and Lough Reagh._--Although these cliffs are not a portion of the Reeks, they are mentioned here as being easily reached from Glencar Hotel. They lie south of Lough Reagh, which is separated only by a marsh from Lough Cloon, and are a most superbly rugged cluster of sugar-loaf peaks huddled together and often separated by sheer precipices and inaccessible ravines. Unfortunately they are of easy access from the southern or Sneem side. Many gullies of sound rock occur. Bad weather on two different visits rendered climbing here an unpleasant experience, but enough was seen to enable the writer to pronounce the district well worthy of a visit. _Mount Aitchin_ (Whin Mount) is the chief summit. Golden eagles bred recently amongst these cliffs. Coming down once from these mountains towards Lough Reagh, facing northwards, in a blinding mist, an uncommon sort of descent was obtained. Not knowing the nature of the ground, or indeed our whereabouts, we struck blindly over a declivity, turning at length to a sheer cliff whose termination was invisible. This cliff or series of cliffs is broken into ledges, all coated with a long growth of woodrush. Glissading and holding on brought us in unexpected safety to the valley below. Return would have been impossible by the way of our descent. Other mountains in the neighbourhood of Killarney are _Mangerton_ (2,756 ft.); _Toomies_ (2,415 ft.); _Purple Mountain_ (2,739 ft.); _Turc Mountain_ (1,764 ft.), and the _Paps_ (2,268 ft.) Of these none afford any real climbing. On Mangerton, however, the Horse's Glen is surrounded by rocky declivities, and the Devil's Punch Bowl has a slight cliff above it. From Killarney by rail to Headfort, and then back over the Paps and Mangerton, and through the Horse's Glen, is a fine walk. Another fine walk is from the lake, whither one proceeds from Killarney by boat, up Toomies Mountain, over Purple Mountain, and Turc Mountain, and Mangerton can be included on the way back. The Eagle's Cliff, above the lake, looks climbable and is reported to have been done. The writer, hurrying to the Reeks, always grudged time for the attempt. _Blasquets Islands_ lie off the extreme west of Kerry. They consist generally of grits and slates. Mr. Barrington (_Report on the Flora, &c._) describes the Great Blasquet as a ridge about 700 ft. high for most of its length, but for about a mile it exceeds 900 ft. The ridge is almost perpendicular in many places. 'The cliffs and precipices are very grand, notably the north-western face of the Great Blasquet and the north-eastern portion of Inishnabro, which latter resembles, when viewed from the sea, a cathedral 500 ft. high, the towers, spires, and even doors and windows being represented. Inishtooskert has an isolated pinnacle of rock, with a great chasm in the cliff near it, scarcely less striking. The Tearaght is like a black tooth projecting from the ocean, its sides being rocky, desolate, and very barren.' The present writer was prevented from reaching these islands by stormy weather. * * * * * =Co. Cork.=--_Sugarloaf Mountain_ (2,440 ft.)--An isolated, bare, conical peak, at the head of the Black Valley (Cummeenduff), the southern boundary of the Reeks. Sunshine after rain makes it glitter like a snowy peak. The rock is steep and glaciated. On the steepest face an interesting ascent may be made--easy, but requiring extreme care. South of the Kenmare River the hills are of less interest, though the beautiful Glengariff lies amongst them. _Hungry Hill_ (2,251 ft.) presents one precipitous face to the west, where a piece of interesting gully work occurs. The writer has reason to remember it, owing to the imprisonment of a bull-terrier, the property of a companion, in the middle of the climb. After completing the ascent the deafening howls of the prisoner made it necessary to work round to the base of the gully and help the beloved creature down. An almost identical incident occurred in a worse situation in the Poisoned Glen of Donegal. A bit of rope should be attached to the neck of any dog that follows a rock-climber. _Gougaun Barra_ ('St. Fin Bar's Rock-Cleft') is a gorge on the road west from Macroom to Bantry. The cliffs around rise from a desolate valley to meet the slopes of the mountains, 1,700-1,800 ft. high. On the road Keimaneigh ('the Pass of the Deer') is traversed, a gorge through the Sheha hills some 2 miles in length. It is a scene of wild beauty, and was the head-quarters of the band under 'Captain' Rock. This defile can be visited from Inchigeelagh, a few miles eastwards, where there is good fishing and accommodation. On Gougaun Barra, Otway (_Scenes and Sketches in Ireland_) and Smith (_History of Cork)_ have a good deal to say. * * * * * =Tipperary.=--_The Galtee Mountains_ extend about 15 miles from Caher at the eastern to Massy Lodge at the western extremity. The ridge slopes gently to the south, but abruptly to the vale of Aherlow on the north. The formation is Silurian, with overlying beds of old red sandstone conglomerate forming the summit of Galtymore (3,018 ft.) The Silurian beds form considerable precipices upon the north, almost enclosing numerous tarns, from which interesting ascents may be made. The best head-quarters for the mountains is Tipperary, about 6 miles north of the base of the range below its highest point. No doubt, however, accommodation could be arranged for at some of the farmhouses in the vale of Aherlow. The entire range from Caher to Mitchelstown forms a splendid walk. Lough Curra and Lough Muskry are the most interesting points to make for, and lie amongst the finest cliffs. Lough Diheen is the most remote and barren. At Lough Curra the cliffs descend 1,000 ft. sheer into the water. These cliffs afford attractive but dangerous climbing. They reach to within a couple of hundred feet of the highest point, known as Dawson's Table, or Galtymore. Still grander, however, are the cliffs above Lough Muskry. These tower to a height of about 1,200 ft. in great terraces and vegetated walls above the north and north-east ends of the lake. Numerous clefts, ravines, and ledges exist. Should the climber get pounded here (as not seldom happens) let him beware of undue haste. A mouthful of food has a wonderful effect in steadying the nerves. The holds here are often sods of dubious security, and the Muskry precipices, though they _can_ be traversed in all directions, are the severest amongst the Galtees. * * * * * =Co. Waterford.= _Commeragh Mountains._--The Commeragh Mountains may be explored from Kilmacthomas on the south, Clonmell on the west, or Caher on the north. They form an elevated plateau, bounded on all sides by steep and frequently inaccessible precipices, which enclose cooms and tarns. The highest point is 2,597 ft., and the rock is for the most part sandstone or conglomerate of the old red sandstone period. Slates and shales occur on the northern side. The cliffs can be climbed in many places. As on the Galtees, a few miles west, dense masses of a species of woodrush often render the holding treacherous. Smith (_History of Waterford_, 1774) says, 'On the sides of this chain there are many horrid precipices, and steep declivities, with large naked rocks. In the valleys considerable chips, or parings, lie in prodigious heaps.' The most imposing precipices are those enclosing in a magnificent sweep the Stilloge Lakes, on the south side of the group; and those above Coonshingaun Lough and Crotty's Lough at the eastern end. This east lake takes its name from one Crotty, an outlaw, who made his home in a cave here during the last century. Legends of this worthy abound in the district. The cliffs are often wholly inaccessible without a rope, but a great deal of excellent climbing can be effected with no artificial aids. In search of rare plants the writer has made several distinct ascents above the Stilloges, and also at Coonshingaun, quite apart from the easier gully tracks, by which the ordinary visitor gains the top. The mountains are singularly picturesque. The verdure-clad cliffs, overhanging the deep, rock-bound, lonely tarns, have an effect that is at once rare and beautiful. INDEX Aber, 1 Aberglaslyn, 95 Abergynolwyn, 10 Accidents, 1, 2, 9, 21, 25, 54, 56, 58, 67, 70, 72, 73, 82, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 108, 126, 139, 176 Achill, 158 Anglesey, 15 Antrim, 131 Aranmore Island, 143 Arans (The), 99 Arenig Fawr, 98 Asko Keeran, 162 Bala, 2 Barmouth, 3 Barnesmore Gap, 153 Beddgelert, 3 Beddgelert (Snowdon from), 4 Beenkeragh, 186 Ben Bulben, 155 Benchoona, 165 Benglog, 5 Berwyn Mountains, 94 Bethesda, 6 Bird Rock, 108 Black Ladders, 19 Black Mountains, 13, 126 Blaenau Ffestiniog, 9 Blasquets, 189 Blue Stack, 152 Braichddu, 18, 19 Brandon, 179 Brecon Beacons, 13 Bronyfedw, 14 Bryansford, 169 Bull's Mountain, 187 Bunglas, 145 Burton Port, 143 Bwlch Cwm y Llan, 87 Bwlch Goch, 61 Bwlch y Saethau, 76 Caddy of Cwm Glas, 60 Cader Fronwen, 94 Cader Idris, 106 Cambrian Railway, 7, 95 Capel Curig, 6 Carnarvonshire, 16 Carndonagh, 135 Carnedd Dafydd, 17 Carnedd Llewelyn, 23 Carnedd Ugain, 67 Carnedd y Filiast, 25 'Carrabuncle' (The), 181 Carran Tuohill, 185 Carrick Hotel, 145 Carrig-a-Rede, 133 Castell Cidwm, 93 Castell Gwynt, 34 Castles (The), 171 Cefnysgolion Duon, 19 Clare Co., 167 Clew Bay, 160 Cloghane, 179 Clogwyn Aderyn, 69 Clogwyn Penllechen, 69 Clogwyn y Garnedd, 72 Clogwyn y Person, 58 Clogwyndur Arddu, 89 Closs (Death of), 91 Cnicht, 96 Commeragh Mountains, 192 Cork Co., 190 Corris, 10 Cox (Mr.), 88 Craig Ddrwg, 98 Craig Eryri, 54 Craig y Bera, 94 Craig yr Ysfa, 21 Craiglyn Dyfi, 103 Crazy Pinnacle, 64 Crib Goch, 60 Crib y Ddysgl, 66 Croagh Patrick, 160 Croghaun, 158 Cumloughra, 185 Cwm Creigiog, 88 Cwm Dyli, 68 Cwm Glas, 56 Cwm y Llan, 87 Cyfrwy, 113 Cynfael Falls, 9 Cynicht, 96 Dawson's Table, 192 Denbighshire, 94 Devil's Kitchen, 28 Devil's Looking Glass, 186 Devil's Punch Bowl, 189 Dinas Bran, 94 Dinas Mawddwy, 7 Dingle, 179 Dismore (Mr.), 58 Dolgelly, 7 Donegal, 134 Down Co., 169 Dublin Co., 171 Dunaff Head, 136 Dunfanaghy, 139 Dungloe, 144 Dunloe (Gap of), 182 Eagle's Cliff, 189 Eagle's Nest, 147 Eglwyseg, 94 Elicydu, 25 Elider, 25 Empson (Mr.), 2 Errigal, 140 Esgair Felen, 42 Evans (Mr. Alf.), 82 Fair Head, 131 Fanet, 137 Ffestiniog, 9 Foelgoch, 26 Frodsham (Mr. G. H.), 90 Gallt y Wenallt, 76 Galtee Mountains, 191 Galway, 164 Gap of Doonmore, 138 Gap of Dunloe, 182 Garnedd Goch, 92 Giant's Causeway, 134 Glaslyn, 69 Glen Car, 183 Glen Gesh, 154 Glen Head, 145 Glenariff, 133 Glenbeagh, 142 Glengad Head, 135 Glengariff, 190 Glyder Fach, 31 Glyder Fawr, 36 Golf, 156 Gougaun Barra, 191 Grey Man's Path, 131 Guides, 183 Gweedore, 141 Hag's Glen, 183, 187 Haseler (Mr. Maxwell), 73 Hill names, 161 Homer (Mr. Philip), 54 Horn Head, 138 Howth, 174 Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit, 9 Hungry Hill, 190 Inishowen, 135 Ireland's Eye, 174 Jackson (Rev. James), 12 Keimaneigh, 191 Kendal (Mr. E. G.), 70 Kerry Co., 179 Killarney, 183 Killary, 165 Kingsley (Charles), 12 King's Mountain, 155 Kinlough, 156 Lambay, 171 Leenane Inn, 158, 163 Lisdoonvarna, 167 Livesley (Mr.), 56 Llaithnant, 105 Llanberis, 9 Llangynog, 95 Llechog, 91 Lliwedd, 74 Llyndulyn, 24 Lough Eske, 152 Lough Muskry, 192 Lough Salt, 142 Lough Swilly, 186 Lugnaquilia, 176 Maamtrasna, 162 Maamturk, 164 Macgillicuddy's Reeks, 182 Machynlleth, 10 MacSwyne's Gun, 143 Maentwrog Road, 15 Malin Head, 135 Mangerton, 189 Marble Arch, 143 Marzials (Miss), 9 Maum Glen, 144 Mayo Co., 156 Melynllyn, 24 Merionethshire, 95 Mitchell (Mr. J.), 86 Moel Eilio, 91 Moel Hebog, 92 Moel Siabod, 52 Moel Sych, 94 Moel Wyn, 96 Moher Cliffs, 167 Montgomeryshire, 94 Mount Aitchin, 188 Mourne Mountains, 169 Muckanaght, 166 Muckish, 140 Mweelrea, 160 Mynydd Mawr, 93 Nantlle, 10 Nephin, 156 Newcastle, 169 Ogwen Cottage, 5 One Man's Pass, 149 Orme's Head, 94 Owen (Harry), 11 Paget (Mr.), 2 Pantylluchfa, 69 Parson's Nose, 58 Payne (Mr.), 1 Pen Helig, 25 Penmaenmawr, 16 Penygroes, 11 Penygwrhyd, 11 Penyroleuwen, 18 'Phouca' (The), 140 Pleaskin Head, 134 Poisoned Glen, 141 Portsalon, 137 Powerscourt, 175 Prisons of Lugnaquilia, 176 Purple Mountain, 189 Rhayader, 13 Rhinog Fawr, 97 Rosapenna, 138 Rostrevor, 169 St. Kevin's Bed, 177 Slanting Gully, 85 Slieve Donard, 171 Slieve Glas, 182 Slieve League, 145 Smith (Death of), 108 Snowdon, 54 Snowdon Ranger, 13 Southey benighted, 54 Spellick, 171 Stacks, 15 Starr (Rev. H. W.), 89 Stilloge Lakes, 193 Sturrell, 144 Tanybwlch, 14 Tonelagee, 176 Tormore, 139, 144 Tory Island, 139 Trigfylchau, 36, 44 Tryfaen, 44 Twelve Bens or Pins, 166 Twll Du, 28 Waterford Co., 192 Wicklow Co., 175 Williams (W.), 72 Wills (Mr.), 2 Wilton (Mr. F. R.), 67 Y Garn, 28 Y Wyddfa, 54 Yr Elen, 25 PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON Transcriber's note: _Underscores_ have been used to indicate _italic_ fonts. =Equals signs= have been used to indicate =bold= fonts. The alternate spellings Carnarvonshire and Caernarvonshire both appear in the original. I have left them as written (both are accepted spellings). Inconsistent hyphenation and dashes (e.g. number-ft vs. number ft) are left as written. 
39482	----	MUSHROOM TOWN BY OLIVER ONIONS Author of "Gray Youth," "In Accordance with the Evidence," "Debit Account," etc., etc. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK _Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton_ Copyright, 1914, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY DEDICATION _In the following pages I have permitted myself to take a number of liberties--geographical, historical, etymological, and even geological--with a country for which I have conceived a strong affection; I trust I have taken none with its beauty nor with its hospitality. It will be useless to search for Llanyglo on any map. It is neither in North Carnarvonshire, in Merioneth, nor in Lleyn. Of certain features of existing places I have made a composite, which is the_ "MUSHROOM TOWN" _of this book._ _The kindnesses I have received in Wales during the past six years have been innumerable; indeed, much of my work has consisted of writing down (and not always improving) things told me by one of my hosts. For this and other reasons I should like to render him such acknowledgment as a Dedication may express._ "MUSHROOM TOWN" _is therefore inscribed, in gratitude and affection, to_ ARTHUR ASHLEY RUCK _Hampstead_, 1914 CONTENTS THE INVITATION 9 PART I I THE YEAR DOT 17 II ITS NONAGE 31 III THE MINDER 46 IV "_DIM_ SAESNEG" 52 V THE HAFOD UNOS 75 VI THE FOOT IN THE DOOR 86 VII THE MEMBER 98 VIII THELEMA 109 PART II I RAILHEAD 117 II THE CLERK OF THE WORKS 126 III THE CURTAIN RAISER 142 IV YNYS 168 PART III I THE HOLIDAY CAMP 179 II THE GIANT'S STRIDE 205 III THE BLANK CHEQUE 218 IV PAWB 233 PART IV I THE BLIND EYE 244 II JUNE 263 III DELYN 275 IV AN ORDINARY YOUNG MAN 297 V THE DWELLING OF A NIGHT 310 VI THE GLYN 323 PART V I THE WHEEL 335 II ADIEU 347 THE INVITATION "We'll take the little cable-tram, if you like, but it's not far to walk--twenty minutes or so--the Trwyn's seven hundred feet high. You'll see the whole of the town from the top. The sun will have made the grass a little slippery, but there are paths everywhere; the sheep began them, and then the visitors wore them bare. And we shall get the breeze.... * * * * * "There you are: Llanyglo. You see it from up here almost as the gulls and razorbills see it. The bay's a fine curve, isn't it?--rather like a strongly blown kite-string; and the Promenade's nearly two miles long. But as you see, the town doesn't go very far back. From the Imperial there to the railway station and the gasometers at the back isn't much more than half a mile; the town seems to press down to the front just as the horses draw the bathing-vans down to the tide. Shall we sit down? Here's a boulder. It's chipped all over with initials, of course; so are the benches, and even the turf; but you'd wonder that there was a bit of wood or stone or turf left at all if you saw the crowds that come here when the Wakes are on. It's odd that you should never see anybody actually cutting them. Some of them must have taken an hour or two with a hammer and chisel, but I've been up here countless times and never seen anybody at it yet. "Yes, that's Llanyglo; but look at the mountains first. This isn't the best time of the day for seeing them; the morning or the evening's the best time; the sun isn't far enough round yet. But sometimes, when the light's just right, they start out into folds and wrinkles almost as quickly as you could snap your fingers--it's quite dramatic. Foels and Moels and Pens and Mynedds, look--half the North Cambrian Range. You couldn't have a better centre for motor-cycle and char-à-banc tours than Llanyglo.... Then on the other side's the sea. That's only a tinny sort of glitter just now, but you should see the moon rise over it. People come out from the concerts on the pier-head just to have a look.... "The Pier looks tiny from up here? Yes, but it's three furlongs long for all that, and those two tart-tin-looking things at the end hold nearly a thousand people apiece. But, as you say, it is rather like one of those children's toy railways they sell on the stalls in Gardd Street for sixpence-halfpenny. And that always strikes me as rather a curious thing about Llanyglo. It's a big place now--nine thousand winter population; but somehow it has a smaller look than it had when it was just a score of cottages, all put together not much bigger than the Kursaal Gardens there. I don't know why the cottages should have seemed more in scale with the mountains than all this, but they did. I suppose it was because they didn't set up for anything, like the Kursaal and the Majestic and the Imperial.... But it doesn't do to tell the Llanyglo folk that. They look at it in quite another way. To them the sea and the mountains are so many adjuncts, something they can turn into money by dipping people at sixpence a time and motoring them round at four-and-sixpence the tour.... And sometimes you can't help thinking that it wouldn't take very much (a wind a bit stronger than usual or an extra heave of the sea, say) and all these hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of stone and iron and paint and gilding would just disappear--be sponged out like the castles and hoof-marks on the sands when the tide comes in--or like a made-up face when you wipe the carmine and pencilling from it.... Eh?--No, I'm not saying they've spoiled the place--nor yet that they haven't. You mustn't come here if you want a couple of miles of beach to yourself. It all depends how you look at it. If Llanyglo's cheapjack in one way, perhaps it isn't in another. It's merely that I remember it as it used to be.... "Would it surprise you to learn that the whole place is only about thirty years old? That's all. It grew like a mushroom; there are people who were born here who don't know their way about their own town.... Mostly Welsh? Oh dear no, not by any means. I should say about half-and-half. I suppose you're thinking of the Welsh names of the streets? They don't mean very much. There's Gardd Street, for instance; 'gardd' is only the Welsh for 'garden,' and Edward Garden, John Willie Garden's father, built the greater part of it (for that matter, he built the greater part of Llanyglo). And if anybody called Wood (say) had put up a house here, he'd probably have called it 'Ty Coed.' And some of it, of course, is genuine Welsh. The Porth Neigr Road does go to Porth Neigr, and Sarn, over there, has always been Sarn. But people think they're getting better value for their money if they come away for a fortnight and see foreign names everywhere; they've a travelled sort of feeling; so they give the streets these names, and print all the placards in two columns, with 'Rhybudd' on one side and 'Notice' on the other. "And that's given rise to one rather amusing little mistake. As you know, this headland that we're on is called the Trwyn, and 'trwyn' simply means a nose or a promontory. But over past the Lighthouse there, there are the remains of an old Dinas, a British camp, and half these Lancashire trippers think the headland's called after that--'t'ruin'--'th' ruin'--you know how they talk.... "I'm interested in the place for several reasons (not money ones, I'm sorry to say). For one thing, I like to watch the Welsh and Lancashire folk together; that's been very amusing. And then, it's not often you get the chance of seeing a whole development quite so concisely epitomised as we've had it here. Llanyglo started from practically nothing, and it's grown to this before John Willie Garden has a single grey hair on his head (though, to be sure, that cowslip colour doesn't show grey very much). Then there's that curious essence--I don't know what you call it--the thing a town would still keep even though you cleared every brick away and built it all over again, and sent every inhabitant packing and re-peopled it. There's a field for speculation there, too, though perhaps not a very profitable one. But most of all I've been interested in seeing what various sets of people have given Llanyglo, and what it's given to them in return--how the stones and the people have taken colour from one another, if you understand me, and what colour--in fact (if it doesn't sound a little pompous) in Llanyglo as an expression of the life of our time. It's sometimes hard to believe that something almost human hasn't got into its stone and paint and mortar. The whole place, as it's spread out down there now--two-mile line of front, houses, hotels, railway, gasometers and all--has had almost a personal birth, and adolescence, and growing-pains, and sown its wild oats, and has its things that it tells and its things that it doesn't tell, in an extraordinary way--or else, as I say, it seems extraordinary, because you get it all into a single focus. There may even be a bit of me in Llanyglo. If you came half a dozen times there'd be a bit of you too. "I should like you to meet John Willie Garden. He's the man to go to if you want to know anything about these streets and hotels and the seaside and the stations on the front. Why not come to the Kursaal, on the Terrace, at about nine to-night?--Good. He's a capital chap; a Something or other on the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, adopted Conservative Free Trade candidate for his division (but a Protectionist in other countries) and probably worth a quarter of a million, a good deal of it out of Llanyglo. Not bad for a little turned forty, eh? He'll probably ask you to dinner. You can't see his house from here; it stands back from Gardd Street. It was the first house to go up in Llanyglo--no, I'm forgetting. There was one before it--just one before it, not counting the original cottages, of course.... "What do you say to a turn? We've time to have a look at the Dinas before we go down.... "It's British, and the _Sixpenny Guide_ will tell you all that's known about it--possibly more. Its foundations are said to have been sprinkled with the blood of Merlin. What's left of it's certainly sprinkled with these everlasting initials. The Trwyn Light's just behind, two reds and a white, and they're experimenting with the Rocket Apparatus, but I don't think that will come to much.--There's little Porth Neigr, look--and that point thirty miles away's Abercelyn.... "Now the mountains are beginning to show; there they are--Delyn on the left, then Moel Eryr, then Mynedd Mawr. That's Penyffestyn, with the great cavity in his side, and his shadow's right across Bwlch.... Yes, very fine, and a perfect evening for it. The posters at Euston don't overstate it, do they? Of course, you've seen that very familiar one, of a Welsh Giantess, shawl, apron, steeple hat and all the lot, holding a view of Llanyglo in her arms? Pink hotels, indigo mountains and chrome-yellow sands.... "There's the _Queen of the Waters_ coming in. If we wait a few minutes longer we shall see the town light up. Yes, electricity; the power-station was finished only last year; it's over there beyond the filter-beds; Llanyglo handles its own sewage.... Ah! There goes the Promenade lights; three jumps, and the two miles are lighted up from end to end; the kite-string's a necklace now; pretty, isn't it?... And there goes the Pier.... There'll be a glare behind us like a shout of light in a moment--the Trwyn Light.... "The mountains are dark now, but how the day lingers on the sea! To-night it's like ribbon-grass.... Hear the post-horns? Those are the chars-à-bancs coming in. The last tripper's running for the station now.... Now the light's dying on the sea; it's a new moon and a spring tide. Two or three riding-lights only--I say, it's solemn out there.... But they'll be dining at the Majestic presently. That long golden haze is Gardd Street, and that spangle at the end of it's the New Bazaar. There goes the Big Wheel in the Kursaal Gardens, with its advertisement on it. We might look in at the Dancing Hall to-night; that's rather a sight. They have firework displays in the grounds, too, and last year there was one out in the bay; they put bombs and flares and serpents on rafts, and laid them from boats, like mines. That was in honour of the Investiture of the Prince of Wales.... "We'd better take the tram down, I think; we might stumble and break our necks.... "The other turnstile.--That kiosk place? That's the visitors' bureau. They'll tell you quite a number of useful things there--cab fares, porters' charges, time and tide tables, excursions and so on; but John Willie Garden can tell you more interesting things than those. Don't forget you're to meet him to-night.... "You're sure you can't dine with me? Very well. The Kursaal, then, on the Terrace, at a quarter to nine...." PART ONE I THE YEAR DOT On a Friday afternoon in the June of the year 1880, a roomy old shandrydan, midway between a trap and a wagonette, moved slowly along the Porth Neigr and Llanyglo road. It had been built as a pair-horse vehicle for Squire Wynne, of Plas Neigr, but the door at the back of it now bore the words, "Royal Hotel, Porth Neigr," and its present or some intermediate owner had converted it to the use of a single horse. The shaky-kneed old brown animal at present between the shafts might have had a spirit-level inside him, so unerringly did he become aware when the road departed by as much as a fraction from the true horizontal. Taking the good with the bad, he was doing a fair five miles an hour. At each of its revolutions the off hind-wheel gave a dry squeak like a pair of boots that has not been paid for. The day was warm, and hay was cutting. Combings of hay striped the hedges where the carts had passed, and as the Royal Hotel conveyance was so wide that it had to draw in in order to allow anything else to pass it, wisps had lodged also in the cords of the great pile of boxes and brown tin trunks that occupied the forward part of it. Honeysuckle tangled the hedge-tops; the wild roses were out below; and in the ditches the paler scabious was of the colour of the sky, the deeper that of the mountains towards which the old horse lazily clop-clopped. The pile of trunks in front hid the driver and the two print-skirted and black-jacketed young women who sat beside him from those inside the vehicle. These two young women were two of Mrs. Garden's domestics, and they travelled far more comfortably than did their mistress. Packed up by her bustle behind, on her right by her seven-years-old daughter who slept with her head on her shoulders, on her left by the angle of the trap, and in front by the hamper, the three or four straw basses, the cardboard boxes, the hold-all of sticks and umbrellas, with a travelling-rug thrown in (all of which articles she strove to balance on her short, steep lap), she could only perspire. Her husband, who sat opposite, could see no more of her than the top of her hen's-tail, lavender bonnet. Even this he shut out when he took up, now his newspaper (every line of which he had read twice), and now his daughter's _Little Folks_ (for the inspection of which periodical, though the print was much bigger than that of the newspaper, he put on his gold-rimmed glasses). The smell of his excellent cigar mingled with the scents of the roses and hay, and trailed like an invisible wake a hundred yards behind. John Willie Garden, who was eleven, had travelled half the distance from Porth Neigr on the step of the trap. During the rest of the time, now falling behind and now running on ahead, now up a campion-grown bank and again lying down flat to drink at a brook, he had covered as much distance as a dog that is taken out for a walk. He wore a navy blue jersey, which, when peeled off over his head, had the double effect of wiping his short nose and causing his shock of gilded hair to stand up like flames, all in one movement. He carried a catapult in one hand. Both pockets of his moleskin knickers bulged with ammunition for this engine. In the heat of a catapult action, against hens or windows, he used his mouth as a magazine, discharging and loading again with great dexterity.--But, a mile or so back, his father, looking up over his paper, had called the Cease Firing. John Willie now plipped the catapult furtively, and without pebble. It was the chief drawback of the holiday from his point of view that it had to be taken in the company of his father. Among his brighter hopes was that Mr. Garden, having seen them installed, would return to Manchester on the Monday. Mr. Garden was head of the firm of Garden, Scharf and Garden, spinners, and, to judge from his attire, he might have stepped straight from the exchange. His square-crowned billycock hat, buttoned-up pepper-and-salt grey suit, and crossover bird's-eye tie with the pebble pin in it, were at odds with the slumbrous lanes and the scabious-blue mountains. He carried a wooden-sticked, horn-handled umbrella, wrapped in a protecting sheath, and from his heavy gold watch-chain depended a cluster of little silver emblems that he would not have exchanged for as many Balas rubies. All Manchester knew that he could have given up the dogcart in which he drove daily to business, and set up a carriage and a pair of horses in its stead, any day it had pleased him; and his opinions and judgments, when he saw fit to utter them, were quoted. But he rarely uttered them. When asked for his advice, say upon a letter, he would adjust his glasses, read the letter slowly through, turn back and read it all over again more slowly still, and then, when the person in difficulties was awaiting the weighty pronouncement, would look through the letter rapidly a third time, and at last, glancing over the top of his glasses, would mildly observe, "This seems to be a letter." Sometimes he would come to the very verge of committing himself by adding, "From So-and-So." The grey eyes that looked over those gold rims were remarkable. They seemed to serve less as appreciative organs of immediate vision than as passers-on of an infinite number of visual data, which would be accepted or rejected or laid for the present aside by some piece of mechanism hidden behind. He was forty-four, clean shaven, save for a pair of small mutton-chop whiskers already turning grey, darkish and rather delicate-looking, and only half the size of his stout, blonde wife. As long as Free Trade remained untouched, he had no politics, and he was an adherent of the lower forms of the Established Church. He was taking this journey on his daughter Minetta's account, who was not doing so well as she ought to be. He had bought a couple of the Llanyglo cottages, and judged that by this time they must be ready for occupation. The mountains drew nearer, and other pale colours began to show through the scabious blue. The pile of luggage continued to brush the hedges, and the off wheel to creak. Minetta snored lightly as she slept, and the black legs that issued from her pink check frock, trimmed with crimson braid, swung slackly with every jolt of the cart. Mrs. Garden's face glistened; Mr. Garden allowed _Little Folks_ to fall from his hand, and dozed; John Willie sought birds' nests and rabbits; and the old horse continued to change from lumpish trot to slow walk and from slow walk to lumpish trot, as if he had had a spirit-level inside him. After this fashion the Gardens jogged along the lanes where to-day the summer dust never settles for touring-cars, motor-cycles and the Llanyglo motor chars-à-bancs. "John Willie!" It was five o'clock, and they had arrived. Leaving the cluster of three or four farms that formed the land-ward part of Llanyglo, they had turned through a gateless gap in a thymy earth-wall, and all save Mrs. Garden and Minetta had descended. The cart-track had become less and less distinct, and had finally lost itself altogether in deep, sandy drifts in which their approach made no noise. There was a fresher feel in the air. And then, through a V in the sandhills, the sea had appeared, and the lazy crash of a breaker had been heard. The irregular row of thatched cottages was set perhaps a hundred yards back from high-water mark, and the intervening space was a waste of sand, coarse tussocks, and the glaucous blue sea-holly. Half-overblown rubbish strewed the beach--rusty tin pans and kettles, old kedge anchors, corks, a mass of potato-parings in which three or four hens scratched, and the skeletons of a couple of disused boats. The half-dozen serviceable boats were gathered a couple of hundred yards away about a short wooden jetty. A mile away in the other direction rose the Trwyn, bronze with sunny heather and purple with airy shadow, with the lighthouse and the Dinas on the top. A small herd of black cattle had wandered slowly out to it, and was wandering slowly back again at the edge of the tide. "John Willie!" The cottages were thatched and claywashed, and while some of them had a couple of strides of garden in front, others rose from little taluses of blown sand. Sand was everywhere. It lodged in the crevices, took the paint off the doors, and had blunted the angles of posts and palings until they were as smooth and rounded as the two or three ships' figure-heads that stood within them. Grey old oars leaned up in corners; umber nets, with cork floats like dangling fruit upon them, hung from hooks in the walls; and the squat chimneys had flat stones on the tops of them. The windows were provided with swing-back wooden shutters. Between the farming part and the fishing part of Llanyglo the family had passed three chapels. "John Willie!" Mrs. Garden had descended, and stood over her neat boot-tops in sand, wondering which of her cramped members it would be best to try to straighten first. Standing by her only half awake, Minetta rubbed her eyes. At a respectful distance, but a convenient nearness, half a dozen barefooted children described as it were rainbow-curves in the air with their hands from the foreheads downwards, and a little further away the maritime population of Llanyglo watched the Royal Hotel driver struggle with the luggage. They did not stand off from hostility, but from an excess of delicacy. Then, as a heavy trunk slipped and stuck, a young man with braces over his gansey gave a quick smile, started forward, and bore a hand. "John--Willie!" It was Mr. Garden who called. He had put his key into the door of the cottage where the house-leek grew like a turkey's neck on the claywashed gate-post, and he wanted John Willie to help carry in the smaller parcels. Now John Willie was neither deaf, nor did he feign deafness, but he had a fine sense of the defensive uses of stupidity. Question him directly (say about those apples or that broken window-pane), and he knew nothing whatever. Question him further, and he knew less than nothing. You might conceivably have questioned him to the extreme point when his unadmitting blue eyes would have said, as plain as speech, "What is an apple?" His primrose head could be seen at this moment fifty yards away down the beach. He was watching a fisherman scrape hooks with an old clasp-knife. He had just spoken to the man. "_Dim Saesneg_," the man had replied. John Willie was now watching him, not as a man who scraped hooks, but as the possessor of a new and admirable defence against questions. "John Wil----" But this time the summons was broken in two on Mr. Garden's lips. He had opened the cottage door, and was looking mildly within. The orders he had given for the preparation of the double cottage for his wife and children had included the lining of the interior with match-boarding, and he had understood that this had been finished a week and more ago. It was a month since he had had the advice-note from the timber merchant at Porth Neigr that the material had been delivered. And so it had. There it was. There, too, were the walls. But the matchboarding was not on the walls. It lay, tongued and grooved, with the scantling for fixing it, just where the timber merchant's men had deposited it--on the floor. It filled half the place. On the top of it, still in the sacking in which they had been sewn, were the articles of furniture that had been brought from Mr. Garden's Manchester attics and lumber-rooms. The rest of the furniture he had taken over from the previous tenants, whom some vicissitude of fortune had taken far away to South Wales. Mr. Garden removed his glasses, wiped them, replaced them, and then, looking over the top of them, spoke: "Where's Dafydd Dafis?" he said. But a cry from his wife, who had come up behind him, interrupted him. She fell back again, not mildly, but in consternation. "Nay, nay, Edward!--I never----" she gasped. "Where's Dafydd Dafis?" Mr. Garden asked again. "Of all the sights! If it isn't enough to--I thought you told me----" Mr. Garden blew his nose and slowly put his handkerchief away again. "Does anybody know where Dafydd Dafis is?" "--and us fit to drop for a cup of tea!" Mrs. Garden continued. "Up since five this morning, and come all that way, and not so much as a fire lighted nor a kettle on to boil----" Mr. Garden was looking about him again, as if he would have said, "These appear to be boards," when suddenly his wife broke energetically in. "Well, it's no good standing looking at it; we must all turn to, that's all.--Jane! Ellen!--Off with them jackets, and one of you make a fire while the other unpacks the groceries. The tea and things are in that box under the shawls--and to think we might have come in wet, and not even a winter-hedge to dry our things on!--There's no wood, you say? Wood enough, marry! I can see nothing else!--And the tea isn't there? Then run out and buy a quarter of a pound to be going on with; I won't have everything unpacked now, not in the middle of this joiner's shop!--Tell her where the grocer's is, Edward----" And she threw off her lavender dolman and bonnet, and bustled about, like the capable creature she was, as ready to turn to as if she had never had a day's help in her life. A little girl stood at the door, still describing rainbows from her forehead; but scarce had Ellen asked her where the grocer's was when there came up at a half run Howell Gruffydd himself, the keeper of the single shop of the place. He was in his shirt-sleeves, wore an old bowler hat, and wiped his hands on the coarse, white apron about his middle. Over his glasses Edward Garden watched his approach, but he did not speak. It was not anger that kept him silent. Already he had accepted _fait accompli_--or in this case _inaccompli_. Howell Gruffydd broke into sunny smiles of welcome. "How d'you do, Mr. Garden? So you have arrived? How d'you do, madam? How d'you do, miss? You had a pless-sant journey?" He beamed on each of them, and then beamed on them again. "Do you know where Dafydd Dafis is?" Mr. Garden asked once more. "Indeed I do not, Mr. Garden. Perhaps he maake fenss for Squire Wynne. Perhaps he fiss." Then Howell Gruffydd's eyes fell on the boards as if he had not noticed them before. He gave a heartfelt "Aw-w-w!" "It is not finiss! Dear me, dear me! Hwhat a pitt-ty!" Then he became cheerfully explanatory. "That will be old Mrs. Pritchard--Dafydd Dafis he that fond of her as if she wass his own fless and blood. She iss nine-ty, and for two weeks they have prayers for her in the chap-pil, and Doctor Williams, he come from Porth Neigr, and that is five s'illing, but the pains in her body was soa bad she not know hwhat to dooa!--And it was good fiss-ing these three weeks and more--and the man who bring the boards, he say they well season, but it do them no harm to wait a little while longer----" Mr. Garden's eyes were still looking over his glasses. "Then is he going to let them season for ever?" he said. Howell Gruffydd smiled soothingly.--"Naw-w-w! Not for ev-er, Mr. Garden!" "It's a good job he hasn't got to get his living in Manchester," Mr. Garden observed. At that Howell Gruffydd clasped his hands, as if he congratulated himself that an interesting rumour was confirmed. "Indeed, now," he said, "they do say that the pip-ple there is not the same as the pip-ple here!" At this point Mrs. Garden's voice was raised. She was on her knees by the boxes, and could not find the sugar for tea. At the word "tea," Howell Gruffydd broke out with eager hospitality. "Indeed it is cup of tea I came about," he said. "I say to Mrs. Gruffydd, 'They come all this way,' I say, 'and they will be want-ting cup of tea whatever.' It is all ready ... Eesaac Oliver!"--he called from the doorway--"run to your mother, and say we be there in one minnit! And do not answer me in Welss when there are pip-ple who do not understand it--where are your manners, indeed!" He turned to the new-comers again. "You s'all have cup of tea whatever, Mrs. Garden--it cost you noth-thing--and the young gentleman, he is down at the boats, but Eesaac Oliver s'all fetch him--come on----" Howell Gruffydd, the grocer, speaks rather better English to-day than he spoke then, but there is no more quickness and keenness in his black-lashed light-blue eyes, and no more persuasiveness in his purring voice. To the half-unpacked boxes of provisions on the floor he did not drop an eye. He led the way past half a dozen cottages to the little shop with showcards and paper packages in the diminutive window. He showed them in and round the counter, lifting the old curtain that shut off the parlour from the public part of the shop. Blodwen, his wife, in a clean apron that showed the knife-edged creases of its ironing, was curtsying as if she did not know how to stop. The parlour communicated with the inner side of the counter, and behind the counter, on the left, was the window. Bottles and canisters stood on the shelves, and below them were innumerable small drawers. The fire-place had a high mantelpiece with countless china objects upon it, and a large dresser with blue and white plates stood against the inner wall. Next to the dresser was a tall clock, with a ship sailing round the world on the dial. A gigantic black turnip of a kettle sent out a cloud of steam; cranpogs were keeping hot in a dish within the fender; and near them an enormous marmalade-coloured cat slept. The room smelt of pepper and soap and pickles and cheese, and Howell Gruffydd's guests filled it. He helped his wife to wait upon them, and in the intervals attended to the shop. A little girl came in for a pennyworth of bicarbonate of soda, and Howell, returning from serving her, again showed his white, but false, teeth. "It maake the tea last longer," he said, with a jerk of his head; "but there is no bi----" he smiled again apologetically, though he was perfectly well able to pronounce the word, "--there is none of that in this tea, Mrs. Garden. It is not tea like the fine pip-ple in Manchester drink, but we are simple pip-ple here. Blodwen, the cranpogs; make a good tea, Mr. Garden; indeed, you eat noth-thing; tut, tut, they taake up no room!--You say what is that, young gentleman? That is a Welss Bible. Aha, you cannot read that! Nor you cannot say, 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychyndrobwlantysiligogogoch!'--You try? I say it slowly----" Though Howell had repeated the jaw-breaker twenty times, John Willie Garden would still have maintained the silence of defence. "Ha, ha, ha! It is easy!... Well, I ask you riddle instead.--There was a young gentleman, and he have eight"--he held up his fingers--"eight--sisters. And every one of them has a brother. Now you tell me how many brothers and sisters there are!" He winked, but respectfully, at Mr. Garden. "Nine," said John Willie Garden contemptuously, with his mouth full of cranpogs and jam. Howell showed no discomfiture. He laughed. "Ha, ha, ha! He say nine! I ask him again.--There was a young gentleman ... but, dear me, there is the s'op again! We must earn our living, all of us. Business before pleas-sure--it is a good rule----" And he squeezed through to the counter again, while his wife boiled more eggs and spiked the cranpogs on a fork, five at a time. After tea Mrs. Garden was seen to be pulling up her skirt and to be feeling for her pocket in the folds of her petticoat; but with an imperceptible gesture her husband restrained her. He thanked Gruffydds, and they returned to their own cottage, Eesaac Oliver accompanying them to help to pile up the matchboards and to take the furniture from its sacking. The cottage was much like the other cottages of the place. Its ceiling consisted of tacked-up sheets, inside which spiders and dust and sand whispered and the wind rippled. The black mantelpiece had brass candlesticks and china ornaments, and on one side of the tall clock was a grocer's almanac-portrait of Mr. Gladstone, while on the other was one of Dr. Rees, the President of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. A sampler, rather difficult to see in the bad light, hung immediately within the door, and the window opened six inches, in which position it had to be propped with a short stick. There were geraniums on its sill, and a red sausage filled with sand kept out the draught when it was closed. The outer door of the second cottage was to be permanently fastened up when the match-boarding should be finished. The cottages adjoining belonged to fishermen, the one with a wife and children, the other a widower who kept his departed wife in mind by means of a number of framed and glazed cenotaphs, consisting of a black ground with white angels mourning over a tombstone, and, above, the words, "_Er Serchog Cof_----" This was Llanyglo when Minetta Garden was first brought there for the benefit of her health. The authors of the Itineraries had not thought it worth mentioning; Wyndham has nothing to say about it, Skrine did not visit it, Pennant passes it by. But you may find an excellent steel engraving of it, by Copley Fielding, full of accomplishment, elegance and taste, and published by the London Art Union. If Minetta did well there, it was Edward Garden's intention, so far as Edward Garden's intentions were ever known, to let or sell his cottage and to build a more convenient house of his own. There was stone to be had in abundance within three or four miles. Mutton was plentiful and delicious, beef not quite so plentiful nor quite so good. The larger grocery supplies could be sent direct from Manchester, the odds and ends purchased from Howell Gruffydd. Water was to fetch only a hundred yards, and lamp oil, etc., came twice a week in the cart from Porth Neigr. And soon--Edward Garden did not know yet, and if he did not know you may be sure nobody else did--Porth Neigr might be brought nearer to the rest of the world than ten miles' journey by road. For, besides being a spinner and a good many other things, Edward Garden was a Director of the Ratchet and Rawtonstall Railway, and, as is the compliment between railway and railway, those little silver trinkets that dangled from his gold watch-chain--little greyhounds and locomotives, winged orbs and other emblems of speed--were the tokens of his freedom at all times over other lines, and of his personal intimacy with men who open up land, not a field at a time with a plough, but by running a sinew of steel through it, with a nerve alongside that, touched at any point, quickens and thrills throughout its length. Nevertheless, it is quite true that he came to Llanyglo first of all for the benefit of his daughter's health. II ITS NONAGE At bottom, neither the good fishing nor the illness of ancient Mrs. Pritchard had been the real cause of Dafydd Dafis's procrastination in the matter of the match-boarding--any more than those greased cartridges were the real cause of the Mutiny. He was merely vindicating the claims of a temperament that kept him, and would always keep him, poor, yet a power. He was a day-labourer, whom anybody could hire to build a wall, mend a thatch or caulk a boat; but--and this was the secret of his influence--he had a harp in his cottage. In a glorious baritone voice he sang _Mentra Gwen_, _Y Deryn Pur_, and lorn songs of love and wild songs of battle. More than that, he sang _penillion_; and as _penillion_--which is an extempore form of song into which you may plunge at any point you please, provided you finish pat and triumphant with the double bar--as _penillion_ concerns itself mainly with two themes, namely, the loved mountains and lakes of Cambria, and quick and topical inventions of personal gossip, Dafydd Dafis held his hearers both by their deeper sentiments and their lighter foibles. He was a spare and roughly clad man of thirty, unmarried, with a kindling eye, a handsome nose, and a ragged dark moustache; and when his head was bowed by the side of his harp, all the life of him seemed to run out into the lean and roughened fingers on the strings. He came to see Edward Garden about that match-boarding on the Saturday morning, bringing a youth of eighteen with him. Edward Garden, who had had experience of the Welsh in Liverpool, which is the capital of Wales, received him with resignation. Fair and softly goes far in a day, and he knew that the luxury of chiding the bard of Llanyglo would prove a dear one did Mrs. Garden find her egg supply suddenly fail and the Llanyglo cows mysteriously cease to yield milk. His forbearance was rewarded. Before he departed for Manchester on the Monday morning he had the satisfaction of seeing Dafydd Dafis and the youth actually begin the job. No doubt it would be finished by the time divinely appointed for its finishing. But whether Dafydd Dafis sang much as he worked, or worked a little as he sang, remained an open question. Now in whatever other respects Llanyglo may have changed, its air then was the same air that the Guide Book so justly praises to-day. Minetta felt the benefit of it at once. During her illness she had had her dark hair close-cropped; for fear of taking cold, she still wore a red "pirate" cap, that is, a cone of knitted wool with a bob at the peak that fell on one side of her head: and for the same reason she wore black stockings pulled well up over the bamboo-like joints of her bony knees. She was a slight, dark pixy of a child, on whom so much care had been expended that she had begun to care for herself and to talk wisely about draughts and wet feet; and sometimes she consoled herself for the loss of her hair by repeating her mother's assurance, that it would grow the more strongly afterwards. But within a fortnight of the Gardens' settling at Llanyglo there was no further thought of taking her back home until the cold weather should come. Her doll's-house and paint-box were sent for. Her health continued to improve. By and by she was to be found squatted down by the sand-blown palings, surrounded by the Llanyglo children, keeping a shop, of which the commodities were shells, pebbles, starfish and the like. Her dolls and their house were neglected. But the other little girls, who had seen these wonders once, sometimes lingered wistfully about Mrs. Garden's door, looking within, and whispering, "There it is, Gwladys--see, by the cloch----" Long before the match-boarding of a single room was completed, John Willie Garden, whom at first his mother had not been able to drive out of doors, had lost interest in Dafydd Dafis, his sawing, his hammering, and his songs. He disappeared by the half-day together. It was a holiday time at the school by the Baptist Chapel, and, with Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd and other youngsters as his companions, he scrambled among the rocks at the base of the Trwyn, or climbed the headland itself, or digged for bait, or went out in the boats, or fished for crabs with split mussels off the jetty end (he stuffed his catch up underneath his blue jersey, where the animals crawled about on his friendly and naked skin). The rainbow curves of the children ceased when he or Minetta appeared, but they continued as a salute to Mrs. Garden. The weather continued superb: it rained scarcely at all. The mountains were never for two hours the same; the sea in the evenings was mother-of-pearl; and the rising moon seemed to stand up on it, like the lateen of a felucca of gold. Mrs. Garden sent to Manchester for her tricycle. Then the school by the Baptist Chapel re-opened, and for some days John Willie, hanging idly about and listening to the droning within, was undecided whether to give the insulting cry of liberty or to lament that he was left to his own devices. He himself would not have to go back to school till the middle of September. Then he still further enlarged his circle of acquaintance. He attached himself to a farmer's lad, who shot rabbits of an evening among the sandhills, and, after being allowed to fire the gun, gave his catapult away to a "kid." July passed. The match-boarding progressed by fits and starts. It was now Minetta who impeded its progress. Dafydd Dafis loved her as if she had been his own child, and told her stories of dragons and knights and enchantments and fairies, and sang _Mentra Gwen_ to her, all by the hour together, careless whether Edward Garden paid him for those same hours or not. With the passing of August, Llanyglo had made far more difference to the Gardens than the Gardens had to Llanyglo. Indeed, Llanyglo looked like absorbing them altogether, as animals not ultimately capable of domestication are sucked back into the feral state. In the matter of dress, for example, they had deteriorated alarmingly. Half his days John Willie spent in and out of the water without a stitch on him, and he no longer had a pair of sand-shoes to his name.--And Minetta? First she lost the bob from the peak of her red "pirate" cap, and then the cap itself was cast aside. From careful nightly brushings of her "new" pleated navy-blue frock with the white braid, she allowed the pleats to get full of sand, and, where the prints of her ribbed soles had been, now her bare feet patterned the beach. Her bamboo legs were brown as seaweed and barked up the shins; and when (with a totally abandoned display of knickers) she emptied her shoes of sand, she would sit down in a pool as soon as not.--And Mrs. Garden? Not for worlds would she have had anybody from Manchester see her as she returned on her tricycle from bathing among the Trwyn rocks, sessile on the saddle, a mackintosh over her voluminous bathing-dress, a towel cast across her shoulders, and her plump ivory legs rising and falling on the pedals like the twin cranks of a vertical human engine. Yes, the Gardens were slipping back into savagery. They were becoming part of Llanyglo. Manchester seemed, not so much a hundred miles, as a hundred years away. And when, on a Monday morning, it became necessary that Mrs. Garden should put on her garments of civilisation again and traverse those hundred miles, or years, in order to see how her other home was getting on, the whole population gathered about the Royal Hotel shandrydan that came to take her to Porth Neigr, and tears stood in eyes, and sobs choked throats, and shawls and hands and handkerchiefs were waved as the vehicle started off over the muffling sandhills, and as many promises were made that Minetta and John Willie should be well looked after as if she had been departing never to return, instead of coming back again on the Friday. Howell Gruffydd picked a tear from his eye with his little finger, and spoke of the mutability of human affairs. "The one is ta-a-ke, the other left," he said. "It is all change. Dear dear, it make me think of my cousin Evan Evans, of Carnarvon, and his three boys, as fine boys as ever you see, and so-a hap-py, all living under one roof, till Mary Evans die and wass buried, and the changes come, and where are those boys now? They are scatter. One is in Bangor, and one is in Menai Bridge, and one is in Pwllheli. Dear me! Dear me! Mrs. Garden was a very kind one. There was no kinder 'ooman. Al-ways the sa-a-me. She seem like one of ourselves. Well, well----" And he picked away another tear, as grief-stricken as if he had been reciting an epitaph "_Er Serchog Cof Am Amelia Garden_." Then, when on the Friday she duly returned, there was as much rejoicing as if she had been a sister, come back again from a long wandering. Mrs. Garden had brought back with her in the Royal Hotel conveyance wellnigh as much luggage as had laden the vehicle on their first coming; for it had been decided that Minetta's stay was to be still further prolonged. So warm clothing had been brought, and more blankets, and a screen for the door, and a small family medicine-chest, and Minetta's Compendium Box of Games. And that was bad news for John Willie Garden, for it brought the shadow of his own departure near; and yet it was good news too, for it seemed to promise a more sure establishment in the place, with perhaps another visit for himself during the Christmas holidays. He could not think how the summer days had slipped away, and grew doleful as he remembered how few of them now remained. Then, when September was a week or so old, he climbed the Trwyn in order to take his good-bye look at Llanyglo. A straggling row of cottages, a few paths over the sandhills, three Chapels, a school, and a few scattered farms: the rest, mountains, sea, and air. The tide was creaming over the short thumb of a jetty, and the herd of small black cows was patrolling the beach. Morgan's cottage, Roberts's cottage, their own cottage, not more than a dozen other cottages; and then Howell Gruffydd's shop: already the place was full of memories for John Willie Garden. That wide pool in the sands that reflected the sky had not been there a fortnight before--for the sea had now lost its summer look, and it changed the configuration of the shore at night. A puff of low-blown smoke showed where Dafydd Dafis was giving a boat a coat of tar. There was the small crack of a gun--John Willie's friend was shooting rabbits. On the top of Mrs. Roberts's chimney a new flat stone had been placed, and a new staple for the shutter had been driven into the wall. John Willie had still no stockings on, but he was sensible now of the wind on his legs. They were as brown as rope. His hands too were brown and grimy, and smelt pleasant. That morning he had been helping the men to get in the winter peat.... So he watched, and at tea-time he descended; but already he was making up the exultant tales he would tell the boys of his form, of the spanking place where his father had taken a cottage and might presently be building a house. He would boast over them in the Welsh words he had learned, and triumph no end that they did not understand him. Only to a few of his special friends would he confide the meanings of his expressions in English. Three days later he was doing even so, at Pannal School, near Harrogate, in Yorkshire. Mr. Garden came to Llanyglo once more, bringing a doctor with him this time in order that Minetta's health might be authoritatively reported upon, and again he departed. The cottages, which in summer had been places to live outside of, began to have a comfortable look as the afternoons drew in. Minetta wore her boots and stockings again now, and her maroon serge frock with the white collar, and Mrs. Garden put her tricycle away in the little lean-to behind the house, smothering the bright parts with vaseline and covering it up with sacking. The last--the very last--piece of match-board had been nailed in its place, and all had been pale oak-varnished, so that the sheen of the fire could be seen in the walls. The glowing peats were reflected too, in still red spots, in the black glass rolling-pin, the brass candlesticks, the windows of the dolls' house, the plates and lustre jugs, and the china sitting hen where they kept the eggs. The wind began to hoot in the throat of the chimney. Mrs. Garden's ears became accustomed to the louder falling of the breakers; soon the cessation of this noise would have been the arresting thing. October wore on. There was very little fishing now. Each of the three Chapels had a week-night service, and nearly everybody went to all three. Twice the schoolroom was thrown open for concerts; but most of the singing took place in the kitchen. Sometimes, on the edge of the dark, a fantastic irregular shape would be seen, rising and dipping and lurching as it approached over the sandhills; it was Dafydd Dafis, carrying on his back the wooden case that contained his harp. Save for these infrequent diversions, the winter was a dead time at Llanyglo. The hamlet rolled itself up and hibernated. Mrs. Garden sometimes sighed for a Hallé concert, or a dance, or "a few friends in the evening," but she bore up for the sake of the dry and sunny and exhilarating days and the good they did Minetta. Minetta got out her dolls, their house, and the Compendium Box of Games; and she and Gwladys Roberts and Morwenna Morgan and Mary Price, with the oil lamp on the table and the firelight glowing low on the ceiling, had spring-cleanings of the mimic dwelling (to which the Welsh children did not take with any great heartiness), and epidemics among the dolls (which were more interesting), and once a funeral (to which they gave themselves rapturously). They played Snap and Fishponds, and then Minetta set about the making of a picture screen, with coloured figures which she cut from the _Queen_ and _Lady's Pictorial_ and plain ones which she coloured with her paint-box. At Christmas Mr. Garden and John Willie came down, the former for a few days, John Willie for a fortnight. One of his days Mr. Garden spent in a visit to Squire Wynne, who lived at the Plas, three miles away. The sea was some days as black as iron, on others as white as ash with the tumult of the wind. There was snow on the mountains, but little at Llanyglo. Even John Willie did not want to bathe. In the daytime he tried to rig up a sail on his mother's tricycle, so that he might coast along the two miles of beach before the wind; at night he often walked down to the edge of the dimly creaming water, and stood looking out into the blackness, or else at the Trwyn Light, two reds and a white. Squire Wynne, the former owner of the Royal Hotel shandrydan, was the ground landlord of Llanyglo, and the reason of Edward Garden's Christmas call on him was--still quite simply and on Minetta's account--that he had decided to build and wanted certain land to build on. But this was not quite the simple matter it might have appeared to be. With this, that, and the other, the Squire floundered in a morass of mortgages, and, for the scraping together of his interest money, could scarce have re-papered the dilapidated walls of the Plas dining-room. He had other property also, thirty miles down the coast, which he had never the heart to go and see. It was there that the family fortunes had been sunk. A score of broken shaft-chimneys and heaps of fallen masonry on a promontory were all he had to show for the good Wynne money--these, and a deed-box full of scrip and warrants which you could have had for the price of the stamps on them. For that remote volcanic waste had been a happy hunting-ground for the prospectus-monger with hopeful views on paying quantities, and the Squire had granted more concessions than he could count. It was to be presumed that somebody had made money out of the concessions, if not out of the mines themselves. The last enterprise had been manganese. "Let me pour you out a glass of port first; it's the only thing I have that hasn't some sort of a charge on it," said the Squire. He was a heavy man of near sixty, the owner of a family pew in Porth Neigr Church, a stickler for rainbowing, and, in a feckless sort of way, something of an antiquary. His adherence to the three-bottle habit helped to make the fortunes of several quacks in our own day, who advertise infallible cures for the neuritis he and his kind have bequeathed to their descendants. The only sign the Squire himself showed of this was a slightly ochreous eye.--Then, when he had poured out the port, "It's you who have the money nowadays," he said, meaning by "you" Gladstonian Liberals. "Look at this ceiling of mine. There isn't a ceiling in Wales with a finer coffering, but look at the state it's in!--And that chandelier! It holds forty candles, but _I_ can't afford 'em! This is what _I_ use." He pointed to his father's old reservoir colza lamp on the table.--"And I'll show you the staircase presently.... Sell? It won't make sixpence difference to me one way or the other. Which piece is it you want?" Mr. Garden told him. "Well, you'd better see my man about it. Sheard, Porth Neigr, next to the corn-chandler's shop. Or I'll see him if you like. But if we do come to terms I should like to give you a piece of advice." "What is that?" Edward Garden asked. "I suppose you're not Welsh by any chance?" "No." "Well, I'm half Welsh, and things jog on well enough as long as I'm alive. There are all sorts of questions that simply don't arise. But they're a queer people here, and when you get to the bottom of it, practically the question of landowning resolves itself into keeping on the right side of Dafydd Dafis, if you see what I mean." It was not necessary to tell Edward Garden that, but he begged the Squire to go on. "For instance," the Squire continued, "I've a couple of mortgages foreclosing any time now--Sheard will tell you--I don't even know who the mortgagees are. But if they're Welsh, so much the better for them. I mean if they introduce changes, or go at things like a bull at a gate, they'll wish I'd gone on paying them interest. A smile does more than a smack here. If they inclose, for example----" "Ah, this new Act----" "Or any other Act There was a case at that No Man's Land of mine over there----" The Squire jerked his head in the direction of the shafts where the family fortunes had been sunk. "An Englishman came, and began to fence, and there was a Dafydd Dafis sort of fellow there, and this man Rodgers thought that because he wore strings round the knees of his corduroys he wasn't anybody of consequence ... and there you are. The only thing Edward the First could do with the bards was to destroy them, and they're the same breed yet.--So that's my advice. For the rest, you'd better see Sheard. Have another glass of port." And, after he had been shown the magnificent ruin of a staircase, and had noted without showing the grass on the Squire's paths and the moss in the Squire's grass, Edward Garden thanked the Squire for his advice and took his leave. He was able to come to terms with Sheard, and in the following spring a new house began to go up in Llanyglo. The site Edward Garden had selected for his house lay a little way behind the row of cottages, over the thatches of which it looked out to the sea. Rock cropped up there, amid a waste of bents and potentilla and sea-thrift and thyme, and a rill slipped over moss and, a little further on, disappeared into the sand, to emerge again down by the shore. From a stone quarry on the Porth Neigr road stone was still being got for the extension of Porth Neigr itself; and it would actually be nearer to bring it to Llanyglo. Sheard saw to that also, and Edward Garden, taking the Squire's advice, put Dafydd Dafis, match-boarder, in charge of the work. It would take time, but it would save time. And, so long as it was understood that it was Dafydd Dafis who might say to this man "Come," and he came, and to the other "Go," and he went, Edward Garden did not anticipate difficulties did he wish, later, to "stiffen" his supply of labour by importing a plumber, or a mason, or a carpenter or two from Manchester. So, in the spring, the rock was cleared and chisels began to clink; and John Willie Garden, away at school in Pannal, could scarce contain himself until the summer holidays should come. He sent, by letter, the most peremptory specifications. His room was to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. The letters also contained complaints to his mother that his health was seriously impaired by arduous study; so was the health of his friend Percy Briggs: indeed, all the fellows were remarking how greatly in need of a change of air he and Percy seemed. Mrs. Garden's chief preoccupation was that the new house should have water upstairs and a cupboard at every turn. And as that was the first building of their own that the folk of Llanyglo had ever seen, its progress became their daily talk. The farmers came from inland to look at it, and, as the weather grew milder, the fishermen no longer smoked of an evening under the shelter of their boats down by the jetty, but instead made a kind of club-house of the triangular pile of floor-boards that the Porth Neigr timber merchant presently delivered. They climbed inside this slatted prism, hung the interstices with sacking as a protection from the wind, and smoked and talked, while the stars peeped down on them. They talked of progress and innovation, and of how little they had ever thought they would live to see such a change as this on the face of their sandhills. "But it will not be as big as the Plas, whatever," one of them would remark, not so much as belittling Edward Garden's new house as in order to correct a certain tendency to wild and disproportionate talk. Indeed, they were proud of Llanyglo's growth. Only the building of another chapel could have made them prouder. "Aw-w-w, William Morgan, h-what a way to talk!" another would reply. "You talk like a great simpleton! You say next it is not so big as the railway station at Porth Neigr! Indeed, the Plas is big-ger, but it is di-lap-i-date, a pit-ty to see, and the staircase--aw-w-w dear! They do say Squire Wynne he go in lit-tle bedroom, not to fall through the floor!" "And the stables is lock up, all but one stall, and you shan't find a handful of corn there, no, not more than will feed one horse!" "There was sixteen horses there----" "And the Squire, he hunt----" "It all go to that Abercelyn in the mines--thousands of pounds!----" "There is land here to build stables if Mr. Garden wiss----" "Indeed, Hugh Roberts, if he build any more we be bigger than Porth Neigr, whatever!----" And this hyperbole always raised a laugh. Porth Neigr, besides being the head of the railway, had a market place, two banks, a stone quay, a court house, and an English Church. The house rose higher and higher, and by the time John Willie Garden came again, in July, it had reached the first floor. Long rows of roof slates were stacked under a temporary shed, and, as if he had not had lessons enough in the school by the Baptist Chapel, Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd did multiplication sums and Welsh-English exercises upon them. John Willie's eyes danced when they saw the scaffolding and ladders. He was six rungs up a ladder before you could have turned round. He was up that ladder and down a second and up a third almost as quickly, nor did he take breath until, short of swarming up the scaffold-poles, he had stood on the topmost point of the structure. Then, with the air of something accomplished, he condescended to the level ground again. Half of Dafydd Dafis's men lodged at one or other of the farms and cottages, to the tenants of which they were bound by ties of consanguinity; the others put up at the little alehouse half a mile out on the Porth Neigr road, which served also as a shop for the outlying farms. Dafydd paid their wages, and they had built a hearth near the mortar heap for the cooking of their dinners. John Willie dined daily with them. Never was such importance as that with which he came nigh to bursting. The rocks and the rabbits, the boats and the Trwyn, no longer called him; here was not only a house going up, but his house. In his father's absence he could give orders. He became knowing in limes and mortars, expert in the use of the plumb and level. He strutted about with a square, setting it carelessly against angles, and derided Eesaac Oliver and his slates and long-division sums. The eaves-level was reached; they began to get the roof-timbers up; the sandhills resounded with hammering and sawing; and the upper part of the house began to resemble a toast-rack against the sky. Only one stone remained to be set in position. This was the gable-stone with "E. G., 1882" upon it. John Willie warned Eesaac Oliver that the slates on which he ciphered would soon be required. As matters turned out, he was wrong in this. Already three men, a plumber, his mate, and a carpenter, had been down from Manchester, and fresh supplies of timber--sections of staircase and so on--had come in carts over the sound-deadening sandhills. But how all at once the work came to a sudden stop--how that toast-rack stood against the sky for another year without a slate upon it--and how Edward Garden, away in Manchester, had once more to accept the line of least resistance, while his son loitered disconsolately about the unfinished building until something even more exciting claimed his interest--to tell these things another chapter had better be begun. III THE MINDER The land on which, as Squire Wynne had told Edward Garden, other mortgages were being foreclosed, began a furlong or so behind the unfinished house, reaching to and including one of the farms--Fotty, John Pritchard's. It formed a three-hundred-yards-wide strip of bents and rough grazing, which spread out inland with Fotty in the middle of its base. The mortgagee was Squire Wynne's Liverpool wine-merchant, and he had accepted the mortgage partly because he did not wish to be at cross-purposes with such of Squire Wynne's friends as were good customers of his, and partly because he was not very likely to get anything else in settlement of a longish account. This account had been reckoned off the sum advanced, which, besides, was based on a low valuation; and, not wanting the land himself, he was ready enough to sell to any optimist who did. The land remained in the possession of the wine-merchant for exactly eleven weeks. At the end of that time he had found his optimist in the person of Terry Armfield. And who was Terry Armfield, that his affairs should thus become mixed up with those of Llanyglo? Well, the name of one of his grandfathers, which need not be mentioned, is to be found, in certain circumstances of notoriety, in Gomer Williams's _History of the Liverpool Privateers_; and that of his father is associated with the bright story of the tea-clippers. Thus a certain adventurousness in Terry may perhaps be accounted for. But whence the rest of him derived was a mystery. Belated young Tractarians who burn incense in their monastic bedrooms were no more common in Liverpool then than they are to-day. In appearance, Terry was an ill-adjusted compromise between an ascetic and a young man about town. He was tall and of a buoyant movement, excellently dressed, had burning and ecstatic brown eyes, and was possessed of an extraordinary power of impressing people as long as, and even a little longer than, he was actually in their presence. This was all very well as long as he spoke only of pictures that this self-made merchant ought to buy, or of books without which some shipper's newly formed library would be incomplete. He really knew a little about these things, as also he did about architecture and engravings, vestments and Ritualism and furniture. The trouble began when he went beyond them. Wealthy business men, looking up as Terry lounged into their offices, would put up their hands defensively, cry, "It's no good, Terry--I won't listen," but would presently find themselves listening none the less. It was not that Terry was plausible. Plausible was not the word. He persuaded you only because he was, for the time being, overwhelmingly persuaded himself. His capacity for enthusiasm was astonishing. Circumstances having driven him from his true vocation (the Church) into business, he traded as it were under Letters of Marque that had had an apostolic blessing. House-property, leases, patents, picture-exhibitions, concessions, bills for discount, Irish-harvester agencies, philanthropy on a paying basis, and a hundred even vaguer values--some idealistic strain in Terry so moved the dullard-on-the-make that he had a new light on business as a benison, and on money-making as something nobler than he had supposed. What such an one commonly lacked, Terry was full and running over with; and the end of the matter frequently was that it was judged to be worth a certain amount of risk to be on the side of Terry and the angels. Of course, Terry ought to have been locked up as a public danger. Anybody but Terry would have been locked up. But you cannot lock innocence and rapturous good faith up. Terry, if you had locked him up, would merely have sent for his crucifix, plunged into fresh scheming, and would have come out again as running over with piracies and the humanities as ever. So Terry Armfield, who hitherto had never heard of Llanyglo and of whom Llanyglo had never heard, took over Fotty and the strip of land that ran down to Edward Garden's unfinished house, with, as it happened, extremely notable results. For nobody who knew Terry ever supposed that he made purchases of real estate solely upon his own account. He represented others; and it is perhaps significant that the nickname by which he was known among the members of the Syndicate which made use of him was borrowed from the slang of the "swell mob." He was called "The Minder." Now the Minder, as you ought not to know, is the gentleman who makes himself charming to you while the others consult about how much you may be worth, and how you may most conveniently be made worth less. Often, like Terry, he himself is not in the real councils of his allies. They want his looks, his candours, his repute, his address, and in Terry's case they especially wanted his powers remarkable of persuasion. Until it should be decided what people were to be persuaded of, Terry minded. Little did John Pritchard, tenant-farmer of Fotty, dream of the solicitude with which his farm was regarded by a number of people who had never seen it and did not want ever to see it. Little did he think that that middling oat-bearing land was being minded and brooded upon. Little did he imagine what interest, what benevolence, what affectionate regard ... or, to put it in plain English, he had no notion whatever that, instead of having Squire Wynne for a landlord, he was now the tenant of a set of prospectus-vendors of whom two or three were the same men who had held those hopeful views on the paying-quantities of manganese that could be obtained from that other property of Squire Wynne's, the Abercelyn mines, thirty miles further down the coast. The Corporation did not insist on manganese or on anything else. On the contrary, it was accommodating in the extreme. You paid your money and took your choice what commodity you found on its properties; you could have had tin, iron, copper, lead, anything you happened to fancy. It merely wished to be able to show, in case of need, its indefeasible title to real land, at Llanyglo or anywhere else, but the further from civilisation the better. It would be safer, and really not much dearer, to buy Pritchard's farm, than it would be to have to confess in open Court that the tin or iron or lead shares of which it was trying to create the value, unfortunately happened to have Pritchard's farm sitting on the top of them. "No, we'd better get hold of a bit of real land from somewhere," the Syndicate had said. "Better have it in a new name too. All Abercelyn names exempt for three years. Who is there?... What about Armfield?" All had agreed that Terry would make an excellent Minder. When, in course of time, the Syndicate first heard from Terry (who heard it goodness knows where) that "glo" was the Welsh word for "coal," it was on the point of plumping for coal without further question. "What more do you want?" it asked itself. "'Glo'--'coal'; there you are. Place-name. Awful lot in a genuine place-name. Find it on an old map, to show that we didn't invent it, and the whole thing settles itself. There's bound to _be_ coal. Sure to be. They didn't call it that for nothing. All ground's got _some_thing in it. _I_ say coal. On the face of it. It seems to me Providential. (Shut up, Abercelyn; we're talking about Llanyglo now.) ... Who says coal, then?" ... But Llanyglo was not destined to be a colliery village. Latticed shaft-heads were not to rise under the Trwyn, nor men to descend in cages to the galleries deep under the sandhills. Edward Garden's house was not to become a mine-manager's residence, nor a coal-quay to be constructed where the wooden jetty stuck out like a stumpy thumb into the sea.--Nevertheless, it almost looked at one time as if it might have been so. The Syndicate's registered offices were within a hundred yards of Lime Street Station, and Terry, looking forth from an upper window, could see the august portico of St. George's Hall and the cabs and steam-trams running to and fro past it. He sat day by day at a high sloping desk, perched on a tall stool. A small pile of letters lay by his side, weighted with a surveyor's reel-tape, and on a shelf above the press with the dumb-bell arm, thrust among directories and files, were _Stones of Venice_ and _The Christian Year_. There was a green cardboard shade on the double-elbowed gas-bracket, and on the wall near it hung an ebony-edged T-square and a number of French curves. There was a second stool for callers, and in a small outer office a youth of sixteen read _The Boys of London and New York_ and chewed root-liquorice. The place was shabby, as befitted a hole-in-corner enterprise, but Terry saw not that shabbiness. He had splendour enough in his own visions. He did not look very busy, but he was. A dozen inspired and half-baked schemes fermented in his head, and besides these, he was minding Llanyglo--the thyme and wild pansies and butterflies of its sandhills, the glaucous blue sea-holly of its shore, its heathery Trwyn, its coal or what-not underfoot, and its crystal air overhead--especially its crystal air overhead.... IV "DIM SAESNEG" On the forenoon of that day on which work on Edward Garden's house suddenly ceased, Dafydd Dafis, sitting astride of a coping, was singing as he drove heavy cut nails into a beam. His song was martial, and it almost made his joinering warlike. The burden of it was that Cambria's foes (here a bang with the hammer) should fall beneath the sword (another bang) as the pine falls when the levin (bang) flashes from the cloud that hides the head of Arenig (bang, and a nail well home). John Willie Garden, who had heard somewhere that coins of the current mintage were placed in cavities in foundation stones, was chipping a hollow in the bedding of the "E.G." stone for the reception of a well-brightened sixpence and a document in his own handwriting, that should tell future ages how one John Willie Garden had lived and had done thus and thus. The sun was hot; the new timbers were as bright as John Willie's own primrose-coloured hair against the intense blue; and the workmen below seemed to stand on their shadows as lead soldiers stand on their little bases of metal. John Willie finished his cavity, and then clambered up to the ridge-tree. There, putting his hands behind his head, he lay on his back, his dangling legs balancing him below. He blinked up at the sky, and from time to time called across to Dafydd Dafis, "Peth a elwir (whatever the English word might be) yn Cymraeg, Dafydd?" Then Dafydd would give him the Welsh, and he would practise it softly. It was just on the stroke of midday when Dafydd abruptly broke off his singing in the middle of a word. John Willie, blinking up at the blue, waited for him to resume; as he did not do so, John Willie turned his head. Dafydd was looking away over the sandhills in the direction of John Pritchard's farm. John Willie sat up. "Who is it?" he asked. Dafydd continued to look under his hand.--"Indeed, it look like Mr. Sheard," he muttered, "but he have strangers with him. It is Mr. Sheard's carr-adge, whatever.... Hugh Roberts!" He called to the men down below, who were making ready for their midday meal. He said something in Welsh to them, and they too looked. Mr. Sheard's governess-cart was drawn up by the earth-wall half a mile away, and from it three figures had descended. They climbed over the wall and began to cross the sandhills. One of them walked slowly and somewhat after the manner of a clock-work toy, as if he was pacing a distance; and another, after looking this way and that about him, moved off to the right, apparently also pacing. He stopped and held up his hand, and then returned, laying out along the ground as he went, something that made a little glitter in the sun. They came together again, and seemed to confer. Then over the earth-wall John Pritchard climbed, and William Sheard went to meet him. After that they all pointed, in various directions. Dafydd Dafis, from the top of the pale yellow toast-rack, called something else in Welsh, too quick for John Willie to hear. Then he gazed again. Something else was coming along the Porth Neigr road. Dafydd, who had the eyes of a river-poacher, knew both the cart and the two men who rode on the load. It drew nearer. Sheard and the two men seemed to be explaining something to John Pritchard. After a time John Pritchard walked away. Dafydd Dafis descended from the roof, followed by John Willie Garden. He had put his hammer into his pocket; his little heap of cut nails remained on the coping. The men had gathered into a cluster, but none went over the sandhills to see what was happening. Then a frequently repeated word struck John Willie's ear. He turned to Dafydd Dafis. "Peth a elwir 'adwydd' yn Saesneg, Dafydd?" he asked. Dafydd Dafis looked as if he had never sung in his life. "Post--hedgestake," he replied. Slowly they got out their dinner. As they did so Howell Gruffydd came up from the beach. Formerly, he had rebuked Eesaac Oliver for speaking Welsh in the presence of those who did not understand it; now, John Willie Garden's presence was entirely disregarded. He did not understand six words of the low, rapid conversation. Then in the middle of it a light sound came over the sandhills, and the talk suddenly ceased. They waited. The sound came again. Hedgestakes were being flung from the cart down by the side of the road. The workmen continued to sit after dinner, but not a ladder was mounted again that day. John Pritchard was big and sickly and consumptive, and his farm kitchen was also the Llanyglo Post Office. There John Willie went at six o'clock that evening to post a letter for his mother. Nominally, John's mother, ancient Mrs. Pritchard, whom Dafydd Dafis so greatly loved, was the postmistress, but actually Miss Nancy Pritchard, the schoolmistress, did most of the work. She was sealing the letter-bag from a saucer of melted wax when John Willie entered. The postman's cart waited at the door, and beyond it, past the gate, could be seen the hedgestakes that had been shot down on the opposite side of the road. The postman was explaining something to John Pritchard, and Dafydd Dafis and his labourers listened in silence. In her chair by the fire sat ancient Mrs. Pritchard, seeming old as the Dinas itself, her face a skull with a membrane stretched over it, a black gophered snood surrounding it, her hands anatomies, and her mouth from time to time making a sort of weak baa-ing. Of the hushed and rapid conversation at the door, John Willie caught this time a phrase or two he understood. "Wait and see, whatever," he heard them say; "let them drive them in ... adwydd ... perhaps it be on Thursday ... Saesneg...." He approached the group. "Peth a elwir----" he began. But the men who formerly had made much of him now took no notice of him at all. The next day two strangers from Porth Neigr appeared at Llanyglo, and began to stake out and to enclose a belt of land that extended, roughly, from the Porth Neigr road on both sides of John Pritchard's farm nearly as far as Edward Garden's house. John Willie watched these two men at work with their pawls, measuring and driving, but the curious thing was that nobody else did so. Save for the Porth Neigr men, the blue and sulphur butterflies and the rabbits, the sandhills were extraordinarily deserted. John Willie wandered here and there in search of somebody to talk to, and by and by found himself in Howell Gruffydd's shop. The grocer showed his false teeth in a smile, and then continued to weigh sugar. "Well, John Willie Garden, can you say 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyll----' yet?" he asked, his eyes gleaming as brightly as the bright scoop in his hand. "Where's everybody?" John Willie demanded. "You look for Eesaac Oliver?" Howell asked. "He go errand for me, to the lighthouse. You meet him coming back if you go." "Where are all the men?" John Willie demanded again, and Howell made a quick and mocking gesture. "Indeed, one hide behind that cur-tain--quick, look see!... Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed when John Willie involuntarily turned in the direction in which he had pointed. "I cat-ss you that time, John Willie Garden! You think there's a man behind that lit-tle cur-tain, hardly so big as my apron! Your sister, she s'arper than that, whatever!... You go find Eesaac Oliver. He fetch eggs from the lighthouse. Perhaps you meet all the men there too----" And that was as much as John Willie could get out of him. It was plain that something extraordinary was toward. It was a habit of John Willie Garden's to look in at Pritchard's farm of an evening, and there to pass the news with John Pritchard and to watch his ancient mother, bent doublefold over her Bible, running a rush-light along line after line so close to the page that the book was scored across with bars of smoky brown. He went as usual that evening. But he had hardly opened the door when it was closed again upon him. "We go to bed," said John Pritchard, and packed John Willie off without his customary "Nos da." But John Willie knew that they were not going to bed. The door had not been closed so quickly but that he had seen a dozen men crowding the kitchen, and Dafydd Dafis's eyes, hollower than ever in the light of the candle that stood at his elbow, with a sentimental and knife-like gleam in them as they turned. The next morning, every stake that those two Porth Neigr men had driven in had been uprooted again, and a board with "Rhybudd" on it lay down the beach, already lapped by the rising tide. * * * * * It was once told to the writer of _The Visitors' Sixpenny Guide to Llanyglo and Neighbourhood_--a young man with so little regard for his bread and butter that he made a labour of love of a job that brought him in exactly ten pounds--it was once told to this over-conscientious author, by a man who had known Squire Wynne very well, that the Squire, finding himself one day in Liverpool, and taking a walk to the docks with an acquaintance in the Royal Engineers, pointed down the Mersey past New Brighton, and said, "Do you know, I've sometimes had the idea that if this country was ever invaded the enemy would come up there?"--"But surely," exclaimed his friend, "it's a difficult piece of navigation?"--"Yes," the Squire replied, "but half the pilots are Welshmen." No doubt the Squire said it without accepting too much responsibility for it. No doubt, too, he would not have allowed anybody else to suggest that Wales might slyly open a back-door into England. But that there was something, much or little, in it, the famous Llanyglo Inclosures Dispute, that now began, lasted off and on for three years, and then came to an end in as fantastic a manner as you could conceive, seemed to show. For that dispute would not have been so obstinate and envenomed had it been simply a question of grazing, turbary, and right-of-way. True, there might still have been the fence-destruction and gate-burning that presently filled John Willie Garden's heart with a fearful joy; but--and this is what made the difference--Owen Glyndwr and his triumph over Mortimer would not have been dragged in, nor Taliesin and his prophecy, nor Howell Dda, nor Gruffydd ap Rhys, nor Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, nor a hundred other grey and valiant and unforgotten ghosts of princes and saints and bards whose names string (as it were) all Wales, from Braich-y-Pwll to St. David's Head, making of it one Western Harp in which the wind of sentiment is never still. For these fences on the Llanyglo sandhills were not fences--they were Saxon fences. They were not notice-boards and gates--they were the insulting tokens of invasion and rapine and defeat. The Welshman says of himself that he is able to keep only that which he has lost, and, in Dafydd Dafis's view of it, at all events, not a piratical Liverpool Syndicate, but a marauding Saesneg king had come again. On the evening of the day on which those fences were laid flat again, John Willie went once more to Pritchard's farm, and this time was not refused admittance. Perhaps nobody either saw or heard him enter. As if it had been put there for a signal, a single candle in a flat tin stick stood among the geraniums in the little square window-recess, and, save for a dull glow from the shell of peats on the hearth, that was the only light in the room. Again seven or eight men were gathered there, some sitting on the hard old horsehair sofa, two on the table, and others crouched or standing in corners; and the candle-light rested here on a bit of lustre-ware, there on a chair knob, and elsewhere on a cheekbone or the knuckles of a hand. It barely reached Dafydd Dafis, who sat in the farthest corner, with his cap on his head and his head resting against a Post Office proclamation that hung on the wall. No sound could be heard save the loud tock-tocking of the tall clock with the in-turned scrolls on the top and the gilt pippin between them. John Willie thought it would be more grown-up to accept their silence and to share their motionlessness. He set his elbows on the dresser and sank his neck between his shoulders. The shadow of great John Pritchard, who sat on the sofa's end, covered John Willie and half the wall behind him as well, and John Willie's eyes only discovered Dafydd Dafis in the farther corner when Dafydd moved. As he moved, a bit of gilt fluting dipped forward out of the gloom of the chimney-corner. Dafydd had his harp. The next moment a single thrumming note had broken out. It was followed by a soft chord of three or four more.... "_Mae hen wlad fy Nhadau yn anwyl i mi, Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri_----" It is the commonest air you will hear in Wales--_Land of my Fathers_. Quarrymen sing it as they work by their trucks, slate-splitters whistle it as they tap in their wedges, farmers' lads tss-tss it between their teeth as they clump along the road, sitting sideways on their horses. You would think it had died an age ago of familiarity and repetition. Had it been _God Save the King_, played at an English theatre, there would have been a single line of it, half lost in the reaching for shawls and cloaks and fans, and here and there a man would have stood with an interval of an inch between his hat and his head, and already the attendants would have been getting out the sheeting for the stalls--so long is it since we knew adversity. But here, it needed but a stake driven into a foreshore that would hardly have pastured a donkey, and that was enough--so much adversity have they seen.... Then, as John Willie craned his neck, a man moved from in front of the candle among the geraniums, and Dafydd Dafis's hands could be seen. They seemed not so much hands as multiple things, assemblies of members each one of which was possessed of an independent life and will. There was not a finger that did not lurk, stiffen, clutch, and then start back from the throbbing string as if each note had been a poignant deed done, an old and secret vow redeemed. For the images that were evoked were cruel images. Those fingers of Dafydd's might have been choosing, not among strings of wire and gut, but among the living nerves of an enemy whose moans of suffering were transmuted into music. Know, that this--not the languid wrist nor the caressing hand, not the swans-neck forearm nor the coquetry of the foot on the pedal--not these, but the hook, the claw, the distortion, and the wreaking and the more than human and yet somehow less than human love--this is the harping of Wales.... "_Gwlad! Gwlad!_----" Dafydd's head against the Post Office notice did not move, but his twisted hand might have wrenched the sinews from their shoulder-blade of a frame---- "_Pleidiol wyf i'm Gwlad!_----" He did not sing the words, but the words that sang themselves in the ear of every man there meant that he was so enwrapped in his country that an alien stake in her soil was a stake in his heart also.... Within a week of that harping of _Hen Wlad_, Terry Armfield had more to mind than he had ever reckoned for. There was no doubt that the flame was fanned largely by the Chapels. These were, respectively, of the three denominations most common in Wales, namely, Baptist, Calvinistic Methodist, and Independent; and Terry Armfield, coming down presently to see for himself what all the trouble was about, gave one affrighted look at their architecture, gasped, "Shade of Pugin!" and fled. The Baptist Chapel was a plain slate-roofed Noah's Ark of stone that, with the day-school adjoining it, stood alone in the middle of the sandhills. At one end of its roof-ridge was a small structure in which a bell swung, and the building had this further peculiarity, that, good stone being cheaper at Llanyglo than common bricks, the latter material had been used wherever an embellishment had been desired. The Independent Chapel was also of stone, with zinc ventilators like those of a weaving-shed; these looked over the fishermen's cottages out to sea not far from Edward Garden's house. And the third Chapel, that of the Methodists, of which body Howell Gruffydd was the principal pillar, lay behind the farms. It was of corrugated iron and wood, painted inside with a skirting of chocolate brown and upper walls of a peculiarly sickly light blue. On the walls were stencilled ribbons with V-shaped ends, and these bore texts in Welsh. Architecturally all these were hideous, but, to those whose grandfathers had worshipped in the fields and in clefts of the barren mountains and on the wide seashore, they had the beauty of a thing that has been ardently desired, and long suffered for, and passionately loved. For from these three Chapels came not only the impulse of the spiritual life of Llanyglo, but its local politics of dissent also. Education, the Poor Law, matters of Local Government, Temperance, Tenure, the Eisteddfod, and the nursing of Nationalism--if these things were not actually Llanyglo's religion, they were hardly divisible from it. And this welding of Faith with secular works was helped by two other circumstances. The first circumstance was that no language was heard in the chapels but Welsh; and the second was that, as a result of the local-preacher system, three times out of four the Welsh issued from the same mouths--from Howell Gruffydd's mouth at the Methodist Chapel, from big John Pritchard at the Baptists', and from Owen Morgan's among the Independents. None of these went quite so far as openly to incite to the destruction of fences. They merely prayed to be delivered from the situation in which they found themselves. Whereupon, like Drake's men, heartened by prayer, they rose from their knees again to take another pull on the rope. So three times in six weeks those fences were set up and laid flat again; and then it was that Terry Armfield came down, saw the Chapels (as above mentioned), gasped "Shade of Pugin!" and straightway sought Squire Wynne. But before ever he set eyes on the Squire he had already almost forgotten the errand that had brought him. As the servant showed him to the dining-room he saw that noble ruin of a staircase, and his eyes became illumined. Then, in the dining-room, those same eyes rested on the coffered ceiling and the portraits and the wide mullioned lattice. By the time the Squire entered he was adoring the stately stone fireplace. He swung round, hearing the Squire's step. "Magnificent, magnificent!" he cried. "Show me over the house--I beg you to show me over the house!----" The Squire, who had had this kind of visitor before (though none with quite that perilous smoulder in his eye that Terry had) naturally concluded that a fellow-antiquary, finding himself in the neighbourhood, had permitted himself to beg for a sight of the faded glories of the Plas. "I'll show you over part of the house with pleasure," said the Squire; and he did so. "Magnificent!" Terry cried again, when they were once more back in the dining-room. "And oh, that rood-screen--early sixteenth--and those sedilia--in your Church over there! I spent an hour there as I came along." "Oh, you came Porth Neigr way, did you?" said the Squire. As if he had previously written the Squire a letter setting forth his business in detail, which therefore he need not repeat, Terry leaped light-heartedly ahead. "Yes, sir--and then, after that, to come upon those incredible Chapels! (That's a misnomer, by the way, unless they contain relics.) ... Of course, after that I'm not surprised at anything these people do--fences or anything else----" The Squire was reaching port from the sideboard.--"Eh?" he said, not quite understanding. "_Those_ places an expression of religious emotion!" Terry cried, throwing up his hands. "Of course, what's happened was a perfectly natural result! Commit such an outrage on the æsthetic sense as that and--and _no_ fence is safe! If I'd seen those Chapels first I'd as soon have bought a volcano as that land! They ought to have been mentioned by the vendors--flagrant _suppressio veri_--deliberate concealment of a material fact--an action ought to lie--by Jove, I've a good mind to take advice about it!----" "I beg your pardon?" said the puzzled Squire. A very few questions served to enlighten him. His mouth twitched as he filled his harebrained visitor's glass. "Well," he said, "I don't quite follow your processes, but your result seems all right. If you mean there's some connection between the Chapels and your fences being pulled down, I dare say you're not very far wrong. The places of worship do settle a good many things indirectly here. But our own Establishment's been called a branch of the Civil Service, so I don't see how we can complain if some of their activities are a little secular too." "'A little secular!'" echoed Terry. "Pulling down fences 'a little secular!' ... Now I'm anxious not to go to extreme lengths----" "Eh?" said the Squire rather quickly. He gave Terry a longish look.... "Do you know Wales?" he asked politely. "I do not. But I've not heard that it's outside the Law. I was going to say, that I don't want to issue summonses if it can be avoided----" Thereupon the Squire, who was inclined to like this half-mystical zany of a guest, gave him the same advice he had given to Edward Garden. "Oh, avoid it if you possibly can!" he said good-humouredly. "There's nothing these people won't do for you if you go the right way about it, but it must be the right way. A new neighbour of yours seems to be getting along with them quite successfully, a man called Garden. Quite an opportunist, I should say--takes things just as he finds them--settles every question strictly on its merits and has a good deal of audacity up his sleeve for use at the right moment, I don't doubt. Can't you take a leaf out of his book?" "Do they pull down his fences?" Terry demanded over his shoulder; he had been looking at that marvellous fireplace again. "I don't think so. As a matter of fact they're building his house for him.--By the way--Sheard's told me very little about it--have you bought your land to build on?" Terry, remembering his Syndicate, had a momentary check.--"I don't know yet," he confessed. "Because if you have," the Squire continued, "and find them employment--spend money in the place--and use a certain amount of tact--you might hit it off with them. But do try to overlook their Chapels. A soul's sometimes saved under a tin roof, you know." Terry looked as if he would far rather have his soul damned under a Gothic nave.--"That's simply buying 'em off," he said. He would have preferred to burn them, each at one of the stakes they had uprooted. "Well.... I'm afraid it's all the advice I can give you.--And now I shall have to ask you to excuse me. I'll show you a rather fine carved kingpost before you go if you like----" And Terry presently departed for Porth Neigr again, where he took the taste of the Chapels out of his mouth in a further ecstatic contemplation of the early sixteenth-century rood-screen. The fences were set up again. John Willie Garden could never be sufficiently grateful to his stars that what happened next came before he departed for school again. He had gone to bed that night, but was lying awake, thinking of the suspended building. He knew that the resumption of that building was not irremediably involved in the fencing dispute; Edward Garden had established a serviceable goodwill in Llanyglo; and that very night, standing by Pritchard's manure-heap, Dafydd Dafis had all but told John Willie that when Llanyglo had settled with the intruder it would have time to spare for the child of its adoption again. He had told him this, and had then ruffled up John Willie's fair hair with his hand and had added that it was ten o'clock and time he was in bed. His little window, as well as that of the next room, where his mother slept, overlooked the sandhills, and John Willie, lying awake, did not at first notice the change in its colour. Neither did his ears hear at first a low muffled cracking that had been going on for some time. But suddenly he sat up. The muslin curtains and the claywashed embrasure of the window had a rusty glow, which reached the counterpane of the bed in which John Willie lay. The moment he saw this John Willie was out of bed. Then, within thirty seconds, he had plunged into his jersey, tucked his nightgown hastily into his knickers, and, making as little noise as possible, had tiptoed down the stairs and out of the cottage. The bright glow over the sandhills guided him, and he ran as fast as he could through the muffling sand. The continuous cracks were like pistols, and a deep roaring could be heard, which became louder. Then, mounting a hillock, John Willie saw the beautiful blaze. It was as high as a cottage, and the twisting, upstreaming column of sparks above it rose fifty feet into the night. It illumined the sandhills far and wide. The Baptist Chapel and schoolhouse looked as if they were cut out of red cardboard against the night. Even the zinc ventilators of the Independent Chapel, down by the sea, showed faintly. Then all became grey again as a dozen fresh stakes were piled on. By the time John Willie Garden got there these too had caught, with volleys of cracks. Every man in Llanyglo was there, and, farther off, groups of women also. The heat was intense, so that the men and lads who ran in to throw back half-consumed ends did so with their faces averted. "Why didn't you tell me?" said John Willie to Dafydd Dafis reproachfully. Dafydd was watching this beautiful Red Dragon of a flame that was burning Saxon stakes. His eyes blinked rapidly. Then he leant over John Willie, and his forefinger tapped two or three times on the boy's heart. "You wass tell me you go to bed," he whispered. "You wass tell me that, at ten o'clock, at John Pritchard's. There iss two men over there----" suddenly he straightened himself again and pointed, "--you can tell them the same whatever." A hundred and fifty yards away two men watched. They were the men from Porth Neigr who had set up the fences. They put up at a wayside cottage two miles away, and probably they were not surprised at what was happening. They did not approach any nearer. Then there was a call of "John Willie!" and Mrs. Garden's terrified face could be seen in the outer ring of light. John Willie was haled off, in a rage that was nearer to tears than he would have admitted. Four days later summonses were served on Dafydd Dafis and two other men. The serving of those summonses had an instant and very remarkable effect. This effect was, that three of the inhabitants of Llanyglo straightway lost all recollection of the English language. And not only did they, the summoned ones, lose it, but every witness called from Llanyglo fell into an ignorance as blank. This happened at Sessions, before Squire Wynne himself, who, in the days before this visitation of forgetfulness, had talked English to all of them. The gloomy magistrates' Court opposite Porth Neigr railway station was crowded. Terry Armfield, at whose instance the summonses had been issued, thought he had never seen such a set of pigjobbers as stood against the perspiring walls or sat with their chins on their outspread forearms, their caps in their hands or in the pockets of their corduroys. The two men who had put up the fences sat in the well of the Court. They were brothers, and their name was Kerr. The skylight shone on the baldish head of the elder of them, and both had given their evidence in a strong Lancashire accent. They had been watching on the sandhills, they said, expecting something of the sort, and knew that it had taken place at exactly ten o'clock, because they had both looked at their watches.... So "Dim Saesneg," said man after man; and the Squire could only make dots with his pen on the blotting-paper before him, keep his eyes from Terry Armfield, and call for an interpreter. Now interpretation takes time, during which time the person with most to gain can be thinking of the tale he will tell next. So the prosecuting solicitor stood up before Dafydd Dafis, and this kind of thing began: "Were you on this land at ten o'clock that night?" ("_Oeddych chi ar y tir yma am ddeg o'r gloch y noson hono, Dafydd Dafis?_" This from the interpreter.) A rapid denial from Dafydd, not a hair of his shaggy moustache moving. "Ask him where he was." "_Lle r'oeddych chi, Dafydd Dafis?_" The harpist, his fingers twisting his cap, answered that he had been at Pritchard's farm, and this also was translated. "Have you any witnesses?" ("_Oes genych chi dystion, Dafydd Dafis?_") "Eh?" "_Oes genych chi dystion?_" "_R'oeddwn efo John Willie Garden._" ("He says he can call the son of the man who is building a house there, sir.") ... And so it went on, hour after hour, with the English evidence likewise translated for the benefit of the defendants. At the end of the first day the case was adjourned, but it came on again on the morrow, and again on the day after that. It began to dam all other business. As a block in traffic causes an accumulation behind, so other cases began to collect--drunks, dog-licences, drivings without lights, and innumerable other petty disputes. There was no question that the fences had been burned; the only question was whether they had got hold of the right men. The Bench could not understand the obstinacy with which the two Lancashire witnesses persisted that the outrage had occurred at exactly ten o'clock. "But mightn't it have been half-past ten, or eleven, or even half-past eleven?" they were asked again and again. "Ah, it might," they admitted open-mindedly. "But it wasn't," they added unshakably. Dafydd Dafis wanted to know what they said. "Oh, translate it," the Squire sighed, and for the fortieth time it was translated. "_R'oeddwn efo John Willie Garden_," said Dafydd once more.... And that was great glory for John Willie, for he was called, asked whether he knew the nature of an oath, was sworn, and raised a general laugh by varying the formula with which the Court was not so drearily familiar, and saying, in Welsh, "_Dim Cymraeg._" He stood to it that at ten o'clock Dafydd Dafis had been talking to him by Pritchard's manure-heap. "Oh, for God's sake settle it or do something!" the Squire said impatiently to Terry Armfield, as he crossed the road to the Station Hotel for lunch. "You can't say I didn't warn you." "I doubt whether my own witnesses would let me now," Terry replied. "They're as cranky in their way as your own Fenians. Besides, as I told you, I'm acting for others." "Well, if I bind 'em over they'll only do it again," sighed the Squire. Terry himself began to weary. After all, he had other things to mind than a piece of beggarly waste land dotted with Chapels that were a blasphemy of the name of beauty. As the Squire ate his chop in the coffee-room, the two witnesses from Lancashire sat each on a tall stool in the sawdusted tap round the corner. Thick imperial pint glasses of mild ale stood on the counter before them. The elder and baldish one was a man of three or four and forty, a hard, handy little man, with a curious dip and slope about his right shoulder. This slight lopsidedness he had acquired during the years in which he had wandered North Wales buying and felling alders for clog-soles. Any time this last twenty years you might have come across him in his little canvas hut in the middle of a wood, with a pile of split alder-billets on one side of him which, plying his hinged knife on its solid base with marvellous dexterity, he shaped roughly into the clog-soles which he cast on a pile on his other side, while his brother felled. He would buy all the alders in a wood, at so much a foot over all; the rough-dressed soles went off to Manchester; and no doubt a good many of them found their way into Edward Garden's spinning-sheds. In the course of his travels he had picked up from the gentry and their stewards volumes of gossip of families and their vicissitudes, of wills, boundaries, timber-news, and customs and tenures rapidly becoming obsolete; and his coat, a brown check with wide pockets, had probably been made a dozen years before in Conduit Street. He wore a tie, but no collar. As the Court had assumed on its own responsibility that he spoke no Welsh, he had not considered it his business to correct the mistake, but had allowed them to translate for him also--perhaps for reasons not fundamentally different from those of Dafydd Dafis himself. He had half a week's stubble on his chin and thin upper lip; he spat with great accuracy; and he turned to humour things not generally accounted humorous, such as scaffold accidents, fights, and deaths from dropsy. His brother, save that he wore a collar and no tie, was a younger edition of him. They drank from the thick glasses in silence, and then the elder of them drew out a short clay pipe with a dottle in the bottom of the bowl, struck a match on the side of it, and lighted up. The dottle made a noise like frying. His brother also drew out his pipe, a clay shaped like a cowboy's head. He gave an indescribably short jerk of his head in the direction of the other's waistcoat pocket, then, when the stub of cake was thrown over to him, cut it with a knife with a curved blade. He stuffed these brains of black tobacco into the cowboy's head, and made another minute gesture. This was a request for a match. Then, bringing out sixpence from his pocket, he knocked once with the heavy glass on the counter. "Two more cups o' tea," he said to the young woman who approached. They smoked again in silence. It was the elder brother who spoke first. "I'm capped about them watches, an' right!" he mused. The other took a pull at his beer, and replaced the cowboy pipe in his mouth. "I cannot think th' bairn wor telling 'em lies," the elder one mused again. "Gi'e me another match," said his brother. The alder-buyer's wrinkled eyes were peering sideways at an auction announcement pinned to the wall. He shifted his feet in the legs of the tall stool. By and by he spoke again. "Let's see. Let's study it out.... We com' home at tea-time that day, didn't we?" "Ay." "Then we went out into th' yard and washed we'rsens at th' bucket." "Ay." A pause, and then, the speaker's eyes on his hearer's face like two prickers: "Did yet tak' your waistcoat off?" "I cannot tell ye." "I did mine. I threw it down on a chair i' t' kitchen." This time the younger brother shifted his feet. "Happen I did mine an' all." "Wor your watch i' your pocket?" "Ay, it wad be." "So wor mine." They drank thoughtfully and simultaneously, and again the silence fell. Then, more slowly still, the elder Kerr resumed. "D'ye remember a chap coming in, a thin chap, 'at spoke Welsh to t' Missis?" "Ay." "He com' to fetch a pair o' boots to mend." "Ay." "Think ye----" again the look as of prickers, "--think ye there wor owt?" "How, owt?" "'At he wanted to know what time it wor, or owt?" "There wor t' clock." "Ay...." There were minutes of silence this time. Evidently the younger brother occupied them by taking, in thought, a considerable journey. He spoke as if in objection to some far-fetched surmise. "But they'd ha' to be set forrard again," he grunted. "Ay, I'm bothered wi' that," the elder admitted, "--wi'out t' Missis herself----" "Aw!... Think ye?..." They knocked for two more cups of tea. "And we've been swearing to ten o'clock." "So ye think there wor summat?" "I cannot think t' lad wor telling 'em lies," said the alder-buyer. This time they both peered reflectively at the auction announcement on the wall, smoking and spitting as they peered. V THE HAFOD UNOS "Then," said Terry's Syndicate, or such of its members as lounged in Terry's office, looking down on the Lime Street and St. George's Hall pavements as if they had been so many fishermen selecting a likely spot for the casting of a fly, "what about going back to the old idea--coal?" "Hm!----" (a very dubious "Hm!").--"Far better have another shot at manganese--especially after what's happened----" What had happened had started remotely enough from Llanyglo. It had started, to be exact, in the Balkans. Much manganese comes from the Balkans; a war there had suddenly made the supply a mere trickle, so that prices had whooped up; and--wonder of wonders--those old workings of Squire Wynne's, farther along the coast, actually looked like paying. Terry's Company, unhappily, had just transferred its rights, and was rather sore about it. "Wouldn't that be a little too--timely?" a timid member suggested. "Not if you--er--put it properly. It's only thirty miles away----" The speaker paused from delicacy. "From the real manganese" was understood. "Might send a geologist down--one we could trust----" A very young member of the Syndicate hazarded a remark.--"But wouldn't burnt mine-works come dearer than burnt fences?" They smiled indulgently at him. He was merely suffering from a slight confusion of ideas. Nobody had said anything about mine-works. Then they turned to Terry. "What do you say, Armfield?" ... It was now winter, and the dispute was still dragging on. There had been no further fence-burning, but the Member for the constituency had been memorialised, a joint meeting had been held in the Llanyglo schoolroom, and he had promised to come down and see for himself how matters stood. Until he should do so the disputants glared, so to speak, at one another. A certain element of contempt, that looked at first like tolerance, had even entered into the quarrel. Thus, a section of fence on a portion of the sandhills that it would have been a positive inconvenience to visit was allowed to stand. Llanyglo preferred to reserve its strength. But elsewhere the stakes lay half buried in the sand, and John Willie Garden now and then wondered what sort of a raft they would make. "The whole thing looks like being a damned bad spec," the Syndicate grumbled. That opinion seemed to be gaming strength. There seemed to be more than a chance that Llanyglo, its heathery Trwyn and its purple mountains, its unproductive sandhills and its non dividend-paying sea, would be written off by Terry's Syndicate as a total loss. Then, all in a night, something astonishing happened at Llanyglo. The words "all in a night" are to be understood in their very plainest sense. Granted that it was a winter's night, and therefore a long one, with the darkness setting in soon after four and the sun not coming up behind the mountains again until nearly eight; none the less the fact remained that Llanyglo went to bed as usual, and woke up to rub its eyes, unable to believe what it so plainly saw. What had happened was this: With Edward Garden's house-roof still a toast-rack against the wintry sky, and his slates just as they had been left after Eesaac Oliver's last long-division sum, and only half the staircase yet fitted, and the little socket John Willie had scooped out under the date-stone still awaiting its sixpence--with all this arrested as life and growth and motion were arrested in the Enchanted Palace, the first new house had gone up in Llanyglo. Where had been nothing the night before, there it now was, staring at them when the sun rose, a house, with smoke coming out of its chimney. * * * * * That same friend of Squire Wynne's who repeated to the author of the _Sixpenny Guide_ the Squire's remark about invasion _viâ_ the Mersey, told him also what a Welsh "Hafod Unos" is. "You know what the words mean," he said. "Strictly speaking, it's the summer-house--pavilion--shelter--of a night. The essentials are that it must be built on common land, and in a single night. Then they can't eject you. At least that's the idea. Don't ask me how it stands in Law. It may be a kind of squatter's right, or anything else, or it may have no standing at all. Probably it hasn't. But that's neither here nor there. They have their notions about it, and those at any rate are immemorial. Look here: you're pottering about this country just now; just count how many houses you find with the name 'Hafod Unos.' You'll find quite a lot. There's a very big one Bangor way, that probably took some years to build, but probably one of these places was its foundation.... And a house 'within the meaning of the Act,' so to speak, means that smoke must have gone up the chimney. Cook your breakfast there, and--well, after that you're a sort of tolerated freeholder. It might be worth putting into your Guide Book. You'd better add a footnote, though, that the 'f' in 'hafod' is a 'v,' and 'unos' is pronounced 'innos.' ... Not at all; you're welcome to any help I can give you----" * * * * * Llanyglo, snugly in bed, had heard the sounds across the sandhills during the night, but they had been set down to the newest development of the fencing dispute. This development was that, a week or so before, several cartloads of undressed stone had been shot down by the side of the sandy gully that ran from Pritchard's gap down to the shore. And Llanyglo had smiled. Aha! They were going to build a walled enclosure, were they? Something that wouldn't burn, whatever? Well, well, if it amused them to build walls on winter nights when everybody else was warm in bed, they might. They would only lose their labour in the end. Mr. Tudor Williams, of Ponteglwys, was going to ask a question in the House of Commons, yes, and he was coming down to speak at the Chapel and to see for himself. It was a cold night for building walls, whatever---- So they stayed in bed, and only the revolving Trwyn light, two reds and a white, saw the planting of the thorn in Llanyglo's side. The two Kerrs did not do it alone. It took four of them--"a Kerr to each corner," as Howell Gruffydd afterwards said. The two other brothers had been sent for from Ratchet, where one of them worked in an asbestos factory and the other was a builder's labourer; and if these imported ones lacked that spur of conviction that their watches had been tampered with by tricky Welshmen, they had another and a double incentive--the sense of family unity, and of the honour of the gradeliest county on earth, Lancashire. No Kerr, no lad from Lancashire whomsoever, could thole to be bested by a Welshman. Lancashire was the place for which Johnnie Briggs played cricket, the place where the Waterloo Cup Meeting was held. They danced in clogs there, clogs with soles of Welsh alder, and laaked at quoits and knurr and spell, and knew a bit about homing pigeons, not to speak of cocks, the game kind. They were lads, and right, in Lancashire.--Wales? Wales produced nothing but alders and oats and goats and Chapels. The idea had been that of Ned, the eldest brother, and it was part of the miscellaneous general information he had picked up on his alder-prospecting through Merionethshire and Montgomery and Carnarvon and Denbigh and Flint. He had seen a way of convicting Llanyglo out of its own mouth. They threw down fences on the grounds that the land was common land; very well, if it was common, as they claimed, it was a proper site for a Hafod Unos. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander; and merely as a poke in the eye for watch-tinkering Welshmen, and a vindication of Lancashire's superior wit and malice, it would be worth a night's work to see their faces in the morning. So to work in the dark the four brothers got. They helped themselves to a modest slice of Llanyglo earth, plotted it out with stakes and string, and then began to dig. The night was moonless, and they worked by the light of four lanterns. These illumined little enough of the waste; the moving, straddling shadows they cast hardly began before they were lost in the darkness again. Knitting-needles of light came and went again on the polished handles of the rising and falling spades, and faintly, regularly, and as if a spirit passed high overhead in the night, the intermittent Trwyn beam swung--red, red, white--red, red, white---- They had not to dig deep; there is much volcanic rock under the Llanyglo sand; and they had not set up fences half a dozen times without having a notion where it was. "Here we are," Harry, the builder's labourer grunted as his spade gave a clink and a jump in his hand. "I thowt it wadn't be far off.--Is t' barril there, Tommy?" Across a mound of thrown-up sand one of the lanterns cast a short parabola of shadow. It was the shadow of a nine-gallon barrel of beer. "Nay, we mun do a bit first," Tommy replied, spitting on his hands and driving in his spade again. Their house already existed, complete in their practical heads, before ever a spade was lifted. They had seen through its entire anatomy in the taproom of the Station Hotel, with beer to solve all difficulties. Nothing was done twice, and brother did not get in brother's way. Even as Howell Gruffydd said, they took a corner of their plan apiece and dry-walled, all save Tommy, who went to and fro with a hand-cart, fetching stone, not too much at a time, because of the dead softness of the sand. For the general design Ned's word was law; for details, each used his own gumption. They worked and grunted, and worked and grunted, and worked. By the time Sirius appeared over faraway Delyn, and Orion balanced himself on Mynedd Mawr, they had a serviceable first course laid. Then they put on their coats again, for it was a bitter night and they perspired, and with a single blow Tommy neatly tapped the barrel. They drank, threw off their coats again, and set to work once more. "Never heed that, Sam," Ned said once, seeing his brother elaborating the stark essential plan that had been agreed upon in the taproom of the Station Hotel. "T' corners, t' beams, and t' roof; we haven't time to paint it and put a pot o' geraniums i' t' window." By one o'clock the lanterns showed four irregular angles of masonry, shoulder-high, as rough as you please, but true by plumb and level. This might be a joke against Llanyglo, but it was a workmanlike one. Only two of the brothers now walled, for they had only two ladders; Sam helped Tom to lift and carry beams. By three o'clock only two of the beams were laid, but they were the principal ones, and Ned seemed well content. "That's t' main o' t' work," he said, with satisfaction. "How's t' barril going on, Tom?" "True by t' level yet," Tom replied. "Shall we start on th' bread and cheese?----" "Did ye think on to bring some pickled onions?" "Ay." "Then we'll ha' we're nooning." They took their nooning, with Sirius now over Mynedd Mawr, and Orion soaring like a kite. They took it at their leisure; they were "lads from a reight place," setting about a job as if they meant to finish it, not Welshmen matchboarding. A mountain of sand filled the space within their four corners, and they lay on their backs on it, smoking, and watching the red and white spokes of the light high over their heads, twenty-mile spokes, of a wheel that had no circumference but its sweep through the night. Now and then Sam gave a low chuckle; but Ned smoked, spat, and was silent, save that he said from time to time, "Did ye number and letter them chamfers, Harry?" or some similar question. You would have said they had a month before them. Certainly the Kerrs, when there was a surprise to be prepared for foreigners who meddled with their watches, were members one of another. At half-past three they set to work again. By four Ned had climbed up above, and was sitting astride a beam with the light of a lantern shining up on his streaming face. "Give us another inch, Sam," he grunted, "--a bit more--a bit more--_whoa!_ Tom, that quoin--no, th' one wi' th' bolt--this is th' chimney end--and get them three strutts ready, accordinglie to th' letters.... How are ye down there, Harry?" The mason brother was building the chimney. It was an outside one, massive as a buttress, and Harry was building it well and truly, for it was the essential of the house. Smoke must go up it before dawn, the hearth-smoke of civilised man, the lowly and secular and beautiful token that he has made himself an abiding-place on a spot of earth, and becomes part of that spot, and it part of him, so that to deracinate him is to thrust him back again into the bestial state and to make the land as desert as the sea. By all prognostication, Edward Garden's smoke should have been the first to add itself to that of the cluster of humble dwellings between the mountains and the waves that was Llanyglo; but of that lawn of lightsome blue that veils Llanyglo to-day the breakfast-smoke of the Kerrs was the fore-runner. At half-past four they were shovelling out the mountain of sand and making the hearth for it. By six Tommy had brought in the bundle of dry twigs and faggots he had carefully hidden away. Harry was filling in the space between the main beam and the transom of the door; when Tom asked him for a match he sprang down, and Ned and Sam also descended from the roof. "What time is it?" Tom asked. Ned gave a glance round, and smiled for the first time that night as he drew out his watch. "Five past six," he said, and added, with indescribable dryness, "--unless som'b'dy's been meddling wi' my watch." "Here goes," said Tommy, striking a match.... They exchanged glances that were near to winks as they watched the flames. It was their equivalent of a cheer. The night paled; the Trwyn light went out; and off the headland a seal disported itself in the icy sea. The day stole across Delyn, but Mynedd Mawr still remained an awful precipice of ink--the shadow of the morning bank lay over him. Then came the first glitter on the waves, and, as if with light all other faculties awake, folk became conscious of the crowing of cocks and the falling of the breakers on the shore. Howell Gruffydd got up and began to rekindle his fire. A bolt was shot back at Pritchard's farm. Dafydd Dafis packed his breakfast in his tin and set out for his day's work--a little reslating of the roof of the Baptist Chapel. But on his way across the sandhills he suddenly changed, not only his direction, but his gait also. He advanced cautiously, skirted certain mounds of sand that he did not remember to have seen before, and then as suddenly drew back. Then, instead of advancing again, he returned by a circuitous route, dropped into a sunken sandy way, and then ran as fast as his legs would carry him down to the cottages. There he thrust his head into Morgan's cottage and said something, and ran to the next one--or rather to the next but two, for Edward Garden's double cottage had been locked up since October. Then Howell Gruffydd came to his shop door, and Dafydd called him. Five minutes later half Llanyglo was out on the sandhills staring through a gap at something that lay beyond. It was an extraordinary house they saw, and then went round to the back to look at from another point of view. It appeared to consist of a living-room and a scullery, with a patch under the skeleton of a sort of penthouse at the back. It was not even on the land that had been fenced and unfenced and fenced again. Of roof it had none--for you could hardly call the three or four tarpaulins, that lifted as the wind got under them and were kept down by stones, a roof. Parts of the walls were solidly constructed; other parts had been battened up with hedgestakes, filled in with sods and peats, stuffed up with coats, anything. It had an old door that had been used somewhere else, and appeared to be propped up with stones. Over one window-opening hung an old brown coat, the other frame was empty. A bright glow shone on the rubble within, and smoke and sparks came merrily from the chimney. The fire crackled loudly, and there was a pleasant smell of cooking bacon. All about the cavity in the sand lay stones big and little, timbers, stakes, loops of rope. There was a hand-cart too, with its handle making a T in the air. A scraping sound was heard, as of somebody cleaning out a pan, and then came a low "Wouf" and flare of fat in the chimney. Then somebody spoke. "Squeeze t' barril, Tom, and see if there's another cup o' tea." "Nay, we've supped t' lot." "Blow down t' vent-hole...." As if those walls vanished again even more quickly than they had sprung up, Llanyglo could see a picture vividly in its fancy--a picture of a tilted barrel, with the cheeks of one man distended over the spigot-hole while another caught a muddy trickle in a thick glass---- Then their vision fled, and they were staring at that unimaginable house again---- Slowly, and without a word, they moved off through the soft sand in the direction of the Baptist Chapel. VI THE FOOT IN THE DOOR IT was a Saturday, a day on which the school did not assemble, and the door of the schoolhouse was locked. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd was sent off in haste for the key. They waited for him to come back, twenty of them, men and women, with others hurrying over the sandhills to join them. Eesaac Oliver ran panting up again, and they entered the schoolhouse. This was a large, yellow-washed room with beams making triangles overhead and hot-water pipes running round the walls below. A small squad of desks stood upright behind, and a number of smaller benches knelt, as it were, in front of them. These faced the raised desk of Miss Nancy Pritchard, the schoolmistress. A yellow chair or two, a couple of glass-fronted cupboards, a row of hooks for caps and cloaks at the back, and a harmonium, completed the furniture. A short covered way near Miss Pritchard's desk gave access to the adjoining Chapel. A door at the side of this led to the little stone outhouse where the water for the pipes both of school and Chapel was heated. Their astonished exclamations had broken out now. As something legendary and dear and native to their land, it was in their hearts to defend the Hafod Unos; but for a stranger to set one up! "Look you, it can-not be legal!" exclaimed Hugh Morgan, a little tubby man with semicircular brows and a round bald forehead. "It iss not even finiss; there iss holes in the walls so-a big I put my head through them! And that iss not a roof--it iss only rick-covers----" "It is wonderful how they did it, whatever!" said little restless-eyed Mrs. Gruffydd. Those predatory eyes in Blodwen Gruffydd's pale face could see a sixpence a mile away, and, having seen it, would not leave it again until it had been safely dropped through the slot of the money-box into which the savings for Eesaac Oliver's education went. Eesaac Oliver was not to serve packets of tea and pennyworths of bicarbonate of soda over a grocer's counter. He was to go to Aberystwith College, and to become a preacher, and wear a black chip straw hat. Howell Gruffydd, who had been as thunderstruck as the rest of them, now affected to take a jocular view of the matter. "De-ar me, first Mr. Garden's house, and now Ty Kerr! Well, it make trade. Indeed, I need a bigger s'op presently--I think I start a Limited Company----" But big consumptive John Pritchard spoke in deep tones. More vividly than any of them, John had seen, as if in a camera obscura, that vision of a Kerr blowing into the vent-hole of a barrel, while another Kerr anxiously watched the tap.--"We need a bigger public-house, I think," he said grimly. "Indeed you are right, John Pritchard," Hugh Morgan struck eagerly in, the curves of his brows all marred with anxiety. "They sit in the Sta-tion Hotel Porth Neigr, and do noth-thing but drinking all day--it set a s'ock-king example, whatever." "And they call it 'ano-ther cup of tea,'" said a third. "They very smart ones----" Again John Pritchard's deep voice came in.--"They're very deep ones." Little Hugh Morgan spoke excitedly. "Indeed you are right again, John Pritchard! John Williams Porth Neigr, he say to me it would not surprise him if that Ned Kerr speak Welss so well as nobody if he wiss!" A shocked "_Aw-w-w!_" broke out. "And he say in the Court, 'No Welss!'" "Tut-tut-tut--de-ar me!" They were silent for a moment, contemplating this duplicity. "And there iss four of them now," one resumed. "They send into England for two more." "We soon have large population," said Howell Gruffydd again.... John Pritchard had sat down on one of the yellow chairs with his knees a yard apart. His brows seemed knitted. "But there is noth-thing for them to do here," he said. "No work, no wages--only building fences." "Perhaps they have lot of money. Their bacon smell very good, whatever." "They finiss their breakfast--I heard them wipe the frying-pan out as plain as if I see it with my eyes!" Again John Pritchard's heavy voice: "Finiss their breakfast indeed! They finiss a whole barrel of beer!" "And it is right what Hugh Morgan says," another struck in. "That Ned Kerr, he know Wales as well as I know my two hands! I have let-ter from my cousin Thomas Thomas in Towyn, and he say they buy lot-t of alders up the Dysynni two years ago of Mr. Llewelyn Jones of Abergynolwyn, and set up a hut in the 'ood, and make their clog soles, and pay six-pence a foot for the trees." "He set up more than a hut at Llanyglo, whatever!" "Indeed they do no such thing! The Hafod Unos belong to the old days. There iss no new Hafod Unos I don't know this how many years!" "All the old things was new things once, Hugh Morgan." Then, as if all at once they saw anew that house so magically sprung up out of the sand, there fell a silence. Howell Gruffydd might make his jests about taking a larger shop and forming a Limited Company, but the hard fact remained, that aliens had squatted down at Llanyglo while they had slept, and, by force or process of law, might be difficult to turn out again. Howell's jocosity subsided; among the children's forms and benches they took counsel together; and when, at half-past ten, John Pritchard's eldest lad came in with the news that one of the Kerrs had departed along the Porth Neigr road, while the other three kept guard over what they had won, they drew closer together still, and spoke in low tones of boycott. Then suddenly somebody asked what Mr. Tudor Williams of Ponteglwys would say, and the quick little outburst of "Yes, indeed," "Well said," "Mr. Tudor Williams have some-thing to say," showed how pertinent the observation was considered. For Mr. Tudor Williams, the Member, would be able to tell them, if anybody could, whether the Hafod Unos was countenanced by the Law, and whether the intruders could be served with notice to quit. His promised visit now took on an added urgency. "It is a pit-ty Mr. Williams fall out with Squire Wynne," Hugh Morgan remarked. "It will be the Squire who will have to give them notice, whatever." "They quarrel one day outside the Court at Porth Neigr." "But indeed, Howell Gruffydd, Mr. Tudor Williams wass in the right--it was about the Tithes, and the Tithe iss a wick-ked system----" "Aw-w-w, but the Welss Members they alter all that very soon!" "But the Squire and the Bis-sop of St. Asaph is great friends----" "Indeed that Bis-sop of St. Asaph he look at a Chap-pil like as if it wass not worth his eyesight!" Dafydd Dafis, who sat on a child's bench, looking moodily at the floor, had not spoken yet. He gave a quick glance up, and then looked down again. "The Church iss a great robber," he muttered within his moustache.... They discussed questions of ecclesiastical polity.... "It iss a great robber," said Dafydd Dafis, again resuming his former attitude. Then Howell Gruffydd rose, and one or two others followed his example. There was the day's work to be done. Soon all moved to the door, but before going about their businesses they went to take another look at that astonishing house. But they looked only from a distance. If they had assumed that the Kerrs, having worked all night, would now be sleeping, they were wrong. They could see them, three of them, still busily walling, filling, shovelling out sand. "They try to finiss before Sunday," Hugh Morgan said. But big John Pritchard glared sternly at him. "They care noth-thing for Sunday, those ones," he said. "That other one will have gone for more beer." And he added, in solemn tones, "It iss a den of li-ons!" The fencing dispute had now sunk into insignificance. It quickly appeared, even as John Pritchard had said, that the Kerrs cared nothing for Sunday. At a quarter to ten on the morning of that day, Howell Gruffydd, in his tight black frock-coat and bowler hat, passing up the sandy gully on his way to the Methodist Chapel, heard sounds of carousing. He turned aside to look. The door of the Hafod stood open, and a second barrel of beer, together with provisions and some sticks of furniture, had been fetched during the night. Tommy, the youngest of the Kerrs, was already drunk and singing. The eldest of them, seeing Howell Gruffydd, gave him an insolently familiar nod, as if he had as much right to be there as anybody else. "Cold mornin'," he said. "Are ye coming in to hev' a tot?" Howell turned away. After service, Howell encountered John Pritchard. John, too, had heard that godless levity from afar. Others gathered round them by the gap in the thymy earth-wall, and John raised his voice on high. It shook with bitter zeal. "We hear them in the Chap-pil, in the mid-dle of prayers, singing!" he cried. "On a Sunday morning they sing; they sing '_Thomas, make Room for your Uncle_!' I said it was a den of li-ons, but indeed no li-ons ever behave so s'ock-kingly! They sing '_Thomas, make Room for your Uncle_,' in the mid-dle of prayers, like if it was out of the belly of hell!" Dafydd Dafis, whose head for a day and a half had drooped like a wet head of corn, gave a quick gleaming glance. "They not build it any more quick than it can be pulled down again," he said quickly. "They come out of the house sometime to work, I think. They not gentry with lot of money, whatever." And that was true. The Kerrs could hardly earn their living by drinking beer and having continually to mount guard over the house they had made. "There will be no peace in Llanyglo now till Mr. Tudor Williams has been." Dafydd Dafis's head drooped again. "Indeed we do not need Mr. Tudor Williams for this," he muttered under his breath. And the Kerrs themselves? Did they suppose they could plant themselves thus in the enemy's midst and not meet with hostile entertainment? For this we may perhaps go once more to the gentleman without whose friendly help the _Llanyglo Guide_ would have been done quite as well as it needed to be, and in half the time. "It's difficult to say, for two reasons," this gentleman said. "In the first place, the humour of some of these Lancashire fellows is such an incalculable thing; you never know how far they will carry it, nor how soon it will end in black eyes and bloody noses. And in the second place, there was that humanitarian scatterbrain, Armfield. I believe myself that probably Armfield had already told Ned Kerr that there _would_ be work presently.... "Of course, you've heard what Armfield's scheme was. The Syndicate had decided not to rectify any more errors of Providence about the disposition of coal and manganese; they only wanted to clear out altogether, leaving somebody else 'holding the baby'--I believe that's the expression. Their idea was simplicity itself: to buy land at a shilling and sell it again at ten; but they didn't express it quite so nakedly. That was where Terry Armfield came in--to dress the enterprise up and make it attractive. As long as he enabled them to cut their loss they didn't care what he did with Llanyglo. "And there was nothing really wrong with the scheme, except that Terry was twenty years before his time, and naturally had to suffer for it. I think he called it '_The Thelema Estate Development Company_,' and nowadays it would be called a Garden City. And if Terry hadn't Edward Garden's sense of the line of least resistance, you must remember that he hadn't Edward Garden's 'inside' information either. He had nothing but that ecstatic power of persuading people. And he did persuade them. I doubt if half a dozen of the people he sold to ever saw the place. Two of them did, though, two brothers, in the produce line. They went down, and came back again, and quietly sold out, keeping strictly to Terry's representations; and I believe they warned Terry then that if he wasn't careful he'd be getting into trouble. I asked them what they'd been thinking of to let themselves be persuaded by a hare-brained enthusiast like that. They told me it was all very well for me to talk _now_. They knew perfectly well all the time that it was only one of Terry's dreams of a better and a brighter world, but they bought for all that, and so did crowds of others. Terry didn't admit a single difficulty. He talked about angels and the higher life. He talked about Pugin and the soul's need for seasons of contemplation and repose. He talked about the air and the sea and the mountains and the Trwyn, and he made it out to be Llanyglo's chief merit that it took a whole day to get there.... And so on. To cut it short, they were to do their own building, but Terry, as vendor, undertook the rest--laying out certain roads, draining and lighting them, I believe the building of a sort of public hall, and so forth. I don't think he said anything about the Chapels. "And that (to get back where we started from) is probably the reason the Kerrs stood by." * * * * * Whether Dafydd Dafis would have watched the Kerrs out of the Hafod, or, failing that, whether he would have pulled it down over their heads, is hardly worth debating; for, as it happened, that very Sunday night there befell something that for the time being had all the effect of a declared truce between the hamlet and its invaders. Something deeper and more solemn than the machinations of man took a hand in the making of Llanyglo. This was the wind. It began to get up at about three o'clock that afternoon; all day there had been a swell; and Dafydd Dafis and others, returning from Howell Gruffydd's house (where a second letter to Mr. Tudor Williams Ponteglwys had been written, as urgent as Eesaac Oliver's pen could make it), saw all four of the brothers on the roof, trying to secure the tarpaulin in which the wind volleyed; their roof-slates were not expected till the following Wednesday. The ground was a blurr of flying sand; the sea resembled a tossing fleece as far as the eye could see; and from moment to moment the waves, breaking over the Trwyn, rose in slow, gigantic fountains, fell again, and then came the roar. The four men clung like limpets to the roof, crouching until the worst gusts were past and then resuming their hammering. They were trying to nail the covering down, using pieces of wood as washers to prevent the material from ripping. Suddenly Dafydd Dafis, looking up under his brows, saw Ned Kerr pause with his hammer lifted and peer out to sea. Then, without moving his head, Ned put up his hand and appeared to be shouting something to the others. All four looked, and so did the men of Llanyglo, but from the ground below they could see nothing. Then, all in a moment, Ned Kerr gave a scramble and a spring, came down like a bundle into a mound of soft sand, and was followed tumblingwise by the others. There was a rip and a crack, and the released tarpaulin was a hundred yards away, flapping grotesquely over the sandhills. Ned was up again in an instant, and as he passed Dafydd Dafis at a run he shouted a single word in Welsh: "_Llongddrylliad!_" It was a wreck. The boats by the short thumb of a jetty had not been used for a week, and lay high up the beach. Could they have got them through that boiling of white sea and brown sand there was a towering ridge to be seen beyond, maned with spray, that rushed forward and burst only to show another in the same place. No more than one at a time could be seen. The boats were open boats, and night was coming on. Small wonder there seemed little to do but pray. But Ned Kerr shouted another word.--"_Bâd!_" From the top of the Hafod he had seen a ship's boat. The next moment he and Dafydd Dafis had each a shoulder to Hugh Morgan's boat, and William Morgan, the three remaining Kerrs, and another man, were hauling. All save the youngest Kerr continued to tumble aboard as the boat lifted. He tried to struggle after it, but was overturned, and they dragged him out and turned him upside down to pour the water out of him. They have a lifeboat now at Llanyglo, _The Ratchet_, presented and maintained by the town of that name; but that night the men of Lancashire and the men of Llanyglo went out in one of the half-dozen open boats. They put her into the brown, and a moment later the water had slipped from under her and she sat down on the sand, with every plank started. They got ashore again as best they could, and raced for another boat and more oars. They put out again. They dare not use the wooden jetty, of which only the beginning could be seen. The first boat was already matchwood. A sea crawled up the Trwyn almost as far as the Light. They inspected its ravage the next day. It stood as a record for many years. Then the boat passed the brown, and stood out to that pale wall smoking with spray. The wall came on and broke with a crash that shook the shore. A woman gave a shrill scream ... then they saw the boat again---- It seemed madness to think that that open boat would be safer out beyond---- After that, though they watched, they saw nothing. Then the Trwyn Light opened its eye, two reds and a white. All Llanyglo was gathered on the beach, and none thought of going to Chapel. Night fell; the sky became clear as black ice; the dim seas resembled a lair of white bears at play. Seven o'clock passed, and eight.... Already in folks' minds the grim thought was born; it might have been worse. They had dragged Hugh Morgan back as the second boat had pushed off, and none of the Llanyglo men was married. Whether the three Kerrs were married or not nobody knew. Nine o'clock came.... Blodwen Gruffydd saw the return first, if, indeed, that vague speck lost in the grey combings were they. Again the wave came on, and another hideous range lifted its grey ridge.... By a miracle, it boiled far away to right and left, but rolled, a grey-dappled dead weight, under the boat. Already half a dozen men with a rope were waist-deep in the water.... Then, as the boat crawled on its oars like an insect, another crest rose, tilted them so that man fell on man, and a man came out.... They at the rope were swept out by the backwash to meet them.... And after all, they had come back empty-handed. They had seen neither ship nor boat. But (and this, in this tale of Llanyglo and of those who made it and were made by it, is the point), an hour later Dafydd Dafis, opening his eyes for the first time since he had been hauled out of the water, said something in Welsh to John Pritchard, who bent over him. Translated it ran: "I would not pull that one's house down." Then he closed his eyes again. As far as the Hafod Unos was concerned, Mr. Tudor Williams's visit now seemed superfluous. VII THE MEMBER Ostensibly, Mr. Tudor Williams came to Llanyglo to assist at a Sasiwn, which is a gathering very much like the Love Feasts of other parts of the country (indeed, if memory serves, Mr. Wesley gave these assemblies for prayer and mutual consolation the latter name as far north in Wales as Builth--but then Mr. Wesley did not speak Welsh). Neither the fencing dispute nor the question of the Hafod Unos had taken nominal precedence of this. But Mr. Tudor Williams's visit was also something more. He was a Member returning to his own constituency--exalted, yet their servant, familiar with the great ones of the land, yet by their favour. For that reason they liked him to bring the evidences of his greatness back with him. Mr. Tudor Williams did so, and handsomely. He was a small nimble man with black brows and a ragged silvery moustache, and a very erect and conscious carriage of the head. He wore a silk hat, a turned-down collar with a flat black bow, a frockcoat with voluminous lapels of watered silk, grey trousers, and new black kid gloves. He drove from Porth Neigr in the carriage that had been lent him by a political supporter, and alighted at the gap opposite John Pritchard's farm. They would have run forward to greet him, but a certain awe of his clothes and equipage combined with their own dignity as makers and unmakers of such as he to keep them where they stood, in a semicircle across the road. But if they were at one and the same time a little intimidated and filled out with pride in him, Mr. Tudor Williams knew no hesitation. He sprang down from the carriage, grasped John Pritchard by the hand, and then, not content with that, patted him all up the arm as far as the shoulder and across the breast with the other hand, as if he conferred invisible decorations on him. His eyes were moist, but glad greetings flowed from his tongue, in an accent that would have put the most diffident speaker of English at his ease. "Well, John Pritchard! Well, well! Indeed you have not grown any less! A lit-tle man like me, I hardly reach up to your shoulder! Aw-w-w, you look splen-did! I was spik-king of you a few days ago to the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs--but dear me, here am I neglecting the ladies--I tell you presently--How are you, Mrs. Gruffydd? This young man is never Eesaac Oliver! Aw-w-w, how he grows! Did you write the let-ter to me, Eesaac Oliver? That's the style! Education, knowledge--it is a grand thing!--Now, Dafydd Dafis! And how is the harp? You sing me _Y Gadlys_ by and by: '_Mae cynhwrf yn y ceunant, Ar derfyn dydd y gad_----' --dear, dear, you have to go away before you can come home again! There is nothing like this over there; there is not the sym-pathy; as I was saying to the Member for Caermarthen, Mr. Hughes Caegwynion, not three, four days ago, 'You get no sym-pathy from England and the Englishman'--and indeed you do not.--Here comes Howell Gruffydd, run-ning (indeed he runs like a deer, Mrs. Gruffydd!).--Now, Howell Gruffydd, you miss the train if you don't look sharp (he's making so much money he cannot leave the shop for a min-nit!).--Now, my old friend William Morgan! How is the rheumatics?--How are you, Hugh?--Is this your youngest, Mrs. Roberts? Hwhat! Another since! Aw-w-w--and you more like an elder sister than a mother!... And there is the Trwyn, just the same----" He was staying the night with John Pritchard, and the two moved away to the house, the others following a yard or two behind. Mr. Tudor Williams advanced to ancient Mrs. Pritchard's chair, took the hand that resembled a dead bird's foot, and shouted in her ear: "You see I do not lose a min-nit before I come to see you, Mrs. Pritchard!" he cried in Welsh. ("Indeed she is a wonderful old 'ooman!)--How many grandchildren have you now, Mrs. Pritchard?" (The old woman nodded her aged head.) "Great-grandchildren! _No-o-o!_ Think of that! But I think you all live for ever at Llanyglo. It is not like London. If I could take bagsfull of this air back with me I make my for-tune!--Now, Miss Pritchard, I think I must have offended you, you are so long in spik-king to me! And how is all in school? I tell you press-ently something straight from the Board of Ed-u-ca-tion for you to try. You whisper a subject in the scholar's ear as he comes in at the door, and he walk straight to the middle of the room, no time for think-king, and speak for five minutes about it! That will make them ready speakers, hwhat? That will accustom them to public life and speaking in the Chapel? But I tell you later.--Now, my old friend John, if I could wash my hands before sitting down to a cup of tea--then we will talk----" He was shown into the best bedroom, with the cork-framed funeral-cards and the cardboard watch-pockets on the walls, and the sound of his moving about and pouring out water and spluttering as he washed his face could be heard by those who waited below. Then he descended again and sat down. "Well," he said by and by, from his place where he sat at the table alone, they respectfully yet proprietorially watching him eat and drink his tea, "now tell me about those matters in the letter you wrote.... I mean the other matters...." But let us, before we pass to the other matters, look at the company that watched Mr. Tudor Williams eat. First there was John Pritchard, sitting on the other side of the table with his hands upon his knees, and now and then turning his body a little aside and bowing his back to cough. There was John, stern religionist, believing in God and Disendowment; obstinate, dull, just, unsmiling; as ready for the Day of Judgment as if it had been the audit-day of the accounts he kept as principal trustee of the Baptist Chapel. For all that he was so rooted in Llanyglo that he had never travelled farther than Porth Neigr in the whole of his life, he was as ardent a supporter of Missionary Endeavour abroad as his voice was powerful at the Sasiwn at home. He watched Mr. Tudor Williams's plate, and with his thumb made signs for his daughter to replenish it. Next, there was Howell Gruffydd, with his pale and studious son, Eesaac Oliver. You might have been sure even then that, should Llanyglo ever grow, Howell Gruffydd's fortune would grow with it. Howell considered a good penny worth the putting into his pocket, and, as if his apron (which, however, he had now left behind at the shop) had made half a housewife of him, he cared nothing, so it brought in money, whether he did a man's labour or washed up the dishes or black-leaded the grate. He could not read, but if at Porth Neigr a stranger chanced to ask him the way, he would smile and reply, "There is the signpost," allowing it to be understood that his questioner might read as well as he himself. Howell had his inner dream. It was of a shop with two large windows, and a bell inside the door, and brightly varnished showcards, and pyramids of tinned salmon, and peas within the window that should suggest the noses of children flattened against the pane, and handbills distributed in the streets, and two assistants, and a son at College, who should read for two, and perhaps--who knew?--sit while his constituents watched him eat his tea--Mr. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd, M.P. Then, with his cap in his hands and his feet shifting nervously, there was Dafydd Dafis, next to Eesaac Oliver, on the sofa. Should purchases and rumoured purchases of land prove to be a portent, Dafydd had all to lose and nothing to gain by change. With that soft cruelty of his of which the hard and more profoundly sentimental Englishman knows nothing, Dafydd was at least disinterested. The Kerrs he had forborne to harm, but he only hated them the more on that account. He himself would not have killed one of the blue and primrose butterflies that in the summer hovered over the Llanyglo buffets of wild thyme, and he could not understand a country that said it was fond of animals and yet, like these Lancashire men, hunted rats with terriers and coursed hares with dogs. Alone of that nation he had for a time loved delicate little Minetta Garden, and had told her stories of fairies and had sung _Serch Hudol_ and _Mentra Gwen_ to her; but Minetta had gone. All the things for which Dafydd Dafis cared had gone, or were going, and Dafydd was lonely. He told his harp so, with those warped and stealing fingers, and the harp made music of his pain. All that Dafydd would gain by change would be memories that became ever the more poignant the more they were attenuated, and the less the world cared for him and his unprofitable life. Passing constantly between Mr. Tudor Williams and the saucepan where the eggs boiled, or the plate in the fender where the lightcakes kept hot, was Miss Nancy (_née_ Nansi) Pritchard, schoolmistress and virtual custodian of the Post Office. The development of Llanyglo, did that ever come to pass, would be a good thing for Nancy, for otherwise there was none in Llanyglo to marry her, and to domestic service elsewhere she could not have stooped. She was tall and plump and ruddy, with black hair and black-lashed blue eyes, and in her conversation she gave the preference to the longer words. She had been to school in Bangor, wore the longest skirts in Llanyglo, and between her and her father's guest was the bond of their common superiority to everybody else there. She was a _partie_, for John Pritchard was well-to-do; but for whom? Apparently for nobody whom Llanyglo had yet seen. The remaining spectators, with the exception of old Mrs. Pritchard, who resembled a mummy rather than a spectator, partook in varying degrees of these same characteristics; and there at the table sat Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., of Ponteglwys, one of his eyes aflow with tears of sensibility while the other was glued to the main chance; Baptist, nationalist, and arguer by metaphor and analogy; an elocutionist, and a maker of elocutionists by that process of education that consists of giving a scholar a subject and bidding him straightway speak for five minutes upon it; and, above all, ever and again suggesting, by slight gesture or quick glance, that his secret thought was that there, in cap or corduroys, but for the Grace of God, went Mr. Tudor Williams of Ponteglwys.... At last he put up his hand, refusing to eat more. "No more, no more indeed! It is the best bread and but-ter I have tasted since I was here before, but I should be ill in my stomach.--Dear me, John Pritchard, the happy hours I have spent in this room! '_Mid Pleas-sures and Palaces_'--indeed there is tears in my eyes when I see the dres-ser with the plates on it, and the jugs, and Mrs. Prit-chard's Bible in the window, just the same as when I was a boy!--Well, I have had a splen-did tea at all events, and if you will excuse me a min-nit I will return thanks for it.... Now, my friends!----" Five minutes later, Mr. Tudor Williams, not so near to the Kerrs' Hafod that he had the appearance of specially watching it, nor yet so far from it but that he could see Ned Kerr and his brother Sam setting a rough window-sash into position, was once more shaking hands and patting shoulders and exchanging greetings with such of the men and women and children of Llanyglo as he had not yet seen. And now that they had got him there they hardly knew what they wanted of him. That building exploit of the Kerrs having thrust the Inclosures Dispute a good deal into the background, and Dafydd Dafis's honourable if sullen refusal to injure men who had risked their lives with him having given that exploit itself a kind of condonation, it seemed as if their Member had merely come to a Sasiwn after all. But land had changed hands: they had a vague sense of impending change and of the discomfort of change; and, as they answered their Member's questions, the very presence in their midst of this man who moved behind the scenes of the drama of large events accentuated this feeling. "What is he like, this one?" Mr. Tudor Williams asked, gently yet absent-mindedly patting big John Pritchard's back as he stooped to cough. They had been speaking of Terry Armfield. They described Terry as he had appeared to them in the Court at Porth Neigr. "Is he taking over any other land?" ... You would not have supposed, from the way in which Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., asked the question that he merely sought to know how much _they_ knew. And it had not occurred to Llanyglo that these transfers of land might be, not an end, but only a beginning. Yet Mr. Tudor Williams had good, if private reasons, for knowing that this very land might soon be more than merely worth acquiring.... He was not deceiving them. It pleased them to think that their Member was the repository of weighty secrets, and he was merely indulging this simple and legitimate liking. But already he intended to go to Liverpool in order to find out what this Syndicate's plans really were. He wanted to know whether the Syndicate, in its turn, was aware of something else, something still very secret indeed, so secret that five minutes at certain keyholes might have been worth many thousands of pounds.... "And this Hafod Unos--on whose land is it erected?" he next asked. He made a little grimace when they told him, on Squire Wynne's. "Then perhaps he will let it stand; he is cracked in his head about old customs, and antiquities, and suchlike foolishness, when there is great work wait-ing to be done. It is not our business if he likes to let these people squat upon his land." But here John Pritchard interposed heavily. "But it is our business if they sing '_Thomas, make Room for your Uncle_' in the middle of prayers," he said. "No-o-o!" exclaimed Mr. Tudor Williams, shocked. Perhaps also he wished to gain a little time; he had no wish to call upon Squire Wynne, either about this or anything else. "Don't tell me they did that!" he added. "Indeed, they did," said John quickly. "Aw-w-w!--But it is a Liberal maxim, John, and Radical, too, that force is no remedy. In my opinion our friend Dafydd here----" he put his arm affectionately about Dafydd Dafis's waist, "--was a lit-tle headstrong about burning the fences." "I will not burn their house," said Dafydd sullenly. (By the way, had the case been altered, it is doubtful whether the Kerrs would have done as much for him.) "Well--we can always take what the doc-tor told the man who wanted information for noth-thing to take--advice," said Mr. Tudor Williams. "It would be better to see Mr. Wynne first," said John Pritchard. "If one comes others may come, and indeed I never saw such behaviour, no, not in a den of li-ons!" They continued to discuss the matter, while, before their eyes, the Kerrs fitted their window-sash. Yet it was curious to note how, within the bond of their passionate, if loquacious nationalism, each man was jealously for himself. It was not that their democracy was more conspicuously lacking in democrats than are other democracies; perhaps it was rather that the Welshman recognises two ties and two ties only--the tie of unity against the foreigner, and the private claim of his strong family affections. Between these two things is his void and vulnerable place. He has not set up for himself the Englishman's stiff and serviceable and systematised falsity of Compromise, that has no justification save that it works. He has his age-long tradition, but no daily rule that can (and indeed must) be applied without question. Each of his acts is his first act, and so a retail act. Because his hypocrisy lacks the magnificent scope of that of the Saxon, he bears the odium of a personal stealthiness. Thus, perhaps, it comes about that while too strict an adherence to the letter is the Englishman's ever-present danger, for his brother Celt the spirit slayeth. Noble dreams, petty acts; and here, if a little obscurely, may be hidden the reason why, when he seeks his fortune in London, his greatest successes are the minor successes of drapery and milk.... "Well," said Mr. Tudor Williams at last, "Wynne is a man of no ideas. He is only a pettifogging country Squire, whose views on the Land Question are ob-solete in _tot-to_. But if he harbours men that are a nuisance, as John Pritchard says, perhaps it would be better if I went to see him----" Nevertheless, he had no intention whatever of doing so. The truth was that the Squire's views on the Land Question were too obsolete altogether. They were so obsolete that he had sold when (as first Edward Garden had known, and now Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., knew) he ought to have held; and it was for Mr. Tudor Williams to profit by his error if he could, rather than to call his attention to it. He was very far from being a wealthy man. VIII THELEMA Because Terry Armfield, believing in his idea, would not have abated one jot of it for all the money in Liverpool, therefore he got all the money he wanted. This--alas!--is not optimism, nor a hardy belief that merit infallibly meets with its deserts in this world; it merely means that a number of businessmen with rudimentary consciences were willing to pay a kind of hedging-premium on the off-chance of being, after all, on the side of Terry and the angels. It is astonishing how often your visionary can get money out of your man of affairs when another man of affairs would fail. And, even as the man who chatted to the author of the _Sixpenny Guide_ said, Terry was only a few years before his time. The things he dreamed of have not come to pass yet, but they are confidently promised to-morrow. As happy as the day was long, he was merely setting up the City that is not built with hands, and lighting it with the Light that never was. And if the "_Thelema Estate Development Company_" had done nothing else, it did, at any rate, put an end to that dispute that had begun when Dafydd Dafis had pulled down fences and burned them in his beautiful Red Dragon of a bonfire. But, over and above that, it did leave its little mark on Llanyglo--a fleeting mark, laughable, bathetic, sad, hauntingly vacant, and lunatic (as Mr. Tudor Williams would have said) "_in tot-to_." Come to that little office near St. George's Hall, Liverpool, and see Terry Armfield in the closing stages of his minding of Llanyglo. He not only conceived his Thelema; he drew the plans of it as well. He drew them on drawing-paper, on tracing-paper, on note-paper and bill-heads and the backs of envelopes. A paper-weight, with a knob in the shape of a clenched fist grasping a short staff, kept half a hundred of his hasty drafts from flying off again into the air that gave them birth. And he added to them day by day, almost hour by hour.... Forty or forty-five or fifty houses, say, each with its little plot for private meditation and repose, yet sharing in common among them a spacious pleasaunce where friend should meet friend and none but friends should come--that was the idea. A fair wide Way, with the mountains looking down its perspective to where gentle steps led down to the tawny sand--that was the idea. A wall all about it, or a ha-ha perhaps, not as against trespass, but as a symbol that here was an Isle that the tides of the care and of the trouble of the world did not invade--a shining and galleried chamber where light and happy laughter should rise to the groining of the roof (dim blue with gilt stars), and should echo and linger there as if the fane itself whispered--that was the idea. None of it existed, none of it was ever likely to exist; but without some such dreaming our life on earth is little worth. The people who put up the real money for it laughed at it, and laughed at Terry when he had gone, but humoured him while he was there as a nuisance, but a gentle one. If they lost their money there would, at any rate, be a good many of them in company, the land was exceedingly cheap, and they need not begin to build upon it till they pleased. Besides, by taking shares in his Thelema they had bought Terry off. When he came with his other wild and beautiful schemes they could say, "No, no, Terry, we'll see how Thelema turns out first," and pass him on to somebody else. That alone was worth the money. Then there came to Terry one day a man who not only did not laugh at him, but grasped him by the hand, patted him all up the arm and across the breast as if he conferred invisible decorations upon him, gave Thelema his blessing, and said, in moved tones, "Indeed it is splen-did--splen-did--without vis-ion the people perish-eth." He told Terry that his name was Tudor Williams, and that he was the parliamentary representative of the constituency a portion of which Terry and the gods on high were developing. He did not ask outright for anything. He told Terry that, while he himself was a good Radical, believing that God made the land for the people, nevertheless, in this imperfect world things had to be done a lit-tle at a time, and his principal objection to the (temporary) private ownership of land was that it was too often in the wrong hands. If it could be put into the right hands much of the ini-quit-ty would disappear, whatever. Then, when he came to inform Terry that in his opinion he could be of great use to the Estate, he told him also that he was far from being a wealthy man, and that his usefulness must be set off as against the cost of any interest Terry might think fit to confer upon him.... "Look you," he said, "the conditions of labour are peculiar, and things that would be easy for me you might find a lit-tle diff-fi-cult. I do not say you would, and indeed I am a good democrat, and do not believe in one law for the ritss and another for the poor; but nowadays, when every man has his rights and his vote ... well, without a word here and a word there it might be a lit-tle diff-fi-cult...." And Terry, who was quite acute enough to see this, asked Mr. Tudor Williams to come again. When Mr. Tudor Williams came to see Terry for the third time, Terry pressed him to accept a seat on the Board. But Mr. Tudor Williams put up a deprecating hand. "Aw-w-w, no!" he said. "Indeed it is very good of you, and I am very pleased you show so much confidence in me, but it would not do. There is my public position to consider. Indeed I would rather have a nominee. It is hard to make people understand a proper motive. If the time was ripe for it I would nationalise all land, yes indeed I would, but if it must be privately owned for a lit-tle while longer it is better that it should be in the trust of men like you and me for the public good. There is as many different kinds of landowning as there is of landowners. That pet-ti-fog-ging country squire, Wynne, he is repre-sen-ta-tive of all that is worst in a vic-ious sys-tem; he has no more vis-ion than that chair you sit on now; but we are not like that. I have not often found a sym-pathy like yours; indeed there has been tears in my eyes while you have talked.... But I will have a nominee. It will be better. And I will see you get your labour. There is John Jones, Contractor, Porth Neigr. He may even be willing to pay a lit-tle commission. We shall not quarrel about that.--But I am bet-ter off the Board." Very curiously, he was not the only one who seemed a little shy about being put on the Board. Others displayed an equal bashfulness. This puzzled Terry. But it never puzzled him for long at a time. Always a fresh inspiration sent him off into his cloudland again. It was about that time that he acquired his second slice of Llanyglo, a tract adjoining the first and running down to that shore that Copley Fielding depicted with such accomplishment, elegance, and taste. And he took with that second piece of land a responsibility greater than that he had assumed when he had merely cajoled money out of the pockets of men who had known his tea-clipping father and whose fathers had known his privateering great-grandfather. Briefly, by enlarging his enterprise, Terry threw away the immediate advantage of his personal idealism and charm. The thing went to allotment shorn of his peculiar magnetism. He received money that would not, merely on the score that they liked him, be indulgently written off by those who would see that money no more. His Prospectus is extant. Edward Garden's unfinished house came into it, and an affiliated interest, "_Porth Neigr Omnibuses, Ltd._," about which Mr. Tudor Williams knew something. There were great swathes about the natural beauties of the situation, and lesser ones (the Syndicate pruned them down behind Terry's back) about the Thelema Idea. And there were a number of other things that are impossible, yet facts in the amazing History of Flotation. It is no good saying these things cannot happen when they happen daily. Had you or I bought shares in the "_Thelema Estate Development Company, Limited_," we should merely have bought, you and I, shares in that moonshine that poor, gentle, rapturous, cat's-paw Terry Armfield drew with freehand and French curves on his bits of paper and presently spread out in such a lunatic fashion over the sandhills of Llanyglo. Come, before we leave this dim chapter of the twilight of Llanyglo's forebeing, and see what Terry did. Starting at right angles from the Porth Neigr road, a couple of hundred yards short of John Pritchard's farm, there runs straight down to the shore a street of rather more than a quarter of a mile in length. Crossing this street in the middle runs another street, not so long, but unfinished. These two streets intersect in an open space or circus perhaps a hundred yards in diameter. The first street is called Delyn Avenue, because of the mountain that commands it. The second one is called Trwyn Way. The central circus is called by the names of the four Crescents it comprises. Farther back from the intersecting points are other streets. They also are named. But do not suppose that these streets and Crescents and Avenues and Ways are streets in any ordinary sense. They are twenty-two and thirty-five foot roads, metalled, crowned, drained, and with a good stone kerb running parallel on either side. But there are no houses. There is not even a pavement, no, not a vestige of one, flagged, macadamed, cobbled, nor of any other description. There are no standards for gas or electric light; there are no standards even for the names of the thoroughfares--for you can hardly call those things standards--those low wooden boards, rather like the "_Please Keep off the Grass_" notices in a public park, that inform you that this is Delyn Avenue or that that is Trwyn Way. Exactly as it was all drawn on Terry Armfield's tracing-paper and envelopes and memo-heads, so it is now drawn on the Llanyglo sandhills, with strips of stone kerbing for pencil lines and the wind-blown sand where his india-rubber has passed. Lie down on the sandhills with your eyes at the level of the kerbs, and, save for those eighteen-inch-high street name-boards, all disappears. Or if you care to climb the Trwyn you can see it all rather well from there.... There you are. Just a little patch of strapwork in the middle of the waste. Or like a rather large gridiron somebody has thrown away. And, if you are capable of seeing what Terry saw, namely all the things that are not there and that never will be there, then that little grid of laid-down and abandoned streets has a curiously mocking effect. You imagine the ghosts of Terry's Thelemites moving noiselessly there, passing to and from their non-existent habitations. They are going, friendly ghost taking friendly ghost by the hand, to that groined and lofty chamber of Terry's dream, where the faint echoes of laughter linger in the roof of dim blue with gilt stars. They are going to walk in Terry's closes and courts and arbours, happy in that the sorrows and pains and substantialities of the world touch them not in their retreat. They are going down Delyn Avenue, to where the broad and gentle steps descend to the yellow shore. And all about them, but only to be seen if you can see what Terry saw (otherwise you will see only the sand and the wild thyme and the sulphur butterflies and the blue), are Calaer and Anatole, Crière and Hesperia, Mesembrine and Arctic, which are the six towers of that Place with the great gate where bigots and hypocrites and defrauded and whining shareholders enter not, nor the violent Huns of the world of business nor the cruel Ostrogoths of commerce, but only the spruce and noble devotees of the Best, the Terrys before their time. But when the wind gets up, then the sand blows over it all, and John Pritchard or somebody else, catching his foot against the unseen kerb, comes down his length into the middle of Terry's lovely and desired Place. But the men and women of Llanyglo are beginning to know their way about this phantom town, and none other, save the Gardens (whose house is now finished), and a friend or so of the Gardens' in the summer, ever comes there. The Kerrs, however, still have their Hafod, which they inhabit together when they are not away buying and cutting alders and shaping them into clog-soles with the free-hinged knife in the little canvas hut. And among the businessmen of Liverpool the whole thing is still a rich joke.--"Well, have you started building that house of yours in Wales yet?" a man who has not bought will ask a man who did; and this one will reply, "Oh, I'm thinking about it," or, "You must come down there and stop with me," or some other put-off. And it was rich in the extreme when, one day, the man at whose expense the joke was made took the jester by the button, smiled, and whispered something confidential.... "What!" gasped the jester. "You've _sold_!... Wherever did you find him? In Manchester? Ha, ha, ha! Splendid! That's a dig in the ribs for Manchester!--I should like to see his face when he sees it!... A pity about poor Armfield, though--he'll catch snuff----" For Terry had been refused bail. PART TWO I RAILHEAD But something was coming to Llanyglo. As Edward Garden might have said, looking at this something under his glasses and over his glasses as it crept slowly up out of the east--as Edward Garden might have said, looking at it again and yet again, and then gazing mildly and mistrustfully through the glasses at you, it appeared to be a railway. At any rate, if it was not coming to Llanyglo it was coming within three miles of it. As if a snail should leave behind it a track, not of slime, but of new iron, grey at first, then red with rust, but soon to be bright again, so it came on; and in other respects also it resembled a snail. It carried, for example, its lodging with it. And it put forward sensitive and intelligent antennæ as it sought its food thirty miles away down the coast--manganese. It left the junction half a mile beyond Porth Neigr, and it was going to Abercelyn. The lodging that the snail carried with it was called Railhead. Seen from a distance of a couple of miles it resembled a small excoriation on the face of the land; seen nearer it resolved itself into a town of wood and corrugated iron, with stockades of creosoted sleepers and trenches of earth and ramparts of ballast and metal for the laying of the permanent way. There were superintendents' offices and the sheds of clerks of works; there were forges and stables and strings of waggons and a telegraph cabin; there were huts and pumping-stations and cranes, stationary and travelling, and a gas-plant; and there were watchmen's boxes and the temporary dwellings of hundreds of men. By day these could be seen, spread out on the level or clustering about the embankments as the flies clustered about the treacled strings and fly-papers Howell Gruffydd hung up in his shop in Llanyglo; at night the oncoming snail seemed phosphorescent, its phosphorescence the flares and fires and lamps in cabin-windows and red eyes for danger that appeared when the other shift took over the work from the men of the day. Whistle of construction-engine and roar of dynamite cartridge; hiss of steam and clang of hammers as they fished the joints; rattle of road-metal as it was shot from the carts, and thud of the paviors' rammers; clank of couplings and agonised scream of a circular saw; purr of telephone-bells and the "Hallo!" as the clerk took down the receiver; sough of pumps and bubbling of cauldrons of tar; cries to horses, slish and slap of mortar and the clinking of the trowels; spitting of dinners cooking over the firebaskets, sounds of singing at night; with these and a hundred other noises the snail crept on with a spirit-level inside him--the level that kept him true to the line that had been laid down by staff and chain and theodolite a couple of years before. And in some respects that something that looked so very much like a railway resembled not so much a snail as a snake. Did you ever see the great python that died lately at the Zoo climb his ragged staff of a tree? Not a joint or section of him but seemed to have that separate life of each of Dafydd Dafis's fingers when he mourned over his harp. A yard, two yards of the gorgeous waist-thick creature would ripple and flow and roll upwards to the crutch of the stump; another yard would follow, piling ever up and up; and you would wait for the toppling over of the great golden reticulated cable. And then all motion in that portion of the great fake would suddenly cease. Beyond the stump you would become aware that another glittering section was a-crawl, balancing, making fast, ever continuing the ascent.... Even so, before and behind Railhead, the work progressed. At a point the construction-engine stopped, the regiment of red and blue shirts and wondrous forearms and corduroy would move off, and presently all the life of the line would be five miles ahead, where they dug and built and drained and by and by passed back the word that all was well. So they moved, between the finished and tested line at one point and the warning bell and the dynamite stick at the other; and there was an end of much gorse and heath and of many banks of flowering campion and hassocks of wild thyme. And, for all this snail with its iron slime was not passing within three miles of Llanyglo, it was bringing the hamlet's appointed destiny with it. It was bringing (though, to be sure, not for some years yet) a passenger-junction where yet only irises and bog-cotton grew and frogs boomed out over the marsh at night. It was bringing sidings where John Pritchard's farthest field of oats now rippled silver-green in the wind. It was bringing a goods-yard and signal-bridges, and sheds and platforms and turntables and a cabrank in front and rows of railwaymen's dwellings behind. It was bringing a different breed of men, a breed that so far Llanyglo knows only in the persons of the four Kerrs. More than this, it was bringing progress, and sophistication, and wealth for some but nothing for others, and jollity, and vice, and some knowledge that was good and some that Llanyglo would have been no worse without, and always loads, loads, trainloads of white-faced people from the smoky towns. And most of all it was bringing to that vague yet unmistakable town-soul of Llanyglo growth and experience, growth that it could not escape and experience that it must square with those numbered days of its idyllic nonage as best it can. Through growing-pains and wild-oats, through revulsions of young remorse and impossible panaceas of repentance, through shrugging worldliness and cynicism and the forgetfulness that lies in laughter, Llanyglo must pass before it becomes--whatever it is to be. One thing only is certain: it can never again be as it was when Edward Garden first went there. Its wild thyme will remain only in patches on its Trwyn, and its sandhills will be glaucous with the blue sea-holly no more. The black cattle have not much longer in which to pace its shore, and Terry Armfield's gridiron will be forgotten--no _Sixpenny Guide_ will point the way down Delyn Avenue nor past his immaterial Crescents along Trwyn Way. Railhead is creeping on. Two of the Kerrs are already working there, the other two have just bought the last of Squire Wynne's alders. Squire Wynne has now no land except that occupied by the Plas and its tangled and mossy and grassy and neglected gardens. "_Porth Neigr Omnibuses, Limited_," is already a serious undertaking, for it will ply between Llanyglo and the nearest point of the line. Howell Gruffydd has an option on the two original cottages that Edward Garden had had matchboarded--he may soon be requiring a larger shop. Compensations will be paid right and left. And there will soon be a larger assortment of young men for Miss Nancy Pritchard to choose a husband from.... For something is coming to Llanyglo. * * * * * Mr. Tudor Williams Ponteglwys had been clever enough in the matter of the Omnibuses, Limited, nor, for the matter of that, had his cleverness stopped there; but for astuteness he could not hold a candle to Edward Garden. Edward Garden was not a Member of Parliament. As he musingly said when people asked him why he was not, it was out of his line. Therefore, he and his friends had left to others the promotion of the Bill, its steering through Select Committees of both Houses, and the whole conduct of the negotiations that, in their different way, were no less complicated than that concentration of various forces by virtue of which Railhead crept ever slowly forward. To a regiment of lawyers had likewise been left the adjustments under the general Acts to which, on the passing of the Bill, the enterprise had become subject. Members and lawyers alike, those drest in a little brief obedience to the commands of the party whips, these as often as not Members themselves, were virtually the nominees of Edward Garden and his friends. Politics Edward Garden's "line"?... To all outward appearances he had no "line" at all. He merely added another emblem to that little cluster of Mercuries and Greyhounds and Winged Orbs that formed the pendant of his watch-chain. It was only when others, full of plans and hope and secrecy, sought "lines" for themselves that they discovered that he had been beforehand with them. To give an instance: When Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., apparently as representing somebody else, had come forward with an offer to take up the remnants of poor Terry's Thelema, he had found there were no remnants to take up. To give another instance: When, by carefully engineered good offices and intermediaries, Mr. Tudor Williams had sought a reconciliation with Squire Wynne, and presently had gone to see him, he had found that he had pocketed his pride for nothing--the Squire no longer had a yard of land to sell. In a word, before ever whispers of the Bill had begun to circulate in the lobbies of the House of Commons, the sandhills and oat-fields of Llanyglo had been cut up like a jigsaw puzzle, raffled, dealt in, apportioned, and owned; and, save for his small holding in Thelema, between the Omnibuses at Porth Neigr and manganese at Abercelyn, there were very few pickings for Mr. Tudor Williams of Ponteglwys. Therefore he returned with an enthusiasm more ardent than ever to his original crusade against the private ownership of the land that God made for the people, and took his constituents by the button-holes, and spoke darkly of other Acts--Acts which by and by should give the Local Authority powers of compulsory purchase. And all this time the eye still saw nothing to purchase but bents and blown sand, blue and lemon butterflies, nodding harebells, a few tidemarks of black seaweed, a wooden jetty, a cluster of thatched kerb, the three Chapels, Edward Garden's house, and Ty Kerr. But something was coming to Llanyglo. * * * * * On the whole they did not talk very much about it. Each had his reason for reticence, or brooding, or resentment, or calculation, as the case might be. Nevertheless, with Railhead still many miles away, they began to become accustomed to the coming and going of strangers. They came, these strangers, to Edward Garden's house, sleeping either there or else at the double cottage down by the beach; Edward Garden himself, with a lantern in his hand, saw them hospitably over the sandhills to bed. They were surveyors and architects, accountants, geologists, prospectors, men in control of the snail that left the track of iron and grey ballast and upturned clay across the land, lawyers, conveyancers, the directors of the stone-quarries along the Porth Neigr road, and others at whose business Llanyglo could only guess. And Mr. Tudor Williams also went there, perhaps to talk about compulsory powers. These and others wandered in groups along the straggling lines of seaweed, and up the Trwyn, and far inland behind John Pritchard's farm, pointing, pacing, discussing, exactly as those minions of the Liverpool Syndicate had done that morning when work had suddenly ceased on Edward Garden's new house; but there was no talk of fence-burning now. Even Dafydd Dafis saw the hopelessness of it, and once more went about with his head bowed like a head of corn heavy with rain. Already men were widening and levelling the Porth Neigr road. One week-end in July, after an unusually large gathering at Edward Garden's house, a new waggonette from Porth Neigr came to take them back in a body. It had a pair of horses, and it took the hills in style. Dafydd Dafis, whom the vehicle overtook on his ten miles' trudge into the town, was offered a seat, but he appeared not to hear, and the vehicle drove on, enveloping him in its dust. Half-way to Porth Neigr he came upon a squad of men setting up a telegraph pole. One of them spoke to him, in English. "Dim Saesneg," he muttered, and then perhaps wondered why he had done so. It might be "Dim Cymraeg" presently. A little farther on the waggonette passed him again, once more hiding him in its dust. No doubt it had turned aside up the rough road that led to the stone-quarries. Dafydd continued his trudge. But in the household of Howell Gruffydd the grocer, a suppressed excitement reigned. This, when Dafydd Dafis happened to be there, showed only as resignation and a bowing to the inevitable; but at other times it seemed to confer a more frequent glitter to Howell's teeth, a new impulse to his jocularity, and a sparkle and sharpness to his wife's eyes. Cases and canisters the like of which he had never handled before were delivered at his door by the Porth Neigr carrier; these were for the consumption of Edward Garden and his guests; and he waited in person upon Mrs. Garden every Monday morning. He thought of having a Christmas almanack with his own name printed upon it. Blodwen, his wife, made him, in anticipation, a pair of linen half-sleeves that drew up over his forearms. Eesaac Oliver was forbidden any longer to fetch the eggs from the light-keeper's wife up the Trwyn; one of Hugh Morgan's boys might do this. As a preparation for Aberystwith, Eesaac Oliver was packed off to a second cousin of Blodwen's at Porth Neigr, there to attend an excellent endowed school. With the railway passing so near it would be a simple matter for him to spend his week-ends at Llanyglo. And big consumptive John Pritchard rarely said a word about that onward-creeping snail that left its double thread of permanent track behind it, but he thought exaltedly and powerfully. Stories had already reached him of drunkenness at Railhead, and fights, and singing at nights, and other godless orgies, and his brow was sternly set. When he preached at the Baptist Chapel about such as loved darkness and the evil paths in which they walked, it was known that he was thinking of Railhead. Men were now plotting their levels almost within sight of Llanyglo. They turned their surveying instruments on the hamlet as if they had been guns, and laid out their chains as if they had been enslaving the soil itself. Then an advance gang approached, and, even while John knew that the end was near (but not so near as all that), that end came. Eight men marched one evening into Llanyglo, bawling a bawdy chorus, with Sam Kerr showing the way. They had bottles and piggins and stone jars of beer, and, slung with joined-up leather belts between two of them, swung a barrel. They stumbled through the loose sand towards the Hafod Unos, hiccoughing and polluting the peaceful evening. Ned Kerr had evidently been advised of their coming; he stood at the door of the Hafod to receive them; and the carousing began.... It lasted half the night, and then each clay-stained navvy and tattooed platelayer slept and snored where he fell. John Pritchard did not sleep. Faintly he could hear their singing where he lay. The red and white of the Trwyn light dyed the darkness overhead. John remembered his own words: "It is a den of li-ons----" Something had already come to Llanyglo. II THE CLERK OF THE WORKS John Willie Garden was by this time at the age when he occasionally washed himself without being told. This he probably did, not out of any great love of cleanliness, but because by washing unbidden he acquired the right to retort, when the order to wash came, "I have--there!" Did one of the maids give the order he might add the word "Sucks!" This word he withheld when the command came from his mother. He was still at school at Pannal, but ardently longed to leave. It was intended that sooner or later he should go into business with his father, and during the past Christmas vacation, which the Gardens had spent at home in Manchester, he had had the run of the offices and spinning-sheds. His real education, as distinct from his scholastic one, had been immensely advanced thereby. This real advance had taken place principally after working hours. In such cases there is usually a young clerk or market-man ready to take the son of the firm into his charge, and a certain Jack Webster had had the bringing of John Willie out. This he had done at football matches, in the dressing-rooms where the titans clad themselves for the fray, and at their sing-songs and smokers afterwards. Therefore, John Willie esteemed himself a boy of the world, and already the day seemed far distant when he had shot the Llanyglo rabbits with his bow and arrow, and had buried a sixpence beneath the date-stone of his father's house. To Llanyglo John Willie went again that summer, as the snail crept forward yard by yard to Abercelyn and the manganese. All things considered, you might have been pardoned had you supposed that, without John Willie, the work at Railhead must have come to a stop. Had you wished to know anything about that railway--its cost per mile, its contractors' time-limits and penalties, its wages bills, its estimated upkeep--you would have gone, not to those men who spent week-ends at Edward Garden's house, but to John Willie. Railhead was now to him what the building of the Llanyglo house had formerly been, and the fence-burning, and rugby football, and many another interest of the days when he had been a kid and immature. It was in the summer of 1884 that the snail's antennæ approached within sight of Llanyglo, and, rain or shine, permitted or forbidden, John Willie spent most of his waking hours among the masons and smiths and navvies and plate-layers who formed the population of that nomad town of wood and earth and sleepers and rolling stock and escaping steam and corrugated iron. He knew half the men by name. He joined them at dinner when the great buzzer told half a county that it was half-past twelve. He knitted his brows over the curling and thumb-marked plans in the foremen's cabins. He passed this section of work or that, and gave the other his imprimatur. He adapted his stride to the distance between sleeper and sleeper. He spat reflectively on heaps of clay and mortar. With his hands, not in his pockets, but thrust (in imitation of the labourers with the "drop-front" corduroys) deep into his waist-band, and his cap on the back of his yellow, thistle-down head, he gave off-hand nods of greeting and warning "Steadys." He was variously known as "t' gaffer," "t' ganger," "t' clerk o' t' works," and "t' foreman." And his friend, Percy Briggs, of Pannal School and Roundhay (where his father was an architect) accompanied him. Percy's father was one of Edward Garden's week-enders. He was making the plans of a second house, not far from where Terry Armfield's Thelemites were to have descended the shallow, marble steps to the golden shore. There was also some talk of an hotel. For by this time quite a number of people knew at least the name of Llanyglo, and there is very little doubt that, had the place but had houses, it might even then have been that within another three or four years it actually had become--a quiet but not inaccessible resort, with perhaps a dozen striped bathing-tents and a row or two of deck-chairs drawn up on its beach, a couple of comfortable hydros established and a large new hotel a-building, a few donkeys (but no niggers nor pierrots), a place for children and for such of their elders as sought a quiet not to be found at Blackpool nor the Isle of Man, a spot unvisited by trippers, "select," a little on the expensive side, where an acquaintance struck up between families might without too much risk be improved afterwards, where the nurses would be uniformed and the luggage would be sent on in advance, where a wealthy patron might even build a house of his own (if he could get the land), a "nice" place, a place you could afterwards tell _any_body you had been to, a place from which you would go back feeling well and not in need of another holiday, a place--in short, a place like So-and-So, or So-and-So, out of which we try to shut history and change by being a little jealously secret about them. Llanyglo might have been, and for a short time actually was, such a place; and Percy Briggs's father, with others to tell him what to do and what not to do, was even now in the act of planning how to make it so. In the meantime, Edward Garden's own house was a very different place from those two cottages that Dafydd Dafis had taken his own good time about matchboarding. That first lodging had been no more than a temporary camping-place for the summer. Any sagging old wicker-chairs or tables or chests of drawers from lumber-rooms had been good enough for it, and its crockery and kitchen appointments had been of the cheapest kind that Porth Neigr could supply. But not so with the new house. Everything about it spoke of permanence. The large plate-box was carried backwards and forwards at the beginning and end of the summer season, but not the Worcester dinner-service, nor the glass that filled its cupboards, nor the linen in its closets, nor the blankets nor the eiderdowns set by for winter, nor the few--the rather few--books. Mrs. Garden herself had told Howell Gruffydd that it was not likely that the place would be locked up for the winter months again. Edward Garden intended to spend more and more time there; indeed he must, unless by and by he would look musingly and a little ill-favouringly through his glasses at that sparse line of bathing-tents and that little knot of combination-saddled donkeys and say, "This does not appear to be much of a watering-place." Already he had made special arrangement for the delivery of his Manchester letters; upstairs on the first floor he had his office, with a deep window, the side bays of which looked, the one towards the sea, the other to the mighty deltoid-shaped outline of Mynedd Mawr; and where Edward Garden settled he liked to settle comfortably. In that quiet and rugged and curtained room he was once more following the line of least resistance. The chances were that he already foresaw the direction that line was likely to take. For Lancashire, which had been remote when folk had had to jog the ten miles from Porth Neigr behind a somnolent old brown horse, would be near when that snail had packed his lodging up and departed, leaving only its iron pathway behind it; and the Kerrs in their Hafod Unos would have been astonished to learn how much Edward Garden mused upon Lancashire and upon just such people as themselves. He mused upon the cost of living of such as they; and he mused upon their standard of living, which is a related thing, but not the same thing. He mused again as he saw the gradual change in that standard, and contrasted the things he saw with the things he remembered in his own early days. In those days, expressly taken holidays had been unheard-of things. Folk's excursions had reached little farther afield than their own legs could carry them. If John Pritchard, of Llanyglo, had never been to Porth Neigr, many and many a Manchester man of the days of Edward Garden's boyhood had never been to Liverpool. Many thousands had never seen the sea. It had been holiday enough in those days to meet in the streets, to play knurr and spell in the nearest field, to lean over walls and watch their pigs, and to tend their gardens. Slate Clubs and Goose Clubs and Holiday Clubs had not been invented. A shilling or half a crown a week painfully saved would not have been squandered again for the sake of that little superfluity that had now become the minimum itself. The mass of the people of his day would no more have dreamed of saving money in order that seaside lodging-house keepers should profit than they would have dreamed of taking the Grand Tour. But a generation seemed to have arisen, very different in some ways, yet exactly the same in others. They were different in that they refused to be exploited any longer according to the old familiar formulas, yet the same in that they were as subject as their fathers had been, and as their sons and grandsons will be, to the man who could devise a new one. All manner of circumstances contributed to their unuttered invitation (it was that in effect, and the only thing they did not utter) that somebody should bring to their exploitation the spice of variety. There were smoulderings everywhere--smoulderings at Durham and West Ham, at Ayr and Lanark and Swansea, at Sheffield and Manchester and Liverpool and Leeds and Hull. Over his glasses and under his glasses Edward Garden noted them, and inferred that the sum of it all was that folk intended to have a better time than they had been having. They were quite unmistakably resolved to have a much better time. Their grandfathers' idea of a Wakes Week, for example, might have been staying at home and timing the pigeons into the cote; but they meant to improve on that. They intended to doff their clogs and to put on their thinnest shoes, to draw extravagant sums from the Club, to take railway-tickets, and not to rest from their arduous relaxation as long as a penny remained unspent.... Manganese? The moment they showed signs of coming his way, Edward Garden was after richer returns than manganese would yield. He granted that without manganese there would have been no Railhead coming up out of the east, but what he had his eye on was the new generation's deadly resolve to be amused, the crammed coffers of its Holiday Clubs, the beginnings of those tens and scores and hundreds of thousands of pounds that to-day a single town will get rid of in a single fortnight by the sea. But _only_ if it came his way. He was no Terry. It was his business to take things as they were, not to try to make them something they were not. He had no theories, no criticisms, no impulses, no hesitations. He asked for nothing but uncoloured data. Therefore, and to that extent, Llanyglo's future was not entirely in his hands. It was still free, and always, always, save for a little rising of new stone here and there, just the same to look at--watched over by the Light on its noble Trwyn, guarded by the majestic mountain behind, and presenting to its diurnal tides the same shore that Copley Fielding drew. Now it befell towards the end of the July of that year that the Welshmen of Llanyglo held an open-air service for the young in one of the hollows of the sandhills. It was a blazing Sunday afternoon, with the sea like silk and the pale mountains seeming thrice their distance away. They had brought a small moveable platform and reading-desk from the Baptist Chapel, and first John Pritchard, and then Howell Gruffydd had mounted it. The sun beat on the bare heads and best bonnets and black-coated shoulders of parents; myriads of tiny hopping insects gave the surface of the sand the appearance of being in motion; and a buzzard sailed in great steady circles in the sky of larkspur blue, now standing out to sea, now a speck in the direction of Delyn or Mynedd Mawr. Howell was teaching the twelve or fourteen urchins a new hymn-tune, singing it now alone, now with them, now listening with little gestures of encouragement and nods of pleasure as their voices rose. His secular jocularity was not absent, but tempered to the occasion. "Louder, louder and quicker--it give you an appetite for your tea," he said, waving his arms and beating with his foot to the accelerated time. "You will not wake Mrs. Hughes at the lighthouse--now--'_Joyful, Joyful_----'" And, with Eesaac Oliver leading, they went through the tune again. That a special exhortation should be given to those of tenderer years had been deliberately resolved upon. Since that evening when the eight men from the line had rolled drunkenly over the sandhills to the Kerrs' house, a fear had weighed on the chapel-goers of Llanyglo. Until then, their children had known nothing of the wide and wicked world; but that ignorance could not now be maintained. They must be put on their guard, and for that job the ingratiating Howell was the man. The tune came to an end, and he put his leaflet of printed words into his pocket and shepherded the row of urchins into position with movements of his hands. "Move that way, John Roberts--I cannot see Olwen Morgan's face. Hugh Morgan, stop poking your foot into that rabbit-hole or you fall down it and we have to dig you out. Miss Pritchard, give Gwen Roberts her sunbonnet, if you please, or she catss a sunstroke. Ithel, where is your handkerchief? Your nose resem-bles a snail.... Now listen to me. If I see a boy or girl not pay atten-sson I stop till he do pay atten-sson----" And he began. He told them that soon, with the coming of the railway, there would come also all manner of pip-ple, some good pip-ple, some bad pip-ple. He told them that at Railhead were many bad pip-ple, who swore, and drank a great deal more than was good for them. He told them (discreetly, since he had no wish to preach a _jehad_ against customers so good as the Gardens) that while some boys might go to Railhead to play, boys like some he would not mention, who had lived in large towns, yet it would be bet-ter if they kept themselves to themselves.... He did not go the length of asserting that all good boys were Welsh and country boys, and that all bad ones were town-bred and English, but--but--well, things have to be put a little starkly to the young. They shuffled their feet in the hot loose sand as he talked. The buzzard sailed back from the mountains. The sandhoppers danced as if the ground had been a frying-pan. A holy peace brooded over the land. Away at Railhead men, those sinful men who drank and swore slept in rows, stretched face-downwards on the grass or the thrown-up banks of clay. Then the grocer began to promise the rewards of virtue. He turned with an interrogative smile to John Pritchard. "And now, Mr. Pritchard, do you think I might tell them that sec-ret? Indeed I think I get into trouble if I do! But yess, I will tell them.--Atten-sson now. Hugh Morgan, do not scratss your head. Now!--Can any boy or girl tell me what there iss to be in Mr. Pritchard's field next month?" They guessed at once, with one voice. Howell Gruffydd knew better than to ask an audience questions it could not answer. He held up his hands in admiring surprise. "Indeed they guess--they are every one right, Miss Pritchard! Astonissing! Dear me, I never saw such s'arp young men and women!--Yess, they are right. There is to be a Treat for the Sunday School scholars! There now! And there will be races, and prizes, and tea, and the books will be given for those who have had the largest num-ber of attendances and have not been late.--And now: who is giving this Treat?" "Mr. Tudor Williams!" they cried. "Right again--it is Mr. Tudor Williams, the Member of Parliament! And Mr. Williams is giv-ing something else too. He is giv-ing--I have seen them--new pictures--pictures of the construc-tion of flowers--(bot-tany I think it is called, Miss Pritchard?)--and an-i-mals--and fiss-sses----" He turned up his eyes, as if to the heavens from which these rewards of virtuous living descended. The croupy shrilling of a cock came from down by the beach. The bees droned, and the wheeling buzzard suddenly dropped like a plummet a hundred yards through the larkspur blue. It was then, in that very moment, that Howell Gruffydd's face was seen to change. He stopped, listening. Beyond the hot cuplike hollow in which they were assembled was another sunken way, and along this way somebody was approaching. Probably in complete unconsciousness that any hearer was at hand, this somebody was singing softly as he came. It was Tommy, the youngest of the Kerrs, and he was singing to himself, in very bad Welsh, _Glan Meddwdod Mwyn_. Now this song is one of the less reputable songs of Wales. The English drinking song usually contents itself with extolling the mere convivial act, drawing a decent veil over the lamentable effects of that act; but even in its title _Glan Meddwdod Mwyn_ (which words mean _Fair, Kind Drunkenness_) has no such reticence. It depicts ... but you can see the difference for yourself. No wonder it froze the words on Howell Gruffydd's lips. In the singer's complete unconsciousness that he was not alone lay the whole sting. The malice, the intent, the hateful Lancashire humour of the Kerrs they had had before, but not _this_ home-thrust with a weapon they themselves had provided! Tommy might just as well have climbed the hummock and told them that, since their language provided equally for these eventualities, they were no better than anyone else.... An English drunkard, to grub in the lees of their own language like this!---- And little Hugh Morgan had sniggered!---- The unseen Tommy and his (their) song passed on towards the Hafod Unos. Then Howell bestirred himself again. "There, now!" he said; "what had he just been tell-ing them? Indeed, that was opp-por-tune, whatever!" ... But, though he strove to hide it, there was a hollowness now in his exhortation. He felt as if he had been building a wall against a contagion that crept in upon the invisible air. If Thomas Kerr knew _Glan Meddwdod Mwyn_ he might also know viler ditties still; if little Hugh Morgan, whom he had thought pure, had sniggered at _Glan Meddwdod_ he might guffaw outright at the baser version of _Sospan Bach_.... It could only (Howell thought) be original sin.... It was at least a little balm to him to hear the fervour with which Eesaac Oliver once more led the singing of _Joyful, Joyful_. And, by the way (speaking of songs), Eesaac Oliver's choice of the narrow and difficult path had already involved him in a persecution in which song played a minor part. This persecution was at the hands of John Willie Garden. For, in an unguarded moment, Eesaac Oliver had confided to John Willie his plans for his career; and since then the unfeeling John Willie, on his way to Railhead and debauchery, had held over him the song that contains the lines:-- "_He wass go to Je-sus College For to try to get some knowledge---- Wass you ever see," etc. etc._ John Willie, itching to get away from Pannal, could not understand why anybody wanted to go to Jesus, Aberystwith, or any other College. "_I think it would be wiser For to stay with Sister Liza---- Wass you ever see," etc. etc._ he would hum softly and (alas) contemptuously; and, since it was part of his chosen career to do so, Eesaac Oliver would very expressly forgive John Willie, getting into quite a Christian heat about it. On the day after that homily on the Llanyglo sandhills, John Willie Garden went as usual to Railhead, and was enabled to delight his leather-belted and corduroyed friends there with a piece of information, hitherto secret, that he had from his father's table. This was that the line was to be opened in the following Spring by His Royal Highness the Duke of Snell. The announcement produced an astonishing effect. Not one in ten of the men either knew or cared what the enterprise was all about. They knew that the railway was a railway, but beyond that, none of its dividends being destined for their pockets, it was merely the job--"the" job, the job of the moment, the job not very different from the last job, and very, very like all the other jobs to come, until their living hands should become as stiff as the picks they plied, and the light of their eyes be extinguished as their own lanterns were extinguished at daybreak. But at the news that the Duke of Snell was to do his trick when they had finished theirs, they were innocently uplifted and delighted. _This_ would be something to tell their grandchildren in the years to come! They would spit on their hands and work better all the afternoon for _this_!... In the meantime they discussed it when the great buzzer called them to their beef and bacon sandwiches, their chops and pickles and bread and cheese. "So it's to be t' Dewk o' Snell!" one of them admired, with as much satisfaction as if he himself had had a tremendous leg-up in the world thereby; he was a West Riding navvy, whom twenty years of digging up the length and breadth of England had delocalised of everything save his powerful accent. "Well, now, I'd figgered it out 'at it'ld happen be t' Prince o' Wales mesen----" Here struck in a Cardiff man, so lean that you would not have got another pennyweight of fat off him if you had fried him in his own frying-pan. "Wass-n't it the Duke of Snell that mar-ried the Prin-cess Victorine?" "Noa. That wor t' Dewk o' Flint," the Yorkshire navvy replied, with authority. "T' Dewk o' Snell wed t' youngest, t' Princess Alix. I knaw all t' lot on 'em; t' missis hed all their pic'ters o' biscuit-boxes; they reached from one end o' t' chimley-piece to t'other; ye couldn't ha' got a finger in between." "Well, well," said the Cardiff man, an inquiring mind among many complacent ones, "it is curious, how lit-tle diff-ference it makes to us. The Prinss of Wales, say you? If I wait for the Prinss of Wales to give me ano-ther piece of this ba-con I wait a long time, whatever!... But prapss we get our in-vi-ta-tions soon," he added jocularly, taking an enormous bite of bread. "S'all you be there, John Willie?" John Willie answered, a little doubtfully, that he hoped to be present at the ceremony if he could get away from school. The Cardiff man wagged his head. There are few Welshmen who do not wag their heads at the sound of the word school. "Ah, school; it iss a gra-and thing," he said, still wagging. "I not be work-king here with my shirt wet-t on my back if I go to a prop-per school." "Oh, be dinged to that tale!" returned the Yorkshireman bluntly, cutting cheese on his leathery palm. "T' schools is all my backside! They learn 'em a lot o' newfangled stuff, but I remember 'at when tea wor eight shillin' a pund, an' they kept a penny nutmeg in a wood case as if it wor diamonds----" "Aw-w-w, there iss that Burkie, talk-king again!" said the Cardiff man. "It's reight, for all that----" And presently the talk had veered round to those very changes of standards and conditions, his careful study of which had led Edward Garden to the conclusion that a generation had arisen that intended thenceforward to have more of the world's good things than it had been having or know the reason why. As it happened, the work on the line had that day taken a new leap forward. Again all the life of the python had rolled on ahead, and John Willie, lunching with his friends, was doing so at a point actually beyond Llanyglo, two miles nearer to Abercelyn. From the Abercelyn end also the line was coming to meet them, and the two sections would meet at a place called Sarn. Sarn means Causeway, and there the sea showed, like a piece of bright piano-wire, across a waste of fleecy bog-cotton and bog-myrtle, sundew and flags and rushes. A siding was to be made there. Because of Sarn Church, a tiny little building with an odd Fifteenth-Century circular tower, Squire Wynne loved this region, and attended service there; but as that Service was held only once a year, the "Hough!" of the shunting-engines and the clanking of couplings would disturb it little. The Squire sighed to think that, among so many, many other changes, it would be only one change the more. His sales of land had provided him with just enough money to last his time out, and on the whole he thought he did not want to outlive his time. Perhaps he too had had his glimpse of that vision of Edward Garden's, though as it were in obverse; and, looking, he shrugged his shoulders. Who, in another twenty or thirty years, would care for the things he had cared for? Who would waste a thought on antiquity? Who would open his County History, or his books on Brasses or Church Plate, Memorials or Heraldry or Glass? Who would know each tree he came upon on his walks, as a country doctor knows his patients--its sickness, its health, its need of air, its treatment, its amputations? Who would repair the staircase at the Plas, and restore its magnificent ceilings, and set the merry smoke streaming up its chimneys once more?... Mr. Tudor Williams would probably do this last. He would no doubt convert the Plas into a Museum (as he would have converted Sarn Church itself into a Museum), and fill it with cases of ice-scratched pebbles, and diagrams of strata and flowers, for reluctant and educated urchins to gape at. The Squire was entirely in sympathy with John Willie Garden's corduroyed friend Burkie about these things. It seemed to him that the multitude, which after all had backbone enough to starve rather than go on the Parish, would not resist this organised pauperisation of its mind. It was time the Squire died, since he held that not everybody has the right to everything and no questions asked. Otherwise not an inhumane man, there were nevertheless abstractions which he loved more than he loved his fellow-being.... And who would drink what was left of that wondrous old port? Well, the Squire, sighing and smiling a little wistfully both at once, intended to see to that himself. III THE CURTAIN RAISER But while the march of events drove the aborigines of Llanyglo ever more and more closely together, as the reaping of a field of corn drives the mice and snakes and rabbits to the narrowing square in the centre, at the same time something of the opposite process went on. Two or three stood aloof, Welsh when it suited them to be Welsh, less Welsh at other times. One of these was Mr. Tudor Williams, the Member of Parliament. Another was Howell Gruffydd, the grocer. For thick as thieves now were Edward Garden and Tudor Williams, and to their frequent councils was admitted also Raymond Briggs, the architect, whose son had been John Willie's schoolfellow at Pannal. This Raymond Briggs was a Yorkshireman, from Hunslet, but you wouldn't have thought it to look at him. You saw at a glance that he was superfine, but you had no idea how superfine until he opened his mouth. He was tall, plumpish, very erect, numerously chinned and faultlessly dressed; and, having entered into culture by one of the noblest of its portals, architecture, it was small wonder that he wished to forget Hunslet, with its black canal, its serried weaving-sheds, its grimy warehouses, and its sooty brickfields. Certainly he had completely forgotten it in his speech. Over an alien mode he had acquired a really remarkable mastery; and had it not been for a trifling uncertainty about his vowels, particularly his "a's," you would have set him down as quite as much London as Leeds. And so more or less with everything else about Raymond.--But his wife haled you north again. To her, acquirements were like hot plates to the fingers, to be kept constantly in motion or else dropped altogether. Her husband was probably the most humourless man who ever came to Llanyglo; but Maud Briggs would use the homeliest of dialect-words in the most artificial of accents, and would tell you, even while she was mothering you with cool drinks in the most hospitable fashion, that the piece of ice she dropped with a clink into your glass was positively "the last piece in the hoil"--if you know your West Riding well enough to understand the peculiar significance of the word "hoil" as applied to a house. Her rings were dazzling, for Raymond's invaluable lack of humour had enabled him to make his mark on the world; the blue-and-white collapsible boat which their son Percy brought with him to Llanyglo had cost his father a cool twenty-five pounds in London; and it would not be for lack of money if Percy did not turn out a very superior silk purse indeed. So when the snail, his journey finished, rested and made the siding at Sarn and then returned to Porth Neigr again, and Railhead was dismantled, and grasses began to seed themselves about the upturned soil, Edward Garden and Raymond Briggs and Tudor Williams, M.P., had their heads frequently together; and no longer were the short days and long nights a season of hibernation for Llanyglo. Three years out of four the Llanyglo winters are mild; this particular winter was not so inclement that it stopped building-operations for more than a day or two at a time; and, with a sort of miniature Railhead strung out along the Porth Neigr road for his labour, Raymond's second house rose steadily course by course, and already they were draining and digging for the first hotel. If they were mainly Porth Neigr men Raymond employed, that did not mean that Dafydd Dafis or any other Llanyglo man who was so minded would not be taken on; indeed they were taken on; but it did mean that the centre of gravity of the labour-supply had shifted, and would never shift back again. Those temporary dwellings along the Porth Neigr road were a constant reminder that if the Llanyglo men did not like it they might lump it; and as they did neither, but while disliking it intensely, bore a hand and took their wages just the same, they appeared to be sufficiently quelled. Edward Garden, while making Llanyglo his headquarters, was again much away. A whisper was started that he was once more treating for land, but, as no further land appeared to be available, the rumour was derided as idle. Howell Gruffydd was already converting the two original matchboarded cottages to his own use. Something Departmental happened somewhere beyond Llanyglo's ken (probably Mr. Tudor Williams knew all about it), and the word came that the Post Office was to be transferred from John Pritchard's to Howell's new shop; and though the Post Office was on the whole more trouble than it was worth, for a little while Howell seemed likely to have a quarrel on his hands. But Howell had not definitely taken a part without knowing equally definitely how to bear himself in that part. _He_ did not intend to be herded into the gloomy company of a lot of beaten and sulking Welsh nationalists! As if already a vast spud had cut about Manchester or Liverpool, and an equally vast spade had taken either of these cities up bodily like a square of peat and had set it down again on the Llanyglo sandhills, so the idea of expansion had taken hold of Howell's mind. He even went a little preposterously beyond bounds, as others did later, when they learned that their old Welsh dressers and armchairs were a rarity and marketable, and proceeded to put ridiculous prices upon them. And probably Edward Garden had a use for Howell. Already it looked like it. The answer with which Howell appeased John Pritchard in the matter of the transference of the Post Office looked very much like it. Edward Garden himself could not so have reconciled John to all this innovation with a single whispered word. For "_Bazaars_," Howell said furtively to John, behind his hand; and the quick electric gleam in his eyes was instantly extinguished again.... You see. They had never had a bazaar at Llanyglo. There would have been little profit in passing their own money about among themselves. But _strangers'_ money.... That was the soul of good in things otherwise evil that Howell whispered to John Pritchard, and later it was so observingly distilled out for the benefit of the Baptist and other Chapels that for a time there was actually a danger lest the mulcting should keep folk away. And if even Mr. Tudor Williams himself now appeared a little absent-minded among his constituents, and hauled himself, as it were, out of remote fastnesses of thought to grasp them fervently (if indiscriminately) by the hand, and to inquire after their rheumatics and wives and other plagues, well, he was a busy, and not at all a wealthy man. At Llanyglo, as elsewhere, it was not only Welsh and English; it was also Get or Go Wanting. The early bird.... So (to push on) circular smears of white appeared on the windows of the second of Raymond Briggs's houses (it was finished by Christmas), and these gave it the appearance of a sudden new Argus, looking out on every side for other houses to join it; and the scaffold-poles began to rise about the new hotel like a larch-plantation. Raymond came and went, and Mr. Tudor Williams came and went, and short winter day followed short winter day. Then, with cat's-ice still glazing the ruts and pools but a feeling of Spring in the air, Porth Neigr, ten miles away, came bustlingly to life. An emissary of the Lord-Lieutenant of the County took up his quarters at the Royal Hotel, and there he was one day joined by the Lord-Lieutenant himself, with Sir Somebody Something, of the Office of Works. These summoned others, who in turn summoned others, and maps and plans were sent for and a line of route was chosen. Police were drafted in, and folk went up into their upper front rooms to see which bedstead or table-leg would best stand the strain of a rope across the street. The old station had been repainted to suit with the new extension, and masts rose at its entrance. To the residents in the principal streets the Council lent loyal emblems and devices. The sounds of bands practising could be heard. His Royal Highness the Duke of Snell was coming to open the line. Then on the appointed day, the town broke into a flutter of bunting. The March sun shone merrily on Royal Standard and Red Dragon, on Union Jack and ensign, on gold-fringed banners with "CROESAW" on one side and "WELCOME" on the other. On the new metals a Royal Salute of fog-signals was laid. Warning of the Approach passed along the line, on the red-druggeted platform officials great and small waited, and John Willie Garden's friends, whose picks and shovels had made the clay fly, would no doubt read all about it a few days later in the papers. So, with detonation of fog-signals, and some cheers, but more wide-eyed gazing, and bared heads and bowing backs, and an Address, and other circumstances of loyalty and fraternisation and joy, His Royal Highness and John Willie Garden between them declared the line open; but only the Duke rode on the footplate of the garlanded engine with the crossed flags on its belly. Probably intensely bored, he rode out about a mile towards Abercelyn, and then returned to luncheon at the Royal Hotel. An hour later, coming out again, he passed away to Lancashire. All was over. Folk might now take down their bunting as soon as they pleased. The trick was virtually done for Llanyglo. A loop at Sarn or a new junction, and a realisation on the part of those in authority that there were things that paid better than Abercelyn manganese, and Llanyglo would be "linked up" with rigid iron to the rest of the world. Nay, it is already linked up even more straitly. A few poles and a thread of wire, crossing the sandhills and ending at the Llanyglo Stores, have some weeks ago put an end to its isolation. It is the nerve that accompanies the sinew, and Howell Gruffydd now receives and despatches telegrams. All is over bar the shouting, and it will not be long before that begins. They are busy now, painting and papering the new hotel, and decorating and upholstering it. It reeks of new paint and varnish and furniture-polish and the plumbers' blowpipes. It resounds with all the doubly loud noises of a half-empty place--with hammering and tacking, clanking buckets, the "Whoas!" to the horses of the delivery-vans, the jolting of heavy things moved upstairs, the rasp of scrubbing-brushes, the squeak of window-cloths. It is spick-and-span, from the feathery new larches in front to the silvery new dustbins behind.... Wherefore, seeing that we shall only be in the way, with never a chair to sit down on yet, and nothing to eat in the place save what the charwoman and the green-aproned carters and carriers have brought for themselves, we may as well leave all these things to the folk whose business it is to attend to them, and take a nap for a month or two, secure that when we wake up again the scene will be set for Llanyglo's _lever de rideau_, that starched and polite and not quite real little piece that preludes the main action of our tale. There is heather and wild thyme up the Trwyn, very comfortable to doze on; suppose we have our nap up there?... _Ah-h-h-h!_--That was the July sun that woke us. It's a warm and brilliant morning. Stretch yourself first, and then have a look down.... That's a surprise, isn't it? You didn't quite expect that? Really not much changed, and yet it's entirely changed. Two new houses and an hotel (in this clean air they'll be new-looking for years yet), and that little border of deck-chairs and bathing-tents and slowly moving parasols, not a couple of hundred yards long altogether, and yet the whole appearance of the place is altered. After a moment you find it quite difficult to remember it as it was the last time we were up here. See that little puff of smoke over there? That's a shunting-engine at Sarn; you'll hear the sound in a moment; there!--Butterflies about us, like hovering pansies; you can see just one corner of poor old Terry's Thelema showing; and out there, where the sea changes colour, just where the gulls are rocking, that's a bank of sand a storm threw up three or four years ago. And that's the telegraph-wire I spoke of, running straight across to Howell Gruffydd's shop there. Yes, that links Llanyglo up.... Where did all these people come from? Well, it's hard to say, but no doubt Edward Garden's got them here for one reason and another. He may even have "packed" the place a little carefully; I don't know. At any rate, he's lent "_Sea View_" there (that's the newer of the two houses) to Gilbert Smythe. Who's Gilbert Smythe? Well, he's the Medical Officer for Brannewsome, Lancs., and a very clever and quite an honest man. But Gilbert's family's grown more quickly than his fortune, live as frugally as he will he's always in debt, and he isn't going to say "No" to the free offer of a well-built, roomy house, not three minutes from the sands where the children can play all day, and furnished from the potato-masher in the kitchen to the little square looking-glasses in the servants' attics. And of course Edward Garden asks nothing in return. But _if_ Gilbert cares to say that the Llanyglo water is abundant and pure, Edward won't object--it is excellent water. And _if_ Gilbert likes to praise its air and low rainfall (low for Wales), well, he'll be telling no more than the truth. And _if_ Gilbert (not bearing ancient Mrs. Pritchard too much in mind) finds the longevity at Llanyglo remarkable, what's the harm in that? As a matter of fact, there is a saying that the oldest inhabitant always dies first at Llanyglo, and the others follow in order of age, which would be a poor look-out for anybody setting up in the Insurance business here.... So if by and by Gilbert signs a statement to this general effect, you can hardly blame him. He has his way to make, and he is a wise man who allows the galleons of the Gardens of the world to give his skiff a tow. The others? Well, Edward Garden's a cleverer man than I, and you can hardly expect me to explain the workings of his mind to you in detail. But I think we may assume he knows what he is about. I needn't say they're all very well-to-do; you can see that even from here; but there's something else about them, something we saw in Raymond Briggs, that's a little difficult to describe--perhaps it's merely that they too intend (_mutatis mutandis_, of course) that their children shall have a better time than their parents have had--or perhaps we'd better say their grandparents had, for their parents do themselves very well, indeed. I don't think you can say more about them than that--it's just that dash of Raymond Briggs.... Squire Wynne wouldn't understand them in the least. The Squire's wasted too much time over antiquity. He doesn't know anything about these people who are coming on. Except in their clothes, and so on, he'd see very little difference between them and people Raymond Briggs would look at as if they weren't there. He wouldn't understand Philip Lacey, for example. (Do you see that orange-and-black striped blazer--there by the seaweed: he's pointing; that's Philip Lacey.) Philip is the big Liverpool florist, seedsman, and landscape-gardener; if he hasn't his "roots in the land" in exactly the sense the Squire understands, his plants have; and Philip distinctly does not intend that Euonyma and Wygelia, who are at present at school at Brighton, shall go into one of his fourteen or fifteen retail shops. Philip isn't spending all that money for that.... (Understand me, I think Philip's perfectly right; the only thing I don't quite see is why he should veneer good sound stuff with something that's an obvious sham.) Of his wife, frankly, I don't think very much. Her processes show too plainly. Philip has his business to attend to, but Mrs. Lacey never leaves her one idea, day or night.... There, Philip's stopped and spoken to Mr. Morrell. Mr. Morrell has just as many hopes and plans for Hilda as the Laceys have for Euonyma and Wygelia, but he knows that his "a's" are past praying for, so he makes rather a display of his native speech. I needn't tell you what a trial that is to Hilda.... And bear in mind that these are prosperous people, well-travelled people (though they mostly keep to the beaten tracks where they meet one another--it's Mrs. Briggs's chief recollection of Florence that she met some people she knew in Leeds there), people who put up at far better hotels than you or I do. And if these, who can afford it, can be shown the way to Llanyglo, the chances are that a crowd of other people, who certainly can't afford it but as certainly won't be out of it, will come in their wake. What do you say to our going down and having a closer look at them? We might take a stroll as far as Howell Gruffydd's shop--I beg its pardon, Stores. Sit still a moment though; here's Minetta Garden behind us. She's been sketching the Dinas, very likely. Minetta very much wants to be an artist, and you meet her with her sketching things all over the place. It may or may not be a passing fancy; she certainly has what Raymond Briggs calls a "Rossetti head"--enormous dark eyes, sharpish jaw, straight dark hair, and a disconcerting way of staring at people who are "putting it on" a little more thickly than usual (she stares pretty frequently at Raymond himself). Ah, she's taking the steep way down. We'll take the other way.... * * * * * Now we're on the level; better put your tie straight--or aren't you overpowered by these things? I confess I am; Raymond Briggs always chills me when he casts his eye over my front elevation. No thick-booted undergraduates' holiday-parties nor furry art-students with knickers and bare throats here. We're spruce at Llanyglo. Even on a week-day it's like a Church Parade, and on Sundays we go one better still. All the men have brightly coloured flannel blazers and gaudy cammerbands, and the women carry many-flounced parasols by a ring at the ferrule end, and wear toilettes straight out of the "Queen." Some of them will change for lunch; all of them will for _table d'hôte_ at seven. They protest that they vastly prefer dinner at seven, but what with the servants' dinners at midday, and husbands who prefer the old-fashioned hour, and one thing and another, they take their principal meal at one. There's no reason they shouldn't. There's no reason they should mention it at all. But they do, every day. If you're introduced to them, they'll all have told you within twenty-four hours. It's as if they didn't want there to be any mistake about something or other.... Here's where the donkeys turn. They have red and white housings, and their names across their foreheads--"_Tiny_," "_Prince_," and so on; the donkey-rides are a little offshoot of _Porth Neigr Omnibuses_. Kite-flying's popular here too--that's Mr. Morrell's, the big star-shaped one. The bathing-tents and deck-chairs are mostly hired from Howell Gruffydd, but there are no boats yet except Percy Briggs's twenty-five-pound collapsible one; those who want to go fishing have to use one of those old Copley Fielding things by the jetty there.... Now we're coming to the people. Here's Raymond Briggs with Mr. Lacey, Raymond in his orange-and-black blazer and a white Homburg hat, Philip in a blue blazer with white braid and a plain straw hat; both with perfect creamy rippling white trousers and spotless white doeskin boots. They're talking off-handedly about other holiday-places--Norway, the Highlands, the Riviera--and they're afraid of showing any enthusiasm or delight. Of every place they know they say that it has "gone off" since they first went there. There's a subtle undercurrent of contest about their conversation. Philip was at Hyères as recently as last winter, looking at the violets; but Raymond has been three times to Arles and Nimes. I suppose honours are easy. "Roman, I've heard?" Philip remarks. (You can hear him as you pass.) "Yes, Roman, with a Saracenic tower." "Ah, that tower's Saracenic, is it?" "Saracenic." "Wonderful people!" "Indeed yes!" "Curious how it takes you back into ancient times." "Yes, yes, it shortens history." "But the hotel accommodation!----" "Oh, bad in the extreme!" "What they want is entirely new and up-to-date management----" "Quite so----" "Can't say I thought much of their _bouillabaisse_." "An acquired taste, I suppose----" And they pass on. They'll talk like that the whole morning. They're not really interested in their subject. As I say, it makes you think of a sort of contest. Personally, I always want to applaud when somebody scores a good point. Perhaps the idea is that they're doing Llanyglo a favour by coming here-- There, stepping over the tent-ropes, are Mrs. Briggs and Mr. Ashton. Mr. Ashton is Edward Garden's chief London representative, a man of pleasure and of the world, and for all I know his function may be to keep these prosperous northerners up to the metropolitan mark. Mrs. Briggs, for example, who is very short and stout, and wears a lavender bonnet and pelisse, and certainly will not walk far on the sand in those heels, is on her mettle now. She is telling Mr. Ashton some London hotel experience or other. I like Mrs. Briggs. She's worth ten of Raymond. But I don't think she quite knows which is the paste and which the jewels in her speech. "----and so at the 'Metropole' they couldn't take Ray and I in; not that I was surprised in the very least, such frights as we looked after the voyage, and hardly any luggage; it hadn't come on from Paris, you see. So I says to Ray, 'It's no good making a noration here, for it's plain they don't want us. _I_'m glad they're doing so well they can afford to turn money away.' So I turns to the manager, who was staring at my slippers I'd put on for the railway-journey, and 'Don't if it hurts you,' I said, and with that we slammed our things together and drove off to the 'Grand'----" You can hear Mr. Ashton's sympathetic murmurs ... but that's Mrs. Lacey, with Mr. Morrell, just turning; she thinks that Euonyma and Wygelia have been quite long enough in the water. Mr. Morrell is in cool-looking cream alpaca; Mrs. Lacey, who is hook-nosed and pepper-and-salt haired and thin as a hop-pole, resembles a many-flounced hollyhock in her silvery battleship grey. "They'll tak' no harm, weather like this," Mr. Morrell is saying. "What's that I was going to ask you, now?... I have it. Is it right 'at Briggs is to build you a new house ovver yonder?" A foot or so over Mr. Morrell's head, Mrs. Lacey replies that Mr. Lacey hasn't decided yet.--"You see, with the girls at Brighton for another year yet, and then of course they'll have to go to Paris, it's early to say." "There's some talk of his making a Floral Valley, isn't there?" "I've not heard.--But I'm sure those girls----" "They're as right as rain wi' Mrs. Maynard----" But that is precisely where Mrs. Lacey thinks Mr. Morrell is mistaken. She has nothing whatever against Mrs. Maynard, who is a young widow, but she would like to know a little more about the late Mr. Maynard before admitting her to unreserved intimacy. Mrs. Maynard has not quite the figure a "Mrs." ought to have, and does more bathing than swimming (if you understand me). That's an accomplishment she learned at Ostend (for if Mr. Ashton, the London agent, is metropolitan, Mrs. Maynard brings quite a cosmopolitan air to Llanyglo). The misses Euonyma and Wygelia, on the other hand, learned to swim at Brighton, walking to the bathing-place in a crocodile. You see the difference. Brighton is not Ostend, any more than Llanyglo is either, and Mrs. Lacey considers that you can't be too careful.... That's Mrs. Maynard, with her back to the oncoming breaker. Her bathing-dress is quite complete, as complete as Mrs. Garden's, drying outside her tent there; but Mrs. Lacey disapproves of those twinkling scarlet ribbons. She considers them to be little points of attraction, that do all that is asked of them, and more. She prophesied that the red would "run" in the water, but it didn't, and that makes matters rather worse, for if Mrs. Maynard knows as well as that which red will run and which won't she is practised---- And those two graceful but rather skinned-rabbit-looking young shapes in the gleaming navy-blue costumes with the white braid are the girls. Now we're among the castles. Quite a horde of children, and very pretty children too, with their spades and buckets and their petticoats bunched up inside striped knickers (those too you get at Gruffydd's). That's Gilbert Smythe, the Medical Officer, the tall shaggy man carrying the bucket of water for the little boy's moat. He'll be giving Llanyglo its bathing testimonial too. Don't tread on that seaweed; it may be a castle garden, or a sea-serpent, or anything else in the child's imagination.... There are the boys trying to launch the collapsible boat. John Willie hasn't grown much; he won't be a tall man; but he's filling out. That minx Mrs. Maynard makes quite a lot of him, and says she likes the feel of his fine-spun hair. Whether John Willie likes her to feel it or not he does not betray. Now for Howell Gruffydd's.... * * * * * There you are. "THE LLANYGLO STORES," in big gold letters right across the front of the two cottages. What do you think of it? Yes in one way and another, there must be a largish sum sunk in "stock." Whether Howell's buying on credit or not I don't know, but he looks prosperous; he's had his beard trimmed, and he wears a new hat. Green butterfly-nets and brown and white and grey sandshoes--spades and buckets and balls and fishing-lines and toy ships--bottles of scent and the "Llanyglo Sunburn Cure" (made up for him by the chemist at Porth Neigr)--a new board with "Tricycles for Hire" on it (that's the shed at the back, and Eesaac Oliver, home for the holidays, books the hirings and does the repairs)--baskets and spirit-kettles and ironmongery, all in addition to the groceries.--Yes, Howell has quite a big business now. Let's go inside and buy something. "Good morning, Mr. Gruffydd; papers in yet? No? I thought I saw Hugh coming down the Sarn road half an hour ago. Yes, a lovely day. How's Eesaac Oliver? Still at Porth Neigr?... No, no, I know he's home for his holidays; I saw him driving Mr. Pritchard's hay-cart yesterday; I mean when is he going to Aberystwith?... Next year? Good! He'll make his mark in the world!--Mr. Garden been in this morning yet?... He's driving in the mountains? Well, there's always a breeze in the mountains.... No, serve Mrs. Roberts first. How are you, Mrs. Roberts?" Howell still sells Mrs. Roberts her pennyworth of bicarbonate of soda, and with the same smile as ever, but he could do without her custom now. Look round. Crates of eggs (the Trwyn hens can't keep pace with the demand now), great Elizabethan gables of tinned fruits and salmon, a newspaper counter, the Post Office behind the wire grating there, strings of things hanging from the ceiling, scarcely an inch of Edward Garden's matchboarding to be seen, and three assistants, all busily weighing, packing, checking, snipping the string off on the little knives on the wooden string-boxes, and passing the parcels to the boys with the hand-carts. But we ought to have been here a couple of hours ago. Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Lacey and Mrs. Garden were giving their orders for the day then. They come every morning, rings on their fingers and bells on their toes, high heels and flounced parasols and all the lot, and Howell doesn't have it all his own way then, I can tell you. For this is where our ladies are really efficient. They may never dream of travelling otherwise than first-class, but they know the price of everything to a halfpenny and a farthing. There's no "If 'twill do 'twill do" about them when it comes to the management of a house. And when Hilda Morrell grows out of the stage of wishing her father would talk "like other people," the chances are that she'll discover too that this is her real strength, as it was her mother's. Mrs. Maynard comes in with them of a morning sometimes, and tells them how tre-_men_-dously clever she thinks them, to know the differences between things like that, and vows that _her_ tradesmen rob her right and left because she hasn't been properly brought up; and then Mrs. Briggs, putting down the egg she is holding to the light, cries, "Eh, it's nothing, love--I could learn you in a month!" But Mrs. Lacey detects a secret sarcasm in the phrase about the bringing-up. And the men will be in for their newspapers presently. Now a stroll to the hotel, and just a peep at them by and by as they have lunch.... * * * * * This is the hotel lounge. The varnish is quite dry, though it doesn't look it. A dozen little round tables, chairs heavily upholstered in crimson velvet, festoons of heavy gilt cord on the curtains, and that's the service-hatch in the corner. The waiters are rather melancholy; you see, it isn't a public-house; everything goes down on the residents' bills; and that means fewer tips. Tea is served here in the afternoon, but of course the ladies never dream of tipping. Those excellent purchasers work out everything at cost price, omit such items as interest on capital, insurance, depreciation, and so on, and find a shilling for two pennyworth of bread and butter, a twopenny cake, and a pinch of two-shilling tea with hot water thrown in, tip enough. "_Ting! Ting! Ting!_" It is Val Clayton, ordering another drink for himself and his two friends. He drinks vermouth, his friends bottles of beer. Val drinks vermouth because it is foreign (he runs over to Paris frequently, and travels to Egypt for Clayton Brothers and Clayton), and perhaps he makes love to Mrs. Maynard (if you can call it making love) because she too is almost a continental. Since Mrs. Maynard is to be seen in her red ribbons, you might expect to find Val on the beach instead of drinking vermouth in the hotel lounge; but that is far from being "in character" when you know Val. The world's pleasures a little in excess have already set their mark on Val. He will tell you that he would not miss his morning drink, "not for the best woman living." Others may fetch and carry for their hearts' mistresses, but not Val. In the afternoon, perhaps, if he feels a little less jaded, in a hollow of the sandhills and with the warm sun to help, Val may bestir himself a little, but in the meantime he wants another vermouth. "_Ting! Ting! Ting!_--They want to have French waiters here," Val grumbles. "I never mind tipping a waiter if I can get what I want when I want it. _Wai_--oh, you've come, have you? Well, since you are here, you may as well bring these again, and then see if the papers have come in yet----" "And bring me a box of Egyptian cigarettes." "No--hi!--don't bring those cigarettes.--You don't want to smoke the rubbish they sell here. Fill your case out of this--I've a thousand upstairs I brought from Cairo myself----" "Oh!... Thanks.--Well, as I was saying----" And the speaker (who might as well be in Manchester for all he sees of Llanyglo, at any rate in the mornings) resumes some narrative that the replenishing of the glasses has interrupted. Now the others are dropping in, those who like one _aperatif_ before lunch but not half a dozen. Their wives have gone upstairs to tittivate themselves. The velvet chairs fill; extra waiters appear; and a light haze ascends from cigars and cigarettes to the roof. Listen to the restrained hubbub. "Waiter! _Ting!_ Waiter!----" and then a slight gesture; the waiters are supposed to know the tastes of the real _habitués_ by this time; (it counts almost as a "score" if the waiter brings your refection without your having as much as opened your mouth to ask for it).--"The usual, sir--yes, sir--coming!" And again they are talking, not on subjects, but as if the act of talking were itself subject enough. Philip Lacey discusses with Mr. Ashton the improvement in the Harwich-Hook of Holland crossing, and Mr. Morrell exchanges views on Local Government with Raymond Briggs. "_Ting! ting!_ You haven't cassis? Then why haven't you cassis?"--"Very sorry, sir--coming, sir!"--"What's happened to the newspapers this morning?"--"Of course, if it goes to arbitration----"--"Nay, John, don't drown t' miller!" "Ten o'clock, first stop Willesden----" "Your very good health, Mr. Morrell----" "Debentures----" "New heating in both greenhouses----"--"Same again, Val?"--"_Ting!_"---- "BOO-O-O-OOM-M-MMMMM!" It is the luncheon gong. * * * * * Just a glance as they sit at table. Don't you think it's a pleasant room? Three tall windows looking out on the sea, noiseless carpet, ornaments on the sideboards rather like wooden broccoli, but the decorations straight from London. But those two large chandelier gas-brackets don't work yet; the plant isn't installed; that's why the red-shaded oil-lamps are placed at intervals down the T of tables. The older folk gather round the head of the T, and down the stalk stretch the children. These will rise before their parents, just as they go out of Church after the Second Lesson; they will break off just below John Willie Garden and the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia there--who, by the way, are more usually called June and Wy. The flowers are chosen to "last well," for Llanyglo is almost as short of flowers as it is of trees; but the linen and plate and other appointments are all good--these actors in Llanyglo's little fore-piece are not accustomed to roughing it, even on a holiday. As I told you they would, half the women have changed their frocks. Mrs. Lacey is a pink hollyhock now, of which her daughters seem cuttings, and her hat is a sort of pink straw _képi_, trimmed with flowers that resemble virginia stock. She sits at the end of one arm of the T, with her back to the window. Near her is Mrs. Briggs, in stamped electric-blue velvet--her forearms, on which bracelets shiver, are as uniform in contour from whatever point you look at them as if they had been turned in a lathe. The Misses June and Wy also wear bracelets, from which depend bundles of sixpences, a sixpence for each of their birthdays, sixteen for Wiggie, fourteen for June. John Willie is lunching with Percy Briggs to-day, who lunched with him yesterday. Next to his chair is an empty one. It is Mrs. Maynard's, who has not come down yet. Then comes Val Clayton. Over all, with his napkin tucked into his collar as if he had prepared, not for a lunch, but for a shave, Mr. Morrell presides. For some reason or other, lunch always begins a little stiffly; but they unbend as they go on. At present Raymond Briggs cannot get away from the subject of the newspapers and their unaccountable lateness. "Can't understand it," he says for the fifth or sixth time. "And they were late last Wednesday--no, Thursday--no, I was right, it was Wednesday." "Was it Wednesday?" "Yes, the day it looked like rain; you remember?" "Ah, yes; the day it cleared up again." "All but a drop or two--nothing to hurt----" A pause. "Well, I don't suppose there's anything in them." "Speaking for myself, I don't care a button. I don't want to see the newspapers. 'No letters, no newspapers,' I always say when I go away." "A real country holiday, eh?" "Change and rest--those are the great things." "You're right. Complete change. No trouble about how you dress nor what you eat. That's the best of this place." "Still, if the newspapers are coming we may as well know when they are coming." "They ought to have a man, not that young boy." "Hugh Morgan?" "Is that his name? There are so many Morgans." "Common Welsh name." "Met another boy, I expect." "Boys are all alike." "Not a pin to choose among 'em." "Wish I was behind him with a stick for all that." "Another glass of wine, Mr. Ashton?" ... Then there enters with a little commotion, and trips half running to the empty chair between John Willie Garden and Val Clayton, Mrs. Maynard. She wears a big black hat swathed in black tulle, and her dress is of black lace, with close sleeves that reach to the middle knuckles of her taper fingers. She shakes out the mitre of her napkin and breaks forth to Val as she settles in her chair. "My horrid hair!" she pouts; "it always takes me three-quarters of an hour! Really, I shall have to stop bathing, but I do love it so. It seems a kind of fate; I always have to give up the things I love!" Hereupon Val--or perhaps vermouth, since Val seems a little astonished at his own gallantry--suddenly replies that if he were like that he would have to give up Mrs. Maynard. If Mrs. Maynard also is a little surprised she covers it with great readiness. "Oh, now the dreadful man's beginning again!" she cries. "If you _will_ say those things, Mr. Clayton, I shall have to change places at table!" Mr. Clayton asks here what is wrong with her hair.--"I think it's champion," he adds. "Very nice indeed," he adds once more. "Oh, how _can_ you!" (As a matter of fact, Mrs. Maynard's hair is rather wonderful, dark, and so long that she can sit on it.) "No fish, thank you," she says, with a smile to the waiter. Then Mrs. Lacey's firm voice is heard. "Can anybody tell me whether there have been many wrecks on this coast?" The person best qualified to give this information is John Willie Garden, but Mrs. Maynard has turned to John Willie, and is asking him whether he does not think she swims rather nicely. Her tendril-like fingers are again stroking his hair. Mrs. Lacey considers Mrs. Maynard's tulle-swathed hat the ostentation of modesty and the coquetry of mourning (if she is in mourning), and, getting no answer to her question about the wrecks, invents a name for Mrs. Maynard: "Mrs. Maynard--as she calls herself." Plates are changed, corks pop, and from time to time a seltzogene gives a spurt and a cough. Raymond Briggs explains that he is fond of strawberries, but strawberries are not fond of him. The chatter grows louder. "I took her as a kitchen-maid, but she turned out quite a good plain cook----" "Oh, like a top--as Dr. Smythe says, it's the air." "Oh, I _prefer_ it rustic; like this!" "Quite so--the first tripper and I'm off!" "So I opened her box myself; and there they were, if you please--four silver spoons!----" "Now, June, you and Wy talk French--you haven't talked it for days----" "John's booked the rooms for next year already----" "Oh, _Mis_-ter Clayton! I never promised any such thing!" "They can talk it if they like, as fast as a mill----" "If I were you I should see Tudor Williams about it----" "You can put on your oldest things and there's nobody to see you----" "But really I'm almost ashamed to go about the fright I do!----" "But that's a new dress?----" "_New!_--Last year--but it's good enough for here----" "Can't manage those double-l's----" "Gutturals----" "Llan--Thlan--Lan----" "June, your legs are younger than mine--run and get Aunt May's letter out of my dressing-table drawer----" "Mrs. Smythe?... The best thing for the baby, of course, but I can't help thinking that not _quite_ so publicly----" "Oh, I always let Percy suck, whoever was there!----" "John will have his dinner in the middle of the day----" "Smythe? Oh, one of the nicest fellows, but no push, I'm afraid----" "That's his failing----" "Where he misses it----" "Extraordinary----" "Well, some men are born like that----" "Wait for things to come to them instead of going to fetch them----" "Up t' Trwyn? We'll talk about it after I've had my forty winks. I must have my forty winks after my dinner." "Lunch, William." "Lunch, then." "He _will_ call it his dinner----" "It _is_ my dinner----" Then Mr. Morrell makes a signal, the younger ones troop out, breaking into loud shouts the moment they are clear of the room. They are off to the beach again. Shall we follow them?... * * * * * What do the Welshmen think of it all? It suits Howell Gruffydd's book, as you see, and Howell has pacified John Pritchard with the promise of Bazaars; but the others? Dafydd Dafis, say? Again nothing is going right for Dafydd. He feels that another friend has changed towards him--Minetta, to whom he used to sing _Serch Hudol_, and tell his stories of fays and water-beings and knights, and make much of for her elfin looks and quick and un-Saxon ways. For Minetta is already displaying the artist's heartlessness, and does not see the sorrow in Dafydd's eyes, but only what sort of a "head" he has from her special point of view, and how he will "come" upon a piece of paper. She tried to draw Dafydd only the other day, and ordered him, half absently, to turn his head this way and that, and grew petulant when her drawing went all wrong, and suddenly cried "Don't look at me like that!" when Dafydd turned his eyes on her with a tear in the corner of each. Poor Dafydd! He, like the Squire, would be better out of all this swiftly oncoming change.... But Dafydd, who is of the phrase-making kind, has made out of his sadness a phrase that more or less represents the attitude of every Welshman in Llanyglo. He watched all these people coming in ones and twos and threes out of the hotel one morning and walking down to their deck-chairs and bathing-tents on the beach. He stood for a while, looking at the gay parterre of sun-shades and summer clothes, of kites and spades and buckets, and rings on fingers more carefully tended but of coarser stuff than his own. And he listened to the accents that even his alien ear told him were strained and affected and false. And he gave them a half contemptuous and half pitying look as he turned away. "_These summer things_," he said.... But Howell Gruffydd has Dafydd Dafis's measure also, and takes it, just as he took John Pritchard's, in a single word. "_Eisteddfodau_," he whispered to Dafydd behind his hand.... For they may by and by be advertising Llanyglo by means of an Eisteddfod, and, as long as he is allowed to play, Dafydd does not greatly care who he plays to nor whether they understand him or not. IV YNYS There came one day at about that time a Welsh gipsy fortune-teller to Llanyglo. Her name was Belle Lovell, she was a known character all over the countryside, and she was some sort of a connection of Dafydd Dafis's. There was always a packet of tobacco for her in the Squire's kitchen when she appeared, and her companion on her travels was her thirteen-years-old daughter Ynys.[1] Belle sold baskets and mended chairs, and Ynys drew the cart, which was no more than a large deal packing-case mounted on four perambulator wheels, and with two flat shafts roughly nailed to its sides. The mother's boots, which you might have hit with a hammer and not have dinted, resembled grey old wooden dug-outs; the child went barefooted and barelegged, and it would have been a stout thorn that could have pierced the calloused pads of her hardened soles. [Footnote 1: Pron. "Unnis."] These two appeared at Llanyglo at midday, ate their frugal meal on the doorstep of Dafydd's single-roomed cottage behind the Independent Chapel, and then, leaving the cart behind them, strolled down to have a look at that splendacious new caravan, Howell Gruffydd's shop. Belle, her greenish light brown eyes never for a moment still, gossiped with her old acquaintances; her daughter, whose head was as steadily held as if she balanced an invisible pitcher on it, stood looking at the green butterfly-nets and red-painted buckets, admiring, but no more desiring them than she would have desired anything else impossibly beyond her reach. Her mother joined a group about Mrs. Roberts's door; the visitors, who had lunched, began to descend to the beach again; and there approached down the path that led to the Hafod Unos Ned, the oldest of the Kerrs. Now Ned had run across Belle on many alder-expeditions, and, while the invasion of "summer things" had not driven Ned into naturalisation as a Welshman, it had, by emphasising the distinction between the well-to-do and the poor of the world, shown him how to jog along in peace with his neighbours. He gave Belle an intelligent grin, and jerked his head in the direction of the bathing-tents. "Well, mother," he said, "ye've dropped in at just about th' right time." "There iss no wrong time for seeing friends," Belle replied, in an up-and-down and very musical Welsh accent. "Nay, I wanna thinking-g o' that," Ned replied, strongly doubling the "g" that terminated the present participle. "I wor thinking-g of a bit o' fortune-telling. There's a lot ovver yonder wi' more brass nor sense, and it allus tickles 'em to talk about sweethearts an' sich." "Indeed Llanyglo has become grea-a-at big place, whatever," the gipsy replied, and continued her conversation with Mrs. Roberts. And presently, whether she took the hint or whether she had come precisely for that purpose, Belle's greenish-brown eyes roved again, she made a slight gesture to Ynys, who had turned from the butterfly-nets and was looking out to sea, and the pair of them made off along the beach in the direction of that bright plot of colour that made as it were a herbaceous border between the grey-green tussocks and the glittering sea. For a hundred yards Belle's dug-outs left behind her a heavy shuffling track in the sand, parallel with the light kidney-shaped prints of the child who walked as if she carried an invisible pitcher on her head; and then, with the cluster of tents and parasols still far ahead, they stopped. John Willie Garden and Percy Briggs, with Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd ready to bear a hand if called upon to do so, but otherwise a little fearful of intruding, were victualling the blue-and-white collapsible boat for a cruise. But it was not in order to tell the fortunes of the three boys that Belle stopped. She stopped for the same reason that the street-seller pulls out his rattle or his conjuring trick, while his quick-silver eyes dart this way and that in search of his crowd. The only difference was that Belle was her own conjuring-trick. The gesture with which she performed it was superbly negligent. She had a wonderful old mignonette-coloured shawl, which, when she had talked with the group about Mrs. Roberts's doorstep, had been drawn up over her head; and suddenly she allowed it to fall to her shoulders. The effect might well have carried twice the distance it was intended to carry. Out of the folds of the shawl her neck rose as erect as the pistil of an arum lily. Against it gleamed her heavy gold earrings. Her cheekbones and the nodule of her high nose gleamed like bronze, and about the whorl of the springing of her hair at the back of her head the sunshine made as it were a sun-dog on the lustrous blackness. Her silver wedding-ring, an old tweed jacket that might have belonged to her kinsman Dafydd Dafis, and a patched old indigo petticoat, completed the legerdemain. Ynys, clad to all appearances in a single garment only, watched the boys exactly as she had watched the balls and butterfly-nets and buckets outside Howell Gruffydd's shop. They too made a shining _coup d'oeil_. There was just swell enough to set the long breakers hurdling in, and wind enough to take the tops off them in rattling showers of brilliant spray. Indeed it was so merry a sea that, not half an hour before, Mrs. Maynard had declared to John Willie that she had come within an ace of drowning during her bathe that morning, and had asked him whether, had he seen her in difficulties, he would have come to her rescue. "Mmmmm, John Willie?" she had asked, curling his hair with her perfumed fingers; but John Willie, seeing Percy Briggs approaching, had jerked away his head. This had not been because he had been afraid of being laughed at by Percy. For that matter, Percy had confided to John Willie only a week before that he "liked their Minetta," and so was in no position to jeer at the softer relations. No; it had merely been that, as Llanyglo's curtain had risen, suddenly revealing a soft and alluring group of Euonymas and Wygelias and Hildas, not to speak of Mrs. Maynard herself, all temptingly set out like fruit upon a stall, the curtain of John Willie Garden's peculiar privacy had come down with a run. Mrs. Maynard was always trying to peep behind it, but probably there was nothing behind. Probably that was the reason it had come so sharply and closely down. No boy wants to show that he has nothing to show. Smack!--A bucketful of spray drenched the stores, and the wave ran hissing and creaming back under the counter of the blue-and-white boat. John Willie shouted rather crossly to Eesaac Oliver. "Pull her up a bit, can't you, instead of standing there doing nothing!" Eesaac Oliver started to life and obeyed. He was rather a fetcher and carrier for these more happily circumstanced boys, but privately he knew himself to be in some things their superior. To tell the truth, Eesaac Oliver knew just a lee-tle too much about what went on within himself, and communicated it just a lee-tle too readily to others. For he dropped no curtain; on the contrary, the windows of his soul were flung wide open. The experience of the world he had acquired at the school at Porth Neigr had already caused him to declare himself as being thenceforward powerfully on the side of the angels; and that ingenious educational exercise which consists of speaking extempore on any subject given only a moment ago had a lee-tle abnormally developed certain natural powers of expression which his race rarely lacks. Had Mrs. Maynard attempted to stroke Eesaac Oliver's hair (which was thick and black, and rose in a great lump in front, falling thence in a lappet over his pale forehead), he would either have cried "Apage!" or else, suffering the seduction, would have undergone torments of remorse afterwards. Therefore it was with a meek dignity that Eesaac Oliver bore a hand with the boat, and then fell back and a little enviously watched again. Then that crafty and stately piece of legerdemain of Belle's had its reward. In his rippling cream alpaca, there approached along the sands Mr. Morrell himself, and Belle's neck no longer resembled the pistil of an arum lily. She bent ingratiatingly forward; as if a key had clicked, a dazzling smile cut her face into two; and after a jocular word or two Mr. Morrell bore her off, Ynys following. Let us follow too. Do look at the contrast--those summer things, and the two wanderers in whom all the seasons are ingrained; carefully veiled and sunburn-cured complexions, and these other vagrants, brown as the upturned earth; the indefatigable maintenance of artificial attitudes even before one another, and the grave ease of the child, the deliberate gesture with which the mother looses as it were in the sheath the only weapon she has against the world.... Frith's "_Derby Day_?" Yes, it is a little like it; but listen. Mrs. Maynard, with a sparkling glance about her that says "Mum," has slipped off her wedding-ring, and Belle has taken her hand. It is slim as a glove that has never been put on, and Mrs. Maynard intends to trip Belle if she can. So, when Belle begins to promise Mrs. Maynard a husband who shall be such-and-such, there are winks and glances and nudges, as much as to say that now they are going to have some fun, and Mr. Morrell says, "Here, ho'd on a bit, mother--how do you know she isn't married?" If Belle shows the knife for a moment, she does it so delicately that nobody notices it. "If the prit-ty lady was married, her man he srink a ring upon her finger, red-hot, as they srink a tyre on a cart-wheel," Belle replies; and the reading of Mrs. Maynard's palm continues. Mrs. Lacey, a pale blue hollyhock, looks as if she pooh-poohed the whole thing; but inwardly she is a-tremble with eagerness to have the fortunes of her two daughters told. As it happens, no sooner is Mrs. Maynard's hand dropped than Mr. Morrell, who happens to be standing next to June, catches her by the arm. "Come on, June, and be told how to get a husband!" he cries, and he slips a shilling into Belle's hand. June will never be prettier than she is now. She is indeed very pretty--apple-blossom and cream, bright-haired, freshly starched, back straight and elbows well down, and as glossy from top to toe as the broad mauve ribbon of her sash. Soon she will be as tall as her mother; already she is taller than her father, the landscape-gardener; and the thought of whether she will marry or not, and whether brilliantly or otherwise, never enters her head. Of course she will marry, and of course her marriage will be a brilliant one. "Marriage" and "brilliant marriage" are one and the same thing. In this, as in most other things, Wygelia is of the same opinion as June. A close understanding, which has not yet outgrown the form of surreptitious kicks under the table, and private and abbreviated words, exists between the two sisters. Other things being equal, they would probably prefer to marry two brothers. "I tell the prit-ty miss a harder thing than that--I tell her how to keep her man when she has got him," Belle replied amid laughter; and she proceeds to describe June's husband. He is to come over the water (landing at Newhaven, Mrs. Lacey instantly concludes, and taking the first train to the Boarding School at Brighton), and he shall be devoted to her, and she shall have such-and-such a number of children. (Mrs. Lacey straightens her back; this is something like; her grandfather, whom she remembers quite well, was June's great-grandfather, and will have been the great-great-grandfather of June's boys and girls, which is getting on, especially when you remember the younger sons and grandsons of somebodies, who are estate-bailiffs and engine-drivers and carriers of milk-cans in the Colonies.) When June's fortune is finished all applaud her, as if she had performed some feat of skill, and then Mr. Morrell seizes Wy. "Come on, Wy--no hanging back--let's see what sort of a fist Wy's going to make of it----" And Wy also is haled forward, blushing and conscious and biting her lip, and is told that for her too somebody is languishing, and that presently he will drink out of her glass and thenceforward think her thoughts, which are already complex. And Hilda's palm is read, and little Victoria Smythe's fat one, and Val Clayton's, and others, and silver rains into Belle's palm. Chaffingly Mr. Morrell offers her a sovereign for her takings, uncounted, but is refused. Then Mrs. Briggs "wants the boys done," and somebody is despatched along the shore for Percy and John Willie, and as they arrive, bearing their bottles of milk and parcels of jam-sandwiches (for the blue-and-white boat had been paid off), there comes up also Minetta, carrying her sketching-kit. She stands peering at Ynys, more as seeing in her a subject than as at a fellow-being. So, idly and laughingly, an hour of the summer afternoon passes; and then an accident mars its harmony. John Willie and Percy, feeling the pangs of thirst, had drunk their milk and had then set up the bottle as a mark to throw stones at; and Ynys, walking down to the sea-marge, has set her foot upon a piece of the broken glass. Unconcernedly she bathes the cut in the salt water. But as the laughing group breaks up, and her mother calls her again, the blood wells out once more, dabbling with a dark stain those light kidney-shaped prints in the sand. Mrs. Garden and Mrs. Briggs see the child's plight simultaneously. It is a cruel gash, and the two ladies utter loud cries. "Nay, nay, whativver in the world!" cries Mrs. Briggs, all of her that is not pure mother suddenly becoming pure Hunslet. "Nay, nay! Come here, doy!----" She and Mrs. Garden kneel down before the gipsy child, and a dozen others gather round. Cries of sympathy break out. "T' poor bairn!----" "What a mess!" "How did she do it?" "John Willie, quick, run and get the kettle from the picnic-basket----" "Indeed, lady dear, it iss noth-thing----" "Quick, Ray, give me your handkercher too----" Ynys' foot is bathed in fresh water from the picnic-kettle, and bound up with Mrs. Briggs's tiny lace handkerchief, with Raymond's large one over it to secure it. The blood has already come through before the tying is finished. And you forget the false accents and the elaborate pretences of these "summer things" of Llanyglo's little preliminary piece, and remember only the better things that lie beneath them. They flatter Ynys, and encourage her with admiring words. "She's a very brave little girl, anyway!" "What did you say her name was?" "Ynys." "Well done, Ynys! Soon be well----" "John Willie, I've told you about throwing stones at bottles before--get you home till I come----" "And you too, Percy Briggs; and you dare to stir out till I tell you!" "Don't cry, little girl----" Ynys has no thought whatever of crying. She makes no more motion than a pine makes when it bleeds its gouts of resin in the spring. But they continue to comfort her. "She'll never be able to walk like that!" "Better fetch Gilbert Smythe." "June, you run----" "Here's half a crown for you, Ynys, for being a brave little girl." Then Minetta, who has been conferring with Belle, speaks.--"All right, mother, she's to come home with us; I'm going to paint her." "There, now, Ynys, you're going to be painted! Won't that be fun!" "And if she ever comes to Liverpool and asks for me," says Philip Lacey, "I'll see she's all right. Yes, I will. She shall sell flowers. That'll be better than going about barefoot and getting her poor little foot cut, won't it?" But at that, for the first time, the child seems to see and to hear. Her eyes, greenish-brown and deep like her mother's, look into Philip Lacey's small but kindly ones as if she had not seen him before. The half-crown Philip has given her is still tightly clasped in her hand, but then half-crowns are things that do sometimes visit people precisely like that. And she knows that they have some mystic power or virtue by means of which they can buy things--green butterfly-nets and red-painted buckets; but Ynys can not quite understand the people who can sell these wondrous things for mere half-crowns.... Then she realises again that somebody has just said something about selling flowers.... They are promising her that if she is a brave little girl and lets Doctor Smythe dress her foot she shall one day sell flowers.... Sometimes, meeting Belle Lovell and her daughter upon the road, the one with her loops of cane upon her back and the other drawing the cart made of the deal box mounted upon perambulator wheels, you will give them good-day and pass on; and then, five minutes or so afterwards perhaps, you will be conscious of an almost noiseless pattering behind you, and will turn. It is Ynys, holding out to you a little posy of hedge-flowers. She may not refuse your penny for them; indeed she will not; but you are not to suppose that it is for the penny that she has brought you the nosegay. The poor sticky little thing is unpurchasable. You would have got it just the same had you been as poor as herself. PART THREE I THE HOLIDAY CAMP The writer of the _Sixpenny Guide to Llanyglo and Neighbourhood_, in speaking of the rise of the town, made use of an obvious image which we will take leave to borrow from him. "Thenceforward," he wrote, "Llanyglo sprang up as if by magic out of the soil itself." Indeed it did something like it. Watching it, you would have thought of one of Philip Lacey's gardens in the short days before Spring had begun to warm the air. Neat, bare, brown, friable soil, with not yet a crocus or a snowdrop to be seen; here and there a stick with a tiny linen tab fluttering (reminding you of Terry Armfield's little "_Keep off the Grass_" board with "Delyn Avenue" written upon it); frames half open and inverted bells, dibbing-strings, sprinklings of lime, and a few whirligigs to keep the birds away; these, and the promise of the scent and colour to come--it did indeed resemble Llanyglo. Not all at once did the pea-sticks become builders' scaffold-poles, the lines of string the plotting-out of streets. As of Philip's gardens, you could not have said of Llanyglo on any particular day, "This has changed more than it was changing yesterday, more than it will be again changing to-morrow." But for all that, nothing remained any longer the same. Philip's men, working over the blindfold earth with clay and spittle, caused its lids to open; Edward Garden and his associates, similarly, with money for manure, labour to let in the air and light, and the gentle airs of advertisement already fanning an incipient repute, made a garden of stone and iron, with buds of stucco, flowers of paint and glass and gilding, and fruit after its kind to ripen by and by. Humanity was the soil he worked on, and his knowledge of it the force with which he did so. Its hopes and appetites, its need of noise and change and laughter, its stretching itself after fetters struck off and its resolve to have a better, a much better time than it had ever had before--out of these things came Edward Garden's beds and borders. He would grow flowers of pleasure for those of the towns to pick. And, since you do not advance the glory of July by neglecting to make the most of March, his crops also had their rotation. For this, in a manner of speaking, was Llanyglo's March, and what though it lasted two, three, four years? The Laceys and the Raymond Briggses were to be cultivated while they were yet there. Blooming and falling again, they would make an excellent preparation, and there was plenty to do in the meantime. There were other hotels to build, and a wet-weather pavilion for tea and talk and dancing, and a landing-stage for the twenty new boats, and this and that and the other--and always, always, the coming full summer to look forward to, the summer of ten, eleven, twelve years thence, the summer when, not the Laceys, but the employees of their fourteen or fifteen shops should talk of Llanyglo; the summer when Mr. Morrell should come no more, but his operatives should draw their thousands from the Clubs and rain them upon the town; the summer when all should be changed but the steadfast Trwyn, and all different save the mountains behind, and nothing the same save the still and watching sea. The Sarn-Porth Neigr Loop was constructed in 1886-7, and opened in the May of the last-named year. One of its earlier trains brought, in a first-class compartment, Philip and Mrs. Lacey and the Misses June and Wygelia, fresh from Paris; and in a third-class compartment it brought a family called Topham. Mr. Topham was head-clerk in a Liverpool Irish-bacon-importing concern, and Philip Lacey, meeting him once or twice at Philharmonic Promenade Concerts, had forgotten the golden rule that it is easier to get into conversation with a man than it is to shake him off again, and had fallen into the habit of nodding to him. In fact, a sort of acquaintanceship had been struck up. He had learned Topham's name, and Topham his. All this had been in Liverpool. But it was one thing to strike up an acquaintanceship in Liverpool, and quite another to continue that acquaintanceship elsewhere. Philip Lacey, seeing Barry Topham get into the train, had not doubted that the bacon-importer's clerk would be dropping off again after a few stations. But at Stockport, where Philip had descended to stretch his legs, Topham had met him on the platform and had informed him that he was going to Llanyglo. Now when Philip went away for a few weeks' change he liked that change to be a change. He didn't come to Llanyglo to meet casuals from Liverpool. He began to wonder whether Llanyglo was quite what it had been. And so did Mr. Morrell, who brought his daughter Hilda from Brighton that year. And so did Val Clayton, who also came that year, merely in order to see what sort of vermouth they sold at the other hotels. For soon there were three hotels, the original "Cambrian," the "Cardigan," and the "Montgomery." All these were on what by and by became the front, and between the "Cambrian" and the "Cardigan" was a space of perhaps a couple of hundred yards. Thence to the "Montgomery," however, was quite a walk for Val of a morning--a quarter of a mile or more on towards the Trwyn. Of the three hotels the "Montgomery" was the largest. It had sixty bedrooms. Its stabling (for there was now a landau-service up into the mountains) blocked up one of Terry's dream-avenues a hundred yards from where the easy marble steps were to have descended to the shore. A wide metalled road ran past the three hotels, but it reminded you of unexplored rivers on an ancient map, which are traced for a score or a hundred miles, and then dissipate in interrogative dots. Another road at right angles ran past the Kerrs' Hafod to the gap opposite Pritchard's farm, and there were yet other roads, if those widish alleys bounded by stakes and wire could properly be called roads. When the wind rose the sand still whistled everywhere, scouring paint, rounding wooden corners, stinging faces; but so far it had made very little impression on a large, black, tarred notice-board firmly stayed into the sand midway between the "Cardigan" and "Montgomery" hotels, a board bigger than the whole front of the Kerrs' Hafod, which bore a straggling plan upon it in white, and the words: LEASEHOLD! For 999 Years! Lots as Under: Apply----------- To tell the truth, Llanyglo was now rather a dreary-looking place. They had broken its sylvan eggs, but had hardly yet begun the making of its urban omelette. The above-mentioned announcement was not the only one of its kind; there was another halfway between the Kerrs' house and Pritchard's, and a third at Pritchard's corner. These, it was known, awoke faint and distant echoes in little paragraphs in Manchester and Liverpool papers. The Company so far was a private one; it hardly knew yet what powers it might presently expect to possess; but Mr. Tudor Williams and others were finding out. As a matter of fact, they were rather anxious about these powers. An Act of Parliament two years before had seemed to promise them certain things that might prove immensely to their advantage; but of the two great Local Government Acts (of 1888 and 1894), the first was still in a plastic state, and the second not yet thought of. Hitherto Porth Neigr had been the centre of administration; it was now being sought to shift that centre. And, with the cumbrous old machinery of Boards of Guardians and Poor Law Overseers out of the way, Howell Gruffydd, it was whispered, might before long become a Councillor. Indeed, who would make a better one? Edward Garden? Edward Garden preferred to depute powers of this kind. The Laceys and Briggses, on a property qualification? These had their own affairs to attend to, and were summer residents only. John Pritchard? Stern John, as unchallenged ruler of the Baptist Chapel, was already a Councillor in a deeper sense than that defined by any mundane Act. William Morgan? Not substantial enough. John Roberts? Dafydd Dafis? The Squire?--The claims of all of them paled before that of Howell Gruffydd the grocer.... The leases were being taken up too. The Llanyglo Pavilion, Limited, was incorporated before a spade was set in the sand. The great blackboard between the Kerrs' house and Pritchard's Corner bore a significant diagonal paper strip with four fifteen-inch letters in red upon it--SOLD. Negotiations were proceeding for the acquisition of the land at the Corner itself. And Edward Garden had completed that rumoured purchase of his far up in the mountains. It was a "catchment area" for water, and if, under the new distribution, the Council should find itself possessed of large borrowing-powers, it might possibly find the private ownership of those hundreds of acres far away up Delyn an awkward matter. And the excavation was already being made for the row of houses that later was known as "Ham-and-Egg Terrace"--a hundred and fifty yards of building that at first awed Llanyglo by its grandeur, but which they subsequently came to think a poor affair and did their best to conceal. It was only partly for a holiday that those first visitor-discoverers came to Llanyglo now. Considerations of business had begun to play a part in their coming. Mr. Morrell, for example, had sunk quite a lot of money in the place, and liked to keep an eye on his interests. Philip Lacey pored over a dozen sketch-drafts of his Floral Valley, a project for converting a coombe or dean that clove one portion of the Trwyn into an ornamental arrangement of flower-beds with a bandstand in the centre. And Raymond Briggs mused on houses and hotels, on hotels and more and yet more houses. For these Llanyglo was no longer simply a place "delightfully rural," a place "where you could dress as you liked," a place for "a real rustic holiday." It was the Tophams who made these discoveries and bestowed these encomiums now. Whether or not Barry Topham dressed as he liked, he certainly dressed as the Briggses and the Laceys disliked. At the Promenade Concerts his appearance had been just decently unremarkable; alas, it was so no longer! Now, in the country, he broke out into a loose tweed jacket, knickers made of a pair of long trousers of striped cashmere cut down, low shoes, a flannel shirt, no hat, and a tightly knotted red tie, this last as a voucher for the socialism that, Philip Lacey discovered to his horror, he talked in and out of season. He was a small, bearded, wiry man of forty-four or five, who gave you a curious impression of ferocity and mildness mingled. The mildness was perhaps due to his bolt-upright shock of frightened-looking sandy hair, the ferocity to the pince-nez marks on either side of his nose that gave his glance a concentrated look. His wife did not appear to dress (you cannot call mere concealment of the person "dressing") until four o'clock in the afternoon, and his two daughters, aged nineteen and twenty-one, were school-teachers, less buxom than Miss Nancy Pritchard, but more professionally eager, as if all the vital force in them had gone, not to the waste of mere pleasant flesh, but into the severer regions of the mind. This taking of Llanyglo at its word in the matter of dress was bad enough, but worse was to come. Scarcely were the Tophams installed at the "Montgomery" when it became known that, though they had appeared to come alone, they were merely an advance party. Two days later the main body arrived, and Llanyglo experienced its first social slump. The party called itself a Holiday Camp. It was a union of two semi-secular, semi-Nonconformist Institutions whose idea of having a better time than their fathers had had was to botanise, to geologise, to read, and to discuss these activities afterwards in whirlwinds of communal talk. Strictly speaking, they did not "camp" at all: they put up at the "Montgomery"; but they had camped, hoped to camp again, and called their more convivial gatherings, when studies were cast aside, Pow-Wows. They overran the place instantaneously. You met them with their brown canvas satchels and japanned tin specimen-cases, poking about up the Trwyn or groping in the boggy patches about Sarn. They were to be met in the lanes, carrying picnic paraphernalia. They lighted fires of driftwood on the shore, which coatless young men blew while the young women combed their hair out in the sun. And wherever they went a little red rash went with them, the rash of the small red-backed book, Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_, of which the contagion had raged among them. Not that they had not books of other hues also. They had Hugh Miller's _Old Red Sandstone_ in green, and _Selected Sayings_ of Marcus Aurelius in brown, and others in various colours; but it was the red that struck the eye at the greater distance. They and the books were inseparable. The unmarried ones, sharing a book between them, seemed already to be creating that sage community of intellectual interest that, as all the world knows, comes in so very handy when the first fires of love have become less devouringly hot; the married ones, with a book apiece, kept the calm connubial ideal before the maids' and bachelors' eyes.... And it was all exceedingly disquieting and difficult to understand. One hoped that the books were portals into high and fair and spacious places, but feared that they might be but pathetic posterns of escape from the world's weary drudgery that has got to be done and that therefore somebody must do. One had struggles of compunction and abasement and doubt, and the humiliating feeling that some clean and heathery and wind-swept place of the mind was being invaded to sadly, sadly little purpose. One tried, desperately tried, to tell oneself that if poor lame Harry Stone got one single half-hour's joy out of it all, nothing else mattered; and then one wondered whether even this was true. It is hard to be social over an anti-social thing.... So one bore, humble heart and arrogant heart alike, each his portion of Education's shame. The coming of the Montgomeryites acted instantaneously. Within an hour of their issuing from their sixty-bedroom hotel, the Cambrians and their deck-chairs and bathing-tents had drawn a little more compactly together on the sands. Certainly the Cambrians did not see why they should take, intellectually, a second place to these loftily and botanically thinking ones, merely because they chose to pay a little attention to appearances also. Moreover, the fact that the Reading Party had come to Llanyglo only for a fortnight filled the Briggses and the Laceys with a certain compassion. This was not compassion that the ecstacies with which a zoophyte was discovered, or the glad cries with which a bit of sundew was hailed, must be such transient joys. It was rather compassion that the Montgomeryites should find the place pristine. Llanyglo "pristine"--now!... "Ah," they thought, "they wouldn't think that if they'd known it as _we_ knew it--two houses and a single hotel only!" ... The thought opened a vista. Perhaps, in time to come, these Utopians would tell others how, when _they_ first set eyes on Llanyglo, the place had not begun to be spoiled, but had had three hotels only, a dozen or so houses, Ham-and-Egg Terrace, and a blackboard here and there that had emphasised rather than detracted from its virgin charm. And these others would pass it on to others still, and so it would go on, and so, in one sense, Llanyglo would never grow. There would always be somebody who had known it before somebody else, and would say, "Ah, yes, but you ought to have seen it _then_!" ... Well, thought the Cambrians, perhaps it was a good thing. To have inferiors is one of the great solaces of Life, and they supposed that the Tophams also had their inferiors. Perhaps some day a tripper would look even on Philip Lacey's Floral Valley with much the same shock of delight with which Eve opened her eyes on the dew of Eden.... A sorely tried man now was Philip. Sadly he lamented the evening that had taken him and Barry Topham to the same Philharmonic Concert in Liverpool. For the starched and hotpressed ones of the "Cambrian," though they did not openly say so, held him as in a manner responsible for this inferior spilling all over their idyllic place. They seemed to be trying to make out that the Tophams were Philip's chosen friends. Philip felt this to be unfair. It was an accident that might have happened to anybody, and Philip's views on culture and the multitude were every bit as sound as Raymond Briggs's own. And as Philip did not intend to be sat upon by Raymond Briggs or anybody, he acted well, nay, even nobly. He had recognised Topham; very well. He had not positively encouraged the fellow, but say that certain narrow-minded persons wished to make it appear that he had done so; well again. He would stand by what he had done. He would ask the Tophams to dinner at his hotel. He did so, and took the disastrous consequences. For the Tophams came, and, with the eyes of the whole "Cambrian" upon them, behaved for all the world as if they had been dining at their own inferior Liberty Hall of a "Montgomery." So at least it seemed to Philip, and bad enough surely that would have been; but Mrs. Lacey made it far, far worse. It was plain as plain could be (she said afterwards) that the Tophams' sprawls and freedoms were all put on, and that they had been like four fishes out of water every minute of the time--he ought to be ashamed of himself, showing them up before everybody's eyes like that!... "Come as you are," Philip Lacey had said, with the truest delicacy, since it was very unlikely that the Tophams had brought evening clothes to their Camps and Pow-Wows; and so nobody dressed. The "Cambrian's" tables were no longer arranged in the form of a T. With the installation of gas, numerous smaller tables, with a couple of large oval ones among them, had taken its place, and at one of the oval tables the four Laceys and the four Tophams sat. Mr. Lacey was at one end, with Mrs. Topham on his right, Mrs. Lacey was at the other end with Mr. Topham on her right. At the sides sat the younger ones, a Topham and a Lacey on either side. This was not the happiest of arrangements, since young ladies who have just "finished" in Paris usually think they have seen enough of school-teachers for some time to come, but it was the best that could be managed. Nor could Miss June kick Miss Wy under the table. The discord showed from the very first moment. The Laceys, as urbane hosts, would have kept to such light and frothy conversational matters as how the Tophams liked Llanyglo, whether they had been up into the mountains yet, and similar subjects; but not so the Tophams. Briefly, they went for the eternal verities like four steam-navvies. Before she had unfolded her napkin, Mrs. Topham had Philip Lacey helpless in the toils of More's _Utopia_, and by the time she had asked him half a dozen searching questions, looking mistrustfully at him as much as to say, "You _dare_ to lie to me, sir!" the unhappy man had to confess that it was some time since he had read the book, and that his textual memory was by no means as good as it had been. A second attack rendered him abject. The third was not delivered. Seeing him such a rank and pitiable outsider, Mrs. Topham contemptuously spared him. "And _this_ is the state of education to-day!" she said scornfully to her husband afterwards.... Mr. Topham, in the meantime, tackled Mrs. Lacey on certain problems of the Distribution of Wealth, with no happier results. Quite simply, Mrs. Lacey was unaware that such problems existed save insofar as they were included in the specific question of marriage-settlements for daughters. She scarcely troubled to answer Mr. Topham, but, glancing from June and Wy to the Misses Amy and Norah Topham, lost herself in the problems of the Distribution of Proposals instead. So she too, from the point of view of those who carried Mill and Smith in their pockets and read these inhuman authors in the shade of the crumbling Dinas, became an outsider. But worst of all fared the Misses June and Wy; for the Topham sisters had brought with them from Liverpool a holiday-pamphlet, which consisted of forty-two questions, three of which, daily for a fortnight, the holiday-maker was advised to ask himself. So: "As I came along the beach this afternoon," said Miss Amy to June, with a chatty note in her voice, but the enthusiasm for knowledge smouldering in her eyes, "I observed great quantities of seaweed. To what uses are seaweeds put?" And said Miss Norah to Wy, slightly puckering her shining and melon-like forehead: "One of the boatmen told me yesterday that in the Spring large masses of the vernal squill are to be found upon the hills near here. Why is this?" Then Miss Amy again: "There are fine examples of contorted strata on the other side of the Trwyn. Perhaps you or your sister can tell me the reason why these strata are contorted?" And again Miss Norah: "Who was Taliesin? When did he flourish? Tell me anything you know about him." Dearly would June and Wy have liked to reply, in the words of Mrs. Briggs when the hotel-manager had looked at her boots, "Don't if it hurts you!" Wiggie nicknamed Miss Norah Topham "The Vernal Squill" on the spot; June, a phanerogam herself, dubbed Miss Amy "The Club Moss." After that dinner, there was nothing for Philip Lacey to do but to live his indiscretion down. But if this was the "Cambrian's" attitude to the "Montgomery," it was not that of the Welshmen of Llanyglo. These were now more in number, for half the staffs of the three hotels were Welsh, and others also had scented prosperity in the air. Within a few hours friendly relations had been established between the natives and the readers of _Utopia_. A Welshman's eyes will always sparkle at the sight of a book or other piece of the apparatus of knowledge, and the Montgomeryites, friendly souls all and ready chatters with whomsoever they met, began to drop into Howell's shop of a morning. None too reluctantly, they suffered themselves to be drawn out by Howell on the subjects of their studies, and then it was that Howell became a proud man indeed. For he produced Eesaac Oliver, home once more from Aberystwith College. Without even having the titles given to him as he came in at the door that divided the shop from the dwelling-rooms behind, Eesaac Oliver swapped them book for book. Howell's breast swelled. "Blodwen--Blodwen--come quick!" he called. Then, with his eyes sparkling like bits of mica in a pebble and his small teeth gleaming like a double row of barley, he looked fondly on the assembly and murmured, "Dear me, I did not know till to-day there wass so-o-a many books written!" One morning Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Garden came in in the very middle of one of these galas of the intellect. They were kept waiting for a minute and more. There were times when the Llanyglo Stores almost resembled a Debating Room. It was left to the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia Lacey to restore the balance that their father's luckless dinner-party had disturbed; and right well they laboured to that end. They brought all the resources of Brighton and Paris to bear upon those two amiable but indefatigable school-teachers, the sisters Topham. They did not avoid them; on the contrary, they put their heads together and then went out in search of them. Then, when they had met them, they asked them to tell them whether it was true that the guillemot laid its blunt-ended egg in order that it should not roll off ledges, and whether the person who said that serviceable knife-handles could be made of the stems of the Great Oar Weed had been correctly informed. And when they failed to come upon their unsuspecting victims, they cathechised one another. "As I was ascending the mountains the other day," June would suddenly break out in the Vernal Squill's raised and staccato voice, "I found myself walking upon grass. What is grass? State reasons for your answer." And Wiggie, assuming the _viva voce_ examination tones of the Club Moss, would ask her sister what a man was, and whether Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd could properly be classed as one. Failing the turning up of those two marriageable brothers, the Misses June and Wy were likely to be what Mrs. Briggs called "bad to suit." It was when the _Utopia_-readers had been at the "Montgomery" rather more than half their time that the first bruit went abroad of the jollification that presently made memorable the eve of their departure. Nor was this jollification to be confined to their own set. All (as afterwards at the Llanyglo P.S.A. Meetings) were to be welcome. The project was talked over, at first informally at the Llanyglo Stores, afterwards more seriously at the "Montgomery"; and a few days later the rumour was confirmed by print. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd and Hugh Morgan distributed a number of handbills, thrusting them into folk's hands in the stake-and-wire-enclosed streets, pushing them under doors, and even entering that Reservation on the shore where the Cambrians sat stiffly, reading their novels, toying with their fancy-work, or dozing after lunch. Then, on the land-agents' blackboards and in the windows of the Llanyglo Stores, larger bills appeared. Large bills and small alike read as follows: _Llanyglo Holiday Camp, July, 1887._ THE AIGBURTH STREET AND CHOW BENT SQUARE UNITED READING CIRCLES beg to announce that a GRAND POW-WOW will be held in the Dinas, the Trwyn, Llanyglo, on Friday Evening, the 22nd, at 8.30 sharp. BRING YOUR REFRESHMENTS! BRING YOUR VOICE LOZENGES! BRING YOUR MUSIC! BRING YOUR LANTERNS! BRING YOUR FRIENDS! Visitors and Residents alike are Welcome! _Songs!! Recitations!!! Short Speeches!!!!_ LADIES SPECIALLY INVITED! _Grand Chief:_ _Deputy Grand Chief:_ BARRY TOPHAM, Esqr. HOWELL GRUFFYDD, Esqr. Committee: ................ ................ ................ The Proceedings will open with the singing of "_God Save the People_," and will close with "_Hen Wlad fy Nhadau_." * * * * * EDWARD JONES, PRINTER, PORTH NEIGR. 0616. "Boy!" called Raymond Briggs, as Eesaac Oliver, having distributed this announcement to the occupants of the Reservation, was passing on; and Eesaac Oliver turned. "Pick those papers up at once!" Raymond ordered, pointing to a litter of handbills where the wavelets lapped the marge of seaweed. Then, over his shoulder to Philip Lacey, who reclined almost horizontally in the next deck-chair: "Making a mess of the beach like that! Paper wherever you go; they're as bad as a lot of trippers! Can't make out what you see in that fellow Topham----" Philip, who was frowning over the handbill, spoke, also over his shoulder.--"You going to this?" Raymond gave a short laugh.--"Me?" It was almost as if he said, "I didn't ask them to dinner, my dear man! _I'm_ perfectly free to stop away!" "Good. We'll have a game of chess, then," Philip replied off-handedly. He could give Raymond pawn and move. Outside the Reservation, however, little but the Pow-Wow was talked of. Howell Gruffydd had looked the word up in his little English-Welsh Dictionary, and, though he had failed to find it, he was none the less set-up at the thought of being a Deputy Grand Chief. But he became thoughtful again when there arrived for him a bundle from Barry Topham, which, on being opened, was found to contain a pair of very much creased moccasins, a broad-striped blanket, and a head-dress of feathers similar to the one the Grand Chief himself was to wear. Howell had remembered Dafydd Dafis. Dafydd might not like him to bedeck himself thus, and what Dafydd might think always mattered a great deal in Llanyglo. Dafydd, his old corduroys notwithstanding, stood for the integrity of Nationalism, and even Howell, willing to be English, must be careful not to be too English--or, in the present case, too Indian. But the aliens themselves showed no such reserve. They had bracketed a Welsh name with an English one on their handbill, had placed _Hen Wlad_ by the side of _God Save the People_, and been otherwise hearty; and they did not know that even in their hospitality they were a little bustling, urgent, and compelling. As for differences of race, such things were presently about to be abolished. So they bade Llanyglo almost boisterously welcome to its own Trwyn, and Barry Topham, passing Dafydd Dafis on the afternoon of the day of the celebration, shouted cheerily over his shoulder, "Don't forget your harp, Davis. I'm not going to call you 'Dafis'--we'll make an Englishman of you before we've done with you! Eight-thirty sharp.... Eh?... Stuff and nonsense! Fiddlededee! What sort o' talk's that, man alive! Of course you're bringing your harp!" It was on a dullish summer evening, and none too warm up there, that the Montgomeryites, in threes and fours and sixes, began the ascent of the Trwyn. Some of them had already set match to their lanterns, though the Trwyn beam was not alight yet, and they carried with them more than one copy of _The Scottish Students' Song Book_. They tried their voices as they climbed, and called to one another, pointing out false easy ways and bursting into laughter when the misdirected ones had to return again; and the Trwyn sheep started up from before their feet and fled, baa-ing. The refreshments had gone on ahead, as also had the fuel for the camp-fire, but no Welshmen were to be seen yet. Perhaps, gruff heartiness notwithstanding, they felt that they were guests who should have been hosts. Perhaps they felt that here was not the urgency there had been on the only other occasion when they and the Saxon had rushed hurriedly and tumultuously together--that wild nightfall when Ned Kerr, from the roof of the new Hafod Unos, had seen something out in the lair of grey, and, with a cry of "_Llongddrylliad!_" Celt and new-comer had flung themselves into an open boat pell mell. But by and by they also began to move in a body slowly along the shore, sometimes over the dry, sometimes plodding over their own reflections in the ebb. There was no pointing out false ascents to them. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd, who came first, had fetched eggs too often from the Trwyn light not to know every cranny of the promontory, and his father remembered the building of the lighthouse. Howell had seen them, as a boy, locking and dowelling the great blocks of masonry, shaped each like an intricate Chinese puzzle; and in thirty odd years the Light seemed to have become almost as much part of the headland as the ancient Dinas itself. That seemed to be the way with building. Even Edward Garden's house seemed a settled thing now. So, in another year or two, would the "Montgomery," the "Cardigan," Ham-and-Egg Terrace. And Howell reflected that stones meant grocery-orders. But that was not all. If he must be English, but not too English for Dafydd Dafis, he must still be careful to be the right sort of English. He made little out of these _Utopia_ readers. They simply came in under the "Montgomery's" contract. The Briggses and Laceys still provided the richer yield. Whether was the better--the "Montgomery," where one visitor would presently be creeping into a bed that his predecessor had left still warm, or these more prosperous ones, who, Howell knew, would presently come no more?... Moreover, he was already feeling the pressure of outside competition. Ellis, of Porth Neigr, was even now quoting cutting rates for the "Cardigan's" butter and cheese, and for a long time Llanyglo had had to depend on outsiders for its milk. The railway, that brought people, also brought their provender.... Oh, don't think for a moment that Howell was prospering without giving deep thought to things! They gained the Dinas, where already the fire was yellow and crackling, and stood smiling Good evenings, as if they waited to be asked inside. How long ago it was since the foundations of that Dinas had been sprinkled with the blood of Merlin--how long ago it was since the Red and White Dragons had contended about it, now one gaining the advantage, now the other--how long ago these things had been, not even Miss Amy Topham would have dared to ask June Lacey. Now it resembled a grey old heel of cheese, with a little scrabbling in one corner. This scrabbling was where Bert Stoy, one of the younger and most indefatigable of the Readers, had hoped he might find a British grave. "We thought you'd maybe changed your minds about coming," were the words with which Barry Topham welcomed them. He was an Indian, but a bearded one, and he bustled here and there, wanting to know where So-and-So was, and whether this requisite or that had been brought up, and seeing to this and the other. The goblin shadows of eighteen or twenty of the Readers danced on the ruined works, and the sky behind their illumined faces was of a sad and leaden lavender hue. The lanterns made little patches in the short grass; matches lighted faces momentarily; and then suddenly there broke out over the shoulder of the headland and continued thenceforward, the Light. Red, red, white--red, red, white--it was numbing, intolerable. It dyed the clouds that seemed to sag over the earth as the ceiling-sheets sagged in the cottages, and its glare was not lost high overhead now, as it had been on that night when the Kerrs had rested for their "nooning" in the midst of their building of their Hafod. The staggering blaze passed not twenty feet above them, seeming to stumble and trip over the cloud-folds, and driving the revellers to fresh places with their backs to it. You would have said that those ancient Red and White Dragons had come to life again and were chasing one another across the rafters of the night. Then Barry Topham, placing himself by a jagged tooth of rock, held up his hand for silence. He had motioned Howell Gruffydd to his side, and had pointed at somebody's cap. His fingers tweaked a tuning-fork; he set the vibrating prong against his teeth; he gave them a soft note--"Doh----" and then: "_When wilt Thou save the people, O God of Mercy, when?..._" Then when it was finished, Barry again stood with uplifted hand. Caps were put on again by such as wore them. "Not weft enough," was Barry's brief comment on the singing; the Welsh, unfamiliar with the air, had not sung. "Never mind; it might ha' been worse.--Now I'm just going to say a few words, and then we'll make a start." And he began. "Well, we've been here a fortnight now, and I think we've all enjoyed it. I have for one. Some of us has been up these grand mountains, finding out how they were made, and some of us has been improving ourselves among the rocks and on the shore. Some of us has botanised, and some's collected butterflies, and one and all we've read the books set down for us in the Syllabus. That's a job done, at all events. "But I think we shall one and all admit that we've a great deal to learn about Llanyglo yet. There'd still be something to learn if we were to come here six, ten, twenty times. That's the grand thing about knowledge--we need never be afraid we shall come to the end of it. When we've read fifty books there's always fifty more. Ay, and there'll be another fifty after that. "But we've got other things besides knowledge at Llanyglo. We've got health, health to keep us going for another year. And we've got friends, new friends. I think we can say," here he laid his hand on Howell's shoulder, "that we've all done the little bit that in us lies to break down prejudices and dislikes and racial differences. We've had our quarrels, us Welsh and English, in the past; no doubt there's been battles fought on this very spot; but that's all over, and, speaking as Grand Chief for the year, though unworthy to succeed Comrade Walker, who occupied this same position last year at our Holiday Camp at Keswick, I think I may say we've buried the hatchet now. So in the name of one and all I greet these friends of ours. I think it does us both good to come together like this. They're a bit--what shall I say?--on the poetical side, perhaps; more romantic than us; we're just plain, practical folk that has to tew for our livings; but what I mean is, it's a good thing for both of us to get to understand one another. We do understand one another now, and I'm sure we're all very glad to see them here." (Applause, and cries from the Lancashire men of "Good old Wales!") "You here that, Gruffydd--Comrade Gruffydd? That's hearty. That's Lancashire. No flowers o' speech, but we say a thing and mean it. And we mean it when we say we're very glad to see you indeed, and hope this won't be our last visit to Llanyglo.--And now I won't take up any more of your time. We've a long programme before us, and I see that the first item is----" he consulted a paper in his hand, "----is the old favourite, _There is a Tavern_. What's the key, Harry? C? (Doh, lah--lah, te, doh----)." And with the singing of _There is a Tavern in the Town_ the Pow-Wow began. Did they come to understand one another the better for it? Were they who took part in that Pow-Wow so "poetical and romantic" for the one part, so blunt and rough and practical for the other? Did a score or so of Saxons suddenly and miraculously cease that night to belong to the world's most sentimental race, and were the hearts of as many Celts as miraculously changed? No doubt it all seemed simple enough to Barry Topham. Hard-rinded himself, but not without a generous juice within, he would have found it hard to believe that pulpier fruits existed, with a stone inside he would but crack his teeth upon. Perhaps--perhaps--it was not so; and yet--what, after all, can the victor do to the vanquished more than vanquish him?... Barry saw their smiles only, and for every smile they received they gave three. The jovial Campers became ever bluffer and heartier and fonder of them as song followed song. Nor did the Welshmen refuse to sing. Enlightened Young Wales, in the person of Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd, was presently to be seen with his back to the intolerable Trwyn beam while the Dragons of the Light chased one another behind his head; and his voice was lifted up in _Vale of Llangollen_. Was the song a success? It was doubly a success. The blunt and genial aliens applauded him as a breaker of the ice, his compatriots applauded him as a stepper into the breach from which they themselves had hung back. Hardly had he sat down before he was beset with requests to hum the air all over again, in order that they might take it down in the Tonic Sol-fa notation.... Then, almost immediately, the clapping swelled again, and there were cries of "Harry! Harry!" Harry Stone, who had the voice of an angel, was allowed to sing as he sat, because of his lameness, and he could not be seen in his dim angle of masonry, but only the unhurrying but unceasing red and white spokes, that strode from afar over the sea, passed overhead, and were off on their wide circle again. Hearing his voice and not seeing him, you thought of a pure spring that gushes suddenly out of the dark and grudging earth.--_Cannibalee_, he sang---- It was poor enough stuff. Its words were a laborious parody, its harmonies exactly predicable; it was facetious or nothing, and it marred an original with a remote and deathly grace of its own; but these things were forgotten as Harry sang. To-morrow they were leaving Llanyglo. To-morrow they were filing back through that postern that had given them this, their fortnight's respite, from tasks too often ignoble, from cramped circumstances, from savourless lives. And it weighed on them, tenderly yet heavily. Next year seemed so sadly, sadly far away.... "_Her eyes were as fair as the star of the morn And her teeth were as sharp as the point of a thorn---- She was very fair to see!_----" Harry sang; and the hands of young men sought those of young women in the blackness of the Dinas's shadows, and the married ones drew a little closer together, and there was no parody at all in the little soft punctuations of the refrain, in which every voice joined: "_She was very fair to see---- (So she was!) She was very fair to see---- (So she was!)_----" Edward Garden was right---- "_Her eyes were as fair as the star of the morn And her teeth were as sharp as the point of a thorn---- My beautiful Cannibalee_----" Edward Garden was right. That tender but heavy weight, so tender, so heavy that it bore down the stupid expression of the song, lay even on the Welshmen too. He was admirably shrewd and right. It would not be yet awhile--it was too early yet--but presently, as an advertisement for Llanyglo, an Eisteddfod--an Eisteddfod, say, when the holiday season began in July, and a Brass Band Contest towards its close in September.... They were still singing when they came down again, at eleven o'clock. You might have thought, from the way in which Barry Topham clung to Howell Gruffydd's arm, that he was slightly drunk, but he was not; that was only brotherliness and exaltation. He still wore the gala-dress of the Grand Chief, but in that particular Howell thought that he had come out of his dilemma rather well. The feather head-dress he had tried on had proved too big for his head, and in trying to shorten the band he had torn off the button, thus rendering the adornment useless. As for the striped blanket about his shoulders--well, it was a coolish night, and there is no sense in taking a chill when there is a blanket to be had to keep you warm. Even Dafydd would see that. So Howell had worn it.... And looked at from below again, the Trwyn beam no longer appeared a hunt of raving red and white monsters, but a little lonely thing, familiar and disregarded, old, wise, minding its own business, and meanwhile quietly opening and shutting an eye. II THE GIANT'S STRIDE After that summer they began in earnest the building of Llanyglo. Come and see them at it. Whence came these stone-carts and timber-carts, these girders and castings, a single one only taking up a couple of trucks? Whence came these wains of floor-boards with their trailing tails bobbing up and down within an inch or two of the white road, these bastions of metal and ballast, these crawling and earth-shaking traction-engines with the little bellies and the monstrous wheels and the dotted line of lorries and trollies behind them? Whence these sawn planks, these massive frames with machinery parts on them so heavy that every rut threatens a standstill, these contractors' vans with absurd little trolley-wheels, these gatlings of drain-pipes, these wagons of plumbers' material, these vans of provisions, this army of men? Why do these now choke the roads that formerly were empty save for the passing of a wain of whispering hay, or the light market-cart that left a smell of raspberries and a stain of Welsh song behind, or Ned Kerr with his folding hut and clogging-knife, or Ynys Lovell with her packing-case cart and her mother with her loops of cane seeking chairs to mend? Where did they come from, and what are they doing here? The stone, of course, comes from the Porth Neigr quarry, where the blasts shake the rocks and the shooting of waste resounds throughout the day. And the castings come from Manchester and Middlesborough and Wigan and Leeds. And the sawn planks come from Russia and the Baltic, and the larches for scaffolding from the Merionethshire valleys. These things come from these places--if you look at it that way. But look at it the other way and they have an origin mystical indeed. They are conceived of fecund nods and looks, of the germination of writing and initials and signatures and contract-stamps. They are born of print and promotion and allotment, and the cord is cut when sums are paid on application, and more in three months' time. They thrive when Chairmen, standing up on platforms, say "the adoption of the Accounts has been moved and seconded----," and become lusty when more clerks have to be called in, and temporary premises have to be taken, to cope with the public rush for the splendid thing. You see their real origin on those blackboards that seem to set Llanyglo its new multiplication sum, and in those paragraphs in the Manchester and Liverpool and London papers. You see it again when the new Local Government Bill receives the Royal Assent. You see it once more when from the machines of printers in Nottingham and Harrow and Frome and Belfast there are turned out the posters that already overspread the northern hoardings, bidding Blackpool look to itself, warning Douglas that it has another competitor, elbowing Bridlington, shoving Yarmouth aside. There are half a dozen of these posters out already, and if they are not strictly speaking representations of Llanyglo, they are something more--they are prophecies, which you will do well to heed if you want to put your money on a good thing. There is one in Lime Street Station, Liverpool (you need not glance at that upper window; you'd have a job to find poor Terry Armfield's Trwyn Avenue now). It is the "Welsh Giantess" one. She is dressed in a black steeple hat with a white hood underneath it, red check shawl, striped petticoat, and has buckles on her shoes. She holds the town in a three-quarter circle in her arms, with children at play on the sands and super-Briggses and super-Laceys all spilling out in the foreground. The mountains are indigo, the hotels pink, the sands chrome yellow, and the name LLANYGLO sprawls across the sky as if the Trwyn Light had dropped it there in passing, a letter at a time.... The poster, of course, is a little grandiose: nobody cries stinking fish. The Pier, for example, isn't there yet. But it is somewhere, in somebody's desk-drawer, perhaps, or perhaps it has even got farther than that. Perhaps the caissons are already on the way; certainly a group of strangers has been busy on the shore any time this past twelve months. And the Promenade isn't ex-_act_-ly like that yet. It has railings not unlike those, but not yet that fine stretch of impregnable sea-wall. And so with the hotels.... But all in good time. These things will all be ready quite as soon as those posters have sunk into the perception of the public. We mustn't have a completely equipped town standing empty for a number of seasons while folk make up their minds whether they'll come or not. We have the money, the men, powers under the new Act ample as our hearts could wish, and the certainty of the coming reward. Llanyglo itself found it difficult to realise what was happening. It all came in such strides. Where the stake-and-wire-enclosed roads had been, a giant hoarding would rise, twenty, forty, fifty yards long. On this hoarding, by means of the railway posters, Llanyglo would be told all about itself--its climate, its mild winters, its accessibility from all parts, and its "unrivalled attractions." It read Gilbert Smythe's signature there. And among these were other bills curiously opposite, which told them that if they in their turn needed change, there were week-end tickets to be had to Liverpool and Belle Vue at specially reduced rates.--And while Llanyglo knew, as month succeeded month, that work was going on behind these hoardings, the effect was none the less magical when, on the day they were knocked to pieces again, the astounding frontage appeared. They had known nothing like it since that piece of witchcraft of the Kerrs, and now several times they had seen it happen. It had happened between the "Cambrian" and "Cardigan" hotels. It had happened at Pritchard's Corner. And now it was about to happen again, along a line that ran from a point just below the Kerrs' Hafod to the piece of land, not built on yet, where for three days one Spring a circus was set up, its cages and caravans and the guy-ropes of its tenting all mingled with the timber-stacks and mortar-engines and breastworks of stone setts and other dumpings of a dozen different contractors. Later, a temporary wooden shed occupied this space. This shed was town-hall, concert-hall, general purposes hall, and theatre thrown into one. That was the time Llanyglo began to discover that if one of its inhabitants wished to meet another he had better appoint a time and place to do so. To climb up the nearest sandhill and take a look round no longer served. And even these amazing unfoldings were as nothing compared with that which (it was already known) was to happen next--the construction of the sea-wall and the Pier. Philip Lacey's Floral Valley was already finished. Its gravelled walks, with steps every few yards, straggled up both sides of the ravine in the side of the Trwyn, and from the topmost of these you could look down on the octagonal roof of the bandstand that occupied the levelled plot in the middle. Sticking (as it were) the point of his compasses into the bandstand, Philip had described successions of eighth and quarter-circles, with radiating paths and variously shaped smaller beds in between; and of these he had made a piece of crewel-work of colour. Golden feather and London pride, lobelia and pinks and bachelors'-buttons, formed the borders; behind them, in ovals and stars and crown-shapes and monograms, mignonette and arabis and dwarf pansies and Virginia stock were set; and so he had brushed-and-combed and curled and scented the whole place. He had staked his professional reputation, too, that from the first crocus to the last Michaelmas daisy, the gaudy Catherine-wheel would never be for a single day out of bloom; and then he had departed, leaving the responsibility of upkeep to the delighted town. John Willie Garden, looking at the Valley's logical plan, wished that the town itself had had as fair, if severe, a start. For John Willie was Clerk of the Works now in a very different sense from that in which he had had charge of the coming of Railhead. He was now nineteen, and had no longer any wish to go into the business in Manchester. His father, noting his tastes and capacity, had judged it perfectly safe to depart, leaving John Willie to look after things in his stead; and as no contractor's foreman wished to quarrel with the son of the principal maker of the place, he had a fairly large authority. So John Willie occupied the house by the shore, with Minetta to make him comfortable. He spent his days in passing from this building to that, pushing at doors in hoardings marked "No Admittance," threading his way along the wheeling-planks, mounting ladders, looking down on the swarming men from the stagings, looking up through the groves of the scaffold-poles, looking out, not over the sandhills now, but over other houses built and building. The masts and spars of other scaffold-poles here and there might almost have made you think that a navigable river twisted through Llanyglo, and that these were the rigging of the vessels upon it. From one work to another he passed, approving, questioning, telephoning, making notes. There is scarce a room of that period of Llanyglo's up-springing but, even to-day, John Willie Garden can tell you the lie of its water-pipes, where its main-cocks are, where its drains, its gas-connections, the depth of its foundations, the branchings of its chimney-flues. He hasn't been into half of them since, but the present occupiers can tell him nothing about which cellars are on the rock and when the girders are due to be repainted. And he could talk to the men as well as to their bosses. He addressed them authoritatively, but he knew their football and their drinking, their jokes and songs, which dog belonged to which and which among them "subbed" or "liened" before his wage was due. John Willie Garden's boyhood lay behind him now. What was John Willie like to look at by this time, and what was his outlook on the world? You may meet his kind at six o'clock any morning, the sons of Alderman This or Sir John That, going to their fathers' engineering-shops in Leeds, or to Manchester spinning-sheds, or Rochdale factories, or dye-works, or rolling-mills, or drawing-offices, or electrical works. They wear greasy blue overalls and carry tin luncheon-cans, and use cotton-waste for handkerchiefs. They glory in the readiness of their repartee to their fathers' workmen, to be mistaken for one of whom gives them the keenest pleasure. Joyously they attack the blackest and greasiest of the work, honestly forgetting that they could leave this to others if they wished.--But see them in the evening! They have had tea and a "clean-up" by this time. Their heads have been soused and their hands pumiced, they have on their mahogany boots and their white collars, the hands that wielded crowbars or strained with the grip of spanners ply thin and expensive canes now, and you can see the radiance of their approach a quarter of a mile away. They are off to billiard-rooms and card-parties, theatre-boxes, or courting. They will be home fairly early, because of the five-o'clock alarum in the morning, but until then they are so evidently about to enjoy themselves that you sigh if you are unable to join them. Go one night and watch them when next the Pantomime comes. Sit in the second row of the stalls (you won't be able to get into the first row). If the leading lady is pretty, and John Willie and Percy Briggs are there, you won't consider your evening wasted. The show is sure to "go." That, more or less, was John Willie. He had rather a lot of money to spend, but nowhere much to spend it yet. His hair was a little less primrose coloured than it had been (pomatum does darken hair a little), but his eyes had not altered. They were still just as receptive or just as stupid as he cared to make them, blue as flax, and capable, if you happened to catch him at something he did not wish to be caught at, of a rather hard and prolonged stare. He was not tall--long ago it had been plain he would not be--but, looking at his shoulders, hung as it were from an apex at the back of his head, you would have wondered at the lightness of the pit-pat of his feet when he did a step-dance on the occasion of one of the men's "birthdays" (which have nothing to do with days of birth, by the way, but frequently much to do with an unfancied horse and a longish price). In a word, he was a nicish, powerful young rascal, with an expensive dressing-case and a trace of those Lancashire final "g's"; and he and his friends (of whom he had a good many down to Llanyglo) had their own corner in the "Cambrian" lounge, unless the evening's programme included cards or involved the use of a room with a piano in it. Yet, though the Llanyglo air might thrill with the clink-clink of chisels on stone, and vibrate with the jolting of the builders' carts, and resound with all the noises of the swift building, still, nobody who now came thought it ruined. On the contrary, exactly as the Briggses and the Laceys had predicted, it came to them with shocks of delight. For think of it: here was no twopenny ride on a clanging tram through naked, unshaded streets before they could reach the sea. Here was no two-miles plod back again over the burning asphalt, slackening every nerve that had been braced up by the bathe. Here was no Brighton nor Scarborough nor Blackpool yet, with nettings of electric wires overhead and perspective of rails below. No: from any part of the place, three minutes would take you, if not in every case to the beach itself, at any rate to an open space of thyme and harebells and hillocks of clean sand, where, if you got on the right side of the sandhill, you might not know that there was a crane or a scaffold within miles. And if the beach was ploughed and harrowed and tramped and trodden until it resembled a dirty batter-pudding, half a day and a tide, and the sands were smooth and shining again, and the wet stretches seemed as much sky as land, and passing birds were reflected in their depths. The sea tidied up the shore again as the housemaids took up the crumbs from the hotel carpets.--And there were dozens of boats now, in which you could push out a few hundred yards and find yourself in spots that man can never sully. Five minutes' tugging at the oars and you could rock and gaze up at the sky, or look over the boat's side at the translucent green reflection of its curving boards below, and past that into glassy clear depths, and so past that again to where the water began to show you, not its depths, but the broken mirroring of the sky again. The boating was one of the "unrivalled attractions." By nine o'clock every morning a row of boatmen leaned against the railings between the "Cambrian" and the jetty, smoking, scanning the front, showing you fresh bait, and offering boats by the hour, the morning, or the day. Foremost among them, as likely as not, would be Tommy, the youngest of the Kerrs. He wore a blue gausey with a diamond woven across the breast, touched the peak of his dirty old petty-officer's cap constantly, and told folk it was "a gradely morning for fishing." Though the youngest, he was the least reputable of the Kerrs. Ned, the eldest, Llanyglo counted part of itself; the two middle ones were both contractors' foremen, and respected citizens; but Tommy had become the scandal of Llanyglo. You were well advised to allow him double time or more if you gave him a bag to carry anywhere and there was the temptation of beer on the way; and you might catch him sober if you engaged him and his boat soon after breakfast, but your chance of doing so became ever less as the day wore on. Who were these people who strolled among the droning bees of the sandhills or pushed out from the shore in boats? Well, they were of more kinds than one or two now. The charges at the "Cambrian" were still stiffish; a week there cost as much as a fortnight at the "Cardigan," or a month at the "Montgomery"; and so we still exhibit the social degrees. There has even been a certain amount of "feeling" about this. Of two Rochdale men, say, with little to choose between them in point of income, one will be seen on the "Cambrian's" balcony in the evening after dinner, his heart-shaped dinner-shirt one of a number of heart-shaped dinner-shirts, the bosom and neck and head of the lady he is chatting with rising out of her lacy corsage as a bouquet rises from the paper frill that encloses and bedecks it. He will be seen there, with the red-shaded lamps of the empty dining-room behind him and the moonlight making his sunburnt face very dark. But the other's face is sunburnt too, and at half the cost. He too could attitudinise like this were he so minded. And he reflects that Jones or Jackson may cut a dash among strangers, but he mustn't try it on with people who know him at home. As for himself, he's thankful to say that he's just the same wherever he is, at home or away on a holiday.... In fact Jones or Jackson is precisely the man Edward Garden more than half expected--the man who can't quite afford it, but will.... But this, it is hardly necessary to observe, is to take the "Cambrian" at less than its average and the "Cardigan" at rather more. The "Montgomery" is actually outclassed by the better "Private Hotels" and one or two of the superior "Boarding Establishments." Indeed, of these last the "Cadwallader" almost ranks with the "Cambrian" itself. And so we come by degrees down to Ham-and-Egg Terrace.--But enough of these _nuances_ of difference of a fortnight's duration. Who, taken by-and-large, are these people, and where do they come from? You have only to ask yourself, "Who else should they be?" and your question is half answered. Remember the smallness of these Islands, and the scores of pulsing, radiating, almost radio-active centres within them, every one swarming with folk who intend to have a better time than their fathers have had. Could the East Coast be pushed out beyond the North Sea, and Lancashire be stretched until it took in Galway, St. George's Channel and all, there might be room enough on England's shores for every parliamentary voter to have a few acres of Trwyn foreshore of his own and a black cow walking up and down them, seeking coolness and food hock-deep in the glistening ebb; but, as things are, the littoral is by much too small. True, scores and fifties of miles of it remain practically unvisited; but no snail has snuffled out its manganese there, and they are not within a few hours and a thirty-shilling circular fare of the human ant-heaps of the land, where King's Ransoms of Holiday Club money are put by. There was no wonder about the growth of Llanyglo. Geographically situated as it was, the marvel would have been had it not grown. With a few posters and similar devices to advertise it, it would presently continue to advertise itself. Therefore the folk who flocked there were of every kind, short of the grey and overwhelming multitude itself. _Because_ it was only partly built, _because_ it had not yet shaken down to a definite character and physiognomy and personality, it spread its net the wider. Did you want to dress for dinner, and to have your luggage carried by a man in a red jacket? There was the "Cambrian." Did you want everything that the Cambrians had, barring only the luxury of being seen lounging in one of the wicker-chairs about its portals, and still to keep your money in your pocket? There was the "Cardigan." Did you want to read or to idle, to botanise or merely to forget your cares for a fortnight, to picnic up the Trwyn or to have your meals in bed? They asked no questions at the "Montgomery." From Philip Lacey's piece of Floral Geometry to the nooks on the farther side of the Trwyn where you could spend a whole morning undisturbed, there was something for every taste. And they actually had to turn people away who had been so ill-advised as to come with their luggage without having first secured their lodging. And now it had come to this: that while these came to Llanyglo for a change of air, John Willie Garden, who spent his days among lime and mortar and wheeling-planks and newly dressed stone, frequently turned his back on Llanyglo for precisely the same reason. Once a week or so he was seen to drive past Pritchard's Corner in a light yellow trap at nine o'clock in the morning. He was off to see to another of his father's interests--that "catchment area" far away up in the mountains. He drove eight miles, put up at an inn past which a trout-stream brawled (hardly yet settled from its precipitous plunging cataracts), and then set out on foot up a road that rose one-in-five under a whispering wood, to see the skyline of which you had to throw your head back. It took him an hour of walking to get to his destination--a solitary wooden cabin where the agent lived. The agent had on the whole an easy time of it, for hardly a hundred yards from his cabin door, above the woods now, lay Llyn Delyn, pure looking-glass in the mile long crook of the mountain. An old boat was moored among the sedges at one end, the launching of which on the unbroken surface of that lovely water always seemed to invoke vague judgments, penalties perhaps forborne, but none the less incurred. Here the agent, whose name was Sharpe, fished. John Willie fished with him. Fishing was a good enough way of passing the time, for they were not really doing anything up there. They were merely waiting--waiting for more people to come to Llanyglo, for the Town Hall to rise, for the seat of local administration to be shifted from Porth Neigr, and then for the Waterworks Scheme. They had the water as fast as prevision and Law could make it. They would not drive too hard a bargain with the town. In the meantime they fished, speaking little, noting whether it was the gnat or the cochybondhu that killed, casting so lightly that the boat scarcely rocked. Sometimes, when the amber evening light was clear behind them, so impeccable was the profound mirror below that, while their tweed-clad forms could hardly be distinguished from the hues of the mountain behind, the upside-down shapes beneath them were sharp and dark as the silhouettes in your grandmother's little oval frames. III THE BLANK CHEQUE Death took a hand that winter in Llanyglo's making. They were getting well up with the Town Hall, in what is now Gardd Street; still the flag floated at the polehead, in token that they had got thus far without serious mishap; and then it had to be run down to the half-mast. It was a common scaffold accident. Harry Kerr, on one of the upper stages, stepped back upon empty air; Sam sprang forward to save him; and they picked them both up from among the debris below. A few remembered the launching of that open boat on that wild night seven years before, and said that it seemed out of nature that these comparatively young men should go off before ancient Mrs. Pritchard; and Mrs. Pritchard herself baa-ed, and said that there would be more room now in the Hafod Unos whatever. But most of the residents were new-comers now, who knew more of Tommy Kerr's present delinquencies than of the history of his brothers, and they could hardly be expected to grieve. They buried them both at Sarn, under the shadow of that pepper-caster of a fifteenth-century church tower, and the problem of however the Hafod had held them all became a thing of the past. The Town Hall was the outward and visible sign that Llanyglo had not only caught up with Porth Neigr, but had outstripped it. It had special conveniences for a centre of administration, which it forthwith became; and at the election that Autumn Howell Gruffydd was made a Councillor. He had two branch shops now, one at Porth Neigr and the other at Sarn, and to his newspaper counter he had added a Library of books bought at Mudies' clearance sales. He charged fourpence a week for the loan of each book, which was twopence more than the old stationer's library at Porth Neigr had charged; but there was the railway-fare to take into account if you considered the charge extortionate. Later, a good deal later, when the picture postcard was invented, Howell did rather well out of that too. He praised your amateur snapshot of the Trwyn or the Promenade of the façade of the Town Hall, and made you what no doubt seemed to him a fair offer; namely to give you a dozen prints in exchange for your film. He then proceeded to fill a revolving stand with other prints, which he sold at seven for sixpence, or, highly glazed, at twopence apiece. With pennies and twopences accumulated in this and similar ways he bought certain house-property behind Ham-and-Egg Terrace, paying a ground-rent to Edward Garden. He had by this time acquired a little personal habit of Mr. Tudor Williams's--the habit of shaking hands with one hand, while the other affectionately kneaded and patted his interlocutor's right arm from the wrist up to the shoulder. Hitherto the developments of Llanyglo had lain in a few hands only--the hands of Edward Garden and his shareholders, of one or two others who had forgotten they had a holding in Terry Armfield's Thelema, but remember it now with joy and thanksgiving, of Mr. Tudor Williams, and of not very many more. But now a more ponderous machine began to rumble into motion. This was the machine of which the Railway Companies and a couple of Pleasure Packet Services were the visible active parts. Rumours now began to fly about of developments long since planned and now imminent, developments astounding and gigantic. These rumours began with hotels. Hitherto the "Cambrian" had been thought to be rather more than so-so, but of course nobody would have dreamed of comparing it with the "Grands" and "Majesties" which "_Lancashire Hotels, Limited_" possessed in the great centres of the North. These had half a dozen tennis-courts in front, palm-courts and winter-gardens behind, and five and six and seven hundred bedrooms. But now the rumour ran that, not one of these, but two, owned by opposing Syndicates, were to be set up in Llanyglo. The sites on which they were to be built varied according to the version of the tale. Some said that the "Montgomery" was to be pulled down again, some that the whole row of fishermen's cottages was to be demolished, some that a terrace was to be dug out of the side of the Trwyn itself and a funicular railway constructed. However it might be, it was known that there were prolonged meetings of the Council about it, and that at one point the whole thing, whatever it might be, seemed likely to fall through. And that, as they now knew, would be their death-blow. They would do anything, anything rather than that these immense reservoirs of capital, already partly opened, should be shut up again. They would hold out the town itself as security, a twopenny rate, promises, accommodations, anything. It was said that Sheard, the Porth Neigr solicitor, who had moved to new premises opposite the Llanyglo Town Hall, sat up five nights in the week, making actuarial calculations, estimating yields, measuring margins, and balancing all with the possibility of the town's bankruptcy. Edward Garden was once more at Llanyglo, and closeted frequently with Mr. Tudor Williams and Howell Gruffydd.... Even the two projected hotels were not much more than a detail as matters now stood; the whole town must now be given a tremendous upward heave or collapse with a crash. Even those hotels could go up now only on one condition--namely, that the base of the visiting population, that foundation of which innumerable units are the strength, should at once be immensely broadened. For every individual who could afford to put up at a palace, they must rake in scores, hundreds of people who could not. The real foundation of the hotels must be row on row, acre on acre, of Ham-and-Egg Terraces. For the rest, a place that must live through the year on the takings of three months must be big, as those places of entertainment must be big that are full on Saturdays only and empty during the rest of the week. Nothing smaller would tempt the Railway Companies. (This, by the way, was not altogether good news for Raymond Briggs. Architecture is not needed for that broadened base. Any working master-builder can run up houses that are good enough. The pattern of one is the pattern of all, and Raymond would have small chance in competition with the bigger men of his profession.) Nor would it suffice merely to house and feed the people who came. Other watering-places were awake to the new menace now, so that the rival announcements on the hoardings resembled a desperate grapple for the possession of those sixpences and shillings and half-crowns that were poured without ceasing into the coffers of the Holiday Clubs. Not one in five hundred of those who contributed those shillings and half-crowns stopped to think that Wales herself has no Holiday Clubs--that Wales does not go abroad with a year's savings in her pocket of which it is black shame to bring as much as a single penny back again. They wanted amusement. The Resort or Spa that could provide the most amusement would get the lion's share. Amusements were a more urgent necessity than chairs and tables and roofs. So it was that, between this place and that, the people who intended to have a better time than their fathers had had were in some danger of being pampered. The project for the Llanyglo Big Wheel was set a-going. The promise that Howell Gruffydd had made behind his hand to John Pritchard had already begun to be redeemed. The Town Hall was not three months old before a Grand Bazaar was held there in aid of the Llanyglo Joint Chapels. On the first of the four days during which the Bazaar lasted the proceedings were opened by Tudor Williams, Esquire, M.P. On the second day they were opened by Edward Garden, Esquire. On the third Mrs. Howell Gruffydd opened them, in heliotrope satin; and on the fourth day Raymond Briggs, Esquire, who scented Chapel-building in the air, performed the ceremony. Raymond guessed that at least three new Chapels were certain presently to go up in the stead of those buildings of tin and boards and sickly blue paint that had so outraged Terry Armfield's Oxford Movement susceptibilities. As a matter of fact, five went up, and have debts on them to this day, in spite of the long series of Bazaars, two a season at least, at which the Saxon veins were opened.... For the money poured in. It rained into the square collecting-sheets that were placed at intervals along all the principal streets. It clattered into the slots of the wooden boxes that were rattled under the nose of the passer-by. It was minted in the Bran Tubs from which, paying your threepence, you drew forth a penny toy. It multiplied with every flower Miss Nancy Pritchard, with twenty other young women in Welsh national costume, sold. It made heavy the pockets of the stall-holders, who had never any change. It made little cylinders of silver and copper, three and four and five inches high, on the tables folk had to pass before they were admitted to the Concerts.... Believe it, the Chapel-goers of Llanyglo, seeing all that money to be had for little more than the asking, opened their eyes, and sat up, and took notice. If _this_ was the Saxon invasion, why had they not welcomed it long ago? A few bales of hired bunting, a few pounds for evergreens and velvet banners with texts on them, a few paid assistants and a not unreasonable printers' bill, and--_these_ splendid results! As big as John Pritchard himself said, putting on his spectacles to see whether the astonishing total could really be true, "They must be very rit-ss, whatever!" But the Bazaars had not this golden harvest to themselves. They found competition, which they a little resented. Secular amusements more than held their own. Gigantic castings had begun to arrive for the Big Wheel; under the booth-awnings of Gardd Street (recently christened) penny articles could be had for a penny; and a long row of automatic machines--Wheels of Fortune, little iron men who kicked footballs, Sibyls of Fate and Try-your-Grip machines--had sprung up along the railings of the sea-front. A few stage-gipsies with green parrakeets had made the town their summer home. There was a rifle-range on the farther sandhills--you could hear the "plunk" of the bullets on the iron targets. Near it was a travelling Merry-go-Round. Photographers had their "pitches" on the sands, with humourous canvas flats with oval holes in them, through which you put your face, so that you could have your portrait taken as "_He Won't be Happy till He Gets It_" or in the act of embracing a two-dimensional young woman, whichever was to your liking. And there were niggers. These danced and sang and played the banjo on a raised platform, dressed in wide turned-down schoolboy collars and pink striped trousers; the concentric rings of green chairs about them resembled the spread of a large symmetrical thistle plant; and outside this ring one or other of the troupe constantly moved, shaking a sort of jellybag under your nose (as the Chapel-goers had shaken the collecting-boxes) and blinking the pink lids in his burnt-cork face. A little farther on was the men's bathing-place. They had wooden machines now, into which youths entered four at a time--no more the trim and private striped tents of the Laceys and the Raymond Briggses. The ladies' bathing-place was farther on still--a boat stood off between the two lest the sexes should not keep their distance. And a hundred yards past that, beyond a great scabrous groyne of loose stone, clay-coloured at the shore end but slimy with green as it ran down to the sea, with red flags and notice-boards along the top and a moveable rope-barrier at its base where two men walked on sentry-go, they were at work upon the Pier. By this time there was one question which, more than others, was beginning to disturb Llanyglo. This was the question of drink. In the old days, when the old brown horse who had walked as carefully as if he had had a spirit-level inside him had first brought the Gardens and their luggage so softly over the sandhills, there had been no inn nearer than Porth Neigr. Save on market-days, scarce a drop of alcohol passed a Llanyglo man's lips from year's end to year's end. If John Pritchard had preached occasionally against drunkenness, it had been conventionally only, with little more bearing on Llanyglo's own habits than if he had preached against cannibalism. Then Railhead had crawled across the land; Howell Gruffydd had found it necessary to warn the young against contamination; and with the building of the "Cambrian" had come Llanyglo's first licence. But for long enough after that there had been no public-houses. The travelling army of labourers had had their own canteens, and even when a necessary beer-licence or two had been applied for at Sessions, the applications had been granted as it were behind the hand, and the affair had been got over as quickly as possible. No: Tommy Kerr's unconscious soft carolling of _Glan Meddwdod Mwyn_ as he had crossed the sandhills on that torrid Sunday afternoon had held no real personal reproach for Llanyglo. For Porth Neigr, perhaps yes; for other places, yes; but not for Llanyglo. But since then things had changed. Things had changed since they had been able to tell themselves that what went on in the "Cambrian" lounge was no concern of theirs. They had begun to change when Llanyglo had been no longer able to shut its eyes to the beer-drinking of the navvies and bricklayers and the brothers Kerr. Then for a time a convenient connection had been established between drunkenness and rough trousers tied about the knees with string. For cases such as these, the little Station at the extreme end of Gardd Street, with "Police" over the door and geraniums in the windows, had ample powers. The half-dozen constables must exercise discretion, that was all. But it became a not uncommon sight to see a tipsy reveller singing himself unsteadily home on one side of the street, while the officer, watching him from the other side, stood questioning his discretion until the delinquent had passed out of sight. For a time Tommy Kerr, who had been twice run in, had served as a scapegoat, but that was little permanent help. It began to be seen that the real problem was, that if they would get folk with money to spend into the town, they must accept these folk, within reason, as they were, tipplers and teetotalers alike. For some reason or other, convivial drinking also seemed to come under the head of amusements. Blackpool provided liquor; Douglas was in an exceptional position for the provision of liquor; and more and more it appeared that Llanyglo must open the Bazaar doors with one hand and the doors of inns and taverns with the other. Meanwhile, the "Lancashire Rose," on one side of Gardd Street, and the "Trafford" on the other, were quickly becoming notorious. These were both fully licenced houses, with Tap and Saloon entrances, and it was idle to pretend to think that all the scandal originated in the humbler compartments. Heady young men with full pockets, respectable fathers of families, and others whom they could by no means lock up as they could lock up Tommy Kerr, went into these places in broad daylight, sometimes coming out again obviously affected: and it was almost certain that not all their stomachs were so innocent and unaccustomed that a single glass of the poison had produced this result. Dolefully they wished that a sober Lancashire would come to Llanyglo; but--a Lancashire of some sort they _must_ have. Why else were they doing all they could to win its favour? What else was their Big Wheel for, of which four mammoth standards of plate and lattice-girder had already risen thirty feet above the sandhills, where they were stepped and anchored into the oldest rocks of earth? Why else were they toiling day and night at their Pier, and at the building, section by section, of the sea-wall? Why else were they setting up gasometers beyond Pritchard's, and discussing a Sewage Scheme, and--most urgent of all--gnawing their fingers anxiously until some arrangement should be come to with Edward Garden's lawyers about that water far away up Delyn? The supply was becoming terrifyingly insufficient. For want of mere water the growth of the town might come to a stop as plants shrivel and fall again in an arid bed.... And, save to get Lancashire folk there, drunk or sober, why did they solemnly discuss this inanity of an amusement or that--Big Wheels and Switchbacks, Scenic Railways, Toboggan Slides, Panoramas, Fat Women, Dancing Halls, Floral Valleys and Concerts and Town Bands? There was no going back now. They had spent money that they would never, never see again if they persisted in being visionaries in business and irreconcilables on mere minor points of demeanour.... "They spend more when they are ... like that," said Howell Gruffydd one day to the Council assembled. He said it a little shamefacedly, his fingers fiddling with the green cloth of the Council-table. Nobody spoke. "I--saw--a--man," Howell continued, "a respectable man, with good clothes on his back and a new hat, all spoiled--it was a pity to see it--I saw him knock over row of bot-tles at John Parry's in Gardd Street, just for amusement, and he laugh, and say 'How mut-ss?' like it wass noth-thing, he was so-a drunk----" "It is a pit-ty they make such a noise sometimes," somebody said, in a curiously aggrieved voice.... Evan Pugh, the landlord of the "Trafford," was of precisely the same opinion. They escaped their dilemma by means of a noteworthy bit of government by minority. There was a small section of the Council, easily outvotable at ordinary times, which urged that, after all, things were _as_ they were, that you must live and let live in this world, and that even good things could be pushed to extremes when they became no longer good. And, as these began to speak, one stern bazaar-promoter after another began to look at his watch and to mutter "Dear me--I had no idea it wass so late--indeed I not catss him if I not go now----" They left. This, or else a tactful absenteeism, became their custom whenever licencing matters came up to be discussed. But cases of conscience are cases of conscience all the world over. The sum that Edward Garden proposed as a fair price for that catchment-area up Delyn was two hundred thousand pounds--this for about two thousand acres; and on the day when his lawyers named the figure it was a wonder that the whole Council did not take in a body to their beds. Two hundred thousand pounds! They could not believe their ears. Nor could they believe their eyes either when they got it in writing, words first, and the figures in brackets afterwards. If they had written the single word "_Fancy!_" across that document and sent it straightway back to the lawyers they would no doubt have followed their first impulse; but somebody, less hard hit in the wind than the rest, managed to gasp out the proposal that they should sleep on it, and sleep on it they did. But the night did not alter it. In the morning it was still two hundred thousand pounds (£200,000). News of the rapacity of the demand had leaked out almost immediately. Ordinarily, anybody who had stopped Howell Gruffydd in the street and had asked him a Council secret would have been met with the smiling facer he deserved, but this was extraordinary altogether. On the morning after they had slept on it, William Morgan saw Howell on the Promenade, came up to him, and, making no bones about it whatever, asked him whether it was true. "Who told you, William Morgan?" Howell began ... but he really had not the heart to go on. He took off his hat, wiped the lining of it with his handkerchief, and the bright sunlight showed his brows lined with anxiety and sick fear, crumpled and embossed like one of his own pats of butter. He replaced his hat and blew his nose violently. "Is it true?" demanded William Morgan again. Howell became grim.--"It was an e-vil day for this town when that man came here," he said, forgetting how little town there had been when that old brown horse had first brought the Gardens softly jolting across the sandhills. "Then it is true?" said William Morgan once again. "It is true that a man sometimes asks one thing, and finiss by getting something very diff-ferent from what he ask," Howell replied, and walked abruptly away. He crossed the Promenade and turned into Pontnewydd Street. There he stood, irresolutely plucking his lip and gazing into a stationer's window. Dafydd Dafis's voice in his ear caused him to start almost violently. "H-what is this, Howell Gruffydd?" Dafydd demanded without preface, his eyes burningly and truculently on the Chairman's face. He wore his everyday corduroys, but his air was that of a monarch in banishment. Howell turned. "Ah, how are you, Dafydd? Indeed you look well! They do say the smell of road-tar is a very healthy smell----" "H-what is this we hear, Howell Gruffydd?" Dafydd repeated. Howell tried to smile.--"Indeed, how can I answer a question like that, 'What is this we hear?'----" "H-what is this about Delyn and the Water?" There was a dangerous quickness in Dafydd's voice. Involuntarily Howell gave a little hiccough of emotion, which answered Dafydd sufficiently. His eyes were like the windows of a burning house. "He sell us two thousand acres, of our own land, for how mut-ss?" "Two--hundred--thou-sand--pounds," sobbed Howell. "Of our own mountains--Delyn, that belong to us--he sell us Delyn, this Saxon?----" "Indeed, indeed, Dafydd, do not excite yourself--it will have to go to arbi-tra-tion----" "It will go to Hell, with his soul!" Dafydd replied fiercely. "He sell us Delyn--he sell us Delyn water--he sell us our own moun-tains!--It iss not for this we make you Chairman of the Council, Howell Gruffydd!" Howell trembled, but put up a soothing hand. "Aw-w-w, you wait and see, Dafydd Dafis! A prof-fit is a prof-fit, but this is wick-ed, and preposterous, and out of all reason! You wait and see! We have a meeting this morning, and p'rapss we show Mister Edward Garden he is not so clever as he think he is! He think he put his Saxon pistol to our heads like this? Indeed he make a great mistake! You wait and see, Dafydd. There iss a saying, 'He laughs best who laughs last'--you wait and see!" He patted Dafydd's shoulder and arm reassuringly, and perhaps felt heartened by his own words. "You wait and see!" he said once more, almost cheerily now. "We not pay it--never fear! I see you later----" And he hurried away, leaving Dafydd standing on the pavement. But the Council Meeting that morning settled nothing, and neither did the next Meeting nor the next after that. They wrote to Mr. Tudor Williams, but it almost looked as if Mr. Tudor Williams was taking a leaf out of their own book: if they had pressing private affairs when questions of ales and wines and spirits appeared on the agenda, so Mr. Tudor Williams pleaded a multiplicity of urgent engagements now that it was a question of water. The meeting adjourned, reassembled, adjourned again, and met again. Days passed, weeks passed. Legal opinions were taken, but no action. They fetched Mr. Tudor Williams down almost by force, and he proffered his good offices, but deprecated the serving of notices of compulsory arbitration. He advised an amicable settlement if one could possibly be arrived at. Llanyglo's anger died away, and blank despair began to take its place. Then one day Edward Garden's lawyers hinted that in the event of an arrangement being come to within a given time they were in a position to enter into certain pledges on behalf of the Railway Companies. They hinted also that they were equally in a position to do the other thing. Surely, they said, Llanyglo saw that this was a matter of its life or its death; and surely, they added, it was plain that it would not really be _they_ who were paying! Nothing of the sort! Lancashire would pay. Yorkshire would pay. The Midlands would help to pay, and perhaps also the West and South. Whoever footed his bill at hotel or boarding-establishment would be contributing--they must see that he did contribute--his portion. What though visitors grumbled and talked about extortion? They forgot all about it the next day. What though residents groaned under the burden of the rates? They must submit to conditions, like everybody else. Llanyglo must pay, and pass it on. In short, all the people who intended to have a better time than their fathers had had were to be shaven and shorn exactly as their fathers had been. Llanyglo saw it, sighed, and acquiesced. There was nothing else to do. And if Parry, of the "Lancashire Rose," or Pugh, of the "Trafford," reaped too rich a harvest by making people drunk, they must be assessed higher and higher still, and still higher, that was all. IV PAWB This question of assessment had already raised another question, which at first seemed a small one, but swelled afterwards into ominous proportions. When the rumours of those two towering new hotels had first begun to circulate, it had been a gentle and stimulating mental exercise to place, in fancy, these palaces on this spot or that. Among other suggestions, the vacant plot of land adjacent to the Kerrs' Hafod Unos had been mentioned as a fitting site for one of them. Hereupon folk had begun to ask one another: What about the Kerrs' title? Hitherto they had not thought of this. The four brothers had planted themselves there when all about had been a waste of sand, had since taken firm root, and there two of them still remained. But between such a squatting eight or nine years ago, and a sitting tight now that everything had gone up a hundredfold in value, was an immense difference. To this difference, moreover, was now added the evil repute in which Tommy Kerr lived. Ned, the alder-cutter, they would have accepted; they could live with Ned; but his brother, besides being in his unpleasant person a public nuisance, was beginning to appear a setter-back of the fingers of History's clock, a mongrel in their fine new manger, a thorn in the side of that lusty young Welsh Giantess whose figure was now one of the familiar sights on a thousand hoardings in the North. The invisible odour of stale beer-fumes in which he moved poisoned the air of the Promenade, and, though he certainly did his best to remedy this as far as the staleness was concerned (invariably beginning the day with pints and ending it with quarts), that did not improve matters in the long run. As long as Tommy Kerr was merely locked up once in a while for drunkenness, he himself paid no heed to the whispers that had begun to gather about him. He could sleep as heavily and happily in a cell as in his own Hafod. Nor were his eyes at once opened even when an inspector appeared at the Hafod and began to ask questions about its sanitation--which, by the way, was of a low order. But his brother Ned began to "study," as he called it, and the result of his studying was that he said one day to Tommy, "They'll be wanting to be shut o' you and me, Tommy." Tommy was in the act of wiping out a greasy frying-pan with a piece of old newspaper. He stopped suddenly. After a pause, "Eh?" he said.... "D'ye mean purr us out?" "We're a bit i' t' road to my way o' thinking," Ned replied, sinking back into his arm-chair again and closing his eyes. He had taken badly to heart the deaths of his brothers Harry and Sam; indeed he had not been the same man since. He frequently walked over to Sarn churchyard, sat on a flat tombstone near his brothers' grave, and smoked and spat; he was "studying" about a stone for them. Intermittently he talked about carving this with his own hands, but he delayed to do so. All the work he now did was to doze in a street-watch-man's hut, with a two-days-old newspaper on his knee and a firebasket in front of him set sideways on the wind. He was no longer the beer-drinker he had been. "Think ye?" said Tommy, after another silence. "But we donnot want to be purred out," he added resuming the wiping of the frying-pan, though more slowly. And as it seemed to be a condition of their remaining in their Hafod unmolested that they should make a show of satisfying the sanitary inspector's demands, they overhauled their drainage system and gave it the minimum of attention it demanded. Then one day an offer was made them, which was also an admission. It was an offer of compensation and of another dwelling elsewhere, and the admission apparently was that their title was a good one. Ned was for accepting the offer, and accepted it would probably have been but for a circumstance that Tommy discovered only in a roundabout way. He was congratulated one morning in the "Marine" Tap on having escaped ejectment. This was the first he had heard of ejectment. He asked a few questions, and soon after went out for a walk. Ejectment! Apparently they had been considering his ejectment, had found it for some reason or other not to be feasible, and had substituted the offer of compensation.... Then, while this offer was still neither accepted nor rejected, something else came to Tommy Kerr's ears. This was that the sites, not of one, but of both the new hotels, were at last decided on. As a matter of fact, this choice was now almost a foregone conclusion. Next to Gardd Street, which ran parallel with the shore, Pontnewydd Street, in which lay the Hafod, was becoming the principal street of the town. It ran from the shore to Pritchard's Corner, was prolonged past that to the new station, and was the main thoroughfare for landaus and wagonettes off to the mountains. The hotels were to be built one on either side of the Hafod, not actually adjoining it, but not more than a couple of strides away. Already in Tommy Kerr's suspicious mind the mischief was done. Howell Gruffydd, all blandishments to his face, had been making secret inquiries behind his back, had he? He had been talking about compensation and whispering with attorneys and such-like, had he? Very well. That settled it. Tommy would go when he was purred out, and not before. As for that snuffling Howell Gruffydd.... "So that's it, Mister Treacle-Tongue, is it?" he had muttered. "Reight. As long as we know where we are. I'm off out to buy a ha'porth o' thread----" And with the ha'porth of thread he had sewn a large button on each of his pocket-flaps, and thenceforward meeting Howell Gruffydd in the street, had ostentatiously buttoned every pocket up before answering the prosperous grocer's smiling "Good morning." They began to dig the foundations of those glittering hotels. They did so, as it happened, in the early part of that same summer that saw Edward Garden's ingenious advertisements put into execution--the summer of the Eisteddfod and the Brass Band Contest. Llanyglo was packed with people. Two days before the Eisteddfod, there began to troop into the town from all parts bards and singers, poets and harpers and minstrels and the members of a chorus five hundred voices strong. They came in their everyday clothes, moustached like vikings, bearded and maned like lions, and instantly with their coming the Saxon took a back seat. Shopkeepers left their counters, publicans clapped down the half-filled glasses, and ran to their doors as this honoured singer or that famous bard passed their windows. They walked with stately slow walk and stately slow head-turnings, and happy was the Welshman who got a motion of the hand or a benign smile from them. The Gorsedd had been publicly proclaimed; the temporary dancing hall behind Gardd Street, big enough for a regiment to drill in, had been made ready; the insignia in the Town Hall were as jealously watched and guarded as are the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London; and he was a prudent visitor who had realised that for three whole days he was likely to get but negligent attention from those who at other times were his humble servitors. For, fleer as aliens would, this was the Awakening of the Red Dragon. Their reproach that he was but a pasteboard Dragon fell to the ground. The Dragon was what the Dragon was, and if his service was theatrical, theatricalism is ennobled when its boards are the soil itself and each of its actors an Antæus, strong because his foot is upon the ground that bred him. In England, behind his smile, the Welshman is an enigma of reserve; but see him at his Eisteddfod, with money waiting to be taken at his closed shop-doors.... With the ceremony of the Gorsedd on the opening day Dafydd Dafis's spellbound and uplifted hours began. At the sounding of the trumpets his head flew proudly up; at the Drawing of the Sword and the solemn question, "Is there Peace in the land?" his voice joined in the reply, like a thunder-clap, "There is Peace"--for that was before the year when, for three whole days, the blade remained naked and bright, while far over the seas brave Englishmen and brave Welshmen fell and died together. It was the single victory of Dafydd's life. On ordinary days he now drove a road-engine--Howell Gruffydd had got him the job under the Council; but he was a Lord of Song now. He had put his name down for the "penillion" contest; should he prove successful, not he himself only, but Llanyglo also, the place of his birth, would be forever famous. He sat behind the semicircle of white-robed and oak-crowned and druid-like figures that occupied the front part of the platform, looking down on the vast oblong of faces, Saxon and Welsh, that resembled a packed bed of London Pride; he was in the tenor wedge of the chorus; and as the five hundred voices pealed together you thought of the roof and of that singer whose voice had shivered vessels of glass.... Coming out of the hall again at the end of the first day, Dafydd was still in his trance. As he walked along the street past the "Trafford" Tap, Tommy Kerr, who sat within drinking, hailed him and called for a song, while one of his boon companions crying "Nay, we don't ask nobody to sing for nowt!" cast a couple of pennies on the ground; but Dafydd seemed neither to see nor to hear. At the break-up after the last chorus an august hand had been placed on Dafydd's shoulder, and an archangelic voice had spoken to him, saying that he, he the great one, had heard of Dafydd Dafis; and what, after that, did pot-house insults matter? He passed on, his eyes still flashing and his face shining like the Silver Chair itself.... Two days later he was proclaimed the victor in the "penillion" contest, and on the day after that, still drunk with song, he drove his road-engine again. And so passed Llanyglo's first Eisteddfod. The Brass Band Contest five weeks later was a triumph in a different way. The impression now was one, not of unity, but of the keen spirit of faction. The "_Besses o' th' Barn_" were at the crest of their fame, but the "_Black Dike_" ran them close, and not far behind came "_Wyke Temperance_" and "_Meltham Mills_"; and had these been, not Bands, but football teams, local rivalry could not have run higher. True, underneath the sporting interest lay the musical. This performer's "lipping" and the "triple-tonguing" of the other were matters of endless debate among the expert; nuances of ensemble and attack were hotly argued in strong Lancashire and Yorkshire accents; and the devotees were ready to fight with their fists over the fame of the conductors of their fancy. But, without unity, the Contest proved, for all save the Brass-band-maniacs, a little wearisome. The ear began to revolt against the reiterated "test-piece," and one pitied the judge hidden away in his carefully guarded cubicle. Fewer Welsh attended the Contest than had English the Eisteddfod, and a day was judged sufficient for it. After a sensational replay with the "_Besses_," "_Black Dike_" took pride of place, with "_Meltham Mills_" third. The strains of _Zampa_ and _The Bronze Horse_ sounded once more only, when they massed the Bands in the evening in the Floral Valley; and (the Council having sanctioned a charge of sixpence as the fee for entrance) the sum of £115 was taken at the temporary barriers. So passed the Brass Band Contest also. By the June of that year the understructure of the Pier was finished, and the rest was advancing with the speed of paper-hanging. The contractors were under time-penalties to be ready for the formal opening on the forthcoming August Bank Holiday. All through the night the sounds of the planking could be heard, and pavilion-parts, lettered and numbered and ready gilded and painted, were rushed along in haste. At the same time the Big Wheel began to resemble the largest circle of the Floral Valley set up on end; it was wonderful to stand beneath it and to gaze up through the intricacy of tie and strut and lattice at the sky. Immense hoardings filled a large part of Pontnewydd Street; by and by they would be taken down again, and the façades of those magnificent new hotels would appear; but Llanyglo would scarcely turn its head to look at them. They were getting used to this now. Besides, they had plenty else to do. The town was so full that they were turning away money into its nearest place of overflow--Porth Neigr. Then, in the beginning of August, a hundred portents were fulfilled. There began to run into the station train after train, with three or four faces at each window. Doors opened almost before the engines had begun to slow down, and (as if the trains had been veins and somebody had suddenly slit them up, spilling out the life within) the platforms were suddenly black and overrun with people. They carried bags, baskets, hampers, parcels, stools, pillows, babies. Inside the carriages they left crumpled newspapers, trodden sandwiches, bottles, nuts, corks, the heads and tails of shrimps. Their tickets had been taken miles back--no collecting-staff could have coped for a moment with the emptying of those wheeled and windowed veins of impoverished blood. Parents carrying babies stood prudently aside from that first mad rush to the entrance. Many of them had been up since half-past four that morning; they had spent seven hours in the train, twelve and thirteen and fourteen in a carriage, standing, sitting on one another's knees, lying on the rows of feet; and now they made straight for air. Certain trains had been told off for week-end travellers; others were labelled "_Special_" or "_Day Excursion Only_." Those who had come by these would have seven hours in Llanyglo, and at the end of that time they would squeeze into the trains again for seven, eight, ten hours more--for on the return journey they must attend the convenience of every other wheel on the line, and a stand of an hour or so at two o'clock in the morning would be but an incident. During that short space in which they would breathe the wonderful Llanyglo air they would eat the meals they had brought with them, or else besiege the inns and eating-houses and tea-rooms and confectioners'-shops. They were the first trippers--spinning operatives, weavers, twisters, warp-dressers, mechanics, asbestos-hands, stokers, clerks, shopkeepers, the grey and unnumbered multitude itself. Some would enjoy themselves, some would vow they enjoyed themselves, and some would declare it "a toil of a pleasure," and would drag about on hot and swollen and weary feet, repeating at intervals, "Niver again--niver as long as I live!" And the lagging children's arms would be almost wrenched off at the shoulders, and some would fall asleep with the sticky paint of the penny toys dyeing their hands, and the platforms would begin to fill up again three hours before the time of departure of the train, for the sake of the chances of corner seats, or indeed of seats at all, and also because, on that horrible arduous day, the station itself would seem almost like a home.... Yes, as the Laceys and Briggses had followed Edward Garden, and those who could not (but would) afford it had followed the Briggses and Laceys, and the _Utopia_ readers these, and the fortnight and ten-days' people these, and all sorts and conditions of people for varying lengths of time these again, so now the unnumbered rest had come.... "The first tripper, and I'm off," the Briggses and the Laceys had said; and which of us is not a Briggs or a Lacey in this? Which of us can say without misgiving that he would have remained in Llanyglo? Could we have endured the sight of our kind in this bulk--or could we have endured to think, either, that if they were not there for that dreadful day they would still be elsewhere? Can we, in the unshared solitude of our hearts, bear to think of this rank and damp and steaming human undergrowth at all? Would the Squire, seeing these, still have thought as much of his books on Church Plate and Brasses, still have defended the integrity of something not for all? Would Minetta Garden have looked on them with a sort of incurious interest as so many "types"? Or would we all, Minetta, the Squire, you, I, have felt meanly and skulkingly relieved when the last tail-light had died away in the night again? There is neither "Yes" nor "No" to be answered. I may rant of brotherhood and humanity, but you--you may remember that cart jolting without noise over the sandhills, the blue and primrose petals of those butterflies, the amethyst-tufts of wild thyme, the milkwort, the harebells, and then, of a sudden, that V with the sea beyond. I, choosing to shoulder all the responsibility of a world in the making of which I was not consulted, may moisten that human peat with my tears, but you--you, passionate for beauty's sake, may mourn a loveliness deflowered and a simplicity destroyed. It is no virtue in me, no harshness in you. We both are what we are and do what we can. Llanyglo also was what it had become and did what it could. And Llanyglo, after all, had a solace that we lack. It was an inferior one, but better than nothing. Their beach might be littered, their streets made pitiful; their lodging-house keepers might put every loose jug or china dog or ornament away, and replace them again only after these had gone; strange accents might grate upon their ears, different and disliked minds frame the thoughts those accents expressed; yet balm remained. There was not a tripper, no, not the poorest of them, but spent his three, four, or five shillings in the town. PART FOUR I THE BLIND EYE Drub-drub--drub-drub-drub--drub-drub---- It was the sound of heels on the Pier. From one end of it to the other they walked, past the recesses and lamp-standards and the bright kiosks where tobacco and confectionery and walking-sticks and picture-postcards and souvenirs were sold, and then they turned and walked back. After a time the drub-drubbing became curiously hypnotising. At moments it conformed almost to a regular rhythm; then it broke up again into mere confusion, out of which another metrical beat would rise for a second or so and then become lost again. For long spaces the ear would become accustomed and cease to hear it, and would take in instead the lighter registers of tittering, soft laughter, the striking of matches and an occasional scuffle and call; but the groundwork of sound would break through again, like a muffled drum tapped by many performers at once, monotonous, reverberating, dead---- Drub-drub-drub--drub-drub--drub-drub---- It was half-past eight of a July night. Crowded as the Pier was, it would become still more so when the Concert Hall just within the turnstiles, and the Pavilion at the pier-head, turned out their audiences again. There would hardly be space to move them. The Promenade was a sweep of brilliants; Gardd Street lay unseen behind it under a golden haze; behind that again the lighted rosette of the Big Wheel turned slowly high in the sky; and the great hotels of the front were squared and mascled with window-lights. All this dance of gold and silver made an already blue evening intensely blue, and the Pier was so long that, even with quick walking, several minutes passed between your losing the rattle of hand-clapping outside the Concert Hall at one end of it, and your picking up the strains of the Pavilion orchestra at the other. Drub-drub-drub--drub-drub-drub--drub-drub---- There was hardly a bed to be had in Llanyglo. Visitors who had rashly chosen to take their chance commonly passed their first night in the waiting-rooms of the railway station. Servant-girls lay in their clothes under kitchen tables, while their own garrets were let for half a sovereign a night. Dozens slept on sofas, chairs, hearthrugs, billiard-tables, on the Promenade benches, under the tarpaulins of wagonettes and chars-à-bancs, or curled up in the boats on the shore. They Boxed-and-coxed it as they could, and the police did not trouble to shake the slumberers on whom they turned their bull's-eyes in the nooks and arbours of the Floral Valley. Drub-drub-drub--drub--drub---- And who were they now, they whose heels wore down the Pier timbers and made the brain drowsy with their ceaseless tramp? It was a curious and a rather arresting change. To all appearances, Llanyglo had now got a "better class of visitor" than it had had since the Briggses and Laceys had shaken the dust of the place from their feet. Even in this puzzle of gold and silver light and deep mysterious blue, it could be seen that there was not much Holiday Club money there. In another fortnight or so those coffers would burst over the town, drenching it with gold; but in the meantime who were these others, and what were they doing at Llanyglo? Let us ask the author of the _Sixpenny Guide_. * * * * * "When did you arrive? Only last night? And you're stopping at the 'Majestic'? Well, you've somebody there who can tell you more about it than I can--Big Annie the head-chambermaid on the first floor. There are a good many things about Llanyglo now that I've had to keep out of my _Guide_, you see. But I'll tell you what I can. "And I don't want to give you any false impression. Don't forget that scores and hundreds of families come here and bathe, and picnic, and dance, and go for drives, and enjoy themselves, and go away again without a notion that everybody here isn't exactly like themselves. And there's no harm in the Wakes people either. The worst you can say of them is that now and then one of them gets violently or torpidly drunk, as the case may be, and that all of them make a most hideous and infernal noise. So don't think I'm talking disproportionately, and that this is the only place of its kind I was ever in. "But I do mean this: that somehow or other we've now acquired a very peculiar kind of notoriety. You can deny it, disprove it, show that it isn't there at all, and--there it remains all the time. For one thing, you'll see if you look round that the place is very much less northern in character than it was, and as it happens that's very significant. For it might conceivably happen that a northerner--or a southerner, or anybody else--might have his reasons for avoiding a place that was full of other northerners, many of whom might know him (they have an expression in the North for the kind of thing I mean; they call it 'making mucky doorstones'). So you'll find lots and lots of Londoners here now, and midlanders, and easterners and westerners. They come here, where nobody's ever seen them before and will never see them again perhaps, for much the same reason that some Englishmen are said to go to Paris. "I don't want to make them out more in number than they are. Spread out over the whole country they'd only be a fractional percentage, and you'd never notice them; but when they're brought together here they're quite enough to give the place a character. They aren't the open and reckless kind. Furtiveness--complete disappearance if possible--is the whole point. They're the men who arrange for somebody to post their letters home from the place they're supposed to be really at, and the women who, as the Bible says, eat and wipe their lips and say they haven't eaten. They want to dodge, not only everybody else, but themselves also, something they're perhaps afraid of in themselves, for a fortnight, three weeks, a month. You see, they've persuaded themselves (and Llanyglo's done too well out of them to undeceive them) that things done here somehow 'don't count.' If you want to do something you'd never dare to do in a place where you were known, you come to Llanyglo to do it. If you can imagine the oasis in the desert with exactly the contrary meaning--that's us. We're an asylum for those who've lost their moral memories. "And it isn't that wedding-rings are juggled off and on, and false names entered in hotel registers, nor anything of that kind. That goes on more or less everywhere, and we haven't become notorious merely for that. And as usual, it's easier to say what it isn't than what it is. It isn't the Trwyn, for example, though that does twitter so with kisses from morning till night that you'd think it was the grasshoppers. And it isn't the almost open displays you see at certain hours wherever you go. It isn't any one fact, not even the worst. It's a faint attar of some _abandonment_, some bottomlessness, that you can't name. It may be my imagination, but I've fancied I've actually smelt it with my nostrils, coming into it from a mile out of the town. They relinquish even appearances. Most of us have the grace to cover up our sins with a decent and saving hypocrisy, but these know and understand one another so horribly well. They seem to find a comfort that they're all in the same boat. As they say themselves, 'Heaven for climate but Hell for company.' Give them your name on your visiting-card and they'll ask you by and by what your _real_ name is. Until then, neither your name nor anything else about you is their business. They haven't any business. For a week, or a fortnight, or a month, they've turned their backs on that tremendous common business that keeps the world going. It's the blind eye, and Llanyglo provides the blinkers.... "But go and talk to Big Annie. She's really a rather remarkable woman. At stated hours she sits on point duty on the landing of her floor of eighty bedrooms, just where everybody's got to pass her, and if you look like making--er--a mistake (and your hotel's quite an easy place to get lost in) she sets you right without a quiver of her face. Yes, she's rather an alarming person. There's a swiftness about her way of summing up people from a single glance at their faces. Oh, you don't take Annie in with a wedding-ring and a 'darling' or so--especially when the lady asks the darling whether he takes sugar in his early morning cup of tea.... "Yes, you go and see Annie." * * * * * Drub-drub--drub-drub-drub---- After a time that stupor of the ear became a stupor of the eye also. Even when a match glowed before a face for a moment, the stage-like lighting gave you no physiognomical information. The lamps shone on the crowns of the passing hats, but the faces beneath them were lost; all cats were grey. Any one of them might have been a giggling flapper with her eyes still sealed to Life, or one of those others mentioned by the too-curious author of the _Guide_, who would be dead to sight and thought for a space that didn't count. Light frocks and darker hues, bare heads and plaits and shawls and hooded dominoes, shop-girl and high-school girl, caps and straws and panamas, pipes and cigarettes, youths thoughtless and youths predatory--you paid your threepence at the turnstiles and watched them pass and repass. Drub-drub-drub.... And if you sat long enough, changes began to be perceptible. The flappers who were evidently high-school girls began to be fewer, and others took their places--for most of the shops of Llanyglo closed at nine or half-past, and the released waitresses and assistants who had been on their feet all day were still not too weary to add to the drub-drubbing. It was difficult to say in what particular these were distinguishable. It was not their dress--the universal attainment of a certain standard of dressing is one of our modern miracles. You would not have had it from their own lips--you would have been tactless in the extreme not to have assumed that they also were visitors (as a matter of fact, they would calmly make appointments for four o'clock of the next day, knowing perfectly well that at that hour they would be giving change in a cash-desk or hurrying hither and thither with piles of bread and butter and trays awash with spilt tea). Perhaps it was the young men they greeted and their way of greeting them. They didn't come out for these last hours of the day to gossip with those to whom they had called "Sign!" all the afternoon, their own foremen, companions, or the tradesmen of the shop opposite. Drub-drub--drub-drub---- There passed through the Season Ticket turnstile two young men. Both wore dark suits and conventional collars and ties (as if they, at any rate, had no need to don their coloured jackets and flannel trousers while they could), and the attendant at the turnstile had touched his cap as they had passed. One of them, the taller of the two, wore his straw hat halo-wise at the back of his head, filled his pipe as he walked, and looked cheerfully and unobservingly about him; the other's straw was well down, and the eyes beneath its brim sought somebody or something, and would apparently be satisfied with nothing less. The first was Percy Briggs, and everybody in Llanyglo knew Percy Briggs--Percy Briggs, who strolled casually into Hotel Cosies towards midday, nodded to the more favoured ones, said to the barmaid "So and So been in yet?" and, getting a bright "No, Mr. Briggs, not yet" for an answer, lounged out again without having had a drink--a sufficient gage of privilege and familiarity with the place. The other was John Willie Garden, who knew Llanyglo, knew which faces had been there last year and the year before, and was now looking for a face he had seen yesterday evening for one moment only and had then lost again. The Pier was an old, old story to him now. Between seasons, on winter nights, the drub-drub of a few months before seemed sometimes still faintly to echo in his ears--this when the grey skies came, and in the hotels a few rooms only were kept open for unprofitable commercial travellers, and the Promenade was empty, and the Pleasure Packet Service laid up, and a walk to the end of the Pier and back seemed a long way to feet that had covered the distance twenty times on a summer's evening, and the colourless sea seemed to give to the red and white blink of the Trwyn Light a sudden and nearer significance. He knew every hour of Llanyglo's day--the hours of departure of the pleasure-boats to Rhyl and Llandudno and round Anglesey, the bathing-hours in the morning, the high-school parade at midday, the second bathing relay in the afternoon, the tea-hour, the walk of parents and children to see the boats come in again in the early evening, and then, as the evening wore on, the successive appearances and droppings out of this kind or that, the emptying of the Pavilions, the inflow of the shop-girls and waitresses, the rush for the public-houses half an hour before the Pier lights went out, the thinning numbers who beat the Promenade, the parties of the Alsatians who sat up in one another's hotels long after every public drinking-place had been closed. He had nothing further to learn about it all, and it bored him. Only his search for that girl had brought him on the Pier to-night. He had been almost certain he knew her, but where he had seen her face before he could not for the life of him remember. Perhaps he did not know her after all; indeed, when he came to think of it, no memory of a voice seemed to go with the face, so that the probability was that if he had seen her before he had never spoken to her. She had been standing, in that blue twilight, clear of the throng, under the single crimson pier-head light, looking out over the water that seemed still to reflect a light that had faded from the sky, and for a moment John Willie had wondered what she was looking at. The next moment he had seen--and so, confound it, had twenty others. A yellow spot, like a riding-light, had risen out of the sea; almost as quickly as the second-hand of a watch moves, it had become a tip; and then the lookers-in at the glass sides of the Pavilion had run to see the rising of the bloated, refraction-magnified, burning yellow horn. In that little running of people he had lost her. Twice, thrice he had walked the whole length of the Pier, but without seeing her again. All of her that he could now remember was the carriage of her head and her plain black dress, and he knew that dress, in this extraordinary raising of the standard of dressing which implies the possession by almost everybody of two dresses at least, was an uncertain guide. Another rattle of hand-clapping broke out as Percy Briggs and John Willie passed the turnstiles. "Any good looking in there?" Percy asked, nodding towards the Concert Hall, but John Willie made no reply. He was as cross as a bear with a sore head. Twice already he had rounded on Percy, who had proposed drinks at this place or that, and had snapped "You go if you want--I'm not keeping you;" but Percy had replied good-naturedly, "Oh, all right, keep your hair on." The sounds of two more pairs of heels were added to the drub-drubbing on the planks of the Pier. It seemed idle to seek, but John Willie stood looking in at the glass sides of the Pavilion at the pier-head, searching the bright and crowded interior. His mind was as obstinately set as that of a mule. It seemed to him idiotic that all those rows and rows of people should clap the inanities of the young man in knee-breeched evening-dress who strutted and made painted eyes over the top of a flattened opera-hat, or encore Miss Sal Volatile, all spidery black silk stockings below and cocksfeather boa and enormous black halfmoon hat above. John Willie turned away to the low-burning crimson pier-light. He stood there for some moments, and then began to stride back the length of the Pier again. "Chucking it?" said Percy, half sympathetic, half "getting at" John Willie. "Come on to the Kursaal," John Willie grunted. The Kursaal lay behind the two frontages of Gardd and Pontnewydd Streets, and it could be reached from either thoroughfare. From Gardd Street, up another short street, the great lighted semicircle of what was then its Main Entrance could be seen; and if the minor entrance from Pontnewydd Street was at that time less resplendent, that was because the Kerrs' Hafod stood in the way of opening it up. With its grounds and theatre and vast dancing-hall, the Kursaal covered getting on for an eighth of a square mile; but a third or more of that was still in progress of being laid out and planted--once more by Philip Lacey. Crossing the Promenade to the less crowded pavement beyond, John Willie and Percy strode the half-mile to the Kursaal. There was a queue about the turnstiles, but John Willie made a sign to an attendant, who flung up the Exit Only barrier. They passed under trees with many-coloured electric lights among the branches, and the slowly turning Big Wheel, which made a quarter-arch of lights over the tower of the Central Hall, dipped behind it again as they reached the steps that led to the vestibule. For size alone, apart from any other consideration, the dancing-hall of the Llanyglo Kursaal is one of the wonders of the North. It cost a hundred thousand pounds to build, and since it can dance a thousand couples, to seek anybody there without going up into the balconies is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. The band was not playing at the moment when Percy and John Willie entered; but before they had reached the top of an empty half-lighted series of staircases the distant strains of a Barn Dance had broken out. Then, with the pushing at a door, it burst loudly upon them. John Willie strode down the shallow gallery steps, made for a front seat whence he could see the whole length of the vast oblong below, spread out his elbows and set his chin on his wrists, and, once more muttering "You go and get your drink if you want," began to search the hall with gloomy blue eyes, very much as a boy flashes a bit of looking-glass hither and thither in the sun. Now when the Wakes people come to Llanyglo, and the pleasant family parties yield place a little, and drive in the mountains more frequently, and leave the Pier and Promenade a little earlier, and gather more often at one another's hotels--even then that dancing-hall is so vast that twenty different elements can be accommodated there without mixing or encroachment. But that series of precipitations had not yet taken place. That night all was homogeneous. Perhaps here and there other contacts had sparsely "crossed," as it were, that fresh blooming, as the white hawthorn takes on faintly the hue of the pink in the spring, but that was probably rare. John Willie, had he had eyes for it, looked down upon a wonderful sight. The hall was a creamy gold, with bow after bow along its balcony tiers; without its other innumerable clusters of lights, the eight arc-lamps in its high roof would have lighted it no better than a railway station is lighted; and the mirrors on the walls were hardly more polished than its satiny floor. A fully appointed stage half-way down one of the sides held an orchestra of thirty performers; walking across that wonderfully swung floor you felt something almost alive under your feet; and four thousand feet moved upon it that night. It was beautiful. The band was playing, slowly, as is the dancing-fashion of the North, that Barn Dance; and almost every girl was in white. The whites were the whites of flowers--the greenish white of guelder-roses, the yellow white of elder or of meadow-sweet, the pinkish white of the faintest dog-rose, the dead white of narcissi, but little that was not white. And because of all that soft whiteness, faces caught by the sun were browner, and hair that the wind had blown through all day glossier, and eyes brighter, and perhaps blushes quicker and more readily seen. And to the whole bright spectacle was added the impressiveness of unfaltering rhythm and simultaneousness of movement. The Colour on the Horse Guards' Parade is not honoured with greater precision of physical movement than these disciplined feet, these turning bodies; the pulsing floor itself answered to the delicate dip of the conductor's stick. For two bars ... but look at them as they pour towards you down the left side of the room. Every face is towards you, forty abreast, and forty following those, and more forties, columns and squadrons of them, coming forward as grain comes down a channel, as graded fruit pours down a shoot. You do not see where they come from--their turn is far away under the pillars there; you do not see where they go to--they pass away out of sight again beneath you. They do not seem the same over and over again, but all the youths and maidens of the world, coming on and on, and new, always new.... Then you look to the right, and instantly your eyes are sensible of a darker ensemble. That is because you see, not faces now, but the backs of heads; not gaily striped shirts and bright ties, but plain shoulders only. And they pass away as they came, all the youths and maidens of the world with their backs to you. Not one turns for a look at you, not one nods you farewell. It is like your own youth leaving you.... And then magically all alters. Two more bars and, as if some strange and all-potent and instantaneously acting element had been dropped into the setting and returning human fluid, of a sudden it all breaks up. It effervesces. Every couple is seen to be waltzing. Two by two they turn, and your youth is no longer coming to you nor departing from you, but stops and plays. It stops and plays--for two bars--and lo, the other again. Once more they troop towards you with their faces seen, once more troop away with faces averted. The illusion becomes a spell. Coming, going, all different, all the same, parallel legions with faces to the future and faces to the grave--it is a little like Llanyglo itself. Suddenly you find yourself drawn a little closer to John Willie Garden. You do not want to look down from a balcony on all the young manhood and young womanhood of the world. One, one only, will suffice you, and with her you will come brightly down, all eyes and rosiness and laughter, and with her go in a soberer livery away again.... But luckier you than John Willie if you find that one. His eyes, practised as they were in scanning the Kursaal throng, did not see her. The _coda_ came; the vast oblong well lighted up for a moment as a poplar lights up when the wind blows upon it--it was the slightly wider swing of skirts seen from above as the dance quickened to its finale; and then, as if something else potent and inimical had been dropped into the solution, there was a break for the sides, and the shining floor was seen again. "Damn!" muttered John Willie Garden. Percy, relishing the spectacle of John Willie on the hunt, was in no hurry. "The arbours?" he suggested laconically as John Willie rose; but again John Willie did not reply. For one thing, it was a little difficult to see into those dark nooks among Philip Lacey's barrows and planks and new larches and heaps of upturned earth; for another, he had an assurance that she he sought would not be there. "Come on," he grunted. "Ah!" said Percy, with an exaggerated shake of himself. "Has the moment at last arrived when we quaff?" But already John Willie had stridden on ahead. They took a known short cut through dark and obstructed windings, and presently reached the side-door of the adjoining hotel. It had certain rooms where ladies unaccompanied might get a drink, but into these they barely glanced. Percy grinned. Should John Willie find the object of his search in one of the other rooms, then there was reasonable hope of a row. He had never before seen John Willie so persistently asking for trouble. The door at which they paused showed a room crowded, bright, and full of a lawn of tobacco-smoke. It was not a large room, but it must have held twenty men and as many women, and you could have seen their like on any summer Sunday at Tagg's Island, or any day in Regent Street, or on Brighton Front. They sat in chairs of saddlebag or leather, and the fingers of the men were poised over the large cigar-boxes the waiters held before them, or else made little circular gestures about the circumference of the little round tables, as much as to say "Same again" or "Mine." Little but champagne, liqueurs, or brandies-and-soda seemed to be to their taste, and John Pritchard might indeed have thought them "very ritss whatever"; gold seemed to come from them at a touch, notes at little more. Just within the door a very brown man sat with a plump little lady about whose short fingers gems seemed to have candied, as sugar candies about a string; and next to them another man admired as much of his companion's shoes as could be seen for the champagne cooler on the floor. There was not much noise. There was a good deal of whispering about horses. A ring was widened for the new-comers about one of the larger tables--"Arthur!" Percy called as he passed one of the waiters. "Bag o' beer, and Mr. P. Briggs's compliments to Miss Price and will she please come at once." They settled down. This was Percy's present humour--to drink pints of beer from a silver tankard that resembled a tun among the gem-like liqueur-glasses, and to make love to Miss Price, the fat and creasy and unapproachable hotel-manageress. Perhaps he intended to convey that few other new sensations remained to him at the end of his three-and-twenty hard-lived years. Sometimes John Willie laughed at this posture of his friend's, but to-night he thought it merely stupid and idiotic. He had come here because he had thought he might as well be having a drink as fruitlessly searching; now he thought he might as well be searching as having a drink he didn't want. Percy was ordering the drinks now--"Vermouth, Val? Cissie, your's is avocat, I know. Now, Johannes Guglielmus, what will you imbibe?" Presently John Willie sat glowering at a whiskey-and-soda. The girl on his left, whom Percy had addressed as Cissie, made an arch attempt to talk to him, and then gave up the laborious task and turned her back. Miss Price, the manageress, appeared, and Percy began his stupid and facetious love-making. John Willie wondered whether he had searched the Dancing-Hall thoroughly after all. The table grew noisy, and there were appreciative grins from other tables; Percy was trying to draw that disgustingly fat manageress on to his knee. And, with the pace thus set by Percy, the whole room woke up. The waiters began to move about more quickly and to call for assistance, and there was applause as somebody opened the lid of the piano.... John Willie sat before his untouched whiskey-and-soda. He was once more wondering whether it would be worth while to return to the Dancing-Hall, or whether she might not by this time be on the Pier. And again, and ever again, he wondered when and where he had seen her before.... Again Percy's silly joyous voice broke in. He was expostulating with Miss Price. "Look, Cissie's sitting on Val's----" "Let be, Mr. Briggs--indeed I will not be pulled about like that!----" "Then sit on Mr. Garden's--cheer him up--he's looking for Gertie, the Double-Blank from Blackburn, and can't find her----" "There, now, Mr. Briggs!--Now I shall have to go and get a needle and thread!----" Somebody interposed.--"Here, chuck it, Percy; somebody might come in.... Hallo, John Willie, you off?" For John Willie had pushed back his chair. He reached for his hat. "Leave us a lock of your hair for my mourning-brooch," Percy's muffled voice came after him, but he was off. Perhaps she would be at the Wheel.... But she was not at that immense tyre slung with upholstered coaches, nor yet to be seen at the side-shows round about. He left the Kursaal, and joined the dense throng that made a double stream under the Promenade lamps. He told himself he was a fool. She might have left Llanyglo within a few hours of his having seen her--might be back in any of the towns of England or Scotland or Wales by this time. But he did not cease to seek. He reached the Pier again. Drub-drub-drub-drub-drub-drub-drub. It was now solid with flesh, and indeed he had not walked half its length when the closing-bell clanged. The glow over the pier-head Pavilion went suddenly out, and so, a few moments later, did a hundred yards of the lamps on either side. He heard the usual cries of mock-terror. It was no good going up there now.... Nor would she be in the Floral Valley. In fact, he had better give it up. He had better clear out of Llanyglo for a bit. He was sick of this dusty dance of pleasure, and the Wakes crowds would be here in a few days.... He would go and fish up Delyn. The Water Scheme hadn't spoiled the lake; they had only built a quite small dam with locks at one end, and the grid of service-reservoirs was lower down. Sharpe had left the hut. He would go there for a few days and have his bread and mutton and cheese sent up from the inn in the valley below. He would tell Minetta to get somebody to stay with her, and would go in the morning.... He was passing the closed fancy-shop at the corner of Gardd Street when he came to this resolution; and suddenly he stopped dead. Minetta!... What was it that the thought of his sister, coming at this moment, reminded him of? It was odd, but it had certainly reminded him of something that had seemed to come near him only to escape him again immediately. Minetta!... He saw Minetta daily. There was nothing new about Minetta. She looked after the house, and if he wasn't going to be in for meals he mentioned the fact, or sometimes didn't, and beyond that, to tell the truth, he didn't very often think of Minetta. He didn't suppose she would ever marry--wasn't that kind. He remembered that years ago that genial idiot Percy Briggs had fancied himself "sweet" on her, but that sketching of hers---- _Ah!_ John Willie, who had been still standing at the corner, moved slowly forward again. He had got it. He _knew_ he'd been right! It was a little boast of his that he remembered faces rather well, and the thing that had perplexed him for two days was now clear. In a flash he saw in his mind the Llanyglo of the days of the Briggses and Laceys. He saw a bright diminutive picture of deck-chairs and bathing-tents on the shore, and June Lacey and Wiggie having their fortunes told. And he saw a gipsy child, with a head held as if it had borne an invisible pitcher, and then a foot cut by a piece of glass, and himself and Percy packed off home in disgrace, and Percy's mother washing the gashed foot with water from a picnic-basket and tying it up with a handkerchief. Then Minetta had come up, and had said that she was going to make a sketch of the child.... Ah! It was _she_ who had stood under the red pier-light, watching that cadmium horn of the moon that lifted itself out of the sea! II JUNE As it happened, John Willie did not go off fishing on the morrow. He expected that Minetta would be in bed when he got home, but as he passed up the path he saw a light burning high in the front of the house. It was in the room beneath that date-stone under which he had once put a sixpence, and that room, because of its high and uninterrupted view of the sea, was one of the guest-chambers. He wondered who had come. His supper was laid in the dining-room, but he did not want it, and so passed straight upstairs. As he turned along the landing to his own room he heard a door opened on the floor above, and his sister called "Is that you?" He answered, entered his bedroom, and began to undress. But he had scarcely got his boots unlaced when there came a tap at the door, and Minetta entered. Her dark hair was in plaits, she wore a wrap over her nightdress, and she carried on her hip a tray with two claret-stained glasses and a salver with a cut cake. Evidently there had been a girls' bedroom orgie. "Who's come?" John Willie asked, throwing aside his second boot. "June Lacey. You knew she was coming," Minetta answered accusingly. "No, I didn't--first I've heard of it." "You never hear anything when you're reading a newspaper. I told you at breakfast this morning, and that she was going to wire the time of the train. And you were out, and I had to leave everything and go and meet her myself." "Sorry," John Willie grunted. He remembered now. "I mean, I didn't gather it was to-day." "Well, I hope you'll manage to spare her an hour or two now that she's here," Minetta said a little crossly. "I did tell her to come just whenever she wished, and she didn't know the Wakes were coming on." "All right," John Willie yawned. "I was going fishing, that's all; but I won't if you don't want. How long's she staying?" "At least a fortnight. So don't say I haven't told you that. And do try to be in just occasionally. Have you had supper?" "I didn't want any, thanks. Sorry I forgot, Min. Say good night to June for me." Five minutes later he had turned out the gas and tumbled into bed. Except that she postponed his escape from ennui for a day or two, June's arrival was a matter of indifference to him. He had known her for so long that he regarded her almost as if she had been a split-off portion of Minetta herself, that happened to possess its own apparatus of speech and locomotion. He could no more have said whether she was pretty than he could have said whether Minetta was pretty. It was no trouble to talk to June. As much talk as was necessary came of itself. He had only to say "You remember so-and-so----" or "Like that time when----" and conversation sustained itself out of a hundred trifles desultorily familiar to both of them. That, at any rate, was a comfort. With anybody new he would have had to take a certain amount of trouble. With June it didn't matter. So, at breakfast the next morning, he did not actually read the newspaper as he ate, but he threw out a remark from time to time as it were over the edge of an imaginary newspaper, and then asked June what she would like to do that morning. When she replied that she wanted him to do just whatever he had intended to do, he even hoisted himself to the level of a little ceremoniousness, and told her that he had no plans at all save to amuse her--what about a bathe, the morning Concert in the Pavilion, a drive in the afternoon, and so on? By keeping to this beaten track of enjoyment, he could, at one and the same time, be entertaining June and keeping an eye open for that gipsy girl who haunted his imagination. "A bathe?" said June.... "Oh, of course! How stupid of me! I'd forgotten there was mixed bathing here now. What a change!... Wasn't there a frightful row about it?" There had been a row, but it had been short and sharp. Briefly, Blackpool and Douglas and Llandudno had settled the matter for them, and, after a protest for conscience's sake--and also a little more well-judged absenteeism--even Howell Gruffydd, now Chairman of the Council, and John Pritchard, a Councillor in his second year, had yielded. A portion of the shore had been set apart for this "playing with fire," but within a year even this had become a dead letter. The only thing that now distinguished this portion of the beach from the rest was a certain heightened jocundity in the advertisements on the sides of the bathing-machines at that spot. The virtues of Pills and Laxatives were a little more loudly announced there, and this heartiness and lack of false shame culminated in a long hoarding that was erected on one of the groynes, and bore on one side the legend "THE NAKED TRUTH" (which was that Somebody's Remedies were the Best), and on the other the words "TO THE PURE" (who were warned against Fraudulent Imitations). For the rest folk now bathed where they would. So, idly, John Willie told June of the town's struggle between its principles and its living, and then they rose from the table. When June heard that Minetta wasn't coming with them she wanted to stay behind and help; but Minetta persuaded her that she would only be in the way, and that anyway she couldn't help her with her painting; and presently, with towels and costumes, she and John Willie went forth and, after a casual discussion about its being rather soon after breakfast to bathe, descended to the beach. June was certainly a pretty enough girl for even a fastidious young man to be seen about with. No neater shoes than those that moved beneath the gypsophylla of her petticoats were to be seen on the whole Promenade, and she held her longish figure trimly, and was almost on the "fast" side with her little thin switch of a cane. She was an inch taller than John Willie, too, which was another inch of smartness to be seen walking with. He found her a bathing-machine and secured another for himself; and when, presently, they lay on their backs side by side a hundred yards farther out from the shore than anybody else, with the sun hot on their faces and their eyes blinking up at the intense blue, they continued to talk as they had talked before--of who had been to Llanyglo lately and who had not, and of what had become of Mrs. Maynard, and whether anybody had seen Hilda Morrell lately, and whether that London man--what was his name--Mr. Ashton--had been heard of since. John Willie, for his part, asked how Mrs. Lacey and Wiggie were, and told June what a lot was thought of her father's laying out of the Kursaal Gardens, and asked her when the work was expected to be finished. Then they came in again, dressed, and regained the Promenade. John Willie was surprised to find how quickly the morning went. The Concert was half over by the time they reached the Pavilion, and when the Concert was over and the drub-drub on the boards of the Pier became incessant, June said that, build as they would, it would be a long time before they built on the Trwyn. To that John Willie replied that he wasn't so sure, and told her of how at one time it had been a toss-up whether they wouldn't make a terrace there and build the "Imperial" on it; and June's reply was that she would never have thought it. Then John Willie looked at his watch, and at first thought it must have stopped, the time had flown so. They turned their faces to the Promenade again, and at a Booking Kiosk John Willie ordered a landau for half-past two. Minetta (he told June) would have finished her work by then, and the three of them could go either out Abercelyn way, or through Porth Neigr and round home, or along the Delyn road, just as June wished. June said that if she really had her choice, she would like the Abercelyn drive, because it was years since she had been there, and she would like to see how much it had altered. So out towards Abercelyn the three of them went that afternoon, and June's eyes opened wide at the Sarn manganese sidings, and John Willie told her to mind that gypsophylla of her petticoats against the coal-heaps and grease-boxes of the wagons. Then back in the landau again, he took a well-earned rest while Minetta and June talked. He leaned back against the hot leather, and smoked and watched them, and wondered, first, whether anybody would ever marry Minetta, and, next, whether anybody would ever marry June, and then all at once found himself wondering about the gipsy girl again. Suppose he should take seats for June and Minetta at some entertainment that evening, should see them comfortably settled, and should then go out for another look for her?... But, now that he knew who she was, he thought of her, somehow, ever so slightly differently. He was no less set on finding her; indeed he was more set; but part of the possible surprise and excitement had certainly gone. Had he apparently not been destined not to see her again, the thing would have been less of an adventure than he had at first supposed. There would have been far fewer discoveries to make. It might even have been difficult to talk to her. He could talk pleasantly to June and be thinking of something else all the time; but he could hardly have asked Ynys Lovell how her mother was getting on with her chair-mending and fortune-telling, or have told her that he had heard that her kinsman Dafydd Dafis had won the "penillion" contest at the Eisteddfod.... _Ah!_---- Again he had it, and, lying back on the hot leather of the hired landau, wondered that he had not had it sooner. Of course--Dafydd Dafis. If anybody knew where she was, Dafydd would know. _That_ was what he would do that evening while Minetta and June were at the Concert. He would take a stroll to Dafydd's house (which was no longer the single-roomed cottage near the old Independent Chapel, but a two-roomed one in Maengwyn Street), and he would sit down and have a smoke and ask Dafydd how all was with him.... At this point he became conscious that June was speaking to him. She was offering him a penny for his thoughts. Instantly he fell into the rut of easy conversation again. It took him hardly a moment to find a topic. "Eh?" he said.... "Oh!--You can have them for nothing. I was just thinking of that place of the Kerrs in Pontnewydd Street. I suppose you've heard all about that?" "No, I've not heard a word," June declared. "Do tell me!" After all, it was but a step from his real thought to the narrative he now told June. Between Dafydd Dafis and Tommy Kerr was now the association of an all but declared feud, which would break out into open enmity the moment anything happened to Tommy's brother Ned. More than any man in Llanyglo Dafydd had writhed at that wonderful building of the Hafod Unos, and since then he had remembered something else that had set him darkly flushing. It had been Tommy Kerr (or one of his boon companions--it came to the same thing) who, when Dafydd had returned rapt after the first day of the Eisteddfod, had cast two-pence on the ground and had drunkenly demanded a song. Yes, that remark, scarce heard at the time, had come back since. They had offered him, Dafydd, their dirty dross in exchange for Song, and had bidden him stoop to pick it up.... And that mortal insult had reminded Dafydd of an older memory still. This was, that of the four Kerrs, Tommy had been the only one who had not tumbled into that open boat when that chilling cry of "_Llongddrylliad!_" had sounded on that stormy night years and years before. That that had not been Tommy's fault mattered nothing; as soon as Dafydd had remembered this he had felt himself released from the last shadow of an obligation. It was another stick to beat Tommy with and "beating him" now meant, as everybody knew, waiting until his brother died and then "purring" him out of the Hafod, if not by fair means, then--well, purring him out none the less. And that stick Tommy was to be beaten with was only the latest of many. It was a whole history of sticks--of the Council's Sons of Belial set at Tommy, collectors, inspectors of this and that and the other, policemen to apprehend him for drunkenness, sergeants to warn publicans that if they harboured Tommy they might be made to feel it in other ways.... But lately they had withdrawn this last prohibition. Putting their heads together, they had judged it best that Tommy should drink all he could, and more.... He had done so, and did not seem a single penny the worse for it. Moreover, he had now openly declared himself an abominator of Welshmen and everything else Welsh. Nightly he zig-zagged home crying out against the whole smiling, thievish crew, their Kursaals and Pavilions and Dancing-Halls and Concerts Llanyglo. He lurched along Pontnewydd Street after everybody else had gone to bed, roaring "_Glan Meddwdod Mwyn_." How he had twenty times escaped breaking his neck when they had laid down the Pontnewydd Street tramlines nobody knew.... And whenever he remembered that they wanted his Hafod and would have it as soon as Ned died, he offered to _give_ it away to any Welshman who would repeat after him, word for word ... but his forms of words varied widely, and no more than the Amalekites could some of those against whom he railed pronounce his words that began with "sh." So John Willie, as the landau bowled homewards, had to tell June all this, and June was extraordinarily interested. Minetta watched them both, and, in her turn, wondered about John Willie and _his_ marrying. She liked to have June to visit her; she wasn't so sure that she wanted June as a standing ornamental dish. Indeed she rather thought she didn't, and, allowing for many large but still accidental differences, Minetta was not without a trace of the malicious humour of Tommy Kerr himself. In fairness she had to admit, however, that so far there were no signs that June was setting her cap at John Willie. That night again, however, John Willie had little luck of his searching, this time of Dafydd Dafis. He sought him at his home, he sought him abroad, but he failed to find him and he joined June and his sister again where they sat listening to The Lunas, those incomparable Drawing-Room Entertainers. He bought them chocolate and he bought them ices, and then, at the end of the performance, he proposed a walk along the Promenade before they turned in. Not to lose them, he passed an arm through either of theirs, his sister's arm and that of this tall and pretty and undisturbing extension of his sister. They set their faces towards the Pier that stretched like a sparkling finger out to sea. It was the hour of the ebb, and lately, at that hour, an odd and new activity had begun to make sharper that contrast between the bright and crowded and restless Promenade and the solemn void that pushed as it were its dark breast against that two-miles-long chain of gold and silver lamps, straining the slender fetter into a curve. Down below the railings, at three or four points, not more, an upturned face with tightly shut eyes was praying aloud. They looked like little floating, drowned, yet speaking masks. Each evangelist had his little knot of three or four companions, but these had come with him, and of hearers they had none. They stood on the trampled sand, just below the gas-lighted line of pebbles; a boat drawn up, or a yard or two of groyne, struggled between light and shadow beyond them; far out in the bay the twinkle of a solitary light could be seen; the rest was blackness and immensity. It made Infinity seem strangely weak. Here It was, striving to make Itself known to the finite, Its sole instrument a little oval mask and a voice that could not be heard five yards away; and never a head was turned. Calling and laughing, the babel of their voices like the rattle of the pebbles that roll back with the retiring wave, they passed and passed and passed. One would have said that some vast angelic skater had cut that sweeping outside-edge of light, and then, repulsed, had rushed away into the darkness again. And this was something else for John Willie to tell this pretty, unexigent June. It had only been going on about a fortnight, he said, but he didn't think they'd heard the last of it yet. There was a Revival or something coming slowly up the coast, he said, and--who did June think was doing it?--why, Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd! "Never!" June exclaimed. "Rather! You remember him, don't you? Howell Gruffydd the grocer's son; pale-faced chap, with a great lump of hair; and by Jove, he is stirring 'em up! He started at Aberystwith, and worked his way up through Aberdovey and Towyn and Barmouth and Portmadoc, with no end of crowds following him wherever he went. I expect he'll be here presently. If he comes when the Wakes are on there will be a shindy!... I say, aren't you feeling a bit cold? Better be getting along home. I'll take you as far as the corner, and then if you don't mind I'll leave you--I want to find a man if I can----" Five minutes later he had got rid of them, and stood in meditation. Was it worth while trying for Dafydd Dafis again? Or taking another stroll along the Pier? Perhaps it wasn't. He was rather tired, and this seemed a stupid kind of thing he had been doing for the last few days. He'd potter about with June for another day--perhaps he had rather neglected Minetta lately--and then for the fishing up Delyn. In that way he would be off just as the Wakes people arrived. Already the lodging-house keepers were getting ready for them, putting away their ornaments and so on. They would be here on Friday night; to-day was Wednesday; John Willie would be off on Friday morning. This time he kept to his decision. He walked about with the pretty and untroublesome June all the next morning, and in the afternoon Minetta joined them. She approved warmly of his fishing-plan, and said she was sure the change would do him good. He told them to keep away from the crowds and not to be out too late, and then, on the Friday morning set off. When, at nine o'clock the same night, he walked up the path again and appeared in the dining-room just as June and Minetta were thinking of going to bed, Minetta stared. She had thought him miles away. She stared still harder when he mumbled that he had "forgotten something," and intended to be off again in the morning. III DELYN He had not at first seen that black dress. Sharpe's old cottage was never locked, and he had walked straight in, had put down his little dressing-bag, and had begun to empty his pockets, setting his flask, his fly-book, his store of tobacco and certain provisions on the little deal table under the single window. At a first glance there was nothing to show that the place had been entered since he had last been there. The mattress of Sharpe's narrow pallet had been rolled up at the bed-head and a patchwork quilt spread over it; the two windsor chairs stood in their accustomed places; and the rods in their brown canvas covers stood as usual in the corner. Only Sharpe's photographs had gone from the walls, leaving the little black heads of nails and tacks, each over its slightly paler oblong of plain deal boarding. Had not John Willie thought that he had better drag the bedding on which he was to sleep out into the sun at once, he would not have found the frock. It had been thrown across the roll of mattress and covered with that old piece of patchwork. Nor, since it was folded in a square, did he even then recognise the thing for a frock. Only when he had picked it up and it had revealed itself had he stood, suddenly arrested, alternately gazing at it and then looking obliquely at the floor. Then, as he had slowly put it down again, at its full length this time, there had peeped at him from half under the roll of mattress, first a white linen collar with one of the little sham pearl studs that are given away with such things still in one of its button-holes, and next a pair of tiny cylindrical cuffs.... Perhaps already, deep within himself, he had known that she was not far away.... Then, slowly and methodically, he had begun to search the hut. His search had been productive of the following discoveries:-- Thrust under the bed: A newish oval brown tin box (which he had not opened), and a pair of black shoes. On the lower shelf of Sharpe's little provision-cupboard: a round narrow-brimmed black hat. On the upper shelf, among cups, plates, and other odds and ends: A seven-pound paper bag half full of flour, and a mug with some still fresh milk in it--he tasted it. Outside the hut: A stone or two in a little clearing in the fern, a stick-heap, the ashes of a recent fire, and a frying-pan. Then he had re-entered the hut. He had sat down in one of the windsor chairs. He had been filling his third or perhaps his fourth pipe when she herself had appeared in the doorway. All this had been the day before. * * * * * As he now walked up that one-in-seven slope under the firs he remembered again, for the fiftieth time in twenty hours, her appearance as she had stood there. She had worn an old red blouse which she had not troubled to tuck in at the waist, a petticoat of faded greenish-blue (no gypsophylla there), and her legs and feet had been bare. And at first he had thought she was going to run away. But she had only recoiled as a cat recoils, yielding ground without abandoning it. He himself had not moved. Move, and she might still be off as suddenly as a hare; sit still and say "Hallo, Ynys, not much in the chair-mending line up here, is there?" and she might stay.... And now, as he trudged up under the firs, he blamed Llanyglo that he had not heard that her mother was dead. Had Llanyglo remained a hamlet, or had it grown merely reasonably and within measure, the death even of Belle Lovell would have been an event; now, with towns in Lancashire half-emptied (he had seen it that morning, Llanyglo black and boiling like a cauldron of pitch with the people of the Wakes)--now such simple happenings passed unnoticed. Belle had died a year before, but that was not the reason Ynys wore black. She wore black because black was the livery of Philip Lacey's Liverpool flower-shop girls. Black showed up the flowers to better advantage. Ynys, after months of lonely wanderings and getting of her bread as best she could, had remembered Philip Lacey's promise when she had cut her foot that morning on the shore, had tramped to Liverpool, had asked for Philip at his principal establishment in Lord Street, and now sold stately blooms the poor hedgerow cousins of which she had formerly given away, pattering bare-foot after pedestrians on the road with them in her hand. She had been given a fortnight's holiday, and had come to Llanyglo to spend it. As the path under the firs grew steeper still, John Willie wondered whether she would have kept her word to him. He had made her welcome to the cottage of which she had already made free, but that, he knew, did not mean that she might not have packed up and fled the moment he had turned his back--no, not even though she had promised not to do so. He had seen enough of her yesterday to guess that her word given would be an empty and artificial thing the moment her inclination changed; nay, she might have given it with no intention whatever of keeping it, just to gain a little time. Even should he find her frock and her oval tin box still there, that would not necessarily mean that she would return. A box of matches was her luggage. Except as a depository for these things she had not used the hut. She had cooked her meals outside, and had slept on a litter of bracken. Nevertheless, John Willie had left the cottage to her, and, for fear a stray shepherd might gossip, had himself returned home rather than sleep at the inn a few miles below. He continued to climb, past rocks spotted with pennywort and trickling with rills, orange and whitey-green with lichen and tongued with polypodi, past crops of dead nettle and vistas of fronds, past dust of pine-needles and debris of cones. Now and then a flutter of wings broke the stillness of the aisles, but no song; and always he had the skyline almost overhead on his right, and on his left, beyond the little grid of reservoirs far below, the crisscrossing AAAA's of a mountain-side of larches. She had not taken advantage of his absence to fly. He saw her as he ceased to climb and gained the half-way fold that held Llyn Delyn in its crook. She was standing outside the hut, but she was not wearing the old unconfined red blouse of the day before now. The small spot he saw a quarter of a mile ahead was a black one. He waved his hand, but she did not respond. He saw her sit down with her back against the wall of the hut and cross her arms over her knees. Three minutes later he was standing beside her. And now that he had come he was not very clear in his mind why he had come. True, he could have given a dozen reasons--the bursting over the town of that flood of operatives he had seen that morning, his desire to fish, his wish (as he now suddenly and rather startlingly knew) to escape further attendance on June, and so forth; and these reasons would have been precisely a dozen too many. Had all Lancashire been drubbing on the Pier and she standing under the crimson light watching that strange and dhowlike sail of the moon glaring orange over the water, John Willie would not have been up Delyn. He had intended to fish, but fishing was now far from his thoughts. And already he was aware of another thing, namely, that while June had been no trouble at all to talk to, talk with Ynys was a heavy business. Yesterday, every sentence he had attempted had been as difficult as if it had been the first. Only by a series of almost violent extractions had he learned that her mother was dead and that she sold flowers (curious that they should have been June's father's flowers!) in Liverpool. He supposed he must begin to talk again now. He could hardly be with her and not talk. Well, if he must talk, he would. "I say, you're well out of it all to-day!" he exclaimed, with apparent heartiness. "They began to come in at eleven last evening, and they've been coming in all night. Whew, but I ran, I can tell you!" She had been looking in the direction of the lake, which, however, she could hardly have seen, so low did she sit; and he, as he stood, could see no more of her than the straight white parting of her hair and her tanned forearms and wrists about her knees. The black of her dress was a sooty black, but you would only have called her hair black because there was nothing else to call it. It was neither more nor less black than a bowl of black lustre is black; it had a surface, but it had also depths where you saw the sun again, and the sky lurked, and the green of the ferns that grew about the hut. Had John Willie put his hand near it it might have been dimly reflected, as it would have been reflected in a peat pool. The sound of his voice seemed almost to startle her, but she did not look up. "Hwhat do you say?" she said. She slightly overstressed the internal "h's," and her accent was Welsh, but uniquely soft. As she had not heard, he had to repeat his remark. "I mean those Wakes people. There are thousands of them there now." He made a little motion of his head behind him. "It's better up here." Then, as still she did not reply, he asked her a direct question. "You didn't stay long in Llanyglo, did you?" "I stay there one day," she answered. A scarcely perceptible movement of her forefinger accompanied the numeral. "Oh, then of course that was the day I saw you. Did you see me?" "No." "You were standing at the pier-head, watching the moon rise." Ynys did not deny this. Neither did she confirm it. "Then you disappeared," John Willie continued, "and I couldn't find you again." To this she replied after a moment.--"I went back to the house, and paid the Englishwoman, and then I came away. In the morning I arrive here." "Do you mean you walked all night?" "There is lit-tle night this time of the year." John Willie was silent. Only a week before he had left an evening party at the "Imperial" to find the sun already burning a hole in the edge of Mynedd Mawr. "And how much longer holiday have you?" John Willie asked presently. "Six days," answered the girl; and again the numeral was accompanied by a slight gesture of her fingers. "And then you go back to Liverpool?" Complete silence was all the answer he had to that question. Then, suddenly, Ynys moved. She stood up. For the first time her seaweed-coloured eyes looked straight into John Willie's. "You left that place early. You will be hungry. I caught some fis-s--_brithyll_. I think she cooked now." She disappeared round the corner of the hut. John Willie would have liked to ask her why she had put on the black dress and the black shoes, but something seemed to whisper to him not to do so. No doubt she had caught the trout with her hand, in one of the pools of a stream that slid and chattered under fern down the side of Delyn, and he feared that did he approach her too suddenly even by words she might be off, even as those trout would have vanished in a flash at the least disturbance of the water by her hand. She had cooked them on the wood; she had also made a cake of flour and water and no salt; and she served the fish in a tin platter by the little clearing she had made for the hearth. He sat now, and she stood; she brought also a mug of milk, from the surface of which she took a tiny caterpillar with the tip of a frond; and when he had eaten she cleaned the platter by scouring it with a handful of fern-rot and then setting it in a little stream with a stone upon it. Then they stood before one another again, he with his back to the hut, she in front of him, her head always superbly erect, but slowly turning from time to time, while her eyes sought the lake, the line of bracken against the sky where the mountain dropped, and his own eyes, indifferently. Then, unexpectedly, she asked a question. "You come to fis-s?" she asked. He said that he had thought of it. "There is wa-ter in the boat, but indeed I not touch it. I go and empty it," she said. But he stopped her.--"Oh, it's no good now--too bright," he said. "Might try in the evening. Sit down, won't you? I want to ask you some questions." She curled herself up in the bracken, and he set his back against the wall of the hut and began to fill his pipe. But instead of questioning her, John Willie had all the appearances of a man who was questioning himself. He sat a little behind Ynys, so that when she looked straight before her he lost her full profile; and he moved no more than she. He was suddenly thinking how thoroughly sick he was of Llanyglo. For if he had helped to make Llanyglo, and knew its lighting and its watering, its building and its leases and its subsoil, Llanyglo had also helped to make him. The drub-drub on the Pier, the inanities of his friend Percy Briggs, evening parties that began at midnight and ended with the sun high in the sky, complaints from his sister that she saw him only in the short intervals between a coming home and a setting out again--this had been pretty much the reaction of Llanyglo on John Willie Garden. He was a very ordinary young man.--But here was a world peopled only by sheep, the myriad insects that hopped and wove and chirruped in the tall fern, the kites and curlews overhead, and the trout far below the surface of the lake. His lashes made rainbows before his half-closed eyes, and those eyes, opening again, could gaze at the tips of the sunny fern against the deeps of the sky until the difference between them became almost as intensified as the difference between dark and bright. Spiders no bigger than freckles seemed to be doing important things under their bright green roofs--for only the under sides of the fronds were green and translucent: the fern on which the sun beat directly was no more green than Ynys's hair was black.... And the sunny parts of Ynys's arms were of the colour of a hayfield with much sorrel, while the round beneath was as cool as the under curve of a boat on the water.... It would have been part of the peace of that hot midday could he have dozed with his head in the crook of that arm. Of other desire to break its peace had he none. And Ynys? She had seen those fretted parasols of the fern, meshed and lacy and interpenetrating, a vast rug of whispering frondage--she had seen them, or their like, since they had been no more than tender, uncurling pastoral staffs, brown, with tiny inner crocketts not even green yet. She had watched them unfold their weak fingers--yes, from Lord Street, Liverpool, she had watched them unroll as a soft caterpillar unrolls. In a cool and darkened shop, with the floor always wet, she had seen, with those seaweed-coloured eyes, not the great queenly hydrangeas, nor the burning torches of the gladioli, nor the fat and scentless roses, nor the great half-pint pitchers of the arum lilies--she had seen, not these cold grandiflora, but the celandine and anemone of the hedge-bottoms, and the cool pennywort on the rocks, and the soft and imperceptible change, day by day, of those mountains many, many railway stations away. Those other great robed and wedding-dressed blooms? She had not considered them to be flowers. Flowers were the sappy bluebells she had pulled, white-stalked and squeaking, from the banks, receiving a penny for them--but not in exchange. She had sold the hydrangea-things without even seeing them. And her own weekly fifteen shillings of wages had not purchased a single glance of her eyes nor a single emotion of her heart. And her eyes had not distinguished less between magnificent bloom and magnificent bloom than they had between this and the other collar, tie, and bowler hat who, his purchase made, had lingered, and had tried to talk to her, and had come again. Young women who can see Delyn from Liverpool can hardly be expected so to distinguish. These young men had not even been, as the balls and buckets of Howell Gruffydd's shop-window had been, beyond her reach, she below theirs. She and they might breathe the same air, but they extracted different elements from it. Was that true also of herself and John Willie Garden, lying now among the fern of Delyn--John Willie, whose clothes (even) were what they were by a kind of artifice, and not, like Dafydd Dafis's, as if the cropped grasses themselves had by some natural alchemy become wool, and the wool clothing, that would be worn out by labour not far from the grasses again?... Because he did not know, John Willie lay there, and watched her cheek and arm, and forgot that he had said he was going to ask her questions. The silence lasted for so long that, when at last he spoke, she might (he thought) have supposed that he had had a nap in the meantime. He hoisted himself to his feet, stretched himself, yawned "Ah, that's better!" and then added, "I say, you might show me where you got those fish." Instantly, a gillie incongruously in a flower-seller's dress, she was on her feet and walking a little ahead. But he caught her up and kept abreast of her. They reached the boat, half in and half out of the gravelly shallow, but she went straight on across a swampy little stream that led to the upper margin of the lake. Presently it seemed to John Willie that they would have done better to take the boat, for they had to skirt a deep shaly spur the slope of which continued unbroken down under the water and gave under their feet the moment they tried to ascend it. At a point where she splashed a few yards ahead of him John Willie suggested that they should take their boots and stockings off, and he had a momentary fancy that the brown of her cheek deepened a little; but she made no reply, and they kept on. Then, after more hundreds of yards of walking and wading, they gained firm earth again. They were at the bottom of a V-shaped ravine into which all the trees and scrub of the mountain-sides seemed to have settled. It was known to a few shepherds as Glyn Iago, and the stream came down it over jagged stairs of purple slate and under dwarf-oak and birch, thorn and briar and mountain-ash. Again it would have been better to wade through the noisy shallows and round the boulders spongy with drenched moss, and again he suggested it; but perhaps the deep gurgle of the fall they were approaching drowned his voice. He went ahead, putting aside the worst of the brambles, and he knew without telling when they reached the pool. It was long enough to have plunged into, too wide to have leapt across even had the rocks afforded any take-off, and it deepened gradually to blackness, and then boiled pale and tumultuous again under the plunge of a twelve-foot fall. Over the pool itself the sunlight glowed in spots only through the leaves, but on one bank there was a sunny clearing of a few yards square. Then the trees began again, up and up and up to the sky, a cliff of leaves that shut the mountains out and the stream in. He let her sit down first. This she did where she could see the little plants and mosses at the water's edge endlessly a-quiver with the tumult of the fall. Then, sitting down beside her, he again felt that he must begin talking to her all over again. His mouth flickered for a moment as he thought of Percy Briggs on the Pier, and then he spoke. "If I were you I should move up here," he said. She was picking up a snail-shell to throw into the water. She turned, extraordinarily quickly, and in the seaweed eyes there was a hard and defensive look, instant, yet old. "It iss only my hat and my box," she said quickly. "Eh? Oh!----" He laughed. "I only mean there'll be brakes and wagonettes all over the place now, and anybody might come to the lake.--I say, you didn't think I meant to chuck you out, did you?" "I thought prapss you want to fiss," she replied, turning away and looking at the gasogene of black water again. He laughed again.--"Oh, no. I mean you don't sleep there, and nobody'd come here, and I could get you a lock and key so that your things would be safe. You could go there if it rained." She tossed the snail-shell into the water, neither accepting his offer nor rejecting it. "Besides," he went on, "I know that if anybody disturbed you you'd be off. Look here. I'll get you that lock and key. I'm off back to-night, and I'll bring 'em up to-morrow.--But you will be here won't you?" Again--he could not be sure--he fancied her colour deepened. "Hwhere should I go to?" she said over her shoulder. "Well--anywhere--Liverpool--anywhere." And again her reply was to gaze at the boiling of the air-bubbles at the foot of the fall. But John Willie no longer wondered that he should struggle thus with a conversation when there were rills and rivulets of talk waiting for him at home at Llanyglo. She was not mute; there were a thousand communications wrapped up in her very presence. She ran over with unspoken meanings, babbled for all her silence. Her hair, nearly all cool green now, as the black water was cool green; that unlearned balance of her head; the curve of her cheek; those lovely, despotic forearms--whether that least member of her whole sweet parliament, her tongue, moved or was still, there was more of approach in all of these than in June's "Fancy! Do tell me! And how's So-and-So getting on?" These were the weeds, the dusty groundsel of words; Ynys was her own vocabulary, every part of her a part of speech.... And the theme? The theme that every corpuscle of her announced as she sat there, listlessly tossing snail-shells and twigs and rolled-up leaves and blades of grass into the water? John Willie was a very ordinary young man. In Liverpool, his eyes would have seen very little but Liverpool. Perhaps that was why, in Glyn Iago, he had not the perfect freedom of sun and air, of growing and dying things, and things growing again, of moving water, of that essential speech with this creature at his side that at the last has no need of words. For, for good and ill mingled, they make shames and fears in the Liverpools of the land, and codes, and suppressions, and the apparatus of Conscience, and it is too late for you, too late for me, too late for John Willie, to unmake them. John Willie had begun by questioning Ynys; now, far more searchingly, Ynys was questioning him. And the end of her questioning of him was that he would have called himself a cur had he as much as thought of not doing "the decent thing...." Indeed it was precisely because he thought so resolutely and intently of doing that thing that by and by he rose. It was only half-past four; he could be home in two, or two-and-a-half hours; and for that matter he was not in any hurry to get home. He was in a hurry now only because Ynys spoke too much. She gave him no rest from her close inquisition. He must answer those questions that she so pressed home or take himself quickly off, to add (as he knew) the fuel of thought to that flame with which he already burned. Therefore, again standing by her, he asked her one more question only. "You will be here to-morrow?" he said, his eyes anxiously on her face. What his answer would have been had she said "No," or had he not believed that nod of her head, it is useless to ask. He left her still tossing the debris into the water. * * * * * He began to be aware of the change the Wakes people had wrought in Llanyglo before the trap had carried him a mile along the road. Twice in that distance he had to whip up to get through the dust of vehicles ahead. He had been right in saying that the landaus and brakes and wagonettes would be all over the place now. They were taking the family parties back to dinner at the hotels. Then, still five miles from Llanyglo, he began to allow the brakes and wagonettes to overtake him again. He had remembered that he was in no hurry. Hurry would only mean the crowd sooner, the noise sooner, and supper sooner, with the conversation of June and Minetta. At a place called Doll he turned aside into a narrow lane that would take him by a circuitous route into the Porth Neigr road near the stone quarries. Then, sitting sideways on the seat, with his head sunk and the whiplash trailing over the dashboard, he allowed the horse to take him at its own pace. Of course, he could marry Ynys; there was nothing to be said against that except that hitherto he had not thought of marriage. Marriage, in John Willie's observation of his married friends and acquaintances, was a quite definite and circumscribed thing, in which prospects played a part, and settlements, and houses of a certain kind, and certain well-marked changes in the bride's demeanour towards her still unmarried friends, and a certain tendency to stoutness and baldness on the part of the groom. Moreover, behind every suggested marriage there lurked the question whether it "would do." His father and mother, when he came to speak of marriage, would want to know whether it would "do"; Minetta would have her opinion about whether it would "do"; and if it did not "do," all his friends and acquaintances would by and by shake their heads and say that it had been plain all along how _that_ would turn out.... On the other hand, the case was complicated--not in principle (that was beastly clear)--but by allowances in practise. Llanyglo had for some time been far from exacting; it was now, in certain of its phases, at any rate, almost exacting in the opposite direction. As many social allowances were made for the young man who had something "on" as liberties were granted to properly affianced couples who had got their certificate that it would "do." Percy Briggs would have gone off alone, with his hat on the back of his head and cheerfully whistling, at the least hint that John Willie had something "on." ... But this that had come so suddenly and overmasteringly over John Willie was a different thing altogether. Here was not somebody who played a game of which the rules and forfeits were known. That game, under one veiling or another, might form the staple of the Lunas' Drawing-room Entertainment at the Palace, or of the songs of Miss Sal Volatile in the Pavilion on the Pier; but Ynys had not even known what she had turned her back on when she had stood under the raspberry-coloured light, looking out at the gathering darkness of sky and the still lingering gleam on the sea. Warned probably, not by hearing and sight, but by some apprehension more sensitive still, she had stayed to see that orange rising, and then, before it had become a setting again, had been far on the road to Delyn.... Suddenly John Willie sat up and shook the reins. "No, damn it," he said. He began to bowl more briskly along the hilly lanes. It was after eight o'clock when he reached the quarry, and then for a time he had to go carefully down the by-lane that the stone-carts had deeply scored. But on the Porth Neigr road he whipped up again. Hearing a sound behind him, he drew in; and when there had passed him a great brake hung all over with Chinese lanterns and full of people singing, the spell of silence under which he had lain all day was broken. Thereafter sound merely succeeded sound. As he took the railway bridge, a "special" roared past below, carrying more people to Llanyglo; and before its red tail-lights had mingled with the other rubies and emeralds of the line he had come upon the first couple turning at the limit of their walk. Then came a large board with "Imperial Hotel" on it, then a new horse-trough; then benches, then walls with placards on them. A mile ahead lay the golden corona of the town. This began to break up into single lights and groups of lights, and then, at a turn, he saw the Wheel and the jewelled finger of the Pier. He could hear the noise, an indistinguishable something in the air that was not the wind and not the sound of the sea; and then at the first roadside lamp it seemed suddenly to become night. More slowly he rounded Pritchard's Corner; at the tram terminus the belated shopkeepers made a press about the Promenade-Pontnewydd Street car; and from the open doors of the "Tudor Arms" was wafted the smell of beer. Delyn and Glyn Iago were part of the night behind him. He did not attempt to drive through the crowd that suddenly thickened about the middle of Pontnewydd Street, where half the road was being taken up. One of the "Imperial" ostlers took the horse's head, said "All right, Mr. Garden," and John Willie descended and walked. On the balconies of the "Grand" and "Imperial," people stood and watched the stream that descended to the Front. From the Kursaal Gardens came a noise that presently the ear ceased to hear, so steady and monotonous was it. Then, walking in the wake of a tram that moved slowly forward among the street barriers with an incessant clanging of its bell, John Willie reached the Promenade. It was thrice the width of Pontnewydd Street, and so there was more room; but for all that it was difficult to walk at more than the general pace. This, nevertheless, football-packs of young men attempted from time to time to do, breaking their way through. They played mouth-organs, and at moments, apparently without plan or premeditation, suddenly formed into rings, feet pattering in clog-steps, eyes fixedly on those same feet, their backs a fence to hold back the spectators, while in the middle a couple of young men or a young man and a young woman danced. Then, as suddenly as they had stopped, they were off again, arms linked in arms or locked about the waist in front, each figure a vertebra of a many-jointed onward-rushing snake. Under the Promenade lamps they advanced, everybody else yielding place as they came. The little rail-enclosed plots that lay between the pavements and the hotels were magpied with torn paper and strown with lying figures. They lay there, in meaningless embrace, moaning long harmonies in thirds, hats decorated with penny gauds, eating nuts and "rock" and chocolate, hardly moving when passers-by all but strode over them. Probably they were discussing nothing more than "So I said to her, straight to her face----" or the conduct of the shed-overlooker where they worked throughout the year together and if the passers-by almost trod on them, they, in return, half absently flirted the passing ankles with whisks and penny canes. But if these lay like bivalves, torpid and content, another and more active element had awoke in the throng. The Alsatians, had they required it, were put into countenance now. One felt that they veined and threaded the mass with something that worked as quietly and as rapidly as yeast. They fed on it, drawing from it at last an open and confirmed sanction for all those things they would not have dreamed of doing at home. One met them here and there in couples, or in couples of couples with the invisible link between each pair of couples drawing ever farther and farther out, the women with shawls and hoods and dominoes over their dinner attire, the men with restless eyes, quick to show by a touch of hand or elbow that avoidance was desirable or a glance of complicity no harm. Lamps showed these gestures of understanding between those who could not have sworn to one another's names. Of the two solitudes, that of the mountain-top and that of this press where ribs could hardly lift, they sought and found the second. Perhaps--who knows?--they were even grateful to those others who moaned those gummy thirds stretched on the lamplit grass.... And scarce two hundred yards away, under the railings of the sea-wall, here and there a mask, with struggling breast and tightly shut eyes and writhing lips, prayed.... As John Willie pushed at the garden gate, the door at the other end of the path opened and closed again behind Minetta and June. He met them in the middle of the path and asked them where they were going. When they said they were only going for a stroll he ordered them back. Minetta's "_Oh_--how you startled us!--why, we didn't know you were coming back----" suggested that she thought her brother might have spoken in another tone; but John Willie was not thinking of tones. He was thinking that perhaps after all he had no business to be spending days up Delyn just at present. A stroll with him to take care of them--well and good; but not two girls alone.... He said so, rather curtly, in the dining-room as Minetta got him some supper; but Minetta made no reply. Again she was thinking that June was a very nice girl, but it was odd that she should twice have brought her brother back from his fishing like this. John Willie, eating his supper almost savagely, had some ado to reply politely to June's rills of pretty speech. He wondered now why she should talk when she had nothing whatever to say. Only her tongue wagged, and he hardly heard his own tongue wagging in reply. _This_ was not speech; _this_ was not language!... "Not if I know it," he found himself suddenly thinking, as June asked him whether the Water Scheme had spoiled Delyn much, and said that she would like to go and see. But Minetta said little. She only asked John Willie one direct question. This was, Whether he had come back for good now. He replied that he didn't know, and added some futility about fishing-weather and the difference a night sometimes made. Minetta thought that the only extraordinary thing about his reappearance was that he should have troubled to go away at all. June had one piece of information to give him, however. It was two days old, she said, but there--if John Willie _would_ take himself off on his unsociable excursions like this he must expect to be a bit out of things. But she would forgive him, and tell him.--Ned Kerr was dead. It seemed (June said) that he had once given somebody in Porth Neigr a canary, and reports had reached him that the canary was not doing very well--had the pip or the croup or whatever it was canaries did have. He had worried a lot about the canary (June said), and, a week before, had been to Porth Neigr to see it. He had had a cold or something himself, June didn't know what; anyway, he had come back from seeing the canary and the next day hadn't got up. So his brother had sent for a doctor, and of course had told the doctor all about it--Ned, the canary, and all the lot. The doctor had said that _he_ could see nothing the matter with Ned (which was more than some of them admitted, going on sending bottles of coloured water and so on and then a bill coming in for pounds and pounds), but Ned hadn't said anything at all--he'd just died at two o'clock in the morning. He might just as well have _had_ something the matter with him, June said. And all about a stupid canary!---- Soon after that John Willie told them it was time they went to bed. He followed them upstairs himself a few minutes later. But it was long before he slept. Perhaps he knew already in his heart that if he really meant that "Damn it, no" he might as well stay at home now instead of leaving June and Minetta alone in the house. And he had meant it. He vowed he meant it still. The rusty light on his ceiling, cast from the corona outside, did not prevent his seeing the hut again--Glyn Iago--the black-dressed gillie who had tossed the snail-shells into the water; nor did the faint and harsh and ceaseless noise outside drown that powerful and wordless eloquence that he had heard with some faculty other than his bodily hearing.... Then the sounds grew thinner, yet louder also; fewer, but clearer in the growing silence of the night. He heard a long-drawn strain of tipsy song, the tinny thread of sound of a mouth-organ, and then a clock striking three.... But he must go up to Delyn on the morrow. It would be a rotten thing to tell a girl to be sure to be there and then not to turn up himself. And he would take her that lock and key. IV AN ORDINARY YOUNG MAN He began to spend his days up Delyn and his nights at Llanyglo. To avoid the shaly spur, he pulled across in the boat each morning from the beaching-place near the hut to the foot of Glyn Iago, and she had his breakfast ready for him when he arrived, which was between half-past ten and eleven o'clock. As if his suggestion had been a command, she had made her little encampment up the Glyn, fetching dry sticks from up the steep wood; her hat and her box only remained in the locked shed. He did not cast a fly. Minetta began to ask him, when he returned at night, first what sport he had had, and then why he always chose to fish in the middle of the day. Then one night he returned to find his sister showing June her sketches. For some minutes he affected not to be interested; then, with a highly elaborate yawn, he said, "Oh, I say, Min--what became of that sketch you once made of that gipsy kid--you remember--the one mother once took in with a cut foot?--Best thing she ever did," he added carelessly to June. "Oh, it got shoved away somewhere. Why?" said Minetta; but there was a little quick dropping look in her eyes. "Nothing. I just happened to remember it. It was better than some of these." The next morning the sketch, unearthed from some dusty heap or other, was on his plate when he came down to breakfast. Presently June and Minetta also came down. By that time he was able to say, quite composedly, "Oh, I see you found that thing. That's the sketch I was speaking of, June----" But he wondered whether Minetta also could by any chance have seen Ynys on that, her single night in Llanyglo. One rapidly advancing trouble was on his mind. He had not spoken to Ynys of the passing of her holiday, but he himself could almost hear its seconds ticking away. Soon two days only remained; the morrow, when he would see her on Delyn again, would be the eve of her departure. She had told him that she had taken a return ticket; already he seemed to hear the whistle of the train by which it was available. She could take that train either at Llanyglo or at Porth Neigr. On the morning of her last whole day he ascended the Glyn and found, as usual, his trout cooked for him and keeping hot between two plates. He ate it abstractedly. Again Minetta had remarked pointedly on his lack of fishing-luck, but it was not that that was troubling him. He was wondering, not for the first time, what explanation Ynys gave herself of his untouched rods and buckled fly-book, and whether she too thought it unusual that he should come so far merely to lie by the stream with her hour after hour, or else, with a "Shall we go up there?" to ascend the stream, skirt the wood, gain the open mountain-side, and toil for half an hour to the summit. He had substituted no other pretence for his first pretence of fishing. What did she think of it? Or did she not think of it at all? Again that morning, when she had scoured the plates and set them in a little rocky basin by the quivering moss, he proposed the mountain climb. In half an hour they were at the top. It was a plateau of volcanic rock, with scrubs of hazel, and bents and reeds and harebells ceaselessly stroked by the wind. Behind them, as they sat down under a rock, only Mynedd Mawr rose higher than they; below them Llyn Delyn lay like a bit of grey looking-glass set in its little mile-long cleft. They had raised other bits of looking-glass, too, in other far-off clefts. About them the mountains rolled as if invisible giants were being tossed in the visible blankets of the land. On the left only, far from Llanyglo, a scratch of silver showed that the sea was there. "So you're off to-morrow," he said, when they had lain long. He did not hide from himself the ache the words caused him. "My tick-ket say to-morrow," she answered, without emotion. He muttered something foolish about an extension.--"But I suppose they wouldn't keep your place open," he answered himself hopelessly. Her next words caused him a marvellous pang of lightness and hope. "I think-k I not go back," she said, the seaweed eyes looking at that far-off silver scratch that was the sea. Why did that pang at which he had winced instantly become another pang, at which he winced no less? What was it that the eyes of his spirit saw, far, far, farther off than her seaweed ones saw the sea? Her decision to stay, if she really meant that she would stay, should have meant the continuance of his happiness; what, then, should change it into something like an unhappiness and a fear? He did not know. He was only an ordinary young man. He only knew that over that moment, which should have been one of a care removed, a faint shadow of an irremovable care already impinged. He had sat up, and was looking at her.--"You mean--that you won't go back at all?" he said. "Indeed I think I cannot go back," she answered; and her imperfect speech left it uncertain whether indeed she meant that she was still unresolved, or whether to her, who had not been able to endure a night in Llanyglo, a return to Liverpool would be more than she could bear. "But--but--what would you do?" he asked. "I stay here lit-tle longer, and then I get wick-ker from Dafydd Dafis, and mend chairs, like my mother." "But--but----" It was so new to his experience. "You mean you'd just go from place to place?" "If I go to Liverpool I die," she answered. John Willie, torturing himself over this long afterwards, could never decide what that subtle yet essential change was that came over their relationship from that moment. It was quite contrary to any change that might have been expected. But for that sullen "No, damn it," he might have been conscious of hardier impulses as the term of her holiday approached; but very curiously, it was now that he learned that it had no term that he felt those hardier stirrings. It was exactly as if, with little time to spare, he had wasted time, and now, with time enough before him, he must lose no time. Perhaps it was also that growing wonder what she must think of fishing expeditions without fishing. Or--or--could it be that that sweet clamour of her person had all along shown patient intention, and that he, he only, had been dull?... But, more quickly than he had thought of charging her with this--(he was only an ordinary young man)--he had to acquit her again. Certainly she had not decided not to leave because, staying, she saw him daily. She merely dreaded towns and disliked those over-glorious waxen cenotaphs that were raised to the memory of the humble flowers she knew. And he was still sure that at an unguarded movement from him she would have fled days ago. At an unguarded movement she would fly now. He had what he had only on the condition that, by comparison with his hunger, it was and must remain nothing.... What then? Must he come, and still come, until the wraiths of the mists began to drive over a dead and sodden Delyn, and those tossing blankets of the mountains became hidden in rain, and the wood of Glyn Iago became brown and thin, and the stream an icy torrent, and Llanyglo itself as empty as a piece of old honeycomb? He did not know, nor did he know how, without risking all, to ascertain. Yet know he must; and in that moment, forgetting his "Damn it, no," he contrived as if by accident to touch her hand. But he was none the wiser for doing so. As his hand moved with intent, hers moved innocently; her fingers began to pull to pieces the little yellow flower she had plucked; and he had not the courage to essay it twice. Nor did he, his broodings notwithstanding, find that courage again that day. The sun crept round; tiny Llyn Delyn far below began to shine with an amethyst light; and a quietude filled the heavens above and the land beneath, so that the rolling mountains seemed to be no longer the tossing of giants, but rather as if the giants, their tumbling game ended, had crept under the blankets and had gathered them about their heads and shoulders for the night. The sea and sky became a shining golden bloom of air. They descended to the Glyn again. There they ate a packet of sandwiches which John Willie had brought, and then he rose and stood, irresolute. He must go, he must go.... She was setting her stick-heap in order; her plain black dress, that showed off Philip Lacey's superfatted flowers, was an anomaly by the side of the Delyn twigs.... "Nos da," he said. If the face she lifted had not been glorious, his thoughts of it would now have made it so. "Nos da," she replied.... If he still said "No," it was not with the sturdy expletive now. Chiefly he now feared to risk and fail. He left abruptly. He drove to Llanyglo that night with a brassy sunset on his left that sank to the colours of dying dahlias as mile succeeded mile; and this time he did not turn into the winding lanes that led to the quarry. From the main road to which he kept he could see Llanyglo's corona three miles away. But it moved him now, not to the revulsion and distaste of a week ago, but only to a careless contempt. Some aroma seemed to have passed away from his dreamings. For the first time, he felt himself to be an ordinary young man returning from the mountains where he had something "on." This new slight bitterness extended even to his thoughts about the perspicacious Minetta. Be hanged to Minetta. If Minetta overstepped the mark he would very quickly tell her to mind her own business. He had to pull himself out of his moroseness and to remind himself that she had not done so yet. As he passed along the Pontnewydd Street he did not at first notice the diminution in the number of people usually to be seen there at that hour. Nor, as he sank into his reverie again, did it immediately strike him that the greater number of the people on the Promenade were hurrying in one direction--the direction of the Trwyn. But he entered the dining-room at home in time to find June and Minetta scrambling hastily through their supper. All the dishes had been laid on the table at once, and their shawls were cast in readiness over the backs of chairs. This time he deemed it prudent not to raise any opposition to their plans, whatever these had been. Instead, he drew up his own chair. "Off out?" he remarked. "Well, I hurried back to take you somewhere. Just let me swallow something, and then I'll come with you. What's up?" In telling him what was "up" Minetta seemed to make the most of some advantage she apparently fancied herself to possess. If he had only glanced at the newspapers, she said, instead of rushing off the moment he'd bolted his breakfast, he'd have known what was "up." It had been "up" in Llanyglo that afternoon--such a crowd as never was, and Eesaac Oliver was to preach in the Floral Valley again that night. "Unless he changes his mind," Minetta added. "Of course it's part of it all that he doesn't make arrangements. He'll stop in the middle of a walk and begin to preach just where he is, and then at other times, when they've made all ready for him and everybody waiting, he's praying in his bedroom or something and nobody dares go near him. So they never really know till he begins. There's only one thing he won't do----" "Eesaac Oliver?" John Willie began, puzzled. "Wait a minute----" Then, as Minetta once more tossed her head, he remembered. Of course. The Revival.... And what he did not remember he did not, in the circumstances, choose to ask his sister. It would only be giving her another opportunity to comment on his remarkable absences. He remembered much. He remembered those rumours of the great spiritual thing that had broken out at Aberystwith, had then rolled tumultuously up the coast to Barmouth, and thence to Harlech and Portmadoc, and thence up the sky-high steeps of Ffestiniog, and through the folds of those tossed blankets west into Lleyn. He remembered--yes, he remembered now that his eyes were turned outward from himself and his own affairs again--the preachings of Eesaac Oliver on the bare mountain-sides, and his fastings among the rocks, and his baptisms in rivers, and his liftings-up of his voice on the outskirts of towns that had presently emptied to hear him, and his calling on folk to turn from the wickedness of their ways while there was yet time, for the Day of Judgment was at hand. He remembered these things because at the time he had thought them rather one in the eye for the Howell Gruffydds and the John Pritchards who, when the Council came to debate such delicate but profitable subjects as licencing and mixed bathing, had tactfully allowed themselves to be represented by the soft closing of the door behind them. He knew what that interrupted sentence of Minetta's meant, "There's only one thing he won't do----" The only thing that Eesaac Oliver would not do was to preach within the stone walls of their new Chapels. He held these bazaar-supported buildings to be defiled, their Baptist temples places out of which the traffickers in money and doves must be driven with scourges. It mattered not that John Pritchard was a pillar, Howell his own father. "He that loveth father and mother more than Me----" He would preach as the mighty Wesley preached, from wall-tops, from the boulders of the stony places, from the wheelbarrow, from the milking-stool, from the saddle. He would journey and preach, and journey and preach again, four, six times a day. There was a Door which, entering by it, gave his instant and flaming Theme--the Door open to Llanyglo itself unless it would sink, it and its Kursaals and its Big Wheels, its Lunas' Entertainments and its bivalves lying under the lighted lamps on the public grass-plots, its Alsatians and its greedy Chapel-goers, its harlotry and its cupidity and its bright sin and its blasphemy of the Name, into the pit where it must be destroyed. "Oh, _do_ hurry up!" said Minetta impatiently.... Ten minutes later they were hastening along the half-empty Promenade. The Floral Valley was no longer as it had been when Philip Lacey had plotted it out so neatly with his pair of compasses and coloured it with his geranium and lobelia and golden feather. At its upper end, a Switchback now humped itself like a multiple dromedary, and clear across it, from a staging on one side to a staging on the other, was swung the cabled apparatus known as an Aerial Flight. Philip's bandstand still occupied the middle, but the rest, save for a few outlying dusty beds, was as barren as a gravel playground. The Valley had held five thousand people on the occasion of the Brass Band Contest; that night it held and overflowed with thrice five thousand. Half-way up the ascending path that led to it John Willie Garden saw that there was no approach from that quarter; there was nothing for it but to take to the slippery grass and the darkness, avoiding the bivalves open and the bivalves shut, and struggling as best they could to the crest. There, with an arm about each of them, he led them through the slowly moving outer circle of people who struck matches and laughed and occasionally craned their necks forward to look over the dense mass in front. By degrees they gained the ring where, if little was to be seen, a word now and then could be heard; and thereafter, by losing no chance of wriggling forward, they reached a point from which they could see the bandstand. A ladder ran up to its roof, and up this ladder Eesaac Oliver and two other men had climbed. The bight of a rope had been passed about Eesaac Oliver's body, its ends running round the gilded spike that crowned the flat eight-sided pyramid; and the men who crouched on the slope varied the tether as Eesaac Oliver moved this way and that round the octagonal gutter. The trapeze of the Flight hung motionless in the air above him; the shrieking Switchback had stopped; and the slight white figure, so precariously perched, turned to all sides of the vast speckled bowl about him. "See who that is, at the right hand rope?" John Willie whispered to June. He still had an arm about either of their waists, and he fancied that June pressed a little closer to him. "No. Who?" she whispered back. "Tudor Williams. Expect he couldn't get out of it. He made a speech the other day, all about Young Wales, a regular dead set at them, and he'll sweep the poll after this. I don't know who the other is.--Listen, he's turning this way now----" Eesaac Oliver's voice came across the packed still basin. "Cry aloud--spare not--lift up your voice like a trumppp-pet! I say to you young men, and I say to you young women, that this cit-ty by the sea shall not be spared, no, no more than the cit-ties of the plain were spared! It smells of corrupp-tion; it is an offence in the nostrils of God! There is more sin packed into it than there is drops of blood in your bodies, and more wick-kedness, and more fornication, and more irreligion. And those who should help, do they help? Indeed they do not! They fill their pock-kets instead! I tell them, their own souls go, perhaps this night, into the pock-kets of Hell! Aw-w-w, their bazaars prof-fit them lit-tle there! Their new Chap-pils prof-fit them lit-tle there! Their funds, and their balance-sheets, and their foundation-stones with their names on them, prof-fit them lit-tle there!--But I say to you young men, and you young women, that the Wa-ter of Life is free. Come now, come now! Do not say, 'I will sin one more sin and then repent'--perhaps you be taken away before that sin iss commit-ted----" He turned again, and his voice became less clear. Perhaps John Willie and his charges were well where they were, high on the rim of the basin. Whether with the pressure of those behind, or with the swelling of their own emotion, many below were moaning softly, and one or two small and hushed commotions seemed to be centres of fainting. The inner ring, close to the bandstand, was hatless; the belt above them was packed so that it would have been impossible to remove a hat; and always about the uppermost circle matches twinkled in and out. Again Eesaac Oliver's voice was heard, as if borne upon a wind: "--he that loveth father and mother more than Me----" "Is his father here?" June whispered to John Willie.... * * * * * Howell was at his own home, surrounded by sympathetic neighbours. Sunk into his arm-chair, he sobbed. Big John Pritchard tried to console him, but he was inconsolable. He shook with his emotion. "My own fless and blood!" he sobbed. "To turn from his parents, that fed him, and clothed him, and sent him to the Coll-idge, and gave him allowance of twen-ty-six pounds a quarter, and bring him up in the fear of God! Oh, oh!--John Pritchard, give me a drink of water if you please.--And to call his father and mother sinful pip-ple! Indeed, Hugh Morgan, you are happy you have no children! They know bet-ter than you always; indeed the 'orld go on at a great rate, we get so wise! And the Chap-els burdened with debt! There is half a dozen Chap-els for him to preach in, but he say the highways and the hedges is his Chap-pil!... Look you, he not even come home. I meet him in the street, I, his father; and I say to him, 'Eesaac Oliver,' I say, 'if you will not preach in the Chap-pils, then you preach in that field on the Sarn road; you get crowds of pip-ple; it is a big field, and will hold crowds of pip-ple.' But he turn away, indeed he turn his back on his own father!... Look you: If he preached in that field, they find their way to that field, look you, all those pip-ple--they learn the way to that field as well as they learn the way to the sta-tion--and the Chap-el buy it cheap--oh, oh!... By and by that field be worth ten bazaars--oh, oh!... Blodwen, if the gas is lighted upstairs I think I go to bed--the things that were good enough for his father and mother are not good enough for him--this is a heavy day----" John Pritchard and Hugh Morgan helped him up the stairs to bed. * * * * * June, Minetta, and John Willie left the valley before Eesaac Oliver descended from the bandstand. As they walked along the now rather more crowded Promenade Minetta seemed to be in livelier spirits; she chattered with June; but John Willie was morose again. Again he was wondering what would have happened had Ynys not chanced to pick a flower at the moment when his hand had moved imperceptibly towards hers. He saw her again, bending over the stick-heap and looking up as she gave him that expressionless "Nos da." By this time she was probably asleep, asleep far away up that Glyn, with the deep plunge of the fall for her lullaby, the stars for her night-lights, and the sun over the wood-edge for her alarum in the morning. Before the noises of Llanyglo should awaken him, she would be lying flat on the bank, taking trout for his breakfast. And, again and ever again, he wondered whether, had that attempted touch of his not miscarried, she would have been off as the trout would have been off at the falling of her shadow on the water.... For one moment, just before he went to sleep, he seemed to hear Eesaac Oliver's voice again: "Do not say, 'I will sin one more sin and then repent'--perhaps you will be taken away before that sin is committed----" Then he slept, brokenly, waking at intervals to mutter "Damn it----" and to think of her again where she lay, far up Glyn Iago. V THE DWELLING OF A NIGHT John Willie began to spend his days up Delyn and his nights elsewhere than at Llanyglo. He too passed them under the night-lights of the stars--for if she could go to bed by those candles, so could he. On the first night on which he did not return to Llanyglo they peeped down on him where he lay, gazing at them, a mile and more over the head of Delyn, to the summit of which he had reascended after bidding her "Nos da" in the Glyn. On the second night he put another mile between herself and him, bathing in the morning in a brook the chilliness of which only a little refreshed him after his night's tossing; he slept for three hours that afternoon, with her keeping watch by his side. And on the third night he lay among the fern, in her own old place behind Sharpe's hut. She did not know that he did not return each night to that dusty town by the sea. And now once again he was muttering to himself, fiercely and frequently, "No--no----" June's stay began to draw to a close. Minetta suspected her of moping for John Willie, and told her that he often disappeared for days at a time like that. Sometimes, she added, he called it fishing. "But he'd be fearfully annoyed if we went to look for him," she said; and she turned away and smiled. She smiled again when one morning June had a letter from Wygelia, with a postscript for herself. "_A bit of gossip for Minetta_," the postscript ran. "_Ask her if she remembers a girl from Llanyglo father took into one of his shops. He's thinking of sending out search-parties for her. She went off for a holiday, and hasn't turned up again----_" etc., etc., etc. And so it was that John Willie, filled now with one thought only, came to miss quite a number of things that went down into the history of Llanyglo. He missed, for example, those first days of Revival in which the town, self-accused of sin, strove to purify itself. He missed that storm of impassioned evangelicalism in which Eesaac Oliver, walking one day on the Porth Neigr road, stopped at the foot of the lane that led to the quarries, suddenly threw up his hands, broke forth, and presently had the occupants of a dozen brakes and wagonettes listening to him in the great echoing excavation of the quarry itself. He missed, too, an odd little by-product of that gale of spiritual awakening--the black-faced group that one morning made its appearance on the beach, and resembled a troupe of ordinary seaside niggers until it broke, not into Plantation Melodies, but into hymns, one of which had a catchy pattering chorus that told over the names of the blest ones the redeemed would meet in Heaven: "_There'll be Timothy, Philip and Andrew, Peter, Paul and Barnabas, James the Great, James the Less And Bar-tholo-mew_----" He missed that other great storm of groans and fervour, when the pale young regenerator, mounting the railway embankment from a low-lying meadow near Porth Neigr, began to preach before sunset, preached until the stars came out, and then sent hysterical young women and overstrung young men home in couples along the benighted lanes together, to comfort and enhearten and uplift one another as they went.... And he missed, among these and a multitude of other things, a certain rather famous exploit of his compatriot, Tommy Kerr. He knew how Tommy had flouted and insulted Llanyglo, and how Llanyglo in return had long been looking for signs that Tommy was drinking himself to death. But neither John Willie Garden nor anybody else had thought of the alternative solution of the inconvenience of Tommy's presence in Llanyglo. This was, not that Tommy himself should fall one night and break his neck, but that something should happen to the house that, having been put up by the four brothers in a single night, was enjoyable by them as long as they or any of them should remain alive. During Ned's illness, if that listless state in which he had moved between the accident to Harry and Sam and the death of the canary had been an illness, the care of the Hafod had fallen to Tommy; and that was as much as to say that it had been cared for very little. Moreover, the fabric itself was perhaps by this time impaired. The digging of the foundations of the hotels on either side of it had done it no good, and the constant vibration of the Pontnewydd Street trams had done it even less. On a certain Sunday morning, some weeks before the sickening of the canary, Tommy had taken it into his head to make a thorough examination of the place, while Ned had dozed in his chair. That examination had given Tommy a bad fright. Mounting a short ladder and looking up into the roof-space above the single living-room, he had found the loft far lighter than it ought to have been; but it had not been the gap in the roof that had scared him so badly. It had been what he had seen through the gap--the chimney-stack all tottering, hooped out on one side like a barrel.... With boards and baulks, an old pole-mast and other timbers from the unsightly little backyard, it had taken him the greater part of the day to shore the chimney up again. Whew! He and Ned had been sleeping under _that_!---- It may be that there had been plotting against Tommy, too--or, if not actually plotting, a great deal of quiet watching to see what would happen, backed by a powerful desire that something should happen. Both Howell Gruffydd and John Pritchard were on the Roads Committee, and--well, it was obvious that Pontnewydd Street could not remain unrepaired merely because these Kerrs happened to live there. Orders had gone forth that its mains were to be seen to, pits had been dug in the street and barriers erected round them, and red flags set there by day and red lanterns by night. Nothing had happened. Then the excavations had been filled up again, and the road-metal carts had come. The surface was to be tackled.... So it had been that John Willie Garden returning one night from Delyn, had seen Dafydd Dafis's road-engine drawn up for the night opposite the Imperial Hotel. The engine had remained in Pontnewydd Street ever since. It shook the Hafod as if it had been brought there expressly for its destruction. During the very first hour of its slow and ponderous passing backwards and forwards, Tommy's newly cobbled chimney had given a not very loud crack, and, like a heavy sleeper, had settled down into a more comfortable shape. Tommy had come out, and had hailed the man who walked in front of the machine with a red flag. Nervously, almost politely, he had asked him how long they were likely to be. The man had replied that they had orders to "make a job of it." Then Tommy had seen Dafydd Dafis's face, watching him from the cab.... Half an hour later he had met Howell Gruffydd in the Marine Arcade. The Chairman of the Council had stopped. He had patted the shoulder of the common enemy gently with his hand, and his smile had been odiously affable. "Well, Thomas Kerr," he had said, "how are you? I hear there is improvements at Plas Kerr; you have a grand road to your house soon, whatever! I think we have to assess you higher. How are you, Thomas Kerr?" Kerr had hated the Welshman's fine, small, regular teeth. They were false, but by no means the falsest thing about his mouth. As he had made to move away Howell had continued. "I hope Dafydd Dafis does not incommode you with the road-engine, Thomas Kerr? He has orders not to be a nuis-ance to the town. 'Drive as gently as you can, Dafydd Dafis' is his orders.... You are off to the Marine Hotel now, Thomas Kerr? Dear me, it is a curious fas-cin-ation such places have for some pip-ple! Would it not be bet-ter to come to the Chap-pel on Sundays?... Thomas Kerr." (Tommy had been shuffling miserably away.) "Excuse me, Thomas Kerr, but you lose your handkerchief if you are not careful!" And at this reminder that he had intended to button up his pockets in the presence of his foe, Tommy had been wellnigh ready to weep. And then Ned had died.... There was a good deal of "edge," or vanity, or self-esteem, or conceit, or whatever you like to call it, about Tommy Kerr. He knew now that that road-engine would not be taken off as long as his crazy house stood, and he was stung and mortified that a few beggarly Welshmen, backed by a pettifogging Railway Company or two, with Kursaals Limited, a miserable District Council, a Pleasure Boats' Amalgamation, a few Hotel Syndicates and other such trifles, should be able to beat him. He felt very lonely without Ned. He would have liked to see Lancashire again, particularly Rochdale, his own town. He wanted to walk its hilly streets, and to see the Asbestos Factory again, and Hollingworth Lake. He would almost rather be found dead there than continue to live among these indigo mountains and pink hotels and chrome-yellow sands. And so he set about his exploit. At the very outset they tried once more to baulk him. For the thing that he intended to do certain timbers were necessary, and at six o'clock one night he passed, none too steadily, to a timber-merchant's, and gave an order to a clerk. The clerk smiled, and sent for his principal. Kerr pointed to various pieces in the yard. "Ye can send that--an' that--an' that t'other," he said thickly; "ye can get 'em out now--I'll fetch a cart." Then, looking at the builder's face, he saw that he too, like the clerk, was smiling.... There was no need of words. Howell Gruffydd had been beforehand with him again. If one builder refused to sell to him, so, he knew, would all the others. He was wasting precious time with builders. How many inns he had been to that day he could not have told, but he now felt the heart in him again. They thought they could dish Tommy Kerr like that, did they? Well, he would show them.... He lurched away to the "Lancashire Rose," in Gardd Street, and then crossed to the "Trafford." But at neither of them did he stay very long. He left the "Trafford" at a little after eight, three hours before he needed to have done so. He wanted those three hours. He also wanted all the hours he could get between then and sunrise. * * * * * No sober man would have dreamed of attempting it; but sobriety and large deeds do not always go hand in hand. Neither do large deeds and very clear thinking--which, stout hearts being commoner than unmuddled brains, is lucky for us. Through Kerr's bemused head ran one thought and one thought only, namely, that the Hafod had been built by himself and his three brothers in a night--built in a night--built in a night---- If it had been built in a night it could be rebuilt in a night---- It had taken four of them to build it, but the rebuilding ought not to be nearly so heavy a job---- He would show them he did not come from Lancashire for nothing! But before entering his dwelling that night he committed an act of theft. That damned road-engine had again been left drawn up opposite the Imperial Hotel, and Tommy, fumbling under the tarpaulin that covered it, stole something from the cab. He chuckled as he seemed to see again Dafydd Dafis's cat-like face looking at him round the fly-wheel. _He'd_ show Dafydd Dafis!---- He entered his house and locked the door behind him. He had formed no plan, but yet, somehow, he was conscious of a plan, and a reasonably clear one. Where it had come from he did not know; it was as if he heard again, somewhere in the air quite near, the voices of his brothers again, saying, in the loved Ratchet accents, "Never heed that, Sam--here's where th' strain comes--we'll do th' paperin' and put a pot o' geraniums i' th' window after." He saw these vital points and master-members of his plan as if they had been marked in his mind in red. He had not to stop to reason about them. He knew--dead Ned seemed to tell him--that the wall between the living-room and the scullery might stand. He knew--he seemed to have it from Sam--that the whole of the street-frontage was sound. The ends, near the two hotels, were the danger-points; most perilous of all was the main beam under the lately propped chimney. The chimney must be taken down first of all. "To lighten th' beam, ye see," Harry's voice seemed to sound; "nay, donnot fiddle wi' it--shove it ovver into th' alley--we're pushed for time----" So, whether you call it drink, or whatever you call it, Tommy did not set to work quite unassisted. At the very beginning he almost came to grief. This was over the chimney, that essential member of the dwelling up whose throat the comfortable smoke had passed on that far-off morning as a token of habitation before the eyes of astonished little Llanyglo. He had climbed out on to the perilous roof and had begun to "study" how best to take it down; then, as cautiously he had unlashed and removed the baulks and the pole-mast, the chimney had suddenly thrust out its stomach at him. His heart gave a jump, and in a twink he had set his back against it, grasping a rope to check his heave.... But the chimney would neither stand, nor yet fall as he wished it to fall, over the end of the Hafod into the side-alley. It wanted to fall inwards, over Tommy's head. He thought his agonised effort would never end.... But end it did. He felt the release of weight. The thing hung poised for a moment, and then.... He was once more down in his kitchen before the windows which had been flung up in the two hotels had closed again. No doubt they had been waiting for days for that crash. They did not know that the scandalous Tommy himself had caused it. The ghost of a malicious smile crossed his face. "Sucks," he muttered, "for Gruffydd." Then, at eleven o'clock at night, he fell to his house-breaking. * * * * * "Kerr?" said the author of the _Sixpenny Guide_, when asked about this. "I suppose you mean Tommy Kerr? Yes, I remember him.--His cottage? That Hafod Unos place?--Yes, it's perfectly true. He did pull it down or put it up again in one night, or at any rate something like it. An uncouth little animal he was; a drunken little beast; still, he did this. Made quite a job of it too.--How? That I can't tell you. But I saw the place the next morning, and it seems to me that at one time during the night both the ends and half the back must have been as open as an empty rick-shed. Of course the whole thing was altogether preposterous. Six men's work. I was staying a little farther up the road, and by daybreak there must have been a thousand people in Pontnewydd Street. Nobody lifted a finger. They just watched. He wasn't to be seen mostly; he was busy inside; but when he did come out he never turned his head.--Sober? Impossible to say. And of course he didn't quite finish the job. But you've heard the rest." The rest was as follows: * * * * * By three o'clock in the morning Tommy was neither drunk nor sober. He was a will and a piece of muscular apparatus, the two things quite separate, yet working together with never a jerk to mar the harmony. As a worn-out old machine will continue to run provided it is not interrupted, so Kerr worked, in a state to which the only fatal thing would have been to stop. The Tommy Kerr Llanyglo knew was a base thing, senseless as the lime and stone through which his chisel drove (with a fearful racket), obstinate as the beams under which he hammered his wedges; but this was another Tommy Kerr--somehow the name yet somehow another--a Kerr who might have been imagined to mutter, as he laboured, that it was a gradely night for a titanic act--that he came from Lancashire, where men did impossible things as a matter of course--and that if any Welshman would pocket his pride and ask him, he would pull down and put up again their whole blasted flashy town for them while he was about it. And perhaps he was not really patching up his tottering cottage at all that night. Perhaps he was rather doing one of those useless and splendid things that alone among man's contrivances do not crumble and fall. Perhaps he was doing in his ruined Hafod pretty much the same thing that Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd did from bandstands and railway embankments and rocks and bedroom windows--setting up an ideal, and bidding men remember, though they might never attain, to strive. Or perhaps he was working from the most religious motive known to man--to please himself, trusting that if he did so he might please Something greater than himself. If so, his idea might have had grandeur, but that grandeur was curiously expressed. For he did not cease to grunt from time to time, as his face became grimy and then washed clean again with perspiration: "Damned Treacle-tongue! I'll _sew_ my pockets up next time! Owd false-teeth--their road-engines--him an' his new brolly!----" By four o'clock twenty road-engines could not have shaken down the beam on the chimney side of the house, and without another look at it he turned to the other wall. It was Ned's remembered voice that bade him hasten. As he tackled the second beam he grew quite chatty with Ned. It was Ned who kept him to those red-marked crucial points, and told him that he needn't bother about the walls, for the ceiling-sheets would do to cram into the interstices, and that, if he made haste, the golden days would come again when he had mocked at all Welshmen, and had had on the hip the Railway Companies and Kursaals and Hotels and Steamboats that had done their utmost to get rid of him. It was soon after this that he became conscious of other whispers than Ned's. At last he had seen the crowd gathered in Pontnewydd Street. But by this time he had ripped his ceiling-cloth down, and the grey incoming day was suddenly darkened again as he ploughed across the talus of debris and made a wall of cloth, fastening it anywise from beam to beam. Ned said that that was quite good enough. You never caught wise old Ned napping. Tommy Kerr had been very fond of his brother Ned. He had gone ratting with him, and alder-cutting, and he remembered a whippet Ned had once had, a rare dog for nipping 'em as they turned, and a canary too.... Then Tommy Kerr's brain, which for more than seven hours had been as steady as a sleeping top, gave a little wobble. This was as he paused in the middle of the floor of his incredible house. There was something else he had to do; what was it?... _What_ was it, now?... He knew there was something else he had to do.... He would have done better to begin his work all over again than to stop and think. What ... ah yes, he remembered! He remembered and chuckled. Why, he had been on the point of forgetting the cream of the whole joke!---- He stooped by the rounded grey mound of lime and plaster that represented his bed, but his knees gave, and he came with a little thump to the floor. But he rolled over on his side, and his fingers found what they sought, and after a few minutes he rose again. In his hand was the red flag he had stolen from the cab of Dafydd Dafis's road-engine. That was to go up where his chimney had been, that chimney that had emitted that first smoke on that far-off first morning. The town, when it awoke, must on no account miss _that_. Tommy Kerr wanted to see the faces of Howell Gruffydd, John Pritchard, Dafydd Dafis and Co. when they saw that flag.... He tottered to the ladder that ran up into the loft. He fell twice from the lower rungs of it, but a foot of lime made his fall soft. He mounted to the top, and crawled on his belly across the open rafters of the loft. He did not know how he got out on to the roof; it seemed to him that he lay below for a long time, gazing up through a gap at the paling sky and wondering how it was to be done, and then miraculously found himself where he wished to be. Then he got on his feet. Then he saw them, the people in the street below. He had again forgotten they were there. So much the better; they should see him do it. Then he'd give a shout that should wake all Wales, and--and--by that time the pubs ought to be opening.... But the little hand-staff of the flag was not long enough to please him. He wanted a longer one, to make more of a show. It took a whole tree to carry the flag over the Kursaal Dancing Rooms there. It was stupid of Tommy not to have thought of that--not to have brought one up from below, where there were plenty--yes, plenty---- As it happened, he did not need the stick. It all came about very softly and gently. He was standing up, again looking about for a longer stick, when once more his brain gave a wobble. The watchers below saw him lean, as formerly his chimney had leaned, only now Tommy Kerr leaned the other way---- And so gently did he come over, and so comparatively short a distance had he to fall, that you would have sworn it did not hurt him very much. He stuck to the little square of red calico at the end of the short staff; it was still in his hand when they picked him up from the heap of chimney-bricks that choked the little alley where the principal entrance to the Kursaal Gardens now is. Ancient Mrs. Pritchard, when she heard of it, baa-ed, and said that folk came and went--came and went---- VI THE GLYN From sleeping badly, John Willie Garden had passed to sleeping hardly at all. From that same fear of startling her, he still did not appear in the Glyn much before his accustomed hour (though there had been times without number when he had resolved otherwise); instead, he wandered about, a mile, two miles away, sometimes setting himself a distant point to walk to, on his return from which it would surely be time he was seeking her. On the first two mornings of his absence from home he had not shaved; then he had decided that that would never do, and has sent somebody from the inn below to fetch him a bag. With the bag had come a short note from Minetta. It had merely said that June was leaving on the following Saturday, and that after that day she would be alone in the house. He now wished he had not asked Minetta to show June that sketch. She had put it on his breakfast-plate for all the world as if _he_ had wished to see it, instead of merely to show June how much better it was than the others. He didn't think that Minetta cared in the least how he spent his time, but she was so sharp, and queer as well as sharp. She watched things without taking any part in them. The more self-absorbed the actors showed themselves, the more keenly interested Minetta became. In many respects she took after her father. Edward Garden too had that habit of poking and prying into people's tastes and enjoyments and passions and desires, noting and understanding them while remaining himself inaccessible to such weaknesses. It wouldn't greatly have surprised John Willie to learn that Minetta guessed what he was about up Delyn. The curious thing was that, if that were so, he didn't think that Minetta would disapprove. She would look as it were over the tops of a pair of imaginary glasses, and under them, and finally through them, and her ironical glance would say as plainly as words, "This seems to be a love-affair." She would neither disapprove nor approve, or, if she did approve, it would be of his provision of entertainment for her. Her disapproval would appear only if John Willie involved her in something that would not "do." This brought John Willie straightway back face to face with his old and torturing dilemma, of having something "on"--but something that would not "do." A hundred times he had fought it out, and a hundred times he had come to the conclusion that, while Minetta might resemble her not quite human father, he, John Willie, was his mother's son. His mother would have been entirely for that "No" that a hundred times had gained the day. After each of these victories he had been on the point of turning his back on the mountains and of not returning as long as he knew her to be there. These impulses had now nothing to do with his fear of startling her. They were born of that stiff and indispensable code. He had only to thank her for a few breakfasts, to tell her he was going, to wish her well, and all would be over. He found rest in the thought. He might suffer an ache or two afterwards, but it would be the best way out. It had been his first impulse, and it had proved to be his last conclusion. He would consider it settled so. It would be much the best course to act like an ordinary young man. For several days he had said that. He said it again on the morning when he shaved off half a week's growth of beard. Once more he had slept within a stone's-throw of the hut. There had been light showers during the night, but hardly enough to call a break of the weather; the drops twinkled on fern and grass and spiders'-webs and tiny flowers, but the ground was still as dry as tinder. As he shaved, with the little mirror of his dressing-bag hung on a hazel, he reflected that it was only half-past seven, and that the Llyn ought to be a good colour for fishing. There would be plenty of time for a cast or two before saying good-bye. But his rod was in the locked hut, of which she had the key. No matter. Since he had now come to his decision, it would make no difference did he seek her in the Glyn a little earlier than usual. He would then be able to get away earlier in order to say good-bye to the neglected June. He was heartily glad it was all over. The only possible course seemed so plain that he wondered now what he had been tormenting himself about all this time. Smiling a little, he even thought of all the awkwardnesses and dissimulations and machinations and deceits he was by one stroke escaping. He _would_ have felt rather a brute had he come upon Dafydd Dafis one day, and asked him how he was getting on, and, casually, what had become of that little niece or cousin of his, whose name he would have had to make a lying pretence of having forgotten. It _would_ have been behaving rather off-handedly to June, to see her for the first two days only of her stay and then to let her go without as much as seeing her off. It _would_ be better that Minetta should not have to write home saying that John Willie was away (fishing) and she alone in the house, but she was quite all right. It _would_ be better to think of the things that would permanently "do"--altogether more comfortable and satisfactory not to have to call himself, in the waking hours of nights in the years ahead, or in the days to come when business claimed him, by a disquieting name. It was not as if there were not plenty of other things to think of. This particular aspect of life was far too much dwelt on. Percy Briggs dwelt on it too much, he himself had dwelt too much on it. He wasn't sure that he hadn't been getting even a little morbid about it. Not every lovely flower is picked because it is lovely and then thrown wilting away again. John Willie had come to his senses. It had taken him some time, but he was all right again now. He wondered how those people at the inn below had been looking after his horse. They'd probably let him get fat and lazy. Well, he would give him a twisting on the way home. Too much inaction is good for neither horse nor man.... He finished shaving, and began to whistle as he packed his tackle and strapped the case. He would leave the case where it was, and pick it up on his way back. He would take the boat, pull straight across, get it over, and then have a swinging walk down to the inn. Despite his moping wanderings, he felt the need of a really good hard walk. He strode down to the lake, unfastened the boat, dashed the waterdrops from the thwart with his cap, and pushed off. It was a brilliant, if broken, sky. Up the mountain-side the light mists were quickly evaporating, and a great crag of dazzling white cloud, shaped like the north of Scotland on a map, was perfectly reduplicated in the glassy Llyn. As if the surface of the water had had a tenuity without abating a jot of its crystal clearness, the smooth V from the bows seemed to shear through something that, even when the water settled to rest again, did not return; there fled at each stroke an intact perfection. He altered the boat's course, and the reflection of the edge of Delyn broke into long smooth stripes. He altered it again, and an invisible comb seemed to pass through the towering inverted cloud. His wake was a dancing of broken glittering facets. He stood in towards the shaly spur; a few more strong strokes and he grounded abruptly; and he gathered up his boots and stockings from the bottom of the boat, stepped out, and made fast at the bottom of the Glyn. The showers had swollen the stream a little, and mossy stones that had been dry the day before were lapped by the water, and pools came farther up his calf. But suddenly at a thought he stopped. In the new circumstances it was a new thought. She did not expect him for some hours yet; it might be better--in case of his coming upon her as she might not wish to be come upon--to give a call. On second thoughts he was sure that he ought to give a call. He opened his mouth---- But it was not necessary. Suddenly he saw her twenty yards ahead. She had probably been up for hours, and had got her bathe over long since. But even that glimpse of her through the leaves had been as it were two glimpses. In the first of them he had seen that she was there; in the second he had noted that her appearance was not her usual appearance. She was no longer wearing the black dress of Philip Lacey's flower-shop, but that old blouse, unconfined at the waist, and again, as on that day when she had started back from the door of the hut, her legs and feet were bare. Four trout lay on the grass beside her, one of them still fluttering. She was stroking the drops of water from her forearms, and wiping her hands on her old striped petticoat. He did not call, but all in a moment she looked round as quickly as if he had done so. At first he thought she was going to start to her feet and run, but she remained seated. Then a bough intervened. He put it aside behind him, threw his boots and stockings ashore, and climbed the bank. "Hallo, Ynys," he said, as he sat down beside her. "I'm a bit early, but I've got to get off soon. They want me down there. There are some people I must see before they go." Then he wondered whether, after all, he had not startled her. In her eyes was once more that look that had been there that other day, when she had fallen back, though no farther than a cat falls back. If that was so he must reassure her by going on talking. Without pausing, he continued. "Yes, I shall have to get off by eleven. I've not been home, you see. Couldn't stand going back to that place, so I just made myself comfortable by the hut there.--I say, I hope you didn't get wet with that rain in the night?" Simply, freely, naturally, and without a second thought, he put out his hand to feel whether her petticoat was dry. He supposed she slept in her petticoat, and that his early visit had not allowed her time to change. But she crouched back so swiftly that he also fell a little back, surprised. He forgot that his own words, "I'm a bit early," raised twenty questions--questions of why he was there at all, of how it had come to pass that a variation in his habit was a thing to be remarked on, of why his announcement that he must be off early seemed even to himself a breach of something that had never been established, but only tacitly allowed. He forgot these things, stared at her, and suddenly exclaimed, "Why, what's the matter?" Had she feared that he was about to put his hand upon her? One of her elbows had shot up as if she would have defended herself, and the frightened seaweed eyes looked at him over the guarding forearm. Her other hand, behind her on the grass, supported her. So they sat, she trembling, he covering her with an astonished stare. Then, as quickly as she had raised it, she dropped the defending arm. She made a swift clutch at her petticoats and scrambled a foot farther away from him. Her breast fluttered like that of the still living trout, and her hand was clasped betrayingly about one foot hidden in the short striped petticoat. And in a twink John Willie saw his mistake. It was not from his advanced hand that she had shrunk. It was from the resting of his eyes--those eyes that, even as she had drawn herself back, had already rested. Those eyes, of Scandinavian blue, had sought hers again, of the wet greenish brown of the seaweed of the shore. He spoke quietly. "Come here, Ynys," he said. She did not move. "Come here, Ynys," he said again. Her trembling became violent. "Come here, Ynys--I want----" He did not finish. His hand shot quickly forth. The next moment it held what she had striven to hide. He was gazing at the silver mark that ran round the outer edge of her foot near the little toe as a vein runs round a pebble. She had twisted her body so that her face lay on the grass, covered with her hands. She made one feeble movement to draw the foot from his hand, and then lay still. When, presently, he put it gently down, she made no further attempt to hide it; what was the good, since he had seen? It lay still now, a little crinkled brown sole with bits of vegetation pressed into it, and, running across it, that old thread, silver, like the wedding-ring of her mother--that hard little sole that had made the kidney-shaped footprints on the Llanyglo beach, that had pattered after pedestrians on the road, and that would take to the roads again rather than be pressed into a shoe and walk the pavements of a town. Yet, though he had seen the foot, she seemed determined he should not see her face too. Presently she was conscious that he was trying to do so, that he was gently trying to draw away the concealing hands. That she resisted. "Ynys! Ynys!" he was saying remorsefully in her ear. She lay quite still, and "Ynys! Ynys!" he continued to repeat, over and over again. At last he heard that uniquely soft voice of hers in reply. She spoke into the grass, not sobbingly, only a little dully. "I 'ould not show you," she begged him--movingly begged him--to believe. "Ynys--dear!----" "Indeed you ask me, one day, if I take off my boots and stock-kings, and I 'ould not----" "No, no----" he soothed her. "I not show nobody, in lot-t of years, never." She turned her face to him for a moment; the anger of a fury lurked there for him had he not believed her. "I not show nobody, if they kill me," she went on. "Lot-t of years I _hate_ it----" the vindictiveness of the single word died away, and he scarcely heard what came next, "--but I not hate it any more now----" His answer was to rise suddenly to his knees, to stoop again, and to kiss the foot he had innocently maimed. He was conscious as he did so of its quick little pressure against his mouth.... The next moment his arm was about her shoulder, and he was gently seeking to see her face again. "Cariad!" he murmured, his lips to her ear. And he knew that by no other means could it have come to pass. "Lot-t of years I hate it--but I not hate it any more." She had hated the foot for its disfigurement. She had loved it for him. There was no question of Yes or No as they ate their breakfast together; it was as it was, and neither guilt nor innocence had any part in it. From time to time, as they sat, he flung his arms about her shoulders as frankly as children embrace, and she suffered the crushing with lips parted and eyes immeasurably far away. The black pool was flecked with froth; it danced over the whitey-green ebullition at the foot of the swollen fall; and two dragon-flies, one blue as a scarab and the other like a darting twig of green metal, hovered and set and spun. There seemed to be no wind, but the great country of white cloud up aloft had advanced, and a soft gloom filled the Glyn. They did not wash up; impatiently John Willie tossed the platter they had shared aside; and they embraced again. Midday did not find John Willie on his way to Llanyglo, nor yet did he see June off by the three o'clock train. By three o'clock he was on the summit of Delyn again, under the same rock where he had tried, as if by accident, to touch her hand. She had put on her shoes, but not her stockings, for the climb, but he had drawn them off again, and once more she lay, luxuriating with her foot under his hand. Even now she did not talk very much. She had only one thing to say, with lovely monotony and very few words to say it in; she strayed no farther from her little store of English than to say, over and over again, "Boy bach!" with the greenish-brown eyes slavishly on his, and her parted lips hurrying out the diminutive before he crushed them again. She started from her dream once, as a stray sheep close behind them gave a call like a rich oboe; then she relapsed into it again. The shadows lay still and leagues long over the rumple of mountains, and she had not changed, and had promised that she would not again change, that unfastened bodice and short and faded old petticoat. So June steamed away, while Ynys's face was framed in John Willie's arm on the summit of Delyn. They descended to the Glyn again between the afternoon and the early evening, and with each step as they dropped down the mountain a silence grew and deepened on them. He knew its meaning, if she did not, and, back by the pool again, he first cleaned the forgotten platter (which she tried to prevent), and then stood before her as he had stood when once, with an abrupt, "Nos da," he had stridden away. And in that pause of gazing silence he knew how much was packed--his Yes, his No, hers too; all that lay behind them, all that lay before. For him, there lay enwrapped in it that slight black figure he had seen under the crimson pier-light; his searching for her; his finding her; his struggles, his decision, and then, even in the act of his relinquishment, his wonderful recovery of her. And her memory took a farther flight still. She saw herself, a little girl, sitting with a bandaged foot upon a chair, while a testy girl not two years older than herself drew her likeness. She remembered the unendurable length of those half-hours--unendurable, save that occasionally there looked in at the door or passed the window a cowslip-haired boy, with hard blue eyes that would stare down even his own conscience and none be the wiser, a conquering boy, of a race so habituated to conquest that it takes with the sword-hand and carelessly tosses twice as much back with the other. That was what it meant to her, that silver mark that ran round the edge of her foot as a vein runs round the edge of a pebble.... And for the future? His future might be anything, but hers could be one thing only. For the gipsy loves never but the once. In all but love, the waters of the world are not more unstable than she; in love, the rocks are not more irremovable. Therefore she has no past and no regrets. She has no regrets, for there is no scar upon her heart--how can there be a scar, when a scar is a healing, and this wound is never healed, but ever new, ever quivering? And she has no past--how can she have a past when all is a poignant and lovely present, that endures to the end?... There was so little for John Willie to do. He had only to go away without kissing her again. Kiss her, however, he must not--he was only an ordinary young man---- He knew it, and---- He passed his arms about her waist and drew her down by his side. It was dark in the Glyn long before the light had faded from the open hillside above. In Llyn Delyn not a fish rose to break that dark and intact perfection. The fall into the pool diminished a little in volume, and mossy cushions that had lately been covered began to rise out of the water again. And a heart was laid quiveringly open where formerly only a foot had been maimed. She was twice conquered, for she was Welsh and woman too. In the hearts of the men of her race the fame of their story still lives, and while it lives strife will not cease. As their own proverb says, what the sword took, the tongue will take back again. But the woman goes with the land. PART FIVE I THE WHEEL It was a summer nightfall in the Kursaal Gardens. The turnstiles of the new Main Entrance in Pontnewydd Street revolved ceaselessly, with a noise as of an unending rack and pinion. The lightly clad merrymakers poured under the trees that had electric globes for fruit; they moved towards the cream-coloured buildings that, with their illuminations, seemed no more than footlights to the solemn stage of the immeasurable blue beyond. Most of them were going to that Dancing-Hall where all the youths and maidens of the world seemed to dance together; the others hurried to keep appointments, to sit at the little tables where the waiters moved on the grass, to join the slowly moving circle about the bandstand, or to see the side-shows. The band played the "Lohengrin" Prelude; the soft sound of gravel crunching underfoot mingled with the music; and the great lighted circle of the Big Wheel rose against the sky. In the topmost coach of the Wheel sat John Willie Garden and June Lacey. They were alone in the bright upholstered compartment. June wore her Juniest frock and an engagement ring; John Willie, who had been walking, was in cap and knickers. They had been engaged since the Spring, and everybody had said how splendidly it would "do." They had played together (everybody had said) since childhood, knew exactly what to expect and what not to expect of one another, had (as they put it) the solid cake to cut at when the sugar and the almond-paste had begun to pall, and what could have been more romantic? "They'd be hard put to it to think of anything they're short of," everybody had said. From the windows of the car they could see the whole of Llanyglo. With the turning of the Wheel they had watched its lights rise slowly over the intervening roofs, and then slowly sink away again. Now, to see the grounds below, they had to step to the windows and to look almost vertically down, through the intricacy of girders and lattice and mammoth supporting piers. "It takes about twenty minutes to go round, doesn't it?" June asked. "About that," John Willie replied absently. "Look at the Trwyn light!" "Yes, dear." "We aren't as high as that, are we?" "Oh dear no." "I suppose we've stopped to take more passengers up?" "I expect so." Then, after a pause, June said, "Do you know, dear, I think I've finally decided about the drawing-room. I think I shall have it all white--every bit----" From her white gloves to her gypsophylla petticoats, she was a girl any young man would have been glad to spend his shillings on, and her house was going to be as smart and complete as herself. Her father was coming down very handsomely for her wedding, and in addition to his other gifts, was going to lay out the gardens and the greenhouse for them. Counting her silver, tapping her flower-pots to see which was in need of water, trimming bits of raffia with her scissors and putting drops of gum into her geraniums, June would be exactly in her right place. She was already attending a Cookery Class, and had all her household linen marked. And already they were promised any number of presents. "Presents are so useful," she had said to John Willie, "because then you have them, and so often they're the kind of thing you'd put off buying for yourself." It was all going to "do" very splendidly. "I say," said John Willie by and by, "we don't seem to be moving." "The Wheel?" June asked. "Yes. But it will go on in a minute, I expect." "I hope it won't stop long," June replied. John Willie also hoped it would not stop long, but for the life of him he couldn't have told you why he hoped so. Indeed he tried to smother the hope. He tried to smother it because he had an obscure feeling that--that--well, if a reason can smile, that his reason for not wishing to stay up there too long was quietly smiling at him. It seemed to tell him that he and everything about him were enviably all right--safe--thoroughly and entirely comfortable--need have no fears for the future--and that all would continue to be just as comfortable and safe and altogether all right until he should come to die, in a best bed, with eiderdowns, and frilled pillow-cases, and hot bottles, and the certainty of a handsomely appointed funeral a few days later. Few were as sure of their future as that. John Willie was one of the lucky ones.... He moved, not to the windows from which he could look down on the lights of the Promenade and Pier, but to those that were turned to the dark and unseen mountains. Somehow this reason he had for hoping that the car would not stop long seemed to come from there. He told himself that he would be better presently. He had these--bad humours, call them--sometimes. He hid them from June, but Minetta had noticed them, and he knew all about them himself. He turned to June again. "I wonder what's happened," he said. "It's--it's quite safe, isn't it?" June asked. "Oh, quite." His lips compressed a little. It was quite safe--neither more nor less safe than everything else in John Willie's life. That, somehow, was at the bottom of these ill-humours of his. "Dash it," he muttered.... "It is a nuisance," June agreed. "But I don't suppose Minetta will be anxious." "I wasn't thinking of Minetta," John Willie replied. Now when you are reluctant to enter into explanation, and there is something you badly want to do, you never (if you are an ordinary young man) look very far for a reason. The first that comes will serve your turn. If it is a flimsy one, no matter; you then get angry when its flimsiness is pointed out to you, and presently out of your anger and obstinacy you will have found a reason as good as another. John Willie did not at all like those interior smiling taunts of himself that took the form of congratulations on his neatly planned life and pillowed and feathered death to close it. If anybody of his own weight had taunted him thus he would have knocked that person down. But you cannot knock down a whisper that seems to come on the wind from the mountains through the night, making you, your ordered comfort notwithstanding, absolutely wretched. Again John Willie turned to June. "I say, June; this won't do, you know," he said. June looked enquiringly at him. "But we can't do anything but wait, dear, can we?" He did not answer. They waited. Half an hour passed. Then John Willie muttered again that, among so many other things that would "do" beautifully, this particular thing would not "do." June coloured a little. "But--but--it isn't our fault," she murmured, picking at the fingers of her gloves. He saw she understood. Again they waited. Then, suddenly, John Willie came shortly out with that reason that must serve in the stead of his real reason. He knew how lame it was. A score or two of other young couples were in precisely the same situation as they, and more that cheerfully resigned to their plight; but then they were not being goaded and taunted as John Willie was being goaded and taunted. They were not being told that their paths lay, so to speak, on flowers, while the paths of others were the stony road, that cut and blistered the foot, and tired the eyes, and bowed the back (but had no power, perhaps, thus to reproach the heart).... Anyway, John Willie was not disposed to stand it. "June," he said abruptly, "I can't stay up here all night with you." Her wail interrupted him.--"Oh-h-h!----" "It wouldn't do." "Oh-h-h--it isn't our fault----" "No, but that can't be helped. The woman I marry----" "Oh-h-h--but there isn't anything to do!" "Oh, yes there is. We needn't be together. I can get into another car or something. It will only be like walking along the footboard of a train." She gave a little shriek.--"Oh--if you do I shall throw myself out--I know I shall!----" "You won't do anything so silly. Get up, dear; I've quite made up my mind. I tell you it wouldn't do. The woman I marry...." With gentle force he picked her up and set her on the seat of the car. Then he approached the window. There was a bar across it, which it took him a minute to bend, but the chances were that where his head would pass the rest of his body might follow. June hid her face and moaned as he took off his coat; then he kissed her and thrust his head under the bar. He wriggled through, stood on the footboard, smiled again grimly through the window, and then looked down. At any rate, he had given a reason of sorts. Then he looked up. Instantly he saw that, unless head or wrist or finger should unexpectedly fail him, the most dangerous part of his exploit lay at the very beginning. There was no descent from the step on which he stood. The cars were slung from axles, and in order to get to the rim that held the axles themselves he must climb to the roof of the coach. He glanced at the roof of the coach twenty feet below and to his left. He saw that it had a curved rain-sill like that of the top of a railway carriage. Good; the coaches would be all alike. He set his knees in the window-frame once more. June was still lying with her face hidden on the seat. His fingers felt blindly for the rain-sill; they found it, and he moistened his other hand. He wished he could have glued it, for for some moments mere friction must be half his support. For an instant he thought calmly and abysmally; then he risked it.... It succeeded. He knelt on the roof, holding the sling and coupling that hung from the car-axle overhead. He glanced up at the axle to which he must swarm. The singing in the cars continued, and a babble of sound rose lightly from below. Evidently he had not been seen to get out of the car. But then, who would have thought of looking? * * * * * It was as he swarmed up the coupling that there first came over him the sense of the difference between the reason he had given, and the real reason that had brought him out from that brightly lighted and cushioned car in which he might far more easily have stopped. And the realisation of that difference brought with it, very strangely, the sense, not of bodily peril, but of inner peace. It was unaccountable, but there it was, not to be argued about. The only thing that disturbed this peace, and that but lightly, was that his venture had not a more profitable object. Folk did less dangerous things for far better reason--to save life, or property, or something else worth while. But this neck-risking of his was--could only be--bravado. He knew perfectly well that in the circumstances nobody would have thought a penny the worse of June. "The woman I marry----" he had known that to be an hypocrisy even when he had said it. No, he was merely idiotically showing-off, and that peace at his heart would presently prove to be an illusion.... It was quite suddenly, as he lay out along the Wheel's topmost car-axle, that the thought of Ynys came to him. He didn't know why it should come at that moment, unless it was born of his bodily isolation on the very top of that immense bracelet hung with trinkets of cars. But perhaps it was that; perhaps there was a connection, if only an idle and fanciful one. Save perhaps the keeper of the Trwyn light, nobody in Llanyglo was nearer the stars than he that night; and only Mynedd Mawr had been higher than he when he had lain on the rocky head of Delyn.... Or was it, not the isolation of his body at all, but his isolation of soul, that had brought that mysterious and inexplicable and probably fallacious peace. While not ceasing to keep his carefully calculating eyes open, and every motor-fold of his brain intent on the preservation of his balance, he began to think of Delyn. He had stayed many days up there; some weeks perhaps; he couldn't have told you how long. Its rain had soaked him, and its winds dried him again; its streams had fed him and its herbage furnished his litter at night; but the sun itself had not warmed him more than had her impulsive looks and surrendering gestures when he had but lifted up a hand. With another eye than that that now measured the distances between girders and axles and ties, he seemed to see the rocks again, and the lake shining in its morning intactness, and the drowned bubbles of the fall in the Glyn, and the thin wind stroking the short grass, and the mountain-ashes under which they had sat, their leaves like finger-prints against the sky. He could see again the trout she had cooked for him--her breast had fluttered as those dying silvery things had fluttered, silvery as that dry old scar he had kissed. He could smell the smoke of her morning fire again, her hair, her breast.... And he could hear again the shrill warning note in that unique voice of hers that had first set him wondering whether, after all, it would "do." ... That quarrel had not been on that heart-breaking morning of their parting. There had been no quarrel then. No; it had been at something unguarded he had said about his sister and her friends. Yes, he saw again the insensate jealous flame in those seaweed eyes, and heard the ugly passionate cracking of the voice in which she had cried, "They noth-thing, your fine miss-es! They mar-ry house without a man if they could--they take house in their arms--they make those eyes at house, and kiss house, and call it cariad! You no dif-ferent from them! You go to your miss and say, 'I have house'--she want-t you then!----" It had taken a whole morning before he had had her, humble and sobbing and remorseful and enslaved, in his arms again.... No, it wouldn't have done to marry a temper like that--and, temper altogether apart, it wouldn't have done. There are only a few years of this world and its companionships, and, though your friends may have their twists and crankinesses, they are still your friends, all you are likely to have. Better be in the stream with them while you are here. He would only have been sorry for it later, on her account as well as on his own. She had been quicker to see that than he, and had spoken of it in her soft and halting English. At first he had laughed and said "Kiss me" ... but she had been right.... But John Willie, with a Wheel to descend, must not let these things take him too far from the business in hand. He had reached a chain in a great guiding sprocket, but he thought of what at any moment a hand upon a lever in the power-house far below might do, and of one of his father's men who had once been carried round shafting. No moving parts for him.... He looked down through an iron-framed lozenge at the people below. The grounds resembled a tray of many-coloured moving beads. All Llanyglo seemed to have run to see the stopped Wheel. Probably the Pier itself was half empty. If so, all the more room for anybody who wanted to watch, not a Wheel, but the moon lift her gilded sacrificial horn out of the sea.... There had been far too much drub-drub-drubbing. John Willie was weary of it. It was time he settled down. And Llanyglo itself seemed to have come to much the same conclusion. It had begun to make a restriction here and a regulation there, as if it wished to purge itself of its evil name. There was no doubt that for a time it had been a very sinful place, and ... (here John Willie, with a slow steady pull, hoisted himself to where he wished to be, on the long curved upper plate of a massive H, rivet-studded like a boiler, that was knitted with iron lace to other H's--John Willie must not venture too far down that slope unless he should suddenly acquire a fly's faculty for walking upside-down) ... and perhaps the town had begun to get a little frightened, as sinful people, and perhaps sinful towns also, sometimes do. But that would be all right presently. Llanyglo was going, in a manner of speaking, to be married. It was turning over, had turned over, a new leaf. Soon it would be a churlish thing to reproach it for a past that it had lived down; it was becoming sadder and wiser, and better able to distinguish between the things that would "do" and the things that would not. The less talk ... (here John Willie began to realise that he was not a fly, and to collect his nerves for the turn-over to the under side of that H that a few yards away dropped over, with a little gleam, into nothing) ... the less talk the soonest mended. He did not intend to say--anything--to June. Indeed he intended ... (there: that was rather a jerk to his shoulder socket, but he was safely underneath) ... indeed he intended that his attitude to June about such matters should be rather severe. This was not because June's own thoughts were in the least degree lax (she erred, if anywhere, on the prudish side), but because women were very tender things. A whisper was fatal to them. That was why John Willie was clinging now to that enormous piece of knitting of iron and upholstered carriages and electric light. He had climbed out in order that nobody should be able to say, after that, that.... Then it was that he knew, once and for ever, that this was a lie. Then it was that he knew that he was not where he was, suspended between the stars of heaven and the lamps of earth, on June's account. He was there because a gipsy girl had called him. This was his service, not of the pretty and pleasant June he was presently going to marry, but of one whom he had not married, of one he had not feared to compromise, of one who had known nothing, cared nothing, save that she had been lost in a wild and tender and beautiful love. She, none other, had called him---- Then, too, it was that there rose to him from below a faint yet high and shuddering "A-a-a-ah!" that was followed by a sudden cessation of all sound whatever save only a distant throb and pulsing in the Dancing-Hall. It surprised him for a moment; then he remembered. Of course. He had been seen---- She, none other, had called him, and he knew now that so she would continue to call him, wherever he might be--from his labour by day and from his rest by night, from his laughter with his children and his clasping of his wife. She would continue to call him until softness and ease should have done their slow and fatal work, would continue to call him until that nerve, with her harping on it, should have become dull.... He seemed to hear the echoes of that voiceless calling, diminishing through the years to come. They would end in a silence that his wife's innocent garrulity would never, never be able to break---- The faint throb in the Dancing-Hall also ceased. The Kursaal Gardens were a bead mat of faces. There was not a whisper. Delyn was not stiller. Unconscious that already he was black and torn and bleeding, he looked down from his girder upon the bead mat. He knew what, presently, if he came down alive, every bead there would be singing--his daring and his quixotry and his devotion, and the possession by June of a husband who would do this rather than suffer the lightest breath upon the mirror of her name---- He looked at them as he clung, scarce bigger than a speck, high in that webbed diadem of the Wheel---- And as he hung there, with only the guardian of the Trwyn light higher than he, and the rest of the descent still to make, he still could not decide, of the two things that oppressed his heart, which was the atonement and which the sin. II ADIEU "You're leaving Llanyglo? Well, holidays must come to an end.--You'd like another walk up the Trwyn? Very well; but you've seen all there is to see.... "Here we are.... What's going on at the Light? Oh, that's the Board of Trade, experimenting with some new fog apparatus or other. By the way, the Light people are rather sore because of a new Regulation, that they mustn't have lodgers at the farm; and also because they'd like to grow roses up the look-out wall, and that's prohibited too; I suppose the authorities think they'd be spending the day looking at the roses instead of at the ships. They've moved the rocket apparatus farther along the coast; they found it wasn't much use here, and it's turned out very successfully at Abercelyn.--Eh? Yes, where the manganese comes from. They still get a certain quantity, but there's peace in the Balkans or wherever it is for the moment, so nobody's growing very rich out of the mines here.... "Hallo, that's rather a coincidence. Don't look round too quickly. You see that tallish man over there? I don't suppose you've even seen him before; as a matter of fact he hasn't been--er--to be seen. He got into trouble once; in plain English, they put him in prison. His name's Armfield, and his trouble was all about Llanyglo. Awkward things, meetings like these. I think Armfield's a capital chap, and I should like to go and talk to him; but prison's a cruel thing, and you never know how the poor fellow himself feels about it.... Ah! As I thought, he looks rather broken. If you don't mind we won't watch him. Come on to the Dinas and have a smoke.... * * * * * "How's John Willie Garden? Perfectly rosy, if beginning to get a bit fat. Lucky dog! Four children, two boys and two girls, quite an amiable chatter-box of a wife, and rich enough to buy almost anything he wants. Lucky, lucky dog!--Did I tell you he was the adopted Conservative Free Trade candidate for one of the Manchester divisions? Not that he cares a snap about Free Trade politically; economically it merely happens to be a good part of his bread and butter; but then you have to be careful about what you say on platforms, and so John Willie talks like the editor of the _Spectator_ himself. June Garden runs her two houses, one here and one in Manchester, like clockwork, and they go backwards and forwards between them in a really regal car. Every tramp and gipsy on the road knows that car. However fast he's driving, John Willie always pulls up and gives them a shilling. Just a foible of his. We all have 'em in one shape or form. "Llanyglo's going in heartily for these new proposals for advertising the town out of the rates. A young man called Ithel Williams is very keen on it; he's a son of Tudor Williams, the Tudor Williams who used to be M.P. for this division. Young Ithel's got rather a nice billet here, as Librarian or something for the Council, and if this new thing goes through he'll be quite in clover.--Jobbery? Well, I suppose that's the name for it, but personally I'm not altogether against it. It seems to me that the only alternative is putting these berths up for competitive examination, which in my opinion's failed all along the line, so find the right man and then job him in, I say.--The right man's so frequently a relative? Well ... there you are. That _is_ the weak spot. But there's always a crab somewhere.... * * * * * "I wonder if Armfield's gone yet? Let's have a look.... No, he's still there.... * * * * * "A good season? Yes, from all accounts it's been a very good season. There have been better from the purely money point of view, I should say, but after all everybody can't be everything, and every place can't get all there is. Llanyglo, like other places, has its natural limits of expansion. I don't think it will get any bigger yet awhile. There's no doubt the Wakes people were the people who flung the money about, and they've a little fallen off; but even if Llanyglo has to write down some of its obligations it will probably gain in the long run. A section of the Council's coming to see that, and is pressing for reconstruction (that's always rather wonderful to me, that they should construct things of solid materials and then reconstruct them by saying they cost less than they did); but that's the Council's business, or rather the powers behind the Council. Edward Garden isn't one of these any longer, at any rate not to the extent he was. He sits in Manchester and makes towns in Canada now. But he still looks at letters under his glasses, and over them, and backwards and forwards and upside down, and then looks mildly up at you and says the letter seems to be a letter.... "A last look at the place: there you are: bay, Promenade, Pier, the ring of mountains behind. It grew from a few fishermen's huts to over-capitalisation in a very few years. And there's Terry Armfield, still looking at it all, like a not very old Rip Van Winkle. I wonder what he's thinking! I suppose he couldn't keep away, but must come and remember it as it was and dream over it again as it was never, never to be.... Walk past quickly; he's sobbing, poor chap. His dream was of a place--I don't know how to describe it--all friendliness and loveliness and graciousness, fowl and flesh and good red-herring all in one, so to speak, what you might call a diaphanous sort of place, a jolly place to think of during those few minutes of the morning or evening when you're not quite asleep and not quite awake, but--hm!--I'm not so sure ... not in this imperfect world.... "Anyway, that down there is what he sees.... "I suppose the other wouldn't have done.... "Shall we go?" THE END * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed. 
39903	----	Star of Mercia Historical Tales of Wales and the Marches _by_ Blanche Devereux _With an Introduction by_ Ernest Rhys Jonathan Cape Eleven Gower Street, London _First published 1922 All rights reserved_ _Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_ INTRODUCTION There are three reading-publics to which a tale-writer who attempts the uncertain business of writing about Wales may appeal. One is the homebred Welsh public that asks for a tale in the old tongue, _yr hen iaith_, and has never been quite satisfied, I believe, by any novel or short story about its life, or its real or romantic concerns, written in English. The second is the quasi-Celtic public, which may or may not know the _Mabinogion_ or Borrow's _Wild Wales_, and is glad of anything that gets the romance atmosphere. The third is the ordinary fiction-loving English public, which asks for a good story, rather likes a Welsh background as in Blackmore's _Maid of Sker_ (a much better book than _Lorna Doone_ to my mind), and does not trouble about the fidelity of the local colour in the reality of the setting. It is from the second and third of these audiences that Miss Devereux can look to gain her "creel-full of listeners," as the story of _The Yellow Hag_ has it. She has, to begin with, the genuine tale-teller's power of using a motive, a bit of legend, or a proverbial and stated episode, and giving it fresh life and something original out of her own fantasy. In her way of narrative, she does not adopt any rigorous ancientry. She has a sporting sense in dealing with an archaic character like _Mogneid_, and is satisfied to see him hammer at a door with the butt of his riding-whip. She will make _Gildas_ and _St. David_ or _Dewi Sant_, collogue as they never did in the old time before us; and devise a comedy and a drunkard's tragedy of her own for a wicked old sinner like King _Gwrthyrn_, just as she mixes chalk and charcoal freely in the Saxon cartoons that follow the Welsh. The important thing is, she makes her people live, and by the bold infusion of the same old human nature with prehistoric Welsh and old chronicler's English, she succeeds in creating a region of her own. It is not literally Cymric or Saxon; but it is instinct with the fears, loves, hopes and appetites that never decay, and realizes alike the drunkard's glut and the saint's mixed piety and shrewd sense. In her story of _Saint David_ she has gone to the old "Lives" and the documents for some of her colour. There are passages that may terrify the modern reader, who has no Welsh and does not know how to pronounce _Amherawdwr_ (the Welsh form of imperator or emperor), _Dyfnwal_, _Llywel_ or _Cynyr_. The average English reader who is brought up on soft and sibilant C's and i-sounding Y's will probably end by turning the last name into "sinner" in vain compromise. And possibly Miss Devereux is too hard on the average un-Celtic reader; for though she turns _Gwy_ into Wye, she retains _Dyfi_ for Dovey. But these are the pleasant little inconsistencies that exist in every English writer, from Shakespeare and Ben Jonson to Sir Walter Scott and George Meredith, who has attacked the impregnable old fortress of the British tongue. It is interesting to compare the two tales of wilder Wales with those of Mercia and Saxondom that succeed them in this mixed story-book. The first are realized almost entirely, you will discover, from the man's point of view. The Saxon tales are more intimately felt, and realized from the woman's dramatic angle. It is avowedly so in the chronicle of Winifred, Ebba's daughter, telling the grim love-story of Earl Sweyn the Nithing and Algive. This is in texture, and reality of presentment, maintaining the pseudo-archaic mode with just the faintest reminder of the modern tale-teller pulling the puppet-strings, on the whole the completest of all these new-old tales. In the portrait of Algive, tenderly and joyously painted, there is a faint reminiscence of a Celtic romance-heroine like Olwen (in the _Mabinogion_), which adds to the charm. And in other ways it will be found by the story-loving and unprejudiced reader, who reads for the pleasure of the thing, and not for criticism or edification, that these _Tales of Two Regions_ gain by carrying over at times the atmosphere of the one--never so lightly indicated--into the actual presentment of the other. ERNEST RHYS. 1922. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 5 GWRTHEYRN THE DRUNKARD 11 DEWI SANT 35 STAR OF MERCIA 65 EARL SWEYN THE NITHING 86 EDITH'S WELL 109 RICHARD THE SCROB 120 Gwrtheyrn the Drunkard "_Vortigern of repulsive lips, who, drunken, gave up the Isle of Thanet to Hengist._" --WELSH TRIADS. Mogneid son of Votecori tapped upon the lintel of the open doorway and called "Ho, there! Is there refreshment for wayfarers?" From within came a luxurious sound of snoring. Mogneid muttered a curse, and began to hammer impatiently with the butt of his riding-whip. The father of the household coughed, rolled heavily from his bed of rushes, and appeared at the door--an old man, blinking with sleep, but collected and courteous. "What, lord?" said he. "There is tired you are now! How may I serve you? Please you share the shelter of my roof till evening!" "Nay, not so," Mogneid replied, "I am in haste to reach my journey's end. Give us to drink, sir, I pray you--beer, milk, or water--what you will--anything! We are dried up with this dust! And tell me, if you can, how far hence dwells Gwrtheyrn the King?" Without waiting to answer, the old man hobbled away, and returned a few minutes later with a big stone pitcher and two little cups of horn. "Alack, my friend," he grumbled, "they have taken all the beer. They are all gone to mow the hay, look you, my son and the women! and I am left to milk the cows and tend the livestock. Sore thing it is that old age comes so soon! Well, lord, if ye will not stay to cleanse your feet and enter my dwelling, let us at least converse in the shade. Here is new milk, that quenches thirst." He led Mogneid and his four serving-men beneath the boughs of a great hawthorn-tree, the only ornament of his straw-littered, pig-frequented entrance-yard. "Seek ye King Gwrtheyrn?" He dropped thankfully on to a low seat surrounding the tree trunk, and Mogneid sat down beside him, quaffed at the creamy liquor, and wiped the dust and sweat from his countenance. The traveller was a middle-aged man, thin and muscular, with a dark grizzled beard, and vague-looking light blue eyes that missed sight of nothing that went on around him. Upon the backs of his hands was tattooed a mystic design of circles interlaced. "I am from the land of Dyfed, reverend sir," he answered, "and I travel to the court of Gwrtheyrn son of Guitaul, lord of Ewyas, of Erging, and of Caer Glouwy. My folk were somewhat akin to his, many a generation ago, and there is talk of a marriage between my niece and a lord of Gwent who follows King Gwrtheyrn. If I mistake not greatly, I am now not very far from my kinsman's palace." "Noble lord," his host rejoined, "if ye be akin to Gwrtheyrn our King, doubtless ye lament, as we do, his fall from greatness. Our Gwrtheyrn, heaven protect him! was lord of all the armies of Britain--like the commanders of the Romans, see you now; and in truth a very great prince is he; none braver, or taller, or more just and more generous. But the pirates came by sea on every side; and those Britons of the East--they cannot fight like us men of the west; so King Gwrtheyrn sought to procure peace, that the land might have time to rest and gather her strength. When the chieftains of the Saxons, or Jutes, as they call that tribe of them, came to confer with him, they feasted well together, and Gwrtheyrn looked with eyes of love upon the daughter of Hengist the Jute; and he wedded her, and gave to her kinsmen a parcel of land in Kent, to hold under him, that they might aid him to beat off all other robbers. But after this there was no peace at all. God's curse on the Saxon ruffians! Would they keep within their boundaries, think you? Nay, they disquieted the Britons upon every side. Then the lords of Britain, with old Emrys at their head, grew angry, and refused to follow Gwrtheyrn longer: even Gwrthefyr, his son by the Roman woman, declared for another Amherawdwr[1] and other ways. So what was left to Gwrtheyrn, when they had taken from him the government of Britain, but to dwell here in the land of his fathers, amongst his own natural born people, and rule over us?--and there is well he does rule over us--yes, yes! I and my sons were with him in his army, in the grand old days--not so very long ago, truly. And behold me now--a life fit for a cart-horse! And I a free tribesman of Gwrtheyrnion!" [1] Imperator. "Why, from thy saying," said Mogneid, "thou bearest great love to Gwrtheyrn." "Indeed yes!" cried the old man. "These are ill times we live in! Emrys commands in Britain now, or would command--but when all is said and done, he is only lord of Morganwg. And he is a stark Roman, who will have all things cut and dried about him. I tell you, I have a very little opinion of these Romans, and of them who follow in their steps. I have often heard my father tell of them. They came to our land, and cut down our fair sheltering forests, and carried away our fighting men to their own wars, so that Britain was left naked to the Saxons. As for their priests--sir, I perceive you to be from the west, where, I hear, priests are few.... Well, well! father Pewlin says, when the ague torments me, 'Pray that thou mayest be given strength to bear the trial.' Not such for me! I have fastened a scrap of my clothing above the old healing--well out yonder." "The old gods are indeed very wise! And Gwrtheyrn son of Guitaul? How does he pass his time?" "Alack that I must tell it! Is the caged beast as princely and as mighty as he that roams abroad where he will?... Sometimes he hunteth the stag or the boar--and there is metheglin, or wine, perchance--and good beer. What else is left to our lord Gwrtheyrn? he who was a hero in good King Arthur's time! That fat-faced Queen--I trow she is no stay to him! 'The sweet Verge of Drunkenness!' That was a song my father used to sing." "Most honoured sir," Mogneid broke in, "I thank you very heartily for your kind entertainment. But I must press on upon my road. I shall praise your hospitality to my noble cousin, believe you me. Tell me, I pray you, how soon I may be with him?" "Fifteen miles and more is Caer Gwrtheyrn from here. Cross you Clywedog and Ithon both. From the ford of Ithon there is a bridle-track the whole way. May the Saints and Mary keep you! and all the powers that be! May you suffer no violence, and may no goblin or hound of hell affright you!" "May all the powers bless you, my father! May the She-Greyhound of the Heavens,[2] who maketh fat both land and cattle, favour you! Fare ye well!" [2] Ceridwen. Mogneid and his little train set forth once more. They reached the glen of Trawscoed in the cool of the evening when the sky was aglow with amber lights and calm turquoise depths. Caer Gwrtheyrn, the residence of the King of this country, which took the name of Gwrtheyrion from its then lord, rose a mile or so before them, upon the heights of Mynydd Denarch. As the Demetian cast his eye over the surrounding country, in the east, upon the track that descended from the hills of Gref-o-dig and Bron-y-Garn-llwyd, he caught sight of what looked to him like the glint of the sun on steel helmet and corslet. Mogneid lost no time. He quickened his pace, and reached the gateway of Caer Gwrtheyrn in about fifteen minutes. Soon the customary ritual was fulfilled: his feet were bathed by the porter, to signify his acceptance of hospitality for the night, and the King's door-keeper ushered him into the castle hall. It was dark already there. The torches smoked foully. There was a manifold smell of beer, roast meat, barley-broth, rosemary and woodruff, dogs and humanity. Mogneid felt that he could never find his way except perhaps by the sense of touch. Presently a loud, harsh voice rang out: "Who is it? Who? What say you? Thou didst not inquire? What have I told thee? I will have the name and ancestry of every considerable visitor to my house--announced to me"--the voice spoke thickly--"as has always been my wont! Curse thee for a numskull! Whom have we here?" Mogneid, who had reached the head of the board, looked up, and saw, scowling down upon him, a gigantic, loosely-built personage, of dignified bearing for all his violence--the wreck of a fine man, with a flushed face and swollen, bloodshot eyes--Gwrtheyrn, King of Gwrtheyrnion, Erging and Ewyas, whom the Britons had deposed from the sovereignty of them all for all his ill-judged policy and for what they deemed extravagant, un-British notions--Gwrtheyrn the Goidel, of the foreign "repulsive" lips.[3] [3] Supposedly so called from his Goidelic accent in speaking British. "Gracious lord," said Mogneid, "it is your humble kinsman, Mogneid, son of Votecori, son of Maelumi, from the land of Dyfed, praying that he may sojourn awhile under the King's protection. There is a family matter in question, O Gwrtheyrn, in which I seek the aid of the chieftain of my tribe." "Son of Votecori!" cried Gwrtheyrn, with outstretched hand. "My father's cousin's son! Now welcome, kinsman. Ho! bring meat and wine for the Lord Mogneid! Thou must eat ere we further confer." Seated by the side of his host, the new-comer feasted upon broiled mutton-chops, which were carried in from without, for during the summer weather Gwrtheyrn's food was cooked in a kitchen in an outhouse. The King's hall was crowded, but the company presented few elements of interest to the man of Dyfed. The Jutish Queen sat upon Gwrtheyrn's other hand, counting the stitches in her needlework; she had a broad face, a square full chin, and heavy auburn plaits. There were a few old women, her attendants; the huntsmen, servants, and men-at-arms; some rustic noblemen, talkative and disputatious; and some half-dozen of the King's pages or foster-sons, who squabbled in whispers over noughts and crosses chalked upon the empty hearth-stone. "Lord," said Mogneid, "there come others to claim hospitality of thee ere nightfall, I do think. As I looked back upon the eastern valley, I beheld a party of horsemen, clad in steel armour, such as the Romans wear." "Art clever, kinsman," Gwrtheyrn replied. "It is Emrys, to a certainty! or emissaries of his! Well that we are warned. They shall be warmly received, I promise!" "Whence comes Ambrosius?" Mogneid asked. "As I travelled hither, I heard of him at Caerdydd." "Look you, cousin," said Gwrtheyrn, "Ambrosius and I have some contention toward, concerning my lordship of Buallt, of which this overweening person claims the right to dispose, forsooth!--One cup more, kinsman Mogneid; it is of the Kentish vintage. Now when these Romanizers----" "They are here," said Mogneid. In truth, the clatter of horses' hooves resounded outside the building, and the voices of men. Twenty mail-clad soldiers entered the hall, with a keen-faced leader at their head. "Greeting, King Gwrtheyrn," the officer cried, "from Ambrosius the Imperator!" "Greeting!" returned Gwrtheyrn shortly. "What would the Lord Emrys say to us by your lips?" "Thus says Aurelius Ambrosius to you, O Gwrtheyrn King of Erging: The renowned and mighty lord Ambrosius himself is now at Buallt, whither he is come to bestow the lordship of those lands--which are his as much as thine by hereditary right, be it said--upon the valiant prince Pascent thy son, for fitting appanage and livelihood. And he charges thee, O Gwrtheyrn, to attend him straightway, upon the morrow, to witness the installation of thy said son in all due form and order." "Fore God!" Gwrtheyrn roared, "this is passing insolence! Hence to thy master, sir, and tell him that Gwrtheyrn permits not that another force from him what is his own! Or if it be too late now to make the return journey, why, there are my villeins' cow-houses at your service for the night. Ye shall have a guard set over you while ye are sleeping. Out of our presence, instantly, by blessed Paul!" "So be it," said the soldier. "We will back to the lord of Britain." While they were departing, the Queen and her women rose and withdrew. The foster-children went out into the twilit courtyard to play; the servants, after removing the dishes and the victuals, one by one left the room. Mogneid drew his seat closer to that of Gwrtheyrn. "Ticklish fellows, these mongrel Romans," he observed. The King was drinking deeply; the veins of his forehead still throbbed with rage and shame. By and by he put down his cup, and began to talk, with much gesticulation. "Romans! Romans! Romans! Curse them all, high and low, up and down!... Ambrosius their tyrant, to the lousiest beggar's brat--and----What good are they to the clans of Britain?--with their fine habits and their sickly vices? What good to me was my wife Severa, Maxen's daughter? Ye see what sons she brought me--Gwrthefyr, and Cyndeyrn, and Pascent--cleave to Ambrosius, and forsake their own father! Here, in the west, are men mightier and taller and braver than all their enfeebled town-dwellers. Good fighting Goidels...." "All men do know as much," said the other. "For my part, I would that my kinsmen were the chief men of the land." "God!" panted Gwrtheyrn. "What is gone is gone--for ever." He looked upon his companion with a watery eye. "Thou art verily welcome, good Mogneid. A man is always glad to gossip with one of his own blood, especially after long time of dreariness. Few guests knock at my castle-gate--we are out of the run of life nowadays, alas! alas!" The monotony and the squalor were all too evident. "It were surely unjust," said Mogneid, in soothing tones, "that Buallt should be taken from thee." "And shall I suffer it? I have my favourite hunting-lodge in that lordship. They are my lands--my lands! It pleases me to dwell there!" Gwrtheyrn shouted with maudlin vehemence. "What is your purpose, O King?" "Well, that--I know not. But he shall not have my lands! Look you, kinsman, it is near the harvest-time: I think my men will not come willingly to arms." "Then speak Ambrosius fair, biding thy time. Go not to Buallt, if thou like not the indignity; and when the harvest is over, levy thy forces and win back thine own. Is there difficulty in this?" "All the priests are ever on the old fox's side. A man cannot well struggle if he have holy Church against him. These are evil days indeed. They meddle in everything, these rascally adze-heads.[4] Now in the days of old, we could worship whom we would, aye, and how we would. Prosperous days!... There were the sacred fires at the spring and at the fall--those were things of power; they made the earth yield bravely and plenteously. I remember I have run through the bonfires, myself, many a time, when I was a child. And the magic of the wise ones--I swear each spell was worth ten blessings of a priest!" [4] Celtic priests, from their form of tonsure. "The King speaks soothly. In Dyfed there are many who do think as we, and who will scarcely permit the new-fangled faith to show its head. It is not too late, O King, to throw off the yoke of the Romanizers. Ye are all the world yet to your own people; they hate to see you idle and dispossessed. There are many men of my country eager to rise at your bidding: I know their minds." "Cousin, this is a cheerful saying! Thy coming has filled me with hope." "Know then that the ancient wisdom is mine, perfectly: from my childhood was I trained up in it by the last survivors of the venerable sacred order. Listen, then, my lord, that should be King of all the kings of Britain, to the words of the high gods that they have spoken unto Mogneid! Thus and thus, O Gwrtheyrn, foretold the entrails of the slave-boy accepted of Ceridwen...." * * * * * "Lord King," said Eliseg the chief huntsman, "it is not meet, nor is it wise, to talk of intimate matters with the scavenger of the by-ways. In other words, master, there is an old crafty bird, called cuckoo, who stealeth the nests of others that his own offspring may grow and flourish. Few have seen the cuckoo, but there are some that have had sight of him. The cuckoo is perfectly familiar to me." "Aye, so," said Dyfnwal the King's chamberlain. "By Hu the Mighty! speak plainly, Eliseg, or else hold thy tongue, thou naughty rogue!" cried Gwrtheyrn; but he smiled upon his trusty servant. "Lord, I think ye cannot know what ye are about. The cuckoo of my simile, look you, he is the new-come guest, the lord from Dyfed, from whom the King has no secrets. This is not the first time this man has crossed my way. In Dyfed I was born, and there my wife's parents do still dwell. O King, this is Mogneid the Druid, of very evil fame!" "The devil take thee for a lying slanderer! Mogneid is near of kin to me, within the nine degrees. He is a worthy prince, and fit to company me in all my undertakings. Well, and if he be learned in the ancient wise things--what can we show to-day to compare with the might of our forefathers?" "By my dogs and my horns and my leashes! King Gwrtheyrn," said Eliseg, "we seek not to meddle impertinently, Dyfnwal and I, look you. But I have served you four and thirty years, and Dyfnwal thirty, day in and day out, in storm and shine, and we would not, for the love we bear you, that ye should now ride for a fall." "We speak as your friends," Dyfnwal grunted. "It is a dangerous reptile ye have sheltered," continued the other. "Dreaded is he throughout the land of Dyfed for his unfathomable deeds. He has all the art of the Druids; and he is the last of the brood, God be praised! The days of darkness are over, my king: men will no longer take succour from the wiles of devils, thanks be to the Lord Christ and to Mary the dear Lady of mankind!" "Will ye hold your peace?" stormed the King. "Get you gone, both of you, or I will have your tongues slit for you! What next, what next, I ask you?" "The tantrums of him!" said Eliseg, when they two were outside the door. "Dyfnwal, look you, I fear that this fellow will bring peril upon the King. He was never up to good from the hour wherein he first drew breath. He is up and down the country, about and about, each day, questioning every gaffer and goodwife, every lad, lass, and babe that will waste the precious hours talking with him. Already Lord Gwrtheyrn is never from the metheglin. We must let nothing escape us, lest our master be undone." "I have eyes," said Dyfnwal. "I use them." "Hist! I see him," exclaimed the huntsman. "Grows there gold in the villeins' hay-meadow, think you?" Within the hall, Gwrtheyrn raged and muttered. When his wrath began to cool, he felt the want of the congenial society of Mogneid. This King's life was a lonely one. The Queen spent hours at spinning and carding, weaving and embroidery; and although she would listen, nodding and smiling, at any time to her husband's remarks, she seldom spoke, and her thoughts seemed always far away, at rest upon things serene and pleasant. So it came about that he seldom sought her company. Why must his kinsman tarry so long from him? wondered Gwrtheyrn. He gulped down a cupful of metheglin, and then another, and subsided into a chair, to wait. Mogneid came up the hill, smiling to himself. He knew the lie of the country of Gwrtheyrnion well by now, and the disposition of its people. He entered the castle hall. To his surprise, early in the day though it was, Gwrtheyrn sat propping himself nicely in his chair of state: a gold cup, relic of the sack of some Romano-British villa, lay at his feet, and there were splashes of metheglin on the floor. The King's mood was benign and expansive. "Want thee--tell me," he greeted him. "Old preaching devil! Alleluia! and they all ran away! Whatshisname?" "Garmon, perhaps," answered Mogneid. Affecting indifference, he watched his kinsman narrowly. "Garmon--yes--yes--that's he. Father of the king of devils! Well, Garmon--he's here. He's sent me a message." ... Gwrtheyrn seized his cousin's arm. "I'll tell thee a secret. Knowest thou my first wife's niece? Knowest her? A most sweet lass! She came to me, two years ago, being widowed and very young, and having no protector. I have her now, in the little summer dwelling of Rhaiadr Gwy. None know--the Queen knows not. Well.... It has leaked out somehow.... Holy Garmon sends to tell me that we are a scandal far and wide, and bids me mend my way of life. The old fool! Calls her my daughter! Understand, she's not my daughter. Not my daughter! Wife's niece!" "Thou must send her away!" cried Mogneid. "Don't want to send her away. 'Tis a pretty chuck--she pleases me.... Besides"--he beamed--"we have a son." "All this is nought!" Mogneid insisted harshly. "Will you risk all we have schemed for, my lord, for one girl? Put her from you, I say!" He had used too rough a tone. A look of distress crept across the stupor of the King's countenance. "This priesthood! 'tis a cursed powerful thing," he said, with the stirrings of cunning apparent. "Old Garmon--he has the ear of Ambrosius. And these Christians show forth miracles in plenty." "My lord, they are not the only wonder-workers. Can it be that the wise men of old, who raised the giant stones for the temples, and forged the swords and shields that none now can fashion, were weaker than these unlettered saints? And their lore abides in me, and in some few instructed ones in the west country. Now, Gwrtheyrn, my king, what can a man's will do not, if he foster and train it by supernatural discipline? And what is the first work of the will but to sink our enemies?" "What is the end of man, Mogneid?" said Gwrtheyrn. "Shall he be born again, Mogneid? Perhaps from the crop of a hen? Shall he? From the crop of a hen!"[5] [5] Gwrtheyrn had Taliesin's mystical account of his incarnations in mind. "There is no end to the soul," Mogneid replied. "And every soul returns to a body when he may find one. Come, O King, take heart. We shall trample upon the necks of Ambrosius and Garmon." "Kinsman, do what you can," said the King. "I rely on you." Mogneid left him then, and sought the Queen's apartment. He despised the King's wife, but as a tool she might be useful. Gwrtheyrn, sobered now, beat his brow in turmoil of another sort. "Beast or bird"--he cried--"man or woman--or wandering, bodiless spirit! Or purgation by fire--or to roast in flames for ever! I believe--I believe in hell! God--if Thou beest God ... O Christ, Christ! I am lost--I cannot repent!" Germanus of Auxerre and his colleague Lupus came to Caer Gwrtheyrn, aflame with zeal for God and for the Church. In his palace hall they upbraided King Gwrtheyrn, calling him the shame and scandal of all Britain. As for the royal culprit, he would not hear them patiently. Furious words were bandied between them. "Things shall be as I will!" roared Gwrtheyrn. "Am I not lord in my own dominions? Presumptious shaveling! what thinkest thou I care for thy preachments?" "O Gwrtheyrn, egregious sinner!" said Germanus. "Know that we have power behind us. Ambrosius, who is near at hand with his army, will soon be here, to punish or to break thee. Who will comfort thee with the rites of holy Church if we proclaim thee outcast? Fortunate art thou if thou escape so easily. Lupus and I will fast upon the Lord God until He grant our demands concerning thee. Ere many days, heaven will pour down fire upon thee, to shrivel up thee and thine and all thine ill-famed land!" This curse carried such terror to all standing by that even Mogneid durst not suggest that the King should order the seizure of the holy men, and they two passed out and went their way. Said Mogneid to Gwrtheyrn: "If Ambrosius come upon us, and Garmon and his monks from Llanharmon, we are undone, and they will surely do thee to death. I can think of only one resource. Thy Queen--has she not Saxon kindred about Pengwern, not forty miles away? I think she will be persuaded to send them messages. We will make allies of them; and should Ambrosius besiege this fortress, we can hold out within, until the Saxons come to deliver us." "Do what thou wilt," answered Gwrtheyrn. "Speak thou to my wife. By now she must have heard some story of my pretty dear." The Queen was not jealous; and very readily she dispatched a runic writing and another token to a kinsman of hers whom she knew to be commanding the Saxon outposts at Pengwern. These were entrusted to three huntsmen of the King's, who had by heart every path and by-track in the country. Gwrtheyrn and Mogneid made fast the defences, and provided arms for every man of the King's subjects near at hand who could be spared from gathering in the harvest in feverish haste. But, on the morning of the next day, Eliseg brought dire tidings to Caer Gwrtheyrn. The monks of Cilfachau had taken all three messengers, and had carried them off to Germanus at Buallt. And the army of Ambrosius had been seen moving upon Gwrtheyrn's palace. "We must to Llanaelhairn, in the valley that opens into Lleyn from the bay of Arvon," said Gwrtheyrn. "There it will be hard for them to follow us." "My plans have failed," thought Mogneid. "I came hither too late. Cousin Gwrtheyrn cannot weather this storm." In a very little while, their preparations were made and they set out: the King and the Druid; the Queen upon a pillion behind Eliseg; Dyfnwal and all the men of the household, a few of the women whose homes were inaccessible, and every man of the royal hamlet who could be quickly armed and mounted--leaving Caer Gwrtheyrn to whatsoever might befall. For seven hours they rode to the north-west. After passing the confines of Gwrtheyrn's own lands, they kept to the course of the Wye, which river became narrower and more rapid with every frequent bend. They travelled slowly, for they were an unwieldy party. About sunset, an ominous smoky glare appeared in the sky in the region they had abandoned. "They burn Caer Gwrtheyrn!" said the King; and he wept uncontrollably. At nightfall they came to the outskirts of the waste about Plinlimmon. This was an uninhabited tract, part oak and elm thicket, part alder-shaded swamp. In the higher reaches, huge craggy hills arose like spectral scaly monsters gathering their strength for a spring. Beyond lay the open moorland where Wye has its rising, and where Severn is a tiny trickle, whose source is unknown to man. Owls hooted in this wooded valley, and there were strange flutterings, squeakings and snappings, and patterings over the ground. The King's men refused to go farther. "The dogs of hell are abroad, lord!" cried one. "Arawn's hounds--yes, yes! Once it is dark, they roam this desert place. There is fearful they are now. White they are, every one, with rose-red ears, and their jaws foam and drip. And the man who sees them--sure to be ailing from that very hour, and die before long, and that is a fact. Very, very unlucky! Let us stay where we are, now!" They wailed and besought so piteously that Gwrtheyrn had to permit a halt in spite of the friendly moonlight, and of Mogneid's whispered urgings. A long low cave was near at hand: into it they packed, shivering in the night-mist, for they durst not kindle a fire. They passed a restless night; only the Queen slept soundly in the cave on the borders of the haunted forest. Then on once more over the rocky track that led through Arwystli and Meirionedd to their goal, the peninsula of Lleyn. "I dreamed of Garmon," said Gwrtheyrn, as they started. "His face glowed white, like hottest iron, kinsman Mogneid--I cannot forget it. He is fasting upon his God, to procure my destruction." Mogneid answered nothing, but gnawed his lip. "Llanaelhairn must we make upon the morrow," continued the King. "It is a little old fortress of my father's building, for to guard the valley beneath Yr Eifl from attack by sea: I myself have not set foot there for more than thirty years. The way thither is little known, and I wager Emrys will be finely entangled once or twice if he endeavour to follow us. But there are caretakers, and there should be flocks and herds for our regaling." That night they spent in Arthog. A hospitable Goidelic lord overwhelmed them with attentions, giving them what food he had, and they passed the night in and about his dwelling. Across the estuary of the Mawddach, the forsaken druidic stones showed white and awful. By noon next day, they had reached the borders of Lleyn. By late afternoon, as they pursued their rough, scarcely distinguishable, interminable way, the Queen grew querulous. She could ride no longer; every muscle in her body ached; she must drink deeply from a tumbling spring that ran across their path, and bathe her face, hands, and feet; she was hungry, and here were bilberries. Surely they were safe from their enemies? And every one was sun-dried and speechless! Well, she might rest a breathing-while: they might all stretch their limbs and eat and drink their fill. "But come thou on with me, cousin," said Gwrtheyrn. "I cannot stay still. We will go ahead, and spy over the hills before us, and seek the readiest way." To the commander of the men-at-arms: "Look you, tarry not long, for sunset will soon be upon us." Said Eliseg to Dyfnwal, "They are gone together, the King and he. I like not the evil lowering of his face this day. We should follow them." "At once!" said Dyfnwal. "The bay and the roan are the fleetest." The sky had clouded over, and there was a rainy light in the western quarter. "Look yonder!" cried Mogneid, when they had ridden some two miles farther. A great army of horsemen was winding about the foot of the hills of Pennant, and at their head was something, broad and scarlet-gleaming, that flapped in the evening breeze--surely the dragon-standard of Ambrosius. "Then the end is come," said Mogneid. "On to Llanaelhairn!" Gwrtheyrn exclaimed. "Once there, we can get the cattle within, and hold the ford, belike, with my people that dwell there. Hasten, kinsman, hasten! The others have sure guides; they cannot miss the way." When they reached the ford of the little brook, now called by King Gwrtheyrn's name, that flowed beneath the walls of the fortress of Llanaelhairn, the moon was shining, and the clouds were fewer. They crossed the castle forecourt. Not a soul was about, for the land-maer and his family had gone to the upper pastures to bring in the sheep and cattle. As they opened the hall door, the stifling atmosphere beat heavily against their faces. A fierce fire was burning, upon which the women of the household had lately roasted whole the carcasses of several sheep. After glancing around, Mogneid sped up the stairway leading into the look-out tower, and Gwrtheyrn followed him into the small, low chamber at the top. He found Mogneid before its half-ruinous window, tugging at the rusty iron grating that screened the aperture. Presently the mortar that had held it crumbled, the whole frame-work came away in Mogneid's hands, and he cast it violently upon the floor. Then he returned to the window. Above him the heights of the Rivals towered; away to the west, the sea-waves lapped sullenly; below, Nant Gwrtheyrn ran very low in its stony bed. "What hope is there now?" cried Gwrtheyrn the King. "What hast thou done for me, Mogneid my kinsman, who promised so much? Garmon is a greater curser than thou--his magic mightier. The ancient gods have lied to thee, Mogneid--they delude thee--thou art not their favoured one! Wilt thou give me back my kingdoms, thou who hast all things of power at thy fingers' ends!" He rushed upon the other with a snarl like a wild beast's. Mogneid son of Votecori turned upon him a look that scorched, and Gwrtheyrn cowered back against the wall, shaking from head to foot. "Thou scum of dross! Thou refuse thing! Thou drunkard and son of drunkards! Aye, a high destiny hadst thou once--until thou gavest over thy will to sloth and rottenness! Talk ye of hope, my lord? Was Ambrosius ever known to spare? Well, there is one way--by this opening, see you?--it is fully wide enough: a man may lower himself; it is a swift ending. Concerning what will follow, these Christians lie. Perchance thou wilt become a silvery salmon, very wise, in Wye or Dyfi; or a wallowing hog; or Emperor of the West, perchance, or Pope of Rome. Jump, Gwrtheyrn, King of Gwrtheyrnion, Buallt, Erging, Ewyas, and Caer Glouwy, sometime Pendragon of all Britain, and flee shame!" "Shame--only that ... I must flee shame!" muttered Gwrtheyrn, climbing into the window as though compelled by the fascination of Mogneid's eye. "I must--I will ... I cannot...." He faltered on the edge, but the Druid, standing behind, pushed him, and his long body fell hurtling through the air. After peering for a moment at a certain motionless dark patch upon the stones below, Mogneid descended the staircase, in haste to make his escape. Eliseg and Dyfnwal caught him in the doorway. They carried him, bound hand and foot, into the hall, and threw him upon the fire that still burned brightly. After a little while, they took him off the fire, and hacked off his head with a chopper that was used for jointing meat. Dewi Sant "_O holy David, our bishop, take away our sadness._" David strode along the winding road: his feet were bare, his head was bare and tonsured, and one garment, of coarse felt, but snowy white, was his only bodily covering. The sun beat down upon him; the sky, of a deep, throbbing blue, held few clouds, and they silvery and sweetly-curved as the breast-feathers of a dove; on his left, the sea dazzled; before and about him, small columns of dust twirled mischievously. David's eyes, dark and bright, feasted untiringly upon the life and growth around him, and he sang as he went. "Dancing is the sea, the winds are dancing also: Breath of angels hath the sun-warmed hay, the poppies are out in scarlet. Good thing it is for a man to strive in his lifetime. "A mighty chorus echoeth from the bed of ocean: There is also the poem of the flight of birds. Who would conquer sin, must learn praise and gratitude. "Who hath set the thrift in the rocks that are smooth and barren? Who nourisheth the little sweet rose that maketh a garden of the sand-dunes? How can a man wander, when for him the Love of God is nailed on high? "The corn-ears are purple-ripe: Generous gifts bring the apple-boughs against the season of All Saints. Very good is song, that giveth cheerfulness." He turned him about, and looked back upon the whitewashed walls of Mynyw, his darling among his many foundations. To the little company of religious who followed his steps, he cried: "I do think that of all the lands in all the world the fairest is our land of Cymru. And of all the parts of Cymru, look you, the fairest and the sweetest is this Dyfed." Aidan, Teilo, Ismail, and some few more clustered round him. Said they all together: "Indeed, indeed, blessed, holy father, blessed is our Dyfed!" and many were the looks of affection they cast upon their little abbot. "I have been in the Holy Country," said David. "That is the very marvel of the world--a jewel set in the desert; but hard and bright, dear me! there is unplayful it is! I can never give thanks enough, children, that I am permitted to dwell here where I was born." So saying, he resumed his journey. They had left the monks' cultivated domain behind them, and were now in the shade of a broad lane between willows and hazels, where the mallows and the bellflowers grew rankly. Of a sudden, the lane came to an end, and they emerged upon the little promontory below Porth Mawr. Carn Llidi loomed above them, on their right hand, and at its foot rose Ty Gwyn, the deserted college of Patrick, with its grave-stones round about it. In the western distance, far away, appeared a green fairy land, with the hazy forms of mountains melting into the skyline. "Let us pray for our brethren of Ireland," said David, "of the Second Order of Saints." About an hour later, David was still some few paces at the head of his people, and repeating to himself, hands folded, the prayers for the third hour after noon, when he felt his shoulder seized in a brawny grip, and he was forcibly twisted round until he faced a sturdy individual, with a broad, smiling red face, sandy hair, and twinkling green-grey eyes, and fully equipped with the war-sword, flowing robe, and shoes of dressed leather which only a nobleman might wear. Near him were his retinue of horsemen, one of whom held the steed from which his lord had just dismounted. "David, little cousin," was his greeting, "whither so fast, I pray thee, with thy chin to the ground? Have you mission to punish wrong-doers, O very powerful saint?" "Why, kinsman Cadfan," David replied, "sweet is the sight of you to the eyes. It is seldom we meet now. But I am not abroad to deal with evildoers, look you. Dyfed, thanks be to God! is a very peaceful place; the religion of Christ reigns even in the farthest nooks. I have enough to do, kinsman, to order mine own house and the brethren and disciples over whom I rule. The bishops hold synod at Brefi, and I must be there with the rest; though little doing, say I, follows much talking." "Hast indeed won all this land by thy words and wonders?" cried Cadfan, who, though he had great affection for David, could never, in his presence, master an uncontrollable desire to tease him. "Look that they deceive thee not, the pigs of Dyfed! and pay not double tithes to their Druids, and turn to them first at birth and at death! What did I hear of thee and of a monstrous old stone? Some tale spread by women...." "Dost thou doubt the power of God?" exclaimed David, with flashing eyes. Then, as he caught sight of his interlocutor's face, he could not help smiling. "Cadfan, they would not give up the old stone of Cetti--slew beast and fowl upon it, to obtain prosperity, or for blessing or cursing, and slept beneath its shade that dreams might visit them! Then, on a day, when a great crowd was there assembled, I prayed, and took a sword in my hand, and climbed upon the old abomination, to the very top; and I smote with my sword in the face of all the people, and lo! the stone split in twain with a hideous scream. Oh, joyful was my heart for that God had deigned to heed my supplication! And so was the unbelieving remnant drawn into the Church's fold." "Well done, well done!" said his jovial kinsman. "And the Gwyddel chieftains? Are they forbearing towards thee?" "Boia is dead. Leschi came out of Ireland and slew him and all his in one night; and Leschi is for holy Church. But it was pity for Boia. He suffered us gladly, and I think would have hearkened to the word ere long. A brave soul! I say mass for him often, as Cattwg does for worthy Virgil. But the wicked shrew, his wife! she urged him with all her might against us; and when we would take no notice of her handmaidens whom she sent to bathe in the stream that runs before our very doors, one day she lured Dunawd her step-daughter to an ancient altar in a forsaken spot, and sacrificed her to the Siddi, her underground gods. First shore off the little one's hair,[6] and then slit her throat! A sweet innocent child! who would come to our church door, to peep and to listen, and then flee shyly away. Alas! alas! a grievous happening!" [6] In sign of dedication. "And wilt thou spend all thy days in lonely Dyfed, little holy one? I did hear of thee at Afallach,[7] where Joseph's thorn grows. Didst thou not bestow there some very rich treasure? Would that not be a kingly centre for thee to dwell in?" [7] Glastonbury. "At Afallach left I the sapphire altar which I brought from Caer Salem. Afallach will be great and famous, I doubt not; but, Mary be aiding! I will live and die yonder in Glyn Rhosyn, nursery of the dearest of my sons. Lonely we are, yes. We control no state policy, for Britain is the dominion of the Saxons; but Cymru shall render us thanks in days to come: we shall have great power of prayer." "O cousin, it is marvel to me that thou canst thus go barefoot in the dust, and hang rough texture of the taeogion[8] about thee, and drink nought but tasteless water. I am but an ordinary man, and I would not forego my pleasures of everyday for any miracles which might be sung of down the ages. Well, well! each man to his own taste! I go to old Aunt Angharad, at Porth Mawr. The blessed woman! she has found me a dainty maid to wife, says she. Now speak me a blessing, David, and let me have your prayers." [8] Villeins. "Our Lord God be aiding thee, kinsman Cadfan! May He preserve to thee thy good tenderness of heart!" "And may He prosper thee, my David! Fare thee well, little kinsman." Cadfan departed on his way, and David and his companions set their faces northwards. They were not a solitary party. The road swarmed with priests and monks, and was trodden also by many laymen and some few women whom devotion or curiosity drew to the synod of the bishops at Brefi in Ceredigion. As evening drew on, the abbot-bishop of Menevia led his tired followers up the slope of a wooded hill, where he knew were dry caverns to pass the night in, and a spring of water. When they neared their proposed resting-place, a tonsured figure ran out from under the trees, and stood in their path-way, waving his arms. David whistled to the mongrel greyhound that padded by his side. Then, suddenly, he hastened his steps, his face aglow. "Padarn! Dear, dear me! My Padarn! Are ye many? Or may we spend this night with thee and thine in this God-given spot?" "Well met, well met, David!" cried Padarn, "And well met all, ye road-stained travellers! There is surely room for all." He hurried through the thicket to the clearing before the rocky bank which the aforesaid caves perforated, calling out: "Brethren! whom see ye here, whom see ye? Look you, this is David of Mynyw. Teilo, he, and I did journey together to the holy Jerusalem, one in soul, in joy, and in sorrow; and is it not a gladsome thing that he should be here amongst us this night?" An enthusiastic welcome ensued, and before long David, Teilo, Aidan, Ismail and the rest had been seated by the fire and supplied with food and drink. This was the Age of the Saints. Besides the newcomers there were some dozen holy men, whose names are living yet, sitting about upon the ground, each one bound for the great synod of the Cymric priesthood. In the mouth of the largest cave squatted an elderly man, sallow and wrinkled, with a beak-like nose and weary eyes; he had vellum, pen, and inkhorn, and wrote sedulously, giving himself no respite, with a heavy frown between his brows the while. David knew him for Gildas of Strathclyde, the apostle of Ruys in Lesser Britain. They yielded early to their fatigue, and lay down where they best might, most of them within the shelter of the caves. Gildas put aside his pen. "They are all mightily drunken with the use and custom of sins!" he thundered. "If I reckoned without pause for ten years, the scandals concerning the high men of Britain would not be enumerated--and concerning also our monks and ordained priests (Have mercy, have mercy, on us miserable sinners!). Our princes are a host of devils--nay, worse than devils, for have they not received the sign and sacrament of baptism? Lust, and pillage, and oppression are such as were never before since the creation of the world. Stinking to heaven is Gomorrah--I should say Aberffraw! And there dwells the most heinous, the Satan of them all--and that is Maelgwn Gwenedd!" David yawned, said a prayer for his kinsman Maelgwn, stretched himself, and fell asleep. At the first glimmer of dawn, they were awakened by the clanging of Gildas's bell. Their prayer said, David went to bathe in the brook near by. When he returned to the camp-fire, Gildas, his countenance sallower than usual, twisting and biting his lips, had just bent down to the simmering pot that hung over the flames, with a loaf of bread in his hand, when the mongrel grey-hound darted up to him, made an ecstatic leap, and snatching the loaf in his teeth, rushed away with it down the hill-side. David's laugh pealed loud and clear. The holy Gildas turned furiously upon a little boy, one of his pupils, who stood beside him rubbing sleepy eyes, and abused him for not giving his master warning of what he must have seen was likely to occur. The bishop of Mynyw ran as fast as he could after the thief. Some distance below, in the valley, he caught his dog, beat and scolded him, and possessed himself of the bread. In the village at the hill's foot, he admired a cottager's leeks, and was given a handful. He then re-ascended the hill. "The sour-faced hawk!" thought he. "I am glad, very glad, he did not obtain the rule of Mynwy when he tried to supersede me, long ago!" Gildas confronted him. "Ill is thy laughter, Dewi mab Sandde!" he spluttered hoarsely. "For a holy man of God--such conduct is light...." "Thou hast the black bile, brother," said David. "Laughter is surely given us for good--so are we different from the brute beasts. We must practise austerities for all needful purposes; but I counsel thee that thou endeavour to find joy in all things gay and innocent, and in thine own mishaps, that prove thee human, most of all: so shall such dust-specks not make the sunshine less sweet to thee!" In softer tones, "Lift up thy heart, brother; in a very little while, we shall break our fast. I and my companions will find food enough for us all and to spare." Gildas, raging inarticulately, rushed into the cave where he had spent the night. David turned to the contrite boy, whose cheeks showed traces of tears. "Hast thou seen our Lady's Candle,[9] over yonder by the quarry-side?" said he. "Such altar-light saw I never made by the hand of man. Seek thou it out, for a lovely sight." [9] The great mullein. "Father David," answered the child, "how may that be? Do they not tell us that we must not gratify our senses, for that this world teems with sin most foul?" "That is old nonsense!" cried David. "Has not the Lord made all the earth, and is not His Word indwelling? And, son, remember this--come storm, come drought, come frost, nothing can take our God from us." "Is it true, O my father," asked the boy, wide-eyed, "that once on a time your own cook did try to poison you?" "The poor mad fellow!" said the bishop shortly. "Luckily one of my guests suspected, and so were we one and all saved alive. Go thou draw water, little one, where the brook is deepest: I have need of more." David stirred the broth in the pot, adding his leeks and some sage and pepper which he carried about him. The monks had gone their several ways, in search of wild fruits and pot-herbs. From within the biggest cave came the sound of restless fidgeting. David began to sing: "Hast thou heard the saying of Calwaladr, King of all Britain? The best crooked thing is the crooked handle of a plough." There was a hasty footfall behind and Gildas stood beside him. "Thy pardon, David," he said, very humbly, hanging his head. "Indeed, indeed, I know not why--but I have always a dark humour before breakfast!" "Oh, Gildas, Gildas," cried David, as he wrung both the other's hands. "I am too hot-mettled, I fear, in the early hours!" When they were within an hour's walk of the town of Brefi, David left them and disappeared into the woods. "There will be enough to talk and enough to listen," said he to Aidan. "I feel a great need to pray." The rest of the party proceeded without him. Now upon and around the hill of Brefi vast numbers of people were assembled. Certain questions disquieted the land of Cymru. Some hundred and fifty years before, Morgan the Briton, who is also called Pelagius, being at Rome, where he lived ascetically and reasoned unceasingly, hatched from his brain a subtle heresy. Adam's sin was his alone, and brought no curse upon his children; the will of a man to do good was enough to secure him from sin; Christ died only that His example might prompt and incite the well-disposed to greater efforts, and that those baptized in His Name might enter after death into a heaven superior to that of unbelievers. Now, of all the races of the earth, the race which set most store by the sayings of Morgan was his own nation of the Briton, who love discussion before all things, and especially discussion of the properties of the soul. Even so late as this, the Pelagians in Britain were many, and tampered with the faith of many, exhorting their fellow-Christians to forego the aid of the sacraments, as tending to superstitious bondage. And that some even of the clergy led gross and scandalous lives, we have Saint Gildas to witness. The day of the synod was hot to oppression. From early morning until past noon, one after another, bishop and priest addressed the gathering. There was as much embroidered rhetoric, impassioned argument, and brilliant, aimless quotation as always abound wherever the Cymry are met together; but to no one came the trenchant words that would sever the knots of their problems. As for the greatest among them, Dyfrig, and Deiniol, and Gildas, they seemed tongue-tied by the heavy weather, and hopelessly dreary. Then said Dyfrig the aged saint: "One who was made bishop by the Patriarch of Caer Salem is not present amongst us, a man who is eloquent, full of grace, and approved in religion, who has spread the Gospel far and wide in the desert regions of Britain, and has thoroughly purged the pagan land of Dyfed: David the son of Sandde, of Mynyw in Pebidiog. Let us send for him." Gildas, Dyfrig, and Deiniol, and the young Aidan, sought and found David, and to Brefi hill they led him. Now the sides of the hill were white as a flowering orchard with the bleached garments of the priests and bishops who crowded thereon, and for a mile or more on every hand stretched the great throng of the people. When David came among them, the holy men made a pile of their cloaks, satchels, and books that he might mount upon it, for he was a short man (they say three cubits in height). So he stood up before them in all his greatness, and he seemed to tower high above them all. He spoke to them in his voice of silver; he smote at error with strong strokes, which called forth both tears and laughter; he pleaded sweetly with the recalcitrant; his arguments were sound, his metaphors lively and concise. How can it be supposed, said he, that the nature of man can of itself engender righteousness to salvation? He told of his own laborious days: of his long discipleship with Illtyd; his missionary journeys throughout the west of Britain; his struggle, scarcely ended, with hostile princes and heedless people in his native province; his temptations, contests, watchings, and privations; his experiences as a ruler of religious and a trainer of youth. "If a man glorify his will, there follows pride; and pride drops dead in the presence of God mocked and crucified!" Then he talked of discipline, of the need of it in human life, and of how it must be loving and carefully contrived, that the heart of the delinquent be not hardened. Of those who listened, not one moved from his place until the end of David's discourse, and scarcely one stirred hand or foot. And some there were who saw a spirit near the saint, like to a dove, with gleaming bill, who sometimes perched upon his shoulder and whispered in his ear. And to many in that assembly his words brought comfort entire and ease from mental strife, and left in their hearts a pathway of peace and light. They acclaimed him with rapturous tongues; far and wide they noised it that David of Mynyw was the treasure of the Cymry, the prince of all the saints of Britain. Gildas muttered congratulations, and hurried away to his interminable writing. His heart was not free from envy for a little while. As David was leaving the synod, he heard the sound of heartbroken sobs from a little gathering upon the banks of the Teify. It was a poor woman lamenting by the body of her son. "Dewi, Dewi!" she cried, "have pity upon my affliction! He was my only little weakly child, and I have striven so sorely to rear him! God cannot reave him from me. Entreat Him for me, Dewi Sant!" The tears rose to David's eyes as these sorrowful words were uttered; he knelt down by the body, and began to rub the hands and the feet, and to pray aloud in this wise. "O Lord, my God, who didst descend to this world from the bosom of the Father for us sinners, that Thou mightest redeem us from the jaws of the old enemy, have pity on this widow, and give life to her only son, that Thy Name may be magnified in all the earth!" He felt the limbs growing gradually warmer beneath his touch, and he continued to pray, and to call upon the boy in tender, soothing tones. By and by the eyelids flickered; then the boy opened his eyes, raised himself for the space of a second, and looked full into the eyes of David. They gave him wine, and life was secured to him. When they had escaped from the grateful outpourings of the mother, David said to Teilo: "Brother, an awful thing is death! For after death, we come no more; and judgment follows. It has been given to me once or twice to behold the Angel drawing near to those who themselves were unaware; and power has even then come upon me that I might put them in mind of their latter end. I pray often, Teilo, that neither thou, nor I, nor any of the brethren, nor any of all my beloved people, may be cut off without timely warning." Wherefore, say the ancients, is the Corpse Candle foretelling dissolution oftenest seen in the diocese of Mynyw. The next day, before they had travelled many miles, earth and sky took on a mysterious aspect. A heavy blight hung in the air; and a strange, watery column, with its head in the clouds, trailed over the earth, discharging raindrops which were hot to the touch and yet struck chill. A few men and women fell sick by the roadside; their bodies shrivelled and turned yellow, and in a few hours they died. David remained among the sufferers, nursing and consoling. The Yellow Plague hourly increased its ravages. Some recounted that the advance of the pest could be seen in the form of a female spirit--a frightful hag, hairless, with flavescent features and long pointed teeth, who clutched at her prey. Ere many days, the land was choked with unburied corpses. "Maelgwn the King is dead!" they told David. "Then is Gildas content!" said he. "Hasten we to Mynyw." In Dyfed, for all his loving zeal, he could not dwell long, because of the Plague which followed him there. So David and all his surviving brethren and all the inhabitants of Pebidiog whom he could gather together set sail for Lesser Britain. There he laboured greatly for five years and more at Leon, Saint Ivy, and Loquivy, preaching the word of God and founding churches and houses of religion. In the last year but one of the fifth century after Christ, when David was a very old man, Cynyr son of Cyngen, a scholar in Teilo's Côr upon the Taff, being unable to bear the stern rule of Teilo, fled from the college and wandered until he came upon Llywel the hermit of Selyf in Brycheiniog, who entertained him and kept him under his protection. And a little after Llywel died, and Cynyr dwelt still in the former cell of Llywel. That year was cold and frosty, and the fruits of the earth were nipped in the ear and in the bud. At the autumn equinox great storms of wind and rain arose, followed early by snow, and the flocks of the men of Brycheiniog were lost and starved for the most part. As soon as the thaw set in at the beginning of the next year, Llyr Merini, lord of Talgarth, laid claim to a cantref in the lordship of Rhaint son of Brychan, his wife's brother, as belonging to his own tribe, and publicly reproached King Rhaint with being the cause of the late disastrous weather through his harbourage of an apostate religious. The men of Llyr fell upon the lands of Rhaint, seized his men, broke their ploughs, and carried off the little grain they had ready to sow. Some of the seed-corn with which they could not escape they cast into the stony bed of the brook Cilieni. Rhaint and his people proceeded to fitting reprisals. And so things continued until the spring had come indeed. It was then that David of Mynyw, as he journeyed through Brycheiniog, declared his will to judge between the warring princes. On the morning of the first of May, a white-robed monk, with horny hands, and a tanned face whose pointed nose and patient brown eyes made it resemble the face of a dog, stood in the dingle through which the Clydach flows. Upon a gradually-sloping bank, where primroses and small blue violets bloomed in the damp and mossy grass, he had just spread three sheep-skins, and was regarding their position with doubtful look. He appeared oblivious of two other persons who occupied the little glen at the same moment, though these were no less than Llyr Merini, lord of Talgarth, and his wife Gwen, daughter of King Brychan. At a seemly distance were their household attendants. "O Lily, servant of David," said Llyr, "I have heard that he thy master holds the keys that do lock and unlock the portals of heaven!" "Very righteous saint is David," replied Lily. He did no more than glance at the lord and lady. "Surely he does consider that the perjury of one tonsured to God is of all things the most abominable?" "David has a key to all of heaven that is in the world," David's servant continued. "Where he scattereth, there does the good corn spring. When the Yellow Plague had run its course, and we returned from Llydaw, a crushing labour was before him, for men were lax and weary, and religion wellnigh forgotten. But this task he fulfilled, for the blessing of God was upon him, and he and his disciples journeyed far afield, hither to Brycheiniog, and into Gwent, Ewyas, and Erging, and sowed the seed of the Gospel in plenty. Every holy thing does David foster and honour. And he reads plainly the hearts of men, and traces the springs of their actions. A fountain of justice is the heart of David." "Many fair churches owns David. Loves he not gifts of gold, and silver, and polished jewels," said Gwen eagerly, "for the adornment of his foundations? They say that the praise of beauty is ever upon his lips." "This will not do for my master!" cried Lily, snatching one of the fleeces from the ground. "How can he, whose years are ninety and more, huddle upon the moss like a lithe-limbed stripling? He must have a seat conformable to his dignity, myn Duw!" "See, see!" Gwen cried. "A heap of logs for the great May fire! We will fetch one of them, husband, for the use of the powerful saint." They carried a log between them to the foot of the bank. Lily approved it, after scrutiny, and spread one of his cherished sheepskins upon it. Then David came slowly into the glen towards them, leaning upon the arm of King Rhaint of the Red Eyes. With a quick gesture of greeting to all there assembled, he seated himself in the tribunal prepared for him. He seemed smaller than ever now, for his form was bowed and his skin was abundantly wrinkled, and all his life and energy centred in his gleaming dark-hazel eyes. Teilo, abbot-bishop of Llandaff, and Ismael, one of David's own bishops, were with him, and some of their attendant monks; and the courtiers and fighting-men of Rhaint followed. A few of the villagers had made their way to the place of meeting. "Speak you now your causes, my children," said David, in his clarion tones, which the years had scarcely weakened. "This one has attacked my lands," cried Rhaint, "and has broken the ploughs of my men, and destroyed their valuable corn-seed!" "This one," cried Llyr, "keeps from me a cantref which was my father's and the father of my father's; and Brycheiniog brings forth no sustenance, for Rhaint mab Brychan protects the renegade Cynyr!" Two armed men, shouting and threatening, dragged a youth in monastic garb, tonsured, his countenance pallid and his eyes dim with watching and fasting, to the feet of the bishops. "Here is Cynyr, between my men," said Rhaint. "Examine him, father, upon his matter." "O stinging viper!" exclaimed Teilo. "Obedience didst thou vow to me in my college upon the Taff! And thou didst manifest such notable dispositions in the early days of thy pupilage!" "May the penalty be heavy and bitter, we pray you, holy bishops," said Gwen, "that the curse be lifted from us. Always very ill fortune dogs the breach of a vow!" "Lady, I would have silence about me," said David, "that I may pray Our Lord for grace to discern rightly between Teilo my son and my brother and Llywel who is in Paradise." ... After a brief pause: "What pleadest thou, Cynyr? By whose permission hast thou betaken thyself to the life of a solitary? Wilt thou confess thy sins, and return to the faithful congregation?" "Dewi mab Sandde, with you will I go," the young man replied. "With me? but not with Teilo? Speak out thy mind, and fear not." "Not with Teilo. His rule is too harsh: I cannot bow myself to such authority." "Thou must go with my brother Teilo, being his pupil and servant." "I will abide here in Llywel's cell, and gather about me my own Côr, and rule it. Or I will live beneath the ordinance of David. Let him[10] not cast me away; for of all saints he is the most efficacious! I would be a holy man, even as he is. But, look you, the legions of Satan do compass me about, and make hideous my nights and my days. There is also an evil, fair woman, Indeg daughter of Maenarch, who plagues me whenever I do meet with her; and her spirit is with me continually, to trouble me, when she herself is absent! Pray for me, for the love of the Lord!" [10] David. Cynyr uses the third person singular of courtesy. "O Cynyr," said David meditatively, "hast thou the gift of obedience, I wonder?... Thou hast taken thy final vows before the Holy Sacrament?" he added suddenly. Cynyr hung his head, and grew even paler than he had been before. "No, no. My consecration should have been at the Paschal Feast of last year. I fled Llandaff the week before. This I told to blessed Llywel before he took me in." "Why, Teilo," said the bishop of Mynyw, "I had heard that this Cynyr had deserted the furrow that he had undertaken to plough. Where is the truth in this?" "My overseer of the disciples did speak of his consecration," was the other bishop's answer. "Thou hast said that his vows were taken?" "I did think that they were," said Teilo. "Llandaff has done the youth great wrong!" cried David. A dull red crept into the face of Teilo, but he did not utter a word. "Come you here, Llyr and Rhaint," David said sternly. "This is my judgment, princes, upon you. It is written that cursed is he who oppresses the poor and helpless. Ye have brought contention and bloodshed to pass. Your people are slain, or wounded, or they pine in captivity; those that remain unhurt and free are starving, their fields being waste; and great is your guilt, for their livelihood is given into your charge! Ye have just heard the conclusion of your affair. Cynyr son of Cyngen is no vowed monk; how can heaven have sent a blight upon your lands for his sake? Greed it was that made Llyr to plunder the Lordships of Rhaint. And Rhaint has hated his brother, though I say not that his hatred had no cause. Ye two shall swear to be friends, and to keep peace, and maintain good government. And half of Selyf shall be thine, O Rhaint, for Brychan thy father did win it in fair fight; and half shall be Llyr's, for thy sister is his wife, and he is thy brother. So shall the lords of Gwent not spoil Brycheiniog when its chief men are divided." The princes exclaimed together: "Wondrous his judgment! There is content we are!" "Gwen daughter of Brychan, wilt thou swear to this also?" "Yes, yes!" the Lady Gwen replied. "No love of warfare have I!" "In the name of God, ye do promise to hold to peace and fellowship?" "In the name of God, we do promise to hold to peace and fellowship one with another!" "Prosperity be upon you, and upon your children and your children's children, and upon all that is yours and theirs, while ye do observe this solemn compact!" said David then. "And if so be ye scorn and break it, may lightning and storm devastate your territories, may sickness and famine stalk throughout them, and may rottenness take hold upon your bodies! Amen, amen!" Rhaint and Llyr held each other's hands and shook them up and down; they almost danced upon the springy sod in the exhilaration that their reactive emotion had quickened. "I am old donkey, Llyr!" shouted Rhaint. "I forgive thee thy ravages. My people will have no bread this year; but doubtless thou wilt provide?" "Donkey and cuckoo am I!" roared Llyr. "I will feed thy people. We will make a great feast to-night, and forget our differences." And they two and Gwen sat down upon the bank, and laughed and gossipped together. Cynyr flung himself at David's feet. "Forsake me not!" he wailed. "I am as firmly resolved as ever to lead the life of a saint. Let the little holy one of Mynyw be aiding to me!" The abstraction of age was upon David; he sat gazing at and through the kneeling youth. Lily approached him, carrying something square wrapped in a cloth. "What wouldst thou say, my servant?" the bishop murmured. "Well, well, indeed, what hast thou there?" "My father's official," answered Lily. He removed the cloth, and disclosed a book, with cover worn and water-stained, and laid it upon his master's knees. David turned the pages, caressing them with his numb old fingers. "Once I was harsh with a boy,"[11] said he. "And my harshness was because of this blemished volume. I thank thee, Lily, for bringing that sin of anger to my mind. The child, whom I had permitted to read my office-book, left it out of doors upon a rainy day. For penance I sent him to lie at full length upon the sand of the shore at Porth Mawr; and in the press of business I forgot for many hours where I had bidden him bide. When at last I ran to find him, the waves were licking his body, and half-drowned was he.... My son," the saint continued, addressing Cynyr, "hast thou not told me that the direst of thy assailant demons is a living woman, and no bloodless spirit?" [11] St. Aidan, bishop of Ferns. "Indeg daughter of Maenarch pesters and torments me, so that the thought of her is an ever-present temptation. Great hate and scorn has she for me, and her strength she spends in striving for my downfall. She does come bringing bannuts,[12] for she knows I love to eat them!" [12] Walnuts. "My father," Lily interposed, "they say that the girl is here." "Well, indeed, now," said David, "let her come forth." Several women pushed a maiden into the middle of the ring formed by the assembly. She seemed to have been weeping, for her eyelids were flushed; she shook her dark hair over her face, and clutched her hands together and plucked at a ring she wore. "Daughter," said David, "why do you torment and pester Cynyr son of Cyngen, a hermit seeking God?" Her lips moved. Some thought she whispered hoarsely: "I do not!" "Dost thou hate Cynyr?" "I hate him in my heart!" cried she. "I will hang him from yonder ash-tree," said David with a mocking twinkle, "to-morrow at dawn." "No, no!" she shrieked. "Mercy, mercy! Holy David, there is cruel he is! Spare him--spare Cynyr----" "Peace, woman!" David's face had become a mask of fury, but his voice was mellifluous. "Nothing will thy tongue avail thee. Thou hast wrought devilish magic, and surely we shall slay thee as a witch!" "Myn Duw!" shouted Cynyr the novice, tossing his arms on high. "Do not so! I was mistaken--there is mad I have been. David has cleared the covering from my eyes! I love Indeg...." "And thou, Indeg," said David softly, "dost thou love Cynyr?" Said she, more softly still: "I like him ... as well as I like any man." "Our Lord God lays hold upon His own," cried David, "and, Teilo, there is no need to grab souls for him. Rhaint mab Brychan, wilt thou adopt this Cynyr into thy tribe, when he shall have sojourned with thee the accustomed number of years? He will make a brave fighting-man, though not in the picked army of heaven." "Yes, indeed!" replied Rhaint the King. "I am David's servant, to do his bidding." "Now, upon blessed Llywel's land, where he lived and died," the saint continued, "we will set a new church, and Llywel, Teilo, and I, we three, will own it in perpetuity. And of the three thou, Teilo, shalt have the pre-eminence. Willingly wilt thou fast forty days upon this spot, for our church's hallowing. A small omission troubles thy conscience, I know. Children," turning from the Abbot of Llandaff to the man and woman before him, "I would see all well with you before I depart. Give me thy ring, Indeg." She put her ring in the palm of David. "It is not yet the noon-hour," said he. "Lily, where is my altar, and the other things I now require?" "Here is your altar, my father," was Lily's reply, "and the sacred elements, look you!--ready for the swearing of oaths." He brought David's portable altar and placed it before him, and set bread and wine upon it. David rose to his feet, and, supported by Teilo and Ismael, said mass as it was celebrated for a marriage. "Cynyr," said he in the British tongue, "wilt thou have Indeg as thy wife?" "Yes, yes!" Cynyr answered. "And, Indeg, wilt thou have Cynyr as thy husband?" She nodded her head several times. "Then I declare before all these, men and women of the Plant y Cymry, that ye be man and wife together. And, Cynyr, thou shalt love Indeg as long as her life shall last; and thou, Indeg, shalt love Cynyr and obey him. The blessing of God is upon you; and ye shall go with my blessing, and with the blessing of Teilo." Hand in hand the lovers wandered away over the young, green grass. "Sixty days and no less will I fast before I consecrate Llywel's church," cried Teilo, his native generosity breaking forth, "and those two shall have my prayers at each day's offering!" Gwhir, Teilo's bard at Llandaff, unslung his harp from his shoulder, and struck a triumphant prelude from the strings. He began to chant the praises of his master: "Thrice a hundred servants of Christ does Teilo feed in his Bangor. The fierce old dragon he drove to the seas--potent is our father. Miracles are all about the little ones of Teilo. "With Brynach aforetime did angels company in the wilderness about Nant Nimer. No harvest had Llandaff but flower of the broom, the gold-finch of the meadows. Surely white messengers were at hand for the succour of the Côr of Teilo!" David listened at first with a slight frown, but by the end of the second triad his countenance had softened. "Truth governs the tongue of Gwhir," said he. "Hearken! there is also music over yonder. Give me thy arm, my Ismael--I would hear the children sing." They left the dingle, David and his followers, and ascended a gentle slope that led to an open stretch of level, sheep-cropped sward. Here stunted cowslips grew, and daisies, and a few stray tufts of thyme greeted the footsteps of each comer with their tonic perfume. Young men and girls, partnered in couples, were dancing about a blossoming hawthorn. At their shoulders and wrists, their knees or their ankles, coloured ribbons fluttered; and as they sprang, with outstretched arms, to touch the tree-trunk they hissed between tongue and palate. A man played shrilly upon a pipe, and a number of elderly women, seated upon the ground, were singing: "Arianrod's battlements light the pathless waste of the sky. Oak for power, and ash for aid, and birch for constancy! Bird calls to bird that gone is winter, the time of hunger and fear. Bless the thorntree, maidens and boys, and bless the spring of the year!" David watched them indulgently, for the days of the Druids were far off. When their dance was over, they rushed in a body to his feet, begging his blessing, and crying out compliments, sincere though extravagant, upon his sanctity and his fame. "Dewi Sant! Dewi Sant! Father of the Saints of Britain! May he live amongst us for ever!" "As God wills," said he, as he turned to leave them. "Beautiful the May tree--more beautiful the groves of Paradise. There is a hard task, my brothers, for Ismael." His companions remembered well what he had spoken of Ismael in two months less than a year from that hour.[13] [13] Ismael succeeded David as Bishop of Mynyw. One February day in the year Six Hundred and One, many folk, rich and poor, flocked to the walls of Ty Ddewi, David's monastic enclosure. A rumour had gone abroad that the saint had had heavenly premonition that his end was near at hand. So, weeping and lamenting, these men and women came from the regions around, crying upon their bishop to take their sadness from them. Within Ty Ddewi there was a wonderful silence and peace; and in the streets of Mynyw were heard the flutterings of invisible wings. "Look you, this mourning must cease, now!" said blessed David. "Well, well, true is what ye have heard. Merry tidings have reached me! In a little while from now, on the first day of March, I must go hence to the place where is life without end, rest without labour, and joy without sorrow--where is health and no pain, youth and no old age, peace and no contention, music and no discord. I charge you pray always, in all your undertakings, spiritual and bodily; and be good, little people, for the best usage is goodness." His last words on earth were just as simple: "Take me with Thee!" Star of Mercia "_Hic regina detestatur Amplexus illicitos; Spreta mortem machinatur Ob amores vetitos._" "Nay, Ethelfrith, bide thou here in quiet!" said Cynerith. "Tush, girl! art no child now, at sixteen years old! Why, thou hast witnessed the death of many a fledgling rook. The sun must not stain thy cheeks this day, and that thou knowest! The young man cannot now be afar off, God help! Nay, good lack! I will not have such pouting! It is my behest that thou stay at home." In reality, the Lady Ethelfrith could scarcely be said to pout; and she knew her mother too well to venture a protest. The party set forth--Offa the King, the imperious Cynerith his Queen, their son the Atheling, and Eadburh their handsome elder daughter, wife of Beorhtric, King of Wessex, and now on a visit to her parents' court--and the young Ethelfrith, debarred from the sport, climbed to the upper room which was her own sleeping-chamber, and looked out over the shire of Hereford. If she leant out and turned sideways, her window commanded a view of the highway that ran by the gates of King Offa's palace of Sutton. She peered idly in that direction, without emotion of any sort--even anger, or curiosity. Below her lay the orchard-close, bright green under foot, and rosy overhead with the vernal glory of the apple-trees. It was the fairest day of the fair month of May; but its beauty awoke in Ethelfrith a dull, continuous pain. She was seldom happy, poor little princess: she thought much, but there was no one to whom she could tell her ideas, or who would give her sympathy. The King was always occupied; her brother was as spare of speech as herself; her mother was the Queen and unapproachable, except when she jested coarsely; and she feared her sister, the Queen of Wessex. There were many puzzling things in her everyday world which had only just begun to claim her attention. She was a very fairy-like being, so small and slim and fragile; her complexion was as delicate as the apple-blossom; she had soft eyes, grey as the plumage of a dove and a soft mouth with an obstinate curve; her hair was of the purest, palest gold, just saved from being flaxen and colourless. A strange child, surely, for those two robust persons, Offa and Cynerith. Just now she was wondering why they had not told her before yesterday of Ethelbert of East Anglia, his coming and its purpose. Every one about the palace had known of it but herself. She had overheard what had been whispered to a servant of her sister's from Wessex, in the orchard, upon the foregoing afternoon, by one of her father's henchmen, whose eyes had shed a marvellously tender light while he gazed upon her, King Offa's daughter. "She is the star and flower of all Mercia," this henchman had said, "and she is to wed Lord Ethelbert, the star of the Eastern Angles." Although she had remarked it, the expression of the speaker's countenance had in no wise stirred her sensibilities; she had been a little ruffled in temper, perhaps--no more. For Ethelfrith had no affinities with the courtiers; the overfed, voluptuous women and their satellites filled her with a cold disgust. The nuns of Marden, she thought, led peaceful lives, and bore in their faces a truly joyous light. Yet she had no longing for the seclusion of a religious house. She would sometimes, however--though very rarely--go to visit the sisters and spend a day in their company. The reverend mother was a motherly woman indeed; she was very gentle with the princess, and careful to refrain in her presence from any allusion to her life or her kinsfolk that might dash her girlish, half-childish dreams. When the maiden returned to her ordinary surroundings, how the glare and the chatter tired her head and oppressed her whole dainty frame! So it came about that the Lady Ethelfrith was little accounted by the great folk of Mercia: she was always silent, usually prim, and sometimes brusque; and to some she seemed a cross, spoilt child, and to others, witless. Then there had been her mother's half-teasing words of the evening before; that was really all she knew! At the thought of King Ethelbert, a sharper pain than the ache of loneliness amid natural beauties struck through her heart. She remembered the Queen's parting injunctions. Her childhood was surely at an end. This Ethelbert would be coming by the highway to the halls of Sutton before long. Impatiently she turned away from the dusty road. Her eyes lighted upon the flowering gorse-bushes that blazed upon the outskirts of an upland covert in the distance. There ran through her head a riddle of her nursery days, couched in the rhyming metre which the Mercians had begun to imitate from the neighbouring Welsh. "Yellow and green, Sharp and keen, Grows in the mene. The King can't ride it, no more can the Queen." Song after song, carol after carol, lay after lay, came tripping after--some of God and the saints and ghostly blessedness; some of love and mirth; others of woe. A smile hovered about the lips of Ethelfrith. She loved songs--they were often her only solace. She would walk in the garden--no, she would not. The sun was too hot--the wind was too cold. She had just decided to wile away the time by strumming upon her cither, when she descried figures approaching along the road. They were horsemen, many horsemen; a mighty train. And there, unmistakably, was the banner of some great one. It was not a lord of Mercia, nor a lord of Wessex! Ethelfrith rushed from her room, down the stairs, and headlong into the orchard-close, in a fit of wild shyness. There was her waiting-maid, and there were several aged ladies who cared not to look on at the shooting of the rooks. All confused, she stammered to them of her surmise--how that the King of East Anglia was even at their gates. What should they do, with her parents away? "Why, lady, there is no need for fear," said one kind-hearted matron. Even as she spoke a servant appeared in the orchard doorway, ushering with every token of respect a company of nobly-attired, travel-stained men. In another moment the little group beneath the trees had become aware of the leader of the party--a young man, very lithe, very muscular, with an energetic open countenance, and the bluest, brightest eyes that Ethelfrith had ever seen. Their glance wandered from one to another of the women, and came to rest upon King Offa's youngest daughter. It seemed to her that the universe whirled around her: she had to strain at her insteps in order to keep herself upright. Then she heard him saying: "O lady, forgive me that I know not whom I should greet! Do I speak to the high and mighty lady, the Lady Ethelfrith of Mercia?" She curtsied, and hung her head; she was pallid now, who had been crimson the instant before; her tongue refused to utter audible sound. "I am Ethelbert of East Anglia," continued the stranger. "Here am I at King Offa's bidding. They have told you of my coming?" "Indeed, I am Ethelfrith," said she. "I do greatly grieve--my father and mother.... Oh, my lord, will ye not be seated? I had forgotten.... Ye will deem me unmannerly...." "Nay, lady, surely nay," said Ethelbert earnestly; and he seated himself beside her upon a bench built round the trunk of an ancient apple-tree. He had begun to address her once more in his kindly tones, when a bustling noise reached them from within the palace, and in another moment the whole court was about them. Offa, the welcoming host, Cynerith, with her ready, witty talk. And Eadburh, whose person and taste in adornment made her give the effect of a full-blown poppy. Ethelfrith felt faded and nerveless beside her. She shrank into the background. "In a good hour!" cried Offa. "Ye have spoken with my little daughter, I see: no need to make you known one to another. I trow ye are weary from your wayfaring. Come with me, and ye shall bathe you, and have meat and drink. And then, Ethelbert Etheldred's son, I will show you my horses, my hounds, and my hawks, and ye shall say whether ye have other such in East Anglia." And they all departed into the house, leaving the princess alone. She, pondering dazedly, thought that a thunderstorm had broken. But the sun was shining as it had shone all day: the little stream which bounded the orchard from the meadows beyond was as blue as the sky whose colour it borrowed. The earth beneath her feet seemed to pant forth the scent, sweet and languorous, of white wild violets. A cuckoo shouted insistently. The air was vibrant with the voices of created things. A glimmering sulphur-moth came fluttering before her. Ethelfrith began to run. About and about she chased it, screaming in her excitement; and presently she fell on her knees, panting, by the brookside, her arms clasped around a clump of meadowsweet and forget-me-not. Summer was summer once again. They were all upon a green knoll, sheltered by ash and elm. They had flown their hawks with some success, and were now enjoying shade and repose, while their attendants laid the midday meal before them. Ethelfrith looked often at Ethelbert. He was listening somewhat impatiently to Eadburh, whose florid beauty was evidently little to his taste. "Lord King," she was saying, "ye seem to me in no wise a monkish man. I thought, from what I had heard, that surely ye would betake you to the life of the cloister, or else bind yourself to all of a saint's life in your kingly halls. I beseech you say, had ye ever such a meaning?" "They were my youthful thoughts," said Ethelbert. "But I have put them far from me. A king's life is for a king, and no monk's life. Besides, I am the last of my father's house." He rose, and crossed to Ethelfrith, offering to pour mead into her drinking-horn. Now Cynerith had looked often and long at Ethelbert since his coming. "A harmless boy!" she remarked to her daughter Eadburh; and then she said "Fore heaven! the handsomest boy I have seen this many a year!" Eadburh laughed her horse-laugh. "Are all things to thy liking, fair lady?" said Ethelbert to Ethelfrith. "Why, greatly to my liking, O King!" answered she. Suddenly Cynerith called out, "Child, where is thine amethyst brooch? Is it lost, then, thou naughty one?" "My lady," said the girl, trembling, "I did give it.... Ye saw the beggars. One there was that might have been a leper; and there were little children. O mother, be not wroth! I could not do else--woeful was their crying. I sent them unto the sisters, who will feed them and care for them this night; and I gave my brooch unto the woman with the baby in her arms." "Fie upon thee, fie upon thee!" cried the Queen. "Is my daughter altogether a fool? I will not have thee go among such filthy folk, to touch them belike! Precious stones give I not thee for this!" "All beggars and such scum should be whipped and branded," said Eadburh, little guessing that in years to come she herself would roam a foreign city,[14] begging her bread. "Lord father, think ye not that it would be well that when a bondman have not work enough, or when he feign himself a cripple, his lord might sell him beyond seas? So do I often tell King Beorhtric." [14] Pavia. "Why, why," Ethelbert broke in, "I miss my ring of onyx!" "Was it loose upon thy finger?" said Queen Cynerith. "Often in unhooding a hawk----" "Nay," said he, smiling, "I do think it is where the Lady Ethelfrith's sweet charity would have it be!" Cynerith bit her lip. "Have ye indeed bestowed your ring upon the beggars?" Ethelfrith whispered. "Surely, aye," answered he. "The sad, sorry souls! These do fear lest they be besmirched by fellowship with the mean and ailing. But I think that a king, before all men in the earth ought to be lowly." Bending towards her, he said softly, "Tell me now, are all things truly to thy liking?" "Oh, my lord...." said she. Here, amongst all these people--before all her kindred! "'High and mighty' I greeted thee," he pursued. "Dearest, I knew not then to whom I spake. 'Soft and lovely lady' hail I thee now!" He handed her down the slope and together they wandered slowly through the fields. The royal party followed immediately, and they proceeded, mostly on foot, along the path which leads through the lush meadow-land. Presently Cynerith called the King of East Anglia to her, and they in their turn headed the company. "May-tide is God's gift to lovers," she said. "The Queen's words are sooth," was his rejoinder. "Hearken to the live things, and to the birds," said Cynerith, and her eyes were languishing. "Ethelbert, a woman's heart blooms blithe and tender in this month of May!" Eadburh looked her sister from head to foot. "Art not a fine woman," she remarked. "Belike thou wilt yet grow." "Think ye I must needs become a fine woman?" said the other, smiling. "Men like them," replied Eadburh. "All men," she added, with a meaning glance towards Ethelbert. "What wouldst thou hint?" cried Ethelfrith; but Queen Eadburh was gone from her side. The younger sister was not easy in heart or mind. Lately she had become aware of circumstances which she did not care to think on; and now, her sister's words! She was used to the moods of her mother; but there was also Sexwolf, the young lord who had been the Queen's constant companion for two years--he was full of smouldering fury, it was evident, and would speak to no one. Her brother was near at hand, but he always snubbed her when she talked inquisitively; he would be no help. There was thane Edric, the honest old man, seneschal of the court; she was certain he would tell her plainly anything he thought she ought to know. Why should she not take her perplexities to him? Alack! here was Eadburh again! Her she could not question. She would consult old Edric later on. "Is a woman ever too old to love?" said Cynerith the Queen. Ethelbert looked up quickly, surprised and a little amused. They were walking along the edge of a springing cornfield. "Look, the bonny blossoms!" cried she. She stooped over a patch of poppies, whose bowls seemed to burn with liquid scarlet fire. As she did so, her hand brushed against Ethelbert's as though by accident. "Bonny, for sure," answered the young man. "Pity they have no smell--as it were, no soul. They are rank, too, I think. O lady mother, this morning I heard Ethelfrith singing to herself...." * * * * * "Why, Leofgythe, whither away?" said Ethelfrith. Said the waiting-maid: "Lady, there is great mirth afoot to-night for us of the household. The Queen hath given us leave that we may go to the dancing at Aegelstane the Thane's. I beseech you, my lady, that ye forget not to comb your locks right thoroughly; they must shine like gold for King Ethelbert." "Good luck go with thee, Leofgythe," cried the Lady gaily. "I would we might have dancing too. But I fear me we shall be too few." And she passed on up the staircase. In the palace hall King Ethelbert and Queen Cynerith sat facing one another across a little table, playing at chess. All was not well between them. The Queen leant very far over the board, and her lips were pouting. Her fingers rested lightly upon the head of a chessman. Suddenly she withdrew her hand, and launched a side-long look at her opponent from beneath drooping lashes. Ethelbert's brow was black, and for an instant there appeared in his eyes a glint of loathing. Then Cynerith surveyed the board once more and played her piece. It was checkmate. As by a common impulse, they both rose, making no comment upon the game. The Queen was flushed and quivering. Ethelbert bowed to her and strode hurriedly from the hall. Cynerith went then to King Offa's private chamber. The King was there alone: he smiled at sight of her, and greeted her lovingly. Cynerith stood before him, rapping one foot upon the earthen floor. "My lord," she burst forth at last, "what will ye do if things fall out even so as your dearest wishes be undermined?" Offa spread wide his hands. "How now, sweetheart?" he queried, laughing. "It were well to be ready. If East Anglia become our foe--if Ethelbert will not wed with Ethelfrith----?" "Not wed with Ethelfrith! Not wed my little maid! How, wife, what meanest thou?" "I understand not, for my life," said Cynerith, "which way things are faring between them twain! It is my belief that Ethelbert is here to pick a quarrel with thee, Offa." "Tush, woman, woman! I have marked nought of this." "Thou wilt own that my woman's wit is ever quicker than thine own, husband. I think he beareth little love to our daughter, and none to thee or me, or any of us. For all he is so mild, and his tongue so smooth, he is a man to scheme deep undertakings. Why hath he brought with him so great an armed train--greater far than a wedding warranteth? Offa, I tell thee this youth will some day spread his sway in England, even so far as thou hast spread thine!" "If I thought he truly scorned my daughter...." "Shall we let him go forth, husband, wed or unwed? Thou shouldst set him straightway in ward, the wheedling knave! or there are other ways, maybe!" "Lady wife," said Offa, "do thou bear in mind that this man is our guest!" "My lord, Ethelbert is young, and as for thee, thou hast looked thy last upon the height of thy manhood. And Egbert our son will never be the man that thou art. I say, beware! Come tell me now, if so be that Ethelbert of East Anglia wriggle from out of this pact he is come to make with us--if he make of us laughing-stocks from Iceland unto Caisar Charles's court--aye, and beyond--say ye will strike, O Offa of Mercia, so that your kingly dignity be upheld in the land!" "God knoweth I will strike, and right heavily!" cried Offa. "I give my word I will not fail thee. But, lady, I hold thee mistaken--all this can scarcely be." And as he was in gleeful humour, he put the matter from his mind, and began contentedly to examine and polish his boar-spears. He had suffered one or two envious pangs through Ethelbert's youth and vigour. Moreover, strong man though he was, he had never been able to bridle Cynerith. Hardly had the Queen left the room than Sexwolf, her neglected favourite, sprang out upon her; and bitterly he upbraided her, raging, expostulating, pleading, outside the very door of King Offa's cabinet. "Hold thy tongue, young man!" said she loudly, in her stateliest tones; and she swept from before him into the hall, where some were setting out the evening meal. It was a hot evening, even sultry. They opened the doors, and such windows as had swinging frames, and the red glow of sunset shone in upon them for a brief hour. Though few of their court were to be present, they decked themselves that night in their full finery. Cynerith, clad in wine-purple, was as handsome, seen by twilight, as she had ever been in the days of her prime. Eadburh, in green and crimson, was gorgeous and blatant. Ethelfrith wore white, exquisitely embroidered with silver and gold. Star of Mercia was she indeed that night. Eadburh seemed a burning brazier by contrast; Cynerith a painted shrew. No more was the Lady Ethelfrith silent; merry words flowed from her lips; time and again her laughter rippled out, soft and joyous. King Offa began, as was his custom, to talk of his wars, and of the stupendous dyke, boundary between his dominions and the lands of the wild Welsh, which the March folk, at his bidding, had dug in the sweat of their brows; but he soon hushed his voice, and listened proudly while his youngest-born told of her new-found pleasure in hunting, dancing, and friendly company. Even the Atheling, a stalwart, somewhat sullen youth, was seen once or twice to smile. They brought her cither, and she sang them all her store of songs, with an art and confidence of which none had ever thought her capable. King Ethelbert applauded her and cast fond looks upon her, and at the end of every ditty he prayed her for more. By and by, when the light faded and the torches were kindled, Offa the King began to yawn, and to doze in his chair. The Queen then conversed apart with Ethelbert. She bore herself meekly towards him, was innocent and child-like in manner and speech. Presently Offa awoke. His wife was beside him, bearing a brimming tumbler. "What--what--sweetheart?" said he. "It is mine own brew that thou lovest so well," Cynerith replied. She waited while he drank, and noted how the potion increased his drowsiness. "Husband," she whispered, "I have sure proof that it is even as I guessed. He will go hence upon the morrow, leaving us pledges which he hath no mind to fulfil. Then will he stir up the men of his own kingdom, without doubt, hoping to take thee defenceless in thine old age. The hour is ripe, Offa my King! Shall he live to work our undoing?" "I shall be nithing in the eyes of all men," murmured Offa. "Lo, no man shall know how the end did come about," said the Queen. "I, thy wife, will be thy handmaid in this as in all things, aye, and bear the blame, if blame be to follow. Trust in me. O son of Woden, it profiteth not a man to spare his enemies. Hereafter shall thy sway reach from the hills of Wales even unto the eastern sea." And Offa nodded his head. She took another cup in her hand, and beckoned to Ethelbert, who rose to meet her midmost in the hall. "We will talk together of the wedding day," said she. "The King leaves all such business unto me." Then they drank to one another, very gravely, where they stood. Eadburh, sitting by her sister, nudged her, with sneering lips. "Let us now to bed, children," cried Cynerith. "I trow we are all full weary, even as our lord the King." As she passed out, she said in the ear of a trusted servant: "Gymbert, be ready against I need thee!" Edric the seneschal stayed behind, searching the floor and the tables for property mislaid, smothering the torches himself with meticulous care. He heard a light step brush across the strewn rushes. Ethelfrith stood before him, darkly cloaked and hooded. "My little hare was ailing this evening," said she. "I might not find thee, Edric, though I sought. But even now he is better than I could earlier have hoped." "I will go see him early to-morrow," said Edric, "if ye do think he will live through this night." He was a man of few words. "He will live through the night.... Edric, I have no wish to sleep. I have thoughts and fears which break through my rest.... And then ... Eadburh said ... at least I do fancy that she meant to say...." "Her tongue wags ever too fast," Edric rejoined. "Well, lady, what said she?" "It was of my lord King Ethelbert she spake.... I am sorely troubled. Meseemeth that the Queen and King Ethelbert love each other not, or mayhap.... And there is strife between my mother and Sexwolf.... I hate Eadburh!" cried Ethelfrith. "God forgive me!" she added, horrified. Surprise and interest went far to conquer Edric's wonted reserve. The little princess irked him usually; but now--yes, and formerly throughout that evening--she showed signs of a spirit that he had never suspected to exist in her. "Listen, lady," said he. "King Ethelbert should go his ways, taking you with him. He loveth you dearly, as all may see. Here hath he been three weeks, and is no nearer the settlement of that which brought him hither. Ye are scarce even a moment together. This is a drear betrothal." "Alack! how can I help?" said she. "Can a maid beg a man to wed her?" "And fret not yourself too greatly over what Queen Eadburh may say or do. Her mind is evil, and all that she looketh upon doth take on for her the same ill hue." "O Edric, good Edric, dear Edric, say to me that all must be well! My heart sinks within me. Tell me--tell me truly whether my father's court be fair and clean, as I have heretofore dreamed it to be!" Edric turned away his face, and began to poke, with the staff which he always carried, in the rushes beneath a little table standing under one of the windows. A faint clink resounded. He stooped and picked up a small, finely-wrought key with a handle curiously bent. "That is my mother's wry-necked key!" exclaimed Ethelfrith. "Great store sets she by it. Thou knowest she weareth it ever upon the chain at her waist." "She leant much upon the board this evening, playing at chess with Ethelbert," said the old man, "Belike it was rubbed loose, or the chain broke." "It openeth the garden door of the chamber, built down into the earth, beneath the Queen's bedroom," the Lady continued. "I have never been within, nor hath any that I have heard of. But Gymbert may go sometimes: he hath another key like unto this. Once, one of the maids did whisper.... But I will not believe it!" "Neither have I ever seen into that chamber," said Edric the seneschal; and both together they uttered the same words: "This night spake she into the ear of Gymbert, even as she left the hall!" "O child, be strong!" said Edric. He stopped and coughed. "There would be no harm," he ventured, "in learning to be strong." They were both silent for a little while. Then "Take thou the Queen's key, Ethelfrith Offa's daughter," said he. "She shall deem it utterly lost. It may serve thee at need." She slipped it into her bosom, and went softly from the room. "God's blood! thou sorry young fool!" cried Offa's wife. "Is this all I must hear from thee--I, who have done thee so much honour? By the Fiend! thou art right hardy! Thinkest indeed that the man who scorneth me shall have my daughter? I am no loser, and Offa and I, we shall share thy kingdom!" She stamped her foot three times, and scarcely had she done so when a part of the floor of her bedchamber began quickly to descend, and Ethelbert King of the East Angles, who stood upon that part, sank with it out of sight. There followed one or two cries, fierce, but muffled almost to extinction, and a thud. The Queen put her face to the opening, and called, "Gymbert, is all done?" There was no reply. She bent low to listen. Then a piercing sound assailed her ears--the voice of a woman, shrieking again and again, with gruesome, mechanical regularity. Another moment, and Cynerith had reached the garden. The outer door of this wing, her private door, was open. Upon the threshold stood her youngest daughter, in night-rail and hooded cloak. Gymbert the Queen's thrall rushed at the Lady Ethelfrith, and tried to take hold of her. She fought and beat him off, and tottered, shrieking still, though more faintly, sobbing and moaning, down the few steep steps and towards the middle of the room, where lay a shapeless mass from which a pool of crimson was spreading slowly. A flickering lantern swung from a hook upon the wall. Others arrived upon the scene. First came old Edric; then Eadburh, with her mass of tawny hair about her face; then Offa, muttering hoarsely; and all the inhabitants of the palace thronged to learn what had befallen. Ethelfrith was seated upon the ground, holding Ethelbert's dissevered head in her arms, and she rocked herself to and fro, and chanted in a far-away tone. "Under the leaves, under the leaves, There saw I maidens seven!" She broke off short, and changed her tune. "Then He built Him a bridge of the beams of the sun, And over the water ran He; And the three wealthy wights they followed him after, And drowned they were all three!" "Come, canst thou riddle me my ridlass? "Yellow and green, Sharp and keen, Grows in the mene. The King cannot ride it, no more can the Queen." "No more can the Queen.... I must mind me to tell my mother that in two years and a little more her son will be lying dead and cold. How sister Eadburh will storm at what must follow--the fall of our proud house!... Heart's dearest, the sun is high in heaven. Why do ye not awake, my lord? Do ye not hear the lark singing? Ethelbert, there is blood all about thy hair--it is like a crown, Ethelbert!" Babbling thus and laughing, she was torn away: nor did she ever recover her reason, though she lived thereafter thirty years. Earl Sweyn the Nithing _Being the Chronicle of Winifred Ebba's daughter_ In the first year of King Hardicanute, on the sixth-and-twentieth day of May, feast of blessed Augustine, Algive, only child of Aldred, sometime thane of Berrington, became by oath-plight nun of the Order of blessed Benedict, before the altar of the Abbey-church of Leominster, lately builded and begun by Leofric the good Earl. By this means grew the hoard of the same holy house the richer by the half of her goods. The other half, and her land at Berrington eke, Athelstane her uncle kept for himself. On the self-same day, and in the self-same abbey-church, did I, Winifred Ebba's daughter, whose father had been freed churl of the father's father of this Algive, make also mine awful vows to serve God after St. Benedict's law. Algive Aldred's daughter had then fifteen years, and I six more than she: all the days of our lives had we played together, and I watched over her. And for that I had ever longed, since I could mind me, for the religious life, I was glad in that hour: and my kindred chode not too greatly, for that I willed to tread the path whereon wended our old thane's daughter. But for Lady Algive was her oath-plight the spring of many and bitter woes. Now Algive was a right comely maiden. Like the blush of the wild rose on milk was the skin of her cheek: red as the wild rose-berries her soft lips; her hair yellow as the heart of the honeysuckle, and long and curling before they shore it; and her eyes were blue and grey together, as the onyx-stone in my Lord Bishop's great ring. She was hale, blithe, and unmoody, mild and forgiving; she worshipped God as do most women; she had ever a most sweet ruth for all that ailed or sorrowed; boughsome was she unto the rule of St. Benedict, in so far as the Abbess willed: yet I do mind me of thinking always that Heaven had not called her to be a nun. Howsoever, these thoughts kept I to myself. Twenty sisters were we, a few good enough, many less good than the best that lead the life of the world. We dwelt together in peace as far as might be; but there were no saints among us, such as King Edward loved. Nor was there such learning at Leominster as many of our English sisterhoods did boast of; but of such things I cannot speak cunningly, nor was I ever drawn to lettered lore. For me, the things of the household: let me cook and mend, heal and bind, and all happiness is mine. Our sister Algive had small learning enough. But because she was sunny ever, and none hated her, and because, moreover, her kin were mighty folk, when the Abbess Mildred came to die, we made her Abbess over us. Algive was then in her one-and-twentieth year. I do think that from first to last her rule was overmild. Many of us left prayer for idle talking--an ill thing where there are many women! Me she took from the kitchen, wherein I had wrought since my coming to the convent, to be sub-prioress, and sent me often as her trusted bode about the farm and garden. Those were the days when holy King Edward sat upon the throne in Thorney Island, by London town, and doughty Earl Godwin swayed the land. Many hated this Godwin; not a few feared, but ever followed him; but I who knew him can tell you so much of him: Were he greedy of wealth and grasping after means to might, yet had he a stout English heart, and none loved better than he the English land, or kenned better the wants of English folk. Churl's son or childe's son, I wit not, but King Edward took his daughter, fair Edith, as Lady of the English; and the children of Godwin were of the blood of kings, for he wedded Gytha the Danish Lady, kinswoman of King Canute. But though foremost in Witan and in leaguer, two of his own sons might Earl Godwin never rule. Of the six sons of Godwin, with three have I, Winifred, had my dealings, and of those three this is my reckoning: Sweyn the eldest was a man, for all his wilfulness and his sinful wrath. Harold the next-born was a noble prince. Woe worth the day wherein the arrow slew him! As for Tostig, fair of face as Michael Archangel, he was a devil. Now the Abbey of Leominster stood in the old land of Offa, some fourteen miles from the Hereford, where the king's armies are wont to pass over Wye into the fastnesses of the Welsh. Some three years before my lady Algive became our Abbess, Sweyn the first-born son of Godwin was made Earl, and given as Earldom much of the old kingdom of the March--to wit, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, and more beside. Ere long there spread from mouth to mouth tales of the wildness of our young Earl, even such wildness as Godwin his father bore with never in any other lord in England. More viking he seemed than Englishman, which made some to wonder, and to put abroad a groundless slander. And with brooding brows and foreboding nods, folk would tell of how he spurned the wise words of the old, or of how he would at times drink deep, and then fall to singing, fighting, or love-making maybe. Yet was he a righteous lawgiver, and open-handed ever: loving a daring deed, a hearty lay, a tale of the great ones of bygone years. Few there were that wished him not well, and few that prayed not God to bring him through the storms of youth to a steady manhood. Alack! alack for Lord Sweyn! tallest, proudest, most gifted of all the Godwinsons! It was on the twenty-sixth day of May--the self-same day of our profession--in the year of Our Lord One Thousand, Forty and Seven, when the hawthorn was in full bloom, and the bleak blossoms of the blackthorn hung withered and tattered on their swart stems, and all our broad meadows shone golden with the buttercup, that we of the convent of Leominster heard a clatter of many horses' hooves upon the cobble-stones before our door. And there before the door was Sweyn our Earl, with twenty Danish house-carles that followed him, and at his side some of the wealthiest and worthiest thanes of our smiling shire of Hereford. He was much above the mean height, long-limbed and lithe, with a swift and noiseless tread; not ruddy, as are the most of the English, but dark of hair and milk-white of skin as his mother the Dane, and browned about the face and neck by wind and sun; with a nose like the beak of a hawk, and eyes like the hawk's for brightness, and a sudden, rare smile such as God gives to few. And a most beguiling tongue had Earl Sweyn--the tongue of a sagaman. I saw his coming, peeping from an upper window, and went in haste with the tidings to the Lady Abbess. He strode into her little parlour, and louted low before her. Then many a strange thing happened. I was standing by at this their first meeting, and what there befell can I forget never. For ye must bear in mind that for six years I had toiled without end within the convent kitchen, and beheld no man, young or old, goodly or wizen, but Godmund the priest. It was a fair sight that greeted the Earl, that of Algive Aldred's daughter, now full-grown to womanhood--two and twenty years had she--fair even in her weeds of black, with her eyes lowered, yet she peering, as I knew, all the while from beneath her lashes. And so, when he then beheld her, Sweyn Godwinson grew pale beneath his bronze, and stood stock-still before her, his look all wonder. Algive raised her grey-blue eyes to his for one short moment. Of a sudden she dropped her gaze once again to the hem of her kirtle, and felt fumblingly for the crucifix at her waist. Then Sweyn flushed deep red, and his fingers clenched on the handle of his boar-spear; and taking another step forward, he bowed him down once more, and gave her greeting in words. Thereafter these twain talked together in courtly wise, as befitted them. * * * * * From that day forth came Earl Sweyn often to our Abbey. Twice or thrice had he with him his near kinsman, Beorn, late made Earl of the Middle English, sister's son to King Canute. This was a handsome man enough, but methought his eyes were treacherous. After a while Earl Sweyn brought Beorn no more, but himself came, and was much with the Abbess alone. My lady had indeed grounds for beseeching help of him: her churls were unruly, and who could rede the Abbess so well as the Earl? Howsoever, within the sisterhood was there great tattle of talk, and light hinting anent their two names. I but waited, and prayed, feeling sharp woe, and sorrowed in my heart--Mary forgive me!--as much for him as for her. Then one day late in June, the Lady Abbess rode forth, with only a band of weapon-bearing churls, to Hereford, where Sweyn the Earl then dwelt. A week's stay made she there, then rode back again to her Abbey. No more was she the woman that she had been--even Algive the fair, sparkling as a beam of the sun. Wan as the dead was she now, with tight-drawn lips. All day long would she walk up and down the cloister, up and down the garden paths, oft-times wringing her hands together. The evil mutterings grew, and tongues waxed ever louder and bolder; and some sisters forbore not openly to cast gibes at their Abbess almost before her back was turned. I beguiled them as well as I could to leave chatter and spend themselves in healthful work, for it was hay-harvest-tide. On a day early in August, the eleventh day, we bore in our last load of hay. I mind me well of that eleventh of August--sultriest day of all that sultry month: the lift bright as glass, and cloudless altogether until the hour of sun-setting. All day long we laboured in the heat, staying only for our holy offices, the which were soon said under the roof-tree of heaven; and every sister, yea, even the Abbess Algive herself, worked as lustily as the stoutest churl. All was done at early even; the great wains rolled home to the barns, and we passed in thankful procession to our church, and there sang vespers, as well as we might for our parched throats. The evening meal was spread in the hall of the convent: each nun stood beside her stool at the board--thinking, one and all, I trow, of white wheaten bread, and cool cider, and eke of dreamless slumber: at the board's head, the Abbess had but now beckoned to Godmund the Priest that he should ask blessing on our food, when there arose a loud clamour without, such as made even the drowsiest to start, and we heard the voice of the portress, angry and shrill. Then one threw open the door of the hall, and there upon the threshold stood Earl Sweyn Godwinson, and behind him his house-carles, twenty dauntless men of the Danes. Earl Sweyn stepped within the hall, up to where the Abbess was. "My lady," he cried, before us all, "here am I. Come thou with me!" Abbess Algive would not meet his gaze. She strove a little to speak, and a whisper came. "Lord Earl----" Sweyn kept his glowing eyes upon her until at last she raised her eyes to his. Then: "Sweyn, Sweyn," quoth she, and went to him, putting both her hands into his hands. She would have withdrawn them indeed, but he caught her about the body, and laughing a little, bore her shoulder-high from her convent hall. We sped to our gates, but he was already ahorse, with her before him, holding to him tightly, and his men were springing to their saddles. Out at the gates they streamed, and we after them, into the midst of Leominster town, where they halted a little while. What a sight was there upon Leominster green! Small wonder that the folk thronged to stare! There were the sisters of blessed Benedict, running hither and thither as they were wode, all shrieking, some laughing, most wailing and calling upon all the saints: there lame old Father Godmund, snuffling and chiding all unheeded; in the midst of all, Sweyn the Earl, with his Danish house-carles about him, marking naught, it seemed, but a loose nail in his horse's shoe. Suddenly, one Sister Sexburh, who had been ever greedy after gold and jewels and such light things of the world, cried with a loud voice: "What, good sisters! bide ye here when the road lies open before you? What of the flock when the shepherdess is fled? Must we ever waste within walls?" And picking up her kirtle with one hand, she set off swiftly down the high-way, with Offa the drunken thane in her wake. But of all that there befell--to my shame I own it--I heard no more, for now Earl Sweyn set his horse's head towards Hereford, and with him was Algive with her arms about him; and I had no more thought of the Abbey of Leominster, of my holy oath of profession, of the needy I was wont to feed and clothe and the sick I was wont to heal; but I ran until I came up with Sweyn's horse, catching at his stirrup and calling out: "Leave me not, leave me not! Take me also, Lord Earl!" Sweyn made sign to one of his men that rode beside him, who, stooping, lifted me into his saddle before him, and so was I borne along, following Earl Sweyn and my Lady Algive. * * * * * From that day forth was Earl Sweyn forced to flee from shire to shire. For wheresoever he would go, the noise of his sacrilege sped before him. All priests of God cried out upon him throughout the length and breadth of the land; and of the folk, the most did shun the Earl, and curse the whole brood of Godwin. Then Sweyn took pen in hand, and wrote unto Edward our King, his sister Edith the lady's lord, begging this thing of him: That whereas Algive Aldred's daughter had taken the holy oath-plight in full early youth, for dread of her kindred, whom she might not withstand, this Algive might now be freed of her oath, and be wedded to him, Sweyn Godwinson, as his lawful wife. Now blessed Edward was a great saint, ywiss. Did any man ill or slightingly by this Edward's self, his laws or his kingship, then had the King towards him the kind heart of a woman: but woe betide that one that had wrought wrong to Holy Church! He alone would find starkness in King Edward. For him had our Lord King heart of stone! When he had read the writing of Lord Sweyn, he cut and tore the same in shreds, and stamping his foot upon the ground, swore by blessed Dunstan's bones that Sweyn Godwinson should rue the day wherein he was born. King Edward was abiding at Winchester, and Earl Godwin and his other sons were with him. Unto his father sent Sweyn then for help, but Godwin did most straitly let that he should not come to him: nor would any of his brethen hold speech with Sweyn, but Harold only. Then was Algive the Abbess stricken with fear, and wanhope, and bitter remorse, and she fled from before Earl Sweyn, and hid herself in the house of a kinsman of mine own, in the borough of Pevensey, in Kentland, where, try as he would, he might never come at her. Here, in the summer of the next year, her son Haco was born. And about this tide was Sweyn Godwinson outlawed by Witenagemote, and became as a wolf, and his head as a wolf's head, and thus any man might slay him, and yet go guiltless of blood. And Sweyn fled to the sea-shore, and took ship with his house-carles, and fared unto his Danish kin, and with them roved the seas a viking, for full a year and more. Now my Lady Algive and I abode in the house of Oswy my kinsman, a worthy chapman of the town of Pevensey, and the folk around kenned nought of us nor of whence we came, believing her to be a widow and I her maid. For King Edward and Earl Godwin had made fast unto my lady some small means of livelihood. Thus a whole year passed from the spring of Sweyn Godwinson's forth-going, and summer was come again. And one fine day, when my lady and I did walk forth into Pevensey market to buy us fresh cake-bread, who should come through the market, wending afoot, but Sweyn's cousin, Earl Beorn of the shifty eyes. He caught sight of Algive's face beneath her wimple, as she stood by the cake-seller's booth, and halted beside her, and spake softly, near to her ear. And when my lady returned to our dwelling, Earl Beorn went along with her, and there talked with her alone some while. Often thereafter came he unto my lady Algive at my kinsman's house at Pevensey--once in the week at the seldomest. What this boded I could not guess, but ever I misliked this Beorn more and more. One evening, late in summer, I, after long wandering by the shore in the cool of the eventide, hied me home, weening that somewhat ailed my lady, and sought her in her own small chamber. I found her therein, crouched low upon the floor, white as sheeted ghost, her eyes a-stare, her mouth round-agape. Seeing me, she stumbled to her feet, and with one great sob, flung her arms about my neck and held me as she would never let me go. "Winifred, sweet friend," then said mine alderliefest lady, "fail me not now, thou that hast followed me through weal and woe! For now must I to a deed before which my whole being quails. Know then--Earl Beorn--he hath wooed me long to his own ends, and I withstood him, minding me that my troth is to Christ our Lord, even though I be now desecrate. But ever he spake of the King, and of how he, Beorn, had lately besought him that Sweyn might come again into England, and be made once more lord and earl, as beseemeth his father's son. And King Edward, said he, seemed like to yield. And oh! I have but now plighted me, that if Sweyn be inlawed by his means, I will go unto Beorn whensoever he shall send for me.... O Winifred, thou wilt yet stand by me? Thou wilt go with me--on that day...? To what end my soul's weal? Is not Sweyn's life wrecked through me?" Seeing how it was with her, I wrestled not with her resolve, but soothed her crying, and swore to stand or fall by her. In the town of Pevensey I had a friend, a trusty good-wife who had been whilom of Earl Godwin's household, and loved Lord Sweyn as her own bairn. Indeed, I had but now learned of her that Sweyn, with his Danish ships, hung even then about the shores of Kent. And in his father's lordship of Bosham were some, as I knew, that gave him food and shelter when he willed to set foot on English ground. To one of these I sent, bidding him tell Sweyn the outlaw that I had that for his ear alone which must be said, and quickly. Three days later I found him, Earl Godwin's first-born, within a filthy hovel, wherein must he ever stoop that his head hit not against the thatch. Straightway I fell on my knees before him, not knowing what I uttered--only saying over and over: "Lord Sweyn, Lord Sweyn, this must not be!" And I told to him the guilty bargain made by my Lady Algive with Beorn the Earl, for sake of him, Sweyn Godwinson. Scarce was my meaning clear ere his fell wrath began to gather like a thunder-storm. "May he burn in hell-fire!" cried Sweyn. "May earth spue forth his body, that he come never to no burial! May the ravens of Odin pick his bones for ever, and each day may the flesh grow upon them anew! The toad! The rat!--Aye, I too have trafficked with Beorn Estrithson of late, and found him kindly and loving enough. Speak for me to the King! Shall I be inlawed? I do think for a day: and then, if I but yawn at mass, or smile at a pretty wench by the roadside, they will drive me once more forth!" Then growing calmer he said: "Into thy keeping give I Algive. Watch well; and when Beorn would work his wicked will, send me tidings, and I will be with them ere harm can come to that lady." Honeyed words spake Earl Beorn in King Edward's ear, and within the week was Sweyn Godwinson inlawed, and of the King bidden come and welcome. On the self-same night my lady bade me wit that the hour of her dread was nigh. Now the King's ships were out, ready to fight with Baldwin the Flemish Earl, but in the end King Edward willed not to war with Baldwin, so must the seamen to their own homes. It had so befallen that the King had sent for Harold Godwinson to Sandwich, where he was then dwelling. Earl Harold's seamen were of Devon, and would make Dartmouth on the next day, and thus must Earl Beorn be over them in their ship of war, in Harold's stead. At eventide would Earl Harold yield up his command to Beorn his kinsman, in the haven of Pevensey; and at eventide would Beorn have my Lady Algive come to him aboard this ship. Then I sent a trusty one in haste with these tidings unto Sweyn. As the sun was setting, my lady, hooded altogether, and leaning upon my arm, went down to the water-side. In a shed, behind heaped-up timber, crouched we hidden, and watched Earl Harold and his household men land from the tall warship when the shades of night were fast drawing down, and set out for the court of the King. Earl Beorn was left, and four of his men, and they had all eaten and drunken well. When all was once more still, we crept out, she and I, clomb the ladder that yet hung adown the side, and so aboard the ship of Earl Beorn. In the bows lay the four seamen, heavy with the ale they had drunken: they seemed scarce to mark our going. Now Beorn awaited her astern, in a tent-room strung upon poles and screened on all sides with thick hangings, wherein he had feasted with Harold a little before. At the door of this tent I left her, and ran with all my haste to the ship's side. Beneath my cloak I had carried, so warily, a little lanthorn, whose horn I had shrouded with a scrap of thin red silk. This I waved thrice to and fro, for a token to Lord Sweyn without. In the twinkling of an eye, he came on out of the darkness, ten of his Danish followers in his wake: swiftly and soundlessly they leapt aboard. They took hold on three of Beorn's men ere they could struggle or cry, gagged them, and bound them fast. The fourth saw we not at all at that time. Swiftly sped Sweyn towards the Earl's tent, the great battle-axe of a viking in his hand, and I beside him. Even fleeter was I, for I forged ahead, and had torn aside the hangings even as he came up with me. Earl Beorn stood within, flushed and lowering: at his feet knelt Algive, her hood wrested away, and the fingers of his right hand clasped in the short golden curls of her hair. Beside him, as though thrust from his way, was a light trestle-board, yet strewn with bread, broken meats, and drinking-horns: upon this board he leant unsteadily with his other hand. Said he thickly, swaying a little: "By the hammer of Thor, who dare----" Then Sweyn glided within, and called full softly and sweetly: "Ho, Beorn Estrithson! Here is Sweyn Godwinson!" "Is it so?" said Beorn. "Is it so indeed? Sweyn the Outlaw! Sweyn the Nithing!" His voice rose in a drunken laugh. "Godwin's son! Sweyn the son of King Canute, and of Gytha the spotless princess." It was the last hiss of that wicked worm. The Danish war-axe of Sweyn whistled once through the air, and smote Earl Beorn right between the brows, and he fell heavily along the deck, and by his blood was Algive all foully bespattered as she lay. And Sweyn sang loud and hoarse and high; hoarse and high and loud sang he: "Utters the axe: of Sweyn the sea-rover; Lifeless he lies: the wiler of women! Blood of betrayer: is it not a sight full seemly? Haro! Haro! Aié! Haro! Lo! cries his lord: Weapon unworthy, Lop I thy head leifer, than 'gainst brave and true men bear thee! Hempen death rather his, that was sib-folk's slanderer. 'Cowards come not: To the halls of the Chosen! Haro! Haro!..." But of all that followed I nothing saw nor heard, for a great blow was stricken me behind the head, and black darkness rushed down upon mine eyes and ears. The blood beat dully against my brow, and my head ached as it would split in twain. I lay on a day-bed, pillowed with down. On the ship? There had been a ship.... The fourth man! He must have fallen upon me as I stood in the tent-door. Nay, I was once again within four walls. There were voices of men and women about me. I opened mine eyes. Near-by saw I some that I kenned full well, though they kenned not me, for often had I gazed upon the great ones of the land, since coming into Kent. On a settle over against me sat proud Lady Gytha, Earl Godwin's wife: her grief had made her stony; her eyes were heavy, and her lips a thin, tight streak. Earl Tostig stood before the empty hearth, clanking ever at the golden chain about his neck. At the feet of his mother, upon a stool, sat Harold, holding on his knee the child Haco Sweynson. "Stirs she yet?" said Lady Gytha. "Nay, not yet," Tostig answered. I shut mine eyes, for his harsh tones jarred and sickened me. "Was it Algive?" she said, right mournfully. "Has this woman once again brought my Sweyn to nought?" "Lady mother," spake Earl Harold, "I was, as ye know, at Dartmouth town, when, at dead of night, came one of my men to me. In a dark wynd, he said, armed men set upon him and held him fast, and one, whose voice seemed the voice of Sweyn, gave into his arms this child, son of Sweyn Godwinson, and bade him take him thence unto me, or be slain where he stood. 'And look thou beneath the shed of Oswald the shipman, by his wharfside,' quoth he that might be Sweyn, 'and there wilt thou behold more which beareth on this matter.' My man and his fellows sought the sheds of Oswald, and lo! bound hand and foot, four seamen of Beorn's ship, which Sweyn my brother sailed out of Pevensey, and the body of Beorn Estrithson our kinsman, mangled fearfully, and eke yon poor soul, whom the men of Beorn call the Lady Algive's woman." Then I guessed that I was now in the house of Earl Godwin at Dorchester. "Slain by my son!" moaned Lady Gytha. "Beorn, who won for him the King's forgiveness!" "Fore God and His host of hallows!" cried Tostig bitterly. "Heavy is now our shame! Such wantonness knows no end. Outcast of Holy Church was Sweyn Godwinson--and now black murder done on him who had befriended him. Shall the whole house of Godwin fall for the strayings of one? Were I King----" "Hold!" Harold thundered. "Never aught underhand did Sweyn, and that thou well wittest, Tostig!" At this I strove to sit upright on my bed, but could not, and fell back. "See, she swoons no more," said Lady Gytha, and was at my side, bringing wine in a flask. Then there broke in upon us Godwin the Earl, with fumbling step, his eyes wild, his grey locks tangled and unkempt. "Woe worth the day!" he cried aloud unto his lady. "Woe worth the hour wherein he saw the light, this son of thine! Twice outlaw he, and Nithing by the word of the armed Gemot! Foul blows where thanks were owing--that was well done, O Sweyn! No child of mine art thou henceforward. Harold, stand thou in his stead: thine are all the rights of the first-born." He sank upon a settle, shading his countenance with his hands. Lady Gytha went to him, and her tears began fast to flow. Then came Tostig's whisper, sudden and clear as the cracking of ice: "What, Harold, so soon? I did think----" But Harold chode not with him, for the boy Haco whimpered, and he fell to soothing him in most kind wise. Then, by God's favour, I rose from my bed, and knelt at the feet of the Earl and his lady, and spake to them of the shameful saying of Beorn, the which had goaded Sweyn Godwinson to smite him to death. In after years, Lord Harold knew, but so softly spake I there that my tale was heard of Godwin and Gytha only, and no word reached the ear of Tostig. When I had ended, Lady Gytha arose, to pass from us all into an inner room. And Earl Godwin arose too, and caught her arm as she went. "Gytha--wife"--said he--"here is it at an end! I am old, I am old, Gytha!" It was sooth he spake, the once stout Earl. He was an old man from that hour. But Gytha held her head high, and I knew that in her heart she was glad for her son. Good folk, ye say that ye would hear yet further of Earl Sweyn and of the Lady Algive, who are now no more, and of how they came to their ends. Men say that King Edward would once more have pardoned this lord, Edith the Lady besought him so. But when Sweyn had put the body of Earl Beorn on shore at Dartmouth, of his eight ships, six then left him, for his men, both Danes and English, now beheld him stained with the blood of a kinsman. And as he sailed towards the east, in the warship of Beorn, with one of his own ships faithfully following, the men of Hastings set forth from their haven, and hunted these craft until they overtook and seized them. But Sweyn Godwinson they took not, nor Lady Algive that was with him; and they twain hied them into Flanders, and there abode all that winter. Thereafter Lord Sweyn went once more a-sea-roving, seeking forgetfulness, as I have heard. In the year One Thousand Fifty and One, when the townsfolk of Dover, greatly wroth, did wreak the wrongs done to them by Eustace the French Earl upon the said Earl and his men, Godwin withstood the King upon the men of Dover's behalf, and was banished by King Edward beyond seas, he and all his house. Then went they also unto Baldwin's land, and Sweyn met them there, and abode with them, for he had long yearned for sight of his kindred. When Godwin was called back into England, they were for bringing Sweyn with them, to be inlawed, and received back into the King's trust, But Sweyn's pride was broken. He would come no more to the land of his birth, who had so fouled the fair fame of Godwin's house. Harold should stand in his stead: he would fare afar, pilgrim to the Holy Grave and Calvary Hill, that haply he might find the forgiveness of heaven. When the children of Godwin returned, they had in their keeping Algive my dear lady. All this while had she been in the city of Bruges, in the ward of Baldwin's daughter, Mahault, that is now Queen of the English, wife to King William. They sent for me to her, and put us to dwell together in the house of my kinsman at Pevensey, where we had woned aforetime. Now in two years from that time began my Lady Algive to wane and to wither, as a green bush when the sap no more rises. She spake little, and prayed long hours together. At last came the day, when she went abroad no more, and often kept her bed. Then one morning early, she called me to her side and thus quoth she: "O Winifred, this month agone dreamed I a dream, one that is sooth and no vanity. I dreamed that Sweyn, my lord and my love, stood before me, the rime in his hair, his feet bruised and bleeding, and beckoned me. So I know--ask me not how--that he is no longer on life, and that God in his goodness sendeth death to me also. But lo! another marvel. Each morn, as I awaken, I hear the ring of footsteps that come from a far frozen land. Each morn, I say, are these footsteps louder and nigher; but Sweyn comes not at all any more." This was at the winter-tide. Early in the next summer, my good friend, she who had been of the household of Gytha, sent to let me wit that an holy priest and pilgrim was lately come from the East, bearing tidings which my lady should hear. To our house-door came he, and I led him within to my lady, where she lay. And this was his tale, told in few words: "Good wives, as I journeyed hither from the Holy City, I traversed the land of Lycia, where they have a winter more bitter than any winter we English know. And one evening came one to our fellowship, saying that yonder, beneath the roof of an holy hermit, lay a man of the north, they thought of the Island of the Angles, sick unto death. I followed this Lycian, seeking my countryman, and found him, a mighty man aforetime, I ween, but now so wasted with his wanderings that he seemed to have no flesh, but only skin and bone. And when I would shrive and housel him, thus he spake: 'Priest, know that I am Sweyn the Nithing, first-born son of Earl Godwin, and whilom Earl in fair England, from Hereford even unto Oxenford! Woe for the sins of unbridled youth! I have profaned the Holy Church of Christ, and have wrought murder, even upon my kinsman, when the red wrath boiled in my blood--aye, and the guilt of mine own father's death is also upon me, most wretched! Since these things done have I known no peace until this hour, wherein I leave my life.' "Soon after died he of the cold." Now about an hour after this pilgrim had given over speaking, Algive Aldred's daughter went forth from the bitterness of the world to the unbounded mercy of God. As for Haco Sweynson, he fell fighting by King Harold upon Senlac field. And I, Winifred, daughter of Ebba, yet live on, and pray in each hour to Our Lord Christ and to Mary mild, His Mother, that the souls of these twain, Sweyn and Algive, may be cleansed of every foul stain. For though their sins were many and great, yet scorned they none, nor lied, nor ever betrayed any but themselves, neither ground down the needy when that might was theirs; and verily and indeed they loved much; and I, who have sinned my share, God wot! do faithfully hope to meet them both again ere long in the fair, shining meads of Paradise. Edith's Well "_Sicut spina rosam genuit Goduinus Edivam._" So, Gundred my son's daughter, thou hast been to London town; and thou hast seen this new Queen Edith, whom men in the French tongue call Maulde; and she is the fairest lady who ever in all the world sat beside king in high-seat; the most gracious, the meekest, the freest-handed, the most ruthful! Edith, quoth the child? Long ago there was an Edith.... Well, daughter, a queen once spoke to thy grandfather, and he to her; and a mighty wonder marked their meeting, which will be remembered while time shall last. Young folk love tales, and the old are fain to the telling of tales. Sit down by my feet, and hear how once upon a day Edith came to her Well yonder by the highway. I have witnessed frost and snow, storm and lightning, pest and famine, in my nigh-on-eighty years; I have known drought and burning also, but never such drought as befell us in the year One Thousand Sixty and Five. This was a great year in its beginnings: a marvellous year for the apple-bloom; we had carried two crops of hay before July was out; the wheat-ears were so heavy that they leant together as they grew, like unto folk in a crowd that swoon, and even the barley would scarcely bestir itself at the coming of a welcome wind. Oh, the heat of that summer! We had three showers in all between April and the end of August, and they but soft and slender. The earth cracked in places into gaps full many a foot wide; the grass was no more green, but the colour of the baked earth in which it had root: small weeds died, and the moss withered on stock and stone; half a day was the life of a brier-rose. Rabbits, hares, and some birds starved all about us; the field-mice were a scourge to us at the first, but later even they and the hedgehogs gave up the breath of life. The brooks dwindled and ceased to flow but in a trickle: many an age-old spring sent forth water no more. The morning dews were heavy, but soon gone; and the earth could drink them in no farther than a hen may scratch. Though we dug dew-ponds, the little moisture they gathered was not worth our toil. We cut the corn in haste, for the wild fowl rifled it day and night. Many an one that laboured did the sun strike dizzy. One man and one boy were slain by the heat-stroke, and some tottered from the fields to work no more that year. With those that remained, it was mug to mouth ten times in the hour! My cider was gone within the first three days; and then my goodly beer must follow! And in the second week in August they sent from Ledbury to tell me that Edith the Lady, King Edward's wife, would pass near by my dwelling as she went to visit her brother, Harold Godwinson the Earl, at Hereford, and begged that I in charity would give her refreshment upon her wayfaring. As the Lady willed, so must I do, for our King's sake, and for the sake of other some. In my boyhood I had been one year a henchman of Godwin her father's; Gytha her mother had nursed me in some slight sickness; I had ridden out with Sweyn to fight with Griffith the Welsh king. I had not seen this Edith since she was a young maiden in her father's hall: men had told of her as both merry and learned; but I had never been near her, to speak one word. It was said that she led a gleeless life with her pious old lord. She would not pass right before my door, I deemed, on her way to the Hereford: I would take food and drink, and meet her upon the road that runs through Ledbury to Gloucester, and ride with her some deal of her journey, if she should wish for my company. So I set out about the ninth hour of the morning, with four of my men: my good wife, thy grandmother, I bade abide within doors, for fear of the deadly heat. We bore with us a pie and wheaten bread--no butter, for it would have melted. Little beer and no cider had I by then; but we took two skins of ripe mead, fit for queen or king. The sun was shining so strongly that we could almost hear the shooting of his beams. The air was seen to throb. White dust lay thickly over grass, bush and tree. There was a dreadful stillness; the only sound that ourselves made not was the sickening hum of flies. We went slowly, with bracken-leaves bound about our heads and twined within our horses' browbands. When we had gone some two miles, there befell a great mishap. The stopper flew from the mead-flask at the saddle-bow of Anflete the reeve, and the mead gushed out. We had not time to catch any of it ere it lay frothing in the dust. And then, as though the devil strove to plague us, the other bottle, which mine own horse carried, burst also, and left us likewise liquorless. But we bore on, until we came to a spot a few yards off the Ledbury highway, where the banks were steep and the bushes shady: indeed, all about was the woodland of the vill of Stoke, belonging to this same Edith the Lady, who had set a reeve therein to see to her rights and her profits. Seemingly she would not stay to look upon her own land, so fain was she for sight of Harold her brother. Near the joining of the ways, then, we waited. Our throats were as dry as a smith's bellows. My men had swallowed what little beer we had left before I could forbid them. At once I made the blockheads seek for water, thinking of the wants of those we had come to meet. Not one drop within a hundred yards in every quarter, though God knows there are springs and streams enough thereabouts in any common year! We stretched ourselves in what there was of shade, and soon we beheld them coming, a goodly company of ladies and armed men. We went forward to greet them; the foremost of them got down from their saddles; the Lady of the English came stately towards me, smiled, and put her small hand in mine. "Odda, right glad am I to meet with thee," she said. "Dost thou mind thee how at Winchester I let my head-rail fall from a window into the buckthorn-tree, and how thou didst climb in and get it again, and didst send it me by my mother's woman?" I remembered. Being but a henchman of the stable, I could not myself go with it. How gracious her smile! How mild her condescension! Great wonder was it throughout the land, I knew, that she should be so lowly-sweet. The Lady Edith was little like to Earl Godwin her father, the rugged, grim old man! Although at this time about forty-four years old, as I think, she was an exceedingly fair woman still. Her skin was white as walrus-bone, and very little wrinkled; her hair long, thick, and red-golden as ever it had been, for though she was now hooded and staidly wimpled, I saw it uncovered later on that morning, and I could find therein no grizzled strand. Her clothing? She was cloaked and hooded, meseemeth, in fallow hue--and a little cross, finely-wrought in silver, hung at her throat; but how can a man speak of women's garments? I know that her mouth was soft and kindly, and quivered a little sometimes when she was not speaking; and there were now black shadows beneath her big grey eyes--maybe from the hardship of her journeying. "My lady," I answered, "I beg that ye will rest awhile, and eat of the food that I have here. Alack! I have no drink to set before you! We brought mead, but in the heat an hour agone it burst our bottles; and there is no water near at hand--we have but lately sought it." The lady raised her hands to her brows in most weary wise. "Good Odda," she said, notwithstanding, "I thank thee much for thy kindness in thus coming, and for all the pains that thou hast taken. And since thy mead was lost on my behalf, I thank thee for it also. Let us sit here awhile and eat, as thou sayest; we are sore anhungered, that is sure. And later we will go find my reeve at Stoke over yonder. He will doubtless have one drop of somewhat for us each to drink. We also emptied our flasks an hour ago, silly souls that we were!" She had with her her mass-priest, her women, her men-at-arms, her thralls. We sat down upon the ground, and broke the pasty into portions, and dealt out my fine wheaten bread. As she talked with me of the old days in her own home, suddenly we heard a noise in the woodland upon our right--a child's voice wailing--the voices of two children. Far away at first, then somewhat nearer. Two wandering children, crying fit to burst their bosoms. Great breathless, thirsty sobs, swelling every now and then to a despairing roar. The lady had sprung to her feet, and had broken through the nearest bushes into the thicket beyond. "Hither! hither!" she cried. "Come! Come! But where are ye? Weep no more--here is help!" We all followed her. She walked onward, calling; they shouted still, and drew nearer and yet more near: at last they came forth, the little mites, upon a bare plot whereon we had halted. Boy and girl they were; five and seven years old they seemed: hand clasped in hand, cheeks grimy with dust which their tears had furrowed, faces flushed and seared by the mighty heat. She ran to meet them, with outstretched arms. They ran to her, and caught at her skirts. The girl, the younger, cried, "We were lost!" and the boy said hoarsely, "Mother!... O mother, the world looks black.... Oh, my head, I cannot see!" and he had fallen flat at her feet before she could stay him. The girl said, "Lady, my head--great smart have I also!" and her breath came thick and loud. The Lady Edith gathered sorrel-leaves, and bound them about the heads of the bairns. "It is not enough," said she then. "They must have water." "There is no water here," Anflete my servant answered. "We sought it high and low before my lady's coming." She wrung her hands in sharp woe. "O Christ, have mercy!" she said. "O Mary, that art our mother, hasten--help!" Then her passion seemed to leave her, and she knelt, and began to speak in still, low tones; but I heard her words. "Father of all goodness," she prayed, "save these twain alive, who are more to Thee than the wild sparrows! Strengthen then, Lord, I beseech thee, the gift that Thou hast bestowed upon Thine handmaid!" Having so said, she arose, and quickly bade her folk bear the children with them, and shade the little ones' heads. It was high noon now, but she flung her hood back, and her wimple fell away and hung down with the hood, so that her bright hair was laid bare, and her shapely neck and breast of ivory. Many a woman would have seemed light-minded, even wanton, so; but our Edith was queen in everything she did. Although the soil was burning, and scorched the feet through riding-boots, she began to walk swiftly, glidingly, around and about. She held her riding-switch, a toy with handle of gold and amber, bent bow-wise between her two hands. Her lips were parted, as those of one who breathes-in freshest air. And we followed, a great awe upon us. We were once more in the lane where we had rested, when a gleam awoke in her eyes, which had become dark and shut off from earthly sight, and she sped ahead of us even faster than at first. She came to where the bank overhung, and was covered with sagging ferns, shrivelled and caked with dust. A shiver shot through her whole body, and the switch that she carried started and writhed as it had been a live snake. "God be praised!" she exclaimed. "Here is water for them!" She stamped her foot. "Dig! dig! Bring spades--Oh, dig! Quick! Would ye see them die before your eyes?" "Sebbe the charcoal-burner!" said Anflete. "I will fetch his spade." Edith had snatched his war-axe from one of her men-at-arms and was hewing at the bank whereunder she stood; I hacked away with my broad knife; some of the others scratched with their hands. In a little while Anflete was back from the charcoal-burner's with spade and pick, and we got more skilfully to work. A homely croon was heard in the heart of the earth. A spot of moisture darkened the bottom of the hollow that we had made. One spadeful more, and up it bubbled--a little spring, but a strong one. There were stones still within the hollow, and we put back more to keep up the shifting sides; and into the bowl so made the water flowed, thick and clotted, truly, with the dust and flakes of sandstone, but how sweet to touch and taste! Oh, the happy noise of water in a thirsty land! The Lady Edith dipped a clout in the well and bathed the heads and necks of the little ones, gave them to drink, and set them to lie in the shade. Soon the girl-child stirred and wept, and Edith lifted her up in her arms. A shrill cry made us all turn to behold a poorly-clad woman, hot and unkempt, who stumbled towards us, tears in her eyes and terror in her voice. "Ye naughty ones!" she stormed at sight of the children. "Here have I been...." Then she stopped short, with open mouth, and stared at the slender, bare-headed woman who held her younger child, until one whispered: "It is the King's Lady!" when she louted down upon her knees. "Hush! hush!" said Lady Edith to her sobbing burden. "Fear not, sweetheart! Thou must go home now--go to thy mother indeed!" and she laid her in the arms of the kneeling woman. Never had she been more lovely than in that moment, her face shining like a rose, her eyes most tender and brightly-beaming. When, a short while after, she turned from mother and child and came seeking me, a huge pity rushed up within me, and I think that she read that pity in my look. "Dread lady," said I, being a little mazed, and all soft with ruth, "how goes it with our Lord the King?" "Whenas I left my lord, all was right well with him," she answered. "He had some sickness in the spring, but it irked him little, truly, for his years. Such an holy life he leads, and yet he is so long-enduring towards them of worldly mind! It is great joy to me that I may see him sometimes, and be somewhat near him." She crossed herself, and the fair light faded from her. "Wherefore do I murmur?" said she. "Is not Jordan flood better than all the rivers of Damascus?" And so saying, she folded her meek hands above her heart, and went her way. I never saw her again. The well that she found for us abideth for her memorial: clear and cool in every weather--the freshest in all the countryside. I have often thought of her since that day; and I think of her more often now than ever in the long night hours that are not the drowsy hours when one has grown old. Dreams, Gundred, dreams--waking dreams, but idle things none the less! But sometimes meseemeth that her very self is near me, standing as I best knew her, arms outheld, face aglow. She lived and died childless; the old King had made an oath, they say, for fear he might fall short of heaven. Once or twice evil tongues have made free to slander her fame! She was staunch, I know, and flawless; and yet her heart was quick and warm. Girl, I have ever recked little of the greater deal of the saints to whom prelates bid us pray. Of God and of his goodness I reck much; and this is the saint whom I worship before all others, crowned in this world or uncrowned--Edith the well-beloved Lady, whom all her people honoured and pitied. Richard the Scrob "Better than mine, Kenric--better than thine!" said Grim. "Ever his are taken, and ours are left. Who will look at our sheep and our oxen when the Scrob's are by?" Kenric withdrew the straw that he had been chewing from between his teeth, and ceased to stare at the white-limbed, red-spotted cattle in the pen before him. "Eh! he buyeth for the Bishop," he mumbled. "And he buyeth for the folk of Hereford town. And for the Abbot of Leominster. And for the Prior of Wenlock. His salted meat is rowed upon Wye and upon Severn to feed the merchantmen of Bristol. Grim, this Frenchman is a worker of spells." "And even so the beasts of his own breeding are such as thou wilt not meet with on any other man's land within the two shires. Heavier! Fatter! Sleeker! I would that his lord the devil would fly away with him soon! Hast thou but seen his woolsacks yonder? What other has such great store to sell? True, he can have little spinning at home, with no women." "I have not seen him--Richard the Scrob," said vague Kenric, returning to his straw-munching. "Are not these sold already----" "Kenric, stand not and grumble, with blind eyes," cried Munulf the maltman, who now accosted these two. "Here is a sight not often seen--the little widow, Kenric, the plump widow. Look up and behold the light of thine eyes, where she cometh, girt about with her husband's stalwart kinsfold." "Hey? who?" Kenric rejoined. "Who cometh yonder? Alftrude the widow of Winge? Oh, aye, it is a pretty woman enough----" "And should be rich woman enough," said Grim. "They are watchdogs indeed, the brethren of the Moor. I wonder that they let her show her nose at Ludford fair--so little and straight is it that many a man will love it, by heaven! My good wife pities Alftrude greatly. She will be widow to the end of her days, they ward her about so wilily." "I know it, I know it!" wheezed Kenric. "And Ulwin, Alward, and Ednoth--they are three ill men to deal withal. Alack! no hope have I!" He summoned up a faint sigh of good-humoured resignation. "If but now thou found me grumbling," he explained, "it was at French Richard." Munulf raked his fingers through his long yellow hair, and looked mysterious. "I have heard cunning talk of late," said he "Men say that these outland folk that swarm about our King shall soon be outlanders twofold; for shall they not be bundled off, beyond the seas, whither they came? Earl Godwin called together his Mickle Gemot seven weeks ago. I would we knew how that has sped. Godwin is wont to bring about his will!" "Why, my lords, he hath brought it about, the good Earl!" sounded in an excited cackle behind them. Hildred the ale-wife hastened to join the three speakers, her red face unusually resplendent with pride in being foremost retailer of news for that day. "A man of Worcester brought great tidings yestereve. Godwin is driving out the accursed Normans, every one--man, woman, child, and priest. Even Ralf our Earl, the King's nephew, shall go, though his mother were English Godgifu!" "Bless the work!" exclaimed Grim. "These Normans have a knack of drawing to themselves the wealth that should be ours. There should be pickings, eh? for all true Englishmen!" He nudged Kenric, and whispered: "H'st! see where Richard comes!" Richard the Norman came up to his cattle-pen. He was a small man, slightly built, and of upright carriage, and he moved with a spring in his gait. He had an aquiline nose, a persistent chin, and a strong, exceedingly well-formed mouth; his eyes were dark and deeply-set beneath the fine straight line of brow, and they looked straight into the eyes of others. His face was clean-shaven like a cleric's, and more than ordinarily wrinkled about mouth, eyes, and brow for his age, which was a little over thirty; the black hair of his head was cut short at the nape of the neck and the top of the forehead. He wore a short tunic of dull-coloured cloth, and leather boots, and from his waistbelt hung a small, shabby leather bag. Behind him walked his two servants, Howel the Welshman, and his own countryman Perot. "Good day, Thane Kenric," said Richard the Scrob. "Good day, lords both, and to you, worshipful Munulf." "Ah! Good day, Richard Scrob's son." "Warm weather for November. A very Martin's summer," said Richard. "Aye," from Grim. "Oh, aye, right warm, this weather. It may become hot. It shall soon be hot for all Frenchmen!" he concluded savagely. Richard seemed unconscious of Grim's words and of their tone. He unfastened the bag from his belt, opened it, and surveyed the contents complacently. Oswin, the maltman's son, a weak-kneed, loose-lipped youth, gave a laboured imitation of the Norman's air of detachment, a few yards away. "Why, son," said Munulf, when he had finished guffawing at this specimen of his offspring's wit, "what bearest in thy bosom?" pointing to the opening at the neck of the lad's jerkin, where a small, dark head was seen to writhe. "Oh, it is my weasel," Oswin replied. "He harms me not, for I feed him, but others he biteth. There are some shall feel his fangs before Holy Martin's fair is out, I warrant you, my father!" "Here are the Moor folk at last. I shall sit down," Kenric announced portentously. He withdrew to the customary resort of thanes and great men on market-days, on holidays, and at all public functions held upon Ludford green--the huge elm whose boughs cast their shadow as far as the cattle-pen of Richard the Scrob. There he subsided upon a bench, and sent a serving-woman of the ale-wife's for beer. The green was now crowded with buyers and sellers of every degree. Grim and Munulf, who leant upon the hurdles surrounding Richard's exhibits, saw the throng before them part to release a procession of two thralls, four lean oxen, four women in riding-mantles, and three corpulent men who wore the grimy remains of once-fine garments, and had pretentiously heavy gold ornaments at their necks and about their wrists and fingers. Three of the women were comely and commonplace: the pleasant person of the fourth could not have failed to command attention in any surroundings. She was young, of moderate height, and generously built; she was small-featured, white skinned, blue-eyed, and her lips were full and wholesomely red. Over her head and the greater part of her figure was a hooded cloak, evidently new, of periwinkle-blue cloth; and upon her breast lay her hair in long plaits of that soft shade which is not golden, nor brown, nor chestnut, but all three, and has yet an ashen-silver haze upon its surface when the sun shines behind it. Her gown was black, and much the worse for wear, and at the base of her throat gleamed a bunch of the spindle-tree's pink berries, fastened in place with a silver pin. "Good day, or else good morrow, Ulwin," said Grim, scarcely attempting to veil the sneer in his voice. "Ye are late with your stock." "Late--aye!" panted the eldest, fattest, most showily-dressed of the newly arrived men. "Aye--late! All for women--hindered by women! I ask you, fellows, what should women do at fair or market, if they bring not wares to sell? Squander good money! Bedizen themselves to the nines! Would God that I had let thee from coming forth in thy prideful gear!" he snarled at her of the blue mantle. "Did I not say that thou wouldst seem no better than a tumbling-girl in the eyes of the folk? Dost thou mind that my brother lies in his grave?" Richard the Scrob's right hand closed upon the hurdle in a convulsive grasp. "It is five years since he died," said the woman. "Get behind me, and stay behind me, out of our way," said Ulwin. "See here, Alftrude, thou shalt not stir whence I now bid thee stand. I will not have thee waste our goods on womanish nothings. Geegaws and sweet foodstuffs, forsooth! What lacks the woman? Will she tell the world that we clothe her not nor board her?" She made no reply. For a moment she looked him full in the face: there was no reproach in her gaze, but only contempt and a spice of derision; then she turned and walked calmly, with unflushed cheeks, to join the other women in the background, and stood with them. The market-crowd surged all about them. "These are thine?" growled Ulwin to Richard, indicating the penned oxen. "Mine they were," answered Richard. "I sold them to Edmund the flesher of Worcester this morning, when the fair was but new-begun. But I have others, Ulwin Ednoth's son, if ye wish to buy." "Buy! Pah! no, not I! It is not of buying that I have to speak with thee, Richard." "Of what then, worthy thane?" "Indeed, it is not of buying that I have to speak with thee, Richard. Thou art learned in the law: because thou art so learned, the Lord Abbot deems thee worthy of his trust; but all thy cleverness could not teach thee.... How can I say, all-wise one, that thou didst not know? Well, the Lord Abbot knew not--aye, even I myself knew not--that Ashford, which thou callest thine, was not holden by us and by our father of the Abbot of Leominster, and that therefore neither the Abbot nor I might make over this land of Ashford to thee in exchange for ... such and so much cattle and silver ... two years ago." "Ashford is mine. I have set up a mill there, with the Abbot's licence." "Not thine, Richard the Scrob. I am Turstin of Wigmore's man for Ashford, and I may not go with it to any other lord;[15] and Turstin is wishful to uphold his right. As for thy mill ... well, thou hast made it, and there will be the tolls for me." [15] He could not sell or convey it. "If there be any flaw in our dealings, then is it matter for the moot." "Now, understand me, thou!" shouted Ulwin, with a pompous gesture of the arms and an outward thrust of his swollen underlip. "That which thou hast tricked of me I will have again, yea, this day and this hour! Ulwin of the Moor is unwonted to waiting!" "Then, Ulwin, understand thou that Richard of Overton is unwonted to brook such words from any. At the bidding of none do I yield up mine own." Scarcely had Richard proclaimed his defiance than a thrill such as some much-desired presence imparts forced him to glance past the wrathful bully's left shoulder. The widow Alftrude was now close behind her brother-in-law, and studied the Scrob from head to foot with wide, wondering blue eyes. "I have nowise tricked you, Ednoth's son," said he, his countenance once more unperturbed. "Ye did chaffer with me for silver. This is matter for the hundredmen. They shall hear and try it." "Hearken, good neighbours, to the high and mighty words!" Ulwin jeered. "How will he speed when Englishmen are met together? Does he dream that their dooms are for the French?" "Come from here, now, master!" cried the high-pitched voice of Richard's servant Howel, in which agitation was patent. Ednoth, Ulwin's brother, pushed past Howel and jostled him roughly, in order to draw nearer to the two disputants. Howel flung up his head, his eyes kindling, and hissed an imprecation under his breath. "Hey? what hast thou there?" said Ulwin. "Nought, nought," Ednoth answered. "It is but a Welshman who bars my way." "No Welshman am I!" cried Howel the servant of Richard. "I am a man of Irchenfield--as good an Englishman as any of you here--and a better Englishman, too, than ye clumsy boors that think yourselves noblemen! When the King of the English marches with his army into Wales, we men of Irchenfield do go the foremost, that we may be the first to deal death, and----" "Do they dance in Irchenfield?" piped the maltman's son, as he shambled out of the crowd and swiftly inserted a furry object between the collar of Howel's jerkin and the back of his neck. "We shall soon see. Oh, merrily, right merrily--merrier and higher than in all Herefordshire else! On, on, brave Welshman! None here can hope to beat thee!" Loud was the spectators' laughter as the victim bounced up and down, shaking and tossing his limbs, and twisting his head and his body. When Richard had succeeded in dragging the weasel from out of his serving-man's garments, Howel rushed forward, bent on reprisal. Ednoth, the primary cause of the trouble, happened to be the person nearest: in a second Howel had him by the throat, and his short knife gleamed bare. Half a dozen bystanders instantly joined in the fray, most of them for the purpose of overwhelming the impudent Welshman of Irchenfield: in the midst of the turbulent knot were Ulwin, tugging at Ednoth's shoulders, and Richard, who held on to Howel by the arms and so compelled him to desist from stabbing at the Englishman. "Peace, thou fool!" cried Richard. "Leave be, now, Howel my man! I will not be embroiled for idle pride of thine. God's death! put up thy dagger!" Sullenly but promptly, Howel allowed his master to lead him out of the clutches of his assailants. "Peace, I beg of you, good men," the Norman continued. "We do but hinder the many that care not for our meaning. See, yon lady would come by!" The crowd had borne Alftrude away from her brother-in-law's side during the scuffle: she stood by the booth of a seller of gilded gingerbread, the nearest stall to the thanes' elmtree, a coin in one hand and two shining half-moons of cake in the other. Distaste and hesitancy were in the look she cast upon the brawlers. "Lady, fear not," said Richard. "If ye would but lean upon my arm----" Eagerly she moved towards him, in bland acceptance of his offer; however, before he could approach her, Ulwin had interposed himself, thundering: "Lay by yon nasty trash! Straight shalt thou wend thee homeward! Spendthrift! Shameless woman! Is this a widow's mourning? Is this modesty? Come home, I say!" He seized her by the arm, and in so doing trod heavily upon her toes. Alftrude's lips contracted, and her eyelids flickered with the pain, and she steadied herself against the gingerbread stall. Richard the Scrob was now beside them: with the first missile to hand, his own money-bag, he struck at the head of Ulwin; and Ulwin reeled and sat down upon the ground with a curse and a roar. "Foul clot of dirt!" said Richard. "I will not have thee deal so with her!" His money-bag was still in his right hand; but why was it no heavier than a strip of pigskin? Where was the reassuring weight to which he had grown used throughout that day? "Look, look!" the ale-wife screamed. "His ill-gotten silver of itself runs from him! Gather, gather, I say--it is his no more! All these French are to be driven forth. Shall he hoard king's coin in our land?" The well-worn bag had burst its seams, and pieces of money strewed the muddy ground. Thralls, boys, and children hurled themselves upon them; they struggled, fought, kicked and clawed up the mud, laughed ecstatically, and rushed about the green, each hugging what he had secured. The crimson faded from Richard's countenance, and he stood white as death and still as a stone. Alftrude hid her face in her hands. "Up, Ulwin!" exclaimed Ednoth. "Let us drive his cattle to Worcester for him--to Hereford--or to hell! Down with the Frenchman! Long life to Earl Godwin!" From under the elm stepped Ingelric the aged thane of Caynham, his beard half-covering his flowing moss-green robe. "No, no, it is unseemly!" he said. "Richard is my friend; he saved me once from debt and loss. If any man befriend me----" "Good folk," stuttered Kenric behind him, "this is more than a game! We are not thieves." But Ednoth and Grim had torn down the hurdles of the pen; the crowd had once more concentrated on that spot, and in another instant, shouting and shrieking, babbling and cheering, they chased and pelted the cattle of Richard the Scrob down Ludford street and out into the open country beyond. Alftrude had flung her arms about Ulwin. She seemed in a swoon: no, she was not fainting; her cheeks were aglow, and her finger-nails were embedded in her brother-in-law's neck. "Perot! Howel!" called Richard. "Come on, come on! To me!" The English, in their zeal for the dispersal of his cattle, had forgotten him. He ran between the outlying houses, followed by his servants, and upon the outskirts of the town they came face to face with the main body of the rabble, and drew their short swords. "Ere ye farther go," said Richard, "ye shall slay me and my men!" They bombarded the three with stones and dirt; a woman threw an egg, another hurled her market-basket with uncertain aim. "Tear him limb from limb!" snarled someone. "Surer rid of him so than by banishment!" Ednoth was advancing upon Richard, sword in hand.... There was a sudden hush, an awestruck murmur. "Lord Abbot! Lord Abbot!" "Hold your hands, in the Name of God and of His holy Church!" cried an imperious voice. Ednoth lowered his sword; the thanes uncovered their heads; many cowered, some stared resentfully; some slipped away in the tracks of the vanished cattle; the women fell on their knees. From the market-place came the Abbot of Leominster upon his fat white nag, with his chaplains and his retinue of men-at-arms riding behind him. "Ednoth of Moor, what would ye?" he demanded, flourishing the parchment roll that he carried in his bejewelled right hand. "Wherefore is the market all-to-wrecked? Would ye work murder upon harmless Ricardus here?" "Lord," said Ednoth, "here is a Frenchman who by craft sucketh the wealth from our land. Witanagemot is for putting an end to all such." "Indeed--and, Ednoth, art thou Witanagemot? Thou art too rash--ye are sadly unbridled, folk of Ludford. Hear the truth from me. There are surely many foreigners, Normans of the King's mother's people, who do craftily suck the wealth of England, and who bear not themselves truly towards blessed Edward our King; and Godwin and his Great Gemot have decreed that such shall go forth whither they came and leave the sway of England to Englishmen. But are there not some Normans, worthy fellows, whom no man could wish ill? Richard who dwells at Overton--has he not lived fifteen years among you, in good repute? In all Herefordshire is there no better dealer in corn and cattle: from Shrewsbury to Hereford is none more learned in the laws of English and of Welsh--none who can write a fairer hand--none of readier wit or smoother tongue: he hath been great help to me; how shall I spare him? Shall they bereave me of Ricardus? said I. I knelt before the King; I reasoned with stern Godwin; and ere I left London both had promised me my will. Yesterday the sheriff sent to me anent the outgoing of the French; and I have ridden since dawn, seeking Ricardus, that I might show him how Holy Church rewardeth goodwill for goodwill. Hugolin bideth about King Edward, they tell me, and Robert the Staller--they are faithful servants; as for the others, one Dumfrey--some outlandish name!... Hah! I have the sheriff's writing.... 'Banished be they all beyond seas, but Humfrey's Cocksfoot and Richard the Scrob.'" Richard bent to kiss the Abbot's ring. "Children, go your ways," the prelate continued, "with our blessing upon you. I rede you repent of your rashness. Ye are not robbers and rioters--no, but law-abiding English. Ricardus, come to me to-morrow morning: I have much to talk over with thee." So saving, he signed to his attendants, and ambled away. "My blessing, also, upon thee, worthy friend," a low voice said in Richard's ear. It was the blue-clad woman. Ulwin, with gashed forehead and scratched neck, was shepherding his kinsfolk in the direction of his abode. "Ashford shall be mine, O mighty Norman," said he with an exultant sneer. "Thy star is set, though abbots smile on thee." "Oh, Ulwin, brother!" exclaimed Alftrude--"oh, where is my silver bodkin? It is gone, Ulwin! And it was my mother's own! Can one have snatched it from me?" "Have ye seen it lying?" asked Richard of a group of persons lately come from the green. "What wouldst thou?" said Ulwin to Alftrude. "I bade thee leave the thing at home! Come on, thou spitfire--I will not wait." Old Ingelric hobbled up, and laid his hand upon Richard's arm. "Have no fear," he said. "Thou art not without friends. Though likely thou wilt not see thine oxen again, and who shall trace the coins----" Richard shook himself free. "The rogue who stole her pin!" he cried--"I will split his head also!" The grey cob plodded and splashed through the stream of slushy mud and half-thawed snow which represented the descending track from Ulwin's dwelling of the Moor to the highway between Ludford and Leominster. Upon him was Alftrude, closely muffled in a grey felt mantle, and beside him, holding the bridle, splashed and floundered a bare-legged boy, the bondman's son, with alder-clogs upon his feet. Alftrude rode in some discomfort, perched astride upon a man's saddle: her right arm supported a big wicker basket. The December sun shone out self-assertively: nevertheless the child slapped his free hand continually against his thigh, and often blew ruefully upon the fingers that clasped the reins. The widow, however, paid no heed to the moist chill of the morning air. Every now and again she glanced behind her. Once, in the shelter of the grove of hollies, she stopped for a moment to listen. There was no sound but the purring of a brook beneath its perforated covering of ice. She urged on her stolid steed. As they reached the heath, they heard the scrunch of a horse's hooves upon the ground they had just traversed. Alftrude turned her head nonchalantly; then she smote the cob such a sudden blow with her whip that the boy stumbled, and stared up into his mistress's face, aghast. About twenty paces more, and the Norman came up with her, riding alone. He would have passed her with "Good day to you, lady!" but she called: "Friend, stay awhile!" and he reined in his horse and proceeded beside her. "Master Richard," said she, "I would thank you meetly, if I could, for your great and neighbourly kindness, and beg forgiveness of you for that I have not myself done so until now. My mother's pin is the dearest of all my few possessions. Tell me, how came it into your hands?" "If ye be content, madame, I am honoured," said Richard. "It was no matter. The maltman's dunderhead son passed it about the ale-house that night. They gave it up when I did call for it." (This was not true. When Richard had seized the trinket from the thief, the ale-house company had fallen on him to a man, and had rolled ten-deep upon him about the floor, until their sense of fair-play had obliged them to draw off.) Alftrude was smiling her slow, comfortable smile. Could she--the gleam in her eyes seemed one of admiration--could she have heard what had really befallen? "I was like to weep when I saw it again," said she. They had reached the steepest slope of the hill. Richard the Scrob dismounted. "I will carry the basket," said he. "And I will lead your horse heredown. Let yon lad take mine. Whither make ye?" he continued, when the boy had fallen behind with his new charge. "Madame, I think ye should not fare abroad by such a slippery road and in such fickle weather." "I must to Ludford," she answered. "What think ye of this? There are seven young children at home, and in the house no spices nor dried grapes to make them Yuletide broth or Yuletide cake, and the housewife will not send any for these! Yet our bairns must have their Christmas fare like other bairns! so I am for Hildred the ale-wife, who has such sweet stuffs to sell." But even as she enlarged upon her purpose, her cheeks blushed red. "It is shameful!" said he, and his tone was full of warmth. "I like not their dealings with you, these kinsmen of your former lord!" "Good friend," said Alftrude, "how wilt thou do now? Thy cattle--thy money--the best of all thy gear! Great thy loss that evil market-day! Indeed I am abashed by the folk with whom I dwell!" "Why, I must stint and save, that is all. It will be no new thing--so have I done all the days of my life. When I first came over to join the train of Ralf the Earl, I had nothing but two silver pieces, my pen and inkhorn, and my wits. That was fifteen years ago.... They have been lonely years in England since Idonea died." "She was your wife?" "Idonea was my wife. She was of Bayeux--daughter of Robert the deacon. I had her but two years in this misty island. A short sickness bore her off." "Alack, alack! that is piteous!" "She fretted ever for Normandy. I think it was as well she died." Alftrude eyed him gravely, reflectively. Suddenly she shook with silent laughter. "Oh! oh!" she cried when she had recovered her voice, in answer to his manifest surprise, "ye would have laughed, Son of Scrob, had ye seen a sight that mine eyes beheld three nights ago. Know that Ulwin will ever have the swine and the fowls to wander in and out of the house, as they were mankind, that they may eat up the scraps of food which he throweth by among the rushes. Upon that night, my husband's mother and I had gone aloft with the maidens, when a mad hubbub arose--Ulwin shouting, threatening, praying--with such grunts and shrieks besides, ye would have thought the Fiend himself was there. We hurried down, and there stood my good brother, smiting upon his bed with a flail as strongly as his quaking hand would let him--and the fattest pig tangled in the covering of fat Ulwin's bed!" "Oh, gladsome sight!" exclaimed Richard. "Ye did work havoc upon that same Ulwin that day at the fair? Indeed I think I owe my life to a lady's finger-nails!" "Ye had avenged his roughness with me," she answered. "And I saw him rise to fall upon you." By this time they had emerged upon the highroad; and now there passed them two nuns riding sleek mules, and two serving-men, mounted also. "There goes Burghild of Caynham," said Alftrude. "It is now five years since she took her holy oaths. I would not be she for all the world--though, heaven wot! a nun's life is a peaceful life!" "There is peace to be found where no nuns are, lady." "Know ye her story, Richard Scrob's son? She is the thane of Caynham's daughter, and Godric the brother of Athelstane of Berrington loved her dearly, and she him. But his lands were small and barren, and he could offer her no fitting home, or so he thought. He would take service with some great lord, and store what wealth the saints might send him, that he might make yon maiden his wife. They met twice or thrice in the year, and I am sure each read the other's mind; but he never told her of his love and of his hopes. And she pined for him, and grew pale, and tart of mood. Godric went out with Earl Sweyn against the Welsh king, and was slain by the Welshmen. When Burghild heard these tidings, she fell sick of sorrow, even nigh unto death; but she is brave; she clung to life, and now she is the Church's bride. Oh, sad that lack of goods should sunder two true hearts!" "How could he speak, being a man without wealth?" said Richard. "He might not speak." He would not look at her. "He should have spoken," said Alftrude softly. "Now, as for these swine indeed, thy kinsmen----" cried he.... "Pardon my rough speech, Lady Alftrude; but I have marked how they treat you--you who were their brother's wife--better born than they, and better nurtured. As the dirt underfoot! Must ye abide beneath their roof? Is there none other with whom ye might dwell?" "My brother is a thane about the King's court. I have not set eyes on him for many a year. I have no other brother and no sister." "It is many a day since I have wondered how ye bore with them." "Since ye press me, Richard, I will own that my lot is hard. I have been widowed these five years. Since Winge my husband died, the land and goods with which he left me--aye, and mine own goods which I brought him--I may not call mine own. The first they till and order as they will, and the yield thereof they put with the yield of their land. As for the goods, they all lay hands upon them with never a 'by your leave' to me! Ulwin would have sold my mirror of steel last week, but I hid it.... Richard Scrob's son, there are two of thine oxen among the cattle at the Moor. At least, I am sure I saw them at Martin's Fair within thy pen." "Let them be. I have enemies enough at this time. To claim your goods! To sell your mirror!" "They grudge me this my new cloak," Alftrude continued, drawing a fold of periwinkle blue from beneath her winter wrapping. "True, it is not of my weaving; but mine own corn did I sell to buy the cloth. I believe they grudge me my mother's own jewels! Ulwin, and Alward, and Ednoth, and their mother, and the wives of the three. There would be no pleasure for any but Ulwin, if he could have his way: others must scrape and lack for him. A bad husbandman, too, is Ulwin. Men will give him but little for his crops and cattle. And that little leaves his poke that he may feast and game, and bet on sparring-cocks. But I think the women are the worst to dwell with." "And the housewife--your husband's mother? Has she no kindness for thee, who wert wife to her son?" "We were childless, Winge and I." "By holy Stephen! it is a weary life ye tell me of!" "I am well wonted to such weariness. I am four and twenty. A great age, Richard." "Madame, I am thirty-two, and I think that the sweetest of my life is yet before me." "Here is Ludford. Now, God speed you, lord," said she, holding out her hand to him. The next instant she withdrew it in confusion, exclaiming: "I know not why I clepe you lord!" "I know," said Richard, and took her hand. "Alftrude, I will see to it that thou become a very great lady." From the thicket bordering the pathway proceeded gasping, panting, maudlin complaints, and thickly-uttered curses; then came the sound of a feeble struggle as though a heavy body strove vainly to extricate itself from glutinous, liquescent soil. Richard the Scrob got down from his horse, handed the reins to Perot, who walked beside him, and strode in among the alders. The light of the sinking moon revealed a man lying face downwards, his legs submerged in a marshy pool, his hands clinging to a tuft of rushes. Having chosen a firm foothold, Richard seized the unfortunate by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him on to more or less solid ground. The bloated visage, streaming with mud, was just recognizable as that of Ulwin of the Moor. "Oh, oh--ah--oh!" he blubbered. "I am a dead man! Drowned dead--frozen to the inwards! One had bewitched the accursed nag that she might throw me!" Richard heard a horse cropping the wet fern a little distance away. He captured the offending animal without difficulty, and gave it into the care of his servant. Then he approached Ulwin once more, and took him by the arm in order to help him to his feet. "Dost thou dare?" cried the Englishman, striking aimlessly in the direction of his rescuer's chin. "I have no gold upon me--nought upon me! Murder! Murder by our lord the King's highway! Fellow, I am a thane, and my wergild a thane's wergild--twelve hundred shillings worth!" "No robber am I. Ulwin, I am Richard of Overton. Ye have known me this many a year--I am Richard the Scrob." "Scrob? Scrob? Eh, what is Scrob?" said the thane of the Moor. "Oh, aye--I mind--thou art the Frenchman--Richard--neighbour Richard. Well, Richard, my old nag tossed me off--bewitched is she, the jade! And Alward and Ednoth and the others--to hell with them for selfish churls! they rode on and left me here--would not wait for me--rode on and left me lying here.... I called--I called! Wending home from Wigmore.... Cakes and ale had we--good eating and drinking at Wigmore, Richard.... Left me here to drown! What think ye of that?" "Belike they missed thee not!" replied the other grimly. "Here is your horse. Try to get upon her. I think your bones are whole." Ulwin remained sitting in the mud. "Wa--la! wa--la!" He was weeping again now. "Wa-la-la and woe the day! Beggared am I and all undone! They set two worthy cocks to fight.... Oh, a fair sight to see them at war! When all around would wager upon them, how might I not do likewise? One hundred shillings have I lost to the men of Wigmore! And, Richard, I am burdened with debt: one hundred and forty shillings in all do I owe among my neighbours. I must sell myself into thralldom--my wife--my hapless bairns! Let me flee the shire...." Richard brought a leather wallet from beneath his mantle. "No need," said he. "See here," and he unfastened the string which closed the wallet. "What?" shouted Ulwin, scrambling to his knees. "Money? Money? How comest thou by money? Art surely a sorcerer--a warlock--leagued with Satan and all his devils! Why, it is not three years since we--since thy cattle was driven loose and thy silver scattered and lost beneath the feet of Ludford folk!... Richard Scrob's son--good neighbour----" "Now, cease thy whimpering of a dog, Ulwin of Moor, if man thou be," said Richard. "Shalt not sell thyself for debt. One hundred and forty shillings--such shalt thou borrow of me.... Nay, not now. At thine own dwelling, in the afternoon.... Give me Alftrude thy brother's widow to wife: that she will have me I know well. Half thy brother's morning-gift to her of land shalt thou keep; and if within ten years from this day thou owe me still that which I do pledge me here and now to lend thee, I will take again Ashford and its mill. They were truly holden of the Abbot, all the time." "So they have crowned French William at Westminster?" said Ulwin. "Aye, so was I told by one of Harold's men who came alive through Senlac slaughter," Grim replied. "This William is a stark man, they say; but he has sworn to abide by our old laws." The men of mark were gathered about Ludford elm. It was a warm, misty day in February. There was a fair upon the green for the sale of chickens, ducks, and geese. "I do think that these be lying tidings," said Tori the priest of Ludford. "Two kings dead within a year, and English and Welsh at peace in Herefordshire! I will believe there is such a William when I have set eyes upon him, and in the deaths of kings when I see kings lying dead. I am a stickler for the good old ways: I do not waste my prayers upon an unknown outlander, but beseech heaven for Edward and for his Lady as I have been wont all the days of my life!" "Under seven kings have I dwelt," Ingelric the ancient murmured dreamily. "First Ethelred, then Sweyn, then Canute. Canute was a Dane, but a better man than Ethelred. Then Harefoot, then Hardicanute, then Edward whom they call the Blessed. Well, well, peace to his soul! There were no more righteous folk in England after his crowning than before. And so the son of Godwin is cast down and slain! It is a little thing, children, where or of whom a king be born, if so be he govern strongly and wisely." "Now, Childe Edric, what say ye to this?" cried Ulwin of the Moor. "Father Ingelric, ye know that my mind is quite other," said a hoarse, far-carrying voice. The speaker, a weather-tanned young man, with bright grey eyes and a resolute chin, bent towards Ulwin and whispered: "The poor old man--he doteth!" "A fair tide for the ploughing," Kenric's elephantine tact prompted him to observe. "I think there will be no more frost nor snow." "We have one Norman here," said Ulwin to Edric. "Spared when the others were banished, through the might of the greedy Abbot. He has the Fiend's own luck. Frost and snow! I would the earth were ice-bound for his sake! I would the frost would shatter his plough-shares! I would he might drop dead as doth a sparrow!" "Richard is a good fellow," Ingelric interjected stubbornly. "And one king is much as another king." "Is it nothing to you all," cried Edric the Wild, "that England shall be no more England, but Normandy? What of Harold, our King and our Earl of late, and his bloody end? Must we all bow to the robber, because the men of the South loved their harvest-beer better than their motherland?" "We are free English!" said one; and another: "What shall we do?" "We have our hills and our woodlands," Edric continued. "When William sends his warriors amongst us, we will lead them jack-o'-lantern's dance, and utterly undo them. My men are all armed and ready to come forth whensoever I bid them; and I have the word of the Welsh lords that they will give us help." "If Howel of Irchenfield were here," Kenric remarked ruminatively, "he would tell you to put no trust in the word of a Welshman. And Howel is right: they do never cleave to us, though time and again have they sworn faith and truth unto our kings. And I have not seen Howel this day...." "Howel, Richard's man, say ye?" panted the ale-wife, as she deposited mugs of beer before two of her customers. "Howel passed the ford three weeks ago, or nearer four. I know not whither he went." "Richard also crossed over this day at dawn," said Munulf the maltman, "and with him his firstborn boy. They took the road to Stretton." "Hey? it is not like Richard to miss the fair," said Ulwin. "I see bondmen of his who watch his wares." "But not the goodwife?" said Kenric. "How not? She loves the mirth of the market." "Why, he liketh not that Alftrude bestir herself overmuch, or rub shoulders with all and sundry," answered Ulwin contemptuously. "Treats her as she were the Mother of God herself, or a queen at the least. And they have been wed eleven years!" "I met some of his men yesterday upon the heath," said Grim, "all mud-bespattered and outworn. What hath he now in hand, Ulwin?" "Pah! who can tell? He hath fetched a swarm of accursed foreigners--smiths and wrights--from overseas, and he must keep them busy. There is ever some new-fangled hewing or digging. He set a yew-hedge in the fall, ye know; and they say he will have a fish-pond." "Here is friend Richard," said Ingelric, "and the little lad also." Richard appeared upon the green, on horseback, accompanied by his son Osbern, aged ten, who rode a pony. Having tethered their mounts to two of a row of posts beside the ale-house door, they made their way to the elm-tree. The years had been generous towards Richard the Scrob. He was better clothed and shod than formerly, more serene, less spare. Osbern, the eldest of his children, had his father's firm mouth and his mother's clear blue eyes. "Greeting," said Ulwin, with an uneasy leer. "We talk of thee, neighbour, as a great man and a wealthy. Shouldst thank me for Alftrude and what she brought thee, which latter did surely set thee on thy feet." "Nay, Ulwin, surely I did set thee once upon thy feet, with timely loan. Hast thou forgotten, also, that I have had no answer from thee to a question I put to thee above a year and four months ago?" "What mean ye? Say all that ye mean aloud, in the ears of these thanes, and let them judge between thee and me!" Ulwin's brain was slow, but he rightly guessed that an explicit reply would follow, for Richard's love of litigation was notorious. "Thou knowest that I speak of Ashford, which wrongfully thou keepest from me, and of the hundred and forty shillings which thou borrowedst." "Thou knowest, and all here know, that Ashford is mine, holden of Turstin as lord," said Ulwin. "Turstin is not lord of that land; the Abbot is lord thereof indeed, and by the Abbot's leave did it pass from thee to me. And I did pay thy gaming-losses; and thou gavest me Alftrude my dear wife, and half of the land she had as thy brother's widow. I did swear to let thee be in Ashford for ten years, and thou to give it up to me when ten years were run, or to repay me the sum of my lending in gold." "Not so," said Ulwin. "I agreed with thee for Alftrude and half of her morning-gift from Winge. Why should she take more with her when she went from us to wed a needy foreigner?" "I have thy mark which thou settedst to the bond I wrote." "I made no mark. I saw no bond." "There is Ednoth's mark thereon, beneath thine own." "Say, brother Ednoth, have I pledged all this to Richard the Scrob by tongue or by pen?" "I know nought of it," answered Ednoth. Richard thrust his hands into his belt. The faintest possible shadow of a smile lurked at the corners of his lips. For a second his glance wandered absently to the rocky hill of Lude[16] which towered above Ludford on the farther bank of the Teme where that river turned northward to join the Corve, and for a fraction of a second rested upon the narrow track straggling round the southern side of the hill and descending steeply to the ford. [16] Now Ludlow. "Bring witnesses to my mark and Ednoth's!" cried Ulwin with a gobbling laugh. "Bring witnesses to the Abbot's right! The hundredmen will laugh thee to scorn. This Richard is a liar, friends: guilt hath sapped his boldness, or wealth and good-living, belike; he who was wont to be so ready with his fists now quails before an Englishman. What, dost thou smile? Aha, thou thinkest on the Frenchman at Westminster! What deemest thou we shall make of thy Duke?" "What ye will, I doubt not," said Richard. "I am for law and order." He seated himself upon a root of the elm, and leant against the trunk. Every now and again he scanned what could be seen of the winding road about the hill of Lude. "Hear me once more," said Edric the Wild. "Ye should make ready against aught that may befall while these your fruitful acres are your own and all unscathed. The tyrant hath left his spoor of fire and steel from the South Saxon land to London town.... Why, Gunwert of Mereston! What tidings? Steady, man--drink first, speak after!" A weary, speechless man dropped from his horse to Edric's feet. "They come!" he gasped, when he had swallowed a mouthful of beer. "Sighted beyond Stretton.... From Shrewsbury ... in their hundreds--fully armed!" Richard, deep in the shadow of the tree, took the boy Osbern's hand and drew him down beside him. "Hasten, all!" shouted Edric, quivering with eagerness. "To every homestead where be weapons--tools--what ye can find! Hasten, hasten! Ride--gather your men together! We will beat them back at the ford." All were on their feet, all running--every thane, every churl, every thrall. Some dashed into houses and sheds, and bore thence sickles, scythes, axes, picks, shovels, and mattocks, and ancient rust-caked weapons; some seized the horses tethered by the ale-house door and sprang upon them. Richard, still holding Osbern by the hand, entered the town in the midst of the first contingent of those who remained on foot. "They have taken our horses," he whispered. "Silence now--we must not move nor breathe!" The maltman's barn opened on to Ludford Street, and they slipped within and hid between the outer wall and a rampart of odorous sacks. Edric drove the whole body of his compatriots out into the open. After a quick consultation with Ingelric, he set off with the old man on the shortest route to Caynham. Some made towards Ashford, some towards the Moor. A few splashed through the ford over which the grey waters of the Teme glided in their winter flood. An hour passed; another hour; the second hour after noon began. Richard was still in the maltman's storehouse, scarcely stirring from the post he had originally taken up, listening intently to every sound that penetrated from without. Osbern had perched himself upon a sack by his father's side, as motionless except for his fingers, about which he twined a piece of string in cat's cradle pattern. The voices of women reached them, the laughter of children, the swirl of water among the roots of the willows. Falling cobwebs powdered these two with dingy flakes; conflicting currents of air made the malt-dust dance all around them; they heard the patter of rats' feet, the dogged gnawing of a mouse. Suddenly a woman shrieked in terror---- "Yonder--see yonder! Horsemen! horsemen! Yonder the death of us all! My man--where is he? Gone--left me here helpless! The Frenchmen! The Frenchmen!" Panic seized the women of Ludford (there were some twenty of them): tearful, voluble, or outwardly composed, they carried, dragged, drove their children up the street, across the green, and out of the town, in frantic search of masculine protection. Richard and Osbern stepped stiffly out into the street, brushing their garments as they went. Yes, there they were, the horsemen, filing along the hill-side track. The apathetic sun of late winter lent a sulky radiance to lance, mace, and scabbard, ringed hauberk, conical helm, and kite-shaped shield. Nearer they came--sixty in all, Richard guessed. The cavalcade appeared at the farther end of the street: men-at-arms, pursuivants, knights, esquires, and, behind his banner, riding alone, William fitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford and Lord of Breteuil, in the full splendour of vigorous manhood. "Seignior!" cried Richard the Norman--"Seignior, faictes grace a moy, qui suys de vostre sang!" William fitzOsbern threw an amused glance at a forgotten cobweb that adhered to the speaker's head. "Mort Dex!" said he. "Whom have we here?" "Richard of Overton, son of Hugh, son of Osbern, son of Walter of Rye in the Cotentin, where my nephew is now lord. Sir Count, the mother of my grandsire was cousin and nurse unto Herfast your own father's father, and unto noble Dame Gunnore his sister, spouse of our then Duke." "Thou art the Scrope. I have heard of thee. One named Perot spoke of thee with the King at Westminster; and that British fellow of thine--Howel they call him--guides the company of Ralph de Mortemar behind us upon the road. I have pressed on with another to conduct me, for I would reach the city of Hereford as soon as may be." "Seignior, I have dwelt for twenty years within your county that now is," said Richard, dropping on one knee, "and I pray of you justice and your puissant aid! The rascal English do me wrong, and they will not consider my cause, for I stand alone. One Ulwin invades certain of my lands and a mill which I myself set up beside the river: he first exchanged this Ashford for money and cattle of mine, then pleaded his no-right to sell." He paused. FitzOsbern had half-turned in his saddle and was surveying the rugged hill of Lude upon the other side of the ford. "What a rock of defence!" he exclaimed. "Careless fools to let it stand unfortified!... Well, I did look for thee to come to greet us; but alone? and--toil-stained, is it? I have seen no rascal English hereabouts. This seems a village dead or sleeping. Are ye the only persons here alive, thou and one child?" "News of your coming has reached these English, my lord, and they believe that your purpose is to spoil their homesteads, and so they are gone without into the country, gathering together all able men for resistance. Wild Edric of Clun was here but now, at work upon their fears. Though they be mostly on foot, and their weapons be rusty, they are more than we, and might bar your road to Hereford. Come with me, I pray you: on yonder hill I have a strong house, where ye, aye, and all these, may be safe." "Joyously will we partake of thine hospitality, good Richard, for an hour or so, although our march be thereby delayed. Thy Howel, I know, will lead Ralph de Mortemar to thy very door. Say, who is the lad? Son of thine, I wager." "My eldest son, so please you. Osbern, stand forth." "Hah! Osbern fitzRichard, how sayest thou? "Wilt thou serve my lady in bower and at board until such time as thou be old enough to ride with me into battle?" "Assurement, mon seignior!" replied the child, upon his knee beside his father in a moment. His French had the thick accent of an Englishman. FitzOsbern smiled down upon him. "Shalt learn more gracious French," said he, "but not more gracious manners. Well, let us be going." "Seignior," said one of the esquires, "I hear the tramp of many feet, but no voices at all." "The English!" cried William, and Richard the Scrob sprang to his feet. "They think to surprise us. It were best parley with them in the open, in peaceable guise. Boy, I will carry thee behind me." Osbern clambered on to the Earl's steed. "Sir, have I your leave?" asked Richard of Sir Walter de Lacy, who rode on the left of his master. Lacy nodded, and instantly Richard was astride behind him. He had scarcely mounted, when a strange, seething hiss resounded from one side of the street, and above their heads. Another hiss, and another: a splutter, then a crackle; and the thatch of the maltman's dwelling, which adjoined his barn, burst into steadily-spreading flame. "O Mary! happy thought!" they heard in the fatuous tones of the maltman's son Oswin. "Hem them right well about, and watch them cook alive!" "Thank God for burning pitch!" and in the indignant voice of Grim: "Thou oaf! Would thou had been born dumb! We had them snared!" A horse neighed shrilly; the other horses echoed the warning sound. "Quick, ere terror benumb them!" the Earl shouted. "Right about--a dash for it!" A bucketful of hot pitch streamed from one roof, hot charcoal cinders showered from another; some one flung a lighted torch. Another thatch was already on fire. The English were formed in a thin ring all round Ludford. The Norman charge scattered those at the bottom of the street, and the horsemen poured out. "Follow me!" cried Richard. "I know a way to baffle them. Ride, sirs--ride as ye were devils!" Edric of Clun, on horseback, planted himself in fitzOsbern's way with menacing gesture; William hurled his truncheon, hit him on the head, and sent him tumbling from his saddle. Ednoth clung like a vice to Richard's legs for some yards, and was thrown to the ground, and trampled by many hurrying hooves. The few mounted English tried valiantly to intercept the trained cavalry, but were unhorsed or put to flight. "To Richard's hall!" shouted Ulwin, from the background, where he was making tentative passes in the air with an antique sword. "Overton! Overton! Fire! Burn! Torches, I say--bring torches! Come on, all of you! Come, burn his house to the ground!" The Earl and his men had rallied to Richard the Scrob, who called and signalled to them from Walter de Lacy's crupper. He headed straight for the forest of Haye. "Warily now," said he. "There is much bogland." He led them westward, skirting swamps, threading apparently impenetrable thickets, with scarcely a pause. They could hear faintly the voices of a few Englishmen who cursed as they wandered among the briary undergrowth. The hindmost of the Normans looked back and saw Ludford flaming, crumbling, and falling into ruins. "It is mine own secret path," their guide announced. "Verily, mon seignior, I have prepared for your coming." They left the forest behind them, and rode through the hamlet of Overton. "Look yonder!" said Richard, pointing to the grey gleam of a stone rampart among the trees surrounding his mansion. "What is this?" laughed the Earl. "Have ye licence from King William to erect a castle within his realm?" "I am King William's loyal subject," the Scrob replied. "Of a certainty, our King will not grudge a timely shelter to his Earl." A curtain-wall, roughly but strongly compacted of quarried stone, of wood, and of rubble, surrounded and concealed the timber dwelling of Richard and Alftrude; at the western end of the enclosure the unfinished keep loomed upon its mount; and about them both an eight-foot moat was drawn. "The keep as well!" cried fitzOsbern. "Oh, guileful notion, to colour it with pitch! Only the hawk-eyed may spy it from the valley, for the foliage embowers it--and, man, ye can surely keep watch therefrom for many a mile!" At a blast from Richard's horn, the drawbridge was lowered, and several Normans in his service appeared upon the threshold, mail-clad and fully armed. "It was four weeks building, under Geoffrey of Rouen," said Richard, "and the moat was digging thirteen days more. I have engines of war within, and great store of missiles of stone. Enter, bel sire. They will not find it easy to burn this my dwelling about my head." "Let the peasants come!" said William fitzOsbern. "They must learn to know their masters; but please the saints! we shall not need to take the lives of many. Perchance the sweet peers of heaven may send that Mortemar find us before long.... Cousin, thou hast a pleasant view from thy fortress, even through such a narrow peephole. H'm! Rich forfeitures for our sovereign Lord! Thou shalt trouble thyself no more, cousin Richard, concerning lands and mills and cheating Saxons. As far and as wide as eye can see, from the sky that is our Lord God's footstool unto Satan's fires in the centre of earth, this same pleasant country shall be thine own, in reward for this day's fealty and service, and so I, William of Hereford and Breteuil, promise thee in the name of the King.... Nay, no thanks: kneel but one moment longer.... It is meet, sirs, is it not, that our leader in this engagement should hold the honourable rank of chevalier? We will account this a field of battle. Rise up, Sir Richard fitzHugh le Scrope!" The next morning, when the Earl of Hereford had gone his way, and the bodies of the only two Englishmen slain by Ralph de Mortemar's rescuing party had been borne to burial, the new lord of the Moor, of Ashford, of Ludford, and of Stanage rode out to display the extent and resources of his manors to his astonished lady. Their itinerary ended, they stood in the evening outside the moat and gazed at the placid, billowing country beneath them. Although by the cold, saffron light of a February sunset the misty course of the Teme was the only certain landmark and it was hard to distinguish meadow and ploughland, pasture and forest, they had to feast their eyes until the last glimmer faded. "With right tillage," said Richard, "it should yield me thrice its yearly value in grain. And I will have yet more sheep, and yet more cattle: there is now place for four times as many as ever I bred.... I have made thee great and famous, as I promised; and Osbern, with the Earl to favour him, should be an even greater lord than I.... Our fishpond shall go forward upon the morrow. What sayest thou to an orchard yonder, planted with apples of Normandy? and I think that Gascon vines would ripen passably upon our southern slope. O Alftrude, thou knowest how I have loved and pondered this land this many a year; and we shall have great profit of it, ma belle, thou and I together." Alftrude dwelt at Richard's Castle well content; for, as she sometimes observed when she looked round upon her flocks, her herds and her horses, her orchards, her cornfields, her vineyards, her chickens, ducks and geese, her hounds and her falcons, her fishpond, her smooth green lawn, her yew-tree alley, her doves and her peacocks, and her band of healthy children, there was no reason at all why she should not. 
40726	----	THROUGH WELSH DOORWAYS [Illustration: SHE LOOKED SHARPLY AT THE APPROACHING GROUP (Page 18.)] THROUGH WELSH DOORWAYS by JEANNETTE MARKS With Illustrations by Anna Whelan Betts London T. Fisher Unwin Adelphi Terrace 1910 (All rights reserved.) _CONTENTS_ _The Merry Merry Cuckoo_ 11 _Mors Triumphans_ 27 _Dreams in Jeopardy_ 45 _Tit for Tat_ 77 _An Oriel in Eden_ 97 _The Child_ 121 _An All-Hallows' Honeymoon_ 133 _The Heretic's Wife_ 151 _The Choice_ 175 _A Last Discipline_ 203 _Respice Finem_ 227 _ILLUSTRATIONS_ _She looked sharply at the approaching group_ (_page_ 18) Frontispiece TO FACE PAGE _Janny watched Ariel's thin fingers work skilfully_ 106 _Betto Griffiths laughed_ 112 _The Merry Merry Cuckoo_ "Lad _dear_, no more or ye'll be havin' an attack, an'----" Annie's words sounded inconclusive, although she fortified them by an animated gesture with her plump wrinkled hand. Her eyes glanced timidly from the window to David's face. "But, Annie, ye've not said a word of the cuckoo," replied David plaintively. "Aye, the cuckoo," said Annie, her heart sinking as she sent her voice up. "The cuckoo--" "Has it come? Did ye hear it?" The old man clasped and unclasped his hands helplessly, childish disappointment overspreading his face. "David _dear_, if ye'd but listen to what I was a-goin' to say"--Annie gulped--"I was a-goin' to say that I've not heard the cuckoo yet, but that everythin' 's over early an' I'm expectin' to hear one any time now. It's so warm there might be one singin' at dusk to-day--there might be!" "Might there be?" asked David, his eyes brightening, "might there be, Annie?" "Aye, there might be, lad," and she lifted his head on her arm gently while she turned the pillow. "It's over early," he objected, "an', Annie----" "Davie _dear_, be still," she commanded, drawing his head close to her bosom before she put him down on the pillow again. "Pastor Morris says everythin' 's over early; even the foxglove is well up in the garden; an' the heather by Blaen Cwm will be bloomin' a month early, an' the hills will be pink, lad--soon. Now, dearie, I'll be back by and by with the broth; ye must be still awhile." Annie went out of the room stepping as softly as she could. For a moment she stood on the doorsill, looking into the old garden, green at last after the dreary winter and beautiful in the promise of coming summer blossom. Foxglove and columbine, honeysuckle, lilies and roses would bloom, but David would see them no more! For fifty springs they had gone into the garden together, he to trim the hedge and bind up the honeysuckle, she to dig about the rose-bushes and flowers. And every spring there had been one evening when the cuckoo's song was heard for the first time and when there came into David's eyes a look of boyish joy. Ah, lad, lad, how she loved him! And he _should_ hear the cuckoo again! Resolutely Annie started up hill, climbing close by the high pasture wall, and, panting made her way as best she could over boggy places. After she had gone about a quarter of a mile she looked around her, furtively. There lay Gwyndy Bach in the distance, Ty Ceryg and Cwm Cloch far away, and the Chapel still farther. Only the mountains were near by, and a few lazy sheep trailing over their wild, grey ledges. She did not see even a sheep-dog. When she sat down by the stone-wall there was a look of approval on her face, followed, as she opened her mouth, by a look of appealing misery. "Aye, it was somethin' like this: _coo-o_. Dear, let me see, every year I've heard it, an' David he does it. _Coo-o-o!_ Tut, that sounds like a hen." Annie peered about her. "_Cu, cu_," then she shook with silent laughter. "I know! it goes over and over again, sing-song, sing-song, like this: _cu-cu, cu-cu_. Aye, that's better." Practising the song Annie rocked herself backwards and forwards. "It's growing better!" she exclaimed, "but, lad, lad, I'm plannin' to deceive ye"; and the tears rolled out of her old eyes. She brushed the tears away impatiently and began the song again: "_Cucu-cu, cucu-cu, cucucucu, cu_; aye, that's fair, aye, it's fine! He'll not know me from a real cuckoo. I'll have to be tryin' it now, for ye've no long, dearie." Annie went down into the valley, humming the bird-notes over to herself lest she forget what she had learned. She lifted her short skirts and waded through the marshy places; in her eagerness she was unmindful of the pasture-bogs, her seventy years, her weary body; and her sparse grey hair lay damp on her forehead. In her mother-heart was but one thought: bringing his wish to Davie. Gasping she reached the southern corner of the cottage garden, and there leaned on a trellis for support till she could get her breath. Completely engrossed in what she was to do, she did not think to look about her, she did not listen for possible approaching footsteps, and even Davie had slipped in importance a wee bit behind the cuckoo song. Finally she drew a long breath and began; she paused a moment, then repeated the song, softly, slowly. Pleased with her success, she sang the song again, very softly, very slowly, till it sounded much as if it came from a distance somewhere by the stream near the mill wheel. She was just beginning once more when steps rustled behind her and a voice said tauntingly: "Pooh! 'tis a pretty cuckoo ye make, Annie, an' a pretty song!" "Lowry Prichard!" "It's over early for the cuckoo, is it not?" "Aye." "An' what are ye singin' in your garden for, an' David dyin'?" Annie's mild eyes gathered fire, but she said nothing. "Are ye deceivin' David, an' he on the edge of the grave, Annie? 'Tis a godly song to sing, an' a tale for Chapel, eh, Annie?" "Ye--may--go--out--of--this--garden, an' that this minute," said Annie, advancing. Lowry backed towards the wicket. "Ye look fair crazy, Annie, crazy with wrath, aye, and your hair is all rumpled an' your smock is wet. Bein' a cuckoo is----" But Lowry never finished her taunt, for Annie pushed her through the wicket gate. The old wife went towards the cottage door slowly. David must have heard Lowry's words, and she could never make him happy again. "Annie! Annie!" Her face brightened, then fell. "Aye, David, I'm comin'." "Annie, did ye hear a cuckoo singin'?" David's eyes glowed rapturously in the twilight. "Aye, I thought so, dearie." "It sang three times; first, it sounded like somethin' else, it was so breathless; then it sang quiet and sweet like a cuckoo; an' the third time it seemed comin' from the old mill wheel. I was listenin' for it again when I heard Lowry Prichard's shrill voice an' I could hear no more." "But, lad _dear_, ye've heard it, an' I'm that glad!" Annie beamed upon him. "Three times; aye, that's fine an' a real cuckoo; now ye're happy, dearie, an' ye'll sleep well upon it." "Will it be singin' again?" asked David, with a sigh. "Aye, in the early mornin' an' at dusk. Now ye must drink your broth an' go to sleep." David drank it obediently. "It's been a fine day, lad dear, is it not so?" "Aye, a fine day. I did not think I'd ever hear it sing again"; and David's head slipped contentedly on to the pillow. "Aye," he murmured, "a happy day!" At dawn Annie stole out to sing her cuckoo song. It was done quickly, and she was back among her pots and kettles before David could know that she had been away. She rattled the saucepans around, then she stopped to listen. Yes, there he was calling. "Aye, David, I'm comin'; I did not hear for the noise, dearie." "Annie, it's been singin' again!" There was an expression of eager happiness on David's wan face. "I'm a-wantin' to hear it sing over an' over again, over an' over again. But, Annie, ye make such a clatter there's no hearin' more than a song or two, an' yesterday 'twas Lowry." "Aye, dearie, 'tis a pity I was makin' such a noise gettin' breakfast for ye." "I was awake, Annie, when the stars were hangin' in the trees, an' I saw them go out one by one while I was a-waitin' for it to sing. I heard little creepin' things makin' way through the trees an' the grass, an' I saw the poplar by the window turn from silver to brown an' back to grey; an' I heard the other birds makin' their early mornin' stirrin', flittin' an' chirpin'; an' a little breeze came an' bustled through the trees with them, but no cuckoo; an' then just as it was singin' ye began stormin' with pots an' kettles." "I'm that sorry, Davie lad, but ye have heard it twice, dearie, an' it'll be singin' this evenin' at dusk, perhaps, over an' over again. Ye are feelin' fine this mornin', Davie?" "Aye, better nor yesterday mornin'; I'll be gettin' well, Annie, is it not so?" "Indeed, lad _dear_, ye'll be about among the heather 'fore long." Annie turned suddenly and went back into the kitchen; there in a corner she dried her eyes with her apron, drew a long breath, and went on with her household duties. She was disposing of the work rapidly when she heard the click of the wicket gate. Coming up the path were John Roberts, Peter Williams, and Lowry Prichard. Annie put down the pot she was scouring, wiped her hands on her apron, and went to the kitchen door, which, stepping outside, she closed carefully behind her. She looked sharply at the approaching group, and her kindly wrinkled face hardened. Peter Williams spoke first:-- "A fine mornin' to ye, Annie Dalben." "Thank ye, Peter Williams, for the wish." "How is your man?" asked John Roberts. "He is the same," replied Annie, in a level tone of voice. Lowry Prichard moved nearer:-- "We've come about the cuckoo-singin', Annie. At the Chapel last night the congregation prayed for ye, an' a committee was appointed to wrestle with ye." Annie breathed quickly. "Aye, Sister," continued Peter Williams, "ye've always been a godly member of the flock; ye would not have David go to Heaven with your lie on his soul?" "Amen!" sang Lowry Prichard. "An', Sister, there was light in that meetin'; the Spirit's among us these days; yours are the only lyin' lips." "Repent!" shouted John Roberts. "Have ye done?" asked Annie. "But, Sister----" "I've a word to say. I've no mind to your salvation, no, nor to Heaven if the Lord makes this singin' a lie. I'm a-thinkin' of David as I've thought of him these fifty years, an' if a lie will make him happy when he's dyin', then I'm willin' to lie, an' do it every minute of the day." "Sinner!" muttered John Roberts. "Aye, sinner, a willin' sinner," said Annie, her soft eyes blazing; "be gone, an' ye need not return." Annie bolted the door and sat down wearily on a chair. She felt quiet; it mattered so little now what the neighbours thought of her if only David might die happy, and David still believed he had heard the cuckoo. She was tired, so tired that she did not care what the Chapel said of her; and her heart was numb. She knew that David was going, but it did not come home to her in the least except to make her hungry to bring him happiness. He should have that if she could give it. At a faint call she hastened to his room. "Annie, there's some one outside, an'----" "Aye, David Dalben, there is, an' Annie is a cuck--" But the sentence was never finished, for Annie forced Lowry Prichard's head back and slammed the casement to, latching it securely. "What does she want?" asked David feebly. "I cannot say, lad, but she's no right talkin' to ye through a window. She's an idle, pryin' young woman. I'll see now that she's out of the garden. Go to sleep, dearie, it's bad for ye havin' so much noise over nothin'; aye, that's a good lad," and Annie smoothed his brow with one hand the while she brushed aside her tears with the other. If David should live a week longer, could she ever keep the truth from him? For a day, yes, perhaps. But for an entire week, with all Nant y Mor trying to force a way to the sick man? No. And how could she sing morning and night with the neighbours spying into the garden and around the house? She felt friendless; for strength only the courage of a mother left alone in the world with a sick child to protect. She had no idea of relinquishing her plan, although she was in despair, and if any one had come to her with a friendly hand she would have wept. As it was, she was ready to meet attack after attack. Annie was not surprised, later in the day, to see young Pastor Morris coming up the pathway. He came slowly. When he greeted Annie his eyes sought the ground, his complexion was ruddier and more boyish than ever, and his lips, usually firm in speech, seemed uncertain. But the large hand with which he held Annie's was warm and kind. In the clean kitchen he began to talk with Annie about David: how was David, what did the physician say, wasn't Annie growing tired, what could he do? Suddenly the young Pastor changed as if brought face to face with a disagreeable duty. "Annie, they say that you are imitating a cuckoo; is it so?" "Aye, sir, for David's ears." "But, Annie, that is acting a lie, is it not?" "It may be," replied Annie wearily. "Wouldn't it be better if I were to tell David, Annie?" "Oh, no, no, no!" sobbed Annie. "Not that!" "Annie, Annie, you mustn't cry so; there!" and the young man stretched out his hand helplessly. "Oh, sir, it's all the happiness David's got, an' he is goin'. O my lad, my lad!" "There, there, Annie!" "We've been married fifty years this spring, an' every spring we've listened for the cuckoo an' not one missed. An' this year he's dyin', an' he's a-wantin' to hear it so, an' it's over early. O Davie, Davie!" "There, Annie, there, _dear_," soothed the young man; "tell me about it. We'll see, Annie." "There's no more," said Annie, "only he kept askin' about things, violets an' cowslips an' birch-trees an' poplars, an' I knew all the time he was thinkin' of the cuckoo an' not askin' because he was goin' an' mightn't hear it. An' one day he did. An' I said I thought he'd hear one that very evenin', that everythin' was over early. Then he seemed happier than I'd seen him, an' I went off up the hill an' practised it till I could do it fair. O Davie, lad!" "Now, Annie _dear_," comforted the young man, patting her helplessly on the back. "Annie _dear_, don't cry, just tell me more." "Then, sir, I sang the song in the corner of the garden, an' when I went into the house there was such a look of joy on David's face that's not been there for many a month, an' it was no matter Lowry Prichard found me singin'. It's the last happiness I can give him, sir." "I see," said the young man; "aye, Annie, I see. And you will be wishing to do it again?" "Aye, sir, Davie's expectin' to hear the cuckoo to-night. Each time might be his last, an' I cannot disappoint him, poor lad." "Well, Annie," said the minister, looking shyly out the window, "I'll be around the garden at dusk watching, and there'll be no one to annoy you while you are singing, so sing your best for Davie." "Oh, sir, thank you," replied Annie, drying her tears and sighing with relief; "it's a comfort. But ye're no harmin' your conscience for me, sir, are ye?" "I'm not saying, Annie; I'm over young to have a conscience in some things. I'll be going in to speak a few words to David, shall I?" "Aye, sir, ye're so kind." And so it happened that at dusk, when David's eyes were growing wider with expectation and his heart was beating for very joy of the coming song, Annie, after she had patted him in motherly fashion, smoothed out his coverlets, called him lad _dear_, and dearie, and Davie, and all the sweet old names she knew so well how to call him--so it happened that she stole out into the garden with a lighter heart to sing than she had had in many a day. She knew the young minister was somewhere around to protect her from interruption. Standing by the honeysuckle trellis, swaying her old body to and fro, she sang. The song came again and again, low, sweet, far away, till all the hill seemed chiming with the quiet notes and echoes. And the young man listening outside to the old woman singing inside the garden knew something more of the power of love than he had known before; and he bowed his head, thinking of the merry notes and of David in the twilit room dying. Annie sang the song over and over again, then over and over again, till beyond the valley she saw the evening star hanging in the sky. Once more she sang, and all the spring was in her song. Then she turned to go into the house, her heart beating with fear. As she came through the doorway she heard her name called. "Annie, sweetheart, did ye hear the cuckoos singin'?" David was sitting up in bed, his hands stretched towards her. "Aye, lad dear," replied Annie softly, taking David into her arms. "An' there were so many, an' they sang over an' over again." "Aye, David." "But ye were not here, an' I'd like hearin' them better with ye here." "Aye, dearie, I was busy." "Oh, it was beautiful singin'--" "Aye, lad, I know." "An' over an' over again, like this----" But David's notes trailed away as he started to sing. "Aye, dearie, I see." "An' the--valley--was--quiet--but--Annie----" The voice ceased, for a second the pulse in his throat ticked sharply against her heart, then his head settled drowsily upon her breast. "Oh, lad, lad _dear_, Davie," called Annie, rocking him in her arms, "lad, lad _dear_, will ye not speak to me?" And the young minister stepping in over the threshold saw that the Messenger had come. _Mors Triumphans_ I _Griffith Griffiths has a Happy Thought and takes a Trip_ Each new election for the Town Council found Griffith Griffiths still unelected. The primary reason for his failure was a party matter: Griffiths was a Conservative, whereas every other Welshman in the town of Bryn Tirion was a Radical. Let him change his politics, said Bryn Tirion. No, said Griffith Griffiths, never! And the town knew he meant it. But, added Griffiths, I _will_ be a member. For thirty years this battle was waged; children were born and their children; mothers grew old and died; and Griffiths grew rich in slate and sheep. Now he was sixty and still unsuccessful. If he wished he could buy up all Merionethshire; true, but he could not buy up one independent honest Welshman, whether that Welshman counted his sheep by tens or thousands. Nor, to do Griffiths justice, did he think of buying votes, for he was as honest as his fellow townsmen. Pulling his whiskers, he looked vindictively at the mantelpiece before him, with its cordon of shining, smiling china cats. Had he not done more for the village than any other man? He had given Bryn Tirion two sons of whom to be proud, he had provided the young minister with a wife in the person of a beloved daughter, he had piously paid for tearing down a shabby old treasure of a church built in the time of Edward I., he had presented the village with a fountain and a new bread-oven, he had introduced improved methods in cleaning and shearing sheep, and he employed daily over one hundred men in his slate-quarry. Notwithstanding all these benefactions, he was still obliged to consider schemes for winning a paltry election. "That's a happy thought," he exclaimed, starting forward, "I'll do it. Aye, it'll win this time. I'll go for it myself an' bring it home, I will. There'll be no word spoke when they see that. It'll cost me a hundred pounds an' the trip, but I'll do it." Griffith's eyes twinkled as he winked at the mantelpiece cats. "There'll be no doubt this time, my girls. No doubt, no doubt this time, an' every old granny in the town a-thankin' me. Oho, ho, ho!" Mrs. Griffiths peered in. "Father!" "Aye!" "Father?" "Well, _mother_?" "Is it a joke?" "No-o, a joke, yes, a--no-o, it is not." "Father, what are ye thinkin'?" "I--I, well, I've _been_ a-thinkin'!" replied Griffiths, with conviction. Mother's face expressed censure. "I'm thinkin' _now_, mother, I'm thinkin' of goin' to Liverpool." "Liverpool! an' what would ye be goin' there for?" "I'm thinkin', mother, of goin' to-morrow." "Thinkin' of goin' to-morrow?" "Aye!" "Are ye goin' about slate?" "No, not just about slate," father hedged. "Is it sheep?" "No, not exactly sheep." Mrs. Griffiths by this time regarded her husband with alarm. "Ye've not been to Liverpool in twenty years; am I goin'?" "Why, no, mother, I'll travel there one day and back the next. I'm--I'm a-goin' just--I'm a-goin' for the trip." "For the trip!" sniffed Mrs. Griffiths. "What'll I bring ye, mother?" "I'm no' wantin' anything," replied Mrs. Griffiths coolly. II _ Griffith Griffiths takes a Trip and his Wife receives a Call_ While her generous husband was running about Liverpool to buy another benefaction for Bryn Tirion, Mrs. Griffiths was receiving calls at Sygyn Fawr. "Good-day," said Olwyn Evans, stepping over the brass doorsill of Sygyn Fawr. "Good-day," replied Betty Griffiths. "I hear Griffiths is gone to Liverpool?" "Aye, he is." "He went yesterday?" "Aye." "He comes back this evening?" "Aye." The clock ticked and the china cats smiled blandly in the silence. "He's not come yet?" "No, he has not." Olwyn readjusted her shawl. "Evan says he's not taken the trip for twenty years?" "No, twenty years ago this September." "Rhys Goch says he's gone for new machinery come from Ameriky; has he so?" At this point there was a chorus of yaps and shrieks from Colwyn Street, on which Sygyn Fawr stood. "It's Marged Owen's baby, Johnny. Dalben's terriers are always upsettin' him when they're fightin'. At Cwm Dyli farm they say he's gone to sell sheep; has he so?" "It's neither sheep nor slate," replied Betty Griffiths acridly. "Is it so?" The street rang with another volley of yells. "It's Cidwm Powell this time, fallin' off the slate copin'. He always is; some day he'll fall in, an' I don't know what Maggie'll do then." "No, nor I," added Olwyn Evans, "it's her only. Jane Wynne and Jane Jones is ill. Their folks've been to the chemist's in Tremadoc for them, but you'd think they'd have the doctor, now wouldn't you?" "You would," assented Betty. "Jane Wynne's eighty; how old is Jane Jones?" "She's comin' seventy-five." "She is?" "The chemist says it's failin' with both," commented Olwyn. "They'll not die very far apart. They'll be keepin' the minister busy what with visitin' them and then buryin' them. It'll be hard on Robert." "It will." "You say Griffiths is not back?" "No, not back." "He'll be comin'?" "Aye." "Goodbye." "Goodbye." III _Griffith Griffiths brings his Happy Thought Home_ The evening light lay purple and lavender on the heather-covered hills; it cut through Aberglaslyn Pass in a golden shaft, gilding the jagged top of Craig y Llan and making the cliff side of Moel Hebog sparkle. Griffith Griffiths sniffed the honeyed air of his Welsh valleys hungrily. The nearer he came to home the more purple seemed the heather and the more golden the gorse. "How d'ye think of it, Griffiths?" said Jones, looking back approvingly. "Well, the village hasn't any." "It'll be a great surprise, man." "It will be," agreed Griffiths. "The folks over to C'n'rvon can't give themselves airs any more." "Well, no, they cannot." "Did Betty know?" "No, a woman worries when she's to keep a secret." "The folks have all been askin' for ye for two days"; and Jones's face shone with the same delighted goodwill as that on his master's. "We'll take it to Ty Isaf; it'll be kept there." "Aye. Ye're a thoughtful man, Griffiths. Ye've done about everything could be done for this village. There ain't a man better thought of nor ye, except ye're a Conservative. But they ought to put ye on the Council just the same." The caravan moved slowly into Bryn Tirion. At the rumble of wheels Olwyn thrust her head out of Cwm Cloch door, took one look at the moving load, and rushed into the back garden for Evan. To Ty Isaf they hurried with the crowd; girls with water-pails dropped them; children staggering along under mammoth loaves of bread fresh from the oven tumbled them in the white dust of the road; mothers with babies strapped to them by shawls tightened the shawls and hastened along; old women put down their bundles of faggots; dogs ceased their quarrelling and children their playing, all rushing in the same direction. Griffiths and Jones were stripping away the crating. "It's an organ for Chapel," said Marged Owen. "It's a new pulpit," exclaimed Maggie Powell. "It's a HEARSE!" cried Olwyn Evans, as the bagging was ripped from one side. For an instant admiration made the concourse silent; then old Marslie Powell said softly: "If the Lord had 'a' asked me what I wanted most He could not've done better." "Surely, it is the Lord's gift," affirmed Ellen Roberts. "To think I'd live to see a real live hearse!" shrilly exclaimed old Annie Dalben. "It's a fine smart present, it is," said Howell Roberts, "an' there wouldn't no one else 'a' thought of it except Griffith Griffiths." "It'll be pretty and tasty with mournin', now won't it!" commented Gwen Williams. "It's a pity Jane Jones and Jane Wynne's too sick to be here an' see it when they're likely to have first chance at it!" declared Olwyn Evans. "It'll be fine for the first as is buried in it," nodded Ellen Roberts wistfully. "It'll be an honour," assented old Annie Dalben. IV _Bryn Tirion sees a Lighted Candle of the Dead and a Contest_ "The doctor from Tremadoc has been called in," remarked Betty. "Has he so!" replied Griffiths, toasting his feet before the fire and eyeing the smiling cats benevolently. "He's a clever young man." "Aye, but it won't save Jane Jones nor Jane Wynne." "No?" "The Joneses is havin' him come every other day, so the Wynneses is doin' the same. They're both failin' rapidly. When the family asks about Jane Jones, all he'll say is, 'She's no worse.' An' when the Wynneses ask about Jane Wynne he says, 'She's no better.' Olwyn Evans says it's her opinion he don't know which is worse; doctors, she thinks, has to keep quiet, they're always so uncertain what the Lord is plannin'. It'll be hard on Robert if they both die the same day an' he has to bury them simultaneous. Virginia says he's poorly now from havin' to make so many visits each day on the Joneses, to say nothin' of the neighbours flockin' in to ask him questions after each visit. It's hard on Robert." "Aye, it is," assented Griffiths peacefully. In the thirtieth year of the contest Griffith Griffiths had won his election; by the gift of the hearse he put Bryn Tirion under a final obligation. Politics paled before the generations of dead who would be indebted to this benefactor. That a man should be a Conservative or a Radical mattered not to the dead, and the living must discharge for the dead their debt of gratitude. But the outcome of this contest was quickly lost sight of in the uncertainty of a new strife. Would Jane Jones or Jane Wynne be buried first in the new hearse? While Griffiths and Betty were still discussing this question the door-knocker clapped rapidly. "I do believe it's Olwyn Evans come with news," exclaimed Betty. "Good-evening," said Olwyn, disposing of her greeting. "She's seen it!" "Seen it?" "Aye, Gwen Williams. She was walkin' there by the old hedge over the Glaslyn this evening, an' first she thought it was a light in the old mill, for it looked large just like a lamp-flame. Then she saw it was movin' and it was comin' toward her." "It was the Candle of the Dead she saw?" asked Griffiths. "Aye, it was; the nearer it came the smaller grew the flame till it was no bigger than a thimble. Gwen was frightened so she couldn't move from the wall; she let it pass close by her, and it was a woman carryin' the light." "A woman!" "Aye, a woman, an' she moved on to the doorsill of Jane Jones's house an' stopped there." "Jane Jones's?" "Aye, an' then she went over to Jane Wynne's door an' stopped there." "She did?" "Aye, she did, an' then she went over to the graveyard an' waved her candle over the gate, an' it went out. Gwen says there weren't no more thickness to her than to the candle-flame,--ye could thrust your finger straight through her." "Which door did she go to first--Jane Jones's?" "Aye, it was Jane Jones's, but Gwen says she stood nearer the Wynne's plot in the graveyard." Griffith's eyes sought the cats, and he pulled his side-whiskers thoughtfully. "Ye cannot tell which it'll be, now can ye?" "No, you cannot, but I've my opinion it'll be Jane Jones, she's more gone in the face. I must be goin'; Betty, will you be comin' with me; I promised Gwen I'd step in for a neighbourly look at the Joneses, an' perhaps I can help her decide which it'll be." First they went to Jane Wynne's; they found her propped up in bed surrounded with a circle of interested neighbours. The doctor had just gone and the minister was on his way in. Old Marslie Powell curtsied gravely to the minister as he entered. "Dear love, she'll not last the night." "Aye, aye," chorused the circle of neighbours, "her breath's failin' now." But in Jane Wynne's eye there was a live coal of intelligence; she beckoned imperiously with her scrawny old hand to the young minister. "If I do, ye'll put it on the stone?" she whispered eagerly. "Yes, Jane, Hugh will have it done." "She's not long," said Olwyn to Betty; "let us be goin' to Jane Jones's." They walked across the street. "Poor dear," said Ellen Roberts to them as they entered, "she'll not last till morn. Her heart's beatin' slower a'ready." "Aye, aye, she's failin'," assented the neighbours. "It would be a credit, somethin' to be proud on," whispered old Annie Dalben. "Aye, a credit," agreed the neighbours. Jane beckoned to the doctor. "If I do, tell Robert Roberts to make mention of it in his sermon," she pleaded weakly. "I will," replied the doctor. "Well," remarked Olwyn Evans as they went out, "it'll be a credit either way to one of the families to be carried in that smart hearse. Jane Wynne's older, an' perhaps she'd ought to get it; but then the Joneses has always meant more to Bryn Tirion, an' it seems as if they'd ought to have the honour. I never saw two families more ambitious for anything. It does seem as if Griffiths had thought of everything a man could think of to benefit the village." "Aye," assented Betty proudly, "he's a wonderful man for thinkin' of other folks." V _Bryn Tirion sees Death Triumphant_ "I don't know," said Olwyn Evans, in a resigned voice, "I don't know but it was best. The Wynneses always had fewer chances than the Joneses. Hugh Wynne didn't say much, but I could see he was happy, an' the Wynne girls was so pleased. They said as long as their mother had to go she couldn't have done better, the stone'll look so pretty with it all writ on it; an' then the hearse an' their mournin' did look so nice together." "There was a good many folks there?" suggested Griffiths. "Aye, there was; I thought it was more'n pleasant for all the Joneses to come, because they must feel disappointed with Jane Jones still livin'." "Is she the same?" asked Griffiths. "Aye, no worse." "There was people at the funeral from Tremadoc," added Betty. "From Tremadoc and from Rhyd Dhu, too. Some haven't ever seen a real hearse before. A cart to draw the coffin in is all the Rhyd Dhu folks know," concluded Olwyn. "They say the plate on the coffin was more'n filled with money," added Betty. "Aye, it was," said Olwyn; "there was more'n enough to pay both the doctor an' the minister. It does the town good to have a lot of folks here. They wasn't all interested in Jane Wynne, but they was interested in seein' which'd die first, an' in the hearse. I suppose they wanted to come an' make sure she really was dead. Well, you never did better by Bryn Tirion, Griffith." "Aye," said Griffith, tapping his finger-tips together and smiling contentedly at the row of big-eyed, whiskered cats, "aye, it's an assistance." _Dreams in Jeopardy_ Pedr Evans dived into the contents of a box of picture post-cards; from the shop counter all that could be seen of him was the back of broad shoulders, two inches of sturdy neck, well-shaped ears, and a thatch of brown hair. The box, which was large and placed on a shelf behind the counter, gave evidences to the person who could peek over the counter and around Pedr of being in an alarming state of disorder. Apparently the man fumbling among the cards intended to rearrange them; at least some line of the figure suggested that this was the impression he wished to convey. But it was as if he were running his hands through sand, for the post-cards slipped from his fingers and fell in even greater confusion. A woman who had entered the shop-door looked at his back a second--she had caught a rim of the face as it had turned quickly away--smiled, lifted her eyebrows, and stuck her tongue into one heavily tinted cheek. "'Ts, 'ts," she hissed, behind her teeth. Pedr wheeled about; in turning he caught the corner of his box of post-cards, and over they went upon the floor. "Well, indeed, Catrin Griffiths," he said, with an attempt at composure. "Aye, it's me," she answered airily. "Ffi! Playin' cards, Pedr Evans? Um-m, what would Nelw Parry be sayin'?" Pedr coloured and shifted his weight. "No, puttin' the stock in order," he objected. "Yes? Well, an' playin' you didn't see me? Yes?" Catrin patted the puffs of yellow hair that projected from under her pink hat, and, placing a finger on her lips, smiled insinuatingly at Pedr. It was evident as she stood before him that she considered herself alluring, a charming embodiment of the world and the flesh and the devil. Of that world, it was rumoured, Pedr Evans knew something; at least he had made excursions into it; he had been to Liverpool, nay, he had been even farther, for he had been to London. London! The word chimed as merrily in Catrin's ears as coronation bells. London! Pedr Evans had been to London, and the magic word had been in more mouths than Catrin's. There was never a question asked in Conway, climbing by degrees to the wise men of the village and still failing an answer, but people would say, "Aye, well, indeed, _we_ dunno, but Pedr Evans he's been to London, an' he'll know, whatever." Catrin Griffiths had seen him mount the London coach, and she had seen him return. And, by a method of reasoning wholly her own, she had concluded that he would appreciate her, for she, Catrin Griffiths, had seen something of that world, too; she had seen highly-coloured prints of Piccadilly, the 'busses with gay people atop and fine ladies in their carriages clad in cloaks and furs and furbelows, throats and wrists bejewelled in a marvellous fashion, and such fine gentlemen driving the carriages; and, what is more, she had spelled painfully through the English, in which her tongue was stiff, of a beautiful romance, "Lady Nain's Escape." Catrin considered her worldly schooling of coloured pictures, a novel, and advertisements, the best, and with an occasional shilling sent to Liverpool she had literally applied this tuition to her face and figure. She realised, however, that there were still worlds for her to conquer, and a far enchanted land called Drawing Room into which she had not as yet had even a lithographic peep. Because she longed for greater nearness to this kingdom, therefore she longed for Pedr. As she stood before him, her pink hat on her yellow hair, her painted face thick with chalk, her lips a glossy carmine, her throat embedded in fluffs of cheap tulle, her figure stuffed into an ancient dress of white serge, she was wondering how it would be possible for any man to resist her. But the man whom she ogled blushed; he looked furtively towards the windows, and at the door at the back of the shop, and it was plain to be seen that he felt himself caught in a trap between his counter and the shelf. He seemed ashamed, ashamed to look at her. "Well, Catrin," he said, without lifting his eyes, "what can I do for you to-day?" "Dear _anwyl_, it's most slipped my mind--um-m--well, I'll be havin' sixpence worth of writin' paper." "Aye, smooth, I suppose?" he asked, taking it from the shelf. "No, I think I'll take it rough, for that's the style now, whatever." "Oh! very well." "Been takin' photographs lately, Pedr?" "Not many." "I'm thinkin' you'll be goin' down Caerhun way some day soon," she continued, her pink face wrinkling with mingled mirth and devilry; "it's very pretty there, good for an artist like you." Pedr folded in the ends of the parcel and said nothing. "Aye," she went on, "an' there's an old church there, with a bell-tower that looks over the wall like an eye. It don't wink, Pedr, but I'm thinkin', indeed, it could tell a good deal, if it had a mind to. It's next to the church the Parrys used to live." Pedr, tying the parcel and snapping the string, maintained his silence. "It's there old Parry used to be drunk as a faucet; aye, an', Pedr," she whispered, "I could be tellin' you somethin' else. Nelw Parry----" "Tut!" said Pedr angrily; "here's your parcel, Catrin Griffiths. You'll have to be excusin' me this morning, for I'm busy." "Pooh, busy!" and Catrin laughed shrilly; "you're always busy when there's a mention of Nelw Parry. Well, ask Nelw herself what it is she can tell you that you don't know. Perhaps you'll be _wantin'_ to know before you marry her." And with a flounce Catrin Griffiths betook herself out of the shop. Pedr with his back to the counter was the same as Pedr with his face to the shop-door; however, he did not seem the same. The back suggested middle age, but the face was the face of a boy in its expression, with something perennially young about it: it may have been innocence or untouched pride or something that looked from his eyes as if they had been those of a mere girl. Indeed, except for a conscious awkwardness of hand and a certain steadfast, almost impassive look about the mouth, he might have recited an _awdl_ or been a bard. Howbeit, he could neither play a harp nor recite an ode. And because he kept only a stationer's shop, which contained a fine medley of inferior post-cards scattered everywhere, piles of newspapers, books, shelves of letter-paper, trinkets of rustic and plebeian sort, it would not be safe to conclude that he was no more than a thoroughly commonplace man. Because he spent his leisure from the shop in taking pictures of the country he loved, it would not be wise to decide that he was therefore a poor, mediocre thing who had not brains enough to make even a very wretched artist; who was, in short, a mere factotum to higher ability. Pedr's shop, which lay on a steep winding cobblestone street next to the Cambrian Pill Depôt, five doors down from Plas Mawr and twenty doors up from the Castle Gate, was tenanted by dreams as fair and holy in service, although they never found their way into the world except by means of sensitised paper or by an occasional expression in Pedr's eye or tremble of his impassive lips--this shop was tenanted by dreams as fair as any which had ever waited upon accepted painter or poet. They had a habit of tiptoeing about unseen, so that the usual customer who entered Pedr's door would not have felt their presence. Nelw Parry had come to know them well, but before Catrin Griffiths they vanished away. The lovely colour of dawn itself was not gobbled up faster by the smoke of trade than these entities disappeared at the sound of Catrin Griffiths' heels upon the street. In fact the tiny beings were troubled by the presence of even post-cards, for, dream-like, they wished to give all they had, if need be, to the hearts which could be seen beating through the hands that held them, and these cards lying upon the floor, these flaunting things of many colours, were commerce; things, they thought, which were to steal something from men. Over the counter, from which a few minutes ago he had recoiled, Pedr Evans had often leaned, many invisible eyes smiling upon him, taking from some old folio pictures which had caught the very lustre of the sky; or the mingled shadow and iridescence of a hillside, mysteriously suggestive of the sea; or some flow and subsidence of light itself. Like any other mortal, poor Pedr had to live, and that is why he was obliged to keep a shop next to the Cambrian Pill Depôt. If he had been an artist, the world might willingly have forgotten that he had to live at all and paid him just nothing for his work. But it was not the necessity of existence which made him lean upon the counter, showing a picture another man never would have had the wit to take. To Pedr something beautiful was always worth a plate, so he had many pictures no one bought, and he was not often given a chance to show. Later in the day, after his encounter with Catrin Griffiths, Pedr was with Nelw Parry in the sitting-room of the Raven Temperance, drinking tea. Nelw's house, from the outside, was a quaint, stuccoed building with a quantity of chimney-pots sticking up into the sky, neat steps and a brass sill at the front door, a painted sign "Raven Temperance," and printed cards at the windows, one bearing a cyclist's wheel decorated with mercurial wings, the other the gratifying word, "Refreshments." Within the room were two people, both middle-aged, drinking tea--a commonplace enough scene the casual observer would have said; however, at that moment these two people, even if they were doing nothing more romantic than talking quietly together, lifting their teacups once in a while and looking at each other a good deal, were very much like good children in a fairy tale. It may have been merely a trick of the light due to the low casement windows, that the room seemed more peaceful than most rooms in Conway; the subdued light touched the soft green walls gently, reaching for the top of the walls as if it were some enchanted region, to enter which it must climb. Indeed, it was an enchanted region, for there a shining silver river ran in and out, in and out, among alleys of green trees. In and out, in and out, it ran noiselessly, and yet it seemed to Pedr, as to some strangers who entered the little room for refreshments, to sing a song heard before--just when, just how, was another question. Some visitors who had been in that room once came again to sit, often bodily weary, while their eyes travelled to that border of the shining river, and the mistress of the "Raven" waited upon them tranquilly, placing the tea-service before them, and, it may be, adjusting a wrap about a stranger's shoulders as delicately as if she were adding to the comfort of some happy fancy, some ideal, some dream, that a burdened touch might shatter. Grateful, there were tired travellers glad to come and go phantom-like, putting down their silver gently, in a room where reality seemed the greatest phantom of all. To Pedr it was better than the best picture he had ever taken--better than the best because the thought of taking it would have seemed like desecration. He looked at Nelw, as he did every few seconds, alternately, over his teacup and then without that barrier to his gaze. Coils of dark hair made the shapely head heavy on the slender neck, as if the weight of that abundant beauty were great. It was wonderful hair, making in its shadowy depth a shade for the white, sensitive face, quiet as the reverie of her eyes. In a land where comely hair blessed poor and rich alike with its wealth, Nelw Parry's was even lovelier than that of her neighbours. It had one peculiarity, however, which her neighbours did not admire but which to Pedr--perhaps to something untutored in Pedr--was dear. Around the edges of its abundance little curls escaped. "Nelw," he said, glancing at her wistfully, "they're prettier than ever." She brushed the curls back and looked at him with reproach, as if something she was thinking about, or something of which they had been talking, had been rudely disturbed. As an actual matter of fact they had been saying nothing for two or three minutes, indulging the speechlessness of those who know their way even by day to another land. But Pedr was aware what sort of answer any remark about Nelw's hair always fetched, so he changed the subject. "Dearie, Catrin Griffiths was in the shop this mornin'." "What was she wantin'?" "I dunno; she bought sixpence worth of writin' paper," replied Pedr, regarding Nelw with the air of a man who would like to say more. He was wondering how much she guessed of Catrin's angling. A shadow of annoyance passed over Nelw's face. "Dearie," he continued, encouraged by her expression, "I can't like her, whatever; she's--she's not nice." "Well, indeed, she's smart," answered Nelw gently. "Tut! smart in those things she wears? She looks more than frowsy to me; an'--an' she's always coming into my shop." "Poor thing!" murmured Nelw, her face tender with pity. Pedr observed her wonderingly. What prompted this compassion in Nelw? What made her understand weakness without being disgusted or repelled by its ugliness? Other women were not like her in this respect. And just behind this yielding lovableness that yearned over the mistakes of others, that reached out to Pedr as one athirst for the necessity of life, that clung to Pedr for strength, for protection, like a child afraid of the dark, what was this sense he had, of an obstinate reticence which seemed the very resiliency of her mysterious nature? Certainly she had had a bitter life. Then, like a viper into its nest, what Catrin Griffiths had said darted into Pedr's mind. Was there something he did not know, that he ought to know? With the acuteness of the man who can detect the shadow of even a folded leaf, he searched Nelw's face. Why when she needed him, when she was alone, when she was fretted by the difficulties of her solitary life, why did she always put off their marriage? Baffled, irritated, he spoke sharply. "Poor thing, nothin'! It's a pound head an' a ha'penny tail with Catrin Griffiths." Nelw gasped. "A pound head an' a ha'penny tail, I say," he continued roughly, "Aye, an' the time is comin', comin' soon, when she'll get herself into trouble, flauntin' around with those frocks on, all decked out, an' all her false seemin', her face painted and powdered, an' her hair dyed. The deceitful thing!" "Och, Pedr, don't!" But Pedr, excited beyond self-control by the workings of his imagination, could not stop. The blanching face before him was no more than a cipher, it expressed nothing to him. "Tut! that I will. An' what is it Catrin Griffiths knows an' I don't? Yes?" There was a cry of "Pedr!" Nelw shivered, her eyes widened and stared at him. It was so still in that room that the flutter of the draught sucking the smoke up the chimney could be heard. Pedr sat motionless in his chair, the reality of what he had done yet to reach him. Nelw moved, and in an instant he was beside her. "Dearie, dearie, what have I done?" "Och, nothin'--nothin' at all," she answered, her face twitching helplessly. "But I did; och, I was beside myself; I didn't know what I was sayin'!" Pedr paused, he looked at her longingly: "Nelw, little lamb, is it _somethin'_ I ought to know?" "It's nothin', nothin' at all," she replied, her eyes still staring at him, her hands lying open upon her lap, palms up. And there she sat and sighed and sighed, refusing to answer any of Pedr's questions; and, every once in a while, moaning, "Not him, dear God, och! not him!" At dusk every day, and every day in the year except Sunday, and year after year, the servant had brought the lights into Pedr Evans's stationery shop, and, setting them down, had gone back into the kitchen. This evening, as she went into the room, scarcely knowing whether her master was in or not, everything had been so noiseless, she started, for there he sat, his head in his hands. Except for a slight disturbance when Pedr entered his shop, which it is probable no other human ear would have heard, there had not been a sound, until Betsan came in. Nelw's "Nothin', nothin' at all" had been going around and around in his mind like a turn-buckle tightening up his thoughts, till it seemed to him they would snap. Then it would be, "What has she done? what has she done?" He had known her, in her sensitiveness, to exaggerate; she had confided to him some of the incidents of her childhood, which would have been taken quietly enough by other children. But he was unable to reason away the horror that looked out from her face to-day. And he, Pedr Evans, had asked the question that had brought that expression! A question suggested by a woman of whom even to think in the same moment was to dishonour Nelw. He wondered what it was that crawled into a man's mind and made him to do a thing like that? Betsan had barely closed the door into the kitchen, when, like the vision of the woman who tempted St. Anthony, Catrin Griffiths stood before him, the shrewd ogling eyes looking at him out of the painted face. The question, the answer to which was of more concern to him than anything else on earth, surged back upon him and stifled him and beat in his temples and his ears till it seemed as if he could not breathe. Catrin coughed. "Um-m, Pedr Evans, I forgot the envelopes this mornin'." "Well, indeed," he replied mechanically. "Aye," she affirmed. Then asked, "Did ye see Nelw Parry this afternoon?" knowing that he had done so, for her room was opposite the Raven. "Yes," he said. "What was she tellin' you, eh, what? She's not so unlike me, yes?" Pedr looked at her, his mind at a bow-and-string tension of expectancy. "She didn't tell you, I see," Catrin continued. "Well, may every one pity the poor creature! You'll be wantin' to know so----" But Catrin Griffiths never got any further, for with a leap Pedr was upon her. "Out of my shop, girl, out!" and she was bundled through the door and the door slammed behind her and locked. Pedr's feeling of passionate anger against himself as well as against Catrin gradually settled. He must try to think. He would see no one else to-night and turned out the lamps. For a minute the wicks flickered, puffing odd jets of shadow on the raftered ceiling. There was an instant of wavering flame, then darkness, and only the silvered window-panes looking into the obscure room like big shining eyes. Pedr sat still, thinking, sighing and sighing. There were vague rustling noises in the shop; every time he sighed it seemed as if the noises quivered together like dry leaves. What would it ever matter to him now what happened? Without warning he had been robbed of his happiness; even time never could have proved such a thief, for time was no common plunderer,--if it took away, often it put something far more precious in its place. Pedr had always liked to think what time meant to anything lastingly beautiful; he loved the houses better when they were old, the thought that they had been attractive to others, had held many joys and even sorrows, made them beautiful to him; he liked the lines in an old face, somehow they made it merrier, made it sweeter; even the yellowing of a photograph, for Pedr was limited in his subjects from which to draw illustrations, pleased him with some added softening of tone. Life with Nelw, as it wound towards the end of the road, would be, he had thought, ever more and more enchanting, for just where the road dipped over into space there was the sky. Even Death confirmed love. That last blessing it had to give--the greatest blessing of all. But now his mind must be forever like the track of the snail in the dust. It was no matter to him now what lay upon the hillsides or within the valleys; the heavy-domed shadows of foliage trees, the shadow of ripple upon ripple where the water wrinkles, were alike of little account. He sighed again, and there was the same succession of small sounds, for he was not alone in the room. Hidden away in all the corners and nooks of the darkened shop were scores of little beings, once his comrades. Now they hid and trembled in their dark places, shrinking from Pedr from whom it had been their wont to take what the all-powerful hand offered. They well knew what tragedy might be coming to them, for of their race more had died in one age than of the race of man in all ages. But like the children of men, till the moment of danger they had counted themselves secure, and now when Pedr sighed it was as if the sea went over them. They had always been so well off; but they had seen the fate of their kin, the wide reachless waters that had unexpectedly surrounded them, the boiling of the waves, the calm, and the bodies floating on the surface, their wee diaphanous hands empty of the hearts that had once beat through them, their faces looking with closed eyes up into the everlasting day. As Pedr sighed again and again, they shook now, their hands over their ears, in the dusty holes of the shop. At last Pedr sighed a mighty sigh, and it was like the shaking of the wind in a great tree. Although it was a mighty sigh, the little beings uncovered their ears, and, with a new expression on their faces, leaned forward to hear it repeated. It came once more. Then they crept softly out of their nooks and small recesses and dusty corners, and stood tiptoe waiting for the next sigh. It came, and the wind seemed to shake down lightly through the great tree with the most dulcet notes in all the world; whisperings and tremolos and flutings and pipings. At that, the little beings ran from every part of the shop, and Pedr heard them coming; they clambered about his knees, they climbed into his lap, and Pedr gathered them all into his arms--that is as many as he could hold, and the rest seemed happy enough without being there. If the truth must be told, Pedr slept soundly that night, just like the most fortunate of lovers. And the next morning, after he had found fault with his breakfast and scolded Betsan for her late rising, he betook himself, with a far more cheerful heart than he had known in many hours, to Nelw's. Pedr in the darkened shop had learned a lesson which he would not have exchanged for any pure unmixed joy upon earth. And he knew even now, with the sun upon him and a strange yearning within him, that it mattered very little what Nelw had done or was hiding from him, for despite every dreadful possibility he loved her with a feeling that mastered fear. When Nelw opened the door for him she shrank away. "Och, Pedr," she said, "so early!" "Well, indeed, _so_ early," he replied, with an attempt at gaiety. "So now I must be tellin' you," she whispered, hanging her head, and looking, with her white face, ready to sink to the floor. "Indeed, dearie, you'll not be tellin' me, whatever," he declared hotly. "Pedr!" she exclaimed, "but you said Catrin Griffiths--alas, I must tell you!" She lifted her hand as if she were going to point to something and then dropped it. "I'm not carin' what I said about Catrin Griffiths or about any one else. Dear little heart, you're makin' yourself sick over this an'----" "Och, but I must tell you!" and again came the futile motion of the hand. "You shall not!" he commanded. "Yes, now, now," she cried, lifting her hand; "Pedr I--I have----" Pedr seized the uplifted hand. "No, Nelw, no;" and he put his finger over her mouth and drew her to him. "Pedr, I must," she pleaded, struggling to free herself. "No, not now; I'm not carin' to know now. Wait until we're married." "Oh no, oh no!" Nelw moaned. "That wouldn't be fair to you. Och, if you knew----" But Pedr covered her mouth with his hand and drew her closer. "Not now, little lamb." She sat quite still, her head upon his shoulder. Pedr felt her relaxing and heard her sighing frequently. She seemed so little and so light where she rested upon him, almost a child, and a new sense of contentment stole over Pedr. He patted her face; she made no reply, but he felt her draw nearer to him. At last she lifted her hand and passed it gently over his head. "Och, Pedr," she whispered, "I'm growin' old." "Old, nothin'," replied Pedr. "Aye, but I'm over thirty." "Pooh!" returned Pedr, "that's nothin'!" "Yes, it is; an' as I grew older you would mind even more if----" "Nelw," said Pedr warningly, covering her mouth again. "But, Pedr, how could you love me when I'd grown very old? I wouldn't have any hair at all," she faltered, "an' not any teeth," she continued, gasping painfully, "an'--an' wrinkles an' oh--an' oh--dear!" she half sobbed. "Tut," said Pedr calmly, "what of it? It's always that way, an' I'm thinkin' love could get over a little difficulty like that, whatever. Indeed, I'm thinkin' what with love an' time we'd scarcely notice it. I dunno," he added reflectively, "if we did notice it I'm thinkin' we'd love each other better." At these words Nelw smiled a little as if she were forgetting her trouble. After a while she spoke-- "You are comin' this afternoon again, Pedr, are you?" "Yes, dearie," he answered, "I'm comin'." "Och, an' it must--it must be told," she ended, forlornly. It was quiet up and down the winding cobblestone street; no two-wheeled carts jaunted by; there was no clatter of wooden clogs, no merriment of children playing, no noise of dogs barking. And all this quietude was due to the simple fact that people were preparing to take their tea, that within doors kettles were boiling, piles of thin bread and butter being sliced, jam--if the family was a fortunate one--being turned out into dishes, pound-cake cut in delectably thick slices, and, if the occasion happened to need special honouring, light cakes being browned in the frying-pan. Previous to the actual consumption of tea, the men, their legs spread wide apart, were sitting before the fire, enjoying the possession of a good wife or mother who could lay a snowy cloth. And the children, having passed one straddling age and not having come to the next, were busy sticking hungry little noses into every article set upon the cloth, afraid, however, to do more than smell a foretaste of paradise. So the street, except for a gusty wind that romped around corners, was deserted. When Nelw Parry opened a casement on the second floor, she saw not a soul. She looked up and down, up and down,--no, there was not a body stirring. Then her head disappeared, and shortly one hand reappeared and hung something to the sill. True, there was not a soul upon the street, but opposite the Raven Temperance, behind carefully-closed lattice windows, sat a woman who saw everything. Catrin Griffiths had been waiting there some time to discover whether Pedr Evans would come to-day as he did other days at half-past four. But when she beheld Nelw's hand reappear to hang something at the window, she jumped up, with a curious expression on her face, exclaiming, "A wonder!" and ran swiftly downstairs and out into the street. Once in the street she gazed steadily at the object swinging from the casement of the Raven, and again, "A wonder!" she ejaculated. She began to laugh in a harsh low fashion, then shrilly and more shrilly. "Oh, the lamb!" she exclaimed, "oh, the innocent!" Her hilarity increased, and she slapped herself on the hip, and finally held on to her bodice as if she would burst asunder. At the doors, heads appeared; some disappeared immediately upon descrying Catrin, but others thrust them out further. "See" she called, seeing Modlan Jones coming towards her, "there's Nelw Parry's _cocyn_." Modlan canted her head upwards towards the object and chuckled-- "Ow, the idiot!" "Och, the innocent!" laughed Catrin. "'Ts, 'ts," she called to Malw Owens, who, munching bread, was approaching from a little alley-way; "Nelw Parry's _cocyn's_ unfurled at last an' flappin' in the breeze." One by one a throng gathered under the walls of the Raven Temperance, and the explosions of mirth and the exclamations multiplied, until the whole street rang with the boisterous noise, and one word, "_Cocyn! cocyn!_" rebounded from lip to lip and wall to wall. But there were some who, coming all the way out of their quiet houses and seeing the occasion of this mad glee, shook their heads sadly and said, "Poor thing! she's not wise!" and went in again. And there were others who passed by on the other side of the road, and they, too, muttered, "Druan bach!" pityingly, and if they were old enough to have growing sons, cast glances none too kind at Catrin Griffiths. Evidently the "poor little thing" was not intended for her; but, indeed, they might have spared one for her, for it is possible that she needed it more than the woman who lay indoors in a convulsion of tears. Suddenly, amidst the nudges and thrusts and sniggers and shrieks, Catrin clapped her hands together. "Listen," she bade, "now listen! I'll be fetchin' Pedr." And with a snort of amusement from them all, she was off down the street. What happened to Catrin before she reached Pedr's door will never be told. By the time she came to the Cambrian Pill Depôt she was screwing her courage desperately. Even the most callous have strange visitations of fear, odd forebodings of failure, and hang as devoutly upon Providence as the most pious. It would be robbing no one to give Catrin a kind word or, indeed, a tear or two. Good words and tears are spent gladly upon a blind man, then why not upon Catrin, whose blindness was an ever-night far deeper? She was but groping for something she thought she needed, for something to make her happier, as every man does. And now, as it often is with the one who hugs his virtue as well as with the sinful, the road slipped suddenly beneath her feet and her thoughts were plunged forward into a dark place of fears. She, who always had had breath and to spare for the expression of any vulgar or trivial idea which came to her, could barely say, as she thrust her head in at the door of Pedr's shop, "Nelw Parry'll be needin' you now." What she had intended to say was something quite different; since she did not say it, it need not be repeated here. It seemed an eternity to Pedr before, without any show of following Catrin too closely, he could leave the shop. The sounds of the jangling voices he was nearing mingled with the gusty wind that whickered around housetops and corners, and brushed roughly by him with a dismal sound. He walked with slow deliberateness, but his thoughts ran courier-like ever forward and before him. To his sight things had a peculiar distinctness, adding in some way to his foreknowledge, prescient with the distress he heard in the wind. He looked up to the casement towards which all eyes were directed. Something attached to the sill whipped out in the wind and then flirted aimlessly to and fro. Pedr scanned it intently. Another gust of wind caught it, and again it spread out and waved about glossily plume-like. Then for a moment, unstirred by the air, it hung limp against the house-side; it was glossy and black and--and--thought Pedr with a rush of comprehension--like a long strand of Nelw's hair. There were suppressed titters and sly winks as he came to the group before the Raven. "Ffi, the poor fellow, I wonder what he'll do now?" asked one. "Hush!" said another. "Well, indeed," answered a third, tapping her head significantly, "what would one expect when she's not wise?" "He's goin' in," said a fourth. While all eyes were upon Pedr, Catrin Griffiths had slipped away from their midst, slid along the wall, and stolen across the street. The look upon Pedr's face was like a hot iron among her wretched thoughts, and hiss! hiss! hiss! it was cutting down through all those strings that had held her baggage of body and soul together. Pedr made his way into the house and to the couch where Nelw lay. "Nelw," he said. Nelw caught her breath between sobs. "Nelw," he repeated gently, sitting down by her, "there, little lamb!" Nelw stopped crying. "Pedr, did you see?" she asked. "Did I see? Yes, I saw your _cocyn_ hangin' to the window." Nelw sat up straight. "Do--do you understand, Pedr? Did you hear them mockin' me?" "Aye, an' I know it's your _cocyn_." Pedr smiled, "Little lamb, did you think that would make any difference?" "But, Pedr," she said insistently, as if she must make him understand, "these curls are all I really--really have." She drew one out straight. "Aye, dearie, I'm thinkin' that is enough." If he had been telling her a fairy story Nelw's eyes could not have grown wider. Pedr cocked his head critically to one side. "It's very pretty, whatever," he added; "I was always likin' that part of your hair the best." * * * * * And now there is no more story to tell; for Pedr set to work to get the tea for Nelw. As he went in and out of a door, sometimes they smiled at each other foolishly and sometimes Pedr came near enough to pat her on the head. The room, although it would have been difficult to lay hands on its visitors, had other inmates too, for it was full of Pedr's comrades. Every minute they increased in number, as is the way of the world when two people, even if they are not very wise,--and of course they never will be wise if they are not by the time they are middle-aged,--are joined together in love. And every one of these little visitors took the heart it held in its wee transparent hands and offered it to Nelw. And Nelw, as Pedr had done almost twenty-four hours ago, gathered the dreams into her arms, and there they lay upon her breast like the children they really were. And above this scene the shining silver river ran in and out, in and out among its alleys of green trees singing a gentle song which, once it has been learned, can never be forgotten. _Tit for Tat_ On the chimney-pot of Adam Jones's cottage sat two rooks. They put their bills together this morning just as they did every day, and one said "Ma! Ma!" and the other answered "Pa! Pa!" in raucous but affectionate tones. And the grey wood-pigeons in the woods said "Coo! Coo! Coo!" all day long; and the geese by the stream made futile rushes at one another and passed harmlessly like clumsy knights atilt. And when the kittens played, as they did sometimes on Twthill, there was no suggestion of frolic about it; the ladies' chain with their mother's hind legs was done with such harmonious _ensemble_ that it was just as quiet as the chapel-going step of old Deacon Aphael Tuck and his wife Olwyn. Even the lusty toad who lived under the holly-bush hopped only half-way home, and then, lifting himself unwillingly, straddled _pronunciamento_ to the holly stem. At half-past seven the milkman went by, with a very small can in a very small cart, ringing a very big bell,--a bell big as a dinner-bell, that went "Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong," in the sleepiest fashion in all the world. And this bell the milkman had to ring a long, long time, for, either it put the inhabitants to sleep and then they must have leisure to wake up again before they could attend to their business, or they were asleep anyway and must have time to get up. And an hour later the post went by, marked V. R. in large shabby gilt letters, for you may be certain that _Eduardus Rex_ had not yet got on to any document inside or outside this cart that bowled slowly up Twthill, looking as it disappeared at the top like a lazy beetle crawling into a hole. And down at the bottom of Twthill a little stream purred and purred and purred, like a convention of all the comfortable tabby-cats in the universe, or a caucus of drowsy tea-kettles. In the woods beyond the stream, where the wood-pigeons cooed, a little bird called "Slee-eep! Slee-ep! Slee-p!" Some of the young people on Twthill had been known to maintain that it said "Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!" But later they changed their minds, and it seemed like "Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!" to them, too, and they sharply corrected other young people for thinking nonsense. And every day there was the sound of Deacon Aphael Tuck puffing up the hill, saying under his breath, "Tut, tut, tut, a hill whatever, tut, now isn't it!" At the foot of the hill, in the midst of all this quiet lived a little old woman, Gladys Jones, the wife of Deacon Adam Jones. The Welsh have a saying that the first man Adam was a Welshman and that his name was Adam Jones. However that may be, this Adam Jones seemed assuredly the first man in all the world to Gladys, and, in the course of the story you may consider Adam justified in thinking of Gladys sometimes as his Eve. They were very different in appearance. He was tall, gaunt, with a saintly look about his waxen features, a look made attractively human by two deep lines on either side of his mouth. When Gladys was at her antics, caprioling like a shy, pathetic marmoset, these lines deepened, and he would pull his beard and his eyes would twinkle much as stars twinkle on a frosty night. Adam Jones was a saint, and he had need to be. Gladys was tiny in size, round, merry, alert. Her face was round, too, with cheeks as full-moulded as a baby's, and a small pointed chin that was as sensitive as it was whimsical, and wide, round blue eyes that were as apt to weep as they were to sparkle. This Saturday morning Gladys sat by the hearth, her head forward, listening for a step. At her left the table was spread with an abundant breakfast. As she listened, misfortune did not come running, but slowly and with the footfall of an old man. Gladys was waiting for an answer concerning the thing she wished to do more than anything else in the world, more than she had ever wished to do anything; the thing she had never done, the thing she had never had a chance to do: go to the Circus. The Circus was to be held on Monday in Carnarvon, near the Castle where the Eisteddfod was held last year; and Carnarvon, only eight miles away, was her old home. She knew that no one else in Twthill had even thought of such an act as going. But what was there wicked about it? Gladys asked herself; and reasoning thus she forthwith asked the deacon for permission. First he looked astounded, then he said he must consider the matter over-night. Now he was coming in to breakfast, and she would have his answer. Adam Jones came slowly through the doorway, which was surmounted by a gable guard of slate pigeons and flanked by slate rosettes. Out on the hedge poised a privet-cut pigeon, lacking the evil eye of his slate brethren, but possessed of an evil green tail now pointed with evil significance at Adam's entering back. "Well, dad," said Gladys, as he took his seat at the table. "Aye, mam, the mist means fine summer weather, indeed." "Have ye been thinkin', father?" "I dunno----" he faltered. "Aye, mam; better the evil we know than that we know not." "Och, dad, am I _not_ to go?" "'Twould be playing with fire, and that's no play, mam. I've been talkin' with Aphael Tuck, and with Keri Lewis, and Evan Edwards, and they say the only man in Twthill has thought of goin' is Morris Thomas. Morris Thomas is a dark bird, he's always had a long spoon to eat with the devil, whatever. His missus is sick cryin' over his ways." "But, father, I long so to go!" sobbed Gladys. "Mother, ye are too gay, too gay! A weak doctrine, an easy path." The deacon was inclined to attribute Gladys's gaiety to her Wesleyanism; he himself was a Calvinist. At this moment, with tears rolling down her cheeks, Gladys did not look over gay; and it would have been difficult for any one to divine the reputation for liveliness which she had made for herself. No good was coming to her now because she had lightened the heavy quiet of Twthill in various ways; because she had talked with the slate pigeons and clipped the wicked green tail of the privet pigeon; because she twinkled over the candytuft, bright and beautiful enough for a dozen Joseph's coats, or rang the Canterbury bells when nobody was looking, or pulled the bees off the honeysuckle, or fed the tiny sparrows and sandpipers and rooks as if they were geese, or tickled the toad under the holly-bush till he swelled with joy. It was no consolation to her now that she had always found something during the quiet dreary hours on Twthill to please her fancy, or that she had turned her attention successfully to her neighbours. Mrs. Thomas the greengrocer was a stupid thing, Betty Harries proud, and Olwyn Tuck the shop, starched with her doctrines. Many a trap of words had she set for them and many a trap had been sprung. There were harmless practical jokes, too, and there were matchmaking and theology. In these heat-producing topics Gladys had gained no mean skill, as the privet pigeon knew. But the deacon took a serious view of her relation to a possible future. He longed to grant everything she might desire. However, there was her soul to be kept! He gathered himself together. "Mam, ye cannot go," was his final word. Adam got up; he wanted to go out very much, and Gladys sat alone thinking. At last she straightened, and shook her head; then she half laughed, then she half cried, as children sometimes laugh and cry almost in the same breath. After this she said aloud to herself-- "I will do it, now, won't I?" She nodded, "Aye, I will indeed." She arose, looking mischievously wicked, and stole out of the back-door of the cottage. She glanced about, and evidently her eyes alighted on what she wished, for she stood there thinking. It wasn't fair, och! it was such a silent place, not worth a man's while to wake up in. And that stream, purr, purr, purr, purr all day long, just as if the cats couldn't attend to that sort of noise better. And those heavy-looking ugly-coloured foxglove bells that grew on the sunny side of the stone wall, and rustled "Tinkle-tinkle, tinkle-tinkle" in a way that Gladys had sometimes thought like the mysterious swishing of dry leaves or the scampering of tiny feet. What if they did know a deal about the Little Folk, it was of no earthly use to her. And the white clover and the red clover had such a warm sleepy smell, and those loppy dandelions that grew tall and drooped over, and those silly pink and white stone-crops that lay as still as lizards on the stone wall! Och, what if she had played with them once? She hated them all now. This stillness weighed down upon her like the rocks upon the hills. She took something from the clothes-line and went into the house. Then she opened a long, heavy chest and was busy in its depths for several minutes. After that she was restlessly active throughout the day. At last bedtime came, and she went to sleep as innocently as the lamb in the sheepfold. But Adam Jones lay awake. He touched the plump wrinkled cheek gently and looked at Gladys's frilled nightcap with inexpressible longing. White Love, she was so different from other bodies in Twthill, enough to make a man happy as in the Garden of Eden these long years, but enough to vex him sorely too. Aye, he must manage to keep her soul for her, and the good deacon, his hands folded on his chest, his eyes blinking in an effort to stay awake, passed from prayers for Gladys into sleep. When they arose, the quiet on Twthill had deepened to silence, for it was the Sabbath. The milkman made his rounds as usual, but instead of the dinner-bell he had a small boy who tiptoed from door to door, gently rapping up the good wives. There was no sound in all Twthill; only the smoke from the chimney-pots told of the life within. And all day long there would be no sound except the Chapel bell ringing worshippers to service and the tread of obedient Sunday-shod feet. "Come," said Adam Jones to Gladys, "'tis time to be dressin' for Chapel." "Nay, I'm not goin'." "Not goin'! Dear heart, what's come over ye?" "I'm not goin'," was all Gladys obstinately replied. This was all the good deacon could get from her. Nor would she stir from her place by the fire. "Mam, where's my Sunday socks?" he called from upstairs. "How should I be knowin'?" "But I cannot find them," was the distressed answer, while bureau drawers flew in and out. "Mam," he called again, "I can't find them whatever, an' my grey socks are not here, either." "They're in the mendin' basket to be darned." "But, mam, then where's the other pair of greys?" "They're not clean, they're to be washed to-morrow." "Tut, tut, tut," said the deacon, sitting on the edge of the bed; then he pulled his boots on over bare feet and stretched down his trousers as far as he could. After that he went meekly downstairs. "Where's my Sunday coat, mam?" "In the chest where it is always." "In the chest?" "Aye." Adam Jones bent over the big box where his Sunday coat lay spread out carefully from Sabbath to Sabbath. He groped around, fished out the coat, put it on unaided by Gladys, and leaned over his wife to say good-bye. "Ye're not lovin' me much to-day, mother, are ye?" Gladys gulped and pushed him away. He left the house, his Bible under his arm, to join the people streaming up Twthill to the Chapel. Gladys ran to the door and called once. He turned around, but she bit her lips and said, "No matter." As Adam stepped into the upward moving throng, Mrs. Thomas, the wife of Morris Thomas, whispered-- "Och, Morris, look!" Morris gave one look, covered his mouth with his fingers, and began to shake; but dark bird that he was and long spoon that he had for supping with the devil, his face took on a pitying expression. "'Tis too bad," he said; "what shall I do?" Meantime the children had begun to giggle, little Dilys, and Haf and Delwyn and Ifor and Kats, and a score more. The suppressed tittering caught all the way down the line like a fuse attended by sundry minor explosions, and every eye was directed at Deacon Jones's back. But Morris's question remained unanswered, and no one did anything. The deacon, with his gentle bows to right and left and his long stride, skimmed past couple after couple, and entering the Chapel took his deacon's seat immediately under the pulpit, his back to the congregation. Other deacons gathered rapidly about him on the circular seat, and there was much nudging among them, and more stir and craning of necks in the Chapel than had ever been there before. But soon the worshippers were launched upon a discussion of Arminianism, that unfortunate set of questions gentle John Wesley managed to flourish before Calvinism. Now Calvinism, full-tilt, rushed smoking and roaring from the kind mouths of the good people in the Chapel, belching flame and destruction upon the laxity of Wesleyanism. Deacon Adam Jones, with his eyes tight closed and his heart bursting with sorrow, was engaged in something like prayer. No matter that he could not know within himself that he was one of the elect. After all, if he strove to be saved and then wasn't, he could not grumble. He had tried his best; if he failed it was not his fault. But oh, his beloved Gladys, that her feet might be on the Rock and off this sliding sand of Wesleyanism! Or that already he might be landed on the happy shores of the other side, and know her foreordained to be saved! She might ride the wicked Elephant and not fall; a thousand circuses would not harm her in his sight. Suddenly there was the tramping of a multitude in their silent Sabbath street, followed by a wild "Yah!" The deacons quivered together like so many leaves on a branch, and looked to the high windows, but the windows were so high that only the hills peered down serenely upon the congregation. At home Gladys, eyeing disconsolately the bright fire and the rows of brass candlesticks and the big shiny cheese dishes, sat in the same place in which Adam had left her. Ah! it was wicked for her to have done that, for her husband was so gentle to her, no man could be better. And now she was making a laughingstock of the lad among the neighbours. The tears rolled out of her eyes, and, irresponsible little body that she was, with the flow of her tears there came a great desire to be comforted for her wickedness. Adam had always comforted her. Suddenly she sat up, for there was the sound of many feet upon the road. She listened, she looked out, she gasped, she sped to the hedge. A great procession was going by. Her amazed eyes fell upon camels, with gentlemen in baggy trousers on their backs. The camels were walking forward, stealthily spreading out their soft-padded feet. And there were many elephants, uneasily swaying the keepers who sat on their heads; for the elephants, hearing the purring of the stream, thought it sounded like the rustling of long jungle-grass, and wished more than anything else that this tidy little hill were a jungle in which they might lie down. Instead, they must trundle wearily up hill, taking comfort in elephantine ways by holding by their trunks to one another's tails. And the ladies from Egypt, seated high in a great barge, fanned themselves and looked yellow and much as Cleopatra must have looked when Mark Antony wooed her. And the float-full of American Indians seemed tired, and something must have been washed off their faces, for certainly they were not red. And the gentlemen representing the musical talent of the German Empire were mopping their fat necks. And in the huge barge representing Japan, courteous little Japs covered their yawns with fastidiously-kept hands. And the "artist" who sat inside the steam-organ wagon became so sleepy that his hand slipped and struck one of the organ pedals. "Yah!" screeched the organ, and I think it was the loudest sound ever heard on Twthill. The only rosy, tidy being in the whole procession was a little maid in white cap and apron who was hanging up fresh towels in one of the living vans, and peeping out of the window at the curious cottages and unpronounceable names decorating each one that she saw. There was no talking, no laughter. This was part of the day's work for these men and women and beasts. They were on their way to Carnarvon for Monday's performance. The men looked tired and sober, and so did the women. Gladys thought they all seemed strangely draggled. Indeed, she had imagined they would be quite different, so bright and beautiful, very creatures of the air like the birds. She believed she did not wish to go to the circus after all, for if they were not happy, she was certain she could never be happy looking at them, poor dears! If only Adam would come home, she could stand the stillness, and she would never do anything wrong again. In the Chapel the service went forward without interruption; the minister, a man of character, convinced that he had met on Twthill all the forces of the world and the flesh and the devil, was not to be terrified by a multitude of feet, even though those feet were an avenging host sent for the destruction of this wicked village, in which he laboured and struggled in vain. The congregation, ignorant of this unflattering opinion of them, followed their heroic leader to a man. At the close of the service, Deacon Aphael Tuck leaned forward towards Adam Jones. "Mr. Jones, your socks--your socks----" "What is that, Mr. Tuck?" "Your socks. I'm sorry, but did ye intend----" "Aye, my socks, Deacon," said Adam, looking apprehensively towards his boots, "aye, I've been lookin' for them--my Sunday socks." "They're on your back," said the senior deacon, coughing. Adam Jones flushed all over his pale face; then he smiled, much as if he enjoyed having his Sunday socks on his back rather than on his feet, and then, recollecting, he began to explain to the deacon. "Well, 'tis Sunday,"--the deacon knew this,--"and Gladys takes very good care of my clothes whatever, and puts them--lays them out in the chest an'--an' she's not well to-day." While Aphael Tuck was pulling out the strong stitches with which the socks were tacked on,--strong stitches which he and Mrs. Tuck often discussed later as part of the liveliest day Twthill had ever known,--the Recording Angel, who had been taking down Adam's prayers much cut in angelic shorthand, spaced out every one of these half-true faltering words carefully, and over them, the Angel wrote, in beautiful bright letters, LOVE, and beneath them, with lax impartiality to Calvinism and Wesleyanism, made this note, "Elect: Adam and wife." _An Oriel in Eden_ Mrs. Jenkins looked over at Mr. Jenkins the shop merchant and bard, and there was love and wonderment in her eyes. He was reclining in an arm-chair, his long legs stretched before him, his head at rest against the chair, his hands folded over his stomach, his eyes tight closed, his mouth wide open, his lips moving, and every once in a while his tongue quickly lapping his upper lip. Janny looked away and out of the windows to the meadows that rolled up into the mist like big grey waves; this was the act of composition, she knew, and too sacred even for her, his humbler half, to behold. But the misty uplands suggested overmuch of that unnamable something which, when she looked at her husband, made her wish to shut her eyes; for, might she not, Janny reasoned, see more than she ought to see of the divine spirit that moved behind those hills and behind the lips of Ariel Jenkins. So her thoughts slipped back into the living-room of Ty Mawr, while her eyes avoided the inspired contents of the arm-chair. She had been a bride and the envied mistress of Ty Mawr just two weeks; however, she was forty and matrimony was late for her, and Ariel Jenkins being forty-five, it was none too early for him. Janny felt her responsibilities keenly. Was she living up to them? She was at the mercantile centre of the village, her better half was not only a merchant but also a crowned poet, her house the most important in Glaslyn. And Glaslyn expected changes; Mrs. Parry Wynn the baker said so, Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman had prophesied, and Mrs. Jeezer Morris the minister had whispered to Betto Griffiths who had told Janny of these expectations, that she supposed, nay, she _hoped_ Ariel Jenkins's home with a woman in it would soon look like a God-fearing place and receive some improvements. Janny's glance roved through the sitting-room. She had made a few alterations, but somehow in the half-light of dusk they seemed as nothing. What was the moving or replenishing of a taper holder, a fresh case for Ariel's harp, a new cover for the table, or the addition of a few pleasant-faced china cats to a regimental mantelpiece,--indeed, she sadly asked herself, what were these changes in comparison with the unappointed something she was expected to accomplish as Mrs. Ariel Jenkins the shop? She was a stranger in Glaslyn, an intruder from a great outside world, and now she felt bewildered, lonely. Her eyes flitted to Ariel's face for company. "Dearie!" There was no answer. "Is it comin', Ariel dear?" "Aye," he snapped. Janny winced; she had never lived with genius, and, somehow, she thought it would be different. Her deep-blue eyes had a still look in them that suggested not only a long habit of self-repression but also perplexity, and sadness, too; there was appeal in every feature of her face,--an appeal made the more pathetic, perhaps, by the childlike lines of pale-gold curling hair about her forehead and tired eyes, and the delicate hollows beneath her cheek-bones, and the fragile sweetness of her mouth. It was a face in its soft bloom and delicacy, forever young and yet unforgettably weary. She straightened out her kirtle, and again her glance roved the room. There must be a clean hearth-brush, new muslin curtains for the casement; the stairway landing, where it turned by the front windows, even in the twilight looked shabby with the wear and tear of heavily-booted feet and clogs, the light from the oriel window above the landing shining through with bald ugliness upon the stairs. As she looked at the light Janny's eyes dilated, her face flushed, and she leaned forward, gazing intently at the window. For the minute she had forgotten Ariel, but he, puff, puff, puff, with many sighs and yawns and much stretching of his long legs, was coming out of his inspired coma. His awakening look fell upon Janny there where she sat, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders tipped forward, her chin tilted upward, a circle of quiet light about her hair, her eyes intent upon the stairway window. "Janny dear, what is it? What are ye lookin' at?" "Oh! na--aye, lad, I--I----" "Well, well, Janny!" "Ariel, I was thinkin'." "Aye, an' ye were plannin', too." He was thoroughly aroused now from his inspiration, and studying that object, woman, which through some twenty-five years he had sung and praised. Ariel's eyes searched her; stanza, metre, rhyme, theme, were all forgotten, for he saw that Janny possessed a thought she had no intention of parting with to him. He glanced from her to the window upon which she had been looking so rapturously when he surprised her gaze. So far as he could see it was like any other stairway light in Glaslyn, except that it was oval instead of rectangular, and perhaps a little deeper than some, but otherwise precisely like scores he had seen. Then he called imagination to his aid, that imagination which had been the means of begetting shillings over the counter of his shop, which had won for him a comfortable income, and commercial success, as well as made him the foremost bard in his county. He peered through the window; what he beheld was a bit of dusky sky with a shadowy star seemingly behind it. He dismissed imagination and returned to the study of his bride. It was a whim probably; perhaps one of those unshaped thoughts, elemental, unspoken, to which women listen in their idle moments; indeed, it might even be some dreaming about him of which Janny in the shyness of their relation, still new, was too sensitive to speak. Gradually Ariel forgot the problem in his renewed consciousness of the charm of Janny, with her deep blue eyes, her childlike pale-gold hair, the delicate lines of her fragile face so different from the Welsh women of their village. Under his scrutiny Janny sat serenely with a more than wonted air of self-possession. She interrupted him: "Ariel, ye've been to sea, dear?" "Aye, when I was a lad." "Was it for long?" "No, not long, two years sailin' with cargoes between our coast and Ireland." "Did ye learn much of the ways of sailorfolk?" "Aye, much." "Runnin' up an' down the ropes?" "Aye, that, an' more too." "Did ye learn tattooin', dear?" "Aye, the marks ye've seen on my arms an old salt taught me to do. The sailors were clever with the needle, sketchin' as well as sewin'." "Do ye think ye could sketch a star now, Ariel, or have ye forgotten?" Ariel laughed, partly with pleasure at this talk by the fire, partly from joy in the companionship. "Aye, I'm thinkin' I could, little lamb." He drew his chair closer to hers and saw her face brighten; it rested her to have him near her, and her thoughts sped back through all the years of loneliness and hunger for the things she could not have; she had a new consciousness of life and of being useful; it was not merely Ariel, it was the house, too, and what she could do to make it--Well, the word escaped her; anyway it was the house as well as Ariel, and it was lovely to think of what she could do for it while he made poetry and sold things in the shop. "An', Ariel, could ye sketch me an anchor an' a bit of rope?" "Aye, dearie, I could; ye know I could anyway, for I had drawin' at the school in Carnarvon while I was an apprentice there." "Drawin'?" "Aye, it was mam's idea." Janny's eyes grew large. "Ariel, do ye--do ye--think ye could draw me a--a cat?" Ariel took one look at Janny and burst into laughter; shop, poetry, everything was forgotten in his amusement at her childlike eagerness. Suddenly he stopped, for Janny's face was quivering. Aye, he had forgotten, too, that this was no peasant-woman; his laughter seemed brutal. "Janny, little lamb," he said softly, drawing her head to him, "I could, dear, I'll sketch all the cats ye want." Janny sighed comfortably, her head still upon his shoulder, the weariness easing away from her heart. She could do it now; it would make the greatest difference; Betto Griffiths and others should see that she was something more than a bit of porcelain in Ariel's home, that she could do something more than merely oversee house-cleaning. Besides, it really was something more,--it was having an idea of her own, and that until Ariel rescued her she had never been allowed to have. She reached up and patted his face; even her gestures were incomprehensibly childlike. What she lacked in the passion of a woman she seemed to make up in the perfect trust of a child. Ariel, selfish with the selfishness of a man who has lived by himself and who had lived much in his own mind, thought now with a pang how lonely Janny must have been ever since she came to him; the appeal of her confidence touched the best that was in him, the protection that was his to give her, and some potential sense of fatherhood. Aye, he knew how tired she was after the life that lay behind her, and he gathered her into his arms, holding her there quietly while he talked. "What shall it be, Janny? A star, an anchor, a bit of rope, an' a cat, did ye say, dear?" "Aye, a star, Ariel, please. I don't think I want the anchor. The bit of rope would be nice, dear. An' I'd like the cat." "An' what are ye goin' to do with these drawin's, Janny? Are ye goin' to hang them on the wall?" "No, I'm not goin' to do that." "Well, it's just as well, dearie, for Betto Griffiths, an' Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman, an' Mrs. Parry Winn the baker, would be hauntin' Ty Mawr. But what _are_ ye goin' to do with them, dearie?" "Ariel, I couldn't say _now_." Janny stirred uneasily. "I _might_ be hangin' them in our bedroom, an'--an'--an' I might be puttin'--puttin' them in the--Bible to press. They'd be useful." "Aye, that's so. An' how large shall I draw them?" Janny thought a minute. "The cat, dear, I'd like about a foot long, that is from his tail to his whiskers--No, I'm thinkin' that's too narrow for the cat; from the tail to the whiskers I'd like him one foot an' a half, Ariel." Janny's glance took a flight over Ariel's shoulder. "An' the star?" Janny thought again. "Six inches from point to point, an' four stars--no--one star will do--I can cut--och?--Ariel, _one_ star, please." "An' the rope?" "It's the twisted kind I want, an' it must go all around the--Oh, dear! Ariel, about an inch wide, please." "Good! one cat, one star, one inch rope. Anything more, little lamb?" "No-o-o, could ye do it now?" "Aye, dearie, fetch me the ruler, the paper, an' a pencil." So Janny watched Ariel's thin fingers work skilfully, swiftly with the pencil, the ruler measuring off star points and a cat's length as carefully as if the paper were Welsh flannel worth one-and-six a yard. And the next night, after a day of unusual elation of feeling, Janny, when sleep had come to Ariel, stole noiselessly from the marital side, crept to the whitewashed wall of their bedroom pallid in moonshine, felt for the white paper cat and star and length of rope hanging there indiscernible, caught the edge of the paper with her fingers as she felt about, unpinned the pieces, and tiptoed out of the room and down the stairway. As she moved about the sitting-room in her night-gown, she looked pathetically little, the flush in her cheeks marking her eager helplessness. Much had slipped by her, and she had lost much in that sorry life before Ariel took her and brought her to live among strangers, whose motives and feelings she had no means of penetrating. But the tenderness, the innocence, the expectancy of childhood had remained with her, as if making amends for her loss or awaiting the sunshine of maturing impulses. She set a candle beside the settle, lifted the cover, took out two long rolls of paper, closed the settle, and bore her parcels to the table. Then she untied them with trembling fingers, rolling out several feet of green and crimson paper and a small sheet of yellow. She placed weights on the corners of the lengths, pausing to run her fingers into her hair as she gazed with rapt eyes upon the coloured surfaces, commonplace enough to all appearances. She took the cat, laid it carefully on the crimson, pinned it down and pencilled around the edges. In the same fashion she drew the outlines for four yellow stars and some lengths of yellow rope. Finally, with a pair of shears she cut out all the outlined figures. She lifted the cat, freed now from the matrix of surrounding paper and enlivened with the lifelikeness of a new liberty, and held its foot and a half of length against the candle-light. The light shone through the crimson paper but dimly. Janny nodded, took a small cake of paraffin, melted it, and with a bit of cloth sponged the cat as it lay upon the table. This she did also to the four yellow stars, to the lengths of rope, and to a large piece of green paper upon which the original cat pattern had been appliquéd. Once more she lifted the crimson animal to the light,--the candle-flame shone through clearly with a beautiful crimson flood of softer light. After this Janny broke a half-dozen eggs, separating the white from the yolk. Her fingers worked feverishly now, and her eyes kept measuring distances; in her nervous haste there were moments when she seemed hardly able to accomplish the next step forward in the task she saw already complete in her mind's eye. She stopped to listen for sounds and steps as she worked, and again and again she imagined that Ariel was looking down from the head of the staircase. But she finished the work uninterrupted, and with a sigh, half-sob of weariness, half-contentment, and with many a glance of admiration as she went, she tiptoed up the stairway. Ariel was sleeping, and as she crept into bed she put out a hand to touch his thick black hair, and then, curling into the cool white of her pillow, fell asleep as children sleep, one hand resting lightly on his arm. [Illustration: JANNY WATCHED ARIEL'S THIN FINGERS WORK SKILFULLY] Ariel Jenkins awoke at the waking-time of all Glaslyn--the dawn; Janny lay beside him, still sleeping, her face heavily shadowed in her abundant hair. She seemed so wistfully childlike and her closed eyes so unforgettably weary. Perhaps it was merely the shadows of the early dawn and her hair, but the eyelids had a kind of veined transparency and her skin a transparent pallor, and the mouth drooped. Ariel's selfishness smote him consciously; he thought with a pang of Janny, and he made resolutions. With this awakening he transferred a little of his poetry from the bard to the man. Aye, he acknowledged to himself, this might well be called the Education of Ariel Jenkins, bard and merchant. And for the first time a thought that gripped his heart brought him no desire to turn it into rhyme. He recalled compassionately all her efforts to make improvements in the house, her evident inability to understand and cope with the shrewd Welsh women of their village; and he remembered with fear the prying curiosity and overt enmity these women had shown toward Janny. Then he wondered in a desultory way what she was planning to do with the stars and the cat and the bits of rope. And after she awakened and they were talking at breakfast, he reflected how easily his resolution won success, for Janny since he brought her to Glaslyn had not been as buoyant, almost animated, as she was this morning. Ariel thought, too, that he had not noticed before the way Janny had of looking at him, as if she expected him to discover some extraordinary joy; maybe she was merely looking to him for happiness, but certainly there was an air of anticipation about her to-day. Upon finishing breakfast Ariel passed with a sense of secure well-being into his shop; so many problems were solving themselves, and on the whole the man made him happier than the bard. Even the flag sidewalk outside the shop seemed more than ordinarily lively and merry to-day. He saw neighbours passing and heard them chatting, and once in a while there was a loud shout of laughter. Across the street, looking towards his shop he beheld a little knot of men,--Ivor Jones and Wil Penmorfa and Parry Wynn,--men who did not usually have time for mirth so early in the morning. They were talking and laughing, and Ariel saw one of them point towards Ty Mawr. Just then Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman came in. She wanted some flannel for a blouse like the material she was wearing, and Mrs. Roberts threw back her long cloak to display the neat striped flannel. How was Mrs. Jenkins? Ariel thanked her: Janny was well. "I'm comin' soon to have a good long visit with her," said Mrs. Roberts. "Aye, ye'll be welcome." "Ye're makin' improvements, I see." "Aye, a few," replied Ariel, using his yardstick deftly and wondering what improvements Mrs. Gomer Roberts could have had any opportunity to see. "Glaslyn's no seen anything like it," continued Mrs. Roberts, straightening her beaver hat over the crisp white of her cap. "No, I'm thinkin' not," answered Ariel vaguely, rolling up the bundle of flannel with precise neatness. He was still wondering why women talked in riddles when in came Mrs. Jeezer Morris the minister. She had torn her blue kirtle and wanted a new breadth. Ariel took down the cloth. Then were showered upon him in a compacter form, and one of greater authority, practically the same remarks as those made by Mrs. Gomer Roberts: How was Mrs. Jenkins, she was coming to visit her, there were improvements she saw, the like of which Glaslyn had not seen before. Mrs. Morris the minister had scarcely finished her purchase when in came Mrs. Parry Wynn the baker; they had apparently met that morning and their greetings were purely conventional,--a smile, a look of inquiry, a nod of negation. Mrs. Parry Wynn wanted some new cotton cloth, but apparently she also wished to make the same remarks as those made by Mrs. Gomer Roberts and Mrs. Jeezer Morris. Then Ariel Jenkins's thoughts began the converging process, began to gather in towards some definite centre, to fix themselves upon some one thing which all these estimable women must have in mind. And when Mrs. Parry Wynn left the shop, Ariel went to the door. Betto Griffiths walked by briskly, joining the women who had just made purchases and who were gathered in a little group opposite Ty Mawr. They were looking eagerly at the house and gesticulating. Betto Griffiths laughed harshly as she pointed at Ty Mawr, and shrugged her shoulders in the direction of the shop. Ariel's heart sank. What had Janny done to make the house such an object of attraction? He stepped out to the little group of customers and looked up. Except for the quick flexing of the muscles in his forehead and the dilation of his eyes Ariel betrayed no emotion. The oriel window jutting over the street had been transformed; he saw no longer the clear glass of the stairway-light common to Ty Mawr and the other houses of Glaslyn, but a crimson cat, fore-feet in air, blazoned on a green background, each quarter of the oriel brilliant with a yellow star and the whole device bound together with a chaplet of rope. [Illustration: BETTO GRIFFITHS LAUGHED.] "It _does_ make a pretty light!" he exclaimed thoughtfully; "prettier," he added with pride, "than I had any idea it would." The women stared at him. "Aye, an' it's prettier within," he continued; "it sheds such a bright colour on dark days." "No, is it so!" ejaculated Mrs. Parry Wynn. "Aye, it is so," replied Ariel. "Out of Glaslyn ye see many coloured windows like this in private houses--smart houses of course." "Just fancy!" responded Mrs. Jeezer Morris, "we've seen them in churches, the Nonconformists as well as the Established, but we've never heard of coloured windows before in a village house, especially not with such a cat----" "Aye, the cat!" interrupted Ariel, in a caressing voice, the far-away, much-reverenced look of the poet in his eyes, "that cat is a copy from a--medal taken from--the sar-coph-a-gus of Tiglath Pileser II. Aye," he added dreamily, "the cat, the sacred symbol of Egypt, holy to the Muses, beloved of----" "Mr. Jenkins, ye don't say so!" they all exclaimed, looking with curious glances at the oriel window. "I will say," nodded Mrs. Gomer Roberts, "that it has an uncommonly intelligent look." "Aye, so it has," agreed Mrs. Parry Wynn, "intelligent an'--an'--lively." Betto Griffiths glanced about the little group shrewdly. "An' the stars, Mr. Jenkins?" she said. "Tut, the _star_! Betto Griffiths, ye don't say ye don't know the meanin' of the five-pointed star, sacred to history, to sacred history, guide in the----" "Oh, aye!" interrupted Betto, "if _that's_ the star ye mean, I certainly do." The little gathering took a fresh look at the window; their eyes lingered reverently now on the emblazoned group of cat and stars leashed together with yellow rope. "Aye, it's a wonderful idea!" asserted Mrs. Jeezer Morris, from her superior position and knowledge. "Aye, wonderful!" solemnly affirmed the rest. "I'm thinkin'," said Betto Griffiths, an undisciplined look in her eyes, "Mrs. Jenkins made it?" "Mrs. Jenkins! Oh, no!" exclaimed Ariel, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, "I did it." "Ye did!" they all exclaimed, admiringly. "Mr. Jenkins," continued Mrs. Parry Wynn, whose husband, the baker, had been standing across the street not more than a half-hour ago laughing over the crimson cat _rampant_, blazoned on the green field, "Mr. Jenkins, if Mr. Wynn thinks he could afford something like it, would ye be willin'----" "Aye, gladly," returned Ariel, "but it's expensive, Mrs. Wynn." "Oh!" chorused the women, in deferential voices. "But I'm thinkin'," continued Ariel, "through my connection as a merchant I might be able to obtain the material at less expense an'----" "If ye could!" clamoured the little group. "Mr. Jenkins, if Mr. Roberts----" broke in Mrs. Roberts. "Mr. Jenkins, if Mr. Morris----" interrupted Mrs. Morris. "Won't ye come in?" asked Ariel, placidly interrupting them all. "I'm certain ye will like the light even better from the inside where it falls in such pleasin' colours on the landin'. When I was workin' on it last night by moonlight the colours were like fairyland." "Aye, it's only a poet could have conceived this," said Mrs. Morris, with assurance, "only a poet!" "Only a poet!" echoed the rest. "But won't ye come in? Mrs. Jenkins will be glad to see ye." "Aye, thank ye, 'twould be a pleasure!" And flock-like they followed Ariel into the house. Mrs. Jenkins's eyes were red, and there was the furtive aspect of a trapped animal about her; but when she saw their eager faces and heard their enthusiastic and admiring exclamations as they crowded into the stairway landing, there was a look of surprise first, and then of delight upon her face. "Mr. Jenkins tells me ye didn't make it yourself," said Betto Griffiths, suspicion still on her sharp features. "Well, it came," replied Janny, glancing appealingly at Ariel, "it--came from Liverpool." "Janny _dear_," corrected Ariel, with a look straight into her eyes, "ye mean the _material_ did." "Aye, Ariel," answered Janny, with a mixture of childlike obedience and confusion, "aye, just the material." Ariel talked a great deal; the window was admired, commented upon, there were demands for future assistance, envious exclamations of delight to Mrs. Jenkins, who was given no chance to say a word, and the little group departed. "Well, Janny!" exclaimed Ariel. "Ariel _dear_, I--I saw them--them laughin' an'--then--ye," the flood-gates burst and Janny threw herself sobbing into Ariel's arms. "There, there, _dear_, little lamb!" he comforted, his own eyes wet with tears. "I thought--thought it would--be so--pretty--an' people's been--expectin' me--to--to make changes--an'--an'--Betto Griffiths said improvements, an' Ariel--I--I----" Janny's voice caught and she sobbed afresh. "Tut, tut, little lamb, dearie, don't. Janny, Janny, don't cry." "Ariel, I saw--the--men--laughin' an'--an' slappin' their knees--an'--an' pointin' at the window--an' even--little Silvan runnin' by--laughed, an' then when Betto Griffiths----" Janny faltered, gulping. "Pooh, little lamb, Betto Griffiths!" exclaimed Ariel derisively, "Betto Griffiths is an ignorant woman. An', dearie, didn't ye hear them all askin' me to help them to get windows like this?" "But, Ariel, didn't ye laugh at all?" "I laugh, Janny! Why, dear," answered Ariel slowly, "I think--the--window--is beautiful!" "Oh, Ariel!" said Janny happily. "Aye, I do; only if ye should have another idea, just tell me about it, dearie, beforehand, for it might--perhaps it wouldn't," he added gently, "make it awkward." "But, Ariel, I saw----" "Well, dear, that's enough--ye don't understand these people quite yet. The window is beautiful; aye," he continued, "I like it, so we'll be sendin' it to Liverpool to get a real stained-glass window something the same--aye, dearie, I can well afford it." _The Child_ The irons of the fireplace glowed in the light of the steady peat-fire. The odour from the peat was delicious with the aroma of age-old forests. With this was mingled the odour of the supper Jane Morris was clearing away. As she moved nimbly about the table, Jane's shadow advanced and withdrew across the blackened rafters of the roof. "Whoo-o!" said Tom, comfortably, at the sound of the wind booming down the rocky mountain-side. "'Tis a bad night for strangers to be abroad, bad to be wandering along Bryn Bannog." "Aye, 'tis dark," answered Owen, removing his pipe, and rubbing the head of a pet lamb that lay beside him. "One minute it cries like a child, and another it wails like a demon. But 'tis snug within, lad, an' we'll never know want." The bachelor brothers regarded each other and their sister with contentment. Outside the wind shouted and cried by turns, and then died away clamorously in the deep valley. "Snug within, lad," reaffirmed Owen, drawing his harp to him. Tom lifted his finger. "Hush! Some one comes." All listened while the wind beat upon the house and sobbed piteously in the chimney. Jane hastened to the door. "God's blessin'--rest--on this house!" gasped a man, stumbling in. "Take the stranger's cloak off," commanded Owen, before the visitor was in, "an' here's my clogs dry an' warm." "Tut, tut," objected Jane, "'tis food he needs, whatever. I'll fetch him bread an' fill the big pint. Now, friend, this chair by the table." The Stranger sat down; his deep-set eyes looked out wistfully on the awakened bustle, and on the warmth and the cheer of the cottage room. But they heard him whisper drearily, "My little child, my little child!" Tom tried to lift the silence that was settling over them all with a question here and a question there. The Stranger ate absent-mindedly and ravenously, drinking his ale in greedy draughts. Owen knocked the ashes from his pipe and stared into the fire. "'Tis late," he said. The Stranger lifted his eyes, looked at the two brothers, and long at Jane. "I shall not rest----" he began. "Well, Stranger, that you will not with a burden on your mind. That's so, lad?" Tom asked, turning to Owen. "I shall not rest till I have told my dream," he resumed. "All day and every day my little one lies on her back--the crooked back that is killin' her." "Dear _anwyl_!" exclaimed Owen to Jane and Tom, "'tis very like his little one." "Aye, lad," answered Jane, while the wind drew gently over the house-roof. "The dream came many times an' I did not heed it." "He who follows dreams follows fools," interrupted Tom. "I am a poor man, with naught richer than dreams to follow, an' no mother for my child. If the dream prove true, gold would make my little one well. But the days are goin' fast an' she is weaker every day." "Och!" sighed Jane. "Tut, a dream come true!" scoffed Tom, laughing. "But what _was_ your dream?" he asked, leaning forward. "It was of a pitcherful of gold hid beneath a ruin of rocks piled one upon another, an' it was near a great fortress built in a fashion unknown to me. The fortress was on the crown of a rugged hill, an' it seemed away from the sea. So I have travelled eastward." "Pen y Gaer!" exclaimed Owen and Tom and Jane, looking at one another. "An' in this dream I saw many strange things, garments unlike aught men wear now." "Aye," agreed Jane, "but it was all a dream." "Nay, nay," replied the Stranger, "can you not tell me of it?" "That we can," said Owen. "Tut," interrupted Tom, "there is a round tower, aye, two round towers, the one by Pen y Gaer, south-west over Bryn Bannog, down the bridle-path by Llyn Cwm-y-stradlyn." "Aye, but, lad," objected Owen, "the other----" "The other's further away, more like a sheep-pen once than a tower for any fortress." Owen's face was perplexed, but Tom's calm, and his eyes keen with light. "Rest here, Stranger," he said. "On the morrow you shall start out for your treasure, up over Bryn Bannog." "Nay, Tom," interrupted Owen, but Tom silenced him. The next morning Tom stood outside the hedge that enclosed their grey-stone mountain cottage, pointing with his finger. "Well, more to the west, so." "Aye," replied the Stranger, scanning Bryn Bannog, its steep meadows, its rocks tufted with golden gorse, its craggy spine from which the mist was lifting; "yes, the path is plain." The Stranger set his eyes southward up the mountain. After a while he turned to look back at the cottage cradled in the fields below; beyond the valley, Moelwyn, massive and green; eastward, Cynicht, sharp and grey; and still farther east, a vast wilderness of crag tumbled hither and thither down to the very edge of the glimmering sea. "Hope goes with me, little one," he said, and turned to climb higher. At the summit he looked westward; there lay a lake blue as a meadow-flower, and half-way down, by the little brook Tom had described, there was a large circle of loose stones. The Stranger hurried forward. He glanced at the sun, and began by the edge of the circle near the brook, turning up the soggy earth in large clods. He dug feverishly, working hour after hour. He lay down and pulled the earth away in rolls, the wet drenching him, still hoping against hope. He took the clods of earth and dashed them against the rocks where they broke noiselessly. He looked about as if praying that some power might come to him from the blue distance or the sky above or the golden sun; then he sank on the stones and wept. The little green snake that crept by in the grass, the snail that trailed over the sod, heard him weep, and the cry that came from him, "My little one, my little one, was it for this?" The afternoon swung its shadows eastward, and the roof of the cottage lay in a pointed figure on the grass beyond the hedge. Two men bearing something toiled up the path to the hedge gate. As the sun set behind Bryn Bannog the pointed roof-shadow drew in, and the shadow from the hedge lay on the grass in a dark ribbon, growing narrower and fainter. From the distant summit a single figure dropped slowly downhill, the autumn dusk closing around it. In the windows candle-light flickered; a woman came to the west door and looked uphill. She seemed troubled and she had been crying. "Brothers, he is comin'," called Jane, "he is close by the house. Och, be kind to him for the child's sake! It is not too late even now." "Well, Stranger," said Tom, appearing at the door, "did you find aught?" "Nay," replied the Stranger, in a level voice. "Is there another ruin where the dream might lie?" "Dreams!" exclaimed Tom cheerily, "dreams, dreams! 'Tis no place for dreams. You will find nothin' but sheep bones buried on Bryn Bannog. Do you know of any other place, Owen?" Owen took his pipe from his mouth, looked hard at his brother, hard at the Stranger, started to speak, changed his mind, and put the pipe in his mouth again. "Will you come in an' rest?" asked Tom. "'Tis growin' dark." "My way is long, westward over the hills, an' the child is waitin'." "Here," said Tom, holding out a coin, "here is a crown for the little Flower." "Nay," replied the Stranger gently, "it would avail nothin'. She hath need of many crowns. Good-night." As the Stranger took the path downhill, the brothers turned indoors. Jane confronted them, her eyes indignant, her lips tense. "You--you will go after him. Och, that I should live to see this day! The Lord will find you out." Tom laughed. "Set the candle on the table," he said; "'tis an odd box. Is the door fast, Owen?" "Aye, fast." "To think it's lain in our pastures these hundreds of years." Tom undid the hasps. He lifted out one chalice of silver after another, and several silver plates, all marked with early dates. Tom looked disappointed; Owen's face had grown pallid. Jane was speaking to them both:-- "'Tis the lost church silver, the altar-service, aye, the holy altar-service; now what will you do?" she cried. * * * * * At the breakfast table the porridge was eaten in silence. Jane's eyes were red. Tom looked uneasy, and Owen stared into his dish. In vain Gwennie thrust her little white nose against Owen's leg. "Baa-a!" Still no attention. "I'm glad the wind is quiet," said Jane. There was no response. "Did you sleep, Tom?" she asked. "Sleep! With that shriekin' of the wind!" "Nay," said Owen softly, "the cryin' of a little child, indeed." "There _was_ no gold, I say," Tom asserted. "True," Owen complied. "Well, 'twas altar silver, whatever." "Aye," assented Jane, "an' it must go back to the church." "Yes, an' we're no richer," ended Tom. "We've nothin' to spare to a stranger an' his child." Owen turned the leaves of the big Bible on the table. Tom was staring defiantly from Jane to Owen. "'It were better a millstone'--" Owen began to read to himself. "The devil!" shouted Tom, rushing from the table and slamming the door behind him. Owen went out after him. Their work for that day lay in the sheep-pens by the brook, washing and shearing the sheep. Before him Tom was walking very fast and talking in a loud, angry voice. But Owen was thinking of the sound of the wind as it cried and whimpered and pleaded all night long. And the flowers he saw in the grass at his feet made him think of big eyes; and the sheen on the grass, of a child's hair; and the slender birch-wands, of a child's little body. What would it have been like to have had such a little one a part of him? And supposing it had lain crumpled together like yonder fern--Owen's heart gave a great leap. Tom was still talking when he reached the sheepfold. The anger had left his face, and in its stead there was uneasy inquiry. Owen, without looking at his brother, took his seat on the shearing-stool and the shepherd carried a sheep to him. Owen turned it deftly. Clip, clip, clip, the fleece began to roll back from the shears and the skin to show pink through the stubble of remaining fleece. Clip! a deft turn to right, then to left, and the fleece slipped to the ground and lay there, white, and with arms outstretched. "Och!" exclaimed Owen, staring at it, "I'm goin' westward to the child, tell Jane." "I'm goin', too," called Tom, walking after him rapidly, grumbling and talking, "an' I'll not tell Jane. There's no need to go so fast, whatever." Jane came to the door of the cottage and looked down to the roadway. Gwennie was beside her and caught sight of Owen. "Baa-a!" the lamb bleated, scampering downhill. "Gwennie, Gwennie!" called Jane. But the stiff little legs were taking the hillside in leaps and bounds. "Gwennie, _bach_, Gwen_nie_, Gwennie bach!" Jane started downhill after the lamb. "If they're goin'," she said to herself, with a shrewd look of understanding, "indeed, I'm goin' too." "Baa-a!" bleated Gwennie, with little frisks and skips to right and left. _An All-Hallows' Honeymoon_ Intermittently the wind whined and raced, howling like a wolf, through the Gwynen Valley; and intermittently, too, the rain doused the bridge on whose slate coping Vavasour Jones leaned. It was a night when spirits of air and earth, the racing wind, the thundering water, the slashing rain, were the very soul of this chaos of noise. Still, cosy lights shone on either side of the bridge, the lights of Ty Ucha and Ty Usaf, where a good mug of beer could be had for a mere song to a man of Vavasour's means. And the lights from all the cottages, too, for it was All-Hallows' Eve, twinkled with festive brilliance upon the drenched flags of the street. Indeed, there was not one of these houses in all Gwynen whose walls and flaggings were not familiar to him, where Vavasour Jones and his wife Catherine had not been on an occasion, a knitting-night, a Christmas, a bidding, a funeral, an All-Hallows' Eve. But to-night his eyes gazed blankly upon these preliminary signs of a merry evening within doors, and he seemed unconscious of the rain pouring upon him and the wind slapping the bridge. He moved when he saw a figure approaching. "Hist! Eilir!" "Aye, man, who is it?" "It's me, it's Vavasour Jones." "Dear me, lad, what do ye here in the dark and rain?" Vavasour said nothing; Eilir peered more closely at him. "Are ye sick, lad?" "Och, I'm not sick!" Vavasour's voice rang drearily, as if that were the least of ills that could befall him. "Well, what ails ye?" "It's All-Hallows' Eve an'----" "Aren't ye goin' to Pally Hughes's?" "Ow!" he moaned, "the devil! goin' to Pally Hughes's while it's drawin' nearer an' nearer an'--Ow!" "Tut, man," said Eilir sharply, "ye're ill; speak up, tell me what ails ye." "Ow-w!" groaned Vavasour. Eilir drew away; here was a case where All-Hallows' had played havoc early in the evening. What should he do? Get him home? Notify Catherine? Have the minister? He was inclining to the last resource when Vavasour groaned again and spoke:-- "Eilir, I wisht I were dead, man." "Dear me, lad, what is it?" "It's the night when Catherine must go." "When Catherine must go? What do ye mean?" "She'll be dead the night at twelve." "Dead at twelve?" asked Eilir, bewildered. "Does she know it?" "No, but I do, an' to think I've been unkind to her! I've tried this year to make up for it, but it's no use, man; one year'll never make up for ten of harsh words an' unkind deeds. Ow!" groaned Vavasour, collapsing on to the slate coping once more. "Well, ye've not been good to her," replied Eilir, mystified, "that's certain, man, but I've heard ye've been totally different the past year. Griffiths was sayin' he never heard any more sharp words comin' from your windows, an' they used to rain like hail on the streets some days." "Aye, but a year'll not do any good, an' she'll be dyin' at twelve to-night, Ow!" "Well," said Eilir, catching at the only thing he could think of to say, "there's plenty in the Scriptures about a man an' his wife." "Aye, but it'll not do, not do, not do," sobbed Vavasour Jones. "Have ye been drinkin', lad?" "Drinkin'!" exclaimed Jones. "Well, no harm, but lad, about the Scriptures; there's plenty in the Scriptures concernin' a man an' his wife, an' ye've broken much of it about lovin' a wife, an' yet I cannot understand why Catherine's goin' an' where." "She's not goin' anywhere, Eilir; she'll be dyin' at twelve." Whereupon Vavasour Jones rose up suddenly from the coping, took a step forward, seized Eilir by the coat-lapel, and, with eyes flickering like coals in the dark, told his story. All the little Gwynen world knew that he and his wife had not lived happily or well together; there had been no children coming and no love lost, and, as the days went on, bickering, scolding, harsh words, and even ugly actions. Aye, and it had come to such a pass that a year ago this night, on All-Hallows' Eve, he had gone down to the church-porch shortly before midnight to see whether the spirit of Catherine would be called, and whether she would live the twelve months out. And as he was leaning against the church-wall hoping, aye, man, and praying that he might see her there, he saw something coming around the corner with white over its head; it drew nearer and nearer, and when it came in full view of the church-porch it paused, it whirled around, and sped away with the wind flapping about its feet and the rain beating down on its head. But Vavasour had time to see that it was the spirit of Catherine, and he was glad because his prayer had been answered, and because, with Catherine dying the next All-Hallows', they would have to live together only the year out. So he went homeward joyfully, thinking it was the last year, and considering as it was the last year he might just as well be as kind and pleasant as possible. When he reached home he found Catherine up waiting for him. And she spoke so pleasantly to him and he to her, and the days went on as happily as the courting days before they were married. Each day was sweeter than the one before, and they knew for the first time what it meant to be man and wife in love and kindness. But all the while he saw that white figure by the churchyard, and Catherine's face in its white hood, and he knew the days were lessening and that she must go. Here it was All-Hallows' Eve again, and but four hours to midnight, and the best year of his life was almost past. Aye, and it was all the result of his evil heart and evil wish and evil prayer. "Think, man," groaned Vavasour, "prayin' for her callin', aye, goin' there hopin' ye'd see her spirit, an' countin' on her death!" "Oh, man, it's bad," replied Eilir mournfully, "aye, an' I've no word to say to ye for comfort. I recollect well the story my granny used to tell about Christmas Powell; it was somethin' the same. An' there was Betty Williams was called ten years ago, an' didn't live the year out; an' there was Silvan Evans, the sexton, an' Geffery his friend, was called two years ago, and Silvan had just time to dig Geffrey's grave an' then his own, too, by its side, an' they was buried the same day an' hour." "Ow!" wailed Vavasour. "Aye, man, it's bad; it'll have to be endured, an' to think ye brought it on yourself. Where's Catherine?" "She's to Pally Hughes's for the All-Hallows' party." "Och, she'll be taken there!" "Aye, an' oh! Eilir, she was loth to go to Pally's, but I could not tell her the truth." "That's so, lad; are ye not goin'?" "I cannot go; I'm fair crazy an' I'll just be creepin' home, waitin' for them to bring her back. Ow!" "I'm sorry, man," called Eilir, looking after him with an expression of sympathy: "I can be of no use to ye now." Across the bridge the windows of Pally Hughes's grey-stone cottage shone with candles, and as the doors swung to and fro admitting guests, the lights from within flickered on the brass doorsill and the hum of merry words reached the street. Mrs. Morgan the baker, dressed in her new scarlet whittle and a freshly starched cap, was there; Mr. Howell the milliner, in his highlows and wonderful plum-coloured coat; Mrs. Jenkins the tinman, with bright new ribbons to her cap and a new beaver hat which she removed carefully upon entering; and Mr. Wynn "the shop," whose clothes were always the envy of Gwynen village; and many others, big-eyed girls and straight young men, who crossed the bright doorsill. Finally, Catherine Jones tapped on the door. Within, she looked vacantly at the candles on the mantelpiece and on the table, all set in festoons of evergreens and flanked by a display of painted china eggs and animals; and at the lights shining steadily, while on the hearth a fire crackled. Catherine, so heavy was her heart, could scarcely manage a decent friendly greeting to old Pally Hughes, her hostess. She looked uncheered at the big centre table, whereon stood a huge blue wassail-bowl, about it little piles of raisins, buns, spices, biscuits, sugar, a large jug of ale and a small bottle tightly corked. She watched the merriment with indifference; bobbing for apples and sixpences seemed such stupid games. There was no one in whom she could confide now, and anyway it was too late; there was nothing to be done, and while they were talking lightly and singing, too, for the harp was being played, the hours were slipping away, and her one thought, her only thought, was to get home to Vavasour. "Oh," reflected Catherine, "I'm a wicked, wicked woman to be bringin' him to his death!" The candles were blown out and the company gathered in a circle about the fire to tell stories, while a kettle of ale simmered on the crane and the apples hung roasting. Pally began the list of tales. There was the story of the corpse-candle Lewis's wife saw, and how Lewis himself died the next week; there were the goblins that of All-Hallows' Eve led Davies such a dance, and the folks had to go out after him with a lantern to fetch him in, and found him lying in fear by the sheep-wall; and there were the plates and mugs Annie turned upside down and an unseen visitor turned them right side up before her very eyes. Then they began to throw nuts in the fire, each with a wish: if the nut burned brightly the wish would-come true. Old Pally threw on a nut, it flickered and then blazed up; Maggie tossed one into the fire, it smouldered and gave no light. Gradually the turn came nearer Catherine; there was but one wish in her heart and she trembled to take the chance. "Now, Catherine!" "Aye, Catherine, what'll she be wishin' for, a new lover?" they laughed. With shaking hand she tossed hers into the fire; the nut sputtered and blackened, and with a shriek Catherine bounded from the circle, threw open the door and sped into the dark. In consternation the company scrambled to their feet, gazing at the open door through which volleyed the wind and rain. Old Pally was the first to speak: "'Tis a bad sign." "Aye, poor Catherine's been called, it may be." "It's the last time, I'm thinkin', we'll ever see her." "Do ye think she saw somethin', Pally, do ye?" "There's no tellin'; but it's bad, very bad, though her nut is burnin' brightly enough now." "She seemed downcast the night, not like herself." "It can be nothin' at home, for Vavasour, they say, is treatin' her better nor ever, an' she's been that sweet-tempered the year long, which is uncommon for her." As she fled homeward through the dark, little did Catherine think of what they might be saying at Pally's. When Vavasour heard feet running swiftly along the street, he straightened up, his eyes in terror upon the door. "Catherine!" he cried, bewildered at her substantial appearance, "is it ye who are really come?" There was a momentary suggestion of a rush into each other's arms checked, as it were, in mid-air by Vavasour's reseating himself precipitately and Catherine drawing herself up. "Yes," said Catherine, seeing him there and still in the flesh, "it was--dull, very dull at Pally's; an' my feet was wet an' I feared takin' a cold." "Aye," replied Vavasour, looking with greed upon her rosy face and snapping eyes, "aye, it's better for ye here, dearie." There was an awkward silence. Catherine still breathed heavily from the running, and Vavasour shuffled his feet. He opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. "Did ye have a fine time at Pally's?" he asked. "Aye, it was gay and fine an'--na----" Catherine halted, remembering the reason she had given for coming home, and tried to explain. "Yes, so it was, an' so it wasn't," she ended. Vavasour regarded her with attention, and there was another pause, in which his eyes sought the clock. The sight of that fat-faced timepiece gave him a shock. "A quarter past eleven," he murmured; then aloud: "Catherine, do ye recall Pastor Evans's sermon, the one he preached last New Year?" Catherine also had taken a furtive glance at the clock, a glance which Vavasour caught and wondered at. "Well, Catherine, do----" "Aye, I remember, about inheritin' the grace of life together." "My dear, wasn't he sayin' that love is eternal an' that--a man--an'--an' his wife was lovin' for--for----" "Aye, lad, for everlastin' life," Catherine concluded. There was another pause, a quick glancing at the clock, and a quick swinging of two pairs of eyes towards each other, astonishment in each pair. "Half-after eleven," whispered Vavasour, seeming to crumple in the middle. "An', dear," he continued aloud, "didn't he, didn't he say that the Lord was mindful of our--of our--difficulties, and our temptations, an' our--our----" "Aye, an' our mistakes," ended Catherine. "Do ye think, dearie," he went on, "that if a man were to--to--na--to be unkind a--a very little to his wife--an' was sorry an' his wife--his wife--died, that he'd be--be----?" "Forgiven?" finished Catherine. "Aye, I'm thinkin' so. An', lad dear, do ye think if anythin' was to happen to ye the night,--aye, _this_ night,--that ye'd take any grudge away with ye against me?" Vavasour stiffened. "Happen to _me_, Catherine?" Then he collapsed, groaning. "Oh, dearie, what is it, what is it, what ails ye?" cried Catherine, coming to his side on the sofa. "Nothin', nothin' at all," he gasped, slanting an eye at the clock. "Ow, the devil, it's twenty minutes before twelve!" "Oh, lad, what is it?" "It's nothin', nothin' at all, it's--it's--ow!--it's just a little pain across me." Catherine stole a look at the timepiece,--a quarter before twelve, aye, it was coming to him now, and her face whitened to the colour of the ashes in the fireplace. To Vavasour the whimpering of the wind in the chimney was like the bare nerve of his pain. Even the flickering of the flame marked the flight of time, which he could not stay by any wish or power in him. Only ten minutes more, aye, everything marked it: the brawl of the stream outside, the rushing of the wind, the scattering of the rain like a legion of fleeing feet, then a sudden pause in the downpour when his heart beat as if waiting on an unseen footstep; the very singing of the lazy kettle was a drone in this wild race of stream and wind and rain, emphasising the speed of all else. Vavasour cast a despairing glance at the mantel, oh! the endless _tick-tick, tick-tick_, of that round clock flanked by rows of idiotic, fat-faced, whiskered china cats, each with an immovably sardonic grin, not a whisker stirring to this merciless _tick-tick_. Aye, it was going to strike in a minute, and the clanging of it would be like the clanging of the gates of hell behind him. He did not notice Catherine, that she, too, unmindful of everything, was gazing in horror at the mantel. Vavasour groaned; oh! if the clock were only a toad or a serpent, he would put his feet on it, crush it, and--oh!--Vavasour swore madly to himself, covering his eyes. Catherine cried out, her face in her hands--the clock was striking. Twelve! The last clang of the bell vibrated a second and subsided; the wind whimpered softly in the chimney, the tea-kettle sang on. Through a chink in her fingers Catherine peered at Vavasour; through a similar chink there was a bright agonised eye staring at her. "Oh!" gulped Catherine. "The devil!" exclaimed Vavasour. "Lad!" called his wife, putting out a hand to touch him. Then followed a scene of joy; they embraced, they kissed, they danced about madly, and having done it once, they did it all over again and still again. "But, Katy, are ye here, really _here_?" "Am _I_ here? Tut, lad, are _ye_ here?" "Aye, that is, are we _both_ here?" "Did ye think I wasn't goin' to be?" asked the wife, pausing. "No-o, not that, only I thought, I thought ye was goin'--to--to faint. I thought ye looked like it," replied Vavasour, with a curious expression of suppressed, intelligent joy in his eyes. "Oh!" exclaimed Catherine. Then, suddenly, the happiness in her face was quenched. "But, lad, I'm a wicked woman, aye, Vavasour Jones, a bad woman!" As Vavasour had poured himself out man unto man to Eilir, so woman unto man Catherine poured herself out to her husband. "An', lad, I went to the church-porch hopin', almost prayin' ye'd be called, that I'd see your spirit walkin'." "Catherine, ye did that!" "Aye, but oh! lad, I'd been so unhappy with quarrelling and hard words, I could think of nothin' else but gettin' rid of them." "Och, 't was bad, very bad!" replied Vavasour. "An' then, lad, when I reached the church-corner an' saw your spirit was really there, really called, an' I knew ye'd not live the year out, I was frightened, but oh! lad, I was glad, too." Vavasour looked grave. "Katy, it was a terrible thing to do!" "I know it now, but I didn't at that time, dearie," answered Catherine; "I was hardhearted, an' I was weak with longin' to escape from it all. An' then I ran home," she continued; "I was frightened, but oh! lad dear, I was glad, too, an' now it hurts me so to think it. An' when ye came in from the Lodge, ye spoke so pleasantly to me that I was troubled. An' now the year through it's grown better an' better, an' I could think of nothin' but lovin' ye an' wishin' ye to live an knowin' I was the cause of your bein' called. Och, lad, _can_ ye forgive me?" asked Catherine. "Aye," replied Vavasour slowly, "I can--none of us is without sin--but, Katy, it was wrong, aye, a terrible thing for a woman to do." "An' then to-night, lad, I was expectin' ye to go, knowin' ye couldn't live after twelve, an' ye sittin' there so innocent an' mournful; an' when the time came I wanted to die myself. Oh!" moaned Catherine afresh. "No matter, dearie, now," comforted Vavasour, putting his arm about her, "it _was_ wrong in ye, but we're still here an' it's been a sweet year, aye, it's been better nor a honeymoon, an' all the years after we'll make better nor this. There, Katy, let's have a bit of a wassail to celebrate our All-Hallows' honeymoon, shall we?" "Aye, lad, it would be fine," said Catherine, starting for the bowl, "but Vavasour, can ye forgive me, think, lad, for hopin', aye, an' almost prayin' to see your spirit, just wishin' that ye'd not live the year out?" "Katy, I can, an' I'm not layin' it up against ye, though it was a wicked thing for ye to do--for any one to do. Now, dearie, fetch the wassail." Catherine started for the bowl once more, then turned, her black eyes snapping upon him. "Vavasour, how does it happen that the callin' is set aside an' that ye're _really_ here? Such a thing's not been in Gwynen in the memory of man"; and Catherine proceeded to give a list of the All-Hallows'-Eve callings that had come inexorably true within the last hundred years. "I'm not sayin' how it's happened, Catherine, but I'm thinkin' it's modern times an' things these days are happenin' different,--aye, modern times." "Good!" sighed Catherine contentedly, "it's lucky 'tis modern times." _The Heretic's Wife_ "Mother, Mr. Thatcher oversteps himself; any such suggestions should be comin' from the landlord." Gabriel puffed out his whiskered cheeks and grew red under his eyes. "There, father dear, there," Maggie hastened to soothe him. "Tut, mam, a man knows what he's talkin' about by the time he's seventy, doesn't he? A man has a right to his own thoughts; now, hasn't he? I tell ye, it was insultin', most insultin'!" "Aye, it's so," admitted Maggie ruefully, "but, father----" "He's always interferin' with your private affairs, he is," Gabriel interrupted, heedless of Maggie's attempts to change the conversation. "At best he's nothin' but an absentee's gentleman, now, isn't he?" "No, I think; I'm thinkin', dad, he is himself a gentleman," Maggie contradicted gently. "Pooh! no gentleman at all! He's the lad's tool, given the education of a gentleman, taught to carry himself like a gentleman, an' livin' in the landlord's house in his absence; but for all that he's not a gentleman, naught but an upper servant, an' Sir Evan treats him so. I'm thinkin' a very self-respectin' man wouldn't be takin' such a position nowadays, now, would he?" At the sound of a horse's hoofs upon the road Gabriel turned to the window with eager curiosity, his head travelling the width of the latticed light. "There's the young master ridin' by now!" he exclaimed. As she contemplated the back of Gabriel's head, his pink ears protruding independently from the sides of his bald, shiny pate as if they, too, had opinions of their own, Maggie's eyes gathered anxiety. Gabriel turned to the hearth again. "Well, mam?" "Father, these are dangerous new ideas ye're gettin'," she answered. "Tut, if Mr. Thatcher, steward or no steward, felt like a gentleman, then in my eyes he'd be a gentleman, indeed. But no gentleman would ever act as Mr. Thatcher does, now, isn't it?" "Lad, lad!" Maggie remonstrated. This advanced thinking would do for the young ones; she would have had to confess to a liking for it in her children's letters. It was right for a new world perhaps; but she thought with alarm of Gabriel daring to assert such views here on the very flaggings, under the very thatch of Isgubor Newydd. She looked anxiously towards the hearth, as if she feared such social doctrine might quench its brightly glowing pot of coals, or destroy its shining fire-stools, candlesticks, pewter platters, and big copper cheese-dishes, or break its fragile, iridescent creamers and sugar basins and jugs,--there, much of it, four hundred years ago at a certain wedding-breakfast, just as it had been at her own some forty years ago. It would not have surprised her now to have it all come clattering down about her head and break in precious fragments on the stone hearth. "Mam," said Gabriel, looking shrewdly at her troubled face, "do ye recall the repairs we asked for and never got?" "Aye, dad dear." "Well, mam, David Jones had his an' he asked after us. David Jones trades at Mr. Thatcher's shop, mam, an' we don't an' we're not a-goin' to," Gabriel ended pugnaciously. "Och, father!" "Aye, it's so, isn't it? It's insultin', isn't it, suggestin' a man change his way of prayin' to suit his landlord's steward an'--an'--" Gabriel added hesitatingly, "his landlord, I suppose, too; an' the steward obligin' him to trade at his shop to get any paint or a roof tatchèd." The firelight shone upon Gabriel's fringe of whiskers and glowed through his pink ears and twinkled upon his bald head. He looked up indignantly to the rafters above him; they were well hung with hams and bacons upon which the dry salt glistened like frost. His expression mellowed. He glanced at the bright hearth with its bright trimmings; he looked from the purring kettle and purring kitten before Maggie's feet to Maggie herself, daintily upright on the dark settle, her cap and apron immaculately white. She was as comely and fragile as the antique china she cherished. Then Gabriel spoke contentedly, like a man who has counted his riches and found them after all more than sufficient. "Well, mam, we've prospered even here, haven't we? It's leading a righteous life does it; aye, an' there's the young man has made us all feel like livin' better, hasn't he?" "Aye, dear beloved," Maggie nodded, glad of the turn the conversation was taking, "even in his picture he looks like one lifted up, like the apostle Paul." "They say, mam, that for fifteen years he prayed the same prayer to get knowledge an' do good." "Aye, an' it came, an' now from being nought but a collier, he's influencin' thousands and thousands." "Good reason; there's power there we know nothin' about," Gabriel said meditatively, "an', mam," he continued, "he appears like a gentleman; you might think he'd been born an' bred a gentleman." "Yes, dad, an' they say he's questionin' himself seriously," replied Maggie, leading away from the possibility of a renewed debate; "that he's puzzlin' an gettin' learnin' an' goin' to college. It's been a sweet season, father; the long winter's not been dull at all, what with meetin's every night till ten and eleven." "Aye, it's been a blessed time, mam, an' growin' better every day. With the singin' above the housetops an' the heavenly lights, it looks like a new revelation." "But I'm wishin' the Revival was quieter in some ways," Maggie objected; "there's people that's fairly crazed by it; yes, an' when they're gettin' the hwyl so many at once it's--it's----" "Tut, mam," said Gabriel fiercely, "it's hot, aye; but it's a grand an' blessed stir. An' the strength it brings to men!" As Gabriel raised his hand to enforce his belief, there was a rap on the cottage door. Maggie got up nimbly, smoothed down her apron, and hastened to the low entry. "Aye, Mr. Thatcher, come in." "Ah!" said Mr. Thatcher, coming in, "cosy little room, brasses attractive, pretty willow-wood there. Ah, good-afternoon, Gabriel, about to have your tea, don't let me disturb you." And Mr. Thatcher seated himself comfortably by the kitchen fire. "We can wait for our tea, Mr. Thatcher," said Gabriel, continuing to stand. "Ah, very well, I won't keep you long! I just came in to speak to you about that little matter I mentioned the other day. Sir Evan is much in earnest; he feels that church tenants would be a decided advantage to--to the harmony of the estate." Maggie's glance fluttered anxiously to Gabriel. "Mr. Thatcher, a man can't change his beliefs to suit his landlord's, meanin' no disrespect to Sir Evan," came the reply, in a voice as uncompromising as Gabriel's attitude. "Ah-h, well," drawled Mr. Thatcher, tapping his long nose; "there's Price an' Howell an' Jenkins, they're church people _now_," he concluded. "May every one pity them!" exclaimed Gabriel. "Dad, dad!" called Maggie rebukingly. "Ah!" said Mr. Thatcher. "Well, Gabriel, I came here to speak of other matters, too. You never come to my shop?" "No, Mr. Thatcher, I don't." Maggie was wringing her hands under her apron. "You farmers don't know when you're well off; it would be profitable for you to trade there." Maggie stared in dismay at the red mounting under Gabriel's eyes and flushing the edges of his bald head. "Is that a bribe ye're offerin' me, Mr. Thatcher?" Gabriel asked. "Ah! no impertinence, if you please," replied the steward. "As I was saying, Sir Evan is very devout now and much in earnest about having his people churched, so it will be necessary, unless you have a change of opinion, for you to leave Isgubor Newydd in two weeks." Mr. Thatcher rapped his gaiter and looked before him into the fire. "Father," said Maggie, poking him, her wrinkled cheeks white, her lips trembling; "father, did he say _leave_ Isgubor Newydd?" "You heard Mr. Thatcher, mam," answered Gabriel stonily. "Of course, Gabriel," continued the steward, "there is the shop, as a favour to you, if----" "Sir!" roared Gabriel, his hands working, his eyes blazing. "Dad, dad dear!" cried Maggie, clinging to his arm; "father, remember." Mr. Thatcher had risen and was stepping towards the door. "Good-afternoon," he said, "in two weeks, if you please." They watched the figure of the steward disappear through the doorway, then Gabriel took his seat by the fire. "Leave Isgubor Newydd?" Maggie whispered. "Well, mam, I'd rather go than stay," said Gabriel sharply. "Dad!" "Aye, it'll be sacrificin' somethin' for the faith." "Och, you don't understand," Maggie cried; "I was born here, mother was born here--for hundreds of years we've lived in Isgubor Newydd!" "Mam, it'll be doin' somethin' for the faith," Gabriel replied obstinately, in his voice the trumpet-sound of battle; "an' I say I'd rather go than stay, whatever." "Och, father, father dear, how can ye? An' we were married here an' the little ones were born here, an' when they come home where'll they come to now?" For an instant Gabriel looked bewildered, then said stoutly, "Tut, mam!" "I can't believe the young master did it," continued Maggie, unsilenced; "lovin' the house is most like lovin' the children. Dear beloved, can't you see?" Without even a shake of the head Gabriel stared before him. "Dad, I have----" Maggie hesitated, "I've three pounds put by for an ill day." "Well?" "Dad dear," Maggie whispered, desperate courage on her lips, desperate fear in her eyes, "would ye--would ye buy me somethin'--somethin' at Mr. Thatcher's shop--or--that is just for me or--or--I'll do it, father?" "Maggie Williams," Gabriel shouted, "do ye know what ye are sayin', or are ye the devil temptin' me?" * * * * * With the habit of a lifetime Maggie, in the end, tried to acquiesce and think only of Gabriel's point of view. She chid herself for lack of strength, for want of courage to act for her faith. She made, as the days went by, an effort to seem the same to Gabriel, but all the while it was as if something were eating out her life. As she went about the little cottage her hands followed from one object to another, for whereever her eyes fell they fell upon something dearly loved. It took her an interminable time to pack anything to leave Isgubor Newydd; it was handled and handled again, and then set aside because, after all, she could not tell what should be done with it. As a result, for the first time in many generations the cottage was in confusion. Maggie began with the chest. The very odour from the oaken box made her ache. When, first of all, out came the little garments of the children who had scattered over the world, as a Welshman's children often must, she wept. The wee, clumsy clogs with their stubbed toes, the patched corduroy trousers, the round caps, seemed so dear, as if their little master's frolics were a thing of yesterday. But Maggie knew that time now to be a thing of the past,--a past of which she could not keep even the hearth, the walls, the garden within which these joys had been lived. Next, she took out a beaver hat that had been her mother's; she smoothed it gently as if it were a tired head, she put it against her cheek, she held it away from her, looking at it tenderly, then with a moan she dropped it back into the chest. That part of her life, too, seemed but yesterday, and yet it was so much older than Gabriel and the children. As long as she lived, Maggie asked herself, would these things always be young to her? As she stood there thinking, it came to her that people at least did not realise that they were growing old if they stayed in the same place, for the place was always young, its rafters staunch, its walls fresh, the flowers renewed their bloom and the grass its colour. With sudden resolve Maggie decided that they must not leave Isgubor Newydd, for Gabriel did not know what he was doing. There were the three pounds--perhaps that might help them. She had no time to lose, she must hasten, and her thoughts ran feverishly forward into the future. Gabriel had noticed that Maggie was growing weaker; her hands shook, she talked to herself, and often, when Gabriel came into the room, she started. Gabriel did not wish to see these things; he was like a cruel prophet exulting in sacrifice, even in the sacrifice of Maggie to the uttermost. The stress of these days but added strength to his step and power to his glance. In chapel he sang with a mighty voice, and loud and frequent were his assents to the minister's prayers. From his deacon's seat, where he received congratulation from those less blessed by persecution than himself, he could see Maggie seated limply upon the narrow pew bench, all her one-time erectness gone, her eyes wandering to the windows high above the heads of the congregation, and to the mountains, higher still, which looked down into this little chapel of men. Gabriel was like some protomartyr of ancient Wales, like Amphibalus or Albanus of Caerlon; in his zeal he was indifferent to personal discomfort and sacrifice. He exulted in his strength with a savage joy, and because he was resisting his natural inclination to be kind to Maggie, he was roughly unkind,--unkind for the first time in their lives. On his fingers he told over and over all the sacrifices martyrs and prophets and teachers had made of their nearest and dearest. It was a glorious bead-roll, one to make the eyes of a valiant man shine. He could give nothing more precious than Maggie. He exhorted her to be strong in spirit. She listened patiently to his words, her hands unclasped in her lap, her head drooping, and a gentle "yes" breathed from time to time. She was like a tired child, good still, but too weary to know what it was all about. To Gabriel she seemed so ineffective that he wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, for in his eyes righteousness had gone completely out of her. She was a vessel empty of strength, and every time he spoke to her, her head drooped a little more and the poor hands lay more weakly in her lap. "Yes, father, I will try," she would say in reply to his exhortation; and then the touch of the place ached in her fingers and ran up into her heart, and her one longing was to gather it all to her breast, if only she could, and run away with it to the ends of the earth, where persecution could not take it from her again. There was no piece of its wood or stone that was not living to her, that had not entered into her sense of motherhood, of possession, for which she did not feel, where a good woman weak or strong feels everything that is inseparable from her. One day, four days before they must leave Isgubor Newydd, Gabriel came out of his fields, rich with the grass the benefit of which he was not to reap, and saw something creeping slowly by the hedge along the road to the village. He studied it. He rubbed his old eyes and looked again. It was Maggie's cloak and cap, and she was well up the hill to the town. But she went slowly, one hand leaning on the wall in front of the hedge, the other grasping a stick. Suddenly Gabriel started. Ah, if she had _that_ in mind! He hurried forward to overtake her. As he approached, Maggie turned. "Is that you, dad?" she said. "Mam," was all he answered, his eyes looking her through. "I--I was goin' to--to the town," she faltered. "Why?" "To--to buy somethin'," she replied unsteadily. "At Mr. Thatcher's shop?" Gabriel demanded. "A--a little, dad," she replied, stretching out one hand upon the wall for more support. "Give me your purse." Maggie gave it to him and Gabriel opened it; there within lay the three gold pieces. Gabriel took her by the arm, and, shaking her, turned her towards home. Another day went by, and Maggie continued to pick up things that should be packed, only to put them down again. The Welsh have tender hearts for trouble, and many a kind soul among her neighbours would have been glad to assist her. Besides, there was the added incentive of persecution which makes all the Welsh world kin and which made the village proud of Isgubor Newydd. But the thought of neighbourly assistance was repulsive to Maggie. She could not let others see those things now. Under Gabriel's condemnation, too, she had lost her self-respect, and was furtive and half ashamed of meeting her neighbours. When Gabriel was in the house, she moved about from thing to thing, with a feint of accomplishing something of the work of which so much was to be done. But when he was out she hurried from object to object, talking incessantly to herself and whatever she touched. "There, little one," she said to a creamer she took from a shelf, stuffing a piece of paper into it, "that will be grand to keep your heart from crackin' while you're away from home." Then, looking aimlessly about the room, she put the pitcher back again upon the shelf and went over to the latticed light where stood a pot of tall fuchsias. With her finger she counted the blossoms: "Twenty blossoms an' fifty buds; that's less than this time last year. You must grow, little hearts," she said. "Ow! he'll be comin' back an' not a thing done," she continued, hastening to a pile of plates that had stood in the same place for almost a week. "My! but the lads wore the bench slidin' in an' out, an' here's a rough place; I'll call Eilio to make it smooth. Eilio!" she called, then brushed her hand uncertainly over her forehead. "He's not here," she said. "Ow! there's the candlesticks. I'd most forgotten ye, ten--a dozen bright eyes; that's a many for old Maggie,--I'm old now, yes, I am,--a dozen bright eyes for one old woman; aye, an' for Gabriel, too, the lad'd not do without ye. In ye go!" And she took them all and threw them clattering into an empty box. "Hwi, hwi, now go to sleep while mam sings a lullabye--a sweet lullabye--a little lullabye--shoo! Here, Gwennie bach, here, darlin'--it's--it's just a bit of tea-cake mam made for ye--it's rich, most too rich for a little one an', dear little heart, it's plums in it an'--an'----" And with a moan Maggie slipped to the slate flaggings, the empty plate breaking upon the stones. So Gabriel found her lying huddled upon the hearth, her cap awry, her eyes closed, her mouth open and her breath coming harshly. Out in the barn he had heard the call for Eilio and stopped to wonder what it meant. Then followed a great clatter, and shortly a crash as of breaking china. "Mam," he said, gathering her head awkwardly into his arms, "mam, are ye hurt?" There was no answer. "Mam," he whispered, staring at her, "what is it?" Still the eyelids, puffed and blue, lay unstirred. "Och!" he cried, "mam, mam, can't ye speak?" Tremblingly Gabriel picked her up and carried her over to the couch. He fetched water and wrung out his handkerchief in it and bathed Maggie's head. He dropped on his knees beside her and clumsily loosened her cap and blouse. He thought he had killed Maggie, and he saw now that he had done so without making even an effort to keep what might have saved her life. The sense of righteousness had gone completely out of him, and his satisfied and valiant soul was crumpled into a wretched little wad, the very thought of which sickened him. Year after year she had taken the brunt of all the trouble of their home, and there was no sorrow that had not rested its head on her bosom, and, soothed by her hand, found its peace there. Gabriel bathed her face with the cool water; still no sign of consciousness stirred the bland look of the mouth. She had worn herself out in his service, and now at the last he had been willing, without an effort to see her point of view, to sacrifice her on the altar of his self-righteousness. He was a man; steward or no steward, he could have fought for her rights. Even if he had not won, if the landlord had proved as obdurate as the steward was corrupt, why the fight might have heartened Maggie for what must come. He not only had not fought for her, but he had been cruel to her, leaving her wholly alone at a time when she most needed support and sympathy. "Poor little mam!" he whispered, helpless with the thought that he might be helpless to do anything for her any more. With a sigh Maggie opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Lad, are ye here?" "Aye, mam." "Did it break?" "No, dearie," he replied, looking from the strewn floor with such reassurance for her that the deacons, if they could have seen his face, would have been confounded. "An' the creamer I stuffed so full of paper? I thought I heard it crack." "No, mam, not a crack." "What'm I lyin' here for, lad? Dreamin'?" "Aye, restin' ye a little." "Aren't we goin' somewhere? I'm a bit tired, dad; I'd rather stay here," she concluded, looking up at him trustfully. "We're goin' nowhere whatever, mam; an' ye shall stay here," Gabriel answered. "Is that the children playin'?" "Aye, dearie, playin' in the garden." "Dear, dear!" Maggie exclaimed, "I hear their little clogs clattering like ponies. I'll just peek at the lambs." She lifted herself up and dropped back. "I'm tired!" she exclaimed apologetically. "Aye, dearie," Gabriel said; then asked, "Will ye be still here a half hour while I write a bit of a letter an' take it out?" "Yes," she said, "very still, lad; I'll just sleep awhile"; and smiling at him, she closed her eyes. * * * * * "Poor old man!" Sir Evan muttered, his austere young face angry and pained. He turned to the letter again. "Sir," it read, "Mr. Thatcher said we must leave Isgubor Newydd in two weeks. It broke Maggie's heart. A few minutes ago I found her lying on the floor touched. It will kill her if we must go. Sir, if your honoured lady mother were living, would you have the heart to send her away from her home? Sir, for God's sake let me hear from you. Your humble servant, GABRIEL WILLIAMS." The stewards of the estate had been brought up upon it for generations in an unbroken line of eldest sons from one family of the tenantry. So rigid had the family's adherence to this custom been, that sometimes their world had had a good steward, sometimes a bad, just as all the Empire had had sometimes an excellent monarch, sometimes a wicked or incompetent ruler. It was a condition of affairs Sir Evan had taken for granted, without question of the right and wrong to himself or to others. He had wasted neither liking nor affection upon Thatcher, but it had not occurred to him that he could employ some one in whom he had confidence. Now Evan saw the possibilities of the past few years, the injustices and neglect and trouble which the steward might have inflicted in the landlord's name. How could he know that repairs, for which he paid, had been carried out? How could he know that all the houses had been kept in good condition? How could he tell whether the tenants were receiving an equal amount of attention, that the fields were being improved and the stock increased? He was convinced that there had been injustice of some kind to Gabriel and Maggie; he knew the old man well enough to know that he would have trouble with any steward not so uncompromisingly honest as himself. Evan realised now, with the letter before him, what sort of a master he had been to these people who called him "Master," and in every one of whose homes there hung a picture of himself. He did not know now, he had never known, whether they had been dealt with justly or unjustly. As he rode on towards Isgubor Newydd his mind was full of anxieties. For the first time in the few years of his majority possessions had become a burden. The real obligation to administer, he saw, could not be given to a deputy as he had been giving it to Thatcher. And all the while he had known the steward was not the man morally or otherwise that he should be. Evan saw a new meaning in the fields and hills of his estate and a new accountability for himself--one in which he would himself be directly responsible. Already, however, it might be too late to undo some of the harm he had wrought. He asked immediately for Maggie when Gabriel opened the door. "She's the same, sir," replied Gabriel, admitting him. "O Gabriel, I'm so sorry," Evan said. "Aye, sir," Gabriel replied, with some stiffness, "it's natural your wantin' church tenants." "But did you think I would let Thatcher send you away from the home you have had so long?" asked Evan, sick with the thought that this after all was what his tenants thought he would do. "Indeed, sir, we didn't know." "Ah well, it's my fault," Evan answered humbly. "For what reasons were you asked to leave?" "Och, sir, you would not like the truth." "Aye, Gabriel, but tell it since I ask for it." "Well, sir, first because we wouldn't be churched." Evan's eyes winced. "And then?" "Well, sir, because we wouldn't trade at Mr. Thatcher's shop." "Trade at Thatcher's shop?" Evan repeated incredulously, anger and humiliation in his tone. "Aye, sir." Then seeing the mortification upon Sir Evan's face, Gabriel added hastily: "But it's my fault Maggie's out'n her head. I was cruel to her, an' between that an' havin' to leave home it broke her heart." "No, Gabriel, it's more my fault than yours," said Evan. "May I see her?" "Aye, sir," assented Gabriel, taking him into the kitchen. Maggie raised her head, a bright look of love and welcome upon her face. "Lad, I heard ye, I thought ye'd come, an' ye've come so far." "Och, pardon her, sir," said Gabriel, "she thinks it's Eilio. Mam, it's the master, not Eilio." Evan rested his hand on Maggie's hot forehead. "So," he asked, "you are not well to-day?" "Aye, tired--but it's nothin' at all, nothin' at all, whatever, except a sorrow here, dearie," and Maggie pointed to her bosom. "A sorrow, Maggie?" "Aye, but it's no matter at all now," she answered. "I'll put it by in the creamer with the paper, stuff it in tight like cheese in a sack." And she laughed merrily. "That's right," he replied. "My, ye've grown to a sweet-lookin' lad," she said, patting his hand. "Could ye--could ye keep a home for mam now? I'll give ye," she whispered, looking at Gabriel furtively, "everythin' I have--that's three pounds. But ye mustn't tell him." Evan glanced at Gabriel, but the old man did not see him, for he was staring at the floor. "Lad, could ye?" Maggie demanded again. "Yes, Maggie," Evan answered, "we will keep a home for you as long as you live. You shall have Isgubor Newydd--see, I will give it to you. You shall have a deed of it." "There," said Maggie, "of course, tell father now, an'--an' I hope he'll want to stay." _The Choice_ I Keturah, leaning towards the open grate of coals in the cheerful kitchen of the Reverend Samson Jones, rubbed up and down, up and down her old shin; so rhythmical was the motion that she might have been sousing or rubbing clothes, except for a polyphonic "Ow! Ow!" to set off the rubbing. Keturah knew better than to quarrel with fate. But when the latch lifted she looked up eagerly, with that instinctive hunger for sympathy upon which most of the satisfaction of joy or the pleasure of pain depends. It was Deb, the widow Morgan's servant, and Keturah groaned afresh with the joyous sense of having from all the world just the audience she would have chosen for her misery. "Ow, ow!" "Well, indeed, what is it?" asked Deb, subduing her voice, but unable to dim the two ripe, red cherries in her old red cheeks, or the snap in her old eyes. "Ow, 'tis a pain--ow! a pain in me leg." "Och, well, 't is too bad, but 'tis nothin', 'tis nothin' but the effect of old age," said Deb comfortingly, "an' old age is never comin' alone." "Not comin' alone?" "Nay, nay, no more nor youth comes without love, nor middle age without comfort, nor----" "Tut," interrupted Keturah sharply, "indeed ye are makin' a mistake; the pain has nothin' to do with growin' old. The other leg is quite as old whatever, but that one is well, aye, quite well." After an awkward silence Deb said lightly, "Is it? well, indeed!" then passed with feminine skill to another subject. "Have ye heard the news about Tudur Williams? No? Well, he went quite nasty with Cardo Parry for playin' false with poor little Sally Edwards." "Did he so! Tudur is always fightin', his pale face looks so fierce." "Aye, bleached. 'Tis hard rememberin' he an' the schoolmistress are brother and sister." "Aye, hard, but what did Cardo Parry do?" The two women lowered their voices, and with that naïve liking old age often has for repulsive tales, they rolled this particular story as a sweet morsel under their tongues. Keturah forgot to rub her old shin, and the two women confronted each other in the candle-lighted room with bright eyes in which every skip of the flame from the coals over the shining brasses was reflected. "Tudur Williams was right!" exclaimed Keturah. "Aye, Tudur Williams is always right; but do you believe in it?" "Aye, aye, I do indeed." "Tut, Keturah, believe that? I cannot. Ye're that trustin', ye'd believe the whale swallowed Jonah, indeed." "Aye, so I do," fervently affirmed Keturah; "that blessed story I heard from the master's father first, and I've heard it often from the master himself. 'Tis true as the Lord's Prayer." "Pooh!" sniffed Deb, with the superiority of one indulging in the higher criticism; "if the Bible said Jonah swallowed the whale ye'd believe that, too!" "Aye, aye, indeed, iss, iss, if the Bible said so," admitted Keturah simply; "but the Bible don't." "Well," Deb hastened to add, with a sense of having been on tottering exegetical foundations, "I dunno. But if I was to say the pastor would marry my mistress, would ye believe that, now would ye?" Keturah considered; she had a helpless sense of tossing Jonah and the whale to and fro in an effort to understand the connection of Deb's last remark. To this sober, long-nosed old woman, the pastor's devoted servant, the mental processes of the widow's cherry-cheeked Deb were often hard to understand. Keturah thought her distinctly light-minded, but without Deb the old woman would have been lost. In the last ten years, in which the Reverend Samson Jones had been, according to more lenient Wesleyan dispensation and the power of his own eloquence, returned twice to Gelligaer, Keturah had conceived a real love for and dependence on Deb. "Marry the widow Jenkin Morgan?" she repeated. "Aye, the mistress." "Are her parents ailin'?" "Nay," admitted Deb, crestfallen. "Then what made ye say it?" "I dunno," replied Deb, "but I've a feelin' here"--she patted her corsage with bright assurance--"that somethin' is comin', aye, somethin' is comin', now isn't it?" "How can I tell? I'm thinkin' it will not be the widow whatever." "Tut, he loves her, now doesn't he?" "Aye, he does," replied Keturah, taking again to rubbing her shin. "Aye, so he does, an' it's like to have ruined his life. A woman's no right to hold out to stay with her parents, be they as old as Methuselah, when a man needs her to wife. Aye, he's grown old with it all, an' he the first man in Gelligaer! But I'm thinkin' he'll not marry her." "Not marry her!" exclaimed Deb, in real alarm. "Not marry her in the end?" "Not marry her," solemnly repeated Keturah. "Since he went to see his lady mother last he's acted brisker, aye, he's stepped firmer and swifter, an'--an'----" "An' what?" asked Deb breathlessly. "An' he's been to see the schoolmistress three times since Sabbath once before last." Deb gasped, her eyes helplessly fixed on the erect Keturah. "The schoolmistress!" she exclaimed. "Tudur Williams's sister?" "Aye, the schoolmistress." "But she's poor." "Aye, so she is, an' your mistress is rich, but a minister cannot stay unmarried all his life, now can he, with all the women in the parish pursuin' him. Jane Elin's a handsome, capable young woman." "But does he love her?" persisted Deb. "Love her? I dunno." "Aye, does he as he does the widow?" "Well, indeed, I dunno. Nay," admitted Keturah reflectively, "not as he loves the widow, I'm thinkin'." In his study the Reverend Samson Jones was conscientiously at work on his sermon; the will is a good horse, and if ever a man strove to ride it well it was Samson Jones, as he ran his fingers through his hair, looking now this way and now that, tipping back in his chair and muttering disconnectedly "planet shining in the night," "morning star of a revival," "brook in the desert," "arid waste," "Dan to Beersheba," "the understanding and the conscience," "the affections and the will." The last word smote him and he pushed away the neatly written sheets of his sermon. Nothing any longer that he said or wrote seemed coherent or to have meaning. In years past when the Almighty had called on Samson Jones, Samson Jones had answered, with the result that Gelligaer had been listening to an eloquence unparalleled in the history of the village,--an eloquence that had brought men, women, and children from the outlying farms and hills into the Chapel, that had touched every nonconformist tradesman in the town, that had won the respect of the stricter Calvinists, and the friendly co-operation of the Church. But for two weeks no eloquent word had come to his lips; his speech had been like a spring checked at its source. To-morrow was the day he had set on which to display finally the power of his will, and to-morrow would be here in twelve hours; after that he might allow a few hours, until the proper interval came in Jane Elin's school work, and then----! Samson Jones covered his eyes and moaned aloud, with pagan reliance upon the helpfulness of an old saying, "Gwell pwyll nog aur [prudence is better than gold]; ond tan enw pwyll y daw twyll [but under the name of prudence deceit will come]." His head felt hot and as if every thought were a string stretched to the snapping-point; and his heart beat uncomfortably. He unlocked the drawer of his writing-table and took out a picture; it was the photograph of a charming face, of a woman evidently about thirty, but whose features were round and childlike, the deep fringed lashes, the coronal of hair and contour of chin giving the countenance the circular aspect and soft depth and delicate tinting of a pansy. Before it Samson Jones, who was of the same flesh and blood as other mortals, sat, tears filling his eyes, spilling over and rolling down his face, and the hand that held the picture shaking as it had not shaken since it held its first public sermon. Ah, he loved her so, and had loved her even before her marriage! After her husband had died unexpectedly, Samson Jones got himself recalled to Gelligaer, a feat that only he could have accomplished, and then had come this second trial. With the unaccountable determination soft, gentle things sometimes display, Dolly Morgan had decided not to marry again so long as her old father and mother lived. She had admitted her love for Samson Jones, but assured him at the same time that he must wait. He had loved her now with the exclusive passion of a warm, dependent nature through six long years. The parents might live, however, for twenty years more. He had battled in vain against the resolution of Dolly, who, having experienced matrimony once, had no longer a maiden's eagerness to rush into matrimony again, however desirable. He had urged upon her the especial responsibility of a minister's life, the need he had for a wife to help him, the years that her parents were likely to live, the wish of his congregation that he should marry, and finally, again and again, his great love for her. But Dolly could be convinced of no immediate duty beyond that due to her parents. But there was no shadow of a doubt in her mind that the day would come inevitably when she would be Mrs. Samson Jones "the minister," just as she had certainly been two years ago Mrs. Jenkin Morgan "the shop." Her mind was full of untroubled _axiomata media_, and these two facts were of them, the one proved, the other unproved but not disproved. In the meantime the pastor's work suffered; he was pursued by marriageable women young and old; he had advice from experienced matrons forced upon him; from every conceivable point of view, utilitarian to ideal, his brothers of the cloth had taken up the subject of matrimony for a young minister; and at last had come his own conviction that he had not given himself over wholly to the good of his ministry. Finally, there had been a conversation with his wise old mother. Samson Jones saw afresh that Jane Elin had made herself indispensable to him in his work. She was useful in every organisation connected with the Chapel: the societies, the sessions, the prayer-meetings, the Cymanfas; and she was a leader in the Sunday school, which young and old attended. She was always effective, always busy, and always polite. Her equilibrium could no more have been disturbed than a buoy's on the ocean, for whatever came, she was still in her element. Jane Elin had learned her most important lessons under that best of teachers--adversity; from this unexceptionable preceptress she had grown wise in reflection, and from teacher and teaching she had won the sharp weapon of an excellent education. Consciously or unconsciously there were two decisive factors in the minister's feeling that it was advisable to marry the schoolmistress now, since he could not have the widow. First, she worshipped him, as every one in Gelligaer knew; that was as near as Jane Elin had come thus far to an insurmountable difficulty. And, secondly, Samson Jones leaned on her; for if the world is divided into those who lift and those who lean, Samson Jones had learned to lean on Jane Elin. The will is a good horse, but the Reverend Samson Jones sat his horse with difficulty, and only by steadying himself with the thought of his mother. He took the picture of Dolly, which he felt that he no longer had any right to keep, and tore it slowly in two, then once more in two, then in two again, then he dropped his head on the table with a sob. By the morrow he would have committed himself, and even his thoughts after that must be honourable to the schoolmistress. It is easy to sleep in a perfect skin; when a man feels as Samson Jones did, the very thought of sleep is misery. But the cottage was quiet, Keturah had gone to her loft, and, habit being strong, he took his candle and stumbled upstairs to bed, wiping his eyes with his coat-sleeve. He took off his clothes with a sense that each garment stripped him of one more hope and joy. And as he slipped on to his knees by his bedside, there seemed nothing left for which to live. He had merely a dull sense of a nightly duty still to be performed. Before he knew what he was saying, he had repeated a childish rhyme not thought of since he was a boy. Horrified that it had come to him at such a moment, he rushed fervently into the petitions and acknowledgments of a conventional prayer. He sought to spread himself meekly before an inevitable will in this choice of a wife, then he paused a minute, groaned and ended with, "Lord, Lord, I long exceedingly for Dolly." Little Dilys sat with her doll in front of the schoolhouse by the stream. As the happy children had tumbled out of school, the bell rang its quick strokes from the bell-cot. That it would soon ring them in again did not much matter to Dilys, for despite the fact that she loved Lul, the doll, with a love warmer than platonic, there was another she loved still better. Both had pink cheeks, but Lul's helplessness wore on Dilys and the schoolmistress was never helpless. The child liked the proprietary feeling she had in the helpful hands and nice warm arms of her schoolmistress foster-mother. At the moment she was provoked with Lul for looking so stuffed, just as if she had eaten too much, and she shook her till her eyes clappered in her head and her Welsh beaver tumbled off her fuzzy hair. Overcome by remorse at Lul's dilapidated aspect, she called her all the endearing names she could muster: "white sugar," "sugar and honey," "hundred and a thousand," "the world's value," "white love," "the apple of her eye," and "tidy baby" which she obviously was not. But not one of these superlative terms of endearment took away the pained, stuffed expression of Lul's countenance. The doll's history had not been a happy one. Ever since she had been born in Gelligaer, the summer before, she had presented many grave questions, that had incessantly to be referred from Dilys to the schoolmistress, from the schoolmistress to the Reverend Samson Jones, and finally to the medical man. There was the question in the first place of how she got here--Dilys always sought for the sources of truth, as her sweet name might indicate; then, once admitting that Lul was here,--which she seemed to be,--why did she come without being properly provided with a fashionable bonnet? Dilys found herself obliged to take a great deal on faith. When she saw the minister entering the school close, she dropped Lul and rushed upon Samson Jones. But the minister, putting her away gently, asked for the schoolmistress. Dilys led him in, never once aware that his thoughts clappered worse than Lul's eyes had, and that he saw neither stick nor stone of the school close as he marched forward blindly to the completion of a last duty. Dilys found all grown-ups, except Jane Elin, unaccountable at seasons: sometimes they would talk too much, for example when Lul was saying her prayers or going to sleep; and sometimes, when any sensible mortal would be glad of conversation, they wouldn't talk at all. Half an hour later, when the minister came out, Dilys, who based a reasonable faith on the substance of things hoped for, ran trustingly to him again. And this time he did talk, and looked so brisk, and inquired about Lul and gave her,--oh, wonderful new joy!--a whole shilling with which to buy a stylish bonnet for Lul. Dilys ran skipping and jumping in to her guardian, but Jane Elin, wiping her eyes and smiling at the same time, put Dilys away with a "Well, indeed, dear, 'tis grand, but 'tis very late now. Run tell Glyn to ring the bell." While she wiped away the last tears, Glyn did ring the bell till it danced like mad in the bell-cot and the old people thought with a smile how boys must be boys with bell-ropes. To Jane Elin it seemed, as all the little valleys and hilltops tossed its clangour to and fro, the sweetest sound in all the world; for the joy of all joys, the great unaccountable joy, had come to her, after it had been resigned a score of times to another. Further than this thought the schoolmistress allowed herself no hysterical pause. Her character, like a firm sock, had been knit a stitch at a time, and stood the strain of the last half-hour with no sign of wear and tear. Dilys tucked Lul under her bench, Lul was so dull, and looked lovingly at the shine on Jane Elin's bright face and at her pretty bright hair. Dilys was certain there was no one in all Gelligaer or beyond its mountains like her own dear Jane Elin, and as the baton beat time for them to sing their closing song, Dilys opened her little mouth, red as a holly-berry, very wide indeed, and sang with all the lustiness of happy childhood:-- "My Cambria! thy valleys how dearly I love, And thy mountains that darken the blue sky above." II Again Deb and Keturah confronted each other in the kitchen. "Och, och, to think it!" sighed Deb. "Well, 'tis natural, now isn't it? They were old people." "Aye, but she's that lonely; 'tis pitiful to see her distress." "But they died peaceful; neither one wanted other more than three hours; I'm thinkin' the old man barely set foot in heaven before the old woman was travellin' after him. If the Lord had 'a' planned that,--and perhaps He did,--He couldn't have done better, now could He? If Peter has the keys, as master says he has, he must have smiled to see those two old people hurryin' so to get in together, the old woman with that hasty step of hers a-skippin' after him." "Aye, aye, they went together," sighed Deb, wiping away tears; "but, och! the mistress is like a distracted creature, pacin' up and down, up and down the house, wringin' her hands, her soft, pretty eyes all cried out, an' goin' every day to the grave where those poor souls lie." "Poor souls," sniffed Keturah, "nothin' could satisfy ye, Deborah. They're lyin' side by side in the same grave on earth, an' singin' an' rejoicin' hand-in-hand in heaven. Ye think too little an' talk too much," concluded Keturah, who thus far had done most of the talking herself. The old woman had no patience with sentimentality about death, for she had served forty years in a minister's family, where life in its birth, its growth, its death, had come and gone about her with epical fullness. There was little human history that Keturah's old eyes had not as calmly surveyed as they looked now upon the tearful face of Deb. "But she weeps so, poor dear, an' the only time she seemed more cheerful was when the pastor came to bury the old people. When they came back from the grave she begged him to stay awhile, but he couldn't, an' then she cried an' cried again, poor child." "Well, well," said Keturah, with a shrewd, troubled look, "'tis a pity." "But he loves her, now doesn't he?" "Aye, he does whatever." "T'was only a week ago," said Deb, patting herself on her corsage again, "I was sayin' somethin' was comin'; an' I thought then, when we were talkin' 'twould be their gettin' married, aye, I did indeed." "Indeed, so ye did," Keturah repeated. "Tut, there's the knocker clappin'. Now who would be comin' this late, and the master so tired?" Keturah hobbled swiftly through the kitchen and narrow hallway to the door. "Well, Mrs. Morgan!" "Yes, Keturah, is your master in?" "Aye, in his study; will ye go in there?" To the Reverend Samson Jones, since the death of the widow Morgan's parents, life had seemed nothing more dignified than a low gambling game. He had done what he believed a man should do; after protracted delay and a final self-conquest greater than any one knew, he had done the thing duty told him to do. Had he delayed twenty-four hours longer to do this duty, that for which he had waited and longed through six years would have been his. Now, horse and rider had stumbled together, and all the principles which have been as a guide-post to his fervid spirit lay prostrate with him. When the door opened and the widow Morgan came in, Samson Jones was sitting idly in his study-chair, nerveless and confused, one moment saying to himself that he would send for Jane Elin and tell her all, the next minute terrified at the very thought, and the third moment condemning himself for lack of courage to accept what had come upon him through no fault of his own. The aspect of his thin, long face had become so ghastly, and the confusion of his words so unusual, that not only had Keturah and Jane Elin watched him with alarm, but the deacons and good-wives of Gelligaer began to question, to talk of the oncoming of the spring and its bad effect on the system, to suggest a holiday for their beloved pastor; and one good-wife had gone so far as to consult Keturah and to write to Mrs. Jones, his mother. His thoughts and feelings were like filings with no centrifugal force to gather them in. As he jumped to his feet with the exclamation, "Dolly!" these thoughts and feelings flocked swiftly about the love he had for her. The widow's eyes looked red and her voice quavered as she said, "I am so lonely, Samson, och, so lonely!" "Aye," said Samson, trying to shift his glance from her appealing face. Dolly dropped into a chair and slipped back her scarf. Her chin trembled pitifully. "I am so lonely, Samson; I thought perhaps you had forgotten me?" "No, I've not indeed." "Well, and don't you love me any more? I thought you'd never forget." "Aye, I love you but--but----" At this Dolly rushed upon him like an impulsive, gladdened child. "Och, then, nothing else matters, nothing at all whatever!" She clung to him eagerly, and with her arms about him the last vestige of Samson Jones's resolution was quenched. After that, through the blissful evening he knew nothing but blind snatching at ecstasy. He tried to forget everything. That night, when he saw Dolly home, she was an appeased, contented child whose only thought of the morrow is the untroubled one that it will come again and again with the same delicious happiness. But never had Samson Jones known anything like the week that followed, with its dissimulations petty and large, its pained irresolution, its alternations between ecstasy and despair. The surface of his mild zealous eyes had come to have the feverish look of a man living in a delirium. With Jane Elin he was gallant, attentive, punctilious, a finished lover. With Dolly he gave himself up so to the luxury of their love, that the widow Morgan wondered why she had not seen before the extravagant passionateness of his nature. For her part, Jane Elin rang again and again on the surface of this emotion called love and listened with troubled ears to the hollow sounds within. Jane Elin had had just twenty-four hours in which to rejoice undisturbed in her new happiness. She was no idle sentimentalist, afraid to face the truth, or with rose-coloured glasses through which to look at the truth. Up to this point she had seen clearly the course of events and the ninepins fate had played with a question she believed finally settled. At last the widow was free, and Jane Elin was sober-thoughted at the new aspect that that fact put upon her relations to the minister. With both, despite the fact that Samson Jones was exceeding in devotion to each the highest expectation either could have held, intuition of something wrong about their lover made them keenly anxious. On the Sunday after this week that Gelligaer will never forget, the minister, without a note of any kind on the desk or in his hand, preached a sermon of extraordinary power. And the old white-haired deacons sitting in a row around the pulpit nodded their heads approvingly, for it seemed to them that the good old times of fifty years ago were coming back, when all preaching in Wales was extemporaneous. Keturah alone looked with troubled face upon the minister, certain that a catastrophe was overtaking him, at the nature of which she had shrewdly guessed. And it was the Monday following this Sunday that the Reverend Samson Jones made a convulsive resolution to see Jane Elin and tell her all. He would send for her to come to his pastoral study; it would be easier to talk with her there. His action in sending for Jane Elin was like the action of the man who instinctively puts out his hand to shield his head from a blow, for Samson Jones saw the calamity coming upon him. He stood with down-dropped eyes as she came into the study, fingering the objects on his writing-table. Jane Elin went up to him swiftly. "What is it, Samson? Has anything happened? Do you need me?" "Aye, I have been meaning this last week--it seemed only right--I don't see how it is possible--I----" "Och, tell me, Samson, tell me quickly, what is it?" "Well, that day two weeks ago----" "Dear, dear!" Jane Elin interjected, turning pale. Samson Jones was thinking of an escape, any escape--this was too horrible, he could not continue with it--when his eye fell on a letter just received from his mother in answer to the one sent by the deacon's wife, and the word "mother" flashed over his whole being like a great light revealing a path in the darkness. The joy in the freedom that came to him with this thought was almost too great for him to bear. His mother would help him. "My mother," he stammered, "my mother, och, it is too horrible!" "Dear anwyl!" said Jane pitifully, thinking of sickness or of death. "Is it that bad?" "Aye," he muttered, looking around wildly, and then at his watch; "there's just time to catch the narrow-gauge to Qwyllyn. Och, goodbye!" And he was gone. With a sense of real relief, Jane Elin stood still a moment. It was that, after all, which had been worrying him. Why had he not told her before that his mother was ill? She walked thoughtfully toward the kitchen. "Keturah, is she very ill?" "Who?" "The master's mother; he told me to tell you he'd gone to catch the narrow-gauge. Is she?" Keturah's eyes widened and contracted as she said, "Aye, very." "Och, 'tis too bad! I must go to him." "Nay, nay, there's no need, Miss Williams, he'll manage somehow." "Aye, but I can nurse her; yes, I must go; I can get the next train." "Well, ye know best," replied Keturah. Keturah continued to sit by the fire, muttering to herself: "Well, well indeed, 'tis as I thought; dear, the poor lass, the poor lad! Trouble, trouble, trouble!" She leaned forward to stir the pot. "He'll not be wantin' it, not at all." Keturah dwelt moodily on her thoughts, with no change in attitude except when she took the oat-cake from the skillet and reached forward to stir the pot. "'Tis certain disgrace whatever; och, och, the poor lad!" Suddenly there was the rush of hurrying feet and Deb came in breathless and excited. "Well, well, he's gone, and I didn't know that his mother----" she gasped. "Aye, he went over an hour ago," interrupted Keturah. "He was passin' the window, an' my mistress saw him an' called to him; but he wouldn't stay, he said he couldn't, he was runnin' to catch the train." "Aye, so he was indeed," agreed Keturah. "An' she ordered me to pack up an' call the coach, an' so I did; she thought she'd get there all the quicker to help him than by takin' the train an' makin' so many changes." "Jane Elin's gone, too; she left Gelligaer over half an hour past," said Keturah slowly. "The schoolmistress gone?" questioned Deb. "What for, indeed?" "To be with him." "To be with him!" "Aye, ye're blind, blind as a bat, Deborah, an' that trustin' ye see nothin' and believe anythin'. Believin' the whale swallowed Jonah is nothin' to what ye're capable of takin' on faith," ended Keturah, with infinite sarcasm. "Dear, dear, dear, Keturah, I cannot believe this whatever! What shall we do? Och, the disgrace it'll be!" There was an imperative rap on the door: "Keturah, where is my sister?" "Gone, Mr. Tudur, to be with the minister." "She left word his mother was ill. I do not believe it. Is she?" "Nay, to my knowledge, the old lady Jones is not ill." "Och, the scoundrel! I thought it of him. There, you Deb, where's your mistress?" "She's--she's gone, too," Deb answered, shaking from her ankles up. "Gone where?" "To Qwyllyn." "I'll go after," he shouted, slamming the door. Keturah sank back by the fire. "Well, indeed, well, indeed!" she said, with the peaceful accent of one who has accomplished an end, "they're all off now. Ye've no need to cry, for what will be, will be," she continued dryly to Deb, who was sobbing. "The old lady Jones will manage." "Och, but 'tis shockin', shockin'; an' they'll never have him in Gelligaer again." "So 'tis. Well, they're all on the road now. The master's about at Dinas; Jane Elin, if her train's on time, is at Llanengan; the widow Morgan, if her coach is makin' good speed, is about at Abersoch; and Tudur's just leavin' Gelligaer. The old lady Jones will have her hands full, but she's a wise old lady, a very wise old lady. 'Twill all get settled when she takes it up, aye, so 'twill." _A Last Discipline_ "Barbara, the flummery's sour!" Samuel pushed back his dish and dropped his spoon. "Aye, dad, a bit sour; I'm sorry." "A bit sour!" exclaimed the husband, "a bit sour! tut, _more'n_ a bit sour, whatever!" Barbara looked at him, the corners of her sweet old mouth trembling, "Father, I'm sorry; I thought it was better nor usual." "Better nor usual! Ye're full of fancies, Barbara, a-runnin' round nursin' other folks, an takin' other folks' troubles, all except your own. Yesterday ye made broth for the servant-men, an' it was every bit meat; broth like that'll ruin my pocket, an' anyhow we arn't providin' for gentlemen's families." "Aye, father dear, but for a long while they've had nothin' but barefoot porridge, an' there was a little extra meat in the house, an' I thought----" "An' ye thought! Ye needn't think, mother. Such thinkin' as ye do is ruinin' my prospects." "Dad dear, I'll not do it again if ye say no." "I did not say 'no,' I said yesterday ye gave the men an all-meat broth an' it was no holiday." The old man's voice grew petulantly angry, the childlike appeal of his wife's eyes, the trembling lips, her gentle sweetness, irritated him. "Very well, dear." "Mother, they've milk on the farm, which is more'n they'd have in their own homes; if they lived at home they'd be scramblin' with their children to suck herrin'-bones. Stirabout with plenty of milk is good for any man, an' it's especially good for a workin' man; they have all the stirabout they can eat here, an' some kind of meat-broth an' tart every day." "Very well, dear, I'll see that it doesn't happen again." "Aye, an' mother, I found one of the tubs of butter in the dairy touched; there was most a half a pound of butter taken out. Do ye know who took it?" "Dad, I took it for Mrs. Powell the carpenter, who's ill." "For Mrs. Powell the carpenter! An' then how are we goin' to pay the landlord, think ye, if ye go takin' the butter to sick people?" "She's very sick, father, an' they're very poor, an' I thought it would be such a nice to her just now, and she did relish it so." "Relish it! Aye, soon ye'll be distributin' the sheep to the neighbours. An', mother, I found some broken crockery in the garden out by the corner of the hedge. It looked most as if it had been hidden there; do ye know anythin' about it?" "Aye, I know somethin' about it." "An' what do ye know?" "Father, that I shall not be tellin' ye, whatever." "Not be tellin' me! not be tellin' _me_?" he exclaimed hotly. "Tut, Barbara, what's come over ye?" "No, father, not be tellin' ye," answered Barbara, with gentle deliberateness. "Indeed, we'll see. Maggie, Maggie," shouted Samuel, "Maggie, come here!" Maggie came hurrying to the door, anxiety in every feature of her face. "Maggie Morgan, what do ye----" began Samuel. "Father, that will do," interrupted Barbara; "Maggie, ye may go." The girl turned and went; speechless, Samuel regarded his wife. "Father," she continued gently, "I broke it an' I hid it. I was--mixin' oat-cake in the bowl an' the bowl was on my knee, an' suddenly it slipped an' fell on to the flaggin's an' broke. Then I hid it 'cause,"--the quiet voice faltered,--"'cause--why 'cause, of course, father, I thought ye'd be troubled over it if ye saw it, an' ye'd not miss it if ye didn't." "Alack, mother!" There was genuine astonishment in the husband's exclamation. "Barbara! to think we'd be livin' together forty-five years an' ye deceivin' me at the last like this. I've just one thing the more to say to ye. There's no cause for makin' a duck-pond out'n the kitchen floor an' if----" "But, father," interrupted Barbara, wiping her eyes with her apron, "father _dear_, the lads was just foolin' a little an' they spilt a bit of water on the flaggin's, an' before Maggie could mop it up ye came in." "Tell them an' such as them to go live with the pigs!" And Samuel, pushing back his chair, rose hastily to his feet, and left the room. "Father, father _dear_!" called Barbara. There was no answer, and she was alone. "Oh, father, if ye but loved me as ye used to! There were never any words then. Oh, lad, lad!" There was no reproach, no bitterness in her voice, only longing; she loved him so, and their time at best was short, and she couldn't manage to please him in anything. And perhaps this was their one chance--a few years at best, perhaps a few weeks, and it might be only days. She cried patiently as if she had lost something irrecoverable, an ideal, a hope, a child. Their past, the past of their youth, lay before her now, in its human romance and young love, like something perished; and, wistful, she dwelt in its memories, on its common human beauty. Suddenly she ceased crying. "Aye, but I lied to him an' I never did before, indeed. I was afraid Maggie'd lose her place if he knew she broke it; an' to think that I hid the pieces from him! Oh, Sammie, Sammie! I'm deservin' what's come to-day, deservin' it," she concluded with satisfaction, "for sinnin' so against conscience." She sat up straight in her chair as if to receive punishment. "An' I'm more blessed than most. Samuel's a good man an' well respected--no man better respected. He's honest in his dealin's, he's more generous than some to his men. There was Eilir's little lad he paid the doctor's bill for, an' Morgan's old mother he buried an'----" Barbara was sitting very straight in her chair now, with one wrinkled hand spread before her, telling off on its fingers Samuel's good deeds; her eyes shone joyously, there were so many, and in their numbering she forgot a sore heart, a cap askew, a kerchief wet over the bosom, and a wrinkled apron. "An' there was old Silvan he'd partly fed an' clothed these ten years, an' an old crot no one would do anything for, an' Sammie helped her, too. An' there was the dress he brought me from the fair, an' the gold-rimmed spectacles from Liverpool, an' the beautiful linen for caps, better nor any one else in the valley has. An' he's done everythin' for the children, an' one of them's fine a scholar as any in Wales, which is sayin' much. Aye, he's a good man, an' I'm a wicked woman to be dreamin' so; but oh, lad, lad _dear_," she ended lamely, "if ye'd only love me as ye used to!" Samuel went out on to the farm with irritable thoughts, indignant against extravagances which he laid to Barbara, and which meant a slender purse even in their old age. He was willing to admit that she was a good woman, aye, a more than ordinarily good woman, but where she fell short, he thought, was in managing. Yes, he had prospered a little; for an instant he had an uncomfortable sense of owing this prosperity in part to the efforts of some one besides himself. But there was this constant leakage, and again his mind flamed up over the broth and the broken pottery. It was the woman's business to see to it that no ha'penny was wasted; he failed to recall a certain rusted spade, some moulded straps, and a snapped fill in the year's calendar. And then, at last, manlike, in the midst of the work out on the farm, he not only washed his lungs with the keen mountain air, but he washed his mind of the whole difficulty, straightway forgetting it. When once more he entered the house for his tea, he found Barbara in the kitchen knitting before the fire--knitting socks for him. There was no trace of what had passed, no trace of her care, her grief. Her cap was fresh and tied with new ribbons, her kerchief was folded neatly over her shoulders, her apron clear white and starched, and out from beneath the short skirt peeped two brass-toed shoes bright-eyed as mice. Samuel did not know how quaint and sweet she looked. But then, why should he? she had been always just so. He took her, all of her, for granted,--the bit of red in her old cheeks, red that matched the bright cap-ribbons; the soft white hair, the tender eyes, the kind tired mouth, the little figure dainty as the sweet alyssum in their garden--in short, there was nothing to be remarked upon; he simply took her for granted as he had done always, or as, for example, one takes the fresh air till one is in prison, or the sky till one goes blind, or love till it is gone. The tea and bread and butter were on the table. Barbara poured out his cup, put in the sugar, the top of the cream, and passed the cup to him as he sat toasting his feet before the fire. Then she handed him the bread. "Well, father," she said, patting him on the shoulder, "did ye have a successful afternoon?" "Aye, Barbara," he answered, "fine." Without touching the tea, she took up her knitting. "Are the lambs comin', dear?" "Aye, mother, they're most as big as yearlin's now. Are ye not goin' to take tea?" "No, I've a bit distress, no more'n I have often." "Have ye tried the peppermint?" "Aye, but it's no good. Did Eilir say what the shearin' 'd be?" "He did; it'll be heavier nor usual. It'll make a big shipment this year." "Good, father, we'll be takin' a trip to the lad's college yet, what with the lambs comin' fine, the wool heavy, the calves double the number they were last year. Father, do ye think the boy'd be ashamed of his old mam?" "Ashamed? He's no lad of mine if he is. Well, mother, if it's all really comin' as well as it seems to be, we'll be takin' that trip to see the boy." "Oh, father dear, 'twould be grand, what I've dreamed of these many, many years!" Barbara dropped her knitting and clasped her hands in childlike abandonment of pleasure. "Tut, mam," added Samuel, his face lengthening, "it's not absolutely certain, what with waste in the kitchen, the breakin' of crockery, an' the men eatin' themselves out'n house an' home, it's no tellin'. It might be an extravagance, but we'll see." "But, father!" exclaimed Barbara impulsively, and stopped. "Well, mam, maybe it'll be; maybe we'll see the boy an' see him a great man in his college, aye, a most successful man, as good's the best." "Oh, dearie, to think we'll be seein' him--perhaps. But, dad, do ye think he'll forget he's my boy?" "Why should he? Mother, if we're goin' it'll be in six weeks." "Aye, but father,"--Barbara paused, her head reflectively to one side,--"there's the shoes. I'll have to be havin' shoes; these clogs'll not do for the lad's college." "No matter, mother," replied Samuel, thrusting his hands into his pockets with boyish energy, "we'll have proper shoes for ye an' we'll go first to Liverpool for a travellin' suit for ye an' a proper bonnet for me an'----" "Listen to what ye are sayin'--a bonnet for _ye_!" And Barbara laughed merrily. "Dear me!" laughed Samuel, slapping his knee, "I mean a proper bonnet for _ye_ an' for _me_ a proper suit of clothes. Aye, we'll afford it all if the lambs keep comin'." "Dearie, it'll be most too much happiness, the boy, the trip, an all the clothes. I'll be takin' him some socks an'----" Barbara gasped and touched her side with her hand. "What ails ye, mother?" "It's just a stitch in my side." Samuel did not notice that Barbara had turned white up to the very edges of her cap. "An' what'll ye be takin' him, dearie?" "Dear, dear, I'll bring him a--a--well, mother, what'll I take him? He's such a great man 'twouldn't do to fetch him a cheese or eggs or a fowl, now would it?" "That's so, father," replied Barbara reflectively. "Aye, he's a great man an' 'twouldn't do, whatever. I have it, dad, we'll be buyin' him books in Liverpool." "Good, so we will, mam, as many books as we can afford." And Samuel thrust his hands still further into his pockets, pursed out his lips, spread his legs apart, and contemplated the fire earnestly. "Aye, mother, books is the very thing; the lad'll be more'n pleased to have them an' to think I thought of them." "Aye, that's so, dearie." "Well, I'll be goin' now; we'll have to be makin' haste to have all done in six weeks, an' we'll go, mother, we'll go if we can afford it." Samuel strode out of the room; he was over seventy, but he walked with youthful elation; indeed, in some marked fashion, despite white hair, wrinkled skin, and limbs that were beginning to bend with years, he was still a boy. Barbara looked after him, sighing wistfully as he left the room. "It seems a bit like bein' young once more, a bit like old times." She caught her side again. "This stitch is worse than common. Aye, dearie, I was unjust to ye the mornin', an' I'm a bad old woman." When Samuel came in for supper, he found Barbara lying down. Nothing was the matter, she assured him, "just a stitch worse than common, aye, an' they'd be goin' to Liverpool the same." But as the night wore on it grew worse still, and by morning she was a very sick woman, suffering what even his man's eyes could see was intense pain. The old cheeks had shrunk in the night, the face blanched to an ashen gray; only the eyes remained unchanged and shone sweetly and serenely upon him. The physician was sent for, and while one of the men was fetching him, Samuel told Barbara at least fifty times that she would "be better the morrow," and each time Barbara, too weak for speech, nodded as much as to say that she certainly would be. When the doctor came he saw her extremity and sent Samuel and Maggie from the room. A quick examination followed. "Samuel," said the doctor, stepping into the kitchen, "Barbara is a very sick woman." "Aye, sir, but she'll be better the morrow." "No, Samuel, not to-morrow." "Not to-morrow, sir? Then next day?" "No, man, nor the next day." "But, sir, Barbara's never ill." "She can never get well here." "Not the week, sir?" "Samuel, ye do not understand. _Barbara will never be well here._" "Och!" "She's dying, man; there's nothing to do for her that could be done out of Liverpool." "Liverpool," said Samuel. His thoughts seemed to be somewhere in the back of his mind, inaccessible, walled up from contact with the reality of what he heard and saw. He appeared unable to grasp what had happened, what was coming. Surely he was walking in a dream, and every minute there was the chance, so he thought, that he might awake from it. What was this that had come upon him in a night? Certainly not the reality, for with that he had been living for years--that was life. Barbara was dying; the words rang oddly in his ears without reaching his mind. Some stranger was speaking with him; he did not understand. Barbara was dying; no, not Barbara, somebody else; other people _did_ die. Barbara, was dying; not his Barbara, not the mother of his children, the wife of his fireside, his companion during a lifetime. Somebody _was_ dying; no, not his Barbara but somebody else; just give him time to think. Barbara was dying--could it be his Barbara? "Dyin'?" asked Samuel aloud, "_Barbara_ dyin'?" He repeated the words as if questioning and testing them. "Aye, man," replied the doctor sharply, "she's dying; she's caught herself lifting something. With an operation there might be some chance; but there's none here in this place, only in Liverpool." "Aye, Liverpool," answered Samuel, "we're goin' to Liverpool soon." The doctor glanced at him keenly; before this he had seen childishness with some shock of grief take a sudden, unrelinquishing hold on old age. "Well," continued Samuel, still as if talking to himself or to some one outside the room, "we'll go now; aye, we'll take the chance." "But, man," replied the doctor, "it'll cost more money than ye spend in two years." "No matter, sir, we'll sell the sheep, if need be. Aye, dearie," he added gently, "we'll take the chance." "There's no time to spare, then," said the doctor looking at his watch. "Aye," replied Samuel, "we'll be ready." "Then be sharp about it," said the doctor, alert for the one chance of life. "Aye, sir"; and Samuel went into the room where Barbara lay. He looked down upon her lying in bed; he could see that her strength was slipping, slipping away. He dropped on his knees beside her. He patted her hand, he smoothed her forehead. "Mother!" he called. Her eyes smiled confidingly, reassuringly up at him. "Och, mother, I never thought of this!" There came a feeble answering pat from her hand. "Mother, we're goin' to Liverpool; aye, dear, they're goin' to make ye well." Barbara moaned, and her eyes brimmed with tears. "Father _dear_," she whispered, "let me--oh! Sammie--let me die--here." "Tut, mam, ye're not goin' to die--aye, they'll be makin' ye well in Liverpool." "Dad _dear_," she plead, "let me--die--here." "But, mam," argued Samuel, "the lad'll be there waitin' for us--an'--an' to see ye," he ended weakly. "Sammie, Sammie," she begged, "let me die here--not--away--from--home; the lad--will--understand." "Barbara, there's a chance for ye to get well; will ye not take it for me, dearie--aye, will ye not do it for me, Barbara, for my sake?" The big eyes that had looked into his without anger, without selfishness, through all the circumstances of life, smiled now with sudden sweetness. The hand lying in his hand tightened, her lips trembled. "Aye, Sammie, lad, I will." "Dearie, Barbara, my Barbara!" he exclaimed, struggling to control himself. "Oh, mam, I do love ye so, an' I've not been good to ye!" "Sammie, not been good to me? but ye have been, lad, an' I'm a bad old woman an' before I leave the house----" "Mam _dear_, ye're not to say such things. I've found fault with ye an' neglected ye, but ye do know I love ye?" "Aye, lad _dear_, I know--ye--love me but I'm a bad--old--woman, an' I must tell ye before--I--leave the house----" "Tut, mother, mother, ye're not to say such things. I'll do for ye now, oh! I will. Mam, I'd never thought of this." "But lad," she persisted, "I'm a bad old woman an'----" "Tut, dearie, no, no," he silenced her. "We've just a little while an' I must see about some things. I'll call Maggie an' she'll have ye all ready, dear." Preparations were soon made, and when Maggie had her mistress wrapped up for the journey, Samuel and the doctor hastened into the room. It was evident that Barbara's strength was ebbing more and more rapidly away. After she was lying on the stretcher she reached out a hand to Maggie. "Goodbye, my dear," she faltered; "be--a--good--girl." "Och, mistress, please let me tell----" "No, Maggie, no, not--a--word," she answered. Then suddenly Barbara cried out, "Sammie!" the first terror of death in her voice. "There, there, mam _dear_; aye, dearie, I'm here." "Oh, Sammie, to die--away--from home,--aye, once--over--the threshold," she murmured. For an instant her eyes tried to smile into his, then consciousness slipped away, and a wing swept over them,--they fluttered and they closed. The doctor's stern "No matter, she will recover in the air," checked the sobs of Maggie; and so they bore her, still and white, over the threshold of her home, past the farm-servants, to the carriage. Fields, hills, buildings flashed by, seeming with their shadows and forms to flick the windows of the railway coach. The doctor and Samuel sat side by side, and opposite on the long seat lay Barbara, quiet and semi-conscious. The half-day's journey to Liverpool stretched out interminably, even now the most of it had been covered. Samuel was thinking, thinking, thinking, as he had never thought before, and the discipline of these thoughts was biting into him like acid. There were lines graven on his face which years alone could never write there. Aye, to learn a lesson like this in a few hours which should be learned through a lifetime,--to learn it thus in one last brief discipline! Oh, Barbara, Barbara, what had he done for her, what had he been to her? And now _if_--the thought strangled him--where, where was she going? Then came to him the years when he might not be able to tell her any more how he regretted the selfishness of weeks and months, aye, of half a century. Even now the separation had begun; she was too weak to listen to him, he could not tell her, and in a few hours the one chance might be gone. Already, as she lay there hovering between life and death, she was no longer his in the old substantial way, but merely a hostage, fragile, ethereal, of a past life. If he had loved her every hour of those days that seemed so lastingly secure, if he had tried in every way--all the little ways--to show her how tenderly, how deeply he really loved her, the years would have been too short. And to-day, at the best, there was the one chance growing less certain every minute; there were but a few years at the most when he might try to make her know what she was to him. Then, with a revulsion of feeling, the little commonplace joys dear to them both crowded in upon him; he felt benumbed in their midst, helplessly conscious that the heart of them all was slipping, slipping away. The road of their life flowed swiftly behind him, receding ribbonlike, as the hills and trees and fields passed the coach-window, into indistinguishable distance. Their tea-time with its happy quiet, their greeting at night, their rest side by side, their goodbye in the morning, Barbara's caps, Barbara's knitting, the shining eyes, the smile--each daily commonplace thing a part of his very being. He had a sickening sense of having the roots of existence torn out. With a pang came the thought of that other trip to Liverpool they had planned to take. What would the boy say now? And he must know how that mother-life had been wasted, neglected. And the books they were going to bring the lad, and the socks Barbara had made, and the shoes that were to delight her, and the new clothes for both, and the bonnet over which they had laughed so merrily--the agony of these simple things, remembered, ate at his thoughts like fire. They were so little; he had never known before what they meant, or he had forgotten; now, surely, they could not be taken from him. Samuel's mind prostrated itself in petition to that Inexorable in whose power lay these little joys, his, his only, of account only to him, sacred to him only, that he might be allowed to keep them. His face was gray with the battle of these hours when the doctor spoke, telling him that they were almost in Liverpool and must move quickly. Their voices aroused Barbara; her eyes sought Sammie's and smiled faithfully into them. "Dearie!" he said, leaning forward with such an expression that Barbara, if she saw it clearly, could never doubt his love again. "Lad!" she whispered in reply. But Samuel's eyes shrank when he saw the ambulance at the station, waiting. The doctor was going in it with Barbara. Oh! this cut, cut, as that knife would cut Barbara. Already they were being separated. They were taking her out of the train, away from him, and he was looking around the great station blindly, when he felt a strong grip on his arm and heard the word, "Father!" Nothing else seemed clear after that, and the way, the long way, rumbling through those streets, was like a narrow lane in the night. Barbara was in the streets, alone, without him, or she was already at that place where lay the one chance for him. "There, father," the lad was comforting him, "there's no better place for her; you did just right." Samuel sobbed convulsively, tears rolling out of his eyes unnoticed, his hands clenching the chair. "Father, father, don't; we shall know soon." But the old face over which he leaned paid no heed to what was said; nor did Samuel hear the quick entrance into the room and the whispered words. "Father, do you hear? Mother's safe." Then Samuel rose to his feet, started forward, and swayed uncertainly. The lad took his arm. "Father," he said, "mother's very weak, and we must be careful; we can see her only a minute, that is all, the doctor says." When they entered, Barbara lay on the bed, smiling. The nurse stepped outside; ah! she had seen so many, many moments like this, and yet her heart ached for the old man coming through the door, coming through to take into his arms the few precious years that were left. "Mother!" he said simply. "Sammie _dear_!" she answered, her heart shining in her eyes. Then she espied the lad standing behind his father. Samuel watched their greeting, his lips twitching. "Lad, lad," he cried, unable to withhold the words, "I've not been good to mam." A flush overspread Barbara's face. "Tut, Sammie _dear_, ye never----" she commenced indignantly. "Be still, mother, I'm goin' to say it now; ye know I've not been good to ye. Lad," he continued, turning to him, "when ye marry, as ye will, don't think any way is too little to show her that ye love her." "Tut, tut, Sammie _dear_," insisted Barbara, "ye _are_ good to me, an' I lied to ye an'----" "It's time to leave," said the nurse, coming in. "But I'm going to have one word more," Barbara replied, the life springing into her eyes with this gentle defiance. "Sammie, Sammie _dear_," she called as the two men were urged through the door, "I lied about the bowl--I didn't break it but I did hide it. Maggie broke it, an' I was afraid she'd lose her place, so I hid it. Father, did ye _hear_?" "There!" said the nurse, shutting the door. _Respice Finem_ "Good-mornin', Mrs. Rhys," said Megan Griffiths, as she stooped to save her high beaver. "'Tis kind of ye to come," answered Nance. "How is Mr. Rhys?" "Och, he's no----" Nance began, but she was hindered by a merry voice singing in the next room. "Dear, dear, I can't hear ye. Did ye say he is the same?" "Aye, he's no better." "Is that him singin'?" "Aye," admitted Nance. "He's not got any cause to sing, I'm thinkin'. 'Tis a pity," she continued significantly, "ye couldn't attend Harry James's funeral. 'Twas grand. They had beautiful black candles with Scripture words written on them." Chuckles and a protesting bark followed this observation. Megan stiffened. "Such a funeral, Mrs. Rhys," she snapped, "is an _honour_ to Rhyd Ddu! An' such loaves as she handed over the bier to that hungry Betsan! An' the biggest cheese in the parish, with a whole guinea stuck in it! At every crossin' they rung the bell, an' we knelt down to pray in all that drenchin' wet." "'Tis seldom Rhyd Ddu sees black candles with Scripture words on them," assented Nance. "Pooh! the candles, _they_ was nothin' to the cards Mrs. James had had printed for him--nothin'. Here's mine. They have his last words." Nance looked eagerly towards the card. "Scripture words, too," added Megan. "'Tis sanctifyin' how many people in Rhyd Ddu die repeatin' such words." "What was they, Mrs. Griffiths?" asked Nance, her eagerness turning into trembling. Megan opened the large card with its wide border of black and inner borders of silver and black, and read the words. The verses were long, and during their reading no sound came from the adjoining room. Then, aloud, Megan counted off on her fingers neighbours who had left life in this approved fashion, while the excitement in Nance's eyes was deepening and her cheeks were quivering. "Show it me," she said. "Indeed, 'tis a safe way to----" Megan commenced speaking, but commands and a sudden breaking forth of song interrupted her. "'Tis the dog takin' him his slippers," Nance apologised. "Yes, a safe way to die," concluded Megan testily. In the midst of a blithe refrain of "Smile again, lovely Jane," she rose to go, muttering as she repocketed the card. In Rhyd Ddu the rush of the modern world had not cut up the time of the folk into a fringe of unsatisfying days. With these Welsh mountain people from sunrise to sunset was a good solid day, full of solid joys and comforts or equally solid woes and sorrows. In Rhyd Ddu a man might know the complete tragic or joyous meaning of twenty-four hours, with solemn passages from starlight to dawn and manifold song from sunrise to dusk. There was no illusion in such a day, so that when he came to the Edge of the Great Confine, sharper than the ridge of his own thatched roof, that, too, seemed merely a part of the general illusion. Rather, he knew that step from the green and gold room of his outdoor world, with its inclosed hearth of daily pleasures, was a step into another room not known to him at all. But he said to himself, especially when he had spent his days among the hills and amid mountain winds and valleys, that he could not get beyond the love in the room he knew well; so trusting what he could not see, he stepped forward quietly. And the deep waters of an infinite space closed over his head. One soul after another came to the Great Edge. There were no outcries, no lamentations over lost days, no shattering questions, no wail to trouble the ears of those who made grave signs of farewell. But there was a pang, part of the pang of birth and of love, and taken as the workman takes the ache in his crushed finger--silently. So simple were they that the coming and going of the mown grass was as an allegory of their own days, and the circumstance of death was as natural to them as the reaping of their abundant valley fruit, or the dropping of a leaf from a tree. In Rhyd Ddu, however, the acceptance of death differed from life in one respect, for the simple pride of life was as nothing compared with the pride centring about some incident of death. They honoured dying with the frank, unhushed voice with which they praised a beautiful song or the narration of some stirring tale. They discussed it freely at a knitting-night or a merry-making; even at the "bidding" of a bride the subject was acceptable discourse. The ways of their living taught them no evasion of this last moment. To Nance the little old man in the next room, with his arched eyebrows, delicate features, and whimsical sprightly look, had been more than life itself, and more completely than she had words to express, her hero. The one object through the years of living that seemed worth remembering at all--those with Silvan--had been to Nance the glorification of this husband about whom the Rhyd Ddu folk were by no manner of means in concord, for pranks of speech and hand are disconcerting to the slow-moving wits of the average human being. Now, in the end, Nance foresaw wrested away from Silvan the last of the distinctions she had hoped to win for him. When she entered the room revolving these ambitions, beautiful only because love was their source, he was shaking his finger at Pedr and taking advantage of his good humour. "Och, mam, this poor dog has had nothin' to eat. Ye're pinchin' him, whatever." "Pinchin' him!" exclaimed Nance. "Tut, he'll not be gettin' in an' out'n the door much longer, an' I see the neighbours a-laughin' now when they look at him. He'll die with over-feedin', he will." "He will," mocked Silvan, "die of over-feedin', he will!" "Lad, Mrs. Griffiths's been here." "Well, dearie, do ye think I didn't know Megan Griffiths was here? She'd crack the gates of heaven with that voice. Was she tellin' ye everythin' that didn't happen, now was she?" "Dad, what will ye say such things about Megan for? She was tellin' of Harry James's funeral." "Nance, she's a bell for every tooth, an' they jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle." Nance's eyes filled. "Och, mam, I'm just teasin' ye; an' ye were thinkin' of me the while, now weren't ye?" "Aye, father. 'Twas a grand funeral, an' he died with them wonderful verses on his lips." "Did he so!" exclaimed Silvan. "Well, the man had need to, drinkin' as he did." "But, lad, there's been others, too." "Aye, dearie, I heard Megan shoutin' them for my entertainment. I'm not deaf. But, mam," he continued, the merriment leaving his eyes, "ye're ambitious for me? Aye?" "Aye, lad, I am," she whispered, looking away from Silvan, "I am, lad, for ye have been so long the cleverest man in Rhyd Ddu, an' the handsomest an' the kindest, an' nothin's too fine for ye. There's no woman ever had a better man nor I have, lad." "These girls----" Nance put up her hand. "Lad, lad, I cannot stand it, I cannot." "Och, dearie, I'm just teasin' ye; come here." She went over to him and sat beside him, her head turned away from the bright eyes. "Father, have ye thought of what's comin', have ye?" "Nance, I'm thinkin' of it all the while, but I'm not afraid, only for ye. Dearie, ye're not to believe everythin' ye hear; Megan has a good memory, an' it takes a good memory to tell lies. 'Tisn't everybody dies repeatin' Bible verses." "Aye, but father, Harry James _did_ say those words on the card, an' all the time he never was a good man, swearin' an' drinkin' so, an' ye've been _so_ good, dad, for all your teasin' an' fun." "Tut, mam, ye're just wantin' to spoil me, a-makin' out I'm the best man in Rhyd Ddu. An' ye're wantin' me to have more honour among the neighbours nor any one else when I'm gone, now isn't that it?" "Aye," she whispered. "An' ye're wishin' me to promise to say some text? Would it comfort ye, mam?" "Aye," she answered. "What text?" Nance thought and repeated some verses. "No, I can't," he said, shaking his head, "I can't. They're sad, an' I've always been merrylike." In the silence that followed these words Silvan turned to Nance. "I might, if 'twould please ye, say _these_ words." Silvan repeated a verse. "But I cannot promise even these." As she listened Nance's face fell. "Aye, well, dad darlin'," she said, as bravely as she could, "they're good words indeed, over-cheerful, I'm thinkin', but Holy Writ, aye, Holy Writ." Whatever happened in the luxuriant green of the Rhyd Ddu valley, which the bees still preferred to Paradise, and the flowers to the Garden of Eden itself,--whatever happened in this valley--some phenomenal spring season, the flood that swept away their plots of mid-summer marigolds, the little life that suddenly began to make its needs felt, or the life with its last need answered--was adjudged with the most primitive wisdom and philosophy. Megan Griffiths lost no time in distributing the gleanings from her visit with Nance, information which was often redistributed and to which new interest accrued daily as the end of Silvan Rhys's life drew near. "Tut," said Megan, "she's that ambitious for him, it fairly eats her up. 'Twas always so from the day of their biddin', an' here 'tis comin' his funeral, an' he'll never end with a word of Holy Writ on _his_ lips, that he won't." "There, there!" Dolly Owen objected, compassionately, her motherly face full of rebuke. "Aye, he won't, _that_ he won't," affirmed Morto Roberts, wagging his head, and sniffing the pleasant odours from the browning light-cakes. Dolly made no reply, but turned a cake with a dexterous flip, and pulled forward the teapot to fill it with hot water. The quiet glow from the fire mirrored itself equally in her kind eyes and in the shining brass pots and kettles of the flanking shelves, and was multiplied in a thousand twinkles on the glistening salt of the flitches hanging above her head. The table was already spread with a gaily-patterned cloth, and set with china bright as the potted fuchsias and primroses blooming in the sunshine of her windows. There was nothing garish about this humble dwelling of Dolly's, yet everywhere it seemed as if sunshine had been caught and were in process. Warmth, odour, gleam, colour, and the soft heavy wind travelling by outside, made this the workroom of a golden alchemy. Dolly smiled with benevolence as she piled up the light-cakes. "The fat's snappish to-day; it sputtered more nor usual," she said to Megan, who was seated in the shadow of the high settle. "Aye," responded Megan, in an irritable voice. "When I went by the house this mornin'," she persisted, "I heard him singin' some gay thing, a catch--singin' in bed, indeed, an' dyin'." "Singin' in bed," puffed Morto, "singin' in bed whatever, an' dyin'. Up to the last a-caper-in' an' a-dancin' like a fox in the moonlight." "There, there!" Dolly objected again, filling Morto's plate with cakes; "he's been a kind man, a very kind man. There was Tom _bach_ he put to school an' clothed would follow him about like a puppy, an' so would Nance, an' so would his own dog." "Pooh! what's that?" asked Megan. "Mrs. Rhys has had the managin' of most everythin', I'm thinkin', an' his houses he's been praised for keepin' in such fine repair, an' the old pastor's stipend--aye, well, ask Nance," ended Megan, with a shrug of her shoulder, and a gulp of hot tea. "Aye, well, ask Mrs. Rhys," echoed Morto, "an' ye mind it was the same pastor's coat-tails he hung the dog-tongs to when he was some thirty years younger, an' by twenty too old for any such capers. He's an infiddle, he is, a-doin' such things." "An' 'twas he, wasn't it," Megan added, "who put that slimy newt in Sian Howell's hat?" "Aye, so 'twas, an' she had a way of clappin' her beaver on quick, an' down came that newt a-hoppin' on her white cap." "An' he tied the two Janes's cap-strings together, the one who always prayed sittin' straight up, an' the other in the pew behind leanin' forward, didn't he?" demanded Megan. "They went quite nasty with him for that." "Well," said Dolly, cutting a generous slice of pound cake for Megan, "I'm thinkin' it's not just, talkin' so; the lad was full of life. He could no more keep his feet on earth than the cricket in the field. 'Tis come he's old an' dyin', an' I can see no harm in his havin' had a little fun, an' singin' now an' then." "Tut, now an' then!" exclaimed Megan. "'Tis over foolish he is, now isn't he?" "Aye," agreed Morto, "he's light." "He'd have gone quite on the downfall years ago, hadn't it been for Nance." "Quite on the downfall," echoed Morto. "Aye, an' there'll be no word of Scripture crossin' _his_ lips," concluded Megan. Morto had his private reasons for losing no love upon Silvan, and Megan hers of a similar nature. Even the kindest villagers had taken to considering the words Silvan would or would not speak at the last. Rumour, peering into corners with antiquarian diligence and nodding his white head in prophecy, sat down by every fireside as much at home as the cottage cat or the fat bundle of babyhood that rolled upon the hearth. Wherever Rumour seated himself, "he will" and "he won't" was tossed about excitedly under thatched roofs. The very shepherd on the hills cast a speculative glance upon Nance's cottage, and Mr. Shoni "the _coach_" added another question to his daily _questionnaire_. There was no begging the fact that precedent had begun to weigh heavily on the last moments of speech of the Rhyd Ddu inhabitants. A man of years thought anxiously, like one skating on thin ice, how far out he dare venture without some talismanic and now established words. There were neighbours in Rhyd Ddu, however, probably no more accomplished with their tongues than motherly Dolly Owen, who speculated but little and whose hearts went out to Nance and Silvan. Although they had never seen the Silvan Nance saw, nevertheless they considered him a good neighbour, and the path to Nance's cottage was much travelled by kindly thoughts and by helpful feet. While the news, old Rumour panting in the rear, was running swiftly from door to door, Nance was watching Silvan with passionate devotion, no expression of the face that had lain close to her own for so many years escaping her. Rhyd Ddu must know at the last, must have some solemn sign of the eminent goodness he had meant to her. She could not let him go with one of his jests on his lips--every day was fit enough for that, but not these minutes. Her thoughts clung even to the words of the over-cheerful verse she believed he would say. And yet there was a tantalising merriness in his eyes. "Father," she said, "do ye mind?" "Aye, dearie, I'm to be sayin' that ye--have the faith an' I--I have the works?" "Och, lad!" "There, mam, I'm just teasin' ye--just teasin' ye." "But, lad, it'll be soon." "Mam," he whispered, "closer." Nance bent her head. "Mam--ye--are a darlin', an'--I'll--no--forget." Every word came more faintly. "Lad, lad," plead Nance, "quick, now!" Silvan cast one imploring look at Nance, and his lips struggled for speech, then his gaze slipped away like a light withdrawing into deep woods. Coming down the lane sounded the tread of many feet. Nance heard the steps approaching; she rose, shook the tears from her eyes, and closed the bedroom door behind her. Already the latch had been lifted and her neighbours were filing in, the men taking off their caps and making way for the women. Nance, confronting them, leaned against the door frame. "Och, dear," said Dolly compassionately, "he's gone already." There was no reply. "Were his last words----" asked Megan. "Aye," answered Nance, her voice courageous, proud, "aye, these words: 'In the shadow of Thy wings I will rejoice.'" UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's note: | | | | Archaic and inconsistent punctuation and spelling were retained.| | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ 
42011	----	PABO, THE PRIEST A Novel BY S. BARING GOULD Author of "Domitia," "The Broom-Squire," "Bladys," "Mehalah," Etc. NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1899, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. GERALD 1 II. NEST 14 III. THE SEVEN DEGREES 23 IV. A HWYL 38 V. THE FIRST BLOOD 48 VI. THE SCROLL 58 VII. GRIFFITH OF RHYS 66 VIII. PREPARING FOR THE EVIL DAY 74 IX. WHAT MUST BE 83 X. THE CELL ON MALLAEN 93 XI. A MIRACLE 104 XII. GORONWY 117 XIII. IT MUST BE MAINTAINED 129 XIV. THE FALL OF THE LOT 140 XV. TWO PEBBLES 152 XVI. A SUMMONS 162 XVII. BETRAYED 172 XVIII. CAREG CENNEN 183 XIX. FORGOTTEN 194 XX. THE BRACELET OF MAXEN 206 XXI. SANCTUARY 217 XXII. IN OGOFAU 228 XXIII. AURI MOLES PRÆGRANDIS 238 XXIV. THE PYLGAIN OF DYFED 251 XXV. THE WHITE SHIP 261 PABO, THE PRIEST CHAPTER I GERALD King Henry sat in a great chair with a pillow under each arm, and one behind his head resting on the lofty chair-back. He was unwell, uncomfortable, irritable. In a large wicker-work cage at the further end of the room was a porcupine. It had been sent him as a present by the King of Denmark. Henry Beauclerk was fond of strange animals, and the princes that desired his favor humored him by forwarding such beasts and birds as they considered to be rare and quaint. The porcupine was a recent arrival, and it interested the King as a new toy, and drew his thoughts away from himself. He had occasion to be irritable. His leech had ordered him to eat salt pork only. By his hand, on the table, stood a ewer and a basin, and ever and anon Henry poured water out of the ewer into the basin, and then with a huge wooden spoon ladled the liquid back into the receiver. The reason of the proceeding was this-- He had for some time been troubled with some internal discomfort--not serious, but annoying; one which we, nowadays, would interpret very differently from the physicians of the twelfth century. We should say that he was suffering from dyspepsia; but the Court leech, who diagnosed the condition of the King, explained it in other fashion. He said that Henry had inadvertently drunk water that contained the spawn of a salamander. It had taken many months for the spawn to develop into a sort of tadpole, and the tadpole to grow into a salamander. Thus the reptile had attained large size, and was active, hungry, and rampageous. Beauclerk had a spotted salamander within him, which could not be extracted by a forceps, as it was out of reach; it could not be poisoned, as that medicament which would kill the brute might also kill the King. It must, therefore, be cajoled to leave its prison. Unless this end were achieved the son of the Conqueror of England would succumb to the ravages of this internal monster. The recipe prescribed was simple, and commended itself to the meanest intelligence. Henry was to eat nothing but highly salted viands, and was to drink neither wine, water, nor ale. However severely he might suffer from thirst he could console himself with the reflection that the sufferings of the salamander within him were greater--a poor comfort, yet one that afforded a measure of relief to a man of a vindictive mind. Not only was he to eat salt meat, but he was also to cause the splash of water to be heard in his insides. Therefore he was to pour water forwards and backwards between the ewer and the basin; and this was to be done with gaping mouth, so that the sound might reach the reptile, and the salamander would at length be induced to ascend the throat of the monarch and make for the basin, so as to drink. Immediately on the intruder leaving the body of the King, Henry was to snap it up with a pair of tongs, laid ready to hand, and to cast it into the fire. Although the season was summer and the weather was warm, there burned logs on the hearth, emitting a brisk blaze. There were in the room in the palace of Westminster others besides the King and the imprisoned salamander. Henry had sent into South Wales for Gerald de Windsor and his wife Nest. These two were now in the chamber with the sick King. "There, Nest," said he, "look at yon beast. Study it well. It is called a porcupine. Plinius asserts--I think it is Plinius--that when angered he sets all his quills in array and launches one at the eyes of such as threaten or assail him. Therefore, when I approach the cage, I carry a bolster before me as a buckler." "Prithee, Sire, when thou didst go against the Welsh last year, didst thou then as well wear a bolster?" "Ah," said the King, "you allude to the arrow that was aimed at me, and which would have transfixed me but for my hauberk. That was shot by no Welshman." "Then by whom?" "Odds life, Nest, there be many who would prefer to have the light and lax hand of Robert over them than mine, which is heavy, and grips tightly." "Then I counsel, when thou warrest against the Welsh, wear a pillow strapped behind as well as one before." "Nest! Thy tongue is sharp as a spine of the porcupine. Get thee gone into the embrasure, and converse with the parrot there. Gerald and I have some words to say to each other, and when I have done with him, then I will speak with thee." The lady withdrew into the window. She was a beautiful woman, known to be the most beautiful in Wales. She was the daughter of Rhys, King of Dyfed--that is, South Wales, and she had been surrendered when quite young as a hostage to Henry. He had respected neither her youth nor her helpless position away from her natural protectors. Then he had thrust her on Gerald of Windsor, one of the Norman adventurers who were turned loose on Wales to be the oppressors, the plunderers, and the butchers of Nest's own people. Nest had profuse golden hair, and a wonderful complexion of lilies and roses, that flashed, even flamed with emotion. Her eyes were large and deep, under dark brows, and with long dark lashes that swept her cheeks and veiled her expressive eyes when lowered. She was tall and willowy, graceful in her every movement. In her eyes, usually tremulous and sad, there scintillated a lurking fire--threats of a blaze, should she be angered. When thrown into the arms of Gerald, her wishes had not been consulted. Henry had desired to be rid of her, as an encumbrance, as soon as he resolved on marrying Mathilda, the heiress of the Saxon kings, daughter of Malcolm of Scotland, and niece to Edgar Etheling. At one time he had thought of conciliating the Welsh by making Nest his wife. Their hostility would cease when the daughter of one of their princes sat on the English throne. But on further consideration, he deemed it more expedient for him to attach to him the English, and so rally about him a strong national party against the machinations of his elder brother, Robert. This concluded, he had disposed of Nest, hurriedly, to the Norman Gerald. Meanwhile, her brother, Griffith, despoiled of his kingdom, a price set on his head, was an exile and a refugee at the Court of the King of Gwynedd, or North Wales, at Aberfraw in Anglesey. "Come now, Gerald, what is thy report? How fares it with the pacification of Wales?" "Pacification, Lord King! Do you call that pacifying a man when you thrash his naked body with a thorn-bush?" "If you prefer the term--subjugation." "The word suits. Sire, it was excellent policy, as we advanced, to fill in behind us with a colony of Flemings. The richest and fattest land has been cleared of the Welsh and given to foreigners. Moreover, by this means we have cut them off from access to the sea, from their great harbors. It has made them mad. Snatch a meal from a dog, and he will snarl and bite. Now we must break their teeth and cut their claws. They are rolled back among their tangled forests and desolate mountains." "And what advance has been made?" "I have gone up the Towy and have established a castle at Carreg Cennen, that shall check Dynevor if need be." "Why not occupy Dynevor, and build there?" Gerald looked askance at his wife. The expression of his face said more than words. She was trifling with the bird, and appeared to pay no attention to what was being said. "I perceive," spoke Henry, and chuckled. Dynevor had been the palace in which Nest's father, the King of South Wales, had held court. It was from thence that her brother Griffith had been driven a fugitive to North Wales. "In Carreg Cennen there is water--at Dynevor there is none," said Gerald, with unperturbed face. "A good reason," laughed Henry, and shifted the pillow behind his head. "Hey, there, Nest! employ thy energies in catching of flies. Methinks were I to put a bluebottle in my mouth, the buzzing might attract the salamander, and I would catch him as he came after it." Then to Gerald, "Go on with thine account." "I have nothing further to say--than this." He put forth his hand and took a couple of fresh walnuts off a leaf that was on the table. Then, unbidden, he seated himself on a stool, with his back to the embrasure, facing the King. Next he cracked the shells in his fist, and cast the fragments into the fire. He proceeded leisurely to peel the kernels, then extended his palm to Henry, offering one, but holding his little and third finger over the other. "I will have both," said Beauclerk. "Nay, Sire, I am not going to crack all the nutshells, and you eat all the kernels." "What mean you?" "Hitherto I and other adventurers have risked our lives, and shed our blood in cracking the castles of these Welsh fellows, and now we want something more, some of the flesh within. Nay, more. We ask you to help us. You have done nothing." "I led an army into Wales last summer," said Henry angrily. "And led it back again," retorted Windsor drily. "Excuse my bluntness. That was of no advantage whatsoever to us in the south. Your forces were not engaged. It was a promenade through Powys. As for us in the south, we have looked for help and found none since your great father made a pilgrimage to St. David. Twice to Dewi is as good as once to Rome, so they say. He went once to look around him and to overawe those mountain wolves." "What would you have done for you?" inquired Henry surlily. "Not a great thing for you; for us--everything." "And that?" "At this moment a chance offers such as may not return again in our time. If what I propose be done, you drive a knife into the heart of the enemy, and that will be better than cutting off his fingers and toes and slicing away his ears. It will not cost you much, Sire--not the risk of an arrow. Naught save the stroke of a pen." "Say what it is." "The Bishop of St. David's is dead, a Welsh prelate, and the Church there has chosen another Welshman, Daniel, to succeed him. Give the see to an Englishman or a Norman, it matters not which--not a saint, but a fellow on whom you can rely to do your work and ours." "I see not how this will help you," said Henry, with his eye on the hard face of Gerald, which was now becoming animated, so that the bronze cheek darkened. "How this will help us!" echoed Windsor. "It will be sovereign as help. See you, Sire! We stud the land with castles, but we cannot be everywhere. The Welsh have a trick of gathering noiselessly in the woods and glens and drawing a ring about one of our strongholds, and letting no cry for assistance escape. Then they close in and put every Englishman therein to the sword--if they catch a Fleming, him they hang forthwith. We know not that a castle has been attacked and taken till we see the clouds lit up with flame. When we are building, then our convoys are intercepted, our masons are harassed, our limekilns are destroyed, our cattle carried off, our horses houghed, and our men slaughtered." "But what will a bishop avail you in such straits?" "Attend! and you shall hear. A bishop who is one of ourselves and not a Welshman drains the produce of the land into English pockets. He will put an Englishman into every benefice, that in every parish we may have a spy on their actions, maintained by themselves. There is the joke of it. We will plant monasteries where we have no castles, and stuff them with Norman monks. A bishop will find excuses, I warrant you, for dispossessing the native clergy, and of putting our men into their berths. He will do more. He will throw such a net of canon law over the laity as to entangle them inextricably in its meshes, and so enable us, without unnecessary bloodshed, to arrogate their lands to ourselves." Henry laughed. "Give us the right man. No saint with scruples." "'Sdeath!" exclaimed the King; "I know the very man for you." "And he is?" "Bernard, the Queen's steward." "He is not a clerk!" "I can make him one." "He is married!" "He can cast off his wife--a big-mouthed jade. By my mother's soul, he will be glad to purchase a bishopric so cheap." "He is no saint?" "He has been steward to one," mocked Henry. "My Maude postures as a saint, gives large alms to needy clerks, washes the feet of beggars, endows monasteries, and grinds her tenants till they starve, break out into revolt, and have to be hung as an example. She lavishes coin on foreign flattering minstrels--and for that the poor English churl must be put in the press. It is Bernard, and ever Bernard, who has to turn the screw and add the weights and turn the grindstone." "And he scruples not?" "Has not a scruple in his conscience. He cheats his mistress of a third of what he raises for her to lavish on the Church and the trumpeters of her fame." "That is the man we require. Give us Bernard, and, Sire, you will do more to pacify Wales--pacify is your word--than if you sent us an army. Yet it must be effected speedily, before the Welsh get wind of it, or they will have their Daniel consecrated and installed before we shall be ready with our Bernard." "It shall be accomplished at once--to-morrow. Go, Gerald, make inquiry what bishops are in the city, and send one or other hither. He shall priest him to-morrow, and Bernard shall be consecrated bishop the same day. Take him back with you. If you need men you shall have them. Enthrone him before they are aware. They have been given Urban at Llandaff, and, death of my soul! he has been belaboring his flock with his crook, and has shorn them so rudely that they are bleeding to death. There is Hervey, another Norman we have thrust into St. Asaph, and, if I mistake not, his sheep have expelled their shepherd. So, to support Bernard, force will be required. Let him be well sustained." "I go," said Gerald. "When opposition is broken we shall eat our walnuts together, Sire." "Aye--but Bernard will take the largest share." CHAPTER II NEST King Henry folded his hands over his paunch, leaned back and laughed heartily. "'Sdeath!" said he. "But I believe the salamander has perished: he could not endure the mirth of it. Odds blood! But Bernard will be a veritable salamander in the rude bowels of Wales." Before him stood Nest, with fire erupting from her dark eyes. Henry looked at her, raised his brows, settled himself more easily in his chair, but cast aside the pillows on which his arms had rested. "Ha! Nest, I had forgotten thy presence. Hast caught me a bluebottle? My trouble is not so acute just now. How fares our boy, Robert?" She swept the question aside with an angry gesture of the hand. "And what sort of housekeeping do you have with Gerald?" he asked. Again she made a movement of impatience. "Odds life!" said he. "When here it was ever with thee Wales this, and Wales that. We had no mountains like thy Welsh Mynyddau--that is the silly word, was it not? And no trees like those in the Vale of Towy, and no waters that brawled and foamed like thy mountain brooks, and no music like the twanging of thy bardic harps, and no birds sang so sweet, and no flowers bloomed so fair. Pshaw! now thou art back among them all again. I have sent thee home--art content?" "You have sent me back to blast and destroy my people. You have coupled my name with that of Gerald, that the curses of my dear people when they fall on him may fall on me also." "Bah!" said the King. "Catch me a bluebottle, and do not talk in such high terms." "Henry," she said, in thrilling tones, "I pray you----" "You were forever praying me at one time to send you back to Wales. I have done so, and you are not content." "I had rather a thousand times have buried my head--my shamed, my dishonored head"--she spoke with sternness and concentrated wrath--"in some quiet cloister, than to be sent back with a firebrand into my own land to lay its homesteads in ashes." "You do pretty well among yourselves in that way," said Henry contemptuously. "When were you ever known to unite? You are forever flying at each other's throats and wasting each other's lands. Those who cannot combine must be broken." Nest drew a long breath. She knitted her hands together. "Henry," she said, "I pray you, reconsider what Gerald has advised, and withhold consent." "Nay, it was excellent counsel." "It was the worst counsel that could be given. Think what has been done to my poor people. You have robbed them of their corn-land and have given it to aliens. You have taken from them their harbors, and they cannot escape. You have driven away their princes, and they cannot unite. You have crushed out their independence, and they cease to be men. They have but one thing left to them as their very own--their Church. And now you will plunder them of that--thrust yourselves in between them and God. They have had hitherto their own pastors, as they have had their own princes. They have followed the one in war and the other in peace. Their pastors have been men of their own blood, of their own speech, men who have suffered with them, have wept with them, and have even bled with them. These have spoken to them when sick at heart, and have comforted them when wounded in spirit. And now they are to be jostled out of their places, to make room for others, aliens in blood, ignorant of our language, indifferent to our woes; men who cannot advise nor comfort, men from whom our people will receive no gift, however holy. Deprived of everything that makes life endurable, will you now deprive them of their religion?" She paused, out of breath, with flaming cheek, and sparkling eyes--quivering, palpitating in every part of her body. "Nest," said the King, "you are a woman--a fool. You do not understand policy." "Policy!" she cried scornfully. "What is policy? My people have their faults and their good qualities." "Faults! I know them, I trow. As to their good qualities, I have them to learn." He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "You know their faults alone," pursued Nest passionately, "because you seek to find them that you may foster and trade on them. That is policy. Policy is to nurture the evil and ignore the good. None know better their own weaknesses than do we. But why not turn your policy to helping us to overcome them and be made strong?" "It is through your own inbred faults that we have gained admission into your mountains. Brothers with you cannot trust brothers----" "No more than you or Robert can trust each other, I presume," sneered Nest. "An arrow was aimed at you from behind. Who shot it? Not a Welshman, but Robert, or a henchman of Robert. On my honor, you set us a rare example of fraternal affection and unity!" Henry bit his lips. "It is through your own rivalries that we are able to maintain our hold upon your mountains." "And because we know you as fomenters of discord--doers of the devil's work--that is why we hate you. Give up this policy, and try another method with us." "Women cannot understand. Have done!" "Justice, they say, is figured as a woman; for Justice is pitiful towards feebleness and infirmity. But with you is no justice at all, only rank tyranny--tyranny that can only rule with the iron rod, and drive with the scourge." "Be silent! My salamander is moving again." But she would not listen to him. She pursued-- "My people are tender-hearted, loving, loyal, frank. Show them trust, consideration, regard, and they will meet you with open arms. We know now that our past has been one of defeat and recoil, and we also know why it has been so. Divided up into our little kingdoms, full of rivalries, jealousies, ambitions, we have not had the wit to cohere. Who would weave us into one has made a rope of sand. It was that, not the superior courage or better arms of the Saxon, that drove us into mountains and across the sea. It is through playing with, encouraging this, bribing into treachery, that you are forcing your way among us now. But if in place of calling over adventurers from France and boors from Flanders to kill us and occupy our lands, you come to us with the olive branch, and offer us your suzerainty and guarantee us against internecine strife--secure to us our lands, our laws, our liberties--then we shall become your devoted subjects, we shall look up to you as to one who raises us, whereas now we regard you as one who casts us down to trample on us. We have our good qualities, and these qualities will serve you well if you will encourage them. But your policy is to do evil, and evil only." Henry Beauclerk, with a small mallet, struck a wooden disk, and an attendant appeared. "Call Gerald Windsor back," said he; then, to himself, "this woman is an offense to me." "Because I utter that which you cannot understand. I speak of justice, and you understand only tyranny." "Another word, Nest, and I shall have you forcibly removed." She cast herself passionately at the King's feet. "I beseech thee--I--I whom thou didst so cruelly wrong when a poor helpless hostage in thy hands--I, away from father and mother--alone among you--not knowing a word of your tongue. I have never asked for aught before. By all the wrongs I have endured from thee--by thy hopes for pardon at the great Day when the oppressed and fatherless will be righted--I implore thee--withhold thy consent." "It is idle to ask this," said Henry coldly, "Leave me. I will hear no more." Then taking the ewer, he began again to pour water into the basin, and next to ladle it back into the vessel whence he had poured it. "Oh, you beau clerk!" exclaimed Nest, rising to her feet. "So skilled in books, who knowest the qualities of the porcupine through Plinius, and how to draw forth a salamander, as instructed by Galen! A beau clerk indeed, who does not understand the minds of men, nor read their hearts; who cannot understand their best feelings, whose only thought is that of the churl, to smash, and outrage, and ruin. A great people, a people with more genius in its little finger than all thy loutish Saxons in their entire body, thou wilt oppress, and turn their good to gall, their sweetness to sour, and nurture undying hate where thou mightest breed love." "Begone! I will strike and summon assistance, and have thee removed." "Then," said Nest, "I appeal unto God, that He may avenge the injured and the oppressed. May He smite thee where thou wilt most painfully feel the blow! May He break down all in which thou hast set thy hopes, and level with the dust that great ambition of thine!" She gasped. "Sire, when thou seest thy hopes wrecked and thyself standing a stripped and blasted tree--then remember Wales!" CHAPTER III THE SEVEN DEGREES The river Cothi, that after a lengthy course finally discharges into the Towy, so soon as it has quitted the solitudes of moor and mountain, traverses a broad and fertile basin that is a gathering-place of many feeders. From this basin it issues by a narrow glen, almost a ravine. The sides of this great bowl are walled in by mountains, though not of the height, desolation, and grandeur of those to the north, where the Cothi takes its rise. The broad basin in the midst of the highlands, once probably occupied by a lake, is traversed near its head by the Sarn Helen, a paved Roman-British road, still in use, that connects the vales of the Towy and the Teify, and passes the once famous gold-mines of Ogofau. At the head of this oval trough or basin stand the church and village of Cynwyl Gaio, backed by mountains that rise rapidly, and are planted on a fork between the river Annell and a tributary, whose mingled waters eventually swell the Cothi. The lower extremity of the trough is occupied by a rocky height, Pen-y-ddinas, crowned with prehistoric fortifications, and a little tarn of trifling extent is the sole relic of the great sheet of water which at one time, we may conjecture, covered the entire expanse. At the time of this story, the district between the Towy and Teify, comprising the basin just described, constituted the sanctuary of David, and was the seat of an ecclesiastical tribe--that is to say, it was the residence of a people subject to a chief in sacred orders, the priest Pabo, and the hereditary chieftainship was in his family. And this pleasant bowl among the mountains was also regarded as a sanctuary, to which might fly such as had fallen into peril of life by manslaughter, or such strangers as were everywhere else looked on with suspicion. A story was told, and transmitted from father to son, to account for this. It was to this effect. When St. David--or Dewi, as the Welsh called him--left the synod of Brefi, in the Teify Vale, he ascended the heights of the Craig Twrch, by Queen Helen's road, and on passing the brow, looked down for the first time on the fertile district bedded beneath him, engirdled by heathery mountains at the time in the flush of autumn flower. It was as though a crimson ribbon was drawn round the emerald bowl. Then--so ran the tale--the spirit of prophecy came on the patriarch. His soul was lifted up within him, and raising his hands in benediction, he stood for a while as one entranced. "Peace!" said he--and again, "Peace!" and once more, "Peace!" and he added, "May the deluge of blood never reach thee!" Then he fell to sobbing, and bowed his head on his knees. His disciples, Ismael and Aiden, said, "Father, tell us why thou weepest." But David answered, "I see what will be. Till then may the peace of David rest on this fair spot." Now, in memory of this, it was ordained that no blood should be spilled throughout the region; and that such as feared for their lives could flee to it and be safe from pursuit, so long as they remained within the sanctuary bounds. And the bounds were indicated by crosses set up on the roads and at the head of every pass. Consequently, the inhabitants of the Happy Valley knew that no Welsh prince would harry there, that no slaughters could take place there, no hostile forces invade the vale. There might ensue quarrels between residents in the Happy Land, personal disputes might wax keen; but so great was the dread of incurring the wrath of Dewi, that such quarrels and disputes were always adjusted before reaching extremities. And this immunity from violence had brought upon the inhabitants great prosperity. Such was a consequence of the benediction pronounced by old Father David. It was no wonder, therefore, that the inhabitants of the region looked to him with peculiar reverence and almost fanatical love. Just as in Tibet the Grand Lama never dies, for when one religious chief pays the debt of nature, his spirit undergoes a new incarnation, so--or almost so--was each successive Bishop of St. David's regarded as the representative of the first great father, as invested with all his rights, authority, and sanctity, as having a just and inalienable claim on their hearts and on their allegiance. But now a blow had fallen on the community that was staggering. On the death of their Bishop Griffith, the church of St. David had chosen as his successor Daniel, son of a former bishop, Sulien; but the Normans had closed all avenues of egress from the peninsula, so that he might not be consecrated, unless he would consent to swear allegiance to the see of Canterbury and submission to the crown of England, and this was doggedly resisted. Menevia--another name for the St. David's headland--had undergone many vicissitudes. The church had been burnt by Danes, and its bishop and clergy massacred, but it had risen from its ruins, and a new successor in spirit, in blood, in tongue, had filled the gap. Now--suddenly, wholly unexpectedly, arrived Bernard, a Norman, who could not speak a word of Welsh, and mumbled but broken English, a man who had been hurried into Orders, the priesthood and episcopal office, all in one day, and was thrust on the Welsh by the mere will of the English King, in opposition to Canon law, common decency, and without the consent of the diocese. The ferment throughout South Wales was immense. Resentment flamed in some hearts, others were quelled with despair. It was not the clergy alone who were in consternation: all, of every class, felt that their national rights had been invaded, and that in some way they could not understand this appointment was a prelude to a great disaster. Although there had been dissensions among the princes, and strife between tribes, the Church, their religion, had been the one bond of union. There was a cessation of all discord across the sacred threshold, and clergy and people were intimately united in feeling, in interests, in belief. In the Celtic Church bishops and priests had always been allowed to marry--a prelate of St. David's had frankly erected a monument to the memory of two of his sons, which is still to be seen there. Everywhere the parochial clergy, if parochial they can be styled, where territorial limits were not defined had their wives. They were consequently woven into one with the people by the ties of blood. Nowhere was the feeling of bitterness more poignant than in the Happy Valley, where the intrusion of a stranger to the throne of David was resented almost as a sacrilege. Deep in the hearts of the people lay the resolve not to recognize the new bishop as a spiritual father, one of the ecclesiastical lineage of Dewi. Such was the condition of affairs, such the temper of the people, when it was announced that Bernard was coming to visit the sanctuary and there to initiate the correction of abuses. Pabo, the Archpriest, showed less alarm than his flock. When he heard that threats were whispered, that there was talk of resistance to the intrusion, he went about among his people exhorting, persuading against violence. Let Bernard be received with the courtesy due to a visitor, and the respect which his office deserved. A good many protested that they would not appear at Cynwyl lest their presence should be construed as a recognition of his claim, and they betook themselves to their mountain pastures, or remained at home. Nevertheless, moved by curiosity, a considerable number of men did gather on the ridge, about the church, watching the approach of the bishop and his party. Women also were there in numbers, children as well, only eager to see the sight. The men were gloomy, silent, and wore their cloaks, beneath which they carried cudgels. The day was bright, and the sun flashed on the weapons and on the armor of the harnessed men who were in the retinue of Bishop Bernard, that entered the valley by Queen Helen's road, and advanced leisurely towards the ridge occupied by the church and the hovels that constituted the village. The Welsh were never--they are not to this day--builders. Every fair structure of stone in the country is due to the constructive genius of the Normans. The native Celt loved to build of wood and wattle. His churches, his domestic dwellings, his monasteries, his kingly halls, all were of timber. The tribesmen of Pabo stood in silence, observing the advancing procession. First came a couple of clerks, and after them two men-at-arms, then rode Bernard, attended on one side by his interpreter, on the other by his brother Rogier in full harness. Again clerks, and then a body of men-at-arms. The bishop was a middle-sized man with sandy hair, very pale eyes with rings about the iris deeper in color than the iris itself--eyes that seemed without depth, impossible to sound, as those of a bird. He had narrow, straw-colored brows, a sharp, straight peak of a nose, and thin lips--lips that hardly showed at all--his mouth resembling a slit. The chin and jowl were strongly marked. He wore on his head a cloth cap with two peaks, ending in tassels, and with flaps to cover his ears, possibly as an imitation of a miter; but outside a church, and engaged in no sacred function, he was of course not vested. He had a purple-edged mantle over one shoulder, and beneath it a dark cassock, and he was booted and spurred. One of the clerks who preceded him carried his pastoral cross--for the see of St. David's claimed archiepiscopal pre-eminence. In the midst of the men-at-arms were sumpter mules carrying the ecclesiastical purtenances of the bishop. Not a cheer greeted Bernard as he reached the summit of the hill and was in the midst of the people. He looked about with his pale, inanimate eyes, and saw sulky faces and folded arms. "Hey!" said he to his interpreter. "Yon fellow--he is the Archpriest, I doubt not. Bid him come to me." "I am at your service," said Pabo in Norman-French, which he had acquired. "That is well; hold my stirrup whilst I alight." Pabo hesitated a moment, then complied. "The guest," said he, "must be honored." But an angry murmur passed through the throng of bystanders. "You have a churlish set of parishioners," said Bernard, alighting. "They must be taught good manners. Go, fetch me a seat." Pabo went to the presbytery, and returned with a stool, that he placed where indicated by the bishop. The people looked at each other with undisguised dissatisfaction. They did not approve of their chief holding the stirrup, or carrying a stool for this foreign intruder. Their isolation in the midst of the mountains, their immunity from war and ravage, had made them tenacious of their liberties and proud, resistful to innovation, and resolute in the maintenance of their dignity and that of their chief. But a certain amount of concession was due to hospitality, and so construed these acts could alone be tolerated. Nevertheless their tempers were chafed, and there was no graciousness in the demeanor of the bishop to allay suspicion, while the contemptuous looks of his Norman attendants were calculated to exasperate. "It is well," said Bernard, signing imperiously to Pabo to draw near. "It is well that you can speak French." "I have been in Brittany. I have visited Nantes and Rennes. I can speak your language after a fashion." "'Tis well. I am among jabbering jackdaws, and cannot comprehend a word of their jargon. I do not desire to distort my mouth in the attempt to acquire it." "Then would it not have been as well had you remained in Normandy or England?" "I have other work to do than to study your tongue," said Bernard with a laugh. "I am sent here by my august master, the fine clerk, the great scholar, the puissant prince, to bring order where is confusion." "The aspect of this valley bespeaks confusion," interrupted Pabo, with a curl of the lip. "Do not break in on me with unmannered words," said the bishop. "I am an apostle of morality where reigns mere license." "License, my Sieur? I know my people; I have lived among them from childhood. They are not perfect. They may not be saints, but I cannot admit that a stranger who is newly come among us, who cannot understand a word that we speak, is justified in thus condemning us." "We shall see that presently," exclaimed Bernard, "when we come to particulars. I have heard concerning you. My lord and master, the Beauclerk Henry, has his eyes and ears open. Ye are a dissolute set, ye do not observe the Seven Degrees." Then aside to his chaplain: "It is seven, not four, I think?" "I pray you explain," said Pabo. "Seven degrees," pursued Bernard. "I must have all the relationships of the married men throughout the country gone into. This district of Caio to commence with, then go on through the South of Wales--through my diocese. I must have all inquired into; and if any man shall have contracted an union within the forbidden degrees, if he have taken to him a wife related by blood--consanguine, that is the word, chaplain, eh?--or connected by marriage, affine--am I right, chaplain?--or having contracted a spiritual relationship through sponsorship at the font, or legal relation through guardianship--then such marriages must be annulled, made void, and the issue pronounced to be illegitimate." "My good Lord!" gasped Pabo, turning deadly pale. "Understand me," went on the bishop, turning his blear, ringed, birdlike eyes about on the circle of those present, "if it shall chance that persons have stood at the font to a child, then they have thereby contracted a spiritual affinity--I am right, am I not chaplain?--which acts as a barrier to marriage; and, if they have become united, bastardizes their issue. Cousinship by blood, relationship through marriage, all act in the same way to seven degrees--and render unions void." "Are you aware what you are about?" asked Pabo gravely. "In our land, hemmed in by mountains, marriages are usually contracted within the same tribe, and in the same district, so that the whole of our people are more or less bound together into a family. A kinship of some sort subsists between all. If you press this rule--and it is no rule with us--you break up fully three-fourths of the families in this country." "And what if I do?" "What! Separate husband and wife!" "If the union has been unlawful." "It has not been unlawful. Cousins have always among us been allowed to marry. No nearer blood relations; and the rule of affinity has never extended beyond a wife's sister. As to spiritual relationship as a bar, it is a device of man. Why! to inquire into such matters is to pry into every family, to introduce trouble into consciences, to offer opportunity for all kinds of license." "I care not. It is our Canon law." "But we are not, we never have been, subject to your Canon law." "You are so now. I, your head, have taken oath of allegiance to Canterbury. Thereby I have bound you all." Pabo's cheek darkened. "I rely on you," proceeded the bishop. "You, as you say, have lived here always. You can furnish me with particulars as to all the marriages that have been contracted for the last fifty years." "What! does the rule act retrospectively?" "Ay. What is unlawful now was unlawful always." "I will not give up--betray my people." "You will be obedient to your bishop!" Pabo bit his lip and looked down. "This will entail a good deal of shifting of lands from hand to hand, when sons discover that their fathers' wedlock was unlawful, and that they are not qualified to inherit aught." "You will cause incalculable evil!" The bishop shrugged his shoulders. "Lead on to the church," said he. "My chaplain, who is interpreter as well, shall read my decree to your people--in Latin first and then in Welsh. By the beard of Wilgefrotis! if you are obstructive, Archpriest, I know how to call down lightning to fall on you." NOTE.--The seven prohibited degrees were reduced to four at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). By Civil law the degrees were thus counted,-- 0 | +-----+-----+ | | 10 10 | | 20 20 \----\ /----/ 4 But by Canon law-- 0 | +-----+-----+ | | 0.....1.....0 | | 0.....2.....0 CHAPTER IV A HWYL A Welsh church at the period of the Norman Conquest was much what it had been from the time when Christianity had been adopted by the Britons. It was of wood, as has been already stated. The insular Celt could never apply himself to the quarrying and shaping of stone. The church of Cynwyl was oblong, built of split logs, roofed with thatch. The eaves projected, so as to shelter the narrow windows from the drift of rain, as these latter were unglazed. Only in the chancel were they protected by sheep's amnion stretched on frames. A gallows of timber standing at a short distance from the west end supported the bell. This was neither circular nor cast, but was oblong in shape, of hammered metal, and riveted. The tone emitted was shrill and harsh, but perhaps was on this account better suited to be heard at a distance than had it been deep in tone and musical in note. Rude although the exterior of the church was, the interior was by no means deficient in beauty, but this beauty was limited to, or at least concentrated on, the screen that divided the long hall into two portions. There were no aisles, the only division into parts was effected by the screen, that was pierced by a doorway in the middle. This screen was, indeed, constructed of wood in compartments, and each compartment was filed with an intricate and varied tracery of plaited willow wands. It was the glory and the delight of the Celt to expend his artistic effort on the devising and carrying out of some original design in interlaced work--his knots and twists and lattice were of incomparable beauty and originality. If he took to carving on stone, it was to reproduce on the best tractable material his delightful lacework of osiers. The patterns of the compartments were not merely varied in plaits, but color was skilfully introduced by the flexible rods having been dyed by herbs or lichens, and a further variety was introduced by the partial peeling of some of the wands in rings. Moreover, to heighten the effect, in places flat pieces of wood like shuttles, but with dragons' heads carved on them, were introduced among the plait as a means of breaking continuity in design and allowing of a fresh departure in pattern. Within the screen a couple of oil-lamps burned, rendered necessary by the dusk there produced by the membrane that covered the windows. Here, beneath the altar, was preserved the abbatial staff of the founder--a staff invested by popular belief with the miraculous powers. On the last day of April every year, this staff was solemnly brought forth and carried up the river Annell, to a point where rested an enormous boulder, fallen from the mountain crag, and resting beside the stream, where it glanced and frothed over a slide of rock, in which were depressions scooped by the water, but superstitiously held to have been worn by the Apostle of Caio as he knelt in the water at his prayers and recitation of the Psalter. Here the Archpriest halted, and with the staff stirred the water. It was held that by this means the Annell was assured to convey health and prosperity to the basin of the Cothi, into which it discharged its blessed waters. Hither were driven flocks and herds to have the crystal liquid scooped from the hollows in the rock, and sprinkled over them, as an effectual preservative against murrain. The bishop occupied a stool within the screen. On this occasion he had nothing further to do than proclaim his inflexible determination to maintain the prohibition of marriage within the seven degrees for the future, and to annul all such unions as fell within them, whether naturally or artificially, and to illegitimatize all children the issue of such marriages. It was the object of the Norman invaders to sow the seed of discord among those whose land they coveted, to produce such confusion in the transmission of estates as to enable them to intervene and dispossess the native owners, not always at the point of the sword, but also with the quill of the clerk. The villagers had crowded into the sacred building, they stood or knelt as densely as they could be packed, and through the open door could be seen faces thronging to hear such words as might reach them without. Every face wore an expression of suspicion, alarm, or resentment. Pabo stood outside the screen upon a raised step or platform, whence he was wont to read to or address his congregation. It sustained a desk, on which reposed the Scriptures. The bishop's chaplain occupied the center of the doorway through the screen. He held a parchment in his hand, and he hastily read its contents in Latin first, and then translated it into Welsh. Pabo was a tall man, with dark hair and large deep eyes, soft as those of an ox, yet capable of flashing fire. He was not over thirty-five years of age, yet looked older, as there was gravity and intensity in his face beyond his years. He was habited in a long woolen garment dyed almost but not wholly black. He was hearkening to every word that fell, his eyes fixed on the ground, his hands clenched, his lips closed, lines forming in his face. It escaped Bernard, behind the lattice-work, and incapable of observing such phenomena, how integrally one, as a single body, the tribesmen present were with their ecclesiastical and political chieftain. Their eyes were riveted, not on the reader, but on the face of Pabo. The least change in his expression, a contraction of the brow, a quiver of the lip, a flush on the cheek, repeated itself in every face. Whilst the lection in Latin proceeded, the people could understand no more of it than what might be discerned from its effect on their Archpriest; but it was other when the chaplain rendered it into every-day vernacular. Yet even then, they did not look to his lips. They heard his words, but read the commentary on them in the face of Pabo. They understood now with what they were menaced. It was shown to them, not obscurely. They knew as the allocution proceeded what it involved if carried out: there were wives present whose sentence of expulsion from their homes was pronounced, children who were bastardized and disinherited, husbands whose dearest ties were to be torn and snapped. Not a sound was to be heard save the drone of the reader's voice; till suddenly there came a gasp of pain--then a sob. Again an awful hush. Men set their teeth and their brows contracted; the muscles of their faces became knotted. Women held their palms to their mouths. Appealing hands were stretched to Pabo, but he did not stir. Then, when the translation was ended, the chaplain looked round in silence to Bernard, who made a sign with his hand and nodded. In a loud and strident voice the chaplain proceeded: "By order of Bernard, by the grace of God, and the favor of his Majesty the King, Bishop of St. David's and Primate of all Wales--all such as have contracted these unlawful unions shall be required within ten days from this present to separate from the women with whom they have lived as husbands, and shall not occupy the same house with them, nor eat at the same board, under pain of excommunication. And it is further decreed that in the event of contumacy, of delay in fulfilling what is hereby required, or refusal to fulfil these lawful commands, after warning, such contumacious person shall forfeit all his possessions, whether in lands or in movable goods, or cattle--his wearing apparel alone excepted; and such possessions shall be divided into three equal portions, whereof one-third shall be confiscated to the Crown, one-third shall fall to the Church Metropolitan, and, again, one-third----" He raised his head. Then Bernard moved forward in his seat that he might fix his eyes upon Pabo; there was a lifting of his upper lip on one side, as he signed to the chaplain to proceed: "And, again, one-third shall be adjudged as a grace to the Informer." A moan swept through the congregation like that which precedes the breaking of a storm, "To the Informer," repeated the chaplain; "who shall denounce to the Lord Bishop such unions as have been effected in this district of Caio within the forbidden degrees." This last shaft pierced deepest of all. It invited, it encouraged, treachery. It cast everywhere, into every family, the sparks that would cause conflagration. It was calculated to dissolve all friendships, to breed mistrust in every heart. Then Pabo lifted his head. His face was wet as though he had been weeping, but the drops that ran over his cheeks fell, not from his glowing eyes, but from his sweat-beaded brow. He turned back the book that was on the desk and opened it. He said no words of his own, but proceeded to read from the volume in a voice deep, vibrating with emotion; and those who heard him thrilled at his tones. "Thus saith the Lord God. Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle. Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad; therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle----" "What doth he say? What readeth he?" asked the bishop of his chaplain, whom he had beckoned to him. Pabo heard his words, turned about and said--"I am reading the oracle of God. Is that forbidden?" A woman in the congregation cried out; another burst into sobs. Pabo resumed the lection, and his voice unconsciously rose and fell in a musical wail: "I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them." At once--like a rising song, a mounting wave of sound--came the voice of the people, as they caught the words that rang in their hearts; they caught and repeated the words of the reader after him--"One shepherd, and he shall feed them." And as they recited in swelling and falling tones, they moved rhythmically, with swaying bodies and raised and balanced arms. It was an electric, a marvelous quiver of a common emotion that passed through the entire congregation. It went further--it touched and vibrated through those outside, near the door--it went further, it affected those beyond, who knew not what was said. Pabo continued--and his voice rolled as if in a chant--"I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them--even my servant DAVID." "David! He shall feed us--even he, our father--our father David!" Those kneeling started to their feet, stretched their arms to heaven. Their tears poured forth like rain, their voices, though broken by sobs, swelled into a mighty volume of sound, thrilling with the intensity of their distress, their hope, their fervor of faith--"Even he shall come--God's servant David!" At the name, the loved name, they broke into an ecstatic cry, "And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it."[1] The chaplain translated. "He is uttering treason!" shouted Bernard, starting up. "David a prince among them! We have no King but Henry." Then from without came cries, shouts, a rushing of feet, an angry roar, and the clash of weapons. [Footnote 1: "A minnau yr Arglwydd a fyddaf yn Dduw iddynt, a'm gwas Dafydd yn dywysog yn eu mysg; myfi yr Arglwydd a leferais hyn."--Ez. xxxiv. 24.] CHAPTER V THE FIRST BLOOD "What is this uproar? What is being done?" asked Bernard in agitation. "Look, Cadell! Is there no second door to this trap? Should violence be attempted I can obtain no egress by the way I came in; this church is stuffed with people. Shut the screen gates if they show the least indication of attacking us. 'Sdeath! if it should occur to them to fire this place----" "They will not do so, on account of their own people that are in it." "But--but what is the occasion of this noise? How is it I am here without anyone to protect me? This should have been looked to. I am not safe among these savages. It is an accursed bit of negligence that shall be inquired into. What avails me having men-at-arms if they do not protect me? Body of my life! Am not I the King's emissary? Am not I a bishop? Am I to be held so cheap even by my own men that I am allowed to run the risk of being torn to pieces, or smoked out of a hole like this?" "Do not fear, my Lord Bishop," said Cadell, his chaplain and interpreter, who was himself quaking, "there is a door behind, in the chancel wall. But methinks the danger is without; there is the disturbance, and the congregation are pressing to get forth." "Body of my life! I want to know what is happening. Here, quick, you clumsy ass, you beggarly Welshman; Cadell, undo the clasp, the brooch; I will have off this cope--and remove my miter. I will leave them here. I shall be less conspicuous, if weapons are being flourished and stones are flying." The bishop speedily divested himself of his ecclesiastical attire, all the while scolding, cursing his attendant, who was a Welshman by birth, but who had passed into the service of the conquerors, and knew very well that this would advance him in wealth, and ensure for himself a fat benefice. When the bishop had been freed of his vestments, the chaplain unbolted a small side door, and both emerged from the church. Outside all was in commotion. The populace was surging to and fro, uttering cries and shouts. An attack had been made on the military guard of the bishop--and these, for their mutual protection, had retreated to the sumpter horses and mules, surrounded them, and faced their assailants with swords brandished. About them, dense and menacing, were the Welshmen of Caio, flourishing cudgels and poles, and the women urging them on with cries. Bernard found himself separated from his party by the dense ring of armed peasants, infuriated by the wrongs they had endured and by the appeals of the women. He could not see his men, save that now and then the sun flashed on their swords as they were whirled above the heads of the crowd. No blood seemed to have been shed as yet--the Normans stood at bay. The Welsh peasants were reluctant to approach too nearly to the terrible blades that whirled and gleamed like lightning. At the same instant that Bernard issued from the church, the bell suspended between two beams was violently swung, and its clangor rang out above the noise of the crowd. As if in answer to its summons, from every side poured natives, who had apparently been holding themselves in reserve; they were armed with scythes, axes, and ox-goads. Some were in leather jerkins that would resist a sword-cut or a pike-thrust, but the majority were in thick wadmel. The congregation were also issuing from the west door of the church, thick on each other's heels, and were vainly asking the occasion of the disturbance. It was some minutes before Pabo emerged into the open, and then it was through the side door. He found the bishop there, livid, every muscle of his face jerking with terror, vainly endeavoring to force his chaplain to stand in front of and screen him. "I hold you answerable for my safety," said Bernard, putting forth a trembling hand and plucking at the Archpriest. "And I for mine," cried the chaplain. "Have no fear--none shall touch you," answered Pabo, addressing the prelate. He disdained even to look at the interpreter. "If any harm come to my men, you shall be held accountable. They are King Henry's men; he lent them to me. He sent them to guard my sacred person." "And mine," said Cadell. "Our father in God cannot make himself understood without me." "You are in no danger," said Pabo. Then the Archpriest stepped forward, went to the belfry, and disengaged the rope from the hand of him who was jangling the bell. With a loud, deep, sonorous voice, he called in their native tongue to his tribesmen to be silent, to cease from aggression, and to explain the cause of the tumult. He was obeyed immediately. All noise ceased, save that caused by the Normans, who continued to thunder menaces. "Silence them also," said Pabo to the bishop. "I--I have lost my voice," said the frightened prelate. At the same moment the crowd parted, and a band of sturdy peasants, carrying clubs, and one armed with a coulter, came forward, drawing with them Rogier, the bishop's brother, and a young and beautiful woman with disheveled hair and torn garments. Her wrists had been bound behind her back, but one of the men who drew her along with a great knife cut the thongs, and she shook the fragments from her and extended her freed arms to the priest. "Pabo!" "Morwen!" he exclaimed, recoiling in dismay. "What is the meaning of this?" demanded the bishop. "Unhand my brother, ye saucy curs!" But, though his meaning might be guessed by those who gripped Rogier, they could not understand his words. "What is the cause of this?" asked Bernard, addressing the Norman. "Rogier, how comes this about?" The Norman was spluttering with rage, and writhing in vain endeavor to extricate himself from the men who held him. It was apparent to Bernard that the right arm of the man had received some injury, as he was powerless to employ it against his captors. The rest of the soldiery were hemmed in and unable to go to his assistance. "Curse the hounds!" he yelled. "They have struck me over the shoulder with their bludgeons, or by the soul of Rollo I would have sent some of them to hell! What are my men about that they do not attempt to release me?" he shouted. But through the ring of stout weapons--a quadruple living hedge--his followers were unable to pass; moreover, all considered their own safety to consist in keeping together. "What has caused this uproar?" asked the bishop. "Did they attack you without provocation?" "By the soul of the conqueror!" roared Rogier. "Can not a man look at and kiss a pretty woman without these swine resenting it? Have not I a right to carry her off if it please me to grace her with my favor? Must these hogs interfere?" "Brother, you have been indiscreet!" "Not before your face, Bernard. I know better than that. I know what is due to your sanctity of a few weeks. I waited like a decent Christian till your back was turned. You need have known nothing about it. And if, as we rode away, there was a woman behind my knave on his horse, you would have shut one eye. But these mongrels--these swine--resent it. Body of my life! Resent it!--an honor conferred on one of their girls if a Norman condescend to look with favor on her. Did not our gracious King Henry set us the example with a Welsh prince's wench? And shall not we follow suit?" "You are a fool, Rogier--at such a time, and so as to compromise me." "Who is to take you to task, brother?" "I mean not that, but to risk my safety. To leave me unprotected in the church, and to provoke a brawl without, that might have produced serious consequences to me. Odd's life! Where is that Cadell? Slinking away?" "My lord, I have greater cause to fear than yourself. They bear me bitterest hate." "I care not. Speak for me to these curs. Bid them unhand my brother. They have maimed him--maybe broken his arm. My brother, a Norman, held as a common felon by these despicable serfs!" "Bishop," said Pabo, stepping before Bernard. "What have you to say?" asked the prelate suddenly. The face of the Archpriest was stern and set, as though chiseled out of alabaster. "Are you aware what has been attempted while you were in God's house? What the outrage is has been offered?" "I know that my brother has been so light as to cast his eye on one of your Welsh wenches." "Lord bishop," said Pabo in hard tones, and the sound of his voice was metallic as the bell, "he has insulted this noble woman. He bound her hands behind her back and has endeavored to force her onto a horse in spite of her resistance, her struggles--look at her bruised and bleeding arms!--and to carry her away." "Well, well, soldiers are not clerks and milk-sops." "Do you know who she is?" "I know not. Some saucy lass who ogled him, and he took her winks as an invitation." "Sieur!" thundered Pabo, and the veins in his brow turned black. "She is the noblest, purest of women." "Among broken sherds, a cracked pitcher is precious." "Bishop, she is my wife!" "Your wife!" jeered Bernard, leaned back, placed his hands to his side, and laughed. "Priests have no wives; you mean your harlot." In a moment the bishop was staggering back, and would have fallen unless he had had the timber wall of the church to sustain him. In a moment, maddened beyond endurance by the outrage, by the words, by the demeanor of the prelate, in forgetfulness of the sacred office of the man who insulted him, in forgetfulness of his own sacred office, forgetful of everything save the slur cast on the one dearest to him in the whole world, the one to whom he looked with a reverence which from her extended to all womanhood, the incandescent Welsh blood in his veins burst into sudden flame, and he struck Bernard in the face, on the mouth that had slandered her and insulted him. And the bishop reeled back and stood speechless, with blear eyes fixed, his hands extended against the split logs, and from his lips, cut with his teeth, blood was flowing. Then, in the dead silence that ensued, an old hermit, clothed in sackcloth, bareheaded, with long matted white hair, walking bent by the aid of a staff--a man who for thirty years had occupied a cell on the mountain-side without leaving it--stood forward before all, an unwonted apparition; and slowly, painfully raising his distorted form, he lifted hand and staff to heaven, and cried: "Wo, wo, wo to the Blessed Valley! The peace of David, our father, is broken. Blood has flowed in strife. That cometh which he foresaw, and over which he wept. Wo! wo! wo!" CHAPTER VI THE SCROLL The young, the thoughtless, were full of exultation over the rebuff that the Normans, with their bishop, had encountered, but the older and wiser men were grave and concerned. The Normans had indeed withdrawn in sullen resentment, outnumbered, and incapable of revenging on the spot and at once the disabled arm of their leader and the broken tooth of their prelate. The old men knew very well that matters would not rest thus; and they feared lest the events of that day when the party of foreigners penetrated to the Blessed Valley might prove the most fruitful in disastrous consequences it had ever seen. Native princes had respected the sanctuary of David, but an English King and foreign adventurers were not likely to regard its privileges, nor fear the wrath of the saint who had hitherto rendered it inviolable. Bishop Bernard had at his back not only the whole spiritual force of the Latin Church, the most highly concentrated and practically organized in Christendom, but he was specially the emissary of the English King, with all the physical power of the realm to support him; and what was the prospect of a little green basin in the mountains, isolated from the world, occupied by three thousand people, belonging to the most loosely compacted Church that existed, with no political force to maintain its right and champion its independence--what chance had the sanctuary of David in Caio against the resentment of the English King and the Roman Church? Neither, as experience showed, was likely to pass over an affront. One would sustain the other in exacting a severe chastisement. The hermit, who after over thirty years of retirement in one cell, far up the Mount Mallaen, had suddenly, and unsolicited, left his retreat to appear once more among his fellow-men, and then to pronounce a sentence of wo, had sunk exhausted after this supreme effort of expiring powers, and had been removed into the Archpriest's house, where he was ministered to by Morwen, Pabo's wife. The old man lay as one in a trance, and speechless. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing on earth, and no efforts could induce him to take nourishment. With folded hands, muttering lips, and glazed eyes he continued for several days. Pabo and his wife looked on with reverence, not knowing whether he were talking with invisible beings which he saw. He answered no questions put to him; he seemed not to hear them, and he hardly stirred from the position which he assumed when laid on a bed in the house. The hermit of Mallaen had been regarded with unbounded reverence throughout the country. He had been visited for counsel, his words had been esteemed oracular, and he was even credited with having performed miraculous cures. That he was dying in their midst would have created greater attention and much excitement among the people of Caio at any other time, but now they were in a fever over the events of the bishop's visit, their alarm over the enforcing of the decree on marriages, and their expectation of punishment for the rough handling of their unwelcome visitors; and when one night the old hermit passed away, it was hardly noticed, and Morwen was left almost unassisted to pay the last duties to the dead, to place the plate of salt on his breast when laid out, and to light the candles at the head. It was no holiday-time, and yet little work was done throughout the once happy valley. A cloud seemed to hang over it, and oppress all therein. Shepherds on the mountain drove their flocks together, that for awhile, sitting under a rock or leaning on their crooks, they might discuss what was past and form conjectures as to the future. Women, over their spinning, drew near each other, and in low voices and with anxious faces conversed as to the unions that were like to be dissolved. Men met in groups and passed opinions as to what steps should be taken to maintain their rights, their independence, and to ward off reprisals. Even children caught up the words that were whispered, and jeered each other as born out of legitimate wedlock, or asked one another who were their sponsors, and shouted that such could never intermarry. So days passed. Spirits became no lighter; the gloom deepened. It was mooted who would tell of the relationships borne by those who were now contented couples?--so as to enable the bishop to separate them? Who would see selfish profit by betrayal of their own kin? The delay was not due to pitiful forbearance, to Christian forgiveness; it boded preparation for dealing an overwhelming blow. The Welsh Prince or King was a fugitive. From him no help could be expected. His castle of Dynevor was in the hands of the enemy. To the south, the Normans blocked the exit of the Cothy from its contracted mouth; to east, the Towy valley was in the hands of the oppressor, planted in impregnable fortresses; to the west, Teify valley was in like manner occupied. Only to the north among the wild, tumbled, barren mountains, was there no contracting, strangling, steel hand. The autumn was closing in. The cattle that had summered in the _hafod_ (the mountain byre) were returning to the _hendre_ (the winter home). Usually the descent from the uplands was attended with song and laugh and dancing. It was not so now. And the very cattle seemed to perceive that they did not receive their wonted welcome. Pabo went about as usual, but graver, paler than formerly--for his mind was ill at ease. It was he who had shed the first blood. A trifling spill, indeed, but one likely to entail serious results. The situation had been aggravated by his act. He who should have done his utmost to ward off evil from his flock had perpetrated an act certain to provoke deadly resentment against them. He bitterly regretted his passionate outbreak; he who should have set an example of self-control had failed. Yet when he looked on his wife, her gentle, patient face, the tenderness with which she watched and cared for the dying hermit, again his cheek flushed, the veins in his brow swelled, and the blood surged in his heart. To hear her insulted, he could never bear; should such an outrage be repeated, he would strike again. Pabo sat by his fire. In Welsh houses even so late as the twelfth century there were no structural chimneys--these were first introduced by the Flemish settlers--consequently the smoke from the wood fire curled and hung in the roof and stole out, when tired of circling there, through a hole in the thatch. On a bier lay the dead man, with candles at his head--his white face illumined by the light that descended from the gap in the roof. At the feet crouched a woman, a professional wailer, singing and swaying herself, as she improvised verses in honor of the dead, promised him the glories of Paradise, and a place at the right hand of David, and then fell to musical moans. Morwen sat by the side, looking at the deceased--she was awaiting her turn to kneel, sing, and lament--and beside her was a rude bench on which were placed cakes and ale wherewith to regale such as came in to wake the dead. And as Pabo looked at his wife he thought of the peaceful useful life they had led together. She had been the daughter of a widow, a harsh and exacting woman, who had long been bedridden, and with whose querulousness she had borne meekly. He had not been always destined to the Archpriesthood. His uncle had been the ecclesiastical as well as political head of the tribe; but on his death his son, Goronwy, had been passed over, as deformed, and therefore incapable of taking his father's place, and the chiefship had been conferred on Pabo, who had already been for some years ordained in anticipation of this selection. Pabo continued to look at his wife, and he questioned whether he could have understood the hearts of his people had he not himself known what love was. "Husband," said Morwen, "there is a little roll under his hand." Pabo started to consciousness of the present. "I have not ventured to remove it; yet what think you? Is it to be buried with him? It almost seems as though it were his testament." The Archpriest rose and went to where the dead man lay; his long white beard flowed to his waist, and the hands were crossed over it. "It is in the palm," said Morwen. Pabo passed his fingers through the thick white hair and drew forth a scroll, hardly two fingers' breadth in width; it was short also, as he saw when he uncurled it. He opened and read. "Yes, it is his will. 'To Pabo, the Archpriest, my cell--as a refuge; and----'" He ceased, rolled up the little coil once more, and placed it in his bosom. A stroke at the door, and one of the elders of the community, named Howel the Tall, entered. "It seems fit, Father Pabo, to us to meet in council. What say you? All are gathered." "It is well; I attend." CHAPTER VII GRIFFITH AP RHYS The council-house of the Caio tribe was a large circular wooden structure, with a conical thatched roof. There was a gable on one side in which was a circular opening to serve as window, and it was unglazed. As Pabo entered with Howel the Tall, he was saluted with respect, and he returned the salutation with grave courtesy. He took the seat reserved for him, and looked about him, mustering who were present. They were all representative men, either because weighty through wealth, force of character, or intellect. Among them were two officers, the one Meredith ap David, the Bard, who, in his retentive memory preserved the traditions of the tribe and the genealogies of all the families of the district from Noah. The other was Morgan ap Seissyl, the hereditary custodian of the staff of Cynwyl, and sacristan of the church, enjoying certain lands which went with the _baculus_, or staff, as well as certain dignities. Howel stepped into the center of the building and addressed those present, and their president. "Father Pabo, we who are gathered together have done so with one consent, drawn hither by a common need, to take counsel in our difficulties. Seeing how grave is the situation in which we stand, how uncertain is the future, how ignorant we are of the devices of our enemies, how doubtful what a day may bring forth--we have considered it expedient to meet and devise such methods as may enable us to stand shoulder to shoulder, and to frustrate the machinations of our common foe. By twos and threes we have talked of these things, and now we desire to speak in assembly concerning them. "And, first of all, we have considered the threats of Bernard, whom the King of the English has thrust upon us by his mere will, to be bishop over us; a man of whom we hear no good, who cannot speak our tongue, who despises our nation and its customs, and mocks at our laws. A man is he who has not entered the sheepfold by the door, but has climbed in another way." His words were received with a murmur of assent. "And the first time that this intruder has opened his mouth, it has been to provoke unto strife, and to fill all hearts with dismay. He erects barriers where was open common. He prohibits unions which the Word of God does not disallow. He creates spiritual relationships as occasions and excuses for dissolving marriages, where no blood ties exist. He proclaims his mission to be one of breaking up of families and making houses desolate. Now we are sheep without a shepherd, a flock in the midst of wolves. We are neither numerous enough nor strong enough to resist the over-might that is brought against us. By the blessing of David, we have been ever men of peace. Our hands are unaccustomed to handle the bow and wield the sword. We have no prince over us to lead us. We have no bishop over us to advise us. The throne of our father David is usurped by an intruder whom we will not acknowledge." He paused. Again his words roused applause. "And now, it seems to me, that as we are incapable of opposing force to force, we must take refuge in subtlety. It has pleased God, who confounded the speech of men at Babel, that we should preserve that original tongue spoken by Adam in Paradise, in his unfallen state, and that the rest of mankind, by reason of the blindness of their hearts, and the dulness of their understandings, are hardly able to acquire it. Now it has further pleased Providence, which has a special care over our elect nation, that our relationships should present a perplexity to all save unto ourselves. I am creditably informed that the English people are beginning to call themselves after their trades, and to hand down their trade names to their children, so that John the Smith's sons and daughters be also entitled Smiths, although the one be a butcher, and another a weaver--which is but one token out of many that this is an insensate people. Moreover, some call themselves after the place where they were born, and although their children and children's children be born elsewhere, yet are they called after the township whence came their father--an evident proof of sheer imbecility. Again, it is said that if a John Redhead, so designated by reason of a fiery poll, have a dark-haired son, though the head of this latter be as a raven's wing, yet is he a Redhead. One really marvels that Providence should suffer such senseless creatures to beget children. But there is worse still behind. A Tom has a son George, and he is called Tomson. But if this George have a son Philip, then Philip is not Georgeson, but Tomson. Stupidity could go no farther. Now we are wiser. I am Howel ap John, and John was ap Roderick, and he ap Thomas. There were assuredly a score of Johns in Caio when my father lived, and say that each had five children. Then there be now in the tribe a hundred persons who bear the name of ap John or merch John. Who is to say which John begat this lad or that lass, and therefore to decide who are consanguineous, and who are not? There is one man only whose duty and calling it is to unravel the tangle, and this is Meredith, the genealogist. Should the bishop come here again, or send his commissioner, we have the means of raising such a cloud of confusion with our Johns and Morgans, or Thomases and Merediths, with the _aps_ and our _merchs_, as will utterly bewilder his brains. I defy any pig-headed Englishman or Norman either to discover our relationships unless he gets hold of the genealogist." This was so obviously true and so eminently consolatory that all nodded approvingly. "This being the case," pursued Howel, "as there is but a single man to unravel this tangle, Meredith ap David, and as he would consider it his sacred duty conscientiously to give every pedigree if asked--therefore I advise that he go into hiding. Then, when the bishop comes we take it upon ourselves to confound his head with our relationships--consanguine, affine, and spiritual--so that he will be able to do nothing in the matter of dissolving our marriages. A child who is ill-treated lies. In that way it seeks protection. An ill-treated people takes refuge in subterfuge. It is permissible." This long speech was vastly approved, and all present, even the bard himself, voted with uplifted right hand that it should be carried into effect. Then Jorwerth the smith stood up and said-- "It is well spoken; but all is not done. The chief danger menaces us through our head. It is at the head that the deadly blow is aimed. Griffith ap Rhys, our prince, is not among us. A true bishop is not over us. We have none but our Father Pabo; and him we must do our utmost to preserve. It is he who stands in greater peril than we. It is true that I struck a fellow on the arm because he molested the wife of our chief; but that was naught. Blows are exchanged among men and thought lightly of. But our Father Pabo smote the bishop in the mouth and broke his teeth. That will never be forgiven him--never; and the intruder Bernard will compass sea and land to revenge on him that blow. If our head be taken, what will become of us, the members? If it be thought expedient that Meredith the Bard should go into hiding, then I give my voice that our chief should also seek out a refuge where he may not be found." This opinion was met with murmurs of approval. Then the tall Howel rose and said, "You marked what I said before, that although we approve not deception, yet must the weak take resort unto trickery when matched against the strong. So be it--our Archpriest Pabo shall disappear, and disappear so that the enemy shall not know that he be alive. Leave this to me. An opportunity offers--that Heaven has given to us. Ask me not to explain." "It is well. We trust thee, Howel." Then they heard a distant murmur, a hum as of a rising wind, the rustle of trees, the beating of waves. It drew nearer, it waxed louder, it broke out into cries of joy and shouts of exultation as at the bringing in of harvest, and the crowned sheaf--the _tori pen y wrach_. The elders of Caio listened and wondered. Then through the door sprang a young man, and stood where a falling sunbeam from the one round window rested on him. He had flowing golden hair that reached his shoulders in curls. He was tall, lithe, graceful, and beautiful. In a moment they all knew him, as those had recognized him on the way and had accompanied him to the churchtown. The old, the gray-headed, strong iron men, and those who were feeble at once encircled him. They threw themselves at his feet, they clasped his knees, those who could kissed his hands, others the hem of his garment. "Griffith, our Prince! Our heart and soul, our King!" CHAPTER VIII PREPARING FOR THE EVIL DAY As Nest was the most beautiful woman in Wales, so her brother Griffith was the handsomest of the men there. His face was open and engaging. The blue eyes were honest, the jaw resolute. His address had a fascination few could resist. Moreover, the story of his young life was such as enlisted sympathy and fired the hearts of the Cymri. His gallant father, a true hero, the King of Dyfed, South Wales, had fallen in battle, fighting against the Normans under Robert Fitzhamon and some turbulent Welsh who had invited the invader into the land. The fall of the great chief had left his country open, defenseless to the spoiler. His eldest son and his daughter had been carried away as hostages, the Prince to die in his captivity--whether wasting with grief or by the hand of the assassin none knew--and the Princess, dishonored, had been married to the worst oppressor of her people. Griffith, the second son, had effected his escape, and had committed himself to his namesake the King of Gwynedd, or North Wales, and had married his daughter. The crafty Beauclerk was ill-pleased so long as the Prince remained at large to head insurrection in the South, perhaps, in combination with his father-in-law, to unite all Cambria in one mighty effort to hurl the invader from the rocks of that mountain world. He accordingly entered into negotiations with the King and invited him to visit him in London. Griffith ap Cynan, the old King of North Wales, flattered by the terms in which he was addressed, pleased with the prospect of seeing more of the world than was possible from his castle-walls in Anglesea, incautiously accepted. Arrived at Westminster, he was treated with effusive courtesy: King Henry addressed him as a brother, seated him at his side, lavished on him splendid gifts, and still more splendid promises. Not till he had made the Welshman drunk with vanity and ambition did Henry unfold his purpose. Griffith ap Cynan was offered the sovereignty over North and South Wales united with Cardigan, the Prince of which had fled to Ireland, to be held under the suzerainty of the English Crown, and the sole price asked for this was the surrender of the young Prince, his own son-in-law and guest, a man whose only guilt consisted in having the blood of Rhys in his veins, and who confided in the honor and loyalty of his wife's father. The King of Gwynedd consented, and hasted home to conclude his part of the contract. Happily, but not a moment too soon, did Griffith the younger get wind of the treachery that was intended, and he fled before the arrival of the old King. When the latter discovered that his son-in-law had escaped, he sent a body of horsemen in pursuit. The fugitive, nearly overtaken, took sanctuary in the church of Aberdaron, and the baffled pursuers, not venturing to infringe the rights of the Church, returned unsuccessful to their master. The King, angry, blind to every consideration save his ambition, bade his men return on their traces, and, if need be, force the sanctuary and tear the Prince from the foot of the altar, should he make that his last refuge. The executioners of the mandate were not, however, free from the superstitious awe which surrounded a sanctuary. The clergy of the church and of the neighborhood rose with one consent in protection of the pursued, and of the menaced rights, and again the Ministers of the King were baffled. By this means, time was gained, and the clergy of Aberdaron succeeded by night in securing the escape of the Prince, with a few faithful followers, into the Vale of the Towy. There he had no alternative open to him but to prepare to take up arms. He at once entered into communication with his sister, on whose fidelity to the cause of the royal family of Dyfed, and of her country, he knew he could calculate. He found the people impatient to fly to arms. Their condition had become intolerable. Wherever they went the barons had introduced the system of feudal tenure, which was foreign to the laws and feelings of the people, and they vigorously resisted its application. Moreover, foreign ecclesiastics, the kinsmen or clients of the secular tyrant, seized upon the livings. Where a fortress could not be established, there a monastery was planted and filled with foreigners, to maintain whom the tithes and glebes were confiscated, and the benefices converted into vicarages, which were served by English or continental monks. Added to this, the King had created the Bishop of London Lord of the Marches and President of Shropshire, and this astute and unprincipled man devoted his energies to the setting at rivalry of all the native princes, and the goading them to war with one another. Such was his policy--let the Welsh cut each other's throats and make way for the Norman and the Fleming. The wretched people, betrayed by their natural leaders, the princes, deprived of their clergy, subjected to strange laws, with foreign masters, military and ecclesiastic, intruding themselves everywhere, and dispossessing them of all their possessions, felt that it would be better to die among their burnt farmsteads than live on dishonored. At this juncture, when they looked for, prayed for a leader, Griffith, son of their King, suddenly appeared in their midst, with a fresh story of insult and treachery to tell--and make their blood flame. "I am come," said the Prince, still standing in the falling ray of sun. "I have hasted to come to you with a word from my sister, the Princess Nest. Evil is devised against you--evil you are powerless now to resist. It comes swift, and you must bow your heads as bulrushes. The enemy is at hand--will be here on the morrow; and what the Princess says to Pabo, your chief, is, Fly for your life!" "That is what has been determined among us," said Howel. "It is well--let not a moment be lost!" Then, looking around, "I--my friends, my brothers, am as a squirrel in the forest, flying from branch to branch, pursued even by the hand that should have sheltered me. There is no trust to be laid in princes. I lean on none; I commend my cause to none. I place it in the hearts of the people. I would lay my head to sleep on the knee of any shepherd, fearless. I could not close my eyes under the roof of any prince, and be sure he would not sell me whilst I slept." None answered. It was true--they knew it--too true. "My brother," said Griffith--and he stepped to each and touched each hand--"I commit myself and the cause of my country to these hands that have held the plow and wielded the hammer, and I fear not. They are true." A shout of assurances, thrilled from every heart, and the eyes filled with tears. "My brothers, the moment has not yet arrived. When it comes, I will call and ye will answer." "We will!" "My life--it is for you." "And our lives are at your disposal." "We knew each other," said the prince, and one of his engaging smiles lighted his face. "But now to the matter in hand. The Bishop Bernard claims the entire region of Caio, from the mountains to where the Cothi enters the ravine, as his own, because it is the patrimony of David, which he has usurped. And forthwith he sends a mandate for the deposition of your Archpriest Pabo, and his arrest and conveyance under a guard to his castle of Llawhaden." "He shall not have him." "Therefore must he escape at once." "He shall fly to a place of security." "And that without a moment's delay." "It shall be so." "Furthermore, the bishop sends his chaplain, Cadell, to fill his room, to minister to you in holy things." "He shall not so minister to us." "And to occupy the presbytery." "My house!" exclaimed Pabo. "He shall not set foot therein," said Howel; "leave that to me." "I go," said Pabo sadly; "but I shall take my wife with me." "Nay," answered Howel hastily, "that must not be." "But wherefore not? She must be placed where safe from pursuit as well as I." "She shall be under my protection," said Howel the Tall. "Have confidence in me. All Caio will rise again were she to be molested. Have no fear; she shall be safe. But with you she must not go. Ask me not my reasons now. You shall learn them later." "Then I go. But I will bid her farewell first." "Not that even," said Howel, "lest she learn whither you betake yourself. That none of us must know." Then Meredith the Bard rose. "There is need for haste," he said. "I go." "And I go, too," said Pabo. He looked at the elders with swelling breast and filling eye. "I entrust to you, dear friends and spiritual sons, one more precious to me than life itself." He turned to Griffith: "Prince, God grant it be not for long that you are condemned to fly as the squirrel. God grant that ere long we may hear the cry of the ravens of Dynevor; and when we hear that----" All present raised their hands-- "We will find the ravens their food." CHAPTER IX WHAT MUST BE Howel the Tall walked slowly to the presbytery, the house of Pabo, that was soon to be his no longer. The tidings that an armed body of men was on its way into the peaceful valley--whose peace was to be forever broken up, so it seemed--had produced a profound agitation. Every one was occupied: some removing their goods, and themselves preparing to retire to the hovel on the summer pastures; those who had no _hafod_ to receive them were concealing their little treasures. A poor peasant was entreating a well-to-do farmer to take with him his daughter, a young and lovely girl, for whom he feared when the lawless servants of the bishop entered Caio. But all could not take refuge in the mountains, even if they had places there to which to retire. There were their cattle to be attended to in the valley; the grass on the heights was burnt, and would not shoot again till spring. The equinoctial gales were due, and rarely failed to keep their appointments. There were mothers expecting additions to their families, and little children who could not be exposed to the privations and cold of the uplands. There were no stores on the mountains; hay and corn were stacked by the homes in the valley. Some said, "What more can these strangers do than they have done? Do they come, indeed, to thrust on us a new pastor? They will not drive us with their pikes into church to hear what he has to say! They are not bringing with them a batch of Flemings to occupy our farms and take from us our corn-land and pasture! The Norman is no peaceful agriculturist, and he must live; therefore he will let the native work on, that he may eat out of his hands." And, again, others said: "There will be time enough to escape when they flourish their swords in our faces." But even such as resolved to remain concealed their valuables. The basin of the sanctuary was extensive; it was some seven miles long and five at its widest, but along the slopes of the hills that broke the evenness of its bottom and on the side of the continuous mountains were scattered numerous habitations. And it would be an easy matter for those on high ground commanding the roads to take to flight when the men-at-arms were observed to be coming their way. Howel entered the presbytery. Like every other house in Wales, excepting those of the great princes, it comprised but two chambers--that which served as hall and kitchen, into which the door opened, and the bed-chamber on one side. There was no upper story; its consequence as the residence of the chief was indicated by a detached structure, like a barn, that served as banqueting-hall on festive occasions, and where, indeed, all such as came on Sundays from distances tarried and ate after divine service, and awaited the vespers which were performed early in the afternoon. There were stables, also, to accommodate the horses of those who came to church, or to pay their respects, and to feast with their chief. With the exception of these disconnected buildings, the house presented the character of a Welsh cottage of the day in which we live. It was deficient in attempt at ornament, and, unlike a medieval edifice of the rest of Europe, lacked picturesqueness. At the present, a Welsh cottage or farmhouse is, indeed, of stone, and is ugly. Although the presbytery was lacking in beauty, of outline and detail, it was convenient as a dwelling. As Howel entered, he saw that the body of the hermit still lay exposed, preparatory to burial, with the candles burning at its head. But Morwen was the sole person in attendance on it, as the professional wailer had decamped to secrete the few coins she possessed, and, above all, to convey to and place under the protection of the Church a side of bacon, the half of a pig, on which she calculated to subsist during the winter. By the side of the fire sat a lean, sharp-featured boy, with high cheek-bones; a lad uncouth in appearance, for one shoulder was higher than the other. He stirred the logs with his foot, and when he found one that was burnt through, stooped, separated the ends, and reversed them in the fire. This was Goronwy Cam, kinsman of Pabo, the son of the late Archpriest, who had been passed over for the chieftainship, partly on account of his youth, mainly because of his deformity, which disqualified him for the ecclesiastical state. He lived in the presbytery with his cousin, was kindly, affectionately treated by him, and was not a little humored by Morwen, who pitied his condition, forgave his perversity of temper, and was too familiar with ill-humors, experienced during her mother's life, to resent his outbreaks of petulance. "Go forth, Goronwy," said Howel. "Bid Morgan see that the grave for our dead saint be made ready. They are like to forget their duties to the dead in their care for themselves. Bid him expedite the work of the sexton." "Why should I go? I am engaged here." "Engaged in doing nothing. Go at once and speak with Morgan. Time presses too hard for empty civilities." "You have no right to order me, none to send me from this house." "I have a right in an emergency to see that all be done that is requisite for the good of the living, and for the repose of the dead. Do you not know, boy, that the enemy are on their way hither, and that when they arrive you will no further have this as your home?" "Goronwy, be kind and do as desired," said Morwen. The young man left, muttering. He looked but a boy; he was in fact a man. When he had passed beyond earshot, Morwen said, "Do not be short with the lad; he has much to bear, his infirmities of body are ever present to his mind, and he can ill endure the thought that but for them he would have been chief in Caio." "I have not come hither to discuss Goronwy and his sour humors," said Howel; "but to announce to you that Pabo is gone." "Whither?" "That I do not know." "For how long?" "That also I cannot say." "Is he in danger?" Morwen's color fled, and she put her hand to her bosom. "At present he is in none; for how long he will be free I cannot say, and something depends on you." "On me! I will do anything, everything for him." "To-morrow the sleuth-hounds will be after him: his safety lies in remaining hid." "But why has he not come to me and told me so?" "Because it is best that you know nothing, not even the direction he has taken in his flight. Be not afraid--he is safe so long as he remains concealed. As for you and that boy, ye shall both come to my house, for to-morrow he will be here who will claim this as his own. The bishop who has stepped into David's seat has sent him to dispossess our Archpriest of all his rights, and to transfer them to Cadell, his chaplain." "But it is not possible. He does not belong to the tribe." "What care these aliens about our rights and our liberties? With the mailed fists they beat down all law." "And he will take from us our house?" "If you suffer him." "How can I, a poor woman, resist?" "I do not ask you to resist." "Then what do you require of me?" "Leave him no house into which to step and which he may call his own." "I understand you not." "Morwen, say farewell you must to these walls--this roof. It will dishonor them to become the shelter of the renegade, after it has been the home of such as you and Pabo, and the Archpriests of our race and tribe for generations--aye, and after it has been consecrated by the body of this saint." He indicated the dead hermit. "But again I say, I do not understand. What would you have me do?" "Do this, Morwen." Howel dropped his voice and drew nearer to her. He laid hold of her wrist. "Set fire to the presbytery. The wind is from the east; it will cause the hall to blaze also." She looked at him in dismay and doubt. "To me, and away from this, thou must come, and that boy with thee. Thou wouldest not have Pabo taken from thee and given to some Saxon woman. So, suffer not this house that thou art deprived of to become the habitation of another--one false to his blood and to his duties." "I cannot," she said, and looked about her at the walls, at every object against them, at the hearth, endeared to her by many ties. "I cannot--I cannot," and then: "Indeed I cannot with him here,"--and she indicated the corpse. "It is with him here that the house must burn," said Howel. "Burn the hermit--the man of God!" "It would be his will, could he speak," said Howel. "He, throughout his life, gave his body to harsh treatment and treated it as the enemy of his soul. Now out of Heaven he looks down and bids you--he as a saint in light--do this thing. He withholds not his cast-off tabernacle, if thereby he may profit some." "Nay, let him be honorably buried, and then, if thou desirest it, let the house blaze." "It must be, Morwen, as I say. Hearken to me. When they come to-morrow they will find the presbytery destroyed by fire, and we will say that the Archpriest has perished in it." "But they will know it is not so. See his snowy beard!" "Will the flames spare those white hairs?" "Yet all know--all in Caio." "And I can trust them all. When the oppressor is strong the weak must be subtle. Aye, and they will be as one man to deceive him, for they hate him, and they love their true priest." "I cannot do it." "It may be that the truth will come out in a week, a month--I cannot say; but time will be gained for Pabo to escape, and every day is of importance." "If it must be--but, O Howel, it is hard, and it seemeth to me unrighteous." "It is no unrighteousness to do that which must be." "And it must?" "Morwen, you shall not lay the fire. I will do it--but done it must be." CHAPTER X THE CELL ON MALLAEN At the back of Caio church and village stretches a vast mountain region that extends in tossed and rearing waves of moorland and crag for miles to the north; and indeed, Mynedd Mallaen is but the southern extremity of that chain which extends from Montgomeryshire and Merioneth, and of which Plinlimmon is one of the finest heads. The elevated and barren waste is traversed here and there by streams--the Cothy, the Camdwr, the Doeth--but these are through restricted and uninhabited ravines, Mynedd Mallaen, the southernmost projection of this range, is a huge bulk united to the main mountain system by a slight connecting ridge, between the gorge of the Cothy and a tributary of the Towy. North of this extends far the territory of Caio, over barren wilderness, once belonging to the tribe now delimited as a parish some sixteen miles in length. On leaving the Council Hall, Pabo tarried but for a few minutes in converse with Howel, and then ascended the glen down which brawled the Annell. The flanks of mountain on each side were clothed with heath and heather now fast losing their bells, and were gorgeous with bracken, turned to copper and gold by the touch of the finger of Death. He pursued his way without pause along the track trodden by those who visited the rock of Cynwyl, where annually the waters were stirred with his staff. But on reaching this spot, Pabo halted and looked into the sliding water that swirled in the reputed kneeholes worn by the saint in the rocky bed. A pebble was in one, being eddied about, and, notwithstanding the distress of mind in which was Pabo, he did not fail to notice this as an explanation of the origin of the depressions. Dreamy, imaginative though he might be, he had also a fund of common sense. The spot was lonely and beautiful, away from the strife of men and the noise of tongues. The stillness was broken only by the ripple of the water and the hum of the wind in the dried fern. The evening sun lit up the mountain heights, already glorious with dying fern, with an oriole of incomparable splendor. The great stone slept where it had lodged beside the stream, and was mantled with soft velvet mosses and dappled with many-colored lichen. It was upon its summit, doubtless, that the old Apostle had knelt--not in the bed of the torrent, although the folk insisted on the latter, misled by the hollows worn in the rock. Pabo, moved by an inward impulse, mounted the block, wrenched, like himself, from its proper place and cast far away, never to return to it. Never to return. That thought filled his mind; he need not attempt to delude himself with hopes. The past was gone forever, with its peace and love and happiness. Peace--broken by the sound of the Norman's steel, happiness departed with it. Love, indeed, might, must remain, but under a new form--no more sweet, but painful, full of apprehensions, full of torture. Discouragement came over him like the cold dews that were settling in the valley now that the sun was withdrawn. Where the Norman had penetrated thence he would have to depart. The sanctuary had been broken into--and the Angel of Peace, bearing the palm, had spread her wings. He looked aloft: a swan was sailing through the sky, the evening glory turning her silver feathers to gold. Even thus--even thus--leaving the land; but not, like that swan, to return at another season. Pabo knelt on that stone. He put his hand to his brow; it was wet with cold drops, just as the herbage, as the moss, were being also studded with crystal condensations. He prayed, turning his eyes to the sunlight that touched the heights of the west; prayed till the ray was withdrawn, and the mountain-head was silvery and no longer golden. Then, strengthened in spirit, he left the block and resumed his course. Without telling Howel whither he would betake himself, Pabo had agreed with him on a means of intercommunication in case of emergency. Upon the stone of Cynwyl, Howel was to place one rounded water-worn pebble as a token to flee farther into the depths of the mountains, whereas two stones were to indicate a recall to Caio. In like manner was Pabo to express his wants, should any arise. The refugee now ascended the steep mountain flank, penetrating farther into the wilderness, till at last he reached some fangs of rock, under which was a rude habitation constructed of stones put together without mortar, the interstices stopped with clay and moss. It leaned against the rock, which constituted one wall of the habitation, and against which rested the rafters of the roof. A furrow had been cut in the rock, horizontally, so as to intercept the rain that ran down the face and divert it on to the incline of the roof. The door was unfastened and was swaying on its hinges in the wind with creak and groan. Pabo entered, and was in the cell of the deceased hermit, in which the old man had expended nearly half his life. A small but unfailing spring oozed from the foot of the rocks, as Pabo was aware, a few paces below the hermitage. The habitation was certain not to be deficient in supplies of food, and on searching Pabo found a store of grain, a heap of roots, and a quern. There was a hearth on which he might bake cakes, and he found the anchorite's tinder, flint and steel. The day had by this time closed in, and Pabo at once endeavored to light a fire. He had been heated with the steep ascent, but this warmth was passing away, and he felt chilled. At this height the air was colder and the wind keener. There were sticks and dry heather and fern near the hearth, but Pabo failed in all his efforts to kindle a blaze. Sparks flew from the flint, but would not ignite the spongy fungus that served as tinder. It had lain too many days on a stone, and had become damp. After fruitless attempts, Pabo placed the amadou in his bosom, in hopes of drying it by the heat of his body, and drew the hermit's blanket over his shoulders as he seated himself on the bed, which was but a board. All was now dark within. The window was but a slit in the wall, and was unglazed. The cabin was drafty, for there was not merely the window by which the wind could enter, but the door as well was but imperfectly closed, and in the roof was the smoke-hole. What a life the hermit must have led in this remote spot! Pabo might have considered that now, feeling this experience, but, indeed, his mind was too fully occupied with his own troubles to give a thought to those of another. Shivering under the blanket, that seemed to have no warmth in it, he leaned his brow in his hand, and mused on the dangers, distresses, that menaced his tribe, his race, his wife, and which he was powerless to avert. Prince Griffith might raise the standard and rouse to arms, but it was in vain for Pabo to hug himself in the hope of success and freedom for his people by this means. The north of Wales was controlled by a king who had violated the rights of hospitality and betrayed his own kindred. Thus, all Cambria would not rise as one man, and what could one half of the nation do against the enormous power of all England? Do? The hope of the young and the sanguine, and the despair of the old and experienced, could lead them to nothing else but either to retreat among the mountains and there die of hunger and cold, or perish gloriously sword in hand on the battlefield. Pabo lifted his head, and looked through the gap in the thatch. A cold star was twinkling aloft. A twig of heather, got free from its bands, was blown by the night wind to and fro over the smoke-hole, across the star now brushing it out, then revealing it again. The cell was not drafty only, it was also damp. Pabo felt the hearth. It was quite cold. Several days had elapsed since the last sparks on it had expired. The wind moaned among the rocks, sighed at the window, and piped through the crevices about the door. A snoring owl began its monotonous call. Where it was Pabo could not detect. The sound came now from this side then from that, and next was behind him. It was precisely as though a man--he could not say whether without or within--were in deep stertorous sleep. Again he endeavored to strike a light and kindle a fire. Sparks he could elicit, that was all. The fungus refused to ignite. The cold, the damp, ate into the marrow of his bones. He collected a handful of barley-grains and chewed them, but they proved little satisfying to hunger. Then he went forth. He must exercise his limbs to prevent them from becoming stiff, must circulate his blood and prevent it from coagulating with frost. He would walk along the mountain crest to where, over the southern edge, he could look down on Caio, on his lost home, on where was his wife--not sleeping, he knew she was not that, but thinking of him. Wondrous, past expression, is that link of love that binds the man and his wife. Never was a truer word spoken than that which pronounced them to be no more twain, but one flesh. The mother parted from her nursling knows, feels in her breast, in every fiber of her being, when her child is weeping and will not be comforted, though parted from it by miles; an unendurable yearning comes over her to hurry to the wailing infant, to clasp it to her heart and kiss away its tears. And something akin to this is that mysterious tie that holds together the man and his wife. They cannot live an individual life. He carries the wife with him wherever he be, thinks, feels with her, is conscious of a double existence fused into a unity; and what is true of the husband is true also of the wife. It was now with Pabo as though he were irresistibly drawn in the direction of Caio, where he knew that Morwen was with tears on her cheeks, her gentle, suffering heart full of him and his desolation and banishment. The night was clear, there was actually not much wind; but autumn rawness was in the air. To the west still hung a dying halo, very faint, and the ground, covered with short grass, was dimly white where pearled with dew, each pearl catching something of the starlight from above. But away, to the south, was a lurid glow, against which the rounded head of Mallaen stood out as ink. Pabo thrust on his way, running when he could, and anon stumbling over plots of gorse or among stones. At length he came out upon the brow, Bronffin, and looked down into the broad basin of Caio. Below him was a fire. It had burned itself out, and lay a bed of glowing cinders, with smoke curling above it, lighted and turned red by the reflection of the fire below. Now and then a lambent flame sprang up, and then died away again. The sound of voices came up from beneath: it was pleasant to Pabo to hear voices, but in his heart was unutterable pain. He looked down on the glowing ruins of his presbytery--where he had lived and been so happy. Hour after hour he sat on the mountain-edge, watching the slowly contracting and fading glow, hearing the sounds of life gradually die away. Then above the range to the left rose the moon, and silvered the white ribbon of the Sarn Helen, the paved road of the old Queen of British race who had married the Roman Emperor Maxentius, and illumined the haze that hung over the river-beds, and far away behind Pen-y-ddinas formed a cloud over the two tarns occupying the bottom of the valley. But all the while Pabo looked only at one and then at another point--this, the fiery reek of his home, that a spot whence shone a small and feeble light--the house of Howel the Tall, beneath whose roof watched and wept his dearest treasure, Morwen. When midnight was overpassed, and none stirred, then did Pabo descend from the heights and approach the ashes of his home. At the glowing embers he dried the tinder. Then he caught up a smoldering brand, turned and reascended the mountain, with the fire from his ruined hearth wherewith to kindle that in his hovel of refuge. CHAPTER XI A MIRACLE Had one been on Bronffin, the mountain-brow overhanging Caio, on the following morning, strange would have been the scene witnessed. Those of the inhabitants who had not fled were engaged in the obsequies of the hermit who had been burned when the presbytery took fire, and whose charred remains had been extricated from the ruins. The corpse was borne on a bier covered with a white sheet; and men and women accompanied, chanting an undulating wail-like dirge, while the priest from Llansawel--a daughter church--preceded the body. Simultaneously arrived a number of armed men, retainers of the bishop, under the command of his brother, with the chaplain Cadell in their midst, accompanied by the Dean of Llandeilo and his deacon. Rogier had recovered the use of his arm, which was, however, still somewhat stiff in the joint from the blow he had received. Their arrival disturbed the procession, for the newcomers rode through the train of wailers manifesting supreme indifference with regard to the proceedings. "Put down yon bier!" ordered Rogier; and then, because none comprehended his words, he made imperious gestures that could not be mistaken. He was obeyed by the bearers, and the mourners parted and stood back, while the armed men filled in about the chaplain and their leader. Cadell rose in his stirrups and called in Welsh for silence, that he might be heard. Then, addressing the inhabitants in loud tones, he said: "It is well that ye are present, assembled, without my having to call you together. Ye shall hear what has been decreed. Proceed with the interment of the dead after that. Draw around and give ear." All obeyed, though slowly, reluctantly. When Cadell saw that all those of Caio who were gathered to the funeral were within earshot and attention, he said, speaking articulately, in sharp, distinct sentences, raising himself in his stirrups: "His fatherliness, the Bishop of St. David's, by the grace of God and the favor of Henry King of England and Lord Paramount over Wales, in consideration of the disloyal and irreligious conduct of the people inhabiting the so-called Sanctuary of David in Caio, but forming an integral portion of the patrimony of the see when he, their father and their lord, visited the place but recently, and above all, because the Archpriest did resist him, and further, did not shun to lift up his sacrilegious hand against him, his father in God, and inasmuch as in the divine law communicated to man from Sinai, it is commanded that he who smiteth his father shall surely be put to death, therefore he, their Lord and Bishop, in exercise of his just and legal rights, doth require _imprimis_: That the said Archpriest, Pabo by name, shall surrender his person to be tried and sentenced by the Court ecclesiastical, then to be handed over to the secular court for execution; and, further, that he be esteemed _ipso facto_ and from this present inhibited from the discharge of any sacred office, and shall be destituted of all and singular benefices that he may hold in the Menevian diocese, and that he be formally degraded from his sacerdotal character, by virtue of the authority hereby committed to me." Then Howel the Tall stood forth, and approaching the chaplain, said, "Good master Cadell, this matter hath already been decided and taken out of the province of thy master. Pabo, Archpriest and hereditary chieftain of the tribe of Caio, hath, as saith the Scripture, escaped out of the snare of the fowler. We are even now engaged in the celebration of his obsequies. You have interrupted us as we were about to commit his ashes to the ground." "How so!" exclaimed the chaplain, taken aback. "Pabo is not dead?" "Look around thee," answered Howel. "Behold how that fire hath destroyed the presbytery and at the same time hath consumed him who lay therein." "It was the judgment of God!" cried Cadell. "The manifest judgment of God against the man who lifted his hand against his spiritual father. Did the lightning flash from heaven to slay him?" "That I cannot affirm," said Howel. "Heaven has manifestly and miraculously interposed," said the chaplain, dismounting. In a few words he informed his attendants of what had taken place. "It is to be regretted," said Rogier. "I had hoped to carry a fagot, wherewith to roast him." "It soundeth passing strange," said another. "It is a miracle," persisted Cadell. "God is with us and against those who resist the bishop. This shall be everywhere proclaimed." "I do not see that as a miracle it was necessary," said Rogier. "For we would have burnt him all the same." "But," said the chaplain, "it was the will of Heaven to reveal that it is wroth with this people, and is on our side." Rogier shrugged one shoulder. "I will have a look at him and satisfy myself," said he, strode to the bier, and plucked aside the sheet. All recoiled at the object revealed--a human being burnt to a cinder. "By the soul of the Conqueror," said the bishop's brother, "methought he had been a man of more inches." "He is shrunken with the fire," explained the chaplain. "I would I could be certain it is he," said Rogier. "We will subject them to an oath," said Cadell. "If it be he, then, assuredly, his wife--that woman whom he called his wife--will not be far away." "She is the chief mourner," said Howel. Then he took Morwen by the hand and led her forward. "She is here." "Ah, ha! my pretty wench!" said Rogier, "praise Heaven that thou art released from thy leman. We may find thee a better man, and not one that wears the cassock." "Come hither," said the chaplain; "I desire thee to take the strictest and most solemn oath that he who there lieth charred as a burned log is none other than Pabo the Archpriest, whom thou didst call thy husband. What be the chiefest relics here?" he asked, looking round. "We have but the staff of Cynwyl; but that is mighty and greatly resorted to," said Howel. "Where is it? Bring it hither." "I am the custodian of the relic," said Morgan ap David. "But it is not customary to produce it unless it be attended and treated with all reverence." "Take with you whom you will," said the chaplain impatiently. "Faugh! cast again the pall over it." Morgan chose Howel and another, and they departed towards the church. After a few moments' delay they returned, Morgan in the center, bearing the staff. "Lay it on the corpse," said Cadell. "Have a care," said Howel, with a curve in the lip. "That staff has been known to have raised the dead to life again." "It were well it did so now," laughed Rogier, when Cadell, somewhat dashed, interpreted what had been said. "I' faith, I would be glad to have a hand in the second burning of him." "Hath it really done so?" asked the chaplain. "There was Ewan, the son of Morgan ap Rees, who fell from a tree," said Howel, "and he lay stone dead. Then, full of faith, his mother cried out for the staff of Cynwyl, and lo! when it was laid on the lad he opened his eyes and spoke." "Hold it above the body," said the chaplain, "one at each end, so as not to touch, and in such wise let the woman take oath." Again was the linen sheet removed, and now Morgan and an attendant sacristan held the relic--one at the head, the other at the foot--that it was above the body, yet not touching it; only the shadow fell upon it. "Go thrice round it," enjoined Morgan, signing with his head to Morwen; "thrice from left to right, with the sun, then lay thine hand on the staff and take the required oath." Morwen shuddered, but she obeyed, though pale as death. When she had made the third circuit she was forced, shrinking and with averted head, to approach the dead man. Then Cadell said in a loud voice, "Lay thy hand thereon and say these words: 'I take oath before God and Cynwyl, before the saints and angels in heaven, in the face of sun and moon and all men here present, that this is the dead body of Pabo, late Archpriest--whom thou didst esteem as thy husband.'" Then Morwen repeated, mechanically, the first words of adjuration, but added, in place of what Cadell had recited: "I take oath that if this be not Pabo, the Archpriest, and my husband, I know not where he is." "That sufficeth," said Cadell. "And now," he spoke aloud, turning to the assistants, "seeing that this man hath manifestly died by the just judgment of God, and to the notable confirmation of the authority of Bernard, the bishop, I declare that he be treated as one excommunicate, and be not buried within consecrated ground." The people of Caio murmured and looked at one another disconcerted. Then Howel went among them and whispered a few words. Cadell did not observe him; he was intent on speaking once more. That he might be the better heard, he remounted his horse. "Inhabitants of the sanctuary and of the tribe of Caio," said he, in the same distinct and sharp tones as before. "I have something further to add. _Secundo_: Inasmuch as the Archpriest Pabo hath manifestly perished by the interposition of Heaven, thus obviating his deposition as purposed, now his fatherliness, Bernard, Bishop of Menevia, is graciously pleased to nominate and present me, unworthy, to fill his room; in token whereof, the Dean of Llandeilo accompanies, so as straightway to induct me into all the offices, benefices, spirituals that were possessed by Pabo, the late Archpriest. _Tertio_: And inasmuch as the people of the territory and tribe of Caio did resist and mutinously assail the servants of the bishop, he imposes on them a fine of a mark in silver per house, great and small, to be collected and paid within one month from this day, until which time his attendants now accompanying me shall have free quarters and entertainment for themselves and their beasts among you." His words filled all with dismay. None answered. Then said Rogier laughingly: "I' faith, while Providence punished the late Archpriest, it did not mightily favor the incomer, for it hath consumed his presbytery." "The hall still standeth," said Cadell sternly. "Are we to question the ways of Heaven!" "'Ods life," pursued Rogier mockingly, "who would ever have considered my brother a saint, and one to be sustained by miracles; and he, but the other day, as great a Jew in grinding the peasants, and wringing the blood from their noses, as any son of Abraham. By the paunch of the Conqueror--and taking tithe and toll therefrom to his own benefit! Well! If Heaven be not nice in whom it proclaims as saints. There is good hope for such as me." Somewhat later, the new Archpriest indited the following letter to his ecclesiastical superior-- "Cadell, Archpriest of Caio, to Bernard, Lord Bishop of St. David's, sendeth humbly greeting, with much filial affection. "This is to inform your fatherliness that it has pleasured Heaven--which is wondrous in the saints, to vindicate thy sanctity in a very special and marvelous manner. It is now many hundred years ago since David, the holy, founded the bishopric of Menevia, and primacy over all Cambria; and it is said he was thereto ordained and appointed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Now it is a notable fact that there was a certain Boia, a chief of the land, who mightily opposed him. Then fell fire from Heaven in the night, and consumed Boia and his wife and all that he had, in witness thereto remaineth the Cleggyr Voia, his ruined and burnt castle, unto this day. Since then many have been the bishops who have sat in the seat of David, and many also have been those who have opposed them. The Northmen have slain some, and have expelled others, yet did not Heaven interfere in their behalf. Nevertheless, no sooner art thou, Bernard, appointed and consecrated to this see, than have thy right and thy holiness been vindicated miraculously in the sight of all. For the Archpriest and chief Pabo did oppose thee even as did Boia oppose David. And each was smitten in the same way. Manifestly in the sight of all men, fire fell from Heaven and consumed him who sacrilegiously lifted his hand against thee, him and all his house, whereof we are witnesses--to wit, thy brother Rogier, the Dean of Llandeilo, and all thy servants and the people of Caio, as well as my unworthy self, thy servant, who beheld him--the transgressor--burned as a charred log, blasted by Heaven. And forasmuch as he perished by the judgment of God, I have bidden give to him but the burial of an ass. "Be this known unto all men, and it will mightily extend the fear of thee, and dissuade men from temerariously resisting thy just authority, whether in the diocese or throughout Wales." When the chaplain had written this, as he sealed it, he said to Rogier, "It is so wonderful, he will hardly credit it." "My good Cadell," replied the Norman adventurer, "I know my brother better even than do you. He is so inordinately vain that he would believe if you told him that the sun and moon had bowed down to worship him. But I--whether I believe this, that is another matter." "But I believe it--that I solemnly affirm," said Cadell. "And, further, do you not recollect that his fatherliness, the Bishop, did threaten as much, when he was here, and the Archpriest resisted him? Did he not say, can I not send lightning to consume thee?--and lo! it has fallen, even as he said." CHAPTER XII GORONWY The Blessed Valley, which for nearly five hundred years had enjoyed the "Peace of Dewi," which had remained untroubled in the midst of the most violent commotions, was now a prey to the spoiler. Throughout the whole basin all was trouble. The armed men, servants of the bishop, for the most part Normans or Englishmen, but some Welshmen who had taken service under the oppressors of their countrymen, were dispersed through the district. Ostensibly they were engaged in numbering the hearths, for the exaction of the fine, but with this they did not content themselves. They entered every house, and conducted themselves therein as masters, aware that they were not likely to be called to order for the grossest outrages by either Rogier or by the bishop. They demanded food and drink, they ransacked the habitations and plundered them. They wasted what they could not consume, and destroyed what they did not take. The men they treated with contumely and the women with insult. A farmer who had a _hafod_, a summer byre, as well as a _hendre_, a winter residence, must pay for both. The poorest squatter would be forced to contribute as well as the wealthiest proprietor. "A mark of silver for a house," said Rogier; "settle it among you how the money is to be extracted. The rich will pay for the poor. In a fortnight we shall have every hearth registered." One wretched man, whose hovel had been broken into, set fire to it. "This," said he, "shall not be counted. I have no house now, no roof, no hearth. Therefore it shall not be reckoned in." "It was recorded before you set it in flames," was the answer. "It pays all the same." A father attempting to defend his daughter against one of the dissolute soldiers received a blow on his head which cut it open and cast him senseless on the ground. He lay in a precarious condition; and the girl had been carried off. A lone woman, aged, and a widow dependent on the charity of the neighbors, through their dispersion, or through forgetfulness, had died in solitude, by starvation. Several well to-do men, landowners, in attempting to resist the plunderers had been unmercifully beaten. It was an open secret that Rogier was seeking in all directions for the beautiful Morwen; but Tall Howel had the cunning to evade his search, by moving her about from house to house. On Sunday, with the exception of some of the soldiers, hardly any natives appeared in the church. The few who did show were some old women. It transpired that the inhabitants of the Caio district had gone for their religious duties to some of the chapels, of which there were at least six, scattered over the territory of the tribe, where they had been ministered to by the assistant clergy. When this came to Cadell's ears, he had his horse saddled, and attended by some of the men-at-arms, rode to the residences of these vicars, dismissed them from their offices, and had them removed by the bishop's retainers and thrust over the borders, with a threat of imprisonment should they return. On the following Sunday the church of Cynwyl was as deserted as before. "He has deprived us of our pastors," said the people. "He cannot rob us of our God." Then as Cadell learned that they had assembled in the chapels, and had united in prayer under the conduct of one of the elders, he rode round again, and had the roofs of these chapels removed. "This is better," said the people. "There is naught now betwixt us and God. He will hear us the readier." The day arrived for the benediction of the waters of the Annell. Then it transpired that the rod of Cynwyl had been abstracted from the church. In a rage, Cadell sent for the hereditary custodian. Morgan appeared with imperturbable face. "Ah!" said he, "this comes of having here such godless rascals as you have, foreigners who respect nothing human and divine. You brought forth the staff to lay it on the body--and this before all eyes. These rapacious men saw that there was gold on the case, and that stones of price were encrusted therein. Had they stolen the case and left the wooden staff, it would not have mattered greatly. But what to them are the merits of one of our great saints? They regard them not." Rogier now considered that it were well to hasten matters to a conclusion. He accordingly sent round messengers to every principal farmhouse to summon a meeting of the elders in the council-house, that he might know whether they were ready with the fine, and what measures they had taken to raise it. Cadell was dissatisfied and uneasy. He sat ruminating over the fire. The hall that had escaped being burnt had been accommodated for his occupation without much difficulty, as such articles as were needed to furnish it were requisitioned without scruple from the householders of Caio. But Cadell was discontented. In a few days the bishop's servants, who had brought him to the place and had seen him there installed, would be withdrawn. Then he would be left alone in the midst of a hostile and incensed population. Although they might not overtly resist him, they would be able in a thousand ways to make his residence among them unendurable. He might wring from them their ecclesiastical dues, but would be unable to compel those many services, small in themselves, which go to make life tolerable. He had already encountered reluctance to furnish him with fuel, to supply him with meal and with milk, to fetch and to carry, to cook and to scour. To get nothing done save by the exercise of threats was unpleasant when he was able to call to his aid the military force placed at his disposal; when, however, that force was withdrawn, the situation would be unendurable. If there had been a party, however small, in the place that favored the English, he would have been content; but to be the sole representative of the foreign tyranny, political as well as ecclesiastical, under which the people writhed, was beyond his strength. And the situation was aggravated by the fact that he was himself a Welshman, and was therefore regarded with double measure of animosity as a renegade. He was uneasy, as well, on another head. Rogier had let drop a hint that his brother intended to reduce the Archpriesthood of Caio to a mere vicariate on small tithe, and to appropriate to himself the great tithe with the object of eventually endowing therewith a monastery in the basin of the Cothi, probably by the tarns at the southern end. "We shall never crush the spirit out of this people," said Rogier, "unless we plant a castle on Pen-y-ddinas, or squat an abbey by those natural fishponds at Talley." If this were done, then he, Cadell, would have been inadequately repaid for the vexations and discomforts he would be forced to endure. The troop sent with him, Cadell could not but see, had done their utmost to roughen his path. They had exasperated the people beyond endurance. As he sat thus musing a young man entered cautiously, looked around, and sidled towards him. He was deformed. The chaplain looked up and asked what he required. "I have come for a talk," said the visitor. "May I sit? I know this hall well; it belonged to my father. I am Goronwy, son of the former Archpriest Ewan or John, as you please to call him." Cadell signed to a seat. He was not ill-pleased at a distraction from his unpleasant thoughts, and he was not a little gratified to find a man of the place ready to approach him without apparent animosity or suspicion. "You do not appear to me to have a pleasant place," pursued Goronwy. "I saw a beetle once enter a hive. The bees fell on him, and in spite of his hardness, stung him to death, and after that built a cairn of wax over him. There he lay all the summer, and every bee that entered or left the hive trampled on the mound of wax that covered their enemy." "Their stings shall be plucked out," said Cadell. "Aye, but you cannot force them to furnish you with honey, nor prevent them from entombing you in wax. They will do it--imperceptibly, and tread you underfoot at the last." Cadell said nothing to this; he muttered angrily and contemptuously, and drew back from the fire to look at his visitor. A lad with a long face, keen, beady eyes, restless and cunning, long arms, and large white hands. His body was misshapen and short, but his limbs disproportionately long. "I should have been Archpriest here," pursued he; "but because I am not straight as a wand, they rejected me. In your Latin Church, are they as particular on this point?" "We can dispense with most rules--if there be good reason for it." "Do you think, in the event of your getting tired of being here, among those who do not love you, that you could make room for me?" "For you!" Cadell stared. "Aye! I ought to have been chief here, only they passed me over for Pabo. I have a hereditary right to be both chief and priest in Caio." Then Cadell laughed. "You are a misshapen fool," he said; "dost think that Bishop Bernard would give thee such a place as this--to foment rebellion against him?" "He might give it to me, if I undertook to do him a great service, and to bring the place under his feet." "What service could such as you render?" "Would not that be a service to bring all Caio into subjection. See! I doubt not that a good fat prebend would be more to your liking than this lost valley among the mountains, traversed by the Sarn Helen alone, which was a road frequented once when the Romans were here, and the gold-mines were worked, and Loventum was a city. But now--it is naught. Few use it." Cadell mused on this astonishing proposal. It was quite true. He would rather far be a canon at St. David's, with nothing to do, than be stationed here in this lonely nook surrounded by enemies. Caio, however, with Llansawel and Pumpsaint, its daughter benefices, was a rich holding, and not to be sacrificed except for something better. Yet he feared the intentions of Bernard with regard to it. "You see," continued Goronwy, "that the people are so maddened at what has been done and so bitterly opposed to you that were I appointed in your room----" "But you are not a priest." "Was not Bernard pitchforked into the priesthood and episcopate in one day? Could not something of the sort be done with me?" Again Cadell was silent. Goronwy suffered him to brood over the proposal. "If you were to leave for something better they would hail me as one of themselves, and their rightful chief. And I would repay the bishop and you for doing it." Still Cadell did not speak. Then Goronwy drew nearer to him. His small eyes contracted and his thin lips became pointed as he said, "Pabo is not dead." Cadell started. "Dead! I know he is dead! I saw his body!" Goronwy broke into a mocking laugh. "I saw him--charred; and I had him buried under a dungheap outside the church garth, as befitted one struck down by the judgment of Heaven." "Pabo is not dead," repeated Goronwy jeeringly. "He is dead. It was a manifest miracle. I have told the bishop of it. It would spoil everything if, after I had announced it, he were found not to be dead." "Yes," said the young man, rubbing his large hands together, "it would spoil everything." Then, seized by a sudden terror, Cadell exclaimed, "It was threatened--the staff of Cynwyl would raise the dead. It has done it before." "Oh! the staff of Cynwyl had naught to do with it." "Merciful heavens, angels and saints protect me! If that burned lump is raised, and walks, and were to come here, and--come to me when in bed----!" In the horror of the thought, Cadell was unable to conclude the sentence. But he broke forth: "It is not so. If he be alive, he is no longer under the dungheap where he was laid. I will go see." "Go, by all means," said Goronwy, and laughed immoderately. "Tell me more. You know more." "Nay, go and see. I will tell nothing further till I have a written and sealed promise from the bishop that he will appoint me Archpriest of Caio." Cadell ran from the hall. Filled with terror, he got together some of the men of the bishop, and they searched where the burnt body had been laid. It was not there. Back to the hall came the chaplain. Goronwy still sat over the fire warming and then folding and unfolding his hands. "He is gone. He is not where we buried him," gasped Cadell. "Oh, he is gone! I told you Pabo was alive. He is walking to and fro--when the moon shines you may see him. When it is dark he will come on you unawares, from behind, and seize you." Cadell cowered in alarm. "I would to Heaven I were out of this place!" he gasped. "Now, mark you," said Goronwy. "Get the promise of this Archpriesthood for me, and I will deliver Pabo, risen from the dead, into your hands, and, if he desire it also, Morwen into the arms of Rogier." CHAPTER XIII IT MUST BE MAINTAINED Rogier broke into a roar of laughter, when Cadell, with white face and in agitated voice, told him that Pabo was not dead. "'Sdeath!" he exclaimed. "I never quite believed that he was." "Not that he was dead?" cried the chaplain. "Did you ever see a man burnt as black as a coal and live after it?" "That was not he. I doubted it then." "It must have been he. He was buried as a dog in a dungheap, and"--Cadell lowered his voice--"he is no longer there." "Because these fellows here have removed the body and laid it in consecrated ground. It was a trick played on us, clever in its way, though I was not wholly convinced. Now I shall let them understand what it is to play jokes with me. I can joke as well." "But what do you mean, Rogier?" "That these Welsh rogues have endeavored to make us believe that the old Archpriest is dead, so that our vengeance might be disarmed and he allowed to escape. He is in hiding somewhere. Where is that fellow who informed you?" "Nothing further is to be got out of him." "We shall see." "I pray you desist. He may be useful to us; but it must not be suspected that he is in treaty with us." "There is some reason in this. I shall find out without his aid." "Do nothing till I have seen the bishop. He will be very distressed--angry. For I assured him that a miracle had been wrought. It was such an important miracle. It showed to all that Heaven was on our side." Rogier laughed. "We can cut and carve for ourselves without the help of miracles," said he. "I shall go at once," said Cadell; "the bishop must be communicated with immediately--and his pleasure known." Bernard of St. David's was at his castle of Llawhaden, near Narberth. He was there near his Norman friends and supporters. He had no relish for banishment to the bare and remote corner of Pembrokeshire stretching as a hand into the sea, as though an appeal from Wales to Ireland for assistance. Moreover, Bernard was by no means assured that his presence where was the throne would be acceptable, and that it might not provoke some second popular commotion which would cost him a further loss of teeth. Llawhaden lay in a district well occupied by Norman soldiers and Flemish settlers. The residence there was commodious in a well-wooded and fertile district. The castle was strong, secure against surprises, built by architect and masons imported from Normandy, as were all those constructed by the conquerors throughout the South of Wales. In Llawhaden Bernard lived like a temporal baron, surrounded by fighting men, and never going abroad without his military retinue. It was said that he ever wore a fine steel-chain coat of mail under his woolen ecclesiastical habit. In his kitchen, as about his person, no native was suffered to serve, so suspicious was he lest an attempt should be made on his life, by poison or by dagger. Happily, he was not required to perform any ecclesiastical functions, for he was profoundly ignorant of these; but the situation was such that he was not required to ordain clergy or consecrate churches. Clergy were not lacking. The ne'er-do-weels of England, men who were for their immorality or crimes forced to leave their cures, hasted to Wales, where they readily found preferment, as the great object in view with the invaders was to dispossess the natives of their land and of their churches. "So you are here," said the bishop. He spoke with inconvenience, as one front tooth had been knocked out and another broken. Unless he drew down his upper lip, his words issued from his mouth indistinctly, accompanied by a disagreeable hiss. "Hah!--have the bumpkins paid up so readily that you are here with the money? How many marks have they had to disgorge?" "Your fatherliness," said the chaplain, "I have brought nothing with me save unsatisfactory tidings." "What! They will not pay?" "They can be made to find the silver," said Cadell; "that I do not doubt. For centuries those men of Caio have prospered and have hoarded. Other lands have been wasted, not theirs; other stores pillaged, theirs have been untouched." "It is well. They will bear further squeezing. But what ails thee? Thou lookest as though thou hadst bitten into a crab-apple." "I have come touching the miracle." "Ah! to be sure--the miracle. I have sent despatches containing complete accounts thereof to his Majesty King Henry, and to my late gracious mistress, the Queen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who consecrated me at Westminster, looked as sour as do you. He would fain have had the consent of the Pope, as father of Christendom, but the King would brook no delay, and the Archbishop was not so stubborn as to hold out--glad in this, to get a bishop of St. David's to swear submission to the stool of Augustine. I have sent him as well a narrative of the miracle; it will salve his conscience to see that Heaven is manifestly with me. Moreover, I have had my crow over Urban of Llandaff. _He_ has not a miracle to boast of to bolster up his authority." "My gracious master and lord, I grieve to have to assure you that there has been some mistake in the matter for which I am in no way blameworthy." "How a mistake?" asked Bernard testily. "There has been no miracle." "No miracle! But there has. I have it in your own handwriting." "I wrote under a misapprehension." "Misapprehension, you Welsh hound! You misapprehend your man, if you think I will allow you to retract in this matter." "I really do not know what to say, for I do not know what to think about the circumstance. It is, I fear, certain that Pabo lives." "Pabo lives! Why you saw him burnt to a coal! I have your written testimony. You invoked the witness of the Dean of Llandeilo, and he has formally corroborated it. I have it under his hand. You declared that there were hundreds who could bear testimony to the same." "Lord Bishop, I cannot now say what is the truth. It is certain that your brother and we all were shown the charred relics of a man, whom the inhabitants of Caio were proceeding to inter with the rites of religion, as their late Archpriest. When I learned that he had died by fire, by the judgment of God, then I stayed the ceremony, and bade that his body should be laid under a dungheap." "You did well. It is there still." "It is not, my Lord Bishop." "Do you mean to declare that he is risen from his grave?" "Your brother is of opinion that we have been deceived by the tribesmen of Caio, so as to make us suppose that this their Archpriest and chief was dead, and that he is now in concealment somewhere. He further saith that the people have secretly removed the dead man from the place where cast, and have laid him in the churchyard." "But--who can he have been?" "I know not." "And I care not," said the bishop. "Pabo was struck by fire from heaven, because he opposed me. Why when Ahaziah sent captains of fifty with their fifties against the prophet Elijah, did not lightning fall and consume them and their fifties twice? Is a ragged old prophet under the law of Moses to be served better than me, a high prelate under the Gospel? I see but too plainly, Cadell, you, being a Welshman, would rob me of the glory that appertains to me. What grounds have you for this preposterous assertion?" "There is a young man, the son of a former Archpriest, who has been slighted and overpassed, and has harbored resentment against Pabo. He came to me secretly and told me that we had been deceived--they used subtlety so as to be able the more effectually to conceal their chief from your just resentment." "I do not believe a word of it. I have written and sent certified testimonies that Pabo was burned by fire from Heaven. Where is this alleged Pabo?" "I know not. The young man I speak of is ready to assist us to secure him." "I do not want him. I want and will have my miracle. Did you not hear me? When I visited Caio, I said to Pabo that I would call down fire from Heaven upon his head. I take you to witness that you heard me." "But what, my dear master and lord, if he were to appear, and all men were to discover that there had been no miracle?" "I _will_ have my miracle," persisted Bernard in petulant tones. "I have gone too far with it to retract. Odds' life! I should become a laughing-stock all through Wales; and I know well the humor of his Majesty. Over his cups he would tell the tale and burst his sides with laughing; and he would cast it in the teeth of my gracious mistress, the Queen. I have gone too far--I will have my miracle. If there be a man who is going about calling himself Pabo the Archpriest, let him be arrested as an impostor." "There will be talk concerning it." "There must be no noise. By the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, we must hush it up! As a minister of the Truth, a prelate of the Church, it is my sovereign duty to put down all imposition. Go now! I will even send a letter to Gerald of Windsor, who is at his castle of Carreg Cennen, in a retired vale away from every road, and from most habitations. I will bid him receive this false Pabo, and take such measures that the wretched impostor trouble us no more. As to my brother, bid him, if he lay hand on this dissembler and deceiver of men, this lying rogue, to get him away unnoticed, and with no noise, out of Caio, where he may be observed, and to send him under escort and by night to Gerald at Carreg Cennen." "It shall be so. And--with regard to the young man of whom I spake?" "That young man is a pest. Why should he have disturbed us with his suggestions?" "I venture to remind your fatherliness that he has but allowed us to see what is at work behind our backs. He tells us what is known to all men in Caio. Pabo might come forward at any time and show that he is alive." "That is true. What further about this young man?" "He offers to be the means of putting Pabo in our power." "And his price?" "In the event of your fatherliness transferring me to some other place of usefulness, such as a canonry at St. Davids, he protests that were he named to the Archpriesthood, he would in all ways subserve your interests. As he belongs to the chieftain's family, he would be well received by the people, and their suspicions disarmed." "Well, well, promise him anything--everything. I shall not be bound to performance. But hark you, Master Cadell! If this miracle be a little breathed upon, then you must contrive me another that cannot be upset by scoffers. Find me a paralytic or a blind person whom I may recover. That would go mightily to confirm the miracle of the burning of Pabo. And bid my brother act warily and proceed secretly, require him to treat this dissembler as what he is--a personator of a man who is on sure warrant dead, slain by the judgment of God." "I would fain have it under your hand and seal," said Cadell. "Your brother Rogier acts after his own will, and is not amenable to my advice." "You shall have it--also a letter to Gerald of Windsor. Get you away now. The epistles shall be ready by night, and you shall ride at cockcrow. And, mind you this, Master Cadell, if you lust after a canonry, provide me a new miracle. As to that already wrought, at all hazards it must be maintained. Not on my account. I am a poor worm, a nothing! But for policy, for the good of the Cause; lest these Welsh should come to crow over us." CHAPTER XIV THE FALL OF THE LOT The elders of the Caio tribe assembled as enjoined. Some few were not present, risking the anger of Rogier rather than appear before him. But the majority conceived it advisable to attend; and, in fact, a gathering of the notables was necessary for the apportionment of the fine that had to be raised. Although a mark in silver was what had to be exacted from each house, yet, as the majority of the inhabitants were too poor to pay such a sum, the richer would have to supplement the deficiency. The fine was imposed on the district as a whole. The amount was calculated by the hearths, but each householder was not expected to pay the same fixed sum. This was well understood, and the adjustment of the burden had to be considered in common. There was, so it was generally supposed, no exceptional cause for further uneasiness. The tax must be raised, and when the silver had been paid, then the valley would be rid of its intruders--with the exception of the renegade Cadell, forced on the tribe as its ecclesiastical chief. That Rogier had any fresh cause of complaint against the inhabitants was not suspected. They assembled accordingly, and entered the council-hall. It was not till all were within that the young men and women without were filled with alarm and suspicion by seeing the men-at-arms slowly, and in orderly fashion, close in and completely surround the edifice, and a strong detachment occupy the door. Rogier had remained outside, and gave directions. Presently he stepped within, attended by two men, one of whom served as his interpreter. The sun was shining, and it had painted a circle on the floor through the opening in the gable. Then the Norman took his sword, and drew a line in the dust with it from the president's seat to the doorway. "I give ye," said he, "till the sun hath crossed this line, wherein to discuss and arrange as to the payment of the fine. Till then--no one leaves the hall. After that--I have a further communication to make." The men looked in one another's faces and wondered what this meant. A fresh impost? They were not aware that occasion had been given for this; but who could be sure with one so rapacious as Rogier! It was the case of the Wolf and the Lamb in the fable. The Norman now left the court-house and sauntered about outside, speaking to his men, looking pryingly among those of the natives who, in an anxious, timorous crowd, remained in every avenue between the houses, ready at a threat to escape. After the lapse of approximately an hour the Norman reentered the hall and walked directly to the principal seat to take it. Then up started an aged man, and with vehement gesticulations and in words of excitement addressed him: "That seat is taken by none--save of the race of Cunedda. It belongs to our chief, who is of the blood royal. None other may occupy it." "I take it by the right of the sword," answered Rogier. "And let me see the man who will turn me out of it. I take it as deputy to my brother, the bishop." He laughed contemptuously, and let himself down on the chair. "Well," said he, looking round, "have you settled among yourselves as to the contribution? The round gold patch touches my line. I give you till it has passed across it to conclude that matter." Then Howel ap John stood up. "We have considered and apportioned the charges," he said, and his cunning eyes contracted. "Amongst ourselves we have arranged what each is to pay. But, inasmuch as we are nothing save tribesmen of our chief, and as the right over the land was at one time wholly his, but has since suffered curtailment, so that portions have become hereditary holdings of the chief men, yet as still the common lands, as well as the glebe and the domain, belong to the chief, it has seemed reasonable and just that he should bear one-third of the fine, and that this shall be levied on his land and homesteads, and two-thirds upon us." When this was translated to Rogier, he laughed aloud. "I see," said he, "the holder of the benefice is to bear a third. What will Cadell say to that?" "It is a decision according to equity," said Howel. "I care not. Cadell is not here to protect himself. So long as I have the silver to hand to the bishop, it is indifferent to me whether you bleed your own veins or fleece your pastor. He has been put in a fat pasture by my brother; it is right that he pay for it." "In two days the silver shall be brought here and weighed out." "It is well." Rogier looked at the sun-patch. "That is concluded; now tarry till the sun traverses the line. Then we will broach other business." All sat now in silence, their eyes on the soil, watching the patch of light as it traveled. The men of Caio were aware that the doorway was guarded. But what was threatened they could not conjecture. They had endured intolerable provocations without resistance. They were anxious at heart; their breasts contracted at the dread of fresh exactions. Some looked at Rogier to endeavor to read his purpose in his face; but his, as well as the countenances of his attendants, was expressionless. The sun-round passed on. Then a cloud obscured the light, a fine and fleecy cloud that would be gone shortly. All tarried in silence, breathless, fearing they knew not what--but expecting no good. Then the sun burst forth again, and the circle of fire appeared beyond the line. At once Rogier stood up. "You men of Caio, you have thought to deal with a fool, and to deceive me by your craft. But I know what has been done, and will make you to understand on whom ye have practised your devices. Pabo, the chief and Archpriest, is not dead. It was not he who was consumed in the presbytery. Ye played a stage mystery before our eyes to make us believe that he was dead, and that you were burying him. Pabo is alive and is among you, and you know where he is concealed." The interpreter was interrupted by outcries of, "We know not. If that were not he, we cannot say where he be. We found a man burned to a cinder. Were we in error in supposing him to be our chief? Show us that it was so!" Rogier remained unmoved by the clamor. "Ye are like a parcel of lying, quibbling women," he said. "Pabo is in hiding. Ye are all leagued together to save him. But have him from his lurking-den I will." "We cannot say where he is. There is not one of us who knows." "You will admit that he whom ye pretended to be Pabo was some other?" They looked doubtfully at each other. "We could not tell. The dead man was found in the ruins of the burnt house. We thought it was Pabo." "Ye did not. Ye contrived the device between you." "We will swear that we know not where he is. Bring forth the staff of Cynwyl." "The staff has been stolen. But I will not trust your oaths. Did not the wife of Pabo swear thereon?" Then Rogier laughed. "She was crafty as the rest of you, and deceived us in her oath. Nay, I will trust no oaths. I will place my reliance on something more secure. Hey! bring forward my bassinet!" At his order, one of the attendants went to the door and received a steel cap from a soldier without. "In this bassinet," said Rogier, "there are short willow twigs. There are more twigs than there are householders and notables here assembled. Of these twigs all but six are blank; but on half a dozen a death's head has been scored with a dagger point, rubbed in with black. He who draws such a figured twig shall be hung on the gallows, where is suspended your church bell--one to-day, a second to-morrow. On Sunday, being a sacred day, none; on Monday a third, on Tuesday a fourth, on Wednesday a fifth, on Thursday the sixth. And on Friday ye shall all assemble here once more, and again draw the lots. I shall hang one of you every day till Pabo be delivered up to me, alive." Then there broke forth cries, protests, entreaties; there were hands stretched towards the window through which the sun entered, in oath that the whereabouts of Pabo was not known; there were arms extended to Rogier in assurance that Pabo was actually dead. Some cried out that they had had no cognizance of any plot to deceive. Many folded their arms in sullen wrath or despair. Then Rogier lifted his sword and commanded silence. "No word spoken," said he, "will move me from my purpose. One thing can alone rob the gallows of its rich burden--the delivery of your late chief, Pabo." "We cannot do it. We know not where he is." "Then let justice take its course. This I will suffer. When each has drawn his lot from the cap, he shall bring it in his closed fist to me, and open it where I stand in the ray of sunlight. If he have an unmarked stick, he shall go forth by the door unmolested. But he who shall have the death's head in his hand shall tarry here. And when all six are selected, then will I suffer each in turn to be conducted to his home, there to bid farewell to his family, and so to dispose of his worldly affairs as pleaseth him. I will allow each one hour to effect this; then he will return hither. The first man who draws the bad lot shall be strung to the gallows to-day. If ye be wise men, he will be the only one who will go to make a chime of bells. If Pabo be delivered to me before noon to-morrow, then no second man shall hang. If he be given up on Monday before mid-day no third man shall swing. But--if you remain obstinate, I will go on hanging ye to the last man. Come, in your order, as ye sit; draw to the bassinet and take out your lot. I lay the steel cap on what ye call the seat of your chief." Then the old man advanced, he who had protested against the occupation of the chair, and said--"I am ready to die, whether in my bed or on the gibbet matters little to me. God grant that I be the man taken. My time at best is but short. Another year to me matters not a hair." He walked to the bassinet, without hesitation drew his lot, carried it to the Norman--who stood in the sun-ray--and unclosed his withered hand. In it was an unmarked stick. "Pass forth," said Rogier. "Nay," said the old man. "My son comes after me--let him draw." A tall, well-built man walked boldly to the cap, drew, and approached the sunbeam. "Open!" ordered Rogier. He held a marked stick. "On one side--food for the crows," said the Norman. Then the old man fell on his knees. "I beseech you take me and spare him. He has a young wife and a child. He has life before him, mine is all behind." "Away," ordered Rogier. "The lot decides--the judgment is with heaven, not with me." "Father," said the young man, "I am willing to die for my chief." Then followed several who went free, and escaped into the open air, where they drew long breaths, as though their lungs had been cramped within. The next who drew the death's head was a mean little man with pointed, foxy face and red hair. He fell into convulsions of terror, clung to Rogier, implored for life, promised to betray whatever he knew--only, unhappily, he did not know where Pabo was concealed, but undertook, if pardoned, to find out. The bishop's brother spurned him from him with disgust. Then came three with blanks and were sent outside. The third taken was Howel. "One can but die once," said he, and shrugged his shoulders. "My old woman will have to look out for a second husband. May he be better than the first." He stepped aside without the exhibition of much feeling, but avoided the whimpering wretch who had drawn the death's head before him. "Hah!" said Iorwerth the Smith, as he opened his palm and disclosed the marked twig, "I thought something would fall to me for striking that blow which disabled the captain's arm. Would to heaven I had aimed better and broken his skull! He did not know me, or I should have been hung before this." Singularly enough, the very next to draw was also one who drew an unlucky stick, and this was Morgan the Sacristan. "Since the Sanctuary of David has been invaded, and the wild beast of the field tramples on the vineyard, I care not; and now the secret of where is hid the rod of Cynwyl will perish with me." Next came a whole batch who drew blanks, and gladly escaped with their necks. The last to draw the death's head looked steadily at it, and said: "She is always right. I thought so; now I'm sure of it. My wife said to me, 'Do not go to the meeting?' I said, 'Why not?' Like a woman, she couldn't give a reason; but repeated, 'Do not go.' I have come, and now shall swing with the rest. It's a rough way of learning a lesson. And having learnt it--can no more practise it." CHAPTER XV TWO PEBBLES Tidings of the blow to be struck, reaching the hearts of many families--six only at first, but with prospect of more afterwards--had spread through the tribal region. Those who had drawn the unmarked sticks hurried to their homes, not tarrying to learn who were all the unfortunates; and, although relieved for the present were in fear lest they should be unfortunate at a subsequent drawing. All knew that Pabo was in concealment, and that his place of concealment was known to none, not even to his wife or to Howel. They had not a clue as to where he was. Some supposed that he had fled to the mountains of Brecknock, others to Cardigan; some, again, that he had attached himself to Griffith ap Rhys, who was traversing South Wales, stirring up disaffection and preparing for a general rising of the Welsh against their oppressors. Yet hardly half a dozen men desired that he should be taken, and thus free themselves from death. The great and heroic virtue of the Celt lies in his devotion to his chief, for whom he is ready at once to lay down his life. The hideous prospect that lay before the unfortunate people of Caio was one of illimited decimation. Would Rogier weary of his barbarous work? Would it avail to send a deputation to the bishop? It was doubtful whether the latter was not as hard of heart as his lay brother. Gwen, the wife of Howel, was as one stunned. She leaned with both hands against the wall of her house, her head drooping between them, with dry, glazed eyes, and for long speechless. Morwen was now in Howel's house. She had returned to it. She was pale, and quivering with emotion under the weight of great horror, unable to speak. Her eyes were fixed on the despairing woman, from whose lips issued a low moan, and whose bosom heaved with long-drawn, laborious breaths. Morwen was well aware what sacrifices the tribe was making and would have to make for her husband's safety, and this gave inexpressible pain to her. The moans of the poor woman cut her to the heart. At length, unable to endure it longer, she went to her, put her arms round her, and drew her to herself. Then, all at once, with a cry, the wife of Howel shook herself free, and found words-- "Monday! It is on Monday that he must die, and that is our thirtieth wedding-day? For all these years we have been together, as one soul, and it will tear the heart out of my body--and to be hung on the gallows--the shame, the loss--and Howel so clever, so shrewd! Where has been his wit that he could not get free? He always had a cunning above other men. And on our wedding-day!" She ran to a coffer and opened it, and drew forth a knitted garment, such as we should nowadays call a jersey. "See, see!" cried the wretched woman. "I have been fashioning this; a thought of him is knitted into every loop I have made, and I have kissed it--kissed it a thousand times because it was for him. He feels the cold in the long winters, and I made this for him that he might be warm, and wherever he was remember me, and bear my kisses and my finger-work about him. And he must die, and shiver, and be cold in the grave! Nay, shiver and be cold hanging on the gallows, and the cold winds sway him. He shall wear my knitted garment. They will let me pass to him, and I will draw it over him." Then in at the door came the old man, who had been left when his son was taken. He was supporting that son's wife, and at the same time was carrying her child, which she was incapable of sustaining. She was frantic with grief. "I have brought one sorrowful woman to another," said the old man. "This is Sheena. She must not see it. They are taking my son now to ----. Keep her here, she is mad. She will run there, and if she sees, she will die. For the child's sake, pity her, make her live--calm her." She had been allowed an hour with her husband in their house, and then the soldiers had led him away, bound his hands behind his back, and had conducted him towards the church. She had followed with the child, crying, plucking at her hair with the one free hand, thrusting from her the old man who would hold her back, striving to reach, to retain her husband, her eyes blinded with terror and tears, her limbs giving way under her. The five men confined within the court-house heard her piercing cries, her entreaties to be allowed once more to kiss her husband, her screams as she was repulsed by the guards. They shuddered and put their hands to their ears; but one, the foxfaced man, whose name was Madoc, burst into a torrent of curses and of blasphemy till Morgan the Sacristan went to him in reproof, and then the wretched man turned on him with imprecations. "Come now, man," said the smith, "why shouldst thou take on so frantically? We leave wives that we love and that love us; but thy old cat, good faith! I should esteem it a welcome release to be freed from her tongue and nails." On nearing the gallows, where stood Rogier, that captain ordered the removal of Sheena; and when she saw a ladder set up against the crosspiece that sustained the bell, her cries ceased, she reeled, and would have let the child drop had not her father-in-law caught it from her. "One kiss--one last kiss! I have forgot something to say--let him bless his child!" she entreated. Rogier hesitated and consented, on the condition that she should then be at once removed. Thereupon the desolate woman staggered to the foot of the gallows, threw her arms round her husband's neck; and the man who acted as executioner relaxed the rope that bound his wrists, that he might bring his hands before him and lay them on his infant's head. Then the death-doomed man raised his eyes to heaven and said, "The benediction and the strength of God and the help of our fathers David and Cynwyl be with thee, my son, and when thou art a man revenge thy father and thy wronged country." At once the cord was drawn again, and his hands rebound. The old man took his daughter-in-law in one arm whilst bearing the babe in the other, and seeing that consciousness was deserting Sheena, hurried her to the house of Howel. There, after a moment of dazed looking about her, she sank senseless on the floor. Morwen flew to her assistance, and Howel's wife somewhat rallied from her stupefaction. At that same moment in burst Angarad, the wife of foxfaced Madoc. "Where is she?" she shouted, her eyes glaring, her hair bristling with rage. "She is here--she--the wife of our chief. Are we all to be dragged to the gallows because of him? Is every woman to become a widow? He call himself a priest! Why, his Master gave His life for His sheep, and he--ours--fleeth and hideth his head, whilst those whom he should guard are being torn by the wolves." "Silence, woman!" exclaimed the old man wrathfully. "I joy that my son has given up his life to save his chief." "But I am not content to surrender my Madoc," yelled the beldame. "Let us have the hated Saxon or the worst Norman to rule over us, rather than one who skulks and dares not show his face. My Madoc will be hung to-morrow, as they have hung Sheena's man now. I have seen it. They pulled him up." "Be silent," shouted the old man, and tried to shut her mouth. "I will not be silent. I saw it all. They drew him up, and then a man sprang from the ladder upon his shoulders and stamped." A cry of agony from the wife of Howel, who flung out her hands, as before, against the wall, and stayed herself there. Sheena heard nothing--she was but returning to consciousness. "Why do you not bring him back?" asked the hag, facing Morwen with fists clenched, fangs exposed, and eyes glaring. "Why do you keep him hidden, that we all may be widows--and you be happy with your man? What shall I do without my Madoc? Who will support me? Am I young enough to maintain myself? Is the whole tribe to be dragged down, that you and your husband may live at ease and be merry?" "Woman," said Morwen, trembling, "I do not know where he is concealed." "Then find him, and let him come forward to save us all. Shame, I say, shame on him!--the false shepherd--the hireling--who fleeth and careth not for the sheep!" The rattle of arms was heard, and at the sound Morwen slipped out of the room into the inner apartment that she might not be seen. Immediately two men-at-arms entered, leading Howel between them. "He is granted one hour," said the man who could speak a few words of Welsh. "On Monday he dies." "Clear the room!" said the old man; and to the soldier: "Remove this frantic woman." He indicated Angarad; and he himself, with their assistance, drew her--swearing, struggling, spluttering with rage--from the house. Sheena remained where she had been laid--as yet barely conscious. Howel's wife dropped into her husband's arms, moaning, still powerless to weep. In the inner chamber, dimly lighted by a small window covered with bladder in place of glass, on a bed sat Morwen, with her hands clasped between her knees, looking despairingly before her. Every word of the cruel woman had cut her heart as the stab of an envenomed poignard. Did Pabo know what was being done at Caio? No--assuredly not. She who had read his thoughts and knew his heart was well aware that he would readily die himself rather than that any of his people should suffer. He knew nothing. They, with a rare exception only, would meet their fate, the men give their necks to the halter, the women submit to be made widows rather than that their master and chief should fall into the hands of his enemies. Brave, true, faithful hearts! But was it right that they should be called on to endure such sacrifices? She shuddered. What, would she have him taken and die an ignominious death? Him whom she loved better than any one--with a one, soul-filling love? Could she endure such a sacrifice as that? Then she heard the step of Howel coming to the door. He entered and was with her alone. "Morwen," said he, in a low voice, "I shall be able shortly to do no more for my dear chief. Should you ever see him again, tell him from us all--all but perhaps one who is beside himself with fear--that we die willingly. But with him I can no more communicate. That must be done by you. It is expedient that he should fly farther; search will be made everywhere for him. Where he is, that I know not, though I may have my suspicion. Do this--at nightfall mount the valley of the Annell till you come to the stone of Cynwyl." "The stone of Cynwyl," repeated Morwen mechanically. "Take a pebble out of the brook and place it upon the rock. That will be a sign that he is not safe, and must fly to other quarters." "What other tokens be there?" "Two pebbles was to be the sign that all was safe and he was to return. That is not the case at this present time. Remember, then--One pebble." "And two calls him hither?" "Two pebbles. But remember, One only." "Two pebbles," said Morwen, but so that none heard it: it was said to her own heart. CHAPTER XVI A SUMMONS The days spent on the mountain had not been as cheerless as that first night. The fire burned now continually on the hearth, the light peat smoke was dissipated at once by the wind, which was never still at the fall of the year at the altitude where was planted the hovel of the hermit. The supply of food was better than at first. One night Pabo had found a she-goat attached to a bush near the stone of Cynwyl; and he had taken her to his habitation, where she supplied him with milk. On another night he had found on a rock a rolled-up blanket, and had experienced the comfort at night of this additional covering. But no tidings whatever had reached him of what went on in Caio. This was satisfactory, and his anxiety for his flock abated. But he knew that the enemy was quartered in the valley, because no call had come to him to return to it. At nights he would steal along the mountain-top that he might, from Bronffin, look down on the sleeping valley, with its scattered farms and hamlets; and on Sunday morning he even ventured within hearing of the church bell, that he might in spirit unite with his flock in prayer. He concluded that one of the assistant priests from a chapelry under the great Church was ministering there in his stead. He knew that his people would be thinking of him, as he was of them. During the day he made long excursions to the north, among the wild wastes that stretched interminably away before his eyes, and offered him a region where he might lie hid should his present hiding-place be discovered. None could approach the hut unobserved, a long stretch of moor was commanded by it, and the rocks in the rear afforded means, should he observe an enemy approach, of getting away beyond their reach into the intricacies of the wilderness. At first Pabo was oppressed by the sense of loneliness. No human face was seen, no human voice heard. But this passed, and he became conscious of a calm coming over his troubled heart, and with it a sense of freedom from care and childlike happiness. The elevation at which he lived, the elasticity of the air, the brilliance of the light, unobstructed, as below, by mountains, tended towards this. Moreover, he was alone with Nature, that has an inspiriting effect on the heart, whilst at the same time tranquilizing the nerves--tranquilizing all the cares and worries bred of life among men. It was a delight to Pabo to wander through the heather to some brow that overhung the Ystrad Towy or the valley of the Cothi, and look down from his treeless altitude on the rolling masses of wood, now undergoing glorious change of color under the touch of autumn. Or else to venture into the higher, unoccupied mountain glens, where the rowan and the rose-bramble were scarlet with their berries, and there he seemed to be moving in the land of coral. It was a delight to observe the last flowers of the year, the few stray harebells that still hung and swayed in the air, the little ivy-leafed campanula by the water, the sturdy red robin, the gorse persistent in bloom. He gathered a few blossoms to adorn his wretched hovel, and in it they were as a smile. The birds were passing overhead, migrating south, yet the ring-ouzel was still there; the eagle and hawk spired aloft on their lookout for prey; the plover and curlew piped mournfully, and the owl hooted. The insects were retiring underground for the winter. Pabo had not hitherto noticed the phases of life around him, below that of man, now it broke on him as a wonder, and filled him with interest, to see a world on which hitherto he had not thought to direct his observation. There is no season in the year in which the lights are more varied and more beautiful than in autumn, the slant rays painting the rocks vermilion, glorifying the dying foliage, enhancing the color of every surviving flower. But the fall of the year is one in which Nature weeps and sighs over the prospect of death; and there came on Pabo days of blinding fog and streaming rain. Then he was condemned to remain within, occasionally looking forth into the whirls of drifting vapor, charged with a strange dank scent, or at the lines of descending water. He milked his goat, collected food for it, and heaped up his fire. Then it was that sad thoughts came over him, forebodings of ill; and he mused by his hearth, looking into the glow, listening to the moan of the wind or the drizzle of the rain, and the eternal drip, drip from the eaves. He had thus sat for hours one day, interrupting his meditations only by an occasional pace to the door to look out for a break in the weather, when there came upon him with a shock of surprise the recollection that there was more in the hermit's scroll than he had considered at first. Not much. He unfurled it, and beside the bequest of the hut, only these words were added: "For a commission look below my bed." What was the meaning of this? It was strange that till now Pabo had given no thought to these concluding words. Now he thrust the fire together, cast on some dry bunches of gorse that lit the interior with a golden light, and he drew the bed from the place it had occupied in the corner of the chamber. Beneath it was nothing but the beaten earth that had never been disturbed. The bed itself was but a plank resting on two short rollers, to sustain it six inches above the soil. Nothing had been concealed beneath the plank, between it and the ground--no box, no roll of parchment. Nothing even was written in the dust. Pabo took a flaming branch and examined the place minutely, but in vain. Then he threw off the blanket and skins that covered the pallet. He shook them, and naught dropped out. He took the pillow and explored it. The contents were but moss; yet he picked the moss to small pieces, searching for the commission and finding none. Then he drew away the logs on which the plank had rested. They might be hollow and contain something. Also in vain. Thoroughly perplexed to know what could have been the hermit's meaning, Pabo now replaced the rollers in their former position and raised the plank to lean it upon them once more. At this something caught his eye--some scratches on the lower surface of the board. He at once turned it over, and to his amazement saw that this under side of the pallet was scored over with lines and with words, drawn on the wood with a heated skewer, so that they were burnt in. The fire had sunk to a glow--he threw on more gorse. As it blazed he saw that the lines were continuous and had some meaning, though winding about. Apparently a plan had been sketched on the board. Beneath were these words, burnt in-- Thesaurus, a Romanis antiquis absconditus in antro Ogofau. Then followed in Welsh some verses-- In the hour of Cambria's need, When thou seest Dyfed bleed, Raise the prize and break her chains; Use it not for selfish gains. The lines that twisted, then ran straight, then bent were, apparently, a plan. Pabo studied it. At one point, whence the line started, he read, "_Ingressio_"; then a long stroke, and _Perge_; further a turn, and here was written _vertitur in sinistram_. There was a fork there, in fact the line forked in several places, and the plan seemed to be intricate. Then a black spot was burnt deeply into the wood, and here was written: _Cave, puteum profundum_. And just beyond this several dots with the burning skewer, and the inscription, _Auri moles prægrandis_. Pabo was hardly able at first to realize the revelation made. He knew the Ogofau well. It was hard by Pumpsaint--a height, hardly a mountain, that had been scooped out like a volcanic crater by the Romans during their occupation of Britain. From the crater thus formed, they had driven adits into the bowels of the mountain. Thence it was reported they had extracted much gold. But the mine had been unworked since their time. The Welsh had not sufficient energy or genius in mining to carry on the search after the most precious of ores. And superstition had invested the deserted works with terrors. Thither it was said that the Five Saints, the sons of Cynyr of the family of Cunedda, had retired in a thunder-storm for shelter. They had penetrated into the mine and had lost their way, and taking a stone for a bolster, had laid their heads on it and fallen asleep. And there they would remain in peaceful slumber till the return of King Arthur, or till a truly apostolic prelate should occupy the throne of St. David. An inquisitive woman, named Gwen, led by the devil, sought to spy on the saintly brothers in their long sleep, but was punished by also losing her way in the passages of the mine; and there she also remained in an undying condition, but was suffered to emerge in storm and rain, when her vaporous form--so it was reported--might be seen sailing about the old gold-mine, and her sobs and moans were borne far off on the wind. In consequence, few dared in broad daylight to visit the Ogofau, none ever ventured to penetrate the still open mouth of the mine. Pabo was not devoid of superstition, yet not abjectly credulous. If what he now saw was the result of research by the hermit, then it was clear that where one man had gone another might also go, and with the assistance of the plan discover the hidden treasure which the Romans had stored, but never removed. And yet, as Pabo gazed at the plan and writing, he asked, was it not more likely that the old hermit had been a prey to hallucinations, and that there was no substance behind this parade of a secret? Was it not probable that in the thirty years' dreaming in this solitude his fancies had become to him realities; that musing in the long winter nights on the woes of his country he had come on the thought, what an assistance it would be to it had the Romans not extricated all the ore from the rich veins of the Ogofau. Then, going a little further, had imagined that in their hasty withdrawal from Britain, they might not have removed all the gold found. Advancing mentally, he might have supposed that the store still remaining underground might be recovered, and then the entire fabric of plan, with its directions, would have been the final stage in this fantastic progress. How could the recluse have penetrated the passages of the mine? It was true enough that the Ogofau were accessible from Mallaen without going near any habitation of man. It was conceivable that by night the old man had prosecuted his researches, which had finally been crowned with success. Pabo felt a strong desire to consult Howel. He started up, and after having replaced the plank and covered it with the bedding, left the hut and made his way down into the valley of the Annell, to the Stone of Cynwyl. Notwithstanding the drizzle and the gathering night, he pushed on down the steep declivity, and on reaching the brawling stream passed out of the envelope of vapor. The night was not pitch dark, there was a moon above the clouds, and a wan, gray haze pervaded the valley. As he reached the great erratic block he saw what at first he thought was a dark bush, or perhaps a black sheep against it. All at once, at the sound of his step on the rocks, the figure moved, rose, and he saw before him a woman with extended arms. "Pabo!" she said in thrilling tones. "Here they are--the two pebbles!" "Morwen!" He sprang towards her, with a rush of blood from his heart. She made no movement to meet his embrace. "Oh, Pabo! hear all first, and then decide if I am to lose you forever." In tremulous tones, but with a firm heart, she narrated to him all that had taken place. This was now Sunday. Two men had been hung. On the morrow Howel would be suspended beside them. These executions would continue till the place of retreat of the Archpriest was revealed, and he had been taken. She did not repeat to him the words of Angarad, Madoc's wife--now widow. "Pabo!" she said, and tears were oozing between every word she uttered, "It is I--I who bring you this tidings! I--I who offer you these two pebbles! I--I who send you to your death!" "Aye, my Morwen," he said, and clasped her to his heart, "it is because you love me that you do this. It is right. I return to Caio with you." CHAPTER XVII BETRAYED A congregation exceptionally large under existing circumstances assembled on Sunday morning before the church of Caio. Fear lest the Normans and English quartered in the place should find fresh occasion against the unhappy people, were they to absent themselves as on previous Sundays, led a good many to swallow their dislike of the man forced upon them as pastor, and to put in an appearance in the house of God. They stood about, waiting for the bell to sound, and looked shrinkingly at the hideous spectacle of the two men suspended by the bell, and at the vacant spaces soon to be occupied by others. At the foot of the gallows sat Sheena moaning, and swaying herself to her musical and rhythmic keening. Around the Court or Council-House stood guards. All those standing about knew that within it were Howel and three others, destined to execution during the week. They spoke to each other in low tones, and looks of discouragement clouded every face. What could these inhabitants of a lone green basin in the heart of the mountains do to rid themselves of their oppressors and lighten their miserable condition? Griffith ap Rhys, the Prince, had appeared among them for a moment, flashed on their sight, and had then disappeared. Of him they had heard no more. Some went into the church, prayed there awhile, and came out again. The new Archpriest had not put in an appearance. It was then whispered that he had left Caio during the week, and was not returned. Sarcastic comments passed: such was the pastor thrust on them who neglected his duties. But Cadell was not to blame. He had left Llawhaden, and had made a diversion to Careg Cennen by the bishop's orders. The road had been bad and his horse had fallen lame, so that he had been unable to reach his charge on Saturday afternoon. To travel by night in such troubled times was out of the question, and he did not reach Caio till the evening closed in on the Sunday. It was not, however, too dark for him to see that the frame supporting the bell presented an unusual appearance. He walked towards it, and then observed a woman leaning against one of the beams of support. "Who are you? What has been done here?" he asked. "There is my man--I am Sheena. They have hung him, and I am afraid of the night ravens. They will come and pluck out his eyes. I went to see my babe, and when I returned there was one perched on his shoulder. I drove it away with stones. There will be a moon, and I shall see them when they come." "Who are you?" "I am Sheena--that is my man." "Go home; this is no place for you." "I have no home. I had a home, but the Norman chief drove us out, me and my man, that he might have it for himself; and we have been in a cowshed since--but I will not go there. I want no home. What is a home to me without him?" "Who has done this? Why has this been done?" asked Cadell. "Oh, they, the Saxons, have done it because we will not give up our priest, our chief. And my man was proud to die for him. So are the rest--all but Madoc." "The rest--what do you mean?" "They will hang them all, down to the last man, for none will betray the chief. They will go singing to the gallows. There was but Madoc, and him the devils will carry away; I have seen one, little and black, slinking around. I will sit here and drive devils away, lest coming for Madoc they take my man in mistake." Cadell was shocked and incensed. He hasted at once to the house in which Rogier was quartered. He knew that he had turned out the owners that he might have it to himself. Rogier and two men were within. They had on the table horns and a jug of mead, and had been drinking. Said one man to his fellow, "The Captain shall give me Sheena, when she has done whimpering over her Welshman." "Nay," quoth the other, "she is a morsel for my mouth, that has been watering for her. He cannot refuse her to me." "You, Luke! You have not served him so long as have I." "That may be, but I have served him better." "Prove me that." "I can interpret for him, I know sufficient Welsh for that." "Bah! I would not dirty my mouth with that gibberish." "You have not the tongue wherewith to woo her." "But I have a hand wherewith to grip her." "The captain shall decide between us." "Be it so. Now, captain, which of us is to comfort Sheena in her widowhood?" "It is all cursed perversity of Luke to fancy this woman. Before long there will be a score of other widows for him to pick among. There is even now that wild cat, Angarad." "I thank you. Let the captain judge." Then said Rogier. "Ye be both good and useful men. And in such a matter as this, let Fortune decide between ye. There is a draught-board; settle it between you by the chance of a game." "It is well. We will." The men seated themselves at the board. The draught-men employed were knucklebones of sheep, some blackened. While thus engaged, Cadell came in. "Rogier!" he exclaimed, "what is the meaning of this? There be men hung to my belfry." "Aye! And ere long there shall be such a peal of bells there as will sound throughout Wales, and this shall be their chime: 'Pabo, priest, come again!' By the Conqueror's paunch, I will make it ring in every ear, so that he who knows where he is hidden will come and declare it." "Consider! You make the place intolerable for me to perform my duty in." "Thy duty! That sits light on thy shoulders, I wot. Here have the poor sheep been waiting for their shepherd all the morn, and he was away." "I have been with the bishop." "I care not. I shall find Pabo ere long." "But his fatherliness holds that Pabo the Archpriest was burnt." "And we know that he was not." "If there be found one calling himself Pabo--and he is in no mighty desire that such should be discovered--then let him be esteemed an impostor--a false Pabo." "How so?" The chaplain looked at the men and did not answer. "But none has as yet been discovered," said Rogier. "Do not press to find one--not in this manner." "I shall not desist till he is given up. I have said so, and will be as good as my word." As he spoke, a face looked in at the door, then, after an inspection, a body followed, and Goronwy approached stealthily. He stood before Cadell with his eyes twinkling with malevolence, and his sharp white face twitching with excitement, nodding his head, he said-- "He is here--he, Pabo, and she also whom the great Baron, the bishop's brother, desires; they are both here. Know well that it is I who have told you this, and it is I who claim the reward." "The reward!" "Aye, the Archpriesthood, which thou wilt resign for a rich benefice. Let me tell thee--here thou canst not live. They will hate thee, they will not receive the Sacraments from thy hand, they will baptize their children themselves rather than commit them to thee. The word of God, coming from thy lips, will have lost all savor. They will die and be buried on the mountains under cairns, as in the old pagan times, rather than have thee bless their graves. No--this is no place for thee. What the captain has done has driven barbed iron into their souls; they will have none of thee. But I am of the stock of Cunedda--me they will welcome, and I will be the bishop's henchman." "Pabo here!" exclaimed Cadell, and looked round at Rogier, who had understood nothing that had passed in this brief colloquy, as it had been spoken in Welsh. The man who did understand the tongue was too deeply engrossed in his game to hearken. "Aye, aye, Pabo is here--he and Morwen. I have just seen them; they came together down the glen, and are in the house of Howel ap John. Be speedy and have them secured, or they may again escape. Pabo is for you--and for him," he pointed to the Norman captain, "for him the comely Morwen, whom he has been looking for. Say, didst thou obtain for me the promise from the bishop?" "What says this misshapen imp?" asked Rogier. Then the young man sidled up to him, and, plucking at his sleeve and pointing through the door, said: "Là--Pabo! Morwen, là!" "By the soul of the Conqueror," exclaimed the Norman, "if that be so, Pabo shall be strung up at the door of his church at daybreak!" Turning to his men, with his hand he brushed the knucklebones off the board. "Ye shall conclude the game later--we have higher sport in view now." The men started to their feet with oaths, angry at the interruption, especially he who considered that he had won an advantage over his fellow. "I would have cornered him in three moves!" he shouted. "Nay, not thou; I should have taken thy men in leaps!" "Another time," said Rogier. "The man we seek has run into our hands." Then to the boy: "Where is he hiding?" Goronwy understood the question by the action of his hands, and replied in the few words he had picked up of French, "Là--maison, Howel." "He shall be swung at once," said Rogier; "and then the first object on which the eyes of all will rest when they come out of their houses with the morrow's sun will be this Archpriest they have been hiding from me." "Nay," said Cadell, "that may not be. I have orders to the contrary under the hand and seal of the bishop." He unfolded the instructions. Rogier cursed. "Well," said he, "Pabo to me matters but little--so long as I lay my hand on Morwen." CHAPTER XVIII CAREG CENNEN Before dawn Pabo was on his way, bound to Careg Cennen, riding between four soldiers. He had been taken in the house of Howel. It had been his intention to deliver himself up early on the morrow; but he was forestalled. He regretted this, for more reasons than one. He had been unable to make final arrangements for the protection of Morwen, and he had been unable to communicate with Howel as he desired, relative to the secret of the treasure in the Roman gold-mines. The owls were hooting and night-jars screaming as the cavalcade proceeded along the Sarn Helen towards the broad valley of the Towy by that of its tributary the _Dulais_. As they reached the main river, the dawn was lightening behind the Brecknock Mountains, and the water sliding down toward the sea shone cold as steel. With daylight men were met upon the road, and occasionally a woman; the latter invariably, the former for the most part fled at the sight of the armed men. But some, less timorous remained, and recognizing the Archpriest, saluted him with respect and with exclamations of lamentation at seeing him in the hands of the common enemy. At Llandeilo the river was crossed, and Pabo was conveyed up a steep ascent into the tributary valley of the Cennen. But this stream makes a great loop, and the troopers thrust their horses over the spur of hill about which the torrent sweeps. Presently the castle came in view, very new and white, constructed of limestone, on a crag of the same substance, that rises precipitously for five hundred feet sheer out the ravine and the brawling stream that laves the foot of the crag. After a slight dip the track led up a bold stony rise to the castle gate. The situation is of incomparable wildness and majesty. Beyond the ravine towers up the Mynydd Ddu, the Black Mountain, clothed in short heather, to cairn-topped ridges, two thousand feet above the sea, the flanks seamed with descending threads of water; while further south over its shoulder are seen purple hills in the distance. A solitary sycamore here and there alone stands against the wind on the ridge about which the Cennen whispers far below. The bishop had already arrived at the castle. He had followed up his emissary pretty quickly, anxious that his own view of the case should be maintained in the event of the capture of Pabo. He and Gerald of Windsor were on excellent terms. Between them they were to divide the land, so much to the crook and so much to the sword; and whom the latter did not consume were to be delivered over to feel the weight of the crozier. In the subjugation of Wales, in the breaking of the spirit of the people, church and castle must combine and play each other's game. The staff of the bishop has a crook above and a spike below, to signify the double power that resides in his hands, that of drawing and that of goading. The time for the exercise of the curved head might come in the future, that for the driving of the sharp end was the present, thought Bernard. No sooner did he learn of the arrival of Pabo than he bade that he should be brought into his presence, in the room given to him by his host on whom he had intruded himself--a room facing south, overhanging the precipice. The weather was mild, and the sun shone in at the window. There was no fire. "So!" said the prelate, fixing his gray dark-rimmed irises on the prisoner, "you are he who give yourself out to be the Archpriest of Caio?" "I am he," answered Pabo. The bishop assured himself that the strongly built upright man before him was bound and could not hurt him; and he said to the attendants, "Go forth outside the door and leave this dissembler with me. Yet remain within call, and one bid Gerald, the Master, come to me speedily." The men withdrew. "I wonder," said Bernard, and his words hissed through the gap in his teeth, "I wonder now at thy audacity. If indeed I held thee to be Pabo, the late Archpriest of Caio, who smote me, his bishop, on the mouth and drew my blood, there would be no other course for me but to deliver thee over to the secular arm, and for such an act of treason against thy superior in God--the stake would be thy due." "I am he, Lord Bishop, who struck thee on the mouth. The insult was intolerable. The old law provided--an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. If thou goest by the law of Moses deal with me as seems right. What the Gospel law is, maybe thou art too recent in Holy Orders and too new to the study of the Sacred Scriptures to be aware." "Thou art insolent. But as I do not for a moment take thee to be the deceased Pabo----" "Lord Bishop, none doubt that I am he." Bernard looked at him from head to foot. "Methinks a taller man by three fingers' breadth, and leaner in face certainly, as also browner in complexion, and with cheek-bones standing out more forcibly." Pabo hardly knew what to think of the bishop's words. It occurred to him that the prelate was beating about for some excuse for pardoning him whilst saving his dignity. He smiled and said, "If it be a matter of doubt with thee, whether I be indeed Pabo----" "Oh! by no means," interrupted Bernard, "I have no manner of doubt. On the surest testimony I know that the Archpriest Pabo was consumed by fire from heaven. This is known far and wide. His Majesty the King is aware of it; it is a matter of common talk." "Yet is it not true." "It is most assuredly true. I have the testimony of credible eye-witnesses." "Yet," said Pabo, "my own wife knows me." "Of her I can believe anything," said Bernard, thrusting his seat a little back, to give more space between himself and the prisoner. "Hearken unto me," said the bishop; "I have heard say of these Welsh that they keep their King Arthur somewhere, ready to produce him in the hour of need, to fight against their rightful lord and sovereign the King of England. And I warrant ye--they will turn out some scullion knave, and put a tinsel crown about his head, and shout 'God save King Arthur!' and make believe it is he come from his long sleep to fight against us. But we are prepared against such make-believes and mumming kings. And so, in like manner, when Pabo, Archpriest of Caio, is dead, burned to a cinder, as it has been most surely reported to us, then up starts such as you and assume to be what you are not, so as to fan the flame of discontent among the people, and inspire them with hopes that can never be fulfilled; and so persuade them to resist rightful authority. Have I not appointed my late chaplain to be Archpriest in the room of that unhappy man who, for temerity in lifting his hand against his ecclesiastical father, was evidently, before the eyes of all men, smitten by Heaven? I, of all men, I, who was struck in the face, and thereby lost my teeth, have a right to recognize the impious man who smote me. But I tell thee I do not identify thee. Further, I am ready to declare, and if need be, to swear, that thou art not the man. Thou art but a sorry makeshift. Who should know him, if not I?" "My dear people of Caio, whose pastor I have been, among whom I have gone in and out, will know me well enough. Confront me with them and the matter will be settled at once." "Nay--the word of a Welshman is not to be trusted. They will combine to bolster up a lie. Thou art an impostor, a false Pabo. That is certain." Then he turned his hands one over the other: "If thou wert the real Pabo, then be very sure of this: I would deliver thee over to the secular arm to be burned in verity--and only Norman and English soldiers should surround the fire, and they would see that thou wast in truth this time burned to a coal. But as I do not and will not hold this, I ask thee, for thine own sake, to acknowledge that there has been a plot to thrust thee forward--that thy people are in a league to accept thee as their priest and chief, knowing very well that their true priest and chief was burned in his house. Confess this, and I will use my endeavor to get thee thrust away into some distant part, where no harm shall come to thee. Nay, further," the bishop brightened up, "I will even keep thee about myself and advance thee to honor, and I will put thee into a fat benefice at the other extremity of the diocese, if thou wilt constantly affirm that thou art not Pabo, and never wast Pabo, neither ever knew him--but hast been mistaken for him through some chance resemblance." "Although a Welshman," said the Archpriest, with a curl of the lip, "and, as thou sayest, ready with lies, I will not say that." "Then take the consequences," exclaimed the bishop. "I give one minute in which to resolve thee. Admit that thou art an impostor, and I will do what I can for thee; refuse--and--and----" "Do your worst," exclaimed Pabo indignantly. "What your object is I cannot devise; but, be it what it may, I will not help with a falsehood. I am Pabo, still Archpriest and head of the tribe of the land of Caio." "Then," said the bishop, with harshness in his tone but with no alteration in his mask-like face, "be content, as simulating the Pabo who struck his ecclesiastical father in the face, and knocked out one tooth and broke another, to receive such punishment as is due to so treasonable an action." "If we two met as plain Christian people, living under the Gospel," said Pabo, "I would say the act was done under provocation; but it was an unworthy act, and I, who committed it, express my regret and ask for pardon of my brother Christian." "And I," said the bishop, "as a Christian man and a prelate of the Holy Roman Church, do cheerfully give forgiveness. Yet inasmuch as it is unwise that----" "I see," said Pabo; "a forgiveness that is no forgiveness at all. The transgression must be wiped out in blood." "The Church never sheds blood," said Bernard. "She hands over stubborn offenders to the secular arm. Here it comes--in at the door." The hand of Gerald of Windsor was thrust in, followed by the man himself. "See here," said Bernard, addressing the Baron and pointing to Pabo, "this is a man who sets himself up to be a leader among the rebellious Welsh, and is stirring up of hot blood and fomenting of intrigue." "Aye," said Gerald, "I have tidings come this day that the beggars are rising everywhere. They have among them their Prince Griffith ap Rhys." "And here," said the prelate, "is one of his agents. This man gives himself out to be a certain person whom he is not, and he has come among the people of Caio to bid them take up arms. But happily my brother Rogier is there." "What shall we do with him?" asked Gerald. "Beau Sieur," said the prelate, "with that I have nought to do. Sufficient that I place him--a dangerous fellow--in your hands. And mark you, a priest as well as an agitator, one to arouse the religious fanaticism of the people against the Church as well as against the Crown." "What shall be done with him? Cut off his head?" "Nay, I pray shed no blood." "Shall we hang him?" "I think," said the bishop, after musing a moment, "that it would be well were he simply to disappear. Let him not be hung so that, perchance, he might be recognized, but rather suffer him to be cast into one of the dungeons where none may ever cast eye on him till he be but bones and there be forgot." CHAPTER XIX FORGOTTEN? Pabo was hurried away, along a corridor, down a flight of steps, through the courtyard, and was thrust into a dungeon at the base of a tower on the east side of the castle. He had to descend into it by steps, and then the heavy oak door was shut and locked. The floor was of the limestone rock, with some earth on it; the walls new, and smelling of mortar. One slit, far up, admitted a ray of light, and beneath the door was a space of as much as two finger-breadths between it and the stone sill. No preparations had been made for his reception. No straw or fern was littered for a bed, nor was a pitcher of water set for him, that he might quench his thirst. Pabo was hungry; he had partaken of nothing since he left Caio save a crust that had been given him at Llanwrda on his way. At Llandeilo the soldiers had purposely avoided the town, and they had halted nowhere on the way except at the place Llanwrda, where they had given him a portion of their breakfast. Pabo supposed that he was to remain in confinement as long as suited the convenience of the bishop. He was far from fathoming the purpose of the prelate in endeavoring to cajole or frighten him into a denial of his own identity. Had he known the figure Bernard was endeavoring to cut at his expense, he would have laughed aloud and made his dungeon walls ring. He cast himself in a corner against the wall and waited, in the expectation of his jailer coming in before long with a truss of straw, some bread and water, and possibly chains for his hands or feet. But hours passed, and no one came. From where he sat he could see feet go by his door, and it seemed to him that towards evening these were the feet of women. No sentinel paced the court outside his doorway. He heard human voices, occasionally, but could distinguish no words. The evening closed in, and still none attended to him. Feeling in his pouch he found some dried corn from the hermit's store. When wandering on the mountains he had been wont to thus provide himself, and happily there remained still some unconsumed. With this he filled his mouth. He waited on as darkness settled in, so that he could but just distinguish his window and the gap below the door, and at length fell into a troubled sleep. During the night he woke with the cold, and groped for the blankets he had been accustomed to draw over him in the cell on Mallaen, but here in the prison of Careg Cennen none were provided. He felt stiff and chilled in his bones with lying on the bare rock. He turned from side to side, but could find no relief. Surely it was not the intention of Gerald of Windsor to detain him there without the modicum of comforts supplied to the worst of criminals. He had not offended the Norman baron. If he were not Pabo, as the bishop insisted, why was he dealt with so harshly? He had not done anything to show that he was a fanner of rebellion. Against him not a particle of evidence could be adduced. The thought that he carried with him the great secret of the hermit also troubled him. It is said that no witch can die till she has communicated her hidden knowledge to some sister. It was to Pabo a thought insupportable that he was unable to impart the secret deposited with him to some one who could use the knowledge for the good of his oppressed countrymen. Hitherto the attempts made by the Welsh to shake off their yoke had been doomed to failure, largely because of their inability to purchase weapons and stores that might furnish their levies and maintain them in the field. It was not that in the Cambrian Mountains there had been deficiency in resolution and lack of heroism; but it was the poverty of Wales that had stood no chance against the wealth of England. For himself Pabo cared little, but he was deeply concerned that he had no means of conveying the secret that had been entrusted to him to those who could make good use of it. He dozed off again in cold and hunger, and fell to dreaming that he had lit on an ingot of pure gold, so large and so weighty that he could not himself lift it, and opened his eyes to see a golden bar indeed before him, but it was one of sunlight, painted on the wall by the rising orb as it shone through the slit that served as window. He waited now with impatience, trusting that some one would come to him. Yet time passed and none arrived. He moved to one of the steps, seated himself thereon, and looked at the light between the bottom of the door and the sill. Again he saw what he conjectured to be women's feet pass by, and presently, but after a long interval, return; and this time he knew that the feet belonged to a woman, for she stopped where he could see, set down an earthenware pitcher, and exchanged some words with a soldier, one of the garrison. He could see the pitcher nearly to the handle, but not the hand that set it down and raised it. Yet he distinguished the skirts of the dress and the tones of voice as those of a woman. Presently he again heard a voice, that belonged to a female, and by the intonation was sure that what she spoke was in Welsh. She was calling and strewing crumbs, for some fell near his door. Immediately numerous pigeons arrived and pecked up what was cast for them. He could see their red legs and bobbing heads, and wished that some of the fragments might have been for him. He had hardly formed the wish before a crust, larger than any given to the birds, fell against his door, and there was a rush of pigeons towards it. Pabo put forth two fingers through the opening, and drew the piece of bread within. He had hardly secured this, before another piece fell in the same place, and once more, in the same manner, he endeavored to capture it. But unhappily it had rebounded just beyond his reach, and after vain efforts he would have had to relinquish it wholly to the pigeons had not feet rapidly approached and a hand been lowered that touched the crust and thrust it hastily under the door, and then pushed in another even larger. After this the feet went away. But still the pigeons fluttered and pecked till they had consumed the last particle cast to them. Pabo ate the pieces of bread ravenously. He was not thirsty. The coolness and moisture of the prison prevented him from becoming parched. What he had received was not, indeed, much, but it was sufficient to take off the gnawing pain that had consumed his vitals. Now for the first time he realized the force of the prelate's words when he had bidden Gerald of Windsor to cast him--Pabo--into a dungeon, there to be _forgotten_. Forgotten he was to be, ignored as a human being immured in this subterranean den. He was to be left there, totally unattended and unprovided for. Of this he was now convinced, both because of the neglect he had undergone, and also because of the attempt made by some Welshwoman, unknown to him, surreptitiously to supply him with food. This she would not have done had she not been aware of the fate intended for him. He was to be left to die of cold and hunger and thirst, and was not to leave the prison save as a dwindled, emaciated wreck, with the life driven out of him by privation of all that is necessary for the support of life. He was now well assured of what was purposed, and also, and equally assured, that he had in the castle some friend who would employ all her feminine craft to deliver him from such a fate. Slowly, tediously the day passed. Still, occasionally voices were audible, but no feet approached the dungeon doorway. Overhead there were chambers, but the prison was vaulted with stone, and even were any persons occupying an upper story, they were not likely to be heard by one below. It was, perhaps, fortunate that for some time on the mountain Pabo had led a very frugal life and had contented himself with parched grain, or girdle-cakes of his own grinding and making. Yet to these had been added the milk of a goat, and for this he now craved. He thought of his poor Nanny bleating, distressed with her milk; he thought of how she had welcomed him when he returned to the cell. Poor Nanny! What would he not now give for a draught of her sweet sustaining milk! Another night passed, and again in the morning there ensued the feeding of the pigeons, and therewith a fall of crusts within his reach by the door. During the day he heard a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard, and by seating himself on the lowest step in his vault, leaning one elbow on another, and bringing first eye and then ear near to the gap below the door, he saw and heard sufficient to lead him to suppose that the bishop was leaving Careg Cennen, to return to his own castle of Llawhaden. He could even distinguish his strident voice, and catch a few words uttered by him, as he turned his face towards the dungeon-door, and said: "My good friend Gerald--is, humph! the impostor forgotten?" "Forgotten, as though he had never been," was the response, in the rough tones of the Norman Baron. Then both laughed. Pabo clenched his hands and teeth. Presently, a clatter; and through the gateway passed the cavalcade. There was no drawbridge at Careg Cennen for there was no moat, no water; but there was a portcullis, and there were stout oak-barred doors. After the departure of the prelate, the castle fell back again into listlessness. No sounds reached the ear of Pabo, save the occasional footfall of one passing across the court with the leisurely pace of a person to whom time was of no value. On this day the prisoner began to be distressed for water. The walls of his cell, being of pervious limestone, absorbed all moisture from the air, so that none condensed on it. In the morning he had swallowed the dry crusts with difficulty. He now felt that his lips were burning, and his tongue becoming dry. If food were brought him on the morrow, he doubted whether he would then be able to swallow it. But relief came to him in a manner he had not expected. During the night rain fell, and he found that by crouching on the steps and putting his fingers beneath the door, he could catch the raindrops as they trickled down the oak plank, and convey the scanty supply by this means to his mouth. But with the first glimpse of dawn he saw a means of furnishing water that was more satisfactory. With his fingers he scraped a channel beneath the door to receive the falling drops, and then, by heaping the soil beyond this, forced the water as it ran down the door and dripped, to decant itself in a small stream over the sill. By this means he was able to catch sufficient to assuage the great agony of thirst. He was thus engaged when suddenly a foot destroyed his contrivance, and next moment he heard a key turned in the lock. He started from the steps on which he was lying, the door was thrown open, and before him stood a muffled female figure, against the gray early morning light, diffused through thick rain that filled the castle yard. Without a word the woman signed to Pabo to follow. She made the gesture with impatience, and he obeyed without hesitation. "Follow me!" she whispered in Welsh, and strode rapidly before him, and passed through a small doorway, a very few steps from the tower, yet in the south face of the castle. She beckoned imperiously to him to enter, then closed the door on him, went back and relocked that of the dungeon. Next moment she was back through the small door. Pabo found himself in a narrow passage that, as far as he could judge, descended by steps. The woman bolted the door behind. The place was dark, but she led on. The way descended by steps, then led along a narrow passage, with rock on one side and wall on the other, till she reached a great natural vault--a cave opening into the heart of the crag on which the castle was built. And here the passage terminated in a wooden stair that descended into darkness, only illumined by one point of red light. Still she descended, and Pabo followed. Presently she was at the bottom, and now he saw in a hollow of the rock on one side a little lamp burning with a lurid flame. She struck off the glowing snuff, and it sent up a bright spire of light. "Forgotten," said she, turning to Pabo, and throwing back her hood. "Forgotten! Nay, Nest will never forget one of her own people--never." CHAPTER XX THE BRACELET OF MAXEN "Look at me," said Nest; "I am the daughter of Rhys and sister of your Prince Griffith. How I have been treated God knows, but not worse than my dear country. I have been cast into the arms of one of its oppressors, and I welcome it, because I can do something thereby for those of my people who suffer. Griffith is about. He will do great things. I sent him with warning to you. And now I will even yet save you. Know you where you are? Whither I have brought you? Come further." She led him down among the smooth shoulders of rock, and showed him pans scooped in the limestone ledges that brimmed with water. There was no well in Careg Cennen. It would not have availed to have sunk one. In the dry limestone there were no springs. Gerald the Norman would not have reared his castle on this barren head of rock had he not known that water was accessible in this natural cave. But this cavern had been known and utilized long before the Norman adventurers burst into Wales. At some remote age, we know not how many centuries or tens of centuries before, some warfaring people had surrounded the top of the hill with a wall of stones, not set in mortar, but sustained in place by their own weight. And to supply themselves with water, they had cut a path like a thread in the face of the precipice to the mouth of a gaping cavern that could be seen only from the slopes of the Black Mountains, on the further side of the Cennen River. In this vault water incessantly dripped, not in rapid showers, but slowly; in wet weather more rapidly than at times of dryness, yet even in the most burning, rainless seasons, there never was an absolute cessation of falling drops. To receive these, bowls had been scooped out in ledges of rock; and hither came the maidens daily with their pitchers, to supply the wants of all in the castle. What the Norman builders had done was to broaden the path by cutting deeper into the face of the cliff, and to build up the face towards the precipice, leaving loopholes at intervals, to prevent accidents such as might happen through vertigo, or a turn of an ankle, or a slip on the polished lime-rock. The whole mouth of the cavern had also been walled up, so that no one unacquainted with the arrangements within the castle would have suspected its existence. To fill the pitchers the water-carriers were furnished with wooden spoons and shallow ladles, with which they scooped up the liquid from the rock-basins into their vessels. Hither Nest, the wife of Gerald of Windsor, had brought Pabo. She had learned what was the doom of the Archpriest so soon as the interview was over between him, the bishop, and her husband. Nest was a subtle woman. Lovely beyond any other woman in Britain, and with that exquisite winsomeness of manner which only a Celtic woman possesses, which a Saxon can ape but not acquire, she was able when she exerted her powers to cajole Gerald, and obtain from him much that his judgment warned him he should not yield. For a long time she had induced him even to harbor her brother Griffith, but he did so only so long as the young man was not in open revolt against King Henry. She had not on this occasion attempted to induce Gerald to mitigate the sentence on Pabo. She reserved her cajolery for another occasion. Now, she had recourse to other means. With a little cleverness, she had succeeded in securing the key of the dungeon; but for her own good reasons she did not desire that her husband should learn, or even suspect, that she had contrived the escape of the prisoner. Now Pabo stood by her in the great natural domed vault in the bowels of the mountain, crowned by Careg Cennen Castle; and by the flicker of the lamp he saw her face, and wondered at its beauty. "Pabo, priest of God!" she said, and her face worked with emotion. "Heaven alone knows what a life I lead--a double life, a life behind a mask. I have a poor, weak, trembling woman's heart, that bleeds and suffers for my people. I have but one love--one only love, that fills and flames in all my veins: it is the love of Wales, of my country, my beautiful, my sovereign country. And, O God! my people. Touch them, and I quiver and am tortured, and durst not cry out. Yet am I linked to one who is my husband, and I belong to him in body. Yet hath he not my immortal soul, he hath not this passionate heart. Nay! Not one single drop of the burning Welsh blood that dances and boils in every artery." She clasped her hands to her heart. "Oh, Pabo, my lot is in sad quarters! My life is one continuous martyrdom for my country, for my people, for their laws, their freedom, their Church! What can I do? Look at these women's fingers! What gifts have I? Only this fair face and this golden hair, and a little mother wit. I give all to the good cause. And now," she became more calm in tone, and she put forth her hand and clasped the priest by the wrist, and spake in measured tones, though her finger-ends worked nervously. "And now--learn this. For reasons that I cannot speak plainly, I would not have my husband know that I have contrived thy escape. And I cannot contrive to pass thee out through the gates. There is but one way that thou canst be freed. See--the women come hither to draw water, and the door creaks on its hinges whensoever opened. When thou hearest the door cry out, then hide thee under the stair, or yonder in the depth of the cave. None of the wenches penetrate further than these basins. But after they have left--and they come but in the morning and at eve--then thou hast this place to thyself. Know that there is no escape downwards from the eyelet-holes. It is a sheer fall--and if that were adventured, thou wouldst be dashed to pieces, as was one of the Normandy masons who was engaged on the wall. He lost his foothold and fell--and was but a mangled heap at the bottom. No--that way there is no escape. I have considered well, and this is what I have devised." She paused and drew a long breath. "There stands a stout and well-rooted thorn-tree on the crag above. I will tarry till supper-time, when my lord and his men will be merry over their cups, and then will I swing a bracelet--this." She took off a twisted serpent of gold, quaintly wrought, from her wrist. "This I will attach to a string, and I will fasten the other end to the thorn-tree. Then shall the bracelet be swung to and fro, and do thou remain at one of the loopholes, and put forth thine hand and catch the string as it swings. Hold it fast and draw it in. Then I will attach a knotted rope to the string, and do thou draw on until thou hast hold of the rope. Thereupon I will make the other end fast to the thorn-tree, and as thou canst not descend, mount, and thou art free." Pabo hesitated--then said, "It seems to me that these eyelet-holes are too narrow for a man's body to pass through." "It is well said," answered Nest, "and of that I have thought. Here is a stout dagger. Whilst thou canst, work out the mortar from between the joints of the masonry about the window-slit yonder. It is very fresh and not set hard. But remove not the stone till need be." "I will do so." "And as to the bracelet," continued Nest, "it is precious to me, and must not be left here to betray what I have done. Bring it away with thee." "And when I reach the thorn-tree then I will restore it thee." "Nay," rejoined Nest, "take it with thee, and go find my brother Griffith, wherever he be, and give it to him. Know this: it was taken from the cairn of Maxen Wlledig, the Emperor of Britain, whose wife was a Welsh princess, and whose sons ruled in Britain, and of whose blood are we. Tell him to return me my bracelet within the walls of Dynevor. Tell him"--her breath came fast and like flame from her lips--"tell him that I will not wear it till he restore it to me in the castle of our father--in the royal halls of our ancestors, the Kings of Dyfed, and has fed the ravens of Dynevor with English flesh." Again she calmed down. A strange passionate woman. At one moment flaming into consuming heat, then lulling down to calm and coolness. It was due to the double life she lived; the false face she was constrained to assume, and the undying, inextinguishable patriotic ardor that ate out her heart, that was so closely and for so long time smothered, but which must at times force itself into manifestation. Pabo, looking into that wondrous face, by the flicker of the little lamp, saw in it a whole story of sorrow, shame, rage, love, and tenderness mapped out. A strange and terrible life-story had hers been--even in young days. She had been taken from her home while quite a child, and committed as a hostage to the charge of Henry Beauclerk; he had done her the worst outrage that could have been offered--when she was helpless, an alien from her home and people in his power. Then, without caring whether she liked the man or not, he had married her to Gerald of Windsor, the spoliator, the ravager of South Wales. Once, Owen ap Cadogan, son of the Prince of Cadogan, had seen her at a banquet and eisteddfod given by her father at Aberteiri, to which the kings, princes, and lords of Wales had been invited. Among all the fair ladies there assembled none approached in beauty the young Princess Nest, daughter of King Rhys, and wife of Gerald of Windsor. Owen went mad with love. On the plea of kinship he visited her in Pembroke Castle, set it on fire, and while it was blazing carried her away into Powys. Nor was she an unwilling victim: she accompanied him, but only because she trusted that he would rouse all Wales and unite North and South in one great revolt against the power of England. And, indeed, at his summons, like a wild-fire, revolt had spread through Dyfed, Cardigan, and southern Powys. Only North Wales remained unmoved. The struggle was brief--the Cymri were poor and deficient in weapons of war, and were unable to withstand the compact masses hurled against them, in perfect military discipline, and securing every stride by the erection of a stronghold. Owen, carrying with him plenty of spoil, fled to Ireland, where he was hospitably received, and Gerald recovered his wife. She was disillusioned. Owen sought no nobler end than the amassing of plunder and the execution of vindictive revenge on such as had offended him. His ferocity had alienated from him the hearts of his people, for his sword had been turned rather against such of his own kin who had incurred his resentment than against the common foe. Into Cardigan, the realm of Owen's father, Strongbow had penetrated, and had planted castles. Presently, harboring treachery in his heart, Owen returned from Ireland and threw himself into the arms of Henry Beauclerk, who flattered him with promises and took him in his company to Normandy, where he bestowed on Owen the honor of knighthood, and had converted him into a creature ready to do his pleasure without scruple. Pembroke Castle had been rebuilt, Carmarthen was girt with iron-bound towers; in rear, Strongbow was piling up fortresses at Aberystwyth and Dingeraint. "See!" said Nest; "poorly hast thou fared hitherto. I have laid in a store of food for thee under the stair. Be ready just before nightfall. Lay hold of the golden bracelet, and retain it till thou encounterest Griffith, then give it him with my message. Let him return it me in our father's ruined hall of Dynevor, when it is his own once more." CHAPTER XXI SANCTUARY Rogier was pacing up and down in the house of which he had taken possession. On the table lay, heaped in bags of woven grass, the fine that had been imposed on the tribe. All had been paid. The elders had endeavored hard to induce him to accept two-thirds from them and to levy the remainder on Cadell; but he bade them squeeze their Archpriest--he was not going to trouble himself to do that--and the rest of the silver was produced. The men hoped to be able to recoup themselves later by deducting this third from their payments to the pastor thrust upon them. As Pabo had been secured, Rogier had released those who were detained in the court-house; they had returned to their homes. It was anticipated that now the Norman would withdraw along with his men; he had no further excuse for remaining. But he gave not the smallest token of an intention to remove. Cadell had entered. He also wished to know how long the foreigners would tarry in the place. So long as they were there it would be impossible for him to come to friendly terms with his flock. Yet, though he desired that the bulk of the men-at-arms, along with their captain, should withdraw, he did not by any means desire to be left completely alone in the midst of a population that regarded him with a malevolent eye, were unwilling to receive his ministrations, acknowledge his authority, and even show him ordinary civility. He had accordingly entered the house in the hopes of arranging with the bishop's brother terms whereby he might have two or four men left in Caio to support him in emergencies without being ostensibly his servants. A plea might easily be found in the refractory humor of the people for a small guard to be left till they proved more complaisant. Near the door, against the wall, Morwen was seated, pale but resolved, with her hands folded. "You seem to be in a vast impatience to see my back," said Rogier, "but let me tell you, Master Chaplain, I like this place. It lyeth well to the sun, the soil is fertile and amply watered. It is suitably timbered, and methinks there is building-stone here that might serve to construct a stronghold. I have looked about me and fancied Pen-y-ddinas. It crieth out for a castle to stand upon it--dominating, as it doth, the whole valley." "A castle for the bishop?" "Oh! save your presence and clergy. It is well for one to feather one's own nest first. As to the Church, hers is downy enough without needing to pluck more geese to make her easier." "Then for whom?" "For myself, of course. This is a fair district; it is girded about with mountains; it has been occupied for centuries by a thrifty people who have hoarded their silver. Methinks I could soon contrive to make of it a barony of Caio for myself." "But," said Cadell, aghast, "these be Church lands. You would not rob the Church?" "By no means are they Church lands. This is tribal land, and it so chances that the head of the tribe has been for some time--how long I know not--an ecclesiastic. But that is an accident." "It is the sanctuary of David." "But not the property of the see of David. It is the sanctuary of Cynwyl, I take it; and it has so fallen out that the inheritor of the chieftainship has been for some years--it may be centuries--in priestly orders. But as to belonging to the see, that it never did. Now I take it, there shall be a separation of powers, and I will assume the secular rule, and constitute myself Baron of Caio--and thou, if it please thee, shalt be Archpriest, and exercise ecclesiastical authority. It will be best so--then I and my bull-dogs will be ever hard by to help thee in thy difficulties." "The bishop will never agree to this." "He must. Am I going to fight his battles and not be paid for it, and fix my price?" "Does he know of thy purpose?" "I care not whether he do or not. I shall take my course, and he cannot oppose me, because he dare not. By the soul of the Conqueror, Sir Chaplain, these fat farmers ooze with money. I have but given them a little squeeze, and they have run out silver--it is yonder, dost mark it? Hast thou seen cider made? They make it in my country. The apples are chopped up and cast into a broad, stone-grooved trough, and a lever is brought to bear, laden with immense weights, to crush them. You should see, man, how the juice runs out, and you would say that there was never another drop of liquor in them. Then the lever is raised, and the weight shifted; next with a knife the apple-cheese is pared all round and the parings are cast up in the middle. Again the lever is worked, and out flows as much as at first, till again it appears that all is drained away. And this process is renewed to five times, and every time out pours the generous and sweet must. It is not with apples as with grapes. These latter once well pressed yield all--apples must be pressed to six and even seven times. My Cadell--these peasants are juicy apples. If I send this first squeeze to my brother, I reserve the after outgushes for mine own drinking." Cadell looked down disconcerted. He knew very well that Rogier's scheme would mean the shrinkage to but little of his power and profits. "You do not understand this people," said he, after some consideration. "You will drive them to desperation with your rough treatment. They are a kindly and a gentle folk that are easily led, but ill driven." "Well, now," said Rogier, and laughed. He halted, leaned against the table, and folded his arms; "it is so; but I have a scheme such as will reconcile the tribe of Cynwyl to my rule. And thou art come here suitably at this moment to assist me in carrying it out." "What wouldest thou?" asked Cadell sulkily. "It is even this," answered Rogier, and again he laughed. "Dost see? I have been courting a pretty wench. But it is bad wooing when I cannot speak a word of Welsh and she as little of French. Now, Sir Priest, be my go-between, and say sweet and tender words to her from me, and bring me back her replies of the same savor." "I cannot! I will not!" exclaimed the chaplain indignantly. "I ask of thee nothing dishonest," said Rogier; "far otherwise. I have a fancy to make the pretty Morwen my wife--and Baroness Caio. Tell her that--all in good sooth and my purpose honorable, the Church shall be called to bless us." "She is another man's wife!" "Nay, nay, a priest's leman--that is all. And if that stick in thy throat, be conscience-smoothed. By this time Pabo is no more. I know my brother's temper. He is a man who never forgives; and the loss of a pair of teeth is not that he will pass over." "But he does not hold that this man you have sent him is Pabo." "Pshaw! he knows better. Whether he be Pabo, or whether he be not, Bernard will never suffer him to live a week after he has him between his two palms. Therefore, seeing Morwen is a widow, and free, now, all is plain, my intent is good. If I marry her--who has been the wife of the chieftain of the tribe, I enter upon all his rights so far as they are secular; those that be ecclesiastical I leave to thee." "Not so," said Cadell sharply. "She is no heiress. She is not of the blood." "Oh! she shall be so esteemed. Scripture is with me--man and wife be no more twain but one flesh, so that she enters into all his rights, and I take them over along with her. It will smooth the transfer. The people will like it, or will gulp down what is forced on them, and pretend to be content." "This is preposterous--the heir to the tribal rights is Goronwy, the cousin of Pabo." "That cripple? The people would not have him before to rule over them. They will not now. Let them look on him and then on me; there can be but one decision. If there be a doubt, I shall contrive to get the weasel out of the way. And, moreover," said Rogier, who chuckled over his scheme, "all here are akin--that is why there was such a to-do about the seven degrees. It hit them all. I warrant ye, when gone into, it will be found that she has in her the blood of----. What is the name?" "Cunedda." "Aye, of that outlandish old forefather. If not, I can make it so. There is a man here--Meredith they call him--a bard and genealogist. I have a pair of thumb-screws, and I can spoil his harping forever unless he discover that the pretty wench whom I design for myself, to be my Baroness Caio, be lineally descended from--I cannot mind the name--and be, after Goronwy, the legitimate heir to all the tribal rights. Cadell, you can make a man say and swear to anything with the persuasion of thumb-screws. A rare institution." The chaplain said nothing to this. It was a proposition that did not admit of dispute. A good many of the Norman barons had taken the Welsh heiresses to them as a means of disarming the opposition they encountered, perhaps feeling a twinge of compunction at their methods of appropriation of lands by the sword. Gerald of Windsor, as we have seen, was married to a princess of the royal race of Dyfed, though not, indeed, an heiress. A knight occupying a subordinate position, if he chanced to secure as wife the heiress of some Welsh chief, at once claimed all her lands and rights, and sprang at once into the position of a great baron. "Come, sweetheart!" exclaimed Rogier boisterously, and went up to Morwen and caught her by the chin. "Look me in the face and say 'Aye!' and I will put a coronet of pearls on thy black hair." She shrank from him--not indeed, understanding his words, but comprehending that she was treated with disrespect. "Speak to her, you fool!" said Rogier angrily. "She must be told what I purpose. If not by you then by Pont l'Espec, whom I will call in. But by the Conqueror's paunch, I do not care to do my wooing through the mouth of a common serving-man." Cadell stood up from the seat into which he had lowered himself and approached Morwen. "Hark y'!" said the Norman; "no advice of thine own. I can see thou likest not my design. Say my words, give my message, and bear me back her reply--and thrust in naught of thy mind, and thy suasion." "What, then, shall I say?" "Tell her that I am not one to act with violence unless thwarted, and in this particular thwarted I will not be. Tell her that I desire that she shall be my wife; and say that I will make myself baron over this district of Caio--King Henry will deny me nothing I wot--and she shall rule and reign the rest of her days by a soldier's side, instead of by that of a cassocked clerk." Cadell translated the offer. Morwen's large deep eyes were fixed on him intently as he spoke, and her lips trembled. "I must give an answer," said the priest. Then Morwen rose and replied: "He will surely give me time to consider." "Aye, aye, till to-morrow," said Rogier when her words were translated to him. Thereupon Morwen bowed and left the house. Rogier took a step towards the door, but Cadell stayed him. "Give her till to-morrow to be alone." "Well," said he, "to-morrow shall settle it." Cadell left, and instead of seeking his lodging he went into the church. There, to his surprise, he saw a woman--it was Morwen, clinging to the wicker-work screen. "It is sanctuary! It is sanctuary!" she cried, as she saw him. "They shall not tear me hence." "Nay," said Cadell; "that they dare not. I will maintain thy right to sanctuary. It is well. To Cynwyl thou hast appealed. Cynwyl shall protect thee." CHAPTER XXII IN OGOFAU In the darkness, Goronwy was lurking about the church. He was the first to communicate to Rogier that Morwen had taken sanctuary. The Norman, angry, bade him watch and not suffer her to leave without informing him whither she had betaken herself. She could not remain there indefinitely. It was a custom that sanctuary held for seven days and nights, and that if the clergy could not send away a refugee during that time, the right of protection afforded by the sacredness of the precincts ceased in that particular case. Rogier was wounded in his vanity, but not greatly concerned. He was certain that she could not escape him eventually. A hand was laid on Goronwy's shoulder; he started with terror, and his alarm was not lessened when Pabo addressed him, "What are you doing here, Goronwy?" "Oh, Pabo! we have feared you were lost." "As you see--I am returned. What are you doing here?" "Alas! I have no proper home--no more than you. Do you ask then why I am about at night?" "Poor boy! poor boy! Well, I would have you do me a commission now. I must not be seen here; yet would communicate with my wife. Where is Morwen?" Goronwy hesitated but for a moment, and then answered, "I do not know." "She is not now with Howel?" "No, sent elsewhere. Perhaps to Llansawel." "You must find her, and bid her come to me." "Whither shall I bid her go?" "Bid her come to me in Ogofau." "In Ogofau?" echoed Goronwy, shrinking back. "There is one thing more I desire," pursued Pabo. "Go into the church and bring me thence one of those coils of taper that hang in front of the screen." "Taper!" in all but speechless astonishment. "Yes; I am going to enter the old mine. I do not hesitate to tell you, as one in blood, in hopes, in sufferings with me. I am going to enter the mine, and would fain have a consecrated light." "I will get it at once," said Goronwy, and went within. What could this mean? What was Pabo's object? Within the church two lamps burnt in the sanctuary, but without all was dark, yet in the darkness he could see Morwen crouched against the screen. A Celtic church had buildings connected with it--a guest hall in which the congregation could assemble and take a meal after divine service, stables for horses, and even sleeping apartments. All were surrounded by the privilege of sanctuary; yet Morwen remained in the church, fearing lest these adjuncts should not meet with the same respect as the main building, the house of God. Against the screen were hung a number of twisted wax tapers, forming coils. These were employed on vigils and at the Pylgain, or Christmas Eve service at night. One of these Goronwy took down. He said no word to Morwen, but went out as silently as he had entered. "I thank you," said Pabo. "I would not enter myself lest Cadell should be there, and he recognize me." "You need not have feared that," laughed Goronwy. "He is not one to spend hours in prayer. He is not there." "Then will I enter and pray." "Nay," Goronwy interposed. "There are others there who it were well should not see you." "Be it so," said Pabo. "And now--find Morwen, aye--and speak with Howel also. Tell him naught of Ogofau. I shall have something to say shortly that will make the hearts of all Welshmen dance." "And will you not tell me?" "All in good time, lad. As yet I cannot say, for in sooth it is an expectation and not a certainty." Then he departed. Goronwy leaned against the church wall, looking in the direction he had taken, perplexed and not knowing what he should do. Pabo took his course over the brawling Annell, below the church, and mounted a spur of hill, among woods, till he came to a hollow, an incipient glen that ran west, and opposite rose a rounded height crowned by a camp, the Caer of ancient Cynyr, the father of the Five Saints. It was thence these holy brothers had descended to place themselves under the tuition of Cynwyl. It was when these five had disappeared into the gold-mine that the father had surrendered his principality to the missionary who had come among them from the North, and thus had constituted the Archpriesthood, holding a chieftaindom over the Caio district. And now Pabo descended among stumps of trees and broken masses of stone, and all at once stood on the edge of a great crater, into which the silvery light of the moon from behind a haze flowed, and which it filled. Out of this circular basin shot up a spire of rock, called the Belfry of Gwen--of her who dared to enter the mine to spy on the Saints in their magic sleep. Cautiously Pabo descended the steep side, where the rubble, sifted for gold, sloped to the floor. On reaching the bottom he looked around him. He was in an amphitheater of rock, here abrupt, there buried under slopes of detritus. The moon came out and sent the shadow of Gwen's Belfry across the level white floor of the mine. What the Romans had done was to scoop out the interior of a nodule of hill, much as we now dig out the inside of a Stilton cheese, and leave the walls intact. But there existed this difference: that the walls were not like a cheese-rind, that could be pierced through. They were but portions of the mountain, into which, by adits from the crater, the miners had burrowed. Most of these old tunnels were choked, some hidden under slides of rubble, but one gaped black, and it was into this that the Five Saints had entered according to legend, and Gwen also. And now Pabo was about to penetrate as well. Doubt of the reality of the discovery made by the hermit had departed. He was fully convinced that he would light on the hoard. His sole fear left was he should forget the directions he had seen traced on the plank. There was little wind now, below in this bowl. He struck flint and steel together and obtained a light. Then he kindled his wax taper, signed himself with the cross, and entered the cave. For some way in, the floor was covered with stones that had been thrown in. The roof was higher than his head and was arched. This was no natural cavern like that under Careg Cennen. This was cut by man's hand, out of rock very different in character, color, and texture from the limestone. The light from his taper glittered in the water that trickled over the sides, and in the pools that here and there lay in the footway. There were no stalagmites. Pabo could distinguish the marks of the picks used to excavate the adit. All at once he was startled by a rushing and whistling. He drew back, and past him swept legions of bats that had hitherto lived undisturbed in this cave. They came back, flickered near his face, threatened his light, and he shouted and threw stones. Then--he saw, heard them no more. They had issued from the portal and had gone to hunt under the open sky. Now the ground rose; there had been an accumulation of soil, and he was forced to bend low to pass on. But presently the floor sank and the vault was loftier, and he pursued his course erect. The ground now was hard rock, not earth, and it rang under his steps. It was also dry. The air was intensely still. The candle cast but a feeble light, and that but imperfectly illumined the way before him. He could best see by holding it above his head, yet was able to do this only where the arched roof was high, and he ever feared lest it should strike on a rock and become extinguished. The passage bulged and became a hall, and here it seemed to him that he saw some blue object before him. He stood, uncertain what it was, and whether to venture towards it. Presently he discovered that it was a patch of light, a reflection of some of the moonlit vapor in the sky falling through a small orifice far, far above in a dome, the height of which he could not measure. In contrast with the yellow flame of his candle, this feeble spot had looked blue as a turquoise. He tried to recollect the plan sketched on the board, and he did remember that this hall was there indicated, with _Ibi lumen_ scrawled beside it. He traversed this hall and entered another passage, or a continuance of the same, beyond. Then he put his hand to his brow, and endeavored to recall the sketch of the mine--and felt that it was gone from him. While lying in prison at Careg Cennen he had recalled it distinctly--he now, indeed, remembered that there was a direction _in sinistram_ or _ad dextram_, he could not now say which, and where the turn was to be made. However, there surely could be no mistake--as he had the way open before him. Hitherto he had felt no fear. Possibly his incarceration in partial darkness had accustomed him to some such places; he pushed on, moreover, animated with hope. And he placed some confidence in his blessed taper from the church of the patron of his family and tribe. But suddenly he sprang back, and only just in time. In front of him, occupying the whole width of the passage, was a hole. How deep it was he had some means of judging by hearing the bound and rebound of a stone dislodged by his foot. "_Cave puteum_;" now he recalled the warning. He crept forward cautiously, and extended his light over the gulf. It illumined the sides but a little way down. Judging by the time a stone took in falling before it plashed into water, it must have been about fifty feet in depth. The well was not large at the mouth. And now Pabo distinctly remembered that the _Thesaurus_ was not far beyond it. It did not occur to him to return. He was so near the goal that reach it he must. He examined attentively the sides. Not a thread of a track existed whereby the abyss might be skirted. There were no pieces of wood about by means of which it could be bridged. The well's mouth was but four feet in diameter. Surely he could leap that! He stepped back two, three strides, and bounded. He reached the ground beyond, but in the spring his light was extinguished. The snuff was glowing, and he blew on it, but it would not flame. "It matters not," said he. "I have my tinder and steel; I can relight it. Now on, on to the gold!" He stepped forward in the dark, but holding the taper with the smoldering snuff. Then his steps sounded as though he were in a wide chamber. He held out his hands; the walls had fallen away. A few steps further, and he stumbled, and stumbling, dropped on his knees, and saw by the expiring light of the snuff--the glint of ingots of gold. The last spark went out, and he was in complete darkness. CHAPTER XXIII AURI MOLES PRÆGRANDIS Pabo rose to his feet at once. He had seen, he had touched the gold. The wax taper had dropped from his hand as he fell. He groped for it and soon found it. Then he put his hand to his pouch for flint and steel. They were not there. He searched the breast of his tunic. They were not there either. Then he passed his hand over the floor, thinking that he might have dropped them from his pouch when he fell. As yet he was not alarmed, rather concerned, as he was impatient to see the treasure. Kneeling, he groped on all sides of him, but could not find what he sought. His hand touched ingots; that he knew by their shape, and that they were of gold he was assured by the yellow glint when his wax light fell. Still bending on one knee, and with a hand on the ground, he began to consider what could have become of flint and steel. Was it possible that he had left them outside the "Ogof" when he lighted the taper? He racked his brain. He distinctly recalled the kindling of the wick. He could not remember having replaced the flint, steel, and tinder in his pouch. It might have occurred that flint or steel had fallen out when he stumbled, or even when he leaped the chasm, but not that tinder as well should have gone. He knew that whilst engaged in kindling the taper he had placed the now missing articles on a stone just within the entrance. There they might be still. He must have forgotten to replace them in his purse. Forgotten those things most necessary to him in the mine! Only conceivable through the occupation of his thoughts over the treasure, in quest of which he was venturing. He had found the treasure, but now was without the means of mustering it, even of seeing it. Again he groped about the floor, in desperation, hoping against conviction that the flint, steel, and tinder might be lying there. His hands passed over the cold damp rock; it was in vain; and weariness at length compelled him to desist. Now only did the whole horror of his situation lighten on him. The chasm lay between him and his way back. He might, possibly enough, by feeling, find the passage by which he had entered; but how could he traverse that awful abyss? He was buried alive. He sat in the darkness listening. He heard no sound whatever, save at long intervals a drip of water. He stared into the blackness of night that surrounded him, but could see not the faintest trace of light. And yet--not at any great distance was the hall into which a pearly ray fell from an orifice above; but between him and the spot of light lay the well. Were it not better to essay to return, and risk the headlong fall into that gulf, than to sit there in darkness, in solitude, till death by starvation came on him, and hear the slow ticking of the falling drops? What chance of rescue had he? True that he had sent word to his wife to meet him at the Ogofau--the caves, in the plural, not to seek for him in the one Ogof, in the singular, that was specially dreaded as the haunt of Gwen, and the place where slept the Five Saints. Would his wife think of seeking him therein? Could she possibly venture so far from the light? It was not credible. He tried to rise, but his limbs were stiff, and he shivered as with cold. Cautiously, with extended hands, he groped for the wall, and finally reached it. Then, passing them along, he felt his way towards the opening to the passage. But as to his direction, of that he knew nothing, could form no conjecture. While searching for his kindling tools, he had turned himself about and lost every inkling as to the course by which he had entered. After a while his right hand no longer encountered rock, and stepping sideways, he held with his left hand to the wall and stretched forth the right, but felt nothing. Letting go, but with reluctance, he moved another step sideways and now touched rock again. He had found the passage, and he took a few steps down it, drawing his hand along the side. He put forth the right foot, feeling the floor lest he should come unawares on the chasm. So he crept on, but whether he were going forward in a straight line or was describing a curve, he did not know. His brain was in a whirl. Then he struck his head against a prong of rock that descended from above, and reeled back and fell. For a while, without being completely stunned, he lay in half consciousness. His desperate condition filled him with horror. What if he did find his way to the ledge of the well? Could he leap it? If he made the attempt, he did not know in which direction to spring; he might bound, dash himself against the rock, and go reeling down into the gulf. But even to make such a leap he must take a few strides to acquire sufficient impetus. How measure his strides in the pitch darkness? How be sure that he did not leap too precipitately and not land at all, but go down whirling into the depths? And there was something inexpressibly hideous in the thought of lying dead below, sopping in water at the bottom of that abyss--sopping till his flesh parted from the bones, away from the light, his fate unknown to his wife, his carcass there to lie till Doomsday. Partly due to the blow he had received, partly to desperation, his mind became confused. Strange thoughts came over him. He seemed to acquire vision, and to behold the Five Saints lying in a niche before him, with their heads on a long stone. They were very old, and their faces covered with mildew. Their silver beards had grown and covered them like blankets. One had his hand laid on the ground, and the fingers were like stag's-horn lichen. Then the one saint raised this white hand, passed it over his face, opened his eyes, and sat up. "Brothers," said he, in a faint small voice, "let us turn our pillow." Thereat the other four sat up, and the one who had roused his brethren said: "See--we have worn holes in the stone with our heads. We will turn our pillow." And in verity there were five cup-like depressions in the stone. Then the old Saint reversed the stone, and at once all four laid their heads on it again and went again to sleep. The fifth also relaid his head on the stone, and immediately his eyes closed. Then it was to Pabo as though he saw a white face peeping round a corner of rock; and this was followed by a form--thin, vaporous, clad in flowing white robes. "Gwen! Gwen!" he cried, starting up. "You--you know a way forth! You leave in thunder and storm. Let me hold to your skirts, and draw me from this pit of darkness!" But with his cries the phantasm had vanished. His eyes were staring into pitch darkness, in which not even a spectral form moved. And still--he heard at long-drawn intervals the drip, drip of water. Again he sank back into half-consciousness, and once more his troubled brain conjured up fantastic visions. He thought himself once again in the cave at Careg Cennen, and that the beautiful Nest came to him. Somehow, he confused her with Gwen. She seemed also to be vaporous--all but her face and her radiant golden hair. What eyes she had, and how they flashed and glowed as she spoke of the wrongs done to her country and to her people! He thought she spoke to him, and said: "Oh, Pabo, Pabo, I have trusted in thee! My brother, he is raising all Cymraig peoples. Take to him the treasure of the old Romans. With that he will buy harness, and swords, and spears, and will call over and enroll levies from Ireland. With gold he will bribe, and get admission to castles he cannot break up. With gold he will get fleets to sail up the Severn Sea and harass the enemy as they venture along the levels of Morganwg. See, see, I have given thee the bracelet of Maxen the Emperor! It is a solemn trust. Bear it to him; let it not be lost here in the bowels of the earth!" And again he started with a cry and said: "Help, help, Princess Nest! Me thou didst draw out of the dungeon. Me thou didst bring up out of the cave. Deliver me now!" And again all was blackness, and there was no answer. Still continued the monotonous drip. Then Pabo bit his tongue, and resolved by no means to suffer himself to fall away into these trances again. With strong resolution he fought with phantom figures as they rose before his eyes, with drowsiness as it crept over his brain, with whispers and mutterings that sounded in his ears. How long the time was that passed he knew not. He might have counted the drips of water, yet knew not the length of each interval between the falling of the drops. He forcibly turned his mind to Morwen, and wondered what would become of her. Howel he trusted to do his uttermost, but Howel would have been hung but for his opportune return. Then his mind turned to the prospects of down-trampled Wales; to the chances of Griffith--to the defection and treachery of the King of North Wales; to the discouragement that had followed the abortive attempt of Owen ap Cadogan. But Owen had been a man false of heart, seeking only his selfish ends; without one spark of loyalty to his nation. Far other was Griffith. His beauty, his open manner, his winning address, were matched with a character true, brave, and sympathetic. In him the people had a leader in whom they could trust. And yet what would be his chances against the overwhelming power of England and Normandy? Before Pabo's eyes, as they closed unconsciously, clouds seemed to descend, overspread and darken his beautiful land. He saw again and again devastation sweep it. He saw alien nobles and alien prelates fasten on it and suck its resources like leeches. There passed before him, as it were, wave on wave of darkness, fire, and blood. And then--suddenly a spark, a flame, a blaze, and in it a Welsh prince mounting the English throne, one of the blood of Cunedda--the ancestor of the Saint of Caio, their loved Cynwyl. The lions! the black lions of Cambria waving over the throne of England! Pabo started with a thrill of triumph, but it was to hear a shriek, piercing, harsh, horrible, ring through the vault, followed by crash, crash, again a dull thud--and a splash. Thereon all was silent. Dazed in mind, unaware whether he were dreaming still, or whether what he had heard were real, with every nerve quivering, with his blood fluttering in his temples, at his heart, he shut his eyes, clutched the ground, and held his breath. And then--next moment a flash--and a cry--"Pabo!" He opened his eyes--but saw nothing, only light. But he felt arms about him, felt his head drawn to a soft and throbbing bosom, felt warm tears dropping on his face. "Pabo! oh, my Pabo! it was not you!" By degrees his faculties returned. Then he saw before him Howel bearing a horn lantern; but he felt he could not see her who had folded him in her arms and was sobbing over him. "We have found you," said Howel. "But for her I would not have dared to enter. Yet she would have gone alone. She saw thy flint and steel on a stone at the entrance. She was full of fear, and left me no rest till I agreed to accompany her. Tell me, what was that fearful cry?" "I know not. The place is full of phantoms." "Was there none with thee?" "None. Were ye alone?" "We were alone." "Then it was the cry of Gwen, or of some evil spirit. And oh! Howel. _Auri moles prægrandis._" "I understand not." "Come and see." Pabo started to his feet now, disengaging himself gently from the arms of his wife; but not relaxing the hold of her hand which he clasped. A few steps were retraced to the hall, and there lay the fallen wax taper, and there, piled up, were ingots of gold. "See!" exclaimed Pabo. "For Griffith ap Rhys. With this--at last something may be done." Howel passed his lantern over it meditatively. "Yes," he said, "it is just what has been the one thing that has failed us hitherto." "Not the only thing; the other--a true man." "Right. We have here the means of success, and in Griffith--the true leader." "Come!" said Pabo. "I must to the light. I am weary of darkness." He rekindled his wax taper at Howel's light, and all proceeded on their way; and before many minutes had elapsed were in the domed chamber, traversed from above by a tiny ray of moonlight. Pabo stood still. His head spun. "But the well! the well!" His wife and Howel looked at him with surprise. "How came you to me? How did you pass the chasm?" "There was no chasm. We have returned as we went." Pabo clasped his head. "There is a well. I leaped it. I feared to fall into it." Then all at once, clear before him stood the plan as drawn by the hermit. From the chamber where light was there were two passages leading to the treasure--one had it in the well--that was the turn to the right, and the direction had been to go to the left. He who had seen the map had gone wrong. They who had never seen it went right. But, we may ask, what was that cry? From whom did it issue? All that can be said is this: Goronwy, after having given the message, watched curiously, and saw Morwen go to the house of Howel. Had he not been inquisitive to know the meaning of the meeting in Ogofau, he would have betrayed her at once to Rogier. As it was, he resolved to follow and observe, unseen. He had done so, and at a distance, after Howel and Morwen, he had entered the mine. More cannot be said. Goronwy was never seen again. CHAPTER XXIV THE PYLGAIN OF DYFED Like an explosion of fire-damp in a coal-mine--sudden, far-reaching, deadly--so was the convulsion in South Wales. All was quiet to-day. On the morrow the whole land from the Bay of Cardigan to Morganwg, was in flames. The rising had been prepared for with the utmost caution. The last to anticipate it were the soldiery under Rogier, who were quartered in Caio. Notwithstanding imperative orders from the bishop at Llawhaden to return to him, they had remained where they were, and had continued to conduct themselves in the same lawless manner as before. They scoffed at the tameness with which their insolence was endured. "They are Cynwyl conies--des lapins!" they said. "Say 'Whist!' and nothing more is seen of them than their white tails as they scuttle to their burrows." For centuries this had been an oasis of peace, unlapped by the waves of war. The very faculty of resistance was taken out of these men, who could handle a plow or brandish a shepherd's crook, but were frightened at the chime of a bowstring and the flash of a pike. Yet, secretly, arms were being brought into the valley, and were distributed from farm to farm and from cot to cot; and the men whose wives and daughters had been dishonored, whose savings had been carried off, who had themselves been beaten and insulted, whose relatives had been hung as felons, were gripping the swords and handling the lances--eager for the signal that should set them free to fall on their tormentors. And that signal came at last. On Christmas Eve, from the top of Pen-y-ddinas shot up a tongue of flame. At once from every mountain-side answered flashes of fire. There was light before every house, however small. The great basin of Caio was like a reversed dome of heaven studded with stars. "What is the meaning of this?" asked Rogier, issuing from the habitation he had appropriated to himself, and looking round in amazement. "It is the pylgain," replied his man, Pont d'Arche, who knew something of Welsh. "Pylgain! What is that?" "The coming in of Christmas. They salute it with lights and carols and prayers and dances." "Methinks I can hear sounds." "Aye! they are coming to church." "With torches--there are many." "They all come." Then a man came rushing up the hill; he was breathless. On reaching where stood Rogier, he gasped: "They come--a thousand men and all armed." "It is a river of fire." Along the road could be seen a waving line of light, and from all sides, down the mountains ran cascades of light as well. "There is not a man is not armed, and the women each bear a torch; they come with them--to see revenge done on us." Then up came Cadell. He was trembling. "Rogier," he said, "this is no pylgain for us--the whole country is stirring. The whole people is under arms, and swearing to have our blood." "We will show these conies of Cynwyl that we are not afraid of them." "They are no conies now, but lions. Can you stand against a thousand men? And--this is not all, I warrant. The whole of the Towy Valley, and that of the Teify, all Dyfed, maybe all Wales, is up to-night. Can you make your way through?" Rogier uttered a curse. "By the paunch of the Bastard. I relish not running before those conies." "Then tarry--and they will hang you beside Cynwyl's bell, where you slung their kinsmen." Rogier's face became mottled with mingled rage and fear. Meanwhile his men had rallied around them, running from the several houses they were lodging in; a panic had seized them. Some, without awaiting orders, were saddling their horses. "Hark!" shouted Rogier. "What is that?" The river of light had become a river of song. The thunder of the voices of men and the clear tones of the women combined. And from every rill of light that descended from the heights to swell the advancing current, came the strain as well. "They have come caroling," said Rogier disdainfully. "Carol, call you this?" exclaimed Cadell. "It is the war-song of the sons of David. 'Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered: let them also that hate Him, flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt Thou drive them away: and like as wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish----'" "I will hear no more," said Rogier. "Mount! And Heaven grant us a day when we may revenge this." "I will go too," said Cadell. "Here I dare not remain." Before the advancing river of men arrived at the crossing of the Annell, the entire band of the Normans had fled--not one was left. Then up the ascent came the procession. First went the staff of Cynwyl, not now in its gold and gem-encrusted shrine, but removed from it--a plain, rough, ashen stick, borne aloft by Morgan ap Seyssult, its hereditary guardian, and behind him came Meredith, with his two attendant bards, all with their harps, striking them as the multitude intoned the battle-song that for five hundred years had not sounded within the sanctuary of David. The women bore torches aloft, the men marched four in breast, all armed and with stern faces, and Pabo was there--and led them. The Archpriest, on reaching the church, mounted a block of stone, and dismissed the women. Let them return to their homes. A panic had fallen on those who had molested them, and they had fled. The work was but begun, and the men alone could carry it on to the end. Rogier and his men did not draw rein till they had reached the Ystrad Towy, the broad valley through which flowed the drainage of the Brecknock Mountains. And there they saw that on all sides beacons were kindled; in every hamlet resounded the noise of arms. At Llandeilo they threw themselves into Dynevor, which had but a slender garrison. But there they would not stay; and, avoiding such places as were centers of gathering to the roused natives, they made for Carmarthen. The castle there was deemed impregnable. It was held mainly by Welsh mercenaries in the service of Gerald of Windsor. Rogier mistrusted them; he would not remain there, for he heard that Griffith ap Rhys, at the head of large bodies of insurgents, was marching upon Carmarthen. Next day the brother of the bishop was again on the move with his men by daybreak, and passed into the Cleddau Valley, making for Llawhaden. In the meantime the men of Caio were on the march. None were left behind save the very old and the very young and the women. They marched four abreast, with the staff of Cynwyl borne before them. Now the vanguard thundered the battle-song of David, "Cyfoded Duw, gwasgarer ei elynion: afföed ei gaseion o'i flaen ef." They sang, then ceased, and the rear-guard took up the chant: "When thou wentest forth before the people; when thou wentest through the wilderness, the earth shook and the heavens dropped." They sang on and ceased. Thereupon again the vanguard took up the strain, "Kings with their armies did flee, and were discomfited; and they of the household divided the spoil." Thus chanting alternately, they marched through the passage among the mountains threaded by the Sarn Helen, and before the people went Pabo, wearing the bracelet of Maximus, the Roman Emperor, who took to wife that Helen who had made the road, and who was of the royal British race of Cunedda. So they marched on--following the same course as that by which the Norman cavalcade had preceded them. And this was the Pylgain in Dyfed in the year 1115. The host came out between the portals of the hills at Llanwrda, and turned about and descended the Ystrad Towy, by the right bank of the river; and the daybreak of Christmas saw them opposite Llangadock. The gray light spread from behind the mighty ridge of Trichrug, and revealed the great fortified, lonely camp of Carn Gôch towering up, with its mighty walls of stone and the huge cairn that occupied the highest point within the enclosure. They halted for a while, but for a while only, and then thrust along in the same order, and with the same resolution, intoning the same chant on their way to Llandeilo. There they tarried for the night, and every house was opened to them, and on every hearth there was a girdle-cake for them. On the morrow the whole body was again on the march. Meanwhile, the garrison had fled from Dynevor to Careg Cennen, and the men of Ystrad Towy were camped against that fortress, from which, on the news of the revolt, Gerald had escaped to Carmarthen. By the time the men of Caio were within sight of this latter place, it was in flames. And tidings came from Cardigan. The people there had with one acclaim declared that they would have Griffith as their prince, and were besieging Strongbow's castle of Blaen-Porth. But the men of Caio did not tarry at Carmarthen to assist in the taking of the castle. Only there did Pabo surrender the bracelet of Maxen to the Prince, with the message from his sister. They pushed on their way. Whither were they bound? Slowly, steadily, resolvedly on the track of those men who had outraced them to their place of retreat and defense, the bishop's Castle of Llawhaden. Now when Bernard heard that all Caio was on the march, and came on unswervingly towards where he was behind strong walls and defended by mighty towers, then his heart failed him. He bade Rogier hold out, but for himself he mounted his mule, rode to Tenby Castle; nor rested there, but took ship and crossed the mouth of the Severn estuary to Bristol, whence he hasted to London, to lay the tidings before the King. And with him went Cadell, the Chaplain. It was evening when the host of Caio reached Llawhaden, and Rogier from the walls heard the chant of the war-psalm. "God shall wound the head of his enemies: and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his wickedness ... that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies: and that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same." He shuddered--a premonition of evil. Pabo would have dissuaded his men from an immediate assault; but they were not weary, they were eager for the fray. They had cut down and were bearing fagots of wood, and carried huge bundles of fern. Some fagots went into the moat, others were heaped against the gates. The episcopal barns were broken into, and all the straw brought forth. Then flame was applied, and the draught carried the fire with a roar within. By break of day Llawhaden Castle was in the hands of the men of Caio. They chased its garrison from every wall of defense; they were asked for, they gave no quarter. Those who had so long tyrannized over them lay in the galleries, slain with the sword, or thrust through with spears. Only Rogier, hung by the neck, dangled from a beam thrust through an upper window. CHAPTER XXV THE WHITE SHIP The rebellion extended, castle after castle fell; those of the Normans who remained maintained themselves within fortresses, like Pembroke and Aberystwyth, that could receive provisions from the sea. Powys was seething--a thrill of excitement had run through Gwynedd, and the aged King there quaked lest his people should rise, dethrone him, and call on Griffith to reign over them, and combine north and south in one against the invader. It was in the favor of the Welsh that King Henry was out of the country. He was warring against the French King in Normandy, and the malcontents in the duchy. In order to punish the Welsh, he had sent Owen ap Cadogan at the head of a body of men into the country. Owen was furious because the people of Cardigan had greeted Griffith as their prince. Cardigan was the kingdom to which Owen laid claim, but he had done nothing to maintain this claim against Strongbow. Yet no sooner did he hear that a cousin, Griffith ap Rhys, had been welcomed there as its deliverer and prince, than in uncontrolled rage he gathered a troop of ruffians, and aided by the men afforded him by King Henry, he invaded Dyfed, and took an oath that he would massacre every man, woman, and child he came across till he had cut his way, and left a track of blood from the Usk to the Atlantic. Thus a Welsh prince, with a mixed host of Welshmen and English, had come among the mountains that had cradled him to exterminate those of his own blood and tongue. The horrors he committed, his remorseless savagery, sent men and women flying before him to the wastes and heaths of the Brecknock mountains, and they carried with them the infirm and feeble, knowing well that Owen would spare neither the gray head nor the infant. Enraged at not finding more food for his sword, he marked his onward course with flame, destroying farms and homesteads. An appointment was made for the host of Owen, another led by Robert Consul, and the disciplined foreigners under Gerald of Windsor, who had been reinforced from the sea--to converge and unite in one great army for the chastisement of South Wales. It so happened, while thus marching, that Owen, with about a hundred men, detached himself from the main body to fall on and butcher a party of fugitives on their way to the fastnesses of the mountains. Returning with their plunder and their blades dripping with blood, Owen and his ruffians came near to where Gerald of Windsor was on his way. Then up flamed the rage of the baron, and he resolved on using the opportunity to discharge a personal debt of honor. It was this Owen who had penetrated as a friend into Pembroke, and had carried off Gerald's wife, Nest. At once he turned and fell on Owen and his murderous band, cut them to pieces, and slew the man against whom he bore so bitter a grudge. Henry had returned from Normandy; he was triumphant. Peace had been declared, and his son William had been invested with the duchy. The King hastened to Westminster as soon as he had landed, expecting his sons, William and Richard, and his daughter, Matilda, to follow him in a day or two. As he was about to embark at Barfleur, there had come to him one Thomas Fitz-Stephen, the son of the man who had conveyed the Conqueror to England. At his petition, Henry accorded him the favor of convoying the princes and the princess across the Channel in his splendid new vessel, the _White Ship_. The crew, greatly elated at this honor, after having received their passengers on board, begged Prince William that he would order drink to be supplied them, and this he imprudently granted. A revel ensued, which was kept up even after the King and his fleet had put to sea. Owing to this, Henry arrived in England without the _White Ship_ remaining in sight and forming a portion of the fleet. He was not, however, in any concern, as the sea was calm and there was little wind, and he made his way at once to Windsor. Almost immediately on his arrival, Nest appeared before him. The King was in a bad humor. He was vexed at his children not having arrived. He was very angry because his porcupine was dead. The servant whose duty it was to attend to the natural rarities Henry collected, assured him that this death was due to the porcupine's licking himself like a cat, to keep himself clean, and he had accidentally swallowed one of his own quills, which had transfixed his heart. "And, Sire," said the man; "when I saw him licking himself, I blessed Heaven, as I thought it to be a token of fair weather while your Majesty was crossing the sea." "You should not have suffered him to lick himself," said the King angrily. "Sire, I believed he was cleaning his spines, that he might present his best appearance to your Majesty." "Take him away!" ordered Henry, addressing a man-at-arms, "and say he is to receive fifty stripes at the pillory for his negligence. Well, what are you here for, Nest? This is a cursed bad augury on my return to find my porcupine dead and you here with a complaint." "Sire," said the Princess, "at one time my presence was not of ill-augury to you." "Times have changed. I am driven mad with rebellion. First in Normandy, then in Wales. One has no peace. But I have beaten down all opposition in the duchy, and now I shall turn my attention to your country. What do you want? To threaten and scold, as once before?" "No--only to entreat." "Oh, you women! you plead, and if you do not get what you ask, then you menace. What one of all your threats and denunciations has come true? What single one?" "Oh, my Sovereign," said Nest, "hearken to me but this once. Now there is an occasion such as may not present itself again of pacifying Wales and making my dear people honor you and submit to your scepter." "What is that?" "Owen ap Cadogan is dead. He entered his native land slaying and laying waste, so that every Cymric heart trembled before him--some with fear, others with resentment. And now--he is dead, Gerald my husband, who had some wrong to redress----" Henry burst into derisive laughter. "Gerald killed him; and now the Welsh people hail him as having delivered them from their worst foe." "Then let them submit." "But, Sire and King, their wrongs are intolerable. Oh, let there be some holding of the hand. Lay not on them more burdens; meddle not further with their concerns. I speak to you now, not for the princes, but for the people." "It is well that you speak not for the princes. The worst of all, a rebellious dragon, is your brother Griffith. Him I shall not spare." "I speak for the people. Sire, there is one truth they have taken to heart now by the fall of Owen. It is that given in Scripture: Put not your trust in princes! Those we have known have failed; and fail they all will, because they seek their own glory, and not the welfare of the people. Our Cymri know this now. Griffith of Gwynedd and Owen of Cardigan have taught them that. Therefore, they are ready to bow under the scepter of England, if that scepter, in place of being used to stir up one prince against another, be laid on all to keep them in tranquillity. What my people seek is peace, protection, justice. Sire, you are mistaken if you believe that the Welsh people rise against the overlordship of your Crown. They rise because they can obtain no peace, no justice from the Norman adventurers sent among them, and no protection against their best lands being taken from them and given to Flemings. Sire, trust the people. Be just and generous to them. Protect them from those who would eat them up. All they rise for, fight for--are the eternal principles of justice as between man and man. Your men snatch from them their lands; their homes they are expelled from; even their churches are taken from them." "Ah, ha, Nest! I have the sanction of Heaven there. Did not your British Church resist Augustine? Does it not now oppose our See of Canterbury? And as Heaven blesses the right and punishes the wrong, so has it marvelously interposed to silence evil tongues. When my Bernard was resisted, fire fell from heaven and consumed those who opposed him, in the sight of all men. I believe a hundred men were suddenly and instantaneously burnt." "You heard that from Bernard." "It has been published throughout England. I have spoken of it myself to the successor of the Apostles, to Pope Callixtus, at Rheims, and he was mightily gratified, for, said he, I ever held that British Church to be tainted with heresy. And he reminded me that when the British bishops opposed Augustine, they were massacred at Bangor. Which was very satisfactory. So now with my Bernard----" "Bernard!" exclaimed Nest, boldly interrupting the King, "Bernard is an arch liar! Sire! a priest named Pabo struck the bishop in the mouth, and knocked out one or two of his teeth." "I noticed this and rallied him on his whistling talk. But he said nought of the blow." "It was so. And he pretends that Pabo was smitten by lightning for having thus struck him. But, Sire, I have seen this priest since the alleged miracle; his hair is unsinged. He has a hearty appetite, and good teeth--not one struck out by lightning--wherewith to consume his food. The smell of fire has not passed upon him." The King broke into a roar of laughter. "That is Bernard! Bernard to the life! A rogue in business. He cheated my Queen, and now tries to cheat me with a lie, and sets up as the favored of Heaven. You are sure of it?" "Quite sure; Bernard endeavored to huddle the man out of the way lest the lie should be found out." "Famous!" The King had recovered his good-humor. "And to see the solemnity and conviction of the Holy Father when he heard the story." Again he exploded into laughter. "I must go tell the Queen. It is fun, it will put her in a passion." "And, Sire! about my people--my poor Welsh people?" "I will see to it. I will consider--what did I hear? You have brought your young child with you?" "Yes, Sire, he is without." "Let me see him--has he your beauty or Gerald's ugliness?" "Your Majesty shall judge." Nest went towards the door, but turned. "Oh, Sire, forget not my entreaty for my people." "Away--fetch the boy. I will think on it." Nest left the room. In the ante-chamber all present were in obvious consternation, pale, and dejected. She had left her little son with a servant, and she crossed the chamber. Then the Chancellor, who was present, came to her, drew her into the embrasure of a window, and spoke to her in awestruck tones. At his words her cheek blanched. "None dare inform him," said the Chancellor. "We have instructed the child. Suffer him to enter alone and tell the tale." For a moment Nest could not speak; something rose in her throat. She signed to the boy to come to her. "Do you know what to say?" "Yes, mother; that the _White Ship_----" "Cast yourself at the King's feet, tell him all; and when you have said the last words, 'The princes, thy sons, be dead; thy daughter also, she likewise is dead'--then pause and say in a loud voice, 'Remember Wales!'" The child was dismissed. He passed behind a curtain, then through the door into the royal presence. All without stood hushed, trembling with emotion, hardly breathing, none looking on another. Then, in the stillness, came a loud and piercing cry; a cry that cut to the hearts of such as heard it like a stiletto. In another moment Henry staggered forth, blanched, and as one drunk, with hands extended and lifted before his face, and in a harsh voice, like a madman's shriek, he cried: "It has come. The judgment of God! I am a dry and a branchless tree, blasted in the midst of life--blasted in the hour of victory." Then he reeled to a table, threw himself on his knees, laid his head on his hands, and burst into tears. None moved. None ventured near him. The Bishop of London was there--but he felt that no words of his were of avail now. So they stood hardly breathing, watching the stricken man, who quivered in the agony of his bereavement. Presently he lifted his face--so altered as to be hardly recognizable, livid as that of a corpse, and running down with tears. He turned towards Nest and said--"Go, woman, go--it shall be as thou hast desired. I am judged." What had occurred needs but a few words of explanation. When the _White Ship_ started the captain assured Prince William that such was her speed that she would overtake the King's ship, and even pass it and leave behind the royal squadron. The signal was given, and the _White Ship_ left the harbor, impelled to her utmost speed by fifty excited rowers; but she had not proceeded far before she was driven violently against a reef, which stove in two planks of her starboard bow. Prince William was put into the boat, and was already on his way towards the land when, hearing the cries of his sister from the sinking vessel, he ordered his rowers to put back and save her. He was obeyed; but on reaching the wreck such a rush was made by the frantic passengers to enter their boat that she was swamped, and the whole crowd was swallowed in the scarcely troubled sea. William and Richard, the two sons of Henry, and their sister Matilda, and three hundred others, chiefly persons of exalted rank, perished on this occasion. Nest returned to Wales. She had gained all that she desired. She went at once to Dynevor. There was her brother, Griffith, who had done much to restore the ruinous castle of his fathers, the kings of Dyfed. "Griffith," said she, "I have done what I could. For thee, free pardon and reinstatement in thy principality--yet is it not to be a kingdom, only as a great chiefdom. The King undertakes to suffer no more English or Normans to enter our country and carve out for themselves baronies therein. Nor will he send into it any more Flemings. But such as are here shall remain, and Norman, Fleming, and Welshman alike shall be under his scepter, and be justly ruled, the English by their own laws, the Welsh by those of Rhodric Dda." She looked round and saw Pabo, "and for thee--return thou to Caio and thy Archpriesthood--and to thy wife. Let Bernard look to it. The King will not forget the story of thy being consumed with fire from Heaven for having knocked out one of the bishop's teeth. And now, Griffith, give me the armlet of Maxen Wledig. We have both deserved well of our country." THE END. 
34704	----	Transcriber's Note Bold text is indicated with equals signs, =like this=. Individual letters in curly brackets indicate superscripts, e.g. y{e}. A y with a circumflex above is shown as [^y]. Reverse asterisms are indicated with [*.*]. Illustration captions in {curly brackets} have been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader. BRITISH GOBLINS: _WELSH FOLK-LORE, FAIRY MYTHOLOGY, LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS._ BY WIRT SIKES, UNITED STATES CONSUL FOR WALES. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY T. H. THOMAS. In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour ... Al was this lond fulfilled of fayrie. CHAUCER. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET. 1880. [_All rights reserved._] LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. [Illustration: THE OLD WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.] TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, ALBERT EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, THIS ACCOUNT OF THE FAIRY MYTHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE OF HIS PRINCIPALITY IS BY PERMISSION DEDICATED. PREFACE. In the ground it covers, while this volume deals especially with Wales, and still more especially with South Wales--where there appear to have been human dwellers long before North Wales was peopled--it also includes the border counties, notably Monmouthshire, which, though severed from Wales by Act of Parliament, is really very Welsh in all that relates to the past. In Monmouthshire is the decayed cathedral city of Caerleon, where, according to tradition, Arthur was crowned king in 508, and where he set up his most dazzling court, as told in the 'Morte d'Arthur.' In a certain sense Wales may be spoken of as the cradle of fairy legend. It is not now disputed that from the Welsh were borrowed many of the first subjects of composition in the literature of all the cultivated peoples of Europe. The Arthur of British history and tradition stands to Welshmen in much the same light that Alfred the Great stands to Englishmen. Around this historic or semi-historic Arthur have gathered a throng of shining legends of fabulous sort, with which English readers are more or less familiar. An even grander figure is the Arthur who existed in Welsh mythology before the birth of the warrior-king. The mythic Arthur, it is presumed, began his shadowy life in pre-historic ages, and grew progressively in mythologic story, absorbing at a certain period the personality of the real Arthur, and becoming the type of romantic chivalry. A similar state of things is indicated with regard to the enchanter Merlin; there was a mythic Merlin before the real Merlin was born at Carmarthen. With the rich mass of legendary lore to which these figures belong, the present volume is not intended to deal; nor do its pages treat, save in the most casual and passing manner, of the lineage and original significance of the lowly goblins which are its theme. The questions here involved, and the task of adequately treating them, belong to the comparative mythologist and the critical historian, rather than to the mere literary workman. UNITED STATES CONSULATE, CARDIFF, _August, 1879_. CONTENTS. BOOK I. THE REALM OF FAERIE. CHAPTER I. PAGE Fairy Tales and the Ancient Mythology--The Compensations of Science--Existing Belief in Fairies in Wales--The Faith of Culture--The Credulity of Ignorance--The Old-Time Welsh Fairyland--The Fairy King--The Legend of St. Collen and Gwyn ap Nudd--The Green Meadows of the Sea--Fairies at Market--The Land of Mystery 1 CHAPTER II. Classification of Welsh Fairies--General Designation--Habits of the Tylwyth Teg--Ellyllon, or Elves--Shakspeare's Use of Welsh Folk-Lore--Rowli Pugh and the Ellyll--Household Story Roots--The Ellylldan--The Pooka--Puck Valley, Breconshire--Where Shakspeare got his Puck--Pwca'r Trwyn--Usual Form of the Pooka Story--Coblynau, or Mine Fairies--The Knockers--Miners' Superstitions--Basilisks and Fire Fiends--A Fairy Coal-mine--The Dwarfs of Cae Caled--Counterparts of the Coblynau--The Bwbach, or Household Fairy--Legend of the Bwbach and the Preacher--Bogies and Hobgoblins--Carrying Mortals through the Air--Counterparts and Originals 11 CHAPTER III. Lake Fairies--The Gwragedd Annwn, or Dames of Elfin-Land--St. Patrick and the Welshmen; a Legend of Crumlyn Lake--The Elfin Cow of Llyn Barfog--Y Fuwch Laethwen Lefrith--The Legend of the Meddygon Myddfai--The Wife of Supernatural Race--The Three Blows; a Carmarthenshire Legend--Cheese and the Didactic Purpose in Welsh Folk-Lore--The Fairy Maiden's Papa--The Enchanted Isle in the Mountain Lake--Legend of the Men of Ardudwy--Origin of Water Fairies--Their prevalence in many Lands 34 CHAPTER IV. Mountain Fairies--The Gwyllion--The Old Woman of the Mountain--The Black Mountain Gwyll--Exorcism by Knife--Occult Intellectual Powers of Welsh Goats--The Legend of Cadwaladr's Goat 49 CHAPTER V. Changelings--The Plentyn-newid--The Cruel Creed of Ignorance regarding Changelings--Modes of Ridding the House of the Fairy Child--The Legend of the Frugal Meal--Legend of the Place of Strife--Dewi Dal and the Fairies--Prevention of Fairy Kidnapping--Fairies caught in the Act by Mothers--Piety as an Exorcism 56 CHAPTER VI. Living with the Tylwyth Teg--The Tale of Elidurus--Shuï Rhys and the Fairies--St. Dogmell's Parish, Pembrokeshire--Dancing with the Ellyllon--The Legend of Rhys and Llewellyn--Death from joining in the Fairy Reel--Legend of the Bush of Heaven--The Forest of the Magic Yew--The Tale of Twm and Iago--Taffy ap Sion, a Legend of Pencader--The Traditions of Pant Shon Shenkin--Tudur of Llangollen; the Legend of Nant yr Ellyllon--Polly Williams and the Trefethin Elves--The Fairies of Frennifawr--Curiosity Tales--The Fiend Master--Iago ap Dewi--The Original of Rip Van Winkle 65 CHAPTER VII. Fairy Music--Birds of Enchantment--The Legend of Shon ap Shenkin--Harp-Music in Welsh Fairy Tales--Legend of the Magic Harp--Songs and Tunes of the Tylwyth Teg--The Legend of Iolo ap Hugh--Mystic Origin of an old Welsh Air 91 CHAPTER VIII. Fairy Rings--The Prophet Jones and his Works--The Mysterious Language of the Tylwyth Teg--The Horse in Welsh Folk-Lore--Equestrian Fairies--Fairy Cattle, Sheep, Swine, etc.--The Flying Fairies of Bedwellty--The Fairy Sheepfold at Cae'r Cefn 103 CHAPTER IX. Piety as a Protection from the Seductions of the Tylwyth Teg--Various Exorcisms--Cock-crowing--The Name of God--Fencing off the Fairies--Old Betty Griffith and her Eithin Barricade--Means of Getting Rid of the Tylwyth Teg--The Bwbach of the Hendrefawr Farm--The Pwca'r Trwyn's Flitting in a Jug of Barm 112 CHAPTER X. Fairy Money and Fairy Gifts in General--The Story of Gitto Bach, or Little Griffith--The Penalty of Blabbing--Legends of the Shepherds of Cwm Llan--The Money Value of Kindness--Ianto Llewellyn and the Tylwyth Teg--The Legend of Hafod Lwyddog--Lessons inculcated by these Superstitions 119 CHAPTER XI. Origins of Welsh Fairies--The Realistic Theory--Legend of the Baron's Gate--The Red Fairies--The Trwyn Fairy a Proscribed Nobleman--The Theory of hiding Druids--Colour in Welsh Fairy Attire--The Green Lady of Caerphilly--White the favourite Welsh Hue--Legend of the Prolific Woman--The Poetico-Religious Theory--The Creed of Science 127 BOOK II. THE SPIRIT-WORLD. CHAPTER I. Modern Superstition regarding Ghosts--American 'Spiritualism'--Welsh Beliefs--Classification of Welsh Ghosts--Departed Mortals--Haunted Houses--Lady Stradling's Ghost--The Haunted Bridge--The Legend of Catrin Gwyn--Didactic Purpose in Cambrian Apparitions--An Insulted Corpse--Duty-performing Ghosts--Laws of the Spirit-World--Cadogan's Ghost 137 CHAPTER II. Household Ghosts and Hidden Treasures--The Miser of St. Donat's--Anne Dewy's Ghost--The Ghost on Horseback--Hidden Objects of Small Value--Transportation through the Air--From Breconshire to Philadelphia, Pa., in Thirty-Six Hours--Sir David Llwyd, the Magician--The Levitation of Walter Jones--Superstitions regarding Hares--The Legend of Monacella's Lambs--Aerial Transportation in Modern Spiritualism--Exorcising Household Ghosts--The Story of Haunted Margaret 151 CHAPTER III. Spectral Animals--The Chained Spirit--The Gwyllgi, or Dog of Darkness--The Legend of Lisworney-Crossways--The Gwyllgi of the Devil's Nags--The Dog of Pant y Madog--Terrors of the Brute Creation at Phantoms--Apparitions of Natural Objects--Phantom Ships and Phantom Islands 167 CHAPTER IV. Grotesque Ghosts--The Phantom Horseman--Gigantic Spirits--The Black Ghost of Ffynon yr Yspryd--Black Men in the Mabinogion--Whirling Ghosts--Antic Spirits--The Tridoll Valley Ghost--Resemblance to Modern Spiritualistic Performances--Household Fairies 174 CHAPTER V. Familiar Spirits--The Famous Sprite of Trwyn Farm--Was it a Fairy?--The Familiar Spirits of Magicians--Sir David Llwyd's Demon--Familiar Spirits in Female Form--The Legend of the Lady of the Wood--The Devil as a Familiar Spirit--His Disguises in this Character--Summoning and Exorcising Familiars--Jenkin the Pembrokeshire Schoolmaster--The Terrible Tailor of Glanbran 187 CHAPTER VI. The Evil Spirit in his customary Form--The stupid Medieval Devil in Wales--Sion Cent--The Devil outwitted--Pacts with the Fiend and their Avoidance--Sion Dafydd's Foul Pipe--The Devil's Bridge and its Legends--Similar Legends in other Lands--The Devil's Pulpit near Tintern--Angelic Spirits--Welsh Superstitions as to pronouncing the Name of the Evil Spirit--The Bardic Tradition of the Creation--The Struggle between Light and Darkness and its Symbolization 202 CHAPTER VII. Cambrian Death-Portents--The Corpse-Bird--The Tan-Wedd--Listening at the Church-Door--The Lledrith--The Gwrach y Rhibyn--The Llandaff Gwrach--Ugliness of this Female Apparition--The Black Maiden--The Cyhyraeth, or Crying Spirit--Its Moans on Land and Sea--The St. Mellons Cyhyraeth--The Groaning Spirit of Bedwellty 212 CHAPTER VIII. The Tolaeth Death Portent--Its various Forms--The Tolaeth before Death--Ewythr Jenkin's Tolaeth--A modern Instance--The Railway Victim's Warning--The Goblin Voice--The Voice from the Cloud--Legend of the Lord and the Beggar--The Goblin Funeral--The Horse's Skull--The Goblin Veil--The Wraith of Llanllwch--Dogs of Hell--The Tale of Pwyll--Spiritual Hunting Dogs--Origin of the Cwn Annwn 225 CHAPTER IX. The Corpse Candle--Its Peculiarities--The Woman of Caerau--Grasping a Corpse Candle--The Crwys Candle--Lights issuing from the Mouth--Jesting with the Canwyll Corph--The Candle at Pontfaen--The Three Candles at Golden Grove--Origin of Death-Portents in Wales--Degree of Belief prevalent at the Present Day--Origin of Spirits in General--The Supernatural--The Question of a Future Life 238 BOOK III. QUAINT OLD CUSTOMS. CHAPTER I. Serious Significance of seemingly Trivial Customs--Their Origins--Common Superstitions--The Age we Live in--Days and Seasons--New Year's Day--The Apple Gift--Lucky Acts on New Year's Morning--The First Foot--Showmen's Superstitions--Levy Dew Song--Happy New Year Carol--Twelfth Night--The Mari Lwyd--The Penglog--The Cutty Wren--Tooling and Sowling--St. Valentine's Day--St. Dewi's Day--The Wearing of the Leek--The Traditional St. David--St. Patrick's Day--St. Patrick a Welshman--Shrove Tuesday 250 CHAPTER II. Sundry Lenten Customs--Mothering Sunday--Palm Sunday--Flowering Sunday--Walking Barefoot to Church--Spiritual Potency of Buns--Good Friday Superstitions--Making Christ's Bed--Bad Odour of Friday--Unlucky Days--Holy Thursday--The Eagle of Snowdon--New Clothing at Easter--Lifting--The Crown of Porcelain--Stocsio--Ball-Playing in Churchyards--The Tump of Lies--Dancing in Churchyards--Seeing the Sun Dance--Calan Ebrill, or All Fools' Day--May Day--The Welsh Maypole--The Daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint--Carrying the Kings of Summer and Winter 266 CHAPTER III. Midsummer Eve--The Druidic Ceremonies at Pontypridd--The Snake Stone--Beltane Fires--Fourth of July Fires in America--St. Ulric's Day--Carrying Cynog--Marketing on Tombstones--The First Night of Winter--The Three Nights for Spirits--The Tale of Thomas Williams the Preacher--All Hallows Eve Festivities--Running through Fire--Quaint Border Rhymes--The Puzzling Jug--Bobbing for Apples--The Fiery Features of Guy Fawkes' Day--St. Clement's Day--Stripping the Carpenter 277 CHAPTER IV. Nadolig, the Welsh Christmas--Bell-Ringing--Carols--Dancing to the Music of the Waits--An Evening in Carmarthenshire--Shenkin Harry, the Preacher, and the Jig Tune--Welsh Morality--Eisteddfodau--Decorating Houses and Churches--The Christmas Thrift-box--The Colliers' Star--The Plygain--Pagan Origin of Christmas Customs 286 CHAPTER V. Courtship and Marriage--Planting Weeds and Rue on the Graves of Old Bachelors--Special Significance of Flowers in connection with Virginity--The Welsh Venus--Bundling, or Courting Abed--Kissing Schools--Rhamanta--Lovers' Superstitions--The Maid's Trick--Dreaming on a Mutton Bone--Wheat and Shovel--Garters in a Lovers' Knot--Egg-Shell Cake--Sowing Leeks--Twca and Sheath 298 CHAPTER VI. Wedding Customs--The Bidding--Forms of Cymmhorth--The Gwahoddwr--Horse-Weddings--Stealing a Bride--Obstructions to the Bridal Party--The Gwyntyn--Chaining--Evergreen Arches--Strewing Flowers--Throwing Rice and Shoes--Rosemary in the Garden--Names after Marriage--The Coolstrin--The Ceffyl Pren 306 CHAPTER VII. Death and Burial--The Gwylnos--Beer-drinking at Welsh Funerals--Food and Drink over the Coffin--Sponge Cakes at Modern Funerals--The Sin-eater--Welsh Denial that this Custom ever existed--The Testimony concerning it--Superstitions regarding Salt--Plate of Salt on Corpse's Breast--The Scapegoat--The St. Tegla Cock and Hen--Welsh Funeral Processions--Praying at Cross-roads--Superstition regarding Criminals' Graves--Hanging and Welsh Prejudice--The Grassless Grave--Parson's Penny, or Offrwm--Old Shoes to the Clerk--Arian y Rhaw, or Spade Money--Burials without Coffin--The Sul Coffa--Planting and Strewing Graves with Flowers 321 BOOK IV. BELLS, WELLS, STONES, AND DRAGONS. CHAPTER I. Base of the Primeval Mythology--Bells and their Ghosts--The Bell that committed Murder and was damned for it--The Occult Powers of Bells--Their Work as Detectives, Doctors, etc.--Legend of the Bell of Rhayader--St. Illtyd's Wonderful Bell--The Golden Bell of Llandaff 338 CHAPTER II. Mystic Wells--Their Good and Bad Dispositions--St. Winifred's Well--The Legend of St. Winifred--Miracles--St. Tecla's Well--St. Dwynwen's--Curing Love-sickness--St. Cynfran's--St. Cynhafal's--Throwing Pins in Wells--Warts--Barry Island and its Legends--Ffynon Gwynwy--Propitiatory Gifts to Wells--The Dreadful Cursing Well of St. Elian's--Wells Flowing with Milk--St. Illtyd's--Taff's Well--Sanford's Well--Origins of Superstitions of this Class 345 CHAPTER III. Personal Attributes of Legendary Welsh Stones--Stone Worship--Canna's Stone Chair--Miraculous Removals of Stones--The Walking Stone of Eitheinn--The Thigh Stone--The Talking Stone in Pembrokeshire--The Expanding Stone--Magic Stones in the 'Mabinogion'--The Stone of Invisibility--The Stone of Remembrance--Stone Thief-catchers--Stones of Healing--Stones at Cross-roads--Memorials of King Arthur--Round Tables, Carns, Pots, etc.--Arthur's Quoits--The Gigantic Rock-tossers of Old--Mol Walbec and the Pebble in her Shoe--The Giant of Trichrug--Giants and the Mythology of the Heavens--The Legend of Rhitta Gawr 361 CHAPTER IV. Early Inscribed Stones--The Stone Pillar of Banwan Bryddin, near Neath--Catastrophe accompanying its Removal--The Sagranus Stone and the White Lady--The Dancing Stones of Stackpool--Human Beings changed to Stones--St. Ceyna and the Serpents--The Devil's Stone at Llanarth--Rocking Stones and their accompanying Superstitions--The Suspended Altar of Loin-Garth--Cromlechs and their Fairy Legends--The Fairies' Castle at St. Nicholas, Glamorganshire--The Stone of the Wolf Bitch--The Welsh Melusina--Parc-y-Bigwrn Cromlech--Connection of these Stones with Ancient Druidism 373 CHAPTER V. Baleful Spirits of Storm--The Shower at the Magic Fountain--Obstacles in the way of Treasure-Seekers--The Red Lady of Paviland--The Fall of Coychurch Tower--Thunder and Lightning evoked by Digging--The Treasure-Chest under Moel Arthur in the Vale of Clwyd--Modern Credulity--The Cavern of the Ravens--The Eagle-guarded Coffer of Castell Coch--Sleeping Warriors as Treasure-Guarders--The Dragon which St. Samson drove out of Wales--Dragons in the Mabinogion--Whence came the Red Dragon of Wales?--The Original Dragon of Mythology--Prototypes of the Welsh Caverns and Treasure-Hills--The Goblins of Electricity 385 [Illustration: {FAIRIES.}] BRITISH GOBLINS. BOOK I. THE REALM OF FAERIE. At eve, the primrose path along, The milkmaid shortens with a song Her solitary way; She sees the fairies with their queen Trip hand-in-hand the circled green, And hears them raise, at times unseen, The ear-enchanting lay. REV. JOHN LOGAN: _Ode to Spring_, 1780. CHAPTER I. Fairy Tales and the Ancient Mythology--The Compensations of Science--Existing Belief in Fairies in Wales--The Faith of Culture--The Credulity of Ignorance--The Old-Time Welsh Fairyland--The Fairy King--The Legend of St. Collen and Gwyn ap Nudd--The Green Meadows of the Sea--Fairies at Market--The Land of Mystery. I. With regard to other divisions of the field of folk-lore, the views of scholars differ, but in the realm of faerie these differences are reconciled; it is agreed that fairy tales are relics of the ancient mythology; and the philosophers stroll hand in hand harmoniously. This is as it should be, in a realm about which cluster such delightful memories of the most poetic period of life--childhood, before scepticism has crept in as ignorance slinks out. The knowledge which introduced scepticism is infinitely more valuable than the faith it displaced; but, in spite of that, there be few among us who have not felt evanescent regrets for the displacement by the _foi scientifique_ of the old faith in fairies. There was something so peculiarly fascinating in that old belief, that 'once upon a time' the world was less practical in its facts than now, less commonplace and humdrum, less subject to the inexorable laws of gravitation, optics, and the like. What dramas it has yielded! What poems, what dreams, what delights! But since the knowledge of our maturer years destroys all that, it is with a degree of satisfaction we can turn to the consolations of the fairy mythology. The beloved tales of old are 'not true'--but at least they are not mere idle nonsense, and they have a good and sufficient reason for being in the world; we may continue to respect them. The wit who observed that the final cause of fairy legends is 'to afford sport for people who ruthlessly track them to their origin,'[1] expressed a grave truth in jocular form. Since one can no longer rest in peace with one's ignorance, it is a comfort to the lover of fairy legends to find that he need not sweep them into the grate as so much rubbish; on the contrary they become even more enchanting in the crucible of science than they were in their old character. FOOTNOTE: [1] 'Saturday Review,' October 20, 1877. II. Among the vulgar in Wales, the belief in fairies is less nearly extinct than casual observers would be likely to suppose. Even educated people who dwell in Wales, and have dwelt there all their lives, cannot always be classed as other than casual observers in this field. There are some such residents who have paid special attention to the subject, and have formed an opinion as to the extent of prevalence of popular credulity herein; but most Welsh people of the educated class, I find, have no opinion, beyond a vague surprise that the question should be raised at all. So lately as the year 1858, a learned writer in the 'Archæologia Cambrensis' declared that 'the traveller may now pass from one end of the Principality to the other, without his being shocked or amused, as the case may be, by any of the fairy legends or popular tales which used to pass current from father to son.' But in the same periodical, eighteen years later, I find Mr. John Walter Lukis (President of the Cardiff Naturalists' Society), asserting with regard to the cromlechs, tumuli, and ancient camps in Glamorganshire: 'There are always fairy tales and ghost stories connected with them; some, though _fully believed in_ by the inhabitants of those localities, are often of the most absurd character; in fact, the more ridiculous they are, the more they are believed in.'[2] My own observation leads me to support the testimony of the last-named witness. Educated Europeans generally conceive that this sort of belief is extinct in their own land, or, at least their own immediate section of that land. They accredit such degree of belief as may remain, in this enlightened age, to some remote part--to the south, if they dwell in the north; to the north, if they dwell in the south. But especially they accredit it to a previous age: in Wales, to last century, or the middle ages, or the days of King Arthur. The rector of Merthyr, being an elderly man, accredits it to his youth. 'I am old enough to remember,' he wrote me under date of January 30th, 1877, 'that these tales were thoroughly believed in among country folk forty or fifty years ago.' People of superior culture have held this kind of faith concerning fairy-lore, it seems to me, in every age, except the more remote. Chaucer held it, almost five centuries ago, and wrote:[3] In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, ... Al was this lond fulfilled of fayrie; ... I speke of many hundrid yer ago; But now can no man see non elves mo. Dryden held it, two hundred years later, and said of the fairies: I speak of ancient times, for now the swain Returning late may pass the woods in vain, And never hope to see the nightly train. In all later days, other authors have written the same sort of thing; it is not thus now, say they, but it was recently thus. The truth, probably, is that if you will but sink down to the level of common life, of ignorant life, especially in rural neighbourhoods, there you will find the same old beliefs prevailing, in about the same degree to which they have ever prevailed, within the past five hundred years. To sink to this level successfully, one must become a living unit in that life, as I have done in Wales and elsewhere, from time to time. Then one will hear the truth from, or at least the true sentiments of, the class he seeks to know. The practice of every generation in thus relegating fairy belief to a date just previous to its own does not apply, however, to superstitious beliefs in general; for, concerning many such beliefs, their greater or less prevalence at certain dates (as in the history of witchcraft) is matter of well-ascertained fact. I confine the argument, for the present, strictly to the domain of faerie. In this domain, the prevalent belief in Wales may be said to rest with the ignorant, to be strongest in rural and mining districts, to be childlike and poetic, and to relate to anywhere except the spot where the speaker dwells--as to the next parish, to the next county, to the distant mountains, or to the shadow-land of Gwerddonau Llion, the green meadows of the sea. FOOTNOTES: [2] 'Archæologia Cambrensis,' 4th Se., vi., 174. [3] 'Wyf of Bathes Tale,' 'Canterbury Tales.' III. In Arthur's day and before that, the people of South Wales regarded North Wales as pre-eminently the land of faerie. In the popular imagination, that distant country was the chosen abode of giants, monsters, magicians, and all the creatures of enchantment. Out of it came the fairies, on their visits to the sunny land of the south. The chief philosopher of that enchanted region was a giant who sat on a mountain peak and watched the stars. It had a wizard monarch called Gwydion, who possessed the power of changing himself into the strangest possible forms. The peasant who dwelt on the shores of Dyfed (Demetia) saw in the distance, beyond the blue waves of the ocean, shadowy mountain summits piercing the clouds, and guarding this mystic region in solemn majesty. Thence rolled down upon him the storm-clouds from the home of the tempest; thence streamed up the winter sky the flaming banners of the Northern lights; thence rose through the illimitable darkness on high, the star-strewn pathway of the fairy king. These details are current in the Mabinogion, those brilliant stories of Welsh enchantment, so gracefully done into English by Lady Charlotte Guest,[4] and it is believed that all the Mabinogion in which these details were found were written in Dyfed. This was the region on the west, now covered by Pembroke, Carmarthen, and Cardigan shires. More recently than the time above indicated, special traditions have located fairyland in the Vale of Neath, in Glamorganshire. Especially does a certain steep and rugged crag there, called Craig y Ddinas, bear a distinctly awful reputation as a stronghold of the fairy tribe.[5] Its caves and crevices have been their favourite haunt for many centuries, and upon this rock was held the court of the last fairies who have ever appeared in Wales. Needless to say there are men still living who remember the visits of the fairies to Craig y Ddinas, although they aver the little folk are no longer seen there. It is a common remark that the Methodists drove them away; indeed, there are numberless stories which show the fairies to have been animated, when they were still numerous in Wales, by a cordial antipathy for all dissenting preachers. In this antipathy, it may be here observed, teetotallers were included. FOOTNOTES: [4] 'The Mabinogion, from the Welsh of the Llyfr Coch o Hergest.' Translated, with notes, by Lady Charlotte Guest. (New Edition, London, 1877.) [5] There are two hills in Glamorganshire called by this name, and others elsewhere in Wales. IV. The sovereign of the fairies, and their especial guardian and protector, was one Gwyn ap Nudd. He was also ruler over the goblin tribe in general. His name often occurs in ancient Welsh poetry. An old bard of the fourteenth century, who, led away by the fairies, rode into a turf bog on a mountain one dark night, called it the 'fish-pond of Gwyn ap Nudd, a palace for goblins and their tribe.' The association of this legendary character with the goblin fame of the Vale of Neath will appear, when it is mentioned that Nudd in Welsh is pronounced simply Neath, and not otherwise. As for the fairy queen, she does not seem to have any existence among Cambrian goblins. It is nevertheless thought by Cambrian etymologists, that Morgana is derived from Mor Gwyn, the white maid; and the Welsh proper name Morgan can hardly fail to be mentioned in this connection, though it is not necessarily significant. The legend of St. Collen, in which Gwyn ap Nudd figures, represents him as king of Annwn (hell, or the shadow land) as well as of the fairies.[6] Collen was passing a period of mortification as a hermit, in a cell under a rock on a mountain. There he one day overheard two men talking about Gwyn ap Nudd, and giving him this twofold kingly character. Collen cried out to the men to go away and hold their tongues, instead of talking about devils. For this Collen was rebuked, as the king of fairyland had an objection to such language. The saint was summoned to meet the king on the hill-top at noon, and after repeated refusals, he finally went there; but he carried a flask of holy water with him. 'And when he came there he saw the fairest castle he had ever beheld, and around it the best appointed troops, and numbers of minstrels and every kind of music of voice and string, and steeds with youths upon them, the comeliest in the world, and maidens of elegant aspect, sprightly, light of foot, of graceful apparel, and in the bloom of youth; and every magnificence becoming the court of a puissant sovereign. And he beheld a courteous man on the top of the castle who bade him enter, saying that the king was waiting for him to come to meat. And Collen went into the castle, and when he came there the king was sitting in a golden chair. And he welcomed Collen honourably, and desired him to eat, assuring him that besides what he saw, he should have the most luxurious of every dainty and delicacy that the mind could desire, and should be supplied with every drink and liquor that the heart could wish; and that there should be in readiness for him every luxury of courtesy and service, of banquet and of honourable entertainment, of rank and of presents, and every respect and welcome due to a man of his wisdom. "I will not eat the leaves of the trees," said Collen. "Didst thou ever see men of better equipment than these of red and blue?" asked the king. "Their equipment is good enough," said Collen, "for such equipment as it is." "What kind of equipment is that?" said the king. Then said Collen, "The red on the one part signifies burning, and the blue on the other signifies coldness." And with that Collen drew out his flask and threw the holy water on their heads, whereupon they vanished from his sight, so that there was neither castle nor troops, nor men, nor maidens, nor music, nor song, nor steeds, nor youths, nor banquet, nor the appearance of anything whatever but the green hillocks.' FOOTNOTE: [6] 'Greal' (8vo. London, 1805), p. 337. V. A third form of Welsh popular belief as to the whereabouts of fairyland corresponds with the Avalon of the Arthurian legends. The green meadows of the sea, called in the triads Gwerddonau Llion, are the Green fairy islands, reposing, In sunlight and beauty on ocean's calm breast.[7] Many extraordinary superstitions survive with regard to these islands. They were supposed to be the abode of the souls of certain Druids, who, not holy enough to enter the heaven of the Christians, were still not wicked enough to be condemned to the tortures of annwn, and so were accorded a place in this romantic sort of purgatorial paradise. In the fifth century a voyage was made, by the British king Gavran, in search of these enchanted islands; with his family he sailed away into the unknown waters, and was never heard of more. This voyage is commemorated in the triads as one of the Three Losses by Disappearance, the two others being Merlin's and Madog's. Merlin sailed away in a ship of glass; Madog sailed in search of America; and neither returned, but both disappeared for ever. In Pembrokeshire and southern Carmarthenshire are to be found traces of this belief. There are sailors on that romantic coast who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish channel to the west of Pembrokeshire. Sometimes they are visible to the eyes of mortals for a brief space, when suddenly they vanish. There are traditions of sailors who, in the early part of the present century, actually went ashore on the fairy islands--not knowing that they were such, until they returned to their boats, when they were filled with awe at seeing the islands disappear from their sight, neither sinking in the sea, nor floating away upon the waters, but simply vanishing suddenly. The fairies inhabiting these islands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know, without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible, but they were often seen, by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage, instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green fairy islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea. [Illustration: FAIRIES MARKETING AT LAUGHARNE.] That isolated cape which forms the county of Pembroke was looked upon as a land of mystery by the rest of Wales long after it had been settled by the Flemings in 1113. A secret veil was supposed to cover this sea-girt promontory; the inhabitants talked in an unintelligible jargon that was neither English, nor French, nor Welsh; and out of its misty darkness came fables of wondrous sort, and accounts of miracles marvellous beyond belief. Mythology and Christianity spoke together from this strange country, and one could not tell at which to be most amazed, the pagan or the priest. FOOTNOTE: [7] Parry's 'Welsh Melodies.' CHAPTER II. Classification of Welsh Fairies--General Designation--Habits of the Tylwyth Teg--Ellyllon, or Elves--Shakspeare's Use of Welsh Folk-Lore--Rowli Pugh and the Ellyll--Household Story Roots--The Ellylldan--The Pooka--Puck Valley, Breconshire--Where Shakspeare got his Puck--Pwca'r Trwyn--Usual Form of the Pooka Story--Coblynau, or Mine Fairies--The Knockers--Miners' Superstitions--Basilisks and Fire Fiends--A Fairy Coal-mine--The Dwarfs of Cae Caled--Counterparts of the Coblynau--The Bwbach, or Household Fairy--Legend of the Bwbach and the Preacher--Bogies and Hobgoblins--Carrying Mortals through the Air--Counterparts and Originals. I. Fairies being creatures of the imagination, it is not possible to classify them by fixed and immutable rules. In the exact sciences, there are laws which never vary, or if they vary, their very eccentricity is governed by precise rules. Even in the largest sense, comparative mythology must demean itself modestly in order to be tolerated in the severe company of the sciences. In presenting his subjects, therefore, the writer in this field can only govern himself by the purpose of orderly arrangement. To secure the maximum of system, for the sake of the student who employs the work for reference and comparison, with the minimum of dullness, for the sake of the general reader, is perhaps the limit of a reasonable ambition. Keightley[8] divides into four classes the Scandinavian elements of popular belief as to fairies, viz.: 1. The Elves; 2. The Dwarfs, or Trolls; 3. The Nisses; and 4. The Necks, Mermen, and Mermaids. How entirely arbitrary this division is, the student of Scandinavian folk-lore at once perceives. Yet it is perhaps as satisfactory as another. The fairies of Wales may be divided into five classes, if analogy be not too sharply insisted on. Thus we have, 1. The Ellyllon, or elves; 2. The Coblynau, or mine fairies; 3. The Bwbachod, or household fairies; 4. The Gwragedd Annwn, or fairies of the lakes and streams; and 5. The Gwyllion, or mountain fairies. The modern Welsh name for fairies is y Tylwyth Teg, the fair folk or family. This is sometimes lengthened into y Tylwyth Teg yn y Coed, the fair family in the wood, or Tylwyth Teg y Mwn, the fair folk of the mine. They are seen dancing in moonlight nights on the velvety grass, clad in airy and flowing robes of blue, green, white, or scarlet--details as to colour not usually met, I think, in accounts of fairies. They are spoken of as bestowing blessings on those mortals whom they select to be thus favoured; and again are called Bendith y Mamau, or their mother's blessing, that is to say, good little children whom it is a pleasure to know. To name the fairies by a harsh epithet is to invoke their anger; to speak of them in flattering phrase is to propitiate their good offices. The student of fairy mythology perceives in this propitiatory mode of speech a fact of wide significance. It can be traced in numberless lands, and back to the beginning of human history, among the cloud-hung peaks of Central Asia. The Greeks spoke of the furies as the Eumenides, or gracious ones; Highlanders mentioned by Sir Walter Scott uncover to the gibbet and call it 'the kind gallows;' the Dayak will not name the small-pox, but calls it 'the chief;' the Laplander calls the bear 'the old man with the fur coat;' in Ammam the tiger is called 'grandfather;' and it is thought that the maxim, 'Speak only good of the dead,' came originally from the notion of propitiating the ghost of the departed,[9] who, in laying off this mortal garb, had become endowed with new powers of harming his late acquaintance. FOOTNOTES: [8] 'Fairy Mythology' (Bohn's Ed.), 78. [9] John Fiske, 'Myths and Myth-makers,' 223. II. The Ellyllon are the pigmy elves who haunt the groves and valleys, and correspond pretty closely with the English elves. The English name was probably derived from the Welsh _el_, a spirit, _elf_, an element; there is a whole brood of words of this class in the Welsh language, expressing every variety of flowing, gliding, spirituality, devilry, angelhood, and goblinism. Ellyllon (the plural of ellyll), is also doubtless allied with the Hebrew Elilim, having with it an identity both of origin and meaning.[10] The poet Davydd ab Gwilym, in a humorous account of his troubles in a mist, in the year 1340, says: Yr ydoedd ym mhob gobant Ellyllon mingeimion gant. There was in every hollow A hundred wrymouthed elves. The hollows, or little dingles, are still the places where the peasant, belated on his homeward way from fair or market, looks for the ellyllon, but fails to find them. Their food is specified in Welsh folk-lore as fairy butter and fairy victuals, ymenyn tylwyth teg and bwyd ellyllon; the latter the toadstool, or poisonous mushroom, and the former a butter-resembling substance found at great depths in the crevices of limestone rocks, in sinking for lead ore. Their gloves, menyg ellyllon, are the bells of the digitalis, or fox-glove, the leaves of which are well known to be a strong sedative. Their queen--for though there is no fairy-queen in the large sense that Gwyn ap Nudd is the fairy-king, there is a queen of the elves--is none other than the Shakspearean fairy spoken of by Mercutio, who comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman.[11] Shakspeare's use of Welsh folk-lore, it should be noted, was extensive and peculiarly faithful. Keightley in his 'Fairy Mythology' rates the bard soundly for his inaccurate use of English fairy superstitions; but the reproach will not apply as regards Wales. From his Welsh informant Shakspeare got Mab, which is simply the Cymric for a little child, and the root of numberless words signifying babyish, childish, love for children (mabgar), kitten (mabgath), prattling (mabiaith), and the like, most notable of all which in this connection is mabinogi, the singular of Mabinogion, the romantic tales of enchantment told to the young in by-gone ages. FOOTNOTES: [10] Pughe's 'Welsh Dictionary.' (Denbigh, 1866.) [11] 'Romeo and Juliet,' Act II., Sc. 4. III. In the Huntsman's Rest Inn at Peterstone-super-Ely, near Cardiff, sat a group of humble folk one afternoon, when I chanced to stop there to rest myself by the chimney-side, after a long walk through green lanes. The men were drinking their tankards of ale and smoking their long clay pipes; and they were talking about their dogs and horses, the crops, the hard times, and the prospect of bettering themselves by emigration to America. On this latter theme I was able to make myself interesting, and acquaintance was thereupon easily established on a friendly footing. I led the conversation into the domain of folk-lore; and this book is richer in illustration on many a page, in consequence. Among others, this tale was told: On a certain farm in Glamorganshire lived Rowli Pugh, who was known far and wide for his evil luck. Nothing prospered that he turned his hand to; his crops proved poor, though his neighbours' might be good; his roof leaked in spite of all his mending; his walls remained damp when every one else's walls were dry; and above all, his wife was so feeble she could do no work. His fortunes at last seemed so hard that he resolved to sell out and clear out, no matter at what loss, and try to better himself in another country--not by going to America, for there was no America in those days. Well, and if there was, the poor Welshman didn't know it. So as Rowli was sitting on his wall one day, hard by his cottage, musing over his sad lot, he was accosted by a little man who asked him what was the matter. Rowli looked around in surprise, but before he could answer the ellyll said to him with a grin, 'There, there, hold your tongue, I know more about you than you ever dreamed of knowing. You're in trouble, and you're going away. But you may stay, now I've spoken to you. Only bid your good wife leave the candle burning when she goes to bed, and say no more about it.' With this the ellyll kicked up his heels and disappeared. Of course the farmer did as he was bid, and from that day he prospered. Every night Catti Jones, his wife,[12] set the candle out, swept the hearth, and went to bed; and every night the fairies would come and do her baking and brewing, her washing and mending, sometimes even furnishing their own tools and materials. The farmer was now always clean of linen and whole of garb; he had good bread and good beer; he felt like a new man, and worked like one. Everything prospered with him now as nothing had before. His crops were good, his barns were tidy, his cattle were sleek, his pigs the fattest in the parish. So things went on for three years. One night Catti Jones took it into her head that she must have a peep at the fair family who did her work for her; and curiosity conquering prudence, she arose while Rowli Pugh lay snoring, and peeped through a crack in the door. There they were, a jolly company of ellyllon, working away like mad, and laughing and dancing as madly as they worked. Catti was so amused that in spite of herself she fell to laughing too; and at sound of her voice the ellyllon scattered like mist before the wind, leaving the room empty. They never came back any more; but the farmer was now prosperous, and his bad luck never returned to plague him. [Illustration: ROWLI AND THE ELLYLL.] The resemblance of this tale to many he has encountered will at once be noted by the student of comparative folk-lore. He will also observe that it trenches on the domain of another class in my own enumeration, viz., that of the Bwbach, or household fairy. This is the stone over which one is constantly stumbling in this field of scientific research. Mr. Baring-Gould's idea that all household tales are reducible to a primeval root (in the same or a similar manner that we trace words to their roots), though most ingeniously illustrated by him, is constantly involved in trouble of the sort mentioned. He encounters the obstacle which lies in the path of all who walk this way. His roots sometimes get inextricably gnarled and intertwisted with each other. But some effort of this sort is imperative, and we must do the best we can with our materials. Stories of the class of Grimm's Witchelmänner (Kinder und Hausmärchen) will be recalled by the legend of Rowli Pugh as here told. The German Hausmänner are elves of a domestic turn, sometimes mischievous and sometimes useful, but usually looking for some material reward for their labours. So with the English goblin named by Milton in 'L'Allegro,' which drudges, To earn his cream-bowl duly set. FOOTNOTE: [12] Until recently, Welsh women retained their maiden names even after marriage. IV. The Ellylldan is a species of elf exactly corresponding to the English Will-o'-wisp, the Scandinavian Lyktgubhe, and the Breton Sand Yan y Tad. The Welsh word dan means fire; dan also means a lure; the compound word suggests a luring elf-fire. The Breton Sand Yan y Tad (St. John and Father)[13] is a double ignis fatuus fairy, carrying at its finger-ends five lights, which spin round like a wheel. The negroes of the southern seaboard states of America invest this goblin with an exaggeration of the horrible peculiarly their own. They call it Jack-muh-lantern, and describe it as a hideous creature five feet in height, with goggle-eyes and huge mouth, its body covered with long hair, and which goes leaping and bounding through the air like a gigantic grasshopper. This frightful apparition is stronger than any man, and swifter than any horse, and compels its victims to follow it into the swamp, where it leaves them to die. Like all goblins of this class, the Ellylldan was, of course, seen dancing about in marshy grounds, into which it led the belated wanderer; but, as a distinguished resident in Wales has wittily said, the poor elf 'is now starved to death, and his breath is taken from him; his light is quenched for ever by the improving farmer, who has drained the bog; and, instead of the rank decaying vegetation of the autumn, where bitterns and snipes delighted to secrete themselves, crops of corn and potatoes are grown.'[14] A poetic account by a modern character, called Iolo the Bard, is thus condensed: 'One night, when the moon had gone down, as I was sitting on a hill-top, the Ellylldan passed by. I followed it into the valley. We crossed plashes of water where the tops of bulrushes peeped above, and where the lizards lay silently on the surface, looking at us with an unmoved stare. The frogs sat croaking and swelling their sides, but ceased as they raised a melancholy eye at the Ellylldan. The wild fowl, sleeping with their heads under their wings, made a low cackle as we went by. A bittern awoke and rose with a scream into the air. I felt the trail of the eels and leeches peering about, as I waded through the pools. On a slimy stone a toad sat sucking poison from the night air. The Ellylldan glowed bravely in the slumbering vapours. It rose airily over the bushes that drooped in the ooze. When I lingered or stopped, it waited for me, but dwindled gradually away to a speck barely perceptible. But as soon as I moved on again, it would shoot up suddenly and glide before. A bat came flying round and round us, flapping its wings heavily. Screech-owls stared silently at us with their broad eyes. Snails and worms crawled about. The fine threads of a spider's web gleamed in the light of the Ellylldan. Suddenly it shot away from me, and in the distance joined a ring of its fellows, who went dancing slowly round and round in a goblin dance, which sent me off to sleep.'[15] FOOTNOTES: [13] Keightley, 'Fairy Mythology,' 441. [14] Hon. W. O. Stanley, M.P., in 'Notes and Queries.' [15] 'The Vale of Glamorgan.' (London, 1839.) V. Pwca, or Pooka, is but another name for the Ellylldan, as our Puck is another name for the Will-o'-wisp; but in both cases the shorter term has a more poetic flavour and a wider latitude. The name Puck was originally applied to the whole race of English fairies, and there still be few of the realm who enjoy a wider popularity than Puck, in spite of his mischievous attributes. Part of this popularity is due to the poets, especially to Shakspeare. I have alluded to the bard's accurate knowledge of Welsh folk-lore; the subject is really one of unique interest, in view of the inaccuracy charged upon him as to the English fairyland. There is a Welsh tradition to the effect that Shakspeare received his knowledge of the Cambrian fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the priory of Brecon. It is even claimed that Cwm Pwca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, is the original scene of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream'--a fancy as light and airy as Puck himself.[16] Anyhow, there Cwm Pwca is, and in the sylvan days, before Frere and Powell's ironworks were set up there, it is said to have been as full of goblins as a Methodist's head is of piety. And there are in Wales other places bearing like names, where Pwca's pranks are well remembered by old inhabitants. The range given to the popular fancy in Wales is expressed with fidelity by Shakspeare's words in the mouth of Puck: I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier, Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.[17] The various stories I have encountered bear out these details almost without an omission. [Illustration: {SKETCH OF PWCA.}] In his own proper character, however, Pwca has a sufficiently grotesque elfish aspect. It is stated that a Welsh peasant who was asked to give an idea of the appearance of Pwca, drew the above figure with a bit of coal. A servant girl who attended to the cattle on the Trwyn farm, near Abergwyddon, used to take food to 'Master Pwca,' as she called the elf. A bowl of fresh milk and a slice of white bread were the component parts of the goblin's repast, and were placed on a certain spot where he got them. One night the girl, moved by the spirit of mischief, drank the milk and ate most of the bread, leaving for Master Pwca only water and crusts. Next morning she found that the fastidious fairy had left the food untouched. Not long after, as the girl was passing the lonely spot, where she had hitherto left Pwca his food, she was seized under the arm pits by fleshly hands (which, however, she could not see), and subjected to a castigation of a most mortifying character. Simultaneously there fell upon her ear in good set Welsh a warning not to repeat her offence on peril of still worse treatment. This story 'is thoroughly believed in there to this day.'[18] I visited the scene of the story, a farm near Abergwyddon (now called Abercarne), and heard a great deal more of the exploits of that particular Pwca, to which I will refer again. The most singular fact of the matter is that although at least a century has elapsed, and some say several centuries, since the exploits in question, you cannot find a Welsh peasant in the parish but knows all about Pwca'r Trwyn. FOOTNOTES: [16] According to a letter written by the poet Campbell to Mrs. Fletcher, in 1833, and published in her Autobiography, it was thought Shakspeare went in person to see this magic valley. 'It is no later than yesterday,' wrote Campbell, 'that I discovered a probability--almost near a certainty--that Shakspeare visited friends in the very town (Brecon in Wales) where Mrs. Siddons was born, and that he there found in a neighbouring glen, called "The Valley of Fairy Puck," the principal machinery of his "Midsummer Night's Dream."' [17] 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' Act III., Sc. 3. [18] 'Archæologia Cambrensis,' 4th Se., vi., 175. (1875.) VI. The most familiar form of the Pwca story is one which I have encountered in several localities, varying so little in its details that each account would be interchangeable with another by the alteration of local names. This form presents a peasant who is returning home from his work, or from a fair, when he sees a light travelling before him. Looking closer he perceives that it is carried by a dusky little figure, holding a lantern or candle at arm's length over its head. He follows it for several miles, and suddenly finds himself on the brink of a frightful precipice. From far down below there rises to his ears the sound of a foaming torrent. At the same moment the little goblin with the lantern springs across the chasm, alighting on the opposite side; raises the light again high over its head, utters a loud and malicious laugh, blows out its candle and disappears up the opposite hill, leaving the awestruck peasant to get home as best he can. [Illustration: PWCA. COBLYNAU.] VII. Under the general title of Coblynau I class the fairies which haunt the mines, quarries and underground regions of Wales, corresponding to the cabalistic Gnomes. The word coblyn has the double meaning of knocker or thumper and sprite or fiend; and may it not be the original of goblin? It is applied by Welsh miners to pigmy fairies which dwell in the mines, and point out, by a peculiar knocking or rapping, rich veins of ore. The faith is extended, in some parts, so as to cover the indication of subterranean treasures generally, in caves and secret places of the mountains. The coblynau are described as being about half a yard in height and very ugly to look upon, but extremely good-natured, and warm friends of the miner. Their dress is a grotesque imitation of the miner's garb, and they carry tiny hammers, picks and lamps. They work busily, loading ore in buckets, flitting about the shafts, turning tiny windlasses, and pounding away like madmen, but really accomplishing nothing whatever. They have been known to throw stones at the miners, when enraged at being lightly spoken of; but the stones are harmless. Nevertheless, all miners of a proper spirit refrain from provoking them, because their presence brings good luck. VIII. Miners are possibly no more superstitious than other men of equal intelligence; I have heard some of their number repel indignantly the idea that they are superstitious at all; but this would simply be to raise them above the level of our common humanity. There is testimony enough, besides, to support my own conclusions, which accredit a liberal share of credulity to the mining class. The _Oswestry Advertiser_, a short time ago, recorded the fact that, at Cefn, 'a woman is employed as messenger at one of the collieries, and as she commences her duty early each morning she meets great numbers of colliers going to their work. Some of them, we are gravely assured, consider it a bad omen to meet a woman first thing in the morning; and not having succeeded in deterring her from her work by other means, they waited upon the manager and declared that they should remain at home unless the woman was dismissed.' This was in 1874. In June, 1878, the _South Wales Daily News_ recorded a superstition of the quarrymen at Penrhyn, where some thousands of men refused to work on Ascension Day. 'This refusal did not arise out of any reverential feeling, but from an old and widespread superstition, which has lingered in that district for years, that if work is continued on Ascension Day an accident will certainly follow. A few years ago the agents persuaded the men to break through the superstition, and there were accidents each year--a not unlikely occurrence, seeing the extent of works carried on, and the dangerous nature of the occupation of the men. This year, however, the men, one and all, refused to work.' These are examples dealing with considerable numbers of the mining class, and are quoted in this instance as being more significant than individual cases would be. Of these last I have encountered many. Yet I should be sorry if any reader were to conclude from all this that Welsh miners are not in the main intelligent, church-going, newspaper-reading men. They are so, I think, even beyond the common. Their superstitions, therefore, like those of the rest of us, must be judged as 'a thing apart,' not to be reconciled with intelligence and education, but co-existing with them. Absolute freedom from superstition can come only with a degree of scientific culture not yet reached by mortal man. It can hardly be cause for wonder that the miner should be superstitious. His life is passed in a dark and gloomy region, fathoms below the earth's green surface, surrounded by walls on which dim lamps shed a fitful light. It is not surprising that imagination (and the Welsh imagination is peculiarly vivid) should conjure up the faces and forms of gnomes and coblynau, of phantoms and fairy men. When they hear the mysterious thumping which they know is not produced by any human being, and when in examining the place where the noise was heard they find there are really valuable indications of ore, the sturdiest incredulity must sometimes be shaken. Science points out that the noise may be produced by the action of water upon the loose stones in fissures and pot-holes of the mountain limestone, and does actually suggest the presence of metals. In the days before a Priestley had caught and bottled that demon which exists in the shape of carbonic acid gas, when the miner was smitten dead by an invisible foe in the deep bowels of the earth it was natural his awestruck companions should ascribe the mysterious blow to a supernatural enemy. When the workman was assailed suddenly by what we now call fire-damp, which hurled him and his companions right and left upon the dark rocks, scorching, burning, and killing, those who survived were not likely to question the existence of the mine fiend. Hence arose the superstition--now probably quite extinct--of basilisks in the mines, which destroyed with their terrible gaze. When the explanation came, that the thing which killed the miner was what he breathed, not what he saw; and when chemistry took the fire-damp from the domain of faerie, the basilisk and the fire fiend had not a leg to stand on. The explanation of the Knockers is more recent, and less palpable and convincing. IX. The Coblynau are always given the form of dwarfs, in the popular fancy; wherever seen or heard, they are believed to have escaped from the mines or the secret regions of the mountains. Their homes are hidden from mortal vision. When encountered, either in the mines or on the mountains, they have strayed from their special abodes, which are as spectral as themselves. There is at least one account extant of their secret territory having been revealed to mortal eyes. I find it in a quaint volume (of which I shall have more to say), printed at Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1813.[19] It relates that one William Evans, of Hafodafel, while crossing the Beacon Mountain very early in the morning, passed a fairy coal mine, where fairies were busily at work. Some were cutting the coal, some carrying it to fill the sacks, some raising the loads upon the horses' backs, and so on; but all in the completest silence. He thought this 'a wonderful extra natural thing,' and was considerably impressed by it, for well he knew that there really was no coal mine at that place. He was a person of 'undoubted veracity,' and what is more, 'a great man in the world--above telling an untruth.' That the Coblynau sometimes wandered far from home, the same chronicler testifies; but on these occasions they were taking a holiday. Egbert Williams, 'a pious young gentleman of Denbighshire, then at school,' was one day playing in a field called Cae Caled, in the parish of Bodfari, with three girls, one of whom was his sister. Near the stile beyond Lanelwyd House they saw a company of fifteen or sixteen coblynau engaged in dancing madly. They were in the middle of the field, about seventy yards from the spectators, and they danced something after the manner of Morris-dancers, but with a wildness and swiftness in their motions. They were clothed in red like British soldiers, and wore red handkerchiefs spotted with yellow wound round their heads. And a strange circumstance about them was that although they were almost as big as ordinary men, yet they had unmistakably the appearance of dwarfs, and one could call them nothing but dwarfs. Presently one of them left the company and ran towards the group near the stile, who were direfully scared thereby, and scrambled in great fright to go over the stile. Barbara Jones got over first, then her sister, and as Egbert Williams was helping his sister over they saw the coblyn close upon them, and barely got over when his hairy hand was laid on the stile. He stood leaning on it, gazing after them as they ran, with a grim copper-coloured countenance and a fierce look. The young people ran to Lanelwyd House and called the elders out, but though they hurried quickly to the field the dwarfs had already disappeared. FOOTNOTE: [19] 'A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales.' By Rev. Edmund Jones of the Tranch. (Newport, 1813.) X. The counterparts of the Coblynau are found in most mining countries. In Germany, the Wichtlein (little Wights) are little old long-bearded men, about three-quarters of an ell high, which haunt the mines of the southern land. The Bohemians call the Wichtlein by the name of Haus-schmiedlein, little House-smiths, from their sometimes making a noise as if labouring hard at the anvil. They are not so popular as in Wales, however, as they predict misfortune or death. They announce the doom of a miner by knocking three times distinctly, and when any lesser evil is about to befall him they are heard digging, pounding, and imitating other kinds of work. In Germany also the kobolds are rather troublesome than otherwise, to the miners, taking pleasure in frustrating their objects, and rendering their toil unfruitful. Sometimes they are downright malignant, especially if neglected or insulted, but sometimes also they are indulgent to individuals whom they take under their protection. 'When a miner therefore hit upon a rich vein of ore, the inference commonly was not that he possessed more skill, industry, or even luck than his fellow-workmen, but that the spirits of the mine had directed him to the treasure.'[20] The intimate connection between mine fairies and the whole race of dwarfs is constantly met throughout the fairy mythology; and the connection of the dwarfs with the mountains is equally universal. 'God,' says the preface to the Heldenbuch, 'gave the dwarfs being, because the land and the mountains were altogether waste and uncultivated, and there was much store of silver and gold and precious stones and pearls still in the mountains.' From the most ancient times, and in the oldest countries, down to our own time and the new world of America, the traditions are the same. The old Norse belief which made the dwarfs the current machinery of the northern Sagas is echoed in the Catskill Mountains with the rolling of the thunder among the crags where Hendrik Hudson's dwarfs are playing ninepins. FOOTNOTE: [20] Scott, 'Demonology and Witchcraft,' 121. XI. The Bwbach, or Boobach, is the good-natured goblin which does good turns for the tidy Welsh maid who wins its favour by a certain course of behaviour recommended by long tradition. The maid having swept the kitchen, makes a good fire the last thing at night, and having put the churn, filled with cream, on the whitened hearth, with a basin of fresh cream for the Bwbach on the hob, goes to bed to await the event. In the morning she finds (if she is in luck) that the Bwbach has emptied the basin of cream, and plied the churn-dasher so well that the maid has but to give a thump or two to bring the butter in a great lump. Like the Ellyll which it so much resembles, the Bwbach does not approve of dissenters and their ways, and especially strong is its aversion to total abstainers. There was a Bwbach belonging to a certain estate in Cardiganshire, which took great umbrage at a Baptist preacher who was a guest in the house, and who was much fonder of prayers than of good ale. Now the Bwbach had a weakness in favour of people who sat around the hearth with their mugs of cwrw da and their pipes, and it took to pestering the preacher. One night it jerked the stool from under the good man's elbows, as he knelt pouring forth prayer, so that he fell down flat on his face. Another time it interrupted the devotions by jangling the fire-irons on the hearth; and it was continually making the dogs fall a-howling during prayers, or frightening the farm-boy by grinning at him through the window, or throwing the maid into fits. At last it had the audacity to attack the preacher as he was crossing a field. The minister told the story in this wise: 'I was reading busily in my hymn-book as I walked on, when a sudden fear came over me and my legs began to tremble. A shadow crept upon me from behind, and when I turned round--it was myself!--my person, my dress, and even my hymn-book. I looked in its face a moment, and then fell insensible to the ground.' And there, insensible still, they found him. This encounter proved too much for the good man, who considered it a warning to him to leave those parts. He accordingly mounted his horse next day and rode away. A boy of the neighbourhood, whose veracity was, like that of all boys, unimpeachable, afterwards said that he saw the Bwbach jump up behind the preacher, on the horse's back. And the horse went like lightning, with eyes like balls of fire, and the preacher looking back over his shoulder at the Bwbach, that grinned from ear to ear. XII. The same confusion in outlines which exists regarding our own Bogie and Hobgoblin gives the Bwbach a double character, as a household fairy and as a terrifying phantom. In both aspects it is ludicrous, but in the latter it has dangerous practices. To get into its clutches under certain circumstances is no trifling matter, for it has the power of whisking people off through the air. Its services are brought into requisition for this purpose by troubled ghosts who cannot sleep on account of hidden treasure they want removed; and if they can succeed in getting a mortal to help them in removing the treasure, they employ the Bwbach to transport the mortal through the air. This ludicrous fairy is in France represented by the gobelin. Mothers threaten children with him. 'Le gobelin vous mangera, le gobelin vous emportera.'[21] In the English 'hobgoblin' we have a word apparently derived from the Welsh hob, to hop, and coblyn, a goblin, which presents a hopping goblin to the mind, and suggests the Pwca (with which the Bwbach is also confused in the popular fancy at times), but should mean in English simply the goblin of the hob, or household fairy. In its bugbear aspect, the Bwbach, like the English bogie, is believed to be identical with the Slavonic 'bog,' and the 'baga' of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, both of which are names for the Supreme Being, according to Professor Fiske. 'The ancestral form of these epithets' is found in 'the old Aryan "Bhaga," which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the Vedas, and has left a memento of itself in the surname of the Phrygian Zeus "Bagaios." It seems originally to have denoted either the unclouded sun, or the sky of noonday illuminated by the solar rays.... Thus the same name which to the Vedic poet, to the Persian of the time of Xerxes, and to the modern Russian, suggests the supreme majesty of deity, is in English associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend, closely akin to that grotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey was unable to think without laughing.'[22] FOOTNOTES: [21] Père l'Abbé, 'Etymologie,' i., 262. [22] Fiske, 'Myths and Myth-makers,' 105. CHAPTER III. Lake Fairies--The Gwragedd Annwn, or Dames of Elfin-Land--St. Patrick and the Welshmen; a Legend of Crumlyn Lake--The Elfin Cow of Llyn Barfog--Y Fuwch Laethwen Lefrith--The Legend of the Meddygon Myddfai--The Wife of Supernatural Race--The Three Blows; a Carmarthenshire Legend--Cheese and the Didactic Purpose in Welsh Folk-Lore--The Fairy Maiden's Papa--The Enchanted Isle in the Mountain Lake--Legend of the Men of Ardudwy--Origin of Water Fairies--Their prevalence in many Lands. I. The Gwragedd Annwn (literally, wives of the lower world, or hell) are the elfin dames who dwell under the water. I find no resemblance in the Welsh fairy to our familiar mermaid, beyond the watery abode, and the sometimes winning ways. The Gwragedd Annwn are not fishy of aspect, nor do they dwell in the sea. Their haunt is the lakes and rivers, but especially the wild and lonely lakes upon the mountain heights. These romantic sheets are surrounded with numberless superstitions, which will be further treated of. In the realm of faerie they serve as avenues of communication between this world and the lower one of annwn, the shadowy domain presided over by Gwyn ap Nudd, king of the fairies. This sub-aqueous realm is peopled by those children of mystery termed Plant Annwn, and the belief is current among the inhabitants of the Welsh mountains that the Gwragedd Annwn still occasionally visit this upper world of ours.[23] The only reference to Welsh mermaids I have either read or heard is contained in Drayton's account of the Battle of Agincourt. There it is mentioned, among the armorial ensigns of the counties of Wales: As Cardigan, the next to them that went, Came with a mermaid sitting on a rock.[24] FOOTNOTES: [23] 'Archæologia Cambrensis,' 2nd Se., iv., 253. [24] There is in 'Cymru Fu' a mermaid story, but its mermaid feature is apparently a modern embellishment of a real incident, and without value here. II. Crumlyn Lake, near the quaint village of Briton Ferry, is one of the many in Wales which are a resort of the elfin dames. It is also believed that a large town lies swallowed up there, and that the Gwragedd Annwn have turned the submerged walls to use as the superstructure of their fairy palaces. Some claim to have seen the towers of beautiful castles lifting their battlements beneath the surface of the dark waters, and fairy bells are at times heard ringing from these towers. The way the elfin dames first came to dwell there was this: A long, ay, a very long time ago, St. Patrick came over from Ireland on a visit to St. David of Wales, just to say 'Sut yr y'ch chwi?' (How d'ye do?); and as they were strolling by this lake conversing on religious topics in a friendly manner, some Welsh people who had ascertained that it was St. Patrick, and being angry at him for leaving Cambria for Erin, began to abuse him in the Welsh language, his native tongue. Of course such an insult could not go unpunished, and St. Patrick caused his villifiers to be transformed into fishes; but some of them being females, were converted into fairies instead. It is also related that the sun, on account of this insolence to so holy a man, never shed its life-giving rays upon the dark waters of this picturesque lake, except during one week of the year. This legend and these magical details are equally well accredited to various other lakes, among them Llyn Barfog, near Aberdovey, the town whose 'bells' are celebrated in immortal song. III. Llyn Barfog is the scene of the famous elfin cow's descent upon earth, from among the droves of the Gwragedd Annwn. This is the legend of the origin of the Welsh black cattle, as related to me in Carmarthenshire: In times of old there was a band of elfin ladies who used to haunt the neighbourhood of Llyn Barfog, a lake among the hills just back of Aberdovey. It was their habit to make their appearance at dusk clad all in green, accompanied by their milk-white hounds. Besides their hounds, the green ladies of Llyn Barfog were peculiar in the possession of droves of beautiful milk-white kine, called Gwartheg y Llyn, or kine of the lake. One day an old farmer, who lived near Dyssyrnant, had the good luck to catch one of these mystic cows, which had fallen in love with the cattle of his herd. From that day the farmer's fortune was made. Such calves, such milk, such butter and cheese, as came from the milk-white cow never had been seen in Wales before, nor ever will be seen again. The fame of the Fuwch Gyfeiliorn (which was what they called the cow) spread through the country round. The farmer, who had been poor, became rich; the owner of vast herds, like the patriarchs of old. But one day he took it into his silly noddle that the elfin cow was getting old, and that he had better fatten her for the market. His nefarious purpose thrived amazingly. Never, since beef steaks were invented, was seen such a fat cow as this cow grew to be. Killing day came, and the neighbours arrived from all about to witness the taking-off of this monstrously fat beast. The farmer had already counted up the gains from the sale of her, and the butcher had bared his red right arm. The cow was tethered, regardless of her mournful lowing and her pleading eyes; the butcher raised his bludgeon and struck fair and hard between the eyes--when lo! a shriek resounded through the air, awakening the echoes of the hills, as the butcher's bludgeon went through the goblin head of the elfin cow, and knocked over nine adjoining men, while the butcher himself went frantically whirling around trying to catch hold of something permanent. Then the astonished assemblage beheld a green lady standing on a crag high up over the lake, and crying with a loud voice: Dere di felen Einion, Cyrn Cyfeiliorn--braith y Llyn, A'r foel Dodin, Codwch, dewch adre. Come yellow Anvil, stray horns, Speckled one of the lake, And of the hornless Dodin, Arise, come home. Whereupon not only did the elfin cow arise and go home, but all her progeny to the third and fourth generations went home with her, disappearing in the air over the hill tops and returning nevermore. Only one cow remained of all the farmer's herds, and she had turned from milky white to raven black. Whereupon the farmer in despair drowned himself in the lake of the green ladies, and the black cow became the progenitor of the existing race of Welsh black cattle. This legend appears, in a slightly different form, in the 'Iolo MSS.,' as translated by Taliesin Williams, of Merthyr:[25] 'The milk-white milch cow gave enough of milk to every one who desired it; and however frequently milked, or by whatever number of persons, she was never found deficient. All persons who drank of her milk were healed of every illness; from fools they became wise; and from being wicked, became happy. This cow went round the world; and wherever she appeared, she filled with milk all the vessels that could be found, leaving calves behind her for all the wise and happy. It was from her that all the milch cows in the world were obtained. After traversing through the island of Britain, for the benefit and blessing of country and kindred, she reached the Vale of Towy; where, tempted by her fine appearance and superior condition, the natives sought to kill and eat her; but just as they were proceeding to effect their purpose, she vanished from between their hands, and was never seen again. A house still remains in the locality, called Y Fuwch Laethwen Lefrith (The Milk-white Milch Cow.)' FOOTNOTE: [25] Llandovery, published for the Welsh MSS. Society, 1848. IV. The legend of the Meddygon Myddfai again introduces the elfin cattle to our notice, but combines with them another and a very interesting form of this superstition, namely, that of the wife of supernatural race. A further feature gives it its name, Meddygon meaning physicians, and the legend professing to give the origin of certain doctors who were renowned in the thirteenth century. The legend relates that a farmer in the parish of Myddfai, Carmarthenshire, having bought some lambs in a neighbouring fair, led them to graze near Llyn y Fan Fach, on the Black Mountains. Whenever he visited these lambs three beautiful damsels appeared to him from the lake, on whose shores they often made excursions. Sometimes he pursued and tried to catch them, but always failed; the enchanting nymphs ran before him and on reaching the lake taunted him in these words: Cras dy fara, Anhawdd ein dala; which, if one must render it literally, means: Bake your bread, 'Twill be hard to catch us; but which, more poetically treated, might signify: Mortal, who eatest baken bread, Not for thee is the fairy's bed! One day some moist bread from the lake came floating ashore. The farmer seized it, and devoured it with avidity. The following day, to his great delight, he was successful in his chase, and caught the nymphs on the shore. After talking a long time with them, he mustered up the courage to propose marriage to one of them. She consented to accept him on condition that he would distinguish her from her sisters the next day. This was a new and great difficulty to the young farmer, for the damsels were so similar in form and features, that he could scarcely see any difference between them. He noted, however, a trifling singularity in the strapping of the chosen one's sandal, by which he recognized her on the following day. As good as her word, the gwraig immediately left the lake and went with him to his farm. Before she quitted the lake she summoned therefrom to attend her, seven cows, two oxen, and one bull. She stipulated that she should remain with the farmer only until such time as he should strike her thrice without cause. For some years they dwelt peaceably together, and she bore him three sons, who were the celebrated Meddygon Myddfai. One day, when preparing for a fair in the neighbourhood, the farmer desired her to go to the field for his horse. She said she would, but being rather dilatory, he said to her humorously 'Dôs, dôs, dôs,' i.e., 'Go, go, go,' and at the same time slightly tapped her arm three times with his glove.... The blows were slight--but they were blows. The terms of the marriage contract were broken, and the dame departed, summoning with her her seven cows, her two oxen, and the bull. The oxen were at that moment ploughing in the field, but they immediately obeyed her call and dragged the plough after them to the lake. The furrow, from the field in which they were ploughing to the margin of the lake, is still to be seen--in several parts of that country--at the present day. After her departure, the gwraig annwn once met her three sons in the valley now called Cwm Meddygon, and gave them a magic box containing remedies of wonderful power, through whose use they became celebrated. Their names were Cadogan, Gruffydd and Einion, and the farmer's name was Rhiwallon. Rhiwallon and his sons, named as above, were physicians to Rhys Gryg, Lord of Dynevor, and son of the last native prince of Wales. They lived about 1230, and dying, left behind them a compendium of their medical practice. 'A copy of their works is in the Welsh School Library in Gray's Inn Lane.'[26] FOOTNOTE: [26] 'Cambro-Briton,' ii., 315. V. In a more polished and elaborate form this legend omits the medical features altogether, but substitutes a number of details so peculiarly Welsh that I cannot refrain from presenting them. This version relates that the enamoured farmer had heard of the lake maiden, who rowed up and down the lake in a golden boat, with a golden oar. Her hair was long and yellow, and her face was pale and melancholy. In his desire to see this wondrous beauty, the farmer went on New Year's Eve to the edge of the lake, and in silence awaited the coming of the first hour of the new year. It came, and there in truth was the maiden in her golden boat, rowing softly to and fro. Fascinated, he stood for hours beholding her, until the stars faded out of the sky, the moon sank behind the rocks, and the cold gray dawn drew nigh; and then the lovely gwraig began to vanish from his sight. Wild with passion, and with the thought of losing her for ever, he cried aloud to the retreating vision, 'Stay! stay! Be my wife.' But the gwraig only uttered a faint cry, and was gone. Night after night the young farmer haunted the shores of the lake, but the gwraig returned no more. He became negligent of his person; his once robust form grew thin and wan; his face was a map of melancholy and despair. He went one day to consult a soothsayer who dwelt on the mountain, and this grave personage advised him to besiege the damsel's heart with gifts of bread and cheese. This counsel commending itself strongly to his Welsh way of thinking, the farmer set out upon an assiduous course of casting his bread upon the waters--accompanied by cheese. He began on Midsummer eve by going to the lake and dropping therein a large cheese and a loaf of bread. Night after night he continued to throw in loaves and cheeses, but nothing appeared in answer to his sacrifices. His hopes were set, however, on the approaching New Year's eve. The momentous night arrived at last. Clad in his best array, and armed with seven white loaves and his biggest and handsomest cheese, he set out once more for the lake. There he waited till midnight, and then slowly and solemnly dropped the seven loaves into the water, and with a sigh sent the cheese to keep them company. His persistence was at length rewarded. The magic skiff appeared; the fair gwraig guided it to where he stood; stepped ashore, and accepted him as her husband. The before-mentioned stipulation was made as to the blows; and she brought her dower of cattle. One day, after they had been four years married, they were invited to a christening. In the midst of the ceremony the gwraig burst into tears. Her husband gave her an angry look, and asked her why she thus made a fool of herself. She replied, 'The poor babe is entering a world of sin and sorrow; misery lies before it. Why should I rejoice?' He pushed her pettishly away. 'I warn you, husband,' said the gwraig; 'you have struck me once.' After a time they were bidden to the funeral of the child they had seen christened. Now the gwraig laughed, sang, and danced about. The husband's wrath again arose, and again he asked her why she thus made a fool of herself. She answered, 'The dear babe has escaped the misery that was before it, and gone to be good and happy for ever. Why should I grieve?' Again he pushed her from him, and again she warned him; he had struck her twice. Soon they were invited to a wedding; the bride was young and fair, the groom a tottering, toothless, decrepit old miser. In the midst of the wedding feast the gwraig annwn burst into tears, and to her husband's question why she thus made a fool of herself she replied, 'Truth is wedded to age for greed, and not for love--summer and winter cannot agree--it is the diawl's compact.' The angry husband thrust her from him for the third and last time. She looked at him with tender love and reproach, and said, 'The three blows are struck--husband, farewell!' He never saw her more, nor any of the flocks and herds she had brought him for her dowry. [Illustration: THE GWRAIG OF THE GOLDEN BOAT.] In its employment of the myth to preach a sermon, and in its introduction of cheese, this version of the legend is very Welsh indeed. The extent to which cheese figures in Cambrian folk-lore is surprising; cheese is encountered in every sort of fairy company; you actually meet cheese in the Mabinogion, along with the most romantic forms of beauty known in story. And herein again is illustrated Shakspeare's accurate knowledge of the Cambrian goblins. 'Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy!' says Falstaff, 'lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!'[27] Bread is found figuring actively in the folk-lore of every country, especially as a sacrifice to water-gods; but cheese is, so far as I know, thus honoured only in Cambria. FOOTNOTE: [27] 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Act V., Sc. 5. VI. Once more this legend appears, this time with a feature I have nowhere else encountered in fairy land, to wit, the father of a fairy damsel. The son of a farmer on Drws Coed farm was one foggy day looking after his father's sheep, when crossing a marshy meadow he beheld a little lady behind some rising ground. She had yellow hair, blue eyes and rosy cheeks. He approached her, and asked permission to converse; whereupon she smiled sweetly and said to him, 'Idol of my hopes, you have come at last!' They there and then began to 'keep company,' and met each other daily here and there along the farm meadows. His intentions were honourable; he desired her to marry him. He was sometimes absent for days together, no one knew where, and his friends whispered about that he had been witched. Around the Turf Lake (Llyn y Dywarchen) was a grove of trees, and under one of these one day the fairy promised to be his. The consent of her father was now necessary. One moonlight night an appointment was made to meet in this wood. The father and daughter did not appear till the moon had disappeared behind the hill. Then they both came. The fairy father immediately gave his consent to the marriage, on one condition, namely, that her future husband should never hit her with iron. 'If ever thou dost touch her flesh with iron she shall be no more thine, but she shall return to her own.' They were married--a good-looking pair. Large sums of money were brought by her, the night before the wedding, to Drws Coed. The shepherd lad became wealthy, had several handsome children, and they were very happy. After some years, they were one day out riding, when her horse sank in a deep mire, and by the assistance of her husband, in her hurry to remount, she was struck on her knee by the stirrup of the saddle. Immediately voices were heard singing on the brow of the hill, and she disappeared, leaving all her children behind. She and her mother devised a plan by which she could see her beloved, but as she was not allowed to walk the earth with man, they floated a large turf on the lake, and on this turf she stood for hours at a time holding converse with her husband. This continued until his death.[28] FOOTNOTE: [28] 'Cymru Fu,' 476. VII. The didactic purpose again appears in the following legend, which, varying but little in phraseology, is current in the neighbourhood of a dozen different mountain lakes: In other days, before the Cymry had become reconciled to their Saxon foe, on every New Year's morning a door was found open in a rock hard by the lake. Those mortals who had the curiosity and the resolution to enter this door were conducted by a secret passage to a small island in the middle of the lake. Here they found a most enchanting garden, stored with the choicest fruits and flowers, and inhabited by the Gwragedd Annwn, whose beauty could be equalled only by the courtesy and affability which they exhibited to those who pleased them. They gathered fruit and flowers for each of their guests, entertained them with the most exquisite music, disclosed to them many secrets of futurity, and invited them to stay as long as they liked. 'But,' said they, 'the island is secret, and nothing of its produce must be carried away.' The warning being heeded, all went well. But one day there appeared among the visitors a wicked Welshman, who, thinking to derive some magical aid therefrom, pocketed a flower with which he had been presented, and was about to leave the garden with his prize. But the theft boded him no good. As soon as he had touched unhallowed ground the flower vanished, and he lost his senses. However, of this abuse of their hospitality the Gwragedd Annwn took no notice at the time. They dismissed their guests with their accustomed courtesy, and the door was closed as usual. But their resentment was bitter; for though the fairies of the lake and their enchanted garden undoubtedly occupy the spot to this day, the door which led to the island has never been reopened. VIII. In all these legends the student of comparative folk-lore traces the ancient mythology, however overlain with later details. The water-maidens of every land doubtless originally were the floating clouds of the sky, or the mists of the mountain. From this have come certain fair and fanciful creations with which Indo-European folk-lore teems, the most familiar of which are Undine, Melusina, Nausicaa, and the classic Muse. In Wales, as in other lands, the myth has many forms. The dispersion of dark clouds from the mountains, by the beams of the rising sun, or the morning breezes, is localized in the legend of the Men of Ardudwy. These men make a raid on the maidens of the Vale of Clwyd, and are pursued and slaughtered by the latter's fathers and brothers. The maidens thereupon cast themselves headlong into the lake, which is thenceforth called the Maidens' Lake, or Llyn y Morwynion. In another legend, the river mist over the Cynwal is the spirit of a traitress who perished long ago in the lake. She had conspired with the sea-born pirates of the North (the ocean storms) to rob her Cambrian lord of his domains. She was defeated by the aid of a powerful enchanter (the sun), and fled up the river to the lake, accompanied by her maidens, who were drowned with her there.[29] FOOTNOTE: [29] 'Arch. Camb.,' 4th Se., vii., 251. IX. As the mermaid superstition is seemingly absent in Wales, so there are no fairy tales of maidens who lure mortals to their doom beneath the water, as the Dracæ did women and children, and as the Nymph of the Lurley did marriageable young men. But it is believed that there are several old Welsh families who are the descendants of the Gwragedd Annwn, as in the case of the Meddygon Myddfai. The familiar Welsh name of Morgan is sometimes thought to signify, 'Born of the Sea.' Certainly môr in Welsh means sea, and gân a birth. It is curious, too, that a mermaid is called in Basse Bretagne 'Mary Morgan.' But the class of stories in which a mortal marries a water-maiden is large, and while the local details smack of the soil, the general idea is so like in lands far remote from each other as to indicate a common origin in pre-historic times. In Wales, where the mountain lakes are numerous, gloomy, lonely, and yet lovely; where many of them, too, show traces of having been inhabited in ancient times by a race of lake-dwellers, whose pile-supported villages vanished ages ago; and where bread and cheese are as classic as beer and candles, these particulars are localized in the legend. In the Faro Islands, where the seal is a familiar yet ever-mysterious object, with its human-like eyes, and glossy skin, the wife of supernatural race is a transformed seal. She comes ashore every ninth night, sheds her skin, leaves it on the shore, and dances with her fairy companions. A mortal steals her sealskin dress, and when day breaks, and her companions return to their abode in the sea, compels her to remain and be his wife. Some day he offends her; she recovers her skin and plunges into the sea. In China, the superstition appears in a Lew-chewan legend mentioned by Dr. Dennys,[30] which relates how a fairy in the guise of a beautiful woman is found bathing in a man's well. He persuades her to marry him, and she remains with him for nine years, at the end of which time, despite the affection she has for their two children, she 'glides upwards into a cloud' and disappears. FOOTNOTE: [30] 'Folk-Lore of China,' 99. CHAPTER IV. Mountain Fairies--The Gwyllion--The Old Woman of the Mountain--The Black Mountain Gwyll--Exorcism by Knife--Occult Intellectual Powers of Welsh Goats--The Legend of Cadwaladr's Goat. I. The Gwyllion are female fairies of frightful characteristics, who haunt lonely roads in the Welsh mountains, and lead night-wanderers astray. They partake somewhat of the aspect of the Hecate of Greek mythology, who rode on the storm, and was a hag of horrid guise. The Welsh word gwyll is variously used to signify gloom, shade, duskiness, a hag, a witch, a fairy, and a goblin; but its special application is to these mountain fairies of gloomy and harmful habits, as distinct from the Ellyllon of the forest glades and dingles, which are more often beneficent. The Gwyllion take on a more distinct individuality under another name--as the Ellyllon do in mischievous Puck--and the Old Woman of the Mountain typifies all her kind. She is very carefully described by the Prophet Jones,[31] in the guise in which she haunted Llanhiddel Mountain in Monmouthshire. This was the semblance of a poor old woman, with an oblong four-cornered hat, ash-coloured clothes, her apron thrown across her shoulder, with a pot or wooden can in her hand, such as poor people carry to fetch milk with, always going before the spectator, and sometimes crying 'Wow up!' This is an English form of a Welsh cry of distress, 'Wwb!' or 'Ww-bwb!'[32] Those who saw this apparition, whether by night or on a misty day, would be sure to lose their way, though they might be perfectly familiar with the road. Sometimes they heard her cry, 'Wow up!' when they did not see her. Sometimes when they went out by night, to fetch coal, water, etc., the dwellers near that mountain would hear the cry very close to them, and immediately after they would hear it afar off, as if it were on the opposite mountain, in the parish of Aberystruth. The popular tradition in that district was that the Old Woman of the Mountain was the spirit of one Juan White, who lived time out of mind in those parts, and was thought to be a witch; because the mountains were not haunted in this manner until after Juan White's death.[33] When people first lost their way, and saw her before them, they used to hurry forward and try to catch her, supposing her to be a flesh-and-blood woman, who could set them right; but they never could overtake her, and she on her part never looked back; so that no man ever saw her face. She has also been seen in the Black Mountain in Breconshire. Robert Williams, of Langattock, Crickhowel, 'a substantial man and of undoubted veracity,' tells this tale: As he was travelling one night over part of the Black Mountain, he saw the Old Woman, and at the same time found he had lost his way. Not knowing her to be a spectre he hallooed to her to stay for him, but receiving no answer thought she was deaf. He then hastened his steps, thinking to overtake her, but the faster he ran the further he found himself behind her, at which he wondered very much, not knowing the reason of it. He presently found himself stumbling in a marsh, at which discovery his vexation increased; and then he heard the Old Woman laughing at him with a weird, uncanny, crackling old laugh. This set him to thinking she might be a gwyll; and when he happened to draw out his knife for some purpose, and the Old Woman vanished, then he was sure of it; for Welsh ghosts and fairies are afraid of a knife. FOOTNOTES: [31] See p. 104. [32] Pronounced Wooboob. [33] 'Juan (Shuï) White is an old acquaintance of my boyhood,' writes to me a friend who was born some thirty years ago in Monmouthshire. 'A ruined cottage on the Lasgarn hill near Pontypool was understood by us boys to have been her house, and there she appeared at 12 p.m., carrying her head under her arm.' II. Another account relates that John ap John, of Cwm Celyn, set out one morning before daybreak to walk to Caerleon Fair. As he ascended Milfre Mountain he heard a shouting behind him as if it were on Bryn Mawr, which is a part of the Black Mountain in Breconshire. Soon after he heard the shouting on his left hand, at Bwlch y Llwyn, nearer to him, whereupon he was seized with a great fright, and began to suspect it was no human voice. He had already been wondering, indeed, what any one could be doing at that hour in the morning, shouting on the mountain side. Still going on, he came up higher on the mountain, when he heard the shouting just before him, at Gilfach fields, to the right--and now he was sure it was the Old Woman of the Mountain, who purposed leading him astray. Presently he heard behind him the noise of a coach, and with it the special cry of the Old Woman of the Mountain, viz., 'Wow up!' Knowing very well that no coach could go that way, and still hearing its noise approaching nearer and nearer, he became thoroughly terrified, and running out of the road threw himself down upon the ground and buried his face in the heath, waiting for the phantom to pass. When it was gone out of hearing, he arose; and hearing the birds singing as the day began to break, also seeing some sheep before him, his fear went quite off. And this, says the Prophet Jones, was 'no profane, immoral man,' but 'an honest, peaceable, knowing man, and a very comely person' moreover. III. The exorcism by knife appears to be a Welsh notion; though there is an old superstition of wide prevalence in Europe that to give to or receive from a friend a knife or a pair of scissors cuts friendship. I have even encountered this superstition in America; once an editorial friend at Indianapolis gave me a very handsome pocket-knife, which he refused to part with except at the price of one cent, lawful coin of the realm, asserting that we should become enemies without this precaution. In China, too, special charms are associated with knives, and a knife which has slain a fellow-being is an invaluable possession. In Wales, according to Jones, the Gwyllion often came into the houses of the people at Aberystruth, especially in stormy weather, and the inmates made them welcome--not through any love they bore them, but through fear of the hurts the Gwyllion might inflict if offended--by providing clean water for them, and taking especial care that no knife, or other cutting tool, should be in the corner near the fire, where the fairies would go to sit. 'For want of which care many were hurt by them.' While it was desirable to exorcise them when in the open air, it was not deemed prudent to display an inhospitable spirit towards any member of the fairy world. The cases of successful exorcism by knife are many, and nothing in the realm of faerie is better authenticated. There was Evan Thomas, who, travelling by night over Bedwellty Mountain, towards the valley of Ebwy Fawr, where his house and estate were, saw the Gwyllion on each side of him, some of them dancing around him in fantastic fashion. He also heard the sound of a bugle-horn winding in the air, and there seemed to be invisible hunters riding by. He then began to be afraid, but recollected his having heard that any person seeing Gwyllion may drive them away by drawing out a knife. So he drew out his knife, and the fairies vanished directly. Now Evan Thomas was 'an old gentleman of such strict veracity that he' on one occasion 'did confess a truth against himself,' when he was 'like to suffer loss' thereby, and notwithstanding he 'was persuaded by some not to do it, yet he would persist in telling the truth, to his own hurt.' Should we find, in tracing these notions back to their source, that they are connected with Arthur's sword Excalibur? If so, there again we touch the primeval world. Jones says that the Old Woman of the Mountain has, since about 1800, (at least in South Wales,) been driven into close quarters by the light of the Gospel--in fact, that she now haunts mines--or in the preacher's formal words, 'the coal-pits and holes of the earth.' IV. Among the traditions of the origin of the Gwyllion is one which associates them with goats. Goats are in Wales held in peculiar esteem for their supposed occult intellectual powers. They are believed to be on very good terms with the Tylwyth Teg, and possessed of more knowledge than their appearance indicates. It is one of the peculiarities of the Tylwyth Teg that every Friday night they comb the goats' beards to make them decent for Sunday. Their association with the Gwyllion is related in the legend of Cadwaladr's goat: Cadwaladr owned a very handsome goat, named Jenny, of which he was extremely fond; and which seemed equally fond of him; but one day, as if the very diawl possessed her, she ran away into the hills, with Cadwaladr tearing after her, half mad with anger and affright. At last his Welsh blood got so hot, as the goat eluded him again and again, that he flung a stone at her, which knocked her over a precipice, and she fell bleating to her doom. Cadwaladr made his way to the foot of the crag; the goat was dying, but not dead, and licked his hand--which so affected the poor man that he burst into tears, and sitting on the ground took the goat's head on his arm. The moon rose, and still he sat there. Presently he found that the goat had become transformed to a beautiful young woman, whose brown eyes, as her head lay on his arm, looked into his in a very disturbing way. 'Ah, Cadwaladr,' said she, 'have I at last found you?' Now Cadwaladr had a wife at home, and was much discomfited by this singular circumstance; but when the goat--yn awr maiden--arose, and putting her black slipper on the end of a moonbeam, held out her hand to him, he put his hand in hers and went with her. As for the hand, though it looked so fair, it felt just like a hoof. They were soon on the top of the highest mountain in Wales, and surrounded by a vapoury company of goats with shadowy horns. These raised a most unearthly bleating about his ears. One, which seemed to be the king, had a voice that sounded above the din as the castle bells of Carmarthen used to do long ago above all the other bells in the town. This one rushed at Cadwaladr and butting him in the stomach sent him toppling over a crag as he had sent his poor nannygoat. When he came to himself, after his fall, the morning sun was shining on him and the birds were singing over his head. But he saw no more of either his goat or the fairy she had turned into, from that time to his death. CHAPTER V. Changelings--The Plentyn-newid--The Cruel Creed of Ignorance regarding Changelings--Modes of Ridding the House of the Fairy Child--The Legend of the Frugal Meal--Legend of the Place of Strife--Dewi Dal and the Fairies--Prevention of Fairy Kidnapping--Fairies caught in the Act by Mothers--Piety as an Exorcism. I. The Tylwyth Teg have a fatal admiration for lovely children. Hence the abundant folk-lore concerning infants who have been stolen from their cradles, and a plentyn-newid (change-child--the equivalent of our changeling) left in its place by the Tylwyth Teg. The plentyn-newid has the exact appearance of the stolen infant, at first; but its aspect speedily alters. It grows ugly of face, shrivelled of form, ill-tempered, wailing, and generally frightful. It bites and strikes, and becomes a terror to the poor mother. Sometimes it is idiotic; but again it has a supernatural cunning, not only impossible in a mortal babe, but not even appertaining to the oldest heads, on other than fairy shoulders. The veracious Prophet Jones testifies to a case where he himself saw the plentyn-newid--an idiot left in the stead of a son of Edmund John William, of the Church Valley, Monmouthshire. Says Jones: 'I saw him myself. There was something diabolical in his aspect,' but especially in his motions. He 'made very disagreeable screaming sounds,' which used to frighten strangers greatly, but otherwise he was harmless. He was of a 'dark, tawny complexion.' He lived longer than such children usually lived in Wales in that day, (a not altogether pleasant intimation regarding the hard lot to which such children were subjected by their unwilling parents,) reaching the age of ten or twelve years. But the creed of ignorance everywhere as regards changelings is a very cruel one, and reminds us of the tests of the witchcraft trials. Under the pretence of proving whether the objectionable baby is a changeling or not, it is held on a shovel over the fire, or it is bathed in a solution of the fox-glove, which kills it; a case where this test was applied is said to have actually occurred in Carnarvonshire in 1857. That there is nothing specially Welsh in this, needs not to be pointed out. Apart from the fact that infanticide, like murder, is of no country, similar practices as to changelings have prevailed in most European lands, either to test the child's uncanny quality, or, that being admitted, to drive it away and thus compel the fairies to restore the missing infant. In Denmark the mother heats the oven, and places the changeling on the peel, pretending to put it in; or whips it severely with a rod; or throws it into the water. In Sweden they employ similar methods. In Ireland the hot shovel is used. With regard to a changeling which Martin Luther tells of in his 'Colloquia Mensalia,' the great reformer declared to the Prince of Anhalt, that if he were prince of that country he would 'venture _homicidium_ thereon, and would throw it into the River Moldaw.' He admonished the people to pray devoutly to God to take away the devil, which 'was done accordingly; and the second year after the changeling died.' It is hardly probable that the child was very well fed during the two years that this pious process was going on. Its starved ravenous appetite indeed is indicated in Luther's description: It 'would eat as much as two threshers, would laugh and be joyful when any evil happened in the house, but would cry and be very sad when all went well.' II. A story, told in various forms in Wales, preserves a tradition of an exceedingly frugal meal which was employed as a means of banishing a plentyn-newid. M. Villemarqué, when in Glamorganshire, heard this story, which he found to be precisely the same as a Breton legend, in which the changeling utters a rhymed triad as follows: Gweliz vi ken guelet iar wenn, Gweliz mez ken gwelet gwezen. Gweliz mez ha gweliz gwial, Gweliz derven e Koat Brezal, Biskoaz na weliz kemend all. In the Glamorgan story the changeling was heard muttering to himself in a cracked voice: 'I have seen the acorn before I saw the oak: I have seen the egg before I saw the white hen: I have never seen the like of this.' M. Villemarqué found it remarkable that these words form in Welsh a rhymed triad nearly the same as in the Breton ballad, thus: Gweliz mez ken gwelet derven, Gweliz vi ken gwelet iar wenn, Erioez ne wiliz evelhenn.[34] Whence he concluded that the story and the rhyme are older than the seventh century, the epoch of the separation of the Britons of Wales and Armorica. And this is the story: A mother whose child had been stolen, and a changeling left in its place, was advised by the Virgin Mary to prepare a meal for ten farm-servants in an egg-shell, which would make the changeling speak. This she did, and the changeling asked what she was about. She told him. Whereupon he exclaimed, 'A meal for ten, dear mother, in one egg-shell?' Then he uttered the exclamation given above, ('I have seen the acorn,' etc.,) and the mother replied, 'You have seen too many things, my son, you shall have a beating.' With this she fell to beating him, the child fell to bawling, and the fairy came and took him away, leaving the stolen child sleeping sweetly in the cradle. It awoke and said, 'Ah, mother, I have been a long time asleep!' FOOTNOTE: [34] Keightley, 'Fairy Mythology,' 437. III. I have encountered this tale frequently among the Welsh, and it always keeps in the main the likeness of M. Villemarqué's story. The following is a nearly literal version as related in Radnorshire (an adjoining county to Montgomeryshire), and which, like most of these tales, is characterised by the non-primitive tendency to give names of localities: 'In the parish of Trefeglwys, near Llanidloes, in the county of Montgomery, there is a little shepherd's cot that is commonly called the Place of Strife, on account of the extraordinary strife that has been there. The inhabitants of the cottage were a man and his wife, and they had born to them twins, whom the woman nursed with great care and tenderness. Some months after, indispensable business called the wife to the house of one of her nearest neighbours, yet notwithstanding that she had not far to go, she did not like to leave her children by themselves in their cradle, even for a minute, as her house was solitary, and there were many tales of goblins, or the Tylwyth Teg, haunting the neighbourhood. However, she went and returned as soon as she could;' but on her way back she was 'not a little terrified at seeing, though it was midday, some of the old elves of the blue petticoat.' She hastened home in great apprehension; but all was as she had left it, so that her mind was greatly relieved. 'But after some time had passed by, the good people began to wonder that the twins did not grow at all, but still continued little dwarfs. The man would have it that they were not his children; the woman said they must be their children, and about this arose the great strife between them that gave name to the place. One evening when the woman was very heavy of heart, she determined to go and consult a conjuror, feeling assured that everything was known to him.... Now there was to be a harvest soon of the rye and oats, so the wise man said to her, "When you are preparing dinner for the reapers, empty the shell of a hen's egg, and boil the shell full of pottage, and take it out through the door as if you meant it for a dinner to the reapers, and then listen what the twins will say; if you hear the children speaking things above the understanding of children, return into the house, take them and throw them into the waves of Llyn Ebyr, which is very near to you; but if you don't hear anything remarkable do them no injury." And when the day of the reaping came, the woman did as her adviser had recommended to her; and as she went outside the door to listen she heard one of the children say to the other: Gwelais fesen cyn gweled derwen; Gwelais wy cyn gweled iâr; Erioed ni welais ferwi bwyd i fedel Mewn plisgyn wy iâr! Acorns before oak I knew; An egg before a hen; Never one hen's egg-shell stew Enough for harvest men! 'On this the mother returned to her house and took the two children and threw them into the Llyn; and suddenly the goblins in their blue trousers came to save their dwarfs, and the mother had her own children back again; and thus the strife between her and her husband ended.'[35] FOOTNOTE: [35] 'Cambrian Quarterly,' ii., 86. IV. This class of story is not always confined to the case of the plentyn-newid, as I have said. It is applied to the household fairy, when the latter, as in the following instance, appears to have brought a number of extremely noisy friends and acquaintances to share his shelter. Dewi Dal was a farmer, whose house was over-run with fairies, so that he could not sleep of nights for the noise they made. Dewi consulted a wise man of Taiar, who entrusted Dewi's wife to do certain things, which she did carefully, as follows: 'It was the commencement of oat harvest, when Cae Mawr, or the big field, which it took fifteen men to mow in a day, was ripe for the harvesters. "I will prepare food for the fifteen men who are going to mow Cae Mawr to-morrow," said Eurwallt, the wife, aloud. "Yes, do," replied Dewi, also aloud, so that the fairies might hear, "and see that the food is substantial and sufficient for the hard work before them." Said Eurwallt, "The fifteen men shall have no reason to complain upon that score. They shall be fed according to our means." Then when evening was come Eurwallt prepared food for the harvesters' sustenance upon the following day. Having procured a sparrow, she trussed it like a fowl, and roasted it by the kitchen fire. She then placed some salt in a nut-shell, and set the sparrow and the salt, with a small piece of bread, upon the table, ready for the fifteen men's support while mowing Cae Mawr. So when the fairies beheld the scanty provision made for so many men, they said "Let us quickly depart from this place, for alas! the means of our hosts are exhausted. Who before this was ever so reduced in circumstances as to serve up a sparrow for the day's food of fifteen men?" So they departed upon that very night. And Dewi Dal and his family lived, ever afterwards, in comfort and peace.'[36] FOOTNOTE: [36] Rev. T. R. Lloyd (Estyn), in 'The Principality.' V. The Welsh fairies have several times been detected in the act of carrying off a child; and in these cases, if the mother has been sufficiently energetic in her objections, they have been forced to abandon their purpose. Dazzy Walter, the wife of Abel Walter, of Ebwy Fawr, one night in her husband's absence awoke in her bed and found her baby was not at her side. In great fright she sought for it, and caught it with her hand upon the boards above the bed, which was as far as the fairies had succeeded in carrying it. And Jennet Francis, of that same valley of Ebwy Fawr, one night in bed felt her infant son being taken from her arms; whereupon she screamed and hung on, and, as she phrased it, 'God and me were too hard for them.' This son subsequently grew up and became a famous preacher of the gospel. [Illustration: JENNET FRANCIS STRUGGLES WITH THE FAIRIES FOR HER BABY.] There are special exorcisms and preventive measures to interfere with the fairies in their quest of infants. The most significant of these, throughout Cambria, is a general habit of piety. Any pious exclamation has value as an exorcism; but it will not serve as a preventive. To this end you must put a knife in the child's cradle when you leave it alone, or you must lay a pair of tongs across the cradle. But the best preventive is baptism; it is usually the unbaptised infant that is stolen. So in Friesland, Germany, it is considered a protection against the fairies who deal in changelings, to lay a Bible under the child's pillow. In Thuringia it is deemed an infallible preventive to hang the father's breeches against the wall. Anything more trivial than this, as a matter for the consideration of grave and scholarly men, one could hardly imagine; but it is in precisely these trivial or seemingly trivial details that the student of comparative folk-lore finds his most extraordinary indices. Such a superstition in isolation would suggest nothing; but it is found again in Scotland,[37] and other countries, including China, where 'a pair of the trousers of the child's father are put on the frame of the bedstead in such a way that the waist shall hang downward or be lower than the legs. On the trousers is stuck a piece of red paper, having four words written upon it intimating that all unfavourable influences are to go into the trousers instead of afflicting the babe.'[38] FOOTNOTES: [37] Henderson, 'Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,' 6. [38] See Doolittle's 'Social Life of the Chinese.' CHAPTER VI. Living with the Tylwyth Teg--The Tale of Elidurus--Shuï Rhys and the Fairies--St. Dogmell's Parish, Pembrokeshire--Dancing with the Ellyllon--The Legend of Rhys and Llewellyn--Death from joining in the Fairy Reel--Legend of the Bush of Heaven--The Forest of the Magic Yew--The Tale of Twm and Iago--Taffy ap Sion, a Legend of Pencader--The Traditions of Pant Shon Shenkin--Tudur of Llangollen; the Legend of Nant yr Ellyllon--Polly Williams and the Trefethin Elves--The Fairies of Frennifawr--Curiosity Tales--The Fiend Master--Iago ap Dewi--The Original of Rip van Winkle. I. Closely akin to the subject of changelings is that of adults or well-grown children being led away to live with the Tylwyth Teg. In this field the Welsh traditions are innumerable, and deal not only with the last century or two, but distinctly with the middle ages. Famed among British goblins are those fairies which are immortalised in the Tale of Elidurus. This tale was written in Latin by Giraldus Cambrensis (as he called himself, after the pedantic fashion of his day), a Welshman, born at Pembroke Castle, and a hearty admirer of everything Welsh, himself included. He was beyond doubt a man of genius, and of profound learning. In 1188 he made a tour through Wales, in the interest of the crusade then in contemplation, and afterwards wrote his book--a fascinating picture of manners and customs in Wales in the twelfth century. The scene of the tale is that Vale of Neath, already named as a famous centre of fairyland. Elidurus, when a youth of twelve years, 'in order to avoid the severity of his preceptor,' ran away from school, 'and concealed himself under the hollow bank of a river.' After he had fasted in that situation for two days, 'two little men of pigmy stature appeared to him,' and said, 'If you will go with us, we will lead you into a country full of delights and sports.' Assenting, Elidurus rose up and 'followed his guides through a path at first subterraneous and dark, into a most beautiful country, but obscure and not illuminated with the full light of the sun.' All the days in that country 'were cloudy, and the nights extremely dark.' The boy was brought before the king of the strange little people, and introduced to him in the presence of his Court. Having examined Elidurus for a long time, the king delivered him to his son, that prince being then a boy. The men of this country, though of the smallest stature, were very well proportioned, fair-complexioned, and wore long hair. 'They had horses and greyhounds adapted to their size. They neither ate flesh nor fish, but lived on milk-diet, made up into messes with saffron. As often as they returned from our hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies; and though they had no form of public worship, were, it seems, strict lovers and reverers of truth. The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way he had gone, sometimes by others; at first in company, and afterwards alone; and made himself known only to his mother, to whom he described what he had seen. Being desired by her to bring her a present of gold, with which that country abounded, he stole, whilst at play with the king's son, a golden ball with which he used to divert himself, and brought it in haste to his mother, but not unpursued; for, as he entered the house of his father, he stumbled at the threshold;' the ball fell, 'and two pigmies seizing it, departed, showing the boy every mark of contempt and derision. Notwithstanding every attempt for the space of a year, he never again could find the track to the subterraneous passage.' He had made himself acquainted with the language of his late hosts, 'which was very conformable to the Greek idiom. When they asked for water, they said _Udor udorum_; when they want salt, they say _Halgein udorum_.'[39] FOOTNOTE: [39] See Sir R. C. Hoare's Translation of Giraldus. II. Exactly similar to this medieval legend in spirit, although differing widely in detail, is the modern story of Shuï Rhys, told to me by a peasant in Cardiganshire. Shuï was a beautiful girl of seventeen, tall and fair, with a skin like ivory, hair black and curling, and eyes of dark velvet. She was but a poor farmer's daughter, notwithstanding her beauty, and among her duties was that of driving up the cows for the milking. Over this work she used to loiter sadly, to pick flowers by the way, or chase the butterflies, or amuse herself in any agreeable manner that fortune offered. For her loitering she was often chided; indeed, people said Shuï's mother was far too sharp with the girl, and that it was for no good the mother had so bitter a tongue. After all the girl meant no harm, they said. But when one night Shuï never came home till bed-time, leaving the cows to care for themselves, dame Rhys took the girl to task as she never had done before. 'Ysgwaetheroedd, mami,' said Shuï, 'I couldn't help it; it was the Tylwyth Teg.' The dame was aghast at this, but she could not answer it--for well she knew the Tylwyth Teg were often seen in the woods of Cardigan. Shuï was at first shy about talking of the fairies, but finally confessed they were little men in green coats, who danced around her and made music on their tiny harps; and they talked to her in language too beautiful to be repeated; indeed she couldn't understand the words, though she knew well enough what the fairies meant. Many a time after that Shuï was late; but now nobody chided her, for fear of offending the fairies. At last one night Shuï did not come home at all. In alarm the woods were searched; there was no sign of her; and never was she seen in Cardigan again. Her mother watched in the fields on the Teir-nos Ysprydion, or three nights of the year when goblins are sure to be abroad; but Shuï never returned. Once indeed there came back to the neighbourhood a wild rumour that Shuï Rhys had been seen in a great city in a foreign land--Paris, perhaps, or London, who knows? but this tale was in no way injurious to the sad belief that the fairies had carried her off; they might take her to those well-known centres of idle and sinful pleasure, as well as to any other place. [Illustration: SHUÏ RHYS AND THE TYLWYTH TEG.] III. An old man who died in St. Dogmell's parish, Pembrokeshire, a short time since (viz., in 1860), nearly a hundred years old, used to say that that whole neighbourhood was considered 'fou.' It was a common experience for men to be led astray there all night, and after marvellous adventures and untellable trampings, which seemed as if they would be endless, to find when day broke that they were close to their own homes. In one case, a man who was led astray chanced to have with him a number of hoop-rods, and as he wandered about under the influence of the deluding phantom, he was clever enough to drop the rods one by one, so that next day he might trace his journeyings. When daylight came, and the search for the hoop-rods was entered on, it was found they were scattered over miles upon miles of country. Another time, a St. Dogmell's fisherman was returning home from a wedding at Moelgrove, and it being very dark, the fairies led him astray, but after a few hours he had the good luck (which Sir John Franklin might have envied him) to 'discover the North Pole,' and by this beacon he was able to steer his staggering barque to the safe port of his own threshold. It is even gravely stated that a severe and dignified clerical person, no longer in the frisky time of life, but advanced in years, was one night forced to join in the magic dance of St. Dogmell's, and keep it up till nearly daybreak. Specific details in this instance are wanting; but it was no doubt the Ellyllon who led all these folk astray, and put a cap of oblivion on their heads, which prevented them from ever telling their adventures clearly. IV. Dancing and music play a highly important part in stories of this class. The Welsh fairies are most often dancing together when seen. They seek to entice mortals to dance with them, and when anyone is drawn to do so, it is more than probable he will not return to his friends for a long time. Edmund William Rees, of Aberystruth, was thus drawn away by the fairies, and came back at the year's end, looking very bad. But he could not give a very clear account of what he had been about, only said he had been dancing. This was a common thing in these cases. Either they were not able to, or they dared not, talk about their experiences. Two farm servants named Rhys and Llewellyn were one evening at twilight returning home from their work, when Rhys cried out that he heard the fairy music. Llewellyn could hear nothing, but Rhys said it was a tune to which he had danced a hundred times, and would again, and at once. 'Go on,' says he, 'and I'll soon catch you up again.' Llewellyn objected, but Rhys stopped to hear no more; he bounded away and left Llewellyn to go home alone, which he did, believing Rhys had merely gone off on a spree, and would come home drunk before morning. But the morning came, and no Rhys. In vain search was made, still no Rhys. Time passed on; days grew into months; and at last suspicion fell on Llewellyn, that he had murdered Rhys. He was put in prison. A farmer learned in fairy-lore, suspecting how it was, proposed that he and a company of neighbours should go with poor Llewellyn to the spot where he had last seen Rhys. Agreed. Arrived at the spot, 'Hush,' cried Llewellyn, 'I hear music! I hear the sweet music of the harps!' They all listened, but could hear nothing. 'Put your foot on mine, David,' says Llewellyn to one of the company; his own foot was on the outward edge of a fairy ring as he spoke. David put his foot on Llewellyn's, and so did they all, one after another; and then they heard the sound of many harps, and saw within a circle about twenty feet across, great numbers of little people dancing round and round. And there was Rhys, dancing away like a madman! As he came whirling by, Llewellyn caught him by his smock-frock and pulled him out of the circle. 'Where are the horses? where are the horses?' cried Rhys in an excited manner. 'Horses, indeed!' sneered Llewellyn, in great disgust; 'wfft! go home. Horses!' But Rhys was for dancing longer, declaring he had not been there five minutes. 'You've been there,' says Llewellyn, 'long enough to come near getting me hanged, anyhow.' They got him home finally, but he was never the same man again, and soon after he died. V. In the great majority of these stories the hero dies immediately after his release from the thraldom of the fairies--in some cases with a suddenness and a completeness of obliteration as appalling as dramatic. The following story, well known in Carmarthenshire, presents this detail with much force: There was a certain farmer who, while going early one morning to fetch his horses from the pasture, heard harps playing. Looking carefully about for the source of this music, he presently saw a company of Tylwyth Teg footing it merrily in a corelw. Resolving to join their dance and cultivate their acquaintance, the farmer stepped into the fairy ring. Never had man his resolution more thoroughly carried out, for having once begun the reel he was not allowed to finish it till years had elapsed. Even then he might not have been released, had it not chanced that a man one day passed by the lonely spot, so close to the ring that he saw the farmer dancing. 'Duw catto ni!' cried the man, 'God save us! but this is a merry one. Hai, holo! man, what, in Heaven's name, makes you so lively?' This question, in which the name of Heaven was uttered, broke the spell which rested on the farmer, who spoke like one in a dream: 'O dyn!' cried he, 'what's become of the horses?' Then he stepped from the fairy circle and instantly crumbled away and mingled his dust with the earth. A similar tale is told in Carnarvon, but with the fairy dance omitted and a pious character substituted, which helps to indicate the antiquity of this class of legend, by showing that it was one of the monkish adoptions of an earlier story. Near Clynog, in Carnarvonshire, there is a place called Llwyn y Nef, (the Bush of Heaven,) which thus received its name: In Clynog lived a monk of most devout life, who longed to be taken to heaven. One evening, whilst walking without the monastery by the riverside, he sat down under a green tree and fell into a deep reverie, which ended in sleep; and he slept for thousands of years. At last he heard a voice calling unto him, 'Sleeper, awake and be up.' He awoke. All was strange to him except the old monastery, which still looked down upon the river. He went to the monastery, and was made much of. He asked for a bed to rest himself on and got it. Next morning when the brethren sought him, they found nothing in the bed but a handful of ashes.[40] So in the monkish tale of the five saints, who sleep in the cave of Caio, reappears the legend of Arthur's sleeping warriors under Craig-y-Ddinas. FOOTNOTE: [40] 'Cymru Fu,' 188. VI. [Illustration: PLUCKED FROM THE FAIRY CIRCLE.] A tradition is current in Mathavarn, in the parish of Llanwrin, and the Cantref of Cyfeillioc, concerning a certain wood called Ffridd yr Ywen, (the Forest of the Yew,) that it is so called on account of a magical yew-tree which grows exactly in the middle of the forest. Under that tree there is a fairy circle called The Dancing Place of the Goblin. There are several fairy circles in the Forest of the Yew, but the one under the yew-tree in the middle has this legend connected with it: Many years ago, two farm-servants, whose names were Twm and Iago, went out one day to work in the Forest of the Yew. Early in the afternoon the country became covered with so dense a mist that the youths thought the sun was setting, and they prepared to go home; but when they came to the yew-tree in the middle of the forest, suddenly they found all light around them. They now thought it too early to go home, and concluded to lie down under the yew-tree and have a nap. By-and-by Twm awoke, to find his companion gone. He was much surprised at this, but concluded Iago had gone to the village on an errand of which they had been speaking before they fell asleep. So Twm went home, and to all inquiries concerning Iago, he answered, 'Gone to the cobbler's in the village.' But Iago was still absent next morning, and now Twm was cross-questioned severely as to what had become of his fellow-servant. Then he confessed that they had fallen asleep under the yew where the fairy circle was, and from that moment he had seen nothing more of Iago. They searched the whole forest over, and the whole country round, for many days, and finally Twm went to a gwr cyfarwydd (or conjuror), a common trade in those days, says the legend. The conjuror gave him this advice: 'Go to the same place where you and the lad slept. Go there exactly a year after the boy was lost. Let it be on the same day of the year and at the same time of the day; but take care that you do not step inside the fairy ring. Stand on the border of the green circle you saw there, and the boy will come out with many of the goblins to dance. When you see him so near to you that you may take hold of him, snatch him out of the ring as quickly as you can.' These instructions were obeyed. Iago appeared, dancing in the ring with the Tylwyth Teg, and was promptly plucked forth. 'Duw! Duw!' cried Tom, 'how wan and pale you look! And don't you feel hungry too?' 'No,' said the boy, 'and if I did, have I not here in my wallet the remains of my dinner that I had before I fell asleep?' But when he looked in his wallet, the food was not there. 'Well, it must be time to go home,' he said, with a sigh; for he did not know that a year had passed by. His look was like a skeleton, and as soon as he had tasted food, he mouldered away. VII. Taffy ap Sion, the shoemaker's son, living near Pencader, Carmarthenshire, was a lad who many years ago entered the fairy circle on the mountain hard by there, and having danced a few minutes, as he supposed, chanced to step out. He was then astonished to find that the scene which had been so familiar was now quite strange to him. Here were roads and houses he had never seen, and in place of his father's humble cottage there now stood a fine stone farm-house. About him were lovely cultivated fields instead of the barren mountain he was accustomed to. 'Ah,' thought he, 'this is some fairy trick to deceive my eyes. It is not ten minutes since I stepped into that circle, and now when I step out they have built my father a new house! Well, I only hope it is real; anyhow, I'll go and see.' So he started off by a path he knew instinctively, and suddenly struck against a very solid hedge. He rubbed his eyes, felt the hedge with his fingers, scratched his head, felt the hedge again, ran a thorn into his fingers and cried out, 'Wbwb! this is no fairy hedge anyhow, nor, from the age of the thorns, was it grown in a few minutes' time.' So he climbed over it and walked on. 'Here was I born,' said he, as he entered the farmyard, staring wildly about him, 'and not a thing here do I know!' His mystification was complete when there came bounding towards him a huge dog, barking furiously. 'What dog is this? Get out, you ugly brute! Don't you know I'm master here?--at least, when mother's from home, for father don't count.' But the dog only barked the harder. 'Surely,' muttered Taffy to himself, 'I have lost my road and am wandering through some unknown neighbourhood; but no, yonder is the Careg Hir!' and he stood staring at the well-known erect stone thus called, which still stands on the mountain south of Pencader, and is supposed to have been placed there in ancient times to commemorate a victory. As Taffy stood thus looking at the Long Stone, he heard footsteps behind him, and turning, beheld the occupant of the farm-house, who had come out to see why his dog was barking. Poor Taffy was so ragged and wan that the farmer's Welsh heart was at once stirred to sympathy. 'Who are you, poor man?' he asked. To which Taffy answered, 'I know who I was, but I do not know who I _am now_. I was the son of a shoemaker who lived in this place, this morning; for that rock, though it is changed a little, I know too well.' 'Poor fellow,' said the farmer, 'you have lost your senses. This house was built by my great-grandfather, repaired by my grandfather; and that part there, which seems newly built, was done about three years ago at my expense. You must be deranged, or have missed the road; but come in and refresh yourself with some victuals, and rest.' Taffy was half persuaded that he had overslept himself and lost his road, but looking back he saw the rock before mentioned, and exclaimed, 'It is but an hour since I was on yonder rock robbing a hawk's nest.' 'Where have you been since?' Taffy related his adventure. 'Ah,' quoth the farmer, 'I see how it is--you have been with the fairies. Pray, who was your father?' 'Sion Evan y Crydd o Glanrhyd,' was the answer. 'I never heard of such a man,' said the farmer, shaking his head, 'nor of such a place as Glanrhyd, either: but no matter, after you have taken a little food we will step down to Catti Shon, at Pencader, who will probably be able to tell us something.' With this he beckoned Taffy to follow him, and walked on; but hearing behind him the sound of footsteps growing weaker and weaker, he turned round, when to his horror he beheld the poor fellow crumble in an instant to about a thimbleful of black ashes. The farmer, though much terrified at this sight, preserved his calmness sufficiently to go at once and see old Catti, the aged crone he had referred to, who lived at Pencader, near by. He found her crouching over a fire of faggots, trying to warm her old bones. 'And how do you do the day, Catti Shon?' asked the farmer. 'Ah,' said old Catti, 'I'm wonderful well, farmer, considering how old I am.' 'Yes, yes, you're very old. Now, since you are so old, let me ask you--do you remember anything about Sion y Crydd o Glanrhyd? Was there ever such a man, do you know?' 'Sion Glanrhyd? O! I have some faint recollection of hearing my grandfather, old Evan Shenkin, Penferdir, relate that Sion's son was lost one morning, and they never heard of him afterwards, so that it was said he was taken by the fairies. His father's cot stood somewhere near your house.' 'Were there many fairies about at that time?' asked the farmer. 'O yes; they were often seen on yonder hill, and I was told they were lately seen in Pant Shon Shenkin, eating flummery out of egg-shells, which they had stolen from a farm hard by.' 'Dir anwyl fi!' cried the farmer; 'dear me! I recollect now--I saw them myself!' Pant Shon[41] Shenkin, it must be here remarked, was a famous place for the Carmarthenshire fairies. The traditions thereabout respecting them are numerous. Among the strangest is, that a woman once actually caught a fairy on the mountain near Pant Shon Shenkin, and that it remained long in her custody, retaining still the same height and size, but at last made its escape. Another curious tradition relates that early one Easter Monday, when the parishioners of Pencarreg and Caio were met to play at football, they saw a numerous company of Tylwyth Teg dancing. Being so many in number, the young men were not intimidated at all, but proceeded in a body towards the puny tribe, who, perceiving them, removed to another place. The young men followed, whereupon the little folks suddenly appeared dancing at the first place. Seeing this, the men divided and surrounded them, when they immediately became invisible, and were never more seen there. FOOTNOTE: [41] Sion and Shon are the same word, just as are our Smith and Smyth. Where there are so few personal names as in Wales, while I would not myself change a single letter in order to render the actors in a tale more distinct, it is perhaps as well to encourage any eccentricities of spelling which we are so lucky as to find on the spot. VIII. Ignorance of what transpired in the fairy circle is not an invariable feature of legends like those we have been observing. In the story of Tudur of Llangollen, preserved by several old Welsh writers, the hero's experiences are given with much liveliness of detail. The scene of this tale is a hollow near Llangollen, on the mountain side half-way up to the ruins of Dinas Bran Castle, which hollow is to this day called Nant yr Ellyllon. It obtained its name, according to tradition, in this wise: A young man, called Tudur ap Einion Gloff, used in old times to pasture his master's sheep in that hollow. One summer's night, when Tudur was preparing to return to the lowlands with his woolly charge, there suddenly appeared, perched upon a stone near him, 'a little man in moss breeches with a fiddle under his arm. He was the tiniest wee specimen of humanity imaginable. His coat was made of birch leaves, and he wore upon his head a helmet which consisted of a gorse flower, while his feet were encased in pumps made of beetle's wings. He ran his fingers over his instrument, and the music made Tudur's hair stand on end. "Nos da'ch', nos da'ch'," said the little man, which means "Good-night, good-night to you," in English. "Ac i chwithau," replied Tudur; which again, in English, means "The same to you." Then continued the little man, "You are fond of dancing, Tudur; and if you but tarry awhile you shall behold some of the best dancers in Wales, and I am the musician." Quoth Tudur, "Then where is your harp? A Welshman even cannot dance without a harp." "Oh," said the little man, "I can discourse better dance music upon my fiddle." "Is it a fiddle you call that stringed wooden spoon in your hand?" asked Tudur, for he had never seen such an instrument before. And now Tudur beheld through the dusk hundreds of pretty little sprites converging towards the spot where they stood, from all parts of the mountain. Some were dressed in white, and some in blue, and some in pink, and some carried glow-worms in their hands for torches. And so lightly did they tread that not a blade nor a flower was crushed beneath their weight, and every one made a curtsey or a bow to Tudur as they passed, and Tudur doffed his cap and moved to them in return. Presently the little minstrel drew his bow across the strings of his instrument, and the music produced was so enchanting that Tudur stood transfixed to the spot.' At the sound of the sweet melody, the Tylwyth Teg ranged themselves in groups, and began to dance. Now of all the dancing Tudur had ever seen, none was to be compared to that he saw at this moment going on. He could not help keeping time with his hands and feet to the merry music, but he dared not join in the dance, 'for he thought within himself that to dance on a mountain at night in strange company, to perhaps the devil's fiddle, might not be the most direct route to heaven.' But at last he found there was no resisting this bewitching strain, joined to the sight of the capering Ellyllon. '"Now for it, then," screamed Tudur, as he pitched his cap into the air under the excitement of delight. "Play away, old devil; brimstone and water, if you like!" No sooner were the words uttered than everything underwent a change. The gorse-blossom cap vanished from the minstrel's head, and a pair of goat's horns branched out instead. His face turned as black as soot; a long tail grew out of his leafy coat, while cloven feet replaced the beetle-wing pumps. Tudur's heart was heavy, but his heels were light. Horror was in his bosom, but the impetus of motion was in his feet. The fairies changed into a variety of forms. Some became goats, and some became dogs, some assumed the shape of foxes, and others that of cats. It was the strangest crew that ever surrounded a human being. The dance became at last so furious that Tudur could not distinctly make out the forms of the dancers. They reeled around him with such rapidity that they almost resembled a wheel of fire. Still Tudur danced on. He could not stop, the devil's fiddle was too much for him, as the figure with the goat's horns kept pouring it out with unceasing vigour, and Tudur kept reeling around in spite of himself. Next day Tudur's master ascended the mountain in search of the lost shepherd and his sheep. He found the sheep all right at the foot of the Fron, but fancy his astonishment when, ascending higher, he saw Tudur spinning like mad in the middle of the basin now known as Nant yr Ellyllon.' Some pious words of the master broke the charm, and restored Tudur to his home in Llangollen, where he told his adventures with great gusto for many years afterwards.[42] FOOTNOTE: [42] Rev. T. R. Lloyd (Estyn), in 'The Principality.' IX. Polly Williams, a good dame who was born in Trefethin parish, and lived at the Ship Inn, at Pontypool, Monmouthshire, was wont to relate that, when a child, she danced with the Tylwyth Teg. The first time was one day while coming home from school. She saw the fairies dancing in a pleasant, dry place, under a crab-tree, and, thinking they were children like herself, went to them, when they induced her to dance with them. She brought them into an empty barn and they danced there together. After that, during three or four years, she often met and danced with them, when going to or coming from school. She never could hear the sound of their feet, and having come to know that they were fairies, took off her ffollachau (clogs), so that she, too, might make no noise, fearful that the clattering of her clog-shodden feet was displeasing to them. They were all dressed in blue and green aprons, and, though they were so small, she could see by their mature faces that they were no children. Once when she came home barefoot, after dancing with the fairies, she was chided for going to school in that condition; but she held her tongue about the fairies, for fear of trouble, and never told of them till after she grew up. She gave over going with them to dance, however, after three or four years, and this displeased them. They tried to coax her back to them, and, as she would not come, hurt her by dislocating 'one of her walking members,'[43] which, as a euphemism for legs, surpasses anything charged against American prudery. FOOTNOTE: [43] Jones, 'Apparitions.' X. Contrasting strongly with this matter-of-fact account of a modern witness is the glowing description of fairy life contained in the legend of the Fairies of Frennifawr. About ten miles south of Cardigan is the Pembrokeshire mountain called Frennifawr, which is the scene of this tale: A shepherd's lad was tending his sheep on the small mountains called Frennifach one fine morning in June. Looking to the top of Frennifawr to note what way the fog hung--for if the fog on that mountain hangs on the Pembrokeshire side, there will be fair weather, if on the Cardigan side, storm--he saw the Tylwyth Teg, in appearance like tiny soldiers, dancing in a ring. He set out for the scene of revelry, and soon drew near the ring where, in a gay company of males and females, they were footing it to the music of the harp. Never had he seen such handsome people, nor any so enchantingly cheerful. They beckoned him with laughing faces to join them as they leaned backward almost falling, whirling round and round with joined hands. Those who were dancing never swerved from the perfect circle; but some were clambering over the old cromlech, and others chasing each other with surprising swiftness and the greatest glee. Still others rode about on small white horses of the most beautiful form; these riders were little ladies, and their dresses were indescribably elegant, surpassing the sun in radiance, and varied in colour, some being of bright whiteness, others the most vivid scarlet. The males wore red tripled caps, and the ladies a light fantastic headdress which waved in the wind. All this was in silence, for the shepherd could not hear the harps, though he saw them. But now he drew nearer to the circle, and finally ventured to put his foot in the magic ring. The instant he did this, his ears were charmed with strains of the most melodious music he had ever heard. Moved with the transports this seductive harmony produced in him, he stepped fully into the ring. He was no sooner in than he found himself in a palace glittering with gold and pearls. Every form of beauty surrounded him, and every variety of pleasure was offered him. He was made free to range whither he would, and his every movement was waited on by young women of the most matchless loveliness. And no tongue can tell the joys of feasting that were his! Instead of the tatws-a-llaeth (potatoes and buttermilk) to which he had hitherto been accustomed, here were birds and meats of every choice description, served on plates of silver. Instead of home-brewed cwrw, the only bacchic beverage he had ever tasted in real life, here were red and yellow wines of wondrous enjoyableness, brought in golden goblets richly inlaid with gems. The waiters were the most beautiful virgins, and everything was in abundance. There was but one restriction on his freedom: he must not drink, on any consideration, from a certain well in the garden, in which swam fishes of every colour, including the colour of gold. Each day new joys were provided for his amusement, new scenes of beauty were unfolded to him, new faces presented themselves, more lovely if possible than those he had before encountered. Everything was done to charm him; but one day all his happiness fled in an instant. Possessing every joy that mortal could desire, he wanted the one thing forbidden--like Eve in the garden, like Fatima in the castle; curiosity undid him. He plunged his hand into the well: the fishes all disappeared instantly. He put the water to his mouth: a confused shriek ran through the garden. He drank: the palace and all vanished from his sight, and he stood shivering in the night air, alone on the mountain, in the very place where he had first entered the ring.[44] [Illustration: THE FATAL DRAUGHT.] FOOTNOTE: [44] 'Cambrian Superstitions,' 148. (This is a small collection of Welsh stories printed at Tipton in 1831, and now rare; its author was W. Howells, a lad of nineteen, and his work was drawn out by a small prize offered by Archdeacon Beynon through a Carmarthen newspaper in 1830. Its English requires rehandling, but its material is of value.) XI. Comment on the resemblances borne by these tales to the more famous legends of other lands, is perhaps unnecessary; they will occur to every reader who is at all familiar with the subject of folk-lore. To those who are not, it is sufficient to say that these resemblances exist, and afford still further testimony to the common origin of such tales in a remote past. The legend last given embodies the curiosity feature which is familiar through the story of Bluebeard, but has its root in the story of Psyche. She was forbidden to look upon her husband Eros, the god of love; she disobeyed the injunction, and the beautiful palace in which she had dwelt with him vanished in an instant, leaving her alone in a desolate spot. Ages older than the Psyche story, however, is the legend embodying the original Aryan myth. The drop of oil which falls upon the shoulder of the sleeping prince and wakes him, revealing Psyche's curiosity and destroying her happiness, is paralleled among the Welsh by the magic ointment in the legend of the Fiend Master. This legend, it may be premised, is also familiar to both France and Germany, where its details differ but little from those here given: A respectable young Welshwoman of the working class, who lived with her parents, went one day to a hiring fair. Here she 'was addressed by a very noble-looking gentleman all in black, who asked her if she would be a nursemaid, and undertake the management of his children. She replied that she had no objection; when he promised her immense wages, and said he would take her home behind him, but that she must, before they started, consent to be blindfolded. This done, she mounted behind him on a coal-black steed, and away they rode at a great rate. At length they dismounted, when her new master took her by the hand and led her on, still blindfolded, for a considerable distance. The handkerchief was then removed, when she beheld more grandeur than she had ever seen before; a beautiful palace lighted up by more lights than she could count, and a number of little children as beautiful as angels; also many noble-looking ladies and gentlemen. The children her master put under her charge, and gave her a box containing ointment, which she was to put on their eyes. At the same time he gave her strict orders always to wash her hands immediately after using the ointment, and be particularly careful never to let a bit of it touch her own eyes. These injunctions she strictly followed, and was for some time very happy; yet she sometimes thought it odd that they should always live by candle-light; and she wondered, too, that grand and beautiful as the palace was, such fine ladies and gentlemen as were there should never wish to leave it. But so it was; no one ever went out but her master. One morning, while putting the ointment on the eyes of the children, her own eye itched, and forgetting the orders of her master she touched one corner of it with her finger which was covered with ointment. Immediately, with the vision of that corner of her eye, she saw herself surrounded by fearful flames; the ladies and gentlemen looked like devils, and the children appeared like the most hideous imps of hell. Though with the other parts of her eyes she beheld all grand and beautiful as before, she could not help feeling much frightened at all this; but having great presence of mind she let no one see her alarm. However, she took the first opportunity of asking her master's leave to go and see her friends. He said he would take her, but she must again consent to be blindfolded. Accordingly a handkerchief was put over her eyes; she was again mounted behind her master, and was soon put down in the neighbourhood of her own house. It will be believed that she remained quietly there, and took good care not to return to her place; but very many years afterwards, being at a fair, she saw a man stealing something from a stall, and with one corner of her eye beheld her old master pushing his elbow. Unthinkingly she said, "How are you master? how are the children?" He said, "How did you see me?" She answered, "With the corner of my left eye." From that moment she was blind of her left eye, and lived many years with only her right.'[45] An older legend preserving this mythical detail is the story of Taliesin. Gwion Bach's eyes are opened by a drop from Caridwen's caldron falling upon his finger, which he puts in his mouth. FOOTNOTE: [45] 'Camb. Sup.,' 349. XII. A Carmarthenshire tradition names among those who lived for a period among the Tylwyth Teg no less a person than the translator into Welsh of Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He was called Iago ap Dewi, and lived in the parish of Llanllawddog, Carmarthenshire, in a cottage situated in the wood of Llangwyly. He was absent from the neighbourhood for a long period, and the universal belief among the peasantry was that Iago 'got out of bed one night to gaze on the starry sky, as he was accustomed (astrology being one of his favourite studies), and whilst thus occupied the fairies (who were accustomed to resort in a neighbouring wood), passing by, carried him away, and he dwelt with them seven years. Upon his return he was questioned by many as to where he had been, but always avoided giving them a reply.' XIII. The wide field of interest opened up in tales of this class is a fascinating one to the students of fairy mythology. The whole world seems to be the scene of such tales, and collectors of folk-lore in many lands have laid claim to the discovery of 'the original' on which the story of Rip van Winkle is based. It is an honour to American genius, to which I cannot forbear a passing allusion, that of all these legends, none has achieved so wide a fame as that which Washington Irving has given to our literature, and Joseph Jefferson to our stage. It is more than probable that Irving drew his inspiration from Grimm, and that the Catskills are indebted to the Hartz Mountains of Germany for their romantic fame. But the legends are endless in which occur this unsuspected lapse of time among supernatural beings, and the wandering back to the old home to find all changed. In Greece, it is Epimenides, the poet, who, while searching for a lost sheep, wanders into a cave where he slumbers forty-seven years. The Gaelic and Teutonic legends are well known. But our wonder at the vitality of this myth is greatest when we find it in both China and Japan. In the Japanese account a young man fishing in his boat on the ocean is invited by the goddess of the sea to her home beneath the waves. After three days he desires to see his old mother and father. On parting she gives him a golden casket and a key, but begs him never to open it. At the village where he lived he finds that all is changed, and he can get no trace of his parents until an aged woman recollects having heard of their names. He finds their graves a hundred years old. Thinking that three days could not have made such a change, and that he was under a spell, he opens the casket. A white vapour rises, and under its influence the young man falls to the ground. His hair turns grey, his form loses its youth, and in a few moments he dies of old age. The Chinese legend relates how two friends wandering amongst the ravines of their native mountains in search of herbs for medicinal purposes, come to a fairy bridge where two maidens of more than earthly beauty are on guard. They invite them to the fairy land which lies on the other side of the bridge, and the invitation being accepted, they become enamoured of the maidens, and pass what to them seems a short though blissful period of existence with the fairy folk. At length they desire to revisit their earthly homes and are allowed to return, when they find that seven generations have lived and died during their apparently short absence, they themselves having become centenarians.[46] In China, as elsewhere, the legend takes divers forms. FOOTNOTE: [46] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 98. CHAPTER VII. Fairy Music--Birds of Enchantment--The Legend of Shon ap Shenkin--Harp-Music in Welsh Fairy Tales--Legend of the Magic Harp--Songs and Tunes of the Tylwyth Teg--The Legend of Iolo ap Hugh--Mystic Origin of an old Welsh Air. I. In those rare cases where it is not dancing which holds the victim of Tylwyth Teg in its fatal fascination, the seducer is music. There is a class of stories still common in Wales, in which is preserved a wondrously beautiful survival of the primitive mythology. In the vast middle ground between our own commonplace times and the pre-historic ages we encounter more than once the lovely legend of the Birds of Rhiannon, which sang so sweetly that the warrior knights stood listening entranced for eighty years. This legend appears in the Mabinogi of 'Branwen, daughter of Llyr,' and, as we read it there, is a medieval tale; but the medieval authors of the Mabinogion as we know them were working over old materials--telling again the old tales which had come down through unnumbered centuries from father to son by tradition. Cambrian poets of an earlier age often allude to the birds of Rhiannon; they are mentioned in the Triads. In the Mabinogi, the period the warriors listened is seven years. Seven men only had escaped from a certain battle with the Irish, and they were bidden by their dying chief to cut off his head and bear it to London and bury it with the face towards France. Various were the adventures they encountered while obeying this injunction. At Harlech they stopped to rest, and sat down to eat and drink. 'And there came three birds, and began singing unto them a certain song, and all the songs they had ever heard were unpleasant compared thereto; and the birds seemed to them to be at a great distance from them over the sea, yet they appeared as distinct as if they were close by; and at this repast they continued seven years.'[47] This enchanting fancy reappears in the local story of Shon ap Shenkin, which was related to me by a farmer's wife near the reputed scene of the legend. Pant Shon Shenkin has already been mentioned as a famous centre for Carmarthenshire fairies. The story of Taffy ap Sion and this of Shon ap Shenkin were probably one and the same at some period in their career, although they are now distinct. Shon ap Shenkin was a young man who lived hard by Pant Shon Shenkin. As he was going afield early one fine summer's morning he heard a little bird singing, in a most enchanting strain, on a tree close by his path. Allured by the melody he sat down under the tree until the music ceased, when he arose and looked about him. What was his surprise at observing that the tree, which was green and full of life when he sat down, was now withered and barkless! Filled with astonishment he returned to the farm-house which he had left, as he supposed, a few minutes before; but it also was changed, grown older, and covered with ivy. In the doorway stood an old man whom he had never before seen; he at once asked the old man what he wanted there. 'What do I want here?' ejaculated the old man, reddening angrily; 'that's a pretty question! Who are you that dare to insult me in my own house?' 'In your own house? How is this? where's my father and mother, whom I left here a few minutes since, whilst I have been listening to the charming music under yon tree, which, when I rose, was withered and leafless?' 'Under the tree!--music! what's your name?' 'Shon ap Shenkin.' 'Alas, poor Shon, and is this indeed you!' cried the old man. 'I often heard my grandfather, your father, speak of you, and long did he bewail your absence. Fruitless inquiries were made for you; but old Catti Maddock of Brechfa said you were under the power of the fairies, and would not be released until the last sap of that sycamore tree would be dried up. Embrace me, my dear uncle, for you are my uncle--embrace your nephew.' With this the old man extended his arms, but before the two men could embrace, poor Shon ap Shenkin crumbled into dust on the doorstep. [Illustration: SHON AP SHENKIN RETURNS HOME.] FOOTNOTE: [47] Lady Charlotte Guest's 'Mabinogion,' 381. II. The harp is played by Welsh fairies to an extent unknown in those parts of the world where the harp is less popular among the people. When any instrument is distinctly heard in fairy cymmoedd it is usually the harp. Sometimes it is a fiddle, but then on close examination it will be discovered that it is a captured mortal who is playing it; the Tylwyth Teg prefer the harp. They play the bugle on specially grand occasions, and there is a case or two on record where the drone of the bagpipes was heard; but it is not doubted that the player was some stray fairy from Scotland or elsewhere over the border. On the top of Craig-y-Ddinas thousands of white fairies dance to the music of many harps. In the dingle called Cwm Pergwm, in the Vale of Neath, the Tylwyth Teg make music behind the waterfall, and when they go off over the mountains the sounds of their harps are heard dying away as they recede. The story which presents the Cambrian equivalent of the Magic Flute substitutes a harp for the (to Welshmen) less familiar instrument. As told to me this story runs somewhat thus: A company of fairies which frequented Cader Idris were in the habit of going about from cottage to cottage in that part of Wales, in pursuit of information concerning the degree of benevolence possessed by the cottagers. Those who gave these fairies an ungracious welcome were subject to bad luck during the rest of their lives, but those who were good to the little folk became the recipients of their favour. Old Morgan ap Rhys sat one night in his own chimney corner making himself comfortable with his pipe and his pint of cwrw da. The good ale having melted his soul a trifle, he was in a more jolly mood than was natural to him, when there came a little rap at the door, which reached his ear dully through the smoke of his pipe and the noise of his own voice--for in his merriment Morgan was singing a roystering song, though he could not sing any better than a haw--which is Welsh for a donkey. But Morgan did not take the trouble to get up at sound of the rap; his manners were not the most refined; he thought it was quite enough for a man on hospitable purposes bent to bawl forth in ringing Welsh, 'Gwaed dyn a'i gilydd! Why don't you come in when you've got as far as the door?' The welcome was not very polite, but it was sufficient. The door opened, and three travellers entered, looking worn and weary. Now these were the fairies from Cader Idris, disguised in this manner for purposes of observation, and Morgan never suspected they were other than they appeared. 'Good sir,' said one of the travellers, 'we are worn and weary, but all we seek is a bite of food to put in our wallet, and then we will go on our way.' 'Waw, lads! is that all you want? Well, there, look you, is the loaf and the cheese, and the knife lies by them, and you may cut what you like, and fill your bellies as well as your wallet, for never shall it be said that Morgan ap Rhys denied bread and cheese to a fellow creature.' The travellers proceeded to help themselves, while Morgan continued to drink and smoke, and to sing after his fashion, which was a very rough fashion indeed. As they were about to go, the fairy travellers turned to Morgan and said, 'Since you have been so generous we will show that we are grateful. It is in our power to grant you any one wish you may have; therefore tell us what that wish may be.' 'Ho, ho!' said Morgan, 'is that the case? Ah, I see you are making sport of me. Wela, wela, the wish of my heart is to have a harp that will play under my fingers no matter how ill I strike it; a harp that will play lively tunes, look you; no melancholy music for me!' He had hardly spoken, when to his astonishment, there on the hearth before him stood a splendid harp, and he was alone. 'Waw!' cried Morgan, 'they're gone already.' Then looking behind him he saw they had not taken the bread and cheese they had cut off, after all. ''Twas the fairies, perhaps,' he muttered, but sat serenely quaffing his beer, and staring at the harp. There was a sound of footsteps behind him, and his wife came in from out doors with some friends. Morgan feeling very jolly, thought he would raise a little laughter among them by displaying his want of skill upon the harp. So he commenced to play--oh, what a mad and capering tune it was! 'Waw!' said Morgan, 'but this is a harp. Holo! what ails you all?' For as fast as he played his neighbours danced, every man, woman, and child of them all footing it like mad creatures. Some of them bounded up against the roof of the cottage till their heads cracked again; others spun round and round, knocking over the furniture; and, as Morgan went on thoughtlessly playing, they began to pray to him to stop before they should be jolted to pieces. But Morgan found the scene too amusing to want to stop; besides, he was enamoured of his own suddenly developed skill as a musician; and he twanged the strings and laughed till his sides ached and the tears rolled down his cheeks, at the antics of his friends. Tired out at last he stopped, and the dancers fell exhausted on the floor, the chairs, the tables, declaring the diawl himself was in the harp. 'I know a tune worth two of that,' quoth Morgan, picking up the harp again; but at sight of this motion all the company rushed from the house and escaped, leaving Morgan rolling merrily in his chair. Whenever Morgan got a little tipsy after that, he would get the harp and set everybody round him to dancing; and the consequence was he got a bad name, and no one would go near him. But all their precautions did not prevent the neighbours from being caught now and then, when Morgan took his revenge by making them dance till their legs were broken, or some other damage was done them. Even lame people and invalids were compelled to dance whenever they heard the music of this diabolical telyn. In short, Morgan so abused his fairy gift that one night the good people came and took it away from him, and he never saw it more. The consequence was he became morose, and drank himself to death--a warning to all who accept from the fairies favours they do not deserve. III. The music of the Tylwyth Teg has been variously described by people who claim to have heard it; but as a rule with much vagueness, as of a sweet intangible harmony, recalling the experience of Caliban: The isle is full of noises; Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears.[48] One Morgan Gwilym, who saw the fairies by Cylepsta Waterfall, and heard their music dying away, was only able to recall the last strain, which he said sounded something like this: [Music] Edmund Daniel, of the Arail, 'an honest man and a constant speaker of truth,' told the Prophet Jones that he often saw the fairies after sunset crossing the Cefn Bach from the Valley of the Church towards Hafodafel, leaping and striking in the air, and making a serpentine path through the air, in this form: [Illustration: {WAVY HORIZONTAL LINE.}] The fairies were seen and heard by many persons in that neighbourhood, and sometimes by several persons together. They appeared more often by night than by day, and in the morning and evening more often than about noon. Many heard their music, and said of it that it was low and pleasant; but that it had this peculiarity: no one could ever learn the tune. In more favoured parts of the Principality, the words of the song were distinctly heard, and under the name of the 'Cân y Tylwyth Teg' are preserved as follows: Dowch, dowch, gyfeillion mân, O blith marwolion byd, Dowch, dowch, a dowch yn lân. Partowch partowch eich pibau cân, Gan ddawnsio dowch i gyd, Mae yn hyfryd heno i hwn. One is reluctant to turn into bald English this goblin song, which in its native Welsh is almost as impressive as 'Fi Fo Fum.' Let it suffice that the song is an invitation to the little ones among the dead of earth to come with music and dancing to the delights of the night revel. FOOTNOTE: [48] 'Tempest,' Act III., Sc. 2. IV. In the legend of Iolo ap Hugh, than which no story is more widely known in Wales, the fairy origin of that famous tune 'Ffarwel Ned Pugh' is shown. It is a legend which suggests the Enchanted Flute fancy in another form, the instrument here being a fiddle, and the victim and player one under fairy control. In its introduction of bread and cheese and candles it smacks heartily of the soil. In North Wales there is a famous cave which is said to reach from its entrance on the hillside 'under the Morda, the Ceiriog, and a thousand other streams, under many a league of mountain, marsh and moor, under the almost unfathomable wells that, though now choked up, once supplied Sycharth, the fortress of Glyndwrdwy, all the way to Chirk Castle.' Tradition said that whoever went within five paces of its mouth would be drawn into it and lost. That the peasants dwelling near it had a thorough respect for this tradition, was proved by the fact that all around the dangerous hole 'the grass grew as thick and as rank as in the wilds of America or some unapproached ledge of the Alps.' Both men and animals feared the spot: 'A fox, with a pack of hounds in full cry at his tail,' once turned short round on approaching it, 'with his hair all bristled and fretted like frostwork with terror,' and ran into the middle of the pack, 'as if anything earthly--even an earthly death--was a relief to his supernatural perturbations.' And the dogs in pursuit of this fox all declined to seize him, on account of the phosphoric smell and gleam of his coat. Moreover, 'Elias ap Evan, who happened one fair night to stagger just upon the rim of the forbidden space,' was so frightened at what he saw and heard that he arrived at home perfectly sober, 'the only interval of sobriety, morning, noon, or night, Elias had been afflicted with for upwards of twenty years.' Nor ever after that experience--concerning which he was wont to shake his head solemnly, as if he might tell wondrous tales an' he dared--could Elias get tipsy, drink he never so faithfully to that end. As he himself expressed it, 'His shadow walked steadily before him, that at one time wheeled around him like a pointer over bog and stone.' One misty Hallow E'en, Iolo ap Hugh, the fiddler, determined to solve the mysteries of the Ogof, or Cave, provided himself with 'an immense quantity of bread and cheese and seven pounds of candles,' and ventured in. He never returned; but long, long afterwards, at the twilight of another Hallow E'en, an old shepherd was passing that--as he called it--'Land-Maelstrom of Diaboly,' when he heard a faint burst of melody dancing up and down the rocks above the cave. As he listened, the music gradually 'moulded itself in something like a tune, though it was a tune the shepherd had never heard before.' And it sounded as if it were being played by some jolting fiend, so rugged was its rhythm, so repeated its discordant groans. Now there appeared at the mouth of the Ogof a figure well-known to the shepherd by remembrance. It was dimly visible; but it was Iolo ap Hugh, one could see that at once. He was capering madly to the music of his own fiddle, with a lantern dangling at his breast. 'Suddenly the moon shone full on the cave's yellow mouth, and the shepherd saw poor Iolo for a single moment--but it was distinctly and horribly. His face was pale as marble, and his eyes stared fixedly and deathfully, whilst his head dangled loose and unjointed on his shoulders. His arms seemed to keep his fiddlestick in motion without the least sympathy from their master. The shepherd saw him a moment on the verge of the cave, and then, still capering and fiddling, vanish like a shadow from his sight;' but the old man was heard to say he seemed as if he slipped into the cave in a manner quite different from the step of a living and a willing man; 'he was dragged inwards like the smoke up the chimney, or the mist at sunrise.' Years elapsed; 'all hopes and sorrows connected with poor Iolo had not only passed away, but were nearly forgotten; the old shepherd had long lived in a parish at a considerable distance amongst the hills. One cold December Sunday evening he and his fellow-parishioners were shivering in their seats as the clerk was beginning to light the church, when a strange burst of music, starting suddenly from beneath the aisle, threw the whole congregation into confusion, and then it passed faintly along to the farther end of the church, and died gradually away till at last it was impossible to distinguish it from the wind that was careering and wailing through almost every pillar of the old church.' The shepherd immediately recognised this to be the tune Iolo had played at the mouth of the Ogof. The parson of the parish--a connoisseur in music--took it down from the old man's whistling; and to this day, if you go to the cave on Hallow eve and put your ear to the aperture, you may hear the tune 'Ffarwel Ned Pugh' as distinctly as you may hear the waves roar in a sea-shell. 'And it is said that in certain nights in leap-year a star stands opposite the farther end of the cave, and enables you to view all through it and to see Iolo and its other inmates.'[49] [Music: FFARWEL NED PUGH.] FOOTNOTE: [49] 'Camb. Quarterly,' i., 45. CHAPTER VIII. Fairy Rings--The Prophet Jones and his Works--The Mysterious Language of the Tylwyth Teg--The Horse in Welsh Folk-Lore--Equestrian Fairies--Fairy Cattle, Sheep, Swine, etc.--The Flying Fairies of Bedwellty--The Fairy Sheepfold at Cae'r Cefn. I. The circles in the grass of green fields, which are commonly called fairy rings, are numerous in Wales, and it is deemed just as well to keep out of them, even in our day. The peasantry no longer believe that the fairies can be seen dancing there, nor that the cap of invisibility will fall on the head of one who enters the circle; but they do believe that the fairies, in a time not long gone, made these circles with the tread of their tripping feet, and that some misfortune will probably befall any person intruding upon this forbidden ground. An old man at Peterstone-super-Ely told me he well remembered in his childhood being warned by his mother to keep away from the fairy rings. The counsel thus given him made so deep an impression on his mind, that he had never in his life entered one. He remarked further, in answer to a question, that he had never walked under a ladder, because it was unlucky to walk under a ladder. This class of superstitions is a very large one, and is encountered the world over; and the fairy rings seem to fall into this class, so far as present-day belief in Wales is concerned. II. Allusion has been made in the preceding pages to the Prophet Jones, and as some account of this personage is imperatively called for in a work treating of Welsh folk-lore, I will give it here, before citing his remarks respecting fairy circles. Edmund Jones, 'of the Tranch,' was a dissenting minister, noted in Monmouthshire in the first years of the present century for his fervent piety and his large credulity with regard to fairies and all other goblins. He was for many years pastor of the congregation of Protestant Dissenters at the Ebenezer Chapel, near Pontypool, and lived at a place called 'The Tranch,' near there. He wrote and published two books, one an 'Account of the Parish of Aberystruth,' printed at Trevecca; the other a 'Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales,' printed at Newport; and they have been referred to by most writers on folk-lore who have attempted any account of Welsh superstitions during the past half-century; but the books are extremely rare, and writers who have quoted from them have generally been content to do so at second-hand. Keightley,[50] quoting from the 'Apparitions,' misprints the author's name 'Edward Jones of the Tiarch,' and accredits the publication to 'the latter half of the eighteenth century,' whereas it was published in 1813. Keightley's quotations are taken from Croker, who himself had never seen the book, but heard of it through a Welsh friend. It is not in the library of the British Museum, and I know of but a few copies in Wales; the one I saw is at Swansea. The author of these curious volumes was called the Prophet Jones, because of his gift of prophecy--so a Welshman in Monmouthshire told me. In my informant's words, 'He was noted in his district for foretelling things. He would, for instance, be asked to preach at some anniversary, or quarterly meeting, and he would answer, "I cannot, on that day; the rain will descend in torrents, and there will be no congregation." He would give the last mite he possessed to the needy, and tell his wife, "God will send a messenger with food and raiment at nine o'clock to-morrow." And so it would be.' He was a thorough-going believer in Welsh fairies, and full of indignant scorn toward all who dared question their reality. To him these phantoms were part and parcel of the Christian faith, and those who disbelieved in them were denounced as Sadducees and infidels. FOOTNOTE: [50] 'Fairy Mythology,' 412. III. With regard to the fairy rings, Jones held that the Bible alludes to them, Matt. xii. 43: 'The fairies dance in circles in dry places; and the Scripture saith that the walk of evil spirits is in dry places.' They favour the oak-tree, and the female oak especially, partly because of its more wide-spreading branches and deeper shade, partly because of the 'superstitious use made of it beyond other trees' in the days of the Druids. Formerly, it was dangerous to cut down a female oak in a fair dry place. 'Some were said to lose their lives by it, by a strange aching pain which admitted of no remedy, as one of my ancestors did; but now that men have more knowledge and faith, this effect follows not.' William Jenkins was for a long time the schoolmaster at Trefethin church, in Monmouthshire, and coming home late in the evening, as he usually did, he often saw the fairies under an oak within two or three fields from the church. He saw them more often on Friday evenings than any other. At one time he went to examine the ground about this oak, and there he found the reddish circle wherein the fairies danced, 'such as have often been seen under the female oak, called Brenhin-bren.' They appeared more often to an uneven number of persons, as one, three, five, &c.; and oftener to men than to women. Thomas William Edmund, of Hafodafel, 'an honest pious man, who often saw them,' declared that they appeared with one bigger than the rest going before them in the company. They were also heard talking together in a noisy, jabbering way; but no one could distinguish the words. They seemed, however, to be a very disputatious race; insomuch, indeed, that there was a proverb in some parts of Wales to this effect: 'Ni chytunant hwy mwy na Bendith eu Mamau,' (They will no more agree than the fairies). IV. This observation respecting the mysterious language used by fairies recalls again the medieval story of Elidurus. The example of fairy words there given by Giraldus is thought by the learned rector of Llanarmon[51] to be 'a mixture of Irish and Welsh. The letter U, with which each of the words begins, is, probably, no more than the representative of an indistinct sound like the E mute of the French, and which those whose language and manners are vulgar often prefix to words indifferently. If, then, they be read dor dorum, and halgein dorum, dor and halgein are nearly dwr (or, as it is pronounced, door) and halen, the Welsh words for water and salt respectively. Dorum therefore is equivalent to "give me," and the Irish expression for "give me" is thorum; the Welsh dyro i mi. The order of the words, however, is reversed. The order should be thorum dor, and thorum halen in Irish, and in Welsh dyro i mi ddwr, and dyro i mi halen, but was, perhaps, reversed intentionally by the narrator, to make his tale the more marvellous.'[52] FOOTNOTES: [51] Rev. Peter Roberts, 'Cambrian Popular Antiquities,' 195. (1815.) [52] Supra, p. 67. V. The horse plays a very active part in Welsh fairy tales. Not only does his skeleton serve for Mary Lwyds[53] and the like, but his spirit flits. The Welsh fairies seem very fond of going horseback. An old woman in the Vale of Neath told Mrs. Williams, who told Thomas Keightley, that she had seen fairies to the number of hundreds, mounted on little white horses, not bigger than dogs, and riding four abreast. This was about dusk, and the fairy equestrians passed quite close to her, in fact less than a quarter of a mile away. Another old woman asserted that her father had often seen the fairies riding in the air on little white horses; but he never saw them come to the ground. He heard their music sounding in the air as they galloped by. There is a tradition among the Glamorgan peasantry of a fairy battle fought on the mountain between Merthyr and Aberdare, in which the pigmy combatants were on horseback. There appeared to be two armies, one of which was mounted on milk-white steeds, and the other on horses of jet-black. They rode at each other with the utmost fury, and their swords could be seen flashing in the air like so many penknife blades. The army on the white horses won the day, and drove the black-mounted force from the field. The whole scene then disappeared in a light mist. FOOTNOTE: [53] See Index. VI. In the agricultural districts of Wales, the fairies are accredited with a very complete variety of useful animals; and Welsh folk-lore, both modern and medieval, abounds with tales regarding cattle, sheep, horses, poultry, goats, and other features of rural life. Such are the marvellous mare of Teirnyon, which foaled every first of May, but whose colt was always spirited away, no man knew whither; the Ychain Banog, or mighty oxen, which drew the water-monster out of the enchanted lake, and by their lowing split the rocks in twain; the lambs of St. Melangell, which at first were hares, and ran frightened under the fair saint's robes; the fairy cattle which belong to the Gwraig Annwn; the fairy sheep of Cefn Rhychdir, which rose up out of the earth and vanished into the sky; even fairy swine, which the haymakers of Bedwellty beheld flying through the air. To some of these traditions reference has already been made; others will be mentioned again. Welsh mountain sheep will run like stags, and bound from crag to crag like wild goats; and as for Welsh swine, they are more famed in Cambrian romantic story than almost any other animal that could be named. Therefore the tale told by Rev. Roger Rogers, of the parish of Bedwellty, sounds much less absurd in Wales than it might elsewhere. It relates to a very remarkable and odd sight, seen by Lewis Thomas Jenkin's two daughters, described as virtuous and good young women, their father a substantial freeholder; and seen not only by them but by the man-servant and the maid-servant, and by two of the neighbours, viz., Elizabeth David, and Edmund Roger. All these six people were on a certain day making hay in a field called Y Weirglodd Fawr Dafolog, when they plainly beheld a company of fairies rise up out of the earth in the shape of a flock of sheep; the same being about a quarter of a mile distant, over a hill, called Cefn Rhychdir; and soon the fairy flock went out of sight, as if they vanished in the air. Later in the day they all saw this company of fairies again, but while to two of the haymakers the fairies appeared as sheep, to others they appeared as greyhounds, and to others as swine, and to others as naked infants. Whereupon the Rev. Roger remarks: 'The sons of infidelity are very unreasonable not to believe the testimonies of so many witnesses.'[54] FOOTNOTE: [54] Jones, 'Apparitions,' 24. VII. The Welsh sheep, it is affirmed, are the only beasts which will eat the grass that grows in the fairy rings; all other creatures avoid it, but the sheep eat it greedily--hence the superiority of Welsh mutton over any mutton in the wide world. The Prophet Jones tells of the sheepfold of the fairies, which he himself saw--a circumstance to be accorded due weight, the judicious reader will at once perceive, because as a habit Mr. Jones was not specially given to seeing goblins on his own account. He believes in them with all his heart, but it is usually a friend or acquaintance who has seen them. In this instance, therefore, the exception is to be noted sharply. He thus tells the tale: 'If any think I am too credulous in these relations, and speak of things of which I myself have had no experience, I must let them know they are mistaken. For when a very young boy, going with my aunt, early in the morning, but after sun-rising, from Hafodafel towards my father's house at Pen-y-Llwyn, at the end of the upper field of Cae'r Cefn, ... I saw the likeness of a sheepfold, with the door towards the south, ... and within the fold a company of many people. Some sitting down, and some going in, and coming out, bowing their heads as they passed under the branch over the door.... I well remember the resemblance among them of a fair woman with a high-crown hat and a red jacket, who made a better appearance than the rest, and whom I think they seemed to honour. I still have a pretty clear idea of her white face and well-formed countenance. The men wore white cravats.... I wondered at my aunt, going before me, that she did not look towards them, and we going so near them. As for me, I was loth to speak until I passed them some way, and then told my aunt what I had seen, at which she wondered, and said I dreamed.... There was no fold in that place. There is indeed the ruins of some small edifice in that place, most likely a fold, but so old that the stones are swallowed up, and almost wholly crusted over with earth and grass.' This tale has long been deemed a poser by the believers in Cambrian phantoms; but there is something to be said on the side of doubt. Conceding that the Reverend Edmund Jones, the dissenting minister, was an honest gentleman who meant to tell truth, it is still possible that Master Neddy Jones, the lad, could draw a long bow like another boy; and that having seen, possibly, some gypsy group (or possibly nothing whatever) he embellished his tale to excite wonderment, as boys do. Telling a fictitious tale so often that one at last comes to believe it oneself, is a well-known mental phenomenon. VIII. The only other instance given by the Prophet Jones as from the depths of his own personal experience, is more vague in its particulars than the preceding, and happened when he had presumably grown to years of discretion. He was led astray, it appears, by the Old Woman of the Mountain, on Llanhiddel Bryn, near Pontypool--an eminence with which he was perfectly well acquainted, and which 'is no more than a mile and a half long and about half a mile broad.' But as a result of his going astray, he came to a house where he had never been before; and being deeply moved by his uncanny experience, 'offered to go to prayer, which they admitted.... I was then about twenty-three years of age and had begun to preach the everlasting gospel. They seemed to admire that a person so young should be so warmly disposed; few young men of my age being religious in this country then. Much good came into this house and still continues in it.... So the old hag got nothing by leading me astray that time.' CHAPTER IX. Piety as a Protection from the Seductions of the Tylwyth Teg--Various Exorcisms--Cock-crowing--The Name of God--Fencing off the Fairies--Old Betty Griffith and her Eithin Barricade--Means of Getting Rid of the Tylwyth Teg--The Bwbach of the Hendrefawr Farm--The Pwca'r Trwyn's Flitting in a Jug of Barm. I. The extreme piety of his daily walk and conversation may have been held as an explanation why the Prophet Jones saw so few goblins himself, and consequently why most of his stories of the fairies are related as coming from other people. The value of a general habit of piety, as a means of being rid of fairies, has already been mentioned. The more worldly exorcisms, such as the production of a black-handled knife, or the turning one's coat wrongside out, are passed over by the Prophet as trivial; but by the student of comparative folk-lore, they are not deemed unimportant. The last-mentioned exorcism, by the way, is current among the Southern negroes of the United States. The more spiritual exorcisms are not less interesting than the others, however. First among these is ranked the pronunciation of God's name; but the crowing of a cock is respectfully mentioned, in connection with the story of our Saviour. Jones gives many accounts which terminate in the manner of the following: Rees John Rosser, born at Hendy, in the parish of Llanhiddel, 'a very religious young man,' went one morning very early to feed the oxen in a barn called Ysgubor y Llan, and having fed them lay himself upon the hay to rest. While he lay there he heard the sound of music approaching, and presently a large company of fairies came into the barn. They wore striped clothes, some in gayer colours than the others, but all very gay; and they all danced to the music. He lay there as quiet as he could, thinking they would not see him, but he was espied by one of them, a woman, who brought a striped cushion with four tassels, one at each corner of it, and put it under his head. After some time the cock crew at the house of Blaen y Cwm, hard by, upon which they appeared as if they were surprised and displeased; the cushion was hastily whisked from under his head, and the fairies vanished. 'The spirits of darkness do not like the crowing of the cock, because it gives notice of the approach of day, for they love darkness rather than light.... And it hath been several times observed that these fairies cannot endure to hear the name of God.' A modern Welsh preacher (but one whose opinions contrast most decidedly with those of Jones) observes: 'The cock is wonderfully well versed in the circumstances of the children of Adam; his shrill voice at dawn of day is sufficient intimation to every spirit, coblyn, wraith, elf, bwci, and apparition to flee into their illusive country for their lives, before the light of day will show them to be an empty nothingness, and bring them to shame and reproach.'[55] Shakspeare introduces this superstition in Hamlet: _Ber._ It was about to speak, when the cock crew. _Hor._ And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons.[56] But the opinion that spirits fly away at cock-crow is of extreme antiquity. It is mentioned by the Christian poet Prudentius (fourth century) as a tradition of common belief.[57] As for the effect of the name of God as an exorcism, we still encounter this superstition, a living thing in our own day, and in every land where modern 'spiritualism' finds believers. The mischief produced at 'spiritual seances' by 'bad spirits' is well-known to those who have paid any attention to this subject. The late Mr. FitzHugh Ludlow once related to me, with dramatic fervour, the result of his attempts to exorcise a bad spirit which was in possession of a female 'medium,' by trying to make her pronounce the name of Christ. She stumbled and stammered over this test in a most embarrassing way, and finally emerged from her trance with the holy name unspoken; the bad spirit had fled. This was in New York, in 1867. Like many others who assert their unbelief in spiritualism, Mr. Ludlow was intensely impressed by this phenomenon. Students of comparative folk-lore class all such manifestations under a common head, whether related of fairies or spirit mediums. They trace their origin to the same source whence come the notions of propitiating the fairies by euphemistic names. The use of such names as Jehovah, the Almighty, the Supreme Being, etc., for the terrible and avenging God of the Jewish theology, being originally an endeavour to avoid pronouncing the name of God, it is easy to see the connection with the exorcising power of that name upon all evil spirits, such as fairies are usually held to be. Here also, it is thought, is presented the ultimate source of that horror of profane language which prevails among the Puritanic peoples of England and America. The name of the devil is similarly provided with euphemisms, some of which--such as the Old Boy--are not of a sort to offend that personage's ears; and until recently the word devil was deemed almost as offensive as the word God, when profanely used. FOOTNOTES: [55] Rev. Robert Ellis, in 'Manion Hynafiaethol.' (Treherbert, 1873.) [56] 'Hamlet,' Act I., Sc. 1. [57] Brand, 'Popular Antiquities,' ii., 31. II. A popular protection from the encroachments of fairies is the eithin, or prickly furze, common in Wales. It is believed that the fairies cannot penetrate a fence or hedge composed of this thorny shrub. An account illustrating this, and otherwise curious in its details, was given in 1871 by a prominent resident of Anglesea:[58] 'One day, some thirty years ago, Mrs. Stanley went to one of the old houses to see an old woman she often visited. It was a wretched hovel; so unusually dark when she opened the door, that she called to old Betty Griffith, but getting no answer she entered the room. A little tiny window of one pane of glass at the further side of the room gave a feeble light. A few cinders alight in the miserable grate also gave a glimmer of light, which enabled her to see where the bed used to be, in a recess. To her surprise she saw it entirely shut out by a barricade of thick gorse, so closely packed and piled up that no bed was to be seen. Again she called Betty Griffith; no response came. She looked round the wretched room; the only symptom of life was a plant of the Wandering Jew (_Saxifraga tricolor_), so called by the poor people, and dearly loved to grace their windows. It was planted in a broken jar or teapot on the window, trailing its long tendrils around, with here and there a new formed plant seeming to derive sustenance from the air alone. As she stood, struck with the miserable poverty of the human abode, a faint sigh came from behind the gorse. She went close and said, "Betty, where are you?" Betty instantly recognised her voice, and ventured to turn herself round from the wall. Mrs. Stanley then made a small opening in the gorse barricade, which sadly pricked her fingers; she saw Betty in her bed and asked her, "Are you not well? are you cold, that you are so closed up?" "Cold! no. It is not cold, Mrs. Stanley; it is the Tylwyth Teg; they never will leave me alone, there they sit making faces at me, and trying to come to me." "Indeed! oh how I should like to see them, Betty." "Like to see them, is it? Oh, don't say so." "Oh but Betty, they must be so pretty and good." "Good? they are not good." By this time the old woman got excited, and Mrs. Stanley knew she should hear more from her about the fairies, so she said, "Well, I will go out; they never will come if I am here." Old Betty replied sharply, "No, do not go. You must not leave me. I will tell you all about them. Ah! they come and plague me sadly. If I am up they will sit upon the table; they turn my milk sour and spill my tea; then they will not leave me at peace in my bed, but come all round me and mock at me." "But Betty, tell me what is all this gorse for? It must have been great trouble for you to make it all so close." "Is it not to keep them off? They cannot get through this, it pricks them so bad, and then I get some rest." So she replaced the gorse and left old Betty Griffith happy in her device for getting rid of the Tylwyth Teg.' FOOTNOTE: [58] Hon. W. O. Stanley, in 'Notes and Queries.' III. A common means of getting rid of the fairies is to change one's place of residence; the fair folk will not abide in a house which passes into new hands. A story is told of a Merionethshire farmer who, being tormented beyond endurance by a Bwbach of a mischievous turn, reluctantly resolved to flit. But first consulting a wise woman at Dolgelley, he was advised to make a pretended flitting, which would have the same effect; he need only give out that he was going to move over the border into England, and then get together his cattle and his household goods, and set out for a day's drive around the Arenig. The fairy would surely quit the house when the farmer should quit it, and especially would it quit the premises of a born Cymro who avowed his purpose of settling in the foreign land of the Sais. So then he could come back to his house by another route, and he would find the obnoxious Bwbach gone. The farmer did as he was told, and set out upon his journey, driving his cattle and sheep before him, and leading the cart upon which his furniture was piled, while his wife and children trudged behind. When he reached Rhyd-y-Fen, a ford so called from this legend, they met a neighbour, who exclaimed, 'Holo, Dewi, are you leaving us for good?' Before the farmer could answer there was a shrill cry from inside the churn on the cart, 'Yes, yes, we are flitting from Hendrefawr to Eingl-dud, where we've got a new home.' It was the Bwbach that spoke. He was flitting with the household goods, and the farmer's little plan to be rid of him was a complete failure. The good man sighed as he turned his horses about and went back to Hendrefawr by the same road he had come. IV. The famous Pwca of the Trwyn Farm, in Mynyddyslwyn parish, came there from his first abode, at Pantygasseg, in a jug of barm. One of the farm-servants brought the jug to Pantygasseg, and as she was being served with the barm in the jug, the Pwca was heard to say, 'The Pwca is going away now in this jug of barm, and he'll never come back;' and he was never heard at Pantygasseg again. Another story tells that a servant let fall a ball of yarn, over the ledge of the hill whose base is washed by the two fishponds between Hafod-yr-Ynys and Pontypool, and the Pwca said, 'I am going in this ball, and I'll go to the Trwyn, and never come back,'--and directly the ball was seen to roll down the hillside, and across the valley, ascending the hill on the other side, and trundling along briskly across the mountain top to its new abode. CHAPTER X. Fairy Money and Fairy Gifts in General--The Story of Gitto Bach, or Little Griffith--The Penalty of Blabbing--Legends of the Shepherds of Cwm Llan--The Money Value of Kindness--Ianto Llewellyn and the Tylwyth Teg--The Legend of Hafod Lwyddog--Lessons inculcated by these Superstitions. I. 'This is fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove so,' says the old shepherd in 'Winter's Tale;' sagely adding, 'Up with it, keep it close; home, home, the next way. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still, requires nothing but secrecy.'[59] Here we have the traditional belief of the Welsh peasantry in a nut-shell. Fairy money is as good as any, so long as its source is kept a profound secret; if the finder relate the particulars of his good fortune, it will vanish. Sometimes--especially in cases where the money has been spent--the evil result of tattling consists in there being no further favours of the sort. The same law governs fairy gifts of all kinds. A Breconshire legend tells of the generosity of the Tylwyth Teg in presenting the peasantry with loaves of bread, which turned to toadstools next morning; it was necessary to eat the bread in darkness and silence to avoid this transformation. The story of Gitto Bach, a familiar one in Wales, is a picturesque example. Gitto Bach (little Griffith), a good little farmer's boy of Glamorganshire, used often to ramble to the top of the mountain to look after his father's sheep. On his return he would show his brothers and sisters pieces of remarkably white paper, like crown pieces, with letters stamped upon them, which he said were given to him by the little children with whom he played on the mountain. One day he did not return. For two years nothing was heard of him. Meantime other children occasionally got like crown-pieces of paper from the mountains. One morning when Gitto's mother opened the door there he sat--the truant!--dressed exactly as he was when she saw him last, two years before. He had a little bundle under his arm. 'Where in the world have you been all this time?' asked the mother, 'Why, it's only yesterday I went away!' quoth Gitto. 'Look at the pretty clothes the children gave me on the mountain, for dancing with them to the music of their harps.' With this he opened his bundle, and showed a handsome dress; and behold, it was only paper, like the fairy money. FOOTNOTE: [59] 'Winter's Tale,' Act III., Sc. 3. II. But usually, throughout Wales, it is simply a discontinuance of fairy favour which follows blabbing. A legend is connected with a bridge in Anglesea, of a lad who often saw the fairies there, and profited by their generosity. Every morning, while going to fetch his father's cows from pasture, he saw them, and after they were gone he always found a groat on a certain stone of Cymmunod Bridge. The boy's having money so often about him excited his father's suspicion, and one Sabbath day he cross-questioned the lad as to the manner in which it was obtained. Oh, the meddlesomeness of fathers! Of course the poor boy confessed that it was through the medium of the fairies, and of course, though he often went after this to the field, he never found any money on the bridge, nor saw the offended Tylwyth Teg again. Through his divulging the secret their favour was lost. Jones tells a similar story of a young woman named Anne William Francis, in the parish of Bassalleg, who on going by night into a little grove of wood near the house, heard pleasant music, and saw a company of fairies dancing on the grass. She took a pail of water there, thinking it would gratify them. The next time she went there she had a shilling given her, 'and so had for several nights after, until she had twenty-one shillings.' But her mother happening to find the money, questioned her as to where she got it, fearing she had stolen it. At first the girl would not tell, but when her mother 'went very severe on her,' and threatened to beat her, she confessed she got the money from the fairies. After that they never gave her any more. The Prophet adds: 'I have heard of other places where people have had money from the fairies, sometimes silver sixpences, but most commonly copper coin. As they cannot make money, it certainly must be money lost or concealed by persons.' The Euhemerism of this is hardly like the wonder-loving Jones. III. In the legends of the two shepherds of Cwm Llan and their experience with the fairies, the first deals with the secrecy feature, while the second reproduces the often-impressed lesson concerning the money value of kindness. The first is as follows: One evening a shepherd, who had been searching for his sheep on the side of Nant y Bettws, after crossing Bwlch Cwm Llan, espied a number of little people singing and dancing, and some of the prettiest damsels he ever set eyes on preparing a feast. He went to them and partook of the meal, and thought he had never tasted anything to equal those dishes. When it became dusk they pitched their tents, and the shepherd had never seen before such beautiful things as they had about them there. They provided him with a soft feather-bed and sheets of the finest linen, and he retired, feeling like a prince. But on the morrow, lo and behold! his bed was but a bush of bulrushes, and his pillow a tuft of moss. He however found in his shoes some pieces of silver, and afterwards, for a long time, he continued to find once a week a piece of silver placed between two stones near the spot where he had lain. One day he divulged his secret to another, and the weekly coin was never placed there again. There was another shepherd near Cwm Llan, who heard some strange noise in a crevice of a rock, and turning to see what it was, found there a singular creature who wept bitterly. He took it out and saw it to be a fairy child, but whilst he was looking at it compassionately, two middle-aged men came to him and thanked him courteously for his kindness, and on leaving him presented him with a staff as a token of remembrance of the occasion. The following year every sheep he possessed bore two ewe lambs. They continued to thus breed for years to come; but one very dark and stormy night, having stayed very late in the village, in crossing the river that comes down from Cwm Llan, there being a great flood sweeping everything before it, he dropped his staff into the river and saw it no more. On the morrow he found that nearly all his sheep and lambs, like his staff, had been swept away by the flood. His wealth had departed from him in the same way as it came--with the staff which he had received from the guardians of the fairy child. IV. A Pembrokeshire Welshman told me this story as a tradition well known in that part of Wales. Ianto Llewellyn was a man who lived in the parish of Llanfihangel, not more than fifty or eighty years ago, and who had precious good reason to believe in the fairies. He used to keep his fire of coal balls burning all night long, out of pure kindness of heart, in case the Tylwyth Teg should be cold. That they came into his kitchen every night he was well aware; he often heard them. One night when they were there as usual, Ianto was lying wide awake and heard them say, 'I wish we had some good bread and cheese this cold night, but the poor man has only a morsel left; and though it's true that would be a good meal for us, it is but a mouthful to him, and he might starve if we took it.' At this Ianto cried out at the top of his voice, 'Take anything I've got in my cupboard and welcome to you!' Then he turned over and went to sleep. The next morning, when he descended into the kitchen, he looked in his cupboard, to see if by good luck there might be a bit of crust there. He had no sooner opened the cupboard door than he cried out, 'O'r anwyl! what's this?' for there stood the finest cheese he had ever seen in his life, with two loaves of bread on top of it. 'Lwc dda i ti!' cried Ianto, waving his hand toward the wood where he knew the fairies lived; 'good luck to you! May you never be hungry or penniless!' And he had not got the words out of his mouth when he saw--what do you think?--a shilling on the hob! But that was the lucky shilling. Every morning after this, when Ianto got up, there was the shilling on the hob--another one, you mind, for he'd spent the first for beer and tobacco to go with his bread and cheese. Well, after that, no man in the parish was better supplied with money than Ianto Llewellyn, though he never did a stroke of work. He had enough to keep his wife in ease and comfort, too, and he got the name of Lucky Ianto. And lucky he might have been to the day of his death but for the curiosity of woman. Betsi his wife was determined to know where all this money came from, and gave the poor man no peace. 'Wel, naw wfft!' she cried--which means in English, 'Nine shames on you'--'to have a bad secret from your own dear wife!' 'But you know, Betsi, if I tell you I'll never get any more money.' 'Ah,' said she, 'then it's the fairies!' 'Drato!' said he--and that means 'Bother it all'--'yes--the fairies it is.' With that he thrust his hands down in his breeches pockets in a sullen manner and left the house. He had had seven shillings in his pockets up to that minute, and he went feeling for them with his fingers, and found they were gone. In place of them were some pieces of paper fit only to light his pipe. And from that day the fairies brought him no more money. V. The lesson of generosity is taught with force and simplicity in the legend of Hafod Lwyddog, and the necessity for secrecy is quite abandoned. Again it is a shepherd, who dwelt at Cwm Dyli, and who went every summer to live in a cabin by the Green Lake (Llyn Glas) along with his fold. One morning on awaking from sleep he saw a good-looking damsel dressing an infant close by his side. She had very little in which to wrap the babe, so he threw her an old shirt of his own, and bade her place it about the child. She thanked him and departed. Every night thereafter the shepherd found a piece of silver placed in an old clog in his cabin. Years and years this good luck continued, and Meirig the shepherd became immensely wealthy. He married a lovely girl, and went to the Hafod Lwyddog to live. Whatever he undertook prospered--hence the name Hafod Lwyddog, for Lwydd means prosperity. The fairies paid nightly visits to the Hafod. No witch or evil sprite could harm this people, as Bendith y Mamau was poured down upon the family, and all their descendants.[60] FOOTNOTE: [60] 'Cymru Fu,' 472. VI. The thought will naturally occur that by fostering belief in such tales as some of the foregoing, roguery might make the superstition useful in silencing inquiry as to ill-gotten gains. But on the other hand the virtues of hospitality and generosity were no doubt fostered by the same influences. If any one was favoured by the fairies in this manner, the immediate explanation was, that he had done a good turn to them, generally without suspecting who they were. The virtues of neatness, in young girls and servants, were encouraged by the like notions; the belief that a fairy will leave money only on a clean-kept hob, could tend to nothing more directly. It was also made a condition of pleasing the Tylwyth Teg that the hearth should be carefully swept and the pails left full of water. Then the fairies would come at midnight, continue their revels till daybreak, sing the well-known strain of 'Toriad y Dydd,' or 'The Dawn,' leave a piece of money on the hob, and disappear. Here is seen a precaution against fire in the clean-swept hearth and the provision of filled water-pails. That the promised reward did not always arrive, was not evidence it would never arrive; and so the virtue of perseverance was also fostered. Superstitions of this class are widely prevalent among Aryan peoples. The 'Arabian Nights' story of the old rogue whose money turned to leaves will be recalled. In Danish folk-lore, the fairy money bestowed on the boors turns sometimes to pebbles, and sometimes grows hot and burns their fingers, so that they drop it, when it sinks into the earth. [Music: TORIAD Y DYDD.] CHAPTER XI. Origins of Welsh Fairies--The Realistic Theory--Legend of the Baron's Gate--The Red Fairies--The Trwyn Fairy a Proscribed Nobleman--The Theory of hiding Druids--Colour in Welsh Fairy Attire--The Green Lady of Caerphilly--White the favourite Welsh Hue--Legend of the Prolific Woman--The Poetico-Religious Theory--The Creed of Science. I. Concerning the origin of the Tylwyth Teg, there are two popular explanations, the one poetico-religious in its character, the other practical and realistic. Both are equally wide of the truth, the true origin of fairies being found in the primeval mythology; but as my purpose is to avoid enlarging in directions generally familiar to the student, I have only to present the local aspects of this, as of the other features of the subject. The realistic theory of the origin of the Tylwyth Teg must be mentioned respectfully, because among its advocates have been men of culture and good sense. This theory presumes that the first fairies were men and women of mortal flesh and blood, and that the later superstitions are a mere echo of tales which first were told of real beings. In quasi-support of this theory, there is a well-authenticated tradition of a race of beings who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, inhabited the Wood of the Great Dark Wood (Coed y Dugoed Mawr) in Merionethshire, and who were called the Red Fairies. They lived in dens in the ground, had fiery red hair and long strong arms, and stole sheep and cattle by night. There are cottages in Cemmaes parish, near the Wood of the Great Dark Wood, with scythes in the chimneys, which were put there to keep these terrible beings out. One Christmas eve a valiant knight named Baron Owen headed a company of warriors who assailed the Red Fairies, and found them flesh and blood. The Baron hung a hundred of them; but spared the women, one of whom begged hard for the life of her son. The Baron refused her prayer, whereupon she opened her breast and shrieked, 'This breast has nursed other sons than he, who will yet wash their hands in thy blood, Baron Owen!' Not very long thereafter, the Baron was waylaid at a certain spot by the sons of the 'fairy' woman, who washed their hands in his warm and reeking blood, in fulfilment of their mother's threat. And to this day that spot goes by the name of Llidiart y Barwn (the Baron's Gate); any peasant of the neighbourhood will tell you the story, as one told it to me. There is of course no better foundation for the fairy features of it than the fancies of the ignorant mind, but the legend itself is--very nearly in this shape--historical. The beings in question were a band of outlaws, who might naturally find it to their interest to foster belief in their supernatural powers. II. The so-called Pwca'r Trwyn, which haunted the farm-house in the parish of Mynyddyslwyn, is sometimes cited as another case in which a fairy was probably a being of flesh and blood; and if this be true, it of course proves nothing but the adoption of an ancient superstition by a proscribed Welsh nobleman. There is a tradition that this fairy had a name, and that this name was 'yr Arglwydd Hywel,' which is in English 'Lord Howell.' And it is argued that this Lord, in a contest with the forces of the English king, was utterly worsted, and driven into hiding; that his tenants at Pantygasseg and the Trwyn Farm, loving their Lord, helped to hide him, and to disseminate the belief that he was a household fairy, or Bwbach. It is related that he generally spoke from his own room in this farm-house, in a gentle voice which 'came down between the boards' into the common room beneath. One day the servants were comparing their hands, as to size and whiteness, when the fairy was heard to say, 'The Pwca's hand is the fairest and smallest.' The servants asked if the fairy would show its hand, and immediately a plank overhead was moved and a hand appeared, small, fair and beautifully formed, with a large gold ring on the little finger. III. Curiously interesting is the hypothesis concerning the realistic origin of the Tylwyth Teg, which was put forth at the close of the last century by several writers, among them the Rev. Peter Roberts, author of the 'Collectanea Cambrica.' This hypothesis precisely accounts for the fairies anciently as being the Druids, in hiding from their enemies, or if not they, other persons who had such cause for living concealed in subterraneous places, and venturing forth only at night. 'Some conquered aborigines,' thought Dr. Guthrie; while Mr. Roberts fancied that as the Irish had frequently landed hostilely in Wales, 'it was very possible that some small bodies of that nation left behind, or unable to return, and fearing discovery, had hid themselves in caverns during the day, and sent their children out at night, fantastically dressed, for food and exercise, and thus secured themselves.' But there were objections to this presumption, and the Druidical theory was the favourite one. Says Mr. Roberts: 'The fairy customs appeared evidently too systematic, and too general, to be those of an accidental party reduced to distress. They are those of a consistent and regular policy instituted to prevent discovery, and to inspire fear of their power, and a high opinion of their beneficence. Accordingly tradition notes, that to attempt to discover them was to incur certain destruction. "They are fairies," says Falstaff: "he that looks on them shall die." They were not to be impeded in ingress or egress; a bowl of milk was to be left for them at night on the hearth; and, in return, they left a small present in money when they departed, if the house was kept clean; if not, they inflicted some punishment on the negligent, which, as it was death to look on them, they were obliged to suffer, and no doubt but many unlucky tricks were played on such occasions. Their general dress was green, that they might be the better concealed; and, as their children might have betrayed their haunts, they seem to have been suffered to go out only in the night time, and to have been entertained by dances on moonlight nights. These dances, like those round the Maypole, have been said to be performed round a tree; and on an elevated spot, mostly a tumulus, beneath which was probably their habitation, or its entrance. The older persons, probably, mixed as much as they dared with the world; and, if they happened to be at any time recognised, the certainty of their vengeance was their safety. If by any chance their society was thinned, they appear to have stolen children, and changed feeble for strong infants. The stolen children, if beyond infancy, being brought into their subterraneous dwellings, seem to have had a soporific given them, and to have been carried to a distant part of the country; and, being there allowed to go out merely by night, mistook the night for the day, and probably were not undeceived until it could be done securely. The regularity and generality of this system shows that there was a body of people existing in the kingdom distinct from its known inhabitants, and either confederated, or obliged to live or meet mysteriously; and their rites, particularly that of dancing round a tree, probably an oak, as Herne's, etc., as well as their character for truth and probity, refer them to a Druidic origin. If this was the case, it is easy to conceive, as indeed history shows, that, as the Druids were persecuted by the Romans and Christians, they used these means to preserve themselves and their families, and whilst the country was thinly peopled, and thickly wooded, did so successfully; and, perhaps, to a much later period than is imagined: till the increase of population made it impossible. As the Druidical was one of the most ancient religions, so it must have been one of the first persecuted, and forced to form a regular plan of security, which their dwelling in caves may have suggested, and necessity improved.' IV. It will be observed that one of the points in this curious speculation rests on the green dress of the fairies. I do not call attention to it with any Quixotic purpose of disputing the conclusion it assists; it is far more interesting as one feature of the general subject of fairies' attire. The Welsh fairies are described with details as to colour in costume not commonly met with in fairy tales, a fact to which I have before alluded. In the legend of the Place of Strife, the Tylwyth Teg encountered by the women are called 'the old elves of the blue petticoat.' A connection with the blue of the sky has here been suggested. It has also been pointed out that the sacred Druidical dress was blue. The blue petticoat fancy seems to be local to North Wales. In Cardiganshire, the tradition respecting an encampment called Moyddin, which the fairies frequented, is that they were always in green dresses, and were never seen there but in the vernal month of May. There is a Glamorganshire goblin called the Green Lady of Caerphilly, the colour of whose dress is indicated by her title. She haunts the ruin of Caerphilly Castle at night, wearing a green robe, and has the power of turning herself into ivy and mingling with the ivy growing on the wall. A more ingenious mode of getting rid of a goblin was perhaps never invented. The fairies of Frennifawr, in Pembrokeshire, were on the contrary gorgeous in scarlet, with red caps, and feathers waving in the wind as they danced. But others were in white, and this appears to be the favourite hue of modern Welsh fairy costume, when the Tylwyth Teg are in holiday garb. These various details of colour are due to the fervour of the Welsh fancy, of course, and perhaps their variety may in part be ascribed to a keener sense of the fitness of things among moderns than was current in earlier times. White, to the Welsh, would naturally be the favourite colour for a beautiful creature, dancing in the moonlight on the velvet sward. The most popular pet name for a Welsh lass is to-day exactly what it has been for centuries, viz., Gwenny, the diminutive of Gwenllian (Anglicised into Gwendoline)--a name which means simply white linen; and the white costume of the favourite fairies undoubtedly signifies a dress of white linen. This fabric, common as it is in our day, was in ancient times of inestimable value. In the Mabinogion, linen is repeatedly particularised in the gorgeous descriptions of fabled splendour in princely castles--linen, silk, satin, velvet, gold-lace, and jewels, are the constantly-recurring features of sumptuous attire. In his account of the royal tribes of Wales, Yorke mentions that linen was so rare in the reign of Charles VII. of France (i.e., in the fifteenth century) 'that her majesty the queen could boast of only two shifts of that commodity.' The first cause of the fairies' robes being white is evidently to be discerned here; and in Wales the ancient sentiment as to whiteness remains. The Welsh peasantry, coarsely and darkly clad themselves, would make white a purely holiday colour, and devise some other hue for such commoner fairies as the Bwbach and his sort: The coarse and country fairy, That doth haunt the hearth and dairy.[61] So the Bwbach is usually brown, often hairy; and the Coblynau are black or copper-coloured in face as well as dress. FOOTNOTE: [61] Jonson, Masque of 'Oberon.' V. A local legend of the origin of fairies in Anglesea mingles the practical and the spiritual in this manner: 'In our Saviour's time there lived a woman whose fortune it was to be possessed of nearly a score of children, ... and as she saw our blessed Lord approach her dwelling, being ashamed of being so prolific, and that He might not see them all, she concealed about half of them closely, and after his departure, when she went in search of them, to her great surprise found they were all gone. They never afterwards could be discovered, for it was supposed that as a punishment from heaven for hiding what God had given her, she was deprived of them; and it is said these her offspring have generated the race called fairies.'[62] FOOTNOTE: [62] 'Camb. Sup.,' 118. VI. The common or popular theory, however, is in Wales the poetico-religious one. This is, in a word, the belief that the Tylwyth Teg are the souls of dead mortals not bad enough for hell nor good enough for heaven. They are doomed to live on earth, to dwell in secret places, until the resurrection day, when they will be admitted into paradise. Meantime they must be either incessantly toiling or incessantly playing, but their toil is fruitless and their pleasure unsatisfying. A variation of this general belief holds these souls to be the souls of the ancient Druids, a fancy which is specially impressive, as indicating the duration of their penance, and reminds us of the Wandering Jew myth. It is confined mainly to the Coblynau, or dwellers in mines and caves. Another variation considers the fairies bad spirits of still remoter origin--the same in fact who were thrown over the battlements of heaven along with Satan, but did not fall into hell--landed on the earth instead, where they are permitted to tarry till doomsday as above. A detail of this theory is in explanation of the rare appearance of fairies nowadays; they are refraining from mischief in view of the near approach of the judgment, with the hope of thus conciliating heaven. The Prophet Jones, in explaining why the fairies have been so active in Wales, expounds the poetico-religious theory in masterly form. After stating that some in Monmouthshire were so ignorant as to think the fairies happy spirits, because they had music and dancing among them, he proceeds to assert, in the most emphatic terms, that the Tylwyth Teg are nothing else, 'after all the talking about them,' but the disembodied spirits of men who lived and died without the enjoyment of the means of grace and salvation, as Pagans and others, and whose punishment therefore is far less severe than that of those who have enjoyed the means of salvation. 'But some persons may desire to know why these fairies have appeared in Wales more than in some other countries? to which I answer, that I can give no other reason but this, that having lost the light of the true religion in the eighth and ninth centuries of Christianity, and received Popery in its stead, it became dark night upon them; and then these spirits of darkness became more bold and intruding; and the people, as I said before, in their great ignorance seeing them like a company of children in dry clean places, dancing and having music among them, thought them to be some happy beings, ... and made them welcome in their houses.... The Welsh entered into familiarity with the fairies in the time of Henry IV., and the evil then increased; the severe laws of that prince enjoining, among other things, that they were not to bring up their children to learning, etc., by which a total darkness came upon them; which cruel laws were occasioned by the rebellion of Owen Glandwr, and the Welsh which joined with him; foolishly thinking to shake off the Saxon yoke before they had repented of their sins.' Whatever their locally accepted causes of being may be, it is beyond any question that in the fairy folk-lore of Wales, as of other lands, are to be found the _débris_ of ancient mythology--scintillant fragments of those magic constellations which glow in the darkness of primeval time, grand and majestic as the vast Unknown out of which they were evolved by barbaric fancy. Through the aid of modern scientific research, 'those ages which the myths of centuries have peopled with heroic shadows'[63] are brought nearer to us, and the humble Welsh Tylwyth Teg may reach back and shake hands with the Olympian gods. [Illustration: "THE HUMBLE 'TYLWYTH TEG' SHAKE HANDS WITH THE OLYMPIAN GODS."] FOOTNOTE: [63] Marquis of Bute, address before the Royal Archæological Institute, Cardiff meeting. BOOK II. THE SPIRIT-WORLD. Where the wan spectres walk eternal rounds. POPE. _Miranda._ What is't? a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, It carries a brave form:--But 'tis a spirit. SHAKSPEARE: _Tempest_. CHAPTER I. Modern Superstition regarding Ghosts--American 'Spiritualism'--Welsh Beliefs--Classification of Welsh Ghosts--Departed Mortals--Haunted Houses--Lady Stradling's Ghost--The Haunted Bridge--The Legend of Catrin Gwyn--Didactic Purpose in Cambrian Apparitions--An Insulted Corpse--Duty-performing Ghosts--Laws of the Spirit-World--Cadogan's Ghost. I. In an age so given to mysticism as our own, it is unnecessary to urge that the Welsh as a people are not more superstitious regarding spirits than other peoples. Belief in the visits to earth of disembodied spirits is common to all lands. There are no doubt differences in the degree of this belief, as there are differences in matters of detail. Where or how these spirits exist are questions much more difficult to the average faith than why they exist. They exist for the moral good of man; of this there prevails no doubt. The rest belongs to the still unsettled science of the Unknowable. That form of mysticism called 'spiritualism' by its disciples is dignified to the thoughtful observer by being viewed as a remnant of the primeval philosophy. When we encounter, in wandering among the picturesque ghosts of the Welsh spirit-world, last-century stories displaying details exactly similar to those of modern spiritualism, our interest is strongly aroused. The student of folk-lore finds his materials in stories and beliefs which appear to be of a widespread family, rather than in stories and beliefs which are unique; and the spirit of inquiry is constantly on the alert, in following the details of a good old ghost story, however fascinating it may be in a poetic sense. The phantoms of the Welsh spirit-world are always picturesque; they are often ghastly; sometimes they are amusing to the point of risibility; but besides, they are instructive to him whose purpose in studying is, to know. That this age is superstitious with regard to ghosts, is not wonderful; all ages have been so; the wonder is that this age should be so and yet be the possessor of a scientific record so extraordinary as its own. An age which has brought forth the magnetic telegraph, steamships and railway engines, sewing-machines, mowing-machines, gas-light, and innumerable discoveries and inventions of marvellous utility--not to allude to those of our own decade--should have no other use for ghostology than a scientific one. But it would be a work as idle as that of the Coblynau themselves, to point out how universal among the most civilised nations is the superstition that spirits walk. The 'controls' of the modern spiritualistic seance have the world for their audience. The United States, a land generally deemed--at least by its inhabitants--to be the most advanced in these directions of any on God's footstool, gave birth to modern spiritualism. Its disciples there compose a vast body of people, respectable and worthy people in the main (as the victims of superstition usually are), among whom are many men of high intellectual ability. With the masses, some degree of belief in the spirits is so nearly universal that I need hardly qualify the adjective. In a country where there is practically no such class as that represented in Europe by the peasantry, the rampancy of such a belief is a phenomenon deserving close and curious study. The present work affords no scope for this study, of course. But I may here mention in further illustration of my immediate theme, the constant appearance, in American communities, of ghosts of the old-fashioned sort. Especially in the New England states, which are notable for their enlightenment, are ghost-stories still frequent--such as that of the haunted school-house at Newburyport, Mass., where a disembodied spirit related its own murder; of the ghost of New Bedford, which struck a visitor in the face, so that he yet bears the marks of the blow; of the haunted house at Cambridge, in the classic shadow of Harvard College. It is actually on record in the last-named case, that the house fell to decay on account of its ghastly reputation, as no one would live in it; that a tenant who ventured to occupy it in 1877 was disturbed by the spirit of a murdered girl who said her mortal bones were buried in his cellar; and that a party of men actually dug all night in that cellar in search of those bones, while the ghost waltzed in a chamber overhead. The more common form of spirit peculiar to our time appears constantly in various parts of the country; it is continually turning up in the American newspapers, rapping on walls, throwing stones, tipping over tables, etc. 'Mediums' of every grade of shrewdness and stupidity, and widely differing degrees of education and ignorance, flourish abundantly. Occasionally, where revelations of murder have been made to a mortal by a spirit, the police have taken the matter in hand. It is to be observed as a commendable practice in such cases, that the mortal is promptly arrested by the police if there has really been a murder; and when the fact appears, as it sometimes does, that the mortal had need of no ghost to tell him what he knows, he is hanged. II. The Welsh dearly love to discuss questions of a spiritual and religious nature, and there are no doubt many who look upon disbelief herein as something approaching paganism. That one should believe in God and a future life, and yet be utterly incredulous as to the existence of a mundane spirit-world, seems to such minds impossible. It is not many years since the clergy taught a creed of this sort. One must not only believe in a spiritual existence, but must believe in that existence here below--must believe that ghosts walked, and meddled, and made disagreeable noises. Our friend the Prophet Jones taught this creed with energy. In his relation of apparitions in Monmouthshire, he says: 'Enough is said in these relations to satisfy any reasonable sober-minded person, and to confute this ancient heresy, now much revived and spreading, especially among the gentry, and persons much estranged from God and spiritual things; and such as will not be satisfied with things plainly proved and well designed; are, in this respect, no better than fools, and to be despised as such.... They are chiefly women and men of weak and womanish understandings, who speak against the accounts of spirits and apparitions. In some women this comes from a certain proud fineness, excessive delicacy, and a superfine disposition which cannot bear to be disturbed with what is strange and disagreeable to a vain spirit.' Nor does the Prophet hesitate to apply the term 'Sadducees' to all doubters of his goblins. His warrant for this is found in Wesley and Luther. That Luther saw apparitions, or believed he did, is commonly known. Wesley's beliefs in this direction, however, are of a nearer century, and strike us more strangely; though it must be said that the Prophet Jones, in our own century, believed more than either of his eminent prototypes. 'It is true,' wrote Wesley, 'that the English in general, and indeed most of the men in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it, and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do _not_ believe it.... They well know, whether Christians know it or not, that the giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible. And they know, on the other hand, that if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air--deism, atheism, materialism--falls to the ground.' III. The ghosts of Wales present many well-defined features. It is even possible to classify them, after a fashion. Of course, as with all descriptions of phantoms, the vagueness inevitable in creatures of the imagination is here; but the ghosts of Welsh tradition are often so old, and have been handed down so cleanly through successive generations, that in our day they have almost acquired definite outlines, as in the case of images arising from the perceptions. Always bearing in mind the risk of being lost in the labyrinthine eccentricities of popular fancy, compared to which the Arsinoë of Herodotus was unperplexing, I venture to classify the inhabitants of the Welsh spirit-world thus: 1. Departed Mortals; 2. Goblin Animals; 3. Spectres of Natural Objects; 4. Grotesque Ghosts; 5. Familiar Spirits; 6. Death Omens. IV. The ghosts of departed mortals are usually the late personal acquaintances of the people who see them. But sometimes they are strangers whom nobody knows, and concerning whom everybody is curious. Two such ghosts haunted the streets of Ebbw Vale, in Glamorganshire, in January, 1877. One was in the shape of an old woman, the other in that of a girl child. Timid people kept indoors after nightfall, and there were many who believed thoroughly in the ghostly character of the mysterious visitors. Efforts were made to catch them, but they eluded capture. It was hinted by materialists that they were thieves; by unbelievers in spiritualism that they had perhaps escaped from a seance in some adjoining town. These ghosts, however, are not very interesting. A cultivated moderner can have no satisfaction in forming the acquaintance of a seance ghost; it is quite otherwise in the case of a respectable old family goblin which has haunted a friend's house in the most orthodox manner for centuries. Such ghosts are numerous in Wales, and quite faithfully believed in by selected individuals. Indeed one of the highest claims to a dignified antiquity that can be put in by a Welsh family mansion, is the possession of a good old-fashioned blood-curdling spectre--like that, for example, which has haunted Duffryn House, a handsome stone manse near Cardiff, for the past two hundred years and more. This is the ghost of the doughty admiral Sir Thomas Button, famed in his day as an Arctic navigator. Since his death he has faithfully haunted (so the local farm folk say) the cellar and the garden of Duffryn House, where he lived, when he did live, which was in the 17th century. He has never been known to appear in hall or chamber of the mansion, within the memory of man, but has been seen hovering over the beer butt or tun in the cellar, commemorated in his name, and walking in the flower-garden of a fine windy night. It is noteworthy that in Wales it is by no means necessary that a house should be tenantless, mortally speaking, merely because a ghost haunts it. The dreary picture of desolation drawn by Hood, the all-sufficient explanation of which was-- ... the place is haunted! would not recall the smug tidiness of Duffryn House, whose clean-cut lawns and well-trimmed hedges are fit surroundings of a mansion where luxurious comfort reigns. A ghost which confines itself to the cellar and the garden need disturb neither the merrymaking nor the slumbers of the guests. St. Donat's Castle is down on the southern coast of Glamorganshire, in a primitive region not yet profaned by railroads, nor likely to be perhaps for many years to come. It is owned and inhabited by a worthy gentleman whose ancestors for seven centuries sleep in the graveyard under the old castle wall. Its favourite ghost--for to confine this or any other ancient Welsh castle to a single ghost would be almost disrespectful--is that of Lady Stradling, who was done away with by some of her family in those wicked old times when families did not always dwell in peace together. This ghost makes a practice of appearing when any mishap is about to befall a member of the house of Stradling--the direct line of which is, however, extinct, a fact not very well apprehended among the neighbouring peasantry. She wears high-heeled shoes and a long trailing gown of the finest silk. In this guise doth she wander up and down the long majestic halls and chambers, and, while she wanders, the castle hounds refuse to rest, but with their howlings raise all the dogs of the village under the hill. V. Ghosts of this sort are vague and purposeless in character, beyond a general blood-curdling office which in all ghosts doth dwell. They haunt not only castles and family mansions, but bridges, rocks, and roads, objectless but frightful. The ghost of Pont Cwnca Bach, near Yscanhir, in Carmarthenshire, frightens people off the bridge into the rivulet. Many belated peasants have had this dire experience at the little bridge, afterwards wandering away in a dazed condition, and finding themselves on recovering at some distance from home, often in the middle of a bog. In crossing this bridge people were seized with 'a kind of _cold dread_,' and felt 'a peculiar sensation' which they could not describe, but which the poorest fancy can no doubt imagine. Another purposeless spectre exists in the legend of Catrin Gwyn, told in Cardiganshire. The ruin of a shepherd's cottage, standing on a mountain waste near the river Rheidol, is the haunt of this spectre. A peasant who was asked to escort a stranger up the narrow defile of rocks by the ruin, in horror exclaimed, 'Yn enw y daioni, peidiwch,' (in the name of heaven, sir, don't go!) 'or you'll meet White Catti of the Grove Cave.' 'And what's that?' 'An evil spirit, sir.' And the superstitious peasant would neither be laughed nor reasoned out of his fears. Catrin was the bride of a young shepherd living near Machynlleth in 1705. One day she went to market with a party of other peasants, who separated from her on the return way at a point two miles from Gelli Gogo. She was never more seen alive. A violent storm arose in the night, and next day a scrap of her red cloak was found on the edge of a frightful bog, in which she is believed to have disappeared in the darkness and storm. The husband went mad; their cottage fell to decay; and to this day the shepherds declare that Catti's ghost haunts the spot. It is most often seen, and in its most terrific shape, during howling storms, when it rides on the gale, shrieking as it goes.[64] FOOTNOTE: [64] 'Camb. Quarterly,' i., 452. VI. Few Cambrian spirits are devoid of a didactic purpose. Some teach reverence for the dead,--a lesson in great request among the rising generation in Wales and elsewhere. The church at Tregaron, Cardiganshire, was being rebuilt in 1877, and certain skulls were turned up by the diggers in making new foundations. The boys of Tregaron amused themselves playing ball with the skulls, picking out their teeth, banging them against the wall to see if they would break, and the like.[65] They probably never heard the story told by Mrs. Morgan of Newport to the Prophet Jones: of some people who were drinking at an inn there, 'two of them officers of excise,' when one of the men, to show his courage, declared he was afraid of no ghosts, and dared go to the charnel house and fetch a skull from that ghastly place. This bold and dangerous thing he did, and the men debated, over their beer, whether it was a male or a female skull, and concluded it was a woman's, 'though the grave nearly destroys the difference between male and female before the bones are turned to dust, and the difference then quite destroyed and known only to God.' After a jolly hour over the skull, the bold one carried it back and left it where he got it; but as he was leaving the church, suddenly a tremendous blast like a whirlwind seized him, and so mauled and hauled him that his teeth chattered in his head and his knees knocked together, and he ever after swore that nothing should tempt him to such a deed again. He was still more convinced that the ghost of the original owner of the skull had been after him, when he got home, and his wife told him that his cane, which hung in the room, had been beating against the wall in a dreadful manner. FOOTNOTE: [65] 'Western Mail,' Dec. 14, 1877. VII. As a rule, the motive for the reappearance on earth of a spirit lately tenanting a mortal body, is found in some neglected duty. The spirit of a suicide is morally certain to walk: a reason why suicides are so unpopular as tenants of graveyards. It is a brave man who will go to the grave of a suicide and play 'Hob y deri dando' on the ysturmant (jew's-harp), without missing a note. Many are the tales displaying the motive, on the ghost's part, of a duty to perform--sometimes clearly defining it, sometimes vaguely suggesting it, as in the story of Noe. 'The evening was far gone when a traveller of the name of Noe arrived at an inn in Pembrokeshire, and called for refreshment. After remaining some time he remarked that he must proceed on his journey. "Surely," said the astonished landlord, "you will not travel at night, for it is said that a ghost haunts that road, crying out, The days are long and the nights are cold to wait for Noe." "O, I am the man sought for," said he, and immediately departed; but strange to say, neither Noe nor the ghost was ever heard of afterwards.'[66] The ghost of a weaver, which appeared to Walter John Harry, had a very clear idea of the duty he must perform: Walter John Harry was a Quaker, a harmless, honest man, and by trade a farrier, who lived in the romantic valley of Ebwy Fawr. The house he lived in was haunted by the ghost of Morgan Lewis, a weaver, who had died in that house. One night, while lying awake in his bed, with his wife sleeping by his side, Harry saw a light slowly ascending the stairs, and being somewhat afraid, though he was naturally a fearless man, strove to awake his wife by pinching her, but could not awake her. So there he lay in great fear, and with starting eyes beheld the ghost of the weaver come up the stairs, bearing a candle in its hand, and wearing a white woollen cap on its head, with other garments usual to the weaver when alive. The ghost came near the farrier's bed, who then mustered up courage to speak to it. 'Morgan Lewis,' said Harry, 'why dost thou walk this earth?' The ghost replied with great solemnity, that its reason for so doing was that there were some 'bottoms of wool' hidden in the wall of this house, and until these said bottoms were removed from the wall it could not sleep. The ghost did not say this wool had been stolen, but such was the inference. However, the harmless farrier spoke severely to the ghost, saying, 'I charge thee, Morgan Lewis, in the name of God, that thou trouble my house no more.' Whereupon the ghost vanished, and the house ceased thereafter to be haunted. The motives animating ghosts are much the same the world over, and these details have no greater novelty than that of the local colouring. European peoples are familiar with the duty-compelled ghost; but it is odd to encounter the same spectre in China. The most common form of Chinese ghost-story is that wherein the ghost seeks to bring to justice the murderer who shuffled off its mortal coil. The ghosts of suicides are also especially obnoxious there. The spectres which are animated by a sense of duty are more frequently met than any others: now they seek to serve virtue in distress, now they aim to restore wrongfully-held treasure.[67] FOOTNOTES: [66] 'Camb. Sup.,' 31. [67] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 73. VIII. The laws governing the Welsh spirit-world are clear and explicit. A ghost on duty bent has no power of speech until first spoken to. Its persistency in haunting is due to its eager desire to speak, and tell its urgent errand, but the person haunted must take his courage in both hands and put the question to the issue. Having done so, he is booked for the end of the business, be it what it may. The mode of speech adopted must not vary, in addressing a spirit; in the name of the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost it must be addressed, and not otherwise. Its business must be demanded; three times the question must be repeated, unless the ghost answer earlier. When it answers, it speaks in a low and hollow voice, stating its desire; and it must not be interrupted while speaking, for to interrupt it is dangerous in the extreme. At the close of its remarks, questions are in order. They must be promptly delivered, however, or the ghost will vanish. They must bear on the business in hand: it is offended if asked as to its state, or other idle questions born of curiosity. Neglect to obey the ghost's injunctions will lead to much annoyance, and eventually to dire results. At first the spirit will appear with a discontented visage, next with an angry one, and finally with a countenance distorted with the most ferocious rage. Obedience is the only method of escape from its revenge. Such is a _resumé_ of the laws. The illustrations thereof are generally consistent in their details. The story of Cadogan's ghost is one of many in kind. Thomas Cadogan was the owner of a large estate in the parish of Llanvihangel Llantarnam, and being a covetous man did wickedly remove his landmarks in such a way as to absorb to himself part of the land of a widow his neighbour. After his death this injustice troubled him, and as a certain woman was going home one night, at a stile she passed over she met Cadogan's ghost. By a strange forgetfulness, this woman for the moment lost sight of the fact that Cadogan was now a ghost; she had momentarily forgotten that Cadogan was dead. 'Mr. Cadogan,' said she, with ungrammatical curiosity, 'what does you here this time o' night?' To which the ghost answered, 'I was obliged to come.' It then explained the matter of the landmarks, and begged the woman to request a certain person (whom it mentioned) to remove them back to their proper places; and then the ghost vanished. At this unexpected termination of the interview, the woman suddenly recollected Cadogan's death, and fell into a state of extreme terror. She however did as the ghost had bidden her, and Cadogan walked no more. CHAPTER II. Household Ghosts and Hidden Treasures--The Miser of St. Donat's--Anne Dewy's Ghost--The Ghost on Horseback--Hidden Objects of Small Value--Transportation through the Air--From Breconshire to Philadelphia, Pa., in Thirty-Six Hours--Sir David Llwyd, the Magician--The Levitation of Walter Jones--Superstitions regarding Hares--The Legend of Monacella's Lambs--Aerial Transportation in Modern Spiritualism--Exorcising Household Ghosts--The Story of Haunted Margaret. I. The majority of stories of this class turn on the subject of hidden treasures. The popular belief is that if a person die while any hoarded money--or indeed metal of any kind, were it nothing more than old iron--is still hidden secretly, the spirit of that person cannot rest. Its perturbation can only be relieved by finding a human hand to take the hidden metal, and throw it down the stream of a river. To throw it up the stream, will not do. The Ogmore is the favourite river for this purpose in lower Glamorganshire. The spirit selects a particular person as the subject of its attentions, and haunts that person till asked what it wants, when it prefers its request. Some say it is only ill-gotten treasure which creates this disturbance of the grave's repose. A tailor's wife at Llantwit Major, who had been a stout and jolly dame, was thus haunted until she was worn to the semblance of a skeleton, 'for not choosing to take a hoard honestly to the Ogmore.' But flesh and blood could not resist for ever, and so--this is her story: 'I at last consented, for the sake of quiet, to take the treasure to the river; and the spirit wafted me through the air so high that I saw below me the church loft, and all the houses, as if I leaned out of a balloon. When I took the treasure to throw it into the river, in my flurry I flung it up stream instead of down: and on this the spirit, with a savage look, tossed me into a whirlwind, and however I got back to my home I know not.' The bell-ringers found her lying insensible in the church lane, as they were going home from church late in the evening. II. There was an old curmudgeon of a money-hoarder who lived in a cottage on the side of the cwm, or dingle, at St. Donat's, not far from the Castle. His housekeeper was an antique dame of quaint aspect. He died, and the dame lived there alone; but she began to grow so gaunt and grizzly that people wondered at it, and the children ran frightened from her. Some one finally got from her the confession that she was haunted by the miser's ghost. To relieve her of its presence the Methodists resolved to hold a prayer-meeting in the haunted house. While they were there singing and praying the old woman suddenly jumped up and screamed, 'There he is! there he is!' The people grew silent. Then some one said, 'Ask it what it wants.' 'What do you want?' quavered the old woman. No one heard the reply, except the dame, who presently said: 'Where is it?' Then the old woman, nodding and staring as if obeying an invisible mandate, groped her way to the chimney, thrust her gaunt arm up, and drew down a bag of money. With this she cried out, 'Let me go! let me go!' which, no one preventing her, she did, as quickly as a flash of light. Some young men by the door followed her, and, it being a bright moonlight night, beheld her whisk over the stile without touching it, and so off up the road towards the Ogmore. The people now resumed their praying and singing. It was an hour before the old woman got back, and then she was found to be spattered with mud and bedraggled with wet, as if she had been having a terrific time. She had indeed, as she confessed, been to the Ogmore, and thrown the bag of money down the stream; the ghost had then taken off its hat, made a low bow, and vanished, to trouble her no more. III. A young man from Llywel parish, who was courting a lass who lodged at the house of Thomas Richard, in the vale of Towy, found himself haunted as he went to and fro by the ghost of Anne Dewy, a woman who had hanged herself. She would not only meet him in the road, and frighten him, but she would come to his bedside, and so scare him that he fell ill. While he was ill his cousin came to see him, and thinking his illness was due to his being crossed in love, rallied him, saying, 'Wfft! thou'rt sick because thy cariad has refused thee.' But being gravely answered, and told of Anne Dewy's ghost, this cousin advised the haunted man to speak to her. 'Speak to her,' said he, 'or thou wilt have no quiet. I will go with thee, and see thou shalt have no harm.' So they went out, and called at Tafarn y Garreg, an inn not far off; but the haunted man could not drink, and often looked towards the door. 'What ails the man?' asked the tap-room loungers. He continued to be uneasy, and finally went out, his cousin following him, and then he saw the ghost again. 'Oh God, here she is!' he cried out, his teeth chattering and his eyes rolling. 'This is a sad thing,' said his cousin: 'I know not what to think of thee; but come, I will go with thee, go where thou wilt.' They returned to the ale-house, and after a while the haunted man started up, saying he was called, but when others offered to go with him he said no, he must go alone. He did go alone, and spoke to the ghost, who said, 'Fear nothing; follow me.' She led him to a spot behind the house where she had lived when in the flesh, and where she had hanged herself, and bade him take from the wall a small bag. He did so. The bag contained 'a great sum of money,' in pieces of gold; he guessed it might be 200_l._ or more. But the ghost, greatly to his regret, bade him go and cast it into the river. He obeyed, against his better judgment. The next day, and for many a day thereafter, people looked for that money where he had thrown it in the river, but it never could be found. The Rev. Thomas Lewis, a dissenting minister in those parts, saw the place in the wall where the money had been hid, in the haunted house, and wondered how the young man could reach it, it being so very high; but thought it likely he was assisted by the ghost. IV. This same Rev. Thomas Lewis was well acquainted with a man who was similarly employed by a perturbed spirit, and was at the man's bedside when he died. This ghost was in appearance a clergyman, dressed in black clothes, with a white wig on. As the man was looking out of an ale-house window one night, he saw this ghost on horseback, and went out to him. The ghost bowed and silently offered him drink; but this was declined. Thereupon the ghost lifted his hat, crooked his elbow, and said in a hollow tone, 'Attoch chwi, syr,' (towards you, sir). But others who were there could see nothing and hear nothing. The ghost then said, 'Go to Clifford Castle, in Radnorshire, take out some money which lies hidden there, and throw it into the river. Do this, I charge thee, or thou shalt have no rest.' Further and more explicit directions were then given, and the unhappy man set out, against his will, for Clifford Castle, which is the castle in which was born Fair Rosamond, King Henry II.'s beautiful favourite. No one but himself was allowed to enter the castle, although he was permitted to have a friend's company to the ruined gate thereof. It was dark when they came to the castle, but he was guided to the place where the money was, and ran with it and flung it into the river. After that he was haunted no more. An old house at Ty'n-y-Twr, in Carnarvonshire, was haunted by a ghost whose troubles were a reversal of the rule. A new tenant, who took possession of the house a few years ago, was so bothered by this spectre that he resolved to question it. He did so and got for answer the information that if he would deposit a particular sum of money in a specified place, his ghostship would cease to walk. The man actually did this, and it acted like magic. The money disappeared with promptitude, and the ghost came there no more. A man at Crumlyn, Monmouthshire, was haunted by a ghost whose trouble related to a hidden object of small value. Nevertheless the spectre was so importunate that the man set out one night to accompany it to the scene of perturbation. In due time they came to a huge stone, which the ghost bade its friend lift up, who replied that he had not sufficient strength, it being a pretty large rock he was thus requested to move. 'But try,' said the ghost. So he tried, and lo! it was lifted as if it had been a feather. He drew forth a pike, or mattock; 'and the light,' the man afterwards related, 'was as great as if the sun shone; and in the snow there was no impression of the feet of either of us.' They went to the river, and by the ghost's command the man threw the pike over his head into the water, standing with his back to the flood. The ghost then conducted him home, and never troubled him more. But for a long time after he was out of his senses. This was an illustration, according to the popular belief, of the wickedness of hiding anything, however trifling its value--a practice strongly condemned by the Welsh peasantry. There is a Glamorganshire story about a certain young man who, returning late at night from courting his sweetheart, felt tired, and sitting down fell asleep. He had not slept long when he was aroused by a strange noise, and looking up recognised the ghost of his departed grandfather. Enquiring the cause of the old gentleman's visit to this scene of trials, he got this answer: 'Under the corner of the thatch of your roof, look and you will find a pair of silver spurs, surreptitiously obtained by me when in the flesh, and hidden there. Throw them into the river Taff, and I shall be at peace.' The young man obeyed these instructions, and found the spurs accordingly; and although many persons were present when he climbed to the roof and fumbled under the thatch, and saw him in the very act, not one among them could see the spurs, which were to them invisible. They said, however, that when the purloined spurs had been thrown into the river, a bright flame was seen to flash along the water. V. A large proportion of these stories of ghostly perturbation concerning hidden treasure include a further feature of great interest, relating to transportation through the air. I have mentioned that ghosts sometimes employ the services of the fairy Boobach in thus carrying mortals from place to place. The fairies of Wales are indeed frequently found to be on the best of terms with the ghosts. Their races have much in common, and so many of their practices are alike that one is not always absolutely sure whether he is dealing with a fairy or a spectre, until some test-point crops up. However, in transporting a mortal through the air, ghost and fairy work together. The Boobach being set his task, complaisantly gives the mortal the choice of being transported above wind, amid wind, or below wind. The value of knowing beforehand what to expect, was never better illustrated than in this place. The mortal who, with a natural reluctance to get into an unpleasantly swift current, avoids travelling mid-wind, misses a pleasant journey, for mid-wind is the only agreeable mode of being borne by a Boobach. Should you choose to go above wind, you are transported so high that you skim the clouds and are in danger of being frightened to death. But choosing the below-wind course is even worse, for then you are dragged through bush, through briar, in a way to impress upon you the advice of Apollo to Phaeton, and teach you the value of the golden mean. _In medio tutissimus ibis._ VI. In the parish of Ystradgynlais, in Breconshire, Thomas Llewellyn, an innkeeper's son, was often troubled by the spirit of a well-dressed woman, who used to stand before him in narrow lanes, as if to bar his passage, but he always got by her, though in great alarm. One night he mustered up courage to speak to her, and ask her what she wanted with him. To which she replied, 'Be not afraid; I will not hurt thee.' Then she told him he must go to 'Philadelphia in Pennsylvania,' and take a box from a house there, (which she described,) in which there was a sum of 200_l._ But as he did not know how to go to that far-off place, he said as much. 'Meet me here next Friday night,' said the phantom; 'meet me, I charge thee.' She then vanished. The young man went home and told this story to his neighbours and friends. They held a consultation with the curate of the parish, who promptly appointed a prayer-meeting for that Friday night, to which the young man was bidden, and by which it was hoped the purpose of the ghost to spirit him off to Philadelphia might be circumvented. The meeting continued until midnight, and when it broke up the young man's friends stayed with him; but they had no sooner got beyond the parson's stables than he was taken from among them. His subsequent adventures are thus related by himself: 'The apparition carried me away to a river, and threw me into it, chiding me for telling the people of our appointed meeting and for not coming to meet her as she had charged me; but bade me be not afraid, that she would not hurt me, because she had not charged me to be silent on the subject; nevertheless I had done wrong to go to the parson's house. Now, said she, we begin the journey. I was then lifted up and carried away I know not how. When I came to the place,' (in Philadelphia,) 'I was taken into a house, and conducted to a fine room. The spirit then bade me lift up a board, which I did. I then saw the box, and took it. Then the spirit said I must go three miles and cast it into the black sea. We went, as I thought, to a lake of clear water, where I was commanded to throw the box into it; which when I did there was such a noise as if all about was going to pieces. From thence I was taken up and carried to the place where I was first taken up. I then asked her, Am I free now? She said I was; and then she told me a secret, which she strictly charged me to tell no person.' Extensive and ingenious guessing was indulged in by all Ystradgynlais, as to what this secret might be; and one woman made herself popular by remembering that there was a certain Elizabeth Gething in other days who had gone from this neighbourhood to Pennsylvania, and the conclusion was eagerly arrived at, that this was the woman whose phantom the young man saw, and that the secret she told him was her name when alive. They questioned him as to her appearance, and he said she was largely made, very pale, her looks severe, and her voice hollow, different from a human voice. This was considered by the Ystradgynlaisians, with many nods to each other, as a most accurate description of what Elizabeth Gething would probably be, after having shuffled off this mortal coil. The time occupied in this mysterious transportation and ghostly enterprise was three days and three nights; that is, from Friday night to Monday night; and when the voyager came home he could scarcely speak. VII. Sir David Llwyd, the Welsh magician, was once at Lanidloes town, in Montgomeryshire, and as he was going home late at night, saw a boy there from his neighbourhood. He asked the lad if he would like to ride home behind him, and receiving an affirmative reply, took the boy up behind on the horse's back. They rode so swiftly that they were home in no time, and the boy lost one of his garters in the journey. The next day, seeing something hanging in the ash-tree near the church, he climbed up to learn what it was, and to his great surprise found it was the garter he had lost. 'Which shows they rode home in the air,' observes the Prophet Jones in telling the story. Mr. Jones has a number of extraordinary narratives of this class--e.g., the following, which I condense: Henry Edmund, of Hafodafel, was one night visiting Charles Hugh, the conjuror of Aberystruth, and they walked together as far as Lanhiddel, where Hugh tried to persuade his companion to stay all night with him at a public house. Edmund refused, and said he would go home. 'You had _better_ stay,' said Hugh in a meaning tone. But Edmund went out into the street, when he was seized by invisible hands and borne through the air to Landovery, in Carmarthenshire, a distance of fully fifty miles as the crow flies. There he was set down at a public house where he had before been, and talked with people who knew him. He then went out into the street, when he was seized again and borne back to Lanhiddel, arriving there the next morning at daybreak. The first man he met was the conjuror Charles Hugh, who said, 'Did I not tell you you had better stay with me?' VIII. The landlord of the inn at Langattock Crickhowel, in Breconshire, was a man called Richard the Tailor. He was more than suspected of resorting to the company of fairies, and of practising infernal arts. One day a company of gentlemen were hunting in that vicinity, when the hounds started a hare, which ran so long and so hard that everybody was prostrated with fatigue; and this hare disappeared from view at the cellar window of the inn kept by Richard the Tailor. The circumstance begat a suspicion among the hunters that the hare which had so bothered them was none other than Richard the Tailor himself, and that his purpose in taking that form had been to lead them a dance and bring them to the door of his inn at an hour too late for them to return home, thus compelling them to spend their money there. They stayed, however, being very tired. But they growled very hard at their landlord and were perfectly free with their comments on his base conduct. One of their party, having occasion to go out-doors during the evening, did not come back; his name was Walter Jones, and he was well known in that part of the country. The company became uneasy at his absence, and began to abuse the landlord roundly, threatening to burn the house if Walter Jones did not return. Notwithstanding their threats, Walter Jones came not back all night. Late the next morning he made his appearance, looking like one who had been drawn through thorns and briars, with his hair in disorder, and his whole aspect terribly demoralised. His story was soon told. He had no sooner got out-doors than invisible hands had whisked him up, and whirled him along rough ways until daybreak, when he found himself near by the town of Newport, helping a man from Risca to raise a load of coal upon his horse. Suddenly he became insensible, and was whisked back again to the inn where they now saw him. The distance he traversed in going to and fro was about forty miles. And Walter Jones, who had hitherto been an ungodly man, mended his ways from that time forth. IX. There are many points in all these traditional stories which are suggestive of interesting comparisons, and constantly remind us of the significance of details which, at first sight, seem trivial. The supposed adoption of the hare form by the tailor recalls a host of mythological details. The hare has been identified with the sun-god Michabo of the American Indians, who sleeps through the winter months, and symbolises the sleep of nature precisely as in the fairy myth of the Sleeping Maiden, and the Welsh legends of Sleeping Heroes. Among the Hottentots, the hare figures as the servant of the moon. In China, the hare is viewed as a telluric genius in one province, and everywhere as a divine animal. In Wales, one of the most charming of the local legends relates how a hare flying from the hounds took refuge under a fair saint's robes, so that hares were ever after called Monacella's Lambs in that parish. Up to a comparatively recent time, no person in the parish would kill a hare. When a hare was pursued by dogs, it was firmly believed that if any one cried, 'God and St. Monacella be with thee,' it was sure to escape. The legend is related by Pennant, in his tour through Montgomeryshire: 'At about two miles distant from Llangynog, I turned up a small valley to the right, to pay my devotions to the shrine of St. Monacella, or, as the Welsh style her, Melangell.... She was the daughter of an Irish monarch, who had determined to marry her to a nobleman of his court. The princess had vowed celibacy. She fled from her father's dominions, and took refuge in this place, where she lived fifteen years without seeing the face of man. Brochwel Yscythrog, prince of Powys, being one day a hare-hunting, pursued his game till he came to a great thicket; when he was amazed to find a virgin of surprising beauty engaged in deep devotion, with the hare he had been pursuing under her robe, boldly facing the dogs, who retired to a distance, howling, notwithstanding all the efforts of the sportsmen to make them seize their prey. When the huntsman blew his horn, it stuck to his lips. Brochwel heard her story, and gave to God and her a parcel of lands to be a sanctuary to all who fled there. He desired her to found an abbey on the spot. She did so, and died abbess of it, in a good old age. She was buried in the neighbouring church.... Her hard bed is shown in the cleft of a neighbouring rock. Her tomb was in a little chapel, or oratory, adjoining to the church and now used as a vestry-room. This room is still called cell y bedd, (cell of the grave).... The legend is perpetuated by some rude wooden carvings of the saint, with numbers of hares scuttling to her for protection.' X. It is interesting to observe, in connection with the subject of transportation through the air, with what vitality this superstition lingers in modern spiritualism. The accounts of such transportation are familiar to every reader of newspapers. That Mr. Home was seen, by a learned English nobleman, sailing through the moonlight seventy feet from the ground, is on record; that Mrs. Guppy was transported from Highbury Park to Lamb's Conduit Street, in London, in a trance and a state of partial _déshabille_, is also on record; and that a well-known American spiritualist was borne by invisible hands from Chicago to Milwaukee and back, between midnight and 4 A.M., I have been assured by a number of persons in Illinois who thoroughly believed it, or said they did. But it certainly is not too much to demand, that people who give credence to these instances of aerial transportation should equally believe in the good old ghost stories of the Welsh. The same consistency calls for credulity as to the demoniacal elevation of Simon Magus, and the broomstick riding of the witches whose supernatural levitation was credited by Lord Bacon and Sir Matthew Hale, not to speak of Addison and Wesley. There is something peculiarly fascinating to the gross denizens of earth in this notion of skimming like a bird over house-tops. No dreams, save those of love and dalliance, are so charming to the dreamer as visions of flying; to find oneself floating along over the tops of trees, over the streets where less favoured mortals walk, to look down on them as they stroll, is to feel an exquisite pleasure. The mind of childhood and that of ignorance, alike unable to discriminate between reality and illusion, would naturally retain the impression of such a dream with peculiar vividness. The superstition has no doubt been fostered by this fact, although it, like most superstitions, began its career in pre-historic days. The same class of belief attaches to the magical lore of widely separated lands, in all ages. The magic carpet of the Arabian Nights finds its parallel to-day in the enchanted mat of the Chinese conjuror, which carries him from place to place, at a height of twenty or thirty feet in the air. The levitation involved is in Welsh story embodied in the person of Sgilti Yscawndroed; when he was sent on a message through the wood he went along the tops of the trees; in his whole life, a blade of reed grass never bent beneath his feet, so light was his tread.[68] FOOTNOTE: [68] Lady Charlotte Guest's 'Mabinogion,' 225. XI. It remains but to add, in connection with our household ghosts, that the method of exorcising such goblins in Wales is explicit. The objectionable spectre must be conjured, in the name of Heaven, to depart, and return no more. Not always is this exorcism effective; the ghost may have a specific purpose in hand, or it may be obstinate. The strength of the exorcism is doubled by employing the Latin language to deliver it; it receives its utmost power, however, through the clergy; three clergymen, it is thought, will exorcise any ghost that walks. The exorcism is usually for a stated period; seven years is the favourite time; one hundred years the limit. There are many instances where a ghost which had been laid a hundred years returned at the end of the time to its old haunts. In all cases it is necessary the ghost should agree to be exorcised; no power can lay it if it be possessed of an evil demon--a spirit within a spirit, as it were--which stubbornly refuses to listen to argument. In such cases the terrors of Heaven must be rigorously invoked; but the result is only temporary. Properly constituted family ghosts, however, will lend a reasonable ear to entreaty, backed by prayer. There are even cases on record where the ghost has been the entreater, as in the story of Haunted Margaret. Haunted Margaret, or Marget yr Yspryd, was a servant-girl who lived in the parish of Panteg. She had been seduced by a man who promised to marry her, and a day was set for their wedding; but when the day came, the man was not on hand, and Margaret thereupon fell on her knees in the church and prayed Heaven that her seducer might have no rest either in this world or in the world to come. In due course the man died, and immediately his ghost came to haunt Margaret Richard. People heard her in the night saying to the ghost, 'What dost thou want?' or 'Be quiet, let me alone;' and hence it was that she came to be known in that parish by the nickname of Marget yr Yspryd. One evening when the haunted woman was at the house of Mrs. Hercules Jenkins, at Trosdra, she began to be uneasy, and as it grew late said, 'I must go now, or else I shall be sure to meet him on the way home.' Mrs. Jenkins advised Margaret to speak to him; 'and tell him thou dost forgive him,' said the good dame. Margaret went her way, and as she drew near a stile at the end of a foot-bridge, she saw the ghost at the stile waiting for her. When she came up to it the ghost said, 'Do thou forgive me, and God will forgive thee. Forgive me and I shall be at rest, and never trouble thee any more.' Margaret then forgave him, and he shook hands with her in a friendly way, and vanished. CHAPTER III. Spectral Animals--The Chained Spirit--The Gwyllgi, or Dog of Darkness--The Legend of Lisworney-Crossways--The Gwyllgi of the Devil's Nags--The Dog of Pant y Madog--Terrors of the Brute Creation at Phantoms--Apparitions of Natural Objects--Phantom Ships and Phantom Islands. I. Of spectral animals there is no great diversity in Cambria, unless one should class under this head sundry poetic creatures which more properly belong to the domain of magic, or to fairyland. The spirits of favourite animals which have died return occasionally to visit their masters. Sometimes it is a horse, which is seen on a dark night looking in at the window, its eyes preternaturally large. More often it is the ghost of a dog which revisits the glimpses of the moon. Men sometimes become as fondly attached to a dog as they could to any human being, and, where the creed of piety is not too severe, the possibility of a dog's surviving after death in a better world is admitted. 'It is hard to look in that dog's eyes and believe,' said a Welshman to me, 'that he has not a bit of a soul to be saved.' The almost human companionship of the dog for man is a familiar fact. It is not strange, therefore, that the dog should be the animal whose spirit, in popular belief, shares the nature of man's after death. II. Sometimes the spirit in animal form is the spirit of a mortal, doomed to wear this shape for some offence. This again trenches on the ground of magic; but the ascription to the spirit-world is distinct in modern instances. There was a Rev. Mr. Hughes, a clergyman of the Church of England, in the isle and county of Anglesea, who was esteemed the most popular preacher thereabout in the last century, and upon this account was envied by the rest of the clergy, 'which occasioned his becoming a field preacher for a time, though he was received into the Church again.'[69] As he was going one night to preach, he came upon an artificial circle in the ground, between Amlwch village and St. Elian Church, where a spirit in the shape of a large greyhound jumped against him and threw him from his horse. This experience was repeated on a second night. The third night he went on foot, and warily; and now he saw that the spirit was chained. He drew near, but keeping beyond the reach of the chain, and questioned the spirit: 'Why troublest thou those that pass by?' The spirit replied that its unrest was due to a silver groat it had hidden under a stone when in the flesh, and which belonged to the church of St. Elian. The clergyman being told where the groat was, found it and paid it over to the church, and the chained spirit was released. FOOTNOTE: [69] Jones, 'Apparitions.' III. In the Gwyllgi, or Dog of Darkness, is seen a spirit of terrible form, well known to students of folk-lore. This is a frightful apparition of a mastiff, with a baleful breath and blazing red eyes which shine like fire in the night. It is huge in size, and reminds us of the 'shaggy mastiff larger than a steed nine winters old,' which guarded the sheep before the castle of Yspaddaden Pencawr. 'All the dead trees and bushes in the plain he burnt with his breath down to the very ground.'[70] The lane leading from Mousiad to Lisworney-Crossways, is reported to have been haunted by a Gwyllgi of the most terrible aspect. Mr. Jenkin, a worthy farmer living near there, was one night returning home from market on a young mare, when suddenly the animal shied, reared, tumbled the farmer off, and bolted for home. Old Anthony the farm-servant, found her standing trembling by the barn-door, and well knowing the lane she had come through suspected she had seen the Gwyllgi. He and the other servants of the farm all went down the road, and there in the haunted lane they found the farmer, on his back in the mud. Being questioned, the farmer protested it was the Gwyllgi and nothing less, that had made all this trouble, and his nerves were so shaken by the shock that he had to be supported on either side to get him home, slipping and staggering in the mud in truly dreadful fashion all the way. It is the usual experience of people who meet the Gwyllgi that they are so overcome with terror by its unearthly howl, or by the glare of its fiery eyes, that they fall senseless. Old Anthony, however, used to say that he had met the Gwyllgi without this result. As he was coming home from courting a young woman of his acquaintance (name delicately withheld, as he did not marry her) late one Sunday night--or it may have been Monday morning--he encountered in the haunted lane two large shining eyes, which drew nearer and nearer to him. He was dimly able to discern, in connection with the gleaming eyes, what seemed a form of human shape above, but with the body and limbs of a large spotted dog. He threw his hat at the terrible eyes, and the hat went whisking right through them, falling in the road beyond. However, the spectre disappeared, and the brave Anthony hurried home as fast as his shaking legs would carry him. As Mr. David Walter, of Pembrokeshire, 'a religious man, and far from fear and superstition,' was travelling by himself through a field called the Cot Moor, where there are two stones set up called the Devil's Nags, which are said to be haunted, he was suddenly seized and thrown over a hedge. He went there another day, taking with him for protection a strong fighting mastiff dog. When he had come near the Devil's Nags there appeared in his path the apparition of a dog more terrible than any he had ever seen. In vain he tried to set his mastiff on; the huge beast crouched frightened by his master's feet and refused to attack the spectre. Whereupon his master boldly stooped to pick up a stone, thinking that would frighten the evil dog; but suddenly a circle of fire surrounded it, which lighting up the gloom, showed the white snip down the dog's nose, and his grinning teeth, and white tail. 'He then knew it was one of the infernal dogs of hell.'[71] Rebecca Adams was 'a woman who appeared to be a true living experimental Christian, beyond many,' and she lived near Laugharne Castle, in Carmarthenshire. One evening when she was going to Laugharne town on some business, her mother dissuaded her from going, telling her she would be benighted, and might be terrified by some apparition at Pant y Madog. This was a pit by the side of the lane leading to Laugharne, which was never known to be dry, and which was haunted, as many had both seen and heard apparitions there. But the bold Rebecca was not to be frighted at such nonsense, and went her way. It was rather dark when she was returning, and she had passed by the haunted pit of Pant y Madog, and was congratulating herself on having seen no ghost. Suddenly she saw a great dog coming towards her. When within about four or five yards of her it stopped, squatted on its haunches, 'and set up such a scream, so loud, so horrible, and so strong, that she thought the earth moved under her.' Then she fell down in a swoon. When she revived it was gone; and it was past midnight when she got home, weak and exhausted. FOOTNOTES: [70] 'Mabinogion,' 230. [71] Jones, 'Apparitions.' IV. Much stress is usually laid, in accounts of the Gwyllgi, on the terror with which it inspires domestic animals. This confidence in the ability of the brute creation to detect the presence of a spirit, is a common superstition everywhere. An American journal lately gave an account of an apparition seen in Indiana, whose ghostly character was considered by the witnesses to be proven by the terror of horses which saw it. They were drawing the carriage in which drove the persons to whom the ghost appeared, and they shied from the road at sight of it, becoming unmanageable. The spectre soon dissolved in thin air and vanished, when the horses instantly became tractable. In Wales it is thought that horses have peculiarly this 'gift' of seeing spectres. Carriage horses have been known to display every sign of the utmost terror, when the occupants of the carriage could see no cause for fright; and in such cases a funeral is expected to pass there before long, bearing to his grave some person not dead at the time of the horses' fright. These phenomena are certainly extremely interesting, and well calculated to 'bid us pause,' though not, perhaps, for the purpose of considering whether a horse's eye can receive an image which the human retina fails to accept. Much weight will not be given to the fright of the lower animals, I fear, by any thoughtful person who has witnessed the terror of a horse at sight of a flapping shirt on a clothes-line, or that hideous monster a railway engine. Andrew Jackson Davis has a theory that we all bear about us an atmosphere, pleasing or repulsive, which can be detected by horses, dogs, and spiritual 'mediums;' this _aura_, being spiritual, surrounds us without our will or wish, goes where we go, but does not die when we die, and is the means by which a bloodhound tracks a slave, or a fond dog finds its master. Without denying the possibility of this theory, I must record that in my observation a dog has been found to smell his master most successfully when that master was most in need of a bath and a change of linen. Also, that when the master leaves off his coat he clearly leaves--if a dog's conduct be evidence--a part of his _aura_ with it. More worthy of serious attention is August Comte's suggestion that dogs and some other animals are perhaps capable of forming fetichistic notions. That dogs accredit inanimate objects with volition, to a certain extent, I am quite convinced. The thing which constitutes knowledge, in dogs as in human beings--that is to say, thought, organised by experience--corrects this tendency in animals as they grow older, precisely as it corrects the false conclusions of children, though never to the same extent. That a dog can think, I suppose no well-informed person doubts in these days. V. The Gwyllgi finds its counterpart in the Mauthe Doog of the Isle of Man and the Shock of the Norfolk coast. It there comes up out of the sea and travels about in the lanes at night. To meet it is a sign of trouble and death. The Gwyllgi also is confined to sea-coast parishes mainly, and although not classed among death-omens, to look on it is deemed dangerous. The hunting dogs, Cwn Annwn, or dogs of hell, whose habitat is the sky overhead, have also other attributes which distinguish them clearly from the Gwyllgi. They are death-omens, ancient of lineage and still encountered. The Gwyllgi, while suggesting some interesting comparisons with the old mythology, appears to have lost vogue since smuggling ceased to be profitable. VI. Confined to the coast, too, are those stories of phantom ships and phantom islands which, too familiar to merit illustration here, have their origin in the mirage. That they also touch the ancient mythology is undoubted; but their source in the mirage is probably true of the primeval belief as well as of the medieval, and that of our time. The Chinese also have the mirage, but not its scientific explanation, and hence of course their belief in its supernatural character is undisturbed. CHAPTER IV. Grotesque Ghosts--The Phantom Horseman--Gigantic Spirits--The Black Ghost of Ffynon yr Yspryd--Black Men in the Mabinogion--Whirling Ghosts--Antic Spirits--The Tridoll Valley Ghost--Resemblance to Modern Spiritualistic Performances--Household Fairies. I. The grotesque ghosts of Welsh folk-lore are often most diverting acquaintances. They are ghosts on horseback, or with coloured faces, or of huge and monstrous form; or they indulge in strange gymnastics, in whirling, throwing stones, or whistling. A phantom horseman, encountered by the Rev. John Jones, of Holywell, in Flintshire, as described by himself, is worthy of Heinrich Zschokke. This Mr. Jones was a preacher of extraordinary power, renowned and respected throughout Wales. He was one day travelling alone on horseback from Bala, in Merionethshire, to Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire, and as he approached a forest which lay in his way he was dogged by a murderous-looking man carrying a sharp sickle. The minister felt sure this man meditated an attack on his life, from his conduct in running crouched along behind hedges, and from his having met the man at the village inn of Llanuwchllyn, where the minister exposed his watch and purse. Presently he saw the man conceal himself at a place where the hedge was thick, and where a gate crossed the road; and feeling sure that here he should be attacked, he stopped his horse to reflect on the situation. No house was in sight, and the road was hidden by high hedges on either side. Should he turn back? 'In despair, rather than in a spirit of humble trust and confidence,' says the good man, 'I bowed my head, and offered up a silent prayer. At this juncture my horse, growing impatient of the delay, started off. I clutched the reins, which I had let fall on his neck, when, happening to turn my eyes, I saw, to my utter astonishment, that I was no longer alone: there, by my side, I beheld a horseman in a dark dress, mounted on a white steed. In intense amazement I gazed upon him. Where could he have come from? He appeared as suddenly as if he had sprung from the earth; he must have been riding behind and have overtaken me, and yet I had not heard the slightest sound. It was mysterious, inexplicable; but joy overcame my feelings of wonder, and I began at once to address my companion. I asked him if he had seen any one, and then described to him what had taken place, and how relieved I felt by his sudden appearance. He made no reply, and on looking at his face he seemed paying but slight attention to my words, but continued intently gazing in the direction of the gate, now about a quarter of a mile ahead. I followed his gaze, and saw the reaper emerge from his concealment and run across a field to our left, resheathing his sickle as he hurried along. He had evidently seen that I was no longer alone, and had relinquished his intended attempt.' Seeking to converse with the mysterious horseman, the minister found the phantom was speechless. In vain he addressed it in both Welsh and English; not a word did it utter, save that once the minister thought it said 'Amen,' to a pious remark. Suddenly it was gone. 'The mysterious horseman was gone; he was not to be seen; he had disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. What could have become of him? He could not have gone through the gate, nor have made his horse leap the high hedges, which on both sides shut in the road. Where was he? had I been dreaming? was it an apparition--a spectre, which had been riding by my side for the last ten minutes? was it but a creature of my imagination? I tried hard to convince myself that this was the case; but why had the reaper resheathed his murderous-looking sickle and fled? And then a feeling of profound awe began to creep over my soul. I remembered the singular way of his first appearance, his long silence, and the single word to which he had given utterance after I had mentioned the name of the Lord; the single occasion on which I had done so. What could I then believe but that ... in the mysterious horseman I had a special interference of Providence, by which I was delivered from a position of extreme danger?' II. Of gigantic ghosts there are many examples which are very grotesque indeed. Such was the apparition which met Edward Frank, a young man who lived in the parish of Llantarnam. As he was coming home one night he heard something walking towards him, but at first could see nothing. Suddenly his way was barred by a tall dismal object which stood in the path before him. It was the ghost of a marvellous thin man, whose head was so high above the observer's line of vision that he nearly fell over backward in his efforts to gaze at it. His knees knocked together and his heart sank. With great difficulty he gasped forth, 'In the name of God what is here? Turn out of my way or I will strike thee!' The giant ghost then disappeared, and the frightened Edward, seeing a cow not far off, went towards her to lean on her, which the cow stood still and permitted him to do. The naïveté of this conclusion is convincing. Equally prodigious was the spectre seen by Thomas Miles Harry, of the parish of Aberystruth. He was coming home by night from Abergavenny, when his horse took fright at something which it saw, but which its master could not see. Very much terrified, the latter hastened to guide the animal into an adjoining yard, and dismount; whereupon he saw the apparition of a gigantic woman. She was so prodigiously tall, according to the account of the horrified Harry, that she was fully half as high as the tall beech trees on the other side of the road; and he hastened to hide from his eyes the awful sight, by running into the house, where they listened open-mouthed to his tale. Concerning this Mr. Harry we are assured that he was of an affable disposition, innocent and harmless, and the grandfather of that eminent and famous preacher of the Gospel, Thomas Lewis, of Llanharan, in Glamorganshire.[72] The same narrator relates that Anne, the daughter of Herbert Jenkins, of the parish of Trefethin, 'a young woman well disposed to what is good,' was going one evening to milk the cows by Rhiw-newith, when as she passed through a wood she saw a horrible black man standing by a holly tree. She had with her a dog, which saw it also, and ran towards it to bark at it, upon which it stretched out a long black tongue, and the dog ran affrighted back to the young woman, crawling and cringing about her feet for fear. She was in great terror at all this, but had the courage still to go on after the cows, which had strayed into another field. She drove them back to their own field, and in passing the holly-tree avoided looking that way for fear of seeing the black man again. However, after she had got safely by she looked back, and saw the monster once more, 'very big in the middle and narrow at both ends,' and as it walked away the ground seemed to tremble under its heavy tread. It went towards a spring in that field called Ffynon yr Yspryd, (the Fountain of the Spirit,) where ghosts had been seen before, and crossing over the stile into the common way, it whistled so loud and strong that the narrow valley echoed and re-echoed with the prodigious sound. Then it vanished, much to the young woman's relief. FOOTNOTE: [72] Jones, 'Apparitions.' III. That giants should appear in the Welsh spirit-land will surprise no one, but the apparition of black men is more unique. The Mabinogion, however, are full of black men, usually giants, always terrible to encounter. The black man whom Peredur slew had but one eye, having lost the other in fighting with the black serpent of the Carn. 'There is a mound, which is called the Mound of Mourning; and on the mound there is a carn, and in the carn there is a serpent, and on the tail of the serpent there is a stone, and the virtues of the stone are such, that whosoever should hold it in one hand, in the other he will have as much gold as he may desire. And in fighting with this serpent was it that I lost my eye.'[73] In the 'Lady of the Fountain' mabinogi the same character appears: 'a black man ... not smaller in size than two of the men of this world,' and with 'one eye in the middle of his forehead.'[74] And there are other black men in other Mabinogion, indicating the extremely ancient lineage of the spectre seen by Anne Jenkins at the Fountain of the Spirit. Whatever Anglo-Saxon scoffers may say of Welsh pedigrees of mere flesh and blood, the antiquity of its spectral hordes may not be disputed. The black giant of Sindbad the Sailor and the monster woodward of Cynan alike descend from the Polyphemus blinded by Odysseus. FOOTNOTES: [73] 'Mabinogion,' 106. [74] Ibid., 6. IV. Another grotesque Welsh goblin goes whirling through the world. Three examples are given by the Prophet Jones. _First:_ Lewis Thomas, the father of the Rev. Thomas Lewis, was on his return from a journey, and in passing through a field near Bedwellty, saw this dreadful apparition, to wit, the spectre of a man walking or whirling along on its hands and feet; at sight of which Lewis Thomas felt his hair to move on his head; his heart panted and beat violently, 'his body trembled, and he felt not his clothes about him,' _Second:_ John Jenkins, a poor man, who lived near Abertillery, hanged himself in a hay-loft. His sister soon after came upon his dead body there hanging, and screamed loudly. Jeremiah James, who lived in Abertillery House, hearing the scream, looked in that direction and saw the 'resemblance of a man' coming from the hay-loft 'and violently turning upwards and downwards topsy turvy' towards the river, 'which was a dreadful sight to a serious godly man.' _Third:_ Thomas Andrew, living at a place called The Farm, in the parish of Lanhiddel, coming home late at night saw a whirling goblin on all fours by the side of a wall, which fell to scraping the ground and wagging its head, 'looking aside one way and the other,' making at the same time a horrible mowing noise; at which Thomas Andrew 'was terribly frightened.' V. The antics of these and similar inhabitants of the Cambrian spirit-world at times outdo the most absurd capers of modern spiritualism. At the house of a certain farmer in the parish of Llanllechid, in Carnarvonshire, there was great disturbance by a spirit which threw stones into the house, and from one room to another, which hit and hurt the people who lived there. The stones were of various sizes, the largest weighing twenty-seven pounds. Most of them were river stones, from the stream which runs hard by. Some clergymen came from Bangor and read prayers in the house, to drive the spirit away, but their faith was not strong enough, and stones were thrown at them, so that they retired from the contest. The family finally had to abandon the house. On the farm of Edward Roberts, in the parish of Llangunllo, in Radnorshire, there was a spirit whose antics were somewhat remarkable. As the servant-man was threshing, the threshel was taken out of his hand and thrown upon the hay-loft. At first he did not mind this so much, but when the trick had been repeated three or four times he became concerned about it, and went into the house to tell of it. The master of the house was away, but the wife and the maid-servant laughed at the man, and merrily said they would go to the barn to protect him. So they went out there and sat, the one to knit and the other to wind yarn. They were not there long before their things were taken from their hands and tumbled about the barn. On returning to the house, they perceived the dishes on the shelves move to and fro, and some were thrown on to the stone floor and broken. That night there was a terrible clattering among the dishes, and next morning they could scarcely tread without stepping on the wrecks of crockery which lay about. This pleasant experience was often repeated. Neighbours came to see. People even came from far to satisfy their curiosity--some from so far as Knighton; and one who came from Knighton to read prayers for the exorcising of the spirit, had the book taken out of his hand and thrown upstairs. Stones were often cast at the people, and once iron was projected from the chimney at them. At last the spirit set the house on fire, and nothing could quench it; the house was burnt down: nothing but the walls and the two chimneys stood, long after, to greet the eyes of people who passed to and from Knighton market. VI. A spirit which haunted the house of William Thomas, in Tridoll Valley, Glamorganshire, used to hit the maid-servant on the side of her head, as it were with a cushion, when she was coming down the stairs. 'One time she brought a marment of water into the house,' and the water was thrown over her person. Another time there came so great an abundance of pilchards in the sea, that the people could scarcely devour them, and the maid asked leave of her master to go and fetch some of them. 'No,' said he, being a very just man, 'the pilchards are sent for the use of poor people; we do not want them.' But the maid was very fond of pilchards, and so she went without leave, and brought some to the house. After giving a turn about the house, she went to look for her fish, and found them thrown out upon the dunghill. 'Well,' said her master, 'did not I tell thee not to go?' Once a pot of meat was on the fire, and when they took it off they found both meat and broth gone, none knew where, and the pot as empty as their own bellies. Sometimes the clasped Bible would be thrown whisking by their heads; and 'so it would do with the gads of the steller, and once it struck one of them against the screen where a person then sat, and the mark of it still to be seen in the hard board.' Once the china dishes were thrown off the shelf, and not one broke. 'It was a great business with this light-hating spirit to throw an old lanthorn about the house without breaking it.' When the maid went a-milking to the barn, the barn-door would be suddenly shut upon her as she was milking the cow; then when she rose up the spirit began to turn the door backwards and forwards with an idle ringing noise. Once it tried to make trouble between the mistress and the maid by strewing charcoal ashes on the milk. When William Evans, a neighbour, went there to pray, as he knelt by the bedside, it struck the bed such a bang with a trencher that it made a report like a gun, so that both the bed and the room shook perceptibly. On another occasion, it made a sudden loud noise, which made the master think his house was falling down, and he was prodigiously terrified; it never after that made so loud a noise. The Rev. R. Tibbet, a dissenting minister from Montgomeryshire, was one night sleeping in the house, with another person in the bed with him; and they had a tussle with the Tridoll spirit for possession of the bed-clothes. By praying and pulling with equal energy, the parson beat the spirit, and kept the bed-clothes. But the spirit, apparently angered by this failure, struck the bed with the cawnen (a vessel to hold grain) such a blow that the bed was knocked out of its place. Then they lit a light and the spirit left them alone. It was a favourite diversion with this goblin to hover about William Thomas when he was shaving, and occasionally cuff him on the side of his head--the consequence being that the persecuted farmer shaved himself by fits and starts, in a very unsatisfactory manner, and in a most uncomfortable state of mind. For about two years it troubled the whole of that family, during which period it had intervals of quiet lasting for a fortnight or three weeks. Once it endeavoured to hinder them from going to church, by hiding the bunch of keys, on the Lord's day, so that for all their searching they could not find them. The good man of the house bade them not to yield to the devil, and as they were loth to appear in their old clothes at meeting, they were about to break the locks; but first concluded to kneel in prayer, and so did. After their prayers they found the keys where they used to be, but where they could not find them before. One night the spirit divided the books among the members of the family, after they had gone to bed. To the man of the house it gave the Bible, to the woman of the house 'Allen's Sure Guide,' and upon the bed of the maid-servant (whom it was specially fond of plaguing) it piled a lot of English books, which language she did not understand. The maid was heartily afraid of the spirit, and used to fall on her knees and go to praying with chattering teeth, at all hours of the day or night; and prayer this spirit could not abide. When the maid would go about in the night with a candle, the light thereof would diminish, grow feeble as if in dampness, and finally go out. The result was the maid was generally excused from making journeys into cellar or garret after dark, very much to her satisfaction. Particularly did this frisky Tridoll spirit trouble the maid-servant after she had gone to bed--in winter hauling the bed-clothes off her; in summer piling more on her. Now there was a young man, a first cousin to William Thomas, who could not be got to believe there was a spirit at his kinsman's house, and said the family were only making tricks with one another, 'and very strong he was, a hero of an unbeliever, like many of his brethren in infidelity.' One night William Thomas and his wife went to a neighbour's wake, and left the house in charge of the doubting cousin, who searched the place all over, and then went to bed there; and no spirit came to disturb him. This made him stronger than ever in his unbelief. But soon after he slept there again, when they were all there, and before going to bed he said aloud to the maid, 'If anything comes to disturb thee, Ally, call upon me, as I lie in the next room to you.' During the night the maid cried out that the spirit was pulling the clothes off her bed, and the doubting cousin awoke, jumped out of bed, and ran to catch the person he believed to be playing tricks with the maid. But there was no creature visible, although there rained upon his doubting head a series of cuffs, and about his person a fusillade of kicks, which thrust the unbelief quite out of him, so that he doubted no more. The departure of this spirit came about thus: William Thomas being in bed with his wife, heard a voice calling him. He awaked his wife, and rising on his elbow said to the invisible spirit, 'In the name of God what seekest thou in my house? Hast thou anything to say to me?' The spirit answered, 'I have,' and desired him to remove certain things out of a place where they had been mislaid. 'Satan,' answered William Thomas, in a candid manner, 'I'll do nothing thou biddest me; I command thee, in the name of God, to depart from my house.' And it obeyed. VII. This long and circumstantial account, which I have gathered from different sources, but mainly from the two books of the Prophet Jones, will impress the general reader with its resemblance, in many respects, to modern newspaper ghost stories. The throwing about of dishes, books, keys, etc.; its raps and touches of the person; its making of loud noises by banging down metal objects; all these antics are the tricks of contemporaneous spiritualism. But this spectre is of a date when our spiritualism was quite unknown. The same is true of the spirit which threw stones, another modern spiritualistic accomplishment.[75] The spiritualists will argue from all this that their belief is substantiated, not by any means that it is shaken. The doubter will conclude that there were clever tricksters in humble Welsh communities some time before the American city of Rochester had produced its 'mediums.' The student of comparative folk-lore, in reading these accounts, will be equally impressed with their resemblance to phenomena noted in many other lands. The conclusion is irresistible that we here encounter but another form of the fairy which goes in Wales by the name of the Bwbach, and in England is called the Hobgoblin, in Denmark the Nis, in Scotland the Brownie. Also, the resemblance is strong in all stories of this class to certain of the German Kobolds. In several of these accounts of spirits in Wales appear the leading particulars of the Kobold Hinzelmann, as condensed by Grimm from Feldman's long narrative.[76] There is also a close correspondence to certain ghost stories found in China. In the story of Woo, from the 'Che-wan-luk,'[77] appear details much like those in Hinzelmann, and equally resembling Welsh particulars, either in the stories given above, or those which follow. But we are now drawn so near to the division of Familiar Spirits that we may as well enter it at once. FOOTNOTES: [75] For the sake of comparison, I give the latest American case which comes under my notice. The scene is Akron, a bustling town in the State of Ohio; the time October, 1878. 'Mr. and Mrs. Michael Metzler, middle-aged Germans, with their little daughter, ten years of age, and Mrs. Knoss, Metzler's mother-in-law, recently moved to a brick house in the suburbs known as Hell's Half Acre. The house is a good, substantial building, situated in a somewhat open space, and surrounded by a lonesome deserted air. A few days after they had moved, they were disturbed by sharp rappings all over the house, produced by small stones or pebbles thrown against the window panes. Different members of the family were hit by these stones coming to and going from the house. Other persons were hit by them, the stones varying in size from a pea to a hen's egg. Mrs. Metzler said that when she went after the cow in the evening, she could hear these stones whistling around her head. Mr. and Mrs. Metzler, who are devout Catholics, had Father Brown come to the house to exorcise the spirits which were tormenting them. The reverend father, in the midst of his exercises, was struck by a stone, and so dismayed thereby that he went home in despair.' (Newspaper account.) [76] 'Deutsche Sagen,' i. 103. [77] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 86. CHAPTER V. Familiar Spirits--The Famous Sprite of Trwyn Farm--Was it a Fairy?--The Familiar Spirits of Magicians--Sir David Llwyd's Demon--Familiar Spirits in Female Form--The Legend of the Lady of the Wood--The Devil as a Familiar Spirit--His Disguises in this Character--Summoning and Exorcising Familiars--Jenkin the Pembrokeshire Schoolmaster--The Terrible Tailor of Glanbran. I. Innumerable are the Welsh stories of familiar spirits. Sometimes these are spectres of the sort whose antics we have just been observing. More often they are confessedly demons, things of evil. In numberless cases it is no less a personage than the diawl himself who makes his appearance in the guise of a familiar spirit. The familiar spirit which takes up its abode in the household is, as we have seen, a pranksome goblin. Its personal appearance--or rather its invisibility--is the saving circumstance which prevents it from being deemed a fairy. The familiar spirit which haunted the house of Job John Harry, at the Trwyn Farm, in the parish of Mynyddyslwyn, was a stone-thrower, a stroker of persons, etc., but could not be seen. It is famous in Wales under the cognomen of Pwca'r Trwyn, and is referred to in my account of the Ellylldan.[78] The tenants at present residing on the Trwyn Farm are strangers who have recently invaded the home of this ancestral spook, but I was able to glean abundant information concerning it from people thereabout. It made a home of Mr. Harry's house some time in the last century, for a period beginning some days before Christmas, and ending with Easter Wednesday, on which day it departed. During this time it spoke, and did many remarkable things, but was always invisible. It began at first to make its presence known by knocking at the outer door in the night; but when persons went to open the door there was no one there. This continued for some time, much to the perplexity of the door-openers. At last one night it spoke to the one who opened the door, and the family were in consequence much terrified. Some of the neighbours, hearing these tales, came to watch with the family; and Thomas Evans foolishly brought a gun with him, 'to shoot the spirit,' as he said. But as Job John Harry was coming home that night from a journey, the familiar spirit met him in the lane and said, 'There is a man come to your house to shoot me, but thou shalt see how I will beat him.' So Job went on to the house, and immediately stones were thrown at the unbelieving Thomas who had brought the gun, stones from which he received severe blows. The company tried to defend him from the stones, which did strike and hurt him, and no other person; but their efforts were in vain. The result was, that Thomas Evans took his gun and ran home as fast as his legs would carry him, and never again engaged in an enterprise of that sort. As this familiar spirit got better acquainted with its quarters, it became more talkative, and used often to speak from out of an oven by the hearth's side. It also took to making music o' nights with Job's fiddle. One night as Job was going to bed, the familiar spirit gave him a gentle stroke on the toe. 'Thou art curious in smiting,' said Job. 'I can smite thee where I please,' replied the spirit. As time passed on the family became accustomed to their ghostly visitor, and seeing it never did them any harm, but on the contrary was a source of recreation to them, they used to boldly speak to it, and indulge in entertaining conversation. One old man, a neighbour, more bold than wise, hearing the spirit just by his side, but being unable to see it, threatened to stick it with his knife. 'Thou fool,' quoth the spirit, 'how canst thou stick what thou canst not see with thine eyes?' When questioned about its antecedents, the spirit said, 'I came from Pwll y Gasseg' (Mare's Pit, a place in the adjacent mountain), 'and I knew ye all before I came hither.' The wife of Morris Roberts desired one of the family to ask the spirit who it was that killed William Reilly the Scotchman; which being done, the spirit said, 'It was Blanch y Byd who bade thee ask that question;' and Blanch y Byd (Worldly Blanche) was Morris Roberts' wife ever after called. On Easter Wednesday the spirit departed, saying, 'Dos yn iach, Job,' (fare thee well, Job,) and Job asked the spirit, 'Where goest thou?' The reply was, 'Where God pleases.'[79] There are other accounts of this Trwyn sprite which credit it to a time long anterior to last century; but all are consistent in this, that the goblin is always invisible. The sole exception to this rule is the legend about its having once shown a white hand to some girls in the kitchen, thrusting it through the floor of its room overhead for that purpose. Now invisibility is a violation of fairy traditions, while ghosts are very often invisible--these rapping and stone-throwing ghosts, always. It might be urged that this spirit was a Bwbach, if a fairy at all, seeing that it kept pretty closely to the house; but on the whole I choose to class it among the inhabitants of the spirit-world; and really, the student of folk-lore must classify his materials distinctly in some understandable fashion, or go daft. FOOTNOTES: [78] Supra, p. 21. [79] Let me recommend the scene of this story to tourists. It is a most romantic spot, on the top of a mountain, a glorious tramp from Crumlyn, returning by another road to Abercarne. Wheels cannot go there, though a sure-footed horse might bear one safely up. The ancient farm-house is one of the quaintest in Wales, and must be hundreds of years old; and its front porch looks out over a ravine hardly less grand and lonely than a Californian gulch. II. The sort of familiar spirit employed by magicians in the eighteenth and preceding centuries was distinctly a demon. The spirit of this class which was controlled by Sir David Llwyd is celebrated in Wales. This Sir David was a famous dealer in the black art, who lived in Cardiganshire. He was a physician, and at one time a curate; but being known to deal in the magic art, he was turned out of the curacy, and obliged to live by practising physic. It was thought he learned the magic art in Oxford. 'It was this man's great wickedness,' says the Prophet Jones, 'to make use of a familiar spirit.... The bishop did well in turning him out of the sacred office, though he was no ill-tempered man, for how unfit was such a man to read the sacred Scripture! With what conscience could he ask the sponsors in baptism to undertake for the child to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, who himself was familiar with one of the spirits of darkness?... Of this Sir David I have heard much, but chiefly depend upon what was told to me by the Rev. Mr. Thomas Lewis, the curate of Landdw and Tolachdy, an excellent preacher of the gospel; and not sufficiently esteemed by his people, (which likely will bring a judgment on them in time to come.) Mr. Lewis knew the young woman who had been Sir David's maid servant, and the house where he lived.' His familiar spirit he kept locked up in a book. Once while he was in Radnorshire, in going from one house to another he accidentally left this book behind him, and sent his boy back to fetch it. The boy, being of an inquisitive turn of mind, opened the book--a thing his master had expressly charged him not to do--and the familiar spirit immediately demanded to be set at work. The boy, though very much alarmed, had the wit to answer, 'Tafl gerrig o'r afon,' (throw stones out of the river,) which the spirit immediately did, so that the air was for a time full of flying stones, and the boy was fain to skip about in a surprisingly active manner in order to dodge the same. After a while, having thrown up a great quantity of stones out of the river, (the Wye,) the spirit again, with the pertinacity of its kind, asked for something to do; whereupon the boy bade it throw the stones back again, which it did. Sir David having waited a long time for the boy to return, began to suspect that things had gone wrong, and so hastened back after him, and commanded the familiar spirit again into his book. III. Familiar spirits of this class are not always invisible; and they can assume such forms as may be necessary to serve their purposes. A favourite shape with them is that of a young and lovely woman. Comparisons are here suggested with the water-maidens, and other like forms of this fancy; but they need not be pursued. It is necessary for the student of phantoms to constantly remind himself of the omnipresent danger of being enticed too far afield, unless he keep somewhat sternly to the path he has marked out. How ancient is the notion of a familiar spirit in female form, may be seen from accounts which are given by Giraldus and other old writers. Near Caerleon, (Monmouthshire,) in the twelfth century, Giraldus tells us[80] there lived 'a Welshman named Melerius, who by the following means acquired the knowledge of future events and the occult sciences: Having on a certain night met a damsel whom he loved, in a pleasant and convenient place, while he was indulging in her embraces, instead of a beautiful girl he found in his arms a hairy, rough and hideous creature, the sight of which deprived him of his senses; and after remaining many years in this condition he was restored to health in the church of St. David's, through the merits of its saints. But having always had an extraordinary familiarity with unclean spirits, by seeing them, knowing them, talking with them, and calling each by his proper name, he was enabled through their assistance to foretell future events; he was indeed often deceived (as they are) with respect to circumstances at a great distance; but was less mistaken in affairs which were likely to happen soon, or within the space of a year. They appeared to him on foot, equipped as hunters, with horns suspended from their necks, and truly as hunters not of animals but of souls; he particularly met them near monasteries and religious places; for where rebellion exists there is the greatest need of armies and strength. He knew when any one spoke falsely in his presence, for he saw the devil as it were leaping and exulting upon the tongue of the liar; and if he looked into a book faultily or falsely written, although wholly illiterate he would point out the place with his finger. Being questioned how he could gain such knowledge, he said he was directed by the demon's finger to the place.' In the same connection Giraldus mentions a familiar spirit which haunted Lower Gwent, 'a demon incubus, who from his love for a certain young woman, and frequenting the place where she lived, often conversed with men, and frequently discovered hidden things and future events.' FOOTNOTE: [80] Sir R. C. Hoare's Trans., i. 105. IV. The legend of the Lady of the Wood is contained in the Iolo MSS., and is of considerable antiquity. It is a most fascinating tale: Einion, the son of Gwalchmai, 'was one fine summer morning walking in the woods of Treveilir,' when 'he beheld a graceful slender lady of elegant growth, and delicate feature, and her complexion surpassing every white and red in the morning dawn and the mountain snow, and every beautiful colour in the blossoms of wood, field, and hill. And then he felt in his heart an inconceivable commotion of affection, and he approached her in a courteous manner, and she also approached him in the same manner; and he saluted her, and she returned his salutation; and by these mutual salutations he perceived that his society was not disagreeable to her. He then chanced to cast his eye upon her foot, and he saw that she had hoofs instead of feet, and he became exceedingly dissatisfied,' as well he might. But the lady gave him to understand that he must pay no attention to this trifling freak of nature. 'Thou must,' she said, 'follow me wheresoever I go, as long as I continue in my beauty.' The son of Gwalchmai thereupon asked permission to go and say good-bye to his wife, at least. This the lady agreed to; 'but,' said she, 'I shall be with thee, invisible to all but thyself.' 'So he went, and the goblin went with him; and when he saw Angharad, his wife, he saw her a hag like one grown old, but he retained the recollection of days past, and still felt extreme affection for her, but he was not able to loose himself from the bond in which he was. "It is necessary for me," said he, "to part for a time, I know not how long, from thee, Angharad, and from thee, my son, Einion," and they wept together, and broke a gold ring between them; he kept one half and Angharad the other, and they took their leave of each other, and he went with the Lady of the Wood, and knew not where; for a powerful illusion was upon him, and he saw not any place, or person, or object under its true and proper appearance, excepting the half of the ring alone. And after being a long time, he knew not how long, with the goblin, the Lady of the Wood, he looked one morning as the sun was rising upon the half of the ring, and he bethought him to place it in the most precious place he could, and he resolved to put it under his eyelid; and as he was endeavouring to do so, he could see a man in white apparel, and mounted on a snow-white horse, coming towards him, and that person asked him what he did there; and he told him that he was cherishing an afflicting remembrance of his wife Angharad. "Dost thou desire to see her?" said the man in white. "I do," said Einion, "above all things, and all happiness of the world." "If so," said the man in white, "get upon this horse, behind me;" and that Einion did, and looking around he could not see any appearance of the Lady of the Wood, the goblin, excepting the track of hoofs of marvellous and monstrous size, as if journeying towards the north. "What delusion art thou under?" said the man in white. Then Einion answered him and told everything how it occurred 'twixt him and the goblin. "Take this white staff in thy hand," said the man in white, and Einion took it. And the man in white told him to desire whatever he wished for. The first thing he desired was to see the Lady of the Wood, for he was not yet completely delivered from the illusion. And then she appeared to him in size a hideous and monstrous witch, a thousand times more repulsive of aspect than the most frightful things seen upon earth. And Einion uttered a cry of terror; and the man in white cast his cloak over Einion, and in less than a twinkling Einion alighted as he wished on the hill of Treveilir, by his own house, where he knew scarcely any one, nor did any one know him.' The goblin meantime had gone to Einion's wife, in the disguise of a richly apparelled knight, and made love to her, pretending that her husband was dead. 'And the illusion fell upon her; and seeing that she should become a noble lady, higher than any in Wales, she named a day for her marriage with him. And there was a great preparation of every elegant and sumptuous apparel, and of meats and drinks, and of every honourable guest, and every excellence of song and string, and every preparation of banquet and festive entertainment.' Now there was a beautiful harp in Angharad's room, which the goblin knight desired should be played on; 'and the harpers present, the best in Wales, tried to put it in tune, and were not able.' But Einion presented himself at the house, and offered to play on it. Angharad, being under an illusion, 'saw him as an old, decrepit, withered, grey-haired man, stooping with age, and dressed in rags.' Einion tuned the harp, 'and played on it the air which Angharad loved. And she marvelled exceedingly, and asked him who he was. And he answered in song: ... "Einion the golden-hearted." ... "Where hast thou been!" "In Kent, in Gwent, in the wood, in Monmouth, In Maenol, Gorwenydd; And in the valley of Gwyn, the son of Nudd; See, the bright gold is the token." And he gave her the ring. "Look not on the whitened hue of my hair, Where once my aspect was spirited and bold; Now gray, without disguise, where once it was yellow. Never was Angharad out of my remembrance, But Einion was by thee forgotten."' But Angharad 'could not bring him to her recollection. Then said he to the guests: "If I have lost her whom I loved, the fair one of polished mind, The daughter of Ednyved Vychan, I have not lost (so get you out!) Either my bed, or my house, or my fire." 'And upon that he placed the white staff in Angharad's hand, and instantly the goblin which she had hitherto seen as a handsome and honourable nobleman, appeared to her as a monster, inconceivably hideous; and she fainted from fear, and Einion supported her until she revived. And when she opened her eyes, she saw there neither the goblin, nor any of the guests, nor of the minstrels, nor anything whatever except Einion, and her son, and the harp, and the house in its domestic arrangement, and the dinner on the table, casting its savoury odour around. And they sat down to eat ... and exceeding great was their enjoyment. And they saw the illusion which the demoniacal goblin had cast over them.... And thus it ends.'[81] FOOTNOTE: [81] Iolo MSS. 587, et seq. V. There is hardly a goblin in the world more widely known than this spectre of the forest. Her story appears in the legends of very many lands, including China. Its ancient Grecian prototype is found in the Odyssey.[82] When it is the Diawl himself who appears in the role of the familiar spirit, his majesty is usually in some other form than that of a man, with hoofs, horns, and tail. The orthodox form of Satan has indeed been seen in many parts of Wales, but not when doing duty as a familiar spirit. A Welsh poet of the thirteenth century mentions this form: And the horned devil, With sharp hoofs On his heels.[83] He is variously called cythraul, dera, diafol, all euphemisms for devil, equivalent to our destroyer, evil one, adversary--as well as plain diawl, devil. In his character of a familiar spirit he assumes the shape of a fiery ball, a donkey, a black calf, a round bowl, a dog, a roaring flame, a bull, a goose, and numberless others, including the imp that goes into a book. In all this he bears out the character given him in old mythology, where he grows big or little at pleasure, and roars in a gale as Hermes, the wind-god, howls as a dog, enters a walnut as in the Norse Tale, or is confined in a bottle as the genie of the 'Arabian Nights.' To that eminent nonconformist preacher, Vavasor Powell, the devil once appeared in shape like a house. 'Satan ... appeared several times, and in several wayes, to me: as once like a house, stood directly in my way, with which sight I fell on my face as dead.... Another time, being alone in my chamber ... I perceived a strong cold wind to blow ... it made the hair of my flesh to stand up, and caused all my bones to shake; and on the suddain, I heard one walk about me, tramping upon the chamber floor, as if it had been some heavie big man ... but it proved in the end to be no other than ... Satan.'[84] A black calf, which haunted a Pembrokeshire brook early in the present century, was believed to be the devil in familiar guise. It appeared at a certain spot near the village of Narberth--a village which has figured actively in mythic story since the earliest ages of which there is any record. One night two peasants caught the terrible calf and took it home, locking it up safely in a stable with some other cattle, but it had vanished when morning came. Henry Llewelyn, of Ystrad Defoc parish, Glamorganshire, was beset by the devil in the shape of a round bowl. He had been sent by his minister (Methodist) to fetch from another parish a load of religious books--Bibles, Testaments, Watts' 'Psalms, Hymns and Songs for Children'--and was coming home with the same, on horseback, by night, when he saw a living thing, round like a bowl, moving to and fro across the lane. The bold Llewelyn having concluded it was the devil, resolved to speak to it. 'What seekest thou, thou foul thing?' he demanded, adding, 'In the name of the Lord Jesus go away!' And to prove that it was the adversary, at these words it vanished into the ground, leaving a sulphurous smell behind. To William Jones, a sabbath-breaker, of Risca village, the devil appeared as an enormous mastiff dog, which transformed itself into a great fire and made a roaring noise like burning gorse. And to two men at Merthyr Tydfil, in Glamorganshire, the fiend appeared in the shape of a gosling. These men were one night drinking together at the Black Lion Inn, when one dared the other to go to conjure. The challenge was accepted, and they went, but conducted their emprise with such drunken recklessness, that the devil put out the eyes of one of them, so that he was blind the rest of his days. FOOTNOTES: [82] In his fascinating essay on the 'Folk-Lore of France,' in the 'Folk-Lore Record' for 1878 (published by the Folk-Lore Society) Mr. A. Lang says: 'So widespread is this superstition, that a friend of mine declares he has met with it among the savages of New Caledonia, and has known a native who actually died, as he himself said he would, after meeting one of the fairy women of the wild wood.' [83] Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Coch. [84] 'The Life and Death of Mr. Vavasor Powell,' p. 8. (A curious seventeenth century book, no two existing copies of which appear to be alike. I here cite from that in the library of the Marquis of Bute, than which a more perfect copy is rarely met with.) VI. The mode of summoning and of exorcising familiar spirits--in other words, of laying and raising the devil--varies little the world over. Even in China, the magic circle is entered and incantations are muttered when the fiend is summoned; and for the exorcism of devils there are laws like our own--though since modern Christianity has been introduced in China the most popular exorcist is the Christian missionary.[85] In Wales, the popular belief is compounded of about equal parts of foul magic and fair Biblical text; magic chiefly for summoning, the Book for exorcising. John Jenkin, a schoolmaster in Pembrokeshire, was a conjuror of renown in that part of Wales. One of his scholars who had a curiosity to see the devil made bold to ask the master to assist him to that entertainment. 'May see him,' said the master, 'if thou hast the courage for it. Still,' he added, 'I do not choose to call him till I have employment for him.' So the boy waited; and not long after a man came to the master saying he had lost some money, and wished to be told who had stolen it. 'Now,' the master said to the scholar, 'I have some business for him.' At night they went into the wood together and drew a circle, which they entered, and the schoolmaster called one of the spirits of evil by its name. Presently they saw a light in the sky, which shot like lightning down to the circle, and turned round about it. The conjuror asked it who had stolen the man's money; the spirit did not know, and it disappeared. Then the schoolmaster called another evil spirit by its name; and presently they saw the resemblance of a bull flying through the air towards them, so swiftly and fiercely as if it would go through them; and it also turned about the circle. But the conjuror asked it in vain who had the stolen money. 'I must call still another,' said he. The schoolboy was now almost dead with fear, and the conjuror considerately waited till he was somewhat revived before calling the third spirit. But when he did call, there came out of the wood a spirit dressed in white, and went about the circle. 'Ah,' said the schoolmaster, 'we shall now hear something from this.' And sure enough 'this' told the conjuror (in a language the boy could not understand) where the money was, and all about it. Then it vanished in red fire; and that boy 'has never been well since, the effect of the great fright still cleaving to him.' Not far from Glanbran, in Carmarthenshire, lived a tailor, who added to his trade as a breeches-mender the loftier, if wickeder, employments of a worker in magic. A certain Mr. Gwynne, living at Glanbran, took it upon himself to ridicule this terrible tailor, for the tailor was a little man, and Mr. Gwynne was a burly six-footer, who feared nobody. 'Thou have the courage to look upon the devil!' sneered Gwynne; 'canst thou show him to me?' 'That I can,' said the tailor, his eyes flashing angrily; 'but you are not able to look at him.' 'What!' roared Gwynne, 'thou able to look at him, and not I?' 'Very well,' quoth the tailor; 'if you are able to look at him I will show him to you.' It was in the day time, but the tailor went immediately into a little grove of wood in a field hard by, and made a circle in the usual manner. In a short time he returned to fetch the incredulous Mr. Gwynne, saying, 'Come with me and you shall see him.' The two then crossed the field until they came to the stile by the wood, when suddenly the tailor cried, 'Look yonder! there it is!' And looking, Mr. Gwynne saw, in the circle the tailor had drawn, 'one of the fallen angels, now become a devil.' It was so horrible a sight that the terrified Mr. Gwynne was never after able to describe it; but from that time forth he had a proper respect for the tailor. FOOTNOTE: [85] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 89. CHAPTER VI. The Evil Spirit in his customary Form--The stupid Medieval Devil in Wales--Sion Cent--The Devil outwitted--Pacts with the Fiend and their Avoidance--Sion Dafydd's Foul Pipe--The Devil's Bridge and its Legends--Similar Legends in other Lands--The Devil's Pulpit near Tintern--Angelic Spirits--Welsh Superstitions as to pronouncing the Name of the Evil Spirit--The Bardic Tradition of the Creation--The Struggle between Light and Darkness and its Symbolization. I. The devil has often appeared in Wales in his customary form, or with his distinctive marks covered up by such clothing as mortals wear. There was even a tailor in Cardiganshire who had the honour of making a suit of clothes for his sulphuric majesty. The medieval view of this malignant spirit--which makes the devil out as dull and stupid as he is mendacious and spiteful--still lingers in some parts. Those formal pacts with the devil, the first traces of which are found in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, have been made in great numbers in Wales; and tales in which the devil is outwitted by a mortal are still preserved with much distinctness in various localities. That the myth of Polyphemus reappears in all accounts of this sort, is pretty well agreed among students of folk-lore. Hercules and Cacus, Polyphemus and Odysseus, Peredur and the one-eyed monster of the Mabinogion, Gambrinus and der Teufel, Jack the Giant-Killer, Norse Jötuns and Arabian genii tricked and bottled; all these are deemed outgrowths of the same primeval idea, to wit, the victory of the sun-god over the night-fiend; and the story of Sion Cent's compact with the diawl is doubtless from the same root. Certain it is that were not the devil at times gullible, he never would have been so useful as a familiar spirit, never could have been made so completely a slave to his mortal masters. The Pope (Benedict IX.) who had seven evil spirits in a sugar-bottle, merely subdivided the arch-fiend in the same way the genii of the old tales are subdivided--now existing as a dense and visible form, again expanding to blot out the sky, and again entering the narrow compass of a bottle or a nut-shell; co-existing in a million places at the same instant, yet having a single individuality. II. Tradition relates that Sion Cent was a famous necromancer in Monmouthshire, who outwitted the devil, not once but many times. He lives in popular legend simply as a worker in magic, but in reality he was a worthy minister, the Rev. John Kent, who flourished from 1420 to 1470, and wrote several theological works in Latin. In his native Welsh he confined himself to poetry, and Sion Cent was his Cymric pseudonym. Like many learned men in those days, he was accredited with magical powers by the ignorant peasantry, and of his transactions with the devil many stories were then invented which still survive. One relates that he once served as a farmer's boy, and was set to keep the crows from the corn, but preferring to go to Grosmont fair, he confined the crows in an old roofless barn by a magic spell till the next day, when he returned. His compact with the devil enabled him to build the bridge over the Monnow, near Grosmont, which still bears his name. The compact gave the devil the man's soul, as all such compacts do--the stipulation being that if his body were buried either in or out of the church, his soul should be forfeit to the diawl. But the shrewd Welshman gave orders that he should be buried exactly under the chancel wall, so that he should lie neither in the church nor out of it; and the devil was made a fool of by this device. A precisely similar tradition exists concerning an old gentleman in Carmarthenshire. III. A popular legend giving the origin of the jack-o'-lantern in Wales deals with the idea of a stupid devil: A long time ago there lived on the hills of Arfon an old man of the name of Sion Dafydd, who used to converse much with one of the children of the bottomless pit. One morning Sion was on his way to Llanfair-Fechan, carrying a flail on his shoulder, for he had corn there, when whom should he meet but his old friend from the pit, with a bag on his back, and in it two little devils like himself. After conversing for some time they began to quarrel, and presently were in the midst of a terrible fight. Sion fell to basting the devils with his flail, until the bag containing the two little ones went all to pieces, and the two tumbling out, fled for their lives to Rhiwgyfylchi, which village is considered to this day a very wicked place from this fact. Sion then went his way rejoicing, and did not for a long time encounter his adversary. Eventually, however, they met, and this time Sion had his gun on his shoulder. 'What's that long thing you're carrying?' inquired the devil. 'That's my pipe,' said Sion. Then the devil asked, 'Shall I have a whiff out of it?' 'You shall,' was Sion's reply, and he placed the mouth of his gun in the devil's throat and drew the trigger. Well; that was the loudest report from a gun that was ever heard on this earth. 'Ach!--tw!--tw!' exclaimed the smoker, 'your pipe is very foul,' and he disappeared in a flame. After a lapse of time, Sion met him again in the guise of a gentleman, but the Welshman knew it was the tempter. This time he made a bargain for which he was ever afterwards sorry, i.e., he sold himself to the devil for a sum down, but with the understanding that whenever he could cling to something the devil should not then control him. One day when Sion was busily gardening, the evil one snatched him away into the air without warning, and Sion was about giving up all hopes of again returning to earth, when he thought to himself, 'I'll ask the devil one last favour.' The stupid devil listened. 'All I want is an apple,' said Sion, 'to moisten my lips a bit down below; let me go to the top of my apple-tree, and I'll pick one.' 'Is that all?' quoth the diawl, and consented. Of course Sion laid hold of the apple-tree, and hung on. The devil had to leave him there. But the old reprobate was too wicked for heaven, and the devil having failed to take him to the other place, he was turned into a fairy, and is now the jack-o'-lantern.[86] FOOTNOTE: [86] 'Cymru Fu,' 355 et seq. IV. Best known among the natural objects in various parts of Wales which are connected with the devil in popular lore, is the Devil's Bridge, in Cardiganshire. Associated with this bridge are several legends, which derive their greatest interest from their intrinsic evidences of an antiquity in common with the same legends in other lands. The guide-books of the region, like guide-books everywhere, in their effort to avoid being led into unwarranted statement, usually indulge in playfully sarcastic references to these ancient tales. They are much older, however, than the bridge itself can possibly be. The devil's activity in bridge-building is a myth more ancient than the medieval devil of our acquaintance. The building story of the Devil's Bridge in Cardiganshire runs briefly thus: An old woman who had lost her cow spied it on the other side of the ravine, and was in great trouble about it, not knowing how to get over where the animal was. The devil, taking advantage of her distress, offered to throw a bridge over the ravine, so that she might cross and get her cow; but he stipulated that the first living creature to cross the bridge should be his. The old woman agreed; the bridge was built; and the devil waited to see her cross. She drew a crust of bread from her pocket, threw it over, and her little black dog flew after it. 'The dog's yours, sir,' said the dame; and Satan was discomfited. In the story told of the old bridge over the Main at Frankfort, a bridge-contractor and his troubles are substituted for the old woman and her cow; instead of a black dog a live rooster appears, driven in front of him by the contractor. The Welsh Satan seems to have received his discomfiture good-naturedly enough; in the German tale he tears the fowl to pieces in his rage. In Switzerland, every reader knows the story told of the devil's bridge in the St. Gothard pass. A new bridge has taken the place, for public use, of the old bridge on the road to Andermatt, and to the dangers of the crumbling masonry are added superstitious terrors concerning the devil's power to catch any one crossing after dark. The old Welsh bridge has been in like manner superseded by a modern structure; but I think no superstition like the last noted is found at Hafod. V. The English have a saying that the devil lives in the middle of Wales. There is in every part of Wales that I have seen a custom of whitening the doorsteps with chalk, and it is said to have originated in the belief that his Satanic majesty could not enter a door thus protected. The devil of slovenliness certainly would find difficulty in entering a Welsh cottage if the tidiness of its doorstep is borne out in the interior. But out-of-doors everywhere there are signs of the devil's active habits. His flowers grow on the river-banks; his toes are imprinted on the rocks. Near Tintern Abbey there is a jutting crag overhung by gloomy branches of the yew, called the Devil's Pulpit. His eminence used in other and wickeder days to preach atrocious morals, or immorals, to the white-robed Cistercian monks of the abbey, from this rocky pulpit. One day the devil grew bold, and taking his tail under his arm in an easy and _dégagée_ manner, hobnobbed familiarly with the monks, and finally proposed, just for a lark, that he should preach them a nice red-hot sermon from the rood-loft of the abbey. To this the monks agreed, and the devil came to church in high glee. But fancy his profane perturbation (I had nearly written holy horror) when the treacherous Cistercians proceeded to shower him with holy water. The devil clapped his tail between his legs and scampered off howling, and never stopped till he got to Llandogo, where he leaped across the river into England, leaving the prints of his talons on a stone. VI. Where accounts of the devil's appearance are so numerous, it is perhaps somewhat surprising so little is heard of apparitions of angels. There are reasons for this, however, which might be enlarged upon. Tradition says that 'in former times' there were frequent visits of angels to Wales; and their rare appearance in our days is ascribed to the completion of revelation. One or two modern instances of angelic visitation are given by the Prophet Jones. There was David Thomas, who lived at a place called the Pantau, between the towns of Carmarthen and Laugharne; he was 'a gifted brother, who sometimes preached,' in the dissenting way. One night, when he was at prayer alone in a room which stood apart from his house, there was suddenly a great light present, which made the light of the candle no longer visible. And in that light appeared a band of angels, like children, very beautiful in bright clothing, singing in Welsh these words: Pa hyd? Pa hyd? Dychwelwch feibion Adda! Pa hyd? Pa hyd yr erlidiwch y Cristnogion duwiol? How long? How long? Return ye sons of Adam! How long? How long will ye persecute the godly Christians? After a time they departed; reappeared; departed again; the great light faded; and the light of Mr. Thomas's candle was once more visible on his table. There was also Rees David, a man of more than common piety, who lived in Carmarthenshire, near Whitlands. At the time of his death, it was testified by 'several religious persons who were in the room,' that there was heard, by them and by the dying man, the singing of angels. It drew nearer and nearer as his death-struggle grew imminent, and after his death they 'heard the pleasant incomparable singing gradually depart, until it was out of hearing.' That the dying do see something more, in the last moment of expiring nature, than it is given to living eyes to see, is a cherished belief by numberless Christian men and women, whom to suspect of superstitious credulity were to grossly offend. This belief is based on exclamations uttered by the dying, while with fixed and staring eyes they appeared to gaze intently at some object not visible to the bystanders. But that the bystanders also saw, or heard, voice or vision from the Unknown, is not often pretended. VII. Reference has been made to the euphemisms in use among all peoples to avoid pronouncing the name of the devil. That many good folk still consider the word devil, lightly spoken, a profane utterance only second to a similar utterance of God's name, is a curious survival of old superstitions. No prohibition of this sort attaches to the words demon, fiend, etc., nor to such euphemisms, common in both Welsh and English, as the adversary, the evil one, etc. It is an old custom in North Wales to spit at the name of the devil, even when so innocently used as in pronouncing the name of the Devil's Bridge. The peasantry prefer to call the bridge 'Pont y Gwr Drwg,' the Bridge of the Wicked One; and spitting and wiping off the tongue are deemed a necessary precaution after saying devil, diafol, or diawl. The phrase 'I hope to goodness,' so common in Wales and elsewhere, is clearly but another euphemism for God; the goodness meant is the Divine beneficence. 'Goodness' sake' is but a contraction of 'For God's sake!' The Hebrew tetragrammaton which was invested with such terror, as representing the great 'I am,' finds an explanation, according to the ideas of Welsh scholars, in the Bardic traditions. These relate that, by the utterance of His Name, God created this world; the Name being represented by the symbol /|\, three lines which typify the focusing of the rising sun's rays at the equinoxes and solstices. The first ray is the Creator, the second the Preserver, and the third the Destroyer; the whole are God's Name. This name cannot be uttered by a mortal; he has not the power; therefore it remains for ever unuttered on earth. At the creation the universe uttered it in joy at the new-born world; 'the morning stars sang together.' At the last day it will be uttered again. Till then it is kept a secret, lest it be degraded, as it has been by the Hindus, who, from the three rays created their three false gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Tradition relates that Einigan Gawr saw the Divine Name appear, and inscribed it on three rods of mountain ash. The people mistook the three rods thus inscribed for God himself, and Einigan died from grief at their error.[87] FOOTNOTE: [87] 'Dosparth Edeyrn Dafod Aur,' 3. VIII. The devil with which we are acquainted is a character unknown to Greek or Roman mythology; this devil was a later invention; but his identity with the genii, or jinns of the 'Arabian Nights,' the Dïvs of Persian history, is clear enough. Ahriman, the evil spirit, king of the realms of darkness and of fire, was apparently the progenitor of Satan, as Vritra was of Ahriman. Both these ancient arch-fiends appeared as serpents in form, and were myths representing the darkness, slain by the light, or the sun-god, in the one case called Indra, in the other Ormuzd. The medieval devil with horns and hoofs does not appear in the records of Judaism. He is an outgrowth of the moral principle of the Christian era; and traced to his origins he is simply a personification of the adversary in the never-ending struggle on earth between light and darkness. That struggle is not, in nature, a moral one; but it remains to-day, as it was in the beginning, the best type we have of the battle between right and wrong, and between truth and error. When God said, 'Let there be light,' the utterance became the symbol and guide of virtue, of brave endeavour, and of scientific research, until the end. CHAPTER VII. Cambrian Death-Portents--The Corpse-Bird--The Tan-Wedd--Listening at the Church-Door--The Lledrith--The Gwrach y Rhibyn--The Llandaff Gwrach--Ugliness of this Female Apparition--The Black Maiden--The Cyhyraeth, or Crying Spirit--Its Moans on Land and Sea--The St. Mellons Cyhyraeth--The Groaning Spirit of Bedwellty. I. There are death portents in every country, and in endless variety; in Wales these portents assume distinct and striking individualities, in great number and with clearly defined attributes. The banshee, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, has no corresponding feature in Scandinavian, Teutonic, or classic mythology, and belongs entirely to the Celts. The Welsh have the banshee in its most blood-curdling form under the name of the Gwrach y Rhibyn; they have also the Cyhyraeth, which is never seen, but is heard, moaning dolefully and dreadfully in the night; the Tolaeth, also only heard, not groaning but imitating some earthly sound, such as sawing, singing, or the tramping of feet; the Cwn Annwn and Cwn y Wybr, Dogs of Hell and Dogs of the Sky; the Canwyll Corph, or Corpse Candle; the Teulu, or Goblin Funeral, and many others--all of them death-portents. These, as the more important and striking, I will describe further; but there are several others which must first be mentioned. The Aderyn y Corph is a bird which chirps at the door of the person who is about to die, and makes a noise that sounds like the Welsh word for 'Come! come!' the summons to death.[88] In ancient tradition, it had no feathers nor wings, soaring without support high in the heavens, and, when not engaged upon some earthly message, dwelling in the land of illusion and phantasy.[89] This corpse-bird may properly be associated with the superstition regarding the screech-owl, whose cry near a sick-bed inevitably portends death. The untimely crowing of a cock also foretells the sudden demise of some member of the family. In North Wales the cry of the golden plover is a death-omen; these birds are called, in this connection, the whistlers.[90] The same superstition prevails in Warwickshire, and the sound is called the seven whistlers. Thunder and lightning in mid-winter announce the death of the great man of the parish. This superstition is thought to be peculiar to Wales, or to the wilder and more secluded parts of North Wales.[91] Also deemed peculiar to Wales is the Tan-wedd, a fiery apparition which falls on the lands of a freeholder who is about to die. It is described as appearing somewhat similar to falling stars, but slower of motion. 'It lighteneth all the air and ground where it passeth,' says 'the honest Welshman, Mr. Davis, in a letter to Mr. Baxter,' adding, 'lasteth three or four miles or more, for aught is known, because no man seeth the rising or beginning of it; and when it falls to the ground it sparkleth and lighteth all about.'[92] It also comes as a duty-performing goblin, after a death, haunting the graveyard, and calling attention to some special grave by its conduct, as in the following account: Walter Watkins, of the Neuadd, in a parish of Brecknockshire, was going one dark night towards Taf Fechan Chapel, not far from his house, when he saw a light near the chapel. It increased till it was as big as a church tower, and decreased again till it was as small as a star; then enlarged again and decreased as before; and this it did several times. He went to his house and fetched his father and mother to see it, and they all saw it plainly, much to their astonishment and wonder. Some time after, as a neighbour was ploughing in a field near the chapel, about where the mysterious light had been seen, the plough struck against a large flat stone. This the ploughman raised up, after a deal of difficulty, and under it he found a stone chest, in which was the jawbone of a man, and nought else except an earthen jug. The bone was supposed to be the remains of a man who had disappeared long before, and whose wife had since married; and on her being told of it, she fell ill and died. The light, which had often been seen before by various persons, was after this seen no more. It was believed to be the spirit of the murdered man, appearing as a light. Listening at the church-door in the dark, to hear shouted by a ghostly voice in the deserted edifice the names of those who are shortly to be buried in the adjoining churchyard, is a Hallow E'en custom in some parts of Wales. In other parts, the window serves the same purpose. There are said to be still extant, outside some village churches, steps which were constructed in order to enable the superstitious peasantry to climb to the window to listen. The principle of 'expectant attention,' so well known to physiological science, would be likely in this case to act with special force as a ghost-raiser. In an ancient MS. by Llywelyn Sion, of Llangewydd, there is mention of a frightful monster called the Fad Felen, which was seen through the key-hole of Rhos church by Maelgwn Gwynedd, who 'died in consequence.' This monster was predicted in a poem by Taliesin, as a 'strange creature' which should come from the sea marsh, with hair and teeth and eyes like gold. The yellow fever plague, which raged in Wales during some five years in the sixth century, is the monster referred to in this legend. The Scotch wraith and Irish fetch have their parallel in Wales in the Lledrith, or spectre of a person seen before his death; it never speaks, and vanishes if spoken to. It has been seen by miners previous to a fatal accident in the mine. The story is told of a miner who saw himself lying dead and horribly maimed in a phantom tram-car, led by a phantom horse, and surrounded by phantom miners. As he watched this dreadful group of spectres they passed on, looking neither to the right nor the left, and faded away. The miner's dog was as frightened as its master at the sight, and ran howling into the darkness. Though deeming himself doomed, the miner continued to work in the pit; and as the days passed on, and no harm came to him, he grew more cheerful, and was so bold as to laugh at the superstition. The day he did this, a stone fell from the roof and broke his arm. As soon as he recovered he resumed work in the pit; his death followed instantly. A stone crushed him, and he was borne maimed and dead in the tram along the road where his lledrith had appeared, 'a mile below the play of sunshine and wave of trees.'[93] The Mallt y Nos, or night-fiend, is a death-omen mentioned by Rev. D. R. Thomas in the 'Archæologia Cambrensis'; and Croker[94] gives as the Welsh parallel of the Irish death-coach a spectre called ceffyl heb un pen, or the headless horse. The marw coel, or 'yellow spot before death,' is another death-omen which I have been able to trace no further than the pages where I find it.[95] FOOTNOTES: [88] 'Dewch! dewch!' [89] 'Cymru Fu,' 299. [90] 'Camb. Quarterly,' iv., 487. [91] 'Arch. Camb.' 4th Se., iii., 333. [92] Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' iii., 127. [93] 'Tales and Sketches of Wales,' in 'Weekly Mail.' [94] 'Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland,' 341. [95] 'The Vale of Glamorgan.' II. A frightful figure among Welsh apparitions is the Gwrach y Rhibyn, whose crowning distinction is its prodigious ugliness. The feminine pronoun is generally used in speaking of this goblin, which unlike the majority of its kind, is supposed to be a female. A Welsh saying, regarding one of her sex who is the reverse of lovely, is, 'Y mae mor salw a Gwrach y Rhibyn,' (She is as ugly as the Gwrach y Rhibyn.) The spectre is a hideous being with dishevelled hair, long black teeth, long, lank, withered arms, leathern wings, and a cadaverous appearance. In the stillness of night it comes and flaps its wings against the window, uttering at the same time a blood-curdling howl, and calling by name on the person who is to die, in a lengthened dying tone, as thus: 'Da-a-a-vy!' 'De-i-i-o-o-o ba-a-a-ch!' The effect of its shriek or howl is indescribably terrific, and its sight blasting to the eyes of the beholder. It is always an omen of death, though its warning cry is heard under varying circumstances; sometimes it appears in the mist on the mountain side, or at cross-roads, or by a piece of water which it splashes with its hands. The gender of apparitions is no doubt as a rule the neuter, but the Gwrach y Rhibyn defies all rules by being a female which at times sees fit to be a male. In its female character it has a trick of crying at intervals, in a most doleful tone, 'Oh! oh! fy ngwr, fy ngwr!' (my husband! my husband!) But when it chooses to be a male, this cry is changed to 'Fy ngwraig! fy ngwraig!' (my wife! my wife!) or 'Fy mlentyn, fy mlentyn bach!' (my child, my little child!) There is a frightful story of a dissipated peasant who met this goblin on the road one night, and thought it was a living woman; he therefore made wicked and improper overtures to it, with the result of having his soul nearly frightened out of his body in the horror of discovering his mistake. As he emphatically exclaimed, 'Och, Dduw! it was the Gwrach y Rhibyn, and not a woman at all.' III. The Gwrach y Rhibyn recently appeared, according to an account given me by a person who claimed to have seen it, at Llandaff. Surely, no more probable site for the appearance of a spectre so ancient of lineage could be found, than that ancient cathedral city where some say was the earliest Christian fane in Great Britain, and which was certainly the seat of the earliest Christian bishopric. My narrator was a respectable-looking man of the peasant-farmer class, whom I met in one of my walks near Cardiff, in the summer of 1878. 'It was at Llandaff,' he said to me, 'on the fourteenth of last November, when I was on a visit to an old friend, that I saw and heard the Gwrach y Rhibyn. I was sleeping in my bed, and was woke at midnight by a frightful screeching and a shaking of my window. It was a loud and clear screech, and the shaking of the window was very plain, but it seemed to go by like the wind. I was not so much frightened, sir, as you may think; excited I was--that's the word--excited; and I jumped out of bed and rushed to the window and flung it open. Then I saw the Gwrach y Rhibyn, saw her plainly, sir, a horrible old woman with long red hair and a face like chalk, and great teeth like tusks, looking back over her shoulder at me as she went through the air with a long black gown trailing along the ground below her arms, for body I could make out none. She gave another unearthly screech while I looked at her; then I heard her flapping her wings against the window of a house just below the one I was in, and she vanished from my sight. But I kept on staring into the darkness, and as I am a living man, sir, I saw her go in at the door of the Cow and Snuffers Inn, and return no more. I watched the door of the inn a long time, but she did not come out. The next day, it's the honest truth I'm telling you, they told me the man who kept the Cow and Snuffers Inn was dead--had died in the night. His name was Llewellyn, sir--you can ask any one about him, at Llandaff--he had kept the inn there for seventy years, and his family before him for three hundred years, just at that very spot. It's not these new families that the Gwrach y Rhibyn ever troubles, sir, it's the old stock.' IV. The close resemblance of this goblin to the Irish banshee (or benshi) will be at once perceived. The same superstition is found among other peoples of Celtic origin. Sir Walter Scott mentions it among the highlands of Scotland.[96] It is not traced among other than Celtic peoples distinctly, but its association with the primeval mythology is doubtless to be found in the same direction with many other death-omens, to wit, the path of the wind-god Hermes. The frightful ugliness of the Gwrach y Rhibyn is a consistent feature of the superstition, in both its forms; it recalls the Black Maiden who came to Caerleon and liberated Peredur:[97] 'Blacker were her face and her two hands than the blackest iron covered with pitch; and her hue was not more frightful than her form. High cheeks had she, and a face lengthened downwards, and a short nose with distended nostrils. And one eye was of a piercing mottled gray, and the other was as black as jet, deep-sunk in her head. And her teeth were long and yellow, more yellow were they than the flower of the broom. And her stomach rose from the breast-bone, higher than her chin. And her back was in the shape of a crook, and her legs were large and bony. And her figure was very thin and spare, except her feet and legs, which were of huge size.' The Welsh word 'gwrach' means a hag or witch, and it has been fancied that there is a connection between this word and the mythical Avagddu,[98] whose wife the gwrach was. The Gwrach y Rhibyn appears also as a river-spectre, in Glamorganshire. FOOTNOTES: [96] 'Demonology and Witchcraft,' 351. [97] 'Mabinogion,' 114. [98] Avagddu means both hell and the devil, as our word Heaven means both the Deity and his abode. V. A death-portent which is often confused with the Gwrach y Rhibyn, yet which is rendered quite distinct by its special attributes, is the Cyhyraeth. This is a groaning spirit. It is never seen, but the noise it makes is no less terrible to the ear than the appearance of its visible sister is to the eye. Among groaning spirits it is considered to be the chief. The Prophet Jones succinctly characterises it as 'a doleful, dreadful noise in the night, before a burying.' David Prosser, of Llanybyther parish, 'a sober, sensible man and careful to tell the truth,' once heard the Cyhyraeth in the early part of the night, his wife and maid-servant being together in the house, and also hearing it; and when it came opposite the window, it 'pronounced these strange words, of no signification that we know of,' viz. '_Woolach! Woolach!_' Some time afterward a funeral passed that way. The judicious Joshua Coslet, who lived by the river Towy in Carmarthenshire, testified that the Cyhyraeth is often heard there, and that it is 'a doleful, disagreeable sound heard before the deaths of many, and most apt to be heard before foul weather. The voice resembles the groaning of sick persons who are to die; heard at first at a distance, then comes nearer, and the last near at hand; so that it is a threefold warning of death. It begins strong, and louder than a sick man can make; the second cry is lower, but not less doleful, but rather more so; the third yet lower, and soft, like the groaning of a sick man almost spent and dying.' A person 'well remembering the voice' and coming to the sick man's bed, 'shall hear his groans exactly like' those which he had before heard from the Cyhyraeth. This crying spirit especially affected the twelve parishes in the hundred of Inis Cenin, which lie on the south-east side of the river Towy, 'where some time past it groaned before the death of every person who lived that side of the country.' It also sounded before the death of persons 'who were born in these parishes, but died elsewhere.' Sometimes the voice is heard long before death, but not longer than three quarters of a year. So common was it in the district named, that among the people there a familiar form of reproach to any one making a disagreeable noise, or 'children crying or groaning unreasonable,' was to ejaculate, 'Oh 'r Cyhyraeth!' A reason why the Cyhyraeth was more often heard in the hundred of Inis Cenin was thought to be that Non, the mother of St. David, lived in those parts, where a village is called after her name, Llan-non, the church of Non. On the southern sea-coast, in Glamorganshire, the Cyhyraeth is sometimes heard by the people in the villages on shore passing down the channel with loud moans, while those dismal lights which forebode a wreck are seen playing along the waves. Watchers by the sea-shore have also heard its moan far out on the ocean, gradually drawing nearer and nearer, and then dying away; and when they thought it gone it has suddenly shrieked close to their startled ears, chilling their very marrows. Then, long after, they would hear it, now faint, now loud, going along the sands into the distant darkness. One or more corpses were usually washed ashore soon after. In the villages the Cyhyraeth is heard passing through the empty streets and lanes by night, groaning dismally, sometimes rattling the window-shutters, or flinging open the door as it flits by. When going along the country lanes it will thus horrify the inmates of every house it passes. Some old people say it is only heard before the death of such as are of strayed mind, or who have long been ill; but it always comes when an epidemic is about to visit the neighbourhood. A tradition of the Cyhyraeth is connected with the parish churchyard at St. Mellons, a quaint old-fashioned village within easy tramping distance of Cardiff, but in Monmouthshire. It is of a boy who was sent on an errand, and who heard the Cyhyraeth crying in the churchyard, first in one place, then in another, and finally in a third place, where it rested. Some time after, a corpse was brought to that churchyard to be buried, but some person came and claimed the grave. They went to another place, but that also was claimed. Then they went to a third place, and there they were allowed to bury their dead in peace. And this going about with the corpse was 'just the same as the boy declared it.' Of course the boy could not know what was to come to pass, 'but this crying spirit knew exactly what would come to pass.' I was also told by a person at St. Mellons that a ghost had been seen sitting upon the old stone cross which stands on the hillside near the church. VI. Other groaning spirits are sometimes heard. A girl named Mary Morgan, living near Crumlyn Bridge, while standing on the bridge one evening was seized with mortal terror on hearing a groaning voice going up the river, uttering the words, 'O Dduw, beth a wnaf fi?' (O God, what shall I do?) many times repeated, amid direful groans. The conclusion of this narration is a hopeless mystery, as Mary fainted away with her fright. Much more satisfactory, as a ghost-story with a moral, is the tale of the groaning spirit of Bedwellty.[99] There was one night a wake at the house of Meredith Thomas, over the body of his four-year-old child, at which two profane men (named Thomas Edward Morgan and Anthony Aaron) began playing at cards, and swearing most horribly. In the parish of Bedwellty, the wakes--or watch-nights, as they are more commonly called in Wales--were at that time very profanely kept. 'Few besides the dissenters,' says Jones (who was himself a dissenter, it must be remembered), 'had the sense and courage to forbid' this wickedness, but 'suffered it as a custom, because the pretence was to divert the relations of the dead, and lessen their sorrows.' While the aforementioned profane men were playing cards and swearing, suddenly a dismal groaning noise was heard at the window. At this the company was much frightened, excepting the card-players, who said 'Pw!' and went on playing. But to pacify the rest of the company they finally desisted, and at once the groaning ceased. Soon after they began playing again, when at once the groaning set up in most lamentable tones, so that people shuddered; but the profane men again said, 'Pw! it is some fellow playing tricks to frighten us.' 'No,' said William Harry Rees, a good man of the Baptist persuasion, 'it is no human being there groaning, but a spirit,' and again he desired them to give over. But though they were so bold with their card-playing, these wicked men had not the hardihood to venture out and see who it was 'playing tricks,' as they called it. However, one of the company said, 'I will go, and take the dogs with me, and see if there be any human being there.' The groaning still continued. This bold person then 'took the prime staff, and began to call the dogs to go with him;' but the dogs could not be induced to go out, being in great terror at the groaning noise, and sought to hide themselves under the stools, and about the people's feet. In vain they beat the dogs, and kicked and scolded them, out-door they would not go. This at last convinced the profane men, and they left off playing, for fear the devil should come among them. For it was told in other places that people had played cards till his sulphurous majesty appeared in person. FOOTNOTE: [99] Jones, 'Apparitions,' 24. CHAPTER VIII. The Tolaeth Death Portent--Its various Forms--The Tolaeth before Death--Ewythr Jenkin's Tolaeth--A modern Instance--The Railway Victim's Warning--The Goblin Voice--The Voice from the Cloud--Legend of the Lord and the Beggar--The Goblin Funeral--The Horse's Skull--The Goblin Veil--The Wraith of Llanllwch--Dogs of Hell--The Tale of Pwyll--Spiritual Hunting Dogs--Origin of the Cwn Annwn. I. The Tolaeth is an ominous sound, imitating some earthly sound of one sort or another, and always heard before either a funeral or some dreadful catastrophe. Carpenters of a superstitious turn of mind will tell you that they invariably hear the Tolaeth when they are going to receive an order to make a coffin; in this case the sound is that of the sawing of wood, the hammering of nails, and the turning of screws, such as are heard in the usual process of making a coffin. This is called the 'Tolaeth before the Coffin.' The 'Tolaeth before Death' is a supernatural noise heard about the house, such as a knocking, or the sound of footsteps in the dead of night. Sometimes it is the sound of a tolling bell, where no bell is; and the direction in which the ear is held at the time points out the place of the coming death. Formerly the veritable church-bell in its steeple would foretell death, by tolling thrice at the hour of midnight, unrung by human hands. The bell of Blaenporth, Cardiganshire, was noted for thus warning the neighbours. The 'Tolaeth before the Burying' is the sound of the funeral procession passing by, unseen, but heard. The voices are heard singing the 'Old Hundredth,' which is the psalm tune usually sung by funeral bands; the slow regular tramp of the feet is heard, and the sobbing and groaning of the mourners. The Tolaeth touches but one sense at a time. When this funeral procession is heard it cannot be seen. But it is a peculiarity of the Tolaeth that after it has been heard by the ear, it sometimes makes itself known to the eye also--but in silence. The funeral procession will at first be heard, and then if the hearer stoop forward and look along the ground, it may perhaps be seen; the psalm-singers, two abreast, with their hats off and their mouths open, as in the act of singing; the coffin, borne on the shoulders of four men who hold their hats by the side of their heads; the mourners, the men with long black hatbands streaming behind, the women pale and sorrowful, with upheld handkerchiefs; and the rest of the procession stretching away dimly into shadow. Not a sound is heard, either of foot or voice, although the singers' mouths are open. After the procession has passed, and the observer has risen from his stooping posture, the Tolaeth again breaks on the ear, the music, the tread of feet, and the sobbing, as before. A real funeral is sure to pass that way not long afterwards. This form of the Tolaeth should not be confused with the Teulu, or Goblin Funeral proper, which is a death-warning occupying its own place. II. John Clode, an honest labouring man living on the coast of Glamorganshire, near the Sker Rocks, had just gone to bed one night, when he and his wife heard the door open, the tread of shuffling feet, the moving about of chairs, and the grunting of men as if setting down a load. This was all in the room where they lay, it being the only room their cottage afforded, except the one upstairs. 'John, John!' cried his wife in alarm, 'what is this?' In vain John rubbed his eyes and stared into the darkness. Nothing could he see. Two days afterward their only son was brought home drowned; and his corpse being borne into the house upon a ladder, there were the same noises of opening the door, the shuffling of feet, the moving of chairs, the setting down of the burden, that the Tolaeth had touched their ears with. 'John, John!' murmured poor Mrs. Clode; 'this is exactly what I heard in the night.' 'Yes, wife,' quoth John, 'it was the Tolaeth before Death.' Before Ewythr Jenkin of Nash died, his daughter Gwenllian heard the Tolaeth. She had taken her old father's breeches from under his pillow to mend them (for he was very careful always to fold and put his breeches under his pillow, especially if there was a sixpence in the pocket), and just as she was about sitting down at the table on which she had thrown them, there came a loud rap on the table, which startled her very much. 'Oh, Jenny, what was that?' she asked of the servant girl; but Jenny could only stare at her mistress, more frightened than herself. Again did Gwenllian essay to sit and take the breeches in hand, when there came upon the table a double rap, much louder than the first, a rap, in fact, that made all the chairs and kettles ring. So then Gwenllian fainted away. At a place called by its owner Llynwent, in Radnorshire, at a certain time the man of the house and his wife were gone from home. The rest of the family were sitting at supper, when three of the servants heard the sound of horses coming toward the house, and cried out, 'There, they are coming!' thinking it was their master and mistress returning home. But on going out to meet them, there was nobody near. They re-entered the house, somewhat uneasy in their minds at this strange thing, and clustered about the fire, with many expressions of wonderment. While they were so seated, 'Hark!' said one, and all listening intently, heard footsteps passing by them and going up stairs, and voices of people talking among themselves. Not long afterward three of the family fell sick and died. III. An instance of recent occurrence is given by a local newspaper correspondent writing from the scene of a Welsh railway accident in October, 1878. It was at Pontypridd, famous the world over for its graceful bridge, (now old and superannuated,) and renowned in Druidic story as a seat of learning. A victim of the railway accident was, a few days before the collision, 'sitting with his wife at the fireside, when he had an omen. The house was still, and they were alone, only a little servant girl being with them. Then, while so sitting and talking, they both heard a heavy footstep ascending the stairs, step by step, step by step, as that of one carrying a burden. They looked at one another, and the husband called, "Run, Mary, upstairs; some one has gone up." Mary did run, but there was no one. She was told to look in every room, and she did so, and it was put down as fancy. When the news was borne to the poor wife on Saturday night, she started up and said, "There now, that was the omen!"'[100] That his readers may not by any perversity fail to understand him as alluding to the Tolaeth before Death, our newspaper correspondent states his creed: 'I believe in omens. I knew a lady who heard distinctly three raps at her door. Another lady was sitting with her near it too. The door was an inner door. No servant was in the house. The two ladies heard it, and yet no human hand touched that door, and at the time when the knock was heard a dear brother was dying. I know of strange things of this sort. Of voices crying the names of half-sleeping relatives when the waves were washing some one dear away to the mighty deep; but then the world laughs at all this and the world goes on.' The correspondent is severe; there is nothing here to laugh at. FOOTNOTE: [100] 'Western Mail,' Oct. 23, 1878. IV. The Tolaeth has one other form--that of a Voice which speaks, in a simple and natural manner, but very significant words. Thus Edward Lloyd, in the parish of Llangurig, was lying very ill, when the people that were with him in his chamber heard a voice near them, but could see no one; nor could they find any one anywhere about the house, to whom the voice might belong. Soon afterwards they heard it utter, so distinctly that it seemed to be in the room where they were, these words, 'Y mae nenbren y t[^y] yn craccio,' (the upper beam of the house cracketh.) Soon the Voice spoke again, saying, 'Fe dor yn y man,' (it will presently break.) And once more it spoke: 'Dyna fe yn tori,' (there it breaks.) That moment the sick man gave up the ghost. John, the son of Watkin Elias Jones, of the parish of Mynyddyslwyn, was one day ploughing in the field, when the oxen rested, and he sent the lad who drove the oxen, to fetch something which he wanted; and while thus alone in the field, he saw a cloud coming across the field to him. When the cloud had come to that part of the field where he was, it stopped, and shadowed the sun from him; and out of the cloud came a Voice, which asked him which of these three diseases he would choose to die of--fever, dropsy, or consumption. Being a man who could give a plain answer to a plain question, he replied that he would rather die of consumption. The lad now returning, he sent him home with the oxen, and then, feeling inclined to sleep, lay down and slept. When he awoke he was ill, and fell by degrees into a consumption, of which he died one year from the day of this warning. He did not tell of this apparition, however, until within six weeks of his death. V. One of the most beautiful legends in the Iolo MSS. gives an ancient tale of the Tolaeth which may be thus condensed: A great and wealthy lord, rich in land, houses and gold, enjoying all the luxuries of life, heard a voice proclaim thrice distinctly: 'The greatest and richest man of this parish shall die to-night.' At this he was sadly troubled, for he knew that the greatest and richest man of that parish could be no other than he; so he sent for the physician, but made ready for death. Great, however, was his joy when the night passed, the day broke, and he was yet alive. At sunrise the church bell was heard tolling, and the lord sent in haste to know who was dead. Answer came that it was an old blind beggar man, who had asked, and been refused, alms at the great man's gate. Then the lord knew the meaning of the warning voice he had heard: that very great and very rich man had been the poor beggar--his treasures and wealth in the kingdom of heaven. He took the warning wisely to heart, endowed religious houses, relieved all who were in poverty, and when at last he was dying, the voices of angels were heard to sing a hymn of welcome; and he was buried, according to his desire, in the old beggar's grave.[101] FOOTNOTE: [101] Iolo MSS., 592. VI. Of the Teulu, or Goblin Funeral, a death-portent of wide prevalence in Wales, numberless stories are told. This omen is sometimes a form of the Tolaeth, but in itself constitutes an omen which is simple and explicit. A funeral procession is seen passing down the road, and at the same time it is heard. It has no shadowy goblin aspect, but appears to be a real funeral. Examination shows its shadowy nature. Subsequently a real funeral passes the same way, and is recognised as the fulfilment of the omen. The goblin funeral precedes the other sometimes by days, sometimes by weeks. Rees Thomas, a carpenter of Carmarthenshire, passing by night through Rhiw Edwst, near Capel Ywen, heard a stir as of a procession of people coming towards him, walking and speaking; and when they were close to him he felt the touch of an unseen hand upon his shoulder, and a voice saying to him, 'Rhys bach, pa fodd yr y'ch chwi?' (my dear Rees, how are you?) A month after, passing that way again, he met a funeral in that very place, and a woman of the company put her hand upon his shoulder and spoke exactly the same Welsh words to him that the invisible spirit had spoken. Rev. Howel Prosser, many years ago curate of Aberystruth, late one evening saw a funeral procession going down the church lane. Supposing it to be the funeral of a man who had recently died in the upper part of his parish, yet wondering he had not been notified of the burial, he put on his band in order to perform his office over the dead, and hastened to meet the procession. But when he came to it he saw that it was composed of strangers, whom he had never seen before. Nevertheless, he laid his hand on the bier, to help carry the corpse, when instantly the whole vanished, and he was alone; but in his hand he found the skull of a dead horse. 'Mr. Prosser was my schoolmaster, and a right honest man,' says Edmund Jones,[102] who is responsible for this story, as well as for the ensuing: Isaac William Thomas, who lived not far from Hafodafel, once met a Goblin Funeral coming down the mountain toward Llanhiddel church. He stood in a field adjoining the highway, and leaned against the stone wall. The funeral came close to the other side of the wall, and as the bier passed him he reached forth his hand and took off the black veil which was over the bier. This he carried to his home, where many people saw it. 'It was made of some exceeding fine stuff, so that when folded it was a very little substance, and very light.' That he escaped being hurt for this bold act was long the marvel of the parish; but it was believed, by their going aside to come so near him, that the goblins were willing he should do as he did. An old man who resided near Llanllwch church, in Carmarthenshire, used to assert in the most solemn manner that he had seen the Teulu going to church again and again. On a certain evening hearing one approaching, he peeped over a wall to look at it. The persons composing the procession were all acquaintances of his, with the exception of one who stood apart from the rest, gazing mournfully at them, and who appeared to be a stranger. Soon afterwards there was a real burying, and the old man, determined to see if there would be in the scene any resemblance to his last Teulu, went to the churchyard and waited. When the procession arrived, all were there as he had seen them, except the stranger. Looking about him curiously, the old man was startled by the discovery that he was himself the stranger! He was standing on the identical spot where had stood the man he did not recognise when he saw the Teulu. It was his own ghost. FOOTNOTE: [102] 'Account of the Parish of Aberystruth,' 17. VII. The death portent called Cwn Annwn, or Dogs of Hell, is a pack of hounds which howl through the air with a voice frightfully disproportionate to their size, full of a wild sort of lamentation. There is a tradition that one of them once fell on a tombstone, but no one was able to secure it. A peculiarity of these creatures is that the nearer they are to a man the less loud their voice sounds, resembling then the voice of small beagles, and the farther off they are the louder is their cry. Sometimes a voice like that of a great hound is heard sounding among them--a deep hollow voice, as if it were the voice of a monstrous bloodhound. Although terrible to hear, and certain portents of death, they are in themselves harmless. 'They have never been known,' says a most respectable authority,[103] 'to commit any mischief on the persons of either man or woman, goat, sheep, or cow.' Sometimes they are called Cwn y Wybr, or Dogs of the Sky, but the more sulphurous name is the favourite one. They are also sometimes called Dogs of the Fairies. Their origin in fairyland is traced to the famous mabinogi of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed; but in that fascinating tale of enchantment their right to be called Cwn Annwn is clearly set forth, for they are there the hounds of a King of Annwn. There are several translations of this mabinogi in existence, and its popularity in South Wales is great, for the villages, vales, and streams mentioned in it are familiar to residents in Pembroke, Carmarthen, and Cardigan shires. Pwyll, the Prince, was at Narberth, where was his chief palace, when he went one day to a wood in Glyn Cych. Here 'he sounded his horn and began to enter upon the chase, following his dogs and separating from his companions. And as he was listening to the cry of his pack, he could distinctly hear the cry of another pack, different from that of his own, and which was coming in an opposite direction. He could also discern an opening in the woods towards a level plain; and as his pack was entering the skirt of the opening he perceived a stag before the other pack, and about the middle of the glade the pack in the rear coming up and throwing the stag on the ground. Upon this he fixed his attention on the colour of the pack, without recollecting to look at the stag: and of all the hounds in the world he had ever seen he never saw any like them in colour. Their colour was a shining clear white, with red ears; and the whiteness of the dogs and the redness of their ears were equally conspicuous.'[104] They were the hounds of Arawn, a crowned king in the land of Annwn, the shadow-land of Hades. The Cwn Annwn are sometimes held to be the hell-hounds which hunt through the air the soul of the wicked man, the instant it quits the body--a truly terrific idea to the vulgar mind. The Prophet Jones has several accounts of them: Thomas Phillips, of Trelech parish, heard them with the voice of the great dog sounding among them, and noticed that they followed a course that was never followed by funerals, which surprised him very much, as he had always heard that the Dogs of the Sky invariably went the same way that the corpse was to follow. Not long after a woman from an adjoining parish died at Trelech, and being carried to her own parish church to be buried, her corpse did actually pass the same way in which the spirit dogs had been heard to hunt. Thomas Andrew, of the parish of Llanhiddel, heard them one night as he was coming home. 'He heard them coming towards him, though he saw them not.' Their cry grew fainter as they drew near him, passed him, and louder again as they went from him. They went down the steeps towards the river Ebwy. And Thomas Andrew was 'a religious man, who would not have told an untruth for fear or for favour.' FOOTNOTES: [103] 'Cambro-Briton,' i., 350. [104] Dr. W. Owen Pughe's Trans., 'Camb.-Briton,' ii., 271. VIII. No form of superstition has had a wider popularity than this of spiritual hunting dogs, with which was usually connected in olden time the wild huntsman, a personage who has dropped quite out of modern belief, at least in Wales. In France this goblin was called Le Grand Veneur, and hunted with his dogs in the forests of Fontainebleau; in Germany it was Hackelberg, who sold himself to the devil for permission to hunt till doomsday. In Britain it was King Arthur who served as the goblin huntsman. Peasants would hear the cry of the hounds and the sounding of the horns, but the huntsman was invisible. When they called out after him, however, the answer came back: 'We are King Arthur and his kindred.' Mr. Baring-Gould,[105] in giving an account of the myth of Odin, the Wild Huntsman, who rides over the forests by night on a white horse, with his legion of hell-hounds, seems to ascribe the superstition to the imagination of a belated woodcutter frightened by the wind in the tree-tops. William Henderson[106] presumes the belief in the Wild Huntsman's pack, which prevails in the North of England, to come from the strange unearthly cries uttered by wild fowl on their passage southward, and which sound like the yelping of dogs. These natural phenomena have not served, however, to keep the old belief alive in Wales. That the Cwn Annwn are descendants of the wish-hound of Hermes, hardly admits of doubt. The same superstition prevails among all Aryan peoples, with details differing but little. The souls of the dying are carried away by the howling winds, the dogs of Hermes, in the ancient mythology as in surviving beliefs; on this follows the custom of opening the windows at death, so that the released soul may escape. In Devonshire they say no soul can escape from the house in which its body dies, unless all the locks and bolts are opened. In China a hole is made in the roof for a like purpose. The early Aryan conception of the wind as a howling dog or wolf speeding over the house-tops caused the inmates to tremble with fear, lest their souls should be called to follow them. It must be constantly borne in mind that all these creatures of fancy were more or less interchangeable, and the god Hermes was at times his own dog, which escorted the soul to the river Styx. The winds were now the maruts, or spirits of the breeze, serving Indra, the sky-god; again they were the great psychopomp himself. The peasant who to-day tells you that dogs can see death enter the house where a person is about to die, merely repeats the idea of a primeval man whose ignorance of physical science was complete. FOOTNOTES: [105] 'Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas,' 199-203. [106] 'Notes on Folk-Lore,' 97. CHAPTER IX. The Corpse Candle--Its Peculiarities--The Woman of Caerau--Grasping a Corpse Candle--The Crwys Candle--Lights issuing from the Mouth--Jesting with the Canwyll Corph--The Candle at Pontfaen--The Three Candles at Golden Grove--Origin of Death-Portents in Wales--Degree of Belief prevalent at the Present Day--Origin of Spirits in General--The Supernatural--The Question of a Future Life. I. Perhaps the most picturesque of the several death-omens popular in Wales is the Canwyll Corph, or Corpse Candle. It is also, according to my observation, the most extensively believed in at the present day. Its details are varied and extremely interesting. The idea of a goblin in the form of a lighted tallow candle is ludicrous enough, at first sight; and indeed I know several learned Welsh gentlemen who venture to laugh at it; but the superstition grows more and more grim and less risible the better one becomes acquainted with it. It is worth noting here that the canwyll, or candle, is a more poetic thing among the Welsh--has a higher literary place, so to speak--than among English-speaking peoples. In the works of their ancient poets the candle is mentioned in passages where we should use the word light or lamp--as in this verse, which is attributed to Aneurin (sixth century): The best candle for man is prudence. The candle is the favourite figure for mental guidance among the Welsh;[107] there is no book in the Welsh language so popular as a certain work of religious counsel by a former Vicar of Llandovery, called 'The Candle of the Cymry.' The Corpse Candle is always and invariably a death-warning. It sometimes appears as a stately flambeau, stalking along unsupported, burning with a ghastly blue flame. Sometimes it is a plain tallow 'dip' in the hand of a ghost, and when the ghost is seen distinctly it is recognised as the ghost of some person yet living, who will now soon die. This, it will be noticed, is a variation upon the wraith, or Lledrith. Sometimes the goblin is a light which issues from a person's mouth or nostrils. According to the belief of some sections, the size of the candle indicates the age of the person who is about to die, being large when it is a full-grown person whose death is foretold, small when it is a child, still smaller when an infant. Where two candles together are seen, one of which is large and the other small, it is a mother and child who are to die. When the flame is white, the doomed person is a woman; when red, a man. FOOTNOTE: [107] Stephens, 'Lit. of the Kymry,' 287. (New Ed., 1876.) II. Among the accounts of the Corpse Candle which have come under my notice none are more interesting than those given me by a good dame whom I encountered at Caerau, near Cardiff. Caerau is a little village of perhaps one hundred souls, crouched at the foot of a steep hill on whose summit are the ancient earthworks of a Roman camp. On this summit also stands the parish church, distinctly visible from Cardiff streets, so ponderous is its square tower against the sky. To walk there is a pleasant stroll from the late Marquis of Bute's statue in the centre of the seaport town. I am thus particular merely for emphasis of the fact that this superstition is not confined to remote and out-of-the-way districts. Caerau is rural, and its people are all poor people, perhaps; but its church is barely three miles from the heart of a busy seaport. In this church I met the voluble Welshwoman who gave me the accounts referred to. One was to this effect: One night her sister was lying very ill at the narrator's house, and she was alone with her children, her husband being in the lunatic asylum at Cardiff. She had just put the children to bed, and had set her candle on the floor preparatory to going to bed herself, when there came a 'swish' along the floor, like the rustling of grave-clothes, and the candle was blown out. The room, however, to her surprise, remained glowing with a feeble light as from a very small taper, and looking behind her she beheld 'old John Richards,' who had been dead ten years. He held a Corpse Candle in his hand, and he looked at her in a chill and steadfast manner which caused the blood to run cold in her veins. She turned and woke her eldest boy, and said to him, 'Don't you see old John Richards?' The boy asked 'Where?' rubbing his eyes. She pointed out the ghost, and the boy was so frightened at sight of it that he cried out 'O wi! O Dduw! I wish I may die!' The ghost then disappeared, the Corpse Candle in its hand; the candle on the floor burned again with a clear light, and the next day the sick sister died. Another account ran somewhat thus: The narrator's mother-in-law was ill with a cancer of the breast. 'Jenny fach,' she said to the narrator one night, 'sleep by me--I feel afraid.' 'Hach!' said Jenny, thinking the old woman was foolishly nervous; but she stayed. As she was lying in bed by the side of her mother-in-law, she saw at the foot of the bed the faint flame of a Corpse Candle, which shed no light at all about the room; the place remained as dark as it was before. She looked at it in a sort of stupor for a short time, and then raised herself slowly up in bed and reached out to see if she could grasp the candle. Her fingers touched it, but it immediately went out in a little shower of pale sparkles that fell downward. At that moment her mother-in-law uttered a groan, and expired. 'Do you know Thomas Mathews, sir?' she asked me; 'he lives at Crwys now, but he used to live here at Caerau.' 'Crwys?' I repeated, not at once comprehending. 'Oh, you must know Crwys, sir; it's just the other side of Cardiff, towards Newport.' 'Can you spell it for me?'[108] The woman blushed. ''Deed, sir,' said she, 'I ought to be a scholar, but I've had so much trouble with my old man that I've quite forgot my spellin'.' However, the story of Thomas Mathews was to the effect that he saw a Corpse Candle come out of his father's mouth and go to his feet, and away a bit, then back again to the mouth, which it did not exactly enter, but blended as it were with the sick man's body. I asked if the candle was tallow at any point in its excursion, to which I was gravely answered that it was the spirit of tallow. The man died not long after, in the presence of my informant, who described the incident with a dramatic force and fervour peculiarly Celtic, concluding with the remark: 'Well, well, there's only one way to come into the world, but there's a many ways to go out of it.' The light issuing from the mouth is a fancy frequently encountered. In the 'Liber Landavensis' it is mentioned that one day as St. Samson was celebrating the holy mysteries, St. Dubricius with two monks saw a stream of fire to proceed glittering from his mouth.[109] In old woodcuts, the souls of the dying are represented as issuing from the mouth in the form of small human figures; and the Tyrolese peasants still fancy the soul is seen coming out of the mouth of a dying man like a little white cloud.[110] From the mouth of a patient in a London hospital some time since the nurses observed issuing a pale bluish flame, and soon after the man died. The frightened nurses--not being acquainted with the corpse-candle theory of such things--imagined the torments of hell had already begun in the still living body. A scientific explanation of the phenomenon ascribed it to phosphuretted hydrogen, a result of incipient decomposition.[111] FOOTNOTES: [108] It is pronounced Croo-iss. [109] 'Liber Landavensis,' 299. [110] Tylor, 'Primitive Culture,' 391. [111] 'Transactions Cardiff Nat. Soc.,' iv. 5. III. It is ill jesting with the Corpse Candle. Persons who have endeavoured to stop it on its way have come severely to grief thereby. Many have been struck down where they stood, in punishment of their audacity, as in the case of William John, a blacksmith of Lanboydi. He was one night going home on horseback, when he saw a Corpse Candle, and his natural caution being at the moment somewhat overcome by potables, he resolved to go out of his way to obstruct its passage. As the candle drew near he saw a corpse upon a bier, the corpse of a woman he knew, and she held the candle between her forefingers, and dreadfully grinned at him. Then he was struck from his horse, and lay in the road a long time insensible, and was ill for weeks thereafter. Meantime, the woman whose spectral corpse he had seen, died and was buried, her funeral passing by that road. A clergyman's son in Carmarthenshire, (subsequently himself a preacher,) who in his younger days was somewhat vicious, came home one night late from a debauch, and found the doors locked. Fearing to disturb the folk, and fearing also their reproaches and chidings for his staying out so late, (as many a young fellow has felt before and since,) he went to the man-servant, who slept in an out-room, as is sometimes the custom in Welsh rural districts. He could not awake the man-servant, but while standing over him, he saw a small light issue from the servant's nostrils, which soon became a Corpse Candle. He followed it out. It came to a foot-bridge which crossed a rivulet. Here the young man became inspired with the idea of trying an experiment with the Corpse Candle. He raised the end of the foot-bridge off the bank, and watched to see what the ghostly light would do. When it came to the rivulet it seemed to offer to go over, but hesitated, as if loth to cross except upon the bridge. So the young man put the bridge back in its place, and stayed to see how the candle would act. It came on the bridge, and as it passed the young man it struck him, as with a handkerchief. But though the blow was thus light and phantom-like, it doubled the young man up and left him a senseless heap on the ground, where he lay till morning, when he recovered and went home. It is needless to add that the servant died. IV. Morris Griffith was once schoolmaster in the parish of Pontfaen, in Pembrokeshire, but subsequently became a Baptist preacher of the Gospel. He tells this story: 'As I was coming from a place called Tre-Davydd, and was come to the top of the hill, I saw a great light down in the valley, which I wondered at; for I could not imagine what it meant. But it came to my mind that it was a light before a burying, though I never could believe before that there was such a thing. The light which I saw then was a very red light, and it stood still for about a quarter of an hour in the way which went towards Llanferch-Llawddog church. I made haste to the other side of the hill, that I might see it farther; and from thence I saw it go along to the churchyard, where it stood still for a little time and entered into the church. I remained waiting to see it come out, and it was not long before it came out, and went to a certain part of the churchyard, where it stood a little time, and then vanished out of my sight. A few days afterwards, being in school with the children about noon, I heard a great noise overhead, as if the top of the house was coming down. I ran out to see the garret, and there was nothing amiss. A few days afterwards, Mr. Higgon of Pontfaen's son died. When the carpenter came to fetch the boards to make the coffin, (which were in the garret,) he made exactly such a stir, in handling the boards in the garret, as was made before by some spirit, who foreknew the death that was soon to come to pass. In carrying the body to the grave, the burying stood where the light had stood for about a quarter of an hour, because there was some water crossing the way, and the people could not go over it without wetting their feet, therefore they were obliged to wait till those that had boots helped them over. The child was buried in that very spot of ground in the churchyard, where I saw the light stop after it came out of the church. This is what I can boldly testify, having seen and heard what I relate--a thing which before I could not believe.' Joshua Coslet, before mentioned in these pages, suddenly met a Corpse Candle as he was going through Heol Bwlch y Gwynt, (Windgap Lane) in Llandilo Fawr parish. It was a small light when near him, but increased as it went farther from him. He could easily see that there was some dark shadow passing along with the candle, and the shadow of a man carried it, holding it 'between his three forefingers over against his face.' He might perhaps have seen more, but he was afraid to look too earnestly upon it. Not long after, a burying passed through Heol Bwlch y Gwynt. Another time he saw the likeness of a candle carried in a skull. 'There is nothing unlikely or unreasonable in either of these representations,' says the Prophet Jones, their historian. A Carmarthenshire tradition relates that one day, when the coach which runs between Llandilo and Carmarthen was passing by Golden Grove, the property of the Earl of Cawdor, three Corpse Candles were observed on the surface of the water gliding down the stream which runs near the road. All the passengers saw them. A few days after, some men were about crossing the river near there in a coracle, when one of them expressed his fear at venturing, as the river was flooded, and he remained behind. Thus the fatal number crossed the river--three--three Corpse Candles having foretold their fate; and all were drowned. V. Tradition ascribes the origin of all these death-portents to the efforts of St. David. This saint appears to have been a great and good man, and a zealous Catholic, who, as a contemporary of the historical Arthur, is far enough back in the dim past to meet the views of romantic minds. And a prelate who by his prayers and presence could enable King Arthur to overthrow the Saxons in battle, or who by his pious learning could single-handed put down the Pelagian heresy in the Cardiganshire synod, was surely strong enough to invoke the Gwrach y Rhibyn, the Cyhyraeth, the Corpse Candle, and all the dreadful brood. This the legend relates he did by a special appeal to Heaven. Observing that the people in general were careless of the life to come, and could not be brought to mind it, and make preparation for it, St. David prayed that Heaven would give a sign of the immortality of the soul, and of a life to come, by a presage of death. Since that day, Wales, and particularly that part of Wales included in the bishopric of St. David, has had these phantoms. More materialistic minds consider these portents to be a remainder of those practices by which the persecuted Druids performed their rites and long kept up their religion in the land which Christianity had claimed: a similar origin, in fact, is here found for goblin omens as for fairies. That these various portents are extensively believed in at the present day there cannot be a doubt; with regard to the most important of them, I am able to testify with the fullest freedom; I have heard regarding them story after story, from the lips of narrators whose sincerity was expressed vividly in face, tones, and behaviour. The excited eye, the paling cheek, the bated breath, the sinking voice, the intense and absorbed manner--familiar phenomena in every circle where ghost stories are told--evidenced the perfect sincerity, at least, of the speakers. It is unnecessary here to repeat, what I for my own part never forget, nor, I trust, does the reader, that Wales is no exception to the rest of the world in its credulity. That it is more picturesque is true, and it is also true that there is here an unusual amount of legend which has not hitherto found its way into books. Death-omens are common to all lands; even in America, there are tales of the banshee, imported from Ireland along with the sons of that soil. In one recent case which came under my notice the banshee belonged to a Cambridgeshire Englishman. This was at Evansville, Indiana, and the banshee had appeared before the deaths of five members of a family, the last of whom was the father. His name was Feast, and the circumstances attending the banshee's visits were gravely described in a local journal as a matter of news. Less distinguished death-portents are common enough in the United States. That the Cambrian portents are so picturesque and clearly defined must be considered strong testimony to the vivid imagination of the Welsh. Figures born of the fancy, as distinguished from creatures born of the flesh, prove their parentage by the vagueness of their outlines. The outlines of the Cyhyraeth and the Gwrach y Rhibyn sometimes run into and mingle with each other, and so do those of the Tolaeth and the Goblin Funeral; but the wonder is they are such distinct entities as they are. VI. To say that all the visible inhabitants of the mundane spirit-world are creatures of the disordered human liver, is perhaps a needless harshness of statement. The question of a future life is not involved in this subject, nor raised by the best writers who are studying it; but, religious belief quite apart, it remains to be proved that spirits of a supernatural world have any share in the affairs of a world governed by natural law. A goblin which manifests itself to the human eye, it seems to me, becomes natural, by bowing before the natural laws which rule in optics. Yet believers in ghosts find no difficulty in this direction; the word 'supernatural' covers a multitude of sins. 'What is the supernatural?' asks Disraeli, in 'Lothair.' 'Can there be anything more miraculous than the existence of man and the world? anything more literally supernatural than the origin of things?' Surely, in this life, nothing! The student who endeavours to govern his faith by the methods of science asks no more of any ghost that ever walked the earth, than that it will prove itself a reality. Man loves the marvellous. The marvels of science, however, do not melt away into thin air on close examination. They thrive under the severest tests, and grow more and more extraordinary the more they are tried. The spectroscope and the radiometer are more wonderful than any 'supernatural' thing yet heard of. Transportation through the air in the arms of a spirit is a clear impossibility; but it is less wonderful than the every-day feats of electricity in our time, the bare conception of which would have filled Plato and Aristotle with awe. The actual origin of the phantoms of the spirit-world is to be found in the lawless and luxuriant fancy of primeval man. The creatures of this fancy have been perpetuated throughout all time, unto our own day, by that passionate yearning in men for continued life and love, which is ineradicable in our nature. Men will not, they can not, accept the doubt which plunges an eternal future into eternal darkness, and separates them for ever from the creatures of their love. Hence, when the remorseless fact of Death removes those creatures, they look, with a longing which is indescribably pathetic, into the Unknown where their beloved have gone, and strive to see them in their spirit-life. On this verge the finite mind must pause; to question that life is to add a terrible burden to all human woe; it need not be questioned. But to question the power of anything in that life to manifest itself to man through natural law, is to do what science has a right to do. 'The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing ... neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.'[112] FOOTNOTE: [112] 'Eccles.' ix., 5, 6. [Illustration: {SPRIG OF LILY OF THE VALLEY.}] BOOK III. QUAINT OLD CUSTOMS. Where in an agede cell with moss and iveye growne, In which nor to this daye the sunn had ever showne, Their reverend British saint, in zealous ages paste, To contemplation lived, and did so truly faste, As he did onlie drink what chrystal [rivers] yields, And fed upon the leakes he gather'd in the fields: In memory of whom, in the revolving year, The Welchman on that daye that sacred herb doth wear. _MS. in Bodleian Library._ CHAPTER I. Serious Significance of seemingly Trivial Customs--Their Origins--Common Superstitions--The Age we Live in--Days and Seasons--New Year's Day--The Apple Gift--Lucky Acts on New Year's Morning--The First Foot--Showmen's Superstitions--Levy Dew Song--Happy New Year Carol--Twelfth Night--The Mari Lwyd--The Penglog--The Cutty Wren--Tooling and Sowling--St. Valentine's Day--St. Dewi's Day--The Wearing of the Leek--The Traditional St. David--St. Patrick's Day--St. Patrick a Welshman--Shrove Tuesday. I. Numberless customs in Wales which appear to be meaningless, to people of average culture, are in truth replete with meaning. However trivial they may seem, they are very seldom the offspring of mere fooling. The student of comparative folk-lore is often able to trace their origin with surprising distinctness, and to evolve from them a significance before unsuspected. In many cases these quaint old customs are traced to the primeval mythology. Others are clearly seen to be of Druidical origin. Many spring from the rites and observances of the Roman Catholic Church in the early days of Christianity on Welsh soil--where, as is now generally conceded, the Gospel was first preached in Great Britain. Some embody historical traditions; and some are the outgrowth of peculiar states of society in medieval times. Directly or indirectly, they are all associated with superstition, though in many instances they have quite lost any superstitious character in our day. Modern society is agreed, with respect to many curious old customs, to view them as the peculiar possession of ignorance. It is very instructive to note, in this connection, how blandly we accept some of the most superstitious of these usages, with tacit approval, and permit them to govern our conduct. In every civilised community, in every enlightened land on earth, there are many men and women to whom this remark applies, who would deem themselves shamefully insulted should you doubt their intelligence and culture. Men and women who 'smile superior' at the idea of Luther hurling inkstands at the devil, or at the Welsh peasant who thinks a pig can see the wind, will themselves avoid beginning a journey on a Friday, view as ominous a rainy wedding-day, throw an old slipper after a bride for luck, observe with interest the portents of their nightly dreams, shun seeing the new moon over the left shoulder, throw a pinch of salt over the same member when the salt-cellar is upset, tie a red string about the neck to cure nose-bleed, and believe in the antics of the modern spiritualistic 'control.' Superstition, however, they leave to the ignorant! The examples of every-day fetichism here cited are familiar to us, not specially among the Welsh, but among the English also, and the people of the United States--who, I may again observe, are no doubt as a people uncommonly free from superstition, in comparison with the older nations of the earth; but modesty is a very becoming wear for us all, in examining into other people's superstitions. Aside from their scientific interest, there is a charm about many of the quaint customs of the Welsh, which speaks eloquently to most hearts. They are the offspring of ignorance, true, but they touch the 'good old times' of the poet and the romancer, when the conditions of life were less harsh than now. So we love to think. As a matter of scientific truth, this idea is itself, alas! but a superstition. This world has probably never been so fair a place to live in, life never so free from harsh conditions, as now; and as time goes on, there can be no doubt the improving process will continue. The true halcyon days of man are to be looked for in the future--not in the past; but with that future we shall have no mortal part. II. In treating of customs, no other classification is needful than their arrangement in orderly sequence in two divisions: first, those which pertain to certain days and seasons; second, those relating to the most conspicuous events in common human life, courtship, marriage, and death. Beginning with the year: there is in Glamorganshire a New Year's Day custom of great antiquity and large present observance, called the apple gift, or New Year's gift. In every town and village you will encounter children, on and about New Year's Day, going from door to door of shops and houses, bearing an apple or an orange curiously tricked out. Three sticks in the form of a tripod are thrust into it to serve as a rest; its sides are smeared with flour or meal, and stuck over with oats or wheat, or bits of broken lucifer matches to represent oats; its top is covered with thyme or other sweet evergreen, and a skewer is inserted in one side as a handle to hold it by. In its perfection, this piece of work is elaborate; but it is now often a decrepit affair, in the larger towns, where the New Year is welcomed (as at Cardiff) by a midnight chorus of steam-whistles. [Illustration: THE NEW YEAR'S APPLE.] The Christian symbolism of this custom is supposed to relate to the offering, by the Wise Men, of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus. The older interpretation, however, takes the custom back to the Druidic days, and makes it a form of the solar myth. In the three supporting sticks of the apple are seen the three rays of the sun, /|\, the mystic Name of the Creator; the apple is the round sun itself; the evergreens represent its perennial life; and the grains of wheat, or oats, Avagddu's spears. Avagddu is the evil principle of darkness--hell, or the devil--with which the sun fights throughout the winter for the world's life. Thousands of children in Wales seek to win from their elders a New Year's copper by exhibiting the apple gift, or by singing in chorus their good wishes. A popular verse on this occasion hopes the hearer will be blessed with an abundance of money in his pocket and of beer in his cellar, and draws attention to the singers' thin shoes and the bad character of the walking. In many cases the juvenile population parades the street all night, sometimes with noisy fife bands, which follow the death knell, as it sounds from the old church tower, with shrill peals of a merrier if not more musical sort. In Pembrokeshire, to rise early on New Year's morning is considered luck-bringing. On that morning also it is deemed wise to bring a fresh loaf into the house, with the superstition that the succession of loaves throughout the year will be influenced by that incident. A rigid quarantine is also set up, to see that no female visitor cross the threshold first on New Year's morning; that a male visitor shall be the first to do so is a lucky thing, and the reverse unlucky. A superstition resembling this prevails to this day in America among showmen. 'There's no showman on the road,' said an American manager of my acquaintance, 'who would think of letting a lady be first to pass through the doors when opening them for a performance. There's a sort of feeling that it brings ill-luck. Then there are cross-eyed people; many a veteran ticket-seller loses all heart when one presents himself at the ticket-window. A cross-eyed patron and a bad house generally go together. A cross-eyed performer would be a regular Jonah. With circuses there is a superstition that a man with a yellow clarionet brings bad luck.' Another well-known New York manager in a recent conversation assured me that to open an umbrella in a new play is deemed certain failure for the piece. An umbrella may be carried closed with impunity, but it must not be opened unless the author desire to court failure. The Chinese have the Pembrokeshire superstition exactly, as regards the first foot on New Year's Day. They consider a woman peculiarly unlucky as a first foot after the New Year has begun, but a Buddhist priest is even more unlucky than a woman, in this light.[113] Another Pembrokeshire custom on New Year's morning is quaint and interesting. As soon as it is light, children of the peasantry hasten to provide a small cup of pure spring water, just from the well, and go about sprinkling the faces of those they meet, with the aid of a sprig of evergreen. At the same time they sing the following verses: Here we bring new water from the well so clear, For to worship God with, this happy new year; Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine, With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine; Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her toe; Open you the west door and turn the old year go; Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her chin; Open you the east door and let the new year in! This custom also is still observed extensively. The words 'levy dew' are deemed an English version of Llef i Dduw, (a cry to God). A Welsh song sung on New Year's Day, in Glamorganshire, by boys in chorus, somewhat after the Christmas carol fashion, is this: Blwyddyn newydd dda i chwi, Gwyliau llawen i chwi, Meistr a meistres bob un trwy'r ty, Gwyliau llawen i chwi, Codwch yn foreu, a rheswch y tan, A cherddwch i'r ffynon i ymofyn dwr glan. A happy new year to you, Merry be your holidays, Master and mistress--every one in the house; Arise in the morning; bestir the fire, And go to the well to fetch fresh water. FOOTNOTE: [113] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 31. III. Among Twelfth Night customs, none is more celebrated than that called Mary Lwyd. It prevails in various parts of Wales, notably in lower Glamorganshire. The skeleton of a horse's head is procured by the young men or boys of a village, and adorned with 'favours' of pink, blue, yellow, etc. These are generally borrowed from the girls, as it is not considered necessary the silken fillets and rosettes should be new, and such finery costs money. The bottoms of two black bottles are inserted in the sockets of the skeleton head to serve as eyes, and a substitute for ears is also contrived. On Twelfth Night they carry this object about from house to house, with shouts and songs, and a general cultivation of noise and racket. Sometimes a duet is sung in Welsh, outside a door, the singers begging to be invited in; if the door be not opened they tap on it, and there is frequently quite a series of _awen_ sung, the parties within denying the outsiders admission, and the outsiders urging the same. At last the door is opened, when in bounces the merry crowd, among them the Mary Lwyd, borne by one personating a horse, who is led by another personating the groom. The horse chases the girls around the room, capering and neighing, while the groom cries, 'So ho, my boy--gently, poor fellow!' and the girls, of course, scream with merriment. A dance follows--a reel, performed by three young men, tricked out with ribbons. The company is then regaled with cakes and ale, and the revellers depart, pausing outside the door to sing a parting song of thanks and good wishes to their entertainers. The penglog (a skull, a noddle) is a similar custom peculiar to Aberconwy (Conway) in Carnarvonshire. In this case the horse's skull is an attention particularly bestowed upon prudes. Mary Lwyd may mean Pale Mary, or Wan Mary, or Hoary Mary, but the presumption is that it means in this case Blessed Mary, and that the custom is of papal origin. There is, however, a tradition which links the custom with enchantment, in connection with a warlike princess, reputed to have flourished in Gwent and Morganwg in the early ages, and who is to be seen to this day, mounted on her steed, on a rock in Rhymney Dingle.[114] The cutty wren is a Pembrokeshire Twelfth Night custom prevailing commonly during the last century, but now nearly extinct. A wren was placed in a little house of paper, with glass windows, and this was hoisted on four poles, one at each corner. Four men bore it about, singing a very long ballad, of which one stanza will be enough: [Music: O! where are you go-ing? says Mil-der to Mel-der, O! where are you go-ing? says the youn-ger to the el-der; O! I can-not tell, says Fes-tel to Fose; We're go-ing to the woods, said John the Red Nose, We're go-ing to the woods, said John the Red Nose!] The immediate purpose of this rite was to levy contributions. Another such custom was called 'tooling,' and its purpose was beer. It consisted in calling at the farm-houses and pretending to look for one's tools behind the beer cask. 'I've left my saw behind your beer cask,' a carpenter would say; 'my whip,' a carter; and received the tool by proxy, in the shape of a cup of ale. The female portion of the poorer sort, on the other hand, practised what was called sowling, viz., asking for 'sowl,' and receiving, accordingly, any food eaten with bread, such as cheese, fish, or meat. This custom is still maintained, and 'sowling day' fills many a poor woman's bag. The phrase is supposed to be from the French _soûl_, signifying one's fill. FOOTNOTE: [114] Vide W. Roberts's 'Crefydd yr Oesoedd Tywyll,' 1. IV. Connected with St. Valentine's Day, there is no Welsh custom which demands notice here; but it is perhaps worthy of mention that nowhere in the world is the day more abundantly productive of its orthodox crop--love-letters. The post-offices in the Principality are simply deluged with these missives on the eve and morning of St. Valentine's. In Cardiff the postmaster thinks himself lucky if he gets off with fifteen thousand letters in excess of the ordinary mail. Nineteen extra sorters and carriers were employed for this work on February 14th, 1878, and the regular force also was heavily worked beyond its usual hours. The custom is more Norman than Cambrian, I suppose; the word Valentine comes from the Norman word for a lover, and the saint is a mere accident in this connection. V. St. Dewi is to the Welsh what St. George is to the English, St. Andrew to the Scotch, and St. Patrick to the Irish. His day is celebrated on the 1st of March throughout Wales, and indeed throughout the world where Welshmen are. In some American ports (perhaps all) the British consulate displays its flag in honour of the day. In Wales there are processions, grand dinners; places of business are closed; the poor are banqueted; speeches are made and songs are sung. The most characteristic feature of the day is the wearing of the leek. This feature is least conspicuous, it may be noted, in those parts of Wales where the English residents are fewest, and least of all in the ultra-Welsh shires of Cardigan and Carmarthen, where St. David is peculiarly honoured. The significance of this fact no doubt lies in the absence of any necessity for asserting a Cambrianism which there are none to dispute. In the border towns, every Welshman who desires to assert his national right wears the leek in his hat or elsewhere on his person; but in the shadow of St. David's College at Lampeter, not a leek is seen on St. Dewi's Day. In Glamorganshire may be found the order of Knights of the Leek, who hold high festival on the 1st of every March, gathering in the Welsh bards and men of letters. Why is the leek worn? Practically, because the wearer is a Welshman who honours tradition. But the precise origin of the custom is involved in an obscurity from which emerge several curious and interesting traditions. The verses cited at the opening of this Part refer to one of these; they are quoted by Manby[115] without other credit than 'a very antient manuscript.' Another tradition is thus given in a pamphlet of 1642:[116] 'S. David when hee always went into the field in Martiall exercise he carried a Leek with him, and once being almost faint to death, he immediately remembred himself of the Leek, and by that means not only preserved his life but also became victorious: hence is the Mythologie of the Leek derived.' The practice is traced by another writer[117] to 'the custom of Cymhortha, or the neighbourly aid practised among farmers, which is of various kinds. In some districts of South Wales all the neighbours of a small farmer without means appoint a day when they all attend to plough his land, and the like; and at such a time it is a custom for each individual to bring his portion of leeks, to be used in making pottage for the whole company; and they bring nothing else but the leeks in particular for the occasion.' Some find the true origin of the custom in Druidical days, but their warrant is not clear, nor how it came to be associated with the 1st of March in that case. The military origin bears down the scale of testimony, and gives the leek the glory of a Cambrian victory as its consecrator to ornamental purposes. Whether this victory was over the Saxon or the Gaul does not exactly appear; some traditions say one, some the other. The battle of Poictiers has been named; also that of Cressy, where the Welsh archers did good service with the English against a common enemy; but an older tradition is to the effect that the Saxon was the foe. The invaders had assumed the dress of the Britons, that they might steal upon them unsuspected; but St. David ordered the Welshmen to stick leeks in their caps as a badge of distinction. This he did merely because there was a large field of leeks growing near the British camp. The precaution gave the day to the favoured of St. Dewi. It cannot be denied that there have been found Englishmen rude enough to ridicule this honourable and ancient custom of the Welsh, though why they should do so there is no good reason. The leek is not fragrant, perhaps; but if an old custom must smell sweet or be laughed at, there is work enough for our risibles in every English parish. The following is one of the foolish legends of the English respecting the leek: 'The Welsh in olden days were so infested by ourang outangs that they could obtain no peace day or night, and not being themselves able to extirpate them they invited the English to assist, who came; but through mistake killed several of the Welsh, so that in order to distinguish them from the monkeys they desired them to stick a leek in their hats.' The author of this ridiculous tale deserves the fate of Pistol, whom Fluellen compelled to eat his leek, skin and all. _Flu._ I peseech you heartily, scurvy lowsy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek; because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections, and your appetites, and your digestions, does not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it. _Pist._ Not for Cadwallader, and all his goats. _Flu._ There is one goat for you. [_Strikes him._] Will you be so good, scald knave, as eat it? _Pist._ Base Trojan, thou shalt die. _Flu._ You say very true, scald knave, when Got's will is: I will desire you to live in the meantime, and eat your victuals.... If you can mock a leek you can eat a leek.... _Pist._ Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see, I eat. _Flu._ Much goot do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, 'pray you, throw none away; the skin is goot for your proken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at them! that is all.[118] FOOTNOTES: [115] 'Hist. and Ant. of the Parish of St. David,' 54. [116] 'The Welchmen's Ivbilee to the honour of St. David, shewing the manner of that solemn celebration which the Welchmen annually hold in honour of St. David, describing likewise the trve and reall cause why they wear that day a _Leek_ on their Hats, with an excellent merry Sonnet annexed unto it, composed by T. Morgan Gent. London. Printed for I. Harrison.' [117] Owen, 'Camb. Biog.' 86. [118] Shaks., 'K. Henry V.,' Act V., Sc. 1. VI. The traditional St. David is a brilliant figure in Welsh story; with the historical character this work has not to deal. The legendary account of him represents a man of gigantic stature and fabulous beauty, whose age at his death was 147 years. He was a direct descendant of the sister of the Virgin Mary, and his first miracles were performed while he was yet unborn. In this condition he regulated the diet of his virgin mother, and struck dumb a preacher who presumed to preach in her presence. At the hour of his birth St. Dewi performed a miracle; another when he was baptized; and he was taught his lessons (at a place called The Old Bush, in South Wales) by a pigeon with a golden beak, which played about his lips. As he grew up, his miraculous powers waxed stronger; and magicians who opposed him were destroyed by fire which he called from heaven to consume them. Thirsty, a fountain rose in Glyn Hodnant at his call, and from this fountain ran not water but good wine. When he went about the country he was always accompanied by an angel. On the banks of the river Teify, a miserable woman wept over her son who lay dead; she appealed to Dewi, who laid hold of the boy's right hand and he arose from the dead as if from a sleep. At Llandewi Brefi, in Cardiganshire, as he was preaching on the surface of the flat ground, the ground rose as a high mount under his feet, so that the people all about could see him as well as hear him. A labourer lifted his pickaxe to strike a friend of Dewi's, which the saint seeing from afar off, raised his hand and willed that the labourer's hand should become stiff--which it did. Another friend, going away to Ireland, forgot and left behind him a little bell that Dewi had given him; but Dewi sent the bell across the sea by an angel, so that it arrived there next day without the aid of human hands. And finally, having made up his mind that he would die and go to heaven, he did so--but quite of his own will--at his own request, so to speak. Having asked that his soul might be taken, an angel informed him it would be taken on the first of March proximo. So David bade his friends good-bye on the 28th of February, greatly to their distress. 'Alas!' they cried, 'the earth will not swallow us! Alas! fire will not consume us! Alas! the sea will not come over the land! Alas! the mountains will not fall to cover us!' On Tuesday night, as the cocks were crowing, a host of angels thronged the streets of the city, and filled it with joy and mirth; and Dewi died. 'The angels took his soul to the place where there is light without end, and rest without labour, and joy without sorrow, and plenty of all good things, and victory, and brightness, and beauty.' There Abel is with the martyrs, Noah is with the sailors, Thomas is with the Indians, Peter is with the apostles, Paul is with the Greeks, other saints are with other suitable persons, and David is with the kings.[119] On the summit which rose under St. Dewi while he stood on it and preached, now stands St. David's church, at Llandewi Brefi. In the days of its glory--i.e. during nearly the whole period of Roman Catholic rule--it was renowned beyond all others in Britain. To go twice to St. David's was deemed equal to going once to Rome, and a superstitious belief prevailed that every man must go to St. David's once, either alive or dead. William the Conqueror marched through Wales in hostile array in 1080, but arriving at St. David's shrine laid aside the warrior for the votary. FOOTNOTE: [119] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 402, etc. VII. St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in Wales with much enthusiasm. The Welsh believe that St. Patrick was a Welshman. Born at Llandeilo Talybont, in Glamorganshire, and educated at the famous college of Llantwit Major, he held St. David's place till the coming of Dewi was announced to him; then he went into Ireland, to do missionary work, as it were. This is the monastic tale. Patrick was comfortably settled in the valley of Rosina, and intended to pass his life there, but an angel came to him and said, 'Thou must leave this place to one who is not yet born.' Patrick was annoyed, even angered, but obedient, and went off to Ireland, where he became a great man.[120] The story of the Iolo MSS., however, presents the matter in a different light: 'About A.D. 420 the Island of Britain seemed to have neither ruler nor proprietor.' The Irish took advantage of this state of things to invade and oppress Britain, robbing her of corn, cattle, 'and every other moveable property that they could lay their hands on.' Among other things, they stole away St. Patrick from the college at Llantwit Major, 'whence that college became destitute of a principal and teacher for more than forty years, and fell into dilapidation'--a condition it remains in at present, by the way. 'Patrick never returned to Wales, choosing rather to reside in Ireland; having ascertained that the Irish were better people than the Welsh, in those times.'[121] Still, it is not the native Welsh who are as a rule the celebrators of St. Patrick's Day in Wales. FOOTNOTES: [120] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 403. [121] Iolo MSS., 455. VIII. Shrove Tuesday was once characterised by a custom called throwing at cocks, now obsolete. Hens which had laid no eggs before that day were threshed with a flail, as being good for nothing. The person who hit the hen with the flail and killed her got her for his reward. The more reputable custom of cramming with crammwythau (pancakes) still survives, and is undoubtedly of extreme antiquity. CHAPTER II. Sundry Lenten Customs--Mothering Sunday--Palm Sunday--Flowering Sunday--Walking Barefoot to Church--Spiritual Potency of Buns--Good Friday Superstitions--Making Christ's Bed--Bad Odour of Friday--Unlucky Days--Holy Thursday--The Eagle of Snowdon--New Clothing at Easter--Lifting--The Crown of Porcelain--Stocsio--Ball-Playing in Churchyards--The Tump of Lies--Dancing in Churchyards--Seeing the Sun Dance--Calan Ebrill, or All Fools' Day--May Day--The Welsh Maypole--The Daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint--Carrying the Kings of Summer and Winter. I. Wearing mourning throughout Lent was formerly common in Wales. In Monmouthshire, Mothering Sunday--the visiting of parents on Mid-Lent Sunday--was observed in the last century, but is nowhere popular in Wales at present. Palm Sunday takes precedence among the Welsh, and is very extensively and enthusiastically observed. The day is called Flowering Sunday, and its peculiar feature is strewing the graves of the dead with flowers. The custom reaches all classes, and all parts of the Principality. In the large towns, as Cardiff, many thousands of people gather at the graves. The custom is associated with the strewing of palms before Christ on his entry into Jerusalem, but was observed by the British Druids in celebration of the awakening life of the earth at this season. II. In Pembrokeshire, it was customary up to the close of the last century, to walk barefoot to church on Good Friday, as had been done since times prior to the Reformation. The old people and the young joined in this custom, which they said was done so as not to 'disturb the earth.' All business was suspended, and no horse nor cart was to be seen in the town. Hot-cross buns also figured in a peculiar manner at this time. They were eaten in Tenby after the return from church. After having tied up a certain number in a bag, the folk hung them in the kitchen, where they remained till the next Good Friday, for use as medicine. It was believed that persons labouring under any disease had only to eat a portion of a bun to be cured. The buns so preserved were used also as a panacea for all the diseases of domestic animals. They were further believed to be serviceable in frightening away goblins of an evil sort. That these buns are of Christian invention is the popular belief, and indeed this notion is not altogether exploded among the more intelligent classes. Their connection with the cross of the Saviour is possible by adoption--as the early Christians adopted many pagan rites and customs--but that they date back to pre-historic times there is abundant testimony. Innumerable are the superstitious customs and beliefs associated with Good Friday. In Pembrokeshire there was a custom called 'making Christ's bed.' A quantity of long reeds were gathered from the river and woven into the shape of a man. This effigy was then stretched on a wooden cross, and laid in some retired field or garden, and left there. The birth of a child on that day is very unlucky--indeed a birth on any Friday of the whole year is to be deprecated as a most unfortunate circumstance. III. The bad odour in which Friday is everywhere held is naturally associated, among Christians, with the crucifixion; but this will not account for the existence of a like superstition regarding Friday among the Brahmins of India, nor for the prevalence of other lucky and unlucky days among both Aryan and Mongolian peoples. In the Middle Ages Monday and Tuesday were unlucky days. A Welshman who lived some time in Russia, tells me Monday is deemed a very unlucky day there, on which no business must be begun. In some English districts Thursday is the unlucky day. In Norway it is lucky, especially for marrying. In South Wales, Friday is the fairies' day, when they have special command over the weather; and it is their whim to make the weather on Friday differ from that of the other days of the week. 'When the rest of the week is fair, Friday is apt to be rainy, or cloudy; and when the weather is foul, Friday is apt to be more fair.' The superstitious prejudice of the quarrymen in North Wales regarding Holy Thursday has been cited. It is not a reverential feeling, but a purely superstitious one, and has pervaded the district from ancient times. It has been supposed that Thursday was a sacred day among the Druids. There is a vulgar tradition (mentioned by Giraldus), that Snowdon mountains are frequented by an eagle, which perches on a fatal stone on every Thursday and whets her beak upon it, expecting a battle to occur, upon which she may satiate her hunger with the carcases of the slain; but the battle is ever deferred, and the stone has become almost perforated with the eagle's sharpening her beak upon it. There may perhaps be a connection traced between these superstitions and the lightning-god Thor, whose day Thursday was. IV. Easter is marked by some striking customs. It is deemed essential for one's well-being that some new article of dress shall be donned at this time, though it be nothing more than a new ribbon. This is also a Hampshire superstition. A servant of mine, born in Hampshire, used always to say, 'If you don't have on something new Easter Sunday the dogs will spit at you.' This custom is associated with Easter baptism, when a new life was assumed by the baptized, clothed in righteousness as a garment. A ceremony called 'lifting' is peculiar to North Wales on Easter Monday and Tuesday. On the Monday bands of men go about with a chair, and meeting a woman in the street compel her to sit, and be lifted three times in the air amidst their cheers: she is then invited to bestow a small compliment on her entertainers. This performance is kept up till twelve o'clock, when it ceases. On Easter Tuesday the women take their turn, and go about in like manner lifting the men. It has been conjectured that in this custom an allusion to the resurrection is intended. [Illustration: LIFTING. (_From an old drawing._)] A custom, the name of which is now lost, was that the village belle should on Easter Eve and Easter Tuesday carry on her head a piece of chinaware of curious shape, made expressly for this purpose, and useless for any other. It may be described as a circular crown of porcelain, the points whereof were cups and candles. The cups were solid details of the crown: the candles were stuck with clay upon the spaces between the cups. The cups were filled with a native beverage called bragawd, and the candles were lighted. To drink the liquor without burning yourself or the damsel at the candle was the difficulty involved in this performance. A stanza was sung by the young woman's companions, the last line of which was, Rhag i'r feinwen losgi ei thalcen. (Lest the maiden burn her forehead.[122]) Stocsio is an Easter Monday custom observed from time immemorial in the town of Aberconwy, and still practised there in 1835. On Easter Sunday crowds of men and boys carrying wands of gorse went to Pen Twthil, and there proclaimed the laws and regulations of the following day. They were to this effect: all men under sixty to be up and out before 6 A.M.; all under forty, before 4 A.M.; all under twenty, to stay up all night. Penalty for disobedience: the stocks. The crier who delivered this proclamation was the man last married in the town previous to Easter Sunday. Other like rules were proclaimed, amid loud cheers. Early next morning a party, headed by a fife and drum, patrolled the town with a cart, in search of delinquents. When one was discovered, he was hauled from his bed and made to dress himself; then put in the cart and dragged to the stocks. His feet being secured therein, he was duly lectured on the sin of laziness, and of breaking an ancient law of the town by lying abed in violation thereof. His right hand was then taken, and he was asked a lot of absurd questions, such as 'Which do you like best, the mistress or the maid?' 'Which do you prefer, ale or buttermilk?' 'If the gate of a field were open, would you go through it, or over the stile?' and the like. His answers being received with derision, his hand was smeared with mud, and he was then released amid cheers. 'This sport, which would be impracticable in a larger and less intimate community, is continued with the greatest good humour until eight; when the rest of the day is spent in playing ball at the Castle.'[123] FOOTNOTES: [122] 'Arch. Camb.' 4 Se., iii., 334. [123] 'Hist. and Ant. of Aberconwy,' 108. V. Ball-playing against the walls of the church between hours of service was a fashion of Easter which is within recollection. It was also common on the Sabbath day itself in many parishes, in the days when dissent was unknown and parishioners had long distances to traverse on a Sunday; 'and that, too, with the sanction of the clergyman, and even his personal superintendence. Old people can remember such a state of things, when the clergyman gave notice that the game must cease by putting the ball into his pocket and marched his young friends into church.'[124] Nowhere less than in a custom like this would the ordinary observer look for traditionary significance; yet there is no doubt our Easter eggs are but another surviving form of the same ancient rite. Before the Reformation there was a Church of England custom of playing ball _in_ church at Easter, according to Dr. Fosbrooke, the dean and clergy participating. There were other sports and pastimes common alike to Easter and to the Sabbath day, which are full of curious interest. Some of them no doubt arose out of the social exigencies of sparsely settled neighbourhoods, which caused people to remain at the church between services, instead of returning to distant homes; but a Druidic origin seems necessary to account for others. That the people should between services gather near the church to talk over the gossip of the day, is natural enough, and is a phenomenon which may still be witnessed in remote parts of the United States. In St. Dogmell's parish, Pembrokeshire, there is a tump which bears the name of 'Cnwc y Celwydd,' videlicet, the Tump of Lies. Here were men and women formerly in the habit of gathering together on the Lord's day in great crowds, and entertaining each other with the inventing and telling of the most lying and wonderful yarns they could conjure up with the aid of an imagination spurred to exercise by rivalry and applause. The custom is discontinued; but there is still hardly a neighbourhood in Wales so rich in tales of fairies and other goblins. The custom of dancing in churchyards was common in many parts of the Principality in the early part of this century. At Aberedwy, Malkin saw a large yew tree in the churchyard under which as many as sixty couples had been seen dancing at once.[125] The dancing was not in that part of the yard consecrated to the dead, but on the north side of the church, where it was not the custom to bury. A tradition is preserved by Giraldus of a solemn festival dance which took place in the churchyard at St. Almedha's church, Breconshire, on that saint's day. The dance was 'led round the churchyard with a song,' and succeeded by the dancers falling down in a trance, followed by a sort of religious frenzy. This is believed to have been a Druidical rite, described on hearsay by Giraldus, and embellished by him with those pious inventions not uncommon in his day. One of the customs of Easter, at a comparatively recent period in Wales, was getting the children up early in the morning to see the sun dance. This exercise the sun was said to perform at rising on Easter Day, in honour of the rising of our Lord. The sun was sometimes aided in this performance by a bowl of clear water, into which the youth must look to see the orb dance, as it would be dangerous to look directly on the sun while thus engaged. The religious dance of the ancient Druids is believed to exist in modern times in a round dance wherein the figures imitate the motions of the sun and moon. The ball-playing in church mentioned above was also accompanied by dancing. FOOTNOTES: [124] 'Arch. Camb.' 4 Se., iii., 333. [125] Malkin's 'South Wales,' 281. VI. The first of April is in Welsh called Calan Ebrill, and an April Fool a Ffwl Ebrill; the similarity of English and Welsh words may be said to typify the similarity of observance. The universality of this observance among Aryan peoples would certainly indicate an origin in a time preceding the dispersion of the human family over the world. The Druids, tradition says, celebrated the revival of Nature's powers in a festival which culminated on the first of April in the most hilarious foolery. The Roman Saturnalia or feast of fools perpetuated the rite, though the purpose of the Christian revelry may quite possibly have been to ridicule the Druidic ceremonies. The festivities of May-day are in like manner associated with the powers of Nature, whose vigour and productiveness were symbolized by the Maypole round which village lads and lasses danced. The rites of love were variously celebrated at this time, and some of these customs locally have long survived the Maypole itself. The ordinance for the destruction of Maypoles in England and Wales, printed in 1644, declared them 'a heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness,' wherefore it was ordained that they should be destroyed, and that no Maypole should thereafter be 'set up, erected, or suffered to be within this kingdom of England or dominion of Wales.' The Maypole in Wales was called Bedwen, because it was always made of birch, bedw, a tree still associated with the gentler emotions. To give a lover a birchen branch, is for a maiden to accept his addresses; to give him a collen, or hazel, the reverse. Games of various sorts were played around the bedwen. The fame of a village depended on its not being stolen away, and parties were constantly on the alert to steal the bedwen, a feat which, when accomplished, was celebrated with peculiar festivities. This rivalry for the possession of the Maypole was probably typical of the ancient idea that the first of May was the boundary day dividing the confines of winter and summer, when a fight took place between the powers of the air, on the one hand striving to continue the reign of winter, on the other to establish that of summer. Here may be cited the Mabinogi of Kilhwch and Olwen, where it speaks of the daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint. 'She was the most splendid maiden in the three Islands of the Mighty, and in the three Islands adjacent,' and for her does Gwyn ap Nudd, the fairy king, fight every first of May till the day of doom.[126] She was to have been the bride of Gwythyr, the son of Greidawl, when Gwyn ap Nudd carried her off by force. The bereaved bridegroom followed, and there was a bloody struggle, in which Gwyn was victorious, and which he signalized by an act of frightful cruelty; he slew an old warrior, took out his heart from his breast, and constrained the warrior's son to eat the heart of his father. When Arthur heard of this he summoned Gwyn ap Nudd before him, and deprived him of the fruits of his victory. But he condemned the two combatants to fight for the radiant maiden henceforth for ever on every first of May till doomsday; the victor on that day to possess the maiden.[127] FOOTNOTES: [126] 'Mabinogion,' 229. [127] 'Mabinogion,' 251. VII. In the remote and primitive parish of Defynog, in Breconshire, until a few years since, a custom survived of carrying the King of Summer and the King of Winter. Two boys were chosen to serve as the two kings, and were covered all over with a dress of brigau bedw, (birchen boughs,) only their faces remaining visible. A coin was tossed and the boy chosen was the summer king; a crown of bright-hued ribbons was put upon his head. Upon the other boy's head was placed a crown of holly, to designate the winter king. Then a procession was formed, headed by two men with drawn swords to clear the way. Four men supported the summer king upon two poles, one under his knees and the other under his arms; and four others bore the winter king in a similar undignified posture. The procession passed round the village and to the farm-houses near by, collecting largess of coin or beer, winding up the perambulation at the churchyard. Here the boys were set free, and received a dole for their services, the winter king getting less than the other. Another May-day custom among the boys of that parish, was to carry about a rod, from which the bark had been partly peeled in a spiral form, and upon the top of which was set either a cock or a cross, the bearers waking the echoes of the village with 'Yo ho! yo ho! yo ho!'[128] FOOTNOTE: [128] 'Arch. Camb.,' 2 Se., iv., 326. CHAPTER III. Midsummer Eve--The Druidic Ceremonies at Pontypridd--The Snake Stone--Beltane Fires--Fourth of July Fires in America--St. Ulric's Day--Carrying Cynog--Marketing on Tombstones--The First Night of Winter--The Three Nights for Spirits--The Tale of Thomas Williams the Preacher--All Hallows Eve Festivities--Running through Fire--Quaint Border Rhymes--The Puzzling Jug--Bobbing for Apples--The Fiery Features of Guy Fawkes' Day--St. Clement's Day--Stripping the Carpenter. I. Midsummer Eve, or St. John's Eve (June 23rd), is one of the ancient Druidic festivals, still liberally honoured in Wales. The custom of lighting bonfires survives in some of the villages, and at Pontypridd there are ceremonies of a solemn sort. Midsummer Eve, in 1878, fell on a Sunday. Upon that day the 'Druids and bards' at Pontypridd held the usual feast of the summer solstice in the face of the sun. There is a breezy common on the top of a high hill overlooking the town, where stand a logan stone and a circle of upright stones constituting the 'temple of the Druids.' Here it is the custom of the present-day adherents of that ancient religion, beside which Christianity is an infant, to celebrate their rites 'within the folds of the serpent,' a circle marked with the signs of the zodiac. The venerable archdruid, Myfyr Morganwg, stands on the logan stone, with a mistletoe sprig in his button-hole, and prays to the god Kali, 'creator of sun, moon, stars, and universe.' Then the white-bearded old man delivers a discourse, and new members are initiated into the 'mysteries,' Occasionally these new members are Americans from over the sea, and they include both sexes. Large crowds gather to witness the impressive spectacle--a shadow of the ancient rites when from Belenian heights flamed high the sacrificial fires. It was a former belief that these fires protected the lands within their light from the machinations of sorcery, so that good crops would follow, and that their ashes were valuable as a medicinal charm. The Snake-stone is another striking Welsh tradition, associated with Midsummer eve. At this time of the year there are certain convocations of snakes, which, hissing sociably together among one another, hiss forth a mystic bubble, which hardens into the semblance of a glass ring. The finder of this ring is a lucky man, for all his undertakings will prosper while he retains it. These rings are called Gleiniau Nadroedd in Welsh--snake-stones in English. They are supposed to have been used by the ancient Druids as charms. There is a Welsh saying, respecting people who lay their heads together in conversation, that the talkers are 'blowing the gem.' II. The traditions connected with the Beltane fires are very interesting, but the subject has received so much attention in published volumes that it need not here be dwelt upon. The lad who in the United States capers around a bonfire on the night of Independence Day has not a suspicion that he is imitating the rites of an antiquity the most remote; that in burning a heap of barrels and boxes in a public square the celebrators of the American Fourth of July imitate the priests who thus worshipped the sun-god Beal. The origins of our most familiar customs are constantly being discovered in such directions as this. On the face of the thing, nothing could be more absurd as a mode of jollification, in a little American town, with its wooden architecture, on a hot night in the midst of summer, than building a roaring fire to make the air still hotter and endanger the surrounding houses. The reason for the existence of such a custom must be sought in another land and another time; had reflection governed the matter, instead of tradition, the American anniversary would have found some more fitting means of celebration than Druidic fires and Chinese charms. (For it may be mentioned further, in this connection, that the fire-crackers of our urchins are quite as superstitious in their original purpose as the bonfire is. In China, even to this day, fire-crackers are charms pure and simple, their office to drive away evil spirits, their use as a means of jollification quite unknown to their inventors.) A far more sensible Midsummer rite, especially in a hot country, would have been to adopt the custom of St. Ulric's day, and eat fish. This saint's day falls on the fourth of July, and Barnabe Googe's translation of Naogeorgius has this couplet concerning it: Wheresoeuer Huldryche hath his place, the people there brings in Both carpes and pykes, and mullets fat, his fauour here to win. III. The Welsh saint called Cynog was one of the numberless children of that famous old patriarch Brychan Brycheiniog, and had his memory honoured, until a comparatively recent period, in the parish of Defynog. Here, on this saint's feast Monday, which fell in October, there was a custom called 'carrying Cynog.' Cynog was represented by a man who was paid for his services with money, or with a suit of clothes--sometimes a 'stranger' from an adjoining parish, but on the last recorded occasion a drunken farmer of the neighbourhood. He was clad in dilapidated garments, and borne through the village; after which he was tumbled headlong into the river amid the jeers of the crowd, to scramble out as best he might. It was not a very respectful way of commemorating a saint who had been buried a thousand years or thereabouts; but such as it was it died out early in the present century. The ducking which ended the performance has been supposed to be a puritan improvement on what was before a religious ceremony, or mystery. It is more than possibly a relic of the Druidic sacrificial rites; in cases where a river ran near, at the time of the Beltane fires, a sacrifice by water was substituted for that of flame. The feast of St. Cynog continued for a week. On the Tuesday there was a singular marketing in the churchyard; from all about the farmers brought their tithe of cheese, and taking it to the churchyard, laid it on the tombstones, where it was sold for the parson's behoof. IV. All Hallows eve is by the Welsh called 'Nos Calan Gauaf,' meaning 'the first night of winter;' sometimes, 'Nos Cyn Gauaf,' the 'night before winter.' It is one of the 'Teir Nos Ysprydnos,' or 'three nights for spirits,' upon which ghosts walk, fairies are abroad, mysterious influences are in the air, strange sights are seen, and in short goblins of every sort are to be with special freedom encountered. They may be conjured to appear, by certain enchantments, and to give their visitors glimpses of the future, especially as regards the subject of marrying. On this night it is customary for the young people, gathered in many a merry circle, to seek by tricks and charms of various sort to become acquainted with their future lovers and sweethearts. Not that it is always necessary to employ such aids, for on the Teir Nos Ysprydnos the phantoms of future companions have been known to appear unsummoned. There are many such stories as that of Thomas Williams, the preacher, who slept in the hills on a Nos Ysprydnos, and although he used no charms nor tricks of any sort, he saw his future wife. As he was just about putting out his light, having jumped into bed, the door opened and the goblin mother of the young woman he subsequently married walked into the room, leading her daughter. 'Here, Thomas,' said she, 'I am going, but I leave you Mary.' And when he came down home out of the mountains he found that the old mother had died in her bed at the very moment he saw her goblin. To have done less than marry the girl, after that, would have been to insult the good old lady's ghost, and cast reflections on the reputation of All Hallows eve. The two other spirit-nights, it may here be mentioned, are May-day eve and Midsummer eve; which with All Hallows were three great festivals of the ancient Druids, when they commemorated the powers of Nature and love in the manner which has been alluded to. I have two accounts of this matter, however, and I know not which is the older in tradition, as I have both from the mouths of the people; but one account calls Christmas-night the third spirit-night. The festivities of All Hallows in Wales are in the main like those of other Christian lands, in so far as they consist of feasting and making merry. Bonfires were kindled in many places until recently, and perhaps are still, in some parts, again in pursuance of the Druidic rites, which the Christian Church adopted and continued while changing their significance. In Owen's account of the Bards occurs a curious description of the autumnal fires kindled in North Wales on the eve of the first of November, and the attendant ceremonies. There was running through the fire and smoke, and casting of stones into the fire, 'all running off at the conclusion to escape from the black short-tailed sow.'[129] This custom of running through the fire is said to survive in Ireland. It is no doubt related to the ancient sacrificial rites. As testimonies to the kinship of our race, all these customs possess a deep interest, which is increased in this direction as they lose in the charm of the unique. On the Welsh Border there prevails a Hallow-e'en custom among the children of going about to the houses singing the rhymes which follow: Wissel wassel, bread and possel, Cwrw da, plas yma: An apple or a pear, a plum or a cherry, Or any good thing to make us merry. Sol cakes, sol cakes, Pray you, good missus, a sol cake; One for Peter, and two for Paul, And three for the good man that made us all. The roads are very dirty, My shoes are very thin, I've got a little pocket, To put a penny in. Up with the kettle and down with the pan, Give us an answer and we'll be gan. (_A loud rap at the door._) _Spoken._ Please to give us a 'apenny. Some of these rhymes are heard in Glamorganshire and elsewhere at Christmas and New Year's. The puzzling jug is a vessel in use in some quarters as a means of increasing the hilarity of a Hallow-e'en party. It is a stone jug, 'out of which each person is compelled to drink. From the brim, extending about an inch below the surface, it has holes fantastically arranged so as to appear like ornamental work, and which are not perceived except by the perspicacious; three projections, of the size and shape of marbles, are around the brim, having a hole of the size of a pea in each; these communicate with the bottom of the jug through the handle, which is hollow, and has a small hole at the top, which, with two of the holes being stopped by the fingers, and the mouth applied to the one nearest the handle, enables one to suck the contents with ease; but this trick is unknown to every one, and consequently a stranger generally makes some mistake, perhaps applying his mouth as he would to another jug, in which case the contents (generally ale) issue through the fissures on his person, to the no small diversion of the spectators.'[130] Another merry custom of All Hallows was--and is--twco am 'falau, bobbing for apples. A large tub (crwc) is brought into the kitchen of a farm-house and filled with water; a dozen apples are thrown into it, and the rustic youths bob for them with their mouths. To catch up two apples at a single mouthful is a triumphant achievement. Again the revellers will form a semicircle before the fire, while there depends above their mouths from a hook in the ceiling, a string with a stick attached. At one end of the stick is an apple, at the other end a candle. To snatch the apple with the lips, and yet avoid the candle, is the aim of the competitors. The stick is so hung that it turns easily on its axis, and the bobbers often find themselves catching the candle in their hair while aiming at the apple. This appears to be a relic of the ancient Welsh game of quintain, or gwyntyn. FOOTNOTES: [129] Brand, 'Pop. Ant.,' i., 191. [130] 'Camb. Sup.,' 174. V. November the Fifth, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, is much observed in Wales. 'God grant,' said Bishop Sanderson in one of his sermons, 'that we nor ours ever live to see November the Fifth forgotten, or the solemnity of it silenced.' The words are similar to those used by a great American, of the early days of the Republic, with regard to the 4th of July--God grant it might never be forgotten. But the rites by which both days are celebrated are as old as tradition, and much older than history. As the Americans have given a historical significance to bonfires and fireworks, so the English before them did to sacrificing a puppet on Guy Fawkes' Day; and so again some Catholic nations have made the rite a religious one, in the hanging of Judas. All three customs are traced to the same original--the ancient Druidic sacrifices to the sun-god Beal or Moloch. It is noteworthy that the Fifth of November and the Fourth of July--or rather the fiery features of these days--are alike voted a nuisance by respectable and steady-going people in the countries to which they respectively belong. VI. On St. Clement's Day (the 23rd of November) it was customary in Pembrokeshire in the last century to parade an effigy of a carpenter, which had been hung to the church steeple the night before. Cutting the effigy down from where it hung, the people carried it about the village, repeating loudly some doggerel verses which purported to be the last will and testament of St. Clement, distributing to the different carpenters in town the several articles of dress worn by the effigy. After the image was thus stripped of its garments, one by one, the padded remains were thrown down and carefully kicked to pieces by the crowd. CHAPTER IV. Nadolig, the Welsh Christmas--Bell-Ringing--Carols--Dancing to the Music of the Waits--An Evening in Carmarthenshire--Shenkin Harry, the Preacher, and the Jig Tune--Welsh Morality--Eisteddfodau--Decorating Houses and Churches--The Christmas Thrift-box--The Colliers' Star--The Plygain--Pagan Origin of Christmas Customs. I. We come now to the most interesting holiday season of the year, by reason of its almost universality of observance among Christian peoples, and the variety of customs peculiar to it. In the land of Arthur and Merlin it is a season of such earnest and widespread cordiality, such warm enthusiasm, such hearty congratulations between man and man, that I have been nowhere equally impressed with the geniality and joyousness of the time. In some Catholic countries one sees more merriment on the day itself; indeed, the day itself is not especially merry in Wales, at least in its out-door aspects. It is the season rather than the day which is merry in Wales. The festival is usually understood, throughout Christendom, to include twelve days; the Welsh people not only make much of the twelve days, but they extend the peculiar festivities of the season far beyond those limits. Christmas has fairly begun in Wales a week or two before Christmas-day. The waits are patrolling the streets of Cardiff as early as December 5th, and Christmas festivals are held as early as December 19th, at which Christmas-trees are displayed, and their boughs denuded of the toys and lollipops in which the juvenile heart delights. After Christmas-day the festival continues I know not just how long, but apparently for weeks. The characteristic diversions of the Christmas season are, in the main, alike in all Christian countries. In Wales many well-known old customs are retained which in some other parts of Great Britain have disappeared, such as the mummers, the waits, carols, bell-ringings, etc. Not only do the bell-ringers of the several churches throughout the principality do their handsomest on their own particular bells, but there are grand gatherings, at special points, of all the bell-ringers for leagues around, who vie with each other in showing what feats they can perform, how they can astonish you with their majors, bob-majors, and triple bob-majors, on the brazen clangers of the steeples. At Cowbridge, for instance, on Christmas will come together the ringers from Aberdare, Penarth, St. Fagan's, Llantrisant, Llanblethian, and other places, thirty or forty in number, and after they have rung till the air above the town is black with flying clefs and quavers from the steeples, they will all sit down to a jolly Christmas-dinner at the Bear. The bands of waits, or 'pipers of the watch,' who wake the echoes of the early morning with their carols, are heard in every Welsh town and village. In some towns there are several bands and much good-natured rivalry. The universal love of music among the Welsh saves the waits from degenerating into the woe-begone creatures they are in some parts, where the custom has that poor degree of life which can be kept in it by shivering clusters of bawling beggars who cannot sing. Regularly organised and trained choirs of Welshmen perambulate the Cambrian country, chanting carols at Christmas-tide, and bands of musicians play who, in many cases, would not discredit the finest military orchestras. Carols are sung in both Welsh and English; and, generally, the waits are popular. If their music be not good, they are not tolerated; irate gentlemen attack them savagely and drive them off. Not exactly that boot-jacks and empty bottles are thrown at them, but they are excoriated in 'letters to the editor,' in which strong language is hurled at them as intolerable nuisances, ambulatory disturbers of the night's quiet, and inflicters of suffering upon the innocent. But such cases are rare. The music is almost invariably good, and the effect of the soft strains of melodiously-warbled Welsh coming dreamily to one's ears through the darkness and distance on a winter morning is sweet and soothing to most ears. Sometimes small boys will pipe their carols through the key-holes. The songs vary greatly in character, but usually the religious tone prevails, as in this case: As I sat on a sunny bank, a sunny bank, a sunny bank, All on a Christmas morning, Three ships came sailing by, sailing by, sailing by. Who do you think was in the ships? Who do you think was in the ships? Christ and the Virgin Mary. Both English and Welsh words are sung. Sometimes a group of young men and women will be seen dancing about the waits to the measure of their music, in the hours 'ayont the twal.' In one aspect the Welsh people may be spoken of as a people whose lives are passed in the indulgence of their love for music and dancing. The air of Wales seems always full of music. In the Christmas season there is an unending succession of concerts and of miscellaneous entertainments of which music forms a part, while you cannot enter an inn where a few are gathered together, without the imminent probability that one or more will break forth in song. By this is not meant a general musical howl, such as is apt to be evoked from a room full of men of any nationality when somewhat under the influence of the rosy god, but good set songs, with good Welsh or English words to them, executed with respect for their work by the vocalists, and listened to with a like respect by the rest of the company. When an Englishman is drunk he is belligerent; when a Frenchman is drunk he is amorous; when an Italian is drunk he is loquacious; when a Scotchman is drunk he is argumentative; when a German is drunk he is sleepy; when an American is drunk he brags; and when a Welshman is drunk he sings. Sometimes he dances; but he does not do himself credit as a dancer under these circumstances; for when I speak of dancing I do not refer to those wooden paces and inflections which pass for dancing in society, and which are little more than an amiable pretext for bringing in contact human elements which are slow to mix when planted in chairs about a room: I refer to the individual dancing of men who do not dance for the purpose of touching women's hands, or indulging in small talk, but for the purpose of dancing; and who apply themselves seriously and skilfully to their work--to wit, the scientific performance of a jig. I chanced to pass one evening, in the Christmas-time, at a country inn in a little Carmarthenshire village remote from railways. Certain wanderings through green lanes (and the lanes were still green, although it was cold, mid-winter weather) had brought me to the place at dusk, and, being weary, I had resolved to rest there for the night. Some local festivity of the season had taken place during the day, which had drawn into the village an unusual number of farmer-folk from the immediate neighbourhood. After a simple dinner off a chop and a half-pint of cwrw da, I strolled into what they called the smoke-room, by way of distinguishing it from the tap-room adjoining. It was a plain little apartment, with high-backed wooden settles nearly up to the ceiling, which gave an old-fashioned air of comfort to the place. Two or three farmers were sitting there drinking their beer and smoking their pipes, and toasting their trouserless shins before the blazing fire. Presently a Welsh harper with his harp entered from out-doors, and, seating himself in a corner of the room, began to tune his instrument. The room quickly filled up with men and women, and though no drinks but beer and 'pop' were indulged in (save that some of the women drank tea), Bacchus never saw a more genial company. Some one sang an English song with words like these: Thrice welcome, old Christmas, we greet thee again, With laughter and innocent mirth in thy train; Let joy fill the heart, and shine on the brow, While we snatch a sweet kiss 'neath the mistletoe-bough-- The mistletoe-bough, The mistletoe-bough, We will snatch a sweet kiss 'neath the mistletoe-bough. The words are certainly modern, and as certainly not of a high order of literary merit, but they are extremely characteristic of life at this season in Wales, where kissing under the mistletoe is a custom still honoured by observance. There was dancing, too, in this inn company--performed with stern and determined purpose to excel, by individuals who could do a jig, and wished to do it well. The harper played a wild lilting tune; a serious individual who looked like a school-teacher took off his hat, bowed to the company, jumped into the middle of the floor, and began to dance like a madman. It was a strange sight. With a face whose grave earnestness relaxed no whit, with firmly compressed lips and knitted brow, the serious person shuffled and double-shuffled, and swung and teetered, and flailed the floor with his rattling soles, till the perspiration poured in rivulets down his solemn face. The company was greatly moved; enthusiastic ejaculations in Welsh and English were heard; shouts of approbation and encouragement arose; and still the serious person danced and danced, ending at last with a wonderful pigeon-wing, and taking his seat exhausted, amid a tremendous roar of applause. Scenes like this are common throughout Wales at the Christmas-time; and they contrast strangely with the austerities of religious observance which are everywhere proceeding. But there is not so wide a chasm between the two as would exist in some countries. The best church-members frequently do not deem a little jollity of this sort a hanging matter, and there are ministers who can do a double-shuffle themselves if the worst comes to the worst. A worthy pastor in Glamorganshire related to me, with a suspicious degree of relish, a story about two ministers who were once riding through a certain village of Wales on horseback. One was the Rev. Evan Harris, the other a celebrated old preacher named Shenkin Harry. And, as they rode on, Harris noticed his companion's legs twitching curiously on his horse's sides. 'Why, what ails your leg?' he asked. 'Don't you hear the harp,' was the reply, 'in the public-house yonder? It makes my old toes crazy for a jig.' But the moral tone of Wales is certainly better, on the whole, than that of most countries--better even than that of Great Britain generally, I should say. There is, I know, a prevailing impression quite to the contrary; but it is utterly absurd. It is an impression which has grown, I imagine, out of English injustice to Welshmen in former times, allied to English ignorance in those times concerning this people. Until within the last hundred years, English writers habitually wrote of Wales with contempt and even scurrility. But no one can live in Wales and not form the opinion that the Welsh are, in truth, an exceptionally moral people; and the nature of their public entertainments throughout the Christmas-time enforces this conclusion. Stendhal's declaration that, in true Biblical countries, religion spoils one day out of seven, destroys the seventh part of possible happiness, would find strong illustration in Wales. It is not my purpose to argue whether the illustration would prove or disprove Stendhal's assertion, though one might fairly ask whether religious people are not, perhaps, as happy in going to church on Sunday as irreligious people are in staying away. II. Let it not be supposed that there is any lack of amusement on Christmas-day for people who are willing to be amused in a God-fearing manner. Although you cannot go to the theatre or the circus, you can have a wide liberty of choice among oratorios, concerts, examinations, exhibitions, eisteddfodau, and other odd diversions. Concerts especially thrive. The halls in which they are held are decorated with evergreens, and the familiar custom is in Wales habitually and commonly associated with the ancient Druids, who viewed the green twigs as the symbols of perennial life. Thus a peculiar poetic grace rests with a custom beautiful in itself, and capable in any land of being poetized by any one poetically inclined. Many of those unique gatherings called eisteddfodau are held in different parts of the principality, when poetry, music, and essays, in Welsh and in English, are put forth by the strivers in these Olympian games of intellect and culture, after the prizes which in Hellas would have given them crowns of olive-leaves instead of gold-coins of the realm. When Pindar and Sophocles handed in poems, and Herodotus competed among the essayists, and Phidias and Praxiteles among the cutters of stone, there was no Christmas,--but it is claimed there were eisteddfodau, here in Wales; ay, and before that; for has not Herodotus spoken of the British bards who held them? III. In the family circle, the rules which regulate the Sabbath in Wales--which are almost as repressive as those of bonnie Scotland, where, by the way, Christmas-day is scarcely observed at all--are relaxed, and the aspect of the home is as bright as can be. The rooms are elaborately decorated with flowers and evergreens, holly and ivy, ferns and rare plants. In Glamorganshire, and other of the southern counties looking on the sea, roses and hawthorn-sprays may be sometimes seen in full bloom out-of-doors at Christmas. The decoration of churches is also elaborate beyond anything I have elsewhere seen. It is a sight to behold, the preparations for and the work of decorating a vast pile of ecclesiastical buildings like Llandaff Cathedral--the huge quantities of evergreens and holly, flowers, cedars, etc., which are day by day accumulated by the ladies who have the business in charge; and the slow, continual growth of forms of grace--arches, crosses, wreaths, festoons; green coverings to font, altar, pulpit, choir-stalls, pillars, reredos, and rood-screen; panels faced with scarlet cloth bearing sacred devices worked in evergreen; the very window-sills glowing with banks of colour--until all the wide spaces in chancel, nave, and transepts, are adorned. IV. Of common prevalence formerly, and still observed in numerous parishes, is the custom called the Plygain, or watching for the dawn. This consists in proceeding to the church at three o'clock on Christmas morning, and uniting in a service which is held by the light of small green candles made for the purpose. Sometimes this ceremony is observed at home, the people in a farm-house holding a jollification on the Christmas eve, and sitting up all night to greet the dawn. If the east wind blew on the Christmas eve the circumstance was deemed propitious in this connection. This wind was called 'gwynt traed y meirw,' (the wind blowing over the feet of the corpses,) because it blew towards the foot of the graves in the churchyards. It was also believed that the dumb animals paid their tribute of respect to this night; the bees would hum loudly in their hives at midnight, and the cattle in the cow-houses would bend their knees as in adoration.[131] A Christmas-eve custom among Welsh colliers is to carry from house to house a board stuck over with lighted candles, or to wheel a handbarrow containing a bed of clay in which the candles are stuck. This is called 'the Star,' sometimes 'the Star of Bethlehem,' and when stopping before a house the men kneel about it and sing a carol. A like custom exists in Belgium, among children. The purpose is to solicit a Rhodd Nadolig, or Christmas gift. FOOTNOTE: [131] 'Cymru Fu,' 403. V. The British Boxing-day is well known, both as to its customs and its origin. The Christmas-box, or thrift-box, is still to be seen in barber shops in Wales, fastened to the wall, or standing conveniently under the looking-glass among the pots and brushes. At one time the custom became such a nuisance throughout Britain that an outcry was raised about it. It got to that pass that the butcher and baker would send their apprentices around among their customers to levy contributions. The English Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in 1837, sent a circular to the different embassies requesting their excellencies and chargés d'affaires to discontinue the customary Christmas-boxes to the 'messengers of the Foreign Department, domestic servants of Viscount Palmerston, foreign postmen, etc.' The nuisance is hardly less prevalent now. The faithful postman in Wales not only expects to be remembered at Christmas, but he expects to be given a precise sum, and if he does not get it he is capable of asking for it. In one case, a postman accustomed to receive five shillings at a certain office, on asking for his 'box,' was told the usual donor was absent in London, whereupon he requested the clerk to write up to him in London immediately on the subject. These things strike a stranger as very singular, among a people usually so self-respecting. Warnings are from time to time issued on this subject by those in authority, but the custom is likely to survive so long as it is not ranked outright with beggary. Like the Christmas-tree, it is a graceful thing among the children, or among friends or household servants, if spontaneous; but as a tax, it is an odious perversion.[132] FOOTNOTE: [132] Among those who last Christmas applied at my house for 'his box, sir, if you please' (as my maid put it), quite as a matter of course, were the postman, the leader of the waits, the boy who brings the daily newspapers, the bookseller's boy, the chimney-sweep, the dustman, the grocer's man, etc., etc., no one of whom I had ever set eyes on. The equal of this I never encountered, except in Paris, on the _jour de l'an_. VI. The pagan origin of most of our Christmas customs is undoubted. Even the cheery Christmas-tree is a symbol of heathen rites in times long antedating Christ. The early Christian fathers, in adopting the popular usages of their predecessors, and bending them to the service of Christianity, made wondrous little change in them, beyond the substitution of new motives and names for the old festivals peculiar to several seasons of the year. The British Druids' feast of Alban Arthur, celebrating the new birth of the sun, occurred at our Christmas time, and is still celebrated at Pontypridd, Glamorganshire, every year. It begins on the 22nd of December, and lasts three days, during which period the sun is supposed to fight with Avagddu, the spirit of darkness, the great luminary having descended into hell for that purpose. On the third day he rose, and the bards struck their harps, rejoicing that the sun had again been found. The Pontypridd ceremonies are similar to those of Midsummer-day, already mentioned. The Arch-Druid presides in the folds of the serpent circle--when he can get there, that is, for he is old, past eighty, and the Druidic hill is apt to be slippery with snow and ice at this time of the year. He prays to the pagan god, and perhaps chants a poem in Welsh.[133] The Druidic fires of the winter solstice feast were continued in customs like that which survived in Herefordshire until recent years, when on old Christmas-eve thirteen fires were lighted in a cornfield, twelve of them being in a circle round a central one which burned higher than the rest. The circle fires were called the Twelve Apostles, and the central one the Virgin Mary. In a shed near by was a cow with a plum-cake between or upon her horns, into whose face a pail of cider was dashed, with a rhyming address, and the cow tossing her horns from her unexpected baptism naturally threw the plum-cake down. If it fell forward, good harvests were predicted; if backward, the omen was evil. A feast among the peasants followed. In the Plygain in like manner survives the Druidic custom of going to the sacred groves before dawn on this morning, to greet the rising of the new-born sun after his struggle with the evil principle. FOOTNOTE: [133] I give a free translation of this effort as delivered on Sunday, December 24th, 1876 (which proved a mild day), and which I find reported in the 'Western Mail' of the 26th as follows: 'The day of the winter solstice has dawned upon us; little is the smile and the halo of Hea. The depth of winter has been reached, but the muse of Wales is budding still. Cold is the snow on the mountains; naked are the trees, and the meadows are bare; but while nature is withering the muse of Wales is budding. When the earth is decked in mourning, and the birds are silent, the muse of Wales, with its harp, is heard in the gorsedd of the holy hill. On the stone ark, within the circle of the caldron of Ceridwen, are throned the sons of Awen; though through their hair the frozen mist is wafted, their bosoms are sympathetic and they rejoice. Peace, love, and truth, encircle our throne; throne without a beginning and without ending, adorned with uchelwydd (mistletoe), symbol of perennial life. The throne of the British Bard--which remains a throne while other thrones decay into dust around it: an everlasting throne! The great wheel of ages revolves and brings around our festivities; repeating our joys it does perpetually. Muse, awake; awake, ye harps; let not any part of the year be forgotten wherein to crown usage (defod), morals (moes), and virtue. The Saviour Hea is about to be born of the winter solstice. He will rise higher still and higher shiningly, and we will have again a new year. Haste hail, haste falling snow, hasten rough storms of winter--hasten away that we may see the happy evidences of the new year.' CHAPTER V. Courtship and Marriage--Planting Weeds and Rue on the Graves of Old Bachelors--Special Significance of Flowers in connection with Virginity--The Welsh Venus--Bundling, or Courting Abed--Kissing Schools--Rhamanta--Lovers' Superstitions--The Maid's Trick--Dreaming on a Mutton Bone--Wheat and Shovel--Garters in a Lovers' Knot--Egg-Shell Cake--Sowing Leeks--Twca and Sheath. I. Welsh courtship is a thorough-going business, early entered upon by the boys and girls of the Principality; and consequently most Welsh women marry young. The ancient laws of Howell the Good (died 948) expressly provided that a woman should be considered marriageable from fourteen upwards, and should be entitled to maintenance from that age until the end of her fortieth year; 'that is to say, from fourteen to forty she ought to be considered in her youth.' By every sort of moral suasion it is deemed right in Wales to encourage matrimony, and no where are old bachelors viewed with less forbearance. There used to be a custom--I know not whether it be extinct now--of expressing the popular disapprobation for celibacy by planting on the graves of old bachelors that ill-scented plant, the rue, and sometimes thistles, nettles, henbane, and other unlovely weeds. The practice was even extended, most illiberally and unjustly, to the graves of old maids, who certainly needed no such insult added to their injury. Probably the custom was never very general, but grew out of similar--but other-meaning--customs which are still prevalent, and which are very beautiful. I refer to the planting of graves with significant flowers in token of the virtues of the dead. Thus where the red rose is planted on a grave, its tenant is indicated as having been in life a person of peculiar benevolence of character. The flower specially planted on the grave of a young virgin is the white rose. There is also an old custom, at the funeral of a young unmarried person, of strewing the way to the grave with evergreens and sweet-scented flowers, and the common saying in connection therewith is that the dead one is going to his or her marriage-bed. Sad extremely, and touchingly beautiful, are these customs; but wherever such exist, there are sure to be ill-conditioned persons who will vent spiteful feelings by similar means. Hence the occasional affront to the remains of antiquated single folk, who had been perhaps of a temperament which rendered them unpopular. The Welsh being generally of an affectionate disposition, courtship, as I have said, is a thorough-going business. To any but a people of the strongest moral and religious tendencies, some of their customs would prove dangerous in the extreme; but no people so link love and religion. More of their courting is done while going home from church than at any other time whatever; and the Welsh Venus is a holy saint, and not at all a wicked Pagan character like her classic prototype. 'Holy Dwynwen, goddess of love, daughter of Brychan,' had a church dedicated to her in Anglesea in 590; and for ages her shrine was resorted to by desponding swains and lovesick maidens. Her name--_Dwyn_, to carry off, and _wen_, white--signifies the bearer off of the palm of fairness; and, ruling the court of love while living, when dead A thousand bleeding hearts her power invoked. Throughout the poetry of the Cymric bards you constantly see the severest moral precepts, and the purest pictures of virtuous felicity, mingling in singularly perfect fusion with the most amorous strains. Among the 'Choice Things' of Geraint, the famous Blue Bard, were: A song of ardent love for the lip of a fair maid; A softly sweet glance of the eye, and love without wantonness; A secluded walking-place to caress one that is fair and slender; To reside by the margin of a brook in a tranquil dell of dry soil; A house small and warm, fronting the bright sunshine. With these, versifications of all the virtues and moralities. 'In the whole range of Kymric poetry,' says the learned Thomas Stephens,[134] 'there is not, I venture to assert, a line of impiety.' FOOTNOTE: [134] Vide 'Lit. of the Kymry.' II. The Welsh custom of Bundling, or courting abed, needs no description. The Welsh words sopen and sypio mean a bundle and to bundle, and they mean a squeezed-up mass, and to squeeze together; but there is a further meaning, equivalent to our word baggage, as applied to a strumpet.[135] The custom of bundling is still practised in certain rural neighbourhoods of Wales. To discuss its moral character is not my province in these pages; but I may properly record the fact that its practice is not confined to the irreligious classes. It is also pertinent here to recall the circumstance that among these people anciently, courtship was guarded by the sternest laws, so that any other issue to courtship than marriage was practically impossible. If a maiden forgot her duty to herself, her parents, and her training, when the evil result became known she was to be thrown over a precipice; the young man who had abused the parents' confidence was also to be destroyed. Murder itself was punished less severely. Customs of promiscuous sleeping arose in the earliest times, out of the necessities of existence in those primitive days, when a whole household lay down together on a common bed of rushes strewn on the floor of the room. In cold weather they lay close together for greater warmth, with their usual clothing on. Cæsar's misconception that the ancient Britons were polyandrous polygamists evidently had here its source. It is only by breathing the very atmosphere of an existence whose primitive influences we may thus ourselves feel, that we can get a just conception of the underlying forces which govern a custom like this. Of course it is sternly condemned by every advanced moralist, even in the neighbourhoods where it prevails. An instance came to my knowledge but a short time ago, (in 1877,) where the vicar of a certain parish (Mydrim, Carmarthenshire) exercised himself with great zeal to secure its abolition. Unfortunately, in this instance, the good man was not content with abolishing bundling, he wanted to abolish more innocent forms of courting; and worst of all, he turned his ethical batteries chiefly upon the lads and lasses of the dissenting congregation. Of course, it was not the vicar's fault that the bundlers were among the meeting-house worshippers, and not among the established church-goers, but nevertheless it injured the impartiality of his championship in the estimation of 'the Methodys.' I am not sure the bundling might not have ceased, in deference to his opinions, notwithstanding, if he had not, in the excess of his zeal, complained of the young men for seeing the girls home after meeting, and casually stretching the walk beyond what was necessary. Such intermeddling as this taxed the patience of the courting community to its extreme limit, and it assumed a rebellious front. The vicar, quite undaunted, pursued the war with vigour; he smote the enemy hip and thigh. He returned to the charge with the assertion that these young people had 'schools for the art of kissing,' a metaphorical expression, I suppose; and that they indulged in flirtation. This was really too much. Bundling might or might not be an exclusively dissenting practice, but the most unreasonable of vicars must know that kissing and flirtation were as universal as the parish itself; and so there was scoffing and flouting of the vicar, and, as rebounds are proverbially extreme, I fear there is now more bundling in Mydrim than ever. FOOTNOTE: [135] The Rev. Dr. Thomas, late President of Pontypool College, whose acquaintance with Welsh customs is very extensive, (and to whose erudition I have been frequently indebted during the progress of these pages through the press,) tells me he never heard the word sopen or sypio, synonymous with bundling, used for the old custom, but only 'caru yn y gwelu,' (courting abed.) III. The customs of Rhamanta, or romantic divination, by which lovers and sweethearts seek to pierce the future, are many and curious, in all parts of Wales. Besides such familiar forms of this widely popular practice as sleeping on a bit of wedding-cake, etc., several unique examples may be mentioned. One known as the Maid's Trick is thus performed; and none must attempt it but true maids, or they will get themselves into trouble with the fairies: On Christmas eve, or on one of the Three Spirit Nights, after the old folks are abed, the curious maiden puts a good stock of coal on the fire, lays a clean cloth on the table, and spreads thereon such store of eatables and drinkables as her larder will afford. Toasted cheese is considered an appropriate luxury for this occasion. Having prepared the feast, the maiden then takes off all her clothing, piece by piece, standing before the fire the while, and her last and closest garment she washes in a pail of clear spring water, on the hearth, and spreads it to dry across a chair-back turned to the fire. She then goes off to bed, and listens for her future husband, whose apparition is confidently expected to come and eat the supper. In case she hears him, she is allowed to peep into the room, should there be a convenient crack or key-hole for that purpose; and it is said there be unhappy maids who have believed themselves doomed to marry a monster, from having seen through a cranny the horrible spectacle of a black-furred creature with fiery eyes, its tail lashing its sides, its whiskers dripping gravy, gorging itself with the supper. But if her lover come, she will be his bride that same year. In Pembrokeshire a shoulder of mutton, with nine holes bored in the blade bone, is put under the pillow to dream on. At the same time the shoes of the experimenting damsel are placed at the foot of the bed in the shape of a letter T, and an incantation is said over them, in which it is trusted by the damsel that she may see her lover in his every-day clothes. In Glamorganshire a form of rhamanta still exists which is common in many lands. A shovel being placed against the fire, on it a boy and a girl put each a grain of wheat, side by side. Presently these edge towards each other; they bob and curtsey, or seem to, as they hop about. They swell and grow hot, and finally pop off the shovel. If both grains go off together, it is a sign the young pair will jump together into matrimony; but if they take different directions, or go off at different times, the omen is unhappy. In Glamorganshire also this is done: A man gets possession of a girl's garters, and weaves them into a true lover's knot, saying over them some words of hope and love in Welsh. This he puts under his shirt, next his heart, till he goes to bed, when he places it under the bolster. If the test be successful the vision of his future wife appears to him in the night. IV. A curious rhamanta among farm-women is thus described by a learned Welsh writer:[136] The maiden would get hold of a pullet's first egg, cut it through the middle, fill one half-shell with wheaten flour and the other with salt, and make a cake out of the egg, the flour, and the salt. One half of this she would eat; the other half was put in the foot of her left stocking under her pillow that night; and after offering up a suitable prayer, she would go to sleep. What with her romantic thoughts, and her thirst after eating this salty cake, it was not perhaps surprising that the future husband should be seen, in a vision of the night, to come to the bedside bearing a vessel of water or other beverage for the thirsty maid. Another custom was to go into the garden at midnight, in the season when 'black seed' was sown, and sow leeks, with two garden rakes. One rake was left on the ground while the young woman worked away with the other, humming to herself the while, Y sawl sydd i gydfydio, Doed i gydgribinio! Or in English: He that would a life partner be, Let him also rake with me. There was a certain young Welshwoman who, about eighty years ago, performed this rhamanta, when who should come into the garden but her master! The lass ran to the house in great fright, and asked her mistress, 'Why have you sent master out into the garden to me?' 'Wel, wel,' replied the good dame, in much heaviness of heart, 'make much of my little children!' The mistress died shortly after, and the husband eventually married the servant. The sterner sex have a form of rhamanta in which the knife plays a part. This is to enter the churchyard at midnight, carrying a twca, which is a sort of knife made out of an old razor, with a handle of sheep or goat-horn, and encircle the church edifice seven times, holding the twca at arm's length, and saying, 'Dyma'r twca, p'le mae'r wain?' (Here's the twca--where's the sheath?) FOOTNOTE: [136] Cynddelw, 'Manion Hynafiaethol,' 53. CHAPTER VI. Wedding Customs--The Bidding--Forms of Cymmhorth--The Gwahoddwr--Horse-Weddings--Stealing a Bride--Obstructions to the Bridal Party--The Gwyntyn--Chaining--Evergreen Arches--Strewing Flowers--Throwing Rice and Shoes--Rosemary in the Garden--Names after Marriage--The Coolstrin--The Ceffyl Pren. I. Wales retains several ancient customs in connection with weddings, which are elsewhere extinct. No one who has ever paid any attention to Wales and its ways can have failed to hear of that most celebrated rite the Bidding, which is, however, one of several picturesque survivals less well known to the outer world. The Bidding wedding must be spoken of as an existing custom, although it be confined to rural neighbourhoods in South Wales, and to obscure and humble folk. Those who strive to prove that all such customs are obsolete everywhere--a thankless and even ungraceful task, it seems to me--will not admit that the Bidding has been known since 1870. I have evidence, however, that in Pembroke, Cardigan, and Carmarthen shires, the custom did not cease on the date named, and there is every probability that it prevails to-day. Nothing could be of smaller importance, it is true, than the precise date on which a given custom recently ceased, since any one may revive it next year who chooses to do so. The Bidding is an invitation sent by a couple who are about to be married, soliciting the presence and donations of the neighbours on their behalf. The presents may be either sums of money or necessaries. Gifts of bread, butter, cheese, tea, sugar, and the like, are common, and sometimes articles of farming stock and household furniture. All gifts of money are recognized by a sort of promissory note, i.e., by setting down the name and residence of the donor, with the amount given; and when a like occasion arises on the part of the giver, the debt is religiously paid. The obligation is an absolute one, and its legality has actually been recognized by the Court of Great Sessions at Cardiff. The gift is even claimable under other circumstances than the donor's getting married. Another sort of contribution is the eatables and drinkables which are set before the guests; these are only repayable when required on a like occasion. The method of bidding the guests was until lately through a personage called the gwahoddwr (inviter or bidder) who tramped about the country some days beforehand, proclaiming the particulars to everybody he met. He usually recited a doggerel set of rhymes before and after the special invitation--a composition of his own, or understood to be such, for rhyme-making was a part of the talent of a popular bidder. Frequently no little humour was displayed in the bidding song. But since the printing press became the cheap and ready servant of the humblest classes, the occupation of the bidder has gradually fallen to decay; a printed circular serves in his place. At the shop of a printer in Carmarthen I procured a copy of the following bidding circular, which may be a real document, or a fictitious one: CARMARTHENSHIRE, JULY 4TH, 1862. As we intend to enter the Matrimonial State, on Wednesday, the 30th of July instant, we purpose to make a BIDDING on the occasion, the same day, at the Young Man's Father's House, called TY'R BWCI, in the Parish of Llanfair ar y Bryn, when and where the favour of your good and agreeable company is respectfully solicited, and whatever donation you may be pleased to confer on us then will be thankfully received, warmly acknowledged, and cheerfully repaid whenever called for on a similar occasion. By your most obedient Servants, OWEN GWYN, ELEN MORGAN. The Young Man, his Father and Mother (Llewelyn and Margaret Gwyn, of Ty'r Bwci), his Brother (Evan Gwyn, Maes y Blodau), his Sisters (Gwladys and Hannah), and his Aunt (Mary Bowen, Llwyn y Fedwen, Llannon), desire that all gifts of the above nature due to them be returned to the Young Man on the above day, and will be thankful for all additional favours granted. The Young Woman, her Father (Rhys Morgan, Castell y Moch), and her Brothers and Sister (Howel, Gruffydd, and Gwenllïan Morgan), desire that all gifts of the above nature due to them be returned to the Young Woman on the above day, and will be thankful for all additional favours conferred on her. The Young Man's company will meet in the Morning at Ty'r Bwci; and the Young Woman's at Pant y Clacwydd, near the Village of Llansadwrn. The Bidding is sometimes held on the day of the wedding, and sometimes on the day and night before it; the custom varies in different districts, as all these customs do. When the latter is the case, the night is an occasion of great merrymaking, with much consumption of cwrw da, and dancing to the music of the harp, for poor indeed would be the Welsh community that could not muster up a harper. This festival is called Nos Blaen, or preceding night, and is a further source of income to the couple, from the sale of cakes and cwrw. 'Base is the slave who pays' is a phrase emphatically reversed at a Welsh wedding. [Illustration: THE OLD-TIME GWAHODDWR.] The Bidding is but one form of a feature of Welsh life which extensively prevails, known by the term Cymmhorth. The Bidding is a Priodas Cymmhorth; the Cyfarfod Cymmhorth, or Assistance Meeting, is much the same thing, minus the wedding feature. The customs of the latter festival are, however, often of a sort distinctly tending toward matrimonial results as an eventuality. A number of farmer girls of the humbler sort will gather at a stated time and place to give a day's work to one needing assistance, and after a day spent in such toil as may be required, the festival winds up with jollity in the evening. The day is signalized on the part of those youths of the neighbourhood who are interested in the girls, by tokens of that interest in the shape of gifts. The lass who receives a gift accompanied by a twig of birch is thereby assured of her lover's constancy. To her whom the young man would inform of his change of heart, a sprig of hazel is given. An earlier feature of this ceremony was the Merry Andrew, who presented the gifts in the name of the lover. This personage was disguised fantastically, and would lead the young woman he selected into another room, where he would deliver the gift and whisper the giver's name. The antiquity of the Bidding as a local custom is undoubted. The old-time gwahoddwr was a person of much importance, skilled in pedigrees and family traditions, and himself of good family. A chieftain would assume the character in behalf of his vassal, and hostile clans respected his person as he went about from castle to castle, from hall to hall. He bore a garlanded staff as the emblem of his office, and on entering a dwelling would strike his staff upon the floor to command the attention of the group before him, and then begin his address. II. The Horse-Wedding is of more ancient origin than the Bidding, and is still a living custom in some parts of Wales, especially Carmarthenshire and western Glamorganshire. It was in other days common throughout South Wales, and was scolded about by old Malkin (generally very cordial in his praise of Welsh customs) in these spicy terms: 'Ill may it befal the traveller, who has the misfortune of meeting a Welsh wedding on the road. He would be inclined to suppose that he had fallen in with a company of lunatics, escaped from their confinement. It is the custom of the whole party who are invited, both men and women, to ride full speed to the church porch, and the person who arrives there first has some privilege or distinction at the marriage feast. To this important object all inferior considerations give way; whether the safety of his majesty's subjects, who are not going to be married, or their own, incessantly endangered by boisterous, unskilful and contentious jockeyship.'[137] Glamorganshire is here spoken of. The custom varies somewhat in different localities, but it preserves the main feature, to force the bride away from her friends, who then gallop after her to church, arriving _toujours trop tard_, of course, like the carabineers in 'Les Brigands.' There have been cases, however, when the bride was caught by a member of the pursuing party, and borne away--an incident which occurred in the knowledge of an acquaintance, who related it to me. As may readily be inferred, the bride in this case was not unwilling to be caught; in fact she was averse to marrying the man who was taking her to church, and who was her parent's choice, not her own. The lover who had her heart caught up with her by dint of good hard riding, and whisked her on his horse within sight of the church-door, to the intense astonishment of the bridegroom, who gazed at them open-mouthed as they galloped away. He thought at first it was a joke, but as the lovers disappeared in the distance the truth dawned upon him: a Welsh custom had served something like its original purpose. But usually, the whole performance is a vehicle for fun of the most good-natured and innocent sort. It begins by the arrival of the neighbours on horseback at the residence of the expectant bridegroom. An eye-witness to a certain wedding gathering in Glamorganshire a few years ago states that the horsemen exceeded one hundred in number. From among them a deputation was chosen to go (still on horseback) to the bride's residence to make formal demand for her. Her door was barred inside, and the demand was made in rhyme, and replied to in the same form from within. It often happens that a brisk contest of wits signalizes this proceeding, for if the voice of any one within is recognized by one of those outside, his personal peculiarities are made the subject of satirical verses. A voice inside being recognized as that of a man who was charged with sheep-stealing, this rhyme was promptly shouted at him: Gwrando, leidr hoyw'r ddafad, Ai ti sydd yma heddyw'n geidwad? Ai dyna y rheswm cloi y drysau, Rhag dwyn y wreigan liw dydd goleu? (Ah, sheep-stealer, art thou a guardian of the fair one? If the doors were not locked thou wouldst steal the bride in broad daylight.) The doors are opened in the end, of course, and after refreshments the wedding party gallops off to church. The bride is stolen away and borne off to a distance on her captor's horse, but only in sport; her captor brings her back to the church, where she is quietly married to the proper person. Sometimes the precaution is taken of celebrating the marriage privately at an early hour, and the racing takes place afterward. Obstructions are raised by the bride's friends, to prevent the bridegroom's party from coming to her house, and these difficulties must be overcome ere the bride can be approached. Sometimes a mock battle on the road is a feature of the racing to church. The obstructions placed in the road in former days included the Gwyntyn, a sort of game of skill which seems to have been used by most nations in Europe, called in English the quintain. It was an upright post, upon which a cross-piece turned freely, at one end of which hung a sand-bag, the other end presenting a flat side. At this the rider tilted with his lance, his aim being to pass without being hit in the rear by the sand-bag. Other obstructions in use are ropes of straw and the like. There is a Welsh custom called Chaining, which probably arose out of the horse-wedding, and still prevails. In the village of Sketty, Glamorganshire, in August, 1877, I saw a chaining, on the occasion of a marriage between an old lady of eighty and a man of fifty. The affair had made so much talk, owing to the age of the bride, that the whole village was in the streets. While the wedding ceremony was in progress, a chain was stretched across the street, forming a barrier which the wedding party could not pass till the chainers were 'tipped.' The driver of the carriage containing the newly wedded pair was an Englishman, and ignorant of the custom, at which he was naturally indignant. His angry efforts to drive through the barrier made great sport for the Welshmen. The origin of the Welsh horse-wedding may be traced to the Romans, if no further back, and may thus be connected with the rape of the Sabines. That the Romans had an exactly similar custom is attested by Apuleius, and it is said to have been established by Romulus in memory of the Sabine virgins. It is not improbable that the Romans may have left the custom behind them when they quitted this territory in the fifth century, after nearly three hundred years' rule. FOOTNOTE: [137] Malkin's 'South Wales,' 67. III. Among the wealthier classes of Wales, certain joyous and genial wedding customs prevail, such as are common in most parts of the British isles, but which do not reappear in the new world across the Atlantic,--a fact by which American life is a heavy loser, in my opinion. When the Rector of Merthyr's daughter (to use the form of speech common) was married, a few months since, the tenants of the estate erected arches of evergreens over the roads, and adorned their houses with garlands, and for two or three days the estate was a scene of festivity, ending with the distribution of meat to the poor of the parish. Such festivities and such decorations are common on the estates of the country gentry not only, but in the towns as well. At Tenby, when the High Sheriff's son was married to the Rector of Tenby's daughter, in 1877, garlands of flowers were hung across the High Street, bearing pleasant mottoes, while flags and banners fluttered from house-tops in all directions. Children strewed flowers in the bride's path as she came out of church, while the bells in the steeple chimed a merry peal, and a park of miniature artillery boomed from the pier-head. This custom of children strewing flowers in the path of the new-made bride is common; so also is that of throwing showers of rice after the wedded pair, by way of expressing good wishes--a pleasanter thing to be thrown under these circumstances than the old shoes of tradition. However, since fashion has taken up the custom of rice-throwing and shoe-throwing, the shoes have become satin slippers. As far back as the 16th century, throwing an old shoe after any one going on an important errand was deemed lucky in Wales. It is thought that in the case of a bride, the custom is derived from the old Jewish law of exchange, when a shoe was given in token that the parents for ever surrendered all dominion over their daughter. But a precisely similar custom prevails in China, where it is usual for the bride to present her husband with a pair of shoes, by way of signifying that for the future she places herself under his control. 'These are carefully preserved in the family and are never given away, like other worn-out articles, it being deemed, that to part with them portends an early separation between husband and wife.'[138] The custom of rice-throwing is also Chinese, the rice being viewed as a sign of abundance. In Sicily, as in some parts of England, wheat is thrown on the bride's head; in Russia, a handful of hops; in the north of England a plateful of shortcake;[139] in Yorkshire, bits of the bride-cake. All these customs, while popularly done 'for luck,' are apparently symbolical of the obedience and the fruitfulness of the newly-wedded wife. And as in Scandinavia the bride tries to get her husband to pick up her handkerchief as an omen of his obeying instead of compelling obedience, so in China the bride tries to sit on a part of her husband's dress. The vulgar story and adage, 'Bandbox now, bandbox always,' expresses the superstition succinctly. There is a saying current on the Welsh border, that when rosemary flourishes in the garden of a married pair, the lady 'rules the roast,' as the phrase is--though if there is anything a woman should rule, one would think the 'roast' is that thing. 'That be rosemary, sir,' said an old gardener in Herefordshire, pointing to where the plant grew; 'they say it grows but where the missus is master, and it do grow here like wildfire.' The idea of feminine obedience to masculine will, merely because it is masculine, is in itself looked upon as a superstition by all cultivated people in these days, I suppose. Sex aside, if the truth were known, it would be found that the stronger is the ruler, in all lands, under all customs, be the outward show of the ruling more or less; and it is not always where the public sees it most clearly, or fancies it does, that the rule of the dame is sternest. The strength here employed is not virile strength; there is nothing necessarily masculine about it. The severest mistress of her lord I ever knew was a feeble little woman with hands like a baby's, and a face of wax, with no more will-power apparently than a week-old kitten, but whose lightest whim lay on her lord like iron, and was obeyed as faithfully as if it were backed by a cat-o'-nine-tails and a six-shooter. To return for a moment to our Welsh wedding customs among the wealthier classes. When the couple return from their bridal tour, the fun often begins all over again. Thus at Lampeter, on the edge of Cardiganshire, last September, when Mr. and Mrs. Jones of Glandennis (Jones of Glandennis, Roberts of the Dingle, Williams of Pwlldu,--such cognomens take the place in Wales of the distinctive names which separate Englishmen one from another, and from Jones of Nevada),--when Jones of Glandennis brought home his bride, the whole neighbourhood was agog to greet them. Thousands of people gathered in a field near the station, and passed their time in athletic sports till the train arrived, when they woke the echoes with their cheers. The Joneses entered their carriage, the horses were unharnessed, and a long procession of tenantry, headed by a brass band, dragged the carriage all the way to Glandennis, two miles off, some bearing torches by the side of the carriage. Arches of evergreens were everywhere; and when they got to the house, nothing would do but Mrs. Jones must appear at a window and make a little speech of thanks to the crowd; which she did accordingly--a thing in itself shocking to superstitious ideas of chivalry, but in strictest accord with the true chivalric spirit toward woman. Then fireworks blazed up the sky, and bonfires were lighted on the tops of all the adjoining hills. Lampeter town was illuminated, and nobody went to bed till the small hours. After marriage, Welshwomen still in some cases retain their maiden names, a custom formerly universal among them. The wife of John Thomas, though the mother of a houseful of children, may be habitually known among her neighbours as Betty Williams. In other cases, she not only assumes her husband's name, but the name of his calling as well; if he is Dick Shon the tailor, she is simply Mrs. Dick Shon the tailor. FOOTNOTES: [138] Dennys, 'Folk-Lore of China,' 18. [139] Henderson, 'Notes on Folk-Lore,' 22. IV. A custom called the Coolstrin is now apparently obsolete, unless in occasional rural communities remote from railroads. It resembles the old custom once known in certain parts of England, called the skimitry or skimmington, in which a man whose wife had struck him was forced to ride behind a woman, with his face to the horse's tail, while a band of pans and cow-horns made music for them. The Welsh custom is, however, more elaborate, and more comical, while it is less severe on the man. A husband who is suspected of having a termagant wife, is made the subject of espionage. If it be found that he drinks his mug of ale standing, with his eye twinkling toward the door, the circumstance is considered most suspicious. Efforts are accordingly made to induce the henpecked man to stay and be merry, and if he can be made drunk a great point is gained, as then a squad of volunteers take him inside his own door and critically observe his reception. A moral point involved appears to be that a henpecked husband is a disgrace to manhood in general; and the purpose of the coolstrin is to reform it altogether. However, although it may even be proved that a woman is in the habit of cuffing her husband, the case does not come under the jurisdiction of the coolstrin court until she has 'drawn blood on him.' Then the court is convened. It is composed, no doubt, of any rakehelly youngsters, married or single, who are ripe for sport. One of them is chosen for judge; a special point is that he must be a married man who is not afraid of his wife; and he is invested with robe and gown, that is to say, the collar-bone of a horse is set on his head, around the crown of a slouch hat, and a bed-quilt is made fast to his shoulders. He marches through the streets, with a youth behind him bearing his bed-quilt train, and mounts a chosen wall for a judge's bench. Officers with long white wands range themselves solemnly on either side of him; men are chosen as advocates; and a posse of rustics with pitchforks keeps order. The court is opened by a crier who calls on all good men who as yet wear their own clos,[140] to attend the court. The case is argued by the advocates; witnesses are examined to prove, first, that the man is henpecked, second, that his wife has struck him and drawn blood with the blow. In one case it was proved that the wife had knocked her beery lord down, and that his nose, striking a stool, had bled. The wife's advocate nearly gravelled the judge, by holding that blood drawn by a stool could not be said to have been drawn by the woman. The judge got over this by deciding that if the woman had taken the stool by one of its three legs, and hit the man, drawing blood, the blood would be clearly chargeable to her. 'And where is the difference,' asked he, triumphantly, 'between knocking the stool against him, and knocking him against the stool?' The woman was found guilty. 'For,' said the prosecuting attorney indignantly, 'if a man shan't drink a blue of beer with a neighbour or so, to what won't it come?' Her condemnation followed; to be ridden on the Ceffyl Pren. A derisive procession was formed, and two fellows were rigged up to personate the husband and wife. The male bore a broom, and the female brandished a ladle, and the two were paraded through the town. A band of 'musicians' marched before them, beating frying-pans with marrow bones, banging gridirons and kettles with pokers, tongs and shovels, and two playing on a fife and drum. These were followed by two standard bearers, one bearing a petticoat on top of a pole, the other a pair of breeches in the same manner. Other orts and ends of rabble made up the procession, which with antic and grimace marched about the village and neighbourhood. The orgie ended by the planting in front of the culprit's house of the pole and petticoat, and the pelting of it with addled eggs, stones, and mud, till it fell to the ground. The noble bifurcated emblem of manhood, the clos, was then elevated proudly aloft, and the woman's punishment was deemed complete. This is the story of a rural village in Glamorganshire. The custom was known in other counties, and varied in its details. In Breconshire, the virago was punished through the ceffyl pren merely by the moral influence of parading it before her cottage. Quarrelsome wives were said to stand in great and constant dread of its possible appearance before their doors. In Cardiganshire, on the contrary, the custom termed the coolstrin is _vice versâ_, and it is only husbands who ill-use their wives who are amenable to its discipline. FOOTNOTE: [140] Breeches. CHAPTER VII. Death and Burial--The Gwylnos--Beer-drinking at Welsh Funerals--Food and Drink over the Coffin--Sponge Cakes at Modern Funerals--The Sin-eater--Welsh Denial that this Custom ever existed--The Testimony concerning it--Superstitions regarding Salt--Plate of Salt on Corpse's Breast--The Scapegoat--The St. Tegla Cock and Hen--Welsh Funeral Processions--Praying at Cross-roads--Superstition regarding Criminals' Graves--Hanging and Welsh Prejudice--The Grassless Grave--Parson's Penny, or Offrwm--Old Shoes to the Clerk--Arian y Rhaw, or Spade Money--Burials without Coffin--The Sul Coffa--Planting and Strewing Graves with Flowers. I. With the growth of modern refinement the people of every land have become constantly more decorous in their grief. The effort of the primitive and untutored mind to utter its sorrow in loud and wild lamentations, and of friends and neighbours to divert the mind of the sufferer from his bereavement, gave rise to many funeral customs of which we still find traces in Wales. Pennant, while travelling in North Wales, noted, with regard to one Thomas Myddleton, a fact which he held 'to prove that the custom of the Irish howl, or Scotch Coranich, was in use among us (the Welsh); for we are told he was buried "cum magno dolore et clamore cognatorum et propinquorum omnium."' No such custom now exists; but there is a very impressive rite, of a corresponding character, but religious, called the Gwylnos. It is a meeting held in the room where the corpse is lying, on the night before the funeral. The Irish cry, 'Why did ye die?' is replaced by pious appeals to Heaven, in which great and strong emotion is expressed, the deceased referred to in stirring sentences, and his death made a theme for warnings on the brevity of earth-life and the importance of the future life of the soul. On the day of the funeral, however, the customs are not always in keeping with modern notions of the praiseworthy. Indulgence in beer-drinking at funerals is still a Welsh practice, and its antiquity is indicated by a proverb: 'Claddu y marw, ac at y cwrw'--(To bury the dead, and to the beer.)[141] The collection of Welsh writings called 'Cymru Fu' refers to the custom thus, (to translate:) 'Before the funeral procession started for the church, the nearest friends and relatives would congregate around the corpse to wail and weep their loss; while the rest of the company would be in an adjoining room drinking warm beer (cwrw brwd) and smoking their pipes; and the women in still another room drinking tea together.'[142] The writer here speaks of the custom in the past tense, but apparently rather as a literary fashion than to indicate a fact; at any rate, the custom is not extinct. Occasionally it leads to appearances in the police-court on the part of injudicious mourners.[143] After taking the coffin out of the house and placing it on a bier near the door, it was formerly customary for one of the relatives of the deceased to distribute bread and cheese to the poor, taking care to hand it to each one over the coffin. These poor people were usually those who had, in expectation of this gift, been busily engaged in gathering flowers and herbs with which to grace the coffin. Sometimes this dole was supplemented by the gift of a loaf of bread or a cheese with a piece of money placed inside it. After that a cup of drink was presented, and the receiver was required to drink a little of it immediately.[144] Alluding to this subject the Rev. E. L. Barnwell[145] says: 'Although this custom is no longer in fashion, yet it is to some extent represented by the practice, especially in funerals of a higher class, to hand to those who are invited to attend the funeral, oblong sponge cakes sealed up in paper, which each one puts into his or her pocket, but the providing and distribution of these cakes are now often part of the undertaker's duty.' [Illustration: GIVING FOOD OVER THE COFFIN. (_From an old drawing._)] FOOTNOTES: [141] So the Spanish say, 'The dead to the bier, the living to good cheer.' [142] 'Cymru Fu,' 91. [143] 'Two Llancaiach men named Servis and Humphrey were arrested for fighting. They had _been to a funeral_, had done the customary honours by the remains of the departed brother or sister who had suffered, died, and was "chested," and then, after drowning their grief in the "cwrw," finished up in the police-court with a _finale_ involving the payment of 5_s._ and costs, and 8_s._ 8_d._ damage, or in default twenty-one days' hard labour.'--'Western Mail,' Jan. 31, 1877. [144] Pennant, quoted by Roberts, 'Camb. Pop. Ant.,' 175. [145] 'Arch. Camb.' 4th Se., iii., 332. II. What connection there may be between these customs and the strange and striking rite of the Sin-eater, is a question worthy of careful consideration. It has been the habit of writers with family ties in Wales, whether calling themselves Welshmen or Englishmen, to associate these and like customs with the well-known character for hospitality which the Cymry have for ages maintained. Thus Malkin writes: 'The hospitality of the country is not less remarkable on melancholy than on joyful occasions. The invitations to a funeral are very general and extensive; and the refreshments are not light, and taken standing, but substantial and prolonged. Any deficiency in the supply of ale would be as severely censured on this occasion, as at a festival.'[146] Some have thought that the bread-eating and beer-drinking are survivals of the sin-eating custom described by Aubrey, and repeated from him by others. But well-informed Welshmen have denied that any such custom as that of the Sin-eater ever existed in Wales at any time, or in the border shires; and it must not be asserted that they are wrong unless we have convincing proof to support the assertion. The existing evidence in support of the belief that there were once Sin-eaters in Wales I have carefully collated and (excluding hearsay and second-hand accounts), it is here produced. The first reference to the Sin-eater anywhere to be found is in the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum, in the handwriting of John Aubrey, the author. It runs thus: 'In the county of Hereford was an old custom at funerals to hire poor people, who were to take upon them the sins of the party deceased. One of them (he was a long, lean, ugly, lamentable poor rascal), I remember, lived in a cottage on Rosse highway. The manner was that when the corpse was brought out of the house, and laid on the bier, a loaf of bread was brought out, and delivered to the Sin-eater, over the corpse, as also a mazard bowl of maple, full of beer (which he was to drink up), and sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he took upon him, _ipso facto_, all the sins of the defunct, and freed him or her from walking after they were dead.' Aubrey adds, 'and this custom though rarely used in our days, yet by some people was observed in the strictest time of the Presbyterian Government; as at Dynder (_nolens volens_ the parson of the parish), the kindred of a woman, deceased there, had this ceremony punctually performed, according to her will: and also, the like was done at the city of Hereford, in those times, where a woman kept many years before her death a mazard bowl for the Sin-eater; and the like in other places in this country; as also in Brecon, e.g., at Llangors, where Mr. Gwin, the minister, about 1640, could not hinder the performance of this custom. I believe,' says Aubrey, 'this custom was heretofore used all over Wales.' He states further, 'A.D. 1686: This custom is used to this day in North Wales.' Upon this, Bishop White Kennet made this comment: 'It seems a remainder of this custom which lately obtained at Amersden, in the county of Oxford; where, at the burial of every corpse, one cake and one flaggon of ale, just after the interment, were brought to the minister in the church porch.'[147] No other writer of Aubrey's time, either English or Welsh, appears to have made any reference to the Sin-eater in Wales; and equal silence prevails throughout the writings of all previous centuries. Since Aubrey, many references to it have been made, but never, so far as I can discover, by any writer in the Welsh language--a singular omission if there ever was such a custom, for concerning every other superstitious practice commonly ascribed to Wales the Welsh have written freely. In August, 1852, the Cambrian Archæological Association held its sixth annual meeting at Ludlow, under the Presidency of Hon. R. H. Clive, M.P. At this meeting Mr. Matthew Moggridge, of Swansea, made some observations on the custom of the Sin-eater, when he added details not contained in Aubrey's account given above. He said: 'When a person died, his friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done he received his fee of 2_s._ 6_d._ and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze; for, as it was believed that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom he performed the above ceremony, he was utterly detested in the neighbourhood--regarded as a mere Pariah--as one irredeemably lost.' The speaker then mentioned the parish of Llandebie where the above practice 'was said to have prevailed to a recent period.' He spoke of the survival of the plate and salt custom near Swansea, and indeed generally, within twenty years, (i.e. since 1830) and added: 'In a parish near Chepstow it was usual to make the figure of a cross on the salt, and cutting an apple or an orange into quarters, to put one piece at each termination of the lines.' Mr. Allen, of Pembrokeshire, testified that the plate and salt were known in that county, where also a lighted candle was stuck in the salt; the popular notion was that it kept away the evil spirit. Mr. E. A. Freeman, (the historian) asked if Sin-eater was the term used in the district where the custom prevailed, and Mr. Moggridge said it was. Such is the testimony. I venture no opinion upon it further than may be conveyed in the remark that I cannot find any direct corroboration of it, as regards the Sin-eater, and I have searched diligently for it. The subject has engaged my attention from the first moment I set foot on Cambrian soil, and I have not only seen no reference to it in Welsh writings, but I have never met any unlettered Welshman who had ever heard of it. All this proves nothing, perhaps; but it weighs something.[148] FOOTNOTES: [146] 'South Wales,' 68. [147] Vide Hone's 'Year Book,' 1832, p. 858. [148] Mr. Eugene Schuyler's mention of a corresponding character in Turkistan is interesting: 'One poor old man, however, I noticed, who seemed constantly engaged in prayer. On calling attention to him I was told that he was an iskatchi, a person who gets his living by taking on himself the sins of the dead, and thenceforth devoting himself to prayer for their souls. He corresponds to the Sin-eater of the Welsh border.'--'Turkistan,' ii., 28. III. Of superstitions regarding salt, there are many in Wales. I have even encountered the special custom of placing a plate of salt on the breast of the corpse. In the case of an old woman from Cardiganshire, who was buried at Cardiff, and who was thus decked by her relatives, I was told the purpose of the plate of salt was to 'prevent swelling.' There is an Irish custom of placing a plate of snuff on the body of a corpse; hence the saying, addressed to an enemy, 'I'll get a pinch off your belly yet.' The Irish also employ the plate of salt in the same manner. In view of the universal prevalence of superstitions regarding salt, too much weight should not be placed on this detail, in connection with the accounts of the Sin-eater. Such superstitions are of extreme antiquity, and they still survive even among the most cultivated classes. Salt falling toward a person was of old considered a most unlucky omen, the evil of which could only be averted by throwing a little of the fallen salt over the shoulder. My own wife observes this heathen rite to this day, and so, I fancy, do most men's wives--jocularly, no doubt, but with a sort of feeling that 'if there _is_ anything in it,' &c. Salt was the ancient symbol of friendship, being deemed incorruptible. In the Isle of Man no important business was ventured on without salt in the pocket; marrying, moving, even the receiving of alms, must be sanctified by an exchange of salt between the parties. An influential legend is noted among the Manx inhabitants, of the dissolution of an enchanted palace on that island, through the spilling of salt on the ground. In Da Vinci's picture of the Lord's Supper, Judas Iscariot is represented as overturning the salt--an omen of the coming betrayal of Christ by that personage. In Russia, should a friend pass you the salt without smiling, a quarrel will follow. The Scotch put salt in a cow's first milk after calving. Even the Chinese throw salt into water from which a person has been rescued from drowning. All these practices point either to lustration or propitiation. IV. It has been suggested that the custom of the Sin-eater is in imitation of the Biblical scapegoat. 'And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.'[149] This brings up the subject of charms and magic, and is illustrated in Wales, if not by the Sin-eater, by the cock and hen of St. Tegla's Well. This well is about half-way between Wrexham and Ruthin, in the parish of Llandegla, and has been considered efficacious in curing epilepsy. One of the common names of that complaint in Welsh is Clwyf y Tegla, (Tegla's disease). Relief is obtained by bathing in the well, and performing a superstitious ceremony in this manner: The patient repairs to the well after sunset, and washes himself in it; then, having made an offering by throwing into the water fourpence, he walks round it three times, and thrice recites the Lord's Prayer. If of the male sex, he offers a cock; if a woman, a hen. The bird is carried in a basket, first round the well, then round the church, and the rite of repeating the Pater Noster again performed. After all this, he enters the church, creeps under the altar, and making the Bible his pillow and the communion cloth his coverlet, remains there until the break of day. In the morning, having made a further offering of sixpence, he leaves the cock (or hen, as the case may be) and departs. 'Should the bird die, it is supposed that the disease has been transferred to it, and the man or woman consequently cured.'[150] The custom is associated with the ancient Druids as well as with the Jews, and its resemblance to the scapegoat is suggestive. FOOTNOTES: [149] Levit. xvi., 21, 22. [150] Ab Ithel, 'Arch. Camb.' 1st Se., i., 184. V. The funeral procession, in rural districts where hearses are unknown, wends its way graveward on foot, with the corpse borne by the nearest relatives of the deceased, a custom probably introduced in Wales during their residence here by the Romans. The coffin of Metellus, the conqueror of Macedon, was borne by his four sons. The coffins of Roman citizens held in high esteem by the Republic, were borne by justices and senators, while those of the enemies of the people were borne by slaves and hired servants. As the Welsh procession winds its way along the green lanes, psalms and hymns are sung continually, except on coming to cross-roads. Here the bier is set down, and all kneel and repeat the Lord's Prayer. The origin of this custom, as given by the Welsh, is to be found in the former practice of burying criminals at cross-roads. It was believed that the spirits of these criminals did not go far away from the place where their bodies lay, and the repeating of the Lord's Prayer was supposed to destroy and do away with any evil influence these spirits might have on the soul of the dear departed.[151] The Welsh retain much of the superstitious feeling regarding the graves of criminals and suicides. There is indeed a strong prejudice against hanging, on account of the troublesome spirits thus let loose. The well-known leniency of a 'Cardigan jury' may be connected with this prejudice, though it is usually associated with a patriotic feeling. 'What! would you have hur hang hur own countryman?' is the famous response of a Cardigan juror, who was asked why he and his brethren acquitted a murderer. The tale may be only a legend; the fact it illustrates is patent. It is related that in a dispute between two Cardigan farmers, some fifty years ago, one of them killed the other. The jury, believing the killing was unintentional, acquitted the homicide; but 'whether the man was guilty or not, his neighbours and the people who lived in the district, and who knew the spot where the farmer was killed, threw a stone upon it whenever they passed, probably to show their abhorrence of the deed that had been perpetrated in that place. By this means a large heap of stones, which was allowed to remain for many years, arose.'[152] They were then removed to repair the turnpike. This custom is apparently Jewish. Hangings are almost unknown in Wales, whether from the extra morality of the people, or the prejudice above noted. FOOTNOTES: [151] 'Cymru Fu,' 92. [152] 'Bye-gones,' March 22, 1876. VI. The legend of the Grassless Grave is a well-known Montgomeryshire tale, concerning a certain spot of earth in the graveyard of Montgomery Castle, upon which the verdure is less luxuriant than in other portions of the yard. One dark November night, many years ago, a man named John Newton, who had been at Welshpool fair, set out for home. Soon after, he was brought back to Welshpool in the custody of two men, who charged him with highway robbery, a crime then punishable with death. He was tried, and executed, in spite of his protestations; and in his last speech, admitting he had committed a former crime, but protesting he was innocent of this, he said: 'I have offered a prayer to Heaven, and believe it has been heard and accepted. And in meek dependence on a merciful God, whom I have offended, but who, through the atonement of His blessed Son, has, I trust, pardoned my offence, I venture to assert that as I am innocent of the crime for which I suffer, the grass, for one generation at least, will not cover my grave.' For thirty years thereafter, the grave was grassless; a bare spot in the shape of a coffin marked, amidst the surrounding luxuriance, the place where lay the penitent criminal, unjustly executed. Then a sacrilegious hand planted the spot with turf; but it withered as if blasted by lightning; and the grave is still grassless--certainly an unnecessary extension of the time set by the defunct for its testimony to his innocence. VII. A curious surviving custom at Welsh funerals is the Offrwm, or parson's penny. After having read the burial service in the church, the parson stands behind a table while a psalm is being sung, and to him go the mourners, one and all, and deposit a piece of money on the table. The parson counts it, states the amount, and pockets it. If the mourner depositing his offrwm be wealthy, he will give perhaps a guinea; if a farmer or tradesman, his gift will be a crown; and if poor, he will lay down his sixpence. 'Each one that intended making an offering of silver, would go up to the altar in his turn, and after each one had contributed there would be a respite, after which those who gave copper as their offering went forward and did likewise; but no coppers were offered at any respectable funeral. These offerings often reached the sum of ten and even twenty pounds in the year.' Thus the Welsh work, 'Cymru Fu,' speaking as usual in the past tense; but the custom is a present-day one. The Welsh believe that this custom was originally intended to compensate the clergyman for praying for the soul of the departed. It has now ceased to mean anything more than a tribute of respect to the deceased, or a token of esteem towards the officiating clergyman. In the parish of Defynog, Breconshire, there was a custom (up to 1843, when it seems to have ceased through the angry action of a lawless widower,) of giving to the parish clerk the best pair of shoes and stockings left behind by the defunct.[153] A still more curious form of the offrwm, which also survives in many rural neighbourhoods, is called the Arian y Rhaw, or spade money. At the grave, the gravedigger rubs the soil off his spade, extends it for donations, and receives a piece of silver from each one in turn, which he also pockets. In Merionethshire the money is received at the grave in a bowl, instead of on the spade, and the gift is simply called the offrwm. 'I well recollect, when a lad,' says an entertaining correspondent,[154] 'at Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant, seeing the clerk or sexton cleaning his spade with the palm of his hand, and blowing the remaining dust, so that the instrument of his calling should be clean and presentable, and then, with due and clerk-like gravity, presenting his polished spade, first to the "cyfneseifiaid" (next-of-kin), and then to the mourners one by one, giving all an opportunity of showing their respect to the dead, by giving the clerk the accustomed offrwm. At times the old clerk, "yr hen glochydd," when collecting the offrwm, rather than go around the grave to the people, to the no small annoyance of the friends, would reach his spade over the grave. At the particular time referred to, the clerk, having nearly had all the offrwm, saw that facetious wag and practical joker, Mr. B., extending his offering towards him from the opposite side of the grave. The clerk, as was his wont, extended the spade over the grave towards the offered gift. The opportunity for fun was not to be lost, and whilst placing his offrwm on the spade, Mr. B. pressed on one corner, and the spade turned in the hands of the unwitting clerk, emptying the whole offering into the grave, to the no small surprise of the clerk, who never forgot the lesson, and the great amusement of the standers-by.' It is noted in this connection that the sexton's spade 'was a terror to the superstitious, for if the gravedigger would but shake his spade at anyone, it was a matter of but short time ere the sexton would be called upon to dig the grave of that person who had come under the evil influence of the spade. "Has the sexton shook his spade at you?" was a question often put to a person in bad health.' FOOTNOTES: [153] 'Arch. Camb.,' 2nd Se., iv., 326. [154] 'Bye-gones,' Oct. 17, 1877. VIII. Until a recent date, burials without a coffin were common in some parts of Wales. Old people in Montgomeryshire not many years ago, could remember such burials, in what was called the cadach deupen, or cloth with two heads. Old Richard Griffith, of Trefeglwys, who died many years ago, recollected a burial in this fashion there, when the cloth gave way and was rent; whereupon the clergyman prohibited any further burials in that churchyard without a coffin. That was the last burial of the kind which took place in Montgomeryshire.[155] In the middle ages there was a Welsh custom of burying the dead in the garment of a monk, as a protection against evil spirits. This was popular among the wealthy, and was a goodly source of priestly revenue. FOOTNOTE: [155] 'Bye-gones,' Nov. 22, 1876. IX. Sul Coffa is an old Welsh custom of honouring the dead on the Sunday following the funeral, and for several succeeding Sundays, until the violence of grief has abated. In the Journal of Thomas Dinelly, Esquire, an Englishman who travelled through Wales and Ireland in the reign of Charles II.,[156] this passage occurs, after description of the wake, the keening, etc.: 'This done y{e} Irish bury their dead, and if it be in or neer y{e} burying place of that family, the servants and followers hugg kiss howle and weep over the skulls that are there digg'd up and once a week for a quarter of an year after come two or three and pay more noyse at the place.' The similarity in spirit between this and the Welsh Sul Coffa is as striking as the difference in practice. The Welsh walk quietly and gravely to the solemn mound beneath which rest the remains of the loved, and there kneeling in silence for five or ten minutes, pray or appear to pray. The Sul Coffa of Ivan the Harper is a well-known anecdote. Ivan the Harper was a noted character in his day, who desired that his coffa should be thus: 'I should like,' said he, on his death-bed, 'to have my coffa; but not in the old style. Instead of the old custom ask Williams of Merllyn and Richard the Harper to attend the church at Llanfwrog, and give these, my disciples, my two harps, and after the service is over, let them walk to my grave; let Williams sit at the head and Richard at the feet, of my grave, and let them play seven Welsh airs, beginning with Dafydd y Garreg Wen,' (David of the White Stone) 'and ending with, Toriad y Dydd,' (the Dawn.) 'The former is in a flat key, like death, and the latter is as sober as the day of judgment.' This request was religiously obeyed by the mourners on the ensuing Sul Coffa. FOOTNOTE: [156] Quoted in the Proceedings of the Kilkenny Arch. Soc., 1858. X. Reference has been made, in the chapter on courtship and marriage, to the Welsh practice of planting graves with flowers. There are graves in Glamorganshire which have been kept blooming with flowers for nearly a century without interruption, through the loving care of descendants of the departed. By a most graceful custom which also prevailed until recently, each mourner at a funeral carried in his hand a sprig of rosemary, which he threw into the grave. The Pagan practice of throwing a sprig of cypress into the grave has been thought to symbolize the annihilation of the body, as these sprigs would not grow if set in the earth: whereas the rosemary was to signify the resurrection or up-springing of the body from the grave. The existing custom of throwing flowers and immortelles into the grave is derivable from the ancient practice. But the Welsh carry the association of graves and floral life to the most lavish extreme, as has already been pointed out. Shakspeare has alluded to this in 'Cymbeline,' the scene of which tragedy is principally in Pembrokeshire, at and about Milford Haven: _Arv._ With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave: Thou shalt not lack The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azur'd harebell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Outsweeten'd not thy breath.[157] [Music: DAFYDD Y GARREG WEN.] FOOTNOTE: [157] 'Cymbeline,' Act IV., Sc. 2. BOOK IV. BELLS, WELLS, STONES, AND DRAGONS. Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire. MILTON: _Paradise Lost_. Then up there raise ane wee wee man Franethe the moss-gray stane; His face was wan like the collifloure, For he nouthir had blude nor bane. HOGG: _The Witch of Fife_. ... where he stood, Of auncient time there was a springing well, From which fast trickled forth a silver flood, Full of great vertues, and for med'cine good: ... For unto life the dead it could restore. SPENSER: _Faerie Queene_. CHAPTER I. Base of the Primeval Mythology--Bells and their Ghosts--The Bell that committed Murder and was damned for it--The Occult Powers of Bells--Their Work as Detectives, Doctors, etc.--Legend of the Bell of Rhayader--St. Illtyd's Wonderful Bell--The Golden Bell of Llandaff. I. The human mind in its infancy turns instinctively to fetichism. The mind of primeval man resembled that of a child. Children have to learn by experience that the fire which burns them is not instigated by malice.[158] In his primitive condition, man personified everything in nature. Animate and inanimate objects were alike endowed with feelings, passions, emotions, moral qualities. On this basis rests the primeval mythology. The numerous superstitions associated with bells, wells and stones in Wales, excite constant inquiries as regards their origin in fetichism, in paganism, in solar worship, or in church observances. That bells, especially, should suggest the supernatural to the vulgar mind is not strange. The occult powers of bells have place in the popular belief of many lands. The Flemish child who wonders how the voices got into the bells is paralleled by the Welsh lad who hears the bells of Aberdovey talking in metrical words to a musical chime. The ghosts of bells are believed to haunt the earth in many parts of Wales. Allusion has been made to those castle bells which are heard ringing from the submerged towers in Crumlyn lake. Like fancies are associated with many Welsh lakes. In Langorse Pool, Breconshire, an ancient city is said to lie buried, from whose cathedral bells on a calm day may be heard a faint and muffled chime, pealing solemnly far down in the sepial depths. A legend of Trefethin relates that in the church of St. Cadoc, at that place, was a bell of wondrous powers, a gift from Llewellyn ap Iorwerth, Lord of Caerleon. A little child who had climbed to the belfry was struck by the bell and killed, not through the wickedness of the bell itself, but through a spell which had been put upon the unfortunate instrument by an evil spirit. But though innocent of murderous intent, the wretched bell became forfeit to the demons on account of its fatal deed. They seized it and bore it down through the earth to the shadow-realm of annwn. And ever since that day, when a child is accidentally slain at Trefethin, the bell of St. Cadoc is heard tolling mournfully underneath the ground where it disappeared ages ago. FOOTNOTE: [158] A Mississippi negro-boy who was brought by a friend of mine from his southern home to a northern city, and who had never seen snow, found the ground one morning covered with what he supposed to be salt, and going out to get some, returned complaining that it 'bit his fingers.' II. There was anciently a belief that the sound of brass would break enchantment, as well as cause it; and it is presumed that the original purpose of the common custom of tolling the bell for the dead was to drive away evil spirits. Originally, the bell was tolled not for the dead, but for the dying; it was believed that evil spirits were hovering about the sick chamber, waiting to pounce on the soul as soon as it should get free from the body; and the bell was tolled for the purpose of driving them away. Later, the bell was not tolled till death had occurred, and this form of the custom survives here, as in many lands. Before the Reformation there was kept in all Welsh churches a handbell, which was taken by the sexton to the house where a funeral was to be held, and rung at the head of the procession. When the voices of the singers were silent at the end of a psalm, the bell would take up the burden of complaint in measured and mournful tones, and ring till another psalm was begun. It was at this period deemed sacred. The custom survived long after the Reformation in many places, as at Caerleon, the little Monmouthshire village which was a bustling Roman city when London was a hamlet. The bell--called the bangu--was still preserved in the parish of Llanfair Duffryn Clwyd half-a-dozen years ago. I believe the custom of ringing a handbell before the corpse on its way through the streets is still observed at Oxford, when a university man is buried. The town marshal is the bellman for this office. The custom is associated with the same superstitious belief which is seen in the 'passing bell,' the notes of pure bronze freeing the soul from the power of evil spirits. III. The Welsh were formerly strong in the belief that bells could perform miracles, detect thieves, heal the sick, and the like. In many instances they were possessed of locomotive powers, and would transport themselves from place to place when they had occasion, according to their own sweet will, and without human intervention. It is even recorded that certain handbells required to be tied with the double cord of an exorcism and a piece of twine, or they would get up and walk off in the night. Bells which presaged storms, as well as other disasters, have been believed to exist in many parts of Wales. In Pembrokeshire the unexpected tolling of a church bell in the night is held to be the sure precursor of a calamity--a belief which may be paralleled in London, where there are still people who believe such tolling on the part of the great bell of St. Paul's portends disaster to the royal family. In the Cromwellian wars, the sacrilegious followers of the stern old castle-hater carried off a great bell from St. David's, Pembrokeshire. They managed to get it on shipboard, but in passing through Ramsey Sound the vessel was wrecked--a direct result, the superstitious said, of profanely treating the bell. Ever since that time, Pembroke people have been able to hear this sunken bell ring from its watery grave when a storm is rising. IV. The legend of the Bell of Rhayader perpetuates a class of story which reappears in other parts of Great Britain. It was in the twelfth century that a certain contumacious knight was imprisoned in the castle of Rhayader. His wife, being devoted to him, and a good Catholic, besought the aid of the monks to get him out. They were equal to the occasion, at least in so far as to provide for her service a magical bell, which possessed the power of liberating from confinement any prisoner who should set it up on the wall and ring it. The wife succeeded in getting the bell secretly into her husband's possession, and he set it up on the wall and rang it. But although he had gathered his belongings together and was fully prepared to go, the doors of his prison refused to open. The castellan mocked at the magical bell, and kept the knight in durance vile. So therefore (for of course the story could not be allowed to end here) the castle was struck by lightning, and both it and the town were burned in one night--excepting only the wall upon which the magic bell was hanging. Nothing remains of the castle walls in this day. V. The bell of St. Illtyd was greatly venerated in the middle ages. A legend concerning this wonderful bell relates that a certain king had stolen it from the church, and borne it into England, tied about the neck of one of his horses. For this deed the king was destroyed, but repenting before his death, ordered the bell to be restored to its place in Wales. Without waiting to be driven, the horse with the bell about his neck set out for Wales, followed by a whole drove of horses, drawn by the melodious sound of the bell. Wonderful to tell, the horse was able to cross the river Severn and come into Wales, the great collection of horses following. 'Then hastening along the shore, and over the mountains, and through the woods, he came to the road which went towards Glamorgan, all the horses hearing, and following the sweet sound.' When they came to the banks of the river Taff, a clergyman heard the sound of the bell, and went out to meet the horse, and they together carried the bell to the gate of St. Illtyd's church. There the horse bent down and loosed his precious burden from his neck, 'and it fell on a stone, from which fall a part of it was broken, which is to be seen until the present day, in memory of the eminent miracle.'[159] Some thirty years ago a bell was discovered at Llantwit Major, in Glamorganshire, which was thought to be the identical bell of this saint. The village named was the scene of his exploits, many of which were miraculous to the point of Arabian Nights marvelousness. The discovered bell was inscribed 'Sancte Iltute, ora pro nobis,' and stood upon the gable of the quaint old town-hall. But though the bell was unmistakably ancient, it bore intrinsic evidence of having been cast long after the saint's death, when his name had become venerated. He was one of King Arthur's soldiers, who afterwards renounced the world, and founded several churches in Glamorganshire. FOOTNOTE: [159] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 492. VI. Among the many legends of Llandaff which still linger familiarly on the lips of the people is that of the bell of St. Oudoceus, second bishop of that see. In the ancient 'Book of Llandaff,' where are preserved the records of that cathedral from the earliest days of Christianity on this island, the legend is thus related: 'St. Oudoceus, being thirsty after undergoing labour, and more accustomed to drink water than any other liquor, came to a fountain in the vale of Llandaff, not far from the church, that he might drink, where he found women washing butter, after the manner of the country; and sending to them his messengers and disciples, they requested that they would accommodate them with a vessel, that their pastor might drink therefrom; who, ironically, as mischievous girls, said, "We have no cup besides that which we hold in our hands, namely, the butter." And the man of blessed memory taking it, formed one in the shape of a small bell, and he raised his hand so that he might drink therefrom, and he drank. And it remained in that form, that is, a golden one, so that it appeared to those who beheld it to consist altogether of the purest gold, which, by divine power, is from that day reverently preserved in the church of Llandaff in memory of the holy man, and it is said that by touching it health is given to the diseased.'[160] [Music: CLYCHAU ABERDYFI. (The Bells of Aberdovey.)] FOOTNOTE: [160] 'Liber Landavensis,' 378. CHAPTER II. Mystic Wells--Their Good and Bad Dispositions--St. Winifred's Well--The Legend of St. Winifred--Miracles--St. Tecla's Well--St. Dwynwen's--Curing Love-sickness--St. Cynfran's--St. Cynhafal's--Throwing Pins in Wells--Warts--Barry Island and its Legends--Ffynon Gwynwy--Propitiatory Gifts to Wells--The Dreadful Cursing Well of St. Elian's--Wells Flowing with Milk--St. Illtyd's--Taff's Well--Sanford's Well--Origins of Superstitions of this Class. I. The waters of mystery which flow at Lourdes, in France, are paralleled in numberless Welsh parishes. In every corner of Cambria may be found wells which possess definite attributes, malicious or beneficent, which they are popularly supposed to actively exert toward mankind. In almost every instance, the name of the tutelary saint to whom the well is consecrated is known to the peasantry, and generally they can tell you something about him, or her. Unnumbered centuries have elapsed since the saint lived; nay, generation upon generation has perished since any complete knowledge of his life or character existed, save in mouldering manuscripts left by monks, themselves long turned to dust; yet the tradition of the saint as regards the well is there, a living thing beside its waters. However lightly some forms of superstition may at times be treated by the vulgar, they are seldom capable of irreverent remark concerning the well. In many cases this respect amounts to awe. These wells are of varying power and disposition. Some are healing wells; others are cursing wells; still others combine the power alike to curse and to cure. Some are sovereign in their influence over all the diseases from which men suffer, mental and moral as well as physical; others can cure but one disease, or one specific class of diseases; and others remedy all the misfortunes of the race, make the poor rich, the unhappy happy, and the unlucky lucky. That these various reputations arose in some wells from medicinal qualities found by experience to dwell in the waters, is clear at a glance; but in many cases the character of the patron saint gives character to the well. In parishes dedicated to the Virgin Mary there will almost inevitably be found a Ffynon Mair, (Well of Mary,) the waters of which are supposed to be purer than the waters of other wells. Sometimes the people will take the trouble to go a long distance for water from the Ffynon Mair, though a good well may be nearer, in whose water chemical analysis can find no difference. Formerly, and indeed until within a few years past, no water would do for baptizing but that fetched from the Ffynon Mair, though it were a mile or more from the church. That the water flowed southward was in some cases held to be a secret of its virtue. In other instances, wells which opened and flowed eastward were thought to afford the purest water. II. Most renowned and most frequented of Welsh wells is St. Winifred's, at Holywell. By the testimony of tradition it has been flowing for eleven hundred and eighty years, or since the year 700, and during all this time has been constantly visited by throngs of invalids; and that it will continue to be so frequented for a thousand years to come is not doubted, apparently, by the members of the Holywell Local Board, who have just taken a lease of the well from the Duke of Westminster for 999 years more, at an annual rental of £1. The town of Holywell probably owes not only name but existence to this well. Its miraculous powers are extensively believed in by the Welsh, and by people from all parts of Great Britain and the United States; but Drayton's assertion that no dog could be drowned in its waters, on account of their beneficent disposition, is not an article of the existing faith. The most prodigious fact in connection with this wonderful fountain, when its legendary origin is contemplated, is its size, its abounding life, the great volume of its waters. A well which discharges twenty-one tons of water per minute, which feeds an artificial lake and runs a mill, and has cured unnumbered thousands of human beings of their ills for hundreds of years, is surely one of the wonders of the world, to which even mystic legend can only add one marvel more. The legend of St. Winifred, or Gwenfrewi, as she is called in Welsh, was related by the British monk Elerius in the year 660, or by Robert of Salop in 1190, and is in the Cotton MSS. in the British Museum. It is there written in characters considered to be of the middle of the eleventh century. Winifred was the daughter of a valiant soldier in North Wales; from her youth she loved a heavenly spouse, and refused transitory men. One day Caradoc, a descendant of royal stock, came to her house fatigued from hunting wild beasts, and asked Winifred for drink. But seeing the beauty of the nymph he forgot his thirst in his admiration, and at once besought her to treat him with the familiarity of a sweetheart. Winifred refused, asserting that she was engaged to be married to another. Caradoc became furious at this, and said, 'Leave off this foolish, frivolous, and trifling mode of speaking, and consent to my wish.' Then he asked her to be his wife. Finding he would not be denied, Winifred had recourse to a stratagem to escape from him: she pretended to comply, but asked leave to first make a becoming toilet. Caradoc agreed, on condition that she should make it quickly. The girl went through her chamber with swift feet into the valley, and was escaping, when Caradoc perceived the trick, and mounting his horse spurred after her. He overtook her at the very door of the monastery to which she was fleeing; before she could place her foot within the threshold he struck off her head at one blow. St. Beino coming quickly to the door saw bloody Caradoc standing with his stained sword in his hand, and immediately cursed him as he stood, so that the bloody man melted in his sight like wax before a fire. Beino then took the virgin's head (which had been thrown inside the door by the blow which severed it) and fitted it on the neck of the corpse. Winifred thereupon revived, with no further harm than a small line on her neck. But the floor upon which her bloody head had fallen, cracked open, and a fountain sprang up like a torrent at the spot. 'And the stones appear bloody at present as they did at first, and the moss smells as frankincense, and it cures divers diseases.'[161] Thus far the monastic legend. Some say that Caradoc's descendants were doomed to bark like dogs. Among the miracles related of Winifred's well by her monkish biographer is one characterized as 'stupendous,' concerning three bright stones which were seen in the middle of the ebullition of the fountain, ascending and descending, 'up and down by turns, after the manner of stones projected by a shooter.' They so continued to dance for many years, but one day an unlucky woman was seized with a desire to play with the stones. So she took hold of one; whereat they all vanished, and the woman died. This miracle was supplemented by that of a man who was rebuked for theft at the fountain; and on his denying his guilt, the goat which he had stolen and eaten became his accuser by uttering an audible bleating from his belly. But the miracles of Winifred's well are for the most part records of wonderful cures from disease and deformity. Withered and useless limbs were made whole and useful; the dumb bathed in the water, came out, and asked for their clothes; the blind washed and received their sight; lunatics 'troubled by unclean spirits' were brought to the well in chains, 'tearing with their teeth and speaking vain things,' but returned homeward in full possession of their reason. Fevers, paralysis, epilepsy, stone, gout, cancers, piles--these are but a few of the diseases cured by the marvellous well, on the testimony of the ancient chronicler of the Cotton MSS. 'Nor is it to be hidden in the silence of Lethean oblivion that after the expulsion of the Franks from all North Wales' the fountain flowed with a milky liquor for the space of three days. A priest bottled some of it, and it 'was carried about and drunk in all directions,' curing diseases in the same manner as the well itself. FOOTNOTE: [161] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 519. III. Only second in fame to Winifred's, among the Welsh themselves, is St. Tecla's well, or Ffynon Tegla, in Denbighshire. It springs out of a bog called Gwern Degla, about two hundred yards from the parish church of Llandegla. Some account of the peculiar superstitious ceremony connected with this well has already been given, in the chapter treating of the sin-eater. It is there suggested that the cock to which the fits are transferred by the patient at the well is a substitute for the scapegoat of the Jews. The parish clerk of Llandegla in 1855 said that an old man of his acquaintance 'remembered quite well seeing the birds staggering about from the effects of the fits' which had been transferred to them. IV. Of great celebrity in other days was St. Dwynwen's well, in the parish of Llandwyn, Anglesea. This saint being patron saint of lovers, her well possessed the property of curing love-sickness. It was visited by great numbers, of both sexes, in the fourteenth century, when the popular faith in its waters seems to have been at its strongest. It is still frequented by young women of that part of the country when suffering from the woes inflicted by Dan Cupid. That the well itself has been for many years covered over with sand does not prevent the faithful from displaying their devotion; they seek their cure from 'the water next to the well.' Ffynon Dwynwen, or Fountain of Venus, was also a name given to the sea, according to the Iolo MSS.; and in the legend of Seithenhin the Drunkard, in the 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' this stanza occurs: Accursed be the damsel, Who, after the wailing, Let loose the Fountain of Venus, the raging deep.[162] The story of Aphrodite, born from the foam of the sea, need only be alluded to here. FOOTNOTE: [162] 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' xxxviii. (An ancient MS. in the Hengwrt collection, which belonged of old to the priory of Black Canons at Carmarthen, and at the dissolution of the religious houses in Wales, when their libraries were dispersed, was given by the treasurer of St. David's Church to Sir John Price, one of Henry VIII.'s commissioners.) V. Several wells appear to have been devoted to the cure of the lower animals' diseases. Such was the well of Cynfran, where this ejaculation was made use of: 'Rhad Duw a Chynfran lwydd ar y da!'--(the grace of God and the blessed Cynfran on the cattle.) This Cynfran was one of the many sons of the patriarch Brychan, and his well is near Abergeleu. Pennant speaks also of a well near Abergeleu, which he calls St. George's well, and says that there the British Mars had his offering of horses; 'for the rich were wont to offer one, to secure his blessing on all the rest. He was the tutelar saint of those animals.' VI. St. Cynhafal's well, on a hillside in Llangynhafal parish, Denbighshire, is one of those curing wells in which pins are thrown. Its specialty is warts. To exorcise your wart you stick a pin in it and then throw the pin into this well; the wart soon vanishes. The wart is a form of human trouble which appears to have been at all times and in all countries a special subject of charms, both in connection with wells and with pins. Where a well of the requisite virtue is not conveniently near, the favourite form of charm for wart-curing is in connection with the wasting away of some selected object. Having first been pricked into the wart, the pin is then thrust into the selected object--in Gloucestershire it is a snail--and then the object is buried or impaled on a blackthorn in a hedge, and as it perishes the wart will disappear. The scapegoat principle of the sin-eater also appears in connection with charming away warts, as where a 'vagrom man' counts your warts, marks their number in his hat, and goes away, taking the warts with him into the next county--for a trifling consideration.[163] FOOTNOTE: [163] A popular belief among boys in some parts of the United States is that warts can be rubbed off upon a toad impaled with a sharp stick; as the toad dies the warts will go. _Per contra_, this cruel faith is offset by a theory that toads if ill-treated can spit upon their aggressors' hands and thus cause warts. VII. On Barry Island, near Cardiff, is the famous well of St. Barruc, or Barri, which was still frequented by the credulous up to May, 1879, at which time the island was closed against visitors by its owner, Lord Windsor, and converted into a rabbit warren. Tradition directs that on Holy Thursday he who is troubled with any disease of the eyes shall go to this well, and having thoroughly washed his eyes in its water, shall drop a pin in it. The innkeeper there formerly found great numbers of pins--a pint, in one instance--when cleaning out the well. It had long been utterly neglected by the sole resident of the island, whose house was a long distance from the well, at a point nearer the main land; but pins were still discovered there from time to time. There was in old days a chapel on this island; no vestige of it remains. Tradition says that St. Barruc was buried there, and the now barren and deserted islet appears to have been anciently a popular place among the saints. St. Cadoc had one of his residences there.[164] He was one day sitting on a hill-top in that island when he saw the two saints Barruc and Gwalches drawing near in a boat, and as he looked the boat was overturned by the wind. Both saints were drowned, and Cadoc's manual book, which they had in the boat with them, was lost in the sea. But when Cadoc proceeded to order his dinner, a salmon was brought to him which being cut open was found to have the missing manual book in its belly in an unimpaired condition. Concerning another saint whose name was Barri, a wonderful story is told that one day being on a visit to St. David he borrowed the latter's horse and rode across the sea from Pembrokeshire to the Irish coast. Many have supposed this Barri to be the same person as Barruc, but they were two men. This romantic island was anciently celebrated for certain ghastly noises which were heard in it--sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows--and which were supposed to be made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of brass to surround Carmarthen. So the noises and eruptions of Etna and Stromboli were in ancient times ascribed to Typhon or Vulcan. But in the case of Barry I have been unable, by any assistance from imagination, to detect these mystic sounds in our day. Camden, in his 'Britannica,' makes a like remark, but says the tradition was universally prevalent. The judicious Malkin, however, thinks it requires but a moderate stretch of fancy to create this cyclopean imagery, when the sea at high tides is often in possession of cavities under the very feet of the stranger, and its voice is at once modified and magnified by confinement and repercussion.[165] FOOTNOTES: [164] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 336. [165] Malkin's 'South Wales,' 132. VIII. Another well whose specialty is warts is a small spring called Ffynon Gwynwy, near Llangelynin church, Carnarvonshire. The pins used here must be crooked in order to be efficacious. It is said that fifty years ago the bottom of this little well was covered with pins; and that everybody was careful not to touch them, fearing that the warts deposited with the pins would grow upon their own hands if they did so.[166] At present the well is overgrown with weeds, like that on Barry Island. FOOTNOTE: [166] 'Arch. Camb.,' 3rd Se., xiii., 61. IX. The use of pins for purposes of enchantment is one of the most curious features of popular superstition. Trivial as it appears to superficial observation, it can be associated with a vast number of mystic rites and ceremonials, and with times the most ancient. There is no doubt that before the invention of pins in this country small pieces of money were thrown into the well instead; indeed it was asserted by a writer in the 'Archæologia Cambrensis' in 1856 that money was still thrown into St. Tecla's well, by persons desirous of recovering from fits. That the same practice prevailed among the Romans is shown by Pliny, who speaks of the sacred spring of the Clitumnus, so pure and clear that you may count the pieces of money that have been thrown into it, and the shining pebbles at the bottom. And in connection with the Welsh well of St. Elian there was formerly a box into which the sick dropped money as they nowadays drop a pin into that well. This box was called cyff-elian, and was in the form of a trunk studded with nails, with an aperture in the top through which the money was dropped. It is said to have got so full of coins that the parishioners opened it, and with the contents purchased three farms. The presentation of pins to the well, though now a meaningless rite on the part of those who practice it, was originally intended as a propitiatory offering to the evil spirit of the well. In some instances the heathen faith is virtually restored, and the well endowed with supernatural powers irrespective of the dedication of its waters to a Christian saint. Indeed in the majority of cases where these wells are now resorted to by the peasantry for any other than curative purposes, the fetichistic impulse is much more conspicuous than any influence associated with religious teaching. X. St. Elian's is accounted the most dreadful well in Wales. It is in the parish of Llanelian, Denbighshire. It is at the head of the cursing wells, of which there are but few in the Principality, and holds still a strong influence over the ignorant mind. The popular belief is that you can 'put' your enemy 'into' this well, i.e., render him subject to its evil influence, so that he will pine away and perhaps die unless the curse be removed. The degree and nature of the curse can be modified as the 'offerer' desires, so that the obnoxious person will suffer aches and pains in his body, or troubles in his pocket--the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The minister of the well appears to be some heartless wretch residing in the neighbourhood, whose services are enlisted for a small fee. The name of the person to be 'put into' the well is registered in a book kept by the wretch aforesaid, and a pin is cast into the well in his name, together with a pebble inscribed with its initials. The person so cursed soon hears of it, and the fact preys on his mind; he imagines for himself every conceivable ill, and if gifted with a lively faith soon finds himself reduced to a condition where he cannot rest till he has secured the removal of the curse. This is effected by a reversal of the above ceremonies--erasing the name, taking out the pebble, and otherwise appeasing the spirit of the well. It is asserted that death has in many instances resulted from the curse of this wickedly malicious well.[167] FOOTNOTE: [167] 'Camb. Pop. Ant.,' 247. See also 'Arch. Camb.,' 1st Se., i. 46. XI. Occasionally the cursing powers of a well were synonymous with curing powers. Thus a well much resorted to near Penrhos, was able to curse a cancer, i.e., cure it. The sufferer washed in the water, uttering curses upon the disease, and also dropping pins around the well. This well has been drained by the unsympathizing farmer on whose land it was, on account of the serious damage done to his crops by trespassers. XII. Wells from which milk has flowed have been known in several places. That Winifred's well indulged in this eccentricity on one occasion has been noted. The well of St. Illtyd is celebrated for the like performance. This well is in Glamorganshire, in the land called Gower, near Swansea. It was about the nativity of John the Baptist, on the fifth day of the week, in a year not specified, but certainly very remote, that for three hours there flowed from this well a copious stream of milk instead of water. That it was really milk we are not left in any possible doubt, for 'many who were present testified that while they were looking at the milky stream carefully and with astonishment, they also saw among the gravel curds lying about in every direction, and all around the edge of the well a certain fatty substance floating about, such as is collected from milk, so that butter can be made from it.'[168] The origin of this well is a pleasing miracle, and recalls the story of Canute; but while Canute's effort to command the sea was a failure in the eleventh century, that of St. Illtyd five hundred years earlier was a brilliant success. It appears that the saint was very pleasantly established on an estate consisting of a field surrounded on all sides by plains, with an intermediate grove, but was much afflicted by the frequent overflowings of the sea upon his land. In vain he built and rebuilt a very large embankment of mud mixed with stones, the rushing waves burst through again and again. At last the saint's patience was worn out, and he said, 'I will not live here any longer; I much wished it, but troubled with this marine molestation, it is not in my power. It destroys my buildings, it flows to the oratory which we built with great labour.' However, the place was so convenient he was loth to leave it, and he prayed for assistance. On the night before his intended departure an angel came to him and bade him remain, and gave him instructions for driving back the sea. Early in the morning Illtyd went to the fluctuating sea and drove it back; it receded before him 'as if it were a sensible animal,' and left the shore dry. Then Illtyd struck the shore with his staff, 'and thereupon flowed a very clear fountain, which is also beneficial for curing diseases, and which continues to flow without a falling off; and what is more wonderful, although it is near the sea, the water emitted is pure.'[169] FOOTNOTES: [168] 'Arch. Camb.,' 1st Se., iii., 264. [169] 'Cambro-British Saints,' 478. XIII. Some of the Welsh mystic wells are so situated that they are at times overflowed by the waters of the sea, or of a river. Taff's Well, in Glamorganshire, a pleasant walk from Cardiff, is situated practically in the bed of the river Taff. One must wade through running water to reach it, except in the summer season, when the water in the river is very low. A rude hut of sheet iron has been built over it. This well is still noted for its merits in healing rheumatism and kindred ailments. The usual stories are told of miraculous cures. A primitive custom of the place is that when men are bathing at this well they shall hang a pair of trousers outside the hut; women, in their turn, must hang out a petticoat or bonnet. At Newton Nottage, Glamorganshire, a holy well called Sanford's is so situated that the water is regulated in the well by the ocean tides. From time immemorial wondrous tales have been told of this well, how it ebbs and flows daily in direct contrariety to the tidal ebb and flow. The bottom of the well is below high-water mark on the beach, where it has an outlet into the sea. At very low tides in the summer, when the supply of water in the well is scanty, it becomes dry for an hour or two after low water. When the ocean tide rises, the sea-water banks up and drives back the fresh water, and the well fills again and its water rises. The villagers are accustomed to let the well-water rise through what they call the 'nostrils of the well,' and become settled a little before they draw it. Of course this phenomenon has been regarded as something supernatural by the ignorant for ages, and upon the actual visible phenomena have been built a number of magical details of a superstitious character. XIV. The wide prevalence of some form of water-worship among Aryan peoples is a fact of great significance. Superstitions in connection with British wells are generally traceable to a Druidic origin. The worship of natural objects in which the British Druids indulged, particularly as regards rivers and fountains, probably had a connection with traditions of the flood. When the early Christian preachers and teachers encountered such superstitions among the people, they carefully avoided giving unnecessary offence by scoffing at them; on the contrary they preferred to adopt them, and to hallow them by giving them Christian meanings. They utilized the old Druidic circles as places of worship, chose young priests from among the educated Druids, and consecrated to their own saints the mystic wells and fountains. In this manner were continued practices the most ancient. As time passed on, other wells were similarly sanctified, as the new religion spread and parish churches were built. Disease and wickedness being intimately associated in the popular mind--epileptics and like sufferers being held to be possessed of devils, and even such vulgar ills as warts and wens being considered direct results of some evil deed, suffered or performed--so the waters of Christian baptism which cleansed from sin, cleansed also from disease. Ultimately the virtue of the waters came to be among the vulgar a thing apart from the rite of baptism; the good was looked upon as dwelling in the waters themselves, and the Christian rite as not necessarily an element in the work of regeneration. The reader who will recall what has been said in the chapter on changelings, in the first part of this volume, will perceive a survival of the ancient creed herein, in the notion that baptism is a preventive of fairy babe-thievery. Remembering that the changeling notion is in reality nothing but a fanciful way of accounting for the emaciation, ugliness, idiocy, bad temper--in a word, the illness--of the child, it will be seen that the rite of baptism, by curing the first manifestations of evil in the child's system, was the orthodox means of preventing the fairies from working their bad will on the poor innocent. CHAPTER III. Personal Attributes of Legendary Welsh Stones--Stone Worship--Canna's Stone Chair--Miraculous Removals of Stones--The Walking Stone of Eitheinn--The Thigh Stone--The Talking Stone in Pembrokeshire--The Expanding Stone--Magic Stones in the 'Mabinogion'--The Stone of Invisibility--The Stone of Remembrance--Stone Thief-catchers--Stones of Healing--Stones at Cross-roads--Memorials of King Arthur--Round Tables, Carns, Pots, etc.--Arthur's Quoits--The Gigantic Rock-tossers of Old--Mol Walbec and the Pebble in her Shoe--The Giant of Trichrug--Giants and the Mythology of the Heavens--The Legend of Rhitta Gawr. I. In the traditions concerning Welsh stones, abundant personal attributes are accorded them, such as in nature belong only to animals. They were endowed with volition and with voice; they could travel from place to place without mortal aid; they would move uneasily when disturbed by human contact; they expanded and contracted at will; they clung to people who touched them with profane or guilty purpose; they possessed divers qualities which made them valuable to their possessors, such as the power of rendering them invisible, or of filling their pockets with gold. In pursuing the various accounts of these stones in Welsh folk-lore we find ourselves now in fairyland, now in the domains of mother church, now listening to legends of enchantment, now to tales of saintly virtue, now giving ear to a magician, now to a monk. Stone-worship, of which the existing superstitions are remains, was so prevalent under the Saxon monarchy, that it was forbidden by law in the reign of Edgar the Peaceable, (ninth century,) and when Canute came, in the following century, he also found it advisable to issue such a law. That this pagan worship was practised from a time of which there is now no record, is not questioned; and the perpetuation of certain features of this worship by the early Christians was in spite of the laws promulgated for its suppression by a Christian king. In this manner the monks were enabled to draw to themselves the peasantry in whose breasts the ancient superstition was strong, and who willingly substituted the new story for the old, so long as the underlying belief was not rudely uprooted. II. Among the existing stones in Wales with which the ancient ideas of occult power are connected, one in Carmarthenshire is probably unique of its kind. It is called Canna's Stone, and lies in a field adjoining the old church of Llangan, now remote from the population whose ancestors worshipped in it. The church was founded by an Armorican lady of rank named Canna, who was sainted. The stone in question forms a sort of chair, and was used in connection with a magic well called Ffynon Canna, which is now, like the church, deserted and wretched. Patients suffering from ague, in order to profit by its healing power, must sit in the chair of Canna's stone, after drinking of the water. If they could manage to sleep while in the chair, the effect of the water was supposed to be made sure. The process was continued for some days, sometimes for two or three weeks. In the middle of this parish there is a field called Parc y Fonwent, or the churchyard-field, where, according to local tradition, the church was to have been originally built; but the stones brought to the spot during the day were at night removed by invisible hands to the site of the present church. Watchers in the dark heard the goblins engaged in this work, and pronouncing in clear and correct Welsh these words, 'Llangan, dyma'r fan,' which mean, 'Llangan, here is the spot.' Similar miraculous removals of stones are reported and believed in other parts of Wales. Sometimes visible goblins achieve the work; sometimes the stones themselves possess the power of locomotion. The old British historian Nennius[170] speaks of a stone, one of the wonders of the Isle of Anglesea, which walks during the night in the valley of Eitheinn. Being once thrown into the whirlpool Cerevus, which is in the middle of the sea called Menai, it was on the morrow found on the side of the aforesaid valley. Also in Builth is a heap of stones, upon which is one stone bearing the impress of a dog's foot. This was the famous dog of King Arthur, named Cabal, which left its footprint on this stone when it hunted the swine Troynt. Arthur himself gathered this heap of stones, with the magic stone upon it, and called it Carn Cabal; and people who take away this stone in their hands for the space of a day and a night cannot retain it, for it returns itself to the heap. The Anglesea stone is also mentioned by Giraldus, through whom it achieved celebrity under the name of Maen Morddwyd, or the Thigh Stone--'a stone resembling a human thigh, which possesses this innate virtue, that whatever distance it may be carried it returns of its own accord the following night. Hugh, Earl of Chester, in the reign of King Henry I., having by force occupied this island and the adjacent country, heard of the miraculous power of this stone, and for the purpose of trial ordered it to be fastened with strong iron chains to one of a larger size and to be thrown into the sea; on the following morning, however, according to custom, it was found in its original position, on which account the Earl issued a public edict that no one from that time should presume to move the stone from its place. A countryman also, to try the powers of this stone, fastened it to his thigh, which immediately became putrid, and the stone returned to its original situation.'[171] This stone ultimately lost its virtues, however, for it was stolen in the last century and never came back. FOOTNOTES: [170] Harleian MSS., 3859. [171] Sir R. C. Hoare's Giraldus, 'Itin. Camb.,' ii., 104. III. The Talking Stone Llechlafar, or stone of loquacity, served as a bridge over the river Alyn, bounding the churchyard of St. David's in Pembrokeshire, on the northern side. It was a marble slab worn smooth by the tread of many feet, and was ten feet long, six feet broad, and one foot thick. Ancient tradition relates that one day 'when a corpse was being carried over it for interment the stone broke forth into speech, and by the effort cracked in the middle, which fissure is still visible; and on account of this barbarous and ancient superstition the corpses are no longer brought over it.'[172] In this same parish of St. David's, there was a flight of steps leading down to the sea, among which were a certain few which uttered a miraculous sound, like the ringing of a bell. The story goes that in ancient times a band of pirates landed there and robbed the chapel. The bell they took away to sea with them, but as it was heavy they rested it several times on their way, and ever since that day the stones it rested upon have uttered these mysterious sounds when struck. Also in this parish is the renowned Expanding Stone, an excavation in the rock of St. Gowan's chapel, which has the magic property of adapting itself to the size of the person who gets into it, growing smaller for a small man and larger for a large one. Among its many virtues was that if a person got into it and made a wish, and did not change his mind while turning about, the wish would come true. The original fable relates that this hollow stone was once solid; that a saint closely pursued by Pagan persecutors sought shelter of the rock, which thereupon opened and received him, concealing him till the danger was over and then obligingly letting him out. This stone may probably be considered as the monkish parallel for the magic stones which confer on their possessor invisibility, as we find them in the romances of enchantment. In the 'Mabinogion' such stones are frequently mentioned, usually in the favourite form of a gem set within a ring. 'Take this ring,' says the damsel with yellow curling hair,[173] 'and put it on thy finger, with the stone inside thy hand; and close thy hand upon the stone. And as long as thou concealest it, it will conceal thee.' But when it is found, as we find in following these clues further, that this Stone of Invisibility was one of the Thirteen Rarities of Kingly Regalia of the Island of Britain; that it was formerly kept at Caerleon, in Monmouthshire, the city whence St. David journeyed into Pembrokeshire; and that it is mentioned in the Triads thus: 'The Stone of the Ring of Luned, which liberated Owen the son of Urien from between the portcullis and the wall; whoever concealed that stone the stone or bezel would conceal him,' the strong probability appears that we are dealing with one and the same myth in the tale of magic and in the monkish legend. Traced back to a period more remote than that with which these Welsh stories ostensibly deal, we should find their prototype in the ring of Gyges. The Stone of Remembrance is another stone mentioned in the 'Mabinogion,' also a jewel, endowed with valuable properties which it imparts not merely to its wearer, but to any one who looks upon it. 'Rhonabwy,' says Iddawc to the enchanted dreamer on the yellow calf-skin, 'dost thou see the ring with a stone set in it, that is upon the Emperor's hand?' 'I see it,' he answered. 'It is one of the properties of that stone to enable thee to remember that thou seest here to-night, and hadst thou not seen the stone, thou wouldst never have been able to remember aught thereof.'[174] Still another stone of rare good qualities is that which Peredur gave to Etlym, in reward for his attendance,[175] the stone which was on the tail of a serpent, and whose virtues were such that whosoever should hold it in one hand, in the other he would have as much gold as he might desire. Peredur having vanquished the serpent and possessed himself of the stone, immediately gave it away, in that spirit of lavish free-handedness which so commonly characterizes the heroes of chivalric British romance. FOOTNOTES: [172] Ibid., ii., 8. [173] Lady Charlotte Guest's 'Mabinogion,' 13. [174] Lady Charlotte Guest's 'Mabinogion,' 303. [175] Ibid., 111. IV. In the church of St. David's of Llanfaes, according to Giraldus, was preserved among the relics a stone which caught a thieving boy in the act of robbing a pigeon's nest, and held him fast for three days and nights. Only by assiduous and long-continued prayer were the unhappy boy's parents able to get him loose from the terrible stone, and the marks of his five fingers remained ever after impressed upon it, so that all might see them. There was a stone of similar proclivities in the valley of Mowddwy, which did good service for the church. A certain St. Tydecho, a relation of King Arthur, who slept on a blue rock in this valley, was persecuted by Maelgwn Gwynedd. One day this wicked knight came with a pack of white dogs to hunt in that neighbourhood, and sat down upon the saint's blue stone. When he endeavoured to get up he found himself fastened to his seat so that he could not stir, in a manner absurdly suggestive of French farces; and he was obliged to make up matters with the saint. He ceased to persecute the good man, and to make amends for the past gave him the privilege of sanctuary for a hundred ages.[176] FOOTNOTE: [176] 'Celtic Remains,' 420. (Printed for the Cambrian Arch. Soc., London, 1878.) V. As for Stones of Healing, with qualities resembling those abiding in certain wells, they appear in many shapes. Now it is a maenhir, against which the afflicted peasant must rub himself; now it is a pebble which he must carry in his pocket. The inevitable wart reappears in this connection; the stone which cures the wart is found by the roadside, wrapped in a bit of paper, and dropped on a cross-road; to him who picks it up the wart is transferred. Children in Pembrokeshire will not at the present day pick up a small parcel on a cross-road, suspecting the presence of the wart-bearing stone. In Carmarthen are still to be found traces of a belief in the Alluring Stone, whose virtue is that it will cure hydrophobia. It is represented as a soft white stone, about the size of a man's head, originally found on a farm called Dysgwylfa, about twelve miles from Carmarthen town. Grains were scraped from the stone with a knife, and administered to the person who had been bitten by a rabid dog; and a peculiarity of the stone was that though generation after generation had scraped it, nevertheless it did not diminish in size. A woman who ate of this miraculous stone, after having been bitten by a suspicious cur, testified that it caused 'a boiling in her blood.' The stone was said to have fallen from the sky in the first instance. VI. Stones standing at cross-roads are seldom without some superstitious legend. A peasant pointed out to me, on a mountain-top near Crumlyn, Monmouthshire, a cross-roads stone, beneath which, he asserted, a witch sleeps by day, coming forth at night. 'Least they was say so,' he explained, with a nervous look about him, 'but there you! _I_ was never see anything, an' I was pass by there many nights--yes, indeed, often.' The man's eagerness to testify against the truth of the tradition was one of the most impressive illustrations possible of lingering superstitious awe in this connection. A famous Welsh witch, who used to sleep under a stone at Llanberis, in North Wales, was called Canrig Bwt, and her favourite dish at dinner was children's brains. A certain criminal who had received a death-sentence was given the alternative of attacking this frightful creature, his life to be spared should he succeed in destroying her. Arming himself with a sharp sword, the doomed man got upon the stone and called on Canrig to come out. 'Wait till I have finished eating the brains in this sweet little skull,' was her horrible answer. However, forth she came presently, when the valiant man cut off her head at a blow. To this day they scare children thereabout with the name of Canrig Bwt. VII. In every part of Wales one encounters the ancient memorials of King Arthur--sometimes to be dimly connected with the historical character, but more often with the mythical figure--each with its legend, or its bundle of legends, poetic, patriotic, or superstitious. Arthur's Round Table at Caerleon, Monmouthshire, is as well known to every boy in the neighbourhood as any inn or shop of the village. It is a grass-grown Roman amphitheatre, whence alabaster statues of Adrian's day have been disinterred. There is also an Arthur's Round Table in Denbighshire, a flat-topped hill thus called, and in Anglesea another, near the village of Llanfihangel. Arthur's Seat, Arthur's Bed, Arthur's Castle, Arthur's Stone, Arthur's Hill, Arthur's Quoit, Arthur's Board, Arthur's Carn, Arthur's Pot--these are but a few of the well-known cromlechs, rocking-stones, or natural objects to be found in various neighbourhoods. They are often in duplicates, under these names, but they never bear such titles by other authority than traditions reaching back into the dark ages. Some of the stories and superstitions which attach to them are striking, and of the most fascinating interest to the student of folk-lore; others are merely grotesque, as in the case of Arthur's Pot. This is under a cromlech at Dolwillim, on the banks of the Tawe, and in the stream itself when the water is high; it is a circular hole of considerable depth, accurately bored in the stone by the action of the water. This hole is called Arthur's Pot, and according to local belief was made by Merlin for the hero king to cook his dinner in. Arthur's Quoits are found in many parts of the country. A large rock in the bed of the Sawdde river, on the Llangadock side of Mynydd Du, (the Black Mountain,) is one of these quoits. The story is that the king one day flung it from the summit of Pen Arthur, a mile away. There is another large rock beside it, which was similarly flung down by a lady of Arthur's acquaintance, whose gigantic proportions may be guessed from the fact that this boulder was a pebble in her shoe, which annoyed her. VIII. Upon this hint there opens out before the inquirer a wealth of incident and illustration, in connection with gigantic Britons of old time who hurled huge rocks about as pebbles. There is the story of the giant Idris, who dwelt upon Cader Idris, and who found no less a number than three troublesome pebbles in his shoe as he was out walking one day, and who tossed them down where they lie on the road from Dolgelley to Machynlleth, three bulky crags. There are several legends about Mol Walbec's pebbles in Breconshire. This lusty dame has a full score of shadowy castles on sundry heights in that part of Wales; and she is said to have built the castle of Hay in one night. In performing this work she carried the stones in her apron; one of these--a pebble about a foot thick and nine feet long--fell into her shoe. At first she did not notice it, but by-and-by it began to annoy her, and she plucked it out and threw it into Llowes churchyard, three miles away, where it now lies. In many parts of Wales where lie rude heaps of stones, the peasantry say they were carried there by a witch in her apron. The gigantic creatures whose dimensions are indicated by these stones reappear continually in Welsh folk-lore. Arthur is merely the greatest among them; all were of prodigious proportions. Hu Gadarn, Cadwaladr, Rhitta Gawr, Brutus, Idris, are all members of the shadowy race whose 'quoits' and 'pebbles' are scattered about Wales. The remains at Stonehenge have been from time immemorial called by the Cymry the Côr Gawr, Circle or Dance of Giants. How the Carmarthen enchanter, Merlin, transported these stones hither from Killara mountain in Ireland by his magic art, everybody knows. It is only necessary that a stone should be of a size to make the idea of removing it an apparently hopeless one--that Merlin or some other magician brought it there by enchantment, or that Arthur or some other giant tossed it there with his mighty arm, is a matter of course.[177] The giant of Trichrug, (a fairy haunt in Cardiganshire,) appears to have been the champion pebble-tosser of Wales, if local legend may be trusted. Having invited the neighbouring giants to try their strength with him in throwing stones, he won the victory by tossing a huge rock across the sea into Ireland. His grave is traditionally reported to be on that mountain, and to possess the same properties as the Expanding Stone, for it fits any person who lies down in it, be he tall or short. It has the further virtue of imparting extraordinary strength to any one lying in it; but if he gets into it with arms upon his person they will be taken from him and he will never see them more. FOOTNOTE: [177] It is noteworthy that most of the great stones of these legends appear to have really been transported to the place where they are now found, being often of a different rock than that of the immediate locality. To what extent the legends express the first vague inductions of early geological observers, is a question not without interest. IX. The gigantic stone-tossers of Wales associate themselves without effort with the mythology of the heavens. One of their chiefest, Idris, was indeed noted as an astrologer, and is celebrated as such in the Triads: Idris Gawr, or the Giant Idris; Gwydion, or the Diviner by Trees; Gwyn, the Son of Nudd, the Generous; So great was their knowledge of the stars, that they could foretell whatever might be desired to be known until the day of doom. And among Welsh legends none is more familiar than that of Rhitta Gawr, wherein the stars are familiarly spoken of as cows and sheep, and the firmament as their pasture. CHAPTER IV. Early Inscribed Stones--The Stone Pillar of Banwan Bryddin, near Neath--Catastrophe accompanying its Removal--The Sagranus Stone and the White Lady--The Dancing Stones of Stackpool--Human Beings changed to Stones--St. Ceyna and the Serpents--The Devil's Stone at Llanarth--Rocking Stones and their accompanying Superstitions--The Suspended Altar of Loin-Garth--Cromlechs and their Fairy Legends--The Fairies' Castle at St. Nicholas, Glamorganshire--The Stone of the Wolf Bitch--The Welsh Melusina--Parc-y-Bigwrn Cromlech--Connection of these Stones with Ancient Druidism. I. Paleographic students are more or less familiar with about seventy early inscribed stones in Wales. The value of these monuments, as corroborative evidence of historical facts, in connection with waning popular traditions, is well understood. Superstitious prejudice is particularly active in connection with stones of this kind. The peasantry view them askance, and will destroy them if not restrained, as they usually are, by fear of evil results to themselves. Antiquaries have often reason to thank superstition for the existence in our day of these ancient monuments. But there is a sort of progressive movement towards enlightenment which carries the Welsh farmer from the fearsome to the destructive stage, in this connection. That dangerous thing, a little knowledge, sometimes leads its imbiber beyond the reach of all fear of the guardian fairy or demon of the stone, yet leaves him still so superstitious regarding it that he believes its influence to be baleful, and its destruction a sort of duty. It was the common opinion of the peasantry of the parish in which it stood, that whoever happened to read the inscription on the Maen Llythyrog, an early inscribed stone on the top of a mountain near Margam Abbey, in Glamorganshire, would die soon after. In many instances the stones are believed to be transformed human beings, doomed to this guise for some sin, usually an act of sacrilege. Beliefs of this character would naturally be potent in influencing popular feeling against the stones. But on the other hand, however desirable might be their extinction, there would be perils involved, which one would rather his neighbour than himself should encounter. Various awful consequences, but especially the most terrific storms and disturbances of the earth, followed any meddling with them. At Banwan Bryddin, a few miles from Neath, a stone pillar inscribed 'MARCI CARITINI FILII BERICII,' long stood on a tumulus which by the peasants was considered a fairy ring. The late Lady Mackworth caused this stone to be removed to a grotto she was constructing on her grounds, and which she was ornamenting with all the curious stones she could collect. An old man who was an under-gardener on her estate, and who abounded with tales of goblins, declaring he had often had intercourse with these strange people, told the Rev. Mr. Williams of Tir-y-Cwm, that he had always known this act of sacrilege would not go unpunished by the guardians of the stone. He had more than once seen these sprites dancing of an evening in the rings of Banwan Bryddin, where the 'wonder stone' stood, but never since the day the stone was removed had any mortal seen them. Upon the stone, he said, were written mysterious words in the fairy language, which no one had ever been able to comprehend, not even Lady Mackworth herself. When her ladyship removed the stone to Gnoll Gardens the fairies were very much annoyed; and the grotto, which cost Lady Mackworth thousands of pounds to build, was no sooner finished than one night, Duw'n catwo ni! there was such thunder and lightning as never was heard or seen in Glamorganshire before; and next morning the grotto was gone! The hill had fallen over it and hidden it for ever. 'Iss indeed,' said the old man, 'and woe will fall on the Cymro or the Saeson that will dare to clear the earth away. I myself, and others who was there, was hear the fairies laughing loud that night, after the storm has cleared away.' II. The Sagranus Stone at St. Dogmell's, Pembrokeshire, was formerly used as a bridge over a brook not far from where it at present stands--luckily with its inscribed face downwards, so that the sculpture remained unharmed while generations were tramping over it. During its use as a bridge it bore the reputation of being haunted by a white lady, who was constantly seen gliding over it at the witching hour of midnight. No man or woman could be induced to touch the strange stone after dark, and its supernatural reputation no doubt helped materially in its preservation unharmed till the present time. It is considered on paleographic grounds to be of the fourth century. In Pembrokeshire also are found the famous Dancing Stones of Stackpool. These are three upright stones standing about a mile from each other, the first at Stackpool Warren, the second further to the west, on a stone tumulus in a field known as Horestone Park, and the third still further westward. One of many traditions concerning them is to the effect that on a certain day they meet and come down to Sais's Ford to dance, and after their revel is over return home and resume their places. III. There is a curious legend regarding three stones which once stood on the top of Moelfre Hill, in Carnarvonshire, but which were long ago rolled to the bottom of the hill by 'some idle-headed youths' who dug them up. They were each about four feet high, standing as the corners of a triangle; one was red as blood, another white, and the third a pale blue. The tradition says that three women, about the time when Christianity first began to be known in Britain, went up Moelfre Hill on a Sabbath morning to winnow their corn. They had spread their winnowing sheet upon the ground and begun their work, when some of their neighbours came to them and reprehended them for working on the Lord's day. But the women, having a greater eye to their worldly profit than to the observance of the fourth commandment, made light of their neighbours' words, and went on working. Thereupon they were instantly transformed into three pillars of stone, each stone of the same colour as the dress of the woman in whose place it stood, one red, one white, and the third bluish. Legends of the turning to stone of human beings occur in connection with many of the meini hirion (long stones). Near Llandyfrydog, Anglesea, there is a maenhir of peculiar shape. From one point of view it looks not unlike the figure of a humpbacked man, and it is called 'Carreg y Lleidr,' or the Robber's Stone. The tradition connected with it is that a man who had stolen the church Bible, and was carrying it away on his shoulder, was turned into this stone, and must stand here till the last trump sets him free. At Rolldritch (Rhwyldrech?) there is or was a circle of stones, concerning which tradition held that they were the human victims of a witch who, for some offence, transformed them to this shape. In connection with this circle is preserved another form of superstitious belief very often encountered, namely, that the number of stones in the circle cannot be correctly counted by a mortal.[178] It is noteworthy that the only creature which shares with man the grim fate of being turned to stone, in Welsh legends, is the serpent. The monkish account of St. Ceyna, one of the daughters of Prince Brychan, of Breconshire, relates that having consecrated her virginity to the Lord by a perpetual vow, she resolved to seek some desert place where she could give herself wholly up to meditation. So she journeyed beyond the river Severn, 'and there meeting a woody place, she made her request to the prince of that country that she might be permitted to serve God in that solitude. His answer was that he was very willing to grant her request, but that the place did so swarm with serpents that neither man nor beast could inhabit it. But she replied that her firm trust was in the name and assistance of Almighty God to drive all that poisonous brood out of that region. Hereupon the place was granted to the holy virgin, who, prostrating herself before God, obtained of him to change the serpents and vipers into stones. And to this day the stones in that region do resemble the windings of serpents, through all the fields and villages, as if they had been framed by the hand of the sculptor.' The scene of this legend is mentioned by Camden as being at a place near Bristol, called Keynsham, 'where abundance of that fossil called by the naturalists Cornu Ammonis is dug up.' FOOTNOTE: [178] Roberts, 'Camb. Pop. Ant.,' 220. IV. Our old friend the devil is once more to the fore when we encounter the inscribed stone of the twelfth century, which stands in the churchyard of Llanarth, near Aberaeron, in Cardiganshire. A cross covers this stone, with four circular holes at the junction of the arms. The current tradition of the place regarding it is that one stormy night, there was such a tremendous noise heard in the belfry that the whole village was thrown into consternation. It was finally concluded that nobody but the diawl could be the cause of this, and therefore the people fetched his reverence from the vicarage to go and request the intruder to depart. The vicar went up into the belfry, with bell, book, and candle, along the narrow winding stone staircase, and, as was anticipated, there among the bells he saw the devil in person. The good man began the usual 'Conjurate in nomine,' etc., when the fiend sprang up and mounted upon the leads of the tower. The vicar was not to be balked, however, and boldly followed up the remainder of the staircase and got also out upon the leads. The devil finding himself hard pressed, had nothing for it but to jump over the battlements of the tower. He came down plump among the gravestones below, and falling upon one, made with his hands and knees the four holes now visible on the stone in question, which among the country people still bears the name of the Devil's Stone. V. The logan stones in various parts of Wales, which vibrate mysteriously under the touch of a child's finger, and rock violently at a push from a man's stronger hand, are also considered by the superstitious a favourite resort of the fairies and the diawl. The holy aerolite to which unnumbered multitudes bow down at Mecca is indeed no stranger thing than the rocking-stone on Pontypridd's sky-perched common. Among the marvellous stones in Nennius is one concerning a certain altar in Loin-Garth, in Gower, 'suspended by the power of God,' which he says a legend tells us was brought thither in a ship along with the dead body of some holy man who desired to be buried near St. Illtyd's grave, and to remain unknown by name, lest he should become an object of too reverent regard; for Illtyd dwelt in a cave there, the mouth of which faced the sea in those days; and having received this charge, he buried the corpse, and built a church over it, enclosing the wonderful altar, which testified by more than one astounding miracle the Divine power which sustained it. This is thought to be a myth relating to some Welsh rocking-stone no longer known. The temptation to throw down stones of this character has often been too much for the destruction-loving vulgarian, both in Wales and in other parts of the British islands; but the offenders have seldom been the local peasantry, who believe that the guardians of the stone--the fairies or the diawl, as the case may be--will heavily avenge its overthrow on the overthrowers. VI. [Illustration: THE FAIRY FROLIC AT THE CROMLECH.] Venerable in their hoary antiquity stand those monuments of a long-vanished humanity, the cromlechs which are so numerous in Wales, sharing with the logan and the inscribed stone the peasant's superstitious interest. Even more than the others, these solemn rocks are surrounded with legends of enchantment. They figure in many fairy-tales like that of the shepherd of Frennifawr, who stood watching their mad revelry about the old cromlech, where they were dancing, making music on the harp, and chasing their companions in hilarious sort. That the fairies protect the cromlechs with special care, as they also do the logans and others, is a belief the Welsh peasant shares with the superstitious in many lands. There is a remarkable cromlech near the hamlet of St. Nicholas, Glamorganshire, on the estate of the family whose house has the honour of being haunted by the ghost of an admiral. This cromlech is called, by children in that neighbourhood, 'Castle Correg.' A Cardiff gentleman who asked some children who were playing round the cromlech, what they termed it, was struck by the name, which recalled to him the Breton fairies thus designated.[179] The korreds and korregs of Brittany closely resemble the Welsh fairies in numberless details. The korreds are supposed to live in the cromlechs, of which they are believed to have been the builders. They dance around them at night, and woe betide the unhappy peasant who joins them in their roundels.[180] Like beliefs attach to cromlechs in the Haute Auvergne, and other parts of France. A cromlech at Pirols, said to have been built by a fée, is composed of seven massive stones, the largest being twelve feet long by eight and a half feet wide. The fée carried these stones hither from a great distance, and set them up; and the largest and heaviest one she carried on the top of her spindle, and so little was she incommoded by it that she continued to spin all the way.[181] FOOTNOTES: [179] Mr. J. W. Lukis, in an address before the Cardiff Nat. Soc. in July, 1874. [180] Keightley, 'Fairy Mythology,' 432. [181] Cambry, 'Monuments Celtiques,' 232. VII. Among the Welsh peasantry the cromlechs are called by a variety of names, one interesting group giving in Cardiganshire 'the Stone of the Bitch,' in Glamorganshire 'the Stone of the Greyhound Bitch,' in Carmarthenshire and in Monmouthshire 'the Kennel of the Greyhound Bitch,' and in some other parts of Wales 'the Stone of the Wolf Bitch.' These names refer to no fact of modern experience; they are legendary. The Cambrian form of the story of Melusina is before us here, with differing details. The wolf-bitch of the Welsh legend was a princess who for her sins was transformed to that shape, and thus long remained. Her name was Gast Rhymhi, and she had two cubs while a wolf-bitch, with which she dwelt in a cave. After long suffering in this wretched guise, she and her cubs were restored to their human form 'for Arthur,' who sought her out. The unfortunate Melusina, it will be remembered, was never entirely robbed of her human form. 'Ange par la figure, et serpent par le reste,' she was condemned by the lovely fay Pressina to become a serpent from the waist downwards, on every Saturday, till she should meet a man who would marry her under certain specified conditions. The monkish touch is on the Welsh legend, in the medieval form in which we have it in the Mabinogi of 'Kilhwch and Olwen.' The princess is transformed into a wolf-bitch 'for her sins,' and when restored, although it is for Arthur, 'God did change' her to a woman again.[182] FOOTNOTE: [182] 'Mabinogion,' 259. VIII. In a field called Parc-y-Bigwrn, near Llanboidy, Carmarthenshire, are the remains of a cromlech destroyed many years ago, concerning which an old man named John Jones related a superstitious tale. It was to the effect that there were ten men engaged in the work of throwing it down, and that when they were touching the stone they became filled with awe; and moreover, as the stone was being drawn away by six horses the road was suddenly rent asunder in a supernatural manner. This is a frequent phenomenon supposed by the Welsh peasantry to accompany the attempt to move a cromlech. Another common catastrophe is the breaking down of the waggon--not from the weight of the stone, but through the displeasure of its goblin guardians. Sometimes this awful labour is accompanied by fierce storms of hail and wind, or violent thunder and lightning; sometimes by mysterious noises, or swarms of bees which are supposed to be fairies in disguise. IX. A very great number of fanciful legends might be related in connection with stones of striking shape, or upon which there are peculiar marks and figures; but enough of this store of folk-lore has been given to serve present ends. If more were detailed, there would in all cases be found a family resemblance to the legends which have been presented, and which lead us now into the enchanted country where Arthur reigns, now wandering among the monkish records of church and abbey, now to the company of the dwarfs and giants of fairyland. That the British Druids regarded many of these stones with idolatrous reverence, is most probable. Some of them, as the cromlechs and logans, they no doubt employed in their mystic rites, as being symbols of the dimly descried Power they worshipped. Of their extreme antiquity there is no question. The rocking-stones may be considered natural objects, though they were perhaps assisted to their remarkable poise by human hands. The cromlechs were originally sepulchral chambers, unquestionably, but they are so old that neither history nor tradition gives any aid in assigning the date of their erection. Opinions that they were once pulpits of sun-worship, or Druidic altars of sacrifice, are not unwarranted, perhaps, though necessarily conjectural. The evidence that the inscribed stones are simply funeral monuments, is extensive and conclusive. Originally erected in honour of some great chief or warrior, they were venerated by the people, and became shrines about which the latter gathered in a spirit of devotion. With the lapse of ages, the warrior was forgotten; even the language in which he was commemorated decayed, and the marks on the stones became to the peasantry meaningless hieroglyphics, to which was given a mysterious and awful significance; and so for unnumbered centuries the tombstone remained an object of superstitious fear and veneration. CHAPTER V. Baleful Spirits of Storm--The Shower at the Magic Fountain--Obstacles in the way of Treasure-Seekers--The Red Lady of Paviland--The Fall of Coychurch Tower--Thunder and Lightning evoked by Digging--The Treasure-Chest under Moel Arthur in the Vale of Clwyd--Modern Credulity--The Cavern of the Ravens--The Eagle-guarded Coffer of Castell Coch--Sleeping Warriors as Treasure-Guarders--The Dragon which St. Samson drove out of Wales--Dragons in the Mabinogion--Whence came the Red Dragon of Wales?--The Original Dragon of Mythology--Prototypes of the Welsh Caverns and Treasure-Hills--The Goblins of Electricity. I. In the prominent part played by storm--torrents of rain, blinding lightning, deafening thunder--in legends of disturbed cromlechs, and other awful stones, is involved the ancient belief that these elements were themselves baleful spirits, which could be evoked by certain acts. They were in the service of fiends and fairies, and came at their bidding to avenge the intrusion of venturesome mortals, daring to meddle with sacred things. This fascinating superstition is preserved in numberless Welsh legends relating to hidden treasures, buried under cromlechs or rocky mounds, or in caverns. In the 'Mabinogion' it appears in the enchanted barrier to the Castle of the Lady of the Fountain. Under a certain tall tree in the midst of a wide valley there was a fountain, 'and by the side of the fountain a marble slab, and on the marble slab a silver bowl, attached by a chain of silver, so that it may not be carried away. Take the bowl and throw a bowlful of water on the slab,' says the black giant of the wood to Sir Kai, 'and thou wilt hear a mighty peal of thunder, so that thou wilt think that heaven and earth are trembling with its fury. With the thunder there will come a shower so severe that it will be scarce possible for thee to endure it and live. And the shower will be of hailstones; and after the shower the weather will become fair, but every leaf that was upon the tree will have been carried away by the shower.'[183] Of course the knight dares this awful obstacle, throws the bowlful of water upon the slab, receives the terrible storm upon his shield, and fights the knight who owned the fountain, on his coming forth. Sir Kai is worsted, and returns home to Arthur's court; whereupon Sir Owain takes up the contest. He sallies forth, evokes the storm, encounters the black knight, slays him, and becomes master of all that was his--his castle, his lands, his wife, and all his treasures. The peasant of to-day who sets out in quest of hidden treasures evokes the avenging storm in like manner. Sometimes the treasure is in the ground, under a cromlech or a carn; he digs, and the thunder shakes the air, the lightnings flash, torrents descend, and he is frustrated in his search. Again, the treasure is in a cavern, guarded by a dragon, which belches forth fire upon him and scorches his eyeballs. Welsh folk-lore is full of legends of this character; and the curious way in which science and religion sometimes get mixed up with these superstitions is most suggestive--as in the cases of the falling of Coychurch tower, and the Red Lady of Paviland. The latter is the name given a skeleton found by Dr. Buckland in his exploration of the Paviland caves, the bones of which were stained by red oxide of iron. The vulgar belief is that the Red Lady was entombed in the cave by a storm while seeking treasure there--a legend the truth of which no one can dispute with authority, since the bones are certainly of a period contemporary with the Roman rule in this island. Coins of Constantine were found in the same earth, cemented with fragments of charcoal and bone ornaments. In the case of Coychurch tower, it undoubtedly fell because it was undermined by a contractor who had the job of removing certain defunct forefathers from their graves near its base. Some eighteen hundred skulls were taken from the ground and carted off to a hole on the east side of the church. But the country folk pooh-pooh the idea that the tower fell for any reason other than sheer indignation and horror at the disturbance of this hallowed ground by utilitarian pickaxe and spade. They call your attention to the fact that not only did the venerable tower come crashing down, after having stood for centuries erect, but that in falling it struck to the earth St. Crallo's cross--an upright stone in the churchyard as venerable as itself--breaking it all to pieces. FOOTNOTE: [183] 'Mabinogion,' 8. II. A hollow in the road near Caerau, in Cardiganshire, 'rings when any wheeled vehicle goes over it.' Early in this century, two men having been led to believe that there were treasures hidden there (for a fairy in the semblance of a gipsy had appeared and thrown out hints on the fascinating subject from time to time), made up their minds to dig for it. They dug accordingly until they came, by their solemn statement, to the oaken frame of a subterranean doorway; and feeling sure now, that they had serious work before them, prepared for the same by going to dinner. They had no sooner gone than a terrible storm arose; the rain fell in torrents, the thunder pealed and the lightning flashed. When they went back to their work, the hole they had digged was closed up; and nothing would convince them that this was done by any other than a supernatural agency. Moreover, but a little above the place where they were, there had been no rain at all.[184] FOOTNOTE: [184] 'Arch. Camb.' 3rd Se., ix., 306. III. There is a current belief among the peasants about Moel Arthur--a mountain overlooking the Vale of Clwyd--that treasure, concealed in an iron chest with a ring-handle to it, lies buried there. The place of concealment is often illuminated at night by a supernatural light. Several people thereabouts are known to have seen the light, and there are even men who will tell you that bold adventurers have so far succeeded as to grasp the handle of the iron chest, when an outburst of wild tempest wrested it from their hold and struck them senseless. Local tradition points out the place as the residence of an ancient prince, and as a spot charmed against the spade of the antiquary. 'Whoever digs there,' said an old woman in Welsh to some men going home from their work on this spot, after a drenching wet day, 'is always driven away by thunder and lightning and storm; you have been served like everybody else who has made the attempt.' IV. So prevalent are superstitions of this class even in the present day that cases get into the newspapers now and then. The 'Herald Cymraeg' of September 25, 1874, gave an account of some excavations made at Pant-y-Saer cromlech, Anglesea, by the instigation of John Jones of Llandudno, 'a brother of Isaac Jones, the present tenant of Pant-y-Saer,' at the time on a visit to the latter. The immediately exciting cause of the digging was a dream in which the dreamer was told that there was a pot of treasure buried within the cromlech's precincts. The result was the revelation of a large number of human bones, among them five lower jaws with the teeth sound; but no crochan aur (pitcher of gold) turned up, and the digging was abandoned in disgust. Is it credible that between this account and the following yawns the gulf of seven hundred years? Thus Giraldus: In the province of Kemeys, one of the seven cantrefs of Pembrokeshire, 'during the reign of King Henry I., a rich man who had a residence on the northern side of the Preseleu mountains was warned for three successive nights by dreams that if he put his hand under a stone which hung over the spring of a neighbouring well called the Fountain of St. Bernacus, he should find there a golden chain; obeying the admonition, on the third day he received from a viper a deadly wound in his finger; but as it appears that many treasures have been discovered through dreams, it seems to me probable that some ought and some ought not to be believed.'[185] FOOTNOTE: [185] Sir R. C. Hoare's Giraldus, 'Itin. Camb.' ii., 37. V. In a certain cavern in Glamorganshire, called the Ogof Cigfrain, or Cavern of the Ravens, is said to be a chest of gold, watched over by two birds of gloomy plumage, in a darkness so profound that nothing can be seen but the fire of their sleepless eyes. To go there with the purpose of disturbing them is to bring on a heaving and rolling of the ground, accompanied by thunder and lightning. A swaggering drover from Brecknockshire, though warned by a 'dark woman' that he had better not try it, sneered that 'a couple of ravens were a fine matter to be afraid of indeed!' and ventured into the cavern, with a long rope about his waist, and a lantern in his hand. Some men who accompanied him (seeing that he was bent on this rash and dangerous emprise,) held the coil of rope, and paid it out as he went further and further in. The result was prompt and simple: the sky cracked with loud bursts of thunder and flashes of lightning, and the drover roared with affright and rushed out of the dark cavern with his hair on end. No coaxing ever prevailed on him to reveal the terrible sights he had seen; when questioned he would only repeat in Welsh the advice of 'Punch' to those about to marry, viz., 'Peidiwch!' VI. In the legend of Castell Coch, instead of a raven it is a pair of huge eagles which watch the treasure. Castell Coch is an easy and pleasant two hours' walk from Cardiff Castle, with which it is vulgarly believed to be connected by a subterranean passage. A short time ago--well, to be precise, a hundred years ago, but that is no time at all in the history of Castell Coch, which was a crumbling ruin then as it is now[186]--in or about the year 1780, a reduced lady was allowed to fit up three or four rooms in the ruin as a residence, and to live there with two old servants of her house. One night this lady was awakened from her sleep to receive the visit of a venerable ghost in a full dress-suit of an earlier century, who distressed her by his troubled countenance and vexed her by his eccentric behaviour, for when she spoke to him from the depths of her nightcap he at once got through the wall. He came on subsequent nights so often, and frightened the servants so much by the noise he made--in getting through the wall, of course--that the lady gave up her strange abode, and was glad to pay house rent ever after in other parts. This old ghost was in the flesh proprietor of the castle, it appears, and during the civil wars buried an iron chest full of gold in the subterranean passage--which is still there, guarded by two large eagles. A party of gentlemen who somewhere about 1800 attempted to explore the passage saw the eagles, and were attacked by the birds of freedom so fiercely that they retreated in disorder. Subsequently they returned with pistols and shot the eagles, which resented this trifling impertinence by tearing the treasure-seekers in a shocking manner. After having recovered from their wounds, the determined Welshmen renewed the attack--this time with silver bullets, which they had got blessed by a good-natured priest. The bullets rattled harmlessly on the feathers of the terrible birds; the ground shook under foot; rain descended in torrents; with their great wings the eagles beat out the gold-hunters' torches, and they barely escaped with their lives. FOOTNOTE: [186] It is at present being entirely restored and made habitable by its owner, Lord Bute. VII. The shadowy Horror which keeps vigil over these hidden treasures is now a dragon, again a raven or an eagle, again a worm. In the account of the treasure-seeker of Nantyglyn, it is a winged creature of unknown nature, a 'mysterious incubus,' which broods over the chest in the cave. The terrible Crocodile of the Lake, which was drawn from its watery hiding-place by the Ychain Banog, or Prominent Oxen of Hu Gadarn, is also sometimes called a dragon (draig) in those local accounts which survive in the folk-lore of several different districts. It infested the region round about the lake where it lay concealed, and the mighty oxen so strained themselves in the labour of drawing it forth that one of them died and the other rent the mountain in twain with his bellowing. Various legends of Sleeping Warriors appear in Welsh folk-lore, in which the dragon is displaced by a shadowy army of slumbering heroes, lying about in a circle, with their swords and shields by their sides, guarding great heaps of gold and silver. Now they are Owen Lawgoch and his men, who lie in their enchanted sleep in a cavern on the northern side of Mynydd Mawr, in Carmarthenshire; again they are Arthur and his warriors, asleep in a secret ogof under Craig-y-Ddinas, waiting for a day when the Briton and the Saxon shall go to war, when the noise of the struggle will awaken them, and they will reconquer the island, reduce London to dust, and re-establish their king at Caerleon, in Monmouthshire. Dragon or demon, raven or serpent, eagle or sleeping warriors, the guardian of the underground vaults in Wales where treasures lie is a personification of the baleful influences which reside in caverns, graves, and subterraneous regions generally. It is something more than this, when traced back to its source in the primeval mythology; the dragon which watched the golden apples of Hesperides, and the Payshtha-more, or great worm, which in Ireland guards the riches of O'Rourke, is the same malarious creature which St. Samson drove out of Wales. According to the monkish legend, this pestiferous beast was of vast size, and by its deadly breath had destroyed two districts. It lay hid in a cave, near the river. Thither went St. Samson, accompanied only by a boy, and tied a linen girdle about the creature's neck, and drew it out and threw it headlong from a certain high eminence into the sea.[187] This dreadful dragon became mild and gentle when addressed by the saint; did not lift up its terrible wings, nor gnash its teeth, nor put out its tongue to emit its fiery breath, but suffered itself to be led to the sea and hurled therein.[188] In the 'Mabinogion,' the dragon which fights in Lludd's dominion is mentioned as a plague, whose shriek sounded on every May eve over every hearth in Britain; and it 'went through people's hearts, and so scared them, that the men lost their hue and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men and maidens lost their senses.'[189] 'Whence came the _red_ dragon of Cadwaladr?' asks the learned Thomas Stephens.[190] 'Why was the Welsh dragon in the fables of Merddin, Nennius, and Geoffrey, described as _red_, while the Saxon dragon was _white_?' The question may remain long unanswered, for the reason that there is no answer outside the domain of fancy, and therefore no reason which could in our day be accepted as reasonable.[191] The Welsh word 'dragon' means equally a dragon and a leader in war. Red was the most honourable colour of military garments among the British in Arthur's day; and Arthur wore a dragon on his helmet, according to tradition. His haughty helmet, horrid all with gold, Both glorious brightness and great terror bred, For all the crest a dragon did enfold With greedy paws.[192] But the original dragon was an embodiment of mythological ideas as old as mankind, and older than any written record. The mysterious beast of the boy Taliesin's song, in the marvellous legend of Gwion Bach, is a dragon worthy to be classed with the gigantic conceptions of the primeval imagination, which sought by these prodigious figures to explain all the phenomena of nature. 'A noxious creature from the rampart of Satanas,' sings Taliesin; with jaws as wide as mountains; in the hair of its two paws there is the load of nine hundred waggons, and in the nape of its neck three springs arise, through which sea-roughs swim.[193] FOOTNOTES: [187] 'Liber Landavensis,' 301. [188] Ibid., 347. [189] 'Mabinogion,' 461. [190] 'Literature of the Kymry,' 25. [191] Mr. Conway, in his erudite chapter on the Basilisk, appears to think that the red colour of the Welsh dragon, in the legend of Merlin and Vortigern, determines its moral character; that it illustrates the evil principle in the struggle between right and wrong, or light and darkness, as black does in the Persian legends of fighting serpents.--'Demonology and Devil-Lore,' p. 369. (London, Chatto and Windus, 1879.) [192] Spenser, 'Faerie Queene.' [193] 'Mabinogion,' 484. VIII. For the prototype of the dragon-haunted caves and treasure-hills of Wales, we must look to the lightning caverns of old Aryan fable, into which no man might gaze and live, and which were in fact the attempted explanation of thunderstorms, when the clouds appeared torn asunder by the lightning. Scholars have noted the impressive fact that the ancient Aryan people had the same name for cloud and mountain; in the Old Norse, 'klakkr' means both cloud and rock, and indeed the English word cloud has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon 'clûd,' rock.[194] Equally significant here is the fact that in the Welsh language 'draig' means both lightning and dragon. Primeval man, ignorant that the cloud was in any way different in structure from the solid mountains whose peaks it emulated in appearance, started back aghast and trembling when with crashing thunders the celestial rocks opened, displaying for an instant the glowing cavern whose splendour haunted his dreams. From this phenomenon, whose goblins modern science has tamed and taught to run errands along a wire, came a host of glittering legends, the shining hammer of Thor, the lightning spear of Odin, the enchanted arrow of Prince Ahmed, and the forked trident of Poseidon, as well as the fire-darting dragons of our modern folk-lore. [Illustration: {THISTLE DECORATION.}] FOOTNOTE: [194] Max Müller, 'Rig-Veda,' i. 44. And see Mr. Baring-Gould's 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,' etc. INDEX A. Aberdovey, the Bells of, 339, 344 Aderyn y Corph, the, 212 All Fools' Day, 274 All Hallows, 280 Alluring Stone, the, 367 American Ghost Stories, 139, 185 Angels, Apparitions of, 208 Animals' Terrors at Goblins, 171 Annwn, the World of Shadows, 7, 34 Antic Spirits, 180 Aphrodite, the Welsh, 350 Apple Gift, the, 253 Arian y Rhaw, 333 Arthur, the Mythic and the Historic, vii. Arthur's Dog, 363 " Pot, 369 " Quoits, 370 " Round Table, 369 " Seat, Bed, Castle, Stone, etc., 369 Ascension Day, Curious Superstition concerning, 25 Aura, the Human, its Perception by Dogs, 172 Avagddu, 219 Avalon, 8 B. Ball-playing in Churchyards, 272 Bangu, the, 340 Banshee, the, 212 " " in America, 247 Banwan Bryddin, the Stone of, 374 Barnwell, Rev. E. L., cited, 324 Baron's Gate, Legend of the, 127 Barry Island, Mysterious Noises on, 353 Basilisks in Mines, 27 Beer-drinking at Funerals, 322 Bells, Superstitions concerning, 339 " of Aberdovey, 339, 344 " " St. Cadoc, 339 " " Rhayader, Legend of the, 341 " " St. Illtyd, 342 " " St. Oudoceus, 343 Beltane Fires, 278 Bendith y Mamau, 12 Betty Griffith and the Fairies, 115 Birds of Rhiannon, the, 91 Blabbing, Penalty of, 119 Black Book of Carmarthen, the, 350 " Maiden of Caerleon, the, 219 " Man of Ffynon yr Yspryd, 178 " Men in the Mabinogion, 178 Blue Petticoat, Old Elves of the, 132 Bogie, the, 32 Boxing-day, 295 Branwen, Daughter of Llyr, 91 Bread and Cheese in Fairy Mythology, 44 Brownie, the, 186 Bundling, or Courting Abed, 300 Buns, 267 Burial Customs, 321 Bush of Heaven, Legend of the, 73 Bute, the Marquis of, cited, 136 Bwbach, the, 30 " and the Preacher, the, 30 C. Cadogan's Ghost, 149 Cadwaladr's Goat, the Legend of, 54 Cae Caled, the Dwarfs of, 28 Cae Mawr, the Mowing of, 61 Caerau, the Woman of, 239 Caerphilly, the Green Lady of, 132 Calan Ebrill, 274 Cân y Tylwyth Teg, the, 99 Canna's Stone, 362 Canrig Bwt, the Legend of, 368 Canwyll Corph, the, 238 Caradoc the Bloody, 348 Caridwen's Caldron, 88 Carols, 288 Carrying the Kings, 276 " Cynog, 279 " Mortals through the Air, 157, 163 Castell Coch, the Eagles of, 390 " Correg, 380 Catrin Gwyn, the Legend of, 144 Catti Shon, the Witch of Pencader, 77 Cavern of Ravens, the, 389 Ceffyl Pren, the, 319 Chained Spirit, the, 168 Chaining at Weddings, 313 Changelings, 56 Cheese in Welsh Fairy Tales, 44 Christmas Observances, 286 Classification of Fairies, 11 " " Ghosts, 141 " " Customs, 252 Coblynau, 24 Cock-crow, Fairy Dislike of, 112 " a Death Omen when Untimely, 213 Colliers' Star, the, 294 Colour in Fairy Costume, 131 Compacts with the Diawl, 202 Conway, Mr., cited, 393 Coolstrin, the, 317 Corpse, an Insulted, 146 " Bird, the, 212 " Candle, the, 238 Courting Abed, 300 Courtship and Marriage, 298 Craig y Ddinas, a Fairy Haunt, 6 Criminals' Graves, Superstitions concerning, 331 Crocodile of the Lake, the, 392 Cromlechs, Superstitions concerning, 379 " Legendary Names of, 381 Cross-roads, Stones at, 368 Crown of Porcelain, the, 269 Crumlyn Lake, Legend of, 35 Curiosity Tales, 86 Cursing Wells, 355 Customs, Superstitious and Traditional, 250 Cutty Wren, the, 257 Cwm Llan, the Shepherds of, 121 Cwm Pwca, Breconshire, 20 Cwn Annwn, 233 Cwn y Wybr, 233 Cyhyraeth, the, 219 " of St. Mellons, the, 221 " " the Sea-coast, the, 221 D. Dancing Stones of Stackpool, the, 375 Dancing in Churchyards, 273 " with Fairies, 70 Death Portents, 212 Devil, when Invented, 210 " as a Familiar Spirit, 197 " exorcising the, 199 " in his Customary Form, 202 " measured for a Suit of Clothes, 202 " his Stupidity, 202 " as a Bridge-builder, 206 " at Tintern Abbey, 207 " and the Foul Pipe, a Legend, 204 Devil's Bridge, Legends of the, 205 " Nags, the, 170 " Pulpit, the, 207 " Stone at Llanarth, the, 378 Dewi Dal and the Fairies, 61 Didactic Purpose in Welsh Fairy Tales, 44 " " " Spirits, 145 Dissenters, Fairy Antipathy to, 6 Divination, 302 Dog of Darkness, the, 168 Dogs of the Fairies, 234 " " Hell, 233 " " the Sky, 233 " Fetichistic Notions of, 172 " Ghosts of, 167 Dracæ, 47 Dragons, 391 Dreams of Flying, 164 Druidic Fires, 278 Druids, Fairies Hiding, 129 Duffryn House, the Ghost of, 143 Duty-compelled Ghosts, 146 Dwarfs, 27 Dwynwen, the Welsh Venus, 299, 350 Dyfed, the Ancient, 5 E. Early Inscribed Stones, Superstitions concerning, 373 Easter Customs, 269 Egg-shell Pottage, Story of the, 60 Eisteddfodau, 293 Eithin Hedges, a Protection against Fairies, 115 Elf Queen, the, 14 Elfin Dames, 34 " Cow, the, 36 Elidurus, the Tale of, 65 Ellylldan, the, 18 Ellyllon, 12 Elves, 13 Enchanted Harp, the, 94 Epimenides, 89 Equestrian Fairies, 107 " Ghosts, 174 Eumenides, 12 Euphemisms, 12, 114, 209 Excalibur, 53 Exorcism of Changelings, 57 " " Devils, 199 " " Fairies, 112, 116 " " Ghosts, 165 " " Child-stealing Elves, 62 Expanding Stone, the, 365 F. Fair Folk, 12 Fairies, existing belief in, 2 " King of the, 6 " Welsh names of, 12 " at Market, 9 " of the Mines, 24 " of the Lakes, 34 " of the Mountains, 49 " Dancing with, 70 " of Frennifawr, Legend of the, 82 " on Horseback, 107 " the Red, 127 " hiding Druids, 129 " why in Wales, 132 " their Origin, 127 " Bad Spirits, 134 " on familiar terms with Ghosts, 157 " of the Cromlechs, 380 Fairy Land, 5 " Queen, 14 " Islands, 8, 45 " Food, 13 " Gloves, 13 " Coal-mining, 27 " Father, the, 45 " a, captured by a Welshwoman, 78 " Song, 99 " Rings, 103 " Conversations, 106 " Battle, a, 107 " Animals, 108 " Sheepfold, the, 109 " Gifts, 119 " Tales, débris of Ancient Mythology, 135 Falling of Coychurch Tower, 386 Familiar Spirits, 187 " " in Female Form, 191 Family Ghosts, 142 Fatal Draught, the, 83 Fetches, 215 Fetichism, 338 Fetichistic Notions of Lower Animals, 171 Ffarwel Ned Pugh, 99 Ffynon yr Yspryd, 178 Ffynon Canna, 362 Fiend Master, Legend of the, 86 Fire-damp Goblins, 27 Fires, Mysterious, 213 First Foot on New Year's Day, 254 First Night of Winter, 280 Flowering Sunday, 266 Food at Funerals, 322 Forest of the Yew, Legend of the, 73 Foul Pipe, Story of the, 204 Fountain of Venus, the, 350 Fountains Flowing with Milk, 356 Fourth of July, 278 Frennifawr, the Fairies of, 82 Friday, its Bad Reputation, 268 Frugal Meal, Legend of the, 58 Funeral Customs, 321 " the Goblin, 231 Future Life, the Question of a, 247 Fuwch Gyfeiliorn, the, 36 G. Gallery under the Sea, 10 Gast Rhymhi, the Legend of, 381 Ghosts, Existing Belief in, 137 " in America, 139 " Classification of, 141 " with a Duty to Perform, 146 " of Ebbw Vale, 142 " on Horseback, 154, 174 " Exorcising, 165 " of Animals, 167 " Grotesque, 174 " Gigantic, 176 " their Origin, 247 " of Bells, 339 " Stories of-- The Weaver's Ghost, 147 Cadogan's Ghost, 149 The Ghost of Ystradgynlais, 157 The Admiral's Ghost, 143 The Miser's Ghost, 152 The Ghost of St. Donat's, 143 The Pont Cwnca Bach Ghost, 144 The Ghost of Noe, 147 Anne Dewy's Ghost, 153 The Clifford Castle Ghost, 155 The Ghost of Ty'n-y-Twr, 155 The Ghost of the Silver Spurs, 156 The Tridoll Valley Sprite, 181 The Mynyddyslwyn Sprite, 187 Giants, 370 Giants' Dance, the, 371 Gigantic Ghosts, 176 Giraldus Cambrensis, 65 Gitto Bach, the Legend of, 119 Gnomes, 24 Goats, Strange Beliefs concerning, 53 Gobelin, the French, 32 Goblin Animals, 167 " Funerals, 231 God's Name as an Exorcism, 112 " " in the Bardic Traditions, 209 Good Friday Customs, 266 Good Old Times, the, 252 Grassless Grave, Legend of the, 331 Green Lady of Caerphilly, the, 132 " Meadows of the Sea, 8 Groaning Spirits, 222 Grotesque Ghosts, 174 Guest, Lady Charlotte, 5 Guy Fawkes Day Customs, 284 Gwahoddwr, the, 307 Gwenfrewi, Legend of, 347 Gwerddonau Llion, 8 Gwion Bach (Taliesin), 88, 394 Gwrach y Rhibyn, the, 216 Gwragedd Annwn, the, 34 Gwraig of the Golden Boat, the, 41 Gwydion, the Wizard Monarch, 5 Gwyllgi, the, 168 Gwyllion, 49 Gwyn ap Nudd, 6, 372 H. Hafod Lwyddog, Legend of, 124 Hallow E'en Customs, 280 Hares, Mythological Details, 162 Harp Music among Welsh Fairies, 94 Haunted Bridge, the, 144 " Castles and Houses, 143 " Margaret, 165 Headless Horse, the, 216 Hecate, 49 Hermes, 236 Hidden Treasures and Perturbed Ghosts, 151 " " Dragon-Guarded, 386 Hobgoblin, 32 Holy Thursday, Superstition concerning, 25, 268 Horse-Weddings, 310 Hot-cross Buns, 267 Household Fairy, the, 31 Howell Dda, 298 I. Iago ap Dewi's Seven Years' Absence, 88 Ianto Llewellyn and the Fairies, 123 Idris the Giant, 370 Incubus, 193 Inscribed Stones, Superstitious Dread of, 373 Iolo ap Hugh, the Legend of, 99 Islands, the Enchanted, 8 J. Jack-muh-Lantern, 18 Jennet Francis and the Fairy Child-Stealers, 62 John the Red Nose, 258 Jones, the Prophet, 104 Juan White, the Spirit of, 50 K. Knife, Exorcism by the, 52 Knockers in Mines, 24 Kobolds, 29 L. Lady of the Fountain, 178, 385 " " Wood, Legend of the, 193 Lake Fairies, 34 Lang, A., cited, 197 Language of the Fairies, 106 Lapse of Time under Enchantment, 89 Laws of the Welsh Spirit-World, 148 Leek, Wearing of the, 260 Lenten Customs, 266 Levitation of Mortals, 157, 163 Levy Dew, 255 Lies, the Tump of, 273 Lifting at Easter, 269 Lightning Caverns, 394 Linen, its Ancient Value, 133 Listening at the Church Door, 214 Lisworney-Crossways, the Legend of, 169 Living with Fairies, 65 Llandaff Gwrach y Rhibyn, the, 217 Llechlafar Stone, 364 Lledrith, the, 215 Llwyd the Magician, 159, 190 Llwyn y Nef, the Bush of Heaven, 72 Llyn Barfog, the Fairy Maiden of, 36 " y Dywarchen, the Lady of, 44 " y Fan Fach, the Sirens of, 38 " Glas, the Shepherd of, 124 " y Morwynion, the Maidens' Lake, 47 Logan Stones, Superstitions concerning, 378 Lord and Beggar, Legend of the, 230 Love Charms, 302 Lucky Days, 268 Lukis, J. W., cited, 3, 380 Luther and the Changeling, 57 M. Mab, 14 Mabinogion, the, 5, 14, 91 Magic Carpet, 164 " Harp, 95 Maidens' Lake, the, 47 Maid's Trick, the, 302 Making Christ's Bed, 267 Mallt y Nos, the, 215 Marget yr Yspryd, 165 Mari Lwyd, the, 256 Marketing on Tombstones, 280 Marriage Customs, 306 May-day Customs, 274 Meddygon Myddfai, Legend of the, 38 Melerius, the Legend of, 192 Melusina, the Welsh, 381 Memorials of Arthur, 369 Men of Ardudwy, the Legend of the, 47 Merlin the Enchanter, as a Stone Remover, 371 " " " and the Red Dragon, 393 " an Early Myth, viii. Mermaids, 35, 47 Merthyr, the Rector of, cited, 3 Methodists, Banishers of Fairies, 6 Mid-Lent Sunday, 266 Midsummer Eve, 277 Milford Haven, the Fairies at, 9 Milk from Fountains, 356 Milk-white Milch Cow, Legend of the, 37 Mine Goblins, 24 Miner's Wraith, the, 215 Mirage, 173 Moel Arthur, the Treasure-Chest of, 388 Moelfre Hill, the Women of, 376 Mol Walbec the Giantess, 370 Monacella's Lambs, 162 Money thrown in Wells, 354 Morgan, Born of the Sea, 47 Morgana, 7 Mothering Sunday, 266 Mountain Ash, the Three Rods of, 210 " the Old Woman of the, 49 Mourning in Lent, 266 Music in Welsh Fairy Tales, 91, 98 Myfyr Morganwg, 277 Mystic Wells, 345 N. Nadolig, 286 Names of Welsh Fairies, 12 Nant yr Ellyllon, 79 Narberth in Mythic Story, 198, 234 New Year's Day Customs, 252 Night Fiend, the, 215 Nights for Spirits, the Three, 280 Nis, the, 186 Noises, Mysterious, on Barry Island, 353 North Wales, Fairyland in, 5 Nos Calan Gauaf, 280 O. Oaks, Superstitions concerning, 105 Odin's Spear, 395 Offrwm, the, 332 Old Woman of the Mountain, 49 " " " Torrent, 216 Origins of Fairies, 127 " " the Devil, 210 " " Death Omens, 245 " " Customs, 251 " " Spirits, 247 " " Mystic Well Superstitions, 359 " " Superstitions regarding Stones, 383 " " Dragons, 395 Owen Lawgoch and his Enchanted Men, 392 Owl's Screech a Death Omen, 213 P. Palm Sunday Customs, 266 Pant Shon Shenkin, the Legend of, 75 Pant-y-Madoc, the Gwyllgi of, 170 Pant-y-Saer, the Treasure-Hunter of, 389 Parc-y-Bigwrn, the Cromlech of, 382 Parson's Penny, 332 Pebble-Tossers, Gigantic, 370 Pembrokeshire a Land of Mystery, 10 Peredur, the Legend of, 202, 366 Phantom Horseman, the, 174 " Ships and Islands, 173 Pigmies, 24 Pins in Enchantment, 354 Place of Strife, the Legend of the, 59 Plant Annwn, 34 Planting Weeds on Graves, 298 " Flowers on Graves, 299, 336 Plentyn-newid, the, 56 Plygain, the, 294 Poetico-Religious Theory of Fairies' Origin, 134 Polly Williams and the Fairies, 81 Polyphemus, the Welsh, 179, 202 Pontypridd, Druidic Ceremonies at, 277 Preacher and Bwbach, the, 30 Prolific Woman, Legend of the, 133 Pronunciation of Welsh Words, Preface Propitiation of Goblins, 12, 114 Psyche, 86 Puck, the Welsh, 20 Puzzling Jug, the, 283 Pwca'r Trwyn, Account of, 187 " " chastises a Servant Girl, 22 " " travels in a Jug, 118 " " a Proscribed Noble, 128 " " was it a Fairy, 190 Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, 234 Q. Quintain, the, 284, 313 Quoits, Arthur's, 370 R. Ravens, Cave of the, 389 Realistic Theory of Fairies' Origin, 129 Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch), 5 " Fairies, the, 127 " Lady of Paviland, the, 386 Rhamanta, 302 Rhitta Gawr, the Giant, 372 Rhys and Llewellyn, the Story of, 70 Rice at Weddings, 314 Richard the Tailor, 160 Rip Van Winkle, the Original of, 89 Robber's Stone, the, 376 Rocking Stone, Superstitions concerning, 378 Rowli Pugh and the Ellyll, 15 S. Sabbath-breakers Turned to Stone, 376 Sacred Wells, 345 Sagranus Stone, the, 375 Sailors' Superstitions, 9 St. Barruc's Well, 352 St. Ceyna, the Legend of, 377 St. Clement's Day, 284 St. Collen, the Legend of, 7 St. Cynfran's Well, 351 St. Cynhafal's Well, 351 St. David the Introducer of Death Portents into Wales, 245 " his Day, 259 " his Legendary Character, 260 St. Dogmell's Parish, 69, 273 St. Dwynwen's Well, 350 St. Elian's Well, 355 St. George's Well, 351 St. Gwenfrewi, the Legend of, 347 St. Gwynwy's Well, 353 St. Illtyd's Well, 357 St. John's Eve, 277 St. Mary's Well, 346 St. Melangell's Lambs, 162 St. Patrick and the Elfin Dames, 35 " a Welshman, 264 " his Day, 264 St. Samson and the Dragon, 392 St. Tegla's Well, 329, 349 St. Tydecho's Blue Stone, 367 St. Ulric's Day, 279 St. Valentine's Day, 259 St. Winifred's Well, 346 Salt at Funerals, 328 Sanford's Well, 358 Scapegoat, the, 329 Science, the Marvels of, 248 Seeing the Sun Dance, 273 Serpents Turned to Stones, 377 Seven Whistlers, the, 213 Sgilti Yscawndroed, the Lightfooted, 164 Shakspeare, his use of Welsh Folk-Lore, 14, 44 " his Visit to Wales, 20 Shepherds of Cwm Llan, the Legends of the, 121 Shoe-throwing, 314 Shon ap Shenkin, the Story of, 92 Showmen's Superstitions, 255 Shrove Tuesday, 265 Shuï Rees and the Fairies, 67 Sin-eater, the, 324 Sion Cent the Magician, 203 Skulls, 145 Sleeping Saints, the, 73 " Heroes, Legends of, 162, 392 Snake Stone, the, 278 Soul, its Future Destiny, 249 Souls of Dogs, 167 Sowling, 258 Spade Money, 333 Spectral Animals, 167 Spirit Fountain, the, 178 " Life, the Question of a, 249 " Nights, the Three, 280 " World, Laws Governing the Welsh, 148 Spirits' Antics, 180 Spiritual Hunting Dogs, 235 Spiritualism, 139 Spitting at the Name of the Devil, 209 Stanley, Hon. W. O., cited, 19, 115 Stone-throwing Spirits, 180, 185 Stone-tossing Giants, 370 Stone-worship, 361 Stone of Invisibility, the, 365 " " Remembrance, the, 366 " " Golden Gifts, the, 366 Stones, Curious Superstitions concerning, 361 " at Cross-roads, 368 " of Healing, 367 Storms, Baleful Spirits of, 385 Stripping the Carpenter, 284 Suicides, Superstitions concerning, 146, 331 Sul Coffa, 335 Summoning Spirits, 199 Supernatural, What is the, 248 Superstition, its Degree of Prevalence, 138, 251 " in the United States, 139, 252 Sweethearts' Charms, 302 T. Taff's Well, 358 Taffy ap Sion, the Shoemaker's Son, Legend of, 75 Tailor Magician of Glanbran, the, 200 Taliesin, the Tale of, 88 " his Dragon, 394 Talking Stone, the, 364 Tan-wedd, the, 213 Teetotallers, Fairy Antipathy to, 6 Teir-nos Ysprydnos, 280 Terrors of the Brute, Creation at Apparitions, 171 Teulu, the, 231 Thief-catching Stone, the, 366 Thigh Stone, the, 363 Thomas, Rev. Dr., cited, 300 Thor's Hammer, 395 Three Blows, the Story of the, 40 " Losses by Disappearance, the, 9 " Nights for Spirits, the, 280 Throwing at Cocks, 265 Thunder and Lightning as a Death Omen, 213 Toads and Warts, 352 Tolaeth, the, 225 Tolling the Bell, 340 Tooling, 258 Toriad y Dydd, 125 Transformation of Human Beings to Animals, 167, 381 " " " Stone, 374, 376 Transportation through the Air, 157, 163 Trichrug, the Giant of, 371 Tricking the Diawl, 203 Tridoll Valley Ghost, the, 181 Tudur of Llangollen, the Story of, 79 Tump of Lies, the, 273 Twelfth Night Customs, 256 Tylwyth Teg, the, 12 U. Unknowable, the, 138 Unlucky Days, 268 V. Vale of Neath, the, its Goblin Fame, 6 Vavasor Powell and the Devil, 198 Veil, the Goblin, 232 Venus, the Welsh, 299 " " her Well, 350 Villemarqué cited, 58 W. Walking Barefoot to Church, 266 Walking-stones, 363 Warts, 351, 367 Water Maidens, 47 " Worship, 359 Wedding Customs, 306 Wells, Mystic, 345 Wesley's Belief in Apparitions, 141 Whistlers, the, 213 Whistling Goblin, the, 178 White as a Fairy Colour, 132 " Catti of the Grove Cave, 144 Whitening Doorsteps to Keep off the Devil, 207 Wife of Supernatural Race, 38 Wild Huntsman, 235 Will-o'-Wisp, 20 Witches Sleeping under Stones, 368 Wonder Stone of Banwan Bryddin, the, 374 Wraiths, 215 Y. Ychain Banog, the, 108, 392 Yellow Spot before Death, the, 216 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. _A Catalogue of American and Foreign Books Published or Imported by MESSRS. SAMPSON LOW & CO. can be had on application._ _Crown Buildings, 188, Fleet Street, London, April, 1879._ A List of Books PUBLISHED BY SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON. ALPHABETICAL LIST. _A classified Educational Catalogue of Works_ published in Great Britain. Demy 8vo, cloth extra. 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Crown 8vo, boards, 2_s._ ---- _Books I. to VII._ Boards, 3_s._ 6_d._ London: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. Transcriber's Note Minor punctuation errors have been repaired. Hyphenation and accent usage has been made consistent throughout. Capitalisation of items in the Table of contents and chapter headers has been made consistent. On page 181, following an account of the damage caused by spirits is the line "This pleasant experience was often repeated." The word 'pleasant' may be an error on the part of the author or typesetter, and 'unpleasant' was actually intended, or it may be deliberate on the part of the author. Since it is impossible to be sure, it is preserved as printed. The following amendments have been made, addressing typographic errors or inconsistency: Page xi--Llwellyn amended to Llewellyn--"... Ianto Llewellyn and the Tylwyth Teg ..." Page 17--reducable amended to reducible--"... all household tales are reducible to a primeval root ..." Page 45--hurrry amended to hurry--"... in her hurry to remount, ..." Page 49--Llanhyddel amended to Llanhiddel--"... the guise in which she haunted Llanhiddel Mountain ..." Page 75--acccustomed amended to accustomed--"... the barren mountain he was accustomed to." Page 106--Mammau amended to Mamau--"... Ni chytunant hwy mwy na Bendith eu Mamau, ..." Page 117--Dolgelly amended to Dolgelley--"But first consulting a wise woman at Dolgelley, ..." Page 117--gods amended to goods (based on reference to same further up the same page)--"He was flitting with the household goods, ..." Page 125--Mammau amended to Mamau--"... as Bendith y Mamau was poured down ..." Page 135--hape amended to have--"... may desire to know why these fairies have appeared ..." Page 137--Shakespeare amended to Shakspeare--"SHAKSPEARE: _Tempest_." Page 176--Lantarnam amended to Llantarnam--"... who lived in the parish of Llantarnam." Page 241--Landavenis amended to Landavensis--"In the 'Liber Landavensis' it is mentioned ..." Page 275--Llud amended to Lludd--"... the daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint." Page 276--VIII amended to VII--"VII. In the remote and primitive parish ..." Page 314--IV amended to III--"III. Among the wealthier classes ..." Page 317--V amended to IV--"IV. A custom called the Coolstrin ..." Page 338--Faery amended to Faerie--"SPENSER: _Faerie Queene_." Page 343--Taf amended to Taff--"When they came to the banks of the river Taff, ..." Page 358--well amended to Well--"Taff's Well, in Glamorganshire, ..." Page 399--Gwin amended to Gwyn--"Catrin Gwyn, the Legend of, 144" Page 400--Wybyr amended to Wybr--"Cwn y Wybr, 233" Page 404--Howel amended to Howell--"Howell Dda, 298" Page 408--Dyved amended to Dyfed--"Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, 234" The frontispiece illustration has been moved to follow the title page. Other illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. 
43119	----	David's Little Lad By L.T. Meade Illustrations by H. Petherick Published by John F. Shaw and Co, 48 Paternoster Row, London EC. This edition dated 1890. David's Little Lad, by L.T. Meade. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ DAVID'S LITTLE LAD, BY L.T. MEADE. CHAPTER ONE. THIS IS THE STORY WITHIN THE STORY. Yes, I, Gwladys, must write it down; the whole country has heard of it, the newspapers have been full of it, and from the highest to the lowest in the land, people have spoken of the noble deed done by a few Welsh miners. But much as the country knows, and glad and proud as the country is, I don't think she knows quite all--not exactly what mother and I know; she does not know the heart history of those ten days. This is the story within the other well-known story, which I want to write here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On a certain sunny afternoon in September, 1876, I was seated up in the window of the old nursery. I say _in_ the window, for I had got my body well up on the deep oak seat, had flattened my nose against the pane, and was gazing with a pair of dismal eyes down on the sea, and on some corn-fields and hay-fields, which in panoramic fashion stretched before my vision. Yes, I was feeling gloomy, and my first remark, after an interval of silence, was decidedly in keeping with my face and heart. "Gwen," I said, "what is it to be buried alive?" Gwen, who was singing her charge to sleep to a lively Welsh air, neither heeded nor heard me. "Gwen!" I repeated in a louder key. "Men are false and oft ungrateful, Derry derry dando," sang Gwen, rocking the baby, as she sang, in the most dexterous manner. Gwen had a beautiful voice, and I liked the old air, so I stayed my impatient question to listen. "Maids are coy and oft deceitful, Derry derry dando, Few there are who love sincerely, Down a derry down. Say not so, I love thee dearly, Derry derry down down, Derry down down derry." "None but thee torment and teaze me, Derry derry dando," I shouted in my impetuous manner, and leaving my seat, I went noisily to her side. "Gwen, I _will_ be heard. I have not another soul to speak to, and you are so cross and disagreeable. What is it to be buried alive?" "'Tis just like you, Gwladys," said Gwen, rising indignantly. "Just after two hours of it, when I was getting the darling precious lamb off to sleep, you've gone and awoke him. Dear, dear! good gracious! there never was such a maid!" Gwen retired with the disturbed and wailing baby into the night nursery, and I was left alone. "None but thee torment and teaze me, Derry derry dando," I sang after her. Then I returned to my seat on the window-sill, curled myself up tighter than ever, flattened my nose again against the pane, and began to think out my dismal thoughts. Yes, my thoughts were undoubtedly dismal, and very melancholy must my eyes have looked, and absurdly long and drawn down the corners of my mouth. Had anybody been there to see, they must have pronounced me sentimental in the extreme; but no one was by, and--there was the rub-- that was the reason I looked so melancholy. Even Gwen, rocking baby to sleep, could be disturbed at least by my long drawn sighs, but Gwen had retired into the night nursery, out of reach of my despondency, and though I could hear her cheerful voice in the distance, she certainly could no longer hear me. I was utterly alone. I pressed my face against the window pane, and gazed at the scene before me. It was a fair scene enough. A broad sweep of sea, the waves sparkling in the sunshine--some rugged rocks--a little patch of white sand; all this lay close. In the distance were some hills, magnificently clothed. To the right, I saw oak, ash, beech, in their autumn dress; to the left, yellow fields of corn, an orchard or two; some mowers were cutting down the corn, and laughing merrily; some children were eating apples in the orchards--over all a gentle breeze stirred, and the sun shone out of an almost cloudless sky. Yes, the scene was very fair, but I did not appreciate it. My eyes had rested on those trees, and those hills, and that sea all my life--I was tired of the unvarying monotony. Nothing wearied me so much as when visitors came to stay with mother, visitors who did not know our country, and who consequently went into raptures over our Welsh scenery. I am quite sure now that the raptures were genuine, but at the time they seemed to me very like duty talk. I always listened contemptuously; I always answered carelessly, "Oh, yes, the place is well enough;" and I always thought bitterly in my heart of hearts. It is easy for you, fine sir or madam, to speak and to admire, who need only stay in this place for a week or fortnight, but what if you had to live here _always_, from year's end to year's end. If you had to see the meadows, and orchards, and sea, and the old grey house, and the trees and sky--in short, all the fair landscape, not only in its summer glory, but in its winter desolation, would not the country then appear a little tiresome to you? Might you not then find an occasional visit to Cardiff, and an occasional ride across the fields, and a far from occasional stay at home, slightly wearying, and might it not possibly occur to you that yours was a dull life? For this was my fate. I had always lived at Tynycymmer. I had always seen the hills clothed with trees in the distance; I had always watched the ripening fruit in the orchards, and the ripening corn in the fields. In short, I was a Welsh girl who had never gone out of Wales in her life. Never had I even seen Gloucester, never had I set foot on English soil. Circumstances too many to mention had conspired to thus isolate me. I had once paid a visit, when a little child, to North Wales, but all the rest of my sixteen years had been spent with mother, at Tynycymmer, in the county of Glamorganshire. A rich country, a rambling, romantic old home, a fair scene, where gentle care had tended me, this I acknowledged, but I also knew that I was tired, weary, sick of it all. With my absurdly dismal face gazing outward, I repeated the question to myself, which nurse Gwen had refused to answer; "What is it to be buried alive?" The question had arisen in my mind from a paragraph in a local paper, which I had seen to-day. This paragraph was headed "_Buried alive_." It contained an account of some colliers in a not very distant part of Glamorganshire, who had been killed in a mining accident, truly buried in their full health and strength by the sudden giving way of a column of coal. I had read the paragraph aloud to mother and David at breakfast. I had seen David's face flush and then grow pale, had heard mother say, "That place is not far from Ffynon; I am glad the accident did not happen in our mine, David." "Thank God! and it might have been," from David. Then mother added-- "Things will mend in the old place soon, my son." "I trust so," from David. Then expressions of pity and sympathy from both pairs of lips, for the injured and killed. In this sympathy I had freely joined, for I was not hard-hearted; then I had forgotten the circumstance. The widows and children in the dismal coal country might be weeping and mourning, but I, Gwladys Morgan, in my fair home, in this fair land, had no room for them in my selfish heart. In half an hour I had ceased to remember the paragraph in the _Hereford Times_, all but its heading. But the heading, as I said, haunted me; it had another meaning besides going down into the bowels of the earth, and finding its walls close round one, and feeling oneself shut into a living tomb. It had another meaning besides the palpable and material horror of slow starvation and of coming madness. Of these things I could form no conception, but I could conceive of other things, and feel them through and through my childish and inexperienced heart. I imagined another meaning to the words, and this meaning I hunted up and pondered over, with a deeper and deeper melancholy, adding strength to my gloom. Having roused up the skeleton, I clothed it with flesh, I filled its veins with warm young blood, I made its limbs fair and round, I gave to its face the healthy hue of youth, I coloured its eyes blue, and its hair a golden brown, and I called it, when I had given it life and being, Gwladys Morgan. I took this fair young person of my creation, and buried her in a living tomb; true, the fresh air of heaven still blew upon her, the sun shone over her head, and the flowers blossomed at her feet. She could walk through lovely gardens, she could watch the coming and going of the fresh tide, on the fresh ocean, she could repose at night in the softest of beds, in a spacious oak-lined room. She could receive counsel and love, from the kind and tender lips of mother and brother. All this she could have, but still she was in a tomb, and the name of the tomb was Tynycymmer. Her body was free, as far as the walls of her prison allowed it, to roam, but her mind, with its noble aspirations, her soul, which had conceived great and possible commissions of wide and ever-widening usefulness, these were shut up in a tomb; in short, this feeling, breathing creature, with her talents and her longings, was buried alive. Having consigned Gwladys to this fate, I went on to imagine the result. She would struggle in vain for freedom, she would beat with her wings-- poor imprisoned bird--against her cage, she would pant and long for a less confined air, for emancipation from her living grave, she would suffer in uncomplaining silence, and then gradually, her mind would recoil upon itself, her aspiring soul would cease to struggle, and starved out with earth's hard fate, would soar to nobler worlds!--(here my tears began to drop). But I had not done yet; I imagined still further, and in all its minutest details, the body's decay of this suffering creature. How thin and hollow, how pale and worn the once round and rosy cheeks would become! what a pathetic and far-away look of sad yearning would enter the blue eyes! how the curling hair would begin to grow!--I did not like the idea of the hair growing thin, it was not poetical--had not nurse Gwen a great bald division in her hair, a division clefting her raven locks asunder, deep and wide as a potato ridge? No, I substituted thin locks for grey, and so completed the picture. Over my completed picture I should assuredly have wept, had not, at this opportune juncture, the blue eyes, which were certainly anything but dim as yet, descried, bowling smoothly along the road, and making swift advances to Tynycymmer, a little pony-carriage, driven by a pair of hands, very well fitted for their present task, that of keeping two spirited ponies in order. Into the long, winding avenue the carriage dashed, down the avenue it sped, and the next instant it had drawn up at the front entrance, and a large, strongly-made man was helping a delicate, stately woman to alight. The strong man was my brother, the woman was my mother. Quick as lightning, I had left my seat in the nursery window, had wreathed my face with smiles, had filled my heart with laughter, had, for the time being, banished every trace of the ugly, bad dream in which I had been indulging, had descended the stairs almost like an arrow from its bow, had lifted mother bodily up the steps, and placed her amid my own and David's laughter, in the old oak arm-chair, the family heirloom, the undoubted gift of some old Arch-Druid ancestor, which stood in the wide entrance hall. "Well! mother, what an age you've been away! Did you catch the first train this morning? Aren't you dreadfully tired? What was it like, was it glorious? Were there crowds of people? Did the Bishop preach? Is the music ringing in your ears? Doesn't your head ache? And oh! _did_ you get a new fashion for my blue silk gown?" These questions I poured out, toppling them one over the other, down on my knees the while, removing mother's boots, and encasing her dear, pretty feet in a pair of warm, fur-lined slippers. "I saw one or two nicely-dressed girls," began mother slowly, whereupon I suspended my operations with her feet, and looked up with a face of absorbed interest. "And, Gwladys," said David, laying his hand on my shoulder, "you are to come to-morrow, the Messiah is to be sung, and I will take you over." "Oh! oh! oh!" I exclaimed, beginning to dance about, but then observing that mother was gazing at me a little sadly, I stopped short, and exclaimed with a sudden burst of unselfishness-- "The pony-carriage only holds two; I don't want to take mother's place." "No, my darling, I am tired, I should not care to go again to-morrow, and I want you to hear the Messiah." "We must start even earlier than to-day, Gwladys," continued David, as he led the way to the supper-room. "We nearly missed the train this morning, and I have unfortunately failed to get reserved seats, but you don't mind a crowd?" "I _love_ a crowd," I answered energetically; looking and feeling, as I spoke, a totally different creature from the sentimental being who had gazed with dismal eyes from the nursery window, half an hour before. "What kind of voice had Madame Edith Wynne, mother, and did you hear Sims Reeves?" "Sims Reeves did not sing to-day, but he will to-morrow in the Messiah," replied mother. "And I shall be there to-morrow!" I exclaimed again, then a sudden thought darted through my brain, and I fell into a reverie. In my great excitement and delight at the prospect of going to Hereford, to the festival of the Three Choirs, I had forgotten something which now returned to my memory with painful consciousness. I had nothing to wear. My blue silk, my beautiful navy blue, mother's last present, was still unmade, and my white dress was with the laundress. My white dress, though simple and childish, was new and tolerably fashionable, and in no other could I think of appearing before the great and gay world of Hereford, on this my first visit. "Mother," I said, jumping from my seat, and upsetting a cup of hot tea over Gyp the terrier, "I must go this very moment to speak to Nancy at the lodge; she has got my frock, and she must iron it to-night." Without waiting for a reply, I ran out of the room, and bonnetless and hatless sped up the avenue. The light autumn breeze tossed my curls into wild confusion, my gay voice rose, humming a merry Welsh air. Very far away now were my gloomy thoughts, very like a child I felt, as I walked on. My mind was fully occupied with my promised treat, my dreams were all rainbow tinted, my world all tinged with sunshine and glory. The only cloud that shadowed the gay expanse of my firmament was the possibility of my white dress not being ironed in time for me to wear. CHAPTER TWO. DAVID, I AM TIRED OF TYNYCYMMER. When I reached the lodge, Nancy, a stout, red-faced Welsh woman, came out to meet me, accompanied by a troupe of wild-looking children, who stood round and stared with open eyes and mouths, for Miss Morgan of Tynycymmer was a great person in their eyes. "Is my white dress ready? Nancy; I want to wear it to-morrow morning early." "Eh! dear, dear, Miss Gwladys," dropping a profound curtsey. "Eh! goodness me! yes, I'll h'iron it to-night, miss. Get out of that, Tum," addressing her sturdy-limbed son, who had placed himself between his mother and me. "_I_ know what Tum wants," I said. "Here, Tum, Dai, Maggie, catch!" I threw some halfpence amongst the children, and turned away. As I did so, two ladies came out of the lodge; one, a handsome dark-eyed girl, a casual acquaintance of mine, came eagerly to my side. "Now, Miss Morgan, I call this provoking; what right have you to go away, just when I want to know you!" "What do you mean?" I asked, bluntly. "You are going away from Tynycymmer?" "Indeed we are not," I said. "Well, but my mother heard it from--oh! I forgot," blushing deeply and looking confused. "I was not to say. Of course it is not the case, or you would know--just idle gossip; I am sorry I mentioned it, but so glad you are not going." "Good-night," I said, holding out my hand. I had retraced a few steps home, when my little friend ran after me. "Please, please, Miss Morgan, you won't speak of this; I should get into trouble, indeed." "Oh, dear, no!" I answered, lightly; "there is nothing to repeat. Make your mind easy." The girl, satisfied, ran away, and I walked on. But I was not so cool and unconcerned as she supposed her words had excited me, her words had aroused both discontent and hope. I forgot my certain pleasure of to-morrow, in the bare possibility of a greater and a wider pleasure, and as a moth round a candle, my thoughts fluttered round the magic words, "You are going away." Could they be true? could the gossip the girl had heard be correct? How certain she looked! how startled and frightened, when she found herself mistaken. And, little fool! she had made me promise not to betray her, just too when I wanted to solve the mystery. Oh, if only she might be right! if only we might be going to leave this dull life, this stupid country existence! Could it be the case? gossip was often mistaken, but seldom utterly without foundation. I asked myself this question tremblingly and eagerly. Instantly I had a reply. Sober reason started to the forefront of all my faculties, and said-- "It is impossible; the girl has made a mistake; the gossip is false. How could you leave Tynycymmer? Is not David master here? does not the place belong to David, as it did to his father before him? and do not he and mother love every stone in the old house, every tree in the old ground? would not the idea, the most distant idea, of going away break their hearts?" Yes, it was quite out of the question that mother and David could think of leaving Tynycymmer. But my little friend had said nothing about mother and David, she had only whispered the delicious and soul-stirring words, "_You_ are going away." Perhaps I was going to school; perhaps some London cousins had asked me to pay them a visit. Oh! yes, this last thought must be right, and how pleasant, how lovely, how charming that would be! I should see the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster, and visit the Parks, and the Museums, and Madame Tussaud's. Yes, certainly this was going to happen. Mother had not told me yet, which was a little strange, but perhaps she had heard it herself very suddenly, and had met some friends, and had mentioned it to them. Yes, this must be the mystery, this must be the fire from whence the smoke of Sybil's gossip came. I felt it tingling from my throat down to my very toes. I was _not_ going to be buried alive. So cruel a fate was not in store for me. I should see the world--the world of beauty, of romance, of love, and all possible things might happen to me. I skipped along gaily. David was smoking his pipe, and pacing up and down under some trees which grew near the house. The short September sun had set, but the moon had got up, and in the little space of ground where my brother walked, it was shedding a white light, and bringing into relief his strongly marked features. David's special characteristic was strength; he possessed strength of body, and strength of--mind, I was going to say, but I shall substitute the word soul. His rugged features, his height, his muscular hands and arms, all testified to his great physical powers. And the repose on his face, the calm gentleness and sweetness that shone in his keen, dark eyes, and played round his firm lips, showed how strong his soul must be--for David had known great trouble. I mention his strength of character here, speaking of it first of all in introducing him into my story, for the simple reason that when I saw him standing under the trees, I perceived by the expression of his face, that he was yielding to a most unusual emotion; he looked anxious, even unhappy. This I took in with a kind of side thought, to be recurred to by and by, but at present I was too much excited about myself. I walked with him nearly every evening when he smoked, and now I went to my usual place, and put my hand through his arm. I longed to ask him if the surmise, which was agitating my whole being, was correct, but by doing this I should betray Sybil, and I must not even mention that I had seen her. "What bright cheeks, and what a happy face!" said David, looking at me affectionately, "are you very glad to come to the Messiah with me? little woman." "Yes," I answered absently, for to-morrow's treat had sunk into insignificance. Then out it came with a great irrepressible burst, "David, I am _longing_ to see London." David, who knew nothing of my discontent, who imagined me to be, what I always appeared to him, a child without the shadow of a care, or a sorrow, without even the ghost of a longing outside my own peaceful existence, answered in the tone of surprise which men can throw into their voices when they are not quite comfortable. "London, my dear Gwladys." "Yes, why not?" "Well, we don't live so very far away from London, you may see it some day." It was quite evident, by David's indifferent tone, that he knew nothing of any immediate visit in store for me. I bit my lips hard, and tried to say nothing. I am sure I should not have spoken but for his next words. "And in the meantime you can wait; you are very happy, are you not?" "No, I am not. I'm not a bit happy, David," and I burst into tears. "What's this?" said David in astonishment. "I am not happy," I repeated, now that the ice was broken, letting forth some of my rebellious thoughts, "I'm so dull here, I do so want to live a grand life." "Tell me, dear, tell me all about it?" said David tenderly. To judge from the tone of his voice he seemed to be taking himself to task in some strange way. The love in his voice disarmed my anger, and I spoke more gently. "You see, David, 'tis just this, you and mother have got Tynycymmer, you have the house, and the farm, and all the land, and, of course, you have plenty to do on the land, riding about and seeing to the estate, and keeping the tenants' houses in order, and 'tis very nice work, for 'tis all your own property, and of course you love it; and mother, she has the house to manage, and the schools to visit, but I, David, I have only dull, stupid lessons. I have nothing interesting to do, and oh! sometimes I am so dull and so miserable, I feel just as if I was buried alive, and I do so want to be unburied. I have no companions. I have no one to speak to, and I do long to go away from here, and to see the world." "You would like to leave Tynycymmer!" said David. "Yes, indeed, indeed I should. I should dearly love to go out into the world as Owen has done; I think Owen has such a grand life." Here I paused, and finding that David did not reply, I ventured to look into his face. The expression of his silent face was peculiar; it showed, though not a muscle moved, though not a feature stirred, the presence of some very painful thought. I could not believe that my words had given birth to this thought, but I did consider it possible that they might have called it into fuller being; quickly repentant I began to apologise, or to try to apologise, the sting out of my words. "You know, David, that you and mother are not like me, you both have plenty to interest you here. Mother has the schools, and, oh! a thousand other things, and you have the place and the farm." "And I have my little lad." "Of course--I forgot baby." "Yes, Gwladys," said David, rousing himself and shaking off his depression, "I have my son, and he won't leave me, thank God. I am sorry you find your home dull, my dear. I have always wanted you to love it, there is no place like it on earth to me." He took my hand very gently, and removed it from his arm, then walked with great strides into the house. His face and manner filled me with an undefined sense of gloom and remorse. I followed him like a guilty thing. I would not even go into the drawing-room to bid mother good-night, but went at once up to my own room. When I got there, I locked the door; this conversation had not tended to raise my spirits. As I sat on my bed, I felt very uncomfortable. What an old, old room it was, and all of oak, floor, walls, ceiling, all highly-polished, and dark with the wear of age. Other Gwladys Morgans had carved their names on the shutters, and had laid down to rest on the great four-post bedstead. Other daughters of the house had stood in the moonlight and watched the silent shining of the waves. Had they too, in their ignorance and folly, longed for the bustle and unrest of the great wide world, had they, too, felt themselves buried alive at Tynycymmer? With David's face in my memory, I did not like these thoughts. I would banish them. I opened a door which divided my room from the nursery, and went noisily in. What an awkward girl I was! I could do nothing like any one else; every door I opened, shut again with a bang, every board my foot pressed, creaked with a sharp note of vengeance. Had nurse Gwen been in the nursery, what a scolding I should have merited, but nurse Gwen was absent, and in the moonlit room I advanced and bent over a little child's cot. In the cot lay a boy of between one and two, a rosy, handsome boy, with sturdy limbs, and great dark-fringed eyes; he was sleeping peacefully, and smiling in his sleep; one little fat hand grasped a curly, woolly toy dog, the other was flung outside the bedclothes; his little pink toes were also bare. With undefined pain still in my heart, and David's face vividly before me, I bent down and kissed the child. I kissed him passionately, forgetting his peculiar sensitiveness to touch. He started from his light slumbers with a shrill baby cry, his dark eyes opened wide. I took him out of his crib, and paced up and down with him. For a wonder I managed to soothe him, skilfully addressing him in my softest tones, rubbing my forehead against his soft cheek, and patting his back. The moon had left this side of the house, and the room was in complete shadow, but I did not think of lighting a candle, for to the child in my arms the darkness was too dense for any earthly candle to remove; he was David's little lad, and he was blind. CHAPTER THREE. SOME DAY, YOU WILL SEE THAT HE IS NOBLE. I have said that David's great characteristic was strength, but by this I do not at all mean to imply that he was clever. No one ever yet had called David clever. When at school he had won only second or third class prizes, and at Oxford very few honours had come in his way. He had a low opinion of his own abilities, and considered himself a rather stupid, lumbering kind of fellow, not put into the world to make a commotion, but simply, as far as in him lay, to do his duty. David was never known to lecture any one; he never, in the whole course of his life, gave a piece of gratuitous advice; he could and did advise when his advice was directly demanded, but he was diffident of his own opinion, and did not consider it worth a great deal. To the sinners he was always intensely pitiful, and so gentle and sorrowful over the erring, that many people must have supposed he knew all about their weaknesses, and must once have been the blackest of black sheep himself. No, David possessed none of the characteristics of genius; he was neither clever nor ambitious. To be in all men's mouths, and spoken highly of by the world, would not have suited him at all; he cared, we some of us thought, almost too little for man's opinion, and I have even on one occasion heard Owen call him poor-spirited. But all the same, I am not wrong in saying that David's great, and grand, and distinguishing characteristic was strength. He possessed strength of body, soul, and spirit, to a remarkable degree. Long ago, in the past ages, there were men of our house, men who ate roast beef, and quaffed beer and cider, and knew nothing of the weak effeminacy of tea and coffee; these were the men who would laugh at a nerve ache, who possessed iron frames, and were of goodly stature. Of course we degenerated since then, our lives became less simple, and more luxurious, and our men and women in their paler cheeks and slighter frames, and bodies capable of feeling bodily suffering, bore witness to the change. But David was a Morgan of the old race--tall, upright, broad, with massive features, neither handsome nor graceful, but strong as a lion. He had never in his life known an ache, or a day's serious illness. When Owen and I suffered so much with the measles, David did not even stay in bed; so also with whooping-cough, so also with all other childish maladies. He caught them of course, but they passed over him lightly as a summer breeze, never once ruffling his brow, or taking the colour from his cheek. Yes, David was strong in body, and he was also strong in mind; without possessing talent, he had what was better, sense; he knew which path was the wisest to tread in, which course of action would lead, not to the happiest, but to the best result. His mind was of that calm and rare order, which decides quickly, and once for all; he was never troubled with indecision, and he never asked of others, "What shall I do here? There is a lion in my path at this juncture, how shall I overcome him?" No, he slew his own lions, and in a silent warfare, which gave no token of the tears and blood expended by the victorious warrior. But the strongest part of David, that which made him the man he was, was his soul; and here, he had asked for and obtained, the aid of a higher Power. His was the sort of character that never could have got on without the conscious presence of a God. His soul must be anchored upon some rock which would balance the whole equilibrium of a grand but simple nature. His faith was primitive, and undisturbed by modern doubts. He took the commandments of God in their obvious and literal meaning, he believed what the apostle said when he told men to "pray without ceasing;" he hearkened to him again, when he entreated men to "search the Scriptures;" he was a man of few rather than of many words, but he always found some to cry to God with; he cared very little for books, but he read his Bible daily. Thus his views of life were clear and unclouded. He was put into the world to do his duty. His duty was to love God better than, and his neighbour as well as, himself. This simple rule of action comprises much, and here David acted right nobly, and proved the strength of his soul. And he was early tried, for our father died when he was twelve years old, and then the most obvious part of the duty which stared him in the face lay in the text, "Bear ye one another's burdens." This was one of David's plainest and earliest duties; a duty which he performed humbly, hardly knowing that he performed it at all. Others leant upon him, and he bore their burdens, so fulfilling the law of Christ. I think I may truly say of David, that he was the most self-sacrificing man I ever met. But for all that, for all his gentleness, his kindness, his affection, he was not my favourite brother, nor was he my mother's favourite son. I remember an early incident which revealed this fact in my mother's heart, and perhaps unduly biassed my own. I was standing, shortly after my father's death, in the deep recess of the nursery window--I was standing there watching David and Owen, both home for their holidays, pacing up and down on the gravel sweep in front of the house. David was very strong, and showed his superior strength in his great size even then, but Owen was very beautiful. David was stout and clumsy, Owen slightly made and graceful. As I watched them, mother came behind me, put her arms round my tiny waist, kissed my brow, and whispered as she looked at the two lads-- "My noble boy!" "Which? mother," I asked. "My Owen," replied mother. I opened my eyes very wide, gazed again with new wisdom at the boys, perceived the superior beauty of the one, worshipped the beauty, and from this time I loved Owen best. And Owen was very lovable, Owen was beautiful, brilliant, gay, with lofty ambitions, and versatile showy talents. If his affections wanted depth, they never wanted outward warmth. His smile was a thing to remember, his caress was worth waiting six months to obtain. How well I remember those summer holidays, when he flashed like the sunshine into the dull old house, when his whistle and gay laugh sounded from parlour to cellar. When Owen was at home, Tynycymmer was the happiest place in the world to me; then mother put on her best gowns, and wore her most festive air, then my lessons, always scant and desultory, were thrown to the four winds, and I was allowed unbridled liberty. What fishing expeditions we made all round the coast! how daring were our exploits! I was much younger than my brothers, but the brothers were always gentle to the only little sister--both the brothers--but while I oftenest rode on David's broad shoulder, I received most caresses and most loving words from Owen, so I loved Owen best. So too with mother, she thought very highly of that broad-shouldered, plain-faced, sensible lad, who was so ready to fly at her slightest bidding, so anxious to execute her smallest command. She said over and over again that David was the best boy that widowed mother ever possessed, and that he was the comfort of her life. But her eye never brightened at his approach, as it did when Owen came and sat by her side; to David she gave her approval, but to Owen she gave of the fulness of her mother's love. He was an exacting boy, and from those who gave much, he demanded more. Though David was the eldest and the heir, Owen had double his allowance of pocket money when at school; but then Owen was delicate, fastidious, refined; he needed small indulgences, that would have been wasted on David's coarser strength. He was taught accomplishments, for he was an inborn artist, and his musical ear was fine. At Oxford he entered an expensive and learned college, but then his intellect was of the first order. For every indulgence he demanded, an excuse was found; and for every granted indulgence, he was only loved the more. To the worship of his women folks, Owen returned an easy, nonchalant regard; but David he loved, to David he gave his strongest and deepest affection. And yet David was the only one who opposed him, the only one who was not carried away by his fascinations, the only one who read him aright; and some of the heaviest burdens of David's youth, had been borne because of, and through Owen. I heard it dimly whispered, first in the early college days, something about Owen and his wild oats. It came to me through the servants, and I did not know what it meant. I was an innocent country child, I had never even read a novel. Owen was sowing his wild oats. I remember puzzling over the phrased I should have forgotten what was to me so meaningless an expression, but for some events that happened about the same time. Mother got some letters, which she would not show to me, which she carried away to her own room to read, returning to my presence, some time after, with her eyes red with weeping. Then there was a visit from a man, a lawyer, nurse Gwen informed me, who brought with him piles of papers, and was closeted with mother for the best part of a day; and soon after, most wonderful of all, David came home suddenly, in the middle of the term, came home without Owen, and I was informed that Owen had gone abroad for a time, and that David was not going back to Oxford any more. David settled down quietly at home, without taking his degree, and his coming of age, which took place a couple of months after, was let pass without any celebration. This made a deep impression on me, for we four, mother, David, Owen, and I, had so often spoken of it, and of the grand things that should then be done. Never a Morgan had come of age yet, without oxen being roasted whole, without beer and cider flowing freely, without dancing and festivity. But this Morgan stepped into his honours quietly; the day unnoticed, except by an extra kiss from mother and sister, his brother far away, his own brow thoughtful, and already slightly careworn. The tenants were angry, and voted him stingy--close--an unworthy son of the ancient race, no true chip of the old block, and fresh signs of what they considered closeness and nearness, were soon forthcoming. Several servants, amongst them the housekeeper, were dismissed, the establishment was put upon a smaller scale, a humble pony phaeton was substituted for the old and time-honoured family coach. I was twelve years old at that time, a good deal with nurse Gwen, and many words, unmeant for my ears, were heard by me. The substance of them all lay in this remark-- "If the young master gave the tenants any more of his closeness, he would be the least popular Squire Morgan who ever lived at Tynycymmer!" Indignant, and with tears in my eyes, I sought David, told him what I had heard, and demanded an explanation. "There is nothing to explain, dear," he replied. "We have lost some money, and are obliged to retrench for a bit. But don't repeat the servants' foolish talk to the mother, Gwladys, 'twill only pain her." After this, we settled down very quietly, no fresh event occurring for some time. David went more and more amongst the people, acquainting himself with every man, woman, and child on the estate, winning his way just in the most natural way into their hearts, learning all about their private history, finding out exactly where the shoe pinched John Thomas, and where Thomas John's sorest trouble lay, until gradually I heard nothing more of his stinginess, but much of his love, and when he took the babies in his arms, and called the tiny children by their names, the mothers prayed God to bless the young squire with a fervour they had never used for the old. This took place very naturally, and mother's face began to grow contented and happy. Still, Owen never came home; he was spoken of lovingly, hopefully, but neither mother nor David mentioned his return, and I grew tired of asking questions on this subject, and tired of wishing him back. I dreamed dreams of him instead, and imagined with pride the great deeds he must be doing, and the glory he must be winning. So far away, so little mentioned, his return so indefinite, he became clothed with a halo of romance to me. My love grew in intensity, and I magnified my beautiful and gifted brother into a hero. It was just then David's great joy, and also his great trouble, came to him. We Morgans of Tynycymmer were very proud. Why not? we were poor, old, and Welsh--quite enough to account for any haughtiness we might assume. We believed ourselves to be, if not the direct descendants, at least a collateral branch of that Morgan, son of Leir, some time a king of this land, after whom this county was named. There was a time when to be a true Morgan, of Glamorganshire, meant more to its happy possessor than many a higher sounding title. Of course that time and its glory had passed away, years had deprived us of more than the old stout hearts of our ancient ancestors; our gold had also taken to itself wings, our grey and ivy-covered home had fallen, much of it, into ruins, and our broad and goodly acres passed into the unloving hands of strangers. Still, firmly as the limpet to the rock, the poorer we grew, the more did we attach ourselves to the wild old Welsh country. Each squire of Tynycymmer bringing home, in his turn, a bride who often possessed neither money nor beauty; but always something else, without which she could never have married a Morgan of our house--she had pure, untainted Welsh blood in her veins. None of the Morgans were so foolish, so unfaithful to the old stock, as to marry an English woman; if our gold was scant, our blood at least was pure. So we went on, each fresh master of Tynycymmer a little poorer than his father, when suddenly and unexpectedly a chance came in our way. There was born into the world, a Morgan either more sensible or more lucky than his progenitors; a Morgan who, going abroad to seek a bride, brought home one who not only could boast of blue Welsh blood, but had also beauty and a fortune. This lucky Morgan was my father, his rich and lovely bride my mother. Esther Williams was the daughter of a Glamorganshire man. Her father possessed, at the other side of the county, a fine extent of coal country, and a very large fortune was he able to bestow upon his only child. The fortune consisted of some coalfields, and with the rental from these my father was able to restore Tynycymmer to much of its ancient splendour. My mother's family was not so old as ours, but being true Welsh, and having beauty and a fortune, this fact was graciously overlooked by us, and we condescended to use her money to our own aggrandisement. I have said that we were a proud family--but of us all, there was none who so upheld the family traditions, and who so rejoiced in the family honour, as the one who was herself only a Morgan by marriage, my mother. Of the days when she was only Esther Williams, she never cared to speak; her money was never "her money," but the "Morgans' money." Money that brought fresh glory to the old house, was honoured indeed--she regarded herself individually, as a humble instrument destined to do much good-- for herself, her appearance, her character, she felt little pride or satisfaction; but for the sake of the name given to her by her husband, she would indeed walk with stately mien, and uphold her dignity to the last; and well she could do it, for though a little woman, she was singularly dignified and graceful-looking, and was, in short, every inch worthy of the high position she believed herself to have attained. She possessed the dark eyes and raven locks of the true Welsh woman. How I came to be fair-haired and blue-eyed remained a mystery, and was reckoned rather a disgrace. When a tiny child, Gwen had impressed this fact upon me, and I remember blushing and looking distressed, when fair people were mentioned. Yes, my mother was a beautiful woman; I have a vivid memory of her, as she looked in my father's lifetime, dressed in the time-honoured black velvet, the old jewels flashing in her hair, as bending down her haughty dark face, until it touched my fair one, she filled my greedy and receptive little brain with the ancient stories of our house. I heard of the ghosts and the deeds of vengeance from Gwen, of the fairies and deeds of glory from mother. Yes, my mother was very beautiful, and with the exception of two specks in the fair fruit of her heart, the best woman I know. How loving she was, how tender, how strong, how brave! But the specks marred the full perfection: one speck was her pride, the other her unjust preference for Owen. At the time of which I write, I did not consider this preference unjust, for I too loved Owen best, but even then I had felt the full power of her pride. I mention it here in order to make David's sorrow and David's joy more fully understood. Those retrenchments which took place when David came of age, were no small sorrow to mother. When the housekeeper went away, and many of the servants were dismissed, when the old coach was not sold, but put out of sight in some unused coach-house, when the horses were parted with to the highest bidder;--mother felt pain, though of her feelings she never spoke, and to their expression she gave no vent; her pride was hurt by this lowering of the Morgans' importance, but her very pride was its own shield in preventing its betrayal, and _she_ knew then, though I did not, why these things were done. But a year later, that pride received another blow. I remember the beginning of it. The postman brought to us a letter. I say to _us_, for all our letters, with the exception of those few received when David returned so suddenly from Oxford, were public property. This letter contained news. A distant cousin of mother's had died in London; had died and left one orphan daughter quite unprovided for. This cousin was a Williams, but though calling himself by the well-known Welsh name, was no true Welshman: his family had long ago settled in England, had married English wives, and had become, in mother's opinion, nobodies. The unprovided daughter had not written herself, knew nothing indeed about the letter, but a friend of hers in despair how best to help her, had ventured to inform Mrs Morgan of Tynycymmer, that her cousin's child was a pauper. "Have her here on a visit," said David, promptly. Mother, her heart full of sorrow and pity for the lonely girl, assented at once. Amy Williams was invited and came. And now came mother's trouble and the shock to her pride, for David fell in love with the penniless English girl. I am not surprised at it, and looking back on it now, I am glad. Amy was the only person I ever met who understood David, and who appreciated him. I am glad for his sake, and hers, that they had one short happy year together. For however tender and considerate David was with mother, on this point he was firm; he thought more of Amy's happiness than mother's pride, and he married Amy though mother opposed it bitterly. Of course I did not hear a great deal about it. I was very young, only fourteen, at the time, and mother ever kept her feelings well under control, and not one of the servants even guessed how much she disapproved of this marriage; but I remember on David's and Amy's wedding-day, running in to mother to show her my white muslin bride's-maid's dress, and mother kissing me, and then saying, with concentrated bitterness, "Had Owen been the eldest son, whatever his faults, he would never have given me the pain David has done to-day." Fond and proud as I was of Owen, I did not quite like mother to say that of David on his wedding-day. Well, he and Amy were married; they spent a week in North Wales, another week in London, and then came home. Mother wanted to transfer the reins of authority into Amy's hands, but Amy would not take them; she was the meekest little thing I ever knew, she was quite too meek to please me. I never got to know her, I never really cared for her; but she suited our David, and he suited her. His presence was to her as the sun to the flower, and truly he was a great sun for the little fragile thing to bask in. I am sure she had a great deal in her which David alone could draw out, for after talking to her he always looked happy, his whole face in a glow. Looking back on it now, I can recall nothing brighter than David's face during that year. I have said that Amy was meek, I never remember her showing any spirit but once, but that occasion I shall not quickly forget. She and I were sitting together in the arbour overhanging the sea. She was not very well, and was lying back in a little wicker chair, and I was seated at her feet, arranging different coloured sea weeds. As I worked, I talked of Owen. I did not mean it in the least, but as I spoke of my favourite brother, of his beauty and talent, I unconsciously used David as a foil to show him off by. I was speaking more to myself than to Amy. I was not thinking of her at all. Suddenly she started to her feet, her pale face grew crimson, her soft brown eyes flashed angrily. "Gwladys," she said, "little as you think of David now, some day you will see that he is a nobler man than a thousand of your Owens." "How can you speak so, when you don't know Owen," I retorted, the hot blood of the Morgans flying into my cheeks at this unexpected show of spirit. "I know David," she replied, and she burst into tears. Poor little Amy! that night a son was born to her and David, and that night she died. Perhaps had mother and I understood Amy, and cared for her more, David might have told us something of the sorrow which followed quickly on his joy. Most of the time between Amy's death and her funeral, he spent in her room. After the funeral he went away for a week; he told neither mother nor me where he was going! we never heard how or in what part of the world he spent that week; on his return he never mentioned the subject. But his face, which on the day of Amy's funeral was convulsed with agony, was after that short absence peaceful, and, I say it without expecting to be misunderstood, even happy. It was about this time I really noticed what a religious man my brother was. With all his want of talent, he knew the Bible very well, and I think he was well acquainted with God. It must have been God who gave him power to act as he did now, for if ever a man truly loved a woman, he loved Amy; but he never showed his sorrow to mother and me; he never appeared before us with a gloomy brow. After a time even, his face awoke into that pathetic joy which follows the right reception of a great sorrow. I _did_ once see him, when he thought no one was by, dropping great tears over the baby. "My boy, my little motherless lad," I heard him say. I longed to go up and comfort him; I longed to tell him that I cared for Amy now, but I did not dare. Mother, too, who had not loved her in life, could not speak of her in death. So David could only tell his sorrow to God, and God comforted and heard him, and the baby grew, healthy, handsome, strong, worthy in his beauty and his strength of the proudest Morgan of the race, and David loved him; but, alas! the little lad was blind. CHAPTER FOUR. OWEN IS COMING HOME. I managed to hush little David into a sound sleep, before Gwen returned from her supper in the old servants' hall. When I had done so, I went back to my room and undressed quickly, hoping much that I too would soon sink into slumber, for I was in that semi-frightened and semi-excited condition, when Gwen's stories about the Green Lady--our Welsh Banshee-- and other ghostly legends, would come popping under my eyelids, and forcing me to look about the room with undefined uneasiness. I did sleep soundly, however; and in the morning the brilliant sunshine, the dancing waves which I could even see from my bed, put all my uncomfortable fears to rest. To-day I was to visit Hereford, for the first time to set my foot on English soil. Laid out on a chair close by, lay my clean white muslin dress. I must get up at once, for we were to start early, the distance from our part of Glamorganshire to Hereford being very considerable. I rose and approached the window with a dancing step; the day was perfection, a few feathery clouds floated here and there in the clear blue of the sky, the sea quivered in thousands of jubilant silver waves, the trees crimsoned into all the fulness of their autumnal beauty. My heart responded to the brightness of the morning; ages back lay the ugly dreams and discontented thoughts of yesterday. I was no longer enduring the slow torture of a death-in-life existence. I was breathing the free air of a world full of love, glory, happiness. In short, I was a gay girl of sixteen, going out for a holiday. I put on my white dress. I tied blue ribbon wherever blue ribbon could be tied. I had never worn a bonnet in my life, so I perched a broad white hat over my clustering fair curls, made a few grimaces at myself in the glass, for reflecting back a pink and white and blue-eyed image, instead of the proper dark splendour of the true Morgans; consoled myself with the thought that even blue eyes could take in the beauties of Hereford, and ears protected by a fair skin, could yet communicate to the soul some musical joys. I danced downstairs, kissed mother and David rapturously, trod on Gyp's tail, but was too much excited, and too impatient, to pat him or beg his pardon; found, under existing circumstances, the eating of a commonplace ordinary breakfast, a feat wholly impossible; seated myself in the pony-carriage full ten minutes before it started; jumped out again, at the risk of breaking my neck, to adorn the ponies' heads with a few of the last summer roses; stuck a splendid crimson bud into my own belt; hurried David off some minutes too soon for the train; forgot to kiss mother, and blew a few of those delightful salutes vigorously at her instead; finally, started with a full clear hurrah, coming from a pair of very healthy lungs, prompted by a heart filled, brimming over, leaping up with irrepressible joy. Oh! that summer morning! Oh! that young and happy heart! Could I have guessed then, what almost all men have to learn, that not under the cloudless sky, not by the summer sea, but with the pitiless rain dropping, and the angry waves leaping high, and threatening to engulf all that life holds dearest, have most of God's creation to find their Creator? Could I have guessed that on this summer day the first tiny cloud was to appear, faint as the speck of a man's hand, which was to show me, in the awful gloom of sorrow, the face of my God? From my fancied woes, I was to plunge into the stern reality, and it was all to begin to-day. When we got into the train, and were whirling away in the direction of that border county, which was to represent England to me, my excitement had so far toned down as to allow me to observe David, and David's face gave to my sensations a feeling scarcely of uneasiness, but scarcely, either, of added joy. Any one who did not know him intimately, would have said what a happy, genial-looking man my brother was. Not a wrinkle showed on his broad forehead, and no shadow lurked in his kind eyes; but I, who knew him, recognised an expression which had come into his face once or twice, but was hardly habitual to it. I could not have told, on that summer morning, what the expression meant, or what it testified. I could not have read it in my childish joy; but now, in the sober light of memory, I recall David's face as it looked on that September day, and in the knowledge born of my sorrow, I can tell something of its story. My brother had looked like this twice before--once on his unexpected return from Oxford; once, more strongly, when Amy died. The look on David's face to-day, was the look born of a resolution--the resolution of a strong man to do his duty, at the risk of personal pain. As I said, I read nothing of this at the time; but his face touched me. I remembered that I had rather pained him last night. We had the carriage to ourselves. I bent forward and kissed him; tossed my hat off, and laid my head against his breast. In this attitude, I raised to him the happiest of faces, and spoke the happiest of words. "David, the world is just delicious, and I do love you." David, a man of few words, responded with a smile, and his invariable expression-- "That's right, little woman." After a time, he began to speak of the festival. He had been at the last celebration of the Three Choirs at Hereford. He told me a few of his sensations then, and also something of what he felt yesterday; he had a true Welshman's love of music, and he spoke enthusiastically. "Yes, Gwladys, it lifts one up," he said, in conclusion, "I'd like to listen to those choirs in the old cathedral, or go to the top of the Brecon--'tis much the same, the sensation, I mean--they both lift one into finer air. And what a grand thing that is, little woman," he added, "I mean when anything lifts us right out of ourselves. I mean when we cease to look down at our feet, and cease to look for ever at our own poor sorrows, and gaze right straight away from them all into the face of God." "Yes," I said, in a puzzled voice, for of course I knew nothing of these sensations; then, still in my childish manner, "I expect to enjoy it beyond anything; for you know, David, I have never been in any cathedral except Llandaff, and I have never heard the `Messiah.'" "Well, my dear, you will enjoy it to-day; but more the second time, I doubt not." "Why? David." "Because there are depths in it, which life must teach you to understand." "But, dear David, I often have had _such_ sad thoughts." "Poor child!" a touch of his hand on my head, then no more words from either of us. Just before we reached Hereford, as I was drawing on my long white gloves, which I had thrown aside as an unpleasant restraint during the journey, David said one thing more, "When the service is over, Gwladys, we will walk round the Close, if you don't mind, for I have got something I want to tell you." It darted into my head, at these words, that perhaps I was going to London after all. The thought remained for only an instant, it was quickly crowded out, with the host of new sensations which all compressed themselves into the next few hours. No, I shall never forget it, when I have grey hairs I shall remember it. I may marry some day, and have children, and then again grandchildren, and I shall ever reserve as one of the sweetest, rarest stories, the kind of story one tells to a little sick child, or whispers on Sunday evenings, what I felt when I first listened to Handel's "Messiah." David had said that I should care more for it the second time. This was possible, for my feelings now were hardly those of pleasure, even to-day depths were stirred within me, which must respond with a tension akin to pain. I had been in a light and holiday mood, my gay heart was all in the sunshine of a butterfly and unawakened existence; and the music, while it aroused me, brought with it a sense of shadow, of oppression which mingled with my joy. Heaven ceased to be a myth, an uncertain possibility, as I listened to the full burst of the choruses, or held my breath as one single voice floated through the air in quivering notes of sweetness. What had I thought, hitherto, of Jesus Christ? I had given to His history an intellectual belief. I had assented to the fact that He had borne my sins, and "The Lord had laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" but with the ponderous notes of the heavy music, came the crushing knowledge that _my_ iniquities had added to His sorrows, and helped to make Him acquainted with grief. I was in no sense a religious girl; but when "Come unto Him, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and He will give you rest," reached my ears, I felt vibrating through my heart strings, the certainty that some day I should need this rest. "Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him." "His yoke is easy, and His burden is light." I looked at David, the book had fallen from his hands, his fine face was full of a kind of radiance, and the burden which had taken from him Amy, and the yoke which bade him resign his own will and deny himself, seemed to be borne with a sense of rejoicing which testified to the truth of how lightly even heavy sorrow can sit on a man, when with it God gives him rest. The opening words, "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God," would bring their own message at a not very distant day; but now they only spoke to me, something as a mother addresses a too happy, too wildly-exultant child, when she says in her tenderest tones, "Come and rest here in my arms for a little while, between your play." Yes, I was only a child as yet, at play with life; but the music awoke in me the possible future, the possible working day, the possible time of rain, the possible storm, the possible need of a shelter from its blast. To heighten the effect of the music, came the effect of the cathedral itself. It is not a very beautiful English cathedral, but it was the first I had seen. Having never revelled in the glories of Westminster, I could appreciate the old grey walls of Hereford; and what man had done in the form of column and pillar, of transept and roof, the sun touched into fulness of life and colouring to-day. The grey walls had many coloured reflections from the painted windows, the grand old nave lay in a flood of light, and golden gleams penetrated into dusky corners, and brought into strong relief the symmetry and beauty of aisle and transept, triforium and clerestory. I mention all this--I try to touch it up with the colour with which it filled my own mind--because in the old cathedral of Hereford I left behind me the golden, unconsciously happy existence of childhood; because I, Gwladys, when I stepped outside into the Cathedral Close, and put my white-gloved hand inside David's arm, and looked up expectantly into David's face, was about to taste my first cup of life's sorrow. I was never again to be an unconscious child, fretting over imaginary griefs, and exulting in imaginary delights. "Gwladys," said David, looking down at me, and speaking slowly, as though the words gave him pain, "Owen is coming home." CHAPTER FIVE. WHY DID YOU HESITATE? Let no one suppose that in their delivery these words brought with them sorrow. I had been walking with my usual dancing motion, and it is true, that when David spoke, I stood still, faced round, and gazed at him earnestly, it is also true that the colour left my cheeks, and my eyes filled with tears, but my emotions were pleasurable, my tears were tears of joy. Owen coming home! Nobody quite knew how I loved Owen, how _my_ heart had longed for him, how many castles in the air I had built, with him for their hero. In all possible and impossible dreams of my own future, Owen had figured as the grand central thought. Owen would show me the world, Owen would let me live with him. He had promised me this when I was a little child, and he was a fine noble-looking youth, and I had believed him, I believed him still. I had longed and yearned for him, I had never forgotten him. My love for my good and sober brother David was very calm and sisterly, but my love for Owen was the romance of my existence. And now he was coming home, crowned with laurels, doubtless. For he had been away so long, he had left us so suddenly and mysteriously, that only could his absence be accounted for by supposing that my beautiful and noble brother had gone on some very great, and important, and dangerous mission, from which he would return now, crowned with honour and glory. "Oh, David!" I exclaimed, when I could find my voice, "is it true? How very, very happy I am." "Yes, Gwladys," replied David, "it is true; but let us walk up and down this path, it is quite quiet here, and I have a story to tell you about Owen." "How glad I am," I repeated, "I love him more than any one, and I quite knew how it would be, I always guessed it, I knew he would come back covered with glory. Yes, David, go on, tell me quickly, what did my darling do?" I was rather impatient, and I wondered why David did not reply more joyfully, why, indeed, at first he did not speak at all. I could see no reason for his silence, the crowds of men and women who had filled the cathedral had dispersed, had wandered to hotels for refreshment, or gone to explore, if strangers, the beauties and antiquities the old town possessed. There was no one to molest or disturb us, as we walked up and down in this quiet part of the Close. "Well, David," I said, "go on, tell me about my darling." "Yes," said David, "I will tell you, but I have got something else to say first." "What?" I asked, impatiently. "This; you have made a mistake about Owen, you imagine him to be what he is not." "What do I imagine him to be?" I asked, angrily, for David's tone put into my heart the falsest idea it ever entertained--namely, that he was jealous of my greater love for Owen. "What do I imagine?" I asked. "You imagine that Owen is a hero. Now, Gwladys, you cannot love Owen too much, nor ever show your love to him too much, but you can do him no good whatever, if you start with a false idea of him." I was silent, too amazed at these words to reply at once. "I tell you this, Gwladys," continued David, "because I really believe it is in your power to help Owen. Nay, more, I want you to help him." Still I said nothing, the idea suggested by David's words might be flattering, but it was too startling to be taken in its full significance at first. What did it mean? In all my dreams of Owen I had never contemplated his requiring help from me; but David had said that my ideas were false, my dreams mistaken. I woke up into full and excited listening, at his next words. "And now I mean to tell you why you have not seen Owen for so long--why he has been away from us all these years." "Four years, now," I said. "Yes, David, I have often wondered why you gave me no reason for his long, long absence. I said nothing, but I felt it a good bit--I did indeed." "It was a story you could hardly hear when you were a little child. Even now I only tell it to you because of Owen's unlooked-for and unexpected return; because, as I say, I want you to help Owen; but even now I shall only tell you its outline." "David, you speak of Owen's return as if you were not glad--as if it were not quite the happiest news in the world." "It is not that, my dear." "But why? Do you not love him?" "Most truly I love him." "Well, what is the story? How mysterious you are!" "Yes, I am glad," continued David, speaking more to himself than to me. "I suppose I ought to be _quite_ glad--to have no distrust. How faithless Amy would call me!" When he mentioned Amy, I knew he had forgotten my presence--the name made me patient. I waited quietly for his next remark. As I have said, he was a man of few words. His ideas moved slowly, and his language hardly came fluently. "There are two kinds of love," he began, still in his indirect way. "There is the love that thinks the object it loves perfection, and will see no fault in it." "Yes," I interrupted, enthusiastically; "I know of that love--it is the only kind worth having." "I cannot agree with you, dear. That love may be deep and intense, but it is not great. There is a love which sees faults in the object of its love, but loves on through all. Such--" "Such love I should not care for," I interrupted. "Such love I could not live without, Gwladys. Such is the Divine love." "But God's love is not like ours," I said. "No, dear; and I have only made the remark to justify myself--for, Gwladys, I have loved Owen through his faults." I started impatiently; but David had now launched on his tale, and would not be interrupted. "Yes," he continued, "I loved and love Owen through his faults. I know that mother thought him perfect, and so did you. I am not surprised at either of your feelings with regard to him--he was undoubtedly very brilliant, and on the surface, Gwladys, you might almost have said that so noble a form must have held a noble soul. I do not say this will _never_ be so; but this was not so when you knew him last." I would have spoken again, but David laid his hand on my arm, to silence me. "He had much of good in him; but he was not noble; he had one great weakness--pleasure was dearer to him than duty. Even when a little lad he would leave his tasks unlearned, to play for half an hour longer with you; this was a small thing, but it grew, Gwladys--it grew. And he had great temptations. It was much harder for him to do the right than for me; he was so brilliant--so--so, not clever--but so ready-witted. He was a great favourite in society, and society brought with it heaps of temptations. He struggled against the temptations, but he did not struggle hard enough; and his natural weakness, his great love for pleasure, grew on the food he gave it. "We were in different colleges, and did not see each other every day. He made some friends whose characters--well, they were not men he ought to know. I spoke to him about this; poor fellow! it has lain on my heart often, that I may have spoken harshly, taking on myself elder brother airs, and made myself a sort of mentor. I _could_ not do this intentionally, but it is possible I may have done it unintentionally. I felt hot on the subject, for the fellows I spoke against seemed to me low, in every sense beneath his notice. I did not know that even then, they had a hold on him which he could not, even if he would, shake off. He got angry, he--quarrelled with me. After this, I did not see him for some time. I blame myself again here, for I might have gone to him, but I did not. He had said some words which hurt me, and I stayed away." David paused. "Yes," he continued, taking up his narrative without any comment from me, "I remember, it was the middle of the term. I was sitting with some fellows after dinner; we were smoking in my rooms. I remember how the sun looked on the water, and how jolly I felt. We were talking of my coming of age, and I had asked all these fellows to help me to celebrate the event at Tynycymmer, when suddenly a man I knew came to the door, and called me out; he was a great friend of mine, he looked awfully white and grave; he put his arm inside mine, and we went down through Christ Church meadows to the edge of the river. There, as we stood together looking down into the river, and nodding, as if nothing were the matter, to some men of our college as they rowed past us; there, as we stood and listened to the splash of the oars, my friend told me about Owen. A long story, Gwladys. Shall I ever forget the spot where I stood and listened to it? As I said, I am not going to tell you the tale; it was one of disgrace--weakness--and sin. Evil companions had done most of it, but Owen had done some. It was a long story, dating back from the day of his first arrival; but now the climax had come--Owen had fallen--had sinned. I never knew until my friend spoke, how much I loved Owen. I blamed myself bitterly. I was his elder brother. I might have so treated him as to win his confidence, and to save him from this. He had fallen by means of the very temptations that must assail such a nature as his, and I, instead of holding out a helping hand, had stood aloof from him. In this moment of agony, when I learned all about his sin, I blamed myself as much as him. I started off at once to find him, I could not reproach him. I could only blame myself. When I did this, he burst into tears." Here David paused, and I tried to speak, but could not. "Owen had sinned," he continued, "and in such a way that the most public exposure seemed inevitable. To avoid this, to give him one chance for the future, I would do anything. There was one loophole of escape, and through that loophole, if any strength of mine could drag him, I was determined Owen should come. I could not leave Oxford, but I wrote to my mother. Her assistance was necessary, but I felt little doubt of her complying. I was not wrong. She helped me, as I knew she would. Nay, I think she was more eager than I. Between us we saved Owen." Here David paused, and taking out his handkerchief, he wiped some moisture from his brow. His words were hardly either impassioned or eloquent; but no one knew, who did not hear them, with what pain they came slowly up from his heart. Then I ventured to put the question which was hanging on the top of my lips-- "What was his sin?" "The sin of weakness, Gwladys. The sad lacking of moral courage to say no, when no should be said. The putting pleasure before duty, that was the beginning of it. Then evil companions came round; temptation was yielded to, and, at last, the very men who had ruined and tempted him, managed to escape, and he was left to bear the brunt of everything. However, my dear, this is a story you need not know. I have told you the little I have, because, now that Owen is coming home, I want you to have a truer idea of his character, so that you may help him better. I need and want you to help him, Gwladys. I have said all this to you to-day for no other reason." I said nothing. David looked into my face, and I looked into his, then he went on. "After that dreadful time at Oxford he went abroad, and I came home. Now he, too, is coming home." "To live with us at Tynycymmer?" I asked. "No, no, my dear; he is coming home with a definite purpose; I have had a long letter from Owen, I must tell you some of it. He always wrote to me while he was away, but his letters, though tolerably cheerful, and fairly hopeful, were reserved, and seemed always to have something behind. I used to fear for him. Dear fellow, dear, dear fellow, my weak heart fears for him still, and yet with it all, I am proud and thankful. There _is_ something great in Owen, otherwise this would never have so weighed on his mind. "I must tell you that to save Owen, I had to spend money; that really was no sacrifice to me, a thing not worth mentioning, but it seems to have weighed much on him. In his letter, he told me that he has never ceased working hard at his profession, learning all he can about it. He says that he is now nearly qualified to work as a mechanical engineer; and in that particular department he has made mining engineering his special study. In his letter he also said that he had done this with a definite hope and object. "There is a large coal mine on my property, a mine that has never been properly worked. Owen believes that out of this mine he can win back the gold I have spent on him; he has begged me to allow him to take the management of the mine; to live at Ffynon until this object is effected. I hesitated--I thought--at last I yielded." "Why did you hesitate? David." "Because, Gwladys, the object with which Owen works is worthless to me. I am glad he is coming to manage the mine, I have no doubt whatever as to his ability in the matter. I know in his profession he has much talent. Had he not written to me, I should have been obliged to ask a London engineer to take his place for a time. Yes, Gwladys, I like his work, but not his motive. The mine at Ffynon yields me little money, that is nothing; it also is dangerous, that is much; many accidents have taken place there, many lives have been lost. I want Owen to make the mine safe, as far as man can make it safe: I don't care for the money. And this is the object I want you to help me in, Gwladys, not in words, but in a thousand ways in which a loving and true sister can. I want you to show to Owen that we none of us care for the money." "You lay upon me an impossible task," I said; "you forget that I shall not be with Owen." "You said last night you were tired of Tynycymmer?" "So I am, very often." "You are going to leave it, at least for a time; you and mother are to live with Owen at Ffynon." CHAPTER SIX. GWEN'S DREAM. If I felt excited when starting for Hereford on the morning of that day, how much more feverishly did my heart beat when I returned home in the evening! I was in that state of mind when the need of a confidante was sore and pressing. In whom should I confide? I loved my brother David, I dearly loved my mother, but in neither of them would I now repose confidence. No, they knew too much already. Into fresh ears, but still into ears that communicated with a very affectionate and faithful heart, would I pour my tale--or rather that portion of my tale of which I wished to speak. David had given me, in the old Cathedral Close, two very distinct pieces of information--two pieces of information, either of which would have proved quite sufficient to keep my eyes wakeful for many nights, and my heart restless for many days. Mother and I were going to leave Tynycymmer! Owen was coming home! Round this last item of intelligence floated murky and shadowy words. Owen had sinned! Owen was not the spotless hero I had imagined him! With regard to this piece of news I wished to take no one into my confidence; by the sheer strength of a very strong will I pushed it into the background of my thoughts; I managed to give it a subordinate place where the full sharpness of its sting would not for the present be felt. By-and-by I would drag it to the light; by-and-by I would analyse this thing and pull it to pieces; by-and-by I would face this enemy and dare it to do its worst; by-and-by, defeated, baffled, I would writhe under its blows; but, as I said, for the present it lay in abeyance, and other thoughts pressed upon me. How much a change, even a little change, does signify to us girls! I once met a man who told me calmly, and with easy nonchalance, that he was about to visit Australia. I observed his eye never brightening at the prospect of the gay sea voyage, and the sights to be witnessed in the tropical richness of the far-off land; he had seen many changes, he had visited many lands, to him change was a thing of every day, and he told me, when I pressed him to speak, that he was weary of it all, and that there was nothing new under the sun. But to me! What did not a change, even from one end of Glamorgan to another, mean to me? How very long it would take before I could be satiated with fresh places, or my eyes grow weary of new sights. So much did this one very small change mean to me, that I almost fancied, as we were whirled back in the train, that my fellow-passengers must know something of the uprooting about to take place, and some disquieting waves from the agitation which was surging round me, must be pulsing in their own hearts. I, who had lived all my sixteen years at Tynycymmer, was going to make another place my home! It was on this item of David's news that I longed so for a confidante. When I got home, my eyes were bright and my cheeks flushed. Mother looked anxiously from David to me. "She knows, mother," said David, going over and kissing the stately and beautiful face, and looking down tenderly into the dark depths of the eyes, which were raised inquiringly to his. Mother glanced at me; but I could not speak of it to her--not then. She knew all, and of all I would not speak. I pleaded hunger as a reason for my silence. After supper, I pleaded fatigue, and made a hasty retreat to my bedroom. On my way there, I passed through the nursery. Gwen was in the nursery, knitting a long grey stocking, by little David's bedside. "Gwen," I said, "I want you--come into my room." When we got there, I locked the door, pushed Gwen down into an arm-chair, seated myself in her lap, put my arms round her neck, laid my head on her bosom, and burst into tears. These tears were my safety-valve, but they frightened Gwen. "Now, Gwladys, my maid, what is it? What is wrong? Ah! dear, dear! she's tired--the poor little maid." I wanted Gwen to soothe me. I meant her to stroke my cheek with her large, but soft hand. I meant her to pour, with her dear Welsh accent, some foolish nothings into my ear. Gwen's soothing, joined to my own tears, were, as I said, my safety-valve. When enough of the steam of strong excitement was evaporated by these means, I started up, dried my eyes, and spoke. "Gwen, we're going away. Mother and I are not going to live at Tynycymmer any more. We're going away to the black ugly coal country-- to Ffynon." "Yes, Gwladys," said Gwen; "my mistress told me to-day. She said you was to move quick, so as to have things ready for Owen. And, goodness me! Gwladys, what I says is, that little David and me should go too. What if little David was took with the croup, and me to lose my senses; and what could the Squire do? What I say is, that David and me should go--least for a year--till his h'eye teeth are down--and they do say as there's holy wells out there, what works miracles on the sight, if you dips afore sunrise." It was plain that Gwen had her own troubles in the matter. She spoke vehemently. "And who's to brush h'out your yellow hair, my maid? and who's to make things comfort for my mistress? Dear, dear Gwladys, 'tis worse nor folly me not going with you." "Well, where's the use of making a fuss about nothing?" I said, finding that I had to listen to a complaint instead of making one. "Who says you are not to come!" "My mistress, dear. She says the Squire wishes little David to stay at Tynycymmer. Dear heart! what store he do set by the little lad. Seems to me he loves the blessed lamb h'all the better for being blind." "Well, Gwen, that is all right. Of course David wishes to keep the baby--and I think," I added virtuously, "that as he _does_ wish it, it would be very selfish of us to take him away." "Dear, dear Gwladys," said the penitent Gwen, "don't think as _I_ have no thought for the Squire. _I_ don't see why the house is to be broke up for--but there! Owen and David aren't the same, Gwladys, and no one will make me think 'em the same. But if you and my mistress must go, I was only supposing what 'ud be best for the baby in case he was took with sickness. 'Tisn't _I_ as 'ud be the one to neglect the Squire, Gwladys. Course I'll stay; though dear, dear, dear! I'll be lonesome, but what of that?" As Gwen spoke, I no longer found her arms comforting. I rose to my feet, went to the window, from where I could see the silver moon reflecting glorious light on the glistening waves. "Good-night, Gwen," I said, when she had done speaking. "I'm tired; don't stay any longer--good-night." "But, Gwladys," said Gwen, looking at me with astonishment. "Good-night," I repeated, in a gentle voice; but the voice was accompanied with a little haughty gesture; and Gwen, still with a look of surprise, went slowly out of the room. I shut the door; but though I had told her I was tired, I did not go to bed. I knelt down by the open window, placed my elbows on the window-sill, leant my cheeks on my hands, gazed steadfastly out at the silver-tipped waves, and now I called up David's last item of news. I summoned my enemy to the forefront of the battle, and prepared to fight him to the death. Owen had sinned! I was a proud girl--proud with the concentrated pride of a proud race. Sin and disgrace were synonymous. I writhed under those three pregnant words--_Owen had sinned_. But for David, Owen would have been publicly disgraced. Had he been a cousin, had he been the most distantly connected member of our house, such a fact in connection with him could hardly have failed to make my cheeks burn with humiliation. But the one who brought me this agony, was not a stranger cousin, but a brother--the brother I loved, the brother I had dreamed of, the brother I had boasted of, the brother who had, hitherto, embodied to me every virtue under the sun. How well I remembered the graceful, athletic young form, the flashing, dark eyes, the ring of the clear voice, as he said to me-- "You--a Morgan! I would _scorn_ to do a dirty action, if I were you." I was the culprit then. I had been discovered by Owen, surreptitiously hiding away for private consumption some stolen cherries. I was eight years old at the time, and the sharp words had wrung from me a wail of shame and woe. I flung the fruit away. I would not show my ashamed face for the rest of the evening. I was cured for ever of underhand dealings. The next day I begged Owen's pardon--it was granted, and from that time his word was law to me. I was his slave. For the next four years, until I was twelve years old, I was Owen's faithful and devoted slave. He was my king, and my king could do no wrong. His vacations were my times of blessing, his absence my time of mourning. He ordered me about a great deal, but his commands were my pleasure. He rather took advantage of my affection, to impose hard tasks on his little slave; but the slave loved her taskmaster, and work for him was light. I was a romantic, excitable, enthusiastic child, and Owen played with a skilful hand on these strong chords in my heart. He knew what words would excite my imagination, what stories would fire my enthusiasm; these stories and these words he gave, not always--sometimes, indeed, at rare intervals--but just when he saw I needed them, when I was weary and spent after a long day of waiting on my despotic young king--standing patient while he fished, or copying with my laboured, but neat hand, his blotted exercises; then my reward would come--a few, well-selected lines from Byron, a story from history, or a fairy tale told as only Owen could tell it. I would lie at his feet then, or better still, recline with my head on his breast, while he stretched himself under the trees. Then after an hour or two of this, would come in a soft, seductive whisper in my ear-- "Now, Gwlad, you will get up at six to-morrow, and have those exercises finished for me before breakfast." Of course I did what he asked, of course I was proud of the stealthy stealing away from Nurse Gwen, of course I enjoyed the cool of the study, the romance of copying verses, and making themes appear neat and fair for Owen; and if before the hour of release came, my back ached a trifle, and my face was slightly pale, were not the fatigue and the pain well worth while for Owen's sake? For Owen, as I said, was my hero. How grandly he spoke of the noble deeds he would accomplish when he was a man--they were no idle words, they were felt through and through the graceful young frame, they came direct from the passionate heart. A thousand dreams he had of glory and ambition, and he meant them, meant them truly, as he lay in the long summer days under the great cool horse-chestnuts. Very goodly were the blossoms, and very fair to my inexperienced eyes the show of fruit, in that heart and nature. In those days, it never occurred to me that while Owen spoke, David acted. David had so few words, David never alluded to the possibility of a grand future. Once he even said, almost roughly, that he had no time to dream. Oh! how inferior he seemed, how far beneath Owen! This intercourse, and this instruction of heart and life, I had with Owen more or less from my eighth to my twelfth year; then suddenly it ceased. How little grown people remember of their own childhood! how very little most grown people understand children! There was I, twelve years old, slim, tall, awkward, gaily bright on the surface, intensely reserved within; there was I, the child of an imaginative race, great in ghost lore, great in dreams; there was I, come to an age when childhood and youth meet, when new perceptions awaken, and new thoughts arise, left to puzzle out a problem in which my own heart and life were engaged. How little the grown people guessed what thoughts were surging through my brain, what wondering ideas were taking possession of me! When mother and David told me, that for a reason they could not quite explain, Owen had gone for a time abroad, did it never occur to them that when I accepted the fact, I should also try to fathom the reason? I don't suppose it ever did. Their childhood was a thing of the past, they were pressed hard by a sorer trouble than any I could know. Could they have read my thoughts, could they have guessed my feelings, perhaps they would have smiled. And yet, I think not; for the pain of the child is a real pain: if the shadow that eclipses the sun is a little shadow, yet it falls upon little steps, and its chill presence keeps out the light of day, and the joy of hope, as effectually as the larger, darker shadow dooms the man to despair. When Owen went away, this shadow fell on me. The shadow to me lay in the pain of his absence, in the fact that no long summer days, no joyous winter evenings, were bringing him back to me. I never connected disgrace and Owen; how could I? Was he not my hero, my darling? When no reason was given for his lengthened absence, I formed a reason of my own. He had gone to win some of the glory he spoke of, to execute some of the brave deeds, the recital of which had so often caused both our eyes to sparkle, and both our hearts to glow. I could hardly guess what Owen was to do, in those distant countries where he had gone so suddenly and mysteriously, but that some day he would return covered with fame--a knight who had nobly won his spurs, I felt quite sure of. This was the silver lining to the cloud, which Owen's absence had cast upon my path, and this thought enabled me to bear the long years of his absence, with outward gaiety and inward patience. And now, kneeling by my window, looking out at the fluctuating, shifting, restless tide, I told my heart that the long probation time was over, that at last, at last, Owen was coming home; but _was_ the hero returning? was the laurel-crowned coming back with his long tale of glorious victories? Alas! Owen had sinned. This fact danced before me on the treacherous waves, floated in front of my weary eyes. Owen was no great man, gone away to perform noble deeds; Owen had gone because of his sin. Oh! my gay castle in the air! Oh! my hero-worship, with my hero lying shattered at my feet. He, a Morgan, had brought disgrace on his race; he, a Morgan, had sinned; he, my brother, had sinned bitterly. And I thought him perfect. The blow was crushing. I laid my head down on the window-sill, and sobbed bitterly. I was sobbing in this manner loudly and unrestrainedly, when a hand was laid on my shoulder, a firm cool hand that I knew too well to startle me even then. "What is it? my maid; what's the trouble?" said the tender voice of Gwen. I had been deeply hurt with Gwen for the tone in which she had spoken of Owen half an hour before, but now I was too much broken down, and too much humbled, to feel angry with any one, and I turned to my old nurse with an eager longing to let her share some of the burden which had fallen upon me. "Gwen, _do_ you know about Owen?" "Of course I do, my lamb. Dear, dear, praised be the Lord for His goodness!" Gwen was a Methodist, and I was well accustomed to her expressions, but I could hardly see their force now, and raised my tear-dimmed eyes questioningly. "And why not? Gwladys," she said, in reply to my look. "Have we not cause to praise the Lord? have we not hope that the prayer that has gone up earnestly has been answered abundantly? Don't you be foolish enough to suppose, in your poor weak little heart, that no one cared for Owen Morgan but you. Yes, my maid, others gave a thought to the lad in the far-away country, and many a strong prayer went up to the God of gods for him. Why, sweet Mistress Amy has told me how the Squire prayed, and I know she prayed, bless her dear heart! and I have had my prayers too, Gwladys, my dear, and now perhaps they're being answered." It was quite evident, from these words, that while I was in the darkness of despair with regard to Owen, Gwen was in the brightness of some hope. It was also evident that she had known for years what I only knew to-day, but I was too sore at heart to question her on this point now, though I turned eagerly to the consolation. "How do you know that your prayers are answered?" I asked. "Nay, Gwladys, I don't _say_ as they're answered, but I have a good strong hope in the matter. Don't it stand to common-sense, my maid, that I should have hope now; the lad is coming back to his own people, the lad is ready to work, honest and hard too, in the coalfields. Don't it look, Gwladys, something like the coming home again of the prodigal?" I was silent. Gwen's words might be true, and she, even if she did love Owen as I loved him, might take the comfort of them. She who had known of the sorrow and pain for four years, might be glad now if she could; but I, who until a few hours before had placed Owen far above even the elder brother in the father's house, how could I think of the repentant prodigal, in his rags and misery, without pain, how could I help failing to receive comfort! I little knew then, I little dreamt, that our rags and misery, our shame and bitter repentance, may often but lead us nearer to the Father and the Father's home. If the storm alone can bring the child to nestle in the Father's breast, surely the storm must be sent for good! "Gwen," I said, at last, "I think 'tis very hard." "What's hard? my dear." "I think 'tis hard that this should have been kept from me all these years, that I should have been dreaming of Owen, and fancying good and glory, when 'twas all shame and evil. I think 'twas very bitter to keep it from me, Gwen." "Well, my dear, _I'd_ have broke the news to you, and so I think would the Squire, but my mistress, she was so fearful that you'd fret--and-- and--she knew, we all knew, how your heart was bound up with Mr Owen." "I think it is bitter to deceive any one," I continued, "to let them waste love. Well, 'tis done now, it can't be helped." There was, I knew, a bitter tension about my lips, but my eyes were dry, they shed no more tears. I felt through and through my frame, that my hero was gone, my idol shattered into a thousand bits. "Gwen," I said, "I could not ask David to-day, but I had better know. I don't mind pain. I'm not a child, and I've got to bear pain like every one else. What was it Owen did, Gwen,--what was his sin?" "Nay, my dear, my dear, I can't rightly tell you, I don't rightly know, Gwladys. It had something to say to money, a great lot of money, and I know David saved him, David paid it h'all up and set him free. I don't know what he did rightly, Gwladys, my maid, I never heard more than one little end and another little end, but I believe there was dishonour at the bottom of it, and 'twas that cut up the Squire, and I'm quite sure too, Gwladys, that the Squire never told my mistress the half; she thought 'twas all big debts that they must cramp the estate to pay, but 'twas more." "What was it?" I said, "I don't want to be deceived again, I wish to know all." "I can't tell you, my dear, I don't know myself, 'tis only thoughts I have, and words Mistress Amy has dropped, but she did not mean me to learn anything by 'em. Only I think she felt bitter, when people called the Squire stingy, for she knew what an awful lot of money it took to clear Owen." "I must know all about it," I said; "I shall ask David to tell me if you won't." "My dear, I can't, and I think, if I was you, I'd not do that." "Why?" I asked. "My maid, isn't it better to forget what you does know, than to try to learn more." "I don't understand you, Gwen, what do you mean?" "Why, this, my lamb, don't you think when the Lord has forgiven the lad, that you may forgive him too, where's the use of knowing more of the sin than you need to know, and where's the use of 'ardening your 'art 'gainst the one you love best in the world?" "Oh! I did love him, I did love him," I sobbed passionately, all my calm suddenly giving way. "Don't say `did,' my maid, you love him still." "But, Gwen," I said, "he has sinned, the old, grand, noble Owen is never coming back. No, Gwen, I _don't_ love the man who brought disgrace and misery on us all--there--I can't help it, I don't." "Dear, dear," said Gwen, beginning to smooth down her apron, and trying to stroke my hair, which I shook away from her hand. "What weak creatures we are! dear, dear, why 'tis enough to fret the Lord h'all to nothing, to hearken to us, a-makin' idols one time o' bits o' clay, and then when we finds they ain't gods for us to worship, but poor sinnin' mortals like ourselves, a-turnin' round and hating of 'em; dear, dear, we're that weak, Gwladys, seems to me we can never have an h'easy moment unless we gets close up to the Lord." "I wish you wouldn't preach," I said, impatiently. "No, my dear, I ain't a-going, but, Gwladys, I will say this, as you're wrong; you were wrong long ago, but you're more wrong now; you did harm with the old love, but if you ain't lovin' and sisterly to Owen now, you'll do harm as you'll rue most bitter. I'm a h'ignorant, poor spoke woman, my maid, but I know as Owen will turn to you, and if you'll be lovin' to him, and not spoil him, as h'everybody but David has h'always bin a-doin', why you may help on the work the good Lord has begun. But there, you'll take what I says in good part, my dear, and now I may as well tell you what brought me in at this hour to see you." "Yes, you may tell me," I said, but I spoke wearily, there was no interest in my voice. "I thought how 'twould be," continued Gwen, "I guessed how the maid would fret and fret, and when you turned me out of your room so sharp, I was fit to cry with the fear on me that you thought poor old Gwen had turned selfish, and 'ad an h'eye to her own comfort and meant to leave the Squire. "Why, my dear, it stan's to reason I should fret. Do I not remember the old time when the old mistress was alive, and when your mother came home a bride, so grand, and rich, and beautiful; and now to know that there'll never be a woman of the house about, and only the Squire and the little blind darlin' to live at Tynycymmer; but you're right, Gwladys, 'twould never do to part the Squire and the little lad; and I was 'shamed o' myself for so much as thinkin' of it; and before I dropped asleep, with the baby close to me, so that I could see his little face, I made up my mind that I'd think no more of the lonesomeness, but stay at Tynycymmer, after you and my mistress went away. When I settled me to do that, I felt more comfort; but still, what with the feel of not seeing my maid every day, and being worried, and kissed, and made a fool of by her; and what with the thought that she had a sore heart of her own for Mr Owen's sake, who was coming back so different from what she fancied; I was no way as easy in my mind as I am most nights. And 'twas that, Gwladys, and the moon being at the full, and me only asleep for a few minutes, that made me set such store by the dream." Gwen's last words had been very impressive, and she and I believed fully in dreams. "What was it?" I asked excitedly, laying my hand on her arm. "Well, my dear; 'twas as vivid as possible; though by the clock, I couldn't 'ave bin more'n five minutes dreamin' it. I thought we had h'all gone away to the black coal country, where there's never a green leaf or a flower, only h'everything black, and dear, dear! as dismal as could be; and I thought that David went down into one of those unearthly places they calls a mine. Down he would go, into a place not fit for honest men, and only meant for those poor unfortnets as 'ave to trade by it." "I mean to go into a mine when we live at Ffynon," I interrupted. "Then, my dear, I can only say as you'll tempt Providence. Why, wot was mines invented for? Hasn't we the surface of the earth, green and pleasant, without going down into its bowels; but there, Gwladys, shall I finish the dream?" "Oh, yes!" very earnestly; "please go on." "Well, my maid; David, he went down into the mine, and we all waited on the surface to see him drawed h'up; and the chains went clankin', and one after the other everybody came up out of the pit but David; and after a while we heard that David had gone a long way into the pit, and he couldn't find his way back again; and the place where he went was very dangerous; and all the miners were cryin' for the Squire, and they went down and they tried every mortal man of 'em to get him out of the mine; but there was a wind down below in that dreadful place louder than thunder, and when the men tried to get to where David was shut up, it seemed as if it 'ud tear 'em in pieces. So at last they one and all was daunted, and they said nothing could be done. Then, Gwladys, we all cried, and we gave the Squire up for lost, when suddenly, who should come to the pit's mouth but Owen--Owen, with his breath comin' hard and fast, and his eyes shinin', and he said, `I'm not frighted; David saved me, and I'll save David, or I'll die!' And with that, before anyone could hinder him, he went down into the dark, loathsome pit!" "Well?" I said, for Gwen had paused. "That's h'all. I woke then. The rest was not revealed to me. When I woke, the cock crowed sharp and sudden, that made it certain." "What?" I asked, in an awe-struck, frightened voice. "Why, 'twill come true, my maid. 'Twas sent to us for a comfort and a warnin'. If David saved Owen, Owen will save David yet." CHAPTER SEVEN. VERY NEW AND VERY INTERESTING. It is certainly possible when one is only sixteen to go to sleep in the depths of misery, and to awake after a few hours of slumber, with a heart, if not as light as a feather, yet quite sufficiently so, to enable one to dance, not walk, to eat with an appetite, and to laugh with more than surface merriment. These easily changed feelings may be reckoned as some of the blessings of this pleasant age. At sixteen we have our sharp sorrows, but we have our equally keen pleasures, and it is quite impossible for us to be sad always. So on the morning after Gwen had related to me her dream, though there were sore places which I could not quite bear to touch, somewhere about my heart, yet the leading fact which danced before my young eyes lay concentrated in the one word--_change_. We were going away, we were going to make another place our home; we would soon be in all the grand excitement of a move. I was very childish in the matter, for this experience was so new to me, so completely novel. I had never seen a house in the chaos of a removal. I had never seen furniture ruthlessly piled up in corners, beds in packing-cases, chairs and tables upside down, carpetless and straw-littered floors. It must have been centuries since Tynycymmer had known such a revolution. Except in the attics, everything was in apple-pie order. Even the Tynycymmer attics were not half so disorderly as they should be. Regularly twice a year they were well cleaned out, and reduced to an alarming degree of niceness. The drawing-rooms, dining-room, study, library, were always destined to hold just their own furniture, and no other. And how proper and staid that old furniture looked! those chairs would never tumble down with one, those rather thread-bare carpets would fade and fade, it was true, until all brightness and beauty had left them, but how provokingly orderly they would keep, and how unnecessary it was to do anything to them except at the grand annual cleanings! I have been so put out and so tired by the everlasting sameness of Tynycymmer, that on some of these exciting occasions, I have forced my way into the dethroned and disarranged rooms, tied the housemaid's white apron over my hair, and flourished wildly about with a mop, never subsiding into rationalism until I had laid one or two articles of value in fragments at my feet. But now we were going to have confusion grand and glorious, for the cottage at Ffynon was to be furnished with some of the superabundance of Tynycymmer. Mother and David went through the old rooms many times, and everything that was small enough, and choice enough, and pretty enough, was marked to go. Mother and David both looked sad during these pilgrimages through the Tynycymmer rooms. But whenever David said, "Mother I should like you to have this, for such a corner," or, "Mother, we will put this in Owen's room," she just bent her stately head in acquiescence, and said, "It shall be as you wish, my son." So the rare cases of old china went away, and the choicest landscapes were removed from the walls; only the family portraits remained in the portrait gallery, and a painter's proof of Noel Paton's "_Mors Janua Vitae_," which David and Amy had brought home after their wedding tour, was left undisturbed in David's study. Then the waggons came, old-fashioned, slow, and cumbersome, and the furniture was stowed in, and Gwen and mother and David went to and fro. At last the cottage was ready, everything to our least belongings, packed and put away, and mother and I saw the day dawn when we were to leave Tynycymmer, and take up our abode at Owen's house. I found on the morning of that day in late October, I found on that last day, to my astonishment, that even going away had its sorrows. A mist of tears came dimming my eyes as I looked at the sea, as I wandered through the gardens and grounds, as I peeped into the no longer orderly rooms. Memories I had tried to put out of sight returned to me. That arbour overhanging the sea, where I had talked to Amy of Owen, and Amy, in a short, vivid, last flash of resentment, had told me I was wrong; that David was the brave man. Poor little gentle Amy! I had never loved her very much, I had scorned her earnest words; but they were true. I acknowledged them with a great stab at my heart, when I visited the arbour for the last time. Here was the horse-chestnut-tree where Owen and I had sat and dreamed dreams, summer after summer. I hurried away from it. Here was the cherry-tree from which I had stolen the cherries, for which Owen had reproved me. Here, crawling listlessly after me, was the lame, and half-blind terrier, which had once belonged to Owen, and had been sportive enough when Owen and I were together. Here was the study, where I had copied Owen's exercises. Here the stain, still left in the carpet, where Owen had upset the ink. Here the spot--here, by the deep, mullioned window--where, after a long labour for Owen, he had put his arm round my childish neck, looked full into my eyes, and "called me the best little sister in the world." Oh! what ailed the place this morning; it was alive with Owen, peopled with Owen in every nook. From each corner Owen started up and confronted me, as he was. _As he was_--what was he now? I dashed my blinding tears away. Kissed little David, hugged Gwen, who was absolutely speechless with her own sorrow, got into the carriage beside mother, and was off--away! For mother's sake, who was very white, and seemed to be suffering intensely, I abstained from shouting. For David's sake, who kept his hat well down, and who never spoke, I, too, remained silent. In process of time we arrived at Ffynon, and at the cottage which was to be our future home. A tree or two surrounded it; a little scrap of a garden, neat with gravel, and bright with late geraniums in pots, led up to it. Inside there was a drawing-room, low and small; a dining-room to match; behind, kitchens, a pantry, and cellars; over head, four bed-rooms. That was absolutely all. Goodness me! dear, dear! as Gwen would say, was there ever such a nutshell of a place! Why, it was a toy-house, a doll's abode. I could stand on tiptoe and touch the ceiling of the apartment set aside for my slumbers. I could stand by the bedstead at one end of the room, and nearly pull the bell at the other. But then the bedstead was so pretty, so tiny, so bright! The whole room, encased in its fairy-like pink and white, was like a little bower; the muslin curtains were partly drawn, the blinds partly down, the evening sun cast a glow over everything. I approached the window, whistling to my canary as I went. I drew up the blinds, and pushed back the curtains. My cheeks were hot, I wanted to see my waves. Perhaps from long habit, I thought I should see them. I looked out, and behold! a black country--hills, low and barren destitute of trees, clothed with coal dust; straight, red brick chimneys, from which curled volumes of ugly smoke; roads winding everywhere, of a grimy grey; a train of coal trams, whizzing up to the noisy dirty station; the roar of steam-engines filling the air; dark figures rushing here and there, and the machinery and shaft of what I afterwards learned was David's mine, quite close. The entrance to this mine lay within not many hundred yards of the house. Oh! there was noise enough and life enough here, but it was ugly! ugly! ugly! I quickly shut down the window; I drew the blinds and curtains into their former position. I would not acknowledge, even to myself, how my heart rose up in wild longing for the green trees, and the fresh, sweet, salt waves of Tynycymmer; I only said to myself, "The cottage is lovely, fairy-like; but the view is ugly!" That night I slept well in my little room, and in the morning was able to acknowledge that, though the coal country was far from beautiful, and Ffynon was not quite the home to choose, yet any change was welcome to me; and had Owen only been coming back the hero I had painted him, had dear old David's brave face not worn such a patient look, had my mother not been quite so silent, and quite so sorry for leaving Tynycymmer, and had Gwen been still to the fore to scold me, and pet me, I should have been, notwithstanding the ugly view, the happiest girl in the world. I got up early this first morning, and went out. I ran down, without anyone knowing it, to the place where the machinery roared loudest, and the black coal dust was thickest. I looked into the mouth of the shaft, watched with interest the rows of grimy miners getting into the cage, and descending into the mine; started back at first from their black faces, which, relieved by the dazzling white of teeth and eyeballs, made them look hardly human; presently gathered courage, came close, asked eager questions, made all verbal preparations for a speedy descent into the coal mine; rather laughed at the idea of fear in the matter, and returned home in time for breakfast, my light dress covered with dirty stains, my golden hair full of coal dust, my whole person very dirty indeed. "Gwladys," said mother, "you must never venture near the shaft alone again." "If you do, Gwladys, I must take you back to Tynycymmer," said David. I did not want that; if Ffynon was dirty, it was very new and very interesting. CHAPTER EIGHT. I SAID I WOULD DO MUCH FOR THESE CHILDREN. We were a fortnight at Ffynon. All my possessions were unpacked and put neatly away in the wardrobes allotted to them. My favourite books, my "Cambrian Magazine," my "Westward Ho!" my "Arabian Nights," my "Mabinogion," reflected gay colours behind polished glass doors. Packing-cases had disappeared. The cottage inside was perfection, bright with potted plants, cool with muslin drapery, glowing with rich crimson curtains. The rare and lovely Tynycymmer china filled niches in the drawing-room, exquisite landscapes from the pencils of Fielding and Cooper adorned the walls, the blackest of coal sent out the clearest flames of ruddy hue from the highly-polished grates. Every room was perfect, perfect with neatness, cleanliness, order, and perfect also with a minute, but highly-finished beauty. The tiny abode hardly needed even a fairy's touch to render it more lovely, on the day Owen was expected home. On this day mother came down in the black velvet robe which had lain by for years. It was worn high to her throat, finished off at neck and wrists with Honiton. A tiny Honiton cap rested becomingly on her shining, abundant, still raven black hair. I was lying on my bed, my face flashed, my yellow locks in confusion, a rumpled cotton dress, too soiled for July, too out of season for October, adorning my person, when mother in her massive folds, her eyes bright as stars, came in. "Make yourself nice, my darling. Owen will be here before long," she said. She kissed me and went away. When she left me I jumped up, and looked at my watch. It was not yet four o'clock. Owen could not arrive before another hour. I cared nothing about my dress. I could not sit in state in the tiny drawing-room to meet Owen. I put on a winter jacket, and my hat, ran downstairs, and went out. Mother saw me from the window, and called after me, and I called back in reply-- "I shall not be long, I shall return in time for Owen." Mother turned away with a sigh. What a rebellious, thoughtless young thing I was! Of course mother wanted me. She would like to look at me in my trim, orderly, number one gown, to arrange a ribbon here and a curl there, to sigh, and smile, and talk, to hazard a thousand sweet innocent conjectures. Should we know our darling? What would he think of me? I had been such a little one when he went away! These remarks, these touches, these looks, would have helped mother through that last trying hour of suspense, that hour which, if all _has_ been well, if all _will_ be well, is still fraught with pain through its very intensity. Yes, they would have helped mother, and driven me wild. I was selfish. I went on my way. Oh! that ugly coal country, with the wintry fading light of the first November evening over it! I kicked up coal dust with my feet, and two heavy tears fell from my eyes. Yes, Owen was coming home. Even now, each moment was bringing him nearer to us. Owen was coming home, and I was unhappy. Between this hour, and the hour six weeks before, when David had broken to me one sad fact, a strange but complete revulsion had taken place within me. I was a childish creature still, childish in heart and nature; but just, perhaps, or in part, perhaps, because I _was_ so inexperienced, so immature, I had turned from my hero, I had hardened myself against the warmest love of my life. Yes, I had made a god and worshipped it. Nothing was too good for it, no homage too great to lay at its feet, no sacrifice too worthy to offer at its shrine. Mother, David, Amy, were all as nothing in comparison of this my hero. My dream lasted through my childhood and early youth, then suddenly it vanished. My god was a clay god, my idol was dust. Owen Morgan still lived. Owen Morgan was coming back to his mother, brother, sister, but my perfect Owen was dead. A man who had sinned, who had brought disgrace on us, was coming home to-day. More and more as the time drew nearer I had shrunk from seeing, from speaking to, from touching, this altered Owen. I was intensely unmerciful, intensely severe, with the severity of the very young. No after repentance, no future deed of glory could wipe away this early stain. I had been deceived--Owen had sinned--and _my_ Owen was dead. As I walked quickly along the barren, ugly coal country, I pictured to myself what my feelings would have been to-day had this not been so. Would mother have sat alone then in her velvet and lace to meet the returning hero? Would I? ah! what would I _not_ have done to-day? I could not think of it. I dashed away another tear or two and walked on. I chose unfrequented, lonely paths, and these abounded in plenty, paths leading up to old, used-up shafts, and neglected mines; paths with thin ragged grass covering them, all equally ugly. At last I came to a huge cinder-heap, which had lain undisturbed so long, that some weak vegetation had managed now to grow up around it. Here I sat down to rest. The cinder-heap was close to the closed-up shaft of an unused pit. In this fortnight I had already learned something of mining life, and I knew where to look for the old shafts, and always examined them with curiosity. As I sat there, I heard the voices of two children, who, evidently quite unaware of my close neighbourhood, were talking eagerly together, at the other side of the cinder-heap. It was a boy's voice I heard first--high, shrill, passionate. "Yes, indeed, Nan; they'll call me a coward. No, Nan; I'll not be daunted. I will go down on Monday!" To these words the girl replied with sobs. I heard the boy kissing her; then there was silence, then the same eager voice said-- "Don't cry, Nan; Monday ain't come yet. Let's talk of something pleasant." "Don't talk at all, Miles. Let's sing." "Shall we sing `The Cross?'" "I don't--no, I do care. Yes, we'll sing that." There was a pause, then two sweet, wild voices took up the following words to a plaintive Welsh air:-- "The cross! the cross! the heavy cross! The Saviour bore for me! Which bowed Him to the earth with grief, On sad Mount Calvary. "How light, how light, this precious cross Presented now to me; And if with care I take it up, Behold a crown for me!" Here the voices ceased suddenly, and I again heard a kiss of comfort, and the sound of a girl's sob. I could bear no more. I started to my feet, ran round the cinder-heap, and confronted the children. "Please don't be frightened! I heard you sing. I want you to sing again. I want to know what's the matter. I'm Gwladys Morgan--you may have heard of me; my brother is going to manage the mine at Ffynon." Two pairs of black eyes were raised to my face, then the boy rose slowly to his feet, came forward a step or two, and after gazing at me with the most searching, penetrating glance I had ever been favoured with, said brightly, as if satisfied with the result of his scrutiny-- "I'm Miles, and this is little Nan." "And father works down in the mine," said little Nan. "Father's name is Moses Thomas--he's deputy," said the boy again, in a proud tone. "Go on," I said, seating myself close to the children; "tell me all about yourselves. I'm so glad I've met you. I am sure we shall be friends. I like you both already. Now you must let me know your whole story, from beginning to end; only first, do, _do_ sing that lovely hymn again." "I'll sing, Miss Morgan," said the boy, instantly; "but you'll forgive little Nan; little Nan's in trouble, and her voice ain't steady." Throwing back his head, looking straight before him, and clasping his hands round his knee, he sang to the same wild measure the next verse of the Methodist hymn:-- "The crown! the crown! the glorious crown! A crown of life for me. This crown of life it shall be mine, When Jesus I shall see." "When Jesus I shall see," he repeated, under his breath, looking at the girl as he spoke. As the children looked at each other they seemed to have forgotten my presence. "What's the cross you've got to bear? Nan," I asked. An old-fashioned, troubled, anxious face was raised to mine; but it was Miles who answered. "'Tis just this, Miss Morgan: 'tis nothing to fret about. I've got to go down into the mine to work on Monday. I've never been into the mine before, and little Nan's rare and timmersome; but I says to her that she's faithless. She knows, and I know, that the Lord'll be down in the mine too. 'Tis none so dark down there but He'll find me h'out, and take care on me." "He didn't find out Stephie," sobbed Nan, all her composure giving way. "He took no care on Stephie." "What is it?" I said; "do tell me about it; and who is Stephie? Miles." "Stephie is dead, Miss Morgan. There's only us two now--only us and father. Mother died arter Stephie went; she fretted a good bit, and she died too; and then there was Nan, and me, and father. We lives near Ffynon Mine, and father's deputy; and we're none so rich, and father works rare and 'ard; and he don't get much money, 'cause the times is bad; and I'm fourteen, and I'm very strong, and I says I should work." "No--no--no!" here screamed the girl, forgetting, in a perfect paroxysm of fright and grief, the presence of the stranger. She clasped her arms round the boy's neck, and her white lips worked convulsively. "There it is," said Miles; "she's sure set agen it, and yet it must be." Then bending down and speaking in a low voice, in her ear. "Shall I tell the lady about Stephie? Nan." "Yes," said Nan, unloosing her hold, and looking up into his face with a sigh. She had the scared look in her wild, bright eyes, I have seen in the hunted hare, when he flew past me--dogs and horsemen in full pursuit. Now she buried her head in her brother's rough jacket, with the momentary relief which the telling of Stephie's story would give to the tension of her fears. "Tell me about Stephie," I said. "Stephie," continued Miles--"he was our brother. Mother set great store by Stephie; he was so strong, and big, and brave. Nothing 'ud daunt 'im. Many of the lads about 'ere 'ud try; and they'd say, `Wait till the day you goes down inter the mine, and you'll show the white feather'; but he--he larfed at 'em. He 'ad no fear in 'im, and h'all the stories 'bout fire-damp, and h'all the other dangers--and worse'rn all, the ghosts of the colliers as died in the mine, they couldn't daunt him. Other lads 'ud run away, wen they come near the h'age; but he--he on'y counted the days; and `Mother,' 'e'd say--for mother war werry weakly--`Mother, wen you 'as my wage, you can buy this thing and t'other thing, and you'll be strong in no time.' Well, mother she thought a sight on Stephie, and she never wanted 'im to go down inter the mine; and she used to ask father to try and 'prentice 'im to another trade, for he war so big, and bright, and clever; but the times was bad, and father couldn't, so Stephie had to go. He _was_ clever, and fond o' readin', and a man wot lived near, lent 'im books, real minin' books, and he knew 'bout the dangers well as anybody; but nothing could daunt Stephie, and he often said that he'd work and work, and rise hisself; and he'd try then ef he couldn't find h'out something as 'ud help to lessen the danger for the colliers. At last the day came wen he was to go down." Here Miles paused, drew a long breath, and little Nan buried her head yet farther into his rough jacket. He stooped to kiss her, then raising his head, and fixing his eyes on my face, he continued. "The day 'ad come, and Stephie got h'up very early in the mornin', and he put on 'is collier's dress, and we h'all got up--Nan and h'all; and mother she give 'im 'is breakfast. Well, he was standin' by the fire, and mother's 'and on 'is shoulder, and 'er eyes on 'is face, when father, he came. "Father had h'always promised to go down the first time wid Stephie, and show 'im the mine, and put 'im wid someone as 'nd learn 'im 'is work; but now he said, `Stephie, lad, I can't go down till night. I 'as 'ad a sudden call elsewhere, so thee 'ad better wait, lad;' but Stephie answered, `No, father; there's poor little James, Black William's son, and he's going down too, to-day; and he's rare and daunted, and I ain't a bit; and Black William said as he might stay along wid me the first day, so I must go, father, and Black William ull take care on us both;' then father, he said no more--on'y mother, she cried and begged Stephie to wait. And he looked at 'er amost scornful, for h'all he loved her so; and he said, `Does _thee_ tell me to forsake the little sickly lad?' Then he kissed mother, and he kissed little Nan, and waved his hand back at 'em, and set off running to the bank, and I ran wid 'im, and he said to me, `Miles, lad, don't you h'ever be daunted when your turn comes to go down, for God takes care of h'everybody, in the earth and on the earth--'tis all the same to God.' Then he stepped on to the cage, and gripped the hand of little James, who was shakin' fit to drop, and he called h'out to me--`Tell mother as I'll be coming up wid the day crew, and to 'ave supper ready, for I'll be very 'ungry,' and the other colliers larfed to 'ear 'im so 'arty. "Well, Miss Morgan, that day mother war stronger nor ordinary, and she cleaned and scrubbed the floor, and when evening came, she got a rare and good bit of supper ready, and just wen we was looking h'out for Stephie, and mother had put a rough towel, and water in the tub, ready for him to wash hisself, who should come runnin' in but the wife of Black Bill, h'all crazy like, and 'ringin' 'er 'hands; and she said there had been a gas explosion, and h'every livin' soul in the mine was dead." Here Miles paused; speaking again in a moment, more slowly. "_That_ wasn't true. A few did escape, and was brought up next day. But Black Bill was dead, and Stephie, and little James. Black Bill was found all burnt dreadful; but Stephie and little James--it was the after-damp had done for them. They was found in one of the stalls; Stephie's arms round the little lad." Another long pause. "Mother, she never held up her head--she died three months later, and now there's on'y Nan, and father, and me. Nan is such a careful little body, and keeps the house so trim." "You are not afraid to go down into the mine?" I said. "Well, miss, it is a bit of a cross; partic'lar as it cuts up the little 'un so; but, good gracious! it ain't nothin'; there ain't bin a h'accident for h'ages--and _I_ ain't daunted." "When are you going down?" "On Monday, Miss Morgan." "Little Nan," I said, turning to the child, "I mean to come to see you at your own house on Monday. You may expect me, for I shall be sure to come; and I'll bring you pictures--lots; and if you like, I can show you how to colour them." I thought this offer must charm Nan, and make her forget the terrors of the mine; but it did not. She looked gravely, almost fretfully at me, and it was Miles who said, "Thank you." "I must go now," I said, jumping to my feet. "I have stayed too long already; but I'm very glad I have met you, Miles, and Nan. I think your Stephie a real, real hero; and, Miles, I _love_ you for being so brave, and I should like, beyond anything, to shake hands with you, and to kiss little Nan." After clasping a small brown hand, and pressing a warm salute on two trembling lips, I started home. The children's story had excited me, and warmed my heart. For the present it absorbed my thoughts, even to the exclusion of Owen. I said I would do much for these two. This boy and girl, so lonely, so interesting, with their tragic story and tragic life, should find in me a benefactor and friend. The thought was delicious and exhilarating. David, through my intervention, should rescue Miles from the miner's life, and relieve the timid little sister from her worst fears. My spirits rose high as I contemplated this event, which a word from my lips could bring about. I entered the house humming the wild sweet air which the children had set to their Methodist hymn. The music of my voice was greeted by the richer music of gay and happy laughter. I stood motionless in the hall. My heart almost ceased to beat, then bounded on wildly. The colour fled from my cheeks and lips, returning in a moment in a full tide of richest crimson. I could have given way then. I could have rushed to Owen's side, thrown my arms round his neck, and wept out on his breast, a whole flood of healing and forgiving tears. Had I done so, my soul would have been knit to his with a love strong as the old love was weak--noble as the old passionate affection was erring and idolatrous; but I did not. I conquered the emotion, which the sound of his voice, and his laughter, had stirred within me. I told myself that _that_ was not my Owen--mine, my hero was dead. Untidy, pale, agitated, but unforgiving, I opened the drawing-room door and went in. David, mother, and Owen, were standing in a loving, happy group. I went up to the group--they had not heard me come in--and touched Owen on the sleeve, and said, in a quiet voice, "Welcome home, brother." For an instant two bright, dark eyes looked expectantly into mine--one instant the brilliant eyes wore that look--one instant after, they were blank with disappointment. Then all was commonplace--a commonplace, but affectionate brother's kiss was on my cheek, and a gay voice said, laughingly-- "Why, Gwladys, you're as wild and disreputable-looking a little romp as ever." CHAPTER NINE. EARTH--AIR--FIRE--WATER. Whether Owen had come back, in my opinion, a hero, or an unpardoned and disgraced man, appeared after his first swift glance into my face to affect him very little, if at all; and I had to admit to myself that whatever else he may have failed in, he had arrived at Ffynon with a full knowledge of the duty which he had undertaken. As a boy, he had always loved engineering, and when in those bright and happy days he and I had discussed his golden future, the _pros_ had generally ended in favour of his becoming an engineer. "All things considered, I should like this best, Gwladys," he would say. And though in these very youthful days he appeared to care more for poetry and the finest of the fine arts, yet it was here, I believe, that his true talent lay. Owen had not been idle during the four years of his exile, he had studied engineering as a profession when he was at Oxford, and during these years he had gone through a course of practical training with regard to the duties of a mining engineer, not only in the German mines, but in the North of England. He now brought this knowledge to bear on the rather slow working and unprofitable mine at Ffynon. This mine, which belonged to our mother, had at one time yielded a great deal of coal and was a source of much wealth, but of late, year by year, the mine yielded less, and its expenses became greater. It was worked on an old-fashioned system; it had not the recent improvements with regard to ventilation; and many serious accidents had taken place in consequence. Neither was the manager popular, he worked the mine recklessly, and many accidents of the most fatal character were constantly taking place from the falls of roofs, this expression meaning the giving way of great portions of the coal for want of proper supports being put under it. A short time before Owen's return, the manager of the mine for some more flagrant act of carelessness than usual, had been dismissed, and it was on hearing this, that Owen had written to David, telling him of his studies and his profession, reminding him also that when a boy he had more than once gone down into the old mine at Ffynon, that with his present knowledge he believed the mine to be still rich in coal, and that it only needed to be properly worked to yield a fine return. He spoke strongly against the unprofitable and expensive system which had hitherto been adopted; and finally he begged of David to give him permission to step into the manager's shoes, and for at least a year to have absolute control of the mine: promising at the end of that time to reduce order out of chaos, to lessen current expenses, and to bring in the first instalments of what should be large profits. He had frankly told David his reason for this: he had a debt to pay, a debt of love and gratitude it was true, but still a debt that fretted his proud spirit, a debt that must be paid before he could know happiness again. But it was just on account of this reason that David hesitated to accept the services of one whose knowledge of the work he meant to undertake, was certainly great. The primary motive in Owen's heart, seemed to David, in the present state of Ffynon mine, hardly a worthy one. Coal was valuable, gold scarce, but lives were precious; it seemed to David that until all was done to insure the safety of the lives of those men and boys who worked in the mine, gold ought to weigh very low in the balance, and as he alone of us all knew something truly of his brother's character, so he hesitated to accept his offer; but while David hesitated, mother urged. Mother was ignorant of the miner's life; gold to mother was not valueless: she had dreams of the Morgans being restored to all their former riches and power, she had also, notwithstanding his one fall, still implicit faith in Owen. Owen would not only win the gold but make the mine safe. It was a grief to her to leave Tynycymmer, but it was a counterbalancing delight to live on any terms for a year with her favourite son; she urged the acceptance of his offer. Thus urged, David yielded. We moved to Ffynon. Owen arrived, eager, hopeful, enthusiastic, as of old. Handsome and brilliant as ever he looked as gay as though he had never known a sorrow. So I thought for the first week after his arrival, then I saw that his spirits were fitful, sometimes I fancied a little forced; a bad report of the mine would depress him for the day, whereas good news would send his gay laugh echoing all over the small house. Thus I found myself in the midst of mining life. Mother, hitherto profoundly ignorant of such matters, now took up the popular theme with interest and zest. She and I learned what _fire-damp_, _black-damp_, _after-damp_ meant. We learned the relative destructiveness of explosions by gas and inundations by water. Then we became great on the all-important subject of ventilation. We knew what the steam jet could do, what furnace ventilation could effect. I admired the Davy lamps, learned something of their construction, and at last, I obtained the strongest wish I at present possessed, namely, a visit to this underground region of awe and danger, myself. It is a hackneyed theme, and I need scarcely describe it at length. I remember stepping on to the cage with some of the enthusiasm which I had admired in Miles' brave hero brother, and long before I reached the bottom of the shaft, suffering from an intolerable sense of suffocation, and shivering and shaking with inward fear, such as must have overtaken poor little James on that fatal day. Finally, when I got to the bottom, recovering my courage, rejoicing in the free current of fresh air which was blown down from the great fan above, growing accustomed to the dim light of the Davy lamps, and then discovering little, by little, that the mine with its rail-roads, its levels, its drift ways, where the loaded trams of coal ran swiftly down, impelled by their own weight, its eager, grimy workers, its patient horses, destined many of them to live and die in this underground gloom, was very like a town, and had an order and method of its own. The knowledge gained by the visit, the knowledge gained by listening to Owen's and David's conversation, the knowledge perhaps greater than all, which I had won by my friendship for Miles and Nan, inspired in me the strongest respect and admiration for the brave collier. He works in the dark, his heroic deeds are little heard of beyond his own circle, and yet he is as true a hero as the soldier in the field of battle or the sailor in the storm: his battle-field is the mine, his enemies, earth, air, fire, and water. Any moment the earth can bury him in a living tomb, a vast quantity of that solid coal may give way, and crush him beneath its weight; any instant, the air, in the poisoned form of black, or after-damp, may fill his lungs, take all power from his limbs, fell him in his strength and prime to the earth, and leave him there dead; or in half an instant, through the explosion of a match, the wrong adjustment of a safety-lamp, the whole mine may from end to end become a cavern of lurid fire, destroying every living thing within its reach. Or one stroke too many of the miner's pick, may let in a volume of black and stagnant water from an unused and forgotten pit, which rising slowly at first, then gaining, in volume, in strength, in rapidity, buries the miners in a watery grave of horrible and loathsome desolation. Yes, the miners are brave; for small pay they toll unremittingly, labouring in the dark, exposed to many dangers. Day by day these men go down into the mines literally with their lives in their hands. The wives, mothers, sisters, know well what the non-arrival of a husband, father, brother means. They hope a little, fear much, weep over the mangled remains when they can even have that poor source of consolation, and then the widow who has lost her husband, dries her eyes, puts her shoulder to the wheel, and like a true Spartan woman, when his turn comes, sends down her boy to follow in his father's steps, and, if God wills it, to die bravely, as his father died before him. I visited the schools about Ffynon, and noticed the bright dark-eyed, Welsh children, each boy among them destined to become a collier as he grew up. Many of these boys shrank from it, struggled against it, feared it as a coming nightmare; some few, as the dreaded time drew near, ran away to sea, preferring the giving up of father and mother, and encountering the hardships of the sea, to the greater hardships of the mine, but most of them yielded to the inevitable fate. I found, too, on observation that the colliers of Ffynon were a religious people; the sentiments I had heard in astonishment and almost awe dropping from the lips of little Miles, I found were the sentiments rather of the many than the few. They lived an intense life, and they needed, and certainly possessed, an intense faith. The body of them were not Church people; they had a simple and impassioned service of their own, generally held in the Welsh tongue. At these services they prayed and sang and listened to fervent addresses. At these services, after an accident, slight or great, the men and women often bowed their heads and wept. Their services were alive and warm, breathing the very breath of devotion, suited to their untrained, but strong natures. They left them with the sense of a present God alive in each heart; a God who would go with them into the mine, who would accompany them through the daily toil and danger, and, if need be, and His will called them, would carry them safely, even in a chariot of fire, into the Golden City. To the religious miner, the descriptions of Heaven as written in the Apocalypse, were the very life of his life. He loved to sit by his fire on Sunday evenings, and slowly read from the well-worn page to his listening wife, and his lads and lasses, of the city sparkling with gems and rich with gold. To the man who toiled in the deepest of darkness, a land without night or shadow was a theme of rapture. To the man who knew danger and pain, who fought every day with grim death, that painless shore, that eternal calm, that home where father, mother, brother, sister, rudely parted and torn asunder here, should be together, and God with them, was as an anchor to his soul. No place on earth could be more real and present than Heaven was to the religious collier. Take it from him, and he could do no more work in the dark and dangerous mine; leave it with him, and he was a hero. The colliers had one proud motto, one badge of honour, which each father bequeathed as his most precious possession to his son--this motto was "Bravery;" one stigma of everlasting disgrace which, once earned, nothing could wipe out, "Cowardice." In the collier's creed _no_ stone was too heavy to roll away to rescue a brother from danger. Into the midst of the fire and the flood, into the fatal air of the after-damp, they must go without shrinking to save a companion who had fallen a victim to these dangers. Each man as he toiled to rescue his fellow man, knew well that he in his turn, would risk life itself for him. No man reflected credit on himself for this, no man regarded it as other than his most simple and obvious duty. Into the midst of this simple, brave, and in many ways noble people, came Owen with his science and his skill. He went down into the mine day after day, quickly mastered its intricacies, quickly discovered its defects, quickly lighted upon its still vast stores of unused treasures. At the end of a month he communicated the result to David. I was seated by the open window, and I heard, in detached sentences, something of what was spoken, as the brothers paced the little plot of ground outside, arm in arm. As I watched them, I noticed for the first time some of the old look of confidence and passion on Owen's face. The expressive eyes revealed this fact to me--the full hazel irids, the pupils instinct with fire, the whole eyes brimming with a long-lost gladness, proclaimed to me that the daring, the ambition I had loved, was not dead. "Give me but a year, David," I heard him say in conclusion. "Give me but one year, and I shall see my way to it. In a year from this time, if you but give me permission to do as I think best, the mine shall begin to pay you back what I have lost to you!" David's voice, in direct contrast to Owen's, was deep and sad. "I don't want that," he said, laying his hand on his brother's arm, "I want something else." "What?" asked Owen. "I want something else," continued David. "This is it. Owen, I want you to help me to fulfil a duty, a much neglected duty. I take myself to task very much for the gross way I have passed it by hitherto. God knows it was my ignorance, not my wilful neglect, but I ought to have known; this is no real excuse. Owen, I have lived contented at Tynycymmer, and forgotten, or almost forgotten, this old mine. I left things in the hands of the manager; I received the money it brought without either thought or comment. And all the time, God help me, the place was behind its neighbours. I had not much money to expend on it, and I was content it should be worked on the old system, never thinking, never calculating, that the old system involved danger and loss of life. The mine is not ventilated as the other mines are; in no mine in the neighbourhood do so many deaths occur. You yourself have discovered it to be full of many dangers. So, Owen, what I ask of you is this, help me to lift this sin of my neglect off my soul. I don't want the money, Owen; it is enough for me, it is more than enough, to see you as you now are; the money, I repeat, is a thing to me of no value, but the people's lives are of much. I can and will raise the sum you require to put the mine into a state of safety, to perfect the ventilation, to do all that can be done to lessen the danger for the colliers. Do your part in this as quickly as possible, Owen, and let us think nothing of money gains for the present." While David was speaking, Owen had again drawn a veil of perfect immobility over his face. Impossible, with this veil on, to guess his thoughts, or fathom his feelings. "Of course, of course," he said, "the ventilation shall be improved and all that is necessary done." CHAPTER TEN. LITTLE TWENTY. I had not forgotten my promise to visit Nan on the day her brother first went down into the mine. I selected a bundle of illustrated papers--some old copies of _Punch_-- as, judging from the delight I took in them myself, I hoped they would make little Nan laugh. I also put a sixpenny box of paints into my pocket. These sixpenny paint-boxes were the most delightful things the Tynycymmer children had ever seen, so, doubtless, they would look equally nice in the eyes of Nan. The Thomas's cottage was one of a row that stood just over the pit bank. I ascended the rather steep hill which led to it, entered the narrow path which ran in front of the whole row of houses, and where many women were now hanging out clothes to dry, and knocked at Nan's door. She did not hear me; she was moving briskly about within, and singing to her work. Her voice sounded happy, and the Welsh words and Welsh air were gay. I knocked a second time, then went in. "I am so glad to hear you singing, Nan," I said. "I was sure you would be in trouble, for I thought Miles had gone into the mine to-day!" Little Nan was arranging some crockery on the white dresser. She stopped at the sound of my voice, and turned round with the large china tea-pot in her hand. When I had seen her on Saturday, seated weeping on the old cinder-heap, I had regarded her as a very little child. Now I perceived my mistake. Nan was no child; she was a miniature woman. I began to doubt what effect my copies of _Punch_ and my sixpenny paints would produce on this odd mixture; more particularly when she said, in a quiet old-fashioned voice--"But he did go into the mine, Miss Morgan; Miles went down the shaft at five o'clock this mornin'." "You take it very calmly when the time comes," I continued; "I thought you would have been in a terrible state." "Yes, ain't I easy," said Nan, "I never thought as the Lord 'ud help me like this; why, I ain't frighted at all." "But there's just as much danger as ever there was," I said. "Your not being frightened does not make it at all safer for Miles down in the pit." I made this remark, knowing that it was both unkind and disagreeable; but I was disappointed; I had meant to turn comforter--I was provoked to find my services unnecessary. "There ain't no danger to-day," replied Nan, to my last pleasant assurance. "How can you say that?" I asked. "'Cause the Lord revealed it to me in a dream." Now I, too, believed in dreams. I was as superstitious as the most superstitious Welsh girl could possibly be. Gwen, my isolated life, my Welsh descent, had all made me this; it was, therefore, with considerable delight, that, just when I was beginning to place Nan very low in my category of friends, I found that I could claim her for a kindred spirit. "You are a very odd little girl," I said; "but I'm sure I _shall_ like you. See! I've brought you _Punch_, and the _Illustrated News_, and a box of paints, and _perhaps_ I shall show you how to colour these pictures, as the children did at Tynycymmer." Then I seated myself uninvited, and unrolled my treasures; my newspapers, my copies of _Punch_, my paint-box with the lid off, were all revealed to Nan's wondering eyes. "Get me a saucer and a cup of water," I said, "and I'll show you how to colour this picture, and then you can pin it up against the wall for your father to see when he comes home." "If you please, miss," said Nan, dropping a little curtsey, and then coming forward and examining the print in question with a critical eye, "if you please, miss, I'd rayther not." "What do you mean?" I said. "Well, miss, I'm very gratified to you; but, father, he don't like pictures pasted up on the walls, and, indeed, Miss Morgan," getting very red, her sloe-black eyes gleaming rather angrily, "I 'as no time for such child's play as lookin' at pictures, and colourin' of 'em, and makin' messes in cups and plates. I 'as enough to do to wash h'up the cups and saucers as is used for cookin', and keepin' the house tidy, and makin' the money go as far and as comfort as possible. I'm very gratified to you, miss; but I 'as no time for that nonsense. I ain't such a baby as I looks." As little Nan spoke, she grew in my eyes tall and womanly, while I felt myself getting smaller and smaller, in fact, taking the place I had hitherto allotted to her. I rolled up my despised goods hastily, rose to my feet, and spoke-- "You are not half as nice as you looked. I am very sorry that I disturbed so busy and important a person. As I see you don't want me, I shall wish you good morning." I had nearly reached the door, when Nan ran after me, laid her hand on my arm, and looked into my face with her eyes full of tears. "I ain't a wishin' you to go," she said, "I wants you to set down and talk to me woman-like." "How old are you? you strange creature," I said; but I was restored to good humour, and sat down willingly enough. "I'm ten," said Nan, "I'm small for my h'age, I know." "You are, indeed, small for your age," I said, "and your age is very small. Why, Nan, whatever you may pretend about it, you are a baby." "No, I ain't," said Nan, gravely and solemnly, "it ain't years only as makes us babies or womans, 'tis--" "What?" I said, "do go on." "Well, miss, I b'lieves as 'tis anxiety. Miles says as I has a very h'anxious mind. He says I takes it from mother, and that ages one up awful." "I've no doubt of it," I said. "I've felt it myself, 'tis overpowering." "I don't think you knows it much, miss," said Nan. "I should say from the looks o' you, that you was much younger nor me." "Mind what you're about," I said, "I'm sixteen--a young lady full grown. But come, now, Nan, with all your anxiety, you were merry enough when I came in--you did sing out in such a jolly style,--I thought you such a dear little thing; I did not know you were an old croak." "Why yes," said Nan, half-smiling, and inclined to resume her song, "I'm as light as a feather this mornin', that's the Lord's doing." "What did the Lord do for you, Nan?" "He sent me a token, miss, as sure as sure could be, and it came just in the minute before waking." "What was it?" I repeated, for little Nan had paused, her face had grown soft and almost beautiful; the hard unpleasing lines of care and anxiety had vanished, and in their stead, behold! the eyes were full of love and faith, the lips tender, trustful, but withal, triumphant. "I was sore fretted," she began, "as father couldn't go down with Miles; he had to stay to go ever the mine with the strange gentleman as is to be manager, and Miles going down h'all alone, reminded me sore of Stephie. And I was frettin', frettin', frettin', and the prayers, nor the hymns, nor nothing, couldn't do me no good, and Miles hisself, at last, he were fain to be vexed with me, and when I went to bed my heart was h'all like a lump o' lead, and I felt up to forty, at the very least, and then it was that the Lord saw the burden was too big for me, and He sent me the dream." "What was it? Nan." "I thought, miss, as I seed the Lord Hisself, all pitiful and of tender mercy. I seed Him as plain as I sees you, and He looked me through and through, very sorrowful, as I shouldn't trust Him, and Miles, he was standin' on the cage, just afore it went down, and there was an empty place near Miles, and I saw that every one had their comrade and friend with them, 'cept Miles; and then the Lord, He went and stood by Miles, on the empty space, and He put His arm round Miles, and he looked at me, and I saw the Lord and Miles going down into the dark, dark pit together." "I'm sure that was true," I said, "that was very much what Miles said himself, don't you remember? You were much better after your dream, were you not? Nan." "Yes, miss, I was light and easy in my mind, as if I was twenty!" "What _do_ you mean, now?" I said. "Well, Miss Morgan, I can't help it. I know I'm queer, the folks all say I'm queer. I know I haven't h'aged with my years. Sometimes, miss, the anxiety brings me up to fifty, and I feels my hair's a-turnin' white; then again, I'm thirty, and forty; most times I feels like thirty, but now and then, as to-day, the Lord gives me a special revelation, and then, why, I'm as light as a feather, and down to twenty, but I'm never below that, miss." And yet I meant to offer that creature toys! Such was my mental comment, but before I could speak again, the door was opened, and a tall man--coal-black--with gleaming eyeballs, and snowy teeth, came in. He took no notice of me, perhaps he did not see me, but in passing through to another room, he called out in a full cheery voice-- "I say, little lass, how do you feel?" "Fine, father, down to twenty." "Well, Twenty, bustle about, and get me some dinner; I'll be ready for it in ten minutes." "I must go away now," I said, rising. "No, miss, that you mustn't; I wants you to see father. Father's a wonderful man, Miss Morgan, he have had a sight o' trouble one way and t'other, and he's up to fifty in years; but the Lord, He keeps him that strong and full o' faith, he never passes thirty, in his mind; but there, what a chatterbox I am, and father a wantin' his dinner!" The old-fashioned mortal moved away, laid a coarse but clean cloth on a small table, dished up some bacon and potatoes in a masterly manner, and placed beside them a tin vessel--which, she informed me, was a miner's "jack"--full of cold tea. "Father will never go down into the mine without his jack o' tea," she explained; and just then the miner, his face and hands restored to their natural hue, came in. "Father," said Nan, in quite a stately fashion, "this lady is Miss Morgan; she's a very kind lady, and she spoke good words to Miles o' Saturday." "Mornin', miss," said the miner, pulling his front lock of hair, "I'm proud to see you, miss, and that I am; and now, lass," turning to his daughter, "you'll have no call to be anxious now no more, for this young lady's brother was h'all over the mine this mornin', and he and Squire Morgan promises that all that is right shall be done, and the place made as snug and tight as possible. That young gentleman, miss," again addressing me, "is very sharp; _he_ knows wot he's about, that he do!" "Is the mine dangerous?" I asked. "No, no," said the collier, winking impressively at me, while Nan was helping herself to a potato, "but might be made safer, as I says, might be made safer; another shaft let down, and wentilation made more fresh. But there! praise the Lord, 'tis all to be done, and that in no time; why, that mine will be so safe in a month or two, that little Nan might go and play there, if she so minded." As the big man spoke, looking lovingly at his tiny daughter, and the daughter replied, with anxious, knitted brows, "You know, father, as I don't play," he looked the younger of the two. "No more you does, Twenty," he replied, "but even Twenty can put away her fears and sing us a song when she hears a bit of good news." "Shall I sing a hymn? father." "Well, yes, my lass, I does feel like praisin'--there, you begin, and I'll foller up." Little Nan laid down her knife and fork, fixed her dark eyes straight before her, clasped her hands, and began-- "We shall meet beyond the river, By and by, And the darkness shall be over, By and by. With the toilsome journey done, And the glorious battle won, We shall shine forth as the sun, By and by." She paused, looked at her father, who joined her in the next verse-- "We shall strike the harps of glory, By and by. We shall sing redemption's story. By and by. And the strains for evermore Shall resound in sweetness o'er Yonder everlasting shore, By and by. "We shall see and be like Jesus By and by. Who a crown of life shall give us, By and by. All the blest ones who have gone To the land of life and song, We with gladness shall rejoin By and by!" I have given the words, but I cannot describe the fervent looks that accompanied them, nor catch any echo here, of the sweet voice of the child, or the deep and earnest tones of the man. The strong spiritual life in both their natures came leaping to the surface, the man forgot the stranger by his hearth, he saw his God; the child, too, forgot her fears and her anxieties, and as she sang she became really young. CHAPTER ELEVEN. THEY TALKED OF MONEY. Since my arrival at smoky, ugly Ffynon, I had never again to complain of being buried alive. The life I led was certainly not the life I should have chosen. I was young; I had day dreams. Had the choice been mine, I should have liked, as all other young things, to win for myself either pleasure, love, or fame. But the choice was not mine; and at Ffynon, strange as it may seem, I grew more contented than I had been now for many years at Tynycymmer. I was pleased with the people, I liked their occupation, their life. I soon found interests outside myself--a grand secret--thus I grew happy. Nan and Miles soon also became my real friends: I learned to appreciate their characters, to understand them; they were alike in many ways, but in far more ways were they different. Nan had more character and more originality than Miles, but Miles had far more simple bravery than Nan. They were both religious; but Miles's religion was the least dreamy, and the most practical. On the whole, I think the boy had the grander nature, and yet I think I loved the girl best. I made many other acquaintances amongst the colliers, but these two children were my friends. In about a fortnight after Owen's return, David went back to Tynycymmer, and we settled down quietly into our new and altered life. From morning to night Owen was busy, now making engineering plans, now down in the mine. As a boy he had been dilatory and fitful in his movements, working hard one day, dreaming or idling away the next; but now this boyish character had disappeared--now all this was changed. Now he worked unremittingly, unflinchingly; he had a goal before him, and to this goal he steadily directed his steps, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. In his present plans, whatever they may have been, mother helped him. Mother gave him of her sympathy and her interest. Long ago, dearly as they loved each other, I don't think those two natures had quite met; but this was no longer so now; the same hope animated both pairs of eyes, the same feeling actuated both breasts. They had long conferences, anxious, and yet hopeful consultations; but it was less in their words than in their faces that I read that their wishes were the same. I never saw mother look happier. Her long-lost son seemed now more her son than ever. And I--had I, too, got back my Owen? had my hero returned? was this my brother, once dead to me, now alive again? Alas! no. We were friends, Owen and I; we were outwardly affectionate, outwardly all that could be wished; but the man of the world made no advances of heart and confidence to the still childish sister; and the sister was glad that this should be so. We kissed each other affectionately night and morning, we chatted familiarly, we broached a thousand gay topics, but on the old sacred ground we neither of us ventured to set our feet. After a time I concluded that Owen had really forgotten the old days; and believing this, I yet was glad. Why so? Why was my heart thus hard and unforgiving? Had my love for Owen really died? I do not think it had. Looking back on that winter now, with the light of the present, making all things clear, I believe that this was not so. I know now what was wrong: I know that I, by my pride, by the lack of all that was really noble in my affection, had set up a thin wall of ice between my brother's heart and my own. Once, I think, Owen made an effort, though a slight one, to break it down. He had been talking to my mother for an hour or more; their interview had excited him; and with the excitement still playing in his eyes he came to my side, and stood close to me as I bent down to water some plants. "Poor little girl!" he said, laying his hand on my hair, "you are very good to come and live in this poky, out-of-the-way corner of the world; but never mind, Gwladys, soon there will be plenty of money, and you can do as you like." "How soon? Owen," I said, raising my head and looking in his face. "How soon? In a year, at farthest." "Will the mine then be safe 'n a year?" The bright look left Owen's face. "What do you know of the mine? child," he laughed. "I am speaking about money." I made no reply to this, though Owen waited for it. I watered my flowers in silence, and then walked away. Yes, there was a gulf between us. I might have broken it down then--he gave me the opportunity: he showed by his manner that the old days still occupied some dim corner of his memory; the old days were not quite forgotten; but I would not break down the wall; I would not breathe on the ice with the breath of love. I walked away, and my opportunity was gone! As I did so, I thought of David's words when he begged of me to help Owen to keep in the right path; when he expressed his fears, and asked me to aid him. I did not aid him--I neglected my duty. Owen was not the only sinner. In God's sight, was he the worst? Meanwhile, in the outside world, the people of Ffynon talked of a good time coming, of freedom from danger, of improvements about to be effected, which would enable the mothers to send down their boys into the mine without fear, and would insure the return of the fathers to the children, of the husbands to their wives. Higher wages, too, and more constant employment would follow the new, safe, and profitable system, which not only would save lives, but bring a much greater proportion of coal to the surface. Thus all parties were bright and happy--all parties happy from their own point of view; but while the miners talked of safety, mother and Owen talked of money. CHAPTER TWELVE. YOU ARE CHANGED TO ME. The events in this story followed each other quickly, I must not delay in writing of them. Hitherto I have but skirted the drama, I have scarcely ventured to lift the folds of the dark curtain, but now I hesitate no longer. Here! I push back the veil, let those who will step with me beyond its kind screen. I am going into a battle-field, and the place is gloomy. Heavy with clouds is the sky, red with blood the ground, and cold with death lie the conquered, ay, and the conquerors too. But enough! my story must tell itself, the shadows must come up one by one as they will. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We were five months at Ffynon, and the dreary winter had nearly passed, a few snowdrops and crocuses were in the little garden, and all spring flowers that money could buy and care cultivate, adorned the pretty cottage within. I had been on a long rambling expedition, and had taken Nan with me, and Nan had entertained me as I liked best to be entertained, with accounts of mining life and mining danger. Strange, how when we are young, we do like stories of danger. I came back a good deal excited, for Nan had been giving me particulars, learned from her mother's lips, of the fearful accident caused in our very mine in 1856 by fire-damp, when one hundred and fourteen lives were swept in a moment into eternity. "That was a dark day for Ffynon," said Nan, "not a house without a widow in it, not a home without a dead husband or father. Mother lost her father and brother, and our Stephie was born that very night. Mother warn't twenty then, but she got old in a minute and never grew young again. Eh! dear," added the small thing, with her heavy old world sigh, "ain't it a weary world, Miss Morgan?" "Well, I don't know," I said, "you are inclined to take a dark view of life, but things will brighten, Nan. Owen is making things so delightfully safe down in the mine, that soon you'll have no cause to be anxious, and then you'll grow young, as young as me, and enjoy your life." "I'll never be younger nor twenty," said Nan, solemnly, "never; and, Miss Morgan, I can't help telling _you_ something." "Well, my dear, what is it?" "They do say, father and Miles, not to me, for they knows I'm so anxious, but I hears 'em whispering when they thinks I'm asleep o' nights. They do say that for all Mr Morgan is so keen about saving the miners, and making things safe and compact, that he have the coal pillars what supports the roof, cut all away to nothing, and the timber what's put in, in place o' the pillars, ain't thick enough. It don't sound much I know, but it means much." "What does it mean? Nan," I asked. "Why, falls o' roofs, Miss Morgan. Oh! _I_ knows the sign of 'em, but there," seeing how white my face had grown, "may be 'tis 'cause I'm an anxious thing, and they do say there's a heap more coal bin brought up, and the ventilation twice as good." I made no reply to this. I did not say another word. When we came in sight of Nan's cottage, I bade her adieu by a single-hand shake, and ran home. On the gravel sweep outside the sunny, smiling cottage, might be seen the substantial form of Gwen, and by Gwen's side, his hat off, the breeze stirring his wavy brown hair, stood Owen. Graceful, careless, happy, handsome, looked my brother, as he raised his face to kiss David's boy, who sat astride on his shoulder. The baby was kicking, laughing, crowing, stretching his arms, catching at Owen's hair, and making a thousand happy sounds, the first indications of a language he was never to learn perfectly on earth. Alas! what _did_ the baby see in the darkness, that made his face the brightest thing I ever looked at, the brightest thing I ever shall look at in this world. The sight of the baby and Gwen caused me to forget Nan's words; I ran forward eagerly and spoke eagerly. "Gwen, what a surprise! how delighted I am! have you come to stay? Oh! you darling, darling pet!" These last words were addressed to little David, whom I took out of Owen's arms, and covered with kisses. "How much he has grown! What a beauty he is!--like a little king. There! my precious lamb; go back to Owen, for I _must_ give old Gwen a hug!" Laughing heartily, Owen received him back, perched him anew on his shoulder, while I turned to Gwen, whom I nearly strangled with the vehemence of my embrace. "There! you dear old thing. _Have_ you come to live with us? Oh! how dreadfully, dreadfully I have missed you. Oh! never mind your cap. I'll quill you another border in no time. Now, are you coming to live here? Do speak, and don't look so solemn." "Dear, dear, my maid!" said Gwen, shaking herself free, and panting for breath. "Good gracious! Gwladys, my maid, I'm a bit stout, and none so young; and you did shake me awful." A pause, pant-pant, puff-puff from Gwen. "Why, there! I'm better now, and fit to cry with the joy of seeing you, my maid; but,"--with a warding-off gesture of her fat hands--"good gracious! Gwladys, don't fall on me again." A peal of laughter from Owen, in which the baby joined. "Speak," I said, solemnly; "if you don't instantly declare your intentions, and the duration of your stay, I shall _strangle_ you." "'Twas on account o' the fever," said Gwen. At these words my hands dropped to my sides, the baby's laughter ceased to float on the air, and Owen was silent. "There's nought, to be frighted at," continued Gwen, observing these signs; "on'y a case or two at the lodge, and little Maggie and Dan, the laundress's children were rather bad. The Squire said it warn't likely to spread; but it would be best to make all safe, so he sent little David and me here for a fortnight, or so. Dear heart, he was sore down in the mouth at sayin' good-bye to the baby; but I was pleased enough, Gwladys, my maid. I wanted to get a sight o' your yellow hair, and to see my mistress, and Mr Owen." "And I'm delighted to renew my acquaintance with you, Gwen," responded Owen, heartily. "I assure you I have not forgotten you. There! take baby now," he added. "I think I hear my mother calling you." When Gwen was gone, Owen, to my surprise came to my side, and drew my hand through his arm. "I want to talk to you about the baby," he said. "What a splendid fellow he is? How sad he should be blind. Somehow I never realised it before. I always knew that David's boy was without sight, but, as I say, I never took in the meaning of it until I looked into those beautiful dark eyes. Isn't David awfully cut up about it? Gwladys." "I'm not sure," I replied. "You must remember, Owen, that he is accustomed to it; and then all about baby's birth was so sad. Indeed, David does not like even to talk much about him; and when we are by, he never takes much notice, when he is brought into the room, only Gwen tells me how he comes up every night to see him, and how he kisses him-- indeed, I know he quite lives for baby." "Gwladys, I wish you would tell me about Amy? Was she worthy of that noble fellow?" I looked at Owen in surprise--surprise from a twofold cause, for the voice that brought out the unexpected and unusual words trembled. "He is the noblest fellow I know, quite," said Owen, emphatically, looking me full in the face. "What kind of woman was his wife?" "I did not know her very well," I replied. "I don't believe I cared greatly for her. Still, I am sure, Owen--yes, I _know_ that she was worthy of David." Owen turned away his face, looked on the ground; in a moment he spoke in a different tone, on a different subject. "I was quite glad to see that little bit of enthusiasm in you; you used to be a very affectionate, warm-hearted child, and I thought it had all died out." I felt my face growing crimson. I tried not to speak, then the words burst forth-- "It has not died away; I can love still." "I make no doubt of that, my dear," continued he, carelessly, "but you have not the same pleasant way of showing it." He dropped my hand and walked towards the house, but his indifferent words had renewed the feeling with which I had parted from Nan. He too might be indifferent, but at least he should know. I would tell him Nan's words. "Owen, I want to ask you a question." "Well!" turning round, and leaning his graceful figure against the porch. "We are going to be rich again, before long?" "Perhaps; I cannot say." "But you are getting up a lot of coal now out of the mine?" "Certainly; the weekly supply is nearly double what it was six months ago." "Then of course we must be rich before long?" "There is the possibility, but mines are uncertain things." A pause, a scarcely suppressed yawn, then Owen turned on his heel. "I am going in, Gwladys; I don't care to talk business out of business hours, and I want to have a chat with mother." His tone of easy indifference, coming so soon after seeing Nan's suffering face, and hearing her words of intense anxiety, half maddened me. I know I forgot myself. I ran forward and caught his arm, and made him look me full in the face. No fear then, as he gazed at my crimsoning cheek and angry eye, that he should say I lacked my childhood's enthusiasm. "You are not going in yet," I said, "for I have got something to say to you--something, I repeat, which I _will_ say. You need not pretend to me, Owen, that we are not getting rich, for I _know_ we are. But I ask you one question, Is it right that we should have this money at the risk of the colliers' lives? is it right, in order that we should have a little more gold, that the coal pillars should be cut away, until the roofs are in danger of falling? and is it right that the timber supports should be made thinner than is safe? All this adds to our money, Owen; is it right that we should grow rich in that way?" "Good God! Gwladys;" a pause, then vehemently, "How dare you say such things to me! who has been telling you such lies?" "I won't mention the name of the person who has told me the truth, but I have heard it through the colliers; the colliers themselves are speaking of it." Owen covered his face with his hand; he was trembling, but whether with anger or pain, I could not say. I stood silent, waiting for him to speak; he did not, perhaps for two minutes; those minutes watching his trembling hand, seemed like twenty. "You and the colliers have both made a mistake," he said then; "they have exaggerated notions of the necessary thickness of the coal pillars. I never have them worked beyond what is safe. As to the timber supports, they are measured with the nicest mathematical accuracy. You and they both forget that I am an engineer, that I work the mine with a knowledge which they cannot possess. Good God! to think that I am capable of risking willingly men's lives to win gold; to think that _you_, Gwladys, should believe me capable of it; but you are not what you were. Once, such words could never have been said to _you_ of _me_. You are changed to me utterly, and I am _utterly_ disappointed in you." He pushed his hat over his eyes, and before I could reply was several paces away, walking rapidly in the direction of the still romantic and once beautiful Rhoda Vale. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. PRIDE'S PIT. During the long and dull winter months which preceded this spring, I had been gradually, yet surely, sinking into a state of indifference about Owen. What had commenced with a sense of poignant pain, had by this time subsided into at most an uncomfortable feeling of dissatisfaction. I knew there was a chord in my heart which when struck could set my whole nature out of tune. But was it not possible, in the airs which life played, she might leave this harsh note unsounded? This possibility took place. During the winter months mother, Owen, and I spent together, I grew accustomed to being near and yet far from him. Our little home was very bright, a cloud which I had but dimly and unawares partaken in for years, had been removed. Why should not I too enjoy this season of serenity and bliss? Calling pride to my aid, I did enjoy it. I even loved Owen, not in the old way, but with a very considerable affection. I tried to forget all the past, to give him a place in my heart beside mother and David. And in a measure I was successful, in a measure I put out of sight the ugly cloud, the dark disappointment which had shattered my air castle, and made my childhood's hero dust. So by the hearth on winter evenings, I listened to brilliant stories from Owen's lips, stories of his foreign experience, of things he had learned when studying in the German mines; tales of adventure, funny nothings dropped from his lips at these times, pleasant things to listen to, and to think of afterwards, when I lay curled up in my warmly-curtained bed. But though Owen's mind directed his words at these times, imagination supplying the needful colour, a due sense of either absurdity or pathos supplying the necessary point, a musical voice adding intensity to the narrative; yet I think he waited until I had gone to bed, to let his heart speak. Then how near may mother and he have drawn, how truly, in a figurative sense, did the hand of one take the hand of the other, did the soul of one respond to the soul of the other, as they whispered of hopes and fears, of a dark past to be atoned for and wiped away by a bright future! For never, never once during the winter, did Owen's heart speak to my heart; never, until now, to-day--now, when it leaped up into his eyes, and addressed me with a passionate cry of pain. My whole heart responded to those words, to that bitter cry; trembling I ran up to my room and locked myself in, trembling I threw myself on my bed, fought and wrestled for a few moments with my tears, then let them come. Strange as it may seem, my tears flowed with as much pleasure as sorrow. I had made a discovery in that bitter moment. Owen still loved me. Owen had not forgotten the old days. This was a pleasure to me, this was a joy, greater than my pain; for I had made so sure that it had all passed from him, all the old happy life, the old day dreams. Now, for the first time, holding my hands before my burning, tear-dimmed eyes, did it occur to me, that _I too had sinned_. Owen had not forgotten me, that was plain; perhaps during the sad years of his exile, some of his softest and best thoughts had been given to the child, whose warm love, whose quick appreciation and sympathy, whose unselfish attentions had won so much from him in his boyhood and youth. However or in whatever way he had sinned, he had never forgotten his home or his own people; as soon as possible he had returned to them, not to idle, but to work, and so to work that he might atone for the past. No, Owen had not returned perfect, but was I perfect? How had I treated him--with any true love, with any real sympathy? Alas! he had looked for it, and had been--he himself told me to-day--bitterly disappointed. And of what had I not accused him? How I admired him with something of the old admiration, something of the old hero-worship, as the stinging words of indignant denial dropped from his lips. _He_ do so base, so cruel, so wicked a thing! how could I possibly so misunderstand him! I sat up on my bed, I wished earnestly then to put Owen in the right, and myself in the wrong, but try as I would, I could not quite come to this wished-for conclusion. Nan's words had not been the only hints I had received. I saw daring the winter months, that the great popularity with which Owen had been received on his first arrival, had hardly abated, but still was clouded and tempered with a scarcely perceptible tone of dissatisfaction. The last manager had been most inefficient; in his time the mine was badly worked, it also was dangerous. Owen had begun promptly to remedy both these defects. The question now was, which did he care most for, the gold he would win from the mine, or the safety he would secure for the people? and the evil thought, kept coming and coming, he thinks most of the gold, he values the gold more than the lives of the men! This evil thought had been with me for weeks past; not stirring into active life, lying, indeed, so dormant that it scarcely gave me pain, but none the less had it been there. And now, to-day, this living thing had leaped to the surface of my mind, had trembled in my voice and glittered in my eye, and I had accused Owen of what I suspected. With what an agony of pain, and yet joy, I recalled his unfeigned anger, distress, reproach, that _I_ should think of him so, that any one could accuse him of so base an act. As I recalled his look, his face, his words, the old love which I had thought dead, came surging back. I had, I must have been mistaken; the colliers and I both, in our ignorance, had misunderstood Owen, the safety of their lives _was_ his first consideration. But what an unaccommodating thing is memory! how impossible it is to make her fit herself to existing circumstances, what ugly tricks she was playing me now! Event after event, each small in themselves, came crowding up before me, pointing every one of them with inexorable finger to one fact. Of wilful and purposeful neglect it would be wrong to accuse Owen. He wished to do all in his power to secure the safety of the colliers' lives, but money in his heart of hearts ranked first. I found at last a solution of the problem which relieved my pain, without satisfying me. Owen wished to do right, he meant to do right; but the easy carelessness which had characterised his boyhood had not deserted his manhood. He meant to do well for the colliers, but careless of danger for himself, he might be for them also; and yet, how fatal and disastrous, now and then, were the effects of carelessness! At this moment one very prominent instance of Owen's want of thought rose before me. There was an old used-up mine, known in the country by the name of Pride's Pit, which adjoined the mine at present being worked at Ffynon. Close to this old pit lived the under-viewer and his family. A not very desirable residence was theirs for this reason, that the old shaft leading into the pit had never been filled up; and making it all the more dangerous, it was, from long disuse and neglect, nearly covered by a thick growth of weeds and brushwood, so that an unwary traveller might step into the mine before he was aware. This old shaft for every reason was dangerous, as its open mouth let in the rain and helped to fill the pit beneath with water, which water might by an untoward accident, a boring away of too much of the coal, help at any moment to inundate the larger mine. It was at present the terror of the young wife of the under-viewer, who had three small children, and who was never weary of warding them off the dangerous ground. On the dismissal of the late manager, the young woman who lived in this cottage had come with her complaint to David, and had begged of him to use his influence with his brother to have the dangerous shaft filled up. David had assured her that this should be one of the first steps in the general reformation. When Owen came, I heard David speak to him on the subject, and Owen promised to have all that was necessary done without delay. I am quite sure Owen meant what he said, but in the absorbing interest of more engrossing work, month after month went by, and Pride's Pit still remained with its open shaft. A fortnight ago, I was walking with Owen, when poor Mrs Jones met us with tears in her eyes, "Was nothing going to be done to the shaft, her baby had nearly been killed there a few days since." Owen was really sorry, declared he had completely forgotten it, won Mrs Jones's heart by his sweet graciousness and real regret, and promised to send round men to put the whole thing straight in the morning. Of course, he had done so by this time, but how great and unnecessary was the previous delay; suppose Mrs Jones's baby had been killed, would Owen ever have forgiven himself? After thinking these and many other thoughts, I had brushed my hair, bathed my eyes, and was preparing to go downstairs, when there came a tap at my door, and Gwen, carrying little David in her arms, came in. She placed the child on the floor, came to my side, and looked hard into my face. If ever there was a purpose written in any woman's countenance it was in Gwen's at this moment. "Gwladys, my maid," she said, "will you help your old nurse at a pinch?" "Yes, that I will, Gwen," I replied, heartily; "what is it you want me to do?" "And you'll keep it a secret, and never let it out to mortal?" "Of course," rather proudly. "Well, then, 'twasn't the fever brought me over here." "Oh! Gwen," in a tone of some alarm, "what are you keeping back from me? is David ill?" "Dear, dear, no, my pet; and I don't say as there _isn't_ a fever, and that _that_ is not the reason the Squire sent us away, Gwladys. No, I'd scorn to tell a lie, and there is a fever, though it ain't much; but that wasn't what brought me and the little lad here, Gwladys." "How mysterious you are," I said, laughing. "What was the reason?" "Why, you see, my maid, I'd soon have persuaded the Squire to let us stay, for I knew he'd be lonesome without me and the baby, and, Lord bless you, _he_ (pointing to the child) wouldn't take the fever, God bless him; sweet and sound would I keep him, and free from all that low dirt, and those bad smells, which the negligent, never-me-care, unthrifty poor have, a tempting of Providence. No, it wasn't fright at no fever took me away, but a downright answer to prayer, Gwladys." Gwen paused, and I nodded to her to proceed. "Hadn't I been praying all the winter for some lucky wind to blow me to this place, and wasn't the fever the wind as God sent; so why shouldn't I come with a thankful heart?" "Poor, dear old Gwen! you wanted to see mother and me. I am sorry you were so lonely." "Well, my maid, it wasn't that; I'm none so selfish. No, Gwladys, it wasn't for myself I was praying, nor about myself I felt so happy. No, 'twas about little David. Gwladys, I mean to take little David to the eye-well." "Oh! dear me, Gwen, what is that?" "Hush, hush, child! don't speak of it lightly; just sit patient for five minutes, my dear, and you shall know the whole ins and outs of it." I have said that Gwen, though a very religious woman, was, if possible, a more superstitious one. From the fountain-head of her knowledge and wisdom I had drunk deeply; of late, when away from her, I had been deprived of these goodly draughts, but I was all the more ready now to partake of the very delicious one she had ready dished up for my benefit. "Go on," I said, in a tone of intense interest. "I mean to take the child to the eye-well," continued Gwen; "there's one within a mile or two of this place that's famed, and justly, through the whole country. Many's the blind person, or the weak-eyed body, that has been cured by it; and many and many thoughts have I cast toward it, Gwladys; not liking to speak, for sure, if you long too earnestly, you hinders, so's the belief, the cure. Now there's wells that have a `perhaps' to 'em, and there's wells that have a `certainty,' and of all the wells that ever was sure, this is the one. And I've a strong belief and faith in my mind, that though I brought the little lad here blind, I may carry him home seeing." True, oh! Gwen, dear Gwen, not in your way, perhaps in a better! As she spoke, attracted by the sound of her voice, the child toddled to his feet, came to her side, and raised his dark, sightless eyes to her face. "But it must be managed clever," continued Gwen, "and 'tis there I want you to help me. I don't want my mistress, nor a soul in the house but yourself to know, until I can bring in the laddie with the daylight let into his blessed eyes; and to have any success we must obey the rules solemn. For three mornings we must be at the well before sunrise, and when the first sunbeam dips into the water, down must go the child's head right under too, with it, and this we must do three days running, and then stop for three days, and then three days again. Ah! but I feel the Lord'll give His blessing, and there's real cure in the well." Gwen paused, and I sat still, very much excited, dazzled, and full of a kind of half belief, which falling far short of Gwen's certainty, still caused my heart to beat faster than usual. "And now, Gwladys," proceeded Gwen, "I mean to go to-morrow morning; and can you come with me, and can you show me the way?" "I can and will come with you, Gwen, but I cannot show you the way. I fancy I _have_ heard of this eye-well, but I have never been there." "Then I must find some one who can," proceeded Gwen, rising. "Stay, Gwen," I said, earnestly. "I know a little girl very well here, she has lived all her life in this place, and is sure to have heard of the well. I am sure, too, she would never tell a soul. Shall I go to her and find out if she can come with us?" "Do, my dear maid, and let me know soon, for I am sore and anxious." CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE EYE-WELL. I found that Nan knew all about the eye-well, and had a very strong belief in its curative powers; she was only too anxious and willing to accompany us, and accordingly at five o'clock next morning, Gwen, little David, and I met her, and set off to our destination with a delightful sense of secrecy and mystery. I look back on that day now, when, light-hearted, happy, not having yet met with any real sorrow, I stood and laughed at the baby's shouts of glee, when Gwen dipped his head under the cold water. I remember the reproving look of dear old Gwen's anxious face, and the expectant half-fearful, half-wondering gaze of Nan. I see again the water of the old well, trembling on the dark lashes of two sightless eyes, a little voice shouts manfully, a white brow is radiant, dimples play on rosy cheeks, golden brown curls are wet and drip great drops on the hard, worn hand of Gwen. Nan, excited and trembling, falls on her knees and prays for a blessing. Gwen prays also. I take David's little lad into my own arms, he clasps me firmly, shouts and laughs anew. I too, in a voiceless prayer, ask God to bless the noble boy. We are standing under a great tree, whose sheltering branches protect the old well, the bright sun shines in flickering light through the early spring leaves, on the boughs the birds sing, from the hedge a white rabbit peeps. Yes, I see it all, but I see it now with a precipice beyond. I see now where the sun went down and the dark night came on. I see where the storm began to beat, that took our treasure away. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was the evening before the third visit to the eye-well; I heard Gwen in the room fitted up for a temporary nursery, singing little David to sleep. Hush-a-by, little dear, Hush-a-by, lovely child. It was the old Welsh lullaby song. Soft, soft, softer went her voice to the queer old measure, the quaint old words-- Hush-a-by, lovely child, Hush--hush--hush--hush! Profound stillness, no one could keep awake after that last hush of Gwen's; I felt my own eyes closing. The next moment I found myself starting up to see the singer standing before me. "David's asleep, my dear, and, Gwladys, you need not come with me in the morning." In a very sleepy tone, induced by my early rising and the lullaby song, "Oh! yes, Gwen, I don't--mind--I'd better." "No, no, my dear lamb, David and me'll go alone to-morrow; little Nan ain't coming neither." "Very well, Gwen," I said, just asleep. I was in bed when Gwen came again to me. "My maid, I'm very trouble to you to-night." "No, Gwen, what is it?" To my surprise, Gwen burst into tears; this unusual sign of emotion roused me completely. "Oh! my maid, I'm fearful and troubled, I don't know why. I've set my heart so on the baby getting his sight. If I could only take him back seeing to the Squire, I think I could die content." "Well, Gwen, perhaps you will. Of course, I don't _quite_ believe in the eye-well as much as you do, but still, who knows?" "_No_ one knows, Gwladys, that's what's troubling me; the Almighty has it all hid from us. He may think it good for the baby not to see. There's sights in this world what ain't right for mortal eyes, perhaps He have shut up his, to make and keep the little heart all the whiter." "Perhaps so, Gwen; as you say, God knows best." "Yes, only I _do_ feel troubled to-night; perhaps 'tis wrong of me to take the baby to the h'eye-well, but I did pray for a blessing. Eh! dear, but I'm faithless." "You are down-hearted anyhow," I said. "Go to bed now and dream that the baby is kissing you, and looking at you, and thanking you as he knows how, for getting him his eyesight. Good-night, dear Gwen." But Gwen did not respond to my good-night, she knelt on by my bedside; at last she said in a change of voice-- "Gwladys, have you made it up with Owen?" I was excited by Gwen's previous words, now the sore place in my heart ached longingly. I put my arms round my old nurse's neck. "Gwen, Gwen, Owen and I will never understand each other again." "I feared she'd say that," repeated Gwen, "I feared it; and yet ain't it strange, to make an idol of the dreaming boy, and to shut up the heart against the man who has suffered, repented, who will yet be noble!" "Oh! Gwen, if I could but think it! Will he ever be that?" "I said, Gwladys," continued Gwen, "that he was coming home to His Father, he was coming up out of the wilderness of all his sin and folly to the Father's house, he aren't reached it yet--not quite--when he do, he will be noble." I was silent. "'Tis often a sore bit of road," continued Gwen, "sore and rough walkin', but when the Father is waiting for us at the top of the way; waiting and smiling, with arms outstretched, why then we go on even through death itself to find Him." "And when we find Him?" I asked. "Ah! my maid, _when_ we find Him, 'tis much the same, I think, as when the shepherd overtook the lost lamb; the lamb lies down in the shepherd's arms, and the child in the Father's, 'tis much the same." I lay back again on my pillow; Gwen covered me up, kissed me tenderly, and went away. I lay quiet for a few moments, then I sat up in bed, pressed my hands on my cheeks, and looked out through the window, at the white sky and shining moon. I looked eagerly and passionately. I had been sleepy; I was not sleepy now. After a time of steady gazing into the pitiless cold heavens, I began to cry, then out of my sobs two words were wrung from me, "_My Father_." Never was there a girl more surrounded by religious influences, and yet less at heart religious than I. This was the first time in my whole life that I really felt a conscious want of God. The wish for God and the longing to understand Owen, to be reconciled to Owen, came simultaneously, but neither were very strong as yet. As yet, these two wants only stirred some surface tears, and beat on the outer circle of my heart. I knew nothing of the longing which would even go through the valley of the shadow of death to the Father, nothing of the love which would care a thousand times more for Owen _because_ he had sinned and had repented. I wanted God only a little, my cry was but from the surface of my heart, still it was a real cry, and had more of the true spirit of prayer in it than all the petitions I had made carelessly, morning and evening since my babyhood. After a time I lay down, and, tired out, went to sleep. I did not sleep easily, I had confused dreams of Owen, of little David, of Gwen. Then I had a distinct vision. I saw the children of the under-viewer, playing on the place where the shaft leading down into Pride's Pit had been; the ground was smooth, the danger was past, the children played happily and shouted gleefully. Two of them ran to tell their mother, the baby stayed to throw gravel into the air. All looked secure, but it was not so; as I watched, I suddenly perceived that the work was badly done, the place only half filled up; as I watched, I saw the loose stones and rubbish give way, and the baby sink into the loathsome pit below; although I was quite close, I could hold out no hand to save the under-viewer's baby. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. THAT MAN WAS OWEN. Tired with my two days' early rising, I did not get up until late. I had nearly finished dressing, and was standing by my window, when I heard a woman's voice calling me in muffled tones below. My room looked to the back of the house, and the woman had come to the inside of a thick fuchsia-hedge, which here divided the cottage, and its tiny surroundings, from the road. Looking out, I saw the under-viewer's wife, gazing up with clasped hands and a white face. "For the love of God, come down to me quietly, Miss Morgan." The pain and anguish in the woman's face communicated part of her intelligence to me. I knew there was great and urgent need for me to go downstairs without anybody hearing. The immediate action which this required, prevented my feeling any pain. I stood by the woman, looked hard into her eyes, and said, "Well?" "Dear heart, you must know it," she said, taking my hand. "Come with me." She almost pushed me before her through the little gate; when we got on the high road, she began to run. I knew that she was going in the direction of Pride's Pit. My strangely vivid dream returned to me. Here was a solution of the mystery. I believed in dreams--this dream was not accidental. It had been sent to me as a warning--it was true. Owen had neglected to have the shaft, leading into Pride's Pit, filled up, and the under-viewer's child had fallen a victim to this neglect. The child had fallen down the old shaft. He was dead, and the mother was bringing me now to show me face to face what my brother's carelessness had effected. The life of a little child was sacrificed. I was to see for myself what Owen had done. I felt sure of this. The woman ran very fast, and I kept pace by her side. The distance was over half a mile, and partly up-hill. When we came to the ascent, which was rather steep, we could not go quite so quickly, and I had time to look in the woman's face. It was hard and set, the lips very white, the eyes very staring. She neither looked at me nor spoke. It came into my heart that she was cruel, even though her child _was_ dead, to hurry me forward without one word of warning: to show me, without any preparation, what my brother had done. I would not be treated so. I would not face this deed without knowing what I was to see. The instant I made this resolution, I stood still. "Stop!" I said. "I _will_ know all. Is the baby dead?" The woman stood still also, pressing her hand on her labouring breast. "Dear heart! she knows," she gasped. "Yes, yes, my dear--the baby's dead." I did not say I was sorry, nor a single word. I simply, after my momentary pause, began to run harder than ever. We had now got in sight of the pit, and I saw a little crowd of people about it. Some men in their miners' dresses, a boy or two, a larger proportion of women. I half expected the men, women, and children to curse me as I drew near. We ran a little faster, and the woman's panting breath might have been heard at some distance. Suddenly a boy caught sight of us, and detaching himself from the group, ran to the woman's side. "Does she know?" he exclaimed, catching her hand almost frantically. "She must not see without knowing." The boy, who spoke in a voice of agony, was Miles Thomas. "Yes," replied the woman; "she guessed it herself. She knows that the baby's dead." "Thank God!" said the boy. I looked from one face to the other. I could not help pitying myself, as though it were _my_ sorrow. I thought the boy's tone the kindest--he should take me to see the murdered child. Suddenly I changed my mind. Why should I need or look for compassion. The mother had come all this way to punish me and mine--the mother's just revenge should not be foiled. When we got into the group, I took her hand. "You shall show him to me," I said. "You shall show me your little dead baby." There was a pause on all sides--one or two people turned aside. I saw a woman put her apron to her face, and heard a man groan. Every eye was fixed on me, and, at the same moment, the under-viewer's wife and Miles went on their knees, and began to sob. "Oh! my darling; you are wrong--you have made a mistake," began the woman. "I _felt_ she did not, could not know," sobbed Miles. The crowd opened a little more, and I went forward. Very near the mouth of the old shaft, lying on a soft bed of grass and undergrowth, was a woman--a woman with a face as white as death. I went up close to her, and gazed at her steadily. Her face looked like death, but she was not dead--a moan or two came through white lips. By the side of the woman, stretched also flat, lay a child; his hat was thrown by his side, and one little leg was bare of shoe and stocking. A white frock was also considerably soiled, and even torn. I took in all these minor details first--then my eyes rested on the face. I went down on my knees to examine the face, to note its expression more attentively. On the brow, but partly concealed by the hair, was a dark mark, like a bruise, otherwise the face was quiet, natural, life-like. A faint colour lingered in the cheeks; the lips were parted and smiling. The woman was groaning in agony. The child was quiet--looking as a child will look when he has met with a new delight. I laid my hand on the little heart--it never stirred. I felt the tiny pulse--it was still. The injured and suffering woman was Gwen. The dead baby was not the under-viewer's child, but David's little lad. I took no further notice of Gwen, but I kept on kneeling by the side of the dead child. I have not the least idea whether I was suffering at this moment; my impression is that I was not. Mind, body, spirit, were all quiet under the influence of a great shock. I knew and realised perfectly that little David was dead; but I took in, as yet, no surrounding circumstances. Finding that I was so still, that I neither sobbed nor groaned--in fact, that I did nothing but gaze steadily at the dead child, the under-viewer's wife knelt down by my side, and began to pour out her tale. She did this with considerable relief in her tone. When she began to speak, Miles also knelt very close to me, and laid his hand with a caressing movement on my dress. I was pleased with Miles' affection--glad to receive it--and found that I could follow the tale told by the under-viewer's wife, without any effort. I mention all this just to show how very quiet I not only was in body, but in mind. "No, the shaft was never filled in," began the woman. "I waited day after day, but it was never done; and little Ellen, and Gwenllynn, and the baby, they seemed just from contrariness to h'always want to go and look over the brink. And what made it more danger, was the brambles and grass, and growth of h'all kinds, which from never being cut away, has got thicker year by year; so that coming from that side," pointing west with her finger, "you might never see the old shaft at all, but tumble right in, and know nothing till you reach the bottom. Well, I was so frighted with this, and the contrariness of the children, that finding Mr Morgan had forgot again to have the shaft filled in, or closed round, only last night I spoke to my husband, and begged him to cut away some of the rankest of the growth, as it war, what it is, a sin and a shame to have the shaft like a trap, unknown to folks; but my husband, he war dead tired, and he knowed that I'm timmersome, so he only said, `Let be, woman--let be.' And this morning he was away early--down to the mine. Well," after a long pause, "I had done my bit o' work. I had dressed the baby--bless him--and given Ellen and Gwenllynn their breakfast, and I was standing by the house door, my eye on the old shaft, and my mind set on the thought that I might put up a fence round it myself, so as to ward off the children, when sudden and sharp--almost nigh to me--I heard a woman scream, and looking, I saw a woman running for her bare life, and screaming and making for my cottage; and she had a child in her arms; and sudden, when I saw her, I knew who she was, and why she was running. I knew she was the nurse of Squire Morgan's little son, and that she had the child with her. I knew she had been to the eye-well, for the cure of the sight of the baby, and that she was coming by this short cut home. And she never knew that she'd have to pass through the field with Mr Daniels' bull. Well, I saw her running, and the bull after her, but he was a good way behind; and I thought she'd reach the cottage. And I shouted out to encourage her; when all on a heap, it flashed on me, that she was making straight for the shaft, and that she'd be right down in the pit, if I couldn't stop her. Just then, two men came up, and turned the bull aside, but she didn't know it, and kept on running harder and harder. `Stop!' I shouted. `Stop! you'll be down in the mine'; but she neither heeded nor heard me, and she went right through the thicket and the underwood. I heard it cracking under her feet. I saw her fall, and scream more piercing than h'ever." Another pause from the narrator--then in a breathless kind of way, "I war at the other side o' the pit in a twinkling. She had not gone down--not quite. Her head was above the ground, and she was holding on for bare life to a bit of underwood. She could only hold with one hand; the other was round the child. In one second she'd have been down, for the weight was too much, when I threw myself on my face and hands, and grasped the baby's frock. `Hold the tree with both hands,' I said, `and I'll keep the baby.' Poor soul! she looked up at me so anguish-like; but she did what I bid her, or they'd both have gone down. I was drawing up the baby, when a loose stone came tumbling--it was not much, it but hit him sharp on the temple. He never cried out, but his head dropped all on a sudden. When I got him to the top, he was dead. I laid him on the bank, and just then the men who had turned away the bull, came up, and they lifted the woman out of the shaft--one of her legs was broke!" The under-viewer's wife paused to wipe the moisture from her brow. Just then little feet came pattering, and the living child of the under-viewer, about whom I had grieved and dreamt, came up and looked down at the dead child of my brother. The face of the living baby gazed solemnly at the face of the dead baby. Nobody interrupted him, and he sat down and put, half in play, as though expecting an answering touch, his plump hand on the little hand that was still. At this moment there was a commotion in the crowd, then profound stillness, then a giving way on all sides, and a man's hasty footsteps passed rapidly through our midst. Up straight to where the dead child was lying, the man came. He bent his head a little--he saw no other creature. This man was Owen. For about half a minute he was still. Then from his lips came one sharp cry--the sharpest cry of anguish I ever heard from mortal lips--then he rushed away. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE LITTLE LAD. "Mother," I said, "I will go to Tynycymmer, and tell David." "No, no, my dear child; you are not able." "Mother, some one must tell him; you have to stay here to take care of poor Gwen when they bring her home, and perhaps Owen will come back. Mother, I will tell David, only I may tell him in my own way, may I not?" "As you please, my child, my child!" Mother put her head down on the table and began to sob. I kissed her. I was not crying. From the first I had never shed a tear. I kissed mother two or three times, then I went out and asked Miles, who had followed me home, to get the horse put to Owen's dog-cart; when the dog-cart was ready, I kissed mother again and got into it. "Come with me, Miles," I said to the boy. The bright colour mounted to his cheeks, he was preparing to jump into the vacant seat by my side, when suddenly he stopped, his face grew pale, and words came out hurriedly-- "No, I mustn't, I'd give the world to, but I mustn't." "Why not, when I ask you? you needn't go into the mine to-day." "Perhaps not to work, but I must, I must wait for Mr Morgan; I must take him into the mine." "Well, I cannot stay," I said impatiently; "tell Williams to take me to the railway station at P--." As I drove away I had a passing feeling that Miles might have obliged me by coming, otherwise, I thought no more of his words. After a rapid drive I reached the railway station; I had never travelled anywhere, I had never gone by rail alone in my life, but the great pressure on my mind prevented my even remembering this fact. I procured a ticket, stepped into the railway carriage, and went as far in the direction of Tynycymmer as the train would take me. At the little roadside station where I alighted, I found that I could get a fly. I ordered one, then went into the waiting-room, and surveyed my own image in a small cracked glass. I took off my hat and arranged my hair tidily; after doing this, I was glad to perceive that I looked much as usual, if only my eyes would laugh, and my lips relax a little from their unyouthful tension? The fly was ready, I jumped in; a two-mile drive would bring me to Tynycymmer. Hitherto in my drive from Ffynon, and when in the railway carriage, I had simply let the fact lie quiescent in my heart that I was going to tell David. Now, for the first time, I had to face the question, "How shall I tell him?" The necessary thought which this required, awoke my mind out of its trance. I did not want to startle him; I wished to break this news so as to give him as little pain as possible. I believed, knowing what I did of his character, that it could be so communicated to him, that the brightness should reach him first, the shadow afterwards. This should be my task; how could I accomplish it? Would not my voice, choked and constrained from long silence, betray me? Of my face I was tolerably confident. It takes a long time for a young face like mine to show signs of grief; but would not my voice shake? I would try it on the driver, who I found knew me well, and was only waiting for me to address him. Touching his hat respectfully, the man gave me sundry odds and ends of information. "Yes, Mr Morgan was very well; but there had been a good deal of sickness about, and little Maggie at the lodge had died. Squire Morgan was so good to them all; he was with little Maggie when she died." "Did Maggie die of the fever?" I asked. "Yes, there was a good deal of it about." "And was it not infectious?" "Well, perhaps so, but only amongst children." I said nothing more, only I resolved more firmly than ever to break the news gently to David. I was received with a burst of welcome from trees and shining waves, early spring flowers, and dear birds' notes. Gyp got up from the mat where he lay in the sunshine, and wagged his tail joyfully, and looked with glad expressive eyes into my face. The servants poured out a mixture of Welsh and English. I began to tremble; I very nearly gave way. I asked for David; he was out, somewhere at the other end of the estate; he would however be back soon, as he was going on business to Chepstow. The servants offered to go and fetch him, but I said no, I would wait until he came in. I went into the house, how familiar everything looked! the old oak chairs in the hall, the flowers and ferns. I opened the drawing-room door, but did not enter, for its forlorn and dismantled condition reminded me forcibly that with familiarity had come change. A few months ago I had longed for change, but now to-day I disliked it. I knew for the first time to-day that change might mean evil as well as good. I went into David's study and sat down to wait for him; the study looked as it had done since I was a little child. No, even here there was a difference. Over the mantelpiece was an engraving, so placed that the best light might fall on it. It was Noel Paton's "_Mors Janua Vitae_." I suppose most people have seen the original. David and Amy had brought this painter's proof home after their short wedding trip. It was a great favourite of Amy's; she had said once or twice, when least shy and most communicative, that the dying knight reminded her of David. For the first time to-day, as I looked at it, I saw something of the likeness. I stood up to examine it more closely--the victorious face, humble, trustful, glad,--stirred my heart, and awoke in me, though apparently without any connection between the two, the thoughts of last night. I again began to feel the need of God. I pressed my hands to my face; "God give me strength," I said very earnestly. This was my second real prayer. I had hardly breathed it, when David's hand was on my shoulder. "So you have come to pay me a visit, little woman; that is right. I was wishing for you, and thinking of you only this morning. I have been lonely. Mother and Owen quite well?" "Yes, David." "And my boy?" "He is well." "How I have missed him, little monkey! he was just beginning to prattle; but I am glad I sent him away, there is a great deal of sickness about." "David," I said suddenly, "you are not yourself, is anything wrong?" "No, my dear, I have been in and out of these cottages a great deal, and have been rather saddened," then with a smile, "I _did_ miss the little lad, 'tis quite ridiculous." He moved away to do something at the other end of the room; he looked worn and fagged, not unhappy. I never saw him with quite _that_ expression, but wearied. I could not tell him yet, but I must speak, or my face would betray me. "How nice the old place looks?" I said. "Ah! yes; does it not? You would appreciate it after the ugly coal country; but, after all, Owen is working wonders by the mine--turning out heaps of money, and making the whole thing snug and safe." "Yes," I said. "Can you stay with me to-night? Gwladys. I must go to Ffynon to-morrow, and I will bring you back then--" "I will stay," I said. "I would ask you to give me two or three days; but am afraid of this unwholesome atmosphere for you." "Oh! I must get back to-morrow," I said. I do not know how I got out these short sentences; indeed, I had not the least idea what I was saying. "But there is no real fear, dear," added David, noticing my depression. "You shall come with me for a nice walk on the cliffs, and it will seem like old times--or stay"--pulling out his watch, while a sudden thought struck him--"you don't look quite yourself, little girl; you have got tired out with ugliness. I was just starting for Chepstow, when you arrived. Suppose you come with me. I have business there which will occupy me ten minutes, and then we can take the train and run down to Tintern. You know how often I promised to show you the Abbey." "Oh! yes, David," I said, a feverish flush on my face, which he must have mistaken for pleasure. "I will go with you. I should like it; but can we not get back to Ffynon to-night?" "A good thought. Ffynon is as near Tintern as Tynycymmer; we will do so, Gwladys, and I shall see my little lad all the sooner." He went out of the room, and I pressed my face, down on my hands. No fear now that my heart was not aching--it was throbbing so violently that I thought my self-control must give way. Far more than I ever feared death, did I at that moment, dread the taking away of a certain light out of David's eyes, when he spoke of his little lad. I could not whisper the fatal words yet: it might seem the most unnatural thing in the world, but I would go with David to Tintern. I would encourage him to talk. I would listen to what he said. He was depressed now--worn, weary, not quite himself--recurring each moment to one bright beacon star--his child. But David had never been allowed to wander alone in the wilderness without the sunlight. I would wait until God's love shone out again on his face, and filled his heart. Perhaps this would happen at Tintern. I said to myself, it will only make a difference of two or three hours, and the child is dead. Yes, I will give him that respite. I do not care what people think, or what people say. I cannot break this news to him in his home and the child's. This study where he and Amy sat together, where his boy climbed on his knee and kissed him, where he has knelt down and prayed to God, and God has visited him, shall not be the spot where the blow shall fall. He shall learn it from my lips, it is true. I myself will tell him that his last treasure has been suddenly and rudely torn away; but not yet, and never at Tynycymmer. Having made this resolve, I looked at my watch--it was between eleven and twelve then. I determined that he should learn the evil tidings by four o'clock; this would enable us to catch the return train from Chepstow to Cardiff and from thence to Ffynon. No trains ran to Ffynon in the middle of the day. By allowing David to take me to Tintern, I would, in reality, only delay his coming to Ffynon by an hour or two. Whether I acted rightly or wrongly in this matter, I have not the least idea. I never thought, at that moment, of any right or wrong. I simply obeyed an impulse. Having quite arranged in my own mind what to do, I grew instantly much stronger and more composed. My heart began to beat tranquilly. Having given myself four hours' respite, I felt relieved, and even capable of playing the part that I must play. I had been, when first I came, suppressing agitation by the most violent effort; but when David returned to tell me that the carriage was at the door, I was calm. He found me with well-assumed cheerfulness, looking over some prints. "Now, Gwladys, come. We shall just catch the train." I started up with alacrity and took my seat. As we were driving down the avenue, poor Gyp began to howl, and David, who could not bear to see a creature in distress, jumped out and patted him. "Give Gyp a good dinner," he called back to the servants; "and expect me home to-morrow." Nods and smiles from all. No tears, as there might have been--as there might have been had they known... It is not very long, measured by weeks and hours, since David and I took that drive to Tintern; but I think, as God counts time, one day being sometimes as a thousand years, it _is_ very long ago. It has pushed itself so far back now in the recesses of my memory--so many events have followed it, that I cannot tell what we spoke, or even exactly what we did. By-and-by, when the near and the far assume their true proportions, I may know all about it; but not just now. At present that drive to Tintern is very dim to me. But not my visit to Tintern itself. Was I heartless? It is possible, if I say here that the beauty of Tintern gave me pleasure on that day. If I say that this was the case, then some, who don't understand, may call me heartless. For when I entered the old ruin of Tintern my heart did throb with a great burst of joy. I had always loved beautiful things--God's world had always a power over me. In my naughty fits as a child, I had sat on the edge of a cliff, gazed down at the waves, and grown quiet. However rebellious I had been when I went there, I had usually returned, in half-an-hour, penitent; ready to humble myself in the _very_ dust for my sins. Not all the voices of all the men and women I knew, could affect me as nature could. For six months now, I had been living in a very ugly country--a country so barren and so desolate, that this longing in me was nearly starved; but even at Ffynon I had found, in my eager wanderings, now and then, a little gurgling stream--now and then, some pretty leaves and tufts of grass, and these had ministered to me. Still the country was ugly, and the place black and barren--what a change to the banks of the Wye, and the ruins of Tintern. When I entered the Abbey, I became conscious for the first time that the day was a spring one--soft, sunshiny, and bright. I looked around me for a moment, almost giddy with surprise and delight; then I turned to David, and laid my hand on his arm. "May I sit here," pointing to a stone at the right side of the ruin, "may I sit here and think, and not speak to any one for half-an-hour?" I was conscious that David's eyes were smiling into mine. "You may sit there and lose yourself for half-an-hour, little woman, but not longer, I will come back for you in half-an-hour." When David left me, I pulled out my watch; it was past three, in half-an-hour I would tell him. But for half-an-hour I would give myself up to the joy--no, that is the wrong word--to the peace that was stealing over me. I have said that I was not practically religious. Had anybody asked me, I should have answered, "No, no, I have a worldly heart;" but sitting there in the ruins, the longing for God rose to a strange and passionate intensity. Last night I had said "My Father," with the faint cry of a hardly acknowledged belief. I said it again now, with the satisfied sound of a child. The words brought me great satisfaction, and the sense of a very present help, for my present need. The bright sunlight flickered on the green grass. I sat back, clasped my hands and watched it. A light breeze stirred the dark ivy that twined round the ruins, some cows were feeding in the shade under the western window outside--I could see their reflections--two men, of the acknowledged tourist stamp, were perambulating on the walls; these men and the happy dumb creatures were the only living things I saw. But I did not want life just then, the lesson I needed and was learning was the lesson of the dead. I had looked at a little dead child that morning, now I looked at the dead work of centuries. The same thought came to me in connection with both--God did it; the old monks of Tintern are with God, little David is with God. To be with God must be for good, not for evil to His creatures. If only then by death we can get quite away to God, even death must be good. It is a dreadful thing when we can only see the evil of an act; once the good, however faintly, appears, then the light comes in. The light came back to me now, and I felt it possible that I could tell David about the death of the child. Meanwhile I let my soul and imagination rest in the loveliness before me. Here was not only the beauty of flower and grass, of tree, and sky, and river, but here also was the wonderful beauty God put long ago into the hearts of men. It grew in chancel, and aisle, and pillar, and column. The minds may have conceived, but the hearts must have given depth and meaning to the conception. The mind is great, but the heart is greater. I saw the hearts of the old monks had been at work here. No doubt they fasted, and wrestled in prayer, and had visions, some of them, as they reared this temple, of another and greater built without hands. The many-tinted walls of the New Jerusalem may have been much in their thoughts as the light of their painted windows streamed on their heads when they knelt to pray. Yes, they were dead, their age with its special characteristics was gone, their Abbey was in ruins, their story was a story of long ago. The old monks were dead, gone, some of them, to a world where a narrow vision will extend into perfect knowledge, where the Father whom they dimly sought will fully reveal Himself. "David," I said, when David returned and seated himself by my side, "it is beautiful, but it is dead, I can only think of the dead here." "Yes, my dear, the story of the old monks does return to one." David too looked very peaceful. I could tell him. I pulled out my watch, I had a few moments yet. "Do you remember, David, what you said once about music, and high hills, or mountains; you said they lifted you up, and made you feel better, do you feel that here?" "Yes, dear, I feel near God," he took off his hat as he spoke, "I think God comes close to us in such a beautiful scene as this, Gwladys." "Yes," I said. "But my thoughts are not quite with you about Tintern," he continued, "it is full of memories of the dead, of a grand past age, full of earnestness which I sometimes think we lack, still the central thought to me here is another." "What is that?" I asked. "_Thou remainest_," raising his head and looking up at the sky, "all others may leave us--all, home, earthly love--all may pass away, only to leave us more completely alone with God, only to fill us more with God." I was silent. "Yes, Gwladys, that is the thought of thoughts for me at Tintern--God remains. Never with His will need we unloose our hold of the Divine hand." I looked at my watch again, the time had nearly come for me to tell him; was he not himself making it easy? "And God's mercies follow us so continually too, Gwladys," continued my brother; "I have had some sorrow, it is true, but still mercy has always gone with it. Think of Owen, for instance. Oh! I have wrestled in prayer for him, and been faithless. Amy often reproached me for it; she said God would make it all right for Owen, that God loved and would always love him. Dear child, how I remember her words; and now, my dear, it seems all coming true, Owen is so steady, so careful, so anxious to succeed, so much liked, he is so honourable too about that money I lent him. Not that _I_ care for it, not in the least, but I like the feeling in the dear fellow, and he is making everything right down in the mine. When I remember how _nearly_ he was shipwrecked, and now see good hope of his yet making for the haven; I'm not quite sure yet that the love of God actuates him solely, but it will come, for God is leading him." I looked at my watch again, it was four o'clock. I must speak. "David," I said, "do you love God better than any one?" The agitation in my voice must have penetrated to David's heart at once; he turned round and looked at me. "I _do_ love Him better than any one, Gwladys; but why do you ask?" "You would never be angry with God whatever He did?" I said, again. "Angry? no, no; what a strange question." "I have a reason for asking it," I said. "Gwladys, you have been keeping something from me; what is the matter, what is wrong?" David was excited now, he took my hand in his with a grasp which unconsciously was fierce. "There is something wrong," I whispered. "Something you have been keeping from me?" "Yes." "All day?" "Yes." "How dared--" checking himself--remaining silent for a second, then speaking with enforced composure. "Tell it to me, my dear." But I had given way, I was down on the grass, my face hidden, my sobs rending me. "Is anything wrong with the mother? Gwladys." "No, no, she is well." "Or Owen?" "No." "The mine is all safe, there has been no accident?" "The mine is safe." A long pause, I was sobbing, David was breathing hard. "It isn't, oh! my God, there is nothing wrong with the little lad?" "It is him." "Not dead." "He is dead." I raised my head now to look at David. David put out his hand to ward me back. "Don't speak to me," he said, "don't tell me anything more about it yet. I must be alone for a little, wait here for me." He disappeared out of the doorway, he did not return for two hours; during those two hours I prayed without ceasing for him. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. SIGHT TO THE BLIND. All this time I had completely forgotten Owen. Never once during the whole of that day had I given Owen a thought. His agony and his sin were alike forgotten by me; his very name had passed from my memory. At the end of two hours David returned to my side, sat down quietly, and asked me to tell him what I knew. I did not dare look in his face. I repeated as briefly, as impassively as I could, what I had witnessed and heard this morning. To make my story intelligible, it was necessary to mention Owen's forgetfulness of the old shaft; this brought Owen back to my mind, but with only the passing thought essential to the telling of my tale. To my whole story David listened without a comment, or the putting of a single question. He sat, his head a little forward, his hands clasped round his knee. I saw that the veins had started prominently forward in the strong hands. When I came to the part of my tale where Owen appeared and bent over the dead child, he started for the first time, and looked me full in the face; then he rose to his feet, put his hand on my shoulder, and said-- "Come, my dear; we will go home. I must find Owen!" "Find Owen!" I repeated, too surprised to keep in my hasty words. "Do you want him so quickly? has he not brought this trouble upon you?" "Hush, Gwladys, in God's name--this is an awful thing for Owen!" Once or twice as we travelled back to Ffynon, as quickly as horses and steam could take us, I heard David say again under his breath, "This is an awful thing for Owen!" His first question when we got back, and mother raised her white, agitated face to his, was-- "Where is Owen? I must see Owen directly!" "Oh, my boy! he is not here; he has not been here all day. Oh, my dear, dear boy; I am so terrified about him!" "Not here all day, mother! Have you no idea where he is?" "No, my son; he left the house when he heard of the accident, and has not been back since. David, you won't be hard on him--you will--" "How can you ask me, mother? Will you never understand what I feel for Owen?" he said, impatiently, and in pain; then, turning to leave the room, "I am going to find Owen at once!--but stay! where and how is Gwen?" "Gwen is upstairs; she is very ill; she blames herself most bitterly. She has been asking for you." "I will see her for a moment before I go. Don't come with me, mother and Gwladys; I will see her alone." David had been with Gwen for five minutes, I heard Gwen sobbing, and David talking to her quietly, when at the end of that time I entered the room. "David, Miles Thomas is downstairs; he has been hanging about the place all day; he begs to see you; he knows about everything. Still, he says he _must_ see you. I hope nothing is wrong." "Who is Miles Thomas?" "A boy--one of the trappers in the mine." "Oh! of course. I will see him directly." David and the boy were together for half-an-hour; they paced up and down outside. I saw David's hand on his shoulder, and observed the boy raise entreating eyes to his face. At the end of that time Miles ran away, and David returned to the house. He entered the room where I was trying to prepare some tea for him. Mother was upstairs with Gwen. David came up and put his arm round my waist. "My dear little woman, I want to lay on you a great responsibility." "I am ready, brother," I said, looking up, bravely. "Gwladys, there is something not quite right with the mine. I am going down there to-night with Miles. I cannot look for Owen to-night. If all goes well, as I hope, I may be up in the morning. I want you, Gwladys, to try and keep all knowledge of where I have gone from mother, until the morning. She heard me say I would look for Owen; let her suppose this as long as you can." "And you--you are going into danger!" "I hope not. I hope I am going to prevent danger; but there is doubtless a possibility of my being too late." "Then, David," rising selfishly, clinging to him cowardly; "dear David-- dear, dear David, do not go." "What!" said David, holding me from him, and looking into my face. "No, my dear; that is not your real counsel, when I may save the lives of others." Then, seeing that I began to sob again, that I was trembling and broken with grief. "Come with me, darling; I should like to see the little lad before I go away." I led the way upstairs. The baby was lying on my bed--his nursery was used by Gwen. The moonlight--for it was evening--flooded the white bed, and lit up the pale check. This time last night I heard Gwen soothing him into his last earthly slumber; but now, how sweetly did Jesus his shepherd make the baby sleep; the dark-fringed eyes were hardly closed, the lips were smiling. "He sees at last, my little lad," said David, stooping down and kissing him--he was about to say something more, but checked himself; two tears splashed heavily down on the happy little face, then he went away to my writing-table, and taking out a pen, ink, and paper, wrote hastily a few lines, folded up the paper, and brought it back to me. "_Whenever_ Owen returns, give him that _at once_!" Then he was gone. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. OUR FATHER. But Owen did not come back that night. We got a nurse for Gwen, who was suffering sadly from her broken leg, and mother and I sat up together by the dining-room fire. Without saying a word to each other, but with the same thought in both our minds, we piled coals on the grate for a night watch. Mother ordered meat and wine to be laid on the table, then she told the servants to go to bed, but she gave me no such direction; on the contrary, she came close to where I had seated myself on the sofa, and laid her head on my shoulder. I began to kiss her, and she cried a little, just a tear or two; but tears never came easily with mother. Suddenly starting up, she looked me eagerly in the face. "Gwladys, how old are you?" "Sixteen--nearly seventeen, mother." "So you are. You were born on May Day. I was so pleased, after my two big boys, to have a daughter--though you _were_ fair-haired, and not like the true Morgans. Well, my daughter, you don't want me to treat you like a child--do you?" "Dear mother, if you did, you would treat me like what I am not. I can never be a child again, after to-day." "I am glad of that--two women can comfort one another." "Dear mother," I said, kissing her again. "Gwladys," catching my hand, nervously, "I have had an awful day. I have still the worst conjectures. I don't believe we are half through this trouble." "Dear mother, let us hope so--let us pray to God that it may be so." "Oh! my dear child, I was never a very religious woman. I never was, really. I have obeyed the forms, but I think now, I believe now that I know little of the power. I don't feel as if I _could_ come to God the moment I am in trouble. If I were like Gwen it would be different--I wish you could have heard her quoting texts all day long--but I am not like her. I am not," an emphatic shake of her head. "I am not a religious woman." "And, mother," my words coming out slowly, "I am not religious either. I have no past to go to God with. Still it seems to me that I want God awfully to-night." "Oh! my child," breaking down, and beginning to sob pitifully. "I don't; I only want Owen. Oh I suppose Owen never comes back to me." "But, mother, that is very unlikely." "I don't know, Gwladys. You did not see his face when that terrible news was broken to him this morning. He never spoke to me--he just got ghastly, and rushed away without a single word; and he has never been back all day--never once; though that boy--young Thomas, has been asking, asking for him. He said he had promised to go down into the mine. I could not stop the boy, or put him off--so unfeeling, after all that has happened. But _why_ is Owen away? It is dreadful--the sudden death of the dear little baby. But I never knew Owen cared so much for him; he only saw him once or twice." "Mother, I wonder you cannot guess. Do you not know that it was through Owen's--Owen's--well, mother, I _must_ tell you--it was partly through Owen that little David was killed." Mother's face grew very white, her eyes flashed, she left my side, and went over to the fire. "Gwladys, how dare you--yes, how dare you even utter such falsehoods. Did Owen take the child to the eye-well? Did Owen put the wicked bull in the field? How can you say such things of your brother?" "They are no falsehoods, mother. If Owen had kept his promise to poor Mrs Jones, and had the old shaft filled up, nothing would have happened to the baby." "It is useless talking to you, Gwladys. I would rather you said no more. Ever since his return you have been unjust to Owen." Mother, seating herself in the arm-chair by the fire, turned her back on me, and I lay down on the sofa. I was very tired--tired with the tension of my first day of real grief; but I could not sleep, my heart ached too badly. Hitherto, during the long hours that intervened since the early morning, I had, as I said, hardly thought of Owen; but now mother herself could scarcely ponder on his name, or his memory, more anxiously than I did. As I thought, it seemed to me that I, too, was guilty of the baby's death. I had turned my heart from my brother--a thousand things that I might have done I left undone. David had asked me to help him, to aid him. I had not done so. Never once since his return had I strengthened his hands in any right way. On the contrary, had I not weakened them? And much was possible for me. In many ways-- too many and small to mention--I might have kept Owen's feet in the narrow path of duty. In this particular instance might I not have reminded him of the old shaft, and so have saved little David's life? Yes, mother was right. I was unjust to Owen; but I saw now that I had _always_ been unjust to him. In the old days when I thought him perfect as well as now. I was a child then, and knew no better. Now I was a woman. Oh! how bitterly unjust was I to my brother now. Loudly, sternly did my heart reproach me, until, in my misery and self-condemnation, I felt that David and Owen could never love me again. Through the mists and clouds of my own self-accusation, Owen's true character began to dawn on me. Never wholly good, or wholly bad, had Owen been. Affectionate, generous, enthusiastic, was one side of that heart--selfish and vain the other. Carefully had mother and I nurtured that vanity--and the fall had come. All his life he had been earning these wages; at last they had been paid to him--paid to him in full and terrible measure. _The wages of sin is death_. Little David was dead. Owen's face, as I had seen it this morning, returned to me. His sharp cry of bitter agony rang again in my ears. Yes, the fruit of all that easy, careless life had appeared. I saw my brother as he was; but, strange as it may seem, at last, with all this knowledge, with the veil torn away from my eyes, I longed, prayed for, and loved him as I had never done before. I think I did this because also from my heart of hearts rose the bitter supplication-- "Have mercy on my sin too. Thou who knowest all men--Thou knowest well that my sin is as deep and black as his." The clock struck twelve, and mother, who had been sitting silent, and who I hoped was asleep, moved restlessly, turned round, and addressed me. "Has not David gone to look for Owen?" "He said he would go, mother." "My dear boy--if any one can find him he will. How did he bear the terrible news? Gwladys. I had no time to ask you before." "I can hardly tell you, mother. He said scarcely anything--he seemed greatly troubled on Owen's account." "Ah! dear fellow--the most unselfish fellow in the world; and how Owen does love him. You are sure he has gone to look for him?" "Dear mother, did you not hear him say so?" "Yes, yes--well. God give me patience." Another restless movement from mother, then a couple of hours' silence. At two o'clock she got up and made down the fire, then went to the window and looked out, opened her lips to speak to me--I saw the movement; restrained herself, and sat down again. The clock struck three. A slight sound of a passing footfall outside, an eager clasping of mother's hands. The footfall passed--all was stillness. Mother rose again, poured out a glass of sherry, drank it off, filled out another, and brought it to my side. I, too, drank the wine without a comment. Mother returned to her seat, and I went to sleep. The clock was striking six when I awoke. The window-shutters were open; the place was full of bright sunshine and daylight. I was awakened by mother standing over me. She was trembling and half crying. "Oh! Gwladys--oh! my darling, they have never come home--the whole night has gone, and they have never appeared. Oh! I am so dreadfully frightened. Yes, Gwladys, though I am not a religious woman, yet I must go to God; I must get God to help me. Come with me, my daughter." Together we went down on our knees. I clasped mother's hands. We neither of us spoke. "Say something, Gwladys," said mother. "Mother--I cannot. I have never prayed aloud." "Well, a form--some words. I am so broken--so frightened." "Our Father," I began, impelled to say something quickly by the sound in mother's voice, "our Father--deliver us from evil." "Ah! there it is," sobbed mother. "That's what I want. Oh! Lord, hear me. Oh! Christ, hear me. I'm a poor, weak, broken-down mother. Hear a mother's cry. Save my boy--deliver my boy from evil. Oh! I have been wrong to think only of getting back the old place as it used to be--it was _my_ fault, if any one's, if my Owen forgot to see to the general safety. I urged him so hard; I gave him no rest. But oh! don't punish me too hard--deliver my boy--my boy from evil." Now, I don't know why I said what I did, for all night long my thoughts and fears had been with Owen; but at this juncture I burst out with an impulse I could not withstand--with a longing I could not restrain. "That is not fair--you say nothing about David. Ask God to deliver David, too, from evil." "Gwladys, why--why do you say this?" "I don't know," rising to my feet, and steadying my voice. "Mother, it is daylight. I will go down to see little Nan--she may tell me something." CHAPTER NINETEEN. A RICH VEIN OF COAL. I think her prayer, which was literally a cry of agony to her true Father, brought mother some strength and comfort. She grew more composed, and when I ran away to Nan's cottage, she went up to see Gwen. I had obeyed David's message to the letter. I had not let her know of any possible danger to him. All her thoughts and fears were centred on Owen--indeed, we both had thought most of Owen during the long hours of the weary night. But now David might really seek him; the chances were that the evil he dreaded was averted, that he would come up from the mine with the night shift. He would need a few hours' rest, and then he might really seek for Owen. It had occurred to me as I lay awake in the night, that Owen, who knew nothing of my visit to Tynycymmer, might have gone there himself to tell David, this was quite a likely thing for him to do. In that case, David might go there and bring him back. I fancied his return, I fancied gentle, humble, forgiving words; I thought of mother, sister, brother, starting together on a surer, happier footing, of possible good arising out of this sorrow. In short, as I walked down to Nan's cottage, I saw a rainbow spanning this cloud. How short-sighted and ignorant I was! Did I not know that sin must bring its punishment, that however a man may repent, however fully and freely a man may be forgiven, yet in pain, sorrow and bitterness must the wages his own deeds have brought him, be paid. I entered Nan's cottage; it was early, not more than six o'clock, but Nan was up, had even eaten her breakfast, and was now, when I arrived, washing some coarse delf cups and saucers in a wooden tub. I had learned in my intercourse with this strange child to read her face almost like a book. The moment I saw it to-day my heart sank, Nan had on her very oldest and most careworn expression. "You are up to fifty, to-day. Nan," I said with the ghost of a smile. For answer, Nan looked me hard in the face, and began to cry. "Oh! I'm so sorry," she began, coming up to my side, "I've been thinking so much of you all, Miss Morgan, and I've been crying so bitter to the Lord to comfort you." "I am glad of that, Nan," I said, "but don't let us talk of our trouble now. I want you tell me all you know about the mine; and, first, has my brother come up?" "_All_ I know," repeated Nan, "but Miles said I was not to babble." "Yes, but my brother has told me there is, or was, danger; you know we always imagine danger to be worse than it is, so do tell me what is wrong; and, first, _has_ my brother come up?" "No, Miss Morgan, not with the night shift. The Squire and Miles are still down in the mine." "And all the men have gone down as usual this morning?" I asked. "Oh! yes, and father with them." "Then there cannot be danger?" "Well, I don't know--I'm that timmersome, it may seem so to me; or it may be h'all Miles's fancy, but he's rare and knowing, Miles is." "Well, dear Nan, please sit down quietly and tell me the whole story from beginning to end, what you know and what you fear." Nan had by this time wiped away all traces of her tears; she was given to sudden bursts of grief, out of which her dark eyes used to flash as bright as though the briny drops were unknown to them. Had I met Nan apart from personal tragedy, I might have considered her tiny form, her piquant old-fashioned face, and quaint words, an interesting study; but now I felt a little impatient over her long delays, and deep-drawn sighs, and anxious to launch her midway into her tale. "Miles is very knowing," began Nan, seeing I was determined, and would have my way; "Miles is very knowing, and from the time he was a little, little lad, he'd study father's plan o' the mine. I never could make out the meanin' o' it, but long before Miles ever went down into a mine he knew all about levels, and drifts, and headings, and places without number; and he used to say to me, `Why, our mine is like a town, Nan, it has its main roads, and its crossings, and its railways, and all;' he tried to make a romance out of the mine for me, seeing I was so timmersome, and he never spoke of danger, nor fall o' roofs, nor gas, nor nothing, when I was by; only when they thought I was asleep, I used to hear him and father talk and talk; and somehow, Miss Morgan, the hearing of 'em whispering, whispering of danger, made the danger, just as you say, twice as big to me, and I used to be that frightened I feared I'd die just from sheer old h'age. And at last I spoke to the Lord about it, and it seemed to me the Lord made answer loud and clear, `Resist the devil and he will flee from you;' and then I saw plain as daylight, that the devil to me now, was the fear of danger to father and Miles, and the only thing to do was to turn and face it like a man, or may be a woman, which sometimes is bravest. So I went to Miles and told him how I had prayed, and what the Lord had said, and I begged of Miles to tell me h'all about everything, all the danger of fire-damp, and explosions, and inundations. Oh! Miss Morgan, he did what I axed him, he seemed real pleased; and for a fortnight I scarce slept a wink, but then I got better, and I found the devil, now I was facing him, brave and manful, did not seem so big. Then I went to Miles again, and I made him promise not never to hide when he thought danger was going to be in the mine, and he was real glad, and said he would faithful tell me h'every thing. Well, Miss Morgan, he was very sharp and had his wits about him, and he heard people talk, and for all Mr Morgan was so pleasant, and so well liked, father said that he was so rare and anxious to win the coal, that sometimes, though he had reformed so much in the mine, he was a bit rash, and then the men grumbled about the coal pillars being struck away so much, and the supports not being thick enough." "But I spoke to Owen about that," I interrupted eagerly, "and he was so dreadfully hurt and vexed; he would not endanger the men's lives for the world, Nan; and he said that he was an engineer and must understand a great deal more about the mine than the miners. After all, Nan," I continued rather haughtily, and with feelings new and yet old stirring in my heart for Owen, "your little brother _cannot_ know, and without meaning it, he probably exaggerates the danger." "That may be so, Miss Morgan, but in the case of the coal supports it was the talk of all the men." "I know," I continued, "I have heard that miners were never contented yet with any manager; they were sure, _whatever_ the manager did, to find fault with him." "You wrong us there, Miss, you wrong us most bitter; there is not a man belonging to Ffynon mine who does not love Mr Morgan; there is not a man who does not feel for his trouble. Why, the way he looked yesterday when he saw the little baby, has been the talk of the place; and last night a lot of our men prayed for him most earnest. We all knows that it was want of thought with Mr Morgan, we all loves him." "Dear Nan, forgive me for speaking so hastily, and do go on." "Well, Miss Morgan, Miles, he always says that he must learn, if he lives, to be an engineer, he's so fond of anything belonging to it. What 'ud you say, Miss, but he drawed h'out a plan of the mine for himself, and when it was finished he showed it to me and father; it worn't exactly like father's old plan, but father said in some ways it might be more right. Well, Miss, Miles, haven't much to do in the mine, he's what they calls a trapper--that is, he has to shut and open the doors to let the trams of coal pass, so he has to stand in the dark, and plenty of time for thought has he. Well, Miss, about a month ago, Mr Morgan was down in the mine, and he said they was letting a fine seam of coal lie idle, and he said it should be cut, and it stretched away in another direction. Well, Miles, he had to act trapper at some doors close to the new seam, and it came into his head, with his knowledge of the mine, and his own plan, that they must be working away right in the direction of Pride's Pit, which you know, Miss, is full of water. Miles had this thought in his head for some days, and at last he told me, and at last he told father, and father said, being vexed a bit, `Don't fancy you have a wiser head on your shoulders than your elders, my boy; we are likely enough working in the direction of Pride's Pit, but what of that, 'tis an uncommon rich vein of coal; and, never fear, we'll stop short at the right side of the wall.' Well, Miss, Miles tried to stop his fears but he couldn't, happen what would, he couldn't, and he said to me, `Why, Nan, the men are all so pleased with the new find of coal, that they'll just stop short at nothing, and the manager is beside himself with delight, and they'll work on, Nan, until they gets to the water; why, sometimes standing there, I almost fancies I _hears_ it,' and at last, two nights ago, he said to me, `Nan, my mind is made up, I'll speak to Mr Morgan.' Then, Miss, you know what happened, and how all day long Mr Morgan never came back, and Miles, he wandered about just like a ghost, more fretted about the mine than he was about the dear little baby, so that I was fain to think him heartless: then at last, the Squire came, and he _would_ tell him everything, and the Squire said, `I'll go down with you at once, Miles; I'll see what I can for myself, and question every man in the mine, and if there appears to be the slightest truth in what you fear, all the workings shall be stopped until my brother returns.'" A long pause from Nan, then in a low sweet voice, "Late last night Miles came in, and put his arms round my neck and said, `Nan, darling, the Squire and me, we're going down; we'll put it all right, please God. Don't you be down-hearted, Nan; _whatever_ happens. Jesus loves us, and now that I've got the Squire with me, I feels bold as a lion, for I _know_ I'm right, there _is_ danger.'" Another pause, then facing round and looking me full in the face. "There, Miss, that's the whole story." "But, Nan, Nan, suppose the water does burst in?" "Why, then, Miss, every one in the mine will be drowned, or--or starved to death." "And it _may_ come in at any moment?" "I doesn't know, I means to keep h'up heart, don't let you and me frighten one another, Miss Morgan." CHAPTER TWENTY. THE JORDAN RIVER. Can I ever forget that day? It seemed the worst of all the ten. Yes, I think it was quite the worst. Before the last of those ten days came, I had grown accustomed to suffering; the burden given me to carry began to fit on my young shoulders. I lay down with it, and arose with it; under its weight I grew old in heart and spirit, as old as Nan. Laughter was far from my lips, or smiles from my eyes. But why do I speak of myself? Why do I say, I, I? I was one of many suffering women at Ffynon? Let me talk of it as _our_ sorrow! What a leveller trouble is! There was mother, laying her proud head on little Nan's neck; there was the under-viewer's wife taking me in her arms, and bidding me sob a few tears, what tears I could shed, on her bosom. Yes, in the next ten days the women of Ffynon had a common sorrow. I do not speak here of the men, the men acted nobly, but I think the women who stood still and endured, had the hardest part to play. "Heroic males the country bears, But daughters give up more than sons; Flags wave, drums beat, and unawares You flash your souls out with the guns, And take your heaven at once. "But we; we empty heart and home. Of life's life, love! we bear to think You're gone, to feel you may not come. To hear the door-latch stir and clink, Yet no more you--nor sink." But I must tell my story. I left little Nan, I went home to mother. I told her, for I had to tell her now, something about David. She was not much alarmed, I don't think I was either. We thought it probable that David would come up out of the mine at any moment. I think our worst fears and our strongest suffering was for Owen. We sat together, dear mother and I, very anxious, very expectant, very patient. Hour after hour we sat together, waiting for David and Owen. Overhead, poor Gwen suffered and moaned; we did not tell her of our anxiety, she was too ill to hear it. In the room next to Gwen's, the little baby slept. When my fear and anxiety grew quite unbearable, I used to steal upstairs and look at David's little lad. Once I took the little icy hand and held it in my own for a long time, and tried to chafe it into life and warmth. I could not do it. No more than I could chase away the fear which was growing, growing in my own hearty From my window I could see the pit bank. It was an ugly sight, and one I seldom gazed at. I hated the appearance of the ugly steam-engines, and the dusty coal-covered figures. I hated the harsh noise, the unpleasing commotion; but to-day nothing comforted me so much as to draw the blinds, which were down, and look towards this same pit bank; the roaring steam, the appearance of quiet, rapid, regular work soothed my fears, and became a blessed and soul-sustaining sight. I felt sure as long as these signs of regular work were going on on the bank, that all must be right in the mine. Still, why did not David return? So much depended on his return, he had promised so faithfully not to remain below a moment longer than was necessary. As the day wore on, my heart sank and sank, and my fears rose and rose, and at five o'clock on that April afternoon, the blow came. I was standing by my room window, looking toward the pit bank. Suddenly I saw in that familiar scene a change. The greater number of the day crew had come up. I waited to see David's figure, taller than the rest. The men stood in groups talking eagerly, a number crowded round the mouth of the shaft; out of the houses around, women came rushing, then on the air there rose a bitter sharp cry, and one woman leaving the group, which increased each moment round the shaft, ran, clasping her hands and weeping, towards our house. I recognised her, even as she ran, as the bearer of former ill tidings, Mrs Jones. I went downstairs to meet her. I opened the dining-room door. I called to mother, who was sitting close to the window watching, watching for Owen, thinking little of David. She must know all now, better learn the worst at once. "Mother," I said, "Mrs Jones has come, and something dreadful has happened in the mine." Then I took the weeping, agitated woman's hand, and mother clasped her other hand, and we both looked hard in her face, and she looked into ours, and in broken words she told her tale. How few were her words, but how crushing her intelligence! Just as the men were leaving work, the water had burst in like the sea into the workings; most of the day crew had escaped in time, but fourteen were still below. "Which?" we asked breathlessly, "who were the doomed ones?" "Not my son?" said mother. "Not my brother?" said I. "Yes," said the woman, "Squire Morgan is still below--and--and--" bringing out the words with a great gasp, her face, her lips, growing white, "My husband--my George." She was silent then, and we three looked at each other in blank wonder and surprise; each was saying in her heart of hearts, "My sorrow is the greatest." At last I started to my feet. "I will go down to the bank and learn more," I said. Bonnetless and shawlless the next moment I was mingling with the black men, and wild-looking women; _I_ was clasping their hands, looking into their faces, and entreating them to tell me all they knew. One or two turned away from me, one or two muttered that it was the new manager's fault. Words that made my heart freeze within me, about the blood of husbands and sons being on our heads, reached my ears, then a strong hand was laid on my shoulder, and turning, I recognised through all his coal dust, and blackened face, little Nan's father, Moses Thomas. "Come round to my house, dear young lady," he said, in a gentle tone; then turning to the angry men and women, "Shame on you! cowards! has not Squire Morgan sacrificed his life for you to-day?" The people shrank back; one woman said, "God bless him!" and Moses Thomas took my hand in his. Little Nan was waiting for us. In the midst of all my own agony, I almost dreaded seeing Nan's face, but to my surprise it was quiet. When I entered the house she came up and kissed me. She had never ventured to kiss me of her own accord before, but on this occasion we were equals--nay, on this occasion Nan was greater than I. "Yes, Miss Morgan," said Thomas, seating himself and beginning his tale at once. "'Tis very like they is drowned, the Squire, and my lad, and Jones, and eleven more of 'em; and oh! Lord! some was ready, and some isn't; some was turning to the Lord, and some was just goin' on in evil; and oh! dear Lord! forgive me, and have mercy upon me!" The man covered his face with his hands, and Nan went down on her knees. "Lord, forgive father, and lay not this sin to his charge," she said. Thomas looked at her from under his shaggy brows, stretched out his hand and stroked her cheek, then making an effort to master some strong emotion, continued his tale. "Yes, my dear young lady, as I say, 'twas mostly my fault; I felt rare and h'angered this morning, when I went down into the mine, to find that the little chap, unknownst to me, had brought down the Squire. I spoke sharp to the lad, the Lord have mercy on me! The Squire, he had a long talk with me and the deputy, and he wanted the overman to be sent for, but the overman was ill, and I ranks next, and I was rare and vexed, and I laughed at the thought of danger, and I knew the Squire had no knowledge of mines, and 'twas all the little chap's conceit. So the upshot of it was we went on with the workin' of the new seam, and I had my h'eye out sharp, and to prevent all chance of danger, I made the men work, as I thought, in a new direction, away from Pride's Pit. Well, the Squire stayed down all day, and two or three times he axed me to stop working until Mr Morgan come back; but I never, no, God knows, I never _thought_ of danger. At last it was evening, and I came to the surface, but Miles, being trapper, had to stay down to the last; and the Squire, who seemed mighty taken with the lad, said they would come up together. Well, I had not been to the surface more'n ten minutes, when the news came that the water had burst out of Pride's Pit; most of the men got to the surface in time, but fourteen are below. Oh! God forgive me, God forgive me. My boy, my brave boy was right; if I had hearkened to him, all would have been saved." At these words Nan went down on her knees again, and looked into her father's face with flushed cheeks and glistening eyes. "Father, father, _do_ you call Miles brave and noble now?" "Ay, ay, little lass, brave as a lion, my noble lad; how patient he was when I nearly struck him across the face this morning, and how he spoke up so manful, `Father, I'm not afeerd, but I _know_ there's danger.'" "I'm so glad," said little Nan. "I'm so glad he was brave and noble, and not afeerd; he was follerin' of Jesus. Why, father, if Miles is drowned, he's only gone to Jesus." "True enough, Nan, he's crossed the Jordan river, and is safe on the holy hill of the better land. No fear for Miles, little lass." "But, perhaps--perhaps," I murmured, "they are not all drowned; is there no place of escape in the mine?" "Oh! God grant it, lady; yes, there are rises and levels, they may have got into them, but how are they to be got out? however are they to be got at? Well, if there's a shadow of a chance of this, we miners won't leave a stone unturned to save 'em, no, _not one_, trust us! I must see what can be done!" CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE WIND. I have said that all England knows the story. Still I will tell it, dwelling most on the part that most touched my own heart and my own life. In doing this I may be selfish, but I can tell this part best. That night Moses Thomas, with several other brave volunteers, went down the shaft of the Ffynon mine. The shaft was ninety-two yards deep. They went down determined to risk life, to save life; but even with this determination, they had little hope of success. When they reached the mine, the scene that met their eyes was likely to kill that slight hope. All the workings within a few hundred yards of the bottom of the shaft, were filled with water to the roof. It seemed utterly impossible that a soul now left in the mine could be alive. The water from the old pit had truly come in like a flood, carrying all before it. This being the case, the men were about to ascend to the surface, hopeless and despairing, when suddenly faint knockings were heard on the other side of the coal, at a distance, it was thought, of about a dozen yards. These knockings sent a thrill of joy through the breasts of the brave men. Every thought of persona! danger was put out of sight, and all night they laboured to cut away the wall of coal, fondly hoping that all the men were safe, imprisoned, but not drowned, and in a few hours they would rescue them. Well, as I said before, the story is known: in the morning five men were reached; four of these five were brought in safety to the surface; but the fifth, a noble young fellow, who had worked splendidly all night for his own rescue, and that of his companions, was killed by a terrific gas explosion, which took place when the coal was worked through. I was standing by the pit bank when these four men were brought to the surface. I saw women rush forward, and welcome with tears, fervent thanks, and joy, a father, a brother, a husband. I looked in the faces of the four, and turned away with a sick heart, for David was not amongst them. Yes, I was selfish. I could not rejoice in the joy of the few, but most bitterly could I sorrow in the grief of the many. Mother, who had come down with me in the morning to the mouth of the shaft, quite sure of seeing David, was now weeping hysterically; crying feebly for Owen, who, she said, if present, would surely save David; and mother and I at that time had both that dim idea of the mine, that it seemed to us quite possible that if only men brave enough could be found, they might go even through the water to the rescue. But what if the nine remaining men were dead! drowned. I knew the colliers were working with might and main, through that slow, torturing passage, the solid coal, to reach them. But what if, after all their efforts, they were only met by death! Down on my knees in my room, beside the coffin that contained what was mortal of David's little lad, I thought these thoughts of David. Down on my knees, I say, but not to pray. I was in a wild state of rebellion; it seemed to me that the events of the last few days had put the whole world into a state of chaos--a state of confusion so great, that even God Himself could never put it straight again. As this was so, why should I pray to Him? I had never in days of happiness made myself acquainted with God. How could I go to Him in my misery? I was angry with God. He had been too hard on us. What had we done that He should crush us to the earth? In a few days what had not befallen us? The sudden and terrible death of David's only little child! Gwen's accident! Owen's disappearance! Now David himself probably dead. Yes, truly, a whirlwind of destruction had encompassed us; but the Lord was not in the wind. Raising my head with my mind full of these thoughts, my eyes again fell upon the happy, smiling face of the dead child. The little face seemed to say more eloquently than words, "Yes, God has done all this to you; but He is good--He is very good!" The face of the baby made me cry; and my tears, without then in any way turning me consciously towards my Father, eased my heart. I was wiping them away, when the handle of the door was turned, and Nan came in. This was no time for ceremony, and Nan made none. "The men are not all drowned, Miss Morgan; my father and the other workers have heard knockings, very faint like, and a long way off; but still, that is what they want." "Oh! Nan, is it possible? Is it possible that they'll all be saved? Oh! I cannot believe it!" and I burst into tears. "Now isn't that wrong and faithless?" said the little girl, taking my hand. "Ain't this a time to exercise faith? Why, there ain't a man there--no, not a _man_, as won't work with a will. Why, when father come up, he had the blood streaming from his hands. I tell you, Miss Morgan, there's no halting when we looks to bring h'out our brothers and sons!" "Then, Nan, they may be out to-night?" "No, Miss; that ain't likely--we mustn't look for impossibles. They are in a stall a long way off, called Thomas Powell's stall; and to get to that, they must work through thirty-eight yards of coal. That ain't light labour; but h'everything that men can do will be done. Why, engineers and miners from all the collieries round are on the spot." "Nan," I said, "I think I will ask God for one thing. I don't mind telling you, but I have been feeling very bitter against God; but now if He brings me back David and Owen--both of them safe and well--why, then, I will love Him and serve Him always." Nan was silent for a long time--some thought knitting anxiously her dark brows. "I don't think I'd make a bargain with the Lord," she said. "Oh! but, Nan, you cannot quite understand; I have never told you the story of my life. I see now that I never cared for either Owen or David quite in the right way. I want to change all that. Yes," I added, humbly, "I have a great deal to change. I had a beautiful home before I came here; and I grew so tired of it, I wanted to leave it. I know I vexed David--dear, dear David, by wishing to leave Tynycymmer; and then we came here; and he asked me to try, in the little ways a sister can, to help Owen; but I didn't. Oh! Nan, I have not been at all good, and I want to change all that." "Well, Miss Morgan, from your own words, it seems to me you have a deal to ask the Lord to forgive you." "Yes, I know I have," I added, humbly. "Then why don't you ask to be forgiven now--right away?" "No, I cannot ask now. God is punishing me too hard. I don't love Him now at all." "You want the lads home first?" "Oh! yes, indeed. Oh! if I might hope for that, I could love Him--I could serve Him well." "Eh! dear," said little Nan, "I think I could love Him, even if Miles was gone to Him. Seems to me, for all I'm so timmersome, and I does cling so to Miles, that even if Miles was dead, I could love the Lord. I think father and me, for all we'd grieve bitter, we'd never turn agen the Lord. Why, the Lord's our guide, Miss Morgan; and however rough the way, we'd rayther go that road with Him, than any other in the world without Him. And father and me, we'd soon see that having Miles up in the better land, only 'ud make it more home like. Oh! Miss Morgan, it don't seem to me that yours is a bit the right way." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ That night the doctor gave mother a composing draught. She had not slept for two nights; and the sleeplessness, added to her anxiety, had brought on feverish symptoms. Happen what might, sleep was necessary for her, and she was now in bed, wrapped in heavy slumber. After doing what he could for mother, the doctor looked hard into my eyes, but I assured him I was well, which was true--for in body I never felt better. He made me promise, however, to go to bed. I agreed to do so, though sleep seemed very far away. The night was still early, and for an hour or two longer I would sit by the dining-room fire. As mother had done two nights before, I made down a good fire, then sat opposite to it. I sat with my head pressed on my hands, my eyes gazing into the ruddy flames, my thoughts very busy. My thoughts were troublesome--almost agonising. For the first time in my life, my will and God's were standing opposite to one another, opposing one another in grim conflict. My young desire dared to stand up and defy its Creator. The Creator said to the thing that He had made, "_My_ will be done." The tiny atom replied, "No; not Thy will, but mine." Thus we were at variance--God and I. I knew I must submit--that God could sweep me aside to perform, independent of me, what seemed good to Him. He could do this, but still my will might rise in rebellion, might dash itself out and die against this rock; but never, no, never submit. I was quite ready, as little Nan had expressed it, to make a bargain with God. I was ready to sell my submission at a fair price. If He left to me that for which my soul longed, then my soul, with its treasures, should be His. But without them--empty, torn, and bare; could that soul go to Him?--go to Him in its desolation, and say, "You, who have taken what I love, who have emptied me in my youth of all light and joy, take me too, and do with me what you will." This I could not do--this deed of submission I could not perform. No, if God would be good to me, I would be good to Him--that was my rebellious thought. No wonder it brought me no rest. No wonder I was tossed about by this wind of desolation; and the Lord--the Lord whom I needed, the Lord who, though I knew it not, was wounding but to heal; slaying, to make me truly live--the Lord was not in the wind. I was sitting so, thinking these thoughts, wondering why trouble had awakened all these depths in me--why I, who only six months ago had been, in every sense, a child, should now feel so old and heavy at heart--when at the window of the room where I was sitting there came a very low tap. At another time such a sound, in the stillness of the night, would have frightened me; but not so now. I went directly to the window, and looked out; then, indeed, my heavy heart gave a bound, for Owen stood without. I could not raise the sash of the window without the possibility of awaking mother; but I went to the front door, and managed softly to open it. "Is my mother up? Gwladys." "No, no, Owen," clasping his hands, and trying to drag him over the threshold. "She is worn out--she is in bed, and asleep. Come in, dear Owen." "No one is up but you?" "Not a soul." "Then I will come to the fire for a moment. I am bitterly cold; and could you get me something to eat?" He crossed the threshold, entered the dining-room--shading his eyes from the light--and threw himself, with the air of one utterly spent, into the arm-chair. So worn and miserable was he, physically, that my first thought--my first thought before I could ask him a single question--was to see to his bodily comforts. I got him food and wine, then going on my knees, I unlaced and removed, as well as I could, his wet and mud-covered boots, went softly upstairs for clean, dry socks, and his favourite slippers. He did not oppose me by a single remark, he submitted to my attentions, ate eagerly and hungrily of the food I gave him. When I had done all I could, I sat down on the floor by his side, and took his hand. I must now begin to question him, for the silence between us, with my ignorance of what he did or did not know, was becoming unbearable. "Where have you been? Owen. We have wanted you here so dreadfully." "Have you? I should have been no use to you. For the last two days I have been mad--that was all." He looked like it now. His eyes bloodshot, his face deadly pale. "But, brother," I said, impelled to say the words, "our David has quite forgiven you." "Good God! Gwladys," starting upright, "do you want to put me on the rack? How dare you mention his name. _His_ name, and the name of his murdered child! Oh! my God! how that little face haunts me!" He began to pace up and down the room. I feared he would wake mother; but in his passion and agony I could do nothing to restrain him. After a time, however, he sat down more quietly. "Yes; I have been mad, or perhaps, I am sane now, and was mad all the rest of my life. In my sanity, or madness--call it what you will--I at last see myself. How _dared_ you and mother pamper and spoil me when I was a boy! How dared you foster my be setting sin, my weak ambition, my overweening vanity. I never loved you for _that_--never. I cared most for David. How could I help it--righteous, humble, noble; judging calmly and correctly; telling me my faults. But, there! how I must blame others, and lay the sin on others. I did love you, my dear,"-- laying his hand for an instant on my head--"I used to dream of you when, like the prodigal, I lived in the far country; but, as I say again, what of that! I went to Oxford--oh! it is a long story, a story of sin upon sin. My vanity, fed by petty adulation. I spent money. I got into debt, frightfully--frightfully. I did worse. I got amongst a fast set, and became the fastest of them all. At last came the crisis. I won't tell you of it. Why should you know? But for David, I should have been publicly disgraced--think of that! Your `hero' brother--you used to say that of me--the conceited lad who thought the world hardly vast enough or grand enough to hold him. David, as I say, saved me. He paid all my debts--he set me free. My debts were enormous; to pay them the estate was seriously crippled. I went abroad. I thought myself humbled then. I did not care what I put my hand to. I had one dream, to fulfil that I lived. I meant to pay back to David the money he had spent on me. I knew of this mine on his property. I knew it was badly worked; that the profits, which might be enormous, were very small. I thought this mine might prove my El Dorado; might give to me the golden treasure I needed. I always meant to be a civil engineer; to this purpose I had turned my attention during my short periods of real work at Christ Church. Now I determined to take up engineering with a will. I did this because I knew that it would qualify me to have the direction of David's mine--to get out of David's mine the gold I needed. For four years I worked for this. I gained practical knowledge; then I came here--you know that part of the story. I told David of my hopes; they excited no pleasure in him. He begged of me to make the mine safe; to use my skill in saving life. I promised him. I meant to perform my word. I did not think I should fail bitterly and utterly a second time. I did not suppose, when long ago I dreamed dreams, and saw visions, that I should rob David, first of his gold, and then of his child; and this last is murder." Owen paused here, and wiped some great drops from his brow. "Gwladys," he continued, "I see myself now. I am sane, not mad. I see myself at last. I am the greatest sinner in the world." He paused again; these words have been used hypocritically; but there was no hypocrisy in that voice--in those eyes then; the solemn, slow denunciation came with the full approval of the heart and reason. I could not contradict. I was silent. "Yes," he repeated, "I have come to that--come down to that--to be a murderer--the lowest of all. I am the greatest sinner in the world; and for two days I have been looking at God, and God has been looking at me. Face to face--with that murdered child, and all my other crimes between us--we have been viewing each other. Is it any wonder I should tell you I have been mad?" "You may be facing God," I said, slowly then. "You may be facing God with all your sins; but you must remember one thing: you, a sinner, are facing a God who died for such as you." I don't know why I said these words; they seemed to be sent to me. I appeared to be speaking outside myself. "Thank you," said Owen. Then he covered his face, and was silent for a quarter of an hour; and in that interval of quiet, the knowledge came to me that this penitent, broken man--this agonised, stricken soul, was nearer, far nearer to God than I was. At the end of a quarter of an hour, Owen rose to his feet. "I heard of the mine accident at a roadside inn, this afternoon; that brought me home. I cannot understand how the water burst in. I had no idea there was an accumulation of water in Pride's Pit. I thought it was properly pumped away--but, there! I should have _known_. I am going down into the mine at once. I know David is in the mine." "Owen," I said, suddenly remembering, "David sent you that." I put the little note, which David had written, into his hands. He read it, then threw it, open, on the table. The hard look was gone from his eyes--they were glistening. "Farewell, dear, I am going to my duty. God helping me, I will save David or die." Before I could say a word, he was out of the house; before I could call to him, his footsteps had died away on the night air. I threw myself on my knees. I did not pray in words, but I prayed in floods of healing tears. Then I read David's letter. "_Owen, there are two sides to everything. What has happened is not bad for my little lad. God has taken him--it must be good for my child to be with God. I try to fix my mind on this thought. I ask you to try to do the same. I know this is hard_. "_Owen, you have been careless, and have sinned, and your sin has been punished. The punishment is all the worse for you, because it crushes me. It shall not quite crush me, Owen; I will rise above it. My dear brother, don't despair. If I can and do forgive you, with all my heart, so assuredly will God_. "_But, Owen, you are cowardly to shirk your duty. There is danger in the mine. As soon as ever you get this come to me there. Be brave! Whatever you feel, do your duty like a man, for my sake, and for God's sake_. "David." CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE FIRE. And now, day after day, heroic men worked nobly. Without a thought of personal danger, engineers, viewers, managers, miners, private gentlemen,--all laboured for the common cause. Brothers were perishing of slow starvation, that was enough; brothers, come what might, would go to their rescue. Perhaps there was seldom seen a grander fight between love and death. Those who had a thorough knowledge of the mine, soon perceived that thirty-eight yards of solid coal intervened between the imprisoned men and their rescuers. The only other access was completely cut away by so vast a body of water, that it was not unfitly compared to an underground ocean. The obstacles between the rescuers and the imprisoned men seemed at first insurmountable. It appeared to be beyond human strength, either to drain away the water, or to cut through the coal, in time. What was to be done? Moses Thomas, who, whenever he came to the bank, gave me all the information in his power, said that hopeless as the task appeared, the coal was to be cut away from this black tomb without delay. Every strong man in the neighbourhood volunteered for this work, and truly the work was no light one! The place sloped downwards, about four inches to every yard, and each piece of coal struck away, had to be instantly removed. But fresh and fresh shifts of men plied their mandrils unremittingly; there was no halting or turning back; for three hours, without pause, each man worked, to be instantly followed, when this allotted time had expired, by a fresh volunteer. "Sleep, Miss," said one brawny fellow, when coming to the surface, he stooped to wash his blood-covered hands. "No, I doesn't want to sleep, while the Squire, and the lad, and the others is starving. I tell you, Miss, I never cried so bitter in all my life, as when I heard them knockings!" Thus by one mode of egress, all that mortal man could do, was being tried. But scientific men who were present, were too wise to neglect any plan for rescue. It was thought possible, that by means of divers, the imprisoned men might be reached through the water; accordingly two very experienced divers were telegraphed for from a well-known London firm, and as quickly as they could, they answered the summons. I did not know at the time, though I have learned something since, of the dangers these men underwent in this attempt to rescue human life. Having learned, I should like to say a little about them here, for I think no men stood higher in that band of heroes. So great was their danger, that not a gentleman in the neighbourhood would undertake the responsibility of sending them down into the mine, and some even counselled them not to undertake so hopeless a task. But both men instantly replied, that they would never return to their firm without making the attempt, and that they would take all responsibility on themselves. They had never been in a mine before, and very different would be the diving through this black and stagnant water, full of turnings of which they knew nothing, and of obstacles too great to be overcome, from any work they had hitherto undertaken. Indeed, so great was their danger, that those who saw them enter that inky sea, never expected to see them return again; but nothing daunted, the brave men closed their helmets, and commenced the impossible task. Mother and I, with many other women, and children, stood on the pit bank, and as the man who held the line, called out at intervals "fifty feet," "eighty feet," "a hundred feet," what echoes of hope and longing were awakened in beating hearts! I had one arm round mother's waist, Nan held my other hand, and when at last "five hundred feet" was called, and this was known to be within about two hundred and fifty feet of the stall where the prisoners were confined, simultaneously we went on our knees. The hope, the brilliant hope was too dazzling. Dazzling! it seemed to have come. Mother and I had David once more; little Nan, her brother; the under-viewer's wife, her husband. But; alas! it was only the lightning flash in the dark cloud, for at length, after a long period of silence, came the hopeless words, "They are coming back!" Yes, the brave divers had done their best, but were unsuccessful. To reach the prisoners by this means was a failure. As they said themselves, "We are very sorry, we found it was impossible to get on further, owing to pieces of wood in the water, the broken road, mud, and the strength of the swell." When they appeared again, and had stumbled exhausted to the ground, their helmets, new when they entered, were battered as though they had seen twenty years' service--a convincing proof of the dangers they had undergone. Yes, this attempt was a failure; but still hope did not die, still brave men toiled, and day after day the coal was cut away so perseveringly, so unceasingly, that at last on the seventh day after the inundation, shouts were made to the entombed men, and--oh! with what thankfulness was the faint answering response hailed. That weak cry, low and death-like, would have given the necessary spur had such been needed. All this time pumps were used, without ceasing, to reduce the water in the workings. Meanwhile, as day after day went by, each day filled with more of despair, and less of hope, what had become of Owen? He had said on that evening, some days back now, that he would rescue David or die, but still the manager of the mine was not present. At this critical time he had deserted his post, and the control and direction of all that was done, rested with strangers. Suspicion was grave against my brother, he had, to say the least of it, worked the mine recklessly. Though, with the utmost care, water inundations were sometimes impossible to avert, yet in this particular instance, it seemed that with ordinary foresight, by seeing that Pride's Pit was properly drained, or at least by avoiding the working of this particular coal vein, the present accident might never have taken place. Thus, things looked grave for Owen, and he was not at his post. Yes, I knew all this, I heard ugly words about an inquest, by and by; but strange as it may seem, never since his return, had my heart felt so at rest about Owen. I had a feeling, almost an instinct, that Owen had not really deserted his post, that among the volunteers in the mine he might be found, that amongst the bravest of the rescuers he might be numbered. When, with my sisters in this deep deep trouble, I stood for long hours of every day by the pit bank, I saw once amongst the smoke-begrimed and blackened men, who rose after their herculean toil to the surface, a face and form which in their outline resembled his--any other recognition was impossible; but so sure was I that this man was Owen, that I began gradually to watch for him alone. But watch as I would, I only saw him once. I was told afterwards, on questioning eagerly, that this miner slept below, that he refused to come to the surface at all, until the work for death or life was done, and that he appeared to work with the strength and energy of ten other men. "His name!" I breathlessly demanded. "Nobody knew his name, he was a volunteer, a stranger it seemed, but there were many such present; he was a plucky fellow, worth a great deal," this was all in this awful and grim conflict his fellow-workers cared for. I told mother of Owen's visit to me that night. I think my narrative comforted her, she asked very few questions; but I think _her_ eye too, though she said nothing, had rested on the face and form of the strange miner, and that she too had an idea, and a hope, that Owen was working in the mine. I believe, I feel sure, nothing kept up mother's heart and mine, so much as this hope. Was it possible that we were then learning the truth of that great saying from the lips of the Master--"He that loseth his life for My sake, shall find it?" Ay, for My sake, though _I_ reveal myself through a brother's love. About Wednesday night, the eighth of the men's imprisonment, thirty-two yards out of the thirty-eight of coal had been cut away. There were now only six yards of coal between the prisoners and freedom, and on the men being shouted to, the joyful news was brought to mother and me from the pit bank, that David's voice was heard above the rest; but, alas! sorrow came to many, while relief and thankfulness to is: there were only five men in the stall, four were now given up for lost. Between these five men and life and liberty, there seemed to me to be but a step, it could not take long, surely, to cut through the remaining six yards of coal, and to release the entombed from a lining grave. I showed my ignorance, my hope was wrong, the trial of my faith was not yet over. Nay, I think the faith that was to be tried by fire was put to the proof during the next two days, in every heart at Ffynon. The experienced colliers said that the real danger had now but begun. The water in the mine was only kept back from the imprisoned men by a very strong pressure of air, beyond this air-tight atmosphere it could not come; five or six feet away from the imprisoned men, it stood like an inky wall, but once break through with the slightest blow of the mandril, the wall of coal at one side, and the confined air would find vent, and the water, no longer impeded, would rush forward, sweeping into certain destruction both captives and rescuers. Unless the water could be pumped away, or the air in some way exhausted, there seemed to be no hope. All the pumps in the neighbourhood were lent, and were plied without intermission, and scientific men put their heads together and agreed to raise air-tight doors, so as to keep back the full rush of the imprisoned atmosphere, when the coal was broken through. But, alas! how faint and sick grew all our hearts, for nothing could now be done rashly, and was it possible that the men could live many hours longer without food? On the eighth night, food was attempted to be passed through a tube, but this proved a failure, the rush of air through the opening was so terrible, that it was found necessary to plug the hole. The roar of air was as loud as that of a blast furnace, and twice the force of the imprisoned air dashed out the plug, which could only be replaced by efforts almost superhuman. On the ninth day, I was passing through Gwen's room; she had been in a low fever, brought on by pain, and the violent shock her whole system had undergone. I used to avoid Gwen, dreading her questions, fearing to tell her what had happened. She was taken care of by a clever and experienced nurse, and I thought it kinder to leave her to her care; but on this day she heard my step, opened her eyes, and called me to her side. "Gwladys." "Yes, dear Gwen." "Have they buried the baby yet?" "Yes, Gwen, he is lying in a little grave in the churchyard close by; he was buried last Saturday." "Eh! dear, dear, I'd like to have seen his blessed little face first, but never mind! Oh! Gwladys, ain't the Lord good to the little 'uns?" "I don't know," I said. "Dear, my maid, and h'all this fiery trial upon you, and not to know. Dear, dear, haven't I bin lying here for days and learnin' h'all about it. Seems to me I never knew _what_ the Lord Jesus Christ was like before. Haven't He that baby in His arms now; haven't He put sight into his blind eyes, and shown to him the joys of Paradise; and haven't He bin helping me to bear the pain quite wonderful? I'll _tell_ you, Gwladys," raising herself in bed, "I'll tell you what the Lord is-- tender to the babies, pitiful to the sick and weak, abundant in mercy to the sinners, and the Saviour of them that's appointed to die; and if that's not a God for a time of trouble, I don't know where you'll find a God." Gwen brought out these words in detached sentences, for she was very weak; but her feverish eyes looked into mine, and her hot hand held my hand with energy. "And, my maid," she continued, in an exhausted whisper, "I've dreamed that dream again." "Oh! Gwen--what?" "All that dream about the mine, my maid; and I know 'tis coming true. Owen will save David." I left Gwen, and went into my own room. On my knees, for a brief instant, I spoke to God. "Oh! God," I said, "if you are the only help for a dark day, deliver us. Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, out of the depths, here, we cry to Thee. Lord, deliver those who are appointed to die;" and then, before I rose from my knees, four low words rose from my heart--"_Thy will be done_;" very low, in the faintest whisper--with the cold dew of agony breaking all over me, these words were wrung from my soul; still I said them. Then I went back to the bank. There was a change there, and some commotion-- something had happened. Alas! what? My heart beat audibly. I made my way through the crowd, and found myself close to a group of colliers, who had just come up from the mine. Terrible and ominous words smote on my ear. A new danger had arisen. There were signs of the colliers' worst enemy--gas. The Davy lamps could not be lit. Again the plug was blown out of the hole, and the roar of air which came through the opening, prevented the loudest voice being heard. "There is a power in there which would blow us up the heading like dust," said one. The peril was too tremendous. Even the bravest of the brave had given way. Dear life was too precious. The men who had toiled, as only heroes could toil, for so many long days and nights, faltered at length. To go forward now, seemed certain and absolute death to both rescuers and rescued. "The boy is gone," said Moses Thomas, looking Nan in the face. "He has been nine days now without food." "God help them all; they'll soon be in eternity," said another miner, wiping the tears from his weatherbeaten face. "This last has daunted us," said a third. "We have done all that men could do," sighed a fourth, who, worn out from toil, fell half-fainting on the ground. "To go on now, would be certain death," said a fifth. Then there was silence--intense silence; not even the sound of a woman's sob. The despairing men looked at one another. All seemed over. The starving prisoners in the mine were to starve to death. They were to listen in vain for the cheering sound of the mandril--in vain for their comrades' brave voices--in vain for light, food, liberty. The rescuers could venture into no deeper peril for their sakes. Suddenly the strange miner sprang to the front; fazed his companions with flashing eyes, and called out, in a deep voice rendered almost harsh by some pent-up emotion--"I'm going on, though 'tis death. Shut the doors upon me," he added, "and I'll cut the passage through!" Quick as lightning these words chased fear from every heart. "I'll go, for another--and I--and I," said many. And back went the brave men into the dark mine, to cut away, on their hands and knees, at a passage, in many places not three feet high. I don't know how it was, but from the moment I heard that brave collier's voice, I had hope--from that moment the worst of my heart agony was over. I felt that God would save the men. That His will was to deliver them from this pit of destruction. I was able to hear of the fresh dangers that still awaited the brave workers--of that frightful gas explosion, which on Friday obliged every working collier to fly for his life, and at last to return to his noble toil in the dark. Still I was not afraid. I felt sure of seeing David again. And now the tenth day had dawned, and excitement and hope had reached their highest pitch--their last tension. The air-tight doors were fixed in the workings. The men, both prisoners and rescuers, were now working in compressed air. The pumps had much reduced the water; and at last--at last, a breach was made. The pick of a miner had broken through the wall of coal. What a moment of excitement--longing--fear! What a joy, which seemed almost too grand, and great, for earth, when, to the thousands who waited above, the news was brought that science and love were successful--that back again from the arms of a terrible death, would come to us, our brothers and friends. I hardly remember what followed next. I never left the pit bank. I stood there, between mother and Nan, and watched, with straining eyes, that could hardly see--could hardly realise, as men, borne on litters, were carried past; men with coal-black faces--rigid, immovable, as though carved in granite. Little Miles was brought first. He looked tiny and shrunken; yet I saw that he breathed. Then three men, whom I did not know; but one of whom was recognised by the under-viewer's wife. Last of all our David. His eyes were open, and fixed on the blue sky. When mother saw David, she fainted. I bent over her, and tried to raise her. No one had seen her fall. The heroes in this tragedy had kept all eyes another way. My own head, as I bent over her, was reeling, my own brain was swimming. Suddenly two strong hands were placed under her head, and the strange miner raised her tenderly in his blackened and coal-covered arms. "Gwladys, we have saved them. Thank God!" he said. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. AFTER THE FIRE--A STILL, SMALL VOICE. This is the story. The rest England knows; she knows how all the rescued men recovered, she also knows how she has honoured rescued and rescuers. The last to get well, the slowest to get back again his health and strength, was David. For a time, indeed, for David there were grave doubts and anxieties, which on the doctors' parts amounted to fears. The previous shock and sorrow may have made the ten days without food, in that gloomy prison, tell more severely on him, for originally he was the strongest man of the five. However, after a fortnight of intense watching, the dreaded fever began to abate, and the burden of life which he had so nearly laid aside, he took up again, with his old cheerfulness and courage. "I'm glad he's not going to die," said Nan, "he's wanting down on earth still. Oh! ain't he strong," she added; "oh! if you only heard Miles talk of him!" One day I did hear a little of what David had done, from the boy himself. "Yes, Miss, he was standin' by me, when the water came in, we felt it running past our feet, he took my hand and said we'd run for the shaft; we run a few steps when we met Jones and two men, Powell and Williams; they said the waters were up to the roof, then we got into Powell's stall." "Had you any light?" "Yes, for a while we had candles, then we was in the dark, the water was a few feet away; when we was thirsty we drank the water, but it was very bad. No, we was _not_ very hungry, but we was most bitter cold." "You did not think you were so long in the stall?" "No, not more'n a week." "And you were not frightened?" Here the dark eyes, preternaturally large and eager-looking, gazed hard into mine. "No, I worn't feared to die. I thought I might die, we h'all thought it. I did want to kiss Nan, and father once, but Mr Morgan--" "Well, what about Mr Morgan?" "He spoke so, he said that the Better Land were worth going through anything to reach; he said that may be there were no other road for any of us to heaven, but right through the mine, and he axed us if we was willin' to go through that road to reach it. After a bit we all said we was." "Well?" "Then he'd pray to the Lord so earnest, it seemed as if the Lord was nigh to us, and Mr Morgan said He was with us in the stall; then we'd sing." "What did you sing, Miles?" "Only one hymn, over and over. We sings it at h'our meetings." "I know it," said Nan, "I'll sing it now. "In the deep and mighty waters. No one there can hold my head; But my only Saviour Jesus, Who was slaughtered in my stead. "Friend, he is in Jordan's river. Holds above the wave my head; With His smile I'll go rejoicing, Through the regions of the dead." "Ah!" said Miles, "you never'd know wot that hymn's worth unless you was in the mine. Then we heard the men knocking, and that kep up our hearts, and Mr Morgan said we might be rescued; but any way 'twas all right. Towards the end two of the men got queer and off their heads, and Mr Morgan, and Jones, the under-viewer, had a deal of trouble with 'em; then Mr Morgan thought the water might have gone down, and on Friday he went in and tried for a bit to wade through, but it was too deep, and he did not know the mine. Jones would have tried after him, but then we was let h'out. No, I doesn't remember that part. I knows nothing until I felt Nan kiss me, and I thought 'twas Stephie, and that I was in heaven." All the time during David's slow recovery, one person nursed him day and night--one person, with hardly any intermission, remained by his bedside; this was Owen. And no hand so soothed the sick and weary man, no face brought so peaceful a smile into his eyes, as the hand and face of Owen. As David grew better they had long talks together, but I never heard what they said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I have one thing more to write here. Three weeks after the accident, on an afternoon soft with west wind, and glowing with May beauty, I went to visit little David's grave. They had laid him in a very old churchyard, and the tiny grave faced the Rhoda Vale, and could be seen with its companion graves, from the bank of the Ffynon mine below. I had brought some flowers to plant there. Having completed my task, I sat, for a few moments, by the side of the little mound to rest. As I sat there, I saw a man walking quickly along the high road. He mounted the stile and ascended the steep path which led to the graveyard. As I watched him, my heart beat loud and audibly--for this man was Owen. He was coming to visit little David's grave. He had probably never seen it yet. Still I would not go away. I had something to say to Owen, I could say it best here. He came up, saw me, started for a moment, then seated himself by my side. "Gwladys, this is a fit place for us to meet. I have something to say to you." His words, look, manner, put any speech of my own out of my head. I turned to watch him. "There is such a thing, Gwladys, as being guilty even of this-- blood-guiltiness--and yet being washed white." Silence on my part. He laid his hand on the little grave, and continued-- "David, who never told a lie in his life, says he is glad; that if only the death of his child could bring me to his God, he is glad--glad even at that price." A long pause. "I have found his God. Even by so dark a path as my own sin, I have been led to his God and Saviour." Owen pressed his head on his hands. I saw two heavy tears drop between his fingers. "You will never know, Gwladys, what the finding of God out of so awful a storm of sin and suffering is like. I looked for Him down in the mine. With every stroke of my mandril, my heart cried, `Punish me as you will. I do not care what punishment you lay upon me. My life itself is valueless. Only let me find Thee.' But I could not find Him. As I went further and further into the mine, I seemed getting further and further away from Him; my sins were between Him and me. I could not get a glimpse of Him. I was in despair. I worked with the strength of despair. It was no true courage prompted me to go back, when the other men faltered. My life was valueless to me. Then, as you know, we brought the men out. I went to David. I _was_ glad that he was saved; but my heart was as heavy as ever. I used to sit up at night and fancy myself drifting further and further from God. My whole past life was before me, and it seemed hateful. Not only the wild, reckless days at Oxford, but the months that had seemed so righteous and proper here. One evening I said to David-- "`David, can you forgive me?' "`Ay, lad,' he answered, instantly, `and so can thy God.' "`No, that He can't,' I said. `He never can forgive the death of the baby.' "`You wrong Him, lad,' continued my brother. `He took the baby away in love. He knew your eyes were shut, and a great shock must open them. Surely, Owen, if the only way He could bring you to His arms was to take the baby first, _that_ won't turn Him away now. We must go through death to Him sometimes--the death of another, if not our own.' "`And _you_ are willing to give up your child for that?' "`Willing and glad, if by so doing you may find Christ.' "`David, how you have worked and suffered for me.'" "But not in vain," said David, with a radiant smile. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "No, Gwladys, it was not in vain; the brother's love was not in vain; the death of the Son of Man was not in vain. _I have found God_. There is to be a coroner's inquest; things may go hard with me, for I have been much to blame; but I shall tell the whole story. If I am allowed, I shall remain at Ffynon; but wherever I am, I mean to devote my life-- my whole life--all my time and all my energy, to the great cause of the miners; to the lessening of their many dangers; to the furthering of their well-being. This is my life-work; I promise to devote my life to the miners of Wales, here, by this little grave." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Owen, before we leave this spot, I have something to say to you." "What is that? my dear." "I want you to forgive me." "For what?" "Do you not know--can you not guess? I shut my heart against you; I gave you no true sister's welcome when you came home." "I thought you changed; I was disappointed. Had you ceased to love me?" "No, no; never that. But I had dreamt so of you--I thought you perfect. I thought you would come back bringing honour and glory; then I was told--I--" "I see; your love could not stand the shock." "No, Owen; my old, poor, and weak love--my idolatry, could not; under the blow it died." "Go on, my dear." "Owen, can you ever forgive me? I have been cold, unloving, unsisterly. I wonder, now, looking back on it, that you did not hate me!" "No; at first I was disappointed. You hardly know how I loved you long ago; how you had managed to twine your little childish self round my heart. When away I thought of you. I longed, almost as much for your sake as for David's, to win back that wretched gold. You were much changed. At first I was much disappointed; at last, I believe, indifferent." "It is my just punishment, brother. Still, I must say something now. Owen, I love you now. I love you now as I never did long ago; I understand you now. My heart can read yours at last I love you a thousand times better than of old. I don't expect you to respond to it," I concluded, with a sob. Owen rose to his feet. "One moment," he said; "do you love me well enough not to flatter me; well enough never to flatter me again; well enough to help me?" "Oh, yes! Oh! if we might help each other!" "I do respond to your love. Come to me, Gwladys." Standing by the little grave, he held out his arms and folded them round me, and kissed my cheek; and as I looked up into the dear, beautiful, noble face--it was all that truly now--I felt that my air castle had arisen out of its ashes; my day dream was fulfilled, and I had got back my hero and my darling. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The End. 
56059	----	OLD CROSSES AND LYCHGATES [Illustration: _Frontispiece_ 1. NORTHAMPTON ELEANOR CROSS] OLD CROSSES AND LYCHGATES BY AYMER VALLANCE [Illustration] LONDON B·T·BATSFORD, L^{TD} 94, HIGH HOLBORN PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE DARIEN PRESS, EDINBURGH PREFACE The genesis of this book was an article on "Churchyard Crosses," written by request for the _Burlington Magazine_, and published therein in September 1918. It was at a time when the hearts of the British people were being stirred to their innermost depths, for the European War was yet raging, and the question of the most suitable form of memorials of our heroic dead, sacrificed day by day, was continually present to us. Nor, though hostilities happily ceased when the Armistice was agreed upon within a few weeks thereafter, has the subject of commemorating the fallen on that account declined in interest and importance. Nay, its claims are, if anything, more insistent than ever, for, the vital necessity of concentrating our energies on the attainment of victory having passed away, the nation is now at leisure "to pour out its mourning heart in memorials that will tell the generations to come how it realised the bitterness and glory of the years of the Great War." Such being the case, it was hoped that it might prove useful to gather together a collection of examples of old crosses and lychgates, as affording the most appropriate form of monuments for reproduction or adaptation to the needs of the present. Too many of the manifestations of modern so-called art betray its utter bankruptcy, because having broken with tradition, it has no resource left but to express itself in wayward eccentricity and ugly sensationalism, the very antitheses of the dignified beauty which the following of time-hallowed precedent alone can impart. To obtain a sufficiently representative series there has been no occasion to go beyond the confines of England and Wales. Within those limits a very large number of types is to be found, every one of which is illustrated in the following pages. I do not pretend to have treated the subject exhaustively, but I do claim that never before has so manifold a range of crosses been depicted within the compass of a single volume; nor has so systematic an analysis and classification of the various types of crosses, tracing the course of their historic evolution, been attempted by any previous writer in the English language. My classification, based solely upon the study of anatomical form and structure, is original, and presents the subject in an entirely new aspect. Without the generous co-operation of friends and strangers alike, my task would have been impossible. A considerable amount of material had been collected by my friend, the late Mr Herbert Batsford, and of this I have gladly availed myself. To my dear and revered friend, the late Sir William St John Hope, I, for one, am more indebted archæologically than I can find words to express. No sooner did he learn that I had undertaken this work than he remarked to me, "You must quote documents," and, by way of giving practical effect to his advice, he offered, with his wonted liberality, to place at my disposal some important notes he had made from the original accounts of the royal expenditure on the Eleanor Memorial Crosses. These notes, to my profound regret, I never received, because St John Hope, being shortly afterwards stricken with his fatal illness, had not the opportunity to look them up for me. My pages in consequence are the poorer for lack of his invaluable material. I have, however, been able to quote in full the historic description of Nevill's cross from the _Rites of Durham_ (Surtees Society, 1902), of which St John Hope was Joint Editor. Among my innumerable obligations I desire to record my indebtedness to the following for facilities given, and for help in divers ways:-- The authorities and assistants of the British Museum, of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and of the Guildhall Museum; the President and Council of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the St Paul's Ecclesiological Society; the _Burlington Magazine_, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, the Provost of Eton (who kindly went to Oxford expressly to examine the Jews' cross for me), Mr F. T. S. Houghton (who journeyed from Birmingham to Halesowen in order to photograph the remains of the cross-head at the latter place), and Dr F. J. Allen, of Cambridge (for photographs and much valuable information); also to Miss E. K. Prideaux, the Rev. G. C. Richards, F.S.A., the Revv. F. and F. R. P. Sumner, and C. Eveleigh Woodruff, Major C. A. Markham, and Messrs Harold Brakspear, F.S.A., G. C. Druce, F.S.A., Reginald A. Smith, F.S.A., J. H. Allchin, and H. Elgar, Maidstone Museum; Oxley Grabham and W. Watson, York Museum; H. St George Gray, Taunton Museum; Frank Woolnough, F.R.Met.S., Ipswich Museum; Richard Scriven, George Clinch, F.G.S., F.S.A.(Scot.), W. Plomer Young, P. M. C. Kermode, G. Granville Buckley, M.D., F.S.A., F. H. Crossley, F. E. Howard, Arthur Hussey, F. C. Elliston-Erwood, Robert Richmond, George H. Widdows, F.R.I.B.A., R. P. Stone, Oswald Stone, P. Bedford, Alfred Watkins; and last, but not least, my publisher, Mr Harry Batsford and his assistant, Mr A. W. Haggis, whose constant and ready co-operation has lightened many hours of laborious research in museum libraries and of industry at High Holborn. AYMER VALLANCE. AYMERS, LYNSTED, _February 1920_. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. MONOLITH CROSSES 27 III. THE SHAFT-ON-STEPS TYPE 42 IV. SPIRE-SHAPED OR ELEANOR CROSSES 94 V. PREACHING CROSSES 113 VI. MARKET CROSSES 125 VII. UNCLASSIFIED VARIETIES 158 VIII. LYCHGATES 164 BIBLIOGRAPHY 191 INDEX 195 TOPOGRAPHICAL LIST OF SUBJECTS ILLUSTRATED CHAPTERS I. to VII.--CROSSES Subject. Source. Illustration Page No. Referred to in Text. Aldborough Photo, Frith & Co. 193 158 Alphington _Del._, J. Buckler 199 161 Ampney Crucis Photo, Rev. F. Sumner 97} " " Rev. F. R. P. Sumner 98} " " F. T. S. Houghton 99} 50 Axbridge _Gentleman's Magazine_ 148 128 Bakewell Engraving by F. L. Chantrey, R.A. 39 32 Bedale Photo, Frith & Co. 119 54 Bewcastle " Gibson & Sons 3} " " " 25} " " " 26} 32 Bingley " Frith & Co. 182 125 Bisley " " 197 163 Bishop's Lydeard " Dr F. J. Allen 20} 42,44, } 46 Blakemere _Del._, J. Buckler 15 13 Blanchland Abbey Photo, Gibson & Sons 44 41 Bleadon " Dr F. J. Allen 89 48 Bonsall " Frith & Co. 120 54 Bristol Engraving by S. and N. Buck, 1734 9 123 Brigstock Photo, B.T.B. 122 54 Bungay " " 187 157 Castle Combe _Del._, J. Buckler 173} " Photo, Frith & Co. 174} " _Del._, W. G. Allen 175} " " " 176} 157 Carlton Peart Collection, R.I.B.A. 63 43 Charlton Mackerel Photo, Frith & Co. 19 42,44 Charing Cross, Engraving by Ralph Agas, 1792, Crace 135} nr. London Collection, British Museum } " " Crowle Pennant Collection, British 136} Museum } " " Crace Collection, British Museum 137} 108 Cheadle Photo, W. Watson 35 37 Cheapside Photo, B.T.B., Guildhall Museum 130} Crosses, London } " " " " " 131} " " Water Colour Drawing at Society of 132} Antiquaries, after Mural Painting } at Cowdray } " " Drawing in Pepysian Library, 133} Cambridge } " " Photo, G. Clinch, from Contemporary 134} Woodcut } 102 Cheddar " Frith & Co. 165 146 Cheshunt, Waltham _Vetusta Monumenta_ 127} " _Del._, J. Buckler 128} " _Vetusta Monumenta_ 129} 95,101 Chester, High Pen Drawing by Randle Holme, Harleian MSS. 2073, British Museum 24 24,158 Chichester _Del._, J. Coney } (lent by F. H. Crossley) 11} " Photo, J. Valentine 161} " Print, Victoria and Albert Museum 162} " " 163} 137 Child's Wickham Photo, B.T.B. 7 54 Coventry Dugdale's _Warwickshire_ 8 111 Cricklade Photo, Rev. F. R. P. Sumner 116} Churchyard } " Town Cross " Rev. F. Sumner 117} 54 Croxden _Del._, J. Buckler 88 47 Crowcombe Photochrom Co. 118 46,54 Cumnor _Del._, J. Buckler 59 43 Derwen Photo, Aymer Vallance 110} " " " 111} " " " 112} 52 Doncaster _Vetusta Monumenta_ 191 158 Dorchester _Del._, J. Buckler 65 44 Doulting Dr F. J. Allen 74} " " " 75} " " " 76} 43,44 Drayton _Del._, J. Buckler 54 46 Dundry " J. K. Colling 78 43 Dunster Photo, J. Valentine 177 156 Elstow Peart Collection, R.I.B.A 194 158 Eyam Photo, J. Valentine 27} " " " 28} 32 Eynsham _Del._, J. Buckler, 1820 50 45 Fletton Print, Victoria and Albert Museum 40} " " " " 41} 37 Geddington _Vetusta Monumenta_ 124} " Photochrom Co. 125} 95,96 Glastonbury Hearne's _Antiquities_ 164 138 Gloucester _Vetusta Monumenta_ 138 108 Gosforth Lysons' _Magna Britannia_ 33 34 Great Malvern Photo, Frith & Co. 16 13 " Grimsby _Del._, J. Buckler 49 45 Halesowen Photo, F. T. S. Houghton 82 47 Hardley Knight's _Norfolk Antiquities_, 1892 18 13 Headington _Del._, J. Buckler 69} " Photo, H. Taunt 70} 44 Hedon Peart Collection, R.I.B.A. 79 46 Hereford, _Del._, J. Buckler 72} Whitefriars } " " Photochrom Co. 73} " } 44 Preaching Cross Photo, Frith & Co. 143 122 Hexham " Gibson & Sons 42 37 Higham Ferrers Markham's _Old Crosses of 55 46 Northamptonshire_ Holbech Engraving by W. Stukeley 10 123 Horsington _Del._, after J. Buckler 53 46 Ipswich _Diary of Sir James Thornhill_ 169} " Photo, Frank Woolnough, F.R.Met.S. 170} " Aquatint by Geo. Frost, 1812 171} " Photo, Frank Woolnough, F.R.Met.S. 172} 152 Irtlingborough Markham's _Old Crosses of 56 46 Northamptonshire_ Irton Lysons' Magna Britannia 32 34 Iron Acton Photo, Rev. F. Sumner 144 122 Keyingham, Yorks. Peart Collection, R.I.B.A. 64 44 " " (from " " 80 47 Lincolnshire) Lanteglos Juxta Photo, Frith & Co. 94} Fowey } " " " F. T. S. Houghton 95} 49 Leicester Nichol's Leicestershire 14 152 Leighton Buzzard Engraving in Lyson's Bedfordshire 146} " _Del._, J. Buckler 147} 124 Lichfield, Dean Old Engraving, Victoria and Albert 154 142 Dentons Museum London, (see Cheapside, _supra_) West Cheap " (see Charing Cross, _supra_) Charing Cross " Engraved from Drawing in Pepysian 141} Paul's Cross Library, Cambridge } " " Panel Painting by John Gipkyn at 142}113,120 Society of Antiquaries Lymm Photo, Frith & Co. 183 157 Madley " Alfred Watkins, F.R.P.S. 101} " " " 102} 51 Maidstone " H. Elgar, from Drawing by 167 146 E. Pretty Malmesbury " Dr G. Granville Buckley, F.S.A. 156} " Old Print, Victoria and Albert Museum 157} " " " " 158} 133 Maughold, Photo, J. Valentine 86} Isle of Man } " " " Frith & Co. 87} 46,48 Mawgan-in-Pyder Photo, J. Valentine 38 37 (Lanherne House Nunnery) Mawgan-in-Pyder Lysons' _Magna Britannia_ 106} (Churchyard } Cross) } Mawgan-in-Pyder Photo, Frith & Co. 107} (Churchyard } Cross) } 50 Mildenhall " B.T.B. 12 154 Milverton, _Del._, J. Buckler, 1841 (_per_ H. 185 156 Somerset St. G. Gray) Mitton " " 194} " " " 195} 161 Mitchel Troy " " 57 45 Nether Stowey " " 1837 (_per_ H. 184 156 St. G. Gray) Newmarket, Photo, F. T. S. Houghton 90} Flintshire } " " " " 91} 48 Northampton, " H. Cooper & Son 1} Eleanor Cross } " " Britton's _Architectural Antiquities_ 126} 95,98 Northampton, Water Colour in British Museum (MSS. 150 142 Old Market Dept.), copy of Bridges' Cross _Northamptonshire_ North Petherton _Del._, J. K. Colling 77 42 North Hinksey _Del._, J. Buckler 83} " " " 84} " " " 85} 48 Norwich Blomfield's _Antiquities of Norfolk_ 153} 138 (T. Sheldrake) Nottingham Stretton MSS. 186 157 Oakham Photo, B.T.B. 178} " " " 179} 156 Ombersley " Frith & Co. 66} " _Instrumenta Ecclesiastica_ 67} " " " 68} 44 Oundle Markham's _Old Crosses of 168 156 Northamptonshire_ Oxford, Photo, B.T.B. 21} Jews' Cross } " " " 22} " " " 23} 19 Paul's Cross, (see London, Paul's Cross, _supra_) London Pocklington Old Print, Victoria and Albert Museum 114} " " " " 115} 50,54 Poulton-le-Fylde Photo, Sir B. Stone 6 24 Raglan _Del._, J. Buckler 71 44 Raunds Markham's _Old Crosses of 45 42 Northamptonshire_ Repton Photo, Photochrom Co. 123 54 Ripley " Aymer Vallance 196 162 Rocester _Del._, J. Buckler, 1832 47} " " " 48} 45 Rothersthorp Markham's _Old Crosses of 46 47 Northamptonshire_ Salisbury _Del._, J. C. Buckler 159} " Photo, Photochrom Co. 160} 137 Sandbach Dr Ormerod's _Cheshire_ 29} " " " 30} " J. Valentine & Co. 31} 32 Shepton Mallet Photo, Dr F. J. Allen 151} " Gentleman's Magazine_, 1781 152} 128 Sherburn-in-Elmet G. B. Bulmer, _Architectural Studies in Yorkshire_, 1887 113 46,53 Somersby _Instrumenta Ecclesiastica_ 81 47 Somerton Photo, Frith & Co. 166 146 St Columb Major " " 37 37 St Ives, Cornwall " " 96 50 St Michael's _Del._, J. Buckler 104} Mount } " " " " 105} 52 St Donats Photo, Aymer Vallance 108} " _Del._, J. Buckler 109} 46,52 Stalbridge Photo, R. Wilkinson 58} 43,44, } 46 Stanway _Del._, J. Buckler 60 43 Steeple Ashton " " 121 54 Stevington Peart Collection, R.I.B.A. 17 43 Stringston, _Architectural Association Sketch Book_ 5 43 Somersetshire Swaffham Photo, B.T.B. 188 157 Taunton Drawing in British Museum, King's 155 142 Collection Thatcham _Del._, J. Buckler 61 43 Tottenham Old Engraving, 1788 139} " " Victoria and Albert Museum 140} 111 Tyberton Photo, Alfred Watkins, F.R.P.S. 100} " " " 103} 51 Wakefield _Del._, J. Buckler 190 157 Waltham Cross, (see Cheshunt, _supra_) Cheshunt Waterperry, _Del._, J. Buckler 4 43 Oxfordshire Whalley Photo, Gibson & Sons 34 37 Wells Sime's _Map of Wells_, British Museum, 149 125 King's Collection Wheston, Engraving by F. L. Chantrey, R.A. 92} Tideswell } " " Photo, F. Chapman 93} 49 Whitford " W. Marriot Dodson 36 35 Wicken _Del._, J. Buckler 62 43,4 Winchester " " 145 124 Witney Photo, Henry Taunt 13 156 Wolverhampton, Old Print, Victoria and Albert Museum 2 37 Dane's Cross Wonford, _Del._, Miss E. K. Prideaux 198 161} St Loye's } Woodstock Paul Sandby, 1777, _The Antiquarian 189 157 Repertory_ Wooler Scott's _Border Antiquities_ 43 37 Wymondham Photo, B.T.B. 180} 156 " " " 181} Yarnton _Del._, J. Buckler, 1821 51} 44,45 " " " 52} CHAPTER VIII.--LYCHGATES Anstey _Del._, J. Buckler 210 167 Ashwell B.T.B. 215} " " 216} " " 217} " " 218}165,167 Beckenham Album at R.I.B.A. 205} " _Del._, J. Buckler 206} " _Spring Gardens' Sketch Book_ 207}165,166 Boughton, _Del._, J. Buckler 231 168 Monchelsea Bray Photo, Aymer Vallance 202} " Peart Collection, R.I.B.A. 203} 164 Chalfont, Photo 204 164 St Giles Chiddingfold " W. Plomer Young 227 164 Clodock _Del._, J. Buckler 228 167 Clun Photo, F. H Crossley 235 164 Goring " Henry Taunt 226 165 Hartfield F. Frith & Co. 201 164 Hayes Mills' _History of the Parish of Hayes_200 164,165 Heston J. Drayton Wyatt, Anastatic Drawing 213} Society } " _Spring Gardens' Sketch Book_ 214}164,165 Isleham Drawing after J. Buckler 223} " " " 224} " " " 225} 167 Lenham Photo, Aymer Vallance 220} " _Spring Gardens' Sketch Book_ 221} " " 222}165,167 Llandrillo-yn-RhosPhoto, F. Frith & Co. 233 168 Llanfillo " P. Bedford 229 167 Morwenstow _A. P. S. Dictionary_ 219 165 Monnington-on-Wye Photo 237 167 Pattingham Shaw's _History of Staffordshire_ 234 167 Pulborough Source unknown 236 167 Rustington _Del._, J. Buckler 230 168 Staple _Instrumenta Ecclesiastica_ 208} " " " 209} 166 Tal-y Llyn Photo, Sir B. Stone 232 168 West Wickham Thomas Garratt, _Transactions of 211} St Paul's Ecclesiological } " Society, Vol. II._ } _Spring Gardens' Sketch Book_ 212} 167 ADDENDUM. _Page 9, line 11 from the bottom, after_ "extant" _add_:-- One example, removed from its site, is in existence. In the collection of the Kent Archæological Society at the Museum at Maidstone is a much mutilated head of a churchyard cross found at West Malling. The work, very rude and uncouth, appears to be of the fourteenth century. On one side is a crucifixion, unattended, and on one end a single figure, which may possibly represent St. John Baptist. OLD CROSSES AND LYCHGATES I. INTRODUCTION In pursuance of the Christian policy of instituting an innocent practice to take the place of each of the old, vicious customs of heathendom--the substitution of the festival of Christmas for the former orgies of the Saturnalia is perhaps the best known instance in point--the Emperor Constantine (324 to 337 A.D.) caused crosses to be erected along the public ways at various points where previously had been situated terminal statues. Thence are believed to have originated the shrines and crucifixes, conspicuous by the roadside at the entrance of towns and villages in the Catholic countries of the Continent. Nor throughout the Middle Ages, until the sixteenth century, when the English people were torn from the unity of the unreformed faith, was our own country behind any other in its pious observance of the ancient traditional usage. The reason thereof is explained by a passage in _Dives et Pauper_, a popular treatise on the Ten Commandments, which was printed by Wynken de Worde at Westminster in 1496. The purpose of the erection of standing crosses is therein expounded as follows:--"For this reason ben Crosses by ye waye, that whan folke passynge see the Crosse, they sholde thynke on Hym that deyed on the Crosse, and worshypp Hym above all thynge." [Illustration: 2. WOLVERHAMPTON DANES' CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD MONOLITH TYPE] [Illustration: 3. BEWCASTLE, CUMBERLAND MONOLITH TYPE] [Illustration: 4. WATER PERRY, OXFORDSHIRE] [Illustration: 5. STRINGSTON, SOMERSETSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, WITH PLAN SHAFT-ON-STEPS TYPE] [Illustration: 6. POULTON-LE-FYLDE, LANCASHIRE MARKET CROSS. SHAFT-ON-STEPS TYPE] The process of the evolution of the standing cross may be traced through certain well-defined stages. Its most rudimentary form is that of the menhir, a vertical monolith rising direct from the ground (Figs. 2 and 3); next, the shaft is raised on steps, and becomes a tapering stem, while its head grows on either side into the arms of a cross (Fig. 16), or expands into a lantern-like ornament, quadrangular or polygonal on plan, enriched with sculptured figures and tabernacle work (Figs. 4 and 5). The shaft-on-steps persisted to the last as the favourite type for churchyard crosses, notwithstanding the introduction of other varieties. The cross gained greater dignity by being mounted on an enlarged socket or foot, interposed between the shaft itself and the steps underneath. Thirdly, the shaft takes the form of a pinnacle or spire, generally of diminishing tiers or storeys, the whole crowned with a small cross or finial. To this type the important group of Eleanor crosses belongs (Figs. 1 and 8). Hitherto the cross had been simply spectacular and monumental. It next developed in a utilitarian direction, and became a preaching cross (Figs. 9 and 10), its lowest storey, formerly closed and solid, being opened out and made to consist of a ring of standards (with or without a shaft in the middle), to carry the soaring superstructure. The last type, the market cross (Figs. 11, 12, 13, and 14), may be regarded as an expansion of the preaching cross, the latter being intended to shelter but one occupant, or at any rate only a very small number, whereas the market cross is designed to shelter many persons. In the fully matured market cross the whole structure is one organism, planned as such from the outset; but there are, on the other hand, some obvious instances of adaptation, where the encircling umbrella is, as it were, an after-thought, having been built up to and about a previously existing cross of the shaft-on-steps type. In either case, however, the result ultimately obtained is identical. A number of handsome market crosses, principally belonging to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were constructed of timber framing, with stone, slate, or tiled roofs. The latest development was the introduction of an upper chamber above the open ground-floor stage. But when, later still, the circular or polygonal plan was abandoned for an oblong plan in order to provide the utmost accommodation in the upper chamber, all recognisable resemblance to the structure in the form of its origin was lost; in a word, the market cross had become extinct, and had given place instead to the market house or hall. [Illustration: 7. CHILD'S WICKHAM, GLOUCESTERSHIRE VILLAGE CROSS. SHAFT-ON-STEPS TYPE] [Illustration: 8. COVENTRY, WARWICKSHIRE ELEANOR CROSS TYPE] [Illustration: 9. BRISTOL PREACHING CROSS TYPE] [Illustration: 10. HOLBECH, LINCOLNSHIRE PREACHING CROSS TYPE] It may be assumed that, for the sake of durability, stone would be the most usual material to choose for the construction of standing crosses. But there were exceptions, as a memorable incident in the career of Jeanne d'Arc is sufficient to show. The authority is a letter from two of Jeanne's contemporaries, Jean and André de Laval, grandsons of the famous Bertrand de Guesclin. The scene was Selles; the date 6th June 1428. On that occasion, the maid's horse, a fine black charger, being brought to the door of her lodging, proved so restive that he could not be controlled. "Lead him to the Cross," said Jeanne. And there he stood as quietly as though he had been bound, while she mounted. The cross was a wrought-iron one, and was situated about fifteen paces from the north door of the church. An historical memorial, this cross might have been standing yet, had not the surrounding cemetery been cleared and levelled to make a site for a market place. Again, standing crosses might be made of wood. Thus, Joan Wither bequeathed a sum in 1511 for the restoration of the wooden cross in the hamlet of Reding, in Eboney, Kent; and John Netheway, of Taunton, Somerset, whose will is dated 4th August 1503, directed his executors to "make a new crosse of tree in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalyn, nigh the procession-way"; a provision which is interesting from another point of view, viz., that it unmistakably connects the churchyard cross with outdoor processions. [Illustration: 11. CHICHESTER THE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 12. LEICESTER MARKET CROSS, WITH PLAN] A phenomenon in regard to churchyard crosses at the present day is the inequality of their distribution, which, however, must not be taken as a criterion of their number and situation in former times. Indeed, their existence was very general; and the fact of their preservation or destruction depends on local conditions. Some counties, like Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Northamptonshire, for example, contain numbers, while other counties contain scarcely any at all. Thus, Charles Fowler, F.R.I.B.A., writing in 1896 concerning the Diocese of Llandaff, which comprises Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire, says: "In nearly every churchyard there are remains of a cross of some kind. These crosses were placed midway between the enclosure entrance and south porch, to the east of the principal path.... Many of the steps and bases of these crosses are to be found in the diocese, but the tops have mostly all disappeared; also very many of the shafts." On the other hand, in Hertfordshire there are but two specimens, both incomplete; and again, in Kent, with the exception of the ancient bases in Folkestone and Teynham churchyards, there is not another example extant. And yet numbers and numbers of Kentish churchyard crosses are positively known, through mention of them in wills, to have been standing in the Middle Ages. In churchyard crosses a certain feature, occurring more particularly in the southwestern district of England, has proved somewhat of a puzzle to archæologists, to wit, the presence of a little niche or recess (Figs. 15 and 16), sunk in the side of the socket or, more rarely, in the lower part of the shaft. Instances have been noted at Wonastow and Raglan, in Monmouthshire; Lydney and Newland, in Gloucestershire; Blackmere, Brampton Abbots, Colwell, Kingdon, St Weonards, Whitchurch, and Wigmore, in Herefordshire; and at Broadway and Great Malvern, in Worcestershire. At the last named (Fig. 16) the niche is hollowed out in the shaft itself. It has been supposed that the purpose of the niche was to contain a light; but a much more probable suggestion, of the late Sir William St John Hope's, is that the niche was designed as a receptacle for the pyx, enclosing the Sacred Host, in the course of the Palm Sunday procession. [Illustration: 13. MILDENHALL, SUFFOLK MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 14. WITNEY, OXFORDSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 15. BLAKEMERE, HEREFORDSHIRE SHAFT-ON-STEPS TYPE, WITH NICHE] [Illustration: 16. GREAT MALVERN, WORCESTERSHIRE CROSS, WITH NICHE, IN THE PRIORY CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 17. STEVINGTON, BEDFORDSHIRE SHAFT-ON-STEPS TYPE] There can be no doubt that, whatever else their uses, churchyard crosses in mediæval England figured prominently in the ceremonial of Palm Sunday. So indispensable, indeed, did they become for this purpose, that it may be taken for granted that no parish was without one, at any rate of wood, if not of stone. In the Constitutions, issued in 1229 by William de Bleys, Bishop of Worcester, he ordered that there should be, in every churchyard of his diocese, "_crux decens et honesta, vel in cimiterio erecta, ad quam fiet processio ipso die Palmarum, nisi in alio loco consuevit fieri_." At Hardley, in Norfolk, Henry Bunn, by will dated 1501, directed that a cross should be set up in the churchyard for the offering of boughs on Palm Sunday. It would be interesting if the above named could be identified with the cross now standing (Fig. 18). The latter, however, is not only of later date, but is not a churchyard cross at all, being a secular landmark, dating from 1543. In that year, it is recorded, a new cross was made, sculptured with the crucifixion on one side, and the arms of the city of Norwich on the other; and being painted, was conveyed to Hardley and erected there, "where the Sheriffs of Norwich yearly do keep a court." The "place," says Francis Blomefield, "was the extent of the liberties of the city on the River Wensum." But, to resume, so intimately was the churchyard cross associated with the Palm Sunday solemnities, that the former is very commonly referred to in documents as the "Palm Cross." As such the churchyard cross at Bishop's Stortford is mentioned in the parish accounts for the year 1525--the same cross which was ultimately demolished in 1643. The Palm Cross is so named in the parish accounts of Morebath, Devonshire, as late as the year 1572-73. For the rest, it is enough to cite a number of Kentish wills, in which the churchyard cross is specifically named the Palm Cross, viz.--at Addington in 1528; Ashford in 1469; Bidborough in 1524; Boughton-under-Blean in 1559; Boxley in 1476 and 1524; Eboney; Erith in 1544; Faversham in 1508, 1510, and 1521; Hastingleigh in 1528; Lenham in 1471 (as having then been newly erected); Lyminge in 1508; Lynsted; Margate in 1521; Preston-by-Faversham in 1525; Reculver in 1541; Old Romney in 1484; St Peter's, Sandwich, in 1536; Southfleet in 1478; Strood in 1482; Wittersham in 1497; and Woolwich in 1499 and 1515. In some cases the shaft of the churchyard cross is drilled with holes sloping downward. An instance of this is to be found at Tredington, in Gloucestershire. Charles Pooley thinks that these holes were for the affixing of some such object as a scutcheon or a figure. That the suggestion is not unfeasible is shown by the will of Alice Findred, widow, who in 1528 left £2 "for making of a stone cross, called a Palm Cross, with a picture of the Passion of Christ of copper and gilt ... to be set upon the head of the burial" of her husband and children in the churchyard of Hastingleigh, Kent. But there is an alternative explanation of the drilled holes, viz., that they were meant to hold the stems of flowers or branches for adorning the cross on certain occasions, _e.g._, Palm Sunday, or at the old Lancashire ceremony of "flowering," on St John Baptist's Day, 24th June. According to the eminent ecclesiologist, Dr Daniel Rock, in _The Church of our Fathers_, it was at the churchyard cross that the outdoor procession of palms, having wended its way thither, would always halt, and, the cross itself being wreathed and decked with flowers and branches, the Blessed Sacrament, solemnly borne in procession, was temporarily deposited before it upon some suitable throne, while the second station was being made. This done, the procession reformed and proceeded to the principal door for the third station, before passing again within the church. [Illustration: 18. HARDLEY, NORFOLK BOUNDARY CROSS] A certain peculiarity, occasionally to be found in churchyard crosses, is the scooping out of a cavity or cavities in the base or steps--cavities resembling nothing so much as the hollows in the beheading block at the Tower of London. An instance of this feature, believed to have been designed as a receptacle for offerings, occurs in the churchyard cross at Bishop's Lydeard (Fig. 20) in the second step from the lowest one. Possibly the basin-like cavities, which here and there occur in village and roadside crosses, may have been meant to hold water or vinegar, to disinfect the coins paid for food in times of plague, as mentioned below (page 22). A curious post-Reformation use for churchyard crosses is referred to by Miss Curtis in _Antiquities of Laugharne and Pendine_, 1871. The passages are quoted for what they may be worth. At Eglwyscummin, Carmarthenshire, "there is a cross in the churchyard to which wolves' heads were attached.... In ancient times, when it was a necessity to exterminate certain animals, as foxes, wolves, etc., a reward was given to those who captured these animals, and it was usual to attach their heads to the cross in the churchyard for the purpose of valuing them. Generally, the heads remained on the cross for three church services, and after that the reward was given. For a wolf's head the same sum was awarded, as was given for the capture of the greatest robber; for (dog) foxes, 2s. 6d., and (vixens) 1s. 6d. In the register of Laugharne church is an account of the sums given for the different animals." Again, both at Llansandurnen and at Marrôs, in the churchyard, is "a part of the ancient cross ... to which wolves' heads, etc., were attached. It is but a few years ago that a farmer in Marrôs hung foxes' heads on it. In the churchyard of Amroth (Pembrokeshire) is a cross to which they used to attach wolves' heads, etc." The iconoclastic movement seems to have begun earlier than is commonly imagined. In 1531 or 1532, according to John Foxe in his _Actes and Monuments_, "there were many images cast down and destroyed in many places, as the image of the crucifix in the highway by Coggeshall (Essex). Also John Seward, of Dedham, overthrew a cross in Stoke Park." The spirit of sacrilege and profanity having been aroused, many gross excesses were committed by fanatical persons. Thus one Simon Kent writes on 27th May 1549, to inform the Bishop of Lincoln that a young man had nailed up a dead cat on the market cross at St Ives, Huntingdonshire. At South Littleton, Worcestershire, the "staff and head" of the cross in the churchyard were disposed of by the churchwardens in 1552. In another Worcestershire parish, on the contrary, that of Badsey, the churchwardens in 1557 expended 7s. on the churchyard cross. At Winchester, Bishop Horne, an inveterate innovator, in the injunctions which he drew up for his cathedral church in 1571, ordered "the stone cross in the churchyard" to be "extinguished". At Prestbury, Cheshire, the churchwardens' accounts for 1576 to 1580 record the price paid "for cuttynge (down) the crosse in the churcheyard, and the chargs of one with a certyficat thereof to Manchester" (whence, presumably, the order for the demolition came), and also the amount (14s.) received for the sale of "iron which was aboute" the same cross. This would perhaps refer to the railing for protection, required no longer when once the cross itself had disappeared. On the other hand, according to Thomas Fuller's _Church History of Britain_, Abbot Feckenham built a cross at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, during the period of his imprisonment in Wisbech Castle, _i.e._, from June 1580 to his death in 1585. At Fyfield, Berkshire, at the expense of William Upton, a churchyard cross was erected as late as 1627. Thus individual cases of destruction (as also of repair and reconstruction) no doubt occurred from time to time; but if any particular locality was denuded, it would have been due to the prejudice and bigotry of some individual bishop, archdeacon, or churchwarden, rather than to any systematic iconoclasm authorised by the central government. On 28th August 1643, however, the Puritan party having virtually gained the ascendancy in the kingdom, an Act was passed in Parliament, entitled "Monuments of Superstition or Idolatry to be demolished." This ordinance provides that "all crosses upon all and every ... churches or chappels, or other places of publique prayer, churchyards, or other places to any of the said churches ... belonging, or in any other open place, shall, before the ... first day of November (1643), be taken away and defaced, and none of the like hereafter permitted in any such church ... or other places aforesaid." Local committees were constituted for carrying out the orders of Parliament. Seven eastern counties were entrusted for purgation to the Earl of Manchester, who appointed, as Parliamentary visitor under him, the notorious William Dowsing. This person, though unsurpassed in vandalism, has yet been maligned so far as churchyard crosses are concerned. In 1643 and 1644 he visited, in person or by deputy, 149 churches in Suffolk, keeping a minute record of each day's proceedings; but, strange to say, among all the quantity of objects defaced, his _Journal_ does not specify one single instance of a churchyard cross having been injured or destroyed by him. In some cases the official despoilers met with popular opposition. Thus Richard Baxter relates how, in obedience to the order sent by the Parliament for the demolition of all images of the Holy Trinity and of the Virgin Mary to be found in churches or on the crosses of churchyards, the churchwarden of Kidderminster, Worcestershire, determined to destroy the crucifix upon the churchyard cross there, and accordingly set up a ladder to have reached it. But the ladder proved too short, and whilst he (the churchwarden) was gone to seek another, a crowd of the opposition "party of the town, poor journeymen and servants, took the alarm, and ran together with weapons to defend the crucifix"; and even purposed to wreak their vengeance upon Baxter himself, supposing him to be the prime instigator of the iconoclasm. Numbers of places, and they not necessarily of first rank nor of special size, possessed more crosses than one. For instance, Liverpool, in the Middle Ages but an insignificant village, as compared with its present extent and importance, had its High Cross, White Cross, Red Cross, Town-End Cross, and St Patrick's Cross--five in all. At Brackley, in Northamptonshire, "there were," writes Leland, _circa_ 1535 to 1545, "three goodly crosses of stone in the town, one by south at the end of the town, thrown down a late by thieves that sought for treasure; another at the west end of St James' Church; the third very antique, fair, and costly, in the inward part of the High Street. There be divers tabernacles in this, with ladies and men armed. Some say that the staplers of the town made this; but I think rather some nobleman, lord of the town." [Illustration: 19. CHARLTON MACKEREL, SOMERSETSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 20. BISHOP'S LYDEARD, SOMERSETSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, WITH RECEPTACLE FOR OFFERINGS] At Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, there were six crosses, viz., the churchyard cross (taken down in 1643); the potter's cross, in the middle of the town, and one in each of the four roads leading therefrom. The respective names of these were Collin's Cross, Crab Cross, Wayte Cross, and Maple Cross. Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire, had two crosses standing respectively at the two principal entrances to the town. In 1584 the "stock stone" at Thorpe Cross was sold for 2s. 2d. to John Wythers, who, as part of the bargain, had to undertake to plant an ash, or a thorn tree, in place of it. In the same year, 1584, the "stock stone at Kettelby Cross, with one stone standing," was sold to William Trigg for 5s., the purchaser undertaking, as in the last named case, to plant a tree to mark the site. In addition to the principal cross--the High Cross--of Chester, there was one near St Michael's church. Another cross stood at Barrs, one at Northgate, and another at Spittal Boughton. All three were pulled down in 1583 by order of Archbishop Sandys' visitors. A contributor to the _Gentleman's Magazine_, in 1807, says: "The only remains of any cross at this time," in or near Chester, "is upon the Roode, where races are run." The said meadow, otherwise Roodee, or Roodeye, is situated by the River Dee, not far west of Chester. In former days, down to about 1587, this meadow used to be submerged at high tide, all except one little island, upon which stood an ancient cross of such venerable repute, as an object of pilgrimage, as to give its name to the isle itself. This cross is identical with "the swete rode of Chester," referred to in the ribald verses, entitled "The Fantasie of Idolatrie" printed under the date 1540 in Foxe's _Actes and Monuments_. When Dr George Ormerod wrote his _Chester_ (finished in 1819), the base of this cross, he said, "is, or was lately remaining, and was a few years since replaced." In and around London, besides the well-known crosses of St Paul's, Cheap, and Charing, there were at one time and another three more crosses which may be mentioned. One, called Le Broken Cross, was erected by the Earl of Gloucester in the reign of Henry III. (1216 to 1272), but it did not stand very long. Its site is said to have been the "place of the meeting of the Folkmote ... near St Martin's-le-Grand, about midway between the Northgate of the precinct (of St Paul's) and the church of St Vedast." On 5th September 1379 agreements were drawn up for letting the stations about the Broken Cross to five divers persons. The cross was bodily taken down in 1390. Another was the Cow Cross at Smithfield, a monument referred to by Stow as no longer standing when he wrote. Another instance was the Strand Cross, near Covent Garden. This cross was hexagonal on plan, and comprised four stages. It was standing in 1547, but was ultimately removed, its site being occupied by the Maypole, which was spoken of in 1700 as new. [Illustration: 21, 22, 23. OXFORD SOCKET OF JEWS' CROSS, PRESERVED IN ST FRIDESWIDE'S CHURCH] At Oxford there were at least two crosses, viz., the Jews' cross (Figs. 21-23), and also a noted wayside cross, which the city records show to have been in existence in 1331. It stood without the east gate of the city, in front of the door of St John's Hospital, on or near the site of the present entrance to Magdalen College. As to the monument called the Jews' cross, its origin is historic. In 1268, on Ascension Day, "as the usual procession of scholars and citizens returned from St Frideswide's," and was passing the Jewish synagogue in Fish Street (now St Aldate's), "a Jew suddenly burst from the group of his friends ... and, snatching the crucifix from its bearer, trod it underfoot." Part of the penalty exacted by the Crown was that the Jews of Oxford had to erect, at their own cost, a cross of marble on the spot where the outrage had been committed. The sentence, however, was eventually modified to the extent that, instead of having to endure a perpetual reminder of their humiliation and punishment opposite to the very door of the synagogue, the Jews were allowed to set up the expiatory cross in a less obnoxious position, an open plot by Merton College. Such is the site where it used to be believed that the cross stood. But a certain passage in the city records seems, as the late Herbert Hurst pointed out, to contradict any previously received identification of the site of the Jews' cross, and to locate it rather on some spot near the north side of St Frideswide's church. The passage in question is as follows: "In 1342, Adam Blaket was indicted before John Fitz Perys and William le Iremonger, bailiffs of Oxford, for that he, on the Thursday next before Palm Sunday, feloniously entered by night the enclosure of the cemetery of the Church of St Frideswyde, and there stole and carried off one arm," or other portion (_vana_) "of the great (_capitalis_) cross of the cemetery, of the value of half a mark, and afterwards broke it into four parts." The purloined fragments were subsequently "found and seized. He (Blaket) confessed to the taking, and pleaded that he was at the time a lunatic and not _compos mentis_." Anyhow, if the precise site remains uncertain, there is extant a sculptured socket, which, though it is only of stone, not marble, Mr Hurst pronounced to be "an undoubted part" of the original Jews' cross. This socket was described by Dr James Ingram in 1837 as having been then "recently discovered, on the removal of a quantity of rubbish from the foundation of the walls" of St Frideswide's, embedded in the base of the diagonal buttress at the south-east angle of St Lucy's chapel in the south transept. It is now preserved in the gallery at the south end of the same transept. The four sides are sculptured with what appear to be Old Testament subjects, although only two are now identifiable. The first is the temptation of Adam and Eve, with the serpent coiling round a tree between them; and the second is the sacrifice of Isaac. The third appears to be the sacrifice of an ox or calf; but the whole is much mutilated. Nothing remains of it but the lower part of a human being on the left, and the headless body of a cloven-footed quadruped, the forelegs of which are in a kneeling posture. Above, a hand, issuing from a cloud, lets down a pair of small tablets, or an open book. The subject of the fourth side is a puzzle which has hitherto defied elucidation. It represents three figures, the middle one seated between two upright figures turning away, both having grotesque heads like apes. Below the right foot of one of the figures is what appears to be a dragon or demon, with its leg on the ground. At each angle of the stone is a winged dragon, head downward, the tail terminating in characteristic thirteenth-century foliage. The stone is 1 ft. 11 in. high, by 2 ft. 3 in. square at the bottom, decreasing to 1 ft. 9 in. square at the top. The greatest dimension, inclusive of the figures, is 2 ft. 6 in. in width. It goes without saying that, so long as the land of Britain continued to be open, _i.e._, not subdivided by enclosures--a process which dates back no earlier than the fifteenth century--boundary stones for defining the limits of contiguous parishes, as also of the properties of individuals, assumed much greater importance than would be attached to such marks in later times, after hedges had grown up and fences come into use. The ancient boundary mark might sometimes be a plain post or pillar, or it might take the form of a cross. The latter practice is illustrated by the will of one John Cole, of Thelnetham, Suffolk, dated 8th May 1527. The testator leaves 10s. for erecting a new cross at the spot "at Short Grove's End, where the gospel is said upon Ascension even," and, moreover, expressly directs that this new cross is to be made on the model of one already standing, named "Trapett Crosse at the Hawe Lane's End." The will further provides for an income, arising from certain landed estates, sufficient to yield annually a bushel and a half of malt "to be browne," and a bushel of wheat to be baked, "to fynde a drinking" on the said day in perpetuity, for the parishioners of Thelnetham "to drink at the crosse aforenamed." Here, then, is an instance of a boundary cross explicitly designed for the observances of the Rogation, or gang days. But later on in the sixteenth century, the old order of things was reversed, and the authorities proceeded to stamp out the former time-honoured usages, one after another. Thus Bishop Parkhurst's Injunctions for the diocese of Norwich in 1569, Grindal's for the province of York in 1571, and Sandys' Articles for the diocese of London in the same year, alike prohibited the popish ceremony of "staying at any crosses" during the perambulation of parish bounds on Rogation days. Other ancient customs connected with standing crosses are illustrated by the terms in which prelates of the reformed Church condemn them. Thus, Bishop Bentham's Injunctions for the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in 1565 forbid bearers to set "down the corpse of any dead body by any cross by the way, as they bring it to the burial"; and again, later, Archbishop Grindal's Injunctions for the Province of York in 1571 order that none shall "rest at any cross in carrying any corpse to burying, nor shall leave any little crosses of wood there." In 1585 the Bishop of St David's issued an Injunction to his diocese, among the directions whereof, under the head of "Burial," it is ordered: "First, that there be no crosses of wood made and erected where they use to rest with the corpse; and especially that no wooden crosses be set upon the cross in the churchyard." These strenuous prohibitions only prove that the custom of placing wooden crosses for the dead upon wayside or churchyard crosses must have prevailed in ancient days, and was still tenaciously observed by the people in spite of the drastic change of religion. It may possibly be that the holes, sometimes found drilled in churchyard crosses, were provided, among other purposes, for holding the pegs on which the small wooden memorial crosses could be suspended. Crosses, again, were employed to define, in any given locality, the extent of the right of sanctuary, that powerful safeguard of the age of faith and charity against summary vengeance and injustice. Thus, at Ripon inviolable security was assured within the radius of about a mile around the shrine of St Wilfrid; and accordingly a stone cross was placed close by the edge of each of the five roads leading to the city, to mark the sanctuary bounds. Of these five crosses; the only one whereof any appreciable remnant survives, is that of Sharow. It consists of a massive stone step, with the broken stump of the old shaft. At Wansford, in Northamptonshire, the River Nene is crossed by a fourteenth-century stone bridge; and there, embedded in the ground, in one of the refuges, formed by the triangular space on the top of a cutwater, may be seen the socket of an ancient wayside cross. The upper bed of the stone is barely above the level of the roadway, but its rectangular outline, with the round mortice-hole in the centre, is plain and unmistakable. There seems no reason to doubt that this singularly interesting relic stands _in situ_, and the cross must thus have borne as direct a relationship to the bridge, as a bridge chapel would have done. Near the road leading to the north entrance of Ravenshelm (now Ravensworth) Castle, County Durham, is an old cross, known as the "Butter Cross." The story is told of this, as of many other crosses and landmarks, that the country people used to leave their produce here for the citizens of Newcastle to fetch at the time when the town was stricken by the plague in the sixteenth century. The structure consists of two steps, a massive socket, and a lofty shaft, surmounted by a "four-hole" cross. Halfway between York and the village of Fulford are the remains of a mediæval cross, at which, during the plague in 1665, the country folk used to leave food, to be fetched by the citizens, so avoiding the risk of contagion. This cross served in the same way again, as late as the year 1833, during the cholera epidemic. [Illustration: 24. CHESTER HIGH CROSS] Historically important as having been erected to commemorate the battle between English and Scots, and the defeat of the latter, on 17th October 1346, Nevill's Cross has an added interest, inasmuch as a very full and graphic description of it has been preserved from the pen of one who was evidently well acquainted with the monument. In fact he had been, previously to the Dissolution, a monk in the great Benedictine community at Durham. The following is his account, extracted from the _Rites of Durham_, which he wrote in 1593: "On the west side of the city of Durham there was a most notable, famous, and goodly large cross of stone work, erected and set up to the honour of God and for the victory had thereof, shortly after the battle of Durham, in the same place where the battle was fought, called and known by the name of Nevill's cross, which was set up at the cost and charges of the Lord Ralph Nevill, being one of the most excellent and chief in the said battle and field. Which cross had seven steps about it every way, four squared to the socket that the stalk of the cross did stand in, which socket was made fast to a four-squared broad stone, being the sole or bottom stone of a large thickness that the socket did stand upon, which is a yard and a half square about every way, which stone was one of the steps and the eighth in number. Also the said socket was made fast with iron and lead to the sole stone in every side of the corner of the said socket stone, which was three-quarters deep, and a yard and a quarter square about every way. And the stalk of the cross going upward contained in length three yards and a half up to the boss, being eight square about (octagonal), all of one whole piece of stone, from the socket that it did stand in to the boss above, into the which boss the said stalk was deeply soldered with lead and solder. And in the midst of the stalk, in every second square, was the Nevill cross (saltire) in a scutcheon, being the Lord Nevill's arms, finely cut out and wrought in the said stalk of stone. Also the nether end of the stalk was soldered deep in the hole of the socket that it did stand in, with lead and solder, and at every of the four corners of the said socket below was one of the pictures of the four Evangelists, being Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, very finely set forth and carved in stonemason work. And on the height of the said stalk did stand a most large, fine boss of stone, being eight square round about, finely cut out and bordered and marvellous curiously wrought. And in every square of the nether side of the boss in the masonwork was the Nevill's cross in a scutcheon in one square, and the bull's head, having no scutcheon, in another square; and so contained in every square after the same sort round about the boss. And on the height of the said boss, having a stalk of stone, being a cross standing a little higher than the rest, which was soldered deeply with lead and solder into the hole of the said boss above; whereon was finely cut out and pictured on both sides of the stalk of the said cross the picture of our Saviour Christ, crucified with His arms stretched abroad, His hands nailed to the cross, and His feet being nailed upon the stalk of the said cross below, about a quarter of a yard from above the boss, with the picture of our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the one side of Him, and the picture of St John the Evangelist on the other side, most pitifully lamenting and beholding His torments and cruel death, standing both on the height of the said boss. All which pictures were very artificially and curiously wrought altogether, and finely carved out of one whole entire stone, some part thereof (being) through carved work, both on the east side and the west side of the said cross, with a cover of stone likewise over their head, being all most finely and curiously wrought together out of the said whole stone, which cover of stone was covered all over very finely with lead. And also, in token and remembrance of the said battle of Durham, and to the perpetual memory and honour of the Lord Nevill and his posterity for ever, it was termed by the title and name of Nevill's Cross; which so did there stand and remain, most notorious to all passengers, till of late, in the year of our Lord God 1589, in the night time, the same was broken down and defaced by some lewd and contemptuous wicked persons, thereunto encouraged, as it seemeth, by some who love Christ the worse for the cross' sake, as utterly and spitefully despising all ancient ceremonies and monuments." On the above vivid description of Nevill's Cross no comment is required; but it may not be amiss to append the note by the editors of the reissue by the Surtees Society in 1903: "The socket is all that remains ... The usual symbols of the four Evangelists are still to be seen on the four corners," presumably beneath the places where the statues themselves formerly stood, round about the shaft. The socket "has recently been removed to a new mound some yards distant from the old site. An old milestone stands where the stalk has been. Dr Raine (_St Cuthbert_) states that documents in the Treasury refer to an earlier Nevill's Cross in the same place; but he gives no references." Six and a half miles south of Durham, in the modern village of Ferry Hill, is the fragment of an old stone cross, named Cleve's Cross. This monument, according to tradition, commemorates the valour of one, Roger de Ferry, who slew a monster wild boar, which had been the terror of the whole countryside. At Wigan, Lancashire, are the rude remains of an ancient stone cross, concerning which the following tradition is told. While Sir William Bradshaigh was engaged in the holy wars or in travelling overseas, his wife Mabel, weary of waiting for his return, bigamously married a Welsh knight. After an absence of ten years, however, Sir William came home again and, notwithstanding his pilgrim's habit, was recognised by his wife. Whereupon the Welsh knight fled from the outraged husband, who pursued, and, overtaking, slew him. Dame Mabel's confessor enjoined her to walk barefoot once every week for the rest of her life to do penance at a certain cross on the outskirts of Wigan. The cross is the same which is situated at the end of Standishgate, and has borne the significant name of "Mab's Cross" from the fourteenth century to this day. The romantic story was used by Sir Walter Scott as the basis of his novel, _The Betrothed_. This tradition of employing crosses as places of public penance survives in the shape of the old-fashioned stocks situated at the foot of village and market crosses (Fig. 6). Of Banbury Cross, Oxfordshire, immortalised in nursery rhyme, it is much to be regretted that no vestige remains. John Leland, between about 1535 and 1545, writes in his _Itinerary_: "At the west part of the street," which runs east and west through the town, "is a large area, having a goodly cross with many degrees (steps) about it. In this area is kept every Thursday a very celebrate market." As the churchyard or village cross was the centre of the life of the smaller community, so also the market cross became the centre of the municipal life of towns and boroughs. Thus, it was the custom, at the close of the civic year, for the mayor and electors, being summoned by the blowing of a horn, to assemble at the churchyard cross at Folkestone, and at the market cross (now but a gaunt obelisk) at Ripon, for the election of a mayor for the ensuing year of office. At Chester, "the High Cross (Fig. 24) was the scene of all great civic functions. Here, again and again, royalty was received.... Here proclamations were read out with due formality, and here the (famous) mystery plays were represented." Among the official uses to which market crosses were put was that of a recognised place for public proclamations. Thus, it was at the market cross at Darlington, in 1312, that the Bishop's order, prohibiting a tournament, which had been announced to take place, was read. This particular market cross, by the way, no longer exists, but its site is perpetuated by a plain cylindrical column, surmounted by a ball, erected at the cost of Dame Dorothy Browne in 1727. At Wells it was a time-honoured custom that public proclamations should always be read and published first at the High Cross. It was from the cross at Lyme, Dorset, where he landed on 11th June 1685, that the declaration of the rebel Duke of Monmouth was read; and it was from the crosses of Taunton on 20th June, and Bridgwater, a day or two later, that, emboldened by his reception in the west, he caused himself to be proclaimed King of England--only to meet with crushing humiliation and defeat from the forces of King James II. at Sedgemoor on 6th July 1685. The strangest and ghastliest of all uses to which a village cross could be put is that of a gallows; but, unless tradition lies, the notorious Judge Jeffreys actually hanged a man on the cross at Wedmore, Somerset. This identical cross, with its tall shaft and sculptured head, still stands, though removed from its original site beside the shambles to the garden of the house in which Judge Jeffreys himself is believed to have lodged, presumably during the Bloody Assize in the autumn of 1685, following the collapse of Monmouth's rebellion. At Louth, Lincolnshire, a market cross was erected by the parish in 1521-22. That this structure was in the form of a roofed shelter, with a lofty shaft rising from the midst, is evident from the circumstances of the rebellion in 1536. The malcontents, it is recorded, had seized a number of the official books, and were about to burn them unread, when they came face to face with a certain priest, named William Morland. Upon his remonstrating with them, they dragged him under the High Cross and compelled him to examine the said books before consigning them to the flames. Meanwhile, others of the crowd brought the registrar, "and caused him, by a ladder, to climb up to the altitude, or highest part, of the cross," who, in abject terror for his life, sought to appease the mob by consenting to the destruction of the books in his charge. A portion of this cross, being, perhaps, so much of it as was adjudged to be superstitious, was taken down in 1573. Three stones were purchased for mending the cross in 1632, and further repairs, including tiling, were carried out in 1639. The "cross pales," presumably the railings or posts about the cross, were removed in October 1753; but a proposal for enclosing the structure, "to keep it clean and decent," was carried by the parish in November 1769. Another cross was situated at a spot in Louth, known as Julian Bower. This cross, according to the churchwardens' accounts, was renewed in stone in 1544. At Peterborough the old market cross, long since swept away, was a covered cross, as is evident from the town accounts, which note, in 1649, a sum of money "received under the market cross by several fellows for the use of the poor"; and, again, a further sum in 1652 "from the standers under the cross." In parts of Wales it was formerly the custom for labourers offering themselves for hire to congregate at the village cross, bargains made at such a spot being regarded as of more binding nature than those made elsewhere. It was indeed considered peculiarly dishonourable and impious to break a contract made at the cross. The village cross of Rhuddlan, in Flintshire, was so much frequented for hiring purposes, that the amount of the wages prevailing there became the standard for the time being for the whole district. There was also this distinction, viz., that labourers, hired at Rhuddlan, were hired for a week, during which term the rate agreed upon could not be altered; as distinguished from the crosses of other places where the custom was for the labourer to be hired by the day only--the scale of his pay being liable to fluctuate accordingly from day to day. In addition to the several kinds of crosses above enumerated, some writers name "weeping crosses." What is meant by a weeping cross is not clear, nor has anyone pretended to assign to such edifices, if indeed they ever existed except in popular fallacy, any characteristic features by which they may be recognised as distinct from other crosses. For all practical purposes, then, the weeping cross is not. Or again, it might well have been in any given case that a cross was provided in order that a preacher might deliver his sermon from its steps. But unless such a cross was constructed with the architectural features of a pulpit cross (like those, for instance, at Iron Acton (Fig. 144) or the Blackfriars' Cross at Hereford (Fig. 143)) then surely it must only be reckoned with the normal type of churchyard or village cross, from which it differs in no particular whatever. In a word, the one standard by which the various crosses in the following pages are grouped and classified is not their respective use and purpose, real or imaginary, but their structural shape. II. MONOLITH CROSSES The peculiar form of many crosses of Cornish type, among others, viz., a thick, rude monolith, with rounded head, is accounted for by some authorities, who pronounce such crosses to be nothing else than primeval menhirs. These venerated stones, then, it is stated, instead of being demolished on the conversion of the populace from paganism, were retained, and, after having the crucifixion or some other Christian device incised, or sculptured in bas-relief, upon the upper portion of the shaft, pressed into the service of the newly adopted faith. Such, at any rate, was the practice of St Patrick, in the fifth century. It is true that if in any place he found the old superstitious worship too deep-rooted and perverse to admit of transformation, as it befell at Magh Sleacht, in County Cavan, where he encountered a group of thirteen pagan menhirs, he could not do but overthrow them without ruth; but whenever, on the other hand, as beside Lough Hacket, in County Galway, he found other menhirs, the popular regard for which was capable of being diverted into Christian channels, he spared the pillar-stones, sanctifying them with holy names and emblems. The cutting away of certain portions of the top of the stone would result in a short-armed cross; or, again, a little shaping, combined with piercing, would produce the four-holed cross, so-called, viz., a cross within a ring or circle. It should be remarked at the outset that the dating of these early monuments is a study which has hitherto been strangely neglected. Antiquaries, like the late J. Romilly Allen, for example, have analysed and codified the ornamented motifs of early crosses with methodical precision; but the chronological side of the subject is still a matter of debate. So widely do experts differ that sometimes it happens that the same monument will be assigned by some to the fifth or sixth, and by others to later dates ranging to the twelfth century. Even when the cross happens to be inscribed with runes, which might be expected to afford an authentic clue as to its date and origin, the readings and interpretations propounded by connoisseurs are so irreconcilable as to make one sceptical of arriving at truth or finality through their guidance. The whole question of chronology yet awaits investigation by some competent authority. It must be understood, therefore, that the dates attributed to the several examples in this section cannot pretend to be anything else but approximate, although every care has been taken to obtain the most approved estimate. [Illustration: 25, 26. BEWCASTLE, CUMBERLAND TWO VIEWS OF MONOLITH IN THE CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 27, 28. EYAM, DERBYSHIRE VIEWS OF CROSS IN CHURCHYARD, SHOWING FRONT AND BACK] [Illustration: 29, 30. SANDBACH, CHESHIRE DETAILS OF CROSSES, WITH PLAN, SHOWING HOW THEY STAND] [Illustration: 31. SANDBACH, CHESHIRE] South of the church, in the churchyard at Bewcastle, Cumberland, stands an obelisk or shaft of an early cross (Figs. 3, 25, and 26), strikingly like the famous cross at Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire. The head of the latter is fairly complete, but in the case of the Bewcastle cross "the head was broken off long ago," wrote Bishop G. F. Browne. "About the year 1600, it was sent ... to Lord Arundel, and, beyond a description in Camden, with an attempt at a representation of the Runic inscription it bore, nothing has been heard of it since." The height of the surviving part is 14 ft. 6 in. It is incised with Anglian runes, which, however, are so much worn, and have been so variously rendered, that no reliance can be placed on their alleged authority. Scholars also differ widely as to the date of the cross, some placing it as early as 665, and others even as late as 1150. The west face comprises three standing human figures, in three tiers, the lowest depicting a man with a hawk, while the middle one, a nimbed figure, has been identified as Christ setting His feet upon the heads of monsters. On the east face is one long uninterrupted vine scroll, with birds and beasts in the volutes. The north and south faces are subdivided into panels containing chequers, interlaced knots, and scrollwork. In one of the scrolls on the south face is the oldest detached dial in existence, as distinct from dials on the walls of buildings. It presents a combination of the old 24-system and the octaval system; but the gnomon is missing. In the churchyard of Eyam, Derbyshire, is a peculiarly handsome cross, of Anglo-Saxon workmanship, of about the year 700 (Figs. 27 and 28). The cross now measures 9 ft. 4 in. high; but the head is detached and obviously incomplete, if indeed it belongs to the shaft at all. Assuming, however, that it does belong, the existing lines and proportions would make the cross in its original state attain a total height of some 11 ft. 6 in. The width across the arms is 3 ft. 3 in. Both faces of the cross-top are sculptured with four angels each, that one at the intersection being encircled with a ring. All that part of the head below the central medallion is missing. The obverse of the shaft has two panels of figure-subjects above a very rich and elaborate interlaced knot-ornament. The edges have an interlaced pattern derived from a six-cord plait. The reverse of the shaft is occupied with the volutes of a "vine scroll." In the churchyard of Bakewell, Derbyshire, stands the relic of a monolith with short-limbed cross-head (Fig. 39). It dates from about 800 to 900; and, exclusive of the boulder which forms the base, stands 7 ft. 10 in. high, by about 2 ft. wide over all at the widest part. One portion is sculptured with four compartments of figure-subjects, presumably scriptural, the uppermost one being apparently a crucifixion, though the stone is too much curtailed, and the ornament too broken, for certainty on the point. The other face and the sides are occupied with so-called vine scroll, an adaptation of debased classical Roman work. [Illustration: 32. IRTON, CUMBERLAND CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD] The two mutilated crosses standing side by side in the market square at Sandbach, Cheshire (Figs. 29, 30, and 31), have had an eventful history. Dating from the ninth century, it is on record that they were still standing in 1585; but, since they are not mentioned by Webb in 1621, the assumption is that they had been broken up in the interval. Anyhow, the different parts became dispersed. Some were taken, by Sir John Crewe, to Utkinton Hall, where they remained until his death in 1711. They were subsequently removed to Tarporley rectory. Thence, after Cole, the antiquary, had seen and made drawings of them in 1757, they were taken to Oulton Park, where they were seen and drawn by S. Lysons. Other portions, however, of these crosses never left Sandbach, some of the lower parts being built into a wall by the town well, while the summit was found to have been buried in a garden. Lastly, through the zealous instrumentality of Dr George Ormerod, the various fragments were collected, and re-erected at Sandbach in September 1816. "The two crosses stand on a substructure of two steps, with two sockets, in which the crosses are fixed. At the angle of each stage of the platform are stone posts, on which figures have been rudely carved." The head of either cross had been broken off, so that their proper height has been reduced. "The crosses are now of unequal height.... The taller one is 16 ft. 8 in. high; the shorter one, 11 ft. 11 in." high. Both crosses are of rectangular section, and tapering. It is not easy to convey in words an adequate idea of the extraordinary richness and variety of their sculptured ornament, which includes patterns derived from three-cord, four-cord, and eight-cord plaits, and figure of eight knots, as well as "much the finest series of figure subjects ... probably in all England." On the larger cross the Crucifixion amid the Evangelistic symbols, and beneath it the Nativity, with the ox and ass adoring, are clearly discernible; but the identification of other subjects is in many cases only conjectural. "The smaller cross bears a variety of human figures placed within ... lozenges." The stone of the crosses is of lower Silurian formation, practically indestructible by the natural action of the weather, a circumstance which accounts for the remarkable preservation of those parts which the wanton hand of man has spared. The monolith cross in the churchyard at Irton, Cumberland (Fig. 32), stands 9 ft. 8 in. high, and, with the exception of the cross-head, the surface of which is much worn, is a singularly perfect specimen. Its edges are ornamented with quasi-classic vine scrolls. The obverse and reverse are covered with interlaced ornaments and key patterns. The uppermost panel on one face is a diaper formed by a repetition of small Greek crosses, set diagonally. The date of this cross is approximately 950. The tall sandstone cross, now in the churchyard of Gosforth, in Cumberland (Fig. 33), is classed by the late Mr J. Romilly Allen as belonging to a well-known type, Mercian in origin, in which the shaft is cylindrical below and rectangular in the upper part. It may be dated from about 1000 to 1066. A second cross, which is recorded to have stood at a distance of 7 ft. from the first named, disappeared, probably in the year 1789. In the extant cross the four flat faces of the upper part of the shaft gradually die off into the round surface of the lower part, giving a semicircular line of intersection, which is emphasised by a roll moulding, forming a continuation of the mouldings on the four square angles. The four flat surfaces exhibit a great variety of human and animal forms, with zoomorphic ornament and abstract plaits. Some of the subjects have been interpreted as illustrating the stories of Heimdal and Loke, from Norse mythology, though the whole is actually surmounted by a Christian four-holed cross for head. The round part of the shaft in crosses of this type is not, as a rule, ornamented. The Gosforth cross, therefore, is in this respect exceptional. Its height is 14 ft. 6 in. [Illustration: 33. GOSFORTH, CUMBERLAND CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD] Within Whitford parish, Flintshire, about a mile from the village, on open ground, and quite unprotected, stands an ancient monolith cross, known as Maen y Chwyfan (Fig. 36). The name can be traced back at least to the year 1388. The first part of it is identical with the first syllable of the word menhir. The last part of the name is of doubtful signification. Some have thought that the whole means "St Cwyfan's stone." The precise age of the cross is likewise doubtful, but it may be dated from about 950 to 1000. Its total height above ground is 11 ft. 3 in., by 11 in. thick, the stem diminishing in width from 2 ft. 5 in. at the base to 1 ft. 8 in. at the neck of the solid wheel-head, the diameter of which is 2 ft. 4 in. The flat stone, through which the stem passes for support, measures 4 ft. 11 in. by 4 ft. 4 in. The cross is incised on the edges, as well as on both faces; though almost all the ornament of the lower half of the reverse, or west face, has perished. The condition of the obverse, or east face, is by far the most perfect, and exhibits a wonderful combination of patterns--crosses, knots, osier-plaits, and other devices. In the head, the Triquetra, or three-cornered knot, is conspicuous. Altogether the Maen y Chwyfan is the most important and striking monument of its kind in North Wales. [Illustration: 34. WHALLEY, LANCASHIRE CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 35. CHEADLE, CHESHIRE CROSS, NOW IN YORK MUSEUM] Writing in 1872, Mr J. T. Blight described the early twelfth-century cross (now in the cemetery of Lanherne House Nunnery, Mawgan-in-Pyder, Cornwall) (Fig. 38) as having been "removed several years since from the Chapel Close of the Barton of Roseworthy, in the parish of Gwinear." The crucifix, sculptured in low relief, is of the rudest and most primitive character, while the cross itself belongs to the class known as "four-holed." It is of Pentewan stone. Interlaced work forms the greater part of the ornament, and on the lower portion of the shaft, on either face, is an ancient inscription. The shaft has an unmistakable entasis. The head of another four-holed cross, the holes having the shape of rough trefoils, is to be seen in the churchyard of St Columb Major, Cornwall. Both faces of the cross are similarly sculptured with the Triquetra (Fig. 37). The height is 3 ft. 1½ in. by 2 ft. 9 in. wide, over all, the material granite. At Cheadle, Cheshire, in 1875, there were dug up, in a brickfield opposite to the Convalescent Hospital, the fragments of an early cross, probably of the tenth century, of Anglo-Saxon type (Fig. 35). In each limb of the cross, as well as at the intersection, is a convex boss. The material of the cross is a coarse grit stone. The dimensions are 1 ft. 4 in. wide at the greatest width, by 2 ft. 8 in. in height. It is now preserved at the Museum at York. In the parish churchyard of Whalley, Lancashire, stands a cross (Fig. 34), which was, no doubt, originally a monolith, but has been broken across, and appears to have had its fractured edges trimmed and squared. At any rate, part of the stem, perhaps as much as 2 ft. of the height, where the cross-head rests upon it, is obviously missing. The arms also are missing, but the cross was originally of much the same outline as that of the cross at Irton and that from Cheadle. The ornament of the Whalley cross, however, is of much more refined execution. The date of it may be about 1000. In the churchyard of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, opposite to the south porch, stands an ancient shaft, 14 ft. high, traditionally known as the Danes' cross (Fig. 2). It rises from a round stone, 7 ft. in diameter, and its form is that of a cylinder, 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, tapering toward the neck. Almost the entire surface of the shaft is covered with sculptured ornament of about the year 1150 to 1175. There is, or was, a somewhat similar example in the churchyard of Leek, in the same county. Another twelfth-century cross is that inscribed in memory of Ralph's son, William, at Fletton, in Huntingdonshire (Figs. 40, 41). This cross is a monolith, though the continuity of the design is interrupted by a heavy fillet, forming a horizontal band round the middle of the shaft. [Illustration: 36. WHITFORD, FLINTSHIRE EAST SIDE OF CROSS, NAMED MAEN Y CHWYFAN] [Illustration: 37. ST COLUMB MAJOR, CORNWALL HEAD OF A CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 38. MAWGAN-IN-PYDER, CORNWALL LANHERNE HOUSE NUNNERY, CROSS FROM ROSEWORTHY, GWINEAR] [Illustration: 39. BAKEWELL, DERBYSHIRE CROSS IN CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 40, 41. FLETTON, HUNTINGDONSHIRE FRONT AND BACK OF CROSS] [Illustration: 42. HEXHAM, NORTHUMBERLAND CROSS AT ST GILES' HOSPITAL] [Illustration: 43. WOOLER, HEDGELEY MOOR, NORTHUMBERLAND PERCY'S CROSS] [Illustration: 44. BLANCHLAND, NORTHUMBERLAND CROSS IN THE ABBEY CHURCHYARD] The remains of the cross in the grounds of the Spital at Hexham (Fig. 42) offer an instance of vine scrollwork, derived from debased late-classic ornament. Another side of the shaft is sculptured in low relief with a primitive representation of the Crucifixion between two figures, which, however, bear but slight resemblance to the Mary and John of post-Conquest tradition. On the plain of Hedgeley Moor, near Wooler, in the north part of Northumberland, stands a monolith, commonly known as Percy's Cross (Fig. 43), because it is alleged to mark the spot where, on 24th April 1464, Sir Ralph Percy fell in a desperate attempt, on the part of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI., to recover the throne for her demented husband. So rude and primitive is this monument that it is hard to believe that it could have been executed in the technically skilled period of the fifteenth century. It displays conspicuously, however, the badges of the house of Percy--the luces, or pike, the mascles, and the crescents, sculptured on its eight sides. The pillar stands on a plain, rugged socket. This cross became the rallying point, where the men of the north, opposed to the religious innovations of Henry VIII., gathered under the banner of the Five Wounds, badge of the ill-starred Pilgrimage of Grace, in 1536-7. Percy's Cross, on Hedgeley Moor, must not be confounded with the Percy Cross at Otterburn, erected to commemorate the battle of Chevy Chase, fought on 19th August 1388. The latter cross is a simple monolith, which has a decided entasis, and is mounted on a pile of masonry, resembling but roughly a flight of circular steps. The cross in the churchyard of Blanchland Abbey, Northumberland (Fig. 44), is an interesting example of Gothic design applied to a monolith. From the style of its head this cross can scarcely date back any earlier than the late-thirteenth, or early-fourteenth century. III. THE SHAFT-ON-STEPS TYPE The average form of standing cross, and such to which the vast majority of them, not in churchyards only, but also on village greens and squares, or by the wayside, belongs, is that of the shaft-on-steps type. The fully developed cross of this sort consists of steps or calvary, socket, shaft or stem, capital or knop, and head. The latter, it should be remarked, is that part of the cross which, no doubt on account of the sacred or legendary significance of the figures sculptured upon it, is now most commonly absent. The remaining elements consisting of such simple units, it is truly wonderful how great variety of treatment is to be observed in crosses of the kind. The resources of their design may almost be said to be unlimited. It rarely happens that any two examples are found quite alike in all respects. For though the simplest of motifs be adopted, yet a minute change of detail, such as a hollow chamfer instead of a plain, flat bevel, or the setting of an angle pedestal diagonally instead of squarely with the side it adjoins, or some such other slight divergence, if insignificant in itself, will not fail to produce, by consistent repetition, a widely different result in the aggregate. The parts which lend themselves more appropriately than the rest to ornamental treatment are the socket, the knop, and most of all, the head. The steps, whether circular, rectangular, hexagonal, or octagonal on plan, are not made the subject for ornament, except rarely, and then it is confined to a moulded overhanging drip, or a moulded set-off in the angle between the tread and the riser, as for example, at Bishop's Lydeard (Fig. 20), Charlton Mackerel (Fig. 19), and North Petherton, in Somersetshire (Fig. 77), and Raunds, in Northamptonshire (Fig. 45). Raunds cross has two steps, and the riser of the upper one is enriched with late-Gothic quatrefoil panelling. Such treatment, however, is altogether exceptional; and even in this case can scarcely be authentic, seeing that the quatrefoils are not properly spaced, as they must have been spaced, had they been designed for the position they now occupy. [Illustration: 45. RAUNDS, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] On the other hand, the stone block or socket, into which the shaft is mortised (and furthermore, as a rule, secured with lead), was regarded as a thoroughly appropriate place for ornament. It is most usually square on plan, and its upper bed made octagonal by means of steps or broaches, in the shaping of which a very great variety is manifested. The commonest form of step is diamond-pointed, but there are others which take the shape of a sort of round hump. Examples of plain diamond steps occur in the sockets of Thatcham (Fig. 61) and Water Perry (Fig. 4) crosses. The socket at Stanway, Gloucestershire (Fig. 60), with its severely geometrical triangles and lozenges, is of most unusual form. It measures 1 ft. 10 in. high, exclusive of the fractured stump of the shaft. Convex angle-stops occur at Carlton (Fig. 63), Cumnor (Fig. 59), Stringston (Fig. 5), and Wicken (Fig. 62). The socket of the last-named cross is 2 ft. 6 in. square by 1 ft. 8 in. high. Its octagonal shaft is 11½ in. square at the foot, with pointed stops reaching up to a height of 9 in. Some of the round stops, at the corners of sockets, have a diagonal ridge extending to the outer angle, as at Carlton (Fig. 63), Stevington (Fig. 17), and Stringston (Fig. 5). The knop of the last-named, it may be mentioned, consisted of four demi-angels, holding shields, but their heads have been broken off, and themselves made almost unrecognisable through defacement. To resume, the sockets of the crosses at Elmswell in Suffolk, at Bradford Abbas and Stalbridge (Fig. 58), both in Dorsetshire, and of at least a dozen crosses in Somersetshire, including Doulting (Figs. 74, 75, and 76), Evercreech, Minehead, North Petherton (Fig. 77), West Pennard, and Wraxall, have angle-pedestals on every alternate cant of the octagon. These pedestals may have been designed for statuettes of the four Evangelists. Whatever the subject of the figures, the effect of the whole group, with the tall shaft in the middle, must have been very handsome. At Dundry (Fig. 78) and Wick St Laurence, both in Somersetshire, instead of detached or engaged pedestals, there are, at the angles of the square socket, clasping buttresses with mouldings. The plan of Dundry, Wraxall, and Yatton is made extra elaborate and complex by means of a plinth, forming an eight-pointed figure, inserted between the socket and the topmost step of the calvary. At Headington (Figs. 69 and 70), Ombersley (Figs. 66, 67, and 68), Raglan (Fig. 71), and Wicken (Fig. 62), the sockets are handsomely panelled with late-Gothic tracery ornament, principally quatrefoils. The sockets of Doulting (Figs. 74, 75, and 76) and West Pennard crosses, in Somersetshire, have emblems of the Passion carved on the sides; that at Charlton Mackerel (Fig. 19) has the Evangelistic symbols in the same position. More rarely, as at Bishop's Lydeard (Fig. 20) and Long Sutton, both also in Somersetshire, and at Rampisham and Stalbridge (Fig. 58), both in Dorsetshire, and Yarnton, Oxfordshire (Figs. 51 and 52), the panels of the socket contain sculptured figure-subjects. An octagonal socket at Westcote, Gloucestershire, has a standing figure under a trefoiled niche on each side. This is an early example, since its date is the thirteenth century. At Didmarton, in the same county, is a fourteenth-century socket, octagonal on plan, having a half-length figure sculptured on every alternate side. The churchyard cross at Dorchester, Oxfordshire (Fig. 65), had lost its original head by the time that Buckler made his sketch in 1813. According to him, the lower step was 6 in. high, and the next one above it 10 in. high. The socket was 1 ft. 7 in. square on plan, by 1 ft. 6 in. high; the shaft being a monolith 8 ft. 6½ in. high from socket to head. As to the socket, the transition from square to octagon, by means of stops, is very effective. The cross has since suffered drastic "restoration." The treatment of the stops on the socket may be compared with that at Keyingham, Yorkshire (Fig. 64), and Headington, Oxfordshire (Fig. 69). The Whitefriars' cross (Figs. 72 and 73), so-called, about a mile from Hereford, is believed to have been built, shortly after the great plague at Hereford in the fourteenth century, by Lewis Charlton, Bishop from 1361 to 1369. On the summit of a lofty flight of seven steps rises a high pedestal, hexagonal on plan, each side of which has a sunk panel, sculptured with a shield charged with a lion rampant. The cornice is embattled, and the whole was crowned with a moulded socket. Such was the state of the monument in 1806, the shaft and cross-head having completely disappeared, thereby reducing the total height to some 15 ft. A new shaft and cross, disproportionately large, were "restored" by the year 1875. The peculiar feature of this cross is the lofty pedestal, which scarcely has any parallel, with the exception of the crosses of Helpston, in Northamptonshire, and of Aylburton and Clearwell, both in Gloucestershire. As to the shaft, whether it be cylindrical, clustered, square, or octagonal, it usually tapers, but is very seldom ornamented, beyond having a stop near the foot of each alternate cant in an octagonal stem. A few crosses may now be described, illustrating different treatments of the shaft. The cross in the churchyard at Rocester, Staffordshire (Figs. 47 and 48), has three steps, each 6 in. high. The socket is 2 ft. 4 in. high, and the tapering stem, which is 1 ft. square over all at the bottom, is 11 ft. 9 in. high, exclusive of the capital. The stem, in the form of four keel-moulded shafts, with a vertical strip of dog-tooth ornament between them, must be of early date, possibly as early as 1230. The socket of the Great Grimsby churchyard cross (Fig. 49) may be earlier still, although the stem or shaft itself might be somewhat later, perhaps about the middle of the thirteenth century. On plan the stem consists of four engaged shafts, each with a keel-mould on its outermost projection. The step is 3 ft. 8 in. square by 9 in. high. Next is a socket, 2 ft. 7 in. square on plan, consisting of two stages, the lower having a trefoiled arcade on each of its four sides, the upper one octagonal, with mouldings. The shaft is 6 ft. 2 in. high, including the capital. The total height is 10 ft. 3 in. The village cross at Harringworth, Northamptonshire, has, not unlike the last example, a shaft composed of a cluster of eight engaged columns. It is apparently of late thirteenth-century date. Two Oxfordshire examples, both of about the same date, 1290, viz., the churchyard cross at Yarnton (Figs. 51 and 52) and the market cross at Eynsham (Fig. 50), are adorned with sculpture, notably with canopied figures in low relief surrounding the foot of the shaft. Both shafts are much weather-worn, and that of Yarnton has lost its upper half, but the design of the two crosses appears to have been very similar. Yarnton cross stands upon two circular steps, the lower one of which has a diameter of about 6 ft. 9 in. or 7 ft. The socket has a circular plinth cut out of the same block of stone, and is on plan a quatrefoil of four circles, with the corners of a smaller square occupying the inner angles. The moulded capping is also cut in the same block. On each of the four semicircular faces is a niche incised with a figure in armour, kneeling, except on the eastern face, which exhibits a figure reclining somewhat in the familiar "Dying Gaul" attitude. The figure on the south face has a shield on the left arm. The bottom of the shaft is square on plan, with beaded angles, while the other part is on plan a circle, surrounded by four smaller engaged circles, or segments of circles. The figures round the shaft are four saints, now too much worn to be identified, under steep gables, with crockets. The cross at Eynsham differs from that at Yarnton more in the socket than in any other part. The Eynsham socket is a square block, with a figure sculptured at each angle, and gabled panels between. The upper part of the shaft is complete, and shows what must have been the form of the portion now wanting from Yarnton cross. Another instance of an ornamented shaft is that of Mitchel Troy (Fig. 57). There the stem, a monolith of reddish sandstone, about 1 ft. by 8 in. on plan at the foot, tapers to about half the above dimensions at the point where it is broken off, at a height of about 11 ft. The angles are chamfered, and the chamfers are ornamented with ball-flowers alternating with shields, sixteen ball-flowers on each chamfer. The date of this cross is the fourteenth century. Two Northamptonshire crosses, those of Higham Ferrers (_c._ 1320) and Irthlingborough (_c._ 1280) respectively (Figs. 55 and 56), are ornamented with sculptured decorations throughout the whole height of the shaft. At Ashton-under-Hill, Gloucestershire, the face of the shaft of the cross, about a third of the distance up from the bottom, is ornamented with a scutcheon. A certain number of Somersetshire crosses has a figure under a niche on one side of the shaft. In cases where, as at Burton St David, Broadway, Holford, Montacute, and Wiveliscombe, the niche and figure are sunk into the body of the monolith itself, there can scarcely be any objection to the device. But where, on the contrary, the statue, set on a bracket, stands prominently forward beyond the face of the shaft, the effect is anything but happy. For then the shaft looks so weighted down in one direction as almost to overbalance. The crosses at Bishop's Lydeard (Fig. 20) and Crowcombe (Fig. 118) are particularly exaggerated instances in point; others only less marked being the crosses at Drayton (Fig. 54), Fitzhead, Heathfield, Hinton St George, and Horsington (Fig. 53). But this peculiarity is not confined to Somersetshire. Thus, at Stalbridge, Dorsetshire (Fig. 58), a conspicuous statue and niche occur on one side of the shaft, while at Bradford Abbas, in the same county, the churchyard cross, though much decayed, affords unmistakable traces of having had a statue sculptured on each of the four sides of the shaft. A similar arrangement is to be found in Langley Abbey cross, Norfolk. [Illustration: 46. ROTHERSTHORP, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE HEAD OF CROSS] The knop, though richly sculptured, is rarely the pronounced and distinctive feature that it is at Maughold (Figs. 86, 87), St Donat's (Figs. 108, 109), and Sherburn-in-Elmet (Fig. 113), or in the so-called Ravenspurne cross, a monument now standing at Hedon, Yorkshire (Fig. 79). The chamfers of its shaft have traces of figures about midway, and the head is large and imposing, but too ill-defined for the subject to be identified. It has, however, been described as having "curious sculptured emblems of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary." The cross is said to have been erected to commemorate the landing of Henry IV. in 1399 at Ravenspur, near Spurn Head, in the East Riding. Edward IV. also landed there in 1471. Ravenspur was a well-known seaport in former times, but its site is now completely submerged. The cross stood on the seashore at Kilnsea until 1818, when it was removed further inland, for safety from the encroaching sea. It was eventually set up in the town of Hedon. Usually the knop is reduced to a mere bead, or at any rate is nothing more prominent than the expanding cove beneath the actual head, as at Ampney Crucis, Derwen, and in the two crosses at Cricklade. A factor of immense importance in preserving the organic coherence between shaft and head (wherever the latter takes the form of a cross) is that the lines of the shaft below the knop and of the lower limb of the cross above the knop, should be absolutely continuous, as though passing through, but not interrupted by, the knop. This requisite is satisfactorily exemplified by two very fine Lincolnshire specimens, viz., the well proportioned cross at Somersby (Fig. 81), and one, now at Keyingham, Yorkshire (Fig. 80), known, from the name of him who set it up there, as the Owst cross, since the exact place from which it originally came in Lincolnshire has not been recorded. In both these instances, the handsome knop, moulded and embattled, is but a surrounding band or ring, which occasions no sort of break in the composition, nor interferes at all with the even trend of its upward lines. At Somersby the motif of the crenellated knop is admirably followed up in the battlements of the gabled roof over the head of the crucifix. The shaft is octagonal, and the cross stands altogether 15 ft. high. The crown and glory of the cross is the head, and it was upon this that the choicest art of the sculptor was lavished; and it is instructive to trace the development from the rudimentary crudities of the thirteenth to the perfect maturity of the late-fifteenth century. In pulling down an old barn in the village of Rothersthorp, Northamptonshire, in 1869, there was found the head of a cross (Fig. 46), which was placed in the parish church in about 1890. The stone is 2 ft. 9 in. high by 1 ft. 3 in. wide. The crucifix, which is surrounded by a ring, springs from a mass of thirteenth-century foliage, the capital beneath being surrounded with a belt of foliage of similar kind. At Halesowen, Worcestershire (Fig. 82), in or about 1915, there was found, built into the walls of a cottage, the sculptured head of a cross, which may date as far back as 1300 to 1320. It is of red sandstone, and much weatherworn, besides the deliberate defacement which it has undergone. On plan it is an oblong square, 10 in. by 6 in., the extreme height being 1 ft. 7½ in. On one side is a crucifixion without attendant figures; and, on the opposite side, the Blessed Virgin enthroned, holding her Divine Son on one arm and an apple in the other hand. The ends of the cross-head contain unidentified figures, one a female saint, conjectured to be St Agatha, the other an ecclesiastic, vested in amice and chasuble, and holding his crosier in his left hand. That which he wears on his head is broken, but it looks more like a tiara than a mitre. This cross-head is a peculiarly interesting example, not only because of its early date, but also because its existence is hardly known. The cross-head found among the ruins of Croxden Abbey, Staffordshire (Fig. 88), and sketched by Buckler in the first half of the nineteenth century, is of a somewhat unusual type for its purpose, with handsome crocketing. The Christ has the feet crossed and fastened with a single nail in the newer fashion, though the arms are, in the ancient mode, perfectly horizontal. The work dates probably from the closing years of the fourteenth century. How widely individual treatment might vary within a comparatively short space of time is illustrated by the fragments of the cross-head, found built into the east gable of North Hinksey church, in Berkshire, near Oxford (Figs. 83, 84, and 85). The cross is of rich floriation, overlaid upon which is a perfectly plain narrow cross, bearing the image of the Crucified, Whose feet are crossed, as at Croxden; while, on the contrary, the arms and hands are dragged upward in the fashion that prevailed at a much later period. This cross-head belongs to about the middle of the fourteenth century. The shaft and steps still stand in the churchyard, to the south of the chancel. The shaft is fractured at a height of 8 ft. 9 in. from the socket; the total height, including socket and steps, is 13 ft. 8 in. At Bleadon, Somersetshire, "a few years ago," wrote C. Pooley in 1877, during the restoration of the church, in removing the plaster, there was found embedded in a recess in the east wall of the porch, the sculptured stone head of a cross of the time of Edward III. (Fig. 89). The side exposed, the reverse, portrays the Blessed Virgin and Child between two donors, a man and woman, kneeling. The remarkable feature of this cross-head is the gilding and polychrome decoration, of which considerable traces had survived. The crucifix, on the obverse, being turned inward to the wall, is hidden from view; but, since this particular cross belongs to the same group as those, for example, of Stoke-sub-Hamdon, Stringston, and Wedmore, in the same county, in which the upper part of the figure-sculpture is pierced through from front to back, the arms and upper limb of the cross remain clearly visible from the reverse side. In the churchyard of Newmarket, Flintshire (Figs. 90, 91), stands a remarkable cross, with octagonal socket and shaft, both having diamond-pointed stops. The shaft is 6 ft. 5 in. high, and surmounted with a massive capital or knop. The head is tabernacled on all four faces, but its end niches are empty. The niches of the obverse and reverse have each a crucifixion, the one unaccompanied, the other between Mary and John. This curious anomaly of a double yet divergent representation in one and the same cross-head occurs also at Mitton, Yorkshire. The cross-head at Newmarket measures 3 ft. 6 in. wide at its widest, by 1 ft. 6 in. from front to back. The date of the work is about the middle of the fourteenth century. At Maughold, Isle of Man (Figs. 86, 87), just outside the churchyard gate, and at a distance of about 90 ft. from the north-west angle of the church, stands a cross of very remarkable design, quite unlike the distinctive Manxland type. It is, in fact, of middle-Gothic, belonging, to all appearance, with its blunt cusps and its turgid crockets and finial, to the approximate period of 1330 to 1340. Some authorities, however, assign it to a date some hundred years or more later. The head and knop are in two pieces, which, being of St Bees sandstone, a material foreign to the island, must have been imported thither, perhaps already carved complete, ready for fixing. The knop is square, measuring 14 in. every way. The head is 2 ft. 7 in. high, by 18 in. wide at the widest part, by 8 in. thick. Both head and shaft are tenoned into the knop. The shaft, 5 ft. 1 in. high, is octagonal throughout the greatest extent of its length, but the alternate sides have stops, so that the shaft is actually square on plan at top and bottom. The head is of most unusual shape, the principal panel on either side presenting a sort of rough resemblance to a pointed spade; and containing, on the west, a Madonna and Child, and, on the east, a crucifixion, with the arms spread out quite horizontally, after the manner of earlier tradition. On the knop, under the crucifix, is a heater-shaped shield, bearing, alone of the six shields in the composition, a heraldic charge, viz., the Three Legs of Man (only reversed), with huge rowels to the spurs. The shield on the knop beneath the Madonna has a rose encircled by a ring, which has a bezel in the form of a cross. The north side has, at the top, a shield with a double rose. Lower down, on the same edge of the head, are rude representations of oak leaves, pointing downward; and below, on the knop, is a shield with a chalice, which has the invected foot with points, characteristic of the fourteenth century. The shield at the top of the south edge is per fess, a bud or flower with two wavy leaves on either hand; while underneath are three oak leaves on the shield itself, and one below the shield. Beneath the last-named leaf is a sunk panel with the representation of a warrior on his knees (no doubt the donor), turning, with hands upraised, toward the Madonna in the adjoining panel. On the knop, below the kneeling figure, is a shield with an unidentified charge, a square object entirely composed of vertical flutings, above an oak leaf. The top surface of the head is almost flat, and appears to have borne a capstone, the dowel holes for attaching which yet remain. The shaft is let into a plain square socket. The cross, though weathered, is in wonderful preservation, and is now protected by an iron railing. It is not known ever to have stood on any other than the present site. At Wheston, a hamlet in Tideswell, Derbyshire, is a roadside cross of stone, of the late-fourteenth century, with octagonal, tapering shaft, culminating in a cusped rood, the uppermost limb of which is appreciably shorter than the arms (Figs. 92, 93). On the obverse is a crucifix with the arms horizontally outstretched. The figure is bared to the waist, but the remainder of the body downwards is missing. On the reverse is a Virgin and Child, a Gothic rosette being sculptured near the end of each limb of the cross. The figure-sculpture is coarse and primitive. The shaft is mounted on four steps, the topmost one of which forms the socket, and, by means of diamond stops, assumes an octagonal plan. The cross in the churchyard at Lanteglos juxta Fowey, Cornwall (Figs. 94, 95), was discovered, about the year 1850, "buried deeply in the trench which runs round the wall of the church." After having lain prostrate for two or three years more, it was at last raised and placed erect, with a disused millstone for base, near the church porch. It is of granite, encrusted with lichen. The shaft, 8 ft. high, is octagonal, and tapers slightly from 14 in. at greatest width across the bottom; the four alternate sides being sculptured with sunk panelling, wheels, and rosettes of Gothic character. The head, about 2 ft. high, is an oblong square on plan. The widest sides have double canopies, with the Crucifixion, unattended, on the north, and the Blessed Virgin and Child on the south. The ends, being narrower, have each a single canopy, enshrining an unidentified figure. Mr J. T. Blight supposed them to represent Saints Peter and Paul; but Mr F. T. S. Houghton believes that one of the two is meant for St Tecla. So far as one may venture to judge from the extremely rude and unskilled figure-sculpture, the work seems to be of the late-fourteenth century. The above cross is typical of a certain number of Cornish crosses belonging to the matured mediæval period, in which the head is set direct on to the shaft, without intervening neck, or knop. Besides this feature there should be noted another characteristic in the crosses, for instance, at Callington, St Ives (Fig. 96), and Mawgan-in-Pyder (Figs. 106, 107), to wit their disproportionately thick and sturdy stem, as contrasted with the moderate size of the head. At St Ives the cross-head was unearthed in the churchyard in 1832, and re-erected on a new base in 1852. The height of the cross, as now standing, is 10 ft. 6 in. The reverse of the sculptured head portrays the Madonna and Child, with a kneeling figure, most likely meant for the donor. The obverse is remarkable because the Crucifixion is introduced not, so to speak, _per se_, but rather incidentally, as constituting part of the Holy Trinity group. The crucified Son, then, is placed between the knees of the Eternal Father, Whose hands upraised on either side, the right in benediction, may be observed above the arms of the crucifix. All and any representations of this nature, depicting the Trinity, were peculiarly obnoxious to the reformers, and are yet commonly objected to as being "anthropomorphic." Similar representations of the Trinity occur on one side of the cross-head, with the Crucifixion on the other side, at Cogenhoe, in Northamptonshire, and Pocklington, in the East Riding of Yorkshire (Figs. 114, 115). There is also a Trinity in the head of the cross at Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire. The same subject again is sculptured in the head of another Cornish cross, that in Mawgan-in-Pyder churchyard (Figs. 106, 107). It is made of Catacluse stone, and is a late-Gothic example, with very rich tabernacle-work in the head. In fact, it was singled out by the late J. T. Blight as "the most elaborate specimen of the kind in Cornwall." On the opposite side to the Trinity is a subject of uncertain identity, most likely the Annunciation. A single figure, vested in pontificals, occupies either end of the head. The shaft is hexagonal, with diamond-pointed stops, now much overgrown and practically hidden from view. It stands 5 ft. 2 in. high. At Ampney Crucis, Gloucestershire (Figs. 97, 98, 99), the churchyard cross was overthrown at some unknown period. In January 1854 the head of it was discovered, built up amid a heap of rubbish in the cavity of the rood-staircase. Taken thence, it was reinstated in its proper place in the churchyard about 1860. There are two stone steps, which measure respectively 7 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. square, and an octagonal socket. The shaft is square on plan, changing, by means of stops, into an octagon. The stops, however, instead of terminating in diamond-points, or otherwise dying away into the chamfer, are crowned with engaged pinnacles, extending some way up the canted sides, a most unusual and charming device. It is a misfortune that the effect of this fine cross is spoilt by the faulty, modern treatment of the upper portion of the stem, which, being made too short, is obliged to contract much too abruptly to the junction with the head. Instead of tapering truly, with a series of straight lines converging gradually upward, the shaft is pared away in a concave outline, which results in very serious disfigurement. The total height is only about 10 ft. The head is in excellent preservation, and, though not elaborate, an exceedingly beautiful specimen. It is an oblong square on plan, and thus has two wide sides (occupied respectively by the Blessed Virgin and Child, and by the Crucifixion between Mary and John) and two narrow ends (one occupied by an unidentified ecclesiastic, the other by an unidentified warrior). The canopies are severely plain, being no more than cusped trefoils; while the top is coped in the shape of a gabled roof. The work is of the latter part of the fourteenth century. Two interesting Herefordshire examples, brought to light a few years ago, have been reinstalled under the auspices of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (as recorded in the Committee's Report, dated June 1916). These two crosses, which are at Madley (Figs. 101, 102) and Tyberton (Figs. 100, 103), respectively, bear a striking resemblance to one another. The heads of both are gabled, with a crucifixion on the obverse, and on the reverse a Virgin, crowned and throned, with her Child standing, fully draped, on her knee. The Tyberton cross-head is by far the more perfect of the two. It had been misused as a finial, or hip-knob, at the end of the brick church. The head of the Madley cross is so badly defaced that the figure of the Madonna is all but obliterated. This cross-head was found among the effects of a private gentleman, Mr Robert Clarke, of Hereford, after whose death it was "restored to the very complete base and shaft, which stand in the churchyard." The shafts of both crosses (monoliths, evidently from the same quarry) stand complete. They are of octagonal section, with long pointed stops on the four alternate sides, so that the foot of the shaft is square on plan. The chamfer-stops of the two crosses differ slightly. Both shafts had a similar moulded knop at their junction with the head. The Madley cross-head is executed in a coarse, soft sandstone, which has suffered much from disintegration. But the Tyberton head owes its better preservation not a little to the fact that it is executed in stone of more durable quality. Both these crosses seem to be of approximately the same date, viz., the late-fourteenth or early-fifteenth century. In the courtyard of the castle, St Michael's Mount, Cornwall, is a fifteenth-century cross (Figs. 104 and 105). The head is an oblong square on plan, measuring 1 ft. 4 in. by 1 ft., by about 3 ft. 3 in. high to the top of the pinnacles at the angles. On one side is a seated Madonna and Child; on the other a crucifix between Mary and John. At one end is a male figure wearing a cap and civilian gown; at the other a crowned figure holding what appears to be a sword. The knop is octagonal and moulded, with Gothic square pateras round the neck, just above the junction with the octagonal shaft. At Derwen, in Denbighshire, there stands, immediately opposite to the south porch of the nave, a churchyard cross, which is not only the most perfect one in the district, but also "one of the finest in the Principality" (Figs. 110, 111, and 112). Unfortunately, its effect is marred by the fact that the shaft leans much out of the perpendicular, towards the east. There are two oblong steps. "The lower portion of the basement," writes the Rev. Elias Owen, in 1886, "has only some of its stones remaining in position." It "measures 7 ft. 4 in. by 8 ft. 3 in. In height the step is 8 in., in breadth 1 ft. The second part measures 6 ft. 1 in. by 5 ft. 6 in. In height the step is 10 in., in breadth 1 ft. 4 in. The stones forming these steps are large." The socket, or "pedestal, is a ponderous stone, 2 ft. 9 in. square at the base, and 2 ft. 4 in. high. The upper bed is brought to an octagon by broaches of convex outline, and the upper edge is slightly canted. The shaft, which is mortised into the pedestal, is 13 in. square at the base, but by sculptured heads, which serve as broaches," or stops to the chamfering, "it becomes octagonal." The chamfers are enriched with sculptures in relief, equidistant from one another, representing angels, human heads, and foliage; and, at the top, oak leaves underneath the bead moulding. Heads and quatrefoils ornament the cove which forms the neck of the shaft. The height of the latter is 6 ft. 1 in.; and the total height of the cross, including the steps, is 13 ft. 1 in. Originally, when complete, it was higher still, but the top of the head, which now measures 2 ft. 10 in. high, has vanished. The result is a somewhat blunted and ungainly appearance. The head is oblong on plan, its four faces sculptured like tabernacled niches, enshrining sculpture. The east and west faces, 1 ft. 9 in. wide each, have double canopies, while the ends, being no more than 1 ft. 1 in. wide, have each a single canopy. The subjects, though much worn, can be identified as follows: North face, the Blessed Virgin, with her Child on her left arm; south face, St Michael, treading on the dragon, and weighing souls in a pair of scales; east face, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, with two kneeling donors, the Dove at the top of the group sadly mutilated; west face, the Crucifixion, flanked by Mary and John. Much of the ornamental detail suggests late-fourteenth century work, but it is tolerably certain that it is not earlier than the second half of the fifteenth century. To south of the church, in the churchyard of St Donat's, Glamorganshire, stands a cross admirable in preservation as it is also in its proportions and detail (Figs. 108, 109). If there is a fault to be found in it, the arms of the Christ are dragged upward in too oblique a position. The canopy-work is superb, and, regarding the structure as a whole, it must be pronounced an exquisite and refined specimen of the very perfection of Gothic design. Its date is the end of the fifteenth century. In the south aisle of Sherburn-in-Elmet church, Yorkshire, may be seen what looks like a pair of churchyard cross-heads (Fig. 113) of identical design, viz., a crucifixion between Mary and John, under a crocketed gable, the extremities of the cross ornamented with emblems of the Passion, and the interspaces filled with exquisite late-Gothic pierced tracery. The history of these two sculptures is a strange one. The head of the cross had been cast down and buried at some unknown date in the past. But it was dug up in the latter part of the nineteenth century amid the ruins of a small chantry chapel in the corner of the churchyard. The owners of the chantry disputed the possession of the cross-head with the churchwardens; and, incredible as it may seem, the dispute was settled to the satisfaction of both parties by a method which recalls the judgment of Solomon. The head of the cross being, Janus-like, of identical design on both sides, was sawn asunder down through the middle, so that each of the rival claimants received a similar sculptured ornament. One section was then erected against the wall of a chapel on the east side of the church porch at Sherburn, while the other section was built into a stable wall at a farm house called Steeton Hall. Since 1887, however, the two sundered halves, though not yet attached together as they ought to be, have been set up close to one another in Sherburn church, a puzzle to all who are unacquainted with their story. It should be added that the cross-head rises out of a richly-moulded knop, below which, though the shaft is wanting, enough remains to show that the original stem of the cross was octagonal. In the basement of the west tower of Pocklington church, Yorkshire, is a beautiful late-Gothic cross-head (Figs. 114, 115), fitted on to a modern stem and base. On the obverse is sculptured the Crucifixion between Mary and John; on the reverse is the Trinity, while a single figure occupies either end. Beneath is the inscription: _Orate pro aia, Iohis Soteby_. At Cricklade, Wiltshire, are two crosses of the fifteenth century, one in St Mary's (Fig. 116), the other in St Sampson's churchyard (Fig. 117). The latter example, however, was not originally in the churchyard, but stood, at least down to 1807, as the market or town cross. Both these crosses must, as built, have closely resembled one another, but that at St Mary's is now much the more complete of the two. It stands on steps. The head is lantern-shaped, an oblong on plan, the overhang being corbelled forward by means of a demi-angel at each angle. The tabernacling is rich, and the figure-sculpture within it almost intact, though weather-beaten. The subject on the west is the Crucifixion between Mary and John; on the south, the Assumption; on the north, a bishop; and on the east, a queen with a knight. The cross now at St Sampson's has no steps, but the socket is handsomely panelled with sunk quatrefoils round its sides. All the figure-sculpture from the lantern head, which was formerly corbelled on angels, like the other, has been missing at least from 1806 onwards, if not earlier. [Illustration 47.: ROCESTER, STAFFORDSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, PLAN AND SECTIONS] The village crosses of Crowcombe (Fig. 118), Bedale (Fig. 119), Bonsall (Fig. 120), Repton (Fig. 123), Brigstock (Fig. 122), and Child's Wickham (Fig. 7), especially those which stand on high flights of steps adapted to the fall of the ground, all illustrate how charmingly such structures group in with their surroundings, and how great an ornament they contribute to the village landscape, even though they may have been robbed of their original head. The cross at Brigstock is comparatively intact. It bears the royal arms (quarterly France modern and England), and the initials E.R., with the date 1586. The cross at Child's Wickham dates from the fifteenth century. It is, unfortunately, disfigured by an eighteenth-century urn in place of the mediæval cross-head. In many cases the original heads have been replaced by square blocks with sundials. At Steeple Ashton (Fig. 121), however, the classic column and sundial-block and globe are no doubt all of one date, the late-seventeenth, or the eighteenth century. [Illustration: 48. ROCESTER, STAFFORDSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 49. GREAT GRIMSBY, LINCOLNSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 50. EYNSHAM, OXFORDSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 51, 52. YARNTON, OXFORDSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, WITH DETAILS AND PLAN] [Illustration: 53. HORSINGTON, SOMERSETSHIRE ROADSIDE CROSS] [Illustration: 54. DRAYTON, SOMERSETSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 55. HIGHAM FERRERS, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 56. IRTHLINGBOROUGH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 57. MITCHEL TROY, MONMOUTHSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 58. STALBRIDGE, DORSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 59. CUMNOR, BERKSHIRE REMAINS OF CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 60. STANWAY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE SOCKET OF CROSS] [Illustration: 61. THATCHAM, BERKSHIRE REMAINS OF CROSS IN THE STREET] [Illustration: 62. WICKEN, CAMBRIDGESHIRE SOCKET, AND FOOT OF SHAFT] [Illustration: 63. CARLTON, BEDFORDSHIRE SOCKET, AND FRAGMENT OF THE SHAFT, OF THE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: Elevation of the Base Plan. 64. KEYINGHAM, E.R. YORKSHIRE SOCKET AND STEPS] [Illustration: 65. DORCHESTER, OXFORDSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, BEFORE RESTORATION] [Illustration: 66, 67, 68. OMBERSLEY, WORCESTERSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, WITH DETAIL OF SOCKET, AND ALSO THE PLAN] [Illustration: 69, 70. HEADINGTON, OXFORDSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, BEFORE AND AFTER RESTORATION] [Illustration: 71. RAGLAN, MONMOUTHSHIRE BASE OF CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 72. HEREFORD WHITEFRIARS' CROSS, BEFORE RESTORATION] [Illustration: 73. HEREFORD WHITEFRIARS' CROSS, AFTER RESTORATION] [Illustration: 74, 75, 76. DOULTING, SOMERSETSHIRE SOCKET OF CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 77. NORTH PETHERTON, SOMERSETSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 78. DUNDRY, SOMERSETSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 79. HEDON, E.R. YORKSHIRE THE RAVENSPURNE CROSS] [Illustration: 80. KEYINGHAM, E.R. YORKSHIRE OLD CROSS FROM LINCOLNSHIRE, RE-ERECTED BY THE LATE MR OWST UPON HIS PRIVATE GROUND AT KEYINGHAM] [Illustration: 81. SOMERSBY, LINCOLNSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 82. HALESOWEN, WORCESTERSHIRE REMAINS OF CROSS-HEAD, SHOWING ALL FOUR SIDES] [Illustration: 83. REMAINS OF CROSS-HEAD] [Illustration: 83, 84, 85. NORTH HINKSEY, BERKSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, IN PERSPECTIVE AND ELEVATION] [Illustration: 86, 87. MAUGHOLD, ISLE OF MAN THE VILLAGE CROSS, FROM TWO POINTS OF VIEW] [Illustration: 88. CROXDEN, STAFFORDSHIRE CROSS HEAD FROM THE ABBEY RUINS] [Illustration: 89. BLEADON, SOMERSETSHIRE HEAD OF CROSS] [Illustration: 90, 91. NEWMARKET, FLINTSHIRE HEAD OF CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 92, 93. WHESTON, TIDESWELL, DERBYSHIRE ROADSIDE CROSS, SHOWING FRONT AND BACK] [Illustration: 94, 95. LANTEGLOS JUXTA FOWEY, CORNWALL CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 96. ST IVES, CORNWALL CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 97, 98, 99. AMPNEY CRUCIS, GLOUCESTERSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, WITH DETAILS OF HEAD] [Illustration: 100. TYBERTON, HEREFORDSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 101. MADLEY, HEREFORDSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 102.: MADLEY HEAD OF CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 103. TYBERTON REVERSE OF HEAD OF CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 104, 105. ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT, CORNWALL HEAD OF CROSS IN THE CASTLE COURTYARD] [Illustration: 106, 107. MAWGAN-IN-PYDER, CORNWALL CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 108, 109. ST DONAT'S, GLAMORGANSHIRE CHURCHYARD CROSS, WITH DETAIL OF HEAD] [Illustration: 110, 111, 112. DERWEN, DENBIGHSHIRE THE CORONATION OF OUR LADY CHURCHYARD CROSS, WITH DETAILS ST MICHAEL, WEIGHING SOULS ] [Illustration: 113. SHERBURN-IN-ELMET, W.R. YORKSHIRE HEAD OF THE OLD CHURCHYARD CROSS] [Illustration: 114, 115. POCKLINGTON, E.R. YORKSHIRE CROSS, WITH DETAIL OF HEAD] [Illustration: 116, 117. CRICKLADE, WILTSHIRE ST MARY'S CHURCHYARD CROSS THE TOWN CROSS, NOW REMOVED TO ST SAMPSON'S CHURCH] [Illustration: 118. CROWCOMBE, SOMERSET VILLAGE CROSS] [Illustration: 119. BEDALE, N.R. YORKSHIRE] [Illustration: 120. BONSALL, DERBYSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 121. STEEPLE ASHTON, WILTSHIRE VILLAGE CROSS] [Illustration: 122. BRIGSTOCK, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 123. REPTON, DERBYSHIRE VILLAGE CROSS] IV. SPIRE-SHAPED, OR ELEANOR CROSSES On 28th November 1290 the Queen-Consort, Eleanor of Castile, died at Harby, in Nottinghamshire. Edward I., prostrated with grief--the sincerity of his devotion to his wife was perhaps the most favourable trait in his character--resolved to perpetuate her memory by erecting crosses at the various stopping-places of the funeral procession on its way to London. The route chosen, though not the most direct one, was arranged expressly so that the body might rest, each night of its journey, at some large and important town, or else at some conventual house, for the fitting celebration of the solemn offices for the dead. A stone cross was built, if not upon the exact spot, in the near neighbourhood of the spot, where the body had reposed on each occasion, viz., at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, or rather Hardingston (reached on 9th December), Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans (13th December), Waltham, or rather Cheshunt, London (where the body lay for the night, probably in St Paul's Cathedral, a cross being afterwards erected in West Cheap), and, finally, Charing village, which was the last halting-place on the way to the entombment in Westminster Abbey on 17th December. There were set up altogether twelve Eleanor crosses. Some have reckoned the number at fifteen, supposing that similar crosses were erected also at Harby, Newark, and Leicester, but of these there is no evidence. So far as can be judged from documents and existing remains, it would seem that certain principal features were common to the design of all the crosses of the series, although they varied in minor details. The general outline was borrowed from that of a spire of diminishing stages. A statue of Queen Eleanor occupied each of the niches in the middle storey; a notable peculiarity being the multiplication of the effigies of the person commemorated. Three or four statues of the queen occur in one and the same monument, standing, backs to the central shaft, their faces looking forward in opposite directions. The lowest stage or storey was carved with blind tracery, so designed as to divide, with a vertical moulding, each side, or cant, into two panels, with trefoil cusping in the head, having heraldic shields, one in each panel. The shields respectively bore the arms of (1) England (three leopards only, for the kings of England had not yet arrogated to themselves the sovereignty of France); (2) quarterly, Castile and Leon, the arms of Queen Eleanor's father; and (3) Ponthieu (three bendlets within a bordure), the arms of her mother, Joanna, Countess of Ponthieu, in Picardy. Not the slightest remains of any of the original crosses exist _in situ_, except at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham. Regrettable as is the disappearance of all but three crosses of the series, it is yet a matter for congratulation that those which do happen to survive represent each of them an individual variety of treatment; for, however much they may resemble one another in details, or even in their main scheme and proportions, the difference of plan is a fundamental factor, and such that necessarily results in striking divergences. Geddington cross is triangular, Waltham cross hexagonal, and Northampton cross octagonal on plan. Of these three there can be no question that that at Geddington (Figs. 124 and 125), on account of its triangular section, is the least satisfying aesthetically; indeed, its optical effect is, in certain aspects, decidedly unpleasing. Not only does it look as though part of the fabric were missing, or the whole structure lop-sided, but the anomalous position of the shafts, or standards, rising at each outer angle right before the face of the figures, gives the latter a caged appearance, and, by intercepting a direct view of them, infallibly detracts from the prominence which is their proper due. The triangular shape, then, is more diverting as an ingenious planning experiment than admirable as a model for reproduction. In plain words, it is an architectural eccentricity. Again, Geddington cross, encrusted as is the entire surface with sculptured diaper patterns, and lacking as it does the dignified reticence of contrasted plain spaces, such as occur in Northampton (Figs. 1 and 126) and Waltham (Figs. 127, 128, and 129) crosses, must compare unfavourably with either of them. Whoever the designer of Geddington cross may have been, it is certain he was not the artist that Battle or Crundale was, to whose genius the crosses of Northampton and Waltham respectively are owing. Royal account rolls, extant down to the year 1293, throw considerable light on the progress of the work, the identity of the artists engaged on it, and the cost of their services, as well as of the material used. But the particulars of the several undertakings are not always kept distinct, so that it is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle the precise amount of the cost of any individual cross. John, of Battle, a master mason, contracted for his share of the work of a number of crosses, viz., at Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, and St Albans, for £95 each. The imagery and much of the ornamental sculpture was executed in London. The figures of the queen, for the crosses of Lincoln and Northampton, were the work of William, of Ireland; while Alexander, of Abingdon, another image maker, provided the statues for other crosses, the figures all being produced at a uniform rate of five marks, or £3. 6s. 8d. each. Purbeck marble, from the quarries at Corfe, was used for parts of the crosses at Lincoln, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham, and Charing. The first of the stopping-places at which crosses were erected was Lincoln. The Eleanor cross there "stood on Swine Green, opposite the Gilbertine Priory of St Catherine, where the queen's body rested." The cross was built by Richard, of Stowe, otherwise Gainsborough, then master mason of the works of the cathedral. From time to time, during the years 1291 to 1293, he received payments, amounting to £106. 13s. 4d., for the king's work. The statues, and some of the carved ornament for the cross, were executed at Westminster by William, of Ireland, called in the accounts "_Imaginator_" _i.e._, image maker. William, as mentioned above, received £3. 6s. 8d. each for the statues of the queen; while the ornaments for the head of the cross seem to have cost £13. It is computed that the total cost of the cross at Lincoln amounted to about £134. Not a vestige of it now remains. The cross at Grantham, Lincolnshire, stood in an open space on the London road, at a place called Peter Church Hill. Dr William Stukeley, in 1776, recorded that the people had some memory of it in his time; and, moreover, he was shown "a stone carved with foliage work, said to be part of it." All remains of the cross have long since vanished. In his account of Stamford, Lincolnshire, printed in 1646, Richard Butcher says: "Not far from High Dike, on the north side of the town of Stamford, near unto York highway, and about twelve score from the Towngate, called Clement Gate, stands an ancient cross of freestone, of a very curious fabric, having many scutcheons insculped in the stone about it, as the arms of Castile and Leon quartered ... and divers other hatchments," of which "only the ruins appear to the eye." In the edition of 1659, the cross is referred to in the past tense, showing that it had been removed in the interval. R. Symond, in a note dated August 1645, writes: "On the hill, before ye come to the town (of Stamford), stands a lofty, large cross.... Upon the top of this cross these three shields are often carved: (1) England, (2) Ponthieu, (3) Castile and Leon quarterly." The cross was pulled down by the soldiers of the Parliament during the Civil War, but the foundations were laid bare, in the process of excavations conducted by Dr Stukeley, while vicar of All Saints, Stamford, 1729 to 1747. [Illustration: 124. GEDDINGTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE PLAN OF ELEANOR CROSS] [Illustration: 125. GEDDINGTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE ELEANOR CROSS, IN THE VILLAGE] The Eleanor cross at Geddington, Northamptonshire, is still standing, in the middle of a wide space in the village. The principal part of the material is Weldon stone, but the string courses and weatherings are of Stanion stone, which has a slightly harder texture. The cross is raised on eight hexagonal steps; it comprises three storeys, and is little short of 42 ft. in height. As may be seen by the plan (in which the spaces A, B, and C represent the situation of the figures), the middle stage is so placed in relation to that beneath it that its outer angles correspond with the middle of each side in the lower stage. The base is a triangle of equal sides; each 5 ft. 1 in. wide. The royal accounts, which are wanting from the year 1294 onward, contain no entry referring to Geddington cross; whence it has been inferred that the latter could not have been erected until 1294 or after. Tradition says that a favourite sport of the place used to be squirrel-baiting. A sufficient number of wild squirrels having been caught for the purpose, would be turned loose in the village, where the crowds, surrounding them in a ring, with shouts and all manner of hideous noises, proceeded to hunt and beat their helpless victims to death. Sometimes the terrified little creatures would vainly seek refuge by running up the cross and trying to hide behind the pinnacles and tabernacle work. But their cruel tormentors ruthlessly dislodged them thence, pelting them with stones until they were driven forth and killed. The only marvel, in the circumstances, is that any part of the original stonework of the cross should have survived such reckless violence. The cross was repaired in 1800, and again in 1890. The famous Eleanor cross of Northampton (Figs. 1, 126) stands about a mile distant from the town, and actually in the parish of Hardingston. The monument is picturesquely placed on a roadside bank, with a fine background of trees. The spot was chosen because Delapré, close by, a house of Cluniac nuns, afforded the funeral procession a convenient halt for the night. For the more solid parts of the cross, as distinct from its ornamental detail, Barnack stone seems to have been used. The mason responsible for the design, as already mentioned, was John, of Battle. The sculptor, William, of Ireland, was paid £25 for his work, including the ornamental carvings and the four statues (nearly 6 ft. high) of the queen at £3. 6s. 8d. apiece. The distinctive feature of this cross, not known to have occurred on any other of the series, is an open book carved on every alternate one of the eight sides of the lowest storey. The latter is about 14 ft. high, the next storey above it 12 ft. high. At the present day there are nine steps, all octagonal on plan. Formerly there were seven, while the engraving in _Vetusta Monumenta_, 1791, depicts eight steps. What was the original termination of this cross will never be known. It disappeared so long ago that, even in 1460, the monument was spoken of as "_crux sine capite_." The first recorded "restoration" of the cross took place in 1713. At the Quarter Sessions in that year the Justices authorised the expenditure of a sum not exceeding £30 on repairing the cross, which accordingly underwent thorough "restoration" and partial rebuilding. There was then erected on the summit a stone cross paty, 3 ft. high, while gnomons for sundials, facing the four cardinal points, were fixed to the tracery of the topmost storey. Also, on the west side of the bottom storey were placed the arms of Queen Anne and a marble tablet, with a long inscription in Latin. Further repairs were effected in 1762; and the cross was renovated once again, under the direction of the architect, Edward Blore, in 1840. The commemorative tablets and the modern cross on the summit were then removed, a broken shaft being erected in place of the cross paty. Blore, at the same time, renewed the ornamental cresting, one of the gables, and much of the substantial stonework of the cross; and he recut all but two of the armorial shields. In 1884 further repairs were effected, consisting mainly of the renewal and strengthening of the decayed platform steps. In March 1900 the care and maintenance of the cross were formally vested in the County Council. [Illustration: 126. NORTHAMPTON, (HARDINGSTON) THE ELEANOR CROSS] [Illustration: 127, 128. CHESHUNT, HERTFORDSHIRE WALTHAM CROSS] The Eleanor cross at Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, was built by John Battle and his assistants, Simon, of Pabenham, and others, the ornamental sculpture, comprising shafts, heads, and bands, being executed by Ralph, of Chichester. This cross stood "a little north of the Horseshoe Inn." It was pulled down by the Puritans about 1646, but Cole, the antiquary, was assured by an old inhabitant "that he remembered part of it remaining at the western extremity of the town." The same executants carried out the Bedfordshire crosses of Woburn and Dunstable. The last-named is described as "having been a cross of wonderful size. It stood in the main street ... where Watling Street crosses the Icknield way"; and "is said to have been demolished by troops, under the Earl of Essex, in 1643. Parts of" its "foundation ... have been met with during recent alterations in the roadway" (Dr James Galloway, 1914). "In the heart of the town" of St Albans stood another Eleanor cross, described in 1596 as "verie stately," the same executants as in the preceding instances being employed. The greater part of this cross was "destroyed by order of Parliament in 1643. Fragments, however, stood in the market place" until 1702, when they were cleared away to make room for the erection of an octagonal market house in 1703. [Illustration: 129. CHESHUNT SECTION OF MIDDLE STOREY OF WALTHAM CROSS] Waltham Cross (Figs. 127, 128, and 129) stands at the junction of Eleanor Cross Road and High Street, in the parish of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. The monument was the work of Roger Crundale and Dyminge de Ligeri, or de Reyns, in or about 1293. It was built largely of Caen stone. Apart from the difference necessarily entailed by its hexagonal plan, Waltham Cross in many respects recalls that of Hardingston, Northampton. In 1721 Dr Stukeley contributed to _Vetusta Monumenta_ an imaginary "restoration"; which was followed, in April 1791, by an engraving, by Basire, from Schnebbelie's drawing, showing the cross in its actual state. It had by then become much dilapidated, nothing having been done to keep it in repair beyond the strengthening of the base with new brickwork in 1757. It is believed that the cross originally stood upon ten steps. These had entirely disappeared by 1791. The present steps, four in number, are quite modern. The cross, having been renovated in 1833 to 1834, and again in 1887 to 1889, has lost so much that practically no part of the original fabric beyond the core, the three figures, and parts of the lowest storey, survives. The pinnacle at the top is a conjectural "restoration," the ancient head, as in the cases also of Geddington and Northampton crosses, having so utterly perished as to leave no indication of how the cross should properly terminate. [Illustration: 130, 131. LONDON, WEST CHEAP REMAINS FROM THE ELEANOR CROSS, IN THE GUILDHALL MUSEUM] [Illustration: 132. LONDON, WEST CHEAP THE SECOND OF THE THREE CROSSES ERECTED ON THE SPOT] [Illustration: 133, 134: LONDON, WEST CHEAP THE THIRD CROSS ERECTED ON THE SPOT] [Illustration: 135. CHARING DETAIL OF OLD PROSPECT, SHOWING POSITION OF CHARING CROSS] West Cheap Cross (Figs. 130-134) stood in the middle of the roadway, opposite to the spot where Wood Street opens at right angles out of Cheapside. Three successive crosses have occupied this identical position. The first was an Eleanor cross, built by the mason, Michael, of Canterbury, who contracted to execute the work for £300. The character of the design may be judged from two fragments of the stone panelling of the lowest storey, now preserved in the Guildhall Museum (Figs. 130 and 131). These exhibit trefoil cusping, and the same armorial shields which occur in the three existing crosses at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham. Some twenty years after its erection, Cheapside Cross figured in the festivities which followed the birth of Prince Edward (afterwards King Edward III.) on 13th November 1312. A great pageant was organised in the City in honour of the occasion, and at the cross in Cheap a pavilion was set up, and in it a tun of wine placed, from which all who passed by might freely drink. From whatever cause, the cross was so soon allowed to fall into disrepair that its reconstruction came to be contemplated when it had been standing only about seventy-five years, Sir Robert Launde, knight, whose will is dated 1367, making a bequest to the building of the cross in Cheapside. The matter at last became so urgent that, in 1441, Henry VI. issued a licence to the Mayor of London to rebuild the cross "in more beautiful manner." The new cross, raised mainly at the cost of the City, was not finished until 1486. Why it should have taken so long a space of time to bring it to completion is not apparent. It was a very sumptuous and elaborate structure; but its builders did not attempt to adhere to the model of an Eleanor cross, Scripture subjects and figures of saints taking the place of the statues of the Queen. The monument was surmounted by a crucifix, with a dove over it; the other sculptures comprising the Resurrection, the Blessed Virgin and Child, and St Edward the Confessor. During the night of 21st June 1581, unknown iconoclasts defaced all these figures, that of the Blessed Virgin in the upper tier being subjected to greater indignities than the rest. In addition to being mutilated it was discovered to have been bound with ropes, ready to be torn down. A reward was offered for the apprehension of the offenders, but they were never caught. Queen Elizabeth notified to the Court of Aldermen her wish that the damage should be made good. "The Lord Mayor thereupon wrote to the Lords of the Council, asking Her Majesty's further directions; and he was particularly anxious touching the repairing and garnishing of the images of the cross." In 1595 the image of the Blessed Virgin was renovated and made secure. In 1596 a new Infant was placed in her arms, an addition which was coarsely and clumsily rendered, as one would expect at that period. Four years after, on the plea that the woodwork of the upper part, including the cross on the top of all, was out of repair, a pyramid was substituted for the former finial cross, and a semi-nude statue of Diana for that of the Blessed Virgin. Queen Elizabeth ordered that a plain gilt cross should be set up on the summit of the pyramid. The City magnates demurred, but ultimately complied. Next, the statue of the Blessed Virgin was restored, and the whole structure cleansed; but only twelve nights after the erection of the new statue of the Virgin, the latter was again attacked, decrowned, and nearly beheaded, and the figure of the Infant taken away. In the course of its existence the cross of 1441 to 1486 had been repeatedly repaired and regilt. It had already lost every trace of its fifteenth-century origin by 1547, when, on 19th February, the coronation procession of Edward VI. passed at its foot, an incident which was depicted by a contemporary, or nearly contemporary, hand upon the stucco walls of the dining hall at Cowdray House, near Midhurst, Sussex (Fig. 132). The mural painting, unfortunately, perished in the devastating fire at Cowdray on the night of 24th to 25th September 1793. The rebuilding of Cheapside Cross was resolved upon in 1600. The new cross was erected in 1606 (Figs. 133 and 134). The question of the advisability of crowning the latter with a crucifix having been raised, the two Universities were formally consulted on the subject. Opinions were divided, but Dr George Abbot, then Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced definitely against a crucifix. A simple cross, therefore, unaccompanied by a dove, was attached to the top of the new structure; while the base was encircled by an iron railing as a precaution against attack. This, the third and last of the Cheapside crosses, stood for a shorter period than either of its predecessors. It was overthrown on 2nd May 1643, as recorded by Evelyn in his _Diary_, under this date, in the following passage: "I went to London, where I saw the furious and zealous people demolish that stately Crosse in Cheapside." [Illustration: 136, 137. CHARING, NEAR LONDON THE ELEANOR CROSS, AND THE CROSS WHICH SUCCEEDED THE FORMER ON THE SAME SITE] Charing Cross, built to commemorate the last resting-place of the Queen's body before it reached Westminster Abbey, occupied, as the detail from a prospect, by Ralph Agas (_c._ 1560), of London and neighbourhood shows (Fig. 135), approximately the same site where Herbert Le Sueur's superb equestrian statue of Charles I. now stands. The original cross (Fig. 136) is described as having been the finest and stateliest of all the Eleanor crosses. It was the work of Richard Crundale, who, dying in 1293, was succeeded by Roger Crundale; and Alexander, of Ireland, carved the statues of the Queen for the cross, which is computed to have cost nearly £800. By 1590 it had become much weather-beaten and defaced with age. It may have been about this time that the old cross was entirely rebuilt, the Gothic work disappearing, and a monument of new design, in the current fashion of the day, being erected in its place (Fig. 137). The Parliament having decreed the destruction of the cross in 1643, it was finally demolished in the summer of 1647. Lilly, writing in 1715, says that some of the stones of the old fabric were used for the pavement in front of Whitehall, while others were cut up and polished to make knife handles and other small objects as souvenirs. With Eleanor crosses there should be classed a small group of crosses, which, though erected neither for the same purpose nor at the same time as the Eleanor crosses, yet closely resemble the latter in being fashioned in the graceful shape of a spire of diminishing stages. [Illustration: 138. GLOUCESTER HIGH CROSS] The old cross at Gloucester (Fig. 138) stood on elevated ground at the meeting of Northgate, Southgate, and Westgate Streets. It was raised on steps, and was octagonal on plan. The ground storey, and the next above it, dated apparently from about 1320. But the uppermost storey, consisting of a cluster of turrets with little vanes, the central turret or shaft surmounted by an orb and fourways cross, can hardly have been any earlier than the sixteenth century. Coventry Cross (Fig. 8) had similar vanes which (called _girouettes_ in French, because of their gyrating or revolving with the wind), being gilt, and glittering gaily in the sunlight, imparted additional charm to the stone crosses whereto they were attached. The total height of Gloucester Cross was 34 ft. 6 in. When drawn in 1750, on the eve of its demolition, the cross contained, in the niches of its middle storey, statues of the following kings and queens of England:--King John, Henry II., Queen Eleanor, Edward III., Richard II., Richard III., Queen Elizabeth, and Charles I. The whole was surrounded by an iron railing of obviously later date than the cross itself. [Illustration: 139, 140. TOTTENHAM, MIDDLESEX HIGH CROSS, BEFORE AND AFTER "RESTORATION"] The old market cross at Abingdon, Berkshire, is said to have been erected by the Guild of the Holy Cross, a fraternity attached to St Helen's Parish Church. The cross was repaired in 1605; and, on the occasion of the signing of the Treaty with the Scots in 1641, two thousand persons assembled round it to sing a psalm of thanksgiving. It was destroyed by Waller's army in 1644. The structure was both later in date and more elaborate than any other of its class except Coventry Cross (Fig. 8), to which, in very many respects, it bore a striking resemblance. Abingdon Cross, however, was octagonal, whereas that of Coventry was hexagonal on plan. The lowest stage of either cross was solid, with surface tracery-panelling; while each of the three diminishing stages above consisted of niches with figures, and was further enriched with flying buttresses and with pinnacles surmounted by king's beasts holding iron rods, or pivots, to which were attached metal vanes like little banners. The similarity between the two crosses is explained by the fact that, in bequeathing £200 on 25th December 1541 for building a new cross at Coventry, Sir William Holles, formerly Lord Mayor of London, expressly directed that it was to be modelled upon that already existing at Abingdon. Coventry Cross, then, was begun in 1541 and finished in 1544. It stood 57 ft. high, mounted on three steps, and was divided into four stages comprising in all eighteen niches for statues. The statues in the first-floor storey, reckoning from the south, were Henry IV., King John, Edward I., Henry II., Richard I., and Henry V.; in the second storey, Edward III., St Michael, Henry III., St George, and Richard II.; and in the uppermost storey, a religious, St Peter, a religious, a king, St James the Less, and St Christopher. Above the topmost storey the cross swelled out into a tabernacled lantern surmounted by a metal vane pierced with the Royal arms (quarterly France, modern, and England), the supporting rod having a crown upon its summit. In later times the cross was surmounted by allegorical figures of Justice and Mercy. The cross underwent some repairs in 1629; but on 12th August 1668 a covenant was entered upon by the Mayor and certain stone cutters and masons for the thorough renewing of all defective parts of the stonework, with "good, sure stone from Sroby quarry," Warwickshire, as well as the iron and lead necessary for fixing the statues. Their work completed, the masons were to leave all the scaffolding in position, that the gilders and painters might then carry out their share of the embellishing. The total cost of the work executed in 1668, and following year, was £276. 2s. 1d. By 1760 nothing survived of the structure but the lowest storey and a portion of that above it. And in 1771 the last vestiges of Coventry Cross were bodily swept away. To this same type belongs the High Cross at Tottenham (Figs. 139, 140), Middlesex, although at the present day it sadly belies its real character. Dressed, as it is, in Gothic mouldings, crockets, and panel-work, it looks as though it should belong, at least, to the latter half of the fourteenth century (Fig. 140). But the ornament, unfortunately, is a mere superficial casing of nineteenth-century creation; and, to judge from an engraving, of the year 1788, representing the cross as it stood before it underwent falsification (Fig. 139), it can scarcely date any further back than the early part of the sixteenth century. Again, the ancient Butter Cross, at Scarborough, which stands, or at least in 1860 stood, in Low Conduit Street, was of the same type, but square on plan. In fact, it may be described as shaped exactly like an obelisk, only with early-fourteenth-century Gothic details. How far such an object may, or may not, have been genuine, it is perhaps wisest to leave an open question. V. PREACHING CROSSES Whether or not preaching crosses, for the delivery of outdoor sermons, were required before the advent of the Friars in the first half of the thirteenth century, it may be assumed that, from that time forward, they did exist and were in use. The Dominicans, or Black Friars, came to England in 1221; the Franciscans, or Grey Friars, in or about 1224; the Carmelites, or White Friars, in 1240, and the Austin Friars in 1250. Twenty years after the arrival of the first of the Friars occurs the first recorded mention of Paul's Cross, which attained afterwards to the dignity of the most celebrated of all preaching crosses, not merely in London, nor even in England alone, but throughout Christendom. It must be stated, however, that no actual record of the cross as a preaching-place is found before 1382; the cross at the outset being resorted to rather for secular and general assemblies of the people. But in course of time, perhaps by reason of its convenient situation, the cross seems to have been the focus of every phase of the life of the capital; many of the most stirring and momentous events in English history, whether civil or ecclesiastical, being enacted beneath its shadow. The full story of Paul's Cross would fill volumes. Yet a few representative episodes are enough to show of what varied scenes and movements it was the centre. At the cross took place the promulgation of laws, public announcements, political propaganda, the reading of Papal Bulls, the administration of oaths, elections, examinations, recantations, and the performance of public penances; while in the sermons preached in the pulpit of Paul's Cross, each successive variety of religious opinion was propounded from the time of the Lollards, and through the successive stages of the Reformation and counter-Reformation, until the cross itself came to an end in the reign of Charles I. The first specific mention of Paul's Cross was in 1241, when King Henry III. met an assemblage of the citizens of London there before he set out for Gascony in connection with the French war. From that time onward there occur very numerous references to Paul's Cross, "the earlier ones, for the most part, recording meetings of the citizens there." The earliest notice of the cross as a place of proclamation was in 1256-57, when Justice Mansell read a document of the king's, assuring the citizens of his purpose to preserve their rights and liberties. In 1257 the king, having called a folk-moot at the cross, was present in person; and again met his subjects there in 1258. In 1259-60 another folk-moot was held at the cross by Henry III., on which occasion proclamation was made, requiring every stripling to take the oath of allegiance to the crown. In October 1261 a bull of Pope Urban was read at the cross by the king's order. In 1266 the king made Alan la Zouche constable and warden of the City in the presence of the people at Paul's Cross. On 13th May 1269 a bull of Pope Innocent was read; and in 1274-75 the Mayor of London was elected in a folk-moot at the cross. [Illustration: 141. LONDON PAUL'S CROSS] "In 1311 the new statutes, made in the Parliament of that year, were published and proclaimed ... _super crucem lapideam_"; whence it has been inferred by Mr Paley Baildon, F.S.A., that Paul's Cross, or the High Cross, as it was also called, must have comprised a raised platform surrounded by a parapet, with a lofty shaft in the middle, somewhat after the fashion of the Mercat Cross at Edinburgh, the cross at Aberdeen, and other Scottish examples. [Illustration: 142. LONDON PAUL'S CROSS] On 7th March 1378, during the time when the Bishop of Carlisle was preaching at the cross, he was disturbed by a tumult arising out of a quarrel between certain trade corporations hard by in West Cheap. From that date onward, down to 1633, sermons at Paul's Cross were of very frequent occurrence. In 1378 also, the Bishop of London excommunicated at Paul's Cross the murderers of Robert Hawle and two other victims, who had been sacrilegiously slain in the quire of Westminster Abbey during the solemnisation of High Mass on 11th August. On 12th July 1382 the Archbishop issued an order that the preacher at the cross, whoever he might be, on the following Sunday was to take advantage of the occasion, when the fullest number of persons should be gathered together for the sermon, to denounce publicly and solemnly two contumacious heretics, Nicholas Hereford and Philip Reppyingdon, "holding up the cross and lighting of candles, and throwing the same down upon the ground, to have been, and still to be so excommunicated by us." In the same year, 1382, Paul's Cross suffered very great injury from tempest or earthquake; and on 18th May 1387 Archbishop Courtenay and other Bishops, desirous of repairing the damage, offered an indulgence to any of the faithful who should contribute toward that object. In two years' time the cross seems to have been put in order. Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London, however, rebuilt it, some time between 1449 and 1470; giving it the aspect which illustrations have made familiar, viz., an octagonal pulpit of wood, raised on stone steps and roofed with a lead-covered cupola, surmounted by a large cross (Figs. 141 and 142). The arms of Bishop Kempe were introduced in several places on the roof. From the time of the erection of this new pulpit-cross, the old name of High Cross, applicable to the different form of the earlier structure, seems to have died out of use. Meanwhile, on Quinquagesima Sunday 1388, a great stir was caused by a Wycliffite sermon preached at Paul's Cross by R. Wimbledon. In 1401, under pressure from Archbishop Arundel, two Wycliffites, John Purvey, and a doctor of divinity, named Herford, recanted their errors at Paul's Cross. In 1457 Bishop Pecocke, of Chichester, a prelate, so it would appear, of sadly "modernist" tendencies, made his submission at Paul's Cross, abjured his unorthodoxy, and submitted to the burning of his books at the same time and place. In a sermon at the cross, on 4th March 1461-62, the Bishop of Exeter urged the justice of the title of Prince Edward of York to the throne. In 1483 Jane Shore was compelled to do public penance at Paul's Cross; and on 19th June of the same year the Lord Mayor's brother, Dr Ralph Shaw, in his sermon at the cross, openly intimated that the validity of Edward V.'s right to the crown was questionable, and that there were substantial reasons (which did, in fact, ultimately prevail) why both of the young princes should be debarred from succession. [Illustration: 143. HEREFORD BLACK FRIARS' CROSS] [Illustration: 144. IRON ACTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE PREACHING CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD] On a certain Sunday, in 1492, two men did public penance for heresy, standing at Paul's Cross "all the sermon time, the one garnished with painted and written papers, the other having a faggot on his neck." On Passion Sunday another man "with a faggot stood before the preacher all the sermon while at Paul's Cross; and on the Sunday next following (Palm Sunday), four men stood and did their open penance ... in the sermon time, and many of their books were burnt before them at the Cross." On 12th May 1521, in the presence of Cardinal Wolsey, Bishop Fisher, of Rochester, delivered at Paul's Cross a sermon in denunciation of the German heresiarch, Luther. In 1534 the king, Henry VIII., caused sermons to be preached against his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and also against Papal supremacy. In the same year, Elizabeth Burton and six of her most prominent supporters (all of them ultimately hanged at Tyburn) were brought to Paul's Cross for public exposure and degradation there, for the crime of having dared to express disapproval of the king's liaison with Anne Boleyn. On 24th February 1538, the Rood of Grace, from Boxley Abbey, in Kent, an image which was alleged, by means of wires and other devices, to simulate various gestures and changes of countenance, was exhibited at Paul's Cross by Bishop Hilsey, of Rochester, and, at his incitement, broken and plucked to pieces amid the jeers of the mob. "The like was done by the blood of Hayles, which in like manner, by Crumwell, was brought to Paul's Cross, and there proved to be the blood of a duck," according to the veracious Foxe. From this time onward Paul's Cross witnessed the delivery of a succession of controversial sermons, first on one side and then on the other. When Edward VI. ascended the throne, Bishop Latimer, of Worcester, became a frequent preacher at Paul's Cross. Thus in the month of January 1548 he preached no less than four times. In 1549 the Privy Council delivered to Bishop Bonner a set of articles, which he was required to advocate in a series of quarterly sermons at Paul's Cross. But the Bishop in preaching there having neglected to comply, was cited, on information laid against him by Latimer and Hooper, to appear for examination before the King's commissioners on 10th September 1549. On 1st November 1552, at Paul's Cross, Bishop Ridley, of London, preached at great length in favour of the latest version of the Book of Common Prayer. On 13th August 1553 Gilbert Bourne, a chaplain of Queen Mary, and Canon of St Paul's, preaching at the cross, narrowly escaped being murdered. One of the audience aimed a dagger at the preacher. The weapon, missing its mark, the point became embedded in one of the wooden posts of the pulpit. On the following Sunday Thomas Watson, preaching at the same place, was protected by a guard of 200 soldiers with halberds. At the same time an order was issued forbidding apprentices to attend the sermon, armed with knives or daggers. On 2nd December 1554, in the presence of Cardinal Pole, the Lord-Chancellor preached at Paul's Cross commending the reconciliation of the kingdom, and its restoration to communion with the Holy See. [Illustration: 145. WINCHESTER BUTTER CROSS] Abbot Feckenham preached at the cross on 18th June 1555, and Dr Hugh Glasier, Queen Mary's chaplain, on 25th August of the same year. On 27th October 1584 Samuel Harsnett, subsequently Archbishop of York, delivered at Paul's Cross a sermon, which caused no little stir, on Predestination. On 20th August 1588 Dean Newell made, at the cross, the first public announcement of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. On 17th November 1595, at a special thanksgiving service for the long reign of Queen Elizabeth, Bishop Fletcher, of London, preached at Paul's Cross, which had been repaired and partly enclosed with a low brick wall for the occasion. In 1616, at the instance of Harry Farley, one John Gipkyn painted a panel picture, in which he represented, by anticipation, the attendance of James I. at a sermon at Paul's Cross, which actually came to pass on 26th March 1620. The panel now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries affords the most authentic view extant of the preaching cross (see Fig. 142). Charles I. attended in state to hear a sermon at the cross in 1630, and Archbishop Laud preached there in 1631, perhaps the last preacher of eminence to occupy the pulpit--for in 1633 the use of Paul's Cross as an open-air pulpit was formally abandoned. Its consequent demolition cannot have been long delayed, although it has been contended that the cross was pulled down only that the pulpit might be reconstructed on a grander scale--a project which, however, was never attempted. In a publication of the year 1641 occurs the passage: "Paul's Crosse, the most famous preaching-place, is downe and quite taken away," which shows that the date usually given for the abolition of the cross, viz., 1643, cannot be correct. But it is the fact that, in May 1643, the parishioners of St Faith's complained of the obstruction caused by the presence of "stones, rubbish, and pales" in the churchyard, presumably the uncleared refuse from the demolished cross. In time the very site was forgotten; but in the spring of 1879 it was discovered by Mr C. F. Penrose, the cathedral surveyor. The cross stood about 12 ft. from the wall of Old St Paul's; and close to the north-east corner of Wren's cathedral. The octagonal base measured some 37 ft. across. "The platform itself," writes Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson, "was supported by a vault. A brick wall was found which probably carried the timber supports of the pulpit proper. The probable diameter of the pulpit itself was 18 ft." Paul's Cross was not the only preaching cross in London. There were, at least, two others. One stood in the churchyard on the south side of St Michael's, Cornhill. This cross was built by Sir John Rudstone, Mayor, who, dying in 1531, was buried beneath it. St Mary Spital, without Bishopsgate, also had an open-air pulpit-cross, where special sermons were preached in Easter week, year by year. [Illustration: 146, 147. LEIGHTON BUZZARD, BEDFORDSHIRE MARKET CROSS] In the majority of cases it is likely enough that there was not a distinctive pulpit-cross, the steps of the ordinary churchyard cross sufficing to afford a platform for the preacher, when occasion required. There remain, indeed, no more than two crosses obviously and primarily designed as preaching crosses, viz., that at Iron Acton, Gloucestershire, and the Black Friars' Cross at Hereford. The preaching cross at Iron Acton (Fig. 144) stands in the north part of the churchyard, and is a very good example of its kind. The base, 10 ft. 9 in. in diameter at the ground level, consists of three brick-built steps, topped with stone slabs, forming drips with a slight overhang. These steps are octagonal on plan. Upon the second step (and thus encompassing the top step and the low stone plinth resting on the same) stand the piers of the cross. The piers are buttressed each with one diagonal buttress, like the cross itself, square on plan. The arched openings (2 ft. 11 in. wide) are obtuse headed. One arch (the northern one according to Lysons, the southern one according to Charles Pooley) is open from top to bottom to make an entrance doorway. The three others are railed in with a low fence, composed of a pair of arches, cusped in the head, beneath a transom. The mullions between these small arches had disappeared previously to 1868; so the present mullions are modern restorations. The ceiling within is vaulted, with ribs and sculptured bosses, some of the latter representing acorns and oak leaves. In the centre, forming a pendant, are the remains of a capital of an octagonal shaft, now perished, though the traces of its footing on the floor were remarked by Charles Pooley in, or shortly before, 1868. The whole cross upward from the springing level of the principal arches is sadly mutilated, all the pinnacles, as well as the statues, wanting. The total height of that which survives of the cross is 19 ft. 2 in. The upper part is a shaft with four panelled sides, having, at the foot of each, between a pair of shields borne by demi-angels clad in albs, a pedestal for a standing statue, with projecting canopy overhead. Of these eight shields four exhibit emblems of the Passion; two are blank and two are armorial. One of these last is quarterly per fesse dancetty argent and gules, Acton; while the other shield is Acton as before, impaling quarterly or and gules a bend argent, Fitz-Nichol. Robert Poyntz, lord of the manor of Iron Acton, married, for second wife, Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Fitz-Nichol, and died on 15th June 1439. The cross, then, dates from the early part of the fifteenth century. Contiguous to the ancient house of the order within the city of Hereford stands the Black Friars' Cross (Fig. 143), which apparently dates from the reign of Richard II. It is hexagonal on plan, and is mounted on steps. Its six arches were all open down to the bottom in 1806, but were fenced in some time previously to 1875, after the manner of those of the Iron Acton preaching cross. In the middle is a hexagonal socket, its sides panelled with Gothic panel-work. From the top of the socket rises a central shaft from which springs the vaulting of the roof. The cornice is embattled, and from the midst rose the stump of the shaft, now replaced by a modern shaft and cross. The whole structure has, in fact, been completely renovated since 1875. Besides those above named there is a small class of open crosses, which, though not built for the purpose of preaching crosses, yet resemble the latter more than any others, and must therefore, from the point of view of design and construction, be grouped under the same head. These, then, comprise the crosses of Bristol, Holbeach (Lincolnshire), Leighton Buzzard (Bedfordshire), and lastly Winchester. The High Cross at Bristol (Fig. 9) stood at the junction of four main thoroughfares: Broad Street, Wine Street, Corn Street, and High Street. The site had already been occupied by a cross, when a new cross was erected in 1373. The cross of that date was constructed of coarse-grained oolite, specially liable to absorb moisture; but the original paint (blue and vermilion with gilding) effectually preserved it from the weather for centuries. Above the arches of the lowest stage was a stage comprising four niches, which were eventually filled with statuary, standing figures, facing toward the four cardinal points. A statue of King John faced northward, Henry III. eastward, Edward III. westward, and Edward IV. southward. The cross was taken down in 1633, to be erected on an enlarged scale, its height, by the addition of an extra stage or storey, attaining to a total of 39 ft. 6 in. The new storey contained four seated figures, representing, respectively, King Henry VI. facing eastward, Queen Elizabeth facing westward, King James I. southward, and Charles I. northward. Above these, again, was a tier of armorial shields, with pairs of _putti_ for supporters, obviously an addition of the same period, viz., Charles I.'s reign. Then also was the cross embellished with fresh painting and gilding, and encircled with an iron railing to protect its lowest stage. The latter consisted of four open arches, grouped about a central shaft. The cross was redecorated in 1697. It was subsequently taken down in 1733. Its remains were then carted to the Guild Hall, whence, after a short interval, they were taken and set up in the College Green, to north of the cathedral. There it was standing in 1737, when R. West made the drawing, which was engraved and published in 1743. The cross in its new position was painted to look like grey marble, with the ornaments gilt, and the figures tinted in their natural colours. Not many years later, viz., in 1763, it was again taken down, and its portions relegated to an obscure corner of the cathedral. Finally, Dean Barton gave the remains to Sir Richard Colt Hoare, of Stourton, who transported them, in August 1766, and set up the cross once more, with a new base, summit, and central pier in the gardens of Stourhead, Wiltshire. The cross at Holbeach was pulled down in 1683, but Dr William Stukeley made a drawing of it, dated 1722 (Fig. 10). The structure thus depicted appears to have been pentagonal on plan, four steps supporting the piers, which were buttressed with buttresses, square on plan, panelled on their outward face, and surmounted by pinnacles. The open arches were four-centred. The roof underneath was vaulted with lierne and tierceron ribs, having carved bosses at the intersections. Above the arches was a parapet or frieze, comprising on each side a shield between two quatrefoils. Above, in the midst, rose a huge crocketed pinnacle, forming the shaft for the cross which originally crowned the summit. The Market Cross at Leighton Buzzard (Figs. 146, 147), also, is remarkable in being pentagonal on plan. Apart from the difficulty of treating a five-sided structure satisfactorily, the design is faulty, because the upper stage of the cross (admirable though it be, _per se_, with its statuary, its flying buttresses, and its exquisite cluster of pinnacles) altogether lacks coherent continuity with the open stage beneath, the latter finishing abruptly with a pronounced horizontal break, which divides the cross into two distinct parts, upper and lower. The piers are buttressed and the arches four-centred. Above the latter runs a frieze of masks, surmounted by crenellation. The cross stands on a base of five steps, and is 27 ft. high. The total height, including the weathercock, is 38 ft. The original figures, representing the Blessed Virgin and Child, a Bishop, St John Evangelist, Christ, and a King, were taken down in 1852 and replaced by modern replicas. Fortunately, the old figures were preserved for the embellishment of the Town Hall, and when the architect, G. F. Bodley, repaired the cross in 1900, he restored them to their proper position. The modern copies were, at the same time, set up against the outside walls of the Town Hall, where they still remain. Mr Bodley assigned the cross to the late-fourteenth or early-fifteenth century. If this be somewhat too early, the cross can hardly be of later date than the middle of the fifteenth century. The Butter Cross, at Winchester (Fig. 145), stands on the pavement alongside the High Street, at the point whence a narrow lane leads to the north-west angle of the cathedral churchyard. The cross is remarkable for its lightness and the gracefulness of its proportions. It is mounted on five octagonal steps; it is square on plan, and is enhanced by pinnacles and two tiers of flying buttresses. The open arches of the lowest stage are four-centred, and surround a central shaft. The next stage above forms an open tabernacle for statues, of which, however, by 1741, only one original figure, 5 ft. 10 in. high, survived. The cross measures between 45 and 50 ft. in height; and dates, apparently, from the second half of the fifteenth century, but has been sadly over-restored. VI. MARKET CROSSES "The general intent of market crosses," as defined by Bishop Milner, was twofold, viz., religious and ethical--first, "to incite public homage to the religion of Christ crucified," and secondly, "to inspire men with a sense of morality and piety amidst the ordinary transactions of life." This being so, "every town had its cross, at which engagements, whether of a religious or worldly interest, were entered into," says another writer, Brady. It would seem that, at first, there was no difference of form between the market or village cross and the normal churchyard cross of shaft-on-steps type. But as the need developed of providing for the greater comfort and convenience of folk gathered round the cross for market business, the demand was met by erecting a penthouse roof about the lower part of the already existing cross. Such a transformation is known to have taken place at Norwich, and obviously also must have been effected at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, Bingley in Yorkshire, and at Axbridge and Cheddar in Somersetshire. This method of adaptation, however, cannot have proved entirely satisfactory, because the platform or steps of the shaft in such cases occupied too much of the space beneath the shelter. And so the distinctive form of market cross was evolved at length, planned from the outset as a cross and roof combined in one coherent structure, the base of the central shaft being surrounded by a footing of only a single step, a convenient bench to sit upon, instead of the old-fashioned high flight of graduated steps. Such a typical market cross might be built either of stone or of timber work, its essential feature always being the covered in space for shelter from the weather. [Illustration: 148. AXBRIDGE, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] In Wells, at the junction of Sadler Street with the High Street, stood a cross, which must have been the most beautiful of all structures of its kind. As represented in the prospect of the city, drawn by William Simes, in 1735 (Fig. 149), it was a Gothic work of singular richness and elegance. Its bottom storey consisted of two-centred arches between buttressed piers surmounted by pinnacles, with a parapet of open tracery. The upper portion consisted of a lantern of two diminishing stages, with late-Gothic traceried windows and parapets, with pinnacles at the angles, the lower one of the two stages connected with the ground storey by flying buttresses. The whole was crowned by a most gracefully tapered spire, terminating in a weathercock. This exquisite monument was swept away by order of the Corporation, December 1785, on the ground that part of the cross having "lately fallen down, and the remainder being in a ruinous state and dangerous," the entire cross must be demolished, and its materials carried elsewhere to some convenient place. This cross obviously dated from the middle of the fifteenth century or even earlier, and was, doubtless, the same cross, referred to by Bishop Beckington (1443-64), in his charter providing for the conveyance of water by conduit "to the high cross in the market place." Nevertheless, it has been identified by at least two writers, Charles Pooley and Alex. Gordon, with a cross which the antiquary Leland relates that he saw in process of construction. Leland describes this cross as having two concentric rings, an outer ring or "circumference" of seven pillars, and an inner "circumference" of six pillars, with a vaulted ceiling under the _Domus Civica_. This particular building was completed in 1542. It was erected by Bishop William Knight, with the help of a bequest from Dean Richard Woolman. But the cross of Simes' map must have been, at least, a century earlier in date than the cross of 1542, the account of which tallies neither in architectural style nor in shape with the other. In the one illustrated, there is no sign of two concentric arcades, while the lantern storey is far too small ever to have served for the headquarters of the municipal body. The discrepancies, in short, are such that one is driven to the conclusion that there must have been, at one and the same time, two separate crosses at Wells. It should be added that the tolls of the market cross, which he built, were given, by Bishop Knight's will, "for the use of the choristers of the Cathedral Church for ever." [Illustration: 149. WELLS, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 150. NORTHAMPTON MARKET CROSS] The Market Cross of Axbridge, Somersetshire (Fig. 148), illustrated, after a painting of the year 1756, in a communication from George Bennett to the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1805, was demolished in or about 1770. The structure appears to have been hexagonal on plan. Its piers were buttressed, its arches four-centred. The surrounding parapet was of pierced Gothic tracery, interrupted by a pinnacle over each of the piers. The roof was conical, with a lofty vane. The height to which the steps within, beneath the central shaft, rose, suggests that this was an instance where the cross must have been in existence first, and the shelter a subsequent addition. [Illustration: 151. SHEPTON MALLET, SOMERSETSHIRE INSCRIPTION ON MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 152. SHEPTON MALLET, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 153. NORWICH MARKET CROSS, WITH PLAN AND DETAIL] [Illustration: 154. LICHFIELD MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 155. TAUNTON, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] At Shepton Mallet a market cross (Fig. 152) was erected in 1500 by private benefaction, as recorded on the original engraved brass, or latten plate, attached to the structure. The text of the inscription (see Fig. 151) (in modernised spelling) is as follows: "Of your charity pray for the souls of Walter Buckland, and Agnes his wife, with whose goods this cross was made in the year of our Lord God, 1500, whose obit shall be kept for ever in this parish church of Shepton Mallet, the 28th day of November, whose souls Jesu pardon." "There are certain lands, apparently a part of the Bucklands' bequest, the revenues of which are devoted to keeping the cross in repair, any surplus being distributed among the poor. This 'Cross Charity,'" as it is called, "was formerly administered by trustees, but has recently"--the passage was written in 1907--"been transferred to the Urban Council. The title-deeds have long been lost; and some years ago the Charity Commissioners were inclined to" alienate "the property from the cross." The trustees, however, tenaciously fulfilled their obligations, "and from 1841 onwards, if not before, kept the cross in thorough repair." (Dr F. J. Allen.) The character of the cross has been so much changed from time to time by reconstruction and misrestoration, that it has now become impossible to determine what the ancient design really was; but it seems to have consisted of a shelter very like that formerly at Axbridge, with a central spire like that formerly at Taunton (Fig. 155). From the presence of pinnacles at the angles there can be deduced but one logical conclusion, viz., that the piers must have been, and should yet be, buttressed. The buttresses, however, have completely disappeared. The frequent traffic of heavy vehicles--for the market was once much busier than it has become since the introduction of the railway--would probably have damaged the projecting buttresses; and their omission, therefore, curtailing the extent of the area occupied by the cross, may have been designed to lessen the liability of the latter to collisions with market carts. It is supposed that the top of the central spire fell in the eighteenth century, damaging the substructure. Anyhow, at some time in the seventeenth, or in the early part of the eighteenth century, the hexagonal shelter was taken down from around the central pier (which still remains intact), and was then rebuilt in its present form, portions only of the old Gothic parapet, and the pinnacles, being re-used. This rebuilding has escaped record, but that it did take place the internal evidence of the structure itself makes sufficiently obvious. The absence, already mentioned, of buttresses; the clumsy, square blocks which do duty for the bases of the piers; the classic imposts of the latter, and the depressed arches (unconstructional, because they are not turned with voussoirs, but formed each of one huge pair of stones, cambered to simulate an arch in outline), and the exaggeratedly prominent keystones, could never have been perpetrated at the early date of 1500, but at some subsequent rebuilding, of which the sum of them affords cumulative and convincing proof. Charles Pooley (_Old Stone Crosses of Somerset_, 1877) states that the cross was rebuilt from the ground in 1841: but he was clearly mistaken. Dr F. J. Allen, of Cambridge, is positive on this point. His grandfather, as one of the trustees of the Shepton Mallet cross, was largely responsible for the rebuilding in question; and his own mother and uncle, living as children in their father's house, facing the cross, were eye-witnesses of the progress of the work, and could distinctly remember that only the spire above the roof was reconstructed. Minor repairs may have been done at the same time to the rest of the building, but it was certainly not taken down bodily. The architect employed was G. B. Manners, of Bath; and it is claimed that his design for the modern spire is a careful reproduction of the original one. To what extent this is the case may perhaps be judged by comparing the spire actually standing with an illustration, which appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1781, from a drawing made in 1747. The latter may be faulty, but, such as it is, its value as a record can scarcely be overrated, since it furnishes the earliest extant version of Shepton Mallet cross. The accompanying letterpress says: "On the top of the cross, on the east side, are figures in niches, and, above all, a modern weathercock." The engraving, it is true, shows figures on more sides of the head than one; but the discrepancy need not be material, if one may conjecture that all the figures, other than those on the east side, had perished in the interval between 1747 and 1781. In any event the massive, carved stone cylinder, depicted as capping the spire in 1747, cannot have been the original cross-head of 1500, which, according to Pooley, was "a heavy, lantern-shaped stone, bearing figures of our Saviour on the cross between two malefactors, besides the images of several saints." This cross-head was probably removed at the time of the rebuilding of the shelter; and the cross-head which succeeded it is most likely the same one which fell, as already mentioned, in the eighteenth century. Pooley concludes his notice of Shepton Mallet cross thus: "Some of the fragments of the old cross I saw lying in a builder's yard at Darshill," a hamlet in Shepton Mallet parish. "A grandson of that builder," writes Dr F. J. Allen, in September 1919, "now living at Shepton, states that he can well remember his grandfather selling a selection of those fragments to Lord Portman, who removed them to his house at Blandford." [Illustration: 156, 157. MALMESBURY, WILTSHIRE MARKET CROSS, WITH SECTION] [Illustration: 158. MALMESBURY PLAN OF MARKET CROSS] At Malmesbury, Wiltshire, there stands, some 200 ft. directly south of the south end of the old transept of the Abbey Church, and about 50 ft. east of the south-east angle of St Paul's Parish Church, a handsome market cross (Figs. 156, 157, 158) of the same type as those of Cheddar, Chichester, and Salisbury. The following is Leland's account of the cross: "There is a right fair and costly piece of work in the market place, made all of stone, and curiously vaulted, for poor market folks to stand dry when rain cometh. There be eight great pillars, and eight open arches, and the work is eight square (octagonal). One great pillar in the middle beareth up the vault. The men of the town made this piece of work _in hominum memoria_ (within living memory)." Leland wrote between about 1535 and 1545; and the date assigned to the cross is 1490. With regard to the open arches it would be more accurate to state that two only of the number are open to the ground. The six others are confined at the bottom by a low fence-wall. "A deeply moulded flying buttress rises from each pier, clear of the richly-groined roof, the light ribs being drawn into a cluster by a wide string-band supporting a large pinnacle and ogee finial. This pinnacle bears traces of sculptured figures, and, on the west face, of a crucifix; but the faces of the work are much abraded by the weather, and perhaps rough treatment, for most of the bosses have been broken from the groined vault." [Illustration: 159. SALISBURY POULTRY, OR MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 160. SALISBURY POULTRY CROSS, AS RESTORED] [Illustration: 161, 162. CHICHESTER MARKET CROSS, WITH SECTION] [Illustration: 163. CHICHESTER PLAN OF MARKET CROSS] The Market Cross at Chichester (Figs. 11, 161-163) was built shortly before 1500 by Bishop Edward Storey, who endowed it with an estate at Amberley, Sussex, producing a yearly rental of £25, that the means for keeping the cross in constant repair might be assured. It is octagonal on plan, its eight arches all open to the ground. This is much the most elaborately ornamented of the crosses of its class. The flying buttresses (unlike those of Malmesbury cross) are crocketed at intervals all the way along their ogee course; and the side walls above the arches are richly panelled. Splendid though Chichester cross is still, it has been shamefully disfigured by incongruous innovations intruding upon the original design. It was probably at the "restoration," under Charles II., that the bust of Charles I. was set up in an oval recess, inserted in the place of one of the niches of the parapet. The clock above was fixed in 1724. Again the cross suffered excessive repair, and further alterations in 1746. In the case of the market crosses of Chichester and Malmesbury the ring of pinnacles and the flying buttresses, converging upon the central shaft, itself culminating in a sculptured lantern, resemble in general effect the crown steeples of King's College, Aberdeen, and of the collegiate church of St Giles at Edinburgh. But there is a difference. In the Scottish instances the lantern is structurally upheld by the combined thrust of the flying buttresses, without vertical support. In the English market crosses, on the contrary, the shaft, rising from the floor and passing right up through the roof, sustains the lantern from directly underneath. Salisbury Poultry Cross (Figs. 159, 160) must originally have been constructed in the same way, but, some time before May 1789 (see illustration in _Archæologia_, Vol. IX., p. 373) the whole of the original superstructure above the roof had perished. The pinnacles, flying buttresses, and lantern, which now crown the roof, are only a modern restoration, albeit a very excellent one. The plan of the Poultry Cross is hexagonal. In addition to this cross there are known to have existed at one time in Salisbury the Cheese Cross, Bernard's Cross, and that before the west door of the cathedral. One of the number was erected by Lawrence de St Martino, as a penance enjoined before September 1388, by Bishop Radulph Ergham because Lawrence, who was infected with Lollardism, had been guilty of flagrant irreverence toward the Blessed Sacrament. To complete his penance he was required to come and kneel in the open air, barefoot and bareheaded, before the said cross every Saturday for the rest of his life. A record of his offence and of its punishment was to be inscribed upon the cross itself, and, assuming this penance cross to be the actually existing market cross, it has been conjectured that the six panelled sides of its central pillar bore the required text. But the identity is very doubtful, more especially as 1388 seems too early a date, by some hundred years, for the Poultry Cross. The old Market Cross at Glastonbury (Fig. 164) has unfortunately disappeared. The shelter was octagonal and gabled. But the singular feature of the design was that the gables, instead of surmounting the arched openings, were placed over the spandrels and the piers between the arches. Conformably, then, with the canted plan of the structure, the face of each gable was returned at an angle from its central vertical line, a simple but quite unusual device, which produced a remarkably quaint and original effect. The picturesqueness was enhanced by the presence hard by of a water conduit, which grouped charmingly with the more imposing structure of the market cross. Both, however, becoming dilapidated through neglect, were demolished in 1808. At Norwich (Fig. 153) the first market cross was erected in the time of Edward III. (1327-37). It is known to have been repaired in the reign of Henry IV. (1399-1413). The structure must have been of considerable size, since it contained a chapel and four shops. Becoming decayed, it was pulled down in 1501, and rebuilt, the new cross being finished in 1503. Like its predecessor, it contained an oratory or chapel. It was octagonal, raised on steps, and appears to have been originally an instance, on a large scale, of a spire-shaped cross with an entrance on the west side between two vices leading to the upper storeys. In the seventeenth century, apparently, the cross was surrounded by sixteen pillars, _i.e._, eight large and eight intermediate pillars of slenderer size, to support a flat leaded roof for the shelter of the market people--an addition which totally altered the aspect of the original spire-shaped cross. Meanwhile, in the first year of Edward VI., the crucifixes which had adorned the cross were taken down by order of the King's visitors. The standard weights and measures of the city used to be kept in the market cross. The oratory in it was let in 1574 to the company of workers in leather. In 1646 the cross was repaired by means of a graduated tax, levied on all the citizens in proportion to their means. In 1646, also, the floor of the cross was paved. In 1664 it was appointed for the Court of Guard, and in 1672 was "beautified and adorned" according to the fashion of the day. Just sixty years afterwards the cross was again alleged to be in decay, its materials were sold and the whole cross swept away, the demolition beginning in August 1732. [Illustration: 164. GLASTONBURY, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 165. CHEDDAR, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 166. SOMERTON, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 167. MAIDSTONE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 168. OUNDLE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE MARKET CROSS] At Lichfield (Fig. 154), the Market Cross, octagonal on plan, with two-centred open arches, and with figures by way of pinnacles at the angles of the parapet, was erected at the cost of Dean Denton (1521-32). At Northampton, the Market Cross (Fig. 150) was erected in 1535. It stood upon an octagonal platform of stone, 2 ft. in height, and comprised eight wooden columns, the entire surface of their cylindrical shafts carved, supporting the pointed arches of the octagonal shelter. "And the timbers from one pillar to the next pillar were arched and carved. In the middle (of the platform) were three steps or rounds of stone to sit upon," as well as for means of approach on one side to the doorway which, "locked from market to market," gave access to the stairway curtained within the cylindrical shaft of stone rising in the centre. This shaft terminated above the roof in a lantern with glazed windows, within which were deposited the standard weights and measures, and other utensils connected with the market. There was ample room to walk round upon the lead-covered roof between the lantern and the embattled parapet. The latter was ornamented at every angle of the octagon with a standard, or post, surmounted by a little ape holding a rod with a vane attached. "The whole was set out and beautified with branches of lead, and, upon all squares (faces) little panels of lead like coats of arms gilt, and a great ornament to the place." The cross, unfortunately, perished in the general conflagration at Northampton, on 20th September 1675. [Illustration: 169. IPSWICH MARKET CROSS] The old Market Cross at Taunton, Somersetshire, apparently dated from about the middle of the sixteenth century. It was hexagonal on plan, with pointed arches springing from columns, presumably cylindrical, with polygonal bases. Above the arches was a penthouse roof of boarding, designed, no doubt, to augment the area of the shelter beneath. The top of the walls was crenellated, with pinnacles at the angles. The central shaft rose into two diminishing tiers of niches for statues. The original top having vanished, its place was taken by a square block with sundials on the faces, with an ogee roof surmounted by a weathercock. The cross was demolished in 1769, but its general appearance is perpetuated by a very rough drawing in the British Museum (Fig. 155). [Illustration: 170, 171, 172. IPSWICH, SUFFOLK MARKET CROSS, WITH DETAILS OF WOOD CARVING] [Illustration: 173. CASTLE COMBE, WILTSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 174, 175, 176. CASTLE COMBE, WILTSHIRE MARKET CROSS, WITH PLAN, SECTION, AND DETAILS] The Market Cross at Cheddar, Somersetshire (Fig. 165), is a stone structure of six four-centred open arches and shelter, evidently built up round an older cross of the shaft-on-steps type. The shaft, which dates from the fifteenth century, is octagonal, and, with its knop, rears through the top of the roof. The piers of the surrounding arches are buttressed and the parapet is embattled. Extensive renewing took place in 1834, and the steps were repaired in 1835. The Market Cross at Somerton, Somersetshire (Fig. 166), which may be compared with that of Cheddar, was built in 1673, a surprisingly late date in view of the character of the cross itself. The latter is octagonal, with pyramidal roof of eight cants; its piers are buttressed, and, above a stringcourse with gargoyles at the outer angles, rises an embattled parapet. So closely, indeed, are the forms of architectural tradition adhered to, that, but for the segmental arches with their heavy keystones, one would have had little hesitation in assigning the cross to the first half of the sixteenth century. At Maidstone (Fig. 167), the Market Cross, or as it was formerly called, from its original purpose, the Corn Cross, stood at the top of High Street in the centre of the roadway. The date of its erection is unknown, but it is thought to have been about the middle of the sixteenth century, at the time of the incorporation of the borough by Edward VI. A sketch, ascribed to Cornelius Jansen, drawn upon ass's skin and dated 1623--the property, through the Bosville family, of J. H. Baverstock--shows the cross to have been an octagonal structure with an umbrella-like roof, covered apparently with slates, and surmounted by a leaden cross. Later drawings and paintings show that the arches were four-centred, and supported on clustered wooden shafts, and that, in place of the cross on the top, there had been substituted a lead-covered dome, or cupola, from the summit of which rose a pole of turned wood. In the spandrels of the arches were curious carvings illustrative of a butcher's calling. About 1608 it was converted into the butcher's market. The cross, says William Newton in his _Antiquities of Maidstone_, 1741, "appears to have been very large; but only a part of it is now remaining, which is handsomely covered with lead, and used for the fish market." In 1771 it was considered to be an obstruction to the traffic, and was accordingly moved on rollers a slight distance to the side of the street, just below the square stone conduit shown in the illustration; but it did not stand there very long, for it was finally demolished in 1780. [Illustration: 177. DUNSTER, SOMERSETSHIRE YARN-MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 178, 179. OAKHAM, RUTLAND BUTTER CROSS, WITH DETAIL OF THE INTERIOR] [Illustration: 180, 181. WYMONDHAM, NORFOLK MARKET CROSS, WITH DETAIL OF THE GROUND-FLOOR STOREY] [Illustration: 182. BINGLEY, W.R. YORKSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 183. LYMM, CHESHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 184. NETHER STOWEY, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 185. MILVERTON, SOMERSETSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 186. NOTTINGHAM THE MALT CROSS] At Leicester, the last remains of the ancient cross were cleared away in 1569. Meanwhile, a successor to it had been built in 1557. This new Market Cross (Fig. 12) was octagonal on plan, having open arches on pillars and a cupola roof. In its turn it was demolished between 1769 and 1773. At Ipswich, a preaching cross, erected in 1510 by Edmund Daundy, Bailiff of the town, and said to be a near relative of Cardinal Wolsey, is believed to have occupied the same spot on the Cornhill, where subsequently, in 1628, the market cross was built (Figs. 169-172). The latter was projected, at least, as early as 1610, when Benjamin Osborne promised £50, which, by will dated June 1619, he bequeathed toward the building. But it was not until 1628 that the Corporation managed to obtain any payment from his executors, and then the sum available from his estate was £6 short of the proper amount. The figures in the inscription, recording the benefaction upon a shield in one of the spandrels, were thereupon altered from £50 to £44 (Fig. 172). The structure, 28 ft. in diameter, comprised eight stone columns, supporting elliptical arches of wood, with an embattled parapet above a cornice, elaborately carved with scrollwork and grotesques. Five masks from the old wood carving, together with the shield inscribed as above mentioned, are yet preserved in the Ipswich Museum. The roof, an ogee-shaped cupola, covered with lead, was framed into a centre post, carried on cross-beams just above the level of the eaves. The upper end of the post ran up through the middle of the roof in the form of a square terminal of four stages, the lowest part being carved with a group of figures supporting a gilt ball, like an orb, with a cross on the top. On the occasion of the Proclamation of King Charles II., on 10th May 1660, "the cross was ordered to be beautified--painted or rather emblazoned" with the arms of local celebrities. The arms included those of Ipswich borough and of the families of Daundy, Bloss, Long, and Sparrowe, as well as two tradesmen's marks, C. A., and B. K. M. The carved faces in the museum yet retain their flesh tints. In April 1694 the Corporation ordered that a new statue of Justice should be erected upon the summit of the cross. In 1723 the Corporation voted thanks to Mr Francis Nugent (who represented Ipswich in three Parliaments) for his present of a statue of Justice, which was brought from his seat at Dallinghoe. This, an allegorical figure, holding the scales, is of stone, painted brown, and also is preserved in Ipswich Museum. A sketch and plan by Sir James Thornhill (Fig. 169), in May 1711, shows that the cross at that time stood surrounded by a balustrade. The cross was pulled down bodily at the beginning of January 1812, by order of a Great Court previously held. An aquatint, from a contemporary drawing by George Frost, was published in the same year (Fig. 171). The Market Cross at Mildenhall, Suffolk (Fig. 13), with its timber posts and lead-covered roof, dates from the fifteenth century. [Illustration: 187. BUNGAY, SUFFOLK MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 188. SWAFFHAM, NORFOLK MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 189. WOODSTOCK, OXFORDSHIRE MARKET CROSS] [Illustration: 190. WAKEFIELD, W.R. YORKSHIRE MARKET CROSS] The old Butter Cross at Oakham (Fig. 178) recalls that at Mildenhall, than which, however, it is probably later by a century or more. The Oakham cross is octagonal on plan, the eight oak posts which support the roof resting on blocks of stone for bases. In the centre is a solid stone pier, encircled by seats for the market women. The interior construction of the roof is a fine example of carpentry (Fig. 179). At Oundle, Northamptonshire, stood a market cross, very like the last-named, octagonal on plan, with an eight-sided pyramidal roof, covered with Colly Weston slates, and supported by eight wooden posts (Fig. 168). The interior comprised a central shaft, with a square socket, bearing the date 1591, and mounted on two octagonal steps of stone, having overhanging drips. The cross, not mentioned by Bridges, has long since been demolished. The view is from an undated lithograph, initialled J. S. The Market Cross at Wymondham, Norfolk (Figs. 180, 181), with its quaint timber-framed upper storey, approached by an external stair, dates from 1617. The face of the braces between the piers of the open ground-storey are carved with tops, spindles, spoons, and such like wooden ware, for the abundant manufacture of which the town had long been famous. At Dunster, Somersetshire, the Yarn-Market Cross, as it is called, is octagonal on plan, with an immense span of roof relieved by dormers (Fig. 177). "The arrangement of the timbers, extending radially from the centre of the cross, is somewhat remarkable," writes Alex. Gordon. This cross was built about the year 1600. The weather-vane at the summit of the lantern bears the date 1647. The Market Cross, or Butter Cross, at Witney, Oxfordshire (Fig. 14), was built, according to Joseph Skelton, by William Blake, of Coggs, in 1683. Lavish renovation has now robbed it of much of its proper charm, but the planning of the roof, with its gables facing four ways, constitutes an entirely delightful composition. At Milverton, Somersetshire, the Market Cross, commonly called Fair Cross, was standing, and is referred to in an indenture dated March 1715 (Fig. 185). The vane bore the date 1706. Eight cylindrical columns of stone, surrounding the base and shaft of a medieval cross, sustained the shelter, above which was an upper chamber, used for storage only, access thereto being obtained by means of a ladder through the window opening in one of the sides. The chamber was covered with a slate-healed pyramid of eight cants. The cross, which, strangely enough, was in private ownership, was demolished by the proprietor himself in or about 1850. The Market Cross at Nether Stowey, Somersetshire, was erected about 1750 on the site of an earlier cross, of which nothing but a few fragments of stone from the base had survived. The eighteenth-century structure was octagonal on plan, eight cylindrical columns supporting the eight-canted pyramidal roof, from the top of which rose a square turret, with a clock in the lower part, and a bell in the open bell-cote at the top (Fig. 184). Having been allowed to fall into dilapidation, the whole cross was swept away by the lord of the manor about 1860. At Castle Combe, Wiltshire, the Market Cross is apparently another instance where the shelter was built up over an already existing stone cross (Figs. 173, 176). The latter has a bold, square socket, sculptured with late-Gothic tracery ornament. The shelter seems to be sixteenth-century work. Its pyramidal roof, supported on four stone piers, had lost the original summit of the cross-shaft before Buckler made his drawing of the north-west view of the cross. It was then surmounted by a sundial of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Later restoration, however, has substituted a quasi-Gothic pinnacle. At Lymm, Cheshire, though no market is now held there, the old Market Cross remains, a quaint and unusual structure, standing on the top of a boulder, with steps partly hewn out of the natural rock (Fig. 183). The cross is built of stone, and consists of a massive central pier, square on plan, between four smaller piers, likewise square, supporting the roof at the corners. The roof, cross-ridged, has pediments facing four ways, and surmounted each by a substantial hip-knob. On the faces of the pediments are sundials. From the centre of the roof rises a lofty weathercock with a wrought-iron frame. The Malt Cross at Nottingham stood opposite the lower end of Sheep Lane, and is said to have been erected in 1714, although the old vane at the summit bore the date 1686. The structure, hexagonal on plan, and roofed with a cupola supported on Doric columns, was raised upon a three-foot high platform of four steps (Fig. 186). The boss surmounting the cupola had a sundial on each of its six sides. The Malt Cross was taken down, and the materials were sold by public auction in October 1804. As the seventeenth century advanced the market cross exhibited more and more marked divergence from the original architectural forms, including the abandonment of the cross on the summit, and the adoption, in many instances, of a sundial in place of the cross. This tendency only increased in the eighteenth century. Instances of it are afforded by the market crosses--rectangular on plan--at Woodstock (Fig. 189) and Wakefield (Fig. 190). Other eighteenth-century market crosses, _e.g._, those of Bungay (1789) (Fig. 187) and Swaffham (1783) (Fig. 188), might almost be mistaken in appearance for bandstands, but from the fact that, aloft upon their lead-covered domes, the allegorical figure of Justice, emphasising the duty of fair dealing, continues to proclaim their purpose of open-air shelters for the transaction of business. VII. UNCLASSIFIED VARIETIES It is not easy to devise a system for the classification of crosses, which shall, without loss of precision, be both exhaustive enough and comprehensive enough to embrace every possible variety. There remain, then, a few anomalous instances which seem not to admit of inclusion in any of the categories already considered. The first to note is Doncaster cross (Fig. 191), of which an engraving was published in _Vetusta Monumenta_, July 1753, from an old painting, formerly the property of Lord Fairfax, who sold it in 1672 to Alderman Thoresby, of Leeds. An ancient manuscript, accompanying the painting, recorded all that was known of the history of the cross. The latter bore on the shaft, at about a third of its height up from the bottom, an inscription in Norman French: "This is the cross of Ote de Tilli, on whose soul God have mercy. Amen." The said Ote de Tilli was seneschal of the Earl of Conisborough, and was a witness of the charter of foundation of Kirkstall Abbey in 1152. His name occurs in other charters of King Stephen's reign, and also of others in the reigns of Henry II. and Richard I. The cross stood at the south end of the town of Doncaster, on the London road. The shaft was 18 ft. high, and consisted of a large central cylinder with four engaged cylindrical shafts, having a total circumference of 11 ft. 7 in. It stood upon five circular steps, resting upon a hexagonal base or plinth. On the summit of the stone cross there formerly rose five slender iron crosses, the central one higher than the rest; but in 1644 the monument was defaced by the troops under the Earl of Manchester, losing its iron crosses. To make up the deficiency the mayor, in 1678, erected four dials, a ball, and vane on the top of the cross. Of not dissimilar plan is the stump of a shaft at Elstow (Fig. 192), in Bedfordshire. Again, there is a tall pillar of clustered columns in three stages at Aldborough (Fig. 193). All three examples appear to date from the thirteenth century. [Illustration: 191. DONCASTER, W.R. YORKSHIRE] [Illustration: 192. ELSTOW, BEDFORDSHIRE CROSS NEAR THE CHURCH] [Illustration: 193. ALDBOROUGH, E.R. YORKSHIRE VILLAGE CROSS] [Illustration: 194, 195. MITTON, W.R. YORKSHIRE HEAD OF CROSS IN THE CHURCHYARD, SHOWING OBVERSE AND REVERSE FACES] At Chester, where Watergate Street ends and Eastgate Street begins, and where, at the point of junction, Bridge Street leads off at a right angle southward to the Dee Bridge, there stood the High Cross on a hexagonal platform or step outside the entrance to the Pentice, which itself extended the whole length of the south side of St Peter's Church. The design of this cross was so abnormal that one is at a loss to place it under any known classification. A plain cylindrical column supported an immense and lofty superstructure, exceeding the height of shaft and socket put together, and consisting of a double-storeyed lantern, with two tiers of niches for statues surrounding it. The whole was surmounted by an orb and cross, but the drawing by Randle Holme the third, among the Harleian manuscripts at the British Museum (Fig. 24), gives two alternative details to finish off the summit, viz., a crucifix, or a crowned shield of the royal arms. The High Cross was newly gilded in 1529. It was overthrown and defaced by the Puritans in 1646, or, according to another account, in 1648. "In 1804 the remains were discovered buried in the porch of St Peter's Church, and were taken to Netherleigh House, and there used to form a kind of ornamental rockwork in the gardens." The late Archdeacon Barber, writing in 1910, says that in the Grosvenor Museum at Chester there is a plain stone block, which, though without any of the richly sculptured ornament depicted by Holme, purports to be the head of the ancient cross, while "the shaft is said to be in the grounds of Plas Newydd, at Llangollen." [Illustration: 196. RIPLEY, W.R. YORKSHIRE BASE IN THE CHURCHYARD] There is, again, a certain type of cross which cannot exactly be classified under any of the previously described varieties. The type in question, as exemplified at Alphington (Fig. 199) and at St Loye's, Wonford, near Exeter (Fig. 198), appears to be peculiar to Devonshire. At first sight the cross looks much like a variety of monolith, but the cross-head is in fact worked in a separate block of stone. The shortness of the arms, as compared with the height of the upper limb, is striking. Another feature is a small niche or hollow sunk in the face of the cross at the point of intersection. For the rest, the socket does not differ at all from many examples occurring in the shaft-on-steps group. The cross-head at Mitton, Yorkshire (Figs. 194, 195), is peculiar inasmuch as the crucifixion is sculptured on both faces, but in totally different fashions. That on the west face has the arms stretched horizontally, within a sexfoil frame, and might well be of the thirteenth century. Whereas the sculpture on the east face, though much more weatherworn, is of a style that could not have been designed before the late-fourteenth, or perhaps even the fifteenth century. The arms of the Christ in this instance are drawn upwards in an unusually oblique direction. It is impossible that these two representations could have been executed at one and the same date. The circular outline of the head, too, is peculiar, and suggestive rather of a gable-cross than of a standing cross. Possibly the west face only was sculptured in the first instance, for a gable-cross, the sculpture on the east face being added later in order to adapt the stone for the head of a churchyard cross. Anyhow, since Buckler's drawings were made, the head has been mounted on a modern shaft and pedestal. [Illustration: 197. BISLEY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE MONUMENT IN THE CHURCHYARD] A very strange socket, comprising two stages, both cylindrical with a slight batter, stands to the north of the church in the churchyard at Ripley, Yorkshire (Fig. 196). The topmost stage is about 2 ft. 3½ in. high, and the diameter of its upper bed is 2 ft. 9 in. It has had sunk into it, from the shaft of a cross, a mortise 8½ in. deep by 18 in. by 10 in. The bottom stage is 2 ft. high by about 4 ft. 8 in., the diameter of its upper bed, which varies from 6 to 7½ in. wider all round than the foot of the upper stage. A most peculiar feature is the series of eight cavities averaging 6 in. deep and from 14 to 17 in. high, by 7 to 10½ in. wide at the top. It cannot be that these cavities were receptacles for offerings, for eight of them would be largely in excess of any reasonable requirements of alms-gathering. It has been called a "weeping cross" on the supposition that the hollows were meant for penitents to kneel in. But this again cannot be, for the spaces available are not nearly large enough for such a purpose. It may be that the bottom stage of the Ripley cross is, after all, nothing else than the inverted bowl of a font, and the hollows surrounding it niches for statuary. The problem, however, is one which has not hitherto been satisfactorily explained. [Illustration: 198. ST LOYE'S, WONFORD, DEVONSHIRE] At Bisley, Gloucestershire, in the west end of the churchyard, stands a singular structure of stone, of early-thirteenth-century work (Fig. 197). Circular on plan at the foot and hexagonal above, it now measures about 12 ft. high, the original cross or finial at the apex having disappeared. This monument has been variously described as a cross, a well-head, or a bone-house. Probably it is rather a combination between a cross (for with such it must almost certainly have been crowned) and a lantern for the "poor souls' light." The trefoil-headed openings in each cant seem designed expressly for emitting the light of a lamp burning within, while the dormer-like hoods of the said openings would shelter the flame from wind and rain. Such lantern pillars are known to have been in use in the Middle Ages, though they have very rarely survived to our own times. There exists, however, a fine example of late-fourteenth or early-fifteenth century work, standing outside the north-east part of the Dom at Regensburg, in Bavaria. [Illustration: 199. ALPHINGTON, DEVONSHIRE] VIII. LYCHGATES Lychgates are so named from the old Anglo-Saxon word _lich_, or German _leiche_, meaning corpse, because they stood at the entrance of the churchyard, where the bearers of the dead might deposit their burden, and rest awhile before passing through, and into the church for the solemn funeral rites. Some lychgates are actually provided with a long flat slab for this very purpose, as is the case, for instance, at Ashprington and Atherington, both in Devonshire, and at Chiddingfold, Surrey (Fig. 227). Usually also they are fitted with benches. The rubric of the Prayer Book of 1549 directed that the officiating minister at funerals should go to meet the corpse at the "church style," _i.e._, lychgate; and again, according to the Prayer Book now in use (of the year 1662), the clergyman and the clerks meeting the corpse "at the entrance of the churchyard" (_i.e._, at the lychgate, wherever one exists), there begin the burial service, and thence precede the body into the church. In some places, as at Heston and Hayes, in Middlesex, and at Chalfont St Giles, the entrance gates form turnstiles, being fixed to a central post, which revolves on a pivot. There is hardly scope for any very great variety of types in lychgates, but they may be classified generally under certain main groups, viz., first, the porch-shape, in which the roof-ridge has the same axis as the passage way; secondly, the shed-like form, in which the roof-ridge runs transversely to the axial line of the passage way; thirdly, a rare variety, embodying both the previous features, and such that is exemplified by the charming lychgate at Clun, Shropshire (Fig. 235), where two roof-ridges cross one another at right angles; or at Berrynarbor, Devonshire, where the lychgate is on the plan of a cross; and, lastly, lychgates formed by the combination of the requisite passage way with a church house or other building. To this class belongs the entrance to the churchyard at Penshurst, Kent, an example well known and admired for its picturesqueness. Other instances are those of Hartfield in Sussex (Fig. 201), Long Compton in Warwickshire, Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire (Fig. 204), and Bray in Berkshire (Figs. 202, 203). The last-named specimen is of exceptional interest, not only because it contains an ancient chapel, but also because it bears, on one of the uprights of the entrance, the date of its construction, 1448, a most unusual circumstance. The penthouse gallery, shown on the left of the photograph, is a modern addition. It will also be noticed, on comparison of the two illustrations, that the west window of the old chapel-chamber has, since 1879, been robbed of some of its mullions, and now consists of three lights only. Two Welsh examples of lychgates, with a room built over each, are enumerated by the Rev. Elias Owen, in 1886, viz., Derwen, Denbighshire, where the upper storey is utilised for parochial purposes, and Whitford, Flintshire, where it served as a schoolroom. Latterly, "when the school increased in numbers, the lychgate was blocked up and formed into a class-room" in addition to the upper part. The same writer remarks that a fully equipped lychgate includes seats, a lychcross and a lychstone. As a rule, both lychcrosses and lychstones "have disappeared ... but underneath the roof of Caerwys (Flintshire) lychgate are still to be seen the beam and socket, where once stood the wooden lychcross, and on the ground are traceable the foundation stones of the two lychseats, and of the lychstone in the centre of the porch. This rest for the coffin was a low wall" of about a coffin's length. Some of the distinctive features of lychgates were destroyed in the eighteenth century. Thus "the beam that stretched from wall to wall," and had a wooden cross inserted into it, "has, in nearly every instance, been sawn away." The above-named example at Caerwys, however, according to the _Inventory_ of the Royal Commission, still survives. The place was visited in July 1910, and the report runs: "Within the covered lychgate is a pre-Reformation oak frame, the two uprights supporting a beam in which a cross was fixed," the ancient custom having been to set down corpses on their way to burial upon the lychstone immediately beneath this cross. The distribution of lychgates in various districts is most unequal. Thus nearly every one of the twenty-four churches of the Deanery of Woodleigh, Devonshire, is said to possess a lychgate. An instance, which may safely be pronounced unique, is that of Troutbeck, Westmorland, where there are, or were, no less than three stone lychgates to one and the same churchyard. [Illustration: 200. HAYES, MIDDLESEX LYCHGATE] Lychgates are constructed, it goes without saying, of the most convenient native material available. Thus, the Welsh examples illustrated are of indigenous stone; whereas in Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Kent, and other districts in which freestone is not available, the lack of it is amply compensated by the development of the resources of timber. Kent, though deficient in churchyard crosses, may justly claim to rival, if not indeed to surpass, the other counties of England in respect of the admirable lychgates which it contains. The handsomest stands at Beckenham (Figs. 205-207), on the south side of the old churchyard. The gate is of the shed variety, but the roof-ridge, instead of running the whole length from end to end (as it does at Lenham in the same county (Figs. 220, 221, and 222), at Ashwell, Hertfordshire (Figs. 215-218), Hayes (Fig. 200) and Heston (Figs. 213 and 214) in Middlesex, Morwenstow in Cornwall (Fig. 219), Isleham in Cambridgeshire (Figs. 223-225), and Goring in Oxfordshire (Fig. 226)), is hipped, with very charming result. But hipping alone is not enough to ensure full æsthetic effect. One has only to compare two examples of hipped roofs, viz., that at Beckenham, already named, and the not dissimilar instance at Staple (Figs. 208, 209), in the same county, to realise what very different artistic values two gates, based on one identical motif, may possess. The Beckenham lychgate is far superior to the other, no doubt because of the excellent proportions of its parts. The old drawing, by Buckler (Fig. 206), shows that at one time the large oblique struts were wanting; a deficiency which altered the whole appearance of the lychgate, tending, as it did, to make the roof look heavy and ill-balanced. The large struts, however, had been supplied by 1871. The pronounced tilt of the roof toward the eaves, by means of sprockets (see the section drawings, Fig. 207), gives additional character to this beautiful lychgate. At the present day it cannot, unfortunately, be seen to proper advantage, because of the intrusive presence of a modern brick wall, abutting close up against either end of the gate, and concealing its lower part. The roof is now tiled, but it is believed that it was originally thatched, or shingled. The difference of effect produced by varying the number of bays is illustrated by comparing the lychgates of West Wickham (Figs. 211, 212) and Beckenham, both of one bay each; those of Isleham, Staple, Lenham, and Ashwell, all of two bays each, and that of Anstey with its three bays. As to the last-named, Buckler's amazingly incorrect draughtsmanship in the right hand lower corner fortunately does not avail to disguise the sturdy dignity and grand outline of this magnificent example. At Ashwell, Hertfordshire, the timber lychgate, which forms the south-west entrance to the churchyard, probably dates from the fifteenth century. The three standards carrying the horizontal lintel are so much more massive at the top than at the bottom that they must certainly have been cut from tree trunks inverted, like the angle spurs used in the construction of ancient timber-framed houses. The windbrace in the roof, and the engrailed vergeboard under the end gable should be noticed. The lychgate which forms the western entrance to the churchyard at Lenham, Kent, comprises two passage ways, each having a four-centred arch of timber overhead. The narrower gate, that on the south, has the head cambered out of a single piece of oak to the four-centred outline. The northern, the wider gate, has the head built together of two pieces, shaped to the requisite form. The supporting struts and braces are much worn with age and weather, but happily unrestored. The roof is tiled. The main part of the timberwork is of the fifteenth century, says Mr E. C. Lee, except the roof, the rafters of which, built into the adjoining house, are "very poor and rough.... The strutting at A is bad in construction, all the strain being thrown on the pins." There is a tradition that this gate was brought hither from Canterbury some time about 1770; but it is, in all probability, without historical basis, as also are many other traditions of a similar kind. The lychgate at Pulborough, Sussex (Fig. 236), is an example of a pyramidal roof, and may be contrasted with the cross-ridged construction of the lychgates at Clun in Shropshire (Fig. 235), or Monnington-on-Wye in Herefordshire (Fig. 237). All three are square on plan, and built of timber. The ornamental wood-patterning at Clun is closely allied to the typical domestic work of Shropshire and Cheshire, only in this instance it is open instead of being filled in between with wattle and daub. Some lychgates belonging to the shed type are of composite materials, partly masonry and partly timberwork. To this class belong the gates at Pattingham, Staffordshire (Fig. 234), with its timber-framed gables in the long roof; Llanfillo, Brecknockshire (Fig. 229), and Clodock, Herefordshire (Fig. 228). The last-named is of uncommon character, having timber posts supplemented by masonry pier-walls, with recesses, like niches, in their inner sides. The stone piers are each 8 ft. 8 in. long by 2 ft. thick, and the clear opening between them is 7 ft. 4 in. wide. The roofing is of stone slates. It is believed to have been erected in 1667. To judge of the respective effects produced by timberwork on the one hand, and stonework on the other, one has only to compare the porch-like lychgates of Rustington, Sussex (Fig. 230), and Boughton Monchelsea, Kent (Fig. 231), with those of Talyllyn (Fig. 232) and Llandrillo-yn-Rhos (Fig. 233). It happens that the date of the construction of the last-named is known, viz., 1677. Otherwise, both this one and Talyllyn are so rude in construction, and so conspicuous for the absence of architectural detail, that it would be rash to attempt to assign a more precise date to either of them than some period subsequent to Queen Elizabeth's reign. "It is difficult," says Herbert North in _The Old Churches of Arllechwedd_, "to conjecture the date of the local lychgates." Of six specimens, past and present, noted by him in Carnarvonshire, every one bore, or bears, a date some time within the eighteenth century. The lychgate of Llanrug is dated 1718; Caerhun and Llanfaglan, 1728; the old gate, now demolished, at Dolwyddelan, was dated 1736; the gate at Bettws-y-Coed is dated 1756, and Llanrhychwyn, 1762. In one case only, that of Dolwyddelan, the parish accounts show clearly that the work executed in the year specified was of the nature of repairs to an already existing structure. With regard to the other lychgates, however, there is no way of determining whether they were repaired merely, or built afresh at the dates recorded on them. With one exception, the lychgate of Bettws-y-Coed, where there is on the east side, over the gateway, a fine curved beam, 10 in. square, of really medieval aspect, internal evidence is of little avail, because the structures themselves are of quite plain and simple character, devoid of any distinctive architectural feature whatever. It is, however, a very extraordinary coincidence if occasion arose for all the six lychgates to require repairing within a space of less than fifty years. One can scarcely be rash, then, in assuming that, in the majority of instances, these lychgates were built at the actual dates respectively inscribed upon them. [Illustration: 201. HARTFIELD, SUSSEX LYCHGATE BUILDING] [Illustration: 202. BRAY, BERKSHIRE] [Illustration: 203. BRAY, BERKSHIRE LYCHGATE, FROM THE CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 204. CHALFONT ST GILES, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 205. BECKENHAM, KENT LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 206, 207. BECKENHAM, KENT LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 208, 209. STAPLE, KENT PLAN AND SECTIONS OF LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 210. ANSTEY, HERTFORDSHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 211, 212. WEST WICKHAM, KENT LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 213, 214. HESTON, MIDDLESEX LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 215, 216. ASHWELL, HERTFORDSHIRE LYCHGATE, ELEVATION AND SECTION, SHOWING ROOF CONSTRUCTION] [Illustration: 217, 218. ASHWELL, HERTFORDSHIRE LYCHGATE, PLAN AND END ELEVATION] [Illustration: 219. MORWENSTOW, CORNWALL LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 220. LENHAM, KENT LYCHGATE, FROM WITHIN THE CHURCHYARD] [Illustration: 221. LENHAM, KENT LYCHGATE DETAILS] [Illustration: 222. LENHAM, KENT LYCHGATE, SECTIONS AND GROUND PLAN] [Illustration: 223. ISLEHAM, CAMBRIDGESHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 224, 225. ISLEHAM, CAMBRIDGESHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 226. GORING, OXFORDSHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 227. CHIDDINGFOLD, SURREY LYCHGATE, WITH COFFIN SLAB] [Illustration: 228. CLODOCK, HEREFORDSHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 229. LLANFILLO, BRECKNOCKSHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 230. RUSTINGTON, SUSSEX LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 231. BOUGHTON MONCHELSEA, KENT LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 232. TALYLLYN, MERIONETHSHIRE] [Illustration: 233. LLANDRILLO-YN-RHOS, DENBIGHSHIRE] [Illustration: 234. PATTINGHAM, STAFFORDSHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 235. CLUN, SHROPSHIRE LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 236. PULBOROUGH, SUSSEX LYCHGATE] [Illustration: 237. MONNINGTON-ON-WYE, HEREFORDSHIRE LYCHGATE] BIBLIOGRAPHY _Vetusta Monumenta_, Vol. I., 1747; Vol. II., 1789; and Vol. III., 1796. Folio. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London. These miscellanies contain a number of plates, dating from 1728, and letterpress descriptions of ancient stone crosses. "An Essay towards a History and Description of Ancient Stone Crosses" in _The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain_, by JOHN BRITTON, F.S.A. Vol. I., 4to. London, 1807. "Village Crosses" (Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and Bedfordshire) in _The Ecclesiologist_, pp. 89-90, February 1844. "Ancient Crosses" in _The Ecclesiologist_, pp. 298-300, August 1845. "Crosses in Village or Churchyard," pp. 186-190 of _A Handbook of English Ecclesiology_. Cambridge Camden Society, 1847. _Ancient Stone Crosses of England_, by ALFRED RIMMER. London, 1875. "Concerning Crosses," by FLORENCE PEACOCK, in _Curious Church Gleanings_, edited by William Andrews, F.R.H.S. London and Hull, 1896. "Early Sculptured Stones in England," Parts I. and II., by Bishop G. F. BROWNE, in _The Magazine of Art_. Vol. VIII. Cassell & Co., 1885. _The Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art_, by the Rev. G. S. TYACK, 1896. "Churchyard Crosses," by AYMER VALLANCE, in _The Burlington Magazine_, No. 186, Vol. XXXIII., September 1918. _Wayside Crosses_ (a pamphlet), prepared under the direction of the Advisory Committee of the Wayside Cross Society. London, Chiswick Press, 1917. "Market Crosses and Halls," by WALTER H. GODFREY, F.S.A., in the _Architectural Review_ for September 1919. _The Early Christian Monuments of Cheshire and Lancashire_, by J. ROMILLY ALLEN, F.S.A.(Scot.), December 1893. "Some Cheshire Crosses," by the Ven. Archdeacon EDWARD BARBER, M.A., F.S.A., in _Memorials of Old Cheshire_. London, 1910. _Old Stone Crosses of the Vale of Clwyd and Neighbouring Parishes_, by the Rev. ELIAS OWEN, M.A. London, Oswestry, and Wrexham, 1886. "Cornish Crosses" in _The Ecclesiologist_, pp. 217-219, November 1849. _Ancient Crosses and other Antiquities in Cornwall_, by J. T. BLIGHT, F.S.A. London and Penzance, 1872. _Old Cornish Crosses_, by ARTHUR G. LANGDON, with an Article on their Ornament by J. Romilly Allen. Truro, 1896. "Pre-Norman Cross Fragments at Aspatria, Workington, Distington, Bridekirk, Gilcrux, Plumbland, and Isell," by the Rev. W. S. CALVERLEY, F.S.A., in _Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archæological Society_. Vol. XI. Kendal, 1891. _The Runic Roods of Ruthwell and Bewcastle_, by JAMES KING HEWISON. 4to. Glasgow, 1914. _The Ancient Crosses of Dartmoor_, by WILLIAM CROSSING. London and Exeter, 1887. "Three Pre-Norman Crosses in Derbyshire," by G. LE BLANC SMITH, in _The Reliquary_, July 1904. _The Old Stone Crosses of Dorset_, with an Introduction and Descriptive Article, by ALFRED POPE. Collotype Illustrations. London, 1906. _Notes on the Old Crosses of Gloucestershire_, by CHARLES POOLEY, F.S.A., London, 1868. _The Ancient Crosses of Stortford_, by J. L. GLASSCOCK, 1905. "The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire," by HENRY TAYLOR, F.S.A., first published serially, in seven parts, in _Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society_, and republished in separate form under title of "The Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of Lancashire." Manchester, 1906. "The Crosses of Lancashire," by the Rev. P. H. DITCHFIELD, M.A., F.S.A., in _Memorials of Old Lancashire_. Vol. II. London, 1909. _Manx Crosses_, by P. M. C. KERMODE. London, 1907. "Parish of Kirk Maughold," comprises an illustrated account of the Standing Cross in _The Manx Archæological Survey_, Fourth Report. Douglas, Isle of Man, 1915. _St Paul's Cross: the most Famous Spot in London_, by JOHN B. MARSH, 1892. _Chapters in the History of Old St Paul's_, by W. SPARROW SIMPSON, London, 1881; and _St Paul's Cathedral and Old City Life_, by the same, London, 1894, contain much information concerning Paul's Cross. "Paul's Cross," being Chapter VIII. of Methuen's _Little Guide to St Paul's Cathedral, London_, by GEORGE CLINCH, 1906. "The Early History, Form, and Function of Paul's Cross," by W. PALEY BAILDON, F.S.A., in _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_, 2nd May, 1918. "Early Christian Sculpture in Northamptonshire," by J. ROMILLY ALLEN, F.S.A.(Scot.), in _The Associated Architectural Societies' Reports and Papers_. _The Stone Crosses of the County of Northampton_, by CHRISTOPHER A. MARKHAM, F.S.A. London and Northampton, 1901. "The Missing Termination of Queen Eleanor's Cross at Northampton," by R. C. SCRIVEN, in _The Associated Architectural Societies' Reports and Papers_. Vol. XVIII. Lincoln, 1886. "Eleanor of Castile, Queen of England, and the Monuments Erected to her Memory," by JAMES GALLOWAY, A.M., M.D., in _Historical Sketches of Old Charing_. London, 1914. _An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Old Stone Crosses of Somerset_, by CHARLES POOLEY, F.S.A. London, 1877. "Crosses of Somerset," an Appendix to Pooley's work, was contributed by E. H. BATES HARBIN to _Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset_. Vol. XV., Part 118. Sherborne, 1917. _The Old Stone Crosses of Somersetshire_, by ALEX. GORDON, in two parts, in _The Reliquary_, October 1895 and July 1896. "Wolverhampton Cross Shaft," by Professor W. R. LETHABY, in _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_. Vol. XXV., N.S., pp. 158-159. "Pre-Norman Cross Shaft at Nunburnholme, Yorkshire," by J. ROMILLY ALLEN, in _The Reliquary_. INDEX TO TEXT _N.B._--Items in italics refer to the subject of LYCHGATES, while all other items refer to CROSSES. _See also Alphabetical List of Illustrations at the commencement of the Book_ Abingdon Cross, 110 "Actes and Monuments", 15, 18 Alexander of Abingdon, 95 Angle-pedestals, 43 Anglican Runes, 32 _Ashprington Lychgate_, 164 _Atherington Lychgate_, 164 Banbury Cross, 24 Battle, John of, 95 Baxter, Richard, 16 _Berrynarbor Lychgate_, 164 _Bettws-y-Coed Lychgate_, 168 Bishop's Lydeard, 14 Bishop's Stortford, 18 Boundary Crosses, 13 Brackley, Northants., 16 Bradshaigh, Sir William, 24 _Caerhun Lychgate_, 168 _Caerwys (Flints.) Lychgate_, 165 Calvary, 42 Cavities in Base or Steps, 14 Ceremonial Functions, 21 Charing Cross, London, 18 Cheapside Cross, London, 18 Chester High Cross, 18, 25, 158 Constantine, Emperor, 1 Cornish Type, 27 Crown Steeples, 137 Crucifixion, 34 Dane's Cross, Wolverhampton, 37 Demolitions by Parliamentary Visitors, 16 _Derwen Lychgate_, 165 Diamond-pointed Step, 42 Distribution of Remaining Crosses, 9 "Dives et Pauper", 1 _Dolwyddelan Lychgate_, 168 Dowsing's "Journal", 16 Dunstable, Eleanor Cross, 101 Eglwyscummin, Carmarthenshire, 15 Eleanor Crosses, 94-108 " Plans, 95 " Royal Account Rolls, 95 Eleanor Cross, Dunstable, 101 " St Albans, 101 " Stony Stratford, 101 " Woburn, 101 Eleanor of Castile, 94 Elizabeth, Queen, 106 Evangelistic Symbols, 34 Fyfield, Berks., 16 Gallows, The Cross used as, 25 Hardley, Norfolk, 13 Head of Cross, Varieties of Form, 47 Henry VI., 41 " VIII., 41 Hire of Labourers at Cross, 26 Iconoclastic Movement, 15 Ipswich, Preaching Cross, 152 Jeanne d'Arc, 7 Jews' Cross, Oxford, 19 Knop, Treatment of, 46 Launde, Sir Robert, 102 Leek, Staffs., 37 Liverpool, Cross formerly at, 16 _Llanfaglan, Lychgate_, 168 _Llanrhychwyn Lychgate_, 168 _Llanrug Lychgate_, 168 London, Crosses at, 18, 102 " Minor Preaching Crosses, 120 " Paul's Cross, 113-120 _Long Compton Lychgate_, 164 Louth, Lincs., 25 _Lychcrosses_, 165 _Lychgates_, 164-168 " _Classification of Types_, 164 " _Construction_, 165 " _Distribution of_, 165 " _Materials Used_, 165 _Lychseats_, 165 _Lychstones_, 165 Lyme, Dorset, 25 Margaret of Anjou, 41 Market Crosses, 2, 125-157 " General Intent of, 125 " Tolls, 128 Melton Mowbray, 18 Menhirs, 27 Mercian Type, 34 Monoliths, 1, 27 Monmouth, Duke of, 25 Netheway, John, 7 Nevill's Cross, Durham, 22 Niche in Head, 161 " Socket or Shaft, 9 Outdoor Processions to Cross, 9 Oxford, Jews' Cross, 19 "Palm Crosses", 13 " Sunday Ceremonials, 13 Paul's Cross, London (see London), 113-120 Pecocke, Bishop of Chichester, 116 _Penshurst Lychgate_, 164 Percy's Cross, 41 Peterborough, 26 "Poor Soul's Light", 163 Preaching Crosses, 2, 113-124 Processionate to Cross, 9 Proclamations from Crosses, 25 Ravensworth "Butter Cross", 22 Reding in Eboney, Kent, 7 Regensburg, Bavaria, 163 Rhuddlan, 26 Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, 32 St Albans, Eleanor Cross, 101 " Preaching Cross, 101 St Cwyfan's Stone, 35 St Patrick, 27 Sacrilege and Profanity, 15 Sanctuary Crosses, 21 Scarborough, Butter Cross, 111 Sedgemoor, Battle of, 25 Shaft-on-Steps Type, 42 Shaft Treatment, 44, 45 Smithfield, Cow Cross, 18 Socket, Treatment of, 45 South Littleton, Worcestershire, 15 Statues of Eleanor Crosses, 96 Steps, Treatment of, 44 Stony Stratford, Eleanor Cross, 101 Thornhill, Sir James, 154 Tolls of Market Cross, 128 _Turnstile Lychgates_, 164 Unclassified Varieties of Crosses, 158 Wansford, Northants., 21 "Weeping Crosses", 26 Whitford, Flintshire, 34 _Whitford " Lychgate_, 165 Wigan Cross, Lancs., 24 William de Bley's Constitution, 13 Wither, Joan, 7 Woburn, Beds., Eleanor Cross at, 101 Wolsey, Cardinal, 118 _Woodleigh (Derwen), Deanery of, Lychgates_, 165 Wynken de Worde, 1 _Printed in Great Britain at_ THE DARIEN PRESS, _Edinburgh_ Transcriber's Notes: 1. Obvious spelling and punctuation errors have been corrected. 2. Page 116, paragraph 2, the name Robert Hawke has been corrected to Robert Hawle "Robert Hauley (Haule or Hawle)" - records at Westminster Abbey. 3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r. 4. Italics are shown as _text_. 5. In the TOPOGRAPHICAL LIST OF SUBJECTS ILLUSTRATED, the page number that pertains to the bracketed lines, is always at the bottom bracket. 
45712	----	https://archive.org/details/leisurelytourine00hiss A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND * * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE CHARM OF THE ROAD. _England and Wales._ AN ENGLISH HOLIDAY. UNTRAVELLED ENGLAND. OVER FEN AND WOLD. _London to Lincolnshire and Back._ ON SOUTHERN ENGLISH ROADS. THROUGH TEN ENGLISH COUNTIES. ACROSS ENGLAND IN A DOG-CART. _London to St. Davids and Back._ A TOUR IN A PHAETON. _Through the Eastern Counties._ A HOLIDAY ON THE ROAD. _Kent, Sussex, and Surrey._ ON THE BOX SEAT. _London to Land's End and Back._ A DRIVE THROUGH ENGLAND. _London to Scotland and Back._ AN OLD-FASHIONED JOURNEY. With T. HUSON, R.I., R.P.E. ROUND ABOUT SNOWDON. * * * * * * A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND * * * * * * [Illustration] MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO * * * * * * [Illustration: _See page 312._ A MOATED MANOR-HOUSE. "The place is silent and aware; It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, But that is its own affair."] A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND by JAMES JOHN HISSEY Author of 'The Charm of the Road,' 'On the Box Seat,' 'An English Holiday,' 'Over Fen and Wold,' etc. With Thirty Full-Page Illustrations (and Four Smaller Ones) from Drawings and Photographs by the Author Also a Map Macmillan and Co., Limited St. Martin's Street, London 1913 Copyright TO MY DAUGHTER MRS. HERBERT MALPAS PREFACE Stevenson once took a journey with a donkey, which animal gave him much trouble. I took my journey in a reliable little motor-car that happily gave me none. Though I went by car I went leisurely, stopping often by the way, for full well I realise the reward of loitering, and, as all wise wanderers can testify, there is such a thing as profitably loitering, and a joy in it. Had they been of his day Carlyle would probably have declared that motor-cars "are mostly employed for the transport of fools best left at home," at least he said so of railways. With a car, however, you can control the pace, and can stop at your pleasure; it is an excellent servant, though in truth a bad master. I went "in search of the picturesque" and I found it, also of the unfamiliar in a familiar land. If I came to an interesting place, or happened upon some curious character steeped in the traditions of the countryside, whose speech was perchance racy of the soil, the matter of time did not trouble me. Why should it? The day was mine and the promise of it, my object was not to cover so many miles and make them meaningless by undue haste, but to linger long enough in pleasant places, the more remote the more to my mind, so that they could make their appeal to me and I could gather something of the spirit of them--a something beyond what the eye merely sees. "Wise men," says Kingsley, "go a-fishing"; they also go a-travelling, and I can imagine no touring ground--I write this having wandered far and wide in foreign lands--more delightful than rural England, away from the ugliness of modern cities and all that has to do with them. By not confining myself to the high-road but by seeking the byway and the lane I got right into the heart of the real, unspoilt country, where pleasant pastoral scenery, time-honoured homes, quiet farmsteads, old coaching inns (I hope I have not talked too much of them), peaceful villages, each with their ancient churches, quaint little market-towns picturesquely unprogressive, and here and there a ruined abbey or crumbling castle, grey with years, gladden the eye of the pilgrim. Places and scenes to be remembered. Neither speed, by which we miss much, nor reliance on guide-books formed any part of my programme, for, as Sir Arthur Helps says, "in travel it is remarkable how much more pleasure we obtain from unexpected incidents than from deliberate sightseeing." I set forth for Anywhere by any roads, trusting to fortune for what I might see, content to know that I should arrive at a good many places. One confession, perhaps, I may make. My book was mainly written at odd times and in varying moods during the journey, when the impressions of people I came across, of places and scenes, were fresh upon me. It is a first-hand, unvarnished record of experiences, but little altered or mended since, and I have been minded to leave it so, for the like reason that I generally prefer an artist's rough sketch and the spirit of it to his finished picture--for polish is not always an improvement, sometimes it is but mere gloss. The route that eventually evolved itself is but roughly indicated in my Sketch Map, for I found it impossible, on a map of so small a scale, to trace all our devious wanderings, or to note more than a few of the many places visited. As to the illustrations, in a few cases where my photographs unfortunately proved failures I have ventured to replace them with my own drawings; for these--they are but mere brush notes--I crave a kind indulgence. If I missed anything worth seeing on the way, I can only plead with Plato of old that "as it is the commendation of a good huntsman to find game in a wide wood, so it is no imputation if he hath not caught all." J. J. HISSEY. TREVIN TOWERS, EASTBOURNE. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE Different methods of travel--The old coaching days--Maps _versus_ guide-books--The fortune of the road--The South Downs--Hilly roads--The price of beauty--The sentimental traveller--A lonely farmstead--Oxen at work--A quaint old-world village 1 CHAPTER II A quiet valley--The importance of the unimportant--Moated and haunted houses--Romances in stone--A farmhouse holiday--A picture-book village--A matter of Fate--The tomb of Gibbon the historian--A gruesome happening--Upright burials--An interesting church--A curious epitaph 17 CHAPTER III An old coaching inn--The resurrection of the road--Far from anywhere--The charm of the unexpected--A historic milestone--"Mine host" of past days--Our port-wine drinking ancestors--The lure of the lane--Village life--Miniature effigy of a knight--The tomb of "the good Archbishop Leighton"--A church clerk's story 40 CHAPTER IV Dane Hill--Epitaphs--A wild bit of country--Ashdown Forest--Exploring--The use of maps--Curious inn signs--A Tudor home--The Devil's door--A medieval priest and guest house--Old-fashioned flowers--An ancient interior--Curious carvings--Roads in the old times--The window and hearth tax 59 CHAPTER V "Great-upon-Little"--The woods of Sussex--A maze of lanes--Frensham Pond--A holiday haunt--The legend of the shivering reeds--Rural inns--Roughing it(?)--Waverley Abbey--The monks of old--The sites of abbeys--Quiet country towns--Stocks and whipping-post--A curious font--"A haven of rest" 80 CHAPTER VI "Mine ease in mine inn"--King John's Castle--Greywell--Country odours--Hidden beauty-spots--The valley of the Kennett--A remote spot--Our picturesque villages--The charm of ancientness--Solitude and genius--Coate--Richard Jefferies' birthplace 100 CHAPTER VII Wootton Bassett--A quaint market-hall--Old towns--A Roman road--The spirit of the past--A pre-Elizabethan gate-house--The Royal Agricultural College--Chat with an antiquary--Norman doorways--Second-hand book catalogues--Syde--Cotswold houses--Over the Cotswolds--At a Jacobean inn 121 CHAPTER VIII The Vale of Evesham--A stormy drive--An angler's inn--A big fish--Dating from "the flood"!--Fishermen's tales--The joys of "the gentle craft"--Hotel visitors' books--A "quiet day"--Burford church and its monuments--The golden age of travel--A fine old half-timber inn--Ludlow--A Saxon doorway 141 CHAPTER IX Place names--Bell ringing for lost travellers--A Robber's Grave and its story--Wild Wales--A picturesque interior--The fascination of the moors--Machynlleth--A Royal and ancient house--Ten miles of beauty--Aberdovey--Tramps and their ways--The poetical tramp 161 CHAPTER X Mallwyd--Falling waters--Dinas Mawddwy--Amongst the moors and mountains--A wild drive--A farmer's logic--A famous old inn--A fisherman's tale--A Roman inscribed stone--Brass to old Thomas Parr--A cruel sport--Wem and its story--A chat with "mine host"--Hawkestone and its wonders 182 CHAPTER XI Red Castle--A stately ruin--Old houses and new owners--The joy of discovery--High Ercall and its story--Mills and millers--The life of a stone-breaker--Old folk-songs--Haughmond Abbey--Ancient tombs--A peaceful spot--A place for a pilgrimage 203 CHAPTER XII An angler's haunt--Ferries and stepping-stones--Curious old stained-glass window--The ruins of Uriconium--Watling Street--The Wrekin--Richard Baxter's old home--A Cabinet minister's story--A pretty village--Buildwas Abbey--Ironbridge--The "Methodists' Mecca" 221 CHAPTER XIII Madeley Court--Chat with a collier--The miner's rule of life--Charles II. in hiding--The building of Boscobel--The story of a moated house--A stirring episode--A startling discovery--A curious planetarium--A wishing-well--Lilleshall Abbey--"The Westminster Abbey of Shropshire"--A freak in architecture--Tong Castle--Church clerk-hunting 234 CHAPTER XIV A wonderful collection of tombs--A tombstone inscription by Shakespeare--A leper's door--Relics--Manufacturing the antique--Curiosity shops--The Golden Chapel--"The Great Bell of Tong"--White Ladies Nunnery--The grave of Dame Joan--Boscobel and its story--A tradition about The "Royal Oak" 253 CHAPTER XV A town with two names--An amusing mistake--Abbot's Bromley and its quaint horn dance--Dr. Johnson doing penance at Uttoxeter--Burton-on-Trent--The "Hundreds All" milestone--Indoor wind-dials--Stone-milled flour--The old Globe Room at Banbury--Dick Turpin's pistol--A strange find 272 CHAPTER XVI A gruesome carving--Architectural tit-bits--An ancient and historic hostelry--Chipping Norton--Wychwood--A parson's story--"Timothying"--Shipton-under-Wychwood--On the Cotswolds--"The grey old town" of Burford--Two old manor-houses--A new profession--Highworth--Church relics 293 CHAPTER XVII Little country towns--The romance of the ferry--"The Bear" at Woodstock--Curious conditions of tenure--Where the Black Prince was born--Islip--The mystery of Joseph's Stone--An English Holland--Boarstall Tower--The ancient town of Brill--"Acres for Aeroplanes"--Stokenchurch--A quaint hiring fair 316 CHAPTER XVIII An inn of the old-fashioned sort--A chat with "mine host"--A weird experience--Ghost stories--An ancient rectory house--A quaint interior--A haunted passage--Lost in a fog--The game of bowls--An old posting bill--The siege of Alton church--Ants as weather prophets 334 CHAPTER XIX The Meon Valley--Warnford--A hidden church--A house "a million years old"!--A Saxon sun-dial--A ruined home--Corhampton and its Saxon church--A modern "Naboth's Vineyard"--An out-of-the-world village--A curious story--Quaint carvings and their legend--A church tower built by servants 349 CHAPTER XX A tramp's story--A relic of a famous sea-fight--A tame road--Inn gardens--New landlords and old traditions--Chichester market-cross--A wind-swept land--"Dull and dreary Bognor"--A forgotten poet--Littlehampton--Country sights and sounds--A lulling landscape 363 CHAPTER XXI Travel in the old days--Sequestered Sussex--Country homes--A mellow land--A gibbet post and its story--Chiddingly and its church--The Pelham buckle--Wayside crosses--St. Dunstan's tongs and his anvil--A curious brass--Iron Stocks--Home again 379 INDEX 397 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE A MOATED MANOR-HOUSE _Frontispiece_ HAUNTED! 20 A SUSSEX FARMSTEAD 24 OLD COACHING HOSTELRY, SHEFFIELD PARK, SUSSEX 42 AN ANGLER'S MODEST INN 42 AN OLD TUDOR HOME, WEST HOATHLY 67 A PRE-REFORMATION PRIEST-HOUSE, WEST HOATHLY 72 "A GOOD HONEST ALEHOUSE" 87 AT "THE QUEEN'S HEAD" 96 AN OLD MILL 108 OLD TOLL-HOUSE ON BATH ROAD 111 THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE 116 SYDE CHURCH 133 GATEHOUSE, STANWAY 138 SAXON DOORWAY, STANTON LACY CHURCH 159 A BIT OF WILD WALES 170 WELSH MOUNTAINS AND MOORLANDS 186 THE RUINED HALL OF MORETON CORBET 208 HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHURCH DOORWAY 217 HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHAPTER-HOUSE 218 BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING EAST 229 BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING WEST 230 MADELEY COURT 236 MADELEY COURT, GATEHOUSE 239 LILLESHALL ABBEY 250 FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH 257 BOSCOBEL 257 THE PRIEST'S DOORWAY 296 DOORWAY OF THE CROWN INN, SHIPTON-UNDER-WYCHWOOD 303 BABLOCKHYTHE FERRY 318 BOARSTALL TOWER FROM THE MOAT 328 A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOORWAY 344 AN OLD-TIME HOME 367 A JACOBEAN DOORWAY 383 A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND CHAPTER I Different methods of travel--The old coaching days--Maps _versus_ guide-books--The fortune of the road--The South Downs--Hilly roads--The price of beauty--The sentimental traveller--A lonely farmstead--Oxen at work--A quaint old-world village. There are many ways of exploring the country: one may walk, cycle, ride horseback, or drive a horse in some conveyance, go by crawling caravan or speedy motor-car--each to his fancy or opportunity. Perhaps there is no best way of travel. I say this after having sampled all the methods mentioned, excepting caravanning, for I have tramped it knapsack on back, and enjoyed the tramping, through Switzerland, Scotland, the Lake District, Wales, Cornwall, and Devon; I have taken long cycling tours; I have driven in a phaeton and dogcart from one end of our land to another; I have ridden about country on horseback with a pack; I have driven my own motor-car for more miles than I can remember, and without mishap--so I know, or ought to know, something about the subject, but I will not venture to lay down any dictum, for "What's one man's meat is another man's poison." The thing is to see the country, but what is worth seeing cannot be seen in a hurry. Walking enthusiasts declare that walking is the only way, and certainly the pace that binds the pedestrian permits of leisured observation, almost compels it indeed: therein much virtue lies. Still there are other ways, and the convenience of a conveyance is not to be despised, for there are born wanderers, like myself, who have grown old at the game, and have come to that time of life when they prefer to be comfortably carried than to carry a load. Then there is the further comfort of not being unduly stinted in the matter of luggage, for given a conveyance, even sundry luxuries such as a luncheon-basket, camera, rugs, sketching materials, fishing-tackle (should an opportunity for sport occur), a book or two to while away a possibly dull evening, and a plentiful supply of maps may be taken without inconvenience. To foot it does not enhance the scenic charms of the way. Stevenson, who was a great walker, confesses: "It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good." I am glad to quote Stevenson in this respect, for I have had it so frequently dinned into me that the only way really to see the country is afoot. Now I went not afoot, but travelled in my reliable little motor-car, conveniently little for exploring narrow lanes and crooked byways; and though I went by car I went leisurely. Truly there is no poetry about a motor-car; it has not existed long enough to have gained the halo of romance, so to write of a motor tour makes any appeal to sentiment impossible. This is a handicap; for sentiment does count, even in this matter-of-fact world, let wiseacres say what they will. Possibly our ancestors saw little romance in the stage-coach or postchaise; to them they were commonplace affairs; indeed they often complained bitterly about the former, the misery of the outside seats in stormy weather and in winter time; moreover, the inside passengers were generally sadly cramped for want of room; then the coaches sometimes overturned, and were frequently uncomfortably crowded. We view those days through rose-coloured spectacles--Time is the romancer. I wonder whether our descendants in the far future will ever look back longingly and lovingly to "the good old motoring days"? Granted that many motorists rush through the country gathering but "hurrygraphs" on the way--that is the fault of the man, not the car. It is unfortunate that at the very beginning of the chronicle of my tour I should feel a need, perhaps a fanciful one, to make excuse for the mode of taking it. The car was but a means to an end; let us forget all about it and consider only the journey wherein my pleasure lay. I had no programme, no previously prepared plan of route to follow, so happily escaped the tiresomeness of keeping or endeavouring to keep to one. All roads are good roads to me, provided they lead through a pleasant country, and so to enjoyment begotten of contentment: "I travel not to go anywhere but to go." In a definite itinerary I find no attraction. Freedom is the essence of a real holiday, and I would be as free to veer about as a weather-vane that the wind plays on, free to change my course at the call of any inviting byway or lane, the beckoning of a beautiful distance, or at any other passing prompting, or even at the unaccountable mood of the moment; and this without any feeling of reproach. As to guide-book compulsion to see this or that, I would have none of it. I took a supply of Bartholomew's Reduced Ordnance Survey Maps with me on a scale of four miles to the inch, covering all England and Wales, and these were all the guides I troubled about: unlike some guides they were reliable, I could do my own romancing. Thus provided I wandered careless of direction or destination; these and the distance done each day were but trivial details unworthy of consideration--the joy of the journey was the thing. I never knew when I started forth in the morning where the evening would find me, nor had I any concern so long as the needful inn for the night materialised; and if the first inn I came to was not to my liking, with a tireless car, being master of my Fate, I was enabled to drive on to another more to my mind. That is certainly one of the advantages of travelling by machine instead of by muscle. I trusted, as I travelled on, wholly to the fortune of the road, letting, so to say, the good things come to me, I did not go in search of them--a delightfully simple method of touring, but it served my purpose well and saved much map-consulting and asking of the way, and the vexation of sometimes losing it. My only care was, as far as possible, to find fresh roads to explore and taverns new wherein to take my ease. Certain motorists there be to whom speed and long distances accomplished alone appeal; these need a whole continent to travel over, whilst a modest portion of old England, with a bit of wild Wales thrown in for the sake of varying the scenery, sufficed me. Humboldt once remarked of a great wanderer that he had "travelled further and seen less than any one he knew." Now I trust to make clear that though I did not travel far, I saw a great deal. I was prepared for any adventures should Fortune so favour me, but adventures are hardly to be expected in settled lands, beyond, perhaps, the remote possibility of the motor breaking down at nightfall on some lonely moor far from human habitation; but nothing of the kind happened, for my car gave no sort of trouble--not even tyre trouble--from the start to the finish of the journey. But then it was driven at a moderate pace, and carefully. The journey was void of excitement: happily so, for though I have suffered sundry adventures in my life, I realise they are more enjoyable in the telling than in the experiencing. Says Hazlitt, "One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey." There I am wholly with him, but not when he adds, "I like to go by myself." I am afraid Hazlitt was a selfish man. Then he continues: "I can enjoy society in a room, but out of doors Nature is company enough for me.... Instead of a friend in a postchaise, or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence." As to going alone, surely a sympathetic companion by your side, even though not a word be said at times, only a presence felt, can in no way lessen the joys of a journey? A companion does away with any sense of loneliness that is apt at times to come over the solitary wanderer like a cloud over the bright sunshine; for after all, in spite of certain philosophers, man is a communicative being. A beautiful scene, or an interesting place, doubly appeals to me when I have some one near by to express and share my delight in it. But, in truth, a sympathetic companion is not always to be had. Now it happened that my wife was prevented from taking her place in the car--"Excepto quod non simul esses, caetera laetus," I could only say. No one else was at the moment available; so perforce I had to take my journey companionless or forgo it to an indefinite future. The latter alternative was unthinkable; a lost opportunity is not always recoverable; I trust no future. "Elapsum semel non ipse possit Jupiter reprehendere," said Phaedrus a long while ago, to quote the ancients again, and a truth is a truth for all time. After all I did not go alone, for I took my faithful fox-terrier with me. A dog is the best substitute for a human companion; indeed, I would prefer to travel with a dog of the right sort to venturing with an untried human companion any day--at least you cannot fall out with a dog by the way. A dog never worries you with senseless prattle; he need never be entertained; he never complains of waiting; his patience is inexhaustible. On the other hand, he is ever ready and only too delighted to accompany you at any moment on a ramble afoot, or he will keep faithful guard over your car should you leave it alone by the wayside; and he will not grumble about his food or his quarters. I took dog-biscuits with me for my terrier in case of need, but generally the crumbs that fell from his master's table sufficed him. A dog is a most unselfish creature; a kind word or a pat perhaps now and then he craves, and how easily and gladly these are bestowed. One cannot ever be dull with a dog as companion; so with my dog I started on my journey. Now, to avoid the too frequent use of the personal and irritating "I," I crave permission at times to employ the less personal "we," even if I have to include the dog and the car to justify that term, or to do so forgetfully without. It was early one sunshiny morning towards the end of May, with the pleasant month of June to follow and the promise of it, that I mounted my car and was off without more ado. I had carefully packed it overnight to avoid any possible delay, and that nothing needful should be forgotten in the haste of departure. With my holiday only just begun, with the little world of all England before me, free to wander wherever I would, my mind full of anticipated pleasures, I fared forth in the most enviable of moods. From my home at the foot of the South Downs I climbed to their breezy summit, taking the old road that leads westwards over them, having the rolling green downs on one side, and the glittering sea visible, but a little way off, on the other. Here one breathes a lighter, purer air, so that the mere fact of breathing becomes a pleasure. My journey had a good beginning! By climbing the downs I had raised my horizon and looked down upon the world, not with a sensation of superiority, but with a sensation of relief, being lifted for a time above all its tiresome trivialities and commonplace conventions. I found myself alone with earth, and sky, and sea, rejoicing in my loneliness, and I felt the sense of spaciousness of the wide, bright, overarching sky, of the boundless waters, and of the vast panorama of rounded hills reaching far away into the dim and dreamy distance, where the solid land looked as unsubstantial as a cloud. Broad and bare to the skies The great Down-country lies, Green in the glance of the sun, Fresh with the clean salt air. My road led me a little inland, for I avoided the tourist-haunted one that winds over Beachy Head, that grand headland that rises so sheer, white, and commandingly above the sounding sea. Would one could behold it in its ancient seclusion! Such spots demand solitude, or they cease to be impressive. "The fatal gift of fame" has been the headland's undoing, aided by its proximity to a fashionable watering-place, and the crowd it attracts from early morning till the sun is setting. They even sell picture post-cards there and bottled ginger-beer! Need more be said? Yet I recently read an article in a London paper upon "The Pleasant Solitude of Beachy Head." Was it written in Fleet Street, I wonder? All the roads over the downs are hilly ones; they are for ever either ascending or descending; their gradients are generally fairly severe, and their surfaces none of the best. Now and then you come upon a comparatively level stretch, but not for long. So we soon began a long descent, only to climb steeply again and to find ourselves on a wind-swept height with a tiny flint-built church crowning the topmost ridge of it. Friston church it was marked on our map--an unpretending building, yet not wanting in dignity, and simple dignity is a rare quality, as delightful as it is rare. Even some city-surrounded cathedrals do not attain it. Doubtless its elevated and lonely position gave the humble little fane a certain poetic charm, for it is not only the building but its place in the prospect that affects the observer. Stonehenge in a farm field, away from the wild and open plain that surrounds it, would lose much of its impressiveness; it has lost some of it already by being railed in. A castle in a hollow, as many were built to secure the services of a moat, is not the same to the eye as a castle boldly dominating the landscape from some overhanging crag. Bodiam's ruined Castle, set in a wooded valley, is beautiful but not impressive; on the other hand, Carreg Cennin Castle in South Wales, though inferior in size and much poorer a ruin, is singularly impressive, standing as it does isolated on the top of a perpendicular precipice of rock. That is the sort of castle I pictured to myself and used to draw in fancy when I was a boy. Facing the primitive church, with our road and a pond between, we noticed, what is fast becoming a thing of the past, an old wooden windmill, its sails hurtling round apace in the brisk breeze. The miller, white with flour dust, gazed lazily at us from out a window of his aged and picturesque mill: the wind was his willing slave doing his work for him and working hard that day, why therefore should he not laze and rejoice? The hum of his mill wheels grinding their best must have been as music to his ears. All winds that blow are good for the miller; the sailor is not so fortunate, but to the miller it matters not from what quarter the breezes come, so long as they come. I have been told by a meteorological authority that the wind average for England is eight hours out of the twenty-four. I should imagine that the winds upon the open downs greatly exceed that, and a good, refreshing, salt savour they bring with them, and so a sentiment of the sea and its mystery. The wide and restful greenery of the downs appeals to and gratifies the eye. In a less moist climate than ours the downs would be but parched and barren ground: blame our climate as we may, and the frequent rains that the prevailing west winds bring, it is these frequent rains that give our homeland its rich verdure and charming mellowness which so attracts the foreigner from sunnier climes. Beauty demands its price, and considering the wealth of beauty granted us I hardly think we ought greatly to begrudge the price of it. On the downs the eye is free to rove unchecked over miles and miles of this greenery even to the most distant horizon; that is another delight of them. Their rolling masses, no height being much greater than another, might be likened to some gigantic ocean suddenly arrested in a mighty storm and converted, by some magic, into good dry land, and here and there the white chalk showing might serve for the foam of crested waves arrested also: at least such a fancy came to me as I looked over their sloping sides, their gentle rises and falls, billowy down beyond billowy down in an apparently endless succession. The very green of them, though not translucent, distantly reminded me of the green of the mid-Atlantic rollers raised by a gale that for some time had ceased to blow so that their surface is comparatively smooth and not fretted by wind-driven lines. There is an indescribable vacancy about the downs that suggests the impressive vacancy of the sea, the boundlessness of it. But each man sees things with his own eyes, and to some my fancies may seem far-fetched; they were, but still they pleased me, for I am a sentimental traveller. From our elevated road, some distance on, the curious little village of West Dean was revealed to us, a huddle of roofs and a tiny fane hidden in a hollow of the hills--"a cup full of beauty." We looked right down upon it and over its grey church tower and over the lichen-laden uneven roofs of its few dwellings--roofs all covered with golden lichen, gloriously golden in the bright sunshine; I have never seen roofs so completely thus covered before, and then I realised what a beautifier, even on a large scale, the lowly lichen can be. The village had the rare look of remoteness, so detached was it from the outer world by the wide and folding downs, so far from rail and frequented road. We determined to visit it when we reached the valley by the long descent which followed and idle there a time. At the foot of the descent we found a large and lone old-fashioned farmstead surrounded by a colony of flint-built barns and out-houses; the little slothful river Cuckmere seeking its way to the sea, with many windings, ran close by. The grey old farmstead with its weather-stained walls, the tranquil, reedy river below, the bare and silent downs beyond, struck a note of intense quietness. A peacefulness profound brooded over this out-of-the-world spot: it might have been a hundred miles from anywhere. A picture, too, it made, effective in its breadth and simplicity. There we rested for an hour or more, just because it pleased us so to do. We travelled in search of peace and found it in a land Where little lost Down churches praise The God who made the hills. Near to the old farm we noticed a yoke of black, long-horned, but meek-eyed oxen slowly drawing a waggon up the steep slope of the hillside. The slow, black oxen toiling through the day Tireless, impassive still, From dawning dusk and chill To twilight grey. You seldom see such a sight nowadays, and only rarely on the South Downs or the lonely Cotswolds. Presently the oxen stopped for the waggon to be loaded, and we took the opportunity of having a chat with their driver, a sunburnt man clad in a faded grey suit, and having the soft speech and courteous manner that so often marks the Sussex folk. "Oxen," said he, "beat horses at work any day on these hills. I would not care to drive horses if I could drive oxen; they are a bit slow perhaps, but not lazy; they don't want so much urging as horses; I never has any trouble with them, I have just to give them a reminder with my stick now and then and that is all; you don't need a whip with oxen." I noticed that the stick he held was a long one of hazel, just a thin stick and nothing more, and I noticed that the yokes were fashioned of wood with a heavy cross-bar at the top, and these joined each pair of oxen together, being kept in position by a slight rounded wooden collar below.[1] [1] Since writing the above I noted the following paragraph in my morning paper: "A team of draught oxen in Sussex was disposed of near Lewes. The wooden yoke was purchased by the Mayor of Brighton for presentation to the Brighton Museum." A future generation may need the aid of a Commentator to understand the agricultural operations of to-day and the recent past. Oxen, the driver explained to me, pull from the top of their necks and not by the collar as horses do; yet on lifting a yoke I saw no signs of worn hair, only a smoothness where the yoke touched. Oxen, I learnt, were broken in to draught work at two years old and kept at it from five to six years, after which they were fattened for the market. Their beef was somewhat tough, as might be expected, and chiefly bought by certain institutions. Oxen, I further learnt, were cheaper to keep than horses, as they were fed mainly on hay, chaff, and roots; whilst horses needed oats. So I travelled and picked up odd bits of information. Then we sought out West Dean, prepared to tramp there if no road were available, for West Dean we were determined to see. Unexpectedly we discovered a narrow lane that led to it, the downs rising sheer above on either hand, leaving just room for the lane and a little clear-running stream which we followed up to the village. A quaint village it proved to be, to use a term too often misapplied, one that surely has no counterpart in all the land. Picturesque it could hardly be called; but though I prize both the picturesque and quaint, the quaint pleases me the better because it is so much the rarer. Its tiny church has an uncommon tower--a strong structure, well suited to its purpose, but devoid of disturbing decoration that too often fails to decorate and serves but to vex the eye; otherwise, though ancient enough, the church is not noteworthy; still the simple shapely tower gives it a certain charm and character; and character, whether in man or building, is a thing to be desired. Facing the churchyard we discovered a most interesting relic of past times when religion was more to the fore than it is to-day. This was a pre-Reformation priest-house of the fourteenth century or thereabouts, an austere building of thick rough masonry, deep and narrow arched windows, and a great chimney-stack at one end, a building probably erected in this remote spot by the travelling monks who had not to live in it. I have, here and there, come upon an ancient fourteenth or fifteenth-century priest-house, for they have not all been improved away. There is one at Alfriston, another at West Hoathly--both in Sussex,--and another at Muchelney in Somerset, but these are all half-timbered buildings fairly lighted, and have not the solid, gloomy look of the prison-like structure at West Dean, the windows of which were originally probably of horn, or even possibly mere open spaces with shutters. One would imagine, being so close to the sea with the river conveniently at hand, that West Dean must have its smuggling traditions: those free traders of old would hardly have overlooked so handy a spot; but if such traditions there be, we could glean nothing about them, for we saw not a soul in the place to speak to; the only living thing we observed was a chicken that apparently had lost itself. Never before have I been in a village with such a forgotten look; there the changeful centuries bring no change. Our car stood unnoticed by the side of a tall and broken flint wall that enclosed a weed-grown garden, wherein stood a great, round, and roofless pigeon-cote; not a face at a window did we see. West Dean took no note of our coming or our going. We drove into, and drove out of, a village asleep, and not even the hum of our engines or the sound of our horn awoke it. There brooded over all a sense of silence and solitude like that of the central sea. CHAPTER II A quiet valley--The importance of the unimportant--Moated and haunted houses--Romances in stone--A farmhouse holiday--A picture-book village--A matter of Fate--The tomb of Gibbon the historian--A gruesome happening--Upright burials--An interesting church--A curious epitaph. Leaving West Dean we drove up the narrow and quiet Cuckmere valley, the smooth green hills rising steeply on either side and so preserving its seclusion to this present day. So quiet the valley seemed that the throbbing of our engines sounded reproachfully in our ears, as though a motor-car had no business to disturb its slumbrous tranquillity. We felt like trespassers! A snug and friendly little valley it is, through which the road and river run in close company. The Cuckmere is but a toy river; I should not have called it a river but that it is so marked on my map, and on its banks I saw a man with a gun shooting into the water. He was shooting fish, he said! I have never seen such sport before. Passing the hamlet of Litlington we caught a glimpse, on the other side of the valley, of ancient Alfriston, a little village that calls itself "the capital of the downs," and its modest flint-built church "the cathedral of the downs." So, by title, the unimportant assumes the rôle of the important. A village becomes a capital, a country church a cathedral, and a stream a river. One might imagine this was the land of Lilliput! Of Alfriston a halting couplet runs: Poor parson, poor people, Sold their bells to repair their steeple. But that, I take it, was a long while ago--if it ever was, for I have heard similar couplets of many other places; a few may possibly have some foundation in fact, but I doubt the rest, and in some, alas, the word "drunken" is substituted for "poor"! After the Alfriston people had sold their bells, tradition, that unreliable jade, avers that the bell of a ship, wrecked on the coast, was purchased to take the place of the lost peal, and by the side of the ancient pilgrims' hostel in the same village stands a ship's figure-head in the shape of a boldly carved lion, fierce of countenance, said to have come from the same ship that provided the bell; this, as long as the oldest inhabitant can remember--and what memories these oldest inhabitants have--has rejoiced in a coat of brilliant vermilion, hence the local saying, apropos of what I know not, "As red as the Alfriston lion." Such, at least, were the tales told to me, and many were the tales I heard as I travelled on. Leaving the valley and the lonely downs regretfully behind, we entered upon a level country, and crossing the main Lewes road we proceeded straight forward into a tame land of flat fields. The scenery was featureless and void of interest, but I was in search of a moated house, so the quality of the scenery was a detail. A friend had told me of this house just before I started on the journey, and had kindly given me a written introduction to its owner, who by happy chance I found at home. So, learning from my map that I was passing close to the place, I determined to see it, if possible. Even with the aid of my map I had some difficulty in discovering the object of my search. Claverham, to give the moated home its title, stands within a few hundred yards of the road, yet so hidden by trees that no casual passer-by would dream of its existence. Thus many good things, though close to his way, may be missed by even the keenest observer, unless he has some hint of them and their whereabouts. I had gone this stretch of road once before and with open eyes, and yet had not discovered Claverham. A moated house is a graphic reminder of old times when every Englishman's house was in reality, not in words, his castle. Early in the seventeenth century Sir Edward Coke laid down the dictum that "the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress," a dictum that passed into a law proverb, "Jura publica privata domus." In those benighted days there were no land taxers, or sanitary or other inspectors to demand entry into an Englishman's home. What, I wonder, in olden times would the master of his house have said to a sanitary inspector who demanded admission thereto? Perhaps it would not so much have mattered what he would have said as what he would have done to him--with a deep moat so handy. The very sound of the words "moated" or "haunted house" was as romance to my ears when I was a youth, and the sound has lost little of its glamour and suggestion of mystery since that long ago, for over such ancient homes there always seems to brood an abiding air of mystery. In my search after moated and haunted houses, many a ballad in building, many a romance in stone, seeming more like an artist's or a poet's dream than a happy reality, and many a legended home in remote places have I discovered--for a romantic spot is the mother of legends. In the troublesome days gone by the dwellers in a moated house must have felt a delightful sense of security with the drawbridge up and the outer windows iron-barred. Even to-day, when staying in a moated house, have I felt the sense of security that a moat affords. So much for sentiment. Claverham disappointed me, though the fault was mine in expecting too much. To cherish an ideal and trusting to find it is to court disillusion, and a seasoned traveller like myself should not have fallen into this error. The unexpected always charms, when it has the power to charm, more than the expected. "Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises," says Shakespeare, whom it is the privilege of all Englishmen to quote. The chief delight of travel lies in the surprise of the unforeseen, and the discoveries we make for ourselves of interesting places and beauty-spots: being unprepared beforehand for such revelations, no ideals have been formed. So the unknown attracts and becomes oftentimes memorable. [Illustration: HAUNTED!] I always picture a moated house as a building grey with years, perhaps in parts a little ruinous and creeper overgrown, with ivied casements, a bent and mossy or lichen-laden roof, and with oftentimes a ghost thrown in. Such a house without its ghost seems incomplete to me. Now Claverham, excepting for one possibly original chimney and a lichen-laden roof, conformed in no way to my picture, for the house has been so altered and rebuilt that the greater part of it, though not of to-day, is comparatively of yesterday and not of centuries ago. The wide and weedy moat, enclosing nearly an acre of ground, is there as of yore, but the chief interest of the place is in its history. Still Claverham is picturesque: a pleasant, retired, and wholly delightful abode in the summer-time; in the winter--well, it was not winter-time then. Portions of the interior are quaint, especially the black oak-beamed and plastered hall that with its ingle-nook gives one a genuine old-world greeting. The beams of the hall are of the original building, and so, we were told, was the wide ingle-nook of the dining-room; the crane, fire-back, and andirons of this fireplace, though ancient, are doubtless of more recent date. This is the history of Claverham in brief as told me by its present possessor. The house was originally built in 1307; according to Volume XIV. of the Sussex Archaeological Society, the manor of Claverham "in 12 Edward II. was in the possession of Nicholas de la Beche. This personage appears to be identical with the Sir Nicholas de Beche who, according to a wardrobe account dated 27th March, 1311, participated with Sir Humphery de Littlebury and Sir Thomas le Latimer in the reward of twenty pounds for the singular service of _dragging the King out of bed on Easter Monday_." So at any rate my visit there unearthed a curious bit of ancient history. The manor shortly afterwards came into the possession of a member of the then famous Fiennes family, a descendant of one of the Norman warriors who had come over with the Conqueror. A successor of his afterwards built Hurstmonceux Castle and went to live there in 1422, but Claverham was retained by the Fiennes until about 1600. My host told me that his father remembered when there was still a drawbridge over the moat; now where the bridge was is an embanked approach to the house, doubtless more convenient, but infinitely less romantic. So, here and there, these picturesque relics of the past disappear. A portion of the building was so old that it tumbled down some few years back. My host considered that the house was never really fortified in the sense of being able to resist a regular siege, but was rather intended to withstand a raid, or a sudden attack by the robber bands which infested the country; the moat, too, served the further useful purpose as a protection against wolves and other wild animals which at the time had free range over the unenclosed and wooded country around. To-day it serves as a fence to keep out straying sheep and cattle from the fields, so that the tree-shaded and pleasant garden it encloses can be enjoyed in as much peace and privacy as though it were walled about; at the same time the moat does not interrupt what view there is. Leaving Claverham we drove along a narrow lane that ended in a fair main road, and this took us for a space alongside of the wide Laughton Level, over which sea of waving grasses, once mere marshland, is to be had perhaps the best and most comprehensive panorama of the South Downs, ranging as it does almost from Beachy Head to close upon Lewes. There before us they stretched, bare and rounded to the sky, in their long and lordly array of golden greenery fading into grey: miles and miles of glorious greenery as beheld under the summer sunshine, only broken here and there below by the pale-blue shadows of their shallow recesses. From that distance and point of view, the downs that day looked almost mountainous; it was this view that caused Gilbert White to describe the South Downs as "that majestic chain of mountains"--perhaps a somewhat exaggerated description, but serving to show how impressive the downs may appear under certain conditions, for Gilbert White was not given to employ grandiloquent language. It is the impression that a scene makes upon the traveller that profits, not the vulgar record of mere height, for there is a grandeur of form and colour as well as of size, and for grandeur of rolling form I know nothing to compare with the South Downs seen from afar. Then, rounding a spur of the hills, we descended into ancient and homely Lewes, "sweetly environ'd by the daisied downs": a town, according to Cobbett, of "clean windows and pretty faces" (I am glad that Cobbett found something during his Rural Rides to admire in his own country, for he was generally on the grumble). We left Lewes by a main road leading northwards: hemmed in as the town is by the downs, there was no other road to take except the one to Brighton, and to Brighton we were not minded to go. Presently we struck a byway to our right which brought us to Barcombe, a village of no interest; after this we found ourselves in a tree-bordered lane of the delightful Devon type, and this we followed for several winding miles. At one spot we dropped down to a sheltered and wooded hollow where we espied a lonely, half-timbered, and rambling farmstead, such as painters put in their pictures--pictures that the wealthy man of taste hangs on the walls of his mansion purely for the pleasure of looking at them, though I am afraid few men realise the subtle charm of such old buildings until an artist has translated it on paper or canvas. They see their beauties through other eyes, for there is an art in seeing and discovering beauty not cultivated by the many. I was tempted to take a photograph of this ancient farmhouse, but could only secure a poor end view owing to the slope of the ground and obstructing trees. It would have made a delightful water-colour sketch, only had I stopped to sketch every pleasing spot by the way, my journey might have been prolonged to the winter. I had no trouble in finding subjects for the brush or camera; I came upon them in endless succession. So does rural England abound in beauty. My trouble was what to select out of the profusion of good things presented to me. I felt like one going through a vast picture-gallery of lovely landscapes, only the landscapes were real and living, and so the more delightful. [Illustration: A SUSSEX FARMSTEAD.] The old-fashioned, age-mellowed farmsteads built in the spacious days gone by, when every yard of ground and inch of space was not considered, what pleasantly familiar features they form in the landscape, with their suggestion of contentment, and you come upon them everywhere. Familiar, and essentially English, but how unobtrusive they are, they seem like a natural growth and truly to belong to the soil; remove them from the countryside, and the eye, perhaps hardly knowing why, would feel that there was something missing. Times of late years have not been prosperous for the agriculturist, and I noticed during the journey at more than one picturesque and pleasantly situated old farmhouse a board displayed with "Apartments to let" thereon. From a passing glance they appeared very desirable quarters for those who love retirement, quietude, and purely rural surroundings. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." Probably in more prosperous times farmers would not dream of letting lodgings, but now here is an opportunity offering for hard-worked paterfamilias (whose purse is limited, and who is in search of pure air, change of scene, and fresh surroundings for his youngsters) to spend his holiday in the real country far from crowds, where the children are free to wander over the fields, romp in the meadows, climb trees, play at haymaking, go a-blackberrying, a-bird-nesting, or whatever rural doing may at the moment take their fancy, when not intent upon watching the constant, interesting, and varied life about a farmstead. A holiday in a farmhouse, how delightful and restful is the thought of it to the town-tired man; what a refreshing and complete change it spells from the usually dull and dear seaside apartments, with the everlasting pier, the noisy band, or the inevitable nigger minstrels on the beach by way of insistent entertainment! At a farmhouse of the right and good old-fashioned sort you may obtain fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden, milk direct from the cow, real thick country cream, butter that you may see churned, home-cured bacon and perchance hams, to say nothing of newly-laid eggs, such as are unobtainable in cities. This is no fancy statement; I write from actual experience. The thing is, of course, to find the right sort of farmhouse and the farmer willing to take in lodgers, for though existing they naturally require discovering, or recommending by those who know them. For the busy man this detail of discovery does present a difficulty; to me driving haphazard about the country it presented none, as such desirable quarters, situated in pleasant spots, discovered themselves from time to time as the journey progressed. Once I tried the experiment of spending a month in a farmhouse with my wife and child, and it proved an unqualified success. In the matter of cost it was the cheapest holiday I ever took, and no holiday has given me more real pleasure, or lingers more delightfully in my memory. The farmhouse in question (I came upon it during a driving tour, and there I stayed instead of touring further) was situated in wild Wales and surrounded by beautiful scenery; there were wide and open moors at the back of it to ramble over, and mountains on the other side to climb, and not far away was a playful, tumbling little river that provided me with trout fishing. Much for my sport I cannot say, Though, mind, I like the fun; There have I been the livelong day Without extracting one. Still, it was ever an excuse for a delightful ramble alongside the companionable river, for in the plashing and gurgling of its waters it almost seemed a living thing. At any unoccupied moment I could sally forth with my rod by its rocky banks, just as readily as I could start for a stroll with my stick, though sketching from nature was my favourite pastime when in a less lazy mood. So time never hung heavily. Still, perhaps a word of caution may be given: however otherwise desirable, farmhouse apartments in a purely agricultural country are apt to prove a disillusion to the elders if they have no resources in themselves, owing to the want of something more exciting to do than to watch the slow movements of farming operations. Pleasant surroundings are an essential, so a hilly country is to be desired; then places of interest in the neighbourhood may be made the excuse for occasional excursions, and there are few neighbourhoods where these may not be found. The farmer whose apartments I took let them every year, he told me; an artist and his family had taken them after my term was over, and from what I gathered the different lodgers practically paid the farmer's rent--a roundabout way of meeting agricultural depression. Though but a detail, the farmer sold us what little produce of his we consumed at full market value or over, yet this was considerably less than the usual tradesmen's charges, and every little helps. Besides fruit, vegetables, milk, butter, bacon, home-made jams, and countless eggs, we purchased fowls in quantities, and occasionally ducks. On fowls, indeed, we chiefly relied for the table, butcher's meat being difficult to obtain, and, truth to tell, tough when obtained. The fowls were not over-plump, not being especially fattened--or crammed, is it? Barn-door fowls, the farmer called them, as they picked up a good deal of their substance from the grain scattered about the outbuildings and ricks; so their food was varied, consequently their flesh, if there was not much of it, was tender and delicate of flavour. We had to rely upon ourselves for society, though we did get acquainted with one stranger, an artist, who had taken up his abode at a homely little inn some two miles away--an inn that had its uses in that it provided us with the bottled ale of Bass. We led a self-contained life and gloried in it. Our bread was home-baked, and I still pleasantly remember how excellent that bread was, though it had not the white colour one is accustomed to in the town variety. We had only one baking a week, but the bread kept sweet and palatable for the whole of that time; it did not dry hard on the cut surface as bought bread does; it was made from home-grown wheat ground at a water-mill near by, whose wheel was turned by the little, useful river--there was the romance of it. Great long loaves they were, with a generous allowance of crisp, rocky crust to crumb--loaves to be remembered. We stepped at once from the door of the house into the country, and that was the charm of it. Our water came direct from the lonely moors above, and was beyond suspicion pure and in superabundant supply; indeed at one end of the large kitchen there was a stone trough for washing purposes, and along this the water ran day and night; no tap was ever turned on--there was no tap to turn. Perhaps I was fortunate in finding such desirable quarters, but on comparing notes with an artist friend, who took farmhouse apartments in Cumberland, I found he fared as well as we did. A change in the method of taking a holiday lends an added zest to it, and those who are tired of expensive hotels, seaside lodgings, or constant travelling, with the everlasting packing and squeezing of the sponge, might do worse than try farmhouse apartments in some pleasant country. If rest be needed I cannot imagine a more restful form of holiday. Besides being a good cook our farmer's wife was skilled in the making of sundry jams, jellies, ginger-beer, and elderberry wine; of the last she was very proud, and mulled some for us to bring out its full flavour--I did not sample it a second time: such wine maketh the heart sad. One of her concoctions, however, commended itself to me, namely, a home-made kind of liquor that was fresh and pleasant to my palate which she called, curiously enough, "Job's Comforter." Who would have expected such a thing in a remote farmhouse? This is the recipe for the making of it as given to me: "Get a wide-mouthed stone jar and put in it as many good lemons as you can; stick as many cloves as possible into the skin of the lemons, pressing them well in, then place the prepared lemons in the jar and fill up with unsweetened gin; let the lemons remain in the gin for two or three days, after this strain the liquid off, add honey and a little sugar-candy to sweeten according to taste and to give a smoothness to the liquor, then bottle it." I give the recipe exactly as given to me. I had some trouble to obtain it, and should prefer more precise details as to quantities, but these old housewives are jealous of giving their recipes away. I took a bottle of this "Job's Comforter" home with me and friends of mine pronounced it excellent--"as good as Chartreuse" they declared, but perhaps this estimate was owing to the novelty of the thing. Still, it was undoubtedly good. Resuming our journey we followed the lonely lane for a long way without arriving anywhere, but "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive," and we were in no hurry. Still, the longest lane has ending, and ours ended at a wide, open, elevated space marked Pit Down on the map; this spot, I afterwards discovered, earned its title from the fact that there in pits were hastily buried the victims of the plague that once devastated the villages around, and in one of these villages, Fletching by name, we shortly afterwards found ourselves. A pretty village it proved to be of the picture-book sort, as clean and neat as though it were a Kate Greenaway's drawing materialised. The ancient church stands in precisely the right spot, around which are grouped, as an artist might group them, the many gabled houses of the village; the one thing wanting to perfect the picture was the village green, but "fortune seldom comes with both hands full." Fletching lies well out of the beaten track and is only to be reached by winding lanes, so that I should imagine a motorist is seldom seen there, unless he has fortunately lost his way to the finding of the village. Even then some motorists might not realise their good fortune. I stopped the car in the shade of one of its attractive houses, when a man approached me, evidently imagining I had come to see the church, and, desiring to be of service, exclaimed, "The rector will be delighted to show you over the church; there are a lot of curious old tombs inside that are well worth seeing. The rectory is just over the way"--pointing to it--"and I know the rector's at home." I explained that I had not come to see the church but had merely driven into the village accidentally. "But you really ought to see it now you are here," he continued; "the rector takes a great interest in it, and is always so pleased to show it to any stranger." Fate had brought me to Fletching, and Fate appeared determined I should see the church. Fate was kinder than I knew. The man stood there watching me, and after his civility I felt it would seem ungracious to disappoint him. So to the rectory I went, though somewhat reluctantly, for it was a fine, out-of-door day, but I did not wish to hurt the man's feelings. The grey-haired parson received me most cordially; I might have been a welcome guest instead of a stranger seeking a favour, but I have always found that in pleasant places you meet with pleasant people. Pleasant surroundings surely, to a certain extent, influence the temperament of man? They affect me, I know, and strongly. "Delighted to show you over our church," said the parson; "it possesses many features of interest that you might miss if you went alone." So I put myself under his guidance, for who should take a more intelligent interest in, or know more about, a church than its parson? He even appeared very desirous to show it. A parson's life in a village is often a dull one, and possibly the occasional meeting with a sympathetic stranger comes as a welcome relief to his round of monotonous days. Before entering the building I noticed a little "low-side" or "leper window" on the left of the porch. The purport of these so-called "leper windows," so frequently to be found in country churches, has perplexed many a learned archaeologist, and it seems passing strange to me why a window so usual should be a subject of such mystery. The once generally accepted theory was that they were provided for lepers, that those so unfortunately afflicted might view, from outside the church and safely apart from the congregation, the elevation of the Host, and thus participate, to some extent, in the service. But in the case of Fletching church, and many others, these peculiar windows are so placed that no one could possibly see the altar from them; moreover, as the rector remarked, lepers were never admitted into churchyards. So the leper theory fails. My personal impression is that these windows were never intended for looking into, but for looking out of the building, and for this purpose such a small window sufficed. From the number of leper windows I have inspected, and writing from recollection, I should imagine that the majority of them are suitably placed for watching the congregation entering the church, and so might be of service to the bell-ringers; but that, I take it, would be a secondary consideration and not the main object of them. On entering Fletching church my attention was called to the Norman arches under the tower showing that the building had been originally Norman. Now, owing to rebuildings and restorations, it is mainly Early English--the Early English of the Victorian era! On the west wall is a curious and well-preserved little brass, doubtless formerly on the floor. The inscription on this, beautifully cut, runs briefly as follows: Hic jacet Petrus Denot, glover: Cujus aie ppicietur Deus. Amen. The brass is manifestly an ancient one, and the absence of a date is notable; there is plenty of space for it. Two gloves, crossed, are shown below. The English word "glover" looks strangely out of place in the midst of the Latin. Presumably the carver of the inscription, though doubtless familiar from frequent usage with the usual Latin employed on the memorials to the dead, its _Hic jacets_, its _Obiits_, and the rest that goes between, was in a quandary how to render "glover" in the classic tongue; his limited learning failing him, he boldly inserted it in English. At least I arrived at that conclusion. Who was this Petrus Denot, I wondered? The rector knew his story in part and enlightened me. He was an inhabitant of Fletching, a glover by trade, and was one of the unfortunates who took a part in the Cade rebellion; he was captured and hanged, but his body was recovered by his relations and was buried in the church. I query if that is the whole of the story, for it seems strange that a tradesman of the period, to say nothing of his being hanged for treason, should have the much-sought-for privilege of being buried within the church's hallowed walls, and honoured with a brass besides. Does the brass being dateless point to anything? I fancy that there is more in the simple terse inscription than meets the eye. At one time it appears Fletching was famous for its gloves made from hogs' skins imported from Holland, and it is supposed that the plague was conveyed to the village by these skins, and that brought the industry to an end, and the village nearly too. During one of the restorations, when the flooring of the church was removed, many skeletons were discovered beneath, all in an upright position--"pointing to Saxon burial," I was told. It may, however, be remembered that Wordsworth in "The White Doe of Rylstone" alludes to bodies in after-Saxon days being so buried in a vault at Bolton Priory: Pass, pass who will yon chantry door, And through the chink in the fractured floor Look down and see a grisly sight: A vault where the bodies are buried upright! There, face by face, and hand by hand, The Claphams and Mauleverers stand. "Possibly you are aware," exclaimed my parson guide, "that Gibbon the historian rests here in the Sheffield chapel amid the Sheffield family deceased, for the first earl was a great friend of his." I was not aware of the fact, but with Cicero I could say, "Non me pudet fateri nescire quod nesciam." The number of world-famous men is so large, and grows ever larger as the years roll on, that it is quite impossible to remember where but a scant few of the more famous of them were born, or died, or lie buried. What matters it? These details belong to Fate, not to genius; no genius can command them. So we went to the Sheffield chapel, which is approached by a narrow passage; facing this is a plain marble wall impressively devoid of any ornament, but covered with epitaphs to members of the Sheffield family; in the centre of these is one, in Latin, to Gibbon. He alone has the honour of Latin, the rest being in plain English. "Now," said the rector, "I have a gruesome revelation to make. One evening when at her devotions in the church a nurse was startled by a loud report coming from the Sheffield chapel; she fled the building in terror: it afterwards turned out that the coffin in which Gibbon was laid to rest had burst and a new coffin had to be made. But this is not a lively subject; let me call your attention to those stained-glass windows. The glass of these was removed and buried in the churchyard for preservation during the period of the Puritan fury; some years ago it was unearthed and now is in its old place again. So Time brings about its revenge; what one generation would destroy another would preserve, only the glass being much broken, the pieces have got sadly mixed so as to resemble a mosaic, but not an unpleasing mosaic, revealing little of the old design, yet sufficient to show that the windows were to a royal personage, presumably the Duke of Lancaster." Next a well-preserved piscina was pointed out to me, having a bracket on the top presumably to support an image, "in which respect this piscina is almost, if not quite, unique in England." Then in turn we inspected some of the ancient monuments; reclining on the first altar tomb were two recumbent alabaster effigies side by side, one of a beruffled man in armour and warlike of countenance, the other of his wife. The inscription below runs: "Here lyeth buried the body of Richard Lache. Coming out of his office of High Sheriff for the counties of Sussex and Surrey, having no issue of his body living, he gave all his lands in the county of Sussex unto Catherine his wife, and made her sole executoress of his last will. In regard whereof ... she of her own account caused this monument to be made, and herself living, to be pictured lying by him, as you see." Yet this disconsolate widow consoled herself the next year by marrying the Earl of Nottingham and lies buried elsewhere! Inconstant woman! Another fine altar tomb, though minus inscription, is supposed by the coat of arms remaining on it to be that of Sir Edward Dalyngruge, "who having amassed a large fortune by war, marriage, and court patronage, obtained the royal license to build upon the hereditary estate of his wife the castle of Bodiam." There were also other ancient tombs of lesser interest, one mutilated but apparently to a crusader and his wife; and a thirteenth-century slab with only the matrix of its brass remaining. In the transept I noticed, hung against the wall, two crested helmets, gilt and coloured, the gilding and colours being much age-dimmed, with rusty spurs and gauntlets suspended just below: the crests were those of the Abergavenny family. There were also other features of interest in the church--a penitent's window, a holy water stoup, and at a late restoration I learnt that one of the pillars by the chancel was found to be hollow and to contain the old steps intact leading to the rood-loft, and at the top of the steps an ancient green chasuble was discovered, left there in some haste or for concealment, it may be imagined. On leaving I asked the rector if he knew of any curious epitaph in the churchyard. Time, alas! has robbed us of many a one, and worse still, to my knowledge, certain men placed "in a little brief authority," not approving of such levity on sacred ground, have deliberately obliterated others. "But," said the rector, "if I cannot show you any quaint epitaph, I can tell you of a singular one I came upon some time ago in ancient St. Mary's churchyard at Eastbourne; it ran, 'A virtuous woman is 5/- to her husband.' This puzzled me at first, then I came to the conclusion that it should read, 'A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.' Possibly the carver was an illiterate man, and, being apparently short of space, substituted 5/- for crown, deeming them synonymous. But whatever the explanation, that is how the epitaph read." Fletching church was one of the happy discoveries of the journey; though much restored it is of more than ordinary interest. There are, indeed, but few churches of ancient date that have not something noteworthy to reveal to the traveller; truly they are chapters of history in stone, and some of them are, in a sense, museums. It is well worth a wanderer's while to step aside now and then to inspect carefully and leisurely a country church (carefully, or he may miss much), especially those in remote spots where a want of pence has happily restrained the restorer's hand: blessed be their poverty, I say, for owing to it only needful reparation has been done, so ancient tombs and brasses have remained undisturbed, and the medieval craftsman's handiwork has not been improved away, to the joy of every lover of the never-returning and picturesque past. CHAPTER III An old coaching inn--The resurrection of the road--Far from anywhere--The charm of the unexpected--A historic milestone--"Mine host" of past days--Our port-wine drinking ancestors--The lure of the lane--Village life--Miniature effigy of a knight--The tomb of "the good Archbishop Leighton"--A church clerk's story. Leaving Fletching by a leafy lane, we shortly came to a grass-margined highway, and where the lane and highway met, stood, somewhat back from the road, a lonely old inn--"The Sheffield Arms" to wit--a well-preserved example of a modest country hostelry of the easy-going Georgian era; one that externally shows no signs of alteration since it first was built, and few are the inns of the period that have not suffered some change during those changeful years. As our posting and coach-travelling forefathers saw "The Sheffield Arms" with its long range of stabling on one side, so it looks to-day, only a little more time-toned and weather-stained, with less life about it and, what life there is, less picturesque. There was no other building in sight on the long, straight, but undulating stretch of tree-bordered road fronting the inn, excepting one or two lowly cottages half hidden in woods, so out of direct observation that they did not lessen the impression of loneliness and the illusion of remoteness that the place gave. "Miles from Anywhere. No Hurry," is the legend displayed on the gable of another lonely inn at Upware in the Fens; it might as well be written on the signboard of "The Sheffield Arms." An ancient coaching hostelry of some pretence, that has seen better days and other ways, that has not been modernised, standing forlorn by the roadside, but still appearing too proud to mourn its long-lost prosperity, always makes its appeal to me, for it strikes a pathetic note. I do not need the building to be picturesque, though I would prefer it thus, so long as it be not too much decayed, only that it possess the glamour of age, has entertained travellers of the long ago, and so made its little history. Then I humour my fancy. Many an old inn of this kind has a sort of magnetic attraction for the few who indulge in that despised article, sentiment: Stevenson confessed that he could never get over his hankering after a room in a wayside tavern in which to start his tale. There is romance about a lonely and once flourishing inn, however plain that inn may be--romance that clings to it as surely as ivy clings to a crumbling ruin. I feel that, in the days gone by, some eventful happening only waiting to be revealed must have taken place within the walls of such a one, some romance unrecorded yet. For real romance lingered long into the coaching age, but steam and electricity have killed it. Now Romance beside his unstrung lute, Lies stricken mute. Had "The Sheffield Arms" a tale to tell? To me it looked as though it had, but then it must be remembered the poetry of a place lies as much in the eyes of the beholder as in the place itself; what is a romance in building to one is but bricks and mortar to another. We do not all see alike; a Turner, a David Cox, a Constable would each render the same landscape differently. Once when admiring an old ivy-covered Tudor manor-house I ventured to remark to a native on the beauty of it; he scornfully rejoined, "I see nought in it, it wants pulling down." The eye is but a lens; it is the mind that really sees and interprets. "The Sheffield Arms" is well retired from the highway by a wide space of grassy ground whereon grows a flourishing clump of trees; on the roadside of this clump stands a large, two-pillared, crossed-top signpost; from this depends a swinging sign, in the good old-fashioned way as an inn-sign should--a sign that boldly proclaims the business of the house, so that even the rushing motorist could hardly pass it unheeded by. Without the needful sign one would hardly guess that the shy building was an inn, so little otherwise does it assert its purpose--and modesty becomes even a building! There I pulled up beneath the welcome shade of the trees, sought the cool interior of the hostel and called for a glass of ale, for the day was hot, and mortal man is sometimes thirsty. The ale was good, and brought to mind the poet's query: Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Why, to provide good ale, of course, such as I sampled there that day. Then I got a-chatting with the landlord in hopes of gleaning something of the old inn's past story. I found much civility, but to my disappointment the landlord (whose name of Weller, by the way, was a reminder of Dickens) had scant information of the kind I sought. Truly he said it once had been a coaching house: I could have told him that. [Illustration: OLD COACHING HOSTELRY, SHEFFIELD PARK, SUSSEX.] [Illustration: AN ANGLER'S MODEST INN.] The inn, I imagine, after the coming of the railway suffered from long neglect, left stranded high and dry, as it was, on a travel-forsaken road, its profitable posting and coaching custom gone, and with little else to depend upon: how it existed at all during that stagnant period is a wonder. Who would ever then have dreamt of the resurrection of the road that the motor-car has brought about? How the landlords of the half-forsaken country inns must have rubbed their hands with glee to find custom, and profitable custom too, come again their way. It was a miracle; so they refurbished their ancient houses and blessed the car that others cursed. In this respect, at any rate, the motor has done good service, for a quiet country inn is a boon to the traveller who does not always care to seek his rest in crowded noisy towns. There was a long time, after the coaches had disappeared, when it was the rarest thing to find a decent rural inn, and the best of these existed for the sake of fishermen; they were unfortunately few, but mostly excellent, for the fisherman loves good cheer--so does his fellow-sportsman the motorist. At the first glance the interior of the ancient hostelry did not appear inviting. I found my way into a large, cheerless apartment, erst, I imagined, the coffee-room; truly there were flowers on the table, and a door stood open wide on to a little garden where sweet-scented roses grew whose perfume was wafted into the chamber, but there was no carpet on the floor, and bare boards, though clean and stained a warm hue, are noisy to the tread and comfortless to the eye. I was not impressed, for though one despises luxury, one looks for comfort. Then I jokingly asked the maid, who put in a sudden appearance on the scene, if they ever had any visitors stopping there: thought I, it is a needless query. To my surprise she replied, "We often have motoring parties for the night, and sometimes they stay a day or two; would you like to see our rooms?" I thought I would; I expected to find musty chambers, four-poster beds, and forbidding antiquated furniture, but I found bedrooms scrupulously clean, neat, and simply but sufficiently furnished; I have slept in rooms less comfortable and less clean at expensive town hotels. There was, too, a large but cosy sitting-room supplied with really easy chairs, and--who would have thought it?--a good bathroom! Upstairs the old inn was clean and comfortable, and the not-too-exacting traveller might take his ease there with much content: indeed I almost wished I had been belated and compelled to do so. It is always a delight to me to stay at a real old-fashioned country inn, far from anywhere: I love the peace of it. The country is as tranquil as ever, but the towns are, alas! more noisy. Would Dr. Johnson care to "walk down" his beloved Fleet Street to-day, I wonder, with all the twentieth-century bustle of it? De Quincey, too, dearly loved the quiet country inn; writing in 1802, of a walking tour he took, he remarks, "Happier life I cannot imagine than this vagrancy ... and towards evening a courteous welcome in a rustic inn. It has often struck me that a world-wearied man, who sought for the peace of monasteries separated from their gloomy captivity--peace and silence such as theirs combined with the large liberty of nature--could not do better than revolve amongst these modest inns." At the rear of "The Sheffield Arms" the country looked inviting with its green meadows and big branching trees, and noticing a footpath I was tempted to take a stroll. I had not wandered far when to my surprise I came upon a deep, rock-girt, and shady glen of much charm; at the head of this I caught a glimpse of a large still sheet of silvery water, a lake in miniature, for it was perhaps a quarter of a mile in length or more, of generous width also, and from its sides rose, steeply and abruptly, hills, wooded to the skyline--wooded hills that doubled themselves on its mirror-like surface. I have seldom come so suddenly upon so lovely a spot without a hint of what was to be revealed; in truth the scenery gave no suggestion of this, and, as a rule, Sussex lacks the enlivening presence of water. There was a joy in the discovery of that beauty-spot; nothing more delicious of the kind have I ever seen. Good things that come of course far less do please Than those that come by sweet contingencies. Possibly this sheet of water was artificial, though it had purely a natural look, for it may have been one of the numerous "hammer-ponds" constructed long ago for the service of an iron mill or mills in the now almost forgotten days when Sussex was the Black Country of England, when the present peaceful and pastoral land, as Camden says, "resounded with the noise of busy hammer-mills beating upon the iron," and its pure air was polluted with the smoke of many furnaces and forges of which Sheffield possessed its share. Sussex wood-smelted iron was reckoned the toughest in the world, and iron ore still abounds in the county; it was the failure of fuel for smelting, owing to the exhaustion of the forests and the near proximity of iron and coal in the North, that caused the decay of the extensive Sussex iron industry, not the lack of ore--a fortunate happening as far as the beauty of the land is concerned. Reminders of the period may be found in the many place-names on the map, such as "Steelforgeland," "Furnace Farm," "Cinder Hill," "Hammerfield," and numerous others of a similar nature. Those ancient iron-masters have left their gracious mark in the land by the many beautiful homes, standing yet, that they built for their convenience and enjoyment in the days of their prosperity: they built not only houses, they built pictures in stone, in brick, in half-timber, delightful to look upon; perhaps "they built better than they knew." Amongst the many in half-timber Middle House at Mayfield is a good example, and of those in stone Batemans, near Burwash, the home of Rudyard Kipling, is another. At the end of the lakelet I discovered a picturesque water-mill--grey and old, with a weatherboard upper story, and a red-tiled, lichen-laden, uneven roof, silvery and golden--its dark green wheel revolving round in a leisurely fashion to the droning of the ancient machinery within, and the quiet splash of water without. A ready-made picture awaiting the artist to paint it, if he has not already done so. Somehow the sounds of water and wind-driven machinery seem to me to be different in quality to that of steam-driven machinery with its insistent noise: water and wind are natural powers, and both water-mills and windmills with their adjuncts are picturesque objects to the eye, but I know no steam-mill that is not ugly. In the days before steam became the almost universal power, and the modern builder and engineer had not disfigured the country with their assertive erections, how doubly beautiful England must have been! Would that photography had been invented ages ago, then we might possibly have had photographs of Elizabethan England preserved to us, so that we might better judge of its picturesqueness than by descriptions and drawings not always to be trusted. I know of no other pleasanter stretch of highway in all England than those few miles on either hand of "The Sheffield Arms"; on both sides of it are spacious grassy margins left to nature, and they extend as far as the eye can see, and the sum of them would come to a considerable acreage. On these wide wastes grow big oaks and other trees; especially noticeable are numerous clumps of Scotch firs that, with their tall red trunks and twisted branches high above, give quite a character to the roadscape, if I may employ so odd a term; besides which brambles, heather, bracken, gorse, and other wild growing things flourish on them at their own sweet will. An ideal spot for a wayside picnic, where one might choose a secluded nook near to the road, yet hidden from it. Here at least no "hungry nobility have swallowed up all the land except the King's Highway." There was not a soul in sight; the vacant road impressed me with the same sense of loneliness as does a house deserted, for I looked for life and found none. On a slight rise, a little away from the road and not far from the inn, I espied a tall, shapely, solitary stone pillar, weather-stained and worn, backed by a tangle of greenery. This aroused my curiosity, so off I set to solve its purport--and discovered a glorified milestone, manifestly erected in days somewhat remote; the lettering on it was, in parts, wasted away and so difficult to decipher, but I managed to make out certain of the names and figures, and this is what I noted: Miles. Westminster Bridge 39 East Grinstead 10 Lewes 10 Brighthelmstone 17 There were further inscriptions, but these were all I copied. Brighton being given as Brighthelmstone shows how far back the stone was placed there--those were the days when people directed their letters "Brighthelmstone, near Lewes." I learnt afterwards that this milestone was erected by a former Earl Sheffield in order to settle the frequent disputes that arose with the postboys as to distances to his park and the inn. "Private travellers," as those who posted about country were called, had need of well-filled purses, for in addition to the charge for posting that ranged, according to Leigh's _Road Book_ (sixth edition of 1837), from 1s. to 1s. 9d. per mile, the postillion expected and demanded a further 3d. a mile for himself, and more if he could extort it; besides which the traveller frequently felt under the moral compunction "to take something for the good of the house" during the delay of changing horses. On the arrival and departure of the postchaise the old-fashioned landlord was always in polite evidence, willing to drink the traveller's health at the traveller's expense--it was the custom of the age. What constitutions the men of those days must have had, whether of high or low degree! Men then there were who could drink their two, or even three, bottles of port at night, and rise the next morning apparently none the worse for it. When I was a youth I visited a country squire, one of the last of the old race, and I well remember that after dinner he drank his two bottles of port, excepting a glass that was given to me; at the finish he was "as sober as a judge," and the next morning, early, he was out with the hounds. Leaving the old inn we took a narrow lane opposite to it, for it had a pleasant look; the highway too was pleasant enough, but we thought the lane the more likely to lead to some out-of-the-way spot and have more picturesque possibilities: the highways serve the towns, the byways the villages and the countryside, so always take to a lane when you can if you desire to discover the secreted beauty of the land. Our lane led us through a green and old-world country with no hint of modern ugliness or aught but tranquillity about it, a tranquillity that hardly seemed of our bustling day. The lane was long, but not too long for us, and very winding; possibly our lanes follow the old primitive tracks of past days when the early inhabitants, to avoid a swamp, soft ground, or a wood, simply deviated this way and that in search of firmer footing; even, it may be, these early inhabitants followed on the earlier track of wild animals. Small wonder our lanes are often so wandering--delightfully wandering, for therein lies their special charm: who can tell what a lane may do, or what surprise each bend of it may have in store for the traveller? Then a crooked lane controls the pace, you cannot go fast on it, so time is compulsorily afforded to see and absorb all that is worth seeing; the lane is for the loiterer, though few there be who care to loiter nowadays, so the lane is almost forsaken except by country folk and rural lovers. Some one somewhere says, who or where I cannot now remember, nor am I sure if I have the quotation right, but this is the drift of it, "The lane is a work of genius, the highway that of the engineer." The lane is to the highway as old wine is to new; there is a finer flavour about it, a rarer charm; it leads to half-forgotten places and quiet scenes-- Where the wheels of Life swing slow, And over all there broods the peace Of centuries ago. At last, after many windings and some climbings, our lane brought us to the remote and pleasant village of Horsted Keynes, set on a hill and surrounded by woods. If one goes in search of these out-of-the-way spots they are apt to escape one; it is the good fortune of the true wanderer to discover them--that is the reward of desultory travel. Stopping the car in the wide village street, a goodly portion of the youthful population promptly surrounded it. "A motor-car, a motor-car," I heard them call out to each other, as though the sight of one was somewhat rare; perhaps but few motorists find, or lose, their way there. To travel and escape other cars and the morning paper is a feat even in rural England. Then apropos of nothing one of the boys explained, "That's the way to the church, down that narrow road." "I did not ask the way to the church," I responded; "why did you point it out?" "Well, I thought as how you came to see it; there's nothing else to see here." There was not, except one or two rather pretty cottages. There before us, a little down a narrow road, stood the ancient church with its tall shingle steeple, curiously slight. I strolled up to the silent fane of Sunday devotion for the sake of a walk and to get a better glimpse of the old-fashioned cottages on the way, each with its little garden gay with flowers. Then I glanced inside the church. I had not been there more than a minute or two before the clerk made his appearance, somewhat out of breath in his haste to discover me before I departed. "I saw as how you were a stranger," said he, "and thought perhaps you would like me to show you over the church." So are strangers' movements noted in quiet places. In many an out-of-the-world village the coming of a stranger arouses an astonishing amount of interest; his coming, his movements, his business, his going, are subjects of discussion and watching. How uneventful and unexciting must the lives of the sleepy villagers be that so small a matter should claim their special attention; little wonder that the younger generation among them seeks the town as a relief from the dull monotony of its existence. How to make village life attractive is the problem, and a pretty stiff problem too. Village halls and reading-rooms do not solve it--the average villager scorns them; he, or she, much prefers to idle out-of-doors doing nothing, contentedly or discontentedly, varied by an occasional visit to the public-house. It is not an ideal existence. What the villager needs is a wider interest in life. "Back to the land" is a vain cry till country life is made less dull and more desirable; but if the country in the winter-time is dull to some, is not the town also dreary to others with its yellow fogs and muddy streets? I am writing of the poor man who throngs the town where labour is over-supplied and leaves the country where it is required. So the shires are deserted and the slums crowded. I am no politician, I detest politics as I do the devil--if they are not one and the same thing--but from what I have seen and heard, from the many talks I have had with the countryman lowest down in the social scale, I do feel that only the pride of possession of his freehold cottage with a little garden attached, or some small holding, will ever attract him back from the town to the land. A garden to tend keeps a man's idle hours pleasantly employed, and keeps him too away from the public-house. In the same way I still more strongly feel that the loss of the sturdy yeoman farmer, tilling his own little freehold, on which son succeeded father in the good old days, is a disaster to the country. To do "yeoman's service" had a pregnant meaning once; now it has none, for the yeoman has gone, gone to other lands to forward their prosperity. He was foremost in the fight on many a hard-fought field: he it was who helped to turn the scale at Crecy and Agincourt, and his reward has been to be improved (!) out of existence. But I have forgotten I was with the clerk in the church. I am afraid that at first I rather resented his intrusion, but after all he turned out an obliging fellow, amusing too without the thought of such a thing, so I forgave him. "It's an interesting old church," he exclaimed. How familiar I am with that phrase, so often have I heard it; it is the stock phrase of most clerks by which he introduces himself to you, with the inevitable tip in view. But there he was, not to be disregarded, and with a smile on his face; he might have looked more serious, I thought, for I fancy he was sexton too. I don't know why, but his smile annoyed me; however, I let him have his way. "It's a very old church," he went on, "but it has been restored." "Do you know, I've already discovered that," I retorted. "'Deed, sir, then I suppose you be one of those learned antiquated gentlemen who understands architecture. Now I think I can show you something that will interest you. I likes to meet learned antiquities; I'm a bit of an antiquity myself." He was! Then he led the way to the chancel, and there he pointed out to me on the north wall under a small canopied recess the miniature effigy of a cross-legged Knight-Templar, with his foot resting on the usual lion in miniature too--a very curious and interesting monument, the like of which I have not seen before; the recumbent figure is beautifully carved and in a good state of preservation. But why so brave and bold a knight--it is a matter of faith with me that those knights of old were all both brave and bold--should have such a miniature monument I could not conceive. It perplexed even the learned clerk to account for this strange departure from the usual life-sized effigies of warriors who are supposed to sleep peacefully below their "stone pictures." It could not have been want of pence, for the carving was too well done; it could hardly have been want of space. Why, then? There was, unfortunately, no inscription on the monument, so what the knight's name was, or what daring deeds he may have done, or when he died, I cannot say, but I guessed that the tomb was of about the time of Edward I. Then the clerk told me the tale of a learned "antiquity" who had come from afar especially to inspect this monument (so the fame of it has spread abroad, though I had never heard of it before), and this learned authority had declared, after carefully examining the belt of the effigy, that the date of the monument was 1227. How he could arrive at so exact a date I could not imagine, for after hearing this statement I critically examined the belt but could discover no figures thereon; and the carving in itself is surely not enough to go by. Still my guide stuck to his story. There were other things of minor interest the clerk pointed out to me--the headless brass to a woman, once on the floor but now on the wall; an old stone slab with a finely carved and raised cross, without inscription, also built into the wall; and a number of nail holes in the fine oak roof, showing where laths had at one period been nailed to it to support a plaster ceiling! But I discovered for myself a mural tablet on the chancel wall to a Mrs. Sapphira Lightmaker, "a devout woman and a mother in Israel, widow indeed, who notwithstanding sollicitations to a 2nd marriage, lived to 44 years." What was the import of this? Are unsought-for "sollicitations to a 2nd marriage" likely to shorten life? Then the clerk asked if I knew that "the good Archbishop Leighton is buried here?" I was not aware of it; the clerk knew more than I did, and the fact appeared to please him. "I thought perhaps I could tell you something you didn't know," said he. I felt complimented, for his remark showed that in his opinion I possibly was not wholly ignorant about other things. "Where is his tomb?" I asked. "Out in the churchyard," was the reply; "but it was not always out in the cold; at one time the ground was covered by a chapel, but the chapel either fell or was pulled down." Wherever you go in England you come upon history: at Fletching I came upon the tomb of Gibbon; here, on that of Archbishop Leighton, and both in remote out-of-the-world villages reached only by devious lanes. We went without to see the tomb, a portion of the epitaph on which runs, "In an age of religious strife he adorned the doctrine of God." But the saintly Archbishop has a second, and an older, monument (it is not often, indeed I do not remember such a thing before, that one finds two monuments of different ages close together to the same person). The older monument is in the shape of a slab set against the chancel wall, and bears the following Latin inscription: Depositum Roberti Leightvn Archiepiscopi Glasguensis Apud Scotas Qui Obij xxv. die Junij Anno Dmi 1684. Aetatis suae 74. "Do you know," exclaimed the clerk, "I was showing this monument to an old lady one day who appeared to take a great interest in it, for she told me she had been recently reading about the Archbishop; then suddenly she said, 'I suppose you knew him well, being the clerk here. Do tell me exactly what he was like.' Now that's a true story." "What reply did you make?" queried I. "'Madam,' I said, 'do I really look over two hundred years old?'" It may be remembered that the Archbishop used often to say that he thought "an inn the fittest place to die in, it looking like a pilgrim going home, to whom the whole world was an inn, and who was weary of the noise and the confusion of it." And he had his wish, for he died at the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane, London. Curiously enough, Cicero, centuries before, expressed himself much in the same way, for thus he wrote: "Ex vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo." As I was leaving, the clerk told me that about a mile away, in a wild and wooded country, was Broadhurst, where the good Archbishop spent the last years of his life. "It's a funny tumble-down old building," he said, "and it used to have a moat right round it, but that's filled up; the road to it is very rough and rutty; a farmer has it now." I know not how it was, but though an ancient and picturesque home has an unfailing attraction for me, yet in this case I somehow neglected going just that little out of my way to see what I understood to be one. Truly "a very rough and rutty road" is not good for tyres, or car, but I could have walked it: why this did not occur to me at the time now passes my comprehension; it must have been a temporary lapse of sanity. Even geniuses have such lapses, for it is recorded of Sir Isaac Newton that he cut two holes in his study door, a large and a small one, for a favourite cat and her kitten to enter by! As to Broadhurst, I can only console myself that possibly (as Dr. Johnson once remarked of a place) "it is worth seeing, but not going to see." CHAPTER IV Dane Hill--Epitaphs--A wild bit of country--Ashdown Forest--Exploring--The use of maps--Curious inn signs--A Tudor home--The Devil's door--A medieval priest and guest house--Old-fashioned flowers--An ancient interior--Curious carvings--Roads in the old times--The window and hearth tax. Out of Horsted Keynes we followed a friendly lane that quickly dipped down into a deep and wooded valley and then rose steeply to Dane Hill, an elevated spot that probably derives its name from an early Danish camp, or from some forgotten battle taking place there during the Danish occupation; its commanding situation suggests it may have been a fortified post. Place-names, preserved through generations, often mark spots where some far-off and unrecorded event has taken place, and I am inclined to think Dane Hill is one of these. I hunted through several volumes of general and local history, but failed to find any mention of a battle there; sometimes, however, tradition is founded on fact, though one cannot accept any tradition as trustworthy; still, where probability and tradition go hand in hand, I am inclined to give ear to tradition. Some day perhaps some Archaeological Society may go digging about Dane Hill and make discoveries. Dane Hill is crowned by a fine, large church, not ancient, nor yet quite of recent days, for its stones have grown grey with years, however many or few those years may be. Access is afforded to the churchyard by some steps, and at the side of these stands a modern, tall-pillared, canopied cross; the carving and shaft of this are beautifully neat, a careful copy of old work, yet without even a hint of its spirit or vigour, it being all scraped and smoothed to a meaningless finish, as though any mark of handiwork was a thing to be ashamed of; the old monkish craftsmen knew their art better, for it is the human touch revealed upon it that gives meaning to the meaningless stone. There is no soul behind the modern workman's tool: how can we expect it when for long years we have been making a human machine of him? Look at his lifeless productions, however painstakingly carved, and compare them with the grotesque gargoyles that verily seem to breathe and to struggle of the medieval sculptor, or any other like work of his hands; the latter too was a creator, not a mere copyist. His creatures resemble nothing on earth or in water that has been as far as I know, yet they look like things that could live. Somehow the large churchyard looked strange to me, and for the moment I could not reason why; then suddenly I realised it was because there was not a gravestone in it, not even a grass-grown mound: did the people of the small hamlet never die? The harvest gathered in God's acre is generally so plentiful. Then I solved the mystery; on the opposite side of the road I discovered a little cemetery hidden by trees and where the gravestones were many, each with its loving tribute to the underlying dead. To judge by the tombstone inscriptions in our churchyards, what paragons of perfection lie sleeping there, what saintly virtues they possessed! Would that I had met them in the flesh! Why always of yesterday and not of to-day? Small wonder that a little girl who had been reading similar eulogies asked her father, "Where are all the bad people buried?" Only once have I come upon an epitaph that might possibly bear an unkind interpretation, and this read, "He was ...," leaving the rest to be filled in by the imagination. Solon, the great Athenian ruler, according to Plutarch, "laid down a justly commended law that no man must speak ill of the dead," and wisely ordered, for the dead cannot defend themselves nor can have any say upon what is inscribed above their dust, excepting in those few instances when the living have written their own epitaphs, not always laudatory by the way, and one cannot but admire their candour. For example, there is the much-quoted one that Dr. Lloyd, a dean of St. Asaph (deceased 1663), wrote for himself, and it will bear quoting again: This is the epitaph Of the Dean of St. Asaph, Who, by keeping a table Better than he was able, Ran much into debt Which is not paid yet. At Dane Hill we came upon a good main road that led us to a wild, open upland reaching far on either hand, a delightful bit of unsophisticated nature where the land is poor as land well can be, so poor that according to a local expression "it would make a crow cry to fly over it," yet beautiful in colour to look upon. A glorious stretch of wide and wild country bare to the sky and swept by all the winds that blow, and the absence of any bounding hedges or fences left the eye at liberty to rove over it unchecked to the furthermost horizon of distant hills "rolling in the blue," and to the fir-fringed heights ahead of Ashdown Forest darkly outlined against the sky. Glorious in colour with its masses of purple heather and golden gorse, and sweet was the odour of the gorse that came wafted to us on the soft west wind. All England is not tamed or cultivated, and I am thankful, in a scenic sense, that some portions of it, such as the moors and heaths, still resist the dominion of man, as they have done for ages past. Not so Cobbett, for thus he writes apparently of this very spot in his _Rural Rides_: "You cross Ashdown Forest ... verily the most villainously ugly spot I ever saw in England ... getting, if possible, uglier and uglier all the way, till at last you see some rising spots which instead of trees present you with some ragged, hideous rocks." But no land was beautiful in Cobbett's view, I take it, unless it would grow good wheat; he notices the rocks, "hideous" in his eyes, though romantic in others, but has not a word for the glowing gorse or purple heather that I presumed flourished there in his day, as now. What was gorse or heather or their rich colours to him? You cannot eat gorse or heather; mere beauty he considered not, but a well-grown field of turnips sent him into raptures. Ashdown Forest climbing the hillside, though it only grows trees, is to me with its green glades, its groves of pine and their dim pillared recesses, as delightfully shady and as silent a retreat as the heart of man could desire, yet Cobbett deems it a "most villainously ugly spot." Let no one trust Cobbett's _Rural Rides_ as a touring guide. Nor by his own showing does he appear to have been a very gracious traveller, for thus he writes of one inn where he stopped the night and left the next morning early: "By making a great stir in rousing waiters and boots and maids, and leaving behind me the name of a 'noisy troublesome fellow,' I got clear." I read Cobbett's _Rural Rides_ in the hopes of gaining some information about scenery--and the only information I could gain was about the qualities, good or bad, of agricultural land. Now the title _Rural Rides_ suggests pleasant rovings, not lectures upon land and upon politics. We drove on to a spot right on the top of a hill overlooking Ashdown Forest, and there the road began a long and gradual descent, out of the sunshine into the green gloom of the woods. This descent we should have taken had we not espied a lonely byway to our left that appeared to keep on the high and open ground, so we chose the sunshine, the breezy upland, and the byway: a solitary signpost pointed down this with "West Hoathly" boldly displayed on its extended arm. Now West Hoathly was but a name to us, but to West Hoathly we would go; we might make discoveries there--which we did. Writing of signposts reminds me that when touring in Somerset some years ago I asked my way of a man by the roadside, and he said to me, "Go straight on to the next parson; he will direct you." "The next parson," I exclaimed in astonishment; "whatever do you mean? I may not meet a parson for miles, or at all." "I see you don't understand," was the reply, "but us calls direction-posts parsons in these parts." "How is that?" I queried. "Well, I don't exactly know why, but us do." As I could glean nothing further I sought information elsewhere, and was fortunate enough to find a man who explained to me that "Some folks hereabouts calls direction-posts parsons, because they point the right way but don't go it. It's quite an old joke in these parts;" and he grinned as he repeated the joke to me. Old though it was I had not heard it before, though a Somerset clergyman to whom I told the story often had. A glance at our map showed that the byway would probably take us into a remote corner of the land, far from travelled ways and into a country of woods and wildness, for beyond West Hoathly, marked on the map, were Worth, Tilgate, and St. Leonard's forests, close upon each other and altogether of considerable extent, with narrow lanes winding through and round about them. There surely we should be well out of the beaten track. That is one profitable use and pleasure of a map, to trace, now and then, a rough course upon it remote from town or rail. Many a delightful hour have I spent with a map before me, travelling in imagination by its aid when the winter storms and snow forbade road wandering for pleasure: so I would go up hill and down dale, now following the course of a river for miles, now coming to a ferry across it, now to a ford, now to a mill, now to a bridge by which I reached the other side and climbed up to a wild moorland solitude; then I would descend to the lowlands and make my way by somnolent villages, by shady woods and pleasant parks; then I would come to a ruined abbey, anon to an ancient castle, then to an old battlefield, a prehistoric camp, and occasionally to a Druids' circle, and all this whilst seated comfortably in my arm-chair before a blazing log fire. I think it was Sir Thomas Browne who said, though I am not quite sure of my authority, that to travel with a book was "the pleasantest way of all of travelling"; but I prefer a map, then in fancy I can go where I like, not where others take me. To show how useful a map may be to the discovering of interesting places that have not, generally, found their way into a guide-book, and to specialise in moated houses, I have now before me the Ordnance Survey Sheet of Stratford-on-Avon, No. 200, covering no great breadth of country, and I have just counted nine moated houses marked upon it, or "moats" at any rate; and these are they, being at, or close to, Inkberrow, Rose Lench, Wickhamford, Broom, Broad Marston, Clifford Chambers, and three around Throgmorton. Proceeding along the byway, at first we crossed a wild heath, a perfect sea of heather, gorse, brambles, and bracken, islanded here and there by dark clumps of pines, their tops being tossed about by the brisk breeze, a breeze that bent the bracken below and harassed and hurried along the white clouds above. There was movement everywhere; great gleams of golden sunshine and patches of grey shadow chased one another over the land and raked the distant hills, then, as our eyes followed them, lost themselves in space. We rejoiced in the open-air confusion and in the clearness of the wind-swept atmosphere that caused all objects in the view to be free from any obstructing haze or mist, and, to the vision, brought the distance so near. So, keeping still on the ridge of the hill, we came to West Hoathly standing high above the country around. Here we pulled up under the shelter of a yew-tree overhanging the churchyard, and opposite to a clean and creeper-covered little inn curiously entitled "The Cat"; and this reminds me that we observed some singular inn signs during the journey, and here are samples of a few of them: "The World turned upside Down," but unfortunately there were only those words on the signboard; I should have liked to see a pictured representation of the world shown thus. Then there was "The Devil's Elbow"--how did that originate, I wonder?--and "The Merry Mouth," showing a big mouth smiling a welcome on the sign; "The Labour in Vain" had pictured two white men endeavouring to scrub a black man white, truly a quaint idea. In Wales I noticed "The Aleppo Merchant," a sign I had not seen before, and of its significance I know nothing. "The End of the World" was realised by the world in flames; and there were others. [Illustration: AN OLD TUDOR HOME, WEST HOATHLY.] Strolling about the ancient village, I espied, on the further side of the churchyard, a grey old home of the Tudor time, so substantially built those long years ago that to-day it looks, but for the time-toning of its stones and the slight crumbling of one here and there, almost as perfect as when first finished. Its mullion windows are without the usual transomes, and do not seem to need them; their leaden lattice-panes gleamed, just then, cheerfully in the light. Windows are the eyes of a house, in their way as expressive as those of a human being. I like to see a clear eye and a bright window. The old home was retired behind a high and buttressed wall, and in the centre of the wall was an arched outer doorway. Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country seat. Its roof is of stone slates, the most lasting and the most lovely kind of roof imaginable, beautiful when new, and yet more beautiful when old; the stone slates in this case, as in every other I know, being carefully "sized down, the smaller ones to the top and the bigger towards the eaves, which gives one the same sort of pleasure in their orderly beauty as a fish's scales or a bird's feathers." There is no ornamentation at all about the building except some restrained carving at the top of the arched doorway in the garden wall; the charm of the building lies in its simplicity and goodly proportions, perhaps also in the feeling of lastingness in that it seems fitted to still stand unhurt, as in the past, all the winds and storms of heaven for years uncounted, without a thought of repairs. A modern builder's "desirable residence" never gives me such an impression--indeed, it does not appear to me even "desirable." We seem to have lost all love of building simply, let alone honestly. We too often seek after striking effect and even quaintness, so as to challenge attention, if not admiration, to the loss of all repose and the sentiment of home; for a man's dwelling-place should be first of all to him a home. Once I knew a country squire who desired to build himself a house on a fresh and more healthy site than that in which he lived, so he employed an up-to-date architect, full of ideas, to design him one. In due course the architect placed the elevation of the proposed house before the squire. It was a most unrestful production of needless gables for the sake of gables, tortured stone, and meaningless carvings, in all styles and no style at all, but intended to be impressive and to please. The architect said he thought it original and that it would "look well in stone." "Good gracious," exclaimed the squire, "do you think I am going to take a chair and sit out-of-doors and look at my house? I want one to live in." "Those are the very words I said to him," the squire told me, adding, "I asked for a home, and he produced a nightmare!" Modest in size though that old Tudor home at West Hoathly is, yet it suggests a certain sense of importance, just because it is so well built, with no pretence about it; and what a charm those two words, "no pretence," in an age of pretence and shams, convey. Pretence is an undesirable quality that threatens to submerge us all some day unless we cast it off, realising the utter nonsense and snobbishness of it. Modesty is a thing above most others to be desired, though a famous American once declared that "in our free country a man can get on very well without it." I quite believe that. But you cannot, architecturally speaking, in an ancient land "put new wine into old wine skins" successfully, or with any sense of artistic fitness--the new wine of novelty, I mean; that is best left for fresh lands that have no traditions. I took a photograph of the old Tudor house from the churchyard, and there I got a-chatting with a man in a faded tweed suit who had watched my proceedings with apparent interest. I took him to be a local inhabitant, but to use an antiquary's favourite expression, "I could not quite sum him up," nor did he enlighten me as to who or what he was; but, after all, it was no affair of mine. At first he talked about the weather, by way of introduction, I presume, for it is a topic that never fails amongst country folk. I really do not know what they would do in dull places without the weather to praise or abuse; even the tramp, whose sole object is to beg, invariably first starts upon the weather, and so he feels his way. "If you are interested in old places," said the stranger, "you should see the ancient priest-house a little lower down the road," pointing indefinitely into space. "It's well worth seeing; and you might like to take a glance at the church, it's very old too." I thanked him for the information. Then he led me to the porch and pointed out the oak door there that was grey, not dark, with age, begging me to notice the date upon it, marked in big studded nails, "March 31, 1626." "There's a Devil's door in the north wall; you might take a look at that now you're here, but it's built up," remarked my companion. "The Devil's door!" I exclaimed. "I never heard of such a thing. Surely the Devil does not go to church?" I was puzzled; I asked for enlightenment. "Well, you see," came the reply, "it's certainly not everybody nowadays who is aware of the fact, but in past times there used to be a small doorway on the north side of churches to let the Devil out when a child was baptized, and it was always kept open on such an occasion; but that's an ancient superstition." I was anxious to learn more about it. The stranger had become interesting, and I wished to chat longer with him; but he suddenly exclaimed, "I must be really getting home or the missus will wonder whatever has become of me. I promised to be home ten minutes ago; it don't do to offend my missus"--and I thought he laid a special and meaning emphasis on "my"; so he bade me a polite good-day and hurried off. He was a meek-looking man. I hope he did not get a scolding for the time he took talking to me. I wished his missus had been away from home that day, for I was anxious to learn more about the Devil's door; my curiosity was aroused. That call of the missus was most provoking. I nearly followed the stranger home to glean what further information on the way I could, but I thought he might not care for my company under the circumstances. Thus the traveller in out-of-the-way places picks up forgotten facts or fables, surprising traditions, and odd bits of local lore; but the chaff has to be winnowed from the corn. On my return home I hunted in every likely book for any information upon the Devil's doorway, but found no allusion to the subject. I sought out several parsons, presuming that one of them would surely be able to throw some light on the matter; but they all declared that they had never heard of such a thing, so I began to think that the stranger had made a fool of me, and that I was myself a fool to be so easily taken in. Yet when I recalled the stranger's face, it had an honest look; he seemed hardly a man to invent so poor a joke, and, provided it was a joke, I failed to see the humour of it. Then one day afterwards, when chatting with a learned antiquary, I suddenly remembered about the Devil's door; so I mentioned the tale about it I had been told, and he confirmed the truth of it. "Such doors in churches were quite common, if not universal, long ago," he said; "they were always on the north or Devil's side of the church, and may still be found in many churches, though their purport has long been forgotten. I even remember a certain parson who, only twenty odd years past, insisted on having this door kept wide open during a christening, so as to afford a ready escape for the Devil, who was supposed to be driven out of the child." Curiously enough, after making so many vain inquiries on the subject, I found friends to whom the former existence and use of the Devil's door was quite well known. Leaving the church I went down the village street to inspect the ancient priest-house. This proved to be a long, low, half-timber building; its roof was of stone slates, as most roofs of the period were; the house has manifestly been restored at some recent time, though carefully restored backwards, as far as I could judge, to the intention of the original builder. Unfortunately my photograph, here reproduced, gives no hint of the bloom of age that is upon it, or of the subtle curves of the weather-bleached timber caused by the stress of time. I have found in photographing many an ancient building, unless its walls are actually broken and decayed away, how little the photograph realises its antiquity. In my photograph of Boarstall Tower (that we shall come to later on), in spite of the years the tower has stood, and in spite of the battering of two sieges it has undergone, the ancient structure, hoary with the antiquity of over five centuries, looks almost as though the builder had but lately completed his work. The approach to the priest-house was by a stone-flagged footway across a garden gay and sweet-scented with old-fashioned flowers. "Scents are the souls of flowers," says an old writer whose name I have forgotten: if only these hardy, old-fashioned flowers were rare and difficult to grow, how we should prize them for their charm of colour and their sweetness, both so happily combined! But the modern highly-paid gardener despises them as common: well, the uncultivated foxglove is common enough flourishing in neglected spots, yet no pampered hothouse flower seems half so graceful, stately, or pleasing to my eye. [Illustration: A PRE-REFORMATION PRIEST-HOUSE, WEST HOATHLY.] The door of the house was of oak and nail-studded, and there was a quaintly-shaped iron knocker on it of some antiquity; a gentle tap or two of this brought an old woman to me. "Could I see the house?" I queried. "Why, certainly," she replied; "that's what I be here for, to show it to any one, and to take care of it. I'm only too pleased to see a visitor, I don't see many; it be a bit dull living here alone, it makes me feel almost silly like at times. Come in, please." Fortune was kind; I hardly expected to see over the place, and I found not only ready admission but a guide at my service. The old body proved intelligent but talkative; she told me one thing after another about the place and its history in such breathless succession that I scarce could follow her; I begged for a little time just to jot down a note or two, but as soon as I started to do this she recommenced prattling harder than ever. I think I never before met a woman capable of getting in so many words to the minute, though I have met many very capable ones in that respect. The worst of it was, she had really much of interest to relate, but so eager and in so much haste was she to relate it that I could only secure stray items out of her hurricane of abundance. She had the history of the old place by heart, and was learnedly--would only that she had been leisurely--informative about its contents. First I was shown the living-room, or ancient kitchen, a picturesquely antique apartment with its low black-beamed ceiling, its red brick floor, its recessed lattice window, its door that opened with a wooden latch, its wide stone hearth fireplace, with andirons in position and logs of wood laid between them ready for the burning, not to forget the chimney crane with an iron pot suspended from it, nor the brick oven by the side for the baking of bread--and what superlatively excellent bread those old brick ovens produced! In some things we have progressed backwards, and one of these is the making and baking of bread. The iron fire-back, I noticed, had the royal arms cast in bold relief upon it, but in place of the unicorn was the Elizabethan griffin, and on the quarterings of the shield (I believe that is the correct heraldic expression) were only the three lions of England and the fleurs-de-lis of France, each repeated diagonally. On the big oak beam above the fireplace were carved sundry curious devices; they were but meaningless hieroglyphics to me, and the old body confessed that no one had been able to make anything of them; possibly they were "invented out of the carver's brain," with no other thought than to while away a dull hour or two. A good deal of what the old body told me might have been told to the winds for aught I could remember or make note of; even an American tourist devoting ten whole days "to do" England in somehow, and allowing out of this twenty minutes for Westminster Abbey, could not have complained of such a guide delaying him. Not that all, or even the majority of Americans are like this, for I have met many cultured Americans seeing the old country every whit as leisurely as I. Indeed, I knew an American party who came over to take a motoring tour through England, and were so fascinated by a remote English village they chanced upon, besides finding there a really comfortable, old-fashioned inn, that the party, with one consent, stopped a whole week in that village, contentedly exploring the country around; and one of the party wrote me afterwards that she had never spent such a pleasant or a profitable week in her life, and she thought she might safely say the same of the rest. Of the hurried notes I managed to make about the priest-house at the time, and those I set down from memory afterwards, I gathered that it was built not later than 1350, possibly earlier. Originally there was a large hall heated by a fire on a raised stone set in the centre, the smoke of which escaped through a hole in the roof, and the old plaster of the roof still shows the blackening caused by the smoke. At either end of the hall were doors leading to offices, the sleeping-rooms being above these. Such was its simple plan. About 1522 the present chimney was built on the site of the ancient open fire, and the hall divided into two compartments "as you now see it." "And how do you know all this?" queried I, when I could get a word in. "Well, you see, sir, at different times members of Archaeological Societies have been over to examine the building, and I always went over with them, and so I learnt a lot about it. The house was originally built by the Prior of Lewes as a hospital for invalid priests, and it also served the purpose of a guest-house for stray travellers; the roads in these parts were then but rough tracks through wild forests, full of wild beasts, they tell me. In the chimney a hiding hole was discovered, but it was only three feet square, and as a man could not get into it, it is supposed it was for hiding treasures, or perhaps books." The old house was full of ancient furniture and of odds and ends of curious things that served our ancestors. I remember there was a steel striker and a flint with a tinder-box; I tried my prentice hand with these, and after several attempts at last obtained a light, but with difficulty; it must have been trying and tedious work using this steel, flint, and tinder-box on a cold winter's morning. Little wonder so many houses in past times had their fires piled up at night so that they might keep in till the morning, when the smouldering ashes readily caused the fresh fuel put on them to become ignited. At one old manor-house I went over some years back, I was informed that the fire in the hall had not been out for two centuries; even in summer it was kept alight, day and night, for the walls of that house were thick, and the hall was only pleasantly warm on the fine August noon when I was there. A friend of mine told me that in 1908 he discovered a cottage at Huckaback, Castleton, Yorkshire, where the turf fire had not been out for sixty-eight years. Upstairs in the priest-house we noticed that the internal partitions were of wattle and daub; the daub, the old body said, consisting of pond slime combined with cow hair and chipped straw: pond slime does not sound nice, but the daub was lasting, to which fact my eye and the touch of my hand bore testimony. Then hanging on the walls we observed two parchment deeds framed, one being the original lease from "The Pryor of Lewes to T. Browne of Westhotheleigh, of the Parsonage House and barn." This was dated "9th yeare of Henry VIII." It did not escape my notice that, even so far back, this Brown rejoiced in an added "e." The other had two red seals attached, and related to the conveying of "the Rectory and Church of Westhotheley lately granted by Henry VIII. for her lyfe to Lady Anne Cleve." This was dated "Jan. 21st. 2nd of Elizabeth, 1560." The lettering of both of these documents was as clear and as black as the day they were written, and so quite easy to read, more so than many a modern letter I receive. The world has revolved countless times on its axis since the date of those deeds; but the writing of to-day is not so good as it was then, not even typewriting. On the ceiling of one of the top rooms is a Dedication Cross, deeply cut, showing the religious nature of the house; also we noticed there, put on one side, some fine oak carving which I learnt formerly formed part of the chancel screen of the village church, it being torn down by the Puritans, who destroyed, or made a clearance of, "all carvings, images, and decorations" they found in the sacred edifice; and a rare clearance they appear to have made at West Hoathly. Besides this there was a large board showing signs of weathering, and plainly painted on it was "Cheese Room." "That," explained the guide, "did not belong to this place, but to a farmhouse near by. It is a relic of the window-tax days, when a window, used purely for trade purposes, was free of the tax, provided a notice of its use was placed above it. That is one of those notices. Possibly you may not have seen such a thing before." I had not. Indeed, I had almost forgotten that there had ever been such an iniquitous tax (and that there was a hearth-tax also), and was quite unaware of any such an exemption from it. I was always learning something on the road. Very interesting is the old priest-house at West Hoathly, the more so because it is not bare, but supplied with ancient, though not the original, furniture in keeping with the place, and with domestic appliances that were used in days remote. On my return home I sought for particulars of this house in two or three modern guide-books to the county, but could find no mention of it, although the church was briefly noticed, which shows that guide-book compilers miss many interesting features by the way, to the discovery of which the traveller must trust to his own devices; and do we not take a special personal pride and a greater delight in the good things that we discover for ourselves, than in those we first read of, or are told about? Much of the charm of a journey lies in making these discoveries, and in the delightful state of expectancy of mind knowing not what each day, or even hour, may reveal. CHAPTER V "Great-upon-Little"--The woods of Sussex--A maze of lanes--Frensham Pond--A holiday haunt--The legend of the shivering reeds--Rural inns--Roughing it (?)--Waverley Abbey--The monks of old--The sites of abbeys--Quiet country towns--Stocks and whipping-post--A curious font--"A haven of rest." About a mile from West Hoathly, on the way we took, we were told of a local "lion" in the shape of a huge rock, firmly balanced on a very small one, which together have earned the title of "Great-upon-Little." The great top rock looks insecure enough, and as though a push of the hand would almost send it over. This curious rock stands in a romantic and deeply wooded glen some half a mile or so from the main road, and many other strangely shaped rocks are to be found there; shapes manifestly due to the erosion of the softer stone leaving the harder portions to stand out more or less prominently. To one who has beheld the wonderful rock formations of the Yellowstone Valley in America, this "Great-upon-Little" may appear but a trivial thing; still, in its way it is striking. But it was the rock-girt glen with its green woods, a glen steeply winding down the rough hillside, that charmed me infinitely more than this natural freak--a veritable fairies' glen that would have made the fortune of any watering-place were it only near to it. Cobbett in his _Rural Rides_ thus discourses about this rock in his own peculiar way: "At this place there is a rock which they call 'Big-upon-Little,' that is to say, a rock upon another, the top one being longer and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small house. How, then, came this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances itself naturally enough, but what tossed it up? I do not like to pay a parson for teaching me while I have God's own Word to teach me; but if any parson will tell me how big came upon little, I do not know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this; if he say, 'All that we have to do is to admire and adore,' then I tell him that I can admire and adore without his aid, and that I will keep my money in my pocket." Which shows, however clever an agriculturist he may have been, Cobbett was woefully ignorant of geology, whilst little he cared for scenery. The reading of his _Rides_, allowing for much skipping, was a wearisome task to me, and glad was I when I came to the end of the book. After this dose of Cobbett and his grumblings, I had to take a course of genial Charles Lamb to put me in good humour again. Our road now took us by shadowy forests, which afforded us some shelter from the quiet rain which began to fall, and here and there we glimpsed, half drowned in foliage, a lowly cottage, with its film of ascending smoke, and now and then we caught a warm and fragrant whiff of burning wood that contrasted pleasantly with the cool scent of the many trees, their leaves rain-washed and shining. So we drove on through woods and woods again, with here and there a bit of wild waste, a patch of pasture, or a furrowed field, and here and there the gleam of water--driving first this way, then that, as it took our fancy. Some ways were wide and good, and some were narrow and bad, but the country had a remote and pleasant look; so with the roads I had no quarrel. The scenery concerns me more than the road. I never hesitate to desert the smooth highway for the rough and winding lane if the latter appear the more attractive. My mind is set on exploring, on seeking out odd nooks and corners, not on rushing from one town to another, though, when the highway suits my humour, along it I go contentedly enough. So we drove on till we came to a more open country of meadows and tilled fields and stray farmsteads, but with woods beyond again, and over these a peep of distant hills with misty clouds upon them. A mellow, home-like land it was, where wandering streams kept fresh the greenery of the fields, and ancient footpaths wound in and out, and tangled hedges that so beautify the land, though they show poor husbandry, bordered the roadside on either hand. Then we struck upon a fair main road, though there was little traffic on it; in time the road forked in two, and at the fork a signpost pointed with one arm the way "To Guildford," and with the other arm the way "To Godalming." We chose the road to Godalming because it looked the more inviting. Now we passed other woods that climbed the low hills to our right, then we began to climb the hills ourselves, to descend again into the valley on the other side; so on through a rough country, dotted with pleasant homes, both old and new, we reached the long-streeted town of Godalming. I had an idea--how I came by it I cannot say--that Godalming was a pleasant and a picturesque town; my drive through it effectually got rid of that idea. I saw nothing pleasant or picturesque about it, even allowing for the determined and depressing drizzle that dulled the outlook. Perhaps I saw things crookedly that day, but to me, certainly, Godalming looked a one-streeted affair of commonplace houses and shops, with not a feature amongst the lot worth noticing, not even its old market-house. The road we took out of the town chanced to be the famous Portsmouth road, much favoured by motorists and other vehicular traffic, and not caring for so much company, in due course we took a by-road to our right without a thought as to where it might lead. We soon got into a tangle of narrow, signpostless lanes; so narrow in one part, indeed, became our way that our hood actually at times brushed the hedges on either side, a lane where almost "two barrows might tremble when they meet." Indeed, had we met any cart, conveyance, or another motor I cannot imagine what we should have done, but we met nothing; for miles the tangle of lanes appeared to be endless, one as narrow as the other; then at last I espied a cottage and got down to ask where the lane led, for I felt like a man in a maze. Thrice I rapped loudly at the cottage door before I got an answer; then at the third emphatic rap an old woman appeared. "I be hard o' hearing," she remarked, by way of apology for her long coming. "The lane do lead to the pond. It's only about a mile farther on." "To the pond!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "What pond? We don't want to go to a pond!" "Why, _the_ pond, to be sure," responded she; "but I've left my baking." And that was all I could get out of her, for, doubtless anxious about her baking, she rushed incontinently indoors and left me wondering. I could only presume that we were driving to a village pond, with the uncomfortable idea that there the narrow lane might end. There was nothing to do but to drive on--there was no space to turn; for miles we had not seen a soul, so unfrequented are some of the byways of populous England, but at last a man actually appeared trudging along the road. To him I repeated my query, and got the same reply!--"To the pond"--adding, "It be only a bit farther on." I was more puzzled than ever. "What pond?" asked I. "Why, Frensham Pond, to be sure." Then it dawned upon me that a friend of mine had spoken of Frensham Pond, to which he frequently went a-fishing, and where he told me was a good inn--"the very place for a quiet holiday," and he was an artist not likely to speak favourably of a spot that had no scenic attractions. Right glad were we to escape from the narrow lane and to find ourselves at Frensham Pond, where the road widened out beside the still water, and where the little balconied inn my friend had told me about stood facing it. Now Frensham Pond is a large and beautiful sheet of water over a hundred acres in extent, and to go round it means a good three miles' walk, so the term pond is somewhat of a misnomer; "mere," I think, would be a better and less misleading title, more picturesque besides. A good deal depends on a name; at least one does expect a pleasant spot to bear a pleasant name: now "pond" is not one to conjure with. It was raining again, so we pulled up under the shelter of a spreading tree opposite the hotel, whereupon the landlord appeared at the door and invited me within; but I explained that I was only halting there, as I thought the shower would soon be over, and I wished to admire the view. I was neither hungry nor thirsty, so what need had I of an inn? "It's a lovely spot," the landlord remarked, and as I looked over the little lonely lake with its near background of pines, of heathery hills beyond these, and nothing else in view, I fully agreed with him. Even in the rain the prospect pleased me; there was an individuality about it, it was fresh to my eye, nothing quite like it had I seen before. "You really should make up your mind to stop here," the landlord continued, doubtless with an eye to business. "There's fine fishing in the pond, and a boat at your service; there's plenty of big pike and perch that are willing to be caught"--which was very kind of the fish; I have not found them so obliging in other parts. There was a man in a boat on the water getting wet, but catching nothing, as far as I could make out, unless it were a cold. It seemed poor sport to me to sit thus patiently in a boat with the rain coming down, watching for the bob of a float on the chance of catching a fish not worth eating. Fly-fishing is quite another story. When you wander along the banks of some fair mountain river or stream, even if you have poor sport, you have a pleasant ramble over rock and boulder and amongst pleasant scenes; moreover, your time is ever agreeably occupied in casting your flies and watching them dance on the running water till comes a splash, a tug, and a tasteful trout good to look at, good to eat, and worth the basketing! Suddenly the rain stopped, the grey clouds vanished, the sun shone forth again out of a sky as blue as the summer sea; the erst leaden lake looked like molten gold, the hills became a burning purple, but the dark pines seemed darker still by the contrast with the brightness around. What wind there was had dropped, but all the reeds were quivering, and I thought of the legend of the shivering reeds. Leaving Frensham--where, by the way, in the tower of its church is preserved an ancient copper cauldron that tradition asserts once belonged to Mother Ludlam, a reputed local witch--we drove by devious roads through a sandy and heathery land, and into pine woods, the resinous odours of which filled pleasantly the air. We passed one or two lonely little inns on our way. To me a picturesque, though little regarded, feature of the roadside is the cosy country inn of the class that rises superior to the public-house but is less pretentious than an hotel, where I have found, during my old tramping days, humble doubtless, but sufficiently comfortable quarters, and where I got in touch with the simple and friendly country folk, and so could learn how the world treated them, and what they thought of it, and their ideas in general. The only way to do this is to mix with the country folk on their own ground, and clad in a suit of homely tweed, with often muddy boots, I was not looked upon as a superior person, so the talk I listened to was not curbed; only perhaps at times my speech, I feared, might betray me, for I could in no way manage the country accent, but I spoke little, whilst my ears did me silent service. Imagination fondly stoops to trace The parlour splendours of that festive place; The whitewash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door. [Illustration: "A GOOD HONEST ALEHOUSE."] Dear old Izaak Walton called such an inn "a good honest ale-house," and that title takes my fancy. "I'll now lead you to a good honest ale-house," says that rare old angler, "where we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck upon the walls.... Come, hostess, where are you? Is supper ready?... Be as quick as you can, for I believe we are all very hungry." That is the sort of inn for me; I do not desire luxury when I go a-touring. The more homely my hostelry the more to my taste, so long as I find cleanliness, civility, and reasonable comfort thereat. I even enjoy what some people might term "roughing it" at times; in truth I have spent many delightful red-letter days (some of the most healthful and enjoyable I have ever spent) "roughing it" in a log-hut on the wild far-off Californian mountains, and there I found a wealthy and a titled Englishman doing the same thing, purely for the pleasure of it. If in some remote parts and on rare occasions I was doubtful as to the cleanliness of my inn, I made a point of not unpacking the car before I had sampled the landlord and the accommodation offered. I am glad to say that never once, on this journey, did I find the inn I selected fail to satisfy my modest requirements. Loitering along we came at the foot of a long hill, passing first through gloomy woods, to a spot low down where the indolent winding Wey widened out into a quiet, clear-watered pool, and all around were pine-clad hills; an old water-mill and one or two ancient cottages completed the scene, just serving to humanise it and nothing more. It was a lovely spot, and there we pulled up to enjoy its beauties at our leisure. I know no other country in the wide world with spots so peace-bestowing as, here and there, one finds in England, and to come upon them unawares intensifies the charm of them; I cannot think of a word that precisely defines their special character, but "benign" is not far out. Then I consulted the map and traced on it the river's course, and so made out, roughly, where we were, and it chanced I noticed on the map "Waverley Abbey" marked apparently near by. Now I had a dim recollection, but nothing more, that there was such an abbey, ruined of course, somewhere in England, but as to where it stood I had not given a thought up till that moment; if I had to hazard a guess as to its location, I am afraid I should have guessed Yorkshire, though the fact came back to me that Waverley Abbey suggested to Scott the title of one of his famous novels. Ivinghoe in Bucks is also credited with having given him the slightly altered title of _Ivanhoe_. Rumour asserts that his attention was called to the uncommon name by the local rhyme: Tring, Wing, and Ivinghoe, Hampden of Hampden did forego, For striking ye Prynce a blow, Glad that he might escape it so. "Ye Prynce" was the Black Prince, and Hampden an ancestor of John Hampden, so tradition says, and the blow was given over a dispute about a game of racquets that Hampden lost. I love these old local rhymes and sayings that the inquiring traveller so often comes upon, for they frequently relate to past historical or traditional happenings that have been wholly or half forgotten, and are only otherwise to be found in odd musty volumes that no one cares to read. We stopped the car in a sheltered corner not far from the lodge entrance to a pleasant park, and seeing no one around I ventured to ask at the lodge the whereabouts of the abbey. "You're close to it," responded the young woman, who promptly and civilly came at my call; "it's only a short walk across the fields." Moreover, she came outside and pointed me out the way, bidding me keep to the path by the river till I came to a bridge, "then to your left you will see the ruins." Clearer instructions could no one give, and so I found the abbey. Pleasant indeed was the short stroll to it by the side of the lazy river, with the greenest of green meadows on one hand so soft to the tread, and wide spreading trees on the other that threw "tangles of light and shadow below." So listlessly the water flowed it hardly seemed to flow at all; manifestly the river was loth to leave so fair a spot to join the stormy sea, and fain would linger there in peace. I think it was Wordsworth who first endowed Nature with a living personality. Of Waverley's once stately pile little now is left but crumbling walls and vacant archways; still, its low, roofless remains cover much ground, a fact that attests its former size and glory. The quiet country around, I imagine, has not changed noticeably, if at all, since the abbey stood proudly there in its prime--to stand, as the early builders doubtless thought, till the Day of Doom; but the future was not at their command. As in the past the placid river flows by it without a murmur, the hills beyond rise boldly to the sky, the luscious meadows round about are the same luscious meadows that the old monks trod; but their erst lordly edifice is mostly dust, its stones having been basely used for other buildings, and for a long while to make and mend the roads; still, the country looks as green and fresh as ever, its youth renewed by every recurring summer. I can recall no spot of which so poignantly and so pregnantly may be said, "Sic transit gloria mundi." An almost saintly silence brooded there; I heard neither stir of leaf nor song of bird, nor caught I sight of any living thing to break the solitude. It was as though the monks had laid a spell of profound peace over all, a spell unbroken yet--and may it never be! A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills. The peace-bestowing silence and restful solitude of the spot will linger with me as long as my memory lasts. Great must have been the temptation, in a troublous age, to be a monk, so to escape from all the turmoil of it, and to live at peace and at ease in some such earthly paradise. Many a world-weary man to-day well might sigh for such a harbour of rest. Truly those monks of old had an eye for pleasant places; they built "in fair grounds," as the sites of their many abbeys prove. Father Gonzague, Prior of Storrington, puts it: "Some were built in the valley by the running stream, or on the jutting hill, overhanging the river bank, like St. Agatha's and Eggleston in Yorkshire; others close on the seashore, within hearing of the perpetual cadence of the waves, like Torre, the wealthiest of the English houses in Devonshire, on a spot the charm of which is not easily surpassed, backed by hills and uplands, with just room enough on the plain for the noble church, the monastery and its outbuildings, its gardens, its fish ponds, and its mill; or again among the deep and narrow dales of Derbyshire; or the gentle swell of the Kentish hills; in the forest land of Nottinghamshire, like Welbeck; or else in remote and wild retreats, speaking of penance and detachment, like the Abbey of Magdalen's Vale at Shap, in Westmoreland." Then there are others in situations quite as romantic and as gracious: there is Tintern by the winding Wye, Bolton by the tumbling Wharfe, Fountains sheltered amongst the woods, Rievaulx amongst the hills, Llanthony lone amongst the mountains, Cleeve secluded in the "Vale of Flowers," and many another--all in well-favoured spots and tranquil ones in ancient days, and some, like Waverley, as tranquil now. A better judge of scenery than the monk of old there could not be; where stood his abbey there was a pleasant land, well watered, overflowing with beauty, and not seldom "overflowing with milk and honey" too. If one could trust that rare romancer Time, the monks were a jovial lot--"peace to their ashes"--reaping where they had not sown, and garnering where they had not toiled; making sure of heaven above whilst also making sure of the good things of the world below, ay, and enjoying them to the full as much as any sinner. To make the best of both worlds, especially this one, that was their motto, and they lived up to it. Of the modern monks that I have seen, one half look fat and lazy, the other half lean and sour, with an aspect of piety that would not have disgraced the strictest Puritan. But I know not if one can fairly judge of the old by the new. "Tempora mutantur," and possibly monks with them, and this is all that need be said. Of the scant abbey ruins the only portion not wholly exposed to the weather is what looks like the crypt, with its fine and delicate Early English pillars and groined roof; but it has a fireplace, and from a label attached to its walls I learned it was the "Layman's Refectory." The rest of the ruins are roofless, and it is difficult to make out, with any certainty, even the site of the church--at least I found it so. On the greensward I noticed, level with the ground surface, a stone coffin vacant and exposed to the sky, presumably discovered there and left undisturbed save for the removal of its covering; this was hollowed out to the shape of a body, with a place for the head; probably it belonged to one of the stately abbots' dust and ashes long years ago, but the interior of the stone still preserves the chisel marks of the ancient mason, as sharp almost to-day as when first made. Somehow those marks so old, yet so clear, that but for the time-stains upon them might be of recent date, bridged over the centuries and brought the past quite close to me. Leaving the old abbey to its peaceful seclusion, we once more resumed our way and soon found ourselves at Farnham, far famed for its castle and its ancient coaching hostelry--"The Bush," to wit--and possibly also for hops and ale, but of these I am not so sure. "The Bush," says Thackeray in his _Virginians_, "is a famous inn which has stood in Farnham town for these three hundred years." But why I refer to this old house, in passing, is that its sign is the oldest of signs, which, in ancient days, consisted simply of a bush hung out at the end of a pole to show that wine, or ale, was sold there. Hence doubtless the saying of Shakespeare, "Good wine needs no bush." After Farnham we struck the Winchester highway, dusty with much traffic at the time, so to escape both the traffic and the dust we took the first lane we came to--a lane that led past hop-gardens, up hill and down again; next winding round a well-wooded park it brought us to the little out-of-the-world village of Crondall, where I noticed one or two quaint half-timber houses of sufficient charm to cause me to stop and sketch them. Then after a short stretch of tree-bordered road we arrived at Odiham, a sleepy, sunny, wide-streeted town to which "no noisy railway speeds"; perhaps because of this it retains unhurt so much of its past-time naturalness. On a previous journey we had driven through Odiham, without however stopping, even though it pleased us, but we reached it by a different way. There is often a great deal in the first impression of a place, and this frequently depends upon how you approach it. No doubt there is a certain charm in the first view of fresh places, when such places possess the power to please and present themselves under favourable aspects, but it is wisdom not to linger in them overlong lest the eye should discover imperfections, so their poetry lose much of its glamour, or wholly vanish like a dream that has passed. Before, when at Odiham, the "George" inn there, facing the roadway with its cheerful front and projecting sign, attracted my attention: a typical old coaching hostelry that looks as though it had seen more prosperous days, yet it had not retired from business but kept open wide its doors, bravely facing changed circumstances. "Posting House" in letters large is still boldly displayed on its front, but its posting is done to-day by the landlord's motor-car! _Paterson's Roads_, the Bradshaw of our ancestors, mentions the "George" as the inn of the place, and nearly every old roadside inn one comes across still retains the very title given to it in that rare eighteenth and early nineteenth-century road-book, according to which of its many editions one consults. Now being, by chance, at Odiham again, I thought I would put up at the "George" and sample its entertainment. Quarters in the real country best please me, but they do not always materialise; next I prefer a modest hostelry in some quiet little town, and here I had my desire. So beneath the sign of the "George" I slept that night, and there I found a pleasant garden in the rear, good fare of the simple sort, much civility, and a most moderate bill; so, when next morning I departed, I left it with my blessing. I discovered that the inn was, unfortunately, for sale; it may have been sold by now. I can only trust that the old house may fall into the hands of worthy successors, and that it will, for as long as it stands, and long may that be, retain its good old name; for it must be remembered it is the landlord makes the inn. Does not Alonzo of Aragon say that the recommendations of age are "old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read"? and I should like to add old inns to rest at, and by preference those inns of the candle or lamp, mahogany or oak furniture, and wood-fire-on-the-hearth period, and these, the Fates be praised, are still to be found by the diligent searcher, and when found the wise traveller will not tell everybody about them. In this respect selfishness is a virtue, a moral obligation for the benefit of other quiet-loving travellers; for it is so easy to convert the old into the new, but the new cannot be converted into the old. I was tempted to photograph one of these ancient little inns I chanced upon, on account of its artistic signboard, for it is rare to meet with such artistic creations, though a few may be found to delight the eye of the wayfarer. My photograph, here reproduced, will show the skilful and effective painting of this signboard. Having still an hour or two of daylight left, I took a stroll round the little town; it did not take me long; then I came to the church, and in the roadway before it I discovered, carefully roofed over, its ancient stocks and whipping-post; evidently the Odiham people prize these relics of "the good" or bad "old days." Then I took a glance within the church, where I found much to interest me; there I noticed seven old brasses in an excellent state of preservation--for old brasses--and these were kept both bright and clean; they were fixed against the south wall all in close order, being doubtless removed from the floor at some former restoration. Though removed thus from their proper place over the dust they commemorate, and where they should rightly be, they certainly are seen to better advantage where they are--and their dead owners are not far off. All the brasses but two happily retain their inscriptions; the earliest bears date of 1400; one to a priest in his vestments that of 1498; and there is one to a man in armour, roughly but effectively engraved. The piscina, I noticed, had an ornamented pillar support; I do not remember having seen such an arrangement before. I noticed also the finely carved Elizabethan or Jacobean pulpit, and besides, a thing you seldom nowadays see in churches, an oak gallery, of considerable antiquity, upheld by stout oak posts. Then I became aware that I was not alone in the building, for I heard quiet footsteps, and looking round observed a man at the font, apparently examining it with considerable interest, so too I needs must go and examine it. Said the stranger to me, "This is a curious font and a very ancient one." "It certainly looks it," I replied. "Perhaps you may not know," he continued, "but it possesses a peculiar feature only to be found in one other font in England, and that is at Youlgrave in Derbyshire. Permit me to point out to you the cup-like projection on the top; this is provided to drain back into the basin any drops of water that might be accidentally spilt at a christening." Some people delight to be informing, but the information they impart depends for its value on their special knowledge of special subjects. I observed that the stranger was carefully consulting a handbook when I approached him, which he put away in his pocket, and I thought to myself possibly the stranger has just read up about the font in that book, and is merely imparting to me second-hand information gleaned from it just for the self-importance of imparting it, and to show his cleverness. I might have done him an injustice, but he spoke in a manner so authoritative as to challenge criticism. Anyway I have not the implicit faith in handbooks most people have, for more than once I have found them wrong in facts beyond dispute. So I have examined for myself the "curious" projection, being a bit of an archaeologist, though not a learned one, and came to the conclusion that there was nothing curious about it, and that it had merely been intended to receive a hinge for a font cover. But such an explanation is perhaps too simple to be satisfactory to certain minds to which only the singular or mysterious appeals. [Illustration: AT "THE QUEEN'S HEAD."] Round the top of the font runs a much-worn inscription in long Lombardic, or other early lettering, of which I could make nothing; no more could the stranger, but he made excuse that the light was very poor; so it was. "If we only had a guide-book," I said suggestively, but he failed to take the hint. Leaving the church I noticed some picturesque alms-houses adjoining its quiet "God's Acre," built of brick but grey with age, of one story, uneven-roofed, with shapely chimney-stacks, which houses with their enclosed garden, full of flowers--and weeds--reminded me of Walker's famous picture "A Haven of Rest," though they were not the original of it. Then as the sun was setting I sought "mine inn." CHAPTER VI "Mine ease in mine inn"--King John's Castle--Greywell--Country odours--Hidden beauty-spots--The valley of the Kennett--A remote spot--Our picturesque villages--The charm of ancientness--Solitude and genius--Coate--Richard Jefferies' birthplace. That evening in the coffee-room of the "George" there was only one other guest besides myself, and we sat apart at either end of a long table taking our meals in unfriendly silence. It was very stupid and very English. The other guest was an austere-looking, clean-shaven man neatly dressed in a tweed of grey; he might have been a lord (though it was hardly an inn that lords would patronise), or a commercial traveller of a superior type in his own opinion: I inclined to the latter view. However, what he was did not trouble me, but the silence did, so I ventured some ordinary remark about the weather, that being, as the chess handbooks have it, "a common, but a safe opening." The stranger agreed that it was a warm day, then relapsed into silence. Thought I, everybody golfs now; I will try him on that. His reply was brief and sarcastic: "I'm no golfer. I think, as a game, it's inferior to marbles." Then silence again. After that I mentioned motoring as a possible subject of interest, for so many people motor nowadays, either on their own, their friends', or on hired cars. "No, I don't motor," responded he; "only went on a motor once, and I don't want to go on one again." At this point I fancy most people would have given up the game, for when every card you play is promptly trumped it hardly seems worth going on, but I determined to try one last card. I played fishing. That was a failure too. "No, I'm no fisherman," said he; "never fished since I was a boy. I think it poor sport. A worm or a fly at one end of a line and a fool at the other, as the saying is." I never came upon so pronounced a specimen of a pessimist, and pessimism with the added acid of sarcasm is the devil's own special combination. Perhaps he did not like being disturbed at his meal; perhaps he was not well; perhaps his thoughts were occupied on some important matter. Even Carlyle, we are told, had his "bad days," when he would hardly speak to a soul, and only sharply and bluntly to one when he did. Now if a philosopher can act so, how is an ordinary mortal to be blamed for the same failing to be responsive? Writing of Carlyle reminds me of a story I was told the other day of a visitor who went to Ecclefechan to see the room in which the genial author of _Sartor Resartus_ "first saw the light of day," as the newspaper reporters have it, when the woman who acted as guide as he was inspecting the room exclaimed, "And our Mary was born here too"! The atmosphere of the coffee-room being too freezing for my pleasure, I sought the smoke-room in search of more genial society, or the restfulness of none at all. Better an empty room than to feast with a pessimist. The smoke-room proved to be no ordinary apartment, for it was panelled, or partially so; and there my eye rested on a finely carved old oak fireplace, distinguished enough for a nobleman's mansion, and by the side of it was a cupboard, with shapely old-fashioned outside hinges, for the tidy holding of wood. How came so modest an inn to possess such a beautiful specimen of ancient carving? I wondered, for it was truly a work of art worthy of a museum, but better where it was. I had not to wonder long, for presently a man entered the room and seated himself opposite to me, first lighting his pipe and calling for a drink, and his manner showed he was quite at home there. In marked contrast with my coffee-room companion he was smiling sociability itself. "Fine old fireplace that," exclaimed he, in a right jovial voice, pointing to it with his pipe. "I'm never tired of admiring it." "I was admiring it too," I said; "do you know anything about it and how it came there?" "Well, I heard it came from Basing House when the place was sacked; they say that nearly every one round about on that occasion helped themselves to something from it, and so I suppose the owner of this house, at the time, appropriated that fireplace. He did not do so badly. I've heard that the freeholder has been offered £1300 for it and refused the offer, but I'm always expecting that some day some one will surely come along and buy it. It will be a great pity if they do, for it's a great attraction to the house. You are a stranger here, I expect?" I confessed I was. "Be you on business or pleasure, I wonder?" I felt at first inclined to reply that was my own affair; then, thought I, the man does not intend to be rude, but is only seeking to keep up the conversation by the first remark that comes handy. He explained himself: "If you be pleasure-touring I thought I might tell you that there is an old castle about a mile from the garden at the back of the hotel; it's a bit ruinous, but it's worth seeing. They call it King John's Castle, but I don't know much of its history; they say there's an underground passage from it to the town." How familiar I am with that underground passage, I meet it somewhere on every journey; but I was glad to hear of the old castle, for I had no idea there was one in the locality. Then jumping from one subject to another he went on: "Talking about fireplaces"--which we were not at the moment--"there's a lot of curious chimney corners in the cottages around," and so he gaily chatted on about this thing and that, much to his own pleasure, and would, I believe, have gone on chatting for an hour or more, had not some persons entered the room, townsfolk I took them to be, for they all seemed well acquainted; then others dropped in, so that soon there was a goodly company assembled there--mostly, if not all, tradesmen of the place, I gathered from their talk. After that I became a silent spectator, but I got plenty of entertainment out of the company by studying their various characters, and from their conversation I ascertained how the town was served; I even learned from one or two of them how the kingdom could be better governed if they only had the governing of it. Somehow it amused me to hear all this, and the pride of it. I think one of the speakers had missed his vocation; he should surely have been in Parliament; he spoke quite as wisely and more to the point than many of its paid members do. "It's as good as a play," remarked Charles II. once when listening to a long debate, and I thought the same that night of what I saw and heard; then how unconscious the actors were, and how well they performed their parts all unprepared! "It's a deep tankard that never requires refilling," and I noticed that the glasses were fairly frequently replenished (for beer in the cellar quenches no man's thirst) and pipes recharged, whilst the conversation never flagged, not for a moment, but I liked the hum of it. Towards the end of the evening there was much laughter and merriment; many a joke was cracked; some were good, some were poor, and one or two were fresh to me, and one or two even good enough for _Punch_, I thought. So the hours passed in an atmosphere of good-fellowship and tobacco smoke. A merrier company never have I met, and little did that company know, I ween, how their merriment served to enliven my evening. Then, talking still, the guests departed by ones, and twos, and threes--and I was left alone. Next morning early I took leave of "mine hostess," who in the good old-fashioned manner of an earlier day, possibly a tradition of the house, came to the door to see me off, thanked me for my small custom, and wished me a pleasant journey--moreover, wished me it in a manner so hearty that showed she meant it. How pleasant these little civilities are; how they cheer the traveller on his way; how they oil the wheels of life so that they run smoothly, and yet they cost the bestower nothing! Alas, people nowadays do not seem to appreciate an article that can be had--for nothing! I like a smile of welcome when I arrive a stranger at a strange inn, though in truth I do not always get it--I expect I have to pay the penalty of many a grumpy traveller (how I despise him)--but this I will say, I seldom leave "mine inn" without the landlord or landlady, as the case may be, coming to see me off, and that with some gracious added remark or another; it is pleasant to part thus. I pay my reckonings, of course--I could not do otherwise--still, there was hardly an inn on the road, not one, in fact, but somehow I felt, on leaving it, I had received something more, and more valued, in the shape of thoughtful attentions and kind words, than what was set down on the bill. In truth, my bill mostly seemed to me more an accidental incident of my stay than a charge for accommodation and services rendered, and I fancy--it may be even more than fancy--that a gracious guest most times finds his reckoning on a modest scale. So, take it on the lowest, meanest standard, civility pays. I well remember when at an old country coaching inn--where I stayed for over a week, so pleasant a resting-place I found it, so pleased was I with mine host, mine hostess, and my surroundings--one day a coaching party on a hired coach arrived there, who blustered and fumed and gave themselves so many airs, and ordered the landlord about in so would-be a lordly manner as to make me ashamed of them, so much so that on their departure I went up to the landlord, a good sort if ever there was one, and heartily sympathised with him. I thought to ease his mind. "Bless you, sir," said he, "they didn't trouble me one bit; I saw they weren't gentle-folks; I charged them in the bill for their incivility." At first, for a mile or more, we followed a smooth highway, then we took to a little lonely lane to our left; a signpost at the corner of the roads told us it led to Greywell. Now Greywell had a pleasant sound; we soon came to it, and it proved to be a pleasant village in keeping with its name; some of the cottages there are old and of half timber, and no more picturesque or comfortable a cottage was ever built than in that style, with its projecting upper story that gives more room above than below, where room is mostly wanted, besides keeping the lower walls dry and causing an agreeable effect of light and shade. How I dislike the modern cottage built on the square and strictly economical pattern, a mere slate-roofed brick box with holes for windows in it. Sometimes you meet with rows of them as like one another as peas in a pod, only even perhaps more so. They ruin the prospect wherever they are. A footpath led from the entrance of the village to its tiny church, which, though restored, has not had all its interest restored away, for it can show some pre-Norman work, a curious old carved screen, and, what is rarer, a rood-loft; externally a simple wooden bell-turret gives a touch of character to the building. Beyond Greywell we entered upon a low-lying land of lazy willow-bordered streams, a green and quiet land of luscious meadows loved of cattle, a land of lanes where under the same wheel The same old rut would deepen year by year. Now and then we caught the scent of new-mown hay, sweetening the air as we drove along under the shadow of leafy trees, and anon in the sunshine. The scent of new-mown hay or of a fragrant beanfield in blossom, how delightful a thing it is; shop-purchased perfumery is poor stuff indeed compared with it. For once we looked above rather than around for beauty, above to the windy, wide, white-clouded sky, with its ever-varying incident of passing and changeful form; for the skyscape has interests as well as the landscape, and there are times when it is the more interesting of the two. Even when you pass through a land of scant scenic attractions, you may often, by searching, discover unexpected and secluded beauty-spots, the charms of which, in a small way, are not readily outrivalled; but they need finding, for many lie unannounced though near the roadside. One day I was driving through an open country of flat fields and low bounding hedges, with only one little hill in all the prospect to break the level horizon of circling blue; a country not without its pleasantness, but tame and somewhat monotonous withal, though there was a fine fresh-air feeling about it, such as one finds on the far-reaching Fens. I was hungry, and so looking out for a likely spot in which to picnic, but it was some time before I could find one to my fancy; then it was not so retired as I could wish, and passing traffic robbed me of the privacy I desired. There were no grassy margins by the roadside to enjoy, and the fields did not look inviting. Having stopped the car I thought I heard the sound of falling water; it came from the direction of a little wood that had escaped my notice and to which a footpath went. Thereupon I determined to go exploring in the hope that I might find a secluded spot by some stream side for my midday halt and refreshment. The sound of running or falling water has always a fascination for me, it is as music to my ears, and who could be dull in the company of a gurgling or tumbling stream that almost seems to talk to you in the oldest language of the world?--"I chatter, chatter, as I flow," sings Tennyson of a brook. I was unexpectedly rewarded, for a few minutes' walk brought me to a little winding river that managed to conceal itself from the road, and by the river backed by trees stood an ancient water-mill with mossy roof and weather-stained walls, its great and somewhat broken, dripping, wooden wheel revolving round in so leisurely a fashion that its very movement suggested rest. The ancient mill, wood, and tumbling water, what a perfect picture they made! There on a grassy bank opposite I found an ideal place for my purpose, with the song of the mill-wheel, the swish and splash of the weir, the twittering of birds and the soothing cooing of pigeons to enliven that peace-bestowing solitude, a retired nook where one might "dream down hours to moments." Yet there was no hint from the roadway of mill or river, of anything else than a little wood. How much of quiet beauty that little wood conceals from the vulgar public gaze! How many of those who pass daily close by have discovered that charmed spot, I wonder? [Illustration: AN OLD MILL.] Again on the road, after a time we sighted a signpost pointing the way to Basingstoke, then in a short distance another with the same legend; indeed, all the signposts we came to had "Basingstoke" writ large on their arms, as though there were a conspiracy amongst them to force the traveller to that town. Cobbett on one of his rides wanted to go from somewhere to Hindhead, and he was told he had better go through Liphook; but for some reason known to himself that obstinate farmer declared, "I won't go to Liphook." And he didn't. Just then a fit of like obstinacy came over me; I would not be dictated to by signposts, I would not go to Basingstoke. Basingstoke was a town; I would keep in the country. So whenever I came to a signpost with "To Basingstoke" upon it I went another way. It would have been better had I gone to Basingstoke, for the lanes I got on were tortuous, narrow, and rough, without any compensating virtues in the matter of scenery. However, I had a fit of travel temper strong on me, so I stuck to my whim and eventually discovered a decent road that led across a rolling open country, and from every height of our up-and-down progress we had extended views to distant hills, blue and undulating. The distances were glorious, the near scenery featureless, so our eyes feasted on the distances. So we arrived at Kingsclere, like Odiham a pleasant and a clean little town remote from rail, and it seems to get along, in a quiet way, exceedingly well without it. The place pleased me, not because it was specially agreeable, but owing to the absence of any aggressive modern ugliness. Its virtues are of the negative order, but even that negative quality counts for much. I noticed its large and fine old church--it was so large and close to the road I could not help but notice it; all the same I did not dally to go a clerk-hunting, so failed to inspect the interior: on that sunshiny day my antiquarian zeal did not run to church interiors, though I did not miss observing a rather good example of a Norman doorway unfortunately built up on its south wall. I noted, too, opposite the church, and pleasantly retired from the street, another of those clean little unpretentious inns I had so frequently come across--an inn that from a passing glance of it almost made me wish the day's journey ended there. After Kingsclere the country grew wilder, and presently crossing an extensive heath we dropped down into Newbury. I think it must have been market day there, for the streets of that pleasant town were thronged with carts and horses, to say nothing of pedestrians who would provokingly walk all over the roadway and not on the pavements. Some shouted to us, "Why don't you blow your horn?" and when we did others shouted, "Why do you keep blowing your horn; do you want all the road to yourself?" so we pleased no one, and made what haste we could to get out of the bustle, and to the London and Bath old mail road, smooth travelling and pleasant enough as far as Hungerford. [Illustration: OLD TOLL-HOUSE ON BATH ROAD.] A little before Hungerford my curiosity was aroused by the sight of a lonely castellated building by the roadside which I stopped to photograph. Then a man appeared upon the scene: somehow whenever you start to take a photograph, even in apparently deserted places--and the highway there just then seemed deserted--some one is almost sure to put in an appearance. I asked the man about the building. "That were an old tollhouse," answered he; "it used to mark the half-way between London and Bath." "Does it not to-day?" I queried. The man made no reply. I have frequently found that certain country-folk are curiously averse to jokes, however mild or innocent those jokes may be; they seem afraid lest you are poking fun at them. Taking no heed of my query he continued, for your true-born countryman loves to talk: "Travelling by motor-car, I sees; wonderful things them motor-cars be, to be sure, and they do put on the pace on this bit of road, I reckon; make a regular railway of it, that's what us say; fortunately there baint many housen on it," and so forth for a good five minutes, whilst I packed up my camera, and was therefore a perforced listener. I was somewhat surprised to hear, preserved to this day, the old Saxon plural of "en" in the word "housen" (though we still retain it in men, women, children, and oxen); the so-termed Yankee "I reckon" did not surprise me much, as I have frequently heard it thus employed in country districts, in Sussex especially. At Hungerford I noticed the ancient "Bear Inn" as we passed, and that is the only thing about the town that I can now remember: a comfortable-looking, time-mellowed, two-storied, old-fashioned building, a pleasing picture of a past-time coaching hostelry; now I believe its patrons are mostly motorists and anglers; for the latter there is a troutful river at hand, and troutful streams around. I noted two anglers with their rods leaning listlessly against the inn door, who looked as though they were on a lazy holiday bent, and that the wily trout must wait their turn. The town authorities still preserve an ancient horn inscribed as follows--by which horn they hold the right of fishing in the rivers and streams around--"I John a Gaunt doe giue and grant the riall of fishing to Hungerford toune, from Eldren Stub to Stil, excepting som seueral mil pond. Jehosphat Lucas, Constabl." A curious form of a deed of gift, that reminds one of the more famous Pusey horn, an even more ancient charter of rights. I fancy that name of "Jehosphat" for a constable; it has a genuinely ancient ring about it. Not being learned in old English script, I am not sure whether "riall" should read "right" or "royalty," but the intention of the sentence is clear. A curious old-world custom, dating from about 1370, still prevails at Hungerford. I came upon an account of this in my morning paper, which I think of sufficient interest to quote here in full: Hungerford was yesterday the scene of incidents reminiscent of the remote past. It was Hock-day, a day when Hungerford slips back into past centuries and revels in customs and privileges granted by John of Gaunt. One feature of the proceedings is the perambulation of the town by two "Tuttimen," represented on this occasion by Mr. F. Barnard and Mr. J. Tyler, whose interesting mission it is to kiss all women-folk and exact head-pence from men. Nor is the custom honoured only in the breach, with the result that the "Tuttimen" had a busy day. In exchange for kisses they give oranges. Particularly busy were the "Tuttimen" at the workhouse, where they found the women-folk insistent on the due observation of their privilege. Another interesting scene occurred at the laundry, where the female employés, their hair gaily decked with primroses, paraded before the kissing men, who, by special charter, were instructed to be discreet in their choice, and selected two of each as the recipients of their salute. While the "Tuttimen" were engaged in this mission the borough dignitaries, who form the Hocktide jury, were assembled in solemn conclave at the Court-house, whither they had been summoned in the early morning by blasts on John of Gaunt's historic horn. The ancient rules, regulations, and privileges were recited with due solemnity. The labours of the deliberate assembly being at an end, the members of the jury adjourned for the Hocktide luncheon, while pence and oranges were thrown from the window to the crowds of children who were granted a holiday in honour of the event. When the company separated the "Tuttimen" continued their mission. It is astonishing how many of these quaint old customs are still preserved in various parts of the country, such as the curious horn-dance at Abbot's Bromley we came upon a little later in the journey. How few people seem to be aware of them or their surprising number. A little beyond Hungerford we bade good-bye to the Bath road, for espying a promising byway we followed it up the narrow Kennett valley. The quiet beauty of the scenery took us by surprise. As long as the river kept us welcome company the valley was as fair as a valley may be; truly we saw it under the inspiriting effect of the cheerful sunshine, but that only enhanced and did not cause its charms; the clouds had rolled away and the sky above was serenely blue, and all the land was bathed in golden light. When the English weather is really in a good humour, truly it can make things very pleasant. From one point of the road we had a delightful vision of the shallow river where it widened out and ran rippling merrily over its pebbly bed, silvery and sparkling and gold in the sunshine, with dark green woods rising above, low hills rising beyond these again; and the river sang its song as it ran to the music of the wind-stirred trees. So both eye and ear shared in the charm of the spot. When next I go a-fishing I should like to go a-fishing there, then, sport or no sport, it would be joy enough to be amongst such pleasant scenery, for I have an eye for a pretty river-side, an ear for rural sounds, as well as for that crowning delight--the exciting plash of a trout. Then we drove on between wooded hills that rose gently on either hand, passing near by to our left Littlecote House, that lonely, grey, ancient, and some people have it haunted, home, overshadowed by the gruesome story of "Wild" Darell, a tragedy too well known to need repeating here--an almost incredible tragedy, only that time has shown it to be true, and "truth is stranger than fiction," though some modern fiction is running truth uncommonly hard in this respect. Aldbourne, the first village we came to, with its fine old stately-towered church, its big round pond, and its antique houses grouped around it, pleased us vastly, for the village had such a remote and an unmistakable old-time air--a spot where we really seemed to have left the modern world wholly behind. For a moment we gave ourselves up to the illusion of the place, and were back in the seventeenth century. We pay the novelist to romance for us; why should not we do our own romancing at times? Therein lies the charm of old-fashioned places; they spur the imagination. As Laurence Sterne showed us, sentiment, after all, is not a bad thing. It may have been wholly imagination on my part, but I thought that the people there had a contented look and a quiet eye, as though they had no part in the stress of modern life and the wearisome struggle of it. For where striving ceases, there life runs smoothly; and where life runs smoothly, there contentment reigns. Truly, my impressions were purely those of a passer-by, who had no part in the life of the place. Perhaps the traveller chiefly sees what he desires to see. Now I set out to see the bright side of life--who would blame me for that?--and I happily found what I sought; at some places more than others, still, always the bright side. It is a mere matter of eye-training, the seeking the gold and leaving the dross. There is a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings; I would there were a Society for the Preservation of Picturesque Villages, for many still there are, more than people imagine, that remain unspoilt, or almost so--villages that have not known the hand of the modern builder, bits of old England surviving in the midst of the new, and a gulf of centuries separates the two. Their churches stand on the same sites they did in the thirteenth or other early century; some of the Saxon times are of much earlier date; the continuity of the village and its life is astonishing. As in the days of old, there stands the snug rectory where it has stood for generations past; the humble inn with its swinging sign of "The Red Lion" as likely as not, though it may have suffered alteration, occupies the same spot where an inn has been "time out of memory." So with the cottages, one of which is generally the Post Office; and even in these democratic days the inhabitants are still divided into three classes--the squirearchy, the tradesfolk, and the labourers--and they seem to get along thus very well and contentedly, till the Socialist comes and scatters his tares. [Illustration: THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE.] After Aldbourne the country had a wild and a deserted look, for we found ourselves traversing the open downs where the landmarks are few, our grey road winding before us miles away, with nothing else visible but bare, green, sun-flushed hills around. It was a glorious drive over those billowy downs, and bracing was the air of them, delightful too in its purity and in the delicate scent of the thymy turf that the breezes gathered on their way and brought to us. There one might indulge in The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be. The downs, bare to the skyline, looked lonely enough to satisfy an anchorite. It is refreshing now and again in this crowded England to come upon such silent yet friendly solitudes, for there is nothing frowning or austere about them; hardly does the sunshine cast a shadow upon their spacious slopes of greenery. The charm of English scenery generally lies in its rich detail and finish, the result of the tireless toil of centuries; but the downs afford us broad effects, and broadness of outlook begets broadness of thinking. Fortunately the downs are unblest with mineral deposits, so they will probably remain unspoilt for ages yet; they have no attraction for the tourist crowd, nor are they likely to be vulgarised by too ready railway accessibility, for their population is too scanty for that. Our solitary road ended its solitude in the small but straggling village of Coate, that, like Stratford-on-Avon, has a certain, though lesser, fame cast on it by being the birthplace and early home of Richard Jefferies; and there amongst the fields around and sequestered downs beyond he used to roam alone, neglecting, I am afraid, his father's farm, considered by the local people--and perhaps not without excuse according to their lights--a lazy, loafing, unsociable fellow, "with never a pipe in his mouth nor a glass in his hand." To be a genius is not always to reap a reward, for fame, as in poor Jefferies' case, frequently comes too late--for what profit is fame to the dead? Some years ago, when touring in Lincolnshire, I met an aged man, a Mr. Baker of Horncastle, now gone to his forefathers, who when a boy knew of Tennyson, for Somersby is near to Horncastle, and Mr. Baker told me "people around used to think Tennyson a wild sort of fellow, for ever wandering alone over the wolds a-muttering to himself"; and I believe much the same was said of Wordsworth, "a-booing to hisself" during his solitary rambles over the Cumberland Fells. Solitude is company enough for the majority of geniuses, it seems. Byron says, "In solitude I am least alone"; and Thoreau remarks, "I never found a companion that was half so companionable as solitude." Once when an acquaintance offered to go a walk with him, Thoreau ungraciously declined. "I have no walks to throw away on company," said he. At any rate, there are worse companions than solitude; yet, in spite of poets and philosophers, I am wholly with genial Charles Lamb in my love of sympathetic human company, but the sympathetic quality is not always to be discovered. Doubtless Richard Jefferies failed to find amongst the farmers around a suitable companion; their thoughts were not his thoughts, so he roamed the downs alone in close communion with the nature he loved so dearly and understood so well. It is said, and with some truth, of Thoreau that he found the freedom of the wilderness within the sound of Emerson's dinner-bell; so too Richard Jefferies found his freedom within a walk, if not within actual sight, of his home. Now solitude for the day, with a home, friends, fireside, and a welcome to come to at evening time, is solitude with the keen edge of it considerably blunted. Coate is a quiet village, not noteworthy in any way of itself. It is neither picturesque nor ugly, merely commonplace; like some worthy people in the world, it lacks character. Had it not been the birthplace of Richard Jefferies, I should have passed it unregarded by; but authors, poets, and other men who have earned fame for themselves in this world have no command over their birthplaces: that is the chance of circumstance. In the village I pulled up and asked the first man I met, a man apparently of average intelligence and as well clad as I, if he could point out Richard Jefferies' house. "Richard Jefferies," replied he thoughtfully; "I never heard of him. There's no one lives here of that name." Then after a moment's hesitation he exclaimed, "Maybe it's Mr. Dash the auctioneer you wants. He lives at yonder house to the left; it's the best house in the place." Why he imagined I wanted Mr. Dash the auctioneer, whose name was quite different, I could not understand. I asked the man if he lived there. "I do," responded he; "I've lived here some time." And yet he declared he had never heard of Richard Jefferies! "Perhaps he lives at Swindon," he suggested as I left; now Swindon is not far off Coate. Poor Richard Jefferies! Then I made my way to the house indicated. It seemed to be the most important house of the few unimportant houses there, a pleasant, long rather than square, two-storied dwelling, retired behind a bit of garden and walled in from the road; and there on the wall by the entrance gateway I espied a stone slab, plainly inscribed-- Birthplace of Richard Jefferies. Born November 6th, 1848. Yet even that tablet means nothing to the villager! CHAPTER VII Wootton Bassett--A quaint market-hall--Old towns--A Roman road--The spirit of the past--A pre-Elizabethan gate-house--The Royal Agricultural College--Chat with an antiquary--Norman doorways--Second-hand book catalogues--Syde--Cotswold houses--Over the Cotswolds--At a Jacobean inn. Leaving Coate we soon reached the erst quiet little town of Swindon; it is no longer quiet or little, but looms large and ugly--seen from afar a blot on the fair landscape; the railway has made it prosperous and its name, once unknown to the outer world, "as familiar as a household word." Swindon does not appeal to the traveller who, like the famous Dr. Syntax, fares forth "in search of the picturesque." Of old, I have been told, it was a pleasant spot. We were fortunate enough to simply touch the edge of the bustling town and to get again on to an open country road, careless as to where it might lead; it might go to anywhere so long as we escaped smoky Swindon with its big works, tram-lines, and rows of mean buildings over which the smoke, in the still air, hung like a pall. That is the price it has to pay for its prosperity. Our road took us in a few miles to Wootton Bassett, a small, sleepy, clean market-town set high up on a hill, unprogressive yet not dull, and it greeted us with an air of restfulness and ancientness. It is a good road that takes you to a pleasant place. I was glad to discover Wootton Bassett, a long one-streeted town, and in the centre of its broad sunny street stands its quaint half-timber market-hall upheld by stone pillars, with its ancient stocks preserved in the covered space below. Why will they not build such useful and eye-pleasing structures to-day? This quaint old market-hall, so picturesquely prominent, gives a character to the whole place. I could not imagine Wootton Bassett without its market-hall any more than I could imagine a cathedral city without its cathedral. It seemed the centre of attraction of the little town, for around it were gathered many of its inhabitants, lazing, smoking, and gossiping; the wonder was how they could afford to idle time so, they hardly looked like men of independent means! Now when I desired to take a photograph of the building they, of one accord, stood up all in a formal row, like soldiers on parade, so as to effectually spoil my proposed photograph as a picture. If the good people had only been content not to have minded me, and stayed as they were naturally grouped, they would even have been of pictorial service; but standing each one stiffly facing the camera, the case was hopeless. Why will people always pose so "to be took," with no expectation of seeing "their pictures"? They provoked me almost into being angry, for I so desired to obtain a pleasing photograph of the quaint old structure. Still, I made a sketch of it, conveniently ignoring the figures; but it took me a good half-hour or more to make the sketch, and the photograph would only have needed a minute to take and been faithful to the minutest detail. Now it chanced that I was hungry, and a hungry man is not a good workman. I made a mistake; I ought to have satisfied my hunger and then made my sketch, but somehow at the moment I did not think of so simple a thing. Then I sought an inn, for I had forgotten to replenish my luncheon basket that morning. The first inn I saw looked clean and unpretending, so inviting, and there I obtained some bread and cheese and ale, as that could be had at once for the asking; moreover, it was nicely served in a cheerful little room, and a neat, be-ribboned maid waited quietly on me. I noted that the walls of the room were covered with grey canvas and not with paper; now canvas, after wood panelling and lordly tapestry, is the most artistic wall-covering imaginable. I never expected to find such a thing at a small country inn, where I am content with comfort and never look for the luxury of art. The landlord, anxious to be obliging, apologised that there was no cold meat, but, said he, I could have chops, only they would have to send for them. Fancy a famishing man waiting for the purchase and the cooking of chops; then possibly the chops might prove tough. Bread and cheese and ale, I explained, were good enough for me, and they could be had instanter. Now hunger is the best of sauces, and no meal ever I had did I relish more than my modest one that day. The table was spread with the whitest of cloths, flowers in a vase adorned it, and there is much in the manner a meal is served; the bread was crusty and the crust was crisp, the cheese excellent of flavour, the clear, nut-brown, frothing ale was, as Shakespeare puts it, "a dish for a king." Honestly, just then, I would not have exchanged the simple repast I had in that inn's tiny parlour for the most sumptuous lunch at the most expensive restaurant; and the civility and attention of the maid were more to my liking than the servile service of any black-coated waiter, with a tip in view according to his servility. Then my enjoyable lunch cost me exactly one shilling; no charge was made for stabling my car, and the attentive maid received my modest gratuity with such smiling thanks as though she expected no such thing. Even the landlord thanked me for my poor custom. Wherein lies the charm of these unprogressive little country towns, whilst modern cities, though they may be fine, are generally so uninteresting, is as difficult to explain as the attraction of personality or character. It is not in architectural merit, for they rarely have that, except perhaps in an odd building or two. One thing is, their buildings are low, and so their streets are sunny, which gives them an air of cheerfulness. But I think their real charm lies in their naturalness and welcome absence of all show, assertiveness, or pretence, and this causes a feeling of restfulness, for the eye is not called upon to admire anything; also they have a delightfully finished look--where the town ends there the country begins. The prosperous modern town never seems finished, and as it grows, it grows the more ugly. From Wootton Bassett on to Cricklade I have now no recollection of the road, beyond that we caught a glimpse on the way of a delightful old Tudor, or Elizabethan, home of many mullioned windows and a great porch that spoke a welcome--a picture rather than a place. Of Cricklade I have a pleasant memory of a stone-built, old, and grey-roofed town, with little of life about it, and of a tall canopied cross in the churchyard at the farther end of its long street. If Cricklade has more to show I missed seeing it. So quiet the town was, it looked like a town asleep and not anxious to wake again. Its long street was free of traffic, excepting for a solitary cart; not even a dog troubled to bark at us. But you cannot see or understand any place by simply driving through it; these, therefore, are but passing impressions. On a long journey you have not time to loiter everywhere you would, or the journey would take a whole year, perchance even more; already I had loitered long at Wootton Bassett, and Cricklade looked less attractive. After Cricklade we came upon a level, long stretch of straight road, so straight indeed that it suggested Roman origin, and on consulting my map I found it there marked "Roman road from Cirencester to Speen" (where the Speen alluded to is, or was, I am not sure, but there is one in Berkshire and one in Buckinghamshire, neither of importance nowadays). This straight road extending far as the eye could trace with all revealed ahead, nothing left to imagination, is not an attractive one, except, perhaps, to an engineer's eye, but it has a look of set purpose that impresses the mind; it concerns itself with nothing but its destination, turning not aside for this or that; a road of importance, or rather once it was. This very road, of old, the Roman Legions trod; that takes one back some centuries! The spirit of the past still seems to linger over it; it impressed itself on me. In this old land history greets you volumes deep; you cannot escape it. "Happy is the country that has no history," runs the ancient proverb; and true though the proverb may be, to travel in I prefer a country with a storied past--an eventful past that lends an interest to the present. When touring in California, in spite of its glorious scenery, I felt a vacancy; why, I could not imagine for some time; then I realised it was the absence of any ancient history, legend, or tradition connected with anything I saw beyond poor Indian legend, for something more than mere scenery is needed to satisfy the reflective mind. At the small hamlet of Latton we passed through, I noticed the worn steps and broken shaft of a wayside cross. How numerous these crosses must have been in the pre-Reformation days is proved by the number that still remain in their ruined state, in spite of the complete destruction of others during the Puritan time, and from the frequent and familiar name of "Stone Cross" or "Stony Cross" one finds on the maps, though no vestige of a cross can now be discovered at such spots. Then, to avoid the monotony of the straight road, we took to a lane that a signpost informed us led to Down Ampney, when I suddenly remembered having seen, at some picture gallery, a painting of a charming old house of that name; for I always note both the paintings and photographs I see of picturesque old houses, and when they bear a title keep it in memory--this in case Fate should some day bring me within reach of the originals; and here was my opportunity. A mile or so brought us to Down Ampney, once the stately home of the famous Hungerford family, and there the lane ended. What pleased me most about the place was not the mansion but its quaint and exceedingly interesting and picturesque arched gate-house of the pre-Elizabethan era, with its two octagonal embattled towers on either side of the archway. It was well worth while making the short detour to see that fine old gate-house, for a pre-Elizabethan gate-house is somewhat rare in the land, and, when found, forms such a pleasant roadside feature, besides taking the memory back to the days that are gone. Then we resumed our drive along the old Roman road, and this brought us to ancient Cirencester, where at "The King's Head," a flourishing inn before railways were invented, we found comfortable quarters for the night. Thrice before on my driving tours have I found myself by chance at Cirencester, for all the roads around centre on that town, like the spokes to the hub of a wheel, and take you there unawares; but I had not come to it by the Roman road before. I thought I had seen all Cirencester had to show, but I discovered a fresh interest on this visit in the shape of the Royal Agricultural College about a mile away, and the Principal most kindly showed me all over the building and took me a stroll through the grounds besides. This college, as many know, was established by Royal Charter in 1845, "to train land-owners, estate agents, surveyors, intending colonists, etc., in agriculture, forestry, and allied subjects." It is beautifully situated on high ground and admirably fulfils its purpose. I have often wondered why some of the number of men of limited income, of no occupation, and trained to no profession, instead of idling life unprofitably away without an object, do not study at the Royal Agricultural College, where all things are well ordered, and go in for farming; and what a pleasant and healthy life it is, in close touch with Nature: a man can be a farmer, a sportsman, and a gentleman. Better this, surely, than to lead an aimless, lazy existence? At Cirencester, going into a shop to replenish my tobacco supply, I got a-chatting with the owner, who appeared to have a soul superior to tobacco, for, to my surprise, I discovered him to be an enthusiastic and well-informed antiquary. Who would have thought it? He told me that round about Cirencester there were no fewer than fifteen churches with fine Norman doorways; he kindly gave a list of these, only to be lost! He also showed me a photograph of each one, so that I was able to judge what beautiful and well-preserved specimens of Norman masonry they were; in such instances photography asserts its usefulness. The only church of the number the name of which I can remember is Quennington, and this because I bought a picture-postcard of it, showing a most beautiful and richly sculptured doorway; judging from the photograph, nowhere have I seen so fine a one. The postcard has printed on it the following particulars: "The Norman doorways" (it appears there are two) "of Quennington church are noted for the beauty of their workmanship, and for the curious carved tympani they contain. The south door has elaborate carving, with beak heads around the top of the tympanum, which latter represents the mythical Coronation of the Virgin." Then he told me of a very old church not far away (he pointed out the position of it on the map, and on consulting my map again I feel fairly certain it is Daglingworth) where is a Saxon sun-dial, and where he had discovered in some of the stone-work of one of the windows portions of an ancient Roman inscription, proving that the monkish builders paid scant regard to the despised pagan altars and inscribed tablets that in early days were so plentiful at Cirencester, but used them as they would stone from a quarry; for Cirencester, or Corinium, was an important Roman military station. Fortunately many interesting relics of the time are now carefully preserved from further "base uses" in the Cirencester museum. In turn, to even matters, the monks' "graven images" and other "superstitious" work was ruthlessly destroyed by the stern Puritans. So the pagan was avenged! For want of a better occupation that evening I amused myself by looking over some old local newspapers I discovered in the smoke-room, for in these papers you often come upon odd and interesting bits of information, possibly contributed by some resident antiquary; there I came upon the particulars of a curious bill that I thought worth noting, and this is the paragraph that caught my eye: "Below is an abstract from _The Annual Register_, 1771, page 140. 'Cirencester, August 31st. The following is a true copy of a painter's bill of this place, delivered to the church-wardens of an adjacent parish: Mr. Charles Ferebee (churchwarden of Siddington) to Joseph Cook, Dr. To mending the Commandments, altering the Belieff, and making a new Lord's Prayer, or £1 : 1s.'" So curious is this that it really seems like an invention, only that it is given on the authority of _The Annual Register_, and vouched for as true; otherwise I should not have ventured to requote it, and the very names of the churchwarden, the painter, and the church are put down. Invention surely could not improve on that old bill--and invention is no laggard! At another inn I discovered some second-hand book catalogues left presumably by some former guest, and spent quite an interesting and profitable hour going over these. The various literature you chance upon when travelling oftentimes proves entertaining reading; the following extracts I made from four of these catalogues will, I think, prove my contention. In the first case an "Autograph Album" is offered for sale at the modest price of £25, but then it contains "A collection of over 100 signatures, including those of Lord Tennyson" and other world-famous authors, "and an Autograph Poem by Lord Tennyson addressed to Lady Tennyson," a sample verse of which is quoted, and thus it runs: "Here on this Terrace fifty years ago, When I was in your June, you in your May, Two words 'My Rose' set all your face a-glow; And now that I am white and you are grey, That blush of fifty years ago, my dear, Lives in the past, but close to me to-day, As this red rose upon the terrace here Glows in the blue of fifty miles away." Then, curiously enough, in another second-hand book catalogue a volume of poems, privately printed, is offered, containing likewise "an unpublished sonnet by Tennyson, beginning Me my own Fate to lasting sorrow doometh," but this is the only line of the sonnet given. Then another catalogue offered a book by John Wesley, dated 1770, and entitled _A Preservative against Unsettled Notions in Religion_, in which Wesley, in an open letter to Robert Barclay, says: "Friend, you have an honest heart, but a weak head. Once your zeal was against ungodliness, now it is against all forms of prayer--against saying 'you' to a single person, uncovering your head, or having too many buttons on your coat. O what a fall is there! What poor trifles are these that well-nigh engross your thoughts." Still a further catalogue offers a "Black Letter book, printed in double columns, published about 1555, 'Of the tragedies, gathered by Jhon Bochas, of all such Princes as fell from theyr estates throughe the mutability of Fortune since the creacion of Adam.' A fairly long history. This has a note written on the title-page as follows, 'This book was boughte in the yeare of Or Lorde God 1555.'" There were other volumes offered in these catalogues at a price, but they were of less interest. I think, however, I have quoted enough to show what an entertaining evening may be spent in simply conning over second-hand book catalogues. I am afraid I have wandered off the road, but such occasional digressions, in the absence of the usual added love-story, may serve to break any possible monotony in the chronicle of our tour. We left Cirencester betimes (to use a favourite expression of Samuel Pepys, of Diary renown), though not so early but that sundry country folk were astir on the road before us; and how inexpressibly fresh and sweet is the morning air, "before it has been braithed over," that was Iden's _elixir vitae_ in _Amaryllis at the Fair_! We started forth, as usual, without any definite idea of where we were going or of our destination for the night, simply taking this road and that, rough, or smooth, or hilly, as seemed best in our eyes at the moment. Excepting perhaps in a flat country, such desultory travel is not wholly advisable unless you can rely upon your car mounting the worst of the hills that may be encountered, for now and then on these byways you may come unexpectedly to a hill that is startling in its steepness, and though it be short it has to be climbed, or you have to hark back ignominiously and not see what you set out to see. Fortunately I knew my car, my old and well-tried travelling companion that, when traversing some of the wild Welsh mountain and moorland tracks, had surmounted gradients of no ordinary severity. So I travelled on strange roads with a mind at ease. To go exploring cross-country roads in a hilly district you need a reliable car. It may have been the quality of my car, it may have been good fortune, it may have been careful driving, for careful driving counts, but the fact remains, in spite of many bad and stony roads, during the journey I suffered no breakdown, nor did I on a previous journey of some hundreds of miles. [Illustration: SYDE CHURCH.] So, leaving Cirencester, where the church bells have little rest, for they were chiming the hours and quarters at length both day and night, we wandered about uneventfully till we found ourselves in the out-of-the-world hamlet of Syde, built on the slope of a hill, with a glorious rolling country around. I love these little remote hamlets and the placidity of them--hamlets where "the telegraph, the railway, and the thoughts that shake mankind" have never penetrated. I daresay dull care finds its way to them as elsewhere, but to the outward eye they suggest untold peace. Some one says that "care will come and climb even the side of a ship far out at sea in search of its victims." At Syde we discovered a tiny and charming church with a saddle-back tower, a tiny church, pleasing in its simplicity, and close to it a fine old tithe-barn with a grand roof of open timber, and a delightfully quaint little Gothic window at one end of the building: the monks would have even a barn beautiful. From great beams of oak was the roof constructed, not sawn straight out of a tree regardless of grain in the manner of to-day that tends to weakness, but the natural bends of the wood were utilised so as to ensure the utmost strength of the material, and that made for lastingness and curves that unconsciously please the eye. The medieval craftsman knew the art of making the best use of raw products, and to his credit be it said, as far as I could note, the ancient roof shows no signs of weakness though constructed centuries ago, and apparently all those centuries left to take care of itself. Still such roofs, though strong in themselves, are heavy, and need substantial walls and a generous use of masonry to uphold them. The modern builder would probably construct at least two barns of the same size out of the materials employed in the construction of this one, and then have something to spare, but I greatly doubt if they would stand the stress of centuries as this one has done without constant renewals and repairs. Leaving Syde we wandered about the lonely Cotswolds for most of the day, leisurely and deviously, delighting in their breezy openness, their frequent solitudes, and the extensive prospects afforded to us of hills beyond hills rising out of the blue. Houses are few and scattered in the Cotswolds, and these are mostly farmsteads of past days, grey and old, well and strongly built of the native stone that has a pleasant tint. Simple and yet picturesque are these old houses with their great gables, mullioned windows, stone slate roofs, and big chimney-stacks. The Cotswold architecture is a style of its own, than which a better style for an Englishman's home, from cottage to mansion, there could not be, for it is a style equally suitable for a small dwelling as for a stately hall. I think the keynote to the attractiveness of the Cotswold houses, large or little, is that they are first of all homes; this is what impresses you about them. Iron or lead, in the pre-railway days when the roads were indifferent and transport expensive, was not readily available in this remote district, so the ancient craftsman designed his buildings to have as little guttering and metal work as possible; he used stone wherever he could, stone for his mullioned windows, stone slates for his roofs, stones for his porches, stones for his chimneys, and for all his copings, his ridges, and his cappings; so his houses form part and parcel of the rock on which they stand, as though they had grown up from it. Were I ever to build another home for myself I should go to the Cotswolds for inspiration; still, a good design might be spoilt in its realisation by unfeeling workmanship; you may command the design, but you cannot command the spirit in which it is carried out. Even such a simple thing as a plain stone wall may be built to be beautiful; in the Cotswolds, the mason of old laid his stones in straight courses, carefully keeping them of different sizes; he also varied these courses in width, thus escaping the monotony of uniformity; he laid the biggest stones at the base, making for strength, to the eye at least, but here and there he ran a band of big stones between the smaller ones above, so he secured breadth with variety, and this just because he took a pride and a joy in his work and regarded the look of it. I have yet to meet the modern workman whose pleasure is in his work; he calls it "a job." Here ends my amateur lecture on architecture--fortunately it is short. I made my midday halt at a lonely, elevated spot, with not a building or any other sign of man's handiwork in sight, excepting the long and winding road and the rugged stone walls that bounded and followed it in curving parallels, up hill and down dale for many a mile, till lost to vision in the haze of space. There on a soft grassy margin of the road, with the wall as shelter from the wayward wind that always seems to blow over the Cotswolds, I spread my rug, reclined at ease, and, free from care as a man can be, enjoyed my alfresco meal and contemplative pipe to follow, feeling in the best of humours with all the world and myself, envying none. I heard no sound but that of the wind gently surring among the tall grasses, and softly murmuring through the many crevices of that loose and broken wall. My eyes saw nothing but the sunlit and rolling land stretching far around, and the silent, spacious sky above. I was impressed with the sense of solitude and the peace of the spot. It is good for man to be alone at times with the wide earth and sky; it teaches him how small a thing he really is, for nature shows man neither respect nor attention; she treats the tramp and the lord the same. Even on the wild Canadian prairies, before the coming of the colonist, one could hardly find a solitude more apparently profound than mine that day, for the eye cannot see farther than the uttermost horizon; beyond might be the end of the world. Just to live in the present, content with the present, that was my mood of the moment, neither looking backwards nor forwards, being simply thankful to be alive without any pain of body--that is the true holiday spirit, that is the wine of life; then pure laziness is a virtue, for if a man would enjoy his holiday lazing, laze he should. The gospel of exertion has been preached overmuch. It was a fair spot I had found, and the world is very fair in fair places; and does not Ben Jonson say, "How near to good is what is fair!" Long I rested there, so long that the shadow thrown by the wall changed round like that of a dial, but the matter of time troubled me not, for my hours were not marked by the clock. I wished my mind to be fallow. Emerson says, "The hardest thing in the world is--to think." I cannot follow him, for I find it impossible not to do so. I would be At vacancy with Nature, Acceptive and at ease, Distilling the present hour Whatever, wherever it is, And over the past, oblivion. When I tired of my solitude there was my car, ready at a moment's notice to whisk me back to the haunts of man. "Solitude hath its charms," but, to me, only when I know I can get away from it after having had my fill. One travels to escape for a while from man and town, from streets and houses, and then in turn one longs to get back again to despised humanity and neighbourship--at least I do, being no moody philosopher but a lover of my kind. Leaving my peaceful nook, after further lonely wandering, I struck upon a decent though hilly road, and eventually came to a long, steep descent, at the foot of which I found myself in the truly old-world village of Stanway, where is another fine specimen of a tithe-barn. An apology perhaps is needed for using the term "old-world" so often, but I came during the journey to so many quaint and ancient places that no other word will so well, tersely, and truthfully describe, so I feel bound to use it occasionally, even frequently, though not, I trust, without good cause. At the foot of the descent, facing me, stood a notable gate-house giving access to a time-greyed and noble mansion built in the Jacobean days; the former looks like the work of Inigo Jones. I was tempted to photograph this old gate-house, and any photograph here reproduced will serve to show what manner of building it is, for a picture of any kind appeals direct to the eye, thus conveying a better impression of a place than pages of printed description could: and be it said in favour of a photograph over a drawing that there is no romance about it, it simply records what is before the camera, whilst most artists are prone to treat their subjects with more or less poetic licence, so that one can never be quite sure how much of their work is faithful to fact or how much is fanciful. [Illustration: GATEHOUSE, STANWAY.] Then, as the west was growing golden and the shadows lengthening, my thoughts turned to an inn for the night. It seems to me that an inn of the good old-fashioned sort, friendly, unpretentious, clean, and comfortable, deserves a warm corner in the heart of the wayfarer--for how would he fare without one? Whenever I come upon such an inn I make a note of it so as to keep it in memory, besides marking its site on my map for easy reference on the road. Many a time, and many a mile, have I gone out of my way, and gladly, to revisit such desirable quarters, sure, from past experience, of a welcome, civility, and a moderate reckoning, three qualities I mostly prize in the order given. Healthily hungry, agreeably tired after a long day's journey in the open air, how delightful it is to arrive at a good inn when the day is done--that is one of the joys of travel, and not the least of its joys. Suddenly I remembered that at the foot of the Cotswolds, and not very far away, was an ancient, many-gabled, Jacobean and storied hostelry of mullioned windows and panelled chambers where erst I had taken "mine ease"; thither would I go again, so I sped on my way, rejoicing, to the ancient "Whyte Harte" at Broadway, one of my ports of call when cruising on the road, and there I harboured for the night. In the smoke-room of my inn that evening, seated by its big ingle-nook before a blazing log-fire that threw a ruddy, cheerful glow on beamed ceiling, panelled wall, and antique furniture, I got a-chatting with the chance and friendly company gathered there. Amongst the company was a touring cyclist who talked interestingly about the country and the places he had passed through; another was a fellow-motorist who "talked motor," but he had an eye for scenery as well; still another had recently returned from a long voyage, but he had neither met the Flying Dutchman nor seen the sea-serpent, nor even an iceberg, and what worth is a tale of the sea without a little romance thrown in? I love to hear the good old-fashioned sailor spin his confidential yarn; salt is cheap, so you can allow him more than the proverbial grain. The last yarn I had was from a skipper aboard his ship out in the wide Atlantic, who told me positively that he had seen the sea-serpent "swimming in the sea." "I estimated that it was ninety feet long," said he, "judging from the length of the ship, but perhaps he was a young one: it was a sea-serpent or a snake of some kind sure enough, and much alive." "Did you record it in the Log?" was my response. "Not I," replied the skipper. "You see, another captain of our company had previously seen a sea-serpent, only a much bigger one than mine, and he noted the fact in his Log. Now when our people saw the Log they said to him, 'Captain, if you see any more sea-serpents you won't get another ship.' He never saw another." And this is an unvarnished tale as told to me by the well-known skipper of a famous liner, faithfully retold, word for word, as far as my memory serves. CHAPTER VIII The Vale of Evesham--A stormy drive--An angler's inn--A big fish--Dating from "the flood"!--Fishermen's tales--The joys of "the gentle craft"--Hotel visitors' books--A "quiet day"--Burford church and its monuments--The golden age of travel--A fine old half-timber inn--Ludlow--A Saxon doorway. Leaving our ancient inn we proceeded westward along winding, hedge-bordered lanes that took us through the beautiful and fruitful Vale of Evesham, a very Land of Goshen. We had an uneventful drive to close upon Pershore, where we found ourselves on a good main road; then crossing a narrow bridge we drove into that quiet and ancient town, famous for its fine old abbey church, and for what else I know not; as for the town, it has a pleasant look. Then into the country again and into a storm of rain. By a signpost we learnt that the road led to Worcester, and, as it appeared to keep on high ground with the promise of fine views, we followed it. We had a stormy drive on to Worcester, for it rained the whole of the way; to our left the Malvern Hills loomed up a mass of purple-grey under the leaden sky, appearing almost mountainous, magnified in size to the eye by the mist and rain. Approaching Worcester it poured in torrents; if this keeps on, I said to myself, I shall seek the shelter of an inn. I was in ill-humour with the weather; I do not mind ordinary rain, but this was a deluge, and the roads were becoming rivers. The hint was not lost on the weather; as we drove into Worcester the rain ceased, or almost ceased, and ahead there even appeared a watery gleam of sunshine. Such are the surprises of the English climate. This was encouraging, so through Worcester we went without a stop; no inn I needed now, and to escape the main road and straggling houses I took a turning to the right at a venture, and we were soon in the open country again, wet and gleaming, but we drove into fairer weather. The country we passed through was pleasantly pastoral, the rain-washed air was wonderfully clear and fresh, the distances distinctly blue, and the moisture brought forth the pungent scent of the earth. Presently we passed a finely wooded park, in which we caught sight of a little lake mirroring the sky, the silvery water shining cheerfully bright. Soon after this we reached the village of Great Witley, not a large place, but perhaps "great" for a village, and it presented us with a pretty picture with its old houses, some of half-timber, climbing the hillside, for we were amongst the hills again, hills topped by wind-blown firs darkly outlined against the sky. Before arriving at Great Witley we asked a man, on the way, to where the road led. "To Witley," he replied; "there's a decent public in the village where they sell good beer." As though beer was man's chief desire in life--as perhaps it is with some! I did not take the hint, so instead of the usual twopence I simply tendered thanks for the information given. The man was disappointed; he looked reproachfully at me--at least so I thought. Now the "public" turned out to be a homely but an inviting-looking inn, "The Hundred House," to wit, and, judging of it from a passing glance, had I been benighted I would have claimed its hospitality, and deemed myself fortunate in having found such quiet, unpretending quarters. In truth I almost wished for the rain to come on again as an excuse to sample its entertainment. But as the sun was occasionally shining and the clouds were uplifting I was not inclined to stop, when I had half the day unspent before me for exploring. Somehow I fancy that the people I meet in such out-of-the-way places differ from other people; at least I know I get friendly with them quicker than with those who live where the pulse of the world beats faster--so I have that feeling strong upon me. After Great Witley we had for some miles a hilly drive; at once our road began to climb steeply, only to descend again; it was all up and down, and from the tops of the rises we obtained glorious views of the wild Welsh cloud-loving mountains, standing in rugged array where the remote distance met our gaze, here and there above the mists a peak clearly showing. Next we came to a welcome level stretch of country, our road narrowing into a lane with fine high hedges on either side, Devon fashion; their one fault was that they effectually shut out the view--from leagues our vision was limited to yards. When, at last, the Devon-like lane ended, facing us stood "The Swan Inn" by the Teme side, an inn where anglers congregate, for the Teme is a troutful stream; there I put up for the night, and found comfortable quarters, good fare, and companionship. What more could the traveller desire? The landlord came forth to greet me in a manner after my own heart. "Glad to see you," said he; "you always bring me luck." I thought he had mistaken me, for, as I explained, I had not been to Tenbury till that day. "Well," responded he, "it was certainly not here I saw you last, but I well remember you coming to 'The Porth Arms' at Llandysill, when I was its landlord some few years ago, and just as you arrived one of my guests there had caught the fish of the season." Then, thinking back, I too remembered the circumstance. "Now," continued he, "I've a fisherman staying here who just before you came caught a splendid trout, as fine a trout as ever I've seen; I'll show it you. There's as good fish in the Teme as ever came out of a river;" and he brought the trout out on a dish for my inspection, a grand one in truth. At least, thought I, there are big trout in the Teme. When next I go a-fishing may I catch its like! There is a consoling old saying that "the worst anglers catch the biggest fish." Some of those old sayings appeal to me! Writing of big fish reminds me that once in an old curiosity shop I noticed, amongst the various odds and ends shown for sale there, a glass case with a fine fat trout stuffed and carefully preserved in it. I was surprised to find this marked at a high figure, as it appeared to me a somewhat unlikely article to find a purchaser. So I ventured to remark upon it. "Well," said the dealer in curiosities, "that's as good an article to sell as any I have in the shop, though you mightn't think it. You see, the landlord of some fishing inn is sure to buy it and hang it up in one of his rooms, as a sample of the sport to be had in his river. I'll get my price for it. I think I know where to place it as it is." Have I not seen the like at certain river-side inns I know! It is pleasant to be remembered thus on the road; twice during the journey when arriving at a strange inn in a strange place did the landlord of it remember me, he having moved from some other inn elsewhere which on a previous tour I had visited. Landlords and head waiters of country hostelries appear to have the faculty that kings are supposed to possess of recognising faces, and of even bearing names in mind. The waiter of "The King's Head" at Cirencester knew me from having waited on me at another inn on the road, "and that were over two years ago." "However do you manage to remember people and their names?" I queried, "for you must see so many different people coming and going in the course of the year." "I don't remember them all," he confessed, "only the nice people." I felt flattered, though perhaps he was thinking of his tip. A good memory is a valuable possession when used diplomatically. As there was still an hour or two of daylight left, I crossed the river by a patched-up stone bridge to inspect Tenbury, for the town lay on the other side of the Teme--a countrified little town, like those you find here and there in the heart of the shires, so I was the more surprised to discover it boasted of being a watering-place, though its reputation in this respect was unknown to me, for it possesses a Spa with a regulation pump-house where people drink and bathe in the waters, and around the pump-house are well-laid-out grounds with winding walks. No town that ever I was in gave me less the impression of being a watering-place where invalids congregate, for not even a Bath-chair did I see, nor was there a soul at the Spa. I take it that, up to the present, Tenbury is more famous for its fishing than for its waters; if the latter were only more pronounced, or more distasteful in flavour, possibly Tenbury might become renowned. "They ought to do me good," once I heard a visitor at Harrogate remark, "for the waters are nasty enough." Well, at any rate, Harrogate waters possess that virtue and Harrogate prospers, though I heard of one invalid who, having tasted those waters, declared he preferred his malady! Rain coming on I sought shelter in the church near by; I was glad I did so, for I found much to interest me there. For the second time this journey I discovered another curious, though unfortunately mutilated, miniature effigy to a knight of old in chain armour with his legs crossed; one hand is on his sword, the other holds a shield with a coat-of-arms carved upon it. This effigy is only a little over two feet in length and bears no inscription. The records of his name and race Have faded from the stone. A possible, but doubtful, explanation of these miniature monuments is that they are merely heart shrines; another even more doubtful is that they are to children of knightly parents, and so are represented in armour. Near to this modest memorial to a warrior, in startling contrast, is a stately altar-tomb with life-sized alabaster figures, beautifully sculptured, of a man in armour with his wife by his side, she being quaintly and picturesquely attired; the man's feet rest on a boar, his lady's on nothing, for the faithful hound that presumably once was there has disappeared. A portion of the long inscription in raised letters over this monument runs as follows:-- Here lyeth Thomas Actone of Sutton Esqre Who departed this lyfe in 1546 And Mary his wyfe who deceased on The XXVIII Aprill 1564.... Ioyse Their only daughter and heire being then of the Adge of XII yeres was espoused to Sir Thomas LVCY Of Charcot knight which Dame Ioyse in dutifull Remembravnce of theis her loving parents Hath erected this monument. Anno 1581. Here we have the knight whom Shakespeare ridicules under the title of Justice Shallow in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. What caused the Bard to hold up this Sir Thomas Lucy thus to ridicule no one appears to have discovered; the ancient story that the knight prosecuted Shakespeare for poaching his deer in Charlecote Park is out of court, for in those days there was neither park nor deer there. As I was leaving the church I noticed a brass plate against the west wall about three feet from the pavement, bearing record that On May 14th, 1886 The River Teme overflowed its Banks And rose to the height of the mark Placed below. And to this day certain Tenbury folk date events "from the year of the flood," which to the unknowing sounds strangely of a period immeasurably remote. I dined well at "The Swan" that night in the pleasant company of two anglers, one of whom had caught the big trout already mentioned. The simple dinner was excellently cooked, and my fellow-guests indulged in a bottle of good red wine; so also did I for sociability. Not but that Pure water is the best of gifts That man to man can bring; But what am I that I should have The best of everything? Dinner ended, in the spirit of the Roman of old I could say, "Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day." We three made merry over our meal (fishermen, sailors, and artists all seem to possess cheerful souls); we talked and we joked and "the good wine quaffed"; fishing stories went round the table, true every one of them--or at least they were not impossible. I scorn that cruel libel that declares "the angler goes out in the morning full of hope, returns at evening full of whisky, and the truth is not in him." But we did not talk of fishing alone; we talked of many charmed spots where tranquil rivers flow, of sleepy pools where the big trout lie, of mountain streams with their heathery banks, streams that gurgle and splash along their rocky beds; and I learnt that a trout rises to a fly either because he is hungry, or merely out of curiosity; if the former you may surely land him, if the latter it is a touch and go if you do. Many days the trout have had their fill, so they "rise short," being only curiously minded; then the angler changes his flies, but it is not a fresh fly that is needed, but a hungry trout. Much has been said of the joys of the gentle craft. Other joys Are but toys, we are told, but I think there is another craft more gentle, fully as fascinating and as pleasure-giving--to some even more so, bold though the saying be--and that is sketching from Nature, "good, right, healthy work," Ruskin calls it, and the sketcher need never return home without something to show for his day in the open air. I do not exactly see the gentleness of taking a barbed hook out of a fish's mouth, or of impaling a wriggling worm on a hook, and to do this, mind you, "as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he may live the longer"! which is the dictum laid down by gentle Izaak Walton. After all, may it not be that the term "gentle craft" came from the fact of the use of gentles as baits? But whether one goes a-fishing or fares forth with sketch-book and colours, much of the joy that either gentle craft gives its votaries is, I take it, the pleasant scenery they habitually find themselves amongst. Now I come to think of it, our table talk was of scenery as much as of fishing, so as a listener it struck me that to some wise men fishing after all is in the main an excuse for a delightful and restful holiday with an object, not the mere catching of fish the sole aim of it. In the coffee-room of mine inn I discovered a Visitors' Book, and I glanced through it in the faint hope of perhaps finding there some quaint or humorous effusion, but the day seems past for these things. Of old such men as Kingsley, Tom Taylor, Tom Hughes, and a host of other literary wits were not above making merry in these books; even such notables as Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Pepys, to mention a few of the many, amused themselves by recording their names, scratched with diamonds, on the window-panes of some of the old inns and houses they visited, and in a few instances their signatures remain there to this day. I saw that of Sir Walter Scott in Shakespeare's birthplace not long ago. Seldom now either do I come across any quaint or notable epitaph in our churchyards, yet when I was young I came upon many a one. Indeed I had a notebook filled with them, and curious they were. As I have previously remarked, Time is not the only culprit responsible for their disappearance, though Time has had his hand in the matter, and there is now no Old Mortality to re-cut crumbling inscriptions. A case was brought to my notice where a quaint epitaph (quite harmlessly quaint, as a layman, I thought) was deliberately chiselled off a tombstone "by the parson's orders." In the Visitors' Book at "The Swan" I came upon the following:-- In July a man came to the Swan And the fat of the land lived upon, "But," said he, in September If I rightly remember, "It's just about time I moved on." I copied this, not that the verse has any merit, but to show the temptation there is to linger on at a comfortable country hostelry, as I have been tempted to linger often for an extra day or two, instead of travelling on. In this respect a good inn is an enemy to travel. Twice have I had pointed opportunities of confirming this attraction of an inn. I remember spending the night at a cosy little Kentish hostelry, and there I met a man who told me he had come for a week-end only, but so pleased was he with his quarters that he had stayed on three weeks, even regretting that he was obliged to leave on the morrow. But an almost startling incident of the kind I came upon at a sequestered Sussex inn; a fellow-guest there confided in me that he arrived at the inn intending to spend one night only, but so comfortable was he that he decided to stop on from day to day, and the days had grown into three years. He was a homeless bachelor, and "here," said he, "I've found a home, no trouble about servants, no rent or taxes to pay, entertaining company at times without the cost of entertaining; I've only to order what I want to get it." I felt genuinely sorry for the man that he should have to make his home with strangers at an inn, but he did not appear sorry for himself. At that same inn I also stayed a week: the portly landlord of it was the best of fellows--may his shadow never grow less! The landlady as kindly an old soul as ever breathed--long life to her! The maid who waited on me thought nothing of her trouble, the rooms were clean, and there was a large and shady garden attached where I idled many an odd hour pleasantly away, lazily reading a favourite author whilst reclining in a hammock hung between the trees. But these old, unspoilt, home-like inns are not to be found every day, though I know of a few, but wild horses could not drag from me their whereabouts. "I have certainly spent some very enviable hours at inns," remarks Hazlitt. So have I. Do I talk too much of inns? Thackeray says, "It always seems to me very good talk." A big book could be written about inns of the good old-fashioned sort, and yet not exhaust the pleasant subject; but it needs be written lovingly, as Izaak Walton wrote of fishing, so that the two works may lie side by side and ready of reach amongst the treasures of a well-selected library. As I was leaving "The Swan" at Tenbury the landlord informed me that close to my road at Burford, and but a mile away, was a most lovely old church, beautifully decorated, and with some fine gilt and painted altar-tombs. "You really should not miss seeing it," said he. I know not why, but somehow it seemed strange to me for an innkeeper to be so keen about a church. As he was so pressing I promised the landlord I would see the church, and thither I went. I pulled up the car at the corner of a narrow lane that led to the building, proceeding the rest of the way on foot, and on my way I overtook two ladies slowly walking in front of me. I was bold enough to inquire of them, and as politely as I could, whether the church door were open, or if not where I might find the clerk. One of the ladies answered me in a low voice, and with so solemn a look that I felt I had made a mistake in addressing her; however, she said, "The doors are open. It is a quiet day." I thanked her and congratulated myself that I had come on a "quiet day," then I could inspect the church undisturbed and at leisure. I did not then know the significance of a "quiet day." Since I have learnt that a "quiet day" is one wholly devoted to silent prayer and meditation, in church and out of it, and that those taking part in such are supposed not to speak to one another during the day more words than are absolutely necessary. Further, I have been told the story of a parson who, in reply to his bishop offering to conduct "a quiet day" in his parish, declared that what his parishioners required was not "a quiet day" but an earthquake! The church proved to be richly adorned; there were several exceptionally fine altar-tombs in it, more suitable, I thought, to Westminster Abbey than to that little country fane; there too I noticed a beautiful rood-screen, and its fine timber roof had for supporters the carved figures of angels gracefully wrought; three lights, in hanging lamps, were burning before the "altar"; I quite expected to find a faint odour of incense, but this I failed to do. It was a Protestant church after all, though to me it hardly had the look of one. But to those who do not see "the mark of the beast" in an ornate church interior, and in burning lights before the "altar," the effect and richness of such decoration is pleasing. What would one of Cromwell's stern Puritans, could he come to life again and see that church, think of it, I wonder? Without that resurrection it is enough to make him turn uneasily in his grave. One of the tombs against the north chancel wall has the recumbent effigy of Princess Elizabeth of Lancaster under a finely carved canopy; she is represented with longhair bound round with oak leaves; two kneeling angels hold her cushioned head. Her epitaph runs: Here lyeth the bodie of the Most Noble Elizabeth, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, own sister to King Henry IV. * * * * * She died the 4th yere of Henry VI. An. Dni. 1426. So I picked up much unknown, or wholly forgotten, family history on the road. Another magnificent altar-tomb, glorious in gilt and colour, stands in the centre of the church; on this rests the effigy of Edmond Cornewalle, deceased 1508; he is shown in plate armour, his head on his helmet; his feet with gilded spurs are supported by a crowned lion, painted red. If a dead man could behold his monument, this Edmond Cornewalle should be very proud of his. There are other interesting and beautiful tombs, including two heart shrines, but I had to content myself with a hurried glance at these, for people were silently arriving and kneeling in the pews, and some of them looked up so reproachfully at me for wandering about that I felt ashamed I was not like them; and what else could a sinner do, under the circumstances, but take his quiet departure? I had, however, time just to note a wonderfully fine and ancient decorative panel in perfect preservation and of large size in the chancel; this has figures of the apostles painted on it, with sundry coats-of-arms, all done in rich colouring, though what the apostles have to do with coats-of-arms I cannot imagine. As I was leaving the church I was surprised to find, standing just within the porch, an old grandfather's clock marking faithful time, for it looked curiously out of place, almost as much, it struck me, as would a lectern in a drawing-room. So hushed was the church that the subdued tick of the clock was plainly audible, mildly disturbing the Quaker-like quiet of the people gathered there. In the churchyard I observed a beautiful modern stone cross raised on the ancient and worn steps of a former one doubtless destroyed by the Puritans, to whom a cross of any kind was as a red rag to a bull; but there is a cross back in the old place again, as though there had been no such thing as the wrathful Puritan. "See how these Christians love one another," once exclaimed a gentle Japanese pagan when listening to a hot dispute between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic missionary in his own peaceful land. Now I suppose both the Roman Catholic and the Puritans called themselves Christians, but there was little of brotherly love between them! After Burford our road led us up a valley of clear streams and green pastures, bounded ahead by a long line of blue and undulating hills; we crossed one or two grey old stone bridges, so narrow that two vehicles could not pass over them at the same time. Perhaps this slight impediment to travel does not greatly trouble people in these parts, for we met little traffic on the way, only a cart for some miles, and a solitary tramp trudging along disconsolately. We had the country almost to ourselves until we came in sight of the grey old town of Ludlow, one of the most interesting and picturesque towns in England; but to see Ludlow at its best it needs to be approached, as we approached it, from the south, for to the north a collection of ugly modern brick houses has unhappily sprung up, and these are sadly out of harmony with the rest of the age-mellowed buildings. Before the railway was invented was the golden age of pleasure travel--for those who had money in their purses. Then Buggins the builder had done comparatively little harm in the matter of the uglification of the countryside; there was pleasure in posting across country in those picturesque, motorless days. Coming to it from the south, the castle-crowned town of Ludlow greets the traveller with a genuine flavour of antiquity. He enters it, as did the traveller of centuries ago, through a narrow, arched, stone gateway with round flanking towers. The gateway stands "massive and grim across the street," a graphic reminder of the feudal days when Ludlow was surrounded by fortified walls, broken and ruined now, but they can still be traced encircling the town. Then as we drove on we had a glimpse of the famous "Feathers Inn," with its nodding gables, as fine and as well-preserved a specimen of a half-timber hostelry as one may hope to look upon. The interior of this ancient house with its elaborately carved chimney-pieces and enriched plastered ceilings is even more interesting and picturesque than the exterior, and there are many other quaint and beautiful old houses in the town, notably the Reader's House. I should like to unearth the story of the "Feathers," for it looks like an inn with a storied past, else why those stately chambers? But though, on my return home, I searched for this in many books, I could discover nothing certain about it. Probably it was originally the home of some notable personage. We left Ludlow by the broad highway that leads to Shrewsbury, but we soon deserted it for a lane which took us across a wide and breezy common, with an open, shelterless country stretching for miles away in front. Then we observed great banks of louring clouds ahead rapidly approaching, leaving trailing lines of rain behind which blotted out all the distance. Suddenly the wind rose ominously, then followed a low growl of thunder; we were in for a storm, and our road was unpleasantly exposed. However, there was nothing to do but to drive on; then suddenly I espied, a little to the right of our open road, a village almost buried in leafy elms, that together, village and trees, stood out from the plain like a wooded island from the sea. Other shelter was there none, so to that village we sped on apace; it was a race between us and the storm, and we won by barely a minute. Stanton Lacy proved to be the name of the village, and I do not remember ever having been in one so buried in trees before--great branching trees that at one spot afforded us fair shelter from the worst of the storm. Fortunately the storm was short, though sharp, for I do not think our natural umbrella would have provided protection for long. [Illustration: SAXON DOORWAY, STANTON LACY CHURCH.] Having taken shelter close to the church, I thought I would while away the time whilst the rain came down by taking a glance at it, though I had already seen one church that day; for there was nothing else to do but to sit in the car beneath the drip of the trees. After all it was a fortunate storm, for without it I should not have visited that village or its very ancient church, which proved of uncommon interest. A Saxon church of old, I discovered by the "long and short" projecting stone-work on a portion of the building, and by a very perfect though simple Saxon doorway in the north wall having a boldly carved raised cross on the top, and above this a curious bit of ornamentation of which I could make nothing. In the churchyard is an eighteenth-century tombstone to Thomas Davies, whose epitaph runs: Good-natur'd, generous, bold, and free He always was in company; He loved his bottle as a friend, Which soon brought on his latter end. The storm over, we once more resumed our way. The open fields, after Nature's copious shower-bath, were freshly green and smiling; the distant hills of Wenlock Edge stood out shapely and sharply with their fringes of fir against the now bright sky; the air was enchantingly pure and fragrant with the scent of many growing things; the road was dustless, and the brisk breeze fluttered the foliage of the few trees by the way, and sported with the long grasses in the fields as it swept over them, giving a sense of joyous movement everywhere. It was well worth suffering the storm for the after glory of the day, the peaceful evening that followed it, and the clear starlit night succeeding that. The next village we came to was Culmington, a sleepy out-of-the-world spot on the Corve; the ancient church there attracts the eye on account of its fine and uncommon broach spire. There is little else of interest in the place. Next we turned up at the rapidly growing village of Craven Arms, curiously so named from a solitary inn of some pretence that stood there--and still stands, I believe--in the old coaching days, with a wonderful tall milestone in front of it, on which are recorded the names and distances of no less than thirty-six towns, near and afar, so important a centre of travel was the "Craven Arms"--the hostelry, that is--in past times. Now it is an important railway junction, and round about the once solitary inn has grown a large village that promises in turn and time to grow into a small town, though for the name of a village that of Craven Arms sounds strange in my ears. CHAPTER IX Place names--Bell ringing for lost travellers--A Robber's Grave and its story--Wild Wales--A picturesque interior--The fascination of the moors--Machynlleth--A Royal and ancient house--Ten miles of beauty--Aberdovey--Tramps and their ways--The poetical tramp. Out of Craven Arms I took the fine old coach road that leads to Shrewsbury, intent on seeing Church Stretton on the way, for I had heard much in praise of the scenery round about that quiet little Shropshire town. From my map I gathered that the road for some miles went between high hills, and so promised me a pleasant drive, for I am a lover of hills. Of the ten miles or so on to Church Stretton one spot alone now comes back distinctly to my memory, a spot where I was sadly tempted to desert the broad highway for a tempting lane that led westward into a mystery of moorlands. I had some difficulty in resisting the temptation, but I desired to see Church Stretton. For once I had a definite destination before me, yet I almost wished I had not, for it robbed me of my freedom. First we came to Little Stretton, where we had for company the ancient Roman Watling Street with its parvenu follower, the railway. I wonder will the railway endure as long as the Roman road has done! Soon afterwards we found ourselves in Church Stretton, with the green hills rising grandly around and forming a pleasant background to the straggling, old-fashioned town built along the sides of the highway; hence, possibly, its name is derived from Street Town, but this is mere guessing, and in guessing you sometimes go sadly wrong, as I found out once when I deemed I was certainly right. In Sussex there are two villages not very far apart--one is called Friston, the other Alfriston. Now I jumped to the conclusion that Alfriston meant Old Friston, to distinguish it from the younger village; but a learned antiquary would have none of my guessing, he declaring that Alfriston stood for Alfric's tun or town, it having been given by the king to one Alfric, lord of the manor, who gave the place his name. At Church Stretton we tarried a time, but I am not going to describe the familiar; the guide-book writers have written fully of the place. I do not desire to enter into a needless competition with them. Merely will I say that those who love hill rambles and scrambles will not be disappointed with the country round about Church Stretton, for it is a pedestrian's paradise. The churchyard there contains one or more curious epitaphs; that to Ann Cook, who died in 1814, runs: On a Thursday she was born, On a Thursday made a bride, On a Thursday broke her leg, And on a Thursday died. In old times I was told the church bell was rung on foggy days and nights, as a guide to the town for travellers who might be lost on the hills around; now they are not so thoughtful for the fate of befogged wayfarers. Not that I think that the ringing of a bell is really of much guidance under such circumstances, for once I lost myself on the South Downs in as dense a fog as well could be, and though I heard some church bells in the distance faintly ringing, I could not make out with any certainty from what direction the sound of the bells came; in truth they rather confused than helped me. On to Shrewsbury a change gradually came over the scenery; we left the hills behind and entered into a pleasantly undulating, pastoral country. We dallied not in Shrewsbury, but drove straight through that ancient and interesting town, for who that professes to know his own country knows not Shrewsbury by the winding Severn side? My object was not to revisit places I knew full well, however attractive these places might be; I was in search of the fresh and the unfamiliar. Being at Shrewsbury, after a glance at my map I suddenly made up my mind to strike from there right through the heart of Central Wales to Aberdovey and the sea, steering, roughly, a westerly course as the roads permitted. A longing to get a glimpse of wild Wales had taken possession of me, to refresh my eyes by a sight of its tumbling rivers, foaming falls, lone mountains, and heathery boulder-strewn moors. Then this portion of Wales being out of the general tourist beat, I looked forward to seeing it in its native simplicity. I would I could have seen North Wales in the days of David Cox before the railway and the cheap tripper had invaded and vulgarised it, the days when Bettws-y-Coed was a poor and primitive village, before the "Royal Oak" there--then the haunt of tweed-clad artists and cheery anglers--was converted from a homely little inn into a flourishing hotel where noisy tourists mostly congregate. I am afraid I am a selfish man, for, amongst the mountains, the only company I crave is the landscape painter, the honest angler, and the weather-beaten shepherd; these are in unobtrusive harmony with their surroundings, and claim their part in it from ancient right. Crossing the Welsh Bridge at Shrewsbury, we followed, for some long way, a winding road through a country given over to farming; a country of fields, hedgerows, and growing crops, of sleepy hamlets and stray farmsteads; idyllic but unexciting. Still, there were peeps of hills and the promise of wilder things in the vague beyond to which we were bound. No amount of disappointment robs the beyond of its glamour, for the unknown unfailingly attracts, the disenchantment of to-day may be followed by the surprise of to-morrow. Yet distance is but a gay deceiver; where we may be at any moment, is not that the delectable distance to others far away? "The delusion that distance creates contiguity destroys." We kept steering a westerly course to the best of our ability, and on the whole we succeeded in doing so fairly well, trusting to arrive somehow and at some time at Aberdovey. Who has not heard of the sweet bells of Aberdovey?--I know not whether they ring sweetly still, for no bells rang for us when we were there. For many miles the scenery, though pleasant enough, was devoid of special character, but as we progressed the country grew wilder and the villages lost their indefinable English look; we had not arrived in Wales, but we were nearing the borderland. Long Mountain rose grandly to our right, clear cut as a Grecian statue against the sky, and to our left the curiously-shaped range of hills known as the Stipperstones stood prominently forth, their summits broken by huge rugged rocks, "the fragments of an earlier world," that stand boldly forth from them. According to a local legend, at times on stormy nights "Wild Edric," an ancient warrior chief, may be seen riding in the air above the Stipperstones, and when he is seen it forebodes some calamity. Give me the West Country for legends! I have heard of ghostly huntsmen with their yeth-hounds being seen there; of ghostly highwaymen; of headless horsemen who pursue lone travellers at night on lonely roads; of the ghosts of men and horses who once a year, on the anniversary of the battle of Sedgemoor, may be heard a-galloping away from that fatal field; and of the Devil himself riding across country, whose horse once cast a shoe, when the Devil called at a blacksmith's to have it re-shod, and how the blacksmith declared he caught a glimpse of his Satanic majesty's cloven foot beneath his cloak--and this within the memory of living man! Most singular is the formation of the Stipperstones. Of course there are sundry legends to account for these gigantic rocks that strew the crests of the hills, as though some cyclopean city had been ruined there, and the Devil plays a prominent part in all. How busy the Devil appears to have been in England during the old days! I call to mind the Devil's Leap, the Devil's Dyke, the Devil's Bridge, the Devil's Punch Bowl, the Devil's Stone, the Devil's Den, the Devil's Frying-pan, and many another spot named after him. The one sin of idleness cannot be placed at his door. Then as we drove on Marton Mere, church, and village made a pleasant diversion, and shortly afterwards the tiny old town of Montgomery came into view, climbing the steep hillside, with its ruined castle above, and tumble of hills beyond. From this point Montgomery presents such a picture as Turner loved to paint--a prominent castle, grey and old, a sleepy little town below, with dreamy hills beyond, and a winding road leading the eye towards them. When last I was at Montgomery--let me see, that was over twenty long years ago. Alas, how time flies! Still, however I may have changed, the old town looks to me just as it did then; it is one of those delightful, remote places that never seem to change, let the outer world wag as it will--Well, twenty years or so ago the clerk (may he be alive and as well as I!) showed me the Robber's Grave in a quiet corner of the churchyard there, a grave on which no grass will grow, in proof of which the grave was pointed out to me, a bare spot roughly in the shape of a coffin, when all around was freshly green. Whether the grave be still bare I know not, for my present road did not lead me into the town; I almost wish now I had gone the short distance out of my way to reinspect the spot. This is the story I noted down at the time of the Robber's Grave as told to me by the said clerk, only retold in brief. A certain John Newton, a long while ago, was accused of highway robbery, convicted and sentenced to be hanged, such an offence being then punished by death. On the scaffold Newton loudly proclaimed his innocence, exclaiming, "I have prayed God in proof of my innocence that no grass may grow on my grave." I forget now how many years the clerk told me he had been clerk there, but they were many, during which period he had carefully watched the grave, but not a blade of grass would grow upon it. Fresh sods had been laid there, but they withered away even in one night; the earth was dug up and grass seeds sown, but they would not come up, so the grave remained bare and brown. "I've been clerk here for all those long years," said he, "and I'm only telling you the truth." I cannot say why, but that clerk reminded me of another of the fraternity who exclaimed to a certain Dean he had shown over his church, "I've been clerk here for now over forty years and never missed a service, and, thank God, I'm still a Christian"! So small a town is Montgomery, though the capital of the shire, that a man, it is said, who once tramped there in search of work, inquired in the town how far it was to Montgomery, for he thought he was merely passing through a village on the way to that place. Now our road wound round the side of a wooded hill, from which there was a fine view of the country; and in this wood I sought shelter from the sultry sun and rested there awhile for refreshment, when the birds began to sing for my special entertainment, for there was no one else for them to sing to, and the "Wind, that grand old harper," struck his harp of pines by my side and played a soft accompaniment. Reclining at ease on a mossy bank I smoked a fragrant pipe, well pleased with my wayside hostelry, my comfortable couch, and the music provided with my meal. "The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seems after all a gentle habitable place," says Stevenson. Only at night in the summer time do I desire to "cower" into a house, and that for the convenience of it; indeed the only room I can suffer on a summer day is a library walled round with a goodly company of books, and with just a picture here and there of a pleasant landscape for my eyes, when in a lazy mood, to rest upon. On winter days, when the wild Nor'-easter blows and the rain and hail descend, I grant it is good to be indoors; then give me a seat in a good old-fashioned ingle-nook with a blazing wood fire upon the wide hearth before me, the sweet incense of it reminiscent of the forest. As Richard Jefferies says, "The wood gives out as it burns the sweetness it has imbibed through its leaves from the atmosphere which floats above grass and flowers." Once more on the road we dropped down into a valley and soon came to the Severn again, here in its youth lashing and frolicking along--how good it is to be young and gay! So we followed the rejoicing river up to Newton, where I took the precaution of filling my petrol tank before making my dash across wild Wales. The man who sold me the petrol asked me where I was going--this, as he politely explained, in case he might give me any information as to the route. Such is the friendliness of the road. When I told him where I was bound, he exclaimed, "You've got a lovely drive before you, through the most beautiful scenery." I was glad to hear this, though I expected much of the country, and I was pleased to find that the vendor of petrol had a thought for the scenic charms around. He was not a mere vendor of petrol, though he courteously supplied it to a needful world. Soon after leaving Newton we entered upon a pleasant valley, as pleasant a valley indeed as shapely hills, shady woods, and a sparkling river running through it could make a valley; an uncommercial clear-running river, for it turned no mill by its banks as far as I could see. Its only concern was to be beautiful, and after all that is no small concern. Clouds appear as devoted to the hills as a lover to his lass, and here we found the clouds prevailing over the blue sky, shadowing for a time the hills; then as the clouds passed over them, and a gleam of sunshine came, the hillsides would stand forth all in glowing colour, purple where the heather grew, glowing with gold where the gorse was in bloom, a yellow green on their grassy slopes, and a gleaming grey where the wet rocks showed. For the rich and varied colour of its landscapes I know no country to compare with Wales, though it has its dull days, of course, like most other lands. So we drove on in contemplative enjoyment, and then we came to Carno, a tiny hamlet pleasantly placed on a crag above the voiceful river that would be heard as well as seen. I wish all Welsh villages had such easily spelt and such pronounceable names as Carno; for many a day and many a time, when I have been on the road in Wales, have I been unable to ask my way because I could not pronounce the names of places so that a Welshman could understand me. What can you make of a gathering of consonants, with only a stray vowel here and there amongst the lot? At Carno I espied a homely little inn, the "Aleppo Merchant," to wit, though what possible connection there could be between an Eastern merchant and this remote and tiny village I could not fathom. There I pulled up and called for a glass of ale as an excuse to take a glance at the interior of the old house in case it were answerable to its exterior, for some of these Welsh houses within are most picturesque; nor was I disappointed. There I caught sight of a low, brown-beamed, ceilinged room--I think it was the kitchen, for there was a fire in it though the day was warm, and above the fireplace, arranged in orderly array, were sundry old brass utensils, so brightly polished as to glow like gold; and mingled with these were some pewter pots that shone like silver, and how pleasant they were to look upon. For decorative effect there is nothing like blue and white china, and polished brass and pewter, and they are all as much at home in a mansion as in a cottage. Hanging from the beams I saw a goodly display of hams, no less than thirty-four in all, for I carefully counted them out of curiosity. "Home-cured," the maid who served me with my ale declared. I thought I would buy one, for home-cured hams are not easy to come by nowadays, and such a ham is a delicacy to be enjoyed. But they were not for sale; not even one of them would they spare me, though I did not haggle about the price. "We want them all for ourselves," explained the maid, and with that she went away to serve another customer. I thought to myself these Welsh country people do not fare so badly. [Illustration: A BIT OF WILD WALES.] Some way beyond Carno we began to climb out of the valley and reached a wide moorland, encircled by misty mountains. A moorland waste enlivened only by the dreary gleams of peaty pools, but how buoyant and bracing were the breezes that blew over it! The air was inspiriting if the scene was not. From the moorland we descended steeply to the Tal valley with its tumbling river by our side making wild music as it dashed on its downward way. We were Amongst a multitude of hills, Crags, woodlands, waterfalls, and rills. That describes our road in two short but sufficient lines, and what need is there of more? At Cemmaes we found ourselves in the wider valley of the Dovey; then we rose again to another moorland high above it, with far-reaching prospects over the river to a confusion of bare hill-tops rising above the deep woods below. The Dovey is a river much favoured by fishermen, as our eyes bore witness, but one irate angler I afterwards met, who had fished it without success, declared to me that there were more fishermen on its banks than fish in the stream. Possibly he was prejudiced; possibly the river is much poached, for the Welshman is a born poacher, though, being religiously minded, I am told he considers it a sin to poach on Sundays. I did not reach Aberdovey that night, for as I drove into Machynlleth, a town of unpronounceable name to me, the rain came down, and finding a good inn there I proceeded no farther, though Aberdovey was but ten miles on, but it was late and at Machynlleth I was certain of my quarters. Aberdovey could wait. There were two fishermen in the porch of my inn when I arrived; they had just returned from the river with empty creels. "It will be a good day to-morrow for fishing after the rain," one of them consolingly exclaimed. What virtue there lies in to-morrow and in the promise of it! In the smoke-room that evening I discovered a man poring, and apparently puzzling, over some maps and guide-books, so I ventured to ask if I could be of any assistance. I learnt from him that he was a courier and was travelling in a motor-car with a lady and her daughter from the States, and that he was planning their route for the morrow; but what truly astonished me was his statement that his party had come over to England solely to see the moors and the mountains, and that he was instructed to avoid all large towns as far as possible. It certainly struck me as passing strange that any American should come to England in search of wildness to the avoidance of old-world places. "We've had a rough journey of it," the courier exclaimed. "We landed at Southampton, made straight for Dartmoor, then we did Exmoor, now we're doing the Welsh mountains in the most deserted districts, next we're off to do the Yorkshire moors, then we're going the round of Scotland. We've had awful roads, and the chauffeur does not much fancy the job. No more do I, for that matter, but when a woman with money has got a whim in her head, she's bound to carry it out. It's the funniest journey I've ever undertaken." The rain was dashing against the window-panes. "What a day we shall have to-morrow over the mountains," said the courier; "whatever the weather, off we go; I've got to see the thing through, and to be at Liverpool at a certain date to catch the steamer." I found some entertainment in the conversation, and though I am prepared for surprises on the road, I was hardly prepared for such a surprise as this--an American to come to England in search of wildness. But one may travel till one ceases to wonder at anything. Now when I come to think of it, I do remember some years ago meeting at Warwick two American ladies who were on a driving tour, and who told me what impressed them most in the Old Country was "the weird wildness of the moors where the world seemed as though it had only just been created; we thought to see nothing but meadows and cultivated fields," continued they, "and we've found solitudes." So did John Burroughs, by the way, during his English wanderings. Now that the motor-car has been invented you meet American travellers on motor-cars in the most out-of-the-way and unexpected places, and they appear to delight in them and in their discovery. Columbus discovered America; now the Americans have set about the discovery of rural England. Soon there will be nothing left in the world to discover. Then one of the fishermen came in, but he never broached the subject of fishing; he appeared to take more interest in my tour than in his sport. I left the subject of conversation to him. He asked me where I had come from that day, and when I told him, I was interested to learn that he too was a well-seasoned road traveller who, like myself, knew his roads better than his Bradshaw, and that he considered the drive from Newton to Machynlleth one of the most beautiful in the kingdom, "because it is so changeful and so continuously pleasant." Truly it has no presiding peak, no particular waterfall, no old castle, no special _coup d'oeil_, no shrine for the tourist to worship at, nothing that you feel bound to admire whether in the humour or no, so you can quietly jog on your way without fatigue of mind or eye, without a thought of missing this or that you ought to see and friends expect you to see and perhaps praise. Where all is interesting there is no special assertive point of interest, and for one I prefer my scenic meal served thus. I certainly can commend that drive, and during the whole length of it I met no other car, so I imagine it is not a much-travelled road, unless it were the chance of circumstance that no motorists were in evidence then. It is an easy road, too, with only one really steep hill on all the way from Newton to Aberdovey. Machynlleth is a cheerful town, which all Welsh towns are not; its wide main street is lined with trees, and what adds to the pleasantness of the place is its fortunate position in the sheltered Dovey valley from which rise wooded hills around; after Conway I think it is the cleanest and pleasantest town in Wales. Though it possesses no castle to centre its interest, or church of note, still it boasts of some old buildings that have the charm of character. One very ancient and historic building is the "Royal House," though its plastered front effectually disguises its ancientness, nor is there anything about it to suggest its past importance, but there it was in 1402 that Owen Glyndwr was crowned King of Wales, and there he held his Parliament, and within its walls his life was attempted by one David Gam. In this very house, too, Charles I. slept a night on his way to Chester. I was informed that the walls of the building were in parts of Roman masonry, so old is it, but as the walls are plastered over I had to take this statement on faith. Still it is within the bounds of probability, for the Romans had a fortified station at Machynlleth "to keep the troublesome mountaineers in order." There is also another house, with some fine carving within, known as the "Mayor's House," on which the inhabitants set much store, though I saw little in it; it is a mildly picturesque structure of half-timber, with two large dormer-windows above, a building that strikes an odd note in a land of stone. On the front of it boldly carved in oak is the following enlightening inscription-- 1628. I. OWEN. PVQHIOVXOR. That is all of interest the town has to show, as far as I could discover or hear about; the scenery around is its chief attraction. Finding my quarters and the company at my inn to my liking, I determined to stay there over the next day, just putting through the spare time by driving to Aberdovey and back, by way of a partial rest from continuous travelling. The beauty of the road from Machynlleth to Aberdovey was a surprise to me; the drive was infinitely more rewarding than the object of the drive. First we crossed the Dovey by a fine stone bridge (would that the Welshmen built their chapels as beautifully!) at a spot where the river chattered and danced over its pebbly shallows, and where its quiet pools were green with the reflection of the shady woods by its sides. For the rest of the way our road with many a bend wound about the base of the wooded hills, with the river brightly gliding on the other hand; now our road rounded a projecting crag, now it dipped down to rise again, following faithfully the natural bent of the land; it could not well do otherwise, unless it blasted its way through rocks and tunnelled under the hills. Had it been carefully engineered it would not have been half as pleasant; its very waywardness was the charm of it. Each bend of the road revealed some fresh combination of wood and hill, of rock and river, and the last bend of it the sea cheerfully gleaming in the sunshine. Beneath the woods and on the banks by the wayside the waving bracken flourished, forming a soft background to the many wild-flowers growing there, amongst which the stately foxglove, "chieftain of the wayside flowers," showed prominently. Approaching Aberdovey we had a fine view over the wide estuary of the Dovey, that almost looked like a lake with its background of hills. A signpost pointing "To the Roman Road" brought to mind the times remote when even the wild Welshman in these far-off mountain fastnesses felt the strong and extended arm of the Roman power. Then we came to the open sea, smooth and smiling as though there were never any hurt in it; it lapped the rocky shore in a friendly fashion without hardly a splash or a sound, a plaything fit for a child, as though it never longed for the wind, or the wreck of a ship, or took toll of the lives of men. Aberdovey neither pleased nor disappointed me. I knew it was a watering-place, so I found what I expected: a row of ordinary houses, having apartments to let, facing the sea; a watering-place saved from being wholly uninteresting by a little jetty jutting out into the water, where at the time of our coming two coasting schooners lay alongside discharging their cargoes, a few shoremen looking languidly on. There is always a certain charm about ships of the old-fashioned sort, a suggestion of adventure; and what finer sight can there be than a ship in full sail on the sea? A sight that, alas, is a rare one to-day! How monotonous is the long, level line of the sea's horizon without a ship in sail on it; for a steamer is dark and is not the same thing to the eye as a sailer. One point about Aberdovey is that the distant Welsh mountains in part break this horizon line pleasantly. I was glad to get back to Machynlleth, for it made no pretence of being anything but a quiet little country town at which the traveller might take his ease. I spent the evening seated in the porch of "mine inn" a-chatting with "mine host," having also an eye to the people on the road, and so to the life and the humours of the place. With the help of the landlord to tell me who was who, as far as he knew, and what part each one played on the town's stage, I was entertained enough. I think amongst the loiterers, if I had been a novelist, I could have picked out a character or two of service. Plots may get exhausted, but characters seem inexhaustible. Amongst the numbers of passers-by I noticed a poor specimen of humanity in the shape of a footweary tramp; and though I have so often been taken in by tramps, yet he looked so pitiful an object that I had a mind to take compassion on him to the extent of a whole sixpence; for how could I sit there, who had dined and was even indulging in the infrequent luxury of a cigar, and behold a fellow-mortal go by in need and not hold forth a helping hand? The landlord, too, had noticed him. "Look at that man," exclaimed he. "I know him well. He's on one of his yearly tramps. Always comes to Machynlleth regularly. Never did a day's work in his life. As lazy a good-for-nothing fellow as ever trod the road." I presumed the landlord knew, so hardening my heart I kept my sixpence in my pocket. One might scarcely think it of so unprepossessing a person, but I have found the tramp to be occasionally an amusing individual, that is, when I have got him alone on the road and obtained his confidence--to accomplish which needs considerable diplomacy, a professed sympathy with his lot, and a certain expenditure of coin of the realm to prove such sympathy; then, when in a confidential mood, my tramp has more than once given me an insight into the sort of life he leads, and has even gloried in his mendacity, and has recorded with much self-satisfaction the way he manages to live and find shelter without doing a stroke of work. Such a one, as far as I can gather, would tramp the country even though weary and wet through at times, live on anything, rather than work. How is a man like that to be dealt with? He takes no pride in himself or anything; he has not even a character to lose. "It's a pretty poor life at times, I own," said one of the tribe to me; "but it's the only life worth living, it's so gloriously free. Take one day with another, it's not such a bad life after all in fine weather, and I always has my pipe and bit of 'baccy with me by way of company. I never got any pleasure out of life till I took to the road. Well, sometimes it's a bit lonely, but I can generally manage to pick up a companion on the way. We are a friendly lot, we tramps be," and so on. Whether it is their lonely life or otherwise I cannot say, but it seems that some tramps are addicted to composing poetry. Here, for example, is a trifle, expressing his sentiments, that a certain tramp left behind him scribbled on a casual ward (at Newark I think it was):-- The sailor loves his good old ship, The soldier loves his camp; But give to me the good old road, To live and die a tramp. Some year or two back the Chief Constable of Berkshire, according to my morning paper, when discussing the subject of vagrancy before a meeting of the Charity Organisation Society, quoted the following verses written by a prisoner on the wall of his cell, as illustrating the predilection of tramps even for prison rather than work:-- I cannot take my walks abroad, I'm under lock and key, And much the public I applaud For all their care of me. The lowest pauper in the street Half naked I behold, Whilst I am clad from head to feet And covered from the cold. Thousands there are who scarce can tell Where they may lay their head, But I've a warm and well-aired cell, A bath, good books, and bed. Whilst they are fed on workhouse fare And grudged their scanty food, Three times a day my meals I get, Sufficient, wholesome, good. Then to the British public "Health," Who all our care relieves; And when they treat us as they do, They'll never want for thieves. CHAPTER X Mallwyd--Falling waters--Dinas Mawddwy--Amongst the moors and mountains--A wild drive--A farmer's logic--A famous old inn--A fisherman's tale--A Roman inscribed stone--Brass to old Thomas Parr--A cruel sport--Wem and its story--A chat with "mine host"--Hawkestone and its wonders. We left Machynlleth on a blustery morning when the wild west wind was out for a rampage across country, and who could say it nay? We retraced the road we came by for a short distance, but the landscape had a fresh look seen in the reverse direction; then we turned up the narrow Dyfi valley, hills rising near and bare on either hand, those to the right mist-crowned and scarred by numberless streams that would be torrents, which had worn for themselves long stony channels on the steep hillside, and down these they dashed, milk-white in their mimic, harmless fury, filling the valley with the sound of their complainings. A hill ... that shows Inscribed upon its visionary sides The history of many a winter storm. It was a day full of movement; the clouds above were hounded along relentlessly by the hurrying wind that even blew the birds on the wing about--a wind that played riot with the woods, tossing the tops of the trees this way and that, swaying their branches even to breaking one here and there, and surring through their leaves with a sound like that of a stormy sea heard afar off. The air was full of the confused sounds of the roaring wind and raging waters. The clouds above looked drooping and threatening, but the wind trailed them along and drove them over the mountains before they had time to do much mischief, tearing some even to shreds. Nature was at play that day, and in as rampageous a mood as ever a schoolboy out for a holiday; but no mood of hers would have suited better the bare hills and bleak mountains, for, as Coleridge remarks, "there is always something going on amongst the mountains in stormy weather." There was a good deal going on that day, and loud was the din of the contending elements, and rough the embrace of the wind. At the end of the valley we found ourselves at Mallwyd, a tiny hamlet consisting of a cottage or two, a curious and ancient church, and an old-fashioned little stone-built inn half drowned in dark ivy. Mallwyd is a lonely spot shut in by gloomy mountains; its inn is the fit resort of anglers and artists, for who else, except perhaps a poet, would seek such solitary quarters, unless it were some one who desired to flee mankind? The old inn appealed to me, so far removed from the busy world it seemed, so restful with all around so full of unrest, its strong stone walls fit to bear the buffeting of all weathers; such strong walls it needed, and it looked so cosy, solid, and comfortable, in such contrast with the inhospitable country about and the wild winds that were raging. In front of the inn, overhung by drooping trees, is a deep ravine down which the flooded river rushed and roared, a ravine spanned by a grey old bridge; and this with the tumbling, churning waters below, the dark, damp, shining rocks, the boulders that would impede the river's rush, the green, dripping, and trembling foliage of the trees above, made a picture to be remembered--"A roaring dell, o'er-wooded, narrow, deep." There on the bridge I stood awhile watching the turmoil of the waters; for a space they glided smoothly but swiftly over the rounded rocks with a polished surface clear as crystal, only the occasional and sudden darting lines of white foam and bubbles revealing their movement; then they broke and crashed into the dark pools beneath, sending their spray up on to the rocks and trees, which in turn dropped back beads of moisture into the whirling waters below. Strange that watching the restless waters should have given me a feeling of rest, but so it did; and do not some people find rest by the restless sea? Great is the fascination that falling water has for certain people, and of the number I am one. Give me a mountain torrent in some wild and rocky glen remote in the wilderness, and let me be there alone, then I can, for an hour or more, contentedly watch its mad downward dash and mazy side-plays, its plunges and its plashings, its struggles with the boulders it overleaps and that itself has brought down but to obstruct its troubled course; its changeful colours, here silvery and bright in the shine of the sun, there dark and porter-hued in the shade of the rocks, a translucent amber tint where just escaping from the shelving rocks, with many greens above; and the bass roar of it sounds like music to my ears, the memory of which brings to me a sense of deep refreshment when in the thronged and bustling town; and sometimes at night in the roar of the streets' traffic I fancy I hear again the torrent's hoarse voice. From Mallwyd we went to Dinas Mawddwy, a little more than a mile away, a village veritably walled in by high mountains that rise close and sheer around. It lies at the bottom of a mighty rock-girt cup. When we were there the mountains were roofed across with clouds, so they might have been of any height our fancy pleased. Dinas Mawddwy oppressed me with a sense of gloom--not but what there was a certain grandeur about its gloom, but the mountains around looked so dark, dreary, and enclosing. The place obsessed me, it had such an eerie look under the louring sky; I was glad to get out of it. The prevailing gloom depressed my spirits, a depression that lasted till I got far away on to the wide open moors. I love mountains, to be on them, but I do not care to be imprisoned in them. Returning to Mallwyd we began to climb high amongst the hills; it was a wild, glorious drive, one vastly to be enjoyed, though on our exposed road we came in for a rare buffeting with the wind, but little we heeded that. Right bracing we found it, a tonic of tonics. As we rose the clouds began to break, and great patches of bright blue showed overhead; then frequent bursts of sunshine raked the distant mountains and swept over the moors, causing the wet rocks to glitter here and there, revealing too, now and again, a sparkling rill or a gleaming pool, so enlivening the wide waste of green and dull grey. We had exchanged mountain gloom for mountain glory. It was a fine landscape, delightful in its spaciousness and far-receding distances. Having climbed some miles we began a gradual descent to a sheltered hollow, where we entered into a straggling wood that had a civil look after the bareness of the mountains and the bleakness of the moors. Here our road took a sudden bend and crossed a deep dell boldly spanned by a one-arched bridge, and beyond the bridge we looked up to a cleft in the hills down which a tumbling stream left its white and broken trail, a stream that lost itself for a space in the woods below to shortly reappear again. This was one of the beauty-spots of the journey. The wooded dell, the grey bridge spanning it in one leap, the water falling and foaming down the dark rocks of the mountain side, the tawny-coloured stream below the bridge--altogether what a picture they made! "It seemed but a comparatively short and easy step from Nature to the canvas or to the poem" at that captivating spot! Leaving the wooded glen we came to the open moors again, moors strewn with great weather-stained boulders that have lain there untold ages, before the stones of the Pyramids were hewn or the monoliths of Stonehenge raised from the ground, lain there since the close of the last geological epoch--some old writers indeed have declared "since God created the world." Centuries come and go, kingdoms wax and wane, but the moors remain the same, unchanged, and apparently unchangeable, in an age of change, in an age when most of the land is tilled to the uttermost. Here was a solitude with nothing but the mountains and the moors for the eyes to look upon; the wind had dropped, and great was the silence prevailing except for the faint tinkling of unseen rills that made the silence seem the more profound--not the comparative silence of the countryside, which to the attentive listener is not silence at all. [Illustration: WELSH MOUNTAINS AND MOORLANDS.] Gradually we dropped down to where the moors gave place to more kindly soil, though treeless and open still excepting for some rough and low stone walls by the roadside, but of what service (there being only hardy Welsh sheep dotted sparsely about) I could not imagine, for such sheep can climb a wall as well as any man; the only way to confine them is to place thorn branches along the tops of the walls, held there by big stones on them; even this arrangement sometimes fails, for the sheep are apt to pull down both branches and stones. As we descended we came to patches of cultivated fields, and these increased till most of the land was enclosed and tilled, or under grass, so the scene became tamer. At the beginning of our descent we espied, close to the road, a lone farmhouse with a large water-wheel by the side of its outbuildings, so that the farmer, enlightened man, evidently utilised the power provided by the running streams instead of letting it go to waste, presumably to do his threshing, corn-grinding, chaff-cutting, and possibly churning, to the saving of labour. In a village I know the water-mill there grinds corn by day and generates electricity at night for its inhabitants, thus doing double duty. Rather different to a certain village in Essex where a meeting of the inhabitants--so I read in my morning paper--was held as to the lighting of it. At the meeting a local farmer opposed the project on the ground that "the Creator would have provided light if it had been necessary in the country at night," and strange to say, but true all the same, the lighting scheme was abandoned, though possibly on account of the expense and not because of the farmer's logic. Then we left the hills behind and came down into a green and fertile valley and to "Cann Office Inn"--why so curiously called I cannot say. "What's in a name?" says Shakespeare. Now I think there is much in a name; Aberdovey has a pleasant sound, but Cann Office is not a name suggestive of rural pleasantness, yet "Cann Office Inn" is a charming, old-fashioned, comfortable-looking wayside hostelry, ivy-covered to boot, and it boasts a restful garden; moreover, it is set in the heart of a lovely country far from the sight and sound of the fussy railway, though to be reached by the ubiquitous motor-car, for where goes the road there comes the car. Truly I wish the car was not so ubiquitous; indeed, oftentimes I find myself looking longingly and selfishly back to the desirable old days when the motor-car was not, when I travelled either afoot or by horses, slowly perhaps but contentedly enough on the then little-travelled, peaceful country roads, and took my ease at quiet rural inns, feeling fairly certain of accommodation and even of the best room of the house; now I do not feel so certain of either, nor of the old-time quiet--inns that in those days seemed so remote, and I delighted to give myself up to the delusion of their remoteness. How pleasantly those past wanderings linger in my memory, when in the country you were sure of finding peace and often solitude away from the railway! There is no getting away from the car or the sound of its horn. But vain is the cry of Backward Ho! "Cann Office Inn" was a famous hostelry in the good old coaching and posting era, so I have heard, and that there our hard-drinking ancestors made right merry over their glasses-- In the past Georgian day When men were less inclined to say That time is gold, and overlay With toil their pleasure. Nor troubled they about the morrow--or the gout. Unlike many other coaching inns, Cann Office never seems to have fallen upon evil days, for when it lost its travelling and posting custom, anglers, just in the nick of time, happily discovered it, and ever since have haunted the troutful rivers and streams around. One angler indeed said to me, "If you can't catch fish here, you won't catch them anywhere." By my map I see that the rivers Banwy, Gam, and Twrch meet close at hand, and many a minor stream runs near by. "Twrch"--there is a fine specimen of a Welsh name, without a vowel in it, for a Saxon to pronounce! Truly it is short, but there are others that are long, and still have not a helpful vowel in all their astonishing array of consonants. An angler friend, who in years gone by had fished the rivers about Cann Office, told me that on bringing back his catch to the inn one day, by some mischance his fish got mixed with those of another angler who had fished another river there. He was somewhat vexed, but the landlord said he could quite easily sort them out, for the trout of the one river differed in appearance from the trout of the other--and he sorted them to the satisfaction of both parties. The same angler friend told me a story, for the truth of which he vouched. It appears that though a fairly good fisherman there were days when his sport was poor, and even he had to return at times with an empty creel, yet another angler there on those very days generally came back to the inn with a more or less satisfactory show of fish. So he consulted a native on the matter who knew, or was supposed to know, all about local conditions. The native replied that the man mentioned had a special fly to which the trout rose greedily, but he kept it a secret. One day, however, the man lost his cast on the branches of a tree; this the native discovered and recovered, and, for a consideration, handed to my friend. "All's fair in love--and fishing," so my friend sent the fly to his rod-and-tackle maker to be copied. The fly was unlike any fly my friend had ever seen, but he used it with marked success, and during the rest of his stay he used no other. At Llanerfyl, a little village beyond Cann Office, I pulled up to inspect a long printed notice I observed on the church door there. I found this related to the proposed Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Welsh Church. A great deal has been said of late, both in Parliament and out of it, about the neglect of the Welsh parsons of their parishes in past times. But to go back to the eighteenth century, here is the story told by the author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, published in 1772, who in his Welsh wanderings found "a poor Welsh vicar of the diocese of Llandaff, sitting in his humble kitchen paring turnips for dinner, while he read a book and listened to one of his children repeating his lesson." Then he repeats what the vicar said to him:-- "Now you must observe, sir, that after spending some years in the University and taking a Master of Arts degree, I am possessed of a little rectory of about £30 a year, and of this vicarage which, if I could make the most of it, might bring me in £20 more. Now each of these preferments these poor people consider a noble benefit, and though you see in what way I live, yet because I am possessed of half a dozen spoons and a silver tankard, they envy me as living in a princely state and lording it over God's heritage. And, what is worse, as my whole income in this parish arises from the small tithes, because I cannot afford to let them cheat me out of half my dues, they represent me as carnal and worldly-minded, and as one who regards nothing but the good things of this life, and who is always making disturbances in the parish, and this prejudice against me prevents my doing that good amongst them which I sincerely wish to do. One man has left the church and walks miles to a Methodist meeting, because I took one pig out of seven as the law directs; another has complained to the Bishop of my extortion because I would not take three shillings and sixpence in lieu of tithes for a large orchard, as my predecessor had done. In short, sir, there are two or three Dissenters in the parish, who give out that all tithes are remnants of Popery; and would have the clergy consider meat and drink as types and shadows, which ought to have been abolished with the Levitical Law." In the churchyard of Llanerfyl I noticed a large and ancient yew-tree, its extended branches shadowing the ground far around, its roots amongst the dead. In the shade of it I discovered what I took to be, from the look, the shape, and the lettering on it, a Roman inscribed stone, a stone weathered and worn, with much of the inscription wasted away; still, with difficulty, I managed to decipher a part of it--not that the deciphering left me much the wiser--and this is what I recovered:-- HIC . . . . . . . . . . . . D . . . . . . . GEDLAPA TERMIN . . AN . . XII . N . Our road presently followed alongside the river Banwy, a river overhung with trees through which we caught constant silvery peeps of it tumbling over its bed of shelving rocks in shallow murmuring falls, anon resting, here and there, in many a quiet pool where the big trout lie hidden, or should do so. The English language, and perhaps all others, needs a word to express the sound of falling water--"gurgling" and "plashing" are the nearest I can think of, but they hardly fulfil the need. Then Llanfair village, picturesquely situated on a hill just above the running river, came in view, with its large, tall-towered church keeping watch and ward over its cottage homes; you rarely see so fine a church in a Welsh village--most frequently you find a chapel, a gaunt and square eyesore, where they preach the Calvinistic Creed. A signpost informed me that the road led to Welshpool. Now to Welshpool I had no desire to go; it is a large town where, I believe, they manufacture flannels, a useful town, but it had no interest for me; however, as the road was a pleasant one I kept to it. By the way, the first signpost was inscribed "To Welshpool," but farther on this was shortened to simply "Pool." We duly reached Welshpool; it had a prosperous look; there was much traffic in its streets. We were glad to get out of it into the quiet country again, and a very pleasant country it proved to be, our road leading us along the hillsides and past fragrant pine-woods, with distant peeps of finely-shaped hills. Close to the hamlet of Wollaston I pulled up to consult the map, and to ask the name of the place from a youth who was passing by, and when he had told me this I jokingly queried if there were anything to see there, for it looked an uninteresting spot where nothing had ever happened, or was likely to happen. "Well," replied he, "old Parr lived here--you may have heard of him; there's a brass about him in the church. I know where the key's kept, I'll run and get it for you"--doubtless with an eye to earning an honest penny or two, where, I should imagine, pennies were hard to earn. But he was a civil youth, so I let him get the key. There in the church I found a brass against the wall with a portrait of that old man engraved on the top, and the following inscription below:-- The Old, Old, very Old Man Thomas Parr Was born at the Glyn In the township of Winnington Within the Chapelry of Great Wollaston And Parish of Alberbury In the County of Salop In the year of our Lord 1483. He lived in the reigns of Ten Kings And Queens of England (viz.) King Edward 4th King Edward 5th King Richard 3rd King Henry 7th King Henry 8th King Edward 6th Queen Mary Queen Elizabeth King James 1st and King Charles. Died the 13th And was buryed in Westminster Abby On the 15th of November 1635 Aged 152 years and 9 months. From Wollaston we had for some miles a pleasant stretch of pastoral country varied by shady woodlands, and we caught peeps on the way of some charming old half-timber homes, such as one finds in Shropshire, for we were in that shire now and approaching Shrewsbury again--so the signposts told us. We managed to drive round Shrewsbury by the Severn side, so did not enter the town, and were soon again on the open road, climbing, most of the way, to the village of Albrighton, having glorious panoramas, over a richly wooded country to our left, presented to us the latter half of the stage. At Albrighton I learnt there used to prevail the cruel sport of whipping a cat to death on Shrove Tuesday, and the old signboard, that once hung in front of the inn there, is still preserved, on which is a painted and faded representation of a man whipping a cat, and the legend below-- The finest sport under the sun Is whipping the cat at Albrighton. At the place I could glean no information as to the origin of this cruel and curious custom, but later on during the journey I found enlightenment of a Shropshire parson, who told me he believed it arose from a cat having got into the church and having ate the Sacrament. It was now growing late, and I began to think about my night's quarters. I passed an inviting-looking inn by the roadside, but, as I saw no stabling for the car there, I drove contentedly on in the gathering gloaming through a country that appeared to me to be exceedingly beautiful and richly wooded, and then with the evening star I made the little town of Wem (no town could surely well have a shorter title); there at the "Castle Inn" I found excellent accommodation, much civility, and a landlord who was interesting, informing, and obliging. I was glad I came to Wem. That evening in his cosy bar I had a long chat with "mine host." I discovered him seated there reading Mitford's _History of Greece_, which much surprised me, as being, I thought, a rather heavy work for a landlord to read, and he told me he was reading for his amusement! He also lent me a _History of Wem_, by Herbert Merchant, which I found interesting, and from this I learnt that Hazlitt lived for twelve years at Wem. Augustine Birrell says that "by his writings Hazlitt, the most eloquent of English essayists, has so infected the place with his own delight that it is hard to be dull at Wem"--but not impossible, I think. Coleridge visited Hazlitt at Wem, walking with him from Shrewsbury to that place; I presume they walked along the same road we had come, and Coleridge was so delighted with the scenery on the way that he exclaimed, "If I had the quaint muse of Sir Philip Sidney I would write a sonnet to the road between Shrewsbury and Wem." Surely Coleridge's muse was quaint enough--who else but he could have composed _The Ancient Mariner_? Hazlitt, it appears, like Thackeray, first sought fame as an artist, for he had inscribed on his tomb, "William Hazlitt. Painter, Critic, Essayist. Born 1778. Died 1830." In 1643, when the rest of Shropshire was loyal to the King, Wem declared for the Parliament; thereupon the King sent Lord Capel with five thousand men to capture the town, but--so the story goes--he was repulsed by the garrison of only forty men, aided by the women of the place, who were dressed in red cloaks and placed in positions where they could be seen by the King's forces. Lord Capel, judging from the number of red figures he observed, thought the garrison was too strong to be successfully attacked, and ignominiously retired. Hence the old couplet-- The women of Wem and a few musketeers Beat Lord Capel and all his cavaliers. There was, too, a Royalist mock litany of the time, a part of which reads-- From Wem, and from Nantwitch, Good Lord, deliver us. This story of the red-coated women of Wem reminds me of the similar story told of the French invasion of Fishguard in 1797, where and when a small French force was landed from three frigates to raid the country. Lord Cawdor at the head of a hastily collected body of militia, of about half the strength of the enemy, went forth to meet them; a number of Welsh women, in red cloaks, gathered on the hills around to watch the expected battle, and these were mistaken by the French for regular troops prepared to cut off their retreat; thereupon, deeming they were overpowered, the Frenchmen surrendered. Both stories read much alike. I wonder if either one is true? "I hae my douts." I learnt much about Wem from the landlord, how in past days the houses of the town were all thatched, and that there is still preserved in the old town hall a huge iron hook fixed to the end of a long oak pole that was used to pull down the thatch from any house that was alight and so to prevent the flames spreading, and he offered to show it me in the morning if I cared to see it. I thought I should; such a contrivance must be somewhat of a curiosity--at least I had never seen or heard of anything of the kind before. However, in spite of the hook, it happened that the whole town was burnt down, the church steeple too, in 1677. "Wem was quite a large place at one time," he continued; "and though you might hardly think it, some of the quiet country lanes around were once the town streets. It is the only Shropshire town mentioned in the Doomsday Book, which perhaps may prove its former importance. Judge Jeffreys, who had his home a mile from the town, was created Baron of Wem. His house is still standing and has his coat-of-arms carved over the doorway." Then some customers came in and the conversation became general; I wish they had not, for I was interested in the landlord's account of the place, and I fancy there was much more he could have told me about it. Amongst the company was a farmer, at least I took him to be such, and the weather was his main subject of conversation. I gathered from him that for some cause thunderstorms were fairly frequent at Wem and round about, and I understood that a farmer in the locality had recently lost several sheep by lightning. "Talking of lightning," he went on, "do you know it is a fact that lightning never strikes a moving object?" I did not, though I had to confess I had no recollection of such a circumstance, which was but negative evidence. Then said he, "According to my experience, if there's a full moon on a Saturday it's sure to rain the next day, and if there's a star close by the moon it's bound to blow hard the next morning." Though why this should be he could not explain--and little wonder! Many other things he said about the weather, but I did not note them down. The only man I trust about the weather is the shepherd of the downs or the plains, for on those open places the weather reveals its secrets to him who has little to do but observe it. I do not even trust the newspaper's forecasts except in settled times, when there is no need of them, for as a traveller who is concerned as to what the day will be, I have as often found them wrong as right. Sometimes they strike a provokingly uncertain note, such as "Rain in places," which is very safe forecasting and leaves me much in doubt. During the conversation some one talked about his "near-dwellers," and the same man twice used the term "unked." These were unfamiliar expressions to me, and on inquiry I found "near-dwellers" to mean neighbours, and "unked" was employed to signify down-spirited. Then some one made use of the old saying, "You'll have to mind your P's and Q's." "Does any one know how that saying originated?" queried another of the party, "for I do." No one appeared to know. "Then I'll tell you," he went on, manifestly pleased to be informing. "In the old days, when the publican had to trust many of his customers, slates were kept in the bar with the customers' names written on them, with a P and a Q below. The P stood for pints and the Q for quarts, and crosses were chalked under the P's and Q's corresponding to the pints and quarts for which each customer owed. So, you see, they had to mind their P's and Q's." I had plenty of entertainment that night, of which I have given a fair sample. Much else about other things was said, but perhaps the talk of strangers at an inn is not a subject that profits to enlarge about or even worth mention at all; however, the conversation, and the unexpected turns of it, served to pass my evening pleasantly enough away. A fisherman once told me of a brother of the craft, which brother I own was given a little to romancing, that he "talked salmon and caught only tiny trout." Perhaps the moral applies to the conversation I listened to; agreeably tired after my long day in the open air, I grant I was in no exacting mood as to the quality of my entertainment, I was too dreamily lazy to be critical; then there was nothing to pay for it, and happy is the man who can find entertainment wherever he chance to be. Glancing through the _History of Wem_ that the landlord lent me, I read there a glowing description of Hawkestone Park, a most romantic spot according to the description, and as it was only four miles from Wem I determined to go there next day. I also discovered that Dr. Johnson visited Hawkestone on July 24, 1774, and this is what he had to say about it:-- We saw Hawkestone and were conducted over a large tract of rocks and woods, a region abounding with striking scenes and terrific grandeur. We were always on the brink of a precipice or at the foot of a lofty rock.... Round the rocks is a narrow path cut into the stone which is very frequently hewn into steps, but art has proceeded no further than to make the succession of wonders safely accessible. The whole circuit, somewhat laborious, is terminated by a grotto cut into a rock to a great extent, with many windings and supported by pillars, not hewn with regularity.... There were from space to space seats in the rocks. Though it wants water it excels Dovedale by the extent of its prospects, the awfulness of its shades, the horror of its precipices, the verdure of its hollows, and the loftiness of its rocks. The ideas it forces upon the mind are the sublime, the dreadful, and the vast. Above inaccessible altitude, below is horrible profundity. He who mounts the precipices of Hawkestone wonders how he came thither and doubts how he shall return. His walk is an adventure and his departure an escape. Now all this strikes a most romantic note, and surely Dr. Johnson was too great a man to be given to gush, so all the more it surprised me how it was that I had never heard of Hawkestone and its wonders before. Just "Ignorance, pure ignorance," as the famous doctor once remarked to a lady in reply to her query how it was he did not know something that she considered he ought to know. Truly Hawkestone was one of the surprises and discoveries of the journey. There is one advantage in not knowing all about the country you are travelling in, for such lack of knowing keeps you ever in a delightful state of expectancy as to what fresh discoveries you may make; no matter though to others they are familiar, that does not rob you of the thrill of pleasure in discovering them. Next morning I learnt from the landlord that there was a good inn at Hawkestone, so after a look at Wem I determined to spend the rest of the day there and explore its beauties at leisure. Wem did not detain me long that morning. My curiosity induced me to see the "fire fork" already mentioned that was used to drag down the burning thatch from the houses, and I estimated this to be thirty-six feet long, but I was told it was much more than that originally. It looked just like a big iron fishhook at the end of a pole. In a niche of the church tower I noticed a much-weathered stone figure, and this the clerk told me represented St. Chad, "a favourite saint in these parts." I asked him if there were anything of interest in the church, and he said no, "but there's a unique Gothic doorway at the west end well worth seeing, it's four hundred years old"; so I went to inspect it, and I found a most quaintly shaped doorway, the like of which I had not come upon before, but it struck me as more uncommon than beautiful--and this was all I discovered worthy of note in Wem; its interest is historical, and that does not appeal to the eye. CHAPTER XI Red Castle--A stately ruin--Old houses and new owners--The joy of discovery--High Ercall and its story--Mills and millers--The life of a stone-breaker--Old folk-songs--Haughmond Abbey--Ancient tombs--A peaceful spot--A place for a pilgrimage. On leaving Wem I sought instruction of the landlord as to the road to Hawkestone, for the roads about Wem are many and winding, and it is not easy for a stranger to find his way on them. He told me to go to Weston, a village adjoining the park, "where there is a good inn. If you ask your way to Hawkestone," said he, "the natives may send you miles round; for Hawkestone is a big place, and there is no inn but at Weston." So to Weston we went, guided by the signposts, and not a signpost, strange to relate, did we see with "Hawkestone" upon it. Weston proved to be a charming little village of black and white half-timber cottages with an old church set on a hill above them, and by the churchyard wall were its ancient stocks intact. At the end of the village we came to the inn delightfully placed facing the park and its glorious scenery, and with only a low hedge between it and the park. The Hawkestone hotel gave me an agreeable greeting, for on entering it I found myself in a panelled hall, and beyond this I caught a peep of a pleasant little garden belonging to the inn. Again I was fortunate in finding comfortable quarters. I liked my inn; it had a home-like look. I asked about seeing the park, and was told I could have a guide to show me over it, though I was welcome to go alone if I wished. No guide was pressed on me, and I appreciated the fact; but I felt I might miss much if I went without one. The park was extensive, there were many things to see there; so I obtained a guide, and set forth to explore Hawkestone, and I went alone with the guide. After Dr. Johnson's description of the place and all the adjectives he used--I presume he considered them necessary--I feel somewhat at a discount in attempting a further description, and finding fresh, suitable adjectives; but we see places with our own eyes and glean our own impressions. What struck me first about Hawkestone was a certain indefinable theatrical look, a sense of unreality, as though I were viewing a stage production on a large scale. I had never seen Nature and Art so romantically combined before. Though I climbed the precipices by narrow paths cut along their sides, I did not feel "my walk an adventure and my departure an escape," nor did I feel the "sublime, dreadful, vast, or horrible profundity" of the spot--I wondered much at those expressions; to me it appeared fully to justify the terms romantic and picturesque, but not in the least that of dreadful: never were my spirits daunted! The guide was loquacious; had he talked less, I might have remembered more of all he told me, and he told me much of the past history of Hawkestone and of its lords, from the early days when the first castle was built there to close upon the present time; and he expressed his surprise that I had not heard of Hawkestone before. "Not to know Hawkestone is to show yourself unknown," I almost fancy he thought. I was first shown the Red Castle, built in the reign of King Henry III., of which castle, except some broken masonry, a tall, round keep, standing isolated and stately on a crag, alone remains. "How like one of Salvator Rosa's pictures!" I could not help exclaiming to myself; and really it is. The far view from this tower over a vast extent of peaceful, pastoral, and wooded country to the stormy mountains of Wales, so rugged of outline and contrasting, is wonderfully fine and space-expressing. There was a bigness about it, looking over "the sweep of endless woods," that pleased me, a green spaciousness that was splendid. I forget now how many feet high the guide said the top of the tower on its crag was from the ground; but one had to crane one's neck to see it from below, and this gave one the impression of commanding height whatever its height might be. Next we went under a wide-arched rock at the end of a ravine, and began to climb the crags on the opposite side by a narrow winding footpath with steps cut here and there in the steepest parts; so we reached a wonderful series of grottos, consisting of arched chambers in the solid rock, with many roughly-hewn pillars. These grottos were lined with shells and spas: the guide gave me the history of them, but I have forgotten it; some one, however, cut them out of the rock, and some ladies decorated them in the manner described. Then I was conducted on to the top of the crag, opposite to which is the Raven's Cliff; from this point the view over the park and rocks is very striking, the rough grey rocks peeping out here and there from the sea of soft green foliage, forming a telling combination and contrast. Then we descended, only to ascend again up a steep and stepped path to the Hermitage, a cavern in the cliff side, over the entrance to which is inscribed-- Procul, O procul este, profani. It was a strange whim of our ancestors to have a Hermitage in their grounds; and as real hermits were not to be procured, often an aged pensioner was made to take their place for the benefit of visitors--but nobody was of course deceived. I am afraid it was an age of shams, even of sham ruins built to beautify the view! In the present instance, however, a wax figure of a grey-haired and bearded man seated at a table with a skull upon it did duty for a living hermit, though it did not do it very well; for the effect of the figure was marred by the dripping of moisture from the roof of the cave: not even a hermit could endure that for long and live. The guide told me that he was supposed to leave me here and go in by a secret door at the back of the figure and somehow introduce himself beneath its cloak and talk. He was quite open about the proceeding; it was mere acting; and I told him, after such a confession, he need not trouble himself or me. Though actually he declared some young people were taken in by the device, owing to the gloom of the cavern; if this be true, I am afraid there are a good many young innocents abroad. Then I saw the Druid's Cavern and St. Francis's Cave, and a recess in the rock where, according to an inscription, "Rowland Hill, a gentleman renowned for his great wisdom, piety, and charity, who, being a zealous Royalist, hid himself in the Civil Wars of the time of King Charles I.; but being discovered, was imprisoned in his adjacent Red Castle, whilst his house was pillaged and ransacked by the rebels." There were other things of interest in the park, but in truth its gloriously rocky and wooded scenery, and its ruined castle keep, appealed to me vastly more than the rest. June is a month to joy in, for when in a gracious mood it can produce the pleasantest of weather, and the next morning gave us a sample of its occasional perfectness. A glorious sunshiny day followed the promise of the morning with a deep sea-blue sky above, and hardly a cloud in it--a day that made us feel the joy of being alive. So we made an early start, and wandering about deviously we suddenly espied before us, standing gaunt and deserted and lone in a grass field, the ruined hall of Moreton Corbet, its roofless walls, its upstanding gables and great vacant windows, darkly silhouetted against the bright sky. I recognised the old house from a friend's photograph; it had a familiar look, though I had never been there before and had come upon it unexpectedly. The house covers a considerable area of ground, and some of the quaint carvings on its front appeared to be almost as sharp as the day they were carved, and that was centuries ago. Were I an architect, I think I should try to discover the quarry from whence came that enduring stone, for many a fine building I have seen has suffered sadly from the perishable nature of the stone employed in its construction. An architect cannot be too careful in the selection of his material if he wishes his work to last--and what architect does not--not to mention his client, who surely deserves some consideration? Moreton Corbet was begun by Sir Robert Corbet in 1606, but he died of the plague before the building was finished; his brother Sir Vincent Corbet continued the work, but the house was never finished or inhabited, and now the rambling ruins are but the home of owls and other birds. Camden the antiquary in his day wrote of it: "Robert Corbet began to build a most gorgeous and stately house, after the Italian model, for his future magnificent and splendid habitation, but death countermanding his designs took him off, so that he left his project unfinished and his old castle defaced." The remains of his "defaced" old castle are at hand, with the initials A. C. for Sir Andrew Corbet over its doorway. There is a hazy local tradition that some enemy of the Corbets, when the house was building, uttered the prophecy that "Moreton Corbet shall never be finished." But who can tell, it may be some day, though late the day, for its walls appear sound, the stone mullions stand in the windows still, and I have known ancient houses even more ruined that have come into the hands of a new owner and have been restored and converted into delightful homes. "Patch and long sit," runs the old proverb, but "build and soon flit" it ends, and from my limited experience of the ways of men there is some truth in the proverb. But proverbs are so often contradictory that I have lost faith in them. One says, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"; then another has it, "Out of sight out of mind," and I might go on quoting familiar proverbs of an antagonistic nature, only to do so would be a waste of space. You can generally by searching find a proverb to fit a special case whichever way you desire--that is the beauty of proverbs. [Illustration: THE RUINED HALL OF MORETON CORBET.] A ruined home, whether of cottage or mansion, is always, more or less, a pathetic sight and one that appeals to the sentimental traveller, but coming thus suddenly and unexpectedly upon so stately a ruin as Moreton Corbet right in the heart of a quiet country, a country with no suggestion about it but of farms and fields--one expected nothing else--the greater was the appeal to such sentiment. The coming to the notable ruin of an abbey or castle for which the traveller is prepared by guide-book description is quite a different thing; at least I, for one, cannot command my sympathies to the order of a guide-book. To repeat, in effect, a previous remark, I really think that the chief charm of travel is the coming upon the unexpected, the enjoyment of discovery, so that even the lesser sights by the way assume an importance that perhaps is not rightly theirs and become memorable. Leaving Moreton Corbet we got wandering amongst winding lanes, and very pleasant lanes they were; these eventually brought us to High Ercall, a lonely little village consisting of an ancient church, an old Tudor manor-house of some size standing close by, and a cottage or two. High Ercall had not much to show us, but what it had to show was interesting, chiefly the fine church which retains some features of interest in spite of the fact that it was sadly battered about by the Puritan party, and the time-toned Tudor house built, according to an inscription on it, in 1608. The main portion of the house is of stone, but it has brick gables above that give it an odd appearance. The old home took my fancy. "It looks history," I exclaimed to myself, though at the time I knew nothing of its past. Why I should have imagined that house had a story to tell I cannot say, but so it impressed me, perhaps simply because it was so old. Anyway, on making inquiry I found my intuition not wrong, for I discovered it was one of the many Shropshire houses that had been fortified in the time of the Civil Wars and held for the King, and though but a house, so gallantly was it defended that it successfully resisted several fierce assaults, being indeed the last house in the shire to surrender, only the strongholds of Bridgnorth and Ludlow holding out longer. I wonder if anything eventful will ever happen at High Ercall again. Who would have expected to come upon history there? It looked so innocent of anything of the kind. Certainly the Civil Wars have given the added interest of stirring days to many a now dreamy spot in England, for those wars concerned themselves with the sieges of so many private houses scattered far and wide over the countryside. Those days have passed for ever, for no private house could now be converted into a fortress. Many of these old houses still retain bullet marks on, and sometimes the lead of the bullets in, their thick oak doors; their strong walls too occasionally show, even to this far-off day, the indentations made by some of Cromwell's inexhaustible cannon-balls. You cannot escape from Cromwell's doings when you go a-touring in England. Beyond High Ercall we crossed over a marshy upland, and over a bridge or two so narrow that there was only just room for the car to pass. The country had a remote look, for we travelled far before meeting a soul, and that soul was a solitary man breaking stones by the side of the road. From the uplands we dropped down to a picturesque old mill, its wheel turned by a sparkling stream; and a pretty picture the old mill made with its foaming weir above, its sleepy pool below, and the green fields gently sloping down to it. The mill was busy that day, and the muffled hum of its machinery, the swish, swish of its wheel and the plash of its weir, broke pleasantly the silence of the spot. I saw no miller, or any one, about; perhaps the miller was at his dinner whilst his work was being done for him. I wish I could have seen him, for I have a liking for millers, always having found them jovially disposed and not averse to a gossip; now I have a weakness for gossiping with country folk, trusting by so doing to glean something of their views of life. Such folk I have generally found willing to talk about anything but politics--well, I do not care to talk politics, but why they should so carefully avoid the subject I cannot say, nor yet why millers are so cheerful a race, any more than why farmers in contradiction should be given so to grumbling, even when the seasons are good. I remember that picture in _Punch_ of a squire addressing a tenant of his: "Good morning, Mr. Turnips, fine growing day." "Yes, sir," responds the farmer, "'twill make the weeds grow." But the miller looks on the bright side of life; perhaps it is because he seems to have so little work to do, only having to watch whilst the running water or the willing wind do his work for him. I know I have chatted with a miller for an hour or more inside his mill and amongst his whirling wheels, as the flour flowed fast and free from the wooden shoots into the sacks below, and he merely glanced round now and then to see if a sack were nearly filled, so that he might put another in its place; nor did this take him long to do, nor did the work seem hard. It was this miller who so kindly explained to me how much better it was to rely on water than wind power, the latter being so uncertain, for "the wind may drop in the daytime, and then blow at night when you are comfortably in bed, so you may idle away half, or even the whole of a day, but water-power is constant, if you have a decent stream to depend upon." Then the miller told me how in his father's time, for his father was a miller too, the gleaners used to come to the mill to have their gleanings ground, and in those friendly past days the miller used to grind their gleanings without charge in his spare time, as the custom was. "Then helped every one his neighbour," for those were "the good old days," at least they seem good to look back upon. After the mill followed a stretch of open country with wide cornfields on either hand waving round us like a golden sea and rustling in the wind; then by way of change we entered upon a tree-lined road, with at one spot great rocks by its side, and from this spot Shrewsbury and its church spires came into view vaguely showing in the mist like the city of a dream. Not desiring to revisit Shrewsbury, I stopped the car and consulted my map; it was a fortunate circumstance, for in doing so I discovered "Haughmond Abbey" marked thereon, and apparently not very far off. I seemed to be always making discoveries on my map. Now I had heard of Haughmond Abbey, but what the ruins were like, where they were hidden away, whether extensive or the mere fragments of a building, I had no idea. Bolton, Tintern, Fountains, Glastonbury, Melrose, and other famous ruined abbeys were familiar to me in pictures, engravings, photographs, and poetry long before I saw them, but of Haughmond I had seen neither picture nor engraving, nor, as far as I am aware, has any poet sung its praises. Yet Haughmond Abbey I found to be a beautiful ruin, not so romantically situated as either Tintern or Bolton truly, but set in as sweet a spot as all fair England can show, delightful to the eye with its verdant meadows, shady trees, tranquil water, grey rock, and sheltering wooded hills around--a spot so peaceful in its seclusion, so peace-bestowing, too, and without a hint of the modern world, for at Haughmond nothing is to be seen but quiet woods, gentle hills, and the spacious sky above. Never came I to a more tranquil spot; the monks of old must have left their benediction there, though robbed of their abbey they loved so well and turned adrift into the outer world, and though they doubtless fondly hoped and believed it would "have canopied their bones," or at least they would have been laid to rest in the shade of its church. But I am a little previous. Close to where I pulled up I saw a man breaking stones by the roadside, and I asked him if he could tell me the whereabouts of the abbey. "It be right down there," said he, pointing ahead with his finger into space, "not more than a quarter of a mile away. You comes to a cottage, and on the other side of the way is a footpath by a stream leading to it." He was a civil man, his instructions were clear, stone-breaking is wearisome work; I was sorry for him to the extent of a sixpence, better expended than on a tramp, I thought, and tramps in my green days wheedled many a sixpence out of me. I remember that the last tramp to whom I gave a trifle exclaimed in the fulness of his heart upon unexpectedly receiving it, "God bless you, sir. May we soon meet in Heaven!" Since then my donations to tramps have ceased. I would chat with that stone-breaker, I would see the world through a stone-breaker's eyes. But his view of the world was limited; manifestly the monotony of his labour had told upon him, perhaps too the loneliness of the life, so that I got little profit out of the conversation. It needs a strong mind to sit by the roadside all day long and break stones, do nothing but break stones, and have any imagination left. Finding a secluded, shady spot by the wayside I rested there awhile, for the day was hot; moreover I was already beginning to feel hungry, and my luncheon-basket was handy. How hungry one gets motoring in the fresh air, to be sure! Whilst resting there and thinking, it suddenly struck me how seldom in Wales I saw any children romping about in the villages as English children are wont to do; even to-day sometimes on the village greens one finds the latter playing games so old that no one can tell how they originated. Take, for instance, the game of "Old Roger" often played at children's gatherings in the West Country to an old song as follows. I have given this song in a previous book, but it will bear repeating, and I repeat it to show how this old song, long years ago, found its way to America, and how it became altered there. This, then, is how the original "Old Roger" runs:-- Old Roger is dead and lies in his grave-- Hee-haw! lies in his grave. They planted an apple-tree over his head. The apples were ripe and ready to drop, When came a big wind and blew them all off; Then came an old woman a-picking them up. Old Roger jumped up and gave her a knock, Which made the old woman go hipperty-hop. Now an American lady reading this in my book wrote to me about it, enclosing the words of a song that was sung to her by her grandfather, who had learnt it from his grandfather. "It is very plain," wrote the lady, "that our song came over from your country, and that it originated in your 'Old Roger.' This is very interesting to me. We call our song 'Old Father Cungell.' It goes this way:-- Old Father Cungell went up to White Hall, Hum, ha! up to White Hall, And there he fell sick amongst 'em all, With my heigh down, ho down, Hum, Ha! Old Father Cungell was car-ri-ed home, Hum, ha! car-ri-ed home; Before he got there he was as dead as a stone, With my heigh down, ho down, Hum, Ha! Old Father Cungell was in the grave laid, They covered him up with shovel and spade, And out of his grave there grew a big tree That bore the best apples that ever ye see! Before they were ripe and fit for the fall, There came an old woman and stole them off all; Her gown it was red, her petticoat green, The very worst woman that ever was seen. Old Cungell got up and hit her a knock, That made the old woman go hipperty-hop. The neighbours were scared and said in their fright, 'The ghost of Cungell gets up in the night,' With my heigh down, ho down, Hum, Ha!" [Illustration: HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHURCH DOORWAY.] Rested and refreshed I went in search of Haughmond Abbey, the ruins of which, though near to, are not visible from the road, so the casual traveller might pass them unawares, as doubtless many do. A short stroll along a shady footpath and by the side of a limpid stream soon brought me to the spot; the hoary, ivy-clad ruins peeping through the branching trees made a perfect picture, the sunshine resting on them and brightening the century-gathered gloom of their broken walls and rugged gables. It was, in truth, a pleasant spot the monks selected for their abbey, an ideal spot well secluded from the outer world; even to-day it retains its old-time tranquillity undisturbed. I had the ruins to myself, rejoiced to escape from the noisy prattle of the mere sightseer; to myself, excepting that some birds were holding a profane service on the grass-grown ground where erst the high altar stood. The ruins are of considerable extent, though, but for a portion of a wall and a fine sculptured doorway, the church itself has wholly disappeared; its foundations, however, may still be faintly traced. Unlike most abbeys the ruined churches of which remain whilst their monastic outbuildings and offices have vanished, at Haughmond the reverse is the case. So one generation builds a fane of prayer and another generation levels it to the ground, even glorying in its destruction; and the sad thought of it is, who can say that what we build in our pride to-day may not at some future time share a similar fate? Doubtless the monks who reared this stately abbey thought it would last to Doomsday; it lasted about four hundred years, for it was founded in 1135 by Fitz Alan of Clun, and was suppressed by King Henry VIII. in 1541, he "being mynded to take it into his own handes," as he did many another abbey, "for better purposes." The world knows what those "better purposes" were. Nettles and weeds now flourish in the abbey's deserted courts and around its roofless buildings, the only roofed portion being the Chapter-house, which is entire with its three richly ornamented arched doorways, of which I give an illustration. It may be noted that between the pillars are statues under canopies, a remarkable feature that I do not remember to have seen in any ecclesiastical edifice before. It struck me that these statues were an after-thought and had been introduced at a later period by cutting pillars away to receive them; I cannot say that they altogether pleased me, for they disturbed the unity and simplicity of the fine Norman arches. The flat oak roof of the Chapter-house appears to be in perfect condition, though I was surprised to find an oak roof there and not a vaulted one of stone. The chief offices appertaining to the abbey appear to have been built round a court beyond the cloisters; of these the Abbot's Lodge retains its beautiful bay-window, and what was probably the guest-house retains all its side windows with their tracery intact. This building has a large gable at one end flanked by shapely turrets. [Illustration: HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHAPTER-HOUSE.] Of the many stately tombs the abbey church once contained only two inscribed slabs remain, but these are interesting: one to John Fitz Alan, deceased 1270, who was buried before the high altar, bears the following inscription in Norman French, as was the fashion of the time:-- VOVS KI PASSEZ ICI PRIES PVR LAME IOHAN FIS ALEIN KI GIT ICI DEV DE SA ALME EIT MERCI. AMEN. ISABEL DE MORTIMER SA FEMME ACOST DE L ... DEV DE LVR ALME ... MERCI. AMEN. Another slab has the incised effigy of a woman shown wearing a quaint head-dress with a coat-of-arms on either side of it, her gloved hands folded in prayer; the inscription is in Latin, that prevailed during that later period and for long afterwards, and thus it runs:-- Hic jacet ... filia Iohis Leyton armigi & uxor Ricardi mynde que obiit in festo Cathedre Sancti Petri Anno Dni Millesio cccc xxviij cui aie ppiciet Deus Amen. I loitered long at Haughmond, and loth I was to leave so peace-bestowing a spot; thither the world-weary pilgrim might well come in search of rest, for nowhere could he find a quietude more profound. I wish I could, in words, express the peacefulness of the spot, a peacefulness that grew upon me and that seemed to me on leaving like an unuttered benediction, but not the less a benediction because unuttered. Never bade I farewell to a spot more reluctantly; never have I felt a greater desire to return to one. Such was the spell it cast upon me. "Within its walls peace reigned; from its stately church came the sounds of prayer and praise; its gates were ever open to the pilgrim and the poor; its hospitality and brotherly kindness softened the harsh incidence of the feudal days." CHAPTER XII An angler's haunt--Ferries and stepping-stones--Curious old stained-glass window--The ruins of Uriconium--Watling Street--The Wrekin--Richard Baxter's old home--A Cabinet minister's story--A pretty village--Buildwas Abbey--Ironbridge--The "Methodists' Mecca." Leaving Haughmond to its ancient peace, and finding the road we were on led to Shrewsbury, we took a byway to our left, chancing where it might go. We did not select our road, we took the first one we came to so as to avoid revisiting Shrewsbury, and it led us, with many pleasant windings, through a country of great charm, and unexpectedly to many interesting places. No guide-book could have done us better service. We had at the start fir-crowned hills to the left of us with a tower on the top of them, a modern one, but still a picturesque feature, and the silvery Severn to the right, and in the narrow and pleasant stretch of country between our road went in a dreamy, indirect fashion. At Uffington I noticed a river-side inn with an angler, rod in hand, standing idly in the doorway, so concluded, with the river close by, this must be a fisherman's haunt. I was almost tempted to pull up there and go a-fishing, for it looked such a pleasant hostelry, one whereat a lazy man might laze contentedly. At Uffington the monks of Haughmond had a ferry, and so in the absence of any bridge they crossed the Severn there on the way to Shrewsbury. I am told the ferry still exists, and I was glad to hear it, for ferries and stepping-stones form such picturesque features in the landscape. In Wales, where I once stopped awhile at a remote farmhouse, the only way across the little river in front of it was by stepping-stones, and I took quite a childish delight in crossing and recrossing them, and more than once I discovered an artist painting the spot; there was a very real fascination for me about this primitive way of crossing a stream, in an age when all things are made so uninterestingly smooth and easy, a method probably originally suggested by the boulders that strew the bed of a mountain river. So we followed the Severn down, now losing sight of it, now recovering it again, till we came to Atcham, where the river flowed wide and strong under a fine seven-arched bridge; there by the roadside stood a large old house that had evidently been a coaching inn, and there under the shade of some trees I pulled up the car to have a look around, for it was a pleasant spot. I wandered into the churchyard overlooking the river. The church I found old and interesting. At the east end I noticed two of the so-called leper or low-side windows that have caused so much discussion amongst antiquaries; these were in such a position behind the high altar that, of course, neither the altar nor the elevation of the Host could be seen from them, and this, I think, surely proves, at least to my satisfaction, that such windows were not for the use of lepers to observe the service from without; but as I have already discussed the subject, I will say no more about it. There is some good carved old oak in the church; the reading-desk has some quaint carvings on it of the story of the prodigal son; the fine openwork screen too merits attention, and its walls still plainly show the marks of the medieval masons' chisels; but what specially interested me was a very curious and ancient stained-glass window representing a woman kneeling and presenting a book to Queen Elizabeth enthroned; the top lights above contain the drawings of five angels busy with harps. The inscription below runs:-- Blanch daughter of Henry Miles Parry Esqre. Of Newcourt Herefordshire by Alicia daughter Of Simon Milborn Esqre. Chief gentlewoman Of Queen Elizabeth privy chamber whom She faithfully served from her Highnesses birth dying at Court The 12th of Febry. 1589. Aged 82. Entombed at Westminster. Her bowels at Bacton in The county of Hereford. A little beyond Atcham, whilst driving along a narrow and quiet country road and thinking of nothing in particular, I suddenly noticed some crumbling ruins on rising ground not far away, and I asked at a blacksmith's forge, close by, what the ruins might be, and was told they were the ruins of the Roman city of Uriconium. This was interesting information, and at once the low and broken, moss-grown and ivy-clad walls assumed a look of importance. We had come upon the site of an ancient city of wide renown. "We keep the key here," said the blacksmith, for I found that what remains of the once great city of "gleaming white walls" is fenced round and turned into a sort of peep-show with "a charge of sixpence a head for admission." What an indignity to the ancient city, perhaps the chief city of the country when England was but a colony of Rome: how strange to think of England as a colony! I have said perhaps the chief city of the country, for according to J. R. Green, the historian, "the walls of Uriconium enclosed a space more than double that of Roman London, and exceeded in circumference by a third those of Pompeii, while the remains of its theatre and its amphitheatre, as well as the broad streets which contrast so strangely with the narrow alleys of other British towns, shows its former wealth and importance." It was to Uriconium that the famous Watling Street went direct from Dover through London, and thence as straight as the Romans could conveniently make it to Uriconium. The Romans wisely favoured the high ground in preference to the low for their roads, which to keep dry were carefully trenched on either side, but they always went straight ahead to their destination, excepting when the gradient proved too severe or they had to round a hill, but after such divergence straight ahead they went again; one cannot but admire the purposefulness of them. Watling Street has now been reopened and reconnected from Daventry to Shrewsbury, a distance of eighty-three miles; and to be a little previous, from close to Boscobel on to Daventry we followed the ancient street on our homeward run--excepting for a diversion to Uttoxeter at the Lichfield turn, rejoining it at Atherstone, missing but about fourteen miles of its length between the point above Boscobel and Daventry--and a very pleasant rural road we found it, delightful for its absence of towns and even villages; indeed it took us for miles and miles right through a thoroughly old-world sparsely peopled land. So we followed the footsteps of the Roman legions. The foundation of most of the street, in spite of years of neglect, is as firm to-day as when the ancient Romans made it, for they built for centuries. Our modern road-builders might well take a hint from those clever old engineers. There was no scamped work in those benighted ages, for scamped work meant death--not a fortune. But to return to Uriconium. To show the size of the ancient city, its walls, still traceable, are over three miles in circumference, enclosing now open fields and meadows; in these, I was told, the plough occasionally turns up portions of mosaic pavement, bits of pottery, tiles, and other relics. I entered what now remains of the city above ground by a locked gate and wandered over its grass-grown streets, or at least a very small portion of them, and amongst the fragments of its time-worn walls that are still standing. Wild roses, brambles, nettles, and docks were growing everywhere disorderly; ivy, moss, and lichen were creeping over its stones at will. Some of the foundations of the buildings have been uncovered and laid bare, but Nature is busy at work covering them up again with many a wild growing thing. Little enough remains, in truth, to reveal the former glory of Uriconium; the chief wall standing, built of squared stones, varied by courses of thin red tiles, is presumably that of the basilica; adjoining this are the baths, the plan of which can be roughly made out, the furnace chambers may be traced, and a number of small pillars constructed of thin bricks reveal the hypocausts or heating arrangements. The public baths are the best preserved parts of the city that have been unearthed, and show the extent of civilisation to which the Romans in England had attained. I was glad to have seen Uriconium; it made me respect the civilisation of our early conquerors. I was impressed with the picture that I recovered to myself of the refined life the Romans led in their British colony close upon nineteen centuries ago! Delightful is the situation of Uriconium on its gentle rise, with far views of the country around, and the Severn winding just below. It seems strange that, whilst the sites of so many Roman towns are the sites of English towns to-day, Uriconium so favoured in position should be left desolate--given over to the winds of heaven and the birds of the air. Leaving the ruined city to its sole inhabitants, the birds and perchance the rabbits, we had a fine view of the isolated hill of the Wrekin, from the top of which flamed forth the beacon that told the great Armada was in sight. Then ... streamed in crimson on the wind the Wrekin's crest of light. "To friends all round the Wrekin" is a famous Shropshire toast, and all good Salopians know how that hill came into being: how that the Devil, once upon a time, as the fairy story-books have it, had a grudge against Shrewsbury, and was carrying a great load of earth and rocks on his back, intending to dump it down in the bed of the Severn, and so block the flow of the river and drown all the Shrewsbury people; but even the Devil grew weary of his heavy load, and threw it down on the spot where the Wrekin now stands, declaring he would carry it no longer. So the mountain arose and Shrewsbury was saved. At one point or another the Devil appears to have been very busy in Shropshire knocking the scenery about. When later on I found myself at Ironbridge, with its furnaces and factories, I really thought the Devil must still be busy in Shropshire, for who but he could have entered into the mind of man to cause him to spoil so fair a spot for the sake of mere money-making? Remove the dirty, mean, and ugly town and all connected with it, Madeley too, with its collieries close above, and smoky Broseley but a mile away, and I doubt if the Severn could show in all its pleasant meanderings from its source in lone Plynlimmon to the sea a spot so fair as this would be--and was in the days of old. The scenery improved with every mile as we wound our way down by the Severn side, from which rose gently sloping and wooded hills on the other hand, a very pleasant land in truth. Coming to the little village of Eaton Constantine, I pulled up there to photograph an exceedingly picturesque black and white half-timber farmhouse with a great gable at one end, its roof sloping down to a sheltering porch. Were I an architect and designer of country homes I certainly would seek for inspiration in Shropshire; I know no other part of England where the houses look more like homes. Chatting with the owner of the farmhouse, who kindly allowed me to photograph it from his farmyard, and even stood in front of his porch to be included in the picture--though I did not desire this further favour of him--I learnt that it was formerly the home of Richard Baxter, the Nonconformist divine and the author of _The Saints' Everlasting Rest_, and quite a host of other improving religious works well known to fame, but which I regret I have never read. It was at Eaton Constantine, I believe, that when a boy Richard Baxter used to rob his neighbours' orchards, but, as some one says, "often the worst boys become the best men," a pleasant way of excusing their peccadilloes. Even Bunyan I have somewhere read "sowed his wild oats" freely when a youth, and I have even heard of a certain Cabinet minister who has boasted that he frequently went poaching as a lad. Perhaps it is because I was so good a boy that I have failed to distinguish myself in any way; had I to live my life again I might have got more enjoyment out of my youth, knowing now what good and clever men bad boys can make. I heard a Cabinet minister at dinner tell the story of how his schoolmaster one day declared to him that he was a lazy, troublesome boy, always in some mischief, a disgrace to the school, that he would never do any good for himself or any one else. In after years, when the boy had become one of Her Majesty's ministers, the very same schoolmaster, then an old man, met him and clapped him on the back, declaring, "I'm proud of you, my boy. I always said there was the making of a clever man in you." The story must be true, for a Cabinet minister would not tell a lie--about a trifle, but only for the good of his party. [Illustration: BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING EAST.] The next village of Leighton was almost ideal, with its picturesque black and white cottages half drowned in foliage; then our road became as beautiful as a dream till we came in sight of Buildwas Abbey, gloriously situated by the banks of the Severn, where the river flows gently by. But the situation is robbed of much of its charm by the intruding railway, that passes close to the abbey's ruined walls and sadly disturbs its quiet. All you can do is to try and forget the railway as though it were not. Amidst the ruins you cannot see it, but alas! you can hear it; and how can one romance to the sound of a railway train and the locomotive's blatant whistle? Buildwas Abbey is the relic of a splendid building, beautiful and stately even in decay, seemingly too proud to mourn its long-lost grandeur, "cased in the unfeeling armour of old time." Its massive pillars and stout walls, braving all weathers, stand strong and enduring still. Time, that gentle healer, has tinted and adorned its broken walls with many hues, and fringed their rugged tops with bright wild-flowers, grasses, and weeds; here and there, too, the ivy creeps over them and peeps in from without through the vacant windows. Its silent stones seem laden with memories: would that they could tell their story apart from the written one! Its open arches frame pleasant pictures of rich meadows, of woods beyond them, of blue hills beyond again, with bits of sky peeping above. Says Disraeli, "Men moralise amongst ruins"; here is a rare spot to moralise in for those so minded. The abbey church is cruciform in plan, with a central tower ruined low; its stout Norman pillars with their square capitals are very effective in their suggestiveness of strength. There is a massive dignity, purity, and simplicity about the architecture of Buildwas that pleases the cultured eye; there is nothing petty or pretty about it, rather perhaps it errs on the side of sternness, if it errs at all. Grace of outline rather than ornamentation was evidently the monkish designer's guiding inspiration, but what the building lacks in richness of detail it gains in breadth and quiet harmony. The site of the abbey in a valley formerly lonely and of much sylvan beauty, with a river running by, was one that commended itself to the Cistercians, and none were better judges of scenery than they. How did the abbey come by its name? Some antiquaries assert that it came from "beild," a shelter, and "was," a level; others declare, equally sure they are correct, that it came from "build" and "was," a building by the wash of the river. I am inclined to favour the former view; but when learned antiquaries disagree, how shall a mere layman decide? [Illustration: BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING WEST.] It was an unwelcome change, from the rural pleasantness of the country about Buildwas, coming to the squalid and smoky town of Ironbridge in Coalbrookdale, a town that climbs the steep hillside above the Severn, and practically joins the almost as mean a town of Madeley above, around which latter are numerous collieries with their tall chimneys and heaps of slack, that scar and make hideous the countryside. Ironbridge gains its name, of course, from the bridge of iron that spans the Severn there in one bold arch. At the time of the building of this bridge in 1779 it was considered a great engineering feat, even a thing of beauty, though I saw no beauty in it excepting the curve of its arch. Its black colour is out of tone with the landscape; it seems to have no part in it. Now a bridge constructed of the local stone, such as the monks would have built, would be in agreeable harmony with the scene, and, growing grey with age, would not force its unwilling attention on the traveller; moreover, stone does not need periodical painting to keep it from rusting. Such a fine stone bridge as the one that takes the old mail road over the Towy at Llandilo with one mighty arch, how grandly effective a similar bridge would look spanning the Severn boldly so at Ironbridge! There are one or two places called Stonebridge in England, I believe, and to me the name has a pleasant sound; but that of Ironbridge has not. I can imagine a picturesque bridge of stone, perhaps old and weather-worn and stained, but what can one imagine of an iron bridge but something very precise and proper? Nothing about it with any appeal to sentiment. I believe that this structure at Ironbridge was the first of the kind of any size that was built in England, and was thought a wonder in its day. How distant seems that day! Now people have ceased to wonder at it, or at anything else. A wireless message from Mars would probably be but a nine days' wonder; to fly across the Atlantic a no astonishing thing. Climbing through Ironbridge to Madeley, I pulled up there to replenish my petrol supply. Madeley has been called the "Methodists' Mecca," for there lies buried the famous Methodist, the Rev. John Fletcher, of whom Southey said, "He was a man of whom Methodism might well be proud as the most able of its defenders." But what a Mecca! Whilst waiting for my petrol I got a-chatting with a motor cyclist who was on the same errand as I. I am afraid I made a not very complimentary remark about the place to him, but he did not resent it. He even owned he thought the same; but, said he, "I can tell you of something worth seeing close by. There's an old house called Madeley Court not a mile away that might interest you, and prove that there is something worth seeing here. It's a grand old house, and worth a visit. Charles II. once hid in it, they say. Lots of people go to photograph it." Then he kindly described the way to it, "down a roughish and narrow lane"; but I thought I might as well escape Madeley in that direction as well as any other, in spite of the rough lane. On consulting my map I found Madeley Court plainly marked upon it, so I presumed it was, or at least it had been, a house of some importance. My road that day had provided me with many pleasant surprises, and here was still the promise of another. CHAPTER XIII Madeley Court--Chat with a collier--The miner's rule of life--Charles II. in hiding--The building of Boscobel--The story of a moated house--A stirring episode--A startling discovery--A curious planetarium--A wishing-well--Lilleshall Abbey--"The Westminster Abbey of Shropshire"--A freak in architecture--Tong Castle--Church clerk-hunting. It was certainly a rough and narrow lane, as the cyclist remarked, that led to Madeley Court, and it led past a lot of untidy colliers' cottages, for the hilly country around was well dotted with collieries; yet I fancy from the lie of the land that a hundred years or so ago, before the mines were sunk or the cottages built, that lane must have been a very rural and retired one. At one of the cottages I noticed a collier at work in his little garden; his face and hands and clothes were black as though he had only recently come up from the pit, but there he was busy amongst his flowers and vegetables, and there I pulled up the car and ventured to bid him good-day. "'Tain't a bad day," responded he, and went on with his work unconcernedly. Then I said a word in praise of his flowers, adding I supposed he was fond of gardening. "Well, a few flowers do look a bit cheerful like, so I grows 'em." Now there had been a miners' strike lately, and I wanted to learn his opinion about strikes. Nothing loth he gave it me. Miners I have found, as a race, openly and frankly express their opinions "without fear or favour," and I rather think they even enjoy a chance to express them, sometimes pretty strongly too, for miners have no respect of persons nor of other people's feelings. "We just says what us think and have done with it," as one of them declared to me. "As to strikes," said he, "I'm not gone on them; maybe they's necessary at times, I don't know. You see, we're bound to belong to the trade union lest the masters should best us; but the masters be all right in these parts and we've no need to strike, but us have to strike to help other folk when the unions tell us. Striking's poor game, I'd rather work than play any day; I likes to get my money regularly every week, then I know where I be. Now one never knows when the order may come to 'down tools.' What I say is that every herring should hang by its own tail." What exactly he meant by the last remark was not very clear to me, nor had I ever heard it before, nor was I able to obtain any enlightenment on the matter, for just then he exclaimed, "There be the missus a-calling me in for tea, and I wants it," and without another word he went to his tea. Just as I was leaving two of the miner's children ran out into the garden; one of them plucked a flower, then ran and gave it to me, saying, "Father told I to pluck it for thee"--a graceful little act that was pleasing. So often under rough exteriors kind hearts beat. That miner had not forgotten me, though he left and spoke so abruptly. Yet the following, I am told, is the miner's rule of life:-- Hear all, see all, say nought, Eat well, drink well, and care nought; If thou dost ought for nought Do it for thyself. But I do not believe all I hear. A parson told me the miners were not a bad lot as a whole, but they wanted knowing. They do! Now the poor country folk have often manners; the miners have none. Then we left the cottages behind and dropped sharply down into a sheltered hollow, and there below was revealed to us the rambling and ghostly-looking old manor-house of Madeley Court, a romance in stone, built in the far-off Elizabethan days when men built pictures as well as homes. A large, cheerless pool of water, dark and still, on one side of the ancient and time-dimmed house added to the dreary and eerie impression of the spot as it is to-day: that pool was suggestive to me of some evil deed done in past days, though why I know not, but over all the ancient place there brooded a certain indefinable sense of mystery. It seemed to hold a life apart from its present-day, commonplace surroundings. [Illustration: MADELEY COURT.] It was probably on this very lane that, wet through to the skin, weary and hungry, Charles II. recently escaped from Worcester, sought shelter with his guide, Richard Penderel, under a hedge from the pouring rain. Charles had fled from "the faithful city" with a few followers and had sought temporary asylum at White Ladies, the house of Charles Giffard, that gentleman being recommended to the king by the Earl of Derby. Giffard, however, advised the king not to tarry there, as his house was well known, and suggested that he should go to his retired hunting-box of Boscobel, where there were hiding-holes that had not been discovered; so to Boscobel the king went escorted by one Richard Penderel, a trusted retainer of Giffard's. Now two other retainers of the same family of the Penderels, William Penderel and Joan his wife, had charge of Boscobel, where they assisted, from time to time, in secreting persecuted Roman Catholic priests; indeed chiefly, if not wholly, for this purpose of giving refuge to such fugitives was Boscobel in reality built and planned: the hiding-holes there were no after-thoughts. Boscobel was then "an obscure habitation in a wilderness of woods," and was ostensibly merely a hunting-box. After resting there a few days the king became uneasy, for it had become known to the Parliamentarians that he had escaped into Shropshire, and troops of soldiers were scouring the country all around in search of him. So Charles determined to endeavour to make his way into Wales, but before starting forth he had himself disguised by having his locks cut off, his face and hands stained with walnut juice, and then to complete the disguise he donned a woodman's attire belonging to one of the Penderels, and he consented to be known as Will Jones. Thus disguised, one stormy night the king, with the faithful Richard Penderel for a guide, tramped to Madeley close to the Severn, trusting to find shelter there either at Madeley Court, the home of that staunch Royalist, Sir Basil Brooke, and personal friend of Giffard's, or at another house on the hill above, the abode of William Woolf, a yeoman and an honest man well known to Giffard, both houses having the conveniences of hiding-holes. The king deemed it prudent to go first to Woolf's house, as being a comparatively small one and that of a simple yeoman; he thought it less likely to be suspected or searched than Madeley Court, especially as Sir Basil Brooke was known to favour the Royalists, and he had many servants, some of whom might prove curious and become suspicious. A thousand pounds was the price for betraying the king, and death the penalty for harbouring him. So late that night the faithful Penderel went alone to Woolf's house, and rousing its owner inquired of him if he would be willing to give shelter for the night to a gentleman of quality. Mr. Woolf said he would gladly do so, but it was impossible, he was a suspect; his son had lately been arrested and put in prison; moreover his house had been searched, all his hiding-holes discovered, so they were useless, and his house might at any moment be searched again. Then Penderel confided to him that he for whom he sought shelter was no less a personage than the king himself. Hearing this Woolf exclaimed, "I would the king had come anywhere than here, for soldiers are all round about and are watching the Severn in case any fugitives should escape that way. Now that I know who it is that desires shelter I would risk my life to do that service, but it is not safe for the king to be here." Whereupon Penderel explained that the king was tired out and famished and knew not where to go. After this the two consulted as to what was best to be done, and it was arranged that the king should hide himself in one of the barns amongst the straw. Woolf saw to this and brought the king out refreshments, and there the king with Penderel lay hiding that night and the whole of the next day. Finding it would be folly to attempt to cross the closely guarded Severn, they walked back to Boscobel on the following night. [Illustration: MADELEY COURT, GATEHOUSE.] But to return to Madeley Court, this fine old house, now going, alas! to decay, being converted into miners' abodes and left to their tender care, still retains some semblance of its former stateliness. It is approached by a fine gate-house flanked by two octagonal and roofed towers, of which I give an illustration; beyond the gate-house the many-gabled building stands, and with its big chimneys presents an effective and picturesque outline against the sky. It is the very ideal of a haunted house, but now that it is divided into miners' tenements I can hardly imagine that any self-respecting ghost would remain in such quarters; even ghosts may have their feelings. Madeley Court possesses the abiding charm of antiquity. An ancient time-worn home like this that has made its history, what a wide gulf separates it from a modern building that has no story to tell, even though the modern building be beautiful in itself, which it seldom is. I believe it was Ruskin who said he could not live in a land that had no old castles, and I should like to add ancient houses of the eventful and picturesque Elizabethan or Jacobean era. Castles have their lure to lovers of the past, though they beat the big drum too loudly for my fancy; give me rather a grey-gabled, rambling, old moated house, remote in the country and away from other human habitations, pregnant with traditions that have gathered round it; and if I fail to unearth those traditions, I am quite capable of inventing some for myself suitable to the place, and to my liking. Some years ago during my road wanderings I came, in Worcestershire, upon the decayed but delightfully picturesque moated hall of Huddington Court, standing, isolated and with a sadly forlorn look, in a desolate district, far removed from the beaten track. Of its history, at the time, I could glean nothing, but that it had some story to tell I felt convinced; there was a certain subtle something about the place, actual enough to me but indefinable, that suggested old-time romance. I could not get away from that feeling; I had it with me for days long after. Now in a previous book I described the old place and the glamour it cast over me, and this brought me from a reader of my book and a direct descendant of its former owner a long and most interesting letter giving a graphic account of certain stirring events connected with it, and I take the liberty of here quoting a portion of this letter as showing the share in history, often forgotten history, which many an old house inherits. This, then, is the story of the ancient home as given to me:-- "Huddington Court, with its moat, its priest-holes, was the ancestral home of the Winters, and has played a notable part in many a stirring scene intimately connected with some of the most romantic and fascinating pages of English history. It was at Huddington Court that the famous Gunpowder Plot was in part hatched, Robert Winter (or Wintour, or again Wyntour), the then owner of the Court, being one of the chief conspirators with Thomas, his redoubtable brother. It was at that top window, under the great gable, shown in your excellent photograph, that Lady Mary Winter stood to watch the horseman who should bring her news as to the success, or failure, of the Plot. The prearranged signal was a raised hand (in case of success), and it is an easy matter to picture her look of eagerness and poignant inquiry as she caught a glimpse of the mounted messenger coming down the very road where in all probability you left your car whilst inspecting the Court. As the horseman drew near, what, think you, must have been her feelings when with bowed head he clattered onwards without a sign? There was no necessity for a spoken word; she knew only too well that the Plot had failed, and that the consequences must be swift and terrible. So in truth they were. "Riding like fiends before the breath of destruction the conspirators fled into the night, and from London and elsewhere converged, one and all, upon the Court House of Huddington. The day after the discovery of the Plot they were all assembled there, and received absolution at the hands of a priest who had journeyed post-haste from Coughton Court, another historic old home in the neighbourhood. Under the shadow of the Court, just across the moat, you will remember the little church into which you failed to obtain entrance; there it was that the conspirators met in those last solemn rites of the church. Then as a last desperate effort they rode forth to raise the countryside. They visited Hewell Grange, and failing to enlist the sympathy, or assistance, of the then Lord Windsor or his followers, they turned to and sacked the place, carrying away with them arms and ammunition from its well-stored armoury. By this time the forces of armed justice were close upon their heels, and their plight was desperate indeed. Fate played into the hands of their pursuers, and they found themselves 'hoist with their own petard,' for crossing the Stour (then in flood) the bags of gunpowder attached to their saddles became wet. They presently dismounted and carried them into an inn so that they might dry before the open fire. During the risky operation a spark flew out from the fire and blew the majority of the conspirators to atoms. Leaving the injured to their own devices, the remaining portion of the band clambered again into the saddle and made off in every direction. Thomas Winter, with several other desperate companions, turned to bay in a house near by, where a hand-to-hand fight ensued of a most sanguinary character. Thomas, whose sword must have done deadly service for a time, for he was a noted swordsman, only succumbed after being grievously wounded in the stomach by a pike, and was taken prisoner. Robert Winter escaped to the house of a friend and lay in hiding for several weeks, only to be eventually discovered and captured. Both Thomas and Robert suffered death upon the gallows in London for their share in the Plot, and John Winter, a half-brother, was executed at Worcester. No wonder an air of desolation and the mystery of an untold sorrow still seems to hang about the place; it would be strange if it were not so." Such is the tragedy connected with Huddington Court. Most old houses have some story to tell, at least most old houses of former importance seem to be haunted by the memory of some interesting episode in which they have had their part. Sooner or later, as in the case of Huddington Court, their story will out. The spirit of place calmly awaits discovery. One old house that took my fancy the first time I saw it I afterwards found was connected with quite a romantic incident that reminded me of Dorothy Vernon's famous exploit. Early in the eighteenth century it appears that the daughter of the house clandestinely eloped with her lover, letting herself down from her chamber by the aid of two sheets tied together, just before sunrise one morning. Reaching the garden below safely and unobserved she met the man of her choice, who was quietly waiting near by with two saddle-horses, one for him and one for her, when the pair galloped off to a distant church, where all was arranged for their wedding. This is a true story and no invented legend, and the very sheets are still kept by the family as heirlooms. Writing of old houses, here is an account of a curious discovery made in one that I transcribe verbatim from my morning paper of July 10, 1912: "Whilst repairing the fireplace and chimney at the Feerm Farm, near Mold, workmen have discovered a revolving stone, which on being moved revealed a secret chamber. The house was built in the early part of the sixteenth century and was once a manor-house. In the chamber was antique oak furniture, including a table on which lay old firearms, household utensils, and the remains, reduced to dust, of a repast. It is surmised that the room was used as a hiding-place by Royalist fugitives during the Civil War in the reign of Charles I., and that since then it had remained undisturbed." Still a stranger discovery, and a most tragic one, relating to an old house in England is recorded by Mrs. Hugh Fraser in _A Diplomatist's Wife in Many Lands_, and this is her account of it: "The owners of a certain old house, having inherited it from another branch of the family, decided to clear away a crowded shrubbery that almost covered one side." Upon the shrubbery being cut down, we learn, "it became evident that a part of the building ran out farther into them than any one had noticed. Measurements were taken and proved that a room existed to which there was no entrance from within; this was finally effected by breaking down a bricked-up window, and then the long-excluded daylight showed a bedroom, of the eighteenth century, in wild confusion, garments thrown on the floor, and chairs overturned as if in a struggle. On the mouldering bed lay the skeleton of a woman, still tricked out in satin and lace, with a dagger sticking between the ribs. Under the bed was another skeleton, that of a man, who seemed from the twisted limbs and unnatural position to have died hard. No clue had been obtained to the story." After this who shall say that old houses have not their romances, recorded or unrecorded? Mrs. Fraser's account of a hidden chamber and of skeletons found therein is not the only one of the grim kind that has come to my notice. A book indeed would be needful to tell all the strange and, I believe, truthful tales about old houses in remote spots that I have gathered during many years of road wandering. Boscobel, like many another house of its kind, might never have become famed or known to the outer world but for the chance sojourn there of the hunted king. I have been digressing: it was the sight of that ghostly-looking old house of Madeley Court with its haunting charm of suggested romance that set my thoughts and my pen a-wandering thus. To return to Madeley Court, its walled-in pleasure garden is now but a pathless, grass- and weed-grown space--a play-ground for pigs when I was there. When I opened the gate to peep into it, a miner's wife bade me be careful not to let the pigs out. "Them's our pigs," she exclaimed. Lucky miners to live in a stately, if dilapidated, old hall and to keep pigs galore, and yet to go on strike, as they had lately done, though as the honest old miner I met, as already mentioned, frankly confessed, "we hereabouts has nothing to complain of." As a mere onlooker it appeared to me that these miners felt the need of a trade union to protect their interests, yet were themselves half afraid of the power they had set up over them. One thing remains in the neglected spot that once was, I presume, a garden trim and gay with flowers, and that is a large and remarkable sun-dial or planetarium. This consists of a great square block of stone raised on four stout pillars above some steps; on the four sides of the stone are large cup-like recesses that formerly contained the dials; these, I was informed, not only showed the time, but also the daily or nightly position of the moon and the planets. How they could do all this passes my comprehension; the position of the moon I might possibly grant, but that of the various planets that change positions every twenty-four hours is "a big order." Had only Madeley Court been a little cared for and in pleasanter surroundings, it would have been one of the most picturesque homes imaginable. But the country about being blest with coal beneath is, by the getting of it, curst with ugliness above. I left Madeley by a rough lane that threaded its way through a hilly country and past many collieries, but in time I escaped the spoilt scenery, where both the buildings and the land looked sombre and sad, and reached a fairer country, though for some distance the atmosphere was dull and grey with the drifting smoke from the chimneys of the mines. Then as the evening came on I found myself in the little town of Shifnal, where I discovered a decent inn, and that, to me, was the chief attraction of the place. That night I consulted my map to hunt up the position of Boscobel, for I was minded to see that historic and ancient house next day, and the study of my map revealed the fact that Lilleshall's ruined abbey and the remains of White Ladies Nunnery were not far off, so I determined to make a round of it and see them on my way, and a pleasant cross-country expedition, mostly over winding lanes, it promised to be. I had heard of Lilleshall Abbey but not of White Ladies Nunnery that I found marked plainly on my map, at a spot apparently remote and not far from Boscobel. From Shifnal I went to Sheriff Hales, a small village of no interest, but it was a convenient point to make for first on the complicated way to Lilleshall. Somehow, though I used my eyes and consulted my map, I managed to successfully miss the abbey, notwithstanding the fact that it stood close to the road I was on; but so screened by trees were the ruins that I passed them unawares, and soon found myself a little beyond them in the village of Lilleshall, where there is nothing notable to see unless it be a tall obelisk that crowns the hill above. This obelisk, erected to the memory of a former Duke of Sutherland, is a prominent landmark for miles around, and from the hill-top is a grand panoramic prospect over a goodly country, a prospect that well repays the easy climb. The church of Lilleshall is uninteresting; the only thing that attracted my attention in it was a monument in the chancel with the recumbent effigy of a stately dame on it, her head bound round with a fresh linen bandage. It appears that the nose of the figure had been broken off, and had been replaced and cemented on again, and that the bandage was there to hold the nose in position until the cement hardened. But in the church's gloom the freshly bandaged head gave the effigy a curious look, as though it were alive and suffering severely from toothache! At Lilleshall there still exists an ancient pond of considerable size, the water from which once drove the abbey mill, and the course of the mill-race may still be traced. From near this pond I found a footpath over the fields that led to the abbey ruins, and half-way to them I came to a little lonely railed-in well, known of old as "Our Lady's Well." Above the well a little nook Once held, as rustics tell, All garland-decked, an image of The Lady of the Well. Nowadays it is known as "The Wishing Well," and it is said that whoever drops a pin in it and wishes, his or her wish will be fulfilled. Having no pin with me I was unable to test the efficacy of the well; but this I can say, that I know a certain "Wishing Gate" in the Lake District, much esteemed for its virtues, where all you have to do is to lean against the gate and wish; now when I was much younger I leant against it in the company of one and wished, and my wish was realised. Approaching the abbey ruins by the footpath, they made an effective and pathetic picture lightened and warmed by the soft sunshine, with the green woods behind them, the ruins so old and wan, and the woods so freshly green. The chief feature of the abbey is its bold and beautiful late Norman west doorway, and from this wide portal the whole of the church can be seen at a glance, so that one can judge the extent of it, and a glorious and stately fane it must have been when the last abbot in 1538 meekly handed it over to the minions of Henry VIII., "with all its manors, lordships, messuages, gardens, meadows, feedings, pastures, woods, lands, and tenements." A rare and rich morsel for that greedy monarch. Lilleshall Abbey has been picturesquely ruined, yet I wish it had been a little less ruined, for one misses the graceful tracery that once adorned its now vacant windows; it is the tracery of their windows that gives such an added charm to Tintern and Melrose. The abbey was fortified and held for the king in the Civil Wars, and was bombarded by Cromwell's merciless cannon-balls; afterwards it was utilised as a ready-made stone quarry, so that one wonders, and is thankful, that so much of it remains. Past the abbey's walls runs a little slothful stream with scarcely a murmur, a stream now weed-grown and overhung by trees, and very pleasant it was to ramble by its cool and shady side with the grey ruins on one hand and the tangled woods on the other; the quiet wind just whispering as it passed by, it might be, the secrets of the past. I had the abbey to myself; not a soul did I see; not a sound did I hear but the hardly audible lisp of the stream, and the subdued rustle of the wind-stirred leaves. The spell of peace was there. I fancy the abbey is little visited, for, like Haughmond, it lies out of the track of tourist travel, and there is no inn or railway within miles of it as far as I can remember; now the tourist demands an inn and refreshment in near proximity to the places he haunts. To get beyond railways and inns, that is the thing for the peace-loving traveller. The motor-car he must suffer, but the average motorist loves the highway; on the Shropshire byways I met scarcely one. From the abbey I started forth to discover White Ladies Nunnery and Boscobel. Eventually I discovered both, but so out of the world are they that I had much difficulty in making their discovery. Signposts were useless, for not one directed me to either place. First I went to Tong, as the road to that village is fairly clear to follow, and it appeared to be on my way; moreover I had been told of a wonderful old church at Tong, so full of stately monuments that it is locally known as the "Westminster Abbey of Shropshire," and is sometimes termed the "Church of the Dead"; also it has gained the title of the "Minster of the Midlands." Quite a choice of names. Just before Tong I observed an Arabian Nights sort of a building, a freak in architecture standing desolate in a large neglected park. The house, with its Oriental domes, looked strangely un-English and out of place in the landscape. It might have been bodily conveyed from the East and boldly set down there. I even rubbed my eyes to be quite sure that I saw aright. This I found to be Tong Castle, though anything more unlike a castle I could not imagine; but I learnt that a castle once stood on the spot, and there was a big board put up in the park that told its story, for boldly painted on it was "Tong Castle. For Sale." [Illustration: LILLESHALL ABBEY.] At Tong I pulled up at the church to find that the door of it was locked, so I went to hunt for the clerk; fortunately I found him at home close by, and at my service. It does not always happen so, for at different times I have spent many an hour clerk-hunting, and failed to run down my quarry. It is the most uncertain of sports. It seems passing strange to me how in a small village this minor official occasionally entirely disappears, and no one can tell you where he is, not even the publican; on the other hand, so contrary do things arrange themselves that frequently, when you stop in a village for any purpose, the clerk ferrets you out at once and almost insists on showing you the church whether you desire to see it or no. On a former tour, coming to a small country town in the Eastern Counties where I had been told the church contained a very curious and interesting old tomb, unique of its kind in the kingdom, I spent one whole hour clerk-hunting. Nobody appeared to have seen the clerk that morning, and nobody could tell me where he was. The last person of whom I made inquiries was an old woman standing by her house door. Neither did she know, but she had seen him yesterday, which was not very helpful. Then, perhaps noticing my look of disappointment, she suddenly exclaimed, "I be sorry you can't find the church clerk; but I've the key of the Methodist chapel, if you would like to see over that"! CHAPTER XIV A wonderful collection of tombs--A tombstone inscription by Shakespeare--A leper's door--Relics--Manufacturing the antique--Curiosity shops--The Golden Chapel--"The Great Bell of Tong"--White Ladies Nunnery--The grave of Dame Joan--Boscobel and its story--A tradition about the "Royal Oak." Externally Tong church strikes the rare and happy note of individuality; however beautiful our country churches may be, those in the same county of the same period are but too apt to repeat familiar forms; there is no freshness about them to attract. Now Tong church is an original conception, original without being strange, and it possesses the excellent and pleasing merit of good proportion. Its central tower is octagonal, rising from a square base, with the four corners of its base tapering off to the octagonal above; the tower is crowned by a graceful steeple with spire lights, which spire lights "are perhaps nearly unique." The roof of the church has manifestly been purposely kept low, the better to reveal its embattled parapets and pinnacles. Thought is apparent everywhere in its design. It is a cathedral in miniature, and a beautiful miniature too. At the west end of the building stand the crumbling arches of its former college, and in the churchyard is a cross that marks the plot of ground set apart for the burial of unbaptized children, to me a fresh feature of a churchyard. The interior of the church, with its many truly magnificent altar-tombs, proved vastly more noteworthy and interesting than I expected; the clerk, too, was both interesting and well-informed, and evidently took a pride in the building. He did not go round conveying information in a parrot-like and irritating fashion as some clerks do, as though repeating guidebook-gathered information learnt by heart, and glad to get it done. The tombs are all exceedingly beautiful and well-preserved; they have happily survived the Puritan's rage and the church-wardens' era undamaged. The effigies on them of the noble lords and brave knights of old provide an object-lesson as to the wearing and to the details of ancient armour; those of their ladies reveal the elaborate dresses worn in days of yore, and the changing fashions of head-gear, all so faithfully rendered one could almost reconstruct the armour and renew the dresses from the sculptured stone. The oldest tomb (for they were all pointed out to me in due chronological order) is that of Sir Fulke de Pembruge (who is represented in chain armour of the period of the Crusades), with Dame Elizabeth his wife by his side; though the clerk said "some antiquaries who have examined the tomb have thrown a doubt as to whether the effigy of the lady is really that of the knight's wife, from the fact that the base of the tomb below her effigy has undergone alteration and is not quite in keeping with the other part. It has even been suggested that possibly the effigy may have been removed from elsewhere and placed there for convenience, in careless past days." In truth, to do such a monstrous thing would have needed very careless days indeed. Still, in times past stranger things were done in the name and under the cloak of church restoration. I learnt that Sir Fulke predeceased his wife some years, and I formed a theory, satisfactory at any rate to myself, that quite possibly this Sir Fulke de Pembruge had first been buried beneath a single altar-tomb, and that some years later his wife might have been laid by his side, and this would account for the slight difference in the details of this under portion of the tomb, which has manifestly been added at a little later period. Quite a plausible explanation it seems to me; then wherefore seek for a more improbable one? There were several other stately tombs to various members of the Vernon family, who owned not only the Castle of Tong, but also Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, hallowed now by the story of Dorothy Vernon. Each mail-clad image of the noble house, With sword and crested head, Sleeps proudly in the purple gloom By the stained window shed. Sir Henry Vernon, who died in 1515, the founder of the Golden Chapel and the donor of the Great Bell of Tong, has a very elaborate tomb adjoining the chapel; both his effigy and that of his wife are coloured. But the most magnificent monument of all is that of Sir Thomas Stanley, who, by the long inscription on it, we learn, "married Margaret Vernon one of the daughters and cohairs of Sir George Vernon of Haddon in the Covntie of Derbie, knighte." His wife's effigy lies beside his. This tomb is of considerable interest because a verse attached to it, the clerk informed me, is said to have been written by Shakespeare. Sir William Dugdale, the antiquary (born 1605, deceased 1686)--I note how long lived antiquaries often are--declares positively that it was written by Shakespeare and by no one else. Now Sir William Dugdale is no mean authority. This is the verse: Not monumentall stone preserves our fame, Nor sky aspyring piramids our name. The memory of him for whom this stands Shall outlive marble and defacers' hands. When all to Tyme's consumption shall be geaven, Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in Heaven. In spite of Sir William Dugdale's assertion, most people are of opinion that this verse is not of sufficient merit to warrant Shakespeare's authorship; still, to me at least, it appears equal to the well-known and much-quoted epitaph that the poet composed for himself, which is inscribed over his grave in Stratford-on-Avon church. Truly there is the difficulty of dates to be considered. Now when Sir Thomas Stanley died Shakespeare was but twelve years old; however, as frequently was the case, the monument might not have been erected until some few years after Sir Thomas Stanley's death, and again the verse may not have been written then. It may be that the verse, which is apart from the inscription, was an after-thought, placed there at a little later time. Therefore, as far as dates are concerned, there is nothing impossible in Shakespeare having composed the verse when a young man. Here is a promising matter for antiquaries to dispute about! [Illustration: FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH.] [Illustration: BOSCOBEL.] Next the clerk called my attention to the fine old fifteenth-century stained glass of the west window, found some years back under the floor of the church, presumably placed there for safety from the Puritan fanatics. Also he pointed out the boldly carved royal coat-of-arms set up against the north wall of the church "to celebrate the capture of Napoleon Bounaparte." Then he showed me the old Collegiate Choir stalls, on one of the panels of which is a very curious and cunningly conceived carving representing the Annunciation; at the base of the panel is shown a vase with lilies growing from it, and these are so contrived to subtly suggest the Crucifixion where the flowers expand. A quaint and poetic conception cleverly carried out. "A carving quite unique," the clerk told me; certainly I had seen nothing like it before. I wonder how the medieval carver got his inspiration? Next we inspected the Golden, or the Vernon Chapel, built in 1510, a copy on a smaller scale of the Henry VII. Chapel in Westminster Abbey. The fan-vaulted roofing of this is very fine, and both the roof and walls still plainly show traces of gilt and colouring. In a niche in the west wall and under a richly carved canopy is the figure of Sir Arthur Vernon represented as preaching, this Sir Arthur Vernon being "a priest of the College." During the restoration of the church his brass was discovered beneath the floor of the chapel, though why it should have been floored over I cannot imagine; now it has been recovered and exposed for all men to read who know the Latin tongue. The original altar stone (of rough sandstone with five crosses on it) has also been recovered from the floor, and has been returned to its former rightful position, suitably elevated, at the east end of the chapel, and above it is a faded fresco of the Crucifixion. On the south wall is also a quaint brass to Ralph Elcock--Cellarer of the College. Next we went to the vestry, and I noticed that the door entering to it had three large round holes in the top. According to the clerk this door was originally an outer one and known as the lepers' door, the holes being for the use of lepers to observe the service from the churchyard. I have come upon lepers' or low-side windows galore, but never upon a so-called lepers' door before. As, for reasons already given, I do not believe in lepers' windows, it naturally follows I could not agree with the clerk that this was ever a lepers' door. More probably, I thought that the holes were merely made in the door to afford an outlook from the vestry into the church, but that explanation was too simple to satisfy the clerk, it robbed the door of its romance. In the vestry is preserved a library of rare old tomes, also a richly embroidered ecclesiastical vestment said to have been worked by the nuns of White Ladies. Amongst the treasures of the church is a tall and richly chased silver-gilt and crystal cup, given by Lady Eleanor Harries in 1625, but the cup itself is of very much older date and is probably of foreign craftsmanship. What was the original purpose of this I cannot say; possibly it was a monstrance--it could hardly have been intended for a Communion cup. Since I was at Tong I have heard that an American collector had offered a large sum for this cup, £800 I think I was told. I am glad to say that the church authorities forbade its sale. "England," as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, "is one vast museum," but even the vastest museum, if continually deprived of its treasures, must become depleted in time. As I travel on I am continually hearing of art treasures, of ancient furniture, of fine oak panelling, ruthlessly removed from old houses, of old family pictures and portraits, old pewter, old fireplaces, old everything, having been purchased by Americans, millionaire or otherwise, and conveyed across the Atlantic; how far true I cannot say, but I have also heard that there are sundry manufactories abroad and at home of sham antiques, of old masters, old pottery, "Toby Jugs" in particular, and furniture, kept busily employed for the benefit chiefly of Americans. Of late I was informed that Shakespearian relics are booming, and those of Charles I. run a close second, and the trade is a profitable one, for the prices of these "rare" articles are high, or they would not be considered genuine. Perhaps this explains where all the old furniture comes from, and the store of ancient things one finds, now that motorists scour the land, displayed conveniently to catch the eye of the passer-by in countless village curiosity shops; also the growth of these shops, and why their stores never grow less. A short time ago it came to my knowledge that a lady consulted an authority on old china as to the genuineness of a dessert service she had purchased on the understanding that it had "been in one family for over two centuries," whereupon the lady made the unwelcome discovery that the factory in which it was produced only opened in 1850! Old worm-eaten oak from old houses pulled down and from old churches being restored is utilised in making careful copies of ancient Elizabethan and Jacobean furniture, so the wood of these is old enough and genuinely worm-eaten. I recently visited a village, through which motorists frequently pass, where there is a large curiosity shop literally crammed with "genuine" ancient furniture mostly made yesterday, but the copies I saw were so good and had such a look of ancientness as to deceive many an innocent purchaser. Two "monks' tables" were on sale there, suits and bits of rusty and knightly armour, made I fancy, in spite of the easily obtained rust, not more than a dozen years or so ago in Germany, where they do the thing very well, old sun-dials, old dressers, Elizabethan chairs, early water-clocks and bracket clocks of the Cromwell era, and I know not what else; all most cleverly reproduced even to the signs of wear--done by a wire brush, I believe--and the cutting of initials and dates of centuries past on tables and chairs. A gentleman who had been to Japan told me that he discovered a craftsman there who was most clever in reproducing old brass Cromwell clocks, works and all, even to the English makers' names and ancient dates upon them; these were sent over to England, and he showed me one that he had purchased, and so skilfully was the original imitated, even to the presumed wear of the works, that I was astounded at the cleverness of the fraud. But to return to the vestry of Tong church, said the clerk to me, "Have you heard of the Great Bell of Tong?" I had not till he mentioned it. I waited for him to tell its story that I knew was coming. I have forgotten how much he declared it weighed, but I believe it was considerably over two tons. "It takes three men to start it," he went on, "but when once started one man can keep it going. It was presented to the church in 1518 by Sir Henry Vernon. It is only rung on Christmas Day, Easter Day, Whit-Sunday, and St. Bartholomew's Day, on the birth of a child to the Sovereign and an heir to the Prince of Wales, or when the head of the Vernon family visits Tong." Dickens confessed that it was to Tong church that he brought Little Nell with the schoolmaster in the _Old Curiosity Shop_, and this is how he describes it: "It was a very aged, ghostly place; the church had been built many hundred years ago, and once had a convent or a monastery attached," referring doubtless to the decayed College, "for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while other portions of the old buildings, which had crumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as though they too claimed a burial-place, and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men." Leaving Tong I got amongst narrow winding lanes in my search after White Ladies, and a rare difficulty I had in discovering that remote spot. "It's not a good country for strangers to find their way about in," exclaimed one old body of whom I asked direction, and I quite agreed with her, it was not. I kept on asking for White Ladies of any one I saw, but the lanes were very deserted and I met few people on them, and their answers to my queries were none too clear. Indeed they reminded me in indirectness of a reply that a Shropshire gentleman assured me he once received from a villager. He was asking the villager how long her father had been dead, and she said quite calmly, "If he had lived till to-morrow he would have been dead a week." Country folk, for some inexplicable reason, never seem capable of giving a plain answer to the simplest question. They appear to love to go round it, perhaps because they like to talk. After all I really think I should have missed White Ladies, for it is hidden from the road and only reached by an ill-defined footpath through a wood and then over a field, had I not been bold enough to call at a farmhouse where I received clear instructions how to find the ruins. Fortunately they were not very far off, "only about a mile farther on," so I could not well go astray, for I had only to follow the lane till I came to "a little wicket at the corner of the wood." I was glad of it, for I felt weary of wandering without arriving anywhere. What is left of White Ladies Nunnery consists almost wholly of its despoiled Norman church, if church be not too dignified a term for so small a building, roofed now only by the sky and paved with rough and tangled grasses, the foot of its walls being fringed with flourishing weeds. There are few architectural features of note about the building except its ornamented north doorway and its rounded Norman windows, the carving of this doorway being little the worse for the weathering of centuries. The ruins stand silent and solitary in a large meadow, and around the meadow stretch deep woods for far away, and beyond the woods are distant hills, that day faintly outlined in palest blue against the sky; these woods are the relics of the once famous forest of Brewood. It is a lonely spot to-day, and must always have been a lonely one; its only approach is by a lane, and then over the quiet fields. There solitude dwells. Close to the ruins once stood the old half-timber hall of the Giffards (an old print I have seen represents this as it was in 1660--a low, rambling, and most picturesque building surrounded by walls, and with a quaint gabled gate-house in front), of which now not a vestige remains. Thither came Charles II., fleeing in hot haste from the fatal battle of Worcester--fatal to the Royal cause at least, for Cromwell called it his "crowning mercy." It is always so, to the victor the battle is a triumph, the God of Hosts is with him. Is it not recorded that Cromwell once exclaimed to his troopers whilst crossing a river, "Trust in God," followed quickly by "but keep your powder dry"? Within the ruined walls of the convent church are many ancient tombstones, for it was long a burial-place of Roman Catholic families. The oldest of these doubtless dates from pre-Reformation days, possibly being those of some important ecclesiastic, for it is adorned with foliated crosses beautifully carved, though without inscription as far as I could discover. But, to me, the most interesting tombstone of all bore no ornamentation but was briefly inscribed: Here lieth the bodie of a Friend the King did call Dame Joane but now shee Is deceased and gone. Interred Anno Do. 1669. There Dame Penderel lies. Boscobel was not far away; I simply followed the lane trustingly, and soon I beheld the great chimney and roof-trees of that ancient and historic house peeping through the trees. I came upon it suddenly and unawares. I was prepared to be disappointed with Boscobel; I always am prepared to be disappointed with historic places, for one gets so worked up with enthusiastic descriptions of them that but too often the reality leaves one cold and disenchanted, for who can romance to order? Where historic events have happened, I demand, perhaps unreasonably, a fitting background. The romantic incident of the stay and concealment of Charles II. at Boscobel calls for a picturesque setting, and there I found it. Boscobel is still, as of old, remote amongst the woods, and suits the story to perfection. Though externally the house has lost somewhat of the patina of age by renovation, yet it impressed me. Had I come upon it unknowingly the very aspect of it with its old-fashioned garden and quaint summer-house would have caused me to stop, for it had that indefinable thing--a look of romance. Never yet have I come upon a house with that special look that has not earned it. A man writes his character on his face; so does an old house. I did not know whether this storied home would be shown to strangers, but there I found a soft-spoken dame of dignified manner, who not only showed me over it, but told me its tale again so well and so freshly that in its old-world and pleasant panelled chambers the present seemed almost a dream and the past a reality. So strong was the influence of the place upon me that I almost expected to see the faithful Dame Joan appear approaching along one of the dusky passages, or even the hunted king himself. If ever a house were haunted by past presences, that house is Boscobel. I even thought it remotely possible that the grey-haired dame who showed me the place might be a descendant of the Penderels. I confess I had a longing to ask her if she were not of the good old stock, and should have done this but from fear of being disillusioned; but whether she were or no, for the sentiment of the thing, so I pleased to fancy her. Indeed I thought I traced a resemblance in her features to those of faithful Dame Joan Penderel, whose painted portrait I saw hanging on the wall of the ancient oratory, possibly because I looked for it, and you often see what you look for. There can be no mistake about this portrait, for on it the artist has inscribed, as was the custom of the time, both her name and a date, thus: "Dame Penderel--Anno Dom. 1662," though her age at the time he has not recorded as was usual. Full of quiet character and motherly kindness is the face, a pleasure to look upon. Great is the contrast of this portrait with those of Charles II. and Cromwell (apparently excellent likenesses) hanging in the dining-room, for the king's features reveal a weak and pleasure-loving nature, whilst those of Cromwell are determined and austere. It was a happy time I spent at Boscobel, and I was fortunate to see it alone. I learnt from my guide that the house was built in 1540, so that it was over a century old when the king sought refuge there, and I further learnt that the name Boscobel originated from a suggestion made to John Giffard, its builder, by his friend Sir Basil Brooke, of Madeley Court, who had recently returned from Italy; and his suggestion was that the house, being seated in the heart of a forest, should be called Boscobel, from the Italian words _bosco bello_, meaning fair woods; so it was named. Passing through the hall I was shown first the fine oak-panelled dining-room, where is still preserved the very table that was used by the king. Much as it was then is the room to-day. On its walls hangs a copy of the Proclamation issued by the Parliament at the very time Charles II. was hiding there, offering a reward of £1000 for the discovery of the king, also declaring that it was death without mercy for concealing him. It speaks well for the Penderel brothers, all poor men "of honest parentage but of mean degree" to whom a thousand pounds would have been a fortune, that even when closely questioned by the troopers when searching the house and woods around, each one in turn pleaded ignorance of the king's whereabouts, rejecting the proffered reward and risking death rather than betray their sovereign. Opening out of one of the panelled sleeping chambers in the upper part of the house is a small closet; a cunningly concealed trap-door in the floor of this gives access to a small hiding-hole, and from this hiding-hole is a secret stairway (or rather was, for it is closed up now) contrived in part of the big chimney-stack; this stairway led down to a concealed door at the foot of the chimney and so out into the garden, forming a way of escape from the hiding-hole should it be discovered. It was down this stairway that Charles II. made his escape into the woods when one of the brothers Penderel (four of whom were keeping constant and tireless watch on the roads around) gave the alarm that soldiers were approaching, and it was deemed safer for the king to hide in the woods than to remain in the house. So selecting a thick-leaved oak, some distance off, with a tall straight trunk that no one could imagine that a man could climb, Charles II. mounted into its upper branches by means of a ladder carried there by the faithful Richard Penderel, who hurriedly carried it back to an outhouse before the soldiers arrived. In connection with the familiar story of the king's hiding in this oak my guide related to me an incident that I had not heard before. It appears that the king took with him into the tree two pigeons in a bag, as had been arranged he should, and that when the soldiers rode past below, he released these pigeons as though the soldiers had disturbed them, this to show that no one could be concealed there. The story of the pigeons is told in a quaint carving on the top of an old oak box that is kept in one of the rooms of the house, and is so far confirmed. The carving gives a bold representation of the Royal Oak in full leaf with the two pigeons flying from it, and the soldiers in search below. Whilst the soldiers were searching the woods Dame Joan went out ostensibly to gather sticks for the fire; she engaged the soldiers in conversation, and so diverted their attention from the neighbourhood of the special oak where the king was. You may always trust a woman whose heart is in her task to fool any man. Alone in a field not far from the house and surrounded by an iron railing stands a flourishing and fair-sized old oak, known as the Royal Oak. Though this is doubtless on, or close to, the spot where the historic tree grew, it can hardly be the one in which the king hid; some authorities, however, blinking hard facts, boldly avow their belief in it. Now for these hard facts, though romance suffers thereby, and you may not hint such things at Boscobel, Dr. Stukeley, the antiquary, writing in 1713, declares that then the old tree was "almost all cut away by travellers whose curiosity leads them to see it," and John Evelyn in his day writes that when he saw it "relic-hunters had reduced the original tree to a mere stump." Moreover, the king in his own account of his hiding said that he got into a tree that had been polled and was very bushy at the top. Now the present oak has never been polled, which is surely sufficient proof that it is not the original one. If I may judge from the various chests and other articles I have seen, and which are said to be made out of the wood of the original Royal Oak, it must have been the largest tree that ever grew; but the wise traveller does not take all such relics seriously. An ancient writer indeed declares that at one time in European churches there were shown to pious pilgrims portions of the true Cross which if collected together would be sufficient to load a big ship. Even the clerk of Tong told me that he owned a large oak chest made out of wood from the Royal Oak, and he is but one of many who own chests that have this reputation, to say nothing of chairs, tables, stools, and countless snuff-boxes, all made, and carved, from the wood of that wonderful tree--the tree Wherein the younger Charles abode Till all the paths were dim, And far below the Roundhead rode, And humm'd a surly hymn. Upstairs in the house, beneath what was formerly a cheese attic, is another hiding-place, a dark small hole at the top of the stair and entered by a trap-door in the floor, and here it was that Charles II. spent one uncomfortable night, cheeses being rolled over the trap-door for the better concealment of it. So my guide told me. Now the puzzling thing about this is, why, especially at night when the house was carefully locked and guarded, should it have been thought needful for the king to secrete himself in this cramped place? Surely he might have slept comfortably in bed, for there ought to have been ample time, when the soldiers knocked at the door and the alarm was given, and whilst the door was being slowly opened, for the king to have secreted himself; as it was he spent a most uncomfortable night to no purpose. Now when Charles II. was afterwards sheltered in Moseley Hall and was resting on a couch in a chamber (it chanced to be one afternoon), some soldiers made a surprise visit there, but on the servants rushing upstairs crying "The soldiers are coming," the king found ample time to reach his hiding-place, where he lay concealed in safety till the soldiers departed baffled. It speaks much for the cleverness of the contrivers of the hiding-holes both at Boscobel and Moseley that none of these holes, though carefully searched for, were ever discovered. Still it must have been a very unpleasant experience for the king, hidden away in a dark and dismal hole all the while the soldiers were busily searching the house, not knowing but that he might at any moment be discovered. Indeed, when his host had seen the soldiers safely away and came to release the king, the king exclaimed to him "he thought the time very long"--and little wonder; so might any one in so unfortunate a position. It is said that Charles II. was the last person to be secreted in the hiding-holes at Boscobel. Possibly Boscobel was not so diligently searched as other houses were, owing to its being solely in the care of servants at the time, so less suspicion fell on it. Boscobel in its woods calls to my mind a saying of that quaint old worthy Thomas Fuller: "It is pleasant as well as profitable to see a house cased with trees. The worst is, where a place is bald of wood no art can make it a periwig." CHAPTER XV A town with two names--An amusing mistake--Abbot's Bromley and its quaint horn dance--Dr. Johnson doing penance at Uttoxeter--Burton-on-Trent--The "Hundreds All" milestone--Indoor wind-dials--Stone-milled flour--The old Globe Room at Banbury--Dick Turpin's pistol--A strange find. Leaving Boscobel by a winding lane I presently got on to the ancient Roman Watling Street at a forsaken-looking portion of it, though I fancy the whole of the street for most of the way is, more or less, deserted. I had never been on Watling Street before; it looks so uncompromisingly straight and so uninviting on the map that I never felt any desire to explore it, but now I had come to it by accident I thought it a very pleasant road, this portion at least, with its wide grassy margins, and there before us it stretched far away through a well-wooded and lonely country--a genuine bit of Old England, mellow and grateful to the eye. I forgave the road for its straightness on account of the long and goodly green vista it afforded me, reaching even to the far-away blue--and it was delightfully free from traffic. Now I am a selfish traveller, I do not care for much company on the way. Here I had the advantages of a good road with the loneliness of a lane. So along the old Roman street we went, passing but few human habitations, here a solitary inn, there a grey old farmstead, and every now and then a cottage, but that was all; it was pleasant driving, for there were no children, nor dogs, nor fowls for miles to trouble us, and all being safe we indulged in a burst of speed purely as a stimulant. Once on it I intended to follow the ancient street all the way to Daventry, but somehow I got wrong at a point where it takes one of its few bends, and unexpectedly found myself at Lichfield. Through Lichfield I drove without a stop, for I was not travelling to revisit familiar places, and Lichfield and its cathedral I knew long ago. The route I took through the city I took at a venture, but when I got into the country again I discovered by a signpost that I was journeying to King's Bromley--well, I would go to King's Bromley, it mattered little where I went, life is too short to trouble over trifles; I was out to see the country, one way was as good as another, provided it took me through pleasant scenery, and on this score I could make no complaint. About three miles from Lichfield, at a point where London was a good hundred and twenty miles away, I was amused by a solitary and leaning signpost with simply "To London" on it, and its arm pointed down a mere lane that one would imagine led to nowhere in particular. I remember some years back coming to another such solitary signpost in Hertfordshire with just "York" inscribed on its extended arm, but that was on the Great North Road and there was some excuse for it, though York was very far off. There is such a thing as character in even signposts, and I rather sympathise with signposts that deal with big distances, they impress me with their pride of importance. The next signpost we came to had "To Abbot's Bromley" on it; I felt uncertain whether this were a different place, but a man who was passing assured me that King's Bromley and Abbot's Bromley were one and the same. "It's a small town," said he, "with two names. You can call it which you please." I thanked him for the information. I wondered who he was walking leisurely on the country road clad in a shooting suit. He might have been a squire--or a gamekeeper. I thought I would find out, so I made further innocent inquiries about Abbot's Bromley. "It's a small town," said he; "you won't do much business there." I discovered he thought me a travelling commercial--of a glorified type, I hope. I did not mind for myself, but I felt the slight on my car; fortunately a car has no feelings, but my dog growled--manifestly he had. "In what line do you travel?" queried he quite politely, possibly with the idea of being helpful. Here was a poser. Could I tell a lie? Manifestly not, so I said I was out sampling scenery. "Well, I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed he, and before he had time to think the matter over I went my way. I hope when he realised his mistake, as I presume he did, he would not think I was offended, I was simply amused. I only wish I could have kept up the character, but I was hard put to do it on the sudden emergency. I wonder who he could have been? I am sorry now I drove on so hastily, but the situation was getting strained. It is the people you meet by the way as well as places that are interesting; at least I was glad to find that every motorist is not considered a millionaire. When I come to think of it, it was an idiotic thing to say that I was sampling scenery; still, was I not? The strange fact is that when occasionally I have, at country town inns, been thrown in the company of commercials, and have tried my best to play the part of one of them, I have ignominiously failed. I might invent a new proverb, "If you want to do a thing don't try to do it"; in your anxiety you are almost sure to overact your part. To make amends for being considered a commercial, the landlord of a certain country inn once took me for a real live lord travelling under an assumed name, and the more I tried to convince him of his error the more sure was he that he had made no mistake, he had seen my photograph as Lord Somebody in some paper; he was honoured to receive me, lords would have their whims; why should they not travel under assumed names if it pleased them? He would "my lord" me--and charged for it heavily in the bill. Abbot's Bromley, or King's Bromley, gave us quite a cheerful greeting. I saw one or two flags flying in the town; the village maids (it seemed but a village to me) were dressed in their best; some were carrying flowers and looked quite charming in a rustic way, and there were young men in attendance too, dressed in their black Sunday best that did not suit them a bit. So I would know what was happening. I ventured a joke on one of the prettiest maids. "I see you were expecting me," I said. It fell flat. "No, we weren't," she replied, "it's a bazaar," and without a further word she walked away. But another maid, who had overheard the conversation, graciously came up to me and explained: "We're having an open-air bazaar; will you come to it? We're going to have the horn dance." Then I became interested. What was the horn dance? I wondered; I did not remember having heard of such a thing before. I begged for information, saying I was a stranger that chance had brought that way. I hardly need have done this, for in country places everybody seems to know everybody and their business, so the good people doubtless knew I was a stranger, and most of them appeared to think I had been attracted from afar by the news of the bazaar with its special attraction of the horn dance. It was an eventful day for Abbot's Bromley, where eventful days I should imagine are a rarity. Then I learnt that Abbot's Bromley is one of the few places where the old hobby-dances are still kept up and take place yearly, but this was a special performance in aid of the bazaar. The horn dance, I understood, is carried out by ten or a dozen performers all gaily attired, and the characters are a Maid Marian, a fool, a man with a hobby-horse, and a man with a bow and arrow; then there are six dancers each of whom carries a pair of reindeer horns of large size. These reindeer horns are kept in the church tower, and are mounted on wooden skulls provided with handles. According to tradition these horns are those of reindeers that in times long past once roamed over the forests surrounding Abbot's Bromley. In my copy of _Paterson's Roads_ (that gives a short account of the various towns on the way), under Abbot's Bromley I find the following reference to this dance, from which it appears that it was then in abeyance: "The curious custom called the hobby-horse dance formerly prevailed here; it was generally celebrated at Christmas, on New Year's Day, and Twelfth Day, when a person carrying beneath his legs the semblance of a horse, made of thin boards, danced through the principal street, having a bow and arrow in his hands ... five or six other persons also dancing carrying six reindeers' heads on their shoulders." Abbot's Bromley struck me as a very pleasant and picturesque little place; it has no railway, and that is perhaps why it has such an old-fashioned look. I have always a liking for these little towns beyond railways. Most of its houses, built long years ago, are of black and white half-timber; and the ancient inn there is of half-timber too, that with its grey gables, its casement windows, its swinging sign, is suggestive of the coaching and Pickwickian days and all the lost romance of them. It took my fancy. It ought to have some story to tell of those "good old times," but I failed to find or to conjure one; for though the house remains much as it was, the actors are dead and gone--host, coach-farer, and highwayman. It is the sort of inn you read of in Harrison Ainsworth's novels, though I doubt if any one reads them to-day. How rich in incident and picturesque description they are! I know I took my fill of them when I was a boy; now, alas! they have lost much of their flavour; yet they have changed not, the change must be in me. To complete the old-world picture of the place, Abbot's Bromley boasts of an ancient roofed-in Market Cross, with thick oak supporting-posts around. Only compare the sought-for picturesqueness of a model garden city with the natural unsought-for picturesqueness of such old towns as Abbot's Bromley, and oh, the difference! I left the little, forgotten town basking, but not sleeping, in the sunshine, for it was much alive and making merry that day. We had not gone far before a change came over the weather--I hope the open-air bazaar did not suffer from it. Overhead the sky grew dark and threatening, then came a sudden flash of lightning, loud thunder followed, then the rain in torrents. I wondered whether a motor-car with all its metal work was the safest place to be in, for the storm was severe; but there was nothing for it but to drive on, with such uncertain assurance as the saying of the farmer at Wem afforded that "lightning never strikes a moving object." In spite of that comforting dictum lightning is not to be trusted. Since then I have heard that a motor-car travelling on the road has been struck by lightning, and, though fortunately no one was hurt, the car was damaged. How the rain hissed down, and how the wind howled through and shook the trees, even blowing bits of their branches and leaves across the road! Still above the sound of the storm I could hear the steady beat of our pistons, as one hears the reassuring throb of the engines of a steamer in a gale at sea. The country appeared to be richly wooded, as far as I could judge; but what with the thunder and the lightning, the wind and the rain, I obtained but a vague impression of it. Then after the storm had done its worst, a town loomed up on a hill before us, and this proved to be Uttoxeter, a neat town neither attractive nor ugly, and that is the best I can say for it. Here, it may be remembered, Dr. Johnson, when in the height of his fame, stood in its market-place bare-headed in the rain, "exposed to the sneers of the standers-by," as an act of penance for his unfilial disobedience as a boy in refusing to watch his weary and infirm father's bookstall set up there for a while. It is a well-known story, but the actual sight of the spot where that touching incident took place made me realise it the more. Having viewed the market-place, made historic by this event, we took the first road handy out of the town, mildly wondering where we were going next. There was a sense of pleasurable excitement in not knowing our destination. I have a friend who does this sort of thing when he goes a-cycling, and who, like myself, travels to see the country, little caring where he goes. If a windy day he simply lets the wind settle his direction, for he always makes a point of cycling with the wind behind him; he finds it much easier so, and when it blows hard he finds himself blown along with the minimum of exertion. So he never troubles about any plan, but when he starts out in the morning he just glances at the way of the wind and goes contentedly with it. Capricious though this mode of travelling be, yet it rendered fortunate results. When he traced me out on the map one or two tours he had made in this haphazard fashion, I felt bound to confess that no planned tour could have turned out better, and it took him to many odd out-of-the-way and pleasant places he would probably never have seen otherwise. Truly I did not consult the wind, but on the other hand I did not consult my map unless I wished to make for any special spot, and I also toured fortunately so, to the discovery of interesting places, for the most of my journey. This time it was a milestone that revealed the fact we were bound for Burton-on-Trent. Now to Burton I had no desire to go; Burton is a big town, but the road was a very pleasant one, so I kept to it. The country was fine and open, with glorious views to the south, where undulating hills bounded the distant blue. We passed one or two stately old and dignified homes standing "amid their tall ancestral trees"; then the rain came on again, and in the pouring rain we passed through Tutbury, where afterwards I learnt there are the slight remains of a castle; but I saw nothing of them, for I was thinking more of the rain and the road than anything else: the rain was blinding, so little wonder I missed them. It was not a moment for seeing castles or anything else. I was not pleased at having to drive through Burton, for I expected to find it a busy town with much traffic in its streets, and this was the first large and busy town I had to pass through during the whole of my outing; I had merely skirted Shrewsbury, so that did not count. Yet never have I passed through a large and busy town so easily as I passed through Burton; its streets are wide, and for a wonder I found the traffic on them, much of it brewers' drays, kept well to its side of the road, so I was soon into the country again. Just beyond Burton I had a choice of two roads, and was doubtful which to take, when I saw a signpost with "To Watling Street" upon it--merely to that old highway and not to any inhabited place. This decided me; I would rejoin the famous Watling Street, of which I had a pleasant memory. I knew it avoided big, bustling towns, and that was no small recommendation. A long rise brought me into a very pleasant country, and into welcome blue skies and warm sunshine. Such varied samples of weather had I that day--the blackest of clouds and the bluest of skies, cold pelting rain and the brightest of sunshine. The scenery was delightfully rural all the long and lonely way to Atherstone, where we should be on the Watling Street again, excepting that at one spot there were some collieries on a near hill that spoilt the prospect for a while; but I looked the other way. These passed, we traversed a fine undulating country, made up of meadows, fields, and woods, and ever and again wide views of much charm opened out before us; and there the air blew sweet and bracing, with the rare freshness that follows rain. I pulled up at one quiet spot under the shelter of some overhanging trees for refreshment and for a rest, and there I stopped for an hour or more, and not a soul either driving, riding, cycling, or afoot went by. It was a cross-country road, apparently little used, and one to be enjoyed for its quietude and rural pleasantness. It surprised me how often I came upon such long stretches of almost deserted roads; we travelled far on that stage before we met a human being. Perhaps when I pulled up it was the hour of the day when the good old-fashioned country folk are mostly indoors dining, and the labourers resting from their work, so no one was about; but that does not account for the rest of the road later on being so forsaken. Atherstone is one of the order of far-extending thoroughfare towns that flourished in the old coaching days, and that seem to have fallen half asleep since, for the chief concern of such towns was with the road and its traffic, though Atherstone is not so sleepy as most of them are. All that I could discover of any interest in the place was an old milestone set up against the ancient "Red Lion Inn" there; this, curiously enough, stands just one hundred miles respectively from London, Liverpool, and Lincoln, as the following inscriptions on it show:-- To To To Liverpool London Lincoln 100 100 100 Miles. Miles. Miles. A man who was quietly watching me copying these inscriptions, when I had done my copying, exclaimed, "That be a famous old milestone. The drivers of the old coaches as stopped at the inn used always to call their passengers' attention to it." On returning home I looked up in my _Paterson_ for the name of the chief inn at Atherstone, and found it was "The Red Lion." It seems strange that to-day, when so much loving regard is shown to the preservation of old houses, and to the careful restoration of them backwards to the intention of their ancient architects, that our many quaint and friendly-looking old coaching inns should have found such few patrons to preserve their fascinating features. Standing by the roadside, how delightfully picturesque they often are, when unaltered and--save the mark!--unimproved. Many, in truth, are poems in buildings (and the term is not strained in regard to them) with their many-gabled, time-toned fronts; their signs often gaily painted, swinging on an upright post without, to proclaim their useful business; their great arched doorways under which the loaded coaches drove and landed their passengers at ease sheltered from the rain and undisturbed, or their ample porches that spoke a welcome as plain as any uttered word. Some are of half-timber and some are of stone. Perhaps those of half-timber are the more picturesque, but nearly all are pleasing to the eye; some, alas! are going to sad decay, such as that fine specimen of an old English roadside hostelry, "The Bell" at Stilton, which used to be both afamous and aflourishing house in its day, and which gave its name to the well-known cheese that the landlord of the time used to sell to his guests--indeed I believe it was considered the thing to buy a cheese at "The Bell" to take home with you. One of these old inns Ashby-Sterry has pictured to us in verse, and well the picture suits many an inn I know: 'Tis a finely-toned, picturesque, sunshiny place, Recalling a dozen old stories, With a rare, British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face, Suggesting old wines and old Tories. Ah! many's the magnum of rare crusted port, Of vintage no one could cry fie on, Has been drunk by good men of the old-fashioned sort At the Lion. "The Lion," white or red, was in the past--I am not sure that it is not even to-day--by far and away the favourite sign; "The White Hart," I think, came second. These old inns, both outwardly and inwardly, have suffered sadly from neglect, and from the mania for show that does not spell comfort. Yet when simply, decently cared for, and unaltered, how charming and restful their old-time interiors are with their snug, low, brown-beamed, ceilinged parlours, sometimes panelled and with big ingle-nooks, their mullioned windows with their lattice panes, often deeply recessed with a seat in them, their cool and cosy bars and odd nooks and curious corners. That delightful Jacobean hostelry, "The Whyte Harte," to wit, at Broadway in Worcestershire, with its genuine old-world atmosphere and quiet comfort, may be given as a good example of one. Some of these old hostelries were provided with a quaint device in the shape of an indoor wind-dial worked by a vane without, so that travellers overnight could judge by it of the next day's possibilities, and learn from the direction of the wind whether it were likely to be hot or cold, wet or fair. One of these interesting and useful indoor wind-dials may still, I believe, be seen in London at the Buckingham Palace Hotel; at least one was there and working but a year or two ago, and I understand that they are being introduced into modern homes. There are still some things we may learn from our ancestors. At Atherstone I was again on the ancient Watling Street, and I followed it to Daventry as far as it is at present opened out to the south. Again it led me through a lonely country of field and forest, unexciting but very pleasant, a country fragrant with the scent of wild flowers and the refreshing odours of the woods. I did not dally at Daventry, for the little town appeared to me featureless, and finding from my map that Banbury was but sixteen miles away, I thought to spend the night in that place as being of greater interest; moreover, I had recently read in my morning paper an account of the old historic Globe Room there at the "Reindeer Inn," with the further unwelcome information that its fine oak panelling, with its richly carved fireplace and its elaborately enriched plaster ceiling, had all been sold and were to be removed, and I wished to see it--if not too late. In this room Cromwell, it is said, held a council of war in October 1642 just before the battle of Edge Hill, so it had (oh, that pathetic word "had"!), besides the charm of its ancient picturesqueness, the additional interest of being with little doubt the place of that historic gathering. Now the fine old room has been gutted. So the "vast museum" of England is being despoiled! Whatever were the citizens of Banbury about to permit of such a thing; could they not have subscribed the price demanded for the panelling and decorative work (comparatively a paltry sum when divided amongst so many), and have retained that beautiful, historic, and ancient room intact? You cannot replace or purchase history. Even taking the meanest, most commercial view of the transaction, surely it would have well repaid the town to have bought and to have preserved that fine old chamber so intimately associated with Banbury, for I know it brought many tourists from afar to see it, some from even across the wide Atlantic; now perhaps they will not desire to go to Banbury and spend their money there, for it has little else but some ancient houses to show. Years ago the iconoclastic Banbury folk pulled down their exceptionally fine and interesting old church, "one of the most magnificent in the shire," even destroying its fine monuments, to save the little needed to keep it and them in repair, to say nothing of having done away with their "goodly crosse" of nursery renown, though a later generation has replaced it with a poor and meaningless substitute. What child would now "ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross"? It is not worth riding to or talking about. But I am a little previous, not having arrived at Banbury yet; our road to that town was either up or down hill all the way, but there was nothing to grumble at in this, for the scenery was rewarding and the motor had to do the climbing. At the top of one hill we came upon a lonely old windmill going to decay, its gaunt arms standing darkly profiled against the sky and shaking with every gust of wind. It had a weird and haunted look, though I never heard of a mill being haunted; precisely what is it, I wonder, that gives certain buildings such an uncanny look? There must really have been some magic about that mill, for I photographed it and only got a ghostly result on my film. I have never seen a ghost, but to my astonishment three intelligent people have declared, and positively declared, to me that they have done so. A little later will be found a reference to this matter. Now a ghost is a visible object and ought to be capable of being photographed: what would I not give to see a genuine photograph of a ghost! When next I sleep in a haunted room I must take my camera with me on the off chance of a ghost appearing, so that I may snap him! Though I fear my chances are but slight, for I have slept in haunted rooms where other people are reported to have seen "things," but saw nothing--not even in my dreams, which were undisturbed. Why will "things" appear to others and not to me? Years gone by, and not so many years either, you might from one spot have seen half a dozen or more windmills busily at work where now by chance you may see one; and in those past years you might have seen farmers' waggons slowly wending their way to the mill loaded with sacks of corn to be ground, or wending their way back white with fat sacks of flour. Now, except possibly in some parts of Sussex, to see a windmill with its hurtling sails is a rare sight. Grieved indeed am I that it should be so, for as a child I dearly loved the merry bickering windmill--what child does not? Now I have grown to man's estate I have not lost the old love of the sight of one. There is something very cheery and fascinating in watching the mill sails whirling round and round in their never-completed journey, now grey in shade, now white in the glance of the sun. But I sadly fear the dear old picturesque windmill is doomed, unless the manufactured article flour, not the raw material wheat, is taxed. I am no politician--I think I have said so already--for in an age when it seems to me, to misquote Macaulay, "all are for the party and none are for the State," the business of politics, as one of the Georges, I forget now which, remarked, "is not to my fancy." I preach neither free trade nor tariff reform; I have not studied the question, and I do not profess to know the facts of the case without study, as some people do--even members of Parliament who vote for their party right or wrong; it would probably cost them their seat and four hundred golden sovereigns a year if they did otherwise. But this I know, for I have tested it, that stone-ground flour produced by the old-fashioned windmill is infinitely sweeter, more nutritious, and more wholesome than the foreign roller-mill flour that is so starchy, "hence the present-day indigestion and the decay of teeth." Then, again, there is the fact, of which some clever people lose sight, that by importing flour and not wheat to grind at home we lose the valuable asset of "waste" as a fattening food for fowls, pigs, and cattle. The village of Charwelton was the only one on the way of which I retain a memory, and this I remember on account of a fine and very old two-arched Gothic bridge of stone there by the side of, and parallel to, the road, manifestly intended only for foot passengers, so narrow is it, a carriage bridge in miniature, so solidly built and buttressed as though it spanned a rushing river and had to resist its strivings. Now the road was dry and no water flowed under the bridge; I could only presume that water had once flowed there. So I asked a man, who was idly standing by, about it. "The road be flooded in the winter time," said he, "and then us use the bridge. The water be quite deep at times and the horses on the road have to ford it. That bridge be seven hundred years old, they do say." It looked it. He appeared inclined to talk, so I let him, not knowing what might be coming. "It's a slow place Charwelton be," he went on, "there's no getting away from that. The church be a mile away from the village, and that don't encourage you to go to it. You see, the place were badly knocked about during the war, so I suppose they built a new village here, and let the church bide there." He spoke of "the war" as though it were of recent date; I was mystified, till I discovered he meant the Civil Wars when Charles I. was fighting for his crown! I noticed nothing further on the way to Banbury but a big mounting-block of stone standing by a grassy margin of the road, an interesting survival, and a somewhat unusual thing to see, so I stopped to inspect it, and on it I discovered inscribed-- Thomas High of Warden Set up this. Ivly, 1659. It is still there to keep green the memory of this Thomas High, though I should imagine that few ever read the inscription or make use of the stone. I wonder why he put it up in that lonely spot, where, even in the old days, few people would be likely to need it. Now you rarely see a horseman on the road unless it be a huntsman; I doubt if the mounting-block has been used for these fifty years back. At Banbury I went to the "White Lion"; there was also, I afterwards found, a "Red Lion" in the same street, a cosy-looking hostelry with an ancient front of the fifteenth century that appealed to me. In _Paterson's Roads_ I note both these inns mentioned as existing in the coaching days. The "Red Lion" is the more picturesque of the two, but I was very comfortable at the "White." During the evening I hunted up mine host and inquired of him about the Globe Room. Alas! I had come too late to see it, for he told me that it had already been stripped of its panelling, its finely carved oak fireplace removed, its enriched plaster ceiling had been taken down, and all these had been carted away. I felt provoked with the Banbury people; I told the landlord so. I do not think I shall ever stay in Banbury again. I learnt of one curious and interesting find that had been made in the room. On pulling down the panelling there had been discovered hidden behind it a double-barrelled pistol with flint locks; the pistol was inlaid with gold and had the maker's name, "Baker, London," engraved upon it, and above the name the Prince of Wales's feathers. The pistol bears the following inscription: "Presented to Dick Turpin at the White Bear Inn, Drury-lane, February 7th, 1735." How came it there, I wonder, and who presented it to that famous highwayman? Of the genuineness of the pistol I think there can be but little doubt. Dick Turpin, it may be remembered, was hanged at York on 7th April 1739, four years after the pistol was presented to him. Writing of Dick Turpin reminds me of the myth of his renowned ride to York that Harrison Ainsworth in his _Rookwood_ romanced about; now the credit of this surprising exploit really belongs to another of the fraternity, one Nick Nevison, of earlier time; this knight of the road robbed a traveller at Gad's Hill in Kent one morning at 4 A.M., and furiously riding on to York reached that city at 8 P.M. on the evening of the same day, and so established an alibi and saved his neck, at least on that occasion. The skeleton of a poor unfortunate cat was also found behind the panelling; I wonder if it was that of the historic cat that was hanged as recorded by Drunken Barnaby? To Banbury came I, O prophane-One! Where I saw a Puritane-One Hanging of his cat on Monday, For killing of a mouse on Sunday. The landlord of "The White Lion," a pattern of civility, called my attention to "the famous wistaria" that is trained along the walls of the outbuildings of his ancient inn. This wistaria, he informed me, was the largest and finest in the kingdom, its branches extending for over two hundred feet. He was manifestly proud of it, and I duly admired it, but I had seen many fine wistarias before; I would rather have seen the Globe Room. There is little or nothing now left in Banbury to tempt the pilgrim to linger there. So I took my departure the next morning, and that early. CHAPTER XVI A gruesome carving--Architectural tit-bits--An ancient and historic hostelry--Chipping Norton--Wychwood--A parson's story--"Timothying"--Shipton-under-Wychwood--On the Cotswolds--"The grey old town" of Burford--Two old manor-houses--A new profession--Highworth--Church relics. I left Banbury one sunshiny morning, shaking "the very dust" of the town from my wheels "as a testimony against it," and driving by its modern cross I took the road before me, letting it lead me where it would. Out of Banbury I would go the nearest way. The road climbed Wickham Hill and then dropped sharply down to the quiet old-world village of Bloxham, that boasts of one of the many "finest parish churches" in the kingdom. How many are there, I wonder? Certainly it is a fine church and has a fine spire; this all must grant. I thought it worthy of inspection. I found its windows guiltless of stained glass excepting for two in the chancel, but this was not a matter to grieve about, for I much prefer plain glass to the rubbishy modern stained variety one too often comes upon, and that so offends the cultured eye by its garish crudity. A peep of the blue sky, of green trees and of even the rain, framed by the graceful tracery of a Gothic window, is more to my mind than visions of stiffly posed angular saints with ill-fitting halos round their heads; I have always an uneasy feeling that the halos may tumble off. Not that all modern stained and painted glass is bad, but most of it is--hopelessly bad; its drawing when rarely correct is spiritless, it lacks inspiration; its colouring lacks richness; so unlike the lovely medieval stained glass, it has no gem-like qualities whatever. I honestly find difficulty in worshipping in a church with angular saints in ill-fitting robes and halos askew staring at me! It seems more the idea of a sinner doing penance than a saint glorified. I noticed in the church a carved and coloured screen with some faded figures on it, and on the wall of a side chapel hung two old helmets and breastplates, somewhat rusty. I love to see ancient armour hanging in our churches, it takes the mind back to the days of knightly chivalry and recalls the never-returning romance of them--not the romance of fancy, but the romance of a past reality. Outside the church I found some open stone steps leading to two priests' chambers, one chamber over the other, but what interested me most was its richly sculptured west front; at the top of this are some good but unfortunately much weather-worn grinning gargoyles, for Time has been at work on these and has supplemented the carving of the monks with his, even, it may be, adding to their grotesqueness. Over and round the top of the big doorway is a quaint and gruesome representation of the resurrection, showing dead men rising from their coffins, one man being represented as lifting the lid of his and peering out with a look of genuine surprise as though he did not realise what was happening; others had risen and were kneeling on the ground with hands folded in the attitude of prayer, and all looked very much aghast. Skilful indeed was the hand of the medieval sculptor to obtain these expressions. It was a nightmare in carving, crudely done but startlingly effective. I am glad I do not attend that church and have to face each Sunday that terrible story in stone; it is enough to wish death the end of all. When men could not read the monks talked to them in carving, though rarely so horribly as this; mostly those monks were in a jovial mood, and so I prefer them, as witness their grinning gargoyles, their merry devils, and frequent mirthful representations of men in the dumps; they were artists of no mean order, and verily, I believe, in their hearts loved a joke better than a sermon: truly they joked far better than they preached, for their preaching seems forced--not so their jokes! To the right of the doorway there is a curious carving of a man entering the jaws of some unearthly monster; the drift of this was wholly beyond me--surely it could not have been intended for Jonah being swallowed by the whale, for the monster's head, and that was all there was of him, bore no resemblance to that of a whale or to any creature that ever walked the earth or swam the sea, unless doubtfully in the prehistoric ages. A local rhyme perpetuates the character of the spire of this church with two of its near neighbours thus: Bloxham for length, Adderbury for strength, And King's Sutton for beauty. The next village of South Newington, a village of stone-built cottages with thatched roofs, had by way of contrast a very small and poor church with square-headed windows, not those of the usual pointed Gothic type. I did not trouble to inspect it, though generally the poorest little country church can boast of some architectural feature more or less interesting. I came to a country church with only one point of interest, and that was a narrow priests' doorway gracefully designed; I presume it served the priests of past times, but I was told there was one parson of the good old Georgian days who could not use it because he was too fat! So he could not enter by the "narrow way," but had to go through the porch like any sinner. Doorways in human habitations are often the keynote to the character of the house, and I was tempted in some of the country villages I passed through to photograph a few of their ancient doorways, for they interested me; two of these photographs, reproduced, will be found in pages farther on. The one of the fourteenth century is noteworthy, for it is a rare thing for so ancient a doorway to belong to a dwelling-house. I gathered the house had originally been a pre-Reformation vicarage; now it makes a quaint and picturesque home, with its low stone-slated roof, its mullioned windows, and its ivy-clad walls, boasting too the bloom of age that so beautifies a building. The other shows a simple type of Tudor doorway with steps up to it from the village street, but, though so simple and devoid of ornament, it is so well proportioned that it both pleases and satisfies the eye. I am rather fond of photographing architectural bits that take my fancy, and the English country abounds in such bits, apart from the larger features of buildings. It is curious to note how different districts afford and abound in special subjects: here you find ancient pigeon-cotes, often centuries old, of some pretence, and frequently most picturesque; here the minor items of sun-dials and of artistically wrought weather-vanes are most in evidence; at another spot you discover interesting "lion-guarded" gateways and picturesque doorways; again, it may be, it is the inn signs, with their crudely painted signboards and their elaborate scroll-work of wrought iron that surrounds them, that attract your attention; here a gazebo, and there an ancient roofed-in village fountain, claims your notice; anon a quaint conceit in carving on church or house, and so forth, not to waste space in needlessly enumerating the many and varied architectural tit-bits the wanderer by road constantly comes across, nor need he keep his eyes very wide open to discover them. [Illustration: THE PRIEST'S DOORWAY.] After South Newington we had another long stretch of very lonely road, but charming on account of its loneliness; the country we passed through was elevated and undulating and afforded us many fine and far-reaching prospects. There were wide margins of grass by the sides of our road, so wide in places as to be almost fields; on these multitudes of silly sheep were grazing--I say silly, for when they heard the car approaching they would quietly cross the road in front of us, first one, then another, then the whole flock in slow procession, causing us to make many a stop, for sheep and cattle are lords of the road; they used even to stop a king's mails in the days of yore. These sheep really seemed to do it out of sheer perversity, and it was the more provoking as the otherwise forsaken road was so tempting to speed along, and occasionally, when all is safe, a turn of speed is a very inspiriting thing; it wipes the cobwebs from the brain, it drives the good fresh air into the lungs, it stimulates the mind, and braces the body. Not that I am an advocate of speed, except as a rare indulgence on lonely roads when there can be no hurt in it, and so you may test the mettle of your car. Then we came to the old mail and turnpike highway from London to Birmingham; this crossed our road at a lonely, bleak, and elevated spot close to which formerly stood the once flourishing "Chapel House Inn"; the building still stands there indeed, but it has been converted into a residence: an inn of wide renown in the old road-travelling days, where the Birmingham coaches changed horses and stopped whilst their passengers dined; an inn far famous for its fare and its wines--so good were the latter that it has been said, and I see no reason to doubt the saying, that "there was a strong temptation to indulge in them which was rarely resisted, even the king's cellars could produce nothing better," and there over their wines our ancestors doubtless made merry as was their wont. At least they enjoyed their lives. It was to this inn that Dr. Johnson and Boswell came in a postchaise during the early summer of 1776, and it was then when posting across country that the former, lover of towns though he was, suddenly exclaimed, "Life has little better to offer than this." It was on the same day, whilst dining at the "Chapel House Inn," that the learned doctor delivered his much-quoted eulogy on inns: "There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as in a capital tavern," declared he. "You are sure of a welcome, and the more noise you make, the more good things you call for, the more trouble you give, the welcomer you are. There is nothing that has been invented by man by which so much happiness is produced as a good tavern or inn." What road traveller will not re-echo those sentiments?--though I grieve for the one who can honestly say with Shenstone he has found his "warmest welcome at an inn," however warm the welcome at his inn may be. About Chapel House many stories, astonishing and otherwise, truthful and untruthful, of old days and old ways are told; but though sadly tempted to relate some of these, I refrain, for I find I am always writing about inns. It does not do to keep harping on one subject, to be for ever "spinning your own wheel." I know a man, and a very good-natured, clubbable man is he, but even he gets bored by listening to one tune too long; his sole crime is that he is not a golfer--it is a serious one, I own. Now at his club he frequently meets a golfing friend who will talk golf and nothing else as long as any man will listen to him, just as some fishermen and motorists enlarge about their hobby. Now my friend had listened long times patiently to the golfer's endless stories, but when one day the golfer complained that he was suffering badly from a "golfer's arm," my friend exclaimed, "I have suffered from a worse disease than that, 'golfer's jaw.'" Now I do not wish my readers to suffer from my "jaw" about inns. From Chapel House we dropped down to Chipping Norton, a quiet, clean, contented-looking little town, and that I think sufficiently describes it. As Clarendon remarked of Aldermaston, it is "a town out of any great road," though near to one. So perhaps on that account it has no special history. Beyond Chipping Norton the country grew lonely again, delightfully, restfully lonely, and all the way we went to Shipton-under-Wychwood I do not find a single house marked on my excellent and accurate map. We were in a bleak stone country, where stone walls take the place of hedges, and where the landscape bears a Cotswold look. Those who know the Cotswolds know what that look is, a rarely pleasant one to me in the summer time, with a sense of openness about it; and how fresh and free and bracing are the airs that blow over the Cotswold hills. There you can keep cool in the hottest weather. Is there not an old saying that at "Stow-on-the-Wold, the wind always blows cold"? It is a truthful one as far as my experience goes, for I have passed through Stow on the hottest of summer days and found it none too warm there even then. By degrees we descended into a valley and into a warmer atmosphere, and crossing the little river Evenlode (of which I had not heard before, so does a driving tour extend one's knowledge of one's own country) we found ourselves in the attractive and interesting village of Shipton-under-Wychwood, but of the once wild Wychwood forest, formerly a royal hunting ground, there is not much to boast of left--sufficient, however, to earn for it to-day the title of "The Forest Country of Oxfordshire." There is a story told of a traveller in the pre-railway days whose road took him close by Wychwood, and he asked of a boy the name of the wood. "Wychwood," the boy replied. "Which wood?" the traveller exclaimed. "Why, that wood, you fool," pointing with his finger to it. Again he received the same reply. Once more the traveller repeated his query and received the same reply again; whereupon the traveller grew wroth, and deeming the boy was making fun of him, got down from his horse and soundly boxed his ears. One story calls forth another. This I had from a parson on my journey. It appears that one of his parishioners was over-fond of frequenting the public-house, and one day finding him coming out of it the parson said to him, "Williams, why do you go to the public-house so often?" To which the non-abashed Williams made reply, "Because they sell good ale there," and then he quoted the Bible to the parson. "You know, sir, the Bible tells us 'Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake'--now I cannot afford wine, so I drink ale"; and the parson was hard put how to answer him. It appears that the villagers there employ the expression "Timothying" when they have been drinking. Still another story of a parson I was told occurs to me; this may be an old one, but it is one I have not heard before, nor seen it in print. It appears that this parson had recently lost his only son, to whom he was devoted, and was preaching on the text of Abraham offering up his son Isaac as a sacrifice, and during the sermon his feelings so overcame him that thus unknowingly he delivered himself: "And it was his son, his only son; now if it had only been a sheep or a daughter." I found so much to interest me in Shipton, for there I noticed some old stone buildings, now forming part of what I took to be a farmyard, buildings with Gothic windows of good design and a graceful Gothic doorway in their walls; these could hardly be mere farm-buildings. That they possessed some history was from their character highly probable, but of that history, if there was any, I could glean nothing; as usual, nobody knew anything about them but that "they be very old." That appears to be the stock reply of the villager when you question him about such things. Then I wandered to the church a little way off, and there, for a wonder, I found the clerk within, "tidying up," as he called it. There was not much of interest in the church except a gruesome brass of a figure in a shroud, dated 1548, and a gloomy priest's chamber above the porch, reached by a dark stone stairway. This chamber, the clerk told me, was eight hundred years old; in truth it had an ancient look. Hanging on the wall, though why it should find a place there I could not understand, was a long-winded and framed account of the life of "John Foxe the Martyrologist born 1517," leaving no particulars of his life untold, I gathered from a hasty glance at it. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF THE CROWN INN, SHIPTON-UNDER-WYCHWOOD.] In the village stands a very ancient inn with a weather-worn aspect and a pathetic look of having seen better days, for its architectural features suggest it has been a house of some importance in times past. The old inn possesses a fine, early, and well-preserved high-pointed Tudor archway that, with its big door below with long exterior hinges, the quaint little two-lighted window by its side, and the old-fashioned mounting-block in front, presents a pleasing bit of ancient architecture. My photograph, here reproduced, will give some idea of this ancient doorway and of the quaint little window shown to the right of it. On leaving the village I caught to the left a delightful vision of a stately, many-gabled, stone-built Elizabethan home, standing in its pleasant park at a friendly short distance from the road. Shipton Court was, I learnt, the name of this picture in stone, for it is a home and a picture in one. Very beautiful did the building look with the warm sunshine resting upon it, for, though ancient, the house had a cheerful countenance; there was nothing gloomy or ghostly about it, nothing mysterious or suggestive of legend, but the word Home was written largely on it. Beyond Shipton we rose on to high ground and found ourselves in a breezy open country. Again our road was a deserted one. Few people appear to travel the byways of the Cotswolds, yet, within the same distance of London, nowhere else, I think, can such spacious solitudes be found, such wide and glorious sweeps of uplands and valleys stretching far away into dim and dreamy distances where the round hills seem to melt into the sky. The Cotswolds always delight me, for on them I realise the sense of solitude, silence, and space--a solitude that would satisfy an anchorite. Not that I love solitude except as a restful and occasional change from the burden of too much society; even when I was enjoying my solitude that day I had still a thought for the company I hoped to meet that night at my inn, and a thought of home and family when I returned to them. After a time we dropped down to the lonely, ancient town of Burford, forgotten by the railway; but Burford does not mind, it exists quite well without the railway. There the little town lay before us, hidden in a hollow, at the foot of the hill, and we looked down upon its uneven roof-trees, and on the silvery Windrush quietly flowing by. Of all the old-world Cotswold towns none has a greater charm than Burford. Thus sings one of its many lovers: O fair is Moreton in the Marsh And Stow on the wide wold, But fairer far is Burford town With its stone roofs grey and old. And he calls it "The grey old town on the lonely down." But Burford is not on the lonely down--far from it; it lies sheltered, half forgotten, deep in a hollow; a place of peace. At Burford Speaker Lenthall lived, and his home, painted by Waller, stands there to-day a little removed from the quiet street--a fine specimen of Jacobean architecture. Burford church is one of the finest of the many fine Cotswold churches raised by the pious and prosperous wool merchants of the country, and contains the truly magnificent tomb, in a chapel all to itself, of Sir Lawrence Tanfelde (deceased 1625), besides many other fine monuments. The church was turned into a prison for his captives by Cromwell, after his fight with the Banbury Levellers here, who outdid Cromwell himself in zeal and struggle against authority. At "The George Inn" here Charles I. slept on his retreat from Oxford to Worcester, and on the glass of a window, in the upper room of the same inn, there was, and may be now for aught I know, the diamond-scratched name of Samuel Pepys below the date of 1666, though whether this be genuine or a forgery perhaps no man now can say; if a forgery, it is a clever imitation of that famous Diarist's signature. So Burford, though much out of the world to-day, was not always so. It has witnessed stirring events, it has welcomed and entertained many famous travellers, and people of renown have lived within its walls. All the roads into Burford are hilly, all the stages into the town are long and trying for horses, so that in the past coaching, posting, and horseback days horses coming there were usually given an extra allowance of corn; hence probably arose the local proverb, "To take a Burford bait," meaning to make a big meal. It was a steep climb out of Burford, at the top of which we crossed the old highway from London to Gloucester and South Wales that runs for many miles on the undulating ridge of the hills. The Cotswolds are little given to change, and much as the country looks now it must have looked to our coach-travelling ancestors, excepting that to-day long lines of telegraph poles faithfully follow the road in long array lessening to the horizon, and the sound of the wind on the wires as we passed was like the hum of innumerable bees, and it broke pleasantly the silence of the hills. At the corner of the highway, just where our road crossed, I noticed a large board set up with a boldly lettered inscription on it, and this is what I read there: Only a few yards to the North is one of the most ancient towns to be seen in this part of the Country. It has historical associations of the most interesting nature. Its church is renowned for its beauty. Thus Burford appeals to the hurrying motorists who speed upon this fine highway. I should not have thought Burford would have done any such thing; it appears to me a little undignified; yet without such a notice the motorists mentioned would doubtless rush along heedless of the ancient, grey old town that sleeps so peacefully in the hollow below. Still, I trust other interesting towns off the highway will not take this as a precedent, else we shall have all England turned into a sort of gigantic peep-show. Now we got on to a wilderness of lanes, mostly narrow and rough of surface, but they took us into an old-world land of stone-built villages, very ancient, very grey, and past many a time-mellowed home that hinted of legend. One rambling, neglected-looking old home especially took my fancy, with its great gables, clustering chimneys, and shapely stone diamond-paned windows; it had such a look of mystery about it, high-walled in as it was, and half hidden from the road, and over its porch the lichens had traced strange hieroglyphics. There appeared to be no life about the place, though a film of smoke uprose from one tall, solitary chimney. An ancient manor-house fallen to decay-- A jolly place in days of old, But something ails it now; the place is curst. In its forsaken courtyard stood a tumble-down pigeon-cote of some size, so that I knew it had been a manor-house, for in the medieval days no lesser personage than the lord of the manor had the right of pigeonry, and the pigeon-cote was very ancient. Unfortunately, owing to the high wall without and the trees that had grown up at their own sweet will close around it, I was unable satisfactorily to photograph the old house. Some day I hope to re-discover it and to see if I can trace anything of its history. Another fine old manor-house I came to I found has also fallen on to evil days and was doing duty as a farmhouse, the farmer and his wife inhabiting but a small portion of it. By happy chance I came across the farmer in a field and I got a-chatting with him, first diplomatically about the weather and the crops; neither were satisfactory to him--I hardly thought they would be--but I listened to his complaints about both, and to his complaints about the low price of produce. I listened patiently, and I think my patience pleased--I had "an axe to grind." Then I led up to the old house and ventured to remark what a picturesque place it was. "It's all right to look at," said he, "but it's not good to live in. It's too big, and it's so draughty, and it's so cold and damp in winter, it would take a fortune to keep fires going over it to warm it properly. There's only the wife and self lives in it, and it would hold a large family, and they would only fill a part of it. Would you care to take a glance inside?" Now that is just what I wanted. I said I would. In truth it was a rambling old house. We entered by a large hall, with a fine old carved oak but much damaged fireplace at one end, and dog-irons on the wide hearth below. I could fancy that in the old days, when the lord of the manor lived there, merry were the doings and the dances that took place in that now vacant hall; the very thought of such things made it, in its bareness, look the more forsaken. One wing, where the farmer lived, was furnished fairly comfortably; the rest of the mansion, divided from it by the hall, was a very picture of desolation. Even the once strong oak staircase was shaky, and the floors of the rooms were in places so rotten that it was hardly safe to tread on them; in some the panelling was tumbling from the walls, and in others the bare walls were adorned with cobwebs, erst doubtless covered with tapestry. Such is the fate of some old houses that have come down in the world, but there are others that have fortunately found purchasers and have been restored to something of their ancient dignity. I know at least a good dozen fine old houses of the Elizabethan and Jacobean days that had fallen to decay, but which have been so restored by loving hands that they now form delightful and picturesque homes, and yet have not lost the charm of their ancient look. I met a man, when house-hunting for a friend some little time ago, who confided to me that he made it a business of buying any ruinous old house, if of any architectural merit and agreeably situated, that was for sale at a low price--"and many such houses fetch low prices," he said, "often, the land apart, not more than the value of their materials; sometimes these old houses possess a bit of interesting history, but that goes for nothing"; and purely as a speculation, though the speculation was not without its pleasure, he skilfully restored it, as far as possible, to its pristine estate, and he had done this each time at a considerable profit on the sale of the restored house. "I call myself a house improver," he said, with a laugh, "quite a novel and paying profession." This confession was made to me whilst looking over an interesting old Jacobean house that he had recently purchased and restored, and exceedingly well had he done it. "This," he explained, "had been let and occupied as a farmhouse for years, and little care was taken of it; as you see, it is a picturesque old building, but it was in a dreadful state when I bought it--indeed at first I almost thought it was beyond restoration. I have spent a lot of money on it, but I expect to get it all back with a fair margin of profit. Here you see an ancient house with a formal garden to match, and even an old-fashioned sun-dial in it, to say nothing of the Haddon Hall-like terrace, and all this cost me a lot; but one has to do the thing properly or you may make a failure of it, and this house is ready for occupation. Meanwhile I make it my home; I must live somewhere, and here I abide till I find a purchaser. Then I shall go in search of another old house to restore. The idea of doing such a thing came quite accidentally to me; originally I purchased an old house and restored it for my own occupation, but I had so many unsought offers for it at a big figure, nearly double what it cost me altogether, that I was tempted to sell it. Then I bought another old house and restored it in the same way, and that I sold at a substantial profit; so now I have made a trade of doing this. Look at the panelling of these rooms, all of seasoned oak, a careful copy of old panelling of the period, every bit done by adze and hand; the hinges and locks, too, are copies of old ones I found in the house. I have opened up all the fireplaces, and on removing the modern grates I luckily discovered the open hearths behind; the firebacks are all castings from old ones, and the fire-dogs are copies too from fine past specimens. The whole thing has been properly done. I have pulled down all the plaster ceilings and revealed the old rafters. The one or two sash windows I found I have replaced with mullion ones, so now you have before you the house much as it looked when first built over two centuries ago." This was quite a new way to me of making a living, or a fortune, but one learns many unexpected things when travelling by road. To some there is a potent magnetism, an irresistible fascination about certain old houses, a subtle influence from which there is no escape. I confess to it myself. I have lived in them and love them. Of course there are old houses and old houses; not all possess this peculiar power to charm, and only those of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period, with their panelled halls and chambers, their beamed ceilings, their great gables, their clustering chimneys, their many mullioned windows and big fireplaces, hold it over me. Those of the Queen Anne or Georgian age leave me cold; they are too formal; they lack the sense of mystery and atmosphere of romance. The old moated granges pictured in the Christmas numbers of the _Illustrated London News_ of many years back, how they charmed me when a boy! What romances about them did not I weave to myself! I thought they were only artists' dreams, but since I have happily discovered them actually existing. I shall never forget the thrill of delightful surprise the first discovery of the kind gave me; I could hardly believe my eyes, yet there before me stood an ancient moated home, grey, gabled, and ivy-clad, with a broken bell-turret on its lichen-laden roof, its leaded-light windows reflecting the sunlight, and its big chimney-stacks rising boldly up against the sky; nor shall I forget the special moment when I crossed the deep moat by a moss-grown bridge and knocked at the great oak and nail-studded door. I felt like one in a dream, that this could not be a reality, and that I should suddenly wake up and find myself deceived, disenchanted, and in the commonplace world again. Happily it was no vain imagining. But I am digressing. We were wandering on winding lanes south of Burford when I began this overlong digression, and on that maze of lanes we wandered for some miles--many they seemed to me; first in one direction, then in another we went, without arriving anywhere. All the same, it was very pleasant wandering through a land purely given over to agriculture, somnolent and restful. At last we reached a fair road, and this took us to the little Wiltshire town of Highworth, boldly set on a hill, so that we could see it from afar long before we came to it, its grey church tower and irregular roofed houses outlined sharply against the sky. Seen thus the town looked like those one finds in early engravings. A clean, homely, dreamy little town is Highworth, very ancient, even quaint in parts, and this in spite of the fact that a branch line of railway has found it out; but so far the railway does not appear to have disturbed its old-world tranquillity There I halted a while at "The Saracen's Head," a relic of the old coaching days, and the inn, like the town, seemed half asleep. Then I took a quiet walk round the place, and eventually found my way to the church; there appeared to be nothing else noteworthy there except the old houses and old shops, and these, though they grouped well and made a picturesque whole, were not individually of much interest. So it was I strolled into the church, and there I found the clerk: twice running had I done this unusual thing. I bade him good-morning. He told me he was looking after a bat that had got into the roof of the building and was making a mess there. I have heard of owls in a church tower, but here was a bat in the church itself. "How are you going to catch the bat?" queried I, for he had no ladder, and he believed the bat was somewhere hidden in the beams above. "That's just what I want to know," he replied. "I'm thinking it over; meanwhile I'll show you the church if you like." I thought he might as well do this whilst he was thinking, so I accepted his services. The first thing I noticed was a cannon-ball hanging by three chains from a bracket on the wall; there must be some story attached to that, I thought, and there was. It was another of Cromwell's countless cannon-balls--I have long ago lost count of the many I have seen. "That," said the clerk, "was fired against the church by Cromwell, and it lodged in the tower. I can show you the hole it made there where it struck." Then I learnt that the church had been fortified and held for Charles I., was besieged by the Parliamentarians, who eventually captured it, taking seventy prisoners; the earthworks a little beyond the town, where the cannon was mounted, are still to be made out. Those were stirring times for the countryside; the district between Oxford and Worcester had its full share in them, and in some parts of it the fighting raged furiously. "Now I think I can show you something that will interest you," exclaimed the clerk; then he pointed out the ancient oak and much worm-eaten stalls (of the thirteenth century, he said they were), and called my attention to a quaint carving on one of them of a mermaid admiring herself in a handglass; but what interested me more than this were the ancient helmet and sword of the Baston family suspended against the wall, and still of greater interest a silk tabard belonging to the same Baston family that was worn over the armour with a coat-of-arms worked on it: this was needful in order to distinguish the mail-clad warriors one from another. The tabard, preserved now in a glass frame, is much decayed and faded, but still a lion boldly worked thereon is visible. I understood that this tabard was discovered stowed away somewhere in the church, and that the vicar had it framed and hung up there, and I commend the action of the vicar. Many of our old churches contain, to this day, treasures of various kinds hidden away and forgotten in oak chests and cupboards, and even lost amongst lumber. There was, too, a priest-chamber belonging to the church, with the usual stone steps leading to it, but this special chamber had the uncommon luxury of a washing place. I noticed when leaving a curious bit of bold sculpture over the entrance doorway; in the dim light of the moment I could not very certainly make out what the carving was about, but I read a notice beneath it stating that it was probably a Norman Tympanon. There I bade the clerk good-day. I wondered how he was going to catch that bat! CHAPTER XVII Little country towns--The romance of the ferry--"The Bear" at Woodstock--Curious conditions of tenure--Where the Black Prince was born--Islip--The mystery of Joseph's Stone--An English Holland--Boarstall Tower--The ancient town of Brill--"Acres for Aeroplanes"--Stokenchurch--A quaint hiring fair. After Highworth we had a hilly road, and this took us without event to Faringdon, where it chanced to be market day, and the little town was crowded with farmers and cattle; there were crowds in its streets, and crowds round its inns, so we made what haste we could to get out of the place. These little country towns, however sleepy generally, manage to be very wide-awake once a week on market days. A long, quiet stretch of road now followed, with wide views on either hand over fertile farming lands. A signpost informed us we were bound for Abingdon; now Abingdon we knew, so to avoid the familiar we after a time turned up a byway and, crossing the Upper Thames on an ancient and very narrow bridge, we presently espied another signpost with "North Moor" upon it; the name suggested wildness, to North Moor we would go. We got on a rare tangle of lanes and into a land monotonously level, but no moor did we find, nothing but hedge-enclosed and tame fields. Curiously enough signposts were plentiful, but only gave the names of villages we had never heard of, and one name meant as much, or as little, to us as another. Eventually we found ourselves by the side of the river again and at Bablockhythe Ferry, of which Matthew Arnold has sung. I asked the name of it, and then I found it on my map, and so our whereabouts. The old ferry boat, the quiet river that was so still it hardly seemed to flow at all, the leafy trees, and the road on the opposite shore winding its white way into a distance of green woods, made such a pretty picture that I was tempted to photograph it. Were I a poet or a landscape painter it is a spot that would inspire me. I waited a long time on the chance of some cattle or sheep to be crossing and so help my picture, but during that time only a cyclist came, and I had to make do with him. The ferryman pulled up his boat to the bank thinking I was about to "go over," but when he told me the opposite road went to Oxford, and it was the nearest way there, I concluded I would not cross but trust to the lanes and the chance of coming upon a country hostel in a fresh land. "Where be you bound for?" asked the ferryman politely. "I might help you, for the roads about here are not gain ones for strangers"--and this though he lost custom for his ferry. It was an awkward question, for I knew not myself, and was nonplussed how to answer him. To be a traveller without a destination seems such a silly thing to the rural mind. I hope he did not take me for some lunatic escaped in a car. It was cool by the river, for the day was growing late, and I thought it about time to search for an inn. There was only a public-house by the ferry, and the land around had a lonely look, so I thought it wise to hasten on. I cannot reason why, for some things are not open to reason, but like an old manor-house (moated or otherwise) or a wayside inn of the Jacobean days, of which a few are still left to us, a lonely ferry always appeals to me with a sense of romance. There is something so primitive and picturesque about a lonely old-fashioned ferry, especially those one finds in the far-away Fens, that I cannot get away from my mind a feeling of adventure connected with such: even the one at Bablockhythe has a certain far-from-everywhere look about it, and I gave myself up to the illusion of the spot, an illusion not only of space but of time; and I verily believe just then, when in that mood, if a gaily dressed Cavalier had appeared on the scene fleeing in hot haste from his pursuers with the hurried cry of "Over," I should have taken it quite as a matter of course. I have watched patiently by a very out-of-the-world Fenland ferry I know, always in the vain hope of adventure; yet so has the spirit of the place got hold of me that I feel surely one day, when again I am there, some strange experience will come to me. [Illustration: BABLOCKHYTHE FERRY.] Very lonely, very winding and narrow were the lanes we got on, but if you travel far enough you are sure to arrive somewhere, so we arrived at Stanton Harcourt, a well-known spot to Oxford men, and where the old home of the Harcourts stands with its ancient and chimneyless kitchen, a building apart from the house with a pyramidical roof having a louvre at the top, out of which the smoke escapes as it can. This curious detached kitchen closely resembles the famous one at Glastonbury Abbey, so at least I thought from a passing glance at it. If there was an inn at Stanton Harcourt we missed it, and so we drove on, and shortly came to Eynsham, where I noticed its medieval stone cross in the street by the side of the church. Finding no inn to my liking, I consulted my map and discovered that Woodstock was not far off. Now at Woodstock I knew there was a good inn of the old-fashioned sort, so to Woodstock we went; and so in the gloaming, with the soft light of declining day giving all the landscape a mysterious look, we sped on the few miles to "The Bear" at that town. The great stableyard of "The Bear" is a graphic reminder of the spacious inns of the coaching era of which it has been said, "A regiment of cavalry might have been housed in them, and good wine could be had for the ordering." You may order good wine now at country inns, and pay the price of it, but if you think to get good wine I can only say, I hope you may. Though I do know one or two old inns whose cellars contain some rare old port that has lain in them for years; in one case, the worthy landlord told me, "since the last coach took its last change here," which may be but pleasant fiction, I cannot say; still, in truth, the wine is very old, very rare and good. I have sampled it, and hope to sample it again as long as the bin lasts, for such wine is not to be had every day, not even for money. There were only two other guests at "The Bear" that night; they came from Yorkshire, they said--I did not ask them--and the only thing they talked about was horses. They even dated their remarks from the day, or year, a certain horse won the Derby, or some other horse that had won some other race. I stood it for an hour or two, then called for my candle, as travellers did in the days before gas or electricity, and "to bed," as Pepys has it. I did not visit the show-house of Blenheim, for I had seen it before; moreover, show-houses are not to my mind. It may, however, be interesting to call attention to the conditions on which the Blenheim estate is held, which estate was granted by a grateful nation to the first Duke of Marlborough and his heirs in recognition of the famous victory of Blenheim, in Bavaria, on 2nd August 1704. "A representative of the family has once a year to convey to Windsor Castle an embroidered flag, which is placed in the Guards' Chamber. There it remains for a twelvemonth, till the next rental for holding the palace and the estate falls due. It is the only return the family have to make for the property they enjoy." Next morning, on strolling round the town, I saw in a shop window a picture postcard, and on it a photograph of "The Manor-House Farm, birthplace of the Black Prince, Woodstock." It came as a surprise to me to learn that the Black Prince, "that mirror of knighthood and the greatest of heroes," was born there; so I gleaned, as I travelled on, many a forgotten historical happening. To take a schoolboy a trip through England in a motor-car would be an excellent way of increasing his knowledge of its history. The manor-house is very old, though I take it, except perhaps in parts, little of the original structure can be left. The house has a pleasant look, and possesses a curious old chimney consisting of a stone shaft having a conical roof, the shaft being pierced on all sides at its top with lancet openings for the smoke to escape. The chimney looks as though it ought not to smoke whatever the way of the wind, and that with it a down draught should be an impossibility; it is a picturesque device that might be worth trying in place of the ugly cowls. Finding nothing further to interest me in the sunny and sleepy little town, I took my early departure whilst yet the day was fresh and cool. Out of Woodstock I found myself on the old highway leading to Oxford, but I did not travel it far, taking a lane to the left with a view of exploring that rather remote and out-of-the-way district lying in a rough square between Oxford and Bicester, Aylesbury and Thame--at least it looked out of the way on my map, only served by narrow roads; and on my map I noticed a vacant place marked "Ot Moor," an odd name, with "Joseph's Stone" also marked in the centre of the moor. I wondered what that stone could be so plainly shown there, some "Druidical Standing Stone" perhaps; it aroused my curiosity; and beyond these, in the direction I was going, "Boarstall Tower" was inscribed in bold lettering, also the forsaken little town of Brill. I felt in an exploring mood that day, and here was an odd corner of the land inviting me to explore it. First I came to Islip, a bleak-looking and tiny town of stone houses, yet a town of some importance in its day; but that was a long time ago, when King Ethelred had his palace there, in which his son Edward the Confessor was born, he who founded Westminster Abbey. Shortly afterwards our road led us across lonely Ot Moor, and through the quaint village of Oddington, quaint as becomes its quaint name. Here I inquired about Joseph's Stone, and was told that a big stone of that name once stood on the moor, but "it has been broken up"; nothing further of its history could I glean, nor found I any mention of it in any guide-book I afterwards consulted, nor in any other likely work, nor did any of my antiquarian friends know anything about it. I was disappointed. As the stone is not now there, has not been there, except in bits, for long years, why do they still mark it on the map? It is so provoking to see places marked on the map, and conspicuously marked, that arouse your curiosity, only to find they do not exist. It was the same on Salisbury Plain; there at a spot by the roadside between Wylye and Devizes was printed plainly on my map "St. John á Gores Cross." I believe that a wayside stone cross once stood there, but when that was no one seems to know. Now there is no vestige of it, not even its stump in the ground. Possibly it was destroyed by the Puritans. Now, trusting to my map, I went miles out of my way purposely to see it. I look upon a map as a faithful friend, and one does not like to find a friend at fault. Now succeeded a level stretch of lowland country that had a look of Holland, excepting that the cottage homes by the way were distinctly not Dutch. A land where the eye had freedom to rove over wide spaces of green right away to a circling horizon of blue, and a wild wind swept over it, fresh, cool, and laden with the pungent scent of marsh flowers--as fresh and cool as the wind that sweeps over the sea, only without its salt savour. The wind was making holiday; it tossed the long grasses and reeds about, it bent down the hedges before it, it made mimic waves and Lilliputian tempests on the ponds that we passed. It is wind that gives life to a scene, and the strife of it stirred the blood in our veins. We rejoiced in the wind, for it came from the west, with just a suspicion of keenness, but no harshness, of greeting. In spite of the wind and the sur, sur, sur of it, the whole countryside gave me the impression of great quietude. I could allow for the wind--it would not blow so every day; few people were in the fields, and those few seemed to be taking life easy, contentedly doing little; the hedges were delightfully tangled, a disgrace to good farming it may be, but that is a matter apart. Perhaps they needed some pruning, but they best pleased my eye just wild as they were, growing as Nature would have them. It was a land to laze in, to do nothing in haste; only the wind stirred it up to a semblance of passion. There was no flow in the streams that one could perceive; it was a relief to come to a land that suggested nothing but rest. The interfering political economist might well shake his head at all this, but I was out for my pleasure, without a thought of what he might say. It was so peace-bestowing, and that was its charm. It was a land of health rather than a land of wealth--and who shall say that health is not the better thing?--a land that conformed to no canon of beauty, but none the less pleasing to me. I will wager that no one grew prematurely old from overwork in it: why should he? Mere money-making is the bane of the age; it gives a man no time to call his soul his own. "If a person," says Stevenson, "cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept." It is. I do not go so far. I only protest against money-making at the price of much leisure, the making of money for money's sake only. I knew a man who toiled hard all the week at his desk in a stuffy city office at the cost of his health, and what for?--to keep up a needlessly pretentious home with gardeners and carriage. One day, he confessed to me, the folly of all this forcibly struck him; he had so little leisure to enjoy his family or home. He thought the matter carefully over and for long, and he came to the conclusion that by working half the time he should lose half his income; on the other hand, he would have half the week to himself that he could devote to his wife and the pleasures of home. So he gave up his large house, he dismissed his gardeners, he did away with his carriage, and took a pretty little cottage where, on his reduced income, he could live in comfort, though without the luxuries of gardeners and carriage; and his wife, too, had less cares in the management of a smaller home. So happy was he and every one in the new conditions that, though his partners laughed at him and deemed him a fool, he declared to me that nothing would induce him to return to his former slavery, as he called it. He was an infinitely happier man, his family were happier too, and he enjoyed such health as he had never known since he was a schoolboy free from all but fancied care. From this leisured land a stiff climb brought us on to high ground and into a lighter, more exciting air. On the lowland we were content to laze along, and desired to laze so; here we must needs speed for a while, for the country was open and things not seen in detail; for there is a pace at which you can best enjoy and appreciate the type of country passed through: here, not the foreground but the distance allured us. When you see far ahead, and all is revealed before you, as in a stretch of open road over a wide moorland, your eye is ever on the horizon that beckons you on to explore the unknown, and you cannot, if human, resist its attraction. That is the magic of distance. At a turn in the road, in a lonely spot, we caught a glimpse through branching trees of the grey old tower of Boarstall: no longer the distance held us in thrall; its power was gone. Boarstall, with its four flanking and embattled towers, is all that remains of a once fortified house. There are narrow arrow-slits in the towers that show their ancientness, but the large front and mullioned side windows do not suggest so early a date or a place of much defensive strength; doubtless they were added in later years under a feeling of greater security. The house that stood in the moat-enclosed ground beyond has now wholly disappeared. Boarstall, however, was strengthened during the Civil Wars, well garrisoned, and held for the king. Lord Clarendon in his _History of the Rebellion_ says: "Fairfax attempted to take a poor house near Boarstall, and was beaten from thence with considerable loss, so that he drew off his men, little to his credit." Before the siege the following correspondence took place between the commanders of the besiegers and the besieged:-- SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX TO SIR WILLIAM CAMPION _3 June 1645._ SIR--I send you this summons before I proceed to further extremities, to deliver up to me the house of Borstall you now hold, with all the ordinance, arms, and ammunition therein, for the use and service of the kingdom, which if you shall agree unto, you may expect civility and fair respect, otherwise you may draw upon yourself those inconveniences which I desire may be prevented. I expect your answer by this trumpet within one hour.--Your Servant, THOMAS FAIRFAX. This is the spirited reply that Fairfax received to his summons: SIR WILLIAM CAMPION TO SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX In answer. SIR--You have sent me a summons of a surrender of this house for the service of the kingdom. I thought that cant had been long ere this very stale (considering the King's often declarations and protestations to the contrary), now sufficient only to cozen women and poor ignorant people: for your civilities, so far as they are consonant to my honour, I embrace: in this place I absolutely apprehend them as destructive not only to my honour, but also to my conscience. I am therefore ready to undergo all inconveniences whatsoever, rather than submit to any, much less those, so dishonourable and unworthy propositions, this is the resolution of, Sir, yours, WILLIAM CAMPION. So the siege began. Boarstall Tower stands a picturesque reminder of "the brave days of old," with its embattled towers and weather-beaten walls. Crossing the broad and brimming moat by a stone bridge (with the date of 1735 upon it) that replaces the drawbridge of past times, I found the door locked, so I inquired of a farmhouse close by if it were possible to see the building. The maid who responded to my summons said she thought so, and presently returned with the key and permission to view it. Even with the key I found some difficulty in gaining admission, for the ancient and possibly rusty lock was hard to turn, and the door creaked complainingly on its hinges. Within, the building apparently has suffered little change since the Jacobean days: the towers contain dark circular stairs of stone, and odd and gloomy little rooms reached by narrow passages through the thick walls; but there is one large, well-lighted, and even cheerful apartment on the top. Judging from the size of the gate-house, the original house which it served must have been one of some importance. Though Clarendon calls it "a poor house," I take it this was intended in a military sense. Boarstall must have been a thorn in the side of the Parliamentarians, not being far from Oxford, and by the "constant mischievous incursions of its garrison." The old tower makes a telling subject for the pencil, brush, or camera, as I trust my photograph proves. I hardly think Boarstall is as well known as it deserves to be. Situated in an out-of-the-way corner of the land, remote from main roads, it is not easy to find, but well worth finding. The tradition of the origin of the name Boarstall is curious. It appears that "once upon a time"--that convenient "once upon a time"--it was in the centre of the royal forest of Bemwode, and that "a tremendous wild boar, the terror of the inhabitants," haunted it, and was eventually slain by one Nigel, the forester, who as a reward received a grant of land by tenure of a horn, and on the land he built a house and called it "Borrestalle" in memory of the slain boar. [Illustration: BOARSTALL TOWER FROM THE MOAT.] A little beyond Boarstall the country became wild and open again, and there before us, perched right on the top of a bleak, isolated hill, a hill much scarred with clay pits, stood the odd, little, out-of-date town of Brill. Odd, little, out-of-date town--that just describes it, there is no need for more words: on its hill stands one of, I think, the oldest windmills I have ever seen working, an ancient wooden structure with canvas sails, a mill of the kind the old masters put in their pictures, so old must it be. Brill at one time actually tried to transform itself into a fashionable watering-place, a spring of mineral waters having been discovered there, said by experts to be superior even to those of Bath. But the attempt turned out a failure; for the success of such an adventure a place needs something beyond a mere mineral spring. Prosperity and popularity require pretty or interesting surroundings, decent roads, and, above all, reasonable accessibility. Brill, though bracing in situation, has none of these other needful advantages. Yet a pretentious pump-room was built with every required accessory, including a spacious reception-room, all in the Doric style; these are now hastening to decay, and Brill is left to its solitude. Possibly if you asked the average man where Brill is, he would respond, "I never heard of the place." So should I have done before I discovered it and learnt the unfortunate history of its bold and, to me, apparently hopeless bid for popularity, of which nothing came. I am glad it did not, for it is a quaint old town, and deserves to remain so. Beyond Brill a winding lane brought us to Long Crendon that possesses an interesting old Court House of the fifteenth century, and a fine old Tudor gateway, and shortly after this we found ourselves at Thame, and there we took a by-road to our right that for some miles led us through a quiet, pastoral land, and eventually we came out on the main London to Oxford road. Then we drove eastward. This portion of the Oxford road as far as to West Wycombe runs through very pleasant country, as the many motorists who travel it well know, affording in parts wide prospects over a well-wooded country and climbing the Chilterns with many windings through a fragrant forest of firs. At the hamlet of Tetsworth we noticed its rambling, brick-built, and time-dimmed old coaching inn, and on its ancient front a board inscribed "Petrol." How times have changed--petrol in place of corn and hay for the passing steed of many horse power, even forty at times; machinery in place of muscle! At another old coaching inn, on a previous journey, I noticed a bold advertisement that ran briefly thus, "Acres for Aeroplanes." I did not take this seriously, though there was ample space in the hostel's large and open field for the landing of aeroplanes; but that an ancient inn should display such a sign at all gave me food for thought. Twice during my journey did I wholly unexpectedly see an aeroplane flying overhead, on one occasion when I was stopping in a village; and though the village folk looked up to see it, attracted by the noise of its engines, I hardly think they regarded it with more curiosity, or as a thing more wonderful, than they regarded the motor-car when it first appeared on the road. The miracle of to-day is but the commonplace of to-morrow, and how soon it becomes the commonplace! "The Swan" at Tetsworth is a building of some size, and, though it still entertains wayfarers, has such a forlorn look that I felt quite sorry for the poor old place. Once it was known as "the great inn at Tetsworth," and was the scene of much noisy revelry; when we were there we saw no sign of life about the place. To the ancient wayside tavern Comes the noisy throng no more. Even the motor-car does not appear to have revived its fortunes. There we pulled up for petrol, not that we required it, but it was an excuse to linger about the old inn, for, though I cannot say exactly why, it mildly fascinated me; the building, old and weather-stained, with its broad front to the street, told its silent tale of past days and doings as eloquently and plainly as though it were told on the printed page. After much waiting I procured the petrol I did not want, and, more to the point, I obtained a glance within at the inn's ancient chambers; they had a faded, antiquated look, not, to me, altogether displeasing; I think I could have spent the night at "The Swan" quite comfortably had I needed. It is an inn of memories. Then followed a level stretch of open, cheerful, and sunlit road, with extensive prospects over a rich green land to a long line of low and undulating hills; after this a winding ascent through fragrant woods brought us presently to the bleak little village of Stokenchurch, situated high up on the top of the Chilterns, and there I caught sight of another old decayed coaching inn, but, to my eye, this was a hard-featured, unattractive building, wholly lacking in that peculiar, indescribable character that suggests a romantic past, for buildings have their characters as well as men: some appeal to you, some do not. A little beyond Stokenchurch began the long and steep descent of the famous Dashwood Hill, at the foot of which we found ourselves in the sleepy village of West Wycombe, with one or two rather curious old houses, but having nothing else to boast of. High Wycombe succeeded to West Wycombe; there is but a short and an uninteresting mile or two between them. High Wycombe is an old-fashioned, wide-streeted town, as those who travel the Oxford road are aware, with rather a quaint, much-mellowed, red-brick market-hall raised on stone arches. At High Wycombe the curious custom of Michaelmas hiring still prevails and flourishes. I think a short account of this that I cull from a local paper of the past year may prove interesting:-- Yesterday one of the oldest Michaelmas hiring fairs in England was witnessed in our ancient market-place. From a wide radius, including parts of the three counties of Bucks, Berks, and Oxon, farmers and agricultural employees in all spheres flocked into the town early in the morning. The attendance was large, and there was a general disposition to "change hands," though the average terms of remuneration showed very little alteration. Several old-time customs still prevail, both at the hiring and in regard to the conditions upon which the farm hands are engaged for the ensuing twelve months. For instance, ploughmen decorate their button-holes with pieces of whipcord to denote their distinctive calling, shepherds display tufts of wool in their forelocks and their caps, and other farm hands utilise horsehair and fancy ribbons and rosettes for their personal adornment. A good deal of time was occupied in making the best terms, and in accordance with the precedent of many years' standing, the engagements were conditional on the supplying of beer, or harvest money in its place. Leaving High Wycombe we followed a while the side of the little river Wye that turns an ancient mill on its way, and across the river rose some of the beautiful beech-clad hills for which Buckinghamshire is so justly famed. There is something about the form and growth of the close-leafed beech that causes it to clothe the hills with a graceful and following contour that no other tree does. Now an unattractive five miles of road, with a climb on the way and at the end of it, brought us to the elevated and breezy little town of Beaconsfield that, considering it is within twenty-four miles of London, has retained its ancient air surprisingly; for its low, old houses, that face its wide and quiet street, still possess a pleasant and ancient look that charms. The town seems almost as remote and dreamy as though it were somewhere far away in the distant shires. May it long retain its primitive character! but I doubt it, for the railway has at last found it out. CHAPTER XVIII An inn of the old-fashioned sort--A chat with "mine host"--A weird experience--Ghost stories--An ancient rectory house--A quaint interior--A haunted passage--Lost in a fog--The game of bowls--An old posting bill--The siege of Alton church--Ants as weather prophets. At Beaconsfield I put up for the night at "The White Hart," an ancient and homely hostelry where I found comfortable quarters, a landlord both interesting and obliging, a waitress civil and attentive, and excellent fare: such was my accidental good fortune. "The White Hart" is a very ancient though much altered building, dating, I was informed, from the days of Elizabeth; certainly some of its big and shaped beams upstairs testify to its ancientness. The coaching days were the days of its prime, for then one hundred horses were stabled there--so I afterwards learnt. The landlord received me with a cheery smile at the door: he knew how to welcome a guest. I casually told him I was tired and hungry, for I had travelled far that day; then he must needs at once concern himself about my dinner, so that I might not have to wait unduly for it, and promised me the best that the town could supply. I explained to him I was not an exacting traveller; he was far more anxious about my comfort and my fare than was I. That is the sort of landlord for me: very different his welcome to that one generally receives from the stony-eyed manager of a modern hotel. At these old-fashioned inns, with their friendly, good-natured landlords (for the one seems always to go with the other), I, but a tweed-clad, dust-stained traveller, always feel quite at home and at ease; there is such a charming simplicity and do-as-you-will air about them. Were I a millionaire I would choose them in preference to all others and desire no better. I merely sought a night's shelter, and however humble my chamber, if clean, it satisfied me. These inns give you their best, and who but the surliest could grumble at that when good is the best? I am an unpretending road-farer, though I fare in a car. I do not care to discuss my dinners when I get them; some days I made do with a tea, I found it more refreshing, but the dinner provided for me at that little inn of no pretence consisted of soup, fish, fowl, sweet omelette, with cheese to follow. Perhaps my hunger, begotten of a long day in fresh air, gave me an extra zest, but I thought at the time that never had I sat down to a better cooked dinner--I have certainly sat down to a worse in a wealthy man's house. This much for my modest inn I must say. Indeed, on the strength of its goodness I indulged in a small bottle of wine, and the wine was no worse than that of the same sort I have had at expensive London hotels at double the price, or perhaps even more. It chanced that I was the only guest there that night, so the landlord, with kind intent, came to me after dinner and entertained me with a chat, and I was well entertained. It turned out that he was an old "'Varsity" man, a magistrate, an enthusiastic antiquary, a churchwarden, a mason, and I know not what else besides, a man of many parts; and if he played his other parts as well as he played that of "mine host," he played them well indeed. His knowledge was wide, he talked of many things and interestingly, so I spent a very pleasant and profitable evening in his company over a glass and a pipe. I quite forgot my tiredness; it was late before I got to bed--that speaks well for mine host. Our gossip eventually took an antiquarian turn; he told me of a very ancient, rambling, timber-framed rectory house that stood against the churchyard, which he said I really ought to see, and he kindly offered to show me over it the next morning. This ancient rectory, I understood, was built on the site of an old nunnery and dated from about 1525, and is in part inhabited--I think by the town nurse, he said. Connected with it, he told me of a most strange experience of his, and this is the tale he told to me after some hesitation. "I hardly like to relate my experience," he said, "for you may possibly not credit me, but I tell you the absolute truth." Then he paused as though doubtful if he should continue; indeed he needed some persuasion to do so. But I prevailed on him. What was the strange story he had to tell, I wondered, that he should so hesitate to tell it? I bided my time, and at last he went on: "I was going over the old building one morning, as I sometimes do. Believe me, I am a perfectly sane man, not given to fancies; I was in perfect health at the time, thinking of nothing special in particular. I was going over the building, as I said, and I opened the door of one of the rooms expecting to find it empty as usual. To my surprise I saw a strange clergyman seated there reading a book; being a stranger I took a good look at him, for I wondered who he was, but he neither moved nor spoke, so I left the room, quietly shutting the door. In the passage outside I met an inhabitant of the place. I described the clergyman to him, and asked him who he could be. The man looked at me in some astonishment; then he exclaimed, 'Why, from your description he exactly resembles our late rector, but he has been dead these three years.' Then I went back to the room again; the door had not been opened, I was close to it, and there was no other mode of egress, yet when I entered no one was there, the chair was vacant. For the moment I hardly knew what to think; a queer sort of feeling came over me, for I was suddenly conscious that it must have been the ghost of the late rector I saw. If not, what was it? How came that figure seated there? to where had it disappeared? I did not even know in the least what the dead rector was like, yet the description of what I saw was at once recognised for him by one who had known him well. I had never believed in ghosts, was not at the time thinking about them--indeed I had never previously given them a thought. Such was my strange experience, for which I can give no reasonable explanation." No more could I. The landlord's story did not disturb my rest that night, though I slept in a very ancient chamber, but it set me a-thinking. Ghosts and ghost stories appear to be coming into favour and fashion again, even taken seriously, it seems, from the accounts I read in the papers and in books. Truly astonishing are some of these. A few years back, under the heading of "A Haunted House," there appeared in the _Standard_ a long letter from an army officer who confessed to having been driven out of a good house by the ghostly manifestations that took place within it! He begins his letter: "In this century ghosts are obsolete, but they are costing me two hundred pounds a year. I have written to my lawyer, but am told by him that the English law does not recognise ghosts." I really cannot blame the law, indeed I commend it. Then he goes on to say: "I am not physically nervous, I have been under fire repeatedly, have been badly wounded in action, and have been complimented on my coolness when bullets were flying about. I was not then afraid of ghosts; besides, I suspected trickery. A light was kept burning in the upper and lower corridor all night. A lamp and loaded revolver were by my bedside every night. No one could have entered the house without being detected, and probably shot." Then he describes the different ghostly manifestations that drove him, family, and servants out of the house: "The governess used to complain of a tall lady, with black, heavy eyebrows, who used to come as if to strangle her as she lay in bed." Footsteps were constantly heard during the night in the corridors. "One night, lying awake, I distinctly saw the handle of my bedroom door turned, and the door pushed open; I seized my revolver and ran to the door. The lamp in the corridor was burning brightly; no one was there, and no one could have got away." On another occasion, when the writer with his family returned home at midnight from a concert, "our old Scotch housekeeper, who admitted us, a woman of iron nerves, was trembling with terror. Shortly before our arrival a horrible shriek had rung through the house. To our questions she only replied, 'It was nothing earthly.' The nurse, who was awake with a child with the whooping-cough, heard the cry, and says it was simply horrible," and so forth. Then I read in _A Diplomatist's Wife in Many Lands_, by Mrs. Hugh Fraser, how she had frequently seen a ghost in an Italian palace where her husband and self resided for a time. Besides, have we not the extraordinary description not only of ghostly people but of ghostly scenery (the latter is quite a new departure to me) in that astonishing book _An Adventure_, of which "the Publishers guarantee that the authors have put down what happened to them as faithfully and accurately as was in their power. The signatures appended to the Preface are the only fictitious words in the book." In the _Notes from the Life of an Ordinary Mortal_, by A. G. C. Liddell, C.B., I read: "In the morning walked with Mr. Chamberlain. We talked about ghosts." So enlightened people do talk about ghosts! "He said that he had at one time been interested in the subject, and had got hold of a case where the ghost had been seen by more than one person at the same time.... Four persons were sitting in an old hall and saw the figure of a monk walk across the far end of the room and disappear. The next night they fixed a rope across the track of the phantom, but it passed through the body without movement." So much for the papers and books, though I have only quoted a few of the incidents recorded; there are many others. Now, besides the landlord of "The White Hart," three other persons of late have declared to me positively that they have seen a ghost. Yet till this, since I was a boy, I have never heard them mentioned. The first was a lady whose husband had taken a charming old house in the Eastern Counties; it had the reputation of being haunted, but, not believing in ghosts, neither she nor her husband thought anything of that; but one evening, when going upstairs to dress for dinner, my informant told me she distinctly saw a figure of a woman, richly attired in a quaint old-world dress, perhaps of the Elizabethan period, quietly walking along the landing, and she watched it till it disappeared in the wall at the end of the passage. All the servants and the guests were accounted for, and "If the figure were not a ghost, what could it have been?" I was asked. I could not say! Moreover, the lady saw the same figure on a further occasion walking and disappearing in just the same astonishing manner. Another lady told me the story of a ghost she had seen in her house, only she said she was so frightened she could not say how it was dressed, or whether it was a he or a she ghost, so I did not trouble about further detail. Now for my last relation, and this occurred in my own house, not an old house by the way, and where I have never heard or dreamt of a ghost. A lady was left a short time in a room, when she rushed out to me in another part of the house declaring that, though the room was empty when she went in and she had shut the door behind her, on suddenly looking up from her chair she saw a bald-headed man standing in front of the fireplace; for a moment she wondered who he could be and how he came there, then the thought came across her it must be a ghost, and she asked me to come and interview it! This I did with her at all speed, but when we returned to the room no one was there. I merely thought the lady must have been dozing, but she stoutly averred she had not. Still, let people say and write on the subject no end, and be hounded out of their houses by ghosts, I will not believe in one till I see it; even then, I think I should send for a doctor to learn if my health were at fault, to be sure that I had not imagined the thing. The old rectory house at Beaconsfield is built on three sides of a square, and its half-timber front has a picturesque look. Within are many ancient chambers, some with their original panelling and Tudor fireplaces of stone, and there are many passages besides, for it is a rambling place: one of these passages, I was told, is called "The Ghost Walk," because a ghost is often heard at night, though not seen, walking along it; her footsteps, however, are often heard, and the rustling of her dress, for it is supposed to be the ghost of some lady. I think the landlord told me her story, but I have forgotten it now. Rats suggest themselves to me as an explanation of the footsteps, for I will wager there are rats in that old house; imagination might account for the rustling of a dress--it accounts for a good many things in this world. Old houses are often full of strange noises, for panelling is apt to creak with the changes of the weather, and in the still night-time all sounds appear magnified; then the creak of old woodwork seems startlingly loud, for I have experienced this. My landlord pointed out to me the chamber in which he had seen the vision, but there is nothing remarkable about it except its ancientness. The house is certainly one that should appeal even to the most exacting ghost; any stray ghost out of place through his "haunt" being pulled down would miss a rare opportunity in not taking up his abode there. Some small niches in the sides of the walls were pointed out to me; what use these could have been put to puzzled my antiquarian guide--they were too small and too shallow for statues. It occurred to me that they might be to place lamps in to light the dark passages; the landlord said he had not thought of that, and deemed it a plausible and possible explanation of their purport. I felt complimented he should so esteem my suggestion, but I had seen very similar niches in other old buildings that had undoubtedly been used to contain lamps; I told him this, and then he accepted my view as being correct, though he said many people had seen the niches and were at a loss to account for them. It was a rare foggy morning when we left Beaconsfield, it was as though the whole country were packed up in cotton-wool; so dense indeed was the mist that we had to drive slowly and cautiously, for ahead of us was a wall of white and our vision was limited to yards. At my hotel in the evening I found a fellow-motorist who did not venture out at all that day, he thought it too risky. However, it was merely a matter of pace, and at times, when the fog thinned a little, we drove along quite comfortably. In a way I even enjoyed the drive, for the country looked so mysterious, and the mist exaggerated the forms of half-hidden things that suddenly rose up before us; even the houses and trees by the way assumed proportions gigantic: we might have been travellers in fabled Brobdingnag. Shortly after Beaconsfield we got on to narrow winding lanes, then into woods, though we could not see much of them, when we discovered we were at Burnham Beeches, where the roads are kept as prim as those of a park, neatly signposted too, and this robbed the woods of their suggestion of wildness; so on somehow to the main Bath road, which we followed only as far as Maidenhead, where we struck to the left over cross-country roads and eventually turned up at Wokingham, the landscape between being mostly hidden from view. The horn came in useful that day. Then followed some more cross-country roads, out of which we emerged on to the old Exeter highway and soon reached the hamlet of Hook with its old coaching inn--from the notices on its front it now appears to be a motoring inn; and after this we found ourselves back in Odiham again, so we took a fresh road out of it. The fog had now quite cleared away and the sun was shining, but what with a late start and the slow travelling for much of the way, and a long halt for refreshment, the sun was already lowering in the west and the sky was growing golden there. We had a delightful drive through a more or less hilly country into Alton, passing through South Warnborough, a very pretty village--the prettiest in Hampshire, its inhabitants declare. I am glad to learn they take a pride in their village; that is the sort of pride that profits, the pride of place and not of person--to be a dweller in no mean village. After South Warnborough we had a hilly drive over a down-like undulating country, and then we descended into Alton, where I have an idea they brew good ale. At Alton we put up at "The Swan," an old coaching inn of some former fame, and that still has a pleasantly prosperous look, keeps up its ancient reputation for good cheer, and presents a smiling front to the street. I found a fine bowling-green in the rear, and during the course of the evening some of the townsfolk forgathered there and played bowls quite seriously over their pipes and their ale. It may not be high art, but I noticed there was an art in playing bowls, and the old men who knew and studied it appeared mostly to win. A good old-fashioned game is bowls, that never seems wholly to go out of fashion, and a pleasant one to watch; engrossing too, for even Drake, when playing it on Plymouth Hoe with the dreaded Armada in sight, went on with his rub undisturbed. "There is no hurry," quoth he, and he quietly finished his game and then went and played ball with the Spaniards--but those were the days before steam. Now I never look on at a game of bowls but I think of bold Drake and those easy-going historic old days when, if they did things slowly, they did them very thoroughly. [Illustration: A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOORWAY.] Writing of the subject of inn gardens, I remember seeing somewhere on the way boldly displayed on the front of an inn the simple legend "Lovely Garden." I am glad to note that innkeepers are becoming aware of the attraction of a garden and so proclaim it: a garden where guests may escape from walled rooms into the fresh air, there to loiter at ease retired from the street and the crowd; to secure a bedroom looking over those gardens is a further attraction to me. It may be that special good-fortune attended me, but during the whole of my journey never once at my inn where I stopped for the night did I fail to find entertainment, either from host or from guest. I think I have said so before. Now here at "The Swan" was still another landlord both willing to gossip and wishful to entertain a lone wanderer in the smoke-room of his comfortable hostel. He brought me a time-yellowed paper of the seventeenth century having an advertisement of his inn, to show how long it had been in existence. In the same paper, I think it was, my eye caught the following announcement: "June 19th, 1684. The post will go every day, to and from, betwixt London and Epsom during the season for drinking the waters." Then Epsom was a fashionable Spa. Also he showed me an old posting bill of the house that was of some interest, for it was a bill paid by the Rev. Gilbert White for a postchaise from "The Swan" to Meon Stoke and back, when White was on a visit to a friend at that place; and thus the bill runs:-- HARROW. HAMPSHIRE--ALTON. Swan. Neat Post-Chaises. _£_ _s._ _d._ August 1st. Chaise to Meon Stoke 13 6 Duty 3 0 August 6th. Chaise from Meon Stoke to Alton 13 6 Duty 3 0 ------------ £1 13 0 ============ August 27th, 1785. Received the contents. H. HARROW. Paid by the Rev. GILBERT WHITE. In the account of his Hampshire rides in this locality Cobbett thus delightfully refers to Gilbert White: "I forgot to mention that a man who showed me the way told me at a certain fork, 'that road goes to Selbourne.' This puts me in mind of a book that was once recommended to me, but which I never saw, entitled _The History and Antiquities of Selbourne_ (or something of that sort), written, I think, by a parson of the name of White. The parson had, I think, the living of Selbourne." Now had the "parson of the name of White" only written about farming Cobbett might have taken a more intelligent interest in him. Next the landlord remarked, "You ought really to see our old church." (How often have the landlords of inns during my journey recommended me to see their church; even one offered me his pew on a Sunday, such a staunch churchman was he.) "It may interest you," he continued, "for there are still the marks on its walls of the cannon-balls that struck them during the Civil War, when the church was besieged" (still more of Cromwell's endless cannon-balls!), "and there are the bullet marks too on the door made at the same time." The story of this siege is sufficiently and quaintly recorded on a brass in the church, and this I copied as follows:-- A Memoricall For this renowned Martialist Richard Boles of ye Right Worshipful family of the Boles. Colonell of a Ridgment of foot of 1300. Who for his Gratious King Charles ye First did wonders att the Battell Of Edge Hill. His last action was at Alton in This County of Southampton, he was surprised by Five or six thousand of the Rebells which Caused him, there Quartered, to fly to the Church With near Fourescore of his men who there Fought them six or seuen houers, and when The Rebells Breaking in upon him, he slew With his sword six or seuen of them and then Was slayne himselfe with sixty of his men aboute him. 1641. His Gratious Soverayne hearing of his death Give ys passionate Expression "Bring me A Moorning Scarffe i have lost one of the Best Commanders in this Kingdome." * * * * * Alton will tell you of that Famous Fight Which ys man made & bade the world good night, His Verteous life fear'd not mortalyty His body must, his Vertues cannot die, Because his Bloud was there so nobly spent, This is his tombe, the Church his monument. The next morning, after seeing the church, as I was departing the landlord exclaimed, and that in spite of a fast-falling barometer and a plentiful supply of suspicious clouds about: "You'll have a fine day, for I notice the ants are throwing up their tiny heaps on the bowling-green, and when they do that the day is certain to be fine." I had not heard of this method of prognosticating the weather before; all the same it proved true, excepting for one short shower, when from the look of the sky at the start, and the south-westerly wind that was blowing, I should certainly have expected little but rain; yet even the shower we experienced I found out was local and did not extend very far. CHAPTER XIX The Meon Valley--Warnford--A hidden church--A house "a million years old"!--A Saxon sun-dial--A ruined home--Corhampton and its Saxon church--A modern "Naboth's Vineyard"--An out-of-the-world village--A curious story--Quaint carvings and their legend--A church tower built by servants. We left Alton by the Winchester road; we did not, however, follow it for long, but turned down a by-road and soon reached a pretty village of some thatched cottages built round a little green, with its pond to make the picture complete. The inn there had on its signboard the representation of a fat monk with the legend "The Grey Friar," a fresh sign to me. Then passing a finely timbered park with many wide-branching elms in it, causing grey patches of shade on the great sweeps of sunlit sward, we began to explore the lovely Meon Valley, through which runs the clear and bright river Meon between richly wooded banks and gently sloping hills. I really do not think an artist could have designed prettier scenery had he the designing of it. A valley full of quiet beauty, yet so ignorant was I of my own land I had not heard of its charms before; many a guidebook-lauded valley is not half so beautiful as it. No poet has been born in that valley to sing its praises, otherwise it might have been famed. The day, too, was perfect, and the soft sunshine helped to make everything pleasant; the day and scene were attuned one to another. Up and down hill we went, then we dropped down to West Meon, a neat, clean village. The chief occupation of its inhabitants at the time appeared to be in standing idly at their doorways, or loafing in the road; it somehow reminded me of a scene at a theatre ready set, with the minor performers in place and awaiting the principal actors to come on the stage and play their parts. I often wonder how these villagers live with no local industry; they cannot live on one another, and they do not seem exactly the sort of people to receive dividends on investments, though in all of them at least the public-house appears to prosper. It is a problem beyond me. Here we crossed the Meon on a little stone bridge and proceeded by a delightfully tree-shaded road, as pleasant as a road could be, and along by the river-side to the tiny decayed village of Warnford, a mere hamlet rather of a few pretty and ancient cottages deep in woods where each cottage is a picture. Yet it had a depressingly lonely look as though the village were under some spell, for I did not see a soul about it, not a face at a window, not a figure at a door, no one in its cottage gardens, not a child, nor a dog, nor a fowl in the road. I stopped in the village for an hour, or more, to make some sketches and to take some photographs, yet all that while there was no sign of life about the place, no one going or coming. I could not but marvel at this, it was so curious an experience. It looked like a deserted village, yet the cottages appeared well cared for, and their little gardens loved and well tended. The strange loneliness and silence of the spot impressed me. Why was it? I could not account for it, unless all its inhabitants were away making holiday, but where were the dogs and the fowls? It might almost have been one of those picturesque model villages one sees in an exhibition at an early hour before the very properly dressed up and show village maidens have arrived and when no one is there, only it was far too real for that. There was one thing besides its loneliness that seemed strange and incomplete about the spot, though for a time I could not realise what I missed; then it struck me it was the absence of a presiding church, that is generally such a prominent feature of a village and centres the life of it. I looked carefully around, but nowhere could I see the church; there was no sign of one, nor a chapel. For even peaceful villagers cannot worship one God in one way. As I left the village by a road that bent round sharply by the side of a park, at last I saw a human being, a man close at hand in a field. So I pulled up and asked where the church was, or if there were one. "The church," replied he, "it be away in the park opposite, right in the woods. You cannot see it till you come to it. You go in at the lodge gate and follow the road over the bridge, then when you comes in sight of the house you turns to the right, and there be the church in the woods. It be a curious old place, over a thousand years old they do say." I thought I would see it. A thousand years old is a fair age for a building, and though the man might be mistaken in that, probably the building was very ancient. So off I set in search of the church that I found some way off in the park, half hidden and surrounded by trees and green in the shade of them. A humble little church with a damp and time-worn look, yet with a certain pathetic charm about it that belongs to most things ancient of man's contriving. I was surprised in so poor a church to come upon a fine altar-tomb with the recumbent effigies of a man and his two wives, and the kneeling figures of their children below; and another similar monument, both to members of the same Neale family, the earliest one bearing date of 1599. Drops of moisture were dripping down the sides of the monuments as though the very stones were mourning for the forgotten dead. There is some fine carved oak in the church going to decay, and a curious old pillared font. But the interior was so dim and damp I was glad to get out of it. It certainly is an ancient church, and perhaps looks more ancient than it really is. Some of the walls, and certainly the small yet massive tower, are Norman, but that would not make it over a thousand years old; still, a century or two is nothing to rural folk. I once asked a man in a little country town if he could tell me the age of an interesting old house there. "I don't rightly know just how old it be," he replied, "but it's over a million years old, that I know for certain." I was astonished. "Surely you have made a mistake?" I exclaimed. "No, I haven't," he responded, "for there's the date carved upon it, as you may see," and he pointed this out to me, for it had escaped my notice, carved in Roman letters, "MDXCII." "There, I told you it was over a million years old. 'M' stands for a million, as you know, and the other letters for more years, but I cannot rightly read them." I said nothing; it was not my business to educate the countryman. Once I did attempt to correct a villager about some glaring mistake in reading an inscription--he would read it to me; he resented my correction and walked off in a huff; now I am careful not to run the risk of so offending again. Church clerks too, as a frequent rule, I have found very touchy if you venture, however mildly, to differ with them about anything they may have to say about their church. I shall not in a hurry forget the rare trouble I got into with a more than usually intelligent clerk who was showing me over his interesting old church. Now I had noticed in the tiny town a small and cheap local handbook of the church for sale, so I purchased this before going to inspect the building. I had it with me as I went round the church accompanied by the clerk; I referred to it now and again and found it fairly correct as far as my knowledge went, but on one minor point of architecture I certainly thought the author was manifestly wrong. In my innocence I pointed this out to the clerk, with what I thought to be the quite harmless remark that "the writer of this book does not know everything." My guide was up in arms in a moment. "What do you mean?" queried he; "the book is absolutely correct; I never, no never, heard any one question it before. It has always given perfect satisfaction," and so forth and for some time. I was fairly taken aback. Why all this rage about nothing? thought I, and as I was thinking it out the clerk suddenly exclaimed, "Do you know who wrote that book?" I confessed I did not. "Why, I did," said the clerk, "I who have been here for over twenty long years, and there's not a soul in the whole county knows as much about the church as I do; I know every stone of it, and you have only been in it ten minutes. Now what is ten minutes to twenty years' long study?" I had "put my hand in a hornet's nest," as the saying has it, and I hardly remember to this day how I smoothed matters over; indeed I am not sure if I actually did, the clerk's feelings were wounded. I was truly sorry. I humbly apologised, I even trebled my tip, trusting thus to appease him; in a measure I did, but in a measure only, for he accepted it in an off-hand manner as though he were doing me a favour; still he accepted it, upon doing which he remarked, "You're a generous gentleman, that I will own, but you really don't understand architecture; however," now in a tone more of sorrow than anger, "it takes a lifetime of study, it do." I was glad to get away from that clerk. Now I am careful when reading a book, or when having read one, that I do not talk unawares to its author. Yet I actually blundered again in a much similar way, though I hardly think I was treated quite fairly that time. An artist friend took me to look over a picture-gallery; he asked my opinion of the different pictures as we passed along; my opinion was not worth much, but he seemed pleased to have it, so I gave it quite freely. Of one picture I exclaimed, as I felt bound to make some remarks, "Well, I don't think much of that." "No more do I," said my friend, "for I painted it!" But when I profusely apologised and tried to explain I meant something quite different, even at the price of the truth, unlike the clerk my friend laughed aloud at the trick he had played and how he had trapped me, then insisted on my dining with him that night. Once on the journey I thought I saw an opportunity to turn the tables and to score in this way off a stranger. We were chatting in the smoke-room of our inn after dinner, when, to my surprise, I discovered he was reading a book I had written; he knew not my name, nor did I know his, and I hoped he might make some disparaging remark about my book, then I would tell him I wrote it, and could myself indulge in a laugh. But it never came off, for he put down the book unconcernedly and talked to me most of the evening; evidently he preferred my talk to my writing. But to return to the little church of Warnford, it depressed me with its silence and gloom; I was glad to get out into the fresh air, for it seemed like a tomb. As I was leaving, under the porch I caught sight of a curious old Saxon sun-dial, a somewhat rare thing to find, and over it was a long Latin inscription relating, as far as I could make out, though my Latin is rusty, to the rebuilding of the church a long while ago. The dial probably belonged to a still more ancient church that once stood on the spot, but why it was placed there where no sun could reach it I could not understand. Just by the side of the neglected churchyard I caught a glimpse of the ruins of an old house buried in trees, and a grand house it must have been in its day, for six upstanding stone pillars of what once was its great hall testify to its size, but little else remains but some broken and mouldering walls. Of its history I could glean nothing, for there was no one about to ask this. Then I returned to the car, and once more proceeded on my pleasant way down the wooded valley, with the musical murmuring of the river and the song of the wind in the woods for company; and I had all this lovely country to myself for some miles, except for a stray farmer's gig and a cart or two--a country where to my mind's eye peace dwelt in lowly cottages and scattered old-time farmhouses; truly the trail of the serpent might be there as well as elsewhere, but I saw no sign of it. To me it was a valley of peace and contentment. Perhaps it was because I was an onlooker only and had no concern in its life. It is well to be a mere onlooker at times, then the drama of the little world before you runs smoothly; you do not see behind the scenes. You behold neither the tragedy nor the comedy of life, only its sunshine and its pleasantness. So it is wise not to abide too long in any place, however it take your fancy, lest you risk disillusion of finding the world is much the same the world over, and the earthly paradise you have discovered is no paradise at all. I thought I had found my paradise once in a charming old and picturesque village far west, where all seemed so peaceful and blest; but I stayed there too long, for on getting to know the quiet country folk I too quickly discovered they had their grievances one against the other, just as much as those people who live in less desirable spots; these grievances mostly seemed paltry to me who had no part in them, but they were not to be got over. Yes, I had stayed there too long. Three weeks had I stayed, so charmed was I with the place and its cosy old inn: I had better have stayed for only three days, and retained my first dream of perfection. Next we came to the adjoining villages of Corhampton and Meon Stoke; I took them for one, but I learnt that the little river Meon divides them and that they really are two distinct places. On each side of the river, almost within a stone's throw of each other, their ancient churches stand. Two places of worship where one might suffice--surely a waste of Christian energy! How much energy is often wasted in country churches! A Sussex parson once told me that sometimes he had to preach and the choir had to sing to three old women and an umbrella! Both Corhampton and Meon Stoke are lovely villages in a lovely spot enclosed by wooded hills; you might travel for many a day and many a mile before coming to so fair a corner of the land. It is as fair as wooded hills, gently gliding river, with a droning old mill by its side, green meadows, pretty cottages gracefully yet accidentally grouped, and two grey, quaint, and ancient churches can make it. Meon Stoke church with its odd black wooden bell-turret makes a pretty picture standing by the side of the river where it broadens out into a pool. Corhampton church stands on a little knoll almost opposite, and is small and most unpretending, but of much interest, being Saxon, though since those far-away Saxon times it has suffered alteration. Now Saxon churches are rare in the land, notwithstanding that this was the second we had come upon in out-of-the-way places during the journey. Its walls still show the long-and-short Saxon stone-work, and there is a good example of a Saxon doorway on the north side, unfortunately built up. There is to me little doubt that its walls are the original ones, though patched here and there, and though later windows have been inserted in them, so that the building remains the same size and form as when first erected, long centuries past. In the churchyard is a large yew-tree undoubtedly ancient, but whether it is "as old as the building itself and the oldest in the country," as a parishioner asserted it was, I could scarcely believe; perhaps he did not realise the age of the church. I grant that the tree likely flourished in the days of Queen Bess, probably was old even then, and that takes one back a good while. How many churchyards boast of having the biggest and oldest yew-tree in the land? I have quite lost count of them, and of the "smallest church in England" I have seen not a few. Standing at one side of the porch we noticed the original altar-stone with five crosses on it, and within the church, built into the south wall of the chancel, is a curious stone chair. But I think perhaps Corhampton church is of more interest to the archaeologist than to the average tourist. I suppose there are still trout in the Meon as there were in Izaak Walton's past days when he fished in that river, for as we left I observed a woman on its banks patiently and deftly casting the fly, though the water was so clear and the sun so bright she could hardly hope for much sport. But anglers live greatly on hope. Good Izaak Walton knew when to stop fishing, for of one day he writes: "We went to a good honest ale-house, and there played shovel-board half the day ... and we were as merry as they that fished." He was no slave to his hobby, and owned it. Again I must confess that fishing with me is more an excuse to get out in the country with something to do than the mere catching of fish; possibly to others its chief charm lies in this. But it does not do to analyse one's pleasures. After Corhampton the country grew more open for a time, and at one spot on the top of a hill that rose across the river I caught sight of a quaint-looking, remote village with a fine church possessing a noble tower that dominates the landscape. I could not understand why so small and out-of-the-way a village (it seemed but a hamlet) should possess so fine a church. A sudden desire took me to explore it, so I turned down the narrow lane that led to the spot and climbed the opposite hill. I pulled up at the first cottage I came to; there were only a few, but this attracted my attention, being creeper-covered and with a porch all overgrown with fragrant honeysuckle just as a poet would have it. Then I noticed its name painted over its garden gate; this struck me as strange, for it was "Naboth's Vineyard." As I was standing close by, its owner came forth and bade me good-day; I think curiosity brought him out to learn what a stranger did there, in a motor-car too, where I should imagine strangers or motor-cars very seldom or hardly ever appear. We got chatting together about nothing in particular; then I asked why he had given his pretty cottage so strange a name. I thought there might be some story connected with it. "Can't you guess?" said he, smiling; "it's because so many people envy me it and would like to possess it. I thought it a very suitable name"--and he was simply the village blacksmith who had conceived this conceit. "Would you care to come into the garden and see what a fine view I've from it?" So I went into the garden and duly admired the view looking south far away down the valley, then bathed in the glow of the afternoon sun, and the garden I noticed was a pleasant one, gay with the bright, old-fashioned, hardy flowers so familiar to the Elizabethan poets, flowers that Mrs. Allingham has pictured to us in many of her charming drawings of cottage homes. How I love those hardy flowers, never hurt by the rain; they seem fuller of colour and far sweeter of scent to me than the pampered, potted-out ones that people admire or profess to admire to-day, and that are often ruined by a storm in an hour. I thought at the moment I could live in that cottage contentedly, far away from the world and its worries. I asked the name of the village and learnt it was Soberton. As I was quietly admiring the view, the blacksmith pointed me out a field down below. "Some time ago," said he, "a stone coffin was dug up there, and in it was a skeleton of a man embedded in cement, but no one could make anything of it." A skeleton only, buried in cement in a coffin, not in a churchyard--that is surely suggestive of mystery? From the garden I had a good view of the tall flint and stone-built church tower, and I expressed my surprise to find so fine a one there. "I expect you don't know its history," said the blacksmith. I confessed I did not, but would be pleased to hear it. "Well, it's like this," he continued; "they say it was built by the life-savings of two servants, a butler and a dairymaid, who were in service at an old mansion in the valley that has long been pulled down. You can see on the tower, if you care, the carved figures in stone of the butler and the maid, and between them there is a skull to show, I am told, that the tower was built after their death." So I went to inspect the tower and see what I could make of the carvings. How many quaint legends you pick up on the road if you only search out places remote where legends still linger. There, true enough, high up in the tower, just under the parapet, I saw plainly the two figures, opposite one another, of a butler with a key in his hand and a dairymaid with a pail by her side. They were carved with much skill and boldly, and appeared little the worse for the storms of years that must have beaten upon them, exposed as they are to all weathers. If sculptured stones could confirm a story, these stones appeared to do so. Then at the foot of the tower my eye caught this inscription: This tower Originally built by Servants Was restored by Servants 1881. I presume that whoever had that inscription placed there must have felt there was some truth in the story, though, to me, I confess it seems an improbable one. Still, what traveller would be so cruelly critical as to doubt every legend he hears? In this case the curious carvings are suggestive and certainly call for some story--else why are they there, and not only there, but so prominently placed right in front of the tower? CHAPTER XX A tramp's story--A relic of a famous sea-fight--A tame road--Inn gardens--New landlords and old traditions--Chichester market-cross--A wind-swept land--"Dull and dreary Bognor"--A forgotten poet--Littlehampton--Country sights and sounds--A lulling landscape. From Soberton we resumed our way down the Meon Valley, which gradually widening out lost its vale-like character and with that much of its charm; its scenery culminated at Corhampton. We had not gone far before we sought shelter beneath some overhanging trees from a smart shower; already a tramp was sheltering there. As we drove up he received me with a military salute, or what he considered to be such, for it was not very well done, remarking at the same time, "Good-morning, captain." Tramps are fond of addressing any one as "captain"; I presume they find it pleases. I simply acknowledged his salute out of civility, but said nothing. "Old soldier," exclaimed the tramp laconically. Old humbug, I thought, but still I said nothing, not from pride, but because he looked such a dirty, worthless tramp. But not a whit disheartened he came close up to the car, too close for my liking, and began to pitch a yarn how he had fought for his country against the Boers: "Now look at me, a poor old soldier who has served his country, having to tramp about in search of any odd job, and jobs is hard to find, and wherever I goes to ask for work there's sure to be a dog come for me. Dogs is a terror to a poor tramp." It might have been uncharitable of me, but I was rather pleased to hear that; I have a good opinion of a dog's judgment. Then he started on a long-winded story of his experiences and hardships, real or invented--I strongly inclined to the latter--during the war. The tale was not badly told, I must give him credit for that, yet I doubted the truth of it; my experience of tramps being extensive caused me to doubt; though if I meet with an interesting tramp, and some there are, I am always prepared for a chat and to pay the price of my entertainment--and cheat. Greatly doubting the truth of the tale, a sudden idea struck me: I asked the tramp the name of the ship he went out in. A surprise question it proved, for he hesitated before answering it, then he gave me a name; I had never heard of a ship so called, still that proved nothing; then I quite casually exclaimed, "Why, that's an old paddle-ship." "That's the one," he replied in some haste, not seeing the point that sea-going paddle-ships have long been out of date, and not one naturally was employed to convey troops to the Cape. Such is the artless art of the tramp; but that tramp got nothing from me. As soon as the shower was over I went on my way. I really do not think it kindness or wisdom to encourage the professional tramp, it only tends to increase the tribe who already sufficiently pester our roads. The best of them are lazy fellows who prefer their rough life to doing an hour's honest work. A friend of mine one day offered a begging tramp a good meal and a shilling to dig a corner in his garden, perhaps two hours' real work. But the tramp refused "the job," his excuse being he was hungry and needed the meal first, which might mean he would get the meal, then walk off. Soon we reached the pleasant little town of Wickham, where William of Wykeham was born in 1324, and that is its only claim to fame as far as I know. It is a tiny town with a wide market-place, and it looked very sleepy that day. It consists of a number of gabled houses, mostly old and of various dates, the oldest, as usual, being the most picturesque. The modern city architect, with some very rare exceptions, appears to be ashamed of gables and of chimneys that so pleasantly break and vary the skyline. Wickham just escapes being quaint, but it retains the slumberous calm of old times. The charm that these quiet little unprogressive old towns have for some people lies not alone in their antiquity, though this has much to do with it, nor in their picturesqueness, for they are not all picturesque, except for an odd building here and there, but in their rare restfulness and completeness, for they never seem to grow or get ugly: now prosperous towns are always growing and eating up the green fields around, they have an unfinished look that displeases, and their modern buildings are hopelessly uninteresting, when not positively unsightly, and there is no sense of repose about them. They go in for plate-glass and show, and for tramways when they can. At Wickham we discovered a water-mill, built about a century ago, though it looked much older; the big beams within it were made out of the timbers of the U.S. frigate _Chesapeake_ that was captured by H.M.S. frigate _Shannon_ in that famous sea-fight of 1813, and some of the timbers bear the marks of the cannon-balls still. So in the most unlikely places we came upon history--indeed we never passed a day that we did not at some spot or another. We did not patronise the inn at Wickham, for there was still time for more wandering. I often wonder how these little inns in the sleepy country towns and villages pay, for their customers cannot be many. One landlord at whose inn I stayed on the way, a neat and even picturesque inn where I was very well treated and served, told me he paid £55 a year rent for it with stabling attached. It seemed a low enough rental to me, not enough to pay a fair interest on the building; but that was the owner's affair, I suppose he could not get more or he would. Mine host told me, during a chat in his cosy bar, that his average takings were £10 a week, "which is not all profit, of course. There are licences to pay and rent and taxes, then there's the providing and servants' wages, to say nothing of the wear and tear of carpets and furniture, which is considerable. No, sir, the innkeeper's lot is not all cakes and ale; his hours are late, and he has much responsibility. Yet the Government tax us unmercifully. Our worries are many, but we always have to greet our guests with a cheerful face as though we had nothing to worry about and were the happiest of men. We provide a home from home for all travellers and at all hours. It's hard work is innkeeping, and ought to be better rewarded." I agreed with mine host of a smiling face, and I drank his good health. When I paid my modest bill for excellent entertainment, I left feeling I was under an obligation to him for the trouble he took to obtain me admission to see over a most interesting half-timber Elizabethan house near by, having first told me of it and its eventful past history. [Illustration: AN OLD-TIME HOME.] I had intended to follow the valley of the Meon right down to the sea, and by my map I find it would have taken me to Lichfield, but by some mischance at Wickham I got on the wrong road, a road that took me to Fareham, so the rest of the way I lost sight of the river. I was vexed with myself at having done this, for a river is always such cheerful company. No country, however tame, is without charm that has a river running through it; a river is, as a Frenchman said, "a moving road," its destiny the sea; the birds sing best by its banks, the cattle go down to and refresh themselves and wade in its waters, the fisherman haunts it, often picturesque old mills stand by its side; there is always life by a river, and the gleam of it enlivens the dullest of landscapes. I always make for a river, and follow it as far as I conveniently can. Those old monks knew a good thing, they could be trusted for that, and be it noted how generally they built their abbeys by the side of a stream. Some say it was because they might catch fish for their Fridays when they fasted, or feasted, on fish, for fish is not a bad dish, washed down by good wine--so their enemies say, in the days when the monks became lazy and fat, and let their lands instead of farming them, but I rather believe they selected such sites with an eye for fair spots, and that only. The road on to Fareham seemed tame and hardly worth travelling. After the quiet beauties of the valley above, I was spoilt for the ordinary. But at Fareham, an unattractive, long-streeted town, I again found a good inn of the old-fashioned sort, and that reconciled me to the place; then the inn had a little garden in its rear overlooking an inlet of the sea where ships were harboured, and the sight of their masts and their sails gave a sense of romance to the view, for the sight of a ship, however small it may be, sets my thoughts a-wandering and voyaging in imagination all the world over. The town was forgiven, indeed forgotten. If an inn you rest at has only a pleasant garden to moon in, what matters the town? If "the finest landscape is improved by a good hotel in the foreground," how much the more so in comparison is a commonplace town? I know an old country town that might have been pleasant enough in past days, but now has been ruined picturesquely and utterly by some rows of most assertively ugly new buildings of staring red brick and blue slates and plate-glass; but at the end of it stands a fine coaching inn, a long low building with creeper-clad walls, a dream of old times with its swinging signboard upheld on a post, its panelled, beam-ceilinged chambers, its cool, cosy bar, its long out-of-date comfortable Georgian furniture, not to mention its big bowling-green on which our ancestors played. In spite of its ugliness, and very ugly it is, to that town I often repair solely for the sake of that inn, not forgetting its worthy host, who might have stepped out of some novel by Dickens or Ainsworth or James. So much for sentiment and the attraction of the picturesque. I really think that the inn makes the host; the subtle influence of an ancient inn, the atmosphere or a spirit of the past that lingers about it, soon takes possession of the later landlord and makes him one in his manner and ways with those who preceded him, and so without realising it he comes to conform to the old traditions quite naturally, almost as though he were born to them. So surely I feel this the case that I always expect, and I find--I cannot remember a single exception--an old inn of the kind to have a landlord in keeping. It is the same with old houses. I know a man of modern ideas who came into the possession of one and determined to make alterations in it, but somehow or other the alterations were postponed. Meanwhile the house quietly conquered, and now is religiously preserved as it was; the only concession to modern ideas being that a diamond casement window was replaced with one of plate-glass, and this merely for the sake of a view; but to-day the new owner regrets even that, and I fully expect in due time to find the old lattice panes back in their place, for the view can be sufficiently well seen through them. From Fareham we took the road to Chichester, a road that follows the line of the coast though a little inland; a road of no beauty after the first few miles, but not without interest. Here and there on the way we had peeps of the sea and of little landlocked creeks that had a charm of their own, and these redeemed the scenery from the uninteresting succession of houses and poor villages that succeeded one another with scant intervals for many a mile. Presently we came in sight of Portsmouth over a long lagoon, its waters coming right up to our road, which is embanked to preserve it from the wash of the tide. We caught a glimpse of the grim ironclads in the harbour dimly seen through the drifting dun smoke of the town, but the smoke above where touched by the sunshine was tinged with gold and glorified, and under such conditions even smoke can be beautiful seen afar off. As the road gradually rose we had a fine view across Langstone Harbour, over which the wind blew free towards us with a cool and refreshing salt savour. So through Havant and Emsworth we found our townified and dusty way and came to a land of flat green plains, ahead of which rose, pearly-grey against the white sky, the steeple of Chichester Cathedral with the irregular outline of the city below. Seen thus from our point of view it suggested a city of romance in the days of pilgrimages. Would that the reality could only come up to our vision! How much truth lies in Campbell's often-quoted line, "Distance lends enchantment to the view." We almost wished we could have avoided Chichester and so have retained that poetic vision, for "There is a pleasure, now and then, in giving full scope to Fancy and Imagination." But the road led to Chichester and nowhere else; to the south was the sea, and there was no other way. But Chichester is a pleasant old city, though it does not realise impossible dreams; its grey-toned cathedral makes a fine background for its beautiful arched market-cross. I am afraid I admire the market-cross more than the cathedral, for the cathedral is rather interesting than beautiful, whilst the market-cross is wholly beautiful and interesting besides. Never had an architect of lesser structures a more happy inspiration than when designing that graceful cross. We drove southward from Chichester to regain the sea front, and the road we selected we found led to Bognor: dull and dreary Bognor I have heard it called; its name is against it, and it is a hard thing to struggle against a bad name whether in man or place. Now we found ourselves in a flat land, a land of meadows and fields of waving corn, a land that stretched far away, wide and open to the long level lines of the distant horizon. Truly it was not a beautiful country according to the accepted traditions of beauty, for it was devoid of all character except flatness, and that is a quality that mostly appeals to a Dutchman or Fen dweller. Yet there was a certain charm about that flat country to me; I think it lay in the wide dome of sky above that flooded the landscape with unshadowed light, and the bracing breeziness of it, swept as it was by the unchecked winds from the sea. It was all so open, free, and flushed with the freshest of airs; then there was such a homely, friendly feeling about it, for it was a country of modest homes, not one of mansions or villas--a country of odd farmsteads and cottages only. Truly there was nothing strictly to admire in all the far prospect, only a succession of grass and green cornfields, "one field much like another," as I think Dr. Johnson once said of the country; but the brightness of the vast spaces of sunlit land, and the pronounced pureness and clearness of the air, made for cheerfulness and were inspiriting. If the landscape was in a measure monotonous, the wild flowers that abounded by the way made fair atonement for it. I knew not their names, but what mattered that? It was their beauty I prized, their colour and form. I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis all barren." He had best stay at home and travel by book, till he learns through other eyes how to see. As Keats wrote of the pre-Wordsworth poets: Ah, dismal-soul'd! The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd Its gathering waves--ye felt it not. The blue Bared its eternal bosom and the dew Of summer nights collected still to make The morning precious: beauty was awake! Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead To things ye knew not. I think it was Stevenson who wrote an interesting article "On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places"--not that the country we passed through that day was in any way unpleasant, it simply was somewhat uninteresting; and there is an art in enjoying the uninteresting, or what you may deem so, though I must confess it does not come up to the higher art of "the enjoyment of unpleasant places." A man who can do that can be happy anywhere and without travelling far, but its accomplishment needs a good deal of training and time and trying, I should imagine--not, be it noted, to make the best of, but actually to _enjoy_ the unpleasant. "Ay, there's the rub." That surely is an education in itself, somewhat in the shape of a task! Now I travel for pleasure and not to be taught. Perhaps it was because I fully expected to find Bognor a dull and dreary spot that I was agreeably disappointed with it. Then I confess I have a fancy for seeing places differently from other people, amounting almost to a confirmed opposition to prevailing opinion. It may be just then that I was in the unconscious humour to enjoy unpleasant places, but I could see nothing unpleasant about Bognor to test it. Basking in the bright sunshine it looked quite cheerful to me; indeed I thought I should much prefer to stay there than at fashionable and familiar Brighton, which seems like a town where the sea is but an accident and the shops on the front are the real attraction--Bond Street at second-hand. Hear what Richard Jefferies says: "All fashionable Brighton parades the King's Road twice a day, morning and afternoon, always on the side of the shops.... These people never look at the sea.... The sea is not 'the thing' at Brighton, which is the least nautical of seaside places"--and I fear that the music at the Pavilion is more to the liking of visitors there than the music of the waves. Now at Bognor I noticed there were crowds by the sea, crowds with a happy look on their faces, a sea that was sparkling and dancing far away with joy in its dancing, whilst the white-crested waves came rolling in on the beach, breaking and splashing in masses of silvery spray. I must have had my rose-coloured spectacles on that day, for I could see nothing dreary or dull about Bognor; all the people I saw there seemed light-hearted and sprightly, and it is not a bad rule to judge of a place by the people in it. Those who read this may smile, but in spite of its reputation and name, and reputation influences much, I took quite a liking to the place. Truly I must allow that the sun was shining down gloriously, "doing its best to make all things pleasant," and succeeding--making even Bognor look gay. It was but a short way from Bognor to the village of Felpham, where William Blake lived for some time to be near his friend Hayley the poet, who--the poet, that is--gained some repute in his day, though his popularity has not stood Time's trying test. Of Hayley it may be said, "Everything was good about him but his poetry." Still he wrote pleasant enough verse, though his thoughts were not deep. The last lines he composed to the swallows on his roof may be quoted as an example, not of his best, nor yet of his worst: Ye gentle birds that perch aloof, And smooth your pinions on my roof, Preparing for departure hence Ere winter's angry threats commence; Like you my soul would smooth her plume For longer flights beyond the tomb. Hayley, who was given to writing epitaphs, also composed the well-known and much-quoted one to a local blacksmith that is to be found in Felpham churchyard, which runs thus: My sledge and hammer lie reclin'd, My bellows too have lost their wind, My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd, And in the dust my vice is laid, My coal is spent, my iron gone, The nails are driven, my work is done. This epitaph has been frequently repeated elsewhere; I have come upon it in at least a dozen churchyards, sometimes with variations that are no improvements. An epitaph once popular soon became common property. Twice when touring in the Eastern Counties did a clerk of a church declare in effect, knowing I was in search of quaint epitaphs, "Now I can show you a curious one to a blacksmith that is quite original," only to find, once again, Hayley's epitaph there; and I really do not think I have ever been in a churchyard without coming upon the everlasting--and irritating because so commonplace-- Afflictions sore Long time he (or she) bore. Whoever originated these lines has much to answer for. On the other hand, the man who had simply inscribed on his wife's tombstone "Though lost to sight to memory dear," without a thought of such a thing has given us a classic quotation. Here, however, are two epitaphs that strike a fresh note. The first is at Cobham to a photographer, both brief and to the point, for all it says is "Taken from life." Another to John Knott, a scissor-grinder, may be found in smoky Sheffield: Here lies a man that was Knott born, His father was Knott before him, He lived Knott and did Knott die, Yet underneath this stone doth lie Knott christened, Knott begot, And here he lies And yet was Knott. From Felpham we drove along narrow roads to Littlehampton. I am not sure that we went the nearest or best way, indeed I feel almost sure we did not; even on the map it is not simple to follow. I know we wound about a good deal, first in one direction, then in another, but it was very pleasant wandering, and we passed by many delightful old homes and pretty cottages. It was a land of pleasant homes and quiet abiding. Now and then we caught a peep of the sea on one hand, and of the fine rolling "hills of the South Country" on the other, and on the level land between our road took its devious way as though of uncertain mind whether to make for the sea or the hills, then finally making for the sea at Littlehampton. Now and then we heard the fussy rattle of a mowing machine busy at work in a field. Not only country sights but country sounds have changed greatly during the past century. Scarcely ever now one hears the once familiar whetting of the scythe, or the soothing swish of it in the long grass. Sings Tennyson: O sound to rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew. That is the value of pleasant sounds. It is long since I have heard the beat of the flail threshing out the grain on the barn floor; to-day in its place we have the steam threshing-machine, and that is the only mechanical sound that pleases my ear, the dreamy hum of it when mellowed by distance. Doubtless associations have much to do with the pleasure sounds afford. Who loves not the "caw, caw, caw" of the rook? Yet in reality it is a sound harsh and grating, but then one always so intimately connects it with the country, big trees, ancestral homes and rural delights, that, though truly discordant, the notes even gratify the ear. So we reached Littlehampton, half port half watering-place, of no great importance as either. From Littlehampton our road kept up much the same pleasantly rural and uneventful character, with hills to the north and the sea to the south, and the same sort of level and, in parts, well-wooded land between. "Hills," it has been said, "give hope, wood a kind of mysterious friendliness with the earth, but the sea reminds us that we are helpless." We had all three, but the sea that day, gleaming and bright in the glance of the sun, looked more like a friend than a foe; it did not suggest the helplessness of man but rather his convenient highway over the world to distant lands of old romance--if any be left. There is an infinite pleasure to the quiet-loving pilgrim in driving through a lulling land like this where all is restful to the eye and hurry a thing unknown, a land through which you drive on in a sort of day-dream and for a time desire nothing better, a land Where the wind with the scent of the sea is fed, And the sun seems glad to shine. In truth there was a touch of sunny Southernness about it, a warmth and brightness suggestive of Italy, though the scenery was essentially English. Then we came to the sea again at Worthing, when my rose-coloured spectacles must surely have dropped from my eyes, for I could see nothing attractive about it: otherwise how can I account for the fact that Bognor, "dull Bognor," appealed to me and Worthing did not? Perhaps because, I thought, there was more pretence of being a watering-place about Worthing, and I heard a band playing there, and I heard no band at Bognor but only the surge of the sea. I was glad to escape from Worthing; it had no interest for me beyond its fresh air. CHAPTER XXI Travel in the old days--Sequestered Sussex--Country homes--A mellow land--A gibbet post and its story--Chiddingly and its church--The Pelham buckle--Wayside crosses--St. Dunstan's tongs and his anvil--A curious brass--Iron stocks--Home again. From Worthing our road led for three or four miles along "the beached margin of the sea," a straight stretch of dreary and shelterless shingly road, looking doubly dreary after the pleasant green lanes we had so recently travelled. At the end of this we crossed the Arun close above where it joins the Channel, its short race run, its life almost too brief to grow into a real river; sea-gulls were whirling about it, but what they did there I could not make out; they were not catching fish, nor did they alight on the land or the water, but kept whirling round and round restlessly just over one spot in an apparently purposeless manner; but it pleased me to watch them, for the freedom of the wing is a glorious thing. When sea-gulls do this away from the sea I am told it is a sign of bad weather. On the other side of the river stood the old town of Shoreham with its shipping, and above the town rose its weather-beaten, ancient Norman church tower; square, massive, grey and stern like its builders, strangely sculptured, too, by the salt spray and sea winds that have wrought their will upon it. From our point of view the town had an ancient look, though much of it is modern enough, but the grime of its smoke had toned down the new to the old. Beyond Shoreham lies Brighton, and to avoid the tedious and unprofitable drive through both towns and along a mere succession of houses we turned up by the river-side and went northward inland in search of old-fashioned places. We paid a toll at the bridge by which we crossed the Arun, and that was the only toll we had on the way. Years ago, when I was much younger and took long driving tours, the tolls I had to pay at the toll-gates often cost me more than my dinner, to say nothing of the provoking fact of having frequently to pull up, and often besides be kept waiting for change. Those old toll-keepers were a race apart, and in remote places would dally at the gate whilst they asked me for the news of the day. Such trifles seem to make those old times appear farther off than they are. It was slow travelling then, and with tired horses often your choice of an inn for the night was "Hobson's choice," for you could not go farther--yet these leisured old times make pleasant memory. Now wherever you go you can rarely escape the morning newspaper; to do so is a test of remoteness indeed. What with telegraphs, telephones, railways and motors, news travels fast and the world is made smaller. It was the coach that brought the first tidings of events in times past, and its arrival was eagerly watched for in the towns and villages on the way: so was the news of Trafalgar and Waterloo spread through the land. Some of those toll-keepers, it is said, were in league with the highwayman, and signalled to him about any likely passing and lonely traveller by an open or a shut window, at night by means of a light in the same window; but this may be scandal. At least we know that some rascally landlords of inns were accomplices of the highwayman; rumour indeed has it that Dick Turpin was so indignant at a certain landlord giving information to a rival "when under articles to him" that he threatened to shoot that landlord. In return for his services the toll-keeper was never robbed of his day's takings. There is a tale told of a certain lady of quality who in those exciting times of travel always used to take with her a purse filled with base coin to hand over: but how, I wonder, did that lady become possessed of so much base coin? It was a pleasant drive by the side of the river to the pretty village of Bramber, with its half-timber cottages and fragment of a Norman castle on a wooded knoll. I think it was at Bramber that a friend told me a few years ago he visited an interesting little museum and found the following admission notice: "Adults twopence, Children One penny, Ladies and gentlemen what they will." I wonder how many extra pennies good folk were induced to part with for the glory of being in the latter category? A somewhat similar notice I read in an inn garden: "People must not pluck the flowers. Ladies and gentlemen never do." There was some art in that notice. From Bramber we drove through a fine open country of wide prospects, the forgathering of the hedgerow trees making the distance look like one vast forest--a forest never reached but that always circles the horizon. Next we came to Henfield, a quiet and picturesque village. After Henfield we got into a sequestered land beyond railways and on to some pleasant by-roads and narrow lanes where in sunny nooks hosts of wild flowers flourished, and the hedges delighted in tangled disorder. We were again in a land of sleepy farmsteads of the old Sussex type, farmsteads of time-toned walls, weather-tinted tiling, long, low, lichen-laden roofs, and great chimney-stacks--always a great and shapely chimney-stack of much the same pattern, but of a very good and pleasing pattern. This type of farmhouse is not confined to Sussex, but may be found over its near borders both in Kent and in Surrey. Such farmhouses are much sought after to-day, I am told, to be converted into homes for town people, because of their picturesque charm. This has come about, I believe, in a measure owing to the motor-car making accessible even remote country places; no longer do people depend wholly on the railway as formerly; indeed an estate agent told me that often the stipulation of country home seekers now is "not near a railway." People, Weary of men's voices and their tread, Of clamouring bells and whirl of wheels that pass, desire to get into the real country and away from the crowd. I have just been reading in that delightful book, _An Odd Farmhouse_, how such an old house was found, and the charm of the life in it. "It lay in a dimple of the Downs, all around it were meadows.... A long, low, Jacobean building of simple but beautiful lines.... I looked through the dining-room windows and saw the tiled floor, the oak cupboards built into the wall, the great beams traversing the ceiling, the Gargantuan chimney-place, some eleven feet long, and deep enough to hold settles in the ingle-nook. There was a raised platform for logs, an old Sussex iron fire-back and a swinging crane with many hooks and arms." Such a picture sets me longing to live in some similar old Jacobean farmhouse: would only such good fortune were mine. I know the picture is true, for I have more than once, and in different old Jacobean homes, spent a night with mine hosts in them. I have sat in their ingle-nooks before blazing fires of logs on their hearths, watching the fitful flames leap up their wide chimneys, as they threw a ruddy glow on beamed ceiling and panelled wall whilst casting mysterious shadows around; and I have fed my full of the poetic charm and the romance, rare in these commonplace days, of those nights. The builder of a house never invented a better thing than the old-fashioned big ingle-nook: not the poor pretence affair that the modern architect calls one, with a cheerless, slow, combustion coal grate in its centre; but an ingle-nook at least ten feet wide--and many are more--with a big oak beam above, and deep enough to hold settles to seat comfortably four about the wide hearth, with its fire-back and fire-dogs intended for the burning of wood, such as they built in the Jacobean age when men knew how to build homes to live in and joy in, not merely houses for shelter--homes that were pictures without and within. [Illustration: A JACOBEAN DOORWAY.] But I have strayed from the road. It was a quiet land we were in, one out of the way of much traffic, for the lanes seemed to lead nowhere in particular, and only to exist for local convenience, but they take you into the heart of the real country: a land as hushed as ever it was in the distant days of "Queen Bess," for there has nothing arisen since to disturb its foretime tranquillity--unless, perhaps, the rare and temporary intrusion of a motor-car whose driver has lost his way. It is for such unpretentious, peaceful scenery that the Englishman yearns at times when in foreign lands far away. Just a yearning for the sight of England's green fields, green hedges, leafy elms, and old homes, nothing more. Even Byron, that wanderer, sings: A green field is a sight which makes us pardon The absence of that more sublime construction Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices, Glaciers, volcanoes, oranges, and ices. Also did not Keats, when in Italy, once tell Severn that he lay awake one night just thinking all the while of England's green fields and her flowers? I have often wondered how so simple a thing as a purely English pastoral landscape can so greatly please; wherein exactly lies its strong power to charm? I once took an American friend for a long drive through a beautiful corner of England. I selected it specially, wishing to give my visitor a pleasant impression of the old country. There were hills and fair woods on the way, winding streams with ancient stone bridges across them, a lovely ruined priory in a lonely glen, old homes, many gabled and ivy-clad, picturesque cottages, and a quaint, old-world village or two. These were some of the good things we saw. When the journey was ended--we took it by motor-car, so we went far--I asked my friend what pleased him the most. "Well, I think," said he, "it's the mellow, domesticated look of the country, as though man and nature had long been on familiar terms there; but what really appeals to me most are just your green meadows studded with daisies, and your beautiful hedges." It was actually the simple sight of the daisied meadows and the green hedges that pleased him more than all the other good things, and the other things were very good indeed. It is sometimes enlightening to see our land as others see it. Listen to what Mark Twain says in his _More Tramps Abroad_:-- After all, in the matter of certain physical patent rights there is only one England. Now that I have sampled the globe I am not in doubt. There is the beauty of Switzerland, and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the earth; there is the beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New Zealand and Alaska; there is the beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in ten thousand islands of the Southern Seas; there is a beauty of the prairie and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in the earth; each of these is worshipful, each is perfect in its way, yet holds no monopoly of its beauty; but that beauty which is England, is alone; it has no duplicate. It is made up of very simple details--just grass, and trees, and shrubs, and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and churches, and castles, and here and there a ruin, and over all a mellow dreamland of history. But its beauty is incomparable, and all its own. There must surely be some special charm in a country, unassuming though it may be, to cause such praise of it to be written. Does not even cosmopolitan Kipling pronounce his preference for "Sussex by the sea" over all the world? We were in Sussex again, but, in spite of Kipling, I love Sussex inland, sequestered Sussex of woodlands, sleepy villages, ancient farmsteads and cottages, and genuine ruralness, infinitely more than "Sussex by the sea," with its fringe of more or less fashionable watering-places. Inland Sussex, on the whole, is the Sussex and the England of the long past, delightful to see, but much of seaside Sussex is the England of to-day, and is rather depressing to me. The real charm of Sussex lies in its ancientness and in its simple, good-humoured country folk, not in its modernness. People who rush from London by rail or by motor on the main highways to Brighton, or other of its seaside towns, know little of rural Sussex or the rare charms of its silvan scenes. Travelling through this peaceful land, loitering along its lanes that tempted one to loiter because of their pleasantness, we eventually turned up at Ansty Cross, where we were on one of the three familiar Brighton roads, for there is a choice of roads from London to Brighton, all beloved of the speedy motorist who heeds not the scenery he passes; but they are dusty, with much hasting traffic, and not the roads that a quiet-loving pilgrim would choose. For this cause we did not go far on the Brighton road, but left it by the first promising lane, and in time we reached a little green in an out-of-the-way spot. I could not find it named on my map; there was no village there, but a cottage or two faced it, and in the centre of the green was a post with a weathercock on the top, and the weathercock had the date of years past pierced in it, a date I have forgotten. The post was railed round for protection, so I thought there might possibly be some story connected with it, otherwise why so protected? I asked particulars of a cottager, and he, nothing loth to be informing, told me that the post was part of an ancient gibbet--I do not remember having seen such a thing before--whereon a man was hung in chains for robbery and murder. It appears from the tale I was told that a tramp sought food and shelter one night at a cottage close by; the cottager took pity on him and gave him food and a night's lodging, and was in return robbed of the small savings he had by the scoundrel of a tramp, who richly deserved his fate. Such are the tales of the road. It must have been a gruesome sight in old days, and one not at times to be avoided, for travellers to see a man hung up thus by the wayside, his shrivelled body swinging, or perhaps only his bones rattling, in the wind to the creaking of the chains. I remember a certain church clerk telling me a story of how in past days, at a spot near his church, a poor woman's only son was exposed on a gibbet--I think it was merely for stealing a sheep he suffered death, stolen to provide his widowed mother with food,--and how in after days the poor, bereaved, broken-hearted, solitary widow used to tramp all alone on dark winter nights to the gibbet to pick up any bones of her boy that might have fallen to the ground, and carry them carefully home, so that she might secretly bury them in a quiet corner of the churchyard. I could only hope that the story was not true, but the clerk assured me it was, "every word of it." Sometimes I am thankful I live in these latter days. Then wandering over more winding lanes we came to the top of Scaynes Hill, where the road dropped down steeply before us, and from where there is a fine view looking over the fair wooded Weald to the bare but not barren downs, and just then over their long, undulating line the sea mists were creeping, and I thought there came wafted inland the rare scent of the sea. The mists kept rolling in great masses down the green sides of the hills, then as if by magic vanished from view. I never saw the South Downs look so glorious or so mountainous as they looked with their crowning of mists and their dark shadowed bases. To realise the full beauty of the downs you must see them in all weathers and not in sunshine alone. Sunshine is cheerful, but sunshine is a tamer; now mists give the downs just a suspicion of grandeur. Even Snowdon looks tame on a clear, cloudless day. Descending Scaynes Hill we mounted again to a wide open common with a big white windmill topping it and so exposed to all the winds, a mill boldly in evidence that surely would have tempted Don Quixote, had he been of to-day and passed by that way, to try a tilt or two at it. Without the mill the common would have looked bare and have been wholly characterless except for its openness. I think, after an old castle or a ruined abbey, there is more character about a windmill than in any other building; moreover, a windmill is always a telling and a graceful structure, so a pleasing, even a poetic, feature in any landscape. I really think that more than half the charm of Holland lies in its many bickering windmills, and the life their whirling sails give to its flat and dreamy landscapes with their slow canals. After a time our road led us between great rocks, so quickly in England does the scenery change its character, for the rocks suggested a road in the wild North Country; it was as though we had suddenly been transported there. So we reached steep-streeted Uckfield, and in a few more miles the little railless town of East Hoathly, somewhat beyond which I espied, peeping over distant woods, a tall stone church steeple; it attracted my eye, for it is an unusual sight in Sussex, where the churches have mostly square towers, or steeples roofed with oak shingles. On consulting my map I found the steeple belonged to Chiddingly church, a little remote village off any main road. I had indeed some trouble in finding my way there along the narrow lanes that alone led to it. The church proved interesting. For the village I cannot say much. It consisted of but a few houses, not more than half a dozen, I think, a small shop where they appeared to sell everything from bacon to pins (it was the post office also), and a little inn boasting of the sign of "The Six Bells," a sign that presumably gives one the number of bells in the steeple, for it was an old custom to represent the number of bells in the neighbouring church on an inn sign--one amongst other odd bits of information I picked up on the journey; my journey indeed provided me with quite a storehouse of information about unimportant matters. Chiddingly church has an ancient and time-worn look. I noticed that the steeple was bound round with iron chains, and I asked a man of the place if he knew why they were there, for they were not ornamental. "They be to keep the old steeple together," said he. Poor old steeple, thought I, to have to depend upon chains to hold it in place. "It was the village blacksmith's idea," explained the man. Now I should have thought it was an architect's job. But iron chains exposed thus to all storms would in no long time rust away, I should imagine, though I dare say they will last for some years; but never before have I seen a building so repaired. It is truly a primitive arrangement without even the advantage of being picturesque. The west doorway displays at either end of the drip moulding the quaint device of the Pelham buckle. Now this device was the crest or badge of Sir John Pelham, that gallant knight who made prisoner the King of France at the famous fight of Poictiers, after which he assumed as his crest or badge a representation of the sword-belt buckle of the captured king, and on any building he founded, or helped in its construction, he caused a carving of that badge to be placed. This bit of information I also picked up on the way, though on a previous tour. On a good many churches in Sussex you will find the Pelham buckle engraved. Such was the pride of the Pelhams. The west window of the church is notably out of the centre of the tower, and is but one example of many showing how the old builders considered not strict uniformity, and by so doing, I feel, added a certain charm of irregularity to their structures; they were content with eye measurements; to-day the foot-rule settles everything with a mathematical and eye-provoking accuracy. Within the church what first caught my eye was the gorgeous monument, in a side building all to itself, of "Sir John Jefferay, Knt., late Lord Chief Baron of the Excheqvr," who "dyed the xxiii of May 1575." This monument is somewhat mutilated, it is said at one time by country folk who mistook it for the tomb of the hated Judge Jeffreys. A little away from the church stands a portion of the wing, with its windows bricked up, of the once stately home of the Jefferays, now converted into the outbuildings of a farmhouse--and that and their tomb marks the end of their glory. I noticed in the church an old-fashioned two-decker pulpit, with a sounding-board above; you do not see many of these nowadays. This reminds me of a story of old times I heard on the way and that was fresh to me. It appears that in a certain country church a strange parson had taken duty one Sunday. Now it was the custom there not to begin the service before the squire had arrived. But the strange parson knew nothing of this nor of the squire, so he promptly started with "When the wicked man," whereupon the clerk below hurriedly stood up and in a loud whisper exclaimed, "You must not begin yet, sir, he has not come in." From Chiddingly we proceeded over hilly and winding lanes and roads to Cross-in-Hand, a lonely spot with an inn and a few cottages, so named, I presume, from a pre-Reformation cross that probably once stood there. These at the junction of roads (as here), where they often were placed, were frequently provided with a hand to point out the way, and so were the forerunners of the later finger-posts. A few more miles brought us to historic Mayfield, set boldly on a hill, where in the Convent (once the palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury) they show you the veritable tongs of St. Dunstan, and point out the very dent made in them caused by his Satanic Majesty's nose when he pinched it, and his anvil also at which the saint was at work at the time. They sell picture post-cards of them in the town also. I thought it was a monk of Glastonbury, and at Glastonbury, who had the credit of this thrilling exploit; but at Mayfield they declare the event took place there, and are not the actual tongs proof sufficient? At Glastonbury there are no such tongs; now at Mayfield the doubting traveller may see the tongs and the dent in them. By the way, I heard a rather quaint story of the palace in the troublesome old days when the roads were infested with robbers. Late one night a loud knock was heard at the door, whereupon the porter opened the little iron-guarded shutter to see who was there, and discovered a man begging in God's name for some food; but the porter did not like the look of the stranger and took him for a thief, so he kept the door closed, when suddenly the big bolts flew aside of their own accord and the door opened of itself; it was a saint who was standing outside! But how could the poor porter tell that, if the man looked not the part? So I think it was hardly fair of the saint to reprove the porter for not at once opening the door in God's name. The modern tramp is no saint, but he makes very free use of God's name. From Mayfield we struck west over a wild, open country in search of Ticehurst, that appeared, from my map, to be a little village or small town, fairly remote from the rail and therefore possibly interesting. It was a fine drive through a rough-and-tumble country, and though Ticehurst disappointed me, the road to it did not. Ticehurst proved to be a clean, neat, wide-streeted village, with a village well in the centre--a village of some old houses and pleasantly situated, but not otherwise specially attractive. The inn there is said to be of the fourteenth century, though it hardly looks it. Finding the village uninteresting I strolled to the church, a grey and ancient pile overlooking a vast extent of rolling and wooded hills. It was almost worth going to Ticehurst for that revelation of scenery. Over the church porch I noticed a parvis chamber, and within the building a quantity of stained glass in its many and large windows; some of the glass is old and good, some modern and not so good. I noticed also the curious circular clerestory windows of singular design, a unique feature of the church as far as my knowledge extends. Portions of the stone steps to the former rood-loft still exist, I observed, and there is an old carved oak cover to the font with a worn inscription on it that I could not decipher. The chief interest of Ticehurst church, however, lies in a curious brass to "John Wybarne Armigi," who died "sexto decimo die ffebruarii Anno Rigni Regis henrici Septimi quinto." He is represented on his brass in full armour between his two wives, and at least four times their size. This suggests that the brass was originally only intended for one figure, and that those of the two wives were added afterwards, so there was no room to make them larger in the remaining space available. It is, too, a curious circumstance that the armour shown is of a considerably earlier period than that in which this John Wybarne lived. This further suggests to me that it may have been a memorial to some former knight basely appropriated, for such things were done in times past, as many a palimpsest brass proves; to me in the details of its armour it bears a close resemblance to the one to Sir John D'Agentine at Horseheath in Cambridgeshire, bearing date of 1382. From Ticehurst we had a glorious drive through a rolling and well-wooded country as far as the Hastings main road; this we followed to Robertsbridge with a long and steep descent to that little, old-fashioned town. I think it was Walpole, when posting one night this way, called this descent a precipice, but it scarcely is that. Those old travellers often took a strangely exaggerated view of things, some of them going so far as to call even the modest Welsh mountains "frightful, horrid, awe-inspiring," and so forth in superabundance. We followed the Hastings road as far as Battle, where we turned to the right and proceeded westwards towards Eastbourne and home. In due course we came to Ninfield, a little village high up in the world, and not far from "Standard Hill," as shown on the Ordnance map, and where tradition asserts William the Conqueror of old first raised his banner in England, and the morrow beheld a kingdom he had won with the aid of his armoured knights and a ruse. The hill has a commanding position overlooking the country all round, so there is nothing improbable in the tradition recording a fact, and the name of the hill, preserved through centuries to this day, is suggestive. At Ninfield there are some iron stocks under trees by the wayside. I do not remember having seen stocks of iron before. There is a tale told of these, that a man was condemned to be placed in the wooden stocks that preceded them, only his friends hacked them to pieces overnight, and there were no stocks to put him in; so fresh ones of iron, not readily to be demolished, were ordered, which stand to this day as serviceable as when they were made, and that must be a long while ago, though I am unaware of the date when the punishment of the stocks was abolished. We drove on from Ninfield over winding roads that led us along the top of the hills overlooking the sea, sparkling in the sunshine that day, and past time-mellowed farmsteads, many with their quaint, conical-roofed oast-houses adjoining; then we dropped suddenly down from the hills to the wide plain of the Pevensey marshes, green as a land may be; we were nearing Eastbourne and home, and the end of our journey. So now, kind reader--I think I may venture to call you "kind reader" as you have followed me so far, for that surely is test enough to admit of such an address--I here bid you a reluctant farewell; for your company in spirit on our pleasant journey I heartily thank you. Good-bye. [Illustration] INDEX Abbeys-- Buildwas, 229-231 Haughmond, 213-214, 217-221, 250 Lilleshall, 249-250 Waverley, 89-93 White Ladies, 250, 262-264 Abbot's Bromley, 274-278 Aberdovey, 163-165, 172, 176-178 Abingdon, 316 Albrighton, 195 Aldbourne, 115-117 Alfriston, 15, 17-18, 162 Alton, 344-349 Ansty Cross, 386 Ashdown Forest, 62-63 Atcham, 222-223 Atherstone, 225, 281-285 Bablockhythe Ferry, 317-318 Banbury, 285-287, 290-293 Banwy River, 192-193 Barcombe, 24 Basingstoke, 109 Batemans, 47 Battle, 395 Baxter, Richard, 228 Beachy Head, 8, 9, 23 Beaconsfield, 333-337, 341-343 Blenheim, 320 Bloxham, 293-296 Bognor, 371 Boscobel, 237, 245, 250, 341-343 Boswell, 299 Brighton, 373-374 Broadhurst, 57-58 Broad Marston, 65 Broadway, 139-140 Broom, 65 Browne, Sir Thomas, 65 Bunyan, 228 Burford, 153-156, 304-306 Burnham Beeches, 343 Burroughs, John, 174 Burton-on-Trent, 280-281 Byron, Lord, 118, 150 Cann Office Inn, 188-191 Carlyle, 101 Carno, 170-171 Castles-- Boarstall Tower, 322, 326-328 Bodiam, 10, 37 Bramber, 381 Carreg Cennin, 10 Farnham, 93 Hurstmonceux, 22 King John's, 103 Ludlow, 157 Red Castle, 205, 207 Tong, 251 Tutbury, 280-281 Cemmaes, 171 Chapel House, 298-300 Charles I., 175, 290, 305 Charles II., 236, 239, 263, 267-271 Charwelton, 289-290 Chichester, 370-371 Chiddingly, 389-392 Chipping Norton, 300 Church Stretton, 161-162 Churches-- Alton, 347-348 Bloxham, 294-296 Burford, 153-156, 305 Chiddingly, 389-392 Corhampton, 358-359 Culmington, 159 Dane Hill, 60 Fletching, 31-40 Greywell, 107 Highworth, 313-315 Horsted Keynes, 51-59 Kingsclere, 110 Lilleshall, 248 Odiham, 96-99 Shipton-under-Wychwood, 302-303 Stanton Lacy, 158-159 Ticehurst, 393-394 Tong, 250-262 Cirencester, 125, 128-130, 145 Claverham, 19-23 Clifford Chambers, 65 Coalbrookdale, 231 Coate, 118-121 Cobbett, William, 24, 62-63, 81, 109, 347 Coleridge, 196 Constable, John, 42 Corhampton, 357-359, 363 Cotswolds, The, 13, 134, 139, 304 Cox, David, 42 Craven Arms, 160-161 Cricklade, 125 Crondall, 94 Cross-in-Hand, 392 Cuckmere Valley, 17 Culmington, 159 Daglingworth, 129 Dane Hill, 59-61 Daventry, 225, 273, 285 De Quincey, 45 Dickens, Charles, 43 Dinas Mawddwy, 185 Dovey, Valley of, 171-172 Down Apney, 127 Dyfi Valley, 182 Eastbourne, 38 East Hoathly, 389 Eaton Constantine, 228 Emerson, 137 Emsworth, 370 Evesham, Vale of, 141 Eynsham, 319 Fareham, 367-370 Faringdon, 316 Farnham, 93-94 Felpham, 374-376 Fletching, 31-40, 56 Frensham Pond, 84-86 Friston, 9, 162 Gibbon, 35-36, 56 Godalming, 83 Great-upon-Little, 80-81 Great Witley, 142-143 Greywell, 142-143 Hampden, John, 89 Havant, 370 Hawkestone, 200-201, 203 Hazlitt, William, 5-6, 152 Henfield, 382 High Ercall, 210-211 Highworth, 312-316 High Wycombe, 332-333 Hindhead, 109 Hook, 344 Horsted Keynes, 51-59 Huddington Court, 240-243 Hungerford, 111-114 Ironbridge, 227, 231-232 Islip, 322 Jefferies, Richard, 118-120, 168, 373 Johnson, Dr., 45, 58, 201, 204, 299, 372 Jonson, Ben, 137 Joseph's Stone, 321-322 Kennett Valley, 114 King's Bromley, 273-275 Kingsclere, 110 Kipling, Rudyard, 47, 386 Lamb, Charles, 81 Langstone Harbour, 370 Laughton Level, 23 Leighton, 229 Leighton, Archbishop, 56-58 Lewes, 23-24, 49 Lichfield, 225, 273 Lilleshall, 247-248 Liphook, 109 Litlington, 17 Littlecote, 115 Littlehampton, 377 Little Stretton, 161 Llandysill, 144 Llanerfyl, 191-192 Long Crendon, 329 Long Mountain, 165 Ludlow, 157 Machynlleth, 174-176 Madeley, 227-232 Madeley Court, 233-239, 245-246, 266 Maidenhead, 343 Malvern Hills, 141 Marton Mere, 166 Mayfield, 392-393 Meon Stoke, 357-358 Meon Valley, 349 Montgomery, 166-167 Moreton Corbet, 207-210 Moseley Hall, 170 Muchelney, 15 Newbury, 111 Newton, 169, 174-175 Ninfield, 395-396 North Moor, 316 Oddington, 322 Odiham, 94-104, 110, 344 Ot Moor, 321-322 Pepys, Samuel, 132, 150, 305 Pershore, 141 Pit Down, 31 Plynlimmon, 227 Quennington, 129 Robertsbridge, 395 Ruskin, John, 149 St. Leonard's Forest, 64 Scaynes Hill, 388 Scott, Sir Walter, 89, 150 Sedgemoor, 165 Shakespeare, 20, 94, 124, 147 Sheffield (in Sussex), 40-48 Sheriff Hales, 247 Shifnal, 247 Shoreham, 379-380 Shrewsbury, 163-164, 194, 213, 221-222, 225, 281 Siddington, 130 Soberton, 361-363 South Downs, 8, 11-13, 23, 388 South Warnborough, 344 Standard Hill, 395 Stanton Harcourt, 319 Stanton Lacy, 158-159 Stevenson, 2, 41, 168, 324, 372 Stipperstones, 165 Stokenchurch, 332 Stow-on-the-Wold, 300 Swindon, 121 Syde, 133-134 Tal Valley, 171 Tenbury, 146-153 Tennyson, Lord, 108, 131 Tetsworth, 330-331 Thame, 329 Thoreau, 118-119 Ticehurst, 393-395 Tilgate Forest, 64 Tong, 250-262 Tutbury, 280-281 Uckfield, 389 Uffington, 221-222 Uriconium, 223-226 Uttoxeter, 225, 279 Walton, Izaak, 87, 359 Warnford, 350-352 Watling Street, 161, 225, 272-273, 281, 285 Welshpool, 193 Wem, 195-203 Wenlock Edge, 159 West Dean, 12, 14-17 West Hoathly, 15, 63-64, 66-80 West Meon, 350 Weston, 203 White Ladies, 262-264 Wickham, 365-367 Wickhamford, 65 Wokingham, 343 Wollaston, 193-194 Woodstock, 319-321 Wootton Bassett, 121-125 Worcester, 141-142 Worth Forest, 64 Worthing, 378-379 Wrekin, The, 227 _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Plain print and punctuation errors were corrected. 
9368	----	Distributed Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines. Welsh Fairy Tales By WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS 1921 A PREFACE-LETTER TO MY GRANDFATHER DEAR CAPTAIN JOHN GRIFFIS: Although I never saw you, since you died in 1804, I am glad you were one of those Welshmen who opposed the policy of King George III and that you, after coming to America in 1783, were among the first sea captains to carry the American flag around the world. That you knew many of the Free Quakers and other patriots of the Revolution and that they buried you among them, near Benjamin Franklin, is a matter of pride to your descendants. That you were born in Wales and spoke Welsh, as did also those three great prophets of spiritual liberty, Roger Williams, William Penn, and Thomas Jefferson, is still further ground for pride in one's ancestry. Now, in the perspective of history we see that our Washington and his compeers and Wilkes, Barre, Burke and the friends of America in Parliament were fighting the same battle of Freedom. Though our debt to Wales for many things is great, we count not least those inheritances from the world of imagination, for which the Cymric Land was famous, even before the days of either Anglo-Saxon or Norman. W. E. G. Saint David's and the day of the Daffodil, March 1, 1921. CONTENTS I. WELSH RABBIT AND HUNTED HARES II. THE MIGHTY MONSTER AFANG III. THE TWO CAT WITCHES IV. HOW THE CYMRY LAND BECAME INHABITED V. THE BOY THAT WAS NAMED TROUBLE VI. THE GOLDEN HARP VII. THE GREAT RED DRAGON OF WALES VIII. THE TOUCH OF CLAY IX. THE TOUCH OF IRON X. THE MAIDEN OF THE GREEN FOREST XI. THE TREASURE STONE OF THE FAIRIES XII. GIANT TOM AND GIANT BLUBB XIII. A BOY THAT VISITED FAIRYLAND XIV. THE WELSHERY AND THE NORMANS XV. THE WELSH FAIRIES HOLD A MEETING XVI. KING ARTHUR'S CAVE XVII. THE LADY OF THE LAKE XVIII. THE KING'S FOOT HOLDER XIX. POWELL, PRINCE OF DYFED XX. POWELL AND HIS BRIDE XXI. WHY THE BACK DOOR WAS FRONT XXII. THE RED BANDITS OF MONTGOMERY XXIII. THE FAIRY CONGRESS XXIV. THE SWORD OF AVALON I WELSH RABBIT AND HUNTED HARES Long, long ago, there was a good saint named David, who taught the early Cymric or Welsh people better manners and many good things to eat and ways of enjoying themselves. Now the Welsh folks in speaking of their good teacher pronounced his name Tafid and affectionately Taffy, and this came to be the usual name for a person born in Wales. In our nurseries we all learned that "Taffy was a Welshman," but it was their enemies who made a bad rhyme about Taffy. Wherever there were cows or goats, people could get milk. So they always had what was necessary for a good meal, whether it were breakfast, dinner or supper. Milk, cream, curds, whey and cheese enriched the family table. Were not these enough? But Saint David taught the people how to make a still more delicious food out of cheese, and that this could be done without taking the life of any creature. Saint David showed the girls how to take cheese, slice and toast it over the coals, or melt it in a skillet and pour it hot over toast or biscuit. This gave the cheese a new and sweeter flavor. When spread on bread, either plain, or browned over the fire, the result, in combination, was a delicacy fit for a king, and equal to anything known. The fame of this new addition to the British bill of fare spread near and far. The English people, who had always been fond of rabbit pie, and still eat thousands of Molly Cotton Tails every day, named it "Welsh Rabbit," and thought it one of the best things to eat. In fact, there are many people, who do not easily see a joke, who misunderstand the fun, or who suppose the name to be either slang, or vulgar, or a mistake, and who call it "rarebit." It is like "Cape Cod turkey" (codfish), or "Bombay ducks" (dried fish), or "Irish plums" (potatoes) and such funny cookery with fancy names. Now up to this time, the rabbits and hares had been so hunted with the aid of dogs, that there was hardly a chance of any of them surviving the cruel slaughter. In the year 604, the Prince of Powys was out hunting. The dogs started a hare, and pursued it into a dense thicket. When the hunter with the horn came up, a strange sight met his eyes. There he saw a lovely maiden. She was kneeling on the ground and devoutly praying. Though surprised at this, the prince was anxious to secure his game. He hissed on the hounds and ordered the horn to be blown, for the dogs to charge on their prey, expecting them to bring him the game at once. Instead of this, though they were trained dogs and would fight even a wolf, they slunk away howling, and frightened, as if in pain, while the horn stuck fast to the lips of the blower and he was silent. Meanwhile, the hare nestled under the maiden's dress and seemed not in the least disturbed. Amazed at this, the prince turned to the fair lady and asked: "Who are you?" She answered, "My mother named me Monacella. I have fled from Ireland, where my father wished to marry me to one of his chief men, whom I did not love. Under God's guidance, I came to this secret desert place, where I have lived for fifteen years, without seeing the face of man." To this, the prince in admiration replied: "O most worthy Melangell [which is the way the Welsh pronounce Monacella], because, on account of thy merits, it has pleased God to shelter and save this little, wild hare, I, on my part, herewith present thee with this land, to be for the service of God and an asylum for all men and women, who seek thy protection. So long as they do not pollute this sanctuary, let none, not even prince or chieftain, drag them forth." The beautiful saint passed the rest of her life in this place. At night, she slept on the bare rock. Many were the wonders wrought for those who with pure hearts sought her refuge. The little wild hares were under her special protection, and they are still called "Melangell's Lambs." II THE MIGHTY MONSTER AFANG After the Cymric folk, that is, the people we call Welsh, had come up from Cornwall into their new land, they began to cut down the trees, to build towns, and to have fields and gardens. Soon they made the landscape smile with pleasant homes, rich farms and playing children. They trained vines and made flowers grow. The young folks made pets of the wild animals' cubs, which their fathers and big brothers brought home from hunting. Old men took rushes and reeds and wove them into cages for song birds to live in. While they were draining the swamps and bogs, they drove out the monsters, that had made their lair in these wet places. These terrible creatures liked to poison people with their bad breath, and even ate up very little boys and girls, when they strayed away from home. So all the face of the open country between the forests became very pretty to look at. The whole of Cymric land, which then extended from the northern Grampian Hills to Cornwall, and from the Irish Sea, past their big fort, afterward called London, even to the edge of the German Ocean, became a delightful place to live in. The lowlands and the rivers, in which the tide rose and fell daily, were especially attractive. This was chiefly because of the many bright flowers growing there; while the yellow gorse and the pink heather made the hills look as lovely as a young girl's face. Besides this, the Cymric maidens were the prettiest ever, and the lads were all brave and healthy; while both of these knew how to sing often and well. Now there was a great monster named the Afang, that lived in a big bog, hidden among the high hills and inside of a dark, rough forest. This ugly creature had an iron-clad back and a long tail that could wrap itself around a mountain. It had four front legs, with big knees that were bent up like a grasshopper's, but were covered with scales like armor. These were as hard as steel, and bulged out at the thighs. Along its back, was a ridge of horns, like spines, and higher than an alligator's. Against such a tough hide, when the hunters shot their darts and hurled their javelins, these weapons fell down to the ground, like harmless pins. On this monster's head, were big ears, half way between those of a jackass and an elephant. Its eyes were as green as leeks, and were round, but scalloped on the edges, like squashes, while they were as big as pumpkins. The Afang's face was much like a monkey's, or a gorilla's, with long straggling gray hairs around its cheeks like those of a walrus. It always looked as if a napkin, as big as a bath towel, would be necessary to keep its mouth clean. Yet even then, it slobbered a good deal, so that no nice fairy liked to be near the monster. When the Afang growled, the bushes shook and the oak leaves trembled on the branches, as if a strong wind was blowing. But after its dinner, when it had swallowed down a man, or two calves, or four sheep, or a fat heifer, or three goats, its body swelled up like a balloon. Then it usually rolled over, lay along the ground, or in the soft mud, and felt very stupid and sleepy, for a long while. All around its lair, lay wagon loads of bones of the creatures, girls, women, men, boys, cows, and occasionally a donkey, which it had devoured. But when the Afang was ravenously hungry and could not get these animals and when fat girls and careless boys were scarce, it would live on birds, beasts and fishes. Although it was very fond of cows and sheep, yet the wool and hair of these animals stuck in its big teeth, it often felt very miserable and its usually bad temper grew worse. Then, like a beaver, it would cut down a tree, sharpen it to a point and pick its teeth until its mouth was clean. Yet it seemed all the more hungry and eager for fresh human victims to eat, especially juicy maidens; just as children like cake more than bread. The Cymric men were not surprised at this, for they knew that girls were very sweet and they almost worshiped women. So they learned to guard their daughters and wives. They saw that to do such things as eating up people was in the nature of the beast, which could never be taught good manners. But what made them mad beyond measure was the trick which the monster often played upon them by breaking the river banks, and the dykes which with great toil they had built to protect their crops. Then the waters overflowed all their farms, ruined their gardens and spoiled their cow houses and stables. This sort of mischief the Afang liked to play, especially about the time when the oat and barley crops were ripe and ready to be gathered to make cakes and flummery; that is sour oat-jelly, or pap. So it often happened that the children had to do without their cookies and porridge during the winter. Sometimes the floods rose so high as to wash away the houses and float the cradles. Even those with little babies in them were often seen on the raging waters, and sent dancing on the waves down the river, to the sea. Once in a while, a mother cat and all her kittens were seen mewing for help, or a lady dog howling piteously. Often it happened that both puppies and kittens were drowned. So, whether for men or mothers, pussies or puppies, the Cymric men thought the time had come to stop this monster's mischief. It was bad enough that people should be eaten up, but to have all their crops ruined and animals drowned, so that they had to go hungry all winter, with only a little fried fish, and no turnips, was too much for human patience. There were too many weeping mothers and sorrowful fathers, and squalling brats and animals whining for something to eat. Besides, if all the oats were washed away, how could their wives make flummery, without which, no Cymric man is ever happy? And where would they get seed for another year's sowing? And if there were no cows, how could the babies or kitties live, or any grown-up persons get buttermilk? Someone may ask, why did not some brave man shoot the Afang, with a poisoned arrow, or drive a spear into him under the arms, where the flesh was tender, or cut off his head with a sharp sword? The trouble was just here. There were plenty of brave fellows, ready to fight the monster, but nothing made of iron could pierce that hide of his. This was like armor, or one of the steel battleships of our day, and the Afang always spit out fire or poison breath down the road, up which a man was coming, long before the brave fellow could get near him. Nothing would do, but to go up into his lair, and drag him out. But what man or company of men was strong enough to do this, when a dozen giants in a gang, with ropes as thick as a ship's hawser, could hardly tackle the job? Nevertheless, in what neither man nor giant could do, a pretty maiden might succeed. True, she must be brave also, for how could she know, but if hungry, the Afang might eat her up? However, one valiant damsel, of great beauty, who had lots of perfumery and plenty of pretty clothes, volunteered to bind the monster in his lair. She said, "I'm not afraid." Her sweetheart was named Gadern, and he was a young and strong hunter. He talked over the matter with her and they two resolved to act together. Gadern went all over the country, summoning the farmers to bring their ox teams and log chains. Then he set the blacksmiths to work, forging new and especially heavy ones, made of the best native iron, from the mines, for which Wales is still famous. Meanwhile, the lovely maiden arrayed herself in her prettiest clothes, dressed her hair in the most enticing way, hanging a white blossom on each side, over her ears, with one flower also at her neck. When she had perfumed her garments, she sallied forth and up the lake where the big bog and the waters were and where the monster hid himself. While the maiden was still quite a distance away, the terrible Afang, scenting his visitor from afar, came rushing out of his lair. When very near, he reared his head high in the air, expecting to pounce on her, with his iron clad claws and at one swallow make a breakfast of the girl. But the odors of her perfumes were so sweet, that he forgot what he had thought to do. Moreover, when he looked at her, he was so taken with unusual beauty, that he flopped at once on his forefeet. Then he behaved just like a lovelorn beau, when his best girl comes near. He ties his necktie and pulls down his coat and brushes off the collar. So the Afang began to spruce up. It was real fun to see how a monster behaves when smitten with love for a pretty girl. He had no idea how funny he was. The girl was not at all afraid, but smoothed the monster's back, stroked and played with its big moustaches and tickled its neck until the Afang's throat actually gurgled with a laugh. Pretty soon he guffawed, for he was so delighted. When he did this, the people down in the valley thought it was thunder, though the sky was clear and blue. The maiden tickled his chin, and even put up his whiskers in curl papers. Then she stroked his neck, so that his eyes closed. Soon she had gently lulled him to slumber, by singing a cradle song, which her mother had taught her. This she did so softly, and sweetly, that in a few minutes, with its head in her lap, the monster was sound asleep and even began to snore. Then, quietly, from their hiding places in the bushes, Gadern and his men crawled out. When near the dreaded Afang, they stood up and sneaked forward, very softly on tip toe. They had wrapped the links of the chain in grass and leaves, so that no clanking was heard. They also held the oxen's yokes, so that nobody or anything could rattle, or make any noise. Slowly but surely they passed the chain over its body, in the middle, besides binding the brute securely between its fore and hind legs. All this time, the monster slept on, for the girl kept on crooning her melody. When the forty yoke of oxen were all harnessed together, the drovers cracked all their whips at once, so that it sounded like a clap of thunder and the whole team began to pull together. Then the Afang woke up with a start. The sudden jerk roused the monster to wrath, and its bellowing was terrible. It rolled round and round, and dug its four sets of toes, each with three claws, every one as big as a plowshare, into the ground. It tried hard to crawl into its lair, or slip into the lake. Finding that neither was possible, the Afang looked about, for some big tree to wrap its tail around. But all his writhings or plungings were of no use. The drovers plied their whips and the oxen kept on with one long pull together and forward. They strained so hard, that one of them dropped its eye out. This formed a pool, and to this day they call it The Pool of the Ox's Eye. It never dries up or overflows, though the water in it rises and falls, as regularly as the tides. For miles over the mountains the sturdy oxen hauled the monster. The pass over which they toiled and strained so hard is still named the Pass of the Oxen's Slope. When going down hill, the work of dragging the Afang was easier. In a great hole in the ground, big enough to be a pond, they dumped the carcass of the Afang, and soon a little lake was formed. This uncanny bit of water is called "The Lake of the Green Well." It is considered dangerous for man or beast to go too near it. Birds do not like to fly over the surface, and when sheep tumble in, they sink to the bottom at once. If the bones of the Afang still lie at the bottom, they must have sunk down very deep, for the monster had no more power to get out, or to break the river banks. The farmers no longer cared anything about the creature, and they hardly every think of the old story, except when a sheep is lost. As for Gadern and his brave and lovely sweetheart, they were married and lived long and happily. Their descendants, in the thirty-seventh generation, are proud of the grand exploit of their ancestors, while all the farmers honor his memory and bless the name of the lovely girl that put the monster asleep. III THE TWO CAT WITCHES In old days, it was believed that the seventh son, in a family of sons, was a conjurer by nature. That is, he could work wonders like the fairies and excel the doctors in curing diseases. If he were the seventh son of a seventh son, he was himself a wonder of wonders. The story ran that he could even cure the "shingles," which is a very troublesome disease. It is called also by a Latin name, which means a snake, because, as it gets worse, it coils itself around the body. Now the eagle can attack the serpent and conquer and kill this poisonous creature. To secure such power, Hugh, the conjurer, ate the flesh of eagles. When he wished to cure the serpent-disease, he uttered words in the form of a charm which acted as a talisman and cure. After wetting the red rash, which had broken out over the sick person's body, he muttered: "He-eagle, she-eagle, I send you over nine seas, and over nine mountains, and over nine acres of moor and fen, where no dog shall bark, no cow low, and no eagle shall higher rise." After that, the patient was sure that he felt better. There was always great rivalry between these conjurers and those who made money from the Pilgrims at Holy Wells and visitors to the relic shrines, but this fellow, named Hugh, and the monks, kept on mutually good terms. They often ate dinner together, for Hugh was a great traveler over the whole country and always had news to tell to the holy brothers who lived in cells. One night, as he was eating supper at an inn, four men came in and sat down at the table with him. By his magical power, Hugh knew that they were robbers and meant to kill him that night, in order to get his money. So, to divert their attention, Hugh made something like a horn to grow up out of the table, and then laid a spell on the robbers, so that they were kept gazing at the curious thing all night long, while he went to bed and slept soundly. When he rose in the morning, he paid his bill and went away, while the robbers were still gazing at the horn. Only when the officers arrived to take them to prison did they come to themselves. Now at Bettws-y-Coed-that pretty place which has a name that sounds so funny to us Americans and suggests a girl named Betty the Co-ed at college--there was a hotel, named the "Inn of Three Kegs." The shop sign hung out in front. It was a bunch of grapes gilded and set below three small barrels. This inn was kept by two respectable ladies, who were sisters. Yet in that very hotel, several travelers, while they were asleep, had been robbed of their money. They could not blame anyone nor tell how the mischief was done. With the key in the keyhole, they had kept their doors locked during the night. They were sure that no one had entered the room. There were no signs of men's boots, or of anyone's footsteps in the garden, while nothing was visible on the lock or door, to show that either had been tampered with. Everything was in order as when they went to bed. Some people doubted their stories, but when they applied to Hugh the conjurer, he believed them and volunteered to solve the mystery. His motto was "Go anywhere and everywhere, but catch the thief." When Hugh applied one night for lodging at the inn, nothing could be more agreeable than the welcome, and fine manners of his two hostesses. At supper time, and during the evening, they all chatted together merrily. Hugh, who was never at a loss for news or stories, told about the various kinds of people and the many countries he had visited, in imagination, just as if he had seen them all, though he had never set foot outside of Wales. When he was ready to go to bed, he said to the ladies: "It is my custom to keep a light burning in my room, all night, but I will not ask for candles, for I have enough to last me until sunrise." So saying, he bade them good night. Entering his room and locking the door, he undressed, but laid his clothes near at hand. He drew his trusty sword out of its sheath and laid it upon the bed beside him, where he could quickly grasp it. Then he pretended to be asleep and even snored. It was not long before, peeping between his eyelids, only half closed, he saw two cats come stealthily down the chimney. When in the room, the animals frisked about, and then gamboled and romped in the most lively way. Then they chased each other around the bed, as if they were trying to find out whether Hugh was asleep. Meanwhile, the supposed sleeper kept perfectly motionless. Soon the two cats came over to his clothes and one of them put her paw into the pocket that contained his purse. At this, with one sweep of his sword, Hugh struck at the cat's paw. The beast howled frightfully, and both animals ran for the chimney and disappeared. After that, everything was quiet until breakfast time. At the table, only one of the sisters was present. Hugh politely inquired after the other one. He was told that she was not well, for which Hugh said he was very sorry. After the meal, Hugh declared he must say good-by to both the sisters, whose company he had so enjoyed the night before. In spite of the other lady's many excuses, he was admitted to the sick lady's room. After polite greetings and mutual compliments, Hugh offered his hand to say "good-by." The sick lady smiled at once and put out her hand, but it was her left one. "Oh, no," said Hugh, with a laugh. "I never in all my life have taken any one's left hand, and, beautiful as yours is, I won't break my habit by beginning now and here." Reluctantly, and as if in pain, the sick lady put out her hand. It was bandaged. The mystery was now cleared up. The two sisters were cats. By the help of bad fairies they had changed their forms and were the real robbers. Hugh seized the hand of the other sister and made a little cut in it, from which a few drops of blood flowed, but the spell was over. "Henceforth," said Hugh, "you are both harmless, and I trust you will both be honest women." And they were. From that day they were like other women, and kept one of the best of those inns--clean, tidy, comfortable and at modest prices--for which Wales is, or was, noted. Neither as cats with paws, nor landladies, with soaring bills, did they ever rob travelers again. IV HOW THE CYMRY LAND BECAME INHABITED In all Britain to-day, no wolf roams wild and the deer are all tame. Yet in the early ages, when human beings had not yet come into the land, the swamps and forests were full of very savage animals. There were bears and wolves by the thousand besides lions and the woolly rhinoceros, tigers, with terrible teeth like sabres. Beavers built their dams over the little rivers, and the great horned oxen were very common. Then the mountains were higher, and the woods denser. Many of the animals lived in caves, and there were billions of bees and a great many butterflies. In the bogs were ferns of giant size, amid which terrible monsters hid that were always ready for a fight or a frolic. In so beautiful a land, it seemed a pity that there were no men and women, no boys or girls, and no babies. Yet the noble race of the Cymry, whom we call the Welsh, were already in Europe and lived in the summer land in the South. A great benefactor was born among them, who grew up to be a wonderfully wise man and taught his people the use of bows and arrows. He made laws, by which the different tribes stopped their continual fighting and quarrels, and united for the common good of all. He persuaded them to take family names. He invented the plow, and showed them how to use it, making furrows, in which to plant grain. When the people found that they could get things to eat right out of the ground, from the seed they had planted, their children were wild with joy. No people ever loved babies more than these Cymry folk and it was they who invented the cradle. This saved the hard-working mothers many a burden, for each woman had, besides rearing the children, to work for and wait on her husband. He was the warrior and hunter, and she did most of the labor, in both the house and the field. When there were many little brats to look after, a cradle was a real help to her. In those days, "brat" was the general name for little folks. There were good laws, about women especially for their protection. Any rough or brutish fellow was fined heavily, or publicly punished, for striking one of them. By and by, this great benefactor encouraged his people to the brave adventure, and led them, in crossing the sea to Britain. Men had not yet learned to build boats, with prow or stern, with keels and masts, or with sails, rudders, or oars, or much less to put engines in their bowels, or iron chimneys for smoke stacks, by which we see the mighty ships driven across the ocean without regard to wind or tide. This great benefactor taught his people to make coracles, and on these the whole tribe of thousands of Cymric folk crossed over into Britain, landing in Cornwall. The old name of this shire meant the Horn of Gallia, or Wallia, as the new land was later named. We think of Cornwall as the big toe of the Mother Land. These first comers called it a horn. It was a funny sight to see these coracles, which they named after their own round bodies. The men went down to the riverside or the sea shore, and with their stone hatchets, they chopped down trees. They cut the reeds and osiers, peeled the willow branches, and wove great baskets shaped like bowls. In this work, the women helped the men. The coracle was made strong by a wooden frame fixed inside round the edge, and by two cross boards, which also served as seats. Then they turned the wicker frame upside down and stretched the hides of animals over the whole frame and bottom. With pitch, gum, or grease, they covered up the cracks or seams. Then they shaped paddles out of wood. When the coracle floated on the water, the whole family, daddy, mammy, kiddies, and any old aunts or uncles, or granddaddies, got into it. They waited for the wind to blow from the south over to the northern land. At first the coracle spun round and round, but by and by each daddy could, by rowing or paddling, make the thing go straight ahead. So finally all arrived in the land now called Great Britain. Though sugar was not then known, or for a thousand years later, the first thing they noticed was the enormous number of bees. When they searched, they found the rock caves and hollow trees full of honey, which had accumulated for generations. Every once in a while the bears, that so like sweet things, found out the hiding place of the bees, and ate up the honey. The children were very happy in sucking the honey comb and the mothers made candles out of the beeswax. The new comers named the country Honey Island. The brave Cymry men had battles with the darker skinned people who were already there. When any one, young or old, died, their friends and relatives sat up all night guarding the body against wild beasts or savage men. This grew to be a settled custom and such a meeting was called a "wake." Everyone present did keep awake, and often in a very lively way. As the Cymry multiplied, they built many _don_, or towns. All over the land to-day are names ending in _don_ like London, or Croydon, showing where these villages were. But while occupied in things for the body, their great ruler did not neglect matters of the mind. He found that some of his people had good voices and loved to sing. Others delighted in making poetry. So he invented or improved the harp, and fixed the rules of verse and song. Thus ages before writing was known, the Cymry preserved their history and handed down what the wise ones taught. Men might be born, live and die, come and go, like leaves on the trees, which expand in the springtime and fall in the autumn; but their songs, and poetry, and noble language never die. Even to-day, the Cymry love the speech of their fathers almost as well as they love their native land. Yet things were not always lovely in Honey Land, or as sweet as sugar. As the tribes scattered far apart to settle in this or that valley, some had fish, but no salt, and others had plenty of salt, but no fish. Some had all the venison and bear meat they wanted, but no barley or oats. The hill men needed what the men on the seashore could supply. From their sheep and oxen they got wool and leather, and from the wild beasts fur to keep warm in winter. So many of them grew expert in trade. Soon there were among them some very rich men who were the chiefs of the tribes. In time, hundreds of others learned how to traffic among the tribes and swap, or barter their goods, for as yet there were no coins for money, or bank bills. So they established markets or fairs, to which the girls and boys liked to go and sell their eggs and chickens, for when the wolves and foxes were killed off, sheep and geese multiplied. But what hindered the peace of the land, were the feuds, or quarrels, because the men of one tribe thought they were braver, or better looking, than those in the other tribe. The women were very apt to boast that they wore their clothes--which were made of fox and weasel skins--more gracefully than those in the tribe next to them. So there was much snarling and quarreling in Cymric Land. The people were too much like naughty children, or when kiddies are not taught good manners, to speak gently and to be kind one to the other. One of the worst quarrels broke out, because in one tribe there were too many maidens and not enough young men for husbands. This was bad for the men, for it spoiled them. They had too many women to wait on them and they grew to be very selfish. In what might be the next tribe, the trouble was the other way. There were too many boys, a surplus of men, and not nearly enough girls to go round. When any young fellow, moping out his life alone and anxious for a wife, went a-courting in the next tribe, or in their vale, or on their hill top, he was usually driven off with stones. Then there was a quarrel between the two tribes. Any young girl, who sneaked out at night to meet her young man of another clan, was, when caught, instantly and severely spanked. Then, with her best clothes taken off, she had to stand tied to a post in the market place a whole day. Her hair was pulled down in disorder, and all the dogs were allowed to bark at her. The girls made fun of the poor thing, while they all rubbed one forefinger over the other, pointed at her and cried, "Fie, for shame!" while the boys called her hard names. If it were known that the young man who wanted a wife had visited a girl in the other tribe, his spear and bow and arrows were taken away from him till the moon was full. The other boys and the girls treated him roughly and called him hard names, but he dare not defend himself and had to suffer patiently. This was all because of the feud between the two tribes. This went on until the maidens in the valley, who were very many, while yet lovely and attractive, became very lonely and miserable; while the young men, all splendid hunters and warriors, multiplied in the hill country. They were wretched in mind, because not one could get a wife, for all the maidens in their own tribe were already engaged, or had been mated. One day news came to the young men on the hill top, that the valley men were all off on a hunting expedition. At once, without waiting a moment, the poor lonely bachelors plucked up courage. Then, armed with ropes and straps, they marched in a body to the village in the valley below. There, they seized each man a girl, not waiting for any maid to comb her hair, or put on a new frock, or pack up her clothes, or carry any thing out of her home, and made off with her, as fast as one pair of legs could move with another pair on top. At first, this looked like rough treatment--for a lovely girl, thus to be strapped to a brawny big fellow; but after a while, the girls thought it was great fun to be married and each one to have a man to caress, and fondle, and scold, and look for, and boss around; for each wife, inside of her own hut was quite able to rule her husband. Every one of these new wives was delighted to find a man who cared so much for her as to come after her, and risk his life to get her, and each one admired her new, brave husband. Yet the brides knew too well that their men folks, fathers and brothers, uncles and cousins, would soon come back to attempt their recapture. And this was just what happened. When a runner brought, to the valley men now far away, the news of the rape of their daughters, the hunters at once ceased chasing the deer and marched quickly back to get the girls and make them come home. The hill men saw the band of hunters coming after their daughters. They at once took their new wives into a natural rocky fortress, on the top of a precipice, which overlooked the lake. This stronghold had only one entrance, a sort of gateway of rocks, in front of which was a long steep, narrow path. Here the hill men stood, to resist the attack and hold their prizes. It was a case of a very few defenders, assaulted by a multitude, and the battle was long and bloody. The hill men scorned to surrender and shot their arrows and hurled their javelins with desperate valor. They battled all day from sunrise until the late afternoon, when shadows began to lengthen. The stars, one by one came out and both parties, after setting sentinels, lay down to rest. In the morning, again, charge after charge was made. Sword beat against shield and helmet, and clouds of arrows were shot by the archers, who were well posted in favorable situations, on the rocks. Long before noon, the field below was dotted and the narrow pass was choked with dead bodies. In the afternoon, after a short rest and refreshed with food, the valley men, though finding that only four of the hill fighters were alive, stood off at a distance and with their long bows and a shower of arrows left not one to breathe. Now, thought the victors, we shall get our maidens back again. So, taking their time to wash off the blood and dust, to bind up their wounds, and to eat their supper, they thought it would be an easy job to load up all the girls on their ox-carts and carry them home. But the valley brides, thus suddenly made widows, were too true to their brave husbands. So, when they had seen the last of their lovers quiet in death, they stripped off all their ornaments and fur robes, until all stood together, each clad in her own innocence, as pure in their purpose as if they were a company of Druid priestesses. Then, chanting their death song, they marched in procession to the tall cliff, that rose sheer out of the water. One by one, each uttering the name of her beloved, leaped into the waves. Men at a distance, knowing nothing of the fight, and sailors and fishermen far off on the water, thought that a flock of white birds were swooping down from their eyrie, into the sea to get their food from the fishes. But when none rose up above the waters, they understood, and later heard the whole story of the valor of the men and the devotion of the women. The solemn silence of night soon brooded over the scene. The men of the valley stayed only long enough to bury their own dead. Then they marched home and their houses were filled with mourning. Yet they admired the noble sacrifice of their daughters and were proud of them. Afterwards they raised stone monuments on the field of slaughter. To-day, this water is called the Lake of the Maidens, and the great stones seen near the beach are the memorials marking the place of the slain in battle. During many centuries, the ancient custom of capturing the bride, with resistance from her male relatives, was vigorously kept up. In the course of time, however, this was turned into a mimic play, with much fun and merriment. Yet, the girls appear to like it, and some even complain if it is not rough enough to seem almost real. V THE BOY THAT WAS NAMED TROUBLE In one of the many "Co-eds," or places with this name, in ancient and forest-covered Wales, there was a man who had one of the most beautiful mares in all the world. Yet great misfortunes befell both this Co-ed mare and her owner. Every night, on the first of May, the mare gave birth to a pretty little colt. Yet no one ever saw, or could ever tell what became of any one, or all of the colts. Each and all, and one by one, they disappeared. Nobody knew where they were, or went, or what had become of them. At last, the owner, who had no children, and loved little horses, determined not to lose another. He girded on his sword, and with his trusty spear, stood guard all night in the stable to catch the mortal robber, as he supposed he must be. When on this same night of May first, the mare foaled again, and the colt stood up on its long legs, the man greatly admired the young creature. It looked already, as if it could, with its own legs, run away and escape from any wolf that should chase it, hoping to eat it up. But at this moment, a great noise was heard outside the stable. The next moment a long arm, with a claw at the end of it, was poked through the window-hole, to seize the colt. Instantly the man drew his sword and with one blow, the claw part of the arm was cut off, and it dropped inside, with the colt. Hearing a great cry and tumult outside, the owner of the mare rushed forth into the darkness. But though he heard howls of pain, he could see nothing, so he returned. There, at the door, he found a baby, with hair as yellow as gold, smiling at him. Besides its swaddling clothes, it was wrapped up in flame-colored satin. As it was still night, the man took the infant to his bed and laid it alongside of his wife, who was asleep. Now this good woman loved children, though she had none of her own, and so when she woke up in the morning, and saw what was beside her, she was very happy. Then she resolved to pretend that it was her own. So she told her women, that she had borne the child, and they called him Gwri of the Golden Hair. The boy baby grew up fast, and when only two years old, was as strong as most children are at six. Soon he was able to ride the colt that had been born on the May night, and the two were as playmates together. Now it chanced, the man had heard the tale of Queen Rhiannon, wife of Powell, Prince of Dyfed. She had become the mother of a baby boy, but it was stolen from her at night. The six serving women, whose duty it was to attend to the Queen, and guard her child, were lazy and had neglected their duty. They were asleep when the baby was stolen away. To excuse themselves and be saved from punishment, they invented a lying story. They declared that Rhiannon had devoured the child, her own baby. The wise men of the Court believed the story which the six wicked women had told, and Rhiannon, the Queen, though innocent, was condemned to do penance. She was to serve as a porter to carry visitors and their baggage from out doors into the castle. Every day, for many months, through the hours of daylight, she stood in public disgrace in front of the castle of Narberth, at the stone block, on which riders on horses dismounted from the saddle. When anyone got off at the gate, she had to carry him or her on her back into the hall. As the boy grew up, his foster father scanned his features closely, and it was not long before he made up his mind that Powell was his father and Rhiannon was his mother. One day, with the boy riding on his colt, and with two knights keeping him company, the owner of the Co-ed mare came near the castle of Narberth. There they saw the beautiful Rhiannon sitting on the horse block at the gate. When they were about to dismount from their horses, the lovely woman spoke to them thus: "Chieftains, go no further thus. I will carry everyone of you on my back, into the palace." Seeing their looks of astonishment, she explained: "This is my penance for the charge brought against me of slaying my son and devouring him." One and all the four refused to be carried and went into the castle on their own feet. There Powell, the prince, welcomed them and made a feast in their honor. It being night, Rhiannon sat beside him. After dinner when the time for story telling had come, the chief guest told the tale of his mare and the colt, and how he cut the clawed hand, and then found the boy on the doorstep. Then to the joy and surprise of all, the owner of the Co-ed mare, putting the golden-haired boy before Rhiannon, cried out: "Behold lady, here is thy son, and whoever they were who told the story and lied about your devouring your own child, have done you a grievous wrong." Everyone at the table looked at the boy, and all recognized the lad at once as the child of Powell and Rhiannon. "Here ends my trouble (pryderi)," cried out Rhiannon. Thereupon one of the chiefs said: "Well hast thou named thy child 'Trouble,'" and henceforth Pryderi was his name. Soon it was made known, by the vision and word of the bards and seers, that all the mischief had been wrought by wicked fairies, and that the six serving women had been under their spell, when they lied about the Queen. Powell, the castle-lord, was so happy that he offered the man of Co-ed rich gifts of horses, jewels and dogs. But this good man felt repaid in delivering a pure woman and loving mother from undeserved shame and disgrace, by wisdom and honesty according to common duty. As for Pryderi, he was educated as a king's son ought to be, in all gentle arts and was trained in all manly exercises. After his father died, Pryderi became ruler of the realm. He married Kieva the daughter of a powerful chieftain, who had a pedigree as long as the bridle used to drive a ten-horse chariot. It reached back to Prince Casnar of Britain. Pryderi had many adventures, which are told in the Mabinogian, which is the great storehouse of Welsh hero, wonder, and fairy tales. VI THE GOLDEN HARP Morgan is one of the oldest names in Cymric land. It means one who lives near the sea. Every day, for centuries past, tens of thousands of Welsh folks have looked out on the great blue plain of salt water. It is just as true, also, that there are all sorts of Morgans. One of these named Taffy, was like nearly all Welshmen, in that he was very fond of singing. The trouble in his case, however, was that no one but himself loved to hear his voice, which was very disagreeable. Yet of the sounds which he himself made with voice or instrument, he was an intense admirer. Nobody could persuade him that his music was poor and his voice rough. He always refused to improve. Now in Wales, the bard, or poet, who makes up his poetry or song as he goes along, is a very important person, and it is not well to offend one of these gentlemen. In French, they call such a person by a very long name--the improvisator. These poets have sharp tongues and often say hard things about people whom they do not like. If they used whetstones, or stropped their tongues on leather, as men do their razors, to give them a keener edge, their words could not cut more terribly. Now, on one occasion, Morgan had offended one of these bards. It was while the poetic gentleman was passing by Taffy's house. He heard the jolly fellow inside singing, first at the top and then at the bottom of the scale. He would drop his voice down on the low notes and then again rise to the highest until it ended in a screech. Someone on the street asked the poet how he liked the music which he had heard inside. "Music?" replied the bard with a sneer. "Is that what Morgan is trying? Why! I thought it was first the lowing of an aged cow, and then the yelping of a blind dog, unable to find its way. Do you call that music?" The truth was that when the soloist had so filled himself with strong ale that his brain was fuddled, then it was hard to tell just what kind of a noise he was making. It took a wise man to discover the tune, if there was any. One evening, when Morgan thought his singing unusually fine, and felt sorry that no one heard him, he heard a knock. [Illustration: THE MORE MORGAN PLAYED, THE MADDER THE DANCE] Instead of going to the door to inquire, or welcome the visitor, he yelled out "Come in!" The door opened and there stood three tired looking strangers. They appeared to be travelers. One of them said: "Kind sir, we are weary and worn, and would be glad of a morsel of bread. If you can give us a little food, we shall not trouble you further." "Is that all?" said Morgan. "See there the loaf and the cheese, with a knife beside them. Take what you want, and fill your bags. No man shall ever say that Taffy Morgan denied anyone food, when he had any himself." Whereupon the three travelers sat down and began to eat. Meanwhile, without being invited to do so, their host began to sing for them. Now the three travelers were fairies in disguise. They were journeying over the country, from cottage to cottage, visiting the people. They came to reward all who gave them a welcome and were kind to them, but to vex and play tricks upon those who were stingy, bad tempered, or of sour disposition. Turning to Taffy before taking leave, one of them said: "You have been good to us and we are grateful. Now what can we do for you? We have power to grant anything you may desire. Please tell us what you would like most." At this, Taffy looked hard in the faces of the three strangers, to see if one of them was the bard who had likened his voice in its ups and downs to a cow and a blind dog. Not seeing any familiar face, he plucked up his courage, and said: "If you are not making fun of me, I'll take from you a harp. And, if I can have my wish in full, I want one that will play only lively tunes. No sad music for me!" Here Morgan stopped. Again he searched their faces, to see if they were laughing at him and then proceeded. "And something else, if I can have it; but it's really the same thing I am asking for." "Speak on, we are ready to do what you wish," answered the leader. "I want a harp, which, no matter how badly I may play, will sound out sweet and jolly music." "Say no more," said the leader, who waved his hand. There was a flood of light, and, to Morgan's amazement, there stood on the floor a golden harp. But where were the three travelers? They had disappeared in a flash. Hardly able to believe his own eyes, it now dawned upon him that his visitors were fairies. He sat down, back of the harp, and made ready to sweep the strings. He hardly knew whether or not he touched the instrument, but there rolled out volumes of lively music, as if the harp itself were mad. The tune was wild and such as would set the feet of young folks agoing, even in church. As Taffy's fingers seemed every moment to become more skillful, the livelier the music increased, until the very dishes rattled on the cupboard, as if they wanted to join in. Even the chair looked as if about to dance. Just then, Morgan's wife and some neighbors entered the house. Immediately, the whole party, one and all, began dancing in the jolliest way. For hours, they kept up the mad whirl. Yet all the while, Taffy seemed happier and the women the merrier. No telegraph ever carried the news faster, all over the region, that Morgan had a wonderful harp. All the grass in front of the house, was soon worn away by the crowds, that came to hear and dance. As soon as Taffy touched the harp strings, the feet of everyone, young and old, began shuffling, nor could anyone stop, so long as Morgan played. Even very old, lame and one-legged people joined in. Several old women, whom nobody had ever prevailed upon to get out of their chairs, were cured of their rheumatism. Such unusual exercise was severe for them, but it seemed to be healthful. A shrewd monk, the business manager of the monastery near by, wanted to buy Morgan's house, set up a sanatarium and advertise it as a holy place. He hoped thus to draw pilgrims to it and get for it a great reputation as a healing place for the lame and the halt, the palsied and the rheumatic. Thus the monastery would be enriched and all the monks get fat. But Taffy was a happy-go-lucky fellow, who cared little about money and would not sell; for, with his harp, he enjoyed both fun and fame. One day, in the crowd that stood around his door waiting to begin to hop and whirl, Morgan espied the bard who had compared his voice to a cow and a cur. The bard had come to see whether the stories about the harp were true or not. He found to his own discomfort what was the fact and the reality, which were not very convenient for him. As soon as the harp music began, his feet began to go up, and his legs to kick and whirl. The more Morgan played, the madder the dance and the wilder the antics of the crowd, and in these the bard had to join, for he could not help himself. Soon they all began to spin round and round on the flagstones fronting the door, as if crazy. They broke the paling of the garden fence. They came into the house and knocked over the chairs and sofa, even when they cracked their shins against the wood. They bumped their heads against the walls and ceiling, and some even scrambled over the roof and down again. The bard could no more stop his weary legs than could the other lunatics. To Morgan his revenge was so sweet, that he kept on until the bard's legs snapped, and he fell down on top of people that had tumbled from shear weariness, because no more strength was left in them. Meanwhile, Morgan laughed until his jaws were tired and his stomach muscles ached. But no sooner did he take his fingers off the strings, to rest them, than he opened his eyes in wonder; for in a flash the harp had disappeared. He had made a bad use of the fairies' gift, and they were displeased. So both the monk and Morgan felt sorry. Yet the grass grew again when the quondam harper and singer ceased desolating the air with his quavers. The air seemed sweeter to breathe, because of the silence. However, the fairies kept on doing good to the people of good will, and to-day some of the sweetest singers in Wales come from the poorest homes. VII THE GREAT RED DRAGON OF WALES Every old country that has won fame in history and built up a civilization of its own, has a national flower. Besides this, some living creature, bird, or beast, or, it may be, a fish is on its flag. In places of honor, it stands as the emblem of the nation; that is, of the people, apart from the land they live on. Besides flag and symbol, it has a motto. That of Wales is: "Awake: It is light." Now because the glorious stories of Wales, Scotland and Ireland have been nearly lost in that of mighty England, men have at times, almost forgotten about the leek, the thistle, and the shamrock, which stand for the other three divisions of the British Isles. Yet each of these peoples has a history as noble as that of which the rose and the lion are the emblems. Each has also its patron saint and civilizer. So we have Saint George, Saint David, Saint Andrew, and Saint Patrick, all of them white-souled heroes. On the union flag, or standard of the United Kingdom, we see their three crosses. The lion of England, the harp of Ireland, the thistle of Scotland, and the Red Dragon of Wales represent the four peoples in the British Isles, each with its own speech, traditions, and emblems; yet all in unity and in loyalty, none excelling the Welsh, whose symbol is the Red Dragon. In classic phrase, we talk of Albion, Scotia, Cymry, and Hibernia. But why red? Almost all the other dragons in the world are white, or yellow, green or purple, blue, or pink. Why a fiery red color like that of Mars? Borne on the banners of the Welsh archers, who in old days won the battles of Crecy and Agincourt, and now seen on the crests on the town halls and city flags, in heraldry, and in art, the red dragon is as rampant, as when King Arthur sat with His Knights at the Round Table. The Red Dragon has four three-toed claws, a long, barbed tongue, and tail ending like an arrow head. With its wide wings unfolded, it guards those ancient liberties, which neither Saxon, nor Norman, nor German, nor kings on the throne, whether foolish or wise, have ever been able to take away. No people on earth combine so handsomely loyal freedom and the larger patriotism, or hold in purer loyalty to the union of hearts and hands in the British Empire, which the sovereign represents, as do the Welsh. The Welsh are the oldest of the British peoples. They preserve the language of the Druids, bards, and chiefs, of primeval ages which go back and far beyond any royal line in Europe, while most of their fairy tales are pre-ancient and beyond the dating. Why the Cymric dragon is red, is thus told, from times beyond human record. It was in those early days, after the Romans in the south had left the island, and the Cymric king, Vortigern, was hard pressed by the Picts and Scots of the north. To his aid, he invited over from beyond the North Sea, or German Ocean, the tribes called the Long Knives, or Saxons, to help him. But once on the big island, these friends became enemies and would not go back. They wanted to possess all Britain. Vortigern thought this was treachery. Knowing that the Long Knives would soon attack him, he called his twelve wise men together for their advice. With one voice, they advised him to retreat westward behind the mountains into Cymry. There he must build a strong fortress and there defy his enemies. So the Saxons, who were Germans, thought they had driven the Cymry beyond the western borders of the country which was later called England, and into what they named the foreign or Welsh parts. Centuries afterwards, this land received the name of Wales. People in Europe spoke of Galatians, Wallachians, Belgians, Walloons, Alsatians, and others as "Welsh." They called the new fruit imported from Asia walnuts, but the names "Wales" and "Welsh" were unheard of until after the fifth century. The place chosen for the fortified city of the Cymry was among the mountains. From all over his realm, the King sent for masons and carpenters and collected the materials for building. Then, a solemn invocation was made to the gods by the Druid priests. These grand looking old men were robed in white, with long, snowy beards falling over their breasts, and they had milk-white oxen drawing their chariot. With a silver knife they cut the mistletoe from the tree-branch, hailing it as a sign of favor from God. Then with harp, music and song they dedicated the spot as a stronghold of the Cymric nation. Then the King set the diggers to work. He promised a rich reward to those men of the pick and shovel who should dig the fastest and throw up the most dirt, so that the masons could, at the earliest moment, begin their part of the work. But it all turned out differently from what the king expected. Some dragon, or powerful being underground, must have been offended by this invasion of his domain; for, the next morning, they saw that everything in the form of stone, timber, iron or tools, had disappeared during the night. It looked as if an earthquake had swallowed them all up. Both king and seers, priests and bards, were greatly puzzled at this. However, not being able to account for it, and the Saxons likely to march on them at any time, the sovereign set the diggers at work and again collected more wood and stone. This time, even the women helped, not only to cook the food, but to drag the logs and stones. They were even ready to cut off their beautiful long hair to make ropes, if necessary. But in the morning, all had again disappeared, as if swept by a tempest. The ground was bare. Nevertheless, all hands began again, for all hearts were united. For the third time, the work proceeded. Yet when the sun rose next morning, there was not even a trace of either material or labor. What was the matter? Had some dragon swallowed everything up? Vortigern again summoned his twelve wise men, to meet in council, and to inquire concerning the cause of the marvel and to decide what was to be done. After long deliberation, while all the workmen and people outside waited for their verdict, the wise men agreed upon a remedy. Now in ancient times, it was a custom, all over the world, notably in China and Japan and among our ancestors, that when a new castle or bridge was to be built, they sacrificed a human being. This was done either by walling up the victim while alive, or by mixing his or her blood with the cement used in the walls. Often it was a virgin or a little child thus chosen by lot and made to die, the one for the many. The idea was not only to ward off the anger of the spirits of the air, or to appease the dragons under ground, but also to make the workmen do their best work faithfully, so that the foundation should be sure and the edifice withstand the storm, the wind, and the earthquake shocks. So, nobody was surprised, or raised his eyebrows, or shook his head, or pursed up his lips, when the king announced that what the wise men declared, must be done and that quickly. Nevertheless, many a mother hugged her darling more closely to her bosom, and fathers feared for their sons or daughters, lest one of these, their own, should be chosen as the victim to be slain. King Vortigern had the long horn blown for perfect silence, and then he spoke: "A child must be found who was born without a father. He must be brought here and be solemnly put to death. Then his blood will be sprinkled on the ground and the citadel will be built securely." Within an hour, swift runners were seen bounding over the Cymric hills. They were dispatched in search of a boy without a father, and a large reward was promised to the young man who found what was wanted. So into every part of the Cymric land, the searchers went. One messenger noticed some boys playing ball. Two of them were quarreling. Coming near, he heard one say to the other: "Oh, you boy without a father, nothing good will ever happen to you." "This must be the one looked for," said the royal messenger to himself. So he went up to the boy, who had been thus twitted and spoke to him thus: "Don't mind what he says." Then he prophesied great things, if he would go along with him. The boy was only too glad to go, and the next day the lad was brought before King Vortigern. The workmen and their wives and children, numbering thousands, had assembled for the solemn ceremony of dedicating the ground by shedding the boy's blood. In strained attention the people held their breath. The boy asked the king: "Why have your servants brought me to this place?" Then the sovereign told him the reason, and the boy asked: "Who instructed you to do this?" "My wise men told me so to do, and even the sovereign of the land obeys his wise councilors." "Order them to come to me, Your Majesty," pleaded the boy. When the wise men appeared, the boy, in respectful manner, inquired of them thus: "How was the secret of my life revealed to you? Please speak freely and declare who it was that discovered me to you." Turning to the king, the boy added: "Pardon my boldness, Your Majesty. I shall soon reveal the whole matter to you, but I wish first to question your advisers. I want them to tell you what is the real cause, and reveal, if they can, what is hidden here underneath the ground." But the wise men were confounded. They could not tell and they fully confessed their ignorance. The boy then said: "There is a pool of water down below. Please order your men to dig for it." At once the spades were plied by strong hands, and in a few minutes the workmen saw their faces reflected, as in a looking glass. There was a pool of clear water there. Turning to the wise men, the boy asked before all: "Now tell me, what is in the pool?" As ignorant as before, and now thoroughly ashamed, the wise men were silent. "Your Majesty, I can tell you, even if these men cannot. There are two vases in the pool." Two brave men leaped down into the pool. They felt around and brought up two vases, as the boy had said. Again, the lad put a question to the wise men: "What is in these vases?" Once more, those who professed to know the secrets of the world, even to the demanding of the life of a human being, held their tongues. "There is a tent in them," said the boy. "Separate them, and you will find it so." By the king's command, a soldier thrust in his hand and found a folded tent. Again, while all wondered, the boy was in command of the situation. Everything seemed so reasonable, that all were prompt and alert to serve him. "What a splendid chief and general, he would make, to lead us against our enemies, the 'Long Knives!'" whispered one soldier to another. "What is in the tent?" asked the boy of the wise men. Not one of the twelve knew what to say, and there was an almost painful silence. "I will tell you, Your Majesty, and all here, what is in this tent. There are two serpents, one white and one red. Unfold the tent." With such a leader, no soldier was afraid, nor did a single person in the crowd draw back? Two stalwart fellows stepped forward to open the tent. But now, a few of the men and many of the women shrank back while those that had babies, or little folks, snatched up their children, fearing lest the poisonous snakes might wriggle towards them. The two serpents were coiled up and asleep, but they soon showed signs of waking, and their fiery, lidless eyes glared at the people. "Now, Your Majesty, and all here, be you the witnesses of what will happen. Let the King and wise men look in the tent." At this moment, the serpents stretched themselves out at full length, while all fell back, giving them a wide circle to struggle in. Then they reared their heads. With their glittering eyes flashing fire, they began to struggle with each other. The white one rose up first, threw the red one into the middle of the arena, and then pursued him to the edge of the round space. Three times did the white serpent gain the victory over the red one. But while the white serpent seemed to be gloating over the other for a final onset, the red one, gathering strength, erected its head and struck at the other. The struggle went on for several minutes, but in the end the red serpent overcame the white, driving it first out of the circle, then from the tent, and into the pool, where it disappeared, while the victorious red one moved into the tent again. When the tent flap was opened for all to see, nothing was visible except a red dragon; for the victorious serpent had turned into this great creature which combined in one new form the body and the powers of bird, beast, reptile and fish. It had wings to fly, the strongest animal strength, and could crawl, swim, and live in either water or air, or on the earth. In its body was the sum total of all life. Then, in the presence of all the assembly, the youth turned to the wise men to explain the meaning of what had happened. But not a word did they speak. In fact, their faces were full of shame before the great crowd. "Now, Your Majesty, let me reveal to you the meaning of this mystery." "Speak on," said the King, gratefully. "This pool is the emblem of the world, and the tent is that of your kingdom. The two serpents are two dragons. The white serpent is the dragon of the Saxons, who now occupy several of the provinces and districts of Britain and from sea to sea. But when they invade our soil our people will finally drive them back and hold fast forever their beloved Cymric land. But you must choose another site, on which to erect your castle." After this, whenever a castle was to be built no more human victims were doomed to death. All the twelve men, who had wanted to keep up the old cruel custom, were treated as deceivers of the people. By the King's orders, they were all put to death and buried before all the crowd. To-day, like so many who keep alive old and worn-out notions by means of deception and falsehood, these men are remembered only by the Twelve Mounds, which rise on the surface of the field hard by. As for the boy, he became a great magician, or, as we in our age would call him, a man of science and wisdom, named Merlin. He lived long on the mountain, but when he went away with a friend, he placed all his treasures in a golden cauldron and hid them in a cave. He rolled a great stone over its mouth. Then with sod and earth he covered it all over so as to hide it from view. His purpose was to leave this his wealth for a leader, who, in some future generation, would use it for the benefit of his country, when most needed. This special person will be a youth with yellow hair and blue eyes. When he comes to Denas, a bell will ring to invite him into the cave. The moment his foot is over the place, the stone of entrance will open of its own accord. Anyone else will be considered an intruder and it will not be possible for him to carry away the treasure. VIII THE TOUCH OF CLAY Long, long ago before the Cymry came into the beautiful land of Wales, there were dark-skinned people living in caves. In these early times there were a great many fairies of all sorts, but of very different kinds of behavior, good and bad. It was in this age of the world that fairies got an idea riveted into their heads which nothing, not even hammers, chisels or crowbars can pry up. Neither horse power, nor hydraulic force nor sixteen-inch bombs, nor cannon balls, nor torpedoes can drive it out. It is a settled matter of opinion in fairy land that, compared with fairies, human beings are very stupid. The fairies think that mortals are dull witted and awfully slow, when compared to the smarter and more nimble fairies, that are always up to date in doing things. Perhaps the following story will help explain why this is. These ancient folks who lived in caves, could not possibly know some things that are like A B C to the fairies of to-day. For the Welsh fairies, King Puck and Queen Mab, know all about what is in the telegraphs, submarine cables and wireless telegraphy of to-day. Puck would laugh if you should say that a telephone was any new thing to him. Long ago, in Shakespeare's time, he boasted that he could "put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes." Men have been trying ever since to catch up with him, but they have not gone ahead of him yet. If, only three hundred years ago, this were the case, what must have been Puck's fun, when he saw men in the early days, working so hard to make even a clay cup or saucer. These people who slept and ate in cave boarding-houses, knew nothing of metals, or how to make iron or brass tools, wire, or machines, or how to touch a button and light up a whole room, which even a baby can now do. There is one thing that we, who have traveled in many fairy lands, have often noticed and told our friends, the little folks, and that is this: All the fairies we ever knew are very slow to change either their opinions, or their ways, or their fashions. Like many mortals, they think a great deal of their own notions. They imagine that the only way to do a thing is in that which they say is the right one. So it came to pass that even when the Cymric folk gave up wearing the skins of animals, and put on pretty clothes woven on a loom, and ate out of dishes, instead of clam shells, there were still some fairies that kept to the notions and fashions of the cave days. To one of these, came trouble because of this failing. Now there was once a pretty nymph, who lived in the Red Lake, to which a young and handsome farmer used to come to catch fish. One misty day, when the lad could see only a few feet before him, a wind cleared the air and blew away the fog. Then he saw near him a little old man, standing on a ladder. He was hard at work in putting a thatched roof on a hut which he had built. A few minutes later, as the mist rose and the breezes blew, the farmer could see no house, but only the ripplings of water on the lake's surface. Although he went fishing often, he never again saw anything unusual, during the whole summer. On one hot day in the early autumn, while he stopped to let his horse drink, he looked and saw a very lovely face on the water. Wondering to whom it might belong, there rose up before him the head and shoulders of a most beautiful woman. She was so pretty that he had two tumbles. He fell off his horse and he fell in love with her at one and the same time. Rushing toward the lovely vision, he put out his arms at that spot where he had seen her, but only to embrace empty air. Then he remembered that love is blind. So he rubbed his eyes, to see if he could discern anything. Yet though he peered down into the water, and up over the hills, he could not see her anywhere. But he soon found out to his joy that his eyes were all right, for in another place, the face, flower-crowned hair, and her reflection in the water came again. Then his desire to possess the damsel was doubled. But again, she disappeared, to rise again somewhere else. Five times he was thus tantalized and disappointed. She rose up, and quickly disappeared. It seemed as though she meant only to tease him. So he rode home sorrowing, and scarcely slept that night. Early morning, found the lovelorn youth again at the lake side, but for hours he watched in vain. He had left his home too excited to have eaten his usual breakfast, which greatly surprised his housekeeper. Now he pulled out some sweet apples, which a neighbor had given him, and began to munch them, while still keeping watch on the waters. No sooner had the aroma of the apples fallen on the air, than the pretty lady of the lake bobbed up from beneath the surface, and this time quite near him. She seemed to have lost all fear, for she asked him to throw her one of the apples. "Please come, pretty maid, and get it yourself," cried the farmer. Then he held up the red apple, turning it round and round before her, to tempt her by showing its glossy surface and rich color. Apparently not afraid, she came up close to him and took the apple from his left hand. At once, he slipped his strong right arm around her waist, and hugged her tight. At this, she screamed loudly. Then there appeared in the middle of the lake the old man, he had seen thatching the roof by the lake shore. This time, besides his long snowy beard, he had on his head a crown of water lilies. "Mortal," said the venerable person. "That is my daughter you are clasping. What do you wish to do with her?" At once, the farmer broke out in passionate appeal to the old man that she might become his wife. He promised to love her always, treat her well, and never be rough or cruel to her. The old father listened attentively. He was finally convinced that the farmer would make a good husband for his lovely daughter. Yet he was very sorry to lose her, and he solemnly laid one condition upon his future son-in-law. He was never under any pretense, or in any way, to strike her with clay, or with anything made or baked from clay. Any blow with that from which men made pots and pans, and jars and dishes, or in fact, with earth of any sort, would mean the instant loss of his wife. Even if children were born in their home, the mother would leave them, and return to fairy land under the lake, and be forever subject to the law of the fairies, as before her marriage. The farmer was very much in love with his pretty prize, and as promises are easily made, he took oath that no clay should ever touch her. They were married and lived very happily together. Years passed and the man was still a good husband and lover. He kept up the habit which he had learned from a sailor friend. Every night, when far from home and out on the sea, he and his mates used to drink this toast; "Sweethearts and wives: may every sweetheart become a wife and every wife remain a sweetheart, and every husband continue a lover." So he proved that though a husband he was still a lover, by always doing what she asked him and more. When the children were born and grew up, their father told them about their mother's likes and dislikes, her tastes and her wishes, and warned them always to be careful. So it was altogether a very happy family. One day, the wife and mother said to her husband, that she had a great longing for apples. She would like to taste some like those which he long ago gave her. At once, the good man dropped what he was doing and hurried off to his neighbor, who had first presented him with a trayful of these apples. The farmer not only got the fruit, but he also determined that he would plant a tree and thus have apples for his wife, whenever she wanted them. So he bought a fine young sapling, to set in his orchard, for the children to play under and to keep his pantry full of the fine red-cheeked fruit. At this his wife was delighted. So happy enough--in fact, too merry to think of anything else, they, both husband and wife, proceeded to set the sapling in the ground. She held the tree, while he dug down to make the hole deep enough to make sure of its growing. But farmers are sometimes very superstitious. They even believe in luck, though not in Puck. Some of them have faith in what the almanac, and the patent medicine may say, and in planting potatoes according to the moon, but they scout the idea of there being any fairies. With the farmer, this had become a fixed state of mind and now it brought him to grief, as we shall see. For though he remembered what his wife liked and disliked, and recalled what her father had told him, he had forgotten that she was a fairy. With this farmer and other Welsh mortals, it had become a habit, when planting a young tree, to throw the last shovelful of earth over the left shoulder. This was for good luck. The farmer was afraid to break such a good custom, as he thought it to be. So merrily he went to work, forgetting everything in his adherence to habit. He became so absorbed in his job, that he did not look where his spadeful went, and it struck his dear wife full in the breast. At that moment, she cried out bitterly, not in pain, but in sorrow. Then she started to run towards the lake. At the shore, she called out, "Good-by, dear, dear husband." Then, leaping into the water, she was never seen again and all his tears and those of the children never brought her back. IX THE TOUCH OF IRON Ages ago, before the Cymry rowed in their coracles across the sea, there was a race of men already in the Land of Honey, as Great Britain was then called. These ancient people, who lived in caves, did not know how to build houses or to plow the ground. They had no idea that they could get their food out of the earth. As for making bread and pies, cookies and goodies, from what grew from the soil, they never heard of such a thing. They were not acquainted with the use of fire for melting copper, nor did they know how to get iron out of the ore, to make knives and spears, arrow heads and swords, and armor and helmets. All they could do was to mold clay, so as to make things to cook with and hold milk, or water. When they baked this soft stuff in the fire, they found they had pots, pans and dishes as hard as stone, though these were easily broken. To hunt the deer, or fight the wolves and bears, they fashioned clubs of wood. For javelins and arrows, they took hard stone like flint and chipped it to points and sharpened it with edges. This was the time which men now call the Stone Age. When the men went to war, their weapons were wholly of wood or stone. They had not yet learned to weave the wool of the sheep into warm clothing, but they wore the skins of animals. Each one of the caves, in which they lived, was a general boarding house, for dogs and pigs, as well as people. When a young man of one tribe wanted a wife, he sallied out secretly into another neighborhood. There he lay in wait for a girl to come along. He then ran away with her, and back to his own daddy's cave. By and by, when the Cymry came into the land, they had iron tools and better weapons of war. Then there were many and long battles and the aborigines were beaten many times. So the cave people hated everything made of iron. Anyone of the cave people, girls or boys, who had picked up iron ornaments, and were found wearing or using iron tools, or buying anything of iron from the cave people's enemies, was looked upon as a rascal, or a villain, or even as a traitor and was driven out of the tribe. However, some of the daughters of the cave men were so pretty and had such rosy cheeks, and lovely bodies, and beautiful, long hair, that quite often the Cymric youth fell in love with them. Many of the cave men's daughters were captured and became wives of the Cymry and mothers of children. In course of ages, their descendants helped to make the bright, witty, song-loving Welsh people. Now the fairies usually like things that are old, and they are very slow to alter the ancient customs, to which they have been used; for, in the fairy world, there is no measure of time, nor any clocks, watches, or bells to strike the hours, and no almanacs or calendars. The fairies cannot understand why ladies change the fashions so often, and the men their ways of doing things. They wonder why beards are fashionable at one time; then, moustaches long or short, at another; or smooth faces when razors are cheap. Most fairies like to keep on doing the same thing in the old way. They enjoy being like the mountains, which stand; or the sea, that rolls; or the sun, that rises and sets every day and forever. They never get tired of repeating to-morrow what they did yesterday. They are very different from the people that are always wanting something else, and even cry if they cannot have it. That is the reason why the fairies did not like iron, or to see men wearing iron hats and clothes, called helmets and armor, when they went to war. They no more wanted to be touched by iron than by filth, or foul disease. They hated knives, stirrups, scythes, swords, pots, pans, kettles, or this metal in any form, whether sheet, barbed wire, lump or pig iron. Now there was a long, pretty stretch of water, near which lived a handsome lad, who loved nothing better than to go out on moonlight nights and see the fairies dance, or listen to their music. This youth fell in love with one of these fairies, whose beauty was great beyond description. At last, unable to control his passion, he rushed into the midst of the fairy company, seized the beautiful one, and rushed back to his home, with his prize in his arms. This was in true cave-man fashion. When the other fairies hurried to rescue her, they found the man's house shut. They dared not touch the door, for it was covered over with iron studs and bands, and bolted with the metal which they most abhorred. The young man immediately began to make love to the fairy maid, hoping to win her to be his wife. For a long time she refused, and moped all day and night. While weeping many salt water tears, she declared that she was too homesick to live. Nevertheless the lover persevered. Finding herself locked in with iron bars, while gratings, bolts and creaking hinges were all about her, and unable to return to her people, the fairy first thought out a plan of possible escape. Then she agreed to become the man's wife. She resolved, at least, that, without touching it, she should oil all the iron work, and stop the noise. She was a smart fairy, and was sure she could outwit the man, even if he were so strong, and had every sort of iron everywhere in order to keep her as it were in a prison. So, pretending she loved him dearly, she said: "I will not be your wife, but, if you can find out my name, I shall gladly become your servant." "Easily won," thought the lover to himself. Yet the game was a harder one to play than he supposed. It was like playing Blind Man's Buff, or Hunt the Slipper. Although he made guesses of every name he could think of, he was never "hot" and got no nearer to the thing sought than if his eyes were bandaged. All the time, he was deeper and deeper in love with the lovely fairy maid. But one night, on returning home, he saw in a turf bog, a group of fairies sitting on a log. At once, he thought, they might be talking about their lost sister. So he crept up quite near them, and soon found that he had guessed right. After a long discussion, finding themselves still at a loss, as to how to recover her, he heard one of them sigh and say, "Oh, Siwsi, my sister, how can you live with a mortal?" "Enough," said the young man to himself. "I've got it." Then, crawling away noiselessly, he ran back all the way to his house, and unlocked the door. Once inside the room, he called out his servant's name--"Siwsi! Siwsi!" Astonished at hearing her name, she cried out, "What mortal has betrayed me? For, surely no fairy would tell on me? Alas, my fate, my fate!" But in her own mind, the struggle and the fear were over. She had bravely striven to keep her fairyhood, and in the battle of wits, had lost. She would not be wife, but what a wise, superb and faithful servant she made! Everything prospered under her hand. The house and the farm became models. Not twice, but three times a day, the cows, milked by her, yielded milk unusually rich in cream. In the market, her butter excelled, in quality and price, all others. Meanwhile, the passion of the lover abated not one jot, or for an instant. His perseverance finally won. She agreed to become his wife; but only on one condition. "You must never strike me with iron," she said. "If you do, I'll feel free to leave you, and go back to my relatives in the fairy family." A hearty laugh from the happy lover greeted this remark, made by the lovely creature, once his servant, but now his betrothed. He thought that the condition was very easy to obey. So they were married, and no couple in all the land seemed to be happier. Once, twice, the cradle was filled. It rocked with new treasures that had life, and were more dear than farm, or home, or wealth in barns or cattle, cheese and butter. A boy and a girl were theirs. Then the mother's care was unremitting, day and night. Even though the happy father grew richer every year, and bought farm after farm, until he owned five thousand acres, he valued, more than these possessions, his lovely wife and his beautiful children. Yet this very delight and affection made him less vigilant; yes, even less careful concerning the promise he had once given to his fairy wife, who still held to the ancient ideas of the Fairy Family in regard to iron. One of his finest mares had given birth to a filly, which, when the day of the great fair came, he determined to sell at a high price. So with a halter on his arm, he went out to catch her. But she was a lively creature, so frisky that it was much like his first attempt to win his fairy bride. It almost looked as if she were a cave girl running away from a lover, who had a lasso in his hand. The lively and frolicsome beast scampered here and there, grazing as she stopped, as if she were determined to put off her capture as long as possible. So, calling to his wife, the two of them together, tried their skill to catch the filly. This time, leaving the halter in the house, the man took bit and bridle, and the two managed to get the pretty creature into a corner; but, when they had almost captured her, away she dashed again. By this time, the man was so vexed that he lost his temper; and he who does that, usually loses the game, while he who controls the wrath within, wins. Mad as a flaming fire, he lost his brains also and threw bit and bridle and the whole harness after the fleet animal. Alas! alas! the wife had started to run after the filly and the iron bit struck her on the cheek. It did not hurt, but he had broken his vow. Now came the surprise of his life. It was as if, at one moment, a flash of lightning had made all things bright; and then in another second was inky darkness. He saw this lovely wife, one moment active and fleet as a deer. In another, in the twinkling of an eye, nothing was there. She had vanished. After this, there was a lonely home, empty of its light and cheer. But by living with human beings, a new idea and form of life had transformed this fairy, and a new spell was laid on her. Mother-love had been awakened in her heart. Henceforth, though the law of the fairy world would not allow her to touch again the realm of earth, she, having once been wife and parent, could not forget the babies born of her body. So, making a sod raft, a floating island, she came up at night, and often, while these three mortals lived, this fairy mother would spend hours tenderly talking to her husband and her two children, who were now big boy and girl, as they stood on the lake shore. On his part, the father did not think it "an ideal arrangement," as some modern married folks do, to be thus separated, wife and husband, one from the other; but by her coming as near as could be allowed, she showed her undying love. Even to-day, good people sometimes see a little island floating on the lake, and this, they point out as the place where the fairy mother was wont to come and hold converse with her dear ones. When they merrily eat the pink delicacy, called "floating island," moving it about with a spoon on its yellow lake of eggs and cream, they call this "the Fairy Mother's rocking chair." X THE MAIDEN OF THE GREEN FOREST Many a palace lies under the waves that wash Cymric land, for the sea has swallowed up more than one village, and even cities. When Welsh fairies yield to their mortal lovers and consent to become their wives, it is always on some condition or promise. Sometimes there are several of these, which the fairy ladies compel their mortal lovers to pledge them, before they agree to become wives. In fact, the fairies in Cymric land are among the most exacting of any known. A prince named Benlli, of the Powys region, found this out to his grief, for he had always supposed that wives could be had simply for the asking. All that a man need say, to the girl to whom he took a fancy, was this: "Come along with me, and be my bride," and then she would say, "Thank you, I'll come," and the two would trot off together. This was the man's notion. Now Benlli was a wicked old fellow. He was already married, but wrinkles had gathered on his wife's face. She had a faded, washed-out look, and her hair was thinning out. She would never be young again, and he was tired of her, and wanted a mate with fresh rosy cheeks, and long, thick hair. He was quite ready to fall in love with such a maiden, whenever his eyes should light upon her. One day, he went out hunting in the Green Forest. While waiting for a wild boar to rush out, there rode past him a young woman whose beauty was dazzling. He instantly fell in love with her. The next day, while on horseback, at the same opening in the forest, the same maiden reappeared; but it was only for a moment, and then she vanished. Again, on the third day, the prince rode out to the appointed place, and again the vision of beauty was there. He rode up to her and begged her to come and live with him at his palace. "I will come and be your wedded wife on three conditions: You must put away the wife you now have; you must permit me to leave you, one night in every seven, without following after or spying upon me; and you must not ask me where I go or what I do. Swear to me that you will do these three things. Then, if you keep your promises unbroken, my beauty shall never change, no, not until the tall vegetable flag-reeds wave and the long green rushes grow in your hall." The Prince of Powys was quite ready to swear this oath and he solemnly promised to observe the three conditions. So the Maid of the Green Forest went to live with him. "But what of his old wife?" one asks. Ah! he had no trouble from that quarter, for when the newly-wedded couple arrived at the castle, she had already disappeared. Happy, indeed, were the long bright days, which the prince and his new bride spent together, whether in the castle, or out doors, riding on horseback, or in hunting the deer. Every day, her beauty seemed diviner, and she more lovely. He lavished various gifts upon her, among others that of a diadem of beryl and sapphire. Then he put on her finger a diamond ring worth what was a very great sum--a king's ransom. In the Middle Ages, monarchs as well as nobles were taken prisoners in battle and large amounts of money had to be paid to get them back again. So a king's ransom is what Benlli paid for his wife's diamond ring. He loved her so dearly that he never suspected for a moment that he would ever have any trouble in keeping his three promises. But without variety, life has no spice, and monotony wearies the soul. After nine years had passed, and his wife absented herself every Friday night, he began to wonder why it could be. His curiosity, to know the reason for her going away, so increased that it so wore on him that he became both miserable in himself and irritable toward others. Everybody in the castle noticed the change in their master, and grieved over it. One night, he invited a learned monk from the white monastery, not far away, to come and take dinner with him. The table in the great banqueting hall was spread with the most delicious viands, the lights were magnificent, and the music gay. But Wyland, the monk, was a man of magic and could see through things. He noticed that some secret grief was preying upon the Prince's mind. He discerned that, amidst all this splendor, he, Benlli, the lord of the castle, was the most miserable person within its walls. So Wyland went home, resolved to call again and find out what was the trouble. When they met, some days later, Wyland's greeting was this: "Christ save thee, Benlli! What secret sorrow clouds thy brow? Why so gloomy?" Benlli at once burst out with the story of how he met the Maid of the Green Forest, and how she became his wife on three conditions. "Think of it," said Benlli, groaning aloud. "When the owls cry and the crickets chirp, my wife leaves my bed, and until the daystar appears, I lie alone, torn with curiosity, to know where she is, and what she is doing. I fall again into heavy sleep, and do not awake until sunrise, when I find her by my side again. It is all such a mystery, that the secret lies heavy on my soul. Despite all my wealth, and my strong castle, with feasting and music by night and hunting by day, I am the most miserable man in Cymric land. No beggar is more wretched than I." Wyland, the monk, listened and his eyes glittered. There came into his head the idea of enriching the monastery. He saw his chance, and improved it at once. He could make money by solving the secret for a troubled soul. "Prince Benlli," said he, "if you will bestow upon the monks of the White Minster, one tenth of all the flocks that feed within your domain, and one tenth of all that flows into the vaults of your palace, and hand over the Maiden of the Green Forest to me, I shall warrant that your soul will be at peace and your troubles end." To all this, Prince Benlli agreed, making solemn promise. Then the monk Wyland took his book, leather bound, and kept shut by means of metal clasps, and hid himself in the cranny of a rock near the Giant's Cave, from which there was entrance down into Fairyland. He had not long to wait, for soon, with a crown on her head, a lady, royally arrayed, passed by out of the silvery moonlight into the dark cave. It was none other than the Maiden of the Green Forest. Now came a battle of magic and spells, as between the monk's own and those of the Green Forest Maiden. He moved forward to the mouth of the cave. Then summoning into his presence the spirits of the air and the cave, he informed them as to Benlli's vow to enrich the monastery, and to deliver the Green Forest Maiden to himself. Then, calling aloud, he said: "Let her forever be, as she now appears, and never leave my side." "Bring her, before the break of day, to the cross near the town of the White Minster, and there will I wed her, and swear to make her my own." Then, by the power of his magic, he made it impossible for any person or power to recall or hinder the operation of these words. Leaving the cave's mouth, in order to be at the cross, before day should dawn, the first thing he met was a hideous ogress, grinning and rolling her bleared red eyes at him. On her head seemed what was more like moss, than hair. She stretched out a long bony finger at him. On it, flashed the splendid diamond, which Benlli had given his bride, the beautiful Maid of the Green Forest. "Take me to thy bosom, monk Wyland," she shrieked, laughing hideously and showing what looked like green snags in her mouth. "For I am the wife you are sworn to wed. Thirty years ago, I was Benlli's blooming bride. When my beauty left me, his love flew out of the window. Now I am a foul ogress, but magic makes me young again every seventh night. I promised that my beauty should last until the tall flag reeds and the long green rushes grow in his hall." Amazed at her story, Wyland drew in his breath. "And this promise, I have kept. It is already fulfilled. Your spell and mine are both completed. Yours brought to him the peace of the dead. Mine made the river floods rush in. Now, waters lap to and fro among the reeds and rushes that grow in the banqueting hall, which is now sunk deep below the earth. With the clash of our spells, no charm can redress our fate. "Come then and take me as thy bride, for oath and spell have both decreed it as thy reward. As Benlli's promise to you is fulfilled, for the waters flow in the palace vaults, the pike and the dare (fish) feed there." So, caught in his own dark, sordid plot, the monk, who played conjurer, had become the victim of his own craft. They say that Wyland's Cross still recalls the monk, while fishermen on the Welsh border, can, on nights with smooth water, see towers and chimneys far below, sunk deep beneath the waves. XI THE TREASURE STONE OF THE FAIRIES The Gruffyds were one of the largest of the Welsh tribes. To-day, it is said that in Britain one man in every forty has this, as either his first, middle, or last name. It means "hero" or "brave man," and as far back as the ninth century, the word is found in the Book of Saint Chad. The monks, who derived nearly every name from the Latin, insisted the word meant Great Faith. Another of the most common of Welsh personal names was William; which, when that of a father's son, was written Williams and was only the Latin for Gild Helm, or Golden Helmet. Long ago, when London was a village and Cardiff only a hamlet, there was a boy of this name, who tended sheep on the hill sides. His father was a hard working farmer, who every year tried to coax to grow out of the stony ground some oats, barley, leeks and cabbage. In summer, he worked hard, from the first croak of the raven to the last hoot of the owl, to provide food for his wife and baby daughter. When his boy was born, he took him to the church to be christened Gruffyd, but every body called him "Gruff." In time several little sisters came to keep the boy company. His mother always kept her cottage, which was painted pink, very neat and pretty, with vines covering the outside, while flowers bloomed indoors. These were set in pots and on shelves near the latticed windows. They seemed to grow finely, because so good a woman loved them. The copper door-sill was kept bright, and the broad borders on the clay floor, along the walls, were always fresh with whitewash. The pewter dishes on the sideboard shone as if they were moons, and the china cats on the mantle piece, in silvery luster, reflected both sun and candle light. Daddy often declared he could use these polished metal plates for a mirror, when he shaved his face. Puss, the pet, was always happy purring away on the hearth, as the kettle boiled to make the flummery, of sour oat jelly, which, daddy loved so well. Mother Gruffyd was always so neat, with her black and white striped apron, her high peaked hat, with its scalloped lace and quilled fastening around her chin, her little short shawl, with its pointed, long tips, tied in a bow, and her bright red plaid petticoat folded back from her frock. Her snowy-white, rolling collar and neck cloth knotted at the top, and fringed at the ends, added fine touches to her picturesque costume. In fact, young Gruffyd was proud of his mother and he loved her dearly. He thought no woman could be quite as sweet as she was. Once, at the end of the day, on coming back home, from the hills, the boy met some lovely children. They were dressed in very fine clothes, and had elegant manners. They came up, smiled, and invited him to play with them. He joined in their sports, and was too much interested to take note of time. He kept on playing with them until it was pitch dark. Among other games, which he enjoyed, had been that of "The King in his counting house, counting out his money," and "The Queen in her kitchen, eating bread and honey," and "The Girl hanging out the clothes," and "The Saucy Blackbird that snipped off her nose." In playing these, the children had aprons full of what seemed to be real coins, the size of crowns, or five-shilling pieces, each worth a dollar. These had "head and tail," beside letters on them and the boy supposed they were real. But when he showed these to his mother, she saw at once from their lightness, and because they were so easily bent, that they were only paper, and not silver. She asked her boy where he had got them. He told her what a nice time he had enjoyed. Then she knew that these, his playmates, were fairy children. Fearing that some evil might come of this, she charged him, her only son, never to go out again alone, on the mountain. She mistrusted that no good would come of making such strange children his companions. But the lad was so fond of play, that one day, tired of seeing nothing but byre and garden, while his sisters liked to play girls' games more than those which boys cared most for, and the hills seeming to beckon him to come to them, he disobeyed, and slipped out and off to the mountains. He was soon missed and search was made for him. Yet nobody had seen or heard of him. Though inquiries were made on every road, in every village, and at all the fairs and markets in the neighborhood, two whole years passed by, without a trace of the boy. But early one morning of the twenty-fifth month, before breakfast, his mother, on opening the door, found him sitting on the steps, with a bundle under his arm, but dressed in the same clothes, and not looking a day older or in any way different, from the very hour he disappeared. "Why my dear boy, where have you been, all these months, which have now run into the third year--so long a time that they have seemed to me like ages?" "Why, mother dear, how strange you talk. I left here yesterday, to go out and to play with the children, on the hills, and we have had a lovely time. See what pretty clothes they have given me for a present." Then he opened his bundle. But when she tore open the package, the mother was all the more sure that she was right, and that her fears had been justified. In it she found only a dress of white paper. Examining it carefully, she could see neither seam nor stitches. She threw it in the fire, and again warned her son against fairy children. But pretty soon, after a great calamity had come upon them, both father and mother changed their minds about fairies. They had put all their savings into the venture of a ship, which had for a long time made trading voyages from Cardiff. Every year, it came back bringing great profit to the owners and shareholders. In this way, daddy was able to eke out his income, and keep himself, his wife and daughters comfortably clothed, while all the time the table was well supplied with good food. Nor did they ever turn from their door anyone who asked for bread and cheese. But in the same month of the boy's return, bad news came that the good ship had gone down in a storm. All on board had perished, and the cargo was totally lost, in the deep sea, far from land. In fact, no word except that of dire disaster had come to hand. Now it was a tradition, as old as the days of King Arthur, that on a certain hill a great boulder could be seen, which was quite different from any other kind of rock to be found within miles. It was partly imbedded in the earth, and beneath it, lay a great, yes, an untold treasure. The grass grew luxuriantly around this stone, and the sheep loved to rest at noon in its shadow. Many men had tried to lift, or pry it up, but in vain. The tradition, unaltered and unbroken for centuries, was to the effect, that none but a very good man could ever budge this stone. Any and all unworthy men might dig, or pull, or pry, until doomsday, but in vain. Till the right one came, the treasure was as safe as if in heaven. But the boy's father and mother were now very poor and his sisters now grown up wanted pretty clothes so badly, that the lad hoped that he or his father might be the deserving one. He would help him to win the treasure for he felt sure that his parent would share his gains with all his friends. Though his neighbors were not told of the generous intentions credited to the boy's father, by his loving son, they all came with horses, ropes, crowbars, and tackle, to help in the enterprise. Yet after many a long days' toil, between the sun's rising and setting, their end was failure. Every day, when darkness came on, the stone lay there still, as hard and fast as ever. So they gave up the task. On the final night, the lad saw that father and mother, who were great lovers, were holding each other's hands, while their tears flowed together, and they were praying for patience. Seeing this, before he fell asleep, the boy resolved that on the morrow, he would go up to the mountains, and talk to his fairy friends about the matter. So early in the morning, he hurried to the hill tops, and going into one of the caves, met the fairies and told them his troubles. Then he asked them to give him again some of their money. "Not this time, but something better. Under the great rock there are treasures waiting for you." "Oh, don't send me there! For all the men and horses of our parish, after working a week, have been unable to budge the stone." "We know that," answered the principal fairy, "but do you yourself try to move it. Then you will see what is certain to happen." Going home, to tell what he had heard, his parents had a hearty laugh at the idea of a boy succeeding where men, with the united strength of many horses and oxen, had failed. Yet, after brooding awhile, they were so dejected, that anything seemed reasonable. So they said, "Go ahead and try it." Returning to the mountain, the fairies, in a band, went with him to the great rock. One touch of his hand, and the mighty boulder trembled, like an aspen leaf in the breeze. A shove, and the rock rolled down from the hill and crashed in the valley below. There, underneath, were little heaps of gold and silver, which the boy carried home to his parents, who became the richest people in the country round about. XII GIANT TOM AND GIANT BLUBB Everyone who has read anything of Welsh history--though not of the sort that is written by English folks--knows also that Cornwall is, in soul, a part of Wales. Before the Romans, first, and the Saxons, next, invaded Britain, the Cymric people lived all over the island, south of Scotland. They were the British people, and nobody ever heard the German name, "Wales," which means a foreign land; or the word "Welsh," which refers to foreigners, until men who were themselves outsiders came into Britain. Since that time, it has been much the same, as when a British Jack Tar, when rambling in Portugal, or China, calls the natives "foreigners," and tells them to "get out of the way." Ages ago, when the Cymric men, with their wives and little ones rowed over in their coracles, from Gallia, or the Summer Land, to Britain, the Honey Land, they came first to the promontory which we know as Cornwall; that is, the Cornu Galliae, or Walliae, which means Horn or Cape of the new country now called England. Here was a new region, rich in every kind of minerals. Ages before, the Phoenicians had named it Britain or the Land of Tin. Within the memory of men now living, Cornishmen, that is, the miners of Cornwall, on going to California, discovered gold. In Cornwall, as part of the Cymric realm, King Arthur found and married Guinevere, his queen. It was in Cornwall, also, that Merlin was hidden. Hear the rhyme: Marvelous Merlin is wasted away By a wicked woman, who may she be? For she hath pent him in a crag On Cornwall coast. So it happens that thousands of "English" people in Cornwall are Welsh, by both name or descent, or have translated their names into English form, even while keeping the Welsh meaning. They are also Welsh in traits of character. Just as tens of thousands of Welsh folks, among the first settlers of New England and the American colonies are described in our histories as "English" people. Now in early Cornwall there were many giants. Some were good but others were bad. One of these, a right fine fellow, was named Tom, and the other, a bad one, Blubb. This giant had had twenty wives, and was awfully cruel. Nobody ever knew what became of the twenty maidens he had married. Sometimes people called the big fellow, that lived in a castle, Giant Blunderbuss, but Blubb was his name for short. He was much taller than the highest hop pole in Kent. He was made up mostly of head and stomach, for his chief idea in living was to eat. His skull was as big as a hogshead, or a push-ball, or a market wagon loaded with carrots. Indeed, it was strongly suspected by most people that the big bone box set on his shoulders was as hollow inside as a pumpkin, but that a cocoanut would hold all the brains he had. At any rate, during one of his fights with another giant, he had been given an awful thwack from the other giant's club. Then the sound made, which was heard a long distance away, was exactly like that when one pounds on an empty barrel. Now this Giant Blubb had built a mighty castle between a big hill and a river. Under it were vaults of vast size, filled with treasures of all sorts, gold, silver, jewels and gems. There were cells, in which he kept his wives, after he had married them. It was the opinion of his neighbors, that in every case, soon after the honeymoon was over, he ate them up. Yet, if even the devil ought to have his due; one should be fair to this human monster, and we are bound to say that Giant Blubb denied these stories as pure gossip. It is certain that such crimes as murder and cannibalism never could be proved against him. To guard his underground treasures, he had two huge and fierce dogs, supposed to be named Catchem and Tearem. What they were really called by their master was a secret. Yet anyone who had a piece of meat ready to throw to them, and knew their names, which were pass words, could first quiet them. Then he could walk by them and get the treasure. Besides these dogs, the only living thing left in the castle when the giant went out, was the latest Mrs. Blubb. Yet she was in constant fear of her life, lest her big husband should sometime make a meal of her. For even she had heard the story that Blubb was a cannibal and looked at all plump women simply as delicacies, exactly as a boy peers into the window of a candy shop. What made all the country round hate this cruel giant was not wholly on account of his awful appetite. It was because he had ruined the King's High Road. Ever since the time of King Lud, whose name we read in Ludgate Hill, in London, where His Cymric Majesty had lived, this highway had been free to all. It ran all the way through Cornwall, from Penzance, and thence eastward to London and beyond. When Giant Blubb wished to enlarge his castle, he had the walls and towers built down to the river's edge. This closed up the big road, so that people had to go far around and up over the hill, or by boat along the river. Such a roundabout way took much time and toil, and was too much trouble for all. Everybody had to submit to this extortion, until there came along Giant Tom, of whom we shall now tell. His real name was Rolling Stone, for he never stuck long in one place at a job, and cared not a cucumber for money, or fine clothes. This jolly fellow was very good-natured and popular, but often very lazy. His mother talked with him many times, urging him to learn a trade, or in some way make an honest living. She found it very hard to keep anything in her larder, barn, pantry, or cellar, when he was at home. He measured four feet across his shoulders and at every meal he ate what would feed three big men. But as he could do six men's work, when he had a mind to--as often he did--he was always welcome. In fact, he was too popular for his own good. One day, when ten common fellows were trying their utmost to lift a big long log on a cart, and were unable to do it, Tom came along and told them to stand back. Then he hoisted the tree on to the wain, roped it into place, and told the cartman to drive on. Then they all cheered him, and one of them lifted his Monmouth cap and cried out, "Hurrah for Giant Tom. He's the fellow to whip Giant Blubb." "He is! He is!" they all cried in chorus. "Who is this Giant Blubb? Where does he live?" asked Tom, rolling up his sleeves, for he was just spoiling for a row with a fellow of his size. Then they told the story of how the big bully had ruined the King's Highway, by building a great wall and tower across the road, to shut it up, to the grief of many honest men. "Never mind, boys. I'll attend to his bacon," said Tom. "Leave the matter with me, and don't bother to tell the King about it." Tom went the next day into town and hired himself out to a beer brewer to drive the wagon. Perhaps he hoped, also, while in this occupation, to keep down his thirst. He asked the boss to give him the route that led past Giant Blubb's castle, over the old King's Highway. The master of the brewery saw through Tom's purpose. He winked, and only said: "Go ahead, my boy. I'll pay you double wages, if you will open that road again; but see that Giant Blubb does not get my load of kegs, or that your carcass doesn't count with those of the twenty wives in his vaults and make twenty-one." Again he winked his eye knowingly to his workmen. Tom drove off. He occupied all the room on the seat of the cart, which two men usually filled and left plenty of room on either side. Cracking his whip, the new driver kept the four horses on a galloping pace, until very soon he called out "whoa," before the frowning high gateway of Giant Blubb. Tom shouted from the depth of his lungs: "Open the gate and let me drive through. This is the King's Highway." The only reply, for a minute, was the barking of the curs. Then a rattling of bolts was heard, and the great gates swung wide open. "Who are you, you impudent fellow? Go round over the hill, or I'll thrash you," blustered Giant Blubb, in a rage. "Better save your breath to cool your porridge, you big boaster, and come out and fight," said Tom. "Fight? You pigmy. I'll just get a switch and whip you, as I would a bad boy." Thereupon Giant Blubb stepped aside into the grove nearby, keeping all the while an eye on his gate, guarded by his two monstrous dogs. He selected an elm tree twenty feet high, tore it up by the roots, pulled off the branches, and peeled it for a whip. This he jerked up and down to make ready for his task of thrashing "the pigmy." Meanwhile Giant Tom upset the wain, drew out the tongue and took off one of the wheels. Then, as if armed with spear and shield, he advanced to meet Giant Blubb. He whistled like a boy, as he went forward. In a passion of rage, Giant Blubb lifted his elm switch to strike, but Tom warded off the blow with his wheel shield. Then he punched him in the stomach, with the wagon tongue, so hard that the big fellow slipped and rolled over in the mud: Picking himself up, Giant Blubb, now half blind with rage, rushed against Tom, who, this time, made a lunge which planted the cart tongue inside Blubb's bowels, and knocked him over. But Tom was not a cruel fellow, and had no desire to kill anyone. So he threw down his war tools, and tearing up a yard or two of grassy sod rolled it together, and made a plug of it, as big around as a milk churn. With this, he stopped up the big hole in Giant Blubb's huge body. But instead of thanking Tom, Giant Blubb rushed at him again. He was in too much of a rage to see anything clearly, while Tom, perfectly cool, gave the angry monster such a kick, in the place where he kept his dinner, that he rolled over, and Tom gave him another kick. Then the plug of sod fell out of his wound. As he was bleeding to death, Giant Blubb beckoned to Tom to come up close, for he could only whisper. "You've beaten me on the square, and I like you. Don't think I killed my twenty wives. They all died naturally. But call the dogs by name, and they will let you pass. Then, in my vaults, you'll find gold, silver, and copper. Make these your own and bury me decently. This is all I ask." Tom made himself owner of the castle and all its treasures. He opened the King's Highway again. He took care of his aged mother, married the twenty-first wife of Giant Blubb, now a widow, and was always kind to the sick and poor. To-day in Cornwall, they still tell stories of the big fellow who abolished Giant Blubb's toll gate. Centuries afterward, when Christ's gospel came into the land, they restored Giant Tom's tomb and on it were chiseled these words: THE RESTORER OF PATHS TO DWELL IN. XIII A BOY THAT VISITED FAIRYLAND Many are the places in Wales where the ground is lumpy and humpy with tumuli, or little artificial mounds. Among these the sheep graze, the donkeys bray, and the cows chew the cud. Here the ground is strewn with the ruins of cromlechs, or Cymric strongholds, of old Roman camps, of chapels and monasteries, showing that many different races of men have come and gone, while the birds still fly and the flowers bloom. Centuries ago, the good monks of St. David had a school where lads were taught Latin and good manners. One of their pupils was a boy named Elidyr. He was such a poor scholar and he so hated books and loved play, that in his case spankings and whippings were almost of daily occurrence. Still he made no improvement. He was in the habit also of playing truant, or what one of the monks called "traveling to Bagdad." One of the consequences was that certain soft parts of his body--apparently provided by nature for this express purpose--often received a warming from his daddy. His mother loved her boy dearly, and she often gently chided him, but he would not listen to her, and when she urged him to be more diligent, he ran out of the room. The monks did not spare the birch rod, and soon it was a case of a whipping for every lesson not learned. One day, though he was only twelve years old, the boy started on a long run into the country. The further he got, the happier he felt--at least for one day. At night, tired out, he crept into a cave. When he woke up, in the morning, he thought it was glorious to be as free as the wild asses. So like them, he quenched his thirst at the brook. But when, towards noon, he could find nothing to eat, and his inside cavity seemed to enlarge with very emptiness, his hunger grew every minute. Then he thought that a bit of oat cake, a leek, or a bowl of oat meal, whether porridge or flummery, might suit a king. He dared not go out far and pick berries, for, by this time, he saw that people were out searching for him. He did not feel yet, like going back to books, rods and scoldings, but the day seemed as long as a week. Meanwhile, he discovered that he had a stomach, which seemed to grow more and more into an aching void. He was glad when the sunset and darkness came. His bed was no softer in the cave, as he lay down with a stone for his pillow. Yet he had no dreams like those of Jacob and the angels. When daylight came, the question in his mind was still, whether to stay and starve, or to go home and get two thrashings--one from his daddy, and another from the monks. But how about that thing inside of him, which seemed to be a live creature gnawing away, and which only something to eat would quiet? Finally, he came to a stern resolve. He started out, ready to face two whippings, rather than one death by starvation. But he did not have to go home yet, for at the cave's mouth, he met two elves, who delivered a most welcome message. "Come with us to a land full of fun, play, and good things to eat." All at once, his hunger left him and he forgot that he ever wanted to swallow anything. All fear, or desire to go home, or to risk either schooling or a thrashing, passed away also. Into a dark passage all three went, but they soon came out into a beautiful country. How the birds sang and the flowers bloomed! All around could be heard the joyful shouts of little folks at play. Never did things look so lovely. [Illustration: THE KING SPOKE KINDLY TO ELIDYR, ASKING HIM WHO HE WAS] Soon, in front of the broad path along which they were traveling, there rose up before him a glorious palace. It had a splendid gateway, and the silver-topped towers seemed to touch the blue sky. "What building is this?" asked the lad of his two guides. They made answer that it was the palace of the King of Fairyland. Then they led him into the throne room, where, sat in golden splendor, a king, of august figure and of majestic presence, who was clad in resplendent robes. He was surrounded by courtiers in rich apparel, and all about him was magnificence, such as this boy, Elidyr, had never even read about or dreamed. Yet everything was so small that it looked like Toy Land, and he felt like a giant among them, even though many of the little men around him were old enough to have whiskers on their cheeks and beards on their chins. The King spoke kindly to Elidyr, asking him who he was, and whence he had come. While talking thus, the Prince, the King's only son appeared. He was dressed in white velvet and gold, and had a long feather in his cap. In the pleasantest way, he took Elidyr's hand and said: "Glad to see you. Come and let us play together." That was just what Elidyr liked to hear. The King smiled and said to his visitor, "You will attend my son?" Then, with a wave of his hand, he signified to the boys to run out and play games. A right merry time they did have, for there were many other little fellows for playmates. These wee folks, with whom Elidyr played, were hardly as big as our babies, and certainly would not reach up to his mother's knee. To them, he looked like a giant, and he richly enjoyed the fun of having such little men, but with beards growing on their faces, look up to him. They played with golden balls, and rode little horses, with silver saddles and bridles, but these pretty animals were no larger than small dogs, or grayhounds. No meat was ever seen on the table, but always plenty of milk. They never told a lie, nor used bad language, or swear-words. They often talked about mortal men, but usually to despise them; because what they liked to do, seemed so absurd and they always wanted foolish and useless things. To the elves, human beings were never satisfied, or long happy, even when they got what they wanted. Everything in this part of fairyland was lovely, but it was always cloudy. No sun, star or moon was ever seen, yet the little men did not seem to mind it and enjoyed themselves every day. There was no end of play, and that suited Elidyr. Yet by and by, he got tired even of games and play, and grew very homesick. He wanted to see his mother. So he asked the King to let him visit his old home. He promised solemnly to come back, after a few hours. His Majesty gave his permission, but charged him not to take with him anything whatever from fairyland, and to go with only the clothes on his back. The same two elves or dwarfs, who had brought him into fairyland, were chosen to conduct him back. When they had led him again through the underground passage into the sunlight, they made him invisible until he arrived at his mother's cottage. She was overjoyed to find that no wolf had torn him to pieces, or wild bull had pushed him over a precipice. She asked him many questions, and he told her all he had seen, felt, or known. When he rose up to go, she begged him to stay longer, but he said he must keep his word. Besides, he feared the rod of the monks, or his daddy, if he remained. So he made his mother agree not to tell anything--not even to his father, as to where he was, or what he was doing. Then he made off and reported again to his playmates in fairyland. The King was so pleased at the lad's promptness in returning, and keeping his word, and telling the truth, that he allowed him to go see his mother as often as he wanted to do so. He even gave orders releasing the two little men from constantly guarding him and told them to let the lad go alone, and when he would, for he always kept his word. Many times did Elidyr visit his mother. By one road, or another, he made his way, keeping himself invisible all the time, until he got inside her cottage. He ran off, when anyone called in to pay a visit, or when he thought his daddy, or one of the monks was coming. He never saw any of these men. One day, in telling his mother of the fun and good times he had in fairyland, he spoke of the heavy yellow balls, with which he and the King's sons played, and how these rolled around. Before leaving home, this boy had never seen any gold, and did not know what it was, but his mother guessed that it was the precious metal, of which the coins called sovereigns, and worth five dollars apiece, were made. So she begged him to bring one of them back to her. This, Elidyr thought, would not be right; but after much argument, his parents being poor, and she telling him that, out of hundreds in the King's palace, one single ball would not be missed, he decided to please her. So one day, when he supposed no one was looking, he picked up one of the yellow balls and started off through the narrow dark passageway homeward. But no sooner was he back on the earth, and in the sunlight again, than he heard footsteps behind him. Then he knew that he had been discovered. He glanced over his shoulder and there were the two little men, who had led him first and had formerly been his guards. They scowled at him as if they were mad enough to bite off the heads of tenpenny nails. Then they rushed after him, and there began a race to the cottage. But the boy had legs twice as long as the little men, and got to the cottage door first. He now thought himself safe, but pushing open the door, he stumbled over the copper threshold, and the ball rolled out of his hand, across the floor of hardened clay, even to the nearly white-washed border, which ran about the edges of the room. It stopped at the feet of his mother, whose eyes opened wide at the sight of the ball of shining gold. As he lay sprawling on the floor, and before he could pick himself up, one of the little men leaped over him, rushed into the room, and, from under his mother's petticoats, picked up the ball. They spat at the boy and shouted, "traitor," "rascal," "thief," "false mortal," "fox," "rat," "wolf," and other bad names. Then they turned and sped away. Now Elidyr, though he had been a mischievous boy, often willful, lazy, and never liking his books, had always loved the truth. He was very sad and miserable, beyond the telling, because he had broken his word of honor. So, almost mad with grief and shame, and from an accusing conscience, he went back to find the cave, in which he had slept. He would return to the King of the fairies, and ask his pardon, even if His Majesty never allowed him to visit Fairyland again. But though he often searched, and spent whole days in trying to find the opening in the hills, he could never discover it. So, fully penitent, and resolving to live right, and become what his father wanted him to be, he went back to the monastery. There he plied his tasks so diligently that he excelled all in book-learning. In time, he became one of the most famous scholars in Welsh history. When he died, he asked to be buried, not in the monk's cemetery, but with his father and mother, in the churchyard. He made request that no name, record, or epitaph, be chiseled on his tomb, but only these words: WE CAN DO NOTHING AGAINST THE TRUTH, BUT ONLY FOR THE TRUTH. XIV THE WELSHERY AND THE NORMANS Though their land has been many times invaded, the Welsh have never been conquered. Powerful tribes, like the Romans, Saxons and Normans, have tried to overwhelm them. Even when English and German kings attempted to crush their spirit and blot out their language and literature, the Welsh resisted and won victory. Among the bullies that tried force, instead of justice, and played the slave-driver, rather than the Good Samaritan's way, were the Normans. These brutal fellows, when they thought that they had overrun Wales with their armies, began to build strong castles all over the country. They kept armed men by the thousands ready, night and day, to rush out and put to death anybody and everybody who had a weapon in his hand. Often they burned whole villages. They killed so many Welsh people that it seemed at times as if they expected to empty the land of its inhabitants. Thus, they hoped to possess all the acres for themselves. They talked as if there were no people so refined and so cultured as they were, while the natives, good and bad, were lumped together as "the Welshery." Yet all this time, with these hundreds of strong castles, bristling with turrets and towers, no Englishman's life was safe. If he dared to go out alone, even twenty rods from the castle, he was instantly killed by some angry Welshman lying in ambush. So the Normans had to lock themselves up in armor, until they looked like lobsters in their shells. When on their iron-clad horses they resembled turtles, so that if a knight fell off, he had to be chopped open to be rid of his metal clothes. Yet all this was in vain, for when the Norman marched out in bodies, or rode in squadrons, the Welshery kept away and were hidden. Even the birds and beasts noticed this, and saw what fools the Normans were, to behave so brutally. As for the fairies, they met together to see what could be done. Even the reptiles shamed men by living together more peaceably. Only the beasts of prey approved of the Norman way of treating the Welsh people. At last, it came to pass that, after the long War of the Roses, when the Reds and the Whites had fought together, a Welsh king sat upon the throne of England. Henry VIII was of Cymric ancestry. His full name was Henry Tudor; or, in English, Henry Theodore. Among the Welsh, every son, to his own name as a child, such as Henry, William, Thomas, etc., added that of his father. Thus it happens that we can usually tell a man by his name; for example, Richards, Roberts, Evans, Jones, etc., etc., that he is a Welshman. When a Welshman went into England to live, if he were a sister's son, he usually added a syllable showing this, as in the case of Jefferson, which means sister's son. Our great Thomas Jefferson used to boast that he could talk Welsh. So the living creatures of all sorts in Wales, human beings, fairies, and animals took heart and plucked up courage, when a Tudor king, Henry VIII, sat on the throne. Now it was Puck who led the fairies as the great peacemaker. He went first to visit all the most ancient creatures, in order to find out who should be offered the post of honor, as ambassador, who should be sent to the great king in London, Henry Tudor, to see what could be done for Wales. First he called on the male eagle, oldest of all birds. Though not bald-headed, like his American cousin, the Welsh eagle was very old, and at that time a widower. Although he had been father to nine generations of eaglets, he sent Puck to the stag. This splendid creature, with magnificent antlers, lived at the edge of the forest, near the trunk of an oak tree. It was still standing, but was now a mere shell. Old men said that the children of the aborigines played under it, and here was the home of the god of lightning, which they worshiped. So to the withered oak, Puck went, and offered him the honor of leadership to an embassy to the King. But the stag answered and said: "Well do I remember when an acorn fell from the top of the parent oak. Then, for three hundred years it was growing. Children played under it. They gathered acorns in their aprons, and the archers made bows from its boughs. "Then the oak tree began to die, and, during nearly thirty tens of years it has been fading, and I have seen it all. "Yet there is one older than I. It is the salmon that swims in the Llyn stream. Inquire there." So of the old mother salmon, Puck went to ask, and this was the answer which he received. "Count all the spots on my body, and all the eggs in my roe--one for each year. Yet the blackbird is older even than I. Go listen to her story. She excels me, in both talk and fact." And the blackbird opened its orange-colored bill, and answered proudly: "Do you see this flinty rock, on which I am sitting? Once it was so huge that three hundred yoke of oxen could hardly move it. Yet, today, it hardly more than affords me room to roost on. "What made it so small, do you ask? "Well, all I have clone to wear it away, has been to wipe my beak on it, every night, before I go to sleep, and in the morning to brush it with the tips of my wing." Even Puck, fairy though he was, was astonished at this. But the blackbird added: "Go to the toad, that blinks its eye under the big rock yonder. His age is greater than mine." The toad was half asleep when Puck came, but it opened with alertness, its beautiful round bright eyes, set in a rim of gold. Then Puck asked the question: "Oh, thou that carriest a jewel in thy head, are there any things alive that are older than thou art?" "That, I could not be sure of, especially if as many false things are told about them, as are told about me; but when I was a tadpole in the pond, that old hag of an owl was still hooting away, in the treetops, scaring children, as in ages gone. She is older than I. Go and see her. If age makes wise, she is the wisest of all." Puck went into the forest, but at first saw no bird answering to the description given him. He said to himself, "She is, I wonder, who?" He was surprised to hear his question repeated, not as an echo, but by another. Still, he thought it might possibly be his own voice come back. So, in making a catalogue, in his note book, of what he had seen and heard that day, he put down, "To wit--one echo." Again came the sound: "To whit--to who, to whit--to who?" Sounded the voice. Thinking that this was intended to be a polite question, Puck looked up. Sure enough, there was the wise bird sitting on a bough, above him, as sober as a judge. "Who! did you ask?" answered Puck and then went on to explain: "I am Lord of the Fairies in Welshery, and I seek to know which is the most venerable, of all the creatures in the Land of the Red Dragon. "I am ready to salute you, as the most ancient and honorable of all living things in the Cymric realm. You are desired to bear a message to the Great King, in London." Tickled by such delicate flattery, and the honors proffered her, this lady owl, after much blinking and winking, flirting, and fluttering, at last agreed to go to King Henry VIII in London. The business, with which she was charged, was to protest against Norman brutality and to plead for justice. Now this old lady-owl, gray with centuries, though she had such short ears, kept them open by day and during the night, also, for all the gossip that floated in the air. She knew all about everybody and everything. From what she had heard, she expected to find the new King, Henry VIII, a royal fellow in velvet, with a crown on his head, and his body as big and round as a hogshead, sitting in a room full of chopping blocks and battle axes. Further, she fancied she would find a dozen pretty women locked up in his palace, some in the cellar, others in the pantry, and more in the garret; but all waiting to have their heads chopped off. For the popular story ran that his chief amusement was to marry a wife one day and slice off her head the next. It was said also that the King kept a private graveyard, and took a walk in it every afternoon to study the epitaphs, which he kept a scholar busy in writing; and also a man, from the marble yard near by, to chisel them on the tombs, after his various wives had been properly beheaded. But the owl never could find out whether these fables were wicked fibs, or fairy tales, or only street talk. Puck and the owl together arrived in London, at the palace, when the King was at his dinner. The butlers and lackeys wanted to keep them out, but the merry monarch gave orders to let them in at once. He made the owl perch over the mantel piece, but told Puck to stand upon the dinner table and walk over the tablecloth. The pepper box was put away, so that he should not sneeze and the King carefully removed the mustard pot, for fear the little fairy fellow might fall in it and be drowned in the hot stuff. His Majesty said that, for the time being, Puck should be the Prince of Wales. Puck strutted about to the amusement of the King and all the Court ladies, but he kept away from the pepper, which made his nose tingle, and from the hot soup, for fear he might tumble into it and be scalded. When the dessert came on, Puck hid himself under a walnut shell, just for fun. It would take too long to tell about all that was said, or the questions, which the King asked about his Welsh subjects, and which either the owl or the fairy man answered. According to Puck's story, Wales was then a most distressful country, though the Welshery, to a man, wanted to be good and loyal subjects of the Tudors. Several times did Puck appeal to the owl, to have his story confirmed, because this wise bird had lived among the Cymry, centuries before the Normans came. The owl every time blinked, bowed, and answered solemnly: "To whit, to who. To whit, to who," which in this case showed that she had learned to speak the Court language. "Why, bless my soul, the owl speaks good Cockney Hinglish," whispered one of the butlers, who had been born in Wales. "Yes, but that is the proper way to address His Majesty, King Ennery the Heighth," answered the other butler, who was a native-born Londoner. Puck and the owl returned to Wales. What happened after that, is the A B C of history, that everybody knows, and for which all the Welsh people to this day bless the Tudors, who made the Welsh equal before the law with any and all Englishmen. Even Puck himself had never seen anything like the change that quickly took place for the better, nor did Queen Mab, with her wand, ever work such wonders. It was better than a fairy tale, and the effects, very soon seen, were even more wonderful. Down went the castles into ruins, for rats to run around in, and wild dogs to yelp and foxes to hide in, or look out of the casements. To-day, what were once banqueting halls are covered with moss, and on the ground grass grows, over which sheep graze and children play; while rooks and crows nest or roost in the tall towers. Any Englishman's life was safe anywhere, and Wales became one of the most easily governed countries in all the wonderful British Empire. And in the great world-war, that even children, who read these stories, can remember, Wales, the Land of the Free, the Home of Deathless Democracy, led all the British Isles, colonies, islands, or coaling stations around the wide world, in loyalty, valor and sacrifice. And the handsome son of the King, George, the Prince of Wales, led the descendants of Welsh archers, now called the Fusileers. They went into battle, singing, "Old Land our Fathers before us held so dear"; or they marched, following the band that played "The Men of Harlech." It is because Welsh cherish their traditions, harps, music, language and noble inheritances, with which they feed their souls, that they lead the four nations of the British Isles in the nobler virtues, that keep a nation alive, as well as in the sweet humanities of the Red Cross and in generous hospitality to the refugee Belgian. True to his motto, "I serve," the Prince of Wales who came to see us in 1919--as did his grandfather, whom the story-teller saw when he visited our Independence Hall in 1860--loved to be the servant of his people. What was it that wrought this peaceful wonder of the sixteenth century? Was it a fairy spell magic ointment, star-tipped wand, treasures of caves, or ocean depths? Was it anything that dragons, giants, ogres, or even swords, spears, catapults, or whips and clubs, or elves or gnomes could do? Not a bit of it! Only justice and kindness, instead of brutality and force. XV THE WELSH FAIRIES HOLD A MEETING In the ancient Cymric gatherings, the Druids, poets, prophets, seers, and singers all had part. The one most honored as the president of the meeting was crowned and garlanded. Then he was led in honor and sat in the chair of state. They called this great occasion an Eistedfodd, or sitting, after the Cymric word, meaning a chair. All over the world, the Welsh folks, who do so passionately love music, poetry and their own grand language, hold the Eistedfodd at regular intervals. Thus they renew their love for the Fatherland and what they received long ago from their ancestors. Now it happens that the fairies in every land usually follow the customs of the mortals among whom they live. The Swiss, the Dutch, the Belgian, the Japanese and Korean fairies, as we all know, although they are much alike in many things are as different from each other as the countries in which they live and play. So, when the Welsh fairies all met together, they resolved to have songs and harp music and make the piper play his tunes just as in the Eistedfodd. The Cymric fairies of our days have had many troubles to complain of. They were disgusted with so much coal smoke, the poisoning of the air by chemical fumes, and the blackening of the landscape from so many factory chimneys. They had other grievances also. So the Queen Mab, who had a Welsh name, and another fairy, called Pwca, or in English King Puck, sent out invitations into every part of Wales, for a gathering on the hills, near the great rock called Dina's seat. This is a rocky chair formed by nature. They also included in their call those parts of western and south England, such as are still Welsh and spiritually almost a part of Wales. In fact, Cornwall was the old land, in which the Cymry had first landed when coming from over the sea. The meeting was to be held on a moonlight night, and far away from any houses, lest the merry making, dancing and singing of the fairies should keep the farmers awake. This was something of which the yokels, or men of the plow, often complained. They could not sleep while the fairies were having their parties. Now among the Welsh fairies of every sort, size, dress, and behavior, some were good, others were bad, but most of them were only full of fun and mischief. Chief of these was the lively little fellow, Puck, who lived in Cwm Pwcca, that is, Puck Valley, in Breconshire. Now it had been an old custom, which had come down, from the days of the cave men, that when anyone died, the people, friends and relatives sat up all night with the corpse. The custom arose, at first, with the idea of protection against wild beasts and later from insult by enemies. This was called a wake. The watchers wept and wailed at first, and then fell to eating and drinking. Sometimes, they got to be very lively. The young folks even looked on a wake, after the first hour or two, as fine fun. Strong liquor was too plentiful and it often happened that quarrels broke out. When heads were thus fuddled, men saw or thought they saw, many uncanny things, like leather birds, cave eagles, and the like. But all these fantastic things and creatures, such as foolish people talk about, and with which they frighten children, such as corpse candles, demons and imps, were ruled out and not invited to the fairy meeting. Some other objects, which ignorant folks believed in, were not to be allowed in the company. The door-keeper was notified not to admit the eagles of darkness, that live in a cave which is never lighted up; or the weird, featherless bird of leather, from the Land of Illusion and Phantasy, that brushes its wing against windows, when a funeral is soon to take place; or the greedy dog with silver eyes. None of these would be permitted to show themselves, even if they came and tried to get in. Some other creatures, not recognized in the good society of Fairyland, were also barred out. To this gathering, only the bright and lively fairies were welcome. Some of the best natured among the big creatures, and especially giants and dragons, might pay a visit, if they wanted to do so; but all the bad ones, such as lake hags, wraiths, sellers of liquids for wakes, who made men drunk, and all who, under the guise of fairies, were only agents for undertakers, were ruled out. The Night Dogs of the Wicked Hunter Annum, the monster Afang, Cadwallader's Goats, and various, cruel goblins and ogres, living in the ponds, and that pulled cattle down to eat them up, and the immodest mermaids, whose bad behavior was so well known, were crossed off the list of invitations. No ugly brats, such as wicked fairies were in the habit of putting in the cradles of mortal mothers, when they stole away their babies, were allowed to be present, even if they should come with their mothers. This was to be a perfectly respectable company, and no bawling, squealing, crying, or blubbering was to be permitted. When they had all gathered together, at the evening hour, there was seen, in the moonlight, the funniest lot of creatures, that one could imagine, but all were neatly dressed and well behaved. Quite a large number of the famous Fair Family, that moved only in the best society of fairyland, fathers, mothers, cousins, uncles and aunts, were on hand. In fact, some of them had thought it was to be a wake, and were ready for whatever might turn up, whether solemn or frivolous. These were dressed in varied costume. Queen Mab, who above all else, was a Welsh fairy, and whose name, as everybody knows who talks Cymric, suggested her extreme youth and lively disposition, was present in all her glory. When they saw her, several learned fairies, who had come from a distance, fell at once into conversation on this subject. One remarked: "How would the Queen like to add another syllable to her name? Then we should call her Mab-gath (which means Kitten, or Little Puss)." "Well not so bad, however; because many mortal daddies, who have a daughter, call her Puss. It is a term of affection with them and the little girls never seem to be offended." "Oh! Suppose that in talking to each other we call our Queen Mab-gar, what then?" asked another, with a roguish twinkle in the eye. "It depends on how you use it," said a wise one dryly. This fairy was a stickler for the correct use of every word. "If you meant 'babyish,' or 'childish,' she, or her friends might demur; but, if you use the term 'love of children,' what better name for a fairy queen?" "None. There could not be any," they shouted, all at once, "but let us ask our old friend the harper." Now such a thing as inquiring into each other's ages was not common in Fairy Land. Very few ever asked such a question, for it was not thought to be polite. For, though we hear of ugly fairy brats being put into the cradles, in place of pretty children, no one ever heard, either of fairies being born or of dying, or having clocks, or watches, or looking to see what time it was. Nor did doctors, or the census clerks, or directory people ever trouble the fairy ladies, to ask their age. Occasionally, however, there was one fairy, so wise, so learned, and so able to tell what was going to happen to-morrow, or next year, that the other fairies looked up to such an one with respect and awe. Yet these honorables would hardly know what you were talking about, if you asked any of them how old they might be, or spoke of "old" or "young." If, by any chance, a fairy did use the world "old" in talking of their number, it would be for honor or dignity, and they would mean it for a compliment. The fact was, that many of the most lively fairies showed their frivolous disposition at once. These were of the kind, that, like kittens, cubs, or babies, wanted to play all the time, yes, every moment. Already, hundreds of them were tripping from flower to flower, riding on the backs of fireflies, or harnessing night moths, or any winged creatures they could saddle, for flight through the air. Or, they were waltzing with glow worms, or playing "ring around a rosy," or dancing in circles. They could not keep still, one moment. In fact, when a great crowd of the frolicsome creatures got singing together, they made such a noise, that a squad of fairy policemen, dressed in club moss and armed with pistils, was sent to warn them not to raise their voices too high; lest the farmers, especially those that were kind to the fairies, should be awakened, and feel in bad humor. So the knot of learned fairies had a quiet time to talk, and, when able to hear their own words, the harper, who was very learned, answered their questions about Queen Mab as follows: "Well, you know the famous children's story book, in which mortals read about us, and which they say they enjoy so much, is named Mabinogion, that is, The Young Folks' Treasury of Cymric Stories." "It is well named," said another fairy savant, "since Queen Mab is the only fairy that waits on men. She inspires their dreams, when these are born in their brains." The talk now turned on Puck, who was to be the president of the meeting. They were expected to show much dignity in his presence, but some feared he would, as usual, play his pranks. Before he arrived in his chariot, which was drawn by dragon flies, some of his neighbors that lived in the valley near by chatted about him, until the gossip became quite personal. Just for the fun of it, and the amusement of the crowd, they wanted Puck to give an exhibition, off-hand, of all his very varied accomplishments for he could beat all rivals in his special variety, or as musicians say, his repertoire. "No. 'Twould be too much like a Merry Andrew's or a Buffoon's sideshow, where the freaks of all sorts are gathered, such as they have at those county fairs, which the mortals get up, to which are gathered great crowds. The charge of admission is a sixpence. I vote 'no.'" "Well, for the very reason that Puck can beat the rest of us at spells and transformations, I should like to see him do for us as many stunts as he can. I've heard from a mortal, named Shakespeare, that, in one performance, Puck could be a horse, a hound, a hog, a bear without any head, and even kindle himself into a fire; while his vocal powers, as we know, are endless. He can neigh, bark, grunt, roar, and even burn up things. Now, I should like to see the fairy that could beat him at tricks. It was Puck himself, who told the world that he was in the habit of doing all these things, and I want to see whether he was boasting." "Tut, tut, don't talk that way, about our king," said a fourth fairy. All this was only chaff and fun, for all the fairies were in good humor. They were only talking, to fill up the interval until the music began. Now the canny Welsh fairies had learned the trick of catching farthings, pennies and sixpences from the folks who have more curiosity in them than even fairies do. These human beings, cunning fellows that they are, let the curtain fall on a show, just at the most interesting part. Then they tell you to come next day and find out what is to happen. Or, as they say in a story paper, "to be continued in our next." Or, worse than all, the story teller stops, at some very exciting episode, and then passes the hat or collection-box around, to get the copper or silver of his listeners, before he will go on. This time, however, it was Puck himself who came forward and declared that, unless everyone of the fairies would promise to attend the next meeting, there should be no music. Now a meeting of the Welshery, whether fairies or human, without music was a thing not to be thought of. So, although at first some fairies grumbled and held back, and were quite sulky about it, even muttering other grumpy words, they at last all agreed, and Puck sent for the fiddler to make music for the dance. XVI KING ARTHUR'S CAVE In our time, every boy and girl knows about the nuts and blossoms, the twigs and the hedges, the roots and the leaf of the common hazel bush, and everybody has heard of the witch hazel. In old days they made use of the forked branches of the hazel as a divining rod. With this, they believed that they could divine, or find out the presence of treasures of gold and silver, deep down in the earth, and hidden from human eyes. And, what boy or girl has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now living ever saw it fall? Now, our story is about a hazel rod, a Welshman on London Bridge, treasures in a cave, and what happened because of these. It was in the days when London Bridge was not, as we see it to-day, a massive structure of stone and iron, able to bear up hundreds of cars, wagons, horses and people, and lighted at night with electric bulbs. No, when this Welshman visited London, the bridge had a line of shops on both sides of the passage way, and reaching from end to end. Taffy was the name of this fellow from Denbigh, in Wales, and he was a drover. He had brought, all the way from one of the richest of the Welsh provinces, a great drove of Black Welsh cattle, such as were in steady demand by Englishmen, who have always been lovers of roast beef. Escaping all the risks of cattle thieves, rustlers, and highwaymen, he had sold his beeves at a good price; so that his pockets were now fairly bulging out with gold coins, and yet this fellow wanted more. But first, before going home, he would see the sights of the great city, which then contained about a hundred thousand people. While he was handling some things in a shop, to decide what he should take home to his wife, his three daughters and his two little boys, he noticed a man looking intently, not at him, but at his stick. After a while, the stranger came up to him and asked him where he came from. Now Taffy was not very refined in his manners, and he thought it none of the fellow's business. He was very surly and made reply in a gruff voice. "I come from my own country." The stranger did not get angry, but in a polite tone made answer: "Don't be offended at my question. Tell me where you cut that hazel stick, and I'll make it to your advantage, if you will take my advice." Even yet Taffy was gruff and suspicious. "What business is it of yours, where I cut my hazel stick?" he answered. "Well it may matter a good deal to you, if you will tell me. For, if you remember the place, and can lead me to it, I'll make you a rich man, for near that spot lies a great treasure." Taffy was not much of a thinker, apart from matters concerning cattle, and his brain worked slowly! He was sorely puzzled. Here was a wizard, who could make him rich, and he did so love to jingle gold in his pockets. But then he was superstitious. He feared that this sorcerer derived all his uncanny knowledge from demons, and Taffy, being rather much of a sinner, feared these very much. Meanwhile, his new acquaintance kept on persuading him. Finally Taffy yielded and the two went on together to Wales. Now in this country, there are many stones placed in position, showing they were not there by accident, but were reared by men, to mark some old battle, or famous event. And for this, rough stone work, no country, unless it be Korea or China, is more famous than Wales. On reaching one called the Fortress Rock, Taffy pointed to an old hazel root, and said to his companion: "There! From that stock, I cut my hazel stick. I am sure of it." The sorcerer looked at Taffy to read his face, and to be certain that he was telling the truth. Then he said: "Bring shovels and we'll both dig." These having been brought, the two began to work until the perspiration stood out in drops on their foreheads. First the sod and rooty stuff, and then down around the gravelly mass below, they plied their digging tools. Taffy was not used to such toil, and his muscles were soon weary. But, urged on by visions of gold, he kept bravely at his task. At last, when ready to drop from fatigue, he heard his companion say: "We've struck it!" A few shovelfuls more laid bare a broad flat stone. This they pried up, but it required all their strength to lift and stand it on edge. Just below, they saw a flight of steps. They were slippery with wet and they looked very old, as if worn, ages ago, by many feet passing up and down them. Taffy shrunk back, as a draught of the close, dead air struck his nostrils. "Come on, and don't be afraid. I'm going to make you rich," said the sorcerer. At this, Taffy's eyes glistened, and he followed on down the steps, without saying a word. At the bottom of the descent, they entered a narrow passage, and finally came to a door. "Now, I'll ask you. Are you brave, and will you come in with me, if I open this door?" By this time, Taffy was so eager for treasure, that he spoke up at once. "I'm not afraid. Open the door." The sorcerer gave a jerk and the door flew open. What a sight! There, in the faint, red light, Taffy discerned a great cave. Lying on the floor were hundreds of armed men, but motionless and apparently sound asleep. Little spangles of light were reflected from swords, spears, round shields, and burnished helmets. All these seemed of very ancient pattern. But immediately in front of them was a bell. Taffy felt some curiosity to tap it. Would the sleeping host of men then rise up? Just then, the sorcerer, speaking with a menacing gesture, and in a harsh tone, said: "Do not touch that bell, or it's all up with us both." Moving carefully, so as not to trip, or to stumble over the sleeping soldiers, they went on, and Taffy, stopping and looking up beheld before him a great round table. Many warriors were sitting at it. Their splendid gold inlaid armor, glittering helmets and noble faces showed that they were no common men. Yet Taffy could see only a few of the faces, for all had their heads more or less bent down, as if sound asleep, though sword and spear were near at hand, ready to be grasped in a moment. Outshining all, was a golden throne at the farther end of the table and on it sat a king. He was of imposing stature, and august presence. Upon his head was a crown, on which were inlaid or set precious stones. These shone by their own light, sending out rays so brilliant that they dazzled Taffy, who had never seen anything like them. The king held in his right hand a mighty sword. It had a history and the name of it was Excalibur. In Arthur's hand, it was almost part of his own soul. Its hilt and handle were of finely chased gold, richly studded with gems. Yet his head, too, was bent in deep sleep, as if only thunder could wake him. "Are they all, everyone, asleep?" asked Taffy. "Each and all," was the answer. "When did they fall asleep?" asked the drover. "Over a thousand years ago," answered the sorcerer. "Tell me who they are, and why here," asked Taffy. "They are King Arthur's trusty warriors. They are waiting for the hour to come, when they shall rise up and destroy the enemies of the Cymry, and once again possess the whole island of Britain, as in the early ages, before the Saxons came." "And who are those sitting around the table?" asked Taffy. The sorcerer seemed tired of answering questions, but he replied, giving the name of each knight, and also that of his father, as if he were a Welshman himself; but at this, Taffy grew impatient, feeling as if a book of genealogy had been hurled at him. Most impolitely, he interrupted his companion and cried out: "And who is that on the throne?" The sorcerer looked as if he was vexed, and felt insulted, but he answered: "It's King Arthur himself, with Excalibur, his famous sword, in his hand." This was snapped out, as if the sorcerer was disgusted at the interruption of his genealogy, and he shut his mouth tight as if he would answer no more questions, for such an impolite fellow. Seizing Taffy by the hand, he led him into what was the storehouse of the cave. There lay heaps upon heaps of yellow gold. Both men stuffed their pockets, belt bags, and the inside of their clothes, with all they could load in. "Now we had better get out, for it is time to go," said the sorcerer and he led the way towards the cave door. But as Taffy passed back, and along the hall, where the host of warriors were sleeping, his curiosity got the better of him. He said to himself, "I must see this host awake. I'll touch that bell, and find out whether the sorcerer spoke the truth." So, when he came to it, he struck the bell. In the twinkling of an eye, thousands of warriors sprang up, seized their armor, girded their swords, or seized their spears. All seemed eagerly awaiting the command to rush against the foe. The ground quaked with their tramping, and shook with their tread, until Taffy thought the cave roof would fall in and bury them all. The air resounded with the rattle of arms, as the men, when in ranks, marked time, ready for motion forward and out of the cave. But from the midst of the host, a deep sounding voice, as earnest as if in hot temper, but as deliberate as if in caution against a false alarm, spoke. He inquired: "Who rang that bell? Has the day come?" The sorcerer, thoroughly frightened and trembling, answered: "No, the day has not come. Sleep on." Taffy, though dazzled by the increasing brilliancy of the light, had heard another deep voice, more commanding in its tones than even a king's, call out, "Arthur, awake, the bell has rung. The day is breaking. Awake, great King Arthur!" But even against such a voice, that of the sorcerer, now scared beyond measure, lest the king and his host should discover the cheat, and with his sword, Excalibur, chop the heads off both Taffy and himself, answered: "No, it is still night. Sleep on, Arthur the Great." Erect over all, his head aloft and crowned with jewels, as with stars, the King himself now spoke: "No, my warriors, the day has not yet come, when the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle will meet in war. Sleep on, loyal souls. The morning of Wales has not yet dawned." Then, like the gentle soughing of the evening breeze among forest trees, all sound died away, and in the snap of a finger, all were asleep again. Seizing the hand of Taffy, the sorcerer hurried him out of the cave, moved the stone back in its place and motioning to Taffy to do the same, he quickly shoveled and kicked the loose dirt in the hole and stamped it down: When Taffy turned to look for him, he was gone, without even taking the trouble to call his dupe a fool. Wearied with his unwonted labors and excitements, Taffy walked home, got his supper, pondered on what he had seen, slept, and awoke in the morning refreshed. After breakfast, he sallied out again with pick and shovel. For months, Taffy dug over every square foot of the hill. Neglecting his business as cattle man, he spent all the money he had made in London, but he never found that entrance to the cave. He died a poor man and all his children had to work hard to get their bread. XVII THE LADY OF THE LAKE One easily gets acquainted with the Welsh fairies, for nearly all the good ones are very fond of music. Or, they live down in the lakes, or up in the mountains. They are always ready to help kind or polite people, who treat them well or will give them a glass of milk, or a saucer of flummery. But, oh, what tricks and mischief they do play on mean or stingy or grumpy folks with bad tempers! They tangle up the harness of the horses; milk the cows, letting the milk go to waste, on the stable floor; tie knots in their tails, or keep the dog's mouth shut, when the robbers come sneaking around. Better not offend a fairy, even though no higher than a thimble! A favorite place for the elfin ladies of the lake is high up in one of the fresh water mountain ponds. They are cousins to the mermaids, that swim in the salt water. They say that these lake maidens love to come up close to the shore, to smell the sweet grass and flowers, which the cows like so much. Near one of these lakes dwelt a widow, with only one son, named Gwyn. One day he took his lunch of barley bread and cheese, and went out, as usual, to tend the cows. Soon he saw rising out of the water, to dress her long and luxuriant hair, the most beautiful lady he had ever seen. In her hand she held a golden comb, and was using the bright lake-surface as a mirror. At once Gwyn fell in love with her, and, like an unselfish lad, held out his refreshments--barley bread and cheese--all he had--bidding her to come and take. But though the lady glided toward him, while he still held out his hand, she shook her head, saying: O thou of the hard baked bread, It is not easy to catch me Sorry enough to miss such a prize, he hurried home to tell his mother. She, wondering also, whether fairies have teeth to chew, told him to take soft dough next time. Then, perhaps, the strange lady would come again. Not much sleep did the boy get that night, and, before the sun was up, he was down by the lake side holding out his dough. There, hour after hour, neglecting the cows, he looked eagerly over the water, but nothing appeared, except ripples started by the breeze. Again and again, he gazed in hope, only to be disappointed. [Illustration: IN A MOMENT HE FORGOT EVERY WORD HE MEANT TO SAY] Meanwhile he thought out a pretty speech to make to her, but he kept his dough and went hungry. It was late in the afternoon, when the trees on the hills were casting long shadows westward, that he gave up watching, for he supposed she would come no more. But just as he started to go back to his mother's cabin, he turned his head and there was the same lady, looking more beautiful than ever. In a moment, he forgot every word he meant to say to her. His tongue seemed to leave him, and he only held out his hand, with the dough in it. But the lake lady, shaking her head, only laughed and said: Thou of the soft bread I will not have thee Though she dived under the water and left him sad and lonely, she smiled so sweetly, as she vanished, that, though again disappointed, he thought she would come again and she might yet accept his gift. His mother told him to try her with bread half baked, that is, midway between hard crust and soft dough. So, having packed his lunch, and much excited, though this time with bright hopes, Gwyn went to bed, though not to sleep. At dawn, he was up again and out by the lake side, with his half baked bread in his hand. It was a day of rain and shine, of sun burst and cloud, but no lady appeared. The long hours, of watching and waiting, sped on, until it was nearly dark. When just about to turn homewards, to ease his mother's anxiety, what should he see, but some cows walking on the surface of the water! In a few minutes, the lady herself, lovelier than ever, rose up and moved towards the shore. Gwyn rushed out to meet her, with beseeching looks and holding the half baked bread in his hand. This time, she graciously took the gift, placed her other hand in his, and he led her to the shore. Standing with her on land, he could not speak for many seconds. He noticed that she had sandals on her feet, and the one on the right foot was tied in a way rather unusual. Under her winsome smile, at last, he regained the use of his tongue. Then he burst out: "Lady I love you, more than all the world besides. Will you be my wife?" She did not seem at all willing at first, but love begets love. Finally yielding to his pleadings, she said, rather solemnly: "I will be your bride but only on this condition, that if you strike me three times, without cause, I will leave your house and you only will be to blame, and it will be forever." These words stuck in his mind, and he inwardly made a vow never to give his lovely wife cause to leave him. But not yet did happiness come, for, even while he took oath that he would rather cut off his right hand, than offend her, she darted away like an arrow, and, diving in the lake, disappeared. At this sudden blow to his hopes and joy, Gwyn was so sorely depressed, as to wish to take his own life. Rushing up to the top of a rock, overhanging the deepest part of the lake, he was just about to leap into the water and drown himself, when he heard a voice behind him, saying: "Hold rash lad, come here!" He looked and there down on the shore of the lake, stood a grand looking old man, with a long white beard. On either side of him was a lovely maiden. These were his daughters. Trembling with fear, the lad slipped down from the rock and drew near. Then the old man spoke comfortably to him, though in a very cracked voice. "Mortal, do you wish to marry one of my daughters? Show me the one you love more than the other, and I will consent." Now the two maidens were so beautiful, yet so exactly alike, that Gwyn could not note any difference. As he looked, he began to wonder whether it had been a different lady, in each case, that rose out of the water. He looked beyond the old man, to see if there were a third lady. When he saw none more, he became more distracted. He feared lest he might choose the wrong one, who had not promised to love him. Almost in despair, he was about to run home, when he noticed that one of the maidens put forward her right foot. Then he saw that her sandal was tied in the way he had already wondered at. So he boldly went forward and took her by the hand. "This one is mine," said he to the father. "You are right," answered the old man. "This is my daughter Nelferch. Take her and you shall have as many cattle, sheep, horses, hogs, and goats, as she can count, of each, without drawing in her breath. But I warn you that three blows, without cause, will send her back to me." While the old man smiled, and Gwyn renewed his vow, the new wife began to count by fives--one, two, three, four, five. At the end of each count drawing in a fresh breath, there rose up, out of the lake, as many sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, and horses, as she had counted. So it happened that the lad, who went out of his mother's cottage, in the morning, a poor boy, came back to her, a rich man, and leading by the hand the loveliest creature on whom man or woman had ever looked upon. As for the old man and the other daughter, no one ever saw them again. Gwyn and his wife went out to a farm which he bought, and oh, how happy they were! She was very kind to the poor. She had the gift of healing, knew all the herbs, which were good for medicine, and cured sick folk of their diseases. Three times the cradle was filled, and each time with a baby boy. Eight long and happy years followed. They loved each other so dearly and were so happy together, that Gwyn's vow passed entirely out of his mind, and he thought no more of it. On the seventh birthday of the oldest boy, there was a wedding at some distance away, and the father and mother walked through a field where their horses were grazing. As it was too far for Lady Nelferch to walk all the way, her husband went back to the house, for saddle and bridle, while she should catch the horse. "Please do, and bring me my gloves from off the table," she called, as he turned towards the house. But when he returned to the field, he saw that she had not stirred. So, before handing his wife her gloves and pointing playfully to the horses, he gave her a little flick with the gloves. Instead of moving, instantly, she heaved a deep sigh. Then looking up at him with sorrowful and reproachful eyes, she said: "Remember our vow, Gwyn. This is the first causeless blow. May there never be another." Days and years passed away so happily, that the husband and father never again had to recall the promise given to his wife and her father. But when they were invited to the christening of a baby, every one was full of smiles and gayety, except Nelferch. Women, especially the older ones, often cry at a wedding, but why his wife should burst into tears puzzled Gwyn. Tapping her on the shoulder, he asked the reason: "Because," said she, "this weak babe will be in pain and misery all its days and die in agony. And, husband dear, you have once again struck me a causeless blow. Oh, do be on your guard, and not again break your promise." From this time forth, Gwyn was on watch over himself, day and night, like a sentinel over whom hangs the sentence of death, should he fall asleep on duty. He was ever vigilant lest, he, in a moment of forgetfulness, might, by some slip of conduct, or in a moment of forgetfulness, strike his dear wife. The baby, whose life of pain and death of agony Nelferch had foretold, soon passed away; for, happily, its life was short. Then she and her husband attended the last rites of sorrow, for Celtic folk always have a funeral and hold a wake, even when a baby, only a span long, lies in the coffin. Yet in the most solemn moment of the services of burial, Nelferch the wife, laughed out, so long and with such merriment, that everyone was startled. Her husband, mortified at such improper behavior, touched her gently, saying: "Hush, wife! Why do you laugh?" "Because the babe is free from all pain. And, you have thrice struck me! Farewell!" Fleeing like a deer home to their farm, she called together, by its name, each and every one of their animals, from stable and field; yes, even those harnessed to the plow. Then, over the mountain all moved in procession to the lake. There, they plunged in and vanished. No trace of them was left, except that made by the oxen drawing the plow, and which mark on the ground men still point out. Broken hearted and mad with grief, Gwyn rushed into the lake and was seen no more. The three sons, grieving over their drowned father, spent their many days wandering along the lakeside, hoping once more to see one, or both, of their dear parents. Their love was rewarded. They never saw their father again, but one day their mother, Nelferch, suddenly appeared out of the water. Telling her children that her mission on earth was to relieve pain and misery, she took them to a point in the lake, where many plants grew that were useful in medicine. There, she often came and taught them the virtues of the roots, leaves, juices and the various virtues of the herbs, and how to nurse the sick and heal those who had diseases. All three of Nelferch's sons became physicians of fame and power. Their descendants, during many centuries, were renowned for their skill in easing pain and saving life. To this day, Physicians' Point is shown to visitors as a famous spot, and in tradition is almost holy. XVIII THE KING'S FOOT HOLDER There was a curious custom in the far olden times of Wales. At the banqueting hall, the king of the country would sit with his feet in the lap of a high officer. Whenever His Majesty sat down to dinner, this official person would be under the table holding the royal feet. This was also the case while all sat around the evening fire in the middle of the hall. This footholding person was one of the king's staff and every castle must have a human footstool as part of its furniture. By and by, it became the fashion for pretty maidens to seek this task, or to be chosen for the office. Their names in English sounded like Foot-Ease, Orthopede, or Foot Lights. When she was a plump and petite maid, they nicknamed her Twelve Inches, or when unusually soothing in her caresses of the soft royal toes. It was considered a high honor to be the King's Foot Holder. In after centuries, it was often boasted of that such and such an ancestor had held this honorable service. One picture of castle life, as given in one of the old books tells how Kaim, the king's officer, went to the mead cellar with a golden cup, to get a drink that would keep them all wide awake. He also brought a handful of skewers on which they were to broil the collops, or bits of meat at the fire. While they were doing this, the King sat on a seat of green rushes, over which was spread a flame-colored satin cover, with a cushion like it, for his elbow to rest upon. In the evening, the harpers and singers made music, the bards recited poetry, or the good story tellers told tales of heroes and wonders. During all this time, one or more maidens held the king's feet, or took turns at it, when tired; for often the revels or songs and tales lasted far into the night. At intervals, if the story was dull, or he had either too much dinner, or had been out hunting and got tired, His Majesty took a nap, with his feet resting upon the lap of a pretty maiden. This happened often in the late hours, while they were getting the liquid refreshments ready. Then the king's chamberlain gently nudged him, to be wideawake, and he again enjoyed the music, and the stories, while his feet were held. For, altogether, it was great fun. Now there was once a Prince of Gwynedd, in Wales, named Math, who was so fond of having his feet held, that he neglected to govern his people properly. He spent all his time lounging in an easy chair, while a pretty maiden held his heels and toes. He committed all public cares to two of his nephews. These were named for short, Gily and Gwyd. The one whom the king loved best to have her hold his feet was the fairest maiden in all the land, and she was named Goewen. By and by, the prince grew so fond of having his feet held, and stroked and patted and played with, by Goewen, that he declared that he could not live, unless Goewen held his feet. And, she said, that if she did not hold the king's feet, she would die. Now this Gily, one of the king's nephews, son of Don, whom he had appointed to look day by day after public affairs, would often be in the hall at night. He listened to the music and stories, and seeing Goewen, the king's foot holder, he fell in love with her. His eye usually wandered from the story teller to the lovely girl holding the king's feet, and he thought her as beautiful as an angel. Soon he became so lovesick, that he felt he would risk or give his life to get and have her for his own. But what would the king say? Besides, he soon found out that the maiden Goewen cared nothing for him. Nevertheless the passion of the love-lorn youth burned hotly and kept increasing. He confided his secret to his brother Gwyd, and asked his aid, which was promised. So, one day, the brother went to King Math, and begged for leave to go to Pryderi. In the king's name, he would ask from him the gift of a herd of swine of famous breed; which, in the quality of the pork they furnished, excelled all other pigs known. They were finer than any seen in the land, or ever heard of before. Their flesh was said to be sweeter, juicier, and more tender than the best beef. Even their manners were better than those of some men. In fact, these famous pigs were a present from the King of Fairyland. So highly were they prized, that King Math doubted much whether his nephew could get them at any price. In ancient Wales the bards and poet singers were welcomed, and trusted above all men; and this, whether in the palace or the cottage. So Gwyd, the brother of the love-sick one, in order to get the herd of surpassing swine, took ten companions, all young men and strong, dressed as bards, and pretending by their actions to be such. Then they all started out together to seek the palace of Pryderi. Having arrived, they were entertained at a great feast, in the castle hall. There Pryderi sat on his throne-chair, with his feet in a maiden's lap. The dinner over, Gwyd was asked to tell a story. This he did, delighting everyone so much, that he was voted a jolly good fellow by all. In fact, Pryderi felt ready to give him anything he might demand, excepting always his foot holder. At once, Gwyd made request to give him the herd of swine. At this, the countenance of Pryderi fell, for he had made a promise to his people, that he would not sell or give away the swine, until they had produced double their number in the land; for there were no pigs and no pork like theirs, to be bought anywhere. Now this Gwyd was not very cunning, but he had the power of using magic arts. By these, he could draw the veil of illusion over both the mind and the eyes of the people. So he made answer to Pryderi's objections thus: "Keep your promise to your people, oh, most honored Pryderi, and only exchange them for the gift I make thee," said Gwyd. Thereupon, exerting his powers of magic, he created the illusion of twelve superb horses. These were all saddled, bridled, and magnificently caparisoned. But, after twenty-four hours, they would vanish from sight. The illusion would be over. With these steeds, so well fitted for hunting, were twelve sleek, fleet hounds. Taken altogether, here was a sight to make a hunter's eyes dance with delight. So Pryderi gave Gwyd the swine, and he quickly drove them off. "For," he whispered to his companion fellows in knavery, "the illusion will only last until the same hour to-morrow." And so it happened. For when Pryderi's men went to the stables, to groom the horses and feed the hounds, there was nothing in either the stables or the kennels. When they told this to Pryderi, he at once blew his horn and assembled his knights, to invade the country of Gwynedd, to recover his swine. Hearing of his coming, King Math went out to meet Pryderi in battle. But while he was away with his army, Gily, the lover, seized the beautiful maiden Goewen, who held the king's feet in her lap. She was not willing to marry Gily, but he eloped with her, and carried her off to his cottage. The war which now raged was finally decided by single combat, as was the custom in old days. By this, the burning of the peasants' houses, and the ruin which threatened the whole country, ended, and peace came. It was not alone by the strength and fierceness of King Math, but also by the magic spells of Gwyd, that Pryderi was slain. After burying the hero, King Math came back to his palace and found out what Gily had done. Then he took Goewen away from Gily, and to make amends for her trouble, in being thus torn from his palace, King Math made her his queen. Then the lovely Goewen shared his throne covered with the flame colored satin. One of the most beautiful maidens of the court was chosen to hold his feet, until such time as a permanent choice was made. As for the two nephews, who had fled from the wrath of their princely uncle, they were put under bans, as outlaws, and had to live on the borders of the kingdoms. No one of the king's people was allowed to give them food or drink. Yet they would not obey the summons of the king, to come and receive their punishment. But at last, tired of being deserted by all good men and women, they repented in sorrow. Hungry, ragged and forlorn, they came to their uncle, the king to submit themselves to be punished. When they appeared, Math spoke roughly to them, and said: "You cannot make amends for the shame you have brought upon me. Yet, since you obey and are sorry, I shall punish you for a time and then pardon you. You are to do penance for three years at least." Then they were changed into wild deer, and he told them to come back after twelve months. At the end of the year they returned, bringing with them a young fawn. As this creature was entirely innocent, it was given a human form and baptized in the church. But the two brothers were changed into wild swine, and driven off to find their food in the forest. At the end of the year, they came back with a young pig. The king had the little animal changed into a human being, which, like every mother's child in that time, received baptism. Again the brothers were transformed into animal shape. This time, as wolves, and were driven out to the hills. At the end of a twelve months' period, they came back, three in number, for one was a cub. By this time, the penance of the naughty nephews was over, and they were now to be delivered from all magic spells. So their human nature was restored to them, but they must be washed thoroughly. In the first place, it took much hot water and lye, made from the wood ashes, and then a great deal of scrubbing, to make them presentable. Then they were anointed with sweet smelling oil, and the king ordered them to be arrayed in elegant apparel. They were appointed to hold honorable office at court, and from time to time to go out through the country, to call the officers to attend to public business. When the time came that the king sought for one of the most beautiful maidens, who should hold his feet, Gwyd nominated to the prince's notice his sister Arianrod. The king was gracious, and thereafter she held his feet at all the banquets. She was looked up to with reverence by all, and held the office for many years. Thus King Math's reputation for grace and mercy was confirmed. XIX POWELL, PRINCE OF DYFED One of the oldest of the Welsh fairy tales tells us about Pwyle, King of Fairyland and father of the numerous clan of the Powells. He was a mighty hunter. He could ride a horse, draw a bow, and speak the truth. He was always honored by men, and he kept his faith and his promises to women. The children loved him, for he loved them. In the castle hall, he could tell the best stories. No man, bard, or warrior, foot holder or commoner, could excel him in gaining and keeping the attention of his hearers, even when they were sleepy and wanted to go to bed. One day, when out a hunting in the woods, he noticed a pack of hounds running down a stag. He saw at once that they were not his own, for they were snow white in color and had red ears. Being a young man, Powell did not know at this time of his life, that red is the fairy color, and that these were all dogs from Fairyland. So he drove off the red-eared hounds, and was about to let loose his own pack on the stag, when a horseman appeared on the scene. The stranger at once began to upbraid Powell for being impolite. He asked why his hounds should not be allowed to hunt the deer. Powell spoke pleasantly in reply, making his proper excuses to the horseman. The two began to like each other, and soon got acquainted and mutually enjoyed being companions. It turned out that the stranger was Arawn, a king in Fairyland. He had a rival named Hargan, who was beating him and his army in war. So Arawn asked Powell to help him against his enemy. He even made request that one year from that time, Powell should meet Hargan in battle. He told him that one stroke of his sword would finish the enemy. He must then sheathe his weapon, and not, on any account, strike a second time. To make victory sure, the Fairy King would exchange shapes with the mortal ruler and each take not only the place, but each the shape and form of the other. Powell must go into Fairy Land and govern the kingdom there, while Arawn should take charge of affairs at Dyfed. But Powell was warned, again, to smite down his enemy with a single stroke of his sword. If, in the heat of the conflict, and the joy of victory, Powell should forget, and give a second blow to Hargan, he would immediately come to life and be as strong as ever. Powell heeded well these words. Then, putting on the shape of Arawn, he went into Fairy Land, and no one noticed, or thought of anything different from the days and years gone by. But now, at night, a new and unexpected difficulty arose. Arawn's beautiful wife was evidently not in the secret, for she greeted Powell as her own husband. After dinner, when the telling of stories in the banqueting hall was over, the time had come for them to retire. But the new bed fellow did not even kiss her, or say "good night," but turned his back to her and his face to the wall, and never moved until daylight. Then the new King in Fairy Land rose up, ate his breakfast, and went out to hunt. Every day, he ruled the castle and kingdom, as if he had always been the monarch. To everybody, he seemed as if he had been long used to public business, and no questions were asked, nor was there any talk made on the subject. Everyone took things as matter of course. Yet, however polite or gracious he might be to the queen during the day, in the evening, he spoke not a word, and passed every night as at the first. The twelve months soon sped along, and now the time for the battle in single combat between Powell and Hargan had fully come. The two warriors met in the middle of a river ford, and backed their horses for a charge. Then they rushed furiously at the other. Powell's spear struck Hargan so hard, that he was knocked out of the saddle and hurled, the length of a lance, over and beyond the crupper, or tail strap of his horse. He fell mortally wounded upon the ground. Now came the moment of danger and temptation to Powell, for Hargan cried out: "For the love of Heaven, finish your work on me. Slay me with your sword." But Powell was wise and his head was cool. He had kept in mind the warning to strike only one blow. He called out loudly, so that all could hear him: "I will not repeat that. Slay thee who may, I shall not." So Hargan, knowing his end had come, bade his nobles bear him away from the river shore. Then Powell, with his armies, overran the two kingdoms of Fairy Land and made himself master of all. He took oath of all the princes and nobles, who swore to be loyal to their new master. This done, Powell rode away to the trysting place in a glen, and there he met Arawn, as had been appointed. They changed shapes, and each became himself, as he had been before. Arawn thanked Powell heartily, and bade him see what he had done for him. Then each one rode back, in his former likeness, to his kingdom. Now at Anwyn, no one but Arawn himself knew that anything unusual had taken place. After dinner, and the evening story telling were over, and it was time to go to bed, Arawn's wife was surprised in double measure. Two things puzzled her. Her husband was now very tender to her and also very talkative; whereas, for a whole year, every night, he had been as silent and immovable as a log. How could it be, in either case? But this time, the wife was silent as a statue. Even though Arawn spoke to her three times, he received no reply. Then he asked directly of her, why she was so silent. She made an answer that, for a whole year, no word had been spoken in their bedroom. "What?" said he, "did we not talk together, as always before?" "No," said she, "not for a year has there been talk or caress between us." At this answer, Arawn was overcome with surprise, and as struck with admiration at having so good a friend. He burst out first in praise of Powell, and then told his wife all that had happened during the past twelve months. She, too, was full of admiration, and told her husband that in Powell he had certainly found a true friend. In Dyfed, when Powell had returned to his own land and castle, he called his lords together. Then he asked them to be perfectly frank and free to speak. They must tell him whether they thought him a good king during the year past. All shouted in chorus of approval. Then their spokesman addressed Powell thus: "My lord, never was thy wisdom so great, thy generosity more free, nor thy justice more manifest, than during the past year." When he ceased, all the vassals showed their approval of this speech. Then Powell, smiling, told the story of his adventures in exchanging his form and tasks; at the end of which, the spokesman taking his cue from the happy faces of all his fellow vassals, made reply: "Of a truth, lord, we pray thee, do thou give thanks to Heaven that thou hast formed such a fellowship. Please continue to us the form of the kingdom and rule, that we have enjoyed for a year past." Thereupon King Powell took oath, kissing the hilt of his sword, and called on Heaven to witness his promise that he would do as they had desired. So the two kings confirmed the friendship they had made. Each sent the other rich gifts of jewels, horses and hounds. In memory of so wonderful and happy union, of a mortal and a fairy, Powell was thereafter, in addition to all his titles, saluted as Lord of Anwyn, which is only another name for the Land of the Fairies. XX POWELL AND HIS BRIDE Not far from the castle where King Powell had his court, there was a hillock called the Mount of Macbeth. It was the common belief that some strange adventure would befall anyone who should sit upon that mound. He would receive blows, or wounds, or else he would see something wonderful. Thus it came to pass, that none but peaceful bards had ever sat upon the mound. Never a warrior or a common man had risked sitting there. The general fear felt, and the awe inspired by the place, was too great. But after his adventure of being King of Fairy Land for a whole year, everything else to Powell seemed dull and commonplace. So, to test his own courage, and worthiness of kingship, Powell assembled all his lords at Narberth. After the night's feasting, revelry and story telling, Powell declared that, next day, he would sit upon the enchanted mound. So when the sun was fully risen, Powell took his seat upon the mound, expecting that, all of a sudden, something unusual would happen. For some minutes nothing, whether event or vision, took place. Then he lifted up his eyes and saw approaching him a white horse on which rode a lady. She was dressed in shining garments, as if made of gold. Evidently she was a princess. Yet she came not very near. "Does anyone among you know who this lady is?" asked Powell of his chieftains. "Not one of us," was the answer. Thereupon Powell ordered his vassals to ride forward. They were to greet her courteously, and inquire who she was. But now the predicted wonder took place. She moved away from them, yet at a quiet pace that suited her. Though the knights spurred their horses, and rode fast and furiously, they could not come any nearer to her. They galloped back, and reported their failure to reach the lady. Then Powell picked out others and sent them riding after the lady, but each time, one and all returned, chagrined with failure. A woman had beaten them. So the day closed with silence in the castle hall. There was no merry making or story telling that night. The next day, Powell sat again on the mound and once more the golden lady came near. This time, Powell himself left his seat on the mound, leaped on his fleetest horse, and pursued the maiden, robed in gold, on the white horse. But she flitted away, as she had done before from the knights. Again and again, though he could get nearer and nearer to her, he failed. Then the baffled king cried out, in despair, "O maiden fair, for the sake of him whom thou lovest, stay for me." Evidently the lady, who lived in the time of castles and courts, did not care to be wooed in the style of the cave men. Such manners did not suit her, but with a change of method of making love, her heart melted. Besides, she was a kind woman. She took pity on horses, as well as on men. Sweet was her voice, as she answered most graciously: "I will stay gladly, and it were better for thy horses, hadst thou asked me properly, long ago." To his questions, as to how and why she came to him, she told her story, as follows: "I am Rhiannon, descended from the August and Venerable One of old. My aunts and uncles tried to make me marry against my will a chieftain named Gwawl, an auburn-haired youth, son of Clud, but, because of my love to thee, would I have no husband, and if you reject me, I will never marry any man." "As Heaven is my witness, were I to choose among all the damsels and ladies of the world, thee would I choose," cried Powell. After that, it was agreed that, when a year had sped, Powell should go to the Palace of the August and Venerable One of old, and claim her for his bride. So, when twelve months had passed, Powell with his retinue of a hundred knights, all splendidly horsed and finely appareled, presented himself before the castle. There he found his fair lady and a feast already prepared at which he sat with her. On the other side of the table, were her father and mother. In the midst of this joyous occasion, when all was gayety, and they talked together, in strode a youth clad in sheeny satin. He was of noble bearing and had auburn hair. He saluted Powell and his knights courteously. At once Powell, the lord of Narberth, invited the stranger to come and sit down as guest beside him. "Not so," replied the youth. "I am a suitor, and have come to crave a boon of thee." Without guile or suspicion, Powell replied innocently. "Ask what you will. If in my power, it shall be yours." But Rhiannon chided Powell. She asked, "Oh, why did you give him such an answer?" "But he did give it," cried the auburn haired youth. Then turning to the whole company of nobles, he appealed to them: "Did he not pledge his word, before you all, to give me what I asked?" Then, turning to Powell, he said: "The boon I ask is this, to have thy bride, Rhiannon. Further, I want this feast and banquet to celebrate, in this place, our wedding." At this demand, Powell seemed to have been struck dumb. He did not speak, but Rhiannon did. "Be silent, as long as thou wilt," she cried, "but surely no man ever made worse use of his wits than thou hast done; for this man, to whom thou gavest thy oath of promise, is none other than Gwawl, the son of Clud. He is the suitor, from whom I fled to come to you, while you sat on the Narberth mound." Now, out of such trouble, how should the maiden, promised to two men, be delivered? Her wit saved her for the nonce. Powell was bound to keep his word; but Rhiannon explained to Gwawl, that it was not his castle or hall. So, he could not give the banquet; but, in a year from that date, if Gwawl would come for her, she would be his bride. Then, a new bridal feast would be set for the wedding. In the meantime, Rhiannon planned with Powell to get out of the trouble. For this purpose, she gave him a magical bag, which he was to use when the right time should come. Quickly the twelve months passed and then Gwawl appeared again, to claim his bride, and a great feast was spread in his honor. All were having a good time, when in the midst of their merriment, a beggar appeared in the hall. He was in rags, and carried the usual beggar's wallet for food or alms. He asked only that, out of the abundance on the table, his bag might be filled. Gwawl agreed, and ordered his servants to attend to the matter. But the bag never got full. What they put into it, or how much made no difference. Dish after dish was emptied. By degrees, most of the food on the table was in the beggar's bag. "My soul alive! Will that bag never get full?" asked Gwawl. "No, by Heaven! Not unless some rich man shall get into it, stamp it down with his feet, and call out 'enough.'" Then Rhiannon, who sat beside Gwawl, urged him to attempt the task, by putting his two feet in the bag to stamp it down. No sooner had Gwawl done this, than the supposed beggar pushed him down inside the bag. Then drawing the mouth shut, he tied it tight over Gwawl's head. Then the beggar's rags dropped, and there stood forth the handsome leader, Powell. He blew his horn, and in rushed his knights who overcame and bound the followers of Gwawl. Then they proceeded to play a merry game of football, using the bag, in which Gwawl was tied, as men in our day kick pigskin. One called to his mate, or rival, "What's in the bag?" and others answered, "a badger." So they played the game of "Badger in the Bag," kicking it around the hall. They did not let the prisoner out of the bag, until he had promised to pay the pipers, the harpers, and the singers, who should come to the wedding of Powell and Rhiannon. He must give up all his claims, and register a vow never to take revenge. This oath given, and promises made, the bag was opened and the agreements solemnly confirmed in presence of all. Then Gwawl, and every one of his men, knights and servants, were let go, and they went back to their own country. A few evenings later, in the large banqueting hall, Powell and Rhiannon were married. Besides the great feast, presents were given to all present, high and low. Then the happy pair made their wedding journey to Gwawl's palace at Narberth. There the lovely bride gave a ring, or a gem, to every lord and lady in her new realm, and everybody was happy. XXI WHY THE BACK DOOR WAS FRONT In the days when were no books, or writing, and folk tales were the only ones told, there was an old woman, who had a bad reputation. She pretended to be very poor, so as not to attract or tempt robbers. Yet those who knew her best, knew also, as a subject of common talk, that she was always counting out her coins. Besides this, she lived in a nice house, and it was believed that she made a living by stealing babies out of their cradles to sell to the bad fairies. It was matter of rumor that she would, for an extra large sum, take a wicked fairy's ugly brat, and put it in place of a mother's darling. In addition to these horrid charges against her, it was rumored that she laid a spell, or charm, on the cattle of people whom she did not like, in order to take revenge on them. The old woman denied all this, and declared it was only silly gossip of envious people who wanted her money. She lived so comfortably, she averred, because her son, who was a stone mason, who made much money by building chimneys, which had then first come into fashion. When he brought to her the profits of his jobs, she counted the coins, and because of this, some people were jealous, and told bad stories about her. She declared she was thrifty, but neither a miser, nor a kidnaper, nor a witch. One day, this old woman wanted more feathers to stuff into her bed, to make it softer and feel pleasanter for her old bones to rest upon, for what she slept on was nearly worn through. So she went to a farm, where they were plucking geese, and asked for a few handfuls of feathers. But the rich farmer's people refused and ordered her out of the farm yard. Shortly after this event, the cows of this farmer, who was opposed to chimneys, and did not like her or her son, suffered dreadfully from the disease called the black quarter. As they had no horse doctors or professors of animal economy, or veterinaries in those days, many of the cows died. The rich farmer lost much money, for he had now no milk or beef to sell. At once, he suspected that his cattle were bewitched, and that the old woman had cast a spell on them. In those days, it was very easy to think so. So the angry man went one day to the old crone, when she was alone, and her stout son was away on a distant job. He told her to remove the charm, which she had laid on his beasts, or he would tie her arms and legs together, and pitch her into the river. The old woman denied vehemently that she possessed any such powers, or had ever practiced such black arts. To make sure of it, the farmer made her say out loud, "The Blessing of God be upon your cattle!" To clinch the matter, he compelled her to repeat the Lord's Prayer, which she was able to do, without missing one syllable. She used the form of words which are not found in the prayer book, but are in the Bible, and was very earnest, when she prayed "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." But after all that trouble, and the rough way which the rich farmer took to save his cattle, his efforts were in vain. In spite of that kind of religion which he professed--which was shown by bullying a poor old woman--his cattle were still sick, with no sign of improvement. He was at his wits' end to know what to do next. Now, as we have said, this was about the time that chimneys came into fashion. In very old days, the Cymric house was a round hut, with a thatched roof, without glass windows, and the smoke got out through the door and holes in the walls, in the best way it could. The only tapestry in the hut was in the shape of long festoons of soot, that hung from the roof or rafters. These, when the wind blew, or the fire was lively, would swing or dance or whirl, and often fall on the heads, or into the food, while the folks were eating. When the children cried, or made wry faces at the black stuff, their daddy only laughed, and said it was healthy, or was for good luck. But by and by, the carpenters and masons made much improvement, especially when, instead of flint hatchets, they had iron axes and tools. Then they hewed down trees, that had thick cross branches and set up columns in the center, and made timber walls and rafters. Then the house was square or oblong. In other words, the Cymric folks squared the circle. Now they began to have lattices, and, much later, even glass windows. They removed the fireplace from the middle of the floor and set it at the end of the house, opposite the door, and built chimneys. Then they set the beds at the side, and made sleeping rooms. This was done by stretching curtains between partitions. They had also a loft, in which to keep odds and ends. They hung up the bacon and hams, and strings of onions, and made a mantle piece over the fireplace. They even began to decorate the walls with pictures and to set pewter dishes, china cats, and Dresden shepherds in rows on the shelves for ornaments. Now people wore shoes and the floor, instead of being muddy, or dusty, with pools and puddles of water in the time of rainy weather and with the pigs and chickens running in and out, was of clay, beaten down flat and hard, and neatly whitewashed at the edges. Outside, in front, were laid nice flat flagstones, that made a pleasant path to the front door. Flowers, inside and out, added to the beauty of the home and made perfume for those who loved them. The rich farmer had just left his old round hut and now lived in one of the new and better kind of houses. He was very proud of his chimney, which he had built higher than any of his neighbors, but he could not be happy, while so many of his cows were sick or dying. Besides, he was envious of other people's prosperity and cared nothing, when they, too, suffered. One night, while he was standing in front of his fine house and wondering why he must be vexed with so many troubles, he talked to himself and, speaking out loud, said: "Why don't my cows get well?" "I'll tell you," said a voice behind him. It seemed half way between a squeak and a growl. He turned round and there he saw a little, angry man. He was dressed in red, and stood hardly as high as the farmer's knee. The little old man glared at the big fellow and cried out in a high tone of voice: "You must change your habits of disposing of your garbage, for other people have chimneys besides you." "What has that to do with sickness among my cows?" "Much indeed. Your family is the cause of your troubles, for they throw all their slops down my chimney and put out my fire." The farmer was puzzled beyond the telling, for he owned all the land within a mile, and knew of no house in sight. "Put your foot on mine, and then you will have the power of vision, to see clearly." The farmer's big boot was at once placed on the little man's slipper, and when he looked down he almost laughed at the contrast in size. What was his real surprise, when he saw that the slops thrown out of his house, did actually fall down; and, besides, the contents of the full bucket, when emptied, kept on dripping into the chimney of a house which stood far below, but which he had never seen before. But as soon as he took his foot off that of the tiny little man, he saw nothing. Everything like a building vanished as in a dream. "I see that my family have done wrong and injured yours. Pray forgive me. I'll do what I can to make amends for it." "It's no matter now, if you only do as I ask you. Shut up your front door, build a wall in its place, and then my family will not suffer from yours." The rich farmer thought all this was very funny, and he had a hearty laugh over it all. Yet he did exactly as the little man in the red cloak had so politely asked him. He walled up the old door at the front, and built another at the back of the house, which opened out into the garden. Then he made the path, on which to go in from the roadway to the threshold, around the corners and over a longer line of flagstones. Then he removed the fireplace and chimney to what had been the front side of the house, but was now the back. For the next thing, he had a copper doorsill nailed down, which his housemaid polished, until it shone as bright as gold. Yet long before this, his cows had got well, and they now gave more and richer milk than ever. He became the wealthiest man in the district. His children all grew up to be fine looking men and women. His grandsons were famous engineers and introduced paving and drainage in the towns so that to-day, for both man and beast, Wales is one of the healthiest of countries. XXII THE RED BANDITS OF MONTGOMERY When chimneys were first added to houses in Wales, and the style of house-building changed, from round to square, many old people found fault with the new fashion of letting the smoke out. They declared they caught colds and sneezed oftener, than in the times gone by. The chimneys, they said, cost too much money, and were useless extravagances. They got along well enough, in the good old days, when the smoke had its own way of getting out. Then, it took plenty of time to pass through the doors and windholes, for no one person or thing was in a hurry, when they were young. Moreover, when the fireplace was in the middle of the floor, the whole family sat around it and had a sociable time. It was true, as they confessed, when argued with, that the smell of the cooking used to linger too long. The soot also, hung in long streamers from the rafters, and stuck to the house, like old friends. But the greatest and most practical objection of the old folks to the chimneys was that robbers used them to climb down at night and steal people's money, when they were asleep. So, many householders used to set old scythe blades across the new smoke holes, to keep out the thieves, or to slice them up, if they persisted. In Montgomery, which is one of the Welsh shires, there was an epidemic of robbery, and the doings of the Red Bandits are famous in history. Now there was a young widow, whose husband had been killed by the footpads, or road robbers. She was left alone in the world, with a little boy baby in the cradle and only one cow in the byre. She had hard work to pay her rent, but as there were three or four scythes set in the chimney, and the cow stable had a good lock on it, she thought she was safe from burglars or common thieves. But the Reds picked out the most expert chimney-climber in their gang, and he one night slipped down into the widow's cottage, without making any noise or cutting off his nose, toes, or fingers. Then, robbing the widow of her rent money, he picked the lock of the byre and drove off the cow. In the morning, the poor woman found both doors open, but there was no money and no cow. While she was crying over her loss, and wringing her hands, because of her poverty, she heard a knock at the door. "Come in," said the widow. There entered an old lady with a kindly face. She was very tall and well dressed. Her cloak, her gloves, and shoes, and the ruffles under her high peaked Welsh head dress, were all green. The widow thought she looked like an animated leek. In her right hand was a long staff, and in her left, under her cloak, she held a little bag, that was green, also. "Why do you weep?" asked the visitor. Then the widow told her tale of woe--the story of the loss of her husband, and how a red robber, in spite of the scythe blades set in the chimney, had come down and taken away both her money and her cow. Now, although she had sold all her butter and cream, she could neither pay her rent, nor have any buttermilk with her rye bread and flummery. "Dry your tears and take comfort," said the tall lady in the green peaked hat. "Here is money enough to pay your rent and buy another cow." With that, she sat down at the round table near the peat fire. Opening her bag, the shining gold coins slid out and formed a little heap on the table. "There, you can have all this, if you will give me all I want." At first, the widow's eyes opened wide, and then she glanced at the cradle, where her baby was sleeping. Then she wondered, though she said nothing. But the next moment, she was laughing at herself, and looking around at her poor cottage. She tried to guess what there was in it, that the old lady could possibly want. "You can have anything I have. Name it," she said cheerfully to her visitor. But only a moment more, and all her fears returned at the thought that the visitor might ask for her boy. The old lady spoke again and said: "I want to help you all I can, but what I came here for is to get the little boy in the cradle." The widow now saw that the old woman was a fairy, and that if her visitor got hold of her son, she would never see her child again. So she begged piteously of the old lady, to take anything and everything, except her one child. "No, I want that boy, and, if you want the gold, you must let me take him." "Is there anything else that I can do for you, so that I may get the money?" asked the widow. "Well, I'll make it easier for you. There are two things I must tell you to cheer you." "What are they?" asked the widow, eagerly. "One is, that by our fairy law, I cannot take your boy, until three days have passed. Then, I shall come again, and you shall have the gold; but only on the one condition I have stated." "And the next?" almost gasped the widow. "If you can guess my name, you will doubly win; for then, I shall give you the gold and you can keep your boy." Without waiting for another word, the lady in green scooped up her money, put it back in the bag, and moved off and out the door. The poor woman, at once a widow and mother, and now stripped of her property, fearing to lose her boy, brooded all night over her troubles and never slept a wink. In the morning, she rose up, left her baby with a neighbor, and went to visit some relatives in the next village, which was several miles distant. She told her story, but her kinsfolk were too poor to help her. So, all disconsolate, she turned her face homewards. On her way back she had to pass through the woods, where, on one side, was a clearing. In the middle of this open space, was a ring of grass. In the ring a little fairy lady was tripping around and singing to herself. Creeping up silently, the anxious mother heard to her joy, a rhymed couplet and caught the sound of a name, several times repeated. It sounded like "Silly Doot." Hurrying home and perfectly sure that she knew the secret that would save her boy, she set cheerily about her regular work and daily tasks. In fact, she slept soundly that night. Next day, in came the lady in green as before, with her bag of money. Taking her seat at the round table, near the fire, she poured out the gold. Then jingling the coins in the pile, she said: "Now give up your boy, or guess my name, if you want me to help you." The young widow, feeling sure that she had the old fairy in a trap, thought she would have some fun first. "How many guesses am I allowed?" she asked. "All you want, and as many as you please," answered the green lady, smiling. The widow rattled off a string of names, English, Welsh and Biblical; but every time the fairy shook her head. Her eyes began to gleam, as if she felt certain of getting the boy. She even moved her chair around to the side nearest the cradle. "One more guess," cried the widow. "Can it be Silly Doot?" At this sound, the fairy turned red with rage. At the same moment, the door opened wide and a blast of wind made the hearth fire flare up. Leaving her gold behind her, the old woman flew up the chimney, and disappeared over the housetops. The widow scooped up the gold, bought two cows, furnished her cottage with new chairs and fresh flowers, and put the rest of the coins away under one of the flag stones at the hearth. When her boy grew up, she gave him a good education, and he became one of the fearless judges, who, with the aid of Baron Owen, rooted out of their lair the Red Bandits, that had robbed his mother. Since that day, there has been little crime in Wales--the best governed part of the kingdom. XXIII THE FAIRY CONGRESS One can hardly think of Wales without a harp. The music of this most ancient and honorable instrument, which emits sweet sounds, when heard in a foreign land makes Welsh folks homesick for the old country and the music of the harp. Its strings can wail with woe, ripple with merriment, sound out the notes of war and peace, and lift the soul in heavenly melody. Usually a player on the harp opened the Eistedfodd, as the Welsh literary congress is called, but this time they had engaged for the fairies a funny little fellow to start the programme with a solo on his violin. The figure of this musician, at the congress of Welsh fairies, was the most comical of any in the company. The saying that he was popular with all the mountain spirits was shown to be true, the moment he began to scrape his fiddle, for then they all crowded around him. "Did you ever see such a tiny specimen?" asked Queen Mab of Puck. The little fiddler came forward and drawing his instrument from under his arm, proceeded to scrape the strings. He had on a pair of moss trousers, and his coat was a yellow gorse flower. His feet were clad in shoes made of beetles' wings, which always kept bright, as if polished with a brush. When one looked at the fiddle, he could see that it was only a wooden spoon, with strings across the bowl. But the moment he drew the bow from one side to the other, all the elves, from every part of the hills, came tripping along to hear the music, and at once began dancing. Some of these elves were dressed in pink, some in blue, others in yellow, and many had glow worms in their hands. Their tread was so light that the flower stems never bent, nor was a petal crushed, when they walked over the turf. All, as they came near, bowed or dropped a curtsey. Then the little musician took off his cap to each, and bowed in return. There was too much business before the meeting for dancing to be kept up very long, but when the violin solo was over, at a sign given by the fiddler, the dancers took seats wherever they could find them, on the grass, or gorse, or heather, or on the stones. After order had been secured, the chairman of the meeting read regrets from those who had been invited but could not be present. The first note was from the mermaids, who lived near the Green Isles of the Ocean. They asked to be excused from traveling inland and climbing rocks. In the present delicate state of their health this would be too fatiguing. Poor things! It was unanimously voted that they be excused. Queen Mab was dressed, as befitted the occasion, like a Welsh lady, not wearing a crown, but a high peaked hat, pointed at the top and about half a yard high. It was black and was held on by fastenings of scalloped lace, that came down around her neck. The lake fairies, or Elfin Maids, were out in full force. These lived at the bottom of the many ponds and pools in Wales. Many stories are told of the wonderful things they did with boats and cattle. Nowadays, when they milk cows by electric machinery and use steam launches on the water, most of the water sprites of all kinds have been driven away, for they do not like the smell of kerosene or gasoline. It is for these reasons that, in our day, they are not often seen. In fact, cows from the creameries can wade out into the water and even stand in it, while lashing their tails to keep off the flies, without any danger, as in old times, of being pulled down by the Elfin Maids. The little Red Men, that could hide under a thimble, and have plenty of room to spare, were all out. The elves, and nixies and sprites, of all colors and many forms were on hand. The pigmies, who guard the palace of the king of the world underground, came in their gay dresses. There were three of them, and they brought in their hands balls of gold, with which to play tenpins, but they were not allowed to have any games while the meeting was going on. In fact, just when these little fellows from down under the earth were showing off their gay clothes and their treasures from the caves, one mischievous fairy maid sidled up to their chief and whispered in his ear: "Better put away your gold, for this is in modern Wales, where they have pawn shops. Three golden balls, two above the one below, which you often see nowadays, mean that two to one you will never get it again. These hang out as the sign of a pawnbroker's shop, and what you put in does not, as a rule, come out. I am afraid that some of the Cymric fairies from Cornwall, or Montgomery, or Cheshire, might think you were after business, and you understand that no advertising is allowed here." In a moment, each of the three leaders thrust his ball into his bosom. It made his coat bulge out, and at this, some of the fairies wondered, but all they thought of was that this spoiled a handsome fellow's figure. Or was it some new idea? To tell the truth, they were vexed at not keeping up with the new fashions, for they knew nothing of this latest fad among such fine young gallants. Much of the chat and gossip, before and after the meeting, was between the fairies who live in the air, or on mountains, and those down in the earth, or deep in the sea. They swapped news, gossip and scandal at a great rate. There were a dozen or two fine-looking creatures who had high brows, who said they were Co-eds. This did not mean that these fairies had ever been through college. "Certainly the college never went through them," said one very homely fairy, who was spiteful and jealous. The simple fact was that the one they called Betty, the Co-ed, and others from that Welsh village, called Bryn Mawr, and another from Flint, and another from Yale, and still others from Brimbo and from Co-ed Poeth, had come from places so named and down on the map of Wales, though they were no real Co-ed girls there, that could talk French, or English, or read Latin. In fact, Co-ed simply meant that they were from the woods and lived among the trees; for Co-ed in Welsh means a forest. The fairy police were further instructed not to admit, and, if such were found, to put out the following bad characters, for this was a perfectly respectable meeting. These naughty folks were: The Old Hag of the Mist. The Invisible Hag that moans dolefully in the night. The Tolaeth, a creature never seen, but that groans, sings, saws, or stamps noisily. The Dogs of the Sky. All witches, of every sort and kind. All peddlers of horseshoes, crosses, charms, or amulets. All mortals with brains fuddled by liquor. All who had on shoes which water would not run under. All fairies that were accustomed to turn mortals into cheese. Every one of these, who might want to get in, were to be refused admittance. Another circle of rather exclusive fairies, who always kept away from the blacksmiths, hardware stores, smelting furnaces and mines, had formed an anti-iron society. These were a kind of a Welsh "Four Hundred," or élite, who would have nothing to do with anyone who had an iron tool, or weapon, or ornament in his hand, or on his dress, or who used iron in any form, or for any use. They frowned upon the idea of Cymric Land becoming rich by mining, and smelting, and selling iron. They did not even approve of the idea that any imps and dwarfs of the iron mines should be admitted to the meeting. One clique of fairies, that looked like elves were in bad humor, almost to moping. When one of these got up to speak, it seemed as if he would never sit down. He tired all the lively fairies by long-winded reminiscences, of druids, and mistletoes, and by telling every one how much better the old times were than the present. President Puck, who always liked things short, and was himself as lively as quicksilver, many times called these long-winded fellows to order; but they kept meandering on, until daybreak, when it was time to adjourn, lest the sunshine should spoil them all, and change them into slate or stone. It was hard to tell just how much business was disposed of, at this session, or whether one ever came to the point, although there was a great deal of oratory and music. Much of what was said was in poetry, or in verses, or rhymes, of three lines each. What they talked about was mainly in protest against the smoke of factories and collieries, and because there was so much soot, and so little soap, in the land. But what did they do at the fairy congress? The truth is, that nobody to-day knows what was done in this session of the fairies, for the proceedings were kept secret. The only one who knows was an old Welshman whom the story-teller used to meet once in a while. He is the one mortal who knows anything about this meeting, and he won't tell; or at least he won't talk in anything but Welsh. So we have to find out the gist of the matter, by noticing, in the stories which we have just read what the fairies did. XXIV THE SWORD OF AVALON Many of the Welsh tales are about fighting and wars and no country as small as Wales has so many castles. Yet these are nearly all in ruins and children play in them. This is because men got tired of battles and sieges. Everybody knows that after King Arthur's knights had punched and speared, whacked and chopped at each other with axe and sword long enough, had slain dragons and tamed monsters, and rescued princesses from cruel uncles, and good men from dark dungeons, even the plain people, such as farmers and mechanics, had enough and wanted no more. Besides this, they wished to be treated more like human beings, and not have to work so hard and also to keep their money when they earned it. Even King Arthur himself, towards the end of this era, saw that fashions were changing and that he must change with them. Hardware was too high in price, and was no longer needed for clothing. He was wise enough to see that battle axes, maces, swords, lances and armor had better be put to some better use, when iron was getting scarce and wool and linen were cheaper. Even the stupid Normans learned that decency and kindness cost less, and accomplished more in making the Welshery loyal subjects of the king. So when, after many battles, King Arthur went out to have a little war of his own, and to enjoy the fight, in which he was mortally wounded, he showed his greatness, even in the hour of death. In truth, it is given to some men, like Samson, to be even mightier when they die, than when following the strenuous life. So it was with this great and good man of Cymry. His love for his people never ceased for one moment, and in his dying hour he left a bequest that all his people have understood and acted upon. Thus it has come to pass that the Welsh have been really unconquerable, by Saxon or Norman, or even in these twentieth century days by Teutons. Though living in a small country, they are among the greatest in the world, not in force, or in material things, but in soul. When Belgium was invaded, they not only stood up in battle against the invader, but they welcomed to their homes tens of thousands of fugitives and fed and sheltered them. Brave as lions, their path of progress has been in faithfulness to duty, industry, and patience, and along the paths of poetry, music and brotherhood. Their motto for ages has been, "Truth against the World." Now the manner of King Arthur's taking off and his immortal legacy was on this fashion: After doing a great many wonderful things, in many countries, King Arthur came back to punish the wicked man, Modred. In the battle that ensued, he received wounds that made him feel that he was very soon to die. So he ordered his loyal vassal to take his sword to the island of Avalon. There he must cast the weapon into the deep water. But the sword was part of the soul of Arthur. It would not sink out of sight, until it had given a message, from their king to the Welsh, for all time. After it had been thrown in the water, it disappeared, but rose again. First the shining blade, and then the hilt, and then a hand was seen to rise out of the flood. Thrice that hand waved the sword round and round. This was the prophecy of "the deathless from the dead." King Arthur's body might be hid in a cave, or molder in the ground, but his soul was to live and cheer his people. His beloved Cymric nation, with their undying language, were to rise in power again. And the resurrection has been glorious. Not by the might of the soldier, or by arms or war--though the Welsh never flinch from duty, or before the foe--but by the power of poet, singer and the narrator of stories, that touch the imagination, and fire the soul to noble deeds, have these results come. Arthur's good blade, thus waved above the waters, became a veritable sword of the Spirit. Men of genius arose to flush with color the old legends. Prophets, preachers, monks, missionaries carried these all over Europe, and made them the vehicles of Christian doctrine. In their new forms, they fired the imagination and illuminated, as with ten thousand lamps, many lands and nations, until they held every people in spell. In miracle and morality play, they reappeared in beauty. They attuned the harp and instrument of the musician and the troubadour, and these sang the gospel in all lands, north and south, while telling the stories of Adam, and of Abraham, of Bethlehem, and of the cross, of the Holy Grail, and of Arthur and his Knights. All the precious lore of the Celtic race became transfigured, to illustrate and enforce Christian truth. The symbolical bowl, the Celtic caldron of abundance, became the cup of the Eucharist and the Grail the symbol of blessings eternal. By the artists, in the stained glass, and in windows of the great churches, which were built no longer of wood but of stone, that blossomed under the chisel, the old legends were, by the new currents of truth, given a mystic glow. As wonderful as the rise of Gothic architecture and the upbuilding of cathedrals, as glorious as the light and art, that beautify the great temples of worship, was this re-birth of the Arthurian legends. For now, again, the old virtues of the knightly days--loyalty, obedience, redress of wrongs, reverence of womanhood, and the application of Christian ethics to the old rude rules of decency, lifted the life of the common people to a nobler plane and ushered in the modern days. Then, after seven hundred years, a host of singers, Tennyson leading them all, attuned the old Celtic harp. They reset for us the Cymric melody and colorful incidents in "the light that never was on sea or land." The old days live again in a greater glory. Lady Guest put the Mabinogion into English, and Renan, and Arnold, and Rolleston, and Rhys, in prose, competed in praise of the heritages from the old time. Popular education was diffused. The Welsh language rose again from the dead. Cardiff holds in pure white marble the most thrilling interpretation of Welsh history, in the twelve white marble statues of the great men of Wales. The Welsh people, by bloodless victory, have won the respect of all mankind. They set a beacon for the oppressed nations. In the World War of 1914-1918, they helped to save freedom and civilization. They were in the van. Long may the sword of Arthur wave! 
53915	----	Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections) FOLK-LORE OF WEST AND MID-WALES BY JONATHAN CEREDIG DAVIES Member of the Folk-Lore Society, Author of "Adventures in the Land of Giants," "Western Australia," &c. With a Preface BY ALICE, COUNTESS AMHERST. "Cared doeth yr encilion." ABERYSTWYTH: PRINTED AT THE "WELSH GAZETTE" OFFICES, BRIDGE STREET. 1911. This book is respectfully dedicated by the Author to COUNTESS OF LISBURNE, CROSSWOOD. ALICE, COUNTESS AMHERST. LADY ENID VAUGHAN. LADY WEBLEY-PARRY-PRYSE, GOGERDDAN. LADY HILLS-JOHNES OF DOLAUCOTHY. MRS. HERBERT DAVIES-EVANS, HIGHMEAD. MRS. WILLIAM BEAUCLERK POWELL, NANTEOS. PREFACE BY ALICE, COUNTESS AMHERST. The writer of this book lived for many years in the Welsh Colony, Patagonia, where he was the pioneer of the Anglican Church. He published a book dealing with that part of the world, which also contained a great deal of interesting matter regarding the little known Patagonian Indians, Ideas on Religion and Customs, etc. He returned to Wales in 1891; and after spending a few years in his native land, went out to a wild part of Western Australia, and was the pioneer Christian worker in a district called Colliefields, where he also built a church. (No one had ever conducted Divine Service in that place before.) Here again, he found time to write his experiences, and his book contained a great deal of value to the Folklorist, regarding the aborigines of that country, quite apart from the ordinary account of Missionary enterprise, history and prospects of Western Australia, etc. In 1901, Mr. Ceredig Davies came back to live in his native country, Wales. In Cardiganshire, and the centre of Wales, generally, there still remains a great mass of unrecorded Celtic Folk Lore, Tradition, and Custom. Thus it was suggested that if Mr. Ceredig Davies wished again to write a book--the material for a valuable one lay at his door if he cared to undertake it. His accurate knowledge of Welsh gave him great facility for the work. He took up the idea, and this book is the result of his labours. The main object has been to collect "verbatim," and render the Welsh idiom into English as nearly as possible these old stories still told of times gone by. The book is in no way written to prove, or disprove, any of the numerous theories and speculations regarding the origin of the Celtic Race, its Religion or its Traditions. The fundamental object has been to commit to writing what still remains of the unwritten Welsh Folk Lore, before it is forgotten, and this is rapidly becoming the case. The subjects are divided on the same lines as most of the books on Highland and Irish Folk Lore, so that the student will find little trouble in tracing the resemblance, or otherwise, of the Folk Lore in Wales with that of the two sister countries. ALICE AMHERST. Plas Amherst, Harlech, North Wales, 1911. INTRODUCTION. Welsh folk-lore is almost inexhaustible, and of great importance to the historian and others. Indeed, without a knowledge of the past traditions, customs and superstitions of the people, the history of a country is not complete. In this book I deal chiefly with the three counties of Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire, technically known in the present day as "West Wales"; but as I have introduced so many things from the counties bordering on Cardigan and Carmarthen, such as Montgomery, Radnor, Brecon, etc., I thought proper that the work should be entitled, "The Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales." Although I have been for some years abroad, in Patagonia, and Australia, yet I know almost every county in my native land; and there is hardly a spot in the three counties of Carmarthen, Cardigan, and Pembroke that I have not visited during the last nine years, gathering materials for this book from old people and others who were interested in such subject, spending three or four months in some districts. All this took considerable time and trouble, not to mention of the expenses in going about; but I generally walked much, especially in the remote country districts, but I feel I have rescued from oblivion things which are dying out, and many things which have died out already. I have written very fully concerning the old Welsh Wedding and Funeral Customs, and obtained most interesting account of them from aged persons. The "Bidder's Song," by Daniel Ddu, which first appeared in the "Cambrian Briton" 1822, is of special interest. Mrs. Loxdale, of Castle Hill, showed me a fine silver cup which had been presented to this celebrated poet. I have also a chapter on Fairies; but as I found that Fairy Lore has almost died out in those districts which I visited, and the traditions concerning them already recorded, I was obliged to extract much of my information on this subject from books, though I found a few new fairy stories in Cardiganshire. But as to my chapters about Witches, Wizards, Death Omens, I am indebted for almost all my information to old men and old women whom I visited in remote country districts, and I may emphatically state that I have not embellished the stories, or added to anything I have heard; and care has been taken that no statement be made conveying an idea different from what has been heard. Indeed, I have in nearly all instances given the names, and even the addresses of those from whom I obtained my information. If there are a few Welsh idioms in the work here and there, the English readers must remember that the information was given me in the Welsh language by the aged peasants, and that I have faithfully endeavoured to give a literal rendering of the narrative. About 350 ladies and gentlemen have been pleased to give their names as subscribers to the book, and I have received kind and encouraging letters from distinguished and eminent persons from all parts of the kingdom, and I thank them all for their kind support. I have always taken a keen interest in the History and traditions of my native land, which I love so well; and it is very gratifying that His Royal Highness, the young Prince of Wales, has so graciously accepted a genealogical table, in which I traced his descent from Cadwaladr the Blessed, the last Welsh prince who claimed the title of King of Britain. I undertook to write this book at the suggestion and desire of Alice, Countess Amherst, to whom I am related, and who loves all Celtic things, especially Welsh traditions and legends; and about nine or ten years ago, in order to suggest the "lines of search," her Ladyship cleverly put together for me the following interesting sketch or headings, which proved a good guide when I was beginning to gather Folk-Lore:-- (1) Traditions of Fairies. (2) Tales illustrative of Fairy Lore. (3) Tutelary Beings. (4) Mermaids and Mermen. (5) Traditions of Water Horses out of lakes, if any? (6) Superstitions about animals:--Sea Serpents, Magpie, Fish, Dog, Raven, Cuckoo, Cats, etc. (7) Miscellaneous:--Rising, Clothing, Baking, Hen's first egg; Funerals; Corpse Candles; On first coming to a house on New Year's Day; on going into a new house; Protection against Evil Spirits; ghosts haunting places, houses, hills and roads; Lucky times, unlucky actions. (8) Augury:--Starting on a journey; on seeing the New Moon. (9) Divination; Premonitions; Shoulder Blade Reading; Palmistry; Cup Reading. (10) Dreams and Prophecies; Prophecies of Merlin and local ones. (11) Spells and Black Art:--Spells, Black Art, Wizards, Witches. (12) Traditions of Strata Florida, King Edward burning the Abbey, etc. (13) Marriage Customs.--What the Bride brings to the house; The Bridegroom. (14) Birth Customs. (15) Death Customs. (16) Customs of the Inheritance of farms; and Sheep Shearing Customs. Another noble lady who was greatly interested in Welsh Antiquities, was the late Dowager Lady Kensington; and her Ladyship, had she lived, intended to write down for me a few Pembrokeshire local traditions that she knew in order to record them in this book. In an interesting long letter written to me from Bothwell Castle, Lanarkshire, dated September 9th, 1909, her Ladyship, referring to Welsh Traditions and Folk-Lore, says:--"I always think that such things should be preserved and collected now, before the next generation lets them go! ... I am leaving home in October for India, for three months." She did leave home for India in October, but sad to say, died there in January; but her remains were brought home and buried at St. Bride's, Pembrokeshire. On the date of her death I had a remarkable dream, which I have recorded in this book, see page 277. I tender my very best thanks to Evelyn, Countess of Lisburne, for so much kindness and respect, and of whom I think very highly as a noble lady who deserves to be specially mentioned; and also the young Earl of Lisburne, and Lady Enid Vaughan, who have been friends to me even from the time when they were children. I am equally indebted to Colonel Davies-Evans, the esteemed Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire, and Mrs. Davies-Evans, in particular, whose kindness I shall never forget. I have on several occasions had the great pleasure and honour of being their guest at Highmead. I am also very grateful to my warm friends the Powells of Nanteos, and also to Mrs. A. Crawley-Boevey, Birchgrove, Crosswood, sister of Countess Lisburne. Other friends who deserve to be mentioned are, Sir Edward and Lady Webley-Parry-Pryse, of Gogerddan; Sir John and Lady Williams, Plas, Llanstephan (now of Aberystwyth); General Sir James and Lady Hills-Johnes, and Mrs. Johnes of Dolaucothy (who have been my friends for nearly twenty years); the late Sir Lewis Morris, Penbryn; Lady Evans, Lovesgrove; Colonel Lambton, Brownslade, Pem.; Colonel and Mrs. Gwynne-Hughes, of Glancothy; Mrs. Wilmot Inglis-Jones; Capt. and Mrs. Bertie Davies-Evans; Mr. and Mrs. Loxdale, Castle Hill, Llanilar; Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd, Waunifor; Mrs. Webley-Tyler, of Glanhelig; Archdeacon Williams, of Aberystwyth; Professor Tyrrell Green, Lampeter; Dr. Hughes, and Dr. Rees, of Llanilar; Rev. J. F. Lloyd, vicar of Llanilar, the energetic secretary of the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society; Rev. Joseph Evans, Rector of Jordanston, Fishguard; Rev. W. J. Williams, Vicar of Llanafan; Rev. H. M. Williams, Vicar of Lledrod; Rev. J. N. Evans, Vicar of Llangybi; Rev. T. Davies, Vicar of Llanddewi Brefi; Rev. Rhys Morgan, C. M. Minister, Llanddewi Brefi; Rev. J. Phillips, Vicar of Llancynfelyn; Rev. J. Morris, Vicar, Llanybyther; Rev. W. M. Morgan-Jones (late of Washington, U.S.A.); Rev. G. Eyre Evans, Aberystwyth; Rev. Z. M. Davies, Vicar of Llanfihangel Geneu'r Glyn; Rev. J. Jones, Curate of Nantgaredig; Rev. Prys Williams (Brythonydd) Baptist Minister in Carmarthenshire; Rev. D. G. Williams, Congregational Minister, St. Clears (winner of the prize at the National Eisteddfod, for the best essay on the Folk-Lore of Carmarthen); Mr. William Davies, Talybont (winner of the prize at the National Eisteddfod for the best essay on the Folk-Lore of Merioneth); Mr. Roderick Evans, J. P., Lampeter; Rev. G. Davies, Vicar of Blaenpenal; Mr. Stedman-Thomas (deceased), Carmarthen, and others in all parts of the country too numerous to be mentioned here. Many other names appear in the body of my book, more especially aged persons from whom I obtained information. JONATHAN CEREDIG DAVIES. Llanilar, Cardiganshire. March 18th, 1911. CONTENTS. PAGE. Dedication III. Preface V. Introduction VII. I. Love Customs, etc. 1 II. Wedding Customs 16 III. Funeral Customs 39 IV. Other Customs 59 V. Fairies and Mermaids 88 VI. Ghost Stories 148 VII. Death Portents 192 VIII. Miscellaneous Beliefs, Birds, etc. 215 IX. Witches and Wizards, etc. 230 X. Folk-Healing 281 XI. Fountains, Lakes, and Caves ... 298 XII. Local Traditions 315 CHAPTER I. LOVE CUSTOMS AND OMEN SEEKING. "Pwy sy'n caru, a phwy sy'n peidio, A phwy sy'n troi hen gariad heibio." Who loves, and who loves not, And who puts off his old love? Undoubtedly, young men and young women all over the world from the time of Adam to the present day, always had, and still have, their modes or ways of associating or keeping company with one another whilst they are in love, and waiting for, and looking forward to, the bright wedding day. In Wales, different modes of courting prevail; but I am happy to state the old disgraceful custom of bundling, which was once so common in some rural districts, has entirely died out, or at least we do not hear anything about it nowadays. I believe Wirt Sikes is right in his remarks when he says that such a custom has had its origin in primitive times, when, out of the necessities of existence, a whole household lay down together for greater warmth, with their usual clothing on. Giraldus Cambrensis, 700 years ago, writes of this custom in these words:-- "Propinquo concubantium calore multum adjuti." Of course, ministers of religion, both the Clergy of the Church of England and Nonconformist ministers condemned such practice very sternly, but about two generations ago, there were many respectable farmers who more or less defended the custom, and it continued to a certain extent until very recently, even without hardly any immoral consequences, owing to the high moral standard and the religious tendencies of the Welsh people. One reason for the prevalence of such custom was that in times past in Wales, both farm servants and farmers' sons and daughters were so busy, from early dawn till a late hour in the evening that they had hardly time or an opportunity to attend to their love affairs, except in the night time. Within the memory of hundreds who are still alive, it was the common practice of many of the young men in Cardiganshire and other parts of West Wales, to go on a journey for miles in the depth of night to see the fair maidens, and on their way home, perhaps, about 3 o'clock in the morning they would see a ghost or an apparition! but that did not keep them from going out at night to see the girls they loved, or to try to make love. Sometimes, several young men would proceed together on a courting expedition, as it were, if we may use such a term, and after a good deal of idle talk about the young ladies, some of them would direct their steps towards a certain farmhouse in one direction, and others in another direction in order to see their respective sweethearts, and this late at night as I have already mentioned. It was very often the case that a farmer's son and the servant would go together to a neighbouring farm house, a few miles off, the farmer's son to see the daughter of the house, and the servant to see the servant maid, and when this happened it was most convenient and suited them both. After approaching the house very quietly, they would knock at the window of the young woman's room, very cautiously, however, so as not to arouse the farmer and his wife. I heard the following story when a boy:--A young farmer, who lived somewhere between Tregaron and Lampeter, in Cardiganshire, rode one night to a certain farm-house, some miles off, to have a talk with the young woman of his affection, and after arriving at his destination, he left his horse in a stable and then entered the house to see his sweetheart. Meanwhile, a farm servant played him a trick by taking the horse out of the stable, and putting a bull there instead. About 3 o'clock in the morning the young lover decided to go home, and went to the stable for his horse. It was very dark, and as he entered the stable he left the door wide open, through which an animal rushed wildly out, which he took for his horse. He ran after the animal for hours, but at daybreak, to his great disappointment, found that he had been running after a bull! Another common practice is to meet at the fairs, or on the way home from the fairs. In most of the country towns and villages there are special fairs for farm servants, both male and female, to resort to; and many farmers' sons and daughters attend them as well. These fairs give abundant opportunity for association and intimacy between young men and women. Indeed, it is at these fairs that hundreds of boys and girls meet for the first time. A young man comes in contact with a young girl, he gives her some "fairings" or offers her a glass of something to drink, and accompanies her home in the evening. Sometimes when it happens that there should be a prettier and more attractive maiden than the rest present at the fair, occasionally a scuffle or perhaps a fight takes place, between several young men in trying to secure her society, and on such occasions, of course, the best young man in her sight is to have the privilege of her company. As to whether the Welsh maidens are prettier or not so pretty as English girls, I am not able to express an opinion; but that many of them were both handsome and attractive in the old times, at least, is an historical fact; for we know that it was a very common thing among the old Norman Nobles, after the Conquest, to marry Welsh ladies, whilst they reduced the Anglo-Saxons almost to slavery. Who has not heard the beautiful old Welsh Air, "Morwynion Glan Meirionydd" ("The Pretty Maidens of Merioneth")? Good many men tell me that the young women of the County of Merioneth are much more handsome than those of Cardiganshire; but that Cardiganshire women make the best wives. Myddfai Parish in Carmarthenshire was in former times celebrated for its fair maidens, according to an old rhyme which records their beauty thus:-- "Mae eira gwyn ar ben y bryn, A'r glasgoed yn y Ferdre, Mae bedw mân ynghanol Cwm-bran, A merched glân yn Myddfe." Principal Sir John Rhys translates this as follows:-- "There is white snow on the mountain's brow, And greenwood at the Verdre, Young birch so good in Cwm-bran wood, And lovely girls in Myddfe." In the time of King Arthur of old, the fairest maiden in Wales was the beautiful Olwen, whom the young Prince Kilhwch married after many adventures. In the Mabinogion we are informed that "more yellow was her hair than the flowers of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemone, amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three-mewed falcon, was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan; her cheek was redder than the reddest roses. Those who beheld her were filled with her love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod. She was clothed in a robe of flame-coloured silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies." A good deal of courting is done at the present day while going home from church or chapel as the case may be. The Welsh people are very religious, and almost everybody attends a place of worship, and going home from church gives young people of both sexes abundant opportunities of becoming intimate with one another. Indeed, it is almost a general custom now for a young man to accompany a young lady home from church. The Welsh people are of an affectionate disposition, and thoroughly enjoy the pleasures of love, but they keep their love more secret, perhaps, than the English; and Welsh bards at all times have been celebrated for singing in praise of female beauty. Davydd Ap Gwilym, the chief poet of Wales, sang at least one hundred love songs to his beloved Morfudd. This celebrated bard flourished in the fourteenth century, and he belonged to a good family, for his father, Gwilym Gam, was a direct descendant from Llywarch Ap Bran, chief of one of the fifteen royal tribes of North Wales; and his mother was a descendant of the Princes of South Wales. According to the traditions of Cardiganshire people, Davydd was born at Bro-Gynin, near Gogerddan, in the Parish of Llanbadarn-Fawr, and only a few miles from the spot where the town of Aberystwyth is situated at present. An ancient bard informs us that Taliesin of old had foretold the honour to be conferred on Bro-Gynin, in being the birthplace of a poet whose muse should be as the sweetness of wine:-- "Am Dafydd, gelfydd goelin--praff awdwr, Prophwydodd Taliesin, Y genid ym mro Gynin, Brydydd a'i gywydd fel gwin." The poet, Davydd Ap Gwilym, is represented as a fair young man who loved many, or that many were the young maidens who fell in love with him, and there is one most amusing tradition of his love adventures. It is said that on one occasion he went to visit about twenty young ladies about the same time, and that he appointed a meeting with each of them under an oak-tree--all of them at the same hour. Meanwhile, the young bard had secretly climbed up the tree and concealed himself among the branches, so that he might see the event of this meeting. Every one of the young girls was there punctually at the appointed time, and equally astonished to perceive any female there besides herself. They looked at one another in surprise, and at last one of them asked another, "What brought you here?" "to keep an appointment with Dafydd ap Gwilym" was the reply. "That's how I came also" said the other "and I" added a third girl, and all of them had the same tale. They then discovered the trick which Dafydd had played with them, and all of them agreed together to punish him, and even to kill him, if they could get hold of him. Dafydd, who was peeping from his hiding-place amongst the branches of the tree, replied as follows in rhyme:-- "Y butein wen fain fwynnf--o honoch I hono maddeuaf, Tan frig pren a heulwen haf, Teg anterth, t'rawed gyntaf!" The words have been translated by someone something as follows:-- "If you can be so cruel, Let the kind wanton jade, Who oftenest met me in this shade, On summer's morn, by love inclined, Let her strike first, and I'm resigned." Dafydd's words had the desired effect. The young women began to question each other's purity, which led to a regular quarrel between them, and, during the scuffle, the poet escaped safe and sound. After this the Poet fell in love with the daughter of one Madog Lawgam, whose name was Morfudd, and in her honour he wrote many songs, and it seems that he ever remained true to this lady. They were secretly married in the woodland; but Morfudd's parents disliked the Poet so much for some reason or other, that the beautiful young lady was taken away from him and compelled to marry an old man known as Bwa Bach, or Little Hunchback. Dafydd was tempted to elope with Morfudd, but he was found, fined and put in prison; but through the kindness of the men of Glamorgan, who highly esteemed the Poet, he was released. After this, it seems that Dafydd was love-sick as long as he lived, and at last died of love, and he left the following directions for his funeral:-- "My spotless shroud shall be of summer flowers, My coffin from out the woodland bowers: The flowers of wood and wild shall be my pall, My bier, light forest branches green and tall; And thou shalt see the white gulls of the main In thousands gather then to bear my train!" One of Dafydd's chief patrons was his kinsman, the famous and noble Ivor Hael, Lord of Macsaleg, from whose stock the present Viscount Tredegar is a direct descendant, and, in judging the character of the Poet we must take into consideration what was the moral condition of the country in the fourteenth century. But to come to more modern times, tradition has it that a young man named Morgan Jones of Dolau Gwyrddon, in the Vale of Teivi, fell in love with the Squire of Dyffryn Llynod's daughter. The young man and the young woman were passionately in love with each other; but the Squire, who was a staunch Royalist, refused to give his consent to his daughter's marriage with Morgan Jones, as the young man's grandfather had fought for Cromwell. The courtship between the lovers was kept on for years in secret, and the Squire banished his daughter to France more than once. At last the young lady fell a victim to the small pox, and died. Just before her death, her lover came to see her, and caught the fever from her, and he also died. His last wish was that he should be buried in the same grave as the one he had loved so dearly, but this was denied him. In Merionethshire there is a tradition that many generations ago a Squire of Gorsygedol, near Harlech, had a beautiful daughter who fell in love with a shepherd boy. To prevent her seeing the young man, her father locked his daughter in a garret, but a secret correspondence was carried on between the lovers by means of a dove she had taught to carry the letters. The young lady at last died broken-hearted, and soon after her burial the dove was found dead upon her grave! And the young man with a sad heart left his native land for ever. More happy, though not less romantic, was the lot of a young man who was shipwrecked on the coast of Pembrokeshire, and washed up more dead than alive on the seashore, where he was found by the daughter and heiress of Sir John de St. Bride's, who caused him to be carried to her father's house where he was hospitably entertained. The young man, of course, was soon head and ears in love with his fair deliverer, and the lady being in nowise backward in response to his suit, they married and founded a family of Laugharnes, and their descendants for generations resided at Orlandon, near St. Bride's. The Rev. D. G. Williams in his interesting Welsh collection of the Folk-lore of Carmarthenshire says that in that part of the county which borders on Pembrokeshire, there is a strange custom of presenting a rejected lover with a yellow flower, or should it happen at the time of year when there are no flowers, to give a yellow ribbon. This reminds us of a curious old custom which was formerly very common everywhere in Wales; that of presenting a rejected lover, whether male or female, with a stick or sprig of hazel-tree. According to the "Cambro Briton," for November, 1821, this was often done at a "Cyfarfod Cymhorth," or a meeting held for the benefit of a poor person, at whose house or at that of a neighbour, a number of young women, mostly servants, used to meet by permission of their respective employers, in order to give a day's work, either in spinning or knitting, according as there was need of their assistance, and, towards the close of the day, when their task was ended, dancing and singing were usually introduced, and the evening spent with glee and conviviality. At the early part of the day, it was customary for the young women to receive some presents from their several suitors, as a token of their truth or inconstancy. On this occasion the lover could not present anything more odious to the fair one than the sprig of a "collen," or hazel-tree, which was always a well-known sign of a change of mind on the part of the young man, and, consequently, that the maiden could no longer expect to be the real object of his choice. The presents, in general, consisted of cakes, silver spoons, etc., and agreeably to the respectability of the sweetheart, and were highly decorated with all manner of flowers; and if it was the lover's intention to break off his engagement with the young lady, he had only to add a sprig of hazel. These pledges were handed to the respective lasses by the different "Caisars," or Merry Andrews,--persons dressed in disguise for the occasion, who, in their turn, used to take each his young woman by the hand to an adjoining room where they would deliver the "pwysi," or nose-gay, as it was called, and afterwards immediately retire upon having mentioned the giver's name. When a young woman also had made up her mind to have nothing further to do with a young man who had been her lover, or proposed to become one, she used to give him a "ffon wen," (white wand) from an hazel tree, decorated with white ribbons. This was a sign to the young man that she did not love him. The Welsh name for hazel-tree is "collen." Now the word "coll" has a double meaning; it means to lose anything, as well as a name for the hazel, and it is the opinion of some that this double meaning of the word gave the origin to the custom of making use of the hazel-tree as a sign of the loss of a lover. It is also worthy of notice, that, whilst the hazel indicated the rejection of a lover, the birch tree, on the other hand, was used as an emblem of love, or in other words that a lover was accepted. Among the Welsh young persons of both sexes were able to make known their love to one another without speaking, only by presenting a Birchen-Wreath. This curious old custom of presenting a rejected lover with a white wand was known at Pontrhydfendigaid, in Cardiganshire until only a few years ago. My informant was Dr. Morgan, Pontrhydygroes. Mrs. Hughes, Cwrtycadno, Llanilar, also informed me that she had heard something about such custom at Tregaron, when she was young. It was also the custom to adorn a mixture of birch and quicken-tree with flowers and a ribbon, and leave it where it was most likely to be found by the person intended on May-morning. Dafydd ap Gwilym, the poet, I have just referred to, mentions of this in singing to Morfudd. Young people of both sexes, are very anxious to know whether they are to marry the lady or the gentleman they now love, or who is to be their future partner in life, or are they to die single. Young people have good many most curious and different ways to decide all such interesting and important questions, by resorting to uncanny and romantic charms and incantations. To seek hidden information by incantation was very often resorted to in times past, especially about a hundred years ago, and even at the present day, but not as much as in former times. It was believed, and is perhaps, still believed by some, that the spirit of a person could be invoked, and that it would appear, and that young women by performing certain ceremonies could obtain a sight of the young men they were to marry. Such charms were performed sometimes on certain Saints' Days, or on one of the "Three Spirits' Nights," or on a certain day of the moon; but more frequently on "Nos Calan Gauaf" or All Hallows Eve--the 31st. of October. All Hallows was one of the "Three Spirits' Nights," and an important night in the calendar of young maidens anxious to see the spirits of their future husbands. In Cardiganshire, divination by means of a ball of yarn, known as "coel yr edau Wlan" is practised, and indeed in many other parts of Wales. A young unmarried woman in going to her bedroom would take with her a ball of yarn, and double the threads, and then she would tie small pieces of wool along these threads, so as to form a small thread ladder, and, opening her bedroom window threw this miniature ladder out to the ground, and then winding back the yarn, and at the same time saying the following words:-- "Y fi sy'n dirwyn Pwy sy'n dal" which means: "I am winding, Who is holding?" Then the spirit of the future husband of the girl who was performing the ceremony was supposed to mount this little ladder and appear to her. But if the spirit did not appear, the charm was repeated over again, and even a third time. If no spirit was to be seen after performing such ceremony three times, the young lady had no hope of a husband. In some places, young girls do not take the trouble to make this ladder, but, simply throw out through the open window, a ball of yarn, and saying the words: "I am winding, who is holding." Another custom among the young ladies of Cardiganshire in order to see their future husbands is to walk nine times round the house with a glove in the hand, saying the while--"Dyma'r faneg, lle mae'r llaw."--"Here's the glove, where is the hand?" Others again would walk round the dungheap, holding a shoe in the left hand, and saying "Here's the shoe, where is the foot?" Happy is the young woman who sees the young man she loves, for he is to be her future husband. In Carmarthenshire young girls desirous of seeing their future partners in life, walk round a leek bed, carrying seed in their hand, and saying as follows:-- "Hadau, hadau, hau, Sawl sy'n cam, doed i grynhoi." "Seed, seed, sowing. He that loves, let him come to gather." It was also the custom in the same county for young men and young women to go round a grove and take a handful of moss, in which was found the colour of the future wife or husband's hair. In Pembrokeshire, it is the custom for young girls to put under their pillow at night, a shoulder of mutton, with nine holes bored in the blade bone, and at the same time they put their shoes at the foot of the bed in the shape of the letter T, and an incantation is said over them. By doing this, they are supposed to see their future husbands in their dreams, and that in their everyday clothes. This curious custom of placing shoes at the foot of the bed was very common till very recently, and, probably, it is still so, not only in Pembrokeshire, but with Welsh girls all over South Wales. A woman who is well and alive told me once, that many years ago she had tried the experiment herself, and she positively asserted that she actually saw the spirit of the man who became her husband, coming near her bed, and that happened when she was only a young girl, and some time before she ever met the man. When she was telling me this, she had been married for many years and had grown-up children, and I may add that her husband was a particular friend of mine. Another well-known form of divination, often practised by the young girls in Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire, is for a young woman to wash her shirt or whatever article of clothing she happens to wear next to the skin, and having turned it inside out, place it before the fire to dry, and then watch to see who should come at midnight to turn it. If the young woman is to marry, the spirit of her future husband is supposed to appear and perform the work for the young woman, but if she is to die single, a coffin is seen moving along the room, and many a young girl has been frightened almost to death in performing these uncanny ceremonies. The Rev. D. G. Williams in his excellent Welsh essay on the Folk-lore of Carmarthenshire, mentions a farmer's daughter who practised this form of divination whilst she was away from home at school. A young farmer had fallen in love with her, but she hated him with all her heart. Whilst she was performing this ceremony at midnight, another girl, from mere mischief dressed herself in man's clothing, exactly the same kind as the clothes generally worn by the young farmer I have mentioned, and, trying to appear as like him as possible, entered the room at the very moment when the charm of invoking the spirit of a future husband was being performed by the farmer's daughter, who went half mad when she saw, as she thought, the very one whom she hated so much, making his appearance. The other girls had to arouse their schoolmistress from her bed immediately so that she might try and convince the young girl that she had seen nothing, but another girl in man's clothes. But nothing availed. The doctor was sent for, but he also failed to do anything to bring her to herself, and very soon the poor young woman died through fright and disappointment. Another common practice in West Wales is for a young woman to peel an apple at twelve o'clock, before a looking glass in order to see the spirit of her future husband. This also is done on All Hallow's Eve. Sowing Hemp Seed is also a well-known ceremony among the young ladies of Wales, as well as England. THE CANDLE AND PIN DIVINATION. It was also the custom, at least many years ago, if not now, for a young woman, or two of them together to stick pins at midnight in a candle, all in a row, right from its top to the bottom, and then to watch the candle burning and the pins dropping one by one, till the last pin had dropped, and then the future husband of the girl to whom the pin belonged, was supposed to appear; but if she was destined to die single, she would see a coffin. Another form of Divination, was to put the plates on the dining-room table upside down, and at midnight the spirit of the future husband was supposed to come and arrange them in their proper order. Another custom resorted to in Cardiganshire and other parts in order to see a future husband, or rather to dream of him, was to eat a hen's first egg; but no one was to know the secret, and absolute silence was to be observed, and the egg was to be eaten in bed. GOING ROUND THE CHURCH. This kind of divination was perhaps of a more uncanny character than anything I have hitherto mentioned, and a custom which both young men and young women very commonly practised, even within the last 50 years as I have been told by old people. This weird practice was to go round the parish church seven times, some say nine times, whilst others again say nine times-and-half, and holding a knife in the hand saying the while:-- "Dyma'r twca, lle mae'r wain?" "Here's the knife, where is the sheath?" It was also the practice to look in through the key-hole of the church door each time whilst going round, and many people assert to this very day that whoever performed this mode of divination in proper order, that the spirit of his or her future wife or husband would appear with a sheath to fit the knife; but, if the young man or woman was to die single, a coffin would meet him or her. Mr. John Jones, of Pontrhydfendigaid, an intelligent old man of 95, with a wonderful memory, told me that, when a boy, he had heard his mother giving a most sad account of what happened to a young woman who did this at Ystrad Meurig in Cardiganshire about the year 1800. She was the daughter of a public house in the village, and the name of her mother was Catherine Dafydd Evan. Mr. Jones's mother knew the family well; some of them emigrated to America. This young woman was in love with one of the students of St. John's College, in the neighbourhood, and being anxious to know whether he was to be her husband or not, she resorted to this uncanny practice of walking nine times round Ystrad Meurig Church. Around and round she went, holding the knife in her hand and repeating the words of incantation, "Here's the knife, where is the sheath?" And whilst she was performing her weird adventure, to her great alarm, she perceived a clergyman coming out to meet her through the church door with his white surplice on, as if coming to meet a funeral procession. The frightened young woman fell down in a swoon, almost half dead, as she imagined that the one she met with a surplice on was an apparition or the spirit of a clergyman officiating at the phantom funeral of herself, which prognosticated that instead of going to be married, she was doomed to die. It turned out that the apparition she had seen was only one of the students, who, in order to frighten her, had secretly entered the Church for the purpose. But the poor girl recovered not, and she died very soon afterwards. I heard the following story from my mother when I was a boy. A girl had determined to obtain a sight of her future husband by going round the parish church nine times at All Hallows' Eve in the same manner as the young woman I mentioned in the above story, but with more fortunate results. This also happened somewhere in Cardiganshire or Carmarthenshire. Just as the young woman was walking round the ninth time, she saw, to her great surprise, her own master (for she was a servant maid) coming to meet her. She immediately ran home and asked her mistress why she had sent her master after her to frighten her. But the master had not gone out from the house. On hearing the girl's account, the mistress was greatly alarmed and was taken ill, and she apprehended that she herself was doomed to die, and that her husband was going to marry this servant girl, ultimately. Then the poor woman on her death bed begged the young woman to be kind to her children, "For you are to become the mistress here," said she, "when I am gone." It was also a custom in Wales once for nine young girls to meet together to make a pancake, with nine different things, and share it between them, that is, each of the girls taking a piece before going to bed in order to dream of their future husbands. Another practice among young girls was to sleep on a bit of wedding cake. WATER IN DISH DIVINATION. I remember the following test or divination resorted to in Cardiganshire only about twelve years ago. It was tried by young maidens who wished to know whether their husbands were to be bachelors, and by young men who wished to know whether their wives were to be spinsters. Those who performed this ceremony were blindfolded. Then three basins or dishes were placed on the table, one filled with clean water, the other with dirty water, and the third empty. Then the young man or young woman as the case might be advanced to the table blindfolded and put their hand in the dish; and the one who placed his hands in the clean water was to marry a maiden; if into the foul water, a widow; but if into the empty basin, he was doomed to remain single all his life. Another way for a young maiden to dream of her future husband was to put salt in a thimble, and place the same in her stockings, laying them under her pillow, and repeat an incantation when going to bed. Meyrick in his History of Cardiganshire states that "Ivy leaves are gathered, those pointed are called males, and those rounded are females, and should they jump towards each other, then the parties who had placed them in the fire will be believed by and married by their sweethearts; but should they jump away from one another, then, hatred will be the portion of the anxious person." Testing a lover's love by cracking of nuts is also well known in West and Mid-Wales. It was also a custom in the old times for a young girl on St. John's Eve to go out at midnight to search for St. John's Wort in the light of a glow worm which they carried in the palm of their hand. After finding some, a bunch of it was taken home and hung in her bedroom. Next morning, if the leaves still appeared fresh, it was a good omen; the girl was to marry within that same year; but, on the other hand, if the leaves were dead, it was a sign that the girl should die, or at least she was not to marry that year. THE BIBLE AND KEY DIVINATION. The Bible and Key Divination, or how to find out the two first letters of a future Wife's or Husband's name is very commonly practised, even now, by both young men and young women. A small Bible is taken, and having opened it, the key of the front door is placed on the 16th verse of the 1st Chapter of Ruth:--"And Ruth said, intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." Some take Solomon's Songs, Chapter viii., verses 6 and 7 instead of the above verse from the Book of Ruth. Then the Bible is closed, and tied round with the garter taken off the left leg of him or her who wishes to know his or her future wife or husband's initials. A person cannot perform this ceremony himself; he must get a friend with him to assist him. The young man must put the middle finger of his right hand on the key underneath the loop, and take care to keep the Bible steady. Then the man, who does not consult the future, repeats the above verse or verses, and when he comes to the appointed letter, that is the first letter of the future wife's name, the Bible will turn round under the finger. I was told at Ystrad Meurig, that a few years ago, a young woman, a farmer's daughter, tried this Bible and key divination; and whilst the ceremony was going on, and her sister assisting her to hold the key under the Bible and repeating the words, instead of the book turning round as she expected, she saw a coffin moving along the room, which was a sign that she was doomed to die single; and so it came to pass! The farmhouse where this young woman lived is situated in the neighbourhood of Strata Florida, Cardiganshire; but I do not wish to name the house. I have myself once or twice witnessed this divination practised, but I never heard of a coffin appearing, except in the case of the young woman just mentioned. DIVINATION BY THE TEA-CUP. Tea-cup divination is also very much practised by young girls in Wales in order to find out some future events concerning love affairs, future husbands, etc. There was a woman, who only died a few years ago, in the parish of Llandyssul, near a small village called Pontshan in Cardiganshire, who was considered an expert in the art of fortune telling by a tea cup, at least young women and young men thought so, and many of them resorted to her, especially those who were in love or intending to marry. There was another one near Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, and there are a few even at present to whom the maidens go for consultation. But Welsh women, who are so fond of tea, can find out many things themselves by means of the tea cup without resorting to those who are considered experts in the art. When several of them meet together to tea they help one another in divining their cups, and tea drinking or sipping is the order of the day among the females of Wales. After having emptied the cup, it is turned round three times in the left hand, so that the tea-leaves may cover the surface of the whole cup. Then the cup is placed in the saucer, bottom upwards, to drain, for a few minutes before inspection. If the leaves are scattered evenly round the sides of the cup, leaving the bottom perfectly clear, it is considered a very good sign; but on the other hand when the bottom of the cup appears very black with leaves, it is a very bad sign: some trouble or some misfortune is near. When the leaves form a ring on the side of the cup, it means that the girl who consults is to marry very soon; but if the ring is at the bottom of the cup, disappointment in love awaits her, or she is doomed to die single. When the tea leaves form a cross or a coffin, that also is considered a bad sign; but as a rule, a horse, a dog, or a bird portends good. Two leaves seen in close proximity on the side of the cup foretell a letter bringing good news. When there is a speck floating on the surface of a cup of tea before drinking, some people say it means a letter, a parcel, or a visitor, but a young girl takes it to represent her lover, and she proves his faithfulness by placing the speck on the back of her left hand, and striking it with the back of her right hand. Should the speck or the small tea leaves stick to the back of the left hand and cling or stick fast to the right hand when striking it, it means that the young man is faithful; but on the other hand, should it happen that the tea still remain on the left hand where it was first placed, especially after striking it three times, the young man is not to be depended upon. Some women can even tell by means of the tea-cup what trade their admirer follows, the colour of their future husband's hair, and many other such things. A lily is considered a most lucky emblem, if it be at the top, or in the middle of the cup, for this is considered a sign that the young man, or the young woman who consults, will have a good and kind wife, or husband, who will make him or her happy in the marriage estate, but on the other hand, a lily at the bottom of the cup, portends trouble, especially if clouded, or in the thick. A heart, especially in the clear, is also a very good sign, for it signifies joy and future happiness. Two hearts seen together in the cup, the young man, or the young woman's wedding is about to take place. Tea-cup divination is well-known all over the Kingdom; and in the Colonies, especially Australia, it is by far more popular than in England. DIVINATION BY CARDS. Divination by cards is not so much known in Wales as in England, and this is more popular in towns than country places. CHAPTER II. WEDDING CUSTOMS. In times past, Wales had peculiar and most interesting, if not excellent, Wedding Customs, and in no part of the country were these old quaint customs more popular, and survived to a more recent date than in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. Therefore this book would be incomplete without giving a full description of them. When a young man and a young woman had agreed together to marry "for better for worse," they were first of all to inform their parents of the important fact. Then in due time, the young man's father, taking a friend with him, proceeded to interview the young woman's father, so as to have a proper understanding on the subject and to arrange different matters, especially concerning dowry, etc. I am writing more especially of a rural wedding among the farmers. The young woman's father would agree to give with his daughter, as her portion, household goods of so much value, a certain sum of money, and so many cows, pigs, etc.; and the young man's father, on his part, would agree to grant his son so much money, horses, sheep, hay, wheat and other things, so that the young couple might have a good start in the married life, "i ddechreu eu byd,"--to begin their world, as we say in Welsh. Sometimes the young man's father on such occasions met with opposition on the part of the young woman's father or mother or other relations, at least we read that it happened so in the case of the heir of Ffynonbedr, near Lampeter, long ago; for it seems that when he tried to secure the daughter of Dyffryn Llynod, in the parish of Llandyssul, as his bride, the reply was in Welsh rhyme as follow:-- "Deunaw gwr a deunaw cledde, Deunaw gwas yn gwisgo lifre, Deunaw march o liw'r scythanod, Cyn codi'r ferch o Ddyffryn Llynod." Anglicised, this meant that she could not be secured without coming for her with eighteen gentlemen bearing eighteen swords; eighteen servants wearing livery; and eighteen horses of the colour of the woodpigeon. But such opposition was not often to be met with. After the parents had arranged these matters satisfactorily, the next preliminary and important step was to send forth a gwahoddwr, or Bidder, from house to house, to bid or invite the guests to the Bidding and the Wedding. In connection with these old interesting customs, there were the Bidding or invitation to the wedding; the Bidder, whose duty it was formally to invite the guests; the Ystafell, or the bride's goods and presents; the purse and girdle; the Pwython; and the Neithior. The Bidding was a general invitation to all the friends of the bride and bridegroom-elect to meet them at the houses of their respective parents or any other house appointed for the occasion. All were welcomed to attend, even a stranger who should happen to be staying in the neighbourhood at the time, but it was an understood thing that every person who did attend, whether male or female, contributed something, however small, in order to make a purse for the young couple, who, on the other hand, naturally expected donations from those whose weddings they had attended themselves. So it was to the advantage of the bride and bridegroom-elect to make their wedding as public as possible, as the greater the number of guests, the greater the donation, so it was the custom to send the "Gwahoddwr," or Bidder all round the surrounding districts to invite the neighbours and friends about three weeks, more or less, before the wedding took place. The banns were, of course, published as in England. The Gwahoddwr or Bidder's circuit was one of the most pleasant and merry features of the rural weddings in South Wales in times past, and he was greeted everywhere, especially when it happened that he was, as such often was the case, a merry wag with fluent speech and a poet; but it was necessary that he should be a real friend to the young couple on whose behalf he invited the guests. This important wedding official as he went from house to house, carried a staff of office in his hand, a long pole, or a white wand, as a rule a willow-wand, from which the bark had been peeled off. This white stick was decorated with coloured ribbons plying at the end of it; his hat also, and often his breast was gaily decorated in a similar manner. The Gwahoddwr, thus attired, knocked at the door of each guest and entered the house amidst the smiles of the old people and the giggling of the young. Then he would take his stand in the centre of the house, and strike the floor with his staff to enforce silence, and announce the wedding, and the names of bride and bridegroom-elect, their place of abode, and enumerate the great preparations made to entertain the guests, etc. As a rule, the Gwahoddwr made this announcement in a set speech of prose, and often repeated a rhyme also on the occasion. The following was the speech of a Gwahoddwr in Llanbadarn Fawr, Cardiganshire in 1762, quoted in Meyrick's "History of Cardiganshire," from the miscellaneous papers of Mr. Lewis Morris:-- "Speech of the Bidder in Llanbadarn Fawr, 1762." "The intention of the bidder is this; with kindness and amity, with decency and liberality for Einion Owain and Llio Ellis, he invites you to come with your good will on the plate; bring current money; a shilling, or two, or three, or four, or five; with cheese and butter. We invite the husband and wife, and children, and man-servants, and maid-servants, from the greatest to the least. Come there early, you shall have victuals freely, and drink cheap, stools to sit on, and fish if we can catch them; but if not, hold us excusable; and they will attend on you when you call upon them in return. They set out from such a place to such a place." The following which appeared in a Welsh Quarterly "Y Beirniad," for July, 1878, gives a characteristic account of a typical Bidder of a much later date in Carmarthenshire:-- "Am Tomos fel gwahoddwr, yr wyf yn ei weled yn awr o flaen llygaid fy meddwl. "Dyn byr, llydan, baglog, yn gwisgo coat o frethyn lliw yr awyr, breeches penglin corduog, gwasgod wlanen fraith, a rhuban glas yn hongian ar ei fynwes, yn dangos natur ei swydd a'i genadwri dros y wlad a dramwyid ganddo; hosanau gwlan du'r ddafad am ei goesau, a dwy esgid o ledr cryf am ei draed; het o frethyn garw am ei ben haner moel; dwy ffrwd felingoch o hylif y dybaco yn ymlithro dros ei en; pastwn cryf a garw yn ei ddeheulaw. Cerddai yn mlaen i'r ty lle y delai heb gyfarch neb, tarawai ei ffon deirgwaith yn erbyn y llawr, tynai ei het a gosodai hi dan y gesail chwith, sych besychai er clirio ei geg, a llefarai yn debyg i hyn:--'At wr a gwraig y ty, y plant a'r gwasanaethyddion, a phawb o honoch sydd yma yn cysgu ac yn codi. 'Rwy'n genad ac yn wahoddwr dros John Jones o'r Bryntirion, a Mary Davies o Bantyblodau; 'rwy'n eich gwahodd yn hen ac yn ifanc i daith a phriodas y par ifanc yna a enwais, y rhai sydd yn priodi dydd Mercher, tair wythnos i'r nesaf, yn Eglwys Llansadwrn. Bydd y gwr ifanc a'i gwmp'ni yn codi ma's y bore hwnw o dy ei dad a'i fam yn Bryntirion, plwyf Llansadwrn; a'r ferch ifanc yn codi ma's y bore hwnw o dy ei thad a'i mam, sef Pantyblodau, yn mhlwyf Llanwrda. Bydd gwyr y "shigouts" yn myned y bore hwnw dros y mab ifanc i 'mofyn y ferch ifanc; a bydd y mab ifanc a'i gwmp'ni yn cwrdd a'r ferch ifanc a'i chwmp-ni wrth ben Heolgelli, a byddant yno ar draed ac ar geffylau yn myned gyda'r par ifanc i gael eu priodi yn Eglwys Llansadwrn. Wedi hyny bydd y gwr a'r wraig ifanc, a chwmp'ni y bobol ifanc, yn myned gyda'u gilydd i dy y gwr a'r wraig ifanc, sef Llety'r Gofid, plwyf Talyllechau, lle y bydd y gwr ifanc, tad a mam y gwr ifanc, a Daniel Jones, brawd y gwr ifanc, a Jane Jones, chwaer y gwr ifanc, yn dymuno am i bob rhoddion a phwython dyledus iddynt hwy gael eu talu y prydnawn hwnw i law y gwr ifanc; a bydd y gwr ifanc a'i dad a'i fam, a'i frawd a'i chwaer, Dafydd Shon William Evan, ewyrth y gwr ifanc, yn ddiolchgar am bob rhoddion ychwanegol a welwch yn dda eu rhoddi yn ffafr y gwr ifanc ar y diwrnod hwnw. "'Hefyd, bydd y wraig ifanc, yn nghyd a'i thad a'i mam, Dafydd a Gwenllian Davies, yn nghyd a'i brodyr a'i chwiorydd, y wraig ifanc a Dafydd William Shinkin Dafydd o'r Cwm, tadcu y wraig ifanc, yn galw mewn bob rhoddion a phwython, dyledus iddynt hwy, i gael eu talu y prydnawn hwnw i law y gwr a'r wraig ifanc yn Llety'r Gofid. Y mae'r gwr a'r wraig ifanc a'r hwyaf fo byw, yn addo talu 'nol i chwithau bob rhoddion a weloch yn dda eu rhoddi i'r tylwyth ifanc, pryd bynag y bo galw, tae hyny bore dranoeth, neu ryw amser arall.'" Rendered into English the above reads as follows:-- "I can see Thomas, in the capacity of a Gwahoddwr,--Bidder,--before me now in my mind's eye. A short man, broad, clumsy, wearing a coat of sky-blue cloth, corduroy breeches to the knee, a motley woollen waistcoat, and a blue ribbon hanging on his breast, indicating the nature of his office and message through the country which he tramped; black-woollen stockings on his legs, and two strong leathern boots on his feet; a hat made of rough cloth on his half-bare head; two yellow-red streams of tobacco moisture running down his chin; a rough, strong staff in his right hand. He walked into the house he came to without saluting any one, and struck the floor three times with his staff, took off his hat, and put it under his left arm, and having coughed in order to clear his throat, he delivered himself somewhat as follows:-- "To the husband and wife of the house, the children and the servants, and all of you who are here sleeping and getting up. I am a messenger and a bidder for John Jones of Bryntirion and Mary Davies of Pantyblodau; I beg to invite you, both old and young, to the bidding and wedding of the young couple I have just mentioned, who intend to marry on Wednesday, three weeks to the next, at Llansadwrn Church. The young man and his company on that morning will be leaving his father and mother's house at Bryntirion, in the parish of Llansadwrn; and the young woman will be leaving that same morning from the house of her father and mother, that is Pantyblodau, in the parish of Llanwrda. On that morning the shigouts (seekouts) men will go on behalf of the young man to seek for the young woman; and the young man and his company will meet the young woman and her company at the top of Heolgelli, and there they will be, on foot and on horses, going with the young couple who are to be married at Llansadwrn Church. After that, the young husband and wife, and the young people's company, will be going together to the house of the young husband and wife, to wit, Llety'r Gofid, in the parish of Tally, where the young man, the young man's father and mother, and Daniel Jones, brother of the young man, and Jane Jones, the young man's sister, desire that all donations and pwython due to them be paid that afternoon to the hands of the young man; and the young man, his father and mother, his brother and sister, and Dafydd Shon William Evan, uncle of the young man, will be very thankful for every additional gifts you will be pleased to give in favour of the young man that day. "Also, the young wife, together with her father and mother, Dafydd and Gwenllian Davies, together with her brothers and sisters, the young wife and Dafydd William Shinkin Dafydd of Cwm, the young wife's grandfather, desire that all donations and pwython, due to them, be paid that afternoon to the hand of the young husband and wife at Llety'r Gofid. "The young husband and wife and those who'll live the longest, do promise to repay you every gift you will be pleased to give to the young couple, whenever called upon to do so, should that happen next morning or at any other time?" The Bidder then repeated in Welsh a most comic and humorous song for the occasion. Another well-known "Gwahoddwr," or Bidder in Cardiganshire was an old man named Stephen, who flourished at the end of the eighteenth, and the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was commonly known as Stephen Wahoddwr, or Stephen the Bidder, and concerning whom the celebrated poet "Daniel Ddu o Geredigion," wrote to the "Cambrian Briton," in March, 1822, as follows:-- "There is an old man in this neighbourhood of the name of Stephen, employed in the vocation of 'Gwahoddwr,' who displayed, in my hearing, so much comic talent and humour in the recitation of his Bidding-song (which he complained, was, by repetition, become uninteresting to his auditors) as to induce me to furnish him with some kind of fresh matter. My humble composition, adapted, in language and conceptions, as far as I could make it, to common taste and capacities, this man now delivers in his rounds; and I send it you as a specimen of a Bidder's Song, hoping that your readers will be in some measure amused by its perusal:-- "Dydd da i chwi, bobl, o'r hynaf i'r baban, Mae Stephan Wahoddwr a chwi am ymddiddan, Gyfeillion da mwynaidd, os felly'ch dymuniad, Cewch genyf fy neges yn gynhes ar gariad. Y mae rhyw greadur trwy'r byd yn grwydredig, Nis gwn i yn hollol ai glanwedd ai hyllig, Ag sydd i laweroedd yn gwneuthur doluriad, Ar bawb yn goncwerwr, a'i enw yw Cariad. Yr ifanc yn awchus wna daro fynycha', A'i saeth trwy ei asen mewn modd truenusa'; Ond weithiau a'i fwa fe ddwg yn o fuan O dan ei lywodraeth y rhai canol oedran. Weithiau mae'n taro yn lled annaturiol, Nes byddant yn babwyr yn wir yr hen bobl, Mi glywais am rywun a gas yn aflawen Y bendro'n ei wegil yn ol pedwar ugain. A thyma'r creadur trwy'r byd wrth garwyro A d'rawodd y ddeu-ddyn wyf trostynt yn teithio, I hel eich cynorthwy a'ch nodded i'w nerthu, Yn ol a gewch chwithau pan ddel hwn i'ch brathu. Ymdrechwch i ddala i fyny yn ddilys, Bawb oll yr hen gystwm, nid yw yn rhy gostus-- Sef rhoddi rhyw sylltach, rai 'nol eu cysylltu, Fe fydd y gwyr ifainc yn foddgar o'u meddu. Can' brynu rhyw bethau yn nghyd gan obeithio Byw yn o dawel a'u plant yn blodeuo; Dwyn bywyd mor ddewis wrth drin yr hen ddaear, A Brenhin y Saeson, neu gynt yr hen Sesar. Can's nid wyf i'n meddwl mae golud a moddion Sy'n gwneuthur dedwyddwch, dyweden hwy wedo'n; Mae gofid i'r dynion, sy'n byw mewn sidanau, Gwir mae'r byd hawsaf yw byw heb ddim eisiau. 'Roedd Brenhin mawr Lloegr a'i wraig yn alluog, A chig yn eu crochan, ond eto'n byw'n 'ysgrechog; Pe cawsai y dwliaid y gaib yn eu dwylo, Yr wyf yn ystyried y buasai llai stwrio. Cynal rhyw gweryl yr aent am y goron, Ac ymladd a'u gilydd a hyny o'r galon; 'Rwy'n barod i dyngu er cymaint eu hanghen Nad o'ent hwy mor ddedwydd a Stephen a Madlen. Yr wyf yn attolwg i bob un o'r teulu, I gofio fy neges wyf wedi fynegu; Rhag i'r gwr ifanc a'i wraig y pryd hyny, Os na chan' ddim digon ddweyd mai fi fu'n diogi. Chwi gewch yno roeso, 'rwy'n gwybod o'r hawsaf, A bara chaws ddigon, onide mi a ddigiaf, Caiff pawb eu hewyllys, dybacco, a phibelli, A diod hoff ryfedd, 'rwyf wedi ei phrofi. Gwel'd digrif gwmpeini wy'n garu'n rhagorol, Nid gwiw ini gofio bob amser ei gofol; Mae amser i gwyno mae amser i ganu, Gwir yw mae hen hanes a ddywed in' hyny. Cwpanau da fawrion a dynion difyrus, I mi sy'n rhyw olwg o'r hen amser hwylus; Ac nid wyf fi'n digio os gwaeddi wna rhywun, Yn nghornel y 'stafell, "A yfwch chwi, Styfyn?" Dydd da i chwi weithian, mae'n rhaid i mi deithio Dros fryniau, a broydd, a gwaunydd, dan gwyno; Gan stormydd tra awchus, a chan y glaw uchel, Caf lawer cernod, a chwithau'n y gornel." The above has been translated into English by one Mair Arfon as follows, and appeared in "Cymru Fu," Cardiff, August 9th, 1888:-- "Here's Stephen the Bidder! Good day to you all, To baby and daddy, old, young, great and small; Good friends if you like, in a warm poet's lay My message to you I'll deliver to-day. Some creature there is who roams the world through Working mischief to many and joy to a few, But conquering all, whether hell or above Be his home, I am not certain; his name though is love. The young he most frequently marks as his game, Strikes them straight through the heart with an unerring aim; Though the middle age, too, if he gets in his way, With his bow he will cover and bend to his sway. And sometimes the rogue with an aim somewhat absurd, Makes fools of old people. Indeed, I have heard Of one hapless wight, who, though over four score, He hit in the head, making one victim more. And this is the creature, who, when on his way Through the world, struck the couple in whose cause to-day, I ask for your help and your patronage, too; And they'll give you back when he comes to bite you. And now let each one of us struggle to keep The old custom up, so time-honoured and cheap; Of jointly, or singly, some small trifle giving, To start the young pair on their way to a living. They'll buy a few things, with a confidence clear, Of living in peace as their children they rear; Stealing and content, out of Mother Earth's hand, Blest as Cæsar of old, or the King of our land. I do not consider that riches or gold Ensure contentment; a wise man of old Tells us men in soft raiment of grief have their share, And a life without wants is the lightest to bear. Once a great English King [1] and his talented wife, Though they had meat in their pan, led a bickering life; Were the dullards compelled to work, him and her, With a hoe in their hands it would lessen their stir. The quarrel arose from some fight for the Crown And at it they went like some cats of renown; And although we are poor, I am ready to swear That Stephen and Madlen are freer from care. Now let me impress on this whole family, To think on the message delivered by me; Lest the youth and his wife, through not getting enough, Should say that my idleness caused lack of stuff. A welcome you'll get there I guarantee you, With bread and cheese plenty, and prime beer, too; I know, for I have tried it, and everybody there Can have 'bacco and pipes enough and to spare. It delights me a jovial assembly to see, For it is wiser sometimes to forget misery; There are times for complaining and song, too we're told, In the proverb of old, which is true as it's old. A bumping big cup and a lot of bright men, Bring before me the jolly old times o'er again, And I wouldn't be angry if some one now even Would shout from some corner "Will you have a glass Stephen?" Good day to you now, for away I must hie, Over mountains and hillocks with often a sigh, Exposed as I am to keen storms, rain, and sleet, While you cosily sit in your warm corner seat." Another well-known Gwahoddwr about 50 years ago was Thomas Parry, who lived at the small village of Pontshan in the parish of Llandyssul. A short time ago, when I was staying in that neighbourhood in quest for materials for my present work, I came across a few old people who well-remembered him, especially Mr. Thomas Evans, Gwaralltyryn, and the Rev. T. Thomas, J.P., Greenpark, both of whom, as well as one or two others, told me a good deal about him. Like a good many of the Gwahoddwyr or Bidders, he seemed to have been a most eccentric character, of a ready wit and full of humour, especially when more or less under the influence of a glass of ale. Mr. Rees Jones, Pwllffein, a poet of considerable repute in the Vale of Cletwr, composed for T. Parry, a "Can y Gwahoddwr," or the Bidder's Song, which song in a very short time, became most popular in that part of Cardiganshire, and the adjoining districts of Carmarthenshire. This Parry the Bidder, whenever he was sent by those intending to marry, went from house to house, through the surrounding districts, proclaiming the particulars, and inviting all to the Bidding and the Weddings, and he was greeted with smiles wherever he went, especially by the young men and young women, who always looked forward to a wedding with great delight, as it was an occasion for so much merriment and enjoyment, and where lovers and sweethearts met. Food was set before the Gwahoddwr almost in every house, bread and cheese and beer, so that it is not to be wondered at that he felt a bit merry before night. He tramped through his circuit through storms and rain, but like most Bidders, he was but poorly paid, so he was often engaged as a mole trapper as well. On one occasion, he had set down a trap in a neighbouring field in the evening expecting to find a mole entrapped in it next morning. Next morning came, and off went the old man to see the trap, but when he arrived on the spot, to his great surprise, instead of a mole in the trap, there was a fish in it! The famous entrapper of moles could not imagine how a fish could get into a trap on dry land, but he found out afterwards that some mischievous boys had been there early in the morning before him, who, to have a bit of fun at the expense of the old man, had taken out the mole from the trap and put a fish in it instead. Thus we see that the modern Gwahoddwr was generally a poor man; but in the old times, on the other hand, he was a person of importance, skilled in pedigrees and family traditions, and himself of good family; for, undoubtedly, these old wedding customs which have survived in some localities in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire and other parts of Wales even down almost to the present time, are of a very ancient origin, coming down even from the time of the Druids, and this proves the wisdom and knowledge of the original legislators of the Celtic tribes; for they were instituted in order to encourage wedlock so as to increase the population of the country, and to repair the losses occasioned by plagues and wars. A chieftain would frequently assume the character of a Bidder on behalf of his vassal, and hostile clans respected his person as he went about from castle to castle, or from mansion to mansion. Old people who well remember the time when the quaint old wedding customs were very general throughout West Wales, informed me that it was in some localities the custom sometimes to have two or more Gwahoddwyr to invite to the wedding; this was especially the case when the bride and bridegroom-elect did not reside in the same part of the country; for it happened sometimes that the young man engaged to be married lived in a certain part of Carmarthenshire, whilst his bride perhaps lived some way off in Cardiganshire or Pembrokeshire. In such cases it was necessary to appoint two Bidders, one for the young man, and another for the young woman, to go round the respective districts in which each of them lived. An old man in Carmarthenshire informed me that many years ago a friend of his, a farmer in the parish of Llanycrwys married a young lady from Pencarreg, two Bidders were sent forth to tramp the country; one going round the parish of Llanycrwys where the bridegroom lived, and the other's circuit was the parish of Pencarreg, the native parish of the bride. Another custom in some places, especially round Llandyssul and Llangeler, which took place before appointing the Gwahoddwr, was for the neighbours and friends to come together of an evening to the house of the bride or bridegroom's parents, or any other place fixed upon for that purpose. On such occasion a good deal of drinking home-brewed beer was indulged in, "Er lles y par ifanc," that is, for the benefit of the young couple. All the profit made out of this beer drinking at a private house went to the young man and the young woman as a help to begin their married life. At such a meeting also very often the day of the wedding was fixed, and the Bidder appointed, and should he happen to be an inexperienced one he was urged to repeat his Bidding speech before the company present, in order to test him whether he had enough wit and humour to perform his office satisfactorily in going round to invite to the wedding. When the young people engaged to be married were sons and daughters of well-to-do farmers, it was the custom to send by this Bidder in his rounds, a circular letter, or a written note in English; and this note or circular in course of time became so fashionable that the occupation of a Bidder gradually fell to decay; that is, it became a custom to send a circular letter instead of a Bidder. The following Bidding Letter, which is not a fictitious one, but a real document, appeared in an interesting book, entitled "The Vale of Towy," published in 1844:-- "Being betrothed to each other, we design to ratify the plighted vow by entering under the sanction of wedlock; and as a prevalent custom exists from time immemorial amongst "Plant y Cymry" of making a bidding on the occurrence of a hymeneal occasion, we have a tendency to the manner of the oulden tyme, and incited by friends as well as relations to do the same, avail ourselves of this suitableness of circumstances of humbly inviting your agreeable and pleasing presence on Thursday, the 29th day of December next, at Mr. Shenkin's, in the parish of Llangathen, and whatever your propensities then feel to grant will meet with an acceptance of the most grateful with an acknowledgement of the most warmly, carefully registered, and retaliated with promptitude and alacrity, whenever an occurrence of a similar nature present itself, by "Your most obedient servants, William Howells, Sarah Lewis. "The young man, with his father and mother (David and Ann Howells), his brother (John Howells), and his cousin (Edward Howells), desire that all claims of the above nature due to them be returned to the young man on the above day, and will feel grateful for the bestowments of all kindness conferred upon him. "The young woman, with her father and mother (Thomas and Letice Lewis), her sisters (Elizabeth and Margaret Lewis), and her cousins (William and Mary Morgan), desire that all claims of the above nature due to them be returned to the young woman on the above day, and will feel grateful for the bestowments of all kindness conferred upon her." The following Bidding Letter I copied from an old manuscript in possession of that eminent Antiquarian, the Rev. D. H. Davies, once Vicar of Cenarth, but who lives at present at Newcastle Emlyn:-- "To Mr. Griffith Jenkins. "Sir,--As my daughter's Bidding is fixed to be the Eighth day of February next, I humbly beg the favour of your good company according to custom, on the occasion, which shall be most gratefully acknowledged and retaliated by "Yours most obedient and humble Servant, Joshua Jones. "Penrallt, Jan. 23rd, 1770." The following also is another specimen of such circular, a copy of which came into my possession through the kindness of the esteemed lady, Mrs. Webley-Tyler, Glanhelig, near Cardigan:-- "February 1, 1841. "As we intend to enter the Matrimonial State, on Thursday, the 11th day of February instant, we purpose to make a Bidding on the occasion, the same day, at the young woman's Father and Mother's House, called Llechryd Mill; When and where the favour of your good company is most humbly solicited, and whatever donation you will be pleased to confer on us that day, will be thankfully received and cheerfully repaid whenever called for on a similar occasion, "By your obedient humble Servants, John Stephens, Ann Davies. "The young man's Father and Mother (John and Elizabeth Stephens, Pen'rallt-y-felin), together with his brother (David Stephens), desire that all gifts of the above nature due to them be returned to the Young Man, on the said day, and will be thankful for all favours granted.--Also the Young Woman's Father and Mother (David and Hannah Davies, Llechryd Mill), desire that all gifts of the above nature due to them, be returned to the young woman on the said day, and will be thankful for all favours granted." The day before the Wedding was once allotted to bringing home the "Ystafell," or household goods and furniture, of the young couple; but these customs varied considerably in different parts of the country. The furniture of the bride, as a rule, consisted of a feather bed and bed clothes, one or two large oaken chests to keep clothes in, and a few other things; and it was customary for the bridegroom to find or provide tables, chairs, bedstead, and a dresser. The dresser was perhaps the most interesting relic of family property, and is still to be seen in Welsh farm-houses, and is greatly valued as a thing which has been an heirloom in the family for generations. It consists of two or more stages, and the upper compartments, which are open, are always decked with specimens of useful and ornamental old Welsh ware, which are getting very rare now, and people offer a high price for them as curiosities. It was also customary on the same day for the young man and the young woman to receive gifts of various kinds, such as money, flour, cheese, butter, bacon, hens, and sometimes even a cow or a pig, also a good many useful things for house-keeping. This was called "Pwrs a Gwregys"--a purse and a girdle. But these gifts were to be re-paid when demanded on similar occasions; and, upon a refusal, were even recoverable by law; and sometimes this was done. About a hundred years ago, and previous to that date, the day before the wedding, as a rule, was allotted to the "Ystafell," or bringing home of the furniture, etc.; but more recently it became the custom to appoint a day for that purpose at other times in some districts, that is, it took place whenever the young married couple went to live at a house of their own; this would be perhaps three or six months after the wedding. In Wales it is very common to see a young married couple among the farmers remaining with the parents of the young man, or with the young wife's parents until it is a convenient time for them to take up a farm of their own. I have already noticed that these customs varied in different parts of the country. In some districts, the day preceding the Wedding was a great time for feasting, whilst in other localities people came together to drink for the benefit of the young couple, and when cakes were prepared for the Neithior which was to follow the wedding on the next day. THE WEDDING DAY. At the present time, Welsh people marry on any day of the week, but about fifty years ago Wednesday was a favourite day in some places, and Friday in other places. I am writing more especially, of course, of West Wales. Indeed, in some parishes old men informed me that when they were young they did not remember any one marrying, except on a Friday. This fact, undoubtedly, is likely to surprise many English readers, who regard Friday as an unlucky day for anything. Meyrick, writing about one hundred years ago in his History of Cardiganshire, says Saturday was the Wedding Day, and other writers mention the same thing, and it is evident that Saturday was the day on which most people did marry, except in a few districts, about three generations ago, as well as in older times. Whether this day, that is, Saturday, was commonly fixed upon from a belief that it was a lucky day for marriage, or from the convenience of Sunday intervening between it and a working day, is rather difficult to know, but it seems that the following old English Marrying Rhyme was either unknown to the Welsh, or that they did not give heed to it:-- To marry on "Monday wealth, Tuesday for health, Wednesday the best day of all; Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, Saturday no luck at all!" THE HORSE WEDDING. The rural weddings in South Wales until very recently were Horse Weddings; that is, it was the custom of the whole party, both men and women to ride, and generally at full speed. Poor people generally managed to obtain the loan of horses for the happy occasion from their richer neighbours. On the wedding morning the invited guests, both men and women, married and unmarried, came on their horses and ponies, some of them from a long distance. The men proceeded to the bridegroom's house, about a hundred or a hundred and fifty in number and honourably paid their pwython; whilst the women at the same time went to the house of the bride, and paid to her their pwython. "Pwython" was the term used in connection with these weddings to denote the gifts presented to the young bride and bridegroom respectively, in return for what the invited guests themselves had received on the occasion of their own weddings from the young man and the young woman, or their relations or friends. Of course, a large number of those who gave gifts were young and unmarried, so that they were not all under an obligation to give; but still they gave, and they were expected to give to help the young couple, and by so giving, they were placing the latter under an obligation to them in the future, that is, in such cases, the giver gave under the expectation of receiving back gifts of equal value, whenever his or her own, or one of his or her relations' wedding took place, even should that happen on the very next day. After depositing their offerings and taking something to eat, it was then the custom for ten, twelve, or sometimes even twenty young men, headed by a bard, a harper, or some fluent speaker, to mount their horses, and drive away full speed in the direction of the bride's house to demand her in marriage for the bridegroom. But on the morning of the wedding, the young woman, that is, the bride-elect, was not to be got possession of without much trouble and argument, and searching. When the bridegroom's procession halted at the house of the bride's parents, the leader of the party, finding the door barred against their entrance, would formally demand the bride, generally in rhyme appropriate to the occasion, delivered something as follows:-- "Open windows, open doors, And with flowers strew the floors; Heap the hearth with blazing wood, Load the spit with festal food; The "crochon [2]" on its hook be placed, And tap a barrel of the best! For this is Catty's wedding day! Now bring the fair one out, I pray." Then one of the bride's party from within made a reply as follows, with the door still closed:-- "Who are ye all? ye noisy train! Be ye thieves or honest men? Tell us now what brings you here, Or this intrusion will cost you dear?" Then the one from without rejoins:-- "Honest men are we, who seek A dainty maid both fair and meek, Very good and very pretty, And known to all by name of Catty; We come to claim her for a bride; Come, father, let the fair be tied To him who loves her ever well." The one within again answers:-- "So ye say, but time will tell; My daughter's very well at home So ye may pack and homeward roam." Again the one without exclaims in resolute tones:-- "Your home no more she's doomed to share Like every marriageable fair, Her father's roof she quits for one Where she is mistress; wooed and won. It now remains to see her wedded, And homeward brought and safely bedded. Unless you give her up, we swear The roof from off your house to tear, Burst in the doors and batter walls, To rescue her whom wedlock calls." Another of the bridegroom's party then calls aloud, in a voice of authority:-- "Ho! peace in the King's name, here, peace! Let vaunts and taunting language cease; While we the bridesmen, come to sue The favour to all bridesmen due, The daughter from the father's hand, And entertainment kindly bland." The above rhyme appeared in "Adventures of Twm Shon Catty." There are a good many such verses composed for, or at such occasion, still extant in the Welsh language. The party without and the party within feigned to abuse one another in such rhymes for an hour, more sometimes, till their wit was exhausted, but the whole performance was nothing but innocent fun, and the doors are opened in the end, and the bridegroom's party are admitted into the house; but even then the trouble is not always over, for it was the custom for the bride to hide herself, when search would be made for her everywhere under the tables, beds, behind the doors and every corner in the house, and at last found, perhaps, under the disguise of a young man smoking his pipe, or of a "granny" knitting in the corner. Whoever discovered the bride received a pint of beer and a cake as a prize in some places. All these things were done for fun or amusement, but I heard of one young woman at least, who was hiding in real earnest, and could not be found. An old farmer near Carmarthen, Griffiths, of Rhenallt, who is 96 years of age, informed me about five years ago, that he once heard his father mention of a man called "Dafydd y Llether," a butcher near Alltwalis, who was disappointed in this manner. This happened about 100 years ago. This butcher was engaged to be married to a farmer's daughter who lived in the parish of Llanllwni, about eight miles off, and had made all preparations for the wedding. When the wedding morning dawned, Dafydd and his neighbours and friends, about one hundred in number, mounted their horses at Alltwalis, and galloped away full speed to Llanllwni, and having arrived at the house of the young bride's parents, search was made for her everywhere, but she was nowhere to be found. At last the young man and his friends had to return home without finding her in great disappointment! The young woman's parents had prevailed upon her not to marry the young man, "because" added the old man to me "he was too much of a jolly boy." So they had contrived between them to hide her where she could not be found on the wedding morning. But, to proceed with our account of the old wedding customs, it was the practice after finding the hidden bride, and partaking of a little refreshments, for the wedding party to mount their horses, and they were joined by the bridegroom and his friends, and made their way towards the church. The young woman was mounted on a fine and swift horse; but often she had to be content to be mounted behind her father, or a brother or a friend; and when the latter was the case, she had to sit on crupper without any pillion, and holding fast to the man. Then the whole cavalcade would gallop off to church. But during the procession the bride was seized suddenly by one of her relatives or friends, stolen away and borne off to a distance. However, this feigned attempt to run away with her was done only in sport. Then a chase ensued, when the bridegroom and his friends drove after her like madmen till they caught her and took her to church. The driving was so furious on such occasions that legs and arms were sometimes broken. Mr. D. Jones in his interesting Welsh book on the History of the Parish of Llangeler, says that in the year 1844, at the wedding of Dinah, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Jones, Saron, one James Evans, the groom of the late Colonel Lewes, drove so furiously that his horse struck against a wall with the result that both the animal and its rider were killed on the spot, near Llangeler Church! In consequence of such a melancholy event the Horse Wedding was discontinued in that part of the country, through the influence of the Vicar, the Rev. John Griffiths, who preached against the practice from II. Kings, chap. IX. verse 20 ... "And the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously." The following account of a Horse Wedding appeared in "The Folk Lore of North Wales" by the late Rev. Elias Owen, F.S.A., whose informant was the Rev. Canon Griffith Jones, who witnessed the wedding, which took place at Tregaron, Cardiganshire. We are told that "The friends of both the young people were on horseback, and according to custom they presented themselves at the house of the young woman, the one to escort her to the church, and the other to hinder her from going there. The friends of the young man were called "Gwyr shegouts." When the young lady was mounted, she was surrounded by the "gwyr shegouts," and the cavalcade started. All went on peaceably until a lane was reached, down which the lady bolted, and here the struggle commenced, for her friends dashed between her and her husband's friends and endeavoured to force them back, and thus assist her to escape. The parties, Mr. Jones said, rode furiously and madly, and the struggle presented a cavalry charge, and it was not without much apparent danger that the opposition was overcome, and the lady ultimately forced to proceed to the church, where her future husband was anxiously awaiting her arrival." The Lord Bishop of Huron, a native of Cardiganshire, writing to me from Canada, November 17th., 1909, says:--"I remember a wedding once when all the guests were on horse-back and there was a hunt for the bride. There could be no wedding till the bride was caught, and, Oh the wild gallop over hill and dale till she was taken captive and led to the altar! The last wedding of that kind to which I refer took place about 45 years ago. The daughter of Mr. Morgan (I think) of Maestir, near Lampeter, or his intended wife being the bride. A very severe accident happened to the bride and that ended the custom in that neighbourhood." Although such things as I have already said were done for sport, yet I have heard of a few cases in which the bride was borne away in earnest, and disappeared willingly in company of an old lover of hers, to the intense astonishment and disappointment of the bridegroom, who happened to be her parents' choice, and not her own. In this case, the custom of a feigned attempt to run away with the bride had in some respects served its original purpose; for, undoubtedly, the origin of the custom of hiding, running away with, and capturing the bride could be traced back to those barbarous times when marriage by capture was a common practice. Thus in the Mabinogion, we find that when a King named Kilydd, after being for some time a widower, wanted to marry again, one of his counsellors said to him, "I know a wife that will suit thee well, and she is the wife of King Dogel." And they resolved to go and seek her; and they slew the King and brought away his wife. When his son also named Kilhwch wanted a wife, he went to demand her from her father Yspaddaden Pencawr, the Giant, and obtained her at last after many adventures, and the help of Arthur and his men. It is probable that when the Celtic Tribes had settled in Britain that they often obtained a wife by capturing her from the Aborigines. This calls to mind the strategy of Romulus to secure wives for his soldiers by directing them at a given signal to seize Sabine maidens and run off with them whilst the men were busy in looking at the games. Another singular instance of wife snatching in ancient times is to be found in the Book of Judges, for when the men of the tribe of Benjamin were in difficulty in obtaining wives for themselves, their elders commanded them to "go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin,.... And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught." Judges XXI., verses 20, 21, and 23. It seems that some kind of Horse Weddings is in vogue among the Calmucians, even at the present day, the young woman is first mounted on her horse and drives off full speed, then the young man, who is her intended, mounts and chases her, and when he catches her he can claim her as his wife on the spot; but should she escape him, he cannot claim her. I well remember when I lived in the Welsh Colony of Patagonia, about 20 years ago, that it was a very common custom for a young man and a young woman when in love, to mount their steeds and take a long ride of 20 miles or more in each other's company, and whilst driving along together in such manner words of love were often whispered. Also when a wedding took place, the guests went to it on their horses, but the old custom of driving after, and capturing the bride was not observed. Horse Weddings were very general in West Wales about sixty years ago, and even twenty years ago in some districts, but I doubt whether the custom has been continued at the present day in any part of the country. In the chase after the bride it was supposed that whoever caught her would be married without doubt within a year from that date, so it is not to be wondered at that young men drove so furiously on such occasions. As soon as the marriage ceremony was over in church, it was once the custom for a harper in the churchyard to play "Merch Megan," "Mentra Gwen," "Morwynion Glan Meirionydd," or some other beautiful old Welsh Air appropriate to the occasion. It was also customary in some places, especially in the Northern part of Cardiganshire, for a certain number of young men to mount their steeds immediately after the ceremony, and drive off full speed, for the first who reached the house of the newly-married couple was to receive a quart of beer and a silk pocket handkerchief, especially if the young husband and wife were well-to-do. The ceremony at the Church being over, all the company joined and returned to the young couple's house, where dinner was provided. On their return journey again, as in going to Church, they drove fast. Indeed, it was often the custom to have a regular horse race on the way home from Church on the wedding day. The Rev. D. G. Williams gives the following amusing story of such a race, in connection with a rural wedding which took place not far from Newcastle Emlyn. There lived a genial old country gentleman in the north-eastern part of Pembrokeshire, known as Mr. Howells, Glaspant, who had sent three of his horses to the wedding referred to, one of them was a pony, considered among the swiftest in the district; but there was one drawback in connection with the animal. He would go whichever way he pleased, especially when he was excited. The wedding procession went along from a house called Gilfach Gweision to Capel Evan, where the "knot was tied," and as soon as the ceremony was over the homeward race began in real earnest. The Squire felt confident that his "Comet," as the pony was named, would be sure to prove victorious in the race, if the animal could be kept to follow the road which led on to Cwm Cuch, instead of turning to another road which led to Mr. Howells' own house, Glaspant. To make sure of this, the enthusiastic old gentleman in due time, sent all his servants, both men and women, with walking-sticks and brooms in their hands to stand where the two roads met, so as to prevent the pony turning to the one that led to the house. Onward came the wedding cavalcade at last, the pony taking the lead as Mr. Howells expected, and when "Comet" saw a rowdy crowd shouting with all their might, and with brooms and sticks, the animal was glad to pass forward in the right direction and soon proved himself the hero of the day, and the old man felt as proud of his pony as the young husband was of his wife. Another common practice in connection with the weddings in Wales, and still prevails in some places, was known as Chaining or Halting the Wedding. As the young husband and wife were driving home from Church at the end of the wedding ceremony they would find the way obstructed by ropes stretching the road, covered with flowers, and ribbons, and evergreens, or sometimes blocked up entirely by thorns. It is said that this was intended as the first obstacle in married life. Ropes in some cases were made of straw, and the young couple were not allowed to pass without paying a footing to the obstructors, and then the barrier was removed amidst a general hurrah. This chaining or halting the wedding was known in many parts of West Wales as "codi cwinten," or to set up a quintain. In ancient times Guintain seems to have been some kind of a game of skill in vogue among several nations; it consisted of an upright post, on the top of which a cross bar turned on a pivot; "at one end of the cross hung a heavy sand bag, and at the other was placed a broad plank; the accomplished cavalier in his passage couched his lance, and with the point made a thrust at the broad plank, and continued his route with his usual rapidity, and only felt the "gwyntyn," or the "air" of the sand bag, fanning his hair as he passed.... The awkward horseman in attempting to pass this terrific barrier was either unhorsed by the weight of the sand bag, or by the impulse of the animal against the bar found his steed sprawling under him on the ground." In some parts of the country, when the bride or the young wife reaches home after the wedding ceremony, she buys some small trifle, a pin or anything from her bridesmaid; and by taking the opportunity of buying something before her husband has a chance, she'll be master over him for life! Sometimes the young newly-married couple resorted to a Wishing Well, and the first to drink the water became the master in their wedded life! In Wales, it is considered unlucky to marry on a wet day. It was considered unlucky for the wedding party to go and return from the church exactly on the same path, so sometimes it was customary to go out of the way a bit so as to avoid ill-luck. It is still customary to decorate the roads where the wedding party is to pass with arches and bannerettes, bearing mottoes appropriate to the occasion. This was done in February, 1906, at the wedding of Mr. David T. Davies, of Penlan, Llanwrda; and at the marriage of Mr. D. Barlett of Carmarthen in the same month, Llanboidy Parish Church was tastefully decorated with palms and evergreens, and the village was gay with bunting and festoons. Such decorations are very common, especially in connection with a country gentleman's marriage, when tenants adorn their houses with garlands, and children strew flowers in the bride's path. It was formerly the custom to pelt the bride and bridegroom with flowers, and it is still very general to throw rice at them. I remember this rice-throwing three years ago at Llanilar, Cardiganshire, at the wedding of a sister of Dr. Rees. Sometimes old boots were thrown, and I have heard that grains of wheat served the purpose once. Such things were done to ensure "Good Luck." In former times the bridal flowers were roses, gentle lady, lady's fingers, lady-smock, pansy, prickles and furze, and, in order to encourage the young wife in industry, red clover bloom was strewn in her pathway. NEITHIOR. When the ceremony at the church and the horse racing which followed were over, the guests proceeded to the young married couple's house to partake of some food, and in the afternoon and the evening they paid their "pwython" to the newly married couple, that is those of the guests who had not paid already. Others again gave fresh presents. There was much consumption of beer and cakes on such occasions always, and the sale of which was a further source of income to the young couple, so that between everything they were provided with the means for a good start in their married life. Very often such a large crowd attended the Neithior, that the house was often too small to accommodate them all; so a party of the men resorted to the barn or any other convenient place to drink beer. It was also customary for the young men to treat the young maidens with cakes; so there was a good deal of love-making, and often of rivalry, especially should there be a very pretty girl among the merry company. Those young maids who were fortunate enough as to be in favour with the young men had their aprons full of cakes and biscuits, etc., to take home with them in the evening. Such festivities as a rule were very merry and kept up till a late hour, and there was a good deal of singing, harp-playing and dancing, for the Welsh were expert dancers in former times; but at the present day dancing is almost unknown, at least in country places. On such occasions, it was customary, as a rule, to secure the presence of a harper, for the harp was from time immemorial a favourite musical instrument among the Welsh people; for Giraldus Cambrensis writing 700 years ago, says:--"Those who arrive in the morning are entertained till evening with the conversation of young women and the music of the harp; for each house has its young women and harps allotted to this purpose ... and in each family the art of playing on the harp is held preferable to any other learning." During the last three generations, however, the dear old instrument with its sweet and melodious sounds gradually declined in popular favour in Wales, and at the present, there are but very few who can play on the harp at all, indeed, in many districts the instrument has entirely disappeared, giving place to the modern piano. This is to be greatly regretted, and every patriotic Welshman should do his best to encourage playing on the harp. It happened once that a "Neithior" or wedding festivities took place, strange to say, without a wedding! This was about two generations ago in the Parish of Llandyssul. A man of the name of B. T. Rees, in that part of the country was engaged to be married to a young woman who was known as Sally. Two Bidders had been sent round the country to invite people to the wedding, and all other preparations had been made ready for the joyful occasion, and everything appeared most promising. But when B. T. Rees, a few days before the appointed time for the wedding ceremony, went to visit his bride-elect, she would neither receive him nor speak to him, but ordered him to depart immediately from her presence, to the great astonishment and disappointment of Rees, the bridegroom, and his friends. He endeavoured to reason with her, but to no purpose. Afterwards some of his friends were sent to speak to her, but nothing availed; it seemed as if she had suddenly made up her mind to banish him entirely from her heart. The wedding was to take place at Henllan on a certain morning, and the "Neithior" in the afternoon at Llandyssul. When that morning arrived, the bridegroom and his friends, decided to seek the bride once more, but she had hidden herself and could not be found anywhere. Rees and his party were in a strange predicament, and did not know what to do; but they returned to Llandyssul, and in the afternoon the wedding festivities were kept up just as if the wedding had actually taken place; and when night came, Rees had come into possession of large sums of money from the sale of beer, and donations, or wedding gifts and the sincere sympathy of the guests, but he had failed to secure a wife after all! Rees and Sally were married ultimately, however. In the last century, the Neithior took place on the wedding day; in former times, however, the festivities were continued on the Sunday, which followed. Sir S. R. Meyrick, writing about one hundred years ago says:--"Sunday being come, the bride and bridegroom's business is to stay at home all day and receive good-will and pwython. This is called "Neithior." They receive more money this day than Saturday, and all are written down as before, whether fresh presents, or those repaid." It seems from what I have been informed by old persons, that such doings on Sundays had almost disappeared, if not completely so, in Meyrick's time, at least in most places, but it is evident that Sunday observances of the kind were common about the middle of the eighteenth century; and in the old Church Register of the parish of Llanfihangel Geneu'r Glyn, in Cardiganshire, the following record is found:-- "11 June, 1745. Whereas the parish has been notorious hitherto in upholding and continuing a wicked custom of keeping Biddings or meetings upon the Sabbath day to the dishonour of God, and contempt of religion, to prevent such irregularities for the future, it is this day ordered by the consent of a vestry legally called and kept that the said custom shall stop and be discontinued entirely hereafter, and whosoever within our said parish encourages or practices and obstinately refuses to obey this our order, we do unanimously consent and join to punish him to the utmost rigour of the law.--W. Williams, Clerk, etc." Such Sunday customs were by degrees discontinued entirely in every part of Wales, and the Welsh have been for some generations now, and to their credit still are, the most strict Sabbatarians in the world with the exception perhaps of the Scotch. The Methodists Revivalists in the eighteenth century, who greatly inveighed against Sabbath breaking, contributed towards bringing about this satisfactory state of things. The curious old Welsh Weddings, which I have endeavoured to describe in this book do not prevail now; the only surviving feature of them is perhaps what is known in some parts as "Ystafell," and in other parts as "Cwyro Ty." "Ystafell" is rather popular now in some districts, especially between Tregaron and Lampeter, but instead of a Gwahoddwr or Bidder an aunt or some other near relative of the bride goes round the houses inviting the neighbours to bring wedding gifts so as to give the young couple a good start in life. I have been informed that similar old wedding customs to those of the Welsh were once in vogue in Cumberland, a county where the Celtic element is very strong, and also in Brittany, another Celtic province, and the present custom of wedding gifts which is so common in connection with fashionable weddings at the present day, is only a survival of the old Welsh customs. It seems that in China also it is customary for the friends and relations of the bride and bridegroom to present them with wedding gifts, and in Ancient Peru a dwelling was got ready for the newly-married pair at the charge of the district, and the prescribed portion of land assigned for their maintenance, and the ceremony of marriage was followed by general festivities among the friends of the parties, which lasted several days. CHAPTER III. FUNERAL CUSTOMS. As the Wedding Customs differed, the Funeral Customs also differed, and still differ in many respects in Wales from those of England. In Wales funerals are public, and the day and the hour on which they are to take place are always announced both in church and chapel, and in some places the day was made known by sending a man or a woman round the houses. One or two from almost every house in the neighbourhood in which the deceased lived attend his funeral, so that funeral processions are very large, even in districts where the population is small and scattered. Both men and women come, many of them from a long distance, the majority of them on foot, others in their traps, and some on horses, and even wet and stormy weather does not prevent them, for they have a profound reverence for the dead and death from time immemorial; and the night before the funeral a prayer meeting is held in the room where the corpse is lying, and pious appeals to Heaven are made in which strong emotions are expressed, the deceased is referred to in stirring sentences, and his death made a theme for warning on the brevity of earthly life, and the importance of the future life of the soul. This prayer meeting is called Gwylnos (wake-night), and it is the only surviving feature of the various customs which were once in vogue in connection with watching the corpse in the house, or keeping vigil over the dead. In Wales in former times when any one died, candles were always lighted every night in the room where the corpse was, and it was customary for friends or relatives to sit up all night to watch it, and even at the present day the custom is observed by some. Some are of the opinion that this custom had its origin in pre-reformation times. But it seems more probable to have been a Pagan custom, and much older than Christianity. The original design of the lighted candles, undoubtedly, was to give light to the spirit of the dead on its way to the other world. This is done for that purpose at the present day in China. It was once the custom in some parts to open the windows when a person was dying. Principal Sir John Rhys, Oxford, says that he well remembers this done in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire, and that a farmer near Ystrad Meurig, in the same county, informed him that when his mother (the farmer's) was dying, a neighbour's wife who had been acting as nurse tried to open the window of the room, and as it would not open, she deliberately smashed a pane of it; and the learned Professor remarks that "this was doubtless originally meant to facilitate the escape of the soul."--Celtic Folk-Lore. It was once customary in the neighbourhood of Llangennech, Carmarthenshire, to cover with muslin the looking glass in the room in which the corpse lay. But to return to the Wake Night, or keeping vigil over the dead, I have already mentioned that the only feature of the old customs in connection with it still observed is the Prayer Meeting on the night before the funeral, and even this has been almost discontinued in Pembrokeshire, though still popular in Cardiganshire and parts of Carmarthenshire, but the custom is very injurious to the health of those who attend these meetings, as people crowd together in large numbers into the room--often a small one--where the coffin is. It was once the custom for every person on entering the house to fall devoutly on his knees before the corpse, and repeat the Lord's Prayer, or some other prayer, and then a pipe and tobacco were offered to him, but is not done now; but it was done in former times in many districts before the commencement of the prayer meeting. The manner of conducting this prayer meeting also differs at the present day to what it used to be once. In former times, before the Nonconformists became strong in Wales, it was the custom for the clergyman to read the common service appointed for the burial of the dead, and at the conclusion of which Psalms were sung; but at the present day the custom is, as a rule, for three or four persons to offer extemporary prayers, and an address delivered on the melancholy subject by the Clergyman of the Church of England or a Nonconformist minister, and hymns are sung. And afterwards the crowd depart for their homes. Formerly when it was customary to keep vigil over the dead, young men and women were glad to volunteer their services to watch the corpse during the night in order to enjoy the society of each other, and on some occasions, it seems, from what I have been told by old persons, some of the young men were rather merry before morning, and often went as far as to drink beer, and in order to pass the time good many stories were related about Corpse Candles, phantom funerals, etc., but the old Welsh Wake nights were never so rowdy as the Irish ones. In Pembrokeshire, about hundred and fifty years ago there was a most curious, strange, and mysterious custom performed during the Wake Night, known as "Hir-wen-gwd" (long white bag, or shroud). The corpse was drawn up through the chimney, and the process was as follows:--A certain number of young men took out the corpse from the coffin and moved it, clad in a long white shroud, to a convenient place near the fire. Then a rope was tied round to the upper part of the body, and when this was done securely, the other end of the rope was passed up the chimney by means of a long stick for that purpose; and the next step was for a party of the men to go up to the top of the chimney from the outside of the house by means of a ladder, and take hold of the rope which had been sent up inside, and when they were ready for the ceremony, they gave a sign to those who were inside the house with the corpse, by crying in Welsh, "Hirwen-gwd," and those who were inside the house would answer by saying, "Chware'n barod," or we are ready. Then the party who were on top of the house pulled up the corpse slowly through the chimney by means of the rope, and brought it to the very top and lowered it again, and eventually re-placed it in the coffin. An aged person, named Mrs. Mary Thomas, Bengal, near Fishguard, told me that she had heard a good deal from her mother about this strange old custom, "Hirwen-gwd," and that the last of such ceremonies took place at a house called Pantycnwch, in the parish of Bridell, about a hundred and forty years ago. According to Mrs. Thomas, it was customary to put a living man in the coffin whilst the ceremony of drawing up the corpse through the chimney was going on, and this was done in the case referred to at Bridell; but when the party at the end of the game approached the coffin in order to take out the living man so as to replace the corpse in it, they found him dead. This sad incident caused people after this to put an end of the old custom. When in Pembrokeshire, I enquired everywhere from very old persons as to the origin and object of such strange and mysterious ceremony, and in reply some of them informed me that it was only a game indulged in by those who were keeping vigil over the dead, to pass the time, whilst others said that there was once a superstition that another death would soon follow the funeral in the family or in the district unless the ceremony was duly performed. Hirwen-gwd, whatever might have been the origin of it, seems to have been confined to Pembrokeshire, at least I have not found any tradition of the custom among the old people of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, except in one district in the latter county, situated on the very border of Pembrokeshire. It is, however, possible that such custom was once known in other parts of South Wales, but discontinued at an earlier date. In a series of spurious letters, known as "Llythyrau Anna Beynon," bearing the date 1720, and pretending to give an account of the old rural customs of two hundred years ago in the Parish of Llandyssul and the surrounding districts, I found the following strange story in connection with "Hirwen-gwd," but I cannot vouch for the truth of the account, as it is evident that the "letters" referred to are not authentic:-- "GWYLNOS. "Fe fu farw Shann, Ty Clai yn ddiweddar, yn 90 oed. Nid oedd ganddi yr un plentyn yn y byd i alaru ar ei hol, ond yr oedd Abel ei hwyr, bachgen 18 oed, yn llefain yn dost ar ol yr unig ffrynd oedd ganddo yn y byd. Fe fu yno ryw wylnos ryfedd ar ei hol. Cafwyd cwrw yno o dafarn Nani Dan-yr-Allt, a buwyd yn adrodd hanes Twm Shon Cati, ac yn yfed hyd haner nos. Yna gollyngodd rhyw rai raff yn ddistaw i lawr trwy y simnau, tra yr oedd eu cyfeillion tu mewn yn canu can 'Ysgyfarnog pen Crug y Balog.' Yr oedd Abel druan, yn eistedd yn bendrwm yng nghornel yr aelwyd, a'i law dan ei ben, ac yn llefain wrtho ei hunan, ac Evan Blaen Cwm ar ei bwys, ac yn ei gysuro, a'i law dros ei gefn, gan dd'weyd, 'Paid llefan Abel bach; yf lymaid eto; rhaid i ti ymroi i fod yn dawel, a ni a wnawn ninau ein goreu drosof ti. Gwnawn nas cyffrwy i, Abel!' Ar yr un pryd yr oedd yr hen andras yn cylymu y rhaff am ganol yr hogyn tlawd. Yn y man dyna y cymdeithion o'r tu maes yn gwaeddi, 'Hirwen gwd,' ac Evan o'r tu mewn yn gwaeddi, 'chwareu yn barod.' "Gyda hyny, dyna Abel yn araf esgyn i fyny i'r simnai, ac Evan yn gofyn, 'Pa le yr wyt ti yn myned, Abel bach?' ac yntau yn ateb, 'Wn i ddim b'le mae'r d----l yn myned a fi.' Tyn-wyd ef i maes trwy y simnai. Hen lwfer gul ydoedd, yn llawn o huddugl, ac yr oedd golwg ofnadwy arno wedyn.... "Mae nhad a'r dynion goreu yn teimlo i'r byw fod y fath beth wedi cymeryd lle yn yr ardal, ac na fu y fath beth o'r blaen er ys pymtheg mlynedd." Translated into English the above reads as follows:-- "WAKE-NIGHT. "Shann, Ty Clai died lately, at the age of 90 without leaving a child to bewail her loss, except Abel, her grandson, a lad of 18 years of age, who was crying sorrowfully after the only friend he had in the whole world. There was there a very strange Wake-night kept at the house. They got some beer there from Nanny Dan-yr-Allt's Inn, and the time was spent until midnight in telling stories about Twm Shon Catty, and in drinking. Then a rope was let down secretly through the chimney by some fellows, while their companions inside were singing 'Ysgyfarnog pen Crug y Balog.' Poor Abel was sitting in the corner of the hearth in sorrow, with his hand under his head, and crying by himself, and Evan, Blaen Cwm, close by him comforting him and saying, 'Don't cry, dear Abel; drink a drop more; you must try and be calm, and we will do our best for thee. Yes, by jove, we shall!' At the same time the old rascal was tying a rope around the poor lad's waist. Then, suddenly, the party outside cried 'Hirwen-gwd,' and Evan from within, cried, 'Chwareu yn barod.' "Almost instantly, Abel found himself being dragged up the chimney, whereupon Evan asked 'Where are you going, dear Abel?' The latter answered, 'I don't know where the d----l takes me to.' He was pulled out through the chimney--a narrow old luffer as it was, full of soot, and there was an awful sight on him afterwards.... "My father and the best men feel to the very life that such a thing has taken place in the district, and they say that no such thing has taken place before for 15 years." It seems that many strange and mysterious events took place sometimes at the Wake-nights in Pembrokeshire, if all the stories we hear are true. Miss Martha Davies, Fishguard, informed me that her late uncle, Mr. Howells, Cilgwyn, vouched for the truth of the following account of an event which happened about a hundred years ago or more. Saith she:--An old gentleman farmer, who was a notorious ungodly man, lived at a farmhouse called Dolgaranog, in North Pembrokeshire. He at last died, and was placed in his coffin, and the candles were lighted, and people came together to the house and the 'gwylnos,' or wake-night went on in the usual manner, according to the customs of those days. Some of the young men and young maidens were talking together, whispering words of love to each other, and were rather merry, it seems. As these things went on, they were suddenly surprised by hearing the sound of horses' feet, as if a large concourse of people were approaching the house on horses and driving full speed. The next moment the sound of men's footsteps was heard entering in through the door and into the very room where the wakenight went on; but nothing could be seen. The invisible intruders, as they passed into the room where the dead man lay, put out all the candles. At last the same sound of footsteps could be heard departing from the house, and as this mysterious sound passed out through the room, people heard the bustle, and even felt the crush, and on leaving, the strange visitors re-lighted the candles, but nothing was to be seen, but the sound of horses' feet was heard as if a large concourse of cavaliers were driving away from the house, in the same manner as they had approached it, and gradually the sound died away. Then the relatives and friends and others who were present at the 'gwylnos,' keeping vigil over the dead, were anxious to know what this sound of invisible footsteps meant, and what had happened, so they entered the room where the coffin was, and when they opened it, to their great alarm, they found that nothing but an empty coffin, for the corpse was gone, and was never found again. The people of the neighbourhood really believed that the body was taken by the Devil, or evil spirits, as the man had lived such a bad life. The coffin was afterwards filled with stones and buried. Another strange old death custom, if it ever existed, was the "Sin Eater." It seems that the first to refer to the subject was Mr. John Aubrey, in 1686, who asserted that there was such a custom in Herefordshire and also in North Wales, and at the annual meeting of the Cambrian Archæological Association, which was held at Ludlow in August, 1852, Mr. Matthew Moggridge, of Swansea, made the following observation:--"When a person died, his friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who, on his arrival, placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2s. 6d. and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze; for, as it was believed that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom he performed the above ceremony. He was utterly detested in the neighbourhood--regarded as a mere Pariah--as one irredeemably lost." The speaker then mentioned the Parish of Llandebie, in Carmarthenshire, where the above practice was said to have prevailed to a recent period. Mr. Allen, of Pembrokeshire, said that the plate and salt were known in that county, where also a lighted candle was stuck in the salt, and that the popular notion was that it kept away the evil spirit. A few years ago, one Rhys read at Tregaron an interesting paper on that town and district, and after referring to the custom of keeping vigil over the dead, he makes the following statement: "There was also an old custom in the town (Tregaron) connected with the 'Sin-eater.' Where there was a corpse in the house the 'Sin-eater' was invited. The relatives of the dead prepared him a meal on the coffin, he was supposed to eat the sins of the dead man so as to make the deceased's journey upward lighter." The late Chancellor D. Silvan Evans, and other well-informed Welshmen, have denied that any such custom as that of the Sin-eater ever existed in Wales, and Wirt Sikes, after diligent searching, failed to find any direct corroboration of it, and I may add that, though I venture no opinion of my own upon the subject, I have never come across in any part of Wales any old persons, either men or women, who had heard any tradition about it. On the other hand, the celebrated Welsh Novelist, Allen Raine, informed me a short time ago, that she knew a man at Carmarthen who had seen a "Sin-eater"; and the Rev. G. Eyre Evans showed me a portrait of a man that had seen one long ago in the Parish of Llanwenog. Perhaps the following, which appeared in Volume 15 of "Folk Lore," may prove of interest in connection with the subject. The writer, Mr. Rendel Harries, who had visited Archag, an Armenian village, where he attended service, says as follows in his "Notes from Armenia:--"At the evening service, to my great surprise, I found that when the congregation dispersed, a corpse laid out for burial was lying in the midst of the building. It had, in fact, been brought in before we came, and was to lie in the Church in preparation for burial next day. I noticed that two large flat loaves of bread had been placed upon the body. Inquiry as to the meaning of this elicited no other explanation than that the bread was for the Church mice and to keep them from eating the corpse. I did not feel satisfied with the explanation. Some months later, on mentioning the incident to some intelligent Armenians in Constantinople, they frankly admitted that in former days the custom was to eat the bread, dividing it up amongst the friends of the deceased. Whether this is a case of Sin-eating, I leave Mr. Frazer and Mr. Hartland to decide." The question of the alleged Sin-eater in Wales and the Borders has several times been discussed in "Bye-Gones," Oswestry, and whether there was at any time such strange custom in vogue in the country, there are at least ample proofs that it was customary in Pembrokeshire, if not in other parts of the country, to place a plate of salt on the breast of the corpse, and it was believed by some that this kept the body from swelling, and by others that it kept away the evil spirits. Pennant, a very keen observer, noticed a similar custom in the Highlands of Scotland 140 years ago, where "the friends lay on the breast of the deceased a wooden platter containing a small quantity of salt and earth separately and unmixed; the earth an emblem of the corruptible body; the salt an emblem of the immortal spirit." There are several superstitions in West Wales concerning salt, but shall refer to the subject in another chapter. It was once the custom in Wales to make the sign of the cross on the dead body or a cross was placed at or near his head; and though the ceremony was discontinued long ago, we even now occasionally hear the old saying, "Mae e dan ei grwys" (he is under his cross), when a dead body is in the house. As a rule in West Wales, coffins are made of oak, but poor people are satisfied with elm, and the corpse is placed in it, covered in a white shroud, but good many are buried in their best clothes, both at present and in the past, and a writer in "Bye-Gones," 1888, says that in an old book in Tregaron Vestry, dated 1636, he found that it was the rule of the Parish at that time to bury paupers without a coffin, and they were to wear their best apparel, and best hat; the charge for burial was two-pence; if any were buried in a coffin they also were to don their Sunday best, and the charge for their burial was 2s. 6d. To bury the dead in their best clothes instead of a shroud is a custom that has been continued in Wales till the present day by some, but not without a coffin; but it seems to have been a common practice to bury paupers, and those who were in very poor circumstances, without a coffin till about 200 years ago and even at a later date, as the registers of some of the old Parish Churches prove. It was also customary in former times to "bury in woollen"--that is, in a shroud made of woollen material, and the eminent Antiquarian, Mr. John Davies, of the National Library, has found out "that this was the practice in the Parish of Llandyssul in the year 1722. Undoubtedly, burying in woollen was in vogue for some generations and a statute of the time of Queen Elizabeth provided that it should be done in order to encourage the flannel industry; and an Act of Parliament was passed in the reign of Charles the Second to promote the sale and use of English wool, and there was once a penalty of £5 for burying in a shroud not made of wool. On the appointed day for the funeral, a large concourse of friends and neighbours come together at the house of the deceased, and all are welcomed to partake of food, as the Welsh people have always been remarkable for their hospitality on melancholy as well as joyful occasions. In former times great preparations were made, for the day of the funeral was in reality a regular feasting day for those who attended. Meyrick, in his "History of Cardiganshire," writing about a hundred years ago, observes:--"A profuse dinner, consisting principally of cold meat, fowls, tongues, etc., is spread on several tables, and a carver placed at the head of each, whose sole business is to carve for different parties as they alternately sit down. As the company are too numerous to be all accommodated within, the poorer people are seated on stools round the outside of the house, and are presented with cakes and warmed ale, with spice and sugar in it." It was once customary to prepare a special kind of drink known as a "diod ebilon," which contained the juice of elder tree and Rosemary, in addition to the ordinary substances of ale. The custom of giving beer and cake at funerals continued in some districts till very recently, and the Rev. D. G. Williams, St. Clear's, says that this was done at the funeral of an old gentleman farmer in the Parish of Trelech, in Carmarthenshire, about 30 years ago. Though it is not customary to give beer at the present day, but food, especially in a way of tea and cake, is given to everybody in rural districts, not only to those who have come from a distance, but even to near neighbours. The nearest relations make it a point of sitting in the death chamber, and before the coffin is nailed up, almost everybody present in the house enters the room to see the body and look on it with a sigh. Then Divine Service is conducted, at the close of which, the body is borne out of the house, by the nearest male relatives of the deceased, a custom introduced, undoubtedly, into Wales by the "Romans during their residence in this country, for the coffins of Roman citizens held in high esteem were borne by senators, but those of enemies were borne on the other hand by slaves." According to Pennant's Tours in North Wales, there was formerly an old custom to distribute bread and cheese over the coffin to poor people who had been gathering flowers to decorate it. Sometimes a loaf of bread was given or a cheese with a piece of money placed inside it, and a cup of drink also was presented. Cakes were given in South Cardiganshire to those who attended the funerals of the wealthy. I found that in Pembrokeshire in the present day, it is customary to place the coffin on chairs before the door outside before placing it on a bier. In most districts of West Wales, hearses have been until a few years ago, almost unknown, and such is the case even at the present day with few exceptions, except in those places adjoining the towns, but no doubt they are continually becoming more general every day. It is still the custom, especially in out of the way places where the funeral procession wends its way graveward on foot, to bear the corpse alternately, four men at the time, and sometimes even women carry as well as men. In the old times when the roads were bad, especially in the mountainous parts of the country, it was customary to make use of a what was known as "elorfarch" (horse-bier). The elorfarch was carried by horses, and it consisted of two long arms or shafts into which the horses were placed, with transverse pieces of wood in the centre, on which the coffin was placed. Before the funeral procession leaves the house, a hymn is sung, and in former times it was customary to sing on the way, especially when passing a house, and sometimes the singing continued all the way from the house to the churchyard without ceasing; and this singing along the lanes was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of all the old Welsh funeral customs, and it is a pity that it has been discontinued. During my recent visit to St. David's, an old gentleman named Evans informed me that he well remembered the funeral processions singing on the way to the churchyard of St. David's Cathedral; and that it was also the custom to march round the old stone cross, which I noticed in the centre of the town, before entering the churchyard. When a funeral takes place at Aberystwyth, in Cardiganshire, it is customary for the Town Crier to go through the streets tolling a small hand-bell, a short time before the funeral procession. This is a survival of a very ancient custom which was once very general throughout Wales, and in pre-Reformation times this corpse-bell which was known as "bangu," was kept in all the Welsh Churches, and when a funeral was to take place, the bellman took it to the house of the deceased. When the procession began, a psalm was sung, and then the sexton sounded his bell in a solemn manner for some time, and again at intervals, till the funeral arrived at the Church. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing 700 years ago, mentions of such bell at "Elevein, in the Church of Glascwm, in Radnorshire; a portable bell endowed with great virtue, called Bangu, and said to have belonged to St. David. A certain woman secretly conveyed this bell to her husband who was confined in his Castle of Raidergwy (Rhaiadyrgwy) near Warthreinion (which Rhys, son of Gruffyth, had lately built), for the purpose of his deliverance. "The keepers of the Castle not only refused to liberate him for this consideration, but seized and detained the bell; and in the same night, by divine vengeance, the whole town, except the wall on which the bell hung, was consumed by fire." Formerly, in all parts of Wales, the Passing Bell was tolled for the dying, just as the spirit left the body. In ancient times there was a superstition among the Welsh people that the evil spirits were hovering about the sick man's chamber, waiting to pounce upon the soul as it left the body, but that the sound of a bell frightened away the fiends. According to "Cymru Fu," an interesting Welsh book published by Hughes and Son, Wrexham, another old custom in connection with Welsh funerals in former times, was to set down the bier and kneel and repeat the Lord's Prayer, whenever the procession came to a cross road. The origin of this custom, as given by the Welsh, is to be found in the former practice of burying criminals at cross-roads. It was believed that the spirits of these criminals did not go far away from the place where their bodies lay, and in repeating the Lord's Prayer was supposed to destroy and do away with any evil influence these spirits might have on the soul of the dear departed. The Venerable Archdeacon Williams, Aberystwyth, informed me that he was told by the late Principal Edwards, University College of Wales, that there was once an old custom in the Parish of Llanddewi Brefi for funeral processions to pass through a bog instead of proceeding along the road which went round it. Those who bore the bier through the bog, proceeded with much difficulty and often sank in the mud. The ceremony of taking the corpse through the bog was, at least, in Pre-Reformation times, supposed to have the effect of lessening the time or suffering of the deceased's soul in Purgatory, but the custom was continued in the said Parish for many generations after the Reformation, if not until recent times. It was once customary at Rhayader, in Radnorshire, for funeral processions to carry small stones which were thrown to a large heap at a particular spot before arriving at the church. When the funeral procession was nearing the churchyard a hymn was again sung. The custom was, and still is, for the clergyman, arrayed in his surplice, to meet the corpse at the entrance of the churchyard, as directed in the Prayer Book, and placing himself at the head of the procession, they proceed into the body of the church, and the bier is placed before the Altar. It was once customary for all the relations of the deceased to kneel around it until taken from the church to the place of interment. After the body has been lowered into the grave, and at the close of the funeral service one or more hymns are sung, generally those that were favourites of the deceased. When the deceased who is buried in the churchyard of the Parish Church, happened to have been a Nonconformist, it is sometimes customary to have services both in chapel and in church; in the former first, and in the latter before the interment. This was done in connection with the funeral of the late Mr. John Evans, Pontfaen, Lampeter, a few years ago, when I was present myself. It was once customary to give the shoes of the dead man to the grave-digger, a vestry at Tregaron in Cardiganshire, about 200 years ago passed that this should be done in that place. There is no such practice at present in any part of Wales. There was once a curious old custom known as "Arian y Rhaw" (spade money) which survived in some districts of West Wales until a comparatively recent date, especially in the Northern parts of Cardiganshire, and that part of Carmarthenshire which borders Breconshire. Mr. John Jones, Pontrhydfendigaid, an old man of 95, informed me that the custom was observed at Lledrod, a parish situated about nine miles from Aberystwyth, about eighty years ago. It was something as follows:--At the grave, the grave-digger extended his spade for donations, and received a piece of silver from each one of the people in turn. The following account of the custom by an eye-witness appeared in the Folk-Lore Column of the "Carmarthen Journal," July 7th, 1905:--"It was in the summer of 1887, if I remember well, that I had occasion to attend the funeral of a young child at Llangurig Church, situated on the main road leading from Aberystwyth to Llanidloes, and about five miles from the latter. After the service at the graveyard, the sexton held up an ordinary shovel into which all present cast something. The cortege was not large, as the child buried was only eight months old. When all had contributed their mites, and the sum had been counted, the sexton in an audible voice, declared the amount received, saying twenty-eight shillings and sixpence, many thanks to you all." Another curious old custom at Welsh funerals was the "Offrwm," or Parson's Penny, which was as follows: After having read the burial service in the Church, the Clergyman stood near the Altar until the nearest relation went up first to him and deposited an offertory on the table, then the other mourners, one and all followed, and presented a piece of money, and the money received by the Parson in this manner amounted sometimes to a very large sum, especially when the mourners were wealthy. The Author of Cradock's account of the most romantic parts of North Wales, published in 1773, makes the following observation concerning the custom: "Many popish customs are still retained in Wales; particularly offering made to the dead. These offerings must, of course, vary according to the rank of the persons deceased, as well as the affection that is borne to their memories. I was at a pauper's funeral when the donations amounted to half-a-crown, and I met with a Clergyman afterwards who had once received 90 guineas." This has not been practised in Cardigan and Carmarthenshire within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but the custom was observed in former times, we have not the least doubt, and it has survived even until the present day in some form or other, in some parts of the Principality, especially in parts of North Wales, as the following correspondence which appeared in the "Oswestry Advertiser" in July, 1906, proves: "OFFERTORIES AT FUNERALS IN WALES." "Sir,--A correspondent in your columns, about a fortnight ago, called attention to this subject, and expressed disapproval of the manner in which the offertories are taken in some Churches at funeral services--by laying the plate on the bier near the pulpit, and the congregation in a disorderly manner laying their offertory on the plate. I regret to observe that this practice is still pursued in two parishes in this neighbourhood, and I should like to call the attention of the proper authorities to the desirableness of changing the custom, and adopting the system suggested by your correspondent, that the offertory should be taken at the gate, or that two or more plates should be taken around the congregation. The parish clerk, too, might be instructed not to announce the amount of the offertory." Undoubtedly, this custom has survived from Pre-Reformation times, and was originally intended to compensate the Priest for praying for the Soul of the departed in Purgatory, but at present it only means a token of esteem towards the officiating Clergyman, or perhaps a tribute of respect to the departed. It was formerly customary in Wales to throw a sprig of rosemary into the grave on the coffin. The custom has been discontinued now, but it was done in the Vale of Towy, in Carmarthenshire as late as sixty years ago. An excellent old Welsh Magazine, the "Gwyliedydd" for May, 1830, makes the following observation concerning the custom: "In ancient times, it was customary for all who attended a funeral to carry each a sprig of rosemary in his hand, and throw it into the grave as the minister was reading the last words of the funeral service"; and a writer in the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine, in the following year adds that a custom analogous to this prevailed amongst the ancient heathens; who used to throw cypress wood into the grave in the same manner. The reason why they made choice of the cypress was, because its branches do not bud when thrown into the earth, but perish altogether; it was thus an expressive symbol of their opinion, that the bodies of the dead would never rise again. On the other hand, the Christians threw the rosemary into the graves of their brethren to express that hope of a joyful resurrection with which their faith had inspired them. It was once customary to read the will of deceased over the grave. Sir S. R. Meyrick mentions this in his History of Cardiganshire, a hundred years ago, and the custom has been continued to a more recent date. The Rev. T. D. Thomas, Vicar of Llangorwen, near Aberystwyth, informed me that this was done by him at Llangadock, Carmarthenshire, about the year 1897, when officiating in the absence of the Vicar of that Parish. There was also an old custom of burying one who had been murdered, in a coffin covered with red cloth. The Rev. D. G. Williams, in his collection of Carmarthenshire Folk-Lore, says that one William Powell, of Glan Areth, Vale of Towy, was so buried in the year 1770. In Wales in pre-Reformation times, it was sometimes the practice to bury a rich man in the garments of a monk, as a protection against evil spirits; but this could not be done without paying large sums of money to the priests. The custom of covering the coffin with wreaths is very generally observed at the present day throughout West and Mid-Wales. The coffin of the late Sir Pryse Pryse, Bart., Gogerddan, who was buried at Penrhyncoch, Cardiganshire, April 23rd, 1906, was covered with wreaths of most beautiful flowers, sent by Dowager Lady Pryse, Sir Edward and Lady Webley-Parry-Pryse, Countess Lisburne, Viscountess Parker, Lady Evans, Lovesgrove; Mr. and Mrs. Loxdale, and many other relations and friends, as well as the tenants and servants. In times past the Welsh always carried the association of graves and flowers to the most lavish extreme, and Shakespeare, alluding to this in "Cymbeline," the scene of which tragedy is more especially in Pembrokeshire, says: "Arv. With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose; or The azur'd harebell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Outsweeten'd not thy breath." It is more generally the case at the present day to cover the coffin with wreaths than with loose flowers, and occasionally the graves are lined with moss and flowers. To decorate the graves of the departed with flowers is a very old custom amongst the Welsh, especially on Palm Sunday, which is known in Wales as "Sul y Blodau"--Flowering Sunday. The custom is very generally observed even at the present day in Glamorganshire, where the churchyards and other burial places present a very beautiful appearance; but it is to be regretted that in West Wales, during the last sixty years, the practice to a very great extent has been discontinued, at least in rural districts. But it is reviving at the present day, and likely to grow as years go on. A correspondent from Aberaeron, in one of the papers noticed that on Palm Sunday, of the year 1906, many of the graves of Henfynyw, in that district had been cleaned and flowers placed upon them, whilst on others flowers grew. Whilst staying for a short time in the Parish of Cilcennin, about five years ago, I took particular notice, that the planting of flowers and plants on the graves is renewed every year about Easter or Spring time, and that they are kept blooming through the loving care of the descendants of the departed. An old man named Jenkin Williams, a native of Llangwyryfon, a parish in the same County, who is 89 years of age, informed me that he well remembered the custom observed in his native parish, about seven miles from Aberystwyth, many years ago; but it is rarely observed at the present day. There are many parts of the country nowadays, where the practice is unknown, but there are evident signs that the beautiful old custom is reviving in parts of Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, and Pembrokeshire. In Glamorganshire, as I have already observed, the custom is very general. The custom of placing tombstones on the graves is very generally observed, but very few of the stones are in the form of a cross. Indeed, crosses are remarkable for their absence in Welsh Churchyards. The Welsh people in rejecting what they consider as a too Popish a practice, have gone into the opposite extremes of adopting as monuments for their dear departed, the polytheistic obelisk of the ancient Egyptians; the Greek and Roman urns, and the chest-stone of the Druids. It has been the custom in some places to whitewash the small inscribed stones at the head and feet of poor people's graves. Several English authors who have written about Wales remark that in nearly every churchyard in the country, the mountain ash is to be seen. It seems to me that this is a mistake; for, as far as my experience is concerned, it is rarely seen in Welsh churchyards, at least in the present day, and I have seen a good many of the churchyards; but it must be admitted that the Welsh have regarded the tree as sacred, and there are a good many superstitions in connection with it, so that it is possible that the custom of growing it in churchyards was more common in former times. The most common tree in the churchyards of Wales is the Yew, and the Welsh people from time immemorial, have always regarded the tree with solemn veneration, probably owing to its association with the dead. The Yew is famed in Welsh song, for the poets of Cambria in their elegies for their dead friends, often mention "Ywen Werdd y Llan" (the Green Yew of the Churchyard), and the poet Ioan Emlyn in his "Bedd y Dyn Tlawd"--"The Pauper's Grave" says: "Is yr Ywen ddu gangenog, Twmpath gwyrddlas gwyd ei ben." In former times the yew was consecrated and held sacred, and in funeral processions its branches were carried over the dead by mourners, and thrown under the coffin in the grave. With rosemary, ivy, bay, etc., branches of the trees were also used for church decorations. The following extract from the Laws of Howel Dda, King of Wales in the tenth century, shows that the yew tree was the most valuable of all trees, and also how the consecrated yew of the priests had risen in value over the reputed sacred mistletoe of the Druids:-- "A consecrated yew, its value is a pound. A mistletoe branch, three score pence. An oak, six score pence. Principal branch of an oak, thirty pence. A yew-tree (not consecrated), fifteen pence. A sweet apple, three score pence. A sour apple, thirty pence. A thorn-tree, sevenpence half-penny. Every tree after that, four pence." The planting of yew trees in Churchyards in Wales is as old as the Churchyards themselves; and it is probable that they were originally intended to act as a screen to the Churches by their thick foliage, from the violence of the winds, as well as a shelter to the congregation assembling before the church door was opened. The first Churches in Wales were only wooden structures, and needed such screens much more than the comfortable stone Churches of the present day. Another important object in planting the yew was to furnish materials for bows, as these were the national weapons of defence. The Churchyards were the places where they were most likely to be preserved, and some authorities derive the English word "yeoman" from yewmen, that is, the men who used the yew bow. The yew bow was very common throughout Wales in the old times, and skill in archery was universal in the country; and as late as Tudor times, the Welsh poet, Tudur Aled, asks, in lamenting the death of a squire:-- "Who can repeat his exploits to-day? Who knows so well the strength of yew." In the memorable Battle of Cressy, three thousand five hundred Welsh archers followed the Black Prince in the attack on France in the year 1346, and as many more came from the Welsh lordships, and bore such distinguished parts, for the success of this war was due to the skill of the Welsh Archers, and at the end of the battle the Prince adopted the motto, "Ich Dien," which has been the motto of the Princes of Wales ever since. Evelyn's opinion is "that we find it (the yew) so numerously planted in Churchyards from its being thought a symbol of immortality, the tree being so lasting and always green." There are at the present day in the Churchyards of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, some fine specimens of the yew tree, and some of them hundreds of years, if not nearly a thousand years old. In former times when Churchyards were resorted to for recreation, seats were fixed round the trunk of the tree. Many of the Churchyards in Wales in ancient times, before the introduction of Christianity, had been Druidical circles. This is evident from the oval form of the ground of many of them, which often resemble small embankments, or mounds. Such is the case as regards Tregaron Church, in Cardiganshire, Llanddewi Brefi also is on elevated ground, as well as several other Churchyards. How early the practice of enclosures near the Churches or Monasteries for burial of the dead began in Wales is quite uncertain. It seems that the practice was introduced into England by Archbishop Cuthbert about 750; but the origin of Churchyards in Wales was of a much earlier date, in all probability about two or three hundred years earlier than in England. Some of the best authorities assert that a few (but few only) of the Welsh Parish Churches and consecrated Churchyards can be traced to the days of St. Garmon, or Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, who paid two visits to this country about A.D. 429, and 447 respectively. It is possible that there were few Christians in Britain even in the first century; but Parochial Churches did not belong to the earlier ages of Christianity, and the clergy lived in towns, and undertook missionary journeys about the country, under the direction of their bishops. Prior to the introduction of enclosures round Churches for the purpose of burial, it was customary (as it is in China to-day), to bury on high places, such as hills and mountains. Cremation had also been practised as it is evident from the urns for the preservation of the ashes of the dead, which are being discovered in various parts of Wales, from time to time. Perhaps the most recent and interesting discoveries of such urns were those found near Capel Cynon, in Cardiganshire, containing ashes and portions of small calcined bones. A labourer named John Davies, came across them accidentally in an old mound on a hill, whilst working for Evan Thomas, a contractor under the County Council of Cardiganshire, in digging out stones for road-mending. (See Archæologia Cambrensis for January, 1905.) The introduction of Christianity put an end to the practice of cremation. Carneddau, or cairns, and tumuli, or mounds of earth, have been preserved till the present day in different parts of Wales, but it is to be regretted that many of these interesting monuments of antiquity, which the Welsh in ancient times erected in honour of their great men have been destroyed. That Wales has been celebrated for its Carneddau, is evident from the words of Taliesin, the chief poet of King Arthur's time, who calls the country "Cymru Garneddog" (Cairn Wales), and one the most interesting "Carnedd" is what is known as "bedd Taliesin"--Taliesin's grave, about eight miles north of Aberystwyth, where, according to tradition, Taliesin himself was buried. Such monumental heaps over the mortal remains of the dead were of two kinds, according to the nature of the country. In stony districts, a cairn of stones was heaped, but where stones were scarce, a mound of turf of a circular construction, called tomen (tumulus), was deemed sufficient. In ancient times this mode of burial was considered a most honourable one, and in passing the tomb of a warrior or some great man, it was customary for every passer by to throw a stone to the cairn, out of reverence to his memory. There was a similar custom among the Indians of Patagonia, which was still observed a few years ago. A Patagonian Chief in passing the grave of an eminent chief or a great warrior, would dismount from his horse, and search for a stone to throw on the cairn. Monumental Cairns were also common in Scotland, for in Ossian's Poems, Shibric, in Carricthura says: "If fall I must in the field, raise high my grave, Vinvela. Grey stones, and heaped earth, shall mark me to future times." To erect mounds seems to have been a very ancient custom, for Herodotus, in giving a full and most interesting account of the strange practices of the Ancient Scythians, in connection with the burial of their Kings, observes amongst other things, "Having done this, they all heap up a large mound, striving and vieing with each other to make it as large as possible." When the custom of burying in churchyards became general in Wales, in course of time, to bury in cairns and mounds, which formerly had been an honourable practice, was discontinued, and even condemned, as fit only for the great criminals; and, as Dr. Owen Pugh, observes: "when this heap became to be disgraced, by being the mark where the guilty was laid, the custom for every one that passed, to fling his stone, still continued, but now as a token of detestation"; hence originated the old Welsh sayings "Carn lleidr (a thief's Cairn), "Carn ar dy wyneb." (Cairn on thy face). Even at the present day throughout Wales, when any one is guilty of robbery or swindle, it is customary to call such a man a "Carn leidr" (A cairn thief). In the parish of Llanwenog, six miles from Lampeter, there is a spot called "Carn Philip Wyddyl." an old farmer, named "Tomos, Ty-cam," informed me that according to the traditions of the district, this Philip was a "Carn leidr," or the ringleader of a gang of thieves, who, in an attempt to escape, jumped down from Llanwenog Steeple, and broke his leg. His pursuers stoned him to death, and buried him beneath a carn. CHAPTER IV. VARIOUS OTHER CUSTOMS. CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR'S DAY CUSTOMS. Christmas at the present day in Wales is not so important as it used to be in former times, though it is still the beginning of a holiday season, and also a regular feasting-day. Morning service is conducted in the Parish Church, but is not so well-attended as in former times. It is often the custom to have an Eisteddfod or a concert in the evening in Nonconformist Chapels. In towns, the children hang up their stockings the night before Christmas, expecting to find some gifts in them next morning. Christmas is also an important day for the young maidens to kiss and be kissed. A girl places a mistletoe to hang over the chair in which a young man, whom she wishes to catch, is likely to sit. Then when he comes under the mistletoe, she kisses him suddenly, and whenever she succeeds in doing so, she claims from him a new pair of gloves. The favourite observance for a young man to kiss a girl under the branches is also well known, and it was once supposed that the maiden who missed being kissed under the mistletoe on Christmas would forfeit her chance of matrimony, at least during the ensuing twelve months. These superstitions and favourite observances have come down from the time of the Druids. The most interesting feature of Christmas in Wales in times gone by was undoubtedly the "Plygain" which means morning twilight. The "Plygain" was a religious service held in the Parish Church, at three o'clock on Christmas morning to watch the dawn commemorative of the coming of Christ, and the daybreak of Christianity. The service consisted of song, prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, and there was at that early hour a large congregation even in remote districts, as many came from long distances, often three or four miles on a frosty night, or through snow. It was customary for each family to take their own candles with them to this early service. These candles were of various colours, and should any remain after the service was over, they became the property of the clerk. Carols were sung, and it was customary for anyone who claimed to be a bard to compose a carol; indeed, a poet was not considered a poet unless he could sing a carol. Some old people informed me that in connection with these early services there was a great deal of disorder on account of men under the influence of drink attending the Church after a night of revelry, and that this put an end to the "Plygain" in some places. In course of time the hour was changed from three to four or five, and such service is still continued in Llanddewi Brefi and other places in Cardiganshire. After beginning Christmas morning so devoutly with Divine Service at early dawn, it was the custom in old times to spend most of the day in enjoyment, especially hunting the hare, the woodcock, but the chief sport was in connection with the squirrel. There was a custom once at Tenby, in Pembrokeshire, for the young men of the town to escort the Rector, with lighted torches from his residence to the Church to the early service on Christmas morning. They extinguished their torches as soon as they reached the porch, and went in to the early service in the Church, and at the conclusion of it, the torches were re-lighted, and the procession returned to the Rectory, the chimes ringing till the time of the usual morning service. Lighted torches were also carried through the streets by a procession on Christmas Eve, and cow-horns were blown, and windows of houses were decorated by evergreens. In North Pembrokeshire the holidays commenced, especially amongst the farmers, on Christmas Day, and were continued for three weeks, viz., till Epiphany Sunday. The Rev. O. Jenkin Evans, writing in "Pembrokeshire Antiquities," page 47, says:--"On the 25th day of December, the farmers with their servants and labourers suspended all farming operations, and in every farm the plough was at once carried into the private house, and deposited under the table in the 'Room Vord' (i.e., the room in which they took their meals), where it remained until the expiration of "Gwyliau Calan." During these three weeks, parties of men went about from house to house, and were invited into the "Room Vord," where they sat around the table, regaling themselves with beer, which was always kept warm in small neat brass pans in every farm-house ready for callers. But the peculiar custom which existed amongst these holiday-makers was that they always wetted the plough which lay dormant under the table with their beer before partaking of it themselves, thus indicating that though they had dispensed with its service for the time, they had not forgotten it, and it would again, in due course, be brought out on the green sward and turn it topsy-turvy. These bands of men would sometimes carry with them the "Wren," singing simple popular ditties. On Christmas Day, a sumptuous dinner was prepared at the principal farms in every neighbourhood to which all the others, including the cottagers, were invited. The repast consisted of geese, beef, pudding, etc." One of the most curious customs which was once in vogue about Christmas time was the procession known as "Mari Lwyd Lawen" ("the Merry Grey Mary"), which was a man wearing the skeleton of a horse's head decked with ribbons and rosettes. The man was enveloped in a large white sheet, and proceeded round the houses, followed by a merry procession, singing songs and playing merry pranks, collecting Christmas boxes: "Mari Lwyd lawen, Sy'n dod o Bendarren," etc. (Merry grey Mary, Who comes from Pendarren.) When a real skeleton could not be got, it was customary to make one of straw and rags. It seems that "Mari Lwyd" belonged more especially to Glamorganshire, yet it was well-known in Carmarthenshire also, not only in those places bordering on Glamorgan, but also in the Vales of Towy and Cothy. Mr. T. Davies (Eryr Glyn Cothi), and others, informed me that the "Mari" procession visited Llanegwad, and other places between Llandilo and Carmarthen only a few years ago. The curious custom was not known in Pembrokeshire, nor indeed in Cardiganshire, though I was informed that "Mari Lwyd" on one occasion at least did visit the latter county from Glamorganshire, and tramped across from Llandyssul, in the Vale of Teify, to New Quay, on the sea coast, calling at Lampeter and other places on the way. According to the excellent Magazine, named "The Cambrian Journal" published 50 years ago, there was an old custom once at Tenby in Pembrokeshire, sometimes before, and sometimes after Christmas Day, for the fishermen to dress up one of their number, whom they called the "Lord Mayor of Penniless Cove," with a covering of evergreens, and a mask over his face; they would then carry him about, seated on a chair, with flags flying, and a couple of violins playing before him. Before every house, the "Lord Mayor" would address the occupants, wishing them "a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year." If his good wishes were responded to with money, his followers gave three cheers, the masquer would himself return thanks, and the crowd again give "three times three," hip, hip, hurrah! There was also in vogue once the barbarous practice of "holly beating." This was on the day after Christmas, St. Stephen's Day, which consisted in a furious onslaught being made by men and boys, armed with large bushes of the prickly holly, on the naked and unprotected arms of female domestics, and others of a like class. NEW YEAR'S DAY. In Pembrokeshire, to rise early on New Year's morning will, it is considered, bring good luck. On that morning also it is deemed wise to bring a fresh loaf into the house as it is considered the succeeding loaves throughout the year will be influenced by that performance. In most places throughout West Wales, even at the present day, people are very particular as to whether they see a man or a woman the first thing on New Year's morning. Mr. Williams in his "Llen-gwerin Sir Gaerfyrddin," says that in parts of Carmarthenshire in order to secure future luck or success during the coming year, a man must see a woman, and a woman a man. And the Rev. N. Thomas, Vicar of Llanbadarn Fawr, informed me that he has met people in his Parish who consider it lucky to see a woman first. As a rule, however, the majority of people both men and women deem it lucky to see a man, but unlucky to see a woman. Even now in various parts of the country, good many object to the entrance of a woman before the in-coming of one of the other sex, this is particularly the case in the central parts of Cardiganshire, especially in the Parish of Llanddewi Brefi and surrounding districts between Lampeter and Tregaron. This is also true of some parts of Pembrokeshire. According to the late Rector of Newport, Pembrokeshire, the man must needs bear one of the four lucky names--Dafydd, Ifan, Sion and Siencyn. "Supposing the man was not called by one of these names, the person first seen might as well be a woman, if she only bore one of the lucky names--Sian a Sioned, Mair a Marged. Then all would go well for that year at least. A hare or a magpie must not cross one before twelve, and the cock must not crow before supper on New Year's Day, or some dire calamity might befall one after all." There was everywhere a general desire to see "the Old Year out and the New Year in." In South Pembrokeshire some danced the old year out; some drank it out, and many walked it out. I was informed at Talybont, that once those who desired to see "the New Year in "crowded to each other's houses in North Cardiganshire to pass the time in story-telling and feasting. The children especially, looked forward to New Year's morning, with the greatest interest, as it was, and still is in some places, customary for them to go about from house to house, asking for "calenig," or New Year's gift. The children on such occasions often repeated something as follows:-- "Rhowch galenig yn galonog, I ddyn gwan sydd heb un geiniog, Gymaint roddwch, rhowch yn ddiddig, Peidiwch grwgnach am ryw ychydig. "Mi godais heddyw maes o'm ty, A'm cwd a'm pastwn gyda mi, A dyma'm neges ar eich traws, Set llanw'm cwd a bara a chaws. "Calenig i fi, calenig i'r ffon, Calenig i fytta'r noson hon; Calenig i mam am gwyro sane, Calenig i nhad am dapo sgidie. "Chwi sy'n meddi aur ac arian, Dedwydd ydych ar Ddydd Calan, Braint y rhai sy'n perchen moddion, Yw cyfranu i'r tylodion, 'Rhwn sy a chyfoeth ac ai ceidw, Nid oes llwyddiant i'r dyn hwnw." "Os gwelwch yn dda ga'i g'lenig?-- Shar i 'nhad a shar i mam, A shar i'r gwr bonheddig." The following is from an old song for New Year's Day, heard at Tregaron in Cardiganshire:-- "Rhowch i mi docyn diogel, Fel gallo mam ei arddel, Neu chwech gael cwart, 'Dwy'n hidio fawr, Waeth fi yw gwas mawr Trecefel." In the English districts of West Wales, such as South Pembrokeshire, such verses as the following were repeated:-- Get up on New Year's morning, The cocks are all a-crowing; And if you think you're awake too soon, Why get up and look at the stars and moon. "The roads are very dirty, My shoes are very thin, I wish you a happy New Year, And please to let me in." The following is another specimen from North Cardigan:-- "Mae rhew a'r eira yn bur oeredd, Awel fain yn dod o'r gogledd, Ambell gybydd oddi cartre, Yn lle rhanu rhai ceinioge, A rhai eraill yn eu caban, Yn gwneyd eu cilwg ar Ddydd Calan." When boys and girls knocked at the doors of misers who refused to give anything, they went away disappointed, repeating "Blwyddyn newydd ddrwg, A llond y ty o fwg." "A bad New Year to you, And a house full of smoke." But as a rule the farmers were very kind to all comers, both in Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire, unless they had been disappointed by seeing a girl first that morning, which was, as I have already observed, considered an unlucky omen. Even at the present day this superstition is very strong in Llanddewi Brefi, Cardiganshire, and, indeed, many other parts of Wales, for I have taken particular notice that the first boy who comes to the door on New Year's morning, if he happens to come before a girl is seen, he is warmly welcomed into the house and even taken upstairs and into the bedrooms so that those who are in their beds might have the satisfaction of seeing a male the first thing on New Year's Day, to secure good-luck. Before the boy departs some money is given him, about sixpence as a rule at the present day, but in former times he got a loaf of bread instead. At the present day boys and girls, and occasionally a few poor old women continue to go round from house to house from early dawn till mid-day collecting alms, when each of the children receive a copper, in former times, however, it was more customary to give them some bread and cheese, which they took home to their parents in a bag which they carried on their backs, or a basket under their arms. When the children had more than they could carry, they would leave some of it at a certain house and return for it the following day. In some places it was customary to keep on to collect alms in this manner for two days, but only those who were in very poor circumstances were allowed to go about on the second day. It was once customary to carry an orange, with oats stuck in it, placed on a stick, round the houses. The visitors sang at the door and expected something to eat and drink. Another interesting custom observed, especially in Pembrokeshire, on New Year's Day was for children to visit the houses in the morning about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning with a vessel filled with spring water, fresh from the well and with the aid of a sprig of evergreen, sprinkled the faces of those they met, and at the same time singing as follows:-- "Here we bring new water from the well so clear, For to worship God with, this Happy New Year; Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine, With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine; Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her toe, Open you the west door and turn the old year go; Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her chin, Open you the east door and let the New Year in." When the children entered into a house, it was customary for them to sprinkle every one of the family even in their beds with this fresh spring water, and they received a small fee for the performance. There was a ceremony among the Druids and others in ancient times, of throwing spring water over the shoulder in order to command the attention of elemental spirits. It is customary in some places, especially in parts of Carmarthenshire, for young men to sprinkle the young girls with water in their beds, and the young maidens in their turn sprinkle the young men, and this is sometimes done when the one upon whom water is thrown is fast asleep. It is still customary for young men with musical instruments to visit the palaces of the gentry at early dawn, and play some of the beautiful old Welsh Airs, when they receive warm welcome and generous gifts. Among Twelfth Night Custom, none was more celebrated in Pembrokeshire in the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth than the "cutty wren," though there are hardly any traces of the custom in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. The custom was something as follows: Having procured a wren, the bird was placed in a little house of paper with glass windows, sometimes a cage or a lantern, or a box was used for that purpose, and often decorated with coloured ribbons, and "every young lady, and even old ladies, used to compete in presenting the grandest ribbon to the "wren." The cage or the lantern thus decorated with the little bird in it, was hoisted on four poles, one at each corner, and four men carried it about for the purpose of levying contributions, singing a long ballad or ditty such as follows on the following tune:-- "Where are you going? says Milder to Melder, O where are you going? says the younger to the elder; O I cannot tell says Festel to Fose; We're going to the woods said John the Red Nose. We're going to the woods said John the Red Nose. "O what will you do there? says Milder to Melder, O what will you do there? says the younger to the elder; O I do not know, says Festel to Fose; To shoot the cutty wren, said John the Red Nose, To shoot the cutty wren, said John the Red Nose. "O what will you shoot her with? says Milder to Melder, O what will you shoot her with? says the younger to the elder O I cannot tell, says Festel to Fose; With bows and arrows, said John the Red Nose, With bows and arrows, said John the Red Nose. "O that will not do! says Milder to Melder, O that will not do says the younger to the elder; O what will you do then? says Festel to Fose; With great guns and cannons says John the Red Nose, With great guns and cannons says John the Red Nose. "O what will you bring her home in? says Milder to Melder, O what will you bring her home in? says the younger to elder; O I cannot tell, says Festel to Fose; On four strong men's shoulders, said John the Red Nose. On four strong men's shoulders, said John the Red Nose. "O that will not do, says Milder to Melder, O that will not do, says the younger to the elder; O what will you do then? says Fester to Fose; On big carts and waggons, said John the Red Nose, On big carts and waggons, said John the Red Nose. "What will you cut her up with? says Milder to Melder, What will you cut her up with? says the younger to the elder; O I do not know, saith Festel to Fose; With knives and with forks, said John the Red Nose, With knives and with forks, said John the Red Nose. "O that will not do, says Melder to Milder, O that will not do, says the younger to the elder; O what will do then? says Festel to Fose; With hatchets and cleavers, said John the Red Nose, With hatchets and cleavers, said John the Red Nose, "What will you boil her in? says Milder to Melder, What will you boil her in? says the younger to the elder; O I cannot tell thee, says Festel to Fose; In pots and in kettles, said John the Red Nose, In pots and in kettles, said John the Red Nose." For more on this interesting subject see "Manners and Customs of the People of Tenby" in "The Cambrian Journal," Vol. IV., page 177. I may add that I heard the above ditty sung in Welsh in several parts of South Wales, especially when I was a boy. Another such custom was called "tooling," and its purpose was beer. It consisted in calling at the farm-houses and pretending to look for one's tools behind the beer cask. "I've left my saw behind your beer cask," a carpenter would say; "my whip," a carter; and received the tool by proxy, in the shape of a cup of ale. It was also customary for the women to practice what was called sowling, viz., asking for "sowl," that is cheese, fish or meat. It was also customary in parts of the counties of Pembroke and Carmarthen for poor people to proceed round the neighbourhood from house to house with their "Wassail bowls," and singing outside each door something as follows-- "Taste our jolly wassail bowl, Made of cake, apple, ale, and spice; Good master give command, You shall taste once or twice Of our jolly wassail bowl." People who partook of the contents of the bowl were of course expected to pay, so that the invitation to "taste our jolly wassail bowl," was not always accepted. In such cases the bearer of the bowl sung the following rhyme in disappointment:-- "Are there any maidens here, As I suppose there's none Or they wouldn't leave us here, With our jolly wassail bowl." "The huge bowl was on the table, brimful of ale. William held a saucepan, into which Pally and Rachel poured the ale, and which he subsequently placed upon the fire. Leaving it to boil, the party seated round the fire began to roast some of the apples that Pally had just put upon the table. This they effected by tying long pieces of twine to their stems, and suspending them from the different "pot-hooks and hangers" with which the chimney corner abounded, twisting the cord from time to time to prevent their burning.... By the time they had all completed their trials the ale was boiling and the apples were roasted. The tempting beverage went smoking hot into the bowl, and was joined by the contents of a small, suspicious-looking, tightly-corked bottle, which I strongly suspect, contained what the French call the "water of life," and a very strong water it undoubtedly is. Next there was a hissing and splutting greeting between the ale and the roasted apples, which was succeeded by the introduction of some of the "nices," with which Pally's table was covered. Different masculines of the party added to the treat by producing packets of buns, raisins, or biscuits, which they dropped singly into the bowl until it was full to overflowing. With a sufficient proportion of spices and sugar, the wassail bowl was finally prepared, and, as if by instinct, just as it was completed, in popped three or four of Pally's ancient cronies, all dying to partake of it. The cups and glasses were speedily filled, when William proposed Pally's health, which was cordially drunk by the whole party." (The Vale of Towey, pages 83-87). It was customary also, especially in parts of Carmarthenshire, on "Calan Hen" (Old New Year's Day) to make a feast for those who had helped them with the harvest. It was also once customary on Epiphany Night in West Wales to visit the houses of those who had been married since the Epiphany before. Those who went round the houses in this manner requested admittance in rhyme and expected food and beer to be given to them by the inmates. Epiphany, known in Wales as "Gwyl Ystwyll," was formerly closely associated with Christmas. Many of the old customs and festivities in connection with the New Year are of great antiquity; it was then that the Druids went to seek the mistletoe on the oak. To the Druids the oak and the mistletoe were objects of veneration; and one of the most imposing ceremonies was the cutting of the latter, some days before the New Year, with a Golden Knife, in a forest dedicated to the gods; and the distributing its branches with much ceremony as New Year's Gifts among the people. On the day for cutting the mistletoe, a procession of Bards, Druids, and Druidesses was formed to the forest, and singing all the while. The Arch-Druid climbed the tree and cut down the mistletoe, the other Druids spreading a sheet to receive it. This scene was enacted with great success at the Builth Wells Pageant, August, 1909--(see illustration)--which I witnessed myself with interest. The Romans had also their festival in honour of Janus and Strenia about the same time of the year. It is interesting to add that in England in the days of King Alfred a law respecting Feast Days was passed, in which the twelve days after the birth of Christ were made a season of holidays. ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. The custom of sending a pretty Valentine, or an ugly one, of love, or from mere mischief, as the case might be, was very common once in Wales. We do not hear much of Valentines at the present, however, since the Picture Post Cards have become so common. ST. DAVID'S DAY. St. David is the Patron Saint of Wales, and strange to say the only Welsh Saint in the Calendar of the Western Church (Canonized by Calixtus II.) more than five hundred years after his death. His day is celebrated on the 1st of March throughout the world where Welshmen are. In Wales there are in some places grand dinners, and speeches are made and songs sung, and at present it is customary to conduct Divine Service on the day even in St. Paul's Cathedral, London. But perhaps the most characteristic feature of the day is the wearing of the Leek, though it must be admitted that wearing the Leek on St. David's Day is not very general in the country districts of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire at the present day, but the interesting old custom is reviving, especially in the towns, and every true-born Welshman ought to wear on the 1st of March the Welsh National Emblem which is dedicated to St. David. The origin of the custom is not known, there are many who positively assert that it originated in the days of St. David himself; that is, according to some traditions, during a memorable battle against the Saxons the Welsh obtained a complete victory over their enemies. During the engagement the Welsh had leeks in their hats on the occasion for their military colour and distinction of themselves, by persuasion of the said prelate St. David. According to other traditions, the battle of Poictiers has been named; also that of Cressy, when the Welsh archers did good service with the English against the French, under Edward the Black Prince of Wales, and Shakespeare alludes to this in Henry V.:-- Fluellen says to Henry: "If your Majesty is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which your Majesty knows, to this hour is an honourable badge of the service; and, I do believe, your Majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek on St. Tavy's Day." King Henry: "I wear it for a memorable honour; for I am Welsh, you know, good countryman." It seems that there was a custom in London 250 years ago of hanging effigies of Welshmen on St. David's Day; for Pepys says:-- (March 1, 1667). In Mark Lane I do observe (it being St. David's Day), the picture of a man dressed like a Welshman, hanging by the neck upon one of the poles that stand out at the top of one of the merchants' houses, in full proportion and very handsomely done, which is one of the oddest sights I have seen a good while. SHROVE TUESDAY. Shrove Tuesday, which is called in Welsh Dydd Mawrth Ynyd, was formerly kept as a holiday; but not much notice is taken of the day now, except that the old custom of pancakes eating still survives in most places. "Deuwch heno, fy nghyfeillion, Merched glan a'r bechgyn mwynion, A chydunwn heb un gofyd, Wneyd Crammwythau ar Nos Ynyd." Come to-night my friends, Fair young maidens and gentle young men; And let us join without sorrow To make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. The day was once also noted for foot-ball kicking in some districts, and also for throwing at cocks, that is hens which had laid no eggs before that day were threshed with a flail as being good for nothing. Mr. Williams in his excellent Welsh essay on the Folk Lore of Carmarthenshire, says that he had been informed by a middle aged person of a curious old custom of playing with eggs. Mr. Williams's informant when a child and other children with him, had been taught by an old woman how to play some peculiar game with eggs on this day, which was something as follows:--Eggs were boiled for two or three hours till they were as hard as stones. The children used to colour their eggs for the prettiest by boiling them in coffee with certain herbs, etc., then for half of the day, they kept throwing the eggs at each other. This curious kind of play reminds me of a similar practice which I noticed in South America many years ago, more especially in the Argentine Republic, where it was customary for the first half of the day for people to throw eggs, water, etc., at each other, and this was done even in the sheets of Buenos Ayres. The custom was known as "El Carnival," that is giving way to the flesh before the beginning of Lent or Fasting Time. In the North of England boys play with eggs on Easter Eve, and centuries ago eggs were blest by the Priest and preserved as Amulates. It was once customary for the tenants of Nanteos, in North Cardiganshire, to give to their landlord Shrove Hens and Eggs (ieir ac wyau Ynyd). This was undoubtedly a survival of the old custom of paying rent, or a portion of it, "in kind." To render in kind ducks and geese, loads of coal, etc., was continued yearly, both in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire within living memory. LENT. There was an old custom once in Wales of taking an egg-shell, filled with water, little meat, flour, etc., to a house of a neighbour, and leave it on the outside of the window while all the family were having their supper, and then run away, for if they were caught in doing it, they were obliged to clean old shoes as a punishment. The egg-shell used on the occasion was called "Crochan Grawys" (Lent Cauldron). Some old people remember this in Carmarthenshire. PALM SUNDAY. I have already, in my Chapter on Funeral Customs, referred to the beautiful old Welsh Custom of decorating the graves on Palm Sunday. GOOD FRIDAY. Good Friday in Welsh is called "Dydd Gwener Groglith (The Lesson of the Cross Friday). Not much notice is taken at present day of the day, and the services conducted in the Parish Churches in country places are as a rule poorly attended. In former times there were many interesting customs and strange superstitions in connection with the day, especially in the South of Pembrokeshire, where there was once a custom called "Making Christ's Bed," which was done by gathering a quantity of long reeds from the river and woven into the shape of a man. Then this was stretched on a wooden cross, and laid in a field. It is said that it was customary in that particular part of West Wales, especially at Tenby, to walk barefooted to Church, and that such Pre-Reformation custom continued till the close of the eighteenth century, which was done so as not to disturb the earth! In returning from Church the people regaled themselves with hot cross buns, and after reaching the house they were eaten. But a certain number of them were tied up in a bag, and hung in the kitchen, where they remained till the next Good Friday, for medical purposes, for it was believed that the eating of one of them cured diseases. They were also used as a panacea for the diseases of animals, as well as serviceable to frighten away evil spirits and goblins. These hot cross buns which figured in such a peculiar manner in South Pembrokeshire, nothing is known of them in the adjoining counties of Carmarthen and Cardigan, among the country people; it is possible, however, that they were known there prior to the Reformation or even after. But perhaps the bun custom was unknown in those two counties, and it had been introduced into South Pembrokeshire (where the people are not of Welsh origin), from England or some other country. Some writers trace the origin of hot cross buns to the cakes which the pagan Saxons used to eat in honour of their goddess Eostre, and that the custom dates back to pre-historic times, and that their connection with the Cross of our Saviour is only by adoption. How far this is true it is impossible to know with certainty; but it is evident that the early Christians adopted many pagan rites and customs. According to Hone's Year Book, the hot cross buns are the ecclesiastic Eulogiae or Consecrated Loaves bestowed in the Church as alms, and to those who could not receive the Host. It was once the custom in Wales to express abhorrence of Judas Iscariot, and the curious custom of flogging him is still in vogue in South America. In former times Good Friday was the day on which rings were blessed by Kings and given away as remedies for the cramp. EASTER. It is deemed essential by many people to wear some new article of dress, if only a pair of gloves or a new ribbon; for not to do so is considered unlucky, and the birds will be angry with you. It is probable that the origin of this custom is associated with Easter baptism, when a new life was assumed by the baptised, clothed in righteousness as a garment. In former times people had such respect for this day that many kept their children unbaptised till Easter Sunday, and many old men and old women went to Church to receive the Communion who were hardly to be seen in the Lord's House on any other Sunday during the year. There was once an old fancy in Wales that the sun used to dance for joy when it rose on Easter morning, and great care was taken in some places to get up the children and young people to see such sight of the sun dancing in honour of the rising of our Lord. The sun was sometimes aided in this performance by a bowl of clear water, into which the youth must look and see the orb dance, as it would be dangerous to look directly on the sun while thus engaged. The religious dance of the ancient Druids is believed to exist in modern times in a round dance wherein the figures imitate the motions of the sun and moon. See "British Goblins," by Sykes, page 274. FIRST DAY OF APRIL. April fool, known in Wales as "Ffwl Ebrill," was observed as in England, and still observed to a certain extent. MAY. The old customs and superstitions in connection with May Day are unknown in Wales in the present day, once, however, May-day dances and revelling were most popular, especially in Pembrokeshire, as the following interesting account which appeared in the "Cambrian Journal" proves:-- "On May-eve, the inhabitants would turn out in troops, bearing in their hands boughs of thorn in full blossom, which were bedecked with other flowers, and then stuck outside the windows of the houses. Maypoles were reared up in different parts of the town (of Tenby), decorated with flowers, coloured papers, and bunches of variegated ribbon. On May-day the young men and maidens would, joining hand in hand, dance round the May-poles, and "thread the needle," as it was termed. A group of fifty to a hundred persons would wend their ways from one pole to another, till they had thus traversed the town. Meeting on their way other groups, who were coming from an opposite direction, both parties would form a "lady's chain," and to pass on their respective ways." The May-pole was once most popular in Wales, but the old custom has entirely died out, though we still hear occasionally of a May Queen being selected in some places. A PRESENT-DAY WELSH QUEEN OF MAY. The May-pole in Wales was called Bedwen, because it was always made of birch which is called in Welsh Bedwen, a tree associated with the gentler emotions; and as I have already observed in another chapter, to give a lover a birchen branch, is for a maiden to accept his addresses. Games of various sorts were played around the bedwen. The fame of a village depended on its not being stolen away, and parties were constantly on the alert to steal the bedwen, a feat which, when accomplished, was celebrated with peculiar festivities. This rivalry for the possession of the May-pole was probably typical of the ancient idea that the first of May was the boundary day dividing the confines of winter and summer, when a fight took place between the powers of the air, on the one hand striving to continue the reign of winter on the other to establish that of summer. Here may be cited the Mabinogi of Kilhwch and Olwen, where it speaks of the daughter of Lludd Llaw Eraint. She was the most splendid maiden in the three Islands of the mighty, and in three islands adjacent, and for her does Gwyn Ap Nudd, the fairy King, fight every first of May till the day of doom. She was to have been the bride of Gwythyr, the son of Greidawl, when Gwyn Ap Nudd carried her off by force. The bereaved bridegroom followed, and there was a bloody struggle, in which Gwyn was victorious, and he acted most cruelly, for he slew an old warrior, took out his heart from his breast, and constrained the warrior's son to eat the heart of his father. When Arthur heard of this he summoned Gwyn Ap Nudd before him, and deprived him of the fruits of his victory. But he condemned the two combatants to fight for the maiden Olwen henceforth for ever on every first of May till doomsday; the victor on that day to possess the maiden. In former times a fire of logs was kindled on the first day of May, around which it was customary for men and women, youths and maidens, to dance hand in hand, singing to the harp, and some of the men would leap over the fire, even at the peril of being burnt. The origin of such strange custom is undoubtedly to be traced to the "belltaine" fires of the Druids. It seems these bon-fires were lighted in some parts of Wales on Midsummer Eve, and the "Glain Nadrodd" (snake-stones) were also, according to Welsh traditions, associated with the same time of the year. It is called Glain Nadrodd from the old Welsh tradition that it is made by snakes at some special gathering among them, when one of their number is made a kind of sacrifice out of the body of which they manufacture the stone. It is of a greenish colour and of the size of an ordinary marble. To find a "Glain Nadrodd" is considered a very lucky omen and they were anciently used as charms. It was also believed in former times that the bon-fires lighted in May or Midsummer protected the lands from sorcery, so that good crops would follow. The ashes were also considered valuable as charms. ALLHALLOW'S EVE (NOS CALAN GAEA.) The Eve of All Saints is known in Wales as "Nos Calan Gaeaf," and in former times there were many old customs in connection with it, most of which have now disappeared. I have already given an account of the Love Charms and spells which were performed on this eve, and amongst other strange doings, the uncanny custom of going round the Church in order to see the spirit of a future husband or wife. But there was in some places another weird ceremony of going round the church at midnight, and look in through the keyhole in order to see the spectral forms, or to hear a spirit calling the names of all those who were to die in the neighbourhood during the year; that is during the coming twelve months from that date, which seems to suggest that the new year began at this time once in old times. Many were afraid, especially children, of going out on Allhallow's Eve as the night among the Welsh was one of the "tair nos ysprydion" (three spirits' nights) as it was supposed that the spirits were free to roam about, and a demon at large in the form of a "Hwch ddu gwta" (black sow without a tail) "Nos Calan Gaea', Bwbach ar bob camfa." (On Allhallow's Eve, A bogie on every stile.) On this eve it was formerly the custom to kindle a bonfire, a practice which continued to a more recent date in the Northern part of the Principality than in the South. Besides fuel, each person present used to throw into the fire a small stone, with a mark whereby he should know it again. If he succeeded in finding the stone on the morrow, the year would be a lucky one for him, but the contrary if he failed to recover it. Those who assisted at the making of the bonfire watched until the flames were out, and then somebody would raise the usual cry, when each ran away for his life, lest he should be found last, and be overtaken by the 'bogie.'--(See "Celtic Folk-Lore," by Sir J. Rhys, page 225.) When a boy, I well remember young men and boys who were full of mischief, making a hollow inside a turnip, and having put a candle in it, carried it about as a bogie to frighten timid people. Allhallow's Eve is known in many parts of West Wales as "Nos twco fale," (apple snatching night), and the game of snatching apples, has been continued in some districts until only a few years ago. Apples and candles, fastened to strings, were suspended from the ceiling and the merry-makers in trying to catch the apple frequently got the candle instead, to the great amusement of those present. Another amusing custom was to try to bring up an apple with the teeth from a tub of water. In some parts of the country, especially Carmarthenshire, it was customary to peel the apple carefully, and throw it, that is the peel, back over the head. Then when this peel had fallen on the floor behind one's back, particular notice was taken in what form it appeared, and whenever it resembled a letter of the Alphabet, the same was supposed to be the first letter of the Christian name of the thrower's future wife or husband. HARVEST CUSTOMS, Etc. "Y Gaseg Fedi, or Harvest Mare." In West and Mid-Wales there have been various harvest customs, the most interesting of which was probably the Harvest Mare, known in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire as "Y Gaseg Fedi, or Gaseg Ben-Fedi," but in Pembrokeshire it was called "Y Wrach." This took place at the end of the harvest. There was a large crowd of both men and women reaping on the last day; and by working at the harvest in this manner small cottagers and other poor people paid the farmer for the privilege of planting a few rows of potatoes in the land, and for the loan of a horse and cart, or for carting home coal, etc.. By working at the harvest poor people paid their debt to the farmer, and still do so to a certain extent. To each of the women who worked at the harvest was given a candle to take home with her every evening, and to the men a little tobacco was given to those who indulged in the bad habit of smoking. An old woman 98 years of age, who lived near Crosswood, Cardiganshire, informed me about three years ago that she well recollected when a child that a farmer who lived at Penllwyn, in the Vale of Rheidol, used to give to each of the men and women a sheaf to take home with them in the evening, and that this farmer was the only one in the country who did this within her memory, and that he did it as he had seen his father doing so. The old lady also added that the custom had been general once. It was the custom once to "dwrn fedi" (fist reaping) a very laborious work, for our forefathers had no scythes nor machines in former times, so that the sickle was everything. It was customary once for a number of farmers in the same district to arrange together not to cut their fields on the same day so that they might be able to assist each other. A few men would come together on an appointed day from each farm in the district that they might be able to cut and bind all the corn of one farm in a single day; and it is still the custom in many places to do this in connection with hay as well as shearing sheep on the mountains. The Gaseg Fedi (harvest mare) at the end of the harvest was a small quantity of the last corn which was left standing in the field, and tied up carefully; and great excitement existed, and much amusement was created when the last standing was reached. There was a good deal of fun in connection with cutting the mare. Each reaper in his turn was allowed to throw his sickle at the corn until it was cut, from a distance of about 15 or 20 yards. The most unskilful were allowed to try first, at last some one would succeed in cutting it down amidst cheers. After cutting it down, it was customary in some places, especially in the North of Cardiganshire for one of the men to take the mare to a neighbouring farm, where the harvest had not been completed, and where the reapers would be still busy at work. The man who took the mare in this manner was very careful to go, or crept without being observed, and stealthily stationed himself over against the foreman of his neighbour's reapers, he watched an opportunity, when within easy distance of throwing it suddenly over the hedge into his neighbour's field, and if possible upon the foreman's sickle and at the same time repeating some insulting words and took to his heels with all speed to escape the flying sickle of the reapers whom he had insulted which were hurled after him, and sometimes he was in peril of his life. In some districts in Carmarthenshire, it was sometimes the practice to be as bold as to take the Gaseg even to the very house of the neighbour, but this was considered more insulting if anything than throwing it into his field. According to old people who remembered the custom in their younger days, they informed me that it was not considered right to throw the mare into the field of a farmer who lived in another parish, or over a river or even a brook. I was also informed by some that it was not allowable to bear it up hill to a field which stood on a more elevated ground. It was often the custom especially in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, instead of throwing it into a neighbour's field, to convey it home to the house, that is to the house of the farmer himself who had finished his harvest that day. The honour of bearing it home in this manner belonged to the one who had succeeded in cutting it, but the difficult part of it was how to take it into the house dry, for it was absolutely necessary that it should be taken into the house without being wetted. And this was not always an easy task as the servant maids at the house carefully stored water in buckets and pans ready to throw over the man and his Caseg Fedi at his entrance; and sometimes he would have a pretty rough time of it. In order to prevent this the man tried to appear as indifferent as possible so as not to be suspected by the girls. Consequently, he carefully hid the mare under his clothes, but in spite of everything he was sometimes stripped of some part of his garment or deluged with water. But when he could succeed in bringing it into the house dry and hung it up without being observed, the master had to pay the bearer a shilling or two, or to give him plenty of beer. But the master was spared to pay the shilling if the girls could succeed in wetting the mare. These curious old customs have been discontinued, but it is still the practice with some to bring a handful of corn into the house tied up under the name of the mare. At supper that evening there was a good deal of fun. John Wright, Bailiff of Stackpole in Pembrokeshire, refers to the custom as follows when writing to his master, Mr. Pryce Campbell, August, 1736:--"Whilst I was abroad (he had been in Cardiganshire) the harvest people cut the neck, and, notwithstanding all the stones about the court (this house was being rebuilt), would have a dance. The dance was the Three Shopkins. There was a noble feast, the bill of fare was as follows:--Four quarters of mutton, a side of bacon, a piece of beef weighing half a hundred-weight, twelve gallons of Buding besides, cabotch and other greens. They seemed very well pleased with their entertainment." It was customary in some places to have a harvest queen attired in white gown decorated with ears of wheat and roses. In other places a sheaf of wheat was decorated with ribbons and taken home to the farm on the top of the last load, when the horses were also very gaily decked. At the close of the harvest it was an universal custom to have a harvest supper, and after the feast there was a merry time. The Rev. D. G. Williams mentions "Chware Dai Shon Goch" and "Rhibo" as favourite games on such occasions. "Chware Dai Shon Goch" was something as follows:-- Two young men, or two young women would put on some old ragged clothes kept at the farm for that purpose, and thus attired would proceed to the barn where a walking-stick was given to each of the two. Then followed a most curious dance to the great amusement of the company of beholders. At present, however, the Welshpeople in country places know nothing of dancing; but it is evident that they were much given to dancing in former times as well as singing to the harp. Owen Tudor, the Welsh gentleman who became the grandfather of Henry VII., King of England, was invited to dance some of the dances of Wales before Katherine, the beautiful widow of Henry V. While the handsome young Welshman was dancing one of his wild reels, it chanced that he fell against the Queen, and the latter with a bewitching smile, said, "that so far from offending her, it would only increase the pleasure of herself and company, if he would repeat the same false step or mistake!" Later on, Katherine and Owen Tudor were married. Another game on such occasions was "Rhibo" which was something as follows:-- Six young men were selected for the performance, three standing face to face to the other three, and each one taking hold of the hands of the one who faced him. Then upon the arms of these six young men, a young man and a young woman were placed in a leaning posture who were thrown up and allowed to fall again into the arms of the young men, and this ceremony continued for some time, and which appeared to be rather a rough game, but it is not practised at the present day. In former times it was customary at some farms to blow the horn at harvest time to call the reapers both to their work and their meals. Such horn was made use of for that purpose until very recently at a farm called Eurglodd, eight miles north of Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire. CYNNOS. "Cynnos" was a practice among the farmers of West Wales, and particularly Cardiganshire, of taking the corn to the kiln to be dried on the night before the grinding; it was customary to sit watching it all night and carefully attend to the drying operations, that is the turning of the corn on the kiln, and the sweeping of it off, when it had been sufficiently dried. The meaning of the word "Cynnos" is unknown, according to some writers it is a form of "cynwys" (contents)--that is the contents of a stack of corn; but according to others it meant "cyn-nos" (the night before) that is the night before the grinding. It is true that the farmers sent small quantities of corn to the mill at any time of the year; but the big annual "cynnos" was prepared, as a rule, about January or February. This "Cynnos" was a night of great fun, especially for young people, as many of the friends and neighbours of those who were engaged in drying the corn came together in the evening. An old gentleman named Thomas Evans, Gwarallyryn in the parish of Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, who well remembered the old custom, gave me an interesting account of it. This meeting of young men and young women and others at the kiln during the Cynnos to enjoy themselves with games and story telling was known, said he, as "Shimli," which often continued all night. Sometimes beer known as "Fetchin," was sent for, and drank around the kiln fire. When the flour was taken home, it was put in chests. Previous to the beginning of the 19th century before kilns attached to the mills became general, many of the farm houses had a kiln for drying the corn at home, but of a very primitive sort. Mr. Price in his interesting little book on Llansawel, in Carmarthenshire, says that the last kiln of the sort for drying the corn at home in that parish was in use at a farm called Cilwenau isaf, worked as late as 1845. He also adds that the shape and the build of this primitive contrivance was something as follows:-- On a gentle-sloping ground a hollow, three yards long, two yards wide, and two deep, was cut, and two planks placed at right angles to each other, their ends resting on the surface outside the hollow. These served to support the sticks which were placed regularly over the kiln until covered. Over the whole clean straw was laid, upon which the corn was placed to be dried. Underneath all this and at the lower end of the kiln, the fire was placed, so that the heat and smoke went under the straw contrivance above. About the month of May, it was once customary in Pembrokeshire for farmers to bring their "Benwent," that is, two or three loads of grain to the mill to be ground and milled, and young men and young women came together on such occasions, and indulged in a sport known as "Byng," or dressing up a horse's head and carrying it about, not unlike "Mari Lwyd." The Rev. Jenkin Evans, Pontfaen, in the "Pembrokeshire Antiquities," also adds that it was customary on May Day for women and children to go round the farmhouses with their basins to receive butter, which enabled poor people to enjoy butter on their bread for some weeks. GLEANING. Within living memory, farmers in Cardiganshire allowed poor people to glean in the fields at the seasons of harvest and ingathering, and indeed this seems to have been a general custom once in all parts of the Kingdom, and directed by the law of Moses. CWRW BACH. There was once an old custom in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, of making what was known as "Cwrw Bach"; that is, people met at a house on a certain evening to drink home-brewed beer, and indulge in games, in order to give the profits from the sale of it to assist helpless old people and others who were in real poverty. This is not done now, but we still hear of some farmers in Pembrokeshire, making their own beer for those who work at the harvest. PERAMBULATION. Beating the Bounds of a Parish was a very old custom in Wales; and according to the Rev. George Eyre Evans, this was done at Bettws Ivan, South Cardiganshire, as late as May 22nd, 1819, when Banners were carried round the Parish on the Boundaries. SHEEP SHEARING CUSTOMS. The following extract which I translate from an introduction to a volume of Welsh Poems known as "Cerddi Cerngoch," gives an interesting account of Sheep Shearing customs in West Wales fifty years ago:-- "A great day at Blaenplwyf was the sheep shearing day, The sheep were kept for the summer at Bronbyrfe, Llanddewi Brefi, with John Jenkins. During Ffair Beder (Peter's Fair) July 10th every year there was a "cnaif" (shearing). Good many were anxious to get the "fei." The service of about half-a-dozen neighbours was secured to look after the shearing. David Davies, Rhiwonen; John Davies, Pantfedwen; Thomas Davies, Pencoed; Daniel Davies, Gelligwenin, had been doing it; and my father, and my uncles of Trecefel, Pant, Penbryn and Clwtpatrwn, were faithful year after year. To swell the company, others from time to time took a day's holiday and enjoyment, and amongst many others, Mr. J. E. Rogers, Abermeurig; Rev. Evan Evans, Hafod; Rev. John Davies, Llandeloy; Thos. Thomas (Norton Brewery), Carmarthen; Ben. Jenkins, solicitor; Aeronian, etc. Llwyd, Llundain, told me: "When my father failed going to the shearing, my brother Shanco, or myself, was allowed to go, and we longed to go, for it was the very thing for us. Little work and plenty of enjoyment, and you know that not one of Shencyn Grufydd's family had any objection to a thing of that kind. A start was made from Blaenplwyf at five o'clock in the morning. At first it was customary to proceed on horses through Llanfair and over the bog and meadow to Bronbyrfe. One or two young women went to look after the wool. It was brought home on horses. After that 'gist cart' and the 'long body' came in use, and lastly the 'gambo.' When going over the mountain one time (1855), and 'Cerngoch,' to be sure, among the foremost of the mounted band, Shencyn gave out the order to form into a rank as soldiers, and after getting things into order, he said:--"Here we are now like cavalry attacking the Russians." "Not quite so," said Cerngoch, "if we were in the Crimea, you my little brother, would not be so far in advance of us." Timothy and Benjamin were in School of Parkyvelvet, under the celebrated old tutor, Rev. Titus Evans, in 1855, and both of them and their second cousin, Mr. Thomas, Myrtle Villa, Wellfield Road, Carmarthen (now) had come on their holidays, and forming a part of the company. As Mr. Thomas was a townsman, he was not acquainted with the horse and the land, so the horse went out of the path, and into the bog, and Cerngoch sang at once:-- "'Roedd mab o dre Caerfyrddin, Yn steilus iawn a'i ferlin; Wrth dd'od ar 'mynydd yn y mawn, Bu'n isel iawn ei asyn." .... After reaching Bronbyrfe, those who were responsible went in for the shearing; but the others scattered along the small brooks which were close by in order to fish; each one with his favourite tackle, hands, fly, hook and bait, etc. Hywel was by far the master. When all the others had failed with the fly and bait, Hywel would have a basketful. He was so clever with the fly--the bait according to the colour of the water.... After eating the black nourishing fish, and ending the shearing, it was customary to go home through Llanddewi. The young men of Llanddewi knew when the Blaenplwyf shearing took place, and were watching them on their homeward journey with great excitement. Then (at Llanddewi) a game of ball was played on the corner of the old chapel, near the Foelallt Arms since then. Not an air ball as at present, but a ball of yarn carefully wound up, and covered with leather as tight as possible. Four were the required number intended to take part in the game, two on each side. "After drinking the health of those who won, off goes the party, each one for the first making for Bettws, about five miles nearer home. Then a game of quoits took place on the commons, as the horses were having their breath, a good excuse for the men to get a drop of "home-brewed" at the Derry Arms. Two miles more, and they reach home at Blaenplwyf at 9 p.m., after a busy and enjoyable day. A feast waited them, my grandmother having been busy all day preparing--cawl--new potatoes--white cabbages--and gooseberry tart. She could make delicious food and taught her daughters also to do so." TAI UNNOS (ONE NIGHT HOUSES). In former times in Wales when the population was small, much of the land in mountainous regions was a common, and the farmers and others were at liberty to send their cattle and sheep there to graze, and people obtained peat from such places to burn on the fire. But if a poor family could succeed to erect a small rude house, or hut in one night on the outskirts of a common, or a desolate spot on the mountain side, or a dreary dingle, they claimed from ancient usage their right to the spot. Such a house was called "Ty Unnos" (one night house). If a man building a Ty Unnos of such kind was discovered in building it during the night by one of his neighbours, people would come and throw it down and scatter everything, to prevent him taking possession of a place which they regarded as belonging to all. So that any one building a Ty Unnos had to do it in one single night, and that secretly, without being detected. I recollect such a house being built on the mountain of Llanddewi Brefi many years ago when I was a boy. After securing a house in this manner the next step was to add land to it, taken and enclosed patch by patch from the surrounding common, so that quite a farm of freehold property was created in course of time, if the intrusion remained unnoticed. But it was necessary for a man to show a great deal of shrewdness to secure a farm in this manner. In the parish of Llanarth, Cardiganshire, there is a spot known as "Mynydd Shion Cwilt." According to tradition this Shion Cwilt was a shrewd and eccentric character who built a Ty-Unnos, and secured much land from Common. THE CEFFYL PREN. In former times, public sarcasm and derision did much to dispel vice and reform offenders. In West Wales "Ceffyl Pren" was resorted to when a man was supposed to have been unfaithful to his wife whom he had promised to cherish, or a woman who had broken her marriage covenant. It was customary to make a straw man riding a straw horse, as an effigy to represent the guilty. Such effigies were carried round the most public places in order to make those who were guilty of breaking the Seventh Commandment ashamed of themselves. The procession was a very noisy one, and accompanied by men with horns and brass, etc., and sometimes a song was composed for the occasion. Such procession went round the neighbourhood for about three weeks, and sometimes a gun was carried to shoot the straw rider. At last the effigies were burnt before the house or houses of the guilty, and then the crowd dispersed. It is supposed that such custom has come down from the time of the Druids when it was customary to burn evil-doers in effigies of straw as sacrifices to the gods. In some cases people were not satisfied in carrying an effigy, but seized the guilty man and woman, and carried them publicly on a ladder for miles round the country. THE EMPLOYMENT OF DOGS TO TURN ROASTING-SPITS. It was customary in former times to place a dog inside a wheel which he turned with his fore-feet, the wheel being connected by a chain with the wheel end of the spit. There was a dog employed in turning the roasting-spit in this manner at Newcastle Emlyn about one hundred years ago. KNAPPAN. This ancient game takes its name from the ball used, which was some hard wood, and well greased for each occasion and just small enough to be grasped in one hand. Running with the ball was the chief method, and the distance between the goals was several miles. George Owen, of Henllys, in Pembrokeshire, gives a full account of Knappan, and how it was played in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and it seems that the ancient game survived the longest in the northern part of that county, and the South of Cardiganshire, and on Corpus Christi Day there was a regular contest between the two districts, when 2,000 came together, and some horsemen as well. The game was regarded as the best training for war. It is thought that the great football contests between Llandyssul and Llanwenog which were popular on Good Fridays about seventy years ago, were the outcome of the ancient game of Knappan. THROWING THE BAR. "Cryfder dan bwysau," or displaying strength in hurling a stone, or throwing a bar, which was one of the ancient Welsh games. Meyrick, in his "History of Cardiganshire," writing one hundred years ago, says that casting of the bar was still continued in his time, particularly in Cardiganshire, "where the people have a meeting once a year at certain Chapels, Yspytty Ystwith, Yspytty Cenvyn, etc., for this purpose. They remain in the Chapel all night to try their activity in wrestling, all the benches being removed, and the spectators, different from ancient regulations, are generally young women, and old champions, who are to see fair play." SCHOOL CUSTOMS. In South Wales, especially Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, about seventy or eighty years ago, most curious customs were in vogue, which were intended to assist the Welsh children to learn English. In many Schools in those days, English was taught in rhymes, such as follows:-- "Hearth is aelwyd, fire is tân, Cloth is brethyn, wool is gwlan, Ash is onen, oak is derwen, Holly tree is pren cerdynen, House is ty, and mill is melin, Fiddle is crwyth, and harp is telyn, River is afon, brook is nant, Twenty is ugnin, hundred is cant." THE WELSH "NOTE," OR "NOT". In order to enforce the use of the English language in Schools the Schoolmasters of those days made use of what was called the Welsh "Note," which was a piece of stick about three or four inches long, with the letters "W.N." marked on it, and in some places it had the following words in full: "Welsh Note, a slap for every time you speak Welsh." This "Welsh Note" was in reality nothing but a devise to find out the children who spoke Welsh, as it was then thought that unless the mother tongue was banished from Schools, monoglot Welsh children could not learn English. During the night-time, of course, the "Welsh Note" was in possession of the Schoolmaster, who, when School began in the morning, gave it secretly to one of the boys with directions to keep it until he caught some one speaking Welsh, to whom he was to hand it over, and this boy in his turn was to hand it over to another delinquent, and so forth. The "Welsh Note" might during the day perhaps pass through about twenty different hands; and at the close of the School in the evening the Schoolmaster would call for it and the boy in whose possession it was found got the first taste of the cane on his naked hand; then he returned it to the boy from whom he got it, and he in like manner was caned in his turn, and so on over the twenty, more or less, each in his turn getting a taste of the cane, until the first boy is reached, whose name is on the register. Then the "Welsh Note" returns to the Schoolmaster, ready for use for the next occasion. There is no "Welsh Note" at the present day, and the Welsh language is taught in many if not in most of the Schools. CHAPTER V. THE FAIRIES (TYLWYTH TEG). "In olde dayes of King Artour, Of which the Bretons speken gret honour, All was this lond fulfilled of Faerie; The elf-quene with hire joly compagnie Danced ful oft in many a grene mede. This was the old opinion as I rede, I speke of many hundred yeres ago; But now can no man see non elves mo." --Chaucer. A book dealing with Superstitions and popular beliefs would be incomplete without assigning a prominent place to the Fairies, or "Tylwyth Teg," as they are called in Welsh. It is true that in Wales, as in other places, the Fairies have become things of the past; but even in the present day many old people, and perhaps others, still believe that such beings did once exist, and that the reason why they are not now to be seen is that they have been exorcised. Many of the Welsh Fairy Tales date from remote antiquity and are, in common with like legends of other countries, relics of the ancient mythology, in which the natural and the supernatural are blended together. ORIGIN OF FAIRIES. Concerning the imaginary origin of the Fairies, it was once a belief in Wales that they were the souls of the virtuous Druids, who not having been Christians, could not enter into heaven, but were too good to be cast into hell! Another curious belief was that in our Saviour's time there lived a woman whose fortune it was to be possessed of near a score of children, and as she saw our Blessed Lord approach her dwelling, being ashamed of being so prolific, and that He might not see them all, she concealed about half of them closely, and, after His departure, when she went in search of them, to her surprise she found they were gone. They never afterwards could be discovered, for it was supposed that as a punishment from heaven, for hiding what God had given her, she was deprived of them; and, it is said, these, her offspring, have generated the race of beings called the Fairies. As to the realistic origin of the Fairies, according to the theories of the learned, they were either the ancient Aborigines, living in seclusion so as to hide themselves from their more powerful conquerors, or the persecuted Druids living in subterraneous places, venturing forth only at night. Whether ancient Aborigines hiding from their conquerors or the Druids who were persecuted by both Romans and Christians the Rev. P. Roberts, author of "Collectana Cambrica," observes that they used these means to preserve themselves and their families, and whilst the country was thinly peopled, and thickly wooded did so successfully, and perhaps to a much later period than is imagined. There are dwelling at the present day on the river-banks of the Congo, in Africa, tribes of dwarfs, whose existence, until Sir Harry Johnston's recent discovery had been regarded as a myth; though they must have lived there from time immemorial. They exist in caves, and in their ways recall the fairies. "Undoubtedly," says Sir Harry, "to my thinking, most fairy myths arose from the contemplation of the mysterious habits of dwarf troglodite races lingering on still in the crannies, caverns, forests and mountains of Europe, after the invasion of neolithic man." FAIRY NAMES. The Fairies are spoken of as people, or folk, not as myths or goblins, and yet as spirits they are immortal, and able to make themselves invisible. The most general name given them in Wales is "Y Tylwyth Teg," (the Fair Family, or Folk); but they are known sometimes as "Bendith y Mamau" (the Mothers' Blessing); and the term "gwragedd Annwn," (dames of the lower regions), is often applied to the Fairy Ladies who dwelt in lakes or under lakes. Sometimes such terms as "Plant Annwn," (children of the lower regions); Ellyll an elf; Bwbach etc., were applied to them, but such appellations have never been in common use. They were also known as "Plant Rhys Ddwfn" in some parts of the Vale of Teivy, more especially in the neighbourhood of Cardigan. But the general term Tylwyth Teg, is known everywhere. FAIRY DRESS, DWELLING, ETC. The Fairies were small handsome creatures in human form; very kind to, and often showered benefits on those who treated them kindly, but most revengeful towards those who dared to treat them badly. They were dressed in green, and very often in white, and some of their maidens were so beautiful, that young men sometimes would fall over head and ears in love with them, especially whilst watching them dancing on a moonlight night; for the old belief was concerning the Fairies, that on moonlight nights they were wont to join hands, and form into circles, and dance and sing with might and main until the cock crew, then they would vanish. The circles in the grass of green fields are still called "Cylchau y Tylwyth Teg" (Fairy Rings). These circles were numerous in Wales when I was a boy; and it was believed by many about forty years ago, if not later that some misfortune would befall any person entering these circles, for I well remember being warned to keep away from them. At the present time, however, I do not know of any person who is afraid of entering them; so it seems that the superstition respecting the Fairy Rings has entirely died out during the last generation. As to their dwellings, the Fairies were "things under the earth," for they were generally supposed to dwell in the lower regions, especially beneath lakes, where their country towns and castles were situated; and the people on the coasts of Pembrokeshire imagined that they inhabited certain enchanted green isles of the sea. The green meadows of the sea, called in the old Welsh Triads Gwerddonau Llion, are the: "Green fairy islands, reposing, In sunlight and beauty on ocean's calm breast." A British King in ancient times, whose name was Garvan is said to have sailed away in search of these islands, and never returned. Garvan's voyage is commemorated in the Triads as one of the "Three Losses by Disappearance." Southey after citing Dr. W. O. Pughe's article in the "Cambrian Biography," goes on as follows:-- "Of these Islands, or Green Spots of the Floods, there are some singular superstitions. They are the abode of the Tylwyth Teg, or the fair family, the souls of the virtuous Druids, who not having been Christians, cannot enter the Christian Heaven, but enjoy this heaven of their own. They, however, discover a love of mischief, neither becoming happy spirits, nor consistent with their original character; for they love to visit the earth, and seizing a man, inquire whether he will travel above wind, mid-wind, or below wind; above wind is a giddy and terrible passage, below wind is through bush and brake, the middle is a safe course. But the spell of security is, to catch hold of the grass. In their better moods they come over and carry the Welsh in their boats. He who visits these islands imagines on his return that he has been absent only a few hours, when, in truth, whole centuries have past away. If you take a turf from St. David's Churchyard, and stand upon it on the sea shore, you behold these Islands. A man once who thus obtained sight of them, immediately put to sea to find them; but his search was in vain. He returned, looked at them again from the enchanted turf, again set sail, and failed again. The third time he took the turf into his vessel, and stood upon it till he reached them." Wirt Sikes, in his "British Goblins," page 8, says that there are sailors on the romantic coasts of Pembrokeshire, and southern Carmarthenshire who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment, which are visible sometimes to the eyes of mortals, but only for a brief space, and they suddenly vanish. He also adds that there are traditions of sailors who, in the early part of the 19th century, actually went ashore on the fairy islands--not knowing that they were such, until they returned to their boats, when they were filled with awe at seeing the islands disappear from their sight, neither sinking in the sea, nor floating away upon the waters, but simply vanishing suddenly. In the account I have just given, a turf from St. David's Churchyard to stand upon enabled one to behold the enchanted lands of the Fairies; but according to traditions in other parts of the country, it seems that a certain spot in Cemmes was the requisite platform, to see these mythical beings who were known in some parts as Plant Rhys Ddwfn (Children of Rhys the Deep). In the Brython, Vol. I., page 130, Gwynionydd says as follows:-- "There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been a country between Cemmes, the Northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Lleyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Ddwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Ddwfn. "They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp-sighted invaders. "There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world, excepting on a small spot, a square yard in area in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory of Plant Rhys Ddwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been nearly vain to look for his footprints." FAIRIES MARRYING MORTALS. In some of the stories about Fairies, we find Fairy Ladies marrying mortals, but always conditionally, and in the end the husband does some prohibited thing which breaks the marriage contract, and his Fairy wife vanishes away. The most beautiful Fairy Legend of this kind is undoubtedly the LADY OF LLYN Y VAN VACH IN CARMARTHENSHIRE. Several versions have appeared from time to time of this story, but the most complete one is the one which appeared in Mr. Rees, of Tonn, in his interesting introduction to "The Physicians of Myddvai," published by the Welsh Manuscript Society, at Llandovery, in 1861; and this is also the version which was reproduced by Principal Sir J. Rhys, of Oxford, in his great work on Celtic Folk-lore. About five years ago, I came across several old persons in the parish of Myddvai, who could repeat portions of the story, but nothing new, so I give the version of Mr. Rees of Tonn, which is as follows:-- "When the eventful struggle made by the Princes of South Wales to preserve the independency of their country was drawing to its close in the twelfth century, there lived at Blaensawdde, near Llandeusant, Carmarthenshire, a widowed woman, the relict of a farmer who had fallen in those disastrous troubles. The widow had an only son to bring up, but Providence smiled upon her, and despite her forlorn condition, her live stock had so increased in course of time, that she could not well depasture them upon her farm, so she sent a portion of her cattle to graze on the adjoining Black Mountain, and their most favourite place was near the small lake called Llyn y Fan Fach, on the north-western side of the Carmarthenshire Fans. The son grew up to manhood, and was generally sent by his mother to look after the cattle on the mountain. One day, in his peregrinations along the margin of the lake, to his great astonishment, he beheld sitting on the unruffled surface of the water, a lady, one of the most beautiful creatures that mortal eyes ever beheld, her hair flowed gracefully in ringlets over her shoulders, the tresses of which she arranged with a comb, whilst the glassy surface of her watery couch served for the purpose of a mirror, reflecting back her own image. Suddenly she beheld the young man standing on the brink of the lake, with his eyes riveted on her, and unconsciously offering to herself the provision of barley bread and cheese with which he had been provided when he left his home. "Bewildered by a feeling of love and admiration for the object before him, he continued to hold out his hand towards the lady, who imperceptibly glided near to him, but gently refused the offer of his provisions. He attempted to touch her, but she eluded his grasp, saying:-- "Cras dy fara; Nid hawdd fy nala. Hard baked is thy bread! 'Tis not easy to catch me." and immediately dived under the water and disappeared, leaving the love-stricken youth to return home, a prey to disappointment and regret that he had been unable to make further acquaintance with one, in comparison with whom the whole of the fair maidens of Llanddeusant and Myddfai whom he had ever seen were as nothing. "On his return home, the young man communicated to his mother the extraordinary vision he had beheld. She advised him to take some unbaked dough or "toes" the next time in his pocket, as there must have been some spell connected with the hard-baked bread, or "Bara cras," which prevented his catching the lady. "Next morning, before the sun had gilded with its rays the peaks of the Fans, the young man was at the lake, not for the purpose of looking after his mother's cattle, but seeking for the same enchanting vision he had witnessed the day before; but all in vain did he anxiously strain his eyeballs and glance over the surface of the lake, as only the ripples occasioned by a stiff breeze met his view, and a cloud hung heavily on the summits of the Fan, which imparted an additional gloom to his already distracted mind. Hours passed on, the wind was hushed, and the clouds which had enveloped the mountain had vanished into thin air before the powerful beams of the sun, when the youth was startled by seeing some of his mother's cattle on the precipitous side of the acclivity, nearly on the opposite side of the lake. His duty impelled him to attempt to rescue them from their perilous position, for which purpose he was hastening away, when to his inexpressible delight, the object of his search again appeared to him as before, and seemed much more beautiful than when he first beheld her. His hand was again held out to her, full of unbaked bread, which he offered with an urgent proffer of his heart also, and vows of eternal attachment. All of which were refused by her saying:-- "Llaith dy fara, Ti ni fynna'." (Unbaked is thy bread! I will not have thee.) But the smiles that played upon her features as the lady vanished beneath the waters raised within the young man a hope that forbade him to despair by her refusal of him, and the recollection of which cheered him on his way home. His aged parent was made acquainted with his ill-success, and she suggested that his bread should next time be but slightly baked, as most likely to please the mysterious being of whom he had become enamoured. "Impelled by an irresistible feeling, the youth left his mother's house early next morning, and with rapid steps he passed over the mountain. He was soon near the margin of the lake, and with all the impatience of an ardent lover did he wait with a feverish anxiety for the reappearance of the mysterious lady. "The sheep and goats browsed on the precipitous sides of the Fan; the cattle strayed amongst the rocks and large stones, some of which were occasionally loosened from their beds and suddenly rolled down into the lake; rain and sunshine alike came and passed away; but all were unheeded by the youth, so wrapped up was he in looking for the appearance of the lady. "The freshness of the early morning had disappeared before the sultry rays of the noon-day sun, which in its turn was fast verging towards the west as the evening was dying away and making room for the shades of night, and hope had well nigh abated of beholding once more the Lady of the Lake. The young man cast a sad and last farewell look over the water, and to his astonishment, beheld several cows walking along its surface. The sight of these animals caused hope to revive that they would be followed by another object far more pleasing; nor was he disappointed, for the maiden reappeared, and to his enraptured sight, even lovelier than ever. She approached the land, and he rushed to meet her in the water. A smile encouraged him to seize her hand; neither did she refuse the moderately baked bread he offered her; and after some persuasion she consented to become his bride, on condition that they should only live together until she received from him three blows without a cause, "Tri ergyd diachos." (Three causeless blows.) and if he ever should happen to strike her three such blows she would leave him for ever. To such conditions he readily consented and would have consented to any other stipulation, had it been proposed, as he was only intent on then securing such a lovely creature for his wife. "Thus the Lady of the Lake engaged to become the young man's wife, and having loosened her hand for a moment she darted away and dived into the lake. His chagrin and grief were such that he determined to cast himself headlong into the deepest water, so as to end his life in the element that had contained in its unfathomed depths the only one for whom he cared to live on earth. As he was on the point of committing this rash act, there emerged out of the lake two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and strength of youth. This man addressed the almost bewildered youth in accents calculated to soothe his troubled mind, saying that as he proposed to marry one of his daughters, he consented to the union, provided the young man could distinguish which of the two ladies before him was the object of his affections. This was no easy task, as the maidens were such perfect counterparts of each other that it seemed quite impossible for him to choose his bride, and if perchance he fixed upon the wrong one all would be for ever lost. "Whilst the young man narrowly scanned the two ladies, he could not perceive the least difference betwixt the two, and was almost giving up the task in despair, when one of them thrust her foot a slight degree forward. The motion, simple as it was, did not escape the observation of the youth, and he discovered a trifling variation in the mode with which their sandals were tied. This at once put an end to the dilemma, for he, who had on previous occasions been so taken up with the general appearance of the Lady of the Lake, had also noticed the beauty of her feet and ankles, and on now recognising the peculiarity of her shoe-tie he boldly took hold of her hand. "'Thou hast chosen rightly,' said her father, 'be to her a kind and faithful husband, and I will give her, as a dowry, as many sheep, cattle, goats, and horses as she can count of each without heaving or drawing in her breath. But remember, that if you prove unkind to her at any time, and strike her three times without a cause, she shall return to me, and shall bring all her stock back with her.'" Such was the verbal marriage settlement, to which the young man gladly assented, and his bride was desired to count the number of sheep she was to have. She immediately adopted the mode of counting by fives, thus:--one, two, three, four, five--one, two, three, four, five; and as many times as possible in rapid succession, till her breath was exhausted. The same procession of reckoning had to determine the number of goat, cattle, and horses respectively; and in an instant the full number of each came out of the lake when called upon by the father. "The young couple were then married, by what ceremony was not stated, and afterwards went to reside at a farm called Esgair Llaethy, somewhat more than a mile from the Village of Myddfai, where they lived in prosperity and happiness for several years, and became the parents of three sons, who were beautiful children. "Once upon a time there was a christening to take place in the neighbourhood, to which the parents were specially invited. When the day arrived the wife appeared very reluctant to attend the christening, alleging that the distance was too great for her to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses which were grazing in an adjoining field. 'I will,' said she, 'if you will bring me my gloves which I left in our house.' He went to the house and returned with the gloves, and finding that she had not gone for the horse jocularly slapped her shoulder with one of them, saying, 'go! go!' (dos, dos), when she reminded him of the understanding upon which she consented to marry him:--That he was not to strike her without a cause; and warned him to be more cautious for the future. "On another occasion, when they were together at a wedding in the midst of the mirth and hilarity of the assembled guests, who had gathered together from all the surrounding country, she burst into tears and sobbed most piteously. Her husband touched her on her shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping: she said, 'Now people are entering into trouble, and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me without a cause.' "Years passed on, and their children had grown up, and were particularly clever young men. In the midst of so many worldly blessings at home, the husband almost forgot that there remained only one causeless blow to be given to destroy the whole of his prosperity. Still he was watchful lest any trivial occurrence should take place which his wife must regard as a breach of their marriage contract. She told him, as her affection for him was unabated, to be careful that he would not, through some inadvertence, give the last and only blow, which, by an unalterable destiny over which she had no control, would separate them for ever. "It, however, so happened that one day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the mourning and grief at the house of the deceased, she appeared in the highest and gayest spirits, and indulged in immoderate fits of laughter, which so shocked her husband that he touched her, saying: 'Hush! hush! don't laugh.' She said that she laughed 'because people when they die go out of trouble,' and rising up she went out of the house, saying, 'The last blow has been struck, our marriage contract is broken, and at an end! Farewell!' Then she started off towards Esgair Llaethdy, where she called her cattle and other stock together, each by name. The cattle she called thus:-- Mu wlfrech, Mu olfrech, gwynfrech, Pedair cae tonn-frech, Yr hen wynebwen. A'r las Geigen, Gyda'r Tarw gwyn O lys y Brenin; A'r llo du bach, Sydd ar y bach, Dere dithe, yn iach adre! Brindled cow, white speckled, Spotted cow, bold freckled, The four field sward mottled, The old white-faced, And the grey Geigen, With the white Bull, From the court of the King; And the little black calf Tho' suspended on the hook, Come thou also, quite well home." They all immediately obeyed the summons of their mistress. The 'little black calf,' although it had been slaughtered, became alive again, and walked off with the rest of the stock at the command of the lady. This happened in the spring of the year, and there were from four oxen ploughing in one of the fields; to these she cried:-- "Pedwar eidion glas sydd ar y maes, Deuwch chwithau yn iach adre! The four grey oxen, that are on the field, Come you also quite well home!" Away the whole of the live stock went with the Lady across Myddfai Mountain, towards the lake from whence they came, a distance of above six miles, where they disappeared beneath its waters, leaving no trace behind except a well-marked furrow, which was made by the plough the oxen drew after them into the lake, and which remains to this day as a testimony to the truth of this story. "What became of the affrighted ploughman--whether he was left on the field when the oxen set off, or whether he followed them to the lake, has not been handed down to tradition; neither has the fate of the disconsolate and half-ruined husband been kept in remembrance. But of the sons it is stated that they often wandered about the lake and its vicinity, hoping that their mother might be permitted to visit the face of the earth once more, as they had been apprised of her mysterious origin, her first appearance to their father, and the untoward circumstances which so unhappily deprived them of her maternal care. "In one of their rambles, at a place near Dol Howel, at the Mountain Gate, still called 'Llidiad y Meddygon,' (The Physician's Gate), the mother appeared suddenly, and accosted her eldest son, whose name was Rhiwallon, and told him that his mission on earth was to be a benefactor to mankind by relieving them from pain and misery, through healing all manner of their diseases; for which purpose she furnished him with a bag full of medical prescriptions and instructions for the preservation of health. That by strict attention thereto he and his family would become for many generations the most skilful physicians in the country. Then, promising to meet him when her counsel was most needed, she vanished. But on several occasions she met her sons near the banks of the lake, and once she even accompanied them on their return home as far as a place still called 'Pant-y-Meddygon,' (The dingle of the Physicians) where she pointed out to them the various plants and herbs which grew in the dingle, and revealed to them their medicinal qualities or virtues; and the knowledge she imparted to them, together with their unrivalled skill, soon caused them to attain such celebrity that none ever possessed before them. And in order that their knowledge should not be lost, they wisely committed the same to writing for the benefit of mankind throughout all ages. And so ends the story of the Physicians of Myddfai, which had been handed down from one generation to another, thus:-- "Yr hen wr llwyd o'r cornel, Gan ei dad a glywodd chwedel, A chan ei dad fy glywodd yntau, Ac ar ei ol mi gofiais innau." "The grey old man in the corner Of his father heard a story, Which from his father he had heard, And after them I have remembered." The Physicians of Myddfai were Rhiwallon and his sons, Cadwgan, Gruffydd and Einion, who became Physicians to Rhys Gryg, Lord of Llandovery and Dynefor Castles, who lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. Rhys "gave them rank, lands, and privileges at Myddfai for their maintenance in the practice of their art and science, and the healing and benefit of those who should seek their help." The fame of the celebrated Physicians was soon established over the whole country, and continued for centuries among their descendants; and the celebrated Welsh Poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, who flourished in the fourteenth century, says in one of his poems when alluding to these physicians:-- "Meddyg, nis gwnai modd y gwnaeth Myddfai, o chai ddyn meddfaeth." (A Physician he would not make As Myddfai made, if he had a mead fostered man.) Mr. Rees says that "of the above lands bestowed upon the Meddygon, there are two farms in the Myddfai parish still called "Llwyn Ifan Feddyg," the Grove of Evan, the Physician, and "Llwyn Meredydd Feddyg" (the Grove of Meredydd the Physician). Esgair Llaethdy, mentioned in the foregoing legend, was formerly in the possession of the above descendants, and so was Ty-newydd, near Myddfai, which was purchased by Mr. Holford, of Cilgwyn, from the Rev. Charles Lloyd, vicar of Llandefalle, Breconshire, who married a daughter of one of the Meddygon, and had the living of Llandefalle from a Mr. Vaughan, who presented him to the same out of gratitude, because Mr. Lloyd, wife's father had cured him of a disease in the eye. As Mr. Lloyd succeeded to the above living in 1748, and died in 1800, it is probable that that skilful oculist was John Jones, who is mentioned in the following inscription on a tombstone at present fixed against the west end of Myddfai HERE Lieth the body of Mr. David Jones, of Mothvey, Surgeon, who was an honest, charitable and skilful man, He died September 14th, Anno Dom. 1719, aged 61. JOHN JONES, SURGEON, Eldest son of the said David Jones, departed this life the 25th of November, 1739, in the 4th year of his Age, and also lyes interred hereunder. These appear to have been the last of the Physicians who practised at Myddfai. The above John Jones resided for some time at Llandovery, and was a very eminent surgeon. One of his descendants, named John Lewis, lived at Cwmbran, Myddfai, at which place his great-grandson, Mr. John Jones, now resides. "Dr. Morgan Owen, Bishop of Llandaff, who died at Glasallt, parish of Myddfai, in 1645, was a descendant of the Meddygon, and an inheritor of much of their landed property in that parish, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his nephew, Morgan Owen, who died in 1667, and was succeeded by his son Henry Owen; and at the decease of the last of whose descendants, Roberts Lewis, Esqr., the estates became, through the will of one of the family, the property of the late D. A. S. Davies, Esqr., M.P., for Carmarthenshire. "Bishop Owen bequeathed to another nephew, Morgan ap Rees, son of Rees ap John, a descendant of the Meddygon, the farm of Rhyblid, and some other property. "Amongst other families who claim descent from the Physicians were the Bowens of Cwmydw, Myddfai, and Jones of Dollgarreg and Penrhock, in the same parish; the latter of whom are represented by Charles Bishop, of Dollgarreg, Esqr., Clerk of the Peace for Carmarthenshire, and Thomas Bishop, of Brecon, Esqr. "Rees Williams, of Myddfai, is recorded as one of the Meddygon. His great grandson was the late Rice Williams, M.D., of Aberystwyth, who died May l6th, 1842, aged 85, and appears to have been the last, although not the least eminent of the Physicians descended from the mysterious Lady of Llyn y Fan." Sir John Rhys mentions of another Dr. Williams also a descendant of the Lady of Llyn y Fan, who was living at Aberystwyth in 1881. It seems that there are several families in different parts of Wales who are said to have fairy blood coursing through their veins; and the noble Lady Bulkeley, who lived in North Wales, three or four generations was supposed to be descended from a Fairy lady who married a mortal. There is also a tradition that after the disappearance of the lady the disconsolate husband and his friends set to work to drain the lake in order to get at her, if possible; but as they were making a cutting into the bank a huge monster emerged from the water and threatened to drown the town of Brecon for disturbing him, saying:-- "Os na cha'i lonydd yn fy lle Mi fodda, dre Byrhonddu!" (If I get no quiet in my place I shall drown the town of Brecon). so they had to give up draining the lake. There are extant several versions of the Myddfai Legend. In the "Cambro Briton" Vol. II., pages 313-315, we have a version in which it is stated that the farmer used to go near the lake and see some lambs he had bought at a fair, and that wherever he so went three most beautiful maidens appeared to him from the lake. But whenever he tried to catch them they ran away into the lake, saying:-- "Cras dy fara, Anhawdd ein dala." (For thee who eatest baked bread It is difficult to catch us.) But one day a piece of moist bread came floating ashore, which he ate, and the next day he had a chat with the maidens. After a little conversation he proposed marriage to one of them, to which she consented, provided he could distinguish her from her sisters the day after. Then the story goes on very similar to Mr. Rees' version which I have already given in full. In another beautiful version of the story which is given by Sikes in his "British Goblins," it is said that an enamoured farmer had heard of the lake maiden, who rowed up and down the lake in a golden boat, with a golden oar. Her hair was long and yellow, and her face was pale and melancholy. In his desire to see this wondrous beauty, the farmer went on New Year's Eve to the edge of the lake and in silence, awaited the coming of the first hour of the new year. It came, and there in truth was the maiden in her golden boat, rowing softly to and fro. Fascinated, he stood for hours beholding her, until the stars faded out of the sky, the moon sank behind the rocks, and the cold gray dawn drew nigh; and then the maiden began to vanish from his sight. Wild with passion, he cried aloud to the retreating vision, "Stay! Stay! Be my wife." But the maiden only uttered a faint cry, and was gone. Night after night the young farmer haunted the shores of the lake, but the maiden returned no more. He became negligent of his person; his once robust form grew thin and wan; his face was a map of melancholy and despair. He went one day to consult a soothsayer who dwelt on the mountain, and this grave personage advised him to besiege the damsel's heart with gifts of bread and cheese. This counsel commending itself strongly to his Welsh way of thinking, the former set out upon an assiduous course of casting his bread upon the waters--accompanied by cheese. He began on Mid-summer Eve by going to the lake and dropping therein a large cheese and a loaf of bread. Night after night he continued to throw in loaves and cheeses, but nothing appeared in answer to his sacrifices. His hopes were set, however, on the approaching New Year's Eve. The momentous night arrived at last. Clad in his best array, and armed with seven white loaves and his biggest and handsomest cheese, he set out once more for the lake. Then he waited till mid-night, and then slowly and solemnly dropped the seven loaves into the water, and with a sigh sent the cheese to keep them company. His persistence was at length rewarded. The Lake Lady came in her skiff to where he was, and gracefully stepped ashore. The story then proceeds as in the other versions. It was once a custom for people to go up to the lake on the first Sunday in August, when its water was supposed to be boiling; and Bishop Edwards, of St. Asaph, informed Professor Sir J. Rhys, that "an old woman from Myddfai, who is now, that is to say in January, 1881, about eighty years of age, tells me that she remembers thousands and thousands of people visiting the Lake of Little Fan on the first Sunday or Monday in August, and when she was young she often heard old men declare that at that time a commotion took place in the lake, and that its waters boiled, which was taken to herald the approach of the Lake Lady and her oxen."--Celtic Folk Lore--page 15. A STUDENT WHO HAD FAILED TO PASS HIS EXAMINATIONS TAUGHT BY THE FAIRIES. Mr. John Jones, of Pontrhydfendigaid, an old man of over 95 years of age, related to me the following story about seven years ago:-- In the 18th century there was a certain clergyman in North Cardiganshire, who was supposed to have been educated by the Fairies. When he was a boy, his parents were very ambitious to see their son a clergyman, but, unfortunately, the lad either neglected his studies, or was a regular "blockhead," and always failed to pass his college examinations, to the great regret and disappointment of his father and mother. One day, however, when the boy was roaming about the country (near the banks of the river Rheidol, as far as Mr. Jones could remember the story), he suddenly met three boys, or rather three little men who were not bigger than boys, who took him into some cave and led him along a subterranean passage into the land of the Fairies. The Fairies proved very kind to him, and when they heard his story, they undertook to help him to learn his lessons, so that in course of time he acquired a considerable knowledge of the classics. After spending a certain number of years very happily in Fairy Land, the young man returned to the world of mortals, and to the great joy of his parents passed his examinations now without the least difficulty, and in due time was ordained by the bishop, and became a vicar of a parish north of Aberystwyth, either Llanfihangel, Llancynfelin, or Eglwysfach. This tale seems to be a version of the Story of Elidorus, which Giraldus Cambrensis heard in the neighbourhood of Swansea during his "Itinerary through Wales," with Archbishop Baldwin in the year 1188, which is as follows:-- "A short time before our days, a circumstance worthy of note occurred in these parts, which Elidorus, a priest, most strenuously affirmed had befallen himself. When a youth of twelve years, and learning his letters, since, as Solomon says, "The root of learning is bitter, although the fruit is sweet," in order to avoid the discipline and frequent stripes inflicted on him by his perceptor, he ran away, and concealed himself under the hollow bank of a river. After fasting in that situation for two days, two little men of pigmy stature appeared to him, saying, 'If you come with us, we will lead you into a country full of delights and sports.' "Assenting, and rising up, he followed his guides through a path, at first subterraneous and dark, into a most beautiful country, adorned with rivers and meadows, woods and plains, but obscure, and not illuminated with the full light of the sun." All the days were cloudy, and the nights extremely dark, on account of the absence of the moon and stars. The boy was brought before the King, and introduced to him in the presence of the court; who, having examined him for a long time, delivered him to his son, who was then a, boy. "These men were of the smallest stature, but very well proportioned in their make; they were all of a fair complexion, with luxuriant hair falling over their shoulders like that of women. "They had horses and greyhounds adapted to their size. "They neither ate flesh nor fish, but lived on milk diet, made up into messes with saffron. "They never took an oath, for they detested nothing so much as lies. "As often as they returned from our upper hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstances; they had no form of public worship, being strict lovers and reverers, as it seemed, of truth. "The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way he had first gone, sometimes by another; at first in company with other persons, and afterwards alone, and made himself known only to his mother, declaring to her the manners, nature and state of that people. "Being desired by her to bring a present of gold, with which that region abounded, he stole, while at play with the King's son, the golden ball with which he used to divert himself, and brought it to his mother in great haste; and when he reached the door of his father's house, but not unpursued, and was entering it in a great hurry, his foot stumbled on the threshold, and falling down into the room where his mother was sitting, the two pigmies seized the ball which had dropped from his hand, and departed, showing the boy every mark of contempt and derision. "On recovering from his fall, confounded with shame, and execrating the evil counsel of his mother, he returned by the usual track to the subterraneous road, but found no appearance of any passage, though he searched for it on the banks of the river for nearly the space of a year. "But since those calamities are often alleviated by time, which reason cannot mitigate, and length of time alone blunts the edge of our afflictions, and puts an end to many evils, the youth having been brought back by his friends and mother, and restored to his right way of thinking, and to his learning, in process of time attained the rank of priesthood. "Whenever David II., bishop of St. David's, talked to him in his advanced state of life concerning this event, he could never relate the particulars without shedding tears. "He had made himself acquainted with the language of that nation, the words of which, in his younger days he used to recite, which, as the bishop often had informed me, were very conformable to the Greek idiom. "When they asked for water, they said 'ydor ydorum,' which meant bring water, for 'ydor' in their language, as well as in Greek, signifies water, from whence vessels for water are caller 'udriai'; and 'Dur' (dwr) also, in the British language (Welsh) signifies water. "When they wanted salt they said, 'Halgein ydorum,' bring salt: salt is called 'al' in Greek, and 'halen' in British, for that language, from the length of time which the Britons (then called Trojans, and afterwards Britons, from Brito, their leader), remained in Greece after the destruction of Troy, became in many instances, similar to the Greek.... "If a scrupulous inquirer asks my opinion of the relation here inserted, I answer with Augustine, 'that the Divine miracles are to be admired, not discussed.' "Nor do I, by denial, place bounds to the Divine Power, nor, by assent, insolently extend what cannot be extended. "But I always call to mind the saying of St. Jerome: 'You will find,' says he, 'Many things incredible and improbable, which nevertheless are true; for nature cannot in any respect prevail against the Lord of nature.' "These things, therefore, and similar contingencies, I should place, according to the opinion of Augustine, among those particulars which are neither to be affirmed, nor too positively denied." The above account is of the greatest interest, as it was written 700 years ago, and it also gives the opinion of one who lived in those days, of "these things, and similar contingencies." It is possible that many of the Fairy Tales throughout the Kingdom, if not throughout the whole of Europe, have been founded on the story of Elidorus, the priest. THE SHEPHERD BOY AND THE FAIRIES OF FRENIFAWR. The following story appeared in the "Cambrian Superstitions," by W. Howells, a little book published at Tipton in 1831:-- A stripling, of twelve or more years of age, was tending his father's sheep on a small mountain called Frenifach, it was a fine morning in June, and he had just driven the sheep to their pasture for the day, when he looked at the top of Frenifawr to observe which way the morning fog declined, that he might judge the weather. If the fog on Frenifawr (a high mountain in Pembrokeshire, 10 miles from Cardigan) declines to the Pembrokeshire side, the peasants prognosticated fair, if on the Cardiganshire side foul weather. To his surprise the boy saw what seemed a party of soldiers sedulously engaged in some urgent affair; knowing there could not possibly be soldiers there so early, he with some alarm, looked more minutely, and perceived they were too diminutive for men; yet, thinking his eyesight had deceived him, he went to a more elevated situation, and discovered that they were the "Tylwyth Teg" (Fairies) dancing. He had often heard of them and had seen their rings in the neighbourhood, but not till then had the pleasure of seeing them; he once thought of running home to acquaint his parents, but judging they would be gone before he returned, and he be charged with a falsehood, he resolved to go up to them, for he had been informed that the fairies were very harmless, and would only injure those who attempted to discover their habitation, so by degrees he arrived within a short distance of the ring, where he remained some time observing their motions. They were of both sexes, and he described them as being the most handsome people he had ever seen, they also appeared enchantingly cheerful, as if inviting him to enter and join the dance. They did not all dance, but those who did, never deviated from the circle; some ran after one another with surprising swiftness, and others (females), rode on small white horses of the most beautiful form. Their dresses, although indescribably elegant, and surpassing the sun in radiance, varied in colour, some being white, others scarlet, and the males wore a red triplet cap, but the females some light head-dress, which waved fantastically with the slightest breeze. He had not remained long ere they made signs for him to enter, and he gradually drew nearer till at length he ventured to place one foot in the circle, which he had no sooner done than his ears were charmed with the most melodious music, which moved him in the transport of the moment, to enter altogether; he was no sooner in than he found himself in a most elegant palace, glittering with gold and pearls; here he enjoyed every variety of pleasure, and had the liberty to range whatever he pleased, accompanied by kind attendants beautiful as the howries; and instead of "Tatws a llaeth," buttermilk, or fresh boiled flummery, here were the choicest viands and the purest wine in abundance, brought in golden goblets inlaid with gems, sometimes by invisible agency, and at other times by the most beautiful virgins. He had only one restriction, and that was not to drink, upon any consideration (or it was told him it would be fatal to his happiness), from a certain well in the middle of the garden, which contained golden fishes and others of various colours. New objects daily attracts his attention, and new faces presented themselves to his view, surpassing, if possible those he had seen before; new pastimes were continually invented to charm him, but one day his hopes were blasted, and all his happiness fled in an instant. Possessing that innate curiosity nearly common to all, he, like our first parents transgressed, and plunged his hand into the well, when the fishes instantly disappeared, and, putting the water to his mouth, he heard a confused shriek run through the garden: in an instant after, the palace and all vanished away, and to his horror, he found himself in the very place where he first entered the ring, and the scenes around, with the same sheep grazing, were just as he had left them. He could scarcely believe himself, and hoped again, that he was in the magnificent fairy castle; he looked around, but the scene was too well known; his senses soon returned to their proper action, and his memory proved that, although he thought he had been absent so many years, he had been so only so many minutes. This tale bears a strange contrast as regards the time the boy thought he was away, to most of our fairy tales which represent those who had the pleasure of being with fairies as imagining they had been dancing only a few minutes, when they had been away for years. FAIRY MUSIC AND DANCING. The Rev. Z. M. Davies, Vicar of Llanfihangel Genau'r Glyn, told me that he once heard an old man in the Vale of Aeron saying that when he was out late one night, he heard the Fairies singing, and that their music was so delightful that he listened to them for hours; and we find from many of the Fairy Tales that one of their chief occupation in their nightly revels was singing and dancing, and that they often succeeded in inducing men through the allurements of music to join their ranks. The beautiful old Welsh Air, "Toriad y Dydd" (Dawn of Day) is supposed to have been composed by the Fairies, and which they chanted just as the pale light in the east announced the approach of returning day. The following "Can y Tylwyth Teg," or the Fairies' song, was well-known once in Wales, and these mythical beings were believed to chant it whilst dancing merrily on summer nights. "O'r glaswellt glan a'r rhedyn mân, Gyfeillion dyddan, dewch. 'E ddarfu'r nawn--mae'r lloer yn llawn, Y nos yn gyflawn gewch; O'r chwarau sydd ar dwyn y dydd, I'r Dolydd awn ar daith, Nyni sydd lon, ni chaiff gerbron, Farwolion ran o'n gwaith. "Canu, canu, drwy y nos, Dawnsio, dawnsio, ar waen y rhos, Yn ngoleuni'r lleuad dlos: Hapus ydym ni! Pawb o honom sydd yn llon, Heb un gofid dan ei fron: Canu, dawnsio, ar y ton-- Dedwydd ydym ni!" "From grasses bright, and bracken light, Come, sweet companions, come, The full moon shines, the sun declines. We'll spend the night in fun; With playful mirth, we'll trip the earth, To meadows green let's go We're full of joy, without alloy, Which mortals may not know. "Singing, singing, through the night, Dancing, dancing, with our might, Where the moon the moor doth light; Happy ever we! One and all of merry mein, Without sorrow are we seen, Singing, dancing, on the green: Gladsome ever we!" MR. EDWARD JONES, PENCWM, LLANRHYSTID, AND THE FAIRIES. Mr. Edward Jones, Pencwm, who only died about 8 years ago, was coming home from Lampeter one moonlight night, and when he came to the top of Trichrug hill, he saw the Fairies dancing in a field close to the road. When he was within a certain distance of them he felt as if his feet were almost lifted up from the ground, and his body so light that he could almost stand in the air. My informant, Mr. D. Morgan, Carpenter, Llanrhystid, added that Mr. Jones was an intelligent and educated man, who had travelled, and was far from being superstitious. A FARM SERVANT NEAR TREGARON, WHO SPENT A YEAR AND A DAY WITH THE FAIRIES. The following story appeared in "Cymru" for May, 1893, a Welsh Magazine, edited by Owen M. Edwards, M.A. It was written in Welsh by the late eminent Folk-Lorist, Mr. D. Lledrod Davies, and I translate it:-- The farm-house called "Allt Ddu," is situated about half-way between Pont Rhyd Fendigaid and Tregaron. It is said that two servant men went out of the house one evening in search for the cattle, which had gone astray. One of the men proceeded in one direction and the other in another way, so as to be more sure of finding the animals. But after wandering about for hours, one of the two servants came home, but whether he found the cattle or not it is not stated. However, he reached home safely; but the other man, his fellow-servant, came not, and after anxiously expecting him till a late hour of night, he began to feel very uneasy concerning his safety, fearing that the lad had accidentally fallen into some of the pits of the Gors Goch. Next morning came, but the servant came not home; and in vain did they long to hear the sound of his footsteps approaching the house as before. Then inquiries were made about him, and people went to try and find him, but all in vain. Days past and even weeks without hearing anything about him, till at last his relations began to suspect that his fellow servant had murdered him during the night they were out looking for the cattle. So the servant was summoned before a Court of Justice, and accused of having murdered his fellow-servant on a certain night; but the young man, pleaded not guilty in a most decided manner, and as no witness could be found against him, the case was dismissed; but many people were still very suspicious of him, and the loss of his fellow servant continued to be a black spot on his character. However, it was decided at last to go to the "dyn hysbys," (a wise man, or a conjurer)--a man of great repute in former days,--to consult with him, and to set the case before him exactly as it had happened. After going and explaining everything to the conjurer concerning the lost servant, he informed them that the young man was still alive. He then told them to go to a certain place at the same time of night, one year and a day from the time the man was lost, and that they should then and there see him. One year and a day at last passed away, and at that hour the family, and especially the servant, traced their steps to the particular spot pointed out by the conjuror, and there, to their great surprise, whom should they see within the Fairy Circle, dancing as merrily as any, but the lost servant. And now, according to the directions which had been given by the conjurer, the other servant took hold of the collar of the coat of the one who was dancing, and dragged him out of the circle, saying to him--"Where hast thou been lad?" But the lad's first words were, "Did you find the cattle?" for he thought that he had been with the Fairies only for a few minutes. Then he explained how he entered the Fairy Circle, and how he was seized by them, but found their company so delightful that he thought he had been with them only for a few minutes. THE SERVANT GIRL WHO WAS LOST IN THE FAIRY CIRCLE. The following is another of the tales recorded in "Ystraeon y Gwyll," by the late D. Lledrod Davies:-- "There lived in an old farm house on the banks of the Teivy, a respectable family, and in order to carry on the work of the farm successfully, they kept men servants and maid servants. One afternoon, a servant-man and a servant girl went out to look for the cows, but as they were both crossing a marshy flat, the man suddenly missed the girl, and after much shouting and searching, no sound of her voice could be heard replying. He then took home the cows, and informed the family of the mysterious disappearance of the servant maid which took place so suddenly. As the Fairies were suspected, it was resolved to go to the dyn hysbys (wise man). To him they went, and he informed them that the girl was with the Fairies, and that they could get her back from them, by being careful to go to a certain spot at the proper time at the end of a year and a day. They did as they were directed by the "wise man," and to their great surprise, found the maid among the fairies dancing and singing with them, and seemed as happy as a fish in the water. Then they successfully drew her out of the ring, and they took her home safely. The master had been told by the "Wise Man" that the girl was not to be touched by iron, or she would disappear at once after getting her out of the ring. One day, however, when her master was about to start from home, and whilst he was getting the horse and cart ready, he asked the girl to assist him, which she did willingly; but as he was bridling the horse, the bit touched the girl and she disappeared instantly, and was never seen from that day forth. THE LITTLE SERVANT BOY AND THE BARM. The following story was related to me by Mrs. Davies, Bryneithyn, in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, where the tale is well-known:-- An old woman known as Nancy of Pen Gwndwn, kept a little boy servant, whom she sent one evening to the neighbouring village with a bottle to get some barm for her, and as he had to pass through a field which was frequented by the Fairies, he was told by the old woman to keep away from their circles or rings. The boy reached the village, got the barm, and in due time proceeded on his homeward journey, but did not reach home. Search was made for him in all directions, and people were able to trace his steps as far as the Fairies' field, but no further, so it was evident that the Fairies had seized him. At the end of a year and a day, however, to the great surprise of everybody, the boy came home, entered the house, with the bottle of barm in hand, and handed it to the old woman as if nothing unusual had happened. The boy was greatly surprised when he was told that he had been away for twelve months and a day. Then he related how he fell in with the Fairies, whom he found such nice little men, and whose society was so agreeable that he lingered among them, as he thought, for a few minutes. A CARMARTHENSHIRE MAIDEN WHO GOT INTO A FAIRY RING. In the parish of Cynwil Elvet, there is a farmhouse called Fos Anna, a place which was known to the writer of this book once when a boy:-- A servant girl at this farm once went rather late in the evening to look for the cows, and, unfortunately, got into the Fairy ring, and although she had been a long period without food she did not feel hungry. IAGO AP DEWI AMONG THE FAIRIES SEVEN YEARS. A Carmarthenshire tradition names among those who lived for a period among the Fairies no less a person than the translator into Welsh of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." "He was called Iago ap Dewi, and lived in the parish of Llanllawddog, in a cottage situated in the wood of Llangwyly. He was absent from the neighbourhood for a long period, and the universal belief among the peasantry was that Iago got out of bed one night to gaze on the starry sky, as he was accustomed (astrology being one of his favourite studies), and whilst thus occupied the Fairies, passing by, carried him away, and he dwelt with them seven years. Upon his return, he was questioned by many as to where he had been, but always avoiding giving them a reply." A district famous for Fairies long ago was the parish of Llanedi in Carmarthenshire, and Mr. Williams, says in his "Llen Gwerin Sir Gaerfyrddin," that an intelligent old man in that parish, named John Rees, gave him the following story of A MAN WHO WAS FOUND AMONG THE FAIRIES AT CAE CEFN PANTYDWR. This story which is similar to some of the tales I have already given as located in other parts is as follows:-- A certain man of Llanedi, on one occasion long ago, went away to another neighbourhood, leading by the "penwast" (collar) a very wild and unmanageable horse; and in order to be sure not to lose his hold of the animal, the man tied the end of the collar round the middle. So both man and horse went together and got lost. After much searching the horse was found without the collar, but nothing was heard of the man. After giving up searching for him as hopeless, they at last consulted a "Dyn Hysbys," (a conjuror or a wise man). The wise man directed them to go on a certain night into a field known as Cae Cefn Pantydwr, about forty yards from the road where the Fairies could be seen dancing, and the lost man among them, with the "penwast" still around his waist, which would enable them to know him; and the way to get him out of the Fairy Ring was to watch him coming round in the dance, and take hold of the collar when an opportunity offered itself, and drag the man out boldly. They did so, and the man was rescued. Ever since then people dreaded going to that field after dark, especially children. In some parts of Carmarthenshire, Fairy Rings are known as "Rings y Gwr Drwg" (the rings of the Old Gentleman), suggesting that the Fairies had some connection with the evil one. SON OF LLECH Y DERWYDD AND THE FAIRIES. The writer of the following tale was the late Rev. Benjamin Williams (Gwynionydd), an eminent antiquarian, Folk-Lorist, and a bard, and it is to be found in Welsh in Y Brython, vol. III., page 460. It is evident that the scene of the story was West or Mid-Wales. Mr. Williams heard the tale from old people who believed in the truth of it:-- "Yr oedd mab Llech y Derwydd yn unig blentyn ei rieni, ac hefyd yn etifedd y tyddyn. Yr oedd felly yn anwyl, ie, yn ddau lygad ei dad a'i fam. "Yr oedd y pen gwas a mab y ty yn gyfeillion mynwesol iawn, fel dau frawd, ie, fel gyfeilliaid. Gan fod y mab a'r gwas y fath gyfeillion, byddai gwraig y ty bob amser yn darpar dillad i'r gwas yr un peth yn hollol ag i'r mab. Cwympodd y ddau gyfaill mewn serch a dwy ddynes ieuainc, brydferth, ac uchel eu parch yn yr ardal, a mawr oedd y boddineb yn Llech y Derwydd; ac yn fuan ymunodd y ddau bar mewn glan briodas, a mawr fu y rhialtwch ar yr amser. Cafodd y gwas le cyfleus i fyw ar dir Llech y Derwydd. Yn mhen tua haner blwyddyn ar ol priodi o'r mab, aeth ei gyfaill ac yntau allan i hela; enciliodd y deiliad i ryw gilfach lawn o anialwch, i edrych am helwriaeth; a dychwelodd yn y man at ei gyfaill, ond erbyn dyfod yno, nid oedd modd gweled y mab yn un man. Parhaodd i edrych o gwmpas am dro gan waeddi a chwibanu, ond dim un arwydd am ei gyfaill. Yn mhen tro aeth adref i Llech y Derwydd, gan ddysgwyl ei weled yno; ond ni wyddai neb ddim am dano. Mawr oedd y gofid yn y teulu drwy y nos; ac erbyn dranoeth yr oedd eu pryder yn llawer mwy. Aethpwyd i weled y fan lle y gwelodd ei gyfaill ef olaf. Wylai ei fam a'i wraig am y gwaethaf. Yr oedd y tad dipyn yn well na'i wraig a'i fam, ond edrychai yntau fel yn haner gwallgof. Edrychwyd ar y fan olaf y gwelodd y deiliad ef, ac er eu mawr syndod a'u gofid, canfyddasent gylch y Tylwyth Teg gerllaw y fan, a chofiodd y deiliad yn y man iddo glywed swn peroriaeth hudoliaethus iawn rywle ar y pryd. Penderfynwyd ar unwaith iddo fod mor anffodus a myned i gylch y Tylwyth, a chael ei gludo ymaith na wyddid i ba le. "Aeth wythnosau a misoedd gofidus heibio, a ganwyd mab i fab Llech y Derwydd; ond nid oedd y tad ieuanc yno i gael gweled ei blentyn, ac yr oedd hyny yn ofidus iawn gan yr hen bobl. Beth bynag, daeth y dyn bach i fyny yr un ddelw a'i dad, fel pe buasai wedi ei arlunio; a mawr ydoedd yng ngolwg ei daid a'i nain. Efe oedd pobpeth yno. Tyfodd i oedran gwr, a phriododd a merch landeg yn y gymydogaeth; ond nid oedd gair da i'r tylwyth eu bod yn bobl hawddgar. "Bu farw yr hen bobl, a bu farw y ferch-yng-nghyfraith hefyd. Ar ryw brydnawn gwyntog, ym mis Hydref, gwelai teulu Llech y Derwydd henafgwr tal, teneu, a'i farf a'i wallt fel yr eira, yr hwn a dybient ydoedd Iddew, yn dynesu yn araf araf at y ty. Hylldremiai y morwynion drwy y ffenestr, a chwarddai y feistress am ben yr 'hen Iddew,' gan godi y plant un ar ol y llall i'w weled yn dyfod. Daeth at y drws, a daeth i mewn hefyd yn lled eofn, gan ofyn am ei rieni. Atebai y wraig ef yn daeog, a choeglyd anghyffredin, gan ddywedyd, 'Beth oedd yr hen Iddew meddw yn dyfod yno,' oblegid tybient ei fod wedi yfed, onid e ni fuasai yn siarad felly. Edrychai yr hen wr yn syn a phryderus iawn ar bob peth yn y ty, gan synu llawer; ond ar y plant bychain ar hyd y llawr y sylwai fwyaf. Edrychai yn llawn siomedigaeth a gofid. Dywedodd yr hanes i gyd, iddo fod allan yn hela ddoe, a'i fod yn awr yn dychwelyd. Dywedodd y wraig iddi glywed chwedl am dad ei gwr flynyddau cyn ei geni, ei fod wedi myned ar goll wrth hela; ond fod ei thad yn dywedyd wrthi nad gwir hyny, mai ei ladd a gafodd. Aeth y wraig yn anystywallt, ac yn llwyr o'i chof eisiau fod yr hen 'Iddew' yn myned allan. Cyffrodd yr hen wr, a dywedai mai efe ydoedd perchen y ty, ac y byddai raid iddo gael ei hawl. Aeth allan i weled ei feddianau, ac yn fuan i dy y deiliad. Er ei syndod, yr oedd pethau wedi newid yn fawr yno. Ar ol ymddiddan am dro a hen wr oedranus wrth y tan, edrychai y naill fwy fwy ar y llall. Dywedai yr hen wr beth fu tynged ei ben gyfaill, mab Llech y Derwydd. Siaradent yn bwyllog am bethau mebyd, ond yr oedd y cyfan fel breuddwyd. Beth bynag, penderfynodd yr hen wr yn y cornel mai ei hen gyfaill, mab Llech y Derwydd, oedd yr ymwelydd, wedi dychwelyd o wlad y Tylwyth Teg, ar ol bod yno haner can' mlynedd. Credodd yr hen wr a'r farf wen ei dynged, a mawr y siarad a'r holi fu gan y naill y llall am oriau lawer. "Dywedai fod gwr Llech y Derwydd y diwrnod hwnw oddi cartref. Cafwyd gan yr hen ymwelydd fwyta bwyd; ond er mawr fraw, syrthiodd y bwytawr yn farw yn y fan. Nid oes hanes fod trengholiad wedi bod ar y corff; ond dywedai y chwedl mae yr achos oedd, iddo fwyta bwyd ar ol bod yn myd y Tylwyth Teg cyhyd. Mynodd ei hen gyfaill weled ei gladdu yn ochr ei deidiau. Bu melldith fyth, hyd y silcyn ach, yn Llech y Derwydd, o blegid sarugrwydd y wraig i'w thad-yng-nghyfraith, nes gwerthu y lle naw gwaith." The above tale translated into English reads as follows:-- "The son of Llech y Derwydd was the only child of his parents, and also the heir to the farm. He was, therefore, very dear to his father and mother, yea, he was as the very light of their eyes. The son and the head servant man were more than bosom friends, they were like two brothers, or rather twins. As the son and the servant were such close friends, the farmer's wife was in the habit of clothing them exactly alike. The two friends fell in love with two young handsome women who were highly respected in the neighbourhood. This event gave the old people great satisfaction, and ere long the two couples were joined in holy wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant man obtained a convenient place to live in on the grounds of Llech y Derwydd. "About six months after the marriage of the son, he and the servant man went out to hunt. The servant penetrated to a ravine filled with brushwood to look for game, and presently returned to his friend, but by the time he came back the son was nowhere to be seen. He continued awhile looking about for his absent friend, shouting and whistling to attract his attention, but there was no answer to his calls. By and by he went home to Llech y Derwydd, expecting to find him there, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the grief of the family throughout the night, but it was even greater next day. They went to inspect the place where the son had last been seen. His mother and his wife wept bitterly, but the father had greater control over himself, still he appeared as half mad. They inspected the place where the servant man had last seen his friend, and, to their great surprise and sorrow, observed a Fairy ring close by the spot, and the servant recollected that he had heard seductive music somewhere about the time that he parted with his friend. "They came to the conclusion at once that the man had been so unfortunate as to enter the Fairy ring, and they conjectured that he had been transported no one knew where. Weary weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the absent man. "The little one grew up the very image of his father, and very precious was he to his grandfather and grandmother. In fact, he was everything to them. He grew up to man's estate and married a pretty girl in the neighbourhood, but her people had not the reputation of being kind-hearted. The old folks died, and also their daughter-in-law. "One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Llech y Derwydd saw a tall thin old man with beard and hair as white as snow, who they thought was a Jew approaching slowly, very slowly, towards the house. The servant girls stared mockingly through the window at him, and their mistress laughed unfeelingly at the 'old Jew,' and lifted the children up, one after the other, to get a sight of him as he neared the house. "He came to the door, and entered the house boldly enough, and inquired after his parents. The mistress answered him in a surly and unusually contemptuous manner and wished to know 'What the drunken old Jew wanted there,' for they thought he must have been drinking or he would never have spoken in the way he did. The old man looked at everything in the house with surprise and bewilderment, but the little children about the floor took his attention more than anything else. His looks betrayed sorrow and deep disappointment. He related his whole history, that yesterday he had gone out to hunt, and that now he had returned. The mistress told him that she had heard a story about her husband's father, which occurred before she was born, that he had been lost whilst hunting, but that her father had told her that the story was not true, but that he had been killed. The woman became uneasy and angry that the old 'Jew' did not depart. The old man was roused, and said that the house was his, and that he would have his rights. He went to inspect his possessions, and shortly afterwards directed his steps to the servant's house. To his surprise he saw that things were greatly changed. After conversing awhile with an aged man who sat by the fire, they carefully looked each other in the face, and the old man by the fire related the sad history of his lost friend, the son of Llech y Derwydd. "They conversed together deliberately on the events of their youth, but all seemed like a dream. However, the old man in the corner came to the conclusion that his visitor was his old friend, the son of Llech y Derwydd, returned from the land of the Fairies, after spending there fifty years. "The old man with the white beard believed the story related by his friend, and long was the talk and many were the questions which the one gave to the other. The visitor was informed that the master of Llech y Derwydd was from home that day, and he was persuaded to eat some food; but to the horror of all, when he had done so, he instantly fell down dead. We are not informed that an inquest was held over the body; but the tale relates that the cause of the man's sudden death was that he ate food after having been so long in the land of the Fairies. His old friend insisted on the dead man being buried with his ancestors. The rudeness of the mistress of Llech y Derwydd to her father-in-law brought a curse upon the place and family, 'hyd y silcyn ach,' and her offence was not expiated until the farm had been sold nine times." TAFFY AP SION OF PENCADER AMONG THE FAIRIES. The following Fairy Legend appeared in "British Goblins," page 75:-- Taffy ap Sion, the shoemaker's son, living near Pencader, Carmarthenshire, was a lad who many years ago entered the Fairy circle on the mountain hard by there, and having danced a few minutes as he supposed, chanced to step out. He was then astonished to find that the scene which had been so familiar was now quite strange to him. Here were roads and houses he had never seen, and in place of his father's humble cottage there now stood a fine stone farmhouse. About him were lovely cultivated fields instead of the barren mountain he was accustomed to. 'Ah,' thought he, 'this is some Fairy trick to deceive my eyes. It is not ten minutes since I stepped into that circle, and now when I step out they have built my father a new house! Well, I only hope it is real; anyhow, I'll go and see.' So he started off by a path he knew instinctively, and suddenly struck against a very solid hedge. He rubbed his eyes, felt the hedge with his fingers, scratched his head, felt the hedge again, ran a thorn into his fingers and cried out, 'Wbwb' this is no Fairy hedge anyhow, nor, from the age of the thorns, was it grown in a few minutes' time! So he climbed over it and walked on. 'Here was I born,' said he, as he entered the farmyard, staring wildly about him, 'and not a thing here do I know!' His mystification was complete, when there came bounding towards him a huge dog, barking furiously. 'What dog is this? Get out you ugly brute! Don't you know I'm master here?--at least, when mother's from home, for father don't count.' But the dog only barked the harder. 'Surely,' muttered Taffy to himself, 'I have lost my road and am wandering through some unknown neighbourhood; but no, yonder is the Careg Hir!' and he stood staring at the well-known erect stone thus called, which still stands on the mountain south of Pencader, and is supposed to have been placed there in ancient times to commemorate a victory. As Taffy stood thus, looking at the long stone, he heard footsteps behind him, and turning, beheld the occupant of the farmhouse, who had come out to see why his dog was barking. Poor Taffy was so ragged and wan that the farmer's Welsh heart was at once stirred to sympathy. 'Who are you, poor man?' he asked, to which Taffy answered, 'I know who I was, but I do not know who I am now. I was the son of a shoemaker who lived in this place, this morning; for that rock, though it is changed a little, I know too well.' 'Poor fellow,' said the farmer, 'You have lost your senses. This house was built by my great-grandfather, repaired by my grandfather; and that part there, which seems newly built, was done about three years ago at my expense. You must be deranged, or you have missed the road; but come in and refresh yourself with some victuals, and rest.' Taffy was half persuaded that he had overslept himself and lost his road, but looking back he saw the rock before mentioned, and exclaimed, 'It is but an hour since I was on yonder rock robbing a hawk's nest.' 'Where have you been since?' Taffy related his adventure. 'Ah,' quoth the farmer, 'I see how it is--you have been with the Fairies. Pray who was your father?' 'Sion Evan y Crydd o Glanrhyd,' was the answer. 'I never heard of such a man,' said the farmer, shaking his head, 'nor of such a place as Glanrhyd, either; but no matter, after you have taken a little food we will step down to Catti Shon, at Pencader, who will probably be able to tell something.' With this he beckoned Taffy to follow him, and walked on; but hearing behind him the sound of footsteps growing weaker and weaker, he turned round, when to his horror he beheld the poor fellow crumble in an instant to about a thimbleful of black ashes. The farmer, though much terrified at this sight, preserved his calmness sufficiently to go at once and see old Catti, the aged crone he had referred to, who lived at Pencader, near by. He found her crouching over a fire of faggots, trying to warm her old bones. 'And how do you do the day, Catti Shon?' asked the farmer. 'Ah,' said old Catti, 'I'm wonderful well, farmer, considering how old I am.' 'Yes, yes, you are very old. Now, since you are so old, let me ask you--do you remember anything about Sion y Crydd o Glanrhyd? Was there ever such a man, do you know?' 'Sion Glanrhyd? O! I have a faint recollection of hearing my grandfather, old Evan Shenkin, Penferdir, relate that Sion's son was lost one morning, and they never heard of him afterwards, so that it was said he was taken by the Fairies. His father's cottage stood somewhere near your house.' 'Were there many Fairies about at that time?' asked the farmer. 'O, yes; they were often seen on yonder hill, and I was told they were lately seen in Pant Shon Shenkin, eating flummery out of egg-shells, which they had stolen from a farm hard by.' 'Dir anwyl fi!' cried the farmer; 'dear me! I recollect now--I saw them myself.' SHON AP SHENKIN SEDUCED BY FAIRY MUSIC. Another story very similar to the one I have just given is the legend of Shon ap Shenkin, which was related to Mr. Sikes by a farmer's wife near the reputed scene of the tale, that is the locality of Pant Shon Shenkin, the famous centre of Carmarthenshire Fairies:-- "Shon ap Shenkin was a young man who lived hard by Pant Shon Shenkin. As he was going afield early one fine summer's morning he heard a little bird singing, in a most enchanting strain, on a tree close by his path. Allured by the melody, he sat down under the tree until the music ceased, when he arose and looked about him. What was his surprise at observing that the tree, which was green and full of life when he sat down, was now withered and barkless! Filled with astonishment he returned to the farmhouse which he had left, as he supposed, a few minutes before; but it also was changed, grown older, and covered with ivy. In the doorway stood an old man whom he had never before seen; he at once asked the old man what he wanted there. 'What do I want here?' ejaculated the old man, reddening angrily; 'that's a pretty question! Who are you that dare to insult me in my own house?' 'In your own house? How is this? where's my father and mother, whom I left here a few minutes since, whilst I have been listening to the charming music under yon tree, which, when I rose, was withered and leafless' 'Under the tree!--music!' 'What's your name?' 'Shon ap Shenkin.' 'Alas, poor Shon, and this is indeed you!' cried the old man. 'I often heard my grandfather, your father, speak of you, and long did he bewail your absence. Fruitless inquiries were made for you; but old Catti Maddock of Brechfa said you were under the power of the Fairies, and would not be released until the last sap of that sycamore tree would be dried. Embrace me, my dear uncle, for you are my uncle ... embrace your nephew.' With this the old man extended his arms, but before the two men could embrace, poor Shon ap Shenkin crumbled into dust on the door-step." It is very interesting to compare this story of Shon ap Shenkin, under the power of the Fairies, listening to the birds of enchantment, with the warriors at Harlech listening to the Birds of Rhiannon, in the Mabinogi of Branwen, daughter of Llyr. Bran Fendigaid, a Welsh King in ancient times, had a palace at Harlech, and had a sister named Bronwen, or White Breast, whom Matholwch the King of Ireland married on account of her wonderful beauty. After a while, however, the foster brothers of Matholwch began to treat Bronwen very cruelly till at last she found means to send a message to her brother Bran, in Wales; and this she did by writing a letter of her woes, which she bound to a bird's wing which she had reared. The bird reached Bronwen's brother, Bran, who, when he read the letter sailed for Ireland immediately, and during a fearful warfare in that country he was poisoned with a dart in his foot. His men had been bidden by their dying chief to cut off his head and bear it to London and bury it with the face towards France. They did as they were bidden by Bran previous to his death, and various were the adventures they encountered while obeying this injunction. At Harlech they stopped to rest, and sat down to eat and drink. While there, they heard three birds singing a sweet song, "at a great distance over the sea," though it seemed to them as though they were quite near. These were the birds of Rhiannon. Their notes were so sweet that warriors were known to have remained spell-bound for 80 years listening to them. The birds sang so sweetly that the men rested for seven years, which appeared but a day. Then they pursued their way to Gwales in Pembrokeshire, and there remained for four score years, during which the head of Bran was uncorrupted. At last they went to London and buried it there. The old Welsh poets often allude to the birds of Rhiannon, and they are also mentioned in the Triads; and the same enchanting fancy reappears in the local story of Shon ap Shenkin, which I just gave. Mr. Ernest Rhys in the present day sings:-- "O, the birds of Rhiannon they sing time away,-- Seven years in their singing are gone like a day." In the region of myth and romance Rhiannon, the songs of whose birds were so enchanting, was the daughter of Heveydd Hen, who by her magic arts foiled her powerful suitor, Gwawl ap Clud, and secured as her consort the man of her choice, Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. In Welsh Mythology several members of the kingly families are represented as playing the role of magicians. It may be added that it is interesting to compare both the story of Shion ap Shenkin, and that of the birds of Rhiannon, with Longfellow's "Golden Legend," originally written in the thirteenth century by Jacobus de Voragine, in which Monk Felix is represented as listening to the singing of a snow-white bird for a hundred years, which period passed as a single hour. "One morning all alone, Out of his covenant of gray stone, Into the forest older, darker, grayer His lips moving as if in prayer, His head sunken upon his breast As in a dream of rest, Walked the Monk Felix. All about The broad, sweet sunshine lay without, Filling the summer air; And within the woodlands as he trod, The twilight was like the Truce of God With worldly woe and care. Under him lay the golden moss; And above him the boughs of hemlock-trees Waved, and made the sign of the cross, And whispered their benedicites, And from the ground Rose an odour sweet and fragrant Of the wild-flowers and the vagrant Vines that wandered, Seeking the sunshine, round and round. "Those he heeded not, but pondered On the volume in his hand, A volume of Saint Augustine, Wherein he read of the unseen Splendours of God's great town In the unknown land, And, with his eyes cast down In humility he said: 'I believe, O God, What herein I have read, But alas! I do not understand'? "And lo! he heard The sudden singing of a bird, A snow-white bird, that from a cloud Dropped down, And among the branches brown Sat singing So sweet, and clear, and loud, It seemed a thousand harp-strings ringing; And the Monk Felix closed his book, And long, long, With rapturous look, He listened to the song. And hardly breathed or stirred, Until he saw, as in a vision, The land Elysian, And in the heavenly city heard Angelic feet Fall on the golden flagging of the street, And he would fain Have caught the wondrous bird, But strove in vain; For it flew away, away, Far over hill and dell, And instead of its sweet singing, He heard the convent bell Suddenly in the silence ringing, For the service of noonday. And he retraced His pathway homeward sadly and in haste. "In the convent there was a change! He looked for each well-known face, But the faces were new and strange; New figures sat in the oaken stalls. New voices chanted in the choir; Yet the place was the same place, The same dusky walls Of cold, gray stone, The same cloisters and belfry and spire. "A stranger and alone Among that brotherhood The monk Felix stood. 'Forty years,' said a Friar, 'Have I been Prior Of this convent in the wood, But for that space Never have I beheld thy face!' The heart of Monk Felix fell: And he answered with submissive tone, 'This morning, after the horn of Prime, I left my cell And wandered forth alone. Listening all the time To the melodious singing Of a beautiful white bird, Until I heard The bells of the convent ring Noon from their noisy towers. It was as if I dreamed; For what to me had seemed Moments only, had been hours!' "'Years!' said a voice close by, It was an aged monk who spoke, From a bench of oak Fastened against the wall;-- He was the oldest monk of all. For a whole century He had been there, Serving God in prayer, The meekest and humblest of his creatures, He remembered well the features Of Felix, and he said, 'One hundred years ago, When I was a novice in this place There was here a monk, full of God's grace, Who bore the name Of Felix, and this man must be the same.' "And straightway They brought forth to the light of day A volume old and brown, A huge tome bound In brass and wild-boar's hide. Wherein were written down The names of all who had died In the convent, since it was edified. And there they found, Just as the old Monk said, That on a certain day and date, One hundred years before, Had gone forth from the convent gate The monk Felix, and never more Had he entered that sacred door He had been counted among the dead! And they knew, at last, That such had been the power Of that celestial and immortal song, A hundred years had passed, And had not seemed so long As a single hour!" In the stories I have already given those who fell into the hands of the Fairies were rescued or returned from them after a certain period of time; but I have heard some stories in which the victim never returned. A woman at Pontshan, Llandyssul, in Cardiganshire, related to me a story of a servant girl in that neighbourhood who was captured by the Fairies and never returned home again. A few months ago another tale of this kind was related to me at Llanrhystyd: A LLANRHYSTYD MAID LOST AMONG THE FAIRIES. Mr David Morgan, Carpenter, Llanrhystyd, informed me that some years ago the maid servant of Pencareg Farm in the neighbourhood, went out one evening to bring home the cattle which were grazing some distance away from the house. A boy employed to look after the cattle in the day-time known as "bugail bach," saw the Fairies dragging the maid into their circle or ring, where she joined them in their dances. Search was made for her everywhere, but she was never seen again. SHUI RHYS AND THE FAIRIES. "Shui was a beautiful girl of seventeen, tall and fair, with a skin like ivory, hair black and curling, and eyes of dark velvet. She was but a poor farmer's daughter, notwithstanding her beauty, and among her duties was that of driving up the cows for the milking. Over this work she used to loiter sadly, to pick flowers by the way, or chase the butterflies, or amuse herself in any agreeable manner that fortune offered. For her loitering she was often chided, indeed, people said Shui's mother was far too sharp with the girl, and that it was for no good the mother had so bitter a tongue. After all the girl meant no harm, they said. But when one night Shui never came home till bed-time, leaving the cows to care for themselves, dame Rhys took the girl to task as she never had done before. 'Ysgwaetheroedd, Mami,' said Shui, 'I could not help it; it was the Tylwyth Teg,' (the Fairies). The dame was aghast at this, but she could not answer it--for well she knew the Tylwyth Teg were often seen in the woods of Cardigan. Shui was at first shy about talking of the Fairies, but finally confessed they were little men in green coats, who danced around her and made music on their little harps; and they talked to her in language too beautiful to be repeated; indeed she couldn't understand the words, though she knew well enough what the Fairies meant. Many a time after that Shui was late; but now nobody chided her, for fear of offending the Fairies. At last one night Shui did not come home at all. In alarm the woods were searched; there was no sign of her; and never was she seen in Cardigan again. Her mother watched in the fields on the Tair-nos ysprydion or three nights of the year when goblins are sure to be abroad; but Shui never returned. Once indeed there came to the neighbourhood a wild rumour that Shui Rhys had been seen in a great city in a foreign land--Paris, perhaps, or London, who knows? but this tale was in no way injurious to the sad belief that the Fairies had carried her off; they might take her to those well-known centres of idle and sinful pleasure, as well as to any other place." [3] FAIRIES COMING INTO THE BEDROOM OF A HOUSE NEAR ABERYSTWYTH. One Robert Burton, in his "History of the Principality of Wales," published 215 years ago, says:--"John Lewes, Esq., a Justice of Peace at Glankerrig, near Aberystwyth, in this county, in the year 1656, by several letters to Mr. B. A., late worthy divine deceased, gives an account of several strange apparitions in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, and this county (Cardiganshire), about that time, confirmed by divers persons of good quality and reputation the substance of whereof are as followeth. A man and his family being all in bed, he being awake about midnight, perceived by a light entering the little room where he lay, and about a dozen in the shapes of men, and two or three women with small children in their arms following, they seemed to dance, and the chamber appeared much wider and lighter than formerly. They seemed to eat bread and cheese all about a kind of a tick upon the ground, they offered him some, and would smile upon him, he heard no voice, but calling once upon God to bless him, he heard a whispering voice in Welsh bidding him hold his peace. They continued there about four hours, all which time he endeavoured to wake his wife but could not. Afterwards they went into another room, and having danced awhile departed. He then arose, and though the room was very small, yet he could neither find the door, nor the way to bed again until crying out his wife and family awoke. "He living within two miles of Justice Lewes, he sent for him, being a poor honest husbandman and of good report, and made him believe he would put him to his oath about the truth of this Relation, who was very ready to take it." A SERVANT OF PERTHRHYS, LLANDDEINIOL, AND THE WHITE FAIRIES. A very old man named John Jones, who lives at Llanddeiniol, about six miles from Aberystwyth, informed me that many years ago, when he was a young man, or a lad of 18, he was engaged as a servant at a farm called Perthrhys, in that neighbourhood. One evening after supper he went to the tailor who was making him a suit of clothes; but as the clothes were not quite ready he had to wait till a late hour before returning home, but it was a delightful moonlight night. As he proceeded along a lonely path across a certain moor known as Rhosrhydd, and happened to look back he was suddenly surprised by seeing two young men or boys as he thought, coming after him. At first he thought they were some boys trying to frighten him; but after they had followed him for a short distance till they came within about 30 or 40 yards of him, they turned out from the path, and began to jump and to dance, going round and round as if they followed a ring or a circle just as we hear of the fairies. They were perfectly white, and very nimble, and the old man informed me that there was something supernatural both in their appearance and movements; and that he is convinced to this day that they could not have been human beings. When he arrived home at the farm, and related his adventure, every one in the house was of the opinion that the strange beings he had seen were the Fairies. NANCY TYNLLAIN AND HER SON SEEING FAIRIES ON HORSES. A man named Timothy in the parish of Llanarth, Cardiganshire, told me that an old woman known as Nancy Tynllain and her son, Shenkin Phillips, had seen the Tylwyth Teg (fairies) on one occasion. Nancy died over sixty years ago. She and her son one day left home rather early in the morning, as they were going to Cynon's Fair, and had some distance to go. As they proceeded on their horses in the direction of Wilgarn, they saw the Fairies, mounted on small horses, galloping round and round as in a circle round about a certain hillock, and Nancy took particular notice that one of the Fairy women had a red cloak on. As the old woman and her son were looking on, watching the movements of the Fairies, Nancy remarked, "That Fairy woman over there rides very much like myself." This was at early dawn. ELIAS, FORCH Y CWM AND THE FAIRIES. Elias, Forch y Cwm, who was a servant man in the same neighbourhood, was one day ploughing on the field, but when he happened to look about he perceived the Fairies on Bank-Cwmpridd, and coming towards him. The man ran home in terror from the field, and this was in broad daylight. The late Mr. T. Compton Davies, Aberayron, an eminent Folk-Lorist, related to me the following two stories, and informed me that he had already written them in Welsh for "Cymru," in which excellent periodical they appeared, September, 1892, page 117. THE CARDIGANSHIRE PAINTER AND MUSICIAN, WHO PLAYED HIS FLUTE TO THE FAIRY LADIES AND NEARLY SECURED ONE OF THEM AS A WIFE. About the year 1860, a builder from Aberayron, in Cardiganshire, was erecting a Vicarage at Nantcwnlle, about nine miles from Aberayron, not far from Llangeitho. There was a certain man there employed as a painter, whose name was John Davies, a harmless and superstitious character, who once had been an exciseman, afterwards a carpenter, and at last became a painter, though he did not shine in either of the two trades. He was however, a brilliant musician, and belonged to a musical family. He was acquainted with the works of Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, whilst one of his favourites was the song of the Witches in "Macbeth," He also always carried his flute in his pocket. Whilst this Nantcwnlle Vicarage was in course of construction, John was sent one day on a message to Aberayron. He went there in due time, and in the afternoon left the town and started on his return journey, having the choice of two roads--either returning through the Vale of Aeron, or across the hill--country of Cilcennin, The latter was a very lonely route, but he chose it as it was about two miles shorter. So John hurried on his journey so as to reach his destination before night. When he came to the little village of Cilcennin, he had a good mind to enter the public house known as the "Commercial," to see his old friend Llywelyn, when he remembered that it was getting late and that he had to pass by the ghosts of the moors and the Fairy circles on the top of the mountain. After walking on again about a mile, he arrived at another public house, known as "Rhiwlas Arms." He was now within three miles to the end of his journey, and it occurred to him that it would be a splendid thing to have one pint of beer to give him strength and courage to meet the ghosts. So in he went into the Public House, where he met with many old friends, and drank more than one pint. After taking out his flute from his pocket, John obliged the merry company with many of the old Welsh airs, such as "Ar Hyd y Nos," "Glan Meddwdod Mwyn," "Llwyn on," etc. It was 8 o'clock p.m., and in the middle of October. John started from the house, boasting to those who were present that he was not afraid, but poor fellow, as soon as he went out into the darkness and the stillness of the night, his heart began to beat very fast. Nevertheless, he walked forward from the cross-road towards Hendraws, and turned to a road which led direct to Nantcwnlle. For a considerable distance, there was no hedge except on one side of the road, and nothing but a vast open moor on the other side. John knew that he was to pass a small cottage called Ty-clottas, and expected every moment to see the light of the old woman who lived there, who was known as Peggi Ty-clottas. Unfortunately, John had somehow or other wandered away from the road into the bog; but seeing light before him, he went on confidently. He followed the light for some distance, but did not come to any house, and he noticed that the light was travelling and giving a little jump now and again. At the early dawn next morning, old Peggi Ty-clottas, when she was half awake, heard some strange music, more strange than she had ever heard before. At first she thought it was the "toili" (phantom funeral), which had come to warn her of her approaching death; for to believe in the "toili" was part of Peggi's confession of faith. But when she listened attentively, Peggi found out that the music was not a dead march, but rather something light and merry. So it could not have been the "toili." Afterwards she thought it was the warbling of some bird. Peggi had heard the lark many a time at the break of day singing songs of praises to the Creator. She had also heard the lapwing and other birds, breaking on the loneliness of her solitary home; but never had she heard a bird like this one singing, singing continually without a pause. At last she got up from her bed and went out into the moor in order to see what was there. To her great surprise, she saw a man sitting on a heap, and blowing into some instrument, who took no notice of Peggi. Peggi went quite close to the man and asked him in a loud voice, "What do you want here?" Then the man stirred up and ceased to blow, and with an angry look, said,--"Ah you,--you have spoiled everything; it nearly came to a bargain." It proved that the man whom Peggi came upon was John Davies, the painter, who had been playing his flute to the Fairies, and had almost made a bargain with them to marry a Fairy lady, when old Peggi came to spoil everything. When Mr. T. Compton Davies, heard about John among the Fairies he went to him and begged him to tell him all about it; and he did so. According to John's own account of his night adventure it was something as follows:--When he got lost in the bog, he followed the light, till presently, he came to a Fairy ring, where a large number of little Fairy ladies danced in it, and to his great surprise, one of them took his arm, so that John also began to dance. And after a while, the Queen of the Fairies herself came on to him, and asked him, "Where do you come from?" John replied, "From the world of mortals," and added that he was a painter. Then she said to him, that they had no need of a painter in the world of Fairies, as there was nothing getting old there. John found the Fairies all ladies, or at least he did not mention any men. They were very beautiful, but small, and wearing short white dresses coming down to the knees only. When he took out from his pocket his flute and entertained them by playing some Irish, Scotch, and English airs, the Queen informed him that they (the Fairies) were of Welsh descent. Then John played some Welsh airs from Owen Alaw to the great delight of the Fairy ladies, and they had a merry time of it. John soon became a great favourite, and asked for something to drink, but found they were "teetotals." Then he fell in love with one of the Fairy ladies, and asked the Queen for the hand of the maiden, and informed her that he had a horse named Bob, as well as a cart of his own making. The Queen in reply said that they were not accustomed to mix with mortals, but as he had proved himself such a musician, she gave her consent under the conditions that he and the little lady should come once a month on the full moon night to the top of Mount Trichrug to visit the Fairies. Then the Queen took hold of a pot full of gold which she intended giving John as a dowry, but, unfortunately, at the very last moment, when he was just going to take hold of it, old Peggi TyClottas came to shout and to spoil the whole thing; for as soon as the Fairy ladies saw old Peggi, they all vanished through some steps into the underground regions and John never saw them again. But he continued to believe as long as he lived that he had been with the Fairies. TWO MEN WHO SAW THE FAIRIES IN CARMARTHENSHIRE DANCING IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. Mr. Compton Davies, also informed me that there were two men in his neighbourhood who had seen the Fairies about 45 years ago, and he directed me to go and see them so as to hear everything from their own lips. One of them, David Evans, Red Lion, lives at Aberayron, and the other Evan Lewis is a farmer near Mydroilyn, in the parish of Llanarth. I went to see both of them, and they gave me a full account of what they had seen which was something as follows:-- In August, 1862, David Evans and Evan Lewis, went from the Coast of Cardiganshire with their waggons all the way to Brecon for some timber for ship-building, which was going on at New Quay. On their return journey, through Carmarthenshire, they stopped for a short time at a place called Cwmdwr on the road leading from Llanwrda to Lampeter. It was about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and the two men and their horses and waggons were standing opposite a farm known as Maestwynog, where the reapers were busy at work in a wheat-field close by. As they were looking in the direction of a hillside not far off, David Evans saw about fifty small wheat stacks (sopynau bychain), as he at first thought. On second sight, however, he noticed that they were moving about, he took them for reapers. They were all dressed exactly alike, and walked fast one after another up the hillside footpath. David Evans now called the attention of his companion Evan Lewis, whom he asked who the men could have been; but before he had time to make any further remarks, the first of those who were climbing up along the winding footpath had reached a small level spot on the top of the hill. The others quickly followed him, and each one in coming to the top, gave a jump to dance, and they formed a circle. After dancing for a short time, one of the dancers turned in into the middle of the circle, followed by the others, one by one till they appeared like a gimblet screw. Then they disappeared into the ground. After awhile one of them reappeared again, and looked about him in every direction as a rat, and the others followed him one by one and did the same. Then they danced for some time as before, and vanished into the ground as they had done the first time. The two men, David Evans and Evan Lewis were watching them from a distance of about 400 yards and were more than astonished to see men, as they thought, acting in such a strange and curious manner on the hill. They continued looking for some time but the dancers did not appear again. At last the two men proceeded on their journey till they came to an old man working on the road whom they asked whether he knew anything about the men they had seen dancing in a circle on the hill behind Maestwynog. The old man replied that he had not the least idea, but had heard his grandfather say that the Tylwyth Teg (Fairies) used to dance in his time, at which explanation our two friends smiled. In the above account we see that the hill near Maestwynog was a special haunt of the Fairies, even in modern days. There are certain spots here and there all over Wales, pointed out by old people to this day, as having been frequented in former times by the Fairies to dance and to sing. An old man named James Jones, Golden Lion, Llanarth, informed me that when a boy he heard from the lips of old men, many a tale of Fairies seen on Bank-rhydeiniol; and that they were mounted on horses, riding and playing; and the late Rev. J. Davies, Moria, mentions that there were traditions of them appearing on Bannau Duon in the same parish. In the northern part of Cardiganshire, the people of Talybont showed me a spot a few miles to the east of that village, where these supernatural beings appeared long ago, more especially to dance. The neighbourhood of Aberporth, in the southern part of the same county, was also a favourite spot according to an old woman in the village. Pant Shon Shenkin in the neighbourhood of Pencader was a famous place for Carmarthenshire Fairies, of which district we have already given the reader more than one story. Gwynionydd in the Brython for 1860, remarks that in former times the Fairies were fond of the mountains of Dyfed, and that travellers in Cardiganshire, between Lampeter and the town of Cardigan often saw them on Llanwenog hill; but after arriving on that spot they would be seen far away on the mountains of Llandyssul, and expecting to find them there, they would be seen somewhere else, both deluding and eluding the traveller. THE FAIRIES OF CWM MABWS, SEEN DRIVING IN THEIR CARRIAGES. In the interesting small valley of Cwm Mabws, near Llanrhystyd, nine miles from Aberystwyth, there is a rocky spot known as Craig Rhydderch. Even within the memory of some who are still alive, the caves of Craig Rhydderch were the favourite haunts of the Fairies, where these mysterious beings were thought to dwell, or at least pass through to the underground regions. The Fairies of this part were, it was supposed, some kind of spirits or supernatural beings, and were often seen in the Valley of Mabws going about in their phantom carriages and horses. About fifty years ago when Fairies were still to be seen in this neighbourhood, the eldest son of Penlan farm, and some of the men servants one evening just before dark, took their horses down to the little river which runs through the bottom of the valley in order to give the animals water, as there was no water near the farm-house which stood on high ground. As they were on their way to the river they heard some noise on the road quite near them, and the farmer's son said to the servants, "It is the noise of the Fairies on their journey, and they are coming from the direction of Craig Rhydderch; let us stand one side of the road to make room for them to pass." And sure enough, just as he spoke, a number of Fairies appeared on the scene and passed by as if they were on a journey. They were little men with little horses and carriages, but my informant could not tell me the colour of their dresses nor the colour of their horses After taking their horses to the water and turning them into a field, the men went home to Penlan; and as soon as they entered the house and related what they had seen, another son of the farm had just arrived home from Aberystwyth with a horse and cart, and he also had seen the Fairies, just as he was turning to the road which led up the hill. The above story was related to me by Mr. David Morgan, Carpenter, Llanrhystyd, who vouches for the truth of the account as he was well acquainted with the persons who saw the Fairies, and one of them was a friend of his. FAIRIES AND FOOTBALLERS. There is a curious tradition that early one Easter Monday, when the parishioners of Pencarreg and Caio were met to play at football, they saw a numerous company of Fairies dancing. Being so many in number, the young men were not intimidated at all, but proceeded in a body towards the puny tribe, who perceiving them, removed to another place. The young men followed, whereupon the little folk suddenly disappeared dancing at the first place. Seeing this, the men divided and surrounded them, when they immediately became invisible, and were never more seen there. This was in Carmarthenshire. Other places frequented by Fairies were Moyddin, between Lampeter and Llanarth, in Troed yr Aur, in Cardiganshire. FAIRIES MARKETING. It was formerly believed in some parts of West Wales, especially by the people dwelling near the sea coast, that the Fairies visited markets and fairs, and that their presence made business very brisk. I have already referred to the "Gwerddonau Llion," or the enchanted "Isles of the Sea," inhabited by Fairy Tribes. These Fairies, it was believed, went to and fro between the islands and shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea, and regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven, in Pembrokeshire and Laugharne in Carmarthenshire. ("British Goblins," page 10.) They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know, without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible, but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the Fairies bestowed their patronage, instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. According to Gwynionydd in the "Brython," for 1858, page 110, these Fairies also came to market to Cardigan, and it was thought they raised the prices of things terribly whenever they came there. In that part of the country they were known as "Plant Rhys Ddwfn." No one saw them coming there or going away, only seen there in the market. When prices in the market happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however, much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, "Oh! They were there to-day," meaning "Plant Rhys Ddwfn," or the Fairies. These Fairies were liked by the farmers who had corn to sell, but disliked by the poor labourers who had to buy corn and give higher price for it. Gwynionydd also says that: "A certain Gruffydd Ap Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and that he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders, like the Phoenicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffydd, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. "Oh!" replied the little old man of shrewd looks, "Just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land; no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the seashore; perfect unity prevails there, and so among us." Rhys, the father of our race, bade us even to the most distant descendant to honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours, and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would prove unfaithful to another, or become what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the Devil's, with hands somewhat like a man's while one of them holds a large knife and the family dead around him Good-bye!" When Gruffydd looked about him he lost sight of the country of Plant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend of Plant Rhys as long as he lived. After Gruffydd's death they came to the market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffydd before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there." FAIRY CHANGELINGS. Mr. B. Davies in the II. Vol. of the "Brython," page 182, gives the following tale of a Fairy Changeling in the neighbourhood of Newcastle Emlyn, in the Vale of Teifi, and on the borders of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire:-- "One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in the "gader" or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return when her neighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her Darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor, she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, "O my little one! thy mother's delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, etc." But to her surprise, he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one of Rhys Ddwfn's children that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a wizard, or wise man, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth (Cenarth) boys, and held before the child's face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Abercuch to Aberbargod at any rate. The mother found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost."--"Celtic Folk-Lore" by Sir J. Rhys. There are many such stories in different parts of Wales and Scotland, and in both countries Fairies were believed to have a fatal admiration for lovely children, and credited with stealing them, especially unbaptized infants. A Welsh poet thus sings:-- "Llawer plentyn teg aeth ganddynt, Pan y cym'rynt helynt hir; Oddiar anwyl dda rieni, I drigfanau difri dir. The Rev. Elias Owen's translation of the above is as follows:-- "Many a lovely child they've taken, When long and bitter was the pain; From their parents, loving, dear, To the Fairies' dread domain." Another popular mode of treatment resorted to in order to reclaim children from the Fairies, and to get rid of ugly changelings was as follows:--The mother was to carry the changeling to a river, and when at the brink, the wizard who accompanied her was to cry out:-- "Crap ar y wrach"-- (A grip on the hag.) and the mother was to respond:-- "Rhy hwyr gyfraglach"-- (Too late decrepit one); Then the mother was to throw the changeling into the river, and then returning home, where she would find her own child safe and sound. It was believed that the Fairies were particularly busy in exchanging children on St. John's Eve. HOW TO DETECT CHANGELINGS. One way of finding out whether children were Changelings or not was to listen to them speaking. If suspected children were heard speaking things above the understanding of children, it was considered a proof that they were changelings. This was a wide-spread belief in Wales. Fairies did not always come to steal children, however, for they were believed in some places to enter the houses at night to dance and sing until the morning, and leave on the hearth-stone a piece of money as a reward behind them, should they find the house clean; but should it be dirty, they came to punish the servant girl. The good Fairies known as "Bendith y Mamau," were supposed to rock the infant's cradle and sweep and clean the house whilst the tired mother slept. And one way of securing their good luck was to leave a little milk for them upon the kitchen table at night. FAIRY MONEY. An old man named Evan Morris, Goginan, informed me that a farmer in the Vale of Rheidol one day found a sixpence on the top of a gate-post. On the next day he found a shilling there, and on the day after two shillings, the sum was doubled every day till the man was beginning to get rich. At last, however, the farmer told his family or his friends about his good luck, and after this he got no more money, as the Fairies were offended that he did not keep the thing secret. FAIRY MOTHERS AND HUMAN MIDWIVES. The following story is to be found in Welsh in an interesting little book entitled "Ystraeon y Gwyll," by the late Mr. D. Lledrod Davies; and in English by Sir John Rhys in his great work "Celtic Folk-Lore":--The locality of the tale is Swyddffynon, near Ystrad Meurig, in Cardiganshire. "It used to be related by an old woman who died some thirty years ago at the advanced age of about 100. She was Pali, mother of old Rachel Evans, who died seven or eight years ago, when she was about eighty. The latter was a curious character, who sometimes sang "Maswedd," or rhymes of doubtful propriety, and used to take the children of the village to see fairy rings. She also used to see the "Tylwyth" (Fairies), and had many tales to tell of them. But her mother, Pali, had actually been called to attend at the confinement of one of them. The beginning of the tale is not very explicit; but, anyhow, Pali one evening found herself face to face with the Fairy lady she was to attend upon. She appeared to be the wife of one of the princes of the country. She was held in great esteem, and lived in a very grand palace. Everything there had been arranged in the most beautiful and charming fashion. The wife was in her bed with nothing about her but white, and she fared sumptuously. In due time, when the baby had been born, the midwife had all the care connected with dressing it and serving its mother. Pali could see or hear nobody in the whole place, but the mother and the baby. She had no idea who attended on them, or who prepared all the things they required, for it was all done noiselessly and secretly. The mother was a charming person, of an excellent temper and easy to manage. Morning and evening, as she finished washing the baby, Pali had a certain ointment given her to rub the baby with. She was charged not to touch it, but with her hand, and especially not to put any near her eyes. This was carried out for some time, but one day, as she was dressing the baby, her eyes happened to itch, and she rubbed them with her hand. Then at once she saw a great many wonders she had not before perceived; and the whole place assumed a new aspect to her. She said nothing, and in the course of the day she saw a great deal more. Among other things, she observed small men and small women going in and out following a variety of occupations. But their movements were as light as the morning breezes. To move about was no trouble to them, and they brought things into the room with the greatest quickness. They prepared dainty food for the confined lady with the utmost order and skill, and the air of kindness and affection with which they served her was truly remarkable. In the evening, as she was dressing the baby, the midwife said to the lady, "You have had a great many visitors to-day." To this she replied, "How do you know that? Have you been putting this ointment to your eyes?" Thereupon she jumped out of bed, and blew into her eyes, saying, "Now you will see no more." She never afterwards could see the fairies, however much she tried, nor was the ointment entrusted to her after that day." There is a version of this story located in the neighbourhood of Llanuwchllyn, Merionethshire, and indeed in several other parts of Wales. FAIRIES PLAYING TRICKS WITH THE OVEN. Miss Evelyn Lewes, Tyglyn Aeron, in the "Carmarthenshire Antiquities" says, "Should the dough not rise properly, but present a stringy appearance, the Cardiganshire housewife announces that "Mae bara yn robin," and forthwith orders the sacrifice of an old slipper, presumably to propitiate the fairy folk who are inclined to play tricks with the oven.... A native of Montgomeryshire tells me that in her youth no loaf at her home was ever placed in the oven unless a cross had been previously signed upon it." FAIRY GLOVES. Mrs. A. Crawley-Boevey, of Birchgrove, Crosswood, a lady who is greatly interested in Folk-Lore, informed me that it is believed in Gloucestershire that the Fairies live in Fox Gloves. I have not so far discovered this belief in Wales, but Fox Glove is called in some part of the Principality Menyg y Tylwyth Teg (Fairy Gloves). Also Menyg Ellyllon (Elves Gloves). FAIRY KNOCKERS. Knockers were supposed to be a species of Fairies which haunted the mines, and underground regions, and whose province it was to indicate by knocks and other sounds, the presence of rich veins of ore. That miners in former times did really believe in the existence of such beings is quite evident from the following two letters written by Lewis Morris (great grandfather of Sir Lewis Morris the poet) in October 14th, 1754, and December 4th, 1754. They appeared in Bingley's North Wales, Vol. II., pages 269-272: "People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature (which, in other words are the powers of the author of nature), will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the existence of "Knockers" in mines, a kind of good-natured impalpable people not to be seen, but heard, and who seem to us to work in the mines; that is to say, they are the types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents, which happen to us. The barometer falls before rain, or storms. If we do not know the construction of it, we should call it a kind of dream that foretells rain; but we know it is natural, and produced by natural means, comprehended by us. Now, how are we sure, or anybody sure, but that our dreams are produced by the same natural means? There is some faint resemblance of this in the sense of hearing; the bird is killed before we hear the report of the gun. However, this is, I must speak well of the "Knockers," for they have actually stood my good-friends, whether they are aerial beings called spirits, or whether they are a people made of matter, not to be felt by our gross bodies, as air and fire and the like. "Before the discovery of the "Esgair y Mwyn" mine, these little people, as we call them here, worked hard there day and night; and there are honest, sober people, who have heard them, and some persons who have no notion of them or of mines either; but after the discovery of the great ore they were heard no more. When I began to work at Llwyn Llwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time that they frightened some young workmen out of the work. This was when we were driving levels, and before we had got any ore; but when we came to the ore, they then gave over, and I heard no more talk of them. Our old miners are no more concerned at hearing them "blasting," boring holes, landing "deads," etc., than if they were some of their own people; and a single miner will stay in the work, in the dead of night, without any man near him, and never think of any fear of any harm they will do him. The miners have a notion that the "knockers" are of their own tribe and profession, and are a harmless people who mean well. Three or four miners together shall hear them sometimes, but if the miners stop to take notice of them, the "knockers" will also stop; but, let the miners go on at their work, suppose it is "boring," the "knockers" will at the same time go on as brisk as can be in landing, "blasting." or beating down the "loose," and they are always heard a little distance from them before they come to the ore. "These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, though we cannot, and do not pretend to account for them. We have now very good ore at "Llwyn Llwyd," where the "knockers" were heard to work, but we have now yielded the place, and are no more heard. Let who will laugh, we have the greatest reason to rejoice, and thank the "knockers," or rather God, who sends us these notices." The second letter is as follows:-- "I have no time to answer your objection against 'knockers'; I have a large treatise collected on that head, and what Mr. Derham says is nothing to the purpose. If sounds of voices, whispers, blasts, working, or pumping, can be carried on a mile underground, they should always be heard in the same place, and under the same advantages, and not once in a month, a year, or two years. Just before the discovery of ore last week, three men together in our work at "Llwyn Llwyd" were ear-witnesses of "knockers," pumping, driving a wheelbarrow, etc.; but there is no pump in the work, nor any mine within less than a mile of it, in which there are pumps constantly going. If they were these pumps that they heard, why were they never heard but that once in the space of a year? And why are they not now heard? But the pumps make so little noise that they cannot be heard in the other end of "Esgair y Mwyn" mine when they are at work. We have a dumb and deaf tailor in the neighbourhood who has a particular language of his own by signs, and by practice I can understand him and make him understand me pretty well, and I am sure I could make him learn to write, and be understood by letters very soon, for he can distinguish men already by the letters of their names. Now letters are marks to convey ideas, just after the same manner as the motion of fingers, hands, eyes, etc. If this man had really seen ore in the bottom of a sink of water in a mine and wanted to tell me how to come at it, he would take two sticks like a pump, and would make the motions of a pumper at the very sink where he knew the ore was, and would make the motions of driving a wheelbarrow. And what I should infer from thence would be that I ought to take out the water and sink or drive in the place, and wheel the stuff out. By parity of reasoning, the language of "knockers," by imitating the sound of pumping, wheeling, etc., signifies that we should take out the water and drive there. This is the opinion of all old miners, who pretend to understand the language of the "knockers." Our agent and manager, upon the strength of this notice, goes on and expect great things. You, and everybody that is not convinced of the being of "knockers," will laugh at these things, for they sound like dreams; so does every dark science. Can you make any illiterate man believe that it is possible to know the distance of two places by looking at them? Human knowledge is but of small extent, its bounds are within our view, we see nothing beyond these; the great universal creation contains powers, etc., that we cannot so much as guess at. May there not exist beings, and vast powers infinitely smaller than the particles of air, to whom air is as hard a body as the diamond is to us? Why not? There is neither great nor small, but by comparison. Our "knockers" are some of these powers, the guardians of mines. "You remember the story in Selden's Table-Talk of Sir Robert Cotton and others disputing about Moses's shoe. Lady Cotton came in and asked, 'Gentlemen, are you sure it is a shoe?' So the first thing is to convince mankind that there is a set of creatures, a degree or so finer than we are, to whom we have given the name of "knockers" from the sounds we hear in our mines. This is to be done by a collection of their actions well attested, and that is what I have begun to do, and then let everyone judge for himself." We do not hear of "Knockers" in Cardiganshire now; in Cornwall, however, it is said that they still haunt the mines, and sometimes, with a sound of knocking and singing, they guide a lucky miner to find good ore. The "Knockers" were, it was once thought, "the Souls of the Jews who crucified our Saviour." At least it seems that that was the belief in Cornwall. Perhaps it would be of interest to add that there were Cornishmen among the miners of Cardiganshire when Mr. Lewis Morris wrote the two letters I have just given. A STORY OF PONT EINION (EINION BRIDGE) TREGARON. Mr. John Jones, Pontrhydfendigaid, who is now about 95 years of age, related to me the following tale seven years ago:-- Long ago, when much of the land where now stand the farms of Ystrad-Caron, Penylan, and Penybont, was a Common, a gentleman named Einion, and his wife, came from Abergwaun (Fishguard) and settled in the neighbourhood of Tregaron. Einion inclosed much of the land on the banks of the river Teivy in that part, and built a fine mansion which he called Ystrad-Caron, and soon became a most influential man in the neighbourhood, especially as he was well-to-do, and had generously constructed at his own expense, a bridge over the river for the convenience of the poor people of Tregaron and the surrounding districts. He also loved above everything his wife, and his harp, and was considered one of the best players on that instrument in Wales; but, unfortunately, as time went on, he failed to derive any pleasure from his surroundings and soon became subject to "melancholia," imagining that the place was haunted by some evil genius. At last, he was persuaded by his medical adviser to seek a change of scenery by going to stay for a while in Pembrokeshire, his native place. Soon after his arrival at Fishguard, he took a short sea voyage from that port, but after some adventures, he and others of his fellow passengers were taken prisoners by a French Man of War. After spending many years of his lifetime inside the strong walls of a French prison, he at last succeeded to escape, and soon found his way once more to the neighbourhood of Tregaron in Cardiganshire; but to his great astonishment, as he neared his own house, Ystrad-Caron, after so many years' absence, he heard some music and dancing. Clothed in rags he knocked at the back door, and pretended to be a tramp. One of the maid servants took compassion on the "poor old tramp," and allowed him to come in and warm himself near the kitchen fire. "We are very busy here to-day," said she to him, "our mistress who has been a widow for many years is about to get married again, and the bride and bridegroom and a party of invited guests are now in the parlour, but, unfortunately, not one of those present is able to tune the harp, a fine old instrument which belonged to the lady's first husband who went away from home and got drowned at sea many years ago." "Please ask them to allow me to tune the harp," said Einion to the maid. The girl then went to inform her mistress that there was an old man in the kitchen who could tune the harp for them. Einion now entered the parlour, and to the astonishment of the bride and bridegroom and the guests, soon tuned the harp; and as soon as he began to play an old favourite tune of his: "Myfi bia'm ty, a'm telyn, a'm tân," (My house, and my harp, and my fire are mine). The lady of the house recognised him at once as her husband. Then turning to the young bridegroom to whom she was engaged to be married, addressed him thus:--"You may go now, as my husband has come home to me once more." A short time after my visit to Mr. J. Jones, Pontrhydfendigaid, I went to Tregaron, where I found out from Mr. Jenkin Lloyd (formerly of Pant), and others, that the story of Pont Einion (Einion Bridge) was well-known in the neighbourhood, but that Einion during the many years he was away from home, was not in prison but among the Fairies. It seems probable that the above story is a modern local version of a tale which is to be found in the Iolo MSS. entitled:--"Einion Ap Gwalchmai and the Lady of the Greenwood," which I introduce here for comparison:-- Einion, the son of Gwalchmai, the son of Meilir, of Treveilir in Anglesey, married Angharad, the daughter of Ednyved Vychan. As he was one fine summer morning walking in the woods of Treveilir, he beheld a graceful slender lady of elegant growth, and delicate features; and her complexion surpassing every white and red in the morning dawn, and the mountain snow, and every beautiful colour in the blossoms of wood, field and hill. He felt in his heart an inconceivable commotion of affection, and he approached her in a courteous manner, and she also approached him in the same manner; and he saluted her, and she returned his salutation; and by these mutual salutations he perceived that his society was not disagreeable to her. He then chanced to cast his eye upon her foot, and he saw that she had hoofs instead of feet, and he became exceedingly dissatisfied. But she told him that his dissatisfaction was all in vain. "Thou must" said she, "follow me wheresoever I go, as long as I continue in my beauty, for this is the consequence of our mutual affection." Then he requested of her permission to go to his house to take leave of, and to say farewell to his wife, Angharad, and his son Einion. "I" said she, "shall be with thee, invisible to all but to thyself; go visit thy wife and thy son." So he went, and the Goblin; and when he saw Angharad his wife, he saw her a hag-like one grown old, but he retained the recollection of days past, and still felt extreme affection for her, but he was not able to loose himself from the bond in which he was. "It is necessary for me" said he, "to part for a time, I know not how long from thee Angharad, and from thee my son Einion," and they wept together, and broke a gold ring between them; he kept one half, and Angharad the other; and they took their leave of each other, and he went with the Lady of the Wood, and he knew not where; for a powerful illusion was upon him, and saw not any place, a person, or object under its true and proper appearance, excepting the half of the ring alone. And after being a long time, he knew not how long, with the Goblin, the Lady of the Wood, he looked one morning as the sun was rising upon the half of the ring, and he bethought him to place it in the most precious place he could and resolved to put it under his eyelid; and as he was endeavouring to do so, he could see a man in white apparel, and mounted on a snow-white horse, coming towards him, and that person asked him what he did there; and he told him that he was cherishing an afflicting remembrance of his wife Angharad. "Dos't thou desire to see her," said the man in white, "get up on this horse behind me"; and that Einion did, and looking around he could not see any appearance of the Lady of the Wood, the Goblin; excepting the track of hoofs of marvellous and monstrous size, as if journeying towards the north. "What delusion art thou under?" said the man in white. Then Einion answered him and told everything, how it occurred betwixt him and the Goblin. "Take this white staff in thy hand," said the man in white; and Einion took it. And the man in white told him to desire whatever he wished for. The first thing he desired was to see the Lady of the Wood, for he was not yet completely delivered from the illusion. And she appeared to him in size a hideous and monstrous witch, a thousand times more repulsive of aspect than the most frightful things seen upon earth. And Einion uttered a cry from terror; and the man in white cast his cloak over Einion, and in less than a twinkling Einion alighted as he wished on the hill of Treveilir, by his own house, where he knew scarcely anyone, nor did anyone know him. After the Goblin had left Einion, the son of Gwalchmai, she went to Treveilir in the form of an honourable and powerful nobleman elegantly and sumptuously appareled, and possessed of an incalculable amount of gold and silver, and also in the prime of life, that is thirty years of age. And he placed a letter in Angharad's hand in which it was stated that Einion had died in Norway more than nine years before, and he then exhibited his gold and wealth to Angharad; and she, having in the course of time lost much of her regret, listened to his affectionate address. And the illusion fell upon her, and seeing that she should become a noble lady higher than any in Wales, she named a day for her marriage with him. And there was a great preparation of every elegant and sumptuous kind of apparel, and of meats and drinks, and of every honourable guest, and every excellence of song and string, and every preparation of banquet and festive entertainment. And when the honourable saw a particularly beautiful harp in Angharad's room, he wished to have it played on; and the harpers present, the best in Wales, tried to put it in tune, but were not able. And when everything was made ready for to proceed to Church to be married, Einion came into the house and Angharad saw him as an old decrepit, withered, gray-haired man, stooping with age, and dressed in rags, and she asked him if he would turn the spit whilst the meat was roasting. "I will," said he and went about the work with the white staff in his hand after the manner of a man carrying a pilgrim's staff. And after dinner had been prepared, all the minstrels failing to put the harp in tune for Angharad, Einion got up and took it in his hand, and tuned it, and played on it the air which Angharad loved. And she marvelled exceedingly, and asked him who he was. And he answered in song and stanza thus: "Einion the golden-hearted, am I called by all around; The son of Gwalchmai, Ap Meilir My fond illusion continued long, Evil thought of for my lengthened stay." "Where has thou been?" "In Kent, in Gwent, in the wood in Monmouth, in Maelor Gorwenydd; And in the Valley of Gwyn, the son of Nudd, See the bright gold is the token." And he gave her the ring. "Look not on the whitened hue of the hair. Where once my aspect was spirited and bold; Now gray, without disguise, where once it was yellow; The blossoms of the grave--the end of all men. The fate that so long affected me, it was time that should alter me; Never was Angharad out of my remembrance, Einion was by thee forgotten." And she could not bring him to her recollection. Then said he to the guests:-- "If I have lost her whom I loved, the fair one of the polished mind, The daughter of Ednyved Vychan; I have not lost (so get you out)-- Either my bed, or my house, or my fire." And upon that he placed the white staff in Angharad's hand, and instantly the Goblin which she had hitherto seen as a handsome and honourable nobleman, appeared to her as a monster, inconceivably hideous; and fainted from fear, and Einion supported her until she revived. And when she opened her eyes, she saw there neither the Goblin, nor any of the guests, or of the minstrels, nor anything whatever except Einion, and her son and the harp, and the house in its domestic arrangement, and the dinner on the table, casting its savoury odour around. And they sat down to eat; Einion and Angharad and Einion their son; and exceeding great was the enjoyment. And they saw the illusion which the demoniacal Goblin had cast over them. And by this perchance may be seen that love of female beauty and gentleness is the greatest fascination of man; the love of honours with their vanities and riches, is the greatest fascination of woman. No man will forget his wife, unless he sets his heart on the beauty of another; nor woman her husband, unless she sets her heart on the riches and honour of lordly vaingloriousness and the pomp of pride. And thus it ends." Ednyved Vychan, whose name is mentioned in the beginning of the above story as Einion's father-in-law, was Lord of Brynffenigl in Denbighshire, and flourished seven hundred years ago. He was a most powerful chieftain, and from him descended in the male line Henry VII. King of England, an ancestor to nearly all if not all the present monarchs of Europe. MERMAIDS. It seems probable that the tradition of Mermaids is of the same origin as that of fairies. In Campbell's Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, it is stated that a man in North Harris, caught a mermaid on a rock, and to procure her release, she granted him his three wishes. He became a skilful herb-doctor, who could cure the King's evil and other diseases ordinarily incurable. This reminds us of the Fairy Lady of Llyn y Fanfach in Carmarthenshire, revealing to her sons the medical qualities of certain herbs and plants, thus enabling them to become eminent doctors. In the Welsh tales the mermaid is described as half woman and half fish: above the waist a lovely woman, but below the waist like a fish. There are several mermaid stories on the west coast of Wales, or perhaps, different versions of the same tale. It was believed that vengeance overtook those who showed cruelty to these beings, and there is a tradition still extant in Carmarthenshire, that a man who killed one of them in the neighbourhood of Pembrey, or Kidwelly, brought a curse upon himself, his family and his descendants until the ninth generation. In times gone by, it seems that Cardiganshire with a sea-coast of about fifty miles, was noted for its mermaids; and according to Dryton, at the Battle of Agincourt, the county had "a mermaid sitting on a rock," as armorial bearings. THE MERMAID AND THE FISHERMEN. Mr. Lewis, Henbant, an old man who lives in the neighbourhood of Llanarth, Cardiganshire, told me the following tale five years ago, though I am indebted for some particulars to the Rev. D. Lewis, Vicar of Llansantffread:--In times gone by a mermaid was often seen on a rock known as Careg Ina, near New Quay. One day this sea creature became entangled in the nets of some fishermen who were out fishing some considerable distance from the land. She entreated the men to disentangle her, and allow her to return to the water. Her request was granted, and in gratitude the mermaid warned them of a coming storm, and advised them to make for the shore without delay. This they did hurriedly, and as they were nearing the land a terrific storm came on suddenly, and it was with difficulty that they managed to land safely. Other fishermen in another boat on the very same day, not having the advantage of being warned by the mermaid, were caught by the storm and met with a watery grave. I have also discovered a version of this story at Aberporth, a seaside village some distance to the South of New Quay. It was formerly believed that there were mermen as well as mermaids, though I have no Welsh tale of a merman. THE FISHERMEN OF LLANDUDOCH AND THE MERMAID. The following tale appeared in Welsh fifty years ago in "Y Brython," Vol. I. page 73; and the writer was the late eminent Welshman Gwynionydd, father of the present Vicar of Lledrod:-- "On a fine afternoon in September in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman named Pergrin proceeded to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, (Pembrokeshire), and found there a mermaid doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat. We cannot imagine why the lady had not been more on her guard to avoid such a calamity; but if sea maidens are anything like land maidens, they often forget their duties when engaged in dealing with the oil of Maccassar, and making themselves ready to meet the young men. We know not what language is used by sea maidens ... but this one this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin's custody weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she called out "Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give three shouts in the time of thy greatest need." So, in wonder and fear he let her go to walk the streets of the deep and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: "Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets! take up thy nets! take up thy nets!" Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, passed the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam, the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned, without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady. A version of the above story is to be found also in Carnarvonshire, North Wales. A MERMAID SEEN NEAR ABERYSTWYTH. The following tale appeared in the interesting Welsh Magazine "Seren Gomer," for June, 1823:-- "Yn mis Gorphenaf, 1826, ffarmwr o blwyf Llanuwchaiarn, yn nghylch tair milltir o Aberystwyth, ty anedd yr hwn sydd o fewn i 300 llath o lan y mor, a aeth i wared i'r creigiau, pan yr oedd yr haul yn cyfodi ac yn pelydru yn hyfryd ar y mor, a gwelai fenyw (fel y tybiai) yn ymolchi yn y mor, o fewn i dafliad carreg ato; ar y cyntaf efe o wylder a aeth yn ei ol, ond ar adfyfyriad meddyliodd na fuasai un fenyw yn myned allan mor bell i'r mor, gan ei fod yr amser hwnw yn llifo; ac hefyd yr oedd yn sicr fod y dwfr yn chwe' troedfedd o ddyfnder yn y fan y gwelodd hi yn sefyll. Wedi meddwl felly, efe a syrthiodd ar ei wyneb, ac a ymlusgodd yn mlaen i fin y dibyn o ba le y cafodd olwg gyflawn arni dros fwy na haner awr. Wedi edrych digon arni ei hun, efe a ymlusgodd yn ei ol, ac a redodd i alw ei deulu i weled yr olygfa ryfeddol hon; wedi dywedid wrthynt yr hyn a welsai, efe a'u cyfarwyddodd o'r drws pa fan i fyned, ac ymlusgo i ymyl y graig fel y gwnaethai efe. Aeth rhai o honynt heb ond haner gwisgo, canys yr oedd yn foreu, a hwythau ond newydd gyfodi; ac wedi dyfod i'r fan, gwelsant hi dros o gylch deng mynyd, tra bu y ffarmwr yn galw ei wraig a'i blentyn ieuangaf. Pan ddaeth y wraig yn mlaen, ni syrthiodd hi i lawr, fel y gwnaethau y rhai eraill, ond cerddodd yn mlaen yn ngolwg y creadur; eithr cyn gynted ag y gwelodd y For-Forwyn hi, soddodd i'r dwfr, a nofiodd ymaith, nes oedd o gylch yr un pollder oddiwrth y tir ag y gwelsid hi ar y cyntaf; a'r holl deulu, y gwr, y wraig, a'r plant, y gweision, a'r morwynion, y rhai oeddynt oll yn ddeuddeg o rifedi, a redasant ar hyd y lan dros fwy na haner milltir, ac yn agos yr holl amser hwnw gwelent hi yn y mor, a rhai gweithiau yr oedd ei phen a'i hysgwyddau oll y tu uchaf i'r dwfr. Yr oedd carreg fawr, dros lathen o uchder yn y mor, ar ba un y safai pan welwyd hi gyntaf. Yr oedd yn sefyll allan o'r dwfr o'i chanol i fynu, a'r holl deulu a dystient ei bod yn gymwys yr un fath o ran dull a maintioli a dynes ieuanc o gylch deunaw oed. Yr oedd ei gwallt yn o fyr, ac o liw tywyll; ei gwyneb yn dra thlws; ci gwddf a'i breichiau fel arferol; ei bronau yn rhesymol, a'i chroen yn wynach nag eiddo un person a welsant erioed o'r blaen. Plygai yn fynych, fel pe buasai yn cymeryd dwfr i fynu ac yna yn dala ei llaw o flaen ei hwyneb dros oddeutu haner mynyd. Pan blygai ei hun felly, gwelid rhyw beth du, fel pe buasai cynffon fer, yn troi i fyny y tu ol iddi. Gwnaethai ryw swn yn fynych tebyg i disian, yr hwn a barai i'r graig i adseinio. Y ffarmwr, yr hwn a gafodd gyfleusdra i edrych arni dros gymaint o amser, a ddywedai na welodd ef ond ychydig iawn o wragedd mor hardd-deg yr olwg a'r For-Forwyn hon. Y mae yr holl deulu, yr ieuengaf o ba rai sydd yn un ar ddeg oed, yn awr yn fyw, a chawsom yr hanes hwn, air yn ngair, fel ei rhoddir yma, oddiwrthynt hwy eu hunain o fewn y mis diweddaf." I have translated the above tale as literally as possible, almost word for word, and in English it reads as follows:-- In the month of July, 1826, a farmer from the parish of Llanuwchaiarn, about three miles from Aberystwyth, whose house is within 300 feet of the seashore, descended the rock, when the sun was shining beautifully upon the sea, and he saw a woman (as he thought) washing herself in the sea within a stone's throw of him. At first, he modestly turned back; but after a moment's reflection thought that a woman would not go so far out into the sea, as it was flooded at the time, and he was certain that the water was six feet deep in the spot where he saw her standing. After considering the matter, he threw himself down on his face and crept on to the edge of the precipice from which place he had a good view of her for more than half-an-hour. After scrutinizing her himself, he crept back to call his family to see this wonderful sight. After telling them what he had seen, he directed them from the door where to go and to creep near the rock as he had done. Some of them went when they were only half dressed, for it was early in the morning, and they had only just got up from bed. Arriving at the spot, they looked at her for about ten minutes, as the farmer was calling his wife and the younger child. When the wife came on, she did not throw herself down as the others had done, but walked on within sight of the creature; but as soon as the mermaid saw her, she dived into the water, and swam away till she was about the same distance from them as she was when she was first seen. The whole family, husband, wife, children, menservants and maid-servants, altogether twelve in number, ran along the shore for more than half-a-mile, and during most of that time, they saw her in the sea, and sometimes her head and shoulders were upwards out of the water. There was a large stone, more than a yard in height, in the sea, on which she stood when she was first seen. She was standing out of the water from her waist up, and the whole family declared that she was exactly the same as a young woman of about 18 years of age, both in shape and stature. Her hair was short, and of a dark colour; her face rather handsome, her neck and arms were like those of any ordinary woman, her breast blameless and her skin whiter than that of any person they had ever seen before. Her face was towards the shore. She bent herself down frequently, as if taking up water, and then holding her hand before her face for about half-a-minute. When she was thus bending herself, there was to be seen some black thing as if there was a tail turning up behind her. She often made some noise like sneezing, which caused the rock to echo. The farmer who had first seen her, and had had the opportunity of looking at her for some time, said that he had never seen but very few women so handsome in appearance as this mermaid. All the family, the youngest of whom is now eleven years old, are now alive, and we obtained this account, word for word, as it is given here, from them themselves within the last month. CHAPTER VI. GHOST STORIES. The belief in the existence of Fairies in Wales has almost died out, but we still find many people who are more or less superstitious with regard to ghosts, spirits, etc., and the belief in death omens is rather popular, even among educated people. The majority of the Welsh ghosts were supposed to be the spirits or shades of departed mortals, re-appearing on account of some neglected duty, and in many cases to point out some hidden treasure; for it was thought that if a person dies, while his money (or any metal) is still hidden secretly, the spirit of that person cannot rest until it is revealed. It was also supposed that the spirits of the murdered haunted the place where their unburied bodies lay, or until vengeance overtook the murderer, "and the wicked were doomed to walk the earth until they were laid in lake or river, or in the Red Sea." It was also thought in former days, if not at present, that the evil one himself appears sometimes in some form or other; but good spirits are seen as well as bad ones. I have heard it said by some that only those who have been born in the night time have the power to see spirits; others say that spirits take more fancy to some persons than others. It was also thought that if two persons were together, one only could see the spirit, to the other he was invisible, and to one person only would the Spirit speak, and this he would do when addressed; for according to the laws of the Spirit world, a Spirit or a ghost has no power of speech until first spoken to. "Its persistency in haunting is due to its eager desire to speak, and tell its urgent errand, but the person haunted must take his courage in both hands and put the question to the issue. Having done so, he is booked for the end of the business, be it what it may. The mode of speech adopted must not vary, in addressing a Spirit; in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it must be addressed, and not otherwise. Its business must be demanded; three times the question must be repeated, unless the ghost answer earlier. When it answers, it speaks in a low hollow voice, stating its desire; and it must not be interrupted while speaking for to interrupt it is dangerous in the extreme. At the close of its remarks, questions are in order. They must be promptly delivered, however, or the ghost will vanish. They must bear on the business in hand; it is offended if asked as to its state, or other idle questions born of curiosity. Neglect to obey the ghost's injunctions will lead to much annoyance, and eventually to dire results. At first the Spirit will appear with a discontented visage, next with an angry one, and finally with a countenance distorted with the most ferocious rage." "British Goblins," page 148. Men sometimes were transported by the spirits through the air, and the Fairies did this also as well as ghosts. About two years ago, an old man at Llansadwrn, Carmarthenshire, gave me a remarkable account of the transportation of a well-known character who lived in that parish some years ago known as "Evan y Gweydd" (Evan the Weaver). A version of the story had appeared in Welsh twenty-five years ago, in an interesting little book entitled "Lloffion Adgof," by T. Edwards. THE WEAVER OF LLANSADWRN TRANSPORTED THROUGH THE AIR BY A SPIRIT. One night Evan y Gweydd found himself speaking with a Spirit who appeared to him in the form of a gentleman outside the house. The gentleman asked him whether he would do one thing at his request. "Yes, if I can," said Evan, in reply. "That is a promise which must be kept," said the spirit, "and thou shalt have no peace until thou hast performed it; name the time and sooner the better." Evan said, "three weeks to to-night." "Very well," said the Spirit, and off it went. Poor Evan by this began to feel very sorry for making such a promise, and when the time came round when he was to fulfil his promise, he barred the door of the house and went to bed; but he was not there long before he was thrown down on the floor, and found himself pushed out through the wide open door, unceremoniously, hardly having time to put on his clothes. After going out he saw the same gentleman as before, or rather the spirit which assumed the form of a gentleman who ordered Evan to follow him without delay to a place called Glan-ty-Bedw, where there was a very large stone, with an iron chest concealed beneath it. Then the spirit ordered him to take hold of the box and carry it and throw it into the Fanfach Lake many miles away. On Sunday morning as they passed through the village of Myddfe on their way to this lake, Evan noticed the people going to Church, some of whom he knew, but it seems that they did not see him, and his companion, or at least they did not seem to notice them. After reaching the lake and throwing in the chest, there came thunder and lightning, and Evan was carried through the air in a kind of half trance. When he came to himself he found himself on the banks of the river Towy, between that river and Llansadwrn, and not far from his home. When he reached the house he went to bed, and was very ill for some time. According to some versions of the story, the spirit compelled him to throw an iron into the Cothy river near Edwinsford, as well as a chest into the Fan Lake. In aerial journey of this kind, the spirit generally gives the mortal the choice of being transported "above wind, amid wind, or below wind." The man who chooses to go above wind is borne to an altitude somewhat equal to that of a balloon, so high that he is in danger of being frightened to death. But choosing the below wind is quite as bad and even worse, for the hapless mortal is then dragged through bush and briar. The safest way is always to remember to select the middle course (amid wind), for this ensures a pleasant transportation at a moderate elevation equally removed from the branches and the clouds. There was a certain man in the neighbourhood of Pontyberem, in Carmarthenshire, to whom a spirit appeared almost every night, and offered him an aerial journey of this description, giving him the choice of above wind, amid wind, or below wind, and on one occasion he was dragged by the ghost through bush and briar that his clothes were all in rags. SPIRITS THROWING STONES. An old man named John Jones, who lives at Pontrhydfendigaid, informed me that a ghost which haunted a farm between Pontrhydfendigaid and Tregaron, was engaged in the dangerous game of stone-throwing to the great discomfort of the family. There are several such stories in different parts of the country. I found the following strange tale in an old Welsh book entitled, "Golwg ar y Byd," written by the Rev. D. Lewis, Vicar of Llangattwg, Glamorganshire, and printed at Carmarthen in 1725: CHWEDL AM YSPRYD. "Yn mhlwyf Llangeler, yn Sir Gaerfyrddin, Mai 21ain, 1719, y dechreuodd yspryd yr hwn a barhaodd dros hir amser, i daflu ceryg at rhai oedd yn y maes yno. Dydd Iau y Sulgwyn y dechreuwyd dyrnu, oddeutu wyth y boreu, ac y dechreuodd yntau daflu ceryg. Un o'r dyrnwyr yn gyntaf a welodd y gareg yn disgyn ar y llawr dyrnu. Yr ail gareg a ddisgynodd ar glin morwyn y ty, nes ydoedd clais arni; ac yn mhen ychydig llanwasant y llawr dyrnu a'r twyn oddiamgylch, yr hyn a wnaethant wedi hyny. Y dyrnwyr a roisant heibio eu gwaith, ac a aethant i edrych pwy oedd yn eu taflu hwynt, ond ni allasent weled neb. "Dydd Gwener,--Y forwyn, pan yn yr ardd, a darawyd dair gwaith. Tarawyd amryw o'r plant, nes iddynt fyned allan o'r ty. Daeth llawer yn nghyd i weled y rhyfeddodau hyn, ac yr oedd pawb ag oedd yn dyfod yn cael gweled y ceryg yn disgyn. "Dydd Sadwrn,--Tarawyd y forwyn ac un o'r dyrnwyr. Yr oedd rhai ceryg yn chwyrnu, ac megys cleisiau ar amryw o honynt. Y ceryg ni welid nes byddent yn disgyn, a phan godid hwynt byddai eu hol ar y llawr, megys pe byddent yno flwyddyn o'r blaen. Daeth pawl mawr yn groes i'r ffenestr, heb neb gweledig yn dyfod ag ef. Rhai ni chredent nes danfon cenadon i weled, ac i gyrchu rhai ceryg adref i'w tai. Cyfodwyd cyff mawr o bren o'r croch i ben y ty, ac a ddisgynodd mewn man arall. "Dydd Sul,--Daeth llawer iawn yn nghyd i weled, ac amryw o honynt yn tyngu ac yn rhegu, ac yn siarad yn gableddus ac yn ysgafn. Disgynodd ceryg mawrion ar y lloft yn y ty, ond ni welwyd hwynt nes disgynent. Tarawyd bar haiarn allan o'r ffenestr, a phlygwyd un arall fel bach ysdarn; a'r ffenestr a dorwyd yn friwion man. Wedi'r nos daeth ceryg i'r gwelyau, a chloriau'r ffenestri a aethant i'r llofft; a gorfu ar dylwyth y ty gyfodi o'u gwelyau a myned i dy cymydog. Nid oedd ond y ceryg yn llawn yn y ty ac oddiamgylch iddo. "Nos Fercher,--Llosgwyd yr ysgubor a'r llafur, a llawer o bethau eraill; yr oedd ef bob dydd yn taflu ceryg, ond nid bob awr. Yr oedd weithiau yn taflu mor gynted ag y gellid eu rhifo, a'r rhan fwyaf o honynt yn geryg afon, a rhai o honynt yn chwech pwys neu ragor o bwysau. "Daeth cymydogion yn nghyd un noswaith i weddio ar Dduw yn y ty, ac ni fu yno fawr o stwr y noson hono. Llawer o bethau yn rhagor a wnaeth efe, ond o'r diwedd efe a ddarfu ac a beidiodd." For the benefit of those who are unable to read Welsh, I give the following translation of the above account:-- A STORY OF A GHOST THROWING STONES AT LLANGELER. In the parish of Llangeler, Carmarthenshire, May 21st., 1719, a spirit, which continued for some time, began to throw stones at those who were in the field. On Thursday in Whitsun week, at eight in the morning, the thrashing began (at a farm) and at the same time he (the spirit) began to throw stones. At first it was one of the men who were thrashing that noticed a stone descending on the thrashing floor. The second stone fell on the leg of the housemaid, wounding her; and after this, very shortly, they filled the thrashing floor and the place around. The men who were thrashing gave up their work, and went to see who were throwing them, but could see no one. Friday.--The servant maid in the garden was struck three times. Several of the children were struck till they went out of the house. A large number of people came together to see these wonders, and all who came were allowed to see the stones descending. Saturday.--The servant maid and one of the thrashers were struck. Some of the stones were rattling, and something like marks on several of them. The stones were not seen till they fell, and when they were taken up marks of them were on the floor as if they had been there from the year before. A large pole came right across the window without any one visibly bringing it. Some people believed not, till they sent messengers to see, and to bring home some of the stones to their houses. A big stump of wood was taken up from the boiler to the house top, and fell in another place. Sunday.--A large number of people came together to see, and several of them cursing and swearing, and speaking lightly and blasphemously. Big stones fell on the loft of the house, but were not seen till they had descended. An iron bar was struck out of the window, and another one bent as a packsaddle's hook; and the window was broken all to pieces. After dark the stones came into the beds, and window frames went to the loft, so that the family of the house were obliged to get up from their beds and go to a neighbour's house. Nothing but stones could be seen filling the house and surrounding it. Wednesday Night.--The barn and the corn as well as many other things were burnt; he (the spirit) was throwing stones every day, though not every hour. Sometimes the stones were thrown as fast as one could reckon them, most of which were river stones, and some of them weighing about seven pounds or more. Neighbours came together to pray to God in the house, and there was not much noise in the house that night. Many other things were done by the spirit, but he at last ceased. There was a troublesome ghost of this kind now recently in the Vale of Towy, Carmarthenshire. SPIRITS AND HIDDEN TREASURE. In some of the places supposed to be haunted there are often traditions of buried treasures in connection with such spots. In some of the stories the ghost haunts some particular person only, and never gives him rest till its purpose is accomplished. Mr. Hall, in his most valuable and interesting "Book of South Wales" gives a tale of: A CARPENTER WHO WAS HAUNTED BY A "WHITE LADY." This man had no peace night or day, for the "White Lady" appeared to him with an agonizing expression of countenance, at unexpected times, and unexpected places. Once in a field to which there were several entrances, she appeared and opposed his exit. Trembling, he sought another, but there, too, was she. He fainted, and did not leave the field, till he was found there by persons who happened to pass. At last some considerable amount of jewels and other valuables were found by the man, in the secret drawer of an old escritoir, which he was repairing for a family that resided near. The valuables were immediately handed over to the owner of the escritoir and the "White Lady" did not appear afterwards. Another remarkable story of this class is told in the northern part of Cardiganshire; and I found the following version of it in a "Scrap Book" of Mr. William Davies, Talybont, an eminent Folk-Lorist:-- THE "WHITE LADY" OF BROGININ, OR A GHOST REVEALING HIDDEN MONEY TO A YOUNG LOVER. Broginin is a farm house where the famous Welsh Bard, Dafydd Ap Gwilym was born, and situated six miles from Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire. Some years ago the respectable and industrious family who lived there at the time, were often disturbed by some unearthly being who generally made his appearance in the depth of night, as it is the case with spirits. This unwelcome visitor aroused the whole family by walking up and down the stairs, or from one room into another. Sometimes he closed the doors behind him, making such noise as to strike terror to the hearts of all in the house. At times, he lighted up the whole house at once with gleaming light, and the next moment vanished as suddenly as he came, leaving behind him utter darkness. Occasionally, the same ghost was seen by some of the servantmen, who had been out courting, walking across the farmyard in the form of a "white lady," appearing as a tall handsome lady attired in lustring white dress, and her face covered by silken veil. This "White Lady" walked towards the young men, and suddenly disappeared in a tremendous ball of fire. People were so terrified by such sights, that several families, one after another moved away from the house. One Sunday evening, however, about the beginning of winter, when all the family as usual had gone to chapel, except the servant maid, who did not feel well, her lover came to keep her company. Naturally, the young man and the young woman began to talk about the ghost, and Evan (for that was the young man's name) laughed, and boasted what he was going to do should the disturber appear. But the next moment, without the least notice, a lady in her white dress stood right in the middle of the room, with her face uncovered, and her brown curly hair down over her shoulders. She held in one hand a comb and in the other a roll of paper, but she did not whisper a word. The servant maid, and her young man who had just been boasting shuddered in terror, and dared not move or utter a word. The "lady" walked round the apartment several times; then suddenly stood; and having opened the door through which she had entered without opening, beckoned the young man to follow her. As he dared not disobey, he followed her up stairs, into a dark back room, but which was now lighted up in some mysterious way. With her finger she pointed out a particular corner under the low roof, at which place the young man with his trembling hand found some hard parcel carefully tied in an old woollen stocking. When he opened it he found it full of money, and at the same moment the "White Lady" vanished and never disturbed the house again. A GHOST REVEALING HIDDEN TREASURE TO A FARMER IN THE PARISH OF LLANAFAN. Crosswood Park, the fine residence of my esteemed young friend the Earl of Lisburne, is situated about nine miles from Aberystwyth. About two miles from the Park is a bridge over the river Ystwyth, known as Pont Llanafan (Llanafan Bridge). This bridge is supposed to be haunted, and I have been told that a ghost has been seen there lately by a gentleman who lives in the district. Mr. John Jones, an old man of 95, who lives at Pontrhydfendigaid, informed me that the origin of this ghost is to be traced to some former days when retired pirates lived in a house near the Bridge, and who were supposed to have hidden some treasure in the spot. Mr. Jones also gave me the following story of a farmer named Edwards, who lived in a small farm house near the bridge two or three generations ago:--The poor farmer worked very hard, but for some time he was continually molested by a mischievous ghost day and night. In the evening when Edwards sat down in the corner eating his supper, which consisted of bread and milk, stones came down through the chimney, or ashes were thrown into his milk by some invisible hand. At another time the ghost was heard thrashing in the barn, or meddling with something continually. One day when the man was engaged in making a new fence round his field, the troublesome visitor from the other world kept with him all day, and threw down both the fence and the gate. Edwards at last decided to address the spirit in these word:--"Yn enw Duw, paham yr wyt yn fy aflonyddi o hyd?" which means in English, "In the name of God, why doest thou trouble me continually?" We are not told what was the reply of the spirit, but it was generally believed by the neighbours that he revealed to the farmer some hidden treasure in an old wall not far from the house. Edwards took down this wall and built a new house with the stones and greatly prospered. It was also said that he had been comparatively poor once, but ever since his conversation with the spirit, his cattle and his horses soon increased and fortune and good luck smiled on him all round. About two years ago when I related this story to a friend of mine who lives at Pontrhydfendigaid, to my great surprise, his wife informed me that the account is quite true. "Yes," said she, "and I got £500 of the Ghost's money." The lady, strange to say, happened to be a descendant, or at least a near relation of the Llanafan farmer to whom the ghost revealed the hidden treasure. Not far from the same Llanafan bridge there is a rock known as "Craig yr Ogof" (Rock of the Cave). Countess Amherst, (now Dowager) informed me that there is a tradition in the neighbourhood that the Romans buried treasures there. THE GLANFREAD FAWR GHOST REVEALING HIDDEN MONEY TO THE HOUSEMAID. Glanfread is a respectable farm house, but in former days it was a mansion of some note, situated in the North of Cardiganshire. In connection with Glanfread there is a ghost tale, and I found the best version of it in a Welsh manuscript kindly lent me by Dr. James, Lodge Park, Talybont:-- Once upon a time there lived at this house an old gentleman whose two nieces on one occasion came to spend with him their Christmas holidays at Glanfread. One evening, the two young ladies, who were sisters, and the housemaid sat down late playing cards. As they kept on playing till a very late hour, the fire was going out, and they began to feel cold; so the maiden went out of the house for some firewood in order to warm themselves before retiring to bed. For some reason or other, however, she was very long in returning with the wood to put on the fire, and when she did return, she fell on the floor in a swoon, that they were obliged to carry her to bed. Next morning when they asked what had caused her to faint, she declined giving any reply; and even when her master, gun in hand, threatened to take her life unless she confessed what had happened, she still persisted in keeping all the mystery to herself. The fact of it was, the girl kept company to one of the farm servants, if not engaged, and very soon they were married, and took a very large farm--a farm which is well-known in North Cardiganshire. All their acquaintances were very greatly surprised how could a poor servant man and servant woman afford to begin farming on such a large scale, when it was known that they had but very little money to start on such an undertaking. And the general opinion was that a spirit had revealed to the servant woman some hidden treasure on the night she fainted. A GHOST APPEARING TO POINT OUT HIDDEN TREASURE IN RADNORSHIRE. There is a story in Radnorshire, that a palace not far from the neighbourhood of Abbey Cwm Hir, was once haunted by a Spirit, which appeared in various forms and made such terrible noise that no one cared to live in the house for a long time. At last, however, a young gentleman who had newly married had the courage to face the ghost, and discovered most valuable treasures which had been hidden in the ground near the house. The spot where the gold had been buried was pointed out to the young man by the Spirit, and the house was never haunted after this. It is a well-known fact that a Spirit revealed hidden treasure to a Baptist Minister, who lived in a respectable old mansion somewhere not far from Nevern in Pembrokeshire. I met with several persons at Eglwyswrw and other places, who vouched for the truth of the fact. The treasure had been hidden, so it is said, in the time of Cromwell. Some of the ghosts who reveal hidden money are not always generous. According to the Rev. Edmund Jones, the ghost of one Anne Dewy, a woman who had hanged herself, compelled a young man in the Vale of Towy, Carmarthenshire, to cast into the river a bag of money which had been hid in the wall of a house. Instead of keeping the money himself, the young man obeyed the ghost against his better judgment, and the sum concerned was "£200 or more." THE POWIS CASTLE GHOST STORY. The following ghost story is recorded in the autobiography of the grandfather of the late Mr. Thomas Wright, the eminent Shropshire antiquary:-- It had been for some time reported in the neighbourhood that a poor unmarried woman, who was a member of the Methodist Society, and had become serious under their ministry, had seen and conversed with the apparition of a gentleman, who had made a strange discovery to her. Mr. Hampson (a preacher among the Methodists about the end of the 18th century) being desirous to ascertain if there was any truth in the story, sent for the woman, and desired her to give him an exact relation of the whole affair from her own mouth, and as near the truth as she possibly could. She said she was a poor woman, who got her living by spinning hemp or line; that it was customary for the farmers and gentlemen of that neighbourhood to grow a little hemp or line in a corner of their fields for their own consumption, and as she was a good hand at spinning the materials, she used to go from house to house to inquire for work; that her method was, where they employed her, during her stay, to have meat, and drink, and lodging (if she had occasion to sleep with them), for her work, and what they pleased to give her besides. That, among other places, she happened to call one day at the Welsh Earl of Powis's country seat, called Redcastle, to inquire for work, as she usually had done before. The quality were at this time in London, and had left the steward and his wife, with other servants, as usual, to take care of their country residence in their absence. The steward's wife set her to work, and in the evening told her that she must stay all night with them, as they had more work for her to do next day. When bedtime arrived, two or three servants in company, with each a lighted candle in her hand, conducted her to her lodging. They led her to a ground room, with a boarded floor, and two sash windows. The room was grandly furnished, and had a genteel bed in one corner of it. They had made her a good fire, and had placed her a chair and a table before it, and a large lighted candle upon the table. They told her that was her bedroom, and that she might go to sleep when she pleased. They then wished her a good night and withdrew altogether, pulling the door quickly after them, so as to hasp the spring-snech in the brass lock that was upon it. When they were gone, she gazed awhile at the fine furniture, under no small astonishment that they should put such a poor person as her in so grand a room, and bed, with all the apparatus of fire, chair, table, and a candle. She was also surprised at the circumstance of the servants coming so many together, with each of them a candle. However, after gazing about her some little time, she sat down and took a small Welsh Bible out of her pocket, which she always carried about with her, and in which she usually read a chapter--chiefly in the New Testament--before she said her prayers and went to bed. While she was reading she heard the door open, and turning her head, saw a gentleman enter in a gold-laced hat and waistcoat, and the rest of his dress corresponding therewith. I think she was very particular in describing the rest of his dress to Mr. Hampson, and he to me at the time, but I have now forgot the other particulars. He walked down by the sash-window to the corner of the room and then returned. When he came to the first window in his return (the bottom of which was nearly breast high), he rested his elbow on the bottom of the window, and the side of his face upon the palm of the hand, and stood in that leaning posture for some time, with his side partly towards her. She looked at him earnestly to see if she knew him, but, though from her frequent intercourse with them, she had a personal knowledge of all the present family, he appeared a stranger to her. She supposed afterwards that he stood in this manner to encourage her to speak; but as she did not, after some little time he walked off, pulling the door after him as the servants had done before. She began now to be much alarmed, concluding it to be an apparition, and that they had put her there on purpose. This was really the case. The room, it seems, had been disturbed for a long time, so that nobody could sleep peaceably in it, and as she passed for a very serious woman, the servants took it into their heads to put the Methodist and Spirit together, to see what they would make of it. Startled at this thought, she rose from her chair, and knelt down by the bedside to say her prayers. While she was praying he came in again, walked round the room, and came close behind her. She had it on her mind to speak, but when she attempted it she was so very much agitated that she could not utter a word. He walked out of the room again, pulling the door after him as before. She begged that God would strengthen her and not suffer her to be tried beyond what she could bear. She recovered her spirits, and thought she felt more confidence and resolution, and determined if he came in again she would speak to him. He presently came in again, walked round and came behind her as before; she turned her head and said, "Pray, sir, who are you, and what do you want?" He put up his finger, and said, "Take up the candle and follow me, and I will tell you." She got up, took up the candle, and followed him out of the room. He led her through a long boarded passage till they came to the door of another room, which he opened and went in. It was a small room, or what might be called a large closet. "As the room was small, and I believed him to be a Spirit," she said, "I stopped at the door; he turned and said, 'Walk in, I will not hurt you.' So I walked in. He said, 'Observe what I do.' I said, 'I will.' He stooped, and tore up one of the boards of the floor, and there appeared under it a box with an iron handle in the lid. He said, 'Do you see that box?' I said, 'Yes, I do.' He then stepped to one side of the room, and showed me a crevice in the wall, where he said a key was hid that would open it. He said 'This box and key must be taken out, and sent to the Earl in London' (naming the Earl, and his place of residence in the city). He said, 'Will you see it done?' I said, 'I will do my best to get it done.' He said, 'Do, and I will trouble the house no more.' He then walked out of the room and left me. (He seems to have been a very civil Spirit, and to have been very careful to affright her as little as possible). I stepped to the room door and set up a shout. The steward and his wife, and the other servants came to me immediately, all clung together, with a number of lights in their hands. It seems they all had been waiting to see the issue of the interview betwixt me and the apparition. They asked me what was the matter? I told them the foregoing circumstances, and showed them the box. The steward durst not meddle with it, but his wife had more courage, and with the help of the other servants, lugged it out, and found the key." She said by their lifting it appeared to be pretty heavy, but that she did not see it opened, and, therefore, did not know what it contained; perhaps money, or writings of consequence to the family, or both. They took it away with them, and she then went to bed and slept peaceably till the morning. It appeared afterwards that they sent the box to the Earl in London, with an account of the manner of its discovery and by whom; and the Earl sent down orders immediately to his steward to inform the poor woman who had been the occasion of this discovery, that if she would come and reside in his family, she should be comfortably provided for, for the remainder of her days; or, if she did not choose to reside constantly with them, if she would let them know when she wanted assistance, she should be liberally supplied, at his Lordship's expense as long as he lived. And Mr. Hampson said it was a known fact in the neighbourhood that she had been so supplied from his Lordship's family from the time the affair was said to have happened, and continued to be so at the time she gave Mr. Hampson this account. To touch or dig for buried treasures guarded by a ghost without the ghost's consent always brings thunder and lightning. Such is the tradition in connection with "Carreg y Bwci" on the top of Craig Twrch, on the borders of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire. Many of the tales displaying the motive, on the ghost's part of a duty to perform--sometimes clearly defining, sometimes vaguely suggesting it, as in the story of Noe. The evening was far gone when a traveller of the name of Noe arrived at an Inn in Pembrokeshire, and called for refreshments. After remaining sometime he remarked that he must proceed on his journey. 'Surely,' said the astonished landlord, 'You will not travel at night for it is said that a ghost haunts that road,' crying out, 'The days are long and the nights are cold to wait for Noe. O, I am the man sought for,' said he, and immediately departed; but, strange to say, neither Noe nor the ghost was ever heard of afterwards. An old woman in Pembrokeshire informed me that the scene of the above tale was a house in the neighbourhood of Letterston. Another story of this class appeared in an interesting little Welsh book entitled "Ysten Sioned," published by Hughes and Son, Wrexham. There was a farmhouse in a certain part of West Wales, in which a large and respectable family lived. But there was one room in the house haunted by a troublesome spirit which often cried out in a mournful voice, "Hir yw'r dydd, a hir yw'r nos, a hir yw aros Arawn" (long is the day, and long is the night, and long is waiting for Arawn). Things went on in this manner for a long time, and not one hardly ventured to open the door of that room. But one cold winter evening when every member of the family sat around the fire, before supper, somebody called at the door of the house, and a stranger was welcomed in to warm himself by the fire. The stranger asked for some food and a bed for the night. He was told he was welcomed of food, but that they were sorry they could not offer him a bed, as all the beds were hardly enough for themselves, and that the only spare bed-room in the house was haunted. Then the stranger begged to be allowed to sleep in that room, as he felt sure that there was nothing to do him harm there. The man appeared very tired, and spoke but little except in reply to questions, and when it was found out that his name was "Arawn," all the family looked into each's face in great surprise. The stranger presently went to bed in the haunted room, and strange to say everything was quiet in that room that night, that is, no spirit was heard as usual crying and moving things about. When the family got up next morning, the first thing was to find out what kind of night the stranger passed in the haunted room, but to the surprise of all the man was gone, and the ghost was also gone, for the room was never haunted afterwards. THE SPIRIT OF A LIVING MAN. Good many people in Wales who laugh at the idea of a ghost, readily admit the possibility of the appearance of a living man's spirit (Yspryd Dyn Byw). THE SPIRIT OF A LIVING MAN APPEARING TO A LITTLE GIRL AT PONTSHAN. An old lady named Miss Pergrin, who lives at Pontshan, Llandyssul, informed me about five years ago, that when she was a little girl of about eleven years of age, a certain man who lived in that neighbourhood had gone from home, for some months, and just about the time when he was expected to return the little girl was one day walking along the road near the village, about two o'clock in the afternoon. She suddenly met the man coming home. He was coming along the road towards her, and looked at her, and then suddenly disappeared through a gate into an adjoining field. She was very much surprised, as the man was not expected home till next day. The next moment two sisters of the man appeared on the scene, and the girl informed them that she had just seen their brother, and inquired whether they had met him as they passed along the same road about the same time. But they in reply positively affirmed that they had seen no sight of him on the road or anywhere else since he left home, and that the girl must have been dreaming or inventing some idle tale, for their brother was not returning home till to-morrow. About 2 p.m., the next day, the man did come home, and, strange to say, it was found out that the day Miss Pergrin had seen him, he was far away from the district, so it was concluded that she had seen his spirit, and that in broad daylight. Miss Pergrin did not like to give the man's name. SPIRIT OF A LIVING WOMAN SEEN ON A MOONLIGHT NIGHT, NEAR LLANYBRI IN CARMARTHENSHIRE. A woman named Mrs. M. Davies, who lives in the small village of Llanybri, in Carmarthenshire, informed me that her mother when a young woman, was going home one evening to Llanybri, on a moonlight night. As she walked along, to her great surprise, she saw an old woman known in the neighbourhood as Rachel Y Gweydd, or the weaver, sitting by the roadside and busily engaged in knitting a stocking. The young woman ran home as fast as she could and told her mother what she had seen. "Och y fi" said her mother, "something strange is sure to take place after this." Within a few days a man named Thomas Davies, of Cwmllan-wybryn, died, and was buried at the Capel Newydd. As the funeral procession passed along, there was Rachel Y Gweydd sitting by the roadside, and knitting her stocking at the very same spot where her spirit had been seen by the young woman on the moon-light night. The old woman had gone to sit by the roadside in order to watch the funeral procession passing. A sister of the above Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Weekes, of Llangynog, also gave me the following account of her mother's experience of seeing "Yspryd dyn byw." SPIRIT OF A REJECTED LOVER APPEARING TO A YOUNG WOMAN. Mrs. Weekes's mother, when a young girl, living with her parents near Llanybri, Carmarthen, went out one evening to fetch some water from a well close by, and she saw, as she thought, Thomas of Felin Gwm standing near the hedge. "Thomas?" says she, "what do you want here?" The man vanished into nothing all at once, and so she perceived that it was his spirit she had seen. Thomas was in love with her, but she had refused to have anything to do with him. TALE OF A DOCTOR. The following tale appeared in "Welsh Folk-Lore," page 296 by the late Rev. Elias Owen, F.S.A., who had obtained the story from the Rev. Philip Edwards:-- "At Swyddffynnon, in Cardiganshire, there lived a Mrs. Evans, who had a strange vision. Mr. Edwards's father called one evening upon Mrs. Evans, and found her sitting by the fire in company with a few female friends, greatly depressed. On enquiring as to the cause of her distress, she stated that she had had a strange sight that very evening. "She saw, she said, in the unoccupied chamber at the further end of the house, a light, and, whilst she was wondering what light it was, she observed a tall, dark, stranger gentleman, who had a long, full beard, enter the house and go straight to the room where the light was, but before going in he took off his hat and placed it on the table; then he took off his gloves and threw them into the hat, and without uttering a single word he entered the lit-up room. "Shortly afterwards, she saw the stranger emerge from the room and leave the house, and on looking again towards the room she saw that the light had disappeared. It was, she said, this apparition that had disconcerted her. "Some time after this vision, Mrs. Evans was in a critical state, and as she lived far away from a doctor, my informant's father was requested to ride to Aberystwyth for one. He found, however, that the two doctors who then resided in that town were from home. But he was informed at the inn that there was a London doctor staying at Hafod. He determined, whether he could or could not, induce this gentleman to accompany him to Swyddffynnon, to go there. This gentleman, on hearing the urgency of the case, consented to visit the sick woman. "Mr. Edwards and the doctor rode rapidly to their destination, and Mr. Edwards was surprised to find that the doctor did everything exactly as it had been stated by Mrs. Evans. There was also a light in the chamber, for there the neighbour had placed the still-born child, and it was the providential help of the London doctor that saved Mrs. Evans's life. "I may add that the personal appearance of this gentleman corresponded with the description given of him by Mrs. Evans." SPIRIT OF A LIVING MAN IN A FIELD. I heard the following story in the neighbourhood of Llanddewi, about my own grandfather, the late Mr. John Evans, of Gogoyan, who died about fifty-five years ago. (The "Hiriaid Gogoyan" were descended from Gruffydd Hir o Llanfair, great-great-grandson of Gwaethfoed); so saith Gwynionydd, in his book on "Enwogion Ceredigion." But now for the story:-- Mr. Evans one day had gone to Aberystwyth, either riding or driving as this was in the days before the introduction of railways into that part, the distance was over twenty miles. Early in the afternoon on the same day one of his servants who was ploughing in the field, saw Mr. Evans walking about quite close to him in the field. The servant was quite surprised at this, as he knew that his master had gone to Aberystwyth early in the morning. When the master came home that night from Aberystwyth, the servant told him that he had seen him in the afternoon in the field. "Well," said Evans in reply, "if you saw me you only saw my spirit, for I have been away all day; now to see the spirit of a living man is not a bad sign." It is rather curious that a story very similar to the above is given by Mr. T. Lloyd, Dinas Powis, in "Cymru Fu" ("Weekly Mail" reprints) for November 16th, 1889, which is as follows:-- "YSFRYD DYN BYW. "Many years ago at a farm called Ystradteilo, near the pretty village of Llanrhystyd in Cardiganshire, the servant girl was sent to the field to fetch home the cows for milking, and while in the field she saw her master doing something there. The master's name was Williams, and he was a near relation to the eminent scholar Rev. E. Williams, M.A., of Lampeter. When, however, the servant girl returned home, she was astonished to find her master in the house. 'How in the world did you come home so quick?' she asked. 'Just now I saw you in the field.' He replied that he had not been from the house during the afternoon, and added, 'look here, girl, that was not a bad sign at all but if you will see me like that after my departure you may depend that I shall be in a place of torture.' It was a general belief that of the dead the ghosts of the wicked only were to be seen." SPIRIT OF A LIVING MAN THROWING STONES. Mr. Thomas Stephens, an intelligent old man in the neighbourhood of Mydroilyn, in the Parish of Llanarth, Cardiganshire, informed me that between 60 and 70 years ago his father, John Stephens, when a young man, was coming home late one evening after spending a few hours of pleasant time with the young woman of his affection at a neighbouring farm. As he was walking along a lonely lane, to his great surprise, he heard the sound of some one throwing stones about in a field which he was passing by. When he looked around, he beheld the spirit of a man of his acquaintance who was well and alive, throwing stones with all his might in a field where stones were not to be found. Spirit of a living man was sometimes heard without being seen, of this I was informed by an old man at Llanddewi Brefi. In some ghost stories we find the spirits of the departed appearing to comfort the living. THE SPIRIT OF A DEAD MOTHER APPEARING TO HER BOY-SON AT LLANGYNOG, CARMARTHENSHIRE. A very old man named Thomas Ticker, who lives at the small village of Llanybri, gave me the following remarkable account:-- Many years ago when one William Thomas, Pengelly Isaf, Llangynog, was a little boy of ten or twelve years of age, his mother died. One day the boy in great sorrow went out into a field which was quite close to the house, and wept bitterly, almost breaking his heart. Suddenly, the spirit of his dead mother appeared to him in a white dress, telling him not to cry, "because" saith she, "your crying gives me pain, and you need not be in trouble about the future, as there is plenty of food for thee." The child was on the ground when she spoke, and when he looked up he beheld his mother vanishing suddenly. This W. Thomas who saw his mother's spirit, died when a comparatively young man, but his son, from whom my informant obtained the account of the vision, lived till eighty years of age, and died about sixty years ago. THE SPIRIT OF A DEAD DAUGHTER APPEARING TO THE MOTHER. About ninety years ago one Mrs. D. Thomas, Llanfair, Llandyssul, had a daughter who was very promising, and her mother was so fond of her. She was sent to the well-known school of the celebrated Mr. Davis of Castell Howell. Unfortunately, however, the girl died, to the great sorrow of her poor mother who bewailed her loss day and night. But one day when the old lady was out in the potato field, the spirit of her dead daughter appeared suddenly to her, and spoke to her mother with severe looks: "Don't cry after me, for I am in a much better place." The above account I heard from the lips of Mr. Rees, Maesymeillion, parish of Llandyssul, about three years ago, to whom and his brother I am indebted for several other stories. THE SPIRIT OF A DEAD MOTHER APPEARING TO HER CHILDREN. The following story was related to me by Mr. Brutus Davies, who died at Aberystwyth about two years ago, and who vouched for the truth of the account:-- About seventy years ago a certain man who was working on the Estate of Col. ---- in the parish of Llangeler, Carmarthenshire, had buried his first wife and had married again. He had several children from his first wife, but not one from the second. One particular day, the children went out to play as they often did. When they came to a certain spot which served them as a playground, they found some small cakes on the ground, which were very tempting to children; but just as they were going to eat them, the spirit of their dead mother appeared on the scene and addressed them as follows:--"My dear children, don't eat those cakes, for there is poison in them!" When this strange occurrence became known in the neighbourhood, people suspected the step-mother of having intentionally and secretly placed the cakes on the children's playground. Sometimes we hear of the appearance of the ghost of a child, especially if a baby has been ill-treated or murdered, and the following story is well-known in the Northern part of Cardiganshire. ALLT Y CRIB GHOST, NEAR TALYBONT. About sixty years ago, the dead body of a little baby was found in a hole or an old mine shaft, known till the present day as "Shaft y plentyn" (the child's shaft), and as the people of the neighbourhood of Talybont guessed who its mother was, there was a rumour that both she and her family were haunted by the child's ghost. This ghost also, it is said, wandered about at night, and its bitter crying disturbed the whole neighbourhood, till many timid people were afraid to go out after dark. My informant was the late J. Jones, Bristol House. There is a similar story of a child's ghost in the parish of Troedyraur, South Cardiganshire. This spirit always appeared as a child dressed in yellow clothes, and on that account the unearthly visitor was known as "Bwci Melyn Bach y Cwm." THE GHOST OF PONT-Y-GWENDRAETH, NEAR KIDWELY IN CARMARTHENSHIRE. It was an old belief among the Welsh people in former times that the spirit of a suicide was doomed to walk the earth as a punishment. Several versions of the well-known Kidwely Legend have already appeared, but a book of West Wales Folk-Lore would be incomplete without it. Sir Elidir Ddu was a Lord of Kidwely. He had two sons, Griffith and Rhys, and one beautiful daughter named Nest. The Crusades had been proclaimed, and this Elidir Ddu was preparing to depart, and accompanied by his youngest son Rhys; but the eldest son Griffith and Nest, the only daughter, remained at home in Kidwely Castle, as well as another fair young lady whose name was Gwladys, a niece of Sir Elidir, and cousin to Nest. Nest was in love with a handsome young Norman named Sir Walter Mansel, her cousin Gwladys also was in love with him, but the young man was true to Nest. Griffith loved Gwladys, but she did not like him as she wanted Sir Walter Mansel. This complicated matters very much. Nest's father before he had left to the Holy Land, had forbidden the young Norman the house, and now the young lady's brother, Griffith, guarded the place against him; but the sanguine lover (Sir W. M.) found means of meeting the fair Nest in the country round, and many stolen interviews were held. But the jealous Gwladys watched Nest, and found out her place of meeting with her lover, which was Pont-y-Gwendraeth, and she informed Griffith of it. Griffith was in love with Gwladys, but she had snubbed him hopelessly. Now, however, in order to use him as an accomplice in her revenge, she flattered his hopes with feigned kindness, and wrought him up to such a pitch of fury against the Norman, that he agreed to join her to destroy the young lover by fixing upon a bad fellow called Merig Maneg to carry out the evil deed. The next trysting place of the lovers was, by some means ascertained to be a bridge over the tidal portion of the Gwendraeth, and as Sir W. came forward to greet his lady-love an arrow whistled from a reed bed and pierced his side. The villain Merig, then rushed from his hiding place, and before the very eyes of Nest, hurled Walter's body into the rushing tide. The young lady overcome with horror, gave a wild shriek of despair and plunged in after the hapless knight. After this, the villain Merig was haunted by Nest's spirit, and on one occasion, she told him that her spirit was doomed to walk the earth as a punishment for her suicide unless a marriage should take place between one of her father's descendants and a member of the Mansel family, and that until that did occur she would appear on Pont-y-Gwendraeth to give warning of the approaching death of every member of the family. From that day the Bridge became known as Pont-yr-yspryd-gwyn, and for generations a white lady occasionally appeared, giving utterance to a wild unearthly shriek and vanish. Mr. Charles Wilkins in his "Tales and Sketches of Wales," gives the following sequel to the story:-- In 1775, Mr. Rhys, a lineal descendant of Rhys Ddu, of Kidwely Castle, a magistrate, was returning one evening from Quarter Sessions when he was startled by seeing a white figure flit rapidly across the Bridge, and disappear over it into the water. His horse trembled and refused to go on. Mr. Rhys thought of the Ghost Story and prediction, and riding towards Kidwely, noticed a large crowd and heard that a shocking murder had been committed upon a poor old woman. He entered the cottage and discovered a small portion of a man's coat sleeve lying upon the bed. By inquiry, found it belonged to "Will Maneg." Will was arrested, confessed, and was hanged on Pembrey mountain, while as still further to strengthen the prediction, Mr. Rhys was informed that day of the death of his brother Arthur of the R.N., who was drowned at sea; and also of his wife's mother's death, Lady Mansel, of Iscoed, who was burnt to death at Kidwely. HAUNTED MANSIONS OF LLANELLY, CARMARTHENSHIRE. Mr. Innes, in "Old Llanelly," page 145, says:-- "The ghost of Lady Mansel 'walked' and haunted Old Stradey House," and "Llanelly House probably had had ghosts for it is certain that spirits may be found there even now; and an old man has recently made a statement that when a boy he slept in the Stepney Mansion; but as he ascended to his room he heard the rustling brocade of a lady's dress in an apparently empty corridor. "This lady during the night played upon an organ built up in one of the thick walls." A GHOST HAUNTING A YOUNG LOVER WHO WAS OUT LATE AT NIGHT, NEAR ALLTWALIS IN CARMARTHENSHIRE. An old man named Griffiths, who is 96 years of age, and lives at 'Renallt Farm, near Carmarthen, gave me the following ghost story concerning his own father. William Griffiths (my informant's father), when a young man, nearly a hundred years ago, was engaged as a servant at a farm called Pontiauar, in the Parish of Llanpumpsaint. William had been out late one night to see the young woman of his affection, and having enjoyed the pleasure of love for some hours, he returned home about three o'clock in the morning. He had some miles to go through a lonely district, and worse than that he had to pass the Haunted Red Gate of Glynadda, a place famous for its ghosts in former times. On he walked as fast as he could, but to his great terror, when he came to the Red Gate the ghost appeared in the shape of a big man. William passed on and ran, but the Ghost followed him all the way to the village of Llanpumpsaint, till the young man was terrified almost to death. When he arrived at the house of Dafydd Llwyd, the Blacksmith (who worked even at that early hour), he entered the house or the Blacksmith's shop, and fell down near the fire half-fainting, and they had to take him home to the farmhouse in a cart. A PEMBROKESHIRE GHOST HAUNTING A SHIP. Sometimes we hear of ghosts at sea, and the following account of a Ghost on board H.M.S. "Asp," which was written by Capt. Alldridge, R.N., Commander of that vessel, appeared in the "Pembroke County Guardian," February 16th, 1901. March 15th, 1867. My dear Sir,--I herewith readily comply with your request as far as I am able, respecting the unaccountable "apparition" on board my ship. Call it ghost or what you will, still I assure you that which I am going to relate is what really did take place, and much as I was, and am, a sceptic in ghost stories, I must confess myself completely at a loss to account by natural causes for that which did actually occur. Many years having elapsed since I retired from active service I am unable to recollect all the dates with exactness, but I will give them as far as I can remember them. In the year 1850, the "Asp" was given me by the Admiralty as a surveying vessel. On taking possession of her, the Superintendent of the Dockyard, where she lay, remarked to me, "Do you know, Sir, your ship is said to be haunted, and I don't know if you will get any of the Dockyard men to work on her." I, of course, smiled, and I said "I don't care for ghosts, and dare say I shall get her all to lights fast enough." I engaged the shipwrights to do the necessary repairs to the vessel, but before they had been working in her a week they came to me in a body and begged me to give the vessel up as she was haunted and could never bring anything but ill-luck. However, the vessel was at length repaired, and arrived in safety in the river Dee, where she was to commence her labours. After my tea in the evening, I generally sat in my cabin and either read to myself or had an officer of mine (who is now master of the 'Magician') to read aloud to me: on such occasions we used frequently to be interrupted by strange noises, often such as would be caused by a drunken man or a person staggering about, which appeared to issue from the after (or ladies') cabin. The two cabins were only separated from each other by the companion ladder, the doors faced each other, so that from my cabin I could see into the after one. There was no communication between either of them and the other parts of the ship, excepting by the companion ladder, which no one could ascend or descend without being seen from my cabin. The evening shortly after our arrival in the Dee, the officer I mentioned was reading to me in my cabin when all at once his voice was drowned by a violent and prolonged noise in the aft cabin. Thinking it must be the steward he called out "Don't make such a noise, steward," and the noise ceased. When he began to read again the noise also recommenced. "What are you doing, steward--making such a--noise for?" he cried out, and taking the candle rushes into the next cabin. But he came back quicker than he went, saying there was nobody there. He recommenced reading, and once more began the mysterious noise. I felt sure there was some drunken person there whom my officer had overlooked, and accordingly rose and looked myself, and to my very disagreeable surprise found the cabin empty! After this evening, the noises became very frequent, varying in kind and in degree. Sometimes it was as though the seats and lockers were being banged about, sometimes it sounded as though decanters and tumblers were being clashed together. During these disturbances the vessel was lying more than a mile off shore. One evening I and the above-named officer went to drink tea at a friend's house at Queen's Ferry, near Chester, the vessel at the time being lashed to the lower stage opposite Church's Quay. We returned on board together about 10 p.m. While descending the companion ladder, I distinctly heard someone rush from the after cabin into the fore cabin. I stopped the officer who was behind me at the top of the ladder and whispered to him, "Stand still, I think I have caught the ghost." I then descended into my cabin, took my sword, which always hung over my bed, and placed it drawn in his hand saying "Now ----, allow no one to pass you; if anyone attempts to escape cut him down, I will stand the consequences. T then returned to the cabin, struck a light and searched everywhere, but nothing could I find to account for the noises I had heard, though I declare solemnly that never did I feel more certain of anything in my life than that I should find a man there. So there was nothing to be done but to repeat for the hundredth time, "Well, it is the ghost again!" Often when lying in my bed at night have I heard noises close to me as though my drawers were being opened and shut, the top of my washing stand raised and banged down again, and a bed which stood on the opposite side of my cabin, pulled about; while of an evening I often heard while sitting in my cabin a noise as though a percussion cap were snapped close to my head; also very often (and I say it with godly and reverential fear) I have been sensible of the presence of something invisible about me, and could have put my hand, so to say, on it, or the spot where I felt it was; and all this occurred, strange to say, without my feeling in the least alarmed or caring about it, except so far that I could not understand or account for what I felt and heard. One night, when the vessel was at anchor in Martyn Roads I was awoke by the quartermaster calling me and begging me to come on deck as the look-out man had rushed to the lower deck, saying that a figure of a lady was standing on the paddle box pointing with her finger to Heaven. Feeling angry, I told him to send the look-out man on deck again and keep him there till daybreak, but in attempting to carry my orders into execution the man went into violent convulsions, and the result was I had to go myself upon deck and remain there till morning. This apparition was often seen after this, and always as described with her finger pointing towards Heaven. One Sunday afternoon while lying in the Haverfordwest river opposite to Lawrenny, the crew being all on shore, and I being at church, my steward (the only man on board) whilst descending the companion ladder was spoken to by an unseen voice. He immediately fell down with fright, and I found his appearance so altered that I really scarcely knew him! He begged to be allowed his discharge and to be landed as soon as possible, to which I felt obliged to consent as he could not be persuaded to remain on board for the night. The story of the ship being haunted becoming known on shore, the clergyman of Lawrenny called on me one day and begged me to allow him to question the crew, which he accordingly did. He seemed very much impressed by what he heard; he seemed to view the matter in a serious light and said that his opinion was that "some troubled spirit must be lingering about the vessel." During the years that I commanded the "Asp" I lost many of my men who ran away on being refused their discharge, and a great many others I felt forced to let go, so great was their fear, one and all telling me the same tale, namely, that at night they saw the transparent figure of a lady pointing with her finger up to Heaven. For many years I endeavoured to ridicule the affair as I was often put to considerable inconvenience by the loss of hands, but to no purpose. I believe that when the officers went out of the vessel after dark none of the crew would have ventured into the cabin on any account. One night I was awoke from my sleep by a hand, to all sensations, being placed on my leg outside the bedclothes. I lay still for a moment to satisfy myself of the truth of what I felt, and then grabbed at it, but caught nothing. I rang my bell for the quartermaster to come with his lantern, but found nothing. This occurred to me several times, but on one occasion as I lay wide awake a hand was placed on my forehead. If ever a man's hair stood on end mine did then. I sprang clean out of bed: there was not a sound. Until then I had never felt the least fear of the ghost or whatever you like to call it. In fact I had taken a kind of pleasure in listening to the various noises as I lay in bed, and sometimes when the noises were very loud I would suddenly pull my bell for the look-out man and then listen attentively if I could hear the sound of a footstep or attempt to escape, but there never was any, and I would hear the look-out man walk from his post to my cabin when I would merely ask him some questions as to the wind and weather. At length in 1857, the vessel requiring repairs, was ordered alongside the dockyard wall at Pembroke. The first night the sentry stationed near the ship saw (as he afterwards declared) a lady mount the paddle box holding up her hand towards Heaven. She then stepped on shore and came along the path towards him when he brought his musket to the charge "who goes there?" But the figure walked through the musket, upon which he dropped it and ran for the guard house. The next sentry saw all this take place and fired off his gun to alarm the guard. The figure then glided past a third sentry who was placed near the ruins of Pater old Church, and who watched her, or it, mount the top of a grave in the old churchyard, point with her finger to Heaven, and then stand till she vanished from his sight. The sergeant of the guard came with rank and file to learn the tale, and the fright of the sentries all along the Dockyard wall was so great that none would remain at their post unless they were doubled, which they were, as may be seen by the "Report of guard" for that night. Singularly enough, since that, the ghost has never been heard of again on board the Asp, and I never heard the noises which before had so incessantly annoyed me. The only clue I could ever find to account for my vessel being haunted is as follows:--Some years previously to my having her, the "Asp" had been engaged as a mail packet between Port Patrick and Donaghadee. After one of her trips, the passengers having all disembarked, the stewardess on going into the ladies' cabin found a beautiful girl with her throat cut lying in one of the sleeping berths quite dead! How she came by her death no one could tell and, though, of course, strict investigations were commenced, neither who she was or where she came from or anything about her was ever discovered. The circumstances gave rise to much talk, and the vessel was remanded by the authorities, and she was not again used until handed over to me for surveying service. Here end my tale, which I have given in all truth. Much as I know one gets laughed at for believing in ghost stories you are welcome to make what use you please with this true account of the apparition on board the "Asp." A SPIRIT ON HORSEBACK. Rhosmeherin, in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, in Cardiganshire, was formerly well known for its ghost. An old man named John Jones, who lives at Pontrhydfendigaid, informed me that when a boy he heard of many belated persons who were terrified in passing the haunted spot by seeing a ghost which appeared sometimes in the shape of a cat, at other times as a man on horseback. Mr. Jones also added that a poor old woman had been murdered there in the old times, which was supposed to account for the spot being haunted. I have heard several ghost stories in connection with this spot, but the best is the one which appeared in an interesting Welsh book entitled, "Ystraeon y Gwyll," written by the late Mr. D. Lledrod Davies, a promising young man, and a candidate for Holy Orders, who died 20 years ago. Mr. Davies obtained the story from a person who had seen the ghost; so I give a translation of the Belated's own words:-- "I was going home one evening from my work from Ros y Wlad, and had to go through Rhosmeherin. "That place, you know is a terrible spot for its ghosts. People say that they are seen there in broad daylight. As to myself I did not see them in the daytime, but many a time was I kept there all night by Jack-a-Lantern. I saw a ghost in the form of a cat there also, and when I began to strike him he disappeared in a blazing fire. But now for the gentleman. I was near the spot where I had seen the cat, when I heard the sound of a horse coming after me. I jumped one side to make room for him to pass; but when he came opposite me he did not go forward a single pace faster than myself. When I went on slowly, he went slowly; when I went fast, he went fast. "Good night," said I at last, but no answer. Then I said it was a very fine night, but the gentleman on horseback did not seem to take any notice of what I said. Then thinking that he might be an Englishman (the man was speaking in Welsh), I said in English "Good night," but he took no notice of me still. By this I was beginning to perspire and almost ready to fall down with fright, hoping to get rid of him, as I now perceived that he was the Devil himself appearing in the form of a gentleman. I could think from the sound of the saddle and the shining stirrups that the saddle was a new one. On we went along the dark narrow lane till we came to the turnpike road, when it became a little lighter, which gave me courage to turn my eyes to see what kind of a man he was. The horse looked like a soldier's horse, a splendid one, and his feet like the feet of a calf, without any shoes under them, and the feet of the gentleman in the stirrups were also like the feet of a calf. My courage failed me to look what his head and body were like. On we went till we came to the cross-road. I had heard many a time that a ghost leaves everybody there. Well, to the cross road we came. But ah! I heard the sound of the ground as if it were going to rend, and the heavens going to fall upon my head; and in this sound I lost sight of him (the Spirit). How he went away I know not, nor the direction he went." A SPIRIT IN A CAVE. Sometimes we hear of haunted caves, where spirits are said to be seen or heard. One of such places is the Green Bridge Cave, near Pendine, Carmarthenshire. There is a story in the neighbourhood that long ago an old fiddler entered once into this cave with his fiddle and a lighted candle to see his way, and that his candle went out when he was in, so that he failed to find his way out of the cave again. He is heard there sometimes, so it is said, playing his fiddle. A SPIRIT IN A RIVER. Near Llandyssul, in Cardiganshire, and the borders of Carmarthenshire, there is a pool in the River Teivi, known as the "Pool of the Harper." When I visited the village a few years ago I was told that it is said that an old harper was drowned there long ago; and that it is still believed by some that on a fine summer afternoon, one hears his spirit playing his harp in the pool. APPARITIONS OF GOOD SPIRITS. It is not, often we hear in Wales of Good Spirits appearing; but the Rev. Edmund Jones in his "Relation of Apparitions," a curious old book published some generations ago, gives the following narrative of Apparitions of Good Spirits:-- ----"There lived at a place called Pante, which is between Carmarthen and Laugharne towns, one Mr. David Thomas, a holy man, who worship the Lord with great devotion and humility; he was also a gifted brother, and sometimes preached. On a certain night, for the sake of privacy, he went into a room which was out of the house, but nearly adjoining to it, in order to read and pray; and as he was at prayer, and very highly taken up into a heavenly frame, the room was suddenly enlightened, and to that degree that the light of the candle was swallowed up by a greater light, and became invisible; and with, or in that light a company of Spirits, like children, in bright clothing, appeared very beautiful, and sung; but he recollected only a few words of it, 'Pa hyd? Pa hyd? Dychwelwch feibion Adda' (How long? How long? Return ye sons of Adam.) Something like Ps. xc. 3. After a time he lost sight of them: the light of the candle again came to appear, when the great light of the glorious company was gone. He was immersed in the heavenly disposition, and he fell down to thank and praise the Lord; and while he was at this heavenly exercise the room enlightened again; the light of the candle became invisible, and the glorious company sung; but he was so amazed at what he saw and heard that he could remember only the following words, 'Pa hyd? Pa hyd yr erlidiwch?' (How long? How long, will ye persecute the godly Christians?) "After a while, they departed, and the candle light appeared. Any Christian who enjoyed much of God's presence will easily believe that D. T. was now lifted up very high in the spiritual life by this extraordinary visitation from heaven." SPIRITS REMOVING CHURCHES. There are several legends in West and Mid-Wales, especially in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, in which spirits or some other mysterious powers, play a prominent part in the removal of Churches from one site to another. LLANDDEUSANT (CARMARTHENSHIRE). I am indebted for the following to the Rev. H. M. Williams, Vicar of Lledrod:-- There is a tradition in the parish of Llanddeusant, that the parish church was to have been built at first at Twynllanan, in the centre of the parish; but the stones that were put up during the day were removed in the night, to the spot where the church now stands. LLANBISTER CHURCH (RADNORSHIRE). The Rev. Professor Tyrrell Green, St. David's College, Lampeter, writes to me thus:-- "Jonathan Williams in his History of Radnorshire, p. 194, ed., 1859, says that near Llanbister Church is a piece of land on which it was originally intended to have erected the Church, but tradition reports that the accomplishment of this design was prevented by the intervention of supernatural agency. "The tradition that a supernatural being carried away in the night whatever was built of the church during the day, is still kept alive, because the warden claims an annual rent of 2s. 6d. for the vacant and unconsecrated site of the originally intended church." In the same book mention is made of an old custom prevailing in this parish, viz., the payment of a certain tax or tribute called "Clwt-y-Gyllell," or Knife Money, imposed on a certain corner of a field on some estates, consisting of a certain number of groats. PENBRYN CHURCH. For the following legend, I am indebted to Mr. Prys Williams, Y. Wenallt, an eminent antiquarian in the southern part of Cardiganshire:-- The intended original site of the Church of Penbryn, according to tradition, was Penlon Moch, near Sarnau, where now stands St. John's Mission Church; but all the materials they brought there, and built in the course of the day, were removed during the night by invisible hands to where it now stands. There is a similar tradition concerning Bettws Ifan. LLANWINIO (CARMARTHENSHIRE). When the attempt was first made to build this church, everything put up in the day fell down in the night, till at last the builder threw his hammer into the air. The church was then built on the spot where the hammer fell and the work progressed without further hindrance. In this story we do not hear of a spirit removing the material, but it is evident that it was believed that the falling down in the night of what was put up in the day, was caused by some supernatural agency. LLANGAN (CARMARTHENSHIRE). In the middle of the parish there is a field called Park y Fonwent, where, according to local tradition, the church was to have been originally built, but the stones brought to the spot during the day, were removed by invisible hands during the night to the spot where the present church now stands, accompanied by a voice saying, "Llangan, dyma'r fan," (Llangan, here is the spot).--See Arch. Cam., 1872. MAROS. Not far from Pendine, Carmarthenshire, is a field called Church Park, a short distance to the west from the church. In this field it was intended at first to build the church, but invisible spirits during the night removed both stones and mortar to the spot where the church now stands. There is also a tradition that two giants were buried in the field. LLANGELER CHURCH. Llangeler parish is in Carmarthenshire, and on the borders of Cardiganshire. There is a tradition in the district that it was at first intended to build Llangeler Church on a spot known as "Parc-y-Bwci," but what had been built during the day, was transported in the night to the site of the present church. There is no mention here that the agency was a spirit; but the name of the spot is very suggestive, for Parc-y-Bwci means the Goblin's Park. LLANFIHANGEL GENEU'R GLYN. The parish church of Llanfihangel Geneu'r Glyn, is situated about five miles north of Aberystwyth, and it is seen from the train. About a mile from the church and the village, there is a respectable farm house, named Glanfread, or Glanfread-fawr which belongs to the Gogerddan Estate. It is evident that Glanfread was a place of importance once, and long ago gentry lived there, and it was the birthplace of Edward Llwyd, the author of Archæoligia Britanica. It is also believed that the house received its name from St. Fraed, a devout woman who, according to local tradition, came over from Ireland to build a church on the spot. There is a legend still extant in the neighbourhood that when the work of erecting the church on the spot was actually commenced, the portion built during the day was pulled down during each night. At last a voice from the spirit world was heard to speak as follows:-- "Glanfread-fawr sy fod fan hyn, Llanfihangel yn ngenau'r Glyn. "Glanfread-fawr is to be herein, Llanfihangel at Genau'r Glyn." What the spirit meant by these words was that the church was to be built at Genau'r Glyn, and that Glanfread-fawr farm or mansion was to occupy the spot they were then trying to build the church; and in accordance with the Spirit's direction the church was after this built where it now stands instead of at Glanfread. The above tradition was related to me by Lady Hills-Johnes, of Dolaucothy, an intelligent lady who has been a friend to me for nearly twenty years. The late Bishop Thirwall wanted Lady Hills-Johnes to write a book on the Legends of Wales. Llanfihangel, of course, is the Welsh for St. Michael, or rather Michael's Church; but as the early Welsh Christians generally dedicated their churches to Welsh Saints, it seems probable that the ancient name of this church was Llanfread; and the name of the farm Glanfread, where it was first intended to build the church seems to suggest this. Perhaps the church was re-dedicated to St. Michael by the Normans, for we know that William the Conqueror seized some lands in the neighbourhood, and that particular part of the parish is known to this day as "Cyfoeth y Brenin," (the King's wealth). St. Michael was a favourite patron of churches with the Normans, as it was believed that an apparition of the Archangel had been seen by Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, directing him to build a church on Mount St. Michael in Normandy. LLANWENOG. From a paper read before the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, by the Rev. J. Morris, Vicar of Llanybyther, I find that there is a tradition still extant that Llanwenog Church was also removed by supernatural agency from one site to another. These popular legends are, undoubtedly, very old, and are current not only in Wales, but in parts of Scotland also as the following from Sir Walter Scott's Notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel prove: ----"When the workmen were engaged in erecting the ancient church of Old Deer, in Aberdeenshire, upon a small hill called Bissau they were surprised to find that the work was impeded by supernatural obstacles. At length the Spirit of the River was heard to say: "It is not here, it is not here, That ye shall build the church of Deer; But on Taptillery, Where many a corpse shall lie." "The site of the edifice was accordingly transferred to Taptillery, an eminence at some distance from where the building had been commenced." As to the origin of these legends or traditions of the mysterious removal of churches, it is not easy to arrive at a correct explanation. Some writers are of the opinion that they contain a record, imaginative and exaggerated, of real incidents connected with the history of the churches to which each of them belongs, and that they are in most cases reminiscences of an older church which once actually stood on another site. Others see in these stories traces of the antagonism, in remote times, between peoples holding different religious beliefs, and the steps taken by one party to seize and appropriate the sacred spots of the other. That some of these tales have had their origin in primitive times, even anterior to Christianity, is probable. APPARITIONS OF THE DEVIL. In many of the Welsh Ghost Stories, the spirit or ghost was supposed to have been none other than the evil one himself. The visible appearance of his satanic majesty was quite as common in Wales as in other countries, though, strange to say, he is often depicted as an inferior in cunning and intellect to a shrewd old woman, or a bright-witted Welshman, as the following two curious stories show:-- THE LEGEND OF THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE IN CARDIGANSHIRE. The Devil's Bridge in the northern part of Cardiganshire is so called from the tradition that it was erected by him upon the condition that the first thing that passed over it should be his. The story which is well-known is something as follows: An old woman called Megan Llandunach had lost her cow, and espied the animal across the gorge. When bewailing her fate, the Devil appeared and promised to build her a bridge over the gorge under the condition that the first living thing which crossed should be surrendered into his hand, "and be beyond redemption lost." Megan agreed, the bridge was completed; she took from her pocket a crust of bread and threw it over the bridge, and her hungry dog sprang after it. So the Devil was balked in his design after all his trouble in erecting the bridge. PENTRE-CWRT FOLK AND THE DEVIL. Once upon a time the devil was offended with the people of Pentre-Cwrt, in Carmarthenshire, and decided to drown them. One day in order to do this mischief the Evil One was seen going along with a big shovelful of mound; and when he came to the parish of Llandyssul in Cardiganshire, which was only about two miles from Pentre-Cwrt, he met with a cobbler who carried a very large bundle of old shoes. After saluting the devil the cobbler asked him to where did he intend taking the shovelful of mound? "To the mouth of Alltcafan," was the reply. "For what purpose?" asked the cobbler again. "To dam the River Teivy so as to drown the people of Pentre-Cwrt," said the devil. Now the cobbler was a very shrewd man, and in order to frustrate the evil design of the Old Gentleman, he told him that the place where he intended to dam the river was very far away. "How far is it?" asked the devil. "I cannot tell you the exact distance," replied the cobbler, "but in walking from there I have worn out all these shoes." "If that is so," said the devil, "it is too far, for I am already tired," and down did he throw the shovelful of mould, and the shovelful which the devil threw down is to be seen to this day, and known as Cnwc Coedfoel.--See Hanes Plwyf Llangeler, gan D. Jones. Sometimes the devil manifests himself in a ball of fire, at other times in the form of a pig, mouse, calf, dog, or headless horse, and even as a gentleman on horseback, as we have already seen in the Rhosmeherin ghost story. When I was in North Pembrokeshire a few years ago, I was told by several old people in the village of Eglwyswrw that the Evil One sometimes was to be seen at Yet Wen in that neighbourhood; occasionally as a "white lady," but more often as a white cat. The people of the same village informed me that Yet Wen, Pen'rallt, was also a favourite resort of the devil, and that a woman once in passing the spot at night, shouted "Come out you d----l," and the next moment a white cat appeared. Nags Head, in the same county was once haunted by the devil, as it seems from the following story of long ago:-- THE EVIL ONE APPEARING AT NAG'S HEAD IN THE FORM OF A DOG. "As Mr. David Walter, of Pembrokeshire, a religious man, and far from fear and superstition, was travelling by himself through a field called the Cot Moor, where there are two stones set up called the Devil's Nags, which are said to be haunted, he was suddenly seized and thrown over a hedge. He went there another day, taking with him for protection a strong fighting mastiff dog. When he had come near the Devil's Nags there appeared in his path the apparition of a dog more terrible than any he had ever seen. In vain he tried to set his mastiff on; the huge beast crouched, frightened by his master's feet and refused to attack the spectre. Whereupon his master boldly stooped to pick up a stone thinking that would frighten the evil dog; but suddenly a circle of fire surrounded it, which lighting up the gloom, showed the white snip down to the dog's nose, and his grinning teeth, and white tail. He then knew it was one of the infernal dogs of hell." "THE OLD GENTLEMAN" APPEARING IN PEMBROKESHIRE, AS A BLACK CALF. A black calf was supposed to haunt a stream that flowed across the road that leads from Narberth in Pembrokeshire to the adjacent village Cold Blow. People returning late that way were sure to get frightened as they passed and, as a consequence, they would go a long distance out of their way to avoid the haunted stream. One night, or rather early morning, two villagers were going home from a fair caught the terrible calf and took it home, locking it up safely with some cattle, but it had vanished when morning came. A GHOST SEEN IN THE FORM OF A CALF IN CARDIGANSHIRE. Rhosygarth, between Llanilar and Lledrod, was a well-known haunted spot in former times. This demon often appeared on the road to travellers late at night in the form of a calf, but with a head much like that of a dog. Many years ago, Mr. Hughes, of Pantyddafad, was going home one night on horseback; but just as he was passing Rhosygarth, the ghost appeared, and passed across the road right in front of the horse. My informant, Thomas Jones, Pontrhydfendigaid, was a servant at Pantyddafad, heard the old gentleman often speaking about the ghost he had seen at Rhosygarth, and that Mr. Hughes was great-grand-father to Dr. Hughes, of Cwitycadno, Llanilar. Mr. Jones also added that he knew a young man who always laughed when people talked about seeing ghosts; but one night, a man (as he at first thought), followed him for about a mile, and after coming close to him, vanished into nothing. The young man nearly fainted, and after this never doubted the reality of the world of spirits. A DEMON ASSUMING THE FORM OF A HORSE. Sir John Williams, Bart, now of Aberystwyth, informed me that when a boy in the neighbourhood of Gwynfi, Carmarthenshire, he often heard some of the old people speak of a ghost which haunted the road in that part of the country in former times. This ghost was known as "Bwci," and always assumed the form of a horse. It is an old belief of the Celts that demons assumed the form of horses, and one of these mythic beings was the Water Horse, so well-known in North Scotland. It was also known in Wales once. THE GWYLLGI, OR DOG OF DARKNESS. The Gwyllgi was a frightful apparition of a mastiff with baleful breath and blazing red eyes. In former times, an apparition in this shape haunted Pant y Madog, in the neighbourhood of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. A woman named Rebecca Adams, passing this spot late one night, fell down in a swoon, when she saw the spectral dog coming towards her. When within a few yards of her it stopped, squatted on its hounchers, "and set up such a scream, so loud, so horrible, and so strong, that she thought the earth moved under her." I was informed at Llangynog five years ago, that Spectral Dogs still haunt that part of Carmarthenshire; and more than one of my informants had seen such apparitions themselves. A spirit in animal form was not always a demon; sometimes the Spirit of a mortal was doomed to wear this shape for some offence. It was once believed that the Evil One, either from lust, or from nefarious designs, assumed the form of a young man or a young woman. The following two stories, the first from South Pembrokeshire, and the other from Gower, have reference to this belief. "A DEMON STEWARD." Giraldus Cambrensis in his Itinerary through Wales (Bohn's edition, page 110) says:-- "In the province of Pembrock (Pembroke), another instance occurred, about the same time, of a spirit's appearing in the house of Elidore de Stakepole, not only sensibly, but visibly, under the form of a red-haired young man, who called himself Simon. First seizing the keys from the person to whom they were entrusted, he impudently assumed the steward's office, which he managed so prudently and providently, that all things seemed to abound under his care, and there was no deficiency in the house. Whatever the master or mistress secretly thought of having for their daily use or provision, he procured with wonderful agility, and without any previous directions, saying, "You wished that to be done, and it shall be done for you." He was also well acquainted with their treasures and secret hoards, and sometimes upbraided them on that account; for as often as they seemed to act sparingly and avariciously, he used to say, "Why are you afraid to spend that heap of gold or silver, since your lives are of so short duration, and the money you so cautiously hoard up will never do you any service?" He gave the choicest meat and drink to the rustics and hired servants, saying that "Those persons should be abundantly supplied, by whose labours they were acquired." Whatever he determined should be done, whether pleasing or displeasing to his master or mistress (for, as we have said before, he knew all their secrets), he completed in his usual expeditious manner, without their consent. He never went to church or uttered one catholic word. He did not sleep in the house, but was ready at his office in the morning. He was at length observed by some of the family to hold his nightly converse near a mill and a pool of water; upon which discovery, he was summoned the next morning before the master of the house and his lady, and, receiving his discharge, delivered up the keys, which he had held for upwards of forty days. Being earnestly interrogated, at his departure who he was? he answered, "That he was begotten upon the wife of a rustic in that parish, by a demon, in the shape of her husband, naming the man, and his father-in-law, then dead, and his mother, still alive; the truth of which the woman upon examination, openly avowed." A DEMON TEMPTING A YOUNG MAIDEN IN GOWER. For the following tale I am indebted to Mr. T. C. Evans (Cadrawd) the eminent antiquarian and folk-lorist of Llangynwyd: "Once upon a time there lived a fair and gentle maiden in the neighbourhood of the Demon's Rock, who often wandered out in the sunset and balmy summer evenings to meet her lover, and would return with her countenance radiant with joy, and the bright light of inexpressible rapture beaming in her love-lighted eye. Evening after evening would she stray out alone to the trysting place to meet her lover, and seemed as happy as a bird that warbles its morning song when the early sun gladdens the earth. However, it chanced that one of her companions followed her one moonlight night--saw the maiden go to a widespreading oak, and heard the whispering soft and low. She was surprised that she could not observe anyone, neither could she hear any reply to the maiden's sweet and loving voice. Affrighted, she hastened back and said that a mysterious dread had crept over her while listening and watching her companion; they kept it secret, but questioned the maiden on her return. She said that her lover was a gentleman, and that she had promised to meet him the next evening in the same spot. The next evening they followed her again and saw her addressing the empty air--they felt assured now that it must be the Spirit of Darkness that was tempting the girl. Her companions warned her and told her how she had been watched, and that they could not see who or whom she spoke to. "She became alarmed, but yet could not refrain from meeting her lover, (as she supposed), once again, as she had made a vow and bound herself by a solemn promise to meet him in this valley in the dead hour of the night. She was also bound to go alone. It was a fearful trial. The night came, the moon hid itself, and dark clouds swept hurriedly across the sky. With blanched cheeks and trembling steps the maiden approached the appointed place. She held (firmly grasped) in her hand a Bible, and as the traitor approached, a straggling gleam of moonshine revealed his form; and oh! horrible to relate, she saw the cloven hoof! With one long piercing cry for protection from heaven she fled; at the same instant the valley was filled with wild unearthly shrieks. The roar of the deafening thunder shook the hills to their foundations; wild and blinding lightnings, together with yells and howls from the legions of baffled fiends rushed by on the startled air. "The bewildered whirlwinds dashed through the woodlands, snapping the oaks of a century like fragile reeds, or hurling them like feathers down into the brook--now a boiling torrent that swept all before it. In the morning a strange scene of devastation presented itself, and the woods seemed crumbled up; the valley was a chaotic mass of confusion, while in the centre of the hamlet was this huge stone which they say the vengeful demon tore from its firm bed on the hillside, and flung at the flying maiden as she evaded his grasp. It remains in the spot where it was cast, and is known as the Demon's Rock." There is also a story all over Wales of the Evil One appearing to a young man as a lovely young lady. SATAN AND SABBATH BREAKERS; OR THE "OLD GENTLEMAN" APPEARING IN MANY FORMS TO A MAN WHO TRAVELLED ON SUNDAY. The late Rev. Elias Owen, "Welsh Folk-Lore," page 152, Vicar of Llanyblodwel, received the following tale from his deceased friend, the Rev. J. L. Davies, late Rector of Llangynog, who had obtained it from William Davies, the man who figures in the story:-- "William Davies, Penrhiw, near Aberystwyth, went to England for the harvest, and after having worked there about three weeks, he returned home alone, with all possible haste, as he knew that his father-in-law's fields were by this time ripe for the sickle. He, however, failed to accomplish the journey before Sunday; but he determined to travel on Sunday, and thus reached home on Sunday night to be ready to commence reaping on Monday morning. His conscience, though, would not allow him to be at rest, but he endeavoured to silence its twittings by saying to himself that he had with him no clothes to go to a place of worship. He stealthily, therefore, walked on, feeling very guilty every step he took, and dreading to meet anyone going to Chapel or Church. By Sunday evening he had reached the hill overlooking Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn, where he was known, so he determined not to enter the village until after the people had gone to their respective places of worship; he therefore sat down on the hill side and contemplated the scene below. "He saw the people leave their houses for the House of God, he heard their songs of praise, and now he thinks he could venture to descend and pass through the village unobserved. Luckily, no one saw him going through the village, and now he has entered a barley field, and although still uneasy in mind, he feels somewhat reassured, and steps on quickly. He had not proceeded far in the barley field before he found himself surrounded by a large number of small pigs. He was not much struck by this, though he thought it strange that so many pigs should be allowed to wander about on the Sabbath Day. The pigs, however, came up to him, grunted and scampered away. Before he had traversed the barley field he saw approaching him an innumerable number of mice, and these, too, surrounded him, only, however, to stare at him, and then disappear. By this Davies began to be frightened, and he was almost sorry that he had broken the Sabbath Day by travelling with his pack on his back instead of keeping the day holy. He was not now very far from home, and this thought gave him courage and on he went. He had not proceeded any great distance from the spot where the mice had appeared when he saw a large grey-hound walking before him on the pathway. He anxiously watched the dog, but suddenly it vanished out of sight. "By this, the poor man was thoroughly frightened, and many and truly sincere were his regrets that he had broken the Sabbath; but on he went. He passed through the village of Llanilar without any further fright. He had now gone about three miles from Llanfihangel along the road that goes to Aberystwyth, and he had begun to dispel the fear that had seized him, but to his horror he saw something approach him that made his hair stand on end. He could not at first make it out, but he soon clearly saw that it was a horse that was madly dashing towards him. He had only just time to step on to the ditch, when, horrible to relate, a headless white horse rushed passed him. "His limbs shook and the perspiration stood out like beads on bis forehead. This terrible spectre he saw when close to Tan'rallt, but he dared not turn into the house, as he was travelling on Sunday, so on he went again, and heartily did he wish himself at home. In fear and dread he proceeded on his journey towards Penrhiw. The most direct way from Tan'rallt to Penrhiw was a pathway through the fields, and Davies took this pathway, and now he was in sight of his home, and he hastened towards the boundary fence between Tan'rallt and Penrhiw. He knew that there was a gap in the hedge that he could get through, and for this gap he aimed; he reached it, but further progress was impossible, for in the gap was a lady lying at full length, and immovable, and stopping up the gap entirely. Poor Davies was now more terrified than ever. He sprang aside, he screamed and then fainted right away. As soon as he recovered consciousness, he, on his knees, and in a loud supplicating voice, prayed for pardon. His mother and father-in-law heard him, and the mother knew the voice and said, "It is my Will! some mishap has overtaken him." They went to him and found he was so weak that he could not move, and they were obliged to carry him home, where he recounted to them his marvellous experience. The late Rector of Llangynog, who was intimately acquainted with William Davies, had many conversations with him about his Sunday journey, and he argued the matter with him, and tried to persuade him that he had seen nothing, but that it was his imagination working on a nervous temperament that had created all his fantasies. He, however, failed to convince him, for Davies affirmed that it was no hallucination, but that what he had seen that Sunday was a punishment for his having broken the Fourth Commandment. "Davies ever afterwards was a strict observer of the Sabbath." THE DEVIL AND LLANARTH CHURCH. A writer in the Arch. Cam., 1850, page 73, says:-- In the Churchyard of Llanarth, near Aberaeron, on the South side of the Church, there is an inscribed stone (not hitherto published) of the twelfth century. It bears a cross covering the stone with four circular holes at the junction of the arms. The inscription is on the lower limb of the cross; but as it is made of a micaceous sandstone, part has been split off, and the inscription is much mutilated.... The current tradition of the place concerning it is, that one stormy night, some centuries ago, there was such a tremendous shindy going on up in the belfry that the whole village was put in commotion. It was conjectured that nobody but a certain ancient personage could be the cause of this, and, therefore, they fetched up his reverence from the vicarage to go and request the intruder to be off. Up went the vicar with bell, book and candle, along the narrow winding staircase, and, sure enough, right up aloft among the bells there was his majesty in person! No sooner, however, had the worthy priest began the usual 'conjurate in nomine, etc.' than away went the enemy up the remaining part of the staircase on to the leads of the tower. The Vicar, nothing daunted, followed, and pressed the intruder so briskly that the latter had nothing else to do than to leap over the battlements. He came down plump among the gravestones below; and, falling upon one, made with his hands and knees the four holes now visible on the stone in question. Another writer in "Y Brython" for 1859, says, that the Devil's purpose in troubling Llanarth Church was to rob it of one of its bells and carry it to Llanbadarn Fawr Church, near Aberystwyth, twenty miles distant, as the latter, though once a cathedral, had only two bells, whilst the former, only a parish church, had four. And an old story still lingers in the neighbourhood of Llanarth that the Devil whilst thus engaged in carrying the bell, put it down and rested and re-arranged his heavy load at the very commencement of his journey, and a particular spot between the church and the river on a road known as "Rhiw Cyrff," is pointed out as the place where the D----l put down the bell. Moreover, it is added that from that day forth, the sound of Llanarth bells cannot be heard from that spot, though it is only a few yards from the church tower. The Llanarth legend is the only story in Wales that I know of in which the Spirit of darkness carries a church bell, as it was believed in old times that the Evil One was afraid of bells, and fled away at the sound of them. There are, however, traditions of churches troubled by the Devil in other parts of Wales besides Llanarth, and in the old superstitious times the north door of a church was called "Devil's Door." It was thought that as the priest entered the church through the south door, the Evil Spirit was obliged to make his exit through the north door. It might also be added that in former times no one was buried on the north side of a churchyard, as it was known as the "Domain of Demons." HOW TO GET RID OF GHOSTS, SPIRITS, GOBLINS, AND DEVILS, ETC. In some parts, especially on the borders of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, it is believed that any one carrying a knife in his hands, will never see or be troubled by a spirit, even when passing a haunted spot in the depth of night. When staying for a short time in the parish of Llandyssul about five years ago, I was told that there lived a few years ago a certain man in the village of Pontshan in that parish, who, when coming home late one night, saw a ghost on the roadside whilst passing a well-known haunted spot in the neighbourhood. The man took out his knife from his pocket, and the ghost vanished. After this, whenever he passed a haunted place the man held a knife in his hand, and never saw a ghost again. In South Pembrokeshire, a V-shaped twig of the mountain ash was considered a protective against spirits. It was also believed once in all parts of Wales that to wear body-linen inside out, and to nail a horseshoe against the door kept away both evil spirits and witches. Even in the present day people all over the world think that there is some "good luck" in finding a horseshoe, and to a young girl it means a new lover. When a spirit troubled a house in Wales, it was sometimes customary to call together the most godly persons in the parish to hold a prayer-meeting; at other times a conjurer, or a priest was sent for, for it was formerly thought that a clergyman had the power to "lay" or exorcise spirits. There were particular forms of exorcising. When the Devil was in the belfry of Llanarth Church, Cardiganshire, the Vicar went to drive away the Evil One, with "Bell, Book, and Candle." Until the time of Henry VIII., it seems that it was customary to curse mortals, as well as to exorcise fiends "with bell, book and candle"; for in an old book called "Dugdale's Baronage," published in 1675, it is said that in the 37th. year of Henry III., "a Curse was denounced in Westminster Hall against the violation of Magna Charta, with bell, book and candle." And in Fox's account of the ceremony of excommunication, we are told that three candles were carried before the clergy, and that as each candle was extinguished prayer was made that the souls of malefactors and schismatics might be "given over utterly to the power of the fiend as this candle is now quenched and put out." YSPRYD PENPOMPREN PLAS OR A SPIRIT "LAID" IN A BOTTLE. Penpompren Plas is a small mansion near Talybont in North Cardiganshire. The late Mr. John Jones, Bristol House, informed me that there was a spirit there once troubling the family, and the servants, and especially the head servant who had no peace as the ghost followed the poor man everywhere whenever he went out at night, and often threw water into his face. At last the servant went to a wise man or a conjurer. The Conjurer came with him to Penpompren Plas to "lay" the Spirit, and transformed it into an insect, in a bottle, which was securely corked. Then the bottle was thrown under the river bridge close by. There are many such stories in different parts of the country; and it is said that under the Monument Arch of Old Haverfordwest Bridge in Pembrokeshire, a spirit has been laid for a thousand years, and that at the expiration of that time it will again be free to roam the earth to trouble people. About 60 years ago, a spirit which appeared in all forms, pig, mouse, hare, etc., at Alltisaf, Llanfynydd, in Carmarthenshire, was "laid" by the celebrated wizard, Harries, of Cwrtycadno. I was told of this by two old men in the village of Llanfynydd about five years ago. THE "LAYING" OF THE HAVOD UCHTRYD GOBLIN. Havod Uchtryd is a large mansion a few miles from Devil's Bridge, in Cardiganshire, and there is a tradition in the neighbourhood that in the time of the celebrated Colonel Johnes about the beginning of the last century the place was haunted by a mischievous goblin. Fortunately, however, there happened to be a wizard nor far off, and the squire, so it is said, sent for him to Havod to lay the ghost. The conjurer came and when he arrived at the spot where the haunting usually took place he surrounded himself with an enchanted circle which the spirit could not break through. Then he opened a book and went through various incantations to invoke the spirit, which presented himself in various forms; first it appeared as a bull, secondly as a bulldog; and at last as a fly which rested on the wizard's open book. In an instant the enchanter closed the book, and thus caught the evil one in a trap, and was only allowed to go out under the conditions that he should betake himself to the Devil's Bridge, and there with an ounce hammer and tintack cut off a fathom of the rock. But notwithstanding this "laying" of the spirit one hundred years ago, there is a rumour still throughout the whole North of Cardiganshire, that Hafod is still haunted. THE MONACHDY GHOST DOOMED TO CUT THE ROCK NEAR LLANRHYSTYD. About 70 or 80 years ago, Monachty, a fine mansion in the neighbourhood of Aberaeron, was rumoured to be haunted. My informant is an old man named James Jones, Golden Lion, Llanarth. Jones said that when he was a boy at Pantycefn, he often felt almost too terrified to go to bed, as it was reported that the Monachty ghost was so small that it could go through even the eye of a needle; and his father's humble cottage was not without holes especially the window of his bedroom. At last, however, Students from Ystrad Meurig College were sent for to Monachdy to lay the ghost, which they did, so Jones said, and they doomed the unearthly being to cut a rock near Llanrhystyd, which proves that students, as well as Clergymen and ministers, had the reputation of being able to lay spirits. THE "LAYING" OF THE STACKPOLE GHOST. Stackpole Court, the beautiful residence of the distinguished Earl of Cawdor, is famous for its legendary lore. "Seven hundred years ago, Giraldus Cambrensis tells the story of Sir Elidur de Stackpole's demon steward, whose name was Simon; and in the more modern times the neighbourhood was haunted by the spirit of an old lady. This ghost appeared in the form of a party consisting of two headless horses, a headless coachman and a headless lady in her carriage. At last the ghost was "laid" by the Parson of St. Patrox, who doomed it to empty a pond with a cockle shell for a ladle, so that the phantom is not seen now. There are several versions of this ghost story, and Col. Lambton, of Brownslade, who is much interested in Folk-Lore and Antiquities, informed me that the headless lady was known as "Lady Mathias." The idea of giving employment to a spirit is most ancient, and in Grecian and Roman Mythology we find that the Danaides, or the fifty daughters of Danaus, who all, except one, slew their husbands on their wedding night, were doomed in Tartarus to draw water in sieves from a well until they had filled a vessel full of holes. It seems from the following story, which I obtained from the Rev. J. Jones, Brynmeherin, near Ystrad Meurig, that a ghost will not follow one through water:-- SHAN AND THE GHOST. About 35 years ago, there lived at Ynysfach, near Ystrad Meurig, an old man and an old woman known as "Shon and Shan." Shon was working in North Wales, for he was a quarryman at the time, but he came home occasionally to spend his holidays with his wife, especially about Christmas time. On one occasion, however, when Shan expected her husband home the day before Christmas as usual, Shon came not. Nine o'clock in the evening she went out to meet him or to search for him and to prevent him spending his money on beer at a public house which his friend, a saddler kept at Tyngraig. But her husband was not at the public house, nor was he seen anywhere, so the old woman had to return home in disappointment. It was a cloudless moonlight night, almost as light as day, but the road was lonely and the hour late, and when she had walked some distance, to her great terror, she noticed a ghost in the field making his way nearer and nearer to her till at last the strange object came to the hedge on the roadside quite close to her. Frightened as she was, she struck the ghost with the strong walking-stick which she held in her hand, saying "D----l! thou shalt follow me no longer." When Shan struck the ghost her walking-stick went right through the head of the strange object, but she did not "feel" that it touched anything--It was like striking a fog; but the spirit vanished into nothing, and Shan walked on. The ghost was now invisible, but the old woman "felt" that it still followed her, though she could not see it; but when she was crossing a brook she became aware that her pursuer left her. TWO YOUNG WOMEN AND THE GOBLIN. Two young women, daughters of a farmer in the parish of Llandyssul, were walking home one night from Lampeter Fair. After reaching the very field in one corner of which the house in which they lived stood, they wandered about this field for hours before they could find the building, though it was a fine moonlight night. It seemed as if the farm house had vanished; and they informed me that they were convinced that this was the doings of the Goblin, who played them a trick. The Welsh word for Goblin is Ellyll. CHAPTER VII. DEATH PORTENTS. Among the most important of the superstitions of Wales are the death portents and omens; and this is perhaps more or less true of every country. About a generation or two ago, there were to be found almost in every parish some old people who could tell before hand when a death was going to lake place; and even in the present day we hear of an old man or an old woman, here and there, possessing, or supposed to possess, an insight of this kind into the future. Mrs. Lloyd, Ffynnonddagrau, Llangynog, Carmarthenshire, told me five years ago that there lived at Ffynnonddagrau, an old man named Thomas Harries, who always foretold every death in the parish as he possessed second sight. John Thomas, Pentre, who worked about the farms, called with my informant one day on his way home; he was in good health then, but on the very next day he was very ill and soon died. Harries had foretold the death of the poor man some days before he was taken ill. He had also foretold the death of one Howells, who was buried at Ebenezer Chapel, and of an old woman known as Rassie of Moelfre Fach, as well as the death of one Thomas Thomas about 35 years ago. People were almost frightened to see Harries as he so often foretold the death of someone or other, and his predictions were always correct. My informant also added that Harries only died about 20 years ago. THE "TOILI" OR PHANTOM FUNERAL. With the exception of Corpse Candle, the most prominent death portent in West and Mid-Wales is the "Toili" or spirit funeral; a kind of shadowy funeral which foretold the real one. In the very north of Cardiganshire, such apparition is known as "teulu" (family); but throughout all other parts of the county it is called "toili." Toili, or Toeli is also rather general in Carmarthenshire; in North Pembrokeshire, however, it is called "Crefishgyn." There are tales of phantom funerals all over the Diocese of St. David's, and the following account of a Twentieth Century Phantom Funeral in Pembrokeshire is interesting, as my informant himself was the man who witnessed the strange apparition, or a foreshadowing of a funeral which actually took place soon afterwards. A PRESENT DAY PHANTOM FUNERAL. A young man who lives in the Gwaun Valley, between Pontfaen and Fishguard informed me in the beginning of November, 1905, that he had just seen a phantom or a spirit funeral only a few weeks previously. A friend of his, a young porter at a Railway Station in the neighbourhood of Cardiff, had come home ill to his native place in Pembrokeshire, and his friend, my informant, one night sat up by his bedside all night. About three o'clock in the morning the patient was so seriously ill that my informant in alarm hurried to call the father of the poor sufferer to come to see him, as the old man lived in a small cottage close by. As soon as he went out through the door into the open air, to his great astonishment he found himself in a large crowd of people, and there was a coffin resting on some chairs, ready to be placed on the bier; and the whole scene, as it were, presented a funeral procession, ready to convey the dead to the grave. When the young man attempted to proceed on his way, the procession also proceeded, or moved on in the same direction, so that he found himself still in the crowd. After going on in this manner for about a hundred yards, he managed to draw one side from the crowd and soon reached the house of his sick friend's father, and nearly fainted. Three days after this vision the seer's friend died; and on the day of the funeral the young man noticed that the crowd stood in front of the house and the coffin resting on chairs exactly as he had seen in the apparition. I may add that my informant who had seen the phantom funeral was so terrified even at the time when I saw him, that he was too much afraid to go out at night. It so happened that I was staying in that part of Pembrokeshire at the time, so I went to see the man myself, and a clergyman accompanied me. I obtained the following account of a phantom funeral from the Rev. John Phillips, Vicar of Llancynfelyn, North Cardiganshire. The scene of the story was Cilcwm, Carmarthenshire:-- A PHANTOM FUNERAL. Though more than thirty years have run their course since the incident which is to be described here occurred, still the impression which it left on the writer's mind was so vivid and lasting that he finds not the slightest difficulty in recalling its minutest details at the present moment. Some experiences are so impressive that time itself seems powerless to efface them from the memory, and of such the following appears to be an instance:-- It happened in the early Spring, just when the days were perceptibly lengthening, and a balmy feeling was creeping into the air, and a glad sense of hope was throbbing throughout the whole of nature. A boy of ten, or may be a couple of years younger, tired out after a hard day of play and pleasure, sat resting on a log near a lonely house, in a sparsely populated district. As he sat, he gazed down a long stretch of white and dusty road leading away past the house. As a rule, few and far between would be the travellers who used that unfrequented road. The sole exception would be on a Sunday, when perhaps a dozen or more of the neighbours might be seen wending their way, to or from the nearest place of worship. Intense, therefore, was the boy's surprise, when on this week-day, his eyes discerned a goodly company turning the corner in the distance, and proceeding in an orderly procession along the stretch of straight road which his vantage ground commanded. He watched it keenly, and wondered greatly. Never had he before seen such a crowd on that particular road. As the people drew nearer and nearer, something of solemnity in their orderly and silent manner struck on the watcher's imagination, but no sense of anything akin to the supernatural obsessed his mind for a second, still he failed not to mark, that for so large an assemblage, it was remarkably noiseless. Twenty yards, more or less, from where the youthful watcher sat, a footpath leading over a piece of wet and barren land joined the road. This path, which could be traversed only in dry weather, terminated half a mile away, at the door of a solitary cottage inhabited by a farm hand named Williams, who dwelt there with his wife and several young children. When the crowd arrived at the spot where the path ran on to the road, there seemed to be a momentary hesitation, and then the procession left the road and took to the footpath. The watcher strained every nerve, in an effort to recognise some one or other in the crowd, but though there was something strangely familiar about it all, there was also something so dim and shadowy, as to preclude the possibility of knowing anyone with certainty; but as the tail end of the procession curved round to gain the path, something he did observe, which caused a thrill, for the last four men carried high on their shoulders a bier,--but it was an empty bier. Soon as the multitude was out of sight, the boy rushed to the house, and related his curious experience. No thought of anything weird and uncanny had so far crossed his mind, and his one desire at the time was to gain some information as to where the people were bound for. Neither could he just then understand the manifest consternation, and the hushed awe, which fell upon his hearers as he unfolded his tale. Amongst these there happened to be a visitor, an old dame of a class well known in many parts of rural Wales in those days. It was her habit to stroll from farm to farm along the country side, regaling the housewives with the latest gossip. In return she would be sure of a meal, and also something to carry home in her wallet. Naturally, such a character would be shrewd and keen, knowing well not only what tales would suit her company, but also the truth, or otherwise, of any tales which she herself might be a listener to. In addition, the old dame in question was generally supposed to be immune from all fear, and cared not how far from home she might be when the shades of night overtook her. On the present occasion, although a few minutes before, she had been on the point of starting, and was indeed only waiting to be handed her usual dole of charity, no sooner had she heard the lad's strange tale, than she flatly declared that no power on earth could move her to travel an inch further that evening, and so at the expense of much inconvenience to the household a bed had to be prepared for her. However, she started early on the following morning, and long before noon, owing mainly to her assiduous diligence, the news had travelled far and near, that a phantom funeral had been seen on the previous evening. Her tale made a deep impression throughout the country-side. Those prone to superstition,--and it must be confessed, they were many,--lent a ready ear. A few,--and these prided themselves on their commonsense,--doubted. The latter class were not slow to point out, what they considered to be, a fatal flaw in the evidence. The supposed funeral was travelling in a direction, which led away from the churchyard. Had it been going down the road instead of up, they argued, that there might be something in it. Then again, it took the footpath, and it was pointed out, not only that funerals kept to the high roads, but that this particular path, could not by any stretch of imagination be said to lead to any burial ground. This seemed a reasonable view to take, and as one day succeeded another, without anything unusual happening, the excitement cooled down. However, within a few weeks Williams, who lived in the cottage across the marsh was taken ill. At first, it was thought that he had contracted a chill, and it was hoped that he would soon be well again. The nearest medical man lived six miles away, and that caused further delay. On the fifth day the doctor came, but he came to find that it was too late for his skill to be of any avail. A glance at the patient had satisfied him that it was a case of double pneumonia, and that the end was rapidly approaching. A few hours later and Williams had drawn his last breath. Three days more and the funeral took place. As is the custom in country places, the neighbours from far and near attended, and on their way a group of men called at the burial place for the bier. This group was joined by others so that long before the house of mourning was reached the procession was a large one. It travelled up the long stretch of road where the lad had watched that mysterious crowd, in the twilight six weeks before. The same lad watched again, and when the procession reached the point, where the footpath branched away across the fields, the man who acted as leader stopped, and raised his hand, while the procession hesitated for a moment, then looking at his watch, the leader spoke in low clear tones, "men," said he, "it is already getting late if we go round by the road, it will get very late; we will take the path." He led the way and as his followers swept round the curve, the lad saw that the last four men carried on their shoulders an empty bier. It was being taken to fetch the body. THE NEUADDLWYD "TOILI." John Jones, Coed-y-Brenin, near Neuaddlwyd, was going home one evening from Derwen-gam; and as he walked along he found himself suddenly in a phantom funeral, and was so pressed by the crowd of spirits that he nearly fainted. At last he managed to escape by turning into a field. He then noticed that the phantom funeral proceeded towards Neuaddlwyd, and soon there was a light to be seen in that chapel through the windows. A few weeks after this a real funeral took place. The above J. Jones, who had seen the apparition only died about twelve years ago. My informant was Mr. Thomas Stephen, near Mydroilyn, in the parish of Llanarth. A HORSE SEEING A "TOILI" OR PHANTOM FUNERAL. The following tale was related to me by Mr. Jones, Bristol House, Talybont:-- A farmer's wife, who lived in the northern part of Cardiganshire, had gone to Machynlleth Market one day riding a pony. On her journey home that evening she met a "toili" on the road. The pony was the first to notice the spirit-funeral, and the animal refused to go forward, but turned back and stood trembling under the shelter of a big tree till the "toili" had passed. The woman was quite terrified, and as soon as she reached home she rushed into the house and asked her husband to go out and put the pony in the stable, and stated that she felt unwell that night. Soon after this, one of the family died. Some persons have such clear vision of a phantom funeral, that they are able even to recognise and give the names of the persons that appear in the spectral procession. Owen Shon Morris, of Pant'stoifan, Llanarth, who died 85 years ago, saw a "toili" passing his own house in the direction of Llanarth, at 1 o'clock in the morning. He even discovered that among the crowd was his own friend, Evan Pugh, the tailor, and a woman wearing a red petticoat. When the "toili" had gone as far as a certain green spot on the road, after passing the house, the tailor and the woman with the red petticoat left the procession, and returned to their homes. Twelve months after this a funeral took place, and in the procession were the tailor and the woman with a red petticoat, both of whom returned home after accompanying the crowd as far as the green spot. My informant was an old farmer, named Thomas Stephens, near Mydroilyn. SPIRIT FUNERALS CARRYING PEOPLE TO CHURCHYARDS. I obtained the following account from an old man in North Pembrokeshire:-- About seven o'clock one winter evening, David Thomas, Henllan, Eglwyswrw, went to the village shop to get some medicine for a sick animal. When he was returning home, it was a fine moonlight night. All of a sudden, however, he found himself in utter darkness, being carried back to Eglwyswrw almost unknown to himself by a "Crefishgyn" as such an apparition is called in North Pembrokeshire; and when he got his feet on the ground once more, he discovered himself taking hold of the iron bars of the Churchyard Gate. In his adventure with the apparition he had passed a blacksmith's shop, where several men were working, without seeing or noticing anything. A farm servant, named David Evans in the parish of Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, had visited his brother who was ill one night, but whilst going home at two o'clock in the morning, a "toili" carried him all the way to Llandyssul Churchyard. My informant was Rees, Maesymeillion. I have also heard of an old woman at Cilcennin, near Aberaeron, who was also carried by force to the churchyard by a "toili," and there are such tales all over the country. AN OLD WOMAN WHO SAW THE APPARITION OF HER OWN FUNERAL. Miss Martha Davies, a housemaid, at Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, informed me that her family possessed the peculiar gift of second sight, and that her mother had seen the phantom of her own funeral before she died. When she was out walking one night, the old woman was terrified by seeing a funeral procession meeting her on the road and which passed on towards Caersalem, a Nonconformist Chapel close by. The Rev. Jenkin Evans, Vicar of Pontfaen, was walking behind the procession, and she even took notice of his dress and what kind of hat he had on his head. She was taken ill the very next day, and in a very short time died, and every one in the neighbourhood believed that she had seen an apparition of her own funeral. The deceased was buried at Caersalem; and as her daughter, Martha, was at the time a maid-servant at Pontfaen Vicarage, the Vicar accompanied the girl to her mother's funeral in his carriage. When he arrived in the neighbourhood where the funeral was to take place, he left his horse and trap at a public house, and proceeded to the house of mourning on foot, as the distance the funeral procession had to go from Melin Cilgwm to Caersalem burial place was very short. Strange to say, when the funeral did proceed, it so happened that the Vicar of Pontfaen walked behind the procession, and his clothes, and even his very hat were in exact accordance with the description which had been given by the dead woman of the vision. A PHANTOM TRAIN. A few years ago an old man named James, 75 years of age, living at Nantgaredig, in Carmarthenshire, told me that he had seen a phantom train on one occasion. Some years ago when he happened to be out about midnight once, he saw a train passing, which came from the direction of Carmarthen, and went towards Llandilo, and as no train was to pass through the station of Nantgaredig at that hour he enquired of the Stationmaster next morning what was the special train that passed at mid-night. In reply, he was told he had been either dreaming or had seen the spirit of a train, as no train had passed at that time of the night. A few days after this a special train passed through the station conveying a large funeral from Carmarthen to Llandilo; and James and his friend were convinced that the train he had seen in the night was nothing but an apparition of the real train with the funeral! A "TOILI" SEEN IN THE DAY-TIME. Like every other apparition a "toili" is supposed to be seen in the night time only; but according to the late Mr. Lledrod Davies, people working at the harvest near Llangeitho many years ago, saw a "toili" at mid-day in the churchyard of Llanbadarn Odwyn; and a funeral took place soon afterwards. The following story of a phantom funeral in the day-time was related to me by an old woman in Pembrokeshire, a farmer's wife in the Parish of Llanycefn:-- An old man named John Salmon saw an apparition of a funeral in the day-time, and he even recognised most of those who were in the procession, but was surprised to find that the minister was not amongst them. A few days after this the funeral took place, and the minister was prevented from being present as he had been called away from home at the time. Sometimes a "Toili" is heard without being seen. An old woman who lived in a little cottage at Dihewid, in Cardiganshire, forty-five years ago, heard every phantom funeral that passed her house; she could tell even the number of horses in the apparition. An old woman who only a few years ago lived close to Llanafan Churchyard, in the same County, heard from her bed one night the Vicar's voice, the Rev. W. J. Williams, reading the burial service quite distinctly, and soon after a funeral took place. The Vicar was informed of this by the old woman herself. SINGING HEARD TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE DEATH. About sixty years ago, the mother of one David Hughes, Cwmllechwedd, was one day standing outside the house, when all of a sudden, she heard the sound of singing. She recognised the voice of the singer as the voice of the Curate of Lledrod, but when she looked round she could see no one anywhere. The maid servants also heard the same sound of singing. Twelve months after this her son, David Hughes, a young man of 22 years of age died, and on the day of the funeral, the Curate of Lledrod, standing near the door, gave out a hymn, and conducted the singing himself, just as the funeral was leaving the house. My informant was Thomas Jones, Pontrhydfendigaid. A woman at Aberporth, informed me that she had heard a "Toili" singing: "Gwyn fyd v rhai trwy ffydd, Sy'n myn'd o blith y byw." Three weeks before the death of her aunt. Mr. John Llewelyn, Rhos-y-Gwydr, somewhere on the borders of Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, when he went to the door of Rhydwilym Chapel one evening, he was surprised when he listened, to hear his own voice preaching a funeral sermon. A DAY-DREAM. Another remarkable instance of second-sight seeing appeared in "Notes and Queries" for July, 1858. The contributor, Mr. John Pavin Phillips, gives the following account of what occurred to him himself in the year 1818, upon his return home to Pembrokeshire, after many years' absence:-- "A few days after my arrival, I took a walk one morning in the yard of one of our parish churches, through which there is a right of way for pedestrians. My object was a twofold one: Firstly, to enjoy the magnificent prospect visible from that portion; and secondly, to see whether any of my friends or acquaintances who had died during my absence were buried in the locality. After gazing around me for a short time, I sauntered on, looking at one tombstone and then at another, when my attention was arrested by an altar-tomb enclosed within an iron railing. I walked up to it and read an inscription which informed me that it was in memory of Colonel ----. This gentleman had been the assistant Poor Law Commissioner for South Wales, and while on one of his periodical tours of inspection, he was seized with apoplexy in the Workhouse of my native town, and died in a few hours. This was suggested to my mind as I read the inscription on the tomb, as the melancholy event occurred during the period of my absence, and I was only made cognisant of the fact through the medium of the local press. Not being acquainted with the late Colonel ----, and never having seen him, the circumstances of his sudden demise had long passed from my memory, and were only revived by my thus viewing his tomb. I then passed on, and shortly afterwards returned home. On my arrival my father asked me in what direction I had been walking, and I replied, in ---- Churchyard, looking at the tombs, and among others I have seen the tomb of Col. ----, who died in the Workhouse. 'That' replied my father 'is impossible, as there is no tomb erected over Colonel ----'s grave.' At this remark I laughed. 'My dear father,' said I, 'You want to persuade me that I cannot read. I was not aware that Colonel ---- was buried in the Churchyard, and was only informed of the fact by reading the inscription on the tomb.' 'Whatever you may say to the contrary' said my father, 'What I tell you is true; there is no tomb over Colonel ----'s grave.' Astounded by the reiteration of this statement, as soon as I had dined I returned to the Churchyard and again inspected all the tombs having railings around them, and found that my father was right. There was not only no tomb bearing the name of Colonel ----, but there was no tomb at all corresponding in appearance with the one I had seen. Unwilling to credit the evidence of my own senses, I went to the cottage of an old acquaintance of my boyhood, who lived outside of the Churchyard gate, and asked her to show the place where Colonel ---- lay buried. She took me to the spot, which was a green mound, undistinguished in appearance from the surrounding graves. Nearly two years subsequent to this occurrence, surviving relatives erected an Altar-tomb, with a railing round it, over the last resting place of Colonel ----, and it was, as nearly as I could remember, an exact reproducing of the memorial of my day-dream. Verily, 'there are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' THE CORPSE CANDLE. The "Canwyll Corph" or Corpse Candle, was another death portent often seen in West and Mid-Wales, about a generation or two ago. Indeed there are several persons still alive who have told me that they had seen this mysterious light themselves. It was a pale light moving slowly and hovering a short distance from the ground. Some could tell whether a man, woman, or child was to die. The death of a man was indicated by a red light, that of a woman by a white light, and a faint light before the death of a child. If two lights were seen together, two deaths were to take place in the same house at the same time. If the light was seen early in the evening a death was to take place soon, but if late it was not to take place for some time. Like the "toili" or phantom funeral, the Corpse Candle also was seen going along from the house--where death was to take place--to the churchyard along the same route which a funeral was to take, whether road or path. Sometimes the light was seen carried by a spectral representation of the dying person, and it was even thought possible to recognise that person by standing near the water watching the apparition crossing over it. Another way of recognising the dying person was to stand at the church porch watching the candle entering the building. There are some instances of people seeing their own corpse candle. There was an old woman living at Llanddarog, in Carmarthenshire, named Margaret Thomas, who always saw every light or Corpse Candle going to the churchyard before every funeral. She only died about 27 years ago. Another old woman who also saw the same death portents was Mary Thomas, Dafy, who lived close to Llandyssul churchyard in Cardiganshire. She was buried sixty years ago. There is a tradition that St. David, by prayer, obtained the Corpse Candle as a sign to the living of the reality of another world, and according to some people it was confined to the Diocese of St. David's, but the fact of it is there are tales of corpse candles all over Wales. A CORPSE CANDLE SEEN AT SILIAN. Owen Evans, Maesydderwen, near Llansawel, Carmarthenshire, who is over 90 years of age, gave me the following account of a Corpse Candle which had been seen at Silian, near Lampeter. When Evans was a boy, his father lived in an old house close to the churchyard walls, and kept the key of the church door. At that time singing practice was often conducted in the church, especially during the long winter evenings. One evening a certain young man entered the churchyard with the intention of going to the church to attend this singing-class, though it was a little too early; but he could see light in the church through one of the windows. So on he went to the church door thinking that the singing had commenced, or at least that some one was in the church. But to his great surprise he found the door closed and locked, and when he looked in through the key-hole there was not a soul to be seen inside the church. The young man then went to the house of Owen Evans's father and informed the old man that there was light in the church, but that he did not see anyone inside. "You must be making a mistake," said my informant's father to the young man, "there cannot possibly be any light in the church; no one could have entered the building to light it, for the door is locked, and I have the key here in the house." "But I am positively certain," said the young man again, "that there is light in the church, for I took particular notice of it." Both of the two men now went to the church together, and as they approached, they noticed a light coming out from the church. This light moved slowly towards a certain part of the churchyard, and the two men followed it and watched it until it suddenly disappeared into the ground. That it was a corpse candle they had no doubt in their minds. The young man had a walking stick in his hand with which he made a mark or a hole in the ground on the spot where the light had sunk. Soon after this a death took place in the neighbourhood, and the dead was buried in the very spot where the corpse candle had sunk into the ground. My informant told me also that he had seen a corpse candle himself before the death of an adopted son of one Mr. John Evans, who lived at Glandenis, in the same neighbourhood. A CORPSE CANDLE SEEN TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO. There is a tradition at Llanilar that a young woman got drowned long ago in attempting to cross the river Ystwyth during a flood; and that a short time before the melancholy event took place, people in the neighbourhood had seen a corpse candle hovering up and down the river. According to the Rev. Edmund Jones, the young woman had come from Montgomeryshire to see her friends at Llanilar. There is also a tradition in Carmarthenshire of a three-flamed corpse candle which had been seen on the surface of the water near Golden Grove a short time before three persons were drowned near the spot. A CORPSE CANDLE SEEN NEAR CONWIL. An old man named James, living at Nantgaredig in Carmarthenshire, gave me an account of how he himself and his father and others had seen a Corpse Candle in the parish of Conwil Elvet. When James was a boy, he was sent one day by a farmer's wife on a message to Llanpumpsaint, about three miles off, to fetch a pair of clogs from the blacksmith, and a few small things from a shop in the village. When he arrived there he went first to the blacksmith, but he had to wait there as the clogs were not ready. Then he went to the village shop, but, unfortunately, the woman who kept the shop was not at home, and he had to wait several hours; so that when he returned to the farm with his message it was quite dark. But the farmer's wife gave him plenty to eat and a present of a waistcoat. Then he went home to Nantglas, where his father and mother lived. It was now getting late in the evening, and he was only a boy going along a lonely road. When he was between Yetyffin, and Cwmgweren, he noticed some light coming after him nearer and nearer, and it even passed him at last. It hovered within about two feet from the ground as it went slowly along. The boy, who was a little bit frightened, now knocked at the door of a house he was passing and called the attention of the inmates to the strange light on the road. On he went again, and he even passed the light on the road; but when he reached home and told his parents about it, his father would not believe that he had seen a light. But the boy opened the door just as the light was passing and he called his father to come out and see it. The whole family now came out, and both his father and the other children saw the light, but his mother and one of the children did not see it--not possessing second sight. Soon after this, a child died at a house called Yet-y-ffin; and my informant's father and his neighbours were convinced that the light which they had seen was his corpse candle. Sometimes a corpse candle was seen coming into the chamber of the person about to die. A woman, who was a native of Gwynfi in Carmarthenshire, told me about five years ago that when her child was dying, she took particular notice of a pale bluish light coming in through the window and standing right over the bed. I have also heard several other persons saying things of this kind. A PEMBROKESHIRE TALE OF A CORPSE CANDLE. The following story was contributed to the "Pembrokeshire County Guardian," May 11th., 1901, by Mr. Joseph Davies, Glynderwen: "It happened not many miles from Tenby where a certain young school mistress lodged at a farm house where she was very happy in every respect. One night after retiring to rest, the light having been put out, and she was lying awake, she suddenly noticed a peculiar greyish light like a little star moving towards the foot of her bed from the doorway. The light came to a stand-still by her bed and gently lowered to her feet. Almost paralysed with fear, she called with all her strength for help, and in a few minutes the whole of the household were together in the room listening in amazement to the frightened girl's story, and all sorts of means were used to pacify her and to induce her to go to sleep, but without avail. She would not stay in that room for the world, and her bed had to be removed and fixed on a temporary bedstead in the room where the mistress slept. Time passed, and the story spread abroad; some made light of it, and some looked serious, and all tried to get the young lady to shake off all thoughts of it. But to no purpose--let them laugh or chaff, she bore the same sad expression, and said something would certainly follow to clear up the mystery. About six weeks or so had passed, and one night the mistress, who was a strong healthy woman, suddenly took ill, and quite unexpectedly died. The young schoolmistress happened at the time to be away on her holidays, and on hearing of the sad news she hurried back to attend the funeral. When she arrived at the house she was taken upstairs to see the body, she again became almost paralysed on finding that the corpse had been laid out on the spare bedstead on the very spot where she had six weeks previously pointed out where the light had lowered and disappeared. No one had thought of the incident until reminded of it. The body had been laid out there for convenience at the time; no one ever thought of the young lady's fright until she now pointed it out herself. "So after that it can be easily imagined the whole neighbourhood became convinced that there was something in it after all, and the old superstition got strengthened in the minds of the young people that it remains to a great extent to the present time." A LLANGATHEN TALE. The following appeared in "Apparitions in Wales" by Rev. Edmund Jones, and it is a story of long ago: "Some years ago one Jane Wyat, my wife's sister, being nurse to Baronet Rudd's three children, and his Lady being dead, his house-keeper going late into a chamber where the maid servants lay, saw five of these lights together: while after that chamber being newly plastered, a great grate of coal fire was kindled therein to hasten the drying of it. At night five of the maid servants went there to bed as these were wont, and in the morning were all found dead, and suffocated with the steam of the new tempered lime and coal." This was at Llangathen, in Carmarthenshire. THE CORPSE BIRD. The most common death prognosticator throughout Wales in the present day is a peculiar bird known as "Deryn Corph" (Corpse Bird)--a bird flapping its wings against the window of the room in which there is a sick person. This was considered an omen of death. Even in the present day most people dread to see or hear a bird flapping its wings against the window when there is a sick person in the house; but every bird is not a corpse bird. An old woman in Pembrokeshire, Miss Griffiths, Henllan, near Eglwyswrw, told me this bird is a little grey one and that it came flapping against her own window before the death of her father, and also before the death of each of her three uncles. I have met with people in almost every district throughout the country who have heard the flappings of this mysterious bird before a death. A BIRD COMING INTO A HOUSE BEFORE A DEATH. Mr. Rees, Maesymeillion, Llandyssul, informed me that many years ago there lived in that part of the country an old woman known as Nell Gwarnant. The old woman at one time had an only son, a young lad who was very dear to her. One day a certain bird came into the house quite suddenly, and descended on the rim of the Spinning Wheel, flapping its wings. The old woman feared that the bird was a precursor of death, and to her great sorrow her only son soon died. A bird coming into the house is also a sign of a storm. Birds as precursors of death seem to follow Welsh people to all parts of the world. A few years ago a Corpse Bird appeared in Perth, Western Australia, before the death of a Welsh lady in that city; and this reminds me of a strange incident which happened in Patagonia, 30 years ago, when I was there. Two Welsh gentlemen, Mr. Powell, who was known as "Helaeg," and Mr. Lewis Jones, a friend of the late Sir Love Jones Parry, M.P., were returning to the Welsh Colony, from Buenos Ayres, in a sailing vessel. When the ship came within a few miles of the mouth of the river Chubut, the captain found it necessary to remain in the open sea that day, as the tide was too low to enter the river over the bar just then. Mr. Jones and Mr. Powell, however, left in a small boat manned by Italian sailors; but when they were within a certain distance of the land the sea was very rough, and a certain bird appeared suddenly on the scene. Mr. Powell pointed out the bird to his friend and said, "Do you see that bird, that's the Bird of Biam! We shall be drowned this very moment." Just as he spoke, the boat suddenly turned over, and the unfortunate speaker got drowned on the spot. The other men were saved. Mr. Powell, who, unfortunately, got drowned, was a gifted Welsh Roman Catholic gentleman, who knew about twelve languages, and was a friend of the President of the Argentine Republic. It was reported in the "Aberystwyth Observer" twenty-two years ago, that before the death of Mrs. Fryer, Lady Pryse (now Dowager), noticed a bird hovering around Gogerddan, and at times flapping his wings at the windows. BIRD SINGING HEARD BEFORE DEATH. In the excellent Welsh Magazine "Y Brython" for January, 1860, page 40, the following remarkable incident is given in connection with the death of the famous poet and clergyman, Tegid, which, being translated is as follows:-- "In his absence from Church, when lying on his death-bed, in the morning of the Lord's Day, whilst a neighbouring clergyman was taking the service for him in Llanhyfer Church, the voice of the reader was suddenly drowned by the beautiful song of a thrust, that filled the whole church.... It was ascertained on leaving the church that at that very moment the soul of Tegid left his body for the world of spirits." MUSIC OF ANGELS HEARD BEFORE DEATH. It is stated in the "Cambro-British Saints," page 444, that previous to the death of St. David "the whole city was filled with the music of angels." The Rev. Edmund Jones in his "Apparitions in Wales," says that at the death of one Rees David in Carmarthenshire, "a man of more than common piety," several persons who were in the room heard "the singing of angels drawing nearer and nearer; and after his death they heard the pleasant incomparable singing gradually depart until it was out of hearing." CYHYRAETH: OR DEATH SOUND. The Cyhyraeth was another death portent. It has been described as a wailing or moaning sound heard before a death, and it was thought to be a sound made by a groaning spirit. This spirit was never seen, only its sound was heard. According to "British Goblins" by Sikes, one David Prosser, of Llanybyther, heard the Cyhyraeth pronouncing the words "Woolach! Woolach!" before a funeral. According to the same book "this crying spirit, especially affected the twelve parishes in the hundred of Inis Cenin, which lie on the south-east side of the river Towy, 'where some time past it groaned before the death of every person who lived that side of the country! It also sounded before the death of persons 'who were born in these parishes, but died elsewhere.' "Sometimes, the voice was heard long before death, but not longer than a quarter of a year. So common was it in the district named, that among the people there is a familiar form of reproach to any one making a disagreeable noise, or children crying or groaning unreasonably was to ejaculate 'Oh'r Cyhyraeth!' A reason why Cyhyraeth was more often heard in the hundred of Inis Cenin, was thought to be that Non, the mother of St. David lived in those parts where a village is called after her name Llanon." THE TOLAETH. The Tolaeth is also a sound heard before death or a funeral. It is represented as superstitious rappings, or knockings, strange noises, or sounds of footsteps or of carriages, etc. This superstition is common in all parts of the country at the present day; and I have met and heard of many carpenters who always know when they are to have an order for a coffin, as they hear strange knockings in their workshops resembling the noise or knockings made by a carpenter when engaged in coffin-making. An old lady who lives at Pontshan, Llandyssul, told me three years ago, that when she was a young woman, she and two other young women were on one occasion sitting near the fire all night watching and nursing a sick old woman of 80 years of age. About four o'clock in the morning, to their great surprise, they heard the door open, and the sound of someone or something entering the house and going about the room, but nothing was visible, nor did the door open as a matter of fact. The aged patient also heard the sound and enquired who had come in. At four o'clock next morning the old woman died. The same woman also told me that before the death of a prominent Esquire in Carmarthenshire, she remembered hearing the sound of a carriage before the front entrance of the mansion, when no carriage was near. Sound of carriages before the death of one of the gentry is a thing that we often hear of even at the present day everywhere in West and Mid-Wales. Sir Edward W. P. Pryse, Gogerddan, informed me that he was told that people had heard the sound of carriages before the death of his grandfather, who died in 1855, and was a member of Parliament for Cardigan. Nanteos, another ancient family in the same county, has, or had, not only a phantom coach, but even a tutelary guardian; but whether this Welsh "Banshi" was a woman under enchantment, or a fairy, is not known. It was formerly believed that the church bell was tolled by a spirit or some other supernatural agency, before a death in certain families. I wonder if the word "Tolaeth" is derived from toll? THE TOLLING OF BLAENPORTH CHURCH BELL BEFORE A DEATH. Several old persons living in the parish of Blaenporth, South Cardiganshire, informed me that it is a fact that in former times a death in certain families in that parish was always foretold by the church-bell in the steeple tolling three times at the hour of midnight unrung by human hands. One old woman gave me the following tradition concerning the origin of this tolling:-- Once upon a time a spirit came at midnight and knocked at the door of a farmhouse known as Tan-yr-Eglwys, which is close to Blaenporth Church. "Who is there?" enquired the farmer from his bed. "Mair Wen (white Mary) of Blaenporth," was the reply; "the silver communion cup has been stolen from the church." Then the spirit begged the farmer to get up from bed and proceed at once on a journey to the town of Cardigan, as the man who had committed such sacrilegious act was resting that night on a sofa in a certain public house in that town with the silver cup under his waistcoat. The farmer went to Cardigan, and when he arrived at the public house named by the spirit, and entered a certain room, a strange man who was lying on the sofa got up, and the stolen cup from under his waistcoat fell to the floor. The farmer took it up in an instant, and returned with all speed to Blaenporth, and placed the sacred vessel in the church once more. For his kindness and trouble in thus restoring the sacred cup, the good spirit or guardian angel of Blaenporth Church told the farmer that the bell would toll three times before his death, and before the death of his descendants till the ninth generation. A REMARKABLE ACCOUNT OF KNOCKING AND WAILING BEFORE DEATH. A few miles from Newcastle Emlyn there is a farmhouse called Pen'rallt-hebog, which is situated in the parish of Bettws-Evan, in Cardiganshire. Besides Pen'rallt-hebog there is also--or there was--another house on the same farm known as Pen'rallt-Fach. And there lived at this Penrallt-fach about 25 years ago a tailor named Samuel Thomas, and his wife. About that time a very strange incident occurred, and the following account of it was given me by Mr. S. Thomas himself an intelligent middle-aged man who is still alive I believe. One morning, very early, Thomas beard a knocking at the door of his bedroom, and he enquired from his bed "who is there?" but there was no reply, and everything was quiet again. The next morning again he heard knocking at the door, though not the bedroom door this time, but the front door of the house. My informant exclaimed from his bed, "Alright, I am getting up now." But when he did get up, and opened the door, not a single soul could be seen anywhere. Thomas was quite surprised, and perplexed as to who could have come to disturb him at five o'clock in the morning, two mornings one after the other, and disappear so mysteriously. No voice had been heard, nor the sound of footsteps, only a knocking at the door. After this there was no further knocking for some time. Twelve months to the very day after this a brother of Thomas who lived in some other part of the country came on a visit, and to spend a day with him, and this was in the first week of January, 1883. Some day during this week the two brothers went out with their guns to shoot some game, but soon returned to the house again, and in the evening Thomas went to his workshop to do some "job"; but as he was busily engaged in making a suit of clothes, he heard a knocking at the window quite suddenly--two knocks. He thought that some friend outside wanted to call his attention to something; but when he looked at the window there was no one to be seen After a while the knocking went on again, and continued for about ten minutes. The second night the knocking at the window continued as the previous evening between ten and eight o'clock, but nothing was to be seen. On the third night there was a knocking at the window several times, and it was much louder or more violent than it had been on the two previous evenings. The tailor and the young man who was his assistant decided now to keep their eyes on the window, and as soon as they did so there was no more knocking; but the moment they ceased looking and resumed their work, the knocking was heard again. There were several young men present in the room this evening, and they heard the knocking, and even the wife heard it from another apartment of the house. These "spirit knockings" had been now noised abroad everywhere, and amongst others who went there in order to hear them was the farmer on whose land the tailor lived. The farmer did not believe in superstition, but when he heard the knocking he was convinced that there was something supernatural about it. On the fifth night a very loud knock at the door was heard as if some one attempted to break through; and on the sixth evening when my informant went out for a short walk he heard such noise as if two hundred horses were rushing by him. On the seventh and eighth evenings the knocking still continued; and on the ninth evening, Thomas went out with a gun in his hand, and found that there was no one to be seen anywhere, but he heard some groaning voice in the air, and doleful wailing. The man returned to the house quite frightened. There was no more knocking after this evening. In the beginning of January, 1883, at the very time when these strange knockings, sound, and wailing were heard at Pen'rallt Fach cottage, a woman whose old home had been this very house before she had left her native land was dying in America; and her crying on her death-bed in that far-off land was heart-rending, when she found that she was too ill to return to Wales, to die at her old home in Cardiganshire, and to be buried with her husband, who had died before she had left for America. One Mr. Lloyd, from Newcastle Emlyn, happened to be at her death-bed in America, when she was longing in vain to die in her old home in Wales. This solves the mystery of the "spirit knockings," and it also confirms the truth of the old belief that Death makes his presence known by knocking at the door of the relatives of friends of those he is about to strike. LLEDRITH--WRAITH. Lledrith is an apparition or the spectre of a person seen soon before his death or about the time he is dying. A most remarkable tale of an apparition of this kind is given in "Ysten Sioned," an interesting Welsh book written by the late Rev. Chancellor D. Silvan Evans, and Mr. John Jones (Ivon). About seventy years ago a young French sailor at Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire, had fallen in love with a servant maid in that town, and she with him. One evening, when this young woman was preparing to go to bed she heard her lover calling to her by her name. It was a bright moonlight night, and when she went to the door there she saw the young man approaching and offering his hand to her; but to her great surprise he disappeared again without speaking a single word. Soon after this, news came to the town that a ship from Aberystwyth got lost on the coast of Spain, and that amongst others of the crew, who were drowned, was the young Frenchman. The young woman discovered that her lover was drowned on the Spanish Coast in the very same hour that she saw his apparition at Aberystwyth! The young Earl of Lisburne ten years ago saw a wraith at Havod, on the night his father was dying at Crosswood Park. Of this I was informed by Mr. Inglis-Jones, Derry Ormond, and by his Lordship himself. It is well-known that the great Lord Brougham saw an apparition of this kind when a friend of his was dying in India, about one hundred years ago. TANWEDD. Another death portent was the "tanwedd," so called because it appeared as a fiery light. The Rev. Edmund Jones says in his "Apparitions".--"When it falls to the ground it sparkleth and lightens. The freeholders and landlords upon whose ground it falls, will certainly die in a short time after." GWRACH Y RHIBYN. Gwrach y Rhibyn was an ugly old hag with long flowing hair, glaring eyes and face as gloomy as death itself. The shriek of the old hag was supposed to foretell a death or some misfortune. She appeared, as a rule, only before the death of a person who had lived a wicked life; at least this is the saying in West Wales, especially in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire. CWN ANNWN--HELL HOUNDS. Cwn Annwn were supposed to have been supernatural hounds whose yelling or howling on dark nights foreboded a death. If the howling was faint, it meant that the pack was close at hand, if loud, the hounds were only hunting at a distance. These hounds were supposed to watch for the souls of notoriously wicked men about to die. An old farmer, named Mr. Thomas Stephens, Llwyncelyn, Llanarth, Cardiganshire, informed me that his brother once heard the bark of these hounds on the road near Bronwen. OTHER DEATH OMENS. The Cock.--It was once thought in all parts of Wales that the crowing of a cock before or about midnight was a sign of death; but whether one of the family or one of a neighbour's family was going to die, it depended on the direction of the cock's head whilst crowing. The Hen.--A hen crowing like a cock is also supposed to indicate a death in the family or some very near relation; or if not death, some very bad luck. A hen laying two eggs in the same day was also a sign of death. A hen laying a small egg was also a bad sign. An Owl persistently screeching near a house or a raven croaking hoarsely also indicated a death. The Dog.--A dog howling, which is called in Welsh Ci-yn-udo, is a sign of a death. The Death Watch.--A sound made by a small insect like the ticking of a watch was once considered a sign of death. A few years ago a sound of this kind was for a long time heard at a house in the parish of Llanddewi Brefi; but as no one died in the house, the family was cured of the superstition. The sound in the ear as of a bell, is a token of death in the family. Clothes Burning.--A farmer's wife near Aberystwyth, informed me that a few years ago she placed a servant boy's wet trousers on a chair to dry before the fire. Then she went out to milk the cows, but when she returned to the house she found that the trousers was burnt. A few days after this her mother died. The untimely blossoming of a tree is another sign of a death. Yarrow and Heather.--Bringing either yarrow or heather into a house is a presage of death; white heather, however, is a sign of good luck. Death-pinch.--This is a mark that cannot be accounted for, appearing suddenly on any part of the body, and is a sign of the death of one of the family or a relative. A Funeral Procession moving too fast is a sign that another funeral will soon follow. MISSING A BUTT. A writer in "Bye Gones" for 1892 says:-- "The other day in going through Mid-Cardiganshire on election business, I observed one row of turnips growing in the middle of a field of potatoes on a farm occupied by a Nonconformist minister. When asked how it happened that that solitary row of turnips came to be there, the minister explained that by accident the planters missed putting down potatoes, and the idea prevailed in the district if the vacant row was not filled in by sowing something in it, some one would die in consequence in the neighbourhood." This superstition is also found in Carmarthenshire as well as in Cardiganshire. I have met with many ministers of the Gospel, Professors of Universities, and other enlightened and educated men who are convinced that there are death portents. CHAPTER VIII. MISCELLANEOUS BELIEFS, WEATHER SIGNS, BIRDS, LORE, Etc. To find a horse shoe on the road or in a field is considered extremely lucky. To see a lamb for the first time during the season with its head facing you is also lucky. When you see a newly-wedded couple throw an old pair of shoes at them, for it means "good luck to them." This was done now at Llanilar, October, 1910, at the wedding of Miss Jones, Bryntirion, by Mrs. Richards, Derwen-Deg. To drop your stick or umbrella on your journey is unlucky. When you have started on a journey, to turn back to the house for something you have forgotten, means bad luck. To bring heather into the house is a sign of death: white heather, however, is considered extremely lucky. It is unlucky to meet a white horse when on a journey, to change it into luck spit over your little finger. If a young lady looks through a silk-handkerchief at the first new moon after New Year's Day, she will be able to see her future husband. It is unlucky to find a coin on the road, but if the head and not the tail happens to be up it is a lucky omen. To carry in one's purse a crooked sixpence, or a coin with a hole in it is lucky. Spit on the first coin you get in the day, and you'll have luck for 24 hours. Never begin any new work on a Friday or Saturday. It is considered unlucky for a servant to go to service on a Thursday or a Saturday. In Cardiganshire servants go to service either on a Monday or Wednesday, which are considered lucky days. A woman near Narberth in Pembrokeshire told me that Tuesdays and Thursdays are lucky days in that part. In some parts of Carmarthenshire, the most lucky days are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. But the fact of it is, I have discovered that the days which are considered lucky in one part of the country are considered unlucky in another part. Odd numbers, especially three, and seven, are said to be lucky numbers. Thirteen, however, is considered very unlucky, and it is thought that if thirteen persons sit down to table, the last person who sits down and the first to rise up, are those to whom the ill-luck will fall. It is considered unlucky by many to shake hands across a table; and when two people are shaking hands, if two others of the company attempt to shake hands across their hands it is a very unlucky sign. It is considered unlucky by some to baptise more than one child in the same water. There is also the same superstition respecting one man washing after another in the same water. In Cardiganshire, it is believed that he who dies on Sunday is a godly man. Mr. Eyre Evans, Aberystwyth, informed me that he has just come across some people in Montgomeryshire who consider it unlucky to pick up or carry white stones in their pockets; and it seems from Sir John Rhys, that Manx Fishermen do not like to have a white stone in a boat. Curious Belief about Salt.--When people remove into a new house it is customary to take a bar of salt into the building before taking in any of the furniture. This is supposed to secure good luck. When this salt ceremony is forgotten or neglected, some people, especially women, are very much perturbed. I have discovered that this curious old belief about salt is very common at present in the towns of Aberystwyth, Carmarthen, and Tenby, and other parts of West Wales. To spill salt denotes quarrels. To serve another person with salt, is to serve him with sorrow. When a white spot appeals on the nail of one of our fingers it means a present. Never stir the fire in anybody's house unless you are a friend of seven years' standing. To break a looking-glass signifies ill-luck for seven years. To put the bellows on a table is considered unlucky. There is also the same superstition about boots all over Wales. Never mend your clothes while you are wearing them. If you see a pin pick it up to insure good luck. There is a saying in Welsh "Gwell plygu at bin, na phlygu at ddim," (It is better to bend down for a pin, than to bend down for nothing.) It seems that a needle, however, is not considered so lucky; for I once overheard a woman who had quarrelled with her neighbour telling her husband that her neighbour and herself were friends before she had given her a needle. If a bramble clings to the skirts of a young lady some one has fallen in love with her; and the same is said of a young man when his hat goes against the branches of a tree. Welshpeople believe that those who have cold hands are very warm-hearted; hence the saying "Llaw oer a chalon gynes," (A cold hand and a warm heart). Two spoons in a saucer denote a wedding, or according to some that you are to be married twice dining your lifetime. In West Wales it is considered unlucky to eat herring or any kind of fish, from the head downwards; and in order to ensure good luck the proper way is to eat the fish from the tail towards the head. This superstition is also known in Cornwall. If in making tea you forget to replace the lid on the teapot, it is the sure sign of the arrival of a stranger. David Evans, a millwright, of Llandilo, informed me a short time ago, that one evening when he was staying in Lampeter, the woman of the house who was preparing tea for supper at a late hour, forgot to replace the lid on the pot. When she found it out, she exclaimed: "A stranger is sure to come here to-night." The husband and wife, and the millwright sat down by the fire till a late hour, but there was no sign of a stranger; just as they were going to bed, however, there was a knock at the door, and a stranger came in! Superstitions about Knives.--To cross your knife and fork is considered unlucky; and crossed knives foretell some approaching disaster. To find a knife on the road or in a field is also supposed to be a very bad omen. This superstition is very general in all parts of Wales, and even in far off parts of the world as well. Many years ago in Patagonia, South America, two friends of mine and myself met in a field one morning by appointment, in connection with some particular business. Each of us three had come from different directions, and each of us had arrived at the spot the same time, and when we came together, strange to say, we discovered that each of us had found a knife on the way! The names of my two friends were Edwin Roberts, and William James, one was a native of Flintshire, and the other a native of Cardiganshire, both of them were no means superstitious; but I well remember that they were very much perturbed on account of the knives, and feared that some serious misfortune was going to happen. As soon as we went home we heard the sad news that a young man named Isaac Howells, was accidentally drowned in the river! It is also very generally believed at present, that it is unlucky to receive a knife as a present. In such cases it is customary to pay a penny for the knife. Wish whenever you get the first taste of the season of any kind of food. It is also considered very lucky to taste as many Christmas puddings as you can. It is considered unlucky to pass under a ladder. When walking a long journey if your feet are sore rub the feet of your stockings with soap. A ringing in the right ear is a sign of good news; but a ringing in the left one, unpleasant news. When the palm of your left hand itches, you are about to give away some money, or some one is blaming you; but when the palm of you right hand itches, it is a sign that you are about to receive money, or that someone is praising you or writing a kind letter to you. When going on a journey, if the sole of your right foot itches, the journey will be a pleasant one; but the contrary if the left foot itches. A child born with a caul is supposed to be very lucky, and he will always be safe from drowning. A caul is much appreciated among sailors in West Wales, as it is believed that to keep one on board the ship secures a safe voyage. In all parts of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, it is generally believed among women that it is unlucky to cut the nails of an infant under six months old. The mother bites them off as they grow. Superstition about Whistling.--It is considered unlucky for a young woman to whistle. Whistling is also, or at least was regarded, as "Talking with the Devil." Mr. Ferrar Fenton in "Pembrokeshire Antiquities," page 59, says, that many years ago he happened to whistle one day whilst walking on the pier at Fishguard with a young sea captain. The Captain seemed very much perturbed at the whistling, and at last said to Mr. Fenton:--"I wish you would not whistle here!" "Why? What harm does it do?" "Well, you know," he said slowly, as if shy at his words, "We Welshmen and sailors are superstitious over some things, and whistling as you now do, is one of them." "Superstitious! Not you! But tell me about it: I love all those old tales." "You see," he replied, "my mother and all the old people told me when a boy that such kind of whistling was the way Croignorian (Magicians) talk with the Devil, and sailors believe something like it, and it always makes my heart start to hear it, especially on the seashore." Then he added, "Look! how muggy it is behind Pencaer. You'll bring a gale, and I always feel pity for the sailors afloat when a sou'-wester rages in the channel behind it." When the great Divine and Martyr, Bishop Ferrar, of St. David's, was burnt alive at Carmarthen in 1555, amongst other pretences for his destruction he was accused of being a Magician, and "teaching his infant son to talk with the Devil by means of whistling." In the old days of sailing ships, wind was an agent of great value; and sometimes sailors whistled for a wind, and this whistling was considered a direct invocation to "the prince of the power of the air" to exert himself on their behalf. I have heard of an old man who is still alive who believes that the devil has some control over wind and rain. THE MOON. There are still lingering in Wales many beliefs and practices with respect to the moon. It is considered unlucky to see the new moon the first time through the window, and many persons go out of doors to see her and show her a piece of money to insure good luck while that moon lasts. I was told by an old gentleman in Cardiganshire that he had seen many taking off their hats and bowing to the new moon; some ladies also make a curtsey to her, and it is considered very lucky to see her over the right shoulder. If a person wishes anything when he sees the new moon after New Year's Day, his wish will be granted to him. Putting a Hen to Sit.--A hen is put to sit so as to get the chick out of the egg at the waxing, and not at the waning of the moon, as it is believed that the young birds are strong or weak according to the age of the moon when they are hatched. Sowing.--There are still many people who are very particular to sow their seeds in their gardens and their fields during the first quarter of the moon, owing to the idea that the seed will then germinate quicker, and grow stronger than when the moon is on the wane. I knew a farmer--a native of Llanfynydd, in Carmarthenshire--who was always very careful to sow his wheat during the first quarter or the waxing of the moon, and it is a well-known fact that he had always a good crop at harvest time. There are also people who are very particular about having their hair cut just before or about full moon so that it might grow better afterwards. When a child, I was told that the dark object which is to be seen in the moon is a man who was taken up there as a punishment for gathering firewood on the Sabbath Day. WEATHER SIGNS, SEASONS. The cat sitting with her back to the fire is considered to be a sign of snow. The cock crowing on rainy weather is a sign of fair weather for the rest of the day. Sea-gulls flying seaward betoken fair weather; when they fly landward, a storm is coming. When the crane flies against the stream, that is, up the river towards its source, it is considered a sign of rain; but the same bird going down the river, is a sign of fair weather. The same is said of the heron. To see ducks and geese flap their wings and dive wildly about is a sign of rain. Crows flying low portend rain; but if they fly high in the air it is a sign of fair weather. The same is said of swallows. Other rain signs are the woodpecker's screech; and the cows running wildly about. If the mountain ponies leave the low and sheltered valleys and return to the mountains during hard weather, it is a sign of a change in the weather. The sheep flocking together is a sign of rough weather. According to the old Welsh saying the rainbow appearing in the sky in the morning portends rain; and in the afternoon fair weather:-- "Bwa'r arch y bore, Aml a hir gawode; Bwa'r arch prydnawn, Tywydd teg a gawn." Rainbow in the morning, Frequent and long showers; Rainbow in the afternoon, Fair weather we shall have. Ceredigion, in "Bye-Gones," August 2nd, 1905, says: "All along the Merioneth and Cardiganshire Coasts farmers watch the sea carefully in harvest time. If there be not a cloud in the sky; if the wind be in a dry quarter; and if the sea be of cerulean blue, if the margin be discoloured and muddy, the farmers know that rain is approaching and will probably be on them before nightfall." If distant mountains are clearly seen, rain may be expected; but if the mountains appear as if they were far off, it is a sign of fine weather. When the smoke from the chimney falls down toward the ground, instead of rising upward, it is a sign that rainy weather will soon follow; but if the smoke goes upward straight, it is a sign of fair weather. In the evening, when the horizon in the west is tinged with a ruddy glow it is a sign that fair and dry weather will come. In the summer, when the atmosphere is dense and heavy it is a sign of a thunder-storm. Rough weather may be expected when the wind blows the dust about, and throws down people's hats. When the stone floors are damp and are long in drying after having been washed is a sign of fair weather. It is also considered a good sign to see large numbers of white butterflies. Another good sign of fine weather is the sun setting red and clear. Bread and butter falling on the floor upside down signifies "rain is near," according to some folks. When the moon's horns are turned up, it is a sign of fine weather; if they are turned down rain is coming. When the face of the moon is partially obscured by a light thin vapour rain is coming. Welsh people in country places generally expect a change of weather when the moon changes; and I have just been informed at Llanilar, that a new moon on a wet Saturday, brings wet weather, but that, on the other hand, a new moon on a fine Saturday, brings fine weather. By Christmas, the days are said to have lengthened "a cock's stride." The following Welsh weather sayings I often heard when a boy:-- "Chwefrol chwyth, Chwytha'r deryn oddiar ei nyth." (February's blast Blows the bird from its nest.) "Mawrth a ladd, Ebrill a fling." (March kills, April flays.) If the hazel (collen) blooms well it is a sign of a fruitful year. "A NUTTY YEAR." In Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, it is believed that if nuts will be numerous, many children will be born that year. A MILD WINTER. I have met many people all over Wales who think that a very mild winter is not good, and they repeat the old saying:-- "Gaeaf glas, mynwent fras." which means that "When the winter is green, many funerals will be seen." BIRDS AND BEASTS LORE. THE CUCKOO. It is believed in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire by many, especially old people, that the cuckoo does not go away from this country in winter, but sleeps in some sheltered place. When a boy, I often heard the following ditty:-- "Amser y gwcw yw Ebrill a Mai, A hanner Mehefin, chwi wyddoch bob rhai." (The Cuckoo's time is April and May, And half of June, as all know, I daresay). The cuckoo making its appearance before the leaves are on the hawthorn bush is a sign of a bad year; and for the bird not to appear at its usual time is also a bad sign; hence: "Gwcw Glamme, Cosyn dime." When you hear the cuckoo for the first time in the season it is very important to have money in your pocket in order to secure good luck for the coming year. People turn the money in their pockets with their hands, and sometimes toss a piece into the air. It is also considered very lucky to hear this bird for the first time when you are standing on green grass; but if you are on the road or on bare ground, it is otherwise. I have met people who do not like to hear the cuckoo for the first time before they get up from bed in the morning. To see the bird coming to the door is also regarded as an evil omen by some. A woman in North Cardiganshire informed me that a cuckoo came to the door before her father died. The cuckoo is supposed to be accompanied by the wryneck known in Welsh as Gwas-y-Gwcw. If we are to believe an old legend, the cuckoo in former times used to begin to sing at Nevern, in Pembrokeshire, on the 7th of April, patron day of that parish; and George Owen of Henllys, who lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth, says, "I might well here omit an old report as yet fresh, of this odious bird, that in the old world the parish priest of the Church would not begin mass until this bird, called the citizen's ambassador, had first appeared and began her note, on a stone called St. Byrnach's Stone, being curiously wrought with sundry sorts of knots, standing upright in the Church-yard of the parish, and one year staying very long, and the priest and the people expecting her accustomed coming (for I account this bird of the feminine gender) came at last, lighting on the said stone, her accustomed preaching place, and being scarce able once to sound the note, presently fell dead." According to another old legend, this stone upon which the cuckoo began her note, was at first intended by St. David for Llanddewi Brefi, but St. Brynach prevailed upon him to leave it at Nevern. The Rev. J. T. Evans, Rector of Stow, gives this legend in "The Church Plate of Pembrokeshire." THE SWALLOW--Y WENNOL. Many superstitions which cluster round the Swallow, have descended to us from remote antiquity; and among the Romans this bird was sacred to the household gods and the family. In Wales, it was formerly believed that the swallow, like the cuckoo, slept through the winter. This bird is also supposed to bring good fortune to the house upon which it builds its nest. If, however, the bird forsakes its old nest on a house, it is considered a sign of ill-luck. It is also most unlucky to break a swallow's nest. "Y neb a doro nyth y wenol Ni wel fwyniant yn dragwyddol." (Whoever breaks a swallow's nest, Never, never shall be blest.) ROBIN REDBREAST. "Cursed is the man who kills a Robin," and ill-luck follows those who take the eggs of this little bird. The following Carmarthenshire story about the robin appeared in Bye Gones, vol. 1. p. 173:-- "Far, far away, is a land of woe, darkness, spirits of evil, and fire. Day by day does the little bird bear in its bill a drop of water to quench the flame. So near to the burning stream does he fly that his dear little feathers are scorched; and hence is he named Bronchuddyn (Qu. Bronrhuddyn), i.e., breastburned, or breastscorched. To serve little children, the robin dares approach the infernal pit. No good child will hurt the devoted benefactor of man. The robin returns from the land of fire, and, therefore, he feels the cold of winter far more than the other birds. He shivers in brumal blasts, and hungry he chirps before your door. Oh, my child, then, in pity throw a few crumbs to the poor redbreast." This old Welsh legend has been rendered into verse by the poet Whittier. THE WREN--Y DRYW. It seems from the following Welsh rhyme that the wren was also a sacred bird:-- "Pwy bynag doro nyth y dryw, Ni wel byth mo wyneb Duw." (Whoever breaks a wren's nest Shall never know the Heavenly rest.) It was once customary in Pembrokeshire to carry a wren round the houses during the Christmas holidays. I have given a full account of this custom in another chapter. How the wren became king of the birds, is related in the next paragraph. THE OWL. The Owl is rather unpopular in Wales, and its hooting is considered a sign of ill-luck, if not of death. This bird is also supposed to be "hateful unto all birds." To account for the unpopularity of the owl there are many legends. The following is given by Mr. H. W. Evans, Solva, in the "Pembrokeshire Antiquities," p. 49: "At one time all the birds unanimously decided to elect unto themselves a king; and (probably with an eye on the eagle) they resolved to crown monarch the bird that would soar the highest. On a signal being given they all started on their upward flight. After a very exciting contest the eagle was seen considerably higher than all other birds. Having reached the highest altitude possible he, in a loud voice, proclaimed himself king. 'No, no, not yet,' said a wren which had perched on the eagle's back and had now flown a few yards higher. 'Come up here,' said the wren; but the eagle, having exhausted his strength, was unable to raise himself, and so the wren became king. When the birds beheld their king, they became very sad and sorrowful, and they cried bitterly. Afterwards they met in solemn conclave, and decided to drown their king in tears. So they procured a pan to hold their tears, and the birds gathered and craned their necks over the pan and wept. But the owl clumsily mounted the edge of the pan, thereby upsetting it, and spilled the tears. The birds became enraged at this, and swore vengeance against the owl, and ever since he has not dared to show himself during the day, and is obliged to seek his food at night, when all other birds are asleep." According to another version of this tale which is extant in Carmarthenshire, the wren in the contest for the kingship fell to the ground and hurt himself. The birds in compassion, prepared healing broth to cure the little bird--each bird putting something in the pot towards making this broth--the owl through his clumsiness was guilty of upsetting this pot containing the healing broth. According to the Mabinogion, (see Math the son of Mathonwy) a woman named Blodeuwedd, for her wickedness towards her husband was turned into an owl; "and because of the shame thou hast done unto Llew Llaw Gyffes, thou shalt never show thy face in the light of day henceforth; and that through fear of all the other birds.... Now Blodeuwedd is an owl in the language of this present time, and for this reason is the owl hateful unto all birds." THE RAVEN. To see one raven crossing the road when a person starts on a journey, is a bad omen; two ravens, however, are considered lucky. THE MAGPIE. I know many people in country places who are pleased to see two or three magpies going together from left to right when a person starts on a journey, as they regard it an omen of good luck. But to see a magpie crossing from the right to the left means ill-luck. Fortunately, however, a person can make void this bad luck by making a cross on the road and spit in the middle of it. A raven crossing after the magpie also makes void the bad luck, according to some; but the superstitions about the magpie and the raven are very similar. Should a magpie descend on the back of a cow on the evening the animal is taken into the cow-house for the winter, it is a bad sign; but should this occur when the cow is taken out from the cowhouse for the summer, it is a good omen. An old woman at Yspytty Ystwyth, informed me that the magpie was a bird of evil omen; for on the very day before her husband was killed at the mines, she saw three magpies close to the window. THE MAGPIE AND THE WOOD-PIGEON. "The Magpie, observing the slight knowledge of nest building possessed by the wood-pigeon, kindly undertook the work of giving his friend a lesson in the art, and as the lesson proceeded, the Wood-pigeon, bowing, cooed out:-- Mi wn! Mi wn! Mi wn! I know! I know! I know! The instructor was at first pleased with his apt pupil, and proceeded with his lesson, but before another word could be uttered, the bird, swelling with pride at its own importance and knowledge, said again:-- I know! I know! I know! The Magpie was annoyed at this ignorant assurance, and with bitter sarcasm said: 'Since you know, do it then,' and this is why the wood pigeon's nest is so untidy in our days. In its own mind it knew all about nest building and was above receiving instruction, and hence its clumsy way of building its nest. This fable gave rise to a proverb, "As the wood pigeon said to the magpie: 'I know.'" Iolo MSS., page 567. THE PIGEON. It is said that if a sick person asks for a pigeon's pie, or the flesh of a pigeon, it is a sign that his death is near. There is also a superstition that people cannot die in ease if there are pigeon's feathers in their pillows. A writer in "Bye-Gones" refers to the case of a woman who died in 1803 at a farm-house called Southern Pills in the Parish of Lawrenny, Pembrokeshire, and states that on her death-bed the nurse snatched the pillow from under her head. THE BEES. The bees understand Welsh; for a woman on the borders of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire informed me that they have a Queen, who leads, and that they follow, when she bids them to come in these words:-- "Dewch, Dewch, Dewch." (Come, come, come.) There are many superstitions about bees. There was a custom once of telling the bees of a death in the family, and they were even put in mourning. It was once considered by some very lucky to find that a strange swarm of bees had arrived in the garden or tree; if, however, they alighted on a dead tree it was an ill omen. THE BEES AND ST. DAVID. "Modomnoc, a disciple of St. David, went to Ireland, and a large swarm of bees followed him, and settled on the prow of the ship where he sat. They supplied him with meat during his Irish Mission; but he, not wishing to enjoy their company by fraud, brought them back to Wales, when they fled to their usual place, and David blessed Modomnoc for his humility. Three times the bees went and returned, and the third time holy David dismissed Modomnoc with the bees, and blessed them, saying that henceforth bees should prosper in Ireland, and should no longer increase in Glyn Rosyn. 'This,' adds Rhyddmarch, 'is found to be the fact: swarms forthwith decreased at David's; but Ireland, in which, until that time, bees could never live, is now enriched with plenty of honey. It is manifested that they could not live there before; for if you throw Irish earth or stone into the midst of the bees, they disperse, and, flying, they will shun it.'--"Pilgrimage to St. David's." THE COCK. It is very curious that some people think that it is very lucky to possess a white cock and a black cat, whilst others look upon them with extreme disfavour. "Na chadw byth yng ynghylch dy dy, Na cheiliog gwyn na chath ddu." (Never keep about thy house, A white cock, nor a black cat.) A cock crowing in the day-time before the door announces the visit of a friend; but should he crow at night before or about midnight, it is considered a sign of death. Cock-fighting was once common in Wales, and spots have been pointed out to me here and there, in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire where such fights took place. THE CAT. In some parts of the country a black cat is looked upon with extreme disfavour; in other parts again people say that a black cat keeps trouble out of the house. "Cath ddu yn cadw gofid ma's o'r ty." It was thought that cats born in May bring snakes into the house. If the cat washed her face, strangers might be expected. FLYING SERPENTS--GWIBEROD. The Welsh name Gwiber means a flying snake, or a flying serpent, an imaginary creature supposed to be a kind of dragon. There are traditions of these dangerous creatures in several parts of Wales; and it was formerly believed that a snake, by drinking the milk of a woman, became transformed into a flying serpent. This superstition was very common in the southern part of Cardiganshire until very recently. A few years ago when staying for a short time at Talybont in the northern part of the same county, a rocky spot was pointed out to me, about a mile from the village, where, according to tradition, a Gwiber which attacked people, had a lurking place in former times. There is also a tradition in the parish of Trelech, Carmarthenshire, that a Gwiber lurked in that neighbourhood once upon a time. At last the creature was shot. A FLYING SERPENT AT NEWCASTLE EMLYN. The most remarkable story of this kind is the well-known tradition of the appearance of a gwiber or Flying Serpent in the neighbourhood of Newcastle Emlyn, in the Vale of Teivi. This interesting small town boasts of a fine old castle, or at least the ruins of one, and it was upon the top of this castle the flying serpent or dragon alighted and rested. According to some, this took place as late as the eighteenth century, on a fine summer day. The flying creature was seen about mid-day, and as there was a fair at Newcastle Emlyn that day the town was crowded with people. The appearance of the "Gwiber" or dragon terrified the people, both old and young, and they feared that their lives were in jeopardy. The strange creature's skin was covered by a hard and stony substance or shell, except the navel. The people were afraid of attempting to kill this flying monster, and did not know what to do. Fortunately, a valiant soldier who had been fighting for his country on land and sea, volunteered to put an end to the life of this strange and terrific creature, or die in the attempt. So taking off all his clothes, except his trousers, he proceeded with his gun in hand and stood right in the river. He then took a good aim at the creature's navel which was the only part of its body not covered with shell. As soon as the soldier fired, in order to escape an attack from the flying serpent, he left a red flannel on the surface of the water, whilst he himself dived into the river and, at last, by swimming against the current, succeeded to land safely on the bank on the other side. The serpent fell or rushed into the river and began to attack the red flannel, but it was soon discovered that the creature had been mortally wounded, for the water of the river was coloured with its blood. A version of this story appeared in "Y Brython," fifty years ago, and another version of it written by the Rev. W. Eilir Evans, appeared in a Welsh book called "Hirnos Gauaf," published in 1899. CATTLE. Many of the farmers are very much perturbed when a cow brings forth two calves. A few years ago a farmer's wife in the parish of Llangybi, near Lampeter, informed me that one of the cows had twin calves, and that she was very anxious to sell the animal as soon as possible, as such an incident was considered an omen of ill-luck or a very great misfortune to the family or the owner. This superstition is very general in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire; but I have heard that in some parts of North Wales a contrary view is taken of such an event. When the first calf of the season happens to be a male one, it is a sign of a successful year to its owner, but the contrary, if the calf is a she one. If the new born calf is seen by the mistress of the house with its head towards her, as she enters the cowhouse to view her new charge and property, it is a good omen. It is also considered a good sign to find the cattle wild and difficult to manage on the way to the fair; for you'll sell them to your advantage. THE MILK-WHITE MILCH COW. The milk-white Milch Cow gave enough of milk to every one who desired it; and however frequently milked, or by whatever number of persons, she was never found deficient. All persons who drank of her milk, were healed of every illness; from being fools they became wise, and from being wicked, became happy. The cow went round the world; and wherever she appeared, she filled with milk all the vessels that could be found; leaving calves behind her for all the wise and happy. It was from her that all the milch cows in the world were obtained. After traversing the Island of Britain, for the benefit and blessing of country and kindred, she reached the Vale of Towy; where, tempted by fine appearance and superior condition, the natives sought to kill and eat her; but just as they were proceeding to effect their purpose, she vanished from between their hands, and was never seen again. A house still remains in the locality, called Y Fuwch Laethwen-Lefrith, (the Milk-white Milch Cow).--Iolo M.S.S., page 475. There is a version of this well-known legend of the mythic cow, located near Aberdovey. According to the Aberdovey tale, the cow was of Fairy origin, and disappeared into Barfog Lake when a farmer attempted to slaughter the animal. THE ASS. I was told when a boy that the stripe over the shoulders of this animal was made by our Lord when He rode to Jerusalem. CHAPTER IX. WITCHES, WIZARDS, PROPHECIES, DIVINATION, DREAMS. WITCHES. The popular belief in witchcraft, is often alluded to by Shakespeare. In times gone by witches held dreaded sway over the affairs of men, perhaps more or less in almost every country; for they were suspected to have entered into a league with Satan, in order to obtain power to do evil, and it was thought that they possessed some uncanny knowledge which was used by them to injure people, especially those whom they hated. It was also believed that they could cause thunder and lightning, could travel on broomsticks through the air, and even transform themselves and others into animals, especially into hares. A good many other imaginary things were also placed to the credit of witches. In the beginning of last century, and even up to the middle of it, witchcraft was very strongly believed in in many parts of Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, Radnorshire, and Montgomeryshire. Even at the present time, there are some who believe that there is in it something more than a mere deception. I have met several who still believe in it. Many well-known characters were proud of being looked upon as witches and conjurors; because they were feared as such and could influence people to be charitable to them. Many an old woman supposed to be a witch, took advantage of the credulity of the people, went about the farm houses to request charity in the way of oat-meal, butter, milk, etc., and could get almost anything, especially from the women, from fear of being witched; for it was believed that these witches could bring misfortune on families, cause sickness, and bring a curse on both men and animals; so that many used to imagine that they were bewitched whenever anything went wrong, even a slight mischance. Unfaithful young men would soon fulfil their promise when they found out that the girl they had slighted was consulting a witch, so that there was some good even in such a foolish superstition as witchcraft. WITCHES SELLING THEMSELVES TO THE DEVIL. In order to become witches it was believed in Cardiganshire that some old women sold themselves to the Father of Lies by giving to His Satanic Majesty the bread of the Communion. The following story I heard about three years ago, and my informant was Mr. John Davies, Gogoyan Farm, a, farmer who had heard it from old people:-- Sometime in the beginning of the last century, two old dames attended the morning service at Llanddewi Brefi Church, and partook of the Holy Communion; but instead of eating the sacred bread like other communicants, they kept it in their mouths and went out. Then they walked round the Church outside nine times, and at the ninth time the Evil One came out from the Church wall in the form of a frog, to whom they gave the bread from their mouths, and by doing this wicked thing they were supposed to be selling themselves to Satan and become witches. It was also added that after this they were sometimes seen swimming in the river Teivi in form of hares! According to Cadrawd, there was an old man in North Pembrokeshire, who used to say that he obtained the power of bewitching in the following manner:--The bread of his first Communion he pocketed. He made pretence at eating it first of all, and then put it in his pocket. When he went out from the service there was a dog meeting him by the gate, to which he gave the bread, thus selling his soul to the Devil. Ever after, he possessed the power to bewitch. A SERVANT MAID WITCHED IN A CHAPEL. An old woman of about eighty years of age, named Mrs. Mary Thomas, Bengal, near Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, informed me about four years ago, that when she was a young girl, the Gwaun Valley in that county was full of witches, more especially of the descendants of one particularly malicious old woman who in her time had proved a terror to the neighbourhood. On one occasion, a well-known family who practised the black art and were guilty of witchcraft, wanted to become members of the Baptist Chapel at Caersalem, and at last they were admitted; but after being received as members of the chapel, they were ten times worse than before. One witch during Divine Service, even on the very day she became a communicant, witched a young woman who was a fellow servant of my informant at a farm called Gellifor, near Cilgwyn. The witch was sitting behind, and in the very next pew to the young woman she witched, which caused the unfortunate girl to rush out from the chapel, and was seen running about the road almost wild and mad. After she had been wild and ill for some time, and every remedy having failed to recover her, her father at last went to Cwrt-y-Cadno, over forty miles away in Carmarthenshire, to consult Dr. Harries, a well-known wizard and a medical man. The conjurer informed the man that his daughter had been witched in chapel by an old woman who was a witch, and he showed him the whole scene in a magic mirror! In order to unwitch the girl, and to prevent further witchcraft, the wizard gave the father some paper with mystic words written on it, which the young woman was to wear on her breast. A GIRL WHO WAS BEWITCHED BY THE GYPSIES, NEAR CARMARTHEN. About fifty years ago there was a young woman very ill in the parish of Llanllawddog, Carmarthenshire, but no one could tell what was the matter with her, and the doctor had failed to cure her. At last, her mother went to consult the local wizard, who at that time kept a school in the neighbouring parish of Llanpumpsaint, and lived at a place called Fos-y-Broga. At the woman's request the conjurer accompanied her home to see her daughter. After seeing the girl he entered into a private room alone for a few minutes, and wrote something on a sheet of paper which he folded up and tied it with a thread. This he gave to the woman and directed her to put the thread round her daughter's neck, with the folded paper suspending on her breast. He also told the mother to remember to be at the girl's bedside at twelve o'clock that night. The young woman was put in bed, and the wizard's folded paper on her breast. The mother sat down by the fireside till midnight; and when the clock struck twelve she heard her daughter groaning. She ran at once to the poor girl's bedside, and found her almost dying with pain; but very soon she suddenly recovered and felt as well in health as ever. The conjurer had told the girl's mother that she had been bewitched by the Gypsies, which caused her illness, and warned the young woman to keep away from such vagrants in the future. The Conjurer's paper, which had charmed away her illness was put away safely in a cupboard amongst other papers and books; and many years after this when a cousin of the mother was searching for some will or some other important document, he accidentally opened the wizard's paper and to his surprise found on it written: "Abracadabra, Sickness depart from me." My informant, whose name is Jones, an old farmer in the parish of Llanpumpsaint, vouches for the truth of the above story, and that the young woman was a relation of his. Another old man, named Benjamin Phillips, who lives in the same neighbourhood gave me a similar tale of another girl bewitched by the Gypsies, and recovered by obtaining some wild herbs from a conjurer. Such stories are common all over the country. Certain plants, especially Meipen Fair, were supposed to possess the power of destroying charms. A CARDIGANSHIRE GIRL WHO HAD BEEN WITCHED. I obtained the following story from David Pugh, Erwlwyd, Carmarthenshire, an old farmer who is over 90 years of age:-- A woman from Cardiganshire whose daughter was very ill and thought to have been bewitched, came to the Wizard of Cwrt-y-Cadno, in Carmarthenshire to consult him. The wise man wrote some mystic words on a bit of paper, which he gave to the woman, telling her that if her daughter was not better when she arrived home to come to him again. The woman went home with the paper, and to her great joy found the girl fully recovered from her illness. My informant knew the woman, as she had called at his house. ANOTHER CARDIGANSHIRE WOMAN WITCHED. An old man living in the parish of Llangwyryfon, seven miles from Aberystwyth, named Jenkin Williams, told me the following story six years ago when he was 89 years of age, and vouched for the truth of the account:--A certain woman who lived in that parish was supposed to be a witch, and it was said she had a brother a wizard: Her husband was a shoemaker. Another woman who used to go back and fore to the town of Aberystwyth, with a donkey-cart, refused on one occasion to bring some leather to the supposed witch and her husband. Soon after this, the woman was taken ill, and the shoemaker's wife was suspected of having witched her. The son of the sick woman went to Cwrt-y-Cadno in Carmarthenshire to consult the "Dyn Hysbys." The conjurer told the young man to go home as soon as possible, and that he should see the person who caused his mother's indisposition coming to the house on his return home. When the son reached home who should enter the house but the supposed witch, and as soon as she came in she spoke in Welsh to his mother something as follows:--"Mae'n ddrwg genyf eich bod mor wael, ond chwi wellwch eto, Betti fach." (I am sorry you are so unwell, but you will get well again, Betty dear). The sick woman recovered immediately! A FARMER'S DAUGHTER AT WALTON EAST, IN PEMBROKESHIRE BEWITCHED FOR FIFTEEN YEARS FOR REFUSING ALMS TO AN OLD HAG. Mrs. Mary Williams, Dwrbach, a very old woman, informed me, that about 55 years ago, there was a well-known witch in the neighbourhood of Walton East, and that on one occasion two young women, daughters of a farm in that part of the country, were taken ill quite suddenly, and were supposed to have been witched by this old woman. The mother of the two young women went to the witch and rebuked the old hag, saying: "Old woman, why did you witch my daughters? Come and undo thy wickedness." The old woman replied that she did not do anything to them. But the mother still believing that she was guilty, compelled her to come along with her to the farmhouse and undo her mischief. At last, she came, and when they reached the door of the farmhouse, the witch pronounced these words in Welsh: "Duw ai bendithio hi." (God bless her). Any such expression pronounced by a witch freed the bewitched person or an animal from the spell. One of the two sisters (both of whom were in bed in another room), overheard these words of the old woman, but her sister did not hear or at least did not catch the words. The young woman who heard the supposed witch saying "Duw a'i bendithio hi," got well at once, but her poor sister who missed hearing, instead of recovering went worse, if anything, than before, and continued to keep to her bed for fifteen years. And during all these years she was so strange, that even when her own mother entered her room, she would hide under the bed clothes like a rat, and her food had to be left on her bed for her, for she would not eat in the presence of anybody. At last, the old woman who was thought to have witched the young woman, died, and as the the mortal remains of the witch were decaying in the grave, the girl began to get better, and she soon fully recovered and became quite herself again after fifteen years' illness. My informant added that after recovering, the young woman got married and received £1,500 from her parents on her wedding-day, and that she is still alive (or was very lately) and a wife of a well-to-do farmer. My informant also said that she was well acquainted with the family. MEN WITCHED BY AN OLD LLEDROD HAG. About sixty years ago Thomas Lewis, Garthfawr, between Llanilar and Lledrod, was for some time suffering from almost unbearable bodily pain, and did not know what to do. The general belief was that he had been bewitched by an old woman who was a terror to the neighbourhood; and at last a man went to Llangurig, in Montgomeryshire, to consult a wise man about it. It was found out soon afterwards that as soon as the conjurer was consulted, the sick man fully recovered from his illness, got up from bed, dressed himself, and came down from his bedroom and felt as well as ever, to the very great surprise and joy of all his family and friends. My informant, Thomas Jones, of Pontrhydfendigaid, who knew the man well, vouches for the truth of this story. Mr. Jones also gave me an account of another man who was witched by the same old hag. The wife of Rhys Rhys, Pwllclawdd and her sister were churning all day, but the milk would not turn to butter. Rhys, at last, went to the old witch and asked her to come and undo her mischief, as she had witched the milk. She was very unwilling to come, but Rhys compelled her. When Mrs. Rhys and her sister saw the old witch coming, they ran to hide themselves in a bedroom. The hag took hold of the churn's handle for a few seconds, and the milk turned to excellent butter at once; but poor Rhys who had always been a strong man till then, never enjoyed a day of good health after; for the old hag witched the farmer himself in revenge for compelling her to unwitch the milk. A HORSE WITCHED. Thomas Jones, an old man who is 85 years of age and lives at Pontrhydfendigaid, informed me that about sixty years ago, the old witch was greatly feared by the people of the neighbourhood, as it was generally believed that the hag cursed or witched those whom she disliked. On one occasion, when her neighbour's horse broke through the hedge into her field, she witched the animal for trespassing. The horse was shivering all over and everything was done in vain to cure the poor animal; but the very moment John Morgan, the Llangurig conjurer was consulted, the horse fully recovered, and looked as well as ever. My informant vouches for the truth of this, and says he had seen the horse, and that the man who consulted the conjurer was a friend of his, and, that he even knew the conjurer himself. CATTLE WITCHED. At Mathry in Pembrokeshire, there was a celebrated witch, and people believed that she was often guilty of witching the cattle. On one occasion when a servant maid of a farm-house in the neighbourhood had gone out one morning to milk the cows, she found them in a sitting posture like cats before a fire, and in vain did she try to get them to move. The farmer suspected the witch of having caused this. He went to her at once, and compelled the hag to come and undo her evil trick. She came and told him that there was nothing wrong with the cows, and she simply put her hand on the back of each animal, and they immediately got up, and there was no further trouble. HORSES KILLED BY WITCHCRAFT IN RADNORSHIRE. Mr. Theophilus, a blacksmith, at Cilcwm, in Carmarthenshire, 80 years of age, informed me that he well remembered a Radnorshire farmer who had lost two horses, one after the other, and as he had suspected that the animals were "killed by witchcraft" he decided to go all the way to Cwrt-y-cadno to consult the wise man about it. The man travelled all the way from Radnorshire, and in passing the small village of Cilcwm, where my informant lived, begged the blacksmith to accompany him to the conjurer who lived in another parish some distance off. The wizard told him that it was such a pity he had not come sooner, "for," said he, "if you had come to me yesterday, I could have saved your third horse, but now it is too late, as the animal is dying. But for the future take this paper and keep it safely and you will have your animals protected." I was also informed that farmers came all the way from Herefordshire to consult the wise man of Cwrt-y-Cadno. SHEEP KILLED BY AN OLD WITCH. Mrs. Edwards, an old woman who lives at Yspytty Ystwyth, in Cardiganshire, informed me that she knew an old witch who lived in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig. One day, this hag saw two shepherds passing her cottage on their way to the mountain with some sheep. The old woman espied one particular lamb and begged one of the shepherds to give the animal to her as a present, but the young man refused her request. "Very well," said the witch, "thou wilt soon loose both the lamb and its mother, and thou shalt repent for thus refusing me." Before reaching the end of the journey to the mountain, the sheep and her lamb died, and it was all put down to the hag's account, for it was believed that she had witched them to death in revenge. A SHIP WITCHED. On a particular occasion nearly sixty years ago, a large number of the leading gentry and others from all parts of Pembrokeshire went to witness the launch of H. M. Ship "Cæsar," at Pembroke Dock. Among the crowd there was an old woman named "Betty Foggy" who was believed to possess the power of witching. When Betty noticed a lot of gentry going up the steps to the grand stand, she followed suit with an independent air; but she was stopped by the police. She struggled hard to have her way, but was forced back. She felt very angry that she had to yield, and shouted out loudly: "All right, the ship will not go off," but the old hag's threat was only laughed at. The usual formalities were gone through, and weights dropped, and amidst cheering the ship began to glide away--but not for long, for the "Cæsar" soon became to stand and remained so till the next tide when she got off by the assistance of some ships afloat, and other means. The old witch was delighted, and people believed that she was the cause of the failure to launch the ship. MILK THAT WOULD NOT CHURN AND THE WITCH. Many believe, and some still believe, especially in Cardiganshire, that when milk would not churn that witches had cursed it. An old woman at Ystrad Meurig, who was supposed to be a witch, called one day at a farm house and begged for butter, but being refused she went away in a very bad temper. The next time they churned the milk would not turn to butter, and they had to throw it out as they were afraid of giving it to the pigs. When they were churning the second time again the milk would not turn to butter as usual. But instead of throwing out the milk as before, they went to the old woman and forced her to come to the farmhouse and undo her spell. She came and put her hand on the churn, and the milk successfully turned to butter. My informant was Mrs. Edwards, Ysbytty Ystwyth. ANOTHER CARDIGANSHIRE STORY OF MILK THAT WOULD NOT TURN TO BUTTER. The following account was given me by Mr. Jenkin Williams, Llangwyryfon:-- There was a man and his family living at a cottage called Penlon, a small place just enough to keep one cow. The name of the man was John Jones; and on one occasion when he and his wife were trying to churn they failed to do so, or in other words the milk would not turn into butter. At last J. Jones went to Cwrt-y-Cadno, in Carmarthenshire to consult the "Dyn Hysbys." The wizard as he often did, gave the man a bit of paper with some mystic words on it, and told him not to show it to anybody, as the charm could not work after showing the paper to others. As he was passing on his way home through a place called Cwm Twrch, he met with a woman who accosted him and asked him where he had been to. The man was rather shy, but at last he admitted that he had been to Cwrt-y-Cadno to consult the conjurer, and he told the woman everything. "I well knew," said the woman, "You had been to Cwrt-y-Cadno, for only those who go to the conjurer pass this way; show me the paper which he gave to you, for I am a cousin of the conjurer." And the man showed it to her. "The paper is alright," said she, "Take it home with you as soon as you can." He went home with great joy, but unfortunately the churning still proved a failure. Instead of undertaking another journey himself again, J. Jones went to his neighbour Jenkin Williams, and begged him to go to the conjurer to obtain another paper for him, and at last J. Williams went. The conjurer, however, was not willing to give another paper without £1 cash for it; but he gave it at last for a more moderate price, when my informant pleaded the poverty of his friend. When Williams asked the wise man what was the reason that the milk would not churn, the reply was that an enemy had cursed it by wishing evil to his neighbour. When this second paper was taken home (which was not shown to anybody on the road), the milk was churned most successfully, and splendid butter was obtained. In some places a hot smoothing iron thrown into the churn was effective against the witch's doings. BURYING THE CHARM. In some of the stories I have already given a paper obtained from a conjurer in the way of charm was considered very effective to undo the witch's evil doings; but from the following story, which I obtained from David Pugh, Erwlwyd, it seems that it was necessary in some cases to bury this bit of paper in the ground. It was also thought a few generations ago, that a letter hidden under a stone was a good thing to keep away both witches and evil spirits and to secure good luck to a house. Many years ago in the neighbourhood of Llandilo, Carmarthenshire, a young farmer was engaged to be married to a daughter of another farmer; but a few days before the wedding-day the bride and bridegroom and their families quarrelled, so that the wedding did not take place. After this, ill-luck attended the young farmer day after day; many of his cattle died till he became quite a poor man very depressed in spirit. The young woman who had been engaged to him was a supposed witch so she was suspected of having caused all his misfortunes. His friends advised him to consult a wizard, and he did so, as there was a "dyn hysbys" close by at Llandilo, in those days, so it was said. The wizard informed the farmer that he and his friends were right in their suspicions about the young woman, and that his losses had been brought about by her who had once been engaged to be married to him. Then the wizard wrote something on a sheet of paper and handed it to the young farmer directing him to bury this paper down in the ground underneath the gate-post at the entrance to his farmyard. The young man went home and buried the paper as directed by the wizard, and from that time forth nothing went wrong. PROTECTIVES AGAINST WITCHCRAFT. Mrs. Mary Thomas, Bengal, near Fishguard, informed me that it was customary when she was young to counteract the machinations of witches by killing a mare and take out the heart and open and burn it, having first filled it up with pins and nails. This compelled the witch to undo her work. Mrs. Thomas also added that when the heart was burning on such occasions the smoke would go right in the direction of the witch's house. Another old woman near Fishguard, informed the Rev. J. W. Evans, a son of the Rector of Jordanston, that she remembered an old woman who was thought to be guilty of witching poor farmers' cattle. At last she was forced to leave the district by the people who believed her to be a witch. But soon after she left a cow died, and even her calves were ill. People took out the cow's heart and burnt it, which forced the hag to return to heal the calves. A FISHGUARD WITCH DISCOMFITED. Another way of protecting oneself from witchcraft was to keep a nail on the floor under the foot when a witch came to the door. Mr. David Rees, baker at Fishguard, told me a few years ago that there was once a particular witch in that town who was very troublesome, as she was always begging, and that people always gave to her, as they were afraid of offending her. She often came to beg from his mother, who at last, as advised by her friends, procured a big nail from a blacksmith's shop. She put the nail under her foot on the floor, the next time the old witch came to the door begging. The old hag came again as usual to beg and to threaten; but my informant's mother sent her away empty handed, saying, "Go away from my door old woman, I am not afraid of you now, for I have my foot on a nail." She kept her foot on the nail till the witch went out of sight, and by doing so felt herself safe from the old hag's spells. Nails or a horseshoe or an old iron were considered preservatives against witchcraft. A CILCWM STORY. Mr. Theophilus, the old blacksmith, at Cilcwm, in Carmarthenshire, told me that when he was a boy the cattle had been witched by an enemy. They would not touch the grass in the field of their own farm; but whenever put in any field of another farm they would graze splendidly. My informant's mother could not understand this, and she felt very much distressed about it. At last she took the advice of friends and went to consult the Wizard of Cwrt-y-Cadno, who informed her that an enemy with whom she was well acquainted, had witched her cattle. Then he advised her to go home and buy a new knife, (one that had never been used before), and go directly to a particular spot in the field where a solitary "pren cerdinen" (mountain ash) grew, and cut it with this new knife. This mountain ash, and some of the cows' hair, as well as some "witch's butter" she was to tie together and burn in the fire; and that by performing this ceremony or charm, she should see the person who was guilty of witching her cows, coming to the door or the window of her house. My informant told me that his mother carried out these directions, and that everything happened as the wizard had foretold her. After this, there was nothing wrong with the cows. WITCHES AND THE MOUNTAIN ASH. Of all things to frustrate the evil designs of witches the best was a piece of mountain ash, or as it is called in Welsh "pren cerdinen." The belief in mountain ash is very old in Wales, and the tree was held sacred in ancient times, and some believe that the Cross of our Lord was made of it. Witches had a particular dread of this wood, so that a person who carried with him a branch of "pren cerdinen" was safe from their spells; and it is believed in Wales, as well as in parts of England, that the witch who was touched with a branch of it was the victim carried off by the devil when he came next to claim his tribute--once every seven years. I was told a few years ago at Talybont, that many in that part of Cardiganshire grew mountain ash in their gardens, and that a man carrying home a little pig was seen with a branch of this wood to protect the animal from witchcraft. In South Pembrokeshire many carry in their pockets a twig of the mountain ash when going on a journey late at night; and a woman at Llanddewi Brefi, in Cardiganshire, Miss Anne Edwards, Penbontgoian, informed me about seven years ago that when she was a child the neighbourhood was full of witches, but nothing was so effective against them as the mountain ash; no witch would come near it. A man travelling on horseback, especially at night, was very much exposed to the old hags, and the horse was more so than even the man riding the animal; but a branch or even a twig of the mountain ash carried in hand and held over the horse's head, protected both the animal and the rider against all the spells of witches. The same woman informed me that on one occasion, the servant man and the servant girl of Llanio Isaf, in that parish, were going to the mill one night, but all of a sudden they found both themselves and their horse and cart right on the top of a hedge. This was the work of the witches. After this, they carried a mountain ash, so as to be safe. Another old woman in Pembrokeshire, named Mrs. Mary Williams, Dwrbach, informed me that a notorious old hag who was supposed to be a witch, was coming home on one occasion from Haverfordwest fair, in a cart with a farmer who had kindly taken her up. As they were driving along the road between Haverfordwest and Walton East, they happened to notice three teams harrowing in a field, and the farmer who was driving the cart asked the witch whether she could by her spells stop the teams? "I could stop two of them," said she, "but the third teamster has a piece of mountain ash fast to his whip, so I cannot do anything to him." Mrs. Mary Williams also informed me that when she was a little girl her mother always used to say to her and the other children on the last day of December: "Now children, go out and fetch a good supply of mountain ash to keep the witches away on New Year's Day," and branches of it were stuck into the wall about the door, windows and other places outside. Then witches coming to beg on New Year's Day could do no harm to the inmates of the house. In Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, and North Pembrokeshire, the mountain ash is called "pren cerdinen," but it was once known in the South of Pembrokeshire, where the people are not of Welsh origin, as "rontree"; and the name "rowan" is still retained in some parts of England, which is derived according to Dr. Jameson, from the old Norse "runa," a secret, or charm, on account of its being supposed to have the power to avert the evil eye, etc. DRAWING BLOOD FROM A WITCH. Drawing blood from a witch by anyone incapacitated the old hag, from working out her evil designs upon the person who spilt her blood. Many years ago a farmer from the neighbourhood of Swyddffynon, in Cardiganshire, was coming home late one night from Tregaron, on horseback. As he was crossing a bridge called Pont Einon (once noted for its witches), a witch somehow or other managed to get up behind him on the horse's back; but he took out his pocket-knife with which he drew blood from the witch's arm, and he got rid of the old hag. After this, she was unable to witch people. My informant was Mr. John Jones, of Pontrhydfendigaid. THE TRANSFORMATION OF WITCHES. Witches were supposed to transform themselves into animals, especially that of an hare. And this belief is a very old one, for Giraldus Cambrensis seven hundred years ago in his "Topography of Ireland," (Bonn's edition) says: "It has also been a frequent complaint, from old times as well as in the present, that certain hags in Wales, as well as in Ireland and Scotland, changed themselves into the shape of hares, that, sucking teats under this counterfeit form, they might stealthily rob other people's milk." Tales illustrative of this very old belief are still extant in Wales, and John Griffiths, Maenclochog, in Pembrokeshire, related to me the story of: A WITCH WHO APPEARED IN THE FORM OF AN HARE EVERY MORNING TO A SERVANT MAID AT MILKING TIME. Griffiths informed me that when his mother was young, she was engaged as a servant maid at a small gentleman's seat, called Pontfaen, in the Vale of Gwaun. But whenever she went out early in the morning to milk the cows, an old witch who lived in the neighbourhood always made her appearance in the form of an hare, annoying the girl very much. At last she informed her master of it, and at once the gentleman took his gun and shot the hare; but somehow, the animal escaped, though he succeeded in wounding and drawing blood from her. After this, the young woman went to see the old hag who was supposed to be a witch, Maggie by name, and found her in bed with a sore leg. A WITCH IN THE FORM OF AN HARE SHOT BY A FARM SERVANT. The following tale was told me by a Mrs. Edwards, Ysbytty Ystwyth, in Cardiganshire:-- An old witch who lived at Tregaron, went to Trecefel, a large farm in the neighbourhood, to beg for the use of a small corner of a field to grow some potatoes for herself. The farmer himself was away from home at the time, but his wife was willing, as she was afraid of offending the witch. The head servant, however, refused her request, and sent her away, which naturally made her very angry, and in departing she used threatening words. One day, soon after this, the same servant was out in the field, and he noticed a hare in the hedge continually looking at him, and watching all his movements. It occurred to him at last that this creature was the old witch he had offended, appearing in the form of a hare, and somehow or other he had not the least doubt in his mind about it, so he procured a gun and fired, but the shot did not inflict any injury on the hare. In the evening, when he met some of his friends at a house in the village, the man servant told them everything about the hare and of his suspicion that she was the witch. One of his friends told him that ordinary shots or bullets were no good to shoot a witch with, but that it was necessary for him to load his gun with a bent four-penny silver coin. He tried this, and the next time he fired the hare rolled over screaming terribly. Soon after this, people called to see the old woman in her cottage, and found that she had such a wound in her leg that she could hardly move. Dr. Rowland was sent for, and when he came and examined her leg he found a fourpenny silver coin in two pieces in it. "You old witch," said he, "I am not going to take any trouble with you again: death is good enough for your sort," and die she did. The possibility of injuring or marking the witch in her assumed form so deeply that the bruise remained a mark on her in her natural form was a common belief. A WITCH IN THE FORM OF A HARE HUNTED BY A PEMBROKESHIRE SQUIRE'S HOUNDS. The following tale was told me by Mrs. Mary Thomas, Bengal, near Fishguard:-- The Squire of Llanstinan, was a great huntsman, but whenever he went out with his hounds, a certain hare always baffled and escaped from the dogs. He followed her for miles and miles, day after day, but always failed to catch the animal. At last the people began to suspect that this hare must have been a witch in the shape of a hare, and the gentleman was advised to get "a horse and a dog of the same colour," and he did so. So the next time he was hunting he had a horse and a dog of the same colour, and they were soon gaining ground on the hare; but when the dog was on the very point of catching the animal, the hare suddenly disappeared through a hole in the door of a cottage. The Squire hurried to the spot and instantly opened the door, but to his great surprise the hare had assumed the form of an old woman, and he shouted out: "Oh! ti Mari sydd yna." (It is you Mary!) A WITCH IN THE FORM OF A HARE HUNTED IN CARDIGANSHIRE. Mr. Rees, Maesymeillion, Llandyssul, told me the following tale which he had heard from an old woman in the neighbourhood:-- Once there was a Major Brooks living in the parish of Llanarth, who kept hounds and was fond of hunting. One day, he was hunting a hare that a little boy of nine years old had started; but the hare not only managed to elude her pursuers, but even to turn back and attack the hounds. The hunting of this hare was attempted day after day, but with the same results; and the general opinion in the neighbourhood was, that this hare was nothing but an old witch who lived in that part, with whom the huntsman had quarrelled. An old man in Carmarthenshire informed me that an old woman known as Peggy Abercamles, and her brother Will, in the neighbourhood of Cilcwm, in that county were seen running about at night in the form of hares. THE FAMILIAR SPIRIT OF A WITCH SHOT IN THE FORM OF A HARE. From the following story which I heard at Talybont, in North Cardiganshire, it seems that witches did not always transform themselves. In some cases it was thought that the hare was not the witch herself, but the old hag's Familiar Spirit assuming the shape of a hare in her stead; but the life of the witch was so closely connected with the Familiar, that when the Familiar was shot, the witch suffered. The tale is as follows:-- There was an old woman at Llanfihangel Genau'r Glyn, who was supposed to be a witch. One day a man in the neighbourhood shot a hare with a piece of silver coin. At the very time when the hare was shot, the old woman who was a witch was at home washing, but fell into the tub, wounded and bleeding. It was supposed by the people of the neighbourhood that the hare which was shot was the old hag's familiar spirit. MEN CHANGED INTO ANIMALS. It is said that an old witch near Ystrad Meurig, in Cardiganshire, turned a servant man of a farm called Dolfawr, into a hare on one occasion; and into a horse on another occasion and rode him herself. In the Mabinogion we have the Boar Trwyth, who was once a King, but God had transformed into a swine for his sins. Nynniaw and Peibaw also had been turned into oxen. And in the topography of Ireland, by Giraldus Cambrensis, mention is made of a man and a woman, natives of Ossory, who through the curse of one Natalis, had been compelled to assume the form of wolves. And while speaking of witches changing themselves into hares the same writer adds: "We agree, then, with Augustine, that neither demons nor wicked men can either create or really change their nature, but those whom God has created can, to outward appearance, by His permission, become transformed, so that they appear to be what they are not." If learned men, like Augustine and Giraldus Cambrensis and others, believed such stories, it is no wonder that ignorant people did so. I am inclined to believe, like the late Rev. Elias Owen, that the transformation fables that have descended to us would seem to be fossils of a pagan faith once common to the Celtic and other cognate races. The belief in transformation and transmigration has lingered among some people almost to the present day. Mr. Thomas Evans, Gwaralltyryn, in the parish of Llandyssul, informed me that he was well-acquainted with an old Ballad singer, who was known as Daniel Y Baledwr. Daniel lived near Castle Howel, and sang at Llandyssul fairs, songs composed by Rees Jones, of Pwllffein. This ballad-singer told my informant that he was sure to return after death in the form of a pig, or of some other animal; and that an animal had a soul or spirit as well as a man had. WIZARDS. There were many conjurers in Wales in former times, and even at the present day there are a few who have the reputation of practising the Black Art; for we still hear occasionally of persons taking long journeys to consult them, especially in cases of supposed bewitched cattle, horses, pigs, etc. I have already given stories of conjurers counteracting the machinations of witches, and delivering both people and animals from their spell. But they were accredited with the power to do many other things beside. They could, it was thought, compel a thief to restore what he had stolen; could also reveal the future and raise and command spirits. The possibility of raising spirits, or to cause them to appear, was once believed in in Wales, even in recent times; and Shakespeare in his Henry the Fourth, Act III., S. 1., makes the Welshman, Glendower say:-- "I can call Spirits from the vasty deep." Wizards and others who practised magical arts were supposed to be able to summon spirits at will; but it seems that some could not control the demons after summoning them. An old man at Llandovery, named Mr. Price, who was once a butler at Blaennos, informed me that an old witch at Cilcwm, named Peggy, found it most difficult to control the spirits in the house, and sometimes she had to go out into a field, and stand within a circle of protection with a whip in her hand. Conjurers possessed books dealing with the black art, which they had to study most carefully, for it was thought that according to the directions of magical books the spirits were controlled. It was considered dangerous for one ignorant of the occult science to open such books, as demons or familiar spirits came out of them, and it was not always easy to get rid of such unearthly beings. An old woman at Caio, in Carmarthenshire, informed me that the great modern wizard Dr. Harries, of Cwrtycadno, who lived in that parish, had one particular book kept chained and padlocked. The old woman also added that people were much afraid of this book, and that even the wizard himself was afraid of it, for he only ventured to open it once in twelve months, and that in the presence and with the assistance of another conjurer, a schoolmaster from Pencader, who occasionally visited him. On a certain day once every twelve months, Dr. Harries and his friend went out into a certain wooded spot not far from the house, and after drawing a circle round them, they opened the chained book. Whenever this ceremony was performed it caused thunder and lightning throughout the Vale of Cothi. My informant vouched for the truth of this, and stated that her husband had been a servant to Harries. A wizard in Pembrokeshire, named William Gwyn, of Olmws, Castell Newydd Bach, with his magic book invoked a familiar spirit. The spirit came and demanded something to do; William commanded him to bring some water from the River in a riddle! In the 18th century a well-known wizard in the same county was one John Jenkins, a schoolmaster. But the greatest wizard in the beginning of 19th century was Aby Biddle, of Millindingle, who was in league with the evil one or at least many of the people in South Pembrokeshire believed so. Aby Biddle's real name was Harries; but, of course, he was not the same person as Harries of Cwrtycadno, in Carmarthenshire. There are still many most curious stories concerning him in South Pembrokeshire, and as typical of other tales, I give the following story which appeared a few years ago in "The Welsh Tit Bits" column of the "Cardiff Times:"-- THE PRIESTS AND THE HORNETS. In the winter of 1803 there was an evening gathering at the ---- Vicarage, which consisted chiefly of clerics, and Aby Biddle was of the number of the guests, having been invited as a source of pastime to help beguile some of the long hours of that forsaken spot. Seldom did he go beyond the solemn dingle, but he had been prevailed upon on this occasion. Much merriment was expected, nor was the expectation misleading, save that it was entirely at the expense of the clerics. The hours glided along gently on the wings of fairy tales. The party remained until the small hours of the morning, singing, merry-making, and tale-telling in turn. The conversation now furtively drifted in the direction of occult science. Aby Biddle sat near the window. Every now and again as he listened to the words magic and witchcraft and various opinions respecting them, he pulled back a corner of the blind and the pale light of the moon flickered on his countenance, revealing the lines of a retreating smile. A loquacious young cleric interposed a caustic remark at this point and fanned the fire into flame, and the discussion was like to have taken a somewhat lively turn had not a broad-browed divine on whose head rested the snow of full three score winters and ten, sternly rebuked the young priest. This divine denounced sorcery and conjuration in unmeasured language. Another aged divine of Puritanic air nodded his assent. Aby Biddle said nothing, though some of the company invited him to speak, but played carefully with the fringe of the curtain. During a momentary lull in the conversation, he rose suddenly, paced the room for a minute or two, and disappeared into the lawn. He was not gone many seconds before he returned with three small rings in his hands. He held these up and remarked, "Gentlemen, we'll see whether conjuring is possible or not." He placed the rings on the floor, at a distance of about a yard apart, and hurriedly left the room, taking care to turn the key in the lock on the smooth side of the door. The priests turned their gaze intently in the direction of the rings. Suddenly there appeared in one of the rings a fly flitting and buzzing. The fly grew. In half a minute or less it had grown into a monster hornet. No sooner had this metamorphosis taken place than it frisked into one of the other rings, and another fly appeared in its place. This one also developed into a hornet, giving way, when fully formed, to a third fly. Each ring was now occupied, and the clerics wondered what next would happen. Little time had they for musing, for the third fly quickly accomplished its transformation, when the first one left the ring and flew through the room. New hornets appeared in quick and quicker succession. The guests became now thoroughly alarmed. Priestly amusement gave way to pallid amazement. More and more came the dreaded hornets, louder and louder their droning hum. They filled the room, they darkened the whitened ceiling, and insinuated themselves into the hoary locks of the Puritanic divine so that he yelled hoarsely. It was utter confusion, and all were rushing wildly here and there for refuge or escape, when the conjuror reappeared with a merry laugh, and a loud "Ho! is conjuring possible now, gentlemen?" The Cloth was soon pacified, the hornets dismissed to their sylvan home, and the reputation of the Aby Biddle established as a mighty magician in the minds of some noted parsons of Pembrokeshire. SIR DAFYDD LLWYD, YSPYTTY YSTWYTH. About two hundred years ago there lived in the neighbourhood of Ysbytty Ystwyth, in Cardiganshire, a wizard and a medical man, known as Sir Dafydd Llwyd, who had been a clergyman before he was turned out by the Bishop for dealing in the Black Art. According to "A Relation of Apparitions," by the Rev. Edmund Jones, it was thought that he had learnt the magic art privately at Oxford in the profane time of Charles II. Like other wizards Sir Dafydd also had a Magic Book, for the Rev. Edmund Jones tells us that on one occasion when he had "gone on a visit towards the Town of Rhaiadr Gwy, in Radnorshire, and being gone from one house to another, but having forgotten his Magic Book in the first house, sent his boy to fetch it, charging him not to open the book on the way; but the boy being very curious opened the book, and the evil Spirit immediately called for work; the boy, though surprised and in some perplexity, said, "Tafl gerrig o'r afon,--(throw stones out of the river) he did so; and after a while having thrown up many stones out of the river Wye, which ran that way, he again after the manner of confined Spirits, asking for something to do; the boy had his senses about him to bid it to throw the stones back into the river, and he did so. Sir David seeing the boy long in coming, doubted how it was; came back and chided him for opening the book, and commanded the familiar Spirit back into the book." SIR DAFYDD DEFEATING A RIVAL WIZARD. According to the stories still extant in North Cardiganshire, this Sir Dafydd Llwyd had a most wonderful control over the demons. The following tale was told me by Mr. D. Jones, Bryntirion, Llanilar: A rival wizard who lived in the neighbourhood of Lampeter, on one occasion challenged Sir Dafydd to a contest in the black art, in order to prove to the world which of the two wizards was the cleverest in controlling the demons. On the morning of the appointed day for the contest between the two experts in the black art, Sir Dafydd sent his boy to an elevated spot to have a look round if he could see a bull coming from the direction of Lampeter. The boy went, but ran back immediately to inform his master that a most savage bull was approaching. Off went Sir Dafydd to Craig Ysguboriau, and stood on the spot with his open magic book in his hand. The bull, or rather a demon in the form of a bull, fiercely attempted to rush at him, but Sir Dafydd compelled him to return whence he came. The animal returned to Lampeter and rushed at once at the Lampeter wizard, and killed him. So Sir Dafydd defeated and got rid of his rival. Another story I heard at Ysbytty Ystwyth was that one Sunday morning when Sir Dafydd went to Church, he sent his boy to keep away the crows from the wheat field; but when he came home he found that the boy had collected all the crows into the barn. Sir Dafydd at once discovered that the boy had learnt the Black Art. There is a tradition in the neighbourhood that the body of Sir Dafydd lays buried under the wall of Yspytty Ystwyth Churchyard, and not inside in the Churchyard itself, and people still believe that this is a fact. The story goes that the wizard had sold himself to the devil. The agreement was that the arch-fiend was to have possession of Sir Dafydd if his corpse were taken over the side of the bed, or through a door, or if buried in a churchyard. In order to escape from becoming a prey to the Evil One, the wizard on his death-bed had begged his friends to take away his body by the foot, and not by the side of the bed, and through a hole in the wall of the house, and not through the door, and to bury him, not in the churchyard nor outside, but right under the churchyard wall. So that his Satanic majesty, who had been looking forward for the body of Sir Dafydd, was disappointed after all. That it was formerly believed that the devil could be out-witted or deceived is evident from the fact that in the Middle Ages it was often customary to bury an ungodly rich man in the garb of a Monk. This could be done by paying the Monks a certain sum of money. There is a story very much like the one I have just given, to be found in the South-Western part of Montgomeryshire. In the Montgomeryshire version, however, the wizard is not Sir Dafydd Llwyd, but Dafydd Hiraddug, who had charged his friends, that on his death, the liver and lights were to be taken out of his body and thrown on the dunghill. They were then to take notice whether a raven or a dove got possession of them; if a dove got possession of them, he was to be buried like any other man in the churchyard; but if a raven, then he was to be buried under the wall, and under the wall he was buried, as a raven got possession of the liver and lights. The devil in disappointment cried out:-- "Dafydd Hiraddug ei ryw, Ffals yn farw, ffals yn fyw." (Dafydd Hiraddug, ill-bred False when living, false when dead.) The dove and the raven play their part in many of the wizards tales. An old man from Llandilo, named David Evans, informed me that the wizard of Cwrtycadno asked his friends to throw his heart on the dunghill. If a dove came for it first, he had been a good man; but a raven, a sign that he had been a bad man. The appearance of a dove at the time of a death or a funeral was regarded as a sure sign that the deceased had been a good man. The Rev. Edmund Jones in his "Apparitions," referring to the death of a certain godly man, says that "Before the body was brought forth, a white dove came and alighted upon the bier." WIZARDS RIDING DEMONS THROUGH THE AIR. In the present day we hear a great deal about airships; but if we are to believe some of the old folk-stories, magicians travelled through the air in days long before anyone had ever dreamt of a balloon. In former times it was believed by the ignorant that a wizard with his magic book could, and did, summon a demon in the shape of a horse, and travelled on the back of the fiend through the air. It is said that Sir Dafydd Llwyd of Ysbytty Ystwyth, employed a demon for that purpose; and one night when he was riding home from Montgomeryshire on a demon in the shape of a horse, a boy who rode behind him on the same horse lost one of his garters on the journey. After this the boy went to search for his garter, and to his great surprise saw it on the very top of a tree near the church, which convinced him that the wizard and himself had been riding home through the air! There was also at Llanbadarn Fawr, in the same county, about seven hundred years ago, a Knight named Sir Dafydd Sion Evan, who was supposed to be taking journeys through the air on a demon-horse. This Sir Dafydd was at times absent for weeks; and when he returned he was often wet with foam and covered with seaweed, or his head and shoulders sprinkled with snow, during the heat of summer. At other times he was blackened with smoke and smelling strong of sulphureous fire. On one occasion when Sir Dafydd had mounted this "devil-born" horse, and had gone up a considerable height into the air, the horse turned his head and said, "How I have forgotten Sir Davy Sion Evan; I asked not of the course of thy travel; art thou for steering above wind, or below wind"? "On Devil-born!" said Sir Davy, "and stint prate." Such tales of wizards riding through the air on demons are to be found in Scotland as well as Wales, and Sir Walter Scott in his Notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, gives the following story concerning Sir Michael Scott, who was chosen, it is said, to go upon an embassy to obtain from the King of France satisfaction for certain piracies committed by his subjects upon those of Scotland. Instead of preparing a new equipage and splendid retinue, the ambassador retreated to his study, opened his book, and evoked a fiend in the shape of a huge black horse, mounted upon his back, and forced him to fly through the air towards France. As they crossed the sea, the devil insidiously asked his rider what it was that the old women in Scotland muttered at bedtime? A less experienced wizard might have answered that it was the Pater Noster, which would have licensed the devil to precipitate him from his back. But Michael sternly replied, "What is that to thee? Mount Diabolus, and fly!" When he arrived at Paris, he tied his horse to the gate of the palace, entered, and boldly delivered his message. An ambassador with so little of the pomp and circumstances of diplomacy was not received with much respect; and the King was about to return a contemptuous refusal to his demand, when Michael besought him to suspend his resolution till he had seen his horse stamp three times. The first stamp shook every steeple in Paris, and caused all the bells to ring; the second threw down three of the towers of the palace; and the infernal steed had lifted his hoof to give the third stamp, when the King rather chose to dismiss Michael with the most ample concessions than to stand to the probable consequences. It seems that in Eastern countries also, there are traditions of magicians riding through the air, for in the "Arabian Nights," we have the story of the Enchanted Horse. An old carpenter, named Benjamin Phillips, Bronwydd Arms, Carmarthen, informed me the Wizard of Fos-y-Broga, often caused a demon to appear at night in the form of a white bull, on the road near Llanpumpsaint. THE HARRIESES OF CWRTYCADNO, THE POPULAR MODERN WIZARDS. The most popular and greatest wizards of modern days were undoubtedly the Harrieses of Cwrtycadno, in Carmarthenshire. John Harries lived at Pantcoy, Cwrtycadno, in the Parish of Caio, and died in the year 1839. His sons were also popular conjurers, one of whom only died about 45 years ago. Harries was a medical man, an astrologer, and a wizard, and people came to enquire of his oracle from all parts of Wales, and from the English borders, especially Herefordshire, and his name was familiar through the length and breadth of the land. It is said that he had a wonderful power over lunatics; could cure diseases; charm away pain; protect people from witches, and foretell future events, etc. Good many stories are told of him by old people, and I have already introduced his name in my account of witches. I was told by an old man, Mr. David Evans, a millwright from Llandilo, that the popularity of Harries as a wizard originated as follows:--A young woman somewhere in that part of the country was lost, and could not be found after searching for her everywhere; at last her relations and friends went to Cwrtycadno to consult Dr. Harries. The wizard informed them that the girl had been murdered by her sweetheart, and that he had hid her body in the earth, under the shades of a tree, in the hollow of which they would find a bee's nest. The tree stood alone near a brook. The searching party at last came across the spot indicated by the conjurer, and here they found the young woman's body buried, as the wise man had told them. The young man who had murdered the girl was found, and confessed the crime. When the authorities of the law became aware of these facts, the wizard was brought before the magistrates, at Llandovery, where he was charged with knowing and abetting of murder, otherwise he could not have known she was murdered, and where she was buried. He was, however, discharged. According to the "History of Caio," by F. S. Price, an interesting book presented to me by Lady Hills-Johnes, the wizard told the magistrates (Lloyd, Glansevin, and Gwyn, Glanbran), that if they would tell him the hour they were born, he would tell them the hour they would die! CWRTYCADNO CONJURER AND SPIRIT RAISING. I did not hear any stories of Dr. Harries riding demons through the air like Sir Dafydd Sion Evan and others; but it was believed, and it is still believed by many, that he could and did summon spirits to appear. A few years ago when I was allowed to search what is left of the Library of Harries, which is still to be seen at Pantcoy, where he lived, I found a large number of medical books, and Greek and Latin works, I also found several books dealing with astrology, magic art, charms, etc.; but the much talked of padlocked volume full of demons was last I was told though amongst other curious things I found the following "Invocation":-- HOW TO OBTAIN THE FAMILIAR OF THE GENIUS OR GOOD SPIRIT AND CAUSE HIM TO APPEAR. "After the manner prescribed by Magicians, the exorcist must inform himself of the name of his Good Genius, which he may find in the Rules of the Travins and Philermus; as also, what Chonactes and Pentacle, or Larim, belongs to every Genius. After this is done, let him compose an earnest prayer unto the said Genius, which he must repeat thrice every morning for seven days before the Invocation.... When the day is come wherein the Magician would invocate his prayer to Genius he must enter into a private closet, having a little table and silk carpet, and two waxen candles lighted; as also a chrystal stone shaped triangularly about the quantity of an apple which stone must be fixed upon a frame in the centre of the table; and then proceeding with great devotion to Invocation, he must thrice repeat the former prayer, concluding the same with Pater Noster, etc., and a missale de Spiritu Sancto. Then he must begin to consecrate the candles, carpet, table and chrystal, sprinkling the same with his own blood, and saying: I do by the power of the holy Names Aglaon, Eloi, Eloi Sabbathon, Anepheraton, Jah, Agian, Jah, Jehovah; Immanuel, Archon, Archonton, Sadai, Sadai, Jeovaschah, etc., sanctifie and consecrate these holy utensils to the performance of this holy work, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. Which done, the Exorcist must say the following prayer with his face towards the East, and kneeling with his back to the consecrated table:--O thou blessed Phanael my angel guardian, vouchsafe to descend with thy holy influence and presence into this spotless chrystal, that I may behold thy glory, etc. This prayer being first repeated towards the East, must be afterwards said towards all the four winds thrice. And next the 70th Psalm repeated out of a Bible that hath been consecrated in like manner as the rest of the utensils, which ceremonies being seriously performed, the Magician must arise from his knees and sit before the chrystal bareheaded with the consecrated Bible in his hand and the waxen candle newly lighted waiting patiently and internally for the coming and appearance of the Genius.... Now about a quarter of an hour before the spirit come, there will appear great variety of apparitions within the glass; as first a beaten road or tract, and travellers, men, and women marching silently along. Next there will be rivers, wells, mountains, and seas appear, after that, a shepherd upon a pleasant hill feeding a goodly flock of sheep, and the sun shining brightly at his going down; and lastly, innumerable flows of birds and beasts, monsters and strange appearance, and which will all vanish at the appearance of the Genius. "The Genius will be familiar in the stone at the performance of the wizard." The following story of this Welsh wizard's spirit summoning was related to me a short time ago by a clergyman who is a native of Carmarthenshire, the Rev. J. Phillips, vicar of Llancynfelyn: THE FARMER WHO CONSULTED THE CONJUROR; OR THE FAMILIAR SPIRITS AND THE LOST COWS. A farmer who lived in the Southern part of Carmarthenshire, lost three cows. Having searched in vain for them everywhere, he at last went to Cwrt-y-Cadno, though he had a very long journey to go. When he arrived there and consulted Dr. Harries, the worthy wizard told him that he could not give him any information concerning his lost cows till next day, as he wanted time to consult his magic books. The farmer was a little disappointed, as he wanted to go home that evening; but under the circumstances there was nothing to be done but try and get a bed for the night at some farm in the neighbourhood. So he left the wizard for the night with the intention of returning to him again in the morning, when he hoped to hear something of his lost cows. But after going out of the house, he noticed a barn close by, which he entered, and found in a corner a heap of straw where he thought he could lie down and sleep comfortably till next morning. This he did unknown to the wizard, who took for granted that the farmer had gone to stay for the night at some house in the neighbourhood. He slept comfortably in the barn for a while, but about one o'clock in the morning, he was awakened by the sound of the wizard's footsteps entering the place at that untimely hour, with a lantern in his hand. The disturbed farmer could not imagine what he wanted in the barn at this time of the night, and he was afraid of being discovered. Presently, however, he noticed the conjurer drawing a circle around himself in the middle of the room; that is the well-known Wizard's Circle. Then he stood right in the middle of this circle, and having opened a book, he summoned seven demons or familiar spirits to appear, and in an instant they came one after another and stood outside the circle. Then he addressed or called out to the first spirit something as follows:--"Tell me where are the farmer's lost cows"? But the demon answered not. He repeated the question two or three times, but the Familiar was quite dumb. At last, however, it shouted out, 'A pig in the straw' but this was no reply to the wizard's question. Having failed with the first spirit, the wizard addressed the second one, and then the third, and so on till he had given the question to each one of the familiars except one, without any result; the spirits seemed very stupid on this occasion, and would not give the information required. Fortunately, however, when the question was given to the seventh and last of the demons, it shouted out, 'The farmer's cows will be on Carmarthen Bridge at 12 o'clock to-morrow.' Then the wizard left the barn and went to bed well pleased. The farmer who was hiding in the straw heard everything, and made up his mind to travel to Carmarthen at once, so as to be there in time to find his cows on the Bridge. So off he went to Carmarthen, and reached the Bridge just at 12 o'clock, and to his great joy the cows were there. Then he drove them home, but when he had gone about half-a-mile from the Bridge, the cows fell down as if half dead on the roadside, and in vain did he try to get them to move forward any further. So he had to go all the way to Cwrt-y-Cadno again, so as to consult what to do. When he arrived there "Serve thee right," said the wizard to him, "I have cast a spell on thy cattle for running away secretly last night from the barn without paying me for the information obtained from the spirits." Then the farmer gave the wizard a certain sum of money and returned to his three cows which he had left on the road half-a-mile from Carmarthen Bridge; and to his great joy the cows went home without any further trouble. A FAMILIAR SPIRIT IN THE SHAPE OF A DOG AND THE LONELY NIGHT TRAVELLER. On one occasion a certain man from Cilcwm, was on a visit in the neighbourhood of Cwrtycadno. When he started to return home it was getting rather late, and he had a long journey to go through a lonely mountainous country. The wizard, Dr. Harries, asked him if he was afraid of such a journey over the mountain in the depth of night. The man confessed that he did not like such a journey at that late hour without a single soul to accompany him, but that he was obliged to go home that night without fail; and so he proceeded on his way. As he journeyed along, the darkness of night overtook him on his way over the mountain, but to his great surprise, when he looked around him, he noticed a black dog following him, or rather walking by his side. The dog was very friendly, and the lonely traveller felt glad of the animal's company. So on they went together; but when they were nearing his home the dog vanished suddenly into nothing. The man was quite convinced that the dog was nothing but a familiar Spirit, in the shape of a dog, sent by the wizard to bear him company in his lonely night journey. The above story was related to me by the Rev. J. Phillips, vicar of Llancynfelyn. CONJURERS AND LUNATICS. About one hundred years ago there lived in the neighbourhood of Pencader, a wizard, named Phillips, who was very successful in curing lunatics. On one occasion, an old woman from Tregroes, near Llandyssul, took her son to him who had been insane from his birth. The wise man blew into the young man's face, and informed his mother that he would be sane for twenty years, and so it happened; but after twenty years he became insane again as the wizard had predicted. My informant was Mr. Rees, Maesymeillion, in the parish of Llandyssul, whose father's uncle remembered the lunatic. The wizard of Cwrt-y-Cadno was also very successful in curing lunatics. He would take the insane to the brink of the river and fire an old flint revolver which would frighten his patient to such a degree that he fell into the pool. WIZARDS REVEALING THE FUTURE. It was believed that conjurers could tell fortunes, or reveal the hidden future, and a good many, especially young people, consulted them. The following is a copy of a card which Harries of Cwrt-y-cadno distributed:-- "NATIVITY CALCULATED." In which are given the general transactions of the Native through life, viz:--Description (without seeing the person), temper, disposition, fortunate, or unfortunate in their general pursuits; honour, riches, journeys, and voyages (success therein, and what places best to travel to, or reside in); friends, and enemies, trade, or profession best to follow; whether fortunate in speculation, viz: Lottery, dealing in Foreign Markets, etc., etc., etc. Of marriage, if to marry.--The description, temper, and disposition of the person, from whence, rich or poor, happy or unhappy in marriage, etc., etc. Of children, whether fortunate or not, etc., etc., deduced from the influence of the Sun and Moon, with the Planetary Orbs at the time of birth. Also, judgment and general issue in sickness and diseases, etc. By Henry Harries. "All letters addressed to him or his father, Mr. John Harries, Cwrtycadno, must be post paid, or will not be received." A CONJURER SHOWING A YOUNG MAN HIS FUTURE WIFE. Harries, Cwrtycadno, had a magic glass, so it is said, into which a person looked when he wished to know or see the woman he was to marry. A young man named Phillips, once had gone from the parish of Llanllawddog, to Cwrtycadno, to show Dr. Harries some of his father's urine, which he took with him in a small bottle, as the old man was very ill. Harries examined it, and told the young man that his father would never get well again. The young man now decided to return home as soon as he could through Abergorlech, and Brechfa, where he intended staying for the night, as the journey was a long one. Just before he departed, however, Harries asked him, "By the way young man, would you like me to tell your fortune? I'll do it for 2s. 6d."; and so it was agreed. The conjurer had a large looking glass, the Magician's Glass, which was covered with a large board. He took off this covering, and told the young man to look into the glass. so as to see his future wife. He did look stedfastly as he was directed, and saw in the glass the form of a young woman passing by. Meanwhile, the wizard himself had entered alone into a little side room, where he was speaking loudly to a familiar Spirit, or something; but he soon returned to the young man and asked him, "Did you see anything in the glass?" "Yes, I saw a young woman." "Did you know her?" "No. I had never seen her before: she was a perfect stranger to me." "Well," said the conjurer, "whether you have met her or not, that young woman you saw in the glass is to be your future wife." Sometime after this, the young man and his brother, both being carpenters, were one day working on the roof of a house which had been damaged by a storm, and it so happened that some woman and her daughter, who were passing by, came to speak to them. When the women had gone away out of hearing, the young man, who had been to Cwrtycadno, said to his brother in surprise: "That young girl was the very one I saw in the Wizard's Magic Glass." This was their first acquaintance, and by and by they were married. My informant was their own son who is a carpenter, and lives about a mile from Bronwydd Arms Station, in Carmarthenshire. His name is Benjamin Phillips. ANOTHER SIMILAR TALE. About sixty years ago, Isaac Isaac, Tyllain, Llanarth, in Cardiganshire, went to Harries, Cwrtycadno, to consult him about something. The wise man was at the time busy with his harvest, and he asked Isaac to be as kind as to help him a little for telling his fortune, and he did so. As they were working together on the field. Harries asked the young man if he intended going to London? Isaac said, no, but that he had a letter in his pocket he wanted to forward to London. Then Harries took the young man to the house and showed him his future wife in a magic glass. He recognised her at once as the young woman to whom he was already engaged, and whom he finally married, though much against the wishes of the young lady's parents. My informant was Mr. Watkin Evans, Blaenpark, an old man who lives in the parish of Llanarth. THE WIZARD OF CWRTYCADNO FORETELLING THE FUTURE DESTINY OF A NEW BORN CHILD. Owen Evans, Maesydderwen, near Llansawel, Carmarthenshire, an old man of 90 years of age, informed me about four years ago that on one occasion, long ago, when a baby, a girl, was born to him and his wife, he went to Dr. Harries, Cwrtycadno, to consult him about the future destiny of the child. The conjurer spoke to him something as follows:--"I hope you will not be distressed when you hear what is going to happen to your dear child; but the truth of it is, she will have a very narrow escape from drowning at the age of four, and death awaits her at the age of twenty!" My informant then went on to tell me with tears in his eyes, that everything took place exactly as Harries told him. His dear girl at the age of four one day, whilst playing and running along the river side (River Cothy), fell over the banks into the water and nearly got drowned. After this, she never enjoyed good health, and at the age of twenty she died! Owen Evans informed me that when he went to Cwrtycadno, several other men accompanied him there, and one of them was named John Lloyd, who was a perfect stranger to Dr. Harries. But the wise man through his knowledge of the occult science, was able to tell this stranger that he had a mole on his head, and had met with an accident on his leg, which was true. My informant also added that the wizard "set great importance on the Planet under which a man was born." Mr. Thomas Davies, Penybont, Llanddewi Brefi, over 90 years of age, vouched for the truth of the following account:--Many years ago, Wiliam Davies, Pistill Gwyn Bach, Llanddewi Brefi, in Cardiganshire, had lost some money, and could not find it, so he went to Cwrtycadno, to consult Dr. Harries about it. The Conjurer told him where to find the money, and warned him to keep away from fairs, lest some accident should befall him. Wiliam was very careful for a time, but at last a son of his got married, and persuaded him to accompany him to a fair at Lampeter. He went, and was thrown down by a horse, and died in a few days. It is said in the neighbourhood of Caio that Dr. Harries had foretold the death of the Late Lamented Judge Johnes, of Dolaucothy, about thirty years before it took place. Mr. Johnes, who was highly respected, was cowardly murdered by a native of Ireland in 1876. Mr. D. Owen (Brutus), in his book "Brutusiana" which was published in 1840, condemns the wizard for his fortune telling: "The first day of winter. Severe is the weather, Unlike the first Summer, None but God can foresee what is to come." Druidical "Warrior Song." PREDICTION CONCERNING THE DEATH OF HIS LATE MAJESTY KING EDWARD. According to Mr. Arthur Mee, Cardiff, in the "Western Mail," May, 1910, astrologers who make a study of national forecasts, had predicted the death of the late King. SIR RHYS AP THOMAS CONSULTING A WIZARD CONCERNING KING HENRY VII. When the Earl of Richmond (afterwards Henry VII.) was about to land in Wales from France on his way to Bosworth, Sir Rhys Ap Thomas, consulted a well-known wizard and prophet, who dwelt at Dale, as to whether the Earl would be successful to dethrone Richard III. After much hesitation, and at the urgent demand of Sir Rhys, the Conjurer on the next day prophesied in rhyme as follows:-- "Full well I wend, that in the end Richmond, sprung from British race. From out this land the boare shall chase." The "Boare" meant Richard III. See "Life of Sir Rhys Ap Thomas," by M. E. James, page 49. THE CONJURER AND THE LOST OX. Mr. Thomas Jones, Brunant Arms, Caio, gave me the following account of what took place about 55 years ago, when his father lived at Penlifau, in the parish of Cilcwm, on the mountain side, and near the road which leads over the mountain from Cilcwm to Cwmcothi. A young farmer who lived at a place called Foshwyaid, Cwm Du, near Talley, has taken some cattle to Caio fair, in the month of August. Somehow or other, one of his oxen went astray from the Fair, and could not be seen anywhere in the neighbourhood. The young farmer and others went in every direction in search of the animal, but returned disappointed. At last, the man went to Cwrtycadno, to consult the "Dyn Hysbys." The wise man informed him that his ox had wandered away from the Fair, at first in a northernly, and afterwards in an easterly direction, "and" said he, "if you take the road leading from here over the mountain to Cilcwm, you will meet a man (the conjurer gave a description of the man) who is likely to know something, or at least give you some clue to your lost animal." The young farmer then went on his way, and after proceeding for some distance, he did meet a man as the conjurer had told him, and he told him all his troubles. Now this very man happened to be my informant's father who lived close by. Mr. Jones sympathised very much with the young farmer, and though a stranger, invited him home with him to get something to eat, and he accordingly went, and at the house, they talked together for some time. At last, the young farmer had to proceed again on his journey, rather disappointed, as his new friend who had showed every kindness, could give him no information about his lost ox. Jones went with him for a short distance, just to show him a path (a short cut) leading from the house to the road; and after bidding each other farewell, they parted. But before the young farmer had gone far, Jones called him back, and informed him that he had just recollected hearing some men, when coming home from Cilcwm Church last Sunday, talking together about some new ox which they had not noticed before in the field or yard of Tim. Davies, Gweungreuddyn (a path from the Church went close by T. D.'s farm). When he heard this bit of news from Jones, off he went at once as fast as he could go to Mr. Timothy Davies; and to his great joy, when he arrived there, found his stray animal quite safe in the "ffald." The local authorities had discovered the ox wandering about the country; but before the young farmer was allowed to take his animal home with him, the sum of seven shillings was to be paid for faldage. The young man went back to Jones, obtained the loan of seven shillings which he repaid honestly after arriving home with his ox. My informant also added that the conjurer had addressed the same young farmer as follows:--"My poor fellow, you are in great sorrow," "No" said the farmer, "Yes" said the conjurer again, "you have buried your mother a few weeks ago." The man then confessed that this was quite true. The wise man added, "A more melancholy event still awaits you at the end of twelve months." And at the end of twelve months the young farmer himself died! Watkin Evans, Blaenpark, informed me that a farmer in the parish of Dihewyd, Cardiganshire, found a harrow which he had lost by consulting a conjurer. One John Evans, of Llanddarog, in Carmarthenshire, 85 years ago, lost a bull, but he found the animal at Morfa, Kidwelly, by consulting a conjurer. THE CONJURER AND THE LOST HORSE. An old farmer, Mr. David Pugh, Erwlwyd, near Caio, Carmarthenshire, told me the following story a few years ago, and vouched for the truth of it:-- A friend of Mr. Pugh had lost a horse, and after searching in vain for the animal for a whole fortnight, he was at last advised to go to consult the "Dyn Hysbys." He rather hesitated at first, but he, however, went. The man was a farmer in the neighbourhood of Llandovery, but my informant did not wish to mention his name. The Wizard, Harries, of Cwrtycadno, consulted his oracles, but did not know what reply to give to the farmer at first about his animal. "Do tell me" said the farmer most earnestly, "what has become of my horse, or who has taken away the animal? It is such a loss to me to lose such a fine steed." Presently, the wizard informed him that a certain man (whom he described) had found the horse on the road, and caught the animal and tied him to a tree which was close by. After a while, this stranger took him home quietly and closed him in his own stable, fully making up his mind to sell the horse at the first opportunity. "And I am almost certain he'll succeed in doing so," added the conjurer, "I am afraid you'll never see your horse again." "Can you do something to prevent the thief selling my horse"? asked the farmer. "Yes," replied the wizard. The wise man then took some paper or parchment on which he inscribed some magic word, or words, and gave it to the farmer, telling him that so long as the parchment was kept safely in his pocket, the thief could not succeed in selling the horse at the fair. "But what can I do to find my stolen horse"? "Watch on the road next Friday, near Glanbran, and I feel almost certain that you will And your horse before the day is over, grazing on the roadside somewhere in that neighbourhood." The farmer then departed with the magic paper safely in his pocket, and when Friday came, he watched on the road, and to his great joy and surprise, he found the horse near Glanbran. Just as he mounted the animal to go home, a young man who passed by, told him that a few days ago, he had seen this very horse offered on sale at Rhayader fair, but that the man who was trying to sell him failed to do so! A LLANFAIR CLYDOGAU WIZARD. Mr. Walter Evans (Pentre-Richard), in the Parish of Llanddewi Brefi, informed me a few years ago, before he died, that some years ago, when he lost some sheep, a conjurer who lived on Llanfair mountain, directed or pointed out to him where to find them, and that they were found two days afterwards in some water nearly drowning as the wise man had said. This Llanfair Clydogau conjurer only died about nine years ago, and until he died people consulted him from the surrounding districts of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. The best service rendered by conjurers to society was to help people to discover thieves, and the superstitious often restored what they had stolen through fear. On one occasion a man who was often losing potatoes from the field went to Harries, Cwrtycadno, who was a terror to thieves. The conjurer showed him the thief in a magic glass, which enabled the man to discover who the culprit was. In another potato tale, the wise man, by means of his magic art forced the thief to appear at his house and confess his guilt. THE WIZARD OF LLANPUMPSAINT AND THE DUCKS OF ALLTYFERIN. Mr. Griffiths, of 'Rhenallt, an old farmer near Carmarthen, informed me about six years ago that long ago when he was a young man, he was once a servant at Alltyferin. Ducks were continually lost at the farm, and his master who suspected a neighbour as the thief, sent Griffiths with a letter to a conjurer who lived at Fosybroga. The wise man sent a note in reply giving a full description of the thief, and he was caught. A woman in Pembrokeshire, who had lost a most valuable picture, consulted a well-known wizard, who showed her a picture of the thief in a magic glass. She recognised the culprit at once as one of her intimate friends. The wizard then wrote the name of the thief on a piece of paper, and pierced it with a needle, and informed his client that if the picture was not restored to her within half an hour the thief would be eaten up of a strange disease. WIZARD MARKING THE CULPRITS. It was believed in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, that Harries, Cwrtycadno, could mark out thieves, and also persons who had an "Evil Eye," by causing a horn to grow out of their foreheads. A man in Tregaron had witched a woman, but the conjurer marked the mischievous person by putting a horn on his head. A farmer from the parish of Llangwyryfon, in Cardiganshire, whose cattle had been witched by a neighbour who had an evil eye, went to Llangurig in Montgomeryshire, to consult, a well-known conjurer who only died a few years ago. The Wizard for the payment of 10s. showed a picture of the offender in a magic mirror, and offered to cause him to die of a strange disease. The farmer begged the conjurer not to do that; that he did not desire to kill his enemy, only to punish him, and he was punished. My informant was a farmer who lives near Talybont, Cardiganshire. This Llangurig wizard was continually consulted by clients from Montgomeryshire, Cardiganshire, Radnorshire, and other counties. Not long ago, there was also a conjurer at Llanidloes, in the same county (Montgomeryshire), who was consulted on all cases of cursed fields, bewitched cattle, horses, pigs, churns, backward lovers, bewitched women, etc. A WIZARD AND THE YOUNG MAN WHO HAD BEEN CURSED. An old man named Evan Morris, who lives at Goginan, near Aberystwyth, informed me that about 60 years ago, a young man in that neighbourhood was struck dumb all of a sudden, that he could not utter a word. As he had neither been ill nor met with an accident it was suspected that he had been witched by some neighbour. So his father at last went over the mountain to Llangurig, about twenty miles off, to consult a well-known wizard named "Savage." The wizard opened his magic book, from which out came a big fly, buzzing or making a humming noise, boom, boom, boom, near the conjurer's face, who exclaimed, "What is the matter with this old fly?" The wise man then struck the insect with his hand and commanded it back into the book, and closed the volume; but he opened it again at another page, and out came another fly of a different colour. This fly again was buzzing till the wizard commanded it back into the book, which he now closed altogether; and addressing the man who had come to consult him, said to him: "You have suspected a certain man in your neighbourhood of having witched your son; but you are wrong; another man whom you do not suspect is the guilty. But your son has not been witched at all; he is under a curse." Welsh conjurers made a distinction between witchcraft and a curse. Thomas Jones, of Pontrhydfendigaid, informed me that a conjurer at Llangurig, named Morgans, told him once, that some men who were born under certain planets, possessed an inherent power of cursing, "and their curse," said he, "is worse than witchcraft itself." When the man returned home from the conjurer, to his great joy and surprise, he found his son able to speak. My informant vouches for the truth of the story, and added that this conjurer was so deep in the Black Art that he could do almost anything. MERLIN. I have in the preceding pages given some instances of modern and mediæval magicians or wizards; but divination astrology and magic in this country are of very ancient date. The names of Idris Gawr, Gwyddion, the Diviner by Trees, and Gwyn, the son of Nud, have come down to us from prehistoric times. So great was these three's knowledge of the stars, that they could foretell whatever might be desired to know until the day of doom. In Welsh Mythology, several even of the kingly families are represented as playing the role of magicians, especially Rhiannon, the daughter of Heveydd Hen. Math Ap Mathonwy, King of Gwynedd, could form a maiden out of flowers, and transform men into deers and wolves, etc. But, perhaps, the greatest of all the wizards was Myrddin, or Merlin as he is known among English readers, who lived about the beginning of the sixth century. Myrddin was born in the neighbourhood of Carmarthen, or at least so it is believed; and it is also believed that the meaning of Carmarthen is Myrddin's town, and the people of Carmarthen to this day feel proud of such a famous prophet who was born in their town. Merlin (or Myrddin)'s fame spread throughout all the Western parts of Europe, if not to other parts of the world, and his mighty magic adorned the tales of romance, and in the tenth century one eminent scholar on the Continent, went as far as to write, a commentary on his prophecies or prognostications. But to confine ourselves to Welsh writers, we have some account of Merlin by Nennius in the eighth century, and by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth. Geoffrey says:--"Vortigern, after the infamous treachery of the long knives, retreated to Mount Erir--which is Eryri, or snowden--and here he ordered the building of a great tower of defence, whose foundations, however, were swallowed up by the earth as fast as they were filled in." The Magicians, on hearing this, said he must procure the blood of "a youth that never had a father," and sprinkle it on the stones and mortar. Vortigern, accordingly, sent messengers to different parts of the country in search of such a youth; and "in their travels they came to a city, called, afterwards, Caermerdin, where they saw some young men playing before the gate, and went up to them; but being weary with their journey, they sat them down there.... Towards evening, there happened on a sudden a quarrel between two of the young men, whose names were Merlin and Dalbutius. In the dispute, Dalbutius said to Merlin, 'As for you, nobody knows what you are, for you never had a father.' At that word the messengers looked earnestly upon Merlin, and asked who he was. They learnt it was not known who was his father, but that his mother was daughter to the King of Dimetia, and that she lived in St. Peter's Church, among the nuns of the city." Merlin and his mother at the request of the messengers accompanied them from Carmarthen to Snowdon to the presence of King Vortigern; and when the boy was asked who was his father, his mother in reply gave a very peculiar account of the birth of her son, whose father she declared was a supernatural being, and so had no human father. Then the King said to Merlin, "I must have thy blood." And when the youth asked the King what good could his blood be more than the blood of any other man, he was informed in reply that the twelve wise men or bards had suggested the blood of a youth in order to make the building stand. Then Merlin asked the bards or magicians what was the real cause that the building of the tower was not a success? But they could give no answer. Young Merlin now upraided them for their ignorance and the cruelty of their suggestion. He then gave orders to dig the ground, and when this was done a lake was discovered. Merlin drained this lake, and at the bottom, as he had predicted, a stone chest was discovered in which there were two sleeping dragons. These, whenever they awoke, fought with each other, and their violence shook the ground, thus causing "the work to fall." When the King commanded the stone chest to be opened the two dragons came out and began a fierce battle. One of these dragons was white and the other red. At first the white dragon drove the red one to the middle of the pool, then the red one, provoked to rage, drove the white one thither in turn. When the King asked what this should signify, Merlin exclaimed as follows:--"Woe to the red dragon for her calamity draws nigh, and the white dragon shall seize on her cells. By the white dragon the Saxons are signified, and the Britons by the red one, which the white shall overcome. Then shall the mountains be made plains, and the glens and rivers flow with blood. The Saxons shall possess almost all the island from sea to sea, and afterwards our nation shall arise, and bravely drive the Saxons beyond the sea." Nennius, chap. 43. The old King Vortigern then left the neighbourhood of Snowdon, and removed to South Wales, and built a fort or a Castle on a spot known to this day as Craig Gwrtheyrn, or Vortigern's Rock, near Llandyssul and Pencader. The white and the red dragons respectively symbolised the Celtic and Saxon races, and Merlin's prophecy concerning the final overthrow of the Saxons by the Britons made a deep and lasting impression on the minds of the Welsh people for ages, and even nearly nine hundred years after Merlin's time. Owen Glyndwr found these prophecies highly instrumental in his favour when fighting against the English. According to a little book which I have in my possession entitled, "Prophwydoliaeth Myrddin Wyllt," (Merlin's prophecy), one Owen Lawgoch, who is tarrying in a foreign land, is to drive out the Saxons, and become King under the title of Henry the ninth. Welshmen of the present day, however, believe that Merlin's prophecy was fulfilled in the year 1485, when Henry VII., a Welshman leading a Welsh army to Bosworth Field, became King of England. There are also many prophecies here and there attributed to Merlin; some of which have been fulfilled, and others to be fulfilled in the future. He had foretold even of the railway train running along the Vale of Towy, which prediction has proved true: "Fe ddaw y gath a'r wenci ar hyd Glan Towi i lawr; Fe ddaw y milgi a'r llwynog i Aberhonddu fawr." "The cat and the weasel shall come down along the banks of Towy; The greyhound and the fox shall come into the town of Aber honddu," (Brecon). It is believed that the train has fulfilled these sayings. In the Vale of Towy, near Abergwili, there is a large stone in a field belonging to Tyllwyd farm. I went to see it myself, and several people in the neighbourhood informed me that a young man was killed when digging under this stone in search of hidden treasure, and that Merlin had prophesied about this. According to another prophecy of Merlin a fearful catastrophe awaits the town of Carmarthen:-- "Llanllwch a fu, Caerfyrddin a sudd, Abergwili a saif." (Llanllwch has been, Carmarthen shall sink, Abergwili shall stand). "Caerfyrddin, cei oer fore, Daear a'th lwnc, dwr i'th le." (Carmarthen, thou shalt have a cold morning, Earth shall swallow thee, water into thy place). The people of the neighbourhood even to this very day, more than half believe that Carmarthen is to sink. At the end of a long street in that town there is an old tree known as Merlin's Tree, in a very withered condition. Every care is taken to protect it from falling, as Merlin had prophesied that when this tree shall tumble down, the town of Carmarthen shall sink. "When Merlin's Tree shall tumble down. Then shall fall Carmarthen town!" (A Prophecy of Merlin). According to another prophecy attributed to the same ancient wizard, Carmarthen is to sink when Llyn Eiddwen, a lake in Cardiganshire, dries up. It is said that Merlin had predicted that a bull would go right to the top of the tower of St. Peter's Church, Carmarthen, and that a calf fulfilled this prophecy. My cousin, the Rev. Joseph Evans, the Rector of Jordanston, in Pembrokeshire, informed me a few years ago that one mile from the town of Fishguard, there is a farm called Tregroes, respecting which Merlin prophesied that it would be in the middle of the town some day. There are now signs that this ancient prophecy is likely to be fulfilled. September 4th, 1909, the Royal Mail Ship, Mauretania, the finest and fastest liner afloat, inaugurated the new Transatlantic Service from New York to Fishguard, so that there is a great future before the place as indicated by Merlin of old. It is also interesting to note that the captain of the Mauretania was a Welshman (Pritchard), and the first passenger to land was also a Welshman, named Mr. Jenkin Evans, brother to the Rector of Jordanston. I have been informed that a relation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, lives at this very house respecting which Merlin had prophesied. General Gwynne, a fine old gentleman I met a short time ago at the house of my genial friend, Col. Gwynne-Hughes, of Glancothy, wrote to me as follows respecting another remarkable prophecy of Merlin and its fulfilment:-- "Glancothy, Carmarthenshire, Oct. 12, 1909. Dear Mr. Davies,-- I have heard you are writing a book on the Folk-Lore of Wales. Perhaps the following may be of use to you. Some time in the forties, when I was at the College at Llandovery, my sister, Madam ---- speaking of our old property Glanbran, at that time mortgaged, said, there is an old Welsh saying attributed to Merlin to the effect that the Gwynnes should be at Glanbran until a man standing at Dover could speak to another at Calais. Years after, when I was in India, about the year when the telephone or telegraph was perfected between France and England, a document was sent out to me for my signature, which was my final release to the Glanbran Estate as the youngest son of the late Col. Sackville Gwynne of Glanbran Park. Yours sincerely, NADOLIG GWYNNE. According to Giraldus Cambrensis, Merlin had prophesied that a King of England and Conqueror of Ireland, should die in crossing "Llechllafar," a stone of great size which was placed across the stream dividing the cemetery of St. David's from the north side of the Church to form a bridge. When Henry II. passed over it on his return from Ireland a frantic woman called upon Llechllafar to kill him according to Merlin's prophecy. "The King, who had heard the prophecy, approaching tie stone, stopped for a short time at the foot of it, and, looking earnestly at it, boldly passed over; then, turning round, and looking towards the stone, thus indignantly inveighed against the prophet: 'Who will hereafter give credit to the lying Merlin?' A person standing by, and observing what had passed, in order to vindicate the injury done to the prophet, replied, with a loud voice, 'Thou art not that King of whom Ireland is to be conquered, or of whom Merlin prophesied!'" According to an ancient tradition, this stone spoke or groaned once when a corpse was carried over it. I was informed by many persons who live in the neighbourhood of Abergwili, near Carmarthen, that Merlin was such a giant that he could jump over the Vale of Towy. MERLIN'S FATE. The end or final fate of Merlin is surrounded by mysteries. A few years ago when I was staying in the neighbourhood of Carmarthen, Merlin's Hill (Bryn Myrddin) was pointed out to me where the great magician still lives (so they say) in a cave in that hill, and held there in imprisonment by an artful woman who contrived his disappearance from among human beings. Moreover, it is added, that if you listen in the twilight, you will hear his groans, and also the clanking of the iron chains which hold him bound. Others say he is heard working in this underground prison. It seems from Spenser's "Faerie Queen," however, that according to another ancient tradition, Merlin's place of confinement is, or was, a cave near Dynevor, in the neighbourhood of Llandilo: "And if you ever happen that same way to traveill, go to see that dreadful place. It is an hideous hollow cave (they say) under a rock that lyes a little apace emongst the woody hilles of Dynevowre (Dynevor), etc." Some stories describe Merlin as being held spellbound in a bush of white thorns in the woods of Bresilien in Brittany. Others say that he died, and was buried at Bardsey Island. But according to the Triads he went to sea and sailed in a house of glass, and was never heard of any more. In this voyage, Merlin took with him the thirteen curiosities of Britain, which were:-- 1. Llen Arthur (the veil of Arthur), which made the person who put it on invisible. 2. Dyrnwyn. 3. Corn Brangaled (the horn of Brangaled), which furnished any liquor desired. 4. Cadair, neu car Morgan mwynfawr (the chair or car of Morgan Mwynfawr), which would carry a person seated in it wherever he wished to go. 5. Mwys Gwyddno (the hamper of Gwyddno), meat for one being put into it, would become meat for a hundred. 6. Hogalen Tudno (the whetstone of Tudno), which would sharpen none but the weapon of a brave man. 7. Pais Padarn (the cloak of Padarn). 8. Pair Drynog (the caldron of Drynog), none but the meat of a brave man would boil in it. 9. Dysgyl a gren Rhydderch (the dish and platter of Rhydderch), any meat desired would appear on it. 10. Tawlbwrdd (a chess board, or, rather backgammon board), the ground gold, and the men silver, and the men would play themselves. 11. Mantell (a robe). 12. Modrwy Eluned (the ring of Eluned), whoever put it on his finger could make himself invisible. 13. Cyllell Llawfrodedd,--which was a kind of knife with which the Druids killed their victims for sacrifices. "The story of Merlin and Vivian as told in Brittany," translated from the French-Breton magazine "L'Hermine," edited by M. Tiercelin, is given in Part X. of the Transactions of the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society, from which I give the following short extract--Viviane, the love-making temptress, had enchanted the enchanter (Merlin). He sleeps, says the legend, in the forest of Broceliande, vaulted by an impenetrable hedge, on the bank of the fountain of love, his head resting on the knees of Viviane; the enchanter enchanted; and nobody has yet awakened the Celtic Orpheus from his eternal slumber. "Ne onques puis Merlin ne issit de ceste tour, où sa mie, Viviane l'avait mis." PEMBROKESHIRE WOMAN'S PROPHECY FULFILLED. The following appeared in the "Pembrokeshire County Guardian":-- "About one hundred and sixty years ago, there lived on a farm near Spittal in Pembrokeshire, a man of the name of David Evans. He had a family of five children: Thomas, the eldest, was born on November 3, 1756, and married Sarah Bevan, of Martel Mill, on Sunday, November 14, 17--, and they lived on a small farm near Trefgarn Rocks, called Penyfeidr. This Sarah Bevan, or Mrs. Evans was, like her husband, noted for her piety, and among her neighbours was possibly more noted for her visions and her ability to foresee and foretell coming events, of which there are many reliable records still existing and talked of in the district to this day. Entering the house one day, she told those present that she had just seen a most remarkable sight below the house in Trefgarn Valley, and described it as a large number of heavily laden carts or waggons going very fast one after the other, and no bullock or horses drawing them, but the first one appeared from the smoke she saw, to be on fire. George Stephenson was the first to introduce steam locomotive power into practical use in the year 1825. So we may state with certainty that the rustics of Pembrokeshire had no idea or knowledge whatever of the railway train at the time that Mrs. Evans saw the vision. About 54 years ago the railway was brought into Pembrokeshire, and the scheme of the great engineer, Brunel, was to extend it to the sea shore near Fishguard. With this in view, much work was accomplished in cuttings and embankments in Trefgarn Valley, which are now to be seen there. The country people were jubilant, expecting soon to realise the prophetic vision. But strong influence was brought to bear on Brunel, and finally he abandoned that route and took the line to New Milford instead. And the vision and prophecy came to nought. Afterwards the old people looked forward to the joining of Fishguard and Goodwick with the main line, and believed the truth of the story. But, alas! when the branch line was made, it was many miles to the North of Trefgarn, and the old lady and her vision were once more ridiculed, and apparently, there were no further grounds for hoping that the prophecy would be fulfilled. "When the project of the G. W. Ry. Co. got matured, it was found that the old loop line via Letterston was not suitable for a fast and direct service from Goodwick to London. So it was decided to make a new line from Goodwick through Trefgarn Valley,--thus re-adopting Brunel's original scheme. And last week I actually saw 'a large number of heavily laden carts or waggons going very fast, one after the other, and no bullocks or horses pulling them, but the first one appeared from the smoke I saw, to be on fire.' Just as described, and in the very spot indicated by Mrs. Evans about 100 years ago. "H.W.E. "Solva, December 26th, 1905." The people of Pembrokeshire have been remarkable for their insight into the future; navvies were heard making railway cuttings many years before the introduction of steam locomotive power into practical use. I have been informed that the sound of a railway engine, whistling, was heard at Llanilar, in Cardiganshire, fifty years before a railway was constructed through the neighbourhood; and it is also said that the sound of blasting was heard at Tyngraig, between Ystrad Meurig and Llanafan, where afterwards a tunnel was made. My informants were Mrs. Lloyd, the Vicarage, Llanilar, and Mr. Jones, Tyncoed. THE CRIMEAN WAR SEEN IN THE SKIES. About six months before the outbreak of the Crimean War, in 1853, John Meyler, Cilciffeth, saw a strange mirage in the sky. He was returning home late from Morville, and when nearing Penterwin he saw the image of armies in the skies. There were several battalions at first, and they increased in number till they spanned the heavens. There were two opposing forces, and he could distinctly see the image of men falling and of horses galloping across the firmament, and the clashing of great masses of men. He was so terrified that he called at Penbank and called the attention of Mr. James Morris, who lived at that place at that time, and he saw the same thing. This strange phenomenon appeared for about two hours. The above account of this strange vision in the skies appeared in the "Cardiff Times," a few years ago, sent to that paper by Cadrawd. Pembrokeshire has always been known as the land of phantasm. A REMARKABLE FULFILMENT OF A CONDEMNED MAN'S PREDICTION. In the Churchyard of Montgomery is a grave where the grass refuses to grow, though it is in the midst of luxurious vegetation. The unfortunate man named John Newton, who was buried there in the year 1821, had predicted this as a proof that he was innocent of the charge brought against him at the Assizes, when he was condemned to die on the evidence of two men named Thomas Pearce, and Robert Parker, who charged him with highway robbery. On being asked at the trial why judgment should not be passed upon him, he said before the judge: "I venture to assert that as I am innocent of the crime for which I suffer, the grass, for one generation at least, will not cover my grave." The poor man's prediction proved true, for the grave to this day remains a bare spot. One of the condemned man's accusers became a drunkard, and the other "wasted away from the earth," and a curse seems to follow every one who attempts to get anything to grow on the spot. At the head of the grave is the stem of a rose tree, and it is said that the man who put it there soon fell sick and died. I had heard of this grave even when I was a boy, and some account of the story respecting it has appeared in the papers from time to time. SHOULDER-BLADE DIVINATION. Giraldus Cambrensis, seven hundred years ago, speaking of the Flemings of South Pembrokeshire, in his "Itinerary through Wales," says:--"It is worthy of remark, that these people, from the inspection of the right shoulder of rams which have been stripped of their flesh, and not roasted, but boiled, can discover future events, or those which have passed and remained long unknown. They know, also, what is transpiring at a distant place, by a wonderful art, and a prophetic kind of spirit. They declare also undoubted symptoms of approaching peace and war, murders and fires, domestic adulteries, the state of the King, his life and death. It happened in our time, that a man of those parts, whose name was William Mangunel, a person of high rank, and excelling all others in the aforesaid art, had a wife big with child by her own husband's grandson. Well aware of the fact, he ordered a ram from his own flock to be sent to his wife as a present from her neighbour; which was carried to the cook and dressed. At dinner the husband purposely gave the shoulder bone of the ram, properly cleaned, to his wife, who was also well skilled in this art, for her examination; when, having for a short time examined the secret marks, she smiled, and threw the oracle down on the table. Her husband dissembling, earnestly demanded the cause of her smiling and the explanation of the matter; overcome by his entreaties, she answered, 'The man to whose flock this ram belongs has an adulterous wife, at this time pregnant by the commission of incest with his own grandson.' The husband, with a sorrowful and dejected countenance, replied, 'You deliver indeed an oracle supported by too much truth, which I have so much more reason to lament, as the ignominy you have published redounds to my own injury.' The woman thus detected, was unable to dissemble her confusion, betrayed the inward feelings of her mind by external signs; shame and sorrow urging her by turns, and manifesting themselves, now by blushes, now by paleness, and lastly (according to the custom of women), by tears. The shoulder of a goat was also once brought to a certain person instead of a ram's, both being alike when cleaned, who, observing for a short time the lines and marks, exclaimed 'Unhappy cattle that never was multiplied! Unhappy likewise the owner of the cattle, who never had more than three or four in one flock!' Many persons, a year and a half before the event, foresaw by the means of the shoulder bones the destruction of their country after the decease of King Henry the First, and selling all their possessions, left their homes, and escaped the impending ruin. In our time, a soothsayer, on the inspection of a bone, discovered not only a theft, and the manner of it, but the thief himself, and all the attendant circumstances; he heard also the striking of a bell, and the sound of a trumpet, as if those things which were past were still performing. It is wonderful, therefore, that these bones, like all unlawful conjurations, should represent by a counterfeit similitude to the eyes and ears, things which are past as well as those which are now going on." It is evident that the Celts, as well as the Flemings, knew something of Shoulder-bone Reading, for J. G. Campbell, in his "Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands," an interesting book presented to me by Countess Amherst, states that this mode of divination was practised, like the augury of the ancients, as a profession or trade; and Pennant, in his "Tours in Scotland," 150 years ago, says that when Lord Loudon was obliged to retreat before the Rebels to the Isle of Skye, a common soldier, on the very moment the battle of Culloden was decided, proclaimed the victory at a distance, pretending to have discovered the event by looking through the bone; and Sir S. R. Meyrick, in his "History of Cardiganshire," writing one hundred years ago, says that the remains of this custom still existed in Cardiganshire in his time; "but the principal use made of the bone is in the case of pregnant women. The shoulder bone of a ram being scraped quite clean, a hole is burnt in it, and it is then placed over the door of the apartment in which the pregnant woman is, and she is told that the sex of her offspring will be precisely the same as that of the first person who shall enter the room." DREAMS. A dream was a common way of making known the will of God to the prophets of old. We know from the Bible that important dreams took place in the early ages of the world, and Welsh people, like other nations, believe in the importance of these mysterious night visions, and of their power of forecasting the future, and there are both men and women all over the country who can give instances of dreams which came true. There are, undoubtedly, some persons whose dreams, as a rule, are reliable; whilst the dreams of others are not to be depended on. It is also said that morning twilight dreams are more reliable than other dreams; and it is believed that a dream which is repeated is more to be relied on than that which occurs only once. I have had most striking dreams myself; indeed almost everything that happens to me has been presaged by a dream. About nine years ago I dreamed that I was delivering a lecture to a large audience, and speaking most fluently. On awaking, I had a distinct recollection of every word I had uttered; and I am now very sorry that I did not write down next morning the lecture which I had delivered in my dream. The most remarkable fact is this: Previous to my dream I had no knowledge whatever of the subject on which I lectured, as I had never studied the subject in my life, and as a psychological curiosity I may mention that by means of my dream I had become possessed of knowledge on a particular subject which would have taken me at least a whole month's hard study to acquire. (I am, of course, used to public speaking). I have taken notes of few of my latest dreams, and perhaps it would not be out of place to record here a remarkable dream which I dreamt just before this book was going to press: One night in January, 1910, I dreamed that I was walking near St. Bride's, the country seat of Lord Kensington, in Pembrokeshire, and I met Lord Kensington himself, who spoke to me thus: "Go into the house, Lady Kensington is home, and I'll be with you in a few minutes." Then I went to the door and rang the bell, and the butler took me into the drawing-room. After waiting in the room alone for some time without seeing anyone, all the household servants came to me in a group, dressed in their holiday attire, and informed me that Lady Kensington was not home after all, but that her Ladyship had gone away and had got lost somewhere in going about, and that Lord Kensington was seeking in vain for her everywhere, but failing to find her anywhere. When I awoke from my dream I felt certain that something had happened to one of the Kensingtons. A day or two after my dream I was surprised to read in the papers that a cable-gram was received in London from Calcutta, announcing the death of Dowager Lady Kensington in India. I discovered that her death took place on the very date of my dream, and that a few days previously Lord Kensington had hurriedly left for India, having received news of the Dowager's serious condition. In order to add to the interest of the dream, I may state that the very day before I dreamt, I expected every moment to hear of the Dowager's return to England, as her Ladyship knew one or two interesting "traditions of Bridget of Ireland, known as St. Bride," which she intended to write down for me in order to record them in this book, to which she was looking forward, as she was greatly interested in Welsh traditions, especially those of Pembrokeshire. One night, about seventeen years ago, when I was spending a few days at Penmachno, in North Wales, where I had delivered a lecture, I dreamt that I was receiving a letter; and when I looked at the envelope, I recognised the handwriting at once as that of Lady Hills-Johnes, of Dolaucothy. I then opened the letter and read it all through, and found it was from her Ladyship; and when I awoke up from my sleep I remembered every word of its contents. In the morning as soon as I went down for breakfast, the landlady of the house delivered me a letter which had come by post. I looked at the envelope as I had done in my dream; it was from Lady Hills-Johnes; and when I read it, I discovered that I knew every word of its contents beforehand from my dream. When I was in Australia ten years ago, I had another remarkable dream about Dolaucothy, just when Sir James Hills-Johnes was leaving home for South Africa, to see his friend Lord Roberts, during the War; but I have been asked by Lady Hill-Johnes not to publish the dream. A remarkable fulfilment of a dream was reported in the "Aberystwyth Observer" in the year 1888, in relation to the sudden death of the late Colonel Pryse, an uncle of Viscountess Parker, and Great-uncle of Sir Edward Webley-Parry-Pryse, Bart., of the ancient Family of Gogerddan:--"It was not considered safe to break to Viscountess Parker the news of her uncle's death for some days, and Mr. Fryer went up to London to convey to her the information. On his arrival at her residence, in Montague Square, a maid announced to her Ladyship his arrival. 'Mr. Fryer!' she said, 'I know what it is. My uncle is dead. He died on a lane leading from Rhiwarthen to Penwern. I have dreamt four times in four years that this would happen, and the last time was the night before baby was born. I have tried many times to keep him from going that way. Ask Mr. Fryer to come up.' She afterwards said that she meant the road leading to Penuwch which is in the same direction, and that she would know the spot." The editor of "Blackwood" gives authenticity to the following dream:--A young man, engaged in a china manufactory at Swansea, about the beginning of the last century, dreamed that he saw a man drowning in one of their pools; he dreamed the same a second time, and a third time, and then could not resist making an effort to rise and satisfy himself that it was not so. He did rise, went to the spot, and found the man drowned. A man in the neighbourhood of Newcastle Emlyn, dreamed a similar dream in the 18th century. The late Rev. J. E. Jenkins, Rector of Vaynor, in Breconshire, in his interesting book on that parish gives the following account of a girl saved by a dream:-- "The Rev. Williams Jones, afterwards Canon Jones, was curate in sole charge here in 1822, and for many years afterwards. The Old Rectory House and the Glebe land was at that time occupied by a man named Enos Davies and his family. The Rev. W. Jones also had rooms at the Rectory. "One morning at the end of May in that year, about two o'clock Enos had a remarkable dream. He dreamt the Church was on fire. He suddenly awoke, and in great excitement jumped out of bed and knocked at the bedroom door of Mr. Jones, and cried:--'Master! Master! come down at once, I have dreamt the Church is on fire.' The worthy divine laughed at him, and told him to go back to bed, and not to give heed to foolish dreams and nightly visions. Enos obeyed, but could not sleep. During the day Mr. Jones walked down to the Church, and found everything in the usual order, safe and uninjured. The following morning, at the same hour, strange to say, Enos had the same dream, and again disturbed the peaceful slumbers of his good master. 'Come down to Church, Master,' said he, 'there must be something wrong, I have again dreamt the Church is on fire.' 'All right Enos,' said Mr. Jones; 'I will come with you, it is a fine morning.' By the time they reached the Church it was half-past three. Coming-down the Lych Gate, which was close by the little brook--the old entrance--they were struck with a great awe and a terrified feeling came over them, for they heard a peculiar sound coming, as it were, from the direction of the Church. They stood, listened, and looked at each other in mute astonishment, and Enos's hair stood on end. The sound became plainer: it was like the sound of a sexton digging or opening a grave inside the Church, as was often the custom in those days. Enos trembled, and became as pale as death; whilst the clergyman, who was a tall strongly built man, entered the churchyard, and stealthily went to listen at the west door. He could distinctly hear a man digging a grave. Mr. Jones soon found that an entrance had been made into the Church through one of the north side windows. Re-tracing his steps to Enos, who was still standing on the road by the brook, his attention was directed to a young girl coming down the steep pathway over Cae Burdudd--'the field of carnage'--the field where the mound is. She came running down merrily, and in a pleasant manner, said--'good morning, Mr. Jones, you are here before me.' 'Yes, my girl,' said the curate, 'where are you going so early?' 'Coming to be married, to be sure;' was her joyous reply. The curate took in the situation in a moment and told her:--'You have made a mistake as to the time. You must wait till eight o'clock; I cannot marry you before eight. Go up to the Rectory to Mrs. Davies and get some breakfast; we shall come after you in a short time. We will wait here until John comes, and will bring him up.' The innocent girl departed as requested, but had not gone far when the south door of the church was opened from within by her treacherous lover. He was at once apprehended by the courageous curate and Enos, and was made to stand over the grave he had prepared for the girl he had shamefully deceived and ruined, and whom he had intended murdering. He pleaded hard for mercy, and, ultimately, in order to avoid public scandal, on his promising to leave the neighbourhood immediately, and never again to return to Vaynor, he was allowed to depart. He was a native of Herefordshire, and was at this time in a service at a well-known farm in the parish. He left at once, and was never heard of afterwards by anyone from this parish. The curate, in a calm, gentle way, partly detailed to the maid the evil intentions of her base lover, and stated how God, in his good providence by the means of a dream, had preserved her from an untimely death. "The young girl was terribly shocked, and fell unconscious into the arms of the curate. She lost her health, and after a time was taken home to the neighbourhood of Knighton, and in a few months later news reached Vaynor that the poor girl had died of a broken heart, and the curate was asked to go up to bury her, but failed to go. The above account was given me by my predecessor, the Rev. Rees Williams, and was confirmed by the testimony of the late Mrs. Thomas, formerly of Cwm and others. Mrs. Evans, late of Pengellifach, however, added that the would-be murderer was handed over by Mr. Jones to the charge of the Parish Constable, and was afterwards released. It should be remembered that there were but few, if any, fixed pews in the Old Church, only movable benches. Neither was the floor paved or boarded." CONVERSING WITH THE DEPARTED IN A DREAM. The following appeared in the "Weekly Mail," Cardiff, for June 18, 1910:--"The Rev. Hugh Roberts, Rhydymain, Dolgelly, discoursed on "The Intermediate State" on a recent Sunday, and in the course of the sermon related the substance of a conversation which he had had with departed friends. "Recently in a dream," he said, "I conversed with an old deacon friend who has been in the intermediate state for some time, and was assured by him that he was not in a state of inertia by any means. It is a 'country' where everybody has something to do--where one and all contribute to make each other happy. However, they pine even in the intermediate state--some are longing for the circles which they left on earth, others pining for their bodies. But all longing will cease when the Spirit has completed the heavenly bodies." Welshpeople believe that if a young girl dreams that she has a long hair, that she will marry a very wise man. To dream of being well-dressed is a sign of wealth and prosperity, especially if you are dressed in silks. If a person dreams that he is going to get married, it foretells sickness. If a man dreams that he is surrounded by pigs, some one will come to him to ask him for some money. To dream of a horseshoe is a sign of good news. Welshpeople generally believe that it is not good for any one to dream that he is losing his teeth, and that it means either a death or the loss of friends. To dream of bacon is also considered bad. If a young man dreams of a full barn, it means that he will marry a wealthy young woman. Those who are interested in the interpretation of dreams must consult dream-books, as I am not expected to enter fully into such subject here. CHAPTER X. THE HEALING ART; OR HOW TO CHARM AWAY DISEASES, Etc. CHARMS FOR WARTS. There were and there are still, many charms in use for the purpose of removing warts; and the writer can prove from experience that there are cases of complete cures through the instrumentality of charms. I remember once when I was a boy I had the misfortune of having two big warts right under my foot, which caused me a great deal of discomfort in walking. As I was complaining about this to my mother, she advised me to go and see a lady friend of hers, who was the wife of a very prominent gentleman in the neighbourhood. I went to the woman and told her everything about the warts. She told me to go home and take a small bit of flesh meat and rub the warts with it. Then I was to go out though the back door, the meat in one hand, and a spade in the other, and after proceeding to the middle of a field, dig a hole in the ground, and bury the meat in it. Perfect silence was to be observed during the ceremony, and everything to be done in secret, for if detected in the act of burying the meat, the charm lost its efficacy. I did everything as I was directed by the woman, and strange to say within two or three days the warts had disappeared. Major Price Lewes, Tyglyn-Aeron, informed me that when he was a boy at Llanllear, an old woman in the neighbourhood charmed away warts from his hands. A woman in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig informed me that she got rid of her warts by washing her hands in the water in which the blacksmith cools iron. Another way of charming away warts is to pick up small white stones from a brook,--one stone for each wait--and rub the warts with them. Then the stones are to be tied up in paper, and the person who has the warts is to go to the nearest cross roads, and throw the stones over his shoulders, and whoever picks up the parcel gets the warts. A young woman in the parish of Llanarth, in Cardiganshire, did this, and got rid of her warts. Soon after this an old woman who lives in the neighbourhood, passed by, and picked up the parcel of stones, thinking it contained some biscuits or sweets which one of the school children had lost on the way home from school. But to her great surprise, when she opened the paper, she only found small white stones! After this the old woman found her hands covered with warts; but she in her turn charmed them away by washing them with spittle from the mouth. My informant was the old woman herself. Another charm for warts is to cut a slip of an elder tree, and make a notch in it for every wart. Rub the elder against each wart, and burn or bury it, and the warts will disappear. In former times Holy Wells were much resorted to by those who desired to get rid of their warts, when a pin was dropped into the well, and a rag with which the warts had been rubbed, hanged on the nearest tree. ROSEMARY CHARM FOR TOOTHACHE. Many people still believe that toothache is caused by a worm in the tooth, and it was once thought that to burn a Rosemary bough until it becomes black and place it in a strong linen cloth, and anoint the teeth with it would kill this worm. According to the old Welsh Magazine, "Y Brython," vol. 3, page 339, there were many charms performed with Rosemary. Rosemary dried in the sun and made into powder, tied in a cloth around the right arm, will make the sick well. The smoke of Rosemary bark, sniffed, will, even if you are in gaol, release you. The leaves made into salve, placed on a wound, where the flesh is dead, will cure the wound. A spoon made out of its wood will make whatever you eat therewith nutritious. Place it under the door post and no snake nor adder can ever enter thy house. The leaves placed in beer or wine will keep these liquids from becoming sour and give such a flavour that you will dispose of them quickly. Place a branch of rosemary on the barrel and it will keep thee from fever, even though thou drink of it for a whole day. "SLIME" OF TROUT AS MEDICINE. In West Wales once a freshly caught trout was placed in a pan of milk in which it would swim, and after it was supposed that the fish had passed the milk through its gills and left some of its slime in the milk, the milk was supposed to have been given the necessary medicinal powers for the cure of whooping cough and other illness. CHARMS FOR FITS AND FOR QUINSY. There is a belief in some parts of West Wales that fits may be cured by wearing round the neck a band made of the hair from the crop of an ass's shoulder. Hair cut at midnight from the shoulder of an ass and applied to the throat was also thought to be efficacious in curing the quinsy. Charm for Rheumatism.--Carry a potato in your pocket. A charm for the Ague.-- Ague was charmed away by tying on the breast a piece of cheese; and after keeping it there for a time, throw it away back over the head. Charms for Whooping Cough.--Drink the milk of a female ass; or buy a penny roll, drape it in calico, bury it in the garden take it up next day, then eat the roll until it is consumed. ABRACADABRA. One of the most famous and popular charms in the central parts of Wales--especially Cardigan and Carmarthenshire--was the magic and mysterious word Abracadabra, which was obtained from wizards by paying a certain sum of money for it. The word was inscribed on a paper or parchment, line under line, repeating the same, but with one letter less in each line till it ended in A, as follows:-- A B R A C A D A B R A A B R A C A D A B R A B R A C A D A B A B R A C A D A A B R A C A D A B R A C A A B R A C A B R A A B R A B A There are many people even at the present day in West and Mid-Wales who keep this mystic cabala in their houses as a most valuable treasure. It is called "papur y Dewin" (the wizard's paper). It was considered a protection against witches and the "evil eye," as well as all other evil influences; and an antidote against fevers. It was effective to protect both persons and animals, houses, etc. Sometimes it was worn round the neck, or on the breast, at other times carried in the pocket, and kept in the house. It was also the custom to rub the charm over cattle or to tie it round their horns, especially when witchcraft was suspected. This mysterious word, Abracadabra, to which the superstitious attributed such magical power was, according to some, invented by one Basilides, and that he intended the name of God by it. Others say that it was the name of an ancient heathen deity worshipped in Syria, or in Assyria. Dr. Ralph Bathurst is of the opinion that the word is a corrupt Hebrew: dabar is verbu, and abraca is benedixit; that is verbum benedixit. As the charm appears very much like a pyramid (though upside down), perhaps that has something to do with the superstition concerning its magical power: anything in the shape of a pyramid is considered very lucky, quite as much as--if not more so--than a horse-shoe. THE PENTACLE. Cadrawd, in the "Welsh Tit-Bits" column of the "Cardiff Times," speaking of South Pembrokeshire, says:-- The pentacle, or pentalpha--a figure consisting of five straight lines so joined and intersected as to form a five-pointed star--is still regarded in Fleming-land as a physical charm and the repository of Talismanic power. This credulity is identical with the traditions of the Greek Christians, who used the figure as a mystic sign in astrology and necromancy. The figure was held in veneration by mediævalists, and was known as the "Pentacle of Solomon." Sir William Jones, the great Oriental scholar, in his work on "Folklore," observes that "it is worthy of remark that at the present time the magical pentalpha in the western window of the southern aisle of Westminster Abbey is one of the emblems which still exist and speaks to the initiate that the black monks who once chanted in the choir were deeply read in occult science." Some years ago, when on a tour in quest of lore, a Pembrokeshire gentleman tells us that he remembers being puzzled by the appearance of a number of pentacles being cut into the bark of several oak trees near the solitary dwelling of a charmer. He addressed the Solon a few questions on the meaning of these strange figures, but was cut short with the reply, "They be signs." On Cresswell Hill, near Lady's Well, there grows a row of tall beeches, on one of which may be seen the figure of a pentacle. It stands about 15 feet from the ground, and the wound was evidently made well nigh a century ago, judging by its appearance. There is a tale that many years ago the "White Ladies" were charmed away or banished from the vicinity of the Lady's Well, of Cottage Dingle, by means of several pentacles being cut into the bark of trees growing near by. CHARMS FOR CATTLE AND PIGS. An old man named Evan Morris, Goginan, near Aberystwyth, informed me that he had several times consulted a conjurer in cases of bewitched cows and pigs. The conjurer, said my informant, took a sheet of paper on which he drew a circular figure very much "like the face of a clock." Sometimes he made more than one figure, which he filled in with writing. In fact, the paper was covered all over with writings and figures and symbols; and it took the wise man about half-an-hour to do this. This paper or charm, the conjurer gave to my informant, and charged him to rub the bewitched animal's back with it, "all over the back right from the ears to the tail," and at the same time repeating the words, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Morris added that this charm never failed. His sister-in-law once had a sow which refused to take any food for nine days; a farrier was sent for, but when he came, he could do nothing. At last, my informant went to a conjurer and obtained a charm, with which his sister-in-law, after some hesitation, rubbed the sow, repeating "In the name, etc." and to their great surprise the sow fully recovered and began to eat immediately, and soon ate up all the food intended for two fat pigs. When I asked my informant to show me one of the papers he obtained from the conjurer, he stated that he never kept such paper longer than twelve months. I next asked him if he had read one of the papers, and what were the words written on it? He replied that he could not decipher the conjurer's writing. Mr. Hamer, in "The Montgomeryshire Collections," vol X., page 249, states that a paper or charm in his possession opens thus:-- "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen ... and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ my redeemer, that I will give relief to ---- creatures his cows, and his calves, and his horses, and his sheep, and his pigs, and all creatures that alive be in his possession, from all witchcraft and from all other assaults of Satan. Amen." Mr. Hamer also states that "at the bottom of the sheet, on the left, is the magical word, "Abracadabra," written in the usual triangular form; in the centre, a number of planetary symbols, and on the right, a circular figure filled in with lines and symbols, and underneath them the words, 'By Jah, Joh, Jah?' It was customary to rub these charms over the cattle, etc., a number of times, while some incantation was being mumbled. The paper was then carefully folded up, and put in some safe place where the animals were housed, as a guard against future visitations." In West Wales, there was once a kind of charm performed upon a cow after calving, when some fern was set on fire to produce smoke, over which a sheaf was held until it was well-smoked. Then it was given to the cow, to be consumed by the animal. THE CURE OF RICKETS. The complaint which is called in West Wales "llechau" means rickets, a complaint to which children are subject. It was thought that it could be cured by cutting a slit in the lobe of one of the child's ears. The practice was once common in Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire and other parts; and Mr. H. W. Williams, of Solva, mentions in "Cambrian Notes and Queries," for January 11th., 1902, of a man in the Rhondda Valley who had recently cut the rickets. He was a Cardiganshire man. HOW TO CURE A DOG THAT HAS BEEN BITTEN BY A MAD DOG. Write down on a bit of paper the words "Arare, cnarare, phragnare," in three lines as follows: Arare Charare Phragnare. Phragnare Cnarare arare Arare cnarare phragnare. Also write down in addition the name of the dog. Having done this, put the paper in a piece of bread and give to the dog to eat. About the middle of the last century, when mad dogs were common, this "prescription" was considered "a sure and certain cure"; or at least, so says my informant, an old farmer in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, who also added that the mountain farmers obtained this charm from Dr. Harries, the wizard of Cwrtycadno. HEALING STONES. There is at the present day preserved at Gilfachwen, Llandyssul, by D. J. Lloyd, Esq., a small white stone, not quite the size of an egg. The stone is comparatively soft, and was supposed to possess healing power to cure people bitten by mad dogs. A little substance of the stone was scraped off, and mixed with milk and given as a dose to the patients. In years gone by--though not now--people believed so much in this stone that some travelled long distances to Gilfachwen; but how many of them were cured I have not been able to discover. The stone is called Llaethfaen, and when I visited Gilfachwen about five years ago, Mr. Lloyd showed me the interesting relic, and a few weeks afterwards I received from the same gentleman, the following communication by post, with an enclosed copy of his late brother's MS. concerning the stone:-- Gilfachwen, Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, Feb. 20th, 1905. Sir,-- I send you, as promised, a copy of all my late brother knew about the Llaethfaen. He died in 1889, but the paper was written many years before his death. There is no record of where the stone was found, or how it came to the Rev. D. Bowen's hands. I remain, Yours truly, D. J. LLOYD. The following is a copy of the paper written by the late Mr. John Lloyd:-- LLAETHFAEN. I know very little about this stone or what curative power it has or was supposed to have. I only know that it was very much in request many years ago. It came to my father's possession on the death of his uncle, Rev. David Bowen, of Waunifor about the year 1847. In those days and for many years afterwards, mad dogs were very "fashionable," a summer never passing without one hearing of a great many people having been bitten, and, consequently, a great many people called at Gilfachwen for a dose of the Llaethfaen, and whether it had curative or preventive powers or not, none of the patients were ever known to be attacked with hydrophobia. People who had been bitten would travel immense distances in order to get the stone. I remember a whole family, father, mother, and four or five children, who had been bitten by the same dog, arriving at Gilfachwen early one summer morning, before anyone was up, having travelled all night in order to be treated with the stone cure; they went away very happy and relieved in mind, after each had received a dose. It has not been used now for many years. The last instance I recollect was this: two men employed in a Brewery at Llanon, on the Cardigan coast, had been bitten by the same dog, supposed to be mad, arrived here on a Sunday afternoon; poor fellows, they looked utterly miserable and wretched; they had spent nearly a week enquiring for the stone, and meanwhile, had been advised by some old woman who was supposed to be learned in some ailments, not to eat any food; this advice they very foolishly followed, and when they arrived here, they were truly in a terrible plight. After giving each of them a dose of the Llaethfaen and a good meal they went away happy and never heard of them since. JOHN LLOYD, Gilfachwen. It is rather interesting that Iolo Morganwg saw a stone of this kind in the year 1802, in the neighbourhood of Bridell, North Pembrokeshire. The following extracts from Iolo's Diary appeared in "Young Wales," June, 1901:--"Leave Cardigan, take the road to Llanfernach. Bridell Church.... Meet a man who carries a stone about the country, which he calls Llysfaen. Scrapes it into powder with a knife, and sells it at about five shillings an ounce as an infallible remedy for the canine madness. He says that this stone is only to be found on the mountains after a thunderstorm, that every eye cannot see it. He showed me the stone, and when I assured him and a little crowd that had gathered about him, that the stone was only a piece of the Glamorgan alabaster, the poor fellow was confounded and seemed very angry; but I was surprised to hear many positively assert that they had actually seen the Hydrophobia cured in dogs and man with this powder given in milk, and used as the only liquid to be taken nine days, and the only food also.... The name by which this fellow named his stone is obviously a corruption of Cleisfaen, from its blushy white colour, veined or spotted with a livid or blackish blue colour like that of a bruise (clais)." The excellent old Welsh Magazine "Y Gwyliedydd" for the year 1824, page 343, gives an account of two other such stones, one of them preserved at Maes y Ffynon, Maelienydd, and the other at Llwyn Madog, Breconshire. How these two stones were discovered the following story is given:--A man attacked with hydrophobia wandered away one day and slept on a hill, where he dreamt that a remedy for his disease was to be found in the ground under his head, where he was sleeping. After digging the ground, two white stones were discovered. A healing stone supposed to have descended from the sky was discovered on a farm called Disgwylfa, in Carmarthenshire. THE PHYSICIANS OF MYDDFAI. The following extracts from the book of remedies of The Physicians of Myddfai, will not be irrelevant, as those celebrated Physicians were of Fairy origin, having been furnished with medical prescriptions by their supernatural mother, the Fairy lady of Llyn y Fan, in Carmarthenshire. TO EXTRACT A TOOTH WITHOUT PAIN. "Take some newts, by some called lizards, and those nasty beetles which are found in ferns during summer time, calcine them in an iron pot and make a powder thereof. Wet the forefinger of the right hand, insert it in the powder, and apply it to the tooth frequently, refraining from spitting it off, when the tooth will fall away without pain. It is proven."--Physicians of Myddfai. FOR THE BITE OF A MAD DOG. "Seek some plantain, and a handful of sheep's sorrel, then pound well in a mortar with the white of eggs, honey, and old lard, make it into an ointment and apply to the bitten part, so that it may be cured."--Physicians of Myddfai. FOR PAIN IN THE EYE. "Seek the gall of a hare, of a hen, of a eel, and of a stag, with fresh urine and honeysuckle leaves, then inflict a wound upon an ivy tree, and mix the gum that exudes from the wound therewith, boiling it swiftly, and straining it through a fine linen cloth; when cold, insert a little thereof in the corners of the eyes, and it will be a wonder if he who makes use of it does not see the stars in mid-day, in consequence of the virtues of this remedy."--Physicians of Myddfai. HOLY BREAD AS A REMEDY. "Black or Holy Bread is that which has been made on Good Friday and kept for twelve months. It is stored in the cottage-roof where it keeps dry and becomes black, and is consumed on Good Friday only. This bread is here said to be an excellent remedy for people and cattle suffering from certain complaints."--The Church Plate of Radnorshire by the Rev. J. T. Evans, page 15. HOW TO CURE A "FOUL FOOT." "If a hoofed animal is found to be suffering from "Foul Foot" it must be taken to a field, or sward, and the impression made on the ground by one of its hoofs must be carefully cut out and placed upside down on a hedge or bush; when the turf has withered the animal will be cured."--Church Plate of Radnorshire, page 16. PILLS OF DEAD MEN'S BONES. Pentrevor, in the "Pembroke County Guardian," says:--I have a valuable recipe for quack doctors. Mr. George Williams, knows of a young lady who was one day cleaning a window when a flash of lightning so frightened her that she became subject to fits. As an infallible cure, someone suggested that a dead man's bone be procured. Llanwnda Churchyard was visited for the purpose, while a new grave was being dug, and dead men's bones were thrown up by the spade. A bone was found and cleaned, ground into powder and made into pills, which the patient took, and was completely cured. GWELLA CLEFYD Y GALON, OR HEART DISEASE, A LOVE SICKNESS. A writer in "Cymru Fu" an interesting reprint from "The Weekly Mail," says:-- It is a well-known fact that "clefyd y Galon," or love-sickness is a very prevalent complaint in Wales, especially among young females who have been jilted, or have failed to win the affection of the young man whom they admire best. The lamented Talhaiarn knew all about it when he penned the line in one of his love songs:-- "Minau'n ceisio caru Gwen, a hithau'n caru Roli." A cure of this disease has been for centuries, and still is, a secret of great value in the Principality, and there are many old women, and some young men, now living, who are making splendid profits out of the secret they have in their possession. An old wag called "Ned y Wain," who resided near Aberystwyth; Harries, Cwrtycadno; and a shrewd old woman in the neighbourhood of Ystumtuen, Cardiganshire, practised the "cure" as a part of a professional conjuring, and many excellent but ridiculous stories are current anent the visits of young females, especially the "Ladies of Borth," to the chambers of the enchanters. The "secret" came into my possession thirty-eight years ago in the following manner:-- When a young lad at home, I had the privilege of visiting a farm house, the last on the borders of Cardiganshire, adjoining Montgomeryshire, where resided a wealthy young widower now living. The landlady of the adjoining farm on the other side of the River Llyfnwy, during my stay, used to cross the river frequently to visit the young widower, with whom she spent hours closeted in the parlour. The frequency of her calls, and the great secrecy observed at her coming and going, drew my attention, and provoked my curiosity, and I began to twit the young widower, who was a local preacher, of something he could not very well relish, and in order to clear himself of all suspicion, he told me that the woman visited him only to cure Clefyd-y-galon; and handed over to me the cherished secret, which I now divulge as a relic of the dark days of Wales, and for the amusement of the readers of "Cymru Fu." The MS. was in Welsh, of which the appended is a translation:-- 1st.--Ask the name of the person, and the surname, and the age; and take a double threaded yarn and measure it with your naked arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger three times, naming the person, and saying the age, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Then put a mark on the thread, and if it is on the person the thread will shorten, but it not, the thread will lengthen. For example, say thus--I am Joseph, thirty-six years of age in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; and measuring, and say it each time while measuring; and do not cut the thread until you have measured three times. It is necessary that the thread should be scoured white wool. Take care not to put the age of the person more than it is. Then put it round the neck of the person, and leave it there for three nights; then take it from the neck and bury it under the ashes in the name of the Trinity. Put a knot on one end of it after cutting it. It is necessary to look several times if the person is recovering or not. Should the thread shorten above the middle finger, there is but little hopes of his recovery; nevertheless, many recover when it shortens the finger's length. It is necessary to keep the whole affair as secret as you possibly can. Again, take notice, it is necessary to measure three lengths from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger; then put a mark on the spot, or let anyone take hold of it; then begin to measure the same way again, naming as said before until you have measured three times, and take notice, as said before if the thread shortens. THE MEDICINE. Six penny worth of gin, or quart of beer, four penny-worth of best saffron; give them a boiling on a slow fire, and take them for seven mornings, after putting red hot steel in to warm it. TOUCHING; OR THE CURE OF THE DISEASE KNOWN AS "THE KING'S EVIL." In the new and valuable History of Radnorshire (p. 321), published by Davis and Co., Brecon, appeared the following transcript of a printed paper, now in a decayed state, which was pasted on a board and placed in a conspicuous part of the Church of Diserth, in that County:-- "At the Court of Whitehall, the 9th of January, 1683. "Whereas by the Grace of God, the King and Queen of this Realm, by and for many years past, have had the happiness by their sacred touch, and invocation of the name of God, to cure those who are afflicted with the disease called the King's Evil; and His Majesty in no less measure than any of his royal predecessors, having had success therein, and in his most gracious, and pious disposition, being as ready and willing as any King or Queen of this realm ever was in anything to relieve the distresses and necessities of his good subjects; yet in his princely wisdom, foreseeing that in this (as in all other things) order to be observed, and fit times are necessary to be appointed for the performance of this great work of charity, his Majesty was therefore this day pleased to declare in Council his royal will and pleasure to be that (in regard heretofore the usual times of presenting such persons for this purpose have been prefixed by his royal predecessors) from thenceforth be from the Feast of All Saints, commonly called All Hallowtide to Christmas until the first of March, and then to cease till Passion Week, on account of the temperature of the season, and in respect of contagion, which may happen to his Majesty's Sacred person. And when his Majesty shall at any time think fit to go, any progression, to appoint such other times for healing as shall be convenient. And his Majesty doth order and command that from the time of publishing this his Majesty's order, none present themselves at his Majesty's Court to be healed of the said disease, but only at, or within the times for that purpose appointed as aforesaid. And His Majesty was further pleased to order that all such as shall hereafter repair to the Court for this purpose, shall bring with them certificates under the hands and seals of the ---- or minister, and of both, or of one of the Churchwardens of the respective parishes whereto they belong, and from whence they come, testifying according to the truth, that they have not at any time before been presented to the intent of being healed of that disease. And all ministers and Churchwardens are ordered to be careful to examine into the truth before they give certificates, and also to keep and register the names of such persons, to whom such certificates they shall from time to time give. And to the end that all His Majesty's loving subjects may be informed of His Majesty's command, His Majesty was pleased to direct that this order be published in all parish churches, and then to be affixed to some conspicuous place there; and that to that end a convenient number of copies be sent to the Most Reverend Father in God, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lord Archbishop of York, who are to take care that the same be distributed to all the parishes in their respective provinces." The above proclamation was issued in the Reign of Charles II. HOLY RELICS. THE NANTEOS CUP. There is preserved at the mansion of Nanteos, near Aberystwyth, a sacred healing cup known in Welsh as the "Phiol," which interesting relic was shown me a few years ago by Mrs. W. B. Powell, to whom, and to the genial Squire, I am indebted for much kindness and respect. In the same week an intelligent and wealthy Roman Catholic lady--an invalid--came all the way from London, as she had such faith in the efficacy and healing virtues of the Sacred Cup. The Cup is of a very dark wood and supposed to have been formed from the wood of the true Cross, and it seems to have been preserved in the Abbey of Strata Florida. At the time of the Dissolution, the Abbey, lands and goods, were given to the Stedman family, who also carefully preserved the relic, and from that family it passed over to the Powells as well as the demesne. THE HEALING CUP. Until a few years ago it was usual for people who were ill, especially those suffering from hemorrhage to send to Nanteos for the loan of this healing cup, as it was supposed to possess healing power which could only be called miraculous, and there are many instances of cures believed to have been effected by taking food and medicine or wine out of the cup. It is a great pity that this interesting relic is now in an unshapely condition, having been considerably damaged by some of the patients who were not content with drinking from it, but tried to bite away parts of the cup itself. It is quite possible that this holy relic was the chalice therein our Lord consecrated the wine and water at the institution of the Eucharist, and in which was said to be preserved some of the blood which fell from the Saviour's wounds as he hung on the cross. In an interesting little book written five years ago, by Miss Ethelwyn M. Amery, B.A., entitled "Sought and Found," the writer, after giving the story of the the Holy Grail, concludes. "Not far from the sea-side town of Aberystwyth, in Mid-Wales, stands the House of Nanteos, the country seat of the Powells. The family is an ancient one; it was ancient in the days of the Reformation, and is possessed of all the traditions of antiquity, including a phantom coach, which foretells death. To this house came, one summer's day, a party of holiday-makers from Aberystwyth--ordinary twentieth century people, with all the most up-to-date ideas--and to them was shown the house and its treasures. There was old armour in the hall, old china in the gallery, a wonderful carved arch in the drawing-room, and many other things which attract the sightseer, attracted one and another of the party. But there were a few who had no eyes for these things; to them the centre of interest was found in a small glass, carefully covered with silk, which was brought out to the lawn from its home in the library, so that all might more easily see it. Now those who looked at this case wondered what this treasure could be which was thus carefully guarded, and when the cover was withdrawn, the astonishment of many more than equalled their previous curiosity, for in this case was a fragment of wood, at first sight shapeless and worm-eaten (and many saw no more than this), but those who looked more closely saw that this worm-eaten fragment was shaped like a wooden bowl about five inches high, of which one side was broken nearly down to the foot, and the other part was roughly held together by two rivets. Many having seen this were satisfied, and went away, but some listened to what their hostess told them concerning the cup, and this is the story she told: "'Many years ago, when Henry VIII. was destroying the Monasteries, his servants came into Wales, and hearing of an ancient Monastery among the hills, where only seven old monks remained to guard their treasure, he determined to destroy the Abbey and seize their goods. But the monks were warned by friendly neighbours, and fled by night, bearing their treasure with them. Their journey was long and dangerous for such old men, but they reached the House of Nanteos in safety, and deposited the treasure they had suffered so much to save. One by one the old monks died, and at the point of death he entrusted the treasure to the owner of the house that had sheltered them, until the Church should once more claim its own. But the Church has not yet claimed it, and it is that treasure of the monks which you now see.' "And again some were satisfied and went away, only wondering that the old monks risked their lives for so small a thing. But those who remained heard further, that the monks had regarded this cup as sacred. Many reasons were given for this: one was that it had a Communion Chalice, another that it possessed miraculous power of healing, but the true reason is told only to the few who press closely for it, and it is thus:-- "Not for its healing properties alone was this cup treasured, not because from it the Monks had received the Communion wine; the cup was older than the Monastery--indeed, the Monastery had been built to receive it; it had been handed down from Abbott to Abbott through the ages, and in each age its secret was told to one or two, that they might guard it the more carefully, for this cup is none other than the one from which our Lord drank at the Last Supper--the cup so eagerly sought for by King Arthur's knights; found and handled by many, who, because of their blindness were unable to perceive the treasure which was before them; seen and realized by the pure knight Galahad, and then hidden from common touch and sight during the sinful days which followed, but preserved carefully through them all, and powerful even yet to give to those who will wait for it, a faint--alas! very faint--glimpse of Galahad's vision, and to remind them that even yet 'The pure in heart shall see God.'" Just as I am sending this to the press, Mrs. Powell of Nanteos, showed me a letter which she had just received from a noble French lady begging her to send to her in a letter, an handkerchief, or ever a rag, which had been tied round this Healing Cup for 24 hours. THE STAFF OF ST. CURIG. In the Church of St. Harmon, Radnorshire, was once preserved a pastoral staff supposed to have belonged to St. Curig, the founder of Llangurig, in Montgomeryshire. Giraldus Cambrensis says that this staff was "covered on all sides with gold and silver, and resembling in its upper part the form of a cross; its efficacy has been proved in many cases, but particularly in the removal of glandular and strenuous swellings." PENGLOG TEILO (TEILO'S SKULL.) A relic known as "Penglog Teilo" is still preserved at Llandilo Llwydiarth, Pembrokeshire. I give a full account of it in my chapter on Holy Wells. CHAPTER XI. FOLK-LORE OF FOUNTAINS, LAKES, AND CAVES. HOLY WELLS. There is much Folk-Lore in connection with wells, in Wales, and an interesting volume might be written on the subject. Holy Wells were once much frequented by devotees in search of health, omens, or prognostications of coming events; and even at the present day some of them are made use of as wishing wells by young men and young women, who throw a bent or a crooked pin into the well, and wishing at the same time. In the old times when "Gwyliau Mabsant," or Saints' Fetes, were in vogue in Wales, wells were sometimes the scenes of great merriment, both before and even after the Reformation. According to an old writer they were much frequented in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The habit of tying rags to the branches of a tree close to the well was well-known once in several places. This was done by people who were suffering from maladies. The rag was first dipped in the water, and the afflicted part of the body bathed with it. Afterwards before going away from the well the rag was tied to the branch of a tree near it. It is also worth mentioning that this ceremony is in vogue in Eastern Countries as well, such as Arabia and Persia. As far as Wales is concerned, some of the wells frequented in times past, possessed medicinal properties; but it must be admitted that some of the superstitious ceremonies which were performed at them, must have come down from pre-Christian times; and it seems evident that water was once an object of worship, or at least of veneration, and that offerings were made either to the water itself, or more probably to the tutelary god of the fountain. This was the opinion of the late Rev. Elias Owen, F.S.A., who had made a special study of the subject all his life-time. That the inhabitants of Great Britain were, in ancient times, given to the adoration of fountains, is evident from the fact that in 960, King Edgar commanded by Canon law "That every priest industriously advance Christianity and extinguish heathenism and forbid the 'Worship of Fountains, and necromancy and auguries."" But finding the worship of fountains too strong to put down at once, the priest effected a compromise, by transferring veneration from the tutelary god by dedicating the well to a saint, and building a church on the spot, and baptised his flock in the well; nevertheless many pagan customs of well worship lingered on from generation to generation. At the present day in some places, we find a village pump situated at the corner of the Churchyard, which is not at all a good thing from a sanitary point of view. But we must bear in mind that the well was there before the Churchyard, and that in most of such cases the site of the Church had been fixed upon because of the virtue and attractions of the well. ST. TEILO'S WELL. This strong spring rises within a short distance of the ruined church of Llandilo Llwydiarth, near Maenclochog, in Pembrokeshire, and close by, there is a farm-house in which a skull, traditionally called "Penglog Teilo," (Teilo's Skull) is kept, and has been kept from time immemorial. This skull is used for drinking water out of from St. Teilo's Well. In former times St. Teilo's Well had a wide-spread reputation as a healing well, and the sick from all parts of South Wales resorted to it; but it was considered absolutely necessary to drink the water out of the skull, which had to be dipped in the well, and filled with water, and handed to the patient by the hereditary keeper. The present keeper of the relic is Mr. Melchior, an intelligent farmer, who informed me that his ancestors had been keepers of the skull from time immemorial. How the skull first came there, Mr. Gibby, of Llangolman, gave the following tradition:--When St. Teilo was dying he bade a female servant take his skull from Llandilo, in Carmarthenshire, to Llandilo, in Pembrokeshire, and that if this was done, the skull would be a blessing to coming generations of men who would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. According to another tradition which I have heard, the skull came from Llandaff Cathedral, where St. Teilo was Bishop, though born in the neighbourhood of Tenby. If we believe the old legend, the miracles he worked in death were marvellous; for, "on the night of his decease, there arose a great dispute between the clergy of the three Churches each asserting its authority and privileges for obtaining his body; but at length, attending to the advice of discreet men, they had recourse to fasting and prayer, that Christ, the great judge, who is the true authority, and privilege of holy persons, should declare by some sign, to which of them he would be pleased to commit the body of the saint. And in the morning a certain elder, looking towards the place where the body was, spoke with a loud voice, saying, "Our prayer, brethren, has been heard by the Lord, who deprives no one of his reward; arise, and behold what things have been done by Christ the meditator between God and man, that our dispute might be settled; and as in the life so in the death of the holy confessor, Teilo, miracles should be performed." For, lo! they saw there three bodies, to which there was the same dimensions of body, the same beauty of countenance; they had the lineaments of the whole frame, without any difference. So peace being restored, each with their own corpse returned homewards, and they buried the different bodies in those several places with the greatest reverence." St. Teilo died in the year 566, and people of the present day hardly believe that the relic at Llandilo Llwydiarth is the real skull of this saint, though the skull in question is a very old one, and only the brain pan now remains. About five years ago an old man named John Griffiths, living in the village of Maenclochog, informed me that he well remembered the time when people came to St. Teilo's Well, from all parts of the country, for the alleviation of their ailments, "and were cured" said he, "by faith." The same old man also told me that when a boy, he and other two boys who were suffering from the whooping cough, were sent by their mothers early in the morning to drink water from the well out of the skull. They did so and got rid of their coughs entirely. I was told by another person in the neighbourhood, that about seventy years ago, a gentleman from Glamorganshire, drove his consumptive son in a carriage all the way to Pembrokeshire, to try this healing fountain of St. Teilo, but arrived home in Swansea without feeling any better. He had drunk the water from the well, but not out of the skull. His father took the boy all the way to St. Teilo's Well a second time, and now made him drink out of the skull, and was completely cured of his complaint. When I was spending a few weeks at Maenclochog, some years ago, in quest of information, I accompanied Mr. Melchior to the well one day, and drank out of the skull. But, unfortunately, I did not get rid of my cold, from which I was suffering at the time, but, perhaps, my faith was not strong enough. THE PRIEST'S WELL. "There is a well on the Picton Castle Estate, situated near the Red House Cottages, called the Priest's Well, which the children are (this was written thirty-five years ago) in the habit of decorating with mountain ash (or as it is called "Cayer" in the district) and cowslips on May Day. This is supposed to have the effect of keeping the witches away from those families who get water from the well during the year. The children sing over the well while decorating it "Cayer, Cayer, keep the witches in May Fair."--Bye-Gones, December, 1874. ST. LEONARD'S WELL. This well, which is situated in the parish of Rudbaxton, in the neighbourhood of Haverfordwest, was once much made use of for its medical properties, especially by those who were suffering from sore eyes. There was once a St. Leonard's Chapel a short distance from the well, though St. Leonard was not a Welsh Saint. The Chalybeate Wells, Gumfreston, Tenby, had a great reputation once for their healing virtues. WELLS OF THE FIVE SAINTS. These are five wells or pools in the river, near Llanpumpsaint, in Carmarthenshire, and I am indebted for the following tradition concerning them, to old records in the possession of the Rev. Canon Lloyd, B.D., Vicar of that parish. Llanpumpsaint, of course, means the "Church of the Five Saints." According to the tradition the five wells were made use of by the five Saints, and each particular saint had his particular well. In former times on St. Peter's Day, yearly, between two and three hundred people got together, some to wash in, and some to see the wells. In the summer time the people in the neighbourhood bathed themselves in the wells to cure their aches. THE HOLY WELL OF LLANFIHANGEL GENEU'R GLYN. This well is about four miles north from Aberystwyth, in Cardiganshire. It is situated quite close to the eastern wall of the Churchyard of Llanfihangel Parish Church. This well has been, and perhaps still is, held in honour for its curative virtues. It is surrounded by a small building and within a few years of the present time, people in search of health took the trouble of coming from long distances to drink from and to bathe in its waters. When the Rev. Z. M. Davies, vicar of the parish, and myself, visited the spot five years ago, a lady living quite close to the well, informed us, that a short time previously, a crippled girl from Glamorganshire, who had come there on crutches, was able to walk away without them, and left them behind. Ffynnon Francis, is also a well in the Parish of Llanfihangel Geneu'r Glyn, on a farm called Penuchaf, and it seems that it was once popularly esteemed, for there is a tradition at Talybont, that its waters had the power of restoring sight to a blind old man named Francis. THE LLANCYNVELYN WELL. The parish of Llancynvelyn is situated on high ground which juts out into the bog called Gors Fochno not far from Borth, in North Cardiganshire. Cynvelyn, to whom the Church is dedicated, was a Welsh Saint, descended from Cunedda. Within the memory of many people who are now alive, there was a holy well in the Churchyard of Llancynvelyn, and the sexton, an intelligent old man, informed me a few years ago, that its water was thought to possess health-restoring qualities, and he himself noticed people resorting there to bathe their feet in the well; and some came with bottles and carried some of the water home with them as a household remedy. CANNA'S WELL (CARMARTHENSHIRE). The parish of Llangan is not far from Whitland. The holy well there, known as Canna's Well, was much resorted to in former times, as its water was supposed to cure ague and intestinal complaints. After throwing a pin into the well, and drink of the water or bathe in it, it was customary for the patient to sit down in "Canna's Chair" for a certain length of time and try to sleep. "Canna's Chair" is a stone. In former times the superstitious believed it had a peculiar virtue in connection with the well. ST. ANTHONY'S WELL. St. Anthony's Well, at Llanstephan, Carmarthenshire, was formerly famous for its curative virtues; and it is rather popular at the present day as a "Wishing Well." Young men and young women resort to the spot to wish, and are in the habit of throwing a pin into the well as an offering to its deity or to St. Anthony, its patron saint. THE "WISHING WELL" OF CAREG CENEN CASTLE. About four miles to the east of the town of Llandilo, in Carmarthenshire, are the remains of a remarkable old castle called Careg Cenen, which stands on the summit of a solitary rock. This rock is about 300 feet high. The most noted feature in connection with the Castle is its underground gallery. In one part of the building a passage terminates in a flight of steps leading down to a dark subterranean cave of about 200, or perhaps, 250 feet long, and at the end of this passage or cave, there is a well which is still used as a "wishing well," more especially by young people. When I went to see the remains of the Castle a few years ago, I also visited the subterranean cave. After lighting a candle and descending the flight of steps, I proceeded along this dark and marvellous passage slowly and cautiously, as there was water in some places. After going on underground in this manner about forty yards, to my great surprise, I heard the sound of human voices, and saw a light in front of me; and all of a sudden I came upon three young ladies, one from London, and two from Ammanford, who informed me that they had intended going on as far as the well, but turned back before reaching it, as they were afraid of proceeding any further into the interior of such a dreary dungeon. However, when I offered to take the lead, they followed me with joy, and at last we reached the Wishing Well at the far end of the cave. Before we left the spot, each one of the three young ladies threw a bent pin into the well, wishing, I suppose that she might have her heart's desire. We found many pins at the bottom of the well, which had been probably left there by young people given to the practice of amorous spells. There is also a well in the neighbourhood of Llandilo, called Ffynon-fil-feibion (thousand men's well), respecting which tradition states that 1,000 men fell near it. ST. MARY'S WELL, RHAYADER. In the "History of Radnorshire" it is stated: "On the western extremity of the common called Maes-y-dref, is a most excellent spring of pure and limpid water, namely, St. Mary's Well. It was heretofore a custom for the young people of Rhayader, of both sexes, to resort hither on Sunday evenings, during the Spring and Summer seasons, to drink this salutary beverage sweetened with sugar." PILLETH CHURCHYARD WELL (RADNORSHIRE). The water of this well was once considered beneficial in ophthalmia and other diseases of the eyes. There are in Radnorshire numerous springs for the cure of various diseases, and in this county also is the celebrated and well-known health resort of Llandrindod. Builth Wells, Llangamarch, and Llanwrtyd (Breconshire), are also on its borders. LLANNON (CARMARTHENSHIRE.) There is a holy Well in this parish dedicated to Non, mother of St. David. Tradition also says that Non herself got water from this well. LLANELLY. In former times there was a Holy Well in the neighbourhood of Llanelly, known as "Ffynnon Elli," supposed to possess medical qualities. HOLY WELL AT LLANGYBI. Llangybi is about four miles from Lampeter, in Cardiganshire. The Vicar, the Rev. J. N. Evans, informed me that there is a well in this parish known as "Ffynon wen," formerly supposed to possess healing powers; and that there is a tradition in the neighbourhood that St. Gybi himself lived at a house which is still called "Llety Cybi." Mr. Evans also adds in the Transactions of the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, Vol I., that within a quarter-of-a-mile of the Holy Well, there used to be a large stone called "Llech Gybi," which the invalids who came to this well for healing were required to touch. There is a Holy Well of St. Gybi in Carnarvonshire also, to which it was once customary for young women to travel long distances, in order to find out their lover's intentions at the forthcoming fair. A pocket handkerchief was thrown on the surface of the water, and "if it floated to the South there would be great joy and delight, but if to the North, the girl would be an old maid." THE HOLY WELL OF ST. GWENOG. St. Gwenog's Well is close to the graveyard walls of the Church of Llanwenog, which is situated about six miles from Lampeter, and two from Llanybyther. The well was once much resorted to, even within memory of people who are still alive, as its water was considered very beneficial, especially to wash children whose backs were weak. THE LLANLLWNI WELL. In the parish of Llanllwni, Carmarthenshire, there is a well called Ffynon Garedig, which seems to have been famous once. There is an old saying that if you hold your two arms in this well for a certain length of time, you will find out whether you are healthy or unhealthy. If one's arms are red when taken out of the water, it is a sign of good health, but if white, a sign of bad health. THE PWLLFFEIN WELL. Mr. Rees, Maesymeillion, Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, informed me, that there was once a famous well for its healing virtues, on the side of the river Clettwr, known as "Ffynon Pwllffein." An old man who is now dead, informed him that this well was much resorted to about the first part of the last century, and pins were once found at its bottom. The well has been destroyed by the river now. Ffynon-Ddewi, or St. David's Well, near Alltyrodyn, in the same parish, was also much resorted to once, even within living memory, as it was popularly esteemed for its cures of whooping-cough. THE LLANDYSSILIO WELL. In the parish of Llandyssiliogogo, Cardiganshire, a well, known as Ffynon Blaenglewinfawr, was once popularly esteemed for its cures of bad legs and other physical troubles. It is said that some who went there on crutches were cured. FFYNON Y GROES (WELL OF THE CROSS). This well is in the parish of Llangranog, Cardiganshire, and was famous once, for tradition, says that in former times, pilgrims rested here to quench their thirst and to make the sign of the Cross. This parish has also its Ffynon Fair, or St. Mary's Well. FFYNON Y PISTYLL. This well, which was once celebrated for its healing virtues is in the neighbourhood of Kidwelly, in Carmarthenshire, and its water cured sore eyes. THE WELL OF FFOSANNA. This well is also in Carmarthenshire, in the parish of Cyuwil Elvet. There was hardly a well in the county more celebrated in former times than "Ffynon Ffosanna," and there are traditions still extant in the neighbourhood, that many of the cripples who resorted here, went home healed. FFYNON BECCA. Another well-known well of great repute in Carmarthenshire, is Becca's Well, between Newcastle Emlyn and Llandyssul. This well is still thought by many to possess health-restoring qualities, and its water cured both gravel and diseased eyes. It was much resorted to within living memory. ST. NON'S WELL, NEAR ST. DAVID'S. This famous holy well, dedicated to Non, the mother of St. David, Patron Saint of Wales, is situated near the remains of St. Non's Chapel, near St. David's, and was formerly much resorted to for many complaints; and Fenton in his History of Pembrokeshire says: "In my infancy, as was the general usage with respect to children at that time, I was often dipped in it, and offerings, however trifling, even of a farthing or a pin, were made after each ablution, and the bottom of the well shone with votive brass.... At the upper end of the field leading to Non's Chapel there appears the ruined site of a house, probably inhabited by the person deputed to take care of the spring, most likely a lucrative employment in more superstitious times." When I visited the neighbourhood a few years ago, an old man at St. David's informed me that he remembered diseased persons coming to the well, and returning home completely restored to good health, and that without doubt there must be healing virtues in the water of this sacred spring. The old man also believed that St. David was baptised in the well. Pembrokeshire people firmly believe that the Patron Saint of Wales was born in the neighbourhood which bears his name. The Welsh name for the cathedral and the town of St. David's is Ty Ddewi, which means the House of David. ST. EDREN'S WELL. St. Edren's is situated about half way between Haverfordwest and Fishguard. According to a local tradition there was once a most famous sacred well in the Churchyard, much resorted to for the cure of many complaints, especially hydrophobia; but one time, a woman washed her clothes in this well on Sunday, which caused the spring to dry up as a curse for breaking the Sabbath. Fortunately, however, for poor patients, the healing propensities or virtues of its water were miraculously transferred into the churchyard grass. So people took some of the grass to their homes to eat it with their food, which cured them of their ailments. There was a hole in the church wall to receive the offerings of those who came to procure some of this grass. One old man informed the Vicar, the Rev. J. Bowen, who is an enthusiastic antiquarian, that the sacred well had been closed in order to drain the graveyard, but that there is still a spring in a field outside the wall. THE LETTERSTON WELL. Another Pembrokeshire well supposed by some to possess curative properties is called "Ffynon Shan Shillin," at Letterston, about five miles from Fishguard. Some say that the water of the well was once so valuable that it was sold for a shilling a bottle. THE LLANLLAWER WELL. A well near the Church of Llanllawer, in the neighbourhood of Fishguard, had once the reputation of possessing medical properties, and was much frequented in the old times. There is a Rocking-Stone also in this neighbourhood, perhaps once used in divination. There was also a well near Moelgrove, between Nevern and Cardigan, which was resorted to once, and pins were discovered at the bottom of it. RHOSCROWTHER. "Down in a hollow beside the stream stands the ancient Parish Church, dedicated to St. Decumanus, patron of Springs and Wells, who in old times was held in high esteem for the cures effected at the bubbling rill hard by."--"Nooks and Corners in Pembrokeshire," page 82. ST. KEYNAN'S WELL (LLANGURIG.) According to the late Rev. Elias Owen, F.S.A., this well granted the wish of the first who drank it; and every married couple endeavoured to first drink the water, for the one did so became the master in their wedded life. LAKES. LLYN MOEL LLYN. This is a lake in the parish of Llanfihangel Genau'r Glyn, North Cardiganshire. There is a saying that every bird that attempts to fly over this lake, falls into it dead. There is also a tradition in the neighbourhood that when an attempt was made to drain the lake, terrific thunder and lightning compelled them to give up the attempt. TREGARON LAKE. There is a small lake near Tregaron, between Lampeter and Aberystwyth; and there is a tradition in the neighbourhood that the village or town of Tregaron was once situated on the spot which is now occupied by the lake, but that it sunk, and some fancy they can see some ruins or remains now at the bottom of the lake. PENCARREG LAKE. Pencarreg Lake is not far from Lampeter, but lies on the Carmarthenshire side of the river Teivy, and near Llanybyther. According to an old tradition in the district, a village once stood on the spot where now the lake is; but the village was swallowed up, and the lake is now known as the "bottomless." TALLEY LAKES. Talley Lakes are close to the remains of the fine old Abbey, and not far from Edwinsford, the country seat of Sir James Drummond, Bart., Lord Lieutenant of Carmarthenshire. Respecting these lakes also there is a tradition that a town lies beneath their waters. Such traditions of towns lying buried beneath lakes are common to many lakes, both in Wales, and other countries. Such traditions have probably come down from pre-historic times, when people dwelt in lake habitations, and in caves, for safety from the beasts of the forest as well as from human foes. Traces of lake dwelling have been discovered in Switzerland and in other countries. LLYN LLECHWEN. Llyn Llechwen, or Llyn Llech Owen, lies on the top of a hill near Gorslas, in Carmarthenshire. According to a local tradition there was only a small well once on the spot now occupied by the lake. The well had a stone cover which had to be removed by those who came to obtain water, and to be carefully replaced after obtaining it. But once upon a time a certain farmer in the neighbourhood sent a boy almost every day to the well to water his horse. Whenever the boy returned the farmer always asked him, "Did you put back the stone over the mouth of the well, my boy?" The boy answered "Yes." One day, however, when in a hurry, the lad quite forgot about replacing the stone, and the consequence was that the water of the well burst forth till it formed a lake. The above story was told me by an old man named John Jones, who lives in the small town of Llangadock, who added that he had heard it from his mother when a boy. According to another tale respecting the spot, it was one famous warrior known as Owen Lawgoch, and his men, who forgot to replace the cover; but when he found the water bursting forth both he and his men entered a cave in alarm, and fell asleep which is to last till it is broken by the sound of a trumpet and the clang of arms on Rhiw Goch, then to sally forth to conquer. LLYN Y FAN FACH. This lake is known to all lovers of Welsh Fairy Lore. It lies on the Black Mountain on the borders of Carmarthenshire and Breconshire. It has been customary from time immemorial for people from all parts to throng the banks of this lake on the first day of August to see the Fairy Lady of the Lake appearing on the surface of the water to comb her hair. For account of this lady see Fairies in this book. LLYN EIDDWEN, LLYN FANOD, AND LLYN FARCH. These are a group of lakes in which the river Aeron, in Cardiganshire, rises. There is an old story that wild cattle used to come out of Eiddwen, and rush back when disturbed. Mr. David Rees, Glynwern, Llanilar, informed me that according to an old prophecy attributed to Merlin, when Llyn Eiddwen dries up the town of Carmarthen will sink! There is also a story about Llyn Farch that, once upon a time, a most wonderful animal came out of its waters, and was shot by a farmer. SAVADDAN LAKE (BRECONSHIRE). This celebrated lake which is known by several names, such as Llangorse Lake, Lake of Brycheiniog, etc., occupies a spot where, according to ancient tradition, once stood a large city, which was swallowed up by an earthquake. Camden once thought that the supposed city was the ancient Loventium of the Romans; but Loventium stood, in all probability, in the parish of Llanddewi Brefi, Cardiganshire. This lake was once celebrated for its miracles, and Giraldus Cambrensis seven hundred years ago, says:--"In the reign of King Henry I., Gruffydh, son of Rhys ap Theodor, held under the King, one comot, namely, the fourth part of the cantred of Caoc, in the Cantref Mawr, which, in title and dignity, was esteemed by the Welsh, equal to the southern part of Wales, called Deheubarth, that is, the right-hand side of Wales. When Gruffydh, on his return from the King's Court, passed near this lake, which at that cold season of the year was covered with waterfowl of various sorts, being accompanied by Milo, Earl of Hereford, and Lord of Brecheinioc, and Payn Fitz-John, Lord of Ewyas, who were at that time secretaries and privy counsellors of the King; Earl Milo, wishing to draw forth from Gruffydh some discourse concerning his innate nobility, rather jocularly than seriously thus addressed him: 'It is an ancient saying in Wales, that if the natural prince of the country, coming to this lake, shall order the birds to sing, they will immediately obey him.' To which Gruffydh, richer in mind than in gold (for though his inheritance was diminished, his ambition and dignity still remained), answered, 'Do you therefore, who now hold the dominion of this land, first give the command'; but he and Payn having in vain commanded, and Gruffydh, perceiving that it was necessary for him to do so in his turn, dismounted from his horse, and falling on his knees towards the East, as if he had been about to engage in battle, prostrate on the ground, with his eyes and hands uplifted to Heaven, poured forth devout prayers to the Lord: at length, rising up, and signing his face and forehead with the figure of the cross, he thus openly spake: 'Almighty God, and Lord Jesus Christ, who knowest all things, declare here this day Thy power. If Thou hast caused me to descend lineally from the natural princes of Wales, I command these birds in Thy name to declare it;' and immediately the birds, beating the water with their wings, began to cry aloud, and proclaim him. The spectators were astonished and confounded; and Earl Milo hastily returning with Payn Fitz-John to Court, related this singular occurrence to the King, who is said to have replied, 'By the death of Christ (an oath he was accustomed to use), it is not a matter of so much wonder; for although by our great authority we commit acts of violence and wrong against these people yet they are known to be the rightful inheritors of this land.'" RIVER LEGENDS. "Hafren ag Wy, hyfryd eu gwedd A Rheidol fawr ei hanrhydedd." (How beautiful are the Severn and Wye And Rheidol is held in honour they say.) The Severn, the Wye, and the Rheidol rise on Plinlimon Mountain. These rivers, which are called three sisters, agreed to make a visit to the sea in the morning. Severn rose up very early, and took compass through Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire. Wye rose later and took her journey through the counties of Radnorshire and Hereford, falling in with her sister near Chepstow, and went hand in hand to the ocean. Rheidol indulged in her dreams and lay so late that she was forced to take the nearest road to Aberystwyth. According to another version of this legend five sister fountains are mentioned, namely, Wye, Severn, Rheidol, Llyfnant and the Dulas. There is another interesting old legend having close connection with the Severn, the following version of which is given by Milton in his History of Britain:--"After this Brutus in a chosen place, built Troja Nova, changed in time to Trimovantum, now London; and began to enact laws (Heli being then High Priest in Judea); and having governed the whole isle twenty-four years died, and was buried in his new Troy. Three sons--Locrine, Albanact, and Camber--divided the land by consent. Locrine had the middle part, Loegria; Camber possessed Cambria or Wales; Albanact, Albania, now Scotland. But he in the end, by Humber, King of the Hums, who, with a fleet, invaded that land, was slain in fight, and his people driven back into Loegria. Locrine and his brother go out against Humber; who now marching onward was by these defeated, and in a river drowned, which to this day retains his name. Among the spoils of his camp and navy were found certain maids, and Estrilidis, above the rest, passing fair, the daughter of a King in Germany, from whence Humber, as he went wasting the sea-coast, had led her captive; whom Locrine, though before, contracted to the daughter of Corineus, resolves to marry. But being forced and threatened by Corineus, whose authority and power he feared, Gwendolen, the daughter, he yields to marry, but in secret loves the other; and ofttimes retiring as to some sacrifice, through vaults and passages made underground, and seven years thus enjoying her, had by her a daughter equally fair, whose name was Sabra. But when once his fear was off by the death of Corineus, not content with secret enjoyment, divorcing Gwendolen, he makes Estrilidis his queen. Gwendolen, all, in rage, departs into Cornwall; where Pladan, the son she had by Locrine, was hitherto brought up by Corineus, his grandfather; and gathering an army of her father's friends, and subjects, gives battle to her husband by the river Sture, wherein Locrine, shot with an arrow, ends his life. But not so ends the fury of Gwendolen, for Estrilidis and her daughter Sabra she throws into a river, and, to have a monument of revenge proclaims that the stream be thenceforth called after the damsel's name, which by length of time is changed now to Sabrina or Severn." The Poet in his "Mask of Comus" makes the nymph Sabrina "that with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream" the goddess of the river, but still retaining her maiden gentleness, and the shepherds, at their festivals, "Carol her goodness loud in their rustic lays, and throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream of pansies, pink, and gaudy daffodils. And, as the old swain said, she can unlock the clasping charm, and thaw the number spell, if she be right invoked in warbling song; for maidenhood she loves, and will be swift to aid a virgin, such as was herself, in hard-besetting need." In the year 1634 when this "Comus" was presented at Ludlow Castle before the Lord President of Wales, the President's own daughter, Lady Alice Egerton, when only a little girl, acted in it; and it is an interesting fact that this same Lady Alice, some years afterwards, became the wife of the Earl of Carbery, Golden Grove, Carmarthenshire, who entertained Jeremy Taylor during the time of the Commonwealth. CAVES. OGOF MORRIS (MORRIS'S CAVE). Near Tre'rddol in North Cardiganshire, there is a cave known as Ogof Morris. According to a tradition I heard in the neighbourhood, this Morris was a notorious robber who lived in this cave, and went about to steal hens and sheep; but at last he was caught and hanged at Cardigan. According to the eminent antiquarian, Mr. Barnwell, there was a robber of the name also in Pembrokeshire, who had a little dog trained to fetch the arrows shot at unfortunate wayfarers. At last he was killed and buried at a spot where there is a stone still called "Bedd Morris" on the highway from St. David's to Newport. BLOODY CAVE. There is a cave at Pendine, in Carmarthenshire, in which according to tradition a gang of most desperate and murderous robbers once made their headquarters. At last, these scoundrels were attacked by the people of the neighbourhood, and put to death for murdering a woman for her money. PLANT MAT'S CAVE. According to tradition "Plant Mat," or "Plant y Fat," were two sons and a daughter of one Matthew Evans, who kept a public house at Tregaron in the seventeenth century. These persons became highway robbers and lived in a cave near Devil's Bridge. The entrance to the cave admitted only one person at a time and this enabled the robbers to keep out hundreds when they were attacked. It seems that they had some notion of honour, for it is said that if either had a friend, he gave him his glove, which served as a passport when stopped by the others. They lived for some years in this cave, but at last they were executed for murder. One of them was captured near Hereford, just as he was giving out the well-known hail of "Deliver or die." These robbers are also credited with the attributes of the fairies. TWM SHION CATTI'S CAVE. "Mae llefain mawr a gwaeddi, Yn Ystradffin eleni; Mae'r ceryg nadd yn toddi'n blwm, Rhag ofn twm Sion Catti." (In Ystradffin a doleful sound Pervades the hollow hills around; The very stones with terror melt, Such tear of Twm Shion Catti's felt.) This cave, which is near Ystradffin, on the borders of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, was once, says tradition, the stronghold of Twm Shion Catti, or to give him his proper name Thomas Jones. This Thomas Jones, or Twm Shion Catti, lived at Tregaron in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It seems that he had been in his younger days a freebooter, but reformed and became a celebrated bard, antiquary and a genealogist. The legends which have gathered round the name of this eminent man, are still retained in the memory of the people in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, and the late Mr. T. J. L. Prichard, of Llandovery, made him the hero of a most popular romance, into whose book the stories have been introduced, and embellished. OWEN LAWGOCH'S CAVE. This cave is in the limestone rock of Dinas, Llandebie, in Carmarthenshire, respecting which there is a story that a great warrior named Owen Lawgoch and his men fell asleep in it, but who are some day to awake and sally forth. A version of the legend is given in the Brython for 1858, page 179, by the late Gwynionydd, and an English translation of the same story is given by Sir John Rhys in his "Celtic Folk-Lore." "Not the least of the wonders of imagination wont to exercise the minds of the old people was the story of Owen Lawgoch. One sometimes hears sung in the fairs the words:-- 'Yr Owain hwn yw Harri'r Nawfed Sydd yn trigo 'ngwlad estroniaid, etc.' (This Owen is Henry the Ninth Who tarries in a foreign land, etc.) But this Owen Lawgoch, the national deliverer of our ancient race of Brythons, did not, according to the Troed yr Aur people, tarry in a foreign land, but somewhere in Wales, not far from Offa's Dyke. They used to say that one Dafydd Meirig of Bettws Bledrws, having quarrelled with his father left for England. When he had got a considerable distance from home, he struck a bargain with a cattle dealer to drive a herd of his beasts to London. Somewhere on the corner of a vast moor, Dafydd cut a very remarkable hazel stick; for a good staff is as essential to the vocation of a good drover as teeth are to a dog. So while his comrades had had their sticks broken before reaching London, Dafydd's remained as it was, and whilst they were conversing together on London Bridge a stranger accosted Dafydd, wishing to know where he had obtained that wonderful stick. He replied that in Wales he had had it, and on the stranger's assuring him that there were wonderful things beneath the tree on which it had grown, they both set out for Wales. When they reached the spot and dug a little they found that there was a great hollow place beneath. As night was spreading out her sable mantle, and as they were getting deeper, what should they find but stairs easy to step, and great lamps illuminating the vast chamber! When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves near a large table, at one end of which they beheld sitting a tall man of about seven foot. He occupied an old-fashioned chair and rested his head on his left hand, while the other hand, all red, lay on the table and grasped a great sword. He was withal enjoying a wondrously serene sleep, and at his feet on the floor lay a big dog. After casting a glance at them, the wizard said to Dafydd: 'This is Owen Lawgoch, who is to sleep on till a special time, when he will wake and reign over the Brythons. That weapon in his hand is one of the swords of the ancient Kings of Britain.' Then they moved slowly on, gazing at the wonders of that subterranean chamber; and they beheld everywhere the arms of ages long past, and on the table thousands of gold and silver pieces bearing the images of the different Kings of Britain. They got to understand that it was permitted them to take a handful of each, but not to put any in their purses. They both visited the cave several times, but at last Dafydd put in his purse a little of the gold bearing the image of one of the Owen's ancestors. But after coming out again they were never able any more to find Owen's subterranean palace." This story of Owen Lawgoch and his sleeping warriors is a version of the well-known Welsh tradition of the enchanted sleep of King Arthur and his Knights. According to an old Welsh ballad, Owen Lawgoch does not sleep in a cave in Wales, but "tarries in a foreign land"; and Dr. O. T. Lewis, of the University College, addressing the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, November 30th, 1910, stated that the garrison at Aberystwyth "was increased in 1369, when Owen Lawgoch with his French auxiliaries were expected from beyond the seas." CHAPTER XII. LOCAL TRADITIONS, Etc. LLANDDEWI BREFI. This parish is celebrated for its legendary lore; and no wonder for it is a spot of great historic interest. There is a tradition current in the neighbourhood to the effect that it was originally intended to build the Church of Llanddewi Brefi in a field on Godregarth farm, and that the work was actually commenced on that spot, but the attempt to build there was constantly frustrated, for that which was set up during the day was pulled down in the night by a Spirit, and all the material removed or carried to the spot where the Parish Church now stands. The field pointed out by tradition is about a mile away from the village, and yew trees are still to be seen there. According to another most ancient tradition, when the Church was in process of construction, two oxen known as the "Ychain Bannog" were employed to draw the stone required for the building. The load was so heavy that one of the two oxen died in the attempt to drag it forward; but before falling down dead he bellowed nine times, and so powerful was the echo that the hill, which before presented itself as an obstacle, divided or split in two. The other ox alone was then able to bring the load unassisted to the site of the Church. "Llanddewi Brefi fraith, Lle brefodd yr ych naw gwaith, Nos hollti craig y Foelallt." (Llanddewi Brefi the spotted, Where the ox bellowed nine times, Till Foelallt rock split in two.) According to another version of the story, it was the ox which survived was the one that bellowed, and not the one that died. According to another story given in Meyrick's History of Cardiganshire, these two Bannog Oxen were on one occasion used to draw "away a monstrous beaver dead"; but this is only a version of a legend which is to be found in several parts of Wales, and is founded on the older story of Hu Gadarn, or Hu the Mighty, who, with his Bannog Oxen, drew to land the avanc out of Llyn Llion, so that the lake burst out no more to deluge the earth. See "Legend of Llyn y ddau Ychain" in Folk-Lore of North Wales, by the late Rev. E. Owen, page 132. The two Ychain Bannog of Llanddewi were sometimes called "dau ychain Dewi" (St. David's two oxen). In a poem written in the Twelfth Century, the Welsh Bard Gwynfardd Brycheiniog alludes to the old tradition as follows:-- "Dau ychan Dewi, deu odidawe, Dodyssant eu gwar dan garr kynawe, Dau ychen Dewi ardderchawe oeddynt." There used to be preserved at Llanddewi Church a remarkable fragment of a horn called "Madcorn yr Ych Bannog," that is, the core of the Bannog Ox's Morn, which, according to tradition, had been kept there as a valuable relic ever since the time of St. David. This horn is now at Llidiardau, Llanilar, kept privately. It has been pronounced by Professor Boyd Dawkins to have belonged to "the great urns (Bos Primigenius) that Charlemagne hunted in the forest of Aachen, and the Monks of St. Galle ate on their feast days." When St. David was preaching at Llanddewi at the great Synod, in the year 519, it is said that the ground on which he stood rose up and formed a hillock under his feet. Cressy recounts the miracle in the following words:--"When all the fathers assembled enjoined David to preach, he commanded a child which attended him, and had lately been restored to life by him, to spread a napkin under his feet; and, standing upon it, he began to expound the Gospel and the law to the auditory. All the while that this oration continued, a snow-white dove, descending from Heaven, sate upon his shoulders; and, moreover, the earth, on which he stood raised itself under him till it became a hill, from whence his voice, like a trumpet, was clearly heard and understood by all, both near and far off, on the top of which hill a church was afterwards built, and remains to this day." The people of Llanddewi Brefi told me that there is another tradition still extant in the neighbourhood, which says that as St. David was preaching on this great occasion, a nightingale appeared on the spot, and sang. The music of the bird was so sweet, that the people listened to the nightingale's song, instead of continuing to give their attention to the sermon. Seeing this, the Holy Saint David rebuked the congregation, and informed them that the nightingale should never again sing in the neighbourhood; and from that day till now the bird has never been heard there. According to the great historian George Owen, there is a different version of this story in Pembrokeshire. "St. David, being seriouse occupied in the night tyme in his divine orizons, was so troubled with the sweete tuninges of the nightingales, as that he could not fasten his minde upon heavenlie cogitacions, as at other tymes, being letted (hindered) by the melodie of the bird, praied unto the Almightie, that from that tyme forward there might never a nightingale sing within his Dioces, and this saieth our women (old wives' fables), was the cause of confininge of the bird out of this country." At Llanio Isaf, in the parish of Llanddewi Brefi are the remains of Loventium, which was a large Roman city. About half a mile from Gogoyan, in the same parish, was once a holy well called Ffynon Ddewi, or St. David's Well, the water of which, according to tradition, flowed up miraculously when St. David restored to life the son of a widow. The well has now been closed up, and a house stands on the spot. There is another "Ffynon Ddewi," on the road-side between Aberaeron and Cardigan. CAIO (CARMARTHENSHIRE). In the parish of Caio, there is a gold mine which in ancient times was worked by the Romans. It is on the estate of Dolaucothy, and the spot is known as the "Ogofau," or caves, and part of it is a height, hardly a mountain, that has been scooped out like a volcanic crater by the Romans during their occupation. In this hollow or basin it is said that the five saints named Ceitho, Gwyn, Gwynno, Gwynnoro, and Celynin, who flourished in the sixth century, had retired in a thunderstorm for shelter. They had penetrated into the mine and had lost their way, and taking a stone for a bolster had laid their heads on it and fallen asleep. And there they would remain in peaceful slumber till the return of King Arthur, or till a more godly bishop than has hitherto been should occupy the throne of St. David. When that happens, Merlin himself is to be disenchanted and restore to liberty the dormant saints. An inquisitive woman named Gweno, who, led by the devil, sought to spy on the saintly brotherhood in their long sleep, was punished by losing her way in the passage of the mine. She, likewise, remained in an undying condition, but was suffered to emerge in storm and rain, and in the night, when her vaporous form might be seen about the old Ogofau, and her sobs and moans were heard and frightened many. Mr. F. S. Price, in his interesting "History of Caio," says that another legend is that one of these saints appears to have a special commemoration, but under a female appelative in "Ffynon" and "Clochdy Gwenno," the latter an isolated rock standing up in the midst of the great gold excavations, and marking their depth in that particular place. The well had, in good old times, a high reputation for healing virtues, and that "on an unfortunate day, Gweno was induced to explore the recesses of the cavern beyond a frowning rock, which had always been the prescribed limit to the progress of the bathers. She passed beneath it and was no more seen. She had been seized by some superhuman power, as a warning to others not to invade those mysterious 'penetralia,' and still on stormy nights, when the moon is full, the spirit of Gweno is seen to hover over the crag like a wreath of mist." ST. GOVAN'S. About seven miles from Pembroke, and a mile from Bosheston, there is a small chapel of rude masonry half way down the cliff known as St. Govan's Chapel. It is a seaside building, perched across a fissure in the side of the cliff, and a long flight of steps leading down to it from above. There is a popular belief that these steps cannot be numbered by anyone correctly, or "counted by none both ways alike." I visited the spot myself in October, 1909. In the east wall of the Chapel a doorway admits into a cleft of the rock in which is a marvellous cell or crevice, "that enables the largest person to turn round therein, and at the same time quite filled by the smallest." This cavity has been regarded by the superstitious as a miraculous cell, and according to a legend Our Lord on one occasion, when pursued by His enemies, the Jews, sought safety in this neighbourhood. "Passing through a field where men were sowing bailey, He ordered them at once to go for their reaping hooks, and, if any passed that way and inquired after Him, to say that they had seen such an one, but it was in sowing time. The men although they knew not who it was, did as they were bid, fetched their hooks, and lo! on their return, the field was waving with ripe corn. Whilst engaged in the reaping, a band of men accosted them, as was expected, who, having received the appointed answer, gave up the chase in despair. The Lord, meanwhile, had been concealed in this crevice, which had opened to receive Him, and still bears a faint impression of His person." According to another tradition which is still extant in the neighbourhood it was St. Govan (Sir Gawain), one of King Arthur's knights, that took shelter in this cell when he was pursued by his pagan persecutors. The cell has been used from time immemorial as a "wishing place," and it is said that "all who turn round therein, and steadfastly cling to the same wish during the operation will most certainly obtain their wish before the expiration of the year." It is still resorted to I believe by young people. A few yards lower down in the ravine is a holy well, once much resorted to for the cure of diseases. This well was frequently visited seventy years ago, and, it is said that its water was so efficacious that some who came there on crutches were able to walk away without them. There are, or at least were, somewhere in this part, three upright stones, about a mile distant from each other. The tradition is, that on a certain day these stones meet to "dance the Hay," at a place called Saxon's Ford, and when the dance is over, travel back and resume their places. The late Mr. Thomas, Greenpark, informed me that there was a moving stone of this kind in the parish of Llandyssul, Cardiganshire. TREGARON. At a distance of about three miles from Tregaron there is a ridge running east and west separating Upper and Lower Tregaron. It is called "Cwys yr Ychain Bannog," the Furrow of the large-horned Oxen. Tradition has it that the "Furrow" was made by two Bannog Oxen dragging along the ground the carcass of a huge reptile which had been killed by the people of the neighbourhood in ancient time. (For more about Tregaron see Lakes.) CRUG MAWR. The Rev. Peter Roberts, in his "Cambrian Popular Antiquities," says that Crug Mawr, or Pentychryd Mawr, is a lofty hill in Cardiganshire, situated in the Vale of Aeron, mentioned in Giraldus, where he says, "there is an open grave, which fits the length of any man lying in it, short or long." Hence arose the ancient tradition, that a powerful giant, kept his post on this hill, and was endowed with the genius of the Aeron Vale. He had a lofty palace erected on the hill, and used occasionally to invite the neighbouring giants to a trial of strength on the top of it. At one of these meetings coits were proposed and introduced, and, after great efforts, the inhabitant of the spot won the day, by throwing his coit clear into the Irish shore, which ever after gave him the superiority over all other giants in Ceredigion, or the land of Ceredig. Gwynionydd in the First Volume of the "Brython," 1859, mentions two places known as "Crug Mawr," one near Cardigan, and the other in the Vale of Aeron. Near the road leading from Newcastle Emlyn to Lampeter, is "Crug Balog," where a warrior or giant of the name of Balog was buried. CANTREF Y GWAELOD; OR THE LOST LOWLAND. "Ochenaid Gwyddno Garanhir, Pan droes y don dros ei dir." (The sigh of Gwyddno Garanhir, When the waives swept over his land.) There is a well-known tradition in Cardiganshire, and indeed all over Wales, that what is known to-day as Cardigan Bay was once dry land. The country was known as Cantref y Gwaelod, or The Lowland Hundred. It had sixteen cities, and in the beginning of the sixth century the district was governed by a king named Gwyddno Garanhir. As the land was below sea-level, dykes had been built to check the encroachments of the sea. One day, however, Saethennyn Feddw, that is, Saethennyn the Drunkard, son of the King of South Wales, opened the sluices, and the sea flowed in, but the people fled to the uplands. One of the ancient Welsh Triads commemorates the inundation as follows:-- "The three abandoned drunkards of the Isle of Britain were, first, drunken Geraint, King of Siluria, who in the paroxysm of a fit of intoxication set fire to the standing corn; the conflagration in consequence of which rash act spread so violently, that all the corn of the country, to an immense distance, was totally consumed, and a destructive famine ensued." "The second was Vortigern, surnamed the wry-mouthed, who when intoxicated gave Horsa, the Saxon chief, the Isle of Thanet, for permission to have an illicit connection with his daughter Rowena; and further promised, that her son, the fruit of that amour, should succeed to the Crown of England; which proved productive of treachery, and a sanguinary massacre of a prodigious number of the chieftains of the Cambrian race. "The third was drunken Seithinyn, the son of Seithyn Saidi, King of Dimetia; who when in a state of intoxication suffered the sea to overflow Cantref y Gwaelod, where lands and habitations the most beautiful in all Wales, excepting only Caerleon or Usk, to the number of sixteen cities and towns, were in a short period inundated and ruined. The lowland hundred was the property of Gwyddno, surnamed longshanks, King of Ceredigion (Cardiganshire). This event happened in the reign of Emrys Wledig. The inhabitants who escaped from that inundation landed in Ardudwy, and ascended the mountains of Snowdon, which had never been inhabited before that period." There is a poem on this inundation in the ancient Welsh book "Llyvr Du Caerfyrddin" (Black Book of Carmarthen). Near Wallog, a few miles to the North of Aberystwyth, a causeway called Sarn Cynfelyn, extends several miles into the sea. According to local tradition this is supposed to have been a main road leading into the submerged country, and it is said that there was a royal palace in this part. Other places which traditions associate with the Lowland Hundred are Sarn Cadwgan and Sarn Ddewi, further South, near Aberayron, and Sarn Badrig, in North Wales. So much has been written on this subject, both in prose and verse, that it it not necessary to dwell further on it here. But it is of interest to add that there is a tradition, which is still extant that between Borth, in Cardiganshire, and Aberdovey, in Merionethshire, there once stood a town at a spot which is now covered by water. There is also a well-known story of the chimes of bells being heard at the bottom of the sea. Dwellers near Ramsey Sound, in Pembrokeshire, also hear the chimes of bells in the sea, and this reminds us of the Story of Grallon, in Brittany, who reigns beneath the waves. LLANFIHANGEL YSTRAD. There is a tradition in the Vale of Aeron that some generations ago, a man from the neighbourhood of Ystrad, was sentenced at the Cardigan Assizes, to be hanged for sheep-stealing, or some other such offence. The sentence, however, was not carried out, as the criminal was a useful man, particularly so to the Squire who happened to be the High Sheriff that year. But before the Squire's year of office had elapsed, urgent inquiries came down from the Government as to the execution, of which no report had ever reached them. The Squire was so frightened at the Government's inquiries, that he had the unfortunate man, who was out in the fields at the time, seized, bound and hanged on a birch tree. One of the Squire's servants entered a small cottage and begged an old woman for the loan of her apron, but concealing from her what he was going to do with it. When the old woman discovered that her apron was made use of to blindfold the poor man who was so unceremoniously hanged, she pronounced a curse on the Squire and his descendants. After this everything went wrong with that Squire. A STRANGE CARMARTHENSHIRE TREE LEGEND. There is a fine old mansion in Carmarthenshire, with a very strange tradition in connection with it. I am not permitted to mention the name of the place. Once upon a time there was a certain tree, or rather a bush, in a field, or in the Park, which bloomed with flowers every Christmas morning. Christmas after Christmas, when putting forth its blossoms, the bush made a strange noise, which attracted to the spot large crowds of people from all parts of the country. At last the selfish Squire cut down this sacred bush, in order to put a stop to the people damaging his park; but by doing this rash act he brought upon himself and his descendants a curse, and his offence has not been expiated till this day. MAESYFELIN. The most popular tradition associated with Lampeter is that known as the "Curse of Maesyfelin." Maesyfelin was a stately mansion on the banks of the river Dulas, on the east side of the town of Lampeter. It was once a place of consequence, and an ancient family of Lloyds lived there. About the beginning of the 17th Century the famous Vicar Pritchard of Llandovery, author of "Canwyll y Cymry" had a son named Samuel. Tradition has it that this young Samuel was an intimate friend of Sir Francis Lloyd, Knight of Maesyfelin, who was a wicked man. At last, so the story goes, the two quarrelled over some love affair, and young Samuel was stifled to death between two feather beds. The body, tied in a sack and placed on horse-back, was conveyed over the mountain in the depth of night and thrown into the river Towy in Carmarthenshire. When the body of his lamented son was discovered in the river, the broken-hearted father pronounced a curse on Maesyfelin in the following words:-- "Melldith Duw ar Maesyfelin-- Ar bob carreg, ar bob gwreiddyn-- Am daflu blodau tref Llan'ddyfri Ar ei ben i Dywi i foddi." (The curse of God on Maesyfelin! On every stone, and root therein, For throwing the flower of Llandovery town To Towy's water, there to drown.) People believe to this day that the judgment of God fell on the family and mansion of Maesyfelin. The palace delapsed and no longer exists. Materials from its ruins were carried away to repair Ffynonbedr, another mansion in the neighbourhood; but that place is also in ruin now, so that it is believed that the curse of Maesyfelin followed the material to Ffynonbedr. TENBY (PEMBROKESHIRE). In former times Tenby was so celebrated for its fishery and it was known as Dinbych-y-Pysgod, that is Tenby-of-the-Fish. There is a tradition in the neighbourhood of some extraordinary bank or rock, at sea, called "Will's Mark," on which codfish in great abundance were formerly taken. The spot is no longer to be found, and the loss is said to have been occasioned as a curse which the inhabitants of the town brought upon themselves by their barbarous usage of a deaf and dumb man, who had come into the town begging. CWM KERWYN (PEMBROKESHIRE). In this locality is a huge stone or rock, which, according to tradition, was thrown there by King Arthur of old; and somewhere in the same neighbourhood is "Bedd Arthur," Arthur's Grave. LLANSTEPHAN CASTLE (CARMARTHENSHIRE). It is popularly supposed that there is an underground passage from this old Castle to the mansion, known as Plas Llanstephan. Tradition has it that many an attempt was made in former times to go through, but always in vain, as a spirit extinguished the candles of all who entered the passage after proceeding a certain distance. CWMYREGLWYS (PEMBROKESHIRE). According to Pentrevor, in "The Pembroke County Guardian," March, 1903, a "Fairies' Town" has been seen in the sea occasionally in this neighbourhood. He also adds that there are on the extreme point of Dinas Head, some steps in the rock called "The Devil's Footprints." There are also "Devil's Footprints" in a rock, to be seen in Cardiganshire, between Llanwenog and Llanarth. MESUR Y DORTH (MEASURE OF THE LOAF). Between St. David's and Fishguard is an object not unlike a milestone, upon which is rudely traced a cross within a circle: the irregular disc being about a foot in diameter. This is known as "Mesur y Dorth," (Measure of the Loaf); and the tradition is, that St. David caused these figures to be made in order to regulate the size of the loaf of bread in times of scarcity. ABERGWILI. Near the Bishop of St. David's Palace, Abergwili, is a pool in the river Towy, called "Pwll y Coach" (the Coach's Pool). The tradition is that in the old Coaching Days the "Great Coach" fell into this pool, and was never seen again. CAE POETH (HOT FIELD). In the parish of Llanon, Carmarthenshire, is a field called "Cae Poeth." Tradition says that images which were in the Church before the Reformation were burnt at this spot. CRAIG GWRTHEYRN (VORTIGERN'S ROCK). Craig Gwrtheyrn is in the neighbourhood of Pencader, in Carmarthenshire. According to an old legend, the disreputable old British King Vortigern, built a castle here in the fifth century; but he and his castle were destroyed by fire from heaven. There is also a story that Owen Glyndwr sleeps in a cave here. BRYNBERIAN (PEMBROKESHIRE). Near Brynberian, in North Pembrokeshire, there is a grave known as "Bedd yr Afanc," or the Avanc's Grave. According to an old tradition in the neighbourhood, this Avanc was a most dangerous beast or monster, which at last, after much trouble, was caught in a pool in the river, and buried with pomp and religious rites on a spot which still bears the name "Bedd yr Afanc." LLANON (CARDIGANSHIRE). Non was the mother of St. David. The Vicar, Mr. Lewis, informed me that there is a tradition in the neighbourhood that the Patron Saint was born here, and owned much land here, including all the flats known as Morfa Esgob--The Bishop's March. It is said that St. David divided the land into small portions which he gave to the fishermen of the place. There was a stone on the exterior wall of the ruins of St. Non's Chapel, on which was carved the face of a woman with a child in her arms, traditionally reputed to be that of Non and her child David. There is also a tradition that the Saint was educated at Henfynyw. See more about this in Mr. Eyre Evans' interesting book on the Antiquities of Cardiganshire. Some three miles from Llanon, says Mr. Horsfall-Turner in his "Wanderings in Cardiganshire," legends have been busy with a huge stone pillar which marks, perhaps the grave of some long-forgotten hero. "During the building of Devil's Bridge, we are told, his Satanic majesty wished to employ this monolith and carried it away, his finger marks may still be seen--leaving another impression. He sat so long and thought so deeply, that at the crowing of the cock, he was startled and vanished so rapidly that the stone was so completely forgotten." TYNYCASTELL (DEVIL'S BRIDGE). According to the Rev. John Griffith, Llangynwyd, there is a version of the well-known legend of Arthur or Owen Lawgoch and the Sleeping Warriors attached to this place; but as I have already given a version of this story in connection with Owen Lawgoch's Cave, near Llandebie, I shall not repeat it here. King Arthur figures rather prominently in North Cardiganshire. Between Devil's Bridge and Llanafan is a farm belonging to the Earl of Lisburne called "Maen Arthur"--Arthur's Stone; and in the parish of Llanbadarn-fawr there is a "Llys Arthur"--Arthur's Court, a legendary residence of the renowned King. BEDD TALIESIN (TALIESIN'S GRAVE). About eight miles north of Aberystwyth is an ancient grave known as Bedd Taliesin. According to a local tradition, Taliesin, Chief Bard of the Island of Britain was buried on this spot. The grave, which is composed of stones, is in the centre of a large heap of earth or mound surrounded by stone circles, and some generations ago bones, and even a human skull, were found in it, which probably were the remains of the great ancient poet. There is a superstition respecting Bedd Taliesin that should anyone sleep in it for one night, he would the next day become either a poet or an idiot. There is a similar popular belief in connection with Cader Idris, in Merionethshire, where an eminent bard once tried the experiment. Taliesin's Grave is in the Parish of Llanfihangel genau'r Glyn, and in the adjoining parish of Llancynfelin there is a village bearing the name of Taliesin; and, according to the "Mabinogion," the great poet was born somewhere between the Dyvi and Aberystwyth. The people of North Cardiganshire believe to this day that Taliesin was both born and buried in their district. The origin of his birth, which was supposed to be very miraculous, and other legends which cling to the memory of this great man are to be found in the Mabinogion. CRUGIAU'R LADIS (CARMARTHENSHIRE). On the mountain above the village of Caio, there are two peculiar heaps of stone known as Crugiau'r Ladis, concerning which there is the following curious tradition:--Two ladies from London were exiled from their homes, and lived in this district. The change of town life to country was so great, that they set to work and gathered heaps of stone together to build a Babel heavenward, from the top of which they could see London from the land of exile. I heard a story when a boy that Derry Ormond tower, near Lampeter, was also built in order to see London. EURGLAWDD. In a field called Llettyngharad on this farm, which is in the parish of Llanfihangel Genau'r Glyn, there are two stones respecting which an ancient prophecy says that when the third appears, the end of the world will be at hand. At Llwynglas, in the same parish, there was once preserved a long knife, which, according to tradition, was used by the Saxons in the time of Vortigern, at the treachery of the long knives. TRAETH SAITH (CARDIGANSHIRE). Tradition says that Traeth Saith--the Seven's Shore--had its name from the seven daughters of a king who were wrecked there, having been put by order of their father into a vessel without sails or oars. A poem commemorates this tradition. Probably the place is named from a brook. LLANILAR. The present vicar, the Rev. J. F. Lloyd, remembers hearing from an old lady, that when she was a little girl, it was customary for the women of the parish to curtsy to an oil painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on entering the church. It seems that there was a holy well once known as Ffynnon Drindod not far from Llanilar. LLANGADOCK. An old man, named John Jones, informed me that Llangadock was a large town in ancient times; but that a part of it sunk. According to tradition, a church stood once where Pwll y Clychau--the Pool of the Bells--is now, and the old man added that people still hear the sound of the bells at the bottom of the pool. There is a stone in the river Sawdde, known as Coitan Arthur, respecting which there is a tradition that it was thrown down from the top of Pen Arthur--about a mile distant--by Arthur the Giant. ABERMARLAIS. At the entrance gate of Abermarlais Park there is an interesting stone, near which, according to a tradition related to me by Mrs. De Rutzen, the Welsh Princes held a council of war. I was also informed by people in the neighbourhood that the spot was once haunted by the ghost of a lady in white. OYSTERMOUTH CASTLE (GOWER). It is said that in an underground dungeon of Oystermouth Castle is, or there was, a large pillar known as "The Wishing Post," around which young men and young women, when wishing for a lover or sweetheart, were in the habit of walking nine times, and at the same time sticking a pin in the pillar and looking on the wall, when they were supposed to see "a lady in white." OXWITCH (GOWER). Near the Bone Caves is a cromlech known as Arthur's Stone. According to tradition, St. David split it with a sword in proof that it was not sacred. CAE HALOG (NORTH CARDIGANSHIRE). "Cae Halog," at Llanbadarn-fawr means "Desecrated Field." The tradition in the neighbourhood is, that in former times people met together at this spot to indulge in games and contests on Sundays, thus breaking the Sabbath. MOUNT AND VERWICK (CARDIGAN). It was customary in former times for the people of this district to meet together on the First Sunday after New Year's Day, called by them "Sul Coch" (Red Sunday), when wrestling, football, etc., took place, to commemorate a victory over the Flemings. In the neighbouring parish of Llangoedmore, is St. Cynllo's Cave, where, according to ancient tradition, the holy Saint prayed, and where marks of his knees are to be seen in the rocks. MAENCLOCHOG (PEMBROKESHIRE). It is said that this parish received its name from a stone which sounded like a bell. An old man named John Griffiths, informed me that he remembered this stone, which was a very large one, and that people broke it up in order to see what caused it to sound. HIGHMEAD (CARDIGANSHIRE). There are old traditions that an ancient Welsh King, named Pryderi Ap Pwyll, had a palace here, somewhere on the river side, on a spot known according to the Mabinogion, as "Rhuddlan Teivi." The present mansion is the country residence of Colonel Davies-Evans, the worthy Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire, who informed me that Sir John Rhys, Oxford, has been trying to discover traces of Pryderi's palace. I dealt with this subject in a paper which I read at Highmead, June, 1910, before the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, and which is to be published in the Transactions of that Society. I may also add that the Lord Lieutenant and Mrs. Davies-Evans are among my best friends in South Wales, and I have made much use of their valuable library. GOGERDDAN (NEAR ABERYSTWYTH). The late John Jones, Bristol House, Talybont, informed me six years ago, that there is a tradition in the neighbourhood that Henry VII. called at Gogerddan when on his way through Cardiganshire to Bosworth Field. Henry had been entertained at Wern Newydd and Llwyn Dafydd in the south of the county. Gogerddan is the ancient residence of the genial baronet, Sir Edward Webley-Parry-Pryse. LLANGYNLLO (CARDIGANSHIRE). There is a tradition in this parish, that in ancient times, the Romans put to death a young woman in the neighbourhood of Gernos, and that her spirit haunted the spot for generations. At first, she appeared as a cat, and afterwards as a "White lady." There is a tradition that a son of Howell Dda, King of Wales, lived in the neighbouring district of Dyffryn Cerri. LLANGWYRYFON (CHURCH OF THE VIRGINS). Tradition says that this parish received is name from eleven thousand Welsh virgins, who were massacred by barbarians on the coast of Germany. The virgins were on their way to Brittany. PENBRYN (CARDIGANSHIRE). According to my friend, the Rev. Prys Williams (Brythonydd), there is a farm in this parish called "Perth Geraint"; and it is probable that Geraint, one of King Arthur's knights was buried somewhere in this neighbourhood, as tradition locates in the parish of Penbryn, the "Battle of Llongborth," at which Geraint was killed. This is the Geraint who figures in the Mabinogion, and in Tennyson, as the knight who married the young Lady Enid, who is described as "comely and graceful." There is a stone near Troed-y-Rhiw, which, according to tradition, was an ejected pebble from the clog of a giant who lived in the district in ancient times. CILGERRAN (PEMBROKESHIRE). It is said that the spot where the remains of the Castle now stand, was known in ancient times as "Dyngeraint," so named from Geraint, one of King Arthur's Knights. This is the Geraint I have just mentioned above in connection with the traditions of Penbryn, Cardiganshire, a parish which is only about seven miles distance from Cilgerran. Arthur and his Knights figure prominently in the traditions of Pembrokeshire, and there is a legend of a battle fought by Arthur's sons in the neighbourhood of Precelly. GORSYGEDOL (MERIONETHSHIRE). Lady Enid Vaughan, daughter of Countess Lisburne, and sister of the young Earl of Lisburne, informed me that there is a tradition in the neighbourhood of Harlech that Charles I. during the Civil War, was at one time hiding at Gorsygedol, and that the bedstead in which he slept is still to be seen there. Near the same old mansion is a large stone known as "Coeten Arthur"--Arthur's coit. NICK-NAMES, OLD AND POPULAR SAYINGS. "There is one-half of him in Penboyr." "Angylion Ceinewydd, Gwartheg Llanarth, Hwrddod Cilcennin." (New Quay's angels, Llanarth's cows, Cilcennin's rams.) "Gwyr Llanddeusant, capan crwyn, Lladron defaid, mamau'r wyn." (Llanddeusant men, skin caps, Sheep stealers, lambs's mothers.) "Moch Sir Benfro." (Pembrokeshire pigs.) It is probable that Pembrokeshire was the particular part of Britain into which pigs were first introduced. In the Mabinogion, Gwydion tells Math, son of Mathonwy, Lord of North Wales, that Pryderi, Lord of the South, had some beasts called pigs. Pryderi, though he had a palace at Rhuddlan Teivi, in Cardiganshire, was a Pembrokeshire Prince, and it would seem that his chief palace was still at Narberth, and that he introduced some of his pigs from Pembrokeshire into Cardiganshire. "Esmwyth yw Cwsg cawl Erfin." (Easily sleeps turnip broth.) In the "Cambrian Notes and Queries," reprinted from the "Weekly mail," March, 1902, I.H.A. says: "There were two families living in two small cottages somewhere in a secluded spot on one of the slopes of the Black Mountain, Carmarthenshire, both in very straitened circumstances. The paterfamilias' names were John and David. John found a way out of the difficulty of rearing a family upon the salary earned by farm labourers in those days by stealing a sheep now and then from the mountain flocks. His family very often had mutton broth and plenty of meat for supper while David's family had to sup upon a piece of coarse bread and turnip broth. Upon a certain night David had enjoyed his usual repast and gone to bed. Mrs. David had gone to the "next door" to view the feast, when suddenly two constables of the old fashion, made their appearance to demand the body of friend John, his depredations having been found out. Mrs. David was frightened and ran into her own house. She then called her husband. 'David! David! Come down at once; they are going to take John of the next door to prison.' 'No,' says David, 'I will sleep on'-- "Esmwyth y Cwsg cawl erfin." (Easily sleeps turnip broth.) The above saying is well-known all over Wales, but in the northern part of the Principality people say, "Esmwyth y cwsg potes faip." What is known as "Cawl erfin" in South Wales, is known in North Wales as "potes faip." Another similar saying which I have heard many a time is "Esmwyth cwsg cawl dwr"--easily sleeps water broth. Mr. John Davies, of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, in the "Cambrian Notes and Queries," says: "'Esmwyth cwsg cawl dwr' is an old saying in Cardiganshire, especially in the parish of Llandyssul. About the year 1830 my grandfather was constable of the parish, 'Lladron Defaid' (sheep stealers) were very popular at that time; so old Siams Isaac, of Pantrhedynen, was called from his bed one winter night to take a prisoner to Cardigan Gaol, who was caught red-handed in the act of killing the sheep in his house. On the road going from Horeb to Newcastle Emlyn the constable and prisoner went into a public house and called for a pint of beer and bread and cheese each. After resuming their journey for about a hundred yards, the landlady of the public house called after them that the man had stolen a knife from the house. A search was made, and the knife was found in the pocket of the 'Lleidr Defaid.' After the usual compliment of a few rounds of old-fashioned boxing, he was taken safely to a place of correction, and never returned to Tregroes. So the old woman who happened to live next door always said to John, her husband, 'Esmwyth cwsg cawl dwr John bach,' (water broth, easy sleep, John dear). "CYNGHOR GWRAIG HEB EI OFYN." (A Woman's advice without asking for it). When King Henry VII. (then Earl of Richmond) was on his way through Wales to Bosworth Field, he consulted Dafydd Llwyd of Mathavarn, as to the final issue of the coming struggle with Richard III. Dafydd was a country gentleman, a bard, a wizard, and a prophet. On this occasion, however, he did not know how to prophecy, and was greatly perplexed. Fortunately, his wife was a very shrewd woman, who, having discovered her husband's embarrassment or trouble of mind, secretly advised him to tell Henry that he would be successful in dethroning Richard III. and in making himself King. She assured her husband that if the prediction failed of its fulfilment, he would hear no more on the subject, but that it would make his fortune if confirmed by the event. Henry went on his way to Bosworth, rejoicing, and we know that the prophecy became true. Hence originated the proverb, "Cynghor gwraig heb ei ofyn," which implies that it is always a good thing to follow a woman's advice, when she gives you an advice without asking for it. In an old book entitled "The History of the Principality of Wales, etc.," by Robert Burton, published as early as the year 1695, the writer when speaking of Cardiganshire says:--"They have a proverb 'Bu Arthur ond tra fu'; that is, 'Arthur was only whilst he was.' It is honourable for old men if they can say, 'We have been brave fellows.' They have another proverb, 'Ni thorres Arthur nawdd gwraig,' that is, 'King Arthur never violated the refuge of a woman.' For the King was the mirror of knighthood. By the woman's refuge we may understand her tongue, (and no valiant man will revenge her words with his blows)." The above sayings mentioned by Robert Burton 200 years ago have fallen into disuse now, but I have occasionally heard, "Ni thorres Arthur nawdd gwraig." CHALKING THE DOOR-STEP. The following appeared in the "Western Mail," December 3rd, 1910:-- According to a work just published on South Pembrokeshire, the custom prevailing in that part of the country of chalking the door-step dates back to Druidical times. The object of this chalking was to keep evil spirits out of the house. The patterns run round the slated steps, and, elaborate as they often are, the essential thing is that there should be no gap in them, because the evil spirits could enter into the house through the gaps. Does this custom prevail in all parts of Wales? It undoubtedly does in Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, Glamorgan, and Pembrokeshire. WAKES IN RADNORSHIRE. The following account by an eye-witness of a Wake at Disserth, on July 9th, 1744, will prove of interest:-- "At the end of a mead, by this river side (the R. Ieithon), were a company dancing in a barn. They were about nine couple, genteely dressed, and all people of fortune and fashion, and I may with security say, the best and most active country dancers I ever saw. We observed that the men were gay and genteel, handsome, and well shaped; the women were genteel without pride, modest without affectation, beautiful without art, and free without fondness. The generous hand of nature appeared in every face, unspotted with the artful follies of this degenerate age. It gave me a strong idea of the happiness and simplicity of the ancient Britons before the Roman and other corruptions overwhelmed the now refined part of the island (as we are pleased to term it). But these zealots for liberty maintained their independency long, and under this happy government they continue (and they never end) their innocent customs, manners and recreations. A favourite dance (Bumpers Squire Jones) I saw them perform with the greatest spirits, order and exactness ... the churchyard, which, though large, was filled with people of almost all ages and qualities. Near this, was a little house, where we put off our riding coats, etc. The church is a strong building, and pretty large, against the tiles of which were a dozen lusty young fellows playing at tennis, and as many against the steeple at fives. They played very well, but spoke (as almost every one else did) in the Welsh tongue. On one side of the church were about six couples dancing to one violin, and just below three or four couples to three violins, whose seat was a tombstone. We saw common games of ball played against the sacred pile, and there also music playing over the bones of the deceased. We were in the middle of a merry, noisy throng, without knowing their language, or indeed almost anything they said."--Church Plate of Radnorshire, by J. T. Evans, quoted from "Pryse's Handbook." NOTES [1] King George and Caroline. [2] A pot for cooking. [3] "British Goblins," page 67. 
63502	----	TORN SAILS _A TALE OF A WELSH VILLAGE_ BY ALLEN RAINE AUTHOR OF MIFANWY, A WELSH SINGER NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1898 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.--Mwntseison II.--Hugh Morgan III.--Mari "Vone" IV.--Owen's "bidding" V.--Traeth-y-daran VI.--Changes VII.--A wedding call VIII.--Confidences IX.--Gwen's rebellion X.--Hugh's suspicions XI.--The storm XII.--Unrest XIII.--Doubts and fears XIV.--The mill XV.--Torn sails XVI.--Peace XVII.--The mill in the moonlight TORN SAILS. "Caraf ei morfa, a'i mynyddedd, A'i gwilain gwynion, a'i gwymp wreigèdd." --Hab Owain. "I love her golden shores, her mountains bare, Her snow-white seagulls, and her maidens fair." --Trans. CHAPTER I. MWNTSEISON. Between two rugged hills, which rose abruptly from the clear, green waters of Cardigan Bay, the Gwendraeth, a noisy little river, found its way from the moors above to the sands which formed the entrance from the sea to the village of Mwntseison. In the narrow valley, or "cwm," through which the fussy little streamlet ran, the whole village lay. It looked like nothing more than a cluster of white shells left by the storm in a chink of the rocks, the cottages being perched in the most irregular confusion wherever sufficient space could be found between the rocky knolls for a house and garden. The stream running through the centre of the village was an object of interest and attraction to the whole community, being the common rendezvous for all sorts of domestic operations. On its banks the household washing was carried on, fires being lighted here and there, on which the water was boiled in large brass pans. There was much chattering and laughter, varied sometimes by hymn singing in chorus, so that "washing day" at Mwntseison was a holiday rather than a day of toil. Here Nance Owen rinsed the laver-weeds[1] preparatory to boiling them down into that questionable delicacy known as "laver-bread." Here the sheep from the moors above were washed once a year with much calling and shouting and barking of dogs. The barefooted boys and girls paddled and sailed their boats in its clear waters in the summer evenings; and here, when the storms of winter made the little harbour unsafe, the fishing-boats were hauled up together; here, too, the nets were washed; and here every day the willow baskets full of vegetables were brought down to be rinsed before they were flung into the boiling crock of water and oatmeal, which hung from every chimney at the hour of noon, vegetables being the chief ingredients in the appetising "cawl" that spread its aroma through the whole village. A strong wooden bridge with an iron rail spanned the narrow river, but was seldom used except in winter, a few broad stepping-stones making a more natural mode of communication between the two sides of the valley. There was nothing like a street in Mwntseison, a rocky, stony road alone passing through it down to the shore, in an independent sort of way, as if disclaiming any connection with the cottages following its course, and, where possible, rather clinging to its sides. Most of the houses were straw thatched; a few had slated roofs, and they looked awkward and bare in their uncongenial attire. The fierce storms, however, which rushed up that narrow cwm in the winter months soon softened any look of rawness which clung to such an innovation as a slate roof! At the end of the village nearest the sea, and not far from the top of the cliff, stood a large, wooden building, which seemed to attract much of the energy and interest of the place, for in and out of its wide-open doors there was always somebody passing. Within its boarded walls was carried on the thriving business of sail-making, which gave employment and comfort to almost every household in the village. Hard by, in a cleft of the great hillside, stood the house of the master, Hugh Morgan, "Mishteer," as he was called, for he was the owner of more than half of Mwntseison. In Wales the landlord is still called "Master," and about the term hangs, in spite of modern and radical suggestions, a flavour of the old affection which once existed between landlord and tenant. There was nothing in the house to distinguish it from the other cottages, except that it was a little larger, and moreover boasted of a second floor, over the two windows of which the brown thatch curved its comfortable mantle. Its front was well sheltered from the sea wind by a bank of the cliff, covered with sea pinks and yellow trefoil. The sun shone full upon its white-washed walls, and in the "cwrt," or front garden, grew two splendid bushes of hydrangia, the pride of the village. Inside, in the spacious old "pen-isha," or living-room, the brown rafters hung low in the dim light, for the window was small, and deeply set in the thick walls. The chimney was of the old-fashioned sort, known as "lwfwr," and encircled within its wattled sides a large portion of the kitchen. Under its shade there was room for the small round table, the settle, and the cosy bee-hive or lip chair. Along the front of its bulging brow ran a shelf, ranged upon which stood various articles of pewter, copper, and brass, glittering with all the brilliancy that Madlen, the maid's, strong arm could give them. She was proud of her long service under the Mishteer, of the pre-eminence which he held over the rest of the villagers; she was proud of her well-scrubbed tables and chairs, and her invariably clean and cheerful hearth; but above all things, she was proud of that shelf with its shining company of "household gods." Indeed, some of the articles ranged upon it would have roused the enthusiasm of a modern collector of curios. The quaint, old brass bowl, with its curious inscription, still faintly visible in spite of Madlen's vigorous rubbing, a rugged old flagon of pewter, bearing the same inscription, not to speak of the quaintly-shaped copper pans, and a regiment of tall, brass candlesticks. When questioned as to the manner in which he had become possessed of such a goodly array, Hugh Morgan was wont to say carelessly, "Oh! I only know they were my grandmother's, and I have heard her say they were _her_ grandmother's." He did not add, as he might have done, that she had also told him that in long past days, the eldest son of the family was always christened from that bowl, for he rather despised and disliked any allusion to the old tradition afloat in the village that his forefathers belonged to a different class from that in which he now lived. On the evening on which my story opens he had just come home to his tea. The big doors of the sail-shed had been closed, the busy workmen and women had separated and sauntered away, for nobody hurried at Mwntseison. There was time for everything, and Ivor Parry--Hugh Morgan's manager--had locked the door and put the key in his pocket, with the comfortable feeling, so unfamiliar to dwellers in towns, that he not only had plenty of work to fill up his time, but also plenty of time for his work. He was tall and manly looking, ruddy featured and blue-eyed, his broad forehead surmounted by thick waves of light brown hair. It was a pleasant face to look upon, and one which inspired confidence. When as a boy of twelve he had entered upon his work in the sail-shed, the Mishteer had been his ideal of all that was manly and strong, and he had constituted himself not only his willing servant, but his almost constant personal attendant. The Mishteer smiled at first, but gradually learnt to value the lad's attachment; and, as the years went on, they became fast friends, in spite of the difference in their ages. Although their friendship was never marked by any condescension in Hugh's manner, it was always felt by Ivor to be a privilege as well as an honour, and this feeling had grown with his growth, and increased with every year of personal intercourse with his employer. Some such thoughts as these filled his mind to-night as he traversed the bit of green sward lying between the shed and the Mishteer's house. Having hung the key on its usual nail near the door, he peeped round the brown painted boards which divided the living-room from the passage, and saw Hugh Morgan seated at his tea. He was well under the shadow of the large open chimney, where a bright fire burned on the stone hearth, although it was May; for here, in the face of the north-west wind, the evenings were often cold. Madlen had drawn the round table for cosiness near to the fire, in the glow of which the tea-things and snowy cloth gleamed cheerfully, while the little brown teapot kept company with the bubbling kettle on the hearth. "Oh, Mishteer," said Ivor, putting his head in, "I can remind Deio Pantgwyn to send the waggon and horses to-morrow; I am going that way." "There's what I was thinking about," said Hugh; "but I thought thou wert going to the singing class to-night at Brynseion?" "They must do without me to-night. Owen Jones is a good leader," replied Ivor. "H'm, h'm! I don't know," said Hugh thoughtfully, "how he'll manage that change of key in the new glee; but I must watch him. Well, tell Deio to be here at eleven to-morrow, for the sails for the Lapwing have to be on the pier at Aberython by four in the afternoon." "Right!" said Ivor laconically; "good-night." And away he went whistling, with his hat pushed back, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. The affection which he felt for his master was shared by almost every man, woman, and child in the village, where Hugh Morgan's influence had spread itself, unconsciously to him, through every household. What special trait in his character had roused this strong feeling it would be difficult to say; but the Welsh are an impressionable race, and doubtless the uprightness and firmness of his moral principles, coupled with an unswerving adherence to truth, had laid the foundation of the power which he possessed over his neighbours. He had also the reputation of being a shrewd man of business, and it would have caused a shock of astonishment to the villagers had he committed a dishonourable action, or miscalculated the result of a business transaction. Their attachment to him was not unmixed with a certain amount of wholesome fear, perhaps to be accounted for by the complete dependence of the majority of them upon him for their daily bread. He was a proof of the truth of the saying, "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," for Mwntseison was, outwardly at least, a pattern village. There was very little brawling or drinking, considering that most of the younger inhabitants were seafaring men. Later in the evening, as Ivor Parry wended his way towards Deio Pantgwyn's farm, his cheerful whistle accompanied a train of busy thought--pride in the consciousness that Hugh Morgan confided in him entirely and made of him a special friend, gratitude for the kindnesses which he had heaped upon him, and pleased satisfaction at the thought that he was of real service to the Mishteer. On the brow of the hill he passed the gaunt and bare Methodist Chapel, from the open doors of which came a stream of music, the result of sixty or seventy young fresh voices, blended into the delicious harmony of a popular Welsh glee. Ivor stopped to listen. His voice, the richest and most musical of the whole party, was much missed in the gallery of the chapel, where the singing class always met. He longed to enter, and take his usual place; but the pleasure of serving Hugh Morgan outweighed this desire. A smile flitted over his face as he listened attentively to the female voices, which took one part alone. One voice soared above the others in clearness and sweetness, and he took note of it with a side jerk of his head. "Gwladys," he said; "I would know it anywhere; yes, I would know it amongst the angels in heaven!" and he turned down the stubby lane, which led its meandering way through fields and farmsteads to Pantgwyn, where Deio himself was whittling a stick at the house door. When reminded of his promise to send the waggon and pair of horses the next day to Hugh Morgan's workshop, he answered in a grumbling, dissatisfied voice: "Three horses you ought to have; 'twill be a heavy load for two." "Not a bit of it," said Ivor; "you may be certain if three were required the Mishteer would have them. If you lived in our village you would know that, Deio." "Oh! I have no doubt," answered the man, in a sneering voice; "the King of Mwntseison is always right!" "Well, eleven o'clock is the time--will you be there, or will you not?" "I'll be there," said Deio, still whittling. "Good-night!" said Ivor, turning away, and receiving no answer from the grumpy man. "Sulky old dog!" he soliloquised, as he retraced his footsteps. When he reached the chapel all was silent, the doors were closed, and evidently the singing class was over. A look of disappointment came over his face, to be quickly followed by one of satisfaction, as he stooped to pick up a book, evidently dropped by a member of the glee class which had just dispersed. It was a thin book with a paper cover, and he recognised it as the collection of glees then occupying the attention of the class. "What good luck," he said, as he read the name on the cover in his own handwriting, for he had distributed the books himself. "Gwladys Price! that is lucky. I must take it up to her to-night," and putting it carelessly into his pocket, he continued his whistling and his walk. Before he had gone many steps, however, he saw the owner of the book come round a turn of the road, evidently in search of her lost music--a girl of eighteen, slim, tall, and of unusual beauty. As she approached, Ivor was able to note every charm and grace afresh, though they were already indelibly stamped on his mind. Her wealth of brown hair, uncovered by hat or hood, was gathered into a thick knot at the back of her head; it was drawn straight away from the broad, low brows, and on the head of a girl of shorter stature would have looked heavy from its thickness, but the graceful neck carried it with a perfect and easy pose. Her skin was of a pure white, and almost transparent clearness, her cheeks of the rich pink of the sea-shell; a pair of dark brown eyes, shaded by their long lashes, looked out rather seriously upon the world, though they sometimes added a sparkling glance to the smile on her expressive mouth; her full red lips disclosed a row of perfect teeth. In fact, Gwladys Price was, without doubt, the possessor of great beauty. At the first glance she recognised Ivor, for--did they not work under the same roof every day of their lives except Sundays? and on those days did they not meet regularly three times in Brynseion Chapel? "Aha, Gwladys, thou hast lost something I see, for thou are hunting about." "Yes--and thou hast found it, for I see it kiwking[2] out of thy pocket." "Well voyr![3] so it is; I was bringing it to your house." "Oh, anwl! there's lucky I am to find it so soon. I missed it as soon as I had taken off my hat. Thee wasn't at the singing class to-night?" "No--didst miss me?" "Yes; Owen Jones' voice does not lead as well as thine." This was not exactly what he had hoped to hear. "Was the Mishteer there?" "Yes, of course; we could not get on far without him. What a voice he has, Ivor!" "Yes, I thought I could distinguish it, from the road--and thine, Gwladys! It was like a thread of silk in a skein of wool!" "Since when art thou a bard, Ivor?" she said, with a merry laugh; "I won't know thee in that guise!" "Oh! I am not taken often in that way," he said; "but some sights would make a bard of anyone!" and he gazed with rapture at the deep, brown eyes. But Gwladys was proof against any implied compliment, her simple guileless nature was slow to take in any suggested admiration, more especially from Ivor Parry, who she knew was rather given to fun and banter. She had grown up so calmly and quietly, had budded into womanhood so suddenly, as it seemed to Ivor, that with a tender shrinking from disturbing the even tenor of her life, born of true love, he had tried, and successfully, to hide his passion from everyone, more especially from the object of it. And thus it was that hitherto she had not guessed its existence, neither did she know that she loved Ivor! They had grown up together, had paddled in the same stream, sung in the same glee classes, and latterly, for several years, had worked under the same employer. Ivor had long known that the happiness of his life was bound up in her, while she was only just awaking to the feeling that the boy who, being seven years her elder, had always constituted himself her protector, had grown into the man whom of all the world she was most desirous of pleasing. During this digression she had thoughtfully inspected her glee book. "There's a beautiful glee we are learning now, isn't it? only 'tis pity the words are English! There's hard to say, 'Whosse rocey fingares ope the gates of day.'" "'Tis hard at first," he answered. A silence fell on them as they approached the village together. Ivor was filled with varied feelings: pleasure at thus having Gwladys all to himself, anxiety lest another should rush in where he feared to tread, and above all, the difficulty of keeping his feelings under proper control in her presence. "Only eighteen," he thought. "I will wait till she is twenty; but meanwhile I will try to win her love." Oh, blind and foolish Ivor! and no less blind Gwladys! who stood upon the brink of that awakening which should let in a flood of light and happiness upon her life. Both seemed to shrink from drawing aside the curtain which hid the future from their sight; for was it not sufficient happiness thus to meet every day, and almost every hour of the day? Was it not enough for Gwladys to raise her eyes from her work on the rough sail-cloth, and see his stalwart form moving about amongst the bales and cordage, and often to find his clear, blue eyes fixed upon her! A word or a smile from him would raise a flush to her face, and caused a tumultuous flutter under the pink muslin 'kerchief crossed in soft folds over her bosom. She knew it was pleasant to be near him; but that he found the same delight in her presence was beyond the range of her imagination, for was he not her master in one sense, being Hugh Morgan's manager, who trusted him entirely, and made no secret of his intention to take him into partnership? As they reached her mother's door, she hesitated to ask him in; but he settled the matter by raising the thumb latch, and preceding her into the cottage. "Hello, Nani," he said; "here is your daughter, whom I found straying about the roads, peering about like a chicken seeking for grain!" As he spoke, a woman rose from a low oak stool by the fire with a pleasant smile of welcome. She was pale and delicate-looking, but still bore traces of the beauty which had once been hers. "Wel! wel! Ivor Parry! it is you, indeed, who are so kind as to bring me back the truant? Many thanks to you. She rushed away like a wild thing, and I guessed she had lost her glee book. And how are Lallo and Gwen?" "Well, indeed, and in good spirits. You have heard the news, of course! No? Gwen is going to be married next week. Siencyn Owen and she have been long enough making up their minds, haven't they?" "So soon!" answered Nani. "Wel! that will be a grand thing for Lallo!" "Would you be so willing to part with Gwladys, then?" "No, indeed; that would be quite different; but Lallo! why, I don't think there has ever been such a thing as a wedding in her family before! Wel, not for three generations whatever!" "No, I suppose not; but Gwen thinks a new name will be better than the old one. After the bidding she will sail away with Siencyn in the Speedwell." "I am glad," said Nani; "and you will be glad, Ivor!" "Yes," said the young man thoughtfully, "I will not be sorry, although I have been very happy with Lallo and Gwen. I am going to Mary the Mill's to-morrow. Wel! I must go now. Nos da, Nani; nos da, Gwladys." The girl was standing beside the little window looking over the sea, her brown eyes fixed on the ripples of gold and crimson that stretched away to the west. She pointed with her finger to the sinking sun as she answered: "Nos da. I was just thinking _there_ was something to make a bard of thee." Ivor saw that she had not understood his former compliment, so would not venture upon another, and merely saying, "'Tis a promise of fine weather," left the cottage. "Come, dear heart," said Nani, "thee'lt want thy supper after all thy singing! How did it go to-night?" "Oh, pretty well, mother!" and as she sat down to the shining oak table she hummed to herself the English words which had puzzled her: "Who teeps the hills with gold, Whosse rocey fingares ope the gates of day." "What gibberish is that?" said the gentle-faced mother. "Now, don't thee get too proud to speak Welsh! And Gwen is going to be married so soon!" "Ivor seems glad, mother." "And no wonder! When a lass shows her love too plainly, a sensible man draws back." Gwladys did not answer for some time, till her mother spoke again. "Didst think Ivor Parry would ever have taken a fancy to Gwen?" "Oh, mother, no! never such a thing came to my thoughts! Ivor Parry! no, no, he never thinks of such things!" [1] The thin dark green seaweed, known to the learned as ulva latissima. When boiled down, it is mixed with oatmeal, and fried in butter. [2] Peeping. [3] Well, indeed! CHAPTER II. HUGH MORGAN. "Blodau'r flwyddin yw f'anwylyd, Ebrill, Mai, Mehefin hefyd. Ma'i fel yr haul 'n'twynu ar gy scod, A gwenithen y genethod." --_Old Ballad_. "My love has every charm of weather, April, May, and June together. She's like the sunshine after rain) She's like the full ear's ripest grain." --_Trans_. When Ivor reached his own lodgings he found Gwen had brought her work out of the cwrt[1] to catch the last beams of the evening sun. "Ah!" he said pleasantly, "getting on with the laces and ribbons?" "Oh, yes," she said, with a toss of her head; "I am not one to let the grass grow under my feet when once I have made up my mind." "No, indeed, you never were," and he disappeared under the low doorway, where his voice could be heard in cheerful conversation with Lallo. There had been nothing unfriendly in Gwen's words, but Ivor was quite aware of the spiteful, sweeping glance which she cast after him. When she soon after followed him into the dark penisha,[2] she flung her work aside, saying: "Wfft to the old sun; he went down just as I wanted him." "Never mind, he'll come round again to-morrow," said Lallo, "and thou canst catch his first beams if thou wishest." Gwen made no answer, but raked the embers together with her wooden shoe. She was a pale, freckled girl, with a short nose and a wide mouth, and had no pretensions to beauty; but her shrewdness and quickness of repartee had made her a favourite with the lads of the village. Siencyn Owen had courted her for years, had been flattered and rebuffed in turns, and had remained faithful through all; while Gwen, who had nursed a secret passion for Ivor, had in vain made every endeavour to win his affections. At length her shrewdness had made it evident to her that she was wasting her youth and her blandishments in a hopeless cause, and she had accepted the long-enduring Siencyn, although in that passionate, fiery little heart of hers, Ivor Parry still had the first place. "Well," she said, examining the brass tips of her clocs,[3] "what did Gwladys say about the news?" He was startled at the suddenness of the question, but knew better from experience than to try to parry Gwen's thrusts. "She was very glad," he said, "and so was Nani----" "I suppose so! And was she glad to get her glee book?" "Yes, indeed!" said Ivor, rising and standing in the doorway, a black figure against the crimson sky. "Little witch!" he said to himself, "I wonder how she knew; but what doesn't she know! They said her grandmother was a witch, and her ways have descended to her granddaughter, I think." As a fact, Gwen, returning through the fields from the singing class, had seen him stoop to pick up the book. Ivor was not absolutely free from superstition; what dweller on that rocky coast is? With his hands thrust deep in his pockets, he sauntered down the road to learn what tidings 'n'wncwl[4] Jos (the general newsmonger of the village) had of the Skylark which should have arrived with the morning's tide. Meanwhile Gwen had carried her bit of work to the penucha[5] and had locked it up in the shining, black "coffor," which contained the wardrobe of the family. She saw her mother pass the window, carrying her red pitcher to the well, and knowing she was alone in the house, sat down in front of the fire and gave the rein to her thoughts, and even spoke them aloud. "She was very glad, no doubt, and they rejoiced together! Oh, yes, Ivor, I have guessed your secret long ago, and if she were not such a fool, such a simple baby, she would have seen it, too; but she doesn't, that's one comfort! Llances![6] But never mind, it wasn't for nothing that I lived with my grandmother. No, it wasn't for nothing that I sat with her night after night over the peat fire! I found out much from her," and rising, she stamped her foot and clenched her hand, and an evil look came into the eyes which looked so cunningly under those half-closed lids. "I hate her!" she said; "and granny has told me that if you have reason to hate anyone you can work them harm without going near them or touching them! And haven't I reason? 'You can keep your mind,' she said, 'so constantly fixed upon that one wish that your enemy will not prosper.' Wel, indeed! perhaps that is nonsense! I will marry Siencyn Owen--poor lad, he is faithful and true, and I will make him a good wife--but 'tis Gwladys I will often be thinking about!" She paused a moment, and approached the little window, through which the glow of the setting sun lighted up her face; it was not pleasant to look upon. "Yes, happy thoughts!" she said, with a sneering smile. "Granny!" she cried, turning back to the gloom of the little room, and raising her hand above her head. "Granny, granny! I wish you were here to help me! and, who knows, perhaps you are! There was no love lost between you and Nani Price!" Almost as she spoke the last words Ivor Parry returned. "I am as hungry as a hound," he said. "Supper then directly; and here comes mother," she said. And as the three sat at their supper of barley bread and fresh butter, with the addition, of course, of a bowl of cawl,[7] no one who looked in through that little window would have guessed that such stormy passions had, a few minutes ago, filled the heart of one of the party. Next day the large doors of the sailmaker's shed stood wide open, letting in a flood of sunshine and a refreshing breeze, which bore on its wings the scent of the seaweed lying strewn on the shore below. Inside the air was full of merry talk and laughter, while the call of the seagulls and the plash of the waves on the shore came in with the wind. The Mishteer was busily engaged with his foreman arranging the sails which had been ordered from Aberython, occasionally going to the doorway to look up the hill for the waggon which was to carry them away. He was about forty years of age, broad-shouldered and firmly built, his head, covered with closely curling jet black hair, was perfect in pose and shape; exposure to all weathers had browned a naturally dark skin. His black beard and moustache were trimly and carefully kept. His teeth were unusually white and even, the eyes which he was shading from the glare of the morning sun were black as night, but had in their depths such a bright sparkle, that they suggested the idea of black diamonds. His open shirt and upturned sleeves disclosed a brawny chest and muscular arms. Everything about him betokened firmness and strength; and as he turned round to address his workmen, his voice, though pleasant, and even musical, made itself heard clearly above the loud talking and laughing. "Here, somebody!" and instantly there was a hush in the hubbub, while two or three men and women came forward to show their alacrity. "That knot of boys down the valley! I believe they are ill-treating some helpless creature in the stream!" Before he had finished his orders, one of the workmen had clapped his hat on, and, running down to the river, was soon dispersing the little crowd of evil-doers. "The Mishteer has seen you!" was all he said; but this was quite enough to make the dirty little brown hands loosen their hold on the stones, and the sun-burnt heads droop with shame, while they stared with round, repentant eyes at the half-drowned dog which they had been pelting with stones, and which the messenger was carrying gently away. "Another lucky dog like myself!" mused Will, as his long strides carried him up the bank to the sail-shed. "Who were the boys?" asked Hugh Morgan, looking down at the frightened, shivering dog. "Ah, Shân Pentraeth's! Well, none of you boys are to play with them for a week; d'ye hear?" "Or goren,[8] Mishteer," came in answer from ten or a dozen boys working together at one end of the shed. Hugh Morgan having made a bed for the dog on a coil of ropes, turned once more to the doorway as Deio Pantgwyn appeared leading a horse and cart. "Where's your waggon and two horses?" asked the Mishteer, with a darkening look on his face, which his work-people all knew betokened a storm. "Wel, Mishteer, Cymro hurt his leg last night, and he was limping this morning, so I could not bring him; but it's all right, Flower can easily take the load herself." "Stop, Deio; didn't you tell Ivor Parry last night that we ought to have three horses? and now you want one to take the load! Go home again, and learn that no one who works for me shall be cruel to any animal----" "But I thought the sails must be on the quay to-day?" "So they ought; and you will put me to great expense, and Captain Morris to great inconvenience; but that horse shall not carry that load--so off you go!" Deio stormed and swore; but the Mishteer was inexorable, and, turning to Ivor, said: "Leave everything as it is until the full moon tide, and I will go myself to-night to explain to Captain Morris----" "Will I borrow another horse to harness with Flower?" Deio shouted from outside, "since you think so much more of a horse than of a man's time and trouble." "It would be too late now, and I shall not want you again." Deio turned his horse and cart away, and the little incident seemed to pass out of Hugh Morgan's mind, for he turned his attention to some other section of his work with apparent equanimity. "I have been thinking lately, Ivor, that we ought to have one of those machines for rolling up and holding the work in place for the women. See Gwladys Price now, how she has to drag at that sail to sew on the reef points." "Yes," said Ivor, "it would lighten the work very much, no doubt; but it does not seem to weigh very much on her strength or spirits just at present, does it?" and the two men looked over to where a knot of girls were listening with evident amusement to 'n'wncwl Jos, who, on the strength of the fact that he took in a weekly newspaper, constituted himself the general dispenser of news. Every day he made his appearance in the sail-shed brimful of information, and should the newspapers be wanting in anything interesting, he did not hesitate to invent new or garnish up old tales from the store of his memory. In personal appearance he resembled a bundle of knobs; in fact, had not a wooden leg somewhat broken the circular outline, he would have looked like a big knob himself. His head was certainly like a black knob, and his face, the colour of new polished mahogany, was made up of shining knobs, his nose being round and smooth, his cheeks the same, especially one which always held a large quid of tobacco, and his fat, brown fists were like two more knobs. One of his eyes was always closed as if in a chronic wink, while the other was unusually wide open. It was an undecided question in the village whether the closed eyelid covered an eye or not. As a matter of fact, it did not, for he had lost it when quite a young man, and it was the account of this event which was now exciting the laughter of the women gathered around him. "Come, let us have a share of the fun," said Hugh Morgan, approaching, his eyes fixed smilingly on Gwladys Price's laughing face. She held her sides, and threw her head back in a fit of laughter, her dimpled face and white teeth looking very charming in their abandon of mirth. "Oh, dear, dear! its 'n'wncwl Jos! Oh, dyr anwl, I have laughed till my sides ache." "Yes, there's a girl she is to laugh," said 'n'wncwl Jos, putting in the stops with his wooden leg, "in spite of those serious brown eyes of hers. Hegh, hegh, hegh! I'll back her for a good laugh against any other girl in Mwntseison." (Stump, stump.) "I was only telling her how I lost my eye long ago, and that's how she takes it! Hegh, hegh! true as I am here. I was in the Bay of Loango, out there in Africa, me sitting on the edge of the ship, The Queen of the South, Captain Lucas, and whew! back I went among the sharks. In a moment an old ghost of a fellow darted after me. 'Here I'm going,' says I to myself, 'safe to Davey Jones' locker, and in a nasty conveyance, too!' (There she is laughing again, look!) The shark stopped a minute just to take a good look at me, when what should I feel but a sharp hook in my eye. I knew at once 'twas the rope and the hook from the ship, and Diwedd anwl![9] I'd rather have forty hooks in my eye than be swallowed by that old white ghost. I was reaching the sandy bottom just as the hook caught me, and partly with the pain, and partly with joy, I danced and floundered about ('twas before I lost my leg) and kicked up such a shindy, that I made a thick cloud of sand about me, and the old shark backed a bit, and I tugged the rope, and they pulled me up." "By the hook in thine eye?" asked Gwen sarcastically, for 'n'wncwl Jos's stories were always taken _cum grano salis_. "Diwedd anwl! No! I took that out pretty sharp--hegh! hegh! hegh!--and fastened it in the band of my trousses. 'Fforwel, old boy!' sez I, with my thumb to my nose, though I was nearly losing my breath; and as true as I'm here, the old fellow was offended"--(stump, stump)--"hegh! hegh! hegh!--for he made a spring at me, and snapped at my leg, just as they were pulling me out of the water. If it wasn't for my trousses he'd have had her off! I have thanked the Lord hundred thousand times for those good, strong trousses, so glad I am that the old fellow didn't have the pleasure of his dinner from me! not so much for the worth of the leg (for she often gave me trouble with rheumatics--hegh! hegh!--and she does now, though she's buried safe in Glasgow! True as I'm here she does!), but to spite the old shark! 'Not for the worth of the loaf,' as the woman said, 'but for the roguery of the baker!'--hegh! hegh! hegh!" (Stump, stump, stump.) "Keep the rest till to-night, 'n'wncwl Jos," said Hugh Morgan, joining in the laugh which followed the story; "I'm coming in to have a pipe with you. How is Mari?" "Mari!" said the old man, with a strangely softened look on his sunburnt, shining face. "Mari! oh, she's very well, calon fâchl[10] she is well, indeed; though, now I remember, she had a headache--there's a brute I am to forget!" and off he stumped in great haste to make up for his forgetfulness. Gwladys dried her tears of laughter, and applied herself with renewed attention to the huge sail, of which she held one corner, while Gwen sewed at the other. "'Tis heavy for thee, lass," said Hugh Morgan, drawing near, and rolling a log under the corner which Gwladys was working at. The girl smiled, but looked a little embarrassed by the Mishteer's kindness. "Oh, no! no heavier than Gwen's corner, Mishteer, and I am quite as strong." It was said innocently, and Hugh knew it was; but a deep flush overspread his face as he turned to the other girl, and offered her the same help. "The same log will do for both," he said. "Oh, no need," said Gwen, with a slight sneer in her voice, as much as she dared show the Mishteer; "of course this corner is lighter than the other." As Hugh passed on to another set of workers, she looked after him with a slowly dawning perception in her eyes. "He is very kind to thee," she said, looking at Gwladys under her half-closed lids; "what has come over him?" "Wel, indeed, he is always kind, isn't he? even to his dogs. See how that little half-drowned dog wags his tail when he passes." Gwen did not answer; but as her companion proceeded with her work she looked at her furtively from time to time with hatred and jealousy in her eyes. The afternoon found them again at their work. Gwen had had time, while she drank her cawl and ate her barley bread at dinner, to arrange her ideas. "Art coming to my wedding on Monday?" she asked carelessly. "Oh, anwl, of course! Thee'st asked me and mother, and we are coming." "Madlen is to be my bridesmaid, and Ivor Parry will be the teilwr.[11] Who shall I find for thee? Dye Pentraeth? I have heard thee art fond of him!" "Dye Pentraeth?" said Gwladys, with perfect composure. "Wel, indeed! he will do very well for me; I will get on all right with him; but I don't think thou hast ever heard I am fond of him, Gwen; thee hast made a mistake." "Perhaps, indeed!" said Gwen, with a yawn. "Was it Ivor Parry, perhaps? I didn't take much notice." Now, indeed, Gwladys was moved, and Gwen watched her mercilessly as a crimson flush overspread cheeks, forehead, and neck. "They were right, too, I see," she said, in a sarcastic tone. "Wel, wel, merch i, 'tis to be hoped he will be pleased when I tell him." "They were _wrong_!" said Gwladys, covering her face with both hands for a moment; and then, standing up, she indignantly threw the corner of the sail away from her. "Thee hast insulted me enough! To say I loved a man who did not love me! Wel wyr!" and her fiery Welsh blood surged through her veins, her bosom heaved, and her eyes flashed, and Gwen was satisfied. "Twt, twt," she said, "there's no need for a beacon fire! I wasn't thinking what I said----" "Wilt tell him such a thing?" said Gwladys; "if thee dost, I will tell the Mishteer!" "Not I!" said Gwen; "I have other things to think about." And sitting down to her work again, Gwladys' quick temper subsided as suddenly as it had arisen, and they parted at the end of the day with no outward signs of anger. Later on, when the sun had set and the sea lisped and murmured down in the little harbour, Gwladys took her creel on her shoulders, and made her way across the wet, shining sands. Her destination was a creek just round the reef of rocks that bounded the harbour on the south side, where Nance Owen gathered her laver weed every day, leaving it in a shady place until Gwladys, to whom the work was a labour of love, could carry it home for her, as she was too weak and infirm herself. The moon rose round and golden behind the hills, and already threw black shadows across the beach. Gwladys did not sing as usual, but walked slowly with bent head. Gwen's words rankled in her mind and troubled her much. Her love for Ivor had been so deeply buried, so carefully hidden even from herself, that it pained and shocked her to have it thus dragged into the garish light. But---- "Was Gwen right? did she love him?" and with flushed cheeks she was forced to confess to herself, "Yes--I love him; but he shall never know it!" After crossing the beach, she found the tide was not low enough for her to reach the further creek; so, sitting down, she waited, looking out over the sea which the sunset glow tinted with a coppery red. Suddenly a boat came round the point, and in it Gwladys recognised Ivor. As the prow of the boat grated on the shingle, she rose, and stood uncertain what to do. "Hello! Gwladys, thee'st mistaken the time to-night, for the tide won't be down for another half hour. See! I have brought the laver weed for thee." And, jumping lightly on the shore, he filled the creel which she carried on her shoulders. "Would'st like a row, lass?" "Wel, indeed," said Gwladys, "I haven't been on the water a long time; but my mother won't know where I am, whatever." "Oh! come, we won't be long----" "Wel, indeed, I don't know," she said again, but at the same time allowing herself to be helped into the boat. Slipping the creel from her shoulders, she took the second oar, for she was as much accustomed to the boats and the rowing as any sailor in the place, having spent the greater part of her childhood on the shore and on the bay. They rowed silently for some time out towards the sunset, where the coppery glow on the water was beginning to catch the silver of the moon on its ripples; then shipping their oars, they floated idly on. Gwladys bent over the side of the boat and drew her fingers through the smooth waters. The moon shone full on Ivor's handsome and sunburnt face. They did not speak much, but in the hearts of both arose a full tide of content and happiness. They were alone on the heaving, whispering waters; sea and sky seemed to fold them in a mantle of love and beauty; the bewitching softness of the hour threw its glamour over them; and though the strong influence of the situation was felt by both with all the fervour of youth and romance, they kept their feelings under strong restraint, and their conversation was confined to ordinary commonplaces. "Here's a splendid evening!" said Ivor, stooping also towards the deep green water in the shadow of the boat. His voice was low and tender, and Gwladys drooped her eyes to her fingers rippling through the water. "Yes, beautiful! And last night was as beautiful!" "Not quite," said Ivor; "there has never been such a sunset--such a moonrise--I think." "Perhaps, indeed," said Gwladys. "Art going to Gwen's wedding?" he asked. "Yes, I think," she said. "And to the bidding?" "Yes, I suppose. Is the Mishteer coming?" "Not to the wedding, I think," said Ivor, "we couldn't expect the Mishteer to do that, though he is so isel,[12] but to the bidding he will come----" "Yes, indeed!" said Gwladys, "and with his hand in his pocket I am sure. He is so kind; he gave my mother our cow, you know; indeed, I don't know what we should have done without him since my father died; but let us go back." "Why," asked Ivor, "art tired? or is there anyone waiting for thee?" "Tired? no; and nobody is waiting for me, except my mother, perhaps." "Art sure no lover is waiting thee?" "I am sure," said Gwladys, raising her brown eyes to his; "I have no lover to wait for me----" Ivor's eyes trembled as he answered: "Thee canst not be sure of that, Gwladys; perhaps thee hast one who hides his love from thee?" "Wel, indeed," she said laughing, "he succeeds in hiding it completely then, for I know of none; but I think my mother will wonder where I am, and Nance will come and look for her laver weed." Ivor did not speak, but, taking up their oars, they were soon silently cleaving the waves, and drawing near the shore again. The night air swept by them, loosening the girl's hair, which streamed back on the wind, and sometimes, as Ivor bent to the oar, it swept across his face, and for a moment he was tempted with one hand to press it to his lips, while with the other he still handled his oar. Gwladys looked round. "I thought something pulled my hair?" "Perhaps!" said Ivor; "who knows? On a night like this the mermaids and mermen come out, and may be one might like to touch thy hair." Gwladys flushed in the darkness. She was sure it was Ivor's hand that had touched her, and it woke a thrill of happiness within her, an emotion which, however, she instantly smothered. "He is playing with me," she said, "and he means no more than the sea breeze means when it touches my hair." And they rowed on again in silence, until they reached the strand on one side of the harbour. "Wilt come another night, Gwladys?" "Perhaps, indeed," said the girl, settling her creel in its place, and jumping lightly from the prow of the boat on to the rock. As they parted on the shore, the moon shone full upon her, and Ivor took note afresh of every charm in the varying expression of her face. "Hast enjoyed it, lass?" "Yes, to be sure," she answered. "Wel, nos da." "Nos da," said Gwladys, beginning her way over the beach. He did not offer to accompany her, and she thought she understood his reason. "He would not like to be seen walking with me in the moonlight," she mused. "Well, he is right; but he need not fear I would think he meant anything by it," and she tossed her head proudly as she entered Nance Owen's cottage and deposited her basket of weed on the table. The house-door stood wide open, the moonlight and the sea wind streaming in together, a few smouldering turfs burnt on the hearth, the old cat sat beside them and blinked, but Nance was out gossiping; and Gwladys went out again, and pursued her uneven path up the village road to her own home with a strange sense of happiness in her heart, which would not be stamped out even by that potent emotion, "Welsh pride." [1] Front garden. [2] Lower, or living-room. [3] Wooden shoes. [4] Uncle. [5] Upper-room, or parlour. [6] Hateful creature. [7] Leek broth. [8] All right. [9] Good Lord! [10] Dear heart. [11] Best man. In olden times the man who made the wedding garments was always supposed to see his employer safely through the ceremony, hence the best man is still called the "tailor." [12] Without pride. CHAPTER III. MARI "VONE." "O Gwyn ei fyd! yr hwn nis gwyr Am ferch fu'n flinder iddo; Ond wn i ddim yn sicr chwaith, Ai gwyn ei fyd ai peidio!" --Ceiriog. "Happy the man whose guarded heart The chain of love refuses; But yet in truth I am not sure, Whether he gains or loses." --Trans. High up the village, and perched on a little knoll, overlooking what was politely called "the road," stood a cottage, in nowise different from the other houses, except that, perhaps, its walls were whiter and its thatch was browner. Its two tiny windows were clear as crystal, an arch over each being painted brick red; the top of the door was ornamented in the same way; and inside, the earthen floor of the passage, which was almost as hard and shining as marble, had its edges marked in a bordering of the same dark red. The door stood wide open; indeed, it was never closed from one year's end to another, except at night and in stormy weather. Within the penisha sat a girl busily knitting, though her thoughts were evidently not on her work, for her eyes were fixed dreamily on the sunset sky which lightened up the little window. But stay, was she a girl? No! if age counts by the number of years that have passed since birth, for Mari Vaughan (or Vone, as it is pronounced in Wales) was thirty-five years of age, and had long taken her place amongst the elder and soberer portion of the community; the younger and more frivolous girls had dropped her out of their companionship, only remembering her when at times she appeared amongst them, and then with an uncomfortable feeling of being eclipsed by her beauty. She was tall and graceful, her figure had lost nothing of the fulness and charm of youth, her pale golden hair was as luxuriant as ever, and her face was one to be always remembered. She was pale, but not with the hue of sickness, for her health was perfect; her skin was not of the milky white, which, in Gwladys' face, contrasted so beautifully with the glowing cheeks, but more of an ivory whiteness; her eyes of deep blue were shaded by the white lids, fringed with brown lashes; her teeth were even and white, and rather large; a dimpled cleft in her chin gave the pale face the amount of spirit and life which it required; and when she spoke, there was a liquid softness in her musical voice, which gave the most ordinary remarks a tone of tenderness. Fifteen years before, she had passed through a crisis in her life, which had left indelible traces upon her character. At twenty she had given her heart to Hugh Morgan--the handsomest and most promising lad in the village--a promise which had been amply fulfilled by his subsequent life. 'N'wncwl Jos, who stood in the place of parents to the orphan girl, had given a willing consent. Hugh had already bought his business and re-furnished his cottage home at his father's death, and Mari loved him with a love deeper, even in its intensity, than she herself was aware of; but with the thoughtlessness of youth, petted and indulged by her uncle, and somewhat spoiled by the attentions of her lover, she had foolishly listened to the blandishments of a new suitor, who had appeared in the village, a sailor, who bore the distinguishing charm of a foreign name, that of "Alfred Smith." Still more interesting, he could not speak a word of Welsh. He spoke his own language with a peculiar accent, which, though in reality a vulgar Cockney, fascinated the simple Mari, accustomed only to the broad, strong tones of her native tongue. Alas, for the perversity of Fate! Hugh Morgan, who had noticed a slight coldness in her manner of late, and, moreover, had heard sundry gossiping rumours in the village, had brought matters to a crisis by reproaching her with her fickleness, and proposing that her marriage with him should take place at once. "The house is ready, and I am ready, and longing for thy presence, Mari. Art ready thyself?" "No, I am not," was her answer, with a toss of her head; "and thou mustn't hurry and order me as if I were a child!" Hugh, who also had the hasty temper of his race, burst into a flame of passion. "It is that d----d Sais!"[1] he said, his eyes flashing and his breath coming in short gasps. "Thou hadst better tell me the truth at once----" "What truth?" said Mari. "That thou preferrest him to me; that while I was working for thee by day, and dreaming of thee at night, a foolish word from the Englishman's slippery tongue drew thee away from me! Such love is not worth having!" "If that's how it is, it is not worth giving," said Mari; "and so it won't grieve thee to hear that I have none to give." She spoke in a pert little voice, and with a toss of her head, very unlike her usual manner. Hugh was silent for a moment, while he tried to control his angry feelings, and the blood surged through his veins and sang in his ears. Had it come to this? His deep and unswerving love for Mari, who had been the star of his life from boyhood upwards, to be crushed ruthlessly! his tender feelings to be trampled upon at the word of a Sais! When he spoke next his voice trembled, and he was pale and agitated. "Think well, Mari; I am not one to turn from my word, or to change the colour of my heart as I change my coat; so think well, lass, before thou answerest my next question, 'Wilt have me or not?'" "Oh, not, then!" said Mari. She seemed to be possessed by a spirit of perversity, which ever after she wondered at. They had just reached her uncle's, and she prepared to leave her lover, and enter the house. "Stop one moment, Mari," he said, grasping her arm tightly; "remember that although I love thee now with my whole heart, and will forgive thee thy fickleness and forget thy folly, if thou wilt come to me, and draw back thy words--yet----" Mari was beginning a hasty answer, but he interrupted her with a fierce-- "Hush! listen. I will sit down there on the limekiln until the moon has set--she is not far from her setting; thou wilt see me by the glow of the limekiln," and his voice changed to a low, pleading tone. "I will be waiting for thee, Mari, and if thou comest, my arms will be open to receive thee; but if not, I will _never_ ask thee again; and, moreover, I will do all in my power to shut thine image out of my heart." "Nos da," was all her answer, as she entered the cottage. The house was empty, for 'n'wncwl Jos was out on one of his fishing expeditions, and running into the penucha, she bolted the door, and threw herself on her bed in a perfect storm of tears. "Oh Hugh, Hugh, beth na'i?"[2] She knew now how much she loved him--how every feeling of her heart would be torn in losing him. She knew that the flattery and admiration of Sais were as nothing to her compared to Hugh Morgan's love, and yet--and yet--she could not stoop to ask his pardon. She rose and looked through the little window; she saw the glow from the limekiln, and also saw the dark figure sitting there. The moon hung very low in the sky, and she watched it tremblingly. The clock struck in the penisha; time was passing, and soon it would be too late. Another storm of tears--and she rose again to look at the dark figure by the limekiln. The moon had already touched the horizon. "Should she rush out now and ask his forgiveness?" She had a feeling that the dim, grey quietness of the night was a forecast of what her life would be without Hugh, while the light and warmth of the glowing kiln portrayed his deep love for her. She had but to ask, and she would be folded in its mantle of happiness. But the moon--she's gone!--and Mari fell sobbing on the floor. She was roused by the stumping of 'n'wncwl Jos's wooden leg, and rose slowly and straightened herself, and, turning to the window, saw the dark figure by the limekiln was gone; and she passed over the threshold of the penucha with a strange perception that all the delight, the passionate love, the intense enjoyment of life were left behind her, and that the future contained for her only the dim and grey quietness of evening. But this was fifteen years ago, and Hugh had never asked her again. She had never spoken to Alfred Smith afterwards. The very thought of him was hateful to her. As the long years went by, she and Hugh were frequently thrown together in that small community. They learnt to meet without embarrassment, and to part without a pang; and gradually Hugh's strong nature found its solace in his work, and in the ever-increasing claims of his work-people upon his time and thoughts. He alone knew how hard had been the struggle to regain calmness and comparative content after the shattering of his hopes which Mari's fickleness had brought upon him; but it came at last, and he thought he had entirely got over his old love-affair. True, no day seemed complete on which he had not seen Mari Vone. His love for her had developed into a perfect friendship--so he thought. He scarcely ever arranged a business transaction without asking her advice, and although she was not employed in his sail-shed, every incident connected with his work was laid before her, and her opinion on every matter weighed much with him. She had never married, neither had Hugh, and their intercourse had outwardly lost every trace of the romance which once hung round it. Thus it was with Hugh Morgan; but what had the years brought to Mari? At first a deep and bitter regret, a wild unrest, which nothing but pride enabled her to hide. She knew that the misunderstanding between her and her lover was the subject of much gossiping interest around her, and she determined that no one should guess her sorrow, or see any sign of her pain. She schooled herself to meet Hugh with calmness and outward indifference, though not a tone of his voice or a change of looks or manner escaped her notice. Deep in her heart she nourished her undying love for him, and when, as time went on, she saw that a warm friendship had taken the place of love in his heart, she endeavoured, with the unselfishness of a true woman, to accommodate herself to his wishes and ideas. The fifteen years that had passed since she and Hugh had watched the moon sink beneath the horizon with such tumultuous feelings, had scarcely altered her or aged her in the least. Time seemed to have stood still with her, or to hesitate to lay his destroying finger upon her charms of person, although on her spirit his hand was ever setting new and tender graces, and as she sat at her knitting, with her eyes fixed on the sunset, her ear was strained to catch the faintest sound of an approaching footstep. And here it comes. And in the darkening twilight Hugh Morgan stoops his head as he enters the low doorway. Mari did not rise; these visits were of too frequent occurrence for ceremony, and she merely looked up from her shining needles as the stalwart form stood before her, asking, "Where's 'n'wncwl Jos?" "He's not come in; wilt look for him? Most like he is smoking on the lower limekiln." "Well, I will wait." "B'tshwr,"[3] said Mari, rising and pushing the rush chair towards him; "supper will be ready directly," she said. "We have fresh buttermilk from Glanynys." "And potatoes?" "Of course." "Well, I will stop and have some, for that is a dish Madlen always spoils." "'Tis pity, indeed; I must show her how to do them." "Can diolch,"[4] he said. "What dost want 'n'wncwl Jos for--anything particular?" "Yes," said Hugh, "I want his advice--and yours, Mari, on a subject very important to me. But here is 'n'wncwl Jos!" As the old man stumped in, he greeted Hugh with the usual friendly "Hello! Mishteer," before he seated himself on the settle, Mari at once placing beside him a bucket of sea-sand, into which he squirted his tobacco juice with unerring aim, for he had learned under Mari's regime to dread a spot upon the speckless floor. Hugh had taken out his pipe, and the two men were soon sending wreaths of smoke up the big, open chimney, as they sat round the bright fire of culm[5] balls. Gwen's approaching marriage was the subject of conversation. "Well, indeed, I think he's a lucky chap," said 'n'wncwl Jos, "for she's a tidy girl, and saving, and steady." "Yes, very good girl," said Hugh. "Ivor Parry will have to find new lodgings now," said Mari. "Yes, Mary the Mill is glad to have him. Are you going to the wedding, Mari?" "Yes, I have promised. You are not, I suppose?" "Well, no--but I am going to the bidding." "Yes, there's what I heard." "I was thinking that would be enough," he said. "What do you think?" "Quite enough," said Mari. "Being the Mishteer, they would scarcely expect you to both; and if you went to this one, you would offend others by refusing----" "Exactly what I was thinking," said Hugh. "We had better have supper now," said Mari, "the potatoes are done." And taking the huge crock which hung by a chain from the wide chimney, she placed it on the floor, and with the large wooden spoon or "lletwad" mashed the snowy potatoes into a steaming paste, adding a little salt and cream. From this crock she partly filled the black, shining bowls which were ranged on the table, placing a wooden spoon for herself and her uncle. A large jug of buttermilk stood in the centre of the table. For the Mishteer, Mari placed a quaint, slender silver spoon; but he indignantly pushed it away, and she laughingly substituted for it a wooden one like her own. "Mari, fâch," he said, "what dost think I am made of that I should eat out of a silver spoon while thou art satisfied with a wooden one? Not I, indeed! Well, I don't think anyone ever did cook potatoes like thee. More? Caton pawb! no, I have made two suppers in one." After supper she closed the door, and throwing a log over the culm fire made it blaze up brightly. A spirit of rest and content came over Hugh, which he invariably felt in her presence. Her needles clicked, and her golden head was bent over her work; the shining points of her little shoes peeped out under her red petticoat; and as she chatted cheerfully, her white teeth glistening and her dimpled chin adding its charm to her fair pale face, even 'n'wncwl Jos noticed how fair she was to look upon. Hugh was accustomed to sudden awakenings to her charms, but had schooled and hardened himself against their influence. Besides, to-night he was pre-occupied--his thoughts were full of something else. The clock in the corner struck nine, drawing near bedtime in that simple village. "Howyr bâch!" said Hugh, with a start; "it will be time to go before I have said what I wanted to." "What is it?" inquired Mari. "Well, thou know'st," he answered, "I always like 'n'wncwl Jos's advice; and--and I am thinking of getting married." Mari's heart stood still; and at that moment, while her needles continued to click, and she showed no sign of the agony within her even then, the hope that had been nourished for fifteen years died; not the love, for that was all enduring and undying. And while she passed through a spasm of pain, she yet raised her white lids calmly, and looking full into Hugh Morgan's face, said: "It will be better for thee than living alone." "Diws anwl!" said 'n'wncwl Jos; "there's news I'll have to give in the sail-shed to-morrow. Nobody'll listen to the war in China." "Stop, stop," said Hugh; "you must tell no one: Perhaps the girl won't have me, man. Wait until I give you leave." And turning his black eyes upon those into which he had once looked with passionate love, he said, "I'm afraid, Mari, thou wilt not approve of my choice." "Who is she?" asked Mari. "Gwladys Price." There was a dead silence for a moment. Mari put down her knitting; 'n'wncwl Jos changed his quid from one cheek to the other. "Jâr-i!" he said; "she's a nice girl." "What dost say, Mari?" said Hugh; "too young, dost think?" "Well," she answered calmly, "she's the best girl in the village; and if she does not think herself too young, it won't matter what others think." "There's just what I was thinking," said Hugh. "Mari, thou art always a sensible woman. She has no other lover, and er--and er--in fact, I love her. I have been a lonely man for years--since the old days, Mari. Nay, don't blush; I'm not blaming thee, lass. And perhaps if it had been otherwise, we wouldn't now be such perfect friends." "Perhaps, indeed," said Mari, beginning to recover her equanimity. She saw in her mind's eye another long stretch of arid desert before her; but her courage rose, and her love was not quenched. She would still be his friend, and that could bring nothing but blessing upon him. Though unchanged and undiminished in its depth and fervour, her love had become more and more free from the selfishness and taint of earthly passion. "Well, in my little deed!" said 'n'wncwl Jos, "if any girl in Mwntseison could tempt me to do such a foolish thing as to get married, 'twould be Gwladys Price." "Caton pawb!" said Hugh, with a merry ring in his voice, which was not lost upon Mari's quick ear; "don't you go and be my rival now, 'n'wncwl Jos, or I will have no chance, indeed!" "No doubt, no doubt!" answered the old man, with, a perfect storm of laughter and stumps of his wooden leg. Mari went on knitting quietly. "Thou hast my best wishes, Hugh," she said at last, looking up into his face; "thou know'st that." "Yes," said Hugh laconically. He took her hand in his, and for a moment he longed to ask her if his marriage would cost her one pang of pain; but with the memory of the long years of calm friendship lying between them and that evening when the moon set too soon for both, how could he ask such a question? So he was silent, and the opportunity went by for ever. "Nos da!"[6] was all he said, "and hundred thanks for your good wishes. Nos da, 'n'wncwl Jos; none of this in the sail-shed, mind, until I give you leave." "No, no!" said the old man; "but diws anwl, don't be long." And he stumped his wooden leg four or five times on the ground. Outside in the moonlight Hugh Morgan walked a few paces, with his head rather drooping on his chest, thinking, not of his new love, but of his old. How fair she was still! how sweet and tender! how true and tried a friend! God grant that through life her friendship might continue his! At the turn of the path he came in sight of Gwladys' cottage. A light was in the window, and a figure passed and re-passed before it. The night breeze blew straight from him to the cottage, and on its wings Hugh sent a fervent "God bless her!" while a light awoke in his eyes and a flush rose into his face, which, he was glad to remember, no one could see. "Only eighteen!" he said, "and I--forty! old enough to be her father! Will she have me? If she will, she shall never repent it; my love shall hedge her in, and shield her from every earthly ill." And as he entered his house he felt as he had not done for years--how lonely it was, and he pictured Gwladys' presence lighting up the quiet hearth. When he smoked his last pipe tender the big chimney his thoughts returned to Mari. "How completely she had forgotten the old days! and what a good thing it was! 'It will be better for thee than living alone!' Kind friend, she always knew what was wisest and best!" [1] Englishman. [2] What shall I do? [3] Certainly. [4] A hundred thanks. [5] A small kind of anthracite rubble mixed with clay and water, which, made into oval balls, burn slowly, but with a fierce bright glow. [6] Good-night. CHAPTER IV. GWEN'S "BIDDING." Gwen and Siencyn had been married in the morning with much fluttering of ribbons and firing of guns. The Speedwell, at anchor in the bay, gaily bedecked with pennons and flags, was to sail away for Ireland with the evening tide, bearing the happy Siencyn and his bride on their honeymoon voyage. Each having a frugal mind, meant to combine business with pleasure, and, therefore, were to carry with them in the hold a cargo of slates. But a more important function even than the wedding was to take place in the afternoon, namely, "the bidding." A week before, the invitations had been sent out--two men of substantial standing in the village having, in the usual fashion, volunteered to leave the "bidding" letters at every farm or cottage in the parish. They were printed in the same formula, as they had borne for generations, and were as follows:-- "DEAR FRIENDS,--As it is our intention to enter the matrimonial state, we are encouraged by our friends to make a 'bidding,' which will be held on Monday, the 28th inst., at our own house in Mwntseison, in the parish of Abersethin. Your agreeable company on the occasion is humbly solicited; and whatever donation you may be pleased to confer on us then will be gratefully received, and repaid whenever called for. "We are, dear friends, "Your obedient servants, "SIENCYN OWEN, "GWEN HUGHES. "The young man, together with his mother and brother, desire that all gifts due to them will be returned to him on that day, and will be thankful for all additional favours. "The young woman and her mother desire that all gifts due to them be returned to her on that day, and will be thankful for all favours granted. "N.B.--All gifts due to the young man's late father, Robert Owen, are humbly solicited to be repaid." In earlier years this outspoken reminder was couched in still plainer terms:-- "Come," it said, "with your goodwill on the plate; bring current money--a shilling, or two, or three, or four, or five, with cheese and butter. We invite the husband and wife, and children and men servants, from the greatest to the least." And it promised "drink cheap, stools to sit on, and fish, if we can catch them; but if not, hold us excusable." With this insinuating reminder before them, every householder began to search the stores of his memory. "Let me see," said one of the invited, "what did Lallo give our Nell? A shilling, I think it was; and old Peggi Shân, her mother, gave a sixpence, I know, for I remember Nell's burying it in the garden, for she was afraid of a witch's money--that's eighteen pence for me." "Jâr-i, what must I give?" said 'n'wncwl Jos, scratching his head. "Old Peggi Shân came to thy mother's bidding, Mari, and gave sixpence, for I kiwked[1] at it as it went into the basin, and I fished it out pretty sharp. 'Ach y fi!' I said, 'no witch's money for my sister!' and sure as I'm here, 'twas a _bad_ sixpence; so I don't owe much to Gwen." But when the bidding day arrived, 'n'wncwl Jos was one of the noisiest and merriest there, welcoming the guests as if he were the father of the bride. "Dewch 'mewn! dewch 'mewn!"[2] and he guided each fresh arrival to the door of a disused cowhouse at the end of the garden, where Gwen sat in state just inside the door, across which a table had been placed; on this table stood a basin covered with a plate ready to receive the gifts of her friends. As soon as a piece of money was put upon it Gwen tilted the plate, and emptied its contents into the basin, replacing it again empty and ready for the next donation. "Come along!" said 'n'wncwl Jos, piloting Gwladys Price to the door, "here's the bride! Nothing less than a shilling now, Nani! for you don't know how soon Gwen will have to return it." Nani smiled. "Not too soon I hope; I don't want to lose my daughter yet." She dropped a shilling on the plate, and Gwladys followed with her modest sixpence. Everybody said "Priodas dda i chi!"[3] as he or she turned away to make room for another. Gwen was very smiling and grateful as the sixpences and shillings and even half-crowns came tumbling on to the plate, and the basin had several times to be handed over to the bridesmaid, who quickly slipped an empty one in its place. "What a good bidding she's having," whispered the women to each other, as they kept a keen eye on the numerous changes of basins. "Why! I've seen a pink and a green and a blue on the board already! Siencyn has done a good thing for himself, whatever!" There was a little excitement in the company as Hugh Morgan came down between the cabbage-beds, followed by Ivor Parry, and there was quite a craning of necks to see how much the Mishteer put on the plate. "A gold sovereign, as sure as I'm here!" said a woman to her neighbours; "and Ivor Parry two crown pieces! Wel wyr! there's rich she'll be!" "Oh! Mishteer bâch!" said Gwen, "a piece of gold! Wel wyr! did man ever hear of such a thing! A hundred thanks!" and she rose to make a bob curtsey. "Well, indeed, indeed, you are too kind, and you must let Siencyn always carry your culm and coal in the Speedwell for nothing! Oh, yes, indeed you must! And I thank thee, too, Ivor Parry, and hope to return thy gift soon at thine own bidding!" "Well, Priodas dda," said both men, shaking hands and turning towards the house, where the fun and merriment began to wax loud and furious under the influence of the "cwrw da,"[4] which Siencyn dispensed with liberal hand. In the penisha a crowd of women sat round a long table drinking tea and eating "light cakes," a delicious kind of batter cake, considered indispensable at a Welsh festive gathering; while in the penucha every guest of the opposite sex was expected to taste the ale which had been brewed for the occasion, and to eat one of the diamond-shaped "bidding cakes." Here there was much boisterous laughter and loud talking, which was somewhat hushed as the Mishteer entered. "A 'blue' for the Mishteer!" shouted somebody to Siencyn, who presided at the tap. And Hugh drained his cup, and placed his cake in his pocket. Having wished Siencyn "Priodas dda," and made a few joking remarks to the men, who had soon recovered from their momentary silence, he made his way into the penisha, where Gwladys Price and her mother were coming to an end of their tea and light cakes, Dye Pentraeth having deserted them for the more potent charms of the beer barrel. "Come," said Hugh, "this is more in my line; a cup of tea, Esther!" and he took a vacant seat next to Gwladys, who blushed at the honour, and handed him a plate of light cakes. "How fortunate for me to find this seat vacant, Gwladys, unless, indeed, thou wert keeping it for someone else." "No, no, indeed," stammered the girl, for her tender conscience told her she had not been without hope that Ivor might come in and fill it; but he had been pounced upon by a fat farm wife, who kept him in attendance upon her and her daughter--the little tricks of society not being confined to one class. Hugh made most of his time. His sparkling black eyes and ready wit, together with a certain earnestness of manner and a superior education to that of his neighbours, gave an indefinable charm to his conversation, which the simple women around him were not slow to feel, though they could not have explained it in words. Gwladys, amused and flattered, was soon chatting and laughing unrestrainedly, her face glowing with the fun and excitement of the occasion. Deep below the surface was the unconfessed longing for Ivor's presence, and when at last he entered the room, and took his seat on the opposite side of the table, she found it difficult to keep up her interest in her companion's conversation. Hugh Morgan's experiences of life being limited to one small village, in the shelter of a lonely bay, he had no great range of subjects upon which to dilate; but his natural good taste and intelligence made him aware that the daily occupation of the sail-shed had better be kept in the background, and he confined himself to the fairs and eisteddfods of the neighbourhood, and amused Gwladys by a description of a competition in which he had been adjudicator, where the three competitors had quarrelled so violently on the platform, that they had to be turned out of the meeting. "Oh, anwl! I wish I had been there," she said. "I was there," said Ivor. "I am sorry, Mishteer, to call you away, but Captain Roberts wants to see you about those sails which were torn so much in the last gale. Will I take him a message for you?" "No, no," said Hugh, rising at once; "business must be attended to. Come and take care of Gwladys while I am gone." And Ivor, nothing loth, took his place beside her. "What a good bidding Gwen has had," she said, examining her plate shyly. It was the general opinion, but Ivor did not agree with it. He shrugged his shoulders, and said: "A bad bidding I call it. I have not seen thee to speak a word to to-day." The pattern on Gwladys' plate seemed to interest her still more. "The Mishteer has been making me laugh about the Abersethin Eisteddfod," she said. "Yes--I was glad to see him so lively; it is seldom he speaks to a woman; and a good thing they say, for they all fall in love with him." "Wel, indeed, there is something very nice about him," said Gwladys. "I can't think how Mari Vone refused him. She did once, they say." "Yes, so I have heard. Not often do parted lovers become such good friends as they are." While he had been speaking, he had poured out a glass of the foaming cwrw which Siencyn had just brought in, and he held it towards the girl, who shook her head, saying, "I prefer tea." "But thou'lt drink from my hand," he said, in a low tone; and Gwladys, knowing that a refusal to the request, "Drink from my hand," would be reckoned an insult, smilingly took the glass and put her lips to it. "No more? I will drink the rest to thy health then, lass, and may thy life be full of love and happiness! Wilt wish something for me?" "Yes, I wish thee the same!" and Ivor seemed satisfied. Gwladys was in a dream of bliss, and it was only when Hugh Morgan returned, and Ivor rose to make room for him, that she began as usual to fear that she had made her preference for the latter too apparent. She called herself to task for her too evident happiness in his presence, and her dissatisfaction at his absence. "What do I expect?" she said. "Ivor is kind and pleasant, but he does not love me; _that_ I know full well!" Later in the afternoon, when the guests were beginning to disperse, and the sound of the waves came fuller and plainer through the open windows, everyone knew it was nearly full tide, and time for Siencyn and Gwen to take their departure. The money collected at the bidding was counted, and the bride was loudly congratulated upon the large amount. "Thirty pounds--enough to set the young couple up in comfort!" It was entrusted to Lallo's keeping, and later in the evening she handed it over with much pride to Hugh Morgan, who stood in the place of "banker" to the whole village. A large party of the young people attended the happy couple to the shore, singing as they went an old part song of farewell greeting. There was no way of reaching the boat that was to carry them to the Speedwell which danced and dipped in the bay, so Siencyn unceremoniously took off his shoes and stockings, and, hoisting his bride on his shoulders, waded through the surf, amongst the shouts and laughter and boisterous "hwré's" of the company. They waited on the shore until the Speedwell was fairly under weigh, and with fluttering pennons and flags had disappeared round the horn of the bay. All the evening, and late into the moonlight, the lads and lasses of the village kept up the festive character of the day, sitting about in knots on the rocks and cliffs, and of course singing to their hearts' content. Lallo alone seemed rather depressed as she led her pig home from a neighbour's stye, to which it had been banished for the day; he was now evidently in a hurry to get back to his own home, tugging violently at the string tied to his leg, which Lallo held. When he was safely housed, she stood somewhat tearfully thinking. Her life was a constant warfare with her pig, and either her voice or his, or both together, were generally to be heard. He had in every way disappointed her. She had meant him to be a fat and short pig; but instead of that he had grown long, and when he stood on his hind feet to argue with her, he was taller than the gate! She had had a board added to the top, but the pig had grown still longer, and was still able to put his head over the gate and vociferate his remonstrances. "There, thou villain!" said Lallo, pouring a steaming bucketful of food into his trough; "hold thy tongue if thou canst." "Oo'ee--oo'ee--oo'ee!" shrieked the pig, and Lallo imitating his tones derisively, the noise was deafening. At last, retiring from the frequent fray, she threw herself down on the settle in the penisha, from which all the guests had departed, and where nothing but the remains of the feast were left. "Yes," she mused, "it is just as well that Gwen is married; there will now be a man to manage him; he wants a firmer hand than mine--the villain! Ivor never managed him properly. Now I will take the money to the Mishteer." She had no sooner appeared at her front door than the pig assailed her with a fresh burst of "Oo'ee--oo'ees!" and Lallo shook her fist at him. "Devil!" she said; "but never mind, my boy, wait till the fifth of September." A few days afterwards, when the evening shadows were falling, Gwladys took her way to the beach, again to fill her creel for Nance Owen. The sun was sinking behind the sea in a glory of purple and gold, making a crimson pathway, which broadened out at her feet. She stood and gazed over the rippling surface, wondering whether Ivor was out fishing this evening. Once or twice a little boat crossed the shining pathway like a grey moth, and she called to mind the happy hour she had spent with him on the moon-lit bay. Would it ever happen again? Why did it seem so distant and so impossible? Is this his boat coming swiftly towards her? She heard the grating of the prow on the sand, she saw a stalwart form, who leapt to the shore, and walked hurriedly towards her. For a moment her heart beat faster, but only for a moment, for she saw the broad shoulders and firm step belonged to Hugh Morgan. "Gwladys!" he called, "is it thee? Luck follows me to-day. This morning brought me good news, and this evening brings me something better. Wilt come in my boat for a row? It is real summer on the water this evening." "I would like it; but, indeed, Mishteer, I can't, for Nance Owen will want her laver weed, and my creel is full." "Nance can wait," said Hugh, "and I will loosen thy creel." And he began to loosen the strap which crossed her bosom. She did not think of resisting; "it was the Mishteer!" And she quietly helped to slip her head out of the strap. It was not without some measure of gratified vanity that she felt herself singled out from all the other girls in the village by his kindness; and therefore it was with a little flutter of pride that she allowed herself to be lifted into the boat, though the glamour which had brooded over sea and sky during her row with Ivor was absent. It was evident to her that the Mishteer was pleased with her work, and perhaps with her industry; but that he loved her had never dawned upon her mind. She took her oar naturally--every man, woman, and child at Mwntseison being perfectly at home on the water--and they rowed straight out towards the sunset, until the shore and village looked like a pretty vignette. "There's nice, it is!" exclaimed Gwladys, "out here on the bay! 'Tis pity, indeed, that we can't come oftener!" "And why not?" said Hugh, resting his oars on the rowlocks, and motioning to her to do the same. "Wel indeed, Mishteer," she answered, laughing, "what would become of the work then? Who would make the sails?" "Somebody else might," said Hugh; and he was silent for some time. "If I had my way," he said at last, "thou shouldst have a boat of thine own. Wouldst like that, lass?" "Oh, anwl! What would I do with a boat--alone on the water? 'Twould soon become wearisome." "But thou shouldst not be alone; I would row thee, Gwladys." "Mishteer!" was all her answer. "Yes, Gwladys. Hast not seen that I love thee? dost not know that all I have I would gladly give for thy love?" His voice trembled, his eyes flashed, and the hand which held the oar in its nervous grasp shook like a leaf. Gwladys was too astonished to think. She stooped over the soft, undulating water, pretending to look into its depths; and when at last his passionate words revealed plainly his meaning, she could only bend her head and ask timidly: "Me?" "Yes, thee," said Hugh. "Canst not understand that my happiness is in thine hands?" Gwladys clasped her hands. "Oh, Mishteer!" she said, "I don't understand your words, or what you want of me." "I want thee, Gwladys, to come and be the brightness of my home, the idol of my love--to be my wife, lass!" Gwladys covered her face with her hands to hide her mingled feelings of astonishment and fright. "It was the Mishteer!--he who had been mainstay and protector to her mother and herself ever since her father's death--to whom their cottage belonged--to whom they owed a year's rent--who had, in fact, loaded them with kindnesses and brightened their lives. And it was he who now desired to confer upon her this great honour. To be the Mishteer's wife!--she, a girl of eighteen, to be raised over all the other girls of the village; to own his house, his riches, and (above all) his heart! It was too wonderful for her to realize! But why--oh! why did not Ivor love her like this?" All this flashed through her mind while she covered her face. Hugh came nearer, and, gently trying to draw away her hands, spoke again (and his voice was trembling and husky): "Thou canst not love me! Tell me, Gwladys--hast any other lover?" "No, no!" said the girl--"indeed, no! Nobody loves me! But, Mishteer--you are mistaken; you cannot care for-me--a poor girl, a fisherman's daughter, the humblest and poorest of your work-people!" "I love thee," he said, taking both her hands in his; "and I am content that it should be all on my side at first--only at first, Gwladys--for my deep love for thee must in time awaken the same in thine heart for me. I know thou canst not love me now--I am so much older than thee. I cannot expect thee yet to care for a great rough fellow like me--but marry me, and I will change thy coldness to love! Believe me! Wilt try me, lass?" Gwladys was trembling all over as she answered, "I cannot, Mishteer; oh! indeed I cannot!" "Why not?" "Because I am frightened and surprised." "Dost dislike me then?" "Oh, no! indeed, indeed we all love you; I love you Mishteer, but not--not as a girl ought to love her--lover." "Say husband, Gwladys." "Well, her husband." "But I am satisfied to wait for that love. Wilt have me, girl?" "Oh! Mishteer, we have drifted far out to sea; let us turn back; let me go home to mother--give me time." "Of course!" said Hugh, beginning to use his oar again; "let us go back. I will not take thine answer here alone on the sea--I ought not to have asked thee; but to-morrow, Gwladys, to-morrow evening at this time, I will come to thee for my answer." "Yes," whispered the girl, as she bent with a will to her oar. The tide had turned, and the long billowy swells carried them swiftly back towards the land; a belated seagull floated by them, a sound of singing came fitfully on the breeze from the shore. "They are practising the anthem at Brynseion Chapel," said the girl, anxious to change the conversation; "they will wonder where I am." "And I," said Hugh, "have been absent twice lately. I will go there at once, and make it all right for thee; thou wouldst like to go home to thy mother?" "Yes," was all she said. When they reached the shore Hugh once more took her in his arms to lift her from the boat, and placing her gently on the sands, he grasped her hand, and for a moment retained it in his own. "At least wilt not deceive me, lass?" "Deceive you, Mishteer! Oh! no, indeed; you are the Mishteer, and I am only Gwladys Price, but I never could break my word." "Must I wait longer for the kiss that I am longing for?" he said. She bent her head and made no answer; but she did not run away, and Hugh, gently drawing her towards him, imprinted a passionate kiss on her full red lips. "Shall I come with thee, or wilt go alone?" "I would rather go alone," said Gwladys, and she left him pulling his boat up the little strand. Her mind was full of confused emotions--astonishment, pride, admiration for the man whom she considered so much above her, wonder why the events of the night left, her so dissatisfied; and above all, her heart was sore with longing for Ivor's love! She dropped her creel of laver-weed at Nance Owen's door, and as she reached the village road, with every step her heart asked the weary question, "Why--why is it not Ivor?" Darkness had fallen, and the moon, hidden by a bank of clouds, shed no light on the scene; but every step of the road was familiar to Gwladys. She moved aside to make room for a rumbling car which came noisily down the hill, its occupants talking loudly, and--surely one of the voices was Ivor's! There were three sitting close together on the board which did duty for a seat, the driver and Ivor, and between them a girl, around whom the latter's arm was thrown, and who seemed content with his protection. She knew Ivor had been absent from the village since the previous day, for he had accompanied the delayed sails in the waggon to their destination on Aberython quay; and from there he was now returning rather hurriedly, for the purpose of consulting the Mishteer on some matter of business which had cropped up at the little town. He was bringing with him a cousin, who was to stay some weeks at his lodgings for change of air; she was a delicate girl, far gone in consumption, and his kindly thought had suggested a short sojourn at Mwntseison. The drive had shaken her much, and he had held her up with his strong arm, until he had lifted her safely out of the car, and placed her under his landlady's care. After a hasty visit to Hugh Morgan he returned the same night to Aberython. A spasm of jealousy was added to the dull aching already filling Gwladys' heart, and as she plodded on up the hill, she called herself to task, and blamed herself for her misery. "Oh! if mother knew," she said, "that her little daughter had been so bold and so foolish as to give her heart to a man who had never asked for it, what would she say? What did she say about Gwen? 'When a girl shows her love too plainly, a wise man draws back!' Have I shown my love to Ivor? and is he drawing back because of that? I will be more careful--and I don't love him! to-night I feel I hate him! And who was that bold girl, I wonder, who sat with him? not Madlen, nor Shân, nor Ana! But why do I care?" "Oh, mother, I am tired!" she added, as she entered the house, and threw herself wearily on the settle. Her mother looked at her with surprise, for the words, "I am tired, mother!" had been left behind with her childish frocks and bare feet. "Come to supper, merch i. Where hast been?" "On the shore and the water," said Gwladys, in a listless tone. "Mother, I have something wonderful to tell thee!" [1] Peeped. [2] "Come in! come in." [3] "A happy bridal to you!" [4] Good beer. CHAPTER V. TRAETH-Y-DARAN. The business which called Ivor Parry to Aberython had proved more wearily slow in its progress than is usual, even in that land where to attend to a thing at once, and to compass its completion without delay, is considered not only unnecessarily flurrying, but also scarcely dignified; so a whole week went by before he returned to Mwntseison. He had never been so long absent before, and was returning one evening in the following week with a fund of bright, fresh interest in his work in the old sail-shed. He was in good spirits, having finished the Mishteer's work satisfactorily, and was bringing with him an order for new sails for the Lapwing; and besides all this, did not his way lie down the hill past Gwladys' cottage? and had he not found an excuse for going in as he passed? And then he fell to wondering what Hugh Morgan meant when he had said good-bye to him with the words, "I will have something to tell thee on thy return." What was it? Ivor wondered. "Something pleasant, I know, by the twinkle in his eye; perhaps an order for the new schooner at Caer Madoc!" And as he trudged down the hill, his thumbs in his armholes, he began to sing lustily one of the old ballads always floating about in the country air:-- "In a garden of flowers I roamed one day, And I said, I will find me a posy gay; I passed the red roses and lilies so fair-- And a handful of nettles I gathered there!" "Twt, twt!" he said, stopping suddenly; "there's a grumbling song I've got hold of this fine evening." And he began again in another key, and filled the summer air with melody:-- "Alone on the shore of the stormy bay A snow-white sea-gull stands; And she preens her feathers damp with spray On the wet and shining sands. "Perhaps 'tis a maiden who stands to-day All wet in a rain of tears; And perhaps she will weep by that stormy bay, Through all the coming years!" "Well, tan i marw! That's not much better," he said. "What's the matter with the man?" And reaching Nani Price's cottage, he stooped his head, and entered the low doorway. "Hello, Nani!" he called, and she rose from the dark chimney corner. "Wel, wyr![1] Ivor, thy voice came in at the door before thee! I am glad to see thee back again. And what dost think of Aberython?" "Oh, 'tis very well," answered Ivor. "There's a fine street going down to the quay, and shops all the way on both sides," and he thought joyfully of the pretty ribbon he had safe in his pocket for Gwladys. "But where's Gwladys?" he asked, looking round; "not come home from the sail-shed yet?" "Well, she's not been there to-day; she's gone to Mari Vone's with patterns of wool for the weaving. Thou'st come to wish her joy, no doubt, like all the rest?" "Wish her joy! of what?" said Ivor, sitting down on the end of the spinning-wheel bench. There was a curious darkening of the sunshine at the doorway and a confused rushing in his head which made him glad to sit down. "Hast not heard the news, then?" said Nani. "Why, she's going to be married to the Mishteer!" And the good woman, for once forgetting everything but her own satisfaction, in the information she had to impart, was blind to the change in Ivor's face. "To be married to the Mishteer! Gwladys, who had filled his thoughts and heart for so long--yes, ever since he could remember!" And the whole universe was shattered, as far as Ivor Parry was concerned; but he sat still and made no sign, for always the most agonising points of life are the most silent. When at last the bitter tale was all told he rose slowly. "There's news I've given thee," said Nani, stopping for breath. "News, indeed!" said Ivor; "but I must go. Well, 'wish her joy' for me, Nani," and out again to the June evening Ivor went, bruised, wounded, bleeding, but fighting bravely with his sorrow, and sustained by his pride. Not for worlds would he--Ivor Parry, the cheeriest and bravest bachgen in the village--let it be seen that he was sorely wounded; and he resumed his old attitude with his thumbs in his armholes, and struck up another verse of his disconnected ballad, though how he managed it he never afterwards could understand. With head erect, and with many improvised turns and grace notes, he sang, as he went his way down the road: "O gwae fi, and woe is me! And my heart is full of pain; For the ship that sailed across the sea Will never come back again!" On reaching his lodgings he was even more lively than usual, making his cousin laugh at his merry sallies, and hearing his own voice as if it had been a stranger's. He even made a show of enjoying his tea; but after it was over he went out, and, leaving the sail-shed behind him, turned his face towards the cliffs. Slipping down through the broom bushes, he made his way by an unfrequented sheep path to the beach below, and, crossing the shore, reached the south end of the harbour. The turmoil of thoughts within him seemed to urge him forwards, and every step he took strengthened the only determination he could evolve out of the chaos of misery in his heart. He must see Gwladys, must hear his doom from her own lips! The south end of the shore was less frequented than the other. The crags were higher and more frowning here, the shadows were deeper, the sands were seldom trodden, and the sea seldom ruffled by oar or sail; but here in the deep shadows the laver weed grew thickest, and here Gwladys might come to fill her creel as usual, "unless, indeed," thought Ivor, "she might to-night be roaming over the cliffs with Hugh Morgan, and so forget her creel and Nance Owen." The thought was so bitter that he groaned aloud. Gwladys had returned home a few minutes after he had left the house, even soon enough to hear an echo of his voice as he trolled out the well-known ballad. Her mother met her with a happy, smiling face. "Merch fâch i!" she said, as she drew the back of her fingers caressingly over the girl's cheek, where the rich colour had paled a little. Her heart was full of gratitude to the daughter whose marriage promised to bring so much comfort and freedom from care into her life. "Ivor Parry has been here to 'wish thee joy,'" she said; and Gwladys' heart throbbed painfully. "There's a merry man he is," continued Nani, as she clattered the tea-cups on the little round table; "singing he was when he came in, and singing again when he went out." In the gloom of the cottage she had not noticed the pallor that overspread his face upon receiving her news, neither did she now notice her daughter's preoccupied silence. It was very evident that her elation of spirits had for the time smothered Nani's usual tender thoughtfulness for others. "Yes, I thought 'twas his voice," said Gwladys at last. "What did he say, mother?" "Oh, well, he was very glad. 'There's good news, indeed!' sez he, and 'wish her joy for me, Nani.' Hast settled which stripe thee'lt have in thy petticoat, lass? What did Mari Vone say?" "Oh, she liked best the blue. I don't care which; you can settle it, mother." "Don't care!" said Nani, raising her hands in astonishment. "Well, in my deed, thou art an odd girl in some things! Going to be married to the Mishteer, and not care whether thy stripes are to be red or blue! If it had been to a common man like Dye Pentraeth or Ivor Parry, it would be no 'otts' perhaps--but to the Mishteer, the owner of half the village, so rich, and so handsome, and with his achan[2] going back I don't know where! A scarlet stripe it shall be, then; and I wish there was a brighter colour!" and she whisked the crock of "mash," which she was warming for her ailing cow, off its hook over the fire with such a swing of triumph that some of its contents was spilt on the hearth, and Gwladys looked after her with a smile, half-sad, half-amused. "Mother fâch,[3] I have made her life happy, whatever!" she said, and standing there in the twilight, with the skeins of bright wool hanging from her unconscious fingers, she fell into a deep reverie. "Is this how every girl feels when she is going to be married?" and then a silence. "Wish her joy for me!" Well, what more could she expect from any man who heard of her approaching marriage? The curves of the mobile mouth fell, and the brown eyes became suffused with tears. Both signs of sadness, however, were chased away as she heard a manly footstep at the door, and Hugh Morgan entered the cottage. At the same moment Nani returned from the cowshed, so, according to Welsh custom, Hugh's manner was jovial and friendly only, nothing warmer being considered decorous in the presence of a third person, more especially that of a future mother-in-law. "Well, are you here, little people? Coming in from the sunset, I can't see you yet." "We are here all right, Mishteer, and glad to see you. Come in," said Nani, as she dusted a chair with her apron. "I just came in to say I am going to Abersethin to-night on business, so I sha'n't be able to bring the new glee to show thee, Gwladys. How does the world go with thee to-night, Nani?" "Right well, Mishteer. Sit down, sit down." "I must not stay long," said Hugh, and Nani considerately made her sick cow an excuse for pottering in and out of the house. She remembered the old saying, "I had better go," said the crow, "when the dove begins to coo!" When she had left the house, Hugh's manner changed at once. "How is my darling?" he said, taking the listless fingers which held the red and blue skeins; "and what are these pretty things? Aha! now I'll warrant they are for some new clothes for thy wedding," and he drew the blushing girl towards him. "The old sail-shed is dull without thee, lass. When will my wild sea-bird get over her shyness?" "Well, I'm coming to-morrow, whatever, Mishteer," said Gwladys. "Halt, halt!" said Hugh, laughing; "you must drop that word now. Mishteer, indeed! Remember I will fine thee a kiss for every time thou call'st me that!" "I will try, indeed; but 'twill be hard at first." "Oh, I won't be very angry if thou fail'st to remember sometimes," answered Hugh, and, as Nani's shadow darkened the door again, he returned to his less warm, but still cordial, manner, and soon rose to go. "Nos da to you both!" he said, and, with a loving look towards Gwladys, which he was careful Nani should not see, he left the house. Meanwhile Ivor had waited on the darkened shore until the sun had long set, and the moon, now at her full, looked down upon the shimmering bay. The tide had turned, and still Gwladys had not come; and while he waited there in the shadow of the cliff, he pondered bitterly on Nani's words, and sought in vain for any loophole for hope that the news was not true, and that he should yet find Gwladys free and unfettered. "Fool! fool!" he said; "to think I could safely loiter on the path of love! to see the answer to my own heart gradually coming into those brown eyes! That's what I waited for; but caton pawb! how could I expect such happiness? I have never seen a sign of that love in her which fills my heart. Sometimes, indeed,"--and his troubled face took a tender, faraway look--"sometimes I have seen her eyes droop, and her blushes come when I have spoken to her, and then I thought perhaps she cared a little for me, for she is not like some girls--Gwen or Ana, now. 'Twas not far to seek for their smiles--no, nor their kisses either! But Gwladys! I was afraid even to touch her, lest she should fly away like a bird!" and he groaned aloud in his trouble, and confessed to himself that the darkest and direst misfortune that could befall him was casting its shadow on his path--nay, had already caught and overwhelmed him. Had his rival been anyone else, he could have fought against his fate--yes, fought, and perhaps conquered! But the Mishteer! his friend! his master! the man whom, of all others, he held in such high esteem. No! the thought was unbearable. Life was not made to hold such bitterness for him! But, alas! life does hold out to us sometimes a cup of so much bitterness that imagination even would hesitate to picture it as a possible event in our experience. We drink it to the dregs, and we survive it. A step on the pebbles, and Gwladys had at last appeared, and Ivor watched her as she picked her way between the boulders, unconscious of his presence. Oh, how lovely she looked, her brown hair tossed by the soft night breeze, the moon shining full upon the clear brown eyes, and the coral of her lips! and what the moonlight failed to reveal was only too plainly pictured on his memory. She held her two hands on her bosom, grasping the strap of her creel, and she rather bent her head over them as she drew near. She did not see Ivor until she was close upon him, and for a moment stood perfectly still. "Gwladys!" was all he could say at first, and his voice was so altered, so hoarse, that she stood up straight before him, and looked in astonishment in his face, while she answered, in a startled tone: "Ivor Parry! it is thee, indeed? Ach y fi! I was not expecting to see thee; but I'm not surprised, though, 'tis such a beautiful night." Before she had finished speaking, Ivor had regained his composure. "Yes, 'tis a fine night," he said; "but 'twas not that made me come out. I have been at thy mother's on my way home from Aberython, and I--I----" and he lifted his hat and pushed his fingers through his hair, which was damp and clammy. "Yes, indeed," said Gwladys, beginning to lose her own calmness. "She gave me thy message. I was not long after thee, for I heard thee singing. I thank thee for thy good wishes." "I thought, perhaps, it was not true," said Ivor, and his voice shook a little. Gwladys was silent for a moment, during which a flood of new emotions surged through her whole being, so that her heart beat fast, her limbs trembled, and the whole world seemed to take a new shape before her. Ivor's altered manner, his hoarse voice, the nervous trembling of the hands which he held out towards her, all told the tale which he had withheld so long, and, with a sudden flash of intuition which comes in a great crisis, his love and misery were all revealed to her; and alas! her love for him! She could not do otherwise than place her hands in those which were stretched out so eagerly towards her; but while she did so, her head drooped, and her tears fell like rain. "'Tis true," she said at last, "'tis true, Ivor." "Didst not know, Gwladys, that I loved thee, that every hair of thine head was precious to me?" Many years passed over Ivor's head after that night, but he never forgot the cry with which she heard his words. "Oh, Ivor! what is this thou art telling me?" and sitting down on the upturned creel which had slipped from her shoulders, she swayed backwards and forwards, endeavouring to smother the sobs which shook her frame. In truth, it was only the bursting of the floodgates, which she had kept closed by a strong effort of will ever since she had made her final promise to Hugh Morgan. The discovery of Ivor's love had been too much for her overstrained nerves, and now, with the abandon of a child, she sat on her creel and cried bitterly. Ivor seated himself on a rock beside her, his worst fears confirmed, and at last, when the sobbing girl had a little regained composure, took her hand and said: "Didst not know that for long years I have loved thee?--for ever, I think!" "I did not know--no, indeed!" said the girl. "If thou hadst known it, lass, what wouldst thou have done?" She did not answer at once, but continued to rock herself backwards and forwards, and even to moan a little. "Tell me, Gwladys," Ivor said again; and at last her answer came in clear, firm tones: "Whatever thou wouldst, Ivor." "Wouldst have married Hugh Morgan?" "Oh, never, never! But now I must. Beth na'i? beth na'i?"[4] "No, no, lass, it must not be--shall not be! I have hungered too much for thy love to let it slip from me now. 'Tis not too late! I will go to Hugh Morgan and tell him all. Thou know'st him, Gwladys--a man who never did a mean thing--a man who would tear out his heart sooner than injure his friend! I will go to him, and tell him, 'Gwladys' love is mine--not thine--and, by heaven! thou shalt not have her!'" His voice was hoarse with eagerness, and the hand that held hers trembled with excitement. But Gwladys only drew her hand away, and said: "'Tis too late, Ivor. I have promised the Mishteer, and our banns have been called once!" At the mention of the word "banns," Ivor made a gesture of despair. Here, indeed, was the downfall to all his reviving hopes--a bar across his path only one degree less insuperable than death itself--for though to a Welshman scarcely any obstacle seems insurmountable, scarcely any stratagem dishonourable in the course of his impetuous love-making, yet marriage and all connected with it holds the high place in his reverence, which it seems to have lost in many nations. It is true that morality amongst the unmarried peasantry lays itself open to reproach; but a lapse from the paths of the strictest virtue after marriage is always looked upon as an unpardonable disgrace. The knowledge, therefore, that Hugh Morgan's banns were published crushed every hope that had begun to spring up anew within Ivor's breast. "Mawredd anwl![5] 'tis impossible!" he cried; "so soon! Gwladys, say it is not true, or thou wilt kill me--an' 'tis the best thing thou canst do for me, for now I see, indeed, that thou art gone from me for ever! Hugh Morgan has not loitered, whatever! Only one short week I was away, and in that time another man has won thee, and thy banns are out!" She made no answer, but sat with her face buried in her hands. "Thou art crying, lass; is it pity for me?" "Yes," she sobbed, "and--and for me!" "Didst love me, then, all the time, f'anwylyd? Tell me; I have a right to know." He had drawn her close to his side, and she felt his breath on her hair as he continued to plead-- "Say it, Gwladys--only once--only to-night!" Poor Gwladys! The glamour of the love she had thirsted for was upon her in all its fulness--was wrapping her in its folds. Its strength subdued her; she forgot her scruples, and stifled the whispers of her usually tender conscience, and, yielding to Ivor's pleadings and her own impulsive, passionate nature, let her lover draw from her the truth, which she had hitherto scarcely confessed to herself. "Yes--yes; I have loved thee always." "And will love me for ever?--whisper it, fanwylyd," said Ivor. "No, I must not say that; but thou knowst it all. Oh! beth na'i, beth na'i?" A step on the shingle disturbed them. "Only Sianco fetching his crab-pots; but here is my boat. Let us go to Traeth-y-daran, where the sand is never trodden; there we shall be alone, for I tell thee, Gwladys, this night is mine and thine--_nothing_ shall tear it from us!" He drew the boat to the side of the rock and once again Gwladys and he were out together on the moonlit bay. It was so calm that nothing could be heard but the creaking of the oars in the rowlocks and the dripping of the water from the blades. Neither spoke until reaching Traeth-y-daran, the boat glided in between the rocks, and they landed on the shore which lay lonely and peaceful in a flood of moonlight. "Here is a seat for thee, love, and one for me beside thee close. Oh, yes; I said this night was made for thee and me! For a few hours let us put everything else away from us, Gwladys, and talk and think and feel nothing--nothing but our love for each other. I will have it so!" he said almost fiercely. "To-night is for happiness--to-morrow is for--?. Tell me, lass, dost remember our last row on the bay?" "Yes, I have had it in my thoughts often, and in my heart always," said Gwladys. "Hast indeed?" said Ivor; "didst feel my kiss on thy hair?" "I felt it," she answered, with head drooping and burning cheeks; "but I did not think it meant anything--indeed I didn't, Ivor!" and she looked up pleadingly into his face. "No, a fool I was! I hid it all, thinking to win thy love gradually and then to tell thee! I thought I would guard thee so well that no other man could approach thee unknown to me, and then I would speak to thee at once. Oh, what a fool I was! and now----" "And now?" repeated Gwladys tearfully; and a silence fell upon them as they both thought of "what might have been!" Into the girl's dream there came a shadow from the future--a picture of Hugh Morgan bending over her as she sat at work in his house on the hillside. It was a momentary glimpse and she shuddered as it crossed her mind. "Art cold, f'anwylyd?" "No, no," she answered; "on this May night who would be cold? I am warm, Ivor; 'tis the future makes me shiver----" "Hush!" he said, "don't speak about that; there is no law in earth or heaven that can part us, if only thou wilt let me go to Hugh Morgan and ask him to free thee from thy promise----" "But the banns, Ivor? Oh, no; 'tis impossible to bring this shame upon the Mishteer's name. And my mother--she would break her heart! No, no; 'tis too plain we must part. Will God give me strength, I wonder? Beth na'i? beth na'i?" For some time Ivor, carried away by the new-born happiness of knowing he had her love, endeavoured to shake her determination; but here she was firm, in spite of the weakness with which she had allowed herself to be swayed by the strong tide of love, which had overwhelmed her on discovering Ivor's feelings towards her. There were long pauses in their talk when the sea seemed to add its sweet whispers of entreaty to his pleading, until at last as the night wore on there came a little pleading into Gwladys' voice also-- "Oh! Ivor, do not tempt me; I have done wrong to come here, I ought to have said 'nos da' and passed straight home--I am like the seaweed, tossed hither and thither by the fierce waves, but still fastened to the rock, and so am I bound to the Mishteer. Only that one thing is certain in all this sea of trouble. O gwae fi! beth na'i? Let me go, lad! Thou wouldst always help me when I was a child; everywhere I was safe and strong, if thou wert there. And now, Ivor, help me, for the storm is upon me!" "I cannot, Gwladys--I cannot, indeed! I seek for the strength within me, and I do not find it; but so far I can do, whatever--I will stand out of thy way and let thee pass on to--the Mishteer." Gwladys, scarce knowing whether this made her more or less miserable, but taking his words somewhat in a literal meaning, began to move a little towards the boat. "Stop, stop, fanwylyd!" said Ivor, "not to-night will I stand aside--not to-night will I part with thee! I have said, and I swear it again, to-night thou art mine! and my fine promises do not begin till to-morrow." He drew her again closer to him--and again they fell into a long silence. "Gwladys," said Ivor at last, "wilt tell me what have thy thoughts been?" "The same as thine, I do believe, Ivor," said the girl, in a broken voice. "Our happiness would be to be together, but our duty bids us part. I cannot break my promise to the Mishteer. Our banns are called! I am half married to him! I ought not to be here; I am a wicked girl. Why, why has he set his love upon me? I have promised to marry him, and I will keep my word though my heart should break." Ivor did not speak, he was struggling with a trial which had come upon him unexpectedly and unprepared for. Every fibre of his being was shaken by the shattering of his fondest dreams--the love which he had cherished for years, and for which he had built such fair palaces of hope! Was it now to be stifled and put out of sight for ever? to be cast under the feet of another man, who would walk over it with joy and happiness on his face, unconscious of the sacrifice which his friend was making for him! For some time they sat thus suffering together, both brooding on the untoward events which had separated them, and on the bitter trial which lay before them. It was Gwladys who spoke first. "See how the moon has travelled, Ivor; she is near her setting; the dawn is not far off. Let us go. What will my mother think?" "She will think thou art staying with Nance Owen, as thou often hast before. Dost see that bright star? We will wait until it sets! So short a time for happiness out of all our long lives, Gwladys!" "The good God will not grudge it us!" she whispered. "When that star sinks down behind the sea I will loosen my hold of thee, fanwylyd; but until then thou art mine--and mine only! We are alone in the world--two ships which have sailed together half-way across the ocean, and now must separate for ever!" Gwladys' long-drawn sobs had subsided, and left only a little catch in her breath, which Ivor heard with yearning tenderness. "'Tis hard for us both, love; but God grant thee comfort as the years go by. Thou wilt, perhaps, gain peace, and learn to forget the past." "Never, never!" said the girl. "Calm and peace! where are they coming from, Ivor? Oh, never, never!" "'Tis a cruel thing, this life which is before us, lass. If I had known that Hugh had set his love on thee, I might have strangled mine at its birth, even though I had killed myself in doing so; but now, 'tis too late, indeed!" "God knows about it, whatever," said Gwladys between her sobs. "Dost think, indeed!" was all Ivor's answer. Both had their eyes fixed upon the star, which hung like a jewel in the sky; it was already losing some of its brilliancy in the haze which bordered the horizon. "See, Ivor, it is going!" And she shuddered. "Not yet, fanwylyd!" he replied; and for a few minutes they watched in silence as one watches at a death-bed. "Our happiness draws near its last moment," he said at last; and they both stood up together, with their eyes fixed on the star, which now drew close to the horizon. "Repeat those words, Gwladys, 'I love thee, I love thee, Ivor!'" And with whispering, trembling breath she obeyed. The star had reached the line of the sea; and, with a simultaneous impulse, they turned to each other, and their lips met in a long, passionate kiss, and it was with a sudden gasp that Ivor opened his arms, leaving Gwladys standing alone on the edge of the wave. He said not another word, but drawing his boat higher up the strand, he lifted her gently over the surf. She felt the nervous trembling of his strong arms as he longed to press her to his heart; but he resisted the impulse, and in another minute they were both rowing silently away from the Traeth-y-daran. Before they reached Mwntseison Ivor spoke. "Wilt land here?" he said, pointing to a narrow creek between the cliffs, where a little stream came trickling down from the hills above. "Yes," was all she could say in reply; and once more Ivor lifted her over the surf, and placed her on the tiny beach. He sprang back into his boat as if afraid to trust himself near her. "Fforwel!" he said, in a hard, dry voice. "Fforwel!" answered Gwladys. And with eyes fixed upon each other they separated, every wave of the ebbing tide increasing the distance between them. As soon as Ivor had passed the point of rocks which enclosed the little creek, he set to with hard rowing to reach the further end of the harbour, passing by Mwntseison still asleep. His face was white and hard set, his hair hung in damp clumps on his forehead, and as he rowed his pale face wore an expression of sullen anger,--in truth, an expression very foreign to his general disposition. Having reached the southern side where the cliffs towered higher and more frowning from the sea, where the fishing boats never came, he was as much alone as if he had been off some far desert island. With an angry motion he flung both the oars from him, rattling noisily as they fell, and sitting moodily in the stern he gave himself up to his bitter reflections. He did not feel the cool morning breezes on his damp face, nor hear the lapping of the water under the keel of his boat as it rose and fell on the gentle swells; all so calm and peaceful around him, and he so full of tumult within! It was just the hour between the dark and the dawn; the sea was of the rough grey of a herring's back, melting into the soft white of the horizon. The gurgle of the fish coming up to the surface for a breath of air was distinctly audible in the silence, and as the flush of the dawn rose higher behind the hills, all sorts of mysterious sounds awoke round the little boat. The hoarse cry of an invisible puffin came over the waters--a soft whispering of the morning breeze filled the air, the strangely human cries of the young seals which still haunt the caves in the cliffs of Mwntseison, all fell unheeded on Ivor's ear. He was fighting with an emotion which he had never known before--jealousy of Hugh Morgan! a blind, unreasoning anger; and underlying it, a desperate conviction that in the end he should submit to his fate--for to fight against the Mishteer was as impossible to him--as contrary to his nature--as it would have been to commit a crime! And it was rebellion against this iron destiny which filled his heart with impotent anger. From the moment when he had caught the last glimpse of Gwladys standing solitary on the shore of the creek, he had known how it would be with him--how strong and unbending were the bonds which compelled him to give his best to his friend. "As for her," he thought, "she would forget him, would soon learn to be content with her lot--yes, more than content--for no woman could be loved by Hugh and not love him in return! That he never doubted; but for himself?" Self-sacrifice as an abstract idea had never dawned upon him. He was but an untaught man, whose only education had been what a tender nature and a simple country life had brought him; but one thing was plain to him, he must efface himself, and Hugh Morgan must have his way! Meanwhile Gwladys remained motionless, watching the little boat, until, a mere speck, it rounded a ridge of rocks which jutted out into the bay, and behind which lay Mwntseison; then she dragged her weary steps up the steep cliff from the shore, following a shepherd's path through the broom and heather bushes, till she reached the top of the hill, where she sat down to watch the rising sun. Behind her lay the sea, with its soft sighings and tender whisperings, the old world of her happiness and her youth--and Ivor! before her lay the cold east, from whose mysterious bosom the dawn was breaking, and as she watched, the sun rose and tipped each little blade and leaf with gold. Here, kneeling between the broom bushes, while the morning breeze ruffled her hair, alone on the hillside, she struggled in an agony of tears and supplications to put away from her the memory of the past night, with its golden moon of love and its bitter waves of sorrow--and to turn her face towards that path of duty which lay before her. At another time how she would have delighted in the sounds and sights around her! the dewdrops glistening on the sea-pinks, the gossamer webs stretched like frosted silver from bush to bush, the rabbits peeping out of their burrows, the shepherd awakening his flock, the sea-gulls sailing high above the hill top, where the little sea-crows were beginning the day with a squabble; but it was all lost upon Gwladys, who reached her mother's house while the village was still sleeping under the early morning sun. There was only the wooden bolt to push back, and she knew the simple trick by which it was reached from the outside. "Why! thou hast risen early," said her mother, as she saw her enter. "What! is Nance Owen up so early?" "I have not been there!" There was something in the girl's voice which startled her mother. "Where, then?" she cried, sitting up in bed. "With Ivor Parry out on the bay! Mother, it will never happen again--we had something to say to each other--it is passed--you must forget it, mother, as I shall--but I wanted to tell you----" Her mother, breathless and frightened, stared at the girl, who, pale and dry-eyed, began to set about her household duties. Whether she understood what that "something" had been which had been spoken at Traeth-y-daran, she never disclosed; but she opened her arms and drew Gwladys towards her, "Calon fâch!"[6] was all she said as she pressed the girl to her heart. [1] Well, indeed. [2] Pedigree. [3] Little mother. [4] "What shall I do?" [5] Good God! [6] Dear heart. CHAPTER VI. CHANGES. The work in the sail-shed went on as usual in the following week--the same hum of voices, the same chatter and laughter amongst the women. The only difference was that Ivor Parry looked ill and worn. "He had been out fishing one night," so ran the story, "and returning in the early morning had slipped as he jumped from his boat, and falling on a slippery rock had had what 'n'wncwl Jos called 'a nasty old shake.' When asked about it, he had treated it with indifference, saying, 'I did slip and twisted my back a little; but, caton pawb! what is that?' And he had been as busy as ever at his work, scoffing at any suggestions of sympathy." Gwladys, at the further end of the long shed, worked quietly at her canvas, with drooping eyelids and flushed cheeks. She knew she was an object of interest to those around her, and was thankful to remember that no one knew anything about her love for Ivor. She heard the comments upon his fall and his altered appearance with a strange callousness which frightened her. Her heart was like a stone within her; she never turned her eyes towards the other end of the shed where the harder and heavier part of the work was carried on by the men. Fortunately for her, it is not considered etiquette in Wales for a lover to pay marked attentions to his betrothed in public, so she was spared the pain of conversing with Hugh in Ivor's presence, except upon the ordinary topics connected with the work. But although Hugh adhered to the usual fashion of ignoring his sweetheart's presence before the curious eyes of the gossips, he yet held his head more proudly than ever. There was a light in his eyes and a smile on his lips which added a fresh charm to his handsome face; and as he gave directions to his work-people, there was a ring of happiness in his voice which plainly told its own tale. One thing troubled him--Ivor was suffering! Of that he was sure. And as it drew near closing time, he spoke to his friend words of serious advice and of kindly sympathy; for Hugh could be as tender as a woman in spite of his burly frame. "Look here, 'mach-geni!"[1] he said, sitting on a bale in front of Ivor; "this will never do. Every hour thou art getting to look paler and thinner; thou must stop in bed to-morrow, and I'll send to Abersethin for Dr. Hughes. I'm afraid thou hast got more of a wrench than thou knowest of." "Not a bit," laughed Ivor; but his laugh had not its usual light-heartedness. "I know exactly what the wrench was--it hurt a good deal; but dost think I'm going to stop in bed and send for a doctor? I never did such a thing in my life! Twt, twt, 'twill be all right if thou wilt let me alone, and not bother me about my looks." Hugh had never known him so irritable before, and he looked at him critically as he left him. "Well, if thou won't listen to advice, I can't help thee." "What about that order for the Sea Nymph?" Ivor called after him. Hugh shook his head. "I cannot take it," he said; "the time is too short. Send them to Rees of Carnarfon; it will be quite as convenient for the owners, and more so for me," and he returned slowly towards Ivor. "I am going to be married next week," he said; "come down this evening, lad, and I'll tell thee all about it. Thou must sprack up, and arrange some jollification for the people. We'll have two days' holidays, and I'll leave all the fun in thine hands, Ivor, only come to me for the money. I know I can trust thee to manage it all. Dost hear, man? Why, what's the matter with thee? Dr. Hughes shall see thee to-night, or my name's not Hugh Morgan." "'Twas only a wrench," said Ivor; "it's all over, and I'll see to the bonfires and shooting." "Right," said Hugh; but he shook his head as he went away. Later on in the evening, as Madlen was preparing supper under the big open chimney in the kitchen, a step disturbed her. "Who's that?" she said snappishly, for the uwd[2] was at the point of boiling. "Oh, Ivor Parry!" "Yes," he answered, walking in unceremoniously. "I wanted to see the Mishteer." "Wel wyr! didst expect to see him here? He is up with Gwladys Price, of course. Howyer bach![3] There's going to be changes! I tell thee, Ivor Parry, he's perfectly mad about the girl. Wel, dwla dwl yw dwl hên!"[4] "Will he come to his supper?" "Most likely not; not even potatoes and buttermilk will bring him home now." But her prognostications were false to-night, for at that moment Hugh entered, bright and breezy. "Hello, Ivor! just in time for supper, 'mach-geni; sit down. Art better?" "Oh, all right," he said, sitting down to the table, on which Madlen placed the smoking "uwd" with a large jug of milk. In every other cottage in Mwntseison wooden bowls and wooden spoons would have been used, but the Mishteer's table was graced by blue-rimmed basins and silver spoons. "I wanted to see thee, Ivor; we've not had a talk for some time." "No, I have been too busy." "And so have I, in my deed," said Hugh. "What between the torn sails of the Albatross--the new boat which is building for me--and a few new things I am getting for my house--well, the time has seemed to fly. What dost think of the new 'coffor' I have bought for Gwladys?" and he opened with pride the doors of a handsome oak wardrobe. "The best piece of work John 'Saer'[5] has ever done, I think." The shelves inside were well filled with stores of snowy napery, sheets, and table-cloths, etc., luxuries little known in Mwntseison. "And these drawers at the bottom to keep her clothes! Mari Vone has seen to it all for me." "A splendid coffor, indeed," said Ivor; "and John Saer knew who he was working for, I think." But then he added a most irrelevant remark, "Poor Mari Vone!" "What dost mean by that?" said Hugh, flushing a dark red. "Oh, nothing," said Ivor. "I was only thinking how dull it must be for her to arrange the household for another girl." "Dull!" said Hugh earnestly, and with a momentary sadness in his voice. "Thou art mistaken, Ivor. Mari Vone knows not what dullness means. She would laugh to hear thy words." "When art going to be married?" "Why, on Tuesday," said Hugh; "of course I expect thee to be my teilwr. Pretty Gwennie Hughes and Laissabeth Owen are to be bridesmaids." "That is what I came down to speak about," said Ivor. "I thought very likely thou wouldst want me to be teilwr." "Of course! who else?" "Well, I'm afraid I cannot be that," said Ivor awkwardly, digging his hands in his pockets. "See this letter, and say if thou thinkest I ought to refuse so good an offer." Hugh took the letter with a look of serious surprise, and read it without comment from beginning to end; then he folded it up deliberately, and returned it to Ivor, looking him full in the face, and before his honest eyes Ivor's quailed and were cast down. "Thou wilt better thyself very much by accepting their offer; but I never thought thou wouldst leave me, Ivor. I would have given thee as much as that had I known thou wert looking for it. I have, perhaps, been slow in rewarding thy merit; but, Ivor, I looked upon thee as a brother, and I meant only to wait until my wedding was over to offer to take thee into partnership, but now--go! I have been mistaken in thee; I never thought money would come between us. Even now--stay, Ivor, and I will give thee what Rees Carnarfon offers thee." Ivor shook his head. "I have determined to go," was all he answered. Hugh was wounded to the quick. He had a deep love for his manager--a love that had grown up for years between them, in spite of the difference in their ages--and to find that parting had no bitterness for Ivor meant bitter sorrow for Hugh. "Then there's no more to be said, but pay what I owe thee," and he counted it out on the table. Ivor gathered it stolidly into his palm, and took up his hat. "Fforwel, Mishteer," he said, "we must part now; your life is full--you can do without me. There is Josh Howels, he is quite able to take my place; he knows all the ins and outs of the business," continued Ivor. Hugh nodded. "Oh, yes, I can do without you," he said, in an offended tone. "Fforwel, then," said Ivor, and he held out his hand, which Hugh, after a moment's hesitation, grasped warmly. "If you are ever in any trouble, send for me, Mishteer, and I will come." Again they said "Fforwel," and parted--Hugh Morgan with a feeling of burning indignation and a smarting sense of disappointment; Ivor with a dull, heavy aching, which he was not to throw off for many a weary month. "Let him think me ungrateful and grasping," he said; "it is better for him than to know the truth. Fforwel, Hugh Morgan, I shall never meet a man like you again!" Indignation and sorrow were the feelings uppermost in Hugh's mind as he sat smoking on his lonely hearth that evening. Madlen had gone to bed, and he sat long into the night, gazing into the dying embers of the peat fire, "chewing the cud of sweet and bitter thought." The announcement of Ivor's intended departure was a crushing blow to him. He had loved the man with all the tenderness which in his lonely life had had no other outlet until Gwladys Price's beauty had enslaved him; and even this had not altered his feelings for his friend, but had rather drawn him nearer to him. Mari Vone and Ivor had been his ideals of all that was manly and womanly, and his affections had gone out to them unstintingly; and now he would have been ashamed that any one should see how deeply he felt the change in Ivor--in truth, his bright, black eyes were dimmed with unshed tears as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and, slipping the wooden bolt of the front door into its hasp, walked slowly up the stairs. The next day Ivor was absent from the sail-shed. Such a thing had never happened before, excepting when he had been attending to business for the Mishteer; but now everybody knew this was not the cause, and gossip, with its busy tongue, suggested all sorts of reasons--all of them, fortunately, very wide of the mark. "He had injured his back too much to continue working," one said. "The increased wages offered by Rees Carnarfon had dazzled him." "He was tired of Mwntseison, and thought this would be a good opportunity for making a move," etc., etc. "What can it mean?" said a girl to Gwladys, as she entered the sail-shed in the morning. "What can have come to Ivor? Have you any idea?" Gwladys shook her head, and would not trust her voice to speak. "I'll tell you what they say," said the girl, "that he is jealous of you." They were already beginning to drop the familiar "thee" and "thou" in addressing Gwladys. She noticed the omission, and blushed a vivid red. "There!" said her friend, holding up her hands in admiration, "there's the colour we've been used to see in your face; in my deed, you are not like yourself lately. Twt, twt, it is not such a wonderful thing to be married that you need grow thin and pale about it. 'That will be the end of us all,' as the old maid said when she watched the wedding. There! look at her now, Mishteer!" And Hugh, who was just entering, gazed with admiration at Gwladys' blushing face. "Thou hast brought back her roses, indeed, Malen," he said, smiling. "What hast been saying to her?" "We were talking about Ivor Parry, and I tell her it is jealousy of her that has made him leave." "Was that possible?" thought Hugh, as he turned away. "Was it the jealousy of love that had caused Ivor's strange behaviour?" and somehow the thought brought comfort to him; the loss of his friend did not weigh quite so heavily upon him. "He would get over this foolish feeling; he would return to Mwntseison again, and to his work in the sail-shed, and the same happy relations would exist between them as had of old." Gwladys had retired to her old corner. The sail had already been spread in a convenient position for working, her stool placed before it, and she knew well whose tender care had arranged her work for her. She looked over to where Hugh Morgan was standing, stalwart and strong, as if he were going to address his work-people, and a wan little smile flitted over her face, where the rich colour was already ebbing. Hugh caught the smile, and his heart beat fast, for, though he hid his feelings from the eyes of the crowd, as was his bounden duty to do if he did not wish to brush the bloom off the peach, to rob his love of the romance of a real Welsh courtship, still his thoughts were ever hovering round Gwladys. Be it remembered that, though he was past the intoxication of "love's young dream," he had succumbed to the passion which had assailed him with all the strong fervour belonging to middle age. His heart had been so long steeled against the glamour of love that now at last, when it had made a breach in his walls, he had completely surrendered to its mad enthralment. His fervid words, the passionate ardour of his looks and his embraces, fell upon Gwladys' soul with scorching pain; she could not feel the same love for him, and, therefore, wearied of its intensity. She reproached herself incessantly with coldness and want of feeling, and endeavoured by occasional warmth of manner to make up for the ordinary want of interest. "I will love him when we are married, and, God helping me, I will be a good wife to him." This was the continual burden of her thoughts; her life was one constant struggle to banish from her mind the memory of Ivor, and, though his image ran like an under-current through the stream of her existence, she yet managed to keep all conscious thoughts of him in abeyance. "What was to come of it all? What was going to happen to smooth out the tangled path into which her feet had so unintentionally strayed? God knows! I can only trust, and try to be a good wife." While these thoughts passed through her mind, Hugh was speaking, and the work-people had dropped their tools, and were listening with attention. "You know, my friends," he said, "that a great sorrow has fallen upon me in the loss of my right-hand man, Ivor Parry. His reasons for going are good ones. He has been offered a post of great responsibility, bringing with it an increased salary. It is every man's duty to make his way in the world if he can, and however much we may regret his loss here, I know that there is not one of you, man, woman, or child, who does not send with him to-day a greeting of love, and an earnest hope that his path may be blessed with every good which can fall to man in this world. Josh Howels will take his place as my manager, and I expect from you the same obedience and deference to him, and to my orders through him, as you have always shown to Ivor Parry." Josh Howels rose to say a few words in answer. Gwladys leant back against the boarded wall of the shed, her head leaning on a rough shelf, her eyes fixed on the sky and sea, which were visible through the wide open doors. She saw the sea-gulls sailing in the air; she heard the hoarse cry of the puffins, which crowded the cliffs above Traeth-y-daran; and the picture of a moonlit beach, on which sat two figures close together, arose before her mental vision; but, with a spasm of pain, she literally shrank from the picture, and by a strong effort of will banished it from her mind. In a few days the eventful week had dawned which she had dreaded, and yet longed for of late! Surely this dull aching would cease! surely this sharp agony of thwarted desires would be quenched when once she was Hugh Morgan's wife! Here lay her only hope--and to this hope she clung with the frantic energy of a drowning man. Her mother had finished all her simple preparations for the wedding, which was to bring such honour and lustre upon them; she had forced herself to forget that pale dawn when Gwladys had entered the house like a spirit or unrest. Sometimes when she heard of Ivor's intended departure from the village, or when she saw Gwladys' paling cheek, a throb of disquietude would pierce her heart; but Hugh Morgan's tenderness, his absolute devotion to her daughter re-assured her. "She must love him," she thought; "no woman could help it! She will be a happy girl, and I shall be a happy mother-in-law!" Indeed, in the whole village congratulations for Nani and Gwladys were rife, and "There's a fortunate girl!" was the refrain of every conversation upon the subject of the Mishteer's marriage. One alone was dissatisfied--Mari Vone! And as she sat in the gloaming on the eve of the wedding-day, her thoughts were evidently none of the happiest; her fair golden head drooped a little over her shining knitting needles, her graceful tall figure had a listless curve in it as she sat looking out of the open doorway; she heard a footstep on the road which she recognised at once. "He is going to Gwladys!" she thought, and she patiently clasped her hands upon her bosom, as if to quiet the throbbing heart within; but no! the steps drew near, and against the red sunset the figure of Hugh Morgan loomed clear and large. He nodded pleasantly over his pipe, and Mari pushed a rush stool nearer the door for him to sit upon. "That will do!" he said; "the smoke will blow out to the road." And with a long-drawn "Ah!" of satisfaction, he stretched out his legs, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of his pipe for a time, during which Mari plied him with questions, most of which he answered with a nod or shake of the head. "Hast Madlen finished her baking? and roasted her chickens? The lobster and crab I have boiled myself. Gwladys will be glad of a dainty supper, for she will be very tired. It is well for her that she is marrying a man who can afford to give her dainties, for her mother tells me she has a poor appetite lately, and turns away from the barley bread." "God bless her! she shall have white bread, white as a dog's tooth! and anything else she may fancy," said Hugh, and he puffed away in silence a little longer. "You are sure to be at the wedding, Mari?" "Oh, yes, I am coming," she answered quietly. "It gave me a terrible fright when somebody said you were not coming--you and Ivor away. I should have felt it a bad omen, Mari." "Oh, twt, twt! nonsense about bad omens! If I had stopped away it would only have been because I am getting too old for weddings, and biddings, and fairs. I leave that to the young girls now." Hugh laughed sarcastically. "You know better than that, Mar. You know very well that whenever you appear the girls have all to hide their heads. They are none of them fit to hold a candle to you. What old age may make of you I don't know; but sure I am, no creature that treads God's earth graces it more than you do!" "Oh! there's pretty words, whatever, Hugh," said Mari, dropping her knitting on her lap, and letting her hands fall with it, and gazing out rather sadly over Hugh's shoulder to the glowing sea and sky beyond. "You are going to see Gwladys to-night, of course? She will be expecting you." "Yes," said Hugh; "I am going now--but--but Mari, I felt I wanted to say something before I went. We have been friends for years--we shall be friends still--eh?" and he held out his broad brown hand. Mari placed her own in it. "Friends forever, Hugh, as long as life shall last!" "And after," he said. "Well, fforwel, and God bless you!" and Hugh made his way under the wreaths and banners which already spanned the road, in readiness for next day's festivities, leaving Mari to her thoughts and to her knitting, upon which by and by a large tear fell. "Hoi! hoi! stop a bit!" said 'n'wncwl Jos, whom Hugh met stumping down the road. "Don't go under the banners before the wedding. It brings bad luck, man." "It's too late," answered Hugh jovially, "for I have been under two or three," and his beaming smile and sparkling eyes, as he turned up the path towards Gwladys' cottage, showed that whatever the future had in store for him, to-night he was well content. [1] My boy! [2] Porridge. [3] Dear people! (an exclamation). [4] "There is no fool like an old fool!" [5] Carpenter. CHAPTER VII. A WEDDING CALL. The month of May, with all her charms on earth, sea, and sky, had slipped away, and June reigned in her place, pouring forth her stores of bud and blossom, laying her warm hand on the ripening fruit in the orchards, turning their cheeks to crimson and gold, lulling the waves to rest, and folding the young broods of birds, which swarmed in the cliffs, in her mantle of soft balmy air. The shepherd's song was heard from the hillside as he sat basking in the sunshine, the clap, clap of the mill came on the breeze, the clinking of the village anvil, the voices of little children, all blended together in delicious harmony. Every door and window in the village was open, and the air was filled with the "sh-sh" of the sea. The children sat playing on the warm, dry sand. 'N'wncwl Jos sat astride on the keel of his boat, which had been turned upside down for repairs. He had a pot of tar and some tow beside him, but the work did not proceed very rapidly, as The Ship Inn was so near, and the heat of the sun made an occasional "blue" a necessity. 'N'wncwl Jos's time was a commodity that hung heavily on his hands, and there was no hurry to get the boat done, so he exchanged his quid of tobacco from one cheek to another, and took his daily snooze in the June sunshine. Suddenly a gentle voice aroused him. "'N'wncwl Jos!" "Well, merch i?"[1] and he began busily to caulk a crack in his boat. It was Gwladys who stood beside him, rather paler, perhaps, than when he saw her last, but with the same sweet curves over mouth and chin--with the same serious look in the brown eyes--which were shaded by the white sun-bonnet. "Wilt come and help me with the brewing this afternoon?" she said, with a languid tone in her voice, which, perhaps, was due to the heat. "B'd siwr! b'd siwr!"[2] replied the old man, waking up with evident interest. "Hugh says thou hast the secret for making the beer clear." "So I have, merch i--learnt it from my grandmother. How far hast thou got with thy brewing?" "The brecci is working," she said, "but I'm afraid it won't be clear. I have never brewed before." "I'll be up this afternoon," said 'n'wncwl Jos, "and we shall see whether thine ale will be clear or not. The Mishteer knew where to send thee for advice! Have you heard the news?" "What news?" "Why, that Ivor Parry is very ill; there he lies stranded at Carnarvon, poor fellow, in some strange lodging, laid up with fever. The Lapwing arrived at Abersethin last night from Carnarvon with slates, and brought the news. I thought he was sickening for something before he left; didst notice how white he looked?" "Yes," said Gwladys, looking across the bay, where in the distance the line of the Carnarvonshire hills looked like a chain of blue clouds. "The Mishteer will be shockin' sorry to hear it," said the old man, shaking his head. "I'm going to the sail-shed to tell him as soon as I have finished this job." Gwladys turned silently away, her heart like a lump of lead, her eyes burning with tears which she must not shed. She must not even ask for more particulars--nay, she must not even wish for more; and as she walked back over the dusty road to her new home, she tightened her grasp upon her own feelings, and laid a strong curb upon her natural instincts. She followed the progress of the brewing with punctilious care, patiently and gently directing Madlen, who endeavoured to frustrate all the plans of the new mistress with the annoying obstinacy of a jibbing horse. She peeped into the mash-tub, and exclaimed: "Sure as I'm here, it'll never clear; it's as thick as the Gwendraeth after rain!" Getting no reply she tried in another direction: "Ivor Parry and Mishteer always praised my ale; 'twas as clear as cryshal,[3] but cawl it'll be to-day!" Gwladys smiled. "Thee's an evil prophetess, Madlen!" They both looked up as a shadow fell through the open doorway. It was Gwen. "I came to ask thee if I could help in the brewing. Thee'lt like be anxious about thy first brewing; how does it go?" "Pretty well, I think," said Gwladys. "It will be casked to-night." "Have you heard of Ivor's illness?" said Gwen, looking full into her face, which visibly blanched under her keen glance. "'N'wncwl Jos has just been telling me," said her victim, trying in vain to speak in a natural tone. "What is it?" "Fever, they say," said Gwen, "but a bad one. Siencyn saw him in his lodgings; 'tis a good thing he is well looked after. The daughter of the house seems very fond of him, and he of her, for he calls her continually, 'Gwladys! Gwladys!' if she only leaves him for a minute. Dir anwl![4] how pale thou art getting! Art not well?" "Not very," said Gwladys. "The heat has been so great to-day, and the wind blows straight from the limekilns." "Perhaps, indeed! but thou hast lost thy roses whatever!" and lifting the lid of the mash-tub, she peered into its contents. "There's a muddy cloud in it! That will spoil thy brewing." "Perhaps, indeed!" said Gwladys, using the formula that does duty in Wales for every variety of expression. "What will the Mishteer say?" "Oh, well, he won't mind much if I do not grieve about it." "No; I suppose thou canst do pretty well what thou lik'st with him now. So can I with Siencyn; but that won't last. 'There's never a pig' thee knowest, 'without a twist in his tail,' and 'never a man without a quirk in his temper!' Oh! yes, we shall see it some day; but as long as we have nothing to _hide_ we need fear nothing. But diwedd anwl![5] the time goes like the andras.[6] I must go. Pity for Ivor Parry--isn't it?" When she was gone, Gwladys began to breathe again, and endeavoured to steel herself against the wounds which she would receive in her passage through life, and to endure, for this, she felt, would be her portion for the future. "Gwladys!" called a manly voice, and Hugh entered from the sunshine, "where art, my little one? Come and comfort me, for I have had bad news, and thou wilt be sorry, too! Poor Ivor is ill; hast heard?" "Yes," she said; "Gwen has just been telling me; but he has a good nurse, and we must not look on the dark side." "No, true, merch i; but I'd give much to have him back here again--foolish boy! I believe he was jealous of my love for thee! Siencyn Owen says he was quite delirious; called constantly for the girl who nurses him, 'Gwladys, Gwladys!' sometimes in such pitiful tones that Siencyn felt like crying; and talking, talking without stopping about the sea and the moon and the stars! 'Gwladys,' he said, 'our star is sinking--sinking--sinking!' Oh, 'tis pity, indeed, we can't have him here to nurse him--thy gentle ways and thy tender care would bring him round, Gwladys; but what is the matter, lass?" "Oh, a pain!" said the girl, laying her hand on her bosom. "A sharp pain, a real pain! I have had it before to-day; I think it must be the brecci, which I have tasted too often." And a pitiful little smile crossed her face. Hugh was all anxiety and fright, and not without cause, for Gwladys had quietly slipped to the ground in a dead faint. In a moment, Madlen the contumacious had forgotten her pique, and was rushing about in search of the inevitable "drop of brandy," while Hugh lifted his wife from the ground, and placed her on the settle, where she presently regained consciousness. His tender words of love were the first that reached her ears. "Gwladys, fâch! my little girl! dear heart! open thine eyes. Art better, darling?" "Yes, yes," said the girl, reaching both hands towards him, and bursting into tears. "Hugh, Hugh, you have married a foolish, weak girl; but have patience with me, and I will get wiser and better." "Oh, ho! as for that," said Hugh, tenderly drawing her towards him, "I want no change in thee!" After the never-failing restorative of a cup of tea, Gwladys revived, and Hugh was happy again; and when 'n'wncwl Jos arrived in the afternoon, Hugh left him with Gwladys to the mysteries of casking the beer, his wooden leg stumping up and down incessantly from the beer-cellar to the living-room. He placed some mysterious object on the table, wrapped up in paper, refusing to unfold it until the last moment. "Now," he said, when the casks had been placed in position, and everything prepared for pouring in the brecci, "now, then, Mishtress, let's see if your brewing won't be the clearest in Mwntseison." "Gwen said there was a cloud in it this morning!" "Gwen!" he said, with a start. "She hasn't been looking at it, has she?" Gwladys nodded. "Ach y fi! there's a pity! She is too nearly related to Peggi Shân for her eyes or her fingers to do any good to thy brewing. I remember once, when my mother was brewing (and she was famed for her clear cwrw), but jâr-i! Peggi Shân came to the door; 'twas a very sunny day, and her shadow fell straight over the mash-tub, and, sure as I'm here, the beer was as thick as bwdran![7] Always after that we kept the door locked on brewing days." "Perhaps, indeed!" said Gwladys! "I will do so next time, for there is something about Gwen I don't like." "Well, we've got nothing to do but try our best now; but 'tis pity Gwen looked at it!" And he unfolded from the crumpled newspaper a large lump of coal, which, after well washing, he placed at the bottom of the cask, pouring the fermented brecci gently over it. "There it is! Now all I ask for my secret is--that when your cask is empty, you will take the coal out, and burn it in the middle of your strongest fire; it will bring good luck to your next brewing; you will be surprised to see what a mass of mud will be gathered round it, and your beer will be like the cryshal! and I'll come and taste the first glass." "Yes, thou shalt indeed!" "Well, good-bye, Mishtress; 'tis only Gwen I am afraid of now! Hast heard any more about Ivor Parry?" "No," answered Gwladys, in a calm voice which astonished herself, "only that he is well nursed by the daughter of the house--Gwladys is her name!" "Well, well, poor fellow! when you are ill it is well to have a woman about you," and he stumped away. Quite in the gloaming, when the hearth had been swept up, Gwladys, dressed in her neatest frock of Welsh flannel, with her favourite pink muslin kerchief tied loosely round her neck, sat knitting near the little window, through which the setting sun sent a rosy parting glow. Hugh had gone a few miles into the country on business, and Nell Jones and Sara Pentraeth, two near neighbours, had taken the opportunity of paying their first wedding call upon the bride. They were constant friends and companions, and although they quarrelled at almost every interview, never seemed happy apart. They had heard so much of the glories of Gwladys' new home that they had been dying to see it for the last fortnight, but had been unable hitherto to overcome their jealousy sufficiently to pay the requisite visit; this evening, however, they both made their appearance in the doorway. "Dir anwl! is it you, Nell fâch? and you, Sara, venturing to leave your little baby? there's kind you are," and Gwladys dusted too already speckless chairs and placed them for her guests. "Well, we have come to wish you 'Priodas dda,' Mishtress," said Sara, who was spokeswoman, Nell being too busily engaged with roving eyes in taking stock of the furniture; "and we would have come before, but as for me, indeed, to goodness, my heart sank down to my clocs, when I heard of all the grand things around you; but I am glad now I came, for I am not so frightened after all, and I don't see anything out of the way here!" "I hope not indeed," said Gwladys, smiling. "No, no! the Mishteer knew better than to make it too grand for you; it would be too great a change. But that is a beautiful chair you are sitting on--solid oak, I see!" "Yes," said Gwladys, rising; "Hugh had it made for me." "Caton pawb!"[8] said both women, raising their hands in astonishment, "a red velvet cushion! Wel! wel! the queen couldn't have anything better! But there, we all know how an old lover spoils his wife!" Here Nell turned to the dresser. "Wel, to be sure! the dresser looks nice; I have heard tell it is the best-dressed dresser in the parish; but so many things alike. For my part, I like different colours--green, blue, and pink, not all pink like these. And what are these?" and she gingerly raised the covers of two vegetable dishes, which stood one each side of the dresser shelf. "They are for the potatoes and cabbages," said Gwladys meekly, feeling that she was indeed in danger of hurting the susceptibilities of her touchy neighbours by the exhibition of her treasures; "and those are the dishes--six plates and three dishes, and two little ones for gravy; they called it a dinner service at the shop at Caer Madoc." "Perhaps indeed!" said Sara, whose mingled feelings of jealousy and astonishment could only be expressed by this never-failing phrase. Meanwhile, Nell was walking round the room, examining with curious eyes and busy fingers every little adornment which the cosy cottage contained; but the coffor was the object of their deepest admiration. "Look at the polish of it!" said Nell, who was not so clever as Sara at hiding her feelings. Gwladys with pride opened every drawer. "Full to the brim!" said Nell, with gasping envy. "I expect old 'Ebenezer' will be well filled on Sunday; everyone is looking out for your new jacket." "They will be disappointed then," said Gwladys, laughing, "for Hugh comes with me to Brynseion from this time forward." "Wel! wel! the Mishteer has given up his soul to you!" in a tone half spiteful, half abject, for "to give up his chapel" was synonymous with "giving up his soul," even though it was only to attend another of the same denomination more conveniently situated. At this last proof of Hugh Morgan's complete subjection to his wife's charms the two women were quite overcome, and when they went away they made their adieux in more humble tones, and tacked a "mem" and a bob curtesy on to the end! But it was only until they were out of sight that this meek behaviour continued, for as they walked up the road they drew closer together, and with sundry nudges and winks discussed the situation. "Did ever man see such a thing?" said Sara. "A red velvet-cushion! didst ever hear of such a thing? Nani's daughter to sit upon a red velvet cushion! No wonder her stool in the sail-shed is so often empty! Wel! wel! the ways of Providence are puzzling indeed. But of all things in the world, Nell, fâch--the dishes for the potatoes! Wouldn't basins do, I should like to know?" "Oh! I don't expect they use them," said Nell. "What did she call them? Some English name." "'A dinner service,' if you please," said Sara, in tones of disgust. "Ach y fi! what is the world coming to when Nani's daughter sits on a red velvet cushion, and has a 'dinner service' on her dresser? dost know what, Nell, fâch? I am sick of the world; it is so foolish. And didst see her ring? as thick as two, Nell, fâch! Wel, wel! the poor Mishteer has made a fool of himself at last! 'Dwla dwl yw dwl hên!'[9] But, Nell," with another nudge and a shrewd wink, "we've got to curtsey to her, my woman. But we've got to hide our feelings in this world, Nell, fâch. There's two pigs in the sty; and that pretty poppet won't do all the salting herself, I'll be bound. And there's the herrings to be salted in the autumn. I won't mind doing the work for her, but there's many a bit of pork can be spared from the salting, and I daresay she'll throw a dozen or two of herrings into my pay!" "Oh, I can salt as well as thee," said Nell, "and I can set the garden for them----" "Oh, yes, I daresay thee'lt pick something out of them!" said Sara. "So we must curtsey and say, 'mem' to Mishtress. Ach y fi! I am tired of this old world. There's Shemi coming home, I must go and put the cawl on; good-night." As they turned into their cottages, Hugh came whistling down the road. He had settled his business in the farm on the moor, and was returning with hurrying steps to the home which held his young bride; for, no doubt, in a great measure the old proverb was right, and Hugh, the man of forty, was more absolutely enslaved by the new-born passion which had come into his life than a younger man would have been. The thought of Gwladys filled his heart to the exclusion for the time of every other consideration. She was the sweetest and fairest woman in the world--the peerless pearl of all the maidens!--and his whole life should be devoted to her happiness. He would guard her path from every danger; he would brush every thorn away, and spread it with flowers for her to walk upon; and as he saw the light which twinkled from his window, and pictured Gwladys' slim figure moving about the room, his heart leapt up with joy, and life seemed to stretch before him in one long boundless haze of happiness. He passed 'n'wncwl Jos standing at his cottage door with a nod only. "Ha, ha!" said the old man, "'tis no use asking you to come in now--too much attraction at home, eh?" "Well," said Hugh, stopping a moment, "'tis too late to-night, and I don't like to leave the little one alone, you see; but to-morrow night, she is going to see Nani, and I'll come up and sit with thee and Mari. How is she?" "Quite well," said 'n'wncwl Jos. "She has been hay-making all day, and has not come home yet." On the following Sunday the worshippers at Brynseion Chapel paid less attention than usual to their minister's fiery sermon. Gwladys Morgan's jacket had been the subject of their thoughts and conversation during the foregoing week, and now here it was in all its glory of lace and bead trimming, plainly exposed to every eye--nay, Sara Pentraeth and Nell Jones had been so fortunate as to secure seats in the very next pew behind the Mishteer and Mishtress, so that they were able correctly to appraise its value. Nell's eyes as usual roamed over every bead and frill, and a series of unconscious nudges in Sara's side expressed the feelings which the presence of the minister and congregation obliged her to conceal. Hugh had commissioned a friend, a sea-captain, to buy the jacket for him at a large seaport town up the bay. The price was to be no object, but fashion and good taste alone were to be considered, and consequently its arrival had created quite a little ferment in the village. Gwladys, when it was presented to her the day after her marriage, went into the expected raptures; but, truth to tell, its grandeur threw a shadow over her Sundays, and though Nani looked across the chapel at her with beaming admiration, she was glad to exchange it for her quiet Welsh flannel dress when the three services of the day were over, and Hugh and she could doff their broadcloth and silk, and lay them to rest in the coffer until the following Sunday. It was midsummer, and as they emerged from the crowded chapel on the day when the glories of the jacket first dazzled the eyes of Mwntseison, the sweet, pure air greeted them like a blessing. The road, shaded on both sides with old gnarled elder trees, was white with the fallen blossoms, the scent of which mingled with that of the wild honeysuckle climbing over the hedges. They stopped a moment to lean over a bridge which crossed the little stream just where it took a headlong leap over the rocks down to the lower level, upon which it made its more sober way through the village into the sea. The spray from the waterfall wetted their faces as they looked through the honeysuckle and ivy into the depths below. The swallows darted backwards and forwards where the water filled the air with its rushing sound. "'Tis a gay world, lass, eh?" said Hugh, looking with almost wistful tenderness into Gwladys' face. "Yes, indeed," she answered; "'tis a pity we live in houses; we lose a lot of beauty so." "Yes," said Hugh; "but to me, now, the real beauty and happiness of life are at home. Since I have thee always with me, my life seems to be almost too full of joy. Dost feel the same, f'anwylyd? Art as happy with me?" For a moment there was a rushing sound in her ears which drowned the sound of the waterfall, and tears filled her eyes as she sought for a truthful answer. "Oh, Hugh, bâch!" she said at last, "who could live with thee without loving thee? Indeed I am far happier than I deserve to be--my only trouble is lest I should not fill thy life completely; but if thou art telling the truth, and dost not find anything wanting in me, that is all I want." "Nothing, merch i, nothing," said Hugh. And he spoke the truth, for he had not as yet fully realised that there was a something wanting in his cup of happiness; while in Gwladys' heart, every fresh proof of her husband's passionate love seemed to press deeper the barb of unrest and misery which was poisoning her life. His tender words, his caresses only deepened her sense of loss, while, added to her own sorrow, pity for Hugh Morgan began to awaken within her. She had not realised that the bitterness could not be hers alone, but that through her it would reach the man who loved her, and whom she admired and honoured so much. "Could I only tell mother; but no!" She felt she must hide her misery from every human eye, and, above all, from Hugh, whose heart the knowledge would break. Yes, whatever it cost her, she must hide it from him; and she must make more strenuous efforts to appear and be glad in Hugh's love, and in all the comforts surrounding her. All this passed through her mind while she watched the swallows darting through the spray and listened to the rush of the waterfall. She turned to her husband with as merry a smile as she could call to her lips. "Come, 'mach-geni, we must not quite forget our home in watching the birds and the water; let us go home." There was a ring of gaiety in the speech which Hugh felt and responded to at once, and leaning over the bridge he reached a wild rose which grew out of the mossy masonry. "A posy for my darling," he said, offering it to her. She took it, smiling, and fastened it on her breast in spite of the silk jacket; and Hugh Morgan turned homewards a happy man. [1] My lass. [2] Of course. [3] Crystal. [4] Dear! dear! [5] Good gracious! [6] Devil. [7] A kind of porridge. [8] An exclamation, as "good gracious!" [9] "There is no fool like an old fool." CHAPTER VIII. CONFIDENCES. The summer and autumn months slipped by, bringing but little change to Mwntseison. The hay harvest brought its usual sweet additions to the charms of the season--the scent of the dry hay and meadow-sweet on the air, the call of the corncrake in the grey evenings, the wisps of hay left hanging on the hedges by the laden waggons. The men and women had all become a shade browner from exposure to the sun, for even the work of the sail-shed was suspended for the haymaking; and there was not a man, woman, or child who did not find some excuse for tossing the hay. The air seemed full of song, for people at Mwntseison always felt the work went better while they sang in chorus together. In the sail-shed there was a murmur of singing, commenced by the women and taken up by the lads and men until alto, tenor, and bass filled up the harmony. Best of all went the music when the Mishteer's rich voice joined in in the bass. A favourite glee was The Herring Boat, which went with so tuneful a swing that it seemed to suit every kind of occupation and experience. The children sang it sitting in little groups on the warm sand, the sailors on the bay, and the haymakers in the field; but oftenest of all, the walls of the old sail-shed echoed to its tones. It ran as follows, though English words can but poorly express the vivid brightness of the original:-- "Out there on the raging sea The wind is high; Nothing but foam and mist to see Under the sky! Father and mother, come down to the shore; Friends and neighbours, stand at the door; Pray--if you never have prayed before-- 'Lord, hear our cry!' Torn sails and broken mast-- Oh! let the boat come home at last! Ja houp, hal! Ja houp, hal! Hal! Hal! Hal! Hal! "Out there on the stormy main A calm has come! The sunshine chases the wind and rain, And gilds the foam. Father and mother, come down to the shore; Friends and neighbours, come out to the door; And shout--if you never have shouted before-- A welcome home! Torn sails and broken mast-- The boat is safe at home at last! Ja houp, hal! Ja houp, hal! Hal! Hal! Hal! Hal!" The corn harvest was nearly over before the news reached the village of Ivor Parry's convalescence. The Lapwing had flitted across the bay to the northern port, and had returned, bearing the news of his recovery and many warm greetings from him to his friends at Mwntseison. "Tell me exactly how he was, my lad. I hunger to hear something of him," said Hugh Morgan to the youthful captain of the little ship, and speaking English, for sailors possessed the distinguishing accomplishment of being able to speak the English language, and are proud of it. Hugh himself spoke it fluently and grammatically, though with a broad Welsh accent. "Wel, he wass looking pale and thin," replied Captain Jones, "and the daughter of the house brought a chair for him to sit on outside the door. Gwladys is her name, and she's a purty girl, too! "'There,' he says, 'turn my chair where the wind will blow straight from the sea.' "'Tis blowing straight across the bay today,' sez I. ''Tis coming later from Mwntseison than me, though I only left yesterday morning.' "Wel, he didn't say nothin' to that, but he took a long breath, and he sighed very heavy." "'Oh, I'll soon be well now,' he sez, 'and begin my work again.' And when I was parting, he sez: 'Remember me to the Mishteer,' sez he, 'and tell him that distance don't make no difference at all in my friendship for him.'" "And what message to the Mishtress?" "'Oh, yes, of course,' he sez, 'my kind remembrances to her, too!' and he didn't say no more." "Well, that's enough," said Hugh, returning to his Welsh, "to know that he is getting well, and that his heart is with us yet. We'll have him back again yet, boys. We'll send him a 'round robin,' and every one in Mwntseison shall sign it. Thee and I shall be the first to sign it. Dost hear, Gwladys? But thee must sprack up, girl, or Ivor will ask me what I've been doing to thee to make thee so pale and thin!" And he, too, sighed heavily, as Ivor had. The winter months sped on, and the spring once more awakened land and sea. On one of her brightest and freshest mornings the doors of the sail-shed stood wide open, as they had done a year ago, and Hugh Morgan as usual worked busily amongst his men, arranging, watching, directing with indefatigable spirit, though, truth to tell, things had been going rather against him lately. He missed Ivor's watchful interest in his business, and his absence, like an intangible cloud, somewhat tarnished the brightness of his life. At the first glance, Hugh's manly form and handsome face seems unchanged, but a closer scrutiny reveals a haunting sadness behind his genial smile. Gwladys was also present, and was busily engaged in directing some portion of the work which she took under her own particular surveillance, and part of which she was able to do in her own home, much against her husband's wishes, for he would have liked to see her spend her days, her time, and his money in pleasure only; but the time hung heavily on her hands, and she felt herself perforce obliged to seek for work outside her own home, and playfully insisted upon taking upon her a portion of the work to which she had been accustomed from childhood. "Wilt come up to-night, Nell," she said, as she left the shed one day, "and bring up those reef points and the new flag for me to hem? There's a bag of sucan[1] and half a cheese you can have." "Tank'ee, tank'ee, Mishtress fâch," said Nell, standing up to make a series of bob curtseys; "there's good you are to me, and I will bring you a bunch of 'moon rocket.' I gathered it when the moon was full in a cleft of the rocks at Traeth-y-daran. 'Tis splendid for bringing the colour back to your blood. Will you try it, mem?" "Yes," said Gwladys, "I will try it to please thee, Nell. From Traeth-y-daran, didst say? Bring it to me; but I am quite well," and she left the shed, Hugh looking after her with a wistful sadness, for it was now very evident that the girl, who a year ago might have stood for a picture of "Hebe," had now lost much of the full ripe form, as well as the glow of health, which had once made her so peculiarly attractive. She was still very fair and lovely, perhaps more so than before, but in a different way. Her dark brown eyes had deep shadows beneath them, and her lips a curve of sadness. What was the cause of this sudden failing of health? Hugh tried in vain to discover, and he was fast resigning himself to the belief that her delicacy was due to that much-dreaded disease, consumption, which was very prevalent in that neighbourhood. Whether from the continual intermarriage of the villagers on the coast, or from some other cause, this cruel disease is very rife amongst the young people of both sexes; and Hugh looked every day, with nervous fears, for signs of the dreaded enemy. Gwladys laughed at his fears, however, and continued to declare she was quite well. Mari Vone, who was her most intimate friend and companion, was as much puzzled as Hugh at first. With the quick intuition of a loving heart, she had soon discovered that Hugh and Gwladys' marriage had not brought to either of them the complete happiness which she had expected would follow their union. She spent some part of every day in Gwladys' home, either helping in the household duties or sitting with her at work, engaged in those long chats which seem to fill up any blank there may be in the lives of women, as smoking does with men. She never stayed later than four or five o'clock, and Hugh was wont to reproach her playfully with always leaving before he came home. Though Mari pleasantly laughed away his reproaches, it was true that she could not look on unmoved while the man who yet reigned supreme in her heart caressed and dallied with his young wife. It was true that she was not yet strong enough to feel no bitterness of spirit when she saw the tender affection which Hugh lavished upon Gwladys, and which seemed to be received by her without the reciprocal delight which Mari herself would have felt. Her pure and unselfish love made her desire his happiness before any earthly good, and it wounded her true heart to see that he missed something in his wife, without plainly realising that he did so, or, at all events, without confessing it even to himself. It was during one of these long chats, when the two friends sat knitting at the cottage door, that the suspicion first dawned upon her which was afterwards to develop into such a miserable certainty. They had sat silent for some time, both heads bent over their clicking knitting needles, when Mari looked up and spoke. "Wel, wyrl Lallo's new pig seems to be as noisy as the last year's. You can always hear them abusing each other." "Yes," said Gwladys, laughing; "I think, between the baby and the pig, Siencyn will be glad to go to sea again." "'Tis a crying baby, indeed," said Mari; "a frail little thing. I'm afraid it will not live." "Oh, I hope so! It would break poor Gwen's heart to lose it. I can't think why--but she's always very spiteful to me." "To thee!" said Mari. "Why? I wonder--but she dare not show her spite to the Mishtress, surely! Poor Gwen! I pity her. Didst know she was very fond of Ivor Parry once?" A crimson blush overspread Gwladys' face as she bent more closely over her knitting--a blush that faded as quickly as it had appeared, leaving on her face a deathly pallor, though she answered in a calm voice: "I remember hearing something of it." Mari saw the blush and the pallor, and quickly changed the conversation, for if there was one trait in her character more conspicuous than another, it was tenderness, and, with a spasm of pain, she perceived she had touched upon a secret in Gwladys' life. "It is drawing near tea-time; I must go. 'N'wncwl Jos is so punctual! the tap of his wooden leg is almost as good as a clock." "Here is Hugh," said Gwladys, and she ran to the gate to meet him. There was only the usual "Wel, merch i!" and "Wel, Hugh!" at meeting, for the Welsh, although so emotional--perhaps because of this--are very chary of any exhibition of tenderness in public. "Ah! now I have caught thee, Mari, going to slip away as usual just as I come in. Indeed, now, stay to tea. 'N'wncwl Jos has gone out in the Speedwell, and she will not be back till nine o'clock; he told me to tell thee. Come, sit thee down, and keep Gwladys and me company." "Oh, then I will, and I can fry those light-cakes for thee, Gwladys." And before long they were seated round the oak table, in the shade of the big chimney, for the evenings were still cold, although it was May. Gwladys hovered round her husband with all sorts of little nameless attentions, endeavouring, as she always did, by faithfully performing and even exceeding in every wifely duty to make up to him for the love which was lacking in her. "There's a bonnie pile of lightcakes," said Hugh, "as tall as Caer Madoc church-steeple; but never mind, I'll soon knock the pinnacle off it!" and he flipped two or three on to Gwladys' and Mari's plates. "One at a time, Hugh bâch," said Gwladys. "Thee wouldst soon make me ill if thou hadst thy way." "I'm afraid I have had my way, lass. Dost see how pale she is, Mari? What shall we do to her?" "Well, I think, take her for a trip on the Aden Ydon. She sails for Cork in June. That would bring her roses back." "Perhaps indeed," said Hugh. "But how shall I manage it? I have had complaints of the work in the sail-shed from many quarters lately, and I must watch it closer. But one thing is certain, I must ask Ivor Parry to come back, and that won't hurt my pride, for we've always been like brothers, and I believe his friendship is mine still." "No doubt of that," said Mari, endeavouring to attract Hugh's notice from his wife, who sat with bent head, changing from white to red, and from red to white. When Hugh had left the house, she raised her hands, which had been clasped on her lap, and covered her drooping face with them, while Mari, pretending not to notice her, bustled about clearing the tea-table; but so long did she remain in this position that it was useless longer to ignore it, so, drawing a stool to her side, she gently tried to draw away the hands which Gwladys still kept over her face, and was surprised to find them wet with tears. "Gwladys, anwl! what is it?" "Something I must not tell you!" said the young wife, with head still bent, the tears coursing each other down her cheeks; "something I must keep for ever here,"--and she smote her breast with her clenched hand--"until I lie in my coffin. You heard Hugh say everything has gone wrong with him lately? It is true, Mari fâch. Oh, everything is wrong! The whole world is twisted and torn, and I long to escape from it." Mari sat beside her, holding one of her hands in stricken silence. "Ts, ts!" was all she said, while Gwladys' tears flowed unrestrainedly. "Poor Hugh! poor Hugh!" she said between her sobs; and Mari cried too, but softly. "I have heard that once Hugh and thee were lovers, Mari?" "Oh, in the old, old past, Gwladys. Now his heart is thine alone, and my only prayer is that he should be happy with thee. Dost believe me, merch i?" "Yes, I believe all that is good of thee, Mari. Thou art an angel somehow straying on earth. Wilt be my guardian angel, and love me still, though I am so weak and sinful? Oh, why did not Hugh marry thee, instead of me? I believe in his heart of hearts he loves thee still, although he has been carried away by a sudden wind of passion. Yes--yes; there has been some terrible mistake," and she started to her feet almost wildly, "and it can never be set right--never, never, never!" And with the last word she flung herself down on the settle, crying bitterly. Mari waited a moment in dazed silence. "Art better, merch i?" she said at length, when the sobs began to grow less violent; and stooping down, and whispering so softly that not even the proverbial walls could hear, she said, "Now, no word of explaining; none is wanted between thee and me; we have been soul to soul together to-day. I know all thy secret, and I think thou knowest mine!" Gwladys' lips moved in assent, but she seemed too broken down for more. "Listen again," said Mari. "We are both women whose dream of happiness has been shattered; but there is still one thing which we can work for as long as life shall last--Hugh's happiness. Can we work together, Gwladys fâch? can we still be friends with these bitter secrets between us? It is for thee to settle." Gwladys' only answer was to raise her arms and clasp them round Mari's neck, drawing her close to her in a long embrace, during which some silent tears were shed by both. "Never leave me, Mari!" "Never!" [1] Crushed oats, with the husks on, used for making a kind of strained porridge. CHAPTER IX. GWEN'S REBELLION. "Where is Gwen?" said Hugh Morgan, looking at an unoccupied stool at one end of the sail-shed; "she has not been here for two days." "No," said one of her friends, "she's at home, Mishteer. Her little baby is ill, and she and Lallo are wild with fear of losing her." "Ts, ts, that's a pity! Has she had a doctor?" "Malen hysbys[1] has been there, and the child would have been well by now, but that Siencyn would open the window before he sailed yesterday; of course the little one caught cold, and now I'm afraid----" and she shook her head mournfully. "Well, well," said the Mishteer, "I must go and see about getting a doctor for her." And he left the shed, and passed up the road towards Gwen's cottage, upon reaching which, he found her deeply intent upon a morsel of raw meat, which she was roasting on a fork before the fire. Her little baby, meanwhile, white and moaning, lay across Lallo's knees, who also seemed much interested in the bit of meat. "Well, Gwen, I am sorry to hear your little one is ill; but diranwl! babies have nine lives and recover from all sorts of illnesses." Gwen scarcely withdrew her eyes from her cooking to answer. "Oh! of course, I know that, Mishteer, I know she will be well soon; but if you had a child of your own, you would know 'tis a cruel thing to see it suffering!" "B'tshwr, indeed!" said Hugh. "I can quite understand that; but what is it that you are cooking?" "A mouse," said Gwen. "Malen hysbys says a roasted mouse will cure my baby." "Caton pawb!" said Hugh, "what nonsense, Gwen! I will send for Dr. Hughes; he ought to have been here sooner. A roasted mouse, indeed. Where did she hear that from? From Peggi Shân?" "Peggi Shân knew more than Dr. Hughes a good deal," said Gwen; "and if she was alive now my baby would not be suffering; but it will be well by to-morrow." "I hope so, indeed," said Hugh; "but if you do not let Dr. Hughes see it, I think it will die, Gwen; that is the plain truth, and there is no use hiding it. I will send for him at once. And throw away that nasty thing you are roasting," he added as he left the house. "Die!" said Gwen fiercely; "she shall not die! There's calmly he says 'die!' I wish I had never let that wife of his touch my baby; it hasn't been well since she nursed it here one day." As she spoke, through the open doorway came the sounds of singing from a knot of women and children passing by. "Hard-hearted wretches!" she said, viciously pounding the mouse, which had been cooked to a cinder. "They can laugh and sing while my child is sick; they don't care. But their time will come!" she added, as she mixed the dark powder with some brown sugar and butter, and, with cooing, tender words, she coaxed the little moaning baby to swallow the unsavory morsel. At the same time Dr. Hughes entered, breezy and fresh from his drive over the hill. "Hello!" he called, as his portly form filled up the whole doorway. "What's wrong here? I met Hugh Morgan down the road, and he told me I was wanted here. What is it, Gwen? Hello!" he said again, in quite an altered tone, as he caught sight of the little panting baby, its pretty lips discoloured with smears of butter and sugar and something worse. "What's this?" and he looked in anger from one woman to another. "How dare you! You have been trying some of your filthy messes again, and with the usual result. You have killed your baby. Had you sent for me in time, I might have saved him; it is now too late." At the words "too late" Gwen screamed, and snatched the little one from its grandmother's lap. Disturbed by the scream it opened its eyes for a moment, and then died with a little fluttering gasp. "There, lay it down, poor little thing," said the doctor; "you can do no more for it; but next time you see a baby dying, don't add to its pain by stuffing filthy things into its mouth." Gwen fixed her heavy-lidded eyes upon the doctor with an angry look, saying: "Go out of my house if you can do no good, and leave me to my sorrow. You will repent of this." "Of what, woman?" She made no answer further than to point to the door, and Dr. Hughes went out, shrugging his shoulders. Through the open doorway the singing of the children came in on the breeze. "Fileiniaid," Gwen said, shaking her clenched fist at the doorway. "I hate them. Are they all to be happy while I am miserable?" and hastily rising, she took her little dead baby in her arms, and pressing it to her bosom, paced moaning up and down the room; while Lallo, even in her fresh sorrows remembering the village proprieties, closed the door and covered up the little window with a pocket handkerchief, and, with no little difficulty, at last persuaded Gwen to lay the child on the bed. "Extraordinary woman that Gwen," said Dr. Hughes, as he called by the sail-shed to report to Hugh Morgan. "Devilish temper. Second Peggi Shân. You see if I'm not right. The little baby? Oh, dead as a herring, its last moments disturbed by some filthy concoction stuffed into its mouth." "Yes, I know, indeed," said Hugh; "a roasted mouse. I saw her cooking it." And Dr. Hughes drove away with an oath. "Mari," said 'n'wncwl Jos one day as he stumped in from the sunshine; "isn't there a hole in Lallo's penucha?" "Yes," said Mari, looking at him with some surprise. "There is a short board near the fireplace, where the damp earth comes quite near to the top. It was going to be finished fifteen years ago when the floor was boarded, but the hole is still there. Why, 'n'wncwl Jos?" "Oh, nothing," said the old man. "Hast heard the little one is to be buried on Monday? and to-morrow night there's to be a gwylnos.[2] Wilt come, Mari?" "No, indeed," she said. "I will come to the prayer meeting, because then I can sit at the door or in the passage; but to be shut up all night in a room with a dead body makes me faint, and besides, I don't like a gwylnos." "Wel, no," said her uncle; "I know both thou and Hugh Morgan are very odd in some things, and that is one thing--not to like a gwylnos. Wel, I'm going anyway," and he stumped vigorously, and put on a defiant look. "What is the good of my never having married if I'm going to be ruled by a woman after all? Caton pawb! Wouldst like us to bury our dead as the Saeson[3] do? To shut the door upon them and say, 'There! we've finished with you; you stop there by yourself in the dark!' And then click with the key, and sit down in the warm kitchen to a comfortable meal, and talk about who's to have his clothes? No, no! Lallo and I are too old friends for me to desert her now in her trouble; so to the gwylnos I'll go, merch i, whatever thou say'st!" "Well, b'dsiwr! if you like, 'n'wncwl Jos," said Mari; "and I only meant that I didn't like the drinking and talking that goes on at a gwylnos, for death is too solemn a thing for such nonsense." "Oh, jâr-i! I agree with thee there. For a man to lie there, stiff and cold, hearing and saying nothing, while his friends are smoking and chatting near him, good liquor passing around him and he knowing nothing about it--well, yes! 'tis a solemn thing! But that's no reason why we shouldn't stay with the poor fellow as long as he is above ground, if it was only to comfort his relatives!" And he began to "furrage" in an old sea-chest, where he kept his own personal treasures safely under lock and key, bringing out from its depths one of the square, high-shouldered bottles of "Hollands" which he had collected in a mysterious manner during his sea-faring days. Having closed the chest with a bang, he hid the bottle under his rough pilot coat, and made his way up to Lallo's cottage. His low tap at the door was answered by Gwen herself. "So sorry, calon fâch!" he said, "for thy trouble and for Lallo's. This is for the gwylnos, merch i; give it to thy mother," and he held out the square bottle. Gwen made no answer, but turned away and called her mother, leaving 'n'wncwl Jos with outstretched arms at the doorway. "Jâr-i! there's manners!" he muttered to himself. But if Gwen was scant of gratitude, Lallo made up for it to overflowing. "'N'wncwl Jos bâch! There's kind you are to remember us in our trouble. A hundred thanks! and I hope you will be at the gwylnos; I will never forget your kindness!" "Twt, twt! hisht about kindness," said the old man, backing from the doorway, in fear lest he might be asked in "to see the body," a compliment considered due to everyone who knocked at the door. On the following day, which was Sunday, after every service in the two chapels was added the notice, given out by one of the deacons in the "set fawr" or big seat under the pulpit: "There will be a prayer-meeting at the house of Lallo Hughes this evening at eight o'clock, to be followed by a gwylnos for any friends who are wishful to attend." In the gloaming, when the many services of the day were over, the congregations trooped down towards Lallo's cottage. Of course, there was no room inside, but they overflowed into the cwrt and into the roadway, where they stood in the gathering twilight, only hearing a faint murmur of the prayers which were offered up inside the house; but still they waited patiently, listening to the rising and falling of the prayers, which mingled with the soft sighing of the sea, and speaking to each other in whispers. Lallo, who managed to get a furtive peep through the corner of the covered-up window, was much comforted by the presence of such a crowd of sympathisers, and called to mind with satisfaction that at the last gwylnos in the village, there had not been so large a gathering. Mari Vone sat on the low hedge of the cwrt, looking over the sea, where she was joined by Hugh Morgan and his wife. "Canst hear, Mari?" he asked. "No, nothing! But I've been listening to the sea, and I quite forgot the prayer-meeting, whatever." Hugh opened his eyes, with a smiling pretence of reproof. "Where is 'n'wncwl Jos?" he whispered; and Mari pointed to the doorway. Hugh looked grave. "Is he going to stay to the gwylnos?" "Yes," said Mari, with an uneasy look on her face. "Wouldst like me to stay, lass?" "Oh! no, Hugh bâch! and you hating a gwylnos as much as I do!" "Twt, twt!" said Hugh, and he elbowed his way into the crowded passage. The meeting was fortunately drawing to a close when Hugh entered, for the air in the small, close room was intolerably stifling. In the penucha he discovered the old man sitting close to the coffin, which stood across the fireplace. He had found the square hole in the boards, and had been able to get safely through the meeting without disturbing the gathering by the sound of his wooden leg, for in the soft earth he had been able to stump unheard. "Well, Mishteer!" he said, when the dispersing of the crowd and the comparative emptying of the cottage enabled him to draw near his friend, "there's beautiful prayers we had! There's no doubt Sam Saer beats anyone in Mwntseison on his knees. Are you going to stop to the gwylnos?" "Well, what d'ye think?" said Hugh. "'Tis shocking close here, and the room is too full. I think Lallo will be glad to get rid of a few of us. I'll stop if thou lik'st; but I was thinking perhaps thee and Mari would come in and have supper with us to-night. There's one of the ducks since dinner got to be eaten, and we've tapped the fresh cask, and it's as clear as cryshal--thanks to thy secret, 'n'wncwl Jos!" "Well, indeed, I think I will come," said the old man, "for I've sat by that coffin till I'm stiff. Good-bye, Lallo fâch!" he said, turning into the penisha. "I see you have so many friends here, I will only be in the way. Good-bye, Gwen fâch! I will be at the funeral to-morrow." And he searched his memory for one of the stock phrases which he tried to carry with him on such occasions. "Cheer up, merch i, and remember what the Bible says, 'Would God I had died for thee, my son!'" When the Mishteer had piloted him safely into the soft evening air, he was rewarded by a look of gratitude from Mari's blue eyes. "'N'wncwl Jos and you are coming to supper with us, Mari; he has agreed to come, so now don't you hold back." "Oh, well, that's a good thing," said Mari, "for I have already promised Gwladys to come." Lallo and her friends were already forming a semicircle around the bright fire, Gwen sitting straight and silent in the corner. Hour after hour of the long night they sat there talking, at first quietly and solemnly, but as the night wore on, and the contents of 'n'wncwl Jos's bottle was handed round, tongues were loosed and conversation flowed more freely. Stories were told of "corpse candles" which wound their flickering way from cottage to churchyard; of phantom funerals, in which the narrator had been so closely pressed by the unseen crowd as nearly to lose his breath, and become himself one of the mysterious company of "cwn bendith y mamman"--the weird invisible pack of hounds, whose yelping chorus rushes by on the wings of the wind; and many other tales, but always ending with the words, "but that was in the olden time, you know! Now, of course, we're wiser!" Their vaunted wisdom, however, did not prevent their cowering more closely over the blazing logs when the wind moaned in the chimney as it swept up the valley in the small hours of the morning, when one day was dead and the other was scarcely living. In the early morning, when the grey dawn came in as well as it could through the little covered window, everyone was glad to welcome it, and to blow out the candles which stood at the head of the coffin, to hang the kettle on the hook over the fire, and to help Lallo with her preparations for breakfast, returning without regret to the material pleasures of tea and buttered toast from their incursions into the realm of darkness and mystery. On the third day after its death, the little one was laid to rest, followed by all the inhabitants of Mwntseison--for a funeral, no matter of how young a child, is an important function in Wales, and few within an area of two miles will fail to attend it, for there is a chance of hearing a sermon, and the certainty of an old Welsh hymn or two; and if there be anything on earth calculated to move the feelings, and awaken sleeping memories, it is a Welsh funeral hymn. Its rising and falling strains, always in a minor key, are harrowing to the feelings of the bereaved; but by those not too closely interested, their emotional character is thoroughly enjoyed. Lallo's small cottage was crowded, the throng overflowing into the garden and the road; and when the little coffin was carried out, and the large concourse of people, outside and in, joined in the funeral hymn, its wailing, dirge-like notes, rising and falling on the air, touched poor Lallo's heart beyond endurance, and she moaned and wept loudly, her sobs being accompanied by many a sympathising tear from the crowd; but Gwen walked beside her, silent and tearless, with a hard, angry gleam in her eyes. "Poor thing! poor thing!" whispered the women; "she can't cry; there's a pity! She looks like Peggi Shân to-day!" When, returned from the funeral, they reached their own door, one or two neighbours proposed to stay with her a few hours, but she coldly answered, "No, I don't want you," and, closing the door with a bang, bolted it noisily. Left to herself, she looked vaguely round the cottage, and, turning to her mother, who had seated herself sobbing in the chimney corner, said, in a cold, hard voice: "What are thou crying about, woman? It wasn't thy child upon whose coffin the clods fell so heavily; they were not thine, those little hands that lay so stiff and white, that used to close so tight round my finger. What hast thou to cry about?" "Oh, Gwen," said poor Lallo, "thou art a strange woman. Wasn't he mine, too? The very apple of my eye, calon fâch! There's sad news for poor Siencyn when he comes home next week! But God knew best what was good for him, and that is why He has taken him from us. The Bible says, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.'" "Oh, silence with your texts! God, indeed! What sort of a God must He be who gave me a little baby to fill my empty heart, and then tore him cruelly away? Be quiet about your God, mother. If granny had been alive I would not have wanted help from God or man." "Oh, Gwen, Gwen, hisht!" said the poor, bewildered woman; "I know it is hard to understand, but thou must bend before God, and say, 'He knows best.'" "I won't," said Gwen, kicking at the embers which had gone out on the cold hearth. "He can do no further harm to me. My little one--born in lawful wedlock, too! not like thee, mother, nor granny, nor yet her mother!" "No, indeed, it is true!" said Lallo, rocking herself backwards and forwards; "bad luck has followed us for generations. But thy father was a respectable man, Gwen; he is deacon in his chapel at Abersethin, and his wife and family are the best dressed in Salem Chapel. Oh, yes, thou hast no need to be ashamed of thy father, though he did play me a scurvy trick in marrying Fani Hughes; but he couldn't help it, poor fellow! They say Fani's brother threatened to shoot him if he hadn't married her!" "Perhaps your God took my child, then, to punish me for your sins," said Gwen, with a sneer. "Sins!" said Lallo, opening her eyes. "'Twas a misfortune that might have happened to thee or anyone. Sins, indeed! That's the first time I have ever had that word thrown in my teeth!" and, much hurt, she began to rekindle the fire. Gwen made no answer, but angrily pulled away the pocket-handkerchief which covered the little window. She spoke little during the day, and the following morning was at work in the sail-shed, pale and sulky, refusing every offer of help, and receiving the condolences of her neighbours with a silent contempt. A few days afterwards the Mishteer wrote to Ivor Parry a letter in his round, firm hand, one that Ivor treasured for years, taking it out of his breast-pocket, sometimes, when the curling smoke from his evening pipe carried up in its wreaths thoughts and memories of the sweet and bitter past. "Come back, mach-geni," it said. "I cannot do without thee. The work calls for thee, my heart calls for thee, and the work-people all desire thy presence. Thou shouldst never have gone! there was no need. No new tie could ever loosen the cords of friendship that exist between thee and me. Nothing has gone well with me since thou art gone. I have had complaints of the work from several quarters. Sweet Gwladys is not well; and, truth to tell, I myself am wanting something, and it must be thee, lad, so come back to Mwntseison, and all will be well." In a postscript he added: "Of course thy pay shall be the same as that thou art receiving now. Indeed, I have raised the wages of all my best workmen." And Ivor had answered: "I will come, for I have quite failed to make my home at Carnarvon; and besides, if I can truly be of help to thee, nothing will keep me away. The Aden Ydon goes across next Monday, and I on board; but remember I will take no more pay than I have always had of thee. It was good pay, and I never wanted more; so fforwel till we meet." Hugh was in good spirits next day, and came homewards at noon waving a letter round his head. "Good news, Gwladys fâch! Ivor will be here next Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday at latest. Everything will be alright now. I feel like a new man," and so absorbed was he with the prospect of his friend's arrival, that he ate his dinner without noticing Gwladys' embarrassment. "Next week! so soon should she be called upon to bear so much I so much bitterness, and alas! so much joy! But the joy must be smothered--be crushed out, and perhaps it would die some day." She ate no dinner, and was thankful that Hugh did not notice the fact. From that moment a restless feeling took possession of her, and as the time for the arrival of the Aden Ydon drew nearer, she was consumed with a feverish dread of meeting Ivor. Mari Vone often dropped in on one pretext or another, and though the subject uppermost in both their minds was never mentioned between them, she always left Gwladys more calm and courageous than when she entered. On Monday the weather was dark and lowering, what wind there was blowing from the land, the waves scarcely breaking as they rippled on the shore. "The Aden Ydon won't sail to-day," said Hugh, as he looked out under the thatched eaves of his window in the early morning. "But to-morrow, perhaps, the weather will have changed." And so it was. On Tuesday the wind blew fresh and full from the north-west, and, standing at the door of the sail-shed, telescope in hand, Hugh watched for the first glimpse of the Aden Ydon's white sails. "Yes, there she is!" he said, turning round to address his people. "Here, now, one of you boys, run up and tell the Mishtress that Ivor Parry will be with us before to-night." Gwladys tried hard to keep her thoughts from roaming out to that blue bay, which seemed to be more _en evidence_ than usual to-day. Through every window and open door she saw it spreading fair and broad before her. The swish, swish of the waves filled her ears, the air was laden with its briny odour, and nearer and nearer from the dim blue hills, eighty miles away, came the white-winged ship that bore such a freight of sorrow for her. "Oh, God forgive me!" she cried, whenever her thoughts went over those blue waters; and when, in the glow of the sunset, she saw the little ship sail in to land, and disappear round the cliff that towered high between Mwntseison and Abersethin, she fell on her knees under the wide chimney, and with hands crossed on her bosom, remained a few moments in silent prayer. She rose calmer, and endeavoured once more to busy herself in her household duties. At last, when the evening shadows were closing in, and the glow in the west had faded away, she heard voices and footsteps coming down the opposite hillside, and across the wooden footbridge, and she knew that Hugh was returning from Abersethin, and was bringing Ivor with him. Now the sound ceased, and she knew they were coming up the road. Her heart beat so violently that she felt suffocated, and went to the doorway, partly to meet her fate and partly for a breath of air. "What should she say?--how would he look? What would Hugh think if she should faint or falter? God help me!" she said as the footsteps came nearer, and in the twilight the two dark figures entered the cwrt. "Here he is, Gwladys," said Hugh boisterously, "just come in to see thee on his way to his lodgings." Gwladys blindly held out her hand, and Ivor took it in his. "Well, Mishtress, and how are you?" he asked, in as cool a manner as he could command. A slight tremor in his voice was the only sign of feeling--there was not even the friendly "thee" and "thou." There was no tender, meaning glance--no pressure of the hand. She had not expected it--nay, would have resented it--but still the tone of indifference was painful to her, although she was perfectly aware it was assumed, and she answered in the same commonplace tones: "I am well, thank you." And Hugh filled up the silence that followed with his loud and hearty greetings. "You will stay and have supper with us?" said Gwladys. "Oh, no!" interrupted Hugh; "I am going to sup with him to-night. I will ask Mari to come and stay with thee." "No," said Gwladys, "I would rather not. I have enough to do to fill up my time to-night." "Wel, nos da, Mishtress," said Ivor; and he and Hugh left, disappearing together through the gloaming. Gwladys looked after them with a set white face, and then turned wearily up the stairs. Calling to Madlen, she said, in a calm voice: "When the Mishteer comes in, tell him I was tired and went to bed." On reaching her bedroom, she bolted the door, and, falling on the bed, gave way to a storm of tears. "Oh, Hugh, Hugh!--my kind husband--oh! good friend and true!--why has God brought such sorrow upon thee? But, no! he shall not suffer--only me! only me!" And then another flood of tears. She rose and went to the window, gazing silently at the leaden waters of the bay, silvered here and there by the moon, which was rising behind the village; then in a whisper she said: "Ivor, Ivor! didst feel it as I did? Yes. I know by the tremble of his voice--'How are you, Mishtress?'--'I am well, thank you.' That is all--and that is all that must be between us. Ivor is strong and good--I must be the same!" And for the rest of the evening she lay still and thoughtful. And thus began Gwladys' martyrdom--and no less that of Ivor's. To meet in the ordinary course of daily life, though not oftener than could possibly be avoided, was a trial under which, at first, both suffered acutely; and Gwladys drooped and wilted visibly in the stress of the storm through which she was passing. She turned her face daily towards the path of duty, endeavouring to take up every thread of interest which her life presented to her, and to brighten her husband's path, even though her own had been stripped of all beauty and joy; and gradually she earned the reward of comparative calm and peace--a peace which added a new charm to her beauty--so much so, that the villagers often remarked--"Wel wyr! the Mishtress grows prettier every day." Hugh rejoiced much in the cheerfulness which she seemed to have somewhat regained. "'Tis thy coming back, mach-geni," he would say to Ivor sometimes. "I put every good down to that as I put every evil to thy going away." And Ivor would push his hat further back on his head, and attack his work with more vigour, saying: "I am glad, Mishteer, if it is so." In the sail-shed, the work-people rejoiced to have him once more amongst them--the same as ever in his frank and genial manner, though much changed in outward appearance; for it was remarked by all how much his illness had aged him. "Why, thee look'st ten years older, man!" they said, with the usual outspokenness of the peasantry. And Ivor would only smile and say--"No doubt, no doubt!" while he applied himself with extra care and interest in the Mishteer's concerns. Morning, noon, and night he was busy, apparently feeling that he could not do enough for his friend. And once more in the sail-shed could be heard the swinging chorus of-- "Torn sails and broken mast-- But the boat is safe at home at last!" [1] Supernaturally wise. [2] Watch-night. [3] English. CHAPTER X. HUGH'S SUSPICIONS. It was about this time that Gwen took to wearing her shawl over her head, held tightly with one hand under her chin, and appearing in it at all sorts of odd times and places. This, to an outsider, may not seem an event worth chronicling; but to anyone conversant with the inner life of a Welsh coast village, it is full of meaning. Where intermarriage is so common as it is there, peculiarities of character gather strength with every succeeding generation, and are affected by the most trivial circumstances; and thus it comes to pass that insanity is always lurking amongst the seeming calmness and rural simplicity of the village life, ever ready to pounce upon the harassed in mind and body. It is no uncommon thing to see in a small village containing two or three hundred inhabitants, two or three windows boarded and barred, behind which are kept the unhappy sufferers from this terrible fate. The dread of the asylum hangs like a cloud over the scene that appears such a picture of rustic happiness. The signs of increasing insanity are little noticed by the villagers, it being considered courteous to ignore them as long as possible, so that the dreadful malady lurks about and shows itself unexpectedly when it is too late to cure it. One sign which is quickly noted, though never commented upon, is that of wearing the shawl in the case of a woman over the head instead of the shoulders, and the degree of insanity may be often gauged by the manner in which the shawl is held. In case of a quarrel between man and wife, or between two neighbours, the woman whose temper has been most seriously ruffled appears next day with her shawl over her head, and held tightly under her chin, as a sign she is in no humour for frivolous conversation; and the sign is so interpreted by her friends and neighbours. So that when Gwen carried her red pitcher to the well in one hand, and with the other clutched her grey shawl under her chin, every one knew the death of her child was weighing sorely upon her, and they passed her with a nod only, or a formal "Dachi!"[1] A few days later, the nod was not returned, but Gwen looked straight before her with a glitter in her eye and a set look on her lips which her neighbours noted with a sigh. "Poor thing! poor thing! she's very bad. Lallo fâch! you must get Mari Vone in to chat a bit and hearten her up!" Lallo shook her head mournfully. "I don't like it at all, Madlen fâch. She will break her heart if she does not cry or something; never a word day or night, but just that silent, angry look. Indeed, what should I do if it were not for the pig? But even with him she seems to be offended!" When, later on, Gwen not only appeared invariably hooded by her grey shawl, but held that shawl crossed over her mouth, she was observed with more serious and sympathising looks. A woman who had quarrelled with her husband would sometimes appear with a shawl held _under_ her chin; but few except the insane held their shawl over the mouth, exhibiting only the nose and eyes. And as Gwen hurried through the village or roamed about the cliffs, she was followed by many a sigh and shake of the head. The village children, against whom she directed spiteful glances as she passed them on the shore or on the cliffs, soon learned to fear and hate her, and when she appeared amongst them they would fly in all directions like a flock of sparrows. "Wel, wyr!" said Sara Pentraeth, as she looked after the miserable woman. "Peggi Shân has come back to Mwntseison, I think. Ach y fi! she looks angry with the sun himself." Her place in the sail-shed was often unoccupied, and the Mishteer remarked upon it with reproof as well as pity in his tone, when one day she appeared, late in the afternoon, and sullenly took her seat, and, after a few minutes' desultory work, rose and began her way to the open doorway. "Stop, Gwen!" he said kindly. "What's the matter, merch i? Sorrow and hiraeth[2] we can all understand after such a loss; but what is the meaning of that anger and sullenness? Why, lodes,[3] art offended with the Almighty?" "I am offended with you, Hugh Morgan! you have no business to speak to me as if I was a child, indeed, though you are the Mishteer." "If you are a woman, Gwen, act like one, and remember that sorrow, if properly borne, may turn to a blessing." "I want neither blessing nor cursing," said Gwen, "but only to be let alone. Go home, Hugh Morgan, and attend to your own affairs; you will find plenty to do with them," and she flung her shawl over her head and left the shed. Taking no notice of the scared looks of her fellow-workers, she walked homewards, straight and unbending, and passed her much-enduring mother in the cwrt without a word. Lallo looked after her sorrowfully, and went to the pig-stye door, over which she leant in a musing attitude for some time. When the soft grey November days had commenced, "Tewi du bach," or the "little black weather," as it is called at Mwntseison, the sea looked still and dreamy under its sheeny leaden surface, and the land seemed to lie in a cold swoon, for the summer and autumn were dead, and the sharp winter weather had not arrived; it was coming steadily and rapidly behind that grey haze which looked so calm and innocent on the north horizon of the bay. The boats were overhauled, and the nets were gathered in from the stretchers. As the evening shadows fell, over the steely glitter of the sea there came a rippling roughness, and an oily movement on the tide, which told its tale to the watchful fishermen. The doors of the sail-shed were closed, and down the grey beach the boats were pushed into the plashing waves; lights glimmered on the bay, and every man in Mwntseison was full of interest in the hauls of silver herrings which the boats brought to land. "Come home and sup with me, Ivor," said Hugh, after one of their fishing excursions; "thou art tired out." "Man alive!" answered Ivor, "am I fit to enter any clean house covered with tar and herring-scales like this? No, no, another time!" "To-night it must be, or thou wilt offend me," said Hugh. "Go home and wash off thy herring-scales, lad, for I know Gwladys has a wheaten loaf and a fine lobster for supper; and I'll take no more of thy 'no, no's.'" "Well, I'll follow thee," said Ivor, seeing a grave look in Hugh's face. "I'll go and tell Gwladys thou art coming," said Hugh; and as he went up the uneven road, carrying a string of herrings, he fell into a deep study--one of those reveries which had become rather frequent with him of late. "What can be the matter with Ivor?" he thought. "What ails the man that he never darkens my door? I thought when once he came back we should be always together; but no--it is always 'not to-night, Hugh,' or 'another time, Mishteer.' I cannot make him out. And Gwladys, too! what ails her? When I say 'I will ask Ivor to come in to-night,' she never seems glad, but turns away without a word. Have they had any quarrel, I wonder? but no!" and again a shadow fell over his face, and an uneasiness crept into his mind, which had hitherto been a stranger there; but he chased it away as he entered the house and handed the herring to Gwladys to be fried for supper. Ivor had tried so hard to put off his friend's frequent offers of hospitality. To-night he had no choice but to accept. When, cleaned and brushed, he entered the cottage, he would have given worlds to be able to rush away and hide his eyes from the sight which he knew awaited him there. Yes, there she was, busying herself with the arrangements of the simple supper, and, in the fitful light of the blazing log fire, looking more beautiful than ever, though paler and more pensive. "Wel, Mishtress, I hope you are well," said Ivor, hurrying over the awkwardness of meeting, while Hugh made him welcome with hearty greeting. Gwladys' answer was low and rather unsteady. She set herself to her duties of hostess, and endeavoured to enter naturally into the conversation, but with very indifferent success, for which Hugh suddenly called her to account. "Wel, wyr! Gwladys, Ivor will think he has come at an inconvenient time if thou art so thoughtful and silent. Come, lass, sprack up a bit, and give my friend a welcome, if thou hast none for me." Never before had she heard the slightest tone of blame in her husband's words, and to-night the overstrained courage gave way for a moment, and her eyes filled with tears, while she offered her poor little excuses; but she quickly conquered her weakness. "Indeed, Hugh, I am ashamed of myself; but Ivor knows I have not been well lately, and he will forgive me, and thou must, too." "Why, of course, of course, merch i; I only want to see the smiles and roses come back to thy pretty face," and Hugh, as if trying to make amends for his slight tone of reproach, passed his arm round her waist, and drew her playfully towards Ivor. "Here she is, Ivor. Doesn't look as if we could be very angry with her, eh?" Gwladys drooped her head shyly, though she tried to join in Hugh's merry laugh, while Ivor felt the blood rush to his head, and every pulse in his body beating painfully. When they were at last seated at supper, Gwladys talked and laughed with unnatural excitement, her eyes gleaming, and her cheeks burning with even more than the old richness of colour. Suddenly a little sound or movement drew their eyes to the doorway, and there in the gloom stood a grey figure, silent, and with glittering eyes fixed upon the trio at the table. "Ach y fi! Gwen, is it thee, then? Indeed, this is the second fright thou hast given me to-day. Wilt sit down to supper?" said Gwladys. But Gwen only shook her head, and, pointing to Hugh, went into peals of laughter--laughter which they continued to hear as she left the house, and took her way homewards. Hugh shuddered. "I believe she's crazy," he said. "That laugh did not sound like that of a sane woman; and, since she has taken to wear that grey shawl over her head, she looks the image of her old grandmother. I believe it's the very shawl old Peggi Shân used to wear. No wonder the children call after her, 'Avaunt, witch!' I feel inclined to say the same myself." "Wel, indeed, she frightens me often," said Gwladys. "In the garden or here by the fire, or leaning over the brewing tub, I look up, and there she stands, saying nothing, but just staring, staring at me; and her eyes seem to pierce me through and through." "She has been distraught ever since her child died, I think," said Ivor; "but we must see to her. She must not trouble the Mishtress in this way." With the pardonable pride of a middle-aged husband, Hugh again drew Gwladys forward, saying: "No, no, she sha'n't be troubled by anything! The best little woman that ever trod the sands of Mwntseison, in spite of her silent ways sometimes. Eh, Ivor?" The latter felt he was expected to make some reply, while Gwladys stood flushed and perturbed before him. His lips were dry and parched, and his generally pleasant voice sounded harsh and hoarse as he answered: "Wel, everybody knows that you picked the flower of Mwntseison; and everybody knows too, that only you, Mishteer, are worthy of her." "Oh, halt there, lad, halt there! I think sometimes I have stolen her from a better man," and, as he loosened his arm from her waist, and seated himself at the supper table, a serious look came over his face, and a shadow seemed to have fallen upon his spirits. He had scarcely meant anything by his words; but even while he spoke there came to his mind a dim foreboding, and to his heart a sharp suspicion, of he knew not what, for he had not failed to notice the change in Ivor's manner--the difficulty with which he had brought out his words,--and, turning to look at Gwladys, he felt that those downcast eyes and that troubled face were not the signs of a young wife's pride in her husband's tender touch and admiring praises. But he smothered the feeling, and applied himself to his supper, and the meal was gone through with some outward show of hilarity. Having finished, Hugh pushed the brown jug of ale towards his friend. "Wilt drink, lad?" he said. "Wilt drink to my health and Gwladys'?" "I will keep to the meth,"[4] answered Ivor; "'tis the best I ever drank; it still tastes of the wild thyme and the sweet brier. Mishtress! here's to your good health and the Mishteer's, and long life and happiness to you both!" There was a strange light in his eyes, as he stood with his head thrown back, the glass of meth in his hand, and as he drank down its contents, a deadly paleness spread over his face. Sitting down again he drew a long breath, and his hand trembled visibly as he replaced the glass on the table. "Canst thank him, Gwladys?" asked Hugh, looking keenly at his wife, who shook her head with a smile on her lips which looked unnatural and strained. "Well, I will, then! Ivor, they are fair _words_, none could be better, and I thank thee for _them_." "Words!" said Ivor, starting to his feet, and stretching out his hand across the table, "Hugh Morgan! there are no words which could ever make plain my friendship for thee. Health and happiness to thee and thy sweet wife! God knows I would gladly shed my blood to bring it to thee!" "Good, then!" said Hugh, taking his hand; "there's no more to be said. Art going? Well, it is late, I suppose. Nos da!" "Yes, and a storm is rising. Nos da, Mishtress," said Ivor as he left the house. It was true the storm was rising fast, dark clouds scudded over the moon, the wind moaned and wailed round the cliffs, the sea seemed to swell and lash itself into threatening fury, and Ivor felt the tumult of the elements accorded well with his feelings. "Dear God!" he exclaimed, as he made his way through the buffeting wind, "I can never go through that again--never! never! not even to please thee, Hugh Morgan." Meanwhile, in the cottage, Gwladys was clearing away the remains of the supper, and endeavouring by busy employment to cover the distressing awkwardness which her husband's manner had awoke in her. As she passed him sitting thoughtful under the chimney, he rose, and drawing her towards him, held her face between his two hands, and, gazing steadily at her: "Dost hide any secret from me behind those brown eyes?" he asked, in a serious, tender tone; and before his honest black eyes her own quailed, and a deep crimson flooded her face. Hugh slowly drew away his hands with a heavy sigh, without waiting for an answer. All next day the storm gradually increased, with a sullen persistency which seemed to threaten a more furious outburst for its tardy consummation. The wind soughed up the valley in fitful gusts; the sea seemed swelling with repressed anger. There was a heavy stillness in the air, in strange contrast with the flying clouds which passed at a high altitude from the north-west. Every cottage door was closed, the boats were safely moored, and the geese on the upland farms flew with loud cackling in flocks from one stubble field to another. At the door of the sail-shed Hugh Morgan stood, lost in thought; the stormy atmosphere around him accorded well with the deep unrest which had taken possession of him. The dark suspicion which had darted into his mind on the previous evening had, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning, disclosed to him a truth, which, if it had ever before dawned upon his mind, had lain dormant, soothed to sleep by Gwladys' gentle ways and his own mad infatuation. He and Ivor had met at intervals as usual in the course of the day's work, and each had felt that an undefined shadow had fallen between them; and of the two, Ivor had suffered most. He was conscious that in Hugh's mind had awoke a suspicion that he could never allay without a lie, for deep in his own heart he knew that his love for Gwladys was unquenchable and eternal. It was so with him, and nothing could alter the unhappy truth; he knew it, and he knew now that his friend knew it; but there was another thing that Hugh did not know, and Ivor writhed under the impossibility of making clear to him the depth and reality of his own unswerving devotion to his friend. As he had tramped home the night before, he had evolved out of the turmoil of his thoughts one idea, which he clung to with some gleam of comfort; he must leave Mwntseison; he must part from Hugh Morgan; he must escape from the sight of Gwladys. He would close with the offer made him by Robert Rees, the miller. At Traeth-Berwen the old mill was to be let, as Robert had become wealthy and portly and lazy, and had offered to sell his business on very generous terms to Ivor Parry. Yes! he would take the old mill, and pass the rest of his days in the dreamy little valley. True, it was only a mile away, and he would still see Gwladys and Hugh on Sunday at Brynseion Chapel; and, moreover, perhaps she would come to the mill sometimes with the corn to be ground; but that would be better than seeing her every day. A sudden sharp stab is better than a continual probing! and he had seized a moment of respite from work to rush down to "The Ship," to catch Robert, and to settle the bargain with a slap of the hand and a blue of ale, and for the rest of the day he had felt somewhat less perturbed. To Hugh, on the contrary, life seemed to hold out no loophole of escape from the miserable dread which had dawned upon him. At first he had been filled with a dull aching anger that another man should dare to love his wife; and that man his friend, whom he had trusted--whom he had loved as a brother; and that he, Hugh Morgan, who had always been considered, and who thought himself, too calm and deliberate to be deceived, should thus have made a mistake in the most important step in his life! There was no anger against Gwladys. "Poor child! poor child!" he was thinking, as he stood there at the door, with his hands clasped behind him; "it was not her fault; I see it all now. She never loved me--she loved Ivor; and I, fool that I was, thought my own love was enough, and would arouse the same feelings in her; but--thou hast been a fool, Hugh Morgan, and thou must open thine eyes now to thy folly, and make the best of a bad bargain. Well, this will help me to make up my mind on one point. I will leave the sail-shed, I will give up my business; I have enough and to spare, and poor Gwladys shall not be left so much alone." And he looked down the village road with gloomy forebodings in his dark eyes. At this moment a large bunch of greenery came round the corner of the shed, and stooping under it, and looking through the golden and green leaves came Mari Vone, her shapely arms, crossed over her bosom, held the restraining cords which bound her bundle of bracken on her shoulders. Her brick-red petticoat made a spot of brightness in the gloomy landscape, and as she approached Hugh, her blue eyes looking out between the overshadowing ferns like harebells in the grass, even his sad face lightened as he met the sunny smile in the eyes, and marked the perfect lips and the dimpled cleft in the chin. "Caton pawb! Mari, where'st been through the storm?" he asked, leaving the shed door, and accompanying her up the village road. "Wel wyr! Now, thou'st never guess, Hugh. 'N'wncwl Jos had to go to Caer Madoc to-day to receive his pension, storm or no storm, so he borrowed Peggi Pentraeth's donkey-cart, and he does whip the poor donkey so. I hid the whip in the big furze bush by our house; but, oh, dir anwl! I couldn't hide his wooden leg, so I'm afraid he will use that instead. No, no! I will not loosen my bundle, so let it be. 'Tis a bed for the poor donkey to-night; I gathered it above Traeth-y-daran, for I knew the poor creature would be tired. Here's Peggi's donkey shed; wilt wait while I spread his bed for him?" "Nay, I will come and help thee, lass." And in the little shed they spread the sweet fresh litter in readiness for the weary beast. "Always comforting some poor, weary creature, thou art, Mari; 'twill be me next, lass. Hast any salve for a miserable man?" "Hugh," said Mari, instinctively pressing her hand to her side, "what is it? Gwladys--is she ill?" "No--what am I saying? Yes, she is sick--I am sick! Come home, lass, and let me tell thee." And when they had strewn the litter of crisp bracken they went out together, and reaching her cottage door, Mari went in, Hugh following in silence. She pushed the rush chair towards him without speaking; and, leaning his elbow on the table, with his hands shading his eyes, he unburdened his mind to the ear which had never failed to listen with interest to every word that came from his lips. It was not a long story. A very few words served to reveal the dismal tale--alas, too common--of disappointed hopes and dire misgivings; of ruined happiness in two hearts caused by one foolish step. "Yes," said Hugh, bringing his fist down heavily on the table, "I have been a fool, Mari--a blinded, headstrong fool! Had I been a boy, or even a young man like--like Ivor, there might have been some excuse for me; but a man of my age, one who had lived so long in quiet and wise solitude, and especially a man who had Mari Vone for his friend! Why didst not say to me," and he grasped her wrist fiercely, "'Stop, stop, Hugh, for she loves another'? _That_ would have been real friendship, such as I thought thou hadst for me; but it seems I was wrong there too. I was mistaken in everything." "I didn't know it, Hugh; indeed, I didn't know it!" "Didst not?" "No, indeed!" and the tears welled up into her eyes; but she resolutely kept them in check while she answered, "Hugh bâch, I am grieving for thee; but there are two things thou canst be certain of in all this sea of trouble--my true and firm friendship, and that sweet Gwladys is as pure as an angel." To this Hugh made no answer, but continued for some time brooding darkly, while Mari sought in vain for any words that might comfort him. At last he spoke. "I am getting tired of my life, Mari--tired of myself. Everything seems wrong with me, and I feel like the outside world around me these days, full of suppressed storm and unrest. It is not only Gwladys' want of love for me, not only that; but I myself am wrong. I am dissatisfied with myself. Come, guardian angel, and tell me what to do!" "What is it, Hugh bâch?" said Mari, standing tall and fair beside him, and looking down with eyes of love and pity upon the storm-tossed man, who sat with his elbow leaning on the table, and his hands shading his troubled eyes. "No! 'tis not Gwladys only who does not love, but I myself have changed. I, who thought my love for her was unchangeable and true, have awoke to find it was only a tempestuous passion which laid hold of me and carried me away, until I was cast shipwrecked and torn and broken against the rocks. Wilt despise me, Mari, when I tell thee that Hugh Morgan, who thought he loved his young wife, has ceased to do so? At the first dawn of suspicion, his love died out. Pity, deep pity, and the tender love of a father for his child, or an elder brother for his sister--that I still feel; but the passionate ardour with which I began my married life is gone--died suddenly, Mari--never to live again. Thou art silent, lass, because thou art sorry to hurt thine old friend by telling him how thou despisest him." Mari laid her hand gently on his bowed head. Her heart was strangely moved within her; she would have been more than human had she felt no joy at hearing that the love which she had craved for all her life--if not hers--was, at all events, not another's! But the strongest feelings that prompted her words were sympathy for him and for Gwladys, and an earnest longing to comfort them. "Thou art altogether wrong, Hugh; I do not despise thee, but pity thee, and sympathise--oh! with my whole heart. Thou hast not ceased to care for thy wife; it is only the passion, the earthly part of thy love, that has died out. The best part, the enduring, wise love remains, and will remain for ever, to guard sweet Gwladys--to comfort her and to guide her; for after all, Hugh, she is but a child, and thou must be very gentle and patient with her. I am as fond of her as if she were my own sister." "Keep close to her, Mari fâch!" said Hugh, rising, "for she will need all thy tenderness--and I, too, Mari," and he held out his brown hand. "Don't turn me out of thine heart." She took his hand in both her own, and pressed it in a warm clasp. "Never, Hugh! while life shall last!" "Right, merch i!" was all Hugh's answer, as he stooped his head under the low doorway. He turned back for a moment, while she still stood pensive at the table. "The old spar is drifting amongst the waves at present, Mari; thou must help to guide it into calm waters." She looked up from the finger with which she had been absently writing on the table. "I will, Hugh! Galon wrth galon!"[5] When Hugh returned to the sail-shed it was to hear the astonishing news that Ivor Parry was about to break off his connection with the sail-making, and to enter upon the less arduous duties of a miller's life. "Well, indeed," said Hugh, with forced cheerfulness, "this will be a day to be remembered by the gossips, for I, too, have a piece of news to give you." And raising his voice a little, so that everyone in the shed could hear him, he continued, "I meant to have called a meeting this evening to let you know that I am thinking to give up my business; but as Ivor Parry has already fired the pistol, I need not be afraid to let off the gun! Joshua Howels and I have had many talks on the subject, and I have now made up my mind to give up the sail-shed to him. I have made enough money to keep my wife and myself in comfort as long as we two live, and therefore I will not stand in the way of another man's doing the same thing. Now, I want you not to make any remarks about this to me to-night. You know I am one of those foolish creatures who cannot spend the greater part of every day under the same roof with other people without letting them into his heart, and I don't want you to think little of me at the last. So, anwl frindiau,[6] let us go on quietly, until some evening I slip out silently after work, and Joshua Howels comes in next morning instead of me. We need not say good-bye, as I am not going away from Mwntseison, and I have no doubt that, whenever I have an hour to spare, my feet will turn naturally towards the old sail-shed, so that we shall meet often; only, I will not be the Mishteer any longer." Here his voice was drowned by an uproar of voices, and cries of "Mishteer! Mishteer!" filled the air. "There has never been another Mishteer in Mwntseison," cried somebody in the crowd, "and there can never be another!" The warm Welsh hearts of his work-people were touched to the quick by his evident emotion at parting with them. When they saw him reach down his straw hat, and turn towards the little office opening out of the shed, and they realised the meaning of the speech, a hush fell upon them more eloquent than words. The Mishteer was unstrung. He was sorrowing at parting with them. There was a moisture in his eyes, the tears were not far off--and all for them; and as they dropped their voices, and passed silently out through the big doors, Hugh Morgan had never been so completely master of their hearts. Of course, next day Mwntseison was moved from hearth to roof--from the Methodist chapel on the cliffs to the little church on the top of the hill. Over the whole neighbourhood the news was spread abroad, and amongst others, Nell Jones and Sara Pentraeth had met early to exchange ideas. Their washing had been hurried over in a very perfunctory manner, in the desire to reach the "hanging-out" stage of the proceedings; and as good luck would have it, just as Nell began to spread out her heavy Welsh flannels, Sara came out too with her basket, and they were soon engaged in deep conversation over the low hedge of blackened broom bushes which divided their sandy gardens. "Nell fâch, didst ever hear of such a thing? There's news! there's an odd thing! that the Mishteer should change his mind like that--and all of a sudden, too! And, Nell anwl, to be handed over to Josh Howels like a bowl of cawl! Ach y fi!" "Will he pay us as well? that's the thing!" said Nell; "for I've heard tell he's a man who wants the penny and the pen'orth!" "Perhaps indeed! shouldn't wonder; he is nearly related to his father, and we all know what he was! But there's one good thing, we sha'n't have to call Gwladys 'Mishtress' any more--Mishtress indeed! with her airs and her pride. Ach y fi! shoes, if you please, instead of clocs!" and, with another expressive "ach y fi," she flung a garment over the hedge so roughly as to tear it, thus adding to her own irritation. "Madam's pride will come down now, Nell fâch; for two women, whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers have lived at Mwntseison, to have to say Mishtress to Nani Price's daughter is very hard; for who was Nani Price's father, I should like to know?" "Oh, I don't know," said Nell. "What does that matter? and, indeed, I can't say I have seen any pride in the Mishtress." "Oh, dir anwl!" said Sara spitefully, "who could show pride to a poor, humble creature like thee. I have seen how thou hast flattered and fawned upon her; but I don't think thy porridge will be any the thicker for it. As for me, I never cringe to anyone. I can hold up my head with anyone in the village. My father was never suspected of sheep-stealing, and my uncle's wife's brother never had occasion to keep accounts to satisfy his master. No! nor my mother never promised to make a quilt for four shillings, and then charge six shillings for it!" This last thrust, alluding to something that was within Nell's memories, was unbearable. "Dost dare to say that my father stole sheep?" she said, with arms akimbo, and looking with flashing eyes across the broom hedge. "Dost dare to say my uncle's wife's brother stole his master's money? I'll have the law upon thee as sure as----" "The law!" said Sara. "I defy the law, and thee into the bargain! I never _said_ thy father stole a sheep. I only said _my_ father never did. No! and I'll tell thee another thing--_my_ daughter never tripped on her way to the marriage market!" At this last shaft, poor Nell was completely crushed, and finished spreading out her flannels in silence, while Sara retired up the garden with flying colours. [1] Good-day! [2] Longing. [3] Girl. [4] A drink made of fermented honey. [5] "Heart to heart!"--A Druidical motto. [6] Dear friends. CHAPTER XI. THE STORM. "Wild waves, where are you flowing Out on the seething bay? Wild wind, what are you doing Tearing the sea and tossing the spray? There the storm bells are pealing, There the sea-gulls are wheeling, And the cabin-boy kneeling, Out on the seething bay." The next day the storm, which had threatened Mwntseison for days, was at its height. During the night the wind had increased into a furious gale, lashing the foaming waves up the sides of the cliffs, rushing up the narrow valley, and carrying huge lumps of foam into the fields above the village. Lying awake, Gwladys listened, dry-eyed, to the roar of the sea and the shriek of the wind. Every hour since that critical moment when Hugh had looked into her eyes, and they had quailed before his, seemed to bring but an access of misery to her heart. Her husband's tenderness had not failed--indeed, the tones of his voice were even more gentle than before; but she was too conscious of a subtle change, the cause of which she knew too well. Hugh no longer trusted her--no longer loved her! He was as fully aware of the state of her feelings towards Ivor as though she had told him in plain words, "I love him, and I have never loved thee as I ought." Oh, the pity of it! that she could not fling her arms about his neck and say, "Hugh, it is not true; it is a foolish fancy of thine! I love thee with all my heart," and, as she looked at Hugh's sleeping form beside her, she would have given worlds to be able thus to reassure him--but she could not. He tossed restlessly on his pillow, and she listened to his mutterings. "What shall I do, Mari?" he murmured, in his sleep. And Gwladys knew that in the bitterness of his heart he was seeking comfort from Mari Vone. When the morning broke, she rose, listless and weary, and, leaving Hugh still sleeping, went downstairs and busied herself with the preparations for breakfast. As she drew back the wooden bolt of the house door, it was pushed open from without, and Gwen came into the passage, as usual wrapped in her grey shawl. She looked pale and haggard, and her eyes gleamed fiercely as she brushed roughly past Gwladys, and preceded her into the kitchen. She seated herself on the settle under the chimney, where Madlen was kindling the fire. "Thou art up early to-day, Gwen," said Gwladys, a little trembling in her voice, for a restless night had already shaken her nerves. "Wilt stay for breakfast with us?" "Why, no; of course not! I have breakfast at home, and want none of thy charity. Where's the Mishteer?" "He's still sleeping. Dost want to see him?" "Oh, no, let him sleep," said Gwen; "he will awake some day." And her eyes, small and glittering as a snake's, followed Gwladys as she busied herself with her household duties. She tried to throw off the fascination of Gwen's look, but wherever she went she felt oppressed by that basilisk stare. "What makes thee so pale and downcast?" Gwen said at last. "Everyone thought that when thou wert the wife of Hugh Morgan thou wouldst be the brightest and happiest in Mwntseison; but instead of that thou look'st like a white storm-driven pigeon. Come out in the rain with me; 'twill suit thee better than all these comforts. Has Hugh Morgan begun to repent of his bargain yet?" "What dost mean?" said Madlen, standing before her with arms akimbo, "coming here, indeed, to insult the Mishtress before she's had a bit or a sup inside her? Get thee out, Gwen, if thee hasn't pleasanter words in thy tongue." "Oh, I am going," said Gwen, standing up and backing gradually towards the doorway, with her eyes still fixed on Gwladys, who felt frightened and trembling, "out in the wind and rain. 'Tis a brâf morning." And with one of her long uncanny peals of laughter, she left the house, and Madlen bolted the door. "There," she said, with satisfaction, "let her go to her wind and rain. Tan i marw![1] I'm afraid of her." When Hugh came down, he entered upon the subject of his intended retirement from business. "'Twill be better for thee, merch i," he said, "than being so much alone. Perhaps I have been wrong to leave thee here all day to fret thyself. I will try not to be in the way of the household work, Gwladys." "Oh, Hugh," said the girl, her voice trembling with emotion, "thou hast not left me to fret. Thou hast filled my life with kindness; thou hast been everything to me--husband, friend, brother,--and I will try--oh, I will try!--to be all I can to thee. Have patience with me, Hugh." And, with timid attempts at reconciliation, she surrounded him with little nameless attentions, piling his plate with the frizzled ham, cutting thin slices of bread and butter from the long barley loaf, and stooping herself to tie his shoe strings; but Hugh's thoughts were absent, and he took no notice of the little tendernesses. The cloud was on his brow and the dark shadow of suspicion in his heart, and, though his words were as kind, perhaps more so than ever, there was an absence of the loving look and the warm embrace, which cut his young wife to the quick. After he had left the house, she flung herself down in the rush chair in the chimney corner, and, with her hands clasped listlessly on her lap, she mused long and sorrowfully, making no answer to Madlen's frequent allusions to the storm. "There's yellow the sea is," said the latter, peeping out through the little side window, which looked down to the bay. "All the sand in the bay is mixed with it, and oh, anwl! the waves are rising as high as steeples! Wel wyr!" Gwladys still sat on in a turmoil of miserable thought. What was to become of her? How should she bear the long life before her, always mistrusted by her husband, and always fighting with this terrible dear love for Ivor, which haunted her sleeping or waking, in the garden, on the shore, or at her household duties? and "I am so young! If I were old there would be some hope of an end of it. But so young--only twenty! It is impossible! I cannot bear it!" and in a paroxysm of bitter trouble she started up, and, flinging an old grey shawl over her head and shoulders, she went quickly out through the back door and into the sandy garden. She would battle with the wind and the storm! It would not be worse than the turmoil of thoughts within, which made her heart ache and her head burn. Out in the garden the wind almost took her breath away. The blackened broom bushes in the low hedge which separated the garden from the cliffs seemed to bend threateningly towards her; but she pushed her way through them. The long grass, beaten down by the pelting rain, obstructed her footsteps; but she hurried on persistently, almost unconsciously, scarcely feeling the cruel stings of the driving rain in her face, and struggling with the fierce wind, which clutched at her dripping garments and dragged her backwards. "But I will go!" cried the girl, as she fought her way over the cliffs, sometimes stopping to take breath, but again resolutely renewing her battle with the storm. Where was she going? She knew not--cared not; but somewhere--anywhere--away from herself and the pitiless circumstances which pressed upon her! Yes; Gwen was right. The storm and the wind and the rain suited her better than the warm hearth and the kind voice of her husband. Could she reach Traeth-y-daran? There she would sit on the rock where Ivor and she had spent their last hours together. Perhaps there she would find peace, for in vain she had sought it in prayer and supplication. She knew if she were once able to make her way down the dangerous path to the shore, the last step, which would be of necessity a leap of ten feet, would render a return impossible. A dim perception of this ran through her mind; but the frenzy which had taken possession of her sought only for its goal--oblivion, and a termination of her sufferings. In calmer moments she would not have dared to tread that dangerous path in a high wind, but to-day she seemed possessed by some wild spirit of unrest, which drove her forwards and impelled her flying feet on--on--till the edge of the cliff was reached, and still on, down the dangerous, zig-zag path, clinging to the stunted bushes. Slipping, stumbling, and yet pursuing, she made her difficult progress, and when the path ended abruptly at the top of a smooth, perpendicular rock, she did not hesitate for a moment, but took the leap with streaming hair and swirling garments, and alighting on the beach below, sped onwards across the wet sands to where the low rocks still lay uncovered by the in-coming tide. At last she had reached her goal, and, flinging herself down, she gave way to the tears which she had hitherto restrained. Every moment seemed to add to the fury of the storm. "Oh, wind, it is for me you are wailing and shrieking! Oh, rain, 'tis for me your tears are falling!" and she mingled her own passionate sobs and cries with the stormy sounds around her. Here she could cry aloud in her despair, for there was no one to hear--no one but God. "Does he hear me?" and she paused for a moment and looked out at the boiling, seething cauldron before her, and up to the streaming sky; but her survey brought her no comfort. "No, He does not! No! no! I am alone--alone!" At that moment a huge wave broke with thundering force at a little distance from the shore, and, helped by the wind and in-rushing tide, it reached far up the beach, even to the rock on which Gwladys sat; and for the first time she realised that, in taking that flying leap, she had cut herself off from every chance of escape. As she watched the huge, curling waves rushing one after another towards her, a strange joy rose within her. She would be drowned!--and here would end all the sorrow and all the sin which had made the last three months of her life so intolerable to her. How had she dared to think God had not heard her?--for here was the answer to her prayers. He was going to take her to Himself--to calm her troubled breast and to unloose the tangled skein of her life! And leaning back, her head on a bed of brown sea-weed, she set herself to wait for death--the great consoler. But when the cold streams of water reached her, and, encircling the rock, began to splash her face, already wetted by the rain, she moved a little further up the beach. "Not just yet," she thought; "I must have time to ask for pardon, and to say good-bye to Ivor and dear Hugh!" And again she threw herself back on the wet sea-weed--as wet and sodden herself as was her cold bed. Steadily the tide came up--not slowly and gracefully as in the quiet summer mornings and evenings, but with rapid strides and far-reaching, foaming arms, that seemed to stretch out hungrily towards her. She closed her eyes as the drenching rain fell on her face, and with clasped hands waited--but not for long. For soon the roar became louder, the wind blew more fiercely, and once more she moved further up the beach, until at last there was only a small strip of sand under the cliffs left bare. Gwladys rose, and wearily gained the narrow strand, and, seeing that the swirling tide already swept over it, she took her stand, leaning against the rocky wall, and once more prepared to wait her doom. Suddenly there was a break in the leaden sky, and while the waves now reached her ankles, the drift widened, and the sun peeped out and cast a fitful gleam on the tossing waves. It was only a gleam, but enough to waken in Gwladys the natural instincts of youth, which had slept within her lately. After all, life was dear! It was better to live miserable than to die miserable! After all, life might hold some solution of her perplexities; God might lighten her burden--to Him nothing was impossible. But it was too late! Already the water reached her knees, and many a wave splashed even over her head. Meanwhile, in the sail-shed, Hugh and Ivor worked each at his own special work, avoiding each other as much as possible, but still showing no other sign of disturbance. "I see Captain Roberts at 'The Ship.' Will I go and tell him his sail is done, Mishteer?" said Ivor at last, standing square and straight at the door of the little office. "Yes," answered Hugh, "if thou canst get there through the storm." "Twt, twt," was all Ivor's answer as he tied the ears of his cap under his chin. In a few minutes he had reached "The Ship" Inn, and delivered his message, having done which he came out again into the wind and rain. From the door of "The Ship" one could see over the jutting point which hid Traeth-y-daran from the rest of the shore; and Ivor, looking across the stormy waters, seemed struck by something he saw there. Surely that was a human figure standing up against the bare rock! Yes, the grey form of a woman!--Gwen, no doubt--and she would be drowned for certain, unless he could save her. A few moments he stood uncertain, until, looking round him, he espied a man who slouched up the road to meet him. "Hello, Will! is that thee, lad? Wilt come with me to Traeth-y-daran?" "Ay, ay!" shouted the man in return, for the storm was too loud for the ordinary voice to be heard. He was one of those unfortunate creatures so common along the coast--a harmless idiot--a mental state politely described in the neighbourhood as "not wise!" He was always ready to risk his life, of whose value he was but dimly conscious. Ivor knew it would be useless to ask anyone else to dare with him the fury of that boiling sea, "unless, indeed, Hugh was here," he thought, as he pushed out his boat, regardless of the entreaties of the knot of idlers who had immediately gathered round him. "Here's the Mishteer!" said somebody, and Hugh was hastily making his way through the buffeting wind and spray. "Come out, Will," he cried; "I will go." And laying hold of the boat, he prepared to leap in, but was pushed back by Ivor. "Not thee, Hugh. Will and I are enough to risk our lives on yon boiling pot. Hast seen the woman?" "Yes," said Hugh--"that mad Gwen in her grey shawl." And he still kept his hand on the boat. "Let me be, lad--I am not going to let thee go alone." "Back!" shouted Ivor, endeavouring to spring past Hugh, who clutched at him and struggled to leap in. There was a moment's wrestling between the two men, each heated by his own passionate will and the new-born spirit of antagonism between them, until at length, "Remember thy wife!" cried Ivor; "I have no one to leave behind--back, man!" And with a violent thrust, he flung Hugh splashing prone in the shallow tide, and, springing into the boat, he pushed it from the shore, while Hugh rose angrily from his undignified position. "Fool!" he cried, looking at the receding boat; "he will be drowned, as sure as he's there!" "That's what he knows, Mishteer," cried a man in the crowd. "That's why he won't let you go with him. Tan i marw! I think you must both be tired of your lives!" "As for me," said another, "I should say if Gwen put herself into that pickle, let her come out of it!" "Why, man," said a third, "how can she get out of it? That wild sea before her, and a straight rock as smooth as a wall behind her!" "Twt, twt!" said the first speaker, "Peggi Shân would come and help her! There he goes round the point, now he will be in the strame of the storm! Poor fellow--druan bâch!" "Druan a Gwen, too!" said the women. "I hope he will reach her." "He will reach her safe enough," said Hugh; "now that he has turned the point the tide will be with him; but coming back will be the difficulty!" And with straining eyes they watched for the reappearance of the tiny craft. "Where was the woman, Mishteer?" "At the further end of the shore, standing straight against the rock. You can see her from 'The Ship' door; the tide must already have been up to her knees, poor soul! What frenzy made her go to Traeth-y-daran of all places? for she knew there was no returning from there!" The rift in the clouds had grown larger, there was a streak of blue sky and a stream of sunlight shining through upon the troubled sea, and suddenly round the point and in a patch of light the boat appeared, labouring and tossing like a cockle shell upon the stormy waters. The sight was greeted by a loud shout from the crowd, which the roaring wind seemed to drive back into their throats. Hugh's relief was intense, as deep as had been his terror, lest he might never see his friend again. "God bless him!" he murmured, straining his eyes eagerly, while the little boat rose and fell between the billows; "there is Gwen in a grey heap at his feet." And shout after shout from the people welcomed each appearance of the frail boat as it rose from the trough of the sea. Will and Ivor rowed bravely; but skill was of little avail in such a storm. They had reached Traeth-y-daran in a lull of the wind, and, sheltered a little by the encircling rocks, had not found much difficulty in reaching the woman, who stood apparently calmly waiting her doom like a martyr at the stake. Gwladys saw the boat approaching, and quickly recognised Ivor as her rescuer; and her blood, which had seemed frozen in her veins, began once more to circulate; the heart which had beaten so faintly bounded up, and fluttered back to life; and the eyes, which had closed in a last prayer, became suffused with warm tears. As for Ivor, when, reaching the strand, he became aware that it was Gwladys, and not Gwen, whom he had come to deliver, he almost dropped his oar in speechless horror. "Gwladys' tender form to be beaten by the pelting rain and dashing spray! Gwladys to be there alone in peril! What did it mean?" And sodden and wet as he was, a burning tide of heat rushed through his frame, as a dim intuition of the cause flashed into his mind; but there was no time to ask, for he saw that upon recognising him the strained courage was giving way. A huge wave rolled in and washed over her, and in its backward flow bore the frail figure away with it. Ivor sprang into the tide as she was carried past him, and, catching her in his arms, lifted her safely into the boat, where she fell in a crouching heap at his feet. "Safe so far, thank God!" he said, and only waiting to lift aside the dark brown hair which covered her face, and to rest her head on a coil of ropes, he bent at once to his oar, and turning the prow of the boat round, he and Will strained every nerve to reach the point, where they knew their greatest danger lay, and where the tide and wind together played havoc with the seething waters. The tide of life was already returning to Gwladys' chilled body, for she was young, and accustomed to Nature's various moods. Not a word passed between her and Ivor; his eyes were fixed upon the sea, whose dangers he was endeavouring to battle with--not for dear life for himself, but for her who was dearer than life itself. Once only he looked at her. "Art recovering, Mishtress?" "Yes," she answered faintly. "Thank God!" They relapsed into silence, for, even to hear her faint answer, he had been obliged to stoop close to her, so loud was the roar of the wind and sea. As they neared the point, even Will became conscious of his danger. "We'll drown, I think!" he shouted. "But don't stop rowing," cried Ivor. Indeed, it seemed impossible that such a tiny craft should ever make its way in safety over that rough sea. The waves ran mountains high, and each one, as it rolled in upon them, threatened to engulf them. Gwladys rose upon her knees sometimes, but sank down again in terror at the sight which met her gaze. They had now reached the patch of sunlight on the water, and the tide and wind helped them onwards towards the beach. Hugh watched them eagerly from the shore. "Brave lad," he cried, "he will do it, I believe!" At this moment somebody touched his arm, and, turning, he beheld--Gwen, her grey shawl over her head, and held over her mouth, her small eyes gleaming fiercely at him. She asked: "What is this fuss about?" Hugh gasped. "Gwen!" he said. "Mawredd anwl![2] what is the meaning of this? Another of thy witch ways! Tell me, woman--art thou in that boat, or here? No more of thy mad tricks!" "Mad tricks?" said Gwen fiercely. "What dost mean, Hugh Morgan?" "Yes, mad tricks," said Hugh angrily. "Didn't I see thee half an hour ago on Traeth-y-daran, with the waves dashing round thee? and hasn't Ivor Parry ventured his life in that cockle shell to save thee?" "Mad, indeed!" replied Gwen, bringing her white face close to his. "Who is maddest--thee or me, Hugh Morgan? Dost think Ivor Parry would risk his life to save me? It was not me who ran so wildly over the cliffs through the wind and rain to-day. I am not the only one, I am glad to say, whose heart is burning and aching. Look nearer home, man. If I am mad, _I_ never left the girl who loved me all her life to marry a croten[3] of a girl who did not love me, and who loved somebody else. 'Tis thou art mad, Hugh Morgan, and 'twas thy wife Gwladys who ran through the storm to Traeth-y-daran this morning," and she burst into one of the long shrieking fits of laughter which had latterly become the terror of Mwntseison. Hugh looked at her in horrified amazement. His mind was a chaos of troubled thoughts, and, as a shout from the crowd caught his ear, he turned again to watch the boat, but it was gone. There had been a slight lull in the storm, during which Will and Ivor had striven hard to reach the shore; but the wind rose again, and the sea, as if regretting its momentary gentleness, suddenly increased in violence. A monstrous wave, towering higher than any that had hitherto assailed them, came rolling with foaming crest towards the boat. Ivor and Gwladys realised at the same moment that to escape its powerful mass was impossible. With one impulse they stood up. "'Tis death!" cried Gwladys. "But together!" answered Ivor, as he clasped her in his arms; and together they were washed out of the boat, and carried away by the rushing wave. Will struggled for a while to keep afloat but soon sank, never to appear again. The excitement on the beach was intense. They were now aware that it was not Gwen for whom Ivor had risked his life, for she was amongst them, and they looked round to see who was missing. In the seething, foaming inrush of waters, the tossed and struggling figures clasped in each other's arms were sometimes visible, rolling over and over, but ever carried nearer to land. "Where are they?" shouted Hugh Morgan. "Show me, for heaven's sake, for I am blind and mad, I think!" "There, there, Mishteer," explained several voices at once; "out there where the floating buoy is fastened." And Hugh, catching sight of the rolling figures for a moment, dashed headlong into the waves, in spite of the restraining hands of his workmen, who thought he was going to certain death. "Mishteer, Mishteer! come back!" cried 'n'wncwl Jos; but Hugh did not hear. Already he was caught in the swirling waters, and the old man, forgetting everything but his frenzied fear for the Mishteer's life, dashed in after him, but only to be caught on the crest of a thundering wave, and to be rolled over and over like a cork on the foaming waters. The sea would have none of them that day, the strong tide and the fierce wind both setting landwards. 'N'wncwl Jos was quickly carried in far enough for Dye Pentraeth to grasp him and drag him into safety. "Come up, thou old fool!" he said. "Dost think we can do without thee and thy wooden leg?" 'N'wncwl Jos shook himself like a wet dog, and would have rushed in again had he not seen Hugh at that moment flung like a broken spar on the beach. He rose in a minute, and as he rose he saw the forms of Ivor and Gwladys borne in on a crest of a wave, and left upon the sands almost at his feet. They were at a little distance from the small crowd, Gwen alone stooping with Hugh over the sodden figures. "Who is mad now? Gwen or Hugh Morgan?" she asked, in biting, sneering tones. "Let them alone, Mishteer,"--and she laid her hand on his fingers, which were already endeavouring to loosen the strong grip of the half-drowned Ivor and Gwladys--"let them alone; 'tis as it should be!" she added. "Away, you devil!" cried Hugh, battling with his bitter agony. And Gwen left him with one of her usual fits of laughter. Hugh's fingers trembled visibly as he loosened the coils of Gwladys' brown hair, which had twisted round and round Ivor's face. "The water is cold," he said apologetically, and his trembling voice and chattering teeth were accounted for; but when the long hair was disentangled, and the clutching fingers loosened from their frantic grasp, there were ejaculations of horror and astonishment from the sympathising onlookers. "The Mishtress! howyr bâch! how did she get there? Druan fâch! there's white she is! And Ivor, too! Surely there will be no awakening for him. So still, so white! but with a smile on his face. Dost see it, Mari fâch?" But Mari was busy with Gwladys. Tenderly the fragile form was carried up the road and into her own home, while Ivor was borne with no less loving care to his lodgings, where the proper means of restoration were, before long, successful in bringing him back to life, and the crowd waiting outside turned up the road towards the Mishteer's house. "How did the Mishtress get there?" was now their eager question. This seemed likely to remain an unsolved mystery, for as Mari Vone came gently down the stairs to answer their frequent inquiries, her reassuring accounts of Gwladys' awakening and recovery stopped short at this interesting point. "Mari fâch," said Sara Pentraeth, in a voice made hoarse by the excitement of the morning, "tell us, Mari fâch, how did the Mishtress get there?" and in her eagerness she ran up two or three stairs, and reached with clawing fingers towards Mari's skirts. "She is better," said Mari, coming down the stairs; "the Mishteer is with her, and begs you all to go home quietly. The Mishtress will be well in a day or two; but she is too frightened to answer any questions yet." And, reluctantly, they were compelled to control their curiosity for the present, satisfying themselves by turning again towards Ivor's lodgings, where they lingered about all day until relieved by the information that his strong frame was battling bravely for life, and that probably after a night's sleep he would be himself again. Gwladys had opened her eyes and returned to consciousness with a quiet calmness which was absent from Ivor's recovery. The return of life and warmth to the body which has so nearly severed its connection with the soul is often a painful experience, and especially in the case of partial drowning. He had returned to consciousness with much struggling and groaning, and when he realised that the old life of thwarted hopes and bruised feelings had once more to be encountered, the groans, which those around him attributed to bodily pain, were caused by the fresh awakening to mental anguish. "Gwladys! where is she?" were his first words. "Safe at home, and getting right rapidly." He said no more, but quietly seconded the efforts of those around him to restore him. Meanwhile, Hugh Morgan sat silent and thoughtful beside his young wife's bed, holding her hand in one of his, while with the other he occasionally smoothed away the brown locks, which, in drying, resumed their tendency to curl and wave about the snowy forehead, while Mari Vone came and went with gentle words and tender smiles. "There's a good girl!" she said, as Gwladys returned an empty cup of some steaming concoction which she had swallowed in quiet obedience. The brown eyes looked up gratefully, but there was no answering smile on the red lips. Only when Mari had retired for a moment, she raised Hugh's hand and pressed a silent kiss upon it, and as she let it drop again, a tear rolled down her cheek. It caught Hugh's glance at once, and, with almost womanly tenderness, he wiped it away. She opened her lips to speak, but Hugh placed his finger playfully upon them, saying: "Not a word, merch i, until thou art well. To-day and to-night thou must be quiet, Dr. Hughes says, and to-morrow thou may'st talk to thine heart's content." [1] If I die!--A common exclamation. [2] Merciful God. [3] Slip of a girl. CHAPTER XII. UNREST. "Pen addysg pan oeddwm, i'r gwyrdd-ddail mi gerddwn, A'r man y dymunwn mi ganwn a'r gog; Yn awr dan ryw geubren 'rwy'n nuchu ac yn ochen, Fel clomen un adeu anwydog." "Time was when calm in wisdom's ways, with heart at rest, I roamed the wood to hear the cuckoo sing; But now I seek the shade alone, unblest, And mourn--a shivering bird with broken wing." "You must go to bed, Hugh," said Mari, when the moon began to look in through the little chamber window, where Gwladys lay quiet and thoughtful. "She has her mother with her, and I will come down in the early morning and make you a cup of tea; so get to bed--your eyes look weary, and your hand is shaking. A good night's rest will be best for you. I will take care of Gwladys, fâch." "I know, I know," said Hugh; "you will be a better nurse than me, so good-night, lass. Can diolch!" He made his way to the little back attic, where the tiny window looked out under the roof to the rugged cliffs and brown hills stretching round the edge of the bay. Madlen, who slept in the corresponding room in the loft, wondered what kept the Mishteer up so late; for long after she had gone to bed, she had heard him pacing up and down. Mari had left Gwladys under her mother's care, with a mould candle for company, just to show any of the villagers who might look that way that the interest of the situation had not entirely departed. It was considered an imperative duty at Mwntseison to keep a candle alight in any room where there was sickness or death. So Nani Price lighted her candle and placed it near the window, where its modest glimmer was frequently remarked upon during the night by the sympathetic villagers. "There's a light still in the Mishtress's window," said Nell, pressing her nose against her two-paned window--"a good light, too--a shop candle, no doubt. But the Mishteer can afford it--or perhaps," she added, as she returned to bed, "perhaps it is only a dip put close to the blind!" Sara Pentraeth was equally impressed as she looked up the road at the glimmering light. "Wel wyr!" she said, "they have lighted a second candle--and shop candles, depend on it! Dear, dear! there's nice it is to be rich!" In the little room under the thatch, where Hugh Morgan had retired for the night, there was no candle or lamp, but it was flooded by a stream of moonlight, which made a slanting path across the rough, uneven floor. Hugh crossed and re-crossed it as he walked with folded arms and bent head up and down--up and down until the moon was high in the sky. A rough wooden bedstead and bed occupied one dark end of the long, low room, which was otherwise destitute of furniture, excepting a worm-eaten bench which stood against the bare, white-washed wall. At the further end, in the dark shadow, stood two or three generations of spinning-wheels, in various stages of decay, accompanied by a few old cloaks and fishing-nets hanging over the rough rafters. Here Hugh Morgan set himself to face his troubles and to fight with his angry feelings; and if, when the morning dawned, he had neither chased away the one nor conquered the other, he had at least gained courage to meet them with fortitude and patience. Suddenly he started, with his eyes fixed steadily on the further end of the room--for there, in the shadow, stood Mari Vone, her tall, graceful figure stooping forward a little, one white arm hanging by her side, the other raised and with finger pointing upwards, seemed to remind him that though he sought in vain for comfort on earth, from Heaven he might still gather help and strength! Her golden hair was unbound, and hung, as he remembered it of old, in flowing waves below her waist; and as he gazed earnestly into the darkness, her face, with every feature and lineament distinctly marked, appeared before him--the deep blue eyes, the white eyelids that too often drooped over them, the parted lips, the dimpled chin--all were distinctly visible. He did not stop to ask himself how she had come there, but with the instinctive relief which her presence always brought him, he stretched out his hands with an exclamation of greeting, and, stepping across the bar of moonlight into the dark shadow, stood face to face with--nothing!--nothing but the old spinning-wheels and nets, and cloaks of different hues which hung down beside them. He stood baffled and astounded. "Could these old rags have shaped themselves in his imagination into Mari's beautiful form?" He returned to his seat on the bench, and tried once more to recall the picture to his mental vision--but in vain. She was gone! And Hugh turned again to face his loneliness and sorrow. Curiously enough, as the night advanced, his thoughts were withdrawn in a great measure from Gwladys, and were occupied with Mari Vone. A sore feeling of resentment against her took the place of the placid, contented friendship which for so many years had reigned in his heart. "It was her fault," he thought--"all this bitter trouble that had come upon him! Everybody in the village knew that she had jilted him shamefully! And what did that mad woman mean?--'The girl who has loved you all her life!' But whatever she meant, it was some fancy of her disordered brain!" Mari Vone had injured him--had spoiled his life, and had laid him open to the temptation of a foolish headstrong passion--a passion that had already died out within him like the furze bush on yonder hillside that blazed up so merrily when the farmer's boys lighted it to-night at ten o'clock, and now see, scarcely a spark remained. So had his passion for Gwladys died out within the last few days, and Mari Vone had been the cause of all his mistakes and troubles! As for Gwladys, he bore her no resentment. "Poor child, poor child!" he thought; "it has been no fault of hers! I alone am to blame! I was the Mishteer, and she dared not refuse me! But Ivor--how has he repaid me? But I will watch and see that at least he shall not lead Gwladys into mischief. Could they have met clandestinely? But no! the thought was unworthy of him or of her! But yet--he would watch! Yes--watch!" And for the first time in his life the giants of suspicion and jealousy clamoured loud at the door of his heart. But he showed no outward sign of disturbance next morning when, rather late, he entered Gwladys' room. Mari Vone stood beside her, and, leaning over the still pale invalid, raised one finger to enforce silence; and the attitude instantly reminded Hugh of the figure he had seen by the old spinning wheels, and the feelings of resentment which it had roused again took possession of him. "Hush!" said Mari, "she is sleeping!" "That is all right," he answered, in a cold and formal voice. "I will see to my wife now, Mari; and we need trouble you no longer." Mari was conscious in every fibre of her being of the change in his manner. She flushed visibly, but showed no intention of giving up her post beside Gwladys. "I have promised Gwladys not to leave her to-day; so have patience with me, Hugh, and leave me here. Your breakfast is waiting." It was in his heart to thank her for all her tenderness and affection for his unhappy wife; but he hesitated, struggling with his new-born anger, and, saying something about his breakfast, left the room awkwardly; and Mari was once more left to keep watch by the sleeping girl-wife. Downstairs in the living-room she had carefully arranged Hugh's breakfast, and after partaking of it silently, he once more entered his wife's room. She was now awake, and when he appeared stretched both hands to meet him. "Hugh bâch!" she said, "come and sit by me. Wilt go out for a bit, Mari lass? or stay if thee lik'st, for I have no secrets from thee." But Mari, having first stooped down to kiss her, slipped out of the room, and Hugh took the chair which she had vacated. Gwladys' breath came in short gasps, her nervousness was painful to witness, and Hugh was smitten with a deep pity for the girl whose happiness he considered his mistaken passion had wrecked. "I want to tell you----" she began, with dry lips and fluttering breath. "Thou shalt tell me nothing, child! I know it all. Thou hast never loved me--thou hast never loved me since we were wedded! I have wronged thee, Gwladys; I might have known a young girl of thine age could not love a middle-aged man like me! But thou hast wronged me, too--thou shouldst have told me this that night when I went to thy mother to ask her for thee! But not a word from anyone! no one thought it worth while to stop me when they saw me rushing to destruction like a blind horse who gallops madly over the cliffs. 'Twas cruel! and I think I would have stretched out my hand to save the unhappy creature; but apparently Hugh Morgan has no friends--not even Mari Vone called me back! Well, Gwladys merch i, we have both made a mistake. Now our eyes are open, and we can only walk together to the end of our lives side by side, each one trying to lighten the sorrow of the other. God only knows how it is going to be, Gwladys fâch; but that is the path for us--it will be a dry and dusty one for us both. May it lead to the golden gates of the West at sunset!" Gwladys, with her face hidden in the pillow, was sobbing bitterly. Hugh let her cry for a while, and then, drawing his hand tenderly over the brown curls, asked, in a voice of much emotion: "One question only I will ask, and that is, Didst mean to do it? Was it with clear purpose that dreadful race over the cliffs--that leap on to the sands below? Oh, Gwladys, didst think of it and settle it all while I was sleeping here beside thee? Wert so unhappy with me? Didst hate me so much, merch i, that the cold creeping tide and the wind and rain were a haven of refuge?" "No, no, no!" said Gwladys, rising on her elbow, and looking at him with streaming eyes, "that I can tell thee, at all events. I did not plan it beforehand; I was restless and wicked, and I knew nothing till I was out in the blinding rain; I felt nothing but wanting to get away anywhere out of myself. It seemed as if an evil spirit had got hold of me. Gwen had been here in the early morning when I first came downstairs; she had taunted me and sneered at me, and the cruel look in those eyes of hers seemed to wake some mad creature inside me; and I felt nothing but on--on--until I had jumped down to the sands. Indeed, indeed, Hugh, that is the truth!" "Thank God for that," said Hugh. "Cheer up, merch i, we shall pass through life somehow; and some day, I am sure, God will lighten thy burden." "Thy tenderness is wounding me sore, Hugh. I have been a wicked girl, but try me once more. Mari Vone has been with me since five o'clock, and she has been trying to show me how I can best find my way back to thine heart, and how I can repay thee for all thy goodness to me. Let me get up--I am longing to begin, and thou shalt see--oh! thou shalt see what a good and true wife I can be!" "Right, merch i, thou art on the right path any way; and from henceforth try not to hate me, lass--try to love me, as if I were thy father or an elder brother. Canst give me so much, girl?" "Oh, Hugh!" said Gwladys, springing on to the floor, and flinging her arms about his neck, "I have always loved you so--fondly, dearly!" He gently loosened the hands which were clasped behind his neck, and still holding them in his own, stooped and kissed her forehead once--twice--three times--before he quietly left the room. He was on his way to the sail-shed when he was accosted by Sara Pentraeth, who came running madly down the hill to catch him, carrying her wooden shoes in her hand, closely followed by Nell. "Oh, Mishteer! come back, come back! Come to poor Lallo--she is calling for you!" "Come, Mishteer bâch!" said Nell. "A dreadful thing has happened," said Sara. "Oh, Mishteer bâch! 'tis Gwen, the vilanes--she has done a fearful thing----" But Hugh was already out of hearing. He had turned at once, and with rapid strides was shortening the distance between him and Lallo's cottage. As he approached it, he saw a crowd of villagers gathered round the pig-stye, gazing with exclamations of horror at something which lay inside the enclosure. Lallo, weeping bitterly, made one of the crowd. Gwen was nowhere to be seen, being in reality hidden behind the pig-stye, listening with a pleased smile to the various comments of her neighbours. Lallo's sympathising friends plied her alternately with condolences and questions. A stream of blood ran from under the pig-stye door, and trickled down the rocky road--inside, lying prone on its side, was the pig, with a horrible gash in its throat from which the life-blood was still trickling. "What is the meaning of this?" said Hugh, looking down at the slaughtered animal. "'Tis Gwen!--Gwen did it, Mishteer, and then walked quietly into the house, and put the razor on the table! Didn't she, Lallo?" "She did, she did!" said Lallo, beginning to cry afresh. "Never mind, Lallo fâch!" said Sara; "you know you had settled to kill him next month." "Oh, but that's a very different thing. To die at the appointed time, and to be properly salted and dried, every pig expects--but to be hurried unprepared like this is terrible." "But you can salt him and dry him," said Nell, offering her mite of comfort. "Can I, do you think?--oh! but I shall never have the heart to do it." "Well, be thankful," said an old crone who had the reputation of being the wisest woman in the village, "be thankful it is the pig and not yourself who is lying there." "Yes--you couldn't be salted and dried," said 'n'wncwl Jos. "Well, that's true enough," answered Lallo, addressing Hugh Morgan. "Mishteer bâch, I am in terror of my life--what will you advise me to do? If she could kill that poor pig who never did her any harm, she may do the same to me. I have borne and borne, but I can bear no more. What shall I do, Mishteer bâch?" "Well," said Hugh, "you must either have a strong man to live with you, who can keep a constant watch upon her, or you must send her to the asylum--that is my advice. Send her to the asylum." "My Gwen to the 'sayloom!" cried Lallo, in angry tones. "No, no, we have not fallen so low as that! My aunt was not wise the last years of her life, but she died peacefully in her own bed, and my cousin was a mad 'iolin,'[1] but his mother kept him respectably shut up in the penucha for many years, and he died singing 'O, frynian Caersalem!' like a saint. No, no, my Gwen shall not go to the 'sayloom!" "What did you ask my advice for, woman, if you will not take it?" "Well, Mishteer, I did not expect _that_ advice; but I thought you would be able to tell me what I am to do." And she burst out into fresh sobs, mingled with indignant exclamations. "Ach y fi, no! 'Sayloom, indeed! Howyr bâch, no!" "Well," said Hugh, turning to leave the crowd, "I have no more time to waste. Get Tim 'Twm' to cut up your pig properly and salt it, and get Gwen to help you--it will keep her from mischief--and by that time you will have calmed down, and will be ready for my advice, I expect. That woman is a danger to us all," he said to 'n'wncwl Jos, who stumped down the hill beside him, "and I must get her put in an asylum before another month is out." "Must you, indeed!" said Gwen, suddenly facing them. She had glided from behind the pig-stye, where she had listened to the whole conversation, and followed close behind them down the road, and now, suddenly passing them, turned round facing them, and walking backwards, she fixed her glittering eyes upon Hugh. "Wilt take me to the 'sayloom, Hugh Morgan?--perhaps indeed! But we shall see--we shall see!" And laughing wildly, she turned suddenly up a path which led to the open cliffs. "Tan y marw! 'tis Peggi Shân herself!" said 'n'wncwl Jos, who had not his usual cheerful jollity. In truth, the old man, in the excitement caused by the events of the preceding day, and in the absence of Mari's thoughtful care, had entirely forgotten to change his dripping garments until late in the evening. He was accustomed to think nothing of such a wetting, and had a score of times braved its dangers; but to-day he shivered, and indignantly confessed to himself that he believed he had been such a fool as to catch a cold like a babby! "Art afraid of her?" said Hugh, noticing his unusual quiet manner. "I must see about her, poor thing, for certain--as soon as I have shifted my business on to Josh Howels. I see no safety for her or for us except the asylum." "Yes, clap her in," said the old man. "I don't like the look of her eyes." Ivor Parry, though looking pale and shaken, had astonished everybody by appearing in the sail-shed as usual in the morning, and when Hugh entered was standing not far from the open doorway. An exchange of greetings was unavoidable between them. "A brâf day," said Ivor, looking up from a sail which he was examining, "a brâf day, Mishteer, and the end of the storm, I think. I hope the Mishtress has not suffered from her wetting." "Not much," said Hugh, fixing grave eyes upon his whilom friend. Poor Ivor endeavoured to stand his scrutiny, but, it must be confessed, with no great success. "Not much," continued Hugh, "and I have to thank you for risking your life to save hers. Dear God! had I known it was my wife you were going to save, you would not so easily have overcome me and pushed me out of your boat." "B'dsiwr, b'dsiwr! I did not know myself it was the Mishtress. I thought it was Gwen, or I would not have thrust you back. You must forgive me that, Hugh." He was keenly conscious that, in addressing him, Hugh had dropped the familiar "thee" and "thou," and he fell at once into the more formal manner himself. "We would both have done the same for any woman." "I am glad to see you have not suffered, and I thank you again," said Hugh, with a slight show of warmth. He could not look into those honest blue eyes and not trust them, but he could not remember all he had learnt of late, and quite believe. The death of Lallo's pig was the subject of conversation in the sail-shed that morning, and Hugh was thankful that its racy horrors had the effect of turning the gossip of the villagers from his wife's narrow escape. "Oh, she is quite well, and none the worse for her dip," he answered jovially to every one who made inquiries. "There's glad I am, indeed, indeed--she might be drowned. But, Mishteer, what shall we do about Gwen, weaving in and out amongst us? Ach y fi! there's dangerous." "Yes, I am afraid she must go to the asylum as soon as I have settled my affairs a little," said Hugh, not sorry to add to the gruesomeness of the incident, and to turn their thoughts away from his wife. "But how did the Mishtress get to Traeth-y-daran?" said the wise woman of the village--"that's what I want to know." "Oh, she's but young, you know," said Hugh, smiling indulgently, "and thoughtless like all young things, and fancied she would like to see the storm from Traeth-y-daran. She might have fared badly if Ivor Parry had not risked his life so nobly. I have given her a good scolding." And he laughed cheerfully. "Did Ivor know it was the Mishtress?" said the inquisitive wise woman. "No, no, we both thought it was Gwen." And so the incident was allowed to sink to rest, to make room for the more exciting adventures of Lallo's pig. [1] Fool. CHAPTER XIII. DOUBTS AND FEARS. For some time after these events, a season of outward calm seemed to reign over the Mishteer's household. Gwladys had taken her place in the daily routine of life with courage and patience, and, leaning upon Mari Vone's strength of character, kept up the role of happy wife! She executed all her small duties with unswerving exactitude, going out of her way to carry out the most trivial details; every wifely duty was performed with apparently cheerful alacrity, and her demeanour was perfect in its simulation of domestic happiness. She almost deceived herself, but there were moments when the gnawing giant of unrest within her threatened to overwhelm her new-born strength and earnestness of purpose. She fought hard, and gained comparative peace. At evening, when Mari left her, the long tremulous pressure of her embrace alone expressed her gratitude; but her friend knew well the sunken rocks that underlay the seemingly smooth current of life under Hugh Morgan's roof. Truth to tell, the even flow of her own life had been much disturbed of late, and though she still attended to all her domestic duties with the same stately calmness, it was not without a feeling of sore trouble that she observed the change in Hugh's manner. Not only to her, but to all around him, he appeared colder and more formal, much absorbed in his own thoughts. "Business, merch i!" he would explain sometimes, when, with a serious wistfulness, Gwladys timidly rallied him. Mari had again fallen into her old habit of leaving the house before Hugh returned from the sail-shed in the evening, and as she always went home before noon to prepare her uncle's cawl, many days went by without her seeing Hugh. "Thou must stand alone now, Gwladys fâch," she said one day, when her friend demurred to her leaving her so early; "our house wants a thorough clean-up. I must white-wash the stone at the garden gate, and put some fresh red paint at the back of the big chimney, the smoke has blackened it so." "Yes, I suppose I must," said Gwladys, "and I shall have Hugh home soon to cheer me up--I will be bright and nice, as thou art! I have learnt a great deal in the last few weeks, and it has been all through thee, Mari fâch! only, Mari," throwing away the stockings which she was knitting, and clasping her knees, and looking up into her face, if with less misery in her eyes, still with a look of troubled thought, "only, I wish I was not walking along my path so blindfolded. I dare not look to the right or left, but I keep straight on, as thou hast advised me--to try and make Hugh happy! try and make Hugh happy! Nothing else in my life, Mari; the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, it is my determination and my wish and my prayer--and he is worthy of it all! I am beginning to feel it, Mari--but will I ever be worthy of _him_?" "Yes, yes," said her friend, "a brighter day will dawn for us all; we must remind each other of that when the clouds are hanging low." "Yes," answered Gwladys. "I am now going to prepare the tea. Thinking is my enemy, which I must keep out of my life until I am an old woman. Perhaps, then, when I am sitting here with my spectacles, and knitting, I shall be able to think again." "Fforwel, then," said Mari; "perhaps I will not come to-morrow till afternoon." And she drew her shawl tightly around her and ran all the way home, helped by the winter wind, which blew icily from the sea. Gwladys busied herself with her preparations for her husband's evening meal, clattering the tea-things, humming at her work, and making believe to be a busy housewife absorbed in her small duties; and her attempts at cheerfulness were not without some measure of success. But it was a fictitious and unreal calm, and one which she was conscious might at any moment crumble into ruins. But for the present her newly-formed resolutions kept her up; and as she tossed the frizzling lightcakes on the griddle, she tried to hum an old familiar tune, which had of late been a stranger to her lips. It was at this moment that Hugh came in from the gusty twilight; he heard the crooning song, and the sadness deepened in his face, and a light shot into his eyes from some hidden spark of jealous suspicion. "She's happy," he thought; "she has seen Ivor!" for during the afternoon the latter had been absent from his work for an hour or so, and Hugh had noted it and had wondered. He closed the door when he entered, fighting rather testily with the blustering sea-wind, which was accustomed to find easy access into every part of the house. Doors were always left open at Mwntseison, except in the stormiest weather or when a death had occurred, so Gwladys looked up with astonishment. "Gwen is coming down the road, and I thought thou wouldst be better without her." "Oh, yes--bolt it, bolt it!" she said, her colour coming and going. "I am afraid of her." "Well, I think we shall all be afraid of her soon," he said; and while his wife placed a chair for him under the chimney, and drew the round table near the fire, and piled his plate with the crisp lightcakes, he explained to her his arrangements for sending Gwen to the asylum. "Poor thing, poor thing! but it will be best indeed. I will be glad when thou art with me always, Hugh. 'Tis nervous work to be alone all day, while she haunts the village like a grey ghost." "Hast had no company to-day, then?" said Hugh, with a searching glance. "Hast not been out?" "Yes, as far as mother's; but I did not meet Gwen." Hugh was silent, and Gwladys' spirits flagged a little. She was conscious of some brooding thought in his mind, and with her continued feeling of guilt and self-upbraiding, she became nervously silent too. The next day, in the sail-shed, Hugh was gloomy and pre-occupied, and Ivor Parry observed it with sorrow. He, too, was full of troubled thoughts. To lose Gwladys was a bitter trial; but what a solace it would have been could he have kept Hugh's friendship--this man whom he had loved and almost worshipped. But now he realised the truth that, in the nature of things, such a solace was impossible. They must walk along the road of life apart, and it were well that the severance should be soon and complete. Even to-morrow he hoped to leave the sail-shed, with all its lingering associations of happiness and sorrow; and, when five o'clock came, he remained alone, making some final arrangements which would facilitate the winding up of the Mishteer's affairs. He had not noticed that Hugh had not left with his workmen as usual. In truth, the latter was now sitting before his desk in the little office, whose badly-fitting door let in between its gaping boards a full view of the shed. The evening shades were fast darkening the old room, and Ivor Parry had lighted a lamp, whose glimmering beams showed up the rafters, the coils of rope, and the other impedimenta scattered about the floor. Hugh, sitting at his desk in the darkness, could see the whole scene through the chinks in the half-open door, and he gazed silently at Ivor's manly form now stooping to re-arrange something on the floor, now stretching to reach something from the rafters; and his heart ached with a dull longing for the time that was past, for the friendship which had filled his life more than he knew at the time, and, if the truth must be told, for the old days before his passion for Gwladys had enslaved him. Those days could never return. He had bowed his neck to the yoke, and henceforth she must be his first care and thought; and how easy and how sweet this would have been, if only--and he brooded there in the darkness with mournful eyes and a heavy heart. Suddenly there was a step at the door of the sail-shed, a finger raised the latch, the door was pushed open, and Gwladys entered. Hugh trembled in every nerve, and watched eagerly what would happen. For a moment, her only thought seemed to be to shut out the boisterous sea-wind, which was swirling outside the door; then she threw back the hood of her cloak, and looked in astonishment, while Ivor Parry, no less taken by surprise, lifted himself up from a bale of sail upon which he had been kneeling. Gwladys involuntarily clutched her hand to her side, while Ivor stood straight before her, with both arms hanging down beside him. Hugh's black eyes never swerved in their keen glance; it never struck him that he was acting dishonourably; his suspicious anxiety seemed to have smothered every other feeling, as he sat there peering at the unconscious actors in the scene before him. A crimson flush spread over Gwladys' face and neck and forehead; but Ivor was pale as death. Neither spoke for some time. Her breath came and went in little fluttering gasps. Ivor was the first to regain his self-possession, and Hugh strained every nerve to listen. "Well, Mishtress, how art thou?" "I only came," said Gwladys, ignoring his question, "to fetch Hugh's coat, and to look for him. He has not come home." "They have all left," said Ivor, glancing into the darkness of the little office. "I have only stayed on a bit to make things more plain for the Mishteer--I am going to-morrow." "Yes," was all her answer, while her head drooped, and she nervously and unconsciously slipped her ring up and down her finger. She seemed suddenly anxious to get away, and, turning hurriedly to the peg on which a coat of Hugh's was hanging, said, "I want it to darn." The peg was just above her reach, so she sprang a little from the ground, and succeeded in dislodging the coat from its hook, but in doing so caught the wrist-band of her jacket in its place, and hung, with toes just reaching the ground, in a helpless and uncomfortable position, trying with her left hand to loosen the wrist-band from the hook--an object which the weight of her body frustrated. Ivor's first impulse was to rush to her assistance, and every pulse in his body throbbed with the desire once more to hold her in his grasp; but his arms again dropped down, and he turned resolutely to a coil of ropes, and, dragging it within reach of her feet, said: "Stand on this, Mishtress." His white set face and his trembling voice were the only signs of the storm that raged within him; but they sufficed to make plain to Gwladys, as well as to the silent watcher behind the half-closed doors of the office, the strong curb which he was placing upon his feelings. Gwladys stepped off the coil of ropes, stood a moment, trembling and blinded with her tears. "That nasty hook has shaken thee," said Ivor; and she made no answer, but, stooping to pick up the coat, gulped down a sob which Ivor and Hugh distinctly heard. "Fforwel, then!" she said, turning back for a moment as she reached the door. "I wish thee well at the mill, Ivor Parry." And she passed out into the night wind. "Fforwel, Mishtress!" caught her ear as she went. For a few minutes, Ivor stood with folded arms, looking after her into the darkness, and then sitting down on the bale upon which he had been at work, a great sob shook his frame, too, and it was with a veritable groan of distress that he once more rose and applied himself energetically to his work. In the darkened office Hugh still sat on; but his head was bowed upon his hands. A feeling of humility, never quite a stranger to his noble heart, tinged the bitter thoughts which occupied the silent half-hour which passed before Ivor Parry extinguished his lamp and left the sail-shed, locking the door behind him. Then Hugh rose, and letting himself out through a small door from his office, walked homeward through the blustering gale which swept up the village road. Gwladys looked up from her knitting as he entered the house with relief, and, rising to meet her husband, placed a trembling hand on his arm. "Hugh, where have you been? you are so late! I would be frightened, indeed, only I know you have much to do to settle things before you give up." "Yes, business, merch i; I am not often late for meals--too good an appetite for that, Gwladys; and you cook them too nicely for that! What have you for supper? Something good, I can tell by the smell." And he rattled on to hide the embarrassment which he saw in Gwladys' face. "Yes, fried herrings and onions; you like them, don't you?" she said, with a wistful anxiety to please, very touching to Hugh in his present mood of self-reproach; "and a white loaf Madlen has made for thee." "Supper then, and business to the winds!" said Hugh cheerfully. "Come and sit down, merch i, or the board will not be full." "I went to look for thee," said Gwladys, sitting down opposite him at the small table, "but there was no one in the sail-shed except Ivor Parry." "Perhaps indeed!" answered Hugh, with simulated indifference; "I suppose he had some last arrangements to make; he is going to-morrow." "Yes, he told me." And with the relief of having been perfectly open, Gwladys ate her supper, and talked with more ease and cheerfulness than she had shown at first. Hugh hastened to change the subject, and with tender thoughtfulness took more than his share of the conversation all the evening. If there was one good trait stronger than another in his character, it was justice. Before all things, Hugh Morgan had been a "just" man; and there was growing in his heart, where at first anger and suspicion had held their own, a strong feeling of admiration for these two--his friend and his wife--who had met under his own eyes, where nothing but their honourable natures restrained them, where they thought no eye was upon them to mark a loving look, no ear to hear a tender farewell, no tongue of scandal to blame them, and yet had come forth immaculate, spotless, blameless, from the trial. He doubted whether he himself would have passed scathless through the temptation, and the nobility of his soul responded to the perfect freedom from guile, which he had seen in the interview between Ivor and Gwladys. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, if, in the days following, his voice, his manner, his actions towards his young wife bore the stamp of a more than usually gentle and chivalrous homage. It fell on Gwladys' perturbed spirit like a tonic, bracing her for still more strenuous efforts to keep in the difficult path on which she had entered. And so outward calm and peace brooded over the Mishteer's cottage, for within it were two beings, who, though the glamour and beauty of life were denied them, yet walked courageously on with open brow and steadfast feet, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but simply to the endeavour to do their part nobly in the battle of life. To Mwntseison also had returned a season of calm. Its inhabitants had latterly been considerably uplifted, not to say inflated, by the evident personal notice accorded to them by Providence! Gwen's bidding, with the unheard-of generosity of the donors, had been like a pleasant fillip to the lethargic tendency of the rural mind, had stimulated and whetted their appetites for more sensations, so that the Mishtress's narrow escape had been received with much appreciation. "Yes, yes," said 'n'wncwl Jos; "there's many things in Mwntseison which you won't find in any other village along the bay. Look at Aberython and Clidwen; and there's Treswnd and Abermere! Is there a man like the Mishteer in one of those places?" "No! Nor a woman like Mari Vone neither!" said a burly sailor. "No, no!" said 'n'wncwl Jos again; "there's no doubt the Almighty keeps His eye on us, 'cos look at Lallo's pig now!" "Well, it seems to me," said Shoni, the blacksmith, who was always inclined to be irreverent, "that He wasn't watching very closely when Gwen did that nasty trick!" "Wasn't He, then!" said 'n'wncwl Jos, stumping violently with his wooden leg. "What was to prevent her killing her mother instead of the pig? If poor Gwen felt she must kill something, what could be better than the pig?" "What, indeed?" said everybody; "for though he was hurried away rather (not so long, too! for he was to be killed in a month), he is as well salted and dried as any pig ever was, and lying safe in sides and hams on the shelves in Rhys Thomas's shop." "Ach y fi! I won't touch that bacon whatever," said Nell. "And look at Ivor Parry, brought safe from the sea and the fever. Oh, yes, caton pawb! it's as plain as the day. Mwntseison is well looked after!" And there were many of the young and frivolous who wished for a few more sensations, since it was evident that they brought them no harm. "When is Gwen going to the 'sayloom?" said Shoni-go.[1] "She was screaming and laughing like a mad thing, as she is, last night, and flying like a partridge over the cliffs, her arms spread out, and her toes just touching the ground. Diwedd anwl! my heart nearly leapt out of my body when I heard her!" "Yes," said 'n'wncwl Jos, "the Mishteer will see to it soon." But a greater excitement than Gwen's madness was hanging over the village, for in a day or two the astounding news was spread abroad that 'n'wncwl Jos was ill. 'N'wncwl Jos! who had never been known to suffer an ache or a pain, except, indeed, the rheumatic twinges which he declared he still felt in the leg which was buried in Glasgow! 'N'wncwl Jos, who, though not wanting in sympathy, still tinged his expressions thereof with a slight tone of blame, as though sickness was invariably "somebody's" fault. And the strongest man in Mwntseison felt his tenure of life uncertain. "Caton pawb! what's the matter with him?" "Flammashwn! Never been well since he jumped into the sea after the Mishteer, when he kept his wet clothes on all day, though he won't confess it," said Dye Pentraeth; and the whole village was in a state of ferment, and Mari Vone was besieged by condoling friends. The invalid at first fought valiantly with his sickness, declaring he would be all right in a day or two. The doctor shook his head, and hour by hour 'n'wncwl Jos grew worse, but still continued to crack his jokes when a moment's cessation from pain enabled him to do so. "Oh, go 'long with you, Nell Jones," he said, when that worthy woman came in with what she considered an appropriate expression of countenance. "Go 'long with you, Nell, and don't pull a long face here; I've bin a deal worse than this! Why! at Glasgow, when I lost my leg, I came to myself when they were carrying me from the docks to the hospital. I didn't know where I was in that straight, narrow thing--'a stretcher' they call it in English--and raised my head to see, and there I was being carried by four men, and a long tail of boys, and men, and women running after me. 'Jâr-i,' sez I to myself, 'I never thought I should see my own funeral!' Well, in three weeks, I was out of the hospital, and--and--let me see--where's my wooden leg? I want to go down to the shore; there's a boat coming in----" and he rambled away in delirium, and in spite of his plucky spirit, his sickness conquered him, and for many days he lay at the point of death. Then came the time when the warmth and tenderness of the Welsh hearts were shown--not a man, woman, or child who did not feel a personal sorrow. They took it in turns to watch through the long nights at the sick man's bed, with eager interest anticipating every want, and endeavouring to make Mari Vone's burden lighter. From every farm in the neighbourhood came presents of milk and eggs. The sailors brought high-shouldered bottles of Hollands and Schnapps; the fishermen dared the storms to procure fish; and even the children brought eggs or apples for Mari. Gwladys was a frequent visitor; and Hugh often sat beside the sick man, whose illness he felt was due to his faithful, though rash, devotion to himself. His presence seemed to have a soothing effect upon 'n'wncwl Jos; the excited, delirious talk would quiet down to a low rambling, even to a pleasant recalling of youthful days of merriment, and Mari Vone learned once more to welcome the sound of Hugh's footsteps as he approached the cottage door. One afternoon, while Hugh sat beside him, the old man fell into a calm, refreshing sleep, a sleep that had been anxiously watched for by Dr. Hughes, but which seemed dangerously long delayed. Hugh knew the importance of this sleep, and, nodding to Mari, said quietly, "Go and rest thyself, I will watch till he wakes;" and she had gone thankfully, and resting on her own bed, the tension of the long anxiety was relaxed, and the drooping eyelids were fast closed in as heavy and refreshing a sleep as 'n'wncwl Jos's. Through the broad, gaping hinges of the tar-painted bedroom door, standing half open, Hugh, as he sat there motionless, holding the sick man's hand, could see into the cosy penisha, and out through the open doorway into the road. It was one of those calm, sunny days which sometimes visit us in November. The sound of the sea filled the air, the click of Shoni-go's anvil, and the voices of the children at play on the beach, came on the breeze. Hugh sat on quietly dreaming, letting his thoughts roam uncurbed over the events of his past life. He remembered how, in the days gone by, he had crossed the threshold of this cottage with the ecstatic buoyancy of a lover, not unmixed with the reverence of a worshipper who enters the shrine which contains his idol. Certainly he had loved Mari Vone with a depth and intensity which he thought neither time nor eternity had power to annihilate. "Neither has it," he thought, "it is only altered. I am a married man now, and Gwladys has my love, my respect, my tender pity; but there is a bond which links me to Mari Vone, so pure, so strong, so enduring, that I fear not to lay it before God, and to ask His blessing upon it." At this moment a shadow darkened the outer doorway, and a light footstep (everyone walked gingerly there now) came into the kitchen. Hugh raised his eyes, and a pleased, indulgent look came over his face as he saw through the crack that it was Gwladys. "The little one, bless her!" he thought, but he made no movement; and Gwladys, noticing the restful quiet in the house, the cessation of the rambling voice in the sick-room, guessed at once that the hoped-for sleep had come, and prepared to leave on tip-toe. She stood a moment at the table, laying down a bowl of curds and milk which she had brought for Mari, and at that instant another figure darkened the doorway, and raising her finger to her lips to enforce silence, she saw Ivor Parry enter silently. Hugh saw it all, too, and found it difficult to keep his hand quietly on 'n'wncwl Jos's. For a moment, as before, the two who confronted each other in the kitchen stood embarrassed and silent; but Gwladys first regained her composure, and in a whisper, which Hugh's quick ear caught distinctly, said: "'N'wncwl Jos is asleep, I think." "I am glad," said Ivor; "that is good news. I could not let another day pass without coming to ask for him. I am going back at once." "You had better stay," said Gwladys, "till Mari comes out. I am going." Ivor nodded silently, and Gwladys passed out into the sunshine. Left alone, he drew his hand over his face as if awaking from a dream, and Hugh watched him gravely. Suddenly a light gleamed in his eyes, a flush overspread his face, and looking round like a thief who espies a treasure, he stretched out his hand to the table, and clutched a bunch of sea-pinks which had fallen from the folds of Gwladys' neckerchief. Hugh had noticed them there when she entered. For a moment Ivor looked at them, then pressed them to his lips before thrusting them inside the breast of his coat. He stood a few moments in silent thought, and then left the house. In the inner room, Hugh still watched with troubled eyes; but the hand which held the sick man's remained firm and unmoved, and 'n'wncwl Jos slept on. [1] Blacksmith. CHAPTER XIV. THE MILL. Round the old mill at Traeth Berwen the night wind sighed and moaned, as it always did here at the opening of the narrow valley. Even in the hot summer days, when the cattle sought the shade, and the flowers drooped languidly, there was always a breeze blowing up or down the cwm, and to-night it blew in gusts round every gable of the old building, shaking the ricketty shutters, and brushing the overhanging ivy against the window panes. Inside, however, there was no sign of anything but comfort and cheerfulness. On the stone hearth in the large kitchen a bright fire glowed, on which a huge log had just been thrown, a crowd of crackling sparks and blue smoke flew up the wide open chimney, and the ruddy glow brought into relief the numerous pegs and stakes driven into its brown smoked walls, for the suspension of future flitches and hams when Ivor Parry should have become more settled into his domestic menage. At present it was empty, and as Ivor and his friend Robert the miller sat well under its shade, they could look straight up its wattled walls to the night sky above, where a bright star shone down upon them. On a small table beside them stood a quaint brown jug of ale, accompanied by two "blues"; they smoked in silence, while Acsa clattered her pails and wooden shoes in the background. She had lived there all her life, at least from childhood, as maid-of-all-work to Robert and his family, and had been taken over by Ivor Parry as part of the furniture. Indeed, to have separated Acsa from the mill would have been a difficult task. Robert had attempted it once, when some of her wilful ways had tried the good-wife beyond endurance; but she had howled and cried like a beaten dog, and had stayed starving and cold about the precincts of the mill so pertinaciously, that she was at last allowed to re-enter, to the delight of the children, and to the secret satisfaction of the miller and his wife, who had missed her faithful service. No one had ever tried to eject her again, so here she was to-night, perfectly satisfied to click clack about in her wooden shoes, in and out of the brown shadows, scraping the potatoes, cleaning the shoes, scouring the brass pans and the pails, without a thought of any reward, except the small pittance of wages which she always received with humble gratitude and a bob curtesy on the 11th of November, this being the day appointed all through Cardiganshire for the ending and beginning of a year of domestic service. Robert had come down for a smoke and a chat with his successor at the mill, and they had apparently exhausted every topic of interest, for they puffed long in silence. Suddenly a weird wailing sound came down the chimney, and both men looked up at the shining star above them, while Acsa exclaimed, "Ach y fi!" "What is it?" said Ivor, listening with his pipe in his hand; and again on the night wind came the long-drawn mournful tones of a woman's voice, who sang some old-world melody with a wild refrain. "Mark my word, 'tis that Gwen Owen again!" said Robert, "that mad woman from Mwntseison; she has taken to coming here lately, and sits on the edge of the cliffs, always at night, and always singing the same tune. I am beginning to know it quite well; indeed, I think I must have heard my mother sing it, and I believe she called it a Witch Song." "I seem to know it, too," said Ivor. "Let us go out and listen." "Howyr bâch," said Acsa, "there's foolish you are to tempt the Almighty like that! when He has given you a warm kitchen to sit in, you go wilfully out to listen to a witch tune! Take care she doesn't draw you away with it; she is Peggi Shân's grand-daughter, and you know, Robert the Mill, that your own uncle Simon was drawn by her singing out there on her father's smack, till he was lost in the fog and drowned! Ach y fi! don't venture." "Twt, twt," said Robert, "she's far enough from us here." And he slipped back the wooden bolt and opened the door. "Shut it after you, then!" screamed Acsa, "for I won't let the tune in here; but, oh! there it is in the chimney again!" And she set herself to her scrubbing to deaden the weird sounds. Outside Robert and Ivor listened, while full and clear on the night-wind came Gwen's voice, sometimes in a low, soft, wailing tone, almost lost on the breeze; sometimes rising as if in tones of entreaty; at other times in passionate words that almost ended in a shriek. "Caton pawb!" said Ivor, "she is madder than I thought she was!" And, as a large white owl flitted silently by them, the two men started nervously. "It's enough to make one's blood run cold. There! do you hear the crows? She has startled them from their nests on the cliffs." "Poor Gwen!" said Ivor. "I never thought she would come to this. Let us go near her and hear what she says." And up the side of the bank they went on the soft turf, until, on reaching the top, they saw Gwen standing on the very edge of the cliff, with arms outspread, and gesticulating wildly, singing, and sometimes talking. "Oh, winds and waves and flames, I call you by your names, North, South, East, West, Hither come, do my behest, And hasten now to help me!" They were close to her, but hidden by one of the many boulders scattered about the greensward. "How she repeats that verse," said Ivor. "I am afraid of her, Robert--not for myself, but for some of them at Mwntseison. She means to do some mischief with her waves and her winds and her flames. Listen! she is talking." "Oh, yes, night-wind, I hear you, I know what you are saying--'Be ready, Gwen--be ready, Gwen! and we will help you.' Hush!" and, with her finger raised, she bent over the cliff until the strong men shuddered with fear. "Hush! 'tis the sea; I hear you whispering 'Be ready, Gwen--be ready, Gwen!' but you are worthless! bant a chi[1]--bant a chi! I have a better friend than you, though he is not here to-night," and turning round she caught sight of a shower of sparks which rose from the mill chimney. "Yes, he is--yes, he is!" she screamed, clapping her hands and dancing with delight; "there are his signs!" and she burst into the wild refrain of her weird song once more:-- "Come flames of yellow, red, and blue, Help! for you are my servants true." "Good-night," she said, waving her hands towards the old mill, "I understand your message; I will be there, and you will be there." And, turning, she fled back towards Mwntseison, as Shoni-go had said, "like a partridge," with arms spread out, her grey shawl held like wings, and her toes scarce touching the ground. Ivor and Robert came slowly out of the shadow of the rock. "Jâr-i!" said the latter, "I thought the witches were dead; but, God save us, we have heard one sing to-night." "Poor Gwen," said Ivor, remembering many a kindness which she had shown him before she had married Siencyn Owen, "she's no witch, only a poor misguided woman, whose life has turned sour, like milk in a thunderstorm. Remember she was brought up by that uncanny old sinner Peggi Shân, and now it pleases her to think she has the same 'hysbys' nature." "Perhaps she has," said Robert, "for such things are." "Perhaps indeed," said Ivor. "Anyway, she can do mischief, and I must keep an eye on Mistress Gwen." And they returned to the mill, where Acsa let them in with a sense of relief. "Another glass of beer before you start?" said Ivor. "Well, yes, indeed, and another whiff; that tune has given me a shiver. Ach y fi!" said Robert, taking up his long clay pipe once more. "I am glad to see thee so comfortable, Ivor. 'Tis a wife thou wilt want most here now. Come up to Blaensethin, lad, and see my three pretty daughters; perhaps one will suit thy fancy." "Perhaps indeed," said Ivor. "I have heard they are so pretty 'tis wiser to keep away; but I am safe, for a wife is a piece of furniture that the old mill will have to do without as long as I live. I am born to be an old bachelor." "Twt, twt," said Robert, rising, "come up to see us on Monday, and we will go to Elinor Pugh's bidding together, and let's see if we can't knock the old bachelor out of thee." "Well, I won't promise; but we shall see," said Ivor. "Nos da!" "Nos da!" shouted Robert, taking the opposite direction to that along which Gwen had flown homewards. Ivor pondered long, lying awake in his bed and listening to the sighing of the wind and the swish, swish of the waves on the beach below the mill. No other sound broke the silence of the night except the "to-whit, to-hoo" of the white owl who sat in the ivied tower of the old church higher up the valley. All next day he was too busy for much thought, for, with the early dawn, the carts came down the hills from one of the farms on the uplands. He heard the merry crack of the whip and the lively whistle of the carters, while he donned his mealy garments, and, looking through his ivy-curtained window, he saw the brilliant scarlet and blue carts come lumbering down the hill, making a bright bit of colouring in the leaden winter landscape. He hurried down to open the big door, and to pull up the dam-board from the leet, turning the water full on the cumbrous wooden wheel, for he would not have it said that "the new miller was caught napping," and before eight o'clock the mill was filled with the sound of the grinding and crushing of the big millstones, the clap, clap of the wheel, and the musical rushing of the Berwen as it poured and trickled through the rude machinery. The empty carts returned up the hill, to come again in the evening, when the new corn and oats had been ground into the sweet brown flour and delicious oatmeal, in readiness for the barley loaves and oat-cakes of the farm. One of the men servants and two jolly lasses stayed in the mill, and shouted their jokes and chaff at each other through the noise. Ivor, on his mettle, worked with a will, grinding the corn, and endeavouring to show that the old Melin Berwen had still a thorough and a jolly miller at the head of affairs. He joined in the merry laughter and talk, which helped on the work of the day; but through it all the memory of Gwen's wild song haunted him, and, mingled with the whirring and rushing of the mill, he seemed to hear the tones of the refrain: "Come, flames of yellow, red, and blue, Help; for you are my servants true!" When at last the meal had been tied into the sacks and the brilliant blue and red cortége returned up the hill with whistling and shouting and laughter, Ivor climbed up the ricketty stairs, and changed his mealy clothes for his usual half-sailor garb. As soon as his tea was over he turned his face in the grey of the evening towards Mwntseison. It was almost dark when he reached the village, and he was puzzled where to begin his search for Gwen. "In her own home? No! that would set her on her guard! Where he most dreaded to find her--in Gwladys' home? No! there he must not enter!" Mari Vone's white-walled cottage was the first to appear through the twilight. "Of course!" he said, "I want to know how 'n'wncwl Jos is." He listened at the open door for a minute to the sound of voices within. No! Gwladys' clear tones were not there; but 'n'wncwl Jos's "Hegh! hegh! hegh!" was distinctly to be heard. "Hello!" he said, in a cheery voice as he entered, "no need to ask how the sick man is!" Mari placed a chair for him by her uncle's side, who was bubbling over with tales and laughter, his wooden leg once more in its proper place, and the usual quid of tobacco in his cheek. "Hooray, mach-geni! there's glad I am to see thee! Wel wyr! they have been nearly killing me here with their pills and their draughts and things; but old 'n'wncwl Jos has diddled them all this time!" And with a poke in Ivor's ribs, he laughed and stumped with something like his old jollity. "Don't listen to him, Ivor bâch!" said Mari; "thee know'st him of old. There never was a man more ready to take his physic, so anxious he was to get well; not a pill nor a draught would he miss, and all day he watched that clock to keep me up to time with his doses!" "Listen not to her, lad," said 'n'wncwl Jos, rather shamefaced; "she's a woman, and they always know how 'to change the feather to the colour of the river.' And how dost get on at Melyn Berwen?" "Oh, very well so far!" "Don't thee take too much toll now," said the old man, with another nudge. "Mari's got two Winchesters of barley for thee to grind next week." "Da iawn![2] and how does Mwntseison get on without me? How is Gwen?" "Oh, indeed, better, I think," said Mari, throwing a fresh log on the fire; "she does not wander about the village so much--goes over the cliffs and speaks to no one. Hugh Morgan thinks it is a pity to put her into an asylum just yet, while she is so quiet." "Clap her in! clap her in!" said 'n'wncwl Jos; "she'll be safe there, that's my advice." "Well, indeed, it seems cruel to say so; but I think so, too," Ivor answered; and he proceeded to tell them of her eccentric behaviour on the cliffs the previous night, and the uncanny nature of her song. Mari Vone laughed heartily; looking up from her knitting, she said: "Why, Ivor bâch, hast forgotten thy childhood completely? Dost not remember that old game? Why, we played it in a ring on the sands in the summer evenings, singing those words all the time. Every child in Mwntseison knows it!" "Well, b'tshwr!" said Ivor; "what a ffwlcyn[3] I was! Well, indeed, I thought it seemed familiar to me somehow; and Robert Owen, too, said he thought he had heard it somewhere." 'N'wncwl Jos was extremely amused. "Well, there's two fools you were! 'There's a pair of you,' as the devil said to his wooden shoes." Ivor joined in the laugh, and felt relieved by the discovery of his mistake, more particularly when Gwen herself entered the house suddenly and silently. She stood a moment, with her white face and piercing eyes half hidden under the shade of her grey shawl. A silence fell upon them as they encountered her cold stare, and Ivor was the first to speak. "Well, Gwen fâch!" he said kindly; "and how art thou and Lallo?" "I am quite well, Ivor Parry, and my mother is quite well. How art getting on at the mill?" And without waiting for an answer, she went quietly away. "We can't call that woman mad enough for an asylum, poor thing!" said Mari. "I say, clap her in!" said 'n'wncwl Jos; "she'll be safe there. Clap her in!" "Well, she seemed quiet enough to-night, and sensible. Perhaps I have been too easily frightened," said Ivor. "Wilt promise me, Mari, to send over to the mill if she shows any signs of mischief?" "I promise." "Then good-night," said Ivor; "I was a fool not to know the old game song." As he passed Gwen's cottage, Lallo stood at the door. "Well, I am glad," she said, "that thou hast not quite left us, Ivor Parry. Come in, come in, and have a chat, for I am all alone." "Where is Gwen, then--and how is she?" "Oh, she's better--very quiet indeed, and gone to bed." "Da iawn!" said Ivor, "that is good news." And making the lateness of the hour an excuse for not entering, he returned over the cliffs to Traeth Berwen. Acsa was still up when he entered the mill kitchen, stooping over the fire and crooning an old Welsh hymn. With an oar-shaped porridge spoon, she stirred the "bwdran" which babbled in the iron pot hanging from a chain in the chimney. In her quaint Welsh costume, a red cotton handkerchief tied under her chin, her hard-featured face catching the light of the glowing fire, she looked like a witch who stirs the broth in her cauldron. "Caton pawb, woman," said Ivor, as he entered and bolted the door, "why art not in bed? I wish I had one of those new machines for taking pictures--I believe I would make my fortune by selling a few of thee, sitting there over thy bwdran in the peat smoke." Acsa laughed, and disclosed a toothless upper gum. "Do then, indeed," she said--"'twould be the first time old Acsa had been of use to anyone." "Oh, halt there," said Ivor, sitting down to his supper. "I don't know how I should get on here without thee. Give me a bowl of bwdran." "Well," she said good-naturedly, as she laid the steaming bowl before him, "I am a good watch-dog; I can watch my master's property as well as any policeman, and as for the foxes--they find me much too sharp for them. Never a fowl can they get from Berwen Mill." And she mumbled on while Ivor hurried through his supper, and, leaving her still clattering amongst her pans and dishes, went to bed, and quickly to sleep. He had not slept more than an hour or so, when Acsa, as if to maintain her character of "watch-dog," thumped at his bedroom door. "Mishteer, there's a strange light in the sky--a fire in Mwntseison, I think." "A fire in Mwntseison!" And almost before she had spoken the words, Ivor was up, and hurrying on his clothes. "A fire in Mwntseison! Had he not dreaded it, pictured it?--was he not even dreaming of it when Acsa gave the alarm?" While he dressed he looked out at the sky, and over the brow of the hill before him; the glow reddened and spread. He was quickly crossing the yard and climbing up the rugged path to the cliffs; and having reached the top, he ran with breathless speed towards the village, every moment nearing the crimson glow, now mixed with sparks, which illumined the sky before him. A few hours earlier, just as Ivor was entering Mwntseison and hesitating as to where he should begin his search for Gwen, Hugh Morgan and his wife sat down to their comfortable tea together, while Madlen hovered about, or drank her tea on a bench under the chimney, helping herself from her own special tea-pot, which sat snugly in the embers on the hearth. "There's quiet the village is, now that Gwen Owen is better," she said. "Indeed it is heaven upon earth not to hear her screaming and laughing. Lallo will be glad she didn't send her to the 'sayloom." "Yes, poor thing," said Hugh; "I am very thankful I have been saved that horrid job. 'Twould have gone hard with me to take one of our village lasses to that big grey building at Caer Madoc. It always gives me a shudder when I pass it, though I never had a relation there; hadst thou, Gwladys?" "No, indeed, as far as I know, whatever; but I can't bear to see it, too, so many of our friends are there, poor things. Poor Laissabeth Davies, whose two sons were drowned together." "And Sianco, the lobster man," said Hugh. "Yes, and Nell who used to paddle with me; poor Nell." "Ach y fi! yes," said Madlen from her chimney corner; "and there's two or three more from Mwntseison would be locked up there if their friends were not so quiet about them." "Perhaps they would be better off in the 'sayloom," said Gwladys. "Indeed, I thought so to-day when I passed poor Reuben Pentraeth's window at the back of his mother's house all boarded up. It must be so dark inside, with only those chinks to let in the light. I often hear him singing when I pass." "Yes, he doesn't lose his fine voice," said Hugh, rising; "it makes my heart ache to hear him. But I must go, merch i; I daresay I will be late coming home to-night, for I have my last accounts to make up. Everything will be finished to-night, and to-morrow Josh Howels and I will sign our names to the contract; and then good-bye to the old sail-shed for ever. Don't sit up for me, merch i. Leave the door on the latch." "Oh, anwl! I'm afraid of Gwen, Hugh." "No, go to bed, Mishtress," said Madlen. "I will be up with the brewing till four o'clock, and I will let the Mishteer in." And with a pleasant nod Hugh Morgan left the house. It requires nothing less than a death, or a parting for years, to make a Welsh husband kiss his wife before stranger eyes. Gwladys, when she had finished her own part of the brewing, went to bed and to sleep, while Hugh sat over his accounts in the sail-shed until his candle burnt low and the last column was added up. Then, with a satisfied "There!" he pushed the book away from him, and leaning back in his chair, fell into a heavy sleep, quite unconscious that a grey, ghost-like figure hovered round and round the old sail-shed, sometimes pressing her ear to the keyhole, sometimes peering in through the tiny window of the office; making no sound on the soft turf that crept up close to the boarded walls of the shed, for she carried her wooden shoes in her hand while she watched the busy man bending over his accounts, and at last, in healthy fatigue, throwing himself back for a refreshing sleep. Yes! so heavily Hugh Morgan slept, that he did not hear the creeping footsteps outside, nor yet the crackling of burning wood around him, nor smelt the sickening fumes from burning sails and ropes, which served to deaden his oppressed senses. When Ivor Parry, "with his breath in his throat," reached the burning building, he found the whole population of Mwntseison gathered round it, everyone eager to help, but all paralysed by the horror of the scene. Where was the Mishteer? he who would have been foremost in helping and directing the surging crowd; his absence took the nerve and pluck out of everybody, and the fear that he might be in the shed intensified the excitement. Gwladys, overcome by terror, lay swooning in her mother's arms. She opened her eyes when Ivor's voice reached her ears. "Save him, Ivor, thy friend! save him if thou lov'st me!" Her mother, who overheard her words, looked round in affright, lest any other ear should have caught the frenzied accents. Ivor was gone in a moment. Leaving the crowd, he passed round to the back of the shed where the little office was situated, and which the flames had not yet reached. One woman was already there. It was Mari Vone, who, in frantic excitement, dragged at the boards which formed the walls of the building. Her whole being seemed centred in the effort to break a way into the office. Ivor wasted no time in words, but joined her at once in her mad tearing at the boards, and with his additional strength, one at length gave way, and in a few seconds a hole large enough to pass through rewarded their efforts. A column of smoke rushed with such fury through the opening that, for a moment, both were thrown back. But, not to be beaten, Ivor pressed in through the blinding smoke, followed closely by Mari. They heard the shouts and cheers of a small portion of the crowd, who had now assembled on that side of the building and watched their efforts; but there was no time for thought, for fear, or for conjecture; only one mad impulse, to search on the ground while their breath lasted. Not at the desk! not at the cupboard! Even at that moment of strained suspense the memory of a tune passed through Ivor's brain. "Come, flames of yellow, red, and blue, Help! for you are my servants true!" Stumbling at the door, he stooped, Mari with him, and felt the Mishteer's body lying prone across the threshold. A heavy beam lay over his chest; his feet and legs were already licked by the curling flames; while his head and shoulders lay within the little office. Ivor saw or felt the situation at once, and Mari, whose busy fingers groped with his in the smoke, understood it, too. With almost superhuman strength, he lifted the heavy beam, while Mari dragged Hugh gently, but firmly, away from its crushing weight. The density of the smoke was not quite so great on the floor as it was higher up, and to this fact Hugh Morgan hitherto owed his life. He was quickly carried to the breach in the wall, which willing hands had enlarged during the few seconds occupied in his deliverance, and, when Ivor and Mari emerged with their silent burden, a shout of joy rose from the people--a shout which quickly subsided into an awestruck silence when the straightened form lay motionless on the grass before them. Not a moment too soon had they made their escape, for the office was now in a blaze of swirling flames. Quickly the news of Hugh's safety was conveyed to Gwladys. "He's alive, Mishtress! Ivor and Mari have brought him out!" But she did not hear them. At the words, "He's alive," the reaction from the terrible fear that had paralysed her was so great that she fainted, and in this condition was carried home. A stretcher had been quickly improvised from an old sail, and Hugh, gently laid upon it, was also carried home by loving hands, and laid tenderly upon his own bed, Mari Vone refusing to allow anyone but Ivor and herself to lift him from the sail to the bed. He moaned once or twice during the removal, and afterwards lay still and motionless, with closed eyes. Dr. Hughes, who, together with all the inhabitants of Abersethin, had seen the fire at Mwntseison, was quickly on the spot, and attending to Hugh Morgan, while Gwladys, white and rigid, tottered in like a ghost and flung herself down at the bedside in an abandonment of grief. The sound of her sobs reached Hugh's ears, and, opening his eyes, he tried to speak, but failed in the attempt. "Not yet," said Dr. Hughes; "lie quite still until you are stronger. Now take this--and you, Gwladys, be quite silent if you wish to save your husband's life." Gwladys smothered her sobs, and, sitting still and shivering beside her husband, said, in piteous accents: "Don't send me from him! let me stay and do something." "You can do nothing but be calm and quiet." "I will," she said; and she kept her word. In the early dawn of the next morning, pale and worn with the night's watching, she looked out through the low thatched window on the leaden waters of the bay, stretched out before her in the cold grey stillness of the late autumn morning. There was a pale yellow light in the eastern sky, but down on the waters of the bay the dark curtains of night had scarce yet been drawn. She shuddered as she looked at the broad expanse of even silence, unruffled by a wave, untouched by the morning's sun. "What would the day bring forth?" and she turned again to watch the quiet form upon the bed. He had been restless with pain in the early part of the night, but for the last hour he had lain silent and still, the dark eyelashes resting upon his pale cheek, the masses of black hair lying damp and matted on the sunburnt forehead, his breathing scarcely audible. "Was it sleep? was it unconsciousness? was it death already creeping over him?" The anguish of the thought was too great for her over-strained nerves, and she shrank on her knees by the bedside, and, burying her face in the bedclothes, sobbed convulsively: "Oh, not that! not that! Oh, God, not that!" She would have given worlds for time to repair the wrong she thought she had done--to bring peace and happiness to the heart to which she had caused so much sorrow. "Was it too late? Would God listen to her prayer, and spare him yet a while? Oh, God! give me one more chance," was her continual cry. But the wheels of life rolled on, unchecked by their course, the still form moved not, scarcely breathed, and the morning hours passed wearily on. Her mother brought her a cup of tea; Mari Vone came gently into the room, gazed a moment at the sleeper, and passed out again, leaving Gwladys to her watch alone. It was her place, and, without comment, everyone acceded to her earnest request, "Let me be with him! let me watch him!" only they hovered near within call, while Gwladys still watched on. [1] Away with you! [2] Very good. [3] Fool; a dolt. CHAPTER XV. TORN SAILS. In the village the excitement was intense, for where the sail-shed had once stood--the backbone of Mwntseison, the dispenser of the means of livelihood to so many families--there was now nothing but a smouldering heap of charred wood, surrounded by a ring of horror-stricken villagers. 'N'wncwl Jos had suggested a dreadful idea last night when Hugh Morgan was carried home and laid on his bed. "Wasn't I right?" he said, as he stumped back to the burning building; "didn't I say 'clap her in'? and if they had done so, we should not have lost the best man that ever trod the sands of Mwntseison!" "What! dost mean Gwen? anwl! anwl! mad as she was she wouldn't have injured the Mishteer!" "Wel, indeed," said Dye Pentraeth, "I was coming home late last night from Traeth Berwen, and my heart nearly jumped out of my body when I passed the sail-shed, for who should I see standing close to the wall but Gwen; she was the same colour as the grey boards. Ach y fi! I was frightened." "Oh, yes," said 'n'wncwl Jos, "'tis plain enough who did it--and where is she now? Nobody knows! and there is poor Lallo, druan fâch! seeking her everywhere!" And beginning to fâch! seeking her everywhere!" And beginning to relish the part of "seer," he added, "And nobody will see Gwen again; she has run away, probably to Caer Madoc. Wel, 'twill save us the trouble of taking her there, for I'm sure I don't know how we're going to manage that now, nor anything else whatever, without the Mishteer. Oh, bobol anwl! I have lost a friend!" "But Dr. Hughes is very clever, perhaps he will bring him through," said one of the crowd; "if not, what will become of us all, and the Mishtress, druan fâch!" Little groups of people, with anxious and mournful faces, were gathered together here and there along the rocky road. To lose the Mishteer from their midst! the thought was unbearable! He had for so long been their guide and support--his strong will and good moral influence had been for years the moving spring of their lives, unconsciously to themselves and to him--and his death, therefore, would be a dire calamity. "Look here, frindiau," said Josh Howels, "if we ever expect any good to come of our prayer meetings this is the time to hold one." And a murmur of approval followed his words. "When shall it be, then?" said 'n'wncwl Jos. "Wel! there's no time like the present," said Josh Howels; and with one accord they turned en masse to the door of the Methodist chapel, and filled the square building to overflowing. In their strong poetic language they poured forth their supplications; and if sometimes the prayers uttered in their meetings had been aimless, creed-bound perorations, to-day all was reality and earnestness, though tinged by the nautical imagery ever uppermost in their minds. "'Tis our Mishteer we are coming to Thee about, O Lord," said Josh Howels, in a voice made tremulous by suppressed feeling; "but Thou knowest that. Forgive our weak words, for we are shaken in our hearts, and blinded with our tears. Spare us the Mishteer, we beseech Thee, for without him how can we steer our frail barks across the troubled sea of life? When the storms arise, and we are tossed about in the waves, who will point us to Thee? Spare him, O Lord, for the aged pilgrims still to lean upon! so that the middle-aged may not lose his companionship, and that the children may still have his example to steer by!" Tears and sobs filled up the pauses in the prayer. "But if," he added, and here there was a breathless silence, "if it be not Thy will to spare him to us, if he must go, then, Lord, pilot him safely into the harbour! guide his frail bark over the dark and stormy waters! make a rift in the clouds, O God! and give him a glimpse of the Morning Star!" One after another they knelt and poured out their souls in prayer, with the strong craving for relief from the tension of fear and sorrow which was weighing them down, and it was three o'clock in the afternoon before the meeting broke up. Of course they could not separate without singing a hymn. And that hymn was long remembered at Mwntseison; its rising and falling cadences had never so torn their heartstrings--never hymn before had been so mingled with sobs and tears; and when it came to an end, they left the chapel in solemn silence. In a short time they were once more gathered round the scene of the fire, and anxiously inquiring for news of the Mishteer's condition. Suddenly there was a cry of horror from the children, for where the flames had risen highest, and the fire had burnt the fiercest, they pointed to a little heap of charred bones, which lay in the midst of the debris. They would scarcely have been recognisable as human remains but for the iron buckles of Gwen's wooden shoes which lay beside them. "Dear God!" said the scared villagers, "who'd have thought of such a thing! 'N'wncwl Jos was right after all! Oh, vila'nes! vila'nes!"[1] And not even the gruesome sight before them could quite restrain their expressions of horrified anger. But a silence fell upon them when Lallo appeared in their midst. "Oh, is it true what I hear?" she cried; "that my Gwen is burnt? that she did this dreadful deed? Gwae fi[2] that I had taken the Mishteer's advice before it was too late! Oh, merch anwl i! my beloved daughter!" and turning with imploring hands to the crowd of bystanders, she pleaded for their forgiveness. "Don't be too angry with her. Remember my beloved child was not wise; ever since she lost her baby she wasn't wise. Oh, my Gwen! don't judge her too harshly!" Even the strong men were touched by her sorrow, and gently led her away, while all that remained of poor Gwen was reverently gathered together. Meanwhile, in the quiet room under the thatch, Gwladys still watched, and Mari Vone crept silently in and out, carrying down scraps of information to Ivor and 'n'wncwl Jos, who sat in the deserted kitchen, hoping for some news of improvement. Ivor's arm was tied in a sling, for it had been badly injured in his frantic efforts to lift the heavy beam under which he had found Hugh. The flesh had been lacerated almost from wrist to elbow, yet he had felt nothing until Hugh had been carried home, and there was no more for him to do. The flames had caught his hands, too, and he was suffering much, in spite of Dr. Hughes' soothing dressing; but he heeded nothing--scarcely felt his pain, so intense was his anxiety. Mari escaped without a burn. The same extraordinary Providence that had carried her through life unscathed and unmarred by the ravages of time seemed to have preserved her unhurt through the terrible experiences of the preceding night. Ivor was struck afresh by the ethereal beauty of her appearance. She seemed lifted above the sorrow which he knew was pressing so heavily upon her. In the stress of her agony the night before he had overheard the words: "Oh, Hugh fanwylyd!" and Ivor, so accustomed to the continual haunting void in his own heart, required no word of explanation. He knew it all, and realised with a sudden intuition the long years of crushed hopes and unselfish devotion of this woman. At length there was a little movement on the boards above their heads, and Mari once more crept half-way up the stairs and listened, returning with a smile on her lips. "He is better! I hear them talking quietly. Let us go and leave them together." And they went out, gently drawing the door on the latch. Ivor went home with them, for "Dear God!" he said, "I cannot go to the mill till he is better; and, besides, I will be nearer Dr. Hughes, and for thy kind nursing." "B'tshwr, Ivor bâch. 'Twill save me the walk over the cliffs, for I will not lose sight of thee until thy arm is well. Thou hast risked thy life for the Mishteer. Come and stretch thyself on 'n'wncwl Jos's bed." And Ivor, worn out with his exertions, did as he was bid, and lay quiet for some hours, suffering much in mind and body. In the sick-room, while Gwladys watched, Hugh Morgan had opened his eyes naturally and calmly, as one who awakes refreshed from a long sleep. Her heart leapt for joy, but she was learning to curb her feelings. "Art better, Hugh bâch?" she said gently. "Yes, merch i," was the quiet answer, after which he relapsed again into silence, while with observant eyes he looked around him, seeming to ponder thoughtfully the condition of things, taking in and arranging in his mind all he saw, and all that the scene suggested to him. This at least was Gwladys' impression, and she wisely waited a few moments before speaking again. "This has been poor Gwen's work. Isn't it so, Gwladys?" "Yes, Hugh bâch." "Poor soul! poor soul! Thou hast gone through a bad time, merch i. Thou hast been called to bear much sorrow in thy young days." Gwladys was crying silently. "But thou art better now, Hugh, and the light is shining again! Oh! it will only be an ugly dream that passes away with the morning, now that thou art better. I cannot help crying; but it is for joy, Hugh bâch, thou hast slept so long! I feared thou wouldst never awake, and now the joy is too great for me." He smiled. "Poor little thing! druan fâch!" and again the long silence and the deep pondering. "Now I will fetch a cup of tea, Hugh; it will refresh thee." And she called down the stairs with such joy and cheer in her voice, though in hushed tones, that Madlen knew at once what had happened, and in five minutes the news had spread through the village, "The Mishteer was better!--was talking!--was going to have a cup of tea!" But Hugh declined the proffered cup, and thus dashed Gwladys' hopes to the ground. To refuse a cup of tea after a long night's sickness seemed to her to point to something very serious. "No; let me be till the doctor comes," he said. "I feel pretty easy lying here; but something tells me not to move. Sit by me, f'anwylyd, and let me ask thee a few questions. Who was it saved me from that deadly furnace? I awoke choking, and tried to stagger into the shed; but at the door of the office a heavy beam fell on me. Who lifted it and carried me out? Ivor Parry, I am sure! faithful friend and true! But I thought there were two?" "Yes, Hugh, it was Mari Vone." "God bless her, and thou, Gwladys! Where wert thou?" "Oh, Hugh, those terrible flames seemed to scorch my life away. I was in a faint in my mother's arms. Thou know'st of old I am a coward!" "Poor little one, no wonder!" After another pause, he asked, "Is there anything left of the sail-shed?" "Nothing, Hugh bâch! but don't thee speak another word, until the doctor comes." And so he once more lay silent and motionless, until Dr. Hughes' step was heard on the stair. Gwladys hastened to meet him with a smile of gladness. "Oh, doctor, he is much better!" "Well, go down, Gwladys, while I look at him." And she went, wondering at the doctor's serious looks. "Well," said Dr. Hughes, after an examination of his patient, "I am glad to find you so easy, so free from pain; but we are old friends, Hugh Morgan, and I will not deceive you. You have been seriously--h'm, h'm--caton pawb! Why do women always pull the blinds down!" And he rose and fumbled awkwardly at the blinds to hide the moisture which gathered in his eyes. "You are a brave man, Hugh Morgan, and I think I ought to tell you----" "Don't trouble to tell me anything, doctor. There is something broken _here_, which not all your skill can mend," and he laid his strong brown hand upon the region of his heart. "Not there, my dear fellow--on this side and lower down." "Perhaps indeed! it doesn't matter what--if it must end my life; only tell me how long I shall live--minutes--or hours--or days?" Dr. Hughes took the hand which still lay upon his heart, as if the pain were there, and clasping it in both his own said gently: "A few hours! It grieves me to the heart to say this, Hugh Morgan, but I will not deceive you. I advise you not to move. Lie perfectly still and you may escape all pain." Hugh's breast heaved with the panting breath, but he showed no other signs of distress. "When I am gone, will you send for Mr. Lloyd the lawyer from Caer Madoc? he knows all my affairs. There will be less than I thought for Gwladys, owing to the fire; but still, thank God! there will be enough to keep her comfortably. I am sleepy." "I will go, then," said Dr. Hughes, "and will come again." And he went softly down the stairs, to find Gwladys impatiently awaiting him. "Oh, doctor, he will live, won't he? he is better, isn't he?" "You must be brave, Gwladys," he answered gravely. "There is a terrible sorrow in store for you, and it depends upon how you bear it whether you make your husband's last moments peaceful or unhappy. May God strengthen you, merch i! Where is Mari Vone? she will be a comfort to you." And leaving Gwladys standing in stony despair, he drove to Mari's cottage, and in a few words told her of Hugh's impending death. She did not speak a word, but, turning a shade paler, she prepared at once to leave the house to comfort Gwladys. Ivor still lay in the heavy sleep which had fallen upon him, and Dr. Hughes refused to awaken him. "No, let him sleep while he can, and I will see him later on." Then Mari took her way down the village road. All the sorrow and pain she had ever suffered seemed now to have reached their climax. She entered the comfortable kitchen, where Madlen sat crying on the settle. "Oh, Mari fâch! what will we do? how can we live in this cold world without the Mishteer?" Mari's lips were white with suppressed sorrow. She could not answer, but passed quietly up the stairs. In the sick-room Hugh still slept on, and Gwladys, white and rigid, sat beside him. There was a silent embrace between the two women, but no sound broke the stillness except the heavy breathing of the motionless figure before them, and so the long hours passed on. In the afternoon Dr. Hughes once more came in, but only stood looking sorrowfully down at the sleeper. As the evening shadows drew on, for the November sun was near its setting, and the little room grew darker, Hugh began to move restlessly, while Gwladys and Mari watched anxiously. Suddenly he opened his eyes, and, in the first moment of awakening, made an attempt to change his position slightly; but a look of anguish overspread his face, and a sharp cry escaped his lips, as he fell back once more into motionless silence. Suddenly he called, "Ivor! Ivor Parry!" and quickly Ivor, who was now waiting below with Madlen, heard his own name, and hastened to the bedside. Evidently Hugh Morgan's life was fast ebbing away. Ivor was so overcome by the sight of his dying friend that for a few moments he could only stand speechless at the foot of the bed, until he heard again the broken voice which called him by name. Gwladys had flung herself down by the side of the bed, and with her face buried in the bedclothes, tried to control the heavy sobs which shook her frame. "Here I am, Hugh bâch!" said Ivor, bending over Hugh's prostrate form. "Art there, lad? Give me thine hand. Wilt forgive me, Ivor, for all the pain I have caused thee? 'Twas done in ignorance; say thou wilt forgive me, lad. Let us part friends, as we have always lived." "Oh, Hugh! I have nothing--nothing to forgive thee; only to be deeply grateful to thee. Thou hast filled my life with kindnesses, and above all, with thy friendship. I have not been worthy of it, but I have never wilfully done anything to betray it." "No," said Hugh; "we can meet on the other side with open brows--friends for ever, Ivor! Gwladys--thine hand! Lift my head a little without moving my body." And Mari, seeing that Gwladys was too overcome to move, passed her arm gently under his head. "That will do. Now I must make haste," and placing Gwladys' hand in Ivor's, he looked at him with serious but calm eyes. "Ivor, I leave her to thee; take care of her for my sake; thou know'st now my wishes. Fforwel, Ivor! I feel my life is going. Fforwel, Gwladys, my beloved child!" There was a long silence, only broken by the panting breath and Gwladys' sobs. Ivor had gently laid her hand on the coverlet, and retired once more to the foot of the bed. "Who is holding my head?" "'Tis me, Hugh--Mari Vone. Hast one word of fforwel for me?" "No," he said; "lean forward that I may see thy face, lass." Already his words came broken and disjointed. "Death is always a revealer, and I see everything plainly now. Mari, no fforwel to thee." Another long silence, while the face bleached visibly, and the dark eyelashes drooped on the waxen cheek. The lips moved, and stooping over him, Mari caught the words: "Torn sails, broken mast!" and something about "in port at last!" Breathlessly they waited for the end, when suddenly the eyes opened wide, and in clear though low tones, Hugh Morgan's voice was heard once more. "Mari," he said. "I am here; close to thee, Hugh anwl." "Come soon," and with these words his spirit took its flight. In a few days all that was mortal of Hugh Morgan was laid to rest in the little churchyard on the hill. Gwladys had completely succumbed to her sorrow, and she lay unconscious in the delirium of fever, while her husband's funeral left the house, thus escaping all the heart-searching accessories of a Welsh burial--the muffled tread of the crowd who assemble, the peculiar mournful monotone of the prayers, and above all, the wailing, sorrowful tones of the funeral hymn. In her absence, Ivor and Mari followed as chief mourners, and never in the memory of Mwntseison had there been so large a gathering. All that remained of poor Gwen was buried in the same little churchyard on the brow of the hill, where the sea winds swept over her grave and Hugh's alike. The seagulls flew over them both, and the harebells nodded over them, and no stranger passing by would have guessed the tragedy that connected the two graves. Gwladys lay long under the grasp of the fierce fever; but a healthy constitution and the vigour of youth at last conquered, and she came slowly back to consciousness and health. Meanwhile, life in Mwntseison had returned outwardly to its usual routine, though the death of the Mishteer caused a blank in the lives of his work-people which Time was slow to fill up. But there is no one who, leaving his place vacant, is irretrievably missed; another is ready to step into his place, and the wheels of life go on with unchangeable uniformity. Joshua Howels rebuilt the sail-shed, and once more the inhabitants of the village found their subsistence from their daily avocations there. The loss occasioned by the fire fell upon Gwladys; but, in spite of this, Mr. Lloyd, the lawyer, was able to announce to her the possession of a small, but sufficient, competence for one in her position in life. "His kindness reaches me still," she said. "Oh, mother, I wish I had been more worthy of it." "Everyone knows thou hast been a good wife," said Nani, but without looking at her daughter. She had an intuitive suspicion that the river of Gwladys and Hugh's married life had not flowed on unruffled; but she was a wise woman, and buried the knowledge, with many other secrets, in her tender heart. Gwladys had come home to live with her once more, and Joshua Howels had married, and gone to live in the Mishteer's old house. [1] Villain. [2] Woe is me. CHAPTER XVI. PEACE. Weeks and months slipped by, and when two years had passed away, the events connected with Hugh Morgan's death had been almost forgotten; only in some hearts their memory lived on, fresh and green, undimmed by the lapse of time. At Melin Berwen, Ivor Parry's life appeared to glide on in peaceful monotony. He was an industrious and honest miller, and business flowed in apace, so that his days were fully occupied, and it was only at night, when the mill wheel was silent, and he sat alone under the big chimney, smoking or reading, that his musings led him into sad memories of the past--of the close companionship and warm friendship, which had been broken so suddenly for him and the Mishteer. In the queer old mill kitchen, the evenings were always cosy; and Ivor Parry, like most of the peasantry, gathered much pleasure and satisfaction from the hours spent on his lonely hearth. There was always the country gossip gathered by Acsa from every stray caller at the mill, and retailed at night for his benefit, while she clattered about her work. Although they belonged to the same class, there was a fine discrimination in her nature, generally possessed by the Welsh peasant, which forbade her sitting down at the hearth with her master, unless requested, and even ordered to do so; and then the order would be obeyed in an awkward, shame-faced manner, and at the first opportunity she would break away with some excuse of a forgotten duty. In the course of the evening, Ivor would open the old glass bookcase which stood in the corner. It had been found there by Robert Owen when he entered the mill thirty years before, and left by him as impedimenta when Ivor took his place there. It was filled not only with account books and musty papers, but also contained the old books accumulated by two or three generations past: dog-eared, brown-leaved books of travel, of history, of biography, all of old-world interest, but which Ivor pored over with the thirst for knowledge which is so strong an element in Welsh life; and if the knowledge he gained was but crude and imperfect, still the pleasure he derived from his hour's reading was great. The only modern intelligence that reached the old mill came in the weekly newspaper and the yearly almanac, the latter being studied in Welsh cottages with great interest. "Are you hearing what I am saying, master?" Acsa would ask sometimes, when her rambling story had brought no response from Ivor; and he would close his book with a bang, and return to his everyday interests, and often to his sober musings and memories of the old sail-shed, and of his careless, happy life before his ill-fated visit to Aberython. He rejoiced to think that at last Hugh knew him as he was! And then came the memory of that last scene, when Hugh had placed Gwladys' hand in his, and the fierce strong desire of his life rose unquenched within him, that "some day," when time had softened her sorrow, she would remember her husband's dying wishes. He scarcely ever went to Mwntseison--it recalled too vividly to his mind the painful scenes of Hugh's death; and when he did go, it was no further than to Mari Vone's cottage. To her he felt irresistibly drawn, and though never a word passed between them on the subject of his love for Gwladys, or of hers for Hugh, yet both felt that between them existed the link of a mutual understanding. When the winter was over, and the earth was beginning to swell and burst with the throbbing of new life within her, even into the dusty mill the spring breezes carried suggestions of green things, Ivor began to walk in his sunny garden, which stretched along the side of the hill even to the edge of the cliffs. Here Acsa, in short petticoats and wooden shoes, was already beginning to dig the leek-bed, and in the corner, under the furze hedge, a clump of sweet violets sent up a fragrant greeting. Ivor paused and looked at them; he remembered seeing a posy of them once in Gwladys' bodice. Why should he not take her these? He had never seen her alone since Hugh's death, had never happened to meet her on the cliff or in the village, and even on Sundays he did not see her, for she and her mother had taken to the new chapel which had lately been built on the other side of the Gwendraeth. He gathered the violets slowly, adding green leaves, and tying them with a blade of long grass. "Yes, spring is coming, and this is a sunny garden," observed Acsa. "We shall have a fine bed of leeks here. Caton pawb! what are you going to do with those?" "I think, perhaps, Mari Vone would like them." "Shouldn't wonder, indeed," said Acsa. "She's an odd woman; there's pretty she is! They say God's blessing is upon her that she never grows old; and she's thirty-seven in May--that I know, because Mary, my sister's daughter, is the same age. She looks old enough to be Mari Vone's mother; 'tis very strange." Ivor pondered, as he went slowly over the cliffs, upon Mari Vone's unfading beauty. Latterly she had seemed to him fairer than ever, and even to grow younger as the days passed on. There was a light in her eyes, a happy smile on her lips, and her coils of golden hair looked more than ever like an angel's crown. "She is beautiful, no doubt," he thought, "with a beauty that reminds one more of heaven than earth. Mari's troubles have been changed to golden blessings, I think." She was busily laying the simple supper on the table when Ivor entered, 'n'wncwl Jos telling her one of his marvellous tales, punctuated with stumps of his wooden leg. "Hello, Ivor! come in; just in time for supper--cawl it is, too, my boy." "Oh, Ivor!" said Mari, coming to meet him, "there's sweet flowers. I always say it is such a shame there is no name for them--such a sweet smell!--but never mind, I love them well without a name." "In English they call them violets," said Ivor. "Vayolet, vayolet!--oh, it suits them well. I must share them with Gwladys." And placing them in a little mug of water, she made room for Ivor at the table. "How's all going on at Mwntseison?" he said at last. "Oh, just as usual," said Mari, with a smile. "Poor Lallo seems to be coming back to her cheery ways a little, though she looks much older; and Gwladys, too, is getting quite well and strong--she is busy in the garden every day now, and often she comes down to me. We like to sit together, Ivor, though we don't talk about the past--some things, thou know'st, are too sacred for words. But we understand each other, and love to sit silent, with our knitting and our thoughts." "Yes," was all his answer; but she knew he was grateful for her reference to Gwladys. "Wel wyr," said 'n'wncwl Jos, as she bolted the door after his departure, "thee and Ivor are such friends, perhaps thee'lt make a match of it after all." Mari sat down to laugh. "Oh, 'n'wncwl Jos!" she said, "will you never remember my age? I am ten years older than Ivor." "So thou art, so thou art, merch i; but upon my dear little deed, nobody would guess it." As the spring advanced, and the days lengthened, Mari frequently walked out over the cliffs to gather bracken for Peggi Pentraeth's donkey, sometimes going as far as the brow of the hill, from which she could look down at the old mill in the valley. At these times, Ivor, seeing her from below, would run up the sheep path to meet her, just for a word of news from Mwntseison--just in the hopes of hearing something of Gwladys. And Mari, who knew well what drew him towards her, and what lent wings to the vigorous steps with which he climbed the hill, would always reward him with some scrap of information. "Price Merthyr preached at Tan-y-groes Chapel last night, Ivor," she said one evening, as they walked slowly over the cliff together. "Gwladys and I went to hear him. Her mother questioned us close when we came home about the sermon; indeed, we remembered pretty well, both of us. There was the pwnc[1] after the sermon, and we stopped for that" (Ivor listened eagerly), "but not for the singing class, for, of course, Gwladys cannot join in that yet." "B'd siwr!" said Ivor, with a shake of his head, for he knew, and felt himself, that to join in the singing would look like disrespect to the Mishteer's memory; "as far as that goes, 'twas a long time before I could sing myself. The first tones of my voice brought the memory of Hugh Morgan to my mind, and the singing seemed to die away." "I cannot tell how it is," said Mari, "but I can sing. My heart seems strangely happy. It seems such a thin veil between us and Hugh, and life is so short! so very short at the utmost, it is not worth while mourning for anyone. But I must go. See those fishing boats going in? I must see if they have any fish for 'n'wncwl Jos's supper. Fforwel, Ivor!" and she waved her hand at parting. He looked after her as her tall, graceful figure was lost to view behind the broom bushes. "Jâr-i! she is a beautiful creature!" he thought. "How such a woman came to be born at Mwntseison I can't think!" And he trudged down the hill, whistling as he went, his thumbs in his armholes. At the mill door stood a small boy who had come up over the sands from Mwntseison, the tide being low at the time. "What is it?" said Ivor. "'Tis Eynon Bryneithin is wanting to know, can he send his corn to be ground to-morrow? He was coming up to see you himself, but he got a hurt on his foot coming over the rocks, and there he is now sitting at 'The Ship,' and there he will be sitting till Catrine turns him out to-night. She sent me up to tell you." "I will come back with thee and speak to him," said Ivor, "for I cannot grind his corn till Monday. There's Glasynys coming to-morrow, and Peutre-du next day," and Ivor took his way once more to the top of the cliff, accompanied by the boy. The sun was setting in crimson and gold behind the sea; the silver crescent moon rising above the upland fields; the sea-gulls were flying homewards overhead; and the little sea-crows quarrelled and cawed as they settled down to their nests on the sides of the cliff. The sea shimmered and rippled in the gorgeous colours of the sunset, and the soft evening air was laden with the scent of the furze, which spread its golden mantle over every grassy knoll. Even the boy was struck by the beauty of the scene. "'Tis a nice night," he said. "Brâf!" said Ivor, drawing in a long breath of the perfumed air. "What is that?" said the boy, pointing to something on the side of the path, a few yards in front of them. "'Tis a woman," said Ivor, "resting; tired, I suppose, poor thing!" But as he approached nearer his eyes took a troubled, anxious look. "Can it be Mari Vone? 'tis like her red petticoat." The boy ran on. "Yis, 'tis Mari Vone, asleep, I think." And Ivor hastened up to see a sight which in all the coming years he never forgot. Yes; 'twas Mari Vone who lay there, half reclining against the grassy hedge, her cheek resting upon her hand, her pillow a clump of harebells and wild thyme. Evidently she had thrown herself down to rest, and rest was depicted upon every feature of her face, and every curve of her figure; the white eyelids were closed, the waxen cheek was scarcely paler than usual, and on the lips was a smile of ineffable sweetness. "There's nice she looks!" said the boy, in an awed whisper, "like an angel!" "Yes," said Ivor, chafing her hands, "like an angel as she is. Go, run to the village and bring somebody here, and a sail to carry her." For there was no doubt about it, Mari Vone was dead. The heart had ceased to beat, and though she was still warm, and the fingers which Ivor rubbed and pressed were pliant as his own, he never doubted the fact; he knew that that gentle spirit had quitted the beautiful tenement in which it had lived for thirty-seven years; he knew that he should never more see it look out of those deep blue eyes, never hear it speak with that tongue now silent, and a flood of sorrow filled his heart. He sat beside her while the sun sank below the horizon; the grassy pillow upon which she lay shone with the burnished gold of its last rays, which threw also with its last kiss a rosy flush over Mari's face. Ivor gazed at her with something of the awe which the boy had felt. "Was it possible that this was death?" The sea sighed and whispered on the shore below, the evening breeze lifted the little stray curls of her golden hair. A thrush in a thorn-bush near sang its last song to the sinking sun; the flowers seemed to send up a stronger perfume as they bent and trembled in the sea-breeze; the clouds of gold and copper speckled the pale blue sky; everything in earth, sea, and sky seemed to speak of beauty and love, and in the next silent half-hour Ivor realised more vividly the nearness of things unseen than in his work-a-day life he had ever done before. When help came at last, he felt almost a pang of regret at being robbed of that lovely form, in whose presence he had experienced such a vision of peace and beauty. With hushed voices and silent tread the villagers approached, and with awe struck faces gazed at the silent form on the green sward. "There's beautiful--she's smiling!" said one. "She has reason to smile, I expect," said Joshua Howels, preparing to tenderly lift her, and place her in the improvised stretcher brought from the sail-shed. "'Tis the same sail that carried Hugh Morgan," he said; and solemnly and slowly they carried their light burden to her home. "There's pity! poor 'n'wncwl Jos and Gwladys Morgan are gone to Caer Madoc!" whispered one. "Wel, indeed, there's sad news for them, whatever!" "I hope she will alter before the funeral," said a sturdy sailor, who had helped to carry her in. "We won't like to bury her looking like that!" And the villagers crowded round to look at the familiar face, whose strange unearthly beauty struck even the children as something unusual. Lallo and Nani Price attended to the arrangements of the death chamber, allowing themselves to be persuaded by Ivor to leave on the body of his friend the clothes in which she died, instead of arraying her in the grandeur of a Sunday gown and the best clothes which she possessed. They were rather scandalised, and gave way only upon Ivor's pointing out to them how speckless and fresh they looked--how snowy the kerchief crossed on her bosom!--how beautiful the crown of golden hair!--how pretty the dainty, shiny shoes! "You could never make her look better!" "That's true, indeed, whatever," said Nani Price; "and, after all, Mari Vone was different to anybody else." "Caton pawb! yes," said Lallo; "never a speck nor a smot upon her! But _I_ would be sorry to be buried in anything but the clothes I go to meeting in, or a decent shroud." "Well," said Nani, closing the door softly, as they all left the room together, "Mwntseison will be no better than any other village, now that Mari Vone and Hugh Morgan have left it! Ivor Parry, wilt go and meet 'n'wncwl Jos and Gwladys and break the news to them?" "No," he said. "Go you, Nani fâch; it will come better from a tender woman than a hard man like me. I will go to Dr. Hughes. There must be a 'quest, I suppose." In less than a week Mari Vone was laid to rest in the little wind-swept churchyard on the hill; and none of the villagers seemed surprised when Gwladys expressed a wish that her grave should be dug close beside the Mishteer's. Their hearts had been too deeply moved for gossip, and they seemed to have been impressed with the reality of something beyond and behind the fleeting scenes of life. Later on, a simple white cross stood between their graves with the words: "In memory of Hugh Morgan (The Mishteer), who died November 18th, 18--, aged 45. And of his friend, Mari Vaughan, who died May 1st, 18--, aged 37. "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided." [1] A kind of catechism in which the preacher questions the people, who all answer in monotone. CHAPTER XVII. THE MILL IN THE MOONLIGHT. "Little I know of life By worldly joys begot, But the rapture well I know That dwells in a mountain cot; The glory that comes at eve, As I sit 'neath the elder tree, And watch the crimson sun Sink down behind the sea." --Ceiriog. Another year had passed over the simple village, whose history we have hitherto followed, unmarked by anything more than the ordinary events of daily life. A golden harvest had been gathered on the uplands, and the herring fishing had been unprecedentedly plentiful. The work at the sail-shed was once more in full swing, and Mwntseison was peaceful and contented. Over the cottage fires in the evening, when the peat burnt brightly, and the "uwd" simmered in the iron crock, the events connected with the Mishteer's and Mari Vone's deaths were frequently the subjects of conversation; but Gwladys' connection with them seemed gradually forgotten. She was amongst them still, and had dropped so naturally into her old place of Nani Price's daughter that her marriage was seldom called to mind. She was well content that it should be so, for into the even flow of her innocent life it had only brought a sorrowful "troubling of the waters," from the memory of which she shrank with a self-upbraiding regret, and she never by word or deed alluded to the past. Her simple, guileless nature was already throwing off the clouds that had darkened her life; a tide of youthful vigour and joy ran full in her veins; Nature asserted her right to be happy, and she seemed to grow in beauty as the days sped on. True, a pensive look often crossed her face, but it rather added to, than detracted from, the charm of her expression. She gradually took up all her old habits--tossing the hay in the hay-fields; binding the sheaves in the corn-fields; singing at her work in the garden; and still carrying her creel to the beds of laver, to the great relief of Nance Owen, who grew more infirm with advancing years. "There's good she is to me, calon fâch!"[1] she would say. "As isel[2] as ever! You would never guess she had money in the bank." Indeed, "the money in the bank" was little more than a myth to Gwladys. Mr. Lloyd, the lawyer, looked after her affairs with great interest, and the respect which every Welshman feels for those who will not touch their capital. He sent Gwladys her dividends regularly; but the blue envelope which brought them was always an anxious mystery to the simple girl, and its receipt was invariably followed by a journey to Caer Madoc in Peggi Pentraeth's donkey-cart, where, having deposited the money in the bank, she and her mother returned with lightened hearts, feeling very rich with a few sovereigns in their pockets. 'N'wncwl Jos generally drove them on these occasions, managing to receive his "pinshwn" on the same day. The journey was always kept a dead secret beforehand, for "who knew but that a donkey-cart bearing two such wealthy people as Gwladys and 'n'wncwl Jos might not be waylaid, and its occupants robbed on the road." Not that any inhabitant of the village would do such a thing! but stray sailors from far-off ports _did_ sometimes find their way to Mwntseison, and English tramps often passed through in their wanderings. 'N'wncwl Jos had found a comfortable resting-place for his latter years, for Lallo had come forward with kindly offers of hospitality. "Come and live with me and Siencyn," she had said, when on his return from Mari's funeral, the old man had begun to look mournfully around him. "Thou wilt be company for Siencyn when he comes home, and when he is away thou canst help me with that andras of a pig, for he wants a firm hand over him." "Oh, he'll get that," said 'n'wncwl Jos, "if I come to live with you; and a firm leg, too, if he doesn't behave." And so it was settled, and Lallo found something to occupy her time and thoughts; and the old man, though he lost much of his jocularity, regained by degrees his old cheerfulness, and spent much of his time with Nani Price and Gwladys. He was always a welcome guest, not only because of his connection with Mari, but that sometimes he rowed up to Traeth Berwen, and stumped up as far as the old mill to see Ivor Parry. "Jâr-i! Ivor is getting on," he said one evening, while Gwladys, at her work, listened with fluttering heart. "He's getting a reg'lar jolly miller; and there's beautiful cwrw Acsa brews! without my secret, too. But his heart is at Mwntseison still, though so many friends are gone from here. There's questions he asks me. 'How is Josh Howels?' he sez. 'And how is Nani Price and her daughter?' "'Oh, quite well,' sez I; 'and Gwladys is as ugly as ever.'" Gwladys smiled pensively. "'How is it you never come up to see us at Mwntseison?' sez I; and he didn't answer, but looked up after the smoke to the chimney." A few evenings after this conversation Gwladys took her way over the cliffs which stretched at the back of the sail-shed towards the valley of the Berwen. She was bent on the same kindly errand that had frequently taken Mari Vone on this path, namely, to gather ferns for Peggi Pentraeth's donkey. She never went more than half-way to Traeth Berwen, partly shrinking from passing the grassy mound on which her friend had breathed her last, alone and unattended, and, moreover, a little proud reserve withheld her footsteps. If she went further than half-way, Berwen mill would be in sight, and perhaps she might be seen from the mill. Not for worlds will a well-brought-up Welsh girl give her lover a shadow of reason to think that she is seeking him. She is not slow to respond to advances on his part, but will never make any of her own. So she turned down a cleft in the cliffs, and gathered her baich[3] of green and golden bracken, and, tying it into shape with a strong cord, sat down upon it for a moment to watch the setting sun before she slung it on her back. Behind her the rounded hills rose brown and flushed in the sunset light; around her the rushes whispered in the evening breeze, the green sward glowed in the sun's last rays, and every nodding flower caught its crimson light. The sea murmured on the rocks below, the floating sea-gulls still rose and fell on the heaving waters, and though it was late autumn, a calm, serene beauty brooded over land and sea, as though summer had returned with a last lingering good-bye. Gwladys sat and watched the fading tints, filled with tender memories of the past, not unmixed with an awakening flood of hope in the future; not untinged, too, with a feeling of resentment against Ivor, who had been very chary of his visits to Mwntseison of late. She had been thankful to him at first for his avoidance of her; it spared her so much embarrassment. But latterly, the longing to see him again had grown upon her, and the old haunting hunger for his love was again rising within her--not that it had ever died, nor even slept, but that it had been repressed and buried under the sad events through which she had passed. But now she was evidently loosening the bonds which had kept it in check, for it rose again within her, and threatened once more to flow in upon her in waves of unrest. True, she had sometimes met her old lover on the way to and from chapel, or market, or fair, but never alone, and always Ivor had been calm and undemonstrative. "Had he forgotten her?" she wondered. "Had the years brought him submission and indifference. She was still so young--only twenty-three. It was no wonder if that pensive curve of the lips and that moisture in the brown eyes betokened a little wistful rebelling against fate. Why! why should she not be happy? Why did Ivor so persistently avoid her?" and so lost was she in her own thoughts, that she did not hear a footstep which passed along the path above her. It was Ivor Parry, sauntering up from the mill with the intention of paying one of his infrequent visits to Mwntseison. He had longed latterly more and more for a sight of Gwladys, and he chafed under the restraints which he had placed upon himself, and the proprieties of village life which kept them apart. But surely here she was close beside him! every barrier removed from his path! no moral restraint to be fought with, as of old! nothing to prevent their intercourse! The suddenness and greatness of the thought took his breath away, and though, with a man's impetuosity, he never hesitated to grasp the opportunity, still the strong man trembled as he approached the unconscious girl. "Gwladys!" he said at last, and in a moment she had started to her feet, the rich blood surging over neck, cheek, and brow. "Ivor!" was all her answer. And then, with the ridiculous combination of the commonplace and the romantic, their first embarrassed words were the usual remarks upon the weather. "'Tis tewi brâf!" said Gwladys, who was the first to recover self-possession. "Brâf, indeed!" said Ivor. "Wilt not sit down again?" But she hesitated. "Come!" he said, arranging the bundle of fern; "and will I sit by thy side?" "Oh, I don't know," said Gwladys, looking round, as if for inspiration. "Yes," said Ivor, laughing at her embarrassment; "look round at earth, sea, and sky, and see if thou canst find a reason why I should not sit on this bank beside thee?" "Well, indeed, I suppose there isn't one whatever," she answered, laughing, and sitting down on the furze again, while Ivor stretched himself on the grass beside her. Both felt the enchantment of the hour, and both endeavoured to relieve the tension by falling into a commonplace remark. But what was the matter with the sea to-night? that in every pause of the conversation it sent up whisperings and murmurings, that bore in their tones such personal suggestions to both Ivor and Gwladys! They could distinctly hear the dash of the waves on Traeth-y-daran, and in both their hearts arose the memory of the night they had spent together there. A bright star followed in the wake of the sun, and though Ivor only said, "'Tis a fair sunset, and promises another fine day," to which she smilingly assented, yet in the hearts of both arose the memory of the star whose setting they had watched together. Yes, though not a word of love was spoken between them, for Ivor still feared to startle his companion by a too sudden change of manner, still both felt that the barriers were down, that the cold wall of separation was broken, and that once more the tide of love was flowing full towards them. At last, when the evening breeze grew colder, and warned them they must part, there came a louder swish from the waves below, and Gwladys, with drooping eyes, said: "I don't forget what thou didst for me in the storm down there, Ivor. I have never thanked thee, oh, no! but it is all here," and she laid her hand on her heart. "There is no need, lass. Between me and thee there is no need for words, we have gone through too many bitter things together not to understand each other now." "Yes, indeed!" was all her answer; and, with great relief, from that hour she put away from her all that was bitter in the memory of the past, and began to make room in her soul for the flowers of hope that were springing up within her. "Well, good-night, lass. I have had a happy hour--and thou?" "Well, yes, I suppose indeed," was all she answered; but it was accompanied with such a happy smile that Ivor seemed quite content, and astonished Acsa by entering the mill yard with a merry song on his lips. This night's meeting was the prelude to many more on the cliffs, on the shore, or on the bay, and when the winter came in real earnest, Ivor's visits to Mwntseison were of very frequent occurrence. One evening in the early spring he walked again in the mill garden, and sought and found under the furze hedge a bunch of sweet violets, which he gathered before he took his way up the side of the hill to meet Gwladys. "Vayolettes! vayolettes!" he thought. "Mari Vone was right, the name does suit them." And as Gwladys pinned them into her bodice, he was reminded of the sea-pinks which he had snatched from the table while 'n'wncwl Jos lay ill in his bed, and which he still treasured between the pages of one of the old brown books in the mill bookcase. He would have told her of the incident had not a tender regard for Hugh's memory made him hesitate to speak of anything which should contrast their present freedom with the restraint of their former meetings. Backwards and forwards over the velvet turf at the top of the cliffs they roamed together, the hours passing by unheeded, until, as they reached the green mound, now lying bathed in the silver moonlight, which they had named "Mari's pillow," Gwladys said: "I must not go further, or my mother will be bolting the door." "Wilt not come to the brow of the hill, 'tis only a little further, and I have something to show thee there." And she made no demur, but continued her walk to the edge of the hill, which sloped down to the valley of the Berwen. The little river gurgled and whispered in the moonlight, as it ran below them on its way to the sea. "We can hear the Berwen from here," said Gwladys; "but what hast to show me, Ivor?" "Only the mill!" said he, pointing across the valley to where the old mill stood by the noisy little stream. It was a picture of rural beauty as it stood there, like a grey sentinel at the opening of the valley. Landwards, the cwm gradually closed in, where the thick woods grew down to the water's edge; between them the old church, the home of the white owls, which made the glen their hunting ground, was dimly visible through the haze, the mill itself showing clear and sharp, with its silvered points and dark shadows, its ivy-covered gables well defined in the moonlight. There was a firelight glow in the broad kitchen window, and the smoke curled up from the grey stone chimney. "Only the mill!" said Ivor again. "Yes, there's pretty it is in the moonlight! and there's nice things the river is saying down there!" "Yes, 'tis a pretty home; but lonely, lass--lonely for me; wilt not come and brighten it, Gwladys? Think how long I have waited; think how much I have suffered--and thee, too! Come, Gwladys, come to the mill with me! Come, f'anwylyd, I have not hurried thee; but every week has seemed a month lately and every month a year! Is there any reason in earth or heaven why we should not be married now? Why art so silent, Gwladys?" "Only, Ivor, I am wondering can it be that there is so much happiness in store for me and thee?" "Yes," said Ivor, in a loud, determined tone, "there is love and happiness in store for us, if thou wilt only give thyself to me. Come and be the mistress of the old mill, f'anwylyd; come and be the queen and idol of my heart, as thou hast always been! When will we be married? To-morrow?" "Caton pawb, Ivor, thou art taking my breath away." "Next week, then?" "Well, indeed, it will only be on one condition," and she held up her finger playfully. "Oh, listen to her," said Ivor delightedly, "she's beginning to lay down the law already; and what conditions does my queen enforce?" and taking off his hat he made her a sweeping bow. "Well, 'tis this," said Gwladys; "there must be no wedding--I mean--only thee and me, Ivor." "What! not the parson?" "Oh, of course, fwlcyn dwl; but no one else." "Agreed!" said Ivor. "And no one at Mwntseison must know about it, only mother." "Agreed!" said Ivor again. "And why must we have no one at our wedding, fanwylyd?" "There will be two there indeed, I think," she said, the merry dimples giving place to a more serious, though happy smile. Ivor looked at her for a moment inquiringly. "Dost mean Hugh and Mari Vone?" She nodded. "'Tis a beautiful thought indeed, lass; and why not? and thou art right, Gwladys, 'twould be hard indeed to find fit company for them." And so it was settled between them; and in the old mill by the Berwen, Ivor and Gwladys found in the long years to come that happiness, so long delayed and waited for, is sometimes found even on earth! [1] Dear heart. [2] Without pride. [3] Bundle. THE END 
55989	----	CELTIC FOLKLORE WELSH AND MANX BY JOHN RHYS, M.A., D.Litt. HON. LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH PROFESSOR OF CELTIC PRINCIPAL OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD VOLUME II OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS MDCCCCI CHAPTER VII TRIUMPHS OF THE WATER-WORLD Une des légendes les plus répandues en Bretagne est celle d'une prétendue ville d'Is, qui, à une époque inconnue, aurait été engloutie par la mer. On montre, à divers endroits de la côte, l'emplacement de cette cité fabuleuse, et les pécheurs vous en font d'étranges récits. Les jours de tempête, assurent-ils, on voit, dans les creux des vagues, le sommet des flèches de ses églises; les jours de calme, on entend monter de l'abîme le son de ses cloches, modulant l'hymne du jour.--Renan. More than once in the last chapter was the subject of submersions and cataclysms brought before the reader, and it may be convenient to enumerate here the most remarkable cases, and to add one or two to their number, as well as to dwell at somewhat greater length on some instances which may be said to have found their way into Welsh literature. He has already been told of the outburst of the Glasfryn Lake (p. 367) and Ffynnon Gywer (p. 376), of Llyn Llech Owen (p. 379) and the Crymlyn (p. 191), also of the drowning of Cantre'r Gwaelod (p. 383); not to mention that one of my informants had something to say (p. 219) of the submergence of Caer Arianrhod, a rock now visible only at low water between Celynnog Fawr and Dinas Dinlle, on the coast of Arfon. But, to put it briefly, it is an ancient belief in the Principality that its lakes generally have swallowed up habitations of men, as in the case of Llyn Syfadon (p. 73) and the Pool of Corwrion (p. 57). To these I now proceed to add other instances, to wit those of Bala Lake, Kenfig Pool, Llynclys, and Helig ab Glannog's territory including Traeth Lafan. Perhaps it is best to begin with historical events, namely those implied in the encroachment of the sea and the sand on the coast of Glamorganshire, from the Mumbles, in Gower, to the mouth of the Ogmore, below Bridgend. It is believed that formerly the shores of Swansea Bay were from three to five miles further out than the present strand, and the oyster dredgers point to that part of the bay which they call the Green Grounds, while trawlers, hovering over these sunken meadows of the Grove Island, declare that they can sometimes see the foundations of the ancient homesteads overwhelmed by a terrific storm which raged some three centuries ago. The old people sometimes talk of an extensive forest called Coed Arian, 'Silver Wood,' stretching from the foreshore of the Mumbles to Kenfig Burrows, and there is a tradition of a long-lost bridle path used by many generations of Mansels, Mowbrays, and Talbots, from Penrice Castle to Margam Abbey. All this is said to be corroborated by the fishing up every now and then in Swansea Bay of stags' antlers, elks' horns, those of the wild ox, and wild boars' tusks, together with the remains of other ancient tenants of the submerged forest. Various references in the registers of Swansea and Aberavon mark successive stages in the advance of the desolation from the latter part of the fifteenth century down. Among others a great sandstorm is mentioned, which overwhelmed the borough of Cynffig or Kenfig, and encroached on the coast generally: the series of catastrophes seems to have culminated in an inundation caused by a terrible tidal wave in the early part of the year 1607 [1]. To return to Kenfig, what remains of that old town is near the sea, and it is on all sides surrounded by hillocks of finely powdered sand and flanked by ridges of the same fringing the coast. The ruins of several old buildings half buried in the sand peep out of the ground, and in the immediate neighbourhood is Kenfig Pool, which is said to have a circumference of nearly two miles. When the pool formed itself I have not been able to discover: from such accounts as have come in my way I should gather that it is older than the growing spread of the sand, but the island now to be seen in it is artificial and of modern make [2]. The story relating to the lake is given as follows in the volume of the Iolo Manuscripts, p. 194, and the original, from which I translate, is crisp, compressed, and, as I fancy, in Iolo's own words:-- 'A plebeian was in love with Earl Clare's daughter: she would not have him as he was not wealthy. He took to the highway, and watched the agent of the lord of the dominion coming towards the castle from collecting his lord's money. He killed him, took the money, and produced the coin, and the lady married him. A splendid banquet was held: the best men of the country were invited, and they made as merry as possible. On the second night the marriage was consummated, and when happiest one heard a voice: all ear one listened and caught the words, "Vengeance comes, vengeance comes, vengeance comes," three times. One asked, "When?" "In the ninth generation (âch)," said the voice. "No reason for us to fear," said the married pair; "we shall be under the mould long before." They lived on, however, and a goresgynnyd, that is to say, a descendant of the sixth direct generation, was born to them, also to the murdered man a goresgynnyd, who, seeing that the time fixed was come, visited Kenfig. This was a discreet youth of gentle manners, and he looked at the city and its splendour, and noted that nobody owned a furrow or a chamber there except the offspring of the murderer: he and his wife were still living. At cockcrow he heard a cry, "Vengeance is come, is come, is come." It is asked, "On whom?" and answered, "On him who murdered my father of the ninth âch." He rises in terror: he goes towards the city; but there is nothing to see save a large lake with three chimney tops above the surface emitting smoke that formed a stinking.... [3] On the face of the waters the gloves of the murdered man float to the young man's feet: he picks them up, and sees on them the murdered man's name and arms; and he hears at dawn of day the sound of praise to God rendered by myriads joining in heavenly music. And so the story ends.' On this coast is another piece of water in point, namely Crymlyn, or 'Crumlin Pool,' now locally called the Bog. It appears also to have been sometimes called Pwll Cynan, after the name of a son of Rhys ab Tewdwr, who, in his flight after his father's defeat on Hirwaen Wrgan, was drowned in its waters [4]. It lies on Lord Jersey's estate, at a distance of about one mile east of the mouth of the Tawe, and about a quarter of a mile from high-water mark, from which it is separated by a strip of ground known in the neighbourhood as Crymlyn Burrows. The name Crymlyn means Crooked Lake, which, I am told, describes the shape of this piece of water. When the bog becomes a pool it encloses an island consisting of a little rocky hillock showing no trace of piles, or walling, or any other handiwork of man [5]. The story about this pool also is that it covers a town buried beneath its waters. Mr. Wirt Sikes' reference to it has already been mentioned, and I have it on the evidence of a native of the immediate neighbourhood, that he has often heard his father and grandfather talk about the submerged town. Add to this that Cadrawd, to whom I have had already (pp. 23, 376) to acknowledge my indebtedness, speaks in the columns of the South Wales Daily News for February 15, 1899, of Crymlyn as follows:-- 'It was said by the old people that on the site of this bog once stood the old town of Swansea, and that in clear and calm weather the chimneys and even the church steeple could be seen at the bottom of the lake, and in the loneliness of the night the bells were often heard ringing in the lake. It was also said that should any person happen to stand with his face towards the lake when the wind is blowing across the lake, and if any of the spray of that water should touch his clothes, it would be only with the greatest difficulty he could save himself from being attracted or sucked into the water. The lake was at one time much larger than at present. The efforts made to drain it have drawn a good deal of the water from it, but only to convert it into a bog, which no one can venture to cross except in exceptionally dry seasons or hard frost.' On this I wish to remark in passing, that, while common sense would lead one to suppose that the wind blowing across the water would help the man facing it to get away whenever he chose, the reasoning here is of another order, one characteristic in fact of the ways and means of sympathetic magic. For specimens in point the reader may be conveniently referred to page 360, where he may compare the words quoted from Mr. Hartland, especially as to the use there mentioned of stones or pellets thrown from one's hands. In the case of Crymlyn, the wind blowing off the face of the water into the onlooker's face and carrying with it some of the water in the form of spray which wets his clothes, howsoever little, was evidently regarded as establishing a link of connexion between him and the body of the water--or shall I say rather, between him and the divinity of the water?--and that this link was believed to be so strong that it required the man's utmost effort to break it and escape being drawn in and drowned like Cynan. The statement, supremely silly as it reads, is no modern invention; for one finds that Nennius--or somebody else--reasoned in precisely the same way, except that for a single onlooker he substitutes a whole army of men and horses, and that he points the antithesis by distinctly stating, that if they kept their backs turned to the fascinating flood they would be out of danger. The conditions which he had in view were, doubtless, that the men should face the water and have their clothing more or less wetted by the spray from it. The passage (§ 69) to which I refer is in the Mirabilia, and Geoffrey of Monmouth is found to repeat it in a somewhat better style of Latin (ix. 7): the following is the Nennian version:-- Aliud miraculum est, id est Oper Linn Liguan. Ostium fluminis illius fluit in Sabrina et quando Sabrina inundatur ad sissam, et mare inundatur similiter in ostio supra dicti fluminis et in stagno ostii recipitur in modum voraginis et mare non vadit sursum et est litus juxta flumen et quamdiu Sabrina inundatur ad sissam, istud litus non tegitur et quando recedit mare et Sabrina, tunc Stagnum Liuan eructat omne quod devoravit de mari et litus istud tegitur et instar montis in una unda eructat et rumpit. Et si fuerit exercitus totius regionis, in qua est, et direxerit faciem contra undam, et exercitum trahit unda per vim humore repletis vestibus et equi similiter trahuntur. Si autem exercitus terga versus fuerit contra eam, non nocet ei unda. 'There is another wonder, to wit Aber Llyn Lliwan. The water from the mouth of that river flows into the Severn, and when the Severn is in flood up to its banks, and when the sea is also in flood at the mouth of the above-named river and is sucked in like a whirlpool into the pool of the Aber, the sea does not go on rising: it leaves a margin of beach by the side of the river, and all the time the Severn is in flood up to its bank, that beach is not covered. And when the sea and the Severn ebb, then Llyn Lliwan brings up all it had swallowed from the sea, and that beach is covered while Llyn Lliwan discharges its contents in one mountain-like wave and vomits forth. Now if the army of the whole district in which this wonder is, were to be present with the men facing the wave, the force of it would, once their clothes are drenched by the spray, draw them in, and their horses would likewise be drawn. But if the men should have their backs turned towards the water, the wave would not harm them [6].' One story about the formation of Bala Lake, or Llyn Tegid [7] as it is called in Welsh, has been given at p. 376: here is another which I translate from a version in Hugh Humphreys' Llyfr Gwybodaeth Gyffredinol (Carnarvon), second series, vol. i, no. 2, p. 1. I may premise that the contributor, whose name is not given, betrays a sort of literary ambition which has led him to relate the story in a confused fashion; and among other things he uses the word edifeirwch, 'repentance,' throughout, instead of dial, 'vengeance.' With that correction it runs somewhat as follows:--Tradition relates that Bala Lake is but the watery tomb of the palaces of iniquity; and that some old boatmen can on quiet moonlight nights in harvest see towers in ruins at the bottom of its waters, and also hear at times a feeble voice saying, Dial a daw, dial a daw, 'Vengeance will come'; and another voice inquiring, Pa bryd y daw, 'When will it come?' Then the first voice answers, Yn y dryded genhedlaeth, 'In the third generation.' Those voices were but a recollection over oblivion, for in one of those palaces lived in days of yore an oppressive and cruel prince, corresponding to the well-known description of one of whom it is said, 'Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive.' The oppression and cruelty practised by him on the poor farmers were notorious far and near. This prince, while enjoying the morning breezes of summer in his garden, used frequently to hear a voice saying, 'Vengeance will come.' But he always laughed the threat away with reckless contempt. One night a poor harper from the neighbouring hills was ordered to come to the prince's palace. On his way the harper was told that there was great rejoicing at the palace at the birth of the first child of the prince's son. When he had reached the palace the harper was astonished at the number of the guests, including among them noble lords, princes, and princesses: never before had he seen such splendour at any feast. When he had begun playing the gentlemen and ladies dancing presented a superb appearance. So the mirth and wine abounded, nor did he love playing for them any more than they loved dancing to the music of his harp. But about midnight, when there was an interval in the dancing, and the old harper had been left alone in a corner, he suddenly heard a voice singing in a sort of a whisper in his ear, 'Vengeance, vengeance!' He turned at once, and saw a little bird hovering above him and beckoning him, as it were, to follow him. He followed the bird as fast as he could, but after getting outside the palace he began to hesitate. But the bird continued to invite him on, and to sing in a plaintive and mournful voice the word 'Vengeance, vengeance!' The old harper was afraid of refusing to follow, and so they went on over bogs and through thickets, whilst the bird was all the time hovering in front of him and leading him along the easiest and safest paths. But if he stopped for a moment the same mournful note of 'Vengeance, vengeance!' would be sung to him in a more and more plaintive and heartbreaking fashion. They had by this time reached the top of the hill, a considerable distance from the palace. As the old harper felt rather fatigued and weary, he ventured once more to stop and rest, but he heard the bird's warning voice no more. He listened, but he heard nothing save the murmuring of the little burn hard by. He now began to think how foolish he had been to allow himself to be led away from the feast at the palace: he turned back in order to be there in time for the next dance. As he wandered on the hill he lost his way, and found himself forced to await the break of day. In the morning, as he turned his eyes in the direction of the palace, he could see no trace of it: the whole tract below was one calm, large lake, with his harp floating on the face of the waters. Next comes the story of Llynclys Pool in the neighbourhood of Oswestry. That piece of water is said to be of extraordinary depth, and its name means the 'swallowed court.' The village of Llynclys is called after it, and the legend concerning the pool is preserved in verses printed among the compositions of the local poet, John F. M. Dovaston, who published his works in 1825. The first stanza runs thus:-- Clerk Willin he sat at king Alaric's board, And a cunning clerk was he; For he'd lived in the land of Oxenford With the sons of Grammarie. How much exactly of the poem comes from Dovaston's own muse, and how much comes from the legend, I cannot tell. Take for instance the king's name, this I should say is not derived from the story; but as to the name of the clerk, that possibly is, for the poet bases it on Croes-Willin, the Welsh form of which has been given me as Croes-Wylan, that is Wylan's Cross, the name of the base of what is supposed to have been an old cross, a little way out of Oswestry on the north side; and I have been told that there is a farm in the same neighbourhood called Tre' Wylan, 'Wylan's Stead.' To return to the legend, Alaric's queen was endowed with youth and beauty, but the king was not happy; and when he had lived with her nine years he told Clerk Willin how he first met her when he was hunting 'fair Blodwell's rocks among.' He married her on the condition that she should be allowed to leave him one night in every seven, and this she did without his once knowing whither she went on the night of her absence. Clerk Willin promised to restore peace to the king if he would resign the queen to him, and a tithe annually of his cattle and of the wine in his cellar to him and the monks of the White Minster. The king consented, and the wily clerk hurried away with his book late at night to the rocks by the Giant's Grave, where there was an ogo' or cave which was supposed to lead down to Faery. While the queen was inside the cave, he began his spells and made it irrevocable that she should be his, and that his fare should be what fed on the king's meadow and what flowed in his cellar. When the clerk's potent spells forced the queen to meet him to consummate his bargain with the king, what should he behold but a grim ogress, who told him that their spells had clashed. She explained to him how she had been the king's wife for thirty years, and how the king began to be tired of her wrinkles and old age. Then, on condition of returning to the Ogo to be an ogress one night in seven, she was given youth and beauty again, with which she attracted the king anew. In fact, she had promised him happiness Till within his hall the flag-reeds tall And the long green rushes grow. The ogress continued in words which made the clerk see how completely he had been caught in his own net: Then take thy bride to thy cloistered bed, As by oath and spell decreed, And nought be thy fare but the pike and the dare, And the water in which they feed. The clerk had succeeded in restoring peace at the king's banqueting board, but it was the peace of the dead; For down went the king, and his palace and all, And the waters now o'er it flow, And already in his hall do the flag-reeds tall And the long green rushes grow. But the visitor will, Dovaston says, find Willin's peace relieved by the stories which the villagers have to tell of that wily clerk, of Croes-Willin, and of 'the cave called the Grim Ogo'; not to mention that when the lake is clear, they will show you the towers of the palace below, the Llynclys, which the Brython of ages gone by believed to be there. We now come to a different story about this pool, namely, one which has been preserved in Latin by the historian Humfrey Lhuyd, or Humphrey Llwyd, to the following effect:-- 'After the description of Gwynedh, let vs now come to Powys, the seconde kyngedome of VVales, which in the time of German Altisiodorensis [St. Germanus of Auxerre], which preached sometime there, agaynst Pelagius Heresie: was of power, as is gathered out of his life. The kynge wherof, as is there read, bycause he refused to heare that good man: by the secret and terrible iudgement of God, with his Palace, and all his householde: was swallowed vp into the bowels of the Earth, in that place, whereas, not farre from Oswastry, is now a standyng water, of an vnknowne depth, called Lhunclys, that is to say: the deuouryng of the Palace. And there are many Churches founde in the same Province, dedicated to the name of German [8].' I have not succeeded in finding the story in any of the lives of St. Germanus, but Nennius, § 32, mentions a certain Benli, whom he describes as rex iniquus atque tyrannus valde, who, after refusing to admit St. Germanus and his following into his city, was destroyed with all his courtiers, not by water, however, but by fire from heaven. But the name Benli, in modern Welsh spelling Benlli [9], points to the Moel Famau range of mountains, one of which is known as Moel Fenlli, between Ruthin and Mold, rather than to any place near Oswestry. In any case there is no reason to suppose that this story with its Christian and ethical motive is anything like so old as the substratum of Dovaston's verses. The only version known to me in the Welsh language of the Llynclys legend is to be found printed in the Brython for 1863, p. 338, and it may be summarized as follows:--The Llynclys family were notorious for their riotous living, and at their feasts a voice used to be heard proclaiming, 'Vengeance is coming, coming,' but nobody took it much to heart. However, one day a reckless maid asked the voice, 'When?' The prompt reply was to the effect that it was in the sixth generation: the voice was heard no more. So one night, when the sixth heir in descent from the time of the warning last heard was giving a great drinking feast, and music had been vigorously contributing to the entertainment of host and guest, the harper went outside for a breath of air; but when he turned to come back, lo and behold! the whole court had disappeared. Its place was occupied by a quiet piece of water, on whose waves he saw his harp floating, nothing more. Here must, lastly, be added one more legend of submergence, namely, that supposed to have taken place some time or other on the north coast of Carnarvonshire. In the Brython for 1863, pp. 393-4, we have what purports to be a quotation from Owen Jones' Aberconwy a'i Chyffiniau, 'Conway and its Environs,' a work which I have not been able to find. Here one reads of a tract of country supposed to have once extended from the Gogarth [10], 'the Great Orme,' to Bangor, and from Llanfair Fechan to Ynys Seiriol, 'Priestholme or Puffin Island,' and of its belonging to a wicked prince named Helig ab Glannawc or Glannog [11], from whom it was called Tyno Helig, 'Helig's Hollow.' Tradition, the writer says, fixes the spot where the court stood about halfway between Penmaen Mawr and Pen y Gogarth, 'the Great Orme's Head,' over against Trwyn yr Wylfa; and the story relates that here a calamity had been foretold four generations before it came, namely as the vengeance of Heaven on Helig ab Glannog for his nefarious impiety. As that ancient prince rode through his fertile heritage one day at the approach of night, he heard the voice of an invisible follower warning him that 'Vengeance is coming, coming.' The wicked old prince once asked excitedly, 'When?' The answer was, 'In the time of thy grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and their children.' Peradventure Helig calmed himself with the thought, that, if such a thing came, it would not happen in his lifetime. But on the occasion of a great feast held at the court, and when the family down to the fifth generation were present taking part in the festivities, one of the servants noticed, when visiting the mead cellar to draw more drink, that water was forcing its way in. He had only time to warn the harper of the danger he was in, when all the others, in the midst of their intoxication, were overwhelmed by the flood. These inundation legends have many points of similarity among themselves: thus in those of Llynclys, Syfadon, Llyn Tegid, and Tyno Helig, though they have a ring of austerity about them, the harper is a favoured man, who always escapes when the banqueters are all involved in the catastrophe. The story, moreover, usually treats the submerged habitations as having sunk intact, so that the ancient spires and church towers may still at times be seen: nay the chimes of their bells may be heard by those who have ears for such music. In some cases there may have been, underlying the legend, a trace of fact such as has been indicated to me by Mr. Owen M. Edwards, of Lincoln College, in regard to Bala Lake. When the surface of that water, he says, is covered with broken ice, and a south-westerly wind is blowing, the mass of fragments is driven towards the north-eastern end near the town of Bala; and he has observed that the friction produces a somewhat metallic noise which a quick imagination may convert into something like a distant ringing of bells. Perhaps the most remarkable instance remains to be mentioned: I refer to Cantre'r Gwaelod, as the submerged country of Gwydno Garanhir is termed, see p. 382 above. To one portion of his fabled realm the nearest actual centres of population are Aberdovey and Borth on either side of the estuary of the Dovey. As bursar of Jesus College I had business in 1892 in the Golden Valley of Herefordshire, and I stayed a day or two at Dorstone enjoying the hospitality of the rectory, and learning interesting facts from the rector, Mr. Prosser Powell, and from Mrs. Powell in particular, as to the folklore of the parish, which is still in several respects very Welsh. Mrs. Powell, however, did not confine herself to Dorstone or the Dore Valley, for she told me as follows:--'I was at Aberdovey in 1852, and I distinctly remember that my childish imagination was much excited by the legend of the city beneath the sea, and the bells which I was told might be heard at night. I used to lie awake trying, but in vain, to catch the echoes of the chime. I was only seven years old, and cannot remember who told me the story, though I have never forgotten it.' Mrs. Powell added that she has since heard it said, that at a certain stage of the tide at the mouth of the Dovey, the way in which the waves move the pebbles makes them produce a sort of jingling noise which has been fancied to be the echo of distant bells ringing. These clues appeared too good to be dropped at once, and the result of further inquiries led Mrs. Powell afterwards to refer me to The Monthly Packet for the year 1859, where I found an article headed 'Aberdovey Legends,' and signed M. B., the initials, Mrs. Powell thought, of Miss Bramston of Winchester. The writer gives a sketch of the story of the country overflowed by the neighbouring portion of Cardigan Bay, mentioning, p. 645, that once on a time there were great cities on the banks of the Dovey and the Disynni. 'Cities with marble wharfs,' she says, 'busy factories, and churches whose towers resounded with beautiful peals and chimes of bells.' She goes on to say that 'Mausna is the name of the city on the Dovey; its eastern suburb was at the sand-bank now called Borth, its western stretched far out into the sea.' What the name Mausna may be I have no idea, unless it is the result of some confusion with that of the great turbary behind Borth, namely Mochno, or Cors Fochno, 'Bog of Mochno.' The name Borth stands for Y Borth, 'the Harbour,' which, more adequately described, was once Porth Wydno, 'Gwydno's Harbour.' The writer, however, goes on with the story of the wicked prince, who left open the sluices of the sea-wall protecting his country and its capital: we read on as follows:--'But though the sea will not give back that fair city to light and air, it is keeping it as a trust but for a time, and even now sometimes, though very rarely, eyes gazing down through the green waters can see not only the fluted glistering sand dotted here and there with shells and tufts of waving sea-weed, but the wide streets and costly buildings of that now silent city. Yet not always silent, for now and then will come chimes and peals of bells, sometimes near, sometimes distant, sounding low and sweet like a call to prayer, or as rejoicing for a victory. Even by day these tones arise, but more often they are heard in the long twilight evenings, or by night. English ears have sometimes heard these sounds even before they knew the tale, and fancied that they must come from some church among the hills, or on the other side of the water, but no such church is there to give the call; the sound and its connexion is so pleasant, that one does not care to break the spell by seeking for the origin of the legend, as in the idler tales with which that neighbourhood abounds.' The dream about 'the wide streets and costly buildings of that now silent city' seems to have its counterpart on the western coast of Erin--somewhere, let us say, off the cliffs of Moher [12], in County Clare--witness Gerald Griffin's lines, to which a passing allusion has already been made, p. 205:-- A story I heard on the cliffs of the West, That oft, through the breakers dividing, A city is seen on the ocean's wild breast, In turreted majesty riding. But brief is the glimpse of that phantom so bright: Soon close the white waters to screen it. The allusion to the submarine chimes would make it unpardonable to pass by unnoticed the well-known Welsh air called Clychau Aberdyfi, 'The Bells of Aberdovey,' which I have always suspected of taking its name from fairy bells [13]. This popular tune is of unknown origin, and the words to which it is usually sung make the bells say un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, 'one, two, three, four, five, six'; and I have heard a charming Welsh vocalist putting on saith, 'seven,' in her rendering of the song. This is not to be wondered at, as her instincts must have rebelled against such a commonplace number as six in a song redolent of old-world sentiment. But our fairy bells ought to have stopped at five: this would seem to have been forgotten when the melody and the present words were wedded together. At any rate our stories seem to suggest that fairy counting did not go beyond the fingering of one hand. The only Welsh fairy represented counting is made to do it all by fives: she counts un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump; un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, as hard as her tongue can go. For on the number of times she can repeat the five numerals at a single breath depends the number of the live stock of each kind, which are to form her dowry: see p. 8 above, and as to music in fairy tales, see pp. 202, 206, 292. Now that a number of our inundation stories have been passed in review in this and the previous chapter, some room may be given to the question of their original form. They separate themselves, as it will have been seen, into at least two groups: (1) those in which the cause of the catastrophe is ethical, the punishment of the wicked and dissolute; and (2) those in which no very distinct suggestion of the kind is made. It is needless to say that everything points to the comparative lateness of the fully developed ethical motive; and we are not forced to rest content with this theoretical distinction, for in more than one of the instances we have the two kinds of story. In the case of Llyn Tegid, the less known and presumably the older story connects the formation of the lake with the neglect to keep the stone door of the well shut, while the more popular story makes the catastrophe a punishment for wicked and riotous living: compare pp. 377, 408, above. So with the older story of Cantre'r Gwaelod, on which we found the later one of the tipsy Seithennin as it were grafted, p. 395. The keeping of the well shut in the former case, as also in that of Ffynnon Gywer, was a precaution, but the neglect of it was not the cause of the ensuing misfortune. Even if we had stories like the Irish ones, which make the sacred well burst forth in pursuit of the intruder who has gazed into its depths, it would by no means be of a piece with the punishment of riotous and lawless living. Our comparison should rather be with the story of the Curse of Pantannas, where a man incurred the wrath of the fairies by ploughing up ground which they wished to retain as a green sward; but the threatened vengeance for that act of culture did not come to pass for a century, till the time of one, in fact, who is not charged with having done anything to deserve it. The ethics of that legend are, it is clear, not easy to discover, and in our inundation stories one may trace stages of development from a similarly low level. The case may be represented thus: a divinity is offended by a man, and for some reason or other the former wreaks his vengeance, not on the offender, but on his descendants. This minimum granted, it is easy to see, that in time the popular conscience would fail to rest satisfied with the cruel idea of a jealous divinity visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. One may accordingly distinguish the following stages:-- 1. The legend lays it down as a fact that the father was very wicked. 2. It makes his descendants also wicked like him. 3. It represents the same punishment overtaking father and sons, ancestor and descendants. 4. The simplest way to secure this kind of equal justice was, no doubt, to let the offending ancestors live on to see their descendants of the generation for whose time the vengeance had been fixed, and to let them be swept away with them in one and the same cataclysm, as in the Welsh versions of the Syfadon and Kenfig legends, possibly also in those of Llyn Tegid and Tyno Helig, which are not explicit on this point. Let us for a moment examine the indications of the time to which the vengeance is put off. In the case of the landed families of ancient Wales, every member of them had his position and liabilities settled by his pedigree, which had to be exactly recorded down to the eighth generation or eighth lifetime in Gwyned, and to the seventh in Gwent and Dyfed. Those generations were reckoned the limits of recognized family relationship according to the Welsh Laws, and to keep any practical reckoning of the kind, extending always back some two centuries, must have employed a class of professional men [14]. In any case the ninth generation, called in Welsh y nawfed âch, which is a term in use all over the Principality at the present day, is treated as lying outside all recognized kinship. Thus if AB wishes to say that he is no relation to CD, he will say that he is not related o fewn y nawfed âch, 'within the ninth degree,' or hyd y nawfed âch, 'up to the ninth degree,' it being understood that in the ninth degree and beyond it no relationship is reckoned. Folklore stories, however, seem to suggest another interpretation of the word âch, and fewer generations in the direct line as indicated in the following table. For the sake of simplicity the founder of the family is here assumed to have at least two sons, A and B, and each succeeding generation to consist of one son only; and lastly the women are omitted altogether:-- Tâd I (Father) 1 Brother A : II : B Mâb (Son) 2 : : 2 i Cousin Aa : III : Ba Wyr (Grandson) 3 : : 3 ii Cousin Ab : IV : Bb Gorwyr (Great-Grandson) 4 : : 4 iii Cousin Ac : V : Bc Esgynnyd (G.G.Grandson) 5 : : 5 iv Cousin Ad : VI : Bd Goresgynnyd (G.G.G.Grandson). In reckoning the relationships between the collateral members of the family, one counts not generations or begettings, not removes or degrees, but ancestry or the number of ancestors, so that the father or founder of the family only counts once. Thus his descendants Ad and Bd in the sixth generation or lifetime, are fourth cousins separated from one another by nine ancestors: that is, they are related in the ninth âch. In other words, Ad has five ancestors and Bd has also five, but as they have one ancestor in common, the father of the family, they are not separated by 5 + 5 ancestors, but by 5 + 5 - 1, that is by 9. Similarly, one being always subtracted, the third cousins Ac and Bc are related in the seventh âch, and the second cousin in the fifth âch: so with the others in odd numbers downwards, and also with the relatives reckoned upwards to the seventh or eighth generation, which would mean collaterals separated by eleven or thirteen ancestors respectively. This reckoning, which is purely conjectural, is based chiefly on the Kenfig story, which foretold the vengeance to come in the ninth âch and otherwise in the time of the goresgynnyd, that is to say in the sixth lifetime. This works out all right if only by the ninth âch we understand the generation or lifetime when the collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, for that is no other than the sixth from the founder of the family. The Welsh version of the Llynclys legend fixes on the same generation, as it says yn oes wyrion, gorwyrion, esgynnyd a goresgynnyd, 'in the lifetime of grandsons, great-grandsons, ascensors, and their children,' for these last's time is the sixth generation. In the case of the Syfadon legend the time of the vengeance is the ninth cenhedlaeth or generation, which must be regarded as probably a careless way of indicating the generation when the collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, that is to say the sixth from the father of the family. It can hardly have the other meaning, as the sinning ancestors are represented as then still living. The case of the Tyno Helig legend is different, as we have the time announced to the offending ancestor described as amser dy wyrion, dy orwyrion, a dy esgynydion, 'the time of thy grandsons, thy great-grandsons, and thy ascensors,' which would be only the fifth generation with collaterals separated only by seven ancestors, and not nine. But the probability is that goresgynydion has been here accidentally omitted, and that the generation indicated originally was the same as in the others. This, however, will not explain the Bala legend, which fixes the time for the third generation, namely, immediately after the birth of the offending prince's first grandson. If, however, as I am inclined to suppose, the sixth generation with collaterals severed by nine ancestors was the normal term in these stories, it is easy to understand that the story-teller might wish to substitute a generation nearer to the original offender, especially if he was himself to be regarded as surviving to share in the threatened punishment: his living to see the birth of his first grandson postulated no extraordinary longevity. The question why fairy vengeance is so often represented deferred for a long time can no longer be put off. Here three or four answers suggest themselves:-- 1. The story of the Curse of Pantannas relates how the offender was not the person punished, but one of his descendants a hundred or more years after his time, while the offender is represented escaping the fairies' vengeance because he entreated them very hard to let him go unpunished. All this seems to me but a sort of protest against the inexorable character of the little people, a protest, moreover, which was probably invented comparatively late. 2. The next answer is the very antithesis of the Pantannas one; for it is, that the fairies delay in order to involve all the more men and women in the vengeance wreaked by them: I confess that I see no reason to entertain so sinister an idea. 3. A better answer, perhaps, is that the fairies were not always in a position to harm him who offended them. This may well have been the belief as regards any one who had at his command the dreaded potency of magic. Take for instance the Irish story of a king of Erin called Eochaid Airem, who, with the aid of his magician or druid Dalán, defied the fairies, and dug into the heart of their underground station, until, in fact, he got possession of his queen, who had been carried thither by a fairy chief named Mider. Eochaid, assisted by his druid and the powerful Ogams which the latter wrote on rods of yew, was too formidable for the fairies, and their wrath was not executed till the time of Eochaid's unoffending grandson, Conaire Mór, who fell a victim to it, as related in the epic story of Bruden Dáderga, so called from the palace where Conaire was slain [15]. 4. Lastly, it may be said that the fairies being supposed deathless, there would be no reason why they should hurry; and even in case the delay meant a century or two, that makes no perceptible approach to the extravagant scale of time common enough in our fairy tales, when, for instance, they make a man who has whiled ages away in fairyland, deem it only so many minutes [16]. Whatever the causes may have been which gave our stories their form in regard of the delay in the fairy revenge, it is clear that Welsh folklore could not allow this delay to extend beyond the sixth generation with its cousinship of nine ancestries, if, as I gather, it counted kinship no further. Had one projected it on the seventh or the eighth generation, both of which are contemplated in the Laws, it would not be folklore. It would more likely be the lore of the landed gentry and of the powerful families whose pedigrees and ramifications of kinship were minutely known to the professional men on whom it was incumbent to keep themselves, and those on whom they depended, well informed in such matters. It remains for me to consider the non-ethical motive of the other stories, such as those which ascribe negligence and the consequent inundation to the woman who has the charge of the door or lid of the threatening well. Her negligence is not the cause of the catastrophe, but it leaves the way open for it. What then can have been regarded the cause? One may gather something to the point from the Irish story where the divinity of the well is offended because a woman has gazed into its depths, and here probably, as already suggested (p. 392), we come across an ancient tabu directed against women, which may have applied only to certain wells of peculiarly sacred character. It serves, however, to suggest that the divinities of the water-world were not disinclined to seize every opportunity of extending their domain on the earth's surface; and I am persuaded that this was once a universal creed of some race or other in possession of these islands. Besides the Irish legends already mentioned (pp. 382, 384) of the formation of Lough Neagh, Lough Ree, and others, witness the legendary annals of early Ireland, which, by the side of battles, the clearing of forests, and the construction of causeways, mention the bursting forth of lakes and rivers; that is to say, the formation or the coming into existence, or else the serious expansion, of certain of the actual waters of the country. For the present purpose the details given by The Four Masters are sufficient, and I have hurriedly counted their instances as follows:-- Anno Mundi 2532, number of the lakes formed, 2. ,, ,, 2533, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1. ,, ,, 2535, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 2. ,, ,, 2545, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1. ,, ,, 2546, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1. ,, ,, 2859, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 2. ,, ,, 2860, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 2. ,, ,, 3503, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 21. ,, ,, 3506, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 9. ,, ,, 3510, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 5. ,, ,, 3520, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 9. ,, ,, 3581, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 9. ,, ,, 3656, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 3. ,, ,, 3751, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1. ,, ,, 3751, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 3. ,, ,, 3790, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 4. ,, ,, 4169, ,, ,, ,, rivers ,, 5. ,, ,, 4694, ,, ,, ,, lakes ,, 1. This makes an aggregate of thirty-five lakes and forty-six rivers, that is to say a total of eighty-one eruptions. But I ought, perhaps, to explain that under the head of lakes I have included not only separate pieces of water, but also six inlets of the sea, such as Strangford Lough and the like. Still more to the point is it to mention that of the lakes two are said to have burst forth at the digging of graves. Thus, A.M. 2535, The Four Masters have the following: 'Laighlinne, son of Parthalon, died in this year. When his grave was dug, Loch Laighlinne sprang forth in Ui Mac Uais, and from him it is named [17].' O'Donovan, the editor and translator of The Four Masters, supposes it to be somewhere to the south-west of Tara, in Meath. Similarly, A.M. 4694, they say of a certain Melghe Molbthach, 'When his grave was digging, Loch Melghe burst forth over the land in Cairbre, so that it was named from him.' This is said to be now called Lough Melvin, on the confines of the counties of Donegal, Leitrim, and Fermanagh. These two instances are mentioned by The Four Masters; and here is one given by Stokes in the Rennes Dindsenchas: see the Revue Celtique, xv. 428-9. It has to do with Loch Garman, as Wexford Harbour was called in Irish, and it runs thus: 'Loch Garman, whence is it? Easy to say. Garman Glas, son of Dega, was buried there, and when his grave was dug then the lake burst throughout the land. Whence Loch Garman.' It matters not here that there are alternative accounts of the name. The meaning of all this seems to be that cutting the green sward or disturbing the earth beneath was believed in certain cases to give offence to some underground divinity or other connected with the world of waters. That divinity avenged the annoyance or offence given him by causing water to burst forth and form a lake forthwith. The nearness of such divinities to the surface seems not a little remarkable, and it is shown not only in the folklore which has been preserved for us by The Four Masters, but also by the usual kind of story about a neglected well door. These remarks suggest the question whether it was not one of the notions which determined surface burials, that is, burials in which no cutting of the ground took place, the cists or chambers and the bodies placed in them being covered over by the heaping on of earth or stones brought from a more or less convenient distance. It might perhaps be said that all this only implied individuals of a character to desecrate the ground and call forth the displeasure of the divinities concerned; and for that suggestion folklore parallels, it is true, could be adduced. But it is hardly adequate: the facts seem to indicate a more general objection on the part of the powers in point; and they remind one rather of the clause said to be inserted in mining leases in China with the object, if one may trust the newspapers, of preventing shafts from being sunk below a certain depth, for fear of offending the susceptibilities of the demons or dragons ruling underground. It is interesting to note the fact, that Celtic folklore connects the underground divinities intimately with water; for one may briefly say that they have access wherever water can take them. With this qualification the belief may be said to have lingered lately in Wales, for instance, in connexion with Llyn Barfog, near Aberdovey. 'It is believed to be very perilous,' Mr. Pughe says, p. 142 above, 'to let the waters out of the lake'; and not long before he wrote, in 1853, an aged inhabitant of the district informed him 'that she recollected this being done during a period of long drought, in order to procure motive power for Llyn Pair Mill, and that long-continued heavy rains followed.' Then we have the story related to Mr. Reynolds as to Llyn y Fan Fach, how there emerged from the water a huge hairy fellow of hideous aspect, who stormed at the disturbers of his peace, and uttered the threat that unless they left him alone in his own place he would drown a whole town. Thus the power of the water spirit is represented as equal to producing excessive wet weather and destructive floods. He is in all probability not to be dissociated from the afanc in the Conwy story which has already been given (pp. 130-3). Now the local belief is that the reason why the afanc had to be dragged out of the river was that he caused floods in the river and made it impossible for people to cross on their way to market at Llanrwst. Some such a local legend has been generalized into a sort of universal flood story in the late Triad, iii. 97, as follows:--'Three masterpieces of the Isle of Prydain: the Ship of Nefyd Naf Neifion, that carried in her male and female of every kind when the Lake of Llïon burst; and Hu the Mighty's Ychen Bannog dragging the afanc of the lake to land, so that the lake burst no more; and the Stones of Gwydon Ganhebon, on which one read all the arts and sciences of the world.' A story similar to the Conwy one, but no longer to be got so complete, as far as I know, seems to have been current in various parts of the Principality, especially around Llyn Syfadon and on the banks of the Anglesey pool called Llyn yr Wyth Eidion, 'the Pool of the Eight Oxen,' for so many is Hu represented here as requiring in dealing with the Anglesey afanc. According to Mr. Pughe of Aberdovey, the same feat was performed at Llyn Barfog, not, however, by Hu and his oxen, but by Arthur and his horse. To be more exact the task may be here considered as done by Arthur superseding Hu: see p. 142 above. That, however, is of no consequence here, and I return to the afanc: the Fan Fach legend told to Mr. Reynolds makes the lake ruler huge and hairy, hideous and rough-spoken, but he expresses himself in human speech, in fact in two lines of doggerel: see p. 19 above. On the other hand, the Llyn Cwm Llwch story, which puts the same doggerel, p. 21, into the mouth of the threatening figure in red who sits in a chair on the face of that lake, suggests nothing abnormal about his personal appearance. Then as to the Conwy afanc, he is very heavy, it is true, but he also speaks the language of the country. He is lured, be it noticed, out of his home in the lake by the attractions of a young woman, who lets him rest his head in her lap and fall asleep. When he wakes to find himself in chains he takes a cruel revenge on her. But with infinite toil and labour he is dragged beyond the Conwy watershed into one of the highest tarns on Snowdon; for there is here no question of killing him, but only of removing him where he cannot harm the people of the Conwy Valley. It is true that the story of Peredur represents that knight cutting an afanc's head off, but so much the worse for the compiler of that romance, as we have doubtless in the afanc some kind of a deathless being. However, the description which the Peredur story gives [18] of him is interesting: he lives in a cave at the door of which is a stone pillar: he sees everybody that comes without anybody seeing him; and from behind the pillar he kills all comers with a poisoned spear. Hitherto we have the afanc described mostly from a hostile point of view: let us change our position, which some of the stories already given enable us to do. Take for instance the first of the whole series, where it describes, p. 7, the Fan Fach youth's despair when the lake damsel, whose love he had gained, suddenly dived to fetch her father and her sister. There emerged, it says, out of the lake two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and strength of youth. This hoary-headed man of noble mien owned herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, a number of which were allowed to come out of the lake to form his daughter's dowry, as the narrative goes on to show. In the story of Llyn Du'r Ardu, p. 32, he has a consort who appears with him to join in giving the parental sanction to the marriage which their daughter was about to make with the Snowdon shepherd. In neither of these stories has this extraordinary figure any name given him, and it appears prima facie probable that the term afanc is rather one of abuse in harmony with the unlovely description of him supplied by the other stories. But neither in them does the term yr afanc suit the monster meant, for there can be no doubt that in the word afanc we have the etymological equivalent of the Irish word abacc, 'a dwarf'; and till further light is shed on these words one may assume that at one time afanc also meant a dwarf or pigmy in Welsh. In modern Welsh it has been regarded as meaning a beaver, but as that was too small an animal to suit the popular stories, the word has been also gravely treated as meaning a crocodile [19]: this is in the teeth of the unanimous treatment of him as anthropomorphic in the legends in point. If one is to abide by the meaning dwarf or pigmy, one is bound to regard afanc as one of the terms originally applied to the fairies in their more unlovely aspects: compare the use of crimbil, p. 263. Here may also be mentioned pegor, 'a dwarf or pigmy,' which occurs in the Book of Taliessin, poem vii. (p. 135):-- Gog6n py pegor I know what (sort of) pigmy yssyd ydan vor. There is beneath the sea. Gogwn eu heissor I know their kind, pa6b yny oscord. Each in his troop. Also the following lines in the twelfth-century manuscript of the Black Book of Carmarthen: see Evans' autotype facsimile, fo. 9b:-- Ar gnyuer pegor And every dwarf y ssit y dan mor. There is beneath the sea, Ar gnyuer edeinauc And every winged thing aoruc kyuoethauc. The Mighty One hath made, Ac vei. vei. paup. And were there to each tri trychant tauaud Thrice three hundred tongues-- Nyellynt ve traethaud. They could not relate kyuoetheu [y] trindaud The powers of the Trinity. I should rather suppose, then, that the pigmies in the water-world were believed to consist of many grades or classes, and to be innumerable like the Luchorpáin of Irish legend, which were likewise regarded as diminutive. With the Luchorpáin were also associated [20] Fomori or Fomoraig (modern Irish spelling Fomhoraigh), and Goborchinn, 'Horse-heads.' The etymology of the word Fomori has been indicated at p. 286 above, but Irish legendary history has long associated it with muir, 'sea,' genitive mara, Welsh mor, and it has gone so far as to see in them, as there suggested, not submarine but transmarine enemies and invaders of Ireland. So the singular fomor, now written fomhor, is treated in O'Reilly's Irish Dictionary as meaning 'a pirate, a sea robber, a giant,' while in Highland Gaelic, where it is written fomhair or famhair, it is regularly used as the word for giant. The Manx Gaelic corresponding to Irish fomor and its derivative fomorach, is foawr, 'a giant,' and foawragh, 'gigantic,' but also 'a pirate.' I remember hearing, however, years ago, a mention made of the Fomhoraigh, which, without conveying any definite allusion to their stature, associated them with subterranean places:--An undergraduate from the neighbourhood of Killorglin, in Kerry, happened to relate in my hearing, how, when he was exploring some underground ráths near his home, he was warned by his father's workmen to beware of the Fomhoraigh. But on the borders of the counties of Mayo and Sligo I have found the word used as in the Scottish Highlands, namely, in the sense of giants, while Dr. Douglas Hyde and others inform me that the Giant's Causeway is called in Irish Clochán na bh-Fomhorach. The Goborchinns or Horse-heads have also an interest, not only in connexion with the Fomori, as when we read of a king of the latter called Eocha Eachcheann [21], or Eochy Horse-head, but also as a link between the Welsh afanc and the Highland water-horse, of whom Campbell has a good deal to say in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands. See more especially iv. 337, where he remarks among other things, that 'the water-horse assumes many shapes; he often appears as a man,' he adds, 'and sometimes as a large bird.' A page or two earlier he gives a story which illustrates the statement, at the same time that it vividly reminds one of that part of the Conwy legend which (p. 130) represents the afanc resting his head on the lap of the damsel forming one of the dramatis personæ. Here follows Campbell's own story, omitting all about a marvellous bull, however, that was in the end to checkmate the water-horse:-- 'A long time after these things a servant girl went with the farmer's herd of cattle to graze them at the side of a loch, and she sat herself down near the bank. There, in a little while, what should she see walking towards her but a man, who asked her to fasg his hair [Welsh lleua]. She said she was willing enough to do him that service, and so he laid his head on her knee, and she began to array his locks, as Neapolitan damsels also do by their swains. But soon she got a great fright, for growing amongst the man's hair, she found a great quantity of liobhagach an locha, a certain slimy green weed [22] that abounds in such lochs, fresh, salt, and brackish. The girl knew that if she screamed there was an end of her, so she kept her terror to herself, and worked away till the man fell asleep as he was with his head on her knee. Then she untied her apron strings, and slid the apron quietly on to the ground with its burden upon it, and then she took her feet home as fast as it was in her heart [23]. Now when she was getting near the houses, she gave a glance behind her, and there she saw her caraid (friend) coming after her in the likeness of a horse.' The equine form belongs also more or less constantly to the kelpie of the Lowlands of Scotland and of the Isle of Man, where we have him in the glashtyn, whose amorous propensities are represented as more repulsive than what appears in Welsh or Irish legend: see p. 289 above, and the Lioar Manninagh for 1897, p. 139. Perhaps in Man and the Highlands the horsy nature of this being has been reinforced by the influence of the Norse Nykr, a Northern Proteus or old Nick, who takes many forms, but with a decided preference for that of 'a gray water-horse': see Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary. But the idea of associating the equine form with the water divinity is by no means confined to the Irish and the Northern nations: witness the Greek legend of the horse being of Poseidon's own creation, and the beast whose form he sometimes assumed. It is in this sort of a notion of a water-horse one is probably to look for the key to the riddle of such conceptions as that of March ab Meirchion, the king with horse's ears, and the corresponding Irish figure of Labraid Lorc [24]. In both of these the brute peculiarities are reduced almost to a minimum: both are human in form save their ears alone. The name Labraid Lorc is distinct enough from the Welsh March, but under this latter name one detects traces of him with the horse's ears in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany [25]. We have also probably the same name in the Morc of Irish legend: at any rate Morc, Marc, or Margg, seems to be the same name as the Welsh March, which is no other word than march, 'a steed or charger.' Now the Irish Morc is not stated to have had horse's ears, but he and another called Conaing are represented in the legendary history of early Erin as the naval leaders of the Fomori, a sort of position which would seem to fit the Brythonic March also were he to be treated in earnest as an historical character. But short of that another treatment may be suspected of having been actually dealt out to him, namely, that of resolving the water-horse into a horse and his master. Of this we seem to have two instances in the course of the story of the formation of Lough Neagh in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 39-41:-- There was once a good king named Maired reigning over Munster, and he had two sons, Eochaid and Rib. He married a wife named Ebliu (genitive Eblinde), who fell in love with her stepson, Eochaid. The two brothers make up their minds to leave their father and to take Ebliu with them, together with all that was theirs, including in all a thousand men. They proceed northwards, but their druids persuade them that they cannot settle down in the same district, so Rib goes westwards to a plain known as Tír Cluchi Midir acus Maic Óic, 'the Play-ground of Mider and the Mac Óc,' so called after the two great fairy chiefs of Ireland. Mider visits Rib's camp and kills their horses, then he gives them a big horse of his own ready harnessed with a pack-saddle. They had to put all their baggage on the big horse's back and go away, but after a while the nag lay down and a well of water formed there, which eventually burst forth, drowning them all: this is Loch Ri, 'Rib's Loch, or Lough Ree,' on the Shannon. Eochaid, the other brother, went with his party to the banks of the Boyne near the Brug, where the fairy chief Mac Óc or Mac ind Óc had his residence: he destroyed Eochaid's horses the first night, and the next day he threatened to destroy the men themselves unless they went away. Thereupon Eochaid said that they could not travel without horses, so the Mac Óc gave them a big horse, on whose back they placed all they had. The Mac Óc warned them not to unload the nag on the way, and not to let him halt lest he should be their death. However, when they had reached the middle of Ulster, they thoughtlessly took all their property off the horse's back, and nobody bethought him of turning the animal's head back in the direction from which they had come: so he also made a well [26]. Over that well Eochaid had a house built, and a lid put on the well, which he set a woman to guard. In the sequel she neglected it, and the well burst forth and formed Lough Neagh, as already mentioned, p. 382 above. What became of the big horses in these stories one is not told, but most likely they were originally represented as vanishing in a spring of water where each of them stood. Compare the account of Undine at her unfaithful husband's funeral. In the procession she mysteriously appeared as a snow-white figure deeply veiled, but when one rose from kneeling at the grave, where she had knelt nought was to be seen save a little silver spring of limpid water bubbling out of the turf and trickling on to surround the new grave:--Da man sich aber wieder erhob, war die weisse Fremde verschwunden; an der Stelle, wo sie geknieet hatte, quoll ein silberhelles Brünnlein aus dem Rasen; das rieselte und rieselte fort, bis es den Grabhügel des Ritters fast ganz umzogen hatte; dann rann es fürder und ergoss sich in einen Weiher, der zur Seite des Gottesackers lag. The late and grotesque story of the Gilla Decair may be mentioned next: he was one of the Fomorach, and had a wonderful kind of horse on whose back most of Finn's chief warriors were induced to mount. Then the Gilla Decair and his horse hurried towards Corkaguiny, in Kerry, and took to the sea, for he and his horse travelled equally well on sea and land. Thus Finn's men, unable to dismount, were carried prisoners to an island not named, on which Dermot in quest of them afterwards landed, and from which, after great perils, he made his way to Tír fo Thuinn, 'Terra sub Unda,' and brought his friends back to Erin [27]. Now the number of Finn's men taken away by force by the Gilla Decair was fifteen, fourteen on the back of his horse and one clutching to the animal's tail, and the Welsh Triads, i. 93 = ii. 11, seem to re-echo some similar story, but they give the number of persons not as fifteen but just one half, and describe the horse as Du (y) Moroed, 'the Black of (the) Seas,' steed of Elidyr Mwynfawr, that carried seven human beings and a half from Pen Llech Elidyr in the North to Pen Llech Elidyr in Môn, 'Anglesey.' It is explained that Du carried seven on his back, and that one who swam with his hands on that horse's crupper was reckoned the half man in this case. Du Moroed is in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen called Du March Moro, 'Black the Steed of Moro,' the horse ridden in the hunt of Twrch Trwyth by Gwyn ab Nud, king of the other world; and he appears as a knight with his name unmistakably rendered into Brun de Morois in the romance of Durmart le Galois, who carries away Arthur's queen on his horse to his castle in Morois [28]. Lastly, here also might be mentioned the incident in the story of Peredur or Perceval, which relates how to that knight, when he was in the middle of a forest much distressed for the want of a horse, a lady brought a fine steed as black as a blackberry. He mounted and he found his beast marvellously swift, but on his making straight for a vast river the knight made the sign of the cross, whereupon he was left on the ground, and his horse plunged into the water, which his touch seemed to set ablaze. The horse is interpreted to have been the devil [29], and this is a fair specimen of the way in which Celtic paganism is treated by the Grail writers when they feel in the humour to assume an edifying attitude. If one is right in setting Môn, 'Anglesey,' over against the anonymous isle to which the Gilla Decair hurries Finn's men away, Anglesey would have to be treated as having once been considered one of the Islands of the Dead and the home of Other-world inhabitants. We have a trace of this in a couplet in a poem by the medieval poet, Dafyd ab Gwilym, who makes Blodeuwed the Owl give a bit of her history as follows:-- Merch i arglwyd, ail Meirchion, Wyf i, myn Dewi! o Fon [30]. Daughter to a lord, son of Meirchion, Am I, by St. David! from Mona. This, it will be seen, connects March ab Meirchion, as it were 'Steed son of Steeding,' with the Isle of Anglesey. Add to this that the Irish for Anglesey or Mona was Móin Conaing, 'Conaing's Swamp,' so called apparently after Conaing associated with Morc, a name which is practically March in Welsh. Both were leaders of the Fomori in Irish tales: see my Arthurian Legend, p. 356. On the great place given to islands in Celtic legend and myth it is needless here to expatiate: witness Brittia, to which Procopius describes the souls of the departed being shipped from the shores of the Continent, the Isle of Avallon in the Romances, that of Gwales in the Mabinogion, Ynys Enlli or Bardsey, in which Merlin and his retinue enter the Glass House [31], and the island of which we read in the pages of Plutarch, that it contains Cronus held in the bonds of perennial sleep [32]. Let us return to the more anthropomorphic figure of the afanc, and take as his more favoured representative the virile personage described emerging from the Fan Fach Lake to give his sanction to the marriage of his daughter with the Mydfai shepherd. It is probable that a divinity of the same order belonged to every other lake of any considerable dimensions in the country. But it will be remembered that in the case of the story of Llyn Du'r Ardu two parents appeared with the lake maiden--her father and her mother--and we may suppose that they were divinities of the water-world. The same thing also may be inferred from the late Triad, iii. 13, which speaks of the bursting of the lake of Llïon, causing all the lands to be inundated so that all the human race was drowned except Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who escaped in a mastless ship: it was from them that the island of Prydain was repeopled. A similar Triad, iii. 97, but evidently of a different origin, has already been mentioned as speaking of the Ship of Nefyd Naf Neifion, that carried in it a male and female of every kind when the lake of Llïon burst. This later Triad evidently supplies what had been forgotten in the previous one, namely, a pair of each kind of animal life, and not of mankind alone. But from the names Dwyfan and Dwyfach I infer that the writer of Triad iii. 13 has developed his universal deluge on the basis of the scriptural account of it, for those names belonged in all probability to wells and rivers: in other terms, they were the names of water divinities. At any rate there seems to be some evidence that two springs, whose waters flow into Bala Lake, were at one time called Dwyfan and Dwyfach, these names being borne both by the springs themselves and the rivers flowing from them. The Dwyfan and the Dwyfach were regarded as uniting in the lake, while the water on its issuing from the lake is called Dyfrdwy. Now Dyfrdwy stands for an older Dyfr-dwyf, which in Old Welsh was Dubr duiu, 'the water of the divinity.' One of the names of that divinity was Donwy, standing for an early form Danuvios or Danuvia, according as it was masculine or feminine. In either case it was practically the same name as that of the Danube or Danuvios, derived from a word which is represented in Irish by the adjective dána, 'audax, fortis, intrepidus.' The Dee has in Welsh poetry still another name, Aerfen, which seems to mean a martial goddess or the spirit of the battlefield, which is corroborated and explained by Giraldus [33], who represents the river as the accredited arbiter of the fortunes of the wars in its country between the Welsh and the English. The name Dyfrdonwy occurs in a poem by Llywarch Brydyd y Moch, a poet who flourished towards the end of the twelfth century, as follows [34]:-- Nid kywiw [35] a llwfyr dwfyr dyfyrdonwy Kereist oth uebyd gwryd garwy. With a coward Dyfrdonwy water ill agrees: From thy boyhood hast thou loved Garwy's valour. The prince praised was Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, whom the poet seems to identify here with the Dee, and it looks as if the water of the Dee formed some sort of a test which no coward could face: compare the case of the discreet cauldron that would not boil meat for a coward [36]. The dwy, dwyf, duiu, of the river's Welsh name represent an early form deva or deiva, whence the Romans called their station on its banks Deva, possibly as a shortening of ad Devam; but that Deva should have simply and directly meant the river is rendered probable by the fact that Ptolemy elsewhere gives it as the name of the northern Dee, which enters the sea near Aberdeen. From the same stem were formed the names Dwyf-an and Dwyf-ach, which are treated in the Triads as masculine and feminine respectively. In its course the Welsh Dee receives a river Ceirw not far above Corwen, and that river flows through farms called Ar-dwyfan and Hendre' Ar-dwyfan, and adjoining Ardwyfan is another farm called Foty Ardwyfan, 'Shielings of Ardwyfan,' while Hendre' Ardwyfan means the old stead or winter abode of Ardwyfan. Ardwyfan itself would seem to mean 'On Dwyfan,' and Hendre' Ardwyfan, which may be supposed the original homestead, stands near a burn which flows into the Ceirw. That burn I should suppose to have been the Dwyfan, and perhaps the name extended to the Ceirw itself; but Dwyfan is not now known as the name of any stream in the neighbourhood. Elsewhere we have two rivers called Dwyfor or Dwyfawr and Dwyfach, which unite a little below the village of Llan Ystumdwy; and from there to the sea, the stream is called Dwyfor, the mouth of which is between Criccieth and Afon Wen, in Carnarvonshire. Ystumdwy, commonly corrupted into Stindwy, seems to mean Ystum-dwy, 'the bend of the Dwy'; so that here also we have Dwyfach and Dwy, as in the case of the Dee. Possibly Dwyfor was previously called simply Dwy or even Dwyfan; but it is now explained as Dwy-fawr, 'great Dwy,' which was most likely suggested by Dwyfach, as this latter explains itself to the country people as Dwy-fach, 'little Dwy.' However, it is but right to say that in Llywelyn ab Gruffyd's grant of lands to the monks of Aber Conwy they seem to be called Dwyuech and Dwyuaur [37]. All these waters have in common the reputation of being liable to sudden and dangerous floods, especially the Dwyfor, which drains Cwm Strallyn and its lake lying behind the great rocky barrier on the left as one goes from Tremadoc towards Aber Glaslyn Bridge. Still more so is this the case with the Dee and Bala Lake, which is wont to rise at times from seven to nine feet above its ordinary level. The inundation which then invades the valley from Bala down presents a sight more magnificent than comfortable to contemplate. In fact nothing could have been more natural than for the story elaborated by the writer of certain of the late Triads to have connected the most remarkable inundations with the largest piece of water in the Principality, and one liable to such sudden changes of level: in other words, that one should treat Llyn Llïon as merely one of the names of Bala Lake, now called in Welsh Llyn Tegid, and formerly sometimes Llyn Aerfen. While touching at p. 286 on Gwaen Llifon with its Llyn Pencraig as one of those claiming to be the Llyn Llïon of the Triads, it was hinted that Llïon was but a thinner form of Llifon. Here one might mention perhaps another Llifon, for which, however, no case could be made. I allude to the name of the residence of the Wynns descended from Gilmin Troeddu, namely, Glyn Llifon, which means the river Llifon's Glen; but one could not feel surprised if the neighbouring Llyfni, draining the lakes of Nantlle, should prove to have once been also known as a Llifon, with the Nantlle waters conforming by being called Llyn Llifon. But however that may be, one may say as to the flood caused by the bursting of any such lake, that the notion of the universality of the catastrophe was probably contributed by the author of Triad iii. 13, from a non-Welsh source. He may have, however, not invented the vessel in which he places Dwyfan and Dwyfach: at all events, one version of the story of the Fan Fach represents the Lake Lady arriving in a boat. As to the writer of the other Triad, iii. 97, he says nothing about Dwyfan and his wife, but borrows Nefyd Naf Neifion's ship to save all that were to be saved; and here one may probably venture to identify Nefyd with Nemed [38], genitive Nemid, a name borne in Irish legend by a rover who is represented as one of the early colonizers of Erin. As to the rest, the name Neifion by itself is used in Welsh for Neptune and the sea, as in the following couplet of D. ab Gwilym's poem lv:-- Nofiad a wnaeth hen Neifion It is old Neptune that has swam O Droia fawr draw i Fôn. From great Troy afar to Mona. In the same way Môr Neifion, 'Sea of Neifion,' seems to have signified the ocean, the high seas. To return to the Triad about Dwyfan and Dwyfach, not only does it make them from being water divinities into a man and woman, but there is no certainty even that both were not feminine. In modern Welsh all rivers are treated as feminine, and even Dyfrdwyf has usually to submit, though the modern bard Tegid, analysing the word into Dwfr Dwyf, 'Water of the Divinity or Divine Water,' where dwfr, 'water,' could only be masculine, addressed Llyn Tegid thus, p. 78: Drwyot, er dydiau'r Drywon, Y rhwyf y Dyfrdwyf ei don. Through thee, from the days of the Druids, The Dwfr Dwyf impels his wave. This question, however, of the gender of river names, or rather the sex which personification ascribed them, is a most difficult one. If we glance at Ptolemy's Geography written in the second century, we find in his account of the British Isles that he names more than fifty of our river mouths and estuaries, and that he divides their names almost equally into masculine and feminine. The modern Welsh usage has, it is seen, departed far from this, but not so far the folklore: the afanc is a male, and we have a figure of the same sex appearing as the father of the lake maiden in the Fan Fach story, and in that of Llyn Du'r Ardu; the same, too, was the sex of the chief dweller of Llyn Cwm Llwch; the same remark is applicable also to the greatest divinity of these islands--the greatest, at any rate, so far as the scanty traces of his cult enable one to become acquainted with him. As his name comes down into legend it belongs here, as well as to the deities of antiquity, just as much, in a sense, as the Dee. I refer to Nudons or Nodons, the remains [39] of whose sanctuary were many years ago brought to light on a pleasant hill in Lydney Park, on the western banks of the Severn. In the mosaic floor of the god's temple there is a coloured inscription showing the expense of that part of the work to have been defrayed by the contributions (ex stipibus) of the faithful, and that it was carried out by two men, of whom one appears to have been an officer in command of a naval force guarding the coasts of the Severn Sea. In the midst of the mosaic inscription is a round opening in the floor of nine inches in diameter and surrounded by a broad band of red enclosed in two of blue. This has given rise to various speculations, and among others that it was intended for libations. The mosaics and the lettering of the inscriptions seem to point to the third century as the time when the sanctuary of Nudons was built under Roman auspices, though the place was doubtless sacred to the god long before. In any case it fell in exactly with the policy of the more astute of Roman statesmen to encourage such a native cult as we find traces of in Lydney Park. One of the inscriptions began with D. M. Nodonti, 'to the great god Nudons,' and a little bronze crescent intended for the diadem of the god or of one of his priests gives a representation of him as a crowned, beardless personage driving a chariot with four horses; and on either side of him is a naked figure supposed to represent the winds, and beyond them on each of the two sides is a triton with the fore feet of a horse. The god holds the reins in his left hand, and his right uplifted grasps what may be a sceptre or possibly a whip, while the whole equipment of the god recalls in some measure the Chariot of the Sun. Another piece of the bronze ornament shows another triton with an anchor in one of his hands, and opposite him a fisherman in the act of hooking a fine salmon. Other things, such as oars and shell trumpets, together with mosaic representations of marine animals in the floor of the temple, compel us to assimilate Nudons more closely with Neptune than any other god of classical mythology. The name of the god, as given in the inscriptions, varies between Nudons and Nodens, the cases actually occurring being the dative Nodonti, Nodenti, and Nudente, and the genitive Nodentis, so I should regard o or u as optional in the first syllable, and o as preferable, perhaps, to e in the second, for there is no room for reasonably doubting that we have here to do with the same name as Irish Nuadu, genitive Nuadat, conspicuous in the legendary history of Ireland. Now the Nuadu who naturally occurs to one first, was Nuadu Argetlám or Nuadu of the Silver Hand, from argat, 'silver, argentum,' and lám, 'hand.' Irish literature explains how he came to have a hand made of silver, and we can identify with him on Welsh ground a Llud Llawereint; for put back as it were into earlier Brythonic, this would be Ludo(ns) Lam'-argentios: that is to say, a reversal takes place in the order of the elements forming the epithet out of ereint (for older ergeint), 'silvern, argenteus,' and llaw, for earlier lama, 'hand.' Then comes the alliterative instinct into play, forcing Nudo(ns) Lamargentio(s) to become Ludo(ns) Lamargentio(s), whence the later form, Llud Llawereint, derives regularly [40]. Thus we have in Welsh the name Llûd, fashioned into that form under the influence of the epithet, whereas elsewhere it is Nûd, which occurs as a man's name in the pedigrees, while an intermediate form was probably Nudos or Nudo, of which a genitive NVDI occurs in a post-Roman inscription found near Yarrow Kirk in Selkirkshire. It is worthy of note that the modification of Nudo into Ludo must have taken place comparatively early--not improbably while the language was still Goidelic--as we seem to have a survival of the name in that of Lydney itself. It is very possible that we have Ludo, Llud, also in Porthlud; which Geoffrey of Monmouth gives, iii. 20, as the Welsh for Ludesgata or Ludgate, in London, which gate, according to him, was called after an ancient king of Britain named Lud. He seems to have been using an ancient tradition, and there would be nothing improbable in the conjecture that Geoffrey's Lud was our Llud, and that the great water divinity of that name had another sanctuary on the hill by the Thames, somewhere near the present site of St. Paul's Cathedral, and occupying a post as it were prophetic of Britain's rule of the water-ways in later times. Perhaps as one seems to find traces of Nudons from the estuary of the Thames to that of the Severn and thence to Ireland, one may conclude that the god was one of the divinities worshipped by the Goidels. With regard to the Brythonic Celts, there is nothing to suggest that he belonged also to them except in the sense of his having been probably adopted by them from the Goidels. It might be further suggested that the Goidels themselves had in the first instance adopted him from the pre-Celtic natives, but in that case a goddess would have been rather more probable [41]. In fact in the case of the Severn we seem to have a trace of such a goddess in the Sabrina, Old Welsh Habren, now Hafren, so called after a princess whom Geoffrey, ii. 5, represents drowned in the river: she may have been the pre-Celtic goddess of the Severn, and the name corresponding to Welsh Hafren occurs in Ireland in the form of Sabrann, an old name of the river Lee that flows through Cork. Similarly one now reads sometimes of Father Thames after the fashion of classic phraseology, and in the Celtic period Nudons may have been closely identified with that river, but the ancient name Tamesa or Tamesis [42] was decidedly feminine, and it was, most likely, that of the river divinity from times when the pre-Celtic natives held exclusive possession of these islands. On the whole it appears safer to regard Nudons as belonging to a race that had developed on a larger scale the idea of a patriarchal or kingly ruler holding sway over a comparatively wide area. So Nudons may here be treated as ruled out of the discussion as to the origin of the fairies, to which a few paragraphs are now to be devoted. Speaking of the rank and file of the fairies in rather a promiscuous fashion, one may say that we have found manifold proof of their close connexion with the water-world. Not only have we found them supposed to haunt places bordering on rivers, to live beneath the lakes, or to inhabit certain green isles capable of playing hide-and-seek with the ancient mariner, and perhaps not so very ancient either; but other considerations have been suggested as also pointing unmistakably to the same conclusion. Take for instance the indirect evidence afforded by the method of proceeding to recover an infant stolen by the fairies. One account runs thus: The mother who had lost her baby was to go with a wizard and carry with her to a river the child left her in exchange. The wizard would say, Crap ar y wrach, 'Grip the hag,' and the woman would reply, Rhy hwyr, gyfraglach, 'Too late, you urchin [43].' Before she uttered those words she had dropped the urchin into the river, and she would then return to her house. By that time the kidnapped child would be found to have come back home [44]. The words here used have not been quite forgotten in Carnarvonshire, but no distinct meaning seems to be attached to them now; at any rate I have failed to find anybody who could explain them. I should however guess that the wizard addressed his words to the fairy urchin with the intention, presumably, that the fairies in the river should at the same time hear and note what was about to be done. Another, and a somewhat more intelligible version, is given in the Gwyliedyd for 1837, p. 185, by a contributor who publishes it from a manuscript which Lewis Morris began to write in 1724 and finished apparently in 1729. He was a native of Anglesey, and it is probably to that county the story belongs, which he gives to illustrate one of the phonological aspects of certain kinds of Welsh. That account differs from the one just cited in that it introduces no wizard, but postulates two fairy urchins between whom the dialogue occurs, which is not unusual in our changeling stories: see p. 62. After this explanation I translate Morris' words thus:-- 'But to return to the question of the words approaching to the nature of the thing intended, there is an old story current among us concerning a woman whose children had been exchanged by the Tylwyth Teg. Whether it is truth or falsehood does not much matter, yet it shows what the men of that age thought concerning the sound of words, and how they fancied that the language of those sprites was of a ghastly and lumpy kind. The story is as follows:--The woman whose two children had been exchanged, chanced to overhear the two fairy heirs, whom she got instead of them, reasoning with one another beyond what became their age and persons. So she picked up the two sham children, one under each arm, in order to go and throw them from a bridge into a river, that they might be drowned as she fancied. But hardly had the one in his fall reached the bottom when he cried out to his comrade in the following words:-- Grippiach greppiach Grippiach Greppiach, Dal d'afel yn y wrach, Keep thy hold on the hag. Hi aeth yn rhowyr 'faglach-- It got too late, thou urchin-- Mi eis i ir mwthlach [45].' I fell into the.... In spite of the obscurity of these words, it is quite clear that it was thought the most natural thing in the world to return the fairies to the river, and no sooner were they dropped there than the right infants were found to have been sent home. The same thing may be learned also from the story of the Curse of Pantannas, pp. 187-8 above; for when the time of the fairies' revenge is approaching, the merry party gathered together at Pantannas are frightened by a piercing voice rising from a black and cauldron-like pool in the river; and after a while they hear it a second time rising above the noise of the river as it cascades over the shoulder of a neighbouring rock. Shortly afterwards an ugly, diminutive woman appears on the table near the window, and had it not been for the rudeness of one of those present she would have disclosed the future to them, but, as it was, she said very little in a vague way and went away offended; but as long as she was there the voice from the river was silent. Here we have the Welsh counterpart of the ben síde, pronounced banshee in Anglo-Irish, and meaning a fairy woman who is supposed to appear to certain Irish families before deaths or other misfortunes about to befall them. It is doubtless to some such fairy persons the voices belong, which threaten vengeance on the heir of Pantannas and on the wicked prince and his descendants previous to the cataclysm which brings a lake into the place of a doomed city: witness such cases as those of Llynclys, Syfadon, and Kenfig. The last mentioned deserves some further scrutiny; and I take this opportunity of referring the reader back to pp. 403-4, in order to direct his attention to the fact that the voice so closely identifies itself with the wronged family that it speaks in the first person, as it cries, 'Vengeance is come on him who murdered my father of the ninth generation!' Now it is worthy of remark that the same personifying is also characteristic of the Cyhiraeth [46]. This spectral female used to be oftener heard than seen; but her blood-freezing shriek was as a rule to be heard when she came to a cross-road or to water, in which she splashed with her hands. At the same time she would make the most doleful noise and exclaim, in case the frightened hearer happened to be a wife, Fy ngwr, fy ngwr! 'my husband, my husband!' If it was the man the exclamation would be, Fy ngwraig, fy ngwraig! 'my wife, my wife!' Or in either case it might be, Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach! 'my child, my child, my little child!' These cries meant the approaching death of the hearer's husband, wife, or child, as the case might be; but if the scream was inarticulate it was reckoned probable that the hearer himself was the person foremourned. Sometimes she was supposed to come, like the Irish banshee, in a dark mist to the window of a person who has been long ailing, and to flap her wings against the glass, while repeating aloud his or her name, which was believed to mean that the patient must die [47]. The picture usually given of the Cyhiraeth is of the most repellent kind: tangled hair, long black teeth, wretched, skinny, shrivelled arms of unwonted length out of all proportion to the body. Nevertheless it is, in my opinion, but another aspect of the banshee-like female who intervenes in the story of the Curse of Pantannas. One might perhaps treat both as survivals of a belief in a sort of personification of, or divinity identified with, a family or tribe, but for the fact that such language is emptied of most of its meaning by the abstractions which it would connect with a primitive state of society. So it is preferable, as coming probably near the truth, to say that what we have here is a trace of an ancestress. Such an idea of an ancestress as against that of an ancestor is abundantly countenanced by dim figures like that of the Dôn of the Mabinogion, and of her counterpart, after whom the Tribes of the goddess Donu or Danu [48] are known as Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish literature. But the one who most provokes comparison is the Old Woman of Beare, already mentioned, pp. 393-4: she figures largely in Irish folklore as a hag surviving to see her descendants reckoned by tribes and peoples. It may be only an accident that a poetically wrought legend pictures her not so much interested in the fortunes of her progeny as engaged in bewailing the unattractive appearance of her thin arms and shrivelled hands, together with the general wreck of the beauty which had been hers some time or other centuries before. However, the evidence of folklore is not of a kind to warrant our building any heavy superstructure of theory on the supposition, that the foundations are firmly held together by a powerful sense of consistency or homogeneity. So I should hesitate to do anything so rash as to pronounce the fairies to be all of one and the same origin: they may well be of several. For instance, there may be those that have grown out of traditions about an aboriginal pre-Celtic race, and some may be the representatives of the ghosts of departed men and women, regarded as one's ancestors; but there can hardly be any doubt that others, and those possibly not the least interesting, have originated in the demons and divinities--not all of ancestral origin--with which the weird fancy of our remote forefathers peopled lakes and streams, bays and creeks and estuaries. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the reader is convinced that in the course of this chapter some interesting specimens have, so to say, been caught in their native element, or else in the enjoyment of an amphibious life of mirth and frolic, largely spent hard by sequestered lakes, near placid rivers or babbling brooks. CHAPTER VIII WELSH CAVE LEGENDS Ekei mentoi mian einai nêson, en hê ton Kronon katheirchthai phrouroumenon hypo tou Briareô katheudonta; desmon gar autô ton hypnon memêchanêsthai, pollous de peri auton einai daimonas opadous kai therapontas.--Plutarch. In previous chapters sundry allusions have been made to treasure caves besides that of Marchlyn Mawr, which has been given at length on pp. 234-7 above. Here follow some more, illustrative of this kind of folklore prevalent in Wales: they are difficult to classify, but most of them mention treasure with or without sleeping warriors guarding it. The others are so miscellaneous as to baffle any attempt to characterize them generally and briefly. Take for instance a cave in the part of Rhiwarth rock nearest to Cwm Llanhafan, in the neighbourhood of Llangynog in Montgomeryshire. Into that, according to Cyndelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, some men penetrated as far as the pound of candles lasted, with which they had provided themselves; but it appears to be tenanted by a hag who is always busily washing clothes in a brass pan. Or take the following, from J. H. Roberts' essay, as given in Welsh in Edwards' Cymru for 1897, p. 190: it reminds one of an ordinary fairy tale, but it is not quite like any other which I happen to know:--In the western end of the Arennig Fawr there is a cave: in fact there are several caves there, and some of them are very large too; but there is one to which the finger of tradition points as an ancient abode of the Tylwyth Teg. About two generations ago, the shepherds of that country used to be enchanted by one of them called Mary, who was remarkable for her beauty. Many an effort was made to catch her or to meet her face to face, but without success, as she was too quick on her feet. She used to show herself day after day, and she might be seen, with her little harp, climbing the bare slopes of the mountain. In misty weather when the days were longest in summer, the music she made used to be wafted by the breeze to the ears of the love-sick shepherds. Many a time had the boys of the Filltir Gerrig heard sweet singing when passing the cave in the full light of day, but they were subject to some spell, so that they never ventured to enter. But the shepherd of Boch y Rhaiadr had a better view of the fairies one Allhallows night (ryw noson Calangaeaf) when returning home from a merry-making at Amnod. On the sward in front of the cave what should he see but scores of the Tylwyth Teg singing and dancing! He never saw another assembly in his life so fair, and great was the trouble he had to resist being drawn into their circles. Let us now come to the treasure caves, and begin with Ogof Arthur, 'Arthur's Cave,' in the southern side of Mynyd y Cnwc [49] in the parish of Llangwyfan, on the south-western coast of Anglesey. The foot of Mynyd y Cnwc is washed by the sea, and the mouth of the cave is closed by its waters at high tide, but the cave, which is spacious, has a vent-hole in the side of the mountain [50]. So it is at any rate reported in the Brython for 1859, p. 138, by a writer who explored the place, though not to the end of the mile which it is said to measure in length. He mentions a local tradition, that it contains various treasures, and that it temporarily afforded Arthur shelter in the course of his wars with the Gwydelod or Goidels. But he describes also a cromlech on the top of Mynyd y Cnwc, around which there was a circle of stones, while within the latter there lies buried, it is believed, an iron chest full of ancient gold. Various attempts are said to have been made by the more greedy of the neighbouring inhabitants to dig it up, but they have always been frightened away by portents. Here then the guardians of the treasure are creatures of a supernatural kind, as in many other instances, and especially that of Dinas Emrys to be mentioned presently. Next comes the first of a group of cave legends involving treasure entrusted to the keeping of armed warriors. It is taken from Elijah Waring's Recollections and Anecdotes of Edward Williams, Iolo Morgannwg (London, 1850), pp. 95-8, where it is headed 'A popular Tale in Glamorgan, by Iolo Morgannwg'; a version of it in Welsh will be found in the Brython for 1858, p. 162, but Waring's version is in several respects better, and I give it in his words:--'A Welshman walking over London Bridge, with a neat hazel staff in his hand, was accosted by an Englishman, who asked him whence he came. "I am from my own country," answered the Welshman, in a churlish tone. "Do not take it amiss, my friend," said the Englishman; "if you will only answer my questions, and take my advice, it will be of greater benefit to you than you imagine. That stick in your hand grew on a spot under which are hid vast treasures of gold and silver; and if you remember the place, and can conduct me to it, I will put you in possession of those treasures." 'The Welshman soon understood that the stranger was what he called a cunning man, or conjurer, and for some time hesitated, not willing to go with him among devils, from whom this magician must have derived his knowledge; but he was at length persuaded to accompany him into Wales; and going to Craig-y-Dinas [Rock of the Fortress], the Welshman pointed out the spot whence he had cut the stick. It was from the stock or root of a large old hazel: this they dug up, and under it found a broad flat stone. This was found to close up the entrance into a very large cavern, down into which they both went. In the middle of the passage hung a bell, and the conjurer earnestly cautioned the Welshman not to touch it. They reached the lower part of the cave, which was very wide, and there saw many thousands of warriors lying down fast asleep in a large circle, their heads outwards, every one clad in bright armour, with their swords, shields, and other weapons lying by them, ready to be laid hold on in an instant, whenever the bell should ring and awake them. All the arms were so highly polished and bright, that they illumined the cavern, as with the light of ten thousand flames of fire. They saw amongst the warriors one greatly distinguished from the rest by his arms, shield, battle-axe, and a crown of gold set with the most precious stones, lying by his side. 'In the midst of this circle of warriors they saw two very large heaps, one of gold, the other of silver. The magician told the Welshman that he might take as much as he could carry away of either the one or the other, but that he was not to take from both the heaps. The Welshman loaded himself with gold: the conjurer took none, saying that he did not want it, that gold was of no use but to those who wanted knowledge, and that his contempt of gold had enabled him to acquire that superior knowledge and wisdom which he possessed. In their way out he cautioned the Welshman again not to touch the bell, but if unfortunately he should do so, it might be of the most fatal consequence to him, as one or more of the warriors would awake, lift up his head, and ask if it was day. "Should this happen," said the cunning man, "you must, without hesitation, answer No, sleep thou on; on hearing which he will again lay down his head and sleep." In their way up, however, the Welshman, overloaded with gold, was not able to pass the bell without touching it--it rang--one of the warriors raised up his head, and asked, "Is it day?" "No," answered the Welshman promptly, "it is not, sleep thou on;" so they got out of the cave, laid down the stone over its entrance, and replaced the hazel tree. The cunning man, before he parted from his companion, advised him to be economical in the use of his treasure; observing that he had, with prudence, enough for life: but that if by unforeseen accidents he should be again reduced to poverty, he might repair to the cave for more; repeating the caution, not to touch the bell if possible, but if he should, to give the proper answer, that it was not day, as promptly as possible. He also told him that the distinguished person they had seen was Arthur, and the others his warriors; and they lay there asleep with their arms ready at hand, for the dawn of that day when the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle should go to war, the loud clamour of which would make the earth tremble so much, that the bell would ring loudly, and the warriors awake, take up their arms, and destroy all the enemies of the Cymry, who afterwards should repossess the Island of Britain, re-establish their own king and government at Caerlleon, and be governed with justice, and blessed with peace so long as the world endures. 'The time came when the Welshman's treasure was all spent: he went to the cave, and as before overloaded himself. In his way out he touched the bell: it rang: a warrior lifted up his head, asking if it was day, but the Welshman, who had covetously overloaded himself, being quite out of breath with labouring under his burden, and withal struck with terror, was not able to give the necessary answer; whereupon some of the warriors got up, took the gold away from him, and beat him dreadfully. They afterwards threw him out, and drew the stone after them over the mouth of the cave. The Welshman never recovered the effects of that beating, but remained almost a cripple as long as he lived, and very poor. He often returned with some of his friends to Craig-y-Dinas; but they could never afterwards find the spot, though they dug over, seemingly, every inch of the hill.' This story of Iolo's closes with a moral, which I omit in order to make room for what he says in a note to the effect, that there are two hills in Glamorganshire called Craig-y-Dinas--nowadays the more usual pronunciation in South Wales is Craig y Dinas--one in the parish of Llantrissant and the other in Ystrad Dyfodwg. There was also a hill so called, Iolo says, in the Vale of Towy, not far from Carmarthen. He adds that in Glamorgan the tale is related of the Carmarthenshire hill, while in Carmarthenshire the hill is said to be in Glamorgan. According to Iolo's son, Taliesin Williams [51] or Taliesin ab Iolo, the Craig y Dinas with which the Cave of Arthur (or Owen Lawgoch) is associated is the one on the borders of Glamorgan and Brecknockshire. That is also the opinion of my friend Mr. Reynolds, who describes this craig and dinas as a very bold rocky eminence at the top of the Neath Valley, near Pont Ned Fechan. He adds that in this tale as related to his mother 'in her very young days' by a very old woman, known as Mari Shencin y Clochyd 'Jenkin the Sexton's Mary,' the place of Arthur was taken by Owen Lawgoch, 'Owen of the Red Hand,' of whom more anon. The next Arthurian story is not strictly in point, for it makes no allusion to treasure; but as it is otherwise so similar to Iolo's tale I cannot well avoid introducing it here. It is included in the composite story of Bwca 'r Trwyn, 'the Bogie of the Nose,' written out for me in Gwentian Welsh by Mr. Craigfryn Hughes. The cave portion relates how a Monmouthshire farmer, whose house was grievously troubled by the bogie, set out one morning to call on a wizard who lived near Caerleon, and how he on his way came up with a very strange and odd man who wore a three-cornered hat. They fell into conversation, and the strange man asked the farmer if he should like to see something of a wonder. He answered he would. 'Come with me then,' said the wearer of the cocked hat, 'and you shall see what nobody else alive to-day has seen.' When they had reached the middle of a wood this spiritual guide sprang from horseback and kicked a big stone near the road. It instantly moved aside to disclose the mouth of a large cave; and now said he to the farmer, 'Dismount and bring your horse in here: tie him up alongside of mine, and follow me so that you may see something which the eyes of man have not beheld for centuries.' The farmer, having done as he was ordered, followed his guide for a long distance: they came at length to the top of a flight of stairs, where two huge bells were hanging. 'Now mind,' said the warning voice of the strange guide, 'not to touch either of those bells.' At the bottom of the stairs there was a vast chamber with hundreds of men lying at full length on the floor, each with his head reposing on the stock of his gun. 'Have you any notion who these men are?' 'No,' replied the farmer, 'I have not, nor have I any idea what they want in such a place as this.' 'Well,' said the guide, 'these are Arthur's thousand soldiers reposing and sleeping till the Kymry have need of them. Now let us get out as fast as our feet can carry us.' When they reached the top of the stairs, the farmer somehow struck his elbow against one of the bells so that it rang, and in the twinkling of an eye all the sleeping host rose to their feet shouting together, 'Are the Kymry in straits?' 'Not yet: sleep you on,' replied the wearer of the cocked hat, whereupon they all dropped down on their guns to resume their slumbers at once. 'These are the valiant men,' he went on to say, 'who are to turn the scale in favour of the Kymry when the time comes for them to cast the Saxon yoke off their necks and to recover possession of their country.' When the two had returned to their horses at the mouth of the cave, his guide said to the farmer, 'Now go in peace, and let me warn you on the pain of death not to utter a syllable about what you have seen for the space of a year and a day: if you do, woe awaits you.' After he had moved the stone back to its place the farmer lost sight of him. When the year had lapsed the farmer happened to pass again that way, but, though he made a long and careful search, he failed completely to find the stone at the mouth of the cave. To return to Iolo's yarn, one may say that there are traces of his story as at one time current in Merionethshire, but with the variation that the Welshman met the wizard not on London Bridge but at a fair at Bala, and that the cave was somewhere in Merioneth: the hero was Arthur, and the cave was known as Ogof Arthur. Whether any such cave is still known I cannot tell; but a third and interestingly told version is given in the Brython for 1858, p. 179, by the late Gwynionyd, who gives the story as the popular belief in his native parish of Troed yr Aur, halfway between Newcastle Emlyn and Aber Porth, in South Cardiganshire. In this last version the hero is not Arthur, but the later man as follows:--Not the least of the wonders of imagination wont to exercise the minds of the old people was the story of Owen Lawgoch. One sometimes hears sung in our fairs the words:-- Yr Owain hwn yw Harri 'r Nawfed Syd yn trigo 'ngwlad estronied, &c. This Owen is Henry the Ninth, Who tarries in a foreign land, &c. But this Owen Lawgoch, the national deliverer of our ancient race of Brythons, did not, according to the Troed yr Aur people, tarry in a foreign land, but somewhere in Wales, not far from Offa's Dyke. They used to say that one Dafyd Meirig of Bettws Bledrws, having quarrelled with his father, left for Lloegr [52], 'England.' When he had got a considerable distance from home, he struck a bargain with a cattle dealer to drive a herd of his beasts to London. Somewhere at the corner of a vast moor Dafyd cut a very remarkable hazel stick; for a good staff is as essential to the vocation of a good drover as teeth are to a dog. So while his comrades had had their sticks broken before reaching London, Dafyd's remained as it was, and whilst they were conversing together on London Bridge a stranger accosted Dafyd, wishing to know where he had obtained that wonderful stick. He replied that it was in Wales he had had it, and on the stranger's assuring him that there were wondrous things beneath the tree on which it had grown, they both set out for Wales. When they reached the spot and dug a little they found that there was a great hollow place beneath. As night was spreading out her sable mantle, and as they were getting deeper, what should they find but stairs easy to step and great lamps illumining the vast chamber! They descended slowly, with mixed emotions of dread and invincible desire to see the place. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves near a large table, at one end of which they beheld sitting a tall man of about seven foot. He occupied an old-fashioned chair and rested his head on his left hand, while the other hand, all red, lay on the table and grasped a great sword. He was withal enjoying a wondrously serene sleep; and at his feet on the floor lay a big dog. After casting a glance at them, the wizard said to Dafyd: 'This is Owen Lawgoch, who is to sleep on till a special time, when he will wake and reign over the Brythons. That weapon in his hand is one of the swords of the ancient kings of Prydain. No battle was ever lost in which that sword was used.' Then they moved slowly on, gazing at the wonders of that subterranean chamber; and they beheld everywhere the arms of ages long past, and on the table thousands of gold pieces bearing the images of the different kings of Prydain. They got to understand that it was permitted them to take a handful of each, but not to put any in their purses. They both visited the cave several times, but at last Dafyd put in his purse a little of the gold bearing the image of one of the bravest of Owen's ancestors. But after coming out again they were never able any more to find Owen's subterranean palace. Those are, says Gwynionyd, the ideas cherished by the old people of Troed yr Aur in Keredigion, and the editor adds a note that the same sort of story is current among the peasantry of Cumberland, and perhaps of other parts of Britain. This remark will at once recall to the reader's mind the well-known verses [53] of the Scottish poet, Leyden, as to Arthur asleep in a cave in the Eildon Hills in the neighbourhood of Melrose Abbey. But he will naturally ask why London Bridge is introduced into this and Iolo's story, and in answer I have to say, firstly, that London Bridge formerly loomed very large in the popular imagination as one of the chief wonders of London, itself the most wonderful city in the world. Such at any rate was the notion cherished as to London and London Bridge by the country people of Wales, even within my own memory. Secondly, the fashion of selecting London Bridge as the opening scene of a treasure legend had been set, perhaps, by a widely spread English story to the following effect:--A certain pedlar of Swaffham in Norfolk had a dream, that if he went and stood on London Bridge he would have very joyful news; as the dream was doubled and trebled he decided to go. So he stood on the bridge two or three days, when at last a shopkeeper, observing that he loitered there so long, neither offering anything for sale nor asking for alms, inquired of him as to his business. The pedlar told him his errand, and was heartily laughed at by the shopkeeper, who said that he had dreamt that night that he was at a place called Swaffham in Norfolk, and that if he only dug under a great oak tree in an orchard behind a pedlar's house there, he would find a vast treasure; but the place was utterly unknown to him, and he was not such a fool as to follow a silly dream. No, he was wiser than that; so he advised the pedlar to go home to mind his business. The pedlar very quietly took in the words as to the dream, and hastened home to Swaffham, where he found the treasure in his own orchard. The rest of the story need not be related here, as it is quite different from the Welsh ones, which the reader has just had brought under his notice [54]. To return to Owen Lawgoch, for we have by no means done with him: on the farm of Cil yr Ychen there stands a remarkable limestone hill called y Dinas, 'the Fortress,' hardly a mile to the north of the village of Llandybïe, in Carmarthenshire. This dinas and the lime-kilns that are gradually consuming it are to be seen on the right from the railway as you go from Llandeilo to Llandybïe. It is a steep high rock which forms a very good natural fortification, and in the level area on the top is the mouth of a very long cavern, known as Ogo'r Dinas, 'the Dinas Cave.' The entrance into it is small and low, but it gradually widens out, becoming in one place lofty and roomy with several smaller branch caves leading out of it; and it is believed that some of them connect Ogo'r Dinas with smaller caves at Pant y Llyn, 'the Lake Hollow,' where, as the name indicates, there is a small lake a little higher up: both Ogo'r Dinas and Pant y Llyn are within a mile of the village of Llandybïe [55]. Now I am informed, in a letter written in 1893 by one native, that the local legend about Ogo'r Dinas is that Owen Lawgoch and his men are lying asleep in it, while another native, Mr. Fisher, writing in the same year, but on the authority of somewhat later hearsay, expresses himself as follows:--'I remember hearing two traditions respecting Ogo'r Dinas: (1) that King Arthur and his warriors lie sleeping in it with their right hands clasping the hilts of their drawn swords ready to encounter anyone who may venture to disturb their repose--is there not a dinas somewhere in Carnarvonshire with a similar legend? (2) That Owen Lawgoch lived in it some time or other: that is all that I remember having heard about him in connection with this ogof.' Mr. Fisher proceeds, moreover, to state that it is said of an ogof at Pant y Llyn, that Owen Lawgoch and his men on a certain occasion took refuge in it, where they were shut up and starved to death. He adds that, however this may be, it is a fact that in the year 1813 ten or more human skeletons of unusual stature were discovered in an ogof there [56]. To this I may append a reference to the Geninen for 1896, p. 84, where Mr. Lleufer Thomas, who is also a native of the district, alludes to the local belief that Owen Lawgoch and his men are asleep, as already mentioned, in the cave of Pant y Llyn, and that they are to go on sleeping there till a trumpet blast and the clash of arms on Rhiw Goch rouse them to sally forth to combat the Saxons and to conquer, as set forth by Howells: see p. 381 above. It is needless to say that there is no reason, as will be seen presently, to suppose Owen Lawgoch to have ever been near any of the caves to which allusion has here been made; but that does not appreciably detract from the fascination of the legend which has gathered round his personality; and in passing I may be allowed to express my surprise that in such stories as these the earlier Owen has not been eclipsed by Owen Glyndwr: there must be some historical reason why that has not taken place. Can it be that a habit of caution made Welshmen speak of Owen Lawgoch when the other Owen was really meant? The passage I have cited from Mr. Fisher's letter raises the question of a dinas in Carnarvonshire, which that of his native parish recalled to his mind; and this is to be considered next. Doubtless he meant Dinas Emrys formerly called Din Emreis [57], 'the Fortress of Ambrosius,' situated near Bedgelert, and known in the neighbourhood simply as y Dinas, 'the Fort.' It is celebrated in the Vortigern legend as the place where the dragons had been hidden, that frustrated the building of that king's castle; and the spot is described in Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Wales, in the article on Bethgelart (Bed-Celert), as an isolated rocky eminence with an extensive top area, which is defended by walls of loose stones, and accessible only on one side. He adds that the entrance appears to have been guarded by two towers, and that within the enclosed area are the foundations of circular buildings of loose stones forming walls of about five feet in thickness. Concerning that Dinas we read in the Brython for 1861, p. 329, a legend to the following effect:--Now after the departure of Vortigern, Myrdin, or Merlin as he is called in English, remained himself in the Dinas for a long time, until, in fact, he went away with Emrys Ben-aur, 'Ambrosius the Gold-headed'--evidently Aurelius Ambrosius is meant. When he was about to set out with the latter, he put all his treasure and wealth into a crochan aur, 'a gold cauldron,' and hid it in a cave in the Dinas, and on the mouth of the cave he rolled a huge stone, which he covered up with earth and sods, so that it was impossible for any one to find it. He intended this wealth to be the property of some special person in a future generation, and it is said that the heir to it is to be a youth with yellow hair and blue eyes. When that one comes near to the Dinas a bell will ring to invite him to the cave, which will open of itself as soon as his foot touches it. Now the fact that some such legend was once currently believed about Bedgelert and Nanhwynain is proved by the curious stories as to various attempts made to find the treasure, and the thunderstorms and portents which used to vanquish the local greed for gold. For several instances in point see the Brython, pp. 329-30; and for others, showing how hidden treasure is carefully reserved for the right sort of heir, see p. 148 above. To prove how widely this idea prevailed in Carnarvonshire, I may add a short story which Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn got from the engineer who told her of the sacred eel of Llangybi (p. 366):--There was on Pentyrch, the hill above Llangybi, he said, a large stone so heavy and fixed so fast in the ground that no horses, no men could move it: it had often been tried. One day, however, a little girl happened to be playing by the stone, and at the touch of her little hand the stone moved. A hoard of coins was found under it, and that at a time when the little girl's parents happened to be in dire need of it. Search had long been made by undeserving men for treasure supposed to be hidden at that spot; but it was always unsuccessful until the right person touched the stone to move. The failure of the wrong person to secure the treasure, even when discovered, is illustrated by a story given by Mr. Derfel Hughes in his Antiquities of Llandegai and Llanllechid, pp. 35-6, to the effect that a servant man, somewhere up among the mountains near Ogwen Lake, chanced to come across the mouth of a cave with abundance of vessels of brass (pres) of every shape and description within it. He went at once and seized one of them, but, alas! it was too heavy for him to stir it. So he resolved to go away and return early on the morrow with a friend to help him; but before going he closed the mouth of the cave with stones and sods so as to leave it safe. While thus engaged he remembered having heard how others had like him found caves and failed to refind them. He could procure nothing readily that would satisfy him as a mark, so it occurred to him to dot his path with the chippings of his stick, which he whittled all the way as he went back until he came to a familiar track: the chips were to guide him back to the cave. So when the morning came he and his friend set out, but when they reached the point where the chips should begin, not one was to be seen: the Tylwyth Teg had picked up every one of them. So that discovery of articles of brass--more probably bronze--was in vain. But, says the writer, it is not fated to be always in vain, for there is a tradition in the valley that it is a Gwydel, 'Goidel, Irishman,' who is to have these treasures, and that it will happen in this wise:--A Gwydel will come to the neighbourhood to be a shepherd, and one day when he goes up the mountain to see to the sheep, just when it pleases the fates a black sheep with a speckled head will run before him and make straight for the cave: the sheep will go in, with the Gwydel in pursuit trying to catch him. When the Gwydel enters he sees the treasures, looks at them with surprise, and takes possession of them; and thus, in some generation to come, the Gwydyl will have their own restored to them. That is the tradition which Derfel Hughes found in the vale of the Ogwen, and he draws from it the inference which it seems to warrant, in words to the following effect:--Perhaps this shows us that the Gwydyl had some time or other something to do with these parts, and that we are not to regard as stories without foundations all that is said of that nation; and the sayings of old people to this day show that there is always some spite between our nation and the Gwydyl. Thus, for instance, he goes on to say, if a man proves changeable, he is said to have become a Gwydel (Y mae wedi troi'n Wydel), or if one is very shameless and cheeky he is called a Gwydel and told to hold his tongue (Taw yr hen Wydel); and a number of such locutions used by our people proves, he thinks, the former prevalence of much contention between the two sister-nations. Expressions of the kind mentioned by Mr. Hughes are well known in all parts of the Principality, and it is difficult to account for them except on the supposition that Goidels and Brythons lived for a long time face to face, so to say, with one another over large areas in the west of our island. The next story to be mentioned belongs to the same Snowdonian neighbourhood, and brings us back to Arthur and his Men. For a writer who has already been quoted from the Brython for 1861, p. 331, makes Arthur and his following set out from Dinas Emrys and cross Hafod y Borth mountain for a place above the upper reach of Cwmllan, called Tregalan, where they found their antagonists. From Tregalan the latter were pushed up the bwlch or pass, towards Cwm Dyli; but when the vanguard of the army with Arthur leading had reached the top of the pass, the enemy discharged a shower of arrows at them. There Arthur fell, and his body was buried in the pass so that no enemy might march that way so long as Arthur's dust rested there. That, he says, is the story, and there to this day remains in the pass, he asserts, the heap of stones called Carned Arthur, 'Arthur's Cairn': the pass is called Bwlch y Saethau, 'the Pass of the Arrows.' Then Ogof Llanciau Eryri is the subject of the following story given at p. 371 of the same volume:--After Arthur's death on Bwlch y Saethau, his men ascended to the ridge of the Lliwed and descended thence into a vast cave called Ogof Llanciau Eryri, 'the young Men of Snowdonia's Cave,' which is in the precipitous cliff on the left-hand side near the top of Llyn Llydaw. This is in Cwm Dyli, and there in that cave those warriors are said to be still, sleeping in their armour and awaiting the second coming of Arthur to restore the crown of Britain to the Kymry. For the saying is:-- Llancia' 'Ryri a'u gwyn gyll a'i hennill hi. Snowdonia's youths with their white hazels will win it. As the local shepherds were one day long ago collecting their sheep on the Lliwed, one sheep fell down to a shelf in this precipice, and when the Cwm Dyli shepherd made his way to the spot he perceived that the ledge of rock on which he stood led to the hidden cave of Llanciau Eryri. There was light within: he looked in and beheld a host of warriors without number all asleep, resting on their arms and ready equipped for battle. Seeing that they were all asleep, he felt a strong desire to explore the whole place; but as he was squeezing in he struck his head against the bell hanging in the entrance. It rang so that every corner of the immense cave rang again, and all the warriors woke uttering a terrible shout, which so frightened the shepherd that he never more enjoyed a day's health; nor has anybody since dared as much as to approach the mouth of the cave. Thus far the Brython, and I have only to remark that this legend is somewhat remarkable for the fact of its representing the Youths of Eryri sleeping away in their cave without Arthur among them. In fact, that hero is described as buried not very far off beneath a carned or cairn on Bwlch y Saethau. As to the exact situation of that cairn, I may say that my attention was drawn some time ago to the following lines by Mr. William Owen, better known as Glaslyn, a living bard bred and born in the district:-- Gerllaw Carned Arthur ar ysgwyd y Wydfa Y gorwed gwedillion y cawr enwog Ricca. Near Arthur's Cairn on the shoulder of Snowdon Lie the remains of the famous giant Ricca. These words recall an older couplet in a poem by Rhys Goch Eryri, who is said to have died in the year 1420. He was a native of the parish of Bedgelert, and his words in point run thus:-- Ar y drum oer dramawr, On the ridge cold and vast, Yno gorwed Ricca Gawr. There the Giant Ricca lies. From this it is clear that Rhys Goch meant that the cairn on the top of Snowdon covered the remains of the giant whose name has been variously written Ricca, Ritta, and Rhita. So I was impelled to ascertain from Glaslyn whether I had correctly understood his lines, and he has been good enough to help me out of some of my difficulties, as I do not know Snowdon by heart, especially the Nanhwynain and Bedgelert side of the mountain:--The cairn on the summit of Snowdon was the Giant's before it was demolished and made into a sort of tower which existed before the hotel was made. Glaslyn has not heard it called after Ricca's name, but he states that old people used to call it Carned y Cawr, 'the Giant's Cairn.' In 1850 Carned Arthur, 'Arthur's Cairn,' was to be seen on the top of Bwlch y Saethau, but he does not know whether it is still so, as he has not been up there since the building of the hotel. Bwlch y Saethau is a lofty shoulder of Snowdon extending in the direction of Nanhwynain, and the distance from the top of Snowdon to it is not great; it would take you half an hour or perhaps a little more to walk from the one carned to the other. It is possible to trace Arthur's march from Dinas Emrys up the slopes of Hafod y Borth, over the shoulder of the Aran and Braich yr Oen to Tregalan--or Cwm Tregalan, as it is now called--but from Tregalan he would have to climb in a north-easterly direction in order to reach Bwlch y Saethau, where he is related to have fallen and to have been interred beneath a cairn. This may be regarded as an ordinary or commonplace account of his death. But the scene suggests a far more romantic picture; for down below was Llyn Llydaw with its sequestered isle, connected then by means only of a primitive canoe with a shore occupied by men engaged in working the ore of Eryri. Nay with the eyes of Malory we seem to watch Bedivere making, with Excalibur in his hands, his three reluctant journeys to the lake ere he yielded it to the arm emerging from the deep. We fancy we behold how 'euyn fast by the banke houed a lytyl barge wyth many fayr ladyes in hit,' which was to carry the wounded Arthur away to the accompaniment of mourning and loud lamentation; but the legend of the Marchlyn bids us modify Malory's language as to the barge containing many ladies all wearing black hoods, and take our last look at the warrior departing rather in a coracle with three wondrously fair women attending to his wounds [58]. Some further notes on Snowdon, together with a curious account of the Cave of Llanciau Eryri, have been kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Ellis Pierce (Elis [59] o'r Nant) of Dolwydelan:--In the uppermost part of the hollow called Cwmllan is Tregalan, and in the middle of Cwm Tregalan is a green hill, or rather an eminence which hardly forms a hill, but what is commonly called a boncyn [60] in Carnarvonshire, and between that green boncyn and the Clogwyn Du, 'Black Precipice,' is a bog, the depth of which no one has ever succeeded in ascertaining, and a town--inferred perhaps from tre in Tregalan--is fabled to have been swallowed up there. Another of my informants speaks of several hillocks or boncyns as forming one side of this little cwm; but he has heard from geologists, that these green mounds represent moraines deposited there in the glacial period. From the bottom of the Clogwyn Du it is about a mile to Bwlch y Saethau. Then as to the cave of Llanciau Eryri, which nobody can now find, the slope down to it begins from the top of the Lliwed, but ordinarily speaking one could not descend to where it is supposed to have been without the help of ropes, which seems incompatible with the story of the Cwm Dyli shepherd following a sheep until he was at the mouth of the cave; not to mention the difficulty which the descent would have offered to Arthur's men when they entered it. Then Elis o'r Nant's story represents it shutting after them, and only opening to the shepherd in consequence of his having trodden on a particular sod or spot. He then slid down unintentionally and touched the bell that was hanging there, so that it rang and instantly woke the sleeping warriors. No sooner had that happened than those men of Arthur's took up their guns--never mind the anachronism--and the shepherd made his way out more dead than alive; and the frightened fellow never recovered from the shock to the day of his death. When these warriors take up their guns they fire away, we are told, without mercy from where each man stands: they are not to advance a single step till Arthur comes to call them back to the world. To swell the irrelevancies under which this chapter labours already, and to avoid severing cognate questions too rudely, I wish to add that Elis o'r Nant makes the name of the giant buried on the top of Snowdon into Rhitta or Rhita instead of Ricca. That is also the form of the name with which Mrs. Rhys was familiar throughout her childhood on the Llanberis side of the mountain. She often heard of Rhita [61] Gawr having been buried on the top of Snowdon, and of other warriors on other parts of Snowdon such as Moel Gynghorion and the Gist on that moel. But Elis o'r Nant goes further, and adds that from Rhita the mountain was called Wydfa Rhita, more correctly Gwydfa Rita, 'Rhita's Gwydfa.' Fearing this might be merely an inference, I have tried to cross-examine him so far as that is possible by letter. He replies that his father was bred and born in the little glen called Ewybrnant [62], between Bettws y Coed and Pen Machno, and that his grandfather also lived there, where he appears to have owned land not far from the home of the celebrated Bishop Morgan. Now Elis' father often talked, he says, in his hearing of 'Gwydfa Rhita.' Wishing to have some more definite evidence, I wrote again, and he informs me that his father was very fond of talking about his father, Elis o'r Nant's grandfather, who appears to have been a character and a great supporter of Sir Robert Williams, especially in a keenly contested political election in 1796, when the latter was opposed by the then head of the Penrhyn family. Sometimes the old man from Ewybrnant would set out in his clocs, 'clogs or wooden shoes,' to visit Sir Robert Williams, who lived at Plas y Nant, near Bedgelert. On starting he would say to his family, Mi a'i hyibio troed Gwydfa Rhita ag mi do'n ol rwbrud cin nos, or sometimes foru. That is, 'I'll go round the foot of Rhita's Gwydfa and come back some time before night': sometimes he would say 'to-morrow.' Elis also states that his father used to relate how Rhita's Gwydfa was built, namely by the simple process of each of his soldiers taking a stone to place on Rhita's tomb. However the story as to Rhita Gawr being buried on the top of Snowdon came into existence, there can be no doubt that it was current in comparatively recent times, and that the Welsh name of y Wydfa, derived from it, refers to the mountain as distinguished from the district in which it is situated. In Welsh this latter is Eryri, the habitat, as it were, of the eryr, 'eagle,' a bird formerly at home there as many local names go to prove, such as Carreg yr Eryr [63], 'the Stone of the Eagle,' mentioned in the boundaries of the lands on Snowdon granted to the Abbey of Aberconwy in Llewelyn's charter, where also Snowdon mountain is called Wedua vawr, 'the Great Gwydfa.' Now, as already suggested, the word gwydfa takes us back to Rhita's Carned or Cairn, as it signified a monument, a tomb or barrow: Dr. Davies gives it in his Welsh-Latin Dictionary as Locus Sepulturæ, Mausoleum. This meaning of the word may be illustrated by a reference in passing to the mention in Brut y Tywysogion of the burial of Madog ab Maredyd. For under the year 1159 we are told that he was interred at Meifod, as it was there his tomb or the vault of his family, the one intended also for him (y 6ydua [64]), happened to be. Against the evidence just given, that tradition places Rhita's grave on the top of Snowdon, a passing mention by Derfel Hughes (p. 52) is of no avail, though to the effect that it is on the top of the neighbouring mountain called Carned Lywelyn, 'Llewelyn's Cairn,' that Rhita's Cairn was raised. He deserves more attention, however, when he places Carned Drystan, 'Tristan or Tristram's Cairn,' on a spur of that mountain, to wit, towards the east above Ffynnon y Llyffaint [65]. For it is worthy of note that the name of Drystan, associated with Arthur in the later romances, should figure with that of Arthur in the topography of the same Snowdon district. Before leaving Snowdon I may mention a cave near a small stream not far from Llyn Gwynain, about a mile and a half above Dinas Emrys. In the Llwyd letter (printed in the Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 142, 209), on which I have already drawn, it is called Ogo'r Gwr Blew, 'the Hairy Man's Cave'; and the story relates how the Gwr Blew who lived in it was fatally wounded by a woman who happened to be at home, alone, in one of the nearest farm houses when the Gwr Blew came to plunder it. Its sole interest here is that a later version [66] identifies the Hairy Man with Owen Lawgoch, after modifying the former's designation y Gwr Blew, which literally meant 'the Hair Man,' into y Gwr Blewog, 'the Hairy Man.' This doubtful instance of the presence of Owen Lawgoch in the folklore of North Wales seems to stand alone. Some of these cave stories, it will have been seen, reveal to us a hero who is expected to return to interfere again in the affairs of this world, and it is needless to say that Wales is by no means alone in the enjoyment of imaginary prospects of this kind. The same sort of poetic expectation has not been unknown, for instance, in Ireland. In the summer of 1894, I spent some sunny days in the neighbourhood of the Boyne, and one morning I resolved to see the chief burial mounds dotting the banks of that interesting river; but before leaving the hotel at Drogheda, my attention was attracted by a book of railway advertisement of the kind which forcibly impels one to ask two questions: why will not the railway companies leave those people alone who do not want to travel, and why will they make it so tedious for those who do? But on turning the leaves of that booklet over I was inclined to a suaver mood, as I came on a paragraph devoted to an ancient stronghold called the Grianan of Aileach, or Greenan-Ely, in the highlands of Donegal. Here I read that a thousand armed men sit resting there on their swords, and bound by magic sleep till they are to be called forth to take their part in the struggle for the restoration of Erin's freedom. At intervals they awake, it is said, and looking up from their trance they ask in tones which solemnly resound through the many chambers of the Grianan: 'Is the time come?' A loud voice, that of the spiritual caretaker, is heard to reply: 'The time is not yet.' They resume their former posture and sink into their sleep again. That is the substance of the words I read, and they called to my mind the legend of such heroes of the past as Barbarossa, with his sleep interrupted only by his change of posture once in seven years; of Dom Sebastian, for centuries expected from Moslem lands to restore the glories of Portugal; of the Cid Rodrigo, expected back to do likewise with the kingdom of Castile; and last, but not least, of the O'Donoghue who sleeps beneath the Lakes of Killarney, ready to emerge to right the wrongs of Erin. With my head full of these and the like dreams of folklore, I was taken over the scene of the Battle of the Boyne; and the car-driver, having vainly tried to interest me in it, gave me up in despair as an uncultured savage who felt no interest in the history of Ireland. However he somewhat changed his mind when, on reaching the first ancient burial mound, he saw me disappear underground, fearless of the Fomhoraigh; and he began to wonder whether I should ever return to pay him his fare. This in fact was the sheet anchor of all my hopes; for I thought that in case I remained fast in a narrow passage, or lost my way in the chambers of the prehistoric dead, the jarvey must fetch me out again. So by the time I had visited three of these ancient places, Dowth, Knowth, and New Grange, I had risen considerably in his opinion; and he bethought him of stories older than the Battle of the Boyne. So he told me on the way back several bits of something less drearily historical. Among other things, he pointed in the direction of a place called Ardee in the county of Louth, where, he said, there is Garry Geerlaug's enchanted fort full of warriors in magic sleep, with Garry Geerlaug himself in their midst. Once on a time a herdsman is said to have strayed into their hall, he said, and to have found the sleepers each with his sword and his spear ready to hand. But as the intruder could not keep his hands off the metal wealth of the place, the owners of the spears began to rouse themselves, and the intruder had to flee for his life. But there that armed host is awaiting the eventful call to arms, when they are to sally forth to restore prosperity and glory to Ireland. That was his story, and I became all attention as soon as I heard of Ardee, which is in Irish Áth Fhir-dheadh, or the Ford of Fer-deadh, so called from Fer-deadh, who fought a protracted duel with Cúchulainn in that ford, where at the end, according to a well-known Irish story, he fell by Cúchulainn's hand. I was still more exercised by the name of Garry Geerlaug, as I recognized in Garry an Anglo-Irish pronunciation of the Norse name Godhfreydhr, later Godhroedh, sometimes rendered Godfrey and sometimes Godred, while in Man and in Scotland it has become Gorry, which may be heard also in Ireland. I thought, further, that I recognized the latter part of Garry Geerlaug's designation as the Norse female name Geirlaug. There was no complete lack of Garries in that part of Ireland in the tenth and eleventh centuries; but I have not yet found any historian to identify for me the warrior named or nicknamed Garry Geerlaug, who is to return blinking to this world of ours when his nap is over. Leaving Ireland, I was told the other day of a place called Tom na Hurich, near Inverness, where Finn and his following are resting, each on his left elbow, enjoying a broken sleep while waiting for the note to be sounded, which is to call them forth. What they are then to do I have not been told: it may be that they will proceed at once to solve the Crofter Question, for there will doubtless be one. It appears, to come back to Wales, that King Cadwaladr, who waged an unsuccessful war with the Angles of Northumbria in the seventh century, was long after his death expected to return to restore the Brythons to power. At any rate so one is led in some sort of a hazy fashion to believe in reading several of the poems in the manuscript known as the Book of Taliessin. One finds, however, no trace of Cadwaladr in our cave legends: the heroes of them are Arthur and Owen Lawgoch. Now concerning Arthur one need at this point hardly speak, except to say that the Welsh belief in the eventual return of Arthur was at one time a powerful motive affecting the behaviour of the people of Wales, as was felt, for instance, by English statesmen in the reign of Henry II. But by our time the expected return of Arthur--rexque futurus--has dissipated itself into a commonplace of folklore fitted only to point an allegory, as when Elvet Lewis, one of the sweetest of living Welsh poets, sings in a poem entitled Arthur gyda ni, 'Arthur with us':-- Mae Arthur Fawr yn cysgu, Great Arthur still is sleeping, A'i dewrion syd o'i deutu, His warriors all around him, A'u gafael ar y cled: With grip upon the steel: Pan daw yn dyd yn Nghymru, When dawns the day on Cambry, Daw Arthur Fawr i fynu Great Arthur forth will sally Yn fyw--yn fyw o'i fed! Alive to work her weal! Not so with regard to the hopes associated with the name of Owen Lawgoch; for we have it on Gwynionyd's testimony, p. 464, that our old baledwyr or ballad men used to sing about him at Welsh fairs: it is not in the least improbable that they still do so here and there, unless the horrors of the ghastly murder last reported in the newspapers have been found to pay better. At any rate Mr. Fisher (p. 379) has known old people in his native district in the Llychwr Valley who could repeat stanzas or couplets from the ballads in question. He traces these scraps to a booklet entitled Merlin's Prophecy [67], together with a brief history of his life, taken from the Book of Prognostication. This little book bears no date, but appears to have been published in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is partly in prose, dealing briefly with the history of Merlin the Wild or Silvaticus, and the rest consists of two poems. The first of these poems is entitled Dechreu Darogan Myrdin, 'the Beginning of Merlin's Prognostication,' and is made up of forty-nine verses, several of which speak of Owen as king conquering all his foes and driving out the Saxons: then in the forty-seventh stanza comes the couplet which says, that this Owen is Henry the Ninth, who is tarrying in a foreign land. The other poem is of a more general character, and is entitled the Second Song of Merlin's Prognostication, and consists of twenty-six stanzas of four lines each like the previous one; but the third stanza describes Arthur's bell at Caerlleon, 'Caerleon,' ringing with great vigour to herald the coming of Owen; and the seventh stanza begins with the following couplet:-- Ceir gweled Owen Law-goch yn d'od i Frydain Fawr, Ceir gweled newyn ceiniog yn nhref Gaerlleon-gawr. Owen Lawgoch one shall to Britain coming see, And dearth of pennies find at Chester on the Dee. It closes with the date in verse at the end, to wit, 1668, which takes us back to very troublous times: 1668 was the year of the Triple Alliance of England, Sweden, and Holland against Louis XIV; and it was not long after the Plague had raged, and London had had its Great Fire. So it is a matter of no great surprise if some people in Wales had a notion that the power of England was fast nearing its end, and that the baledwyr thought it opportune to refurbish and adapt some of Merlin's prophecies as likely to be acceptable to the peasantry of South Wales. At all events we have no reason to suppose that the two poems which have here been described from Mr. Fisher's data represented either the gentry of Wales, whose ordinary speech was probably for the most part English, or the bardic fraternity, who would have looked with contempt at the language and style of the Prognostication. For, apart from careless printing, this kind of literature can lay no claim to merit in point of diction or of metre. Such productions represent probably the baledwyr and the simple country people, such as still listen in rapt attention to them doing at Welsh fairs and markets what they are pleased to regard as singing. All this fits in well enough with the folklore of the caves, such as the foregoing stories represent it. Here I may add that I am informed by Mr. Craigfryn Hughes of a tradition that Arthur and his men are biding their time near Caerleon on the Usk, to wit, in a cave resembling generally those described in the foregoing legends. He also mentions a tradition as to Owen Glyndwr--so he calls him, though it is unmistakably the Owen of the baledwyr who have been referred to by Mr. Fisher--that he and his men are similarly slumbering in a cave in Craig Gwrtheyrn, in Carmarthenshire. That is a spot in the neighbourhood of Llandyssil, consisting of an elevated field terminating on one side in a sharp declivity, with the foot of the rock laved by the stream of the Teifi. Craig Gwrtheyrn means Vortigern's Rock, and it is one of the sites with which legend associates the name of that disreputable old king. I am not aware that it shows any traces of ancient works, but it looks at a distance an ideal site for an old fortification. An earlier prophecy about Owen Lawgoch than any of these occurs, as kindly pointed out to me by Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, in the Peniarth MS. 94 (= Hengwrt MS. 412, p. 23), and points back possibly to the last quarter of the fourteenth century. See also one quoted by him, from the Mostyn MS. 133, in his Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language, i. 106. Probably many more such prophecies might be discovered if anybody undertook to make a systematic search for them. But who was Owen Lawgoch, if there ever was such a man? Such a man there was undoubtedly; for we read in one of the documents printed in the miscellaneous volume commonly known as the Record of Carnarvon, that at a court held at Conway in the forty-fourth year of Edward III a certain Gruffyd Says was adjudged to forfeit all the lands which he held in Anglesey to the Prince of Wales--who was at that time no other than Edward the Black Prince--for the reason that the said Gruffyd had been an adherent of Owen: adherens fuisset Owino Lawegogh (or Lawgogh) inimico et proditori predicti domini Principis et de consilio predicti Owyni ad mouendam guerram in Wallia contra predictum dominum Principem [68]. How long previously it had been attempted to begin a war on behalf of this Owen Lawgoch one cannot say, but it so happens that at this time there was a captain called Yeuwains, Yewains, or Yvain de Gales or Galles, 'Owen of Wales,' fighting on the French side against the English in Edward's Continental wars. Froissart in his Chronicles has a great deal to say of him, for he distinguished himself greatly on various critical occasions. From the historian's narrative one finds that Owen had escaped when a boy to the court of Philip VI of France, who received him with great favour and had him educated with his own nephews. Froissart's account of him is, that the king of England, Edward III, had slain his father and given his lordship and principality to his own son as Prince of Wales; and Froissart gives Owen's father's name as Aymon, which should mean Edmond, unless the name intended may have been rather Einion. However that may have been, Owen was engaged in the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, and when peace was made he went to serve in Lombardy; but when war between England and France broke out again in 1369, he returned to France. He sometimes fought on sea and sometimes on land, but he was always entrusted by the French king, who was now Charles V, with important commands [69]. Thus in 1372 he was placed at the head of a flotilla with 3,000 men, and ordered to operate against the English: he made a descent on the Isle of Guernsey [70], and while there besieging the castle of Cornet, he was charged by the king of France to sail to Spain to invite the king of Castile to send his fleet again to help in the attack on La Rochelle. Whilst staying at Santander the earl of Pembroke was brought thither, having been taken prisoner in the course of the destruction of the English fleet before La Rochelle. Owen, on seeing the earl of Pembroke, asks him with bitterness if he is come there to do him homage for his land, of which he had taken possession in Wales. He threatens to avenge himself on him as soon as he can, and also on the earl of Hereford and Edward Spencer, for it was by the fathers of these three men, he said, his own father had been betrayed to death. Edward III died in 1377, and the Black Prince had died shortly before. Owen survived them both, and was actively engaged in the siege of Mortagne sur Mer in Poitou, when he was assassinated by one Lamb, who had insinuated himself into his service and confidence, partly by pretending to bring him news about his native land and telling him that all Wales was longing to have him back to be the lord of his country--et lui fist acroire que toute li terre de Gales le desiroient mout à ravoir à seigneur. So Owen fell in the year 1378, and was buried at the church of Saint-Léger [71] while Lamb returned to the English to receive his stipulated pay. When this happened Owen's namesake, Owen Glyndwr, was nearly thirty years of age. The latter was eventually to assert with varying fortune on several fields of battle in this country the claims of his elder kinsman, who, by virtue of his memory in France, would seem to have rendered it easy for the later Owen to enter into friendly relations with the French court of his day [72]. Now as to Yvain de Galles, the Rev. Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc) in his Hanes Cymru, 'History of Wales,' devotes a couple of pages, 735-7, to Froissart's account of him, and he points out that Angharad Llwyd, in her edition of Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwydir Family [73], had found Owen Lawgoch to have been Owen ab Thomas ab Rhodri, brother to Llewelyn, the last native prince of Wales. One of the names, however, among other things, forms a difficulty: why did Froissart call Yvain's father Aymon? So it is clear that a more searching study of Welsh pedigrees and other documents, including those at the Record Office [74], has to be made before Owen can be satisfactorily placed in point of succession. For that he was in the right line to succeed the native princes of Wales is suggested both by the eagerness with which all Wales was represented as looking to his return to be the lord of the country, and by the opening words of Froissart in describing what he had been robbed of by Edward III, as being both lordship and principality--la signourie et princeté. Be that as it may, there is, it seems to me, little doubt that Yvain de Galles was no other than the Owen Lawgoch, whose adherent Gruffyd Says was deprived of his land and property in the latter part of Edward's reign. In the next place, there is hardly room for doubt that the Owen Lawgoch here referred to was the same man whom the baledwyr in their jumble of prophecies intended to be Henry the Ninth, that is to say the Welsh successor to the last Tudor king, Henry VIII, and that he was at the same time the hero of the cave legends of divers parts of the Principality, especially South Wales, as already indicated. Now without being able to say why Owen and his analogues should become the heroes of cave legends contemplating a second advent, it is easy to point to circumstances which facilitated their doing so. It is useless to try to discuss the question of Arthur's disappearance; but take Garry Geerlaug, for instance, a roving Norseman, as we may suppose from his name, who may have suddenly disappeared with his followers, never more to be heard of in the east of Ireland. In the absence of certain news of his death, it was all the easier to imagine that he was dozing quietly away in an enchanted fortress. Then as to King Cadwaladr, who was also, perhaps, to have returned to this world, so little is known concerning his end that historians have no certainty to this day when or where he died. So much the readier therefore would the story gain currency that he was somewhere biding his time to come back to retrieve his lost fortunes. Lastly, there is Owen Lawgoch, the magic of whose name has only been dissipated in our own day: he died in France in the course of a protracted war with the kings of England. It is not likely, then, that the peasantry of Wales could have heard anything definite about his fate. So here also the circumstances were favourable to the cave legend and the dream that he was, whether at home or abroad, only biding his time. Moreover, in all these cases the hope-inspiring delusion gained currency among a discontented people, probably, who felt the sore need of a deliverer to save them from oppression or other grievous hardships of their destiny. The question can no longer be prevented from presenting itself as to the origin of this idea of a second advent of a hero of the past; but in that form it is too large for discussion here, and it would involve a review, for instance, of one of the cardinal beliefs of the Latter-day Saints as to the coming of Christ to reign on earth, and other doctrines supposed to be derived from the New Testament. On the other hand, there is no logical necessity why the expected deliverer should have been in the world before: witness the Jews, who are looking forward not to the return but to the birth and first coming of their Messiah. So the question here may be confined more or less strictly to its cave-legend form; and though I cannot answer it, some advance in the direction whence the answer should come may perhaps be made. In the first place, one will have noticed that Arthur and Owen Lawgoch come more or less in one another's way; and the presumption is that Owen Lawgoch has been to a certain extent ousting Arthur, who may be regarded as having the prior claim, not to mention that in the case of the Gwr Blew cave, p. 481, Owen is made by an apparently recent version of the story to evict from his lair a commonplace robber of no special interest. In other words, the Owen Lawgoch legend is, so to say, detected spreading itself [75]. That is very possibly just what had happened at a remoter period in the case of the Arthur legend itself. In other words, Arthur has taken the place of some ancient divinity, such as that dimly brought within our ken by Plutarch in the words placed at the head of this chapter. He reproduces the report of a certain Demetrius, sent by the emperor of Rome to reconnoitre and inspect the coasts of Britain. It was to the effect that around Britain lay many uninhabited islands, some of which are named after deities and some after heroes; and of the islands inhabited, he visited the one nearest to the uninhabited ones. Of this the dwellers were few, but the people of Britain treated them as sacrosanct and inviolable in their persons. Among other things, they related to him how terrible storms, diseases, and portents happened on the occasion of any one of the mighty leaving this life. He adds:--'Moreover there is, they said, an island in which Cronus is imprisoned, with Briareus keeping guard over him as he sleeps; for, as they put it, sleep is the bond forged for Cronus. They add that around him are many divinities, his henchmen and attendants [76].' What divinity, Celtic or pre-Celtic, this may have been who recalled Cronus or Saturn to the mind of the Roman officer, it is impossible to say. It is to be noticed that he sleeps and that his henchmen are with him, but no allusion is made to treasure. No more is there, however, in Mr. Fisher's version of the story of Ogo'r Dinas, which, according to him, says that Arthur and his warriors there lie sleeping with their right hands clasping the hilts of their drawn swords, ready to encounter any one who may venture to disturb their repose. On the other hand, legends about cave treasure are probably very ancient, and in some at least of our stories the safe keeping of such treasure must be regarded as the original object of the presence of the armed host. The permission supposed to be allowed an intruder to take away a reasonable quantity of the cave gold, I should look at in the light of a sort of protest on the part of the story-teller against the niggardliness of the cave powers. I cannot help suspecting in the same way that the presence of a host of armed warriors to guard some piles of gold and silver for unnumbered ages must have struck the fancy of the story-tellers as disproportionate, and that this began long ago to cause a modification in the form of the legends. That is to say, the treasure sank into a mere accessory of the presence of the armed men, who are not guarding any such thing so much as waiting for the destined hour when they are to sally forth to make lost causes win. Originally the armed warriors were in some instances presumably the henchmen of a sleeping divinity, as in the story told to Demetrius; but perhaps oftener they were the guardians of treasure, just as much as the invisible agencies are, which bring on thunder and lightning and portents when any one begins to dig at Dinas Emrys or other spots where ancient treasure lies hidden. There is, it must be admitted, no objection to regarding the attendants of a divinity as at the same time the guardians of his treasure. In none, however, of these cave stories probably may we suppose the principal figure to have originally been that of the hero expected to return among men: he, when found in them, is presumably to be regarded as a comparatively late interloper. But it is, as already hinted, not to be understood that the notion of a returning hero is itself a late one. Quite the contrary; and the question then to be answered is, Where was that kind of hero supposed to pass his time till his return? There is only one answer to which Welsh folklore points, and that is, In fairyland. This is also the teaching of the ancient legend about Arthur, who goes away to the Isle of Avallon to be healed of his wounds by the fairy maiden Morgen; and, according to an anonymous poet [77], it is in her charms that one should look for the reason why Arthur tarries so long:-- Immodice læsus Arthurus tendit ad aulam Regis Avallonis, ubi virgo regia, vulnus Illius tractans, sanati membra reservat Ipsa sibi: vivuntque simul, si credere fas est. Avallon's court see suffering Arthur reach: His wounds are healed, a royal maid the leech; His pains assuaged, he now with her must dwell, If we hold true what ancient legends tell. Here may be cited by way of comparison Walter Mapes' statement as to the Trinio, concerning whom he was quoted in the first chapter, p. 72 above. He says, that as Trinio was never seen after the losing battle, in which he and his friends had engaged with a neighbouring chieftain, it was believed in the district around Llyn Syfadon, that Trinio's fairy mother had rescued him from the enemy and taken him away with her to her home in the lake. In the case of Arthur it is, as we have seen, a fairy also or a lake lady that intervenes; and there cannot be much room for doubt, that the story representing him going to fairyland to be healed is far older than any which pictures him sleeping in a cave with his warriors and his gold all around him. As for the gold, however, it is abundantly represented as nowhere more common than in the home of the fairies: so this metal treated as a test cannot greatly help us in essaying the distinction here suggested. With regard to Owen Lawgoch, however, one is not forced to suppose that he was ever believed to have sojourned in Faery: the legendary precedent of Arthur as a cave sleeper would probably suffice to open the door for him to enter the recesses of Craig y Dinas, as soon as the country folk began to grow weary of waiting for his return. In other words, most of our cave legends have combined together two sets of popular belief originally distinct, the one referring to a hero gone to the world of the fairies and expected some day to return, and the other to a hero or god enjoying an enchanted sleep with his retinue all around him. In some of our legends, however, such as that of Llanciau Eryri, the process of combining the two sets of story has been left to this day incomplete. CHAPTER IX PLACE-NAME STORIES The Dindsenchas is a collection of stories (senchasa), in Middle-Irish prose and verse, about the names of noteworthy places (dind) in Ireland--plains, mountains, ridges, cairns, lakes, rivers, fords, estuaries, islands, and so forth.... But its value to students of Irish folklore, romance (sometimes called history), and topography has long been recognized by competent authorities, such as Petrie, O'Donovan, and Mr. Alfred Nutt. Whitley Stokes. In the previous chapters some folklore has been produced in which we have swine figuring: see more especially that concerned with the Hwch Du Gwta, pp. 224-6 above. Now I wish to bring before the reader certain other groups of swine legends not vouched for by oral tradition so much as found in manuscripts more or less ancient. The first three to be mentioned occur in one of the Triads [78]. I give the substance of it in the three best known versions, premising that the Triad is entitled that of the Three Stout Swineherds of the Isle of Prydain:-- i. 30a:--Drystan [79] son of Tallwch who guarded the swine of March son of Meirchion while the swineherd went to bid Essyllt come to meet him: at the same time Arthur sought to have one sow by fraud or force, and failed. ii. 56b:--Drystan son of Tallwch with the swine of March ab Meirchion while the swineherd went on a message to Essyllt. Arthur and March and Cai and Bedwyr came all four to him, but obtained from Drystan not even as much as a single porker, whether by force, by fraud, or by theft. iii. 101c:--The third was Trystan son of Tallwch, who guarded the swine of March son of Meirchion while the swineherd had gone on a message to Essyllt to bid her appoint a meeting with Trystan. Now Arthur and Marchell and Cai and Bedwyr undertook to go and make an attempt on him, but they proved unable to get possession of as much as one porker either as a gift or as a purchase, whether by fraud, by force, or by theft. In this story the well-known love of Drystan and Essyllt is taken for granted; but the whole setting is so peculiar and so unlike that of the story of Tristan and Iselt or Iseut in the romances, that there is no reason to suppose it in any way derived from the latter. The next portion of the Triad runs thus:-- 1 30b:--And Pryderi son of Pwyll of Annwvyn who guarded the swine of Pendaran of Dyfed in the Glen of the Cuch in Emlyn. ii. 56a:--Pryderi son of Pwyll Head of Annwn with the swine of Pendaran of Dyfed his foster father. The swine were the seven brought away by Pwyll Head of Annwn and given by him to Pendaran of Dyfed his foster father; and the Glen of the Cuch was the place where they were kept. The reason why Pryderi is called a mighty swineherd is that no one could prevail over him either by fraud or by force [80]. iii. 101a:--The first was Pryderi son of Pwyll of Pendaran in Dyfed [81], who guarded his father's swine while he was in Annwn, and it was in the Glen of the Cuch that he guarded them. The history of the pigs is given, so to say, in the Mabinogion. Pwyll had been able to strike up a friendship and even an alliance with Arawn king of Annwvyn [82] or Annwn, which now means Hades or the other world; and they kept up their friendship partly by exchanging presents of horses, greyhounds, falcons, and any other things calculated to give gratification to the receiver of them. Among other gifts which Pryderi appears to have received from the king of Annwn were hobeu or moch, 'pigs, swine,' which had never before been heard of in the island of Prydain. The news about this new race of animals, and that they formed sweeter food than oxen, was not long before it reached Gwyned; and we shall presently see that there was another story which flatly contradicts this part of the Triad, namely to the effect that Gwydion, nephew of Math king of Gwyned and a great magician, came to Pryderi's court at Rhudlan, near Dolau Bach or Highmead on the Teifi in what is now the county of Cardigan, and obtained some of the swine by deceiving the king. But, to pass by that for the present, I may say that Dyfed seems to have been famous for rearing swine; and at the present day one affects to believe in the neighbouring districts that the chief industry in Dyfed, more especially in South Cardiganshire, consists in the rearing of parsons, carpenters, and pigs. Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that the people of the southern portion of Dyfed are nicknamed by the men of Glamorgan to this day Moch Sir Benfro, 'the Pigs of Pembrokeshire.' But why so much importance attached to pigs? I cannot well give a better answer than the reader can himself supply if he will only consider what rôle the pig plays in the domestic economy of modern Ireland. But, to judge from old Irish literature, it was even more so in ancient times, as pigs' meat was so highly appreciated, that under some one or other of its various names it usually takes its place at the head of all flesh meats in Irish stories. This seems the case, for instance, in the medieval story called the Vision of MacConglinne [83]; and, to go further back, to the Feast of Bricriu for instance, one finds it decidedly the case with the Champion's Portion [84] at that stormy banquet. Then one may mention the story of the fatal feast on Mac-Dáthó's great swine [85], where that beast would have apparently sufficed for the braves both of Connaught and Ulster had Conall Cernach carved fair, and not given more than their share to his own Ultonian friends in order to insult the Connaught men by leaving them nothing but the fore-legs. It is right, however, to point out that most of the stories go to show, that the gourmands of ancient Erin laid great stress on the pig being properly fed, chiefly on milk and the best kind of meal. It cannot have been very different in ancient Wales; for we read in the story of Peredur that, when he sets out from his mother's home full of his mother's counsel, he comes by-and-by to a pavilion, in front of which he sees food, some of which he proceeds to take according to his mother's advice, though the gorgeously dressed lady sitting near it has not the politeness to anticipate his wish. It consisted, we are told, of two bottles of wine, two loaves of white bread, and collops of a milk-fed pig's flesh [86]. The home of the fairies was imagined to be a land of luxury and happiness with which nothing could compare in this world. In this certain Welsh and Irish stories agree; and in one of the latter, where the king of the fairies is trying to persuade the queen of Ireland to elope with him, we find that among the many inducements offered her are fresh pig, sweet milk, and ale [87]. Conversely, as the fairies were considered to be always living and to be a very old-fashioned and ancient people, it was but natural to suppose that they had the animals which man found useful, such as horses, cattle, and sheep, except that they were held to be of superior breeds, as they are represented, for instance, in our lake legends. Similarly, it is natural enough that other stories should ascribe to them also the possession of herds of swine; and all this prior to man's having any. The next step in the reasoning would be that man had obtained his from the fairies. It is some tradition of this kind that possibly suggested the line taken by the Pwyll story in the matter of the derivation of the pig from Annwn: see the last chapter. The next story in the Triad is, if possible, wilder still: it runs as follows:-- i. 30c:--Coll son of Collfrewi [88] who guarded Henwen [89], Dallweir Dallben's sow, which went burrowing as far as the Headland of Awstin in Kernyw and then took to the sea. It was at Aber Torogi in Gwent Is-coed that she came to land, with Coll keeping his grip on her bristles whatever way she went by sea or by land. Now in Maes Gwenith, 'Wheat Field,' in Gwent she dropped a grain of wheat and a bee, and thenceforth that has been the best place for wheat. Then she went as far as Llonwen in Penfro and there dropped a grain of barley and a bee, and thenceforth Llonwen has been the best place for barley. Then she proceeded to Rhiw Gyferthwch in Eryri and dropped a wolf-cub and an eagle-chick. These Coll gave away, the eagle to the Goidel Brynach from the North, and the wolf to Menwaed of Arllechwed, and they came to be known as Menwaed's Wolf and Brynach's Eagle. Then the sow went as far as the Maen Du at Llanfair in Arfon, and there she dropped a kitten, and that kitten Coll cast into the Menai: that came later to be known as Cath Paluc, 'Palug's Cat.' ii. 56c:--The third was Coll son of Kallureuy with the swine of Dallwyr Dallben in Dallwyr's Glen in Kernyw. Now one of the swine was with young and Henwen was her name; and it was foretold that the Isle of Prydain would be the worse for her litter; and Arthur collected the host of Prydain and went about to destroy it. Then one sow went burrowing, and at the Headland of Hawstin in Kernyw she took to the sea with the swineherd following her. And in Maes Gwenith in Gwent she dropped a grain of wheat and a bee, and ever since Maes Gwenith is the best place for wheat and bees. And at Llonyon in Penfro she dropped a grain of barley and another of wheat: therefore the barley of Llonyon has passed into a proverb. And on Rhiw Gyferthwch in Arfon she dropped a wolf-cub and an eagle-chick. The wolf was given to Mergaed and the eagle to Breat a prince from the North, and they were the worse for having them. And at Llanfair in Arfon, to wit below the Maen Du, she dropped a kitten, and from the Maen Du the swineherd cast it into the sea, but the sons of Paluc reared it to their detriment. It grew to be Cath Paluc, 'Palug's Cat,' and proved one of the three chief molestations of Mona reared in the island: the second was Daronwy and the third was Edwin king of England. iii. 101b:--The second was Coll son of Collfrewi who guarded Dallwaran Dallben's sow, that came burrowing as far as the Headland of Penwedic in Kernyw and then took to the sea; and she came to land at Aber Tarogi in Gwent Is-coed with Coll keeping his hold of her bristles whithersoever she went on sea or land. At Maes Gwenith in Gwent she dropped three grains of wheat and three bees, and ever since Gwent has the best wheat and bees. From Gwent she proceeded to Dyfed and dropped a grain of barley and a porker, and ever since Dyfed has the best barley and pigs: it was in Llonnio Llonnwen these were dropped. Afterwards she proceeded to Arfon (sic) and in Lleyn she dropped the grain of rye, and ever since Lleyn and Eifionyd have the best rye. And on the side of Rhiw Gyferthwch she dropped a wolf-cub and an eagle-chick. Coll gave the eagle to Brynach the Goidel of Dinas Affaraon, and the wolf to Menwaed lord of Arllechwed, and one often hears of Brynach's Wolf and Menwaed's Eagle [the writer was careless: he has made the owners exchange pests]. Then she went as far as the Maen Du in Arfon, where she dropped a kitten and Coll cast it into the Menai. That was the Cath Balwg (sic), 'Palug's Cat': it proved a molestation to the Isle of Mona subsequently. Such are the versions we have of this story, and a few notes on the names seem necessary before proceeding further. Coll is called Coll son of Collurewy in i. 30, and Coll son of Kallureuy in ii. 56: all that is known of him comes from other Triads, i. 32-3, ii. 20, and iii. 90. The first two tell us that he was one of the Three chief Enchanters of the Isle of Prydain, and that he was taught his magic by Rhudlwm the Giant; while ii. 20 calls the latter a dwarf and adds that Coll was nephew to him. The matter is differently put in iii. 90, to the effect that Rhudlwm the Giant learnt his magic from Eid[il]ig the Dwarf and from Coll son of Collfrewi. Nothing is known of Dallwyr's Glen in Kernyw, or of the person after whom it was named. Kernyw is the Welsh for Cornwall, but if Penryn Awstin or Hawstin is to be identified with Aust Cliff on the Severn Sea in Gloucestershire, the story would seem to indicate a time when Cornwall extended north-eastwards as far as that point. The later Triad, iii. 101, avoids Penryn Awstin and substitutes Penwedic, which recalls some such a name as Pengwaed [90] or Penwith in Cornwall: elsewhere Penwedic [91] is only given as the name of the most northern hundred of Keredigion. Gwent Is-coed means Gwent below the Wood or Forest, and Aber Torogi or Tarogi--omitted, probably by accident, in ii. 56--is now Caldicot Pill, where the small river Tarogi, now called Troggy, discharges itself not very far from Portskewet. Maes Gwenith in the same neighbourhood is still known by that name. The correct spelling of the name of the place in Penfro was probably Llonyon, but it is variously given as Llonwen, Llonyon, and Llonion, not to mention the Llonnio Llonnwen of the later form of the Triad: should this last prove to be based on any authority one might suggest Llonyon Henwen, so called after the sow, as the original. The modern Welsh spelling of Llonyon would be Llonion, and it is identified by Mr. Egerton Phillimore with Lanion near Pembroke [92]. Rhiw Gyferthwch is guessed to have been one of the slopes of Snowdon on the Bedgelert side; but I have failed to discover anybody who has ever heard the name used in that neighbourhood. Arllechwed was, roughly speaking, that part of Carnarvonshire which drains into the sea between Conway and Bangor. Brynach and Menwaed or Mengwaed [93] seem to be the names underlying the misreadings in ii. 56; but it is quite possible that Brynach, probably for an Irish Bronach, has here superseded an earlier Urnach or Eurnach also a Goidel, to whom I shall have to return in another chapter. Dinas Affaraon [94] is the place called Dinas Ffaraon Dande in the story of Llud and Llevelys, where we are told that after Llud had had the two dragons buried there, which had been dug up at the centre of his realm, to wit at Oxford, Ffaraon, after whom the place was called, died of grief. Later it came to be called Dinas Emrys from Myrdin Emrys, 'Merlinus Ambrosius,' who induced Vortigern to go away from there in quest of another place to build his castle [95]. So the reader will see that the mention of this Dinas brings us back to a weird spot with which he has been familiarized in the previous chapter: see pp. 469, 495 above. Llanfair in Arfon is Llanfair Is-gaer near Port Dinorwic on the Menai Straits, and the Maen Du should be a black rock or black stone on the southern side of those straits. Daronwy and Cath Paluc are both personages on whom light is still wanted. Lastly, by Edwin king of England is to be understood Edwin king of the Angles of Deira and Bernicia, whom Welsh tradition represents as having found refuge for a time in Anglesey. Now this story as a whole looks like a sort of device for stringing together explanations of the origin of certain place-names and of certain local characteristics. Leaving entirely out of the reckoning the whole of Mid-Wales, that is to say, the more Brythonic portion of the country, it is remarkable as giving to South Wales credit for certain resources, but to North Wales for pests alone and scourges, except that the writer of the late version bethought himself of Lleyn and Eifionyd as having good land for growing rye; but he was very hazy as to the geography of North Wales--both he and the redactors of the other Triads equally belonged doubtless to South Wales. Among the place-names, Maes Gwenith, 'the Wheat Field,' is clear; but hardly less so is the case of Aber Torogi, 'Mouth of the Troggy,' where torogi is 'the pregnancy of animals,' from torrog, 'being with young.' So with Rhiw Gyferthwch, 'the Hillside or Ascent of Cyferthwch,' where cyferthwch means 'pantings, pangs, labour.' The name Maen Du, 'Black Rock,' is left to explain itself; and I am not sure that the original story was not so put as also to explain Llonion, to wit, as a sort of plural of llawn, 'full,' in reference, let us say, to the full ears of the barley grown there. But the reference to the place-names seems to have partly escaped the later tellers of the story or to have failed to impress them as worth emphasizing. They appear to have thought more of explaining the origin of Menwaed's Wolf and Brynach's Eagle. Whether this means in the former case that the district of Arllechwed was more infested by wolves than any other part of Wales, or that Menwaed, lord of Arllechwed, had a wolf as his symbol, it is impossible to say. In another Triad, however, i. 23 = ii. 57, he is reckoned one of the Three Battle-knights who were favourites at Arthur's court, the others being Caradog Freichfras and Llyr Llüydog or Llud Llurugog, while in iii. 29 Menwaed's place is taken by a son of his called Mael Hir. Similarly with regard to Brynach's Eagle one has nothing to say, except that common parlance some time or other would seem to have associated the eagle in some way with Brynach the Goidel. The former prevalence of the eagle in the Snowdon district seems to be the explanation of its Welsh name of Eryri--as already suggested, p. 479 above--and the association of the bird with the Goidelic chieftain who had his stronghold under the shadow of Snowdon seems to follow naturally enough. But the details are conspicuous by their scarcity in Welsh literature, though Brynach's Eagle is probably to be identified with the Aquila Fabulosa of Eryri, of which Giraldus makes a curious mention [96]. Perhaps the final disuse of Goidelic speech in the district is to be, to some extent, regarded as accounting for our dearth of data. A change of language involved in all probability the shipwreck of many a familiar mode of thought; and many a homely expression must have been lost in the transition before an equivalent acceptable to the Goidel was discovered by him in his adopted idiom. This question of linguistic change will be found further illustrated by the story to which I wish now to pass, namely that of the hunting of Twrch Trwyth. It is one of those incorporated in the larger tale known as that of Kulhwch and Olwen, the hero and heroine concerned: see the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 135-41, and Guest's translation, iii. 306-16. Twrch Trwyth is pictured as a formidable boar at the head of his offspring, consisting of seven swine, and the Twrch himself is represented as carrying between his ears a comb, a razor, and a pair of shears. The plot of the Kulhwch renders it necessary that these precious articles should be procured; so Kulhwch prevails on his cousin Arthur to undertake the hunt. Arthur began by sending one of his men, to wit, Menw [97] son of Teirgwaed, to see whether the three precious things mentioned were really where they were said to be, namely, between Twrch Trwyth's ears. Menw was a great magician who usually formed one of any party of Arthur's men about to visit a pagan country; for it was his business to subject the inhabitants to magic and enchantment, so that they should not see Arthur's men, while the latter saw them. Menw found Twrch Trwyth and his offspring at a place in Ireland called Esgeir Oervel [98], and in order to approach them he alighted in the form of a bird near where they were. He tried to snatch one of the three precious articles from Twrch Trwyth, but he only succeeded in securing one of his bristles, whereupon the Twrch stood up and shook himself so vigorously that a drop of venom from his bristles fell on Menw, who never enjoyed a day's health afterwards as long as he lived. Menw now returned and assured Arthur that the treasures were really about the Twrch's head as it was reported. Arthur then crossed to Ireland with a host and did not stop until he found Twrch Trwyth and his swine at Esgeir Oervel. The hunt began and was continued for several days, but it did not prevent the Twrch from laying waste a fifth part of Ireland, that is in Medieval Irish cóiced, a province of the island. Arthur's men, however, succeeded in killing one of the Twrch's offspring, and they asked Arthur the history [99] of that swine. Arthur replied that it had been a king before being transformed by God into a swine on account of his sins. Here I should remark by the way, that the narrator of the story forgets the death of this young boar, and continues to reckon the Twrch's herd as seven. Arthur's next move was to send one of his men, Gwrhyr, interpreter of tongues [100], to parley with the boars. Gwrhyr, in the form of a bird, alighted above where Twrch Trwyth and his swine lay, and addressed them as follows: 'For the sake of Him who fashioned you in this shape, if you can speak, I ask one of you to come to converse with Arthur.' Answer was made by one of the boars, called Grugyn Gwrych Ereint, that is, Grugyn Silver-bristle; for like feathers of silver, we are told, were his bristles wherever he went, and whether in woods or on plains, one saw the gleam of his bristles. The following, then, was Grugyn's answer: 'By Him who fashioned us in this shape, we shall not do so, and we shall not converse with Arthur. Enough evil has God done to us when He fashioned us in this shape, without your coming to fight with us.' Gwrhyr replied: 'I tell you that Arthur will fight for the comb, the razor, and the shears that are between the ears of Twrch Trwyth.' 'Until his life has first been taken,' said Grugyn, 'those trinkets shall not be taken, and to-morrow morning we set out hence for Arthur's own country, and all the harm we can, shall we do there.' The boars accordingly set out for Wales, while Arthur with his host, his horses, and his hounds, on board his ship Prydwen, kept within sight of them. Twrch Trwyth came to land at Porth Clais, a small creek south of St. David's, but Arthur went that night to Mynyw, which seems to have been Menevia or St. David's. The next day Arthur was told that the boars had gone past, and he overtook them killing the herds of Kynnwas Cwrvagyl, after they had destroyed all they could find in Deugledyf, whether man or beast. Then the Twrch went as far as Presseleu, a name which survives in that of Preselly or Precelly, as in Preselly Top and Preselly Mountains in North Pembrokeshire. Arthur and his men began the hunt again, while his warriors were ranged on both sides of the Nyfer or the river Nevern. The Twrch then left the Glen of the Nevern and made his way to Cwm Kerwyn, the name of which survives in that of Moel Cwm Kerwyn, one of the Preselly heights. In the course of the hunt in that district the Twrch killed Arthur's four champions and many of the people of the country. He was next overtaken in a district called Peuliniauc [101] or Peuliniog, which appears to have occupied a central area between the mountains, Llandewi Velfrey, Henllan Amgoed, and Laugharne: it probably covered portions of the parish of Whitland and of that of Llandysilio, the church of which is a little to the north of the railway station of Clyn Derwen on the Great Western line. Leaving Peuliniog for the Laugharne Burrows, he crossed, as it seems, from Ginst Point to Aber Towy or Towy Mouth [102], which at low water are separated mostly by tracts of sand interrupted only by one or two channels of no very considerable width; for Aber Towy would seem to have been a little south-east of St. Ishmael's, on the eastern bank of the Towy. Thence the Twrch makes his way to Glynn Ystu, more correctly perhaps Clyn Ystun, now written Clyn Ystyn [103], the name of a farm between Carmarthen and the junction of the Amman with the Llychwr, more exactly about six miles from that junction and about eight and a half from Carmarthen as the crow flies. The hunt is resumed in the Valley of the Llychwr or Loughor [104], where Grugyn and another young boar, called Llwydawc Gouynnyat [105], committed terrible ravages among the huntsmen. This brought Arthur and his host to the rescue, and Twrch Trwyth, on his part, came to help his boars; but as a tremendous attack was now made on him he moved away, leaving the Llychwr, and making eastwards for Mynyd Amanw, or 'the Mountain of Amman,' for Amanw is plentifully preserved in that neighbourhood in the shortened form of Aman or Amman [106]. On Mynyd Amanw one of his boars was killed, but he is not distinguished by any proper name: he is simply called a banw, 'a young boar.' The Twrch was again hard pressed, and lost another called Twrch Llawin. Then a third of the swine is killed, called Gwys, whereupon Twrch Trwyth went to Dyffryn Amanw, or the Vale of Amman, where he lost a banw and a benwic, a 'boar' and a 'sow.' All this evidently takes place in the same district, and Mynyd Amanw was, if not Bryn Amman, probably one of the mountains to the south or south-east of the river Amman, so that Dyffryn Amanw may have been what is still called Dyffryn Amman, or the Valley of the Amman from Bryn Amman to where the river Amman falls into the Llychwr. From the Amman the Twrch and the two remaining boars of his herd made their way to Llwch Ewin, 'the lake or pool of Ewin,' which is now represented by a bog mere above a farm house called Llwch in the parish of Bettws, which covers the southern slope of the Amman Valley. I have found this bog called in a map Llwch is Awel, 'Pool below Breeze,' whatever that may mean. We find them next at Llwch Tawi, the position of which is indicated by that of Ynys Pen Llwch, 'Pool's End Isle,' some distance lower down the Tawe than Pont ar Dawe. At this point the boars separate, and Grugyn goes away to Din Tywi, 'Towy Fort,' an unidentified position somewhere on the Towy, possibly Grongar Hill near Llandeilo, and thence to a place in Keredigion where he was killed, namely, Garth Grugyn. I have not yet been able to identify the spot, though it must have once had a castle, as we read of a castle called Garthgrugyn being strengthened by Maelgwn Vychan in the year 1242: the Bruts locate it in Keredigion [107], but this part of the story is obscured by careless copying on the part of the scribe [108] of the Red Book. After Grugyn's death we read of Llwydawc having made his way to Ystrad Yw, and, after inflicting slaughter on several of his assailants, he is himself killed there. Now Ystrad Yw, which our mapsters would have us call Ystrad Wy, as if it had been on the Wye [109], is supposed to have covered till Henry VIII's time the same area approximately as the hundred of Crickhowel has since, namely, the parishes of (1) Crickhowel, (2) Llanbedr Ystrad Yw with Patrishow, (3) Llanfihangel Cwm Du with Tretower and Penmyarth, (4) Llangattock with Llangenny, (5) Llanelly with Brynmawr, and (6) Llangynidr. Of these Llanbedr perpetuates the name of Ystrad Yw, although it is situated near the junction of the Greater and Lesser Grwynë and not in the Strath of the Yw, which Ystrad Yw means. So one can only treat Lanbedr Ystrad Yw as meaning that particular Llanbedr or St. Peter's Church which belongs to the district comprehensively called Ystrad Yw. Now if one glances at the Red Book list of cantreds and cymwds, dating in the latter part of the fourteenth century, one will find Ystrad Yw and Cruc Howel existing as separate cymwds. So we have to look for the former in the direction of the parish of Cwm Du; and on going back to the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV dating about 1291, we find that practically we have to identify with Cwm Du a name Stratden', p. 273a, which one is probably to treat as Strat d'Eue [110] or some similar Norman spelling; for most of the other parishes of the district are mentioned by the names which they still bear. That is not all; for from Cwm Du a tributary of the Usk called the Rhiangoll comes down and receives at Tretower the waters of a smaller stream called the Yw. The land on both sides of that Yw burn forms the ystrad or strath of which we are in quest. The chief source of this water is called Llygad Yw, and gives its name to a house of some pretensions bearing an inscription showing that it was built in its present form about the middle of the seventeenth century by a member of the Gunter family well known in the history of the county. Near the house stands a yew tree on the boundary line of the garden, and close to its trunk, but at a lower level, is a spring of bubbling water: this is Llygad Yw, 'the Eye of the Yw.' For Llygad Yw is a succinct expression for the source of the Yw burn [111], and the stream retains the name Yw to its fall into the Rhiangoll; but besides the spring of Llygad Yw it has several other similar sources in the fields near the house. There is nothing, however, in this brook to account for the name of Ystrad Yw having been extended to an important district; but if one traces its short course one will at once guess the explanation. For a few fields below Llygad Yw is the hamlet of the Gaer or fortress, consisting of four farm houses called the Upper, Middle, and Lower Gaer, and Pen y Gaer: through this hamlet of the Gaer flows the Yw. These, and more especially Pen y Gaer, are supposed to have been the site of a Roman camp of considerable importance, and close by it the Yw is supposed to have been crossed by the Roman road proceeding towards Brecon [112]. The camp in the Strath of the Yw was the head quarters of the ruling power in the district, and hence the application of the name of Ystrad Yw to a wider area. But for our story one has to regard the name as confined to the land about the Yw burn, or at most to a somewhat larger portion of the parish of Cwm Du, to which the Yw and Tretower belong. The position of the Gaer in Ystrad Yw at the foot of the Bwlch or the gap in the difficult mountain spur stretching down towards the Usk is more likely to have been selected by the Romans than by any of the Celtic inhabitants, whose works are to be found on several of the neighbouring hills, such as Myarth [113] between the Yw and the Usk. We next find Twrch Trwyth, now the sole survivor, making his way towards the Severn: so Arthur summons Cornwall and Devon to meet him at Aber Hafren or Severn mouth. Then a furious conflict with the Twrch takes place in the very waters of that river, between Llyn Lliwan (p. 407) and Aber Gwy or the mouth of the Wye. After much trouble, Arthur's men succeed in getting possession of two out of the three treasures of the boar, but he escapes with the third, namely, the comb, across the Severn [114]. Then as soon as he gets ashore he makes his way to Cornwall, where the comb is at length snatched from him. Chased thence, he goes straight into the sea, with the hounds Anet and Aethlem after him, and nothing has ever been heard of any of the three from that day to this. That is the story of Twrch Trwyth, and Dr. Stokes calls my attention to a somewhat similar hunt briefly described in the Rennes Dindsenchas in the Revue Celtique, xv. 474-5. Then as to the precious articles carried by the Twrch about his head and ears, the comb, the razor, and the shears, two out of the three--the comb and the razor--belong to the regular stock of a certain group of tales which recount how the hero elopes with the daughter of a giant who loses his life in the pursuit [115]. In order to make sure of escaping from the infuriated giant, the daughter abstracts from her father's keeping a comb, a razor, and another article. When she and her lover fleeing on their horse are hard pressed, the latter throws behind him the comb, which at once becomes a rough impenetrable forest to detain the giant for a while. When he is again on the point of overtaking them, the lover throws behind him the razor, which becomes a steep and sharp mountain ridge through which the pursuing giant has to waste time tunnelling his way. The third article is usually such as, when thrown in the giant's way, becomes a lake in which he is drowned while attempting to swim across. In the Kulhwch story, however, as we have it, the allusion to these objects is torn away from what might be expected as its context. The giant is Yspadaden Penkawr, whose death is effected in another way; but before the giant is finally disposed of he requires to be shaved and to have his hair dressed. His hair, moreover, is so rough that the dressing cannot be done without the comb and shears in the possession of Twrch Trwyth, whence the hunt; and for the shaving one would have expected the Twrch's razor to have been requisite; but not so, as the shaving had to be done by means of another article, namely, the tusk of Yskithyrwynn Pennbeid, 'White-tusk chief of Boars,' for the obtaining of which one is treated briefly to another boar hunt. The Kulhwch story is in this respect very mixed and disjointed, owing, it would seem, to the determination of the narrator to multiply the number of things difficult to procure, each involving a separate feat to be described. Let us now consider the hunt somewhat more in detail, with special reference to the names mentioned; and let us begin with that of Twrch Trwyth: the word twrch means the male of a beast of the swine kind, and twrch coed, 'a wood pig,' is a wild boar, while twrch daear, 'an earth pig,' is the word in North Wales for a mole. In the next place we can practically equate Twrch Trwyth with a name at the head of one of the articles in Cormac's Irish Glossary. There the exact form is Orc tréith, and the following is the first part of the article itself as given in O'Donovan's translation edited by Stokes:--'Orc Tréith, i. e. nomen for a king's son, triath enim rex vocatur, unde dixit poeta Oínach n-uirc tréith "fair of a king's son," i. e. food and precious raiment, down and quilts, ale and flesh-meat, chessmen and chessboards, horses and chariots, greyhounds and playthings besides.' In this extract the word orc occurs in the genitive as uirc, and it means a 'pig' or 'boar'; in fact it is, with the usual Celtic loss of the consonant p, the exact Goidelic equivalent of the Latin porcus, genitive porci. From another article in Cormac's Glossary, we learn that Tréith is the genitive of Triath, which has been explained to mean a king. Thus, Orc Tréith means Triath's Orc, Triath's Boar, or the King's Boar; so we take Twrch Trwyth in the same way to mean 'Trwyth's Boar.' But we have here a discrepancy, which the reader will have noticed, for twrch is not the same word as Irish orc, the nearest form to be expected in Welsh being Wrch, not Twrch; but such a word as Wrch does not, so far as I know, exist. Now did the Welsh render orc by a different word unrelated to the Goidelic one which they heard? I think not; for it is remarkable that Irish has besides orc a word torc, meaning a 'boar,' and torc is exactly the Welsh twrch. So there seems to be no objection to our supposing that what Cormac calls Orc Tréith was known in the Goidelic of Wales as Torc Tréith, which had the alliteration to recommend it to popular favour. In that case one could say that the Goidelic name Torc Tréith appears in Welsh with a minimum of change as Twrch Trwyth, and also with the stamp of popular favour more especially in the retention of the Goidelic th, just as in the name of an ancient camp or fortification on the Withy Bush Estate in Pembrokeshire: it is called the Rath, or the Rath Ring. Here rath is identical with the Irish word ráth, 'a fortification or earthworks,' and we seem to have it also in Cil Râth Fawr, the name of a farm in the neighbourhood of Narberth. Now the Goidelic word tréith appears to have come into Welsh as treth-i, the long vowel of which must in Welsh have become oi or ui by about the end of the sixth century; and if the th had been treated on etymological principles its proper equivalent in the Welsh of that time would have been d or t. The retention of the th is a proof, therefore, of oral transmission; that is to say, the Goidelic word passed bodily into Brythonic, to submit afterwards to the phonological rules of that language. A little scrutiny of the tale will, I think, convince the reader that one of the objects of the original story-teller was to account for certain place-names. Thus Grugyn was meant to account for the name of Garth Grugyn, where Grugyn was killed; Gwys, to account similarly for that of Gwys, a tributary of the Twrch, which gives its name to a station on the line of railway between Ystalyfera and Bryn Amman; and Twrch Llawin to account for the name of the river Twrch, which receives the Gwys, and falls into the Tawe some distance below Ystrad Gynlais, between the counties of Brecknock and Glamorgan. Besides Grugyn and Twrch Llawin, there was a third brother to whom the story gives a special name, to wit, Llwydawc Gouynnyat, and this was, I take it, meant also to account for a place-name, which, however, is not given: it should have been somewhere in Ystrad Yw, in the county of Brecknock. Still greater interest attaches to the swine that have not been favoured with names of their own, those referred to simply as banw, 'a young boar,' and benwic, 'a young sow.' Now banw has its equivalent in Irish in the word banbh, which O'Reilly explains as meaning a 'sucking pig,' and that is the meaning also of the Manx bannoo; but formerly the word may have had a somewhat wider meaning. The Welsh appellative is introduced twice into the story of Twrch Trwyth; once to account, as I take it, for the name Mynyd Amanw, 'Amman Mountain,' and once for Dyffryn Amanw, 'Amman Valley.' In both instances Amanw was meant, as I think, to be accounted for by the banw killed at each of the places in question. But how, you will ask, does the word banw account for Amanw, or throw any light on it at all? Very simply, if you will just suppose the name to have been Goidelic; for then you have only to provide it with the definite article and it makes in banbh, 'the pig or the boar,' and that could not in Welsh yield anything but ymmanw or ammanw [116], which with the accent shifted backwards, became Ammanw and Amman or Aman. Having premised these explanations let us, before we proceed further, see to what our evidence exactly amounts. Here, then, we have a mention of seven swine, but as two of them, a banw and a benwic, are killed at one and the same place, our figure is practically reduced to six [117]. The question then is, in how many of these six cases the story of the hunt accounts for the names of the places of the deaths respectively, that is to say, accounts for them in the ordinary way with which one is familiar in other Welsh stories. They may be enumerated as follows:-- 1. A banw is killed at Mynyd Amanw. 2. A twrch is killed in the same neighbourhood, where there is a river Twrch. 3. A swine called Gwys is killed in the same neighbourhood still, where there is a river called Gwys, falling into the Twrch. 4. A banw and a benwic are killed in Dyffryn Amanw. 5. Grugyn is killed at a place called Garth Grugyn. 6. A swine called Llwydawc is killed at a spot, not named, in Ystrad Yw or not far off [118]. Thus in five cases out of the six, the story accounts for the place-name, and the question now is, can that be a mere accident? Just think what the probabilities of the case would be if you put them into numbers: South Wales, from St. David's to the Vale of the Usk, would supply hundreds of place-names as deserving of mention, to say the least, as those in this story; is it likely then that out of a given six among them no less than five should be accounted for or alluded to by any mere accident in the course of a story of the brevity of that of Twrch Trwyth. To my thinking such an accident is inconceivable, and I am forced, therefore, to suppose that the narrative was originally so designed as to account for them. I said 'originally so designed,' for the scribe of the Red Book, or let us say the last redactor of the story as it stands in the Red Book, shows no signs of having noticed any such design. Had he detected the play on the names of the places introduced, he would probably have been more inclined to develop that feature of the story than to efface it. What I mean may best be illustrated by another swine story, namely, that which has already been referred to as occurring in the Mabinogi of Math. There we find Pryderi, king of Dyfed, holding his court at Rhudlan on the Teifi, but though he had become the proud possessor of a new race of animals, given him as a present by his friend Arawn, king of Annwn, he had made a solemn promise to his people, that he should give none of them away until they had doubled their number in Dyfed: these animals were the hobeu or pigs to which reference was made at p. 69 above. Now Gwydion, having heard of them, visited Pryderi's court, and by magic and enchantment deceived the king. Successful in his quest, he sets out for Gwyned with his hobeu, and this is how his journey is described in the Mabinogi: 'And that evening they journeyed as far as the upper end of Keredigion, to a place which is still called, for that reason, Mochdref, "Swine-town or Pigs' stead." On the morrow they went their way, and came across the Elenyd mountains, and that night they spent between Kerry and Arwystli, in the stead which is also called for that reason Mochdref. Thence they proceeded, and came the same evening as far as a commot in Powys, which is for that reason called Mochnant [119], "Swine-burn." Thence they journeyed to the cantred of Rhôs, and spent that night within the town which is still called Mochdref [120].' 'Ah, my men,' said Gwydion, 'let us make for the fastness of Gwyned with these beasts: the country is being raised in pursuit of us.' So this is what they did: they made for the highest town of Arllechwed, and there built a creu or sty for the pigs, and for that reason the town was called Creu-Wyrion, that is, perhaps, 'Wyrion's Sty.' In this, it is needless to state, we have the Corwrion of chap. i: see pp. 47, 50-70 above--the name is variously pronounced also Cyrwrion and C'rwrion. That is how a portion of the Math story is made to account for a series of place-names, and had the editor of the Kulhwch understood the play on the names of places in question in the story of Twrch Trwyth, it might be expected that he would have given it prominence, as already suggested. Then comes the question, how it came to pass that he did not understand it? The first thing to suggest itself as an answer is, that he may have been a stranger to the geography of the country concerned. That, however, is a very inadequate explanation; for his being a stranger, though it might account for his making blunders as to the localities, would not be likely to deter him from venturing into geography which he had not mastered. What was it, then, that hid from him a portion of the original in this instance? In part, at least, it must have been a difficulty of language. Let us take an illustration: Gwys has already been mentioned more than once as a name applied to one of Twrch Trwyth's offspring, and the words used are very brief, to the following effect:--'And then another of his swine was killed: Gwys was its name.' As a matter of fact, the scribe was labouring under a mistake, for he ought to have said rather, 'And then another of his swine was killed: it was a sow'; since gwys was a word meaning a sow, and not the name of any individual hog. The word has, doubtless, long been obsolete in Welsh; but it was known to the poet of the 'Little Pig's Lullaby' in the Black Book of Carmarthen, where one of the stanzas begins, fo. 29a, with the line: Oian aparchellan. aparchell. guin guis. The late Dr. Pughe translated it thus: Listen, little porkling! thou forward little white pig. I fear I should be obliged to render it less elegantly: Lullaby, little porker, white sow porker. For the last four words Stokes suggests 'O pigling of a white sow'; but perhaps the most natural rendering of the words would be 'O white porker of a sow!'--which does not recommend itself greatly on the score of sense, I must admit. The word occurs, also, in Breton as gwiz or gwéz, 'truie, femelle du porc,' and as gwys or guis in Old Cornish, while in Irish it was feis. Nevertheless, the editor of the Twrch Trwyth story did not know it; but it would be in no way surprising that a Welshman, who knew his language fairly well, should be baffled by such a word in case it was not in use in his own district in his own time. This, however, barely touches the fringe of the question. The range of the hunt, as already given, was mostly within the boundaries, so to say, of the portion of South Wales where we find Goidelic inscriptions in the Ogam character of the fifth or sixth century; and I am persuaded that the Goidelic language must have lived down to the sixth or seventh century in the south and in the north of Wales [121], a tract of Mid-Wales being then, probably, the only district which can be assumed to have been completely Brythonic in point of speech. In this very story, probably, such a name as Garth Grugyn is but slightly modified from a Goidelic Gort Grucaind, 'the enclosure of Grucand [122] or Grugan': compare Cúchulaind or Cúchulainn made in Welsh into Cocholyn. But the capital instance in the story of Twrch Trwyth as has already been indicated is that of Amanw, which I detect also as Ammann (probably to be read Ammanu), in the Book of Llan Dâv (or Liber Landavensis), p. 199: it is there borne by a lay witness to a grant of land called Tir Dimuner, which would appear to have been in what is now Monmouthshire. Interpreted as standing for in Banbh, 'the Boar,' it would make a man's name of the same class as Ibleid, found elsewhere in the same manuscript (pp. 178, 184), meaning evidently i Bleid, now y Blaid, 'the Wolf.' But observe that the latter was Welsh and the former Goidelic, which makes all the difference for our story. The Goidel relating the story would say that a boar, banbh, was killed on the mountain or hill of in Banbh or of 'the Boar'; and his Goidelic hearer could not fail to associate the place-name with the appellative. But a Brython could hardly understand what the words in Banbh meant, and certainly not after he had transformed them into Ammanw, with the nb assimilated into mm, and the accent shifted to the first syllable. It is needless to say that my remarks have no meaning unless Goidelic was the original language of the tale. In the summary I have given of the hunt, I omitted a number of proper names of the men who fell at the different spots where the Twrch is represented brought to bay. I wish now to return to them with the question, why were their names inserted in the story at all? It may be suspected that they also, or at any rate some of them, were intended to explain place-names; but I must confess to having had little success in identifying traces of them in the ordnance maps. Others, however, may fare better, who have a better acquaintance with the districts in point, and in that hope I append them in their order in the story:-- 1. Arthur sends to the hunt on the banks of the Nevern, in Pembrokeshire, his men, Eli and Trachmyr, Gwarthegyd son of Caw, and Bedwyr; also Tri meib Cledyv Divwlch, 'three Sons of the Gapless Sword.' The dogs are also mentioned: Drudwyn, Greid son of Eri's whelp, led by Arthur himself; Glythmyr Ledewig's two dogs, led by Gwarthegyd son of Caw; and Arthur's dog Cavall, led by Bedwyr. 2. Twrch Trwyth makes for Cwm Kerwyn in the Preselly Mountains, and turns to bay, killing the following men, who are called Arthur's four rhyswyr [123] or champions--Gwarthegyd son of Caw, Tarawg of Allt Clwyd, Rheidwn son of Eli Atver, and Iscovan Hael. 3. He turns to bay a second time in Cwm Kerwyn, and kills Gwydre son of Arthur, Garselid Wydel, Glew son of Yscawt, and Iscawyn son of Bannon or Panon. 4. Next day he is overtaken in the same neighbourhood, and he kills Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr's three men, Huandaw, Gogigwr, and Penn Pingon, many of the men of the country also, and Gwlydyn Saer, one of Arthur's chief architects. 5. Arthur overtakes the Twrch next in Peuliniauc (p. 512 above); and the Twrch there kills Madawc son of Teithion, Gwyn son of Tringad son of Neued, and Eiriawn Penlloran. 6. Twrch Trwyth next turns to bay at Aber Towy, 'Towy Mouth,' and kills Cynlas son of Cynan, and Gwilenhin, king of France. 7. The next occasion of his killing any men whose names are given, is when he reaches Llwch Ewin (p. 515), near which he killed Echel Vordwyd-twll, Arwyli eil Gwydawg Gwyr, and many men and dogs besides. 8. Grugyn, one of the Twrch's offspring, goes to Garth Grugyn in Keredigion with Eli and Trachmyr pursuing him; but what happened to them we are not told in consequence of the omission mentioned above (p. 515) as occurring in the manuscript. 9. Llwydawc at bay in an uncertain locality kills Rudvyw Rys [124] and many others. 10. Llwydawc goes to Ystrad Yw, where he is met by the Men of Llydaw, and he kills Hirpeissawc, king of Llydaw, also Llygatrud Emys and Gwrbothu Hên, maternal uncles to Arthur. By way of notes on these items, I would begin with the last by asking, what is one to make of these Men of Llydaw? First of all, one notices that their names are singular: thus Hirpeissawc, 'Long-coated or Long-robed,' is a curious name for their king, as it sounds more like an epithet than a name itself. Then Llygatrud (also Llysgatrud, which I cannot understand, except as a scribal error) Emys is also unusual: one would have rather expected Emys Lygatrud, 'Emys the Red-eyed.' As it stands it looks as if it meant the 'Red-eyed One of Emys.' Moreover Emys reminds one of the name of Emyr Llydaw, the ancestor in Welsh hagiology of a number of Welsh saints. It looks as if the redactor of the Red Book had mistaken an r for an s in copying from a pre-Norman original. That he had to work on such a manuscript is proved by the remaining instance, Gwrbothu Hên, 'G. the Ancient,' in which we have undoubtedly a pre-Norman spelling of Gwrfodw: the same redactor having failed to recognize the name, left it without being converted into the spelling of his own school. In the Book of Llan Dâv it will be found variously written Gurbodu, Guoruodu, and Guruodu. Then the epithet hên, 'old or ancient,' reminds one of such instances as Math Hên and Gofynion Hên, to be noticed a little later in this chapter. Let us now direct the reader's attention for a moment to the word Llydaw, in order to see whether that may not suggest something. The etymology of it is contested, so one has to infer its meaning, as well as one can, from the way in which it is found used. Now it is the ordinary Welsh word for Brittany or Little Britain, and in Irish it becomes Letha, which is found applied not only to Armorica but also to Latium. Conversely one could not be surprised if a Goidel, writing Latin, rendered his own Letha or the Welsh Llydaw by Latium, even when no part of Italy was meant. Now it so happens that Llydaw occurs in Wales itself, to wit in the name of Llyn Llydaw, a Snowdonian lake already mentioned, p. 475. It is thus described by Pennant, ii. 339:--'We found, on arriving at the top, an hollow a mile in length, filled with Llyn Llydaw, a fine lake, winding beneath the rocks, and vastly indented by rocky projections, here and there jutting into it. In it was one little island, the haunt of black-backed gulls, which breed here, and, alarmed by such unexpected visitants, broke the silence of this sequestered place by their deep screams.' But since Pennant's time mining operations [125] have been carried on close to the margin of this lake; and in the course of them the level of the water is said to have been lowered to the extent of sixteen feet, when, in the year 1856, an ancient canoe was discovered there. According to the late Mr. E. L. Barnwell, who has described it in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1874, pp. 150-1, it was in the possession of Dr. Griffith Griffith of Tal y Treudyn, near Harlech, who exhibited it at the Cambrian Archæological Association's meeting at Machynlleth in 1866 [126]. 'It measures,' Mr. Barnwell says, 'nine feet nine inches--a not uncommon length in the Scotch early canoes,--and has been hollowed out of one piece of wood, as is universally the case with these early boats.' He goes on to surmise that 'this canoe may have been used to reach the island, for the sake of birds or eggs; or what is not impossible, the island may have been the residence of some one who had reasons for preferring so isolated an abode. It may, in fact, have been a kind of small natural crannog, and, in one sense, a veritable lake-dwelling, access to and from which was easy by means of such a canoe.' Stokes conjectures Llydaw to have meant coast-land, and Thurneysen connects it with the Sanskrit prthivi and Old Saxon folda [127], 'earth': and, so far as I can see, one is at liberty to assume a meaning that would satisfy Llydaw, 'Armorica,' and the Llydaw of Llyn Llydaw, 'the Lake of Llydaw,' namely that it signified land which one had to reach by boat, so that it was in fact applicable to a lake settlement of any kind, in other words, that Llydaw on Snowdon was the name of the lake-dwelling. So I cannot help suggesting, with great deference, that the place whence came the Men of Llydaw in the story of the hunting of Twrch Trwyth was the settlement in Syfadon lake (p. 73), and that the name of that stronghold, whether it was a crannog or a stockaded islet, was also Llydaw. For the power of that settlement over the surrounding country to have extended a few miles around would be but natural to suppose--the distance between the Yw and Llyn Syfadon is, I am told, under three miles. Should this guess prove well founded, we should have to scan with renewed care the allusions in our stories to Llydaw, and not assume that they always refer us to Brittany. That the name Llydaw did on occasion refer to the region of Llyn Syfadon admits of indirect proof as follows:--The church of Llangorse on its banks is dedicated to a Saint Paulinus, after whom also is called Capel Peulin, in the upper course of the Towy, adjacent to the Cardiganshire parish of Llandewi Brefi. Moreover, tradition makes Paulinus attend a synod in 519 at Llandewi Brefi, where St. David distinguished himself by his preaching against Pelagianism. Paulinus was then an old man, and St. David had been one of his pupils at the Ty Gwyn, 'Whitland,' on the Taf, where Paulinus had established a religious house [128]; and some five miles up a tributary brook of the Taf is the church of Llandysilio, where an ancient inscription mentions a Paulinus. These two places, Whitland and Llandysilio, were probably in the cymwd of Peuliniog, which is called after a Paulinus, and through which we have just followed the hunt of Twrch Trwyth (p. 512). Now the inscription to which I have referred reads [129], with ligatures:-- CLVTORIGI FILI PAVLINI MARINILATIO This probably means '(the Monument) of Clutorix, son of Paulinus from Latium in the Marsh'; unless one ought rather to treat Marini as an epithet to Paulini. In either case Latio has probably to be construed 'of or from Latium': compare a Roman inscription found at Bath (Hübner's No. 48), which begins with C. Murrius. | C. F. Arniensis | Foro. Iuli. Modestus [130], and makes in English, according to Mr. Haverfield, 'Gaius Murrius Modestus, son of Gaius, of the tribe Arniensis, of the town Forum Iulii.' The easiest way to explain the last line as a whole is probably to treat it as a compound with the qualifying word deriving its meaning, not from mare, 'the sea,' but from the Late Latin mara, 'a marsh or bog.' Thus Marini-Latium would mean 'Marshy Latium,' to distinguish it from Latium in Italy, and from Letha or Llydaw in the sense of Brittany, which was analogously termed in Medieval Irish Armuirc Letha [131], that is the Armorica of Letha. This is borne out by the name of the church of Paulinus, which is in Welsh Llan y Gors, anglicized Llangorse, 'the Church of the Marsh or Bog,' and that is exactly the meaning of the name given it in the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, which is that of Ecclesia de Mara. In other terms, we have in the qualified Latium of the inscription the Latium or Letha which came to be called in Welsh Llydaw. It is, in my opinion, from that settlement as their head quarters, that the Men of Llydaw sallied forth to take part in the hunt in Ystrad Yw, where the boar Llwydog was killed. The idea that the story of Twrch Trwyth was more or less topographical is not a new one. Lady Charlotte Guest, in her Mabinogion, ii. 363-5, traces the hunt through several places called after Arthur, such as Buarth Arthur, 'Arthur's Cattle-pen,' and Bwrd Arthur, 'Arthur's Table,' besides others more miscellaneously named, such as Twyn y Moch, 'the Swine's Hill,' near the source of the Amman, and Llwyn y Moch, 'the Swine's Grove,' near the foot of the same eminence. But one of the most remarkable statements in her note is the following:--'Another singular coincidence may be traced between the name of a brook in this neighbourhood, called Echel, and the Echel Fordwyttwll who is recorded in the tale as having been slain at this period of the chase.' I have been unable to discover any clue to a brook called Echel, but one called Egel occurs in the right place; so I take it that Lady Charlotte Guest's informants tacitly identified the name with that of Echel. Substantially they were probably correct, as the Egel, called Ecel in the dialect of the district, flows into the upper Clydach, which in its turn falls into the Tawe near Pont ar Dawe. As the next pool mentioned is Llwch Tawe, I presume it was some water or other which drained into the Tawe in this same neighbourhood. The relative positions of Llwch Ewin, the Egel, and Llwch Tawe as indicated above offer no apparent difficulty. The Goidelic name underlying that of Echel was probably some such a one as Eccel or Ecell; and Ecell occurs, for instance, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 80b, as the name of a noble or prince. In rendering this name into Welsh as Echel, due regard was had for the etymological equivalence of Goidelic cc or c to Welsh ch, but the unbroken oral tradition of a people changing its language by degrees from Goidelic to Welsh was subject to no such influence, especially in the matter of local names; so the one here in question passed into Welsh as Eccel, liable only to be modified into Egel. In any case, one may assume that the death of the hero Echel was introduced to account for the name of the brook Egel. Indications of something similar in the linguistic sense occur in the part of the narrative relating the death of Grugyn, at Garth Grugyn. This boar is pursued by two huntsmen called Eli and Trachmyr, the name of the former of whom reminds one of Garth Eli, in the parish of Llandewi Brefi. Possibly the original story located at Garth Eli the death of Eli, or some other incident in which Grugyn was concerned; but the difficulty here is that the exact position of Garth Grugyn is still uncertain. Lastly, our information as to the hunting of Twrch Trwyth is not exclusively derived from the Kulhwch, for besides an extremely obscure poem about the Twrch in the Book of Aneurin, a manuscript of the thirteenth century, we have one item given in the Mirabilia associated with the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, § 73, and this carries us back to the eighth century. It reads as follows:-- Est aliud mirabile in regione quæ dicitur Buelt. Est ibi cumulus lapidum, et unus lapis superpositus super congestum, cum vestigio canis in eo. Quando venatus est porcum Troit, impressit Cabal, qui erat canis Arthuri militis, vestigium in lapide, et Arthur postea congregavit congestum lapidum sub lapide in quo erat vestigium canis sui, et vocatur Carn Cabal. Et veniunt homines et tollunt lapidem in manibus suis per spacium diei et noctis, et in crastino die invenitur super congestum suum. 'Another wonder there is in the district called Buallt: there is there a heap of stones, and one stone is placed on the top of the pile with the footmark of a dog in it. Cafall, the dog of the warrior Arthur, when chasing the pig Trwyd printed the mark of his foot on it, and Arthur afterwards collected a heap of stones underneath the stone in which was the footmark of his dog, and it is called Cafall's Cairn. And men come and take the stone away in their hands for the space of a day and a night, and on the following day the stone is found on the top of its heap [132].' Lady Charlotte Guest, in a note to the Kulhwch story in her Mabinogion, ii. 360, appears to have been astonished to find that Carn Cavall, as she writes it, was no fabulous mound but an actual 'mountain in the district of Builth, to the south of Rhayader Gwy, and within sight of that town.' She went so far as to persuade one of her friends to visit the summit, and he begins his account of it to her with the words: 'Carn Cavall, or as it is generally pronounced Corn Cavall, is a lofty and rugged mountain.' On one of the cairns on the mountain he discovered what may have been the very stone to which the Mirabilia story refers; but the sketch with which he accompanied his communication cannot be said to be convincing, and he must have been drawing on his imagination when he spoke of this somewhat high hill as a lofty mountain. Moreover his account of its name only goes just far enough to be misleading: the name as pronounced in the neighbourhood of Rhayader is Corn Gafallt by Welsh-speaking people, and Corn Gavalt by monoglot Englishmen. So it is probable that at one time the pronunciation was Carn Gavall [133]. But to return to the incident recorded by Nennius, one has to remark that it does not occur in the Kulhwch; nor, seeing the position of the hill, can it have been visited by Arthur or his dog in the course of the Twrch Trwyth hunt as described by the redactor of the story in its present form. This suggests the reflection not only that the Twrch story is very old, but that it was put together by selecting certain incidents out of an indefinite number, which, taken all together, would probably have formed a network covering the whole of South Wales as far north as the boundary of the portion of Mid-Wales occupied by the Brythons before the Roman occupation. In other words, the Goidels of this country had stories current among them to explain the names of the places with which they were familiar; and it is known that was the case with the Goidels of Ireland. Witness the place-name legends known in Medieval Irish as Dindsenchas, with which the old literature of Ireland abounds. On what principle the narrator of the Kulhwch made his selection from the repertoire I cannot say; but one cannot help seeing that he takes little interest in the details, and that he shows still less insight into the etymological motif of the incidents which he mentions. However, this should be laid mainly to the charge, perhaps, of the early medieval redactor. Among the reasons which have been suggested for the latter overlooking and effacing the play on the place-names, I have hinted that he did not always understand them, as they sometimes involved a language which may not have been his. This raises the question of translation: if the story was originally in Goidelic, what was the process by which it passed into Brythonic? Two answers suggest themselves, and the first comes to this: if the story was in writing, we may suppose a literary man to have sat down to translate it word for word from Goidelic to Brythonic, or else to adapt it in a looser fashion. In either case, one should suppose him a master of both languages, and capable of doing justice to the play on the place-names. But it is readily conceivable that the fact of his understanding both languages might lead him to miscalculate what was exactly necessary to enable a monoglot Brython to grasp his meaning clearly. Moreover, if the translator had ideas of his own as to style, he might object on principle to anything like an explanation of words being interpolated in the narrative. In short, one could see several loopholes through which a little confusion might force itself in, and prevent the monoglot reader or hearer of the translation from correctly grasping the story at all points as it was in the original. The other view, and the more natural one, as I think, is that we should postulate the interference of no special translator, but suppose the story, or rather a congeries of stories, to have been current among the natives of a certain part of South Wales, say the Loughor Valley, at a time when their language was still Goidelic, and that, as they gradually gave up Goidelic and adopted Brythonic, they retained their stories and translated the narrative, while they did not always translate the place-names occurring in that narrative. Thus, for instance, would arise the discrepancy between banw and Amanw, the latter of which to be Welsh should have been rendered y Banw, 'the Boar.' If this is approximately what took place, it is easy to conceive the possibility of many points of nicety being completely effaced in the course of such a rough process of transformation. In one or two small matters it happens that we can contrast the community as translator with the literary individual at work: I allude to the word Trwyth. That vocable was not translated, not metaphoned, if I may so term it, at all at the time: it passed, when it was still Treth-i, from Goidelic into Brythonic, and continued in use without a break; for the changes whereby Treth-i has become Trwyth have been such as other words have undergone in the course of ages, as already stated. On the other hand, the literary man who knew something of the two languages seems to have reasoned, that where a Goidelic th occurred between vowels, the correct etymological equivalent in Brythonic was t, subject to be mutated to d. So when he took the name over he metaphoned Treth-i into Tret-i, whence we have the Porcus Troit of Nennius, and Twrch Trwyd [134] in Welsh poetry: these Troit and Trwyd were the literary forms as contrasted with the popular Trwyth. Now, if my surmises as to Echel and Egel are near the truth, their history must be similar; that is to say, Echel would be the literary form and Ecel, Egel the popular one respectively of the Goidelic Ecell. A third parallel offers itself in the case of the personal name Arwyli, borne by one of Echel's companions: the Arwyl of that name has its etymological equivalent in the Arwystl- of Arwystli, the name of a district comprising the eastern slopes of Plinlimmon, and represented now by the Deanery of Arwystli. So Arwystli challenges comparison with the Irish Airgialla or Airgéill, anglicized Oriel, which denotes, roughly speaking, the modern counties of Armagh, Louth, and Monaghan. For here we have the same prefix ar placed in front of one and the same vocable, which in Welsh is gwystl, 'a hostage,' and in Irish giall, of the same meaning and origin. The reader will at once think of the same word in German as geisel, 'a hostage,' Old High German gisal. But the divergence of sound between Arwystl-i and Arwyl-i arises out of the difference of treatment of sl in Welsh and Irish. In the Brythonic district of Mid-Wales we have Arwystli with sl treated in the Brythonic way, while in Arwyli we have the combination treated in the Goidelic way, the result being left standing when the speakers of Goidelic in South Wales learnt Brythonic [135]. Careful observation may be expected to add to the number of these instructive instances. It is, however, not to be supposed that all double forms of the names in these stories are to be explained in exactly the same way. Thus, for instance, corresponding to Lug, genitive Loga, we have the two forms Lleu and Llew, of which the former alone matches the Irish. But it is to be observed that Lleu remains in some verses [136] in the story of Math, whereas in the prose he appears to be called Llew. It is not improbable that the editing which introduced Llew dates comparatively late, and that it was done by a man who was not familiar with the Venedotian place-names of which Lleu formed part, namely, Dinlleu and Nantlleu, now Dinlle and Nantlle. Similarly the two brothers, Gofannon and Amaethon, as they are called in the Mabinogi of Math and in the Kulhwch story, are found also called Gofynyon and Amathaon. The former agrees with the Irish form Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, whereas Gofannon does not. As to Amaethon or Amathaon the Irish counterpart has, unfortunately, not been identified. Gofannon and Amaethon have the appearance of being etymologically transparent in Welsh, and they have probably been remodelled by the hand of a literary redactor. There were also two forms of the name of Manawydan in Welsh; for by the side of that there was another, namely, Manawydan, liable to be shortened to Manawyd: both occur in old Welsh poetry [137]. But manawyd or mynawyd is the Welsh word for an awl, which is significant here, as the Mabinogi called after Manawydan makes him become a shoemaker on two occasions, whence the Triads style him one of the Three golden Shoemakers of the Isle of Prydain: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 308. What has happened in the way of linguistic change in one of our stories, the Kulhwch, may have happened in others, say in the four branches of the Mabinogi, namely, Pwyll, prince of Dyved; Branwen, daughter of Llyr; Math, son of Mathonwy; and Manawydan, son of Llyr. Some time ago I endeavoured to show that the principal characters in the Mabinogi of Math, namely, the sons and daughters of Dôn, are to be identified as a group with the Tuatha Dé Danann, 'Tribes of the Goddess Danu or Donu,' of Irish legend. I called attention to the identity of our Welsh Dôn with the Irish Donu, genitive Donann, Gofynion or Gofannon with Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, and of Lleu or Llew with Lug. Since then Professor Zimmer has gone further, and suggested that the Mabinogion are of Irish origin; but that I cannot quite admit. They are of Goidelic origin, but they do not come from the Irish or the Goidels of Ireland: they come rather, as I think, from this country's Goidels, who never migrated to the sister island, but remained here eventually to adopt Brythonic speech. There is no objection, however, so far as this argument is concerned, to their being regarded as this country's Goidels descended either from native Goidels or from early Goidelic invaders from Ireland, or else partly from the one origin and partly from the other. This last is perhaps the safest view to accept as a working hypothesis. Now Professor Zimmer fixes on that of Mathonwy, among other names, as probably the Welsh adaptation of some such an Irish name as the genitive Mathgamnai [138], now anglicized Mahony. This I am also prepared to accept in the sense that the Welsh form is a loan from a Goidelic one current some time or other in this country, and represented in Irish by Mathgamnai. The preservation of Goidelic th in Mathonwy stamps it as ranking with Trwyth, Egel, and Arwyli, as contrasted with a form etymologically more correct, of which we seem to have an echo in the Breton names Madganoe and Madgone [139]. Another name which I am inclined to regard as brought in from Goidelic is that of Gilvaethwy, son of Dôn: it would seem to involve some such a word as the Irish gilla, 'a youth, an attendant or servant,' and some form of the Goidelic name Maughteus or Mochta, so that the name Gilla-mochtai meant the attendant of Mochta. This last vocable appears in Irish as the name of several saints, but previously it was probably that of some pagan god of the Goidels, and its meaning was most likely the same as that of the Irish participial mochta, which Stokes explains as 'magnified, glorified': see his Calendar of Oengus, p. ccxiv, and compare the name Mael-mochta. Adamnan, in his Vita S. Columbæ, writes the name Maucteus in the following passage, pref. ii. p. 6:-- Nam quidam proselytus Brito, homo sanctus, sancti Patricii episcopi discipulus, Maucteus nomine, ita de nostro prophetizavit Patrono, sicuti nobis ab antiquis traditum expertis compertum habetur. This saint, who is said to have prophesied of St. Columba and died in the year 534, is described in his Life (Aug. 19) as ortus ex Britannia [140], which, coupled with Adamnan's Brito, probably refers him to Wales; but it is remarkable that nevertheless he bore the very un-Brythonic name of Mochta or Mauchta [141]. To return to the Mabinogion: I have long been inclined to identify Llwyd, son of Kilcoed, with the Irish Liath, son of Celtchar, of Cualu in the present county of Wicklow. Liath, whose name means 'grey,' is described as the comeliest youth of noble rank among the fairies of Erin; and the only time the Welsh Llwyd, whose name also means 'grey,' appears in the Mabinogion he is ascribed, not the comeliest figure, it is true, or the greatest personal beauty, but the most imposing disguise of a bishop attended by his suite: he was a great magician. The name of his father, Kil-coet, seems to me merely an inexact popular rendering of Celtchar, the name of Liath's father: at any rate one fails here to detect the touch of the skilled translator or literary redactor. [142] But the Mabinogi of Manawydan, in which Llwyd figures, is also the one in which Pryderi king of Dyfed's wife is called Kicua or Cigfa, a name which has no claim to be regarded as Brythonic. It occurs early, however, in the legendary history of Ireland: the Four Masters, under the year A.M. 2520, mention a Ciocbha as wife of a son of Parthalon; and the name seems to be related to that of a man called Cioccal, A.M. 2530. Lastly, Manawydan, from whom the Mabinogi takes its name, is called mab Llyr, 'son of Llyr,' in Welsh, and Manannán mac Lir in Irish. Similarly with his brother Brân, and his sister Branwen, except that she has not been identified in Irish story. But in Irish literature the genitive Lir, as in mac Lir, 'son of Ler,' is so common, and the nominative so rare, that Lir came to be treated in late Irish as the nominative too; but a genitive of the form Lir suggests a nominative-accusative Ler, and as a matter of fact it occurs, for instance, in the couplet:-- Fer co n-ilur gnim dar ler Labraid Luath Lam ar Claideb [143]. A man of many feats beyond sea, Labraid swift of Hand on Sword is he. So it seems probable that the Welsh Llyr [144] is no other word than the Goidelic genitive Lir, retained in use with its pronunciation modified according to the habits of the Welsh language; and in that case [145] it forms comprehensive evidence, that the stories about the Llyr family in Welsh legend were Goidelic before they put on a Brythonic garb. As to the Mabinogion generally, one may say that they are devoted to the fortunes chiefly of three powerful houses or groups, the children of Dôn, the children of Llyr, and Pwyll's family. This last is brought into contact with the Llyr group, which takes practically the position of superiority. Pwyll's family belonged chiefly to Dyfed; but the power and influence of the sons of Llyr had a far wider range: we find them in Anglesey, at Harlech, in Gwales or the Isle of Grasholm off Pembrokeshire, at Aber Henvelen somewhere south of the Severn Sea, and in Ireland. But the expedition to Ireland under Brân, usually called Bendigeituran, 'Brân [146] the Blessed,' proved so disastrous that the Llyr group, as a whole, disappears, making way for the children of Dôn. These last came into collision with Pwyll's son, Pryderi, in whose country Manawydan, son of Llyr, had ended his days. Pryderi, in consequence of Gwydion's deceit (pp. 69, 501, 525), makes war on Math and the children of Dôn: he falls in it, and his army gives hostages to Math. Thus after the disappearance of the sons of Llyr, the children of Dôn are found in power in their stead in North Wales [147], and that state of things corresponds closely enough to the relation between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Lir family in Irish legend. There Lir and his family are reckoned in the number of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but within that community Lir was so powerful that it was considered but natural that he should resent a rival candidate being elected king in preference to him. So the Tuatha Dé took pains to conciliate Lir, as did also their king, who gave his daughter to Lir to wife, and when she died he gave him another of his daughters [148]; and with the treatment of her stepchildren by that deceased wife's sister begins one of the three Sorrowful Tales of Erin, known to English readers as the Fate of the Children of Lir. But the reader should observe the relative position: the Tuatha Dé remain in power, while the children of Lir belong to the past, which is also the sequence in the Mabinogion. Possibly this is not to be considered as having any significance, but it is to be borne in mind that the Lir-Llyr group is strikingly elemental in its patronymic Lir, Llyr. The nominative, as already stated, was ler, 'sea,' and so Cormac renders mac Lir by filius maris. How far we may venture to consider the sea to have been personified in this context, and how early, it is impossible to say. In any case it is deserving of notice that one group of Goidels to this day do not say mac Lir, 'son of Lir,' filium maris, but always 'son of the lir': I allude to the Gaels of the Isle of Man, in whose language Manannán mac Lir is always Mannanan mac y Lir, or as they spell it, Lear; that is to say 'Mannanan, son of the ler.' Manxmen have been used to consider Manannan their eponymous hero, and first king of their island: they call him more familiarly Mannanan beg mac y Lear, 'Little Mannanan, son of the ler'. This we may, though no Manxman of the present day attaches any meaning to the word lir or lear, interpreted as 'Little Mannanan, son of the Sea.' The wanderings at large of the children of Lir before being eclipsed by the Danann-Dôn group, remind one of the story of the labours of Hercules, where it relates that hero's adventures on his return from robbing Geryon of his cattle. Pomponius Mela, ii. 5 (p. 50), makes Hercules on that journey fight in the neighbourhood of Aries with two sons of Poseidon or Neptune, whom he calls (in the accusative) Albiona and Bergyon. To us, with our more adequate knowledge of geography, the locality and the men cannot appear the most congruous, but there can hardly be any mistake as to the two personal names being echoes of those of Albion and Iverion, Britain and Ireland. The whole cycle of the Mabinogion must have appeared strange to the story-teller and the poet of medieval Wales, and far removed from the world in which they lived. We have possibly a trace of this feeling in the epithet hên, 'old, ancient,' given to Math in a poem in the Red Book of Hergest, where we meet with the line [149]:-- Gan uath hen gan gouannon. With Math the ancient, with Gofannon. Similarly in the confused list of heroes which the story-teller of the Kulhwch (Mabinogion, p. 108) was able to put together, we seem to have Gofannon, Math's relative, referred to under the designation of Gouynyon Hen, 'Gofynion the Ancient.' To these might be added others, such as Gwrbothu Hên, mentioned above, p. 531, and from another source Lleu Hen [150], 'Llew the Ancient.' So strange, probably, and so obscure did some of the contents of the stories themselves seem to the story-tellers, that they may be now and then suspected of having effaced some of the features which it would have interested us to find preserved. This state of things brings back to my mind words of Matthew Arnold's, to which I had the pleasure of listening more years ago than I care to remember. He was lecturing at Oxford on Celtic literature, and observing 'how evidently the mediæval story-teller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully possess the secret; he is like a peasant,' Matthew Arnold went on to say, 'building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which he knows not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition merely--stones "not of this building," but of an older architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical. In the mediæval stories of no Latin or Teutonic people does this strike one as in those of the Welsh.' This becomes intelligible only on the theory of the stories having been in Goidelic before they put on a Welsh dress. When saying that the Mabinogion and some of the stories contained in the Kulhwch, such as the Hunting of Twrch Trwyth, were Goidelic before they became Brythonic, I wish to be understood to use the word Goidelic in a qualified sense. For till the Brythons came, the Goidels were, I take it, the ruling race in most of the southern half of Britain, with the natives as their subjects, except in so far as that statement has to be limited by the fact, that we do not know how far they and the natives had been amalgamating together. In any case, the hostile advent of another race, the Brythons, would probably tend to hasten the process of amalgamation. That being so, the stories which I have loosely called Goidelic may have been largely aboriginal in point of origin, and by that I mean native, pre-Celtic and non-Aryan. It comes to this, then: we cannot say for certain whose creation Brân, for instance, should be considered to have been--that of Goidels or of non-Aryan natives. He sat, as the Mabinogi of Branwen describes him, on the rock of Harlech, a figure too colossal for any house to contain or any ship to carry. This would seem to challenge comparison with Cernunnos, the squatting god of ancient Gaul, around whom the other gods appear as mere striplings, as proved by the monumental representations in point. In these [151] he sometimes appears antlered like a stag; sometimes he is provided either with three normal heads or with one head furnished with three faces; and sometimes he is reduced to a head provided with no body, which reminds one of Brân, who, when he had been rid of his body in consequence of a poisoned wound inflicted on him in his foot in the slaughter of the Meal-bag Pavilion, was reduced to the Urdawl Ben, 'Venerable or Dignified Head,' mentioned in the Mabinogi of Branwen [152]. The Mabinogi goes on to relate how Brân's companions began to enjoy, subject to certain conditions, his 'Venerable Head's' society, which involved banquets of a fabulous duration and of a nature not readily to be surpassed by those around the Holy Grail. In fact here we have beyond all doubt one of the heathen originals of which the Grail is a Christian version. But the multiplicity of faces or heads of the Gaulish divinity find their analogues in a direction hitherto unnoticed as far as I know, namely, among the Letto-Slavic peoples of the Baltic sea-board. Thus the image of Svatovit in the island of Rügen is said to have had four faces [153]; and the life of Otto of Bamberg relates [154] how that high-handed evangelist proceeded to convert the ancient Prussians to Christianity. Among other things we are told how he found at Stettin an idol called Triglaus, a word referring to the three heads for which the god was remarkable. The saint took possession of the image and hewed away the body, reserving for himself the three heads, which are represented adhering together, forming one piece. This he sent as a trophy to Rome, and in Rome it may be still. Were it perchance to be found, it might be expected to show a close resemblance to the tricephal of the Gaulish altar found at Beaune in Burgundy. Before closing this chapter a word may be permitted as to the Goidelic element in the history of Wales: it will come again before the reader in a later chapter, but what has already been advanced or implied concerning it may here be recapitulated as follows:-- It has been suggested that the hereditary dislike of the Brython for the Goidel argues their having formerly lived in close proximity to one another: see p. 473 above. The tradition that the cave treasures of the Snowdon district belong by right to the Goidels, means that they were formerly supposed to have hidden them away when hard pressed by the Brythons: see pp. 471-2 above. The sundry instances of a pair of names for a single person or place, one Goidelic (Brythonicized) still in use, and the other Brythonic (suggested by the Goidelic one), literary mostly and obsolete, go to prove that the Goidels were not expelled, but allowed to remain to adopt Brythonic speech. Evidence of the indebtedness of story-tellers in Wales to their brethren of the same profession in Ireland is comparatively scarce; and almost in every instance of recent research establishing a connexion between topics or incidents in the Arthurian romances and the native literature of Ireland, the direct contact may be assumed to have been with the folklore and legend of the Goidelic inhabitants of Wales, whether before or after their change of language. Probably the folklore and mythology of the Goidels of Wales and of Ireland were in the mass much the same, though in some instances they reach us in different stages of development: thus in such a case as that of Dôn and Danu (genitive Danann) the Welsh allusions in point refer to Dôn at a conspicuously earlier stage of her rôle than that represented by the Irish literature touching the Tuatha Dé Danann [155]. The common point of view from which our ancestors liked to look at the scenery around them is well illustrated by the fondness of the Goidel, in Wales and Ireland alike, for incidents to explain his place-names. He required the topography--indeed he requires it still, and hence the activity of the local etymologist--to connote story or history: he must have something that will impart the cold light of physical nature, river and lake, moor and mountain, a warmer tint, a dash of the pathetic element, a touch of the human, borrowed from the light and shade of the world of imagination and fancy in which he lives and dreams. CHAPTER X DIFFICULTIES OF THE FOLKLORIST For priests, with prayers and other godly gear, Have made the merry goblins disappear; And, where they played their merry pranks before, Have sprinkled holy water on the floor.--Dryden. The attitude of the Kymry towards folklore and popular superstitions varies according to their training and religious views; and I distinguish two classes of them in this respect. First of all, there are those who appear to regret the ebb of the tide of ancient beliefs. They maintain that people must have been far more interesting when they believed in the fairies; and they rave against Sunday schools and all other schools for having undermined the ancient superstitions of the peasantry: it all comes, they say, of over-educating the working classes. Of course one may occasionally wish servant maids still believed that they might get presents from the fairies for being neat and tidy; and that, in the contrary case of their being sluts, they would be pinched black and blue during their sleep by the little people: there may have been some utility in beliefs of that kind. But, if one takes an impartial view of the surroundings in which this kind of mental condition was possible, no sane man could say that the superstitious beliefs of our ancestors conduced on the whole to their happiness. Fancy a state of mind in which this sort of thing is possible:--A member of the family is absent, let us say, from home in the evening an hour later than usual, and the whole household is thrown into a panic because they imagine that he has strayed on fairy ground, and has been spirited away to the land of fairy twilight, whence he may never return; or at any rate only to visit his home years, or maybe ages, afterwards, and then only to fall into a heap of dust just as he has found out that nobody expects or even knows him. Or take another instance:--A man sets out in the morning on an important journey, but he happens to sneeze, or he sees an ill-omened bird, or some other dreaded creature, crossing his path: he expects nothing that day but misfortune, and the feeling of alarm possibly makes him turn back home, allowing the object of his journey to be sacrificed. That was not a satisfactory state of things or a happy one, and the unhappiness might be wholly produced by causes over which the patient had absolutely no control, so long at any rate as the birds of the air have wings, and so long as sneezing does not belong to the category of voluntary actions. Then I might point to the terrors of magic; but I take it to be unnecessary to dwell on such things, as most people have heard about them or read of them in books. On the whole it is but charitable to suppose that those who regret the passing away of the ages of belief and credulity have not seriously attempted to analyse the notions which they are pleased to cherish. Now, as to the other class of people, namely, those who object to folklore in every shape and form, they may be roughly distinguished into different groups, such as those to whom folklore is an abomination, because they hold that it is opposed to the Bible, and those who regard it as too trivial to demand the attention of any serious person. I have no occasion for many words with the former, since nearly everything that is harmful in popular superstition has ceased in Wales to be a living force influencing one's conduct; or if this be not already the case, it is fast becoming so. Those therefore who condemn superstitions have really no reason to set their faces against the student of folklore: it would be just as if historians were to be boycotted because they have, in writing history--frequently, the more the pity--to deal with dark intrigues, cruel murders, and sanguinary wars. Besides, those who study folklore do not thereby help to strengthen the hold of superstition on the people. I have noticed that any local peculiarity of fashion, the moment it becomes known to attract the attention of strangers, is, one may say, doomed: a Celt, like anybody else, does not like to be photographed in a light which may perchance show him at a disadvantage. It is much the same, I think, with him as the subject of the studies of the folklorist: hence the latter has to proceed with his work very quietly and very warily. If, then, I pretended to be a folklorist, which I can hardly claim to be, I should say that I had absolutely no quarrel with him who condemns superstition on principle. On the other hand, I should not consider it fair of him to regard me as opposed to the progress of the race in happiness and civilization, just because I am curious to understand its history. With regard to him, however, who looks at the collecting and the studying of folklore as trivial work and a waste of time, I should gather that he regards it so on account, first perhaps, of his forgetting the reality their superstitions were to those who believed in them; and secondly, on account of his ignorance of their meaning. As a reality to those who believed in them, the superstitions of our ancestors form an integral part of their history. However, I need not follow that topic further by trying to show how 'the proper study of mankind is man,' and how it is a mark of an uncultured people not to know or care to know about the history of the race. So the ancient Roman historian, Tacitus, evidently thought; for, when complaining how little was known as to the original peopling of Britain, he adds the suggestive words ut inter barbaros, 'as usual among barbarians.' Conversely, I take it for granted that no liberally educated man or woman of the present day requires to be instructed as to the value of the study of history in all its aspects, or to be told that folklore cannot be justly called trivial, seeing that it has to do with the history of the race--in a wider sense, I may say with the history of the human mind and the record of its development. As history has been mentioned, it may be here pointed out that one of the greatest of the folklorist's difficulties is that of drawing the line between story and history. Nor is that the worst of it; for the question as between fact and fiction, hard as it is in itself, is apt to be further complicated by questions of ethnology. This may be illustrated by reference to a group of legends which project a vanishing distinction between the two kindred races of Brythons and Goidels in Wales; and into the story of some of them Arthur is introduced playing a principal rôle. They seem to point to a time when the Goidels had as yet wholly lost neither their own language nor their own institutions in North Wales: for the legends belong chiefly to Gwyned, and cluster especially around Snowdon, where the characteristics of the Goidel as the earlier Celt may well have lingered latest, thanks to the comparatively inaccessible nature of the country. One of these legends has already been summarized as representing Arthur marching up the side of Snowdon towards Bwlch y Saethau, where he falls and is buried under a cairn named from him Carned Arthur: see p. 473. We are not told who his enemies were; but with this question has usually been associated the late Triad, iii. 20, which alludes to Arthur meeting in Nanhwynain with Medrawd or Medrod (Modred) and Idawc Corn Prydain, and to his being betrayed, for the benefit and security of the Saxons in the island. An earlier reference to the same story occurs in the Dream of Rhonabwy in the Red Book of Hergest [156], in which Idawc describes himself as Idawc son of Mynio, and as nicknamed Idawc Cord Prydain--which means 'Idawc the Churn-staff of Prydain'--in reference presumably to his activity in creating dissension. He confesses to having falsified the friendly messages of Arthur to Medrod, and to succeeding thereby in bringing on the fatal battle of Camlan, from which Idawc himself escaped to do penance for seven years on the Llech Las, 'Grey Stone [157],' in Prydain or Pictland. Another story brings Arthur and the giant Rhita into collision, the latter of whom has already been mentioned as having, according to local tradition, his grave on the top of Snowdon: see pp. 474-9. The story is a very wild one. Two kings who were brothers, Nyniaw or Nynio and Peibiaw or Peibio, quarrelled thus: one moonlight night, as they were together in the open air, Nynio said to Peibio, 'See, what a fine extensive field I possess.' 'Where is it?' asked Peibio. 'There it is,' said Nynio, 'the whole firmament.' 'See,' said Peibio, 'what innumerable herds of cattle and sheep I have grazing in thy field.' 'Where are they?' asked Nynio. 'There they are,' said Peibio, 'the whole host of stars that thou seest, each of golden brightness, with the moon shepherding them.' 'They shall not graze in my field,' said Nynio. 'But they shall,' said Peibio; and the two kings got so enraged with one another, that they began a war in which their warriors and subjects were nearly exterminated. Then comes Rhita Gawr, king of Wales, and attacks them on the dangerous ground of their being mad. He conquered them and shaved off their beards [158]; but when the other kings of Prydain, twenty-eight in number, heard of it, they collected all their armies together to avenge themselves on Rhita for the disgrace to which he had subjected the other two. But after a great struggle Rhita conquers again, and has the beards of the other kings shaved. Then the kings of neighbouring kingdoms in all directions combined to make war on Rhita to avenge the disgrace to their order; but they were also vanquished forthwith, and treated in the same ignominious fashion as the thirty kings of Prydain. With the beards he had a mantle made to cover him from head to foot, and that was a good deal, we are told, since he was as big as two ordinary men. Then Rhita turned his attention to the establishment of just and equitable laws as between king and king and one realm with another [159]. But the sequel to the shaving is related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, x. 3, where Arthur is made to tell how the giant, after destroying the other kings and using their beards in the way mentioned, asked him for his beard to fix above the other beards, as he stood above them in rank, or else to come and fight a duel with him. Arthur, as might be expected, chose the latter course, with the result that he slew Rhita, there called Ritho, at a place said to be in Aravio Monte, by which the Welsh translator understood the chief mountain of Eryri [160] or Snowdon. So it is but natural that his grave should also be there, as already mentioned. I may here add that it is the name Snowdon itself, probably, that underlies the Senaudon or Sinadoun of such Arthurian romances as the English version of Libeaus Desconus, though the place meant has been variously supposed to be situated elsewhere than in the Snowdon district: witness Sinodun Hill in Berkshire [161]. The story of Rhita is told also by Malory, who calls that giant Ryons and Ryence; and there the incident seems to end with Ryons being led to Arthur's court by knights who had overcome him. Ryons' challenge, as given by Malory [162], runs thus:-- 'This meane whyle came a messager from kynge Ryons of Northwalys. And kynge he was of all Ireland and of many Iles. And this was his message gretynge wel kynge Arthur in this manere wyse sayenge . that kynge Ryons had discomfyte and ouercome xj kynges . and eueryche of hem did hym homage . and that was this . they gaf hym their berdys clene flayne of . as moche as ther was . wherfor the messager came for kyng Arthurs berd. For kyng Ryons had purfyled a mantel with kynges berdes . and there lacked one place of the mantel . wherfor he sente for his berd or els he wold entre in to his landes . and brenne and slee . & neuer leue tyl he haue the hede and the berd.' Rhita is not said, it is true, to have been a Gwydel, 'Goidel'; but he is represented ruling over Ireland, and his name, which is not Welsh, recalls at first sight those of such men as Boya the Pict or Scot figuring in the life of St. David, and such as Llia Gvitel, 'Llia the Goidel,' mentioned in the Stanzas of the Graves in the Black Book of Carmarthen as buried in the seclusion of Ardudwy [163]. Malory's Ryons is derived from the French Romances, where, as for example in the Merlin, according to the Huth MS., it occurs as Rion-s in the nominative, and Rion in régime. The latter, owing to the old French habit of eliding d or th, derives regularly enough from such a form as the accusative Rithon-em [164], which is the one occurring in Geoffrey's text; and we should probably be right in concluding therefrom that the correct old Welsh form of the name was Rithon. But the Goidelic form was at the same time probably Ritta, with a genitive Rittann, for an earlier Ritton. Lastly, that the local legend should perpetuate the Goidelic Ritta slightly modified, has its parallel in the case of Trwyd and Trwyth, and of Echel and Egel or Ecel, pp. 541-2 and 536-7. The next story [165] points to a spot between y Dinas or Dinas Emrys and Llyn y Dinas as containing the grave of Owen y Mhacsen, that is to say, 'Owen son of Maxen.' Owen had been fighting with a giant--whose name local tradition takes for granted--with balls of steel; and there are depressions (panylau [166]) still to be seen in the ground where each of the combatants took his stand. Some, however, will have it that it was with bows and arrows they fought, and that the hollows are the places they dug to defend themselves. The result was that both died at the close of the conflict; and Owen, being asked where he wished to be buried, ordered an arrow to be shot into the air and his grave to be made where it fell. The story is similarly given in the Iolo MSS., pp. 81-2, where the combatants are called Owen Findu ab Macsen Wledig, 'Owen of the Dark Face, son of Prince Maxen,' and Eurnach Hen, 'E. the Ancient,' one of the Gwydyl or 'Goidels' of North Wales, and otherwise called Urnach Wydel. He is there represented as father (1) of the Serrigi defeated by Catwallawn or Cadwallon Law-hir, 'C. the Long-handed,' at Cerrig y Gwydyl, 'the Stones of the Goidels,' near Malldraeth [167], in Anglesey, where the great and final rout of the Goidels is represented as having taken place [168]; (2) of Daronwy, an infant spared and brought up in Anglesey to its detriment, as related in the other story, p. 504; and (3) of Solor, who commands one of the three cruising fleets of the Isle of Prydain [169]. The stronghold of Eurnach or Urnach is said to have been Dinas Ffaraon, which was afterwards called Din Emreis and Dinas Emrys. The whole story about the Goidels in North Wales, however, as given in the Iolo MSS., pp. 78-80, is a hopeless jumble, though it is probably based on old traditions. In fact, one detects Eurnach or Urnach as Wrnach or Gwrnach in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen [170] in the Red Book, where we are told that Kei or Cai, and others of Arthur's men, got into the giant's castle and cut off his head in order to secure his sword, which was one of the things required for the hunting of Twrch Trwyth. In an obscure passage, also in a poem in the Black Book, we read of Cai fighting in the hall of this giant, who is then called Awarnach [171]. Some such a feat appears to have been commemorated in the place-name Gwryd Cai, 'Cai's Feat of Arms,' which occurs in Llewelyn's grant of certain lands on the Bedgelert and Pen Gwryd side of Snowdon in 1198 to the monks of Aberconwy, or rather in an inspeximus of the same: see Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 673a, where it stands printed gwryt, kei. Nor is it unreasonable to guess that Pen Gwryd is only a shortening of Pen Gwryd Cai, 'Cai's Feat Knoll or Terminus'; but compare p. 217 above. Before leaving Cai I may point out that tradition seems to ascribe to him as his residence the place called Caer Gai, 'Cai's Fort,' between Bala and Llanuwchllyn. If one may treat Cai as a historical man, one may perhaps suppose him, or some member of his family, commemorated by the vocable Burgocavi on an old stone found at Caer Gai, and said to read: Ic iacit Salvianus Burgocavi filius Cupitiani [172]--'Here lies Salvianus Burgocavis, son of Cupitianus.' The reader may also be referred back to such non-Brythonic and little known figures as Daronwy, Cathbalug, and Brynach, together perhaps with Mengwaed, the wolf-lord of Arllechwed, pp. 504-5. It is worth while calling attention likewise to Goidelic indications afforded by the topography of Eryri, to wit such cases as Bwlch Mwrchan or Mwlchan, 'Mwrchan's Pass,' sometimes made into Bwlch Mwyalchen or even Bwlch y Fwyalchen, 'the Ousel's Gap,' near Llyn Gwynain; the remarkable remains called Muriau'r Dre, 'the Town Walls'--otherwise known as Tre'r Gwydelod [173], 'the Goidels' town'--on the land of Gwastad Annas at the top of Nanhwynain; and Bwlch y Gwydel, still higher towards Pen Gwryd, may have meant the 'Goidel's Pass.' Probably a study of the topography on the spot would result in the identification of more names similarly significant; but I will call attention to only one of them, namely Bedgelert or, as it is locally pronounced, Bethgelart, though the older spellings of the name appear to be Beth Kellarth and Beth Kelert. Those who are acquainted with the story, as told there, of the man who rashly killed his hound might think that Bedgelert, 'Gelert or Kelert's Grave,' refers to the hound; but there is a complete lack of evidence to show this widely known story to have been associated with the neighbourhood by antiquity [174]; and the compiler of the notes and pedigrees known as Boned y Saint was probably right in treating Kelert as the name of an ancient saint: see the Myvyr. Arch., ii. 36. In any case, Kelert or Gelert with its rt cannot be a genuine Welsh name: the older spellings seem to indicate two pronunciations--a Goidelic one, Kelert, and a Welsh one, Kelarth or Kellarth, which has not survived. The documents, however, in which the name occurs require to be carefully examined for the readings which they supply. Lastly, from the Goidels of Arfon must not be too violently severed those of Mona, among whom we have found, pp. 504-5, the mysterious Cathbalug, whose name, still half unexplained, reminds one of such Irish ones as Cathbuadach, 'battle-victorious or conquering in war'; and to the same stratum belongs Daronwy, p. 504, which survives as the name of a farm in the parish of Llanfachreth. The Record of Carnarvon, p. 59, speaks both of a Molendinum de Darronwy et Cornewe, 'Mill of Daronwy [175] and Cornwy,' and of Villæ de Dorronwy et Kuwghdornok, 'Vills of Daronwy and of the Cnwch Dernog,' which has been mentioned as now pronounced Clwch Dernog, p. 457: it is situated in the adjoining parish of Llandeusant. The name is given in the same Record as Dernok, and is doubtless to be identified with the Ternóc not very uncommon in Irish hagiology. With these names the Record further associates a holding called Wele Conus, and Conus survives in Weun Gonnws, the name of a field on the farm of Bron Heulog, adjoining Clwch Dernog. That is not all, for Connws turns out to be the Welsh pronunciation of the Goidelic name Cunagussus, of which we have the Latinized genitive on the Bodfedan menhir, some distance north-east of the railway station of Ty Croes. It reads: CVNOGVSI HIC IACIT, 'Here lies (the body) of Cunagussus,' and involves a name which has regularly become in Irish Conghus, while the native Welsh equivalent would be Cynwst [176]. These names, and one [177] or two more which might be added to them, suggest a very Goidelic population as occupying, in the fifth or sixth century, the part of the island west of a line from Amlwch to Malldraeth. Lastly, the chronological indications of the crushing of the power of the Goidels, and the incipient merging of that people with the Brythons into a single nation of Kymry or 'Compatriots,' are worthy of a passing remark. We seem to find the process echoed in the Triads when they mention as a favourite at Arthur's Court the lord of Arllechwed, named Menwaed, who has been guessed, p. 507 above, to have been a Goidel. Then Serrigi and Daronwy are signalized as contemporaries of Cadwallon Law-hir, who inflicted on the former, according to the later legend, the great defeat of Cerrig y Gwydyl [178]. The name, however, of the leader of the Goidels arrayed against Cadwallon may be regarded as unknown, and Serrigi as a later name, probably of Norse origin, introduced from an account of a tenth century struggle with invaders from the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin [179]. In this conqueror we have probably all that can be historical of the Caswallon of the Mabinogion of Branwen and Manawydan, that is, the Caswallon who ousts the Goidelic family of Llyr from power in this country, and makes Pryderi of Dyfed pay homage to him as supreme king of the island. His name has there undergone assimilation to that of Cassivellaunos, and he is furthermore represented as son of Beli, king of Prydain in the days of its independence, before the advent of the legions of Rome. But as a historical man we are to regard Caswallon probably as Cadwallon Law-hir, grandson of Cuneda and father of Maelgwn of Gwyned. Now Cuneda and his sons, according to Nennius (§ 62), expelled the Goidels with terrible slaughter; and one may say, with the Triads, which practically contradict Nennius' statement as to the Goidels being expelled, that Cuneda's grandson continued the struggle with them. In any case there were Goidels still there, for the Book of Taliessin seems to give evidence [180] of a persistent hostility, on the part of the Goidelic bards of Gwyned, to Maelgwn and the more Brythonic institutions which he may be regarded as representing. This brings the Goidelic element down to the sixth century [181]. Maelgwn's death took place, according to the oldest manuscript of the Annales Cambriæ, in the year 547, or ten years after the Battle of Camlan--in which, as it says, Arthur and Medrod fell. Now some of this is history and some is not: where is the line to be drawn? In any case, the attempt to answer that question could not be justly met with contempt or treated as trivial. The other cause, to which I suggested that contempt for folklore was probably to be traced, together with the difficulties springing therefrom to beset the folklorist's paths, is one's ignorance of the meaning of many of the superstitions of our ancestors. I do not wish this to be regarded as a charge of wilful ignorance; for one has frankly to confess that many old superstitions and superstitious practices are exceedingly hard to understand. So much so, that those who have most carefully studied them cannot always agree with one another in their interpretation. At first sight, some of the superstitions seem so silly and absurd, that one cannot wonder that those who have not gone deeply into the study of the human mind should think them trivial, foolish, or absurd. It is, however, not improbable that they are the results of early attempts to think out the mysteries of nature; and our difficulty is that the thinking was so infantile, comparatively speaking, that one finds it hard to put one's self back into the mental condition of early man. But it should be clearly understood that our difficulty in ascertaining the meaning of such superstitions is no proof whatsoever that they had no meaning. The chief initial difficulty, however, meeting any one who would collect folklore in Wales arises from the fact that various influences have conspired to laugh it out of court, so to say, so that those who are acquainted with superstitions and ancient fads become ashamed to own it: they have the fear of ridicule weighing on their minds, and that is a weight not easily removed. I can recall several instances: among others I may mention a lady who up to middle age believed implicitly in the existence of fairies, and was most anxious that her children should not wander away from home at any time when there happened to be a mist, lest the fairies should carry them away to their home beneath a neighbouring lake. In her later years, however, it was quite useless for a stranger to question her on these things: fairy lore had been so laughed out of countenance in the meantime, that at last she would not own, even to the members of her own family, that she remembered anything about the fairies. Another instance in point is supplied by the story of Castellmarch, and by my failure for a whole fortnight to elicit from the old blacksmith of Aber Soch the legend of March ab Meirchion with horse's ears. Of course I can readily understand the old man's shyness in repeating the story of March. Science, however, knows no such shyness, as it is her business to pry into everything and to discover, if possible, the why and wherefore of all things. In this context let me for a moment revert to the story of March, silly as it looks:--March was lord of Castellmarch in Lleyn, and he had horse's ears; so lest the secret should be known, every one who shaved him was killed forthwith; and in the spot where the bodies were buried there grew reeds, which a bard cut in order to provide himself with a pipe. The pipe when made would give no music but words meaning March has horse's ears! There are other forms of the story, but all substantially the same as that preserved for us by Llwyd (pp. 233-4), except that one of them resembles more closely the Irish version about to be summarized. It occurs in a manuscript in the Peniarth collection, and runs thus:--March had horse's ears, a fact known to nobody but his barber, who durst not make it known for fear of losing his head. But the barber fell ill, so that he had to call in a physician, who said that the patient was being killed by a secret; and he ordered him to tell it to the ground. The barber having done so became well again, and fine reeds grew on the spot. One day, as the time of a great feast was drawing nigh, certain of the pipers of Maelgwn Gwyned coming that way saw the reeds, some of which they cut and used for their pipes. By-and-by they had to perform before King March, when they could elicit from their pipes no strain but 'Horse's ears for March ab Meirchion' (klvstiav march i varch ab Meirchion). Hence arose the saying--'That is gone on horns and pipes' (vaeth hynny ar gyrn a ffibav), which was as much as to say that the secret is become more than public [182]. The story, it is almost needless to say, can be traced also in Cornwall and in Brittany [183]; and not only among the Brythonic peoples of those countries, but among the Goidels of Ireland likewise. The Irish story runs thus [184]:--Once on a time there was a king over Ireland whose name was Labraid Lorc, and this is the manner of man he was--he had two horse's ears on him. And every one who shaved the king used to be slain forthwith. Now the time of shaving him drew nigh one day, when the son of a widow in the neighbourhood was enjoined to do it. The widow went and besought the king that her son should not be slain, and he promised her that he would be spared if he would only keep his secret. So it came to pass; but the secret so disagreed with the widow's son that he fell ill, and nobody could divine the cause until a druid came by. He at once discovered that the youth was ill of an uncommunicated secret, and ordered him to go to the meeting of four roads. 'Let him,' said he, 'turn sunwise, and the first tree he meets on the right side let him tell the secret to it, and he will be well.' This you might think was quite safe, as it was a tree and not his mother, his sister, or his sweetheart; but you would be quite mistaken in thinking so. The tree to which the secret was told was a willow; and a famous Irish harper of that day, finding he wanted a new harp, came and cut the makings of a harp from that very tree; but when the harp was got ready and the harper proceeded to play on it, not a note could he elicit but 'Labraid Lorc has horse's ears!' As to the barber's complaint, that was by no means unnatural: it has often been noticed how a secret disagrees with some natures, and how uneasy and restless it makes them until they can out with it. The same thing also, in an aggravated form, occurs now and then to a public man who has prepared a speech in the dark recesses of his heart, but has to leave the meeting where he intended to have it out, without finding his opportunity. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel have a technical term for that sort of sufferer: they say of him that he is malade d'un discours rentré, or ill of a speech which has gone into the patient's constitution, like the measles or the small-pox when it fails to come out. But to come back to the domain of folklore, I need only mention the love-lorn knights in Malory's Morte Darthur, who details their griefs in doleful strains to solitary fountains in the forests: it seems to have relieved them greatly, and it sometimes reached other ears than those of the wells. Now with regard to him of the equine ears, some one might thoughtlessly suggest, that, if it ever became a question of improving this kind of story, one should make the ears into those of an ass. As a matter of fact there was a Greek story of this kind, and in that story the man with the abnormal head was called Midas, and his ears were said to be those of an ass. The reader will find him figuring in most collections of Greek stories; so I need not pursue the matter further, except to remark that the exact kind of brute ears was possibly a question which different nations decided differently. At any rate Stokes mentions a Serbian version in which the ears were those of a goat. What will, however, occur to everybody to ask, is--What was the origin of such a story? what did it mean, if it had a meaning? Various attempts have been made to interpret this kind of story, but nobody, so far as I know, has found a sure key to its meaning. The best guess I can make has been suggested in a previous chapter, from which it will be seen that the horse fits the Welsh context, so to say, best, the goat less well, and the ass probably least of all: see pp. 433-9 above. Supposing, then, the interpretation of the story established for certain, the question of its origin would still remain. Did it originate among the Celts and the Greeks and other nations who relate it? or has it simply originated among one of those peoples and spread itself to the others? or else have they all inherited it from a common source? If we take the supposition that it originated independently among a variety of people in the distant past, then comes an interesting question as to the conditions under which it arose, and the psychological state of the human race in the distant past. On the other supposition one is forced to ask: Did the Celts get the story from the Greeks, or the Greeks from the Celts, or neither from either, but from a common source? Also when and how did the variations arise? In any case, one cannot help seeing that a story like the one I have instanced raises a variety of profoundly difficult and interesting questions. Hard as the folklorist may find it to extract tales and legends from the people of Wales at the present day, there is one thing which he finds far more irritating than the taciturnity of the peasant, and that is the hopeless fashion in which some of those who have written about Welsh folklore have deigned to record the stories which were known to them. Take as an instance the following, which occurs in Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 103-4:-- 'In Cardiganshire there is a lake, beneath which it is reported that a town lies buried; and in an arid summer, when the water is low, a wall, on which people may walk, extending across the lake is seen, and supposed to appertain to the inundated city or town; on one side is a gigantic rock, which appears to have been split, as there is a very extensive opening in it, which nearly divides it in twain, and which tradition relates was thus occasioned:--Once upon a time there was a person of the name of Pannog, who had two oxen, so large that their like was never known in any part of the world, and of whom it might be said, They ne'er will look upon their like again. It chanced one day that one of them (and it appears that they were not endued with a quantum of sense proportionate to their bulk) was grazing near a precipice opposite the rock, and whether it was his desire to commit suicide, or to cool his body by laving in the lake below, one knows not, but certain it is that down he plunged, and was never seen more: his partner searching for him a short time after, and not perceiving any signs of his approach, bellowed almost as loud as the Father of the Gods, who when he spake "Earth to his centre shook"; however, the sound of his bleating [sic] split the opposite rock, which from the circumstance is called Uchain Pannog (Pannog's Oxen). These oxen were said to be two persons, called in Wales, Nyniaf and Phebiaf, whom God turned into beasts for their sins. Here it is clear that Mr. Howells found a portion, if not the whole, of his story in Welsh, taken partly from the Kulhwch story, and apparently in the old spelling; for his own acquaintance with the language did not enable him to translate Nynnya6 a pheiba6 into 'Nynio and Peibio.' The slenderness of his knowledge of Welsh is otherwise proved throughout his book, especially by the way in which he spells Welsh words: in fact one need not go beyond this very story with its Uchain Pannog. But when he had ascertained that the lake was in Cardiganshire he might have gone a little further and have told his readers which lake it was. It is not one of the lakes which I happen to know in the north of the county--Llyn Llygad y Rheidol on Plinlimmon, or the lake on Moel y Llyn to the north of Cwm Ceulan, or either of the Iwan Lakes which drain into the Merin (or Meri), a tributary of the Mynach, which flows under Pont ar Fynach, called in English the Devil's Bridge. From inquiry I cannot find either that it is any one of the pools in the east of the county, such as those of the Teifi, or Llyn Ferwyn, not far from the gorge known as Cwm Berwyn, mentioned in Edward Richards' well known lines, p. 43:-- Mae'n bwrw' 'Nghwm Berwyn a'r cysgod yn estyn, Gwna heno fy mwthyn yn derfyn dy daith. It rains in Cwm Berwyn, the shadows are growing, To-night make my cabin the end of thy journey. There is, it is true, a pool at a place called Maes y Llyn in the neighbourhood of Tregaron, as to which there is a tradition that a village once occupied the place of its waters: otherwise it shows no similarity to the lake of Howells' story. Then there is a group of lakes in which the river Aeron takes its rise: they are called Llyn Eidwen, Llyn Fanod, and Llyn Farch. As to Llyn Eidwen, I had it years ago that at one time there was a story current concerning 'wild cattle,' which used to come out of its waters and rush back into them when disturbed. In the middle of this piece of water, which has a rock on one side of it, is a small island with a modern building on it; and one would like to know whether it shows any traces of early occupation. Then as to Llyn Farch, there is a story going that there came out of it once on a time a wonderful animal, which was shot by a neighbouring farmer. Lastly, at Llyn Fanod there are boundary walls which go right out into the lake; and my informant thinks the same is the case with Llyn Eidwen [185]. One of these walls is probably what in Howells' youthful hands developed itself into a causeway. The other part of his story, referring to the lowing of the Bannog Oxen, comes from a well known doggerel which runs thus:-- Llan Dewi Frefi fraith [186], Lle brefod yr ych naw gwaith, Nes hollti craig y Foelallt. Llandewi of Brefi the spotted, Where bellowed the ox nine times, Till the Foelallt rock split in two. Brefi is the name of the river from which this Llandewi takes its distinctive name; and it is pronounced there much the same as brefu, 'the act of lowing, bellowing, or bleating.' Now the Brefi runs down through the Foelallt Farm, which lies between two very big rocks popularly fancied to have been once united, and treated by Howells, somewhat inconsistently, as the permanent forms taken by the two oxen. The story which Howells seems to have jumbled up with that of one or more lake legends, is to be found given in Samuel Rush Meyrick's County of Cardigan: see pp. 265-6, where one reads of a wild tradition that when the church was building there were two oxen to draw the stone required; and one of the two died in the effort to drag the load, while the other bellowed nine times and thereby split the hill, which before presented itself as an obstacle. The single ox was then able to bring the load unassisted to the site of the church. It is to this story that the doggerel already given refers; and, curiously enough, most of the district between Llandewi and Ystrad Fflur, or Strata Florida, is more or less associated with the Ychen Bannog. Thus a ridge running east and west at a distance of some three miles from Tregaron, and separating Upper and Lower Caron from one another, bears the name of Cwys yr Ychen Bannog, or the Furrow of the Ychen Bannog. It somewhat resembles in appearance an ancient dyke, but it is said to be nothing but 'a long bank of glacial till [187].' Moreover there used to be preserved within the church of Llandewi a remarkable fragment of a horn commonly called Madcorn yr Ych Bannog, 'the mabcorn or core of the Bannog Ox's Horn.' It is now in the possession of Mr. Parry of Llidiardau, near Aberystwyth; and it has been pronounced by Prof. Boyd Dawkins to have belonged to 'the great urus (Bos Primigenius), that Charlemagne hunted in the forests of Aachen, and the monks of St. Galle ate on their feast days.' He adds that the condition of the horn proves it to have been derived from a peat bog or alluvium [188]. On the whole, it seems to me probable that the wild legends about the Ychen Bannog [189] in Cardiganshire have underlying them a substratum of tradition going back to a time when the urus was not as yet extinct in Wales. How far the urus was once treated in this country as an emblem of divinity, it is impossible to say; but from ancient Gaul we have such a name as Urogeno-nertus [190], meaning a man of the strength of an Urogen, that is, of the offspring of a urus; not to mention the Gaulish Tarvos Trigaranus, or the bull with three cranes on his back. With this divine animal M. d'Arbois de Jubainville would identify the Donnos underlying such Gallo-Roman names as Donnotaurus, and that of the wonderful bull called Donn in the principal epic story of Ireland [191], where we seem to trace the same element in the river-name given by Ptolemy as Mo-donnos, one of the streams of Wicklow, or else the Slaney. This would be the earliest instance known of the prefixing of the pronoun mo, 'my,' in its reverential application, which was confined in later ages to the names of Goidelic saints. To return, however, to the folklorist's difficulties, the first thing to be done is to get as ample a supply of folklore materials as possible; and here I come to a point at which some of the readers of these pages could probably help; for we want all our folklore and superstitions duly recorded and rescued from the yawning gulf of oblivion, into which they are rapidly and irretrievably dropping year by year, as the oldest inhabitant passes away. Some years ago I attempted to collect the stories still remembered in Wales about fairies and lake dwellers; and I seem to have thrown some amount of enthusiasm into that pursuit. At any rate, one editor of a Welsh newspaper congratulated me on being a thorough believer in the fairies. Unfortunately, I was not nearly so successful in recommending myself as a believer to the old people who could have related to me the kind of stories I wanted. Nevertheless, the best plan I found was to begin by relating a story about the fairies myself: if that method did not result in eliciting anything from the listener, then it was time to move on to try the experiment on another subject. Among the things which I then found was the fact, that most of the well known lakes and tarns of Wales were once believed to have had inhabitants of a fairy kind, who owned cattle that sometimes came ashore and mixed with the ordinary breeds, while an occasional lake lady became the wife of a shepherd or farmer in the neighbourhood. There must, however, be many more of these legends lurking in out of the way parts of Wales in connexion with the more remote mountain tarns; and it would be well if they were collected systematically. One of the most complete and best known of these lake stories is that of Llyn y Fan Fach in the Beacons of Carmarthenshire, called in Welsh Bannau Sir Gaer. The story is so much more circumstantial than all the others, that it has been placed at the beginning of this volume. Next to it may be ranked that of the Ystrad Dyfodwg pool, now known as Llyn y Forwyn, the details of which have only recently been unearthed for me by a friend: see pp. 27-30 above. Well, in the Fan Fach legend the lake lady marries a young farmer from Mydfai, on the Carmarthenshire side of the range; and she is to remain his wife so long as he lives without striking her three times without cause. When that happens, she leaves him and calls away with her all her live stock, down to the little black calf in the process of being flayed; for he suddenly dons his hide and hurries away after the rest of the stock into the lake. The three blows without cause seem to belong to a category of very ancient determinants which have been recently discussed, with his usual acumen and command of instances from other lands, by Mr. Hartland, in the chapters on the Swan Maidens in his Science of Fairy Tales. But our South Welsh story allows the three blows only a minimum of force; and in North Wales the determinant is of a different kind, though probably equally ancient: for there the husband must not strike or touch the fairy wife with anything made of iron, a condition which probably points back to the Stone Age. For archæologists are agreed, that before metal, whether iron or bronze, was used in the manufacturing of tools, stone was the universal material for all cutting tools and weapons. But as savages are profoundly conservative in their habits, it is argued that on ceremonial and religious occasions knives of stone continued to be the only ones admissible long after bronze ones had been in common use for ordinary purposes. Take for example the text of Exodus iv. 25, where Zipporah is mentioned circumcising her son with a flint. From instances of the kind one may comprehend the sort of way in which iron came to be regarded as an abomination and a horror to the fairies. The question will be found discussed by Mr. Hartland at length in his book mentioned above: see more especially pp. 305-9. Such, to my mind, are some of the questions to which the fairies give rise: I now wish to add another turning on the reluctance of the fairies to disclose their names. There is one story in particular which would serve to illustrate this admirably; but it is one which, I am sorry to say, I have never been able to discover complete or coherent in Wales. The substance of it should be, roughly speaking, as follows:--A woman finds herself in great distress and is delivered out of it by a fairy, who claims as reward the woman's baby. On a certain day the baby will inevitably be taken by the fairy unless the fairy's true name is discovered by the mother. The fairy is foiled by being in the meantime accidentally overheard exulting, that the mother does not know that his or her name is Rumpelstiltzchen, or whatever it may be in the version which happens to be in question. The best known version is the German one, where the fairy is called Rumpelstiltzchen; and it will be found in the ordinary editions of Grimm's Märchen. The most complete English version is the East Anglian one published by Mr. Edward Clodd, in his recent volume entitled Tom Tit Tot, pp. 8-16; and previously in an article full of research headed 'The Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin,' in Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 138-43. It is first to be noted that in this version the fairy's name is Tom Tit Tot, and that the German and the East Anglian stories run parallel. They agree in making the fairy a male, in which they differ from our Welsh Silly Frit and Silly go Dwt: in what other respect the story of our Silly differed from that of Rumpelstiltzchen and Tom Tit Tot it is, in the present incomplete state of the Welsh one, impossible to say. Here it may be found useful to recall the fragments of the Welsh story: (1) A fairy woman used to come out of Corwrion Pool to spin on fine summer days, and whilst spinning she sang or hummed to herself sìli ffrit, sìli ffrit--it does not rise even to a doggerel couplet: see p. 64 above. (2) A farmer's wife in Lleyn used to have visits from a fairy woman who came to borrow things from her; and one day when the goodwife had lent her a troell bach, or wheel for spinning flax, she asked the fairy to give her name, which she declined to do. She was, however, overheard to sing to the whir of the wheel as follows (p. 229):-- Bychan a wyda' hi Little did she know Mai Sìli go Dwt That Silly go Dwt Yw f'enw i. Is my name. This throws some light on Silly Frit, and we know where we are; but the story is inconsequent, and far from representing the original. We cannot, however, reconstruct it quite on the lines of Grimm's or Clodd's version. But I happened to mention my difficulty one day to Dr. J. A. H. Murray, when he assured me of the existence of a Scottish version in which the fairy is a female. He learnt it when he was a child, he said, at Denholm, in Roxburghshire; and he was afterwards charmed to read it in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1858), pp. 221-5, whence Mr. Clodd has given an abstract of it in his 'Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin.' Among those popular rhymes the reader will find it as related at length by Nurse Jenny in her inimitable fashion; but the Scotch is so broad, that I think it advisable, at the risk of some havoc to the local colouring, to southronize it somewhat as follows:-- 'I see that you are fond of talks about fairies, children; and a story about a fairy and the goodwife of Kittlerumpit has just come into my mind; but I can't very well tell you now whereabouts Kittlerumpit lies. I think it is somewhere in the Debatable Ground; anyway I shall not pretend to know more than I do, like everybody nowadays. I wish they would remember the ballad we used to sing long ago:-- Mony ane sings the gerss, the gerss, And mony ane sings the corn; And mony ane clatters o' bold Robin Hood, Ne'er kent where he was born. But howsoever about Kittlerumpit: the goodman was a rambling sort of body; and he went to a fair one day, and not only never came home again, but nevermore was heard of. Some said he 'listed, and others that the tiresome pressgang snatched him up, though he was furnished with a wife and a child to boot. Alas! that wretched pressgang! They went about the country like roaring lions, seeking whom they might devour. Well do I remember how my eldest brother Sandy was all but smothered in the meal-chest, hiding from those rascals. After they were gone, we pulled him out from among the meal, puffing and crying, and as white as any corpse. My mother had to pick the meal out of his mouth with the shank of a horn spoon. 'Ah well, when the goodman of Kittlerumpit was gone, the goodwife was left with small means. Little resources had she, and a baby boy at her breast. All said they were sorry for her; but nobody helped her--which is a common case, sirs. Howsoever the goodwife had a sow, and that was her only consolation; for the sow was soon to farrow, and she hoped for a good litter. 'But we all know hope is fallacious. One day the woman goes to the sty to fill the sow's trough; and what does she find but the sow lying on her back, grunting and groaning, and ready to give up the ghost. 'I trow this was a new pang to the goodwife's heart; so she sat down on the knocking-stone [192], with her bairn on her knee, and cried sorer than ever she did for the loss of her own goodman. 'Now I premise that the cottage of Kittlerumpit was built on a brae, with a large fir-wood behind it, of which you may hear more ere we go far on. So the goodwife, when she was wiping her eyes, chances to look down the brae; and what does she see but an old woman, almost like a lady, coming slowly up the road. She was dressed in green, all but a short white apron and a black velvet hood, and a steeple-crowned beaver hat on her head. She had a long walking-staff, as long as herself, in her hand--the sort of staff that old men and old women helped themselves with long ago; I see no such staffs now, sirs. 'Ah well, when the goodwife saw the green gentlewoman near her, she rose and made a curtsy; and "Madam," quoth she, weeping, "I am one of the most misfortunate women alive." '"I don't wish to hear pipers' news and fiddlers' tales, goodwife," quoth the green woman. "I know you have lost your goodman--we had worse losses at the Sheriff Muir [193]; and I know that your sow is unco sick. Now what will you give me if I cure her?" '"Anything your ladyship's madam likes," quoth the witless goodwife, never guessing whom she had to deal with. '"Let us wet thumbs on that bargain," quoth the green woman; so thumbs were wetted, I warrant you; and into the sty madam marches. 'She looks at the sow with a long stare, and then began to mutter to herself what the goodwife couldn't well understand; but she said it sounded like-- Pitter patter, Holy Water. 'Then she took out of her pocket a wee bottle, with something like oil in it; and she rubs the sow with it above the snout, behind the ears, and on the tip of the tail. "Get up, beast," quoth the green woman. No sooner said than done--up jumps the sow with a grunt, and away to her trough for her breakfast. 'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit was a joyful goodwife now, and would have kissed the very hem of the green woman's gowntail; but she wouldn't let her. "I am not so fond of ceremonies," quoth she; "but now that I have righted your sick beast, let us end our settled bargain. You will not find me an unreasonable, greedy body--I like ever to do a good turn for a small reward: all I ask, and will have, is that baby boy in your bosom." 'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit, who now knew her customer, gave a shrill cry like a stuck swine. The green woman was a fairy, no doubt; so she prays, and cries, and begs, and scolds; but all wouldn't do. "You may spare your din," quoth the fairy, "screaming as if I was as deaf as a door-nail; but this I'll let you know--I cannot, by the law we live under, take your bairn till the third day; and not then, if you can tell me my right name." So madam goes away round the pig-sty end; and the goodwife falls down in a swoon behind the knocking-stone. 'Ah well, the goodwife of Kittlerumpit could not sleep any that night for crying, and all the next day the same, cuddling her bairn till she nearly squeezed its breath out; but the second day she thinks of taking a walk in the wood I told you of; and so with the bairn in her arms, she sets out, and goes far in among the trees, where was an old quarry-hole, grown over with grass, and a bonny spring well in the middle of it. Before she came very near, she hears the whirring of a flax wheel, and a voice singing a song; so the woman creeps quietly among the bushes, and peeps over the brow of the quarry; and what does she see but the green fairy tearing away at her wheel, and singing like any precentor:-- Little kens our guid dame at hame, That Whuppity Stoorie is my name. '"Ha, ha!" thinks the woman, "I've got the mason's word at last; the devil give them joy that told it!" So she went home far lighter than she came out, as you may well guess--laughing like a madcap with the thought of cheating the old green fairy. 'Ah well, you must know that this goodwife was a jocose woman, and ever merry when her heart was not very sorely overladen. So she thinks to have some sport with the fairy; and at the appointed time she puts the bairn behind the knocking-stone, and sits on the stone herself. Then she pulls her cap over her left ear and twists her mouth on the other side, as if she were weeping; and an ugly face she made, you may be sure. She hadn't long to wait, for up the brae climbs the green fairy, neither lame nor lazy; and long ere she got near the knocking-stone she screams out--"Goodwife of Kittlerumpit, you know well what I come for--stand and deliver!" 'The woman pretends to cry harder than before, and wrings her hands, and falls on her knees, with "Och, sweet madam mistress, spare my only bairn, and take the wretched sow!" '"The devil take the sow, for my part," quoth the fairy; "I come not here for swine's flesh. Don't be contramawcious, huzzy, but give me the child instantly!" '"Ochone, dear lady mine," quoth the crying goodwife; "forgo my poor bairn, and take me myself!" '"The devil is in the daft jade," quoth the fairy, looking like the far end of a fiddle; "I'll bet she is clean demented. Who in all the earthly world, with half an eye in his head, would ever meddle with the likes of thee?" 'I trow this set up the woman of Kittlerumpit's bristle: for though she had two blear eyes and a long red nose besides, she thought herself as bonny as the best of them. So she springs off her knees, sets the top of her cap straight, and with her two hands folded before her, she makes a curtsy down to the ground, and, "In troth, fair madam," quoth she, "I might have had the wit to know that the likes of me is not fit to tie the worst shoe-strings of the high and mighty princess, Whuppity Stoorie." 'If a flash of gunpowder had come out of the ground it couldn't have made the fairy leap higher than she did; then down she came again plump on her shoe-heels; and whirling round, she ran down the brae, screeching for rage, like an owl chased by the witches. 'The goodwife of Kittlerumpit laughed till she was like to split; then she takes up her bairn, and goes into her house, singing to it all the way:-- A goo and a gitty, my bonny wee tyke, Ye'se noo ha'e your four-oories; Sin' we've gien Nick a bane to pyke, Wi' his wheels and his Whuppity Stoories.' That is practically Chambers' version of this Scottish story; and as to the name of the fairy Whuppity Stoorie, the first syllable should be the equivalent of English whip, while stoor is a Scotch word for dust in motion: so the editor asks in a note whether the name may not have originated in the notion 'that fairies were always present in the whirls of dust occasioned by the wind on roads and in streets [194].' But he adds that another version of the story calls the green woman Fittletetot, which ends with the same element as the name Tom Tit Tot and Silly go Dwt. Perhaps, however, the Welsh versions of the story approached nearest to one from Mochdrum in Wigtownshire, published in the British Association's Papers of the Liverpool Meeting, 1896, p. 613. This story was contributed by the Rev. Walter Gregor, and the name of the fairy in it is Marget Totts: in this we have a wife, who is in great distress, because her husband used to give her so much flax to spin by such and such a day, that the work was beyond human power. A fairy comes to the rescue and takes the flax away, promising to bring it back spun by the day fixed, provided the woman can tell the fairy's name. The woman's distress thereupon becomes as great as before, but the fairy was overheard saying as she span, 'Little does the guidwife ken it, my name is Marget Totts.' So the woman got her flax returned spun by the day; and the fairy, Marget Totts, went up the chimney in a blaze of fire as the result of rage and disappointment. Here one cannot help seeing that the original, of which this is a clumsy version, must have been somewhat as follows Little does the guidwife wot That my name is Marget Tot. To come back to Wales, we have there the names Silly Frit and Silly go Dwt, which are those of females. The former name is purely English--Silly Frit, which has been already guessed (p. 66) to mean a silly sprite, or silly apparition, with the idea of its being a fright of a creature to behold: compare the application elsewhere to a fairy changeling of the terms crimbil (p. 263) and cyrfaglach or cryfaglach (p. 450), which is explained as implying a haggard urchin that has been half starved and stunted in its growth. Leaving out of the reckoning this connotation, one might compare the term with the Scottish habit of calling the fairies silly wights, 'the Happy Wights.' See J. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary, where s. v. seily, seely, 'happy,' he purports to quote the following lines from 'the Legend of the Bishop of St. Androis' in a collection of Scottish Poems of the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1801), pp. 320-1:-- For oght the kirk culd him forbid, He sped him sone, and gat the thrid; Ane Carling of the Quene of Phareis, That ewill win gair to elphyne careis, Through all Braid Albane scho hes bene, On horsbak on Hallow ewin; And ay in seiking certayne nyghtis, As scho sayis, with sur [read our] sillie wychtis. Similarly, he gives the fairies the name of Seely Court, and cites as illustrating it the following lines from R. Jamieson's Popular Ballads, (i. 236, and) ii. 189:-- But as it fell out on last Hallowe'en, When the Seely Court was ridin' by, The queen lighted down on a gowan bank, Nae far frae the tree where I wont to lye. Into Welsh, however, the designation Silly Frit must have come, not from Scotland, but from the Marches; and the history of Sìli go Dwt must be much the same. For, though construed as Welsh, the name would mean the Silly who is go Dwt [195], 'somewhat tidy or natty'; but the dwt (mutated from twt) was suggested doubtless by the tot of such fairy names as Tom Tit Tot. That brings me to another group, where the syllable is trot or trut, and this we have in the Welsh doggerel, mentioned at p. 229, as follows:-- Bychan a wyda' hi Little did she know Mai Trwtyn-Tratyn That Trwtyn Tratyn Yw f'enw i. Is my name. But this name Trwtyn-Tratyn sounds masculine, and not that of a she-fairy such as Silly Frit. The feminine would have been Trwtan-Tratan in the Carnarvonshire pronunciation, and in fact trwtan is to be heard there; but more frequently a kind of derivative trwdlan, meaning an ungainly sort of woman, a drudge, a short-legged or deformed maid of all work. Some Teutonic varieties of this group of stories will be found mentioned briefly in Mr. Clodd's article on the 'Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin [196].' Thus from the Debatable Ground on the borders of England and Scotland there comes a story in which the fairy woman's name was Habetrot; and he alludes to an Icelandic version in which the name is Gillitrut; but for us still more interest attaches to the name in the following rhyme [197]:-- Little does my lady wot That my name is Trit-a-Trot. This has been supposed to belong to a story coming from Ireland; but whether that may prove true or not, it is hardly to be doubted that our Trwtyn Tratyn is practically to be identified with Trit-a-Trot, who is also a he-fairy. That is not all; for since the foregoing notes were penned, a tale has reached me from Mr. Craigfryn Hughes about a fairy who began by conducting himself like the brownies mentioned at pp. 287, 324-5 above. The passages here in point come from the story of which a part was given at pp. 462-4; and they are to the following effect:--Long ago there was in service at a Monmouthshire farm a young woman who was merry and strong. Who she was or whence she came nobody knew; but many believed that she belonged to the old breed of Bendith y Mamau. Some time after she had come to the farm, the rumour spread that the house was sorely troubled by a spirit. But the girl and the elf understood one another well, and they became the best of friends. So the elf proved very useful to the maid, for he did everything for her--washing, ironing, spinning and twisting wool; in fact they say that he was remarkably handy at the spinning-wheel. Moreover, he expected only a bowlful of sweet milk and wheat bread, or some flummery, for his work. So she took care to place the bowl with his food at the bottom of the stairs every night as she went to bed. It ought to have been mentioned that she was never allowed to catch a sight of him; for he always did his work in the dark. Nor did anybody know when he ate his food: she used to leave the bowl there at night, and it would be empty by the time when she got up in the morning, the bwca having cleared it. But one night, by way of cursedness, what did she do but fill the bowl with some of the stale urine which they used in dyeing wool and other things about the house. But heavens! it would have been better for her not to have done it; for when she got up next morning what should he do but suddenly spring from some corner and seize her by the neck! He began to beat her and kick her from one end of the house to the other, while he shouted at the top of his voice at every kick:-- Y faidan din dwmp-- Yn rhoi bara haid a thrwnc I'r bwca! The idea that the thick-buttocked lass Should give barley bread and p-- To the bogie! Meanwhile she screamed for help, but none came for some time; when, however, he heard the servant men getting up, he took to his heels as hard as he could; and nothing was heard of him for some time. But at the end of two years he was found to be at another farm in the neighbourhood, called Hafod yr Ynys, where he at once became great friends with the servant girl: for she fed him like a young chicken, by giving him a little bread and milk all the time. So he worked willingly and well for her in return for his favourite food. More especially, he used to spin and wind the yarn for her; but she wished him in time to show his face, or to tell her his name: he would by no means do either. One evening, however, when all the men were out, and when he was spinning hard at the wheel, she deceived him by telling him that she was also going out. He believed her; and when he heard the door shutting, he began to sing as he plied the wheel:-- Hi warda'n iawn pe gwypa hi, Taw Gwarwyn-a-throt yw'm enw i. How she would laugh, did she know That Gwarwyn-a-throt is my name! 'Ha! ha!' said the maid at the bottom of the stairs; 'I know thy name now.' 'What is it, then?' he asked. She replied, 'Gwarwyn-a-throt'; and as soon as she uttered the words he left the wheel where it was, and off he went. He was next heard of at a farmhouse not far off, where there happened to be a servant man named Moses, with whom he became great friends at once. He did all his work for Moses with great ease. He once, however, gave him a good beating for doubting his word; but the two remained together afterwards for some years on the best possible terms: the end of it was that Moses became a soldier. He went away to fight against Richard Crookback, and fell on the field of Bosworth. The bogie, after losing his friend, began to be troublesome and difficult to live with. He would harass the oxen when they ploughed, and draw them after him everywhere, plough and all; nor could any one prevent them. Then, when the sun set in the evening he would play his pranks again, and do all sorts of mischief about the house, upstairs, and in the cowhouses. So the farmer was advised to visit a wise man (dyn cynnil), and to see if he could devise some means of getting rid of the bogie. He called on the wise man, who happened to be living near Caerleon on the Usk; and the wise man, having waited till the moon should be full, came to the farmer's house. In due time the wise man, by force of manoeuvring, secured the bogie by the very long nose which formed the principal ornament of his face, and earned for him the name of Bwca'r Trwyn, 'the Bogie of the Nose.' Whilst secured by the nose, the bogie had something read to him out of the wise man's big book; and he was condemned by the wise man to be transported to the banks of the Red Sea for fourteen generations, and to be conveyed thither by 'the upper wind' (yr uwchwynt). No sooner had this been pronounced by the cunning man than there came a whirlwind which made the whole house shake. Then came a still mightier wind, and as it began to blow the owner of the big book drew the awl out of the bogie's nose; and it is supposed that the bogie was carried away by that wind, for he never troubled the place any more. Another version of the story seems to have been current, which represented the bogie as in no wise to blame [198]: but I attach some importance to the foregoing tale as forming a link of connexion between the Rumpelstiltzchen group of fairies, always trying to get hold of children; the brownie kind, ever willing to serve in return for their simple keep; and the troublesome bogie, that used to haunt Welsh farm houses and delight in breaking crockery and frightening the inmates out of their wits. In fact, the brownie and the bogie reduce themselves here into different humours of the same uncanny being. Their appearance may be said to have differed also: the bogie had a very long nose, while the brownie of Blednoch had only 'a hole where a nose should have been.' But one of the most remarkable points about the brownie species is that the Lincolnshire specimen was a small creature, 'a weeny bit of a fellow'--which suggests a possible community of origin with the banshee of the Irish, and also of the Welsh: witness the wee little woman in the story of the Curse of Pantannas (pp. 188-9), who seems to come up out of the river. All alike may perhaps be said to suggest various aspects of the dead ancestor or ancestress; but Bwca'r Trwyn is not to be severed from the fairy woman in the Pennant Valley, who undertakes some of the duties, not of a dairymaid, as in other cases mentioned, but those of a nurse. Her conduct on being offered a gown is exactly that of the brownie similarly placed: see p. 109 above. But she and Bwca'r Trwyn are unmistakably fairies who take to domestic service, and work for a time willingly and well in return for their food, which, as in the case of other fairies, appears to have been mostly milk. After this digression I wish only to point out that the Welsh bogie's name, Gwarwyn-a-throt, treated as Welsh, could only mean white-necked and (or with) a trot; for a throt could only mean 'and (or with) a trot.' So it is clear that a throt is simply the equivalent of a-Trot, borrowed from such an English combination as Trit-a-Trot, and that it is idle to translate Gwarwyn-a-throt. Now trot and twt are not native Welsh words; and the same remark applies to Trwtyn Tratyn, and of course to Sìli ffrit and Sìli go Dwt. Hence it is natural to infer that either these names have in the Welsh stories merely superseded older ones of Welsh origin, or else that there was no question of name in the Welsh stories till they had come under English influence. The former conjecture seems the more probable of the two, unless one should rather suppose the whole story borrowed from English sources. But it is of no consequence here as regards the reluctance of fairies to disclose their names; for we have other instances to which the reader may turn, on pp. 45, 87-8, 97 above. One of them, in particular, is in point here: see pp. 54, 61. It attaches itself to the Pool of Corwrion in the neighbourhood of Bangor; and it relates how a man married a fairy on the express condition that he was neither to know her name nor to touch her with iron, on pain of her instantly leaving him. Of course in the lapse of years the conditions are accidentally violated by the luckless husband, and the wife flies instantly away into the waters of the pool: her name turned out to be Belene. Thus far of the unwillingness of the fairies to tell their names: I must now come to the question, why that was so. Here the anthropologist or the student of comparative folklore comes to our aid; for it is an important part of his business to compare the superstitions of one people with those of another; and in the case of superstitions which have lost their meaning among us, for instance, he searches for a parallel among other nations, where that parallel forms part of living institutions. In this way he hopes to discover the key to his difficulties. In the present case he finds savages who habitually look at the name as part and parcel of the person [199]. These savages further believe that any part of the person, such as a hair off one's head or the parings of one's nails, if they chanced to be found by an enemy, would give that enemy magical power over their lives, and enable him to injure them. Hence the savage tendency to conceal one's name. I have here, as the reader will perceive, crowded together several important steps in the savage logic; so I must try to illustrate them, somewhat more in detail, by reference to some of the survivals of them after the savage has long been civilized. To return to Wales, and to illustrate the belief that possession of a part of one's person, or of anything closely identified with one's person, gives the possessor of it power over that person, I need only recall the Welsh notion, that if one wished to sell one's self to the devil one had merely to give him a hair of one's head or the tiniest drop of one's blood, then one would be for ever his for a temporary consideration. Again, if you only had your hair cut, it must be carefully gathered and hidden away: by no means must it be burnt, as that might prove prejudicial to your health. Similarly, you should never throw feathers into the fire; for that was once held, as I infer, to bring about death among one's poultry: and an old relative of mine, Modryb Mari, 'Aunt Mary,' set her face against my taste for toasted cheese. She used to tell me that if I toasted my cheese, my sheep would waste away and die: strictly speaking, I fancy this originally meant only the sheep from whose milk the cheese had been made. But I was not well versed enough in the doctrines of sympathetic magic to reply, that it did not apply to our cheese, which was not made from sheep's milk. So her warning used to frighten me and check my fondness for toasted cheese, a fondness which I had doubtless quite innocently inherited, as anybody will see who will glance at one of the Hundred Mery Talys, printed by John Rastell in the sixteenth century, as follows:--'I fynde wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde Saynt Peter porter of heuen, and that God of hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen with small deseruynge; at whyche tyme there was in heuen a great companye of Welchemen, whyche with their crakynge and babelynge troubled all the other. Wherfore God sayde to Saynte Peter that he was wery of them, and that he wolde fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome Saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde, I warrente you, that shall be done. Wherfore Saynt Peter wente out of heuen gates and cryed wyth a loud voyce Cause bobe [200], that is as moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the Welchemen herynge, ranne out of Heuen a great pace. And when Saynt Peter sawe them all out, he sodenly wente into Heuen, and locked the dore, and so sparred all the Welchemen out. By this ye may se, that it is no wysdome for a man to loue or to set his mynde to moche upon any delycate or worldely pleasure, wherby he shall lose the celestyall and eternall ioye.' To leave the Mery Talys and come back to the instances mentioned, all of them may be said to illustrate the way in which a part, or an adjunct, answered for the whole of a person or thing. In fact, having due regard to magic as an exact science, an exceedingly exact science, one may say that according to the wisdom of our ancestors the leading axiom of that science practically amounted to this: the part is quite equal to the whole. Now the name, as a part of the man, was once probably identified with the breath of life or with the soul, as we shall see later; and the latter must have been regarded as a kind of matter; for I well remember that when a person was dying in a house, it was the custom about Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire, to open the windows. And a farmer near Ystrad Meurig, more towards the south of the county, told me some years ago that he remembered his mother dying when he was a boy: a neighbour's wife who had been acting as nurse tried to open the window of the room, and as it would not open she deliberately smashed a pane of it. This was doubtless originally meant to facilitate the escape of the soul; and the same idea has been attested for Gloucestershire, Devon, and other parts of the country [201]. This way of looking at the soul reminds one of Professor Tylor's words when he wrote in his work on Primitive Culture, i. 440: 'and he who says that his spirit goes forth to meet a friend, can still realize in the phrase a meaning deeper than metaphor.' Then if the soul was material, you may ask what its shape was; and even this I have a story which will answer: it comes from the same Modryb Mari who set her face against caws pobi, and cherished a good many superstitions. Therein she differed greatly from her sister, my mother, who had a far more logical mind and a clearer conception of things. Well, my aunt's story was to the following effect:--A party of reapers on a farm not far from Ponterwyd--I have forgotten the name--sat down in the field to their midday meal. Afterwards they rested awhile, when one of their number fell fast asleep. The others got up and began reaping again, glancing every now and then at the sleeping man, who had his mouth wide open and breathed very loudly. Presently they saw a little black man, or something like a monkey, coming out of his mouth and starting on a walk round the field: they watched this little fellow walking on and on till he came to a spot near a stream. There he stopped and turned back: then he disappeared into the open mouth of the sleeper, who at once woke up. He told his comrades that he had just been dreaming of his walking round the field as far as the very spot where they had seen the little black fellow stop. I am sorry to say that Modryb Mari had wholly forgotten this story when, years afterwards, I asked her to repeat it to me; but the other day I found a Welshman who still remembers it. I happened to complain, at a meeting of kindred spirits, how I had neglected making careful notes of bits of folklore which I had heard years ago from informants whom I had since been unable to cross-examine: I instanced the story of the sleeping reaper, when my friend Professor Sayce at once said that he had heard it. He spent part of his childhood near Llanover in Monmouthshire; and in those days he spoke Welsh, which he learned from his nurse. He added that he well remembered the late Lady Llanover rebuking his father for having his child, a Welsh boy, dressed like a little Highlander; and he remembered also hearing the story here in question told him by his nurse. So far as he could recall it, the version was the same as my aunt's, except that he does not recollect hearing anything about the stream of water. Several points in the story call for notice: among others, one naturally asks at the outset why the other reapers did not wake the sleeping man. The answer is that the Welsh seem to have agreed with other peoples, such as the Irish [202], in thinking it dangerous to wake a man when dreaming, that is, when his soul might be wandering outside his body; for it might result in the soul failing to find the way back into the body which it had temporarily left. To illustrate this from Wales I produce the following story, which has been written out for me by Mr. J. G. Evans. The scene of it was a field on the farm of Cadabowen, near Llan y Bydair, in the Vale of the Teifi:--'The chief point of the madfall incident, which happened in the early sixties, was this. During one mid-morning hoe hogi, that is to say, the usual rest for sharpening the reaping-hooks, I was playing among the thirty or forty reapers sitting together: my movements were probably a disturbing element to the reapers, as well as a source of danger to my own limbs. In order, therefore, to quiet me, as seems probable, one of the men directed my attention to our old farm labourer, who was asleep on his back close to the uncut corn, a little apart from the others. I was told that his soul (ened) had gone out of his mouth in the form of a black lizard (madfall du), and was at that moment wandering among the standing corn. If I woke the sleeper, the soul would be unable to return; and old Thomas would die, or go crazy; or something serious would happen. I will not trust my memory to fill in details, especially as this incident once formed the basis of what proved an exciting story told to my children in their childhood. A generation hence they may be able to give an astonishing instance of "genuine" Welsh folklore. In the meanwhile, I can bear testimony to that "black lizard" being about the most living impression in my "memory." I see it, even now, wriggling at the edge of the uncut corn. But as to its return, and the waking of the sleeper, my memory is a blank. Such are the tricks of "memory"; and we should be charitable when, with bated breath, the educated no less than the uneducated tell us about the uncanny things they have "seen with their own eyes." They believe what they say, because they trust their memory: I do not. I feel practically certain I never saw a lizard in my life, in that particular field in which the reapers were.' Mr. Evans' story differs, as it has been seen, from my aunt's version in giving the soul the shape of a lizard; but the little black fellow in the one and the black lizard in the other agree not only in representing the soul as material, but also as forming a complete organism within a larger one. In a word, both pictures must be regarded as the outcome of attempts to depict the sleeper's inner man. If names and souls could be regarded as material substances, so could diseases; and I wish to say a word or two now on that subject, which a short story of my wife's will serve to introduce. She is a native of the Llanberis side of Snowdon; and she remembers going one morning, when a small child, across to the neighbourhood of Rhyd-du with a servant girl called Cadi, whose parents lived there. Now Cadi was a very good servant, but she had little regard for the more civilized manners of the Llanberis folk; and when she returned with the child in the evening from her mother's cottage, she admitted that the little girl was amazed at the language of Cadi's brothers and sisters; for she confessed that, as she said, they swore like colliers, whereas the little girl had never before heard any swearing worth speaking of. Well, among other things which the little girl saw there was one of Cadi's sisters having a bad leg dressed: when the rag which had been on the wound was removed, the mother made one of her other children take it out and fix it on the thorn growing near the door. The little girl being inquisitive asked why that was done, and she was told that it was in order that the wound might heal all the faster. She was not very satisfied with the answer, but she afterwards noticed the same sort of thing done in her own neighbourhood. Now the original idea was doubtless that the disease, or at any rate a part of it--and in such matters it will be remembered that a part is quite equal to the whole--was attached to the rag; so that putting the rag out, with a part of the disease attached to it, to rot on the bush, would bring with it the disappearance of the whole disease. Another and a wider aspect of this practice was the subject of notice in the chapter on the Folklore of the Wells, pp. 359-60, where Mr. Hartland's hypothesis was mentioned. This was to the effect that if any clothing, or anything else which had been identified with your person, were to be placed in contact with a sacred tree, sacred well, or sacred edifice, it would be involved in the effluence of the divinity that imparts its sacred character to the tree, well, or temple; and that your person, identified with the clothing or other article, would also be involved or soaked in the same divine effluence, and made to benefit thereby. We have since had this kind of reasoning illustrated, pp. 405-7 above, by the modern legend of Crymlyn, and the old one of Llyn Lliwan; but the difficulty which it involves is a very considerable one: it is the difficulty of taking seriously the infantile order of reasoning which underlies so much of the philosophy of folklore. I cannot readily forget one of the first occasions of my coming, so to say, into living contact with it. It was at Tuam in Connaught, whither I had gone to learn modern Irish from the late Canon Ulick J. Bourke. There one day in 1871 he presented me with a copy of The Bull 'Ineffabilis' in Four Languages (Dublin, 1868), containing the Irish version which he had himself contributed. On the blue cover was a gilt picture of the Virgin, inscribed Sine Labe Concepta. No sooner had I brought it to my lodgings than the woman who looked after the house caught sight of it. She was at once struck with awe and admiration; so I tried to explain to her the nature of the contents of the volume. 'So the Father has given you that holy book!' she exclaimed; 'and you are now a holy man!' I was astonished at the simple and easy way in which she believed holiness could be transferred from one person or thing to another; and it has always helped me to realize the fact that folklorists have no occasion to invent their people, or to exaggerate the childish features of their minds. They are still with us as real men and real women, and at one time the whole world belonged to them; not to mention that those who may, by a straining of courtesy, be called their leaders of thought, hope speedily to reannex the daring few who are trying to tear asunder the bonds forged for mankind in the obscurity of a distant past. I shall never forget the impression made on my mind by a sermon I heard preached some years later in the cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna. That magnificent edifice in a great centre of German culture was crowded with listeners, who seemed thoroughly to enjoy what they heard, though the chief idea which they were asked to entertain could not possibly be said to rise above the level of the philosophy of the Stone Age. CHAPTER XI FOLKLORE PHILOSOPHY To look for consistency in barbaric philosophy is to disqualify ourselves for understanding it, and the theories of it which aim at symmetry are their own condemnation. Yet that philosophy, within its own irregular confines, works not illogically.--Edward Clodd. It will be remembered that in the last chapter a story was given, p. 602, which represented the soul as a little fellow somewhat resembling a monkey; and it will probably have struck the reader how near this approaches the idea prevalent in medieval theology and Christian art, which pictured the soul as a pigmy or diminutive human being. I revert to this in order to point out that the Christian fancy may possibly have given rise to the form of the soul as represented in the Welsh story which I heard in Cardiganshire and Professor Sayce in Monmouthshire; but this could hardly be regarded as touching the other Cardiganshire story, in which the soul is likened to a madfall or lizard. Moreover I would point out that a belief incompatible with both kinds of story is suggested by one of the uses of the Welsh word for soul, namely, enaid. I heard my father, a native of the neighbourhood of Eglwys Fach, near the estuary of the Dyfi, use the word of some portion of the inside of a goose, but I have forgotten what part it was exactly. Professor Anwyl of Aberystwyth, however, has sent me the following communication on the subject:--'I am quite familiar with the expression yr enaid, "the soul," as applied to the soft flesh sticking to the ribs inside a goose. The flesh in question has somewhat the same appearance and structure as the liver. I have no recollection of ever hearing the term yr enaid used in the case of any bird other than a goose; but this may be a mere accident, inasmuch as no one ever uses the term now except to mention it as an interesting curiosity.' This application of the word enaid recalls the use of the English word 'soul' in the same way, and points to a very crude idea of the soul as material and only forming an internal portion of the body: it is on the low level of the notion of an English pagan of the seventeenth century who thought his soul was 'a great bone in his body [203].' It is, however, not quite so foolish, perhaps, as it looks at first sight; and it reminds one of the Mohammedan belief that the os coccygis is the first formed in the human body, and that it will remain uncorrupted till the last day as a seed from which the whole is to be renewed in the resurrection [204]. On either savage theory, that the soul is a material organism inside a bulkier organism, or the still lower one that it is an internal portion of the larger organism itself, the idea of death would be naturally much the same, namely, that it was what occurred when the body and the soul became permanently severed. I call attention to this because we have traces in Welsh literature of a very different notion of death, which must now be briefly explained. The Mabinogi of Math ab Mathonwy relates how Math and Gwydion made out of various flowers a most beautiful woman whom they named Blodeuwed [205], that is to say anthôdês, or flowerlike, and gave to wife to Llew Llawgyffes; how she, as it were to prove what consummate artists they had been, behaved forthwith like a woman of the ordinary origin, in that she fell in love with another man named Gronw Pebyr of Penllyn; and how she plotted with Gronw as to the easiest way to put her husband to death. Pretending to be greatly concerned about the welfare of Llew and very anxious to take measures against his death (angheu), she succeeded in finding from him in what manner one could kill (llad) him. His reply was, 'Unless God kill me ... it is not easy to kill me'; and he went on to describe the strange attitude in which he might be killed, namely, in a certain position when dressing after a bath: then, he said, if one cast a spear at him it would effect his death (angheu), but that spear must have been a whole year in the making, during the hour only when the sacrifice was proceeding on Sunday. Blodeuwed thanked heaven, she said, to find that all this was easy to avoid. But still her curiosity was not satisfied; so one day she induced Llew to go into the bath and show exactly what he meant. Of course she had Gronw with his enchanted spear in readiness, and at the proper moment, when Llew was dressing after the bath, the paramour cast his spear at him. He hit him in the side, so that the head of the spear remained in Llew, whilst the shaft fell off: Llew flew away in the form of an eagle, uttering an unearthly cry. He was no more seen until Gwydion, searching for him far and wide in Powys and Gwyned, came to Arfon, where one day he followed the lead of a mysterious sow, until the beast stopped under an oak at Nantlle. There Gwydion found the sow devouring rotten flesh and maggots, which fell from an eagle whenever the bird shook himself at the top of the tree. He suspected this was Llew, and on singing three englyns to him the eagle came lower and lower, till at last he descended on Gwydion's lap. Then Gwydion struck him with his wand, so that he assumed his own shape of Llew Llawgyffes, and nobody ever saw a more wretched looking man, we are told: he was nothing but skin and bones. But the best medical aid that could be found in Gwyned was procured, and before the end of the year he was quite well again. Here it will be noticed, that though the fatal wounding of Llew, at any rate visibly, means his being changed into the form of an eagle, it is treated as his death. When the Mabinogion were edited in their present form in a later atmosphere, this sort of phraseology was not natural to the editor, and he shows it when he comes to relate how Gwydion punished Blodeuwed, as follows:--Gwydion, having overtaken her in her flight, is made to say, 'I shall not kill thee (Ny ladaf i di): I shall do what is worse for thee, and that is to let thee go in the form of a bird.' He let her go in fact in the form of an owl. According to the analogy of the other part of the story this meant his having killed her: it was her death, and the words 'I shall not kill thee' are presumably not to be regarded as belonging to the original story. To come back to the eagle, later Welsh literature, re-echoing probably an ancient notion, speaks of a nephew of Arthur, called Eliwlod, appearing to Arthur as an eagle seated likewise among the branches of an oak. He claims acquaintance and kinship with Arthur, but he has to explain to him that he has died: they have a dialogue [206] in the course of which the eagle gives Arthur some serious Christian advice. But we have in this sort of idea doubtless the kind of origin to which one might expect to trace the prophesying eagle, such as Geoffrey mentions more than once: see his Historia, ii. 9 and xii. 18 [207]. Add to these instances of transformation the belief prevalent in Cornwall almost to our own day, that Arthur himself, instead of dying, was merely changed by magic into a raven, a form in which he still goes about; so that a Cornishman will not wittingly fire at a raven [208]. This sort of transformation is not to be severed from instances supplied by Irish literature, such as the story of Tuan mac Cairill, related in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 15a-16b. Tuan relates to St. Finnen of Magbile, in the sixth century, the early history of Ireland from the time of Partholan down, which he was enabled to do because he had lived through it all, passing from one form to another without losing his memory. First of all he was a man, and when old age had come upon him he was transformed into a stag of the forest. For a while he was youthful and vigorous; but again old age overtook him, and he next became a wild boar. When old age and decrepitude overcame him next he was renewed in the form of a powerful bird, called in the original seig. The next renewal was in the form of a salmon: here the manuscript fails us. The form of a salmon was also the one taken by the woman Liban when she was overwhelmed by the flood, which became the body of water known as Lough Neagh: her handmaid at the same time became an otter (fo. 40b). There was an ancient belief that the soul leaves the body like a bird flying out of the mouth of the man or woman dying, and this maybe said to approach the favourite Celtic notion illustrated by the transformations here instanced, to which may be added the case of the Children of Lir, pp. 93, 549, changed by the stroke of their wicked stepmother's wand into swans, on Lough Erne. The story has, in the course of ages, modified itself into a belief that the swans haunting that beautiful water at all seasons of the year, are the souls of holy women who fell victims to the repeated visitations of the pagan Norsemen, when Ireland was at their cruel mercy [209]. The Christian form which the Irish peasant has given the legend does not touch its relevancy here. Perhaps one might venture to generalize, that in these islands great men and women were believed to continue their existence in the form of eagles, hawks or ravens, swans or owls. But what became of the souls of the obscurer majority of the people? For an answer to this perhaps we can only fall back on the Psyche butterfly, which may here be illustrated by the fact that Cornish tradition applies the term 'pisky' both to the fairies and to moths, believed in Cornwall by many to be departed souls [210]. So in Ireland: a certain reverend gentleman named Joseph Ferguson, writing in 1810 a statistical account of the parish of Ballymoyer, in the county of Armagh, states that one day a girl chasing a butterfly was chid by her companions, who said to her: 'That may be the soul of your grandmother [211].' This idea, to survive, has modified itself into a belief less objectionably pagan, that a butterfly hovering near a corpse is a sign of its everlasting happiness. The shape-shifting is sometimes complicated by taking place on the lines of rebirth: as cases in point may be mentioned Lug, reborn as Cúchulainn [212], and the repeated births of Étáin. This was rendered possible in the case of Cúchulainn, for instance, by Lug taking the form of an insect which was unwittingly swallowed by Dechtere, who thereby became Cúchulainn's mother; and so in the case of Étáin [213] and her last recorded mother, the queen of Etar king of Eochraidhe. On Welsh ground we have a combination of transformations and rebirth in the history of Gwion Bach in the story of Taliessin. Gwion was in the service of the witch Ceridwen; but having learned too much of her arts, he became the object of her lasting hatred; and the incident is translated as follows in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 358-9:--'And she went forth after him, running. And he saw her, and changed himself into a hare and fled. But she changed herself into a greyhound and turned him. And he ran towards a river, and became a fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch chased him under the water, until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air. Then she, as a hawk, followed him and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to swoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he dropped amongst the wheat, and turned himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the wheat and scratched it with her feet, and found him out and swallowed him. And, as the story says, she bore him nine months, and when she was delivered of him, she could not find it in her heart to kill him, by reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and cast him into the sea to the mercy of God on the twenty-ninth day of April. And at that time the weir of Gwydno was on the strand between Dyvi and Aberystwyth, near to his own castle, and the value of an hundred pounds was taken in that weir every May eve.' The story goes on to relate how Gwydno's son, Elphin, found in the weir the leathern bag containing the baby, who grew up to be the bard Taliessin. But the fourteenth century manuscript called after the name of Taliessin teems with such transformations as the above, except that they are by no means confined to the range of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. I heard an amusing suggestion of metempsychosis the other day: it is related of a learned German, who was sitting at table, let us say, in an Oxford hotel, with most of his dinner in front of him. Being, however, a man of immediate foresight, and anxious to accustom himself to fine English, he was not to be restrained by scruples as to any possible discrepancy between words like bekommen and become. So to the astonishment of everybody he gravely called out to the waiter, 'Hereafter I vish to become a Velsh rabbit.' This would have done admirably for the author of certain poems in the Book of Taliessin, where the bard's changes are dwelt upon. From them it appears that the transformation might be into anything that the mind of man could in any way individualize. Thus Taliessin claims to have been, some time or other, not only a stag or a salmon, but also an axe, a sword, and even a book in a priest's hand, or a word in writing. On the whole, however, his history as a grain of corn has most interest here, as it differs from that which has just been given: the passage [214] is sadly obscure, but I understand it to say that the grain was duly sown on a hill, that it was reaped and finally brought on the hearth, where the ears of corn were emptied of their grains by the ancient method of dexterously applying a flame to them [215]. But while the light was being applied the grain which was Taliessin, falling from the operator's hand, was quickly received and swallowed by a hostile hen, in whose interior it remained nine nights; but though this seemingly makes Taliessin's mother a bird, he speaks of himself, without mentioning any intervening transformation, as a gwas or young man. Such an origin was perhaps never meant to be other than incomprehensible. Lastly as to rebirth, I may say that it has often struck me that the Welsh habit, especially common in Carnarvonshire and Anglesey, of one child in a family being named, partially or wholly, after a grandparent, is to be regarded as a trace of the survival from early times of a belief in such atavism as has been suggested above [216]. The belief in transformations or transmigrations, such as have been mentioned, must have lent itself to various developments, and two at least of them are deserving of some notice here. First may be mentioned one which connects itself intimately with the druid or magician: he is master of his own transformations, as in the case of Ceridwen and Gwion, for he had acquired his magic by tasting of the contents of Ceridwen's Cauldron of Sciences, and he retained his memory continuously through his shape-shiftings, as is best illustrated, perhaps, by the case of Tuan mac Cairill. The next step was for him to realize his changes, not as matters of the past but as present and possible; in fact, to lay claim to being anybody or anything he likes at any moment. Of this we have a remarkable instance in the case of Amairgen, seer and judge of the Milesians or Sons of Míl, in the story of their conquest of Ireland, as told in the Book of Leinster, fo. 12b. As he first sets his right foot on the land of Erin he sings a lay in which he says, that he is a boar, a bull, and a salmon, together with other things also, such as the sea-breeze, the rolling wave, the roar of the billows, and a lake on the plain. Nor does he forget to pretend to wisdom and science beyond other men, and to hint that he is the divinity that gives them knowledge and sense. The similarity between this passage and others in the Book of Taliessin has attracted the attention of scholars: see M. d'Arbois de Jubainville's Cycle mythologique irlandais, pp. 242 et seq. On the whole, Taliessin revels most in the side of the picture devoted to his knowledge and science: he has passed through so many scenes and changes that he has been an eye-witness to all kinds of events in Celtic story. Thus he was with Brân on his expedition to Ireland, and saw when Mordwyt Tyllion was slain in the great slaughter of the Meal-bag Pavilion. This, however, was not all; he represents himself as also a sywedyd [217], 'vates or prophet, astrologer and astronomer,' a sage who boasts his knowledge of the physical world and propounds questions which he challenges his rivals to answer concerning earth and sea, day and night, sun and moon. He is not only Taliessin, but also Gwion, and hence one infers his magical powers to have been derived. If he regards anybody as his equal or superior, that seems to have been Talhaiarn, to whom he ascribes the greatest science. Talhaiarn is usually thought of only as a great bard by Welsh writers, but it is his science and wisdom that Taliessin admires [218], whereby one is to understand, doubtless, that Talhaiarn, like Taliessin, was a great magician. To this day Welsh bards and bardism have not been quite dissociated from magic, in so far as the witch Ceridwen is regarded as their patroness. The boasts of Amairgen are characterized by M. d'Arbois de Jubainville as a sort of pantheism, and he detects traces of the same doctrine, among other places, in the teaching of the Irishman, known as Scotus Erigena, at the court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century: see the Cycle mythologique, p. 248. In any case, one is prepared by such utterances as those of Amairgen to understand the charge recorded in the Senchus Mór, i. 23, as made against the Irish druids or magicians of his time by a certain Connla Cainbhrethach, one of the remarkable judges of Erin, conjectured by O'Curry--on what grounds I do not know--to have lived in the first century of our era. The statement there made is to the following effect:--'After her came Connla Cainbhrethach, chief doctor of Connaught; he excelled the men of Erin in wisdom, for he was filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost; he used to contend with the druids, who said that it was they that made heaven and earth, and the sea, &c., and the sun and moon, &c.' This view of the pretensions of the druids is corroborated by the fact that magic, especially the power of shape-shifting at will, was regarded as power par excellence [219], and by the old formula of wishing one well, which ran thus: Bendacht dee ocus andee fort, 'the blessing of gods and not-gods upon thee!' The term 'gods' in this context is explained to have meant persons of power [220], and the term 'not-gods' farmers or those connected with the land, probably all those whose lives were directly dependent on farming and the cultivation of the soil, as distinguished from professional men such as druids and smiths. This may be further illustrated by a passage from the account of the second battle of Moytura, published by Stokes with a translation, in the Revue Celtique, xii. 52-130. See more especially pp. 74-6, where we find Lug offering his services to the king, Nuada of the Silver Hand. Among other qualifications which Lug possessed, he named that of being a sorcerer, to which the porter at once replied: 'We need thee not; we have sorcerers already. Many are our wizards and our folk of might'--that is, those of our people who possess power--ar lucht cumachtai. Wizards (druith) and lucht cumachtai came, it is observed, alike under the more general designation of sorcerers (corrguinigh). One seems to come upon traces of the same classification of a community into professionals and non-professionals, for that is what it comes to, in an obscure Welsh term, Teulu Oeth ac Anoeth, which may be conjectured to have meant 'the Household of Oeth and Anoeth' in the sense of Power and Not-power [221]. However that may be, the professional class of men who were treated as persons of power and gods seem to have attained to their position by virtue of the magic of which they claimed to be masters, and especially of their supposed faculty of shape-shifting at will. In other words, the druidic pantheism [222] which Erigena was able to dress in the garb of a fairly respectable philosophy proves to have been, in point of genesis, but a few removes from a primitive kind of savage folklore. None of these stories of shape-shifting, and of being born again, make any allusion to a soul. To revert, for instance, to Llew Llawgyffes, it is evident that the eagle cannot be regarded as his soul. The decayed state of the eagle's body seems to imply that it was somehow the same body as that of Llew at the time when he was wounded by Gronw's poisoned spear: the festering of the eagle's flesh looks as if considered a continuation of the wound. It is above all things, however, to be noted that none of the stories in point, whether Irish or Welsh, contain any suggestion of the hero's life coming to an end, or in any way perishing; Llew lives on to be transformed, under the stroke of Gwydion's wand, from being an eagle to be a man again; and Tuan mac Cairill persists in various forms till he meets St. Finnen in the sixth century. Then in the case of Étáin, we are told in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 129a, that her first-mentioned birth and the next one were separated by more than a thousand years. So practically we may say that these stories implied that men and women were imperishable, that they had no end necessarily to their existence. This sort of notion may be detected in Llew's words when he says, 'Unless God kill me ... it is not easy to kill me.' The reference to the Almighty may probably be regarded as a comparatively late interpolation due to Christian teaching. A similar instance seems to occur in a poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen, fos. 47b-8b, where Arthur loudly sings the praises of his friend Cai. The couplet in point runs thus:-- Ny bei duv ae digonhei. Oet diheit aghev kei. Unless it were God that wrought it, Hard to effect were the death of Cai. I am not sure, however, of the meaning; for, among other things, diheit, which I am inclined to interpret as 'hard to reach' or 'not easy to effect,' has been rendered otherwise by others [223]. In any case, the other instance seems to imply that at one time the heroes of Llew's world were not necessarily expected to die at all; and when they happened to do so, it was probably regarded, as among savages at the present day, as a result brought about by magic. Any reader who may feel astonished at such a crudeness of belief, will find something to contrast and compare in the familiar doctrine, that but for the fall of Adam and Eve we should have never heard of death, whether of man or of beast. But if he proceeds to ask questions about the economy of our world in case nobody died, he must be satisfied to be told that to ask any such question is here not only useless but also irrelevant. Now, suppose that in a society permeated by the crude kind of notions of which one finds traces in the Mabinogion and other old Welsh literature, a man arose who had a turn for philosophizing and trying to think things out: how would he reason? It seems probable that he would argue, that underneath all the change there must be some substratum which is permanent. If Tuan, he would say, changed from one form to another and remembered all that he had gone through, there must have been something which lasted, otherwise Tuan would have come to an end early in the story, and the later individual would not be Tuan at all. Probably one thing which, according to our folklore philosopher's way of thinking, lasted through the transformations, was the material of Tuan's body, just as one is induced to suppose that Llew's body, and that of the eagle into which he was transformed, were considered to be one and the same body labouring under the mortifying influence of the wound inflicted on Llew by Gronw's enchanted spear. Further, we have already found reasons to regard the existence of the soul as forming a part of the creed of some at any rate of the early inhabitants of this country, though we have no means of gathering what precise attributes our philosopher might ascribe to it besides the single one, perhaps, of continuing to exist. In that case he might otherwise describe Tuan's shape-shifting as the entrance of Tuan's soul into a series of different bodies. Now the philosopher here sketched agrees pretty closely with the little that is known of the Gaulish druid, such as he is described by ancient authors [224]. The latter seem to have been agreed in regarding him as believing in the immortality of the soul, and several of them appear to have thought his views similar to those of Pythagoras and his school. So we may perhaps venture to suppose that the druids, like Pythagoras, believed in the transmigration of souls, including that from the human to an animal form and the reverse. If, in the absence of an explicit statement, one may ascribe this latter form of that belief to the druids, the identity of their creed becomes almost complete with that of our conjectured folklore philosopher. At one time I was inclined to fancy that the druids of Gaul had received no unimportant part of their teaching from Greek philosophy by way of Massilia, but I am now more disposed to believe their doctrines to have been gradually developed, in the way above suggested, from the unfailing resources of that folklore which revelled in scenes of shape-shifting and rebirth. Possibly the doctrines of Pythagoras may have themselves had a like origin and a somewhat parallel development, or let us say rather that the Orphic notions had, which preceded Pythagoreanism. But as to Gaul generally, it is not to be assumed that the Gaulish druids and all the other Gauls held the same opinion on these questions: we have some evidence that they did not. Thus the Gauls in the neighbourhood of Massilia [225], who would accept a creditor's promise to pay up in the next world, can hardly have contemplated the possibility of any such creditor being then a bird or a moth. Should it be objected that the transformations, instanced above as Brythonic and Goidelic, were assumed only in the case of magicians and other professional or privileged persons, and that we are not told what was held to happen in the case of the rank and file of humanity, it is enough to answer that neither do we know what the druids of Gaul held to be the fate of the common people of their communities. No lever can be applied in that direction to disturb the lines of the parallel. In previous chapters, pp. 45, 54, 61, 88, 97, 229, instances from Welsh sources have been given of the fairies concealing their names. But Wales is not the only Celtic land where we find traces of this treatment of one's name: it is to be detected also on Irish ground. Thus, when a herald from an enemy's camp comes to parley with Cúchulainn and his charioteer, the latter, being first approached, describes himself as the 'man of the man down there,' meaning Cúchulainn, to whom he pointed; and when the herald comes to Cúchulainn himself, he asks him whose man he is: Cúchulainn describes himself as the 'man of Conchobar mac Nessa.' The herald then inquires if he has no more definite designation, and Cúchulainn replies that what he has given will suffice [226]: neither of the men gives his name. Thus Celts of both groups, Brythons and Goidels, are at one in yielding evidence to the same sort of cryptic treatment of personal names, at some stage or other in their past history. The student of man tells us, as already pointed out, that the reason for the reluctance to disclose one's name was of the same nature as that which makes savages, and some men belonging to nations above the savage state feel anxious that an enemy should not get possession of anything identified with their persons, such as a lock of one's hair, a drop of one's blood, or anything closely connected with one's person, lest it should give the enemy power over one's person as a whole, especially if such enemy is suspected of possessing any skill in handling the terrors of magic. In other words, the anthropologist would say that the name was regarded as identified with the person; and, having said this, he has mostly felt satisfied that he has definitively disposed of the matter. Therein, however, he is possibly wrong; for when he says that the name was probably treated as a part of the man, that only leads one to ask the question, What part of the man? At any rate, I can see nothing very unreasonable in such a question, though I am quite willing to word it differently, and to ask: Is there any evidence to show with what part of a man his name was associated? As regards the Aryan nations, we seem to have a clue to an answer in the interesting group of Aryan words in point, from which I select the following:--Irish ainm, 'a name,' plural anmann; Old Welsh anu, now enw, also 'a name'; Old Bulgarian imen (for *ienmen, *anman); Old Prussian emnes, emmens, accusative emnan; and Armenian anwan (for a stem *anman)--all meaning a name. To these some scholars [227] would add, and it may be rightly, the English word name itself, the Latin nomen, the Sanskrit naman, and the Greek ynoma; but, as some others find a difficulty in thus grouping these words, I abstain from laying any stress on them. In fact, I have every reason to be satisfied with the wide extent of the Aryan world covered by the other instances enumerated as Celtic, Prussian, Bulgarian, and Armenian. Now, such is the similarity between Welsh enw, 'name,' and enaid, 'soul,' that I cannot help referring the two words to one and the same origin, especially when I see the same or rather greater similarity illustrated by the Irish words, ainm, 'name,' and anim, 'soul.' This similarity between the Irish words so pervades the declension of them, that a beginner frequently falls into the error of confounding them in medieval texts. Take, for instance, the genitive singular, anma, which may mean either animæ or nominis; the nominative plural, anmand, which may be either animæ or nomina; and the gen. anmand, either animarum or nominum, as the dative anmannaib may likewise be either animabus or nominibus. In fact, one is at first sight almost tempted to suppose that the partial differentiation of the Irish forms was only brought about under the influence of Latin, with its distinct forms of anima and nomen. That would be pressing the point too far; but the direct teaching of the Celtic vocables is that they are all to be referred to the same origin in the Aryan word for 'breath or breathing,' which is represented by such words as Latin anima, Welsh anadl, 'breath,' and a Gothic anan, 'blow or breathe,' whence the compound preterite uz-on, twice used by Ulfilas in the fifteenth chapter of St. Mark's Gospel to render exepneuse, 'gave up the ghost.' Now the lessons which the words here grouped together contain for the student of man is, that the Celts, and certain other widely separated Aryans, unless we should rather say the whole of the Aryan family, were once in the habit of closely associating both the soul and one's name with the breath of life. The evidence is satisfactory so far as it goes; but let us go a little more into detail, and see as exactly as we can to what it commits us. Commencing at the beginning, we may set out with the axiom that breathing is a physical action, and that in the temperate zone one's breath is not unfrequently visible. Then one may say that the men who made the words--Welsh, enaid (for an earlier anatio-s), 'soul'; Irish, anim (from an earlier stem, animon); Latin, anima, also animus, 'feeling, mind, soul'; and Greek, anemos, 'air, wind'--must have in some way likened the soul to one's breath, which perhaps first suggested the idea. At all events they showed not only that they did not contemplate the soul as a bone, or any solid portion of a man's frame, or even as a manikin residing inside it: in fact they had made a great advance in the direction of the abstract notion of a spirit, in which some of them may have been helped by another association of ideas, namely, that indicated by speaking of the dead as shades or shadows, umbræ, skiai. Similarly, the words in point for 'name' seem to prove that some of the ancient Aryans must have, in some way, associated one's name with the breath of life. On the other hand, we find nothing to show that the name and the soul were directly compared or associated with one another, while the association of the name with the breath represents, probably, a process as much earlier as it is cruder, than likening the soul to the breath and naming it accordingly. This is countenanced to some extent by the general physiognomy, so to say, of words like enaid, anima, as contrasted with enw, ainm, nomen, name. Speaking relatively, the former might be of almost any date in point of comparative lateness, while the latter could not, belonging as they do to a small declension which was not wont to receive accessions to its numbers. In what way, then, or in what respect did early folklore identify the name with the breath? Before one could expect to answer this question in anything like a convincing fashion, one would have to examine the collector of the folklore of savages, or rather to induce him to cross-examine them on the point. For instance, among the Singhalese [228], when in the ceremony of name-giving the father utters the baby's name in a low whisper in the baby's ear, is that called breathing the name? and is the name so whispered called a breath or a breathing? In the case of the savages who name their children at their birth, is the reason ever advanced that a name must be given to the child in order to make it breathe, or, at least, in order to facilitate its breathing? Some such a notion of reinforcing the child's vitality and safety would harmonize well enough with the fact that, as Mr. Clodd [229] puts it, 'Barbaric, Pagan, and Christian folklore is full of examples of the importance of naming and other birth-ceremonies, in the belief that the child's life is at the mercy of evil spirits watching the chance of casting spells upon it, of demons covetous to possess it, and of fairies eager to steal it and leave a "changeling" in its place.' Provisionally, one must perhaps rest content to suppose the association of the name to have taken place with the breath regarded as an accompaniment of life. Looked at in that sense, the name becomes associated with one's life, and, speaking roughly, with one's person; and it is interesting to notice that one seems to detect traces in Welsh literature of some confusion of the kind. Thus, when the hero of the story of Kulhwch and Olwen was christened he was named Kulhwch, which is expressed in Welsh as 'forcing or driving Kulhwch on him' (gyrru kulh6ch arna6 [230]); Kulh6ch, be it noticed, not the name Kulhwch. Similarly when Brân, on the eve of his expedition to Ireland, left seven princes, or knights as they are also called, to take charge of his dominions, we have an instance of the kind. The stead or town was named after the seven knights, and it is a place which is now known as Bryn y Saith Marchog, 'the Hill of the Seven Knights,' near Gwydelwern, in Merionethshire. But the wording of the Mabinogi of Branwen is o acha6s hynny y dodet seith marcha6c ar y dref [231], meaning 'for that reason the stead was called Seven Knights,' literally 'for that reason one put Seven Knights on the stead.' In Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 116, this will be found rendered wrongly, though not wholly without excuse--'for this reason were the seven knights placed in the town.' It is probable that the redactor of the stories from which the two foregoing instances come--and more might be cited--was not so much courting ambiguities as adhering to an old form of expression which neglected from the first to distinguish, in any formal way, between names and the persons or things which they would, in modern phraseology, be said to represent [232]. An instance has been already mentioned of a man's name being put or set on him, or rather forced on him: at any rate, his name is on him both in Welsh and Irish, and the latter language also speaks of it as cleaving or adhering to him. Neither language contemplates the name, however closely identified with him, as having become an inseparable part of him, or else as something he has secured for himself. In the neo-Celtic tongues, both Welsh and Irish, all things which a man owns, and all things for which he takes credit, are with him or by him; but all things which he cannot help having, whether creditable or discreditable, if they are regarded as coming from without are on him, not with him. Thus, if he is wealthy there is money with him; but if he is in debt and owes money, the money is on him. Similarly, if he rejoices there is joy with him; whereas if he is ashamed or afraid, shame or fear is on him. This is a far-reaching distinction, of capital importance in Celtic phraseology, and judged by this criterion the name is something from without the man, something which he cannot take credit to himself for having acquired by his own direct willing or doing. This is to be borne in mind when one speaks of the name as identified or closely bound up with one's life and personality. But this qualified identification of the name with the man is also what one may infer from savage folklore; for many, perhaps most, of the nations who name their children at their birth, have those names changed when the children grow up. That is done when a boy has to be initiated into the mysteries of his tribe or of a guild, or it may be when he has achieved some distinction in war. In most instances, it involves a serious ceremony and the intervention of the wise man, whether the medicine-man of a savage system, or the priest of a higher religion [233]. In the ancient Wales of the Mabinogion, and in pagan Ireland, the name-giving was done, subject to certain conditions, at the will and on the initiative of the druid, who was at the same time tutor and teacher of the youth to be renamed [234]. Here I may be allowed to direct attention to the two following facts: the druid, recalling as he does the magician of the Egypt of the Pentateuch and the shaman of the Mongolian world of our own time, represented a profession probably not of Celtic origin. In the next place, his method of selecting names from incidents was palpably incompatible with what is known to have been the Aryan system of nomenclature, by means of compounds, as evinced by the annals of most nations of the Aryan family of speech: such compounds, I mean, as Welsh Pen-wyn, 'white-headed,' Gaulish Penno-ouindos, or Greek Hipparchos, Archippos, and the like. Briefly, one may say that the association of the name with the breath of life was probably Aryan, but without, perhaps, being unfamiliar to the aborigines of the British Isles before their conquest by the Celts. On the other hand, in the druid and his method of naming we seem to touch the non-Aryan substratum, and to detect something which was not Celtic, not Aryan [235]. Perhaps the reader will not regard it as wholly irrelevant if here I change the subject for a while from one's name to other words and locutions in so far as they may be regarded as illustrative of the mental surroundings in which the last paragraph leaves the name. I allude especially to the exaggerated influence associated with a form of words, more particularly among the Irish Celts. O'Curry gives a tragic instance: the poet Néde mac Adnai, in order to obtain possession of the throne of Connaught, asked an impossible request of the king, who was his own father's brother and named Caier. When the king declared his inability to accede to his demand the poet made the refusal his excuse for composing on the king what was called in Irish an áir or áer, written later aor, 'satire,' which ran approximately thus:-- Evil, death, short life to Caier! May spears of battle wound Caier! Caier quenched, Caier forced, Caier underground! Under ramparts, under stones with Caier! O'Curry goes on to relate how Caier, washing his face at the fountain next morning, discovered that it had three blisters on it, which the satire had raised, to wit, disgrace, blemish, and defect, in colours of crimson, green, and white. So Caier fleeing, that his plight might not be seen of his friends, came to Dun Cearmna (now the Old Head of Kinsale, in county Cork), the residence of Caichear, chief of that district. There Caier was well received as a stranger of unknown quality, while Néde assumed the sovereignty of Connaught. In time, Néde came to know of Caier being there, and rode there in Caier's chariot. But as Néde approached Caier escaped through his host's house and hid himself in the cleft of a rock, whither Néde followed Caier's greyhound; and when Caier saw Néde, the former dropped dead of shame [236]. This abstract of the story as told by O'Curry, will serve to show how the words of the satirist were dreaded by high and low among the ancient Irish, and how their demands had to be at once obeyed. It is a commonplace of Irish literature that the satirist's words unfailingly raised blisters on the face of him at whom they were aimed. A portion at least of the potency of the poet's words seems to have been regarded as due to their being given a certain metrical form. That, however, does not show how the poet had acquired his influence, and one cannot shut one's eyes to the fact that the means he might adopt to make his influence felt and his wishes instantly attended to, implied that the race with which he had to deal was a highly sensitive one: I may perhaps apply to it the adjective thin-skinned, in the literal sense of that word. For the blisters on the face are only an exaggeration of a natural phenomenon. On this point my attention has been called by a friend to the following passages in a review of a work on the pathology of the emotions [237]:-- 'To both the hurtful and curative effects of the emotions M. Féré devotes much attention, and on these points makes some interesting remarks. That the emotions act on the body, more by their effects on the circulation than by anything else, is no new thesis, but M. Féré is developing some new branches of it. That the heart may be stopped for a few seconds, and that there may be localised flush and pallor of the skin, owing to almost any strong emotion, whether it be joy, anger, fear, or pain, is a matter of common observation; and that there may be many changes of nutrition due to vaso-motor disturbance is a point easy to establish. The skin is particularly easily affected; passion and pain may produce a sweat that is truly hemorrhagic (Parrot); and the scientific world is obliged to admit that in the stigmata of Louise Lateau the blood vessels were really broken, and not broken by anything else than an emotional state as cause. In a shipwreck Follain tells us that the pilot was covered in an hour with pustules from his fear; and the doctor sees many dermato-neuroses, such as nettle-rash, herpes, pemphigus, vitiligo, &c, from the choc moral.' I can illustrate this from my own observation: when I was an undergraduate there was with me at college a Welsh undergraduate, who, when teased or annoyed by his friends, was well known to be subject to a sort of rash or minute pustules on his face: it would come on in the course of an hour or so. There is a well-known Welsh line on this subject of the face which is to the point:-- Ni chel grud gystud càlon. The cheek hides not the heart's affliction. So a man who was insulted, or whose honour was assailed, might be said to be thereby put to the blush or to be otherwise injured in his face; and the Irish word enech, 'face,' is found commonly used as a synonym for one's honour or good name. The same appears to have been the case with the Welsh equivalent, wyneb, 'face,' and dyn di-wyneb, literally 'a faceless man,' appears to be now used in Carnarvonshire and Glamorgan in the sense of one who is without a sense of honour, an unprincipled fellow. So when Welsh law dealt with insults and attacks on one's honour the payment to be made to the injured person was called gwynebwerth, 'the price of one's face,' or gwynebwarth, 'the payment for disgracing one's face.' Irish law arranged for similar damages, and called them by analogous names, such as enech-gris, 'a fine for injuring or raising a blush on the face,' and enech-lóg or enech-lann, 'honour price'; compare also enech-ruice, 'a face-reddening or blushing caused by some act or scandal which brought shame on a family.' Possibly one has to do with traces of somewhat the same type of 'face,' though it has faded away to the verge of vanishing, when one speaks in English of keeping another in countenance. It has been suggested that if a magician got a man's name he could injure him by means of his arts: now the converse seems to have been the case with the Irish áer or satire, for to be effective it had, as in the instance of Caier, to mention the victim's name; and a curious instance occurs in the Book of Leinster, fo. 117, where the poet Atherne failed to curse a person whose name he could not manipulate according to the rules of his satire. This man Atherne is described as inhospitable, stingy, and greedy to the last degree. So it is related how he sallied forth one day, taking with him a cooked pig and a pot of mead, to a place where he intended to gorge himself without being observed. But no sooner had he settled down to his meal than he saw a man approaching, who remarked to him on his operating on the food all alone, and unceremoniously picked up the porker and the pot of mead. As he was coolly walking away with them, Atherne cried out after him, 'What is thy name?' The stranger replied that it was nothing very grand, and gave it as follows:-- Sethor . ethor . othor . sele . dele . dreng gerce Mec gerlusce . ger ger . dír dír issed moainmse. Sethor-Ethor-Othor-Sele-Dele-Dreng gerce Son of Gerlusce ger-ger-dír-dír, that is my name. The story goes on to say that Atherne neither saw his meal any more nor succeeded in making a satire on the name of the stranger, who accordingly got away unscathed. It was surmised, we are told, that he was an angel come from God to teach the poet better manners. This comic story brings us back to the importance of the name, as it implies that the cursing poet, had he been able to seize it and duly work it into his satire, could not have failed to bring about the intruder's discomfiture. The magician and folklore philosopher, far from asking with Juliet, 'What's in a name?' would have rather put it the other way, 'What's not in a name?' At any rate the ancients believed that there was a great deal in a name, and traces of the importance which they gave it are to be found in modern speech: witness the article on name or its equivalent in a big dictionary of any language possessed of a great literature. It has been seen that it is from the point of view of magic that the full importance of one's name was most keenly realized by our ancient Celts; that is, of magic more especially in that stage of its history when it claimed as its own a certain degree of skill in the art of verse-making. Perhaps, indeed, it would be more accurate to suppose that verse-making appertained from the outset to magic, and that it was magicians, medicine-men, or seers, who, for their own use, first invented the aids of rhythm and metre. The subject, however, of magic and its accessories is far too vast to be treated here: it has been touched upon here and there in some of the previous chapters, and I may add that wizardry and magic form the machinery, so to say, of the stories called in Welsh the 'Four Branches of the Mabinogi' namely those of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan, and Math. Now these four, together with the adventure of Llûd and Llevelys, and, in a somewhat qualified sense, the story of Kulhwch and Olwen, represent in a Brythonicized form the otherwise lost legends of the Welsh Goidels; and, like those of the Irish Goidels, they are remarkable for their wizardry. Nor is that all, for in the former the kings are mostly the greatest magicians of their time: or shall I rather put it the other way, and say that in them the greatest magicians function as kings? Witness Math son of Mathonwy king of Gwyned, and his sister's son, Gwydion ab Dôn, to whom as his successor he duly taught his magic; then come the arch-enchanter Arawn, king of Annwn, and Caswallon ab Beli, represented as winning his kingdom by the sheer force of magic. To these might be added other members of the kingly families whose story shows them playing the rôle of magicians, such as Rhiannon, who by her magic arts foiled her powerful suitor, Gwawl ab Clûd, and secured as her consort the man of her choice, Pwyll prince of Dyfed. Here also, perhaps, one might mention Manawydan ab Llyr, who, as Manannán mac Lir, figures in the stories of the Goidels of Erin and Man as a consummate wizard and first king of the Manx people: see p. 314 above. In the Mabinogi, however, no act of magic is ascribed to Manawydan, though he is represented successfully checkmating the most formidable wizard arrayed against him and his friends, to wit, Llwyd ab Kilcoed. Not only does one get the impression that the ruling class in these stories of the Welsh Goidels had their magic handed down from generation to generation according to a fixed rule of maternal succession (pp. 326, 503, 505), but it supplies the complete answer to and full explanation of questions as to the meaning of the terms already mentioned, Tuatha Dé ocus Andé, and Lucht Cumachtai, together with its antithesis. Within the magic-wielding class exercising dominion over the shepherds and tillers of the soil of the country, it is but natural to suppose that the first king was the first magician or greatest medicine-man, as in the case of Manannán in the Isle of Man. This must of course be understood to apply to the early history of the Goidelic race, or, perhaps more correctly speaking, to one of the races which had contributed to its composition: to the aborigines, let us say, by whatsoever name or names you may choose to call them, whether Picts or Ivernians. It is significant, among other things, that our traditions should connect the potency of ancient wizardry with descent in the female line of succession, and, in any case, one cannot be wrong in assuming magic to have begun very low down in the scale of social progress, probably lower than religion, with which it is essentially in antagonism. As the crude and infantile pack of notions, collectively termed sympathetic magic--beginning with the belief that any effect may be produced by imitating the action of the cause of it, or even doing anything that would recall it [238]--grew into the panoply of the magician, he came to regard himself, and to be regarded by others, as able for his own benefit and that of his friends to coerce all possible opponents, whether men or demons, heroes or gods. This left no room for the attitude of prayer and worship: religion in that sense could only come later. CHAPTER XII RACE IN FOLKLORE AND MYTH The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the disputes of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it is an orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar who enters the sacred enclosure.--Andrew Lang. It has been well said, that while it is not science to know the contents of myths, it is science to know why the human race has produced them. It is not my intention to trace minutely the history of that science, but I may hazard the remark, that she could not be said to have reached years of discretion till she began to compare one thing with another; and even when mythology had become comparative mythology, her horizon remained till within recent years comparatively narrow. In other words, the comparisons were wont to be very circumscribed: you might, one was told, compare the myths of Greeks and Teutons and Hindus, because those nations were considered to be of the same stock; but even within that range comparisons were scarcely contemplated, except in the case of myths enshrined in the most classical literatures of those nations. This kind of mythology was eclectic rather than comparative, and it was apt to regard myths as a mere disease of language. By-and-by, however, the student showed a preference for a larger field and a wider range; and in so doing he was, whether consciously or unconsciously, beginning to keep step with a larger movement extending to the march of all the kindred sciences, and especially that of language. At one time the student of language was satisfied with mummified speech, wrapped up, as it were, in the musty coils of the records of the past: in fact, he often became a mere researcher of the dead letter of language, instead of a careful observer of the breath of life animating her frame. So long as that remained the case, glottology deserved the whole irony of Voltaire's well-known account of etymology as being in fact, 'une science où les voyelles ne font rien, et les consonnes fort peu de chose.' In the course, however, of recent years a great change has come over the scene: not only have the laws of the Aryan consonants gained greatly in precision, but those of the Aryan vowels have at last been discovered to a considerable extent. The result for me and others who learnt that the Aryan peasant of idyllic habits harped eternally on the three notes of a, i, u, is that we have to unlearn this and a great deal more: in fact, the vowels prove to be far more troublesome than the consonants. But difficult as these lessons are, the glottologist must learn them, unless he is content to remain with the stragglers who happen to be unable to move on. Now the change to which I allude, in connexion with the study of language, has been inseparably accompanied with the paying of increased attention to actual speech, with a more careful scrutiny of dialects, even obscure dialects such as the literary man is wont to regard with scorn. Similarly the student of mythology now seeks the wherewithal of his comparisons from the mouth of the traveller and the missionary, wherever they may roam; not from the Rig-Veda or the Iliad alone, but from the rude stories of the peasant, and the wild fancies of the savage from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland's icy mountains. The parallel may be drawn still closer. Just as the glottologist, fearing lest the written letter may have slurred over or hidden away important peculiarities of ancient speech, resorts for a corrective to the actuality of modern Aryan, so the mythologist, apt to suspect the testimony of the highly respectable bards of the Rig-Veda, may on occasion give ear to the fresh evidence of a savage, however inconsequent it may sound. The movements to which I allude in glottology and mythology began so recently that their history has not yet been written. Suffice it to say that in glottology, or the science of language, the names most intimately connected with the new departure are those of Ascoli, J. Schmidt, and Fick, those of Leskien, Brugmann, Osthoff, and De Saussure; while of the names of the teachers of the anthropological method of studying myths, several are by this time household words in this country. But, so far as I know, the first to give a systematic exposition of the subject was Professor Tylor, in his work on Primitive Culture, published first in 1871. Such has been the intimate connexion between mythology and glottology that I may be pardoned for going back again to the latter. It is applicable in its method to all languages, but, as a matter of fact, it came into being in the domain of Aryan philology, so that it has been all along principally the science of comparing the Aryan languages with one another. It began with Sir William Jones' discovery of the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, and for a long time it took the lead of the more closely related sciences: this proved partly beneficial and partly the reverse. In the case of ethnology, for instance, the influence of glottology has probably done more harm than good, since it has opened up a wide field for confounding race with language. In the case of mythology the same influence has been partly helpful, and it has partly fallen short of being such. Where names could be analysed with certainty, and where they could be equated, leaving little room for doubt, as in the case of that of the Greek Zeus, the Norse Týr, and the Sanskrit Dyaus, the science of language rendered a veritable help to mythology; but where the students of language, all pointing in different directions, claimed each to hold in his hand the one safety-lamp, beyond the range of which the mythologist durst not take a single step except at the imminent risk of breaking his neck, the help may be pronounced, to say the least of it, as somewhat doubtful. The anthropological method of studying myths put an end to the unequal relation between the students of the two sciences, and it is now pretty well agreed that the proper relationship between them is that of mutual aid. This will doubtless prove the solution of the whole matter, but it would be premature to say that the period of strained relations is quite over, since the mythologist has so recently made good his escape from the embarrassing attentions of the students of language, that he has not yet quite got out of his ears the bewildering notes of the chorus of discordant cries of 'Dawn,' 'Sun,' and 'Storm-cloud.' Now that I have touched on the friendly relations which ought to exist between the science of language and the science of myth, I may perhaps be allowed to notice a point or two where it is possible or desirable for the one to render service to the other. The student of language naturally wants the help of the student of myth, ritual, and religion on matters which most immediately concern his own department of study; and I may perhaps be excused for taking my stand on Celtic ground, and calling attention to some of my own difficulties. Here is one of them: when one would say in English 'It rains' or 'It freezes,' I should have to say in my own language, Y mae hi'n bwrw glaw and Y mae hi'n rhewi, which literally means 'She is casting rain' and 'She is freezing.' Nor is this sort of locution confined to weather topics, for when you would say 'He is badly off' or 'He is hard up,' a Welshman might say, Y mae hi'n drwg arno or Y mae hi'n galed arno, that is literally, 'She is evil on him' or 'She is hard on him.' And the same feminine pronoun fixes itself in other locutions in the language. Now I wish to invoke the student of myth, ritual, and religion to help in the identification of this ubiquitous 'she' of the Welsh. Whenever it is mentioned to Englishmen, it merely calls to their minds the Highland 'she' of English and Scotch caricature, as for instance when Sir Walter Scott makes Donald appeal in the following strain to Lord Menteith's man, Anderson, who had learnt manners in France: 'What the deil, man, can she no drink after her ain master without washing the cup and spilling the ale, and be tamned to her!' The Highlander denies the charge which our caricature tries to fasten on him; but even granting that it was once to some extent justified, it is easy to explain it by a reference to Gaelic, where the pronouns se and sibh, for 'he' and 'you' respectively, approach in pronunciation the sound of the English pronoun 'she.' This may have led to confusion in the mouths of Highlanders who had but very imperfectly mastered English. In any case, it is far too superficial to be quoted as a parallel to the hi, 'she,' in question in Welsh. A cautious Celtist, if such there be, might warn us, before proceeding further with the search, to make sure that the whole phenomenon is not a mere accident of Welsh phonetics, and that it is not a case of two pronouns, one meaning 'she' and the other 'it,' being confounded as the result merely of phonetic decay. The answer to that is, that the language knows nothing of any neuter pronoun which could assume the form of the hi which occupies us; and further, that in locutions where the legitimate representative of the neuter might be expected, the pronoun used is a different one, ef, e, meaning both 'he' and 'it,' as in ï-e for ï-ef, 'it is he, she, it or they,' nag-e, 'not he, she, it or they,' ef a allai or fe allai, 'perhaps, peradventure, peut-être, il est possible.' The French sentence suggests the analogous question, what was the original force of denotation of the 'il' in such sentences as 'il fait beau,' 'il pleut,' and 'il neige'? In such cases it now denotes nobody in particular, but has it always been one of his names? French historical grammar may be able, unaided, to dispose of the attenuated fortunes of M. Il, but we have to look for help to the student of myth and allied subjects to enable us to identify the great 'she' persistently eluding our search in the syntax of the Welsh language. Only two feminine names suggest themselves to me as in any way appropriate: one is tynghed, 'fate or fortune,' and the other is Dôn, mother of some of the most nebulous personages in Celtic literature. There is, however, no evidence to show that either of them is really the 'she' of whom we are in quest; but I have something to say about both as illustrating the other side of the theme, how the study of language may help mythology. This I have so far only illustrated by a reference to the equation of Zeus with Dyaus and their congeners. Within the range of Celtic legend the case is similar with Dôn, who figures on Welsh ground, as I have hinted, as mother of certain heroes of the oldest chapters of the Mabinogion. For it is from her that Gwydion, the bard and arch-magician, and Gofannon the smith his brother, are called sons of Dôn; and so in the case of Arianrhod, daughter of Dôn, mother of Llew, and owner of the sea-laved castle of Caer Arianrhod, not far distant from the prehistoric mound of Dinas Dinlle, near the western mouth of the Menai Straits, as already mentioned in another chapter, p. 208 above. In Irish legend, we detect Dôn under the Irish form of her name, Danu or Donu, genitive Danann or Donann, and she is almost singular there in always being styled a divinity. From her the great mythical personages of Irish legend are called Tuatha Dé Danann, or 'the Goddess Danu's Tribes,' and sometimes Fir Déa, or 'the Men of the Divinity.' The last stage in the Welsh history of Dôn consists of her translation to the skies, where the constellation of Cassiopeia is supposed to constitute Llys Dôn or Dôn's Court, as the Corona Borealis is identified with Caer Arianrhod or 'the Castle of Dôn's Daughter'; but, as was perhaps fitting, the dimensions of both are reduced to comparative littleness by Caer Gwydion, 'the Magician Gwydion's Battlements,' spread over the radiant expanse of the whole Milky Way [239]. Now the identification of this ancient goddess Danu or Dôn as that in whom the oldest legends of the Irish Goidels and the Welsh Goidels converge, has been the work not so much of mythology as of the science of language; for it was the latter that showed how to call back a little colouring into the vanishing lineaments of this faded ancestral divinity [240]. For my next illustration, namely tynghed, 'fate,' I would cite a passage from the opening of one of the most Celtic of Welsh stories, that of Kulhwch and Olwen. Kulhwch's father, after being for some time a widower, marries again, and conceals from his second wife the fact that he has a son. She finds it out and lets her husband know it; so he sends for his son Kulhwch, and the following is the account of the son's interview with his stepmother, as given in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation, ii. 252:--'His stepmother said unto him, "It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is sought of every man of renown in the world." "I am not of an age to wed," answered the youth. Then said she unto him, "I declare to thee, that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." And the youth blushed, and the love of the maiden diffused itself through all his frame, although he had never seen her. And his father inquired of him, "What has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?" "My stepmother has declared to me, that I shall never have a wife until I obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." "That will be easy for thee," answered his father. "Arthur is thy cousin. Go, therefore, unto Arthur to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as a boon."' The physical theory of love for an unknown lady at the first mention of her name, and the allusion to the Celtic tonsure, will have doubtless caught the reader's attention, but I only wish to speak of the words which the translator has rendered, 'I declare to thee, that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain Olwen.' More closely rendered, the original might be translated thus: 'I swear thee a destiny that thy side touch not a wife till thou obtain Olwen.' The word in the Welsh for destiny is tynghet (for an earlier tuncet), and the corresponding Irish word is attested as tocad. Both these words have a tendency, like 'fate,' to be used mostly in peiorem partem. Formerly, however, they might be freely used in an auspicious sense likewise, as for instance in the woman's name Tunccetace, on an early inscribed stone in Pembrokeshire. If her name had been rendered into Latin she would have probably been called Fortunata, as a namesake of good fortune. I render the Welsh mi a tynghaf dynghet itt [241] into English, 'I swear thee a destiny'; but, more literally still, one might possibly render it 'I swear thee a swearing,' that is, 'I swear thee an oath,' meaning 'I swear for thee an oath which will bind thee.' The stepmother, it is true, is not represented going through the form of words, for what she said appears to have been a regular formula, just like that of putting a person in Medieval Irish story under gessa or bonds of magic; but an oath or form of imprecation was once doubtless a dark reality behind this formula. In the southern part of my native county of Cardigan, the phrase in question has been in use within the last thirty years, and the practice which it denotes is still so well known as to be the subject of local stories. A friend of mine, who is not yet fifty, vividly remembers listening to an uncle of his relating how narrowly he once escaped having the oath forced on him. He was in the hilly portion of the parish of Llanwenog, coming home across country in the dead of a midsummer's night, when leaping over a fence he unexpectedly came down close to a man actively engaged in sheep-stealing. The uncle instantly took to his heels, while the thief pursued him with a knife. If the thief had caught him, it is understood that he would have held his knife at his throat and forced on him an oath of secrecy. I have not been able to ascertain the wording of the oath, but all I can learn goes to show that it was dreaded only less than death itself. In fact, there are stories current of men who failed to recover from the effects of the oath, but lingered and died in a comparatively short time. Since I got the foregoing story I have made inquiries of others in South Cardiganshire, and especially of a medical friend of mine, who speaks chiefly as to his native parish of Llangynllo. I found that the idea is perfectly familiar to him and my other informants; but, strange to say, from nobody could I gather that the illness is considered to result necessarily from the violent administration of the tynghed to the victim, or from the latter's disregarding the secrecy of it by disclosing to his friends the name of the criminal. In fact, I cannot discover that any such secrecy is emphasized so long as the criminal is not publicly brought before a court of justice. Rather is it that the tynghed effects blindly the ruin of the sworn man's health, regardless of his conduct. At any rate, that is the interpretation which I am forced to put on what I have been told. The phrase tyngu tynghed [242], intelligible still in Wales, recalls another instance of the importance of the spoken word, to wit, the Latin fatum. Nay, it seems to suggest that the latter might have perhaps originally been part of some such a formula as alicui fatum fari, 'to say one a saying,' in the pregnant sense of applying to him words of power. This is all the more to the point, as it is well known how closely Latin and Celtic are related to one another, and how every advance in the study of those languages goes to add emphasis to their kinship. From the kinship of the languages one may expect, to a certain extent, a similarity of rites and customs, and one has not to go further for this than the very story which I have cited. When Kulhwch's father first married, he is said to have sought a gwreic kynmwyt ac ef [243], which means 'a wife of the same food with him.' Thus the wedded wife was she, probably, who ate with her husband, and we are reminded of the food ceremony which constituted the aristocratic marriage in ancient Rome: it was called confarreatio, and in the course of it an offering of cake, called farreum libum, used to be made to Jupiter. A great French student of antiquity, M. Fustel de Coulanges, describes the ceremony thus [244]:--'Les deux époux, comme en Grèce, font un sacrifice, versent la libation, prononcent quelques prières, et mangent ensemble un gâteau de fleur de farine (panis farreus).' Lastly, my attention has been directed to the place given to bread in the stories of Llyn y Fan Fach and Llyn Elfarch. For on turning back to pp. 3-6, 17-8, 28, the reader will find too much made of the bread to allow us to suppose that it had no meaning in the courtship. The young farmer having fallen in love at first sight with the lake maiden, it looks as if he wished, by inducing her to share the bread he was eating, to go forthwith through a form of marriage by a kind of confarreation that committed her to a contract to be his wife without any tedious delay. To return to the Latin fatum, I would point out that the Romans had a plurality of fata; but how far they were suggested by the Greek moirai is not quite clear: nor is it known that the ancient Welsh had more than one tynghed. In the case, however, of old Norse literature, we come across the Fate there as one bearing a name which is perhaps cognate with the Welsh tynghed. I allude to a female figure, called Þokk, who appears in the touching myth of Balder's death. When Balder had fallen at the hands of Loki and Hödr, his mother Frigg asked who would like to earn her good will by going as her messenger to treat with Hell for the release of Balder. Hermódr the Swift, another of the sons of Woden, undertook to set out on that journey on his father's charger Sleipnir. For nine dreary nights he pursued his perilous course without interruption, through glens dark and deep, till he came to the river called Yell, when he was questioned as to his errand by the maid in charge of the Yell bridge. On and on he rode afterwards till he came to the fence of Hell's abode, which his horse cleared at full speed. Hermódr entered the hall, and there found his brother Balder seated in the place of honour. He abode with him that night, and in the morning he asked Hell to let Balder ride home with him to the Anses. He urged Hell to consider the grief which everybody and everything felt for Balder. She replied that she would put that to the test by letting Balder go if everything animate and inanimate would weep for him; but he would be detained if anybody or anything declined to do so. Hermódr made his way back alone to the Anses, and announced to Frigg the answer which Hell had given to her request. Messengers were sent forth without delay to bid all the world beweep Woden's son out of the power of Hell. This was done accordingly by all, by men and animals, by earth and stones, by trees and all metals, 'as you have doubtless seen these things weep,' says the writer of the Prose Edda, 'when they pass from frost to warmth.' When the messengers, however, were on their way home, after discharging their duty, they chanced on a cave where dwelt a giantess called Þokk, whom they ordered to join in the weeping for Balder; but she only answered:-- Þokk will weep dry tears At Balder's bale-fire. What is the son of man, quick or dead, to me! Let Hell keep what she holds [245]. In this ogress Þokk, deaf to the appeals of the tenderer feelings, we seem to have the counterpart of our Celtic tocad and tynghed; and the latter's name as a part of the formula in the Welsh story, while giving us the key of the myth, shows how the early Aryan knew of nothing more binding than the magic force of an oath. On the one hand, this conception of destiny carries with it the marks of its humble origin, and one readily agrees with Cicero's words, De Divinatione, ii. 7, when he says, anile sane et plenum superstitionis fati nomen ipsum. On the other hand, it rises to the grim dignity of a name for the dark, inexorable power which the whole universe is conceived to obey, a power before which the great and resplendent Zeus of the Aryan race is a mere puppet. Perhaps I have dwelt only too long on the policy of 'give and take' which ought to obtain between mythology and glottology. Unfortunately, one can add without fear of contradiction, that, even when that policy is carried out to the utmost, both sciences will still have difficulties more than enough. In the case of mythology these difficulties spring chiefly from two distinct sources, from the blending of history with myth, and from the mixing of one race with another. Let us now consider the latter: the difficulties from this source are many and great, but every fresh acquisition of knowledge tending to make our ideas of ethnology more accurate, gives us a better leverage for placing the myths of mixed peoples in their proper places as regards the races composing those peoples. Still, we have far fewer propositions to lay down than questions to ask: thus to go no further afield than the well-known stories attaching to the name of Heracles, how many of them are Aryan, how many Semitic, and how many Aryan and Semitic at one and the same time? That is the sort of question which besets the student of Celtic mythology at every step; for the Celtic nations of the present day are the mixed descendants of Aryan invaders and the native populations which those Aryan invaders found in possession. So the question thrusts itself on the student, to which of these races a particular myth, rite, or custom is to be regarded as originally belonging. Take, for instance, Brân's colossal figure, to which attention has already been called, pp. 552-3 above. Brân was too large to enter a house or go on board a ship: is he to be regarded as the outcome of Celtic imagination, or of that of a people that preceded the Celts in Celtic lands? The comparison with the Gaulish Tricephal would seem to point in the direction of the southern seaboard of the Baltic (p. 553): what then? The same kind of question arises in reference to the Irish hero Cúchulainn: take, for instance, the stock description of Cúchulainn in a rage. Thus when angered he underwent strange distortions: the calves of his legs came round to where his shins should have been; his mouth enlarged itself so that it showed his liver and lungs swinging in his throat; one of his eyes became as small as a needle's, or else it sank back into his head further than a crane could have reached, while the other protruded itself to a corresponding length; every hair on his body became as sharp as a thorn, and held on its point a drop of blood or a spark of fire. It would be dangerous then to stop him from fighting, and even when he had fought enough, he required for his cooling to be plunged into three baths of cold water; the first into which he went would instantly boil over, the second would be too hot for anybody else to bear, and the third only would be of congenial warmth. I do not ask whether that strange picture betrays a touch of the solar brush, but I should be very glad to know whether it can be regarded as an Aryan creation or not. It is much the same with matters other than mythological: take, for instance, the bedlamite custom of the couvade [246], which is presented to us in Irish literature in the singular form of a cess, 'suffering or indisposition,' simultaneously attacking the braves of ancient Ulster. We are briefly informed in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 60a, that the women and boys of Ulster were free from it. So was any Ultonian, we are told, who happened to be outside the boundaries of his country, and so were Cúchulainn and his father, even when in Ulster. Any one who was rash enough to attack an Ultonian warrior during this his period of helplessness could not, it is further stated, expect to live afterwards either prosperously or long. The question for us, however, is this: was the couvade introduced by the Aryan invaders of Ireland, or are we rather to trace it to an earlier race? I should be, I must confess, inclined to the latter view, especially as the couvade was known among the Iberians of old, and among the ancient Corsicans [247]. It may, of course, have been both Aryan and Iberian, but it will all the same serve as a specimen of the sort of question which one has to try to answer. Another instance, the race origin of which one would like to ascertain, offers itself in the curious belief, that, when a child is born, it is one of the ancestors of the family come back to live again. Traces of this occur in Irish literature, namely, in one of the stories about Cúchulainn. There we read to the following effect:--The Ultonians took counsel on account of Cúchulainn, because their wives and girls loved him greatly; for Cúchulainn had no consort at that time. This was their counsel, namely, that they should seek for Cúchulainn a consort pleasing to him to woo. For it was evident to them that a man who has the consort of his companionship with him would be so much the less likely to attempt the ruin of their girls and to receive the affection of their wives. Then, moreover, they were anxious and afraid lest the death of Cúchulainn should take place early, so they were desirous for that reason to give him a wife in order that he might leave an heir; for they knew that it was from himself that his rebirth (athgein) would be. That is what one reads in the eleventh-century copy of the ancient manuscript of the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 121b; and this atavistic belief, which was touched upon in connexion with the transformations discussed in the last chapter, I need scarcely say, is well known elsewhere to the anthropologist, as one will find on consulting the opening pages of Dr. Tylor's second volume on Primitive Culture. He there mentions the idea as familiar to American Indians, to various African peoples, to the Maoris and the aborigines of Australia, to Cheremiss Tartars and Lapps. Among such nations the words of Don Diègue to his victorious son, the Cid, could hardly fail to be construed in a sort of literal sense when he exclaims:-- ............ ton illustre audace Fait bien revivre en toi les héros de ma race. Let us return to Cúchulainn, and note the statement, that he and his father, Sualdaim, were exempt from the couvade, which marks them out as not of the same race as the Ultonians, that is to say, as the Fír Ulaid, or 'True Ultonians'--presumably ancient inhabitants of Ulster. Furthermore, we have an indication whence his family had come, for Cúchulainn's first name was Setanta Beg, 'the Little Setantian,' which points to the coast of what is now Lancashire, as already indicated at p. 385 above. Another thing which marks Cúchulainn as of a different racial origin from the other Ultonians is the belief of the latter, that his rebirth must be from himself. The meaning of this remarkable statement is that there were two social systems face to face in Ulster at the time represented by the Cúchulainn story, and that one of them recognized fatherhood, while the other did not. Thus for Cúchulainn's rebirth to be from himself, he must be the father of a child from whom should descend a man who would be a rebirth or avatar of Cúchulainn. The other system implied was one which reckoned descent by birth alone [248]; and the Cúchulainn story gives one the impression that it contemplated this system as the predominant one, while the Cúchulainn family, with its reckoning of fatherhood, comes in as an exception. At all events, that is how I now understand a passage, the full significance of which had till recently escaped me. Allusion has already been made to the story of Cúchulainn being himself a rebirth, namely, of Lug, and the story deserves still further consideration in its bearing on the question of race, to which the reader's attention has been called. It is needless, however, to say that there are extant fragments of more stories than one as to Cúchulainn's origin. Sometimes, as in the Book of Leinster, fo. 119a, he is called gein Loga, or Lug's offspring, and in the epic tale of the Táin Bó Cuailnge, Lug as his father comes from the Síd or Faery to take Cúchulainn's place in the field, when the latter was worn out with sleeplessness and toil. Lug sings over him éli Loga, or 'Lug's enchantment,' and Cúchulainn gets the requisite rest and sleep [249]: this we read in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 78a. In another version of the story, Cúchulainn is an incarnation of Lug: the narrative relates how a foster-son was accepted by Dechtere, sister to Conchobar MacNessa, king of Ulster. But her foster-son died young, to the great grief of Dechtere; and her lamentations for him on the day of his funeral having made her thirsty, she inadvertently swallowed with her drink a diminutive creature which sprang into her mouth. That night she had a dream, in which a man informed her that she was pregnant, that it was he who was in her womb, that he had been her foster-son, and that he was Lug; also that when his birth should take place, the name was to be Setanta. After an incident which I can only regard as a clumsy attempt to combine the more primitive legend with the story which makes him son of Sualdaim, she gives birth to the boy, and he is duly called Setanta [250]: that was Cúchulainn's first name. Now compare this with what Dr. Tylor mentions in the case of the Lapps, namely, that 'the future mother was told in a dream what name to give her child, this message being usually given her by the very spirit of the deceased ancestor, who was about to be incarnate in her [251].' If the mother got no such intimation in a dream, the relatives of the child had to have recourse to magic and the aid of the wise man, to discover the name to be given to the child. Here let it suffice to say, that the similarity is so close between the Irish and the Lapp idea, and so unlike anything known to have been Aryan, that it is well worth bearing in mind. The belief in rebirth generally seems to fit as a part of the larger belief in the transmigration of souls which is associated with the teachings of the ancient druids, a class of shamans or medicine-men who were probably, as already hinted, not of Celtic or Aryan origin; and probably the beliefs here in question were those of some non-Aryan people of these islands, rather than of any Aryans who settled in them. This view need hardly be regarded as incompatible with the fact, that Lug's name, genitive Loga, would seem to have meant light, and that Lug was a sun-god, very possibly a Celtic sun-god: or more correctly speaking, that there was a series of Lugs, so to say, or sun-gods, called in ancient Spain, Switzerland, and on the banks of the Rhine, Lugoves [252]. For one is sorely tempted to treat this much as a rescue from the wreckage of the solar myth theory, as against those who, having regard mainly to Lug's professional skill and craft as described in Irish story, make of him a kind of Hermes or Mercury. In other words, we have either to regard a Celtic Lug as having become the centre of certain non-Celtic legends, or else to suppose neither Lug nor his name to be of Aryan origin at all. It is hard to say which is the sounder view to take. The next question which I wish to suggest is as to the ethnology of the fairies; but before coming to that, one has to ask how the fairies have been evolved. The idea of fairies, such as Welshmen have been familiar with from their childhood, clearly involves elements of two distinct origins. Some of those elements come undoubtedly from the workshop of the imagination, as, for example, the stock notion that their food and drink are brought to the fairies by the mere force of wishing, and without the ministration of servants; or the notion, especially prevalent in Arfon, that the fairies dwell in a country beneath the lakes of Snowdon; not to mention the more general connexion of a certain class of fairies with the world of waters, as indicated in chapter vii. Add to this that the dead ancestor has also probably contributed to our bundle of notions about them; but that contains also an element of fact or something which may at any rate be conceived as historical. Under this head I should place the following articles of faith concerning them: the sallowness of their skins and the smallness of their stature, their dwelling underground, their dislike of iron, and the comparative poverty of their homes in the matter of useful articles of furniture, their deep-rooted objection to the green sward being broken up by the plough, the success of the fairy wife in attending to the domestic animals and to the dairy, the limited range generally of the fairies' ability to count; and lastly, one may perhaps mention their using a language of their own (p. 279), which would imply a time when the little people understood no other, and explain why they should be represented doing their marketing without uttering a syllable to anybody (p. 161). The attribution of these and similar characteristics to the fairies can scarcely be all mere feats of fancy and imagination: rather do they seem to be the result of our ancestors projecting on an imaginary world a primitive civilization through which tradition represented their own race as having passed, or, more probably, a civilization in which they saw, or thought they saw, another race actually living. Let us recur for examples also to the two lake legends which have just been mentioned (p. 650): in both of them a distinction is drawn between the lake fairy's notion of bread and that of the men and women of the country. To the fairy the latter's bread appeared crimped or overbaked: possibly the backward civilization, to which she was supposed to belong, was content to support itself on some kind of unleavened bread, if not rather on a fare which included nothing deserving to be called bread at all. Witness Giraldus Cambrensis' story of Eliodorus, in which bread is conspicuous by its absence, the nearest approach to it being something of the consistency of porridge: see p. 270 above. Then take another order of ideas: the young man in both lake legends lives with his mother (pp. 3, 27): there is no father to advise or protect him: he is in this respect on a level with Undine, who is the protegee of her tiresome uncle, Kühleborn. Seemingly, he belongs to a primitive society where matriarchal ideas rule, and where paternity is not reckoned [253]. This we are at liberty at all events to suppose to have been the original, before the narrator had painted the mother a widow, and given the picture other touches of his later brush. To speak, however, of paternity as merely not reckoned is by no means to go far enough; so here we have to return to take another look at the imaginary aspect of the fairies, to which a cursory allusion has just been made. The reader will possibly recall the sturdy smith of Ystrad Meurig, who would not reduce the notions which he had formed of the fairies when he was a child to conformity with those of a later generation around him. In any case, he will remember the smith's statement that the fairies were all women: see p. 245. The idea was already familiar to me as a Welshman, though I cannot recollect how I got it. But the smith's words brought to my mind at once the story of Condla Rúad or the Red, one of the fairy tales first recorded in Irish literature (p. 291). There the damsel who takes Condla away in her boat of glass to the realm of the Everliving sings the praises of that delectable country, and uses, among others, the following words, which occur in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 120:-- Ni fil cenel and nammá acht mná ocus ingena [254]. There is no race there but women and maidens alone. Now what people could have come by the idea of a race of women only? Surely no people who considered that they themselves had fathers: it must have been some community so low in the scale of civilization as never to have had any notion whatsoever of paternity: it is their ignorance that would alone render possible the notion of a race all women. That this was a matter of belief in the past of many nations, is proved by the occurrence of widely known legends about virgin mothers [255]; not to mention that it has been lately established, that there are savages who to this day occupy the low place here indicated in the scale of civilization. Witness the evidence of Spencer and Gillen in their recently published work on The Native Tribes of Central Australia, and also what Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, says of a passage in point, in the former, as follows:-- 'Thus, in the opinion of these savages, every conception is what we are wont to call an immaculate conception, being brought about by the entrance into the mother of a spirit apart from any contact with the other sex. Students of folklore have long been familiar with notions of this sort occurring in the stories of the birth of miraculous personages, but this is the first case on record of a tribe who believe in immaculate conception as the sole cause of the birth of every human being who comes into the world. A people so ignorant of the most elementary of natural processes may well rank at the very bottom of the savage scale [256].' Nevertheless, it is to some population in that low position, in the remote prehistory of this country, that one is to trace the belief that the fairies were all women. It is to be regarded as a position distinctly lower than that of the Ultonians in the time of Cúchulainn; for the couvade seems to me to argue a notion of paternity--perhaps, in their case, as clear a notion of paternity as was possible for a community which was not quite out of the promiscuous stage of society. The neo-Celtic nations of these islands consist, speaking roughly, of a mixture of the invading Celts with the earlier inhabitants whom the Celts found in possession. These two or more groups of peoples may have been in very different stages of civilization when they first came in contact with one another. They agreed doubtless in many things, and perhaps, among others, in cherishing an inherited reluctance to disclose their names, but the Celts as Aryans were never without the decimal system of counting. Like the French, the Celtic nations of the present day show a tendency, more or less marked, to go further and count by scores instead of by tens. But the Welsh are alone among them in having, in certain instances, gone back from counting by tens to counting by fives, which they do when they count between 10 and 20: for 16, 17, 18, and 19 are in Welsh 1 on 15, 2 on 15, 3 on 15, and 4 on 15 respectively; and similarly with 13 and 14 [257]. We have seen how the lake fairy reckoned by fives (pp. 8, 418) all the live stock she was to have as her dowry; and one otherwise notices that the fairies deal invariably in the simplest of numbers. Thus if you wish, for example, to find a person who has been led away by them, ten to one you have to go 'this day next year' to the spot where he disappeared. Except in the case of the alluring light of the full moon, it is out of the question to reckon months or weeks, though it is needless to say that to reckon the year correctly would have been in point of fact far more difficult; but nothing sounds simpler than 'this day next year.' In that simple arithmetic of the fairies, then, we seem to have a trace of a non-Aryan race, that is to say, probably of some early inhabitants of these islands. Unfortunately, the language of those inhabitants has died out, so that we cannot appeal to its numerals directly; and the next best course to adopt is to take as a sort of substitute for their language that of possible kinsmen of a pre-Celtic race in this country. Now the students of ethnology, especially those devoted to the investigation of skulls and skins, tell us that we have among us, notably in Wales and Ireland, living representatives of a dark-haired, long-skulled race of the same description as one of the types which occur, as they allege, among the Basque populations of the Pyrenees. We turn accordingly to Basque, and what do we find? Why, that the first five numerals in that language are bat, bi, iru, lau, bost, all of which appear to be native; but when we come to the sixth numeral we have sei, which looks like an Aryan word borrowed from Latin, Gaulish, or some related tongue. The case is much the same with 'seven,' for that is in Basque zazpi, which is also probably an Aryan loan-word. Basque has native words, zortzi and bederatzi, for eight and nine, but they are longer than the first five, and appear to be of a later formation affecting, in common with sei and zazpi, the termination i. I submit, therefore, that here we have evidence of the former existence of a people in the West of Europe who at one time only counted as far as five. Some of the early peoples of the British Isles may have been on the same level, so that our notions about the fairies have probably been derived, to a greater or less extent, from ideas formed by the Celts concerning those non-Celtic, non-Aryan natives of whose country they took possession. As regards my appeal to the authority of craniology, I have to confess that it is made with a certain amount of reservation, since the case is far less simple than it looks at first sight. Thus, in August, 1891, the Cambrian Archæological Association, including among them Professor Sayce, visited the south-west of Ireland. During our pleasant excursions in Kerry, the question of race was one of our constant topics; and Professor Sayce was reminded by what he saw in Ireland of his visit to North Africa, especially the hilly regions of the country inhabited by the Berbers. Among other things, he used to say that if a number of Berbers from the mountains were to be brought to an Irish village and clad as Irishmen, he felt positive that he should not be able to tell them from the Irishmen themselves, such as we saw on our rambles in Kerry. This struck me as all the more remarkable, since his reference was to fairly tall, blue-eyed men whose hair could not be called black. On the other hand, owing perhaps to ignorance and careless ways of looking at things around me, I am a little sceptical as to the swarthy long-skulls: they did not seem to meet us at every turn in Ireland; and as for Wales, which I know as well as most people do, I cannot in my ignorance of craniology say with any confidence that I have ever noticed vast numbers of that type. I should like, however, to see the heads of some of the singers whom I have noticed at our Eistedfodau at Cardiff, Aberdare, and Swansea, placed under the hands of an experienced skull-man. For I have long suspected that we cannot regard as of Aryan origin the vocal talent so general in Wales, and so conspicuous in our choirs of working people as to astonish all the great musicians who have visited our national festival. Beyond all doubt, race has not a little to do with the artistic feelings: a short-skull may be as unmusical, for example, as I am; but has anybody in this country ever known a narrow long-skull to be the reverse of unmusical? or has any one ever considered how few clergymen of the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed type have been converted to the ritualistic and æsthetic movement in the Church of England? As it seems to me that the bulk of the Welsh people would have to be described as short-skulls, it would be very gratifying to see those who are wont to refer freely to the dark-complexioned long-skulls of Wales catch a respectable number of specimens. I trust there are plenty to be found; and of course I do not care how they are taken, whether it be by an instantaneous process of photography or in the meshes of some anthropometric sportsman, like Dr. Beddoe. Let them be secured anyhow, so that one may rest assured that the type is still numerically safe, and be able to judge with one's own eyes how heads long and swarthy look on the shoulders of living Welshmen. We might then be in a position also to compare with them the prevalent description of fairy changelings; for when the fairies steal nice, blond babies, they usually place in their stead their own aged-looking brats with short legs, sallow skins, and squeaky voices. Unfortunately for me, all the adult changelings of whom I happen to have heard any account had died some years before I began to turn my attention to the population of Faery, with the exception, perhaps, of one whose name I obtained under the seal of secrecy. It was that of the wife of a farmer living near Nefyn, in West Carnarvonshire. It was whispered that she was a changeling, so I am inclined to regard her as no other than one of the representatives of the same aboriginal stock to which one might conjecture some of her neighbours also to belong; she ought to be an extreme specimen of the type. It is to be hoped that the photographer and his anthropometric brother have found her out in time and in good humour; but it is now many years since I heard of her. To return again to the fairies, some of them are described as more comely and good-looking than the rest (pp. 83, 250), but the fairy women are always pictured as fascinating, though their offspring as changelings are as uniformly presented in the light of repulsive urchins; but whole groups of the fairy population are sometimes described as being as ugly of face as they were thievish in disposition--those, for instance, of Llanfabon, in Glamorganshire (p. 262). There is one district, however, which is an exception to the tenor of fairy physiognomy: it is that of the Pennant neighbourhood, in Carnarvonshire, together with the hills and valleys, roughly speaking, from Cwm Strallyn to Llwytmor and from Drws y Coed to Dolbenmaen. The fairies of that tract are said to have been taller than the others, and characterized by light or even flaxen hair, together with eyes of clear blue: see pp. 89, 93-7, 105-8. Nor is that all, for we are told that they would not let a person of dark complexion come near them (p. 96). The other fairies, when kidnapping, it is true, preferred the blond infants of other people to their own swarthy brats, which, perhaps, means that it was a policy of their people to recruit itself with men of the superior physique of the more powerful population around them. The supposed fairy ancestress of the people of the Pennant Valley bears, in the stories in point, such names as Penelope, Bella, Pelisha, and Sibi, while her descendants are still taunted with their descent--a quarrel which, within living memory, used to be fought out with fists at the fairs at Penmorfa and elsewhere. This seems to indicate a comparatively late settlement [258] in the district of a family or group of families from without, and an origin, therefore, somewhat similar to that of the Simychiaid and Cowperiaid (p. 67) of a more eastern portion of the same county, rather than anything deserving to be considered with the rest of the annals of Faery. Passing by this oasis, then, such snap-shot photographs as I have been able to take, so to speak, of fairyland cleared of the glamour resting on its landscape, seem to disclose to the eye a swarthy population of short stumpy men occupying the most inaccessible districts of our country. They appear to have cared more for soap than clothing [259], and they lived on milk taken once a day, when they could get it. They probably fished and hunted, and kept domestic animals, including, perhaps, the pig; but they depended largely on what they could steal at night or in misty weather. Their thieving, however, was not resented, as their visits were believed to bring luck and prosperity (p. 251). Their communities formed as it were islands, owing to the country round about them having been wrested from them by later comers of a more warlike disposition and provided with better weapons. But the existence of the scattered groups of the fairies was in no danger of coming to a violent end: they were safe in consequence of the superstitious beliefs of their stronger neighbours, who probably regarded them as formidable magicians, powerful, among other things, to cause or to cure disease as they pleased. Such, without venturing to refresh my memory by perusing what has been written about dwarf races in other parts of the world, are the impressions made on my mind in the course of analysing and sifting the folklore materials crowded into this volume. That applies, of course, in so far only as regards the fairies in their character of a real people as distinguished from them as creatures of the imagination. But, as I have no wish to earn the displeasure of my literary friends, let me hasten to say that I acknowledge the latter, the creatures of the imagination, to be the true fairies, the admiration of one's childhood and the despair of one's later years: the other folk--the aborigines whom I have been trying to depict--form only a sort of substratum, a kind of background to the fairy picture, which I should be the last man to wish to mar. It is needless to say that we have no trace of any fairies approaching the minute dimensions of Shakespeare's Queen Mab; for, after all, our fairies are mostly represented as not extravagantly unlike other people in personal appearance--not so unlike, in fact, that other folk might not be mistaken for them now and then as late as the latter part of the fifteenth century. Witness the following passage from Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwydir Family, p. 74:-- 'Haveing purchased this lease, he removed his dwelling to the castle of Dolwydelan, which at that time was in part thereof habitable, where one Howell ap Jevan ap Rys Gethin, in the beginning of Edward the Fourth his raigne, captaine of the countrey and an outlaw, had dwelt. Against this man David ap Jenkin rose, and contended with him for the sovreignety of the countrey; and being superiour to him, in the end he drew a draught for him, and took him in his bed at Penanmen with his concubine, performing by craft, what he could not by force, and brought him to Conway Castle. Thus, after many bickerings betweene Howell and David ap Jenkin, he being too weake, was faigne to flie the countrey, and to goe to Ireland, where he was a yeare or thereabouts. In the end he returned in the summer time, haveing himselfe, and all his followers clad in greene, who, being come into the countrey, he dispersed here and there among his friends, lurking by day, and walkeing in the night for feare of his adversaries; and such of the countrey as happened to have a sight of him and his followers, said they were the fairies, and soe ran away.' But what has doubtless helped, above all other things, to perpetuate the belief in the existence of fairies may be said to be the popular association with them of the circles in the grass, commonly known in English as fairy rings. This phenomenon must have answered for ages the purpose for our ancestors, practically speaking, of ocular demonstration, as it still does no doubt in many a rustic neighbourhood. The most common name for the fairies in Welsh is y Tylwyth Teg, 'the Fair or Beautiful Family'; but in South Cardiganshire we have found them called Plant Rhys Dwfn, 'the Children of Rhys the Deep' (pp. 151, 158), while in Gwent and Morgannwg they are more usually known as Bendith y Mamau, 'the Blessing of the Mothers' (p. 174). Our fourteenth century poet, D. ab Gwilym, uses the first-mentioned term, Tylwyth Teg, in poem xxxix, and our prose literature has a word corr, cor in the sense of a dwarf, and corres for a she dwarf. The old Cornish had also cor, which in Breton is written korr [260], with a feminine korrez, and among the other derivatives one finds korrik, 'a dwarf, a fairy, a wee little sorcerer,' and korrigez or korrigan, 'a she dwarf, a fairy woman, a diminutive sorceress.' The use of these words in Breton recalls the case of the cor, called Rhudlwm or else Eidilig, teaching his magic to Coll, son of Collfrewi: see pp. 326, 503, 505. Then we have uncanny dwarfs in the romances, such, for example, as the rude cor in the service of Edern ab Nud, as described in French in Chrétien's romance of Erec et Enide and in Welsh in that of Gereint vab Erbin, also the cor and corres who figure in the story of Peredur. The latter had belonged to that hero's father and mother till the break-up of the family, when the dwarfs went to Arthur's Court, where they lived a whole year without speaking to anybody. When, however, Peredur made his rustic appearance there, they hailed him loudly as the chief of warriors and the flower of knighthood, which brought on them the wrath of Cai, on whom they were eventually avenged by Peredur. In the case [261] of both Edern and Peredur we find the dwarfs loyally interested in the fortunes of their masters and their masters' friends. With them also the shape-shifting Menw, though not found placed in the same unfavourable light, is probably to be ranged, as one may gather from his name and his rôle of wizard scout for Arthur's men (p. 510). In the like attachment on the part of the fairies, which was at times liable to develop into devotedness of an embarrassing nature (p. 250), we seem to have one of the germs of the idea of a household fairy or banshee, as illustrated by the case of the ugly wee woman in the Pantannas legend (p. 188); and it seems natural to regard the interested voices in the Kenfig legend, and other stories of the same kind (p. 452), as instances of amalgamating the idea of a fairy with that of an ancestral person. At all events, we have obtained something to put by the side of the instances already noticed of the fairy girl who gives, against her will at first, her services in the dairy of her captor (pp. 45, 87); of the other fairy who acts as a nurse for a family in the Pennant Valley, till she is asked to dress better (p. 109); and of Bwca'r Trwyn who works willingly and well, both at the house and in the field, till he has tricks played on him (pp. 593-6). To make this brief survey complete, one has to mention the fairies who used to help Eilian with her spinning (pp. 211-3), and not to omit those who were found to come to the rescue of a woman in despair and to assist her on the condition of getting her baby. The motive here is probably not to be confounded with that of the fairies who stealthily exchanged babies: the explanation seems in this case to be that the fairies, or some of the fairies, were once regarded as cannibals, which is countenanced by such a story as that of Canrig Bwt, 'Canrig the Stumpy.' At Llanberis the latter is said to have lived beneath the huge stone called y Gromlech, 'the Dolmen,' opposite Cwmglas and near the high-road to the Pass. When the man destined to dispatch her came, she was just finishing her dinner off a baby's flesh. There are traces of a similar story in another district, for a writer who published in the year 1802 uses the following words:--'There was lately near Cerrig y Drudion, in Merionethshire, a subterraneous room composed of large stones, which was called Carchar Cynric Rwth, i. e. "The Prison of Cynric Rwth," which has been taken notice of by travellers.' Cynric Rwth may be rendered 'Cynric the Greedy or Broad-mouthed.' A somewhat similar ogress is located by another story on the high ground at Bwlch y Rhiw Felen, on the way from Llangollen to Llandegla, and she is represented by the local tradition as contemporary with Arthur [262]. I am inclined to think the Cwmglas cromlech natural rather than artificial; but I am, however, struck by the fact that the fairies are not unfrequently located on or near ancient sites, such as seem to be Corwrion (pp. 57, 526), the margin of Llyn Irdyn (pp. 148, 563), Bryn y Pibion (pp. 212-4), Dinllaen (p. 227), Carn Bodüan (p. 227), on which there are, I am told, walls and hut foundations similar to those which I have recently seen on Carn Fadrun in the same district, Moedin camp (p. 245), and, perhaps, Ynys Geinon Rock and the immediate vicinity of Craig y Nos, neither of which, however, have I ever visited (p. 254). Local acquaintance with each fairy centre would very possibly enable one to produce a list that would be suggestive. In passing one may point out that the uncanny dwarf of Celtic story would seem to have served, in one way or another, as a model for other dwarfs in the French romances and the literatures of other nations that came under the influence of those romances, such as that of the English. But the subject is too large to be dealt with here; so I return to the word cor, in order to recall to the reader's mind the allusion made, at p. 196, to a certain people called Coranneit or Coranyeit, pronounced in later Welsh Corániaid, 'Corannians.' They come in the Adventure of Llûd and Llevelys, and there they have ascribed to them one of the characteristics of consummate magicians, namely, the power of hearing any word that comes in contact with the wind; so it was, we are told, impossible to harm them. Llûd, however, was advised to circumvent them in the following manner:--he was to bruise certain insects in water and sprinkle the water on the Corannians and his own people indiscriminately, after calling them together under the pretence of making peace between them; for the sprinkling would do no harm to his own subjects, while it would kill the others. This unholy water proved effective, and the Corannians all perished. Now the magic power ascribed to them, and the method of disposing of them, combine to lend them a fabulous aspect, while their name, inseparable as it seems from cor, 'a dwarf,' warrants us in treating them as fairies, and in regarding their strange characteristics as induced on a real people. If we take this view, that Coraniaid was the name of a real people, we are at liberty to regard it as possible, that their name suggested to the Celts the word cor for a dwarf, rather than that cor has suggested the name of the Corannians. In either case, I may mention that Welsh writers have sometimes thought--and they are probably right--that we have a closely related word in the name of Ptolemy's Coritani or Coritavi. He represents the people so called as dwelling, roughly speaking, between the Trent and Norfolk, and possessed of the two towns of Lindum, 'Lincoln,' and Ratæ (p. 547), supposed to have been Leicester. There we should have accordingly to suppose the old race to have survived so long and in such numbers, that the Celtic lords of southern Britain called the people of that area by a name meaning dwarfs. There also they may be conjectured to have had quiet from invaders from the Continent, because of the inaccessible nature of the fens, and the lack of inviting harbours on the coast from the country of the Iceni up to the neighbourhood of the Humber. How far their territory extended inland from the fens and the sea one cannot say, but it possibly took in one-half of what is now Northamptonshire, with the place called Pytchley, from an older Pihtes Léa, meaning the Meadow of the Pict, or else of a man named Pict. In any case it included Croyland in the fens between Peterborough and the Wash. It was there, towards the end of the seventh century, that St. Guthlac built his cell on the side of an ancient mound or tumulus, and it was there he was assailed by demons who spoke Bryttisc or Brythonic, a language which the saint knew, as he had been an exile among Brythons. For this he had probably not to travel far; and it is remarkable that his father's cognomen or surname was Penwall, which we may regard as approximately the Brythonic for 'Wall's End.' That is to say, he was 'So-and-so of the Wall's End,' and had got to be known by the latter designation instead of his own nomen, which is not recorded, for the reason, possibly, that it was so Brythonic as not to admit of being readily reduced into an Anglian or Latin form. It is not quite certain that he belonged to the royal race of Mercia, whose genealogy, however, boasts such un-English names as Pybba, Penda, and Peada; but the life [263] states, with no little emphasis, that he was a man whose pedigree included the most noble names of illustrious kings from the ancient stock of Icel: that is, he was one of the Iclingas or Icklings [264]. Here one is tempted to perpetrate a little glottologic alchemy by changing l into n, and to suppose Iclingas the form taken in English by the name of the ancient people of the Iceni. In any case, nothing could be more reasonable to suppose than that some representatives of the royal race of Prasutagus and Boudicca, escaping the sword of the Roman, found refuge among the Coritanians at the time of the final defeat of their own people: it is even possible that they were already the ruling family there. At all events several indications converge to show that communities speaking Brythonic were not far off, to wit, the p names in the Mercian genealogy, Guthlac's father's surname, Guthlac's exile among Brythons, and the attack on him at Croyland by Brythonic speaking foes. Portions of the Coritanian territory were eminently fitted by nature to serve as a refuge for a broken people with a belated language: witness as late as the eleventh century the stand made in the Isle of Ely by Hereward against the Norman conqueror and his mail-clad knights [265]. Among the speakers of Goidelic in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland the fairies take their designation chiefly from a word síd or síth (genitive síde or sída), which one may possibly consider as of a common origin with the Latin word sedes, and as originally meaning a seat or settlement, but it sooner or later came to signify simply an abode of the fairies, whence they were called in Medieval Irish aes síde, 'fairy folk,' fer síde, 'a fairy man,' and ben síde, 'a fairy woman or banshee.' By the side of síd, an adjective síde, 'of or belonging to the síd,' appears to have been formed, so that they are found also called simply síde, as in Fiacc's Hymn, where we are told that before the advent of St. Patrick the pagan tribes of Erin used to worship síde or fairies [266]. Borrowed from this, or suggested by it [267], we have in Welsh Caer Sidi, 'the Fortress of the Fairies,' which is mentioned twice in the Book of Taliessin [268]. It first occurs at the end of poem xiv, where we have the following lines, which recall Irish descriptions of Tír na nÓg or the Land of the Young:-- Ys kyweir vyg kadeir ygkaer sidi. Nys pla6d heint a heneint a uo yndi. Ys gwyr mana6yt a phryderi. Teir oryan y am tan agan recdi. Ac am y banneu ffrydyeu g6eilgi. Ar ffynnha6n ffr6ythla6n yssyd oduchti. Ys whegach nor g6in g6yn yllyn yndi. Perfect is my seat in the fort of Sidi, Nor pest nor age plagues him who dwells therein: Manawydan and Pryderi know it. Three organs play before it about a fire. Around its corners Ocean's currents flow, And above it is the fertile fountain, And sweeter than white wine is the drink therein. The wine is elsewhere mentioned, but the arrangement of the organs around a fire requires explanation, which I cannot give. The fortress is on an island, and in poem xxx of the Book of Taliessin we read of Arthur and his men sailing thither in his ship Prydwen: the poem is usually called the 'Spoils of Annwn,' and the lines in point run thus:-- Bu kyweir karchar g6eir ygkaer sidi. Tr6y ebostol p6yll aphryderi. Neb kyn noc ef nyt aeth idi. Yr gad6yn tromlas kywirwas ae ketwi. Arac preideu ann6fyn tost yt geni. Ac yt ura6t paraha6t ynbard wedi. Tri lloneit prytwen yd aetham ni idi. Nam seith ny dyrreith o gaer sidi. Perfect was the prison of Gwair in Caer Sidi, Thanks to Pwyll and Pryderi's emissary. Before him no one entered into it, To the heavy, dark chain held by a faithful youth; And before the spoils of Annwn sorely he sang, And thenceforth remains he till doom a bard. Three freights of Prydwen went we thither, But only seven returned from Caer Sidi. The incidents in these lines are mostly unintelligible to me, but the incarceration of Gweir or Gwair, together with other imprisonments, including that of Arthur in Caer Oeth and Anoeth (p. 619), are mentioned also in the Triads: see i. 50, ii. 7, 49, iii. 61. It is not improbable that the legend about Gwair located his prison on Lundy, as the Welsh name of that island appears to have been Ynys Wair, 'Gwair's Isle.' Pwyll and Pryderi did not belong to Annwn, nor did Pryderi's friend Manawydan; but the Mabinogi of Pwyll relates how for a whole year Pwyll exchanged crown and kingdom with Arawn king of Annwn, from whom he obtained the first breed of domestic pigs for his own people (pp. 69, 525). In the lowlands of Scotland, together with the Orkneys and Shetlands, the Picts have to a certain extent taken the place of our fairies, and they are colloquially called Pechts. Now judging from the remains there ascribed to the Pechts, their habitations were either wholly underground or else so covered over with stones and earth and grass as to look like natural hillocks and to avoid attracting the attention of strangers. This was helped by making the entrance very low and as inconspicuous as possible. But one of the most remarkable things about these síds is that the cells within them are frequently so small as to prove beyond doubt, that those who inhabited them were of a remarkably short stature, though it is demonstrated by the weight of the stones used, that the builders were not at all lacking in bodily strength [269]. Here we have, accordingly, a small people like our own fairies. In Ireland one of the most famous kings of the fairies was called Mider of Brí Léith, where he resided in a síd or mound in the neighbourhood of Ardagh, in the county of Longford; and thither Irish legend represents him carrying away Étain, queen of Eochaid Airem, king of Ireland during a part of Conchobar MacNessa's time. Now Eochaid was for a whole year unable to find where she was, but his druid, Dalán, wrote Ogams and at last found it out. Eochaid then marched to Brí Léith, and began to demolish Mider's síd, whereupon Mider was eventually so frightened that he sent forth the queen to her husband, who then went his way, leaving the mound folk to digest their wrath. For it is characteristic of them that they did not fight, but chose to bide their time for revenge. In this instance it did not arrive till long after Eochaid's day [270]. I may add that Étain was herself one of the síde or fairies; and one of Mider's reasons for taking her away was, that she had been his wife in a previous stage of existence. Now it is true that the fairy Mider is described as resembling the other heroes of Irish story, in having golden yellow hair and bright blue eyes [271], but he differs completely from them in being no warrior but a great wizard; and though he is not said to have been of small stature, the dwarfs were not far off. For in describing the poet Atherne, who was notorious for his stinginess (p. 635), the story-teller emphasizes his words by representing him taking from Mider three of his dwarfs and stationing them around his own house, in order that their truculent looks and rude words might drive away anybody who came to seek hospitality or to present an unwelcome request [272], a rôle which recalls that of Edern ab Nud's dwarf already mentioned (p. 672). Here the Irish word used is corr, which is probably to be identified with the Brythonic cor, 'a dwarf,' though the better known meaning of corr in Irish is 'crane or heron.' From the former also is hardly to be severed the Irish corrguinigh, 'sorcerers,' and corrguinacht [273], or the process of cursing to which the corrguinigh resorted, as, for instance, when Néde called forth the fatal blisters on Caier's face (p. 632). The rôle would seem exactly to suit the little people, who were consummate magicians. Let me for a moment leave the little people, in order to call attention to another side of this question of race. It has recently been shown [274] by Professor J. Morris Jones, of the University College of North Wales, that the non-Aryan traits of the syntax of our insular Celtic point unmistakably to that of old Egyptian and Berber, together with kindred idioms belonging to the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. He has thereby reduced to articulate speech, so to say, the physiognomical convictions of Professor Sayce (p. 665), to which the reader's attention has been called. To the linguistic argument he appends a statement cited from a French authority and bearing on the question of descent by birth, to the effect, that when among the Berbers the king dies or is deposed, as happens often enough, it is not his son that is called to succeed, but the son of his sister, as in the case of the historical Picts of Scotland down to the twelfth century or thereabouts. Here I would add, that my attention has been called by Professor Sayce to old Egyptian monuments representing the Libyan chiefs with their bodies tattooed, a habit which seems not to be yet extinct among the Touaregs and Kabyles [275]. Lastly, Mr. Nicholson has recently directed attention to the fact that some princes of ancient Gaul are represented with their faces tattooed on certain coins found in the west of France so far south as the region once occupied by the ancient Pictones. We have a compendious commentary on this in the occurrence of a word Chortonicum in a High German manuscript written before the year 814: I allude to the Wessobrunn Codex at Munich, in which, among a number of geographical names connected with Gaul and other countries, that vocable is so placed as to allow of our referring it to Poitou or to all Gaul as the country once of the ancient Pictones. The great German philologist Pott, who called attention to it, brought it at once into relation with Cruithne, plural Cruithni, 'the Picts of Britain and Ireland,' a word which has been explained at p. 281 above [276]. Now at last I come to the question, what pre-Celtic race or races make themselves evident in the mass of things touched on in this and the foregoing chapters? The answer must, I think, recognize at least two. First comes the race of the mound folk, consisting of the short swarthy people variously caricatured in our fairy tales. They formed isolated fractions of a widely spread race possessed of no political significance whatsoever; but, with the inconsistency ever clinging to everything connected with the fairies, the weird and uncanny folk emerging from its underground lairs seems to have exercised on other races a sort of permanent spell of mysteriousness amounting to adoration. In fact, Irish literature tells us that the síde were worshipped (p. 678). Owing to his faculty of exaggeration, combined with his inability to comprehend the little people, the Celt was enabled to bequeath to the great literatures of Western Europe a motley train of dwarfs and brownies, a whole world of wizardry and magic. The real race of the little people forms the lowest stratum which we can reach, to wit, at a level no higher, seemingly, than that of the present-day natives of Central Australia. Thus some of the birth stories of Cúchulainn and Étáin seem to have passed through their hands, and they bear a striking resemblance to certain notions of the Lapps (pp. 657-8). In fact, the nature of the habitations of our little people, together with other points which might be mentioned, would seem at first sight to betoken affinity with the Lapps; but I am warned by experts [277] that there are serious craniological difficulties in the way of any racial comparison with the Lapps, and that one must look rather to the dwarf populations once widely spread over our hemisphere, and still to be found here and there in Europe, as, for example, in Sicily. To come nearer our British Isles, the presence of such dwarfs has been established with regard to Switzerland in neolithic times [278]. The other race may be called Picts, which is probably the earliest of the names given it by the Celts; and their affinities appear to be Libyan, possibly Iberian. It was a warlike stock, and stood higher altogether than the mound inhabitants; for it had a notion of paternity, though, on account of its promiscuity, it had to reckon descent by birth (pp. 654-6). To it probably belonged all the great family groups figuring in the Mabinogion and the corresponding class of literature in Irish: this would include the Danann-Dôn group and the Lir-Llyr group, together with the families represented by Pwyll and Rhiannon, who were inseparable from the Llyr group in Welsh, just as the Lir group was inseparable from the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish legend (pp. 548-9). The Picts made slaves and drudges of the mound-haunting race, but how far any amalgamation may have taken place between them it is impossible to say. Even without any amalgamation, however, the little people, if employed as nurses to their Pictish lords' children, could not help leaving their impress in time on the language of the ruling nationality. But it may be that the treatment of the Picts, by Scottish legend, as a kind of fairies really points to amalgamation, though it is not impossible that archæology may be able to classify the remains of the dwellings ascribed to the Pechts, that is, to assign a certain class to the warlike Picts of history and another to the dwarf race of the síds. A certain measure of amalgamation may also be the meaning of the Irish tradition, that when the Milesian Irish came and conquered, the defeated Tuatha Dé Danann gave up their life above ground and retired inside the hills like the fairies. This account of them may be as worthless as the story of the extermination of the Picts of Scotland: both peoples doubtless lived on to amalgamate in time with the conquering race; but it may mean that some of them retreated before the Celts, and concealed themselves after the manner of the little people--in underground dwellings in the less accessible parts of the country. In any case, it may well be that they got their magic and druidism from the dwellers of the síds. In the next place, it has been pointed out (pp. 550-1) how the adjective hên, 'old, ancient,' is applied in Welsh to several of the chief men of the Dôn group, and by this one may probably understand that they were old not merely to those who told the stories about them in Welsh, but to those who put those stories together in Goidelic ages earlier. The geography of the Mabinogion gives the prehistoric remains of Penmaen Mawr and Tre'r Ceiri to the Dôn group; but by its name, Tre'r Ceiri should be the 'Town of the Keiri,' a word probably referring to the Picts (pp. 279-83): this, so far as it goes, makes the sons of Dôn belong by race to the Picts. Lastly, it is the widely spread race of the Picts, conquered by the Celts of the Celtican or Goidelic branch and amalgamating with their conquerors in the course of time, that has left its non-Aryan impress on the syntax of the Celtic languages of the British Isles. These, it is needless to say, are conjectures which I cannot establish; but possibly somebody else may. For the present, however, they cannot fail to suggest a moral, habitually ignored with a light heart by most people--including the writer of these words--that men in his plight, men engaged in studies which, owing to a rapid accumulation of fresh facts or the blossoming of new theories, are in a shifting condition, should abstain from producing books or anything longer than a magazine article now and then. Even such minor productions should be understood to be liable to be cast into a great bonfire lit once a year, say on Halloween. This should help to clear the air of mistaken hypotheses, whether of folklore and myth or of history and language, and also serve to mark Nos Calangaeaf as the commencement of the ancient Celtic year. The business of selecting the papers to be saved from the burning might be delegated to an academy constituted, roughly speaking, on the lines of Plato's aristocracy of intellect. Such academy, once in the enjoyment of its existence, would also find plenty of work in addition to the inquisitional business which I have suggested: it should, for example, be invested with summary jurisdiction over fond parents who venture to show any unreasonable anxiety to save their mental progeny from the annual bonfire. The best of that class of writers should be ordered by the academy to sing songs or indite original verse. As for the rest, some of them might be told off to gesticulate to the gallery, and some to administer the consolations of platitude to stragglers tired of the march of science. There is a mass of other useful work which would naturally devolve on an academy of the kind here suggested. I should be happy, if space permitted, to go through the particulars one by one, but let a single instance suffice: the academy might relieve us of the painful necessity of having seriously to consider any further the proposal that professors found professing after sixty should be shot. This will serve to indicate the kind of work which might advantageously be entrusted to the august body which is here but roughly projected. There are some branches of learning in the happy position of having no occasion for such a body academical. Thus, if a man will have it that the earth is flat, as flat in fact as some people do their utmost to make it, 'he will most likely,' as the late Mr. Freeman in the Saturday Review once put it, 'make few converts, and will be forgotten after at most a passing laugh from scientific men.' If a man insists that the sum of two and two is five, he will probably find his way to a lunatic asylum, as the economy of society is, in a manner, self-acting. So with regard to him who carries his craze into the more material departments of such a science as chemistry: he may be expected to blow out his own eyes, for the almighty molecule executes its own vengeance. 'But,' to quote again from Mr. Freeman, if that man's 'craze had been historical or philological'--and above all if it had to do with the science of man or of myth--'he might have put forth notions quite as absurd as the notion that the earth is flat, and many people would not have been in the least able to see that they were absurd. If any scholar had tried to confute him we should have heard of "controversies" and "differences of opinion."' In fact, the worst that happens to the false prophet who shines in any such a science is, that he has usually only too many enthusiastic followers. The machinery is, so to say, not automatic, and hence it is that we want the help of an academy. But even supposing such an academy established, no one need feel alarmed lest opportunities enough could no longer be found for cultivating the example of those of the early Christians who had the rare grace to suffer fools gladly. Personally, however, I should be against doing anything in a hurry; and, considering how little his fellows dare expect from the man who is just waiting to be final and perfect before he commit himself to type, the establishment of an academy invested with the summary powers which have been briefly sketched might, perhaps, after all, conveniently wait a while: my own feeling is that almost any time, say in the latter half of the twentieth century, would do better than this year or the next. In the meantime one must be content to entrust the fortunes of our studies to the combined forces of science and common sense. Judging by what they have achieved in recent years, there is no reason to be uneasy with regard to the time to come, for it is as true to-day as when it was first written, that the best of the prophets of the Future is the Past. ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS P. 81. I learn that the plural of bodach glas was in Welsh bodachod gleision, a term which Elis o'r Nant remembers his mother applying to a kind of fairies dressed in blue and fond of leading people astray. She used to relate how a haymaking party once passed a summer's night at the cowhouse (beudy) of Bryn Bygelyd (also Bryn Mygelyd), and how they saw in the dead of night a host of these dwarfs (corynnod) in blue dancing and capering about the place. The beudy in question is not very far from Dolwydelan, on the way to Capel Curig. A different picture of the bodach is given in Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 82; and lastly one may contrast the Highland Bodach Glas mentioned at p. 520 above, not to mention still another kind, namely the one in Scott's Waverley. P. 130. To Sarn yr Afanc add Llyn yr Afanc, near Llandinam (Beauties of Wales, N. Wales, p. 841), and Bed yr Afanc, 'the Afanc's Grave,' the name of some sort of a tumulus, I am told, on a knoll near the Pembrokeshire stream of the Nevern. Mr. J. Thomas, of Bancau Bryn Berian close by, has communicated to me certain echoes of a story how an afanc was caught in a pool near the bridge of Bryn Berian, and how it was taken up to be interred in what is now regarded as its grave. A complete list of the afanc place-names in the Principality might possibly prove instructive. As to the word afanc, what seems to have happened is this: (1) from meaning simply a dwarf it came to be associated with such water dwarfs as those mentioned at p. 432; (2) the meaning being forgotten, the word was applied to any water monster; and (3) where afanc occurs in place-names the Hu story has been introduced to explain it, whether it fitted or not. This I should fancy to be the case with the Bryn Berian barrow, and it would be satisfactory to know whether it contains the remains of an ordinary dwarf. Peredur's lake afanc may have been a dwarf; but whether that was so or not, it is remarkable that the weapon which the afanc handled was a llechwaew or flake-spear, that is, a missile tipped with stone. P. 131. With the rôle of the girl in the afanc story compare that of Tegau, wife of Caradog Freichfras, on whom a serpent fastens and can only be allured away to seize on one of Tegau's breasts, of which she loses the nipple when the beast is cut off. The defect being replaced with gold, she is ever after known as Tegau Eur-fron, or 'Tegau of the golden Breast.' That is a version inferred of a story which is discussed by M. Gaston Paris in an article, on Caradoc et le Serpent, elicited by a paper published (in the November number of Modern Language Notes for 1898) by Miss C. A. Harper, of Bryn Mawr College, U.S.: see the Romania, xxviii. 214-31. One of Miss Harper's parallels, mentioned by M. Paris at p. 220, comes from Campbell: it is concerning a prince who receives from his stepmother a magic shirt which converts itself into a serpent coiled round his neck, and of which he is rid by the help of a woman acting in much the same way as Tegau. We have an echo of this in the pedigrees in the Jesus College MS. 20: see the Cymmrodor, viii. 88, where one reads of G6ga6n keneu menrud a vu neidyr vl6ydyn am y von6gyl, 'Gwgon the whelp of Menrud (?) who was a year with a snake round his neck'--his pedigree is also given. In M. Paris' suggested reconstruction of the story (p. 228) from the different versions, he represents the maiden who is to induce the serpent to leave the man on whom it has fastened, as standing in a vessel filled with milk, while the man stands in a vessel filled with vinegar. The heroine exposes herself to the reptile, which relinquishes his present victim to seize on one of the woman's breasts. Now the appropriateness of the milk is explained by the belief that snakes are inordinately fond of milk, and that belief has, I presume, a foundation in fact: at any rate I am reminded of its introduction into the plot of more than one English story, such as Stanley Weyman's book From the Memoirs of a Minister of France (London, 1895), p. 445, and A. Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1893), pp. 199-209. In Wales, however, it is to a woman's milk that one's interest attaches: I submit two references which will explain what I mean. The first of them is to Owen's Welsh Folk-Lore, p. 349, where he says that 'traditions of flying snakes were once common in all parts of Wales,' and adds as follows:--'The traditional origin of these imaginary creatures was that they were snakes, which by having drunk the milk of a woman, and by having eaten of bread consecrated for the Holy Communion, became transformed into winged serpents or dragons.' The other is to the Brython for 1861, p. 190, where one reads in Welsh to the following effect:--'If a snake chances to have an opportunity to drink of a woman's milk it is certain to become a gwiber. When a woman happens to be far from her child, and her breasts are full and beginning to give her pain, she sometimes milks them on the ground in order to ease them. To this the peasantry in parts of Cardiganshire have a strong objection, lest a snake should come there and drink the milk, and so become a gwiber.' The word gwiber is used in the Welsh Bible for a viper, but the editor of the Brython explains, that in our folklore it means a huge kind of snake or dragon that has grown wings and has its body cased in hard scales: for a noted instance in point he refers the reader to the first number of the Brython, p. 3. It is believed still all over Wales that snakes may, under favourable circumstances, develop wings: in fact, an Anglesey man strongly wished, to my knowledge, to offer to the recent Welsh Land Commission, as evidence of the wild and neglected state of a certain farm, that the gorse had grown so high and the snakes so thriven in it that he had actually seen one of the latter flying right across a wide road which separated two such gorse forests as he described: surprised and hurt to find that this was not accepted, he inferred that the Commissioners knew next to nothing about their business. Pp. 148, 170. With 'the spell of security' by catching hold of grass may perhaps be compared a habit which boys in Cardiganshire have of suddenly picking up a blade of grass when they want a truce or stoppage in a sort of game of tig or touchwood. The grass gives the one who avails himself of it immunity for a time from attack or pursuit, so as to allow him to begin the game again just where it was left off. P. 228. Bodermud would probably be more correctly written Bodermyd, and analysed possibly into Bod-Dermyd, involving the name which appears in Irish as Diarmait and Dermot. P. 230. Since this was printed I have been assured by Mr. Thomas Prichard of Llwydiarth Esgob, in Anglesey, that the dolur byr is more commonly called clwy' byr, and that it is the disease known in English as 'black quarter.' Pp. 259, 268. I am assured on the part of several literary natives of Glamorgan that they do not know dâr for daear, 'ground, earth.' Such negative evidence, though proving the literary form daear to prevail now, is not to be opposed to the positive statement, sent by Mr. Hughes (p. 173) to me, as to the persistence in his neighbourhood of dâr and clâr (for claear, 'lukewarm'), to which one may add, as unlikely to be challenged by anybody, the case of harn for haearn, 'iron.' The intermediate forms have to be represented as daer, claer, and haern, which explain exactly the gaem of the Book of St. Chad, for which modern literary Welsh has gaeaf, 'winter': see the preface to the Book of Llan Dâv, p. xlv. P. 290. It ought to have been pointed out that the fairies, whose food and drink it is death to share, represent the dead. P. 291. For Conla read Connla or Condla: the later form is Colla. The Condla in question is called Condla Rúad in the story, but the heading to it has Ectra Condla Chaim, 'the Adventure of C. the Dear One.' P. 294. I am now inclined to think that butch was produced out of the northern pronunciation of witch by regarding its w as a mutation consonant and replacing it, as in some other instances, by b as the radical. P. 308. With the Manx use of rowan on May-day compare a passage to the following effect concerning Wales--I translate it from the faulty Welsh in which it is quoted by one of the competitors for the folklore prize at the Liverpool Eistedfod, 1900: he gave no indication of its provenance:--Another bad papistic habit which prevails among some Welsh people is that of placing some of the wood of the rowan tree (coed cerdin or criafol) in their corn lands (llafyrieu) and their fields on May-eve (Nos Glamau) with the idea that such a custom brings a blessing on their fields, a proceeding which would better become atheists and pagans than Christians. P. 325. In the comparison with the brownie the fairy nurse in the Pennant Valley has been overlooked: see p. 109. P. 331, line 1. For I. 42-3 read ii. 42-3. Pp. 377, 395. With the story of Ffynnon Gywer and the other fairy wells, also with the wells which have been more especially called sacred in this volume, compare the following paragraph from Martin's Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1703), pp. 229-30: it is concerning Gigay, now more commonly written Gigha, the name of an island near the west coast of Kintyre:--'There is a well in the north end of this isle called Toubir-more, i. e. a great well, because of its effects, for which it is famous among the islanders; who together with the inhabitants use it as a Catholicon for diseases. It's covered with stone and clay, because the natives fancy that the stream that flows from it might overflow the isle; and it is always opened by a Diroch, i. e. an inmate, else they think it would not exert its vertues. They ascribe one very extraordinary effect to it, and 'tis this; that when any foreign boats are wind-bound here (which often happens) the master of the boat ordinarily gives the native that lets the water run a piece of money, and they say that immediately afterwards the wind changes in favour of those that are thus detain'd by contrary winds. Every stranger that goes to drink of the water of this well, is accustomed to leave on its stone cover a piece of money, a needle, pin, or one of the prettiest variegated stones they can find.' Last September I visited Gigha and saw a well there which is supposed to be the one to which Martin refers. It is very insignificant and known now by a name pronounced Tobar a veac, possibly for an older Mo-Bheac: in Scotch Gaelic Bëac, written Beathag, is equated with the name Sophia. The only tradition now current about the well is that emptying it used to prove the means of raising a wind or even of producing great storms, and this appears to have been told Pennant: see his Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, MDCCLXXII (Chester, 1774), p. 226:--'Visit the few wonders of the isle: the first is a little well of a most miraculous quality, for in old times, if ever the chieftain lay here wind-bound, he had nothing more to do than cause the well to be cleared, and instantly a favorable gale arose. But miracles are now ceased.' P. 378. A similar rhyme is current in the neighbourhood of Dolgelley, as Miss Lucy Griffith informs me, as follows:-- Dolgelle dol a gollir, Daear a'i llwnc, dw'r 'n 'i lle. Dolgelley, a dale to be lost; Earth will swallow it, and water take its place. P. 394. With regard to wells killing women visiting them, I may mention a story, told me the other day by Professor Mahaffy after a friend whose name he gave, concerning the inhabitants of one of the small islands on the coast of Mayo--I understood him to say off the Mullet. It was this: all the men and boys, having gone fishing, were prevented by rough weather from returning as soon as they intended, and the women left alone suffered greatly from want of water, as not one of them would venture to go to the well. By-and-by, however, one of them gave birth to a boy, whereupon another of them carried the baby to the well, and ventured to draw water. P. 418. As to Clychau Aberdyfi I am now convinced that the chwech and saith are entirely due to the published versions, the editors of which seem to have agreed that they will have as much as possible for their money, so to say. I find that Mrs. Rhys learnt in her childhood to end the words with pump, and that she cannot now be brought to sing the melody in any other way: I have similar testimony from a musical lady from the neighbourhood of Wrexham; and, doubtless, more evidence of the same sort could be got. P. 443. For Llywelyn ab Gruffyd read Llywelyn ab Iorwerth. Pp. 450-1. Some additional light on the doggerel dialogue will be found thrown by the following story, which I find cited in Welsh by one of the Liverpool Eistedfod competitors:--There is in the parish of Yspytty Ifan, in Carnarvonshire, a farm called Trwyn Swch, where eighty years ago lived a man and his wife, who were both young, and had twins born to them. Now the mother went one day to milk, leaving the twins alone in the cradle--the husband was not at home--and who should enter the house but one of the Tylwyth Teg! He took the twins away and left two of his own breed in the cradle in their stead. Thereupon the mother returned home and saw what had come to pass; she then in her excitement snatched the Tylwyth Teg twins and took them to the bridge that crosses the huge gorge of the river Conwy not very far from the house, and she cast them into the whirlpool below. By this time the Tylwyth Teg had come on the spot, some trying to save the children, and some making for the woman. 'Seize the old hag!' (Crap ar yr hen wrach!) said one of the chiefs of the Tylwyth Teg. 'Too late!' cried the woman on the edge of the bank; and many of them ran after her to the house. As they ran three or four of them lost their pipes in the field. They are pipes ingeniously made of the blue stone (carreg las) of the gully. They measure three or four inches long, and from time to time several of them have been found near the cave of Trwyn Swch.--This is the first indication which I have discovered, that the fairies are addicted to smoking. P. 506. A Rhiw Gyferthwch (printed Rywgyverthwch) occurs in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 200; but it seems to have been in Merionethshire, and far enough from Arfon. P. 521. In the article already cited from the Romania, M. Paris finds Twrch Trwyth in the boar Tortain of a French romance: see xxviii. 217, where he mentions a legend concerning the strange pedigree of that beast. The subject requires to be further studied. P. 535. A less probable explanation of Latio would be to suppose orti understood. This has been suggested to me by Mr. Nicholson's treatment of the Llanaelhaiarn inscription as Ali ortus Elmetiaco hic iacet, where I should regard Ali as standing for an earlier nominative Alec-s, and intended as the Celtic equivalent for Cephas or Peter: Ali would be the word which is in Med. Irish ail, genitive ailech, 'a rock or stone.' P. 545. We have the Maethwy of Gilvaethwy possibly still further reduced to Aethwy in Porth Aethwy, 'the Village of Menai Bridge,' in spite of its occurring in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 77, as Porthaytho. P. 548. To the reference to the Cymmrodor, ix. 170, as to Beli being called son of Anna, add the Welsh Elucidarium, p. 127, with its belim vab anna, and The Cambro-British Saints, p. 82, where we have Anna ... genuit Beli. P. 560. Two answers to the query as to the Llech Las are now to be found in the Scottish Antiquary, xv. 41-3. P. 566. Caer Gai is called also Caer Gynyr, after Cai's father Cynyr, to wit in a poem by William Lleyn, who died in 1587. This I owe to Professor J. Morris Jones, who has copied it from a collection of that poet's works in the possession of Myrdin Fard, fo. 119. P. 569. Here it would, perhaps, not be irrelevant to mention Caer Dwrgynt, given s. v. Dwr in Morris' Celtic Remains, as a name of Caergybi, or Holyhead. His authority is given in parenthesis thus: (Th. Williams, Catal.). I should be disposed to think the name based on some such an earlier form as Kair D6bgint, 'the Fortress of the Danes,' who were called in old Welsh Dub-gint (Annales Cambriæ, A. D. 866, in the Cymmrodor, ix. 165), that is to say 'Gentes Nigræ or Black Pagans,' and more simply Gint or Gynt, 'Gentes or Heathens.' Pp. 579-80. The word banna6c, whence the later bannog, seems to be the origin of the name bonoec given to the famous horn in the Lai du Corn, from which M. Paris in his Romania article, xxviii. 229, cites Cest cor qui bonoec a non, 'this horn which is called bonoec.' The Welsh name would have to be Corn (yr) ych banna6c, 'the horn of (the) bannog ox,' with or without the article. P. 580, note 1. One of the Liverpool Eistedfod competitors cites W. O. Pughe to the following effect in Welsh:--Llyn dau Ychain, 'the Lake of Two Oxen,' is on Hiraethog Mountain; and near it is the footmark of one of them in a stone or rock (carreg), where he rested when seeking his partner, as the local legend has it. Another cites a still wilder story, to the effect that there was once a wonderful cow called Y Fuwch Fraith, 'the Parti-coloured Cow.' 'To that cow there came a witch to get milk, just after the cow had supplied the whole neighbourhood. So the witch could not get any milk, and to avenge her disappointment she made the cow mad. The result was that the cow ran wild over the mountains, inflicting immense harm on the country; but at last she was killed by Hu near Hiraethog, in the county of Denbigh.' P. 592. With trwtan, Trwtyn-Tratyn, and Trit-a-trot should doubtless be compared the English use of trot as applied contemptuously to a woman, as when Grumio, in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Act i, sc. 2, speaks of 'an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head': the word was similarly used by Thomas Heywood and others. P. 649. With regard to note 1, I find that Professor Zimmer is of opinion--in fact he is quite positive--that tyngu and tynghed are in no way related: see the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen for 1900 (No. 5), pp. 371-2. P. 673. I am tempted to rank with the man-eating fairies the Atecotti, who are known to have been cannibals, and whose name seems to mean the ancient race. Should this prove tenable, one would have to admit that the little people, or at any rate peoples with an admixture of the blood of that race, could be trained to fight. Further, one would probably have to class with them also such non-cannibal tribes as those of the Fir Bolg and the Galiúin of Irish story. Information about both will be found in my Hibbert Lectures, in reading which, however, the mythological speculations should be brushed aside. Lastly, I anticipate that most of the peoples figuring in the oldest class of Irish story will prove to have belonged either (1) to the dwarf race, or (2) to the Picts; and that careful reading will multiply the means of distinguishing between them. Looking comprehensively at the question of the early races of the British Isles, the reader should weigh again the concluding words of Professor Haddon's theory, quoted on p. 684 above. NOTES [1] For most of my information on this subject I have to thank Mr. David Davies, editor of the South Wales Daily Post, published at Swansea. [2] I am indebted for this information to Mr. J. Herbert James of Vaynor, who visited Kenfig lately and has called my attention to an article headed 'The Borough of Kenfig,' in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1898: see more especially the maps at pp. 138-42. [3] Here the Welsh has a word edafwr, the exact meaning of which escapes me, and I gather from the remarks of local etymologers that no such word is now in use in Glamorgan. [4] See the Book of Aberpergwm, printed as Brut y Tywysogion, in the Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 524; also Morgan's Antiquarian Survey of East Gower, p. 66, where the incident is given from 'Brut y Tywysogion, A. D. 1088.' It is, however, not in what usually passes by the name of Brut y Tywysogion, but comes, as the author kindly informs me, from a volume entitled 'Brut y Tywysogion, the Gwentian Chronicle of Caradoc of Llancarvan, with a translation by the late Aneurin Owen, and printed for the Cambrian Archæological Association, 1863': see pp. 70-1. [5] For this also I have to thank Mr. Herbert James, who recently inspected the spot with Mr. Glascodine of Swansea. [6] I do not know whether anybody has identified the spot which the writer had in view, or whether the coast of the Severn still offers any feature which corresponds in any way to the description. [7] Supposed to be so called after a certain Tegid Foel, or 'Tegid the Bald,' of Penllyn: the name Tegid is the phonetic spelling of what might be expected in writing as Tegyd--it is the Latin Tacitus borrowed, and comes with other Latin names in Pedigree I. of the Cuneda dynasty; see the Cymmrodor, xi. 170. In point of spelling one may compare Idris for what might be expected written Idrys, of the same pronunciation, for an earlier Iudrys or Iudris. [8] The translation was made by Thomas Twyne, and published in 1573 under the title of The Breuiary of Britayne, where the passage here given occurs, on fol. 69b. The original was entitled Commentarioli Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum, published at Cologne in 1572. The original of our passage, fol. 57a, has Guynedhia and Llunclis. The stem llwnc of llyncaf, 'I swallow,' answers, according to Welsh idiom, to the use of what would be in English or Latin a participle. Similarly, when a compound is not used, the verbal noun (in the genitive) is used: thus 'a feigned illness,' in Welsh 'a made illness,' is saldra gwneyd, literally 'an indisposition or illness of making.' So 'the deuouryng of the Palace' is incorrect, and based on Llwyd's vorago Palatij instead of Palatium voratum. [9] For other occurrences of the name, see the Black Book, fol. 35a, 52a, and Morris' Celtic Remains, where, s. v. Benlli, the Welsh name of Bardsey, to wit, Ynys Enlli, is treated by somebody, doubtless rightly, as a shortening of Ynys Fenlli. [10] The meaning of this name is not certain, but it seems to equate with the Irish Fochard, anglicized Faughard, in County Louth: see O'Donovan's Four Masters, A. D. 1595; also the Book of the Dun Cow, where it is Focherd, genitive Focherda, dative Focheird, fo. 70b, 73b, 75a, 75b, 76a, 77a. [11] This is sometimes given as Glannach, which looks like the Goidelic form of the name: witness Giraldus' Enislannach in his Itin. Kambriæ, ii. 7 (p. 131). [12] See Choice Notes, p. 92, and Gerald Griffin's Poetical and Dramatic Works, p. 106. [13] Failing to see this, various writers have tried to claim the honour of owning the bells for Aberteifi, 'Cardigan,' or for Abertawe, 'Swansea'; but no arguments worthy of consideration have been urged on behalf of either place: see Cyfaill yr Aelwyd for 1892, p. 184. [14] For some of the data as to the reckoning of the pedigrees and branching of a family, see the first volume of Aneurin Owen's Ancient Laws--Gwyned, III. i. 12-5 (pp. 222-7); Dyfed, II. i. 17-29 (pp. 408-11); Gwent, II. viii. 1-7 (pp. 700-3); also The Welsh People, pp. 230-1. [15] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 99a & seq. [16] For instances, the reader may turn back to pp. 154 or 191, but there are plenty more in the foregoing chapters; and he may also consult Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 123-8, 141-2, 146. In one case, p. 123, he gives an instance of the contrary kind of imagination: the shepherd who joined a fairy party on Frenni Fach was convinced, when his senses and his memory returned, that, 'although he thought he had been absent so many years, he had been only so many minutes.' The story has the ordinary setting; but can it be of popular origin? The Frenni Fach is a part of the mountain known as the Frenni Fawr, in the north-east of Pembrokeshire; the names mean respectively the Little Breni, and the Great Breni. The obsolete word breni meant, in Old Welsh, the prow of a ship; local habit tends, however, to the solecism of Brenin Fawr, with brenin, 'king,' qualified by an adjective mutated feminine; but people at a distance who call it Frenni Fawr, pronounce the former vocable with nn. Lastly, Y Vrevi Va6r occurs in Maxen's Dream in the Red Book (Oxford Mab. p. 89); but in the White Book (in the Peniarth collection), col. 187, the proper name is written Freni: for this information I have to thank Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans. [17] It is right to say that another account is given in the Rennes Dindsenchas, published by Stokes in the Revue Celtique, xvi. 164, namely, that Laiglinne with fifty warriors 'came to the well of Dera son of Scera. A wave burst over them and drowned Laiglinne with his fifty warriors, and thereof a lake was made. Hence we say Loch Laiglinni, Laiglinne's Lake.' [18] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 224, and Guest's, i. 343. [19] See Afanc in the Geiriadur of Silvan Evans, who cites instances in point. [20] See the Revue Celtique, i. 257, and my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 92-3. [21] The Four Masters, A.M. 3520. [22] In another version Campbell had found it to be sand and nothing else. [23] As to this incident of a girl and a supernatural, Campbell says that he had heard it in the Isle of Man also, and elsewhere. [24] See the Revue Celtique, ii. 197. He was also called Labraid Longsech, and Labraid Longsech Lorc. The explanation of Labraid Lorc is possibly that it was originally Labraid Morc, and that the fondness for alliteration brought it into line as Labraid Lorc: compare Llûd Llaweraint in Welsh for Nûd Llaweraint. This is not disproved by the fact that Labraid Lorc's grandfather is said to have been called Loegaire Lorc: Loegaire Lorc and Labraid Lorc are rather to be regarded perhaps as duplicates of the same original. [25] See my Arthurian Legend, p. 70; also Hibbert Lectures, p. 590. [26] The original has in these passages respectively siblais a fual corbo thipra, 'minxit urinam suam so that it was a spring'; ar na siblad a fúal ar na bad fochond báis doib, 'ne mingat urinam suam lest it should be the cause of death to them'; and silis, 'minxit,' fo. 39b. For a translation of the whole story see Dr. O'Grady's Silva Gadelica, pp. 265-9; also Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 97-105. [27] See the story in Dr. O'Grady's Silva Gadelica, pp. 292-311. [28] See Stengel's edition of li Romans de Durmart le Galois (Tübingen, 1873), lines 4185-340, and my Arthurian Legend, pp. 68-9. [29] See Williams' Scint Greal, pp. 60-1, 474-5; Nutt's Holy Grail, p. 44; and my Arthurian Legend, pp. 69-70. [30] Bardoniaeth D. ab Gwilym, poem 183. A similar descent of Blodeuwed's appears implied in the following englyn--one of two--by Anthony Powel, who died in 1618: it is given by Taliesin ab Iolo in his essay on the Neath Valley, entitled Traethawd ar Gywreined, Hynafiaeth, a hen Bendefigion Glynn Ned (Aberdare, 1886), p. 15:-- Crug ael, carn gadarn a godwyd yn fryn, Yn hen fraenwaith bochlwyd; Main a'i llud man y lladwyd, Merch hoewen loer Meirchion lwyd. It refers, with six other englynion by other authors, to a remarkable rock called Craig y Dinas, with which Taliesin associated a cave where Arthur or Owen Lawgoch and his men are supposed, according to him, to enjoy a secular sleep, and it implies that Blodeuwed, whose end in the Mabinogi of Mâth was to be converted into an owl, was, according to another account, overwhelmed by Craig y Dinas. It may be Englished somewhat as follows: Heaped on a brow, a mighty cairn built like a hill, Like ancient work rough with age, grey-cheeked; Stones that confine her where she was slain, Grey Meirchion's daughter quick and bright as the moon. [31] This comes from the late series of Triads, iii. 10, where Merlin's nine companions are called naw beird cylfeird: cylfeird should be the plural of cylfard, which must be the same word as the Irish culbard, name of one of the bardic grades in Ireland. [32] For some more remarks on this subject generally, see my Arthurian Legend, chapter xv, on the 'Isles of the Dead.' [33] See his Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 11 (p. 139); also my Celtic Britain, p. 68, and Arthurian Legend, p. 364. [34] From the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, i. 302. [35] I regard nid kywiw as a corruption of ni chywiw from cyf-yw, an instance of the verb corresponding to cymod (= cym-bod), 'peace, conciliation.' The preterite has, in the Oxford Bruts, A.D. 1217 (p. 358), been printed kynni for what one may read kymu: the words would then be y kymu reinald y bre6ys ar brenhin, 'that Reginald de Breos was reconciled with the king, or settled matters with him.' [36] See the Book of Taliessin, poem xxx, in Skene's Four Ancient Books, ii. 181; also Guest's Mabinogion, ii. 354, and the Brython for 1860, p. 372b, where more than one article of similar capacity of distinguishing brave men from cowards is mentioned. [37] See Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 672, where they are printed Dwynech and Dwynaur respectively. [38] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 649-50. [39] A full account of them will be found in a volume devoted to them, and entitled Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, being a posthumous work of the Rev. W. Hiley Bathurst, with Notes by C. W. King, London, 1879. See also an article entitled 'Das Heiligtum des Nodon,' by Dr. Hübner in the Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande, lxvii. pp. 29-46, where several things in Mr. King's book are criticized. [40] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 122, 125. [41] On this subject, see The Welsh People, especially pp. 54-61. [42] Why our dictionary makers have taken into their heads to treat it as Tamesis I know not. The Welsh is Tafwys with a diphthong regularly representing an earlier long e or ei in the second syllable. There is, as far as I know, no reason to suppose Tafwys an invention, rather than a genuine vocable of the same origin as the name of the Glamorganshire river Taff, in Welsh Taf, which is also the name of the river emptying itself at Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire. Tafwys, however, does not appear to occur in any old Welsh document; but no such weakness attaches to the testimony of the French Tamise, which could hardly come from Tamesis: compare also the place-name Tamise near the Scheldt in East Flanders; this, however, may be of a wholly different origin. [43] A more difficult version has been sent me by Dewi Glan Ffrydlas, of Bethesda: Caffed y wrach, 'Let him seize the hag'; Methu'r cryfaglach, 'You have failed, urchin.' But he has not been able to get any explanation of the words at the Penrhyn Quarries. Cryfaglach is also the form in Mur y Cryfaglach, 'the Urchin's Wall,' in Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 249. He informs me that this is the name of an old ruin on an elevated spot some twenty or thirty yards from a swift brook, and not far in a south-south-easterly direction from Sir Edward Watkin's chalet. [44] For this I am indebted to Mr. Wm. Davies (p. 147 above), who tells me that he copied the original from Chwedlau a Thradodiadau Gwyned, 'Gwyned Tales and Traditions,' published in a periodical, which I have not been able to consult, called Y Gordofigion, for the year 1873. [45] The meaning of the word mwthlach is doubtful, as it is now current in Gwyned only in the sense of a soft, doughy, or puffy person who is all of a heap, so to say. Pughe gives mwythlan and mwythlen with similar significations. But mwthlach would seem to have had some such a meaning in the doggerel as that of rough ground or a place covered with a scrubby, tangled growth. It is possibly the same word as the Irish mothlach, 'rough, bushy, ragged, shaggy'; see the Vision of Laisrén, edited by Professor K. Meyer, in the Otia Merseiana, pp. 114, 117. [46] The account here given of the Cyhiraeth is taken partly from Choice Notes, pp. 31-2, and partly from Howells, pp. 31-4, 56-7, who appears to have got uncertain in his narrative as to the sex of the Cyhiraeth; but there is no reason whatsoever for regarding it as either male or female--the latter alone is warranted, as he might have gathered from her being called y Gyhiraeth, 'the Cyhiraeth,' never y Cyhiraeth as far as I know. In North Cardiganshire the spectre intended is known only by another name, that of Gwrach y Rhibyn, but y Gyhiraeth or yr hen Gyhiraeth is a common term of abuse applied to a lanky, cadaverous person, both there and in Gwyned; in books, however, it is found sometimes meaning a phantom funeral. The word cyhiraeth would seem to have originally meant a skeleton with cyhyrau, 'sinews,' but no flesh. However, cyhyrau, singular cyhyr, would be more correctly written with an i; for the words are pronounced--even in Gwyned--cyhir, cyhirau. The spelling cyhyraeth corresponds to no pronunciation I have ever heard of the word; but there is a third spelling, cyheuraeth, which corresponds to an actual cyhoereth or cyhoyreth, the colloquial pronunciation to be heard in parts of South Wales: I cannot account for this variant. Gwrach y Rhibyn means the Hag of the Rhibyn, and rhibyn usually means a row, streak, a line--ma' nhw'n mynd yn un rhibyn, 'they are going in a line.' But what exactly Gwrach y Rhibyn should connote I am unable to say. I may mention, however, on the authority of Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, that in Mid-Cardiganshire the term Gwrach y Rhibyn means a long roll or bustle of fern tied with ropes of straw and placed along the middle of the top of a hayrick. This is to form a ridge over which and on which the thatch is worked and supported: gwrach unqualified is, I am told, used in this sense in Glamorganshire. Something about the Gwrach sprite will be found in the Brython for 1860, p. 23a, while a different account is given in Jenkins' Bed Gelert, pp. 80-1. [47] This statement I give from Choice Notes, p. 32; but I must confess that I am sceptical as to the 'wings of a leathery and bat-like substance,' or of any other substance whatsoever. [48] For more about her and similar ancestral personages, see The Welsh People, pp. 54-61. [49] This seems to be the Goidelic word borrowed, which in Mod. Irish is written cnocc or cnoc, 'a hill': the native Welsh form is cnwch, as in Cnwch Coch in Cardiganshire, Cnwch Dernog (corrupted into Clwch Dernog) in Anglesey, printed Kuwgh Dernok in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 59, where it is associated with other interesting names to be noticed later. [50] All said by natives of Anglesey about rivers and mountains in their island must be taken relatively, for though the country has a very uneven surface it has no real mountain: they are apt to call a brook a river and a hillock a mountain, though the majestic heights of Arfon are within sight. [51] See pp. 13-16 of his essay on the Neath Valley, referred to in a note at p. 439 above, where Craig y Dinas is also mentioned. [52] This is an interesting word of obscure origin, to which I should like our ingenious etymologists to direct their attention. [53] See the Poetical Works of John Leyden (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 36 (Scenes of Infancy, part ii); also my Arthurian Legend, p. 18. [54] I am indebted for the English story to an article entitled 'The Two Pedlar Legends of Lambeth and Swaffham,' contributed by Mr. Gomme to the pages of the Antiquary, x. 202-5, in which he gives local details and makes valuable comparisons. I have to thank Mr. Gomme also for a cutting from the weekly issue of the Leeds Mercury for Jan. 3, 1885, devoted to 'Local Notes and Queries' (No. cccxii), where practically the same story is given at greater length as located at Upsall Castle in Yorkshire. [55] I have never been to the spot, and I owe these particulars partly to Mr. J. P. Owen, of 72 Comeragh Road, Kensington, and partly to the Rev. John Fisher, already quoted at p. 379. This is the parish where some would locate the story of the sin-eater, which others stoutly deny, as certain periodical outbursts of polemics in the pages of the Academy and elsewhere have shown. Mr. Owen, writing to me in 1893, states, that, when he last visited the dinas some thirty years previously, he found the mouth of the cave stopped up in order to prevent cattle and sheep straying into it. [56] Mr. Fisher refers me to an account of the discovery published in the Cambrian newspaper for Aug. 14, 1813, a complete file of which exists, as he informs me, in the library of the Royal Institution of South Wales at Swansea. Further, at the Cambrians' meeting in 1892 that account was discussed and corrected by Mr. Stepney-Gulston: see the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1893, pp. 163-7. He also 'pointed out that on the opposite side of the gap in the ridge the noted cave of Owain Law Goch was to be found. Near the Pant-y-llyn bone caves is a place called Craig Derwydon, and close by is the scene of the exploits of Owain Law Goch, a character who appears to have absorbed some of the features of Arthurian romance. A cave in the locality bears Owain's name.' [57] As in Llewelyn's charter to the Monks of Aberconwy, where we have, according to Dugdale's Monasticon, v. 673a, a Scubordynemreis, that is Scubor Dyn Emreis, 'Din-Emreis Barn,' supposed to be Hafod y Borth, near Bedgelert: see Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 198. In the Myvyrian, i. 195a, it has been printed Din Emrais. [58] See Somer's Malory's Morte Darthur, xxi. v (= vol. i. p. 849), and as to the Marchlyn story see p. 236 above. Lastly some details concerning Llyn Llydaw will be found in the next chapter. [59] The oldest spellings known of this name occur in manuscript A of the Annales Cambriæ and in the Book of Llan Dâv as Elized and Elised, doubtless pronounced Elissed until it became, by dropping the final dental, Elisse. This in time lost its identity by assimilation with the English name Ellis. Thus, for example, in Wynne's edition of Powell's Caradog of Llancarfan's History of Wales (London, 1774), pp. 22, 24, Elised is reduced to Elis. In the matter of dropping the d compare our Dewi, 'St. David,' for Dewid, for an instance of which see Duffus Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue, i. 119. The form Eliseg with a final g has no foundation in fact. Can the English name Ellis be itself derived from Elised? [60] Boncyn is derived from bonc of nearly the same meaning, and bonc is merely the English word bank borrowed: in South Wales it is pronounced banc and used in North Cardiganshire in the sense of hill or mountain. [61] The name occurs twice in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen: see the Mabinogion, p. 107, where the editors have read Ricca both times in 'Gormant, son of Ricca.' This is, however, more than balanced by Rita in the Book of Llan Dâv, namely in Tref Rita, 'Rita's town or stead,' which occurs five times as the name of a place in the diocese of Llandaff; see pp. 32, 43, 90, 272. The uncertainty is confined to the spelling, and it has arisen from the difficulty of deciding in medieval manuscripts between t and c: there is no reason to suppose the name was ever pronounced Ricca. [62] This can hardly be the real name of the place, as it is pronounced Gwybrnant (and even Gwybrant), which reminds me of the Gwybr fynyd on which Gwyn ab Nûd wanders about with his hounds: see Evans' facsimile of the Black Book of Carmarthen, p. 50a, where the words are, dy gruidir ar wibir winit. [63] Dugdale has printed this (v. 673a) Carrecerereryr with one er too much, and the other name forms part of the phrase ad capud Weddua-Vaur, 'to the top of the Great Gwydfa'; but I learn from Mr. Edward Owen, of Gray's Inn, that the reading of the manuscript is Wedua vawr and Carrecereryr. [64] The MSS. except B have y 6ylva, which is clearly not the right word, as it could only mean 'his place of watching.' [65] See Derfel Hughes' Llandegai and Llanllechid, p. 53. As to Drystan it is the Pictish name Drostan, but a kindred form occurs in Cornwall on a stone near Fowey, where years ago I guessed the ancient genitive Drustagni; and after examining it recently I am able to confirm my original guess. The name of Drystan recalls that of Essyllt, which offers some difficulty. It first occurs in Welsh in the Nennian Genealogies in the Harleian MS. 3859: see Pedigree I in the Cymmrodor, ix. 169, where we read that Mermin (Merfyn) was son of Etthil daughter of Cinnan (Cynan), who succeeded his father Rhodri Molwynog in the sovereignty of Gwyned in 754. The spelling Etthil is to be regarded like that of the Welsh names in Nennius, for some instances of which see § 73 (quoted in the next chapter) and the Old Welsh words calaur, nouel, patel, so spelt in the Juvencus Codex: see Skene, ii. 2: in all these l does duty for ll. So Etthil is to be treated as pronounced Ethill or Ethyll; but Jesus College MS. 20 gives a more ancient pronunciation (at least as regards the consonants) when it calls Cynan's daughter Ethellt: see the Cymmrodor, viii. 87. Powell, in his History of Wales by Caradog of Llancarfan, as edited by Wynne, writes the name Esylht; and the Medieval Welsh spelling has usually been Essyllt or Esyllt, which agrees in its sibilant with the French Iselt or Iseut; but who made the Breton-looking change from Eth to Es or Is in this name remains a somewhat doubtful point. Professor Zimmer, in the Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Litteratur, xiii. 73-5, points out that the name is an Anglo-Saxon Ethylda borrowed, which he treats as a 'Kurzform für Ethelhild': see also the Revue Celtique, xii. 397, xiii. 495. The adoption of this name in Wales may be regarded as proof of intermarriage or alliance between an English family and the royal house of Gwyned as early as the eighth century. [66] See the Brython for 1861, pp. 331-2, also Cymru Fu, p. 468, where Glasynys was also inclined to regard the Hairy Fellow as being Owen. [67] I have never seen a copy, but Mr. Fisher gives me the title as follows: Prophwydoliaeth Myrdin Wyllt yn nghyda ber Hanes o'i Fywyd, wedi eu tynu allan o Lyfr y Daroganau ... Caerfyrdin ... Pris dwy Geiniog. It has no date, but Mr. Fisher once had a copy with the date 1847. Recently he has come across another versified prophecy written in the same style as the printed ones, and referring to an Owain who may have been Owen Lawgoch. The personage meant is compared to the most brilliant of pearls, Owain glain golyaf. The prophecy is to be found at the Swansea Public Library, and occurs in a seventeenth century manuscript manual of Roman Catholic Devotion, Latin and Welsh. It gives 1440 as the year of the deliverance of the Brytaniaid. It forms the first of two poems (fo. 37), the second of which is ascribed to Taliessin. Such is Mr. Fisher's account of it, and the lines which he has copied for me cling to the same theme of the ultimate triumph of the Kymry. Quite recently I have received further information as to these prophecies from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln's Inn (p. 354), who will, it is to be hoped, soon publish the results of his intimate study of their history in South Wales. [68] Record of Carnarvon, p. 133, to which attention was called by me in the Report of the Welsh Land Commission, p. 648: see now The Welsh People, pp. 343-4, 593-4. [69] Nor was Owen the only Welshman in the king of France's service: there was Owen's chaplain, who on one occasion distinguished himself greatly in battle. He is called in Froissart's text David House, but the editor has found from other documents that the name was Honvel Flinc, which is doubtless Howel, whatever the second vocable may have been: see Froissart, viii, pp. xxxviii, 69. [70] As to the original destination of the flotilla, see Kervyn de Lettenhove's edition of Froissart (Brussels, 1870-7), viii. 435-7, where the editor has brought together several notes, from which it appears that Owen tried unsuccessfully to recruit an army in Spain, but that he readily got together in France a considerable force. For Charles V, on May 8, 1372, ordered the formation of an army, to be placed under Owen's command for the reconquest of his ancestors' lands in Wales, and two days later Owen issued a declaration as to his Welsh claims and his obligations to the French king; but the flotilla stopped short with Guernsey. It is not improbable, however, that the fear in England of a descent on Wales by Owen began at least as early as 1369. In his declaration Owen calls himself Evain de Gales, which approaches the Welsh spelling Ewein, more frequently Ywein, modern Ywain, except that all these forms tended to be supplanted by Owain or Owen. This last is, strictly speaking, the colloquial form, just as Howel is the colloquial form of Hywel, and bowyd of bywyd, 'life.' [71] For the account of Owen's life see the Chroniques de J. Froissart publiées pour la Société de l'Histoire de France, edited with abstracts and notes by Siméon Luce, more especially vols. viii. pp. 44-9, 64, 66-71, 84, 122, 190, and ix. pp. 74-9, where a summary is given of his life and a complete account of his death. In Lord Berners' translation, published in Henry VIII's time, Owen is called Yuan of Wales, as if anybody could even glance at the romances without finding that Owen ab Urien, for instance, became in French Ywains or Ivains le fils Urien in the nominative, and Ywain or Ivain in régime. Thomas Johnes of Hafod, whose translation was published in 1803-6, betrays still greater ignorance by giving him the modern name Evan; but he had the excuse of being himself a Welshman. [72] For copies of some of the documents in point see Rymer's Foedera, viii. 356, 365, 382. [73] I have not been able to find a copy of this work, and for drawing my attention to the passage in Hanes Cymru I have again to thank Mr. Fisher. The pedigree in question will be found printed in Table I in Askew Roberts' edition of Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwydir Family (Oswestry, 1878); and a note, apparently copied from Miss Llwyd, states that it was in a Hengwrt MS. she found the identification of Owen Lawgoch. The editor surmises that to refer to p. 865 of Hengwrt MS. 351, which he represents as being a copy of Hengwrt MS. 96 in the handwriting of Robert Vaughan the Antiquary. [74] This has already been undertaken: on Feb. 7, 1900, a summary of this chapter was read to a meeting of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion, and six weeks later Mr. Edward Owen, of Gray's Inn, read an elaborate paper in which he essayed to fix more exactly Yvain de Galles' place in the history of Wales. It would be impossible here to do justice to his reasoning, based as it was on a careful study of the records in point. Let it suffice for the present, however, that the paper will in due course appear in the Society's Transactions. Mr. J. H. Davies also informs me that he is bringing together items of evidence, which tend, as he thinks, to show that Miss Llwyd's information was practically correct. Before, however, the question can be considered satisfactorily answered, some explanation will have to be offered of Froissart's statement, that Yvain's father's name was Aymon. [75] We seem also to have an instance in point in Carmarthenshire, where legend represents Owen and his men sleeping in Ogof Myrdin, the name of which means Merlin's Cave, and seems to concede priority of tenancy to the great magician: see the extinct periodical Golud yr Oes (for 1863), i. 253, which I find to have been probably drawing on Eliezer Williams' English Works (London, 1840), p. 156. [76] For the Greek text of the entire passage see the Didot edition of Plutarch, vol. iii. p. 511 (De Defectu Oraculorum, xviii); also my Arthurian Legend, pp. 367-8. It is curious to note that storms have, in a way, been associated in England with the death of her great men as recently as that of the celebrated Duke of Wellington: see Choice Notes, p. 270. [77] See my Arthurian Legend, p. 335. I am indebted to Professor Morfill for rendering the hexameters into English verse. [78] They are produced here in their order as printed at the beginning of the second volume of the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, and the series or versions are indicated as i, ii, iii. Version ii will be found printed in the third volume of the Cymmrodor, pp. 52-61, also in the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 297-308, from the Red Book of Hergest of the fourteenth century. The letter (a, b, c) added is intended to indicate the order of the three parts of the Triad, for it is not the same in all the series. Let me here remark in a general way that the former fondness of the Welsh for Triads was not peculiar to them. The Irish also must have been at one time addicted to this grouping. Witness the Triad of Cleverest Countings, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fol. 58a, and the Triad of the Blemishes of the Women of Ulster, ib. 43b. [79] As to the names Drystan (also Trystan) and Essyllt, see the footnote on p. 480 above. [80] This was meant to explain the unusual term g6rdueichyat, also written g6rdueichat, g6rueichyat, and gwrddfeichiad. This last comes in the modern spelling of iii. 101, where this clause is not put in the middle of the Triad but at the end. [81] The editor of this version seems to have supposed Pendaran to have been a place in Dyfed! But his ignorance leaves us no evidence that he had a different story before him. [82] This word is found written in Mod. Welsh Annwfn, but it has been mostly superseded by the curtailed form Annwn, which appears twice in the Mabinogi of Math. These words have been studied by M. Gaidoz in Meyer and Stern's Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, i. 29-34, where he equates Annwfn with the Breton anauon, which is a plural used collectively for the souls of the departed, the other world. His view, however, of these interesting words has since been mentioned in the same Zeitschrift, iii. 184-5, and opposed in the Annales de Bretagne, xi. 488. [83] Edited by Professor Kuno Meyer (London, 1892): see for instance pp. 76-8. [84] See Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 256, and now the Irish Text Society's Fled Bricrend, edited with a translation by George Henderson, pp. 8, 9. [85] Windisch, ibid. pp. 99-105. [86] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 196, and Guest's trans., i. 302, where the Welsh words a gol6ython o gic meluoch are rendered 'and collops of the flesh of the wild boar,' which can hardly be correct; for the mel in mel-uoch, or mel-foch in the modern spelling, is the equivalent of the Irish melg, 'milk.' So the word must refer either to a pig that had been fed on cows' milk or else a sucking pig. The former is the more probable meaning, but one is not helped to decide by the fact, that the word is still sometimes used in books by writers who imagine that they have here the word mel, 'honey,' and that the compound means pigs whose flesh is as sweet as honey: see Dr. Pughe's Dictionary, where melfoch is rendered 'honey swine,' whatever that may mean. [87] Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 133, where laith lemnacht = Welsh llaeth llefrith, 'sweet milk.' [88] Collfrewi was probably, like Gwenfrewi, a woman's name: this is a point of some importance when taken in connexion with what was said at p. 326 above as to Gwydion and Coll's magic. [89] This reminds one of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Henvinus, whom he makes into dux Cornubiæ and father of Cunedagius or Cuneda: see ii. 12, 15. Probably Geoffrey's connecting such names as those of Cuneda and Dyfnwal Moelmud (ii. 17) with Cornwall is due to the fact, that the name of the Dumnonia of the North had been forgotten long before that of the Dumnonia to be identified with Devon and Cornwall. [90] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 104, and the Oxford Bruts, p. 292. [91] See the Oxford Bruts, pp. 299, 317, 345-6, 348, 384. I learn from Prof. Anwyl that Castell Penwedig is still remembered at Llanfihangel Genau'r Glyn as the old name of Castell Gwallter in that parish. [92] See his note in Owen's Pembrokeshire, p. 237, where he also notices Aber Tarogi, and the editor's notes to p. 55. [93] Mergaed for Mengwaed hardly requires any explanation; and as to Breat or rather Vreat, as it occurs in mutation, we have only to suppose the original carelessly written Vreac for Vreach, and we have the usual error of neglecting the stroke indicating the n, and the very common one of confounding c with t. This first-mentioned name should possibly be analysed into Mengw-aed or Menw-aed for an Irish Menb-aed, with the menb, 'little,' noticed at p. 510 below; in that case one might compare such compounds of Aed as Beo-aed and Lug-aed in the Martyrology of Gorman. Should this prove well founded the Mod. Welsh transcription of Menwaed should be Menwaed. I have had the use of other versions of the Triads from MSS. in the Peniarth collection; but they contribute nothing of any great importance as regards the proper names in the passages here in question. [94] See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 41, 98, and Guest's trans., iii. 313. [95] See Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniæ, vi. 19, viii. 1, 2; also Giraldus, Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 8 (p. 133). [96] Itinerarium Kambriæ, ii. 9 (p. 136). [97] Menw's name is to be equated with the Irish word menb, 'little, small,' and connected with the Welsh derivative di-fenw-i, 'belittling or reviling': it will be seen that he takes the form of a bird, and his designation Menw fab Teirgwaed might perhaps be rendered 'Little, son of Three-Cries.' [98] Identified by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society, 1895-6, p. 73, with a place in Leinster called Sescenn Uairbeóil, 'the Marsh of Uairbhél,' where Uairbhél may possibly be a man's name, but more likely that of a pass or gap described as Cold-mouth: compare the Slack or Sloc in the Isle of Man, called in Manx 'the big Mouth of the Wind.' The Irish name comes near in part to the Welsh Esgeir Oervel or Oerfel, which means 'the mountain Spur of cold Weather.' [99] The word used in the text is ystyr, which now means 'meaning or signification'; but it is there used in the sense of 'history,' or of the Latin 'historia,' from which it is probably borrowed. [100] In the original his designation is Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoed, and the man so called is in the Kulhwch credited with the mastery of all languages, including those of certain birds and quadrupeds. Gwalstawt, found written also gwalstot, is the Anglo-Saxon word wealhstód, 'an interpreter,' borrowed. The name Gwrhyr is possibly identical with that of Ferghoir, borne by the Stentor of Fionn mac Cumhaill's following. Ferghoir's every shout is said to have been audible over three cantreds. Naturally one who was to parley with a savage host had good reason to cultivate a far-reaching voice, if he wished to be certain of returning to his friends. For more about it see the footnote at p. 489 of my Hibbert Lectures. [101] The original has Pelumyawc, p. 138, and the name occurs in the (Red Book) Bruts, p. 355, as Pelunyawc, and p. 411, as Pelunea(wc) between the commots of Amgoed and Velfrey. The identification here suggested comes from Mr. Phillimore, who has seen that Peuliniawc must be a derivative from the name Paulinus, that is of the Paulinus, probably, who is mentioned in an ancient inscription at Llandysilio. There are other churches called after Tysilio, so this one used to be distinguished as Llandysilio yn Nyfed, that is, Llandysilio-in-Dyfed; but the pronunciation was much the same as if it had been written Llandysilio yn Yfed, meaning 'Llandysilio a-drinking,' 'whereof arose a merrye jest,' as George Owen tells us in his Pembrokeshire, p. 9. It is now sometimes called Llandysilio'r Gynffon, or 'Llandysilio of the Tail,' from the situation of a part of the parish on a strip, as it were a tail, of Carmarthenshire land running into Pembrokeshire. [102] This Aber Towy appears to have been a town with a harbour in 1042, for we read in Brut y Tywysogion of a cruel engagement fought there between Gruffyd ab Llewelyn and Howel ab Edwin, who, with Irish auxiliaries, tried to effect a landing. Not long ago a storm, carrying away the accumulation of sand, laid bare a good deal of the site. It is to be hoped that excavations will be made soon on the spot. [103] See the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion, 1894-5, pp. 146-7. There are a good many clyns about South Wales, but our etymologists are careful to have them in most cases written glyn, 'a glen.' Our story, however, shows that the word came under the influence of glyn long ago, for it should be, when accented, clûn, corresponding to Irish cluain, 'a meadow.' We have it as clun in Clun Kein in the Black Book, p. 34b, where I guess it to mean the place now called Cilcain, 'Kilken' in Flintshire, which is accented on the first syllabic; and we have had it in y Clun Hir, 'the Long Meadow,' mentioned above at p. 22. [104] Cas Llychwr, 'Loughor Castle,' is supposed to involve in its Llychwr, Llwchwr, or Loughor, the name of the place in the Antoninus Itinerary, 484, 1, to wit Leucarum; but the guttural spirant ch between vowels in Llychwr argues a phonetic process which was Goidelic rather than Brythonic. [105] Llwydawc Gouynnyat would seem to mean Llwydawc the Asker or Demander, and the epithet occurs also in the Kulhwch in the name Gallcoyt Gouynynat (Mabinogion, 106), to be read doubtless G. Gouynnyat, 'G. who asks or demands': possibly one should rather compare with Go-uynnyat the word tra-mynyat, 'a wild boar': see Williams' Seint Greal, pp. 374, 381. However, the epithets in the Twrch Trwyth story do not count so far as concerns the place-names derived. [106] Other instances of the like shortening occur in words like cefnder, 'a cousin,' for cefnderw, and ardel, 'to own,' for ardelw. As to Amman, it enters, also, into a group of Glamorganshire place-names: witness Aber Amman and Cwm Amman, near Aberdare. [107] It should perhaps be looked for near Brechfa, where there is a Hafod Grugyn, and, as I am told, a Garth also which is, however, not further defined. For it appears that both Brechfa and Cayo, though now in Carmarthenshire, once belonged to Keredigion: see Owen's Pembrokeshire, p. 216. But perhaps another spot should be considered: J. D. Rhys, the grammarian (p. 22 above), gives in the Peniarth MS. 118 a list of caers or castles called after giants, and among them is that of Grugyn in the parish, he says, of 'Llan Hilar.' I have, however, not been able to hear of any trace of the name there, though I should guess the spot to have been Pen y Castell, called in English Castle Hill, the residence of Mr. Loxdale in the parish of Llanilar, near Aberystwyth. [108] I have re-examined the passage, and I have no doubt that the editors were wrong in printing Gregyn: the manuscript has Grugyn, which comes in the last line of column 841. Now besides that the line is in part somewhat faint, the scribe has evidently omitted something from the original story, and I guess that the lacuna occurs in the first line of the next column after the words y llas, 'was killed,' which seem to end the story of Grugyn. [109] Those who have discovered an independent Welsh appellative wy meaning water are not to be reasoned with. The Welsh wy only means an egg, while the meaning of Gwy as the name of the Wye has still to be discovered. [110] This name also occurs in a passage quoted in Jones' Brecknock, ii. 501, from a Carte MS. which he treats as relating to the year 1234: the MS. is said to be at the Bodleian, though I have not succeeded in tracing it. But Jones gives Villa de Ystraddewi, and speaks of a chapel of St. John's of Stradtewi, which must have been St. John's Church, at Tretower, one of the ecclesiastical districts of Cwm Du: see also p. 497. The name is probably to be treated as Strad or Strat d'Ewe. [111] A river may in Welsh be briefly called after anybody or anything. Thus in North Cardiganshire there is a stream called Einon, that is to say 'Einion's river,' and the flat land on both sides of it is called Ystrad Einon, which looks as if one might translate it Einion's Strath, but it means the Strath of Einion's river, or of the stream called Einon, as one will at once see from the upper course of the water being called Blaen Einon, which can only mean the upper course of the Einon river. So here yw is in English 'yew,' but Ystrad Yw and Llygad Yw have to be rendered the Strath of the Yew burn and the Eye of the Yew burn respectively. It is moreover felt by the Welsh-speaking people of the district that yw is the plural of ywen, 'a single yew,' and as there is only one yew at the source somebody had the brilliant idea of making the name right by calling it Ywen, and this has got into the maps as Ewyn, as though it were the Welsh word for foam. Who began it I cannot say, but Theophilus Jones has it in his History of the County of Brecknock, published in 1809. Nevertheless the name is still Yw, not Ywen or Ewyn, in the Welsh of the district, though Lewis gives it as Ywen in his article on Llanvihangel-Cwm-Du. [112] For exact information as to the Gaer, the Yw, and Llygad Yw, I am indebted chiefly to the courtesy of Lord Glanusk, the owner of that historic strath, and to the Rector of Llansantffread, who made a special visit to Llygad Yw for me; also to Mr. Francis Evans, of the Farmers' Arms at the Bwlch, who would be glad to change the name Llygad Yw into Llygad dan yr Ywen, 'the Source beneath the Yew-tree,' partly on account of the position 'of the spring emanating under the but of the yew tree,' and partly because there is only a single yew there. Theophilus Jones complained a century ago that the Gaer in Ystrad Yw had not attracted the attention it deserved; and I have been greatly disappointed to find that the Cambrian Archæological Association has had nothing to say of it. At any rate, I have tried the Index of its proceedings and found only a single mention of it. The whole district is said to teem with antiquities, Celtic, Roman, and Norman. [113] Theophilus Jones, in his Brecknockshire, ii. 502, describes Miarth or Myarth as a 'very extensive' camp, and proceeds as follows:--'Another British camp of less extent is seen on a knoll on Pentir hill, westward of the Rhiangoll and the parish church of Cwmdu, above a wood called Coed y Gaer, and nearly opposite to the peak or summit called Cloch y Pibwr, or the piper's call.' This would probably be more accurately rendered the Piper's Rock or Stone, with cloch treated as the Goidelic word for a stone rather than the Brythonic word for a bell: how many more clochs in our place-names are Goidelic? [114] The Twrch would seem to have crossed somewhere opposite the mouth of the Wye, let us say not very far from Aust; but he escapes to Cornwall without anything happening to him, so we are left without any indication whether the story originally regarded Kernyw as including the Penrhyn Awstin of the Coll story given at p. 503. [115] For this suggestion I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Gaster in the Cymmrodorion's Transactions for 1894-5, p. 34, and also for references in point to M. Cosquin's Contes Populaires de la Lorraine, i. 134, 141, 152. Compare also such Gaelic stories as that of the Bodach Glas, translated by Mrs. Mackellar, in the Celtic Magazine, xii. 12-6, 57-64. [116] In some native Welsh words we have an option between a prefix ym and am, an option arising out of the fact that originally it was neither ym nor am, but m, for an earlier mbi, of the same origin as Latin ambi and Greek amphi, 'around, about.' The article, its meaning in the combination in banbh being forgotten, would fall under the influence of the analogy of the prefix, now am or ym, so far as the pronunciation was concerned. [117] Possibly the benwic was thrown in to correct the reckoning when the redactor discovered, as he thought, that he had one too many to account for: it has been pointed out that he had forgotten that one had been killed in Ireland. [118] It is just possible, however, that in an older version it was named, and that the place was no other than the rock just above Ystrad Yw, called Craig Lwyd or, as it is said to be pronounced, Craig Llwyd. If so, Llwyd would seem to have been substituted for the dissyllable Llwydog: compare the same person called Llwyt and Llwydeu in the Mabinogion, pp. 57, 110, 136. [119] The name is well known in that of Llanrhaiadr yn Mochnant, 'Llanrhaiadr in Mochnant,' in the north of Montgomeryshire. [120] Between Colwyn Bay and Llandudno Junction, on the Chester and Holyhead line of railway. [121] I have discussed some of the traces of the Goidels in Wales in the Arch. Camb. for 1895, pp. 18-39, 264-302; 1899, pp. 160-7. [122] In fact the genitive Grúcind occurs in the Book of Leinster, fo. 359a. [123] The sort of question one would like to ask in that district is, whether there is a spot there called Bed y Rhyswyr, Carn y Rhyswyr, or the like. The word rhyswr is found applied to Arthur himself in the Life of Gruffyd ab Cynan, as the equivalent probably of the Latin Arthur Miles (p. 538 below): see the Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 590. Similarly the soldiers or champions of Christ are called rys6yr crist in the Welsh Life of St. David: see the Elucidarium and other Tracts (in the Anecdota Oxoniensia), p. 118. [124] Rudvyw Rys would be in Modern Welsh Rhudfyw Rys, and probably means Rhudfyw the Champion or Fighter, as Rhys is likely to have been synonymous with rhyswr. The corresponding Irish name was Russ or Ross, genitive Rossa, and it appears to come from the same origin as Irish ross, 'a headland, a forest,' Welsh rhos, 'moorland, uncultivated ground.' The original meaning was presumably 'exposed or open and untilled land'; and Stokes supposes the word to stand for an early (p)ro-sto- with sto of the same origin as Latin sto, 'I stand,' and as the English word stand itself. In that case Ros, genitive Rossa, Welsh Rhys, would mean one who stands out to fight, a prostatês, so to say. But not only are these words of a different declension implying a nominative Ro-stus, but the Welsh one must have been once accented Ro-stús on the ending which is now lost, otherwise there is no accounting for the change of the remaining vowel into y. Other instances postulating an early Welsh accentuation of the same kind are very probably llyg, 'a fieldmouse,' Irish luch, 'a mouse'; pryd, 'form,' Irish cruth; pryf, 'a worm,' Irish cruim; so also with ych, 'an ox,' and nyth, 'a nest,' Irish nett, genitive nitt, derived by Stokes from nizdo-, which, however, must have been oxytone, like the corresponding Sanskrit nidhá. There is one very interesting compound of rhys, namely the saint's name Rhwydrys, as it were Redo-rostus to be compared with Gaulish Eporedo-rix, which is found in Irish analysed into rí Eochraidhi, designating the fairy king who was father to Étáin: see Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 119. Bledrws, Bledrus, as contrasted with Bledrys, Bledris, postulate Goidelic accentuation, while one has to treat Bledruis as a compromise between Bledrws and Bledris, unless it be due to misreading a Bledruif (Book of Llan Dâv, pp. 185, 221-2, and Arch. Camb. for 1875, p. 370). The Goidelic accent at an early date moved to first syllables, hence cruth (with its vowel influenced by the u of a stem qurt) under the stress accent, became, when unstressed, cridh (from a simplified stem crt) as in Noicride (also Nóicrothach, Windisch, ibid., pp. 259, 261, 266) and Luicridh (Four Masters, A.D. 748), Luccraid, genitive Luccraide (Book of Leinster, 359f), Luguqurit- in Ogam. [125] These operations cannot have been the first of the kind in the district, as a writer in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1862, pp. 159-60, in extracting a note from the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries (series II, vol. i. p. 10) relative to the discovery of the canoe, adds a statement based on the same volume, p. 161, to the effect that 'within half a mile of Llyn Llydaw there are the remains of a British town, not marked in the ordnance map, comprising the foundations of numerous circular dwellings. In some of them quantities of the refuse of copper smeltings were found. This town should be visited and examined with care by some of the members of our Association.' This was written not far short of forty years ago; but I am not aware that the Association has done anything positive as yet in this matter. [126] According to Jenkins' Bed Gelert, p. 300, the canoe was subsequently sold for a substantial price, and nobody seems to know what has eventually become of it. It is to be hoped this is not correct. [127] See Holder's Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, s. v. Litavia. [128] For these notes I am indebted to Williams' Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen, and to Rees' Welsh Saints, pp. 187, 191; for our Paulinus is not yet recognized in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. His day was Nov. 22. [129] There are two other inscriptions in South Wales which contain the name Paulinus, one on a stone found in the neighbourhood of Port Talbot in Glamorgan, reading Hic iacit Cantusus Pater Paulinus, which seems to imply that Paulinus set up the stone to the memory of a son of his named Cantusus. The other, found on the site of the extinct church of Llanwrthwl, near Dolau Cothi in Carmarthenshire, is a remarkable one in a kind of hexameter to the following effect:-- Servatur fidæi patrieque semper amator Hic Paulinus iacit cultor pientisimus æqui. Whether we have one or two or three Paulini in these inscriptions I cannot say. Welsh writers, however, have made the name sometimes into Pawl Hên, 'Paul the Aged,' but, so far as I can see, without rhyme or reason. [130] Since I chanced on this inscription my friend Professor Lindsay of St. Andrews has called my attention to Plautus' Asinaria, 499 (II. iv. 92), where one reads, Periphanes Rhodo mercator dives, 'Periphanes a wealthy merchant of Rhodes'; he finds also Æsculapius Epidauro (Arnobius, 278. 18), and elsewhere Nepos Philippis and Priscus Vienna. [131] See Stokes' Patrick, pp. 16, 412. [132] This will give the reader some idea of the pre-Norman orthography of Welsh, with l for the sound of ll and b for that of v. [133] The softening of Cafall to Gafall could not take place after the masculine corn, 'a horn'; but it was just right after the feminine carn, 'a cairn.' So here corn is doubtless a colloquial corruption; and so is probably the t at the end, for as llt has frequently been reduced to ll, as in cyfaill, 'a friend,' from the older cyfaillt, in Medieval Irish comalta, 'a foster brother or sister,' the language has sometimes reversed the process, as when one hears hollt for holl, 'all,' or reads fferyllt, 'alchemist, chemist,' for fferyll from Vergilius. The Nennian orthography does not much trouble itself to distinguish between l and ll, and even when Carn Cabal was written the pronunciation was probably Carn Gavall, the mutation being ignored in the spelling, which frequently happens in the case even of Welsh people who never fail to mutate their consonants in speaking. Lastly, though it was a dog that was called Cafall, it is remarkable that the word has exactly the form taken by caballus in Welsh: for cafall, as meaning some sort of a horse, see Silvan Evans' Geiriadur. [134] An instance or two of Trwyd will be found in a note by Silvan Evans in Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 393. [135] For more about these names and kindred ones, see a note of mine in the Arch. Cambrensis, 1898, pp. 61-3. [136] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 398-401. [137] See the Black Book of Carmarthen in Evans' facsimile, p. 47b; Thomas Stephens' Gododin, p. 146; Dent's Malory, preface, p. xxvi; and Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 51, 63, 155. [138] See the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen for 1890, p. 512. [139] See De Courson's Cartulaire de l'abbaye de Redon, pp. 163, 186. [140] See Reeves' note to the passage just cited in his edition of Adamnan's Vita, pp. 6, 7. [141] Here possibly one might mention likewise Gilmin Troetu or Troeddu, 'Gilmin of the Black Foot,' the legendary ancestor (p. 444) of the Wynns of Glyn Llifon, in Carnarvonshire. So the name might be a shortening of some such a combination as Gilla-min, 'the attendant of Min or Men,' a name we have also in Mocu-Min, 'Min's Kin,' a family or sept so called more than once by Adamnan. Perhaps one would also be right in regarding as of similar origin the name of Gilberd or Gilbert, son of Cadgyffro, who is mentioned in the Kulhwch, and in the Black Book, fo. 14b: at any rate I am not convinced that the name is to be identified with the Gillebert of the Normans, unless that was itself derived from Celtic. But there is a discrepancy between Gilmin, Gilbert, with unmutated m and b, and Gilvaethwy with its mutation consonant v. In all three, however, Gil, had it been Welsh, would probably have appeared as Gill, as indicated by the name Gilla in the Kulhwch (Oxford Mabinogion, p. 110), in which we seem to have the later form of the old name Gildas. Compare such Irish instances as Fiachna and Cera, which seem to imply stems originally ending in -asa-s (masculine) and -asa (feminine); and see the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1899, P. 402. [142] An article in the Rennes Dindsenchas is devoted to Liath: see the Rev. Celtique, xvi. 78-9. As to Celtchar, genitive Celtchair, the name would seem to have meant 'him who is fond of concealment.' The Mabinogi form of the Welsh name is Llwyt uab kil coet, which literally meant 'Ll. son of (him of) the Retreat of the Wood.' But in the Twrch Trwyth story, under a slightly different form of designation, we appear to have the same person as Llwydeu mab kelcoet and Llwydeu mab kel coet, which would seem to mean 'Ll. son of (him of) the Hidden Wood.' It looks as if the bilingual story-teller of the language transition had not been able to give up the cel of Celtchar at the same time that he rendered celt by coet, 'wood or trees,' as if identifying it with cailt: witness the Medieval Irish caill, 'a wood or forest,' dative plural cailtib, derivative adjective caillteamhuil, 'silvester'; and see Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 410, s. v. caill. [143] Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 217, and the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 47b. [144] There has been a good deal of confusion as to the name Llyr: thus for instance, the Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth make the Leir of his Latin into Llyr, and the personage intended is represented as the father of three daughters named Gonerilla, Regan, and Cordeilla or Cordelia. But Cordelia is probably the Creurdilad of the Black Book, p. 49b, and the Creidylat of the Kulhwch story (the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 113, 134), and her father was Llûd Llawereint (= Irish Nuada Airgetlám) and not Llyr. Then as to the Leir of Geoffrey's Latin, that name looks as if given its form on the strength of the legr- of Legraceaster, the Anglo-Saxon name of the town now called Leicester, of which William of Malmesbury (Gesta Pontificum, § 176) says, Legrecestra est civitas antiqua in Mediterraneis Anglis, a Legra fluvio præterfluente sic vocata. Mr. Stevenson regards Legra as an old name of the Soar, and as surviving in that of the village of Leire, spelled Legre in Domesday. It seems to point back to a Legere or Ligere, which recalls Liger, 'the Loire.' [145] I say in that case, as this is not quite conclusive; for Welsh has an appellative llyr, 'mare, æquor,' which may be a generalizing of Llyr; or else it may represent an early lerio-s from lero-s (see p. 549 below), and our Llyr may possibly be this and not the Irish genitive Lir retained as Llyr. That, however, seems to me improbable on the whole. [146] Here it is relevant to direct the reader's attention to Nutt's Legend of the Holy Grail, p. 28, where, in giving an abstract of the Petit saint Graal, he speaks of the Brân of that romance, in French Bron, nominative Brons, as having the keeping of the Grail and dwelling 'in these isles of Ireland.' [147] The Dôn and Llyr groups are not brought into conflict or even placed in contact with one another; and the reason seems to be that the story-teller wanted to introduce the sons of Beli as supreme in Britain after the death of Brân. Beli and his sons are also represented in Maxen's Dream as ruling over Britain when the Roman conqueror arrives. What is to be made of Beli may be learnt from The Welsh People, pp. 41-3. [148] These things one learns about Lir from the story mentioned in the text as the 'Fate of the Children of Lir,' as to which it is right, however, to say that no ancient manuscript version is known: see M. d'Arbois dc Jubainville's Essai d'un Catalogue de la Litérature épique de l'Irlande, p. 8. [149] See Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 303, also 108-9, where the fragment of the poem as given in the Book of Taliessin is printed. The line here quoted has been rendered in vol. i. 286, 'With Matheu and Govannon,' which places the old pagan Gofannon in rather unexpected company. A few lines later in the poem mention is made of a Kaer Gofannon: where was that? Skene, in a note on it (ii. 452), says that 'In an old list of the churches of Linlithgow, printed by Theiner, appears Vicaria de Gumanyn. The place meant is probably Dalmeny, on the Firth of Forth, formerly called Dumanyn.' This is interesting only as showing that Gumanyn is probably to be construed Dumanyn, and that Dalmeny represents an ancient Dún Manann in a neighbourhood where one already has Clach Manann, 'the stone of Manau,' and Sliabh Manann, 'Mountain of Manau' now respectively Clackmannan and Slamannan, in what Nennius calls Manau Guotodin. [150] This occurred unrecognized and, therefore, unaltered by the scribe of the Nennian Pedigree no. xvi in the Cymmrodor, ix. 176, as he found it written in an old spelling, Louhen. map. Guid gen. map. Caratauc. map. Cinbelin, where Caradog is made father of Gwydion; for in Guid-gen we seem to have the compound name which suggested Gwydion. This agrees with the fact that the Mabinogi of Math treats Gwydion as the father of Llew Llawgyffes; but the pedigree itself seems to have been strangely put together. [151] See Bertrand's Religion des Gaulois, pp. 314-9, 343-5, and especially the plates. [152] The Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 40-3; Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 124-8. [153] See Louis Leger's Cyrille et Méthode (Paris, 1868), p. 22. [154] See Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ Historia Scriptorum, xii. 794. The whole passage is worth quoting; it runs thus: Erat autem simulacrum triceps, quod in uno corpore tria capita habens Triglaus vocabatur; quod solum accipiens, ipsa capitella sibi cohærentia, corpore comminuto, secum inde quasi pro tropheo asportavit, et postea Romam pro argumento conversionis illorum transmisit. [155] See The Welsh People, pp. 56-7. [156] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 147; Guest's Mabinogion, ii. 398. [157] This may have meant the 'Blue Slate or Flagstone'; but there is no telling so long as the place is not identified. It may have been in the Pictish district of Galloway, or else somewhere beyond the Forth. Query whether it was the same place as Llech Gelydon in Prydyn, mentioned in Boned y Saint: see the Myvyrian Archaiology, ii. 49. [158] The story of Kulhwch and Olwen has a different legend which represents Nynio and Peibio changed by the Almighty into two oxen called Ychen Banna6c: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 121, also my Arthurian Legend, p. 304, and the remarks which are to follow in this chapter with respect to those oxen. [159] For the story in Welsh see the Iolo MSS., pp. 193-4, where a footnote tells the reader that it was copied from the book of 'Iaco ab Dewi.' From his father's manuscript, Taliesin Williams printed an abstract in English in his notes to his poem entitled the Doom of Colyn Dolphyn (London, 1837), pp. 119-20, from which it will be found translated into German in the notes to San-Marte's Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniæ, pp. 402-3. [160] Oxford Bruts, p. 213: compare p. 146, together with Geoffrey's Latin, vii. 3, x. 3. [161] See Kölbing's Altenglische Bibliothek, the fifth volume of which consists of Libeaus Desconus, edited by Max Kaluza (Leipsic, 1890), lines 163, 591, and Introduction, p. cxxxxiv. For calling my attention to this, I have to thank my friend, Mr. Henry Bradley. [162] Malory's Morte Darthur, i. 27: see also i. 17-8, 28; ii. 6, 8-9. [163] See Evans' Autotype Facsimile, fo. 33a: could the spot so called (in the Welsh text argel Ardudwy) be somewhere in the neighbourhood of Llyn Irdyn (p. 148), a district said to be rich in the remains of a prehistoric antiquity? J. Evans, author of the North Wales volume of the Beauties of England and Wales, says, after hurriedly enumerating such antiquities, p. 909: 'Perhaps in no part of Britain is there still remaining such an assemblage of relicks belonging to druidical rites and customs as are found in this place, and the adjacent parts.' [164] As to Rion, see Gaston Paris and Ulrich's Merlin (Paris, 1886), i. 202, 239-46. Other instances will readily occur to the reader, such as the Domesday Roelend or Roelent for Rothelan, in Modern Welsh Rhudlan; but for more instances of this elision by French and Anglo-Norman scribes of vowel-flanked d and th, see Notes and Queries for Oct. 28, 1899, pp. 351-2, and Nov. 18, p. 415; also Vising's Étude sur le Dialecte anglo-normand du xije Siècle (Upsala, 1882), p. 88; and F. Hildebrand's article on Domesday, in the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 1884, p. 360. According to Suchier in Gröber's Grundriss der rom. Philologie, i. 581, this process of elision became complete in the twelfth century: see also Schwan's Grammatik des Altfranzösischen (Leipsic, 1888), p. 65. For most of these references, I have to thank my friend and neighbour, Mr. Stevenson of Exeter College. [165] It comes from the same Llwyd MS. which has already been cited at pp. 233-4: see the Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 209-10. [166] I notice in the maps a spot called Panylau, which is nearer to Llyn Gwynain than to Llyn y Dinas. [167] See Morris' Celtic Remains, s. v. Serigi, and the Iolo MSS., p. 81. [168] The Iolo MSS., p. 81, have Syrigi Wydel son of Mwrchan son of Eurnach Hen. [169] See Triads, ii. 12, and the Mabinogion, p. 301: in Triads, i. 72, iii. 86, instead of Solor we have Doler and Dolor. [170] See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 125-8. [171] Evans' Autotype Facsimile, fo. 48a; see also my preface to Dent's Malory, p. xxvii; likewise p. 457 above. [172] See my Lectures on Welsh Philology, pp. 377-9; and, as to the Caer Gai tradition, the Arch. Camb. for 1850, p. 204, and Morris' Celtic Remains, p. 63. I may add as to Llanuwchllyn, that the oldest inhabitants pronounce that name Llanuwllyn. [173] I cannot discover that it has ever been investigated by the Cambrian Archæological Association or any other antiquaries. Compare the case of the neighbouring site with the traces of the copper smeltings mentioned in the note on p. 532 above. To my knowledge the Cambrians have twice failed to make their way nearer to the ruins than Llanberis, or at most Llanberis Pass, significantly called in Welsh Pen Gorffwysfa for the older name Gorffwysfa Beris, 'Peris' Resting-place': thus we loyally follow the example of resting set by the saint, and leave alone the archæology of the district. [174] The subject has been discussed at length by Mr. Jacobs, in a note to the legend, in his Celtic Fairy Tales, pp. 259-64; and quite recently by Mr. D. E. Jenkins in his Bed Gelert (Portmadoc, 1899), pp. 56-74. [175] Professor J. Morris Jones, to whom I am indebted for the particulars connected with these names, informs me that the local pronunciation is Drónwy; but Mrs. Rhys remembers that, years ago, at Amlwch, it was always sounded Darónwy. The Professor also tells me that Dernog is never made into Dyrnog: the Kuwgh of the Record is doubtless to be corrected into Knwgh, and probably also Dornok into Dernok, which is the reading in the margin. Cornewe is doubtless the district name which we have still in Llanfair y'Nghornwy, 'St. Mary's in Cornwy': the mill is supposed to be that of Bodronyn. [176] The Book of Llan Dáv has an old form Cinust for an earlier Cingust or Congust. The early Brythonic nominative must have been Cunogústu-s and the early Goidelic Cúnagusu-s, and from the difference of accentuation come the o of Conghus, Connws, and the y of the Welsh Cynwst: compare Irish Fergus and Welsh Gurgúst, later Gurúst (one syllable), whence Grwst, finally the accented rwst of Llanrwst, the name of a small town on the river Conwy. Moreover the accentuation Cúnogusi is the reason why it was not written Cunogussi: compare Bárrivendi and Véndubari in one and the same inscription from Carmarthenshire. [177] Such as that of a holding called Wele Dauid ap Gwelsantfrait, the latter part of which is perversely written or wrongly read so for Gwas Sant Freit, a rendering into Welsh of the very Goidelic name, Mael-Brigte, 'Servant of St. Bridget.' This Wele, with Wele Conus and Wele More, is contained in the Extent marginally headed Darronwy cum Hameletta de Kuwghdernok. [178] This comes in Triad i. 49 = ii. 40; as to which it is to be noted that the name is Catwallawn in i and ii, but Caswallawn in iii. 27, as in the Oxford Mabinogion. [179] Serrigi, Serigi, or Syrigi looks like a Latin genitive torn out of its context, but derived in the last resort from the Norse name Sigtrygg-r, which the Four Masters give as Sitriucc or Sitriug: see their entries from 891 to 1091. The Scandinavians of Dublin and its neighbourhood were addicted to descents on the shores of North Wales; and we have possibly a trace of occupation by them in Gauell Seirith, 'Seirith's holding,' in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 63, where the place in question is represented as being in the manor of Cemmaes, in Anglesey. The name Seirith was probably that written by the Four Masters as Sichfraith Sichraidh (also Serridh, A. D. 971), that is to say the Norse Sigræd-r before it lost the f retained in its German equivalent Siegfried. We seem to detect Seirith later as Seri in place-names in Anglesey--as for example in the name of the farms called Seri Fawr and Seri Bach between Llandrygarn and Llannerch y Med, also in a Pen Seri, 'Seri's Knoll or Hill,' at Bryn Du, near Ty Croes station, and in another Pen Seri on Holyhead Island, between Holyhead and Llain Goch, on the way to the South Stack. Lastly Dugdale, v. 672b mentions a Claud Seri, 'Seri's Dyke or Ditch,' as being somewhere in the neighbourhood of Llanwnda, in Carnarvonshire--not very far perhaps from the Gwyrfai and the spot where the Iolo MSS. (pp. 81-2) represent Serrigi repulsed by Caswallon and driven back to Anglesey, previous to his being crushed at Cerrig y Gwydyl. The reader must, however, be warned that the modern Seri is sometimes pronounced Sieri or Sheri, which suggests the possibility of some of the instances involving rather a form of the English word sheriff. [180] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 546-8. [181] The case with regard to the extreme south of the Principality is somewhat similar; for inscriptions in Glamorgan seem to bring the last echoes there of Goidelic speech down to the seventh century: see the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, pp. 160-6. [182] See Evans' Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language, p. 837, where the Welsh is quoted from p. 131 of the Peniarth MS. 134. [183] See my Arthurian Legend, p. 70. [184] See the Revue Celtique, ii. 197-9, where Dr. Stokes has published the original with a translation and notes; also p. 435 above. [185] The gentlemen to whom I am chiefly indebted for the information embodied in the foregoing notes are the following four: the Rev. John Jones of Ystad Meurig, Professor Robert Williams of St. David's College, the Vicar of Llandewi Brefi, Mr. J. H. Davies of Cwrt Mawr and Lincoln's Inn (p. 354); and as to the 'wild cattle' story of Llyn Eidwen, Mr. J. E. Rogers of Aber Meurig is my authority. [186] So I had it many years ago from an old woman from Llangeitho, and so Mr. J. G. Evans remembers his mother repeating it; but now it is made into Llan Dewi Brefi braith, with the mutations disregarded. [187] See the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1868, p. 88. [188] See ib. p. 87. I have ascertained on the best authority the identity of the present owner of the horn, though I have not succeeded in eliciting from him any reply to my inquiries. I conclude that there is something wrong with the postal service in my native county. [189] Several passages bearing on the word bannog have been brought together in Silvan Evans' Geiriadur. He gives the meaning as 'high, lofty, prominent, conspicuous.' The word is derived from ban, 'a summit or peak,' plural bannau, so common in the names of hills and mountains in South Wales--as in y Fan in Carmarthenshire, Bannwchdeni (p. 22) in Breconshire, Pen y Bannau near Pont Rhyd Fendigaid in Cardiganshire, Bannau Brycheiniog and Bannau Sir Gaer, the mountains called in English the Beacons of Breconshire and Carmarthenshire respectively. In North Wales we have it possibly in the compound Tryfan, which the mapsters will have us call Tryfaen; and the corresponding word in Scotch Gaelic appears in such names as Ben Nevis and the like, while in Irish the word benn meant a horn or peak. I am, nevertheless, not at all sure that Ychen Bannog meant horned oxen or even tall and conspicuous oxen; for there is a Welsh word man, meaning a spot or mark (Latin menda), and the adjective was mannawc, mannog, 'spotted, marked, particoloured.' Now in the soft mutation all four words--ban, bannog, and man, mannog--would begin with f = v, which might help to confusion between them. This may be illustrated in a way from Williams' Seint Greal (pp. 88-92), where Gwalchmai has a dream in which he sees 150 bulls with spots or patches of colour on them, except three only which were 'without any spot in the world' (neb ryw vann or byt), or as it is also put 'without spot' (heb vann). This word vann, applied to the colour of the bulls, comes from the radical form mann; and the adjective was mannawc or mannog, which would mean spotted, particoloured, or having patches of colour. Now the oxen of Welsh legends are also sometimes called Ychen Mannog (pp. 131-2), and it is possible, that, whichever way the term is written, it should be interpreted to mean spotted, marked, or particoloured oxen. I take it also that Llan Dewi Frefi fraith was meant as synonymous with Llan Dewi Frefi fannog, which did not fit the rhyme. Lastly, the Dyfed use of the saying Fel dau ych bannog, 'Like two Bannog oxen,' in the sense of 'equal and inseparable companions' (as instanced in the Geiriadur), sounds like the antithesis of the passage in the Kulhwch (Mabinogion, p. 121). For there we have words to the following effect: 'Though thou shouldst get that, there is something which thou wilt not get, namely the two oxen of Bannog, the one on the other side of the Bannog mountain and the other on this side, and to bring them together to draw the same plough. They are, to wit, Nynio and Peibio, whom God fashioned into oxen for their sins.' Here the difficulty contemplated was not to separate the two, but to bring them together to work under the same yoke. This is more in harmony with the story of the mad quarrel between the two brother kings bearing those names as mentioned above. [190] See the Revue Celtique, iii. 310, after Gruter, 570, 6. [191] An important paper on the Tarvos Trigaranus, from the pen of M. Salomon Reinach, will be found in the Revue Celtique, xviii. 253-66; and M. d'A. de Jubainville's remarkable equations are to be read in the same periodical, xix. 245-50: see also xx. 374-5. [192] This, we are told, was a stone with a hollow in it for pounding corn, so as to separate the husks from the grain; and such a stone stood formerly somewhere near the door of every farm house in Scotland. [193] The editor here explains in a note that 'this was a common saying formerly, when people were heard to regret trifles.' [194] I have heard of this belief in Wales late in the sixties; but the presence was assumed to be that of a witch, not of a fairy. [195] The word twt, 'tidy,' is another vocable which has found its way into Wales from the western counties of England; and though its meaning is more universally that of 'tidy or natty,' the term gwas twt, which in North Cardiganshire means a youth who is ready to run on all kinds of errands, would seem to bring us to its earlier meaning of the French tout--as if gwas twt might be rendered a 'garçon à tout'--which survives as tote in the counties of Gloucester and Hereford, as I am informed by Professor Wright. Possibly, however, one may prefer to connect twt with the nautical English word taut; but we want more light. In any case one may venture to say that colloquial Welsh swarms with words whose origin is to be sought outside the Principality. [196] See Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 144-52. [197] Ibid. for 1891, p. 246, where one will find this rhyme the subject of a note--rendered useless by a false reference--by Köhler; see also the same volume, p. 132, where Mr. Kirby gives more lines of the rhyme. [198] See Choice Notes from 'Notes and Queries,' p. 35. [199] A number of instructive instances will be found mentioned, and discussed in his wonted and lucid fashion, by Mr. Clodd in his Tom Tit Tot, pp. 80-105. [200] The Welsh spelling is caws pob, 'baked (or roasted) cheese,' so called in parts of South Wales, such as Carmarthenshire, whereas in North Wales it is caws pobi. It is best known to Englishmen as 'Welsh rabbit,' which superior persons 'ruling the roast' in our kitchens choose to make into rarebit: how they would deal with 'Scotch woodcock' and 'Oxford hare,' I do not know. I should have mentioned that copies of the Hundred Mery Talys are exceedingly scarce, and that the above, which is the seventy-sixth in the collection, has here been copied from the Cymmrodor, iii. 115-6, where we have the following sapient note:--'Cause bobe, it will be observed, is St. Peter's rendering of the phrase Caws wedi ei bobi. The chief of the Apostles apparently had only a rather imperfect knowledge of Welsh, which is not to be wondered at, as we know that even his Hebrew was far from giving satisfaction to the priests of the capital.' From these words one can only say that St. Peter would seem to have known Welsh far better than the author of that note, and that he had acquired it from natives of South Wales, perhaps from the neighbourhood of Kidwelly. I have to thank my friend Mr. James Cotton for a version of the cheese story in the Bodleian Library, namely in Malone MS. 19 (p. 144), where a certain master at Winchester School has put it into elegiacs which make St. Peter cry out with the desired effect: Tostus io Walli, tostus modo caseus. [201] See Choice Notes from 'Notes and Queries,' pp. 117-8. [202] For instance, when Cúchulainn had fallen asleep under the effect of fairy music, Fergus warned his friends that he was not to be disturbed, as he seemed to be dreaming and seeing a vision: see Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 208; also the Revue Celtique, v. 231. For parallels to the two stories in this paragraph, see Tylor's first chapter on Animism in his Primitive Culture, and especially the legend of King Gunthram, i. 442. [203] See Mr. Gomme's presidential address to the Folk-Lore Society, printed in Folk-Lore for 1892, pp. 6-7. [204] See Sale's preliminary discourse to his translation of the Koran, § iv. [205] Perhaps we may regard this as the more Goidelic account of Blodeuwed's origin: at any rate, traces of a different one have been noticed in a note at p. 439 above. [206] One version of it is given in the Myvyrian Archaiology, i. 176-8; and two other versions are to be found in the Cymmrodor, viii. 177-89, where it is suggested that the author was Iolo Goch, who flourished in the fourteenth century. See also my Arthurian Legend, pp. 57-8. [207] See also the notes on these passages, given in San-Marte's edition of Geoffrey, pp. 219, 463-5, and his Beiträge zur bretonischen und celtisch germanischen Heldensage (Quedlinburg and Leipsic, 1847), p. 81. [208] See Choice Notes, pp. 69-70. [209] See Wood-Martin's Pagan Ireland (London, 1895), p. 140. [210] See Choice Notes, p. 61, where it is also stated that the country people in Yorkshire used to give the name of souls to certain night-flying white moths. See also the Athenæum, No. 1041, Oct. 9, 1847. [211] For this also I am indebted to Wood-Martin's book, p. 140. [212] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 198, and Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 136-45. An abstract of the story will be found in the Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom, p. 502. [213] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 129a-133a; Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 117-33, more especially pp. 127-31; also my Arthurian Legend, pp. 29-33. [214] See the Book of Taliessin, poem vii, in Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 136-7; also poem viii, p. 137 et seq. [215] Some account of this process will be found in Elton's Origins of English History (London, 1882), p. 33, where he has drawn on Martin's Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1703: see pp. 204-5. [216] For one or two instances of the nomenclature in question, see pp. 76-7 above. [217] Sywedyd is probably a word of Goidelic origin: compare Irish súi, 'a sage,' genitive súad, and derivative súithe, 'wisdom.' Stokes suggests the derivation su-vet, in which case súi = su-vi, for su-viss = su-vet-s, and sú-ithe = suvetia, while the Welsh sywedyd is formally su-vetios or su-vetiios. Welsh has also syw, from súi, like dryw, 'a druid,' from Goidelic drúi. Syw, it is true, now only means elegant, tidy; but Dr. Davies of Mallwyd believed its original signification to have been 'sapiens, doctus, peritus.' The root vet is most probably to be identified with the wet of Med. Welsh gwet-id, 'a saying,' dy-wawt, 'dixit,' whence it appears that the bases were vet and vat, with the latter of which Irish fáith, 'a poet or prophet,' Latin vates, agrees, as also the Welsh gwawd, 'poetry, sarcasm,' and in Mod. Welsh, 'any kind of derision.' In the Book of Taliessin syw has, besides the plurals sywyon and sywydon (Skene, ii. 142, 152), possibly an older plural, sywet (p. 155) = su-vet-es, while for súithe = su-vetia we seem to have sywyd or sewyd (pp. 142, 152, 193); but all the passages in point are more or less obscure, I must confess. [218] See the Book of Taliessin, in Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 130-1, 134, 142, 151-2, 155. [219] As, for instance, in the account given of Uath mac Imomain in Fled Bricrenn: see the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 110b, and Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 293. [220] The Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 77a, and the Book of Leinster, fo. 75b: compare also the story of Tuan mac Cairill in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 16b, where the Tuatha Dé Danann are represented as Tuatha Dee ocus Ande, 'the tribes of gods and not-gods,' to whom one of the manuscripts adds a people of legendary Ireland called the Galiúin. See the story as recently edited by Professor Kuno Meyer in Nutt's Voyage of Bran, ii. 291-300, where, however, the sense of § 12 with its allusion to the fall of Lucifer is missed in the translation. It should read, I think, somewhat as follows:--'Of these are the Tuatha Dee and Ande, whose origin is unknown to the learned, except that they think it probable, judging from the intelligence of the Tuatha and their superiority in knowledge, that they belong to the exiles who came from heaven.' [221] See Evans' Black Book of Carmarthen, fo. 33b; also the Mabinogion, pp. 104, 306. The Irish lucht cumachtai would be in Welsh literally rendered llwyth cyfoeth, 'the cyfoeth tribe or host,' as it were. For cyfoeth, in Med. Welsh, meant power or dominion, whence cyfoethog, 'powerful,' and holl-gyfoethog, 'almighty'; but in Mod. Welsh cyfoeth and cyfoethog have been degraded to mean 'riches' and 'rich' respectively. Now if we dropped the prefix cum from the Irish cumachtai, and its equivalent cyf from the Welsh cyfoeth, we should have lucht cumachtai reduced to an approximate analogy to llwyth Oeth, 'the Oeth tribe,' for which we have the attested equivalent Teulu Oeth, 'the Oeth household or family.' Oeth, however, seems to have meant powerful rather than power, and this seems to have been its force in Gwalchmai's poetry of the twelfth century, where I find it twice: see the Myvyrian Arch., i. 196b, 203a. In the former passage we have oeth dybydaf o dybwyf ryd, 'I shall be powerful if I be free,' and in the latter oeth ym uthrwyd, 'mightily was I astonished or dismayed.' An-oeth was the negative of oeth, and meant weak, feeble, frivolous: so we find its plural, anoetheu, applied in the story of Kulhwch to the strange quests on which Kulhwch had to engage himself and his friends, before he could hope to obtain Olwen to be his wife. This has its parallel in the use of the adjective gwan, 'weak,' in the following instance among them:--Arthur and his men were ready to set out in search of Mabon son of Modron, who was said to have been kidnapped, when only three nights old, from between his mother Modron and the wall; and though this had happened a fabulously long time before Arthur was born, nothing had ever been since heard of Mabon's fate. Now Arthur's men said that they would set out in search of him, but they considered that Arthur should not accompany them on feeble quests of the kind: their words were (p. 128), ny elli di uynet ath lu y geissa6 peth mor uan ar rei hynn, 'thou canst not go with thy army to seek a thing so weak as these are.' Here we have uan as the synonym of an-oeth; but Oeth ac Anoeth probably became a phrase which was seldom analysed or understood; so we have besides Teulu Oeth ac Anoeth, a Caer Oeth ac Anoeth, or fortress of O. and A., and a Carchar Caer Oeth ac Anoeth, or the Prison of Caer O. and A., which is more shortly designated also Carchar Oeth ac Anoeth, or the Prison of O. and A. A late account of the building of that strange prison and fortress by Manawydan is given in the Iolo MSS., pp. 185-6, 263, and it is needless to point out that Manawydan, son of Llyr, was no other than the Manannán mac Lir of Irish literature, the greatest wizard among the Tuatha Dé or Tuatha Dé Danann; for the practical equivalence of those names is proved by the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 16b. For further details about Oeth and Anoeth, Silvan Evans' Geiriadur may be consulted, s. v. Anoeth, where instances are cited of the application of those terms to tilled land and wild or uncultivated land. Here the words seem to have the secondary meanings of profitable and unprofitable lands, respectively: compare a somewhat analogous use of grym, 'strength, force,' in a passage relating to the mutilated horses of Matholwch--hyt nad oed rym a ellit ar meirch, 'so that no use was possible in the case of the horses,' meaning that they were of no use whatever, or that they had been done for: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 29, and Lady Charlotte Guest's, iii. 107, where the translation 'and rendered them useless' is barely strong enough. [222] It is right, however, to state that M. d'A. de Jubainville's account of the views of Erigena is challenged by Mr. Nutt, ii. 105. [223] For instance, by Silvan Evans in his Geiriadur, where, s. v. dihaed, he suggests 'unmerited' or 'undeserved' as conveying the sense meant. [224] The reader will find them quoted under the word Druida in Holder's Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz: see also M. Alexandre Bertrand's Religion des Gaulois, especially the chapter entitled Les Druides, pp. 252-76, and Nutt's Voyage of Bran, ii. 107-12. [225] See Valerius Maximus, ii. 6. 10. [226] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 68a. [227] Notably Johannes Schmidt in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xxiii. 267, where he gives the following gradations of the stem in question:--1. anman; 2. anaman; 3. naman; 4. naman. [228] See Clodd's Tom Tit Tot, p. 97. [229] Tom Tit Tot, p. 89. [230] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 100. [231] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 35. [232] As to Irish, I would not lay much stress on the question 'What is your name?' being put, in a fourteenth or fifteenth century version of the French story of Fierabras, as ca hainm tú?--literally, 'what name art thou?' see the Revue Celtique, xix. 28. It may be mentioned here that the Irish writers of glossaries had a remarkable way of appearing to identify words and things. Thus, for instance, Cormac has Cruimther .i. Gædelg indi as presbyter, which O'Donovan (edited by Stokes) has translated, p. 30, as 'Cruimther, i. e. the Gaelic of presbyter': literally it would be rather 'of the thing which is presbyter.' Similarly, Cormac's explanation of the Irish aiminn, now aoibhinn, 'delightful,' runs thus in Latin, Aimind ab eo quod est amoenum, 'from the word amoenus,' literally, 'from that which is amoenus.' But this construction is a favourite one of Latin grammarians, and instances will be found in Professor Lindsay's Latin Language (Oxford, 1894), pp. 26, 28, 42, 53. On calling his attention to it, he kindly informed me that it can be traced as far back as Varro, from whose Lingua Latina, vi. 4, he cites Meridies ab eo quod medius dies. So in this matter, Irish writers have merely imitated their Latin models; and one detects a trace of the same imitation in some of the Old Welsh glosses, for instance in the Juvencus Codex, where we have XPS explained as irhinn issid crist, 'that which is Christ,' evidently meaning, 'the word Christos or Christus.' So with regia, rendered by gulat, 'a state or country,' in celsi thronus est cui regia caeli; which is glossed issit padiu itau gulat, 'that is the word gulat for him' = 'he means his country': see Kuhn's Beiträge, iv. 396, 411. [233] Some instances in point, accompanied with comments on certain eminently instructive practices and theories of the Church, will be found in Clodd's Tom Tit Tot, pp. 100-5. [234] For some instances of name-giving by the druid, the reader may consult The Welsh People, pp. 66-70; and druidic baptism will be found alluded to in Stokes' edition of Coir Anmann, and in Stokes and Windisch's Irische Texte, iii. 392, 423. See also the Revue Celtique, xix. 90. [235] See The Welsh People, more especially pp. 71-4, where it has been attempted to discuss this question more at length. [236] See Stokes' Cormac's Glossary, translated by O'Donovan, p. 87, and O'Curry's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 218-9. [237] See Mind for 1893, p. 390: the review is by Mr. A. T. Myers, and the title of the book noticed is La Pathologie des Émotions, Études physiologiques et cliniques, par Charles Féré, médecin de Bicêtre (Paris, 1892). [238] See Frazer's Golden Bough, i. 9, where a few most instructive instances are given. [239] See Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 255, where, however, Dôn is wrongly treated as a male. [240] One has, however, to admit that the same agency may also mar the picture. Since the above was written I have read in Stokes' Festschrift, pp. 7-19, a very interesting article by L. Chr. Stern, in which he discusses some of the difficulties attaching to the term Tuatha Dé Danann. Among other things he suggests that there was a certain amount of confusion between Danann and dána, genitive of dán, 'art or profession'--the word meant also 'lot or destiny,' being probably of the same origin as the Latin donum, in Welsh dawn, which means a gift, and especially 'the gift of the gab.' But it would invert the natural sequence to suppose any such a formula as Tuatha Dé Dána to have preceded Tuatha Dé Danann; for why should anybody substitute an obscure vocable Danann for dána of well-known meaning? Dr. Stern has some doubts as to the Welsh Dôn being a female; but it would have been more satisfactory if he had proved his surmise, or at any rate shown that Dôn has nothing to do with Danann or Donann. I am satisfied with such a passage in the Mabinogi of Math as that where Gwydion, addressing Math, describes Arianrhod, daughter of Dôn, in the words, dy nith uerch dy ch6aer, 'thy niece daughter of thy sister': see the Mabinogion, p. 68, and, for similar references to other children of Dôn, consult pp. 59 and 65. Arianrhod is in the older Triads, i. 40, ii. 15, called daughter of Beli, whom one can only have regarded as her father. So for the present I continue to accept Stokes' rendering of Tuatha Dé Danann as 'the Folks of the Goddess Danu.' [241] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 102; Guest's trans., ii. 252. The combination occurs also in the Book of Aneurin: see Stephens' Gododin (London, 1888), p. 322. [242] It will be noticed that there is a discrepancy between the gutturals of these two words: tyngu, 'to swear' (O. Ir. tongu, 'I swear'), has ng--the Kulhwch spelling, tynghaf, should probably be tyngaf--while tynghed and its Irish equivalent imply an nc. I do not know how to explain this, though I cannot doubt the fact of the words being treated as cognate. A somewhat similar difference, however, occurs in Welsh dwyn, 'to bear, carry, steal,' and dwg, 'carries, bears': see the Revue Celtique, vi. 18-9. [243] See the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 100, and Guest's trans., ii. 249, where it is rendered 'a wife as a helpmate,' which is more commonplace than suggestive. [244] La Cité antique (Paris, 1864), p. 50; see also Joachim Marquardt's Privatleben der Römer (Leipsic, 1886), pp. 49-51, and among the references there given may be mentioned Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ii. 25. [245] See Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 126, 181-3, 197; the Prose Edda in Edda Snorronis Sturlæi (Copenhagen, 1848), i. 90-2, 102, 104, 172-86; and Simrock's Edda (Stuttgart, 1855), pp. 292-3, 295-6, 299, 316-20. [246] Two versions of a story to account for the Ultonian couvade have been published with a translation into German, by Prof. Windisch, in the Berichte der k. sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (phil.-hist. Classe) for 1884, pp. 338 et seq. Sundry references to the couvade will also be found in my Hibbert Lectures, where certain mythological suggestions made with reference to it require to be reconsidered. But when touching on this point it occurred to me that the wholesale couvade of the Ultonian braves, at one and the same time of the year, implied that the birth of Ultonian children, or at any rate those of them that were to be reared, took place (in some period or other of the history of their race) at a particular season of the year, namely, about the beginning of the winter, that is when food would be most abundant. I have since been confirmed in this view by perusing Westermarck's work on the History of Human Marriage, and by reading especially his second chapter entitled 'A Human Pairing Season in Primitive Times.' For there I find a considerable body of instances in point, together with a summary treatment of the whole question. But in the case of promiscuity, such as originally prevailed doubtless at the Ultonian Court, the question what men were to go into couvade could only be settled by the confinement of them all, wherein we have an alternative if not an additional reason for a simultaneous couvade. [247] See Strabo, iii. 165, and Diodorus, v. 14. [248] For some more detailed remarks on the reckoning of descent by birth, see The Welsh People, pp. 36 et seq. [249] In Welsh eli means 'ointment,' probably so called from spells pronounced over it when used as a remedy. In the Twrch Trwyth story (Oxford Mabinogion, p. 138) one of Arthur's men bears the curious designation of Reid6n uab Eli Atuer, which might be Englished 'R. son of the Restoring Ointment,' unless one should rather say 'of the Restoring Enchantment.' [250] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 128b, and Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 138-9. The rebirth of Lug as Cúchulainn has been touched upon in my Hibbert Lectures, p. 431; but since then the whole question of rebirth has been discussed at length in Nutt and Meyer's volumes entitled The Voyage of Bran (London, 1895). [251] Tylor's Primitive Culture, ii. 4, where he gives a reference to Gustav Klemm's Culturgeschichte, iii. 77, and Klemm's authority proves to be Jessen, whose notes are given in a 'tractatus' bound with Knud Leem De Lapponibus Finmarchiæ (Copenhagen, 1767): Jessen's words in point read as follows, p. 33:--Et baptismum quidem, quem ipsi Laugo, i. e. lavacrum appellabant, quod attinet, observandum occurrit, foeminam Lapponicam, jam partui vicinam, atque in eo statu Sarakkæ impensius commendatam, de nomine, nascituro infanti imponendo, per insomnia plerumque a Jabmekio quodam admonitam fuisse et simul de Jabmekio illo, qui, ut ipsi quidem loqui amarunt, in hoc puero resuscitandus foret, edoctam. Hujusmodi per insomnia factas admonitiones niëgost nuncuparunt Lappones. Si gravida mulier a Jabmekio hac ratione edocta non fuerit, recens nati infantis vel parenti vel cognatis incubuit, per to Myran, in tympano, securi vel balteo susceptum, vel etiam Noaaidum consulendo, explorare, quo potissimum nomine infans appellandus esset. In the body of Leem's work, p. 497, one reads, that if the child sickens or cries after baptism, this is taken to prove that the right ancestor has not been found; but as he must be discovered and his name imposed on the child, resort is had to a fresh baptism to correct the effects of the previous one. [252] See Holder's Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, s. v. Lugus; also the index to my Hibbert Lectures, s. v. Lleu, Lug, Lugoves. [253] For more on this subject see the chapter on the Pictish question in The Welsh People, pp. 36-74. [254] It is right to say that the story represents the fairies as living under the rule of a rí, a title usually rendered by 'king'; but rí (genitive rig) was probably at one time applicable to either sex, just as we find Gaulish names like Biturix and Visurix borne by women. The wonder, however, is that such a line as that just quoted has not been edited out of the verses long ago, just as one misses any equivalent for it in Joyce's English expansion of the story in his Old Celtic Romances, pp. 106-11. Compare, however, the Land of the Women in the Voyage of Maildun (Joyce, pp. 152-6), and in Meyer and Nutt's Voyage of Bran, i. 30-3. [255] This conclusion has been given in a note at the foot of p. 37 of The Welsh People; but for a variety of instances to illustrate it see Hartland's chapters on Supernatural Birth in his Legend of Perseus. [256] See Frazer's article on 'The Origin of Totemism' in the Fortnightly Review for April, 1899, p. 649. The passage to which it refers will be found at p. 265 of Spencer and Gillen's volume, where one reads as follows:--'Added to this we have amongst the Arunta, Luritcha, and Ilpirra tribes, and probably also amongst others such as the Warramunga, the idea firmly held that the child is not the direct result of intercourse, that it may come without this, which merely, as it were, prepares the mother for the reception and birth also of an already-formed spirit child who inhabits one of the local totem centres. Time after time we have questioned them on this point, and always received the reply that the child was not the direct result of intercourse.' It is curious to note how readily the Australian notion here presented would develop into that of the Lapps, as given at p. 658 from Jessen's notes. [257] This feature of Welsh has escaped M. de Charencey, in his instructive letter on 'Numération basque et celtique,' in No. 48 of the Bulletin de la Soc. de Linguistique de Paris, pp. cxv-cxix. In passing, I may be allowed to mention a numerical curiosity which occurs in Old Irish: it has probably an important historical significance. I refer to the word for 'seven men' occurring sometimes as morfeser, which means, as it were, a magnus seviratus or 'big sixer.' [258] The non-Welsh names of the fairy ancestress ought possibly to lead one to discover the origin of that settlement; and a careful study perhaps of the language of the Belsiaid or Bellisians, if their Welsh has any dialectic peculiarities, might throw further light on their past. [259] Our stories frequently delight in giving the fairy women fine dresses and long trains; but I would rely more on the Ystrad Meurig smith's account (p. 245), and the case of the Pennant fairy who tears to shreds the gown offered her (p. 109). [260] The difference between Mod. Welsh cor and Breton korr is one of spelling, for the reformed orthography of Welsh words only doubles the r where it is dwelt on in the accented syllable of a longer word: in other terms, when that syllable closes with the consonant and the next syllable begins with it. Thus cor has, as its derivatives, cór-rach, 'a dwarf,' plural co-ráchod, cór-ryn, 'a male dwarf,' plural co-rýnnod. Some of these enter into place-names, such as Cwm Corryn near Llanaelhaearn (p. 217) and Cwm Corryn draining into the Vale of Neath; so possibly with Corwen for Cor-waen, in the sense of 'the Fairies' Meadow.' Cor and corryn are also used for the spider, as in gwe'r cor or gwe'r corryn, 'a spider's web,' the spider being so called on account of its spinning, an occupation in which the fairies are represented likewise frequently engaged; not to mention that gossamer (gwawn) is also sometimes regarded as a product of the fairy loom (p. 103). The derivation of cor is not satisfactorily cleared up: it has been conjectured to be related to a Med. Irish word cert, 'small, little,' and Latin curtus, 'shortened or mutilated.' To me this means that the origin of the word still remains to be discovered. [261] For Edern's dwarf see Foerster's Erec, lines 146-274 and passim, the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 248-61, and Guest's trans., ii. 73-92; and for Peredur's the latter books, pp. 197-9 and i. 304-7 respectively. [262] The story of Canrig (or Cantrig) Bwt is current at Llanberis, but I do not recollect seeing it in print: I had it years ago from my father-in-law. The statement as to Carchar Cynric Rwth comes from William Williams' Observations on the Snowdon Mountains (London, 1802). The Bwlch y Rhiw Felen legend was read by me to the British Archæological Association at its meeting at Llangollen, and it was printed in its Journal for December, 1878. It is right to say that the Llangollen story calls the woman a giantess, but I attach no importance to that, as the picture is blurred and treated in part allegorically. Lastly, the use of the word carchar, 'prison,' in the term Carchar Cynric Rwth recalls Carchar Oeth ac Anoeth, or 'the Prison of Oeth and Anoeth,' p. 619 above: the word would appear to have been selected because in both cases the structure was underground. [263] See the Acta Sanctorum, April 11, where one finds published the Latin life written by Felix not long after Guthlac's death. See also an Anglo-Saxon version, which has been edited with a translation by Ch. W. Goodwin (London, 1848). [264] In connexion with them Mr. Bullock Hall reminds me of Icklingham, in West Suffolk; and there seem to be several Ickletons, and an Ickleford, most or all of them, I am told, on the Icknield Way. The name Icel, whose genitive Icles is the form in the original life, has probably been inferred from the longer word Iclingas, and inserted in due course in the Mercian pedigree, where it occupies the sixth place in descent from Woden. [265] Since the above was written, Dr. Ripley's important work on the Races of Europe (London, 1900) has reached me, but too late to study. I notice, however, that he speaks of an island of ancient population to the north of London and extending over most of the counties of Hertford, Buckingham, Bedford, Rutland, and Northampton, as far as those of Cambridge and Lincoln. A considerable portion of this area must have been within the boundaries of Coritanian territory, and it is now characterized, according to him, by nigrescence, short stature, and rarity of suicide, such as remind him of Wales and Cornwall: see his maps and pp. 322, 328, 521. [266] See Fiacc's Hymn in Stokes' Goidelica, p. 127, l. 41. [267] The Welsh passages unfortunately fail to show whether it was pronounced sidi or sidi: should it prove the latter, I should regard it as the Irish word borrowed. [268] Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 153-5, 181-2. [269] For more about Picts and Pechts see some most instructive papers recently published by Mr. David MacRitchie, such as 'Memories of the Picts' in the Scottish Antiquary, last January, 'Underground Dwellings' in Scottish Notes and Queries, last March, and 'Fairy Mounds' in the Antiquary, last February and March. [270] See p. 424 above, where, however, the object of the Ogams written on four twigs of yew has been misconceived. I think now that they formed simply so many letters of inquiry addressed by Dalán to other druids in different parts of Ireland. We seem to have here a ray of light on the early history of Ogam writing. [271] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 130b. [272] See the Book of Leinster, fo. 117a. [273] Corrguinigh occurs in the story of 'The Second Battle of Moytura,' where Stokes has rendered it 'sorcerers' in the Revue Celtique, xii. 77; and corrguinacht heads an article in O'Davoren's Glossary, published in Stokes' Three Irish Glossaries, p. 63, where it is defined as beth for leth cois 7 for leth laimh 7 for leth suil ag denam na glaime dicinn, 'to be on one foot and with one hand and one eye doing the glám dicenn.' The glám dicenn was seemingly the special elaboration of the art of making pied de nez, which we have tragically illustrated in the case of Caier. [274] In Appendix B to The Welsh People, pp. 617-41. [275] See Rosellini's Monumenti dell' Egitto (Pisa, 1832), vol. i. plates clvi, clx, and Maspero's Histoire Ancienne (Paris, 1897), ii. 430. [276] One may now consult Nicholson's paper on 'The Language of the Continental Picts': see Meyer and Stern's Zeitschrift, iii. 326-8, 331-2, and note especially his reference to Herodian, iii. 14, § 8. For Chortonicum see Die althochdeutschen Glossen (edited by Steinmeyer and Sievers), iii. 610; also my paper on 'The Celts and the other Aryans of the P and Q Groups' read before the Philological Society, February 20, 1891, p. 11. [277] I am chiefly indebted to my friend Professor A. C. Haddon for references to information as to the dwarf races of prehistoric times. I find also that he, among others, has anticipated me in my theory as to the origins of the fairies: witness the following extract from the syllabus of a lecture delivered by him at Cardiff in 1894 on Fairy Tales:--'What are the fairies?--Legendary origin of the fairies. It is evident from fairy literature that there is a mixture of the possible and the impossible, of fact and fancy. Part of fairydom refers to (1) spirits that never were embodied: other fairies are (2) spirits of environment, nature or local spirits, and household or domestic spirits; (3) spirits of the organic world, spirits of plants, and spirits of animals; (4) spirits of men or ghosts; and (5) witches and wizards, or men possessed with other spirits. All these and possibly other elements enter into the fanciful aspect of fairyland, but there is a large residuum of real occurrences; these point to a clash of races, and we may regard many of these fairy sagas as stories told by men of the Iron Age of events which happened to men of the Bronze Age in their conflicts with men of the Neolithic Age, and possibly these, too, handed on traditions of the Palæolithic Age.' [278] See the Berlin Zeitschrift für Ethnologie for 1894, vol. xxvi. pp. 189-254, which are devoted to an elaborate paper by Dr. Jul. Kollmann, entitled 'Das Schweitzersbild bei Schaffhausen und Pygmäen in Europa.' It closes with a long list of books and articles to be consulted on the subject. 
7055	----	GONE TO EARTH by Mary Webb 1917 [Dedication] _To him whose presence is home._ Chapter 1 Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled sky--shepherdless, futile, imponderable--and were torn to fragments on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears. It was cold in the Callow--a spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown boles. Only the crudeness of youth was here as yet, and not its triumph--only the sharp calyx-point, the pricking tip of the bud, like spears, and not the paten of the leaf, the chalice of the flower. For as yet spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springing mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire. Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry came a tawny silent form, wearing with the calm dignity of woodland creatures a beauty of eye and limb, a brilliance of tint, that few-women could have worn without self-consciousness. Clear-eyed, lithe, it stood for a moment in the full sunlight--a year-old fox, round-headed and velvet-footed. Then it slid into the shadows. A shrill whistle came from the interior of the wood, and the fox bounded towards it. 'Where you bin? You'm stray and lose yourself, certain sure!' said a girl's voice, chidingly motherly. 'And if you'm alost, I'm alost; so come you whome. The sun's undering, and there's bones for supper!' With that she took to her heels, the little fox after her, racing down the Callow in the cold level light till they came to the Woodus's cottage. Hazel Woodus, to whom the fox belonged, had always lived at the Callow. There her mother, a Welsh gipsy, had born her in bitter rebellion, hating marriage and a settled life and Abel Woodus as a wild cat hates a cage. She was a rover, born for the artist's joy and sorrow, and her spirit found no relief for its emotions; for it was dumb. To the linnet its flight, to the thrush its song; but she had neither flight nor song. Yet the tongueless thrush is a thrush still, and has golden music in its heart. The caged linnet may sit moping, but her soul knows the dip and rise of flight on an everlasting May morning. All the things she felt and could not say, all the stored honey, the black hatred, the wistful homesickness for the unfenced wild--all that other women would have put into their prayers, she gave to Hazel. The whole force of her wayward heart flowed into the softly beating heart of her baby. It was as if she passionately flung the life she did not value into the arms of her child. When Hazel was fourteen she died, leaving her treasure--an old, dirty, partially illegible manuscript-book of spells and charms and other gipsy lore--to her daughter. Her one request was that she might be buried in the Callow under the yellow larch needles, and not in a churchyard. Abel Woodus did as she asked, and was regarded askance by most of the community for not burying her in Chrissen-ground. But this did not trouble him. He had his harp still, and while he had that he needed no other friend. It had been his absorption in his music that had prevented him understanding his wife, and in the early days of their marriage she had been wildly jealous of the tall gilt harp with its faded felt cover that stood in the corner of the living-room. Then her jealousy changed to love of it, and her one desire was to be able to draw music from its plaintive strings. She could never master even the rudiments of music, but she would sit on rainy evenings when Abel was away and run her thin hands over the strings with a despairing passion of grieving love. Yet she could not bear to hear Abel play. Just as some childless women with all their accumulated stores of love cannot bear to see a mother with her child, so Maray Woodus, with her sealed genius, her incapacity for expression, could not bear to hear the easy self-expression of another. For Abel was in his way a master of his art; he had dark places in his soul, and that is the very core of art and its substance. He had the lissom hands and cheerful self-absorption that bring success. He had met Maray at an Eisteddfod that had been held in days gone by on a hill five miles from the Callow, called God's Little Mountain, and crowned by a chapel. She had listened, swaying and weeping to the surge and lament of his harp, and when he won the harper's prize and laid it in her lap she had consented to be married in the chapel at the end of the Eisteddfod week. That was nineteen years ago, and she was fled like the leaves and the birds of departed summers; but God's Little Mountain still towered as darkly to the eastward; the wind still leapt sheer from the chapel to the young larches of the Callow; nothing had changed at all; only one more young, anxious, eager creature had come into the towering, subluminous scheme of things. Hazel had her mother's eyes, strange, fawn-coloured eyes like water, and in the large clear irises were tawny flecks. In their shy honesty they were akin to the little fox's. Her hair, too, of a richer colour than her father's, was tawny and foxlike, and her ways were graceful and covert as a wild creature's. She stood in the lane above the cottage, which nestled below with its roof on a level with the hedge-roots, and watched the sun dip. The red light from the west stained her torn old dress, her thin face, her eyes, till she seemed to be dipped in blood. The fox, wistfulness in her expression and the consciousness of coming supper in her mind, gazed obediently where her mistress gazed, and was touched with the same fierce beauty. They stood there fronting the crimson pools over the far hills, two small sentient things facing destiny with pathetic courage; they had, in the chill evening on the lonely hill, a look as of those predestined to grief, almost an air of martyrdom. The small clouds that went westward took each in its turn the prevailing colour, and vanished, dipped in blood. From the cottage, as Hazel went down the path, came the faint thrumming of the harp, changing as she reached the door to the air of 'The Ash Grove.' The cottage was very low, one-storied, and roofed with red corrugated iron. The three small windows had frames coloured with washing-blue and frills of crimson cotton within. There seemed scarcely room for even Hazel's small figure. The house was little larger than a good pigsty, and only the trail of smoke from its squat chimney showed that humanity dwelt there. Hazel gave Foxy her supper and put her to bed in the old washtub where she slept. Then she went into the cottage with an armful of logs from the wood heap. She threw them on the open fire. 'I'm a-cold,' she said; 'the rain's cleared, and there'll be a duck's frost to-night.' Abel looked up absently, humming the air he intended to play next. 'I bin in the Callow, and I've gotten a primmyrose,' continued Hazel, accustomed to his ways, and not discouraged. 'And I got a bit of blackthorn, white as a lady.' Abel was well on in 'Ap Jenkyn' by now. Hazel moved about, seeing to supper, for she was as hungry as Foxy, talking all the time in her rather shrilly sweet voice, while she dumped the cracked cups and the loaf and margarine on the bare table. The kettle was not boiling, so she threw some bacon-grease on the fire, and a great tongue of flame sprang out and licked at Abel's beard. He raised a hand to it, continuing to play with the other. Hazel laughed. 'You be fair comic-struck,' she said. She always spoke in this tone of easy comradeship; they got on very well; they were so entirely indifferent to each other. There was nothing filial about her or parental about him. Neither did they ever evince the least affection for each other. He struck up 'It's a fine hunting day.' 'Oh! shut thy row with that drodsome thing!' said Hazel with sudden passion. 'Look'ee! I unna bide in if you go on.' 'Ur?' queried Abel dreamily. 'Play summat else!' said Hazel, 'not that; I dunna like it.' 'You be a queer girl, 'Azel,' said Abel, coming out of his abstraction. 'But I dunna mind playing "Why do the People?" instead; it's just as heartening.' 'Canna you stop meddling wi' the music and come to supper?' asked Hazel. The harp was always called 'the music,' just as Abel's mouth-organ was 'the little music.' She reached down the flitch to cut some bacon off, and her dress, already torn, ripped from shoulder to waist. 'If you dunna take needle to that, you'll be mother-naked afore a week's out,' said Abel indifferently. 'I mun get a new un,' said Hazel. 'It unna mend. I'll go to town to-morrow.' 'Shall you bide with yer auntie the night over?' 'Ah.' 'I shanna look for your face till I see your shadow, then. You can bring a tuthree wreath-frames. There's old Samson at the Yeath unna last long; they'll want a wreath made.' Hazel sat and considered her new dress. She never had a new one till the old one fell off her back, and then she usually got a second-hand one, as a shilling or two would buy only material if new, but would stretch to a ready-made if second-hand. 'Foxy'd like me to get a green velvet,' said Hazel. She always expressed her intense desires, which were few, in this formula. It was her unconscious protest against the lovelessness of her life. She put the blackthorn in water and contemplated its whiteness with delight; but it had not occurred to her that she might herself, with a little trouble, be as sweet and fresh as its blossom. The spiritualization of sex would be needed before such things would occur to her. At present she was sexless as a leaf. They sat by the fire till it went out; then they went to bed, not troubling to say good-night. In the middle of the night Foxy woke. The moon filled her kennel-mouth like a door, and the light shone in her eyes. This frightened her--so large a lantern in an unseen hand, held so purposefully before the tiny home of one defenceless little creature. She barked sharply. Hazel awoke promptly, as a mother at her child's cry. She ran straight out with her bare feet into the fierce moonlight. 'What ails you?' she whispered. 'What ails you, little un?' The wind stalked through the Callow, and the Callow moaned. A moan came also from the plain, and black shapes moved there as the clouds drove onwards. 'Maybe they're out,' muttered Hazel. 'Maybe the black meet's set for to-night and she's scented the jeath pack.' She looked about nervously. 'I can see summat driving dark o'er the pastures yonder; they'm abroad, surely.' She hurried Foxy into the cottage and bolted the door. 'There!' she said. 'Now you lie good and quiet in the corner, and the death pack shanna get you.' It was said that the death pack, phantom hounds of a bad squire, whose gross body had been long since put to sweeter uses than any he put it to in life--changed into the clear-eyed daisy and the ardent pimpernel--scoured the country on dark stormy nights. Harm was for the house past which it streamed, death for those that heard it give tongue. This was the legend, and Hazel believed it implicitly. When she had found Foxy half dead outside her deserted earth, she had been quite sure that it was the death pack that had made away with Foxy's mother. She connected it also with her own mother's death. Hounds symbolized everything she hated, everything that was not young, wild and happy. She identified herself with Foxy, and so with all things hunted and snared and destroyed. Night, shadow, loud winds, winter--these were inimical; with these came the death pack, stealthy and untiring, following for ever the trail of the defenceless. Sunlight, soft airs, bright colours, kindness--these were beneficent havens to flee into. Such was the essence of her creed, the only creed she held, and it lay darkly in her heart, never expressed even to herself. But when she ran into the night to comfort the little fox, she was living up to her faith as few do; when she gathered flowers and lay in the sun, she was dwelling in a mystical atmosphere as vivid as that of the saints; when she recoiled from cruelty, she was trampling evil underfoot, perhaps more surely than those great divines who destroyed one another in their zeal for their Maker. Chapter 2 At six the next morning they had breakfast. Abel was busy making a hive for the next summer's swarm. When he made a coffin, he always used up the bits thus. A large coffin did not leave very much; but sometimes there were small ones, and then he made splendid hives. The white township on the south side of the lilac hedge increased as slowly and unceasingly as the green township around the distant churchyard. In summer the garden was loud with bees, and the cottage was full of them at swarming-time. Later it was littered with honey-sections; honey dripped from the table, and pieces of broken comb lay on the floor and were contentedly eaten by Foxy. Whenever an order for a coffin came, Hazel went to tell the bees who was dead. Her father thought this unnecessary. It was only for folks that died in the house, he said. But he had himself told the bees when his wife died. He had gone out on that vivid June morning to his hives, and had stood watching the lines of bees fetching water, their shadows going and coming on the clean white boards. Then he had stooped and said with a curious confidential indifference, 'Maray's jead.' He had put his ear to the hive and listened to the deep, solemn murmur within; but it was the murmur of the future, and not of the past, the preoccupation with life, not with death, that filled the pale galleries within. Today the eighteen hives lay under their winter covering, and the eager creatures within slept. Only one or two strayed sometimes to the early arabis, desultory and sad, driven home again by the frosty air to await the purple times of honey. The happiest days of Abel's life were those when he sat like a bard before the seething hives and harped to the muffled roar of sound that came from within. All his means of livelihood were joys to him. He had the art of perpetual happiness in this, that he could earn as much as he needed by doing the work he loved. He played at flower shows and country dances, revivals and weddings. He sold his honey, and sometimes his bees. He delighted in wreath-making, gardening, and carpentering, and always in the background was his music--some new air to try on the gilded harp, some new chord or turn to master. The garden was almost big enough, and quite beautiful enough, for that of a mansion. In the summer white lilies haunted it, standing out in the dusk with their demure cajolery, looking, as Hazel said, like ghosses. Goldenrod foamed round the cottage, deeply embowering it, and lavender made a grey mist beside the red quarries of the path. Then Hazel sat like a queen in a regalia of flowers, eating the piece of bread and honey that made her dinner, and covering her face with lily pollen. Now, there were no flowers in the garden; only the yew-tree by the gate that hung her waxen blossom along the undersides of the branches. Hazel hated the look of the frozen garden; she had an almost unnaturally intense craving for everything rich, vivid, and vital. She was all these things herself, as she communed with Foxy before starting. She had wound her hair round her head in a large plait and her old black hat made the colour richer. 'You'm nigh on thirty miles to go there and back, unless you get a lift,' said Abel. 'A lift? I dunna want never no lifts!' said Hazel scornfully. 'You'm as good a walker as John of No Man's Parish,' replied Abel, 'and he walks for ever, so they do say.' As Hazel set forth in the sharp, fresh morning, the Callow shone with radiant brown and silver, and no presage moved within it of the snow that would hurtle upon it from mountains of cloud all night. When Hazel had chosen her dress--a peacock blue serge--and had put it on there and then in the back of the shop, curtained off for this purpose, she went to her aunt's. Her cousin Albert regarded her with a startled look. He was in a margarine shop, and spent his days explaining that Margarine was as good as butter. But, looking at Hazel, he felt that here _was_ butter--something that needed no apology, and created its own demand. The bright blue made her so radiant that her aunt shook her head. 'You take after your ma, 'Azel,' she said. Her tone was irritated. 'I be glad.' Her aunt sniffed. 'You ought to be as glad to take after one parent as another, if you were jutiful,' she said. 'I dunna want to take after anybody but myself.' Hazel flushed indignantly. 'Well! we _are_ conceited!' exclaimed her aunt. 'Albert, don't give 'Azel all the liver and bacon. I s'pose your mother can eat as well as schoolgirls?' Albert was gazing at Hazel so animatedly, so obviously approving of all she said, that her aunt was very much ruffled. 'No wonder you only want to be like yourself,' he said. 'Jam! my word, Hazel, you're jam!' 'Albert!' cried his mother raspingly, with a pathetic note of pleading, 'haven't I always taught you to say preserve?' She was not pleading against the inelegant word, but against Hazel. When Albert went back to the shop, Hazel helped her aunt to wash up. All the time she was doing this, with unusual care, and cleaning the knives--a thing she hated--she was waiting anxiously for the expected invitation to stay the night. She longed for it as the righteous long for the damnation of their enemies. She never paid a visit except here, and to her it was a wild excitement. The gas-stove, the pretty china, the rose-patterned wall-paper, were all strange and marvellous as a fairy-tale. At home there was no paper, no lath and plaster, only the bare bricks, and the ceiling was of bulging sailcloth hung under the rafters. Now to all these was added the new delight of Albert's admiring gaze--an alert, live gaze, a thing hitherto unknown to Albert. Perhaps, if she stayed, Albert would take her out for the evening. She would see the streets of the town in the magic of lights. She would walk out in her new dress with a real young man--a young man who possessed a gilt watch-chain. The suspense, as the wintry afternoon drew in, became almost intolerable. Still her aunt did not speak. The sitting-room looked so cosy when tea was laid; the firelight played over the cups; her aunt drew the curtains. On one side there was joy, warmth--all that she could desire; on the other, a forlorn walk in the dark. She had left it until so late that her heart shook at the idea of the many miles she must cover alone if her aunt did not ask her. Her aunt knew what was going on in Hazel's mind, and smiled grimly at Hazel's unusual meekness. She took the opportunity of administering a few hometruths. 'You look like an actress,' she said. 'Do I, auntie?' 'Yes. It's a disgrace, the way you look. You quite draw men's eyes.' 'It's nice to draw men's eyes, inna it, auntie?' 'Nice! Hazel, I should like to box your ears! You naughty girl! You'll go wrong one of these days.' 'What for will I, auntie?' 'Some day you'll get spoke to!' She said the last words in a hollow whisper. 'And after that, as you won't say and do what a good girl would, you'll get picked up.' 'I'd like to see anyone pick me up!' said Hazel indignantly. 'I'd kick!' 'Oh! how unladylike! I didn't mean really picked up! I meant allegorically--like in the Bible.' 'Oh! only like in the Bible,' said Hazel disappointedly. 'I thought you meant summat _real_.' 'Oh! You'll bring down my grey hairs,' wailed Mrs. Prowde. An actress was bad, but an infidel! 'That I should live to hear it--in my own villa, with my own soda cake on the cake-dish--and my own son,' she added dramatically, as Albert entered, 'coming in to have his God-fearing heart broken!' This embarrassed Albert, for it was true, though the cause assigned was not. 'What's Hazel been up to?' he queried. The affection beneath his heavy pleasantry strengthened his mother in her resolve that Hazel should not stay the night. 'There's a magic-lantern lecture on tonight, Hazel,' he said. 'Like to come?' 'Ah! I should that.' 'You can't walk home at that time of night,' said Mrs. Prowde. 'In fact, you ought to start now.' 'But Hazel's staying the night, mother, surely?' 'Hazel must get back to her father.' 'But, mother, there's the spare-room.' 'The spare-room's being spring-cleaned.' Albert plunged; he was desperate and forgetful of propriety. 'I can sleep on this sofa,' he said. 'She can have my room.' 'Hazel can't have your room. It's not suitable.' 'Well, let her share yours, then.' Mrs. Prowde played her trump-card. 'Little I thought,' she said, 'when your dear father went, that before three years had passed you'd be so forgetful of my comfort (and his memory) as to suggest such a thing. As long as I live, my room's mine. When I'm gone,' she concluded, knocking down her adversary with her superior weight of years--'when I'm gone (and the sooner the better for you, no doubt), you can put her in my room and yourself, too.' When she had said this she was horrified at herself. What an improper thing to say! Even anger and jealousy did not excuse impropriety, though they excused any amount of unkindness. But at this Hazel cried out in her turn: 'That he never will!' The fierce egoism of the consciously weak flamed up in her. 'I keep myself to myself,' she finished. 'If such things come to pass, mother,' Albert said, and his eyes looked suddenly vivid, so that Hazel clapped her hands and said, 'Yer lamps are lit! Yer lamps are lit!' and broke into peals of laughter. 'If such a thing comes to pass,' laboured Albert, 'they'll come decent, that is, they won't be spoken of.' He voiced his own and his mother's creed. At this point the argument ended, because Albert had to go back after tea to finish some work. As he stamped innumerable swans on the yielding material, he never doubted that his mother had also yielded. He forgot that life had to be shaped with an axe till the chips fly. As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Prowde shut the door on Hazel hastily, for fear the weather might bring relenting. She had other views for Albert. In after years, when the consequences of her action had become things of the past, she always spoke of how she had done her best with Hazel. She never dreamed that she, by her selfishness that night, had herself set Hazel's feet in the dark and winding path that she must tread from that night onward to its hidden, shadowy ending. Mrs. Prowde, through her many contented years, blamed in turn Hazel, Abel, Albert, the devil, and (only tacitly and, as it were, in secret from herself) God. If there is any purgatorial fire of remorse for the hard and selfish natures that crucify love, it must burn elsewhere. It does not touch them in this world. They go as the three children went, in their coats, their hosen, and their hats all complete, nor does the smell of fire pass over them. Hazel felt that heaven was closed--locked and barred. She could see the golden light stream through its gates. She could hear the songs of joy--joy unattained and therefore immortal; she could see the bright figures of her dreams go to and fro. But heaven was shut. The wind ran up and down the narrow streets like a lost dog, whimpering. Hazel hurried on, for it was already twilight, and though she was not afraid of the Callow and the fields at night, she was afraid of the high roads. For the Callow was home, but the roads were the wide world. On the fringe of the town she saw lights in the bedroom windows of prosperous houses. 'My! they go to their beds early,' she thought, not having heard of dressing for dinner. It made her feel more lonely that people should be going to bed. From other houses music floated, or the savoury smell of dinner. As she passed the last lamp-post she began to cry, feeling like a lost and helpless little animal. Her new dress was forgotten; the wreath-frames would not fit under her arm, and caused a continual minor discomfort, and the Callow seemed to be half across the country. She heard a trapped rabbit screaming somewhere, a thin anguished cry that she could not ignore. This delayed her a good deal, and in letting it out she got a large bloodstain on her dress. She cried again at this. The pain of a blister, unnoticed in the morning journey, now made itself felt; she tried walking without her boots, but the ground was cold and hard. The icy, driving wind leapt across the plain like a horseman with a long sword, and stealthily in its track came the melancholy whisper of snow. When this began, Hazel was in the open, half-way to Wolfbatch. She sat down on the step of a stile, and sighed with relief at the ease it gave her foot. Then, far off she heard the sharp miniature sound, very neat and staccato, of a horse galloping. She held her breath to hear if it would turn down a by-road, but it came on. It came on, and grew in volume and in meaning, became almost ominous in the frozen silence. Hazel rose and stood in the fitful moonlight. She felt that the approaching hoof-beats were for her. They were the one sound in a dead world, and she nearly cried out at the thought of their dying in the distance. They must not; they should not. 'Maybe it's a farmer and his missus as have drove a good bargain, and the girl told to get supper fire-hot agen they come. Maybe they'll give me a lift! Maybe they'll say "Bide the night over?"' She knew it was only a foolish dream; nevertheless, she stood well in the light, a slim, brow-beaten figure, the colour of her dress wan in the grey world. A trap came swaying round the corner. Hazel cried out beseechingly, and the driver pulled the horse up short. 'I must be blind drunk,' he soliloquized, 'seeing ghosts!' 'Oh, please sir!' Hazel could say no more, for the tears that companionship unfroze. The man peered at her. 'What in hell are you doing here?' he asked. 'Walking home-along. She wouldna let me bide the night over. And my foot's blistered in a balloon and blood on my dress.' She choked with sobs. 'What's your name?' 'Hazel.' 'What else?' With an instinct of self-protection she refused to tell her surname. 'Well, mine's Reddin,' he said crossly; 'and why you're so dark about yours I don't know, but up you get, anyway.' The sun came out in Hazel's face. He helped her up, she was so stiff with cold. 'Your arm,' she said in a low tremulous voice, when he had put the rug round her--'your arm pulling me in be like the Sunday-school tale of Jesus Christ and Peter on the wild sea--me being Peter.' Reddin looked at her sideways to see if she was in earnest. Seeing that she was, he changed the subject. 'Far to go?' he asked. 'Ah! miles on miles.' 'Like to stop the night over?' At last, late certainly, but no matter, at last the invitation had come, not from her aunt, but from a stranger. That made it more exciting. 'I'm much obleeged,' he said. 'Where at?' 'D'you know Undern?' 'I've heard tell on it.' 'Well, it's two miles from here. Like to come?' 'Ah! Will your mother be angry?' 'I haven't one.' 'Father?' 'No.' 'Who be there, then?' 'Only Vessons and me.' 'Who's Vessons?' 'My servant.' 'Be you a gentleman, then?' Reddin hesitated slightly. She said it with such reverence and made it seem so great a thing. 'Yes,' he said at last. 'Yes, that's what I am--a gentleman.' He was conscious of bravado. 'Will there be supper, fire-hot?' 'Yes, if Vessons is in a good temper.' 'Where you bin?' she asked next. 'Market.' 'You've had about as much as is good for you,' she remarked, as if thinking aloud. He certainly smelt strongly of whisky. 'You've got a cheek!' said he. 'Let's look at you.' He stared into her tired but vivid eyes for a long time, and the trap careered from side to side. 'My word!' he said, 'I'm in luck to-night!' 'What for be you?' 'Meeting a girl like you.' 'Do I draw men's eyes?' 'Eh?' He was startled. Then he guffawed. 'Yes,' he replied. '_She_ said so,' Hazel murmured. 'And she said I'd get spoke to, and she said I'd get puck up. I'm main glad of it, too. She's a witch.' 'She said you'd get picked up, did she?' 'Ah.' Reddin put his arm round her. 'You're so pretty! That's why.' 'Dunna maul me!' 'You might be civil. I'm doing you a kindness.' They went on in that fashion, his arm about her, each wondering what manner of companion the other was. When they neared Undern there were gates to open, and he admired her litheness as she jumped in and out. In his pastures, where the deeply rutted track was already white with snow, two foals stood sadly by their mothers, gazing at the cold world with their peculiarly disconsolate eyes. 'Eh! look's the abron un! Abron, like me!' cried Hazel. Reddin suddenly gripped the long coils that were loose on her shoulders, twisted them in a rope round his neck, and kissed her. She was enmeshed, and could not avoid his kisses. The cob took this opportunity--one long desired--to rear, and Reddin flogged him the rest of the way. So they arrived with a clatter, and were met at the door by Andrew Vessons--knowing of eye as a blackbird, straw in mouth, the poison of asps on his tongue. Chapter 3 Undern Hall, with its many small-paned windows, faced the north sullenly. It was a place of which the influence and magic were not good. Even in May, when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn with shadows, steeped the air with scent; when soft leaves lipped each other consolingly; when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way from the green height to the green depth, and sang again--still, something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is its own, and that which is most stained with old tumults has the strongest fascination. So at Undern, whatever had happened there went on still; someone who had been there was there still. The lawns under the trees were mournful with old pain, or with vanished joys more pathetic than pain in their fleeting mimicry of immortality. It was only at midsummer that the windows were coloured by dawn and sunset; then they had a sanguinary aspect, staring into the delicate skyey dramas like blind, bloodshot eyes. Secretly, under the heavy rhododendron leaves and in the furtive sunlight beneath the yew-trees, gnats danced. Their faint motions made the garden stiller; their smallness made it oppressive; their momentary life made it infinitely old. Then Undern Pool was full of leaf shadows like multitudinous lolling tongues, and the smell of the mud tainted the air--half sickly, half sweet. The clipped bushes and the twisted chimneys made inky shadows like steeples on the grass, and great trees of roses, beautiful in desolation, dripped with red and white and elbowed the guelder roses and the elders set with white patens. Cherries fell in the orchard with the same rich monotony, the same fatality, as drops of blood. They lay under the fungus-riven trees till the hens ate them, pecking gingerly and enjoyably at their lustrous beauty as the world does at a poet's heart. In the kitchen-garden also the hens took their ease, banqueting sparely beneath the straggling black boughs of a red-currant grove. In the sandstone walls of this garden hornets built undisturbed, and the thyme and lavender borders had grown into forests and obliterated the path. The cattle drowsed in the meadows, birds in the heavy trees; the golden day-lilies drooped like the daughters of pleasure; the very principle of life seemed to slumber. It was then, when the scent of elder blossom, decaying fruit, mud and hot yew brooded there, that the place attained one of its most individual moods--narcotic, aphrodisiac. In winter the yews and firs were like waving funeral plumes and mantled, headless goddesses; then the giant beeches would lash themselves to frenzy, and, stooping, would scourge the ice on Undern Pool and the cracked walls of the house, like beings drunken with the passion of cruelty. This was the second mood of Undern--brutality. Then those within were, it seemed, already in the grave, heavily covered with the prison of frost and snow, or shouted into silence by the wind. On a January night the house seemed to lie outside time and space; slow, ominous movement began beyond the blind windows, and the inflexible softness of snow, blurred on the vast background of night, buried summer ever deeper with invincible, caressing threats. The front door was half glass, so that a wandering candle within could be seen from outside, and it looked inexpressibly forlorn, like a glow-worm seeking escape from a chloroform-box or mankind looking for the way to heaven. Only four windows were ever lit, and of these two at a time. They were Jack Reddin's parlour, Andrew Vessons' kitchen, and their respective bedrooms. Reddin of Undern cared as little for the graciousness of life as he did for its pitiful rhapsodies, its purple-mantled tragedies. He had no time for such trivialities. Fox-hunting, horse-breeding, and kennel lore were his vocation. He rode straight, lived hard, exercised such creative faculties as he had on his work, and found it very good. Three times a year he stated in the Undern pew at Wolfbatch that he intended to continue leading a godly, righteous, and sober life. At these times, with amber lights from the windows playing over his well-shaped head, his rather heavy face looked, as the Miss Clombers from Wolfbatch Hall said, 'so chivalrous, so uplifted.' The Miss Clombers purred when they talked, like cats with a mouse. The younger still hunted, painfully compressing an overfed body into a riding-habit of some forgotten cut, and riding with so grim a mouth and such a bloodthirsty expression that she might have had a blood-feud with all foxes. Perhaps, when she rode down the anxious red-brown streak, she thought she was riding down a cruel fate that had somehow left her life vacant of joy; perhaps, when the little creature was torn piece-meal, she imagined herself tearing so the frail unconquerable powers of love and beauty. Anyway, she never missed a meet, and she and her sister never ceased their long silent battle for Reddin, who remained as unconscious of them as if they were his aunts. He was, of course, beneath them, very much beneath them--hardly more than a farmer, but still--a man. Reddin went on his dubious and discreditable way, and the woman Sally Haggard, of the cottage in the hollow, gained by virtue of a certain harsh beauty what the ladies Clomber would have given all their wealth for. The other inhabitant of Undern, Andrew, revolved in his own orbit, and was entirely unknown to his master. He cut the yews--the peacocks and the clipped round trees and the ones like tables--twice a year. He was creating a swan. He had spent twenty years on it, and hoped to complete it in a few more, when the twigs that were to be the beak had grown sufficiently. It never occurred to him that the place was not his, that he might have to leave it. He had his spring work and his autumn work; in the winter he ordained various small indoor jobs for himself; and in the summer, in common with the rest of the place, he grew somnolent. He sat by the hacked and stained kitchen-table (which he seldom scrubbed, and on which he tried his knife, sawed bones, and chopped meat) and slept the afternoons away in the ceaseless drone of flies. When Reddin called him he rarely answered, and only deigned to go to him when he felt sure that his order was going to be reasonable. Everything he said was non-committal, every movement was expostulatory. Reddin never noticed. Vessons suited his needs, and he always had such meals as he liked. Vessons was a bachelor. Monasticism had found, in a countryside teeming with sex, one silent but rabid disciple. If Vessons ever felt the irony of his own presence in a breeding stable, he never said so. He went about his work with tight disapproving lips, as if he thought that Nature owed him a debt of gratitude for his tolerance of her ways. Ruminative and critical, he went to and fro in the darkly lovely domain, with pig buckets or ash buckets or barrows full of manure. The lines of his face were always etched in dirt, and he always had a bit of rag tied round some cut or blister. He was a lonely soul, as he once said himself when unusually mellow at the Hunter's Arms; he was 'wi'out mother, wi'out father, wi'out descent.' He preferred it to the ties of family. He liked living with Reddin because they never spoke except of necessity, and because he was quite indifferent to Reddin's welfare and Reddin to his. But to Undern itself he was not indifferent. Ties deep as the tangled roots of the bindweed, strong as the great hawsers of the beeches that reached below the mud of Undern Pool, held him to it, the bondslave of a beauty he could not understand, a terror he could not express. When he trudged the muddy paths, 'setting taters' or earthing up; when he scythed the lawn, looking, with a rose in his hat, weirder and more ridiculous than ever; and when he shook the apples down with a kind of sour humour, as if to say, 'There! that's what you trees get by having apples!'--at all these times he seemed less an individual than a blind force. For though his personality was strong, that of the place was stronger. Half out of the soil, minded like the dormouse and the beetle, he was, by virtue of his unspoken passion, the protoplasm of a poet. Chapter 4 Vessons took up the pose of one seeing a new patient. 'This young lady's lost her way,' Reddin remarked. 'She 'as, God's truth! But you'll find it forra I make no doubt, sir. "There's a way"' (he looked ironically at the poultry-basket behind the trap, from which peered anxious, beaky faces)--'"a way as no fowl knoweth, the way of a man with a maid."' 'Fetch the brood mares in from the lower pasture. They should have been in this hour.' 'And late love's worse than lad's love, so they do say,' concluded Vessons. 'There's nothing of love between us,' Reddin snapped. 'I dunna wonder at it!' Andrew cast an appraising look at his master's flushed face and at Hazel's tousled hair, and withdrew. Hazel went into the elaborately carved porch. She looked round the brown hall where deep shadows lurked. Oak chests and carved chairs, all more or less dusty, stood about, looking as if disorderly feasters had just left them. In one corner was an inlaid sideboard piano. Hazel did not notice the grey dust and the hearth full of matches and cigarette ends. She only saw what seemed to her fabulous splendour. A foxhound rose from the moth-eaten leopard-skin by the hearth as they came in. Hazel stiffened. 'I canna-d-abear the hound-dogs,' she said. 'Nasty snabbing things.' 'Best dogs going.' 'No, they kills the poor foxes.' 'Vermin.' Hazel's face became tense. She clenched her hands and advanced a determined chin. 'Keep yer tongue off our Foxy, or I unna stay!' she said. 'Who's Foxy?' 'My little small cub as I took and reared.' 'Oh! you reared it, did you?' 'Ah. She didna like having no mam. I'm her mam now.' Reddin had been looking at her as thoughtfully as his rather maudlin state allowed. He had decided that she should stay at Undern and be his mistress. 'You'll be wanting something better than foxes to be mothering one of these days,' he remarked to the fire, with a half embarrassed, half jocose air, and a hand on the poker. 'Eh?' said Hazel, who was wondering how long it would take her to learn to play the music in the corner. Reddin was annoyed. When one made these arch speeches at such cost of imagination, they should be received properly. He got up and went across to Hazel, who had played three consecutive notes, and was gleeful. He put his hand on hers heavily, and a discord was wrung from the soft-toned notes that had perhaps known other such discords long ago. 'Laws! what a din!' said Hazel. 'What for d'you do that, Mr. Reddin?' Reddin found it harder than ever to repeat his remark, and dropped it. 'What's that brown on your dress?' he asked instead. 'That? Oh, that's from a rabbit as I loosed out'n a trap. It bled awful.' 'Little sneak, to let it out.' 'Sneak's trick to catchen un, so tiny and all,' replied Hazel composedly. 'Well, you'd better change your dress; it's very wet, and there's plenty here,' said he, going to a chest and pulling out an armful of old-fashioned gowns. 'If you lived at Undern you could wear them every day.' 'If ifs were beans and bacon, there's few'd go clemmed,' said Hazel. 'That green un's proper, like when the leaves come new, and little small roses and all.' Put it on while I see what Vessons is doing.' 'He's grumbling in the kitchen, seemingly,' said Hazel. Vessons always grumbled. His mood could be judged only by the _piano_ or _forte_ effects. Hazel heard him reply to Reddin. 'No. Supper binna ready; I've only just put 'im on.' He always spoke of all phases of his day's work in the masculine gender. Hazel stopped buttoning her dress to hear what Reddin was saying. 'Have you some hot water for the lady?' ('The lady! That's me!' she thought.) 'No, sir, I anna. Nor yet I anna got no myrrh, aloes, nor cassher. There's nought in my kitchen but a wold useless cat and an o'erdruv man of six-and-sixty, a pot of victuals not yet simmering, and a gentleman as ought to know better than to bring a girl to Undern and ruin her--a poor innocent little creature.' 'Me again,' said Hazel. She pondered on the remark and flushed. 'Maybe I'd best go,' she thought. Yet only vague instinct stirred her to this, and all her soul was set on staying. 'Never shall it be said'--Andrew's voice rose like a preacher's--'never shall it be said as a young female found no friend in Andrew Vessons; never shall it be said'--his voice soared over various annoyed exclamations of Reddin's--'as a female went from this 'all different from what she came.' 'Shut up, Vessons!' But Vessons was, as he would have phrased it himself, 'in full honey-flow,' and not to be silenced. 'Single she be, and single she'd ought to stay. This 'ere rubbitch of kissing and clipping!' 'But, Vessons, if there were no children gotten, the world'd be empty.' 'Let 'un be. 'Im above'll get a bit of rest, nights, from their sins.' 'Eh, I like that old chap,' thought Hazel. The wrangle continued. It was the deathless quarrel of the world and the monastery--natural man and the hermit. Finally Vessons concluded on a top note. 'Well, if you take this girl's good name off'n her--' Suddenly something happened in Hazel's brain. It was the realization of life in relation to self. It marks the end of childhood. She no more saw herself throned above life and fate, as a child does. She saw that she was a part of it all; she was mutable and mortal. She had seen life go on, had heard of funerals, courtings, confinements and weddings in their conventional order--or reversed--and she had remained, as it were, intact. She had starved and slaved and woven superstitions, loved Foxy, and tolerated her father. Girl friends had hinted of a wild revelry that went on somewhere-- everywhere--calling like a hidden merry-go-round to any who cared to hear. But she had not heard. They had let fall such sentences as 'He got the better of me,' 'I cried out, and he thought someone was coming, and he let me go.' Later, she heard, 'And I thought I'd ne'er get through it when baby came.' She felt vaguely sorry for these girls; but she realized nothing of their life. Nor did she associate funerals and illness with herself. As the convolvulus stands in apparent changelessness in a silent rose-and-white eternity, so she seemed to herself a stationary being. But the convolvulus has budded and bloomed and closed again while you thought her still, and she dies--the rayed and rosy cup so full of airy sweetness--she dies in a day. * * * * * Hazel got up from her chair by the fire and went restlessly, with a rustle as of innumerable autumn leaves, to the hall door. She gazed through the glass, and saw the sad feather-flights of snow wandering and hesitating, and finally coming to earth. They held to their individuality as flakes as long as they could, it seemed; but the end came to all, and they were merged in earth and their own multitudes. Hazel opened the door and stood on the threshold, so that snow-flakes flattened themselves on the yellow roses of her dress. Outside there was no world, only a waste of grey and white. Like leaves on a dead bird, the wrappings of white grew deeper over Undern. Hazel shivered in the cold wind off the hill, and saw Undern Pool curdling and thickening in the frost. No sound came across the outspread country. There were no roads near Undern except its own cart track; there were no railways within miles. Nothing moved except the snow-flakes, fulfilling their relentless destiny of negation. She saw them only, and heard only the raised voices in the house arguing about herself. 'I mun go,' she said, strong in her spirit of freedom, remote and withdrawn. 'I mun stay,' she amended, weak in her undefended smallness, and very tired. She turned back to the fire. But the instinct that had awakened as childhood died clamoured within her and would not let her rest. She softly took off the silk dress, and put on her own. She picked up the wreath-frames with a sigh and opened the door again. She would have a long, wild walk home, but she could creep in through her bedroom window, which would not latch, and she could make a great fire of dry broom and brew some tea. 'And I'll let Foxy in and eat a loaf, I will, for I'm clemmed!' she said. She slipped out through the door that had seen so many human lives come and go. Even as she went, the door betrayed her, for Reddin, coming from the kitchen, saw her through the upper panes. Chapter 5 'I be going home-along,' she said, but he pulled her in and shut the door. 'Why did you want to go?' 'I'm alost in this grand place.' 'Your hair's grander than anything in the place. And your eyes are like sherry.' 'Truth on your life?' 'Yes. Now you'd better change your dress again.' He reached down an old silver candlestick, very tarnished. 'You can go upstairs. There's a glass in the first room you come to. Then we'll have supper.' 'Sitting at the supper in a grand shining gown wi' roses on it,' said Hazel ecstatically, her voice rising to a kind of chant, 'with a white cloth on table like school-treat, and the old servant hopping to and agen like thrussels after worms.' 'Thrussel yourself!' muttered Andrew, peering in at the door. He retired again, remarking to the cat in a sour lugubrious voice, as he always did when ruffled: 'There's no cats i' the Bible.' He began to sing 'By the waters of Babylon.' Upstairs Hazel coiled her hair, running her fingers through its bright lengths, as she had no comb, and turning in her underbodice to make it suit the low dress. Outside, his rough hair wet with snow, stood Reddin, watching her from the vantage-ground of the darkness! He saw her stand with head erect and bare white shoulders, smiling at herself in the glass. He saw her slip into the rich gown and pose delightedly, mincing to and fro like a wagtail. He noted her lissom figure and shining coils of hair. 'She'll do,' he said, and did not wonder whether he would do himself. Then he gave a smothered exclamation. She had opened the window, pushing the snowy ivy aside, and she leant out, her breast under its folds of silk resting on the snow. She looked over his head into the immensity of night. 'Dunna let 'un take my good name, for the old feller says I'd ought to keep it,' she said. 'And let me get back to Foxy quick in the morning light, and no harm come to us for ever and ever.' The night received her prayer in silence. Whether or not any heard but Reddin none could say. Reddin tiptoed into the house, rather downcast. This was a strange creature that he had caught. Vessons was still at the waters of Babylon when Hazel came down. 'Why canna he get beyond them five words?' asked Hazel. 'He allus stops and goes back like a dog on a chain.' She sang it through in her high clear voice. There was silence in the kitchen. Reddin stared at Hazel. 'Who taught you to sing?' he asked. 'Father. He's wonderful with the music, is father.' Hazel found that in the presence of strangers her feeling for her father was almost warm. 'Playing the harp nights, he makes your flesh creep; ah! and he makes the place all on a charm, like the spinneys in May month. And he says, "Sing!" says he, and I ups and sings, and whiles I don't never know what I bin singing.' 'That I can well believe,' said Vessons. Reddin swung round. 'What the devil are you doing here?' he asked. 'I've come to say'--Vessons' tone was dry--'as supper's burnt.' 'Burnt?' 'Ah, to a cinder.' 'How did you do that, you fool?' 'Harkening at the lady teaching me to sing.' Reddin was furious. He knew why supper was burnt. 'Get out!' he said. 'Get out into the stable and stay there. I'll get supper myself.' Vessons withdrew composedly. Since Hazel had offended him, he had decided that she must take care of herself. 'Couldna he bide in the house?' asked Hazel uneasily. 'No.' They fetched in bread and beer and cold meat. Her host was jubilant, and during supper, quite deferential. He had been awed by Hazel's request to the night and by her beauty. But when his hunger was satisfied, his voice grew louder and his eyes sultry. Restraint fell between them. Looking at his face, Hazel again had an impulse for flight. When he said, 'I want to stroke that silk dress,' and came towards her, knocking the candle over as if by accident, she edged away, saying sharply: 'Dunna maul me!' He paid no attention. 'I'll do right by you,' he said; 'I swear I will. I'll--yes, I'll even marry you to-morrow. But to-night's mine.' It was not a question of marrying or not marrying in Hazel's eyes. It was a matter of primitive instinct. She would be her own. He had pulled the low dress off one shoulder. She twitched it out of his hand and slipped from his grasp like a fish from a net. He was too surprised to follow at once. 'Old feller!' she called, running into the yard, 'quick! quick!' A rough grey head appeared. 'What? after the old 'un?' 'I wunna stay along of him!' Vessons looked at her interestedly. Apparently she also was a devotee of his religion--celibacy; one who dared to go against the explicit decrees of nature. 'I think the better of you,' he said. 'So he's had his trouble for nothing,' he chuckled. 'You can have my room. You shanna say Andrew Vessons inna a man of charitable nature. Never shall you! There's a key to it.' He led the way to his room through the back door and up the kitchen stairs. Most people would have suffered anything rather than sleep in the room he revealed when he proudly flung the door open. He had the recluse's love of little possessions and daily comforts. On an upturned box by the bed were his clay pipe, matches, a treacle-tin containing whisky, and some chicken-bones. He usually kept a few bones to pick at his ease. A goldfinch with a harassed air occupied a wooden cage in the window, and the mantelpiece was fitted up with white mice in home-made cages. It seemed quite a pleasant room to Hazel. 'Mind as you're very careful of all my things,' said Vessons wistfully. 'I hanna slep away from this room for nigh twenty year. That bird's ne'er slep without me. He'll miss me. He unna sing for anybody else.' He always asserted this, and the bird always belied it by singing to Reddin and any chance visitor. But Vessons continued to believe it. There are some things that it is necessary to believe; doubt of them means despair. Vessons was conscious that he was being generous. 'You can drink a sup of whisky if you like,' he said. 'Now I'm going, afore that bird notices, or I shall never get away.' The bird sat in preoccupied silence. He was probably thinking of the woods and seeded dandelions. He was of the fellowship to which comfort means little and freedom much. So was Hazel. 'Lock the door!' Vessons said in a sepulchral whisper from the stairs. Hazel did so, and curled up to sleep in the creaking house, thoughtless as the white mice, defenceless as they, as little grateful to Vessons for his protection, and in as deep an ignorance of what the world could do to her if it chose. Chapter 6 Early next morning, while the finch still dreamed its heavy dream and the mice were still motionless balls, Hazel was awakened by a knock at the massive oak door. She ran across and opened it a crack, peering out from amid her hair like a squirrel from autumn leaves. Vessons stood there with a pint mug of beer, which he proffered. But Hazel had a woman's craving for tea. 'If so be the kettle's boiling,' she said apologetically. 'Tay!' said Vessons. 'Laws! how furiously the women do rage after tay! I s'pose it's me as is to make it?' 'If kettle's boiling.' 'Kettle! O' course kettle's boiling this hour past. Or how would the ca'ves get their meal?' 'Well, you needna shout. You'll wake 'im.' Fright was in her eyes, strong and inexplicable to herself. 'I mun go!' she whispered. 'Ah! You go,' said Vessons, glad that for once duty and inclination went hand in hand. 'I'll send you,' he added. 'Where d'yer live?' She hesitated. 'You needna be frit to tell _me,_' said Vessons. 'I'm six-and-sixty, and you're no more to me'--he surveyed her flushing face contemplatively--'than the wold useless cat,' he concluded. Hazel frowned; but she wanted a promise from Vessons, so she made no retort. 'You wunna tell 'im?' she pleaded. ''Im? Never will I! Wild 'orses shanna drag it from me, nor yet blood 'orses, nor 'unters, nor cart-'orses, nor Suffolk punches!' Vessons waxed eloquent, for again righteousness and desire coincided. He did not want a woman at Undern. 'Well,' said Hazel, whispering through the crack, 'I lives at the Callow.' 'What! that lost and forgotten place t'other side the Mountain?' 'Ah! But it inna lost and forgotten; it's better'n this. We've got bees.' 'So've I got bees.' 'And a music.' 'Music? What's a music? You canna eat it.' 'And my dad makes coffins.' 'Does 'e, now?' said Vessons, interested at last. Then he bethought him of the credit of Undern. 'But you anna got a mulberry-tree,' he said triumphantly. 'Now then! _I_ 'ave!' He creaked downstairs. In a few moments Hazel also went down, and drank her tea by the red fire in the kitchen, watching the frost-flowers being softly effaced from the window as if someone rubbed them away with a sponge. Snow like sifted sugar was heaped on the sill, and the yard and outbuildings and fields, the pools and the ricks, all had the dim radiance of antimony. 'Where be the road?' asked Hazel, standing on the door-step and feeling rather lost. 'How'll I find it?' 'You wunna find it.' 'Oh, but I mun!' 'D'you think Andrew Vessons'll let an 'ooman trapse in the snow when he's got good horses in stable?' queried Vessons grandly. 'I'll drive yer.' 'I'm much obleeged, I'm sure,' said Hazel. 'But wunna he know?' 'He'll sleep till noon if I let 'im,' said Andrew. They drove off in silence, the snow muffling the plunging hoofs. Hazel looked back as the sky crimsoned for dawn. The house fronted her with a look of power and patience. She felt that it had not yet done with her. She wondered how she would feel if Reddin suddenly appeared at his window. And a tiny traitorous wish slipped up from somewhere in her heart. She watched the windows till a turn hid the house, and then she sighed. Almost she wished that Reddin had awakened. But she soon forgot everything in delight; for the snow shone, the long slots of the rabbits and hares, the birds' tracks in orderly rows, the deep footprints of sheep, all made her laugh by their vagaries, for they ran in loops and in circles, and appeared like the crazy steps of a sleep-walker to those who had not the key of their activity. Hazel's own doings were like that; everyone's doings are like it, if one sees the doings without the motive. Plovers wheeled and cried desolately, seeing the soft relentless snow between themselves and their green meadows, sad as those that see fate drawing thick veils between themselves and the meadows of their hope and joy. At the foot of the Callow Hazel got out. 'Never tell him,' she said, looking up. 'Never in life,' said Vessons. Hazel hesitated. 'Never tell him,' she added, 'unless he asks a deal and canna rest.' 'He may ask till Doomsday,' said Vessons, 'and he may be restless as the ten thousand ghosses that trapse round Undern when the moon's low, but I'll ne'er tell 'im.' Hazel sighed, and turned to climb the hill. 'A missus at Undern!' said Andrew to the cob's ears as they trotted home. 'No, never will I!' A magpie rose from a wood near the road, jibing at him. He looked round almost as if it had been someone laughing at his resolve, and repeated, 'Never will I!' 'Where's Hazel?' asked Reddin. 'Neither wild 'orses, nor blood 'orses, nor race 'orses nor cart 'orses, nor Suffolk punches--' began Vessons whose style was cumulative, and who, when he had made a good phrase, was apt to work it to death like any other artist. 'Oh, you're drunk, Vessons!' said his master. 'Shall drag it from me,' finished Vessons. Reddin knew this was true, and felt rather hopeless. Still, he determined not to give up the search until he had found Hazel. He inquired at the Hunter's Arms, but Vessons had been there before him, and he was met by pleasant stupidity. Vessons was of the people, Reddin of the aristocracy, so the frequenters of the Hunter's Arms sided as one man against Reddin. 'You'll not get another bite of that apple,' said Vessons with satisfaction, when his master returned with downcast face. 'I can't stand your manners much longer, Vessons,' said he irritably. 'Gie me notice, then,' said Vessons, falling back on the well-worn formula, and scoring his usual triumph. Reddin had the faults of his class, but turning an old servant adrift was not one of them. Vessons traded on this, and invariably said and did exactly what he liked. Chapter 7 When Hazel got in, her father had finished his breakfast and was busy at work. 'Brought the wreath-frames?' he asked, without looking up. 'Ah.' 'He's jead at last. At the turn of the night. They came after the coffin but now. I'll be able to get them there new section crates I wanted. He's doing more for me, wanting a coffin, and him stiff and cold, than what he did in the heat of life.' 'Many folks be like that,' said Hazel out of her new wisdom. Neither of them reflected that Abel had always been like that towards Hazel, that she was becoming more like it to him every year. Abel made no remark at all about Hazel's adventures, and she preserved a discreet silence. 'That little vixen's took a chicken,' said Abel, after a time; 'that's the second.' 'She only does it when I'm away, being clemmed,' said Hazel pleadingly. 'Well, if she does it again,' Abel announced, 'it's the water and a stone round her neck. So now you know.' 'You durstn't.' 'We'll see if I durst.' Hazel fled in tears to the unrepentant and dignified Foxy. Some of us find it hard enough to be dignified when we have done right; but Foxy could be dignified when she had done wrong, and the more wrong, the more dignity. She was very bland, and there was a look of deep content--digestive content, a state bordering on the mystic's trance--in her affectionate topaz eyes. It had been a tender and nourishing chicken; the hours she had spent in gnawing through her rope had been well repaid. 'Oh! you darlin' wicked little thing!' wailed Hazel. 'You munna do it, Foxy, or he'll drown you dead. What for did you do it, Foxy, my dear?' Foxy's eyes became more eloquent and more liquid. 'You gallus little blessed!' said Hazel again. 'Eh! I wish you and me could live all alone by our lonesome where there was no men and women.' Foxy shut her eyes and yawned, evidently feeling doubtful if such a halcyon place existed in the world. Hazel sat on her heels and thought. It was flight or Foxy. She knew that if she did not take Foxy away, her renewed naughtiness was as certain as sunset. 'You was made bad,' she said sadly but sympathetically. 'Leastways, you wasn't made like watch-dogs and house-cats and cows. You was made a fox, and you be a fox, and its queer-like to me, Foxy, as folk canna see that. They expect you to be what you wanna made to be. You'm made to be a fox; and when you'm busy being a fox they say you'm a sinner!' Having wrestled with philosophy until Foxy yawned again, Hazel went in to try her proposition on Abel. But Abel met it as the world in general usually meets a new truth. 'She took the chick,' he said. 'Now, would a tarrier do that--a well-trained tarrier? I says 'e would _not_' 'But it inna fair to make the same law for foxes and terriers.' 'I make what laws suit me,' said Abel. 'And what goes agen me--gets drownded.' 'But it inna all for you!' cried Hazel. 'Eh?' 'The world wunna made in seven days only for Abel Woodus,' said Hazel daringly. 'You've come back very peart from Silverton,' said Abel reflectively-- 'very peart, you 'ave. How many young fellers told you your 'air was abron this time? That fool Albert said so last time, and you were neither to hold nor to bind. Abron! Carrots!' But it was not, as he thought, this climax that silenced Hazel. It was the lucky hit about the young fellows and the reminiscence called up by the word 'abron.' He continued his advantage, mollified by victory. 'Tell you what it is, 'Azel; it's time you was married. You're too uppish.' 'I shall ne'er get married.' 'Words! words! You'll take the first as comes--if there's ever such a fool.' Hazel wished she could tell him that one had asked her, and that no labouring man. But discretion triumphed. 'Maybe,' she said tossing her head, 'I _will_ marry, to get away from the Callow.' 'Well, well, things couldna be dirtier; maybe they'll be cleaner when you'm gone. Look's the floor!' Hazel fell into a rage. He was always saying things about the floor. She hated the floor. 'I swear I'll wed the first as comes!' she cried--'the very first!' 'And last,' put in Abel. 'What'll you swear by?' 'By God's Little Mountain.' 'Well,' said Abel contentedly, 'now you've sworn _that_ oath, you're bound to keep it, and so now I know that if ever an 'usband _does_ come forrard you canna play the fool.' Hazel was too wrathful for consideration. 'You look right tidy in that gownd,' Abel said. 'I 'spose you'll be wearing it to the meeting up at the Mountain?' 'What meeting?' 'Didna I tell you I'd promised you for it--to sing? They'm after me to take the music and play.' Hazel forgot everything in delight. 'Be we going for certain sure?' she asked. 'Ah! Next Monday three weeks.' 'We mun practise.' 'They say that minister's a great one for the music. One of them sort as is that musical he canna play. There'll be a tea.' 'Eh!' said Hazel, 'it'll be grand to be in a gentleman's house agen!' 'When've you bin in a gentleman's house?' Hazel was taken aback. 'Yesterday!' she flashed. 'If Albert inna a gent I dunno who is, for he's got a watch-chain brass-mockin'-gold all across his wescoat.' Abel roared. Then he fell to in earnest on the coffin, whistling like a blackbird. Hazel sat down and watched him, resting her cheek on her hand. The cold snowlight struck on her face wanly. 'Dunna you ever think, making coffins for poor souls to rest in as inna tired, as there's a tree growing somewhere for yours?' she asked. 'Laws! What's took you? Measles? What for should I think of me coffin? That's about the only thing as I'll ne'er be bound to pay for.' He laughed. 'What ails you?' 'Nought. Only last night it came o'er me as I'll die as well as others.' 'Well, have you only just found that out? Laws! what a queen of fools you be!' Hazel looked at the narrow box, and thought of the active, angular old man for whom it was now considered an ample house. 'It seems like the world's a big spring-trap, and us in it,' she said slowly. Then she sprang up feverishly. 'Let's practise till we're as hoarse as a young rook!' she cried. So amid the hammering their voices sprang up, like two keen flames. Then Abel threw away the hammer and began to harp madly, till the little shanty throbbed with the sound of the wires and the lament of the voices that rose and fell with artless cunning. The cottage was like a tree full of thrushes. After their twelve o'clock dinner, Abel cut holly for the wreaths, and Hazel began to make them. For the first time home seemed dull. She thought wistfully of the green silk dress and the supper in the old, stately room. She thought of Vessons, and of Reddin's eyes as he pulled her back from the door. She thought of Undern as a refuge for Foxy. 'Maybe sometime I'll go and see 'em,' she thought. She went to the door and looked out. Frost tingled in the air; icicles had formed round the water-butt; the strange humming stillness of intense cold was about her. It froze her desire for adventure. 'I'll stay as I be,' she thought. 'I wunna be his'n.' To her, Reddin was a terror and a fascination. She returned to the prickly wreath, sewing on the variegated holly-leaves one by one, with clusters of berries at intervals. 'What good'll it do 'im?' she asked; 'he canna see it.' 'Who wants him to see it?' Abel was amused. 'When his father died he 'ad his enjoyment--proud as proud was Samson, for there were seven wreaths, no less.' Hazel's thoughts returned to the coming festivity. Her hair and her peacock-blue dress would be admired. To be admired was a wonderful new sensation. She fetched a cloth and rubbed at the brown mark. It would not come out. As long as she wore the dress it would be there, like the stigma of pain that all creatures bear as long as they wear the garment of the flesh. At last she burst into tears. 'I want another dress with no blood on it!' she wailed. And so wailing she voiced the deep lament, old as the moan of forests and falling water, that goes up through the centuries to the aloof and silent sky, and remains, as ever, unassuaged. * * * * * Hazel hated a burying, for then she had to go with Abel to help in carrying the coffin to the house of mourning. They set out on the second day after her return. The steep road down to the plain--called the Monkey's Ladder--was a river, for a thaw had set in. But Hazel did not mind that, though her boots let in the water, as she minded the atmosphere of gloom at old Samson's blind house. She would never, as Abel always did, 'view the corpse,' and this was always taken as an insult. So she waited in the road, half snow and half water, and thought with regret of Undern and its great fire of logs, and the green rich dress, and Reddin with his force and virility, loud voice, and strong teeth. He was so very much alive in a world where old men would keep dying. Abel came out at last, very gay, for he had been given, over and above the usual payment, glove-money and a glass of beer. 'Us'll get a drop at the public,' he said. So they turned in there. Hazel thought the red-curtained, firelit room, with its crudely coloured jugs and mugs, a most wonderful place. She sat in a corner of the settle and watched her boots steam, growing very sleepy. But suddenly there was a great clatter outside, the sound of a horse, pulled up sharply, slipping on the cobbles, and a shout for the landlord. 'Oh, my mortal life!' said Hazel, 'it met be the Black Huntsman himself.' 'No, I won't come in,' said the rider, 'a glass out here.' Hazel knew who it was. 'Can you tell me,' he went on, 'if there's any young lady about here with auburn hair? Father plays the fiddle.' 'He's got it wrong,' thought Hazel. 'Young lady!' repeated the landlord. 'Hawburn? No, there's no lady of that colour hereabouts. And what ladies there be are weathered and case-hardened.' 'The one I'm looking for's young--young as a kitten, and as troublesome.' Hazel clapped her hands to her mouth. 'There's no fiddler chap hereabouts, then?' Abel rose and went to the door. 'If it's music you want, I know better music than fiddles, and that's harps,' he said. 'Saw! saw! The only time as ever I liked a fiddle was when the fellow snabbed at the strings with his ten fingers--despert-like.' 'Oh, damn you!' said Reddin. 'I didn't come to hear about harps.' 'If it's funerals or a forester's supper, a concert or a wedding,' Abel went on, quite undaunted, 'I'm your man.' Reddin laughed. 'It might be the last,' he said. 'Wedding or bedding, either or both, I suppose,' said the publican, who was counted a wit. Reddin gave a great roar of laughter. 'Both!' he said. 'Neither!' whispered Hazel, who had been poised indecisively, as if half prepared to go to the door. She sat further into the shadow. In another moment he was gone. 'Whoever she be,' said the publican, nodding his large head wisely, 'have her he will, for certain sure!' All through the night, murmurous with little rivulets of snow-water, the gurgling of full troughing, and the patter of rain on the iron roof of the house and the miniature roofs of the beehives, Hazel, waking from uneasy slumber, heard those words and muttered them. In her frightened dreams she reached out to something that she felt must be beyond the pleasant sound of falling water, so small and transitory; beyond the drip and patter of human destinies--something vast, solitary, and silent. How should she find that which none has ever named or known? Men only stammer of it in such words as Eternity, Fate, God. All the outcries of all creatures, living and dying, sink in its depth as in an unsounded ocean. Whether this listening silence, incurious, yet hearing all, is benignant or malevolent, who can say? The wistful dreams of men haunt this theme for ever; the creeds of men are so many keys that do not fit the lock. We ponder it in our hearts, and some find peace, and some find terror. The silence presses upon us ever more heavily until Death comes with his cajoling voice and promises us the key. Then we run after him into the stillness, and are heard no more. Hazel and her father practised hard through the dark, wet evenings. She was to sing 'Harps in Heaven,' a song her mother had taught her. He was to accompany the choir, or glee-party, that met together at different places, coming from the villages and hillsides of a wide stretch of country. 'Well,' said Abel on the morning of their final rehearsal, 'it's a miserable bit of a silly song, but you mun make the best of it. Give it voice, girl! Dunna go to sing it like a mouse in milk!' His musical taste was offended by Hazel's way of being more dramatic than musical. She would sink her voice in the sad parts almost to a whisper, and then rise to a kind of keen. 'You'm like nought but Owen's old sheep-dog,' he said, 'wowing the moon!' But Hazel's idea of music continued to be that of a bird. She was a wild thing, and she sang according to instinct, and not by rule, though her good ear kept her notes true. They set out early, for they had a good walk in front of them, and the April sun was hot. Hazel, under the pale green larch-trees, in her bright dress, with her crown of tawny hair, seemed to be an incarnation of the secret woods. Abel strode ahead in his black cut-away coat, snuff-coloured trousers, and high-crowned felt hat with its ornamental band. This receded to the back of his head as he grew hotter. The harp was slung from his shoulder, the gilding looking tawdry in the open day. Twice during the walk, once in a round clearing fringed with birches, and once in a pine-glade, he stopped, put the harp down and played, sitting on a felled tree. Hazel, quite intoxicated with excitement, danced between the slender boles till her hair fell down and the long plait swung against her shoulder. 'If folks came by, maybe they'd think I was a fairy!' she cried. 'Dunna kick about so!' said Abel, emerging from his abstraction. 'It inna decent, now you're an 'ooman growd.' 'I'm not an 'ooman growd!' cried Hazel shrilly. 'I dunna want to be, and I won't never be.' The pine-tops bent in the wind like attentive heads, as gods, sitting stately above, might nod thoughtfully over a human destiny. Someone, it almost seemed, had heard and registered Hazel's cry, 'I'll never be an 'ooman,' assenting, sardonic. They came to the quarry at the mountain; the deserted mounds and chasms looked more desolate than ever in the spring world. Here and there the leaves of a young tree lipped the grey-white steeps, as if wistfully trying to love them, as a child tries to caress a forbidding parent. They climbed round the larger heaps and skirted a precipitous place. 'I canna bear this place,' said Hazel; 'it's so drodsome.' 'Awhile since, afore you were born, a cow fell down that there place, hundreds of feet.' 'Did they save her?' 'Laws, no! She was all of a jelly.' Hazel broke out with sudden passionate crying. 'Oh, dunna, dunna!' she sobbed. So she did always at any mention of helpless suffering, flinging herself down in wild rebellion and abandonment so that epilepsy had been suspected. But it was not epilepsy. It was pity. She, in her inexpressive, childish way, shared with the love-martyr of Galilee the heartrending capacity for imaginative sympathy. In common with Him and others of her kind, she was not only acquainted with grief, but reviled and rejected. In her schooldays boys brought maimed frogs and threw them in her lap, to watch, from a safe distance, her almost crazy grief and rage. 'Whatever's come o'er ye?' said her father now. 'You're too nesh, that's what you be, nesh-spirited.' He could not understand; for the art in him was not that warm, suffering thing, creation, but hard, brightly polished talent. Hazel stood at the edge of the steep grey cliff, her hands folded, a curious fatalism in her eyes. 'There'll be summat bad'll come to me hereabouts,' she said--'summat bad and awful.' The dark shadows lying so still on the dirty white mounds had a stealthy, crouching look, and the large soft leaves of a plane-tree flapped helplessly against the shale with the air of important people who whisper 'Alas!' Abel was on ahead. Suddenly he turned round, excited as a boy. 'They've started!' he cried. 'Hark at the music! They allus begin with the organ.' Hazel followed him, eager for joy, running obedient and hopeful at the heels of life as a young lamb runs with its mother. She forgot her dark intuitions; she only remembered that she wanted to enjoy herself, and that if she was a good girl, surely, surely God would let her. Chapter 8 The chapel and minister's house at God's Little Mountain were all in one--a long, low building of grey stone surrounded by the graveyard, where stones, flat, erect, and askew, took the place of a flower-garden. Away to the left, just over a rise, the hill was gashed by the grey steeps of the quarries. In front rose another curve covered with thick woods. To the right was the batch, down which a road--in winter a water-course--led into the valley. Behind the house God's Little Mountain sloped softly up and away apparently to its possessor. Not the least of the mysteries of the place, and it was tense with mystery, was the Sunday congregation, which appeared to spring up miraculously from the rocks, woods and graves. When the present minister, Edward Marston, came there with his mother he detested it; but after a time it insinuated itself into his heart, and gave a stronger character to his religion. He had always been naturally religious, taking on trust what he was taught; and he had an instinctive pleasure in clean and healthy things. But on winter nights at the mountain, when the tingling stars sprang in and out of their black ambush and frost cracked the tombstones; in summer, when lightning crackled in the woods and ripped along the hillside like a thousand devils, the need of a God grew ever more urgent. He spoke of this to his mother. 'No, dear, I can't say I have more need of our Lord here than in Crigton,' she said. 'In Crigton there was the bus to be afraid of, and bicycles. Here I just cover my ears for wind, put on an extra flannel petticoat for frost, and sit in the coal-house for thunder. Not that I'm forgetting God. God with us, of course, coal-house or elsewhere.' 'But don't you feel something ominous about the place, mother? I feel as if something awful would happen here, don't you?' 'No, dear. Nor will you when you've had some magnesia. Martha!' (Martha was the general who came in by the day from the first cottage in the batch)--'Martha, put on an extra chop for the master. You aren't in love, are you, my dear?' 'Gracious, no! Who should I be in love with, mother?' 'Quite right, dear. There is no one about here with more looks than a brussels sprout. Not that I say anything against sprouts. Martha, just go and see if there are any sprouts left. We'll have them for dinner.' Edward looked at the woods across the batch, and wondered why the young fresh green of the larches and the elm samaras was so sad, and why the cry of a sheep from an upper slope was so forlorn. 'I hope, Edward,' said Mrs. Marston, 'that it won't be serious music. I think serious music interferes with the digestion. Your poor father and I went to the "Creation" on our honeymoon, and thought little of it; then we went to the "Crucifixion," and though it was very pleasant, I couldn't digest the oysters afterwards. And then, again, these clever musicians allow themselves to become so passionate, one almost thinks they are inebriated. Not flutes and cornets, they have to think of their breath, but fiddlers can wreak their feelings on the instrument without suffering for it.' Edward laughed. 'I hope the gentleman that's coming to-day is a nice quiet one,' she went on, as if Abel were a pony. 'And I hope the lady singer is not a contralto. Contralto, to my mind,' she went on placidly, stirring her porter in preparation for a draught, 'is only another name for roaring, which is unseemly.' She drank her porter gratefully, keeping the spoon in place with one finger. If she could have seen father and daughter as they set forth, hilarious, to superimpose tumult on the peace of God's Little Mountain, she would have been a good deal less placid. It was restful to sit and look at her kind old face, soft and round beneath her lace cap, steeped in a peace deeper than lethargy. She was one of nature's opiates, and she administered herself unconsciously to everyone who saw much of her. Edward's father, having had an overdose, had not survived. Mrs. Marston always spoke of him as 'my poor husband who fell asleep,' as if he had dozed in a sermon. Sleep was her fetish, panacea and art. Her strongest condemnation was to call a person 'a stirring body.' She sat to-day, while preparations raged in the kitchen, placidly knitting. She always knitted--socks for Edward and shawls for herself. She had made so many shawls, and she so felt the cold, that she wore them in layers--pink, grey, white, heather mixture, and a purple cross-over. When Martha and the friend who had come to help quarrelled shrilly, she murmured, 'Poor things! putting themselves in such a pother!' When, after a crash, Martha was heard to say, 'There's the cream-jug now! Well, break one, break three!' she only shook her head, and murmured that servants were not what they used to be. When Martha's friend's little boy dropped the urn--presented to the late Mr. Marston by a grateful congregation, and as large as a watering-can--and Martha's friend shouted, 'I'll warm your buttons!' and proceeded to do so, Mrs. Marston remained self-poised as a sun. At last supper was set out, the cloths going in terraces according to the various heights of the tables; the tea-sets--willow and Coalport, the feather pattern, and the seaweed--looking like a china-shop; the urn, now rakishly dinted, presiding. People paid for their supper on these occasions, and expected to have as much as they could eat. Mrs. Marston had rashly told Martha that she could have what was left as a perquisite, which resulted later in stormy happenings. * * * * * From the nook on the hillside where the chapel stood, as Abel ran hastily down the slope--the harp jogging on his shoulders and looking like some weird demon that clung round his neck and possessed him--came a roar of sound. The brass band from Black Mountain was in possession of the platform. The golden windows shone comfortably in the cold spring evening, and Hazel ran towards them as she would have run towards the wide-flung onyx doors of faery. They arrived breathless and panting in the graveyard, where the tombstones seemed to elbow each other outside the shining windows, looking into this cave of saffron light and rosy joy as sardonically as if they knew that those within its shelter would soon be without, shelterless in the storm of death; that those who came in so gaily by twos and threes would go out one by one without a word. Hazel peered in. 'Fine raps they're having!' she whispered. 'All the band's there, purple with pleasure, and sweating with the music like chaps haying.' Abel looked in. 'Eh, dear,' he said, 'they're settled there for the neet. We'll ne'er get a squeak in. There's nought for Black Mountain Band'll stop at when they're elbow to elbow; they eggs each other on cruel, so they do! Your ears may be dinned and deafened for life, and you lost to the bee-keeping (for hear you must, or you'm done, with bees), but the band dunna care! There! Now they've got a hencore--that's to say, do it agen; and every time they get one of them it goes to their yeads, and they play louder.' 'Ah, but you play better,' said Hazel comfortingly; for Abel's voice had trembled, and Hazel must comfort grief wherever she found it, for grief implied weakness. 'I know I do,' he assented; 'but what can I do agen ten strong men?' At the mountain, as in the world of art and letters, it seemed that the artist must elbow and push, and that if he did not often stop his honeyed utterances to shout his wares he would not be heard at all. 'Dunna they look funny!' said Hazel with a giggle. 'All sleepy and quiet, like smoked bees. Is that the Minister? Him by the old sleepy lady--she's had more smoke than most!' 'Where?' 'There. He's got a black coat on and a kind face, sad-like.' 'Maybe if you took an axed him, he'd marry you--when the moon falls down the chapel chimney and rabbits chase the bobtailed sheep-dog!' 'I'm not for marrying anybody. Let's go in,' said Hazel. She took off her hat and coat, to enter more splendidly. On her head, resting softly among the coils of ruddy hair, she put a wreath of violets, which grew everywhere at the Callow; a big bunch of them was at her throat like a cameo brooch. When she entered the band faltered, and the cornet, a fiery young man whom none could tire, wavered into silence. Edward, turning to find out what had caused this most desirable event, saw her coming up the room with the radiant fatefulness of a fairy in a dream. His heart went out to her, not only for her morning air, her vivid eyes, her coronet of youth's rare violets, but for the wistfulness that was not only in her face, but in her poise and in every movement. He felt as he would to a small bright bird that had come, greatly daring, in at his window on a stormy night. She had entered the empty room of his heart, and from this night onwards his only thought was how to keep her there. When she went up to sing, his eyes dwelt on her. She was the most vital thing he had ever seen. The tendrils of burnished hair about her forehead and ears curled and shone with life; her eyes danced with life; her body was taut as a slim arrow ready to fly from life's bow. Abel sat down in the middle of the platform and began to play, quite regardless of Hazel, who had to start when she could. 'Harps in heaven played for you; Played for Christ with his eyes so blue; Played for Peter and for Paul, But never played for me at all! Harps in heaven, made all of glass, Greener than the rainy grass. Ne'er a one but is bespoken, And mine is broken--mine is broken! Harps in heaven play high, play low; In the cold, rainy wind I go To find my harp, as green as spring-- My splintered harp without a string!' She sang with passion. The wail of the lost was in her voice. She had not the slightest idea what the words meant (probably they meant nothing), but the sad cadence suited her emotional tone, and the ideas of loss and exile expressed her vague mistrust of the world. Edward imagined her in her blue-green dress and violet crown playing on a large glass harp in a company of angels. 'Poor child!' he thought. 'Is it mystical longing or a sense of sin that cries out in her voice?' It was neither of those things; it was nothing that Edward could have understood at that time, though later he did. It was the grief of rainy forests, and the moan of stormy water; the muffled complaint of driven leaves; the keening--wild and universal--of life for the perishing matter that it inhabits. Hazel expressed things that she knew nothing of, as a blackbird does. For, though she was young and fresh, she had her origin in the old, dark heart of earth, full of innumerable agonies, and in that heart she dwelt, and ever would, singing from its gloom as a bird sings in a yew-tree. Her being was more full of echoes than the hearts of those that live further from the soil; and we are all as full of echoes as a rocky wood--echoes of the past, reflex echoes of the future, and echoes of the soil (these last reverberating through our filmiest dreams, like the sound of thunder in a blossoming orchard). The echoes are in us of great voices long gone hence, the unknown cries of huge beasts on the mountains; the sullen aims of creatures in the slime; the love-call of the bittern. We know, too, echoes of things outside our ken--the thought that shapes itself in the bee's brain and becomes a waxen box of sweets; the tyranny of youth stirring in the womb; the crazy terror of small slaughtered beasts; the upward push of folded grass, and how the leaf feels in all its veins the cold rain; the ceremonial that passes yearly in the emerald temples of bud and calyx--we have walked those temples; we are the sacrifice on those altars. And the future floats on the current of our blood like a secret argosy. We hear the ideals of our descendants, like songs in the night, long before our firstborn is begotten. We, in whom the pollen and the dust, sprouting grain and falling berry, the dark past and the dark future, cry and call--we ask, Who is this Singer that sends his voice through the dark forest, and inhabits us with ageless and immortal music, and sets the long echoes rolling for evermore? The audience, however, did not notice that there were echoes in Hazel, and would have gaped if you had proclaimed God in her voice. They looked at her with critical eyes that were perfectly blind to her real self. Mrs. Marston thought what a pity it was that she looked so wild; Martha thought it a pity that she did not wear a chenille net over her hair to keep it neat; and Abel, peering up at her through the strings of the harp and looking--with his face framed in wild red hair--like a peculiarly intelligent animal in a cage, did not think of her at all. But Edward made up for them, because he thought of her all the time. Before the end of the concert he had got as far as to be sure she was the only girl he would ever want to marry. His ministerial self put in a faint proviso, 'If she is a good girl'; but it was instantly shouted down by his other self, who asserted that as she was so beautiful she must be good. During the last items on the programme--two vociferous glees rendered by a stage-full of people packed so tightly that it was marvellous how they expanded their diaphragms--Edward was in anguish of mind lest the cornet should monopolize Hazel at supper. The said cornet had become several shades more purple each time Hazel sang, so Edward was prepared for the worst. He was determined to make a struggle for it, and felt that though his position denied him the privilege of scuffling, he might at least use finesse--that has never been denied to any Church. 'My dear,' whispered Mrs. Marston, 'have you an unwelcome guest?' This was her polite way of indicating a flea. 'No, mother.' 'Well, dear, there must be something preying on your mind; you have kept up such a feeling of uneasiness that I have hardly had any nap at all.' 'What do you think of her, mother?' 'Who, dear?' 'The beautiful girl.' 'A pretty tune, the first she sang,' said Mrs. Marston, not having heard the others. 'But such wild manners and such hair! Like pussy stroked the wrong way. And there is something a little peculiar about her, for when she sings about heaven it seems somehow improper, and that,' she added drowsily, 'heaven hardly _should_ do.' Edward understood what she meant. He had been conscious himself of something desperately exciting in the bearing of Hazel Woodus--something that penetrated the underworld which lay like a covered well within him, and, like a ray of light, set all kinds of unsuspected life moving and developing there. As supper went on Edward kept more and more of Hazel's attention, and the quiet grey eyes met the restless amber ones more often. 'If I came some day--soon--to your home, would you sing to me?' he asked. 'I couldna. I'm promised for the bark-stripping.' 'What's that?' Hazel looked at him pityingly. 'Dunna you know what that is?' 'I'm afraid not.' 'It's fetching the bark off'n the failed trees ready for lugging.' 'Where are the felled trees?' 'Hunter's Spinney.' 'That's close here.' 'Ah.' Edward was deep in thought. The cornet whispered to Hazel: 'Making up next Sunday's sermon!' But Edward turned round disconcertingly. 'As it's on your way, why not come to tea with mother? I might be out, but you wouldn't mind that?' 'Eh, but I should! I dunna want to talk to an old lady!' 'I'll stop at home,' then, he replied, very much amused, and with a look of quiet triumph at the cornet. 'Which day?' 'Wednesday week's the first.' 'Come Wednesday, then.' 'What'll the old sleepy lady say?' 'My mother,' he said with dignity, 'will approve of anything I think right.' But his heart misgave. So far he had only 'thought right' what her conventions approved. He had seldom acted on his own initiative. She therefore had a phrase, 'Dear Edward is always right.' It was possible that when he left off his unquestioning concordance with her, she would leave off saying 'Dear Edward is always right.' So far he had not wanted anything particularly, and as it was as difficult to quarrel with Mrs. Marston as to strike a match on a damp box, there had never been any friction. She liked things, as she said, 'nice and pleasant.' To do Providence justice, everything always had been. Even when her husband died it had been, in a crape-clad way, nice and pleasant, for he died after the testimonial and the urn, and not before, as a less considerate man would have done. He died on a Sunday, which was 'so suitable,' and at dawn, which was 'so beautiful'; also (in the phrase used for criminals and the dying) 'he went quietly.' Not that Mrs. Marston did not feel it. She did, as deeply as her nature could. But she felt it, as a well-padded boy feels a whacking, through layers of convention. Now, at her age, to find out that life was not so pleasant as she thought would be little short of tragedy. 'Ah, I'll come, and I'm much obleeged,' said Hazel. 'I'll meet you at Hunter's Spinney and see you home.' Edward decided. To this also Hazel assented so delightedly that the cornet pushed back his chair and went to another table with a sardonic laugh. But his remarks were drowned by a voice which proclaimed: 'All the years I've bin to suppers I've 'ad tartlets! To-night they wunna go round. I've paid the same as others. Tartlets I'll 'ave!' 'But the plate's empty,' said Martha, flushed and determined. 'I've had no finger in the emptying of it. More must be fetched.' Other voices joined in, and Mrs. Marston was heard to murmur, 'Unpleasant.' Edward was oblivious to it all. 'Shall you,' he asked earnestly, 'like me to come to the Spinney?' 'Ah, I shall that!' said Hazel, who already felt an aura of protection about him. 'It'll be so safe--like when I was little, and was used to pick daisies round grandad.' Edward knew more definitely than before the relation in which he wished to stand towards Hazel. It was not that of grandad. Any reply he might have made was drowned by the uproar that broke forth at the cry, 'She's hidden 'em! Look in the kitchen!' Martha's cousin--in his spare time policeman of a distant village--felt that if Martha was detected in fraud it would not look well, and therefore put his sinewy person in the kitchen doorway. Edward seized the moment, when there was a hush of surprise, to say grace, during which the invincible voice murmured: 'I've not received tartlets. I'm not thankful.' 'Mother,' Edward said, when the last unruly guest had disappeared in the wild April night, and Hazel's vivid presence and violet fragrance and young laughter had been taken by the darkness, 'I've asked Hazel Woodus to tea on Wednesday.' 'She is not of your class, Edward.' 'What does class matter?' 'Martha's brother calls you "sir," and Martha looks down on this young person.' 'Don't call her "young person," mother.' 'Whether it is mistaken kindness, dear, or a silly flirtation, it will only do you harm with the congregation.' 'Young men and women,' soliloquized Mrs. Marston as she hoisted herself upstairs with the candlestick very much aslant in a torpid hand, 'are not what they used to be.' Chapter 9 Hunter's Spinney, a conical hill nearly as high as God's Little Mountain, lay between that range and Undern. It was deeply wooded; only its top was bare and caught the light redly. It was a silent and deserted place, cowled in ancient legends. Here the Black Huntsman stalled his steed, and the death-pack coming to its precincts, ceased into the hill. Here, in November twilights, when the dumb birds cowered in the dark pines, you might hear from the summit a horn blown-very clearly, with tuneful devilry, and a scattered sound of deep barking like the noise of sawing timber, and then the blood-curdling tumult of the pack at feeding time. To-day, as Hazel began her work, the radiant woods were full of pale colour, so delicate and lucent that Beauty seemed a fugitive presence from some other world trapped and panting to be free. The small patens of the beeches shone like green glass, and the pale spired chestnuts were candelabras on either side of the steep path. In the bright breathless glades of larches the willow-wrens sang softly, but with boundless vitality. On sunny slopes the hyacinths pushed out close-packed buds between their covering leaves; soon they would spread their grave blue like a prayer-carpet. Hazel, stooping in her old multi-coloured pinafore, her bare arms gleaming like the stripped trees, seemed to Edward as he came up the shady path to be the spirit of beauty. He quite realized that her occupation was not suited to a minister's future wife. 'But she may never be that,' he thought despairingly. 'Have you ever thought, Hazel,' he said later, sitting down on a log--'have you ever thought of the question of marriage?' 'I ne'er did till Foxy took the chicks.' Edward looked dazed. 'It's like this,' Hazel went on. 'Father (he's a rum 'un, is father!), he says he'll drown Foxy if she takes another.' 'Who is Foxy?' 'Oh! Fancy you not knowing Foxy! Her's my little cub. Pretty! you ne'er saw anything so pretty.' Edward thought he had. 'But she canna get used to folks' ways.' (This was a new point of view to Edward.) 'She'm a fox, and she can't be no other. And I'd liefer she'd _be_ a fox.' 'Foxes are very mischievous,' Edward said mildly. 'Mischievous!' Hazel flamed on him like a little thunderstorm. 'Mischievous! And who made 'em mischievous, I'd like to know? They didna make theirselves.' 'God made them,' Edward said simply. 'What for did He, if He didna like 'em when they were done?' 'We can't know all His reasons; He walks in darkness.' 'Well, that's no manner of use to me and Foxy,' said Hazel practically. 'So all as I can see to do is to get married and take Foxy where there's no chicks.' 'So you think of marrying?' 'Ah! And I told father I'd marry the first as come. I swore it by the Mountain.' 'And who came?' Edward had a kind of faintness in his heart. 'Never a one.' 'Nobody at all?' 'Never a one.' 'And if anyone came and asked for you, you'd take him?' 'Well, I'm bound to, seemingly. But it dunna matter. None'll ever come. What for should they?' She herself answered her own question fully as she stood aureoled in dusky light. His eyes were eloquent, but she was too busy to notice them. 'And should you like to be married?' he asked gently. He expected a shy affirmative. He received a flat negative. 'My mam didna like it. And she said it'd be the end of going in the woods and all my gamesome days. And she said tears and torment, tears and torment was the married lot. And she said, "Keep yourself to yourself. You wunna made for marrying any more than me. Eat in company, but sleep alone"--that's what she said, Mr. Marston.' Edward was so startled at this unhesitating frankness that he said nothing. But he silently buried several sweet hopes that had been pushing up like folded hyacinths for a week. The old madness was upon him, but it was a larger, more spiritual madness than Reddin's, as the sky is larger and more ethereal than the clouds that obscure it. He was always accustomed to think more of giving than receiving, so now he concentrated himself on what he could do for Hazel. He felt that her beauty would be an ample return for anything he could do as her husband to make her happy. If she would confide in him, demands on his time, run to him for refuge, he felt that he could ask no more of life. The strength of the ancient laws of earth was as yet hidden from him. He did not know the fierceness of the conflict in which he was engaging for Hazel's sake--the world-old conflict between sex and altruism. If he had known, he would still not have hesitated. Suddenly Hazel looked round with an affrighted air. 'It's late to be here,' she said. 'Why?' 'There's harm here if you bide late. The jeath pack's about here in the twilight, so they do say.' They looked up into the dark steeps, and the future seemed to lower on them. 'Maybe summat bad'll come to us in this spinney,' she whispered. 'Nothing bad can come to you when you are in God's keeping.' There canna be many folk in His keeping, then.' 'Do you say your prayers, Hazel?' he asked rather sadly. 'Ah! I say: "Keep me one year, keep me seven, Till the gold turns silver on my head; Bring me up to the hill o' heaven, And leave me die quiet in my bed." That's what I allus say.' 'Who taught you?' 'My mam.' 'Ah, well, it must be a good prayer if she taught it you, mustn't it?' he said. Suddenly Hazel clutched his arm affrightedly. 'Hark! Galloping up yonder! Run! run! It's the Black Huntsman!' It was Reddin, skirting the wood on his way home from a search for Hazel. If he had come into the spinney he would have seen them, but he kept straight on. 'It's bringing harm!' cried Hazel, pulling at Edward's arm; 'see the shivers on me! It's somebody galloping o'er my grave!' Edward resolved to combat these superstitions and replace them by a sane religion. He had not yet fathomed the ancient, cruel and mighty power of these exhalations of the soil. Nor did he see that Hazel was enchained by earth, prisoner to it only a little less than the beech and the hyacinth--bond-serf of the sod. When Edward and Hazel burst into the parlour, like sunshine into an old garden, they were met by a powerful smell of burnt merino. Mrs. Marston had been for some hours as near Paradise as we poor mortals can hope to be. Her elastic-sided cloth boots rested on the fender, and her skirt, carefully turned up, revealed a grey stuff petticoat with a hint of white flannel beneath. The pink shawl was top, which meant optimism. With Mrs. Marston, optimism was the direct result of warmth. Her spectacles had crept up and round her head, and had a rakishly benign appearance. On her comfortable lap lay the missionary _Word_ and a large roll of brown knitting which was intended to imitate fur. Edward noted hopefully that the pink shawl was top. 'Here's Hazel come to see you, mother!' Mrs. Marston straightened her spectacles, surveyed Hazel, and asked if she would like to do her hair. This ceremony over, they sat down to tea. 'And how many brothers and sisters have you, my dear?' asked the old lady. 'Never a one. Nobody but our Foxy.' 'Edward, too, has none. Who is Foxy?' 'My little cub.' 'You speak as if the animals were a relation, dear.' 'So all animals be my brothers and sisters.' 'I know, dear. Quite right. All animals in conversation should be so. But any single animal in reality is only an animal, and can't be. Animals have no souls.' 'Yes, they have, then! If they hanna; _you_ hanna!' Edward hastened to make peace. 'We don't know, do we, mother?' he said. 'And now suppose we have tea?' Mrs. Marston looked at Hazel suspiciously over the rim of her glasses. 'My dear, don't have ideas,' she said. 'There, Hazel!' Edward smiled. 'What about your ideas in the spinney?' 'There's queer things doing in Hunter's Spinney, and what for shouldna you believe it?' said Hazel. 'Sometimes more than other times, and midsummer most of all.' 'What sort of queer things?' asked Edward, in order to be able to watch her as she answered. Hazel shut her eyes and clasped her hands, speaking in a soft monotone as if repeating a lesson. 'In Hunter's Spinney on midsummer night there's things moving as move no other time; things free as was fast; things crying out as have been a long while hurted.' She suddenly opened her eyes and went on dramatically 'First comes the Black Huntsman, crouching low on his horse and the horse going belly to earth. And John Meares o' the public, he seed the red froth from his nostrils on the brakes one morning when he was ketching pheasants. And the jeath's with him, great hound-dogs, real as real, only no eyes, but sockets with a light behind 'em. Ne'er a one knows what they's after. If I seed 'em I'd die,' she finished hastily, taking a large bite of cake. 'Myths are interesting,' said Edward, 'especially nature myths.' 'What's a myth, Mr. Marston?' 'An untruth, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston. 'This inna one, then! I tell you John seed the blood!' 'Tell us more.' Edward would have drunk in nonsense rhymes from her lips. 'And there's never a one to gainsay 'em in all the dark 'oods,' Hazel went on, 'except on Midsummer Eve.' 'Midsummer!'--Mrs. Marston's tone was gently wistful--'is the only time I'm really warm. That is, if the weather's as it should be. But the weather's not what it was!' 'Tell us more, Hazel!' pleaded Edward. 'What for do you want to hear, my soul?' Edward flushed at the caressing phrase, and Mrs. Marston looked as indignant as was possible to her physiognomy, until she realized that it was a mere form of speech. 'Because I love--old tales.' 'Well, if so be you go there, then'--Hazel leant forward, earnest and mysterious--'after the pack's gone you'll hear soft feet running, and you'll see faces look out and hands waving. And gangs of folks come galloping under the leaves, not seen clear, hastening above a bit. And others come quick after, all with trouble on 'em. And the place is full of whispering and rustling and voices calling a long way off. And my mam said the trees get free that night--or else folk of the trees--creeping and struggling out of the boles like a chicken from an egg--getting free like lads out of school; and they go after the jeath-pack like birds after a cuckoo. And last comes the lady of Undern Coppy, lagging and lonesome, riding in a troop of shadows, and sobbing, "Lost--lost! Oh, my green garden!" And they say the brake flowers on the eve of that night, and no bird sings and no star falls.' 'What a pack of nonsense!' murmured Mrs. Marston drowsily. 'That it inna!' cried Hazel; 'it's the bloody truth!' Mrs. Marston's drowsiness forsook her. Hazel became conscious for tension. 'Mother!'--Edward's voice shook with suppressed laughter, although he was indignant with Hazel's father for such a mistaken upbringing--'mother, would you give Hazel the receipt for this splendid cake?' 'And welcome, my dear.' The old lady was safely launched on her favourite topic. 'And if you'd like a seed-cake as well, you shall have it. Have you put down any butter yet?' Hazel never put down or preserved or made anything. Her most ambitious cooking was a rasher and a saucepan of potatoes. 'I dunna know what you mean,' she said awkwardly. Edward was disappointed. He had thought her such a paragon. 'Well, well, cooking was, after all, a secondary thing. Let it go.' 'You mean to say you don't know what putting down butter is, my poor child? But perhaps you go in for higher branches? Lemon-curd, now, and bottled fruit. I'm sure you can do those?' Hazel felt blank. She thought it best to have things clear. 'I canna do naught,' she said defiantly. 'Now, mother'--Edward came to the rescue again--'see how right you are in saying that a girl's education is not what it used to be! See how Hazel's has been neglected! Think what a lot you could teach her! Suppose you were to begin quite soon?' 'A batter,' began Mrs. Marston, with the eagerness of a philosopher expounding her theory, 'is a well-beaten mixture of eggs and flour. Repeat after me, my dear.' 'Eh, what's the use? _He_ dunna know what he eats no more than a pig! I shanna cook for 'im.' 'Who's that, dear?' Mrs. Marston inquired. 'My dad.' Mrs. Marston held up her hands with the mock-fur knitting in them, and looked at Edward with round eyes. 'She says her father's a--a pig, my dear!' 'She doesn't mean it,' said he loyally, 'do you, Hazel?' 'Ah, and more!' The host and hostess sighed. Then Edward said: 'Yes, but you won't always be keeping house for your father, you know,' and found himself so confused that he had to go and fetch a pipe. Afterwards he walked part way home with Hazel, and coming back under the driving sky--that seemed to move all in a piece like a sliding window, and showed the moon as a slim lady waiting for unlooked-for happenings--he could have wept at the crude sweetness of Hazel. She was of so ruthless an honesty towards herself as well as others; she had such strange lights and shadows in her eyes, her voice, her soul; she was so full of faults, and so brimming with fascination. 'Oh, God, if I may have her to keep and defend, to glow in my house like a rose, I'll ask no more,' he murmured. The pine-tops bowed in as stately a manner as they had when Hazel cried, 'I'll never be a woman!' They listened like grown-ups to the prattle of a child. And the stars, like gods in silver armour sitting afar in halls of black marble, seemed to hear and disdain the little gnat-like voice, as they heard Vessons' defiant 'Never will I!' and Mrs. Marston's woolly prayers, and Reddin's hoof-beats. All man's desires--predatory, fugitive, or merely negative--wander away into those dark halls, and are heard no more. Among the pillars of the night is there One who listens and remembers, and judges the foolishness of man, not by effects, but by motives? And does that One, in the majesty of everlasting vitality and resistless peace, ever see how we run after the painted butterflies of our desires and fall down the dark precipice? And if He sees and hears the wavering, calamitous life of all creatures, and especially of the most beautiful and the most helpless, does He ever sigh and weep, as we do when we see a dead child or a moth's wing impaled on a thorn? Our heavy burden is that we cannot know. For all our tears and prayers and weary dreaming, we cannot know. Edward lay awake all night, and heard the first blackbird begin, tentatively, his clear song--a song to bring tears by its golden security of joy in a world where nothing is secure. The old madness surged in upon Edward more strongly as the light grew, and he tried to read the Gospel of St. John (his favourite), but the words left no trace on his mind. Hazel was there, and like a scarlet-berried rowan on the sky she held the gaze by the perfection of the picture she made. The bent of Edward's mind and upbringing was set against the rush of his wishes and of circumstance. She had said, 'The first that came,' and he was sure that in her state of dark superstition she would hold by her vow. Suppose some other--some farm-hand, who would never see the real Hazel--should have been thinking over the matter, and should go to-day and should be the first? It was just how things happened. And then his flower would be gone, and the other man would never know it was a flower. He worked himself into such a fever that he could not rest, but got up and went out into the lively air, and saw the sun come lingeringly through aery meadows of pale green and primrose. He saw the ice slip from the bright pointed lilac buds, and sheep browsing the frosty grass, and going to and fro in the unreserved way that animals have in the early hours before the restraint of human society is imposed on them. He saw, yet noticed nothing, until a long scarlet bar of cloud reminded him of Hazel by its vividness, and he found a violet by the graveyard gate. 'Little Hazel!' he whispered. He pondered on the future, and tried to imagine such an early walk as this with Hazel by his side, and could not for the glory of it. Then he reasoned with himself. This wild haste was not right, perhaps. He ought to wait. But that vow! That foolish, childish vow! 'I could look after her. She could blossom here like a violet in a quiet garden.' Giving was never too early. 'And I am asking nothing--not for years. She shall live her own life, and be mother's daughter and my little sister for as long as she likes. My little sister!' he repeated aloud, as if some voice had contradicted him. And, indeed, the whole wide morning seemed to contradict his scheme--the mating birds, the sheep suckling their lambs, the insistent neighing and bellowing that rose from the fields and farms, the very tombstones, with their legends of multitudinous families, and the voice that cried to man and woman, not in words, but in the zest of the earth and air, '"Beget, bring forth, and then depart, for I have done with you!"' A sharp cold shower stung his cheeks, and he saw a slim rosebud beating itself helplessly against the wet earth, broken and muddy. He fetched a stake and tied it up. I think,' he said to himself, 'that I was put into the world to tie up broken roses, and one that is not broken yet, thank God! It is miraculous that she has never come to harm, for that great overgrown boy, her father, takes no care of her. Yes, I was meant for that. I can't preach.' He smiled ruefully as he remembered how steadfastly the congregation slept through his best sermons. 'I can't say the right things at the right time. I'm not clever. But I can take care of Hazel. And that is my life-work,' he added naively, 'perhaps I'd better begin at once, and go to see her to-day.' Ah! the gold and scarlet morning as he came home after finding that resolve, which, as a matter of fact, he had taken with him! How the roof of the parsonage shone like the New Jerusalem! And how the fantail pigeons, very rotund denizens of that city, cooed as they walked gingerly--tiles being cold to pink feet on a frosty morning--up and down in the early sun! Edward so much wanted to keep the violet he had found that he decided he ought to give it to his mother. So he put it on her plate, and looked for a suitable passage to read at prayers. The Song of Solomon seemed the only thing really in tune with the morning, but he decided rather sadly that 'something in Corinthians' might please his mother better. So he read, 'The greatest of these is love,' and his voice was so husky and so unmanageable that Mrs. Marston, who did not notice the golden undertones that matched their beauty with the blackbird's song, went straight from the chair she knelt at in the prayers to her store-room, and produced lemon and honey, which Edward loathed. 'You're very throaty, my dear, and you must take a level spoonful,' she said. It is only in poetry that all the world understands a lover. In real life he is called throaty, and given a level spoonful of that nauseous compound known as common sense. Chapter 10 The garden at the Callow was full of old, sad-coloured flowers that had lost all names but the country ones. Chief among them, by reason of its hardihood, was a small plant called virgin's pride. Its ephemeral petals, pale and bee-haunted, fluttered like banners of some lost, forgotten cause. The garden was hazy with their demure, faintly scented flowers, and the voices of the bees came up in a soft roar triumphantly, as the voices of victors returning with hardwon spoil. Abel had been putting some new sections on the hives, and, as usual, after a long spell of listening to their low, changeless music, he rushed in for his harp. He sat down under the hawthorn by the gate, and looked like a patriarch beneath a pale green tint. As day declined the music waxed; he played with a tenderness, a rage of delight, that did not often come to him except on spring evenings. He almost touched genius. Hazel came out, leaving the floor half scrubbed, and began to dance on the potato flat. 'Dunna stomp the taters to jeath, 'Azel!' said he. 'They binna up!' she replied, continuing to dance. He never wasted words. He continued the air with one hand and threw a stone at her with the other. He hit her on the cheek. 'You wold beast!' she screamed. 'Gerroff taters!' He continued to play. She went, hand to cheek, and frowning, off the potato patch. But she did not stop dancing. Neither of them ever let such things as anger, business, or cleanliness interfere with their pleasures. So Hazel danced on, though on a smaller area among the virgin's pride. The music, wild, crude and melancholy, floated on the soft air to Edward as he approached. The sun slipped lower; leaf shadows began to tremble on Hazel's pinafore, which, with its faded blue and its many stains, was transmuted in the vivid light, and looked like the flowers of virgin's pride. '"The Ash Tree"!' said Abel, who always announced his tunes in this way, as singers do at a choir supper. The forlorn music met Edward at the gate. He stopped, startled at the sight of Hazel dancing in the shadowy garden with her hair loose and her abandon tempered by weariness. He stood behind the hedge until Abel brought the tune to an early end with the laconic remark, 'Supper,' and went indoors with his harp. Edward opened the gate and went in. 'Eh, mister! what a start you give me!' said Hazel breathlessly. 'So this is your home?' 'Ah!' Edward found her more disturbing to-night than at the concert; the gulf between them was more obvious; she had been comparatively tidy before. Now her disreputableness contrasted strongly with his correct black coat and general air of civilized well-being. Hazel came nearer. 'He inna bad to live along of,' she confided, with a nod towards the cottage. 'O' course, he's crossways time and again, and a devil's temper.' 'You mustn't speak of your father like that, Hazel.' 'What for not? He _be_ like that.' 'Are all these apple-trees yours?' he asked to change the subject. 'No, they'm father's. But I get the windfa'ls and the bruised 'uns. I allus see'--she smiled winningly--'as there's plenty of them. Foxy likes 'em. He found me at it once bruising of 'em. God a'mighty! what a hiding he give me!' Edward felt depressed. He could not harmonize Hazel's personality with his mother's; he was shocked at her expressions; he was sufficiently fastidious to recoil from dirt; the thought of Abel as a father-in-law was little short of appalling. Yet, in spite of all these things, he had felt such elation, such spring rapture when Hazel danced; the world took on such strange new colours when she looked at him that he knew he must love her for ever. He felt that as his emotions grew stronger--and they were becoming more and more like a herd of young calves out at grass--his ways of expression must increase in correctness. 'Hazel--' he began. 'I like the way you say it,' she interrupted. 'Ah! I like it right well! Breathin' strong, like folk coming up the Monkey's Ladder.' 'Whatever's that?' 'Dunna you know Monkey's Ladder? It's that road there. Somebody's coming up it now on a horse.' They both looked down at Reddin climbing slowly and still some way off. They did not know who it was, nor what destiny was pacing silently towards them with his advancing figure, nor why he rode up and down this road and other roads every day; but an inexplicable sense of urgency came upon Edward. To his own surprise, he said suddenly: 'I came to ask if you'd marry me, Hazel Woodus?' 'Eh?' said she, dazed with surprise. 'Will you marry me, Hazel? I can give you a good home, and I will try to be a good husband, and--and I love you, Hazel, dear.' Hazel put her head on one side like a willow-wren singing. She liked to be called dear. 'D'you like me as much as I like Foxy?' 'Far more.' 'You've bin very quick about it.' 'I'm afraid I have.' 'Will you buy me a green gown with yellow roses on?' 'If you like.' He spoke doubtfully, wondering what his mother would think of it. 'And shall we sit down to our dinners at a table with a cloth on like at--' She stopped. She could not tell him about Undern. 'Like the gentry?' she finished. 'Yes, dear.' 'And will you tell that sleepy old lady as lives along, of you--' ('Oh, poor mother!' thought Edward.) '--Not to stare and stare at me over the top of her spectacles like a cow at a cornfield over the fence?' 'Yes--yes,' said Edward hastily, feeling that his mother must wait to be reinstated until he had made sure of Hazel. 'All right, then; I'll come.' Edward took her hand; then he kissed her cheek gently. She accepted the kiss placidly. There was nothing in it to remind her of Reddin's. 'And you'll do always as you like,' Edward went on, 'and be my little sister.' Then, to make matters clearer, he added: 'and you shall have a room papered with buttercups and daisies for your very own.' 'Eh! how grand!' 'You'll like that?' His voice was wistful in its eagerness for a denial. 'Ah! I shall like it right well.' Edward made no reply. He was never any good at putting in a word for himself. He was usually left out of things, and stood contentedly in the background while inferior men pushed in front of him. 'And now,' he said, 'I'll give you a token till I can get you a ring.' He picked a spray of the faint pink and blue flowers. 'What's its name?' he asked. 'Virgin's pride.' Edward gave her a quick look. Then he realized that she was as innocent as her little fox, and as free from artifice. That was its name, so she told it to him. 'A very pretty little flower, and a very sweet name,' he said, 'And now, where's your father?' 'Guzzling his supper.' Edward frowned. Then the humour of the situation struck him, and he laughed. Abel rose as they came to the door. 'Well, mister,' he inquired glumly, 'what'n you after? Money for them missions to buy clothes for savages as 'd liefer go bare? Or money for them poor clergy? I'm poorer nor the clergy.' 'I want to marry Hazel.' Abel flung back his head and roared. Then he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards Hazel. 'What?--'er?' he queried in ecstasies of mirth. ''Er? Look at the floor, man! Look at the apern she's got on! Laws, man! you surely dunna want our 'Azel for your missus?' 'Yes.' Edward was nettled and embarrassed. 'Well, 'er's only eighteen.' He looked Hazel over appraisingly, as he would have looked at a heifer. 'Still, I suppose she's an 'ooman growed. Well, you can take her. I dunna mind. When d'you want her?' I shall ask her when she will wish to marry me.' Abel laughed again. 'Lord love us!' he said. 'You unna take and ax her? Tell her, that's what! Just tell her what to do, and she'll do it if you give her one for herself now and agen. So you mean marrying, do yer?' Edward was angry. Abel's outlook and manner of expression rawed his nerves. 'I leave all the arrangements to her,' he said stiffly. 'Then the devil aid you,' said Abel, 'for I canna!' Hazel stood with downcast face, submissive, but ill at ease. She wanted to spring at her father and scream, 'Ho'd yer row!' for she hated him for talking so to Edward. Somehow it made her flushed and ashamed for Edward to be told to 'give her one for herself.' She looked at him under her lashes, and wondered if he would. There was something not altogether unpleasant in the idea. She felt that to be ordered about by young lips and struck by a young man's hand would be, as business men say, 'quite in order.' She appraised Edward, and decided that he would not. Had she been able to decide in the affirmative, she would probably have fallen in love with him there and then. Edward came over to her and took her hand. 'When will you be my wife, Hazel?' he said. 'I dunno. Not for above a bit.' 'Haw! haw!' laughed Abel. 'Hark at her! Throw summat at er', man!' 'I should prefer your absence,' said Edward, stung to expression at last. 'Eh?' 'Go away!' said Edward rudely. He was surprised at himself afterwards. Abel withdrew open-mouthed. Hazel laughed with delight. 'But why didna you hit 'un?' she asked wistfully. 'My dear girl! What a thing to say!' 'Be it?' 'Yes. But now, when shall we be married?' 'Not for years and years,' said Hazel, pleased at the dismay on his face, and enjoying her new power. Then she reflected on the many untried delights of the new life. 'Leastways, not for days an' days,' she amended. 'Will you gi' me pear-drops every day?' 'Pear-drops! My dear Hazel, you must think of better things than pear-drops!' 'There's nought better,' she said, 'without it's bull's-eyes.' 'But, dear,' Edward reasoned gently, 'don't you want to think of helping me, and going with me to chapel?' Hazel considered. 'D'you preach long and solemn?' she asked. 'No,' said Edward rather curtly. 'But if I did, you ought to like it.' Hazel took his measure again. Then she said naughtily: 'Tell you what I'll do if you preach long and solemn, mister. I'll put me tongue out!' Edward laughed in spite of himself, and thought for the twentieth time, 'Poor mother!' But that did not prevent his being anxious to have Hazel safely at the Mountain. It seemed to him that every man in the county must want to marry her. 'What would you say to May, Hazel, early May--lilac-time?' 'I'd like it right well.' 'And suppose we fix it the day after the spring flower-show at Evenwood, and go to it together?' 'I'm going with father to sing.' 'Well, when you've sung, you can have tea with me.' 'Thank you kindly, Mr. Marston.' 'Edward.' 'Ed'ard.' Abel came round the house. 'You can come and see the bees, if you've a mind,' he said forgivingly. In his angers and his joys he was like a child. He was, in fact, what he looked--a barbaric child, prematurely aged. He was aged and had lines on his face because he enjoyed life so much, for joy bites as deep as sickness or grief or any other physical strain. Hazel would age soon, for she lived in an intenser world than most people, as if she saw everything through magnifying glass and coloured glass. Edward went to the bees as he would have gone to the dogs--sadly. He disliked the bees even more than he disliked Abel, who in his expansive mood was much less attractive than in his natural sulkiness. Abel did not know how near he came once or twice to frustrating an end that he thought very desirable. A less steadfast man than Edward, with a less altruistic object in view, would have been frightened away from Hazel by Abel's crudeness. 'What about the bitch?' he asked Edward when they had seen the bees. 'Will you take her, or shall I drown her?' Rage flamed in Hazel's face--rage all the more destructive because it was caused by pity. Her father's calm taking for granted that Foxy's fate (and her own) depended on his whim and Edward's, the picture of Foxy tied up in a bag to be drowned--Foxy, who had all her love--infuriated her. Edward was troubled at the look in her eyes. He had not yet had much opportunity for seeing those wild red lights that burn in the eyes of the hunter, and are reflected in those of the hunted, and make life a lurid nightmare. The scene set his teeth on edge. 'Of course,' he said, and the recklessness of it was quite clear to him when he thought of his mother--'of course, the little fox shall come.' 'And the one-eyed cat and the blind bird and the old ancient rabbit, I'll wager!' queried Abel. 'Well, minister, you can set up a menagerie and make money.' 'They could go in bits of holes and corners,' Hazel put in anxiously, 'and nobody'd ever know they were there! And the bird chirrups lovely, fine days.' Abel shouted with laughter. 'Tuthree feathers and a beak!' he said. 'And the rabbit'd be comforbler a muff.' Edward hastily ended the discussion. 'Of course, they shall all come,' he said. Somehow, Hazel made the sheltering of these poor creatures a matter of religion. He found himself connecting them with the great 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto these--' He had never seen the text in that light before. But he was dubious about the possibility of making his mother see it thus. 'They'll be much obleeged,' Hazel said. 'Come and see 'em.' She spoke as one conferring the freedom of a city. Foxy--very clean in her straw, smoothly white and brown, dignified, and golden of eye--looked mistrustfully at Edward and showed her baby white teeth. 'She'll liven the old lady up,' said Hazel. 'I'm afraid--' began Edward; and then--'she shows her teeth a good deal.' 'Only along of being frit.' 'She needn't be frightened. I'll take care of her and of you, and see that no harm comes to you.' The statement was received by the night--critical, attent--in a silence so deep that it seemed quizzical. On his way home he felt rather dismayed at his task, because he saw that in making Hazel happy he must make his mother unhappy. 'Ah, well, it'll all come right,' he thought, 'for He is love, and He will help me.' The sharp staccato sound of a horse cantering came up behind him. It was Reddin returning from a wide detour. He pulled up short. 'Is there any fiddler in your parish, parson?' he inquired. Edward considered. 'There is one man on the far side of the Mountain.' 'Pretty daughter?' 'No. He is only twenty.' 'Damn!' He was gone. Hazel, in the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting her with a passion equal in suddenness and force, but different in quality. She wanted neither. Her passion, no less intense, was for freedom, for the wood-track, for green places where soft feet scudded and eager eyes peered out and adventurous lives were lived up in the tree-tops, down in the moss. She was fascinated by Reddin; she was drawn to confide in Edward; but she wanted neither of them. Whether or not in years to come she would find room in her heart for human passion, she had no room for it now. She had only room for the little creatures she befriended and for her eager, quickly growing self. For, like her mother, she had the egoism that is more selfless than most people's altruism--the divine egoism that is genius. Chapter 11 When Edward got home his mother was asleep in the armchair. Her whole person rose and fell like a tropical sea. Her shut eyes were like those of a statue, behind the lids of which one knows there are no pupils. Her eyebrows were slightly raised, as if in expostulation at being obliged to breathe. Her figure expressed the dignity of old age, which may or may not be due to rheumatism. Edward, as he looked at her, felt as one does who has been reading a fairy-tale and is called to the family meal. All the things he had meant to say, that had seemed so eloquent, now seemed foolish. He awoke her hastily in case his courage should fail before that most adamantine thing--an unsympathetic atmosphere. 'I've got some news for you, mother.' 'Nothing unpleasant, dear?' 'No, Pleasant. It makes me very happy.' 'The good are always happy,' replied Mrs. Marston securely. Before the bland passivity of this remark it seemed that irony itself must soften. 'I am engaged, mother.' 'What in, dear?' 'I am going to bring home a wife.' She was deaf and very sleepy. 'What kind of a knife, dear?' she asked. 'I am going to marry Hazel Woodus.' 'You can't do that, dear,' She spoke with unruffled calm, as if Edward were three years old. 'I can, and shall mother.' 'Ah, well, it won't be for a long, long time,' she said, thinking aloud as she often did, and adding with the callousness that sometimes comes with age--arising not from hardness, but from the atrophy of the emotions--'and, of course, she may die before then.' 'Die!' Edward's voice surprised himself, and it made his mother jump. 'The young do die,' she went on; 'we all have to go. Your poor father fell asleep. I shall fall asleep.' She began to do so. But his next words made her wide awake again. 'I'm going to be married in May, next month.' Her whole weight of passive resistance was set against his purpose. 'Such unseemly haste!' she murmured. 'So inordinate--such a hurried marriage!' But, Edward's motives being what they were, he was proof against this. 'What will the congregation think?' 'Bother the congregation!' 'That's the second time you've said that, Edward. I'm afraid you are going from bad to worse.' 'No. Only going to be married mother.' 'But a year's engagement is the least, the very least I could countenance,' she pleaded, 'and a year is so soon gone. One eats and sleeps, and Lord's Day breaks the week, and time soon passes.' 'Oh, can't you understand, mother?' He tried illustration. 'Suppose you saw a beautiful shawl out on a hedge in the rain, shouldn't you want to bring it in?' 'Certainly not. It would be most unwise. Besides, I have seven.' 'Well, anyway, I can't put it off. Even now something may have happened to her.' He spoke with the sense of the inimical in life that all lovers feel. 'But things will have to be bought,' she said helplessly, 'and things will have to be made.' 'There is plenty of time, several weeks yet. Won't you,' he suggested tactfully, 'see after Hazel's clothes for her? She is too poor to buy them herself. Won't you lay out a sum of money for me mother?' 'Yes, I think,' she said, beginning to recover her benignity--'I think I could lay out a sum of money.' * * * * * Mrs. Marston had what she called 'not a wink of sleep'--that is to say, she kept awake for half an hour after getting into bed. The idea of a wedding, although it was offensive by reason of being different from every day, was still quite pleasant. It would be an opportunity for using the multitude of things that were stored in every cupboard and never used, being thought too good for every day. Mrs. Marston was one of those that, having great possessions, go sadly all their days. It is strange how generation after generation spends its fleeting years in this fetish-worship, never daring to make life beautiful by the daily use of things lovely, but for ever being busy about them. Mrs. Marston's china glowed so, and was so stainless and uncracked that it seemed as if the lives of all the beautiful young women in her family must have been sacrificed in its behalf. They had all drunk of the cup of death long ago, and their beauty had long ago been broken and defaced; but the beautiful old china remained. There were still the two dozen cups and saucers, the cream jug, sugar basin and large plates of the feather-cups, just as when they were first bought. Their rich gilding, which completely covered them outside, was hardly worn at all, nor were the bright birds' feathers and raised pink flowers. It would be very pleasant, Mrs. Marston reflected wistfully, to use it again. There were all the bottled fruits, too, and lemon-curd and jellies; and a wedding would be a very pleasant, suitable opportunity for making one of her famous layer cakes and for wearing her purple silk dress. Mingled with these ideas was the knowledge that Edward wanted it, would be 'vexed' if it had to be put off. 'I have never known him to be so reckless,' she pondered. 'But still, he'll settle down once he's married. And she'll sober down, too, when the little ones come. It will be pleasant when they come. A grandmother has all the pleasures of a mother and none of the pains. And she will not want to manage anything. Edward said so. I should not have liked a managing daughter-in-law. Edward was wise in his choice. For, though noisy, she'll quiet down a little with each of the dear babies, and there will be plenty of them, I think and hope.' It was characteristic of Mrs. Marston's class and creed (united with the fact that she was Edward's mother) that she did not consider Hazel in the matter. Hazel's point of view, personality, hopes and fears were non-existent to her. Hazel would be absorbed into the Marston family like a new piece of furniture. She would be provided for without being consulted; it would be seen to that she did her duty, also without being consulted. She would become, as all the other women in this and the other families of the world had, the servant of the china and the electro-plate and the furniture, and she would be the means by which Edward's children came into the world. She would, when not incapacitated, fetch shawls. At all times she would say 'Yes, dear' or 'As you wish, Edward.' With all this before her, what did she want with personality and points of view? Obviously nothing. If she brought all the grandchildren safely into the world, with their due complement of legs and arms and noses, she would be a satisfactory asset. But Mrs. Marston forgot, in this summing up, to find out whether Hazel cared for Edward more than she cared for freedom. Mrs. Marston came down to breakfast with an air of resignation. 'I have decided to make the best of it, my dear Edward,' she said; 'of course, I had hoped there would never be anyone. But it doesn't signify. I will lay out the money and be as good a grandmother as I can. And now, dear' (she spoke passively, shifting the responsibility on to Edward's shoulders)--'and now, how will you get me to town?' Here was a problem. The little country station was several miles away, far beyond her walking limit, and no farmer in the neighbourhood had a horse quiet enough to please her. 'In my day, dear, I can remember horses so quiet, so well-bred, so beautifully trained, and, above all, so fat, that an accident was, apart from God's will, impossible. Now, my dear father, in the days when he travelled for Jeremy's green tea (and very good tea it was, and a very fine flavour, and a picture of a black man on every canister). Where was I? Oh yes; he always used to allow a day for a ten-mile round. Very pleasant it was, but the horses are not--' Here Edward cut in with a suggestion. 'Why shouldn't you go by the traction trailer? You enjoyed it that one time?' The traction engine, belonging to a stone quarry, passed two or three times a week, and was never--the country being hilly--so full that it could not accommodate a passenger. It was therefore arranged that Edward should go and see the driver, and afterwards see Hazel, and arrange for her to go to town also. He was to stay at home. Mrs. Marston would never leave the house, as she said, 'without breath in it,' though she could give no reason for this idea, and prided herself on having no superstitions. She would not trust Martha by herself; so Edward was ruefully obliged to undertake the office of 'breathing', like a living bellows to blow away harm. It was settled that they were to go on the day before the flower-show, and Hazel was to stay the night. It would be the last night but one before the wedding. Meanwhile, the bark-stripping continued, and fate went on leading Jack Reddin's horse in every direction but the right one. Edward went to Hunter's Spinney every day. He began to find a new world among the budding hyacinths on the soft leafy soil, breaking up on every side with the push of eager lives coming through, and full of those elusive, stimulating scents that only spring knows. * * * * * When the day came for going to Silverton, and Hazel arrived fresh and rosy from her early walk, he felt very rebellious. Still, it was ordained that someone must breathe, and only his mother could choose the clothes. It took Mrs. Marston several hours to get ready, and Edward and Martha were kept busy running up and down. Not that Mrs. Marston's clothes had to be hunted for or mended--far from it. But there were so many cupboards to be locked, their keys hidden in drawers, the keys of which, in their turn, went into more cupboards. When such an inextricable tangle as no burglar could tackle had been woven, Mrs. Marston always wanted something out of the first cupboard, and all had to be done over again. But at last she was achieved. Edward and Martha stood back and surveyed her with pride, and looked to Hazel for admiration of their work; but Hazel was too young and too happy to see either the pathos or the humour of old ladies. She danced down the steep path with an armful of wraps, at the idea of wearing which she had made faces. The path led steeply in a zigzag down one side of the quarry cliff, where Abel had told Hazel of the cow falling, and where she had felt drodsome. Once more as she came down with a more and more lagging step, the same horror came over her. 'I'm frit!' she cried; 'canna we be quick?' But speed was not in Mrs. Marston. She came clinging to Edward's arm, very cautiously, like a cat on ice. Martha, her stout red arms bare, her blue gingham dress and white apron flying in the wind, was directed to hold on to Mrs. Marston's mantle behind--as one tightens the reins downhill--to keep her on her feet. Edward was carrying a kitchen chair for his mother to sit on during the journey. Hazel felt that they were none of them any good; they none of them knew what it was like to be frit. So she ran away, and left the hot, secretive, omniscient place with its fierce white and its crafty shadows. She reached a tiny field that ran up to the woods, and there, among the brilliantly varnished buttercups, the bees sounded like the tides coming in on the coasts of faery. Hazel forgot her dread--an inexplicable sickening dread of the quarry. She chased a fat bumble-bee all across the golden floor--one eager, fluffy, shining head after the other. They might have been, in the all-permeating glory on their hill terrace, with the sapphire-circled plain around--they might have been the two youngest citizens of Paradise, circled in for ever from bleak honeyless winter, bleak honeyless hearts. The slow cortege came down the path, Martha being obliged, as the descent grew steeper, to fling herself back like a person in a tug-of-war, for Mrs. Marston gathered way as she went, and uttered little helpless cries. 'I'm going, Martha! I'm losing control! Not by the bugles, Martha! Not by the braid!' When they reached the road, the traction engine was not in sight, so they sat in the bank and waited, Mrs. Marston regal in the chair; and Hazel held a buttercup under Edward's chin to see if he liked butter. 'Very warm and pleasant,' murmured Mrs. Marston, and dropped into a doze. Edward listened to the thrushes; they were flinging their voices--as jugglers fling golden balls--against the stark sides of the quarry. Up went a rush of bright notes, pattered on the gloomy wall, and returned again defeated. To Edward, as he watched Hazel, they seemed like people thanking God for blessings, and being heard and blessed again. To Hazel, they seemed so many other Hazels singing because it was a festal day. To Mrs. Marston they were 'noisy birds, and very disturbing.' Martha crotcheted. She was making edging, hundreds of yards of it, for wedding garments. This was all the more creditable, as it was an act of faith, for no young man had as yet seemed at all desirous of Martha. At last the traction engine appeared, and Mrs. Marston was hoisted into the trailer--a large truck with scarlet-painted sides, and about half full of stone. This had been shovelled away from the front to make room for Mrs. Marston and Hazel. A flap in the scarlet side was let down, and with the help of one of the traction men Edward and Martha got her safely settled. She really was a very splendid old lady. Her hat, a kind of spoon-shape, was trimmed lavishly with black glass grapes, that clashed together softly when she moved. There was also a veil with white chenille spots. The hat was tied under her chin with black ribbons, and her kind old face, very pink and plump and charming, looked out pleasantly upon, the world. She wore her best mantle, heavily trimmed with jet bugles, and her alpaca skirt was looped up uncompromisingly with an old-fashioned skirt-hook made like a butterfly. Hung on one arm was her umbrella, and she carried her reticule in both hands for safety. So, with all her accoutrements on, she sat, pleasantly aware that she was at once self-respecting and adventurous. They started in a whirl of good-byes, shrieks of delight from Hazel, and advice of Mrs. Marston to the driver to put the brake on and keep it on. Hazel was perched on the side of the truck near her. They rounded a turn with great dignity, the trailer, with Mrs. Marston as its figure-head--wearing an expression of pride, fear, and resignation--swinging along majestically. 'Please, Mrs. Marston, can I buy a green silk gown wi' yellow roses on?' 'Certainly not, my dear. It would be most unsuitable. So very far from quiet.' 'What's quiet matter?' 'Quietness is the secret of good manners. The quieter you are, the more of a lady you'll be thought. All truly good people are quiet in manners, dress, and speech, just as all the best horses are advertised as quiet to ride and drive, but few are really so.' 'Han you got to be ever and ever so quiet to be a lady?' 'Yes.' 'What for have you?' 'Because, dear, it is the proper thing. Now my poor husband was quiet, so quiet that you never knew if he was there or not. And Edward is quiet too,--as quiet as--' 'Oh! dunna, dunna!' wailed Hazel. 'Is a pin sticking into you dear?' 'No. Dunna say Ed'ard's quiet!' Mrs. Marston looked amicably over her spectacles. 'My dear, why not?' she asked. 'I dunna like that sort.' 'Could you explain a little, dear?' 'I dunna like quiet men--nor quiet horses. My mam was quiet when she was dead. Everybody's quiet when they're dead.' 'Very, very quiet,' crooned Mrs. Marston. 'Yes, we all fall asleep in our turn.' 'I like,' went on Hazel in her rather crude voice, harsh with youth like a young blackbird's--'I like things as go quick and men as talk loud and stare hard and drive like the devil!' She broke off, flushing at Mrs. Marston's expression, and at the sudden knowledge that she had been describing Reddin. 'It doesn't signify very much,' said Mrs. Marston (severely for her), 'what you like, dear. But I suppose'--she softened--'that you do really like Edward, since he has chosen you and you are pledged?' Hazel shook her shoulders as if she wanted to get rid of a yoke. They fell into silence, and as Mrs. Marston dozed, Hazel was able to fulfil her desire that had sprung into being at the moment of seeing Mrs. Marston's hat--namely, to squash one of those very round and brittle grapes. Her quick little hand, gleaming in the sun, hovered momentarily above the black hat like a darting dragon-fly, and the mischief was done--bland respectability smashed and derided. Chapter 12 They went gallantly, if slowly, on through narrow ways, lit on either side by the breath-taking freshness of new hawthorn leaves. Primroses, wet and tall, crisply pink of stalk and huge of leaf, eyed them, as Madonnas might, from niches in the isles of grass and weed. Carts had to back into gates to let them go by, and when they came into the main road horses reared and had to be led past. Hazel found it all delightful. She liked, when the driver pulled up outside little wayside inns, to peer into the brown gloom where pewter pots and rows of china jugs shone, and from which, over newly washed floors of red tiles, landlords advanced with foaming mugs. Mrs. Marston strongly disapproved of these proceedings, but did not think it polite to expostulate, as she was receiving a favour. In Silverton Mrs. Marston lingered a long while before any shop where sacred pictures were displayed. The ones she looked at longest were those of that peculiarly seedy and emasculated type which modern religion seems to produce. Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies--evidently forced--talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange greenish light. This picture reminded her of it. She hastily looked at the others. She liked the one with sheep in it best, only the artist had made them like bolsters, and given the shepherd saucer eyes. Then she came to one of the Crucifixion, a subject on which the artist had lavished all the slumbering instincts of torture that are in so many people. 'Oh! what a drodsome un! I dunna like this shop,' said Hazel tearfully. 'What'm they doing to 'im? Oh, they'm great beasts!' Perhaps she had seen in her dim and childish way the everlasting tyranny of the material over the abstract; of bluster over nerves; strength over beauty; States over individuals; churches over souls; and fox-hunting squires over the creatures they honour with their attention. 'What is it, my dear?' Mrs. Marston looked over her spectacles, and her eyes were like half moons peering over full moons. 'That there picture! They'm hurting Him so cruel. And Him fast and all.' 'Oh!' said Mrs. Marston wonderingly, 'that's nothing to get vexed about. Why, don't you know that's Jesus Christ dying for us?' 'Not for me!' flashed Hazel. 'My dear!' 'No, what for should He? There shall none die along of me, much less be tormented.' 'Needs be that one man die for the people,' quoted Mrs. Marston easily. 'Only through blood can sin be washed white.' 'Blood makes things raddled, not white; and if so be any's got to die; I'll die for myself.' The old gabled houses, dark and solemn with heavy carved oak, the smart plate-glass windows of the modern shops, the square dogmatic church towers and the pointed insinuating spires--all seemed to listen in surprise to this being who was not content to let another suffer for her. For civilization as it now stands is based solely on this one thing--vicarious suffering. From the central doctrine of its chief creed to the system of its trade; from the vivisection-table to the consumptive genius dying so that crowds of fat folk may get his soul in a cheap form, it is all built up on sacrifice of other creatures. 'What'd you say if Ed'ard died for yer?' queried Hazel crudely. 'My dear! How unseemly! In the street!' 'And what'd I do if Foxy died for me?' 'Well, well, Foxy's only an animal.' 'So're you and me animals!' said Hazel so loudly that poor Mrs. Marston flushed all over her gentle old face. 'So indecent!' she murmured. 'My dear,' she said, when she had steered Hazel past the shop, 'you want a nice cup of tea. And I do hope,' she went on softly, putting a great deal of cream in Hazel's cup as she would have put lubricating oil on a stiff sewing-machine--'I do hope, my dear, you'll become more Christian as time goes on.' 'If Foxy died along of me,' said Hazel stubbornly--for, although grateful for the festive meal, she could not let her basic rule of life slip--'if Foxy died along of me, I'd die too. I couldna do aught else.' 'Things are very different,' said Mrs. Marston, flustered, flushed and helpless--'very different from what they used to be.' 'What for are they, Mrs. Marston?' But that question Mrs. Marston was quite unable to answer. If she had known the answer--that the change was in herself, and that the world was not different, but still kept up its ancient war between love and respectability, beauty and mass--she would not have liked it, and so she would not have believed it. It was seven o'clock when they were put down, tired and laden with parcels, at the quarry half-way up God's Little Mountain. Edward had been there for more than an hour, tormented with fears for Hazel's safety, angry with himself for letting her go. All afternoon he had fidgeted, worried Martha with suggestions about tea, finally gone to the shop several miles away for some of Hazel's favourite cake, quite forgetting that he ought to be in the house breathing. It all resulted in a most beautiful tea, as Hazel thought when they had pushed and pulled Mrs. Marston home. What with the joy of staying the night and the wonder of her new clothes, Hazel was as radiant and talked so fast that Edward could do nothing but watch her. In her short life there had not been many moments of such rose and gold. It was the happiest hour of Edward's life also; for she looked to him as flowers to warm heaven, as winter birds to a fruited tree. As he watched her opening parcel after parcel with frank innocence and little bird-like cries of rapture, he knew the intolerable sweetness of bestowing delight on the beloved--a sweetness only equalled by the intolerable agony of seeing helpless and incurable pain on the loved face. 'And what's that one?' he asked, like a mother helping in a child's game. He pointed to a parcel which contained chemises and nightdresses. 'That,' said Mrs. Marston, frowning portentously at Hazel, who was tearing it open--'that is other useful garments.' 'What for canna I show 'em Ed'ard? I want to show all. The money was his'n.' It was a tribute to Edward's self-control that she was so entirely lacking in shyness towards him. 'My dear! A young man!' whispered Mrs. Marston. Suddenly, by some strange necromancy, there was conjured in Hazel's mind a picture of Reddin--flushed, hard-eyed, with an expression that aroused in her misgiving and even terror. So she had seen him just before she fled to Vessons. At the remembrance she flushed so deeply that Mrs. Marston congratulated herself on the fact that her daughter-in-law had _some_ modesty and right feeling. If she had known who caused the flush, who it was that had awakened the love of pretty clothes which Edward was satisfying, she would have thought very different thoughts, and would have been utterly miserable. For her love for Edward was deep enough to make her wish him to have what he wanted, and not what she thought he ought to want, as long as he did not clash with her religion. For Edward to know it, though so early in his love for Hazel, would have meant a rocking of heaven and earth around him. Even she, with her childish egotism like a shell about her, realized that this was a thing that could not be. 'But it be all right,' she thought, as she curled up luxuriously in the strangely clean and comfortable bed, 'it'll be all right. Him above'll see as Mr. Reddin ne'er shows his face here; for the old lady said Him above looked after good folks, and Ed'ard's good. But I wish some un 'ud look after the bad uns,' she thought, looking across the room to the north where Undern lay. * * * * * 'My dear, wait a moment!' said Mrs. Marston to Edward downstairs, as he was lighting her candle. I have something to tell you. I fear you must brace yourself.' 'Well, mother?' Edward smiled. 'Hazel's not a Christian!' She spoke in a sepulchral whisper, and looked at him afterwards, as if to say, 'There, now, I _have_ surprised you!' 'And how do you make that out, mother?' Edward found in his heart this fact, that it made no difference to his love whether Hazel were a Christian or not; this troubled him. 'No. She's not a Christian, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston in a kind of gasp; 'she refuses to be died for!' Upstairs, Hazel was saying her orisons at the window. 'If there's anybody there,' she murmured, staring out into the consuming darkness that had absorbed every colour, every form, except the looming outline of God's Little Mountain against a watery moon-rise--'if there's anybody there, I'd be obleeged if you'd give an eye to our Foxy, as is lonesome in tub. It dunna matter about me, being under Ed'ard's roof.' Hazel had never felt so like a child in its mother's lap. Her own mother had not made her feel so. She had been a vague, abstracted woman with an air of bepuzzlement and lostness. She looked so long out of the door--never shut, except when Abel insisted on it--that there was no time for Hazel. Only occasionally she would catch her by the shoulders and look into her eyes and tell her strange news of faery. But now she felt cared for as she looked round the low room with its chair-bed and little dressing-table hung with pink glazed calico. There was a text over the fireplace: '"Not a hair of thy head shall perish."' It seemed particularly reassuring to Hazel as she brushed her long shining coils before the hanging mirror. There was a bowl of double primroses--red, mauve and white--on the window-sill, and a card 'with Edward's love.' Flowers in a bedroom were something very new. To her, as to so many poor people, a bedroom was a stuffy place to crawl into at night and get out of as quickly as possible in the morning. 'Eh! it'll be grand to live here,' she thought drowsily, as she lay down in the cool clean sheets and heard the large clock on the wall of the landing ticking slumbrously in a measured activity that deepened the peace. She heard Mrs. Marston slide past in her soft slippers with her characteristic walk, rather like skating. Then Edward came up (evidently in stockinged feet, for he was only heralded by creakings). Hazel never dreamt that he had taken his shoes off for her sake. The moon, riding clear of cloud, flung the shadow of Edward's primroses on the bed--a large round posy like a Christmas-pudding with outstanding leaves and flowers clearly defined, all very black on the counterpane. Undern seemed very far off. 'I like this better'n that old dark place, green dress or no green dress,' she thought, 'and I'll ne'er go back there. It inna true what he said, "Have her he will for certain sure," for I'm going to live along of Ed'ard, and the old sleepy lady'll learn me to make batter for ever and ever. Batter's a well-beaten mixture of eggs and summat.' She fell asleep. * * * * * In his room Edward walked up and down, too happy to go to bed. 'My little one! my little one!' he whispered. And he prayed that Hazel might have rosy and immortal happiness, guarded by strong angels along a path of flowers all her life long, and at last running in through the celestial gates as a child runs home. The spring wind, rainy and mournful, came groping out of the waste places and cried about the house like a man mourning for his love. The cavern of night, impenetrable and vast, was full of echoes, as if some voice, terrible and violent, had shouted there a long while since, and might, even before the age-long reverberations had died away, be uplifted again, if it was the will of the Power (invisible but so immanent that it pressed upon the brain) that inhabited the obscure, star-dripping cavern. Chapter 13 Next morning Mrs. Marston came in from the kitchen with the toast, which she would not trust anyone but herself to make, with a face portending great happenings. 'Mind you see that they are all properly placed, Edward; they should be all together in one part of the room.' 'Who'd that be?' Hazel inquired. '1906, plums; 1908, gooseberries; 1909, cherries, sugarless. The sugared ones are older.' Mrs. Marston spoke so personally that Hazel stared. 'It's mother's exhibits, Hazel,' explained Edward. 'Yes. They've been to shows year by year, and very well they've stood it. I only hope the constant travelling won't set up fermentation. I should like those Morellas to outlive me. A receipt I had of Jane Thorn, and she died of dropsy, poor thing, and bottled to the end.' 'Dunna you ever eat 'em?' asked Hazel. This was blasphemy. To eat 1909 Morellas! It was passed over in tense silence, allowances being made for a prospective bride. 'Poor thing! she's upset.' The exhibits, packed in a great bed of the vivid star-moss that grew in the secret recesses of the woods, were waiting on the front step in their usual box. There were some wonderful new jellies that made Hazel long to be Mrs. Marston and have control of the storeroom. This was a dim place where ivy leaves scraped the cobwebby window, and tall green canisters stood on shelves in company with glass jars, neatly labelled, and barrels of home-made wine; where hams hung from the ceiling, and herbs in bunches and on trays sent out a pungent sweetness. In there the magic was now heightened by the presence--dignified even in deshabille--of a wedding-cake which was being slowly but thoroughly iced. People often wondered how Mrs. Marston did it. No one ever saw her hurried or busy, yet the proofs of her industry were here. She worked like the coral insect, in the dark, as it were, of instinct unlit by intellect, and, like the coral insect, she raised a monumental structure that hemmed her in. They had to start early, driven by Edward's one substantial parishioner, who was principal judge, chief exhibitor, and organizer of the show. The exhibits must be there by ten; but Edward did not care in the least how many hours he spent there. The day was only darkened for him by one thing. When the trap came round, and Hazel climbed in joyously, Edward forgot the exhibits. He would have gone off without them had not Martha come flying down the path shouting: 'Mr. Ed'ard! Mr. Ed'ard! Nineteen six! Nineteen nine! Jam!' 'What for's Martha cursing?' asked Hazel. Edward, looking round, saw his mother's face in the doorway, dismayed, surprised, wounded. He jumped out and ran up the path. 'Oh, mother! How could I?' he said miserably. Mrs. Marston looked up; her mouth, that had fallen in a little, trembling pitifully, and her eyes smarting with the thick, painful tears of age. 'It wasn't you, my dear,' she said; 'you never forget; it was--the young woman.' One's god must at all hazards go clear of blame. Edward kissed her, but with reserve, and when he got into the trap he put an arm protectingly round Hazel. 'What a fool I am!' he thought. 'Now everything's spoilt.' In the silent store-room, hour by hour, Mrs. Marston propelled the mixture of sugar and egg through her icing syringe, building complex designs of frosty whiteness. Her back ached, and it seemed a long way round the cake, but she went on until Martha, with a note of sympathetic understanding in her voice, announced: 'Yer dinner's in, mum, and a cup of tea along of it.' Mrs. Marston sighed gratefully. 'How nice and pleasant!' she said; 'but not as nice and pleasant as it was--before.' 'Not by a long mile!' said Martha heartily. For Hazel had 'taken the eye' of all the eligibles at the concert, and was altogether disturbing. 'Perhaps, Martha,' said Mrs. Marston wistfully, 'when she's been here a long while, and we're used to her, and she's part of the house--perhaps it'll be as nice and pleasant as before?' 'When the yeast's in,' said Martha pessimistically, 'the dough's leavened!' * * * * * As Edward and Hazel drew near the show-ground they passed people walking and were overtaken by traps. A man passed at full gallop, and Hazel was reminded of Reddin. Later, she said: 'How'd you like it, Ed'ard, if somebody was after you, like a weasel after a rabbit or a terrier at a fox-earth? What'd you do?' 'What morbid things you think of, dear!' 'What'd you do?' 'I don't know.' 'There's nought to do.' Edward remembered his creed. 'I should pray, Hazel.' 'What good'd that do?' 'God answers prayers.' 'That He dunna! Or where'd the fox-hunting gents be, and who'd have rabbit-pie? I dunna see as He _can_ answer 'em.' 'Little girls mustn't bother their pretty heads.' 'If you'd found as many creatures in traps as me, and loosened 'em, and seed their broken legs, and eyes as if they'd seed ghosses, and onst a dog caught by the tongue--eh! you'd bother! You would that! And feyther killing the pigs Good Fridays.' 'Why Good Fridays, of all days?' 'That was the day. Ah! every Good Friday I was used to fight feyther!' 'My dear child!' 'You would if you'd seed the pig that comforble and contented, and know'd what it'd look like in a minute. I'd a killed feyther if I could.' 'But why? Surely it was worse of you to want to kill your father than of him to want to kill the pig?' 'I dunno. But I couldn't abear it. I bit him awful one time, and he hit me on the head with a rake, and I went to sleep.' Edward's forehead was damp with sweat. 'Merciful God!' he thought, 'that such things should be!' 'And when I've heard things screaming and crying to be loosed, and them in traps, and never a one coming to 'em but me, it's come o'er me to won'er who'd loose _me_ out if I was in a trap.' 'God would.' 'I dunna think so. He ne'er lets the others out.' Edward was silent. The radiant day had gone dark, and he groped in it. 'What for dunnot He, my soul? What for dun He give 'em mouths so's they can holla, and not listen at 'em? I listen when Foxy shouts out.' At this moment Edward saw Abel approaching, swaggering along with the harp. He had never been glad to see him so far; now he was almost affectionate. 'Laws, Ed'ard!' said Abel, straining the affection to breaking-point, 'you'm having a randy, and no mistake! Dancing and all, I s'pose?' 'No. I shall go before the dancing.' 'You won't get our 'Azel to go along of you, then. Dance her will, like a leaf in the fall.' 'You'd rather come home with me on your wedding-eve, Hazel, wouldn't you?' Abel, seeing Hazel's dismayed face, laughed loudly. Edward hated him as only sensitive temperaments can, and was conscience-stricken when he realized the fact. 'Well, Hazel?' he asked gently, and created a situation. 'I dunno,' said Hazel, awkwardly. A depressed silence fell between them; both were so bitterly disappointed. Abel, like an ancient mischievous gnome, went off, calling to Hazel: 'Clear your throat agen the judgin's over!' The judges were locked into the barn where the exhibits were. They took a long while over the judging, presumably because they tasted everything, even to the turnips (Mrs. James was partial to early turnips). Edward and Hazel passed a window and looked in. 'Look at 'em longing after the old lady's jam!' said Hazel. 'It's a mercy the covers are well stuck on or they'd be in like wasps! Look at Mr. Frodley wi' the eggs! Dear now, he's sucking one like a lad at a throstles' nest! Oh! Father'd ought to be there! He ne'er eats a cooked egg. Allus raw. Oh! Mr. James has unscrewed a bottle of father's honey and dipped! Look at 'im sucking his fingers!' 'Do people buy the remnants?' asked Edward, amused and disgusted. 'Ah! What for not?' The judges are now making a hearty meal off some cheeses. 'I wonder whose cheeses they are?' Edward mused. They were, in fact, Vessons'. He always insisted on making cheeses for some obscure reason; possibly it was the pride of the old-fashioned servant in being worth more than his wages. Vessons certainly was. He made stacks of cheeses, and took them to fairs and shows without the slightest encouragement from his master, who, when Vessons returned, red with conflict, and said, planking down the money with intense pride--''Ere it is! I 'ad to labour for thre'pences, though,' would merely nod uninterestedly. But still the Undern cheeses went to shows labelled 'John Reddin, Esquire, per A. Vessons.' At last the judges came out. The mere judging did not take long, for Mr. James usually considered his exhibit the best, and said so; the others, being only small-holders, were generally too polite to gainsay him. Edward and Hazel went into the barn where the exhibits were set out with stern simplicity, looking brave and beautiful with their earthly glamour. There were rolls of golden butter, nut-brown eggs, snowy bouquets of broccoli, daffodils with the sun striking through their aery petals, masses of dark wallflower where a stray bee revelled. There was Abel's honey, with a large placard drawn by himself proclaiming in drunken capitals: ABEL WOODUS. BEE-MAN. COFFINS. HONEY. WREATHS. OPEN TO ENGAGEMENTS TO PLAY THE HARP AT WEDDINGS, WAKES AND CLUB-DAYS. The golden jars shone; the sections in their lace-edged boxes, whitely sealed, were as provocative as the reserve of a fair woman. Edward bought one for Hazel. 'To open on your wedding-day,' he said. But the symbolism, so apparent to him, was lost on Hazel. Between the judging and the tea hour was a dull time. The races had not begun, and though an ancient of benign aspect announced continually, 'I'll take two to one!' no one responded. The people stood about, taking their pleasure like an anaesthetic, and looking like drugged bees. Now and then an old man from a far hill-side would meet another old man from a farther one, and there would be handshaking lasting, perhaps, a quarter of an hour. When Abel played, they remained stoical and silent, however madly or mournfully the harp cried. They took good music as their right. Then Hazel sang, gazing up at the purple ramparts of the hills that hung above the show-ground, and Edward's eyes were full of tears. A very old man, smooth-faced, and wondering as a baby, came, leaning on his stick, and stood before Hazel, gazing into her mouth with the steadfast curiosity of a dog at a gramophone. If she moved, he moved, absorbed, his jaw dropped with interest. Hazel did not notice him. She was free on the migratory wings of music. She did not see Vessons looking across the crowd with dismay, nor know that he edged away, muttering, 'That gel agen! Never will I!' Edward was glad when the singing and collection were over, and he could take Hazel into the shilling tent, where sat the elite, and give her tea. People remained in a sessile state over tea for a long time while the chief race of the afternoon was begun by the ringing of a dinner-bell. The race took so long, the riders having to go round the course so many times, that people went on complacently with their tea, only looking out occasionally to see how things progressed, watching the riders go by--one with bright red braces, one in a blue cotton coat, two middle-aged men in their best bowlers, and one, obviously too well mounted for the rest, in correct riding-dress. They came round each time in the same order--the correct one, red braces, blue coat, and the bowlers last. Evidently the foremost one knew he could easily win, and the others had decided that 'it was to be.' In the machine-like regularity of their advent, their unaltered positions, and leisured pace, they were like hobby-horses. 'How many times have they bin round?' Hazel asked the waitress, who poured tea and made conversation in a sociable manner. 'It'll be the seventh. They might as well give over. They're only labouring to stay in the same place.' 'I want to see 'em come in,' said Hazel. They went out, but Abel waylaid them, and took Edward off to show him a queen bee in a box from Italy. Edward loathed bees in or out of boxes, but he was too kind-hearted to refuse. Abel was so unperceptive that he touched pathos. Hazel found a place some distance down the course where she could look along the straight to the winning-post; she loved to hear them thunder past. She leaned over the rail and watched them come, still fatalistic, but gallant, bent on a dramatic finish, stooping and 'cutting' their horses. The first man was on her side of the course. She stared at him in amazed consternation as he came towards her. His strong blue eyes, caught by the fixity of her glance or by her bright hair, saw her, and became triumphant. He pulled the horse in sharply, and within a few yards of the winning-post wheeled and went back, amid the jeers and howls of the crowd, who thought he must be drunk. 'You've given me a long enough chase,' he said, leaning towards her. 'Where the devil _do_ you live?' 'Oh, dunna stop! He's coming.' 'Who?' 'Mr. Marston, the minister.' 'What do I care if he's a dozen ministers?' 'But he'll be angered.' 'I'll make his nose bleed if he's got such cheek.' 'Oh, he's coming, Mr. Reddin! I mun go.' She turned away. Reddin followed. 'Why should he be angry?' 'Because we're going to be wed to-morrow' Reddin whistled. 'And Foxy's coming, and all of 'em. And there's a clock as tick-tacks ever so sleepy, and a sleepy old lady, and Ed'ard's bought me a box full of clothes.' 'I gave you a box full too,' he said with a note of pleading. 'You little runaway!' Hazel was annoyed because he disturbed her so. She wanted to get rid of him, and she desired to exercise her power. So she looked up and said impishly: 'Yours were old 'uns. His be new--new as morning.' He was too angry to swear. 'You've got to come and talk to me while they're dancing to-night,' he said. 'I wunna.' 'You must. If you don't, I'll tell the parson you stopped the night at Undern. Surely you know that he wouldn't marry you then?' He was bluffing. He knew Vessons would tell Marston the truth if he spoke. But it served his turn. 'You wouldna!' she pleaded. He laughed. 'A'right, then,' she said, 'if you wunna tell 'un.' 'Will he stay for the dancing?' 'No. I mun go along of him.' 'You know better.' He turned away sharply as Edward came up. He knew him for the minister he had met near the Callow. Edward was tying up some daffodils for Hazel, and did not see Reddin. Scarlet braces, a fatalist no more, came trotting up. 'What went wrong?' he asked with thinly veiled triumph. 'Everything,' snapped Reddin, and calling Vessons, he went off to the beer-tent to wait till the dancing began. 'These are for your room, Hazel,' Edward was saying, 'because the time of the singing of birds is come.' He was thinking that God was indeed leading him forth by the waters of comfort. Hazel said nothing. She was wondering what excuse she could make for staying. 'Don't frown, little one. There are no more worries for you now.' 'Binna there?' 'No. You are coming to God's Little Mountain. What harm can come there? Now look up and smile, Hazel.' She met his grey eyes, very tender and thoughtful. What she saw, however, were blue eyes, hard, and not at all thoughtful. Chapter 14 Prize-giving time came, and the younger Miss Clomber, who was to present them, tried to persuade Reddin to go up on the platform, a lorry with chairs on it. There already were Mr. James and the secretary, counting the prize-money. Below stood the winners, Vessons conspicuous in his red waistcoat. Miss Clomber felt that she looked well. She was dressed in tweeds to show that this was not an occasion to her as to the country damsels. 'No. I shall stay here,' said Reddin, answering her stare, intended to be inviting, with a harder stare of indifference. 'As the last representative of such an old family--' 'Oh, damn family' he said peevishly, having lost sight of Hazel. As Miss Clomber still persisted, he quenched the argument. 'Young families are more in my line than old 'uns.' She blushed unbecomingly, and hastily got on to the lorry. Reddin went in search of Hazel, while Mr. James began to read the names. 'Mr. Thomas. Mr. James. Mrs. Marston. Mr. James--' He handed the pile of shillings to Miss Clomber, who presented them with the usual fatuous remarks. When he had won the prize he received it back from her with a bow, taking off his hat. As his own name occurred more frequently than usual, he began to get rather self-conscious. He looked round the ring of faces, and translated their stodginess as self-consciousness dictated. Perhaps it would be as well to carry it off as a jest? So his hat came off with a flourish, and he said jocosely as he took the next heap, 'Keeping-apples, Mr. James. I'll put it in me pocket!' This attitude wearing thin, he took refuge in that of unimpeachable honesty. 'Fair and square! The best man wins!' This lasted for some time, but was not proof against 'Swedes, Mr. James. Mangolds, Mr. James. Stewing pears, Mr. James.' He began to get in a panic. His bow was cursory. He pocketed the money furtively and read his name in a low, apologetic tone. But this would never do! He must pull himself together. He tried bravado. 'Mr. Vessons. Mr. James.' Vessons stood immovable within arm's reach of Miss Clomber. When he got a prize, which he did three times, no one else having sent any cheeses, he extended his arm like one side of a pair of compasses, and vouchsafed neither bow nor smile. He disliked Miss Clomber because he knew that she meant to be mistress of Undern. Mr. James was getting on well with the bravado. 'What do I care what people think? Dear me! All the world may see me get my prize.' Then he caught Abel's satiric eye, and went all to pieces. He clutched at his first attitude--the business-like--and so began all over again, and managed to get through by not looking in Abel's direction, being upheld by the knowledge that his pockets were getting very full. When he read out, 'Cherries, bottled. Mrs. Marston,' and Edward went to receive the prize, Reddin shouldered up to Hazel and asked: 'What time's he going?' 'I dunno.' 'Don't forget, mind.' 'Oh, Mr. Reddin, I mun go! What for wunna you let me be?' But Reddin, finding Miss Clomber's eye on him, was gone. Mr. James had come to the end of the list. He read out Abel's name and that of an old bent man with grey elf-locks, a famous bee-master. Mr. James looked at Abel as much as to say, 'You've got your prize, you see! It's quite fair.' 'Thank yer,' said Abel to Miss Clomber, and then to James with fine irony: 'You dunna keep bees, do yer, Mr. James?' * * * * * The hills loomed in the dusk over the show-ground. They were of a cold and terrific colour, neither purple nor black nor grey, but partaking of all. Kingly, mournful, threatening, they dominated the life below as the race dominates the individual. Hazel gazed up at them. She stood in the attitude of one listening, for in her ears was a voice that she had never heard before, a deep inflexible voice that urged her to do--she knew not what. She looked up at the round wooded hill that hid God's Little Mountain--so high, so cold for a poor child to climb. She felt that the life there would be too righteous, too well-mannered. The thought of it suddenly made her homesick for dirt and the Callow. She thought of Undern crouched under its hill like a toad. She remembered its echoing rooms and the sound as of dresses rustling that came along the passages while she put on the green gown. Undern made her more homesick than the parsonage. Edward had gone. She had said she wanted to stay with her father, and Edward had thought her a sweet daughter and had acquiesced, though sadly. Now she was awaiting Reddin. The dancing had not begun, though the tent was ready. Yellow light flowed from every gap in the canvas, and Hazel felt very forlorn out in the dark; for light seemed her natural sphere. As she stood there, looking very small and slight, she had a cowering air. Always, when she stood under a tree or sheltered from the rain, she had this look of a refugee, furtive and brow-beaten. When she ran she seemed a fugitive, fleeing across the world with no city or refuge to flee into. Miss Clomber's approach made her start. 'A word with you!' said Miss Clomber in her brisk, unsympathetic voice. 'I saw you with Mr. Reddin twice. I just wanted to say in a sisterly and Christian spirit'--she lowered her voice to a hollow whisper--'that he is not a good man.' 'Well,' said Hazel, with a sigh of relief in the midst of her shyness and her oppression about the mountain, 'that's summat, anyway!' Miss Clomber, outraged and furious, strode away. Hazel was again left to the hills. The taciturnity of winter was upon them still, and in the sky beyond was the cynical aloofness that comes with frost after sunset. She turned from them to the lighted tent. The golden glow was like some bright creature imprisoned. Abel had prorogued an interminable argument with the old man with the elf-locks, and now began thrumming inside the tent. Young men and women converged upon it at the sound of the music, as flies flock to the osier blossom. They went in, as the blessed to Paradise. The canvas began to sway and billow in the wind of the dancing. Hazel felt that life was going on gaily without her--she shut away in the dark. Her feet began to dance. 'I'll go in!' she said defiantly. 'What for not?' But just as she was lifting the flap she heard Reddin's voice at her elbow. 'Hazel, why did you run away?' 'I dunno.' 'Why didn't you tell me your name? Here have I been going hell-for-leather up and down the country.' 'Ah! That's gospel! That's righteous! I seed you.' Reddin was speechless. 'Me and father was in the public, and you came. I thought it was the Black Huntsman.' 'Thanks. Not a pin to choose, I suppose.' 'Not all that.' 'We're wasting time. What's all this about the parson?' 'I told 'ee.' 'But it isn't true. You and the parson!' He laughed. Hazel looked at him with disfavour. 'You're like a hound-dog when you laugh like to that,' she said, 'and I dunna like the hound-dogs.' He stopped laughing. Abel's harp beat upon them, and the soft thudding of feet on the turf, like sheep stamping, had grown in volume as the shyest were gradually drawn into the revelry. A rainstorm, shaped like a pillar, walked slowly along the valley, skirting the base of the hills. It was like a grey god with folded arms and head aloof in the sky. As it drew slowly nearer to the two who stood there like lovers and were not lovers, and as it lashed them across the eyes, it might have been fate. 'Hazel, can't you see I'm in love with you?' 'What for are you?' There was a wailing note in Hazel's voice, and the rain ran down her face like tears. 'There's you and there's Ed'ard Oh, what for are you?' Reddin looked at her in astonishment. A woman not to like a man to be in love with her. It was uncanny. He stood square-set against the darkening sky, his fine massive head slightly bent, looking down at her. 'I never thought,' he said helplessly--'I never thought, when I had come to forty years without the need of women' ('of love,' he corrected himself), 'that I should be like this.' He looked at Hazel accusingly; then he gazed up at the coming night as a lion might at the sound of thunder. 'Be you forty?' Hazel's voice was on the top note of wonder. 'Laws! what an age!' 'It's not really old,' he pleaded, very humbly for him. She laughed. 'The parson, now, I suppose he's young?' His voice was wistful. 'He'm the right age.' Reddin's temper flamed. 'I'll show you if I'm old! I'll show you who makes the best lover, me or a silly lad!' 'Hands off, Mr. Reddin!' But her words went down the lonely wind that had begun to drag at the lighted tent. 'There' said Reddin, pleased with his kisses. 'Now come and dance, and you'll see if a chap of forty can't tire you. Afterwards we'll settle the parson's hash.' He lifted the tent-flap, and they went in and were taken by the bright, slow-whirling life. Hazel was glad to dance with him or anyone, so that she might dance. Reddin held his head high, for he was a lover to-night, and he had never been that before in any of his amours. He was angry and enthralled with Hazel, and the two emotions together were intoxicating. Hazel was a flower in a gale when she danced, a slim poplar tremulous and swaying in the dawn, a young beech assenting to the wind's will. Abel watched her with pride. She was turning out a credit to him, after all. It was astonishing. 'It's worth playing for our 'Azel's feet. The others just stomps,' he thought. 'Who's the fellow she's along with? I'd best keep an eye. A bargain's a bargain.' 'You'm kept your word,' said Hazel suddenly to Reddin. 'H'm?' 'Tired me out.' 'Come outside, then, and I'll get you a cup of tea.' He fetched it and sat down by her on an orange-box. 'Now look here,' he said, 'fair and square, will you marry me?' He was surprised at himself. Andrew Vessons, who had tiptoed after them from the tent, spread out his hands and gazed at heaven with a look of supreme despair, all the more intense because he could not speak. He returned desolately to the tent, where he stood with a cynical smile, leaning a little forward with his arms behind him, watching the dancing, an apotheosis of sex, to him not only silly and pitiful, but disgusting. Now and then he shook his head, went to the door to see if his master was coming, and shook it again. A friend came up. 'Why did the gaffer muck up the race?' he asked. 'Why,' asked Vessons, with a far-off gaze, 'did 'Im as made the 'orld put women in?' Outside things were going more to his liking than he knew. 'What's the good of keeping on, Mr. Reddin? I told 'ee I was promised to Ed'ard.' 'But you like me a bit? Better than the parson?' 'I dunno.' 'Come off with me now. I swear I'll play fair.' '_I_ swore!' she cried. 'I swore by the Mountains, and that can ne'er be broke.' 'What did you swear?' 'To marry the first as come. That's Ed'ard. If I broke that oath, when I was jead, my cold soul 'ud wander and find ne'er a bit of rest, crying about the Mountains and about, nights, and Ed'ard thinking it was the wind. 'If you chuck him, he'll soon get over it; if you chuck me, I shan't. He's never gone after the drink and women.' It was a curious plea for a lover. 'Miss Clomber said you wunna a good man.' 'Well, I'm blowed! But look here. If he loses you, he'll be off his feed for a bit; but if I lose you, there'll be the devil to pay. Has he kissed you?' 'Time and agen.' 'I won't have it!' ''Azel!' called her father. 'You won't go?' 'I mun. It's father.' 'And I shan't see you again-till you're married? Oh, marry _me_, Hazel! Marry _me_!' His voice shook. At the mysterious grief in his face--a grief that was half rage, and the more pitiful for that--she began to sob. Abel came up. 'A mourning-party, seemingly,' he said, holding his lantern so as to light each face in turn. 'I want to marry your daughter.' Abel roared. 'Another? First 'er bags a parson and next a squire!' 'Farmer.' 'It'll be the king on his throne next. Laws, girl! you're like beer and treacle.' 'You've not answered me,' said Reddin. 'She's set.' 'Eh?' 'Set. Bespoke. Let.' 'She's a right to change her mind.' 'Nay! A bargain's a bargain. Why, they've bought the clothes, mister, and the furniture and the cake!' 'If she comes with me, you'll go home with a cheque for fifty pounds, and that's all I've got,' said Reddin naively. 'I tell you, sir, she's let,' Abel repeated. 'A bargain's a bargain!' It occurred to him that the Callow garden might, with fifty pounds, be filled with beehives from end to end. 'Mister,' he said, almost in tears, 'you didn't ought to go for to 'tice me! Eh! dear 'eart, the wood I could buy, and the white paint and a separator and queens from foreign parts!' He made a gesture of despair and his face worked. 'You could have a new harp if you wanted one.' Reddin suggested. Abel gulped. 'A bargain's a bargain!' he repeated. 'And I promised the parson.' He turned away. ''Azel,' he said over his shoulder, 'you munna go along of this gent. Many's the time,' he added turning round and surveying her moodily, 'as you've gone agen me and done what I gainsayed.' With a long imploring look he hitched the harp on his back and trudged away. Hazel followed. But Reddin stepped in front of her. 'Look here, Hazel! You say you don't like hurting things. You're hurting me!' Looking at his haggard face, she knew it was true. She wiped her tears away with her sleeve. 'It inna my fault. I'm allus hurting things. I canna set foot in the garden nor cook a cabbage but I kill a lot of little pretty flies and things. And when we take honey there's allus bees hurted. I'm bound to go agen you or Ed'ard, and I canna go agen Ed'ard; he sets store by me, does Ed'ard. You should 'a seen the primmyroses he put in my room last night; I slep' at the parsonage along of us being late.' Reddin frowned as if in physical pain. 'And he bought me stockings, all thin, and a sky-blue petticoat.' Reddin looked round. He would have picked her up then and there and taken her to Undern, but the road was full of people. 'I couldna go agen Ed'ard! He'm that kind. Foxy likes him, too; she'd ne'er growl at 'im.' 'Perhaps,' Reddin said hoarsely, 'Foxy'd like me if I gave her bones.' 'She wouldna! You'm got blood on you.' She drew away coldly at this remembrance, which had been obliterated by Reddin's grief. 'You'm got the blood of a many little foxes on you,' she said, and her voice cut him like sharp sleet--'little foxes as met have died quick and easy wi' a gunshot. And you've watched 'em minced alive.' 'I'll give it up if you'll chuck the parson.' 'I won'er you dunna see 'em, nights, watching you out of the black dark with their gold eyes, like kingcups, and the look in 'em of things dying hard. I won'er you dunna hear 'em screaming.' His cause was lost, and he knew it, but he pleaded on. 'No. If I hadna swore by the Mountain I wouldna come,' she said. 'You've got blood on you.' At that moment a neighbour passed and offered Hazel a lift. Now that she was marrying a minister, she had become a personality. Hazel climbed in and drove off, and Reddin's tragic moment died, as great fires die, into grey ash. He went home heavily. His way lay past the parsonage where Edward and his mother slept peacefully. The white calm of unselfish love wrapped Edward, for he felt that he could make Hazel happy. As he fell asleep that night he thought: 'She was made for a minister's wife.' Reddin, leaning heavily on the low wall, staring at the drunken tombstones and the quiet moon-silvered house, thought: 'She was made for me.' Both men saw her as what they wanted her to be, not as she was. Many thoughts darkened Reddin's face as he stood there hour after hour in the cold May night. The rime whitened his broad shoulders as he leaned on the wall, and in the moonlight the sprinkling of white hairs at his temples shone out from the black as if to mock this young passion that had possessed him. God's Little Mountain lay shrugged in slumber; the woods crouched like beaten creatures under the night; the small soft leaves hung limply in the frost. Still Reddin stood there, chilled through and through, brooding upon the house. Not until dawn, like a knife, gashed the east with blood did he stir. He sighed. 'Too late!' he said. Then he laughed. 'Beaten by the parson!' A demoniac rage surged in him. He picked up a piece of rock, and lifting it in both arms, flung it at the house. It smashed the kitchen window. But before Edward came to his window Reddin was out of sight in the batch. 'My dear,' said Mrs. Marston tremulously, 'I always feared disaster from this strange match.' 'How _can_ Hazel have anything to do with it, mother?' 'I think, dear, it is a sign from God. On your wedding-morning! Broken glass! Yes, it is a sign from God. I wish it need not have been quite so violent. But, of course, He knows best.' Chapter 15 At the parsonage everything was ready early. Edward, restless after his rough awakening, had risen at three and finished his own preparations, being ready to help Mrs. Marston when she came down, still a good deal upset. Whenever she passed Hazel's room, or saw Edward take flowers there, she said, 'Oh, my dear!' and shook her head sadly. For the kind of life that seemed to be mapped out by Edward would, she feared, not include grandchildren. And grandchildren had acquired, through long cogitations, the glamour of the customary. She was also ruffled by Martha, who, unlike her own pastry, was 'short.' What with the two women, angry and grieved, and the fact that his wedding-day held only half the splendour that it should have held, Edward's spirits might have been expected to be low; but they were not. He ran up and down, joked with Martha, soothed his mother, and sang until Martha, who thought that a minister's deportment at a wedding should be only a little less grandiloquent than at a funeral, said: 'He'm less like a minister than a nest of birds.' She and Mrs. Marston were setting out the feather-cups in the best parlour. At that moment Edward stood at the door of Hazel's room, and realized that he would enter it no more. He must not see the sweet disarray of her unpacking, nor rest night by night in the charmed circle of her presence. Almost he felt, in this agony of loss--loss of things never possessed, the most bitter loss of all--that, if he could have had these things, even the ruddy-haired, golden-eyed children of his dreams might go. He knelt by Hazel's bed and laid his dark head on the pillow, torn by physical and spiritual passion. His hair was clammy, and a new line marked his forehead from that day. Anyone seeing him would have thought that he was praying; he was so still. It was Edward's fate to be thought 'so quiet,' because the fires within him made no sound, burning at a still-white heat. He was not praying. Prayer had receded to a far distance, like a signpost long passed. Perhaps he would come round to it again; but now he was in the trackless desert. It is only those that have suffered moderately that speak of prayer as the sufferer's refuge. By that you know them. Those that have been tortured remember that the worst part of the torture was the breaking of the prayer in their hands, piercing, and not upholding. Edward knew, kneeling there with his eyes shut, how Hazel's hair would flow sweetly over the pillow; how her warm arm would feel about his neck; how wildly sweet it would be, in some dark hour, to allay dream-fears and hush her to sleep. Never before had the gracious intimacy of marriage so shone in his eyes. And he was going to have just the amount of intimacy that his mother would have, perhaps rather less. Every night he would stand on the threshold, kiss Hazel with a brotherly kiss, and turn away. His life would be a cold threshold. Month by month, year by year, he would read the sweet, frank love-stories of the Bible--stories that would, if written by a novelist, be banned, so true are they; year by year he would see nest and young creatures, and go into cottages where babies in fluffy shawls gazed at him anciently and caught his fingers in a grip of tyrannous weakness. And always there would be Hazel, alluring him with an imperishable magic even stronger than beauty, startling him from his hard-won calm by the turn of a wrist, the curve of a waist-ribbon, a wave of her hair. And then the stern hour of crisis rode him down, and a great voice cried, not with the cunning that he would have expected of a temper, but with the majesty of morning on the heights: 'Take her. She is yours.' He knew that it was true. Who would gainsay him? She was his. In a few hours she would be his wife, in his own house, giving him every law of creed and race. In fact, by not pleasing himself he would be outraging creed and race. The latch of her door was his to lift at any time. That chamber of roses and gold, rainbows and silver cries like the dawn-notes of birds, was there for him like the open rose for the bee. His mother, too, would be pleased. She had expostulated gelatinously about 'this marriage which was no marriage.' He would be that companionable and inspiring thing--the norm. He would be one of the world-wide company of men that work, marry, bring up children, maybe see their grandchildren, and then, in the glory of fulfilment, lay their silver heads on the pillow of sleep. He had always loved normal things. He was not one of those who are set apart by the strange aloofness of genius, whose souls burn with a wild light, instead of with the comfortable glow of the hearth fire. He was an ordinary man, loved ordinary things. Neither was he effeminate or a celibate by instinct, though he had not Reddin's fury of masculinity. Sex would never have awakened in him but at the touch of spiritual love. But the touch had come; it had awakened; it threatened to master him. Pictures came dimly and yet radiantly before him: Hazel as she would stand to-night brushing out her hair; this room as it would be when she had put the light out and only starlight illuminated it; the flowery scent, the sound of her soft breathing; and then, in a tempestuous rush, the emotions he would feel as he laid his hand on the latch--love, triumph, intoxication. How would she look? What would she say? She could not forbid him. She would, perhaps, when she awoke to the sweetness of marriage, love him as passionately as he loved her. A wild mastery possessed him. He would have what he wanted of life. What need was there to renounce? And then, like a minor chord, soft and plaintive, he heard Hazel's voice in bewildered accents murmur: 'What for do you, my soul?' and, 'I'm much obleeged, I'm sure.' What stood between him and his desire was Hazel's helplessness, her personality, like a delicate glass that he would break if he stirred. Creed and convention pushed him on. For Church and State are for material righteousness, the letter of the law. Spiritual flowerings, high motives clad in apparent lawlessness--these are hardly in their province since they are for those who still need crude rules. To the scribes, and still more to them that sold doves, Christ was a brawler. Rather than break that glass he would not stir. What were the race and public opinion to him compared with her spirit? His tenets must make an exception for her. These things were negligible. All that mattered was himself and Hazel; his passion, Hazel's freedom; his longing for husbandhood and fatherhood, her elvish incapacity for wifehood and motherhood. He suddenly detested himself for the rosy pictures he had seen. He was utterly abased at the knowledge that he had really meant at one moment to enforce his rights, to lift the latch. The selfish use of strength always seemed to him a most despicable thing. From all points he surveyed his crisis with shame. He had made his decision; but he knew how easy it would have been to make the opposite one. How easy and how sweet! He stayed where he was for a long time, too tired to get up, weary with a conflict that was hardly yet begun. Then he heard his mother calling, and got up, closing the door as one surrenders a dream. He still held in one hand the bunch of rosy tulips he had bought for Hazel at the show. They hung their heads. 'Oh, my dear boy,' said Mrs. Marston, 'I've called and better called, and no answer! Where were you?' Edward might have said with truth, 'In hell.' He only said: 'In a valley of this restless mind.' 'What valley, dear? Oh, no valley, only a poem?' How very peculiar! Dear, dear! she thought; I hope all this isn't turning his brain; it seemed so like nonsense what he said. 'You look so pale, my dear, and so distraught,' she went on; 'I think you want a--' 'No, mother. Thank you, I want nothing.' He was half conscious of the bitter irony of it as he said it. Mrs. Marston was looking at his knees. 'Oh, my dear, I know now,' she said; 'I beg your pardon for saying you wanted a powder. You were with the Lord. You could not have been better occupied on your wedding morning!' She was very much touched. Edward flushed darkly, conscious of how he had been occupied. 'There!' cried she; 'now you're as flushed as you were pale. It's the fever. I'll mix you something that will soon put you all right.' 'I only wish you could,' he sighed. 'And what I wanted,' said she, catching at her previous thought in the same blind way as she caught at her skirts on muddy days--'what I wanted, dear, was--it's so heavy, the cake--' 'You want me to lift it, mother?' 'Yes, my dear. How well you know! And mind not to spoil the icing; it's so hard not to, it being so white and brittle.' 'No, I won't spoil the white,' he said earnestly, 'however hard it is.' She did not notice that the earnestness was unnatural; intense earnestness in household matters was her normal state. Chapter 16 The stately May morning, caparisoned in diamonds, full of the solemnity that perfect beauty wears, had come out of the purple mist and shamed the hovel where Hazel dressed for her bridal. The cottage had sunk almost out of recognition in the foam of spring. Ancient lilacs stood about it and nodded purple-coroneted heads across its one chimney. Their scent bore down all other scents like a strong personality and there was no choice but to think the thoughts of the lilac. Two laburnums, forked and huge of trunk, fingered the roof with their lower branches and dripped gold on it. The upper branches sprang far into the blue. The may-tree by the gate knew its perfect moment, covered with crystal buds that shone like rain among the bright green leaves. From every pear-tree--full-blossomed, dropping petals--and from every shell-pink apple-tree came the roar of the bees. Abel rose very early, for he considered it the proper thing to make a wreath for Hazel, being an artist in such matters. The lilies-of-the-valley-were almost out; he had put some in warm water overnight, and now he sat beneath the horse-chestnut and worked at the wreath. The shadows of the leaves rippled over him like water, and often he looked up at the white spires of bloom with a proprietary eye, for his bees were working there with a ferocity of industry. He was moody and miserable, for he thought of the township of hives that Hazel might have won for him. He comforted himself with the thought that there would be something saved on her keep. It never occurred to him to be sorry to lose her; in fact, there was little reason why he should be. Each had lived a lonely, self-sufficing life; they were entirely unsuitable companions for each other. He wove the wet lilies, rather limp from the hot water, on to a piece of wire taken from one of his wreath-frames. So Hazel went to her bridal in a funeral wreath. She awoke very tired from the crisis yesterday, but happy. She and Foxy and the one-eyed cat, her rabbit, and the blackbird, were going to a country far from troublous things, to the peace of Edward's love on the slope of God's Little Mountain. The difficulties of the new life were forgotten. Only its joys were visible to-day. Mrs. Marston seemed to smile and smile in an eternal loving-kindness, and Martha's heavy face wore an air of good-fellowship. The loud winds, lulled and bearing each its gift of balm, would blow softly round Edward's house. Frost, she thought, would not come to God's Little Mountain as to the cold Callow. She had not seen Reddin's rimy shoulders, nor the cold glitter of the tombs. She sang as she dressed with the shrill sweetness of a robin. She had never seen such garments; she hardly knew how to put some of them on. She brushed her hair till it shone like a tiger-lily, and piled it on her small head in great plaits. When her white muslin frock was on, she drew a long breath, seeing herself in bits in the small glass. 'I be like a picture!' she gasped. Round her slim sun-burnt neck was a small gold chain holding a topaz pendant, which matched her eyes. When she came forth like a lily from the mould, Abel staggered backwards, partly in clownish mirth, partly in astonishment. He was so impressed that he got breakfast himself, and afterwards went and sandpapered his hands until they were sore. Hazel, enthroned in one of the broken chairs, fastened on Foxy's wedding-collar, made of blue forget-me-not. Foxy, immensely dignified, sat on her haunches, her chin tucked into the forget-me-nots, immovably bland. She was evidently competent for her new role; she might have been ecclesiastically connected all her life. The one-eyed cat was beside her, blue-ribboned, purring her best, which was like a broken bagpipe on account of her stormy youth. 'Ah! you'd best purr!' said Hazel. 'Sitting on cushions by the fireside all your life long you'll be, and Foxy with a brand new tub!' Not many brides think so little of themselves, so much of small pensioners, as Hazel did this morning. Breakfast was a sociable meal, for Abel made several remarks. Now and then he looked at Hazel and said, 'Laws!' Hazel laughed gleefully. When she stood by the gate watching for the neighbour's cart that was to take them, she looked as full of white budding promise as the may-tree above her. She did not think very much about Edward, except as a protecting presence. Reddin's face, full of strong, mysterious misery; the feel of Reddin's arm as they danced; his hand, hot and muscular, on hers--these claimed her thoughts. She fought them down, conscious that they were not suitable in Edward's bride. At last the cart appeared, coming up the hill with the peculiar lurching deportment of market carts. The pony had a bunch of marigolds on each ear, and there was lilac on the whip. They packed the animals in--the cat giving ventriloquial mews from her basket, the rabbit in its hutch, the bird in its wooden cage, and Foxy sitting up in front of Hazel. The harp completed the load. They drove off amid the cheers of the next-door children, and took their leisurely way through the resinous fragrance of larch-woods. The cream-coloured pony was lame, which gave the cart a peculiar roll, and she was tormented with hunger for the marigolds, which hung down near her nose and caused her to get her head into strange contortions in the effort to reach them. The wind sighed in the tall larches, and once again, as on the day of the concert, they bent attentive heads towards Hazel. In the glades the wide-spread hyacinths would soon be paling towards their euthanasia, knowing the art of dying as well as that of living, fortunate, as few sentient creatures are, in keeping their dignity in death. When they drove through the quarry, where deep shadows lay, Hazel shivered suddenly. 'Somebody walking over your grave,' said Abel. 'Oh, dunna say that! It be unlucky on my wedding-day,' she cried. As they climbed the hill she leaned forward, as if straining upwards out of some deep horror. When their extraordinary turn-out drew up at the gate, Abel boisterously flourishing his lilac-laden whip and shouting elaborate but incomprehensible witticisms, Edward came hastily from the house. His eyes rested on Hazel, and were so vivid, so brimful of tenderness, that Abel remained with a joke half expounded. 'My Hazel,' Edward said, standing by the cart and looking up, 'welcome home, and God bless you!' 'You canna say fairer nor that,' remarked Abel. 'Inna our 'Azel peart? Dressed up summat cruel inna she?' Edward took no notice. He was looking at Hazel, searching hungrily for a hint of the same overwhelming passion that he felt. But he only found childlike joy, gratitude, affection, and a faint shadow for which he could not account, and from which he began to hope many things. If in that silent room upstairs he had come to the opposite decision; if he had that very day told Hazel what his love meant, by the irony of things she would have loved him and spent on him the hidden passion of her nature. But he had chosen the unselfish course. 'Well,' he said in a business-like tone, 'suppose we unpack the little creatures and Hazel first?' Mrs. Marston appeared. 'Oh, are you going to a show, Mr. Woodus?' she asked Abel. 'It would have been so nice and pleasant if you would have played your instrument.' 'Yes, mum. That's what I've acome for. I inna going to no show. I've come to the wedding to get my belly-full.' Mrs. Marston, very much flustered, asked what the animals were for. 'I think, mother, they're for you.' Edward smiled. She surveyed Foxy, full of vitality after the drive; the bird, moping and rough; the rabbit, with one ear inside out, looking far from respectable. She heard the ventriloquistic mews. 'I don't want them, dear,' she said with great decision. 'It's a bit of a cats' 'ome you're starting, mum,' said Abel. Mrs. Marston found no words for her emotions. But while Edward and Abel bestowed the various animals, she said to Martha: 'Weddings are not what they were, Martha.' 'Bride to groom,' said Martha, who always read the local weddings: 'a one-eyed cat; a foolish rabbit as'd be better in a pie; an ill-contrived bird; and a filthy smelly fox!' Mrs. Marston relaxed her dignity so far as to laugh softly. She decided to give Martha a rise next year. Chapter 17 Hazel sat on a large flat gravestone with Foxy beside her. They were like a sculpture in marble on some ancient tomb. Coming, so soon after her strange moment of terror in the quarry, to this place of the dead, she was smitten with formless fear. The crosses and stones had, on that storm-beleaguered hillside, an air of horrible bravado, as if they knew that although the winds were stronger than they, yet they were stronger than humanity; as if they knew that the whole world is the tomb of beauty, and has been made by man the torture-chamber of weakness. She looked down at the lettering on the stone. It was a young girl's grave. 'Oh!' she muttered, looking up into the tremendous dome of blue, empty and adamantine--'oh! dunna let me go young! What for did she dee so young? Dunna let me! dunna!' And the vast dome received her prayer, empty and adamantine. She was suddenly panic-stricken; she ran away from the tombs calling Edward's name. And Edward came on the instant. His hands were full of cabbage which he had been taking to the rabbit. 'What is it, little one?' 'These here!' 'The graves?' 'Ah. They'm so drodsome.' Edward pointed to a laburnum-tree which had rent a tomb, and now waved above it. 'See,' he said. 'Out of the grave and gate of death--' 'Ah! But her as went in hanna come out. On'y a new tree. I'll be bound she wanted to come out.' At this moment Edward's friend, who was to marry them, arrived. 'Now I shall go and wait for you to come,' Edward whispered. Waiting in the dim chapel, with its whitewashed walls and few leaded windows half covered with ivy, his mind was clear of all thoughts but unselfish ones. His mother, trailing purple, came in, and thought how like a sacred picture he looked; this, for her, was superlative praise. Martha's brother was there, ringing the one bell, which gave such a small fugitive sound that it made the white chapel seem like a tinkling bell-wether lost on the hills. Mr. James was there, and several of the congregation, and Martha, with her best dress hastily donned over her print, and a hat of which her brother said 'it 'ud draw tears from an egg.' Mr. James' daughter played a voluntary, in the midst of which an altercation was heard outside. 'Her'll be lonesome wi'out me!' 'They wunna like it. It's blasphemy.' Then the door opened, and Abel, very perspiring, and conscious of the greatness of the occasion, led in Hazel in her wreath of drooping lilies. The green light touched her face with unnatural pallor, and her eyes, haunted by some old evil out of the darkness of life, looked towards Edward as to a saviour. She might have been one of those brides from faery, who rose wraith-like out of a pool or river, and had some mysterious ichor in their veins, and slipped from the grasp of mortal lover, melting like snow at a touch. Edward, watching her, was seized with an inexplicable fear. He wished she had not been so strangely beautiful, that the scent of lilies had not brought so heavy a faintness, reminding him of death-chambers. It was not till Hazel reached the top of the chapel that the congregation observed Foxy, a small red figure, trotting willingly in Hazel's wake--a loving though incompetent bridesmaid. Mr. James arose and walked up the chapel. 'I will remove the animal' he said; then he saw that Hazel was leading Foxy. This insult was, then, deliberate. 'A hanimal,' he said, 'hasn't no business in a place o' worship.' 'What for not?' asked Hazel. 'Because--' Mr. James found himself unable to go on. 'Because not,' he finished blusterously. He laid his hand on the cord, but Foxy prepared for conflict. Edward's colleague turned away, hand to mouth. He was obliged to contemplate the ivy outside the window while the altercation lasted. 'Whoever made you,' Hazel said, 'made Foxy. Where you can come, Foxy can come. You'm deacon, Foxy's bridesmaid!' 'That's heathen talk,' said Mr. James. 'How very naughty Hazel is!' thought poor Mrs. Marston. She felt that she could never hold up her head again. The congregation giggled. The black grapes and the chenille spots trembled. 'How very unpleasant!' thought the old lady. Then Edward spoke, and his voice had an edge of masterfulness that astonished Mr. James. 'Let be,' he said. '"Other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also will I bring." She has the same master, James.' Silence fell. The other minister turned round with a surprised, admiring glance at Edward, and the service began. It was short and simple, but it gathered an extraordinary pathos as it progressed. The narcissi on the window-sills eyed Hazel in a white silence, and their dewy golden eyes seemed akin to Foxy's and her own. The fragrance of spring flowers filled the place with wistful sadness. There are no scents so tearful, so grievous, as the scents of valley-lilies and narcissi clustered ghostly by the dark garden hedge, and white lilac, freighted with old dreams, and pansies, faintly reminiscent of mysterious lost ecstasy. Edward felt these things and was oppressed. A great pity for Hazel and her following of forlorn creatures surged over him. A kind of dread grew up in him that he might not be able to defend them as he would wish. It did seem that helplessness went to the wall. Since Hazel had come with her sad philosophy of experience, he had begun to notice facts. He looked up towards the aloof sky as Hazel had done. 'He is love,' he said to himself. The blue sky received his certainty, as it had received Hazel's questioning, in regardless silence. Mrs. Marston observed Edward narrowly. Then she wrote in her hymn-book: 'Mem: Maltine; Edward.' The service was over. Edward smiled at her as he passed, and met Mr. James' frown with dignified good-humour. Foxy, even more willing to go out than to come in, ran on in front, and as they entered the house they heard from the cupboard under the stairs the epithalamium of the one-eyed cat. 'Oh, dear heart!' said Hazel tremulously, looking at the cake, 'I ne'er saw the like!' 'Mother iced it, dear.' Hazel ran to Mrs. Marston and put both her thin arms round her neck, kissing her in a storm of gratitude. 'There, there! quietly, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston. 'I'm glad it pleases.' She smoothed the purple silk smilingly. Hazel was forgiven. 'I'd a brought the big saw if I'd 'a thought,' said Abel jocosely. Only Mr. James was taciturn. Foxy was allowed in, and perambulated the room, to Mrs. Marston's supreme discomfort; every time Foxy drew near she gave a smothered scream. In spite of these various disadvantages, it was a merry party, and did not break up till dusk. After tea Abel played, Mr. James being very patronizing, saying at the end of each piece, 'Very good'; till Abel asked rudely, 'Can yer play yourself?' Edward came to the rescue by offering Mr. James tobacco. They drew round the fire, for the dusk came coldly, only Abel remaining in his corner playing furiously. He considered it only honest, after such a tea, to play his loudest. Hazel, happy but restless, played with Foxy beside the darkening window, low and many-paned and cumbered with bits of furniture dear to Mrs. Marston. Edward was showing his friend a cycle map of the country. Mrs. Marston was sleepily discussing hens--good layers, good sitters, good table-fowl--with Mr. James. Hazel, tired of playing with Foxy, knelt on the big round ottoman with its central peak of stuffed tapestry and looked idly from the window. Suddenly she cried out. Edward was alert in a moment. 'What is it, dear?' Hazel had sunk back on the ottoman, pale and speechless; but she realized that she must pull herself together. 'I stuck a pin in me,' she said. Tins in a wedding-dress? Oh, fie!' said Mrs. Marston. Tricked at your wedding, pricked for aye.' 'Oh, dear, dearie me!' cried Hazel, bursting into tears, and flinging herself at Edward's feet. Wondering, he comforted her. Mrs. Marston called for the lamp; the blinds were drawn, and all was saffron peace. Outside, in the same attitude as before, bowed, and motionless, stood Reddin. He saw Hazel, watched her withdraw, and knew that she had seen him. When the window suddenly shone like daffodils, he recoiled as if at a lash, and, turning, went heavily down the batch. He turned into the woods, and made his way back till he was opposite the house. Thence he watched the guests depart, and later saw Martha go to her cottage. The lights wavered and wandered. He saw one go up the stairs. Inside the house Mrs. Marston confronted with a bridal which she did not quite know how to regard, very tactfully said good night, and left them together in the parlour. They sat there for a time and Edward tried not to realize how much he was missing. He got up at last and lit Hazel's candle. At her door he said good night hastily. Hazel took the arrangements for granted, partly because she had slept in this same room two nights ago, partly because Edward had never shown her a hint of passion. The higher the nature, the more its greatness is taken for granted. Edward turned and went to his room. Reddin, under his black roof of pines, counted the lights, and seeing that there were three, turned homewards with a sigh of relief. But as he went through the fields he remembered how Hazel had looked last night; how she had danced like a leaf; how slender and young she was. He was a man everlastingly maddened by slightness and weakness. As a boy, when his father and mother still kept up their position a little, he had broken a priceless Venetian glass simply because he could not resist the temptation to close his hand on it. His father had flogged him, being of the stupid kind who believe that corporal punishment can influence the soul. And Reddin had done the same thing next day with a bit of egg-shell china. So now, as he thought of Hazel's lissom waist, her large eyes, rather scared, her slender wrists he cursed until the peewits arose mewing all about him. In the thick darkness of the lonely fields he might have been some hero of the dead, mouthing a satanic recitative amid a chorus of lost souls. The long search for Hazel, begun in a whim, had ended in passion. If he had never looked for her, never felt the nettled sense of being foiled, or if he had found her at once, he would never have desired her so fiercely. Now, for the first time in his life impassioned, he felt something mysterious and unwelcome to him begin to mingle with his desire. Above all, life without her meant dullness, lack of vitality, the swift onset of middle-age. He saw this with shrinking. He walked wearily, looking older than he was in the pathos of loss. Life with her meant an indefinitely prolonged youth, an ecstasy he had not dreamt of, the well-being of his whole nature. He walked along moodily, thinking how he would have started afresh, smartened up Undern, worked hard, given his children--his and Hazel's--a good education, become more sober. But he had been a fortnight too late. A miserable fortnight! He, who had raved over the countryside, had missed her. Marston, who had simply remained on his mountain, had won her. 'It's damned unfair!' he said, and pathos faded from him in his rage. All the vague thoughts, dark and turgid, of the last two nights took shape slowly. He neither cursed nor brooded any more. He thought keenly as he walked. His face took a more powerful cast--it had never been a weak face at the worst--and he looked a man that it would not be easy to combat. Bitter hatred of Edward possessed him, silent fury against fate, relentless determination to get Hazel whether she would or not. He had a purpose in life now. Vessons was surprised at his quick, authoritative manner. 'Make me some sandwiches early to-morrow,' he said, 'and you'll have to go to the auction. I shan't go myself.' ''Ow can I go now? Who's to do the cheeses?' 'Give 'em to the pigs.' 'Who's to meet the groom from Farnley? Never will I go!' 'If you're so damned impudent, you'll have to leave.' 'Who's to meet the groom?' Vessons spoke with surly, astonished meekness. 'Groom? Groom be hanged! Wire to him.' 'It'll take me the best part of two hour to go and telegrapht. And it cosses money. And dinner at the auction cosses money.' 'Oh!' cried Reddin with intense irritation, 'take this, you fool!' He flung his purse at Vessons. 'Well, well,' thought Vessons, 'I mun yumour 'im. He's fretched along of her marrying the minister. "Long live the minister!" says Andrew.' Chapter 18 Next morning Vessons went off in high feather; Hazel was so safely disposed of. Reddin left at the same time, and all the long May day Undern was deserted, and lay still and silent as if pondering on its loneliness. Reddin did not return until after night-fall. He spent the day in a curious manner for a man of his position, under a yew-tree, riven of trunk, gigantic, black, commanding Edward's house. He leant against the trunk that had seen so many generations, shadowed so many fox-earths, groaned in so many tempests. Above his tent sailed those hill-wanderers, the white clouds of May. They were as fiercely pure, as apparently imperishable, as a great ideal. With lingering majesty they marched across the sky, first over the parsonage, then over Reddin, laying upon each in turn a hyacinth shadow. Reddin watched the house indifferently, while Martha went to and fro cleaning the chapel after the wedding. Then Mrs. Marston came to the front door and shut it. After that, for a long time, nothing moved but the slow shadows of the gravestones, shortening with the climbing sun. The laburnum waved softly, and flung its lacy shadow on the grave where the grass was long and daisied. A wood-pigeon began in its deep and golden voice a low soliloquy recollected as a saint's, rich as a lover's. Reddin stirred disconsolately, trampling the thin leaves and delicate flowers of the sorrel. At last the door opened, and Edward came out carrying a spade. Hazel followed. They went round to the side of the house away from the graveyard, and Edward began to dig, Hazel sitting on the grass and evidently making suggestions. With the quickness of jealousy, Reddin knew that Edward was making a garden for Hazel. It enraged him. 'I could have made her a garden, and a deal better than that!' he thought. 'She could have had half an acre of the garden at Undern; I could have it made in no time.' He uttered an exclamation of contempt. 'The way he fools with that spade! He's never dug in his life.' Before long Hazel brought out the bird-cage and hung it in the sun. And surprisingly, almost alarmingly, the ancient bird began to sing. It was like hearing an old man sing a love-song. The bird sat there, rough and purblind, and chanted youth with the magic of a master. Hazel and Edward stood still to hear it, holding each other's hands. 'He's ne'er said a word afore,' breathed Hazel. 'Eh! but he likes the Mountain!' In the little warm garden with Hazel, among the thick daisies, with the mirth of the once desolate ringing in his ears, Edward knew perfect happiness. He stood looking at Hazel, his eyes dark with love. She seemed to blossom in the quiet day. He stooped and kissed her hand. To Reddin in his deep shadow every action was clear, for they stood in the sunlight. He ground the sorrel into the earth. After a time Martha rang the dinner-bell, not because she could not both see and hear her master, but because it was the usual thing. To Reddin the bell's rather cracked note was sardonic, for it was summoning another man to eat and drink with Hazel. He ate his sandwiches, not being so much in love that he lost his appetite. Then he sat down and read the racing news. There was no danger of anyone seeing him, for the place was entirely solitary with the double loneliness of hill and woodland. There were no children in the batch except Martha's friend's little boy, and he was timid and never went bird's-nesting. The only sound except the intermittent song of birds, was the far-away noise of a woodman's axe, like the deep scattered barking of hungry hounds. Nothing else stirred under the complex arches of the trees except the sunlight, moving like a ghost. These thick woods, remote on their ridges, were to the watchful eye rich with a half-revealed secret, to the attentive ear full of urgent voices. The solving of all life's riddles might come to one here at any moment. In this hour or in the next, from a grey ash-bole or a blood-red pine-trunk, might come the naked spirit of life with a face fierce or lovely. Coiled in the twist of long honeysuckle ropes that fell from the dead yews; curled in a last year's leaf; embattled in a mailed fir-cone, or resting starrily in the green moss, it seemed that God slumbered. At any moment He might wake, to bless or curse. Reddin, not having a watchful eye or an attentive ear for such things, was not conscious of anything but a sense of loneliness. He read the paper indefatigably. In an hour or so Edward and Hazel came out again, she in her new white hat. They went up God's Little Mountain where it sloped away in pale green illuminated vistas till it reached the dark blue sky. They disappeared on the skyline, and Reddin impatiently composed himself for more waiting. Was he never to get a chance of seeing Hazel alone? 'That fellow dogs her steps,' he said. The transfigured slopes of the mountain were, it seemed to Edward, a suitable place for a thing he wished to tell Hazel. 'Hazel,' he said, 'if you ever feel that you would rather have a husband than a brother, you have only to say so.' Hazel flushed. Although it was such a muted passion that sounded in his voice, it stirred her. Since she had known Reddin, her ignorance had come to recognize the sound of it, and she had also begun to flush easily. If Edward had understood women better, he would have seen that this speech of his was a mistake; for even if a woman knows whether she wishes for a husband, she will never tell him so. They turned home in a constrained silence. Foxy, frightened by a covey of partridges, created a diversion by pulling her cord from Hazel's inattentive hand and setting off for the parsonage. 'Oh! she'll be bound to go to the woods!' cried Hazel, beginning to run. 'Do 'ee see if she's in tub, Ed'ard, and I'll go under the trees and holla.' Reddin was startled when he saw Hazel, who had out-distanced Edward, making straight for his hiding-place. She came running between the boles with an easy grace, an independence that drove him frantic. A pretty woman should not have that easy grace; she should have exchanged it for a matronly bearing by this time, and independence should have yielded to subservience--to the male, to him. With her vivid hair and eyes and her swift slenderness, Hazel had a fawn-like air as she traversed the wavering shadows. She passed his tree without seeing him, and stood listening. Then she began to plead with the truant. 'What for did you run away, Foxy, my dear? Where be you? Come back along with me, dear 'eart, for it draws to night!' Reddin stepped from his tree and spoke to her. With a stifled scream she turned to run away, but he intercepted her. 'No. I've waited long enough for this. So you're married to the parson, after all?' 'Ah.' 'You'll be sorry.' 'What for do you come tormenting of me, Mr. Reddin?' 'You were meant for me. You're mine.' 'Folk allus says I'm theirs. I'd liefer be mine.' 'As you wouldn't marry me, Hazel, the least you can do is to come and talk to me sometimes.' 'Oh, I canna!' 'You must. Any spare time come to this tree. I shall generally be here.' 'But why ever? And you a squire with a big place and fine ladies after you!' 'Because I choose.' 'Leave me be, Mr. Reddin. I be comforble, and Foxy be, and they're all settling so nice. The bird's sung.' 'The parson, too, no doubt. If you don't come often enough, I shall walk past the house and look in. If you go on not coming, I shall tell the parson you stayed the night with me, and he'll turn you out.' 'He wouldna! You wouldna!' 'Yes, I would. He would, too. A parson doesn't want a wife that isn't respectable. So as you've got to'--he dropped his harshness and became persuasive--'you may as well come with a good grace.' 'But it wunna my fault as I stayed the night over. It was aunt Prowde's. What for should folk chide me and not auntie?' 'Lord, I don't know! Because you're pretty.' 'Be I?' 'Hasn't that fellow told you so?' 'No. He dunna say much.' 'You could make such a good chap of me if you liked, Hazel.' 'How ever?' 'I'd give up the drink.' 'And fox-hunting?' 'Well, I might give up even that--for you. Be my friend, Hazel.' He spoke with an indefinable charm inherited from some courtly ancestor. Hazel was fascinated. 'But you've got blood on you!' she protested. 'So have you!' he retorted unexpectedly. 'You say you kill flies, so you're as bad as I am, Hazel. So be my friend.' 'I mun go!' 'Say you'll come tomorrow.' 'Not but for a minute, then.' Edward's voice came from the house. 'I've found her!' Hazel ran home. But as she left the wood she turned and looked down the shadowy steeps of green at Reddin as he strode homewards. She watched him until he passed out of sight; then, sighing, she went home. Chapter 19 Next day Hazel did not go into the woods. In the evening, sitting in the quiet parlour while Edward read aloud and Mrs. Marston knitted, she felt afraid as she remembered it. Yet she had been still more afraid at the idea of going. She had helped Mrs. Marston to cover rhubarb jam in the dim store-room while Edward visited a sick man at some distance. It had been delightful, gumming on the clean tops, and then writing on them. She had dipped freely into the biscuit-box. Then Edward had returned, and they had gardened again. Now they were settled for the evening, and she was learning to knit, twisting obdurate wool round anarchic needles, while Mrs. Marston--the pink shawl top--chanted: 'Knit, purl! Knit, purl!' 'Will it come to aught ever?' queried Hazel. 'It's nought but a tail o' string now!' 'It will come to anything you like to make, dear,' said the old lady. 'Is knitting so like life, mother?' Edward spoke amusedly. 'But it wunna,' said Hazel. 'It'll only come a tanglement,' Edward suggested that he should help; there was great laughter over this interlude, while Mrs. Marston still chanted, 'Knit, purl!' Reddin walked lingeringly past the house in the dark, heard it, and was very angry and miserable. Hazel heard his step on the rough stones, and was alarmedly sure that it was he. She was terribly afraid he would tell Edward. Then a new idea occurred to her. Should she tell Edward herself? She sat in the firelight with her head bent, and turned this new thought about in her brain as incompetently as she twisted the blue wool round the needles. And from the silent shadows, as she played with the thread of destiny, two presences eyed each other across her bright head--one armed, the other bearing roses. Neither Mrs. Marston, with her antiphonal 'Double knit, double purl!' nor Edward, reading in his pleasant voice--he rather fancied his reading, and tried not to--saw those impalpable figures, each with a possessive hand outstretched to Hazel pending her decision. 'Why shouldna I say? There was no harm!' she thought. Then she remembered that there had been something--a queer feeling--that had sent her out of the glass door into the snow. She had never wanted to tell anyone of the episode. She glanced at Edward through her lashes--a look that always made him think of the pool above the parsonage, where lucent brown water shone through rushes. He saw the look, for he always glanced round as he read, having gathered from his book on elocution that this was correct. He smiled across at her, and went on reading. The book was one of those affected by Mrs. Marston and her kind. It had no relation whatever to life. Its ideals, characters, ethics and crises made up an unearthly whole, which, being entirely useless as a tonic or as a balm, was so much poison. It was impossible to imagine its heroine facing any of the facts of life, or engaging in any of those physical acts to which all humanity is bound, and which need more than resignation--namely, open-eyed honesty--to raise them from a humiliation to a glory. It was impossible to imagine also how the child, which appeared discreetly and punctually on the last page, could have come by its existence, since it certainly, with such unexceptional parents, could not have been begotten. Hazel listened anxiously to hear if the heroine ever drove on a winter night with a man who stared at her out of bold blue eyes, and whether she got frightened and took refuge in a bedroom full of white mice. But there were no mice, nor dark roads, nor bold men in all its pages. By the time the reading came to an end, Hazel had quite made up her mind that she could not possibly tell Edward. The blue wool was inextricably tangled, and one of the shadowy presences had vanished. Followed what Mrs. Marston called 'a little chat'; the evening tray, containing cake and cocoa, was brought from its side-table; the kettle was put on, and soon the candles were lit. The presence that remained was with Hazel as she went up to her little room, as she undressed, and when she lay down to sleep. From the mantlepiece in the faint moonlight shone the white background of the text, 'Not a hair of thy head shall perish.' But the promising words were obliterated by night. Next morning, and some time during every subsequent day, Hazel met Reddin under the dark yew-tree. 'You're very fond of the woods, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston one morning. 'It must be very nice and pleasant there just now.' 'No, it inna, Mrs. Marston. It's drodsome.' 'If I could start very early,' Mrs. Marston went on, 'please God I'd go with you. For you always go while Edward is visiting, and it's lonely for you.' Hazel fled down the batch that morning, and back up a shadowed ride to Reddin. 'You munna come never no more, Mr. Reddin!' she cried. 'The old lady's coming to-morrow-day, her says.' Reddin swore. He was getting on so nicely. Already Hazel went red and white at his pleasure, and though he had not attempted to kiss her, he had gained a hold on her imagination. Whenever he saw himself as others would see him if they knew, he hastily said, 'All's fair in love,' and shut his eyes. Also, he felt that he was doing evil in order to bring Hazel good. 'For how a girl can live in that stuffy hole with that old woman and that die-away fellow, Lord only knows!' he thought. 'She'll be twice the girl she is when she lives with a man that _is_ a man, and she can do as she likes with Undern so long as she's not stand-off with me. No, by--! I'll have no nonsense after this! Here I am, sitting under a tree like a dog with a treed cat!' So now he was very angry. His look was like a lash as he said: 'You made that up to get rid of me.' 'I didna!' cried Hazel, trembling. 'But oh! Mr. Reddin canna you leave me be? There's Ed'ard reading the many mansions bit to old Solomon Bache, as good as gold, and you'd ought to let me bide along of the old lady and knit.' 'I'll give you something better to do than knit soon.' 'What for will you?' 'Oh! you women! Are you a little innocent, Hazel? Or are you a d--d clever woman?' 'I dunno. But I canna come no more.' 'Won't, you mean. Very well.' 'What'n you mean, saying "very well" so choppy?' 'I mean that if a man chooses to see a woman, see her he will. It's his place to find ways. It's her privilege to hide if she likes, or do any d--d thing she likes. That only makes it more exciting. Now go back to your knitting. Fff! knitting!' The startled pigeons fled up with a steely clatter of wings at his sudden laughter. 'Oh! hushee! They'll hear and come out.' 'I don't care. If the dead heard and came out and stood between us, I shouldn't care! What are you whispering?' Hazel had said, 'Whoever she be, have her he will, for certain sure.' She would not repeat it, and he turned sharply away in a huff. She also turned away with a sigh of relief, but almost immediately looked back, and watched his retreating figure until it was lost in the trees. Chapter 20 On Lord's Day more than on any other at the mountain Hazel was like a small derelict boat beached on a peaceful shore. There was a hypnotic quiet about the place, with no sound of Martha's scrubbing, no smell of cooking. There was always cold meat on Lord's Day, with pickled cabbage, that concomitant of mysterious Sabbath blessedness. A subdued excitement prevailed about service-time, and sank again afterwards like a wind in the tree-tops. Hazel felt very proud of Edward in chapel, and a little awed at his bearing and his abstracted air. She came near to loving him on the lilac-scented Sundays when he read those old fragrant love-stories that he had dreaded. His voice was pleasant and deep. '"And he took unto him his wife, and she bare him a son."' It may have been that the modulations of Edward's voice spoke as eloquently as words to her, or that Reddin had destroyed her childish detachment, but she began to bring these old tales into touch with her own life. She envied these glamorous women of the ancient world. They were so tall, so richly clad, dwelling under their golden-fruited trees beneath skies for ever blue. It was all so simple for them. There were no Reddins, no old ladies. Their stories went smoothly with unravelled thread, not like her knitting. She began to long to be one of that dark-eyed company, clear and changeless as polished ivory, moving with a slow and gliding stateliness across the rose-coloured dawn, bearing on their heads with effortless grace beautiful pitchers of water for a thirsty world. Edward had shown her just such a picture in his mother's illustrated Bible. Instinctively she fell back on the one link between herself and them. 'Ed'ard's took _me_ to wife,' she thought. The sweetest of vague new ideas stirred in her mind like leaf-buds within the bark of a spring tree. They brought a new expression to her face. Edward's eyes strayed continually to the bar of dusty sunlight where she sat, her down-bent face as mysterious as all vitality is when seen in a new aspect. The demure look she wore in chapel was contradicted by a nascent wildness hovering about her lips. Edward tried to keep his attention on the prayers, and wished he was an Episcopalian, and had his prayers ready-made for him. He once mentioned this to his mother, who was much shocked. She said home-made prayers and home-made bread and home-made jam were the best. 'As for manufactured jam, it's a sloven's refuge, and no more to be said. And prayer's the same. The best printed prayer's no better than bought mixed at four-pence the pound, and a bit gone from keeping.' Edward stumbled on, as Mr. James said afterwards, 'like my old mare Betsy, a step and a stumble, a nod and a flop, and home in the Lord's own time--that's to say, the small hours.' The chapel was still hot, though cool green evening brooded without and the birds had emerged from their day-long coma. Wood-pigeons spoke in their deep voices from the dark pines across the batch a language older than the oldest script of man. Cuckoos shouted in the wind-riven larches, green beyond imagining, at the back of the chapel. A blackbird meditated aloud in high rhapsody, very leisured, but very tireless, on matters deeper than the Coppice Pool far below, deep as the mystery of the chipped, freckled eggs in his nest in the thorn. In and out of the yellow broom-coverts woodlarks played, made their small flights, and sang their small songs. Bright orange wild bees and black bumblebees floated in through the open windows. Mrs. Marston's black and white hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose, swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated in a masterly manner. Mrs. Marston, eyeing Hazel at all the 'Amens,' when, as she always said, one _ought_ to look up, like fowls after a drink, thought it was a pity. What was a pity she did not divulge to herself. She concluded with, 'Well, well, the childless father no sinners,' and hastily shut her eyes, realizing that another 'Amen' had nearly come. Edward's voice had taken a tone of relief which meant the end of a prayer. Mrs. Marston glanced up at him, and decided to put some aniseed in his tea. 'High thinking's as bad as an embolus,' she thought. But Edward was not thinking. He was doing a much more strenuous thing--feeling. Hazel wondered at the vividness of his eyes when he rose from his knees. 'I'm glad I'm Ed'ard's missus, and not Mr. Reddin's,' she thought. She had not seen Reddin for a week, having, since their last meeting in the wood, been so much afraid of encountering him that she had scarcely left the house. The days were rather dull without her visits to the woods, but they were safe. Edward gave out his text: 'Of those that Thou hast given me have I lost none.' All his tenderness for Hazel and her following crept into his sermon. He spoke of the power of protection as almost the greatest good in life, the finest work. He said it was the inevitable reward of self-sacrifice, and that, if one were ready for self-denial, one could protect the beloved from all harm. There was a crunching of gravel outside, and Reddin walked in. He sat down just behind Hazel. Edward glanced up, pleased to have so important an addition to the congregation, and continued his sermon. Hazel, red and white by turns, was in such a state of miserable embarrassment that Reddin was almost sorry for her. But he did not move his gaze from her profile. At last Mrs. Marston, ever watchful for physical symptoms, whispered, 'Are you finding it oppressive? Would you like to go out?' Hazel went out with awkward haste, and Mrs. Marston followed, having mouthed incomprehensible comfort to Edward. He went on stumblingly with the service. Reddin, realizing that he had been femininely outwitted, smiled. Edward wondered who this distinguished-looking man with the merciless mouth might be. He thought the smile was one of amusement at his expense. But Reddin was summing him up with a good deal of respect. Here was a man who would need reckoning with. 'The parson's got a temper,' he reflected, looking at him keenly, 'and, by the Lord, I'm going to rouse it!' He smiled again as he always did when breaking horses. He got up suddenly and went out. Mrs. Marston, administering raspberry cordial in the parlour, heard him knock, and went to the front door. 'Can I help?' he asked in his pleasantest manner. 'A doctor or anything?' Mrs. Marston laughed softly. She liked young men, and thought Reddin 'a nice lad,' for all his forty years. She liked his air of breeding as he stood cap in hand awaiting orders. Above all, she was curious. 'No thank you,' she said. 'But come in, all the same. It's very kind of you. And such a hot day! But it's very pleasant in the parlour. And you'll have a drink of something cool. Now what shall it be?' 'Sherry,' he said, with his eyes on Hazel's. 'I misdoubt if there's any of the Christmas-pudding bottle left, but I'll go and see,' she said, all in a flutter. How tragic a thing for her, who prided herself on her housewifery, to have no sherry when it was asked for! Her steps died away down the cellar stairs. 'So you thought you'd outwitted me?' he said. 'Now you know I've not tamed horses all my life for nothing.' 'Leave me be.' 'You don't want me to.' 'Ah! I do.' 'After I've come all these miles and miles to see you, day after day?' 'I dunna care how many miles you've acome,' said Hazel passionately; 'what for do you do it? Go back to the dark house where you come from, and leave me be!' Reddin dropped his pathos. She was sitting on the horsehair sofa, he in an armchair at its head. He flung out one arm and pulled her back so that her head struck the mahogany frame of the sofa. 'None of that!' he said. He kissed her wildly, and in the kisses repaid himself for all his waiting in the past few weeks. She was crying from the pain of the bump; his kisses hurt her; his shoulder was hard against her breast. She was shaken by strange tremors. She struck him with her clenched hand. He laughed. 'Will you behave yourself? Will you do what I tell you?' he asked. 'I'd be much obleeged,' she said faintly, 'if you'd draw your shoulder off a bit.' Something in the request touched him. He sat quite silent for a time in Edward's armchair and they looked at one another in a haunted immobility. Reddin was sorry for his violence, but would not say so. Then they heard Mrs. Marston's slide, and she entered with a large decanter. 'This is some of the sparkling gooseberry,' she said, 'by Susan Waine's recipe, poor thing! Own cousin to my husband she was, and a good kind body. Never a thing awry in her house, and twelve children had Susan. I remember as clear as clear how the carpet (it was green jute, reversible) was rucked up at her funeral by the bearers' feet. And George Waine said, "That'll worry Susan," and then he remembered, and burst out crying, poor man! And he cried till the party was quite spoilt, and our spirits so low. Where was I? Oh yes, It's quite up, you see, and four years old this next midsummer. But I'm sure I'm quite put out at having no sherry, on account of Martha thinking to return the bottle and finishing the dregs. And there, you asked for sherry!' 'Did I? Oh, well, I like this just as much, thanks.' He felt uncomfortable at this drinking of wine in Marston's house. It seemed unsportsmanlike to hoodwink this old lady. He had no qualms about Hazel. He was going, if Hazel would be sensible, to give her a life she would like, and things her instincts cried out for. Possibly he was right in imagining that her instincts were traitors to her personality. For Nature--that sardonic mother--while she cries with the silver cadence of ten thousand nightingales, 'Take what you want, my children,' sees to it, in the dark of her sorcery-chamber, that her children want what she intends. 'Is it to your liking, Mr.--? I didn't quite catch your name,' said Mrs. Marston. 'Reddin, ma'am. Jack Reddin of Undern.' The name rang in the quiet room with a startling sound, like a gunshot in a wood at night when the birds are roosting. At that moment Edward came in, not having waited till Mr. James had affectionately counted the collection. 'Is Hazel all right, mother?' he called when he got to the front door. 'Oh yes, my dear. It was but the heat. And here's a gentleman to see you. Mr. Reddin of Undern.' Edward came forward with his hand out, and Reddin took it. Their eyes met; a curious hush fell on the room; Hazel sighed tremulously. 'Pleased to see you at our little service, Mr. Reddin,' Edward said heartily. Reddin smiled and said, 'Thanks.' 'Glad there's anything in our simplicity to attract you,' Edward went on, wondering if his sermons were really not so bad, after all. Reddin laughed again shortly. Edward put this down to shyness. 'I hope we shall often have you with us again.' Reddin's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Yes, thanks. I shall be with you again.' 'You'll stay and have some supper?' 'Thanks.' He had left off feeling unsportsmanlike. He had no compunction towards Edward. It was man to man, and the woman to the winner. This was the code avowed by his ancestors openly, and by himself and his contemporaries tacitly. He began to be as excited as he was in a steeplechase. Edward went and sat down by Hazel, asking softly: 'And how is my little girl?' She looked up at him, quiescent, and smiled. Reddin eyed them for a moment, construing their attitudes in his own way. To the unclean mind all frankness of word or action is suspect. Then he turned sharply to Mrs. Marston. 'I can't stay, after all,' he said; 'I've just remembered--something. Thanks very much'--he looked reflectively at Hazel--for the sherry.' He was gone. 'My dear'--Mrs. Marston spoke triumphantly--'didn't I always say that gooseberry wine of Susan Waine's recipe was as good as champagne? Now you see I'm right. For Mr. Reddin of Undern--and a nice pleasant young man he is, too, though a little set about the mouth--and I remember when I was a girl there was a man with just such a mouth came to the May fair with a magic wheel, and it was a curious thing that the wheel never stopped opposite one of the prizes except when he turned it himself; and there! I did so want the green and yellow tab cat--real china--and I spent every penny, but the wheel went on.' 'Poor mother!' 'Yes, my dear, I cried buckets. And I've never trusted that mouth since. But, of course, Mr. Reddin's not that kind at all, and quite above fairs and such things.' 'I don't care for him much,' Edward said. 'No more do I,' said Hazel in a heartfelt tone. Chapter 21 Hazel was up early next morning. She could not sleep, and thought she would go down into the valley and look for spring mushrooms. She crept out of the house, still as death, except for Mrs. Marston's soft yet all-pervading snores. Out in the graveyard, where as yet no bird sang, it was as if the dead had arisen in the stark hours between twelve and two, and were waiting unobtrusively, majestically, each by his own bed, to go down and break their long fast with the bee and the grass-snake in refectories too minute and too immortal to be known by the living. The tombstones seemed taller, seemed to have a presence behind them; the lush grass, lying grey and heavy with dew, seemed to have been swept by silent passing crowds. A dank smell came up, and the place had at once the unkempt look worn by the scene of some past revelry and the expectant air of a stage prepared for a coming drama. Foxy barked sharply, urgently alive in the stronghold of the dead, and Hazel went to explain why she could not come. They held a long conversation, Hazel whispering. Foxy eloquent of eye. Foxy had a marked personality. Dignity never failed her, and she could be hilarious, loving, or clamorous for food without losing a jot of it. She was possessed of herself; the wild was her kingdom. If she was in a kennel--so her expression led you to understand--she was there incognito and of her own choice. Hazel, sitting at Edward's table, had the same look. When the conversation was over, and Foxy had obediently curled herself to sleep with one swift motion like a line of poetry, Hazel went down the hill. She felt courageous; going to the valley was braving civilization. She had Mrs. Marston's skirt-fastener--the golden butterfly, complicated by various hooks--to keep her petticoats up later on. She also had the little bag in which Edward was accustomed to take the Lord's Supper to a distant chapel. To her, mushrooms were as clean as the Lord's Supper, no less mysterious, equally incidental to human needs. In her eyes nothing could be more magical and holy than silken, pink-lined mushrooms placed for her in the meadows overnight by the fairies, or by someone greater and more powerful called God. As she went down the mountain it seemed that the whole country was snowed over. Mist--soft, woolly, and intensely white--lay across the far plain in drifts, filled the valley, and stood about the distant hills almost to their summits. The tops of Hunter's Spinney, God's Little Mountain, and the hill behind Undern stood out darkly green. The long rose-briars, set with pale coral buds, looked elvish against the wintry scene. As Hazel descended the mist rose like a wall about her, shutting her off from Undern and the Mountain. She felt like a child out of school, free of everyone, her own for the pearly hours of morning. When she came to the meadows she gathered up her skirts well above her knees, took off her shoes and stockings, and pinned her sleeves to the shoulders. She ran like a tightly swathed nymph, small and slender, with her slim legs and arms shining in the fresh cold dew. She looked for nests and called 'Thuckoo!' to the cuckoos, and found a young one, savagely egotistic, not ready for flight physically, but ready for untold things psychically. 'You'm proud-stomached, you be!' said Hazel. 'You'd ought to be me, with an old sleepy lady drawing her mouth down whatever you do, and a young fellow--' She stopped. She could not even tell a bird about Reddin. She danced among the shut daisies, wild as a fairy, and when the sun rose her shadow mocked her with delicate foolery. In her hand, and in that of the shadow, bobbed the little black Lord's Supper bag. She went on, regardless of direction. At last she found an old pasture where heavy farm-horses looked round at her over their polished flanks and a sad-eyed foal rose to greet her. There she found button mushrooms to her heart's content. Ancient hedges hung above the field and spoke to her in fragrant voices. The glory of the may was just giving place to the shell-tint of wild-roses. She reached up for some, and her hair fell down; she wisely put the remaining pins in the bag for the return journey. She was intensely happy, as a fish is when it plunges back into the water. For these things, and not the God-fearing comfort of the Mountain, nor the tarnished grandeur of Undern, were her life. She had so deep a kinship with the trees, so intuitive a sympathy with leaf and flower, that it seemed as if the blood in her veins was not slow-moving human blood, but volatile sap. She was of a race that will come in the far future, when we shall have outgrown our egoism--the brainless egoism of a little boy pulling off flies' wings. We shall attain philosophic detachment and emotional sympathy. We have even now far outgrown the age when a great genius like Shakespeare could be so clumsy in the interpretation of other than human life. We have left behind us the bloodshot centuries when killing was the only sport, and we have come to the slightly more reputable times when lovers of killing are conscious that a distinct effort is necessary in order to keep up 'the good old English sports.' Better things are in store for us. Even now, although the most expensively bound and the most plentiful books in the stationers' shops are those about killing and its thousand ramifications, nobody reads them. They are bought at Christmas for necessitous relations and little boys. Hazel, in the fields and woods, enjoyed it all so much that she walked in a mystical exaltation. Reddin in the fields and woods enjoyed himself only. For he took his own atmosphere with him wherever he went, and before his footsteps weakness fled and beauty folded. The sky blossomed in parterres of roses, frailer and brighter than the rose of the briar, and melted beneath them into lagoons greener and paler than the veins of a young beech-leaf. The fairy hedges were so high, so flushed with beauty, the green airy waters ran so far back into mystery, that it seemed as if at any moment God might walk there as in a garden, delicate as a moth. Down by the stream Hazel found tall water-plantains, triune of cup, standing above the ooze like candelabras, and small rough-leaved forget-me-nots eyeing their liquid reflections with complaisance. She watched the birds bathe--bullfinches, smooth-coated and well-found; slim willow-wrens; thrushes, ermine-breasted; lusty blackbirds with beaks of crude yellow. They made neat little tracks over the soft mud, drank, bathed, preened, and made other neat little tracks. Then they 'took off,' as Hazel put it, from the top of the bank, and flew low across the painted meadow or high into the enamelled tree, and piped and fluted till the air was full of silver. Hazel stood as Eve might have stood, hands clasped, eyes full of ecstasy, utterly self-forgetful, enchanted with these living toys. 'Eh, yon's a proper bird!' she exclaimed, as a big silken cuckoo alighted on the mud with a gobble, drank with dignity, and took its vacillating flight to a far ash-tree. 'Foxy ought to see that,' she added. Silver-crested peewits circled and cried with their melancholy cadences, and a tawny pheasant led out her young. Now that the dew was gone, and cobwebs no longer canopied the field with silver, it was blue with germander speedwell--each flower painted with deepening colour, eyed with startling white, and carrying on slender stamens the round white pollen-balls--worlds of silent, lovely activity. Every flower-spike had its family of buds, blue jewels splashed with white, each close-folded on her mystery. To see the whole field not only bright with them, but brimming over, was like watching ten thousand saints rapt in ecstasy, ten thousand children dancing. Hazel knew nothing of saints. She had no words for the wonder in which she walked. But she felt it, she enjoyed it with a passion no words could express. Mrs. Marston had said several times, 'I'm almost afraid Hazel is a great one for wasting her time.' But what is waste of time? Eating and sleeping; hearing grave, sedulous men read out of grave, sedulous book what we have heard a hundred times; besieging God (whom we end by imagining as a great ear) for material benefits; amassing property--these, the world says, are not waste of time. But to drink at the stoup of beauty; to lift the leafy coverlet of earth and seek the cradled God (since here, if anywhere, He dwells), this in the world's eye is waste of time. Oh, filthy, heavy-handed, blear-eyed world, when will you wash and be clean? Hazel came to a place where the white water crossed the road in a glittering shallow ford. Here she stayed, leaning on the wooden bridge, hearing small pebbles grinding on one another; seeing jewel-flashes of ruby, sapphire and emerald struck from them by the low sunlight; smelling the scent that is better than all (except the scent of air on a barren mountain, or of snow)--the scent of running water. She watched the grey wagtails, neat and trim in person, but wild in bearing, racing across the wet gravel like intoxicated Sunday-school teachers. Then, in a huge silver-willow that brooded, dove-like, over the ford, a blackcap began to sing. The trills and gushes of perfect melody, the golden repetitions, the heart-lifting ascents and wistful falls drooping softly as a flower, seemed wonderful to her as an angel's song. She and the bird, sheltered under the grey-silver feathers of the trees, lived their great moments of creation and receptivity until suddenly there was a sharp noise of hoofs, the song snapped, the willow was untenanted, and Reddin's horse splashed through the ford. 'Oh!' cried Hazel, 'what for did you break the song? A sacred bird, it was. And now it's fled!' He had been riding round the remnant of his estate, a bit of hill sheep-walk that faced the Mountain and overlooked the valley. He had seen Hazel wander down the road, white-limbed and veiled in tawny hair. He thought there must be something wrong with his sight. Bare legs! Bare arms! Hair all loose, and no hat! As a squire-farmer, he was very much shocked. As a man, he spurred downhill at the risk of a bad fall. Hazel, unlike the women of civilization, who are pursued by looking-glasses, was apt to forget herself and her appearance. She had done so now. But something in Reddin's face recalled her. She hastily took the butterfly out of her skirt and put on her shoes and stockings. 'What song?' asked Reddin. 'A bird in the tree. What for did you fritten it?' Reddin was indignant. Seeing Hazel wandering thus so near his own domain, he thought she had come in the hope of seeing him. He also thought that the strangeness of her dress was an effort to attract him. To the pure all things are pure. 'But you surely wanted to see me? Wasn't that why you came?' he asked. 'No, it wasna. I came to pick the little musherooms as come wi' the warm rain, for there's none like spring musherooms. And I came to see the flowers, and hearken at the birds, and look the nesses.' 'You could have lots of flowers and birds at Undern.' 'There's plenty at the Mountain.' 'Then why did you come here?' 'To be by my lonesome.' 'Snub for me!' he smiled. He liked opposition. 'But look here, Hazel,' he reasoned. 'If you'd come to Undern, I'd make you enjoy life.' 'But I dunna want to. I be Ed'ard's missus.' 'Be missus!' At the phrase his weather-coarsened face grew redder. It intoxicated him. He slipped off his horse and kissed her. 'I dunna want to be anybody's missus!' she cried vexedly. 'Not yourn nor Ed'ard's neither! But I Ed'ard's, and so I mun stay.' She turned away. 'Good morning to you,' she said in her old-fashioned little way. She trudged up the road. Reddin watched her, a forlorn, slight figure armed with the black bag, weary with the sense of reaction. Reddin was angry and depressed. The master of Undern had been for the second time refused. 'H'm,' he said, considering her departing figure, 'it won't be asking next time, my lady! And it won't be for you to refuse.' He turned home, accompanied by that most depressing companion--the sense of his own meanness. He was unable to help knowing that the exercise of force against weakness is the most cur-like thing on earth. Chapter 22 Hazel was picking wimberry-flowers from their stalks. She sucked out the drop of honey from each flower like a bee. The blossoms were like small, rose-coloured tulips upside down, very magical and clear of colour. The sky also was like a pink tulip veined and streaked with purple and saffron. In its depth, like the honey in the flowers, it held the low, golden sun. Evening stood tiptoe upon the windy hill-top. Hazel had eaten quite a quantity of honey, and had made an appreciable difference in the wimberry yield of half an acre, for she sipped hastily like a honey-fly. She was one of those who are full of impatience and haste through the sunny hours of day, clamorous for joy, since the night cometh. Some prescience was with her. She snatched what her eyes desired, and wept with disappointment. For it is the calm natures, wrapt in timeless quiet, taking what comes and asking nothing, that really enjoy. Hazel ate the fairy tulips as a pixie might, sharp-toothed, often consuming them whole. So she partook of her sacrament in both kinds, and she partook of it alone, taking her wafers and her honeyed wine from hands she never saw, in a presence she could not gauge. She did not even wonder whether it meant ill or well by her. She was barely conscious of it. When she found an unusually large globe of honey in a flower, she sang. Her song was as inconsequent as those of the woodlarks, who, with their hurried ripple of notes and their vacillating flights, were as eager and as soon discouraged as she was herself. Her voice rang out over the listening pastures, and the sheep looked up in a contemplative, ancient way like old ladies at a concert with their knitting. Hazel had fastened two foxgloves round her head in a wreath, and as she went their deep and darkly spotted bells shook above her, and she walked, like a jester in a grieving world, crowned with madness. Suddenly a shout rang across the hill and silenced her and the woodlarks. She saw against the full-blown flower of the west--black on scarlet--Reddin on his tall black horse, galloping towards her. Clouds were coming up for night. They raced with him. From one great round rift the light poured on Hazel as it does from a burning-glass held over a leaf. It burned steadily on her, and then was moved, as if by an invisible hand. Reddin came on, and the thunder of his horse's hoofs was in her ears. Hurtling thus over the pastures, breaking the year-long hush, he was the embodiment of the destructive principle, of cruelty, of the greater part of human society--voracious and carnivorous--with its curious callousness towards the nerves of the rest of the world. 'I a'most thought it was the death-pack,' said Hazel, speaking first, as the more nervous always does. She stood uncomfortably looking up at him as a rabbit looks, surprised half-way out of its burrow. 'Where be going?' she asked at last. 'Looking for you.' Hazel could not enjoy the flattery of this; she was so perturbed by his nearness. 'Where's your lord and master?' 'Ed'ard inna my master. None is.' A hot indignant flush surged over her. 'Yes,' said he; 'I am.' 'That you're not, and never will be.' Reddin said nothing. He sat looking down at her. In the large landscape his figure was carved on the sky, slenderly minute; yet it was instinct with forces enough to uproot a thousand trees and become, by virtue of these, the centre of the picture. He looked at his best on horse-back, where his hardness and roughness appeared as necessary qualities, and his too great share of virility was used up in courage and will-power. Hazel gazed defiantly back; but at last her eyelids flickered, and she turned away. 'I am,' Reddin repeated softly. He was as sure of her as he was of the rabbits and hares he caught in spring-traps when hunger drove them counter to instinct. A power was on Hazel now, driving her against the one instinct of her life hitherto--the wild creature's instinct for flight and self-preservation. She said nothing. Reddin was filled with a tumultuous triumph that Sally Haggard had never roused. 'I am,' he said again, and laughed as if he enjoyed the repetition. 'Come here!' Hazel came slowly, looked up, and burst into tears. 'Hello! Tears already?' he said, concerned. 'Keep 'em till there's something to cry for.' He dismounted and slipped the rein over his arm. 'What's up, Hazel Woodus?' He put one arm round her. The sheep looked more ancient than ever, less like old ladies at a concert than old ladies looking over their prayer-books at a blasphemer. 'My name inna Woodus. You'd ought to call me Mrs. Marston.' For answer, he kissed her so that she cried out. 'That's to show if I'll call you Mrs. Marston.' 'I'd liefer be.' 'What?' 'Ed'ard's missus than yourn.' He ground a foxglove underfoot. 'And there's Foxy in a grand new kennel, and me in a seat in chapel, and a bush o' laylac give me for myself, and a garden and a root o' virgin's pride.' 'I shall have that!' said Reddin, and stopped, having blundered into symbolism, and not knowing where he was. Hazel was silent also, playing with a foxglove flower. 'What are you up to?' he asked. She was glad of something to talk about. 'Look! When you get 'un agen the light you can see two little green things standing inside like people in a tent. They think they're safe shut in!' She bent down and called: 'I see yer! I see yer!' laughing. Reddin was bent on getting back to more satisfactory topics. 'They're just two, like us,' he said. 'Ah! We're like under a tent,' she answered, looking at the arching sky. 'Only there's nobody looking at us.' 'How do you know?' she whispered, looking up gravely. 'I'm thinking there _be_ somebody somewhere out t'other side of that there blue, and looking through like us through this here flower. And if so be he likes he can tear it right open, and get at us.' Reddin looked round almost apprehensively. Then, as the best way of putting a stop to superstition, he caught her to him and kissed her again. 'That's what tents are for, and what you're for,' he said. But he felt a chill in the place, and Hazel had frightened herself so much that she could not be lured from her aloofness. 'I mun go home-along,' she said; 'the sun's undering.' 'Will you come to Hunter's Spinney on Sunday?' 'Why ever?' 'Because I say so.' 'But why so far, whatever?' she asked amazedly. 'Because I want you to.' 'But I mun go to chapel along of Ed'ard, and sing 'ymns proper wi' the folks--and me singing higher nor any of them can go, for all I'm new to it--and the old lady'--her face grew mischievous--'the old lady in a shiny silk gownd as creaks and creaks when she stirs about!' Reddin lost patience. 'You're to start as soon as they're in church, d'you see?' 'Maybe I 'unna come.' 'You've got to. Look here, Hazel, you like having a lover, don't you?' 'I dunno.' 'Hazel! I'll bring you a present.' 'I dunna want it. What is it?' she said in a breath. 'Something nice. Then you promise to come?' There was a long silence. Her eyes seemed to her to be caught by his. She could not look away. And his eyes said strange, terrific things to her, things for which she had no words, wakening vitality, flattering, commanding, stirring a new curiosity, robbing her of breath. They stood thus for a long time, as much alone under the flaming sky as a man and woman of the stone age. When at least he released her eyes, he swung silently into the saddle and was gone. When he got home, Vessons came shambling to the door. 'Supper and a tot of whisky!' ordered his master. Vessons took no notice, but eyed the horse. 'You dunna mind how much work you give me at the day's end, do you?' he inquired conversationally. 'Get on with your jobs!' 'Now, what wench'll cry for this night's work?' mused Vessons. Chapter 23 Hazel ran home through the dew, swift as a hare to her form. Mrs. Marston, communing with a small wood fire and a large Bible, looked over her spectacles as Hazel came in, and said: 'Draw your stockinged foot along the boards, my dear. Yes, I thought so, damp.' Hazel changed her stockings by the fire, and felt very cared for and very grand. A fire to change in the parlour! And several pairs of new stockings! She had never had more than one pair before, and those with 'ladders' in them. 'These here be proper stockings,' she said complacently--'these with holes in 'em as Edward bought me. Holes as _ought_ to be there, I mane. They show my legs mother-naked, and they look right nice.' 'Don't say that word, dear.' 'What 'un?' Mrs. Marston was silent for a moment. 'The sixth from the end,' she said; 'it's not nice for a minister's wife.' 'What mun I say?' Mrs. Marston was in a difficulty. 'Well,' she said at last, 'Edward should not have given you any cause to say anything.' Hazel blazed into loyalty. 'I'm sure I'm very much obleeged to Ed'ard,' she said, 'and I like 'em better for showing my legs. Oh, here _be_ Ed'ard! Ed'ard, these be proper stockings, inna they?' Edward glanced at them, and said indifferently that they were. As he did so, a line that had lately appeared on his forehead became very apparent. In her room upstairs, papered with buttercups and daisies by Edward himself, and scented by a bunch of roses he had given her, Hazel thought about Hunter's Spinney. Edward would not like her to go, and Edward had been kind--kinder than anyone had ever been. He had extended his kindness to Foxy also. 'I'm sure Foxy's much obleeged,' she thought. 'No, she could never tell Edward about Hunter's Spinney. If he questioned her, she knew that she would lie. He would certainly not be pleased. He might be very angry. Mrs. Marston would not like it at all; she would talk about a minister's wife. Reddin had said she must go, but she must not.' She smelt the roses. 'No,' she said, 'I must ne'er go to the Hunter's Spinney--not till doom breaks!' She said her prayers under the shelter of that resolve, with a supplementary one written out very neatly in gold ink by Edward, who wrote, as his mother said, 'a parchment script.' But when she lay down she could not keep her mind clear of Reddin; during each meeting with him she had been more perturbed. His personality dragged at hers. Already he was stronger than her fugitive impulses, her wilding reserve. He was like a hand tearing open a triplet of sorrel leaves folded for rain, so strong in their impulse for self-protection that they could only be conquered by destruction. She was afraid of him, yet days without him were saltless food. There was a ruthlessness about him--the male instinct unaccompanied by humility, the patrician instinct unaccompanied by sympathy, the sportsman's instinct unaccompanied by pity. Whatever he began he would finish. What had he now begun? Innocence and instinct, ignorance and curiosity, struggled in her mind. The attitude of civilization and the Churches towards sex is not one to help a girl in such an hour. For while approving of, and even insisting on, children, they treat with a secrecy that implies disapproval the necessary physical factors that result in children. Tacitly, though not openly, they consider sex disgraceful. Though Hazel had come in contact with the facts of life less than most cottage girls, she was not completely ignorant. But the least ignorant woman knows nothing at all about sex until she has experienced it. So Hazel was dependent on intuition. Intuition told her that if the peaceful life at the parsonage was to continue, she must keep away from Hunter's Spinney. But she could not keep away. It was as if someone had spun invisible threads between her and Reddin, and was slowly tightening them. Long after Edward had locked the house up and shut his door, after the ticking of the clock had ceased to be incidental and become portentous, Hazel lay and tried to think. But she only heard two voices in endless contradiction, 'I munna go. I mun go.' At last she got up and fetched the book of charms, written in a childish, illiterate hand, and nearly black with use. 'I'll try a midsummer 'un, for it's Midsummer Eve come Saturday,' she thought. She searched the book and found a page headed 'The Flowering of the Brake.' That one she decided to work on Saturday. 'And to-morrow the Harpers, and Friday the Holy Sign,' she said. 'And if they say go, I'll go, and if they say stay, I'll stay.' She fell asleep, feeling that she had shifted the responsibility. Her mother had said that before any undertaking you should work the Harper charm. The book directed that on a lonely hill, you must listen with your eyes shut for the fairy playing. If the undertaking was good you would hear, coming from very far away, a sound of harping. Silver folk with golden harps, so the book said, keep on a purple hill somewhere beyond seeing, and there they play the moon up and the moon down. And at sun-up they cry for those that have not heard them. If you hear them ever so faintly, you can go on to the end of your undertaking, and there'll be no tears in it. But you must never tire of waiting, nor tell anyone what you have heard. The next night Hazel stole out in the heavy dew to a hummock of the mountain, and sat down there to wait for moonrise. But when the moon came--the thinnest of silver half-hoops, very faint in the reflected rose from the west--there was no sound except the song of the wood-larks. They persevered, although the sun was gone. Soon they, too, were hushed, and Hazel was folded in silence. She waited a long while. The chapel and the minister's house sank into the deepening night as into water. The longer the omen tarried, the more she wanted it to come. Then fatalism reasserted itself, and she relapsed into her usual state of mind. 'I dunna care,' she said. 'It inna no use to tarry. They unna play. I'll bide along of Ed'ard at chapel on Sunday, and sing higher than last time.' She turned home. At that moment a note of music, strayed, it seemed, out of space, wandered across the hill-top. Then a few more, thin and silvery, ran down the silence like a spray of water. The air was lost in distance, but the notes were undoubtedly those of a harp. 'It's them!' whispered Hazel. 'I'm bound to go.' Then she remembered her mother's injunctions, and took to her heels. At home in her quiet room, she thought of the strange shining folk playing on their purple mountain. She never knew that the harper was her father returning by devious roads from one of the many festivals at which he played in summer-time, and having frequent rests by the way, owing to the good ale he had drunk. Her bright galaxy of faery was only a drunken man. Her fate had been settled by a passing whim of his, but so had been her coming into the world. When she went in, Edward was sitting up for her, anxious, but trying to reason himself into calm, as Hazel was given to roaming. 'Where have you been?' he asked rather sternly, for he had suffered many things from anxiety and from his mother. 'Only up to'erts the pool, Ed'ard.' 'Don't go there again.' 'Canna I go walking on the green hill by my lonesome?' 'No. You can go in the woods. They're safe enough.' 'Foxy's a bad dog!' came Mrs. Marston's voice from upstairs. 'She bit the rope and took the mutton!' 'Eh, I'm main sorry!' cried Hazel. 'But she inna a bad dog, Mrs. Marston; she's a good fox.' 'According to natural history she may be, but in my sight she's a bad dog.' She shut her door with an air of finality. 'The old lady canna'd abear Foxy,' said Hazel. 'Nobody likes Foxy.' She was stubbornly determined that the world bore her a grudge because she loved Foxy. Perhaps she had discovered that the world has a sharp sword for the vulnerable, and that love is easily wounded. 'Don't call mother the old lady, dear.' 'Well, she is. And she says animals has got no souls. She'm only got a little small 'un herself.' 'Hazel!' 'Well, it's God's truth.' 'Why?' 'If she'd got a nice tidy bit herself, she'd know Foxy'd got one, too. Now I've got a shimmy with lace on, I know lots of other girls sure to have 'em. Afore I couldna have believed it.' Edward could find no reply to this. 'Are you happy here, Hazel?' he asked. 'Ah! I be.' 'You don't miss--' 'Father? Not likely!' She looked up with her clear golden eyes. 'You'm mother and father both!' 'Only that, dear?' 'Brother.' 'You've forgotten one, Hazel--husband.' His eyes were wistful. 'And lover, perhaps, some day,' he added. 'Good night, dear.' She lifted a childish mouth, grateful and ready to be affectionate. Too ready, he thought. He looked so eagerly for shyness--a flicker of the eyelids, a mounting flush. He was no fool, nor was he in the least ascetic. In his dreamy life before Hazel came, he had thought of a sane and manly and normal future when he thought of it at all. Now he found that the reality was not like his dreams. The saneness and manliness were still needed, but the joy had gone, or at least was veiled. 'It will come all right,' he told himself, and waited. His face took an expression of suspense. He was like one that watches, rapt, for the sunrise. Only the sun stayed beneath the horizon. He called Hazel in his mind by the country name for wood-sorrel--the Sleeping Beauty. He left her to sleep as long as she would. He kept a hand on himself, and never tried to waken her by easier ways than through the spirit--through the senses, or vanity, or by taking advantages of his superior intellect. He would win her fairly or not at all. So, though to glance into her empty white room set him trembling, though the touch of her hand set his pulses going, he never schemed to touch her, never made pretexts to go into her room. A stormed citadel was in his eyes a thing spoilt in the capturing. So he waited for the gates to open. The irony was that if he had listened to sex--who spoke to him with her deep beguiling voice, like a purple-robed Sibyl--if he had for once parted company with his exacting spiritual self, Hazel would have loved him. We cannot love that in which is nothing of ourselves, and there was no white fire of spiritual exaltation in Hazel. The nearest she approached to that was in her adoration of sensuous beauty, a green flame of passionless devotion to loveliness as seen in inanimate things. But that there should be anything between a man and a woman except an obvious affection, a fraternal sort of thing, or an uncomfortable excitement such as she felt with Reddin, was quite beyond her ideas. She did not know that there could be a fervour of mind for mind, a clasp more frantic than that of the arms, a continuous psychic state more passionate than the great moments of physical passion. If Edward had told her, she could not at this time have understood it. She would have gazed up at him trustingly out of her autumn-tinted eyes; she would have embodied all the spiritual glories of which he dreamed; and she would have understood nothing. Once he tried to share with her a passage in Drummond's 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World.' He was reading it with young delight a good many years behind the times, for books had usually grown very out of date before they percolated through the country libraries to him. He had read it in his pleasant, half-educated voice, dramatically and tenderly; his cheeks had flushed; he had challenged her criticism with keen, attentive eyes. She had said: 'I wonder if that's our Foxy barking, or a strange 'un?' Hazel looked long from her window that night. 'Oh, I canna go! I canna go! Ed'ard setting store by me and all!' she said. 'Maybe the other signs wunna come.' * * * * * On Friday she waited until after the others had gone to bed, and then slipped out. She went into the silent woods as the moths went, purposeless, yet working out destiny. It was a very warm, wet evening, and glow-worms shone incandescently in the long grass, each with her round, wonderful, greenish lamp at its brightest. They beckoned on to faery, though they glowed in perfect stillness. They spoke of marvellous things, though they lit the night in silence. It was a very grave, a very remote personality, surely, that lit those lamps. A more intent eye, a more careful hand were needed, one thinks, to make these than to make the planets, and a mind more vast, big enough to include minuteness. But Hazel felt no awe of them; she was too bounded and earthly a creature to be afraid of mystery. It is the spirit that maketh afraid. She was sure that they were not the Holy Sign, for she had seen them often. The Holy Sign was quite different. 'If I be to go to Hunter's Spinney,' she said, looking up through the black branches and twigs that were like great fowling-nets spread over her--'if I be to go, show me the Holy Sign.' She wandered down the narrow paths. It was very dark and warm and damp. Once the moon came out, and she saw a long pool startle the woods with its brightness, like lightning on steel. The yellow irises that stood about its marges held a pale radiance, and were like butterflies enchanted into immobility. Huge toadstools, vividly tawny as leopards, clumps of ladyfern not yet their full height and thick with curled fronds, stood proudly on their mossy lawns. But none of these was the Sign. 'If it dunna come soon I'll go home-along,' she said. And then, round the next bend, she saw it. At first she thought it was an angel just beginning to appear. The phantom was of a man's height, and it shone as the glow-worms did, only its light would have been enough to read by. It had a strange effect, standing there bathed in its own light in the black unbroken silence. It had a look of life--subdued, but passionate--as a spirit might have when it has just reintegrated its body out of the air. Hazel was terrified. As a rule, she was never afraid in the woods and fields, but only in the haunts of men. But from this, after one paralysed moment, she fled in panic. So she never knew that her second sign was only a rotten tree, shining with the phosphorescence of corruption. Next morning she asked Edward: 'Could folks see angels now?' 'Yes, if it was God's will.' 'If one came, would it be a sign?' 'I suppose so, dear.' 'What'd you do, Ed'ard, if you were bound to find out summat?' Edward was thinking out heads of a discourse on the power of prayer. 'I should pray, dear,' he said absently. 'Who'd answer?' 'God.' 'Would you hear 'Im?' 'No, dear; of course not.' He wanted quiet to finish his sermon, but he tried to be patient. 'You would know by intuition,' he said, 'little signs.' 'The Holy Sign!' murmured Hazel. 'I saw it yester-night--a burning angel.' 'I'm afraid you are too superstitious,' Edward said, and returned to his remarks on ejaculatory prayer. Some people would have found it hard to decide which was the more superstitious, the more pathetic. Chapter 24 In the early morning of Midsummer Eve, Hazel wandered up the hill-slopes. There the sheep, golden, and gospel-like in the early light, fed on wet lawns pale and unsubstantial as gauze. She did not, as the more self-conscious creatures of civilization would have done, envy their peace in so many words. But she did say wistfully to a particularly ample and contented one, 'You'm pretty comfortable, binna you?' When she went in to breakfast she thought the same of Mrs. Marston. Afterwards they picked black currants, Mrs. Marston seated on a camp-stool and wearing her large mushroom hat, which always tilted slightly and made her look rakish. Whenever a blackbird dashed out of the grove of half-ripe red currants, scolding with demoniac vitality, she would look up and say, 'Naughty bird.' She picked with deliberation, and placed the currants in the basket with an air of benediction. The day was hot and splendid, a day to make the leaves limp and crack the flower-beds. But it was cool in the shadow of the mountain-ash that grew near the currants, and a breeze laden with wild thyme and moss fragrance played about the garden like an invisible child. At eleven Martha appeared with cake and milk, and Edward returned from old Solomon's bedside. Then they went on picking, while Edward read them snatches of 'Natural Law.' Hazel was soothed by the reading, to the sense of which she paid no heed. It mingled with the drone of the hot bees falling in and out of the big red peonies, the far-off sound of grass-cutting, the grave, measured soliloquy of a blackbird hidden in the flame-flowered chestnut. Hazel felt that she would like to go on picking currants for ever, growing more and more like Mrs. Marston every day, and at least becoming (possibly through sheer benignity) a grandmother. There seemed no place in her life for Reddin, no time for Hunter's Spinney. She thought, 'I wunna go. I'll stay along of Ed'ard, and no harm'll come to me.' But a peremptory voice said that she must go, and once more her soul became the passive battleground of strange emotions of which she had never even dreamed. While they fought there like creatures in the dark, Hazel, sitting in the aromatic shadow of the currants, fell fast asleep; and as Mrs. Marston could never bring herself to wake anyone, she slept until Martha rang the dinner-bell. So the peaceful, golden day wore on to green evening. It was a day that Hazel always remembered. When the shadows grew long and dew fell, and the daisies on the graves filled the house with their faint, innocent fragrance, and closed their pink-lined petals for the night, Hazel felt very miserable. This very night she was going to work the last charm--the charm of the bracken flower--and whoso she dreamed of with that flower beneath her pillow must be her lover. She felt traitorous to Edward in doing this. She and Edward were handfasted. How, then, could she have any lover but Edward? Why should she work the charm? She puzzled over this during prayers, but no answer came to her questioning. Life is a taciturn mother, and teaches not so much by instruction as by blows. Edward was reading the twenty-third Psalm, which always affected his mother to tears, and in reading which his voice was very tender, '... And lead thee forth beside the waters of comfort.' The room was full of a deep exaltation, a passion of trustfulness. 'I went along by the water,' Hazel thought, 'and watched the piefinches and the canbottlins flying about. And I thought it was the waters of comfort. Only Mr. Reddin came and frit the birds and made the water muddy.' She did not feel as sure as the others did of the waters of comfort. 'So beautiful, dear,' murmured Mrs. Marston, 'so like your poor dear father.' Edward's good night to Hazel was more curt than usual. She was looking so mysteriously lovely. Her stress of mind had given a touch of spirituality to her face, and there is nothing that stirs passion as spirituality does. She had on a print frock of a neat design reminiscent of old-fashioned china, and she had pinned a posy of daisies on her shoulder. For one second, as she held up her cheek to be kissed, standing on the threshold of her moonlit room, Edward hesitated. Then he abruptly turned and shut his door. His hour had struck. His hour had passed. Hazel stood in the window reading the charm. 'On Midsummer Eve, when it wants a little of midnight, spread your smock where the bracken grows. For this is the night of the flowering of the brake, that beareth a blue flower on the stroke of midnight. But it is withered afore morning. Come you again about the time of the first bird-call. If aught is in the smock, take it; it is the dust of the flower. Sleep above it, and he you dream of is your lover. This is a sure charm, and cannot be broke.' * * * * * She took a clean chemise from the drawer, and when the landing clock struck the half-hour she slipped out on to the hillside and laid it under a clump of bracken. As she stooped to set it smooth and straight, the moon swam out of cloud and flung her shadow, black and gigantic, up the hillside. Frightened, she ran home, raked the fire together, and made herself a cup of tea to keep her awake. Sipping it in the dim parlour, where familiar things looked eerie, she thought of Reddin and his strange doings since her wedding. 'Eh, but it ud anger Ed'ard sore if he came to know,' she thought. 'What for does Mr. Reddin come, when he can see I dunna want him?' A slow flush crept over neck and temples as she half guessed the answer. She waited in the dove-grey hour that precedes dawn--an hour pregnant with the future. It is full of hope; for what great deed may not be done, what ethereal idea caged in music or poetry or colour, what rare emotion struck out of pain in the coming day? It is full of grief; for how many beautiful things will be trampled, great dreams torn, sensitive spirits crucified in the time between dusk and dusk? For the death-pack hunts at all hours, light and dark; it is no pale phantom of dreams. It is made not of spirit hounds with fiery eyes--a ghastly 'Melody,' a grisly 'Music'--, but of our fellows, all that have strength without pity. Sometimes our kith and kin, our nearest intimates, are in the first flight; give a view-hallo as we slip hopefully under a covert; are in at the death. It is not the killing that gives horror to the death-pack so much as the lack of the impulse not to kill. One flicker of merciful intention amid relentless action would redeem it. For the world is founded and built up on death, and the reality of death is neither to be questioned nor feared. Death is a dark dream, but it is not a nightmare. It is mankind's lack of pity, mankind's fatal propensity for torture, that is the nightmare. When a man or woman, confronted by helpless terror, is without the impulse to save, the world becomes hell. It was this, dimly but passionately felt, that made Hazel shrink from Reddin. For unless Reddin was without this impulse to save, and had the mind of a fiend without pity, how could he in the mere pursuit of pleasure inflict wholly unnecessary torture, as in fox-hunting? She watched Venus shrink from a silver pool to a silver point. She was full of trouble and unrest. Would she dream of Reddin? Would she go to sleep at all? Mrs. Marston's armchair loomed in the gathering light, and she felt guilty again. The east quickened, as if someone had turned up a light there. She opened the window, and in rushed the inexpressible sweetness of dawn. The bush of syringa by the kitchen window swept in its whole fragrance, heady and sensuous. She took long breaths of it, and thought of Reddin's green dress, of the queer look in his eyes when he stared long at her. A curious passivity quite foreign to her came over her now at the thought of Reddin. What would he look like, what would he say, would he hold her roughly, if she went to Hunter's Spinney? An unwilling elation possessed her as she thought of it. It did not occur to her to wonder why Edward did not kiss her as Reddin did. She took him as much for granted as a child takes its parents. Suddenly the first bird called silverly, startling the dusk. It was a woodlark, and its song seemed even more vacillating than usual in the vast hush. At the first note all Hazel's thoughts of Reddin fled. It seemed that clarity, freshness, and music were bound up in her mind with Edward. She thought only of him as she ran up the hill over the minute starry carpet of mountain bedstraw. 'Maybe there'll be no flower, and then the charm's broke,' she thought hopefully. 'If the charm's broke, I canna dream, and I shanna go.' But when she came to the white garment lying wet and pale in the half-light she drew a sharp breath. There in the centre lay one minute blue petal. Its very smallness proved to her its magic. It was a faery flower. She took it up reverently and went home solemn as a child in church. When, with blue petal under her pillow, she lay down, she fell asleep in a moment. She dreamt of Reddin, for he had more control over her thoughts than Edward, who appealed to her emotions, while Reddin stirred her instincts. Waking at Martha's knock, she said to herself, with mingled heart-sickness and elation: 'The signs say go. I mun go. Foxy wants me to go.' She would not have believed that her third sign was no faery flower, but only a petal of blue milk-wort--little sister of the bracken--loosened by her own nervous hands the night before. Chapter 25 On Sunday evening, as usual, the little bell began to sound plaintively in the soft air which was like a pale wild-rose. Mrs. Marston had betaken herself out of her own door into that of the chapel with a good many sighs at the disturbance of her nap, and with injunctions to Martha to put a bit of fire in the parlour. Edward had gone with his sermon to the back of the house where the tombstones were fewer and it was easier to walk while he read. Hazel ran up to her room and put on her white dress, which was considered by Mrs. Marston 'too flighty' for chapel. She leant out of her window and looked away up the purple hill. Then she gathered a bunch of the tea-roses that encircled it. They were deep cream flushed with rose. She pinned them into her breast, and they matched her flushed face. She was becoming almost dainty in her ways; this enormously increased her attraction for both men. She put on her broad white wedding-hat, and slipped downstairs and out by the kitchen door while Martha was in the parlour. She shut the door behind her like a vanished life. She felt, she did not know why, a sense of excitement, of some great happening, something impending, in her appointment with Reddin. She met no one as she ran down the batch, for the chapel-goers were all inside. The hedges were full of white 'archangel' and purple vetch. When she came to the beginning of Hunter's Spinney she felt frightened; the woods were so far-reaching, so deep with shadow; the trees made so sad a rumour, and swayed with such forlorn abandon. In the dusky places the hyacinths, broken but not yet faded, made a purple carpet, solemn as a pall. Woodruff shone whitely by the path and besieged her with scent. Early wild-roses stood here and there, weighed down with their own beauty, set with rare carmine and tints of shells and snow, too frail to face the thunderstorm that even now advanced with unhurrying pomp far away beyond the horizon. She hurried along, leaving the beaten track, creeping under the broad skirts of the beeches and over the white prostrate larch-boles where the resin ran slowly like the dark blood of creatures beautiful, defeated, dying. She began to climb, holding to the grey, shining boles of mountain ash-trees. The bracken, waist-high at first, was like small hoops at the top of the wood, where the tiny golden tormentil made a carpet and the yellow pimpernel was closing her eager eyes. Hazel came out on the bare hill-top where gnarled may-trees, dropping spent blossom, were pink-tinted as if the colours of the sunsets they had known had run into their whiteness. Hazel sat down on the hilltop and saw the sleek farm-horses far below feeding with their shadows, swifts flying with their shadows, and hills eyeing theirs stilly. So with all life the shadow lingers--incurious, mute, yet in the end victorious, whelming all. As Hazel sat there her own shadow lay darkly behind her, growing larger than herself as the sun slipped lower. Bleatings and lowings, the evening caw of the rooks ascended to her; a horse neighed, aggressively male. From some distance came the loud, crude voice of a man singing. He sang, not in worship, not for the sake of memory or melody or love, but for the same reason that people sing so loudly in church--in the urgent need of expending superabundant vitality. His voice rolled out under the purple sky as if he were the first man, but half emerged from brutishness, pursuing his mate in a world all fief to him, a world that revealed her as she fled through the door of morning and the door of evening, rolling its vaporous curtains back as she went through. It was Reddin, come forth from his dark house, as his foraging ancestors had done, to take his will of the weaponless and ride down the will of others. He did not confess even to himself why he had come. His thoughts on sex were so prurient that, in common with many people, he considered any frankness about it most indecent. Sex was to him a thing that made the ears red. It is hard for them that have breeding-stables to enter the kingdom of heaven. Too often the grave, the majestic significance of the meeting of the sexes--holding as it does the fate of the golden pageantry of life, sacrificially spending as it does the present for the future--is nothing to them. They see it only as a fillip to appetite. So Sally Haggard usually spent most of the money earned by Reddin's stallion, 'The Pride of Undern.' He put the horse to a gallop as he came up Hunter's Spinney, to quench the voice that spoke within him, saying things he would not hear, that spoke of love, and the tenderness and humility of love, and of how these did not detract from the splendour of manhood, the fine rage of passion, but rather glorified them. Something in his feeling for Hazel answered that voice, and it worried him. By heredity and upbringing he had been taught to dislike and mistrust everything that savoured of emotion or ideas, to consider unmanly all that was of the spirit. Therefore he sang more loudly as he saw on the hill-top the flutter of Hazel's white dress, to quench the voice that steadfastly spoke of mutual love as the one reason, the one consecration of passion in man and woman. The hoof-beats thudded like a full pulse. Hazel got up. Suddenly she was afraid of the place, more afraid than she had ever been of the death-pack, which, this evening, she had forgotten. But before she could move away Reddin shouted to her and came up the bridle-path. Hazel hesitated, swayed like the needle of a compass, and finally stood still. 'What'n you wanting me for, Mr. Reddin?' 'Don't you know?' 'If I knew, I shouldna ask.' 'What do men generally want women for?' 'I'm not a woman. I dunna want to be. But what be it, anyway?' He felt in his pocket and drew out a small parcel. 'There! Don't say the giving's all on your side,' he remarked. She opened the parcel. It contained two heavy old-fashioned gold bracelets. Each was set with a large ruby that stared unwinkingly from its setting of pale gold. 'Eh! they'm like drops of blood!' said Hazel. 'Like when fayther starts a-killing the pig. He's a hard un, is fayther, hard as b'rytes. I'm much obleeged to you, Mr. Reddin, but I dunna want 'em. I canna'd abear the sight of blood.' 'Little fool!' said Reddin. 'They're worth pounds.' He caught her wrists and fastened one bracelet on each. She struggled, but could not get free or undo the clasps. She began to cry, loudly and easily, as she always did. All her emotions were sudden, transparent and violent. She also, since her upbringing had not been refined, began to swear. 'Damn your clumsy fists and your bloody bracelets!' she screamed. 'Take 'em off, too! I 'unna stay if you dunna!' Reddin laughed, and in his eyes a glow began; nothing could have so suited his mood. 'You've got to wear 'em,' he said, 'to show you're mine.' 'I binna!' 'Yes.' 'I won't never be!' 'Yes, you will, now.' She raved at him like a little wild-cat, pulling at the bracelets like a kitten at its neck ribbon. He laughed again, stilly. He knew there was not a soul near, for the people from the farm at the foot of the spinney had all gone to church. 'Look here, Hazel,' he said, not unkindly; 'you've got to give in, see?' 'I see nought.' 'You've got to come and live with me at Undern. You can wear those fine dresses.' 'I'm a-cold,' said Hazel; 'the sun's undering; I'd best go home-along.' 'Come on, then. Up you get. We'll be there in no time. You shall have some supper and--' 'What'n I want trapsing to Undern when I live at the Mountain?' 'You'll be asking to come soon,' he said, with the crude wisdom of his kind. 'You like me better than that soft parson even now.' She shook her head. 'I'm a man, anyway.' She looked him over, and owned he was. But she did not want him; she wanted freedom and time to find out how much she liked Edward. 'Well, good neet to you,' she said. 'I'm off.' She ran downhill into the wood. Reddin hitched the reins to a tree and followed. He caught her and flung her into the bracken, and suddenly it seemed to her that the whole world, the woods, herself, were all Reddin. He was her sky, her cloak. The tense silence of the place was heavy on her. Away at God's Little Mountain Edward preached his sermon on the power of prayer--how he could plant a hedge of prayer round the beloved to keep them from all harm. The clock at Alderslea down the valley struck eight in muffled tones. They were burnt into Hazel's brain. The plovers wheeled and cried sadly like the spirits of creatures too greatly outnumbered. Edward was a dream; God's Little Mountain was an old tale--something forgotten, mist-begirt. Twilight thickened, and birds began to shrill in the dew. Voices came up from the farm. They were back from church. Hazel felt crushed, bruised, robbed. 'Now, up you get, Hazel!' said Reddin, who wanted his supper badly, and no longer wanted Hazel. 'Up you get and tidy yourself, and then home.' He felt rather sorry for her. She made no comment, no demur. Instinctively she felt that she belonged to Reddin now, though spiritually she was still Edward's. She looked at Reddin, passive, doubtful; the past evening had become unreal to her. So they regarded one another mistrustfully, like two creatures taken in a snare. They both felt as if they had been trapped by something vast and intangible. Reddin was dazed. For the first time in his life he had felt passion instead of mere lust. The same ideas that had striven within him on his way here uplifted their voices again. Staring dully at Hazel, he felt a smarting at the back of his eyes and a choking in his throat. 'What ails you, catching your breath?' she asked. He could not speak. 'You've got tears in your eyne.' Reddin put his hand up. 'Tell us what ails you?' He shook his head. 'What for not, my--what for not?' She never called Reddin 'my soul.' But he could not or would not speak. Hazel's eyes were red also, with tears of pain. Now she wept again in sympathy with a grief she could not understand. So they sat beneath the black, slow-waving branches under the threat of the oncoming night, weeping like children. They cowered, it seemed, beneath a hand raised to strike. All that they did was wrong; all that they did was inevitable. Two larches bent by the gales kept up a groaning as bole wore on bole, wounding each other every time they swayed. In the indifferent hauteur of the dark steeps, the secret arcades, the avenues leading nowhere, crouched these two incarnations of the troubled earth, sentient for a moment, capable of sadness, cruelty, terror and revolt, and then lapsed again into the earth. Forebodings of that lapse--forebodings that follow the hour of climax as rooks follow the plough--haunted them now, though they found no words for what they felt, but only knew a sense of the pressure of night. It appeared to stoop nearer, blind, impassive, but intensely aware of them under their dark canopy of leaves. Some Being, it seemed, was listening there, and not only listening, but imposing in an effortless but inevitable way its veiled purpose. Hazel and Reddin--he no less than she--appeared to be deprived of identity, like hypnotic mediums. His hardness and strength took on a pitiful dolt-like air before this prescient power. When he at last stopped choking and licking the tears away surreptitiously as they rolled down his cheeks, he was very angry--with himself for crying, with Hazel for witnessing his disgrace. That she should cry was nothing, he thought. Women always cried at these times. Nor did he distinguish between her tears of pain and of sympathy. 'You needn't stare,' he snapped. 'If I've got a cold, there's no reason to gape.' 'What for be you--' 'Shut up! I'm not.' They climbed the crackling wood, ghastly with a sound as of feet passing tiptoe into silence--the multitudinous soft noises of a wood, cones falling, twigs snapping, the wind in old driven leaves, the subdued rustle of the trees. They passed the place where she had talked with Edward at the bark-stripping. The prostrate larches shone as whitely as her shoulder did through her torn gown. She remembered Edward's look, and wept again. 'What is it now?' he asked. 'I was i' this place afore the bluebells died, along with--Ed'ard.' 'Why d'you say the man's name like that? It's no better than other names.' She had no reply for that, and they came in silence to the tormented may-tree where the horse was tied, his black mane and smooth back strown with faded, faintly coloured blossom. Reddin lifted her on and swung into the saddle. She leant against him, silent and passive, as with one arm round her he guided the horse down the difficult path. A star shone through the trees, but it was not a friendly star. It was more like a stare than a tear. When the rest of them sprang out like an army at the reveille, they were aloof and cold, and they rode above in an ironic disdain too terrible to be resented. Reddin put the horse to a gallop. He wanted fierce motion to still the compunction that Hazel's quiet crying brought. A sense of immanent grief was on her, grey loneliness and fear of the future. He tried to comfort her. 'Dunna say ought!' she sobbed. 'You canna run the words o'er your tongue comfortable like Ed'ard can!' 'What do you want me to say?' 'I dunno. I want our Foxy.' 'I'll fetch her in the morning.' 'No, you munna. She'm safe at Ed'ard's. Let her bide. I want to be at Ed'ard's, too.' 'Who comes wailing in the black o' night?' said the voice of Vessons as they neared the hall door. 'I thought it was the lady as no gold comforts--her as hollas "Lost! Alost!" in the Undern Coppy.' Chapter 26 Undern was in its June mood. Pinks frothed over the edges of the borders, and white bush-roses flung their arms high over the porch. All was heavily fragrant, close, muffling the senses. The trees brooded; the house brooded; the hill hung above, deeply recollected; the bats went with a lagging flight. It was like one of those spell-bound places built for an hour or an aeon or a moment on the borders of elfdom, full of charms and old wizardry, ready to fall inwards at a word, but invincible to all but that word. The hot scent of the trees and the garden mingled with the smell of manure, pigsties, cooking pig-wash and Vessons' 'Tom Moody' tobacco. It made Hazel feel faint--a strange sensation to her. Vessons stood surveying them as he had done on the bleak night of Hazel's first coming. 'Where,' he said at last, the countless fine lines that covered his upper lip from nostril to mouth deepening--'where's the reverent?' Receiving no reply but a scowl from his master, he led the horse away. Reddin, with a kind of gauche gentleness, said: 'I'll show you the house.' They went through the echoing rooms, and looked out of the low, spider-hung casements, where young ivy-leaves, soft and vivid, had edged their way through the cracks. They stood under ceilings dark with the smoke of fires and lamps that had been lit unnumbered years ago for some old pathetic revelry. In cupboards left ajar by a hurried hand that had long been still, hung gowns with flower-stains or wine-stains on their faded folds. The doors creaked and sighed after them, the floors groaned, and all about the house, though the summer air was so light and low, there was a moaning of wind. It was as if all the storms that had blown round it, the terror that had been felt in it, the tears that had fallen in it, had crept like forgotten spirits into its innermost recesses and now made complaint there for ever. A lonely listener on a stormy night might hear strange voices uplifted--the sobbing of children; songs of feasters; cries of labouring women; young men's voices shouting in triumph; the long intonations of prayer; the death-rattle. And as Reddin and Hazel--surely the most strangely met of all couples that had owned and been owned by this house--went through the darkening rooms, they were not, it seemed, alone. A sense of witnesses perturbed Hazel, a discomfort as from surveillance. A soft rumour, as of a mute but moving multitude crept along the passages in their wake. 'Be there ghosses?' she whispered. 'I'd liefer sleep under the blue roof-tree. I feel like corn under a millstone in this dark place.' 'It's said to be haunted, but I don't believe it.' He glanced over his shoulder. 'Who by?' 'People that failed. Weaklings. Men that lost their money or their women, and wives and daughters of the family that died young.' 'What for did they fail?' 'Silly ideas. Not knowing what they wanted.' 'Dear now! Foxy and me, we dunna allus know what we want.' 'You want me.' 'Maybe.' 'If you don't, you must learn to. And if you don't know what you want, you'll come to smash.' 'But when I do know, folk take it off me.' A long, mournful cry came down the passages. Hazel screamed. 'Be that the lady as no gold comforts?' she whispered. 'No, you silly girl. It's a barn owl. But she's said to cry in the coppy on Midsummer night.' 'Things crying out as have been a long while hurted,' murmured Hazel. 'To-night's Midsummer. Was she little, like me?' 'I don't know.' 'Did summat strong catch a holt of her?' 'A man did.' He laughed. 'Did she go young?' 'Yes, she died at nineteen.' 'And so'll it be with me!' she cried suddenly. 'So'll it be with me! Dark and strong in the full of life.' She flung herself on a faded blue settee and wept. The impression of companionship--of whisperers breaking out, hands stretched forth, the steady magnetism of countless unseen eyes--was so strong that Hazel could not bear it, and even Reddin was glad to follow her back to the inhabited part of the house. 'This is the bedroom,' Reddin said, opening the door of a big room papered in faded grey, and full of the smell of bygone days. The great four-poster, draped with a chintz of roses on a black ground, awed her. Reddin opened a chest and took out the green dress. He watched her with an air of proud proprietorship as she put it on. She went down the shallow stairs like a leaf loosened from the tree. Vessons, a beer-bottle in either hand, was so aghast at the pale apparition that he nearly dropped them. 'I thought it was a ghost,' he said--'a comfortless ghost.' 'So I be comfortless,' Hazel said to Reddin when Vessons had retired. Her voice had a sound of tears in it, like a dark tide broken on rocks. 'And when I was comfortless at the Mountain Ed'ard was used to read "Comfort ye, my people," as nice as nice.' 'Are you fonder of Marston than of me?' 'I dunno.' She sat down sadly in the home that was not home. She remembered the half-finished collar she was knitting for Foxy. Also, a custom had grown up that she sang hymns in the evenings to Edward's accompaniment. She missed these things. She missed the irritations of that peaceful life--Mrs. Marston's way of clearing her throat softly and pertinaciously; Martha's habit of tidying all her little treasures into the kitchen grate; Edward's absurd determination that she should have clean nails; the ever-renewed argument, 'Foxy's a bad dog!' 'She inna. She's a good fox.' 'In my sight she's a bad dog.' Now she had floated free of all this. She was out of haven on the high seas. She felt very lonely--as the dead might feel, free of the shackles of life. It was certainly pleasant to wear the green dress. But she missed her little duties--clearing away the supper, Martha being gone; fetching the candles (Mrs. Marston always shook her head at the third, not from economy, but from vicarious philoprogenitiveness). Edward's reading of the Book last thing had made her restless; she had thought it a bother. Now it seemed a privilege. To most girls, God's Little Mountain would have been purgatory. To her it was wonderful. It was the first time she had shared in the peculiar beauty of home, the daily sacrament of love. Edward never forgot to kiss them both when he came in; brought them flowers; was always carpentering at surprises for them. These last never turned out very well, his technical skill not keeping pace with his enthusiasm; but Hazel was not critical. She, in common with the other little creatures, sat down in his shadow as in a city of refuge. Mrs. Marston shared this feeling. She always fell asleep at once when Edward was at home in the evening, ceasing to invent alarms about black men creeping through the kitchen window, Foxy getting into the larder, and a great tempest from the Lord blowing them all to perdition because Lord's Day was not kept as it used to be. Into the parlour, at his own good time, Vessons brought the supper, and dumped it on the large round table, veneered like mahogany, heavily Victorian and ornamented with brass feet. There were bread and cheese, bacon, and a good deal of beer. Hazel saw nothing amiss with it, for though she had begun to grow accustomed to respectable middle-class meals, life at the Callow still seemed the homelier. Reddin looked up from cutting bacon to say with unwonted thoughtfulness, 'Like some tea and toast?' He felt that toast was a triumph of imagination. He was rather dubious about asking Vessons to do it, so instead he repeated, 'You'll have some tea and toast?' Vessons went into the kitchen and shut the door. They waited for some time, and Hazel, who, whatever her fate, her faults and sorrows, was always as hungry as Foxy, looked longingly at Reddin's cheese and beer. Physical exhaustion brought tears of appetite to her eyes. At last Reddin went to the kitchen door. 'Where's that tea?' he asked. 'Tay?' 'Yes, you fool!' 'I know nothing about no tay.' 'I said you were to make some.' 'Not to me.' 'And toast.' 'I've douted the fire.' He had just done so. 'Look here, my man, there's a missus at Undern now. You please her or go. She tells me what she wants. I tell you. You do it.' 'I'll 'ave no woman over me!' said Vessons sullenly. 'Never will I! Never a missus did I take, not for all the pleasures of bed and board--no, ne'er a one I ever took. Maiden I am to my dying day.' The coupling of the ideas of Vessons and maidenhood was so funny that Reddin burst out laughing and forgot his anger. 'Now, make that tea, Vessons.' 'She unna be here long?' asked Vessons craftily. 'Yes, for good.' Hazel heard him. 'For good.' Did she want to be in this whispering house for good? Who did she want to be with for good? Not Reddin. Edward? But he had not the passion of the greenwood in him, the lust of the earth. He was not of the tremulously ecstatic company of wild, hunted creatures. If Reddin was definitely antagonistic, a hunter, Edward was neutral, a looker-on. They were not her comrades. They did not live her life. She had to live theirs. She wished she had never seen Reddin, never gone to Hunter's Spinney. Edward's house was at least peaceful. 'And what,' she heard Vessons say, 'will yer lordship's Sally Virtue say?' She did not hear Reddin's reply; it was fierce and low. She wondered who Sally Virtue was, but she was too tired to think much about it. Afterwards Reddin had some whisky, and Vessons drank his health. Then Reddin picked out 'It's a Fine Hunting Day' on the old piano, and sang it in a rough tenor. Vessons joined in from the kitchen in a voice quite free from any music, and the roaring chorus echoed through the house. 'Eh, stop! I canna abide it!' cried Hazel; but they did not hear. Vessons came and stood in the doorway with the teapot in one hand and the expression of acute agony he always wore when singing. 'All trouble and care Will be left far behind us at home!' 'Not for the little foxes!' cried Hazel, and she plucked the music from the piano and ran past Vessons, knocking the teapot out of his hand. She stuffed the music into the kitchen grate. Vessons was petrified. 'Well,' he said, 'you've got the ways of wild-cats and spinsters the world over.' This was an unwilling compliment. 'And I'll say this for you, whatever else I canna say, you've got sperit enough for the eleven thousand virgins!' Reddin felt that the scene was hardly festive enough. He wondered that he himself did not feel more jubilant; reaction had set in. He wished that all should be gay as for a bridal, for he felt that this was a bridal in all but the name. But the old house, like a being lethargic after long revelry, clad in torn and stained garments, seemed unready for mirth. Andrew was highly antagonistic. The hound had bristled, growling, at the intruder; and Hazel--? He looked at Hazel under half-closed lids. Did she know what had happened? He thought not. Perhaps intuition whispered to her. Certainly she avoided his eyes. She sat drinking the tea, which Reddin, with much exertion of authority, at last caused to appear. She was wan, and her face looked very thin. Panic lingered about her eyes, at the corner of her lips. He realized that she was afraid of him--his look, his touch. Immediately he wanted to exercise his power. He went across and took her chin in his hand, laying the other on her shoulder. Her eyelids trembled. 'What'n you after, mauling me?' she said. Then a passion of tears shook her. 'Oh, I want Ed'ard and the old lady! I want to go back to the Mountain, I do! Ed'ard'll be looking me up and down the country.' 'Good Lord, so he will!' said Reddin, 'and rousing the whole place. You must write a letter, Hazel, to say you're safe and happy, and he's not to worry.' 'But I amna.' Reddin frowned at the spontaneity of this. But he made her write the note. 'Saddle the mare, Vessons, and take this to the Mountain.' 'You dunna mind how much--' began Vessons. But Reddin cut him short. 'Get on,' he said, and Vessons knew by the tone that he had better. 'Push it under the parson's door, knock, and make yourself scarce, Vessons,' Reddin ordered. 'You can go up to bed if you like, Hazel.' Left alone, he walked up and down the room, puzzled and uneasy. According to his idea, he had done Hazel the greatest honour a man can pay to a woman. He could not see in what he had failed. He was irritated with his conscience for being troublesome. He had, as he put it, merely satisfied a need of his nature--a need simple and urgent as eating and drinking. He did not understand that in failing to find out whether it was also a need of Hazel's nature--and in nothing else at all--lay his unpardonable crime. That he had offended against the views of his Church did not worry him. For, like many churchmen, he had the happy gift of keeping profession and practice, dogma and deeds, in airtight compartments. How many of the most fervent churchmen are not, or have not been at some period of their lives, exactly like Reddin? 'Of course, I've been a bit of a beast in the past,' he thought. 'But that's done with. Besides, she doesn't know.' He reflected again. 'I suppose I was a bit rough, but she ought to have forgotten that by now. I do wish she wouldn't keep on so about the parson.' He ran upstairs. 'Sorry I was rough, Hazel,' he said shamefacedly. Hazel stood at the open window in a nightdress that she had found in one of the chests--a frail, yellowish thing with many frills of cobwebby lace made and worn by some dead woman on a forgotten bridal. It was symbolic of Hazel's whole life that she came in this way both to Undern and the Mountain--as bare of woman's regalia as a winter leaf is of substance. Hazel was speaking when he entered. He stood still, astonished and suspicious. 'Who are you talking to?' he asked. She turned. 'Him above,' she said. 'I was saying the prayer Ed'ard learnt me. I said it three times, it being Midsummer, and ghosses going to-and-agen and the death-pack about. He'll be bound to hearken to Ed'ard's prayer.' She looked small and pitiful standing in the flickering candlelight. She turned again to the window, and Reddin went downstairs, quite overwhelmed and abashed. The house seemed eerier than ever, full of subdued complaints and whisperings. The faces of the roses round the window were woe-begone in the lamplight. The rustle of the leaves had an expostulatory sound. The wan poplars down the meadow looked accusing. It was almost as if the freemasonry of the green world was up in arms for Hazel. She had its blood in her veins, and shared with it the silent worship of freedom and beauty, and had now been plunged so deeply into human life that she was lost to it. It was as if every incarnation of perfection that she had seen in leaf and flower (and she had seen much, though remaining without expression of it), every moment of deep comradeship with earthy, dewy things, every illumined memory of colours and lights that her vivid mind had gathered and cherished in its rage of love and rapture, had come now, pacing disdainfully through this old haunt of crude humanity; passing up the stairs; standing about the great four-poster where so many Reddins had died and been born; gazing upon this face that had known dreams (however childish) of their eternal magic; grieving as the tree for the leaf that has fallen. They grieved, but they did not forgive. For the spirits of beauty and magic are (as the bondsman of colour knows and the bondsman of poetry) inimical to the ordinary life and destiny of man. They break up homes. They lead a thousand wanderers into the unknown. They brook no half service. It is only the rarest exception when a man loves a woman and yet excels in his art, and a woman must have an amazing genius if she is still a poet after childbirth. But though sometimes these proud spirits will tolerate, will even be sworn companions of human love, it is only when it is a passion pure and burning that they know it for a sister spirit. In the sexual meeting of Hazel and Reddin there was nothing of this. Though it brought out the best in Reddin, the best was so very poor. And Hazel was merely passive. So they stood and wept above her, and they foreswore her company for ever. She might regard the primrose eye to eye, but she would receive no dewy look of comprehension. No lift of the heart would come with the lifting leaves, no pang of mysterious pain with bird-song, star-set, dewfall. Even her love of Foxy would become a groping thing, and not any longer would she know, when her blind bird made its tentative music, all it meant and all it dreamed. This very night she had forgotten to lean out and listen as of old to the soft voices of the trees. She had said her prayer, and then she had been so tired, and pains had shot through her, and her back had ached, and she had cried herself to sleep. 'What for did I go to the Hunter's Spinney?' she asked herself. But the answer was too deep for her, the traitorous impulse of her whole being too mysterious. She could not answer her question. Reddin, pacing the room downstairs, drinking whisky, and fuming at his own compunction, at last grew tired of his silent house. 'Damn it! Why shouldn't I go up?' he said. He opened Hazel's door. 'Look here,' he said; 'the house is mine, and so are you. I'm coming to bed.' He was met by that most intimidating reply to all bluster--silence. She was asleep; and all night long, while he snored, she tossed in her sleep and moaned. Chapter 27 Early next morning Vessons was calling the cows in for milking. He leant over the lichen-green gate contemplatively. All the colours were so bright that they were grotesque and startling. Above the violently green fields the sky shone like blue glass, and across the east were two long vermilion clouds. Behind the black hill the sun had shouldered up, molten, and the shadow of Vessons, standing monkey-like on the lowest bar of the gate, lay on the stretch of wet clover behind him--a purple, elfin creature, gifted with a prehensile dignity. The cows did not appear after his first call. He lifted his head and called again in a high plaintive tone, as one reasons with a fretful child. 'Come o-on, come o-on!' Then he sank into the landscape again. After an interval, a polished red and white cow appeared at a distance of five fields, coming serenely on at her own pace. A white one and a roan followed her at long distances. They advanced through the shadows, each going through the exact middle of the many gateways, always kept open like doors in a suite of rooms at a reception. Vessons waited patiently--more as a slave than a ruler--only uttering his plaintive 'Come o-on!' once, when the last cow dallied overlong with a tuft of lush grass in the hedge. This was the daily ritual. Every morning he appeared, neutral-tinted, from the house, and cried upon an apparently empty landscape; every morning they meandered through the seven gates from the secret leafy purlieus where they spent the night. Mysterious of eye, leisured, vividly red and white, they followed the old man as queens might follow an usher. Hazel was coming down the path from the house. With morning, her abundant vitality had returned. The outer world was new and bright, and she wanted, shyly, to be up and dressed before Reddin awoke. She was full of merriment at the subservience of Vessons to the cows. 'D'you say "mum" to 'em?' she inquired. Vessons looked her up and down. He was very angry, not only at her criticism, but at the difficulty of retort, since he supposed she was now 'missus.' His friendliness for her had entirely gone, not, as would have seemed natural, since her last night's instalment at Undern, but since her marriage with Edward. He felt that she had 'gone back on him.' He had taken her as a comrade, and now she had gone over to the enemy. He was also injured at having been kept up so late last night. He chumbled his straw for some time, until the last cow had disappeared. Then he said: 'You'm up early for a married 'ooman, or whatever you be, missus.' Hazel laughed. She had lived so completely outside the influence of the canons of society that the taunt had no sting. 'Ha! you're jealous!' she said. Then, with a mercilessly accurate imitation of his voice and face, she added: 'A missus at Undern! Never will I!' He quailed under her mocking amber eyes, her impish laughter. Then, looking from side to side with suppressed fury, he said: 'Them birds is after the cherries! I'll get a gun. I'll shoot 'em dead!' 'If you shoot a blackbird, the milk'll turn bloody,' said Hazel; but Vessons paid no heed. All morning, at any spare moment, and after dinner (which he brought in in complete silence, and which was exceedingly unpalatable), he lurked behind trees and crept along hedges, shooting birds. Even Reddin felt awed and could not gather courage to expostulate with him. In and out of the stealthy afternoon shadows, black and solemn, went the shambling old figure with his relentless face and outraged heart. He shot thrushes as they fluted after a meal of wild raspberries; he shot tiny silky willow-wrens, robins, and swallows--their sacredness did not awe him--a pigeon on its nest, blackbirds, a dipper, a goldfinch, and a great many sparrows. The garden and fields were struck into silence because of him; only a flutter of terrified wings showed his whereabouts. He piled his trophies--all the delicate ruffled plumage of summer's prime--on the kitchen table, draggled and bloody. Hazel and Reddin crept from window to window, silent, watching his movements. Undern grew ghostlier than ever, seeming, as the shots rang out startlingly loud in the quiet, like a moribund creature electrified by blows. 'He'd liefer it was me than the birds!' said Hazel. 'Wheresoever I go, folk kill things. What for do they?' 'Things must be killed.' 'It seems like the earth's all bloody,' said Hazel. 'And it's allus the little small uns. There! He's got a jenny-wren. Oh, dearie me! it's like I've killed 'em; it's all along of me coming to Undern.' 'Hush!' said Reddin sharply. 'What I'm afraid of is that he'll shoot himself, he's so damned queer.' The last cow had sauntered to the gate before Vessons opened it and milked them that night. Afterwards he went in with the pails, set them on the parlour floor, and said with fury to Hazel: 'Bloody, is it?' She owned, faintly, that it was not. 'And now,' said Vessons, turning on Reddin, 'it's notice. Notice has been give--one month--by Andrew Vessons to John Reddin, Esquire, of Undern.' With tragic dignity he turned to go. He saw neither Hazel nor Reddin, but only the swan, the yew-tree swan, his creation, now doomed to be for ever unfinished. The generations to come would look upon a beakless swan, and would think he had meant it so. Tears came into his eyes--smarting, difficult tears. The room was full of brooding misery. Reddin felt awkward and astounded. 'Why, Vessons?' he said in rather a sheepish tone. Vessons did not turn. He fumbled with the door-handle. Reddin got up and went across to him. 'Why, Vessons?' he said again, with a hand on his shoulder. 'You and I can't part, you know.' 'We mun.' 'But why, man? What's up with you, Andrew?' The rare Christian name softened Vessons. He deigned to explain. 'She is,' he said, with a sidelong nod at Hazel. 'She mocked me.' 'Did you, Hazel?' 'Now then, missus!' Vessons glared at her. 'I only said--' 'Her said, "Never will I!"' shouted Vessons. 'Ah, that's what her said--"Never will I!" That's what _I_ say,' he added with the pride of a phrase-maker. Reddin could make nothing of them, one so red and angry, the other in tears. 'I'll do no 'ooman's will!' said Vessons. 'Look here, Vessons! Be reasonable. Listen to me. I'm your master, aren't I?' 'Ah! Till a month.' 'Well, you take orders from me; that's all that matters. I'm master here.' The tones of his ancestry were in his voice--an ancestry that ruled over and profited by men and women as good as themselves, or better. 'So we'll say no more about it,' he finished, with the frank and winning smile that was one of his few charms. Vessons stared at him for some time, and, as he stared, an idea occurred to him. It was, he felt, a good idea. It would enable him to keep his swan and his self-respect and to get rid of Hazel. As he pondered it, his face slowly creased into smiles. He touched his forelock--a thing only done on pay-days--and withdrew, murmuring, 'Notice is took back.' They saw him go past the window with the steps and the shears, evidently to attend to the swan. Reddin thought how easy it was to manage these underlings--a little authority, a little tact. He turned to Hazel, crying in the high armchair of black oak with its faded rose-coloured cushions. She was crying not only because Vessons had come off victorious, but because her position was now defined, and was not what she would have liked, but also because Reddin's manner to her jarred after last night. Last night, in the comfortless darkness of Hunter's Spinney, he had seemed for a little while to be a fellow-fugitive of hers, one of the defenceless, fleeing from the vague, unknown power that she feared. Then she had pitied him--self-forgetfully, fiercely--gathered his head to her breast as she so often gathered Foxy's. But now he seemed to have forgotten--seemed once more to be of the swift and strong ones that rode down small creatures. She sobbed afresh. 'Look here, Hazel,' said he, in a tone that he intended to be kind but firm--'look here: I'm not angry with you, only you must leave Vessons alone, you know.' 'You want that old fellow more than you want me!' 'Don't be silly! He has his uses; you have yours.' He spoke with a quite unconscious brutality; he voiced the theory of his class and his political party, which tacitly or openly asserted that woman, servants, and animals were in the world for their benefit. 'I'm not grass to be trod on,' said Hazel, 'and if you canna be civil-spoken, I'll go.' 'You can't,' he replied, 'not now.' She knew it was true, and the knowledge that her own physical nature had proved traitorous to her freedom enraged her the more. 'You can't go,' he went on, coming towards her chair to caress her. 'Shall I tell you why?' Hazel sat up and looked at him, her eyes gloomy, her forehead red with crying. He thought she was awaiting for his answer; but Hazel seldom did or said what he expected. She let him kneel by her chair on one knee; then, frowning, asked: 'Who cried in Hunter's Spinney?' He jumped up as if he had knelt on a pin. He had been trying to forget the incident, and hoped that she had. He was bitterly ashamed of that really fine moment of his life. 'Don't Hazel!' he said. He felt quite frightened when he remembered how he had behaved. A strange doubt of himself, born that night, stirred again. Was he all he had thought? Was the world what he had thought? Misgivings seized him. Perhaps he ought not to have brought Hazel here or to the Spinney. An older code than those of Church and State began to flame before him, condemning him. Suddenly he wanted reassurance. 'You did want to come, didn't you? I didn't take advantage of you very much, did I?' he asked. 'You want to stay?' 'No, I didna want to come till you made me. You got the better of me. But maybe you couldna help it. Maybe you were druv to it.' 'Who by?' he asked, with an attempt at flippancy. Hazel's eyes were dark and haunted. 'Summat strong and drodsome, as drives us all,' she said. She had a vision of all the world racing madly round and round, like the exhausted and terrified horse Reddin had that morning lunged. But what power it was that stood in the centre, breaking without an effort the spirit of the mad, fleeing, tethered creature, she could not tell. Reddin sat brooding until Hazel, recovering first in her mercurial way, said: 'Now I've come, I mun bide. D'you think the old fellow'd let me cook summat for supper? It's been pig-food for us to-day.' But when they went to investigate, they found Vessons preparing a tremendous meal, hot and savoury as a victorious and penitent old man could make it. He showed in his manner that bygones were to be bygones, and night came down in peace on Undern. But it was a curious, torrid peace, like the hush before thunder. Chapter 28 It was the Friday after Hazel's coming, and Reddin was away, much against his will, at a horse fair. He was quite surprised at the hurt it gave him to be away from Hazel. So far he had never been, in the smallest sense, any woman's lover. He had taken what he wanted of them in a kind of animal semi-consciousness that amounted to a stark innocence. Virility, he felt, was not of his seeking. There it was, and it must be satisfied. Now he was annoyed to find that he felt guilty when he remembered these women, and that he wanted Hazel, not, as with them, occasionally, but all the time. He had been accustomed to say at farmers' dinners, after indulging pretty freely: 'Oh, damn it! what d'you want with women between sun-up and sun-down?' His coarseness had been received with laughter and reproof. Now he felt that the reproof was juster than the laughter. It was curious, too, how dull things became when Hazel was not there. Hazel had something fresh to say about everything, and their quarrels were the most invigorating moments he had known. Hazel was primitive enough to be feminine, original enough to be boyish, and mysterious enough to be exciting. As Vessons remarked to the drake, 'Oh, maister! you ne'er saw the like. It's 'Azel, 'Azel, 'Azel the day long, and a good man spoilt as was only part spoilt afore.' Vessons and Hazel were spending the afternoon quarrelling about the bees. When Reddin was away, Hazel put off her new dignity and was Vessons' equal, because it was so dull to be anything else. Vessons tolerated her presence for the sake of the subacid remarks it enabled him to make, but chiefly because of the sardonic pleasure it gave him to remember how soon his resolve would be put into action. They were in the walled garden, and the bees were coming and going so fast that they made, when Hazel half closed her eyes, long black threads swaying between the hive doors and the distant fields and the hill-top. They hung in cones on the low front walls, and lumped on the hive-shelves in that apparently purposeless unrest that precedes creation. But whether they intended, any of them, to create a new city that day, none might know. Vessons said not. Hazel, always for adventure, said they would, and said also that she could hear the queen in one hive 'zeep-zeeping'--that strange music which, like the maddeningly soft skirl of bagpipes or the fiddling of Ned Pugh, has power to lure living creatures away from comfort and full hives into the unknown--so darkly sweet. 'I canna hear it,' said Vessons obstinately. 'Go on! You're deaf, Mr. Vessons.' 'Deaf, am I? Maybe I hear as much as I want to, and more. Ah! that I do!' 'Well, then, why canna you hear 'em? Listen at 'em now. D'you know the noise I mean?' 'Do I know the noise?' Vessons' voice grew almost tearful with rage. 'Do I know? Me! As can make a thousand bees go through the neck of a pint bottle each after other, like cows to the milking! Me! Maybe you'd like to learn me beekeeping?' he continued with salty humility. 'Maybe you would! Never will I!' He began to tear off the tops of the hives. 'Oh, Mr. Vessons, dunna be so cross!' Hazel was afraid there would be another scene like Monday's. 'You take 'em off very neat,' she added, with a pathetic attempt to be tactful--'as neat as my dad.' 'I'd have you know,' said Vessons, 'as I take 'em off neater--ah! a deal neater. Bees and cows and yew-tree swans,' he went on reflectively, 'I can manage better than any married man. For what he puts into matrimony I put into my work. Now I ask you'--he fixed his eyes on her with the expression of a fanatic--'I ask you, was there ever a beekeeper or a general or a sea-captain as was anything to boast of, being married? Never! Marriage kills the mind! Why's bees clever? Why's the skip allus full of honey at summer's end? Because they're all old maids!' 'The queen inna. They all come from her.' Vessons glared for a moment; then, realizing defeat, turned on his heel and went to feed the calves. He had an ingenious way of getting the calves in. He had no dog; it was one of his dreams to have one. But he managed very well. First he opened the calfskit door; then he loosed the pigs; then he fetched a bucket and went to the field where the calves were, followed by a turbulent, squealing, ferocious crowd of pigs. He walked round the calves, and the calves fled homewards, far more afraid of the pigs than of a dog. This piece of farm economy pleased Vessons, and, peace being restored, they laid tea amicably. When Reddin came home to a pleasant scent of toast and the sight of Hazel's shining braids of hair, new brushed and piled high on her head, he felt very well pleased with himself. He stretched in the red armchair and flung an arm round her. His hard blue eyes, his hard mouth, smiled; he felt that he could make a success of marriage, though the parson (as he called Edward) could not. Women, he reflected, were quite easy to manage. 'Just show them who's master straight off, and all's well.' Here was Hazel, radiant, soft, submissive, all the rough prickly husk gone since Sunday. Why had he behaved so strangely in the Spinney? Well, well, he must forget about that. The hot tea ran very comfortably down his throat; the toast was pleasantly resistant to his strong teeth. He felt satisfied with life. Later on, no doubt, Hazel would have a child. That, too, would be a good thing. Two possessions are better than one, and he could well afford children. It never occurred to him to wonder whether Hazel would like it, or to be sorry for the pain in store for her. He felt very unselfish as he thought, 'When she can't go about, I'll sit with her now and again.' It really was a good deal for him to say. He had never taken the slightest notice of Sally Haggard at such times. 'Got something for you,' he said, pulling at his pocket. 'Oh! It's an urchin!' cried Hazel delightedly. Reddin began bruising and pulling at its spines with his gloved hands. 'Dunna!' cried Hazel. Reddin pulled and wrenched until at last the hedgehog screamed--a thin, piercing wail, most ghastly and pitiful and old, ancient as the cry of the death's-head moth, that faint ghostly shriek as of a tortured witch. Centuries of pain were in it, the age-long terror of weakness bound and helpless beneath the knife, and that something vindictive and terrifying that looks up at the hunter from the eyes of trapped animals and sends the cuckoo fleeing in panic before the onset of little birds. Hazel knew the sound well. It was the watchword of the little children of despair, the password of the freemasonry to which she belonged. Before the cry had ceased to horrify the quiet room, she had flung herself at Reddin, a pattern of womanly obedience no longer, but a desperate creature fighting in that most intoxicating of all crusades, the succouring of weakness. On Reddin's head, a moment ago so smooth, on his face, a moment ago so bland, rained the blows of Hazel's hard little fists. Her blows were by no means so negligible as most women's, for her hands were muscular and strong from digging and climbing, and in her heart was the root of pity which nerves the most trembling hands to do mighty deeds. 'What the devil!' spluttered Reddin. 'Here, stop it, you little vixen!' He caught one of her hands, but the other was too quick for him. 'Give over tormenting of it, then!' The hedgehog rolled on the floor, and the foxhound came and sniffed it. Reddin had her other hand now. 'What d'you mean by it?' he asked, very angry, and tingling about the ears. 'Leave it be! It's done you no harm. Lookee! The hound-dog!' she cried. 'Drive him off!' 'I'm going to have some fun seeing the dog kill it.' Hazel went quite white. 'You shanna! Not till I'm jead,' she said. 'It's come to me to be took care of, and took care of it shall be.' She reached a foot out and kicked the hound. Reddin's mood changed. He burst out laughing. 'You're a sight more amusing than hedgehogs,' he said; 'the beast can go free, for all I care.' He pulled her on to his knee and kissed her. 'Send the hound-dog out, then.' When the hound had gone, resentfully, the hedgehog--a sphinx-like, protestant ball--enjoyed the peace, and Hazel became again (as Reddin thought) quite the right sort of girl to live with. During the uproar they had not heard wheels in the drive, so they were startled by Vessons' intrigue insertion of himself into a small opening of the door, his firm shutting of it as if in face of a beleaguering host, and his stentorian whisper: 'Ere's Clombers now!' as if to say, 'When you let a woman in you never know what'll become of it.' 'Tell 'em I'm ill--dead!' said his master. 'Tell 'em I'm in the bath--anything, only send them away!' They heard Vessons recitative. 'The master's very sorry, mum, but he's got the colic too bad to see you. It's heave, curse, heave, curse, till I pray for a good vomit!' The Clombers, urgent upon his track, shouldered past and strode in. 'What the devil do they want?' muttered Reddin. He rose sulkily. 'I hear,' said the eldest Miss Clomber, who had read Bordello and was very clever, 'that young Lochinvar has taken to himself a bride.' This was quite up to her usual standard, for not only had it the true literary flavour, but it was ironic, for she knew who Hazel was. ''Er?' queried Reddin, shaking hands in his rather race-course manner. 'Introduce me, Mr. Reddin!' simpered Amelia Clomber. It was painful when she simpered; her mouth was made for sterner uses. They surveyed Hazel, who shrank from their gaze. Something in their eyes made her feel as if they were her judges, and as if they knew all about Hunter's Spinney. They looked at her with detestation. They thought it was detestation for a sinner. Really, it was for the woman who had, in a few weeks after meeting him, found favour in Reddin's eyes, and attained that defeat which, to women even so desiccated as the Clombers, is the one desired victory. They had come, as they told each other before and after their visit, to snatch a brand from the burning. What was in the heart of each--the frantic desire to be mistress of Undern--they did not mention. Miss Clomber had taken exception to Amelia's tight dress. For Amelia had a figure, and Miss Clomber had not. She always flushed at the text, 'We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts.' Amelia was aware of her advantage as she engaged Reddin in conversation. He fell in with the arrangement, for he detested her sister, who always prefaced every remark with 'Have you read--?' As he never read anything, he thought she was making fun of him. 'And what,' asked Miss Clomber of Hazel, lowering her lids like blinds, 'was your maiden name?' 'Woodus.' 'Where were you married?' 'The Mountain.' 'Shawly there's no charch there?' 'Ah! Ed'ard's church.' 'Edward?' 'Ah! He's minister.' 'You mean the chapel. So that's your persuasion. Now Mr. Reddin is such a sta'nch Charchman.' Reddin looked exceedingly discomfited. 'And when did this happy event take place?' A cat with a mouse was nothing to Miss Clomber with a sinner. At this point Reddin saw, as he put it, what she was driving at. He was very sleepy, having been out all day and eaten a large tea, and he never combated a physical desire. So he cut across a remark of Amelia's to the effect that marriage with the _right_ woman so added to a man's comfort, and said: 'I'm not married if that's what you mean.' 'Then who--' said Miss Clomber, feeling that she had him now. 'My keep,' he said baldly. He thought they would go at that. But they sat tight. They had, as Miss Clomber said afterwards, a soul to save. They both realized how pleasant might be the earthly lot of one engaged in this heavenly occupation. 'Hah! You call a spade a spade, Mr. Reddin,' said Miss Clomber, with a frosty glance at Hazel; 'you are not, as our dear Browning has it, "mealy mouthed".' 'In the breast of a true woman,' said Amelia authoritatively, as a fishmonger might speak of fish, 'is no room for blame.' 'True woman be damned!' Miss Clomber saw that for to-day the cause was lost. At this point Miss Amelia uttered a piercing yell. The hedgehog, encouraged by being left to itself, and by the slight dusk that had begun to gather in the northerly rooms of Undern--where night came early--had begun to creep about. Surreptitiously guided by Hazel's foot, it had crept under Amelia's skirt and laid its cold inquiring head on her ankle, thinly clad for conquest. Hazel went off into peals of laughter, and Miss Amelia hated her more than before. Vessons, in the kitchen, shook his head. 'I never heerd the like of the noise there's been since that gel come. Never did I!' he said. 'Leave him!' said Miss Clomber to Hazel on the doorstep. She was going to add 'for my sake,' but substituted 'his.' 'You are causing him to sin,' she added. 'Be I?' Hazel felt that she was always causing something wrong. Then she sighed. 'I canna leave 'im.' 'Why not?' 'He wunna let me.' With that phrase, all unconsciously, she took a most ample revenge on the Clombers; for it rang in their ears all night, and they knew it was true. Chapter 29 On Sunday Vessons put his resolve--to go to the Mountain and reveal Hazel's whereabouts--into practice. If he had waited, gossip would have done it for him. He set out in the afternoon, having 'cleaned' himself and put on his pepper-and-salt suit, buff leggings, red waistcoat, and the jockey-like cap he affected. He arrived at the back door just as Martha was taking in supper. 'Well?' said Martha, who wanted to have her meal and go home. 'Well?' said Vessons. 'When I say "well," I mean what d'you want?' 'Allus say what you mean.' 'Who d'you want? Me?' 'The master.' 'The master's out.' 'I'll wait, then.' He sat down by the fire, and looked so fixedly at Martha as she poured out her tea that she offered him some in self-defence. He drew up his chair. Now that he was receiving hospitality, he felt that he must be agreeable and complimentary. 'Single, I suppose?' he asked. 'Ah,' said Martha coyly, 'I'm single; but I've no objection to matrimony.' 'Oh!' Vessons spoke sourly, 'I'm sorry for you, then.' 'Maybe you're a married man yourself?' 'Never.' 'Better late than never!' 'If I've kep' out of it in the heat of youth, is it likely I'll go into it in the chilly times? Maiden I am to my dying day!' 'But if you was to meet a nice tidy woman as had a bit saved?' To Martha, a bridegroom of sixty-five seemed better than nothing. 'If I met a score nice tidy women, if I met a gross nice tidy women, it 'ud be no different.' 'Not if she could make strong ale?' 'I can make ale myself. No woman shall come into my kitchen for uncounted gold.' Martha sighed as she changed the subject. 'What do you want the master for?' 'Never tell your tidings,' said Vessons, 'till you meet the king.' 'Martha!' Mrs. Marston stood at the kitchen door in the most splendid of her caps--a pagoda of white lace--and her voice was, as she afterwards said, 'quite sharp,' its mellifluousness being very slightly reduced. Vessons rose, touching his hair. 'What is it, my good man?' 'A bit of news, mum.' 'For my son?' 'Ah!' 'You may go, Martha,' said Mrs. Marston, and Martha went without alacrity. 'Now.' Mrs. Marston spoke encouragingly. 'It's for the master.' 'He cannot see you.' The two old faces regarded each other with silent obstinacy, and Vessons recognized that, for all Mrs. Marston's soft outlines, she was as obstinate as he was. He cleared his throat several times. Mrs. Marston produced a lozenge, which he ate reluctantly, chumbling it with nervous haste. He was so afraid that she would give him another that he told her his news. 'Thank you,' she said, keeping her dignity in a marvellous manner. 'Mrs. Edward Marston, of course, wrote to the minister, but she forgot to give her address.' 'Accidents will 'appen,' Vessons remarked, as he went out. It was some time before Edward came in. He had spent most of his time since last Sunday tramping the hillsides. It was not till he had finished his very cursory meal that his mother said calmly, looking over her spectacles: 'I know where Hazel is.' 'You _know_, mother? Why didn't you tell me?' 'I am telling you, dear. There's nothing to be in a taking about. You've had no supper yet. A little preserve?' Edward, in a sudden passion that startled her, threw the jam-dish across the room. It made a red splash on the wall. Mrs. Marston stopped chumbling her toast, and remained with the rotary motions of her mouth in abeyance. Then she said slowly: 'Your poor father always said, dear, that you'd break out some day. And you have. The best dish! Of course the jam I say little about; jam is but jam, after all; but the cut-glass dish--!' 'Can't you go on with the tale, mother?' 'Yes, my dear, yes. But you fluster me like the Silverton Cheap-jack does; I never _can_ buy the dish he holds up, for I get in such a fluster for fear he'll break it, and then he does. And now you have.' Edward pushed back his chair in desperation. 'For pity's sake!' he said. 'I'm telling you. I never thought Hazel was steadfast, you know.' 'Where _is_ she? Why will you torment me?' 'An old man came. A very untrustworthy old man, I fear. A defiant manner, and that is never pleasant. There he was in the kitchen with Martha! Age is no barrier to wrong, and Martha was very flushed. There was a deal of laughter, too.' 'Mother! If you keep on like this, I shall go mad.' 'Why, Edward, you are all in a fever. There, there! It's more peaceful without her, and I wish Mr. Reddin well of her.' 'Reddin? What Reddin?' 'Mr. Reddin of Undern. Who else?' 'Damn the fellow!' 'Edward! What words you take on your lips! And just think,' she went on sorrowfully, 'that he seemed such a nice man. He liked the gooseberry wine so much, and gave me a "ma'am," which is more than Martha does half her time. Where are you going?' 'To Undern.' 'What for?' 'Hazel.' Mrs. Marston sat bolt upright. 'But, of course, she'll never darken the door again!' 'I shall bring her back to-night, of course.' 'But, my dear! You must divorce her, however unpleasant on account of the papers. Remember, she has been there a week.' 'What of that?' 'But a week, dear!' 'Mother, I did not think to hear the talk of the filthy world from you.' Mrs. Marston quailed a little. There is nothing in the world so pure, so wonderful, so strong, as a young man's love can be--nothing so spiritual, nothing so brave. Mrs. Marston, in her own words, 'shed tears.' 'Don't cry, mother, but help me,' Edward said. 'Be ready for her, love her. She is as pure as a dew-drop. I know it. And I want her more than life.' 'But if she doesn't want you, Edward, what more is to do?' 'To seek and to save,' snapped Edward, and he banged the door and went hatless down the path between the heavy-browed tombstones. But he came back to suggest that there should be some tea ready. As he went down the batch, owls were shrieking in the woods, and the sky was pied with grey and crimson, like bloodstained marble. The cries of the owls were hard as marble also, and of a polished ferocity. They would have their prey. He walked fast through the lonely fields where Hazel had passed on her mushrooming morning. The roses that had then been in the bud were falling. At Alderslea people stared at him as he went by, flushed and hatless. From Alderslea to Wolf batch was some miles; from there to Undern the way lay over Bitterly Hill, where he missed the path. So it was quite dark when he came past Undern Pool, lying black and ghastly in its ring of skeleton trees. The foxhound set up a loud baying within. Only one window was lit. Edward hammered on the knocker, and the sound echoed in the hollow house. There was a noise within of a door opening, and Hazel's voice cried: 'I wouldna go. It's a tramp, likely.' Then Reddin laughed, and Edward clenched his hands in rage at the easy self-confidence of him. The bolt was drawn back, and Reddin stood in the doorway, outlined by pale light. 'Who is it?' he asked in rather a jovial tone. He felt at peace with the world now Hazel was here. 'Beast!' Edward said tersely. 'Just come in a minute, my lad, and let's have a look at you. People don't call me names twice.' Hazel had heard Edward's voice. She ran to the door, and the apple-green gown rustled about her. 'Ed'ard! Ed'ard! Dunna go for to miscall him! He'll hurt 'ee! He's stronger'n you. Do 'ee go back, Ed'ard!' 'Never! till you come, too.' 'I like that,' said Reddin. 'Can't you see she's got my gown on her back? She's mine. She was never yours.' He looked meaningly and triumphantly at Edward. 'Oh, dunna, Jack! What for do you go to shame me?' said Hazel, twisting her hands. Edward took no notice of her. 'I don't know what evil means you used, or how you brought the poor child here,' he said, controlling himself with an effort. 'But you have tried to rob me, and you have insulted her--' 'Oh, don't come here talking like an injured husband,' Reddin said; 'you know you aren't her husband.' 'Keep your foul mouth shut before innocence! To try and rob a poor child of her freedom, of her soul--' Hazel wondered at him. His eyes darkened so upon Reddin, his face was so powerful, irradiated with love and anger. 'So young!' he went on--'so young, and as wild as a little bird. How could anyone help letting her take her own way? She wanted to go free in the woods. I let her; and there you were like a sneaking wolf.' He threw a look at Hazel so full of wistful tenderness that she flung the green skirt over her head and sobbed. 'Stow it, can't you?' said Reddin. 'If you want a fight, say so; but don't preach all night.' His tone was injured. He felt that he had been particularly considerate to Edward in sending him the letter. Also, he was convinced that he had only taken what Edward did not want. That Edward could love Hazel was beyond his comprehension. If a man loved a woman, he possessed her, took his pleasure of her. Love that was abnegation was to his idea impossible. So that, now, when Edward spoke of his love, Reddin simply thought he was posing. 'Why didn't you let her be?' 'Women don't want to be let be,' said Reddin with a very unpleasant laugh. 'Oh! stop talking about me as if I wunna here!' cried Hazel. 'If she loved you, I'd say nothing,' Edward went on, staring at Reddin fixedly. 'The fact that I'm her husband would not have counted with me, if you'd loved her and she you.' 'A fine pastor!' 'But you don't. You only wanted--Oh! you make me sick!' 'Indeed! Well, I'm man enough to take what I want; you're not.' 'You trapped her; you would have betrayed her. But, thank God! a young girl's innocence is a wonderful and powerful thing.' Reddin was astounded. Could Marston really be such a fool as to believe in Hazel still? 'The innocent young girl--' he began, but Hazel struck him on the mouth. 'All right, spitfire!' he said; 'mum's the word.' He was surprisingly good-humoured. 'Well, Hazel'--Edward spoke in a matter-of-fact tone--'shall we go home now?' 'Dunnat ask me, Ed'ard! I mun bide.' 'Why?' Hazel was silent. She could not explain the strange instinct, stronger than her wildness, that Reddin had awakened in her, and that chained her here with invisible chains. 'Come home, little Hazel!' he pleaded. 'I canna,' she whispered. 'Why? You can if you want to. Don't you want to?' 'Ah! I do that.' She was torn between her longing to go and her powerlessness to leave Reddin. The light went out of Edward's face. 'Do you love this man?' he asked. 'No.' 'Does it make you better to live with him?' 'No. It was living with you as did that.' Reddin was so enraged that he struck her, and her expression of submission as she cowered under the blow was worse to Edward than the blow itself. He forgot his views about violence, and struck Reddin back. 'Come outside,' said Reddin in a tone of relief. The situation had now taken a comprehensible turn for him. 'If it's fighting you're after, I'm with you; that's settling it like gentlemen. What are you grinning at?' He spoke huffily. 'Dunna snab at each other! What for do you?' said Hazel. 'Because you're husband's jealous.' Edward was exasperated by the realization that his action in coming did look like that of the commonplace husband. But, after all, what did it matter? Nothing mattered but Hazel. He looked across at her crouched in the armchair sobbing. He went to her and patted her shoulder. 'No one's angry with you, dear,' he said. 'Afterwards, when we're home, you shall explain it all to me.' 'If you win!' put in Reddin. Edward stooped and kissed Hazel's hand. The momentary doubt of her--cruel as hell--had gone. She was his lady, and he was going to fight for her. Hazel looked up at him, and in that instant she almost loved him. They went out. It was a black moonless night. They stood near the lit window. 'Draw the blind up!' shouted Reddin. Hazel drew it up. They faced each other in the square of light. They were both quite collected. It seemed difficult to begin. The humour of this struck Reddin, and he laughed. Edward looked at him disgustedly. Reddin began to feel a fool. 'We must begin,' he said. Seeing that Edward was waiting for him to strike the first blow, and not being angry enough to do so, Reddin said coarsely: 'No good fighting, parson! She's mine--from head to foot.' He received as good a blow as Edward was capable of. They fought with hard-drawn breath, for they were neither of them in training. To Edward it seemed ridiculous to be fighting; to Reddin it seemed ridiculous to be fighting such an opponent. They moved out of the light and back again in the tense silence of the night. A rat splashed in the pool, and silence fell again. Edward could not do much more than defend himself, and Reddin's eyes shone triumphantly. Within, Hazel leaned against the glass faintly. It was as if evil and good, angels and devils, fought for her. And whichever won, she was equally forlorn. She did not want heaven; she wanted earth and the green ways of earth. 'Oh, he'll kill Ed'ard!' she moaned. Edward staggered under a blow, and she hid her eyes. Suddenly she thought of Vessons. Where was he? She ran to the kitchen calling him. He was not there. She went to the stables. He was nowhere to be found. Drawn by an irresistible curiosity, she rushed back to the front of the house. Under the yew-tree she ran into Vessons. 'Sh!' he whispered. 'Say nought! I'll tell you what's a mortal good thing for a dog-fight--pepper!' He held up the kitchen pepper-pot. In the other hand he had the poker. 'Now I'll part 'em, missus, you see!' 'Quick, then!' But as she spoke Reddin got in a blow on Edward's jaw, and he fell. Hazel rushed forward. 'You murderer!'--she screamed, and she bit Reddin's hand as he stretched it out to catch her, and bent over Edward. The victor in the fight was fated to be the loser with Hazel, for she had a never-broken compact with all creatures defeated. She ran to the pool for water. 'Catch a holt on him!' she cried to Vessons; 'he's a murderer!' Reddin stood by, confused and mystified at Hazel's unlooked-for behaviour. Vessons bent over Edward. He struck a match and held it to the end of his nose, chuckling as Edward winced. 'I'll tell you summat as is mortal tough!' he remarked. 'A minister of the Lord! Will the gen'leman stay supper?' he inquired of Reddin. 'No!' said Hazel; 'Mr. Reddin'll take supper alone, for allus, to his dying day. Put the horse in, please, Mr. Vessons.' 'Right you are, missus.' Reddin was so taken aback by the turn of events, and his head ached so much, that he had nothing to say. He watched Vessons bring the horse round, blinked at Hazel as she tore off the silk dress and borrowed Edward's coat instead, and glowered dumbly at Edward as he was helped into the trap. Hazel sat between the two men. 'Pluck up!' said Vessons to the cob unemotionally, and the trap jogged through the gate and out on to the open hill. 'And if it cosses me my place, I'll tell ye one thing!' Vessons said to himself: 'There's as good to be had, and better.' 'Well, I'm damned, said Reddin as they disappeared in the darkness. He went in and finished the whisky in a state of mystification that ended in sleep. Chapter 30 As the horse trotted along the hard road, rabbits scuttled across in the momentary lamplight. Hazel tied her handkerchief round Edward's head. All the windows were dark in Alderslea, except one faint dormer where an old woman was dying. They began to climb the lane that led up to the Mountain. Cattle looked over hedges, breathing hard with curiosity. In an upland field a flock of horned sheep were racing to and fro through a gap in the hedge, coughing and stamping at intervals, and looking, as the moon rose, like fantastic devils working sorcery with their own shadows. The lamps dimmed in the moonlight and the world seemed to widen infinitely, like life at the coming of love. The country lay below like a vast white mere, and the hill sloped vaguely to a silver sky. Vessons walked up the batch to ease the cob, and Edward looked down at Hazel and murmured: 'My little child!' 'Dunna talk,' said Hazel quickly; 'it's bad for 'ee!' She was afraid to break the magical silence, afraid that the new peace that came with Marston's presence would vanish like the moon in driving cloud, and that she would feel the dragging chain that pulled her back to Reddin. Edward was silent, puzzling over the question, Why had not Hazel asked for his help? Reddin must have seen her at least several times, must have persecuted her. He grew very uneasy. He must ask Hazel. They drew up before the white-sentried graveyard. Vessons went up the path and knocked at the silent house. Then he threw handfuls of white spar off a grave at the windows. The Minorca cockerel crew reedily. 'That's unlucky,' said Hazel. Mrs. Marston put her head out, very sleepy, and asked who it was. 'The conquering 'ero!' said Vessons, as Edward and Hazel came up the path, deeply shadowed. He got into the trap and drove off. 'Well, Undern'll be summat like itself again now,' he thought. 'It was a deal more peaceable without her, naughty girl!' thought Mrs. Marston as she sadly and lethargically put on her clothes. 'Well, Edward!' she exclaimed, when she came down in her crimson shawl with the ball fringe, 'here's a to-do! A minister of grace with a pocket-handkerchief round his head coming to his house in the dead of night with a wild old man. What's happened? Oh, my dear, is it your arteries? We wondered where you were, Hazel Marston!' 'I'm very shivery, mother,' Edward said. 'Something hot and sweet!' She bustled off. They were alone for the first time. 'Hazel, why didn't you tell me about this man? It was not kind or right of you.' 'There was nought to tell.' She fidgeted. 'But he must have seen you several times.' 'I was near telling you, but I thought you'd be angered.' 'Angry! With you! Oh, to think of you in such danger!' 'What danger?' 'Of things that, thank God, you never dream of. He forged that letter, I suppose? Or did he frighten you into writing it?' 'Ah.' 'But why did you ever go?' 'He pulled me up on the horse and took me.' 'The man's a savage.' Hazel checked a hasty denial that was on her lips. 'What a pity you happened to meet him!' Edward said. 'Ah!' 'But why didn't you want to come at once when I came to fetch you? Were you so afraid of him as that?' 'Ah!' 'Well, it's over now. He won't show his face here again; we've done with him.' Hazel sighed. But whether it was her spiritual self sighing with relief at being with Edward, or her physical self longing for Reddin, she could not have said. 'Only you could come through such an experience unchanged, my sweet,' Edward said. 'I mun go to Foxy!' she cried desperately. 'Foxy wants me.' 'Foxy wants a good beating,' said Mrs. Marston benignly, looking mercifully over her spectacles. Her wrath was generally like the one drop of acid in a dell of honey, smothered in loving-kindness and _embonpoint_. When Hazel had gone, she said: 'You will send her away from here, of course?' Edward went out into the graveyard without a word. He sat on one of the coffin-shaped stones. 'God send me some quiet!' he said. Mrs. Marston came and draped her shawl round him. He got up, despairing of peace, and said he would go to bed. 'There's a good boy! So will I. You'll be as bright as ever in the morning.' Then she whispered: 'You won't keep her here?' 'Keep her! Who? Hazel? Of course Hazel will stay here.' 'It's hardly right.' 'Pleasant, you mean, mother. You never liked her. You want to be rid of her. But how you can so misjudge a beautiful soul I cannot think. I tell you she's as pure as a daisy. Why, she could not even bear, in her maidenly reserve, the idea of marriage. It is sheer blasphemy to say such things.' 'Blasphemy, my dear, is not a thing you can do against people. It is disagreeing with the Lord that is blasphemy.' 'I must ask you, anyway, never to mention Hazel's name to me until you can think of her differently.' When, after saying good night to Hazel and Foxy, Edward had gone to bed, Mrs. Marston shook her head. 'Edward,' she said, 'is not what he was.' She waited till Hazel came in. 'You're no wife for my son,' she said, 'you've sinned with another man.' 'I hanna done nought nor said nought; it's all other folk's doing and saying, so I dunna see as I've sinned. And I never could abear 'ee,' Hazel cried; 'I'd as lief you was dead as quick!' She rushed up to her room and flung herself on her bed sobbing. She felt dazed, like a child taken into a big toy-shop and told to choose quickly. Life had been too hasty with her. There were things, she knew, that she would have liked; but she had so far not had time to find out what they were. She wished she could tell Edward all about it. But how could she explain that strange inner power that had driven her to Hunter's Spinney? How could she make him understand that she did not want to go, and was yet obliged to go? She could not tell him that. Although she was furious with Reddin on his behalf, although she hated Reddin for the coarseness and cruelty in him, yet parting with him had hurt her. How could this be? She did not know. She only knew that as she lay in her little bed she wanted Reddin, his bodily presence, his kisses or his blows. He had betrayed her utterly, bringing to his aid forces he could not gauge or understand. His crime was that he had made of a woman who could not be his spiritual bride (since her spirit was unawakened, and his was to seek) his body's bride. All the divine paradoxes of sex--the mastery of the lover and his deep humility, his idealization of his bride and her absolute surrender--these he had dragged in the mud. So instead of the mysterious, transcendant illumination that passion brings to a woman, she had only confusion, darkness, and a sense of something dragging at the roots of her being in the darkness. Her eyes needed his eyes to stare them down. The bruises on her arms ached for his hard hands. Her very tears desired his roughness to set them flowing. 'Oh, Jack Reddin! Jack Reddin! You've put a spell on me!' she moaned. 'I want to be along of Ed'ard, and you've bound me to be along of you. I dunna like you, but I canna think of ought else!' She fought a hard battle that night. The compulsion to get up and go straight to Undern was so strong that it could only be compared to the pull of matter on matter. She tried to call up Edward's voice--quiet, tender, almost religious in its tone to her. But she could only hear Reddin's voice, forceful and dictatorial, saying, 'I'm master here!' And every nerve assented, in defiance of her wistful spirit, that he _was_ master. That, when morning came, she was still at the Mountain showed an extraordinary power of resistance, and was simply owing to the fact that Reddin had, in what he called 'giving the parson a good hiding,' opened her eyes very completely to his innate callousness, and to his temperamental and traditional hostility to her creed of love and pity. Soon, in the mysterious woods, the owls turned home--mysterious as the woods--strong creatures driven on to the perpetual destruction of the defenceless, destroyed in their turn and blown down the wind--a few torn feathers. Chapter 31 Edward did not notice the strained relationship between Mrs. Marston and Hazel. He supposed that his mother's suspicions had faded before Hazel's frank presence. Outwardly there was little change in the bearings of the two women; it was only in feminine pinpricks and things implied that Mrs. Marston showed her anger and Hazel her dislike, and it was when he was out that Martha spoke so repeatedly and emphatically of being respectable. His coming into the house brought an armoured peace, but no sooner was he outside the door than the guns were unmasked again. Hazel wished more and more that she had stayed at Undern. She found a man's roughness preferable to women's velvet slaps, his most masterful demands less wearing than their silent criticism. At Undern she could not call her physical self her own. Here, her heart and mind were attacked. She could not explain to Mrs. Marston that something had made her go. Mrs. Marston would simply have said 'Fiddlesticks!' She could not explain that Reddin's touch drugged her. If Mrs. Marston had ever been made to feel that madness of passivity-- which seemed impossible, so that Edward's existence was a paradox--she had long since forgotten it. Besides, Hazel had no words in which to express these things; she was not even clear about them herself. She never tried to explain anything to Edward. She dreaded his anger, and she felt that only by complete silence could she keep the look of loving reverence in his eyes. She understood how very differently Reddin looked at her. It did not matter with him, but Edward--it was everything to her in Edward. Only once there had been a keen look of criticism in Edward's eyes, and her heart had fluttered. Edward said: 'Why, when you were dragged to Undern against your will, did you wear the man's gown? It wasn't dignified. And why did you cry out on him not to shame you? He could not shame you. You had done nothing wrong.' 'He said such awful things, Ed'ard, and the dress--the dress was so pretty.' 'You poor child! you dear little one! So it was a pretty colour, was it?' 'Ah!' 'You shall have one like it.' He went off whistling. * * * * * It was when she had been back nearly six weeks, and the August days were scorching the Mountain, that the strain became unbearable. She was not feeling well. Reddin had made no sign. This had at first calmed her, then piqued her; now it hurt her. Mysteriously she felt that she must be with him. 'He'm that proud, he'd ne'er ask me to go back. And if I went, there'd be no peace. Oh, Jack Reddin, Jack Reddin! You've put a spell on me! There inna much peace, days, nor much rest, nights, in your dark house. And yet--' Yet, whenever she went for a walk, she felt her feet taking her towards Undern. Then, quite suddenly, one morning Reddin rode past the house. Mrs. Marston saw him. 'Edward must know of this,' she said, very much flustered. 'You ought to go away somewhere, Hazel.' 'Away? Why ever?' 'Out of temptation. Why not to your aunt's?' 'Aunt Prowde wouldna have me. And Ed'ard wouldna like me to go.' 'Edward, I am sure, thinks as I do.' 'Gospel?' 'Do not be irreverent.' 'I dunna think you know what Ed'ard thinks as well as me.' 'Don't say "dunna," Hazel. Of course, I know what Edward thinks a great deal better than you. I've known him all his life.' Afterwards, when Mrs. Marston was not in the room, Martha said in her contemptuous tones: 'I s'pose you know, Mrs. Ed'ard, how he's going on?' 'Who?' 'Why, that Mr. Reddin.' 'What's he done?' 'Oh, I know! But I wouldn't soil me mouth, only I'm thinking you'd ought to know.' She looked triumphant. 'He's after that there Sally something as lives nearby. They do say as all her brats be his.' 'Mr. Reddin's? Is he--like--married to her, Martha?' 'About as much as he was to you, I reckon!' 'And does she--live there now?' 'I dunno.' 'Is she pretty?' 'It inna allus the prettiest as get lovers.' 'But is she prettier than me?' 'I've heard she's bigger and finer.' 'But she hanna got abron hair?' 'How should I know?' This was desolate news to Hazel; for Reddin, now that she was going to bear his child, had become necessary to her. She was unconscious of the reason of this need--not a spiritual one, but purely physiological. She did not hate him for this news. Such hatred is abnormal. Nor did she love him. That would have been still more abnormal. But she must be in his house; she must sew for him, share his daily doings, sleep in the big four-poster, and not in the small virginal bed at the Mountain. It would be grievous to leave Edward. He was the shelter between her flickering spirit and the storms of life. She had hesitated, putting off the inevitable, feeling that Undern was always there, like an empty room, for her re-entry, so she had not hurried. Now the room was occupied, her place taken. Immediately she felt that she must go. Feverishly she decided to go this very night and peer in (no one but herself had ever drawn the blinds at Undern of late years) and see for herself. Mrs. Marston and Martha both seemed to be pushing her over the brink. When, after tea, she crept from the house, she was crying--crying at leaving Edward, the master and the comrade of her unknown self. It was as if she gave up immortality. Yet she was relieved to be going--that is, if she could stay at Undern. Both her tears and her relief were natural. The pity was that body and soul had been put in opposition by belonging to different men. She left a little blotted note for Edward. 'Dunna think too bad of me, Ed'ard. I be bound to go to Undern and live; I ud liefer bide along of you.' She went through the shadow-sweet meadows where birds hopped out across green stretches in the cool, the high corn that had once been her comrade, the honeysuckle hedges that used to bring so childish a glee. They wore an air of things estranged and critical. All was so sad, like a dear friend with an altered countenance. She was an exile even in the seeing and hearing. It was strange to her as a town under the tides. There it was, clear and belfried as of old, but fathoms deep, and the bells had so faint a chime that Reddin's voice drowned them. She was turned out of the Eden of the past that she had known in wood and meadow. She was denied the Eden of the future that she might have had in Edward's love. She had the present--Reddin--unless the other woman had robbed her of him also. She sat down in the heavy shadows of the trees at the far side of Undern Pool. The water looked cold and ghastly even on this golden day. She watched the wagtails strut magisterially, the moorhens with the worried air of overworked charwomen, all the mysterious evening life of a summer pool, but she had no smile for them to-day. The swallows slid and circled across the water; their silence was no longer intimate, but alien. She looked across at Undern. There were roses everywhere, but the house had so strong a faculty for imposing its personality that it gave to the red roses and the masses of traveller's joy that frothed over it a deep sadness, as if they had blown and dropped long since and were but memoried flowers. The shadows of swallows came and went on the white western wall, and smoke stood up blue and straight from Vessons' kitchen fire. She watched the cows go down the green lane, and the shadows go over the meadows in triumphal state. When all was shadow, and the sky was as suddenly vacant of swallows as at dawn it had been full of them, she went stealthily towards the house. A light appeared in the parlour. She came close up and looked in. Reddin was in the easy chair, reading the paper, a pipe in the corner of his mouth. No one else was there. 'Jack Reddin!' she said. 'Hullo!' He turned. 'So you've come? I thought you'd have come long ago.' That was all he said. But she assured herself that he was glad she had come, because he shouted to Vessons for tea. She was certain he was glad to see her. Yet there was something vaguely insolent in his manner. He was a man who must never be sure of a woman. The moment she committed herself for him and was at a disadvantage he despised her. 'Come over here!' he said. 'There! I suppose you've forgotten what it's like to be kissed, eh? And to live with a man? You can never go away again now.' 'Why?' 'Well, you are a simpleton! D'you think he'd have you back after this? The first time it was my fault, he thinks; but the second! It won't wash.' He laughed. 'This time's your fault as much as the other. You made me come both times. There's Vessons! Leave me get up.' 'No. Why should I?' Vessons entered. 'This 'ere game of tether-ball,' he said, 'fair makes me giddy.' 'Jack,' said Hazel when he had gone, 'Martha said there was a woman here.' 'Martha's a liar.' 'Hanna there bin?' 'No. Never anyone but you.' 'Hanna you bin fond of anyone?' 'Only you.' 'She said there was a woman as had a lot of little children, as was yours.' 'Damn her!' 'And I thought she's ought to live along of you, and to be married-like, and wear the green dress.' 'No one shall wear that but you, nor have my children but you.' She was, as he had calculated, entirely overwhelmed, and so startled that she forgot to question him any more. 'Oh, no,' she said; 'that'll never be.' He raised his eyebrows at her extraordinary denseness, but he judged it best to say no more. He must get rid of Sally. He supposed she would make him pay heavily. He was sick of the sight of her and the children. They were not nice children. He looked at Hazel contemplatively. If his conjecture was right, he would have to try and legalize things during the next few months. He badly wanted a son--born in wedlock. He would have to go and beg the parson to divorce her. It would be detestable, but it would have to be done. He would wait and see. Meanwhile, Vessons also made plans, his obstinate mouth and pear-shaped face more dour than ever. Hazel had a letter from Edward in the morning; it was very short. She could not tell what he thought of her. He only said that if she ever wanted help she was to come to him. She cried over it, and hid it away. She knew how well Edward would have looked as he wrote it. She knew he would be grieved. She had not the slightest idea that he would be utterly overwhelmed and wrecked. She had not the least notion how he felt for her. She was very glad to be away from Mrs. Marston and Martha. She found this household of two men a great rest after the two women, although Vessons did not relax his disapproval. If it had not been for her passionate spiritual longing for Edward, she would have been happy, for the deep law of her being was now fulfilled in thus returning to Reddin. He, for his part, liked to see her about. Roses appeared in the rooms; it was strange to him, who had never had a woman in his house, to find his bedroom scented with flowers. He liked to watch her doing her hair. He always pretended to be asleep in the morning, so that she should get up first--shyly anxious to be dressed before he awoke. So morning after morning he would watch her through his eyelashes. He never felt that, as she obviously wished for privacy, he was mean or indelicate. 'I've got a right to. She's mine,' was his idea. It was not till a week after Hazel's coming that Reddin pulled himself together, and went to interview Sally Haggard. Vessons, observing the fact, repaired to Sally's cottage on his master's return, and found her in tears. To see this heavy-browed, big-boned woman crying so startled him that he contemplated her in silence. 'Well, fool, can't you speak?' she said. 'I dare say now as he wants you to move on?' queried Vessons. 'Ah.' 'Because of this other young 'ooman he's brought?' 'Ah, what's the good o' mouthing it? I bin faithful to 'im; I hanna gone with others. All the chillun's his'n. And never come near me, he didna, when my time come. And now it's "go!"' She broke out crying again. 'What I come for was to show you a way to make her go. If I tell you, you mun swear never to come and live at Undern.' ''Struth I will!' 'Well, then, just you come and see 'er some time when the master's away. And bring the chillun.' 'Thank you kindly.' 'Not till I say the word, though! I wunna risk it till he's off for the day. If he found me out, it'd be notice. Eh, missus, he's like a lad with his first white mouse! And the parson! Laws, they'm two thrussels wi' one worm, and no mistake.' 'And yet she's only a bit of a thing, you tell me?' 'Ah! But she'm all on wires, to and agen like a canbottle.' 'Why canna she bide with the minister?' 'Lord only knows! It's for 'er good, and for the maister's and yours, not to speak of mine. It's werrit, werrit, all the while, missus, and the fingers in the tea-caddy the day long! It's Andrew this and Andrew that, and a terrible strong smell of flowers--enough for a burying.' * * * * * Vessons waited eagerly for his opportunity; but Reddin was afraid to leave Hazel alone, in case she might see Sally; so September came and drew out its shining span of days, and still Vessons and Sally were waiting. Chapter 32 Morning by morning Hazel watched the fuchsia bushes, set with small red flowers, purple-cupped, with crimson stamens, sway in beautiful abandon. The great black bees pulled at them like a calf at its mother. Their weight dragged the slender drooping branches almost to the earth. So the rich pageantry of beauty, the honeyed silent lives went on, and would go on, it seemed for ever. And then one morning all was over; one of Undern's hard early frosts took then all--the waxen red-pointed buds, the waxen purple cups, the red-veined leaves. The bees were away, and Hazel, seeking them, found a few half alive in sheltered crevices, and many frozen stiff. She put those that were still alive in a little box near the parlour fire. Soon a low delighted humming began as they one by one recovered and set off to explore the ceiling. Into this contented buzzing came Reddin, who had just been again to Sally's, and was much put out by her refusal to go away before November. 'What the h--- is all this humming?' he asked. 'It's bees. I've fetched 'em in to see good times a bit afore they die.' 'What a child's trick!' he said, fending off an inquiring bee. 'Why, they'll stay here all winter! We shall get stung.' Then he saw the hospital full of bees by the fire. 'More?' he said. 'Good Lord!' He threw the box into the fire. Hazel was silent with horror. At last she gasped: 'I was mothering 'em!' 'You're very keen on mothering! Wouldn't you like a kid to mother?' 'No. I'd liefer mother the bees and foxes as none takes thought on. I dunna like babies much--all bald and wrinkly. Martha said as having 'em made folk pray to die, but as it was worth anything to get one. But I dunna think so. I think they'm ugly. I seed one in a pram outside that cottage in the Hollow' (Reddin jumped), 'and it was uglier than a pig. I think you're a cruel beast, Jack Reddin, to burn my bees, and they so comforble, knowing I was taking care on 'em.' She would not speak to him for the rest of the day. He was so bored in the evening that he went out and demanded a boxful of bees from Vessons. 'The missus wants 'em,' he said sheepishly. Vessons was prepared to be pleasant in small matters. He fetched some from the hive. ''Ere you are,' he said patronizingly; 'but you munna be always coming to me after 'em.' He was oblivious of the fact that they were Reddin's bees. Reddin presented them. 'There,' he said gruffly; 'now you can be civil again.' 'But these be hive-bees!' said Hazel, 'and they was comforble to begin with! I dunna want that sort. I wanted miserable uns!' 'Hang it! how could I know?' asked Reddin irritably. 'No. I suppose you couldna,' said Hazel; 'you'm terrible stupid, Jack Reddin!' So life went on at Undern, and Hazel adapted herself to it as well as she could. It was strange that the longer she lived there the more she thought of Edward. She always saw his face lined with grief and very pale, not tanned and ruddy with fresh air as she had known it. It was as if his mentality reached across the valley to hers and laid its melancholy upon her. Sometimes she was very homesick for Foxy, but she would not have her at Undern. She did not trust the place. She never went out anywhere, for people stared, and when Reddin, with some difficulty, persuaded her to amble round the fields with him on a pony he picked up cheap for her, she always wanted to keep in his own fields. It was not until nearly the end of October that Vessons got his chance. Reddin had to go to a very important fair. He wanted Hazel to go with him, but she said she was tired, and, guessing the reason, he immediately gave in. In spite of Vessons' earnest desire to get him off, he started late. He galloped most of the way, determined to get in early. He liked coming home to tea and seeing Hazel awaiting him in the firelight. As soon as she had gone, Vessons set out for Sally's, anxious that she should be quick. But Sally would not hurry. It was washing-day, and she also insisted on making all the children very smart, unaware that their extreme ugliness was her strength. It was not till three o'clock that she arrived at the front door, baby in arms, the four children, heavily expectant, at her heels, and Vessons stage-managing in the background. Hazel had been looking at two of the only books at Undern-'The Horse' and 'The Dog,' illustrated. Vessons had views about books. He considered them useful in their place. 'There's nought like a book,' he would say, 'one of these 'ere big fat novels or a book of sermons, to get a nice red gledy fire. A book at the front and a bit of slack behind, and there you are!' There the books were, too. So Hazel looked at the 'Book of the Horse' until she knew all the pictures by heart. She had fallen asleep over it, and she jumped up in panic when Sally spoke. 'Who be you?' she asked in a frightened voice as they eyed her. 'I'm Sally Haggard and these be my children.' She surveyed them proudly. 'D'you notice that they favour anyone?' Hazel looked at them timidly. 'They favour you,' she said. 'Not Mr. Reddin?' 'Mr. Reddin?' 'Ah! They'd ought to. They'm his'n.' 'His'n?' 'Yes, parrot.' 'Be you the 'ooman as Martha said Jack lived along of?' 'He did live along of me.' 'Why, then, you'd ought to be Mrs. Reddin, and wear this gownd, and live at Undern,' said Hazel. 'Eh?' Sally was astonished. 'And he said there wunna any other but me.' Sally laughed. 'You believed that lie? You little softie!' Hazel looked at the children. 'Be they _all_ his'n?' she said. 'Every man-jack of 'em, and not so much as a thank you for me!' The children were ranged near their mother--on high chairs. They gaped at Hazel, sullen and critical. An irrepressible question broke from Hazel. 'What for did you have 'em?' Sally stared. 'What for?' she repeated. 'Surely to goodness, girl, you're not as innicent-like as that?' 'I ain't ever going to have any,' Hazel went on with great firmness, as she eyed the children. 'God above!' muttered Sally. 'He's fooled her worse'n me!' 'Come and look at the baby, my dear,' she said in a voice astonishingly soft. She looked at Hazel keenly. 'Dunna you know?' she asked. 'What?' 'As you're going to have a baby?' Hazel sprang up, all denial. But Sally, having told the children to play, spoke for a long time in a low tone, and finally convinced a white, sick, trembling Hazel of the fact. Not being sensitive herself, she did not realize the ghastly terror caused by her lurid details of the coming event. Hazel looked so ill that Sally tried to administer consolation. 'Maybe it'll be a boy, and you'll be fine and pleased to see 'un growing a fine tall man like Reddin.' Hazel burst into tears, so that the children stopped their play to watch and laugh. 'But I dunna want it to grow up like Jack,' she said. 'I want it to grow up like Ed'ard, and none else!' 'Well! You _are_ a queer girl. If you like him as you call Ed'ard what for did you take up with Jack?' 'I dunno.' 'Well, the best you can do,' said Sally, 'is to go back to your Edward, lithermonsload and all. And if he wunna take you--' 'Eh, but he will!' A wonderful tender smile broke on Hazel's face. 'He'll come to the front door and pull me in and say, "Come in little Hazel, and get a cup of tea." And it'll be all the same as it was used to be.' 'Well, he must be a fool! But so much the better for you. If I was you, I'd go right back to-neet. Now what's you say to a cup o' tea? I'm thinking it's high time I took a bite and sup in this parlour!' They got tea; and Vessons, hovering in the yard, was in despair. He could not appear, for Hazel must not know his part in the affair. 'Laws! If they've begun on tea, it's all up with Andrew,' he remarked to the swan in passing. Dusk came on and still no Sally appeared. The two chimneys smoked hospitably, and he wanted his tea. He was a very miserable old man. He repaired to the farthest corner of the domain and began to cut a hedge, watching the field track. Soon Reddin appeared, and Vessons was unable to repress a chuckle. 'Rather 'im than me!' he said. Reddin, having fruitlessly shouted for Vessons, took the cob round to the yard himself. Then he went in. As he entered the parlour, aware of a comfortable scent of tea and toast, he met the solemn gaze of seven pairs of eyes, and for a moment he was, for all his tough skin, really staggered. Then he advanced upon Sally with his stock firmly grasped in his hand. 'Get out of this!' he said. The baby set up a yell. Sally rose and stood with her arm raised to fend off the blow. 'Jack,' said Hazel, 'she'm got the best right to be at Undern. Leave her stay! She'm a right nice 'ooman.' Reddin gasped. Why would Hazel always do and say exactly the opposite to what he expected? 'But you're the last person--' he began. 'You're thinking she'd ought to be jealous of me, Jack Reddin,' said Sally. 'But we'm neither of us jealous! I tell you straight! She's too good for you. You've lied to me; I'm used to it. Now you'm lied to her--the poor innicent little thing!' 'What for did you tell me lies, Jack?' asked Hazel. What with the unfaltering gaze of the two women, and the unceasing howls of the baby, Reddin was completely routed. 'Oh, damn you all!' he said, and went hot-foot in a towering passion to look for Vessons. A man to rage at would be a very great luxury. Having at last found Vessons, harmlessly hedge-brushing, he was rather at a loss. 'How dare you let Sally in?' he began. 'Sally?' 'Yes. Why the h-- did you come away here and leave the house?' 'The 'edge wanted doing.' His tone was so innocent that Reddin was suspicious. 'You didn't bring her yourself, did you?' 'Now, _is_ it me,' said Vessons, reasonable but hurt, 'as generally brings these packs of unruly women to Undern?' 'I believe you're lying, Vessons.' Vessons opened his mouth to say, 'Notice is giv''; but seeing that in his master's present mood it might be accepted, he closed it again. When Reddin went in, Sally was gone, and Hazel, much as usual, ministered to his comfort. The only signs of the recent tumult were the constrained silence and the array of cups and plates. 'You'd better understand once and for all,' he said at last, 'that I'll never have that woman here.' 'Not if I went?' 'Never! I'd kill her first.' 'What for did you tell me lies?' 'Because you were so pretty and I wanted you.' The flattery fell on deaf ears. 'Them chillun's terrible ugly,' said Hazel wearily. Reddin came over to her. 'But yours'll be pretty!' he said. 'Dunna come nigh me!' cried Hazel fiercely. 'She says I'm going to have a little 'un! It was a sneak's trick, that; and you're a cruel beast, Jack Reddin, to burn my bees and kill the rabbits and make me have a little 'un unbeknown.' 'But it's what all women expect!' 'You'd ought to have told me. She says it's mortal pain to have a baby, and I'm feared--I'm feared!' 'Hazel,' he said humbly, 'I may as well tell you now that I mean to marry you. The parson must divorce you. Then we'll be married. And I'll turn over a new leaf.' 'I'll ne'er marry you!' said Hazel, 'not till Doom breaks. I dunna like you. I like Ed'ard. And if I mun have a baby, I'd lief it was like Ed'ard, and not like you.' With that she went out of the room, and he noticed that she was wearing the dress she had come in, and not the silk. He sat by the fire, brooding; but at last managed to cheer himself by the thought that she would get over it in time. She was naturally upset by Sally just now. 'And, of course, the parson'll never take her back, nor her father,' he reflected. 'Yes, it'll all come right.' He was upheld in this by the fact that Hazel's manner next day was much as usual, only rather quiet. Chapter 33 It was the night of the great storm. Undern rattled and groaned; its fireless chimneys roared, and doors in unused passages banged so often that the house took on an air of being inhabited. It seemed as if all the people that had ever lived here had come back, ignoring in their mournful dignity of eternal death these momentary wraiths of life. Hazel had always been afraid of the place, and had sat up until Reddin wanted to go to bed, so that she need not traverse the long passages alone. But to-night she was afraid of Reddin also--not just a little afraid, as she had always been, but full of unreasoning terror. All things were confused in her mind, like the sounds that were in the wind; Reddin's face, distorted with rage, as he advanced on Sally with his arm raised; the howling of the baby; the sound of her bees burning--going off like apple-pips. A scene came back to her from the week before--it seemed years ago. They had gone into the harvest-field after a hot, yellow day haunted by the sound of cutting. Only a small square of orange wheat was left; the rest of the field lay in the pale disorder of destruction. The two great horses stood at one corner, darkly shining in the level light. The men who had been tying sheaves stood about, some women and children were coming over the stubble, and several dogs lay in the shadow. They all seemed to be waiting. They were, in fact, waiting for Reddin, who was always present at the dramatic finish of a field. Hazel knew what drama was to be enacted; knew what the knobbled sticks were for; knew who crouched in the tall, kindly wheat, palpitant, unaware that escape was impossible. 'Plenty o' conies, sir!' called one of the men, whose face was a good deal more brutal than that of his mongrel dog. Hazel knew that the small square must be packed with rabbits, stark-eyed and still as death, who had, with a fated foolishness, drawn in from the outer portions of the field all day as the reaper went round. 'Jack,' she said, 'I hanna asked for a present ever.' 'No. You didn't want the bracelets, you silly girl.' 'I want one now.' 'You do, do you?' 'Ah! If you'll give it me, Jack, I'll do aught you want. What'd you like best in the 'orld?' He considered. He was feeling very fit and almost too much alive. 'Hunter's Spinney over again--up to when we got so gloomy.' Hazel never wanted to think of that night, nor see the Spinney again. There had been many times since, in the grey-tinted room, that had been nearly as bad. But for evoking a shuddering, startled horror in her mind, nothing came up to that Sunday night. The reaper was moving again. Soon the rabbits would begin to bolt. 'I'll do ought and go anywhere if you'll do this as I want, Jack.' 'Well?' 'Call 'em off! Leave the last bit till morning. Let 'em creep away in the dark and keep living a bit longer!' 'What nonsense!' 'Call 'em off, Jack! You can. You'm maister!' 'No.' She sobbed. 'I be going, then.' 'No. You're to stay. You'll have to be cured of this damned silliness, and learn to be sensible.' While she struggled to wrench herself free, two rabbits bolted, and hell broke loose. One would not have thought that the great calm evening under its stooping sky, the peaceful, omniscient trees, the grave, contented colours, could have tolerated such hideousness. The women and children shrieked with the best, and Hazel stood alone--the single representative, in a callous world, of God. Or was the world His representative, and she something alien, a dissentient voice to be silenced? Such scenes, infinitely multiplied, bring that question to one's mind. A rabbit had dashed across the field close to them, and Reddin, relaxing his grip of her, had slashed at it with his stick. The look of its eye, white and staring, as it fled past her with insensate speed, came back to her now, and its convulsive roll over and recovery under the blow; and then the next blow--She had fled from the place. She thought again of what Sally had said, and a deep, smouldering rage was in her at this that he had done to her--this torture to which, according to Sally, he had quite consciously condemned her. Now that she knew him better, his daily acts of callousness tormented her. She would go. She was not wanted here. Sally had said so. There had been letters from her aunt, from Reddin's vicar, from the eldest Miss Clomber. In them all she was spoken of as the culprit for being at Undern. Well, she did not want to be at Undern. She would go. 'Well, Hazel, child, what's the matter?' asked Reddin, looking up from doing his quarterly accounts. 'Haven't you got a stocking to mend or a hair-ribbon to make?' 'A many and a many things be the matter.' 'Come here, and I'll see if I can put 'em right.' 'Harkee!' she said suddenly. 'It's like as if the jeath-pack was i' full cry down the wind.' 'Anyone would think you were off your head, Hazel. But come and tell me about the things that are the matter.' 'It's you as makes 'em the matter.' 'Oh, well, sulk as long as you like.' He returned angrily to his accounts. In the kitchen Vessons, very spondaic, was singing 'The Three Jolly Huntsmen.' In a few minutes Hazel rose and lit a candle. She looked, as she walked to the door in her limp muslin dress, like the spectre of some unhappy creature of the past. 'Where are you going?' asked Reddin. 'I thought to go to bed.' 'I'm not ready.' 'I'll go by my lonesome.' 'All right, sulk! It doesn't hurt me.' But it did hurt him. He wanted her to be fond of him, to cling to him. When at last he went up through the screaming house, he thought she was asleep. She lay still in the big bed and made no sign. Reddin was soon snoring, for accounts implied a strenuous intellectual effort. He would have left them to Vessons, but Vessons always had to notch sticks when he did them, and the manual labour ensuing on any accounts running into pounds would have seriously interfered with his other work. The cheese fair accounts usually took a long time. He could be heard saying in a stupendous voice, 'One and one and one--' until the chant ended in, 'Drat it! what _do_ 'em maken?' So Reddin did the accounts and slept the sleep of the intellectual worker afterwards. Hazel looked out from the tent of the bed canopy into the dark, creaking room and the darker, roaring night. She grew more afraid of Reddin and Undern as the hours dragged on. Reddin's presence tore to pieces the things she loved--delicate leafy things--as if they were tissue-paper and he had walked through it. Her pleasures seemed to mean nothing when he was with her and before his loud laughter her wonderful faery-haunted days shrivelled. All she knew was that, now she lived at Undern, she never went out in the green dawn or came home wreathed in pansy and wild snapdragon. Reddin had imposed a deeper change on her than the change from maid to wife. He had robbed her of a thing frailer and rarer than maidenhood--the sacramental love of Nature. It is only the fairest, the highest and fullest matings that do not rob the soul of this, even when it is an old tried joy. He had wronged her as deeply as one human being can wrong another. His theft was cruel as that of one who destroys a man's God. And the strange part of it was that never, as long as he lived, would he know that he had done so, or even guess that there had been any treasure to rifle. He would probably, as an old man, long past desire, repent of the physical part of the affair. Yet this was so much the lesser of the two. Indeed, if he had been able to win her love, it would have been, not wrong-doing, but righteousness. That a woman should, in the evolution of life, cease to be a virgin and become a mother is a thing so natural and so purely physical as hardly to need comment; but that the immortal part of her should be robbed, that she should cease to be part of an entity in a world where personality is the only rare and precious thing--this is tragic. Reddin could not help his over-virility, nor could he help having the insensitive nature that could enjoy the physical side of sex without the spiritual; probably he could not help being the kind of man that supplies the most rabid imperialists, reactionaries, materialists. (He always spoke of the heathen Chinee, lower orders, beastly foreigners, mad fanatics, and silly sentimentalists, these last being those who showed any kind of mercy.) It seemed that he could not help seeing nothing outside his own narrow views. But it did seem a pity that he never tried to alter in the least. It did seem a pity that, after so many centuries, so many matings and births, all his emblazoned and crested ancestors should have produced merely--Reddin, a person exactly like themselves. * * * * * Rain rustled on the window and the wind roared in the elms. The trees round Undern Pool stooped and swung in the attitude of mowers. Hazel knew that the Mountain would be even wilder to-night. Yet the Mountain shone in paradisic colours--her little garden; her knitting; the quiet Sundays; the nightly prayers; above all, Edward's presence, in the aura of which no harm could come--for all these things she passionately longed. They were not home as the wild was, but they were a haven. They were not ecstasy, but they were peace. In her revulsion from Reddin and her terror of Undern, she forgot everything except the sense of protection that Edward gave her. She forgot Mrs. Marston's silent, crushing criticism and Martha's rude righteousness. She forgot that she had sinned against the Mountain so deeply that the old life could never return. She remembered it as on the night of her wedding--the primroses, red and white and lilac; the soothing smell of the clean sheets, that made her feel religious; the reassuring tick of the wall clock; Mrs. Marston's sliding tread; Foxy and the rabbit, the blackbird, and the one-eyed cat. She struck a match softly and crept across the room to the old mahogany tallboy. From beneath a drawerful of clothes she took out Edward's letter. She read it slowly, for she was, as Abel said, no scholar. Edward wanted her, that was quite clear. Comfort flowed from the half-dozen lines. The ethics of the thing held no place in her mind. She was not made for the comforts or the duties of social life, and it was not in her-nor would it have been, however she had been educated--to consider what effect her actions might have on the race. Humanity did not interest her. The ever-circling wheels of birth, mating, death, so all-absorbing to most women, were nothing to her. Freedom, green ways, childlike pleasures of ferny, mossy discoveries, the absence of hunger or pain, and the presence of Foxy and other salvage of her great pity--these were the great realities. She had a deeper fear than most people of death and any kind of violence or pain for herself or her following. Her idea of God had always been shadowy, but it now took shape as a kind of omnipotent Edward. When she had read the letter, she went to the window. A tortured dawn crept up the sky. Vast black clouds, shaped like anvils for some terrific smithy-work, were ranged round the horizon, and, later, the east glowed like a forge. The gale had not abated, but was rising in a series of gusts, each one a blizzard. Hazel was not afraid of it, or of the shrieking woods. The wind had always been her playmate. The wide plain that lay before the Undern windows was shrouded in rain--not falling, but driving. Willows, comely in the evening with the pale gold of autumn, had been stripped in a moment like prisoners of a savage conqueror for sacrifice. The air was full of leaves, whirling, boiling, as in a cauldron. From every field and covert, from the lone hill-tracts behind the house, from garden and orchard, came the wail of the vanquished. Even as she watched, one of the elms by the pool fell with a grinding crash. Reddin stirred in his sleep and muttered restlessly. She waited, frozen with suspense, until he was quiet again. She could hear the hound baying, terrified at the noise of the tree. She dressed hurriedly, crept downstairs and went out by the back way, leaving the house, with its watchful windows, its ancient quiet which was not peace, and the grey, flapping curtains of the rain closed in behind her. She found a little shelter in the deep lanes, but when she came to the woods leading up to the Mountain the wind was reaping them like corn. Larches lay like spellicans one on another. Some leant against those that were yet standing, and in the tops of these last there was a roaring like an incoming tide on rocks. Crackings and groanings, sudden crashes, loud reports like gun-fire, were all about her as she climbed--a tiny figure in chaos. When she came to the graveyard, havoc was there also. Several crosses had fallen, and were smashed; the laburnum-tree, rich with grey seed-vessels, lay prone, and in its fall it had carried half the tomb away with it, so that it yawned darkly, but not as a grave from which one has risen from the dead. A headstone lay in the path, and the text, 'In sure and certain hope of the resurrection,' was half obliterated. Hazel crept into the porch of the chapel to shelter, utterly exhausted. She went to sleep, and was awakened by the breakfast bell. She went to the front door and knocked. Chapter 34 Edward, coming downstairs, felt such a rush of joy and youth at sight of her that he was obliged to stand still and remember that joy and youth were not for him, that his only love had gone of her own will to another man, and must be to him now only a poor waif sheltered for pity. He was very much altered. His face frightened Hazel. 'Have you come to stay, Hazel, or only for a visit?' he asked. 'Oh, dunna look at me the like o' that, and dunna talk so stern, Ed'ard!' 'I wasn't aware that I was stern.' Edward's face was white. He looked down at her with an expression she could not gauge. For there, had come upon him, seeing her there again, so sweet in her dishevelment, so enchanting in her suppliance, the same temptation that tormented him on his wedding-day. Only now he resisted it for a different reason. Hazel, his Hazel, was no fit mate for him. The words flamed in his brain; then fiercely, he denied them. He would not believe it. Circumstance, Hazel, his mother, even God might shout the lie at him. Still, he would not believe. But he must have it out with her. He must know. 'Hazel,' he said, 'after breakfast I want you to come with me up the Mountain.' 'Yes, Ed'ard,' she said obediently. She adored his sternness. She adored his look of weariness. She longed hopefully and passionately for his touch. For now, when it was too late, she loved him--not with any love of earth; that was spoilt for her--but with a grave amorousness kin to that of the Saints, the passion that the Magdalen might have felt for Christ. The earthly love should have been Edward's, too, and would have run in the footsteps of the other love, like a young creature after its mother. But Reddin had intervened. 'First,' Edward said, 'you must have some food and a cup of tea.' He never wavered in tenderness to her. But she noticed that he did not say 'dear,' nor did he, bringing her in, take her hand. Breakfast was an agony to Edward, for his mother, who had from the first treated Hazel with silent contempt as a sinner, now stood, on entering with the toast, and said: 'I will not eat with that woman.' 'Mother!' 'If you bring that woman here, I will be no mother to you.' 'Mother! For my sake!' 'She is a wicked woman,' went on Mrs. Marston, in a calm but terrible voice; 'she is an adulteress.' Edward sprang up. 'How dare you!' he said. 'Are you going to turn her out, Edward?' 'No.' 'Eddie! my little lad!' Her voice shook. 'No.' 'My boy that I lay in pain for, two days and a night, to bring you into the world!' Edward covered his face with his hands. 'You will put me before--her?' 'No, mother.' 'You were breast-fed, Eddie, though I was very weak.' There was a little silence. Edward buried his face in his arms. 'Right is on my side, Edward, and what I wish is God's will. You will put duty first?' 'No. Love.' 'I am getting old, dear. I have not many more years. She has all a lifetime. You will put me first?' He lifted his head. He looked aged and worn. 'No! And again no!' he said. 'Stop torturing me, mother!' Mrs. Marston turned without a word to go out. Hazel sprang up, breaking into a passion of tears. 'Oh, let me go!' she cried. 'I'll go away and away! What for did you fetch me from the Calla? None wants me. I wunna miserable at the Calla. Let me go!' She stared at Mrs. Marston with terrified eyes. 'She's as awful as death,' she said, 'the old lady. As awful as Mr. Reddin when he's loving. I'm feared, Ed'ard! I'd liefer go.' But Edward's arm was round her. His hand was on her trembling one. 'You shall not frighten my little one!' he said to his mother; and she went to the kitchen, where, frozen with grief, she remained all morning in a kind of torpor. Martha was afraid she would have a stroke. But she dared not speak to Edward, for, hovering in the passage, she had seen his face as he shut the door. He made Hazel eat and drink. Then they went out on the hill. 'Now, Hazel,' he said, 'we must have truth between us. Did you go with that man of your own will?' She was silent. 'You must have done, or why go a second time? Did you?' His eyes compelled her. She shivered. 'Yes, Ed'ard. But I didna want to. I didna!' 'How can both be true?' 'They be.' 'How did he compel you to go, then?' Hazel sought for an illustration. 'Like a jacksnipe fetches his mate out o' the grass,' she said. 'What did he say?' 'Nought.' 'Then how--?' 'There's things harder than words; words be nought.' 'Go on.' 'It was like as if there was a secret atween us, and I'd got to find it out. Dunna look so fierce, Ed'ard!' 'Did you find out?' A tide of painful red surged over Hazel; she turned away. But Edward, rendered pitiless by pain, forcibly pulled her back, and made her look at him. 'Did you find out?' he repeated. 'There inna no more,' she whispered. 'Then it is true what he said, that you were his from head to foot?' 'Oh, Ed'ard, let me be! I canna bear it!' 'I wish I could have killed him!' Edward said. 'Then you were his--soul and body?' 'Not soul!' 'You told a good many lies.' 'Oh, Ed'ard, speak kind!' 'What a fool I was! You must have detested me for interrupting the honeymoon. Of course you went back! What a fool I was! And I thought you were pure as an angel.' 'I couldna help it, Ed'ard; the signs said go, and then he threw me in the bracken.' Something broke in Edward's mind. The control of a life-time went from him. 'Why didn't I?' he cried. 'Why didn't I? Good God! To think I suffered and renounced for this!' He laughed. 'And all so simple! Just throw you in the bracken.' She shuddered at the knife-edge in his voice, and also at the new realization that broke on her that Edward had it in him to be like Reddin. 'What for do you fritten me?' she whispered. 'But it's not too late,' Edward went on, and his face, that had been grey, flushed scarlet. 'No, it's not too late. I'm not particular. You're not new, but you'll do.' He crushed her to him and kissed her. 'I'm your husband,' he said, 'and from this day on I'll have my due. You've lied to me, been unfaithful to me, made me suffer because of your purity--and you had no purity. Tonight you sleep in my room; you've slept in his.' 'Oh, let me go, Ed'ard! let me go!' She was lost indeed now. For Edward, the righteous and the loving, was no more. Where should she flee? She did not know this man who held her in desperate embrace. He was more terrible to her than all the rest--more terrible, far, than Reddin--for Reddin had never been a god to her. 'I knelt by your bedside and fought my instincts, and they were good instincts. I had a right to them. I gave up more than you can ever guess.' 'I'm much obleeged, Ed'ard,' she said tremblingly. 'I've disgraced my calling, and I've this morning hurt my mother beyond healing.' 'I'd best be going, Ed'ard. The sun'll soon be undering.' The day blazed towards noon, but she felt the chill of darkness. 'And now,' Edward finished, 'that I have no mother, no self-respect, and no respect for you, I will at least have my pleasure and--my children. The words softened him a little. 'Hazel,' he said, 'I will forgive you for murdering my soul when you give me a son, I will almost believe in you again, next year--Hazel--' He knelt by her with his arms round her. She was astonished at the mastery of passion in him. She had never thought of him but as passionless. 'To-night,' he said, and tenderness crept back into his voice, 'is my bridal. There is no saving for me now in denial, only in fulfilment. I can forgive much, Hazel, for I love much. But I can't renounce any more.' Hazel had heard nothing of what he said since the words, 'when you give me a son.' They rang in her brain. She felt dazed. At last she looked up affrightedly. 'But,' she said, 'when I have the baby, it unna be yours, but his'n.' 'What?' 'It--it'll be his'n.' 'What?' He questioned foolishly, like a child. He could not understand. 'It's gone four month since midsummer,' she said, 'and Sally said I was wi' child of--of--' 'You need not go on, Hazel.' Edward's face looked pinched. The passion had gone, and a deathly look replaced it. He was robbed, utterly and cruelly. He could no longer believe in a God, or how could such things be? Manhood was denied him. The last torture was not denied him--namely, that he saw the full satire of his position, saw that it was his own love that had destroyed them both. Out of his complete ruin he arose joyless, hopeless, but great in a tenderness so vast and selfless that it almost took the place of what he had lost. Hazel was again his inspiration, not as an ideal, but as a waif. In his passion of pity for her he forgot everything. He had something to live for again. 'Poor child!' he said. 'Come home. I will take care of you.' 'But--the old lady?' 'You are first.' She caught his hands; she flung herself upon his shoulder in a rush of tears. If this was his tragic moment, it was also hers. 'Oh, Ed'ard, Ed'ard!' she cried, 'it's you as I'd lief have for my lover! It's you as I'm for, body and soul, if I'm for a mortal man! It's your baby as I want, Ed'ard, and I wouldna be feared o' the pain as Sally told of if it was yours. What for didna you tell me in the spring o' the year, Ed'ard? It be winter now, and late and cold.' 'There, there! you don't know what you're saying. Come home!' Edward did not listen to her, she knew. And, indeed, his brain was weary, and could take in no more. He only knew he must care for Hazel as Christ cared for the lambs of His fold. And darkly on his dark mind loomed his new and bitter creed, 'There is no Christ.' Chapter 35 Martha met them on the doorstep, crying, hiccoughing, and enraged. 'Why, Martha!' Edward looked at her in astonishment. It is usually the supers, and not the principals, that raise lamentation in the midst of tragedy--'why, Martha, have you lost someone dear to you?' He knew all about that loss. 'I've lost nought, sir; thank God my good name's my own, and not gone like some folk's; but I'm bound to give notice, sir, not having fault to find, being as good a master as ever stepped. But seeing the missus is going--' 'The missus?' 'Ah. The mother as God give you, sir, the very next time the trailer goes by, and the letter wrote and all. And when she goes, I go. For I've kep' myself respectable, and I'll serve no light woman, nor yet live in a house give over to sin.' Edward saw Martha in a new light, as he now saw all things. 'What a filthy mind you have, Martha!' he said in a strange, weary voice. 'The minds of all respectable people are obscene. You are a bad woman!' But Martha, setting up a shriek, had fled from the house. She told her brother that the master was mad, bewitched. She never entered the house again. Edward found his mother in the kitchen. 'Mother, you are not really going?' 'Yes, Edward, unless'--a flicker of hope lit her eyes--'unless you have sent her away.' 'Let me explain, mother. It is not as it seems in the world's eyes.' 'She is an adulteress. And you--oh, Edward, I thought you were a good man, like your father! Not even the common decency to wait till the other man's child is born. Why, the merest ploughman would do that!' If any face could have expressed despair, torture and horror, Edward's face did now. He looked at her for a long while, until she said: 'Don't fix your eyes so, Edward! What are you looking at?' 'The world. So that is what you think of me?' 'What else can I think? Why do you say "The world" so strangely?' 'The world!' he said again. 'A place of black mud and spawning creatures. No soul, no God, no grace. Nothing but lust and foul breath and evil thoughts.' 'I will not hear such talk. I will keep my room till I go.' Mrs. Marston rose and went upstairs. She would not have his arm. And though for the next two days he waited on her with his old tenderness, she barely spoke, and there was between them an estrangement wider than death. She prayed for him night and day, but not as one that had much hope. Meanwhile, Hazel managed the house. She put all her worship of Edward into it, all her passion of tenderness. And she, who had hitherto spoilt all the food she touched, now cooked almost with genius. She found an apron of Martha's and washed it; she read Mrs. Marston's receipts till her head ached; she walked over God's Little Mountain each day to buy dainties. When she asked Edward for money, he gave her the keys of his desk. Four times a day appetizing meals went up to Mrs. Marston, and were brought down again barely touched. Hazel ate them, for the urgent necessity of coming maternity was on her, and she would not waste Edward's money. Four times a day Edward's favourite dishes were set in the parlour by a bright hearth. Edward, as soon as Hazel had returned to the kitchen, threw them into the fire. It was Hazel who packed Mrs. Marston's boxes while the old lady slept, and made up the fire in her room in the middle of the night. Then, closing her own door, she would fling herself on her bed in passionate weeping as she thought what might have been if, when Edward had said, 'To-night is my bridal,' she had had a different reply to make. She knew that nothing except what she had said would have made any impression on Edward; she knew he would not have listened to her. She was glad to know this. The momentary fear of him was gone. All was right that he said and did. The whole love of her being was his now. He had filled the place of nature and joy and childish pleasures. She was not meant for human love. But through her grief she loved better than those that were meant for it. All the sweet instincts of love and wifehood; the beauty of passion; the pride of surrender; the forgetfulness of self that creates self; the crying of the spirit from its delicate marble minaret to the flesh in its grassy covert, and the wistful, ascending answer of flesh to spirit--all these were hers. And as she lay and wept, and remembered how many a time Edward had stood on her threshold and hastily, though gently, shut her door upon her, she realized what Edward meant to her, and what he was. Then she would rise and stand at her window, fingered and shaken by the autumn winds, and look up at the hard-eyed stars. 'If there's anybody there,' she would say, 'please let the time go quickly till the baby comes, and let Ed'ard have his bridal like he said, and see his little uns running up and down the batch.' And, looking round the room at all the signs of his love, she would suddenly find unbearable the innocent stare of the buttercups and daisies on the walls, and would bury her face, flushed red with fluttering possibilities of unearthly rapture. Then she would sleep and dream that once more Edward stood upon the threshold and kissed her and turned to his cold room; but she--she had made a noble fire in her little grate; and the room was full of primroses, red and white and lilac; and the wall-clock chimed instead of striking--an intoxicating fairy chime; and there were clear sheets as of old. She forgot her shyness; she forgot to be afraid of his criticism; she caught his hands. He turned. And at the marvel of his face she woke, trembling and happy. Mrs. Marston went without any farewell to Hazel. Edward carried her box down the quarry and helped her into the trailer. He stood and watched it bump away round the corner, Mrs. Marston sitting, as she had done on that bright May morning, majestic in her grape-trimmed hat and the mantle with the bugles. Her face and her attitude expressed the deep though unformulated conviction that God was 'not what He was.' Then he turned and went home, numb, without vitality or hope. A new Hazel met him on the threshold, no longer timorous, deprecating, awkward, but gravely and sweetly maternal. She led him in. Tea was laid with the meticulous reverence of a sacrament. 'Now draw your stockinged foot along the floor!' Hazel commanded. At this remembrance of his mother and at Hazel's careful love, he broke down and wept, his face in her lap. 'Now see!' she whispered. 'She'll come back, Ed'ard, when the anger's overpast.' 'The anger of good people is never overpast, Hazel.' 'See, I'll write her a letter, Ed'ard, and I'll say I'm a wicked girl, and she's to teach me better ways. She'll come like Foxy for bones, Ed'ard.' Comfort stole into Edward's heart. 'And see, my dear, I'll send his baby to him, and maybe, after--' She stumbled into silence. 'What, Hazel?' 'Maybe, Ed'ard, after--a long and long while after--' She began to cry, covering her face. 'Oh, what for canna you see, my soul,' she whispered, 'as I love you true?' Edward looked into her eyes, and he did see. Strangely as an old forgotten tale, there came to him the frail hope of the possibility of joy. And with it some faith, storm-tossed and faint, but still living, in Hazel's ultimate beauty and truth. He did not know this could be. He only knew it was so. He did not know how it was that she, whom all reviled, was pure and shining to him again, while the world grovelled in slime. But so it was. 'Harkee, Ed'ard!' she said; 'I'm agoing to mother you till she comes back. And some day, when you've bin so kind as to forgive me, maybe I unna be mother to you, but--anything you want me to be. And, maybe, there'll be a--a--bridal for you yet, my soul, and your little uns running down the batch.' 'Yes, maybe. But don't let's talk of such things yet, not for many years. They are so vile.' She was cut to the heart, but she only said softly: 'Not for many years, my soul! I'm mothering of you now!' 'That's what I want,' he said, and fell asleep while she stroked' his tired head. Peace settled again on the chapel and parsonage, and a muted happiness. Summer weather had returned for a fleeting interval. The wild bees were busy again revelling in the late flowers, but taking their pleasure sadly; for the flowers were pale and rain-washed, and the scent and the honey were fled. 'Eh! I wish I could bring 'em all in afore the frosses, and keep 'em the winter long,' Hazel said. 'But they've seen good times. It inna so bad for folks to die as have seen good times. Afore I'm old and like to die, I want to see good times, Ed'ard--good times along with you.' 'What sort of good times?' 'Oh, going out of a May morning, you and me--and maybe Foxy on a string--and looking nests, and us with cobwebs on our boots, and setting primmyroses, red and white and laylac, in my garden as you made, and then me cooking the breakfast, and you making the toast and burning it along of reading some hard book, and maybe us laughing over a bit o' fun. And then off to read to somebody ill, and me waiting outside, pleased as a queen, and hearkening to your voice coming quiet through the window. And picking laylac, evenings, and going after musherooms at the turn of the year. Them days be coming, Ed'ard, inna they? I dunna mind ought if I know they're coming.' 'Yes, perhaps they are,' he said, smiling a little at her simple hopes, and even beginning himself to see the possibility of a future for them. Two days went by in this calm way, for no one came near them, and while they were alone there was peace. They did not go beyond the garden, except when Hazel went to the shop. Edward did not go with her; he felt sensitive about meeting anyone. In the evenings, by the parlour fire, Edward read aloud to her. He did not, however, read prayers, and she wondered in silence at the change. She felt a great peace in these evenings, with Foxy on the hearthrug at her feet. They neither of them looked either backward or forward, but lived in the moated present, that turreted heaven whose defences so soon fall. On the third morning Reddin came. Hazel had gone to the shop, and, coming back, she had lingered a little to watch with a sense of old comradeship the swallows wheeling in hundreds about the quarry cliffs. Their breasts were dazzling in the clear hot air. They had no thought for her, being so filled with a rage of joy, dashing up and down the smooth white sides of the quarry, multiplied by their blue shadows. They would nestle in crevices, like bits of thistledown caught in a grass-tuft, and would there sun themselves and chirrup. So many hundreds were there, and their shadows so multiplied them, that they seemed less like birds than like some dream of a bird heaven--essential birdhood. They were so quick with life, so warm, with their red-splashed breasts and blue flashing bodies; they wove such a tireless, mazy pattern, like bobbins weaving invisible lace, that they put winter far off. They comforted Hazel inexpressibly. Yet to-morrow they would, in all likelihood, be gone, not even a shadow left. Hazel wished she could catch them as they swept by, their shining breasts brushing the grasses. She knew they were sacred birds, 'birds with forkit tails and fire on 'em.' If sacredness is in proportion to vitality and joy, Hazel and the swallow tribe should be red-letter saints. It was while she was away that Reddin knocked at the house door, and Edward answered the knock. Something in his look made Reddin speak fast. He had triumphed at their last encounter through muscle. Edward triumphed in this through despair. 'I felt I ought to come, Marston. As things are, the straight thing is for me to marry her--if you'll divorce her.' He looked at Edward questioningly, but Edward stared beyond him with a strange expression of utter nausea, hopeless loss, and loathing of all created things. Reddin went on: 'Her place is with me. It's my duty to look after her now, as it's my child she's going to have.' He could not resist this jibe of the virile to the non-virile. Besides, if he could make Marston angry, perhaps he would fight again, and fighting was so much better than this uncomfortable silence. 'I should naturally pay all expenses and maintenance wherever she was; I never mind paying for my pleasures.' Edward's eyes smouldered, but he said nothing. 'Of course, she can't _expect_ either of us to see to her in her position' (Edward clenched his hands), 'but I intend to do the decent thing. I'm never hard on a woman in that state; some fellows would be; but I've got a memory, hang it, and I'm grateful for favours received.' Why he should be at his very worst for Edward's benefit was not apparent, except that complete silence acts on the nerves, and nervousness brings out the real man. 'Well, think it over,' he concluded. 'You seem to be planning a sermon to-day. I shall be round here on Saturday--the meet's in the woods. I'll call then, and you can decide meanwhile. I don't mind whether she comes or not--at present. Later on, if I can't get on without her, I can no doubt persuade her to come again. But if you say divorce, I'll fetch her at once, and marry her as soon as you've got your decree. Damn you, Marston! Can't you speak? Could I say fairer than that, man to man?' Edward looked at him, and it was such a look that his face and ears reddened. 'You are not a man,' Edward said, with complete detachment; 'you are nothing but sex organs.' He went in and shut the door. Edward said nothing to Hazel of Reddin's visit. He forgot it himself when she came home; it slipped into the weary welter of life as he saw it now--all life, that is, other than Hazel's. Brutality, lust, cruelty--these summed up the world of good people and bad people. He rather preferred the bad ones; their eyes were less awful, and had less of the serpent's glitter and more of the monkey's leer. He did not shrink from Reddin as he shrank from his mother. Hazel came running to him through the graves. She had a little parcel specially tied up, and she wrote on it in the parlour with laborious love. It was tobacco. She had decided that he ought to smoke, because it would soothe him. They sat hand in hand by the fire that evening, and she told him of her aunt Prowde, and how she first came to know Reddin, and how he threatened to tell Edward of her first coming to Undern. She was astonished at the way his face lit up. 'Why didn't you tell me that before, dear? It alters everything. You did not go of your own choice at first, then. He had you in a snare.' 'Seems as if the world's nought but a snare, Ed'ard.' 'Yes. But I'm going to spend my life keeping you safe, little Hazel. I hope it won't make you unhappy to leave the Mountain?' 'Leave the Mountain?' 'Yes. I must give up the ministry.' 'Why ever?' 'Because I know now that Jesus Christ was not God, but only a brave, loving heart hunted to death.' 'Be that why you dunna say prayers now?' 'Yes. I can't take money for telling lies.' 'What'll you do if you inna a minister, Ed'ard?' 'Break stones--anything.' Hazel clapped her hands. 'Can I get a little 'ammer and break, too?' 'Some day. It will only be poor fare and a poor cottage, Hazel.' 'It'll be like heaven!' 'We shall be together, little one.' 'What for be your eyes wet, Ed'ard?' 'At the sweetness of knowing you didn't go of your own accord.' 'What for did you shiver?' 'At the dark power of our fellow-creatures set against us.' 'I inna feared of 'em now, Ed'ard. Maybe it'll come right, and you'll get all as you'd lief have.' 'I only want you.' 'And me you.' They both had happy dreams that night. Outside, the stars were fierce with frost. The world hardened. In the bitter still air and the greenish moonlight the chapel and parsonage took on an unreal look, as if they were built of wavering, vanishing material, and stood somewhere outside space on a pale, crumbling shore. Without, the dead slept, each alone, dreamless. Within, the lovers slept, each alone, but dreaming of a day when night should bring them home each to the other. As the moon set, the shadows of the gravestones lengthened grotesquely, creeping and creeping as if they would dominate the world. In the middle of the night Foxy awoke, and barked and whimpered in some dark terror, and would not be comforted. Chapter 36 Hazel looked out next morning into a cold, hostile world. The wind had gone into its winter quarters, storming down from the top of the Mountain on to the parsonage and raging into the woods. That was why Edward and Hazel never heard the sounds--some of the most horrible of the English countryside--that rose, as the morning went on, from various parts of the lower woods, whiningly, greedily, ferociously, as the hounds cast about for scent. Once there was momentary uproar, but it sank again, and the Master was disappointed. They had not found. The Master was a big fleshy man with white eyelashes and little pig's eyes that might conceal a soul--or might not. Miss Amelia Clomber admired him, and had just ridden up to say, 'A good field. Everybody's here.' Then she saw Reddin in the distance, and waited for him to come up. She was flushed and breathless and quite silent--an extraordinary thing for her. He certainly was looking his best, with the new zest and youth that Hazel had given him heightening the blue of his eyes and giving an added hauteur of masculinity to his bearing. She would, as she watched him coming, cheerfully have become his mistress at a nod for the sake of those eyes and that hauteur. He was entirely unconscious of it. He never was a vain man, and women were to him what a watch is to a child--something to be smashed, not studied. Also, his mind was busy about his coming interview with Edward. He was ludicrously at a loss what to say or do. Blows were the only answer he could think of to such a thing as Edward had said. But blows had lost him Hazel before, and he wanted her still. He was rather surprised at this, passion being satisfied. Still, as he reflected, passion was only in abeyance. Next May-- If Miss Clomber had seen his eyes then, she would probably have proposed to him. But he was looking away towards the heights where Edward's house was. There was in his mind a hint of better things. Hazel had been sweet in the conquering; so many women were not. And she was a little, wild, frail thing. He was sorry for her. He reflected that if he sold the cob he could pay a first-rate doctor to attend her and two nurses. 'I'll sell the cob,' he decided. 'I can easily walk more. It'll do me good.' 'Good morning, Mr. Reddin!' cried Miss Clomber as sweetly as she could. 'May your shadow never grow less!' he replied jocosely, as he cantered by with a great laugh. 'If she'd only die when she has the child!' thought Miss Clomber fiercely. Up on the Mountain Edward and Hazel were studying a map to decide in which part of the county they would live. Round the fire sat Foxy, the one-eyed cat, and the rabbit in a basket. From a hook hung the bird in its cage, making little chirrupings of content. On the window-sill a bowl of crocuses had pushed out white points. But upon their love--Edward's dawn of content and Hazel's laughter--broke a loud imperious knocking. Edward went to the door. Outside stood Mr. James, the old man with the elf-locks who shared the honey prizes with Abel, two farmers from the other side of the Mountain, Martha's brother, and the man with the red braces who had won the race when Reddin turned. They coughed. 'Will you come in?' asked Edward. They straggled in, very much embarrassed. Hazel wished them good morning. 'This young woman,' Mr. James said, 'might, I think, absent herself.' 'Would you rather go or stay, Hazel?' 'Stay along of you, Ed'ard.' Hazel had divined that something threatened Edward. They sat down, very dour. Foxy had retired under the table. The shaggy old man surveyed the bird. 'A nice pet, a bird,' he said. 'Minds me of a throstle I kep' 'Now, now, Thomas! Business!' said Mr. James. 'Yes. Get to the point,' said Edward. James began. 'We've come, minister, six God-fearing men, and me spokesman, being deacon; and we 'ope as good will come of this meeting, and that the Lord'll bless our endeavour. And now, I think, maybe a little prayer?' 'I think not.' 'As you will, minister. There are times when folk avoid prayer as the sick avoid medicine.' James had a resonant voice, and it was always pitched on the intoning note. Also, he accented almost every other syllable. 'We bring you the Lord's message, minister. I speak for 'Im.' 'You are sure?' 'Has not He answered us each and severally with a loud voice in the night-watches?' 'Ah! He 'as! True! Yes, yes!' the crowd murmured. 'And what we are to say,' James went on, 'is that the adulteress must go. You must put her away at once and publicly; and if she will make open confession of the sin, it will be counted to you for righteousness.' Edward came and stood in front of Hazel. 'Had you,' James continued in trumpet tones--'had you, when she played the sinner with Mr. Reddin, Esquire, leading a respectable gentleman into open sin, chastened and corrected her--ay, given her the bread of affliction and the water of affliction and taken counsel with us--' 'Ah! there's wisdom in counsel!' said one of the farmers, a man with crafty eyes. 'Then,' James went on, 'all would 'a been well. But now to spare would be death.' 'Ah, everlasting death!' came the echoes. 'And now' (James' face seemed to Hazel to wear the same expression as when he pocketed the money)--'now there is but one cure. She must go to a reformatory. There she'll be disciplined. She'll be made to repent.' He looked as if he would like to be present. They all leant forward. The younger men were sorry for Edward. None of them was sorry for Hazel. There was a curious likeness, as they leant forward, between them and the questing hounds below. 'And then?' Edward prompted, his face set, tremors running along the nerves under the skin. 'Then we would expect you to make a statement in a sermon, or in any way you chose, that you'd cast your sins from you, that you would never speak or write to this woman again, and that you were at peace with the Lord.' 'And then?' 'Then, sir'--Mr. James rose--'we should onst again be proud to take our minister by the 'and, knowing it was but the deceitfulness of youth that got the better of you, and the wickedness of an 'ooman.' Feeling that this was hardly enough to tempt Edward, the man with the crafty eyes said: 'And if in the Lord's wisdom He sees fit to take her, then, sir, you can choose a wife from among us.' (He was thinking of his daughter.) He said no more. Edward was speaking. His voice was low, but not a man ever forgot a word he said. 'Filthy little beasts!' he said, but without acrimony, simply in weariness. 'I should like to shoot you; but you rule the world--little pot-bellied gods. There is no other God. Your last suggestion (he looked at them with a smile of so peculiar a quality and such strange eyes that the old beeman afterwards said "It took you in the stomach") was worthy of you. It's not enough that unselfish love can't save. It's not enough (his face quivered horribly) that love is allowed to torture the loved one; but you must come with your foul minds and eyes to "view the corpse." And you know nothing--nothing.' 'We know the facts,' said James. 'Facts! What are facts? I could flog you naked through the fields, James, for your stupidity alone.' There was a general smile, James being a corpulent man. He shrank. Then his feelings found relief in spite. 'If you don't dismiss the female, I'll appeal to the Presbytery,' he said, painfully pulling himself together. 'What for?' 'Notice for you.' 'No need. We're going. What d'you suppose I should do here? There's no Lord's Day and no Lord's house, for there's no Lord. For goodness' sake, turn the chapel into a cowhouse!' They blinked. Their minds did not take in his meaning, which was like the upper wind that blows coldly from mountain to mountain and does not touch the plain. They busied themselves with what they could grasp. 'If you take that woman with you, you'll be accurst,' said James. 'I suppose,' he went on, and his tone was, as he afterwards said to his wife with complacency, 'very nasty'--'I suppose you dunno what they're all saying, and what I've come to believe, in this shocking meeting, to be God's truth?' 'I don't know or care.' 'They're saying you've made a tidy bit.' 'What d'you mean?' James hesitated. Filthy thoughts were all very well, but it was awkward to get them into righteous words. 'Well, dear me! they're saying as there was an arrangement betwixt you and 'im--on the gel's account--(the old beeman tried to hush him)--and as cheques signed "John Reddin" went to your bank. Dear me!' Slowly the meaning of this dawned on Edward. He sat down and put his hands up before his face. He was broken, not so much by the insult to himself as by the fixed idea that he had exposed Hazel to all this. He traced all her troubles and mistakes back to himself, blaming his own love for them. While he had been fighting for her happiness, he had given her a mortal wound, and none had warned him. That was why he was sure there was no God. They sat round and looked at their work with some compunction. The old beeman cleared his throat several times. 'O' course,' he said, 'we know it inna true, minister. Mr. James shouldna ha' taken it on his lips.' He looked defiantly at James out of his mild brown eyes. Edward did not hear what he said. Hazel was puzzling over James' meaning. Why had he made Edward like this? Love gave her a quickness that she did not naturally possess, and at last she understood. It was one of the few insults that could touch her, because it was levelled at her primitive womanhood. Her one instinct was for flight. But there was Edward. She turned her back on the semi-circle of eyes, and put a trembling hand on Edward's shoulder. He grasped it. 'Forgive me, dear!' he whispered. 'And go, now, go into the woods; they're not as cold as these. When I've done with them we'll go away, far away from hell.' 'I dunna mind 'em,' said Hazel. 'What for should I, my soul?' Then she saw how dank and livid Edward's face had become, and the anguished rage of the lover against what had hurt her darling flamed up in her. 'Curse you!' she said, letting her eyes, dark-rimmed and large with tears, dwell on each man in turn. 'Curse you for tormenting my Ed'ard, as is the best man in all the country--and you'm nought, nought at all!' The everlasting puzzle, why the paltry and the low should have power to torment greatness, was brooding over her mind. 'The best!' said James, avoiding her eyes, as they all did. 'A hinfidel!' 'I have become an unbeliever,' Edward said, 'not because I am unworthy of your God, but because He is unworthy of me. Hazel, wait for me at the edge of the wood.' Hazel crept out of the room. As she went, she heard him say: 'The beauty of the world isn't for the beautiful people. It's for beef-witted squires and blear-eyed people like yourselves--brutish, callous. Your God stinks like carrion, James.' _Nunc Dimittis_. Hazel passed the tombstone where she had sat on her wedding-day. She went through the wicket where she and her mother had both passed as brides, and down the green slope that led near the quarry to the woods. The swallows had gone. She came to Reddin's black yew-tree at the fringe of the wood, and sat down there, where she could watch the front door. In spite of her bird-like quickness of ear, she was too much overwhelmed by the scene she had just left to notice an increasing, threatening, ghastly tumult that came, at first fitfully, then steadily, up through the woods. At first it was only a rumour, as if some evil thing, imprisoned for the safety of the world, whined and struggled against love in a close underground cavern. But when it came nearer--and it seemed to be emerging from its prison with sinister determination--the wind had no longer any power to disguise its ferocity, although it was still in a minor key, still vacillating and scattered. Nor had it as yet any objective; it was only vaguely clamorous for blood, not for the very marrow of the soul. Yet, as Hazel suddenly became aware of it, a cold shudder ran down her spine. 'Hound-dogs!' she said. She peered through the trees, but nothing was to be seen, for the woods were steep. With a dart of terror she remembered that she had left Foxy loose in the parlour. Would they have let her out? She ran home. 'Be Foxy here?' she asked. Edward looked up from the chapel accounts. James was trying to browbeat him over them. 'No. I expect she went out with you.' Hazel fled to the back of the house, but Foxy was not there. She whistled, but no smooth, white-bibbed personality came trotting round the corner. Hazel ran back to the hill. The sound of the horn came up intermittently with tuneful devilry. She whistled again. Reddin, coming up the wood at some distance from the pack, caught the whistle, and seeing her dress flutter far up the hill, realized what had happened. 'Bother it!' he said. He did not care about Foxy, and he thought Hazel's affection for her very foolish; but he understood very well that if anything happened to Foxy, he would be to blame in Hazel's eyes. Between him and Hazel was a series of precipitous places. He would have to go round to reach her. He spurred his horse, risking a fall from the rabbit-holes and the great ropes of honeysuckle that swung from tree to tree. Hazel ran to and fro, frantically calling to Foxy. Suddenly the sound, that had been querulous, interrogative and various, changed like an organ when a new stop is pulled out. The pack had found. But the scent, it seemed, was not very hot. Hope revived in Hazel. 'It'll be the old scent from yesterday,' she thought. 'Maybe Foxy'll come yet!' Seeing Reddin going in so devil-may-care a manner, a little clergyman (a 'guinea-pig' on Sundays and the last hard-riding parson in the neighbourhood on weekdays) thought that Reddin must have seen the fox, and gave a great view-hallo. He rode a tall raw-boned animal, and looked like a monkey. Hazel did not see either him or Reddin. With fainting heart she had become aware that the hounds were no longer on an old scent. They were not only intent on one life now, but they were close to it. And whoever it was that owned the life was playing with it, coming straight on in the teeth of the wind instead of doubling with it. With an awful constriction of the heart, Hazel knew who it was. She knew also that it was her momentary forgetfulness that had brought about this horror. Terror seized her at the dogs' approach, but she would not desert Foxy. Then, with the fearful inconsequence of a dream, Foxy trotted out of the wood and came to her. Trouble was in her eyes. She was disturbed. She looked to Hazel to remove the unpleasantness, much as Mrs. Marston used to look at Edward. And as Hazel, dry-throated, whispered 'Foxy!' and caught her up, the hounds came over the ridge like water. Riding after them, breaking from the wood on every side, came the Hunt. Scarlet gashed the impenetrable shadows. Coming, as they did, from the deep gloom, fiery-faced and fiery-coated, with eyes frenzied by excitement, and open, cavernous mouths, they were like devils emerging from hell on a foraging expedition. Miss Clomber, her hair loose and several of her pin-curls torn off by the branches, was one of the first, determined to be in at the death. The uproar was so terrific that Edward and the six righteous men came out to see what the matter was. Religion and society were marshalled with due solemnity on God's Little Mountain. Hazel saw nothing, heard nothing. She was running with every nerve at full stretch, her whole soul in her feet. But she had lost her old fleetness, for Reddin's child had even now robbed her of some of her vitality. Foxy, in gathering panic, struggled and impeded her. She was only half-way to the quarry, and the house was twice as far. 'I canna!' she gasped on a long terrible breath. She felt as if her heart was bursting. One picture burnt itself on her brain in blood and agony. One sound was in her ears--the shrieking of the damned. What she saw was Foxy, her smooth little friend, so dignified, so secure of kindness, held in the hand of the purple-faced huntsman above the pack that raved for her convulsive body. She knew how Foxy's eyes would look, and she nearly fainted at the knowledge. She saw the knife descend--saw Foxy, who had been lovely and pleasant to her in life, cut in two and flung (a living creature, fine of nerve) to the pack, and torn to fragments. She heard her scream. Yes; Foxy would cry to her, as she had cried to the Mighty One dwelling in darkness. And she? What would she do? She knew that she could not go on living with that cry in her ears. She clutched the warm body closer. Though her thoughts had taken only an instant, the hounds were coming near. Outside the chapel James said: 'Dear me! A splendid sight! We'll wait to verify the 'apenny columns till they've killed.' They all elbowed in front of Edward. But he had seen. He snatched up his spade from the porch, and knocked James out of the way with the flat of it. 'I'm coming, dear!' he shouted. But she did not hear. Neither did she hear Reddin, who was still at a distance, and was spurring till the blood ran, as in the tale of the death-pack, yelling: 'I'm coming! Give her to me!' Nor the little cleric, in his high-pitched nasal voice, calling: 'Drop it! They'll pull you down!' while the large gold cross bumped up and down on his stomach. The death that Foxy must die, unless she could save her, drowned all other sights and sounds. She gave one backward glance. The awful resistless flood of liver and white and black was very near. Behind it rose shouting devils. It was the death-pack. There was no hope. She could never reach Edward's house. The green turf rose before her like the ascent to Calvary. The members of the hunt, the Master and the huntsmen, were slow to understand. Also, they were at a disadvantage, the run being such an abnormal one--against the wind and up a steep hill. They could not beat off the hounds in time. Edward was the only one near enough to help. If she had seen him and made for him, he might have done something. But she only saw the death-pack; and as Reddin shouted again near at hand, intending to drag her on to the horse, she turned sharply. She knew it was the Black Huntsman. With a scream so awful that Reddin's hands grew nerveless on the rein, she doubled for the quarry. A few woodlarks played there, but they fled at the oncoming tumult. For one instant the hunt and the righteous men, Reddin the destroyer, and Edward the saviour, saw her sway, small and dark, before the staring sky. Then, as the pack, with a ferocity of triumph, was flinging itself upon her, she was gone. She was gone with Foxy into everlasting silence. She would suck no more honey from the rosy flowers, nor dance like a leaf in the wind. Abel would sit, these next nights, making a small coffin that would leave him plenty of beehive wood. * * * * * There was silence on God's Little Mountain for a space. Afterwards a voice, awful and piercing, deep with unutterable horror--the voice of a soul driven mad by torture--clutched the heart of every man and woman. Even the hounds, raging on the quarry edge, cowered and bristled. It echoed in the freezing arches of the sky, and rolled back unanswered to the freezing earth. The little cleric, who had pulled a Prayer-Book from his pocket, dropped it. Once again it rang out, and at its awful reiteration the righteous men and the hunt ceased to be people of any class or time or creed, and became creatures swayed by one primeval passion--fear. They crouched and shuddered like beaten dogs as the terrible cry once more roused the shivering echoes: 'Gone to earth! Gone to earth!' 
57427	----	of California, Stanford University, the Internet Archive, the HathiTrust Digital Library, and Google. The Sheep-Stealers New 6s. Novels DONOVAN PASHA BY GILBERT PARKER CAPTAIN MACKLIN BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS IF I WERE KING BY JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA BY BRAM STOKER MOTHER EARTH BY FRANCES HARROD THE WINDS OF THE WORLD BY MILLICENT SUTHERLAND THE STORY OF EDEN BY DOLF WYLLARDE THE ASSASSINS BY N. M. MEAKIN NEXT TO THE GROUND BY MARTHA MCCULLOCH-WILLIAMS BY BREAD ALONE BY I. K. FRIEDMAN LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 Bedford Street, W.C. The Sheep-Stealers By Violet Jacob (Mrs. Arthur Jacob) London William Heinemann 1902 _First Edition, August_ 1902 _Second Impression, September_ 1902 _All rights reserved_ _This Edition enjoys copyright in all countries signatory to the Berne Treaty, and is not to be imported into the United States of America_ _To my Mother_ CONTENTS Book I Chapter Page I. The Two Communities 3 II. Rhys 8 III. The Dipping-Pool 19 IV. At the Yew-Stump and After 29 V. Rebecca 40 VI. A Dead Man and a Live Coward 51 VII. To Abergavenny 59 VIII. Master and Man 66 IX. Two Meetings 76 X. Forget-me-nots 83 XI. The Brecon Coach 92 XII. George's Business 102 XIII. The Seven Snow-Men 110 XIV. The Uses of a Cast Shoe 120 XV. The Beginning 134 XVI. In which George Proves to be but Human 147 XVII. The Sheep-Stealers Part Company 156 XVIII. Mrs. Walters Goes to Chapel 165 XIX. The Moth and the Candle 174 XX. The Pedlar's Stone 183 XXI. The Way of the Transgressor 192 XXII. A Bad Debt 201 Book II XXIII. White Blossoms 213 XXIV. A Card House 223 XXV. Llangarth Fair 232 XXVI. Howlie and Llewellyn Understand Each Other 243 XXVII. Four Opinions 254 XXVIII. A Martyr 263 XXIX. The Half Loaf 271 XXX. Nannie Sees her Duty 278 XXXI. The Way to Paradise 286 XXXII. A Dark Lantern 293 XXXIII. A Bird in the Hand 302 XXXIV. The Pursuers 312 XXXV. New Year's Eve 325 XXXVI. The New Year 336 BOOK I CHAPTER I THE TWO COMMUNITIES IN the earlier half of the nineteenth century, when most of the travelling done by our grandfathers was done by road, and the intercourse between districts by no means far apart was but small, a tract of country lying at the foot of the Black Mountain, which rises just inside the Welsh border, was as far behind the times of which I speak, as though it had been a hundred miles from any town. Where the Great Western engines now roar down the Wye valley, carrying the traveller who makes his journey in spring through orchards full of pink blossom, the roads then lay in peaceful and unsophisticated quiet. Soon after leaving Hereford, the outline of the mountain might be seen raising itself like an awakening giant, over green hedges and rich meadowland from the midst of the verdure and cultivation. Between its slopes and the somewhat oppressive luxuriance through which the river ran, a band of country totally unlike either of these in character, encircled the mountain's foot, and made a kind of intermediate stage between the desolate grandeur of the Twmpa (as the highest summit was called) and the parish of Crishowell with its farmyards and hayfields far beneath. The lanes leading up from Crishowell village were so steep that it was impossible for carts to ascend them, and the sheep-grazing population which inhabited the hill farms above, had to go up and down to the market-town of Llangarth, either on foot or on ponies brought in from the mountain runs. The "hill-people," as the slower-witted dwellers in the valley called them, came seldom down except on market-days, when the observer mixing in these weekly gatherings in Llangarth market-place, might distinguish them as a leaner, harder race with a wider range of expression, due possibly to their larger outlook on the natural world. They were neither entirely mountain nor entirely valley bred, though retaining something of each locality, and something of the struggle between nature and civilization seemed to have entered into them, giving them that strenuousness which all transition must bring with it. They lived, too, in the midst of what one might call a by-gone element, for the fields and uplands round their homes were full of the records of preceding generations. Strange graves scattered the hill-sides, ancient dates were cut in the walls of their houses, names identical with those on forgotten tombs might be found on outbuildings, and, in the hedges of the perpendicular lanes, stones stood here and there which tradition vaguely designated as "murder-stones," showing where the roadside tragedies of earlier times had taken place. Local history told, too, of bloody battles fought round the spurs of the mountain in ancient British times, and, at one spot, a mound, visible to the eye of archæology, marked the place where three chieftains had been buried after one of those fights. Perhaps it was this which had given the name of "The Red Field" to a small farm at a short distance from the plateau. Imaginative people finding themselves in that region of neither yesterday nor to-day might have felt the crowding-in at every step of dead personalities, past customs and passions, in fact, a close treading on their heels of generations which had lain for years in their graves in Crishowell churchyard, or in the burying-places beside the little Methodist chapels. An element of superstition which all this could not fail to bring with it, stalked abroad through those misty fields and lonely pastures, and, one can hardly wonder that at the time of which I am speaking, it was a powerful factor in the lives of the illiterate shepherds and even of the better-educated farmers who owned sheep-runs on the mountain. Stories were extant of strange appearances seen by late riders on the bridle-tracks, and certain places were passed, even by daylight, with a great summoning-up of courage. One of these shrines of horror was an innocent-looking spot called "The Boiling Wells," in the middle of a green track stretching over the Twmpa's shoulder, where a flat piece of slate rock jutted from the turf, and three small springs of water bubbled eternally up through the earth. Near this place two young farmers, returning at dusk from a sheep-run, had had an experience which they and all the hill-people were not quick to forget, for they had arrived breathless one evening at the Red Field Farm to detail to an open-mouthed audience of farm-labourers how they had been overtaken by a thunderstorm near the Boiling Wells, and how, as they neared the water, the horses had refused to pass it, wheeling round and flying from something visible only to themselves. Then the two men had become aware of a man's figure hovering in the dusk, and a luminous face had peered at one of them from between his horse's ears. At sight of this they had fled as fast as their terrified beasts could carry them, and, after galloping wildly in the increasing darkness for some time, they had been brought to a stand by finding themselves running against the fence which divided Red Field Farm from the mountain land. In fact, the tales of fear which grew around this and other places in the neighbourhood were endless, though sceptics hinted that these strange things happened oftener on market-days than on any others, and that those who claimed to have seen more than their neighbours owed their pretensions more to having been what was called "market-peart" than to anything else. Still, the effect on the public mind was disquieting, and, in winter evenings, it kept many inside their doors or in the inspiriting vicinity of the farm buildings. To the dwellers in Crishowell village, who were disinclined to question anything, all these tales, as they came down to their ears from the higher regions, were unmitigated horrors, to be accepted as best might be and retailed at corners over pipes with much repetition and comment, coloured here and there to suit the narrator's cast of mind. Living in their bit of valley where wages were small, needs few, and public-houses many, they had scant ideas beyond the round of weekly work, which terminated, in many cases, on Saturday night in a prolonged visit to some favoured inn, and a circuitous return to the domestic hearth afterwards. Sunday, indeed, brought to these unsophisticated labourers its veneer of respectability. A bucket of water in the back garden, an inherited Sunday coat, a virtuous resolve not to smoke in any part of the churchyard in which the parson could see them, converted them from a quarter to eleven till half-past twelve, noon, into a chastened community which filed noisily into the battered pews of Crishowell church, there to remain till the final "Amen" let them loose upon the joys of a Sunday dinner in the family circle. After this, they might cast from them the garments of righteousness and sit about on gates with acquaintances to whom they apparently never spoke. Though the hill-people descended into Crishowell, the Crishowell people rarely went up among their neighbours; only the Methodists among them journeyed upwards to attend the Chapels with which the higher land was dotted. In out-of-the-way corners by the thickly intersecting lanes these grim, square, unadorned little buildings were to be found. The wayfarer, coming unexpectedly upon one as he turned some sudden angle of his road, might pause to glance over the low wall which divided its unkempt precincts from the public path, at the few crooked tombstones rising amid a wilderness of coarse hemlock which spread even to the Chapel door, imparting a forlorn effect to the spot, and pervading the air with its rank smell. Many of these places were falling into disrepair from disuse, as, in summer weather, the meetings would often be held on the hill-side, where the short turf would bear marks until the next heavy rain of iron-bound heels and heavy feet which had trodden in a ring round the spot. When the wind chanced to sit in the east, the sound of the hymns and psalms would come down with a kind of wail, by no means unimpressive, though somewhat prolonged and nasal, to the nearer parts of the valley, the favourite themes of death and judgment to come seeming singularly appropriate to the hard, fervent faces and the background of frowning mountain from which they sounded. If it was a narrow religion which had obtained such a grasp upon these upland men and women, it was yet one from which they gained a great deal that few other things could have taught, and virtues adapted to their exposed life grew up among them, possibly in obedience to those laws of supply and demand which are part of Nature's self. Children reared in unyielding austerity, forced to sit meekly through hours of eloquence against which their hearts rebelled, while their bodies suffered in silence, groaned under their trials. But, when they had crossed the threshold of grown-up life, the fruits of these experiences would show in a dormant fund of endurance and tenacity, submerged, no doubt, by the tide of every-day impressions, but apt to re-appear in emergencies as a solid rock rises into view at low water. Such were the two communities living close together on the borders of two nations, nominally one since the middle ages, but, in reality, only amalgamated down to a very few inches below the surface. CHAPTER II RHYS[1] IT was the day after Christmas. The frost and snow, supposed to be suitable to the time, had held off from the West country and were waiting ready to pounce upon the world with a new year. The evenings had been damp and chilly of late, with not a breath of wind stirring to lift the fog which hung over the Black Mountain and pressed like a heavy, dead hand right into Crishowell village. On the green track which led along the plateau at the foot of the Twmpa the air to-night lay still and thick. Noises made by the animal world were carried a long distance by the moist atmosphere, and sounds were audible to people who had learned to keep their ears open for which they might have listened in vain at ordinary times. The water, running through wet places, could be heard distinctly trickling among roots and coarse grasses and patches of rush, as well as the quick cropping of sheep and occasional scuttering of their feet over muddy bits of path; and along the track from the direction of Llangarth came the dull thud of a horse's advancing hoofs and the constant sneezing of the animal as he tried in vain to blow the clinging damp from his nostrils. As they loomed out of the fog which gave to both horse and man an almost gigantic appearance, the rider, without waiting to pull up, slipped his leg over the pommel of the saddle and slid to his feet, the horse stopping of his own accord as he did so. It was almost too thick to see more than a yard in front of one's face, and Rhys Walters stood a moment peering before him with narrowed eyes into what looked like a dead wall of motionless steam. Then he bent down to examine the spongy ground. It oozed and sucked at his boots when he moved about, and he frowned impatiently as he knelt to lay his ear against it. While he listened, a sound of distant running water made itself faintly heard through the windless evening, and his horse pricked his ears and turned his head towards it. The young man remounted and rode abruptly to the left, in the direction of the Boiling Wells. As he went along with the rein lying loose on the bay horse's withers, the animal made a sudden plunge and swerved violently aside as a sheep appeared out of the mist and ran startled across the path under his very nose. But Rhys seemed hardly to notice the occurrence, except by a stronger pressure of his knees against the saddle, for he was thinking intently and the expression on his hard countenance showed that he was occupied with some affair much more difficult than horsemanship, which had been a simple matter to him from his very earliest youth. He was a man to whom one physical exercise was as natural as another, his firmly-knit frame being equally adapted to everything; and, though rather over middle-height than under it, he conveyed the impression of being very tall, more by his leanness and somewhat high shoulders than by actual inches. His hands and feet were well-shaped, though the latter fact was not apparent, on account of the stout leather leggings and clumsy boots which he wore, and every movement of his spare figure had the attraction of perfect balance and unconsciousness of effort. His long face was one which few persons of any discernment would have passed without a second glance; fewer still could have determined what it actually expressed. He had eyebrows of the real Welsh type coming down low towards the nose, the eyes underneath being set near together and looking either brown or grey according to the light in which they were seen. They were usually called brown, to match the tanned complexion and dark hair to which they belonged. His cheekbones were high, his nose long and pointed, though the refinement which it might appear to indicate found its unexpected contradiction in a straight and unsensitive nostril. When he spoke, Rhys used much less gesticulation than was common to his countrymen (for he was three-parts a Welshman), but his thin lips moved a great deal and the quick turns of his close-cropped head--he kept his hair short when it was the fashion among men to wear it rather long--showed that he did not by any means possess the true phlegmatic temperament. Above all, he looked entirely at one with the natural and animal creation around him. Had he been a poorer man, he might easily have been taken for a poacher, had he been a richer one, for a country gentleman of active and sporting tastes; as a matter of fact, he was neither of these, being a farmer and the son of a farmer. His earlier childhood had been spent in what one might almost call savagery, and the rest of his youth in Hereford Grammar School, where, except for a far more polished speech and accent than was natural to his position, he had learnt but a certain amount of what his parents wished him to acquire. He had also learned much of which they, in their greater simplicity, had never dreamed. Of these two, Eli Walters and his wife, only Mrs. Walters was alive, and she lived with Rhys at Great Masterhouse, a farm standing high in Crishowell parish on the skirts of the mountain land. It was a long and ancient stone house which had consisted of one storey until Eli had added an upper floor to suit his more modern ideas of convenience, and, as this outcome of his full purse and soaring mind extended but half the length of the dwelling-house, it gave the approaching stranger a notion that it might be some kind of religious building with a squat tower at one end. Owing to the impossibility of dovetailing a proper staircase in, the upper rooms were reached from outside by a ladder with a weather-beaten railing running up it. To this protection Eli, who occupied a room at the top, had often had reason to be grateful, for the excellent beer produced in Hereford town had played a larger part in his latter years than was altogether decorous; many a time, on winter nights, Mrs. Walters, sitting below in the kitchen, had listened sternly to his uneven footstep in its spasmodic descent to earth. Great Masterhouse looked towards the Twmpa, and, from the kitchen window, the view presented to the eye a strip of turf forming a parade-ground for troops of cocks and hens. This sloped to a tortuous little stream, upon which the ducks, having picked up everything worth having near home, might cruise down to a pool in search of more alluring gluttonies. At the south side of the house lay the strip of garden that was all of which the farm could boast. It was used for vegetable-growing alone, and wore a dreary aspect all the year round, enlivened only for a short time in spring, when a pear-tree, trained up the dead wall of the additional storey, broke out into a green and white cloud. Old Walters, it is true, had taken some interest in the few yards of flower-bed it had contained in his lifetime. He had planted sweet-williams, peonies and such like, for he was a man who loved beauty in any form, though, unfortunately, he had been as apt to see it in the bottom of a beer-jug as in any other more desirable place. His wife cared for none of these things, for she regarded the culture of what merely pleased the eye as a wanton throwing away of time. It seemed to her to be people's duty to make themselves as uncomfortable as possible in this world by way of suitable preparation for the next. So, after Eli had finished alike his drinks and his gardenings and been carried down the hill to Crishowell churchyard, the flowers disappeared from the poor little garden, and rows of sensible cabbages and onions raised their aggressive heads from the places they had left empty. At the back was a great yard surrounded by outbuildings, and this place gave to Great Masterhouse the only picturesqueness it possessed. From it one looked at the curious old back-door which opened on a stone passage to the kitchen, and might admire the solid oak and heavily-moulded lintel. Inside there was a niche in the wall into which a strong wooden beam could be shot, while above it a porch projected bearing the date 1685. Patches of golden-brown stonecrop sprawled over this, and a heap of dried bracken which lay upon the doorstep for all who entered to clean their boots upon, added to the antiquated effect. Such had been Rhys' home during his twenty-seven years of life. At his father's death, when Great Masterhouse with the good slice of land belonging to it passed into his hands, he was fully prepared to do his duty by his inheritance, and in this he was supported by his mother, who was a practical woman, as well as by his own dislike of being bested in the affairs of life, a failing to profit in any way by his advantages. In other words, he hated to be done, and she, like many other worthy persons whose minds are professedly set above this froward world, hated it too. Mrs. Walters had been right in many deeds of her married life, though she had not, perhaps, made her sterling virtues very attractive to her husband and son. Those inclined to blame her for this were too quick in forgetting that her life had been no bed of roses, and that to one of her type, daily contact with a weak, idle nature like that of Eli was a perpetual martyrdom. She was an utterly humourless woman, and her want of humour, which is really no less than the want of a sense of proportion, added a thousand-fold to her trials. She took everything too hard, giving to each untoward trifle which crossed her path the value of a calamity, with the result that the mountain she had created fell and crushed her. She was truthful and upright in the highest degree, and though her hardness and pride repelled her husband and her want of elasticity wearied him to the verge of madness, her integrity was a matter of admiration to him. His weaker spirit might have been dominated by hers, but for that touch of originality in him which forbade his being entirely swayed by another. He was a man addicted to cheerful company, joviality and good-fellowship; in conversation he was a desperate liar, which made him none the less amusing to his friends on market-days, and they rallied round him with unfailing constancy, receiving his sprightly ideas with guffaws of laughter, slapping their own legs, or other people's backs--whichever chanced to be handiest--as his wit struck them in assailable places. When he first married, Eli was very much in love with his unsuitable companion, but the day soon came when he grew tired of her. He wearied of her dark, hawk-faced beauty, and her narrowness of mind oppressed him; his want of seriousness also bred a contempt in her heart which she allowed him to feel plainly. It was not long before this led to quarrels--of a mild kind, it is true--but enough to make husband and wife see the mistake they had committed; and when their first child, a boy, arrived, Anne Walters wrapped herself up in her baby's existence, finding in it an outlet for the intense feeling which had all her life been dormant, and was now awake in her for the first time. At Rhys' birth, some two years later, she had little to bestow on him but a well-meaning interest, for her whole soul was occupied with her eldest born; so Eli, longing for companionship of some kind, took possession of him and proceeded to alternately spoil and neglect him. Between the two, as the child grew older, there existed a curious relationship, more like a defensive alliance between two small powers against a greater one than anything else, tacit, unspoken, and, strange to say, better understood by the boy than by the man. Eli stood in awe of his wife, and young Rhys knew it; he was not afraid of her himself, for fear was a sensation he was physically incapable of feeling, but he saw in his father's society a road of escape from Anne, whose unsympathetic attitude towards his youthful errors was at once dull and inconvenient. A worse education for a little boy could hardly be imagined, and Rhys' shrewdness was perhaps a source of greater danger to his character than any quality he possessed; he was too acute to be deceived in Eli, and he knew perfectly the worth of an affection which, though genuine of its kind, would not hesitate to neglect him if it grew tired of him, or to sacrifice him if he stood in the way. The one great good which he got out of his profitless childhood was an intense familiarity with outdoor life. The sky was his ceiling, the earth his carpet, and he wandered about the pastures around, the mountain above, and the valley below, with the same assurance that other little boys of his age felt in wandering about their nurseries. He knew the habits of every living creature and every nesting-place for miles; he could climb like a mountain-sheep or run like a hare, and his observation of Nature became so highly developed as to make him, in some respects, very like an animal. He knew the meaning of every sound, distant or near, and the whole world teemed with voices for him which it generally keeps for birds and beasts alone. It was only natural that he should be attracted by the delights of poaching, and an inveterate poacher he became; he set nets for partridges and laid night-lines in the trout-streams of the valley, and no outdoor rascality entered his head which he did not immediately attempt. On the few occasions on which he was caught, Mrs. Walters, after rebuking him severely, took him to his father and insisted on his being thrashed, and when this happened, Rhys knew that there was no escape; so he took his punishment with as much equanimity as he could, merely resolving to work his next escapade on more careful lines. When he was five years old his brother died; had he lived to be older he might have done something to humanize the selfish and uncivilized little boy, and his death, which was the blackest grief that Anne had ever known, seemed to turn the poor woman's already hard heart into stone. With her elder child she lost the one real interest she had contrived to glean from her narrow life, and when the funeral was over and there was nothing left but an aching blank, she turned further from her husband and the boy, shutting herself round with a wall of indifference. Rhys was absolutely nothing to her. She was glad that he was so strong and healthy, and sorry that he was so disobedient; beyond that she hardly gave him a thought. He was a sealed book to her--a sealed book with a binding which offended her and which it did not occur to her to open. It was just at this time that an earnest preacher, a light in his sect and a man of extraordinary personal influence, came to hold meetings among the Methodists of the mountain district, and Anne went to hear him speak. With her grief, her silent bitterness, and her unsatisfied life, she was an ideal subject upon which this man's zeal could act. Before he had well begun what he called his "struggle for her soul," the work was half done and the issue decided; the hard doctrines and straitened ideas which he preached appealed to her in a way that nothing else could; the wholesale condemnation of sinners which he announced was entirely in accordance with a type of mind that had ever hated the Devil more than it had loved God, and she threw herself wholly into the sea of his relentless Christianity, for there were no half-measures with her. Eli looked on at the spectacle with apprehension, quailing as he thought of her possible attempts at his own conversion to the paths of the more active and elaborate righteousness. But as time went on, and he found that his personal salvation formed no part of his wife's plans, he was a good deal relieved and felt very grateful to the preacher, welcoming anything which helped to keep them separate and divert her attention from his comfortable habits of life. He never interfered with her in any way, though he would sometimes stroll into the kitchen when a meeting was being held there, loitering about and pretending that he was not quite sober, while he internally enjoyed the agonies she suffered from fear that her decorous guests should suspect what she perceived with horror. Thus did the malicious old farmer gratify his sense of humour. So the years passed on until it occurred to the pair that Rhys' education should be considered. He must go to school, and they resolved to send him to the Grammar School at Hereford. The small amount of pride that Eli had was centred in the pleasant thought that he was, in his calling, a rich man. With all his laxity he had been shrewd in business, and could look round on his possessions with the knowledge that there was enough and to spare for his son and his son's son after him. The boy should better himself in life, should have the education which he had lacked, should spend his money with the best of the gentlefolks' children with whom he would be brought into contact at Hereford. The end of it was that Rhys, considerably interested in his new position, found himself one morning on the top of the Hereford coach with a Bible given him by Anne in one pocket and half-a-sovereign given him by Eli in the other. He was very much pleased with the half-sovereign. His feelings as he rolled along were mixed. He could not but welcome the prospect of the livelier interests and companionships before him, but, at the same time, he knew very well that that freedom which had been the breath of his nostrils would be his no longer; and, until he saw how much he might be compensated for its loss in other ways, he could not exactly rejoice. As regards any sentiment at leaving his parents, he had not much. He did not flatter himself that either would miss him to any distressing degree, and though he felt a little lump in his throat as he bade good-bye to his father, the sensation had passed almost as soon as he was out of sight. No, a new world was opening, and he prepared to plunge into it with a curiosity at once suspicious and hopeful. Education in those days was neither so cheap nor so general as it has become now, and boys like himself, and even the children of much more well-to-do farmers than was Eli Walters, had to content themselves with what schooling could be got in their native villages. Hereford Grammar School was chiefly attended by sons of professional men, and many of the neighbouring squires were satisfied to let their boys pick up all the learning they needed there. When Rhys, with his uncultivated country speech, made his appearance, many were inclined to despise him, holding aloof from him as from a being vastly inferior to themselves; and, when they found out, as they soon did, that his father was a common farmer who worked with his hands, some became actively aggressive and began, after the manner of boys, to practise small cruelties upon the new-comer. But they had caught the wrong man, and it was not long before their mistake was brought home to them. Rhys, with all his faults, was no shivering milksop fresh from his mother's apron-strings, but a hard and cautious young savage, with a heavier fist than most of his oppressors could boast of, and a cheerful willingness in using it freely. So, though the bigger lads taught him the healthy lesson that there were higher powers than himself, his contemporaries soon decided that it was wiser to leave him alone. Besides, how was juvenile snobbishness to resist the attractions of one who could make such catapults and slings, knew things that only gipsies and poachers understood, and was familiar with phases of outdoor life which they had never so much as imagined? Though he made few friends during the six years he spent at school, he had many admirers, and as, little by little, his accent dropped from him and he adopted the manners of his associates, he began to be looked upon as something of a personage, and left school with a veneer of sophistication which hid from ordinary view the fact that he had no more changed in character than a man changes who accustoms himself to the perpetual wear of his Sunday clothes. When he returned to Great Masterhouse and settled down to help his father on the farm, he was accepted by his kind as a much-travelled and very fine young man. On market-days in Llangarth, Eli was not a little proud of his tall son with his green tail-coat and superior air, and he smiled complacently to see how the young fellows nudged each other as he went down the street, and what admiring glances were cast after him by the farmers' daughters. Among the latter he produced the same effect as an eligible duke might in a community of society young ladies. Poor old Eli, lying on his death-bed a few years later, told himself that it would not be his fault should Rhys be unsuccessful in life. * * * * * * Rhys Walters rode along the plateau until he passed the Boiling Wells. There he turned again eastwards, going down an old grass-grown watercourse, the bed of which had become something like a path. The mist was not so thick, and a light showed through it a short way in front, like a little staring eye with long shining eyelashes piercing the damp. As he neared the house from which it proceeded, a door opened, letting a luminous stream into the fog, and a head peered out. "Be that Mr. Walters?" said a voice. "Here I am," replied Rhys, slipping from his horse. The man came out and led the animal away to the back of the house, and Rhys entered, wiping the damp from his hair. ----- [1] Pronounced "Reece." CHAPTER III THE DIPPING-POOL A GROUP of men, sitting round a blazing fire, some on heavy wooden chairs, some on a long settle, looked up as he entered. All were smoking. Those on the chairs gave them a deferential push back when they saw the new-comer. "Very damp night outside," observed Rhys, nodding to the company. "Indeed, so it be, sir. Come you in here near to the warm-ship, Master Walters," said a jolly-looking individual who sat closest to the chimney-corner, pointing invitingly to his next neighbour's chair. His next neighbour, an undersized man with a goat's beard, called Johnny Watkins, jumped up obediently. "Thanks, thanks, don't disturb yourself," said Rhys politely, seating himself in the corner of the settle, "this will do very well for me." The fire-place round which they were gathered was the broad kitchen range of the Dipping-Pool Inn, in which modest establishment bar and kitchen were one and the same place. Being situated in such an out-of-the-way spot, it was too little frequented by any but the few travellers over the mountain to make any addition profitable, Hosea Evans, the landlord, whose sign hung outside, entertaining his guests comfortably in the kitchen. He was assisted in his business by one Mary Vaughan, who stood in what would have been the character of barmaid in a larger hostelry, and brought to the company such drinks as were called for from the inner room in which she sat. Within the memory of a few old people, the dried-up bed of the brook, which made a rough path to the house, had been a swift stream running into a pool before the door. This had been used for sheep-washing at one time, and Hosea, when he took the little inn, had not troubled himself to invent a new name for it; so, though its appropriateness was not apparent, the "Dipping-Pool" it remained. It was an unpretending, whitewashed house, squatting in the green creek as though ashamed to be seen within range of the public eye. Many people thought that it had reason to be so, as its present proprietor had borne an indifferent character for honesty in certain small ways, and had left Llangarth, where he had formerly lived, on account of the inconvenient attitude of local opinion. He was a thick-set, smiling man, of florid complexion, round whose broad face the red hair, beard, and whiskers formed such a perfect halo, that now, as he entered the kitchen and his head appeared over a wooden screen standing at the door, it produced something of the effect of a sunrise. "Well, Mr. Walters," he began, when he had shut the door of the inner room carefully and sat down cumbrously beside Rhys, "and how be you minded to do?" The company took its pipe out of its mouth and turned its gaze upon the young man. There was a pause. "There's a good deal against it," said Rhys, returning the stare, "but let's have a drop of something hot before we sit down to the matter. How about the kettle, Hosea, and a bottle of spirits?" "Wal, I don't have no objection, not I," hazarded Charley Turnbull, the man by the chimney-corner, drawing a large hand across his mouth, and reflecting that Rhys would pay for it. A call from Hosea brought in Mary Vaughan. She stood waiting while he gave the order with her eyes fixed upon Rhys, who was studiously contemplating his muddy boots; he never so much as looked up to bid her good-evening. "When you've brought the liquor, don't be settin' up, girl," said the landlord. "Go you up-stairs and leave we to our bysiness. I'll mind the hearth." Mary's look wandered over the assembly, lighting for a moment upon Rhys Walters; her eyes were large and brilliant, and shone out of her serious face like flames; there seemed to be a slow fire behind them. She made no reply, but brought what was wanted, leaving the room with an indistinct good-night. "If her did get to know, it would not do for we--indeed that it would not," remarked Johnny Watkins, shaking his head. "Lawk! no; her would soon tell the old man," answered Turnbull. "Be the door fast behind her, Hosea?" "Yes, sure." "But put you the key well into the hole," continued Charley, "that there be no sound to go through." "Be her a wag-tongued wench?" asked a man who had not yet spoken, and who, having come from a distance, was a stranger to some of those present. "No, no," replied Hosea, "but her father do keep the toll-gate down below Pig Lane." "Ah, well, to be sure." The company again sat silent while the kettle was put on to boil and the fire stirred up; a shower of sparks flew out as Hosea punched and turned the logs with a plebeian-looking poker. "Master Rhys--beg pardon, Mr. Walters, sir--no offence. Us have knowed ye since ye was no more nor a little lump of a boy," began Charley, who regarded himself as spokesman, with the every-day result that he was quietly accepted as such. "If you be to come along of us at the time we know of, us have thought, and indeed we all do say"--here he looked round upon the men for corroboration--"that Rebecca bein' a Bible person and a leading woman of power and glory in this job, we will be proud if you be she." The orator stopped and replaced his pipe in his mouth as a kind of full-stop to the sentence. Rhys Walters had never before considered himself in the light of a "Bible person," and he smiled slightly. "Is that your wish?" he inquired, scanning the faces in the firelight. "Yes, surely," said Johnny Watkins, his squeaky voice audible above the murmur of assent. "Stevens and I were sayin'"--here he pointed to a man, who, finding himself brought under popular notice, wriggled in his chair with mingled anguish and enjoyment--"just before you come in, sir, what a beautiful female you would be." Rhys, who had about as much resemblance to a woman as a pointer has to a lap-dog, laughed, and the others, at this, laughed too, while Johnny Watkins began to perceive in himself a wit of the highest order. "It's very well I'm a clean-shaved man," said Walters, stroking his lean jaw. "It wouldn't have done for your style of looks, Hosea." The company, being one to which a personality never failed to appeal, again roared with laughter, and Watkins saw with dismay that a greater than he had arisen; he made one mighty effort. "Yes," he remarked, at the pitch of his penetrating voice, "yes. An a' might have set fire to the toll-gate with a's whiskers!" Hosea turned upon him an awful glare, for his red hair had long been a weapon in the hands of his foes. He had no sprightliness of retort, but he was determined that Johnny's pleasantries should not continue for want of a solid, knock-down blow. "If I had a beard like a billy-goat waggin' about under an ass's face," he said solemnly, "I'd keep it out o' the sight o' folks, for fear it might be made a mock of--that I would." Johnny Watkins gave a gasp which made his beard wag more vehemently than ever, and retired abashed into silence. Rhys had not come through the fog at that hour of the evening to listen to profitless disputes. The matter in hand, which was a projected attack upon a toll-gate not far from Llangarth, interested him more now that he had become the prominent person in it, for he had arrived at the inn uncertain whether or no he would lend active support to the affair, it being more of a piece of out-of-the-way amusement to him than anything affecting his opinions. At this time a wave of wrath which had a considerable foundation of justice was surging over South Wales. By a general Highway Act, a new principle of road-government had been brought in, under which the trustees of turnpike roads might raise money through tolls, sufficient to pay the interest of the debts and keep the highways in repair. For this reason the gates were withdrawn from the operation of the Highway Laws, the tolls increased in amount, and every means used by those in authority to uphold the revenues of their trusts. The gates had, in some cases, been taken by professional toll-renters, men who came from a distance, and who were consequently regarded with suspicion by the intensely conservative population of the rural districts. These people, having higher rents to make up, had refused to give credit to farmers, or to allow them to compound for tolls on easy terms as had been formerly their custom. The effect of all this had been to rouse the public to a state of fury, which had resulted, in many places, in serious riots. In carrying out the provisions of their respective Acts, the trustees were under little or no control; they erected fresh gates, interpreted the laws as they thought fit, and there was no appeal from their decisions. Added to these difficulties, a succession of wet harvests, and the fall in price of live stock had reduced the farmers' capital, and they and their dependents resented, as well they might, the new devices for raising money out of their emptying pockets. The first riot had broken out at Carmarthen, and was the signal for a series of like disturbances all over the country. Although it had taken place in May, and now, as Rhys Walters and his companions sat by the Dipping-Pool fire, the year had almost reached its end, the reign of terror created was still going on, though it had not, so far, begun in Breconshire. The Carmarthen rioters had banded themselves together about three hundred strong, under a person whom the law never succeeded in identifying, and who, assuming the name of "Rebecca," appeared dressed as a woman and mounted upon a black horse. "Rebecca and her children," as they were called by the terrified neighbourhood, marched upon one of the gates in the town armed with every conceivable kind of weapon, pitchforks, pistols, hay-knives--to say nothing of the crowbars and the mallets which they carried with them and with which they intended to destroy the bar. "Rebecca" had been chosen as a name for their captain in reference to an Old Testament text, which tells how Rebecca, bride of Isaac, on leaving her father's house, was blessed by Laban in these words: "Let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them." About two o'clock in the morning the strange tribe, some mounted and some on foot, had appeared near the toll and placed sentinels in the surrounding streets; and, before the astonished inhabitants, roused from their beds by the noise and the loud orders of Rebecca, could realize what was happening, the work of destruction was going bravely forward, the rioters using their implements like demons, not only upon the toll-bar, but upon all who tried to hinder them. The toll-keeper came to his door remonstrating with the mob, but his appearance provoked a shower of stones, and he fled back into shelter pursued by shouts and jeers. His wife, a brave woman and a much better man than her husband, then came out and stood quietly in the middle of the road, and, in the lull of surprise which her action provoked, entreated the leader to spare the house, as her child lay dangerously ill within. One or two of the more ruffianly flung stones at the woman, but Rebecca turned upon them, dealing one of them a blow which sent him staggering, and announcing her intention of going to find out the truth. Then, in the grey early light, the extraordinary figure, gigantic in its female dress, dismounted and stalked after the distracted mother into the toll-house. When it emerged, the order was given to retreat, and the cavalcade dashed through the wrecked gate and disappeared in various directions into the country, just as the local police, according to time-honoured custom, were arriving half-an-hour too late. One or two dismounted stragglers were caught and punished, but the ringleader and most of the offenders escaped, though every effort was made to trace them; but it was whispered with bated breath that Rebecca rode abroad in distinguished company, and that many of the younger farmers, and even the gentry, were not above suspicion. After this matters grew worse and worse. The success at Carmarthen encouraged the lawlessness that broke out on every side, and in some districts there was hardly a toll-bar remaining intact. Seeing this, the magistrates took decided action, the military were called out and special police enrolled, with the result that when the opposing forces met, each encounter was more serious and bloody than the last. The panic spread on all sides. People told each other lying tales of cruelties practised by the devastating hordes, with details which made the hair of the respectable stand upright, while children who had read of Rebecca in their Bible lessons and now gathered from their elders that she was actually going about, fancied that Old Testament days had come back. They were prepared at any moment to meet any sort of Sunday character, from Joseph in his coat of many colours to Satan himself, horned, tailed, black, and pitchforked, and without a stitch of clothes upon his unhallowed person. "I think I shall have to come with you, neighbours," said Rhys, "and we had better be stirring and settle our doings. We should be ready for the first week of the year, for we don't want the moon rising on us too early. She ought to be up about eleven; that would do well enough. We'd be done and home by then." "And how about horses?" inquired Hosea. "Them knowin' old badgers in Llangarth will soon see who's movin'. An' ye can't dress up a beast as ye can a man." "Trew enough," observed Charley Turnbull solemnly. He was beginning to wonder how he could get hold of a horse of some one else's. "As to that, I shall ride a young mare I haven't had above a week. She's never been seen in the valley, and a lick of white paint down the faces of some o' your nags, and a white stocking here and there makes a wonderful difference. Those who have white-footed ones can use the blacking brush. And you must risk something," added Rhys, looking hard at Turnbull, and guessing his thoughts exactly. "Woman's clothing be a fine protection," remarked Stevens; and Turnbull wished he had not been so reckless in giving away the part of Rebecca. "Be you to ride all o' one side like the wenches do?" inquired the man who came from a distance, "or will ye put your leg across the saddle like a Christian?" "Oh, I'll ride astride," said Rhys, "or I shan't be able to lay about me so well if need be." "Petticoats an' all?" "I suppose so." Here a roar of laughter went up at the thought of his appearance, which Mary could hear plainly in the room overhead. Had poor old Eli been in his son's place, the whimsicalities of his own costume would have given him hours of study and enjoyment. But it was not so with Rhys; humour was not predominant in him. He did not live sufficiently outside himself for that. "I must look round for some sort of clothes," he said, rather stiffly. "It would be well for everybody to have something to hide their faces. I'll get Nannie Davis up at the farm to lend me an old sun-bonnet." "An' I'll give ye a brown bit of a gown my sister Susan left here when her was over for Crishowell feast September last," volunteered Hosea. "It's been hangin' behind the door ever since." "An' I'll find ye a cloak more fit for a skeercrow than for any other person," said a man called Jones. "Will ye have it?" "Oh, yes, it'll do," replied Rhys. "G'arge! an' you'll be a right hussy! Fit to skeer the old limb without any o' we." Here there was another laugh. "When ye spoke o' skeercrows," observed Johnny Watkins, who had been silent much longer than he liked, "it minds me o' a crewel turn one o' they figgers served my poor mother. Father could never abide the sight o' one since." Rhys looked encouragingly at Johnny. He was nothing loth to change the subject. "What was that?" he asked. "It were when old Hitchcock were parson down at Crishowell. He and his lady had a great notion o' each other, an' when each fifth of August come round--bein' their marriage-day--any one as did go to the Vicarage with a 'good luck to ye, sir and madam,' or 'many happy returns o' the day,' got a bottle o' beer from Madam Hitchcock to take home an' drink their good health in. My mother, though she were a bit hard o' seein', did use to go, an' never missed a weddin'-day from the time her come to the parish to the day her was taken up on high. One year, as her went, her peered over the garden wall an' dropped a bob to the parson as he was in the midst o' the onion-bed standing quiet an' lookin' at the fruit. At the house, the missis were at the window an' her bobbed again. 'Wish you luck o' this day, ma'am,' says she. 'Thank you, Betty,' says madam, smilin' sweet. 'And good luck to the Reverend Hitchcock that's standin' among the onions outside. Never did I see the reverend parson look so well an' handsome,' says mother, smilin' an' laughin' more than was needful, her bein' a bit bashful. The lady give a look at her so as poor mother were fairly dazed, an' down come the window wi' a bang an' madam was gone. Mother waited there three-quarters of an hour full, until a lad were sent out to tell her to go home an' no ale. One day as her an' father was passin', her said to father, says mother, 'Hitchcock be a wonderful man for flowers. Never a day do I go by but he's there squintin' at them.' "'Lawk, you poor foondy[1] woman,' says father, 'do parson have straw round a's legs? 'Tis the skeercrow.' An' when he found how the dummy had cheated him out o' his beer, never could he look one i' the face again. 'Twas crewel, that it was." ----- [1] Foolish. CHAPTER IV AT THE YEW-STUMP AND AFTER THE mist lifted a little as Rhys Walters left the Dipping-Pool and turned out of the watercourse on to smooth turf. He could not help smiling as he thought of Charley Turnbull's misgivings, though in his heart he sympathized with them more than he would admit, even to himself. He looked forward with pleasure to the coming raid, and with still more to the prominent part he was to play in it, but through his pleasure ran the devout hope that he would not be recognized. Not that he feared the law more than he feared anything else, but his respectability was dear to him, as dear as his love of adventure, and the struggle to eat his cake and have it was a part of his inmost soul. Only one person at Great Masterhouse was to know his secret, and that was Nannie Davis, an old servant who had belonged to the establishment since his birth, and who had screened and abetted many of his boyish pranks. She was built on an entirely opposite pattern to her mistress, and the unregenerate old woman had often felt a positive joy in his misdoings, the straitened atmosphere which clung round Mrs. Walters being at times like to suffocate her. From her Rhys intended hiding nothing. He knew that, whatever protest she might see fit to make, she would neither betray him nor grudge him the clothes necessary to his disguise. His plan was, briefly, to tell his mother that he had business in Abergavenny, a town some fourteen miles on the other side of the mountain, and, having ostentatiously departed for that place, to make for the Dipping-Pool. To the Dipping-Pool also he would return when he had seen the adventure through, and from thence in a day or two home in peace. At least so he trusted. The direct line from the inn to Great Masterhouse took him past one of the many remains of old buildings to be found round the mountain. Only a yard or so of broken wall indicated where a long-disused chapel had stood, and the roots of a yew marked the turf; where passing animals had scraped the bark with their hoofs, reddish patches proved what manner of tree the solitary stump had been. Some stones had been quarried from the ground close by, leaving a shallow pit almost overgrown with grass. It was a dismal enough place, he thought, as he rode past, and his heart almost stopped as he heard his own name sounding from the quarry. Having found superstition inconvenient he had long ago rid himself of it, still the voice in the mist sent a perceptible chill through him. "Rhys! Rhys!" came from the hollow, and a figure was distinguishable by the old wall. He turned towards the spot, but the horse reared straight up; he had his own ideas about things which sprang out of mists. Rhys was never cruel to animals, seldom even rough, and he patted his neck, gripping him tightly with his knees and pressing him forward with those indescribable noises dear to horses' hearts. The voice rang out again, this time with a very familiar tone. "Mary! Is that you?" he called sharply, dismounting by the wall. "Oh, Rhys!" she cried, as he came face to face with her, "don't you be angry! I've come all the way from the Dipping-Pool so as to see you here." And as she caught sight of his expression, she burst into violent weeping. He stood in front of her frowning, though the sight of her distress touched him a little through his vexation. She had always touched him rather--that was the worst of it. "What have you come here for?" he asked, feeling great misgivings as to the reason. "Come, sit here like a good girl and tell me. Lord! your dress is dripping. 'Tis like a madwoman to go running over the country these damp nights." And he drew her down upon the yew-stump and put his arm about her. The horse began to crop the short grass. He was completely reassured, and like many who considered themselves his betters, he found his stomach a source of much solace and occupation. Mary leaned her head against Rhys, and her sobs ceased as she found his arm round her; she was cold and wearied, and she was suffering an anxiety that was more than she could well bear. "Rhys," she said, "I know all about it. Mr. Evans was telling Turnbull o' Tuesday evening, an' I heard every word. Don't you go--don't you. I've come all the way through this lonesome place to ask you." And she clung to him, imploring. He sat silent for a moment. "Damnation," he said at last between his teeth. Mary's tears broke out afresh. "Now you hate me for it, I know," she sobbed, breaking away and standing before him, a slight wild figure against the clearing atmosphere. "But oh! how could I help it?" "Nonsense," said the young man impatiently, "come back and don't be a fool. I couldn't hate you, and that you know." "Is that true?" she asked, clasping her hands and fixing her large eyes on him. The wet mist had made her hair limp and heavy, and a lock of it showed on her shoulder, under the cloak she had thrown over her head. Even tears, cold, and wet could not make her anything but an attractive woman, and he put out his hand and took hers. It was like a piece of ice. "You silly wench," he said, pulling her towards him and kissing her. "Why do you come out like this, catching your death of cold? Not but what I'm glad you came, all the same, for I don't seem to see you now-a-days, as I used to. What is it you want me to do?" "Don't go to the toll-gate wi' them Rebecca people," she begged. "It's a black business, and oh! if you were to get caught what would they do to you? Rhys, there's a man in Carmarthen jail that I used to know, and I've heard tell that they won't let him out for years an' years. And what would become of me?" "Mary," he said sharply, "have you told any one of this?" "Never a soul have I spoken one word to, as God above made me," she answered. "'Twas likely I'd tell any one, and you in it; why should you think so bad of me, Rhys? I'd never mistrust you like that. An' for my own sake----" He interrupted her with another kiss. "Don't be angry, my dear, I don't distrust you at all. And I love you truly, Mary, indeed I do." "Well then, if you do, you'll promise not to go along with Evans an' the rest, won't you?" she coaxed, putting her arms round his neck. "Promise, promise." "I can't, Mary, I can't, so there's an end of it." "Very well," she said in a trembling voice, "then good-bye, for I'd best be going." She took up a corner of her cloak, and pressed it to her eyes; there was something infinitely pathetic in the gesture. It was an acceptance of so much--more even than lay in that one interview. "Dear, don't you be afraid," said Rhys, "there's not the smallest chance of any of us being caught. We have it spread all over the country, that there's to be a fine to-do that night at the gate by the river, and every constable will be down there and out of our way." "But the soldiers," said the girl; "they say they're hanging about everywhere. They'll be pouncing out upon you--mark my words--wi' their swords an' dreadful things, and, like as not, you'll be killed. Oh, Rhys! Rhys!" "The soldiers will all be at the Wye gate with the police, you little blockhead, if there are any at all." "Ah! you can't tell." "Well, if they do come," exclaimed he, with a laugh, "they're not likely to catch me. If there's a run for it, I fancy I know this country better than any young fool that ever put on a yeomanry uniform and thought himself a soldier. Since you know so much, Mary, I may as well tell you the whole job. I'm to set out for Abergavenny two days beforehand, but I shan't go there, I shall go to the Dipping-Pool." "I'm glad of that," she said simply, "for then I'll see you." "And so," he went on without heeding her, "if the yeomanry should get wind of it and come down to the gate, I shall have a good mare under me, and I'll be into Abergavenny before the news of it gets even as far as Great Masterhouse. There's a man there who will swear to my having been in his house two days." "But how do you know they'll keep their mouths shut--them at the Dipping-Pool, I mean? There's that Watkins, it's anything for talk wi' him." He struck his fist on his knee. "I'll break every bone in his sneaking body if he says a word now or after, and so I'll tell him. He's frightened out of his life of me as it is, and I'll scare him still more." "Oh, Rhys, you're a wild man," she sighed, "and your look makes me cold when you talk like that. Listen now, you won't hurt my father? He's an old man, but he's not one o' those to stand by and see his gate destroyed without a word. I mind him well when he could use his hands wi' the best." "I won't lay a finger on him, Mary." The girl's heart smote her, when she remembered how her father's danger had weighed on her mind, as she sat waiting for Rhys to come by. Since seeing him, the old man had become but an afterthought; and yet, she had always been reckoned a good daughter. But her world had turned on a different pivot for the last six months. She recognized that and sat silent. "You needn't fear about him," continued her companion, observing the lines of repressed pain round her closed lips. "I wasn't thinking of that; Rhys, you know what I'm thinking about. It's not the word for a maid to say to a man, but I must. When--when is it to be, Rhys?" He plucked up a piece of grass and turned it over and over in his fingers before he answered. To say the truth, he had no desire to marry any one just now. That he loved the girl beside him he could not deny; that she loved him and had trusted his word completely was a fact of which he was profoundly aware. Of another fact he was profoundly aware too, and that was, that, if he were to make her rue it, he would be a blackguard. He did not want to be a blackguard, and he hated the thought of her being in trouble; she was good and true and loving, and she had, in spite of her position, a refined and delicate beauty he never saw among the girls who made eyes at him in Llangarth and giggled when he spoke to them. She would look lovely in the pretty clothes and the surroundings his money would buy for her. And, as he understood love, he loved her. But what was she? An inn servant; there was no getting over that. His mother would be horrified were he to bring back a wife taken from such a place. For this, it is true, he cared but little, for the antagonism which had existed in his boyhood between himself and Mrs. Walters had stayed unchanged. They were on more equal terms, that was all. What he chose to do he would do. All the same his pride rebelled a little at the thought of marrying Mary, for he liked making a figure in the eyes of his neighbours. For a few seconds neither of them spoke. The horse had ceased cropping and was pricking his ears; he whinnied softly, so softly that the sound was hardly more than a gurgle in his throat, but it was enough to make Rhys spring up and seize him by the bit. He led him down the sloping side of the old quarry, dragging Mary with him, and the three stood together at the bottom, Rhys in his shirt-sleeves, holding his coat over the animal's head. The trot of horses came near as they waited stock-still and breathless in their shelter; evidently the riders, whoever they were, would pass very near, and the sound of voices was audible between them and the direction of the Dipping-Pool. The horse began to stamp about. "Mary," whispered Rhys, "they're coming close past us and they must see this brute. Do you lie down flat by the wall and I'll mount and meet them. I'll be bound they are lost in the mist and will think I am in the same plight. I can lead them a bit wide of here, and, when they're passed, go you home. I'll get on to Masterhouse; it's late, and I'd have to be leaving you in any case." "But," she said anxiously, as though there had been no interruption, "you haven't answered me. Tell me; it's to be soon, oh! isn't it?" "After the toll-gate business," he answered. She held up her face and they kissed each other; then he hurried on his coat, threw himself into the saddle and disappeared over the top of the quarry. He rode straight to the right across the path by which he judged the riders to be advancing. As they came upon him, he slackened his pace and stood, as though irresolute which way to take. The new-comers pulled up and hailed him. "Hoy! sir!" shouted the foremost of the two. He turned and saw a man, some years younger than himself, followed by another, whom at a rapid glance he took to be his servant. The master seemed little more than a boy; he had a young, fresh face, and curly hair flattened in rings upon his forehead by the moisture of the air. He might have stood for an equestrian statue of frank and not too intellectual youth. The servant carried a valise, and was mounted on an elderly-looking flea-bitten grey. "I have lost myself in this infernal mist," observed the young fellow, coming towards him, as he had hoped, and leaving the quarry on his left. "Indeed, sir! So have I," replied Rhys. "Plague on it for that," he went on, "for now you can't tell me which way to go." Walters smiled a little. "I don't know where you are bound for," he remarked. The other laughed out. "Lord! I had forgotten that. Well then, my name is Harry Fenton, and I am going down to my father's at Waterchurch." He said this all in a breath, as though anxious to get it out and go on to more, if need be. "Then you are Squire Fenton's son, of Waterchurch Court," said Rhys, who had suspected his identity ever since he came in sight. "Yes, that's who I am. And who are you?" The social standing of this competent-looking man puzzled him hugely. Curiosity and admiration, too, struggled within him like dogs on a leash, while good manners kept a faltering hold on the string. "Excuse me, sir," he added, reddening, "if I am impertinent." "Not at all, sir," replied the other; "my name is Rhys Walters." This information seemed to convey something to the younger man, for he opened his eyes very wide and looked eagerly at his companion. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "then you are Walters of Great Masterhouse." Then he reddened again as he remembered that he was talking to a farmer whom he did not know, and had omitted the "Mister." "At your service," said Rhys. "It's surprising to find _you_ lost," observed Harry, treading as accidentally upon the truth as if it had been a lady's dress. Rhys smiled, this time internally. Like a devout lover he loved strategy, even more for herself than for what she might bring him. "I have heard that you know your way in places where no one else does," continued young Fenton. "Masterhouse is so near the mountain that one has to be pretty sharp these dark nights. But I've been baffled this time. However, I have a suspicion where we are now. With your leave, sir, I'll go with you for a little and put you on the right track." "I should like that very much," said Harry, gratefully, "but my home and yours lie so far apart that it would be taking you much out of your road." "The mist is clearing, so that, when I've left you, I can canter home in twenty minutes. It will be no trouble." "Oh, thank you indeed; I am afraid my poor mother will think I am bogged, or have fallen in with Rebecca; women are always nervous," said the boy, with a male air which was entirely lost on Rhys. At the mention of women his thoughts had flown to the quarry hard by, and he was anxious to push on and leave the coast clear for Mary's escape. They went steadily forward, side by side, the elder man steering west along the plateau, to where the lanes began to run down to Crishowell, the younger riding unquestioning alongside. The servant jogged quietly along in the rear. "That's a good-looking nag you have under you, Mr. Walters," remarked Harry, when they had gone some way, "and he seems in good condition too." Rhys pinched the bay's neck critically. "Not bad," he said. "Yes, he's a nice little beast. I like him as well as any I've got." "Ah," said Harry, "and I suppose you have plenty more like him." He sighed wistfully, remembering his fellow-traveller's reputed wealth. He loved horses dearly, but though he was Squire Fenton's eldest son, the one he was riding represented his whole stud. While there were Bob and Tom and Llewellyn to be provided for, he had to do as best he could with one, and Bob and Tom and Llewellyn shared his tastes. Not that he grudged his brothers anything, for he was much too generous, but he could not help envying the man beside him. He wished, too, that he had something to serve as a yeomanry charger besides his own horse, for, by all accounts, there would be work soon. That was what was bringing him home. "There have been tremendous doings at Carmarthen," he remarked, after a pause. "Yes," said Rhys, quietly, "and I suppose we shall soon see the same here. I believe the yeomanry are to come out too. There's a great raid pending in these parts." "That's what I have come down for," replied his companion, a glow of interest rising in his face. "They'll have us out at last, and I hope we shall get some fun for our pains. Have you heard much about it?" "It's a good deal talked of. They talk too much, these rioters," replied Rhys with a short laugh, riding up closer to Fenton. "Never you mind, sir, how I know it, but know it I do. It's to take place before long, and it's to be the Wye gate, down by the river at Llangarth." "By Gad! is it? Well, we'll come out as strong as we can and be a match for the whole crew. You are a yeomanry man, aren't you?" "No, I am not. Though I have often thought----" "Ah, but you'll come out, surely Mr. Walters!" interrupted Harry, cutting the sentence short, "a man like you, with the Lord knows how many horses and men!" "I should dearly like it," answered Rhys, "but I am going to Abergavenny very soon, and I cannot tell when I may have to be off. It's an urgent matter. It may just fall out that I'm at Abergavenny when I most want to be here; and I can't put it off either, or go till I'm sent for." "What a monstrous pity!" There was vexation in Harry's voice. Besides his zeal for law and order as exemplified by fighting and pursuing, he was strongly attracted by this man and longed to see more of him. They had come down the side of a straggling thorn hedge, and now, at its angle, they halted by a gate. "Now," said Rhys, "this lane will take you down into Crishowell. There's no mist below, if I know anything, and you'll see your way to Waterchurch easily. So here we will part." The boy held out his hand. "A thousand thanks for your company," he said cordially. "And you won't fail us if you can help it, will you?" "If it's possible to be there, I'll be there somehow," was the reply. And in that Rhys Walters spoke truth. CHAPTER V REBECCA AS though to drop connection with its predecessor and to start the world afresh, the new year brought a change of weather. The wind, which for some time had lain in the south-west, was veering round to the east, and the sodden earth was drying herself rapidly. Rheumatism was becoming a less general theme for conversation in Crishowell, and people's clothes were again seen hanging out to dry in gardens. Forlorn-looking strings, which had stretched nakedly from pole to pole, now upheld smocks, petticoats, and well-patched trouser-legs, whose active prancings in the breeze almost made the spectators' legs leap in sympathy. Four or five old men, whose goings-out and comings-in gauged the state of the barometer as accurately as if they had been occupants of pasteboard "weather-houses," were to be met about; and Bumpett, the pig-driver, whose excursions into foreign parts a few miles away made him an authority on all matters, opined that a frost was not far off. He also added that the roads would be "crewell hard" by the Wye toll-gate, and that we "should see what we should see." This information made the women look mysterious and snub those of their sex who had not been observed in talk with the great man; the men said less, though they smoked their pipes in a more chastened manner. Meanwhile, the storm which had been brewed over the Dipping-Pool fire was ready to burst. In a steep upland lane, about nine o'clock one evening, a little band of horsemen was coming quietly down towards the valley. The high banks crowned with ragged hazel on either hand and the darkness around (for the moon was not due for an hour or so) made it difficult to distinguish who or what they were. As gaps in the bank let in a little extra illumination, and stars began to assert themselves over the dispersing clouds, it could be seen that they were about twenty-five in number, and that all, with one exception, wore masks. They were fairly well mounted, and the strange person who kept a few yards ahead of the rest rode an animal which any one, knowing even a little about a horse, would have picked out at a glance. She was a liver-chestnut mare just under sixteen hands, with a shoulder such as was rarely to be found in the motley crowd of horseflesh at local fairs. Youth and a trifle of inexperience were noticeable in her among the sober-stepping and sturdy beasts following, and she mouthed her ring-snaffle as she went. Her long bang tail swung at each stride, and her length of pastern gave her pace an elasticity like that of a Spanish dancer. But if the mare was a remarkable figure in the little procession, her rider was immeasurably more so, being, apparently, the tallest female who had ever sat in a saddle. Her long cloak and voluminous brown skirt fell in a dark mass against the beast's sides, giving her figure a seeming length and height double that of any of her companions. On her head she wore a large sun-bonnet, tied securely over a shock of hair which looked false even in the scant light; the lower part of her face was muffled in her cloak, so that but little feature could be seen. The strange woman rode astride, and, as an occasional puff of wind lifted her skirt, it revealed leggings and boots; one lean, brown hand on the rein was visible under the concealing drapery, and the other carried a heavy thorn stick. From under the shock of hair looked the eyes of Rhys Walters. The whole company was formed of the same material which had met in the inn kitchen the day after Christmas, with several additions and with the exception of Johnny Watkins, whose heart had failed him at the last moment, and of Charley Turnbull, who was nowhere to be seen. Hosea Evans was there, unrecognizable in his black mask and cropped whiskers, for he had parted with a portion of these adornments, fearing that they might betray him. He had hesitated to shave entirely, lest people should be too curious about his reasons for doing so, and had merely trimmed them into less conspicuous limits with the scissors. Every one was armed in some fashion or another. Sticks were the principal weapons, though two or three carried pitchforks, and one of the more ambitious spirits displayed an antiquated horse-pistol which he would have been sorely put about to fire. A few of Rebecca's followers were afoot, and had brought with them a crowbar and a couple of serviceable mallets. These went more slowly behind the horses. The element of burlesque which pervaded the affair was not lost upon Rhys, and it cooled him a little as he rode along, to think what a ridiculous troop he was heading. His own garments, too, offended him greatly, and he would have discarded them at the beginning, had he not been sure that some one else would have put them on, and, with them, assumed leadership of the band. He secretly determined to get rid of them as best he might, when the night's work should begin. Crishowell village was in the centre of a loop which the Brecon road made round it, and when the first few lights it contained at that hour were visible in front, the party turned into the fields, avoiding its vicinity and straggling along by hedges and by such cover as was available. The highway lay like a grey ribbon in the starlight, and they had the good fortune to cross it without meeting a human being; only a prowling fox sneaked up one of the ditches as they passed. They then entered the lane which opened before them, and, down it, made for the other side of the loop, for there, just at its end, stood the toll. At a bend of the way, Walters ran into a rider who was coming to meet them, and the sudden stop which this caused in the narrow place had the effect of bringing every one smartly up against his predecessor's tail. As the new-comer was caught sight of by the huddled-up pack, a loud laugh burst from all and made the empty lane ring. "Be quiet," cried Rhys angrily, under his breath. "You fools! can't you keep from waking the whole place with your noise? Good God! what sort of a tom-fool have we here?" Before the astonished young man stood a travesty of himself, dress, dark cloak, sun-bonnet, and all, the only additions being a mask and a white woollen comforter, one end of which hung down over a substantial back. The rotund cheeks of its wearer swelled out the bonnet, the strings of which were drawn almost to suffocation. The voice of Charley Turnbull escaped, with apparent difficulty, from these surroundings. Since the evening at the Dipping-Pool, Turnbull had been in a state of the most cruel and poignant distress. Steven's remark had brought home to him, too late, the truth that women's clothes would be a more effectual disguise than all the masks and mufflers in the world; with keen vexation he realized that he had overlooked that. The police's likelihood to pursue the ringleader at all costs was nothing to him, for he was a man of few ideas, and liable, when he had one, to make the most of it, to the exclusion of all others. That sentence, "Woman's clothing be a fine protection," rang in his ears from morning till night, and, what was worse, from night till morning. As the days rolled on his agony increased. Often he was on the verge of breaking out of the project altogether, but thoughts of the jeers which would assail him robbed him even of the courage to do that. Finally, he came upon a plan to meet his difficulties, the result of which now brought him face to face with Rebecca and thus attired. "Here I am, Mr. Walters, sir," he began, "and I hope you won't take it ill o' me that I be come lookin' so like yourself. You see, it were this way. I says to myself, I says----" "Come on, come on," interrupted Rhys, "we must be moving. And be quiet behind there, if you can. We are getting near the road." "I says to myself," went on Turnbull, keeping abreast of the mare's walk at the risk of being jogged to pieces, "there's Mrs. Walters, I says, a God-fearing lady as ever stepped. What would she do if aught was to happen to you, sir? Ah, Master Rhys, we must think o' them at home. So then, I thought this way--if there be two of us, them as be after us won't know who to get hold on, they won't indeed. So you see----" "Yes, yes, I understand," exclaimed the other, exasperated beyond bearing; "for God's sake, get behind and let me be. We're pretty nigh in sight of the lane's end." A little way down the Brecon road, not more than a couple of furlongs off, rose the dark mass of the toll-house, its slates here and there catching the starlight. Indistinct black bars could be seen crossing the highway; above them burned the steady flame of the toll-gate light. It was perfectly still, and not a footstep was to be heard coming or going as Rhys pulled up. Several of the men, small farmers principally, crowded round; their hearts were in the matter, and their eager faces looked steadfastly towards him through the fog of horses' breath which the fast-approaching frost was making. To them the matter was sober earnest, and they meant to see it through to the end; the burlesque view of it occurred to them not at all. Those with the mallets and crowbar pressed up. "Give me a stone, Price." One of the men picked up a flint. Rhys took it and turned in his saddle; he was getting excited himself. "Come after me down the grass," he said, "and when you see the light go out, fall to." They cantered down the roadside to within a few yards of the toll-house, and paused. Then they saw Rebecca's cloaked arm go up, a stone whizzed through the air, there was a smash of splintering glass, and the light went out. * * * * * * At the same time another little body of horse and foot was gathered in no very patient frame of mind a couple of miles off. The Wye toll-gate in Llangarth stood at the beginning of the great bridge spanning the river on the north side of the town, and, as it had been rumoured that Rebecca was to make her descent upon that place, all the police available were waiting there on foot as well as about twenty horsemen picked from the flower of the Hereford yeomanry. The latter were cooling their heels in the courtyard of the Bull Inn, which stood a little back from the street, while the police hung in a group round the side door of that establishment, some member of the force now and then moving off to look up the road for sign of the approaching rioters or for anything to break the monotony of their vigil. For six nights now they had been assembled in the same place with no more exciting termination than being marched to the Police Station and dismissed in the early morning, and they were getting heartily tired of the experience. An occasional stamp from a horse or a long-drawn yawn from one of the men was heard above the soft steady roar of the Wye, which was shallow below the bridge and purred like a contented animal over the shingle. The landlady looked out of a back window on her way to bed, holding her hand before the tallow-candle she carried. The light shone red through her fingers as she glanced out upon the gallant figure of Harry Fenton, whose smart uniform showed plainly in the glow streaming from the inn door upon the yard. It was the first time she had ever seen him, as Waterchurch lay some way off, and he had been much from home of late years. Quarter to ten sounded from Llangarth Church, and a sergeant of police went to have another look up the quiet street. Harry gave his horse to the man next him to hold and strolled after him, the landlady at the window admiring the clank of his sword and the attractive jingle he made as he went. As the two men stood at the corner, the silence of the street was broken by an uneven clattering, and a boy, much out of breath and weighted by an extremely heavy pair of country boots, came rushing towards them over the cobbles. Harry caught him as he was about to pass the courtyard. The boy tried to speak, but for want of breath was obliged to desist. "Who is he?" asked Harry of the sergeant. The policeman took him by the shoulder and turned him round as unceremoniously as if he had been a spinning-top, displaying the purple face of a boy about eleven years old. "You're Howell Seaborne, as works for the parson of Crishowell, aren't you?" said the man. "Howlie, they call him, sir." "Ya'as a' be. Can't you leave oi alone, 'stead o' shoikin' that woy?" "Wait a minute, give him breath," said young Fenton. The boy turned a pair of light, prominent eyes on the speaker, and, at the same time, saw his uniform and the soldiers in the yard. He thrust a grimy forefinger towards them. "It's them oi be come for!" he exclaimed, as he regained his wind. "Oi were down in Crishowell Loine, doin' no 'arm, and oi see them comin'--comin' all of a string wi' sticks an' guns----" "But who? What?" "Fifty men roiding an' a great woman." "When? Where?" cried Harry, catching hold of him much more roughly than the sergeant had done. "Yew're 'urtin' me, sir," whined the boy. "Oi shan't tell nothin' till yew leave go." Fenton took away his hand with a gesture of irritation. "Come on, no nonsense," he said, "tell me at once, where were you?" "Down in the loine by Crishowell. They be all gone down to the goite on the Brecon road; an' oi've been runnin' fit to burst to fetch the soljers. It's Rebecca, it is." In two minutes the yeomanry were dashing out of the court, the police holding by the soldiers' stirrups, meaning to keep up with them as long as they could, and to drop off when the pace should become too much for them. The boy flattened himself against the wall as they went by. When they were round the corner, he tied up a loose bootlace and looked about him. Then he went to a pump which stood on one side and jerked the handle; a stream of water flowed out as he put his head underneath and let it run copiously over his face. He had large front teeth and a retreating chin, and, in the cascade, he looked not unlike a drowning rabbit. When he had finished, he snuffled two or three times, rubbed his countenance with his coat-sleeve, and set out from the Bull yard at a steady jog-trot. How he could run at all in the boots he wore was a mystery, but long practice, no doubt, had made it possible. When the soldiers had turned along the road to Brecon and got clear of the town, the police had, one by one, succumbed to the pace and might be seen upon the highway in threes and fours, stepping out as best they might. The riders kept to the grass as Rhys had done, partly to muffle the sound of hoofs, and partly because the roads were fast hardening, and in some places had become actually slippery. The little wind there was was beginning to sting their ears, and the stars above to flash in the frost. The clouds had rolled completely off and lay in a dark bank along the western horizon; the night got gradually lighter. Harry and a senior officer rode a little ahead, neither saying a word to the other; their eyes were fixed on the stretch of road in front, and they breathed hard. Far behind, the constables pressed along with that hopeless feeling in their legs which the sight of retreating horses creates. Last of all toiled Howlie Seaborne in his big boots. As Harry and his companion came round a slight bend, a sound, which, so far, had been but an unintelligible vibration, struck on their ears with meaning. The blows of heavy mallets were distinct, though the wind went from them to the dark mass which surged and swayed over the road in front. Lights were flashing from the toll-house, and the voices of men rose and fell above the noise of struggling hoofs. The two officers took their horses by the heads and drove in their spurs. "Fenton," said the elder man as they separated a few minutes later, in the midst of the mob, "whatever we do, let us get Rebecca." By the time the yeomanry arrived, the little crowd which had seen Rhys put out the light had swelled considerably, and people, hearing the noise, had rushed from neighbouring cottages, catching up pitchforks or any weapons they could lay hands upon. A brisk fight was in full swing; Rhys' blood was up, and he had torn off the sun-bonnet and his voluminous garments and turned his high coat collar up over the lower part of his face. The false hair, which had been so securely fastened that it had refused to come off with his headgear, hung low over his eyes, giving him a wild appearance which fitted his violent gestures and the tumultuous scene around him. When Harry came up and saw him in the thick of the struggle, never for one moment did he suspect that the rebel before him was the man who had ridden with him through the mist scarcely a week before. As his friend's injunction about Rebecca reached him he looked eagerly around for some likeness to a female figure, but could see no trace of any such person, Charley Turnbull having, as the fight increased, ensconced himself safely behind an outhouse, where he stood unseen but ready to fly at any moment. The rioters had been so much taken up with their work, and the turmoil had been so great, that it was as though a bolt were falling on them from heaven when they saw the yeomanry coming. Five or six of the mounted assailants had been forming a protection for those who were engaged in breaking up the gate with their tools, and among these was Rhys, with Hosea beside him. As their opponents charged at them and tried to dislodge them with their pitchforks, he leaned down from the young mare's back and dealt sounding blows right and left. Blood was running from a wound in his knee, but he cared nothing for that, for the rage for fight was in his heart as he laid about him, the mare plunging now and then and forcing back the press before her. Among those who were valiantly protecting the toll was Mary Vaughan's father, the toll-keeper, a tall white-haired old man, whose great height and flowing beard made him a central figure in the mob. He had stood in front of his gate until overpowering numbers had forced him from his place, and now was charging bravely at Walters and his followers. Suddenly a cry rose from the defenders, "The soldiers! The soldiers!" and Rhys saw his men waver for a moment at the sound. "One more," he shouted to those with the mallets. "Down with the gate!" There was now only one post left standing, and the insurgents turned upon it at his cry for a last blow before they should scatter in front of the impending yeomanry and take to the country. The toll-keeper, dropping his pitchfork, threw himself like a game old bull-dog upon Rhys' foot and tried to drag him from the saddle. Hosea gave a shout as Rhys turned round. The two men's arms whirled simultaneously in the air, and two violent blows descended upon Vaughan; as Rhys struck out, a lump of mud and stone whizzed sharply in his face, and his stick came down upon the toll-keeper's shoulder. Evans' blow struck him full on his grey head, and, with a groan, the old man fell, as he had stood, at the foot of his shattered gate-post. Hosea saw what he had done and was seized with terror, but his native cunning did not desert him; the advantage of Rhys' near presence was plain. "Oh, Mr. Walters, you have killed him," he cried loudly. It was all the work of a moment. Rhys dashed the mud from his eyes and saw the senseless heap on the ground before him; and behind, two or three yeomen who were fighting their way towards him. With an oath, he sprang desperately through the mob and turned the mare's head straight for the Black Mountain. CHAPTER VI A DEAD MAN AND A LIVE COWARD WHILE Harry's brother officer was leaning over the dead man on the ground, Charley Turnbull was in terrible difficulties in an adjacent field behind the toll-house. As he heard the sound of hoofs he guessed that the yeomanry was coming up, and he stole, with a trembling heart, across the grass to where a gap in the hedge promised safe egress on to the Brecon road. If he could but reach it without being seen, he would have a good furlong's start. The gates from field to field were locked, he knew, and, being so, presented insurmountable obstacles to a man of his temperament. He urged his old black horse along as silently as he could, trying the while to unfasten the strings of his bonnet, which, in truth, were almost choking him; but his fingers shook, and his heart beat so violently that he felt almost as if it would throw him from his unaccustomed saddle. Turnbull never rode if he could help it. As he reached the gap he left off pulling at his sun-bonnet, for he needed both hands with which to hold on to the reins. The horse cocked his ears, blew a long, snorting breath, and seemed anxious to test with his nose the nature of the difficulty he was asked to meet. Seeing the little ditch which divided the hedge from the road, he stuck out his forelegs stiffly in front of him, and snorted yet louder; he was a large, gross horse, with bunches of hair on his fetlocks, and his voice tallied with his appearance. Turnbull, in an agony lest the sound should reach the toll, where things were getting much quieter, gave him an angry blow. The beast started forward, pecked, crashed sideways through a stiff bit of wattle on one side of the gap, and landed by a miracle upon his ample feet in the hardest part of the road. The yeomanry officer, while his men were scattered in pursuit of the rioters, was still giving instructions to the police over Vaughan's body, when he heard a breaking of wood, and saw Charley's fat figure coming almost headlong through the gap. Howlie Seaborne, staring round-eyed at the scene by the gate, looked up on hearing the sound. The long trot from the courtyard of the Bull Inn had told somewhat upon his appearance, which was a little more dishevelled than before. "There a' be!" he shouted. "There a' be! That be Walters--'im as is Rebecca! Did yew 'ear Evans a-croin' out?" The officer knew that Harry was in pursuit of the murderer--whoever he might be--for he had seen him forcing his way after the big man who had made towards the hill. He had not heard Hosea's cry, but Howlie's words were enough; there, at any rate, was the very ringleader of the band, barely half a furlong off. He mounted quickly. Charley had just presence of mind enough to pull his horse's head towards Brecon, to cling with all his strength to the mane till he had righted himself in the saddle, and to set off at as great a pace as his underbred beast could muster. All that he could think of was those clattering hoofs gaining on him from the toll-gate, and his fear of the animal under him was as nothing to his fear of the man behind. Where he should make for he neither knew nor cared; flight--blessed flight--that was all that his scattered senses could picture. Again and again he struck his horse; use his heels he could not, for the simple reason that his wide skirt had got entangled in the stirrups as he came through the gap, and held his legs firmly bound to the leathers. Half-a-mile had not passed before his pace began to slacken, and, thrash as he might, he could not get the black horse to keep up the gallop at which he had started. Besides, he was getting breathless himself. The rider behind shot alongside, shouting to some one yet in the rear, and a strong hand jerked the bridle out of his convulsive grasp. "I've got him!" cried the yeomanry captain exultantly to his follower as they pulled up, "Sergeant, jump off and have him out of the saddle. It's Walters of Great Masterhouse--I thought he was a better horseman than that!" The sergeant dismounted and seized the prisoner round the waist, but he clung like a limpet to the horse's neck. Finally, a strong pull brought him heavily down in the road. Both man and officer burst into a peal of laughter. "Sir, sir," said the stifled voice from the ground, "I swear to Heaven, sir, I be'ant he. Indeed, indeed, I were just pushed sore against my will into this night's work." "Who is the fellow?" asked the captain, when he had finished laughing. "The boy said he was Walters." The sergeant took out a knife and ripped the bonnet-strings apart; mask and bonnet fell together. "It's Charles Turnbull, sir," he said, grinning widely. "Turnbull the auctioneer at Waterchurch village." "Are you sure it's not Walters?" said the captain, who had never seen Rhys. "No, no, sir, indeed I be'ant," cried the auctioneer, scrambling to his feet, and stumbling helplessly in the skirt. "Rhys Walters o' Masterhouse was dressed the same as me, but he's off. Riding for his neck he is. I never struck a blow, sir, that I didn't, for I were behind the toll-house, lookin' on, and I says to myself----" "That'll do," said the captain shortly. "Now then, sergeant, up with him again; you can leave his clothes as they are, for the police will want to see all that. Pick up that thing on the ground." The sergeant picked up the sun-bonnet with another grin, and then hoisted Turnbull into the saddle. "You can pull the reins over the horse's head and lead him," said the officer, "he is not likely to try and escape. He hasn't got courage enough even for that. And now for the lock-up at Llangarth." As the three started to retrace their steps towards the town, the bell from the church steeple rang out half-past ten; the sound floated out in their direction, for the chill east wind carried it sharply along the highway. The captain turned up the collar of his cloak, and wished that he were at home in his comfortable quarters with the blankets snugly over him. To trot was out of the question, for the auctioneer, having no reins to hold on by, and possessing no other means of securing himself on horseback, would inevitably come to grief, while he, the officer, was now responsible for his safety until he should deliver him into other hands at Llangarth. The sergeant hooked Turnbull's reins over his arm, and blew upon his unoccupied fingers. "It's getting mighty cold, sir," he hazarded. "We can't get on any faster with this bundle of old clothes to look after," said the captain crossly; "if you keep your mouth shut, the cold won't go down your throat." His temper was not improved by the prospect of the next couple of miles at a foot's pace, and the toll was only just coming in sight. The road between them and it was dull and straight, and seemed interminable to two of the riders, Turnbull alone having no great desire to get to the end of the journey. A deathly silence surrounded the ruins of the gate as they reached it at last, and only a couple of figures were moving near the house in that odd, diffused light which precedes moonrise, and which was beginning to touch up the eastern sky. To one of these, which proved on inspection to be Howlie Seaborne, the captain gave his reins as he dismounted. A light could be seen burning through the diamond-paned window. He put his foot on the plinth and looked in, but a half-drawn dimity curtain, and a pot in which a geranium was struggling for life, prevented his seeing what was passing inside. Stepping down again, he turned to the door, and, as it was ajar, pushed it softly open and went in. After one look at the room he removed his busby, and stood holding it in his hand. A low bedstead made of unpolished wood had been drawn into the middle of the floor. The patchwork quilt which covered it trailed upon the carpetless flags, and had evidently been brought in a hurry from some more pretentious bed to spread upon this one. Upon it was the dead figure of the toll-keeper. He lay there waiting for the arrival of a magistrate from Llangarth, straight and still, as he would lie waiting for that other Judge who would one day come to judge his cause. He had wrought well, and his hands, laid simply by his sides, were still clenched. A dark bruise on his left temple from which the blood had oozed made a purple patch on his white, set face. His hair, grey, though abundant, was stained with blood; a pair of strong boots were on his feet, and the pipe he had just been smoking when he rushed out to meet the rioters was still in his pocket. Near him was the stick he had caught up from its corner by the door as he went, for a constable had found it by his body on the road and had brought it in. It had left its mark upon several skins that night. Vaughan was a widower, his wife having been dead some years, but one of those nondescript female relations who rise up to stop gaps in the lives of the poor was in the house, and, as the yeomanry officer came in, she was blowing up the flickering fire with a pair of brass-bound bellows. A constable who had been left to watch the body sat in the background. The captain stood silent, his shadow cast by the spasmodic firelight almost filling the small room. Everything was so still; the sound of the bellows jarred on the stillness; the trivial, persistent noise was like an insult to the presence which was there. He turned sternly to the woman at the hearth; her elbow rose and fell as she looked at him over her shoulder, the flames playing on the outline of her face. The constable in the distance coughed and spat. A rush of sharp air came in at the door, and the bellows faltered for a moment, then went on again with redoubled vigour. The woman nodded towards the threshold. "That be she--his daughter," she explained as she turned again to the fire. The soldier drew reverently back as a girl entered and sprang past him. She sat down on the flags by the bedside and took the dead man's hand in her own two hands. Not a tear was in her eyes; she only gasped like a trapped animal, and the man listening could see how her lips opened and shut. The sound of the bellows drowned everything. He strode to the hearth and shook the woman violently by the arm. "For God's sake, put away that infernal thing," he said. She rose from her knees and hung up the bellows in the chimney-corner, the fire-irons clattering as she searched about among them for the hook. When he looked round again he saw that the girl had fainted and was lying face downwards on the floor. He turned to the bellows-blower, who, now that her occupation had ended, was standing idle by the fire; she took but little heed of what had happened. "You had better do something for her," he suggested after a pause. "Isn't there another room that we could take her to? Poor thing, I can carry her there." "She's a shameless wench," said the woman without moving. He went to the bedside and raised Mary in his arms. "Go on," he ordered, nodding decisively towards the door at the back of the room, and the woman went sullenly forward, while he followed with his burden. He laid the girl in a large wooden chair which was almost the only piece of furniture to be seen. Kneeling by her, he rubbed her palms until her eyelids opened vacantly, and she tried to sit up. As recollection dawned in her eyes she gave a sob, hiding her face. "He's dead, he's dead," she murmured more to herself than to her companions. "Aye, he be dead," responded the elder woman in her uncompromising voice, "and afore you've had time to bring him to disgrace too." "Sir, sir," faltered Mary, turning to the captain, "how was it? How----?" "Rhys Walters did it," interrupted the woman shortly, "he killed him. Ah--he'll swing for it yet." Mary got up like a blind person. Her hands were stretched out before her, and she walked straight to the wall till her face touched it. She put up her arms against it, and stood there like an image; only her two hands beat slowly upon the whitewashed stone. "'Twould be well if she had a ring on one o' they hands o' hers," observed the woman. The scene was so painful that the man who was a participator in it could endure it no longer. Pity for the dead man who lay in the dignity of a death bravely come by, was swallowed up in pity for the poor young creature before him. One had faced death, the other had yet to face life. The two little hands beating against the wall, the hard, stupid face of the woman, the cheerless room, all were too horrible to a man of his disposition to be gone through with any longer. He could do nothing for Mary if he stayed, though he could not help feeling cowardly at leaving her to face the first moments of her grief with such a companion. A flutter of icy wind came through a broken pane near him, and his horse out in the road stamped once or twice; his mind ran towards the inn at Llangarth, and he thought of the bright, warm light in the bar. "Here," he said, holding out half-a-sovereign to the woman, "and mind you look after her." As he passed through the kitchen where the toll-keeper lay, his eye fell upon the bellows, and he shuddered. "Poor girl," he said, "poor wretched girl." Howlie Seaborne was one of those rare persons whose silences are as eloquent as their speech. While the owner of the horse he held was in the toll-house, he stood placidly by its head, his eyes fixed upon the prisoner's face; he grinned steadily. The formation of his mouth was unusual, for, while other people's smiles are horizontal, so to speak, his, owing to his rabbit-teeth, was almost vertical. At last Turnbull looked angrily at him. "'Twas you cried out I was Rhys Walters," he said with a malignant glance. If Howlie heard the words, there was no sign of the fact on his changeless countenance; his one idea appeared to be to see as much of the auctioneer as he could. "I'll remember this some day," continued Turnbull; "do ye mind the hiding I gave ye at Crishowell auction last year? Well, ye'll get another o' the same sort." "Oi do," replied Howlie, his words leaving his grin intact; "if oi hadn't, yew moightn't be a-settin' up there loike a poor zany, an' on yew're road to the joil." Turnbull grew purple. "I'll do for ye yet," he said thickly. At this moment the officer came out and got on his horse, throwing a copper to the boy as he let the bridle go. "You're a young fool, for all that," he observed as the coin rang upon the road; "_that's_ not Walters of Masterhouse." "Naw," answered Howlie, his gaze still fixed upon the auctioneer. As the three men rode on towards Llangarth his boots could be heard toiling heavily up Crishowell Lane. CHAPTER VII TO ABERGAVENNY THAT the toll-gate raid would end in a murder was the last thing expected by Rhys. In all the riots which had taken place since the beginning, nothing worse had happened than broken limbs and bruised bodies, such having been the luck of Rebecca and her followers that only a few captures of unimportant hangers-on had been made. Indeed, it is likely that without Howlie's unseasonable prowlings and recognition of his adversary Turnbull, and his determination to pay off old scores, the matter might have had no greater consequences than the terrifying of society in general and the building up of a new gate. As Rhys took the young mare by the head, and turned out of the crowd, a man who had been some way from Hosea when he shouted, was so much demoralized by the cry, that his hand, almost on one of the rioters' collars, dropped to his side. In a flash there came back to Harry Fenton the evening he had strayed in the mist round the spurs of the Black Mountain, and his eyes were opened. This tall, shock-headed figure which was scattering the people right and left as it made for Crishowell Lane was the man he had ridden beside and talked to so frankly in the innocence of his soul. With wrath he remembered how much he had admired his companion, and how apparent he had allowed his interest to become. He had returned home full of talk about his new acquaintance, his good-nature in turning out of his road for a stranger, his fine seat on horseback, and now it made the boy's face hot to think how Rhys must have laughed in his sleeve as his victim had fallen into the trap laid for him. He had been put on the wrong scent by the very ringleader of the mischief he had come so far to help in preventing. His wounded vanity ached; he had been tricked, bested, mocked, deceived. There was only one solace for him, and that was action, action which would not only be his refuge, but his bounden duty. He almost jerked the bit out of his horse's mouth as he wrenched his head round and shot after his enemy, through the crowd and up the resounding highway on the young mare's heels. Rhys' start was not great--about fifty yards--and Harry thought with satisfaction that he was better mounted than usual. His brother Llewellyn had lent him his horse, one lately bought, and the best that either of the young men had ever had. As long as the animal under him could go, so long would he never lose sight of that devil in front, if both their necks should break in the attempt. He would give Llewellyn anything, everything--all he possessed or ever would possess--if he might only lay hands on the man who had cheated him and whose high shoulders now blocked his view of the starlit horizon which seemed to lie just at the end of the open highway. Rhys swung into the lane, and, once between the hedges, he drove in his heels; the road turned a corner a short way ahead, and he wanted to get round it while he had the lead of Harry. Further on there was a thin place in the hazels on his left, and he meant to get in on the grass, though in reality it took him out of his direct route to the mountain. But the going would be softer, and there was the chance of entangling his enemy in the geography of the trappy little fields. He did not know which of the uniformed figures that had poured down to the gate was on his track, but he felt an absolute consciousness that the man behind was as determined to ride as he was himself, and he suspected who that man might be. As he came to the bend he looked back to make sure. He could not tell in the uncertain light, but he saw it was war to the knife; every line of the rider's figure told him that. He turned the mare short and put her at the bank; that it was not sound he knew, but the hedge let through a gleam of standing water, and there was not enough resistance in it to turn her over if she made a mistake. She scrambled through, loosening clods of earth with her heels, but the good turf was on the further side, and she got through with a clatter of stones and wattle. They struck to the right across a field, and, when they were well out in the middle, Rhys saw that Harry had landed without losing ground, and he settled himself down to a steady gallop. As he reflected that his goal was nothing less than Abergavenny, and thought of the distance lying before him, he knew that his best plan was to hustle his pursuer while they were in the valley, and trust to his knowledge of hill tracks and precipices when they had left the pastures behind. It would not be a question of pace up there. All the same, fifteen long miles were in front of him, and behind him--manslaughter. Directly in his way some hundred yards ahead a wide dark patch stretched across the meadow. He knew it to be a piece of boggy ground deep enough to embarrass a horseman, and too well fed by a spring below to freeze, but he also knew the precise spot at which it could be crossed without difficulty. The recent wet weather had made it bigger than usual, and he headed for it, hoping that Fenton would choose a bad bit, and at least take something out of his horse in the heavy clay. In he went, knowing that where there were rushes there was foothold, and keeping his eye on a battered willow-stump which stood like a lighthouse at the further border of the little swamp. A snipe rose from under his feet, a flash of dark lightning whirling in the greyness of the atmosphere. He was through and making steadily for the line of hedge before him. But Harry had not hunted for nothing; ever since his earliest boyhood he had followed hounds on whatever he could get to carry him, and long years of riding inferior beasts had taught him many things. He had never possessed a really perfect hunter in his life, and he was accustomed to saving his animals by every possible means; mad with excitement as he was, he instinctively noticed the odd bit of ground, and pulled straight into the mare's tracks. Walters, looking back from an open gate through which he was racing, ground his teeth as he saw how well he had steered his enemy. Soon the ground began to slope away, and Rhys knew that they were getting near the brook running only a few fields from the road. Just beyond it was Crishowell village, and the land would ascend sharply as soon as they had left the last cottage behind. The Digedi brook was as unlike the flag-bordered trout-stream of the midlands as one piece of water can be to another, for it rose far up in the Black Mountain near the pass by which Walters hoped to reach Abergavenny, and, after a rapid descent to the valley, passed the village, circling wantonly through the pastures to cross Crishowell Lane under a bridge. There was hardly a yard in its career at which its loud voice was not audible, for the bed was solid rock, and the little falls, scarce a foot high, by which it descended to the lower levels, called ceaselessly among the stones. The water-ousel nested there in spring, and wagtails curtseyed fantastically by the brink. In summer it was all babble, light, motion, and waving leaves. As the young man came down the grass, he saw the line of bare bushes which fringed it, and heard the pigmy roar of one of the falls. Flat slabs of rock hemmed it in, jutting into the water and enclosing the dark pool into which it emptied itself. On an ordinary occasion he would have picked his way through the slippery bits and let his horse arrange the crossing as his instinct suggested, but he had no time for that now. He took the mare by the head, and came down the slope as hard as he could towards a place just above the fall. He saw the white horseshoe foaming under him as they cleared it and the boulders on the edge, and he smiled grimly as he pictured Fenton's horse possibly stumbling about among the rocks. He made straight for the highway, the mare's blood was up, and she took the big intervening hedges like a deer. They were now on the road, and he pulled up for a moment to listen for any sign of his pursuer, but there was no other sound than the barking of a dog in Crishowell. The slippery boulders had probably delayed Harry. He cantered on steadily past the village with its few lighted windows; as the barking had raised a reply from every dog's throat in the place, no one heard him till he had passed the last outlying house, and he made for the steep lane leading up to where he had parted with Fenton on the night of their first meeting. It was highly unlikely that he would come across any one at that time of night, for the Crishowell people went early to rest, like all agricultural characters, and the news of Rebecca's attack on the toll could hardly have reached them yet. Now that he had time to think a little, he began to realize the full horror of the thing that had happened. He had killed a man; worse, he had killed Mary's father; worse still, it was known that he had done so. Curse Hosea! curse him! Why had he been such a madman as to shout out his name? No one need have identified him but for the innkeeper's crass folly. What he was going to do he knew not, beyond that he must make for Abergavenny, where he might possibly lie hidden for a time till he could devise some means of leaving the country. Poor little Mary too, his heart smote him as he thought of her; in one hour she had been robbed of her father, and was losing her lover--losing him as every beat of the mare's hoofs carried him further away towards the great lone mountain that he had to cross that night somehow. He hoped the wet places up there would not have frozen over before he got through the pass, for it was hard underfoot already and the puddles crackled faintly as he rode over them. Every moment it was getting lighter, and he could see a piece of the moon's face above the high banks of the lane. He put his hand down on the mare's shoulder; she was sweating a good deal, though they had only come a couple of miles at most, but she was raw and excitable, and had pulled him considerably since they had come over the brook, taking more out of herself than she need have done. She had good blood in her--thank Heaven for that--and she would want it all. He had paid a long price for her, and, if ever money were well spent, it was then; the young fool behind him was not likely to get much out of his ride. He pulled up once again, just to make sure that Harry was nowhere near, standing in the shadow with his hand over his ear and the mare quivering with excitement under him. Yes, sure enough, there were galloping hoofs distinct on the stillness of the sharp night some way below. Fenton was in the lane. On they went, sparks flying from the flints as the shoes smote hard upon them. The air grew more chilly as they got higher up and the road more slippery; Rhys leaned forward, encouraging the mare as she laboured valiantly up the heart-breaking slope. The banks flew by, gates, stiles; soon they were passing the ruined cottage that stood not a hundred yards from the egress to the mountain; he could see the bare boughs of the apple-trees that tapped against the battered window-panes. Suddenly the mare lurched, scraping the earth with her feet, and the moon seemed to sway in the sky and to be coming down to meet the hedge. A crash, and she was lying on her off side with Rhys' leg pinned underneath her. A mark like a slide on the blue, shining ground showed how the frost was taking firm grip of the world. She struggled up again before he had time to find out whether he was hurt or not, and stood over him, shivering with fright. Fortunately she had hardly touched him in her efforts to rise, as his foot had come out of the stirrup, and he was able to pick himself up in a few seconds with a strong feeling of dizziness and an aching pain in his shoulder. His first idea was to remount as quickly as possible, but, when he put his foot in the iron, he almost fell back again on the road. Something hot was running down his face, first in slow drops, then faster; he could not raise his right shoulder at all, and his arm felt weary and numb. A gust of wind brought the sound of Harry's galloping fitfully up the lane, making the mare turn half round to listen, her nostrils dilated; she seemed quite uninjured. Rhys seized the stick he had dropped as they fell, and, with it in his available hand, struck her two violent blows on her quarter. She plunged forward like a mad creature, and set forth for her stable at Great Masterhouse. As she disappeared he dragged himself with great difficulty through the hedge on his right. Before him the fields fell away perpendicularly to the valley, and the moon was white on the grass that lay like a frosty, vapoury sheet round him. He saw a deep ditch running downward with the land, and had just sense and strength enough left to stagger towards it, a black, positive silhouette on the moon-struck unreality of the surrounding world. As he rolled into it he lost consciousness, and so did not hear Harry Fenton a minute later as he tore past. CHAPTER VIII MASTER AND MAN A MAN was sitting on the low wall which enclosed the spectre of a garden trimming a ragged ash-plant into the plain dimensions of a walking-stick. He worked with the neatness displayed by many heavy-handed persons whose squarely-tipped fingers never hint at the dexterity dormant in them. It was easily seen that, in order to assign him a place in the social scale, one would have to go a good way down it; nevertheless, he reflected the facial type of his time as faithfully as any young blood enveloped in the latest whimsies of fashionable convention, though, naturally, in a less degree. The man of to-day who looks at a collection of drawings made in the early nineteenth century can find the face, with various modifications, everywhere; under the chimney-pot hat which (to his eye) sits so oddly on the cricketer, beneath the peaked cap of the mail-coach guard, above the shirt-sleeves of the artisan with his basket of tools on his back. As we examine the portraits of a by-gone master, Sir Peter Lely, Joshua Reynolds--whom you will--we are apt to ask ourselves whether the painter's hand has not conveyed too much of his own mind to the canvas, making all sitters so conform to it as to reproduce some mental trait of his own, like children of one father reproducing a physical one. Those who find this may forget that there is an expression proper to each period, and that it runs through the gamut of society, from the court beauty to the kitchen wench, from the minister of State to the rat-catcher who keeps the great man's property purged of such vermin. The comprehensive glance of the man on the wall as compared with the immobility of his mouth, the wide face set in flat whiskers which stopped short in a line with the lobe of his ear, dated him as completely as if he had been a waxwork effigy set up in a museum with "Early Victorian Period" printed on a placard at his feet. His name was George Williams, and, in the eye of the law, he was a hedger and ditcher by occupation; on its blind side, he was something else as well. The garden, which formed a background to the stick-maker, was indeed a sorry place, forming, with the tumble-down cottage it surrounded, a sort of island in the barren hillside. A shallow stream on its way to the valley ran by so near the wall, that there was only room for a few clumps of thistle between it and the water. When the dweller in the cottage wished to reach civilization, he had to cross a plank to a disused cart-track making from the uplands down to the village. Hardly any one but the tenant of this unprofitable estate ever troubled the ancient way with his presence, but, in spite of this, Williams looked up expectantly now and then to where it cut the skyline a furlong or so mountainwards. Behind him the tall weeds which were choking the potato patch and the gooseberry bushes straggled in the grey forenoon light, and the hoar-frost clung to a few briars that stretched lean arms over the bed of the stream. The cottage was built of stone and boasted a slate roof, though, what between the gaps showing in it and the stonecrop which covered the solid parts, there was little slate visible. One could assume that the walls were thick from the extreme breadth of the window-sills, and the remote way in which the pane stared out like an eye sunk deep in its socket. The window on the left of the door was boarded up by a shutter which had once been green, the other one being nearly as impenetrable by reason of its distance from the surface. Were any one curious enough to examine the latter, he might see that it was surprisingly clean; the place was wild, inhospitable, weed-sown, but not dirty. A faint column of smoke escaped from one of the squat chimneys which adorned either end of the roof. The ash-plant which Williams was trimming had two strong suckers sticking out of the root. When it was held upside down, the position in which it would eventually be carried, Nature's intention of making it the distinct image of a rabbit's head was clear to the meanest imagination. George's imagination was not altogether mean, and he whittled away diligently, smiling as the thing grew more life-like in his hands, and so much absorbed that he gradually forgot to watch the track and did not see a small figure coming down it till it was within a few yards of him. The person arriving on the scene had such a remarkable gait that one might have singled him out from fifty men, had he been advancing in a line of his fellow-creatures instead of alone. As he came closer, it grew odder because the expression of his face could be seen to counteract the expression of his legs. The latter proclaimed indecision, while the former shone with a cheerful firmness; looking at him, one was prepared to see the legs fold inward like an easel, or widen out like a compass, plunge sideways up the bank, or dive forwards down the road. For this, as for all other phenomena in this world, there was a reason. The man had driven pigs for nearly fifty years of his life. The healthy red of his cheeks was an advertisement for this disquieting trade, and his twinkling eyes and slit of a mouth turned up at the corners as if they had caught something of their appearance from the pigs themselves. Prosperity cried from every part of James Bumpett, from the seams of his corduroy trousers to the crown of his semi-tall hat. He carried a stick, but he did not use it to walk with, for long habit had made him wave it smartly from side to side. Williams transferred his legs deferentially from the inside to the outside of the wall as the old man approached, and stood waiting for him to come up. The Pig-driver seated himself beside him and plunged immediately into his subject. "Is it aught with the business?" he asked. "I come down at once when I got your message." "No," replied the younger man, "it's this way. It's about Mr. Walters o' Masterhouse. He's there below--an' his head nigh broke." He pointed backwards to the cottage with his thumb. "Lord! Lord!" ejaculated Bumpett. "He told me to send word to you. 'Bumpett,' he says, 'Mr. Bumpett at Abergavenny; don't you forget,' an' he went off with his head agin my shoulder. How I got him along here I don't rightly know. He's a fair-sized man to be hefting about." The old man looked keenly into George's face. "What did he want with me?" he inquired. "Indeed I never thought for to ask him," said Williams simply. "'Twas two nights ago, I was going up by Red Field Farm to look round a bit"--here both men's eyes dropped--"and about one o'clock I was nigh them steep bits o' grazing, an' come straight on to him. Lying down in the ditch he was, not twenty yards from Crishowell Lane. I didn't know what to make of it." "Well, to be sure!" exclaimed Bumpett. "Was it drink?" he asked after a pause. "Drink? no!" cried George. "I took a piece of ice from the road and put it on his head. He come to then. I never saw such a look as he give me when he saw me, and he fought like a wild beast, that he did, when he felt my hand on him, though he was as weak as a rabbit when I got him up. 'Tis plain enough now why, though indeed I did wonder then. He's done for Vaughan the toll-keeper, too; knocked him stone dead." Bumpett stared blankly. For once in his life he was quite taken aback. "He was out wi' Rebecca," explained Williams. "I guessed that by the strange hair he had tied all over his head so firm it were hard to get it loose." "What did you do with it?" inquired the Pig-driver sharply. "Brought it with me," said the young man. "Was I to leave it for some o' they constables to find?" "Well, indeed," observed Bumpett, "you're a smarter lad than I took ye for. I don't mind telling ye that I thought to see him along o' me in Abergavenny by now." "You've had to tell me a thing or two before this," said George rather sullenly. "Ye've told no one?" inquired Bumpett suspiciously. "Not I," said George. "What's the use of pulling a man out of the law's way if you're to shove him back after? I thought once I'd have to get the doctor, he was that bad, ranting and raving, but he's stopped now." "I suppose I'd better go down and see him," said the Pig-driver, rubbing the back of his head meditatively with his hand. "What are we to do with him, Williams?" "I can't turn him out," answered the young man, "I don't like to do that." "By G'arge, he couldn't have got into no safer place too," chuckled Bumpett. "We'll keep him a bit, my lad, an' he might lend a hand when he gets better. He'll have to know what sort of a nest he's lighted on, sooner or later, if he stops here." Williams gave a kind of growl. "When the country's quieted down a bit we'll have to get him off out o' this. Straight he'll have to go too, and not be talkin' o' what he's seen. Did they take any of the others, did ye hear?" "They got Turnbull the auctioneer, and about a dozen men from Llangarth; them on the horses were that rigged up wi' mountebank clothes you couldn't tell who was who--so I heard tell in Crishowell. And they were off over the Wye, an' into the woods like so many quists. The yeomanry tried the wrong places in the water, and some of them was pretty nigh drowned. There was no talk of chasing--they'd enough to do pulling one another out." "Well, well, to be sure!" exclaimed the Pig-driver again with infinite relish, his cheeks widening into a grin as he listened, and his eyes almost disappearing into his head. Then he sighed the sigh of a man who broods upon lost opportunities. George whirled his legs back into the garden in the same way that he had whirled them out, and steered through the gooseberry bushes towards the cottage followed by his companion. Entering they found themselves in a small room, dark and bare. Although smoke might be seen to issue from the chimney at this side of the house, it was curious that not a vestige of fire was in the fire-place. A table stood under the window, a few garments hung on a string that stretched across a corner, and two bill-hooks, very sharp and bright, leaned sentimentally towards each other where they stood against the wall. A piece of soap, a bucket of water, and a comb were arranged upon a box; at the end of the room were a cupboard, and a wooden bedstead containing neither bedclothes nor mattress. Besides these objects, there was nothing in the way of furniture or adornment. Bumpett glanced round and his eye reached the bedstead. "Name o' goodness, what have ye done with your bedding?" he inquired, pausing before the naked-looking object. "It's down below." A partition divided the cottage into two, and George opened a door in this by which they entered the other half of the building. Chinks in the closed-up window let in light enough to show a few tools and a heap of sacks lying in a corner. These were fastened down on a board which they completely concealed. The Pig-driver drew it aside, disclosing a hole large enough to admit a human figure, with the top of a ladder visible in it about a foot below the flooring. The young man stood aside for Bumpett to descend, and when the crown of the Pig-driver's hat had disappeared, he followed, drawing the board carefully over the aperture. The room below ran all the length of the house, and a fire at the further end accounted for the smoke in the chimney. Fresh air came in at a hole in the wall, which was hidden outside by a gooseberry bush planted before it; occasional slabs of stone showed where the place had been hollowed from the original rock, and the ceiling was studded with iron hooks. Near the fire was a great heap of sheepskins, surmounted by George's mattress and all his scanty bedding, on which lay Rhys Walters, his head bound round by a bandage, and a cup of water beside him which he was stretching out his hand for as they entered. "Here's Mr. Bumpett," announced Williams, going gently up to the bed. "Well," said Rhys in a weak, petulant voice, "this is a bad look-out, isn't it?" "Indeed, and so it is," answered the old man, as if he had been struck by a new idea. "And I don't know when I can get up out of here." "Bide you where you are," interrupted the Pig-driver. "You couldn't be safer, not if you was in Hereford jail itself," he concluded cheerfully, sitting down on the bed. Rhys frowned under his bandage. "That's where I may be yet," he said, "curse the whole business." "I'd been lookin' out for ye at Abergavenny," said Bumpett, "an' not seein' ye, I thought all had been well, and ye'd gone off licketty smack to Evans's." "If I could get hold of Evans, I'd half kill him," said Rhys between his teeth. "He cried out my name, and I had to ride for it, I can tell you. Give me a drop more water, Williams." George went to the opposite wall and drew out a stone, letting in the pleasant babbling noise of the brook. The foundations of the cottage were so near the water that he stretched his arm through, holding the mug, and filled it easily. In flood-time the room was uninhabitable. "I thought there was nothing that could touch that mare of mine," continued the sick man, as George went up the ladder and left the two together, "but young Fenton's mind was made up to catch me, though I'd have distanced him if this damned frost hadn't been against me. I could have dodged him in the mountain and got him bogged, maybe." "Well, well, you're lucky to be where you are," remarked Bumpett. "There's no one but Williams and me do know of this place. Best bide a bit, and when they give up searchin' for ye, ye can get down to Cardiff somehow." Rhys made no reply; his thoughts went to Great Masterhouse, to its fields, to the barns round which he had played as a child, to its well-stocked stable, to the money it was worth, and he groaned. He was a beggar practically, an outlaw, and the life behind him was wiped out. Many things rose in his mind in a cloud of regret, many interests but few affections; nevertheless, now that she was absolutely lost to him, he longed for Mary. For some time neither of the two men spoke. "'Tis a bad job indeed," broke in Bumpett as he got up to leave. He was a man of his tongue and the silence irked him. "Where are you going to now?" said Rhys listlessly. "Down Crishowell way," answered the Pig-driver. "I've got business there. Mr. Walters, I've got a word to say to you afore I go. Do you know that this place you're in belongs to me?" "To you?" said Rhys; "I thought Williams rented it from Red Field Farm." "Ah, 'tis called Williams'," replied Bumpett, sitting down again, "but I do pay for it. I may make free with you in what I'm saying, for I'm helping to keep you from the law, and it's right you should help to keep me. Give me the oath you'll swaller down what I'm telling you and never let it up again." "What can I do to you, even if I want to?" asked Rhys bitterly. "Swear, I tell ye." "I swear it, so help me God," repeated Rhys, his curiosity roused. "Though I began drivin' o' pigs, I'm the biggest butcher in trade at Abergavenny, am I not?" cried the old man, putting his hand on Rhys' knee and giving it a shake. "Well, I sell more mutton than I ever buy. Do ye understand that? Do ye see what you're lyin' on?" He pointed to the sheepskins. "George is my man and he finds it for me--him an' others I needn't speak of. We've taken toll of you before this." And, as he chuckled, his eyes disappeared again. Walters tried to sit up, but grew giddy at once and dropped back on his pillow. He drew a long breath and lay still. The last words made him hate the Pig-driver, but as, at present, he owed him everything, he reflected that hatred would be of little use to him. "How do you get it all up to Abergavenny?" he inquired at last. "Ah, you may well ask. And 'tis best you should know, for I'll be glad to get a hand from you when you're up again. Do ye know the Pedlar's Stone? There's not one o' they zanys along here will go a-nigh it." Rhys knew the place well. On the way to the mountain, about a mile further up, a little rough, stone cross stuck out of the bank, its rude arms overhanging the hedge. It marked the spot where a pedlar had been murdered some hundred years back, and none of the working people would pass it after dark, for even in the daytime it was regarded with suspicion. "The sheep comes here first, George he knows how. Do ye see them hooks in the ceiling? Did ye take note of the trap ye come down here by? No, I warrant ye didn't, ye was that mazed when ye come. It's all cut up here, an' after that it goes up jint by jint to the place I'm telling you. Williams, he can get two sheep up between ten o'clock and one i' the morning. If ye go along the hedge behind the stone, there's a big bit o' rock close by with a hole scraped in underneath it. It's deep down among the nettles, so ye wouldn't see it if ye didn't know. That's where they lie till I come round afore daylight wi' the cart on my way to Crishowell. Crishowell folks thinks I'm at Abergavenny, and Abergavenny folks thinks I'm at Crishowell." Though in his heart Rhys hated the Pig-driver for what he had been doing to him and others like him, he could not help admiring his astuteness; but he made no comment, for admiration came from him grudgingly as a rule where men were concerned. "Now," said the old man, "I'll say good-day to ye, Mr. Walters, I must be gettin' on." He clambered up the ladder, leaving Rhys alone. CHAPTER IX TWO MEETINGS GEORGE and the Pig-driver left the cottage together a few minutes afterwards. Both men had business in Crishowell, and as Rhys Walters was now well enough to be left alone for a few hours, Williams had no scruple in turning the key on his charge and starting with his patron for the valley. The hoar-frost hung on everything. Around them, the heavy air enwrapped the landscape, making an opaque background to the branches and twigs which stood as though cut out in white coral against grey-painted canvas. Bumpett felt the cold a good deal and pressed forward almost at a trot, looking all the more grotesque for the company of the big, quiet man beside him. Some way out of the village they parted, being unwilling to be seen much together. When he went to see George, Bumpett generally got out of his cart as soon as he had crossed the mountain pass, sending it round by a good road which circled out towards Llangarth, and telling his boy to bring it by that route to Crishowell; he thus avoided trying its springs in the steep lanes, and was unobserved himself as he went down by Williams' house to the village. At the carpenter's shop, where it went to await him, he would pass an agreeable half-hour chatting with the local spirits who congregated there of an afternoon. He was the most completely popular man in the neighbourhood. For this he was much indebted to the habits of his pig-driving days, when he and his unruly flock had travelled the country on foot to the different fairs. Then many a labourer's wife had lightened his journeys by the pleasant offer of a bite and a sup, and held herself amply rewarded by the odd bits of gossip and complimentary turns of speech by which the wayfarer knew how to make himself welcome. Now that he had become a man of money and standing, this graciousness of demeanour had not left him; nay, it was rather set off by the flavour of opulence, and gave meaner folk the comfortable assurance of being hob and nob with the great ones of this world. Nevertheless, the name of "The Pig-driver" stuck to him; as the Pig-driver they had known him first, and the Pig-driver he would remain, were he to be made Mayor of Abergavenny. Rounding a corner, the old man came upon an elderly, hard-featured woman who stood to rest and lean a basket which she carried against the bank. "Oh! Mr. Bumpett," she exclaimed as he approached, "oh! Mr. Bumpett." "Come you here, woman," he said in a mysterious voice, taking her by the elbow, "come down to the brookside till I speak a word wi' you." "Oh! Mr. Bumpett," she went on, "so ye've heard, have ye?" "Sh----sh!" cried the Pig-driver, hurrying her along, "keep you quiet, I tell you, till we be away from the lane." The Digedi brook ran along the hollow near, and at a sheltered place by the brink he stopped. Both he and his companion were out of breath. The woman sat down upon a rock, her hard face working. "Indeed, I be miserable upon the face of the earth," she cried, "an I can't think o' nothing but Master Rhys from the time I get out o' my bed until the time I do get in again, and long after that too. An' there's Mrs. Walters a-settin' same as if he were there and sayin' to me, 'Never speak his name, Nannie, I have no son. Dead he have been to the Lord these many years, and now, dead he is to me. His brother's blood crieth to him from the ground.' I can't abide they prayers o' hers." "Will ye listen to me?" said Bumpett sharply. He gave as much notice to her lamentations as he did to the babble of the brook. "Ah, she's a hard one, for all her psalms and praises! Never a tear do I see on her face, and there's me be like to break my heart when I so much as go nigh the tollet in the yard and see the young turkey-cock going by. Law! I do think o' the smacks poor Master Rhys did fetch his grandfather, when he were a little bit of a boy, an' how the old bird would run before him, same as if the black man o' Hell was after him!" She covered her face with her shawl. The Pig-driver was exasperated. "Will ye hold yer tongue?" he said, thumping his stick on the ground, "or I won't tell ye one blazin' word of what I was to say. Here am I strivin' to tell ye what ye don't know about Mister Walters, an' I can't get my mind out along o' you, ye old fool! Do ye hear me, Nannie Davis?" At the sound of Rhys' name she looked up. "If I tell ye something about him, will you give over?" asked the Pig-driver, shaking her by the shoulder. "Yes, surely, Mr. Bumpett," said Nannie, "I will. I be but a fool, an' that I do know." "He's safe," said Bumpett. "Do ye hear? He's safe. An' I know where he is." "And where is he?" "Ah! that's telling. don't you ask, my woman, an' it'll be the better for him." Nannie had quite regained her composure, and an unspeakable load rolled off her mind at her companion's words. Ever since the morning when the mare had been found riderless, sniffing at the door of her box at Masterhouse, and the news of the toll-keeper's death and Rhys' flight had reached the mountain, waking and sleeping she had pictured his arrest. "So long as he bides quiet where he is, there's none can get a sight o' him," said the old man, "and when we do see our way to get him off an' over the water--to Ameriky, maybe--I and them I knows will do our best. But he's been knocked about cruel, for, mind ye, they was fightin' very wicked an' nasty, down by the toll." "Is he bad?" asked Nannie anxiously. "He was," replied Bumpett, "but he's mending." "And be I never to know where he be?" "You mind what I tell ye. But, if ye want to do the man a good turn, ye may. Do ye know the Pedlar's Stone?" Nannie shuddered. "There's every one knows that. But I durstn't go nigh it, not I. Indeed, 'tis no good place! Saunders of Llan-y-bulch was sayin' only last week----" The Pig-driver cast a look of measureless scorn upon her. "Well, ye needn't go nigh it," he interrupted. "Ye can bide twenty yards on the other side." "Lawk! I wouldn't go where I could see it!" "Ye must just turn your back, then," said Bumpett crossly. "But what be I to do?" inquired Nannie, who stood in considerable awe of the Pig-driver. "Ye might get a few of his clothes an' such like, or anything ye fancy would come handy to him. Bring them down to the stone when it's dark, an' I, or a man I'll send, will be there to get them from ye. Day after to-morrow 'll do." "I won't be so skeered if there's some I do know to be by," said she reflectively. "Can ye get they things without Mrs. Walters seein' ye?" inquired he. "It would never do for her to be stickin' her holy nose into it." Nannie laughed out. Her laugh was remarkable; it had a ring of ribaldry unsuited to her plain bonnet and knitted shawl. "No fear o' that. Mrs. Walters says to me, no more nor this mornin', 'Take you the keys, Nannie,' she says, 'an' put away all them clothes o' his. Let me forget I bore a child that's to be a disgrace to my old age.' 'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good, ye see. But I must be gettin' home now, Mr. Bumpett." So they parted. As George entered Crishowell by another way, and got over the last stile dividing the fields from the village, the church bell began to sound. The first stroke was finishing its vibration as he laid his hand on the top rail, but he had gone a full furlong before he heard the next. They were evidently tolling. A woman came out of her door and listened to the bell. "Who's to be buried?" inquired Williams, as he passed. "'Tis Vaughan the gate-keeper," she answered, "him as was killed Tuesday." The young man proceeded until the road turned and brought him right in front of the lych-gate of the church; it was open, and the Vicar of Crishowell stood bareheaded among the graves. He went on by a path skirting the wall, and slipped into the churchyard by another entrance. A large yew-tree stood close to it, and under this he took up his stand unperceived; the bell kept on sounding. Crishowell church was a plain building, which possessed no characteristic but that of solidity; bits had fallen out of it, and been rebuilt at various epochs of its history, without creating much incongruity or adding much glory to its appearance. The nave roof had settled a little, and the walls were irregular in places, but over the whole sat that somnolent dignity which clings to ancient stone. The chancel windows were Norman, and very small; indeed, so near the ground were they, that boys, sitting in the chancel pews, had often been provoked to unseemly jests during service by the sight of unchurch-going school-mates crowding to make grimaces at them from outside. The porch was high, and surmounted by the belfry, and some old wooden benches ran round its walls to accommodate the ringers. As the sexton, who performed many other functions besides those of his office, had just returned from the fields, Howlie Seaborne, his son, had taken his place and was tolling till his father should have changed his coat. He looked like a gnome as he stood in the shadow of the porch with the rope in his hand. The sound of many feet was heard coming up the lane, and Williams took off his hat. The procession came in sight, black in front of the white hedges and trees, moving slowly towards the lych-gate. First went the coffin, carried under its dark pall, and heading a line of figures which trailed behind it like some interminable insect. From miles round people had come; Squire Fenton and Harry from Waterchurch, the yeomanry officer who had been present at the riot, men from Llangarth, gentlemen from distant parts of the country, all anxious to pay the only respect they could to the undaunted old man whose duty had really meant something to him. Immediately behind the dead walked a girl muffled up in a black cloak. They were at the lych-gate. The bell stopped. "I am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." The words reached Williams where he stood under the yew-tree, and something swelled up in his heart; abstract things struck him all at once as real. Life was real--death very real--to die fighting like Vaughan had died was real--certainly more real than stealing sheep. He stood thinking, hardly definitely, but in that semi-consciousness of thought which comes at times to most people, and from which they awake knowing a little more than they knew before. Whether they make their knowledge of use to them is another matter. The Burial Service ran on to the end, and the people dispersed in twos and threes. Some gentlemen, whose horses were waiting at the smith's shop close by, mounted and rode away after a few civil words with the Vicar; the labourers and their wives vanished quickly, the former hurrying off to their interrupted work, and the latter clustering and whispering among themselves. Soon the churchyard was empty, and nothing was left to show what had taken place but the gaping grave and the planks lying round it. George remained a few minutes at his post under the tree before emerging and going out by the same gate as the mourners, but, when he did so, he saw that the girl had returned again and was sitting by the mound of upturned earth. His impulse was to go back, respecting her solitude, but Mary had heard his step and looked round at him. Their eyes met. He had never seen the toll-keeper's daughter before, and her beauty and the despair written on her face touched him deeply in the stirred-up state of his mind. Remembering that he must shortly go back to Rhys, the man by whose fault he believed her to be sitting where she was, and share his roof with him for days to come, his soul recoiled. And yet, the truth was worse than he knew. CHAPTER X FORGET-ME-NOTS HEREFORD town is one of those slumbrous cities, guiltless of any bait with which to lure the sight-seer, but possessing both a cathedral and an individuality of its own. It is a town which seems to have acquired no suburbs, to have grown up in its proper area out of the flat fields which lie around. But on the night of which I am speaking an unwonted stir was going on, a rumbling of vehicles through streets usually silent, and a great noise of voices and hoofs in the different inn yards. The Green Dragon, that stronghold of county respectability, was crowded from garret to basement, as the lights in every window proclaimed. Inside, chambermaids ran up and down-stairs, men-servants shouted orders from landings, and prim ladies-maids went in and out of bedrooms with the guarded demeanour of those who know, but may not reveal, the mysteries which these contain. The eyes of citizens were constantly gratified by the sight of chariots driven by massive coachmen whose weight seemed likely to break down their vehicles in front if unbalanced by rumbles behind. Into these last the smaller youth of the town deemed it a pride and a pleasure to ascend, when they could do so unnoticed, and to taste all the joys of so exalted a state until the vulgar "Whip behind" of some envious friend made the position untenable. The cause of this uncommon activity in both town and urchins was that the officers of the Hereford Yeomanry were giving a ball, and from the remotest parts of the county people were flocking to it. The landlords thought well of such events, for innkeeping, like hop-growing, is a trade in which the speculator may compensate himself by one good harvest for several lean years. From the assembly rooms a flood of light streamed over the pavement, and across it moved the uniformed figures of the hosts, resplendent in blue and silver, and congregating near the door--some to watch with solemn looks for consignments of their own relations, some, with lighter aspect, for those of other people. The ball had not actually begun, but in Herefordshire, where such festivities were few, people liked to get as much of them as possible, and carriages were already arriving to disgorge be-feathered old ladies and be-wreathed young ones at the foot of the red-carpeted steps. The band began to tune up, and a general feeling of expectation pervaded the building. Harry Fenton was talking to his brother Llewellyn, who had been dining with him, and who was, with apparent difficulty, drawing on a pair of white kid gloves. More carriages rolled up, the doorway was getting crowded, the bandmaster raised his _bâton;_ then the band slid into a mazurka--much in vogue at the time--and the colonel offered his arm to the county member's wife. The floor filled rapidly. Llewellyn Fenton was Harry's youngest brother and the dearest friend he had in the world. Though he was only twenty-one, and consequently four years Harry's junior, there had never been much real difference between the two, the elder being younger than his age, and the younger considerably older. Since their early boyhood they had held together, Harry clinging rather to the harder nature of Llewellyn, and now that they had grown up and gone their different ways, they took every chance of meeting they could get. The Squire on the other side of the ball-room caught sight of them standing together, and smiled as he saw them exchange nods and go off to their respective partners; he liked all his four boys, but Harry and Llewellyn were the pair which appealed to him most. The evening went on cheerfully, and dance succeeded dance. The brothers had run up against each other again, and were watching a quadrille from the door of the supper-room. "Llewellyn," said Harry, taking hold of his arm, "who is that girl? There, look. Dancing with Tom Bradford." "I don't know," said his brother. "Let go, Harry." "Good heavens! isn't she pretty?" he went on, unheeding, and gripping Llewellyn. "Well, yes," said the other, disengaging himself. "She is, there's no denying that." "Do you want to deny it?" asked Harry, with a contemptuous snort. "N--no, I don't." The girl in question was dancing in a set immediately in front of them. She was a little over the middle height, though in these modern days of tall women she would probably pass unnoticed on that score. She seemed quite young, barely out of her teens, but her self-possession was as complete as that quality can be when it is mixed with self-consciousness--not the highest sort of self-possession, but always something. One could not blame her for being alive to her own good looks, they were so intensely obvious, and her complexion, which struck one at once, was of that rose-and-white sort which reminds the spectator of fruit--soft, and with a bloom on it like the down of a butterfly's wing. Seeing only the face one would guess it to be accompanied by rich golden hair, but this girl's was of that shade which can only be described as mouse-coloured, and it grew light and fluffy, rather low on her forehead, its curious contrast with the warm complexion putting her quite out of the common run of red-cheeked, yellow-locked county beauties. Her neck was long and slim, and she carried herself perfectly when moving, though there was a lack of repose about her whole personality when she stood still. She was dressed charmingly in some shiny, silky stuff with a pattern of blue forget-me-nots running over it. On the front of her bodice she wore a small artificial bunch of these flowers, and a wreath of the same in her hair. Many people besides Harry were looking at her, and she was evidently entirely aware of the fact. For the rest of that dance he kept the eye of a lynx upon the unconscious Tom Bradford, and when that youth had finally resigned his partner to the chaperonage of a pleasant-looking spinster, he was off like an arrow after him. Llewellyn looked on rather grimly; he had some experience of his brother's flames. The more precise customs of those days required that young men should first be introduced to the chaperons of their would-be partners, and Harry found himself bowing before the lady whom Tom Bradford named as Miss Ridgeway. She in turn presented him to the girl beside her, who was fluttering her fan and smiling. "My niece, Miss Isoline Ridgeway," she said, throwing an approving look on the open-faced young fellow. By some miracle it appeared that Miss Isoline was not engaged for the next dance, and as a portly Minor Canon appeared at this juncture and led away her aunt to the refreshment table, the two were left together. Harry's heart beat; now that he was safely introduced to the object of his admiration he could not think what to say to her. Besides, he was afraid that Llewellyn was looking. "I was--I mean--I have been trying to get introduced to you for ever so long," he stammered out at last, quite forgetting that he had only caught sight of her about ten minutes before. "Then I hope you are grateful to Mr. Bradford," she replied. "Yes, I am," said Harry. "Tom is a very good fellow," he added, more because the sound of his own voice was encouraging than for any other reason. Isoline glanced over her shoulder towards her late partner, as if she would say that she did not think much of Mr. Bradford. "He cannot dance," she remarked. "I hope you will find me no worse," said loyal Harry. "Oh no," she replied, with a little laugh, "I am sure I shall not." "It is strange that I have never seen you before," he said, "for you live in Hereford, don't you? I have often heard your aunt's name." "I lost my parents some time ago, and I have lately come to live with her. I am only just out of mourning." And she looked down at her forget-me-not sprinkled dress. He did not quite know what to say, but, as the next dance was beginning, he offered her his arm with a little bow. Isoline Ridgeway danced divinely, and Harry felt as though he were flying into the seventh heaven--wherever that problematical spot may be--flying and sailing with the mouse-coloured head near his shoulder. The valse had been so lately introduced into England that, in the country, people were only beginning to take it up, and very few could dance it well, so these two, with their perfect accord and grace of motion, were remarked by many. "Who is that pretty girl dancing with my boy?" asked Harry's father of a neighbour. "They seem to be enjoying themselves." The old gentleman addressed adjusted his spectacles. "That is Miss Ridgeway's niece," he replied. "But, my dear sir, that conveys nothing to me," said the Squire. "Old Ridgeway was a solicitor in some Midland town, I believe, and a slippery scoundrel too. He settled here some time ago, but he has been dead twenty years or more. His daughter, Miss Ridgeway, lives in the same house still, and her sister was married to the present Vicar of Crishowell, near Llangarth. That is all I can tell you about them." "Indeed," said the Squire, "I did not know that, though I know Lewis of Crishowell very well." "She is a good creature, Miss Ridgeway, and does a great deal among the poor. The niece seems more likely to do a great deal among the rich, if one may judge by her looks. They are not quite the sort of people one would have met here when I was young." "You are right--quite right," said Mr. Fenton. And the two old gentlemen sighed over the falling away of their times as their fathers and grandfathers had done before them. Meantime the valse had come to an end, and Isoline and Harry went towards the coolness of the entrance. "Sitting out," for more than a very few minutes, was not countenanced then as it is now, and they stood together in the passage looking into the empty street. "I shall be very sorry when to-night is over," said he presently. "So shall I," she replied demurely. "I enjoy balls more than anything in the world. I wonder when I shall go to another." "Surely you will go to the Hunt Ball? It will be in less than a week." "No, I am going away," said she, watching his face for the effect of her words, and not disclosing the fact that neither she nor her aunt had been invited. "Going away!" echoed he, in dismay. "But where? Forgive me, but I thought you said you had only just come to Hereford." "I am going to stay with my uncle at Crishowell Vicarage while my aunt goes away for some months; she has been ill, and the doctor ordered it." "Oh, at Crishowell," he said, much relieved. "That is not very far; I--I go to Crishowell sometimes. I did not know that Mr. Lewis was your uncle." "He married my aunt's sister," said Isoline, "but she is dead. It will be very dull there." "If I have to go to Crishowell on any business--or anything, do you think he will allow me to pay my respects to you--and to him, of course?" "He might," she answered, looking under her eyelashes. "At any rate, I will ask him." "Thank you, thank you," said Harry fervently. Isoline was delighted. The prospect of five or six months in the unvaried society of her uncle had not been inspiring; she only remembered him as an unnecessarily elderly person who had once heard her catechism in her youth and been dissatisfied with the recital. It was hardly to be supposed that a young girl, full of spirits and eager for life, could look forward to it, especially one who had grown up in the atmosphere of small towns and knew nothing of country pleasures. But the horizon brightened. "I think I must go back to my aunt now," she said, with a little prim air which became her charmingly. "But you will give me one more dance?" pleaded Harry. "What a fool I was to find you so late." "I have only one more to give," she replied, "and that is the very last of all." "Keep it for me, pray, and promise you will stay till the end. I can look after you and Miss Ridgeway, and put you into your carriage when it is over." "Oh, yes, I will stay, if my aunt does not mind," said Isoline, as they went back to the ballroom. The elder Miss Ridgeway was an eminently good-natured person, and the refreshment administered by the Minor Canon had been sustaining, so she professed herself ready to remain till the end of the ball, and Harry, with deep gratitude, betook himself to his other partners till the blissful moment should arrive when he might claim Isoline again. He saw nothing more of Llewellyn, who had his own affairs and amusements on hand, and, for once in his life, he was very glad. It is to be feared that the girls with whom he danced found him dull company, as most of the time he was turning over in his mind what possible pretext he could invent for an early visit to Crishowell. The last dance was Sir Roger de Coverley; a great many people had resolved to see the entertainment out, and, as Harry stood opposite Isoline in the ranks, he marked with pleasure that it promised to be a long affair. He had just come from an interview with the bandmaster, whom he had thoughtfully taken apart and supplied with a bottle of champagne, and the purposeful manner in which the little round man was taking his place among the musicians was reassuring. Sir Roger is without doubt the most light-hearted and popular of country dances, nevertheless it is one in which a man is like to see a great deal more of every one else's partner than of his own. Harry's time was taken up by bowings, scrapings, and crossings of hands with the most homely daughter of the Minor Canon, while Isoline went through the same evolutions with a sprightly gentleman, whose age in no way hampered the intricate steps with which he ornamented the occasion. It was unsatisfactory--highly so--like many things ardently longed for and little enjoyed, and when the music stopped for an instant before merging itself into "God save the Queen," and people were bidding each other good-night in groups, the young man ruefully led her back to her aunt, who was making for the place in which she had left her cloak. He waited for the two women to come out of the cloak-room, and then plunged into the street to find the modest fly which had conveyed his goddess to the ball. The air was bitter, for the winter sunrise was as yet far off. Coachmen were urging their horses up to the door, and footmen touching their hats to their respective masters and mistresses above them on the steps to signify that their carriages were waiting in the little string that had formed itself in the road. The fly was wedged in between an omnibus belonging to one of the town hotels and a large barouche, so there was a few minutes' delay, in which Harry found time to remind Isoline of her promise about her uncle. Then he handed Miss Ridgeway respectfully in, held her niece's fingers in his own for one moment, and the clumsy vehicle rolled away with a great clatter, leaving him standing upon the pavement. As he turned to go up the steps he noticed something lying at his feet, and, stooping, picked up an artificial forget-me-not. CHAPTER XI THE BRECON COACH THE Green Dragon stood in High Street within sound of the Cathedral bells, and was the point of migration to the worldly part of the county, just as the Cathedral was the point of migration to the spiritual. The Hereford and Brecon coach started from its door, and one morning, a few days after the ball, a little crowd had collected as usual to see it off. It was nine o'clock, and the day had not sent out what little heat it possessed; the ostlers were shivering as they stood at the horses' heads, and the guard blew on his fingers whenever he had the courage to take them from his pockets. The coachman, great man, had not as yet left the landlord's room, in which he was spending his last minutes before starting, talking to the landlady by the fire, and occasionally casting an eye through the glass door which opened upon the main entrance where the passengers were assembling. "Guard, guard," cried an old lady, standing near a page who led a Blenheim spaniel, "will you kindly look among the boxes and see whether a small dog's water-tin is there? It is marked 'Fido,' and has 'Miss Crouch, Belle Vue Villas, Laurel Grove, Gloucester,' printed upon the bottom." "It's all right, 'm," replied the guard immovably, "I saw to it myself." The luggage had been put upon the coach a couple of hours earlier before the horses were harnessed, and he and the ostlers exchanged winks. The page-boy sidled up to his mistress. "I've got it 'ere, mum--under my arm, mum," he said, holding out the article. The passengers smiled with meaning, and Isoline Ridgeway, who was among them, giggled audibly. "If your memory for the mail-bags is not better than your memory for the luggage," remarked Fido's owner, "there are many who will have to wait for their letters, my man." The passengers smiled again, but this time not at the old lady. Miss Ridgeway the elder had left the comfort of her snug Georgian house at this unusually early hour to see her niece off by the Brecon coach, which was to put her down at the toll-gate lately demolished by Rebecca, near the foot of Crishowell Lane, at which place her uncle was to meet her. Isoline wore a fur-trimmed pelisse, and her head was enveloped in a thick veil, which her aunt had insisted upon her wearing, both as a protection against the east wind and any undesirable notice which her face might attract. The two ladies stood in the shelter of the Green Dragon doorway while the coachman, who had torn himself from the fire, was gathering up the reins, and the passengers were taking their seats. Miss Crouch, with Fido on her lap, was installed inside, and the guard was holding the steps for Isoline to mount, when Harry Fenton came rushing up wrapped in a long travelling-coat. "Just in time!" he called out to the guard; "my luggage is on, I hope?" He turned to Isoline's aunt, hat in hand. "As I am going down to Waterchurch to-day," he said, "I hope you will allow me to look after Miss Ridgeway's comfort and be of any use I can to her on the way." "Thank you, Mr. Fenton," she replied, "I am pleased to think my niece has the escort of some gentleman whom I know. It will relieve my mind greatly." Isoline said nothing, but she smiled brilliantly behind her veil; then kissing her aunt, she got into her place, followed by Harry; the coachman raised his chin at the ostlers, who whipped the rugs from the horses, and they were off. Is there anything in this steam-driven world, except perhaps trotting to covert on a fresh February morning, which gives a more expectant fillip to the spirits and a finer sense of exhilaration than starting on a journey behind four good horses? The height at which one sits, the rush of the air on one's face, the ring of the sixteen hoofs in front, the rocking-horse canter of the off-leader ere he makes up his lordly mind to put his heart into the job and settle to a steady trot, the purr of the wheels on the road, the smell of the moist country as the houses are left behind, and the brisk pace now that the first half-mile has been done and the team is working well together--surely the man whose blood does not rise at all these, must have the heart of a mollusc and the imagination of a barn-door fowl. Harry had travelled so often behind the blue roan and three bays that he knew their paces, history, and temper nearly as well as the man who drove them, and for some time his interest in them was so great as to make him almost unconscious of Isoline's presence. As they bowled along she sighed softly, drawing up her rug round her. If it had not been for the society in which she found herself, she would willingly have changed places with Miss Crouch inside. The country conveyed nothing to her eye; it was cold, Harry's want of appreciation was anything but flattering--and she was accustomed to think a good deal about what was flattering and what was not; it was rather a favourite word of hers. She had never looked at the horses, because it had not occurred to her to do so; in her mind they were merely four animals whose efforts were necessary to the coach's progress. How could one wonder at her want of interest in ideas and things of which she had no knowledge? To her town-bred soul, outdoor life was a dull panorama seen at intervals through a plate-glass window. Nevertheless, had it been otherwise, she would not have changed her point of view much, being one of those women whose spirits rise at no exercise, whose blood is stirred by no encounter; you might have run the Derby under her nose without taking her mind from her next neighbour's bonnet. Presently Harry looked round and saw her arranging the rug that had fallen again. "I beg your pardon," he cried, "what an oaf you must think me, Miss Ridgeway! I promised to take care of you, and I don't even see that you are comfortable." "It does not matter at all," she said pleasantly, but with a little shudder in case he should take her words too literally. "But you are cold, I am sure you are," exclaimed he, beginning to pull off his heavy coat. "You must have this, it will go right over your dress--cloak--I don't know what it is called." "No, no," she protested. "Please, pray, Mr. Fenton, do not be so absurd. Look, I am all right. The rug only slipped off my knees." He tucked it elaborately round her and sat down, resolving to devote himself to her and to nothing else; and, as it was with a view to this purpose that he had timed his journey home, no doubt he was right. "Where do you expect to meet Mr. Lewis?" he inquired. "I suppose at Llangarth?" "I am to leave the coach at some toll-gate, I do not quite know where, but the guard understands, I believe, and my uncle will be there. I think it is only just being put up, for the Rebecca-ites destroyed it." "I have some reason to know that place," observed Harry, with a sigh; "I would give a thousand pounds--if I had it--to catch the man who was at the bottom of that night's work. I tried hard, but I failed." "How interesting; do tell me all about it," said she. "You were there with the military, were you not?" "The yeomanry, yes. But we did little good." "Were you in your regimentals? How I should like to have been there to see the yeomanry!" "You would not have liked to see poor Vaughan, the toll-man, killed, though he was a fine sight standing up against the rioters." "But why did he come out if there were so many against him? Surely he would not have been killed if he had stayed inside until help came?" "He was responsible for the gate," said Harry. "And he would have been blamed, I suppose," said Isoline. "How unjust!" "No, he wouldn't have been blamed," said Fenton. He was too young to reflect that people might belong to the same nation and yet speak different languages. "Poor old man, how very sad," said the girl. "Which of those dreadful rioters killed him?" "A man called Walters--Rhys Walters--a very large farmer." "Good gracious!" exclaimed Isoline; "then will he be hanged?" "He will have to stand his trial for manslaughter--that is, when they catch him, if they ever do, for he is a wonderful fellow. I thought at one time I might have taken him myself, but he slipped through my fingers, I can't imagine how to this day." "And were you near when he killed the toll-keeper?" "I was, but I did not actually see it done. One of our men and two constables swore at the inquest that they saw Walter's arm fly up and the man go down. It was so dark and everything was so mixed up that one could hardly tell what was happening, but an inn-keeper named Evans was close by, and he saw the blow struck. He was one of the men caught, and he confessed everything." She was really interested, and was listening with her lips parted. "When I saw Walters making off I followed hard. I made up my mind I would get hold of him if I could, but he was on a good mare, and he took me over the worst places he could find; I very nearly came to grief among the boulders at a brook, the light was bad and they were so slippery, but I got through somehow, and I heard him in Crishowell Lane not far ahead. When he got to the top of it, he made for the Black Mountain as hard as he could, and I kept within sound of his hoofs till we were about a quarter of a mile from his own farm; then I heard him pull up into a walk. When I rode up I saw that the horse was riderless, so I suppose he must have slipped off somewhere along the foot of the mountain and left me to follow it. That was the second time he had made a fool of me." "Did you know him before?" "I met him not far from that very place, as I was coming down to Waterchurch from London the day after Christmas. I rode from Hereford on, and lost my way in the fog by the mountain. He was groping about too, and he pretended to go out of his road to show me mine--devil that he is--but I know why he did it now." "Why?" "He rode with me so as to talk about the riot, for every one knew that there would be one; so he put me on the wrong scent; he seemed to have some secret information about it, and it tallied with other rumours we had heard, so the police and the yeomanry were kept night after night at the gate by the river at Llangarth. If it had not been for a boy who saw the rioters making for the toll by Crishowell Lane, and who ran all the way to the town with the information, they would have got off scot-free. What would I not give to catch that man!" "I am afraid you are very vindictive, Mr. Fenton." "They are scouring the country steadily," continued he, unheeding, "but they can find no trace of him. It is extraordinary." But Isoline had grown tired of the subject now that the sensational part of it was over, and she directed her companion's attention to some passing object. The sun had come out, and she was beginning to enjoy herself; it was pleasant to be seen abroad too with such a smart-looking young fellow in attendance. They chatted and laughed as the hedges flew by, and when the first stage was done and they pulled up before the creaking signboard of a village inn to change horses, both regretted that a part of their journey was over. Harry was too much engrossed to get down and watch the new team being put in--a matter which the coachman, who knew him well, did not fail to notice, and he and the guard exchanged comments. "Hi, there!" cried a voice from the road, "have you got a place left for one?" A sturdy young man in leather leggings was coming round a corner, waving his stick. Harry started up. "Gad, Llewellyn, is that you?" he cried, looking down on the crown of his brother's head. "It is," replied Llewellyn, putting his foot on the axle and swinging himself up. "Is there a vacant place anywhere, Harry?" "Yes, a man has just left the one behind me. Miss Ridgeway, this is my brother, Mr. Llewellyn Fenton. Miss Ridgeway is travelling to Crishowell, and I am--I mean, I have--I was asked by her aunt to look after her." "Mornin', sir," said the guard, coming out of the inn and touching his hat. "Any luggage? Two vacant places, sir." "No, nothing; only myself." "I didn't expect to see you, Loo. What have you been doing here?" asked Harry. "Looking after pigs," said Llewellyn, as he sat down. Isoline opened her eyes; she thought that only people who wheeled barrows with pitchforks stuck in them did that. "He is my father's agent," explained Harry. Llewellyn was rather amused. Harry had not told him that he was going down to Waterchurch that day, so the meeting of the brothers was purely accidental. It did not escape him that two was company and three was none, for he marked Isoline's little air of complacency at her entire absorption of her cavalier, and his having broken in upon her raised a faint but pleasant malice in him. It could not exactly be said that he disliked her, for he did not know her in the least, though he had observed her a good deal at the ball, and, considering that he had seen very little of the world, he was a youth wonderfully free from prejudice. But, had he put his feelings into thoughts, he would have known that he was irritated. Isoline glanced at him once or twice, and made up her mind that she hated him. "Were you buying pigs then?" asked Harry, as they were trotting along the high-road again. "Father wants a few young Berkshires, and I came to see some belonging to a man out here. It sounds low, does it not, Miss Ridgeway?" said his brother, looking at Isoline, and knowing by instinct that the subject was uncongenial. "Oh, no, not at all, I assure you," replied she, quite uncertain how she ought to take his remark. That pigs were vulgar was well known, nevertheless she could not help a vague suspicion that she was being laughed at. But Llewellyn's face was inscrutable, and she could only move uneasily on her seat and wish him miles away. For the rest of the journey the two young men looked after her carefully, Llewellyn vying with his brother in his attention to her every wish; but a snake had entered into her Eden, a snake who was so simple that she could not understand him, but who was apparently not simple enough to misunderstand her. Sometime later they clattered through Llangarth, stopping at the Bull Inn, where Harry had been kept for so many hours on the night of the riot, and went along the Brecon road parallel with the river. The toll-gate by Crishowell had not yet been re-erected, and the bare posts stuck dismally up at the wayside by the little slate-roofed house. As it came in sight they observed a vehicle drawn up beside the hedge, and evidently awaiting the advent of the coach. "That must be my uncle's carriage," said Isoline, beginning to collect her wraps. They stopped at the toll, and the guard prepared to disentangle Miss Ridgeway's possessions from the other luggage. Harry and Llewellyn jumped down, and the former went towards the strange-looking conveyance which was moored up under the lee of the hedge. He peered into the weather-beaten hood which crowned it, expecting to find the Vicar of Crishowell inside, but its only occupant was a huddled-up figure fast asleep. He shook it smartly. Howlie Seaborne opened his eyes without changing his position. "Wake up, boy!" cried Fenton, leaning over the wheel and plastering himself with a layer of mud by the act; "do you belong to Mr. Lewis?" "Naw," said Howlie. "Then has no one come to meet Miss Ridgeway?" "Here oi be, but oi belong to moiself an' to no one else. Be her come?" "Your uncle is not here, but he has sent for you," said Harry, going up to the coach from which Llewellyn was helping Isoline to descend. Howlie gave the old white mare in front of him a slap with the whip, and arrived in the middle of the road with a great creaking and swaying. "Oi can't take them boxes along," he remarked, pointing to Miss Ridgeway's luggage which stood in the road. "Never mind, you can send for them after," said Harry. "Guard, put them in the toll-house if any one is there." While this was being done, Isoline climbed up beside Howlie, and the young men wished her good-bye. "You will ask your uncle?" said Harry, looking earnestly into the hood. "Yes, yes," she said, waving her hand. "Good-bye, good-bye, Mr. Fenton, and thank you for taking such care of me!" Then the vehicle lumbered into Crishowell Lane with one wheel almost up on the bank. "Can you drive, boy?" she asked nervously. "Yaas," replied Howlie; "can you?" CHAPTER XII GEORGE'S BUSINESS IT was well into the middle of January, and a few days after Isoline's arrival, before Rhys was sufficiently recovered from his injuries to move about; luckily for him, no bones had been broken, and George's simple nursing, supplemented by the Pig-driver's advice, had met every need. The slight concussion and the exposure had brought on fever, which left him so helpless and weak that he could not rise from his bed without help, while the strange place he was forced to inhabit held back his progress, for he could get no more fresh air than was admitted by the openings in the wall. When he was able to walk again, George would drag him up the ladder after night had fallen, and he would pace unsteadily about the potato-patch, ready to disappear into the cottage at the faintest sound of an approaching foot. But such a thing was rarely heard near their God-forsaken habitation, and, when it was, it belonged to no other than Bumpett. Had he searched the kingdom, he could not have found a safer place in which to hide his head, than the one chance had brought him to on the night of his flight. Convalescence, once begun, makes strides in a constitution such as his. Every day added something to his strength, bringing at the same time an impatience of captive life, untold longings for a new horizon; by the time he was practically a sound man with the full use of his limbs, he was half mad with the monotony of his days. Besides this, Nannie, according to Bumpett's order, had brought most of his everyday possessions to the Pedlar's Stone, and, once in his own clothes, an intense desire for his past identity came upon him, embittered by the knowledge that his choice lay between an absolute abandonment of it, and prison and disgrace. All his life he had been accustomed to be somebody, and he felt like a man in a dream as he looked round at the sheepskins, the iron hooks, and implements of Williams' illicit trade. Only a few miles divided him from Great Masterhouse; surely he had but to step out of these unworthy surroundings and go back to his own! Everything since his illness seemed unreal, his old self was the true one, this a nightmare, a sham. Nevertheless, between him stood that one night's deed like a sentry and barred the way. There was not even the remotest prospect of escape, for Bumpett, who made it his business to gather all the news he could about the search, had strongly impressed on him the necessity of lying low. When it should be given up as hopeless and vigilance relaxed, the time would be come, he said, to make for Cardiff, and get out on the high seas by hook or by crook. The knowledge of the fugitive's hiding-place would remain entirely between the Pig-driver and George Williams, for the old man was firm in his refusal to divulge it to Nannie, devoted as she was, saying that what he had seen of women did not incline him to trust them with his secrets. "They be a pore set," he observed, "they've room for naught i' their heads but tongues." So Rhys and George made up their minds to live together for some time to come, though it was hardly a prospect that gave either much satisfaction. That the one owed a debt of gratitude to the other did not tend to make matters better, for being under an obligation to a person with whom one is not in sympathy, can scarce be called a pleasure, and Rhys was not at all in sympathy with George. Acutely sensitive as to what people thought of him, whether he actually respected their opinion or not, he soon saw that it was from no personal admiration or regard that he had been so carefully tended--as much would have been done for any human creature in distress. The sheep-stealer too was at all times a taciturn man with deep prejudices and strong loves and hates; simple and unpretentious to a degree himself, he loathed all pretension in others, and felt it hard to bear the airs of superiority and patronizing ways which were seldom absent from Rhys' manner towards him. Coming from a runaway criminal to whom he was extending shelter they were absurd; but George did not think of that, for he had as little humour as Rhys, though its want arose from vastly different causes. The lighter aspects of life had passed him by, and he was hampered by the misfit of his double life to his eminently single mind. And whenever he looked at Rhys, the face of the girl in the churchyard rose before him. It was the direst necessity which had induced George Williams to stray so far across the line of honesty, and bitterly he regretted the step. A couple of years before, he and his mother, a blind old woman, had inhabited a little hovel near Presteign, which belonged to the Pig-driver, for the old man owned many cottages in various parts of the neighbourhood. As she could do nothing towards their livelihood, the whole maintenance of the household fell upon the son, who worked hard at such odd jobs as he could get, and earned a small sum weekly by hedging and ditching. They lived very frugally, and with great management made both ends meet, until, one winter, the widow fell ill and took to her bed; then came the pinch. At the end of her illness the young man found himself in debt with arrears of rent and no prospect of paying; besides which, he was receiving messages from Bumpett every week to the effect that, if money were not forthcoming, they would be turned out of doors. Work was slack, and he was in despair; finally he went off to Abergavenny to interview his landlord, and to get, if possible, a little grace from the close-fisted old man. It happened that, at that time, Bumpett was beginning to make a regular business of sheep-stealing; he had started by receiving the stolen goods from men whose private enterprise had led them to lay hands on the animals, and he ended by taking the responsibility of the trade on himself, and stipulating that the actual thieves should enter his employment and supply no other person. It had paid him well. George's need was his opportunity; he wanted another active, reliable hand, and, knowing most things about most people connected with him, he perceived that this steady and trustworthy young fellow was the man for the place. He told him that he meant to offer him a chance on condition that he pledged his word to secrecy, and, when this had been done, he put before him a choice of two things; either he was to become his workman at a small fixed wage, living rent-free in the cottage which now sheltered Rhys, or he was to turn out of his present quarters the next day with a debt which he could not pay off. If he accepted the first alternative his debt was to be cancelled. This contract was to hold good for three years, during which time he was to serve Bumpett entirely, sworn faithfully to secrecy when the time should have elapsed. It was a hard struggle with fate for the poor boy, and one in which he came off second-best; he took the Pig-driver's terms with a heavy heart, and entered on his new occupation, going out for several nights with an expert thief, both in the near and more remote parts of the county, to see the way in which things were done. Afterwards he removed with his mother to their new abode, where the poor woman, being blind, dwelt till the day of her death without knowing how her son was occupied. She lived in that end of the cottage which did not communicate with the cellar, and George, who still kept his hedge and ditching work, easily persuaded her that it was to this and to the lower rent of their new home that they owed their comparative prosperity. She had now been dead about ten months, and he was still working out his time with his employer and longing for its end. "What are you going to do?" asked Rhys one afternoon, as he saw George take a pickaxe and shovel from a corner of the cottage. The outer door was locked, and he had come up from below to escape the dullness of his underground dwelling for a while. "Dig a hole in the garden," replied the other, "I be goin' out to-night, and maybe there'll be something to bury afore morning." "I'll come with you," said Rhys. "Well, I suppose you may as well begin some time, and, if you're feeling right enough, I've nothing against it. It'll be a change for you." "I am sick and tired of this place," exclaimed his companion ungraciously, for he was somewhat piqued by the indifferent acceptance of his companion. He had condescended rather in offering his help. "I'll lock the door on the outside," observed Williams, as he went out, "so you needn't go below again." Rhys sat down by the hearth and listened to the strokes of the pickaxe among the gooseberry bushes outside. He took out his watch and counted the hours till night should come and he should go for the first time beyond the walls of the weary little garden which had become so hateful to him. Seven hours; it was an age to wait. But it went by at last. In the dark of the moonless night the two men went out, taking with them the few implements needful to their work--a piece of rope, a small, very heavy hammer, and a long knife which George attached to a leather belt round his middle. Rhys carried a dark lantern, which for extra safety was muffled in a felt bag, and an old, tattered cloak. As they stepped across the plank into the track up the hillside, the smell of the chill night blew against his nostrils. The air was thick, only faintly penetrated by stars, and bearing with it a chill of approaching rain, but, to the captive, it was a taste of Paradise. He drew a long breath and rubbed his feet against the turf for the pure pleasure of feeling again its firm velvet, and there ran through his being that sense of expansion, mental and physical, which comes to many people in the wide stillness of the night world. Had he been a woman, he would have wept; as it was he did not analyze his feelings, but was merely conscious that he had been dead and that he lived again. As they passed the Pedlar's Stone they halted for a minute while George showed him the rock a few yards off under which the meat could be hidden until Bumpett should come to take it away. Rhys pushed his arm into the hole beneath and felt the lining of hay which was put there periodically for its better preservation. His hand was stung by the nettles growing round and above it. When they reached the Twmpa's foot they went westward and skirted the base, keeping as close to it as possible, then turned into a creek down which a rush of mountain-water was flowing between rocks. Rhys understood nothing of his companion's plan and was not inclined to question him, so he kept silence; though his interest was roused he had sense enough to know that obedience would further their work, and that trusting to Williams would be the best way of saving them both from the chance of discovery. The sheep-stealer stopped where the running water swirled into a pool and out again yet more violently through a narrow place in the rocks, and directed him to set down the lantern. "We'll come back here when we get our beast," he said. "Listen, do you hear anything?" Across the noise of the torrent came the faint baa of a sheep. "There's a flock not far off," said George. "There used to be a hut up here," said Rhys, stretching out his arm towards the slope above. "Aye, an' likely there's a man in it too," replied the other. "I can't see no light. Maybe he's sleeping. He'll have to hearken pretty smart if he's to hear we." They crossed the water and began quietly to descend the hillside. Some way up they could see the dim forms of the sheep, above them again the shepherd's hut, a faint excrescence on the sky-line. Williams uncoiled the rope he carried and twisted it round his body; in one hand he held the hammer. "Now," he said to Rhys, "put the cloak over your back an' get on your hands and knees. Keep anigh me, and when you see me throw the sheep, down you wi' the cloak over his head to stop his noise and hold him fast. I'll do the rest." They crawled forward, one behind the other, stopping for several minutes at a time, flattened against the earth when they saw any animal look in their direction. The sheep were feeding unconsciously, having finished the first long sleep with which the animal world begins the night, and when they were close enough to see their white bodies take definite shape in the dull starlight, Williams chose his victim, a fine large wether on the outskirts of the flock. Rhys pressed close behind him. They were well within a couple of yards of their game when the animal sniffed suspiciously and would have turned his head towards the danger after the manner of horned creatures. But George's hand had gripped him by the hind-leg and laid him with a turn of the wrist on the hillside before he had fully realized that an enemy was upon him, and he was struggling half suffocated by the heavy cloak which Walters flung round his head. The two strong men held him down with all their might till his efforts had grown less violent and Williams had unwound the rope from his body and tied his legs. Then he took up the hammer and, with all his force, dealt him one tremendous blow between the horns. The sheep quivered and lay still. "Thank God, that's done," he said, getting up from his knees. They hoisted their prize on to George's back and went stealthily down the hill to the stream. Here they laid it on a rock, and while Rhys held its head over the water, his companion severed the large artery in the throat. The lantern which they had turned on their work showed the crimson stain, as it mixed itself with the torrent, to be borne whirling down between the boulders and out of sight. When the blood had ceased flowing, Williams took a wisp of hay and stopped the wound, binding it round with a strand of rope; he washed the red marks from his hands and sleeves and from the stones on which they had been kneeling, making Rhys search each foot of ground with the lantern for the least traces of their deed. Then he got the dead beast upon his back again covered by the cloak, and they set their faces towards the cottage. Since they had started that night, the sheep-stealer had taken rather a different place in his companion's mind. Accustomed to regard him as a clod and no more, the calm skill he displayed in his occupation and his great personal strength impressed Rhys, and, for the first time in their acquaintance, he spoke an appreciative word. "That was a wonderful fine bit of work," he remarked as they left the mountain behind them, "few could match you at that, Williams!" "'Tis a cursed business," said George between his teeth. "God's truth! but I do hate it!" "Then what makes you do it, man?" exclaimed Rhys. "Ah, that's just it. I've sold myself to the devil, that's why." Rhys laughed. "Where did you meet with him?" he asked lightly. "At Abergavenny," replied George gravely. "And his name is James Bumpett." CHAPTER XIII THE SEVEN SNOW-MEN MARY'S child opened its eyes prematurely on this world, only to wail itself out of it again in a couple of weeks. It was a miserable, feeble little creature, but the mother clung to it, though it was the son of her father's murderer, of the lover whose baseness towards herself seemed to her nothing compared with his baseness in lifting his hand against the grey head now lying by the wall in Crishowell churchyard. This she told herself again and again as she lay tossing in the weary days succeeding its birth. Though her love for the father was dead, struck down by that foul blow, she had still some to give the child; it was hers, she felt, hers alone. He had never seen it, never would see it, and never would his face shadow its little life. During her illness the Vicar had been to visit her, and had tried, very gently, to bring home to her the greatness of her fault. She listened to his words meekly and with respect, but he left the house feeling that he had not made much impression. When he was gone she thought over all he had said; to have explained to him what was in her heart would have been impossible, for she could hardly explain it to herself, but she knew that, though she recoiled from the man who had once been everything to her, she could not go back upon the love. It was a gift she had made fully, freely, rejoicing in the giving, and she would not repent it. If the sun had gone down on her and left her to grope through the black night, she would accept it as the price of her short happiness; she felt this instinctively, dumbly. She was proud, and, knowing that all the world would think itself at liberty to cast stones at her, she was not going to invite it to do so, much less to shrink from its uplifted hand. The thing was her affair, her loss, and no one else's. Life would be hard, but she would meet it for the child's sake; she would make him an honest man, and, perchance, if she did her duty by him, he might one day stand between her and the loneliness of existence. That was what one might call the middle stratum of her soul; down below--far, far down--there was a tideless sea of grief. Then the poor little infant died. In a small place like Crishowell it is scant news that can remain hidden; what is known to one is the property of the whole community, and Mary's history was soon in every mouth. Horror and mystery were sweet to the rural taste, which was beginning to feel dulled after such a surfeit of events as the riot, the arrests, Vaughan's death, and Rhys' disappearance. The tale of her double wrong gave it something to think about again, and the talk reached the ears of George Williams at last, though he mixed rarely with his fellow-men, and consequently knew little of the topics of the village. He had thought a great deal about the toll-keeper's daughter since the day he had found her sitting in the churchyard, for, in that moment, he seemed to have looked into her very heart. He knew now that he had only seen half of it. He was anything but a vindictive man, but as he walked out of the village one evening with his newly-gotten knowledge, if he could have done what he liked, he would have gone straight home and killed Rhys Walters, then and there, with his two hands. Seeing the story laid out before his mind's eye, he wondered how he should manage to exist under the same roof with him. His view was not altogether a just one, for he could hardly have felt more strongly had Walters deliberately murdered the father in order to ruin the daughter unopposed, but he did not stop to think of that. He saw things in the rough, and in the rough he dealt with them. He knew that Bumpett would never consent to his turning him out, for the Pig-driver had got Rhys into his power and meant to keep him there, as he had done with himself. It was hard enough to find suitable men for his work--and men who were dependent on him could tell no tales. The old man was exaggerating every difficulty in the way of getting the fugitive out of the country, so that he might retain him where he was and have him at his service; Rhys also was becoming enamoured of the business, which suited him exactly, and growing almost reconciled to his life, now that he could spend his nights outside. Whether there was work on foot or not, he left the cottage with the dark--often with the dusk--remaining out until dawn, and spending most of his day in sleep. Where he went George neither knew nor cared, but the day would come, he thought, when Walters would get over-venturesome, and let himself be seen. Though it would probably involve his own ruin, he prayed that it might be soon. All he longed for was the end of his bondage to his taskmaster, and of the hated company he was enduring. The Pig-driver ran his trade on bold lines. It had to be largely done to make it pay him, and he had taken two relations into partnership who had butchers' shops in other towns. The farmers who grazed their herds on the mountain-lands of Breconshire, and who suffered from this organized system of marauding, had no idea, in these days of slow communication and inefficient police, how to protect their interests. On the side of the Black Mountain with which we are familiar, they employed watchers for the flocks on dark winter nights, but hitherto George's skill and luck had been greater than theirs, and he left no traces of his deeds behind him. Once the dead animal had disappeared beneath his floor, it emerged again in pieces, for all the cutting up was done below, the skins dried before the fire, and each head with the tell-tale mark on the skull buried in the garden. Only after a fall of snow, when footmarks were ineffaceable, sheep-stealing was an impossibility. It had been coming down thickly, and after the fall the wind blew billows of white into all the hedgerows, which were broken in great gaps by the weight; everywhere they were being mended, and George was employed at a place on the further side of the Wye to repair about half-a-mile of damage. He had finished early, and, after crossing the river, the fancy took him to return along the shore and strike homewards into Crishowell Lane by the toll-house, where Mary was still living with the new toll-keeper's wife. The woman was a good soul, and had nursed her through her trouble, and the girl was to remain with her father's successors until it was settled where she should live, and how she might support herself, and increase the small sum subscribed for her by the public in memory of the dead man. He went down towards the water and kept along the high bank beside it. It was easy walking, for the wind had blown off the river where it could gather no snow, and the path was almost dry; below him the dark, swirling pools lay like blackened glass under the willows, whose knotted stems overhung them. The fields on his right were three inches deep in their dazzling cover. As his eye roamed over the expanse, some objects in a hollow a short way ahead caught his attention, detaching themselves as he drew near, and he saw that the boys of the neighbouring cottages had been at work. Seven gigantic snow-men were grouped together and stood round in a sort of burlesque Stonehenge, their imbecile faces staring on the monotonous winter landscape. There had been a slight fall since their erection, and though the grass round had been scraped clean by their creators, it was covered with a white powdering, few marks of their work being left. They seemed to have risen from the ground of themselves, seven solitary, self-contained, witless creatures. Not one of them boasted any headgear, all the round bullet heads standing uncovered on the pillar-like bodies; rough attempts at arms had been made, but these had not been a success, for the fragments lay around their feet. Their mouths grinned uniformly, indicated by long bits of stick embedded in the lower part of their jaws, and black stones above did duty for eyes. George contemplated the vacant crew with a smile. He was in no special hurry, so he stood for some time looking at them. Silence lay over everything, heavier than the sky, deeper than the snow. He turned his head towards the Wye, for from somewhere by the bank came the sound of heavy breathing, as of a creature wrestling with a load, pausing occasionally, but recommencing again after a moment's rest. There was a movement among the small branches of an immense willow whose arm stretched over a bit of deep water. The twigs were thick, and the bank shelved out like a roof over the trunk, so, though he could not see the man or beast, he gathered that whichever was struggling there must be down below on a ledge running a few feet above the river. He went cautiously towards the spot and looked over the edge. A woman whom he recognized as Mary Vaughan was scrambling along towards the limb of the great tree. Was he always to be an unwilling spy upon her? he asked himself as he saw her. He drew back and turned to go, when it struck him that he had better not leave her alone, as her foothold on the rotten bank seemed rather insecure, and he knew the pool below to be one of the deepest in the Wye, so he split the difference by getting behind a holly-bush whose evergreen boughs formed a thick screen in front of him, and through an opening in which he could observe her movements. He could not imagine what she was doing, and, until he saw her reach a place of safety, he determined to stay near. Afterwards he would steal away unperceived. Mary made her way towards the willow-branch, and, putting her foot upon an excrescence of the bark, she climbed up and seated herself upon it. George could see that her face was drawn and haggard, as the face of one who has not slept for many nights; it was thin too, and the fire of her beautiful eyes seemed drowned in unshed tears. She drew herself along the thickness of the bough until she was two or three yards from the shore and sat staring before her. A great pang of pity shot through the heart of the man watching her, as it occurred to him that her troubles might have turned her brain. He dared not stir while she sat there so still, for fear of making himself heard, and he held his breath in dread lest she might lose her balance, if startled, and slip from her seat into the pool underneath. Presently she began to fumble with something lying on the bough which he saw to be a piece of rope. He pressed a little nearer, peering under his hand through the holly-leaves into the gloom of the willow. A large stone was resting just where the branches divided into a fork beyond her, and one end of the rope was tied tightly round it; her efforts to get it into its present position had certainly caused the heavy breathing which had attracted him as he stood by the snow-men. It seemed a miracle that such a slight creature should have found strength to get the unwieldy thing up from the water-side, along the slippery bank and out on to the branch. George stood dumbly gazing at the unconscious woman, his steady-going mind in a turmoil. That she was mad he did not doubt, and that he must do something to get her away from her dangerous seat was certain. While he was debating how he should manage it, she took the slip-knot at the loose end of the rope, and, holding out her feet, began to work it round her ankles. Then he understood that it was not madness he was watching, but the last scene of a tragedy, which, if he did not act at once, would be played before his eyes. To shout out, forbidding her to do this thing, would, he knew, be useless, for the rope was already round her feet, and she would merely spring off into the water, before he could reach her. With such a weight to drag her down, rescue would be almost impossible from the depths which she had chosen for her grave, and might mean the loss of two lives instead of one. He was not particularly afraid of death, but he liked doing things thoroughly, and, as drowning himself would not save her, he did not intend to take the risk if he could do without it. Instinct told him that, apart from all fear of prevention, people do not take their lives in presence of the casual passer-by, and he knew that in assuming that character lay his best chance. Mary had covered her face with her hands as though she were praying, and he seized the moment to get himself on to the path. Then he coughed as unconcernedly as he could, and strolled by the tree swinging his bill-hook. She kept as quiet as a bird sitting on a nest, looking at him with startled eyes. "Good-day to ye," he began, as he stopped on the bank above her. Mary murmured something inaudible, and drew her feet as far as she could under her skirt that he might not see the rope. "That's a rotten bough you be settin' on," he continued; "come off, or belike it'll break down." "No, 'tis not," she replied, trembling in every limb; "you needn't mind me. I'm safe enough." For reply he laid hold of a projecting root, and swung himself down upon the ledge. "Look," said he, drawing her attention to a hollow in the limb, and coming a little nearer at each word, "it's all sodden, I tell ye." For fear of betraying her feet, she did not stir as he advanced; she remembered him as the man in the churchyard, and she knew his name, but his determined face awed her, and the shining bill-hook in his hand made him look almost as if he were going to attack her. When he had reached the bough he suddenly sprang upon it, and laid his hand upon her arm. His grip was like iron. Mary screamed aloud; she had not feared death, but she was terrified of George Williams. He held her firmly as they sat; her strained nerves were beginning to give way, and her determination to flutter to the ground like a piece of paper hurled into the air. She looked round despairingly. "Put your feet up on the bough, girl," he said sternly. "I can't," she faltered. They were sitting upon it side by side, more like a pair of children on a gate, than a man and woman with the shadow of death between them. He was holding her fast with his left hand, but he loosened his grip, and put his arm firmly about her. "Do as I bid ye," he said, very quietly. "Turn sideways with your back to me and lean against me." She obeyed. "Now put your feet up on the bough. Gently, mind." She drew them up with some difficulty till they rested upon it before her; a piece of the rope lay across the wood near the fork. "Sit still!" he cried, holding her in a vice. The bill-hook whirled above them and came down in a clean cut upon the branch; the two ends of the rope fell away, one on either side. George gave the great stone a push with the point of the blade and it fell from its place, splashing into the blackness below and sending up a shower of icy drops. The circles widened and widened underneath till they fell out of shape against the sides of the pool. "Do ye see that?" he exclaimed, releasing her and looking at her with stern eyes. "Mary Vaughan, that's where you would be now, but that I had been set to take this way an' not the high-road." She made no reply. "Will you repent it?" he asked, "or be I to tell on you? They at the toll-house are like enough to shut you up if I do--and 'twill be no more nor their duty too." Her overwrought mind was beginning to feel the influence of his quiet strength of purpose and she resented it. A sullen expression crossed her face. "Do as you will," she answered. "What do I care? You've done me an ill trick an' I hate you for it. Go, I tell you!" She turned her head away. He sat quietly beside her, pity and wrath in his heart. "Will you let me be?" she said, after a pause, turning on him and gathering excitement in her voice. "I won't." Then her lips shook and her breast heaved, and she burst into a torrent of helpless tears. "Poor lass, poor lass," exclaimed the young man; and, with an impulse that had in it no shadow of his sex, he put his arm round her. She clung to him, weeping violently. She would have done the same had he been a stock or a stone. He tossed the bill-hook up on to the bank, and stroked her hair clumsily with his large rough hand. "Come away from here," he said, when the rush of her grief had subsided, "this is a bad, lonesome place to be in, Mary. I'll lift you down and we'll go up on the bank. If there's aught you want to say to me, say it up there." He helped her off the bough, and from the ledge up to the path. They stood facing each other. "And now what can I do?" he asked. "How am I to leave you alone? I can't bide by you all day to see that you come to no harm." She opened her lips to speak, but no sound came. "Look," he went on, "will you hearken to one thing I've got to say and not take it ill o' me?" She raised her eyes to his. "If you was gone--drowned and gone--who would mind that little one you've brought into the world? Would you leave it alone, poor little babe, to them as might misuse it?" "But he's dead," she said simply, and the agony in her face made him turn away his own. He met the placid gaze of the snow-men, whose foolish eyes seemed intent upon them both. "Was that why you was--why I found you there?" he asked in a low voice. "Yes," she said. "I've nothing now, you see. There's none to care." For some time neither spoke. "Mary," said Williams at last, his face still turned to the white images in the hollow, "will ye take me for a friend? God knows I bean't no manner o' use." CHAPTER XIV THE USES OF A CAST SHOE MISS ISOLINE RIDGEWAY was standing before an object which usually took up a good deal of her time and attention, namely, the looking-glass. As it was placed at right angles to her bedroom window, there could be seen beyond her left shoulder as she arranged her hair, the great yew in the churchyard and a piece of the church-path framed in by the sash. Behind it was a background of sky turning into a frosty gold. Crishowell Vicarage was a small, old, whitewashed house which had once been a farm-house, with gabled windows looking westward; between it and the lane dividing it from the churchyard was a duck-pond that, in wet seasons, overflowed into the Digedi brook, which ran round the Vicar's orchard at the back. Isoline had just come in, and her hat and walking-things lay upon the bed where she had thrown them. As the room was low, and the early winter sunset hardly penetrated into the house by reason of the rising ground opposite on which the church stood, she had lit a candle, whose spot of feeble light only served to accentuate the dark around her; a rat was scraping in the wainscot, and she shuddered as she looked towards the place from which the noise came. She yawned, and wondered what she could do to amuse herself until supper-time, for it was only half-past four, and the Vicar kept old-fashioned hours--breakfast at nine, a substantial dinner at three, supper at eight, prayers at eight-thirty, and bed at ten o'clock. Since she had arrived at Crishowell the days seemed to have lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months. The old man was all kindness, but there was no one of her own age with whom she could associate, and the few visits she had made at his suggestion to the poor folks living round them had resulted in boredom to herself and constraint to them. She had a true, though rather thin voice, and she would gladly have practised her singing had there been some instrument on which to accompany herself, but unfortunately there was nothing of the sort in the house. Time hung heavy on her hands, for Mr. Lewis's library was mainly theological, and contained nothing which could amuse a girl. It was dull indeed. A knock at the door drew her attention from the glass. "Who is there?" she called, as she laid down the comb. "Oi," was the reply, which came from suspiciously near the keyhole. "What do you want?" she asked impatiently, opening the door on Howlie Seaborne. "Yew're to come down," he announced baldly. "I am not ready," said she, with a haughty look. "Who sent you up here, I should like to know?" "Parson says yew be to come down," he repeated. "Howell!" she exclaimed sharply, using the name by which he was known to his superiors, "how often have I told you that that is not the way to speak of Mr. Lewis; I never heard of such impertinence!" "An' if a bain't a parson, wot be he? Ye moight call 'im even worse nor that too, oi suppose," replied Howlie with a snort. Mr. Lewis's requirements were modest, so he kept only one indoor servant, who cooked for him and waited on his simple necessities, but since his niece had arrived at the Vicarage and there was consequently more work, Howlie had been brought in to help domestic matters forward. He carried coals, pumped water, cleaned knives, and, had it been possible to teach him the rudiments of good manners, would have been a really valuable member of the household. But those who associated with him had either to take him as they found him or to leave him altogether. Isoline would have preferred to do the latter, for there was in her an antagonism to the boy which had begun the moment she climbed into her uncle's crazy vehicle on the Brecon road. She detested boys of every sort, and this one was decidedly the most horrible specimen of that generation of vipers she had ever come across. Howlie Seaborne had never before been at close quarters with a young lady, the nearest approach to the species having been those little village girls whose hair he had pulled, and upon whom he had sprung out from dark corners by way of showing his lofty contempt, ever since he could remember. Miss Ridgeway interested him a great deal, and after the few days of close observation which it had taken him to find her a place in his experience, he persisted in regarding her with the indulgence due to a purely comic character. "There be a gentleman down below," he remarked, when he had finished snorting. "A gentleman? What gentleman?" "Moy! Just about as smart as a lord. Oi know 'im too. 'Im as was general o' the soldjers the noight they was foightin' Rebecca. Oi moind 'im, for 'e shook me crewel 'ard by the shoulder." He rubbed the ill-used part. Isoline shut the door in his face with a bang. The sudden draught put out the candle, and she was obliged to light it again to make the additional survey of her face which the situation below-stairs demanded. She took a hand-glass from the drawer, and assured herself that every view of it was satisfactory; then she hurried down the wooden staircase which creaked under her foot, and stood a moment with beating heart to collect herself at the door of her uncle's study. Mr. Lewis was standing by the round table in the middle of the room, and before him, with his hand on the mantelpiece, was Harry Fenton. The younger man had one foot on the fender, and from his boots went up a lively steam which showed that he had ridden over some heavy bits of ground; his spurs, too, were coated with mud, and he seemed to be appreciating the blaze that leaped gallantly in the chimney. He wore a long cloth coat, which made him look about twice his natural size. "Mr. Fenton has come over from Waterchurch on business," said Mr. Lewis, turning to her as she entered, "and I am sorry to say that his horse has cast a shoe on the way, and it has delayed his arrival till now. But I have persuaded him to stay here for the night, which is very pleasant." "It is most kind of you, sir," interrupted Harry. "My dear boy," exclaimed the Vicar, "it is impossible to think of taking the road again at such an hour, and with such a distance before you as Waterchurch. I am sorry," he went on, taking up a knitted comforter and beginning to put it round his neck, "that I have just been urgently sent for by a parishioner, and shall have to leave you for an hour, but my niece will see that all is made ready for you. Isoline, my dear, I will trust to you to look after Mr. Fenton till I come back." Harry had started from his home that morning with a couple of instruments in his pockets not generally carried about by riders. They bulged rather inside his coat, and he took great care, as he mounted, that Llewellyn, who was leaning against the stable-wall watching him depart, should not see them; they were a smith's buffer and a small-sized pair of pincers for drawing nails out of horses' shoes. His father, with some other county men, was bestirring himself about the putting-up of a stone at Crishowell to the toll-keeper, and had remarked at breakfast that he wanted to consult Mr. Lewis about the inscription. Harry pricked up his ears. "I suppose I shall have to write another couple of sheets," growled the Squire. "Really, with all the writing I have had to do of late, I am beginning to curse the inventor of the alphabet." "Can't I help you, sir?" inquired Llewellyn. "I have nothing particular to do this morning." "Nothing particular to do! What is the use of my keeping an agent, I should like to know, who has 'nothing particular to do'? Eh, sir?" Llewellyn held his peace. "I can go to Crishowell, and give your message; I was thinking of riding out that way in any case," said Harry boldly. The Squire had forgotten the existence of Isoline Ridgeway a couple of days after the ball, and he really wanted to get the business of the gravestone settled. "Very well," he assented, rather mollified, most of his wrath having evaporated upon his youngest son, "but you will have to start soon if you mean to get home again before dark. The roads are pretty bad in this thaw." So Harry had departed, nothing loth, and Llewellyn again held his peace, though he thought a good deal. He had not forgotten Isoline, but he had sense enough to know how useless speech can be. The roads were no better than the old Squire had supposed, nevertheless Harry did not seem inclined to get over them very quickly, for he did not once let his horse go out of a sober walk. He had delayed his start till after mid-day in spite of his father's advice, so by the time he reached a secluded bit of lane about half-a-mile from Crishowell village, the afternoon light was wearing itself out beyond the fields and coppices lying westward. Here he dismounted, and leading the animal into a clump of bushes, he took the buffer out of his pocket and began to cut the clinches out of the shoe on the near fore. Then he wrenched it gradually off with the pincers. When this was done, he drew the reins over his arm and tramped sturdily through the mud, carrying it in his hand. In this plight he arrived at the Vicar of Crishowell's door. When the sound of her uncle's steps had died away down the flagged path that led through the garden, and Isoline had ordered the spare room to be made ready for the guest, she and Harry drew their chairs up to the hearth. "You see, I have come as I said I should," he remarked, contemplating the pattern of the hearthrug; "are you glad to see me, Miss Ridgeway?" "Oh, yes," she replied truthfully. "Shall I tell you a secret?" said the young man, wearing an expression of great guile. "When the shoe came off I was rather pleased, for I ventured to hope that Mr. Lewis might let me stay to supper while it was being put on. I never expected such luck as being asked to stay the night." "It would be dreadfully lonely to ride back to Waterchurch Court in the dark. _I_ should not like it, I know; I suppose gentlemen do not mind these things." "I prefer sitting here with you, certainly," answered Harry, looking into the coals. "What do you see in the fire?" she asked presently. "Are you looking for pictures in it? I often do." "I think I see--you." "That is not very flattering," said Isoline, seeing a compliment floating on the horizon, a little compliment, no bigger than a man's thought, but capable of being worked up into something. "Coals are ugly things, I think, don't you?" "No, I don't, or I should not have looked for you among them." She sat quite still in her chair, hoping there was more to follow, but she was disappointed. "How do you amuse yourself here?" Harry inquired, after a pause. "There is nothing to amuse me," she replied in her most sophisticated manner. "This is a dull little place for any one who has seen anything of society. It is dreadful never to be able to speak to a lady or gentleman." "But there's your uncle; my mother always says that Mr. Lewis is the finest gentleman she knows." This was a new idea, and the girl opened her eyes. "Oh, but he is only an old man," she rejoined. "What an age it seems since the ball," he said, sighing. "I wish there was another coming." "So do I." "When you had gone I found something of yours--something that I shall not give you back unless you insist upon it." "Something of mine? I do not remember losing anything." He took a small pocket-book from his coat, and turned over the leaves until he came to a little crushed blue object lying between them. "Do you know this?" he asked, holding out the book. She took it with all the pleasure a woman feels in handling the possessions of a man in whom she is interested. "Ah, yes, that is mine," she exclaimed, flushing as she recognized the flower. "It was," said Harry, "but it is mine now." "Well, really!" "But may I keep it?" She turned away her head. "You are very foolish, Mr. Fenton." "I do not mind that." Isoline took the forget-me-not up between her finger and thumb and twirled it round; then she leaned forward, holding it out above the flame, and looking over her shoulder at her companion. "Shall I drop it into the fire?" she asked, with a half-smile. The young man sprang up. "No! no!" he cried, "surely you won't do that! Oh! how very unkind of you!" She laughed outright. "Well, take it then," she said, tossing it to him. He replaced it hastily, and put the book back in the pocket of his coat. "You are afraid I shall change my mind," said Isoline. "Yes, I am." She looked at him very softly. "But I shall not," she said. At this moment the door opened, and Howlie Seaborne came in carrying an armful of wood which he cast unceremoniously into a corner; when he had done this he addressed Harry. "Shall oi give yew one o' Parson's noightshirts?" he inquired, stopping a few paces from him and shouting as though a precipice lay between them. "What?" said Harry, unable to assimilate his thoughts to the suddenness of the question. "Be oi to give yew one o' Parson's noightshirts? The cook do say yew're to sleep here, an' yew haven't got one roidin' along o' yew, have yew?" "Oh, yes, do," replied the young man, smiling, "if Mr. Lewis does not mind." "Howell," said Isoline with a face of horror, "go away at once, and do not come back unless you are sent for. He is a dreadful creature," she said, as the door closed behind him. "I cannot think how my uncle can employ such an odious boy." "But he is very amusing." "Oh, I do not think so." "Surely I know him," continued Harry. "Isn't he the boy who ran to Llangarth on the night of the riot and brought us the news at the Bull Inn? Of course! He must have something in him or he would not have done that. I must talk to him after." "You had better not," said she. "He is sure to say something rude." "I suppose no one has ever heard anything more about Walters," said he; "I hear they have almost given up searching for him. What does your uncle think about it, I wonder?" "He says he must be half-way to Australia by this time." "I am afraid he is right," said Harry, the wound Rhys had dealt his vanity smarting, as it always did, at the sound of his name. "I do believe, if you had three wishes given you, like the people in story-books, one of them would be to catch that man." "Certainly it would." "Oh, but there is no use in wishing," said Isoline, shaking her head and feeling quite original. "Sometimes there is," said Harry, looking at her. "I wished at the ball to be introduced to you, and I was, you see." "Yes, but if you had wished and done nothing else, it would not have happened," she observed, feeling more original still. "That is quite true, but, in your case, I was able to do something; I did everything I could in this one, and it was no use. Heavens! how I galloped up those lanes--just a few fields off behind this house too." The dark had closed in by this time and the dull flash of the Vicar's lantern could be seen as he passed the window; he came into the study and stood warming his cold hands at the blaze. Harry rose deferentially. "Do not move," said the old man, pushing him back into his seat. "In a few minutes we will go into the other room and you shall explain your father's business to me. It will not interest you, my dear, so you will excuse us," he added, with a courtesy which was enhanced by his grey hair. When they had left her, Isoline remained with her toes upon the fender in a brown study. She also was looking at pictures in the fire, but, whereas Fenton saw people, she only saw things. Harry never enjoyed a meal much more than the supper he partook of that evening, though Isoline suffered many pangs as she cast her eyes over the plain fare before them; it must look so mean, she reflected, after the superior glories of the establishment presided over by Lady Harriet Fenton. She saw with satisfaction, however, that the guest ate heartily, and, with slight surprise, that he seemed to like her uncle's company. That the refinement of atmosphere surrounding one elderly person might blind the eyes to a darned tablecloth was one of those things the society to which she was fond of alluding had not taught her. That the glamour of a lovely face might turn the attention away from it, she had allowed herself to hope. When the table was cleared and the large Prayer-book placed where the mince and poached eggs had stood, the cook and Howlie Seaborne, who was kept on till bed-time to look after Harry, came in and took their seats in the background. Isoline glanced flippantly across the room at the young man to see whether the homely ceremony would bring a smile to his lips. He caught her look, but the grave simplicity on his face made her avert her eyes and pretend that she had been examining the clock which stood behind him. As she lay in bed that night thinking over the unlooked-for event of the afternoon, she admitted to herself that he was a much more puzzling person than she had supposed. When he left next morning two pairs of eyes followed him as he disappeared behind the church; one pair belonged to Miss Ridgeway, who was smiling at him from a window, and one to Howlie, who had, for the first time in his life, received a real shock. The shock was a pleasant one, for it had been occasioned by the silver half-crown which lay in his palm. Llewellyn was the only person in the Waterchurch household who did not accept the episode of the cast shoe without misgiving, for Harry's non-appearance had produced no surprise, the roads being bad and the Vicar of Crishowell hospitable. His vague dislike to Isoline Ridgeway had lately grown more positive, for a little rift had sprung between the two brothers since she had brought her disturbing presence across their way, and the fact that it was there proved to the younger one how great an influence he had over Harry's thoughts. She was the first person who had ever thrust herself through the strong web of friendship which had held them for so many years. They had not exchanged a word about her since they had parted from her at the toll, which was in itself significant, but they knew each other too well to need words. There is no friend so close as the friend to whom one does not tell everything. Llewellyn had a cooler head than Harry and a finer insight into people, and the want of breeding in Miss Ridgeway was as plain to him as possible. If she had been vulgarly pretty, with a strident voice and loud manner, he might even have disliked her less, but, as it was, he knew that her soul was vulgar, not her exterior; unlike most people, he could distinguish between the two. It was no jealousy of a possible wife who would take the first place in his brother's mind which possessed him, for he had always foreseen the day when Harry would marry, and he himself have to take a modest place in the background, and he meant to do it gracefully. But not for Isoline, nor for one like her; that was beyond him. He cut savagely with the stick he carried at the things in the hedge. The two young men had avoided each other all day, talking with almost boisterous cheerfulness when a third person was present, and finding urgent occupation in different directions the moment they were left alone. And now, as Llewellyn rounded a corner of the gardener's cottage, they came face to face. An insane desire for action took him. "For God's sake don't avoid me, Harry," he exclaimed, running his arm through his brother's. Harry turned red. "I'm not avoiding you, Loo, but I don't know what is the matter with you to-day. Is there anything wrong?" Llewellyn hated fencing. "I wish you wouldn't go to Crishowell, Harry." The elder flared up like a match held over a lamp-chimney. "Why shouldn't I go, if I choose? What the devil has it got to do with you? Am I to get permission before I take my father's messages?--'Yes, sir, I will go if I can, but I must ask Llewellyn first.'--That would be splendid, wouldn't it? Because I always forgot you were my younger brother, you've forgotten it too. It's my fault, I know!" Llewellyn dropped his arm as though the words had made it red-hot. His pride in Harry's affection had always been so great that they were like a blow, and he had not the faintest consciousness of superiority to his brother to dull their effect. "That's true," he said, with a quietness so false that it sobered Harry, "but it need never trouble you again--it can't, for nothing will ever be the same now." And he opened the door of the kitchen-garden, and was through it and was hurrying along between the box-borders before the other had realized what had happened. He stood for a moment looking after his brother, and then rushed to the door, knowing that every instant that kept them apart would widen the gulf that had opened between them. But it had slammed to, and, as there was something wrong with the latch, it had the habit of sticking tight and refusing to move when roughly handled. His pull had no more effect upon it than if it had been locked, and he tore and shook at the stubborn thing, feeling like a person in a nightmare whom inanimate objects conspire together to undo. Seeing that his fight with the latch was useless, he set off running round the garden wall to the entrance at its opposite end; it was open when he reached it, for Llewellyn had come through and was standing by a bed of Christmas roses whose draggled petals had evidently not recovered from the recent thaw. "Loo! Loo! don't go!" he cried as he saw him turn away. "Oh, Llewellyn! I didn't mean that, I didn't mean it!" The younger brother's face was white, and he looked dumbly at the other. "What a cur I am!" cried Harry, seizing his hand. "Don't stare at me, Llewellyn--say something, for Heaven's sake!" "I should not have spoken," said Llewellyn hoarsely. "Say anything you like--anything, only forgive me! forgive me!" cried generous Harry. Llewellyn's hand, which had lain passive in his brother's, began to tighten. "Don't, Harry," he said. "It's all right. I will never say anything about it again. I had no right to interfere." "But that's worse. It is terrible to think we can't talk to each other. Just say out what you think, Loo, and I'll listen; I haven't been able to speak a word to you of late, but I wish we could have it out now." They were walking down the laurel shrubbery leading from the garden to the home farm, Llewellyn's chief anxiety and the Squire's dearest toy. The old wall which ran outside it smelt damp, a background of sodden red to the rank, shining leaves. A cock robin, whose figure had filled out considerably since the thaw, was sending forth his shrill, cold voice in recognition of this crowning mercy. The breath of rotting chrysanthemums came from the beds by the tool-house. "How much do you really care for her?" asked Llewellyn after a pause. "A lot!" "But how much? More than Laura? More than Kitty Foster?" "Oh, Laura! that was nothing. And Kitty Foster, that was different too." "But you were half mad about her once. Don't you remember when she went away, what a state you were in and how you raged?" "Ah, I was younger then," replied Harry, with all the wisdom of his twenty-five years strong upon him. "Is it because she is so pretty that you like Miss Ridgeway?" asked Llewellyn. "That and heaps of other things." "Do you think she likes you?" "Yes, I am nearly sure of it." "Well, then, I'm not," said his brother shortly. "But, my good man, how can you tell?" exclaimed Harry, rather nettled. "She does not care for anything--at least, for nothing but herself." Harry was on the verge of flying out again, but he remembered the latch of the garden-door, and refrained. "I know you are mistaken," he said, "you can't think how glad she was to see me yesterday." "I don't doubt that," replied the other dryly. "But why do you doubt her liking me? I am not such a brute that no girl could look at me; I dare say I am no beauty, but, after all, I am neither lame nor a fright, nor hump-backed, nor crooked, nor squint-eyed, am I?" Llewellyn laughed outright. "Hardly. But she's a nobody, and you're somebody, d'you see, Harry." "I did not know you cared about those sort of things," remarked his brother scornfully. "I'm not sure that I should if she were the right kind of girl. But I'm sure she isn't. She thinks it would be a fine thing to be Mrs. Fenton, and I have no doubt she fancies you have lots of money, because you look smart and all that--she doesn't understand how hard-up we are. I could guess that she was thinking about it that day on the coach." Harry was rather impressed. "Of course it's a grand thing for her having you dangling about; girls like that sort of thing, I know. But I wouldn't if I were you." "One can't look at any one else when she's there," sighed the other. "Then don't go there. I wish you could keep away from that place for a little bit, then you might forget her. And if you couldn't," added the astute Llewellyn, "after all, she will be there for ever so long and you will have plenty of chances of going to Hereford when she returns to her aunt. Try, Harry." The younger brother's influence had always been so strong that the elder was never entirely free from it; he had looked at things for so many years of boyhood through Llewellyn's eyes, that he had never quite lost the habit, though the separation which manhood brought them had weakened it a little. "Well, I shan't have any pretext for going to Crishowell for some time," he said slowly. "You've made me rather miserable." Llewellyn said no more, but he felt that he had gained something. CHAPTER XV THE BEGINNING GEORGE WILLIAMS' education had been a very elementary and spasmodic thing. In days of comparative prosperity, when he was a small boy, he had learned to read and write and add up a little, but his mother's widowhood had sent him out to field-work at an age when the village urchins of the present day are still wrestling with the fourth "standard." That most irksome of all tools, the pen, was lying before him on the box which served as a table, and he stared sorrowfully at it and the cheap ink-pot beside it; now and then he took himself sternly by the front hair as though to compel his brain to come to the assistance of his hand. The cottage was very quiet, and the door stood open to let in what remained of the afternoon light. Below Rhys, who had spent the whole of the preceding night out of doors, was making up for lost sleep upon his pile of sheepskins, for, since his recovery, Williams' bedding had been restored to its rightful place. The brook gurgled outside. He shoved the paper away impatiently and sat back in his chair. All his efforts had only resulted in two words which faced him on the otherwise blank sheet. He laid his unlighted pipe down on them, for he heard Rhys' footsteps upon the ladder below the flooring, and he did not want him to see what he had written. The two words were "Dere Mary." The composition of this letter had hung over him for some days, for, besides his poor scholarship, he was one of those people whose powers of expression are quite inadequate to their need of expressing. He knew this very well, and it depressed him a good deal. He had made up his mind to ask Mary Vaughan to be his wife. It is doubtful whether five people out of every ten who contemplate marrying do so from devotion pure and absolute, so in this George was no worse than many of his neighbours. He certainly was not in love with Mary, for he could hardly tell whether he would be glad or sorry if she refused him, but he was inclined to think, sorry. His main reason, which swallowed up any other, was pity--pity and the longing to protect a stricken creature. The type of theorist perfect in all points except discrimination in human nature would have smiled deprecatingly and assured him that he was a fool, that what had happened once must inevitably happen twice, and that he would be like the man in Æsop's fable who had warmed a frozen viper on his hearth and been bitten for his pains. But he knew better. That Mary was not a light woman he could see easily--so easily indeed that he had never given the matter the consideration of a moment. He merely knew it. Also there lurked in him an odd feeling which one might almost call an economical one; they had both made a terrible muddle of their lives and gone the wrong ways to their own undoing, and if they could but convert their two mistakes into one success, it would be a distinct gain. He was a lonely man too, and the presence of a young and comely woman in his home would be very pleasant to him. He wondered whether she liked him much--he did not for an instant fancy that she loved him, for he knew that her heart was dead inside her, and he was quite unconscious that one thing that drew him to her was his complete understanding of her. It is a kindness we do when we really understand another human being--given a not ignoble one--and the doing of a kindness produces affection more surely than the receiving of one. The chief drawback to his plan was his bondage to the Pig-driver, for until that was over he could not marry; but he was putting by little sums earned with his hedging and ditching and other journeyman work, and on these he hoped they might start their married life when he had served his time with Bumpett. Could he make money enough to pay his debts to his taskmaster he would break with him at once, knowing that the old man in exposing his thefts would have to expose his own also. But his earnings were so small that all these were only forlorn hopes. Rhys came up through the trap-door under the sacks. As he appeared in the doorway of the partition George saw that he had a stick in his hand. "You're not thinking to go out, surely?" he remarked. "I am," was the short reply. "But the light's not gone yet; you'll be collared one of these days," said Williams, more as a sop to his own conscience than from any interest. "If I don't care, you needn't." "I don't--not a damn," replied Williams; "you can get clapped into prison any day you like." Walters left the house in so reckless a humour that he scarce bestowed a precautionary glance on his surroundings when he crossed the plank, and as the old cart-road led only to the most carefully avoided place within, possibly, a hundred miles, he was the less inclined to thwart his mood. Though the dusk had barely begun to confuse distant outlines, he strolled carelessly up the hillside, his mind full of irritated contempt for George. It was hard to him that a man of his intelligence and standing should have to tolerate the society of a clown, one whose sole merit of brute strength was unillumined by any ray of good feeling or geniality. When he arrived at the bit of scrubby ground by the Pedlar's Stone, he turned and looked down the track he had ascended towards the valley. On either side lay the slope, unbroken except by ragged bushes and briers; out of one of these which clothed a bank stuck the Pedlar's Stone. It looked sinister enough thrusting its black form through the thorns. A little way beyond was the rock under which the Pig-driver had made so snug a larder, and two or three slabs not unlike it were scattered round. He sat down upon one of them; there were limits to his imprudence, and he did not mean to venture farther away until the light had completely gone. Night outside had of late become as familiar to him as day, the sleeping world as important as the waking one; he felt almost like a man endued with an extra sense, for that half of life which for the healthy sleepers of the earth is simply cut out, was a living reality to him. The gulf of oblivion which divides one day from another for most people was ceasing to exist, and in its place was a time with its own aspects and divisions, its own set of active living creatures whose spheres of work belonged properly to the darkness and stillness. He had a feeling of double life. Eastern ascetics whose existences are spent in lonely places, in vigils, in silence, in the fastnesses of strange hills, know this. To the Western mind, so curiously incapable of understanding anything which does not assail it through its body, and which has such a strange pride in its own limitations, such things are folly. But the double life is there, the pulsations of knowledge which can be dimly heard through that receptiveness of mind born of long silence, and though Rhys knew it as little as do most of his nation, he had a dim consciousness of change. That the quietness of night soothed him was all he understood or ever would understand; he longed for it to come as he sat looking over the fading landscape. And it was coming--coming as surely as that other influence of which he did not dream, but which even then stood behind him. A sound aroused him; he turned with dismay and saw that he was not alone. He sprang up and found himself face to face with a woman. A glance showed him that she was a stranger, and though he was dismayed at the consequences of his rashness, it was reassuring to see from her manner that she was entirely occupied with her own affairs. "I beg your pardon," she began, "I am sorry to interrupt you, but I am in trouble. I have wandered about for I cannot tell how long--hours, I think--and I have lost myself. I am _so_ tired." There was almost a sob in her voice as she sank upon the stone on which Rhys had been sitting. "I beg of you, sir, to show me the way back to Crishowell." She was stooping down and holding her ankle in her hand as though it hurt her; her boots were thin and cut in places, and the mud had almost turned them from their original black to brown. She was evidently young, though her thick veil hid her features, and her clothes were absurdly unsuited to her surroundings. "Oh, my foot!" she exclaimed, "I have hurt my foot. Something ran into it as I came through those bushes." Rhys looked down. "It is bleeding," he said, noticing a reddish spot which was soaking through the mud. "Your boots are not strong enough for such places." "I did not mean to come up here. I went for a walk from my uncle's house in Crishowell. I only intended to go a little distance up the hill, but I could not find my way back, and there was no one to direct me after I had passed the village. Does nobody live about here?" "Not near here, certainly," he replied. "And how far do you think I am from Crishowell?" "About three miles." "Three miles!" exclaimed the girl, hardly restraining her tears. "How can I ever get home? And with this foot, too." "Perhaps a thorn has gone into it," he suggested. "If you will take off your boot I'll look and see what is wrong." She bent down and began to unfasten it. Rhys looked anxiously about them and saw with satisfaction that the dusk had increased and would soon have fallen completely. He knelt down in front of her, and she straightened herself wearily, glad for her gloved fingers to escape the mud. When he pulled off the boot she gave a little cry of pain, and he looked up at her. She had put back her veil, and for the first time he saw her face. A look of admiration came into his own. She read the expression behind his eyes as she might have read the story in a picture, and it affected her like a draught of wine. Her fatigue was almost forgotten; she only felt that she was confronted by one of the most attractive and uncommon-looking of men, and that he admired her. "Can you see anything in my foot?" she inquired, lowering her eyes. He examined it carefully. "There's a very long thick thorn; it has run in nearly half-an-inch. I'm likely to hurt you pulling it out, but out it must come." "Very well," she said. He took out his knife. "Oh, what are you going to do?" she cried in alarm. "There's a small pair of pincers in it. It will be best to use that." Isoline shut her eyes and drew her breath quickly; as the thorn came out she shuddered and put out her hand. "I am afraid you must think me a great coward," she faltered. "You would not behave like that, I am sure." "I am not so delicate as you. You ought never to trust yourself in these rough places alone." "And now I have all these three miles to go alone in the dark, and I am so afraid. I may meet cows or animals of some kind. Look how dark it has become." "If you will rest a little I will go with you part of the way. I can't come as far as Crishowell, but I'll take you till we can see a farm-house where they'll give you a lantern and a man to carry it before you to the village." "Oh, thank you. How very kind you are." He laughed. "Am I?" he said. "'Tis a mighty disagreeable piece of business for me, isn't it?" There are many ways of conveying admiration, and Rhys' voice was expressive. Isoline was engaged with her boot, and he sat down beside her on the rock. It was almost dark. Like all who saw Rhys Walters for the first time she was considerably puzzled to know who and what he might be, and his surroundings gave no clue to his position. His clothes were good, being his own, for though Bumpett had counselled him to borrow from George, he would never condescend to wear anything belonging to him. He spoke well when he gave himself the trouble, and Isoline, who was not as discriminating as she might have been, admired his assurance. Since the young man had been in hiding he had heard little of what was going on in the neighbourhood, George being uncommunicative, and it was only occasionally that he saw the Pig-driver. His beautiful companion puzzled him as much as he puzzled her, for he knew that, had he seen her face before, he could never have forgotten it. His safety now lay in the possibility of her not describing him to any one, and he would have to secure her promise of silence, a precarious barrier indeed between him and detection. It had been the thousand chances to one against his meeting any one at that hour and place, but the one chance had turned up and confounded him. He was running perilously near the rocks. "I think I ought to be starting for home," said Isoline's voice at his side after some time. "I am rested, and my foot is hardly painful since you have taken the thorn out. You have been very kind to me," she added softly. "Well, be grateful to me." "Oh, I am indeed." "Then stay a little longer to show it," he said boldly, "it's such a treat to look at a face like yours." "Why, you cannot see me in this darkness," replied Isoline, tossing her head, but apparently regarding his remark as perfectly natural. "But I know you are there, and when you are gone, who can tell when I shall see you again? You don't know how terribly I'd like to." There was real feeling in his voice. She was rather taken aback. "Who are you?" she said suddenly. "If you will tell me your name I will tell you mine." "I am Miss Isoline Ridge way, and my uncle is Mr. Lewis, the Vicar of Crishowell." "I don't know him," said Rhys. "I am a stranger." "You have not told me who you are," said the girl, after a silence in which he was preparing his answer. "I'm called Kent--Robert Kent," he replied, giving the name of a boy who had been at school with him. "That sounds very romantic," observed Isoline; "like an outlaw or a murderer in a tale." Rhys winced in the darkness. "I must go now," she said, rising. "You will come with me?" "That I will--as far as I can. Tell me, am I never to see you any more?" "I am sure I don't know," she replied, turning away. "Would you ever care to set eyes on me again?" He took her hand, and she did not draw it away from him. "Yes, I think I should." "Then promise never to tell any one I met you here." "Oh, I will not say anything." "It's a promise, then. Give me your two hands on it." She held out the other, and he kissed them both. "Will you come back here some day soon?" he asked, almost in a whisper. "Oh, I couldn't. And I should never find my way." "You could if I told you how to. You could ask for the farm I am going to take you to, and then 'twould be only a little bit further; and none can see you these dark evenings." "I must go," she said; "don't ask me such things." The night was, by this time, lying on the hillsides like a black cloth, and they crossed the rough turf, Isoline tripping and knocking her unaccustomed feet against the stones. A thrill went through Rhys as she took his arm at his suggestion; she could feel his heart beating against her hand. It was very interesting, she thought, and she hardly regretted having lost herself, though she had been frightened enough at the time. They walked along the high ground until the lighted windows of a farm were visible on a slope below them, and then began to descend; at the outer side of a wall they stopped. "I can't come any further," he said, "but I'll help you over this. There's the house, straight in front of us. Tell them you've missed your road, and ask them to send a man with a light." He took her by the waist, and lifted her on to the top of the wall, then swung himself over and stood before her on the inside of the enclosure. "If you come back," he said, "and keep straight on above this along the hillside, you'll get to the place where I met you to-night. Do you see?" She made no answer. She would not slip down from her seat for fear of falling into his arms. "I shall wait there every evening at dusk," said Rhys, looking up at her through the blackness. "Let me go, please let me go!" He put up his arms and lifted her down. "Good-bye," she said. "But you will think of it," he begged, detaining her. She shook herself free and flitted like a shadow into the night. The word "Perhaps" floated back to him through the dark. He stood for some time looking at the twinkling light of the farm; soon a large steady one emerged from it, moving forward slowly, and he guessed that Isoline's lantern-bearer was piloting her home. The light wound along, leaving a shine behind it, against which he could see the dark outline of some moving thing, turned, wavered at the place where he knew there was a gate, and finally disappeared. He climbed to the high ground and set his face in the direction of the Pedlar's Stone. Though pitch dark, it was still early, which made him anxious to get back to the shelter of its ill-omened presence, for his feeling of security had been shaken. In spite of this he went along with the tread of a man who is light of heart, his head full of the fascinating personality whose existence had been unknown to him a few hours before, but whose appearing had let loose a whole flock of new possibilities. He thought of her voice, of her little slender feet, of the brilliant face that had dawned upon him through the dusk with the turning back of her veil, of her pretty gesture of terror as she saw him draw out his knife; he went over in his mind each word she had said to him since the instant he had sprung up from the rock and found her standing behind him. Even her very name was a revelation of delicacy and ornament; Isoline--Isoline--Isoline--he said it over to himself again and again; it was to the Janes and Annes of his experience as a hothouse flower is to cottage herbs, a nightingale's song to the homely chatter of starlings, a floating breath from the refinements which exist apart from the rough utilities of the world. He sighed impatiently as another face thrust itself between him and his new ideal. To think that he had ever supposed himself dominated by it! Mary's eyes had once illumined him, Mary's personality held his senses and feelings, but he laughed at himself for his blindness in having picked up a wayside pebble and imagined it a jewel. Rhys had a certain amount of imagination, and femininity in one shape or another had been a necessity to him all his life; part of the repulsion he had often felt for his mother was due to the systematic way in which she had divested herself of every shred of feminine attraction in domestic life. This had not come to her as the result of Puritanic sympathies. Before religion had taken hold upon her the romance of all womanhood, of love, of marriage, of motherhood, had been an offence. She approved of people who led happy married lives, but it was an approval of the conventionality of the relationship; that the husband should remain the lover, the wife the mistress, was an idea to be dismissed with scorn. Marriage was a duty, and woman's personal attraction a quality to be reduced to the level of handsome domestic furniture, a credit to the home which contained it. That a married man and woman of more than a year's standing should be in love with each other was more than an absurdity, it was almost an indecency. Since he had been able to think at all, Rhys had dimly felt this, for it is a frame of mind of whose existence in a woman no masculine human being is ever quite unconscious. When he had grown old enough to understand it, it had given him a violent push in the opposite direction, and set his adolescent brain in a flame. It was so dark when he reached the Pedlar's Stone that he had to grope about among the bushes to find it, and he traced his way from it with difficulty to the rock on which he and Isoline had sat. He would come there the next evening and the evening after--every day until the early rising moon should make it impossible. He began to reckon up the calendar on his fingers, trying to make out how many light nights there would be in the following month; February had begun, and the days were lengthening slowly, but by the middle of March there would be no more chances of meeting. Though she had only said "Perhaps," his hopes were rampant, for he had not been accustomed to neglect where women were concerned. He did not undervalue the risk he was running by putting himself in the power of a girl's idle tongue, yet he never hesitated; he was like the miner who will not be deterred from lighting his pipe in the danger-laden atmosphere of the mine. He was a cautious man in ordinary things; it had taken him some time to make up his mind to join Rebecca, and, when he had done so, he had arranged an elaborate scheme for his own security instead of trusting to luck with his companions. But the life of successful hiding which he now lived was making him reckless, and where a woman was in the question he had always been ready to throw common-sense to the winds. He did not trouble himself to think what the end of this unexpected interest might be; in any case it would put a zest into the constrained life he led just as sheep-stealing had done. Would she forget him or refuse to return to the Pedlar's Stone? That was the only anxiety he had, but it was a very half-hearted one, for he felt sure she would not. A future of pleasant dallying lay indefinitely before him, he hoped, with the prospect of a voyage, when the Pig-driver should assure him that all was quiet, and a new life begun in a new country. His regret for Mary had vanished utterly. As he had been to Crishowell church once or twice, he knew Mr. Lewis perfectly by sight, and the irony of things made him smile as he realized that, in his own former respectable personality of Mr. Walters of Great Masterhouse, he could never have hoped to speak to the Vicar's lovely niece. He was a farmer, he reflected, she a lady, not knowing that no circumstances in this world could have made Isoline Ridgeway a gentlewoman. It pleased him to find that, as he had slipped from his original and obvious surroundings, she had evidently taken him for a man of her own class. His feeling of exhilaration made him wish for some one to whom he might pour out the praises of Isoline; in presence of a companion the thought of her would have loosened his tongue like wine mounting to his brain. He longed to shout, to cry her beauty aloud, to flaunt it and her condescension to him in the faces of other men, but there was no one he could speak to except a dull yokel, to whom the very name of love would convey nothing but the most ordinary instincts. It was hard; but he felt that, in spite of all his misfortunes, he was in the better case of the two. He could at least appreciate the high pleasures open to humanity, for his soul was not bounded by the petty fence of commonplace which enclosed George and shut out his view of life's loftier things. He comforted himself with that; yet, as he sat on the rock, his mind filled with the radiance left by Isoline, the picture of the sheep-stealer's unemotional face, set in the ugly framing of the cottage walls, seemed to him like the shadow of some sordid implement of labour against a moonlit landscape. One must pay for everything in this world; even high-mindedness costs its owner something. CHAPTER XVI IN WHICH GEORGE PROVES TO BE BUT HUMAN THE letter which had presented such difficulties to George was finished at last, and while Rhys was sitting with Isoline upon the rock, he was trudging down to Crishowell with it in his pocket. At the village he captured a stray urchin to whom he confided it, promising him a penny, which was to be paid on the following day at twelve o'clock; the boy was to go to the blacksmith's shop, where his patron would await the expected answer. He did not tell him to bring it to the cottage, as, since Rhys' arrival, he had strongly discouraged all visitors. "Dere Mary," he had written, "I write these few lines hopeing you wil not take it il 'tis trewly ment. Dere Mary, wil you have me? What is dun is dun and can't be undun so take hart. I wil be a good husband and love you well never doute it. "Yours trewly, "GEORGE WILLIAMS." When the letter reached its destination, Mary was looking out of the diamond-paned window of the toll-house, and as she opened the door to the boy's knock, he thrust it into her hand, telling her he would come for the answer in the morning. She took it in, and went up with it to the little room where she slept, for there was no light in the kitchen. Lighting a tallow dip which stood in a tin candlestick, she sat down, spreading the paper out in front of her; a letter was such an unusual thing in her experience that she opened it with a sort of misgiving. She read it to the end hurriedly, as hurriedly as her inefficiency and the cramped handwriting would permit, but it was so exceedingly surprising that she could hardly take it in; it lay on the table in the circle of yellow light, a dumb, yet disturbing thing, knocking like an unbidden guest at the closed door of her heart. It brought the strong face of the man with the bill-hook before her, an intruder, almost a vision of fear. She felt that it was incumbent upon her to feel something, but what she could not tell, and she laughed as she folded the letter and pushed it underneath the candlestick. When she went down again to the kitchen where the new toll-keeper and his wife were sitting, they looked at her with solemn curiosity, such as was due to the recipient of a letter, but she made no allusion to it, and went up early to bed after supper, leaving the two by the fire. Before putting out the light, she read George's proposal over again, and repeated it to herself as she lay in her attic with her eyes on the patch of starlit sky which filled the window high up in the roof. How often she had lain there, with her little child in her arms, and watched the handle of the Plough describing its quarter-circle on the heavens. She remembered that and buried her face in the pillow. She wondered whether there was any one in the world so entirely alone as herself, and though she thought with gratitude of the couple sleeping peacefully in the room off the kitchen below, she knew very well that she had no place in their lives. The world--that void peopled with strangers--confronted her, and she had no more spirit left with which to meet it, for her arms were empty of the burden that alone had given her courage. The excitement which comes upon nervous people at night in the presence of difficulties took hold of her; one bugbear after another pressed upon her brain, and though the attic was cold, she sat up as the hours went by, feverish with contending thoughts, and saw the whiteness of the letter lying on a chair under the window. It would be a solution to many anxieties, though hardly the one she would have chosen; but beggars cannot be choosers, and she allowed herself to dwell upon the idea, with the result that as it grew more familiar, it also grew less formidable. She did not want to marry--why could he not give her his friendship only, with no thought of any other relationship? She needed that, and since it had been offered, the knowledge of it had been a greater support than she could have supposed. On first reading the letter she had lost the sense of this, but now it came back, and George's calm personality was a soothing thing to think about. She shut her eyes, and brought back to her mind that terrible hour by the river, and all he had done for her. He had gone with her to the toll-house door that day, and left her taking with him a promise that she would never attempt her own life again. The restraint of the letter gave her confidence. She felt that, had he made a declaration of love as well as an offer of marriage, she could not have listened to it for a moment; she had had enough of love, were it false love or true. If he married her he would be marrying her out of pity, and she almost thought that she liked and trusted him enough to accept the fact. Had he asked for love she could not have pretended to give it him. But he had asked for nothing. It was like a business proposal, so dispassionate was it. He had said, "I wil love you well never doute it," but that gave promise of the loyal affection of a tried companion, not the passion of a lover for the woman loved, and it demanded nothing in return, not even gratitude, though she felt that she could and would give him plenty of that. She would have a home, and she did not doubt that it would be a better one than many a woman got whose domestic relations were considered fortunate. The quiet of the thought calmed her, and she fell asleep while she turned over the restful possibility in her mind. In the morning she rose early and went down to the kitchen to light the fire, for she had lately made a practice of this, being glad to do anything to help the toll-keeper's wife. As she laid the wood she thought of the letter waiting to be answered. Morning had almost brought the decision to say "No." Everything seemed less formidable in the daylight, and sleep had steadied her nerves and cleared away the spectres of the darkness; it was not until she had sat down in the attic, pen in hand, to renounce the haven held open for her that she wavered. While she hesitated the boy knocked at the door below, and standing at the turning-point of her way, Mary's heart failed her. She wanted time. In a few minutes she had got no nearer to her decision, and the messenger waiting in the road began to kick the doorstep impatiently. She tore the sheet of paper in half, and wrote on the blank part of it. "Dear George Williams, i dont know what to do i cant say yes nor no. i know you are a good man and many thanks. forgive me i mean to do rite i will send the anser to Crishowell on market day your obliged friend "MARY VAUGHAN." She had received a little education, and had taught herself a good deal during her intimacy with Rhys, spending many evenings in attempts to improve in reading and writing. What puzzled her most in the present case was how to address her suitor, and, more than all, how to subscribe herself. She wondered, as she watched the boy's back retreating towards Crishowell, whether she had done so rightly. He was her friend, she told herself, and she was obliged indeed. On market day George prepared to go down to the toll and hear his fate. His objection to letting his messenger come to the cottage was his reason for this, and not any excitement brought on by the occasion. He was no hot-headed lad rushing off to his sweetheart; he was a man with whom life had gone wrong, so wrong as to have given him a very present determination to prevent another life from sliding down the hill into that slough which had all but swallowed up his own. He was struggling in it yet, and he could not hope to set his feet on firm ground for some time to come. But when that day should arrive, and he could begin to toil up the slope again, he meant to tow up an extra burden with him. He felt himself strong and hard and patient, and he liked to think that his strength and hardness and patience might do for two. In spite of the absence of romance in his wooing, he determined that no outward sign of it should be missing from his errand--he felt it to be due to Mary. The butterfly, whose wings had been scorched by the fires of life, should be pursued with nets and lures as though it were the most gaudy and unattainable of winged creatures. For this reason his best suit of working-clothes (he possessed no Sunday ones) had been carefully brushed over-night, and his boots cleaned. He ducked his head into the water-bucket and scrubbed it with his coarse towel, flattening and smoothing his hair before the scrap of looking-glass till it shone. He shaved himself with great care, and trimmed the two inches of whisker, which made lines in front of his ears, until they became mere shadings, and then took from some hidden lair, in which he kept such things, a purple neckcloth with white bird's-eye spots on it. This he tied with infinite care. As he was dusting his hat he looked up, to see Rhys standing in the doorway of the partition; he had been so much occupied with his dressing that he had not heard him come up the ladder. He turned very red. Walters was smiling contemptuously. "You're very fine this morning," he said, with his eye resting on a patch just below George's knee, "I suppose you're going courting." Williams took up the rabbit-headed stick, and for answer unlocked and opened the door which had its key always turned as a protective measure when there was the chance of Rhys coming up-stairs. Before shutting it he dropped the key into his pocket. "I'm taking this along with me," he remarked, "so you may just get down below again." It was the first piece of active malice into which the other had provoked him. As he went towards the village he picked a bit of holly from a bush and stuck it into his buttonhole. It added a good deal to his festal air, and the bright sun exhilarated him after the cold water he had applied to himself so copiously. The stolid gloom which seemed to surround him on ordinary days had lifted, and any one meeting him that morning and looking at him without pleasure would have been a dullard. He had health, strength greater than that of most men, and he was only twenty-eight years old. And he had a face that no living thing could doubt. He hit out cheerfully at the dry little oak-apples in the hedge, for Rhys' sneer had run off him like water off the traditional duck's back, and been swallowed in the thought of its perpetrator tied to the underground room till his return. When generous people are goaded into malice they get their money's worth out of the experience, and Williams' little excursion into the devil's dominions had done him a world of good. His prospects were no better than they had been on the preceding night, and he was about to try and hang an additional weight round his neck, but human nature and a spotted neckcloth will do wonders for a man sometimes, and the sense of well-being pervaded everything. Nevertheless, as he turned into the Brecon road, and met the toll-people on their way to Llangarth market, his spirits waned a little from pure fear of the matter in hand, and he stood before the door waiting admittance, sincerely hoping that Mary might not see how his hands shook. Mary had determined on the answer she would give. Through all her wrongs and troubles she had set up a certain standard of right for herself, and she did not mean to sink below it; whatever her shortcoming in other ways had been, she had injured none but herself, and on none but herself should the reckoning fall. What preserved the strong tower of self-respect in her was that fact, and were she to lose sight of it, the whole edifice would crumble to the earth. In the terrors of the night, indeed, she had wavered and almost resolved to take the home offered without more ado, but with the new strength that comes to young lives with sunrise, she had put the idea away from her. No one else should pay, no one else should suffer, least of all George Williams who was her friend. She was thinking of him when she heard his knock, and opened the door to find him standing on the other side of it. He walked into the house without waiting to be invited, and shut the door behind him. The blood tingled in his face, which was ruddy with the morning air, and the holly in his coat made a bright spot of colour in the room; his large frame seemed larger by contrast with the furniture. "Will you please to sit down?" said she, mechanically pushing forward the wooden chair in which her father had been used to sit. "Thank ye, no, I'd best stand," answered George. So they faced each other, the man with his back to the window. Mary had only seen him twice before, but a very definite idea of him had remained in her mind, and as he stood there she felt as though she were looking at a totally different person. He was younger, smarter, and it made her hot to think that she had leaned against his shoulder and wept her heart out in the circle of his arm. Then, he had been simply a protector, but now he had turned into a powerful-looking young man in a purple neckcloth. He had called himself her friend, but he was a stranger and she had no right in his life--certainly no right to spoil it with her ruined one. Her heart beat quick as she held the back of the chair. "I've come to get the answer," said Williams simply. "I can't! I can't do it," replied the girl. There was silence in the little room, and the two cheap clocks which stood on the dresser ticked loudly, one half a second behind the other. He drew an imaginary line on the floor with the ash-plant in his hand. "Well, I'm sorry," he said, looking down at the point of the stick. She did not speak. "I suppose you couldn't come to like me in time? Likely enough I bean't the sort for a girl to fancy, but ye shan't rue it if ye take me. Don't be afeard." She looked up and saw behind the calm, heavy face into the upright soul of the sheep-stealer, and the sight made her more determined. "It's not that. But don't you ask me, George Williams--don't you, for I can't." "D'ye think I shouldn't like ye enough?" he asked, after a pause. "Is it that that's the trouble?" "Ye may like me a bit," she answered boldly, "but it's goodness wi' you, not love." "I like you well," he said, "don't disbelieve me. Mary, Mary, you're not taking on about that--about Walters o' Masterhouse, curse him?" "I can't but think of him. I hate him, but I think of him." "You hate him, Mary?" "I saw my father lyin' dead i' this room. Lyin' there on the bed. They fetched it in. Oh, my God! my God!" She turned away from him. "Go! Go!" she cried, facing round again, "and I'll think of your goodness, that I will; but I can't take ye, George, so let me be." "Mary," he persisted, "will you let me come back? Maybe, as time gets on, you'd forget a bit." He had come to her meaning to act the part of a lover conscientiously, but he was finding little need for acting; no woman he had ever seen appealed to him as this one did. He stood in the middle of the room unwilling to go. She came up to him, and laying her fingers upon his arm, urged him towards the door. When they reached the lintel, he took hold of her hand. "Let me come again," he begged, "let me come back. Do, Mary, do." "No, no," she exclaimed, drawing it away, "'tis no manner o' use. Good-bye; go now, good-bye." George Williams was but human, and his heart was bounding within him. "All right," he said, thickly, "I'll be off then. But oh, Mary, give me one kiss before I go!" and, in his earnestness, he made as though he would draw her towards him. She sprang back, blushing scarlet to the roots of her hair. "Ah!" she cried, "an' I thought you were different!" Before he had realized what had happened she had shut the door, and he heard the bolt shoot into its place. He stood in the road, mortified, ashamed, furious with himself. But as he turned to make his way home between the leafless hedges, he knew that he loved her. CHAPTER XVII THE SHEEP-STEALERS PART COMPANY HE hurried along with the tread of a man who hopes to lose a remembrance in the tumult of his going. He had failed in every way; failed in respect to the creature whom he had resolved so fixedly to protect, and beside whom every other worldly object had all at once become unimportant. It seemed that he was always to show himself in a different light to the one which illumined his heart. His evil luck willed it so, apparently. He loved truth, and yet he lay bound in a tangle of dishonesty; he loved independence, and he was in the hollow of a rogue's hand; he loved to be at peace with all men, and his companion's daily aim was to rouse his temper; and lastly, he loved Mary Vaughan, and by his own folly he had caused her to shut her door in his face. He felt his incapacities keenly, and the brave holly-sprig in his buttonhole was no longer an expression of his mood but a mockery of it. In his self-abasement he did not suspect that she had been hard upon him, nor could he know how the sudden revelation of his masculinity had affected her as he came into the cottage. He had expected to take up their relationship where he had left it on the river-bank near the snow-men, not understanding that it was an abnormal one, risen from abnormal circumstances and passing with them. He went through Crishowell looking neither to the right nor left and never slackening his pace, and he was remarked only by such idlers as were gathered round the blacksmith's shop. At that hour of the morning, the village people had other things to think of besides their neighbours' affairs; that was a pleasure reserved for the later part of the day. He rushed past the churchyard in which he had first seen Mary sitting by her father's grave, and had watched the burial from under the yew. As he crossed a field on the way upwards, he saw Bumpett driving in his spring cart down the lane, his hat bobbing above the hedge with the jolting of the wheels in ruts, and though he heard the old man hailing him in his high-pitched voice, he pretended to be unconscious of it, and went on as though pursued. Presently the Pig-driver stood up in the cart and produced a sound which had in it such a note of distress that George pulled up in spite of himself, and turned his steps towards a low bit of hedge over which he might converse with his employer. He was rather surprised to find an elderly woman sitting beside Bumpett on the board which served as a driving-seat. The Pig-driver crossed his hands one over the other in spite of the reins in them and shrugged his shoulders slowly, smiling with the aspect of one who has an ample leisure in which to let loose his mind upon the world; the horse looked round with cocked ears to see what was happening. George noticed that the woman seemed agitated. "Now, look you, Nannie," began Bumpett cheerily, "I've a fine opinion o' this young feller. S'pose we was to ax him what he thinks." Williams' face darkened, for he was in no humour for trifling, and he knew by long experience that the old man's expansiveness was to be met with caution. His malice was the only gratuitous thing about him, and he was liable to hand that round without stint at any moment. "Don't you!" exclaimed Nannie, half under her breath, twitching at her companion's elbow. "Go on!" she cried to the horse, prodding it with the umbrella beside her; the beast made a step forward, but the Pig-driver was holding the reins tightly and progress was impossible. "It's no matter, none at all," said Nannie. "Lord love me, I was an old foondy, brothering at you like that. Go you on, Mr. Bumpett, 'stead o' putting foolery o' that sort into the young man's head." And she grasped his sleeve again. The Pig-driver only smiled more expansively, until his eyes were as pin-points in his face. "How you do pug at me, Nannie, to be sure! Ah, women do take up strange notions, George, they do indeed," he said wagging his head. "I don't know nothin' about women. I must be movin' on," answered Williams shortly. "Well, well. Time's money wi' you," observed the Pig-driver, winking, "and there's no lack of honest work for honest men. But bide you a minute. Here's Mrs. Davies have got it that Rhys Walters is hidin' away hereabouts. What do ye say? Hey? Did 'e ever hear the like o' that now?" "Don't mind him, young man," cried Nannie, leaning out of the cart and fixing an agonized eye on George. "Lord! Mr. Bumpett, what a man you be for your fun! 'Tis all a lie, I tell you. What do I know about Mr. Walters? He's in Ameriky by this time, and like as not he's turned into a naked savage wi' feathers hangin' down before and behind." "Well now, George! Did 'e ever see the like o' that? Coming down the road she says to me, 'I know 'e's here,' she says; 'where is he, Mr. Bumpett?' Tell her what ye think, my lad; where be he? She won't listen to me." For reply Williams turned his back upon the pair, and continued his way up the field. He heard the creak of the springs as the cart started on again. Nannie was almost sobbing. "You're a wicked man, Bumpett," she said, "and if I know anything of the Lord, you'll smart for this some day." Williams was panting by the time he had climbed up to his house, and he flung the door to unlocked behind him, for he did not want Rhys' society. "It's open," he said, with a backward jerk of his head as the other came up. "Did she take you?" asked Walters, disregarding the remark. He leaned against the wall, and the semi-darkness which reigned in the cottage could hardly veil the insolence in his eyes. The other took no notice, but began to untie his neckcloth. "Ah, you're deaf and can't hear me. I suppose you've had a punch on the head from her father. There are some men of sense in the world yet." George made no reply, but his face lowered. "Perhaps she didn't like you either," continued Rhys, in whom the long morning spent underground was rankling. "I'm sure I don't wonder. They like a man that can give them some sort of a decent home, to say nothing of the rest. However, there are always some thankful enough for a man's name to hide behind. You might get one that was----" "Hold your foul tongue!" broke in Williams. Rhys laughed. "Ha! I was right, was I? I knew well enough you'd been courting and it had come to no good. My God! Fancy a man like you trying to take up with a woman! What did you say to her, Williams? How did you begin?" At this moment the sprig of holly fell out of George's coat. Rhys stepped forward to pick it up, and the sheep-stealer put his foot upon it, grazing Walters' finger with the nails in his boot. "I mayn't touch it, I see. I suppose you'd like me to think she gave it you." George was shaking with rage. The mortification in his heart was hard enough to endure without his companion's sneers, and the Pig-driver had already exasperated him. He knew that Rhys was as a man drawing a bow at a venture, but his shots were going perilously near to the mark. "I don't care what you think," he said. "Get down the ladder, you fool!" "Fool, am I? Fool? You can stop that. It's enough to have to live with an oaf, let alone being called a fool by him." "If it hadn't been for me you'd have been living somewhere pretty different--or maybe you mightn't be living at all," said Williams. Anger was beginning to lend him a tongue. "So you're throwing that in my face! It's like you to do it. If it wasn't for Bumpett you'd be ready to turn me out into the road to take my chance. A man who's down in the world isn't fit company for you, and yet it isn't long since I wouldn't have spoken to a fellow like you, except to give orders." "Get down-stairs," said George, controlling himself with difficulty. A man who cannot keep his temper is at the mercy of every other person who can. He knew that very well, but Rhys' persevering insults were beginning to make his blood boil. "I'm not a dog to go to my kennel for you." "I've seen many a dog that's better than you're ever like to be. Go down and leave me alone; I've other things to do than listen to your tongue. God! To think o' you settin' up to be above another, dog or no! I'm not thinking o' the old man in his grave down the hill there--'twas in hot blood an' never meant--but there was worse nor that, an' I know it." Rhys' calmness was leaving him, and his nostrils dilated. "What's to come to the girl you left? Tell me _that!_" cried the other, his voice shaking. There was a silence, in which they eyed each other like two wild beasts. "You'd better take her yourself," said Rhys at last with his lips drawn back from his teeth; "perhaps she mightn't look higher than a thief--now." The words had hardly left his mouth before Williams hurled himself across the room at him with a violence which sent him staggering against the partition at his back. It gave a loud crack, and Walters feared that the whole thing might give way and he might find himself on the ground among the ruins with the sheep-stealer on the top of him. George, whose methods of attack were primitive, had got him by the collar, and was shaking him about in a way which brought his head smartly in contact with the panels. At last his collar tore open, and, in the moment's backward slip which this caused the enemy, he wriggled sideways and got himself almost free; then he flung his arms round Williams and tried hard to get his foot in behind his heel. Nothing could be heard in the cottage but the hard-drawn breathing of the two men as they swung and swayed about, their teeth shut tight and their eyes fixed; the pent-up hatred of weeks was in them and welled up in an ecstasy of physical expression. George was conscious only of the craving to crush his opponent, to break his ribs with the grip of his arms, to fling him like a rag into a corner with the breath wrung out of his body, but Rhys fought for one end alone, to get his man under him upon the floor, and to this object his brain worked equally with his limbs. He had always been jealous of the other's strength, and he longed and panted to see him lying prostrate below him and to taunt him with his overthrow. They were well matched, for though Williams' weight was in his favour, the other was cooler-headed, and his suppleness in shifting his position saved him from being overborne by it. His nightly ranging about the hills had given him back much of the vigour he had lost during his illness, and he was, as he had always been, like a piece of tempered steel. Their struggles drew them nearer to the unlatched door which a little burst of wind had blown open; they felt the air on their foreheads, and it refreshed Rhys, whose breath was beginning to fail in the sheep-stealer's continued grasp. With an effort which nearly broke his back and loins he freed one arm and hit him on the temple as hard as he could, allowing for the impossibility of getting his fist far enough back for a satisfactory blow. George tried to dodge it with his head, failed, slipped up, and fell with a shock which shook the building, striking the lintel with the back of his skull. He made one convulsive effort to rise and fell back unconscious. The young man stood looking at the great, still form with the blood oozing from underneath its hair; then he turned cold with fear lest he should have killed a man without meaning to for the second time in his life. There was no room for triumph in his mind as he knelt down and put his hand inside Williams' shirt. But the heart was moving, and, much reassured, he fetched the square of looking-glass which hung on the wall and held it over George's lips. His breath made a distinct fog on it, and it was evident to Rhys that he was only stunned by his fall against the woodwork of the door. With the relief, all his animosity came back, and having ventured a few steps out to take a precautionary look round, he began to drag Williams rather roughly over the threshold. This was no easy task, and it took him some time to get him round the end of the house and into the garden behind it, where he laid him on his back under the thickest gooseberry bush in a place which could not be seen from the cart-track. There he left him while he went in to fetch the bird's-eye neck-cloth; he dipped it in the brook as he came out, and then laid one end under the cut on the back of George's head and wound the other round his temples. After this he smoothed away all signs of their difficult progress round the cottage, covered over a few drops of blood on the ground and went in, locking the door. The air and the cold would soon revive George, and he would have to come round and beg for admittance. Meanwhile Rhys went down the ladder, meaning to keep his eye at the aperture in the wall, from which he could see his fallen enemy as he lay by the bush. He was occupying the exact spot under which he generally buried his sheep's heads; indeed, his own was supported by the little mound which these frequent interments had raised, and Rhys smiled as he noticed it. It pleased him to see so pregnant an illustration of "the biter bit." It did not take long for the air and the wet bandage to do their work, and Williams, who had only, to use his own phrase, "been knocked silly," soon stirred and sat up. The bleeding from the cut, which was not a deep one, relieved his head a good deal, and he gathered himself up quite unconscious of the fact that Walters' eyes were watching him not three yards away from his feet. His first impulse as he rose was to hurry down the ladder after his enemy and begin the fight afresh, but he had enough sense to realize that, with a giddiness which made walking rather difficult, he was not likely to gain by such an attempt. He leaned against the end of the cottage with a sore heart. In his eternal quarrel with life he never failed to get the worst of it, and, though he had not the morbid temperament which broods over these things, the grim undercurrent of dislike to his surroundings was always there. He ground his teeth as he thought of Rhys Walters, of Bumpett and his hateful trade, of his ill success with Mary and the rebuke he had felt so much, of the vile round of law-breaking to which he was bound for yet another year; it was a miserable prospect. What if he were to break away from it? The thought was like a whiff from Paradise. He could not owe the Pig-driver very much now, and the rent of the hovel he was occupying was barely worth consideration, for Bumpett would have had some difficulty in finding any one who would live in such a place. True, he had been forgiven his old debt, which amounted to nearly four pounds--an enormous sum for him. In his two years' service he must have wiped it out again and again, even taking his weekly wage into account. But, if he were free, if he could get work of any sort, he would pinch himself to the uttermost farthing till he could pay it back in consideration of his broken contract. He had no one now to think of but himself; if he starved he would starve alone. Bumpett would, of course, be furious, but, as far as giving him up to justice was concerned, his hands would be tied. No doubt he would do his best to injure him in small ways, but that was a risk to be accepted in common with other chances and changes of this transitory life. What if he were to do this thing--now--this moment--as he was? He drew a long breath. A shooting pain coming from the cut on his head began to annoy him, and he went down to the brook, noticing as he passed that the door of the cottage was shut and suspecting that Rhys had locked it; he knelt down and rinsed the neck-cloth, wringing out the blood-stains till it was quite clean. As he bent forward his head ached horribly. He washed his wound and poured the chill water over his face, which refreshed him and took away the feeling of giddiness, then he got up and stood looking at the house. A bill-hook he had left outside was lying by the wall, and he went and picked it up; in spite of his having several small possessions inside the cottage, not for anything in the world would he have entered it, though a push or two from his shoulders would have made short work of the door. He hoped never in all his life to see Rhys Walters again. What would become of him after he had gone, or how he would manage to live on there undetected he could not imagine and did not care. He crossed the brook and went up the hill, not wishing to go near Crishowell, and when he had passed the Pedlar's Stone and got on to the foot of the mountain, he turned westwards towards Great Masterhouse. CHAPTER XVIII MRS. WALTERS GOES TO CHAPEL HE sat for some time on the hill-side turning things over in his mind and trying to make up some plan of action; in his pocket was the sum of eightpence-halfpenny, which would just keep him in food for the next day or two. At present, the bare idea of eating made him feel ill, for his head had begun to ache violently after the climb. He had no hat, and he thought it would be best to rest during the day and keep his unprotected skull out of the rays of the winter sun, which were very bright. Towards evening he might find a place where he could pass the night under shelter, and to-morrow he would go to every farm for miles round--always excepting Great Masterhouse--and do what he could to get work, no matter of what sort. He might just possibly find something, and, if unsuccessful, he would betake himself to Talgarth, a small town some distance off in a different part of the country, and try his luck there; at any rate, he had done with sheep-stealing for ever. He found a spot under a hedge by a running stream where he sat and waited until the shades grew long. Now and then he dipped his hand and bathed his wounded head with the icy water; in this way the day wore on until light began to fail, and he set off westward again. As he passed a small farm some dogs ran out barking, and a tidy-looking woman called them back, putting her head out of a barn-door which abutted on the path. "Thank ye, ma'am," said George, coming to a standstill and hesitating whether to address her further and ask for work. She settled the question herself. "Who be you?" she asked abruptly. "I'm looking for work," replied he. "I said, '_Who be you?_'" she remarked, putting her arms akimbo. "My name's George Williams." "And what do you want, George Williams?" "Work." "What sort?" "Any sort." "That's bad, because I haven't got none for you." "Good-day then, ma'am," he said as he turned away. The woman came out of the barn and stood watching him; she had never seen a tramp before who had any pretensions to good manners. He looked round and saw her, and some impulse made him go back. "Please would ye let me lie in that barn to-night, if I may be so bold as to ask ye?" She stared at him for a considerable time without reply. Her eyes were like gimlets. "Do you smoke?" she inquired at last. "No." "Turn out your pockets." He did so, revealing the eightpence-halfpenny, an old knife, and a piece of string. "Very well" she said, "but see you take yourself off again to-morrow." "I will, an' thank ye kindly." She opened the door wide, and he saw that half of the building was full of straw; several fowls were scratching about on the floor and talking in subdued gutturals. The woman pointed to a corner. "You can take a bit of the straw and lie there," she said, "but mind the nests." And in the misty darkness Williams was aware of the round yellow eyes of a sitting hen fixed watchfully upon him. "I'll be mindful," he replied, wondering at his good fortune. "You'd better stop now you're here; it's pretty nigh dark," she observed as she shut the door and went out. He assented gratefully, and, fetching an armful of straw, made himself a bed. The hen's eyes followed his every movement with that look of latent malice peculiar to her kind. It was with a sense of comfort that he stretched his limbs out upon the softness; his head ached and the darkness was very pleasant. Presently the door beside him opened and the woman's hand appeared with a large round of bread and a piece of cheese in it; she gave it to him with an abrupt nod and departed, noisily slamming the latch. He had no appetite, but he put the gifts by carefully with a view to the morrow and was soon asleep. He was up by daylight and off again on his search. He passed Great Masterhouse, and, at mid-day, had been to every place where it was possible that labour was employed. But there was no chance for him anywhere, it seemed, and he was much disheartened as he sat down to eat the bread and cheese he had been given; he determined to go straight on to Talgarth. In the afternoon he struck into a lane leading down to the valley and on to his destination; he was getting rather weary, having been on his legs since before sunrise, and he was sick at heart from perpetual rebuffs and disappointments. He came all at once upon a hollow circular place whose green turf surrounded a building which he took to be a place of worship of some kind. It was not an attractive spot, and, though the door was open, there appeared to be no one in the neighbourhood. A wall, not two feet high, enclosed the chapel; he strode over this, glad to think that there would be something to sit upon inside after his long trudge. When he had entered he was a good deal alarmed to find that there were one or two people occupying the wooden pews, and that a man in black was seated upon a raised platform with a book in front of him. He would have turned and fled, but the eyes of the man were upon him, and, in face of this, he lost courage and went in as quietly as he could, taking an obscure seat in a dark place beside the door. A little window was just by his head, and he could see, without standing up, that the congregation was beginning to arrive in twos and threes. Nearly every one went over the wall as he had done, men and women alike. The man in black returned to his reading and he felt more comfortable. As a sound of wheels approached he looked out and saw through the distortion of the ancient window-panes that a gig containing two women had drawn up upon the grass, and that a boy whom he had not noticed had risen mysteriously from a bush and taken hold of the horse's head. The two were dressed much alike in bonnets and shawls, but it was evident that they were mistress and servant from the way in which the driver threw down the reins and helped the other deferentially to the ground. She also went forward and had a struggle with the rusty wicket while her companion awaited the result; it was plain that the ordinary method of approach over the wall was not good enough for the superior personality whom she served. George was rather interested, and would have been more so had he known that he was looking at Mrs. Walters and her servant Nannie. As the new-comers entered the chapel they passed within a few feet of the young man in his corner, and he had a vague sense of having seen the taller woman before, though he did not recognize the other as the person who had been in Bumpett's cart on the previous day, her face being turned from him. There was a perceptible movement of heads towards Mrs. Walters as she went up to her place, and she took a prominent seat with the dignified air of one who knew that no less was expected of her. Nannie sat a little way behind that she might examine the other chapel-goers without the rebuke of her mistress' eye; she had come under protest, it being far more abhorrent to her to go to chapel on a week-day than to stay away from it on a Sunday. But it was a special occasion, for the man in black--none other than the preacher who had originally "brought truth" to Mrs. Walters--was leaving the neighbourhood on the following morning and did not expect to return to his flock for some months; and her mistress' orders admitted of no question. In a short time the chapel had half filled, and the service began with a reading from the Old Testament, and a dissertation of immense length upon the chapter read. It seemed interminable to Williams, as he sat quietly in his place, glad of the rest and giving but little attention to what was going on. He was so much absorbed by his own difficulties and humiliations that when the assembly, led by a strange voice which seemed to come from somewhere behind the man in black, began to sing a metrical psalm, his mind leaped back to his surroundings with a start. When the singing was over, all fell reverently on their knees and prayed, following the extemporary supplications of the preacher in silence. George knelt too. He did not pray, but the change of attitude was pleasant; he rested his head on his arms and closed his eyes, for the voice made him drowsy, and, unheeded by any one, he slid out of consciousness into sleep. After the prayers came another reading of the Bible, but he slept on. His head, bowed on his arms, had a devout look which made those who could see him suppose him a fervent worshipper unable to bring himself down from the exaltation of prayer; but the congregation was one accustomed to unconventional things taking place in chapel and paid no heed. Only a few, as they trooped from the building, cast curious glances at him, wondering what sudden conversion or tardy repentance was going on under the window. Nannie Davies had bustled out among the first, and was calling loudly from the very door of the sanctuary to the boy to put in the horse; she had a strident voice, and crooked her forefinger as she beckoned him from his lair in the bushes with a gesture only known to the lower orders. Mrs. Walters was the last to remain. The man in black came down from his platform and stood talking to her for some time with his back to the departing people. At last they shook hands, and the black silk skirt was rustling towards the entrance when she caught sight of the sleeping man. She paused in front of him, but he did not move. The window above his head shone straight in her eyes, making his figure seem dim; she did not doubt any more than did the rest of the worshippers that he was praying devoutly, and, as she had only just turned in his direction, she had no idea how long he had remained in that attitude. She suspected some spiritual conflict, and, like Saint Paul, would fain proclaim the Gospel in season and out of season. She touched him on the shoulder. "You are very earnest in prayer, young man," she said solemnly. "May the words of Grace we have heard sink into your heart." An overpowering confusion covered George. "I wasn't praying, ma'am; I was asleep," he stammered as he rose. "Sleeping in this holy place? In the very sound of the Word? Shame on you! Shame on you indeed!" "I couldn't help it. I didn't mean----" "Come with me outside," said Mrs. Walters. "Let us not forget that we are standing in the tabernacle of the Lord." She went out in front of him and he followed. Embarrassed as he was, he could not help being impressed, and, like Nannie, he felt that he had met with a person to be obeyed, though his idea was the result of instinct and hers of experience. As they stood in the afternoon light she looked rather severely at his untidy dress; though he had put on the best clothes he possessed to go and see Mary, he had since trudged in them for the greater part of two days and slept in them on the preceding night. His unhandsome aspect did not speak well for him. "Do you not remember Eutychus, the youth who slept while Saint Paul was preaching?" she continued. "He fell from the window where he sat, and would have perished in his sins but for the apostle of the Gentiles. The sin of irreverence is great. Remember you may perish in it." He stood silent. The people had all departed and the place was deserted. Only Nannie waited by the horse's head, impatiently watching her mistress. "Why did you come here if you had no heart to pray?" inquired Mrs. Walters. "I was tired, ma'am--cruel done. The door was open and I thought I could sit down quiet-like. I'd no notion there was preaching to be." "Where have you come from? Where are you going to?" "It's work I'm after. I've gone high and low, and up an' down, and I can't get none. There's nothin' I'd turn from if I could get enough to keep me from starving." His voice almost shook. "What can you do?" she asked, being a practical woman. "I can turn my hand to a power of things about a farm. And I'm a proper fine hedge-and-ditcher," he added simply. In every accident of daily life Mrs. Walters was inclined to see a special working of Providence, and it was in her mind that this man, so strangely encountered, might be a brand to be plucked from the burning and reserved for her hand. She began to think deeply, and, as Williams saw it, he fixed his eager eyes on her face. Help from this stern woman seemed to be a futile hope, but he clung to it. "Do you know how to grow vegetables?" she said at last. "No, I don't. Nothin' but potatoes, more's the pity." "But you might learn." "I'd try hard, ma'am. Be sure o' that. But I can't tell how 'twould do." Mrs. Walters prided herself on her accurate reading of people, and, to do her justice, she was generally aware of the sufficiently obvious. "I think you are honest," she said, looking hard at him. Poor George thought of many things and became crimson. She noticed his extreme confusion. "Perhaps you have not always been so," she observed. "No, I've not," he replied, looking down at his boots. "Man! man!" she cried suddenly, her eyes lighting up. "Repent, repent, while yet you may! The day of grace has not gone by! Turn from your sins! Abhor them! Flee from them! Put behind you the evil and strive after a new life." She raised her hands as she spoke, and her voice rang over to where Nannie stood by the cart. This outburst of exhortation had the effect of making Williams very shy. Intensely reserved himself, it was a real shock to him to see a stranger so entirely carried away by feeling; he did not know where to look, and could only stare at a little tuft of moss growing in the wall of the chapel. His face appeared almost sullen. He could see that her lips were moving, and that she passed her handkerchief once or twice over her face. Presently her calm returned. "Do you wish to lead an honest life?" she asked. "I do indeed; Gospel truth I do." "You are a strong man and ought to do a good day's work. Will you do it, if I give it you?" "None shall do a better than I." "Then I will try you. You must come to me to-morrow at mid-day, and I will speak to you. You do not know who I am, I suppose?" she inquired as an after-thought. "No, ma'am, I don't indeed." "I am Mrs. Walters of Great Masterhouse," she replied with a certain stiffness. Her position as a rich woman, the isolation she had made for herself, and the interested looks which followed her whenever she went abroad were not without their charm for her, for, like many who take the effacing of themselves very seriously, she had a touch of what might be called inverted vanity. The familiarity of her face now explained itself to George, and he had a strong feeling of repulsion at the thought of working among everything which had belonged to Rhys. But a man struggling for his daily bread can take no account of such imaginings, and he knew that he ought to be sincerely thankful for what had happened. She went down the path to her cart, cutting short his thanks, and he turned to enter the chapel again. She looked round and called him. "Why do you go back?" she inquired, with a faint hope that her words had moved him to pray, possibly to give thanks for the prospects she held out. "I have left my bill-hook, ma'am. 'Tis lying on the ground in the bottom o' the seat." A slight expression of annoyance was on her face as the maid-servant helped her up to her place and brushed her dress where the wheel had rubbed it. Nannie was a clumsy driver, if a safe one, and she turned the horse round in an immense circle on the short grass. As George came out he saw the cart disappearing up the lane, the two women's backs shaking as the wheels ran into sudden hollows, mistress' and maid's alike. CHAPTER XIX THE MOTH AND THE CANDLE THE Archæological Society which reckoned the border country by the Black Mountain as its special hunting-ground met every winter or early spring; it had two places of assemblage, and those it took in turn, meeting one year at Llangarth, and the next at an insignificant township about twenty miles off across the further bank of the Wye. When the latter place was the base of operations for the enthusiasts, it had been for ages the custom of Mr. Fenton and his wife to invite the Vicar of Crishowell to Waterchurch, so that host and guest might attend the meeting together. Both men were members of the association, and the rendezvous was within comfortable driving distance. The Squire, it is true, had only a lukewarm interest to give to antiquities, but the Vicar, whose mind had a secret strain of romance, had thrown himself heart and soul into the fascinating subject, and contributed some of the most interesting papers the society possessed. Lady Harriet Fenton and her husband were in what the servants called "her ladyship's boodore," a cheerful apartment, where, as a matter of fact, most of the business of the Waterchurch estate was done, and Mr. Fenton stood on the hearthrug looking at his wife's back, talking, as he talked nearly every day, of agricultural and money dilemmas and their solutions. He spoke sensibly enough, but the solutions had a way of being postponed until later, when he had gone off to look round the stables and Lady Harriet could settle down to her usual morning's work. The Squire was one of those happy and consistent people who have one real vocation in life, and follow it with no deviations. He was a figure-head. His fine features, height, and the gallant bearing he had kept until well on into late middle age, singled him out from those less ornamented by nature, and the excellent sense of his conversation impressed all those with whom he was thrown. Devoted to field sports, he was popular in the hunting-field; an excellent shot, an ideal companion. Such was the universal verdict. And, in spite of the fact that he was a figure-head, his wife had also found him an ideal companion, or very nearly so, partly because he was less exacting than persons of this profession generally are, and partly because she herself had one of those natures to whom idleness means misery. He talked and was pleasant, and she worked and was indispensable, and between them they kept things going. If sometimes her shoulders ached and she longed for a rest, she kept these things to herself, and no one but Llewellyn suspected them; for her endurance was great, as great as the loyalty which had held up the figure-head for twenty-five odd years to the gaze of an admiring world. She managed all business except the few little things that it amused him to undertake himself, and he leaned upon her, liked her better than any one he knew, and occasionally had fleeting suspicions that she was superior to most women, though other matters generally intervened in his mind and forbade him to follow out the idea. Lady Harriet was the daughter of a well-known sporting peer, and it was her horsemanship which had first attracted him, combined with the knowledge that she had a little money. She had never possessed beauty of any sort, being a woman of short and almost stumpy figure, with strong hands and square shoulders; what had alone redeemed her from absolute ugliness were her masses of dark hair and the sympathy of expression in her eyes, which could be appealing, steadfast, humorous, or soft. Years had intensified this grace in her; it was a lasting one, and had endured while the thick hair had become silver-grey. She had always been a keen lover of outdoor life and sports, and had hunted regularly with her husband and sons, until the Squire's straitened means had made it difficult to mount the whole family; then she had quietly given her hunting up, saying that she was getting too old for long days. In the minds of her sons she was connected with everything they had liked best in their childhood. Their father had not been disposed to trouble himself with youngsters, so she had taken them bird's-nesting, scrambling, fishing, and had taught them all as little boys to ride to hounds. She had not gone much into society of late years, having no daughters to take out, and not conceiving it to be her duty to form one of a row of gossiping dowagers at county balls. In her secret heart Llewellyn was the dearest to her of her four boys; he was the youngest child, and there was a likeness in disposition between them which, had they been of one sex, would have forced them apart, but which, as they were mother and son, drew them together. Besides, as his business kept him at home, he knew her far more intimately than did his brothers, and with that greater impartiality which comes when the boy grows into the man and meets his parents more on common ground. "Do you know that the Archæological Society meets next week, and that we must ask Mr. Lewis to come over?" inquired Lady Harriet, looking out of the window upon a border of snowdrops which were just coming up. "By Jove, yes; I had forgotten," exclaimed Mr. Fenton. "I suppose we ought to ask the niece too." "I did not know he had one." "A very pretty one. I saw her dancing with Harry at the yeomanry ball. I forget her name; somebody told me something about her, but I can't remember that either." His wife looked thoughtful. "We shall have to ask her at any rate," she said; "she can't be left out very well. I hope she is nice." "You had better write at once, my dear," said the Squire, making for the door. "I am going off to the stables." So Lady Harriet wrote. The letter, when it arrived at Crishowell, produced the most lively effect upon Isoline. First a perfect agony of apprehension that her uncle should refuse--a thing that he had no thought of doing--then, a secret hope that Harry had been the originator of the plan, and had persuaded his parents to send the invitation; and finally, a mental trying-on of every frock in her wardrobe to decide the momentous question of which should be chosen for the coming visit. This imaginary review was followed by a real one, even more interesting. She had not been altogether dull at Crishowell of late, for her meeting with the person whom she thought of as Robert Kent had been the first of several. The Vicar, who spent his afternoons in reading while daylight lasted, only went out just before dusk, and as his visits to distant cottages brought him home generally at a very late hour, she had ample time to take off her outdoor clothes and install herself by the fire before his return. For a few days after meeting Rhys Walters she had hesitated whether to go in the direction of the Pedlar's Stone again, but the prospect of being appreciated and the want of something to do had been too much for her, and she set out one evening for the farm which Rhys had indicated, and found her way there by short cuts pointed out by those whom she met in the lanes. Taken that way, the distance was not great, and when she set foot upon the short turf of the plateau she was surprised at feeling so little tired, and walked on westwards. The desertedness of the place awed her a little, and once or twice she was on the verge of fleeing homewards, but a figure loomed out of the dusk as she had hoped it might, and her fears vanished under the protection of her new admirer. Rhys was very respectful to her, a wholesome fear having filled his mind that his rather bold remarks had prevented her from returning, but he had haunted the place of their meeting patiently, and had reaped the reward of it in seeing her timid approach through the failing light. This had happened two or three times. But it was not to be supposed that the excitement of these meetings could be compared to the legitimate and settled glory of a visit to Waterchurch Court. Isoline had no love of adventure for adventure's sake, and the prospect of being able to show herself to Harry and Harry's relations in her prettiest frocks entirely drove from her head the semi-sentimental interest she was beginning to feel for Rhys. She counted the days till they should start. It was a blowy, showering afternoon on which uncle and niece jogged along the road, the Vicar driving and Isoline tucked up beside him under the ungainly hood, with her hands buried in her muff. Behind the vehicle her box was roped on in some strange manner only known to Howlie Seaborne, who had secured it there, and under their feet was Mr. Lewis' modest carpet-bag. "I hope Lady Fenton is not very stiff," remarked Isoline, when they had turned their backs to the wet south wind, and it was again possible to talk. "She is Lady Harriet Fenton, not Lady Fenton, my dear." "But what must I call her then?" "Lady Harriet." "That sounds very familiar," said the girl. "It is the custom, nevertheless." They were coming within sight of the house, which had the appearance of a small town, for its outbuildings, as well as the mansion itself, had a surprising amount of chimneys protruding from the trees and giving a false idea of size. Glimpses of red brick were to be seen through gaps in the shrubberies, making subdued patches of colour in a rather solemn general aspect. Three tall fir-trees stood in front of the façade, and on the roof was an old-fashioned arrangement of wrought-iron, from which hung a large bell. A little shelter was over its head like a canopy over the head of an idol. A bank sloped down to the Wye, which ran in a shallow ford over the road, making a singular foreground to the place. As they drew up at the door Harry's figure appeared from round a corner of the house, and a brilliant blush overspread Isoline's face as she saw him; it was a good beginning to her visit. She wondered whether he had been watching for their approach. He took them through the hall, carrying the Vicar's bag himself, so much uplifted by their arrival that he forgot to put it down, and ushered them into the drawing-room with it still in his hand. "My dear boy," exclaimed his father, when they were all seated, and Isoline had taken off her wraps, "why not send that up-stairs? Mr. Lewis may prefer a more convenient place than this to change his clothes in." Isoline sat looking out of the corners of her grey eyes at Lady Harriet, and taking in every detail of her appearance; she had never seen any one in the least like her, and she was almost shocked by her simplicity of manner and generally untitled appearance; this simplicity made her feel more shy than the stiffness she had anticipated. She could not talk to Harry with much ease in the presence of his parents, and they were so much engrossed in her uncle that she had a good opportunity of examining her surroundings. The drawing-room interested her very much. The ceiling was high, and the furniture solid, like all the furniture of that date. Some heavy gilt-framed fire-screens stood on either side of the fender, and over the mantelpiece was a full-length portrait of the Squire's mother in high-waisted muslin, her lovely face smiling down into the room in which she had lived and moved thirty years ago, and which knew her no more. Afternoon tea had not been invented in those days, and people dined earlier than they do now; so, as the travellers had arrived late, it was almost time to dress for dinner when Isoline was shown up to her bedroom. A housemaid was lighting some high candles on the dressing-table as she entered, and the fire in the grate shone on the panelled walls; at one end of the room was a large four-post bed hung with dark chintz of a large pattern. Outside, a streak of wet, yellow sky could be seen beyond the trees. It was a dismal place, she thought, as she began to unpack her box and to lay out her dresses. As she stood before the looking-glass ready for dinner she made a radiant picture against the vague darkness which the sunken fire had almost ceased to illumine. The wax candles on either side of her reflection lit her up, a vision of youth framed in by the large oval of the mirror. She had put on a low white muslin dress with transparent folds surrounding the shoulders, in which she looked like some beautiful woodland sprite rising from a film of thistledown. A string of scarlet coral was round her neck, matching her red lips. She looked at herself intently, and her eyes seemed to be dreaming a dream of her own beauty. Presently she took a scarlet geranium, which stood in a little glass on the table with a piece of maidenhair, and fastened it on her bosom; then she turned away, looking back at herself over her shoulder. Dinner would not be ready for twenty minutes, and she wondered what she could do until it was time to go down. It was so dark out of the radius of the candles, and the lugubriousness of a piece of tapestry let into the panelling and representing an armed warrior in the act of cutting off an enemy's head made her shiver; she determined to have a roaring fire when bed-time came. Then she thought she would go down to the drawing-room; it would be lighter there, and she might amuse herself by looking at the things in it until the rest of the world was dressed. The strangeness of the house made her feel shy, and she went down-stairs softly, meeting no one, and entered the drawing-room to find Harry standing at the window whistling softly as he stared out into the dark. Though the curtains were not drawn he could not have got much profit from his observations, for all outside was an indistinguishable mass of black. His face lit up as he turned and saw her. "I hoped you might be early," he said. "I dressed as quickly as I could on the chance of your coming down soon." "What made you think I should?" she asked, lowering her eyelids. "You went up so long ago. You can't take more than an hour dressing, surely?" "Oh, but one can if one wants to look nice." "You have done that to-night, at any rate," said he. "You are very complimentary, Mr. Fenton." "It's quite true," replied he, with fervour, cursing inwardly as he heard a footstep nearing the door. It was only a servant come to draw the curtains, and the two sat in rather a conscious silence while the shutters were fastened up and the heavy rings sent rattling along the curtain-poles. "Are you coming to Crishowell again?" asked Isoline, when the servant had gone. "I should like to come every day if I could," he replied. He was falling very deeply in love; never had she looked so beautiful to him, and seeing her in his own familiar surroundings added to his infatuation. To keep her there always would be to locate heaven. "Why do you say 'if I could'? Cannot you do as you please?" she inquired, with a pout. "Of course I can," he said rather stiffly, thinking of Llewellyn. "Who is to prevent me? I shall come next week." She smiled archly. "On business for your father?" said she, playing with the geranium in her bodice. "No; on business of my own." As Isoline sailed in to dinner on the arm of Mr. Fenton, she wished heartily that her aunt in Hereford could have seen her, and she took her place with a little air of deprecating languor; she was anxious to impress the servants with the fact that she had been waited on all her life, and that no genteel experience could be anything but stale. Afterwards, when dinner was over and she retired with Lady Harriet to the drawing-room, she felt herself for the first time unequal to the occasion, though she chatted away, helped by the elder woman's efforts to put her at her ease. But both stifled a sigh of relief when the men came in. It was a dull, solemn evening, she thought, though she enjoyed the rapture with which Harry turned over the leaves of her music as she sang. Her clear, thin voice sounded like a bird's when she trilled her little operatic airs; it was true, too, which is more than can be said for many one has to listen to in drawing-rooms. She got into the impressive four-poster in her panelled room, sighing to think that one of her evenings at Waterchurch was over, though, as far as actual enjoyment went, it had not been remarkable. But we follow ideas, not actualities--at least, those of us who have souls above the common. She soon fell asleep, tired by the excitement of seeing new faces, and well satisfied with herself; but Harry sat up late in his room. It was long past midnight when he went to bed, and, when he did, he could not sleep for thinking of her. CHAPTER XX THE PEDLAR'S STONE THE Vicarage at Crishowell looked duller than ever, Isoline thought, as she and Mr. Lewis came round the corner of the church and faced its homely front. Howlie was at the door grinning affably, in her eyes a horrible travesty of the soft-mannered footman who had presided over their departure at the other end of their drive. A duck was quacking by the pond, and she would have liked to throw stones at the creature for the odious familiarity of its greeting, had she only known how to do so. She knew herself to be built for refinement, and, after two days of a ladyship's society, it could hardly be expected of her to slip glibly into lower surroundings. Her face grew haughty as she perceived Howlie. The visit to Waterchurch had, perhaps, lacked something of the grandeur expected, and the discrepancy between her anticipations of Lady Harriet and the real woman were a little upsetting; but there had been compensations, for she suspected herself of having, in some ways, impressed her hostess. A woman who went out in a homespun skirt and thick boots could not fail to notice the difference between herself and a young lady who wore beflounced dresses and kid shoes even in the country. She had now no doubt of Harry's feelings; he was deeply in love with her, and she looked to his coming visit as to a red-letter day. He would arrive next week "on his own business," as he had said, and his business would be hers too. She was quite shrewd enough to foresee opposition on the part of his family, but the game was worth the candle, and would be hers in the end. It was stimulating to think of a victory over Lady Harriet. Howlie and the maid-servant carried her box to her room, the former puffing loudly as he went up the staircase supporting the hinder end of the load. "Unlock it," said Isoline, as it was set down in its place, tossing him her keys with the air of a duchess. He looked as impudently at her as he dared, and picking up the bunch, proceeded to make as much noise as he possibly could over the operation. "How dreadfully clumsy you are, Howell," she exclaimed, annoyed, very naturally, by the superfluous rattling that was going on. He only sniffed, a habit he had when he found reply unnecessary. The rattling did not abate, till she darted across the room to snatch the keys from him, the hauteur of her deportment flying to the winds. "You stupid boy!" she exclaimed, "if you were at Waterchurch Court, where I have been, you would not be tolerated for a single day! Her ladyship would send you packing in a very short time!" He fixed his gaze upon her critically, and observed that, in taking off her hat, she had loosened some hairpins. "Yewre 'air's coming down," he remarked placidly. Her hand went up to it at once. "Oi can settle that for yew," he continued, with pleasant good-nature, "for oi learned to plat up the 'orses' tails proper when I was working i' the yard at Jones'." "You are impertinent as well as noisy," said Miss Ridgeway angrily; "if you cannot unlock my box you had better go down-stairs. Why Mr. Lewis keeps you here at all is a wonder to me, mannerless, good-for-nothing boy that you are!" He gathered himself up from the floor on which he was kneeling by the box, and left the room. Isoline was still ruffled when she turned to her dressing-table, but Howlie was smiling as he made his way to the back premises. "Miss is crewell hoigh since she come back from Fenton's," he remarked to the maid-servant as he entered the kitchen. "She's a settin' her cap at the young general over there. Moy! but he's a smart feller too," he added, thinking of the half-crown. For a couple of days after her return the memory of Waterchurch buoyed up Isoline through the flatness of life at the Vicarage, and she spent many an hour anticipating Harry's coming and its almost certain result. But, in spite of this, time was long, and the excitement in her mind made her restless, too restless to sit quietly in the house; she felt she must be out and moving about--a rather unusual thing with her. It was with a half-formed resolution that she put on her hat one afternoon, the Pedlar's Stone in her mind. Harry was so much in her thoughts that she was a little unwilling to replace his visionary image by the reality of the person she was likely to find there, but, in spite of this, her feet seemed to carry her imperceptibly towards the way that had become so familiar. She found herself on the turf of the plateau almost before she had decided whether it would be pleasant to see Rhys or not. She was pretty certain that he would be waiting there, for, though he had made no actual declaration of love to her, she had seen plainly at their last meeting that he was on the high-road to doing so. Comparing him with Harry in her mind, she knew that he was the more attractive of the two, partly because of the mystery surrounding him, and partly because, as a man, he was a more imposing person. Harry was a boy. But what Harry lacked in personal importance was made up to him a thousandfold by his accessories; the actual man mattered little to her. She had hardly discovered more about Rhys than he had told her on the evening of their first meeting, for though she had tried to question him about himself on subsequent occasions, she had got at nothing new. To-night she resolved to find out something further. Dusk had fallen when she reached the Pedlar's Stone; she knew nothing of its history nor the reason of its existence, and her curiosity about outdoor things was so small, that it had never occurred to her to ask him about it. She stood beside it looking round at the darkening landscape, never suspecting that, apart from the Pig-driver and a few of his dependents, she was almost the only person in Crishowell parish who would venture to do so. Had she known it, the idea would hardly have troubled her, for though not physically brave, she was too unimaginative to be upset by anything she could neither see nor feel. She stepped up on to the bank in which it was embedded, and looked through the straggling hazels for some sign of Rhys. Not a live thing was to be seen. She shuddered a little at the awful loneliness that hung around, and for a moment a kind of panic took her. It was almost as though the atmosphere of horror raised round the place by popular tradition had made itself tangible and leaped upon her. She turned quickly to come down the bank, screaming at the sudden apparition of Rhys' figure. He stood a few paces off, with his arms folded, watching her. "How you startled me!" she exclaimed, half angry; "where did you come from?" "I have followed you for some way," he replied, smiling as he took her hand. "I don't like that," she said pettishly; "it is horrid to think of some one walking behind one when one does not suspect it." "Are you angry with me?" asked Rhys. "Don't be unkind after I've waited for you every evening for the last four days." "But I told you I should be away from Crishowell. I only came back the day before yesterday. I enjoyed myself very much too." "I am glad of that," said Rhys, in a voice which gave the lie to his words. "I was staying at such a delightful place," she continued, pausing for the expected question. It came at once. "Where was that?" "A place called Waterchurch Court. Have you ever heard of it? It belongs to Mr. Fenton, who is very rich." Rhys repressed an exclamation. "I know about him. He has a son, hasn't he?" "Yes," replied Isoline, looking conscious. "An' I'll be bound he paid you a sight of attention," cried Walters, relapsing, as he sometimes did when excited, into the speech of his forefathers. "Let us go and sit down," said Isoline, "I am getting tired." She moved towards the great stone on which they usually sat. "You haven't answered me," he exclaimed, tormented by the thought of Harry. Isoline liked power. "Why should I?" she asked lightly. "I'll tell you why," he cried, his breath coming short through his hot lips; "because I love you, Isoline--I love you! I love you! I think of nothing but you, day and night!" She quickened her pace, her head turned away from him, yet her expression was not exactly one of displeasure. But he could not see that. "Ah, you don't care, I suppose," he went on, catching her hand again, "but you can't stop me, Isoline. Do you hear that? I love you! I _will_ love you, whatever you may say. What do I care for anything in this world but you? Here I've sat, night after night, crying out in my heart for you, and longing all the days you have been away for a sight of your face! Hate me if you like, I can't stop loving you." "Let me alone, Mr. Kent," faltered the girl, somewhat taken off her feet by his torrent of words. "Let me go, please; I cannot stay here if you go on in that way." "You _shall_ hear me!" cried Walters, planting himself before her. "Why did you come here, making me forget everything, luck and trouble alike? Isoline! Isoline!" She was getting alarmed by his violence, and would have turned and fled, but his arms were round her and he was covering her face, her lips, her cheek, her hair, with furious kisses. She struggled angrily for a moment, and finding resistance useless, dropped her head upon his shoulder and began to cry. Rhys held her closer. "Don't cry like that," he said, almost in a whisper, frightened in his turn by the effect of his outburst. "Let me go," she repeated. "I want to go home." "Isoline, don't say that--don't go! Ah! how I love you! You must not go. Speak to me--tell me you like me a little, only to keep me from breaking my heart." "Let me go," she repeated again. He loosed his arms and she pushed him away. "How can you be so rough and frighten me so?" she exclaimed, drying her eyes with her handkerchief. "I will never come back here--never--never!" Rhys was half-mad with excitement and despair at her words. He turned away, striking his clenched hands together and walking to and fro like a creature in a cage. She watched him over her handkerchief; emotion was a thing new to her, and she did not like it. "Do stop," she said petulantly, putting it back in her pocket. He turned round and stood humbly before her. "I have terrified you," he said. "I am a brute beast, not fit to speak to you, not fit to love you." Almost for the first time in his life he thought more of another than of himself. She was silent, the resentment in her face giving way to curiosity. "Why do you behave like that?" she asked at last. "Oh, Isoline, I am sorry. Only stay with me a little longer. I swear to you that I will be quiet, and not frighten you any more. I couldn't help it, dear; I love you so." "I think you have behaved very badly," the girl said, pursing up her lips and quite self-possessed again. "It is impossible for me to stay. I am accustomed to gentlemen." Rhys groaned. "I hope you are ashamed," she said, with a fine ignorance of her own share in the situation. "I am, I am." He stood silent while she smoothed her hair, which had become disarranged. "I suppose I may go a bit of the way with you," he hazarded, when she had finished. "It's dark, and I must see you as far as the place above the farm." She did not move; she was looking at him with a faint curiosity. "I will stay a short time if you give me your word that you will not annoy me again," she said, a little surprised at his submission. Certainly it was a strange state of mind for such a man as Rhys Walters. But many things had cropped up in his heart, unsuspected even by himself. "I don't deserve it," he said. "I do not wish to be too hard upon you," she replied, judicially, as she seated herself in their usual place. Rhys' depression was so great that Isoline soon began to get rather tired of his company, for he seemed quite incapable of entertaining her, and the little admiring speeches that had formerly fallen so glibly from his tongue would not come, charmed she never so wisely. In a short time she rose to go home, and he made no protest after he had extorted a reluctant promise that she would return again. Her reluctance did not go very deep. "Why have you told me so little about yourself?" she asked, as they went along the plateau. "I know your name, and I know that I must not speak of you to any one; but that is not much." He was not embarrassed by these questions, for he had long ago foreseen them and prepared something to meet them with. "What are you doing here?" continued she. "Does no one ever see you?" "No one but you and one other. If I were seen I should have to leave this place at once. I am a Government agent on private business for the Crown." He paused a moment, and Isoline's eyes opened wide in her interest. "Yes," she said, "go on." "I'm employed by Government to watch some people who are thought to be doing wrong, and to do that, I have to keep myself out of sight." "Who are they, and what are they doing?" "I can't tell any one that, but it has to do with an estate." The girl drank his words in. The little imagination she had was always attracted by a mystery, and the very vagueness of his story only served to impress her more. "Then is Kent your real name?" she asked. "No--no, it isn't. But I have had to take it for business purposes. You haven't forgotten that you promised to tell no one you had seen me. You will keep your word, Isoline?" "Oh, certainly," she exclaimed fervently, "I should be afraid to say anything after what you have told me. I might get into trouble, mightn't I?" she added naïvely. "And I might have to go to prison," he said, speaking the exact truth. "You would be sorry for that, wouldn't you, Isoline?" "Oh, really I should. How dreadful!" she exclaimed. At this his heart thrilled; he had no idea how the words "Crown" and "Government" had exalted him in her eyes. The pedestal upon which he had raised her was so high that he never supposed she could see down into the sordid world beneath her. Poor Rhys! the spiritual part of him was small, a feeble spark hidden deep in the darkness of selfishness, but Isoline had struck it with her little worthless hand, and it had flickered up. After leaving her he went back to the cottage in a state of rapture, for she had promised to return. Like Harry at Waterchurch, he was wakeful with thoughts of her, but, unlike him, he went out into the night, and spent it rambling among the shoulders of the mountain. It was dawning when he came home and locked himself in for the coming day, and the place was so cheerless that he almost missed George. He wondered what had become of him as he went down the ladder and threw himself on his bed. The underground room was now half filled with things which he had carried below after his companion had left him, and the mattress and other possessions belonging to the sheep-stealer furnished his prison, and made it a little more habitable. The impossibility of having a fire tried him in the cold weather, for the place was chilly with the damp of the surrounding earth, and he dared not during the day kindle the smallest flame in the fire-place, for fear that, by some fraction of a chance, some one might pass, and observe the uncommon spectacle of smoke issuing from an empty house. For some days after Williams had gone he had been in sore straits. There were few provisions in the cottage, and when they were finished, there was no means of getting more, as he dared not venture out. Fortunately, it wanted but a few days of the Pig-driver's weekly visit, and he eked out his food till the old man should arrive, fighting his hunger as best he might, and blessing the clear mountain water which ran at the door. As he heard the sound of Bumpett's squeaky voice one morning in the room above, he felt like a shipwrecked man who sees a sail. Had his visitor been an angel from heaven, instead of an exceedingly wicked old man, he could not have been more welcome. CHAPTER XXI THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR WHEN the Pig-driver heard from Rhys that George had gone, apparently for good and all, his rage was great; his tight little lips had only one movement with which to express anything he felt, and they grew yet tighter in a grin as he sat on a log in the underground room and heard the story. His mouth had the appearance of being embedded in his round face. He was angry with Walters for his part in ridding him of such a servant as he could hardly hope to replace, but he did not venture to give his anger the rein, being too much aware of the loneliness of their position. He was a cautious man, and contented himself with laughing immoderately as Rhys told him of his privations, and making some very unseasonable jokes. "How we do come down i' the world," he said sympathetically, taking off his hat and turning it critically round in his hands. "Well, well, to be sure, who would a' thought, when ye were such a fine figger of a feller at Great Masterhouse, that ye'd come to this?" His eyes twinkled as he spread out his fingers on his knees. "Little did I think," he continued, "when I were settin' down to the fire last night wi' my drop o' cider an' my bit o' cold goose, that you was starvin' here like a beggar man, an' would be thankful to me for any crust o' bread I could spare ye." It was rather a surprise to Bumpett when he saw how willing Rhys Walters was to remain in George's place, and to do George's work. He proposed the scheme with considerable caution, expecting an indignant refusal, but the other took it quietly enough, and agreed to serve him as George had done, and to receive his daily food in return and the use of the miserable roof under which they sat. "Ye bean't thinking to leave the country then?" said the Pig-driver with some curiosity. "Not yet," said Rhys curtly, reddening as he spoke. The old man looked shrewdly at him out of his pig-eyes. "Ye've got some game o' your own, I'll be bound," he said, with one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. "Well, it's nowt to do wi' me, though I am your master now," he added, as he disappeared safely through the trap-door. Rhys now cared neither how he existed nor what he did so long as he could see Isoline Ridgeway, and time, for him, was measured merely by the interval between one meeting and another. He snatched at Bumpett's proposal, which would open the road to all he lived for and give him an occupation he liked. He had grown perfectly reckless, looking no farther than the actual present; his old identity, his old interests and possessions were lost, and no new life, however prosperous, could make up to him for a final parting with Isoline. He was like a man upon whom the sun bursts from behind some dismal pack of clouds, dazzling his eyes, heart, brain and imagination till he can no longer clearly see the objects around. He was blinded, overpowered; his self-important soul was humbled by the perfections with which he had invested his queen. His very face had altered since the days before the Rebecca riots, for the clear tan of his skin was changed to a sort of pallor due to his indoor life. His roamings in the dusk and during the dark hours of night kept him in health, and his limbs had long ago recovered their strength, but he no longer wore the expression of self-centred carelessness which had characterized him a few months before. His keen eyes had a look of pre-occupation, the look of a man whose soul inhabits one place while his body lives in another. All his life his adaptability had been so great that, from every new change and experience, he had gathered some surface difference. Now, for the first time, a thing had happened which had gone down deep and reached the real man. It could not change him altogether, but it had raised the best flower which had ever sprung up from the poor and untilled ground of his nature. James Bumpett was scarcely the man to let a debtor slip through his fingers as George had done, and he cast about on every hand to find out what had become of the truant. Williams, who was working among the cabbage-beds of the garden at Great Masterhouse, glanced over the fence one day to see the rubicund face and tall hat of the Pig-driver on the other side of it. The two men looked at each other, and Bumpett's mouth made itself into a slit; he was so small that he could only just see over the high green boards. "Well, to be sure!" he exclaimed, chuckling. "Well, well, I never did!" The other met his eyes with a sullen calmness. "I've left you," he said. "Name o' goodness! Have ye, now? Well, ye might say I suspected it." The old man came nearer to the fence, and, taking hold of the pointed boards of the top, drew himself up, till his hat had risen about a foot over it. Dignity was one of the few things he did not understand. "Mind yourself; there's nails," said George. "I suppose," remarked Bumpett, "that ye thought ye'd seen the last o' me." Williams resumed his work, and went on turning over the earth which he was preparing for vegetable seeds. He determined to take no more notice of the Pig-driver, who had found in the fence a suitable cranny in which to insert his foot, and showed no signs of departure. His horse and cart were standing a little way off. "There's a sight o' sludge in that garden," he remarked at last, smiling agreeably. Many excelled George in speech, but silence was rather a gift of his. His spade went on vigorously. Bumpett began to hum as he looked at the bare branches of the pear-tree trained against one end of the farm wall. "Don't you be afeard to speak up, George Williams," he said reassuringly, when he had finished his tune. It was a chilly morning, and the wind which swept over the plateau to Great Masterhouse was beginning to touch up the old man's hands in a disagreeable way; his knuckles looked blue as he grasped the fence. The thud of the spade going into the earth was the only response. "Ye'll have something to say when I take the law on ye for that rent-money," he called out as he slipped down to the ground and climbed into his cart. Mrs. Walters soon discovered that, in doing well for Williams, she had also done well for herself. Her new servant worked harder than any one on the farm, and was so quiet and orderly that he gave trouble to neither mistress nor men. Although she despised flowers for mere ornament's sake, she had some practical knowledge of gardening as far as the useful part of it went, and, her father having been a seedsman, she was learned in planting and the treatment of parsley and carrots and everything that contributed to the household table. Under her management George worked in the garden; he mended gates and fences, pumped water, and turned his hand to anything. She exacted from him a promise to go to chapel every Sunday, and looked upon him with that proprietary feeling that a man may have for a dog which he has personally saved from drowning. Sometimes she spoke to him of his soul, which abashed him terribly. Although she wore a black silk dress on Sundays, as befitted a woman of her means, she was up and out early on week-days, walking through cow-house and poultry-yard, and appearing now and then in places in which she was not expected, to the great confusion of the idle. She was just to her men, and, according to her lights, just to her maids. To the latter she was pitiless on the discovery that any one of them had so much as the ghost of a love-affair. Such things were intolerable to her, a shame and a hissing. For a money trouble she would open her purse, having had experience of poverty in the days before her parents grew prosperous; for a love trouble she had nothing but a self-satisfied contempt, and, for a sister who had loved too much--from whatever reason--she had a feeling which would have made her draw in her skirts with a sneer, should she pass such an one in the street. To her, the woman who had staked her all upon one man and lost it was the same as another who made a profession of such lapses; she had excellent theories of life, but she had seen nothing of it. She was, however, true to them, true to herself and true in her speech, though, in her mind, there was but one point of view to be taken by all decent people, and that was her own. Her leniency to Williams, who could look back on past dishonesty, was one of those contradictions which come, now and then, even to the consistent, and, for once in her life, she was ready to believe that a back-slider might yet retrace his steps. Besides, George was a man, and she had the idea, curiously common to good women, that, though a man's sins might possibly be condoned, a woman's were unpardonable. While George went on with his work so quietly, his mind was anything but quiet. He knew his late master well enough to be sure that his threat was no idle one, and that, if the money he had owed him for so long was not produced, Bumpett would never rest until he had him safely by the heels in jail. He had lately been assured in chapel that the way of the transgressor was hard, but it struck him, as he delved on, that the way of the transgressor trying to reform was even harder. "Who was that climbing upon the fence?" called the voice of Mrs. Walters. He looked up to see her standing at an open window with an expression of some displeasure upon her face. "It was Mr. Bumpett, ma'am--the Pig-driver at Abergavenny." "Why was he shouting in that way into my garden? I heard him say something about 'the law.'" "'Twas at me," replied Williams, feeling rather foolish. He drove his spade into the earth with a blow, and went up to the window, mopping his forehead. "I'm sorry," he began, "but I'm afeard I'll have to go." "To go? And why?" "Ah, 'tis no choice o' mine." "Where are you going, Williams?" "'Tis very like to be to the jail. I owe Mr. Bumpett a sight o' money, and I can't pay him, ma'am." She looked at him in astonishment as he stood hanging his head. "Come into the kitchen," she said, turning from the window. It was perhaps the first time that any one had ever wished to confide in Mrs. Walters, and, sorely as he longed to do so, it was impossible for George to tell her the whole history of his trouble. But his simplicity and evident belief in her sympathy touched her as they might not have touched a more expansive heart, accustomed to the near contact of other lives. She sat upright on the kitchen settle while he poured out the tale of his debt; it was a common story, badly told, and it had to end just where he would have liked to begin. He felt as if the confession of his past doings would have taken pounds from that weight of shame which he had carried about with him ever since his acceptance of Bumpett's terms. His only comfort was in the fact that his mother had never suspected the life to which he had pledged himself for her sake. He had not known the sympathy of a woman since her death. He looked down at the earth on his boots as he spoke, for he had forgotten, when he came in, to clean them on the heap of bracken by the doorstep. He was afraid that Mrs. Walters was looking at it too. But her eyes seemed fixed on something far off as she rose, slim and straight, from the settle. What she saw was a man little younger than the one before her, who had brought disgrace and shame upon her and her house. She could not understand it at all. What earthly temptation could there have been to have made him act as he had acted? Her mouth tightened. How was it that this stranger, this rude labourer, should trust her as her own son had never done? She stared out of the window to where the Twmpa reared its great shoulder, unconscious that she was looking at places nightly trodden by Rhys' feet, and, as her bitterness against him increased, so did her sympathy for the other deepen. "I will pay Mr. Bumpett," she said suddenly, her back still turned "and your debt will be to me." The young man stammered some confused words; he would have liked to say many things, but his tongue failed him in the emergency, as it usually did. But he felt as if the gates of heaven were opening in his face. "Go on with your work, Williams," said Anne, turning round and waving him out of the room. "I have no more time to talk to you just now." When he had gone she left the kitchen and went up the wooden staircase leading to the tower; the room that her husband had lived in was kept locked, and had been used for some years as a kind of storehouse for boxes. As she turned the key it screeched in the lock, and she determined to tell Nannie to have the thing oiled; she had not crossed the threshold since Rhys had left Great Masterhouse before the riot. A couple of old bridles were hanging on nails against the wall, for he had used the place to keep odd bits of harness in, and, in obedience to her mistress's orders, Nannie had laid away his clothes in a cupboard at the end of the room. Mrs. Walters paused in front of it; standing in this spot which cried to her of an uncongenial past, she had an impulse to open it and look at the familiar things. She had no love for them and they could but bring back to her mind what it was her daily endeavour to forget, but she was in that experimental humour in which people long to assail their own feelings in the vain hope of finding them a little more impervious than they supposed. So she looked for the key only to see that it was gone, the old woman having carefully carried it away when she had given the garments to Bumpett, and passed on unknowing that the shelves were almost empty. Some of Eli's possessions also remained, and she went over to the mantel-piece to see the things she had come up to look at--two little daguerreotypes belonging to her late husband, one of the child who was dead, and one of the son who was living. They were framed in cheap brass, beaten out thin and ornamented with a florid, embossed pattern, and they had little rings behind them, to hang them to the wall. Between them was a similar portrait of herself as a young woman. She took them up, one in each hand, her lips pressed close together as she carried them to the light. Rhys' bold face looked out at her, the black shadows of the imperfect process giving it an unpleasant harshness. He was standing, his hand on a chair, with the usual looped-up curtain at his back; Eli had been very proud of the picture. The other frame contained the figure of a boy of six. Mrs. Walters could not look at it. She replaced the two on the mantel-shelf and went out, locking the door. The wound she had carried for years was no harder--not a whit. She went into the parlour, a grim, uninviting room in which she sat when she was at leisure, or when she received any one whose position demanded more than the kitchen, and sitting down at the table, opened a Bible. It was a large book, and she propped it against a Manual of Practical Bee-keeping, turning to one of the chapters set apart by custom as particularly suited to the bereaved. She forced herself to read. It was the orthodox way with religious people of overcoming trouble, and the sect to which she belonged applied the words of Scripture to all circumstances and cases. But though she went through the lines steadily, moving her lips, they gave her no sensation of any kind, and seemed no more applicable to the tumult in her than if they had come from the book of bee-keeping which supported them. She glued her attention to the page, reading on and pausing after each verse. Presently her lips ceased to move and were still. A large tear rolled slowly out of each eye and ran down her cheek, falling on the red cloth of the table. The muscles of her face were rigid, never moving; one would not have supposed that she was crying, but for the drops. She took out her handkerchief and dried her eyes, and the act had the air of a concession awkwardly made; she shut the book and clasped her hands together. Then she opened it again in the Old Testament, and, beginning at one of the denunciatory psalms, read it through to the end. CHAPTER XXII A BAD DEBT THE Pig-driver climbed into his high cart like some obscure insect legging its way up the face of a wall. He did not take the reins himself, but let his boy continue driving, so that he might have more leisure to think over the iniquities of George. He was so angry that it cost him quite an effort not to turn the wheels of his chariot towards Abergavenny, and begin at once to make out his bill against him. As he was jolted along he began reckoning up the pounds, shillings and pence on his fingers; but his transactions with other people were so numerous and so odd that he could not make much way through their complications without his accounts, and was forced to wait until he got home in the evening, before he could disentangle Williams' liabilities from the mass of notes among which they reposed. Bumpett's accounts were like some human beings--only understood by their creator. They were perfectly safe under every prying eye which might light on them, and he could have left the keys of the box in which they were kept at the mercy of any one, and known that their perusal would leave the intruder no wiser than before. Not being a man of letters, and being barely able to read, he had invented certain signs which stood for words he had forgotten or never known how to write. Of figures he had only a small idea, for though he had learnt their character as far as the number five, his knowledge stopped there, and the actual accounts of his shop were kept by a less illiterate nephew, whose interests were bound up in his own, and whose open and burly appearance suggested the best aspects of the trade. The old man rushed to his box that evening as soon as he had entered his house, and began to search among the chaos it contained for the record of George's debt. As the papers had not any sort of classification and were stuffed into the bottom, one on the top of another, to make room for all sorts of incongruous articles which shared their home, it took Bumpett some time to find what he wanted. He turned them over and over, smoothing out the creases with his dirty hand, and peering into the medley of hieroglyphics which had been difficult enough to write, and which were now trebly difficult to read. They were of all sorts, but represented chiefly what he considered to be bad or doubtful debts. "Owd 1 pownd bi Jamestench. he is in prisn. cums out Jooli. March ateen forty 3." "Owd ileven shilns ninpens bi jane bull for last 5 munth. can't get it. shes ded. ateen forty 4." "Owd from Gorgewillems. Rent. 3 pownd thirteen and fore. August forty 2." This last document also bore George's sprawling signature, and at the bottom was added, "Made turms with im. James Bumpett." The treasure was found, and the Pig-driver crammed the other papers back and shut down the lid. Then he took off his hat and put it on again, a habit he had when under emotion; he was very happy. He went below to a room at the back of the shop, and sat down with his nephew to a comfortable meal, for they lived well. When they had finished he took out the paper and, having raked a pair of rusty scissors from the back of a drawer, he cut off the lower part of the page and dropped it into the fire. It did not blaze but smouldered, the words "Made turms with im" standing out in an orange glow on their blackened background. He went to bed feeling ten years younger. He was in his best spirits as he drove out of Abergavenny next morning with the precious document in his hand, for the sight of it gave him such pleasure that he did not like to put it in his pocket, but held it clasped tightly until he came within sight of the grey roof of Great Masterhouse. He had never yet had any dealings with Mrs. Walters, but it was his intention to ask to see her; he had heard that she was a person of strict views, and he hoped to say a few words about George which he had no doubt would make her turn him out of the place. The virulent old man longed to see him begging from door to door. He meant to approach her in the interests of abstract virtue, and to warn her against employing a person whom he knew to be a thief and an evil-doer, one who would corrupt his fellow-servants, and in all probability go off some day of his own accord with as much of her portable property as he could carry. He felt sure that a pious woman such as she was would see the rightness of putting Williams to the door. Though he knew very well that, for reasons of his own, he could not prove his charges, he trusted that her severity would recognize the need of ridding her house of doubtful characters. It was in this hope that he drove into the back yard of the farm. Anne Walters was sitting in the kitchen with some knitting in her hand, superintending the work of a clumsy girl of fourteen who was washing a whole regiment of delf mugs. They were a sight to breed envy in a collector of modern days, with their patterns and devices of red roses, doggerel verses, and figures of John Barleycorn, Toby Philpott, and other jocund personalities, but she cared little for them, and kept them hidden away in a cupboard where no eye but that of the strolling spider could espy their quaint beauties. The money she had promised to lend Williams had been given him on the previous evening, and she had agreed to stop a portion of his weekly wages until the debt should expire. She was sure that she had done right in helping him, and it was a pleasant thought in her mind as Nannie's face peered in at the kitchen door. Nannie always peered. Though she had been twenty years and more at Great Masterhouse, she still kept the demeanour of an intruder, and her weather-beaten face came stealthily round the lintel as though its presence were an unlawful act. "The Pig-driver's in the yard, ma'am, wanting to see you on business." "The Pig-driver?" Mrs. Walters raised her eyebrows. "Mr. Bumpett at Abergavenny. I hear him getting out of the cart." The girl of fourteen stood open-mouthed; a visitor was a more amusing thing than cleaning china, and the water ran unheeded off her fingers on to the clean sand of the floor. "Go you out o' this, girl," cried Nannie, pouncing upon her and snatching up the basin, "don't you be gaping there an' the water slitherin' down! Be off, an' take some o' they pots along wi' you, if you don't want a tiert slap on your long ears." The girl fled with as many of the jugs as she could carry. Bumpett stood in the doorway trying to construct his expression into one which might find favour with the opposite sex. "Good-morning," said Mrs. Walters in her cold voice, pointing to a chair. There was a slight movement of garments in the passage which showed that Nannie was listening outside. The Pig-driver sat down with his hat on his knees; he had not supposed it would be so difficult to start his subject, and he cleared his throat loudly by way of giving himself confidence. His experience had led him to believe his address irresistible, but he knew that people had to be "taken the right way." "To be sure, this is a fine big place," he began, glancing round the spacious kitchen, "a proud place. I'll lay ye couldn't have paid less nor the size o' five pound ten for that dresser." "I am not selling my furniture," said Mrs. Walters, inclining to think that the business must be some intended purchase. "Oh, no, no. Name o' goodness! I didn't mean that," rejoined he, laughing with reassuring waggery. "A fine figger of a lady like you to be sellin' up! A pretty pass that would be." "May I ask what your business is?" said Anne, drawing herself up. "I have a great deal to do this morning." He brought his chair a little nearer. "I've heard a sight o' beautiful words about you," he said, throwing an admiring leer into his eye, "from this one an' that. 'Tis common talk what a fine lady you be wi' your silk an' satins, an' your holy doin's in chapel. Ah, a sad thing it was for the respected Mr. Walters that's gone before to be leavin' ye alone. I'll be bound he hasn't found an angel to match ye in the glorious place where he now is." It flashed across Mrs. Walters that the Pig-driver must be mad, and she rose from her chair. "Sit ye down again, do now," he said. "I ax pardon if I be too feelin' in my speech, but what can I do when I see such handsome looks an' high ways before me? A man's heart will feel for ye, seein' ye so unprotected. 'Beauty in distress,' ma'am, as Holy Writ has it." He chuckled at his own aptness of quotation. "I am not unprotected," said Anne Walters, who was growing very angry, "and you will find it out if you will not come to business or leave the house." "No offence meant. No doubt eddicated manners seem queer to ye in a plain man like me," he said lightly, drawing the back of his hand across his nose. "Kindly say what your business is, or go." Bumpett had fallen into the common masculine error of treating all women alike, and it began to strike him that he was on the wrong tack. His companion was no less sensible to flattery than the rest of her fellow-creatures, but flattery is a dish which should be dressed differently for every person. He took a less gallant attitude. "I've come to warn ye," he said, dropping his voice. But she made no movement to regain her seat, for she was thoroughly angry, and she looked down at the eccentric figure of the Pig-driver with an expression of disgust. It was years since she had spoken to any one, except her son and the preacher she followed, who could pretend to an equal position with herself, and the impertinent familiarities of the old man were not to be endured. She debated whether she should send for a couple of her men and have him turned out of the place. "It's my duty, plain an' pure," he continued, nothing daunted by her silence, "an' I've come from Abergavenny to tell ye what may give ye a turn, an' show ye what ye've got about the place. There's a feller name o' George Williams here, isn't there? Well, he's a limb an' no mistake. A fine sort to be hangin' about a respectable house, he is!" He paused for a reply, but Anne appeared entirely unmoved by his news and he began to get exasperated. He thumped his stick on the floor. "Ah, you women!" he cried, "ye're a queer lot! Ye won't believe a word a decent man says, an' yet ye'll believe any scoundrel that comes puggin' his forelock to yer face an' lying an' thievin' behind yer back. Well, ye've got a rare one now. Ye don't know the life he's been leadin'." Mrs. Walters looked intently at him. "I do," she said quietly, thinking of what George had admitted to her. The Pig-driver's blatant demeanour collapsed like a pricked gas-bag; the shreds of it hung round him and that was all. If Williams had been fool enough to place his own safety in the hands of the woman confronting him, then he, Bumpett, was a lost man. In all his calculations he had never pictured any one who would, so to speak, thrust his own head into the prison door, and he made an effort to collect his wits and to find out how much she really knew. "What were he tellin' ye about himself?" he asked, in a voice from which truculence had suddenly vanished. "That is my business and no one else's," replied Anne haughtily. He ground his teeth together. "If you have no more to say," she continued, after a pause in which the sense of his own impotence nearly drove Bumpett mad, "you had better go." A wave of rage surged over him. He got up red in the face. "I'll have him in jail yet!" he cried, flourishing his arm, "I will! I tell 'ee he won't bide here much longer. Look at that!" And he whipped the paper out of his pocket and slammed it down on the table. Anne watched him with disdain. "Look 'ee here! Look 'ee here! D'ye see _that?_ There's his own name to it--three pound thirteen an' four. Ah, but I've showed mercy on him, I have! An' me waitin' all this time for my money. D'ye see that date?" His thumb shook as he planted it on the grotesque writing. "Why should he go to jail if he pays you?" Bumpett's wrath turned into a fine irony. "No, no, indeed," he replied, mouthing his words and twisting himself round to look up in Mrs. Walters' face; "he! he! true; true words, ma'am. Ah, I see ye have a wonderful knowledge o' business." "I will call Williams," she said, "and tell him to pay you." "Pay me, will he? Not him! He can't," shouted the old man in a kind of ecstasy, as he almost capered by the table. George came in from the yard at Mrs. Walters' summons; he stopped, hesitating in the passage outside. "Come in, Williams," she said, with so little trace of expression in her voice that he almost feared the Pig-driver had overruled her good feelings towards him. The old man looked the picture of excited and triumphant malice. "Mr. Bumpett has come to be paid," she said, as he entered. "I have," exclaimed Bumpett, "an' high time I was, too. Now then, down wi' your money, George Williams! A rich man like you shouldn't hang back! Where is it, eh?" He grinned at George as a cat might grin at the mouse between his claws. The young man put his hands in his trousers pocket and, for answer, turned the whole amount out on the table; three gold pieces, thirteen silver ones and a fourpenny-bit. The Pig-driver's countenance presented such a blank wall of astonishment that it was a pity no sufficiently disinterested spectator was present to study it. His errand to Great Masterhouse was proving so unlike anything he had expected that, for once in his life, he felt himself undone. The weapon with which he had hoped to defeat George had been wrested out of his grasp and turned against himself, and he had no other at hand with which to replace it. He glared at the pile of coin, wrath and cupidity fighting within him; the sight of the money made him long to touch it, to handle it and appropriate it, and, at the same time, he hated it because its unlooked-for appearance had robbed him of his revenge. He looked from George to Mrs. Walters and from them to the shining heap between them, and his grin fluctuated and finally died out altogether. Anne opened a drawer in the dresser and took out a sheet of paper which was lying in it, and a pen and ink. "Williams will want a receipt," she remarked, placing them before the Pig-driver. "I can't write," he said, looking at the pen with an expression of malignity. "I'm no hand at it, I tell 'ee. I'll need to take it along to Abergavenny to my nephew and get it made out." "That does not matter," said she composedly, taking up the quill. "You need only write your name. I know you can do that, for you have signed the paper you showed me." She sat down and, in the same precise hand in which she annotated her Bible, wrote: "Received from George Williams in full payment of debt, three pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence." Adding the date, she pushed it towards Bumpett. He would have liked to refuse, but he did not dare to do so; he could not risk disobliging a person who, for all he knew, was aware of the systematic law-breaking which was the source of his income. She watched his unwilling pen forming the signature quite unconscious of the hold she had over him. "Will you please to keep that for me?" said George as she held out the precious receipt. She turned to Bumpett, putting the paper into her pocket. She belonged to a sex whose natural impulse it is to hit a man when he is down. "Are you satisfied now?" she inquired, "or have you anything else to warn me about?" George and the Pig-driver left the kitchen together. Once outside the old man broke into a whirlwind of curses. Williams turned away. "Come back," gasped Bumpett; "I know what ye've been doin', ye lyin' dog that ye are! Ye've been tellin' that high-nosed, preachin' devil yer sins, have 'ee? An' you swearin' on the Bible when I made terms with 'ee, an' now maybe lettin' loose the whole country on me. Well, ye'll likely swing yesself, ye fool; that's what ye'll get fer yer pains--damn ye!" "I've never spoke a word about you. I said no more to Mrs. Walters than that I'd led a bad life--and so I have." Bumpett stared. "An' was that the meanin' o' what she said?" "I suppose so," said Williams. The Pig-driver climbed into his cart as he had done the day before; he had never made such a bad business of anything. BOOK II CHAPTER XXIII WHITE BLOSSOMS IT was on one of those days which seem to occur only in our youth, that Isoline Ridgeway sat under a cherry-tree on the slope of the field overlooking Crishowell Vicarage. The little puffs of wind which occasionally lifted stray bits of her hair were scented with the scent of may hedges; the whole world seemed to have broken out into white blossom. The tree above her head was such a mass of shivering, semi-transparent petals against the blue of the sky, that the endless perspective of bloom held reminiscences of a Japanese painting. At her feet the hill sloped down to the brook and the Vicarage orchard. Below, in a declivity of the field where a spring's course could be traced by the deeper green of the grass to a circle of wet ground, a crop of marsh-marigolds held their cups vigorously above the succulent stems, and green, tea-tray leaves, coarse children of the brown, earth-stained water. Looking beyond the church she could see the indigo outline of the Brecon Hills. Since the day on which she had left Waterchurch Court three months had gone by, and Harry, on whose expected visit she built so much, had not yet been to Crishowell. Not that this was due to neglect on his part, for things had taken an ill turn, and Mr. Lewis, a few days after his return home, had developed an attack of asthma, to which he was subject, and been told by his doctor that only a complete and immediate change would rid him of the enemy. So uncle and niece had departed almost at a day's notice, returning in a month to find that Harry had left home, and was expected back in a few weeks. The disappointment had been keen, but a sustaining belief in her own attractions had helped her through it, and an inward certainty that when he returned he would not delay his coming. Sometimes, it is true, a misgiving would creep into her mind, for she knew that he had gone to London, and the "fine ladies" who, in her imagination, peopled the greater part of the metropolis, might be casting their lures to entangle the feet of so personable a young gentleman. But her fears did not last long, and she argued sensibly enough that these houris would be no new thing to him, and that experience of their devilries had not deterred him from falling down before herself. Was he not fresh from the wicked city when they had first met? She would not disquiet herself, and she did not. Seeing her so willing to return to the dullness of Crishowell, Mr. Lewis had taken it as a good sign of contentment with her surroundings, and he noted her growing inclination to outdoor exercise with a pleased surprise; it seemed that, after all, her stay with him was to be of some use in directing her mind towards healthy pleasures. He was also a little relieved at finding her able and willing to ramble about by herself, and apparently unresentful at being left so much alone. His parish and his books, his archæology and his correspondence kept him so busy, that a niece who expected much of him would have been a serious inconvenience. He treated her with unvarying kindness and courtesy, but he sighed sometimes as he searched vainly for some trait which should remind him of her dead aunt, the wife he had loved. He had always passed for a self-centred man to whom the fellowship of his kind was trivial, but though his reading and his duties now formed his world, there was a chasm in his life which had opened years before he had come to Crishowell, and was gaping still. As a mere tribute to convention, he would now and then delude himself into the belief that he liked Isoline, but he knew in his heart of hearts that it was only a delusion. He had not cared much for his wife's family, and the girl was essentially her father's daughter. One of the first things she had done on getting home was to go to the Pedlar's Stone to meet Rhys Walters, and before her departure she had managed to get to the solitary spot to bid him good-bye. He had taken the news she brought hardly, crying out against all the possible rivals that his jealous heart pictured as assailing her in the semi-fashionable place to which her uncle was ordered. But there was nothing for it but patience, and he got through the time as best he could. The Pig-driver, who kept him supplied with food, was also ready to supply him with Crishowell news, and through him he at last heard of the Vicar's return. Though the days were lengthening, and risk of discovery was greater in consequence, he was at the trysting-place when she appeared. He looked worn and thin, and it was evident by the lines in his face that he had suffered in her absence. If one lover were away there was still the other left to keep her amused, and it made her the more gracious to the one who remained. The light evenings were no obstacle to the infatuated man, and he was at the Pedlar's Stone daily almost before the sun had set, though he knew that he was risking the little he had left to risk by his action. In the night he constructed a sort of rampart of dead thorn-bushes, disposing them so artfully around a little hollow in the vicinity of the dreaded stone, that if by some strange chance any one should be bold enough to pass by, he and Isoline would be unseen as they sat in the declivity on the further side of it. He reached the place by the most devious ways, taking cover wherever he could find it, sometimes almost crawling along an ancient ditch which ran up the hill, and when the beloved woman had left him, lying in the hollow till the descent of darkness. As she sat in its shadow, the girl herself looked like the spirit of the blossoming tree. Her white dress was spread round her on the grass, and her shady hat dangled by a white ribbon from her hand. Even she was impressed by the beauty of the thing above her as she twirled a tuft of flowers in her fingers, wondering whether artificial cherry-blossoms were to be got, and resolving, if so, to trim her next ball-dress with them. She stuck some in her hat and put it on her head, then, remembering that there was no mirror at hand in which the effect could be seen, laughed and tossed it down beside her. A great buzzing fly went past with a hum of wings; but for that the whole world was still; everything was radiating life, and only the yew-tree in the churchyard beneath her laid a dark spot on the uninterrupted flow of light. A man on horseback was turning away from her uncle's door. He must have come up from the road by a footpath, for she had not seen him arrive. Her heart jumped, for it was Harry--Harry riding away, having evidently been told that Mr. Lewis was out. He passed by the stile at the foot of the field, and suddenly looking up, saw her white figure on the slope. He sprang off, calling Howlie (who was by the duck-pond observing him) to take his horse, and in a moment he had vaulted the stile and was coming towards her. She awaited him smiling, a lovely colour spread over her face. "May I stay here?" he asked rather shyly, as he came up. "Oh, certainly," she replied. "I so nearly missed you," he exclaimed, as he threw himself upon the grass beside her. "Your uncle was not in. Fancy, if I had not seen you and had gone back again! Do you know I only got home two days ago, and I have come the very first moment I could get away." "Have you been in London, Mr. Fenton?" "All the time," said he. Isoline sighed. "I should so like to go to London. Were you very gay?" she asked. "Not so very," said Harry, laughing. "Did you go to any balls?" "I went to three." "Oh, tell me. And what were the ladies like? Did they wear beautiful dresses and grand diamonds?" "Yes, I think they did. But I didn't notice much." "But what were they like? Can you not remember _anything?_ If I went to London I should not forget what I saw." "But you are cleverer than I am." "Oh, I don't think you are stupid at all," she said, looking coyly down at her fingers. "I suppose gentlemen do not notice the same things that we ladies do. I hoped that when I saw you again you would be able to bring me all the new fashions." "You knew I should come then? You did not think I should forget?" She was silent, turning her head away. "Isoline, are you glad to see me?" "Perhaps," she said lightly, swinging her hat which she had picked up from the grass. She was so sure of him that she felt she could afford to dally with the situation. Harry was young, and his face fell a little. "I don't believe you care a bit," he said. Again she did not answer. He came nearer. "Isoline, will you marry me?" he asked very earnestly. A perfect flood of triumph and excitement poured into her heart, but she made no outward sign of it. "Do you really mean it, Mr. Fenton?" she said softly. "Of course I mean it, darling!" he exclaimed. "Do you know one thing that took me to London? I went to get something for you, if you will wear it. Look!" He drew a tiny case from his pocket and opened it. Inside was a ring, a diamond heart surrounded by little pearls. She clasped her hands together. "How lovely! How lovely!" she exclaimed. "And is that for me?" "Try it on," said Harry. She held out her finger, and he slipped the jewel into its place. "It fits perfectly!" she cried, enchanted, turning her hand round and round, so that it should flash in the sun. "Darling!" he exclaimed, throwing his arm round her. "Oh, please don't! Some one might be looking. Every one can see you from here." "But, Isoline, do you love me?" "Yes, I do indeed!" "And you will be my wife? You haven't said it, you know, dear." "I will," she said, still contemplating her left hand. "Look at me, dear, tell me you mean what you say. Are you happy, Isoline? I am." She glanced up at him with her grey eyes full of sunshine. "I am very happy," she murmured. Then her look swam away into the far landscape and she sat rapt, thinking of what was to come. The world she wanted was opening in front of her; the man who held the key of it had put it into her hand She wondered whether there might be lions on the threshold, and, if so, how loudly they would roar. She thought that she would not mind the roaring very much, if she could only slip by them successfully. The future was whispering to Harry too. "I wonder what your uncle will say," he remarked at last. "I meant to have spoken to him when I arrived, but he had gone out, and so I came up here to you. He can't refuse me, can he, Isoline?" "Oh dear, no," she laughed, wondering at her lover's simplicity. "How could he? Besides, I shall do as I like." "You will never give me up, whatever may happen? Dear, dear Isoline, you couldn't do such a thing, could you?" "What will Mr. Fenton and Lady Harriet say?" "I shall go and tell them what to say," said Harry valiantly. "I do not think that your mother will be glad," said she, smiling faintly. She hardly knew whether this idea was agreeable to her or not. There was a lurking antipathy in her to Lady Harriet, though she had received nothing but civility at her hands; the strangely-different point of view in small things which Harry's mother represented had put her out. It had been uncomfortable, and she had not forgotten it. In her mind the only recognized difference between well-regulated people lay in their social positions. She rather resented the idea of a titled mother-in-law whose simple behaviour suggested an unconsciousness of her advantage. Her imagination flew on to her wedding. It should not take place at Crishowell, if she could help it. She thought of Hereford Cathedral, and the string of carriages and family chariots waiting outside the close for the company before whom she would be playing the leading part. She pictured herself in white satin and lace being conducted up the aisle, and standing with the eldest son of a county magnate before the Bishop--for no doubt Mr. Fenton would wish the Bishop to marry his son; and finally, being led out by her husband to a carriage with grey horses. She would have the wedding-favours an exact facsimile of some she had once seen, bouquets of orange-blossom which had unexpectedly put forth silver leaves, and which reposed on white satin bows with silver fringe. She was quite certain Lady Harriet had never looked so well as she would on that supreme occasion. There was only one dark blot in all her eminently satisfactory day-dream, and that was the fact that Llewellyn would probably be best man. He was neither creditable nor conciliatory. She awoke from her reverie to find Harry's eyes fixed upon her with such passionate love and admiration that she was rather startled. So far she had considered him more as an adjunct than as any one possessing a future of his own, and for a single moment the importance of what she had done struck her. "I wonder how I shall like you," she remarked suddenly, and without a touch of the flippancy such words might suggest. It was probably the one original thing she had said in her life. Harry looked as if he had been slapped. "Isoline! What do you mean?" he cried. "You do not want to draw back?" "Oh no," said the girl quickly, "I only wondered if we should ever quarrel." "Never," he replied fervently; "I could never be angry with you, I am sure." So they sat and looked down upon the Vicarage till a black figure crossed the churchyard. "There is my uncle," said Isoline, taking up her hat. "We ought to go down and tell him." "Oh, not yet," pleaded Harry, "stay a little, dear; I shall always love this place now." He looked up into the branches. "Is not the cherry-blossom pretty? Before you came, I was thinking how nice it would be to have a ball-dress trimmed with it. Do you think it would suit me?" "You'll look lovely." "And you will not forget my dresses as you forget the London fashions?" She raised her eyes archly to his. He seized her hand and kissed it, and she made no resistance, for the grass was high and the action could not be seen. It was long before he forgot the feel of the cool greenness, the touch of soft fingers as he pressed them against his lips, and the dancing of sunlight through the leaves overhead. Poor Harry, he was happy; the heavens had stooped down to earth, and he had no misgivings. Such difficulties as he foresaw were those that would melt away before the fire of his constancy. How was it conceivable that any opposition could stand against Isoline's beauty and sweetness? He thought of Llewellyn's counsel and the day on which they had so nearly quarrelled by the garden door; it was strange that he--so much cleverer than himself--had taken such an extraordinary view of her character. The recollection made him quite impatient, though he told himself in his generous heart that there was no one like his brother, and that, come what might, his marriage should never in any way shadow their friendship. Time, he was certain, and a closer experience of Isoline's society, would convince him that he had been mistaken, and he knew Llewellyn well enough to be sure that, when such a change should come to pass, his acknowledgment of his error would be complete. It would all come right, and, meanwhile, life was bathed in an untold glory. Like all young, open natures who love truly, Harry was humble. His own inferiority to the girl at his side was manifest to him as he looked up at her through the grasses. His life had been, if anything, rather more regular than that of the ordinary young man, for the extreme genuineness of his nature had necessitated that some real feeling, however transient, should direct his desires. Nevertheless, temptations that assailed others had not stepped aside in his favour, and it was a miracle to him that this creature, so delicate, so pure, so refined, should be willing to walk out of the fairy radiance of her maiden kingdom to join hands with him. The little demure air that never left her, even when she had seemed most near to him, was a charm. There was always a suggestion about her of not giving too much, and he admired it as he might have admired the delicacy of scent in a white flower. He loved refinement, though he could not distinguish between the false and the true, being younger in his mind than in his years; and it is the irony of life that a knowledge of valuations comes to many--indeed to most--when it is too late to be useful. He had reverence in him and a high ideal of womanhood; though it was a crude one, it was the best that his youth and unanalytic nature could frame. The dainty calm and reserve with which Isoline had met his obvious love was as if the white flower grew on a height to be scaled with patience, and bloomed to be touched by one hand alone. He was not the first to mistake coldness for purity. CHAPTER XXIV A CARD HOUSE THE news of the engagement fell like a bombshell into the circle at Waterchurch; to all but Llewellyn it came as an absolute surprise. Harry's temporary attachment to any pretty girl who came in his way was taken as such a matter of course by his parents, that the attentions he had bestowed on Isoline during the few days she had stayed with them were nothing out of the ordinary run of events. Mr. Lewis had made his consent conditional, promising to give it when he should hear of the Squire's approval, and withholding it entirely till Harry should assure him of the sanction. Isoline, to whom her uncle's decision suggested a flying in the face of Providence, relapsed into soft obstinacy, submitting outwardly to what for the moment seemed inevitable, and covering a persistence which would recognize no scruple with a layer of docility. Her attitude was that of a sand-bag towards a bullet--it offered no visible resistance. At the same time it was impenetrable. The Vicar had but little respect for the conventional view of marriage. While he held it unwise for young people to plunge hand in hand into the dismal bog of extreme poverty, only to waste their youth and strength in the sordid flounderings which alone can keep their heads above water, his ideas of the important things of life were at variance with those of most people. He regarded the poverty which necessitates some self-denial as a strengthener of the bonds which tie those whose love is love indeed, and the outward circumstances which (whatever they may say) are the things deemed most essential by the majority, seemed to him to have a secondary place. He was an intensely spiritual man. Abstract things were more real to him than the things usually called tangible facts. Though he lived in a retired spot and kept so much apart from the world, his earlier life had lain in crowded places, and he had studied men and women very profoundly. His mental search after truth had been keen, and he was one who liked half-truths so little that it irked him to have to mix with those whose current coin they were. He would almost have preferred lies. That was one reason why solitude was dear to him. There was only one person among his neighbours with whom he felt himself in true accord, and that was Lady Harriet Fenton. She was a woman whom no expediency and no custom could ever induce to deal in false values. The tying up for life of two people seemed immeasurably more awful to the Vicar than it does to the world in general, for he reckoned with things to whose existence little attention is paid. The power of two characters to raise or lower each other, was in his eyes a more real thing than the power of two purses to maintain the establishment that their owners' friends expect of them. But while he held these opinions, he had seen enough to show him that to hundreds of natures the suitable establishment is all-satisfying, and will preserve them in a lukewarm felicity until death parts them. He knew that strong meat is not for babes. Isoline was a babe, but he was not so sure about Harry. Mr. Fenton's difficulties were no secret to him, and he was aware that, should the young man marry, he would have to content himself with very little. Isoline, even when her husband should have become head of the family, would scarcely be able to keep up the show he suspected her of coveting. It was a point on which he resolved to enlighten her. Although he considered him far too young to think of marriage, he had always liked Harry, for his simplicity and impetuous ways struck him less as blunt intelligence than as late development, and he believed that, were he to develop in the society of Isoline, he would develop away from her; his character at twenty-five was yet in the making, while hers, at nineteen, was set. All this was more to him than the fact that his niece would, socially speaking, be marrying well. As they sat at breakfast on the following morning with the windows wide open to the orchard, he began upon the subject. "Isoline, I feel that I ought to tell you a few things you may not know. If Mr. Fenton gives his consent, and I consequently give mine, I suppose you and Harry will expect to be married before very long. You have always had most things that you want, being an only child; do you think you will be quite happy with less? You may think perhaps that Mr. Fenton is a rich man." "I am not accepting Harry for his money," observed Isoline, with dignity. "That would be rather difficult, my dear, seeing that he has not got any," said the Vicar, with some dryness. She opened her eyes. "I hardly understand. What should I have to do without?" "Well, I fancy you spend a good deal upon your dresses for a young girl. Not that I blame you, for you always look very nice, and you have seventy pounds a year of your own to be pretty with. Of course, when you are here you are my guest, and you are no expense, for what does for me does for us both. I think your aunt in Hereford finds the same--and rightly." She nodded. "It would be hard indeed if you had not a home while we are so well able to afford you one," continued the Vicar, who had denied himself a much-needed carpet for his study in order to add a few luxuries to her bedroom. "You are both most kind to me." "But, my dear, it is only right. All the same I cannot help fearing that you may miss it. You will not have so many new gowns and smart hats." Isoline said nothing, but she looked a little incredulous. "Harry's father allows him two hundred a year. If he married he might possibly increase it a little--a very little--but I know that is all he could do. Harry has no profession. Personally, I think that a mistake, for, in my opinion, every young man who has not learned to work has missed something, but that is Mr. Fenton's affair, not mine. Between you both, you would not have three hundred a year, and, even if a little more were forthcoming, you would barely have three hundred and fifty. That is very well when a man has something to work at." "But why will not Mr. Fenton give Harry more?" "He has not got it to give." She looked dumbly at him, tears gathering in her eyes; her lips quivered. "My dear, my dear," said her uncle, "don't be so upset. I did not mean to dishearten you, but it was right to tell you the truth. We have not heard what the Squire has to say, and something might be found, no doubt, for Harry to do." He was quite glad to see her display some real feeling, and he came round to her side and put his arm tenderly about her. "Don't, my little girl, do not be so distressed," he said, pressing his lined cheek against her soft one. "If Mr. Fenton says 'Yes,' and Harry is a man--which I am sure he is--we shall find some way out of the difficulty. It will be a capital thing for him to work a little, for he will want money all his life, if he is to stand in his father's place." She wept on unrestrainedly, and her emotion touched him; it roused in him a hope that he had judged her hardly. After all, he had possibly often misunderstood her, and Harry's affection might yet bring out things her education had stifled. Though the small interests of provincial town life were bad training for a woman, they might not have quite succeeded in spoiling her. But it was not for love that her tears flowed, it was for a fallen card house. He spoke very gravely and gently. "You will have to do your best for him, as Lady Harriet has done for his father," he continued, still encircling her with his arm. "You will have a good model in your mother-in-law, Isoline." A feeling of dislike went through her as she thought of Lady Harriet's plain clothes and the way she had tramped through the mud of the farmyard when she had shown her the Alderney cows; she seemed to have supposed that it would amuse her to see these dull animals. And then, her strong boots! It was horrible, unfeminine. She had certainly worn a silk gown at dinner, with a piece of valuable lace on it, but it had been the same one each night. And this was to be her pattern! "I did not care very much for Lady Harriet," she faltered. "You have not seen her very often," replied the Vicar; "she is one of those women of whom one can say that the more one knows them, the more one honours them." "Why?" asked Isoline. "What does she do?" "Mr. Fenton has lived very much up to his income, and they have to be extremely careful. There is a great deal of business to be done, more than he can manage, and she is invaluable in the help she gives him. She spends nothing on herself; her whole heart is in the place. If it were not for her, I don't know that it would be in the Squire's possession now." Isoline did not return her uncle's caress in any way, but she dried her eyes, and went cheerlessly on with her breakfast. After it was over she went out into the orchard, and strolled down to where it met the brook. She stood for a few minutes looking disconsolately into the water as it bubbled by; across it she could see up the sloping field to the cherry-tree under which she had sat on the preceding day. How happy she had been then! She pitied herself sincerely. The light which had glimmered before her during all her stay at Crishowell had proved to be no better than a malignant Jack-o'-lantern luring her on to the unsolid ground. But the fatal step had not been taken, though she had put out her foot; her uncle had shown her to what she was on the verge of trusting herself. She felt vaguely resentful against Harry. What business had he, she asked herself, to entangle her in this way, knowing, as know he must, that he had nothing to support her with decently? It was not fair. She turned from the brookside and walked back towards the house. Howlie Seaborne was coming towards her with a letter in his hand. He held it out between thumb and forefinger. Though she had never received a letter from Harry, she knew by instinct where this one had come from, and took it carelessly, conscious that the boy was staring critically at her with his prominent eyes. She turned it over as though doubtful of its origin. "It's from the young general," explained Howlie. Her disapproving face made him cover his mouth quickly with his hand as though the words had escaped from it unawares. It was an indescribably vulgar action. "Is there any answer?" she inquired. "Don't knaw," said Howlie shortly. "But did you ask?" "Naw; an' oi can't stop 'im now, no more nor if he was a lump o' dirt rowlin' down the hill." "But who was he?" she asked, with a wild thought that Harry might have brought the letter in person. "A man with a squintin' oye." She walked away from him, breaking the seal, and he returned to the kitchen, his tongue in his cheek; he was a Herefordshire boy who had only come to the place a few months before, but there was little he did not know, and he was well aware that the messenger lived one mile from Waterchurch Court. "Darling," the letter began, "I cannot help writing to you so soon, though I have not very much to tell. I have spoken to my father. I am afraid we may have some difficulties, but I have not had the chance of a serious talk with him yet, and I cannot quite tell you anything definite. But, whatever happens, I will _never, never_ give you up, and all will come right in the end, I know, if we are only true to each other. I will trust you, darling, be sure, and you know that I am always your devoted lover, "H. FENTON. "P.S.--Oh, Isoline, how I love you! How I wish we were sitting under the cherry-tree again!" She could not help being pleased with the letter, it rang so true; and for the moment, as Harry, honest and trusting, was brought more vividly before her by his written words, she sighed to think of the undeserved ill-turn her luck had played her. She was regretful as she thought how much he loved her. What a smart air he had! What a handsome, bright face! He seemed so proper a person--so like the husband she had pictured as a suitable one for herself, that it was almost a risk to sever herself from him. He was a man with whom any girl might be proud to show herself, and he would, socially, give her the place for which she felt fitted. The feeling was so strong that it went near to overwhelming her more prudent considerations. Might it not, after all, be better to throw in her lot with him? Though he could not give her the riches she had dreamed of before her uncle had shattered the dream, she would, as his wife, be somebody. But then, she would have to economize, to deny herself--do all the horrible things that Lady Harriet did, and there would be no going to London and entering the brilliant vista of balls, operas, and dinner-parties at which it had been her hope to shine. She had imagined her carriage surrounded by a circle of admirers, as were the carriages of the "fine ladies" she had read about, while she lay back on her cushions and listened to the hum of compliment with which the air would be filled. That would never be a reality if she married a poor man. A mere chance had brought such possibilities within her reach, but they had melted away--snares and delusions--leaving only a vision of drudgery and homeliness behind. Small wonder if she had wept. She had barely enjoyed an hour's possession of the ring Harry brought her, for it had lain in Mr. Lewis' desk since the evening before, when her lover had broken the news to him and heard his verdict. The Vicar would not allow his niece to wear it until Mr. Fenton's consent should formally ratify the engagement, and he had insisted upon its being returned. The young man had stoutly refused to take it back, and, by way of settling the difficulty, it had been sealed up in a little box and locked into the desk in which the parish money and one or two valuables were kept. It had been a bitter disappointment, and it was followed by a worse one. She wondered what her aunt in Hereford would think of her engagement, and believed that, were she beside her at present, she would exert herself much to prevent its being broken, her ambitions being more social than pecuniary. She was really very thankful that Miss Ridgeway was not at Crishowell, for the course she meant to take would be made far harder by the lady's presence. She looked upon the doctor who had postponed her return for several months as her own unconscious benefactor, and she cherished the hope of inducing Mr. Lewis to be silent so that her aunt might never know what had happened. She would consider Harry's proposal as a grand chance, and would not understand at how far too high a price that chance would have to be taken. There were troublous times in front of her she could not but suspect; Mr. Fenton might consent, and Harry would be by no means easy to deal with; but she had her uncle's word that money obstacles would be great, and on these she would take her stand with as much determination as she could show with propriety. It would have to be gone through, and the notion made her shudder. The gin of her own making might be closing round her, but, at all events, she would have one frantic leap for freedom before the teeth shut. The letter lay in her pocket, and she took it out and re-read it; its black and white page spread on her knee looked to her like some dangerous document binding her to the fate from which she so desired to flee. "Whatever happens I will _never, never_ give you up," it said. She went quickly down the orchard, and, standing by the brook, tore it into small pieces, parting her fingers widely and letting the fragments float outwards on the water. They were carried along, disappearing one after another in the little rapids between the stones. A wagtail, curtseying with its feet in the eddy, jumped up and twittered away into the green of the undergrowth with a parti-coloured flash of wings. She saw the last scrap of the letter turning a bend of the bank and sailing swiftly under the shadow of the footbridge, and then went back to the house with a sigh of relief, unconscious that Howlie's eyes were watching her attentively from the kitchen window. The boy drew a long breath of astonishment, and opened his mouth as he observed her action. He admired Harry greatly. CHAPTER XXV LLANGARTH FAIR THE generosity of those who admired the toll-keeper's excellent exit from this life had placed his daughter beyond the possibility of want. Public admiration, which, in like instances, will often display itself in ornamenting a memory that is already the most ornamental thing possible, had been leavened by the common-sense of the Vicar. He maintained that the plainest stone would be as efficient a background to the proud record it bore as the most expensive article ever turned out of a stone-cutter's yard. He also added that the sincerest homage offered to the dead would, in this case, be the care of the living. The gentlemen representing the district were impressed by the view he took, as men often are by the words of those who speak little, and though their wives, on hearing of the decision, sniffed and opined that any expenditure on the hussy would be a throwing away of good money, they decided to take his advice and to leave its carrying out in his hands. They thus had the agreeable experience of feeling broad-minded and saving themselves trouble in one and the same act; the situation had novelty as well as convenience, and they folded their hands upon their ample persons in easy after-dinner enjoyment of the good deed. Lady Harriet's was the one dissenting voice in the general female opinion. In this, as in most things, she was Mr. Lewis' warmest supporter, adding a private mite out of her slim purse; the peculiar horror of Mary's situation left no room in her mind for more creditable feelings. By the time Harry's love affair had come to a point, an arrangement had been made on her behalf. Eager to work for her living, she accepted the small provision made for her gratefully, while she assured her benefactors of her wish to help herself as far as she could for the future. She begged them to get her some decent work. The little board before whom she was summoned was impressed by the slender, firm creature, her gentle demeanour and sensible answers, as she stood in front of them and made her request. Afterwards, one member even tried to describe her to his wife, but the lady frowned him down, pointing to the freckled miss who crowned their union, and who now sat at her wool-work within earshot of the pair. But, in spite of the sneers and charges of infatuation for a pretty face brought against the gentlemen by their spouses, she obtained the interest she needed, and a place was found for her in a little greengrocer's shop at Llangarth. The owner, an old woman becoming rapidly infirm, wanted a girl to act as servant and saleswoman, offering a home and a small wage in return for the help. The Vicar, who was particular on the point, hid no part of Mary's history from her employer, but it was received without comment as too ordinary an occurrence to need notice. So one afternoon she started for the town, a bundle in her hand and her new life waiting a few miles in front. She walked along, a kind of reluctance clinging round her footsteps. The independent course she had asked for was near, but, now that she had launched herself, she felt internally cold. Her new employer was a stranger, and the friends she had just left seemed to be receding very far away. She looked mentally back on them, as a traveller ferrying across to an unfamiliar shore looks back at the faces on the brink. She could see the roofs of Llangarth appearing in the green and blue of the landscape, and the smoke curling among the trees. She paused and laid down her bundle, leaning against a gate. A path which was a short cut to the town from the uplands of Crishowell, ran, a wavy line through the clover and daisies, towards her halting-place; and, though a man's figure was coming along it, she was so much pre-occupied that she did not notice his approach. It was only when he stood not a yard from her that she moved aside to let him pass. The man was George Williams. Mary had thought many times of their parting, and, as the wound in her mind began to ache less and her agonizing sensitiveness to abate, her judgment grew straighter. She began to see that she had done George a wrong, misjudging his impulses, and she sincerely wished her words unsaid; but, being one of those souls to whom explanation is torture, she had made no sign. Even now, though she longed to set it right, she could find no voice for a moment. He passed her with an indistinct word. "George." He stopped immediately. "George, I treated you bad when I shut the door on you. I didn't understand. It's hard to do right," said Mary simply. "Then you bean't angry, Mary? Not now?" "No, no." Facing each other, there seemed nothing more to say. In their state of life there are no small embroideries round the main subject. "I'm going to Llangarth," said the girl, with a clumsy attempt at ending the episode. "So am I," said he. Looking down, he noticed her bundle, which he had almost rolled into the ditch as he opened the gate; the four corners were knotted in the middle, and under the knot was stuck a bunch of flowers--wallflower, ribes, and a couple of pheasant-eye narcissus. "Have you left the toll?" he asked, taking it up from the clump of nettles upon which it had fallen. She nodded. "I'll work for myself now." A pang of apprehension went through him. "Where are you going? You won't go further nor Llangarth, surely?" "I'm to help Mrs. Powell. Her that keeps the shop by the market. The Vicar of Crishowell knows her, and 'twas him got me the place. I'll do my best," added Mary, holding out her hand for the bundle; "let me go on, now." "I'll go with you a bit," said George. They took the road together, looking very much like a respectable young peasant family starting on a holiday, but for the fact that the man walked beside the woman, not in front of her, and that there was no baby. The ribes scented everything. Mary drew the nosegay from the bundle; she liked to keep it in her hand, for the touch and smell of something familiar was necessary to her as she stepped along towards her new world. After the solitary position of the Dipping-Pool, and her seclusion at the toll-house, Llangarth seemed nothing short of a metropolis. "I'll be coming into market, time an' again," began Williams, after a few minutes. "Would I see you, do you think? I have to go into the town for Mrs. Walters sometimes." He spoke without a trace of anxiety, but he had been longing and fearing to ask the question. "For Mrs. Walters?" "Yes," replied he, fixing his eyes on the road about a hundred yards ahead. "I'm working for her now at Great Masterhouse." Mary bit her lip. The news surprised her, and the sound of Rhys' name affected her as the word "gallows" might affect a reprieved man. "Of a Sunday," urged George, "I could step down to Llangarth and get a sight of you." She was silent. "But, perhaps you wouldn't like it. I wish you wasn't so set against me." "I'm not set against you." "But you don't like to see me." "I do; but----" "What's wrong wi' you, Mary? Speak out." "I'm feared of you, George." He swore under his breath. "Promise you won't ever speak like you did at the toll," she faltered, "not ever again." Williams set his lips; his short space of prosperity had raised his spirit, and he was no longer so much inclined to accept reverses as natural events. For some time he had earned good wages, and he was already beginning to lessen his debt to Mrs. Walters; in a short time it would no longer exist. He was a different being from the Pig-driver's sullen, dispirited servant. That hated bondage had crushed all the instincts of young manhood, and made him into a kind of machine for endurance. They now had freedom to rise in him, and he longed for a little joy beyond the mere joy of his release. He could not have framed it for himself, but he was craving for emotion, for femininity, for love, for children, for all that might be centred in the woman beside him. He picked up a stone and threw it smartly into the boughs of an elm-tree. It was a rebellious action. "I can't," he said shortly, "and I won't." "Then I can't see you any more. You were to stand by me that day when--after--at the river, but it's different now, it seems." "'Tis different. It's one thing or the other now. Oh! Mary, an' I would be good to you." For reply she quickened her pace. George struck at the bushes with the stick he carried. In spite of the good fortune of their meeting, in spite of the words that had set all right between them, they had slipped back into the old place. The sky had cleared indeed, but the clouds were rolling up again. They arrived at the outskirts of Llangarth without exchanging another word or looking at each other; the girl kept her head turned away, with that uncomfortable sensation that we all know when we do not wish to meet the eye of our neighbour, and feel, consequently, as if we had only one side to our faces. When a steep street branched down to the market, she put out her hand timidly for the bundle, but he took no notice of it, and where the pavement narrowed, he fell behind, so that he might look at her unabashed as she went on before him holding the cottage bouquet close. The town was unusually full, it being the day of a half-yearly fair, and Mary became almost bewildered by the stream of passers. Soon it grew clear that she had missed her way, and that the line she was following would eventually bring her out near the river, some way from her destination. George, who did not know the exact place for which she was making, kept behind; she tried to retrieve her mistake by a short cut, and, turning a corner, found herself in the very middle of the fair. The place was a moving mass of humanity; country boys with their awkward gait elbowing about among the trimmer townspeople, girls in their best head-gear, lingering in groups in the attractive vicinity of a double row of booths bisecting the crowd. A merry-go-round, whose shrill pipes and flags assailed both ear and eye, creaked on its ceaseless round of measured giddiness, and behind it a drum, high on a platform, was being beaten with a certain violent decorum, which announced that the action was no outcome of the performer's spirit, but part of a recognized scheme. Far away from it a rival was found in a Cheap Jack, who proclaimed the merits of bootlaces, tin-whistles, coloured ribbons, and a stack of inferior umbrellas propped against the rush-bottomed chair which formed alike his rostrum and his stronghold. His assistant stood before him, keeping back the dense ring which threatened to submerge him, and using one of the umbrellas for the purpose. The purely agricultural part of the fair had its stand on a piece of high ground, where some fat beasts with indifferent faces occupied a line of pens. In front of them James Bumpett sat in his cart surveying the exhibition. Farm-horses were being trotted up and down before possible buyers, the pig-jumps with which some of the young ones varied their paces driving the unwary back among their neighbours. Here and there a knot of drunken men rolled through the crowd, their passage marked by oaths emanating both from themselves and from those who were inconvenienced by them. Mary started at finding herself on the verge of such a tumult, and turned back to George. "This isn't the road I thought," she said, "I suppose I must have taken the wrong corner somewhere. I can't mind the name of the street, but it's nigh the market." "Then we can get across to it this way," answered Williams, beginning to make a passage through the crowd. "Keep you close to me." He shouldered a path through the human waves. It was a big fair, and the inhabitants of other towns had patronized it largely; one or two lounging youths with their hats on one side looked impertinently at Mary, who was made more conspicuous by the flowers she carried. She shrank closer to her companion; he drew her hand under his arm and they went forward. They passed the pens where the live stock were delighting the gaze of the initiated, and found themselves outside a kind of curtained platform, at either end of which was a large placard. To judge by these, all the most celebrated persons the earth contained were to be found behind the curtain, and would, when the showman had collected enough from the bystanders, be revealed to the public eye. The crowd was so thick in this place that George and Mary found it almost impossible to move, though they had no particular wish to see the Fat Woman, the Wild Indian, the Emperor of China, and all the other inspiring personalities who apparently dwelt in godly unity in the tent at the back of the stage. There was a great collecting of coppers going on, and the showman's hat having reached the fulness he expected, he sprang upon the platform and announced that the show was about to begin. "An' about toime too," observed the voice of Howlie Seaborne, who was in the foremost row of spectators; "oi thought them coppers would be moiking a fresh 'ole in the crown." For three months Howlie had kept Harry's gift intact; he had laid it carefully by, resisting any temptation to spend even a fraction, so that, when Llangarth Fair should come round, his cup of pleasure should be brimming. He had already laid a shilling out on a knife which he admired, but, in the main, he had gone down the row of booths casting withering looks on such wares as displeased him, occasionally taking up some article, and, after a careful examination, laying it down again with quiet contempt. Sweets were simply beneath his notice, and he passed the places in which they were displayed more insolently than any others. To him, the merry-go-round was foolishness, and those who trusted their persons astride of puce-coloured dragons and grass-green horses, fools; but the mysteries behind the curtain appealed to his curiosity. He now stood in the most desirable position amongst the audience waiting for the show to begin; on his right was a stout, high-nosed farmer's wife in a black silk bonnet. After a short disappearance the showman came forward carrying a stick with which he tapped the curtain. It flew up disclosing a stupendous lady in purple velveteen, with a wreath of scarlet wax camellias on her head. She was seated at a table. "Seenyora Louisa, a native of Italy! The stoutest female living!" bawled the showman. The lady blew a promiscuous kiss. "She will now sing an Italian song!" At this the lady rose and took a step forward, the stage shaking under her tread. She cleared her throat and began in a shrill treble, so disproportionate to her size that the effect was more startling than if she had roared aloud, as, indeed, one almost expected her to do. The song was evidently a translation. "I am far from my country alone, And my friends and my parents so true. From the land of my birth I have flown, And the faces around me are new! I weep and I sigh all the day, And dream of fair Italy's shore; How can I be lightsome and gay, When perchance I shall see it no more?" "Well, I never!" exclaimed the woman in the black silk bonnet, "pore thing! I always did say as I hated them furrin' countries, but I suppose them as is born in them is used to them." "Waft me, ye winds, to my home, Where my light skiff bounds on the wave; My heart is too weary to roam, And its rest is the wanderer's grave!" Here the exile turned her eyes upwards and sat thunderously down, a pocket-handkerchief at her face. "'Tis a bad case, pore lady," said the farmer's wife again. "_That_ ain't no loidy," remarked Howlie shortly. "Hold yer tongue, ye varmint," said the farmer's wife. For once in his life Howlie was nonplussed; chance had thrown him against one of the few people fitted to deal with him. He would have liked to make some suitable reply, but the eyes of his neighbour were fixed upon the stage from which Signora Louisa's chair was being removed. The curtain dropped. When it rose again the audience drew a long breath. A pasteboard rock, much the size of the Signora, filled the place where she had sat, and to it, by a rope, was attached a middle-aged woman, whose considerable good looks had departed, leaving a cloud of rouge behind. Her position seemed to have produced no sort of effect upon her, for her face was as placid as if she were at her own fireside. She looked not unlike a dog tied up outside a public-house and waiting for its master. She was enveloped in blue muslin, which stopped midway between knee and ankle, and left her arms and shoulders bare. "'Ere we 'ave the drama of St. George and the Dragon," announced the showman. "The Princess, forsook by all, waits 'er doom." "The hussy!" exclaimed the farmer's wife, turning severely on Howlie. "Go you home, boy, 'tis no place for decent folks. Princess, indeed! I'd Princess her." Howlie smiled and looked tolerantly at his enemy, but made no effort to move; had he wished to, he could hardly have done so, the crowd was so thick. Awful puffings and roarings proclaimed the approach of the Dragon, and the farmer's wife began to get nervous. Anything was to be expected from such a godless exhibition, and, in spite of a high nose and a strict moral attitude, her heart began to quake. As in the case of most women, fear made her angry. She took Howlie fiercely by the arm. "D'ye hear me, boy?" she cried. "Oi feel yew, anyhow," said he. The Dragon had now passed the wings of the stage, and his dire appearance was producing a great effect. The owner of the black silk bonnet turned and found herself confronted by George and Mary, who were wedged up in the row immediately behind her. "Help me out o' this, young man," she said authoritatively, but with a suspicious quaver in her voice. "I don't think much of that sort o' show, an' I don't think much of you, neither, letting your missus stand looking at loose sights." Mary turned crimson. "'Tis hard to get free of this maze o' folk," answered Williams. "I'm going to try it, howsomenever," continued the farmer's wife, "and you might lend me a hand if you be going too. My screwmatics is that bad that I can't shove about me as I'd like to." She looked resolutely round upon the crowd. "I'll do what I can," said George, beginning to push his way to a freer space. The whole concourse having its senses completely centred upon the Dragon it made but little resistance, and as long as its eyes might remain fixed on him, it hardly cared what became of the rest of its body. George's efforts were supplemented by those of the sturdy woman behind him, and they soon arrived at the outskirts of the fair. "Thank ye," she said, as she mopped her shining forehead; "just you take that young missus o' yours home. She's dead tired, I can see that, pore lass." And she left them. George walked with his companion to the door of her new home and parted from her. He asked her again to let him go to see her now and then. She hesitated, and finally said yes. CHAPTER XXVI HOWLIE AND LLEWELLYN UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER HOWLIE SEABORNE, who liked to get his money's worth out of things, was anxious to see the performance through. He did not pay his neighbour of the black silk bonnet so much as the tribute of a glance as she pushed her way out behind the ex-sheep-stealer. He had still a respectable amount of coppers in his pocket, and while this held out, he had no thoughts of going home. The spectacle was assuming a very spirited character, for the blue muslin victim was beginning to realize her situation and the Dragon to writhe horribly. Popular interest was consequently rising to high-water-mark. Behind the stage St. George had mounted a spare-looking pony and was drawing a pasteboard sword. Bloodshed, in the spectators' opinion, was the only thing left to be desired. Just behind Howlie stood two men who had been busy in the same part of the fair as Bumpett, and were now stopping for a minute to cast amused eyes on the realistic splendours of St. George. Squire Fenton and Llewellyn had finished their business and were on their way to the Bell Inn, where they had left their gig, but the hisses of the reptile gaping on the stage made them pause to see the end of the drama. Both recognized Howlie, for he had become something of a celebrity since the Rebecca riot, and they had also seen him at Crishowell Vicarage. The hoofs of the Saint's steed were to be heard clattering on the slanting board up which he had to ride to the platform, for the spare-looking pony was new to the work and seemed disinclined to go on. He had been borrowed to replace another animal which was sick and could not appear in the scene, and his rider, who, in a rough way, was something of a horseman, had to use a good deal of persuasion. At last, after some difficulty, he rode triumphantly forward to where the Dragon breathed forth fire and slaughter. The Dragon, like many of us, was made of different stuff inside from what one might have supposed. His interior was nothing less than two small boys, one of whom formed his head and fore-parts, while the other represented his tail; they were enclosed in padded straw covered with sacking roughly painted to represent scales, and the front boy had a little store of squibs and crackers which he fired out of the monster's mouth as he went along. After being persuaded to get upon the stage, the pony moved forward a few steps, while his rider waved his sword, challenging the reptile loudly and advancing past the Princess to meet him. As soon as they came close together a perfect volcano of squibs flew out in the astonished beast's face, and he reared up so suddenly that the Saint, who was lunging at his foe, almost lost his balance. The sword stuck in a crevice of the Dragon's hide, and, though the blade was pasteboard, the stuff, being rotten, was ripped open, and a great patch of straw bulged out. Mr. Fenton and Llewellyn laughed, but the audience, which had little sense of incongruity, was as serious as ever. The Dragon, pleased to his inmost parts by his success, blew out another shower. One red spark settled on the straw, then another, and another. There was a crackle, an exclamation; the pony turned and jumped off the low platform into the middle of the people, depositing its rider at their feet, and the terrible scream of childish agony rose from the two poor little prisoners in their shroud of living flame. Women shrieked, the men made inarticulate noises and stared open-eyed. One or two moved in the irresolution of stupidity. The Squire caught at his son's arm, unconsciously revealing that dependence of which he had never been suspected. But there was none to read the sign. Before any one could make up his mind what to do, Llewellyn Fenton had bounded on to the platform and was stooping over the blazing mass that writhed upon the boards, tearing with his strong hands a great opening in the fore-part of the Dragon. The smoke was blinding, and the oil and paint which coated the sacking gave substance to the flames. He had got fast hold of one of the boys and was dragging him free; through the reek he could see that his face was uninjured. But the fire was spreading its venomous tongues down towards the tail which contained another human life. One cannot do two things at once. He looked round in desperation and saw Howlie's rabbit face at his side. "Tear it open!" he cried. "Tear it open!" A fresh burst of flame was blowing in his eyes. The boy he had rescued was on his feet, but the fire had caught his shirt and he was trying to break away in the madness of his terror. By this time Mr. Fenton had come close to the stage; he pulled off the thick coat he wore and tossed it up to Llewellyn. The young man smothered the child in its close folds, throwing him down and rolling him over as though he were fighting with a wild beast. The boy who played the other half of the Dragon was almost safe, thanks to Howlie's efforts. He had broken out of his prison uninjured and was free, all but one leg which was held fast. In order that the monster might lash its tail properly there was a curious arrangement of steel wire at the point at which it began to narrow, and in this the victim's foot had caught. The fire was approaching it and his cries increased; his struggles were pitiful to see. As Llewellyn had prevailed and was supporting one boy, more frightened than hurt, the crowd's horrified attention was now fixed on the other. It did not notice Howlie Seaborne, whose arms were plunged up to the elbows in the Dragon's carcase. In each hand he grasped a piece of the steel-trap which he was forcing doggedly apart. His face was growing grey and his eyes stared; for almost the first time in his life his mouth was shut. This was because he was grinding his teeth together. The thing which takes so many words to say had happened all in a moment, and St. George had barely had time to extricate himself from his stirrup and to run behind the scenes. He now returned with a bucket of water, which he held upside down over the burning tail just as Howlie had bent the wires enough to set the prisoner free. The water hissed and the steam rose in a column. A few people from the crowd had come up and pressed in a little circle round the two children; the blue muslin lady was weeping tempestuously. The showman, in his costume of St. George, began, with Mr. Fenton, to examine the burnt foot. The boy was crying with pain, but the injuries did not seem extensive. "Well done, boy!" said Llewellyn, as he came up to Howlie, very white and smelling dreadfully of smoke. The words raised a ghost of the vertical smile, but it faded so strangely that he looked down lower than the rabbit face. "My God!" he cried, as he saw the arms and hands. The circle of onlookers turned round, and Mr. Fenton made an exclamation. "Is it very bad?" he asked with some futility. "Moight be worse, a' suppose," replied Howlie, as he fainted into Llewellyn's arms. The little group was becoming the centre of a dense mass. People who stood in their places while they might have been of some use, now thrust their bodies between the fresh air and those who needed it, after the manner of crowds. It was very evident that, of the two sufferers, Howlie was the worst; pain was bringing him again to consciousness, and he lay back against Mr. Fenton's shoulder, his face looking strangely unfamiliar; nothing seemed to remain the same but a certain stubbornness. Llewellyn was on his way to fetch his father's gig, and, as he went, he pulled off the fragments of the dogskin driving-gloves which he had, by good fortune, been wearing when the accident occurred. A man was dispatched to the nearest doctor's house. The Squire adjured the bystanders to summon the police, a request of which they naturally took no count, being disinclined to have themselves dispersed. Two or three talked about the Infirmary. Howlie's eyes sought the Squire's. "What is it, my boy?" said he. "Toike me 'ome to Parson's," said Howlie faintly. "Ah, the Infirmary; that be the place for he," chimed in a man who had lately refused to go there himself when a drunken fight had laid his head open. The eyes kept their direction and the lips moved. On his way back Llewellyn overtook the doctor, and the two drove up together. Howlie's hands and arms were temporarily dressed; the left one was in such a state that the doctor feared it would be permanently useless; he hoped, he said, to save the use of the other. He was young and shy, and he timidly suggested that the people were pressing too near. The sufferer had fainted again. The showman and Llewellyn simply threw one or two off the platform. The act was sudden and had a good effect. Soon the world came back to Howlie--a world of agony. Llewellyn bent down to him in answer to an unspoken prayer. "Parson's, Parson's," murmured the boy. "What is it? What does he want, father?" asked Llewellyn, pity in every line of his strong face. "Poor little fellow, he wants to go back to Crishowell instead of to the Infirmary." The dumb look grew more intense. Mr. Fenton seemed irresolute. "Parson's, sir, Parson's." Tears which the pain had not brought were starting from Howlie's eyes. "What will Lewis say? Llewellyn, do you hear?" said the Squire. There was a pause. The blue muslin princess, who had left the platform, was being consoled by Signora Louisa inside the tent; their high-pitched chatter flowed like a thin stream behind the canvas. "Eh, Llewellyn? Can't you answer?" said Mr. Fenton testily. "Take him, father." "But Lewis?" "I'll go bail for him," replied his son. "But who's to look after him? Who's to sit up with him? He'll want that, doctor, won't he?" "He will," said the doctor gravely. Howlie's eyes spoke again. "I shall," said Llewellyn. "Father, you can spare me." "Yes, yes. It isn't that. But where are you to live, I should like to know? Lewis' house must be full." "Anywhere. The stable," replied his son, with decision. "Nonsense, boy." "You had better get him away," hazarded the doctor; "the sooner he's in bed the better." With infinite gentleness, Llewellyn lifted Howlie and carried him to the gig. "You must drive, father," he remarked. A gig is not a comfortable vehicle in which to carry an injured person, and Llewellyn, who had no support for his back, had great difficulty in keeping his charge from being shaken as they drove over the cobbled streets. Howlie lay still, but he moaned faintly now and then, and it was evident that he suffered much. Llewellyn's arms ached, one side of his face was smeared with black, and his throat was sore from the smoke; a round blister just inside his wrist which he had not noticed before began to make itself felt, and the boy's weight seemed to rest exactly upon the spot. He made landmarks as they went, and mentally checked off each as it passed. "The crooked elm," "the turning to Brecon," "the bridge," "the laburnum tree," and so on. His father talked continually about the folly of his staying at Crishowell to nurse Howlie, but he trusted to silence, that mighty weapon which so few of us are strong enough to wield. His mind was made up, and he knew that the Vicar would uphold him. "It's very tiresome of you, Llewellyn, going against me in this way. What am I to do, I should like to know? I haven't any one to see to the little things I chance to forget. Harry's at home, certainly, but what use is he?" "Harry's no fool," replied his son, moved to speech by this. "I'm not so sure, with this senseless business about Miss Ridgeway. It's all nonsense, I know," said the Squire, who was apt to treat things he disliked as if they had not occurred, "but he came bothering me about it a couple of days ago. I told him I hadn't time to talk to him, and I haven't said a word to your mother yet. I suppose _you_ know all about it?" "I thought it might happen," admitted Llewellyn. "Then you should have told me," said Mr. Fenton, with that forgetfulness of the unwritten code of youth which comes to so many when they have left it behind. "You and Harry give me more trouble in a year than Tom and Bob have in all their lives." For a man of recognized good character the Squire told a wonderful number of untruths. His son smiled, but not obviously. "Surely this niece can look after him," he continued, looking down at Howlie. Llewellyn shook his head; his trust in Isoline was small. He had sat up many nights with sick cows and horses and he knew what it was like. "And why not, pray?" "Oh, she's not strong enough. She's very young, father." "And what are you, eh?" "Well, I'm a man, at least," said Llewellyn. "A man!" Mr. Fenton snorted sarcastically. There was room for sarcasm, certainly, only he saw it in the wrong place. They had passed the church and were driving up to the Vicarage gate. Mr. Lewis was standing with Isoline in the garden, while a man put up some bee-hives on a wooden trestle. That suggestiveness which surrounds a wounded figure drew his eyes to the limp-looking bundle Llewellyn held so carefully. He came forward quickly and opened the gate. "There has been an accident," said Mr. Fenton. "It's your boy--the boy that works here." "He's badly burnt," explained Llewellyn. Isoline had gone into the house when she had seen who the arrivals were. "Howell, my poor lad!" exclaimed the Vicar, coming up close to the cart. "Is he conscious?" Howlie's voice muttered something indistinguishable. "I don't know what you'll say, Lewis. He _would_ come here. Llewellyn is responsible," said the Squire. "Of course we will take him. How are we to get him down, Llewellyn?" "He's rather heavy," said the young man, whose arms were stiff, "but if you would hold him while I get out, father, I might lift him." The workman left his bee-hives, and between them they carried the sufferer in. Isoline, out of sight, watched them from over the staircase with horror in her face. Physical pain was a thing she could understand. After some discussion, it was settled that Llewellyn should stay and take charge of Howlie; he would take no denial, and Mr. Fenton had to give in. The boy was to have a bed in a large spare room behind the kitchen, and Llewellyn a mattress on the floor near him. Mr. Lewis made no remonstrance when he saw how his eyes followed the young man. "I'll take care of him entirely," said Llewellyn; "you need have no trouble, sir. I've looked after sick things often enough. You won't mind letting me stay a day or two?" "I should even like it," replied the Vicar, laying his hand on his shoulder. The cook was making things ready to get Howlie to bed, and Mr. Fenton was anxious to start for home; it was long past noon, and he had to send his son's things over from Waterchurch. The doctor, who was coming out to Crishowell, was to call late in the afternoon. Isoline kept herself carefully out of the way; a meeting with Mr. Fenton would be extremely awkward, and she had no desire to see Llewellyn at any time. Her uncle felt sorry for her, though he mentally applauded her good sense in remaining up-stairs, and he slipped away for a moment to tell her what had happened. She was sitting by the window of her room as he entered, looking rather worried; anything was unwelcome which recalled to her the entanglement of which she longed so heartily to be free. The gig stood outside at the end of the garden; it was by no means new, and though the Squire looked carefully after everything connected with the stable, it was a shabby article. Her glance wandered over it with distaste. She was startled by his entrance, half fearing that he had come to summon her to an interview with Mr. Fenton. She wanted time to think. She had not made up her mind whether she would see Harry again, or write to him, or whether she would ask her uncle to tell him of her decision. The latter course would be the pleasantest of the three, but there were difficulties even there. The way Mr. Lewis had taken the matter had complicated it. He had seemed unable to imagine that an accurate knowledge of Harry's prospects could make any difference to her feelings, and if her lover should wring a consent from his father, there would be nothing she could do short of breaking with him on her own initiative. She would be able to give no reason but the real one, and that she hardly liked to do. She dared not say, "I thought you were rich, but I find you are poor, so I will not marry you." Her uncle might certainly make the objection for her with some propriety, but how was she to ask him to do so? Though she had no love for him, a certain respect had crept into her secret soul which made her hesitate to lay it bare before his eyes; he took too much for granted. She knew that her deliverance lay in the Squire's probable disapproval, and that disapproval would make a suitable meekness becoming in herself. Meanwhile she would neither see Harry nor any one belonging to him. But it was all harassing enough. Her heart jumped as the Vicar came in. "You may be wondering what has happened, Isoline. Poor Howell has had a dreadful accident. It seems there was a play going on at Llangarth Fair, and something caught fire; Llewellyn Fenton and he put it out together, and saved the lives of two children. Howell's hands and arms are badly burnt, brave boy that he is." "Fancy Howell doing that! I should never have believed it of him," exclaimed the girl, whose estimate of human nature was entirely feminine. To dislike a person was to prove him incapable of a high action. "Mr. Fenton will be gone in a few minutes. It is wise of you, my dear, to stay in your room. You are a good girl." She did not reply, but looked out of the window. The Vicar felt rather chilled. "You are all right up here?" he asked awkwardly. "Yes, thank you." He went out. At the foot of the stairs stood the Squire, hat in hand. "I'm off, Lewis; it's getting late," he said. "You don't want any talk with me?" asked the Vicar, rather surprised. "I do, I do--but I will write," said Mr. Fenton, as he opened the front door hurriedly. CHAPTER XXVII FOUR OPINIONS THOUGH Mr. Fenton had told the Vicar of Crishowell that he would write to him, he was in no hurry to do so. Harry's love affair was a nuisance, and he put off the consideration of it for a week, merely looking askance upon his son when he came across him. To his wife he observed that Harry was making an ass of himself, and it was not till she insisted on his telling her everything he knew that the matter was discussed. Lady Harriet was dismayed; she had hitherto understood her eldest son so well that his evident admiration of Miss Ridgeway had not disturbed her, for she classed her with the thousand and one other goddesses who had shed their glamour upon him at various times during the last ten years. They made a long procession, beginning with the little girls he had admired in his early school days. His safeguard, so far, had been that no one had taken him seriously. But now he had apparently proposed to and been accepted by a young woman who knew extremely well what she was about, and one, moreover, whom his mother, with all her good sense and tolerance, had not been able to like. Putting aside the fact that she was anything but a good match for Harry, she knew that the whole atmosphere of Isoline's world was a lower one than that in which he lived. He was a man who, with the right woman, might develop much, and, with the wrong one, deteriorate as much. He was generous, loyal to a fault, and eminently lovable. He was so affectionate that disenchantment by the woman he loved would make him suffer acutely, and he had not hardness of character enough to be able to make himself a life apart from that of his daily companions. Sorrow warps natures that have no pivot other than their own feelings; the centre is within themselves and all the weight comes upon it. And what sorrow is there more grinding than the knowledge that what we loved was a mean thing, what we admired, an unworthy one, what we dreamed about, a poor and squalid shadow? There are small disenchantments in all married lives, but those who have learned to look at the whole and not at its part know their true value. The proverb says, "Straws show which way the wind blows," and, like many proverbs, it is a half-truth. Some are merely rough receipts for wisdom, made to save fools the trouble of thinking for themselves. Though small acts undeniably give clues to many things in men and women's natures, men and women cannot be judged on their evidence alone. So much goes to determine a deed beside the actual character behind it. When a man behaves unexpectedly, we call him inconsistent, because every influence which has converged on his act does not happen to tally with our private, preconceived idea of himself. But it is not so much his inconsistency as our own ignorance of things which none know clearly but the Almighty. It is the essence, the atmosphere which a character radiates, the effect it produces in those who come in close enough contact to be influenced by it, whereby a soul can be judged. But even had he not been so much in love, Harry was far too elementary to judge Isoline rightly or wrongly; it had never occurred to him to look down very deep into the well where Truth sits, and, had he done so, he would have understood little he saw. He would be elementary to the end of his days, and the elements were all good. Whether they would remain so with Isoline as an interpreter of life, his mother doubted. The Squire, when he had brought himself to face the matter, raged immoderately, and his rage had the common effect of driving his son farther than ever along the way in which he did not want him to go. They had a difficult interview, from which the young man emerged with the stormy assurance ringing in his ears that he would get nothing more than his ordinary allowance, and that, were he to marry without his father's consent, even that would be reduced. He had spoken of getting work to do, and been answered by a sneer which certainly came ill from a man who had refused to give his son a profession. They parted wrathfully. From the smoking-room in which they had met (it was after dinner) Mr. Fenton went up to bed. Their talk had been late and continued long, and the house was still as he ascended the staircase with his lighted candle; the storm in him was subsiding into a mist of irritation through which flying glimpses of other interests began to appear. By the time he had reached his wife's bedroom door his thoughts were circling round a speech he had mapped out in the afternoon and meant to deliver at a coming tenants' dinner. The Squire could never be driven far from his personal interests, a peculiarity which was at once his strong point and his weak one. People who make houses for themselves and live in them perpetually are among the happiest of mortals; the only drawback to their plan is, that, when they are obliged to come out, they find they have lost their eye for the country and all sense of proportion in the landscape which they are accustomed to see only from the window. Oh, that sense of proportion! If we had it completely what things might we not do? To what heights of worth and wisdom might we not attain? The man who could get a bird's-eye view of his own conduct would have no further excuse for missing perfection. Lady Harriet's door was ajar and she pushed it further open as she heard his step; she knew what had been going on, and was waiting. He had not meant to plunge himself again in the obnoxious subject, and a look of impatience crossed his face. She stood on the threshold, brush in hand, her silver hair falling long and thick about her plain figure; the glow of the fire behind her in the room threw up its brilliance. He entered, and they stood together on the hearth. He began to lash himself up into wrath again. "Well?" began his wife anxiously. "Your son is a perfect fool!" burst out Mr. Fenton, who, when displeased with his boys, was accustomed to refer to them as exclusively Lady Harriet's property. She plied her brush, waiting. "I did not mince matters, you may be sure. I told him my opinion of him and his nonsense, and with a few facts to back it. He won't get one extra sixpence from me--where is it to come from, I should like to know? You know that as well as I do. Young idiot! I said, 'Look here, boy, mind me. You make a fool of yourself about this girl and marry her without my consent, and I'll draw a cheque every New Year's Day for fifty pounds. That's all you'll get from me!'" He paused. "And what did Harry say?" inquired Lady Harriet. "Say? What should he say? Some rubbish about getting work. Work indeed! I should like to see Harry work. I laughed at that. 'My dear young man,' I said, 'you aren't fit to work; you've been an idler all your life. What you boys are coming to, _I_ don't know.'" "I sometimes think," said his wife reflectively, "that perhaps you made a mistake when you would not let him go into the army, Edward." "Pshaw! What nonsense! Really, one might think you were on his side." "I dislike Miss Ridgeway, and should dislike beyond all to see him married to her. Have you written to Mr. Lewis?" "Why should I write to Lewis?" "You said you meant to," replied she. "How can I write? I can't say to Lewis, 'Your niece is not good enough,' can I?" "There is nothing of that sort necessary. The money question alone is sufficient. Why not write to-morrow, Edward? We ought to do something." "I must go to Presteign to-morrow. I shall have no time for letters. I think it would be the best plan if you went over to Crishowell in the phaëton, for then you could see Lewis yourself. Yes, that will do very well." And Mr. Fenton took up his candle and went into his dressing-room. While her husband was on his way to Presteign next day Lady Harriet ordered the phaëton. In more prosperous days this vehicle had run behind a pair of well-matched fourteen-hand grey ponies, but these had been swept away along with many other things on the tide of economy, and a strong, elderly cob, accustomed to odd jobs, replaced them. The old servant who sat behind was thinking much of these departed glories as they trotted along, and wondered, noticing the care on his mistress' face, whether she was remembering them too. But it was the future that weighed on her rather than the past. She did not look forward to her errand, and the feeling that it was not hers by right made it all the more disagreeable. She stayed herself up by thinking that with no one could she enter on a difficult subject so well as with the Vicar. Her sincere hope was that she would not be called upon to see Isoline. Though she was so completely out of sympathy with her, she had that pity for the struggles, the hopes, the blank, black despairs of youth, the desperate straits of those who stand _in front_ of the defences of experience, that she dreaded the trouble she was bringing her. Poor though these defences are, the young have to do without them. We are apt to forget that. But she might have spared herself. Llewellyn was still at Crishowell. Howlie was making steps towards recovery, but he had suffered cruelly and was very weak, and though the doctor thought better of his injuries than he had done at first, hoping to save the use of both his hands, it was a slow business. His dependence on Llewellyn was absolute, and the old woman who came in daily from the village to keep the sick boy's room in order being useless for any other purpose, the Vicar wondered what he should have done without him. Isoline had been down once or twice to see Howlie, but her visits had scarcely been profitable. As he began to get some relief from pain his usual nature also began to re-assert itself, and the expression which flitted on his face as he stared at her--which he always did--gave her a sensation of not being appreciated. It was during one of these visits that the wheels of Lady Harriet's phaëton were heard stopping at the gate, and Llewellyn, who had gone to look out, put his head in at the door. The slim, white figure sitting very upright by the bed turned in inquiry. "It is my mother," said Llewellyn. "You would like to see her, Howlie, wouldn't you? She is sure to come down." He disappeared in the direction of Lady Harriet's voice. Isoline made good her escape and slipped out through the kitchen and up into her room, her face flushing. She knew very well that her uncle had been expecting a letter from Mr. Fenton daily, and would not let his visitor go without reference to it; he had been rather annoyed by the silence. She would not be dragged into it if she could help it, and, as she was unable to act until the Squire's decision had been heard, there was no object in facing a needless trial. She snatched up her hat and ran down-stairs, across the orchard, down by the brookside and over the bridge. On it she paused a moment, then, reflecting that she was barely out of earshot, turned up into the fields through which Harry had chased Rebecca. Lady Harriet had quick feelings, and they were always stirred by acts such as the one which had cost poor Howlie so much. She sat with him for some time, leaving behind her, when she went, a basket of things the like of which he had never tasted. He made an attempt to put up his hand to his forelock, which resulted in a twinge of pain. The Vicar was waiting for her outside, and they strolled into the garden. "Perhaps you have something to say to me, Lady Harriet," he remarked. "Yes," she replied. "My husband had business to-day, and he and I--he couldn't come himself. Mr. Lewis, I hope you will not be annoyed at my news, but this marriage is impossible. You know, I am sure, that we are anything but well off, and he says he cannot afford to do anything for Harry." "I know, I know," said the Vicar. "I am very sorry," she went on, "sorry if I am hurting you, my friend, sorry for my boy, for he seems bent upon it, and sorry for your niece too." "Do not think of me," said he, "and do not suppose that I cannot understand Mr. Fenton's feelings. You have every right to expect Harry to make a much better marriage; and, even were it not so, I cannot quite feel that they are suited. I sometimes doubt if they would be happy." "Will she be very much distressed?" inquired Lady Harriet. "I know her so little. But one hates to give pain to people, especially young people who hope so much from life." "I hardly know her better than you do, that is the truth." "She seems a very unlikely niece for you to have," said his companion, after a pause. Mr. Lewis smiled. "I very often do not understand her," he said, with a sigh. "Do you think I ought to see her?" hazarded she, throwing herself upon the point she dreaded; "it seems so unkind not to say a word to her. What shall I do?" She stopped short in their walk. The Vicar did not know what to say. He had been unable to get any response to his own sympathy when Isoline had wept at breakfast, but he thought that perhaps another woman might help her when he could not. Then he remembered that she had said she did not care for Lady Harriet. He was puzzled. "I will find her," he said, "but if she feels she cannot speak about it, you will understand, will you not?" "Poor child, of course. If you knew how I hate this, Mr. Lewis!" He went into the house and she returned to Howlie's room. Isoline was not to be found anywhere. He went all over the Vicarage, into the orchard, down to the brook, and, finally, gave up the search. "I do not know where Isoline is," said he, as he stood by Howlie's bedside. "I have looked everywhere." The window fronted towards the water and the fields; the sill was low and Howlie could see over it into the green beyond. "Oi seed 'er 'alf-an-hour ago," said he, "slinkin' out an' up into they meadows. Goin' fast she was too, for 'er." "Are you sure it was Miss Ridgeway?" inquired the Vicar. "S'pose oi am. There ain't many round 'ere 'as theire noses in the air loike miss." Llewellyn bit his lip. "She has evidently gone off for a long walk," explained Mr. Lewis, rather embarrassed. "She has taken to it so much since she has been here, and I have encouraged it." "It is such a great thing when girls like it," responded Lady Harriet, anxious to say something pleasant; "I have always thought they are kept too much in the house." She was so much relieved that she could have given thanks to Heaven aloud. "It's a funny thing miss didn't want to see the loidy," observed Howlie to Llewellyn after the phaëton had rolled away. Since his illness he had become very much at home with the young man. "Does she like visitors?" inquired Llewellyn, with a view of drawing him out. "She don't like yew," said Howlie. "How do you know?" Howlie looked infinitely subtle, as subtle as a person with a rabbit mouth can look--but took no notice of the question. "She loikes the young general, though." "Who?" asked his companion, with much interest. "Yewre brother. 'Im as is with the soljers an' comes 'ere now an' again. Oi saw them coming down the fields the other day. They'd been sitting up by the cherry-tree. 'E was lookin' at 'er soime as father looks at a jug o' beer after e's dug six foot of a groive." "You talk too much, boy," observed Llewellyn, with an attempt at dignity. "Oi don't, mostly. But oi 'aven't no objection to talkin' to yew," said Howlie reassuringly. "Miss is a rare one," he began again, "can't moike nothin' out of 'er. One day she'll be off walkin' an' not get 'ome till dark an' long after. 'Nother day, if Parson do call 'er to come out i' the orchard, she'll go steppin' loike a turkey i' the long grass. 'Froid of 'er dress, looks loike, an' yet oi've seed 'er come back with 'er petticoats scram-full o' broiers an' mud." "Well, she knows her own business best and it's none of ours," said Llewellyn, inwardly curious and outwardly correct. "Yewre roight there. She knows 'er own moind, she does. Moy! she was pleased when she went wi' Parson to Waterchurch, an' yew should a' seen 'er when she come back, too. Nothin' weren't good enough for 'er. Ye'd a' thought the 'ouse was a work'ouse, an' me an' cook an' Parson was the paupers in it, she was that 'oigh wi' us." Llewellyn turned his back. He did not want to laugh, yet his mouth widened in spite of him. "Now, stop talking," he said, "you've had enough excitement to-day and you'll get tired." "She's after the young general," added Howlie coarsely. But his information was not up to date. CHAPTER XXVIII A MARTYR ISOLINE was panting when she arrived at the top of the field behind Crishowell Vicarage. She sat for a time to rest, looking down at the cherry-tree whose blossoms were beginning to strew the grass beneath it. It was a still day and she could hear her uncle's voice calling her name from the orchard. She rose and flitted along the hedge like a wild bird. Before her, the Twmpa's shoulder rose out of the green plateau, restful and solid. Even to her unresponsive mind it suggested peace and a contrast to the worries on which she had just turned her back. The whole afternoon was before her; she needed no excuse for absenting herself. Had the Vicar not applauded her for remaining unseen when Mr. Fenton had appeared the week before? Lady Harriet would start for home fairly early if she wished to get to Waterchurch by a reasonable hour, and she knew that her uncle had visits that would take him out as soon as the guest had left. The day was her own and the Pedlar's Stone was over there in its place a couple of miles away; as the sun declined the little hollow below the sheltering brushwood would have its waiting, watching occupant. It was Wednesday, too, which, inasmuch as it was one of Mr. Lewis' visiting days in the direction of the Wye, she often spent at the trysting-place. She was harassed, and she felt that Rhys would put her troubles temporarily out of her head. She lingered on the plateau, scanning the long expanse of green for sign of a human figure, and, seeing none, pressed forward, and turned down into the ill-famed bit of ground. She passed the stone and approached the little hollow from a different direction, stepping so softly on the short turf that Rhys did not hear her footstep. She stood looking down. His back was turned to her as he sat, and he was gazing intently at something in his hand. While she looked he carried it to his lips again and again. As he did so she made a slight movement. He sprang up, and seeing her, dropped his treasure, and came up the side of the hollow to meet her. She recognized a little daguerreotype of herself that she had once given him. "Is that the way you treat my picture, Mr. Kent?" she exclaimed, the little playful gaiety which so attracted him returning to her with his presence. "Don't say, 'Mr. Kent.' Why will you never call me by my name?" said Rhys. "I do not know it, you see." "I mean my Christian name, Rh----Robert." She looked at him smiling, without answering; he gazed back at her, feasting his eyes. "Well, what have you to say?" said she at last. "I love you," said he. "But you have told me that many, many times before," she observed. "I am never tired of telling you, Isoline." "Perhaps I am tired of hearing it." "But you can't really hate it, or you would not come," he replied without tact. "Do not be too sure. You cannot even guess what made me come to-day." "Tell me." It always pleased Isoline to see how completely she could work upon Rhys; the very name of another man on her lips was poison to him. Also she was really perturbed herself and felt that sympathy would be supporting. "I have been very much disturbed," she began; "a gentleman has asked me to marry him." Rhys felt as if some one had taken up an arrow and shot it straight into his heart. The stab was almost physical. "Who is it?" he asked thickly. "Do not look so wild. It is young Mr. Fenton of Waterchurch Court." His lips were trying to frame a question, but he had not the courage to utter it. She smiled. "I do not mean to marry him." For answer he caught her hand and covered it with kisses. "Please stop!" she cried, "or I cannot tell you anything. Do be reasonable, Mr. Kent!" "You will not marry him! You cannot! Oh, Isoline, promise me! promise me! Do not take away your hand. I will not let you go till you say you do not care for him." "Have I not told you that I mean to refuse him?" "What? You have not done it yet?" cried Rhys, "and you said he had asked you! What have you done? What have you done?" Isoline was a little ruffled; there was so much she wished to tell him and so much that she dared not tell him, that she was finding it difficult to steer between the two. "He asked my uncle," she said hastily. "What did he say to him?" "Oh, my uncle wishes me to do as I like, and, of course, I could not think of it. He is so poor that he never should have dreamed of such a thing." "Poor devil, I suppose he could not help it," said Rhys, feeling almost kindly towards Harry now that he knew there was no danger. It is difficult to imagine what Walters proposed to himself in the future, or how far he looked beyond the actual present. His higher imagination once awakened, he attributed to Isoline every high quality, and, like Harry, he mistook her inability to respond to emotion for an intense purity of mind. So did he worship her, so far did he deem her above him in every virtue, that she was as safe with him in this lonely place as if she had been in the sitting-room of her uncle's house. What could be the end he scarcely allowed himself to think. Even were he at home, reinstated, he could not suppose that she would stoop down to him, and as he was a penniless outcast, with no prospect of anything but exile at best, his position was hopeless. Every day that he stayed where he was he risked the little that was left him, but he barely thought of that; he only knew that separation from her would mean shipwreck. In spite of the airs of sophistication she gave herself, Isoline was very innocent of the forces that actually sway mankind. Shrewdness she had, and a very distinct determination to further her own interests, but her knowledge was what might be called a drawing-room knowledge; it had no cognizance of the larger things of life. Her dreams began and ended with visions of new dresses, good position, power in small ways, admiration--still of a drawing-room sort--and little likes and dislikes. Of large hates and loves and hopes, abstract principles, of the only things to be dignified by the name of real life, she had no idea. Natures like hers are more safely guarded from the greater temptations than are the salt of the earth, for these may fall and rise again higher, but, for such as Isoline, there is neither rising nor falling. It was seldom that her life had presented such a difficulty to her as it did now. She was certain that Harry would make a determined effort to see her, and she would give a great deal to be spared the ordeal. She had eluded his father and to-day she had eluded his mother, but she thought, rightly enough, that it would be a much more difficult thing to elude him. Had her aunt been in Hereford she would have begged to be allowed to return to her, but Miss Ridgeway's health had not improved, and, a few days before, she had received the news that her stay abroad would be indefinite. There was one friend in the city from whom she might ask the favour of a refuge, and she had made up her mind, as she pursued her way to the meeting-place, to suggest the plan to her uncle, and, with his permission, leave Crishowell for a time. If this could be settled she would depart as soon as her friend could take her. Harry's proximity had once made the place endurable, but now that it had become an actual disadvantage, she was only too ready to go. She would be glad to get back for a little to the diversions and society of a town. There would be no mysterious admirer to amuse her, but in all probability she would see Rhys again on her return, and even if she did not--well, it would not make so very much difference. She was beginning to be a little embarrassed by his demonstrative devotion, and his clothes had looked so shabby of late, that the possibilities with which she had endowed him at first were fading into the commonplace. Hereford would be a relief. She was a good deal disenchanted with things generally. They parted that evening only a few paces from the stone. The days were long and light now, and he could not go with her more than a few yards from its neighbourhood as he had been wont to do in early spring. It was only as they said good-bye that she told him of her possible departure. Poor Rhys, it was a blow; but the thought that it was struck to escape Harry's importunities softened it a great deal. Her absence would not be a long one, she assured him, so he let her go with a sigh and went back to his hiding-place in the hollow. Isoline hurried along homewards. She was longing to see her uncle, and to hear what Lady Harriet had said, for she knew very well that it was not alone the wish to see Howlie which had brought her. She was anxious to get his consent to her departure as soon as possible and write to her Hereford friend, for the moment she should receive that lady's invitation she would start. It was unfortunate that she could not get it for a few days to come, for Harry would be sure to make trouble before she could set off. Everything was most trying. She walked into the Vicarage to find Mr. Lewis in his study. "You have had a long walk," he said, looking at her over the top of his book. "Yes," she replied, "I have been up near the foot of the mountain." "I called for you once or twice; Lady Harriet Fenton was here, and she asked to see you, but you had gone." "Oh, did you, uncle?" "Poor child," said the old man, taking off his glasses and laying down his book, "it has been very hard for you, I know." "Did she say anything about me, uncle?" "She did. I am afraid, my little girl, I have not very pleasant news for you. Mr. Fenton is not going to make any provision for Harry which would enable him to marry. In fact, he cannot afford to do it. And such being the case, he will not give his consent." She looked out of the window at the fading light. "Then I suppose there is nothing to be done," she said, taking up her hat, which she had laid upon a chair as she came in. He had not expected such entire and unprotesting submission, and he was rather surprised; he watched her as she went to the door, rather expecting to see her composure give some sign of wavering. She paused, her fingers on the handle. "Uncle," she began, "I wish I could go away from here for a little." "It would not be a bad plan," said he, after a moment's thought, "but what can we do? Your aunt is away, you see, and there seems no prospect of her coming back." "There is Mrs. Johnson. Could I not go to her? There was an idea of my staying there before it was arranged that I should come here. She has often invited me. You know her, uncle. Could you not ask her to take me for a short time? I want to get away, indeed I do." The Vicar thought that he detected emotion in her voice. "Isoline, are you very unhappy about this? You say so little, my dear. I am so sorry for you, and I wish I could help you." "I can bear anything if I can only get away," said the girl. "Well, I will write," said he, "I believe you are acting wisely." "And ask her to let me come as soon as possible. I feel--I think--the change will be good. And I do not want to see any one, or to talk about what has happened. I need not, uncle, need I? Mr. Harry Fenton will not come here, will he?" Her voice trembled a little. "Come here, child," said he, holding out his hand, "and do not be afraid to speak out. You are going away to avoid seeing Harry again, are you not?" A direct question demands a direct answer, and she hardly felt prepared to give one; she did not know to what it might commit her. She hesitated. "I had rather not see him," she said at last, slipping her hand out of the Vicar's; "must I do it?" "Well, I think so, if he wishes it," he said slowly; "you are certainly doing sensibly in taking Mr. Fenton's refusal of consent as final, for, in marrying, you would be condemning yourself to a life of poverty which you are not fitted to endure. But, though you now wish to free yourself, remember that you accepted Harry. If he wants to hear your decision from your own lips, I think he has a right to do so." "But why should he?" she asked plaintively, "surely he can believe you when you tell him, uncle?" "Surely, my dear, if you ever loved him at all, you will understand how he feels." "I think it will be very inconsiderate of him if he comes here and makes a fuss when he knows it is impossible." "People are sometimes inconsiderate when they are in trouble--young people especially." "Then they ought not to be so," replied Isoline, with decision. She was accustomed to carry about little moral precepts to protect her from difficulties, as other people carried umbrellas to protect them from the rain. When the difficulties came down undeserved upon her head, she would take one out and unfurl it, so to speak. Mr. Lewis smiled faintly; he had some perception of ironies. "Do you not think that _you_ are being a little inconsiderate? You may be in trouble, but somehow I do not fancy your trouble is so great as Harry's." His voice had meaning in the last part of his sentence. A look of dislike shot at him which was hidden by the dusk pervading the room. "Then I must see him?" she said. "You can do as you like," said the Vicar, returning to his book, "but I think you ought to." As the door closed behind her he reflected that he had never before come so near to understanding his niece. Isoline ran up to her room, controlling herself with difficulty as she went; when she reached the door she darted in and locked it. "Every one is against me--every one!" she sobbed as she sat down upon the bed. CHAPTER XXIX THE HALF LOAF HARRY was in a terrible state. Nevertheless, though he kept carefully out of his father's way, he poured out the tumult of his heart to his mother, for she had told him of her visit to Crishowell, encouraging him to talk, and thinking it better that he should have some sort of safety-valve. And talk he did. Late that night he was pacing about in her dressing-room, that dressing-room which was so often the goal of those who sought to ease their souls. The Squire fumed there, Harry brought various sporting interests for discussion, and Llewellyn would steal up from the smoking-room to thrash out farm perplexities. Bob and Tom, with their regiments in India, found their minds turning sometimes to that particular spot. The carpet was worn and threadbare, worn with the coming and going of many feet. To give up Isoline simply never entered Harry's head, and, had he been inclined to do so, the opposition he met with would have sufficed to keep his constancy alight. Again and again did he assure Lady Harriet that he would never, never change, breaking between his assurances into rhapsodies over the beauties and graces of his beloved. He heard from her that she had not seen Isoline at the Vicarage, and that though Mr. Lewis had held by the Squire's decision, he had said nothing about his niece's feelings. He was not disquieted on that score, for he did not dream that she would not reflect his own fidelity like a mirror. How could she, having made him such a gift, take it back at the first breath of adversity? To think of such a thing was to insult her. For himself he had no misgivings. It was hard, but what others had done he could do; he could wait, and he would. As soon as he had been to Crishowell--and he meant to go there next day--he would be off to London, where he might cast about for work and take his place among the bread-winners of the world. These intentions in a youth educated to no special calling hardly seemed so absurd then as they would now, for there were more snug places into which an impecunious young gentleman could be hoisted in those days, and he had many influential friends. Lady Harriet did not try to turn him from any of these resolutions, and she kissed him with special tenderness as they said good-night, but her heart sank in her, for she saw that he stood between the devil and the deep sea. There was that in his face which told her that he was harder held this time than he had been by any of his former devotions. To lose his love would go ill with him no doubt, but to win her might even go worse. She went to bed weary in mind and body and with no zest for the morning; the household seemed out of joint, and she missed Llewellyn. Harry reached Crishowell Vicarage next day to find Howlie sitting in an easy-chair at the foot of the garden. He had been allowed to go out for the first time, and was installed near the fence, where he could see the passers-by and talk to strolling acquaintances. His face lit up with interest as he recognized the approaching rider. "Oi can't 'old the 'orse for yew this toime," he said, raising his bandaged arms as his friend dismounted. He had never wavered in his allegiance to Harry; though Llewellyn had tended him, fed him, and stayed him up in his hours of suffering, though he depended upon him, trusted him, and had remarked to the cook that he was a "rare good one," it was "the young general" who had his admiration and whose image had never been eclipsed by the younger brother's more solid qualities. "S'pose yew be come to see miss?" he observed, when the inquiries about the burnt hands were over. Harry did not answer. "Where is Mr. Llewellyn?" he asked. "Gone out. 'E says 'e's goin' 'ome to-morrow." "You will be sorry, I expect," said Harry. "Oi believe yew. Oi loike 'im an' 'e loikes me an' Parson, though 'e don't think much o' miss. Be yew come to see 'er?" "Is she at home?" asked the young man, ignoring the other's persistence. "Settin' up in 'er room." At this moment Harry looked up and saw the face of Isoline for an instant at the window; it disappeared immediately, but not before the two pairs of eyes had met. Vexation stood in the feminine pair as its owner drew back her head; she had been tempted to look out by the sound of the voices below, and in that instant her unwelcome lover had seen her. She had spent a great deal of time up-stairs that day, her ears strained for any sound of an arrival. She wore her walking-boots and her hat lay within reach, so that she might run out as she had done before. It was not perhaps the most ennobling way of meeting a difficulty, but it had the merit of being extremely safe. For very shame she could not escape now. She grew quite hot, anger with herself for her carelessness, with circumstances, with her uncle, all welled up in her, and gave her some of the feelings that a rat must have when there is nothing but the bare corner behind him and a dog in front. Harry went up to the house and found the Vicar in the orchard. "I expected you," said the old man as the young one began rapidly to explain his presence. "Mr. Lewis, let me see Isoline." The Vicar took him by the arm. "You had much better not, believe me," he said; "it will do no good, Harry, and it will give you both pain." "If you think I will ever consent to give her up, you mistake me. You believe you are doing right, I know, but it is no use, sir. I love her and she loves me, and we will never let anything divide us." The Vicar looked into the honest, excited face, a face full of trust without misgiving or concealment. "I must see her, sir, indeed I must," Harry continued. "If you were I, you would say the same." "If I were you," said the Vicar, "I should do exactly as you are doing. I haven't always been an old man, and I sometimes fear I have never been a wise one. You can see her, Harry, but if you would only accept this quietly you would spare yourself. She will tell you what I am telling you now; she is an obedient girl, and she knows what your father and I think." The colour died out of Harry's face. "You mean that she will give me up?" he exclaimed. "She has told me that she will not engage herself without my consent." A cold, intangible fear, like a breath from the inevitable, hovered round Harry for a moment, but he would not realize the shock it gave him. "She thinks herself that you had better not meet," added the Vicar, averting his look and fixing it on a bough where the last blossoms lingered in a ragged brown cluster; the bloom was almost over, and every puff of wind scattered the grass with withering petals. "But I can't go without a word. Oh, let me see her! Beg her to speak to me, Mr. Lewis. I saw her at the window as I came in. It is only for a moment--it is so little to ask." "Well, if you must, I will tell her. Oh, Harry, Harry, but you have made a mistake!" exclaimed the Vicar, unable to repress himself entirely as he turned away. "I suppose Mr. Fenton wants to see me," said Miss Ridgeway as she came down, her face set, in obedience to the summons. "He does, and you must see him," he replied, with decision. "Go into my study and I will send him there." She went in, her nostrils quivering; the unfairness of the world had never been so plain to her. "Dearest," cried Harry, when he had shut the door behind him, "it isn't true, is it? You can't mean to break with me altogether?" He came closer to her, and took her two hands; they were quite cold. "Your father has refused his consent," she said, with a little drawing back of her head, "and so has my uncle." He let the hands fall. "And so it is all over?" he said almost breathlessly. "It is not my fault. What can I do?" She had entered the room feeling that it would be a simple matter to cut the cord without remorse, for it seemed to her that Harry had cheated her, and her sense of justice smarted. She had shrunk from seeing him, but being forced to do so, she would have small compunction. Now it surprised her to find that her resolution was hardly what it had been before she saw him, they had not met since the day she had accepted him, and his actual presence began to affect her a little. Things are so easy when we rehearse them with only ourselves for audience, but they have a hideous knack of complicating themselves when the curtain is up and the play begins. Isoline realized with a pang that she liked him very much--more than she had remembered, in fact. "And so you do not care for me after all," he said, looking at her with eyes in which tears had gathered in spite of his efforts to keep them back. "It is not that," faltered she. "What is it then? Can't you wait for me? Can't you trust me? It will all come right in the end if we only have patience," said the man, who was surely one of the least appropriate apostles of patience in the kingdom. "I can work. I shall have to go to London and see what I can get to do. I would do _anything_ for you, Isoline, darling. It would not matter if we began in a humble way, would it, once we had something settled to go upon? We should be much, much happier than many who are rich." It was hardly the picture to move her. "But your father will not help you." "No, he won't. I should have to depend entirely upon my work. If I marry without his consent, he says he will give me fifty pounds a year--not even what I have now. But, once I am married and working for myself, I hardly think he will keep to that. It's a risk, I know. But I would run any risk, dear. Perhaps it isn't fair to ask you to do it, though," he added, with a sigh. "Isoline, you can never love me as I love you." "It is unkind of you to speak like that," said she, with an attractive little note of dignity; "if you are in trouble, so am I." He took her hand again with an exclamation of self-reproach; one of her most useful weapons was her aptitude for making other people feel themselves in the wrong. "Dearest, I forget everything but my own unhappiness," he said penitently. "It is really dreadful," exclaimed Isoline. "How happy I was the day that you came here, and now it is all spoilt!" "But it can never be spoilt as long as we love each other," cried he. "Isoline, darling, only be true to me, and some day we shall be together." "I can't promise anything. How can I when my uncle forbids it?" Poor Harry, beating against the door that never resisted, yet never opened, felt helpless. But he gathered himself together. "Then let us do without promising," he urged, "only tell me this. If anything should happen to make it possible--if I get on--will you let me come back? I shall never lose hope if you do not forget me, and I can feel there is a chance still." It is easy enough to promise to remember any one, and this arrangement struck her as very suitable; it was, in other words, almost what she would have proposed herself, for she liked Harry. She assented readily. When they parted he went out to the Vicar, who was still in the orchard. "Good-bye," he said, holding out his hand, "I am glad I saw her after all. I am much happier now." And he left the old man wondering at the hopefulness on his face. Presently Isoline stepped out, cool and dainty, into the greenness of the orchard. "I have told him that I cannot bind myself without your consent, uncle," she said in her clear voice. And the Vicar wondered more. As for Harry, he turned his head towards Waterchurch with a not unhappy heart. Certainly his interview had not been all that he had hoped, but he was brave, and a settled purpose upholds a man much. And, as we all know, half a loaf is better than no bread. CHAPTER XXX NANNIE SEES HER DUTY ALTHOUGH the Pig-driver, as he sat in his cart at Llangarth Fair, was mainly concerned with the prospective beef, mutton, and pork collected before him, he found time to notice other things. One of these was George Williams, steering his way through the crowd with Mary Vaughan's arm in his. He looked after them as they passed, all unconscious of his eyes, and, when they were lost in the mass of human beings and had disappeared from the range of his vision, he still remained in so pre-occupied a state that his bargains were in danger of suffering. It was evident that his former dependent "had a young woman"; a result, no doubt, of his prosperity at Great Masterhouse; perhaps he would soon be setting up a home of his own, perhaps he was even buying things at the fair for his wedding. For years James Bumpett had known no shame, but the nearest approach to it assailed him as he saw Williams, well-dressed, happy, and evidently with his private affairs on hand, a living witness to the limits of his own power. The thought hit him in a spot in which most of us are vulnerable. People who love power may be sublime, to others as well as to themselves, so long as they are able to get it; when they are not, they become ridiculous, principally to others. His business done, he drove away, plunged in his own thoughts. How he wished that the high-and-mighty mistress of Great Masterhouse had been in the fair to see her favourite servant walking about with the girl who had led her only son astray. Not that the Pig-driver thought much of such deviations from the straight path as Rhys had made, but he knew that Mrs. Walters did. The idea of her at a fair was so impossible that he smiled at his own futility; but she should know of it, and the next time he met Nannie Davis he would take care that she heard of George's doings. Nannie did not like Williams, her admiration being given to more lively characters. Her own youth had been cheerful, to say the least of it, and she despised those who lost their opportunities in that way. His gravity and quietness annoyed her, and the high place he had taken in Mrs. Walters' estimation made her jealous. Her personal devotion was not given so much to her mistress as to the family she had served so long, but she could not away with the notion of any one else being important to it. This did not escape Bumpett; he had known Nannie all her life, and they had always been on friendly terms; besides which, their common knowledge of Rhys' presence in the country had brought them a good deal together. But chance happened to keep them apart at this moment, and the neighbourhood of the farm had become so abhorrent to him ever since his errand there, that he hesitated to go near the place. Rhys was the only person to whom he had related the affair; he hated even to think of it, and when he at last met the old woman casually in Crishowell village, the news he longed to impart had been burning within him for three weeks. To do him justice, the Pig-driver's methods in the matter were not coarse. He did not suggest that Nannie should tell Mrs. Walters straight out, but he worked so adroitly upon her feeling that he left her well assured of success. It was clear by her face that she was aching and longing to have a fling at Williams, that upstart, that interloper, and--worst of all sinners to the uneducated mind--that man who kept himself to himself. The two women stood by the duck-pond. The birds were collected round the brink, waddling and gobbling in the soft bits of mud, and Mrs. Walters was pointing out those she had selected for killing. A large white drake straddled cumbrously about among the members of his family. Inside Nannie's apron, which she had gathered with one hand into a kind of sack, a fat one, predestined to death, quacked and complained in a voice so lamentable that the mistress had to shout her directions in order to make the servant understand. "Can't 'ear ye!" bawled Nannie, "so long as this 'ere thief do go on as he do!" "Take up the brown one there--no, no--that one by the stone!" cried Anne, pointing to a young mallard who stood motionless, his dully critical eye staring, unconscious of wrath to come, upon his companions. The old woman stooped and made a dive with her hand towards the mallard, and the duck in her apron lifted up its voice and floundered with all its strength. "Drat ye!" exclaimed Nannie, giving it a vicious pinch and missing her prey, which, with a calm look, sailed into the water, wagging its tail. "Tut, tut," said Mrs. Walters, coming nearer, "give the bird to me and you go and try to drive the mallard back on to the grass. I must have him." Nannie's eye fell on an old wooden box lying open near, and thrusting the duck into it, she turned it over with her foot. The air rang with its outcries. Then she picked up a branch and advanced along the brink to the spot nearest to her quarry. He took little apparent interest until she came level with him, when, with a twirl of his leg, he put an extra yard or so between them. "Shoo! shoo!" cried Mrs. Walters from the shore. "That ain't no good, mum!" exclaimed Nannie, pushing back her sunbonnet with a large gesture; "if ye'd let fly at 'im wi' that gob o' mud beside ye 'e might take more notice o' ye." Anne picked up a clod and threw it into the pond. The duck merely turned upside down and became a simple cone in the water with three small feathers in the apex. The attitude had a suggestion of insult. Nannie beat the branch up and down on the surface of the pond, muttering words under her breath which, had they reached her mistress, would have done her no good. The effect it had was that of disquieting the others, and they began to steal away across the grass in a solemn string, protest in every line of their feathers and every movement of their ungainly feet. The mallard looked after them for a moment and began to swim round and round the pool. "I have no more time to waste," said Anne Walters impatiently; "you had better call Williams; I see him in the garden." George was very cheerful; he was whistling at his work, and he had a pleasant sense of things being all right. The clouds rode along over his head, white masses of packed snow, cut sharp against the blue, and steering their course through the endless ether like great galleons advancing, unconquered and unconquerable. A lark was losing itself in a tremor of melody, a little vanishing spot. It struck him that the world was good. He had seen Mary once or twice since the fair, and, though his heart burned within him at keeping silence from the words he might not speak, he felt he was gaining ground; at least, he had got her respect again, and he had seen, entering the shop a few days since, a look of unmistakable pleasure in her face as she greeted him. Yes, things were looking up, and the garden, into which he had put so many hours of steady work, was beginning to repay him. George was in his element in a garden, though he was himself unconscious of the fact. He had an intense sympathy with growth and life, vegetable and animal, and a large sense of protectorship. As he paused a moment, looking critically at a lush corner where the scarlet-runners had engulfed the fence, he might have stood for the modern version of the original Adam, the natural culmination of the Spirit of Life, moving, not on the waters, but on the fields. All he wanted was Eve; Eve, who, at that moment, was standing in a similar environment, behind the little stack of green vegetables piled on the counter before her. Her surroundings were a little more complicated, that was all, but when were a woman's otherwise? Williams left the garden at Nannie's call, and she watched him with a sour face as Mrs. Walters directed him to catch the mallard. "I'll get 'im easy enough," said he; "there's no use in driving 'im. Them ducks always follow their own kind. Go we a bit out o' the way, an' I'll be bound he'll be on dry land afore we've got far." They retreated from the pond, and the bird ceased his gyrations, only fixing a wary eye on their departing figures. After consideration, he made for the spot where the rest had landed, and set out on their track, the violence of his efforts causing him to roll from side to side like a ship in a storm. When he was well out on his course, the old woman pounced upon him and bore him struggling to the box. "Williams is a sensible man," observed Anne, as she looked after George's disappearing back. "I did well when I took him. There is a Providence over all our acts, little as we think it sometimes." Nannie looked sarcastic. "Under God, I may have done a good work," continued her mistress, who was unused to having her words disregarded. The leavening of self in them took nothing from their sincerity. "That's as may be," replied Nannie, with her nose in the air. Mrs. Walters looked at her as one might look at a child who has pitted its opinion against that of an elder. "Williams is leading a new life. He has put the old man from him." "Yes, he! he! And he've taken a young woman in 'is place," leered Nannie, whose flippancy occasionally got the better of her awe of Anne. "What do you mean?" inquired her companion. "Ye can't see everything that happens in the world from Masterhouse," she replied enigmatically. "I don't know what you mean by talking like that," said Anne, drawing herself up. "There's some that's mighty different to what they look. I could tell a thing or two about that Williams if I liked. Not that it's for _me_ to speak," said the old woman. Anne was not without curiosity. "What do you know against him?" she asked, after a pause. "He's a soft one, is Williams; but I know 'im. It's 'yes, mum' here and 'yes, mum' there up this way, but down at Llangarth 'tis another story. Rollin' about at fairs with a hussy that's no better than she should be. I can't do wi' they mealy-mouthed chaps; they've always got the devil's tail tucked away somewhere in their breeches." Mrs. Walter's face darkened. Nannie went on, encouraged. "As proud as Punch he was, too. An' she goin' about without shame, holding his arm like the gentry." "Who told you this?" It was on the tip of Nannie's tongue to say, "The Pig-driver," but she suddenly bethought her of the one occasion on which he had come to the farm. She had hovered about at the kitchen-door that day and had heard the scene enacted inside it. She knew very well that her mistress had but scant respect for James Bumpett. Anne repeated her question. "Oh, I heard in Crishowell about his goings-on. Fine talk he's made there, an' no mistake." "You are much too fond of gossip," said Mrs. Walters judicially. "'Tis no gossip. 'Tis my plain duty, an' no more. If folks down Crishowell way be sayin' what a mawk you be to have picked up such a bad bit o' stuff, I'll let ye know it, an' no more than Christian too. Not that I wasn't ashamed to hear them speakin' such low words about ye, knowin' that 'twas a holy act ye thought to do. But we're all deceived sometimes." And Nannie stooped, sighing, to take up the imprisoned ducks. Anne stood contemplating the mixture of fiction and truth served up to her. She wished to dismiss it all with contempt, but the thought of her acts being criticized was too much for her. Criticism spelt outrage to her temperament. She turned away towards the house, internally fevered. The ducks squalled in Nannie's grasp as they were carried to the outhouse which was to be their condemned cell. Their jailer hurried along; she had no idea of leaving her work half done. "Where be I to put them?" she cried above the din. Mrs. Walters pointed to a door without stopping. The old woman flung it open and deposited her burden. As she shut them up, Anne turned round. "Come in," she said stiffly. "I must know who it is that has spoken about Williams." "Crishowell folk, mum." "How many people?" "A sight o' them." Nannie's evasions began to rouse her suspicions. "I suppose Bumpett told you," she said, turning suddenly on her servant. Nannie's jaw dropped. "Answer me!" cried Mrs. Walters, with rising voice; "was it Bumpett?" "Well, now I think on it, 'e _was_ one o' them." "I thought so," said Anne, smiling grimly. "And who is this--this loose woman you were speaking of? You haven't told me that." "Lawk! mum, I wouldn't so much as name her afore ye," replied Nannie, drawing down her mouth. "Let me have no more nonsense," exclaimed Mrs. Walters, with justifiable warmth; "if you did not mean to speak out, you had no business to say anything at all. I am waiting to hear." Nannie shuffled from one foot to the other. "Well, 'tis Mary Vaughan, the toll-keeper's wench." Anne stood staring at her. "I do not believe it," she exclaimed, turning her back. "If it were true, it would be a direct disrespect to me." From her point of view this was a charge hardly to be faced. "It's Gospel, for all that," said the old woman. Mrs. Walters' eyes rested searchingly on her companion; the look was returned, and held all the difference between the two women's characters. "I shall ask him myself," she said; "I shall soon find out if it is true." Having sent off her shaft, Nannie held her peace, and followed her mistress indoors, a little nervous, but auguring well from the cloud on Anne's brow; a cloud accumulating, pregnant with storm. CHAPTER XXXI THE WAY TO PARADISE MARY sat behind her counter sewing, for customers were not frequent, and she had plenty of time on her hands. June was well advanced, and the fact was proclaimed by a long spray of dog-roses which stood in a glass beside her. The bloom of the month had not passed her by, and her whole being was making good its losses with the elasticity of youth. Not that she did not carry in her face the same traces of sorrow she also bore in her heart; but as beauty, mental or physical, cannot be made perfect without suffering, it was a fairer woman sat under the light of the window among the fruits of gracious earth than the one who had parted from Rhys Walters at the Dipping-Pool for the last time, six months before. Time is a great healer, but his rival, Work, runs him hard, and though the former's chance had yet to come with Mary, the latter had begun his ministration. Now and then she would break into a snatch of song, and although it would end, for the most part, in a sigh and a long silence, it indicated a state of things impossible a little while ago. She lived very much alone, and but for the old woman who owned the shop and the occasional looker-in, who came to make purchases, she spoke to no one. Only when George Williams contrived to get into the town, and presented himself with a certain determined shyness at the door, did she have any touch with the human beings who surrounded her. And once, when, in the quiet of the evening, she had been induced to stroll out with him, they had crossed the Wye and wandered a mile or two between the dimness of the hedges, a faint yellow sky overhead and the white crescent of a young moon rising above the limitless translucence of the ether. She had not known at the time how much she was enjoying herself. She thought of it again as her needle stitched on and on and the feet of the passers-by rang on the pavement. The shop was so low that, when a cart drove along in the middle of the road, there was nothing but a vision of wheels. One was just stopping outside, and, as a pair of singularly crooked legs was to be seen climbing down, she laid her work by, and rose as the door opened to admit a person whom she had often seen, oftener heard of, and never spoken to. The Pig-driver entered the shop with the air of a man who brings good tidings, so cheerful was his demeanour, so satisfactory his smile, so full of a precise and proven benevolence. A chair stood by the counter, and he drew it yet closer and sat down with a studied care, which suggested that he meant to make immense purchases at illimitable leisure. Before speaking, he eyed her carefully from top to toe. "What can I serve you with?" inquired Mary civilly. "He! he!" chuckled Bumpett, "I bean't come to buy; no, no, not to buy." He laid his stick along the counter, and spreading his elbows out over it, leered up into her face. "I be come to see you, you an' no one else. Ah! I'm an old stump, I am, but I do like the sight of a pretty face." She looked annoyed. "No offence, my dear, no offence." "What is your business?" she asked, drawing a little back from the counter. "It isn't business, my dear, it's pleasure this time. I've come because it does me a sight of good to get a look at you, he! he! Name o' goodness! A wonderful thing it is to think what a deal o' mischief a smart-like wench can do. Ye've done for that fellow up at Masterhouse, an' no mistake. It's all up wi' him now." She stared at him and laid hold of the wooden counter with her hand. "Ye needn't look," said Bumpett, "'tis true. I had it from Mrs. Davis, straight. There won't be no more o' he up at the farm, I'll warrant." "But what has it to do with me?" exclaimed Mary, unable to connect the Pig-driver's meanings, but scenting trouble vaguely. "I don't know what you're driving at, Mr. Bumpett." "Ye don't know nothin' about it, eh? My! you're a bold one, you are, for all ye look as meek as skim-milk. I suppose you'll tell me ye don't know George Williams next. That'll be no use though, because I see'd ye wi' him at Llangarth Fair hangin' on to his arm like a ladyship. But ye've done him no good wi' your sheep's eyes." "I don't believe you--I don't know what you're talking about." "Ah, don't ye? Well then, I'll tell ye." He smacked his lips, for the moment he longed for had arrived. "You sit down, girl. 'Tis a long tale. Ye won't, won't ye? Ah! I hope ye've got a good pair o' legs under ye then, for ye'll have to stand some time. He's an ungrateful dog is Williams, behaving shameful to me, that was like a father to 'im; me that put the bread into 'is mouth when 'e was starving. Then 'e got took on at Masterhouse; nothin' was too good for 'im then, I believe. I warned 'er--went out o' my way by a mile an' more, I did. Ye needn't look at me like that, ye mawk-mouthed piece o' spite; ye've done my job for me, and I'm come to thank ye. Now, mind ye this. When Mrs. Walters got wind that 'e was keepin' company wi' a slut like you, there weren't no more ado, I can tell ye. She says, 'Damn ye!' she says, 'ye'll clear yerself out o' this or ye'll be done wi' that trollop down i' the town.' That's a sweet bit o' news to ye, I'll be bound." "And is he gone?" asked Mary, her face white. "Gone! I suppose he is, indeed. She had 'im out that blessed evenin'. She's one o' the holy sort, an' trust them to stand no jolly doin's." Tears started to Mary's eyes. She could not but believe the old man's words, and it was terrible to think that she, of all people, had been the cause of fresh misfortune to George. She had known him first--a poor man, so poor that he had a hard struggle to live, and then she had seen the difference in him when luck had come his way. He had told her many of his troubles, and, when she had allowed interest to creep in, sympathy and friendship had followed. The day seemed to have grown darker, the light to have faded. She felt herself a blight, a malignant influence which had come into this man's hard life and made it harder. She would have given anything to hide her distress from Bumpett, but she could not, and he sat gloating in his chair over the effect he had made. "You're a bad man," she said, when she had managed to control herself a little, "I've heard it said of you, and God knows it's true." The Pig-driver's reply was cut short by the opening of the shop door and the entrance of a customer. She dried her eyes quickly, and he, finding that he could no longer monopolize his victim, departed, and went away a satisfied and contented man, feeling well towards this life. A little boy begged of him in the street and he gave him a halfpenny. The old woman for whom Mary worked did not generally descend from her room overhead till late in the afternoon. The girl had charge of everything during the greater part of the day, but, at five o'clock, her mistress would come down and take her place behind the counter, leaving her free to do as she pleased and go where she would. She was never asked to give any account of her doings, and was only expected to be back at nine o'clock to put away things in the shop and to close up the house. Sometimes she would stay on in her place, taking out her book, for she still tried to teach herself, and sometimes, since summer had begun, go out into the scented evening, communing with her own soul and drawing peace from the peace around. To-night, though she had little heart to leave the house with, she found her mind unable to fix itself on the letters of the simple pages she was spelling out. It flew off continually to George--George unemployed, George despondent, George disgraced because he had not consented to forego the infinitesimal part she had been willing to give him in her life. It was striking six by the town clock as she went out. The street was a quiet one and there were few people in it, but as her hand left the latch she saw Williams coming towards her. She went hurriedly on to meet him. "Come," she exclaimed, without other greeting, "I want to see you." She put her hand on his sleeve and almost turned him round. George turned with her and they went forward, hardly thinking where they were going, he because he was with her and would have gone with her to perdition, and she because she had no other thought than the one which had been in her all day. "Oh, George, why have you left your place?" she cried. "How do you know I've left it?" said he, almost roughly. "I heard to-day. Mr. Bumpett the Pig-driver was here. 'Twas him I got it from." "What was he doing?" "He was in the shop." "Buying?" "No. He came to tell me you was leaving Masterhouse. He told me why, too." An exclamation broke from the man. "Oh, I know. I know all about it," said the girl, her voice trembling. "Do go back now, George, do. For all the good you've done me, I've given you nought but harm. Let me be an' go back to the farm, and I'll never see you nor speak to you, if they'll take you back. It will make me happy, oh! so happy, George. Do you hear what I say?" "I hear." "To-morrow, George. Go to-morrow. She may fill up your place if you wait. Will you go early?" "I bean't going. I'm off to Hereford to-morrow; I've come down to say good-bye to 'e, Mary." "Oh! George Williams, will nothing turn you?" she entreated. "Nothin'," said the young man. Looking at him she saw it was useless to try to move him. His face was hard, as she had first known it. There was a barred cell in Williams' heart, and when he had entered into it, no one could draw him out, not even the woman he loved. "If you be going to Hereford, you'll be gone from me, the same as if you was at Great Masterhouse. It will be all one," said Mary presently. Not knowing how to explain himself, he did not reply. If he stayed on in his place it would mean a denial of the faith that was in him, a disloyalty to her. He did not so much as consider it, and it annoyed him that she should do so. They had turned into a deep lane leading up to the higher ground. From a clump of thorn-trees further on the cuckoo was calling. When the lane ended, the two stopped and looked at Llangarth beneath their feet. Mary's heart was full; the world was too complicated for her, man too hard, and George was going. She had ruined him, not willingly, but none the less effectually. She glanced up at him and saw his look fixed on her. His eyes were soft in his hard face, and in them lay the weary knowledge of how far outside Paradise he stood. She made a step towards him, catching her breath. "George!" she cried, "oh, but I've been bad to you!" * * * * * * It was some time after that they came down the lane again together, her hand, like a little child's, lying in his. The late sunset had faded, and its remains were just dying along the edge of the world. They said little, the man of few words and the woman of wounded heart. It was the silence of knowledge, profound, irrevocable, lying miles and miles from the door of their lips; of trust, of sorrow, of coming joy. For her the joy was but faintly showing itself through the veil, for him it stood in the path. If his Eve had caused him to be expelled from Paradise by one door, she had let him in again at another. CHAPTER XXXII A DARK LANTERN ALTHOUGH Isoline had now nothing left to fear from the importunities of her lover and was beginning to see a good broad streak of daylight through the entanglements which beset her path, the reply that her uncle's letter brought from Mrs. Johnson in Hereford was a decided relief. She was to come as soon as she liked and to be prepared for a long stay. The widow had an only daughter, just returned for good from the respectable shelter of a Bath seminary, and she looked upon Isoline's proposal as a piece of real good fortune. She was averse to effort of most kinds, and had been a little fluttered at the prospect of her dove's return and the exertions into which it might lead her. A companion who would amuse and occupy the young lady was so good an extinguisher to the flame of her dilemma that she threw a perfect flood of cordiality into her answer, and begged the coming guest to consider herself bound for six weeks at the very least. She thought Isoline a most desirable intimate for her Emily, having been struck by the decorous elegance of her manners and the tone of delicate orthodoxy which surrounded her. Miss Ridgeway turned her back upon Crishowell with many feelings of pleasure. There was not one thing in all the place which she really regretted leaving, and even Rhys Walters, who cost her what more nearly approached a regret than anything else, went comfortably out of her head; on her return, happily a good way off, he might again serve to lend a little zest to an otherwise depressing life. That was his use in her mind. In Hereford her time and attention were soon taken up by more important things, musical evenings, shoppings, and various little social assemblies at which she became the centre of much admiration to the young gentlemen of Hereford society. Indeed, one admirer, a pale youth connected with a local bank, sent her a copy of verses, beginning-- "Stoop, cruel fair, my gaping wounds to heal, Thou goddess graceful, beauteous and genteel," in which he described his feelings in a very lamentable manner. This effusion found a resting-place in her album and aroused some envy in the heart of Miss Emily, to whom the author was an object of interest. But, in spite of such small episodes, the two girls got on very well together, and Mrs. Johnson was happy in the arrangement she had made and the enjoyment of a placid and well-nourished leisure. July went by, August, September, and still Isoline stayed on. The year rolled up to its zenith and declined in a glory of ripened apples and glowing leaves. As October followed, the naked fields about Hereford began to suggest to sporting men the coming hunting season, and the bare boughs of November stirred Harry's heart with the same idea as he saw them in the London parks. He had succeeded in finding a secretaryship, unimportant in itself, but filling him with the hope of greater things, and he had worked hard. As the smell of the moist earth pervaded the late autumn mornings, he could not help, as he crossed St. James' Park on his way to his business, longing for much which he had lost. Doing without pleasures which have, so far, been necessities has a certain interest of novelty for a time, but it is an interest which soon palls. It had palled on him. His courage remained and his love for Isoline, but that was all. With the other man whose destiny had tangled itself round her feet the time had gone even more heavily. Sick at heart with her long absence and the desolate feeling that she had gone beyond his reach, Rhys had dragged himself through the months; having nothing to look forward to from day to day, he had been ready at times to rush out into the full sunshine and give himself up. But, just as he had lost all hope, a letter had come from Isoline, directed to him under the name by which she knew him, and sent to the Pig-driver, in compliance with an earnest request he had made before they parted. That had buoyed him up for some time, and he drew courage from the thought of her return, which she wrote of as not being far distant. But when November passed and there came no sign, the blackness closed down again on him. The cold was terrible too, and the nights were bitter. He would come in half-frozen at dawn and bury himself among the sheepskins to endure the weary hours as best he could between sleep and misery. He cared nothing now for life, and there were times when he made plans of escape; risk would be welcome, a thousand times welcome, for his whole existence was little but a living death. To be out once more in the light, at no matter what cost, to feel the glory of freedom, of taking his life in his hand, the idea made his blood tingle. Had there been proof of his devotion wanted, no greater could have been given than he gave; for, above all his pinings, all his dreams of release, the image of Isoline rose and he thrust them down. Even Bumpett was now anxious to get him out of the country and would have facilitated his escape in any way; as a servant he was becoming useless, for he spent the nights in rambling about with no thoughts of doing anything but cooling his aching heart with the space and the darkness and getting relief after the imprisonment of daylight. The two had had high words, for the old man, resenting the notion of supporting a dependent who did nothing in return, had threatened to cut off his supplies and to starve him out if he did not leave the cottage of his own accord. But Walters had promised him that his own expulsion would mean immediate exposure, and the Pig-driver had gnashed his teeth over the obvious truth that the man who does not value his life has an advantage over the man who does. Rhys would talk to himself as he sat, his head in his hands, in the cellar among the remnants of George's belongings; the dusk in which he dwelt had given his eyes a strange, dull look, and his shoulders stooped from long hours of sitting idle. Bumpett had, at one time, smuggled a book and a few papers in his cart and left them with him; but he had no heart to read, and would only sit and brood, unable to concentrate his thoughts. The whole man had slackened, mind and body; all that was still strong within him was the resolution not to give way until he had seen one face again. It was his fixed idea. It was decided that Isoline was to go back to Crishowell for Christmas, and she was spending the last few days of her stay in Hereford regretfully. She had been very happy and she did not look forward to a return to the country, especially as she would miss all kinds of seasonable gaiety by so doing. The two girls were talking as they sat in the lamplight one evening. Dinner was over and Miss Emily was at work upon her embroidery, a chaste piece of design in which a parrot with bead eyes perched stolidly upon a bouquet of yellow roses. Mrs. Johnson, who had a cold, lay upon the sofa, her head enveloped in a woollen shawl; the local newspaper was in her hand, and from it she occasionally read extracts, not so much for the sake of informing her companions as because she liked to make her comments aloud. "It is really a pity that you will miss the quadrille party next week," said Emily, looking up from her parrot; "what poor Mr. Pottinger will do I cannot think. I am sure he will be vastly annoyed. He will write no more poetry when you are gone." "Yes, and I did so want to wear my green-and-white muslin too." "Green and white, forsaken quite," quoted Emily. "Only it will be Mr. Pottinger who is forsaken, not you." "La! Emily, do not be so absurd. There are plenty of other young ladies coming for Christmas who can console him." "Ah, but there is no one like you, Isoline," said the admiring Emily. She was plain herself. "What nonsense," rejoined her companion, well satisfied. "Emily, my love," broke in Mrs. Johnson, "it is really impossible to see so far from the light. Pray come and take the paper and read aloud a little, as you are near the lamp." Emily put her embroidery away with a sigh. She preferred infinitely to gossip with Isoline. "What shall I read, ma'am?" she inquired, as she sat down again with the journal in her hand. "Anything, child," said her mother. "'There is a strong apprehension,'" she began, "'of great distress being prevalent during the coming winter; it is to be feared----'" "No, not that," interrupted Mrs. Johnson, drawing her woollen shawl more closely round her, "read something else." "'The Probability of a European War,'" continued her daughter, reading the headings. "No, no," said the lady, who was disinclined to grapple with large subjects, "read the local news. On the second page, my dear." Miss Emily ran her eye over the columns. "'Banquet given to the Mayor. A successful entertainment was held in honour of our respected Mayor, Mr. William Smeebody, at the Crown and Gander, on Saturday the 4th instant. The table positively groaned under the triumphs of culinary skill which it displayed, and many brilliant and felicitous speeches followed the repast. But it should not be supposed that the pleasures of the table and the pleasures of the intellect were the only advantages offered to the company. Many of the fair sex were present, including his Worship's lady, whose elegant accomplishments have made her so bright a star in our social firmament.'" Mrs. Johnson breathed as hard as her cold would permit. "Really!" she exclaimed, "there is no end to the odious publicity which is being brought into domestic life! I am sure if the newspapers had ventured to speak of _me_ in such terms, Mr. Johnson would have disliked it intensely--elegant accomplishments, indeed!" "'Death of the Reverend Mr. Slaughter,'" continued Emily. "'It is with profound grief that we have to record the tragic incident which took place yesterday. The Reverend Mr. Slaughter was seized with a fit while officiating last evening in Hebron Chapel and expired in the arms of the verger.'" "Dear! dear!" said the voice from the sofa, "and I was thinking of attending divine worship there too! I had my bonnet half on, you remember, Emily, and I said, 'I shall go to Hebron Chapel,' and then cook came up to speak to me in the middle, so I was too late and had to go later to St. James' instead. How one misses one's opportunities in this world! Dear! dear! dear!" "Here is something to interest _you_, Isoline," said Miss Emily, "for I remember you said that your friend, Mr. Fenton, was concerned about it." "'Some little stir has been occasioned at Llangarth and in the neighbourhood by a statement made by a labouring man. It will not be forgotten that one of the worst of the Rebecca riots took place last January upon the Brecon road near Crishowell, and that the now notorious Rhys Walters took the life of the toll-keeper in the struggle. His subsequent disappearance upon the Black Mountain was, at the time of the disturbance, a nine-days wonder, and no trace of him has been found since that date, now almost a year ago. The labourer in question states that he was returning one night last week to a farm called the Red Field, where he is employed, about half-past twelve. He had been at Abergavenny, on the other side of the Pass, and business had kept him there until a late hour. He carried with him a dark lantern which he had been lent in the town. Being footsore, he sat down to rest upon a piece of rock just under the shoulder of the Twmpa. He had put down the slide of his lantern some time before, for, the path over the turf being good, he felt more able to guide his general direction by the mass of the hill against the sky than by its light, especially as there was a faint starlight. He had sat about ten minutes when he heard a footstep approaching. He called out, but received no answer, and the footstep immediately ceased. He then drew up the slide and saw, not ten yards from him, a figure which he believes to be that of Rhys Walters. The man was looking straight at him, and the labourer, upon whom he produced the effect of an apparition, was so much startled that he dropped the light. It is needless to say that, when he recovered it, the fugitive (if indeed it were he) had disappeared. Questioned closely by the magistrate about his general appearance, he described the person he had seen as a tall man with a long, pale face and piercing eyes. He noticed that he had rather high, square shoulders and eyebrows which came down very low towards the nose. He seemed about thirty years of age. If the labourer speaks accurately, it seems very much as if he were right in his surmises, for the above is a remarkably good description of Rhys Walters. It is even possible that he has been in hiding somewhere in the neighbourhood of the mountain for the last eleven months, though it seems an inconceivable feat for a man to have performed. If this be actually the case, one thing is certain, namely, that he has been assisted in his concealment by some person or persons unknown.'" "What dreadful things there are in the paper to-night, Emily," observed Mrs. Johnson. "It is quite alarming to think of such a man being at large--so near, too. Look at Miss Ridgeway. One might think she had seen a ghost!" Isoline sat like an image, staring before her. Emily's reading was weaving a distinct picture, a picture which grew more familiar at every word. She felt as though the world were giving way beneath her and she herself being whirled along into a chaos where order was dead and criminals were allowed to go free about the earth to delude respectable young ladies, without the very stones crying out against it. What had Providence been doing? The truth was there in its baldness. She had been associating--she, Isoline--with a murderer; she might even have been killed herself. The tears rushed hot into her eyes. These were the sort of things that might happen to other people--rough people--but not to her, surely not to her! She sat stunned, her eyes fixed and brimming. The most shocking part of the whole thing was the coarseness of its reality. "Oh, what is the matter, Isoline?" cried Miss Emily in tactless dismay. "Mama, she is crying!" Mrs. Johnson rose from her sofa. She was a kind soul. "My dear Miss Ridgeway, you are too sensitive," she said, "though I do not wonder you are horrified at such a tale,--so near your home, too. Really, what the law and the police are coming to, I do not know!" Like many ladies, Mrs. Johnson spent much time in lamenting the inefficiency of these bodies. "Go up to bed, my dear, and I will send you a posset. I am taking one myself for my cold. I fear you are terribly upset, but Emily can sleep with you if you are nervous." "No, no, thank you," said Isoline, making a great effort at self-control. "I am quite well now. I am not afraid, thank you, ma'am, but I was upset at thinking--at thinking----" "My dear, I can well sympathize," said Mrs. Johnson, "it is enough to upset any one. Go up to bed. You will get to sleep and forget it." For one thing Isoline was devoutly thankful, and that was that Emily had apparently not guessed her secret. Soon after her arrival, she had told her the story of her mysterious admirer, and Emily, though professing herself rather shocked, had been immensely interested; it was part of her creed that Isoline could do no wrong. She was romantic too, and she had more imagination than her friend, and the idea of it appealed to her. Should she happen upon the truth, the other girl felt as if she could never face her again, and she was now really glad to be going back to her uncle immediately, away from the strain of living in perpetual fear of discovery. She had described Rhys so often that Emily's want of perception appeared wonderful. But light might break in on her any day, and, if it did, her own prayer was that she might be absent. The two parted a couple of days later with secret relief on her side, and on Emily's genuine tears. She left the coach as she had done before, at the foot of Crishowell Lane, and, this time, found Mr. Lewis waiting to meet her and drive her to the Vicarage. As she entered the door, Howlie put a letter into her hand, which had come, he said, just after her uncle's departure, and she took it up-stairs to read. It was from Harry Fenton, and announced the news that a cousin, long lost sight of, and supposed by the family to be dead, had at last justified their belief by expiring in a distant colony, and, in so doing, had left him a sum representing two thousand a year. CHAPTER XXXIII A BIRD IN THE HAND HARRY'S employment was not so congenial as to keep him one day at work after the news of his legacy had reached him, and, as soon as it was possible, he started for home. He was now his own master, and Isoline, that star for which he had sighed through so many weary months, was within his reach; it was a glorious thought. He could hardly resist throwing his hat into the air as he drove along the road between Hereford and Waterchurch again, and saw all the familiar objects he had passed with her when they had travelled along it together in the early days of their acquaintance. There would be no need for shilly-shallying now, no waiting on luck, on circumstances, on the tardy decisions of other people, for the trumps were in his hand and he had only to declare them and lead the game as he liked. Two thousand a year was a fortune to make him perfectly independent of anything his father might say or do, for were he to cut him out of the place itself, his future would still be assured, and he did not suppose that the Squire would take such a desperate line as that. Where would be the sense of leaving the poverty-stricken estate away from the only one of his sons who had the money to change its fortunes? His departure for London had not upset Mr. Fenton very greatly, but the news that he had found work and was actually doing it came as a surprise. He had sat him down complacently in the belief that his prodigal son would soon return, wiser and sadder, to throw himself into the arms of a forgiving parent--for he meant to be forgiving. He was very fond of his children, and, though he stormed about the folly and ingratitude of this one's behaviour, he looked forward to the day when he should receive him back, and, having magnanimously dismissed the subject of his infatuation in a few sentences, should welcome him again to reason and acquiescence in the saner judgment of older and more sober heads. It never struck him that there could be any other ending to the episode. But as time passed and the letters which came to Lady Harriet gave no sign of change, he began to fear that the drudgery which he had promised himself would soon quench the young man's thirst for work was doing no such thing. He could not understand it, for he had never supposed that Harry, careless, scatter-brained Harry, with his youth and light heart, had got it in him to show so much steadiness of purpose. To his wife the truth was plain. Harry was growing up. It had taken him some time to begin the process, but the late development had set in at last, and been helped forward, as it so often is, by the influence of a woman. There was nothing to be done, she felt; time might bring things right, and she tried to persuade her husband that expressed opposition could do no good and might do a great deal of harm. "It is all very well for you to talk," the Squire said; "I am not contemplating a visit of remonstrance to him, though, to hear you, one would imagine I was going to rush up to London and take him by the throat. I shall do nothing about it; I shall simply ignore the whole thing." Tact was not Harry's strong point. He had made up his mind that there should be no delay, and that a day should not elapse ere he delivered his ultimatum. Acting upon this resolve, he precipitated himself upon his father before he had been twenty-four hours in the house. The result was direful. The Squire's policy of mingled indifference and magnanimity which he had been hugging against his son's return changed to gall and wormwood when confronted by the calm request that was made. The young man had not quite robbed his manner of the reflection of what lay behind it, and the knowledge that he was master of the situation peeped out under the formality he had spread smoothly on the top. He did not mean to be discourteous, but the last few months had made him feel twice the man he used to be, and he could not entirely suppress the consciousness. "Consent?" roared Mr. Fenton, furious at being brought up against actualities which he laid decently away, "consent? I tell you the whole thing is a cock-and-bull story! Don't come here, sir, wasting my precious time over such stuff!" Harry's answer had at least the merit of simplicity. He went straight out to the stable, took a horse, and set off to Crishowell. Before he reached the village he met Isoline, who was taking an afternoon walk. She sedulously avoided the direction of the mountain now. It was cold, and she was muffled up in a fur tippet. Her eyes were sparkling. A rose-coloured scarf that she had wound round her neck fluttered behind her. "You see, Isoline, now everything has come right," he said as he let her hand go; "it is well that you trusted me, isn't it, darling?" Her smile, as she looked at him, was answer enough. She was very happy. They turned into a by-road and he drew the bridle over his arm, walking beside her. There was a shade of embarrassment in his mind; he knew that his chance of seeing and speaking to her was not likely to occur again, and he had so much to say. There were a thousand things he had settled as he came along, and which he must discuss with her. He had rushed over to Crishowell, not only as a sort of protest against his father's attitude, but because he knew that he would not be allowed to see Isoline were the Vicar to be prepared for his coming. He wanted to tell her more about his legacy too, though, to his unsuspicious heart, money seemed a sordid thing to talk about to her. And there was something of vital importance, something which he meant to propose. He feared to begin. It was simply providential that he had met her. "I suppose," he began, "that they would not let you see me if I were to come to the house. I have so much to say. Isoline, I want to ask you something. Could you make a sacrifice, do you think? Dearest, I don't know where to start. I must tell you heaps of things, horrid things, some of them." She looked up quickly. "My father is in a dreadful rage. I asked him again to-day, just now, to give in. He will not." "Yes, but you need not mind him now," broke in the girl. "No, that's it. That is what made him so furious." "But you are not thinking of giving me up?" she said suddenly. "Oh, Harry! you never mean that!" "Give you up? Now, when, at last, I can do as I please? Not likely. Isoline, I believe you are joking." "I never joke," said she, with much truth. "What I am going to ask you to do is this," he said gravely, stopping in the road and looking older than she had ever seen him look before; "I want to make these separations impossible. I want you to come away with me, once and for all." "What? Now!" she cried, bewildered, stepping a pace or two back. "Not now, but soon. In a few days--a week, perhaps." She looked at him blankly. "Oh, I cannot!" she exclaimed, "it would never do." "But why, dear? It has been done before now." "What would they say?" "That would not matter. You would be my own wife and no one could say or do anything." She made no reply and they walked on; her face was downcast. She clasped her hands more tightly in her muff and shivered. "It would take a little time," he went on; "I should have to get a special licence and go to London first. But in a week everything could be ready. We can be married in Hereford and then go straight away. Isoline, will you?" She was silent. "Won't you speak, dearest?" said he at last. "Think; all our troubles would be over and we need never part any more." "They will be terribly angry," said Isoline, lifting her eyes suddenly. "No one matters. At least, no one except my mother," he added, with a half-sigh, "and I know she will forgive me in a little, when she knows you better. You cannot think how good she is, Isoline." Her face hardened. "We need not see them, I suppose," she said. "We can go straight abroad, if you like." "I should like London best," said the girl. "We need not come back a moment before we wish to. I am quite independent, you see. I have not got much ready money at this moment, but any one will advance it until I am actually receiving my legacy. Want of money need not trouble us again." "You have two thousand a year, have you not, Harry?" "Two thousand, one hundred and eleven pounds. There are some shillings and pence, too, I believe. I went into it all with the lawyer." "How fortunately it has happened," said Isoline fervently, her eyes looking onward to the wintry horizon. He was thinking the same thing. All at once, out of the silence that fell between them, there swam up before him the solemnity of what he meant to undertake. It was for all his life, probably, and for hers too. A vague foreshadowing of the buffets of the world, of time, of chance, of fate, played across his mind. He turned to her, a wave of tenderness in his heart, and looked down into her perplexed face. "If you will do this thing," he said, "I will try always to make up to you for what I have asked." She looked straight in front of her. "But I have not decided," she said, almost petulantly; "how can I all at once?" "This is likely to be my last and only chance of talking to you," he pleaded; "if we settle anything we must do it to-day. You could not see me if I came; that is the difficulty." She shook her head. "Not if your father makes all this fuss." "And writing would not be safe. So you see we must think it out now. Heaven knows when we may meet again." "Do you think they will _never_ give in, Harry?" "Never's a long day. But it might take time. It might be a year, it might be much more. It does not matter for me, but your uncle will hold to it as long as my father does. Oh, darling! I hate this miserable waiting. Who knows what may happen in a year?" "That is all true, Harry. Oh! what _can_ I do?" she cried. "It is so difficult! If I only had a little time!" "Take till to-morrow, Isoline." "To-morrow? And how can I see you to-morrow?" "You must send to me." She laughed shortly. "What messenger have I? Howlie is always busy. Besides, he might do something dreadful." "Well, I must think of some other way," said he, "and you must think too, Isoline. Between us, we shall light on something. What if you made me some sign?" "Wait--I have it!" he cried. "Will you go out to-morrow?" "Oh, yes." "Any time?" "Any time within reason." "Then go for your walk in the morning before twelve o'clock. Do you know the gate at the foot of the lane? The first one as you turn towards Brecon. I passed it just before I met you." "I do not remember it." "Then go and look at it after I have gone," said Harry. "There is a bush beside it--only one--and you will see a last year's nest in the branches. If you will come away with me, put a stone into it. I will ride by in the afternoon, and, if it is there, I shall know you have said yes." "But can I reach the nest?" "If you stand on one of the rails of the gate you can. It is not out of reach, for I wondered, as I passed, how it was that the boys had not pulled it down." He searched her face earnestly for some clue to what she would do. "What an odd idea," she said at last "But will you do that? It is the only way I can think of, and I must know to-morrow. There is so much to arrange, dear." "Very well," said Isoline, "if I mean 'yes,' I will put in the stone. But suppose it should rain." "You must come all the same." She pouted. Her mind was making itself up, and the surer her decision became, the more she was inclined to play with him. "What will you do if you find there is no stone there?" she asked. But he had gone further in life than when they had parted, and his lingering boyhood was slipping from him. "Do you understand how serious this is?" he said rather sternly. "Don't trifle, Isoline. It is 'yes' or 'no,' and it is for you to decide it." She wondered, for a moment, whether she really liked him as much as she had supposed. "I am not angry," he said, holding out his hand and fearing he had been harsh, "but I am so anxious, darling." She hesitated a moment before taking hers out of her muff. "It had better be this day week," he said, "if you can be ready." "This day week? But I have no new dresses, or anything." "You can get them after," said Harry. "So I could; when we go to London. We shall go to London, shall we not?" "I think it would be the best thing to do." "Perhaps you _will_ find the stone in the nest," she said, smiling. He pressed the fingers he held. "You must slip away early in the morning. It would not do for us to go on the coach, and I cannot let you go alone, so I will get a carriage and have relays of post-horses. We must be in Hereford before midday, and I shall be waiting for you while it is still dark." "And where must I meet you?" she inquired; "I hope I shall not have to go far alone." "I cannot wait very near to Crishowell because the carriage might be seen, and when you are missed, as I suppose you will be in an hour or so, they would suspect where you had gone. The longer start we have of any one who may follow, the better." "Do you think they will come after us, Harry?" "They might. But I hope by the time they see us, that it will be too late to take you away. You are not afraid, are you, dear?" "No, I shall not be then. I need not mind any one when I am Mrs. Fenton." "We must meet on the other side of the village, for that will be a little bit further on our journey. Be in time, Isoline, because the longer I wait, the more chance there is of being seen. The second milestone out of Llangarth would do; you would not have a mile to walk then." "Suppose any one should see me." "If you are there at six o'clock, it will be quite dark; even if any one passed you would not be seen. The earlier we can get off the better." "But suppose they had a light," said she, thinking of the man who had seen Rhys. "Who carries a light so near sunrise?" exclaimed Harry. "No one." "It is horrible having to go alone. I do not like it at all," said Isoline. "I will go as far to meet you as I dare. Don't fail me, dear,--but I know you won't." "You really talk of it as though it were settled," said she. Though she spoke in this way, she knew in her inmost heart that her mind was made up, but not for the world would she have admitted it to her lover, even when the admission was to save her a tiresome walk on the morrow. She liked to exact the last farthing that she considered due to herself. She did not look happy as she retraced her steps, and, though it might be said that her troubles were righting themselves, she was not so, entirely. She was giving up what had been one of her dearest dreams. There would be no wedding--at least none in the sense in which it appealed to her--no toilette, no bridesmaids envious of her importance, no favours, no grey horses, none of the flourish and circumstance with which she had pictured herself entering married life. She could not have foreseen herself dispensing with it, but then, neither could she have foreseen the malign chance which had revealed Rhys Walters to the man with the dark lantern. The horror of that discovery was never long out of her mind. It was clear from what the newspapers had said that he was in communication with some one, and, while she and Harry delayed their marriage, every day brought its fresh possibility that Walters might hear a rumour of her engagement. Little as she knew of the deep places of human souls, she had seen, when they parted, that he was desperate, and a sort of dread had come to her of the power she had let loose; since the revelation of his name and character he had become a nightmare. She repented bitterly of her vanity, or, at least, of the toils into which her vanity had led her. At night she would wake and imagine him lying in wait behind some tree to murder her, like the determined and forsaken heroes of romances she had read. Such things had happened before. Once she was married and clear of Crishowell she would be safe; but she was to pay for the hours in which she had sunned herself in his admiration with the glory that should have been hers as a bride. Next morning while Harry, at Waterchurch, was loitering about, chained to the vicinity of the stable-clock, she was walking briskly along the road with a stone in her muff. CHAPTER XXXIV THE PURSUERS IT was a quiet week which followed at Waterchurch, and when Harry set off to London on business which he refused to talk about, and which he vaguely referred to as connected with his lawyer, Mr. Fenton bade him good-bye amiably enough. His son had neither contradicted him nor re-opened the subject of his marriage, and the Squire, with whom put off was done with, regained his composure and returned to his own affairs. He told his wife nothing, for he had lost his temper and did not wish her to find it out. Harry had said he would be absent "two or three days," so when a week had gone and he neither wrote nor returned, his father began to wonder what he was doing. He sought Lady Harriet. "What's Harry about in London?" he inquired. "He seems in no hurry to come back." "I thought he would have been home before now. I hope there are no complications about his money," she replied. Mr. Fenton fidgeted about. "I wish there were no complications about anything else," said he, stopping in front of her. "I wasn't such a fool as he is at his age." "What has he been doing?" she asked, a twinge of misgiving flying through her mind. "What has he been doing? Really, Harriet, you are not brilliant! Here have we been at our wits' end because of that girl of Lewis', and you ask me, what has he been doing? Heavens!" "But there is nothing new, is there? Nothing we don't know?" "He came to me about it again." She raised her eyes quickly to his in a question, and he looked out of the window. "I told him I wouldn't hear of it." "And then?" "He went off. I didn't see him till dinner that night." "But where did he go?" "Go? How should I know where he went? I know where he _will_ go, and that's to the deuce," said the Squire, beginning to march about the room. "The question isn't where he went, but where he is now. That is the point of it, and I am surprised that you, Harriet, don't see it. I shouldn't wonder if he were sitting there with his arm round the girl's waist at this moment." "At Crishowell? I know Mr. Lewis would never allow that." "Allow it? Who'd ask him to allow it, I should like to know? They needn't be under Lewis' nose. He's there, you take my word for it." At every sentence the Squire's voice rose. "I'm not going to stand such a thing any more. It's time somebody did something. What's the use of our sitting here with our hands before us like so many fools, eh?" "What shall you do? You see, now he is his own master," said Lady Harriet, sighing. "His own master? I'll show him whether he is his own master or not! You know as well as I do that there is no entail on Waterchurch. I'll just bring that to his notice. 'My good boy,' I'll say, 'you bring this upstart of a girl here and you'll see whether there's an entail or not!' That'll bring him round." "I'm afraid that's not a very good plan, Edward. That would be worse than useless." "Pshaw! I tell you I'll soon find out whether it's useless!" Mr. Fenton sat down to a writing-table and began scribbling excitedly. When he had sealed up his note he rang the bell. "Is there any one in the stable?" he inquired, rather unnecessarily, seeing that it was just half-past eight in the morning. The Fentons were early people and breakfasted at eight, even in winter. Lady Harriet never sat long at the table after meals were over, and they had just left the dining-room. Before the man could answer, a steady, approaching trot was plain in the avenue, and, a moment later, there was a grinding of wheels upon the gravel. "What an extraordinary hour for any one to come," exclaimed Lady Harriet. As she spoke, the long face of the Vicar of Crishowell's old mare was visible through the window. She was blowing, and though only her head could be seen, it was apparent, from the way it rocked backwards and forwards, that she was cruelly distressed. The butler went out and returned. "Mr. Lewis, sir. He says he must see you particular. He wished to be shown into the study, sir." "Is Harry here?" asked the Vicar, as his friend entered. "No," said Mr. Fenton. "God bless me, Lewis, you look quite white." "My niece is missing," exclaimed the Vicar, his lips shaking; "I have come to tell you. They have gone off--Heaven forgive them for what they have done! We must go after them. I came here with a faint hope of finding Harry, but I must be off again." The Squire took him by the arm as he was making for the door, and pulled him into a chair. He sank into it, covering his eyes. "What must you think of me, you and Lady Harriet? Fenton, I never foresaw it, blind fool that I was! She was so quiet, I never dreamed that the whole thing was not over, so far as she was concerned; she did not even seem to care." The Squire was bewildered. "She complained of headache last night and told the maid not to call her in the morning. The girl forgot and tried to open the door. It was locked, so she got frightened and came for me, and we found the room empty. The bed had not been slept in, though one could see that she had been lying on it; she must have lain down in her clothes for fear of not awaking in time. Her handbag was gone, and her brushes and things--that is what made me suspect. I sent a boy down to a cottage on the road to Llangarth to ask if anything had been seen, and the man had heard a carriage pass a little before six and seen the lights of a postchaise. He heard it pass again on its way back not long after." "How do you know it was Harry?" asked Mr. Fenton. "I can only guess; but who else could it be? I must be off at once. I am going to Llangarth, for I shall get some clue at the toll this end of the town. They would be obliged to pass through it." "I will go too," said the Squire, his hand on the bell. "You can't get on with the same horse, Lewis. We must put in one of mine." "Quarter to nine," said the Vicar, pulling out his watch. "It was nearly eight when I left. Two hours ago I knew nothing." As the two sat side by side they did not exchange a word. The horse was a good trotter, and the Squire, who drove, put him to his utmost pace. The Vicar looked blankly out on the hedges and fields which approached, passed, and dropped behind, bitterness round his closed lips. The few illusions he had ever had about his niece were fallen from him, and he understood her thoroughly. It was sordid money that had made her do this thing, that had decoyed her out into the darkness of the winter morning, and not the man who was waiting for her. If love had undone Isoline as it had undone Mary, he felt he could have recoiled from her less, though the outside world would have deemed it a worse calamity. It would have struck him to the earth indeed, but it could hardly have sickened him as this had done. He would have given all he possessed to prevent any one belonging to himself from dealing such a blow to those he loved. There was no pretence, no veil, however thin, no excuse. It was money, money, money. She had encouraged Harry when she thought him rich, dropped him angrily, resentfully, as one drops a kitten that has scratched one, when she knew he was poor, and sprung at him again the moment his fortunes mended. And he was the son of the best friends he had. He had left Waterchurch without seeing Lady Harriet, for he had felt unable to face her. They pulled up at the toll on the near side of Llangarth, where the gatekeeper gave them what information he had. The carriage had gone through Crishowell very early, before it was light, and had repassed on its return journey about a quarter-past six--maybe twenty past, or thereabouts--he could not tell exactly. There was a lady in a black veil. He knew that, because he had turned the lantern on the inside of the carriage, and the gentleman who paid the toll was young--fair, he thought--but he couldn't say; he didn't know them, not he, for he was new to the place, but the gentleman had seemed in a hurry. He could give no further clue. But it was enough. They drove on to the Bull Inn, which was the only posting-house in the town, and Mr. Fenton sprang out and went in to find the landlord. "Ain't a pair left in the place," said an ostler, who emerged from the stable. "The 'ole lot's out." He began mechanically to take the Squire's horse out of the shafts. The landlord's tale was the same. There was a postchaise, but nothing to put into it; they might get something at the next posting-house in Welchurch, seven miles on. "What is that over there?" inquired the Vicar, pointing to a brown muzzle which was pushed out of a box at the end of the court. "That's my old horse, sir, that I drive myself." "Let me have that in my shafts," said the Squire, "and I'll make it good to you." In a few minutes they were on their way again with their faces to Hereford, and the landlord's horse, who had good blood in his veins, had put his head into the collar. The reason that they had been unsuccessful in getting what they wanted was simple enough; every pair was out on the road for Harry. The long tedium of the miles seemed interminable till they reached Welchurch, and the white faces of the milestones as they went past were the only things either man had the heart to notice. They were rewarded at last by the sight of the inn and by finding on inquiry that there was a light chaise and a pair of horses to be got. They took their seats grimly and set off on the next stage at a gallop. It was twenty minutes past eleven when they drew up at the Green Dragon in Hereford, and the Squire and the Vicar got out, stiff after thirty miles of sitting cramped in their seats. They did not expect Harry to leave his carriage at so prominent a place as the chief hotel in Hereford, should he mean to stay in the town, but they looked round the courtyard for the possible sign of an arrival. The place was quiet and vacant as they asked hurriedly for news, and, finding none, started for a humbler inn hard by at which they hoped they might come upon some trace of the couple. Sure enough, as they entered its precincts, they saw a carriage, splashed with mud and standing empty; beside it was a pair of unharnessed horses being groomed by two stable-helpers. "Where has that carriage come from?" inquired Mr. Fenton of one. The lad stopped hissing through his teeth and stood with the brush midway between himself and his horse. "Can't say, I'm sure. I don't know nothin' about it." "But how long has it been in, boy?" "About half-an-hour or more. That's 'im over there in the stable." The two men looked round, almost expecting to see Harry, and met the postillion's red countenance and hilarious glance which beamed at them from a doorway; evidently he had had refreshment after his exertions, and, from the satisfaction on his face, it seemed unlikely that he had paid for it himself. He came forward rather unsteadily. "Have you come from Llangarth?" cried Mr. Fenton, pointing over his shoulder at the muddy vehicle. The man smiled and laid his finger along the side of his nose; whoever was responsible for his entertainment had not done the thing by halves. Then he stood a moment, his legs wide apart and his thumbs in the armholes of his open jacket, eyeing the gentlemen with vacillating complaisance. "That 'ud be lettin' the cat out of 'er bagsh," he replied slowly, turning away with what he supposed to be dignity. Mr. Fenton sprang after him, raising his cane, but the Vicar interposed. "That will do no good; there is a much better way than that," he said, as he took a couple of half-crowns out of his pocket. "Look here, my man, which church did you drive them to?" "Don't know the name of it," replied the postillion, with a guileful look. "Unless you're come to m--marry 'em?" he added, suddenly realizing Mr. Lewis' clerical dress. The Vicar hated a lie of any kind, and hesitated, but his companion had no such scruples. "We shall be late if you don't tell us," he broke in, "and they will not be married to-day. It's getting on for twelve." The man stood scratching his head; his mind was turned upside down in a chaos of beer, and there was nothing to suggest that the two gentlemen who had walked into the yard had been travelling post haste. At this moment the Vicar slipped the two half-crowns into his hand. The recipient shook his head as he pocketed them. "That 'ud _never_ do," he observed, in an access of tipsy morality. And, beckoning mysteriously, he led the way into the street. "Thatsh shurch," he said, laying a careful hold upon Mr. Fenton's coat collar, and pointing to a spire which rose, not a hundred yards away, from a railed graveyard. The two men hurried on, for they had no wish to be heralded down the street by the staggering figure. They arrived at the gate just as Isoline and Harry were emerging from the porch. The level of the street was below that of the building, and a flight of steps ran up to the door. Bride and bridegroom stood at the top, arm in arm. On Harry's face, caught full by the light, was the trace of strong feeling and an infinite tenderness for the woman at his side; it was humble too, for he felt he had not deserved so much. He turned to her, and, in so doing, perceived his father and the Vicar looking up at them from the pavement below. Isoline saw them too, and launched a glance of triumph at them; the hour she had waited for had come, and her only regret lay in the fact that Lady Harriet was not present also. She carried a little silk bag that hung by ribbons to her arm, and she twirled it light-heartedly as she looked down at the two grey-headed men. The man and wife descended the narrow steps, Harry drawing back to let her pass on in front. She sailed forward and paused at the bottom within a few paces of her uncle and her father-in-law, hesitating whether to speak to them or not; the former's expression was a study in mortification and pain, of which she took no notice. Catching the Squire's eye, she made a little curtsey that she hoped might express some of the dignity in which she henceforth intended, as Mrs. Fenton, to wrap herself. But there was something in her which made it a failure. Harry went straight up to his father, feeling that he could confront any one or anything with calmness in the glad knowledge of what had just occurred, but the Squire waved him off. He met Mr. Lewis' face of reproach. "I will take care of her, be assured, sir," he said. Then, finding that the Vicar made no reply, he turned and followed his wife, who was walking slowly up the street. The two men went into the church to look at the register. It was midday when the newly-married pair reached the inn where they had left their postchaise, for the wedding had taken place a little later in the morning than they intended. On driving to the church they had found two other people waiting to be married, and, as the first arrivals, the clergyman had taken them before Harry and Isoline. She had looked at the woman who stood before the altar with some interest, for she was beautiful with a beauty unusual in country girls of her class, and her face showed that she felt every word of the service; the man was a young labourer of the massive type, who wore a purple neckcloth with a bird's-eye spot. When their own marriage was over and the other one going on, the first couple had gone into the graveyard for a short time and sat down together on a bench; it seemed as if they wished to realize quietly what had happened to them. When they came out they walked past the inn, and the two brides came face to face. Isoline stood by the door while Harry spoke to the landlord, and there was admiration in Mary's eyes as she looked at the pretty lady in the feathered hat and the fur through which her cheek bloomed like a blush rose. The little cloud on Mrs. Fenton's brow had lifted, and as she saw it she half smiled. Had she known the history of the girl she smiled at she would have drawn aside her skirt so that she might not so much as touch her with the hem of her garment. Mr. Fenton and the Vicar retraced their journey the same afternoon and parted, sadly enough, in Llangarth. The Squire took the chaise and post-horses on to Waterchurch, and the other, whose vehicle had been left at the Bull Inn, agreed to drive his friend's horse back to Crishowell and to give it a night's rest before sending it home next day. He drove through the streets, tired in every limb and sore at heart. He felt worn out and disgusted with everything, and physically very weary; he had not remembered so vividly that he was seventy odd years old for a long time. He went so slowly and was so much lost in his own thoughts that the horse had been brought to a standstill almost before he noticed a thin, shabby woman who had run from the door of a house, and was, with unexpected energy, taking hold of the bridle. "Stop!" she cried, raising her hand. The Vicar pulled up, leaning out from under the hood, and she came up close and laid hold of the dashboard, as though to prevent him forcibly from continuing his way. "There's a man dying," said the woman, panting a little, "an' he wants you. You'll have to be quick, sir; he's mortal bad. Up there." Mr. Lewis looked at the house she pointed at, a tumble-down building which faced the road. "It's Hosea Evans," she went on; "he's come out o' jail a fortnight." "The landlord of the Dipping-Pool? It's the Methodist parson he wants, not me." "Not him. He's been a-calling out for you all the morning. I was just off to Crishowell when I see'd you go by the door. He's pretty nigh done, an' he's crying out for you. There's somethin' on his mind, an' he says he can't tell no one else." Mr. Lewis turned the horse's head, his own troubles retreating, as they were apt to do, before those of other people. Following his guide, he entered a small, dirty room. It was getting dusk outside, which made the miserable place dark enough to prevent his seeing anything but the one ghastly face in the corner lit up by a candle which stood on a chair by the bed. There was the movement of a dim form in the room, and the doctor who attended the very poor in the town rose from the place where he had been sitting. The woman approached the dying man and whispered close to his ear; a wan ray of relief touched his face, and he moved his hands. "He is very near his end," said the doctor. "It is typhoid. These jails are not all that they should be, I am afraid. He has been a bad character too, poor wretch." The Vicar went up to Hosea, and the shabby woman moved the candle away so that he might sit on the chair beside him. "I can't see," said Evans thickly. "I am here," said Mr. Lewis, laying his hand on the wrist from which the pulse was fast ebbing; "what can I do for you, my brother? Shall I pray?" Hosea moved his head feebly. "No, no; I want to speak a bit, but I can't, I'm that done." The doctor poured some liquid into a cup and held it to his lips. "Try to swallow," he said, "it will help you." The innkeeper made an effort and swallowed a little. "Come near," he whispered, and the Vicar leaned down. "I killed Vaughan," he said, "not Rhys Walters." Mr. Lewis was so much astonished that he did not know what to say, and merely looked into the man's face to see whether or not he was in full possession of his senses. "Then that is what has been troubling you?" he said at last. Hosea made a sign of assent. "Me it was," he continued feebly, "me, an' not him. We both struck at him together, an' my stick came down on his head and laid him his length. His no more than shaved his shoulder." "Are you certain that what you say is true?" asked the Vicar, who was suspecting the dying man of an hallucination, but who began to see sense in the circumstantiality of his words. "If you killed him, why did Walters fly so suddenly without another blow?" "He was blinded. A stone took him in the face as he let out, an' he never knew 'twarn't himself as did for him. So he went off smart-like----" The effort to speak plainly was almost too much for Evans. He lay looking at the Vicar with eyes that seemed to be focussed on something very far beyond the room. "And is that everything you want to tell me?" asked Mr. Lewis, bending down in answer to a faint gesture. The dying man signed for the cup in the doctor's hand, and, when a few more drops had been poured down his throat, he spoke again. "There's the money too." "What money, my man?" "My money. I've a mortal lot--the box below the bed. It's for her, an' you'll tell her it warn't him, not Rhys Walters. It's to keep her. 'Tis all I can do now." "But who do you mean, Evans? Try to tell me." "Mary--Mary Vaughan. She was a good lass, an' 'twas me killed him." His voice paused, but his lips moved, and the Vicar could just distinguish the word "box." "Shall I draw it out from under the bed?" Hosea smiled faintly. They pulled out a thick, black wooden box about a foot square, and placed it on the mattress beside him; his eyes lit up as he saw it, and his fingers worked. He had been called a "near" man in his time, and the Vicar remembered that, as landlord of the Dipping-Pool, he had always had credit for being well off, in spite of the poor place he inhabited. When the lid was opened there proved to be nothing inside it but a stuff bag. The sight of it seemed to give Evans strength. "All notes," he said, "a hundred pound an' over. Count them." Mr. Lewis began to do so, Hosea's sunken eyes following every movement of his lips. There was in bank notes one hundred and five pounds, and in coin fifteen shillings and tenpence. "Now write," said the innkeeper, "quick." It was not easy to find pen, ink and paper, and the woman was obliged to go out and borrow what was necessary from a more advanced neighbour; but when this had been done, the Vicar wrote out the simple sum of Hosea's wishes. It was plain enough; everything he owned was to go to Mary Vaughan unreservedly. He was past writing, but he insisted on the pen being given him, and, with the doctor supporting him in his arms, he made a mark where Mr. Lewis had written his name. The two men witnessed it and added their own signatures. "You are happier now that we have done that, are you not?" said Mr. Lewis. "You can trust me to see Mary Vaughan at once, and I will take care that what you want is carried out. It is right that you should do all you can for her. There is nothing else?" "No," said Hosea, though his eyes belied his words. "I've been a bad man," he whispered, after a silence. "I suppose you can't do nothin' for me?" "I can pray," said the other, as he went down on his knees by the bed. He began the commendatory prayer for the dying, and as his voice ran steadily on, the room grew very still. Only the cries and footsteps in the street outside broke the quiet. The doctor was kneeling too. The window-pane showed like a thing far away in a dream, a little blue square in the close-crowding walls that pressed upon Hosea's dying eyes. The candle guttered and went out, and the Vicar finished his prayer in the dark. When the last word was said, the doctor approached and struck a light. There was nothing left of the innkeeper but the poor, earthly husk that had clothed his imperfect soul, lying on the bed. CHAPTER XXXV NEW YEAR'S EVE THE Pig-driver had been absent from his usual haunts for more than ten days, business having taken him on a stealthy tour of inspection to the connecting links of his trade; it was a duty which called to him at the end of each year, and he had returned this time lighter of heart than ever, for his affairs were flourishing, and the books so carefully kept by his nephew told a promising tale. It was New Year's Eve; a year and more since Rhys' and Harry's lives had crossed under the shadow of the Black Mountain in that unconscious rivalry which their destinies had forced upon them; a year since Mary had looked her last upon her lover's face as he rode away from the Dipping-Pool. In the great shuffle which a year will sometimes bring to groups of people whose lives concentrate in the same circle, Bumpett was the unchanged one, as he shambled into Crishowell to hear what local news had cropped up since his departure. As he went along between the houses a burst of singing, which came like a gust of wind from a cottage a little way in front, caught his attention and made him smile. He smiled because he intended to spend the night in the village and because he knew very well that no conviviality was considered complete without his presence, more especially on an occasion so important as the seeing-out of the Old Year. He moistened his lips with his tongue and hurried forward, a pleasant anticipation on his face; it was little more than eight o'clock, and there was a deal in the way of joviality possible before midnight. He paused outside the house, like the discreet man he was, to see if he could identify any of the voices before committing himself to their society. A new song was beginning, and he recognized it as one called "Mary Morris" which had come from the mining districts, and which was very popular in the neighbourhood. It was sung by a single voice, and set forth the rather irregular loves of the mining character who was its hero. At the last line of each verse the company joined in with an ardour and a breadth of vowel which bid fair to rouse the village. There was a large stone outside the door, the remains of an old horse-block, and on this the Pig-driver sat down to listen. The singer made one or two false starts, and finding himself invariably landed in a higher key than he had bargained for, seemed inclined to desist but for the encouragements of his audience, which, at last, launched him safely upon the surging wave of the tune. "O! Mary Ma-awris! Why was you leave me? You leave me all alone, most fit to break my he-a-art! You have gone and left me, All alone so cruel, Never am I happy since you and I was pa-art!" "Since yew an' oi was pa-a-art!" roared the chorus. "O! Mary Ma-awris! I was love your sister, I was love your sister most so well nor you! And my heart was broken Like a crochan chinay;[1] Once that you have broke him, never can put him to! Never can put him to-o-o!" Here the audience began to stamp to the tune, and the singer raised his voice yet a little higher. "O! Mary Ma-awris! I'm living at Penpulchwyth; When you come to Merthyr, mind you come to me; Though I be married To another 'ooman, Come in straight, O Mary, an' never mind for she! Never moind for she-e-e! O! Mary Ma-awris! We will be so happy, We will be so happy, like a king and queen; I will mind the farm, and You shall mind the babies, And we will be so bewtiful as never before was seen! As never before was see-e-en!" Almost as the last long-drawn syllable died away, the door opened and a man came out, who, not noticing Bumpett till he all but fell over him, jumped back with an exclamation. The Pig-driver was taken with a fit of laughter. "Who be you?" inquired the man, when he had collected his wits. "'Tis just me, Bumpett o' Abergavenny, listenin' to the music. Didn't expect to find me, did ye? What sort of a feller is that singin'? I can't mind his voice." "Williams o' Tan-y-bulch. He's a fine talker too; tells ye as many lies an' bad words in an hour as I could in a week." "And who else?" "Stevens an' Griffiths an' Prosser an' William Pritchard an' old Job Hondy. There's only a few more because of the drinking up at Price's." Price was the carpenter, and his house was the usual meeting-place of the Pig-driver's set. "I'm going up there myself," continued the man. "The jug's getting pretty nigh empty here, an' I don't see my way to giving 'em no more. I'll start fair over there, ye see." "Then it's you that's payin' for their treat?" "Yes, yes, 'tis my party. There's just enough left i' the jug to keep them quiet till I've had my turn over at Price's afore they all be after me. I'll be gone then, afore they do come." "But you don't own this house," said Bumpett, rather mystified; "I've never seen you before." "An' you don't see me now," rejoined the other, with an airy glance into the darkness, "nor _they_ won't see me neither after I've had my drink." "Well, you _have_ a right notion o' things--I can see that, anyhow," said the Pig-driver, beginning to like his acquaintance. "I'll step down wi' you to Price's." "Best not," said his companion dubiously. "Oh, but that I will," replied Bumpett, winding his arm confidingly through that of the stranger. The other proceeded rather unwillingly, but the old man would take no denial. "But that's Pritchard's house," he began again, jerking his thumb towards the place they had come from; "how be you come to pay for the drink in it?" "I haven't paid yet," replied the other cheerfully. "Any news flyin' about the town?" inquired Bumpett, after one or two vain attempts at forcing his companion's confidence. "It's goin' ten days since I was hereabouts, and I haven't had a word wi' no one." "It depends what you call news," said the stranger. "For my part, there's little can flummox me. Have e' heard of the young Squire down Waterchurch way runnin' off to Hereford last week? Took the Parson of Crishowell's niece along wi' him, an' was married safe an' sound like a man. The old Squire was after him, an' Parson Lewis, an' though they battered shameful at the church door--so they say--'twarn't no use. The lock was turned till they was tied tight. Not that that flummoxes me though; why I tell 'e----" "Well, well, that's all news to me," exclaimed the Pig-driver, with whom admiration was beginning to oust every other sentiment. "I must get down to Price's afore any o' them's gone, an' hear the rights o' that." "The rights? Bean't I tellin' 'e the rights? What more do ye want nor what I've told ye?" "No offence," said the Pig-driver hurriedly. "Ye don't seem to know much about nothin'," continued his friend, unmollified. "Now, for me, there's not a thing done within twenty mile but I know it all pat afore ye can so much as put your thumb to your nose. Why, the breath wasn't out of Evans o' the Dipping-Pool's body, an' I knew where his money was to land. That's me all over." Bumpett dropped his arm with a jerk. "Did 'e say Evans? Hosea Evans?" "I did; an' I'll say it again if ye've any fancy for jumpin' like that. He's as dead as a nail. Died just after he come out of jail, an' left every damn penny o' two hundred pound to the toll-keeper's wench that used to keep company wi' Rhys Walters." This time the Pig-driver was not to be borne down by any superfluous knowledge on the part of his companion. "She's lucky," he observed shortly. "And so's the chap that's married her. His name's Williams, and he used to live in a queer enough place up by the mountain, and do a turn at hedgin' now an' again. Not much hedgin' now, I suppose. Livin' like a lord, more likely." Bumpett's tongue grew dry, and he grinned mechanically; his lips stretched and went back like pieces of elastic, and his friend, who was waiting for some tribute to his superior information, could hear odd sounds going on inside his mouth. "Ah, you didn't know that!" he exclaimed, "and I'll wager ye didn't know 'twas him killed Vaughan an' not Rhys Walters. He came out with it all on his death-bed to the Parson o' Crishowell." "Go on wi' ye!" broke out the Pig-driver. "That's all very fine," replied the stranger in a tone of offence, "but just you go off to the police at Llangarth and see! Lewis an' the doctor an' a woman was witness to it, an' it's written down in the Law, I tell 'e. Like enough the Queen has it all at her fingers' ends by now." It was half-an-hour later when Bumpett slipped unnoticed out of Price's door into the darkness. He had left his new acquaintance in an advanced state of intoxication among the revellers, where his varying moods of confidence and pugnacity were beginning to make him something of a nuisance. But the stranger had spoken truth and the old man had heard the same from the lips of his friends. It was not only rage at the thought of George's good luck, though, that was boiling in him, which drove him along at such a pace, it was the far more disturbing knowledge of Rhys Walters' innocence. He resolved to go to the cottage without an hour's delay, and by threats or bribes to compel him to leave the country. He would, if all else failed, tell him that his hiding-place was known to the police and press on him any assistance to escape that his money or ingenuity could command. He had been living in daily dread of his unprofitable servant's indiscretion, and since the experience of the man with the dark lantern had appeared in the local newspaper, he would have given much to know him clear of England. And now, if Walters' own folly should bring him to discovery, and he should learn that he was innocent of Vaughan's death, the consequences might be dreadful. He would have to suffer for his share in the Rebecca riot, but having done so he might one day return to his own, damaged, perhaps, but with the stain of blood-guiltiness off his hands, and live on the very scene of his--Bumpett's--activities, a constant embarrassment and menace. It was not likely that he would denounce malpractices in which he had been involved, for the same drag would act on him as on the Pig-driver's other subordinates, namely, their liability to suffer side by side with their master. Sheep-stealing, though no longer a capital offence, was punished heavily, and sane men do not usually open the prison doors for themselves. But, of late, there had been that about Rhys which forbade him to judge him as he would have judged another man. He felt that it was desperately urgent. When he was clear of the village and beginning to ascend towards the mountain he found it no easy matter to get forward; there was not a star in the sky, and a damp mist, which, though he knew it not, was enwrapping the higher country towards which he pressed, became thicker at every step. The lane leading to the old cart track was scarcely less deserted than itself, and his feet struck against heaps of loose stones which the autumn rains had rolled here and there into shelving heaps. He put his hand up to his face and cursed to meet the wet on it. It was one of those nights so frequent in winter, a repetition of the one through which Rhys had once felt his way to the Dipping-Pool. By the time he reached the cottage the enveloping fog was so thick that he would not venture to trust himself upon the plank crossing the water, but waded through, though the cold touch on his ankles made him gasp. He groped round the end of the house till he found himself among the gooseberry bushes of the garden. It was impossible to see anything, and he could only guess at their position as he stumbled along, pricking himself against the stems. When he came to one growing by the wall he pushed it aside, guided by a faint light which came out of the hole in the masonry behind it. From the little shine he gathered that Rhys had not gone out and was in the cellar below. He put his mouth to the aperture and called down it. After two or three vain attempts to make himself heard, the Pig-driver could distinguish steps moving in the cellar. "'Tis me--Bumpett!" he cried. "Go you round to the door and let me in." As he stood waiting for Walters to turn the key, he told himself that he would not depart again without the young man's consent to leave; but he wondered how he should manage the matter, for there seemed to be nothing in the world by which he could keep a hold over him. It must be done somehow, that was all he knew. It was quite dark in the upper part of the house as he entered and followed Walters down the ladder. There was a light standing on a piece of furniture, and Bumpett sat down by it on a broken chair and looked up at his companion. He had seen him continually at short intervals during the last six months, and the alteration in him had not hitherto struck him as it would have struck a stranger. But, all at once, in the wretched light, as the two confronted each other, the Pig-driver saw through the veil of custom which had blinded him to the ghastliness of the change in Rhys. A feeling akin to horror took him by the throat as he sat and looked into the haggard face with the black shadows thrown upwards by the candle lying upon it. Not that it was pity or concern that moved him--he cared little enough for anything that affected the man before him--but even he, coarse, sordid, callous as he was, could feel that Rhys Walters had gone beyond the reach of fear or hope, joy or malice, and that the grey waters of despair divided him from the power of aught else but some one influence which was working within him. Nothing could help or harm him any more. The soul that looked out of his sunken eyes was one pertaining no longer to the ordinary world of human beings with its hates and loves, its ambitions and griefs; it was something which had gone far off into a dominion of one idea. "What do you want?" asked Walters, laying his hand on the improvised table and bringing his face into the circle of light. The shades cast round his jaw and cheek-bones made them stand out with even greater prominence, and the hair, hanging unkempt on either side of his brow, framed it in with dull black. He seemed to Bumpett gigantically tall. "Look you," began the Pig-driver, folding his hands over his stick, "there's no more use in dangling on here, an' ye must just pearten up, Walters. It's time ye was out o' this. I've got a cousin down Cardiff way, and if I could get ye off to him, he'd give ye a hand wi' some o' they ship captains. Ye'd be out o' harm's reach then, an' a good job too." For answer Rhys looked at him with a smile, not as though he were smiling at him, but at something which he saw in his mind. "No," he said, shaking his head; "no, no." "Nonsense," rejoined Bumpett smartly. "I'm not trifling now, and out o' this ye'll have to go, my lad." "Not I," said Rhys, his eyes hardening. "I tell 'e, go ye shall!" cried the old man. "'Tis my place, not yours, an' not another bite nor sup can ye get when I stop sendin' the food that keeps ye. I can turn ye out, an' I will too." "You daren't do that," said the other, looking sideways at him; "there's no manner of use trying to frighten me. Put me out of this house, and it's you that'll have to be on your way to Cardiff, not me. And you'll be too late." "I'm speakin' for yer good," began the Pig-driver again, seeing that threats could produce no effect. "Mind me, ye don't hear nothing hid away in this black hole, but it's different wi' me. I get all the talk o' the country-side, an' I know the police has got their noses turned this way ever since ye let the fellar wi' the dark lantern get sight o' ye on the mountain. It was all written i' the newspapers, so I did hear. Old Job Hondy in Crishowell was tellin' me, for he got a loan of the paper from Parson Lewis." A ray of interest lit up Rhys' face. "And I'll tell Hondy to ask for a sight of it again," continued Bumpett, seeing that he had caught the other's attention, "an' bring it up to show ye; leastways, if it's not lost wi' all the moyther he's had i' the house wi' that young miss o' his." "What do you say?" exclaimed Walters, coming closer to Bumpett. "I said I'd get the newspaper an' show ye what ye've done wi' yer tomfooleries." "What did you say about Mr. Lewis?" cried Rhys, taking hold of the Pig-driver. "I said he was likely moythered wi' that young niece of his and her doin's." "But she is in Hereford," broke out the young man. "In Hereford? Not she. She's off to London wi' young Squire Fenton. Run out one mornin' when the old boy was between the blankets an' up to Hereford an' got married to him. He's been left a fine fortune. She didn't forget that, I'll be bound, no, no indeed." Bumpett had hardly time to end his sentence before Rhys sprang at him like a wild cat and gripped him by the collar. "Liar!" he shouted, "liar! liar!" At every word he shook the old man as though he would jerk the life out of him. The Pig-driver, though naturally cautious, was not altogether a coward, and rage and bewilderment are sharp spurs. He struck out as fiercely as he could; words were impossible, for he had not the breath with which to utter them. When Walters threw him back into the chair from which he had dragged him, he was livid and lay against the back of it with hardly strength left in him to speak. "That's not true!" shouted Rhys, standing over him. "It's a lie! Speak up, or I'll twist your neck like a jackdaw's!" His face was twitching all over and his hands clasped and unclasped themselves. The Pig-driver opened his mouth. "The truth!" cried Rhys, "do you hear? The truth, or out of this you don't go a living man!" "I've told ye the truth," snarled Bumpett. "'Twas no more nor last week, an' every one knows it now." "It can't be, it can't be." "But I tell ye it is," cried Bumpett, turning the knife in the wound. "She's a tiert lass, she is, not one o' the sort that gives a bean for a pea." There was the silence of a moment, and there broke from Rhys a cry so bitter, so despairing, that it seemed as though the heart from whose depths it came had broken. Then he sank down by the table, and, laying his head on his arms, sobbed like a little child, with his face hidden on the sleeve of his shabby coat. It was not until the Pig-driver had been long gone that he raised himself. The light had sputtered out beside him, and he got up and groped his way to the ladder. He climbed to the room above, crossed the threshold into the night, and set his face to the hills. ----- [1] A broken jug. CHAPTER XXXVI THE NEW YEAR AT Great Masterhouse the mist clung round the doors and crept like a breathing thing against the windows, as though it would envelope and cut it off from the rest of the living world. Inside the house there was that sense of subdued movement which is caused by the presence of many people all bent upon the same purpose, and the kitchen was half-filled with men and women ranged on benches and chairs round the walls and near the table. The light illumined their faces and threw their shadows in varying degrees of grotesqueness against the whitewash which formed the background. Beside the hearth, a little apart from the rest, sat Mrs. Walters in the straight chair which she usually occupied, the upright pose of her figure bearing a silent rebuke to some of those who had fallen into glaringly human attitudes. Opposite to her was Nannie Davis. Between them the great fire burned and glowed in the chimney under the high mantel with its rows of brass candlesticks, which stood "with their best side towards London," as the old woman said. The man in black who had preached in the little chapel when George had been discovered asleep there by Anne was standing by the kitchen table. His hand rested on an open Bible and he was reading from it in a loud monotonous voice. In stature he was small and mean, but he threw out his syllables with the assurance of one accustomed to sway his audience. To-night he was lodged at Great Masterhouse, for the farm was his head-quarters whenever his tour of preaching brought him to the Black Mountain district. He had seldom visited the house without holding a service in it at least once during his stay, and now, on the last night of the old year, he had settled with Anne that a meeting should take place near midnight, so that he and his hearers should have the chance of beginning the new one in prayer and supplication. It was a thing which had never been done before, and he hoped that some who might otherwise have failed to be present would be drawn to it by curiosity and the novelty of the experience. But, in spite of this, the room contained hardly more than thirty people, as the thickness of the fog had made it very difficult for those at a distance to push their way through the heavy darkness. As a result it followed that the whole congregation was made up of really earnest persons, and the preacher found himself so much in accord with it that he was stirred to the depths by the moral support he felt in the very air around. He threw his keen glance over the figures before him, over the rough coats, heavy boots, and the hands clasped together or resting open in the lassitude of physical weariness. To him they were the little remnant saved from the burning, out of the many who dwelt in bondage round them. He was a narrow man, zealous, untiring, faithful in the least as in the greatest, sparing neither himself nor others. He had walked many miles that day and he was to set out before sunrise on the following morning for a far-off place, holding a meeting half-way to his destination and preaching again in the barn which would also be his shelter at night. It was no wonder if his influence was great, for he possessed that which could drive his own soul and body forward through physical as through mental struggle, through hunger and cold, through fatigue and pain. He had the courage of a lion and it shone out of the eyes in his small, fierce face. It was the mighty heart in the little body, the little man and the big odds, the thing which, through all time, will hold and keep and fascinate humanity while there is an ounce of blood or nerve left in it. The hands of the large, eight-day clock which stood with its back to the wall were on their way from eleven to midnight, holding on their course with a measured tick that had neither haste nor delay. It was the only sound which seemed to have courage to defy the preacher's voice, and it appeared to impress him in some way, for he glanced towards it now and again during his reading and the prayers he offered. Anne sat stiff and still in her place, and Nannie, who was weary with the day's work and the unwonted vigil, began to nod. He prayed on and on. It was a quarter to twelve when he rose from his knees to begin his sermon, and those whose flesh was weaker than their spirit and whose heads had begun to droop roused themselves as he stood up. He took his theme from the parable of the rich man who pulled down his barns and built greater, saying to his soul, "Eat, drink, thou hast much goods laid up for many years," and whose soul was required of him that night. As he dwelt on the folly of looking forward, the danger of spiritual delay, and the remorseless flight of the time which should be spent in preparing for eternity, every face was turned towards him, and even Nannie felt her attention compelled by his words and by the force which poured from his vehement spirit. The eagerness of his expression was almost grotesque as he leaned forward calling upon his hearers to forsake their sins and to repent while there was yet time, while the day of Grace yet lasted. "You are on the verge of another year," he began when he had read out the parable, "and your feet are drawing nigh to the shores of eternity. Are you ready--you, and you, and you--to face that change that waits you? Can you meet the Messenger who may be in the middle of your road as you return to your homes this very night? There can be no looking back, no halting when the summons comes, as come it will, no changing of a past that is the test by which you will stand or fall. Every day that you live is an account sealed, a leaf turned over for ever, a thing no one can take back. What is your account in the past?" He stopped and wiped the sweat from his face with his handkerchief. The clock warned, and the hands pointed to a few minutes before the hour. The preacher looked towards it. "And, as you sit here," he cried, "the Old Year is dragging out its last moments and the New Year is coming up--even now we can hear its footsteps drawing closer and closer----" He paused, holding up his hand as though to convey to his hearers' minds the picture that he saw in his own. And, in the pause, it began to be actually plain to their bodily senses. There was a dead silence and they sat holding their breath, rooted in their places, for the sound of an approaching tread was surely coming up the passage. The tension in the room was almost a tangible thing; men sat with eyeballs fixed, and women grasped each other. On it came, nearer, nearer, till it stopped at the door. The latch turned, and on the threshold stood Rhys Walters. He did not come further, he only remained standing where he was, looking at the familiar place and the people gathered in it. His clothes were stained and torn, his hair was wet with mist, and the angles of his thin shoulders were sharp beneath his coat. He looked at Anne, rigid and spellbound upon the hearth, and a strange fear stirred within her. Each in the room stared at him, dumb, and all were conscious of something that had set its seal upon him and divided him from themselves. Nannie's cry, as she ran to him, broke the bond of silence which held them, and they rose, pressing towards the figure at the door. Before she could reach him through the crowded medley of chairs and human beings he had gone and his steps were echoing again down the flags of the passage. Anne was behind her as she stood at the outer door straining her eyes into the night and the thickness. The preacher, who had caught up a lantern from a nail in the passage on which it hung, was holding it up, and a bar of light stretched out and died in the fog; the men and women came round, whispering and peering. Mrs. Walters went out into the courtyard calling Rhys' name, and Nannie, down whose cheeks tears were running, began to implore the bystanders to go out and find the man who had been, but a minute before, in their midst. There was no sign nor sound, and through the still air came only the monotone of a distant stream in the mountain, heavy with recent rain. Anne turned mutely to the preacher; her lips were closed and she put out her hand towards him; she looked strange and shaken. "I will go," he said. "Men, will you come with me?" About a dozen responded. The people belonging to Great Masterhouse began to hunt in every outhouse and stable for more lanterns, and, when they had found what they wanted, they filed out of the yard with the little man in front of them. Anne and Nannie stood together watching the lights disperse on the plateau. One was weeping; the other stood with her stony face to the night. * * * * * * The dawn was near when Rhys toiled up a steep spur that jutted out from the mass of the mountain. Though morning was at hand the fog reigned below and only the levels above him were emerging from the pall which had covered them for days. The summit of the Twmpa would soon be lifting itself in the chill of daybreak. All night he had wandered, wandered. Once or twice he had seen the flicker of lights in the hands of the searchers and, with an unexplained instinct, had avoided them. He could not tell where he was going, but he groped along. Twice he had sunk down exhausted and lain in the bitter cold upon the hillside; once sleep had overtaken him and he had spent a couple of hours on the earth, to awake numb and chilled to the bone. But the force of his consuming spirit had driven him on, and he now stood on a height and saw faintly the heavy waves of mist that lay below him over the hidden world like the Valley of the Shadow. His feet were on the utmost edge of a great chasm, but the driving vapour which curled round them up to his knees hid from him the depths that were down, sheer down, within a dozen inches of where he was standing. Had any one been beneath him on the hills, and able to see up through the density and the dark hour, they would have beheld the solitary figure, erect, still, looking out over the space. There was nothing before him but thick, stifling atmosphere. But he was unconscious of that. For some time he stood, neither moving nor turning, facing eastwards. As daybreak began to grow, he lifted his head, and, throwing out his arms towards the coming light, he took one step forward. And so, in the dawning, passed the soul of Rhys Walters, beyond the judgment or the mercy of man, into the unfaltering hand of the Eternal Justice. In this sorry world it is one who can get justice for the hundreds who get mercy--the mercy which, we are told, "blesseth him that gives and him that takes." But Justice carries no perquisites. THE END RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNGAY. Transcriber's Note This transcription is based on two sets of images posted by the Internet Archive of the 1902 edition published by Heinemann. The first, digitized from a copy made available by the University of California, is available at: archive.org/details/sheepstealers00jacoiala The second, digitized by Google from a copy made available by Stanford University, is available at: archive.org/details/sheepstealers01jacogoog In addition, when there were further questions about the text, the 1902 American edition published by G. P. Putnam's Sons was consulted. Images of this edition are available through the HathiTrust Digital Library at: catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008665608 The following changes were made to the printed text: -- p. 68: When it was held upside-down--Deleted the hyphen in "upside-down" for consistency. -- p. 69: "Was it drink?' he asked after a pause.--Changed single closing quotation mark after "drink?" to a double closing quotation mark. -- p. 78: "Will ye listen to me?" said Bumpettt sharply.--Changed "Bumpettt" to "Bumpett". -- p. 130: for he had always forseen the day--Changed "forseen" to "foreseen" for consistency. -- p. 146: even high mindedness costs its owner something.--Inserted a hyphen between "high" and "mindedness" in keeping with the American edition. -- p. 156: how the sudden revelation of his masculinity had effected her--Changed "effected" to "affected" in keeping with the American edition. -- p. 221: for the extreme geniuneness of his nature--Changed "geniuneness" to "genuineness". -- p. 234: A pang of apprehension went through him--Added a period at the end of the sentence. -- p. 236: He swore under his breath."--Deleted the closing quotation mark at the end of the sentence. -- p. 261: observed Howlie to Llewllyn--Changed "Llewllyn" to "Llewellyn". -- p. 288: there wern't no more ado--Changed "wern't" to "weren't". -- p. 289: when she had managed to control herself a liitle--Changed "liitle" to "little". -- p. 313: I shouldn't wonder if he were siting there--Changed "siting" to "sitting". -- p. 314: "What an extraordinary hour for any one to come," exclamed Lady Harriet.--Changed "exclamed" to "exclaimed". 
45178	----	http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) RED AS A ROSE IS SHE. A Novel. BY RHODA BROUGHTON, AUTHOR OF "COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!" "SECOND THOUGHTS," ETC. _ELEVENTH EDITION._ LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. 1887. [Illustration: Frontispiece: ESTHER CRAVEN. ELISH LA MONTI. PINX. JOSEPH BROWN. SC.] RED AS A ROSE IS SHE. CHAPTER I. Have you ever been to Wales? I do not ask this question of any one in particular; I merely address it to the universal British public, or, rather, to such member or members of the same as shall be wise enough to sit down and read the ensuing true and moving love story--true as the loves of wicked Abelard and Heloise, moving as those of good Paul and Virginia. Probably those wise ones will be very few; numerable by tens, or even units: they will, I may very safely aver, not form the bulk of the nation. However high may be my estimate of my own powers of narration, however amply Providence may have gifted me with self-appreciation, I may be sure of that, seeing that the only books I know of which enjoy so wide a circulation are the Prayer-book and Bradshaw. I am not going to instruct any one in religion or trains, so I may as well make up my mind to a more limited audience, while I pipe my simple lay (rather squeakily and out of tune, perhaps), and may think myself very lucky if that same kind, limited audience do not hiss me down before I have got through half a dozen staves of the dull old ditty. Have you ever been to Wales? If you have ever visited the pretty, dirty, green spot where Pat and his brogue, where potatoes and absenteeism and head-centres flourish, _alias_ Ireland, you have no doubt passed through a part of it, rushing by, most likely, in the Irish mail; but in that case your eyes and nose and ears were all so very full of dust and cinders--you were so fully employed in blinking and coughing and enjoying the poetry of motion--as to be totally incapable of seeing, hearing, or smelling any of the beauties, agreeable noises, or good smells, which in happier circumstances might have offered themselves to your notice. Perhaps you are in the habit, every midsummer, of taking your half-dozen male and female olive shoots to have the roses restored to their twelve fat cheeks by blowy scrambles about the great frowning Orme's Head, or by excavations in the Rhyl Sands. Perhaps you have gone wedding-touring to Llanberis on the top of a heavy-laden coach, swinging unsafely round sharp corners, and nearly flinging your Angelina from your side on to the hard Welsh road below. Perhaps you have wept with Angelina at the spurious grave of the martyred Gelert, or eaten pink trout voraciously at Capel Curig, and found out what a startlingly good appetite Angelina had. But have you ever lived in the land of the Cymri? Have you ever seen how drunk the masculine Cymri can be on market days, or what grievous old hags the feminine Cymri become towards their thirtieth year? Have you ever, by bitter experience, discovered the truth of that couplet-- "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief?" I _have_ lived in Wales, so I speak with authority; and for my part I don't think that Taffy is much more given to the breaking of the eighth commandment than the _canaille_ of any other country. He is not a bright fellow, is not Taffy; happiest, I think, when rather tipsy, or when yelling psalms in his conventicle or schism-shop--for Taffy is addicted to schism; he will tell you plenty of lies, too, and will not season them with the salt of a racy, devil-me-care wit, as Pat would. But he is very civil-spoken, and rather harmless; seldomer, I think, than his cleverer neighbour over the border does he hanker feloniously after his neighbour's spoons, or hammer his wife's head with the domestic poker. But why am I drivelling on, like a sort of Murray and water, on the manners and character of this, to my thinking, not very interesting nation? I will waste no more "prave 'ords" upon them, as the few men and women whom I am going to tell you about, and whom I shall want you to like a little, or dislike a little, as the case may be, are not Taffies, only they happen to have stuck up their tent-poles in Taffy-land when they first make their low bow to you. These men and women were nothing out of the way for goodness, or beauty, or talent; they did a hundred thousand naughty things, each one of them. Some of them did them with impunity, as far as this world goes; some of them, capricious Megæra and Tisyphone lashed with scorpions for their derelictions. This is going to be neither a "Life of Saints," nor a "History of Devils;" these are memoirs neither of a "Hedley Vicars," nor of a "Dame aux Camellias;" so, whoso expects and relishes either of those styles of composition may forthwith close this volume, and pitch it (if it be his own, and not the battered property of a circulating library) into the fire. Those who love a violent moral, or violent judgment for sins and follies--a man struck dead for saying "damn," or a woman for going to a ball, as the _Record_ would charitably have us believe is the way of Providence--equally with those who enjoy the flavour of violent immorality, will be disappointed if they look this way for the gratification of their peculiar idiosyncracies. Of my friends presently to be made known to you, and criticised by you, "the more part remain unto this present, but some have fallen asleep." Once upon a time--I like that old, time-honoured opening; it makes one so nobly free, gives one so much room to stretch one's wings in, ties one down to no king's reign, no hampering, clogging century--once upon a time there was a valley in Taffy-land; there is still, unless some very recent convulsion has upheaved it to the top of a mountain, or submerged it beneath the big Atlantic waves; a valley lovelier than that one in "Ida," where "beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris," pastured his sheep and his jet-black goats, and inaugurated his rakish course; a valley where there are no dangerous, good-looking Parises, only one or two red-headed Welsh squires, who have each married, or will in the fulness of time each marry, one lawful wife--red-headed, too, very likely; and have never made, will never make, love to any Enones or other ill-conducted young shepherdesses. In fact, in that Arcadia there are no such shepherdesses; the daughters of the Cymri do not "ply the homely shepherd's trade," nor would they shed much romance over it if they did; for with sorrow be it spoken, blowsy are they mostly, hard-featured, toothless; and, moreover, the little nimble, lean sheep that go scrambling and jumping and skurrying about the rough crags and steep hill-sides do not need any crook'd and melodious Dowsabellas or Neæras to look after them and guide them in the way they should go. In that valley there are plenty of houses, squires' houses and peasants' houses, where the propagation of the Cambrian is conducted with much success; houses big and little, red-faced and white-faced and dirty-faced, old and new. But we have at present to do with only one of those houses, and it comes under the head of the littles and the olds. Halfway up a hill-side it stands, looking across the valley to other higher hills that swell out softly against the sky, and go sloping gently down to the sea twenty miles away. They always remind me--I don't know why--of the distant hills in Martin's picture of the "Plains of Heaven;" so mistily do they rise in their hazy blueness. It is a snug, unpretending little house enough, with its black and white cross-beamed front and unwalled kitchen-garden straggling steeply up the slope at the back. Many and many a day has it stood there, seeing generations and fashions come in and go out; has stood there since the far-away days when men wore curly wigs half-way down their backs, and sky-blue coats, and fought and died for prerogative and King Charles, or fought and lived for England and liberty: when most houses were black and white, like its little elderly self, before plate glass or stucco, or commodious villa residences, five minutes' walk from a station, were dreamed of. The name of the little house is Glan-yr-Afon. CHAPTER II. "Jack and I got in our last hayload to-day, without a drop of rain; the first bit of good luck that has come to us, I don't know when. If we had any land, I should imagine that we must have a bit of consecrated ground among it, to account for our ill-fortune; but as we have not of our own enough to pasture a goose upon, that cannot be it. Such an odd thing happened to-day--Robert Brandon proposed to me: it is the first offer I ever had, though I was seventeen last month. If it is never a more pleasant process than it was to-day, I hope sincerely it may be the last. I said 'Yes,' too; at least, a species of Yes after half-a-dozen Noes; I cannot imagine why, for I certainly did not feel Yes. I suppose I must have been pleased at any one wishing for my company during the term of his natural life." The name on the fly-leaf of this journal-book is Esther Craven, Glan-yr-Afon, and the date July 10, 186-. July is very often a rather wet month--not so this year; all through its one-and-thirty days the sky was like brass, as it looked to Elijah (the Seer's) eyes on the top of Carmel, when, by his faith, he brought up the tarrying rain from the sea's chambers. London is pouring out her noble army of haberdashers and greengrocers into Ramsgate and Margate, and Scarborough and Llandudno. The John Gilpins of to-day are not satisfied with a modest outing to the "Bell" at Edmonton, "all in a chaise and pair." Armies of schoolboys are devouring arid sandwiches and prime old buns in railway refreshment rooms--schoolboys emptied out of every school and seminary and college all over the country. Highly paid instructors of youth are stretching their cramped legs up the steep sides of Helvellyn and Mont Blanc, and surveying the "frozen hurricane" of the glaciers through their academic spectacles. And young Craven's (of Glan-yr-Afon) last hayload is safely stacked, as you heard from his sister's diary. This morning the highest lying of the upland fields was hilly with haycocks: to-night it is as flat as Salisbury Plain. All day long the waggons have gone grinding and crunching up and down the rocky mountain road between field and rick-yard. All day long Evan and Hugh and Roppert (_sic_) with their waistcoats open and their brown arms bared, aided and abetted by various Cambrian matrons, with bonnets standing upright on their heads, and pitchforks in their lily hands, have been tossing the scented bundles--sweeter in death than in life, like a good man's fame--into the carts; loading them till of the shaft horse nought but ears and nose and forelegs appeared, save to the eye of faith. All day long Esther has been sitting under a haycock, as one might fancy Solomon's wise woman doing, "looking well to the ways of her household." The hay moulds itself pliably into a soft arm-chair for her young, slight figure, and the big hay-spiders walk up her back at their leisure, and explore the virgin forests of her thick dusk hair. She has had her luncheon brought out to her there--bread and milk in a white bowl. It is unsocial, surly work, eating alone; one feels reduced to the level of a dog, cracking bones, and lapping up gravy out of his trencher, all by himself, with tail well down, like a pump handle, and a growl and a snap for any brother dog who may approach to share his feast. The haymakers were much cheerier--"couched at ease" under the nutty hedgerow; bringing slices of unnaturally fat bacon out of blue and white spotted pocket-handkerchiefs, gabbling to one another in the Welsh tongue, which, to one who occupies the room of the unlearned, has always a querulous, quarrelsome, interrogative sound; and digging their clasp knives into the ground to clean them, when their services were no longer required. Jack is out for the day, and the place feels stupid without him. There is not much melody in "I paddle my own canoe," but one misses it when one is accustomed to hear it echoing gaily over the crofts and through the farm-yard and orchard. It would be impossible to talk more dog-Welsh than Jack does to his workmen; but even the mellifluous tongue of the Cymri, with its three or four consonants standing together, undissevered by any vowel, is made harmonious, enunciated by a young, clear voice, that sounds as if it had never been the vehicle for sorrowful words. "The village seems asleep or dead, Now Lubin is away," and Esther, though she has entered upon her eighteenth year (an age which a century ago would have been rather overripe--Chloe and Cynthia and Phyllis being considered in their prime at fifteen, and toasted accordingly), has as yet no Lubin but her brother. Now and again, Gwen the cook, and Sarah the housemaid, came panting up the hill in lilac cotton gowns and trim white aprons, bearing beer in every jug and mug and tin pipkin that Glan-yr-Afon affords, as Evangeline brought the nut-brown ale to the reapers of the village of Grand Pré. And the haymakers drink insatiably, and wipe the thirsty mouth upon the convenient sleeve as artless Nature bids. By-and-by artless Nature makes them rather unsteady on their legs. As they lead the heavy-laden cart to the last remaining haycock, the one on which their mistress sits enthroned, I am not at all sure that they do not see two haycocks, two wide-leaved white hats, two Esthers. Perceiving their condition, though too old an inhabitant of Wales to be in any degree surprised at what is, after all, the normal condition of the Welsh, Miss Craven rises precipitately. Driven from her fortress, she picks up her needles and threads, and Jack's shirt, from which, as usual, the frequent button is missing, and runs lightly down the mountain path in her strong country boots, which bid defiance to the sharp stones that crop out at every step through the limestone soil. At the hall door--a little arched door like a church's, with a trellised porch and benches, such as one sees Dutch boors sitting on with their beer and schnapps, in Teniers' pictures---Sarah meets her. Sarah is an Englishwoman. "Mr. Brandon is in the parlour, 'm." "Parlour! My good Sarah, how many times shall I adjure you, by all you hold most sacred, to say drawing-room?" "He has been there best part of half-an-hour, 'm." "Poor man! how lively for him! why on earth didn't you come and call me?" "He said as he wasn't in no partikler hurry, and he'd as lieve as not wait till you come in. Stop a bit, Miss Esther, you have got some hay on your frock behind." "People of seventeen wear gowns, not frocks, Sarah. Oh! there, that will do. If I had a haystack disposed about my person, he would never be a bit the wiser." Half-an-hour passes, and Mr. Brandon is still in the "parlour." It is seven o'clock, and dinner-time. Would you like to know what it is that Mr. Brandon takes so long in saying, and whether it is anything likely to reconcile Miss Craven to the loss of her dinner? A little room that looks towards the sun-setting; a little room full of evening sunshine and the smell of tea-roses; a light paper, with small, bright flower-bunches on the walls; white muslin curtains; a general air of crisp freshness, as of a room that there are no climbing, crawling, sticky-fingered children to crumple and rumple. A young woman, rather red in the face, standing in one corner. She has been driven thither apparently by a young man, who is standing before her, and who is still redder. At a rough calculation, you would say that the young man was seven feet high; but put him with his back against the wall, with his heels together, and his chin in, and you will find that he is exactly six feet four; that is, four inches taller than any man who wishes to do work in the world, and find horses to carry him, ought to be. His clothes are rather shabby, and he looks poor; but, from the crown of his close-clipped head to the sole of his big feet, a gentleman, every inch of him, though he has no "gude braid claith" to help to make him so. His features may be Apollo's or Apollyon's, for all you can see of them, so thickly are they planted out with a forest of yellow hair; but tears do not seem to be at any immense distance from eyes blue as the sky between storm clouds, fearless as a three-years' child's. "Don't you think that we do very well as we are?" says the young woman, suggestively. "I don't know about you, I'm sure. I know I've lost a stone and a half within the last year," replies the young man, very ruefully. Esther laughs. "There is some little of you left still," she says, with rather a mischievous glance up at the two yards and a half of enamoured manhood before her. This is what has been over-roasting the mutton. He has been asking her to take his heart, his large hand, and the half of one hundred and twenty pounds a year (the exorbitant pay of a lieutenant in Her Majesty's infantry), of an old hunting watch, and a curly retriever dog; and she has been declining these tempting offers, one and all. The minute hand of the gilt clock, on which Minerva sits in a helmet and a very tight gown, with her legs dangling down, has travelled from 6.30 to 7.5, and within these five-and-thirty minutes Miss Craven has refused three proposals, all made by the same person: the first, very stoutly and mercilessly, from Jack's arm-chair, where she had originally taken up her position; the second, decisively still, but with less cruelty, from the music-stool, to which she had next retired; and the third, in a hasty and wavering manner, from the corner, in which she has taken final refuge, in a strong, fortified entrenchment behind the writing-table. "But--but--" says Esther, her rebellious mouth giving little twitches every now and then as at some lurking thought of the ridiculous--"it's--it's such a very _odd_ idea! I don't think I ever was more surprised in my life. When Sarah told me that you were here, I thought that, of course, you had come to say something about that bone-dust. Why, you never said anything at all tending this way before." "Didn't I?" answers the young giant, with a crestfallen look. "I tried several times, but I don't think that you could have understood what I meant, for you always began to laugh." "I always do laugh at civil speeches," answers the girl simply. "I don't know how else to take them: I suppose it is because I have had so few addressed to me; they always sound to me so _niais_." "I'm not a bit surprised at your not liking me," he says, with humility. "I don't see how any one could at first. I know that I'm ugly and awkward, and don't understand things quick----" "I don't _dis_-like you," interrupts Esther, with magnanimity, quite affected by her lover's description of his own undesirability. "Why should I? There is nothing in you to dislike; you are very good-natured, I'm sure," damning with faint praise, in the laudable effort not to be unqualifiedly uncomplimentary. "I know what an unequal exchange it is that I am offering," says Brandon, too humble to resent, and yet with a dim sense of mortification at the quantity and quality of praise bestowed upon him. "I know of how much more value you are than I!" She does not contradict him; her own heart echoes his words. "I am of more value than he; I shall find it out practically some day." "That was why I was in such a hurry to speak," he says eagerly. "I felt sure that if I did not, you would be snapped up directly by some one else." She laughs rather grimly. "You might have laid aside your alarms on that head, I think. I don't know who there is about here to snap me up." Silence for a few minutes: Esther takes up a penwiper, fashioned into a remote resemblance to a chimney sweep, and studies its anatomy attentively. "Shall I upset the writing-table and make a rush past him? No, the ink would spoil the carpet, and he would only come again to-morrow, and hunt me into the other corner. Poor fellow! I hope he is not going to cry, or go down on his knees!" Whether mindful or not of the fate of Gibbon the historian, who, having thrown himself on his knees before his lady-love, was unable, through extreme fat, to get up again, Brandon does not indulge in either of the demonstrations that Esther apprehended. He stands quiet, cramming half a yard of yellow beard into his mouth, and says presently: "Well, I suppose I must not worry you any more; it is not good manners, is it? A man ought to be satisfied with one No; I have given you the trouble of saying three." "It's very disagreeable, I'm sure," says Esther, wrinkling up her forehead in an embarrassed fashion, "and I hate saying No to any one: I don't mean in this way, because nobody ever asked me before, but about anything; but what can I do?" "Try me!" he says very eagerly, stretching out his hand across the narrow table (all but upsetting the standish _en route_). "I don't want to threaten you, saying that I should go to the dogs if you threw me over, for I should not; that always seemed to me a cowardly sort of thing to do; and, besides, I should have my mother left to live for if the worst came to the worst; but you must see that it is everything in the world to a fellow to have one great hope in it to keep him straight." Soft music in the distance; some one whistling "I paddle my own canoe" somewhere about the house; Esther, in an agony between the fear of subversing the table, and the hundredfold worse fear of being discovered by Jack in an unequivocally sentimental position, of which she would never hear the last. "Very well, very well, I'll--I'll _think_ about it; could you be so very kind as to loose my hand?" He complies reluctantly, and she, that there may be no further discussion about it, hides it discreetly away in her jacket pocket. "I paddle my own canoe" dies away in the distance; apparently it was on its way to dress for dinner. Esther draws a sigh of relief. "I thought that some one was coming." "And if they had?" "Why, I did not relish the idea of being found driven into a corner, like a child at a dame's school, and you, like the dame, standing over me," answers she, abandoning the struggle with the corners of her mouth, and bubbling over with the facile laughter of seventeen. Utterly unable to join in her merriment, he stands leaning in awkward misery against the wall; all other griefs are at least respectable; love-sorrows, alone, are only ludicrous. "It really is so silly," says Esther, presently, compassionate but impatient. "Do try and get the better of it!" "Easier said than done," he answers ruefully. "I might as well advise you to get the better of your affection for Jack." "I don't see the parallel," rejoined she, coldly, feeling as if there was sacrilege in the comparison. "My love for Jack is a natural instinct, built too upon the foundation of lifelong obligations, endless benefits, countless kindnesses. What kindness have I ever shown you? I sewed a button on your glove once, and once I pinned a rose on your coat." "I have the rose still." She says "Pshaw!" pettishly, and turns away her head. "Perhaps you are afraid of marrying on small means?" suggests Brandon, diffidently, after a while. The gentle clatter and click of dishes carried into the dining-room enters faintly through the shut door. Esther's heart sinks within her. Is he going to begin all over again?--round and round, like a thunderstorm among hills? "I am afraid of marrying on _any_ means," she says, comprehensively. "I particularly dislike the idea; marriage seems to me the end of everything, and I am at the beginning." "But I don't want you to marry me _now_," cries Robert, stammering. "Don't you? You told me just now that you did." "For pity's sake, Esther, don't laugh! it may be play to you, but it is death to me." "I'm not laughing." "Perhaps some day you will feel what I am feeling now." "Perhaps" (doubtfully). "And you will find then that it is no laughing matter." "Perhaps" (still more doubtfully). The clamour of a fresh cohort of plates shaking noisily upon a tray warns Brandon that his time is short. "Esther!" with a sort of despair in his voice, clashing the ridiculous with the pathetic--they are always twin sisters--"I could live upon such a little hope." "What would you have me say?" she cries, standing with fluttering colour, tapping feet, and irritated eyes. "I have told you the plain truth, and it does not please you; must I dress up some pretty falsehood, and tell you that I fell in love with you at first sight, or that after all I find that you are the only man in the world that can make me really happy?" "Say nothing of the kind!" he answers, wincing under her irony. "I have not much to recommend me, we all know that, and I start with the disadvantage of your thinking me rather a bore than otherwise; but other men have overcome even greater obstacles; why should not I? Give me at least a trial!" She is silent. "Say that you will _try_ to like me; there need be no untruth in that." "But if I fail!" says Esther, wavering--partly in sheer weariness of the contest, partly in womanly pity for sufferings which owe their rise to the excess of her own charms. "If you fail you will not have to tell me so; I shall find it out for myself, and--and I shall bear it, I suppose." He ends with a heavy sigh at that too probable possibility. "And you will console yourself by telling all your friends what a flirt I am, and how ill I treated you." Apparently he does not think this suggestion worthy of refutation; at least he does not refute it. "Or, if you don't, your mother will." "Not she" (indignantly). "Or, if she does not, your sisters will." "Not they" (less indignantly). "And if--if--after a long while--a very long while--I succeed in liking you a little--mind, I don't say that I shall; on the contrary, I think it far more probable that I shall not--but if I do, you won't expect me to _marry_ you?" He smiles, despite himself. "I can hardly promise that." "I mean not for many years, till Jack is married, and I am quite, _quite_ old--five-and-twenty or so?" "It shall be as you wish." "And if, as is most likely, I continue not to care about you, and am obliged to tell you so, you will not think the worse of me." "No." "You are certain?" "Certain. Whatever you do, I shall love you to-day, and to-morrow, and always," says the young fellow, very solemnly; and his eyes go away past her, through the window, and up to the blue sky overhead, as if calling on the great pale vault to be witness between him and her. As for her, her prosaic soul has wandered back to the mutton; she takes the opportunity of his eyes being averted to steal a glance at the clock. Apparently, however, he has eyes in the back of his head, for he says hastily, with rather a pained smile: "You are longing for me to go." "No--o." "I ought not to have come at this time of night. I ought to have waited till to-morrow, I know." "It is rather late." "But to-morrow seemed such a long time off, that I thought I must know the worst or the best before the sun came up again. I don't quite know which it is now; which is it, Esther?" "It's neither the one nor the other; it's the second best," she answers, all smiles again at seeing some prospect of her admirer's departure, and forgetting, with youthful heedlessness, the price at which that departure has been bought. "It is that I really am very much obliged, though, all the same I wish you would think better of it, and that I'll try; I will, really; don't look as if you did not believe me." So with this half-loaf he goes, passes away through the little wooden porch, that is so low it looks as if it were going to knock his tall head, past the stables, and through the oak woods, home. CHAPTER III. "It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard; It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whispered word--" As saith that most delicious of love poems that makes us all feel immoral as we read it. It is the hour when chanticleer retires to his perch in the henhouse, lowers his proud tail, sinks his neck into his breast, and goes to sleep between his two fattest wives. It is the hour when animal life and wild humanity retire to bed; the hour when tamed humanity sits down to dinner. The more we advance in civilisation the farther back we push the boundaries of sleep and forgetfulness. When we reach our highest point of culture, I suppose we shall hustle the blessed, the divine Nepenthe, off the face of the earth altogether. The dining-room at Glan-yr-Afon is, like the rest of the house, rather small and rather pleasant. It will not dine more than twelve comfortably; it is seldom asked to dine more than two; and these two, being young and void of gluttony, do not spend much of their time in it. In youth the dining-room is not our temple, our sanctuary, our holy of holies, as it often is in riper years. In youth our souls are great, and our bodies slender; in old age our bodies are often great and our souls slender. The one wide open window looks on the gay little garden--the window, all around and about which the climbing convolvulus is blowing great white trumpets. There are two or three pictures on the walls; good ones, though dim and dusty. Thomas Wentworth, Lord Strafford, very dark and haughty and saturnine, in blue grey armour, scowling at whosoever looks at him, as he might have scowled at Pym and Hollis. Erasmus, astute and lean, in a black skull cap: and Mary, Queen of Scots, very pale and peaky and indistinct, for time has washed and scrubbed all the carmine out of the cheeks and lips that sent Europe mad three centuries ago. An old sheep-dog is lying on the hearth-rug, with his wise old eyes fixed on his master, licking his chops every now and then when he sees some morsel more tempting than ordinary conveyed to another mouth than his. This evening Lord Strafford is scowling, Mary Stuart simpering, down upon two people dining together, and on a third person whisking about in a clean cap and an aggressively well-starched print dress in attendance upon them. There is a great pot, full and brimming over with roses--a beanpot our forefathers would have called it--in the middle of the table. They were plucked but half an hour ago, and their faces were still wet with the dew-tears that they wept at being torn away from their brothers and sisters on the old gnarled rose trees up the kitchen-garden walk. But the freshest, the sweetest, the largest of the roses is not in the beanpot with the others; it is on a chair by itself; there are no dew-tears on its cheeks, it has no prickles, and its name is Esther. "Have some roast chips, Essie? I cannot offer you any roast mutton, because there isn't any; I dare say there was an hour ago, but there certainly isn't now." This speech is made by Jack. Jack is a young person with not a single good feature in his face; with a baby moustache, which, like the daguerreotypes of fifteen or sixteen years ago, is only visible at rare intervals in one particular light; and with cheeks and nose and chin and throat all as brown as any berry that ever ripened under the mellow autumn sun. "It's a fault on the right side, dear boy; it's better than quivering and being purple," says Esther, with a pout which a lover would have thought entrancing, but which a prosaic brother, if he perceived it at all, considered rather a distortion than otherwise. "I wish that people would remember that there is a time to call and a time to dine, and that the two times are not the same," he grumbles, a little crossly. A man may bear the untimely cutting off of his firstborn, the disposition evinced by the wife of his bosom to love his neighbour as himself, the sinking of his little all in the Agra Bank, with resignation and fortitude truly Christian; but what hero, what sage, what archbishop, can stand the over-roasting or under-boiling of his mutton, the burning of his soup, or the wateriness of his potatoes, and bear an _æquam mentem?_ Esther looks rather conscious, purses up her pink mouth into the shape of a noiseless "Hush!" and says "_Pas avant_," which idiomatic phrase is intended to convey to her brother the indiscreetness of making comments in Sarah's presence on Mr. Brandon's enormities. From long familiarity with the sound, Sarah has become entirely acquainted with Esther's specimen of Parisian French, and always pricks up her ears when it appears on the scene. Then they are silent for a little space. One is not apt to say very brilliant things in one's family circle; it requires the friction of mind with mind before bright sayings spring into being, as the flint and the steel must be married before the spark leaps into life. "How long the days are now!" Jack says presently, as he looks out on the evening light lying like a great bright cloak all over the land. The earth is so very fair, all pranked with "smalle flowres" and green leaves, that the sun is grievously loth to leave her. Fair-weather friend as he is, he cannot be in too great a hurry to desert her, when she lies poor and bare and faded in the dull November days. "One always says that this time of year," Esther says, smiling. "It would be much more worthy remark if they didn't get longer; if one kept a journal of one's remarks for a year, what an awful tautology there would be in them! What a pity that one cannot say a thing once for all, and have done with it!" "If you resolved never to say anything that anybody had said before, you would make mighty few observations, I take it," Jack answers, a little drily. "Most remarks have been pretty well aired in the course of the last six thousand years, I fancy." So, with a little flagging talk, the dinner passes, and the modest dessert appears: scarlet pyramids of strawberries, great bag-shaped British Queens, and little racy, queer-tasted hautbois. Sarah retires, and the embargo is taken off Esther's speech. "Is she gone--finally gone?" she cries, very eagerly. "Heaven be praised for that! I thought she would never have done clattering those spoons. Oh, Jack, what a heavy weight a piece of news is to carry! How I sympathise with the woman who had to whisper to the rushes about Midas' ears! I have been dying all through dinner for some rushes to whisper to." "To whisper _what_ to?" asks the boy, his eyes opening very wide and round. "Jack, do I look taller than usual to-night?" "No." "Broader?" "Not that I perceive." "More consequential?" "Much as usual. You never are a woman with 'a presence.'" "Is it possible that there's no difference at all in me?" "None whatever; except that, now I look at you, your cheeks are, if possible, redder than usual. Why should there be any?" "Because" (drawing herself up) "I have to-day passed a turning-point in my history. I have had--a proposal." "Who from?--one of the haymakers?" "No. That would not have surprised me much more, though. Let me get it out as quick as I can, now that the string of my tongue is loosed. Robert Brandon was here to-day." "As I know to my cost," says Jack, with rather a rueful face at the recollection of his unpalatable dinner. "And--and--how shall I word it prettiest?--asked me to be his." "The devil he did!" exclaims Jack, surprised into strong, language. "Yes, the devil he did! as you epigrammatically remark." "And you, what answer did you give?" asks the boy, quickly, his mouth emulating the example of his eyes, and opening wide, too. "I said I was much obliged, but that, for the present, I preferred being my own." "You said 'No,' of course?" "Yes, I did; ever so many 'Noes.' I did not count them, but I'm sure their name was Legion." Jack gives a sigh of relief, and throws a biscuit to the ceaselessly attent sheep-dog. "Poor beggar!" he says. "Here, Luath, old man. You old muff! why did you not catch it? He is as good a fellow as ever I came across, and now, I suppose, it will be all different and disagreeable. Hang it! what a plague women are!" "But, Jack----" "Well, Essie, not done yet? Any more unlucky fellows sent off with their tails between their legs?" "No, no; but, Jack" (looking down, and staining her fingers with the henna of the strawberries), "I--I'm not quite sure that, after all those 'Noes,' I did not say something that was not quite 'No.'" "That was 'Yes?'" "No, not 'Yes' either; not positive, actual 'Yes;' something betwixt and between; a sort of possible, hypothetical 'Yes.'" "More fool you!" said Jack, briefly. "Don't scold me, you bad boy!" she cries, running over to him and putting her gentle arms about his neck in the caressing way which sisters affect so much, and which brothers, in general, disrelish so highly, "or I vow I'll cry, and you know you hate that." "I hate your making a fool of yourself worse," growls Jack, mollified, but struggling. "I say, you need not strangle a fellow." "Wait till I do make a fool of myself," she says, very gaily. "I'm only talking about it as yet, and there's a good wide ditch between saying and doing." "More shame for you to say what you don't mean." "Jack, dear boy, don't you know that I hate saying things that vex a person? I never had a faculty for telling people home-truths; I'd far sooner tell them any amount of stories; and I got so tired of saying 'No,' and he seemed to take it so much to heart, that I said 'Yes,' just for a change--just for peace. In fact, 'anything for a quiet life' is my motto." "And may I ask what you intend to live upon?" asks Jack (the romantic side of whose mind lies at present fallow and uncultivated, and whose thoughts, Briton-like, speedily turn from "love's young dream" to the pound, shilling, and pence aspect of the matter). "On love, to be sure. On--what is it?--6s. 6d. a day; and perhaps I may take in soldiers' washing," Esther says, bursting out into a violent fit of laughing. "Uncommonly funny, no doubt!" Jack says, laughing too, but sorely against his will. "And do you mean to tell me that you like Brandon all of a sudden enough to be such an abject pauper with him for the rest of your days? Why it was only yesterday that you were laughing at him, saying he danced like a pair of tongs." Esther has slidden down to the floor, and sits there tailor-fashion. "I don't mean to tell you anything of the kind," she answers, gravely. "Poor dear fellow!--it is very odious of me--but between you and me I think I should survive it if I were to know that I should never see him again; only, please don't tell him I said so." "Love, who to none beloved to love again remits----" she repeats softly, musing to herself; "that is a very lovely line, but it is horribly untrue." "What do you mean to do then, if it is not an impertinent question?" asks Jack, throwing back his young head, and looking in an inquisitorial manner at the penitent at his feet from under his eyelids. "Marry a man that you don't like, and who has not a farthing to keep you on, merely because he is the first person that asked you?" "Nothing is farther from my intentions," says Esther, getting rather red. "And how unkind of you to twit me with my dearth of admirers. I mean _you_ to interpose your parental authority and forbid the banns; I intend to shift the odium of the transaction on to your shoulders," she says, relapsing into levity,--"poor, dear shoulders!" (patting them very fondly) "they are not very wide, but they are broader than mine, at all events; to them I transfer my difficulties." "_That_ you shan't!" cries Jack, with animation, shaking off her hand, and looking very indignant and honest. "You are to do shabby things, and I am to have the credit of them! Thanks, very much, but I don't admire that division of labour. I don't think I ever heard a meaner proposition." Esther's little head, rich in a soft plenitude of dusky love-locks, sinks low down towards her lap; she is very easily snubbed, especially by Jack. "A nice name you'll make for yourself, Miss Essie," pursues the young Solomon, severely, still brandishing the metaphorical birch-rod over his sister. "I expect you'll make the country too hot to hold us in a short time." Esther lifts up two sudden, tearful eyes, that look like great jewels seen through running water, and says, piteously, "But, Jack, you know, as you said just now, it was the first time; one never does things well the first time one tries; one is always clumsy at them; I shall know better next time." "I don't see what 'next time' you are likely to have," says Jack, inexorable in his young severity. "It will be rather late in the day for people to propose to you when you are Bob Brandon's half-starved or whole-starved wife." "But I'm not, Jack," cries Esther, very eagerly. She looks grave enough now; rather alarmed at the little gay sketch her brother has drawn of her future destiny. "I'm not going to marry him or any one else, _ever_. Do you think I'd leave you to marry the Angel Gabriel, if he came down from heaven on purpose to ask me?" "Why did you tell Brandon that you would then?" asks the young fellow, not a bit disarmed by her sweet flattery. "I did not tell him so; I said I would try; but even if I do try, I need not succeed; and even if I do manage to get up a sort of liking for him, I need not _marry_ him. You are in such a hurry to jump at conclusions; _there's_ the beauty of his being so poor, don't you see? He cannot expect me to marry him, when he has no bread and butter to put into my mouth." "Then why be engaged to him at all, my good girl?" asks honest Jack, rather bewildered by these new lights--these subtleties on the subject of betrothal. "Why do people give babies gin?--it is not good for them, but it keeps them quiet; _that_ is precisely my principle. Being engaged to me may not be good for Robert, but it is _gin_ to him; it keeps him quiet," answers Esther, on the battle-field of whose small face smiles and tears are fighting. Her brother does not seem to see the beauty of this ingenious mode of reasoning in a very strong light. "I won't have you playing fast and loose with him," he says, very decisively, shaking a stern young head--stern, despite its curliness and its total dearth of those care-lines that are supposed to be Wisdom's harsh footprints. "He is much too good a fellow to be played tricks with; mind that, Miss Esther!" "I have not the slightest desire in life to play tricks with him; if I ever do play tricks, I hope it will be with some one more amusing," answers Essie, very pettishly, looking excessively mutine and ill-humoured. "I don't care if I never hear his ugly name again; he has spoilt the dinner and made you as cross as two sticks; and--and--I wish he was _dead, that_ I do!" concludes happy Mr. Brandon's _fiancée_ weeping. CHAPTER IV. Morning is come again. The sun cannot bear to be long away from his young sweetheart, the earth, so he has come back hasting, with royal pomp, with his crown of gay gold beams on his head, with his flame-cloak about his strong shoulders, and with a great troop of light, flaky clouds--each with a reflex of his red smile on its courtier face--at his back. He has come back to see himself in the laughing blue eyes of her seas and streams, and to rest at noontide, like a sleepy giant, on her warm green lap. The daily miracle--the miracle that none can contest, to which all are witness, has been worked--the resurrection of the world. And this resurrection is not partial, not limited to humanity, as that final one is towards which the eyes of the Christian church have been looking steadfastly for eighteen centuries and a half; but every beast and bird and flower has shaken off Death's sweet semblance, his gentle counterfeit, and is feeling, in bounding vein and rushing sap, the ecstatic bliss of the mystery of life. If we never slept, we should not know the joy of waking; if we never woke, we should not know the joy of sleep. How, I marvel, shall we _feel_ the happiness of heaven, if we never lose, and consequently regain it? The thrushes and blackbirds are already in the midst of their glees and madrigals and part songs. They sing the same songs every day, so that they are quite perfect in them; and they are all very joyful ones. In their sweet flute-language there are no words expressive of sorrow or pain; they know of no minor key. There were twenty roses born last night, and the flowers are all rejoicing greatly. They are smiling and whispering and gossiping together; the sweet peas, like pink and purple butterflies, ".....on tiptoe for a flight, With wings of delicate flush o'er virgin white," each half-inclined to hover away with the young west wind that is sighing such a little gentle story all about himself into their ears. The lambs, grown so big and woolly that one might almost mistake them for their mothers, are leaping and racing and plunging about in the field below the house, in the giddiness of youth, unprescient of the butcher. Hated of Miss Craven's soul as much as ever were the blind and lame of King David's are those too, _too_ agile sheep. Grievously prone are they to ignore the low stone wall of partition, and work havoc and devastation among the aster tops and cabbage shoots of her garden. "The king was in his counting-house, Counting out his money; The queen was in the parlour, Eating bread and honey." The King of Glan-yr-Afon is not counting out his money, because he has not any to count, poor young fellow. He is sitting on a garden-chair, reading the _Times_, and thinking how much better he would rule the Fatherland, how much less mean and shabby and selfish he would make her in other nations' eyes, if he might but have the whip and reins for six months or so. Old Luath lies at his feet, with dim eyes half closed, snapping lazily at the flies, and catching on an average about one every quarter of an hour. Esther is in the stack-yard, holding a levy of ravenous fowls. She has tied a large white kitchen-apron round her waist; with one hand she is holding it up, with the other she is scattering light wheat among a mixed multitude. Baby Cochins, in primrose velvet; hobbledehoy Cochins, _au naturel_, with not a stitch of clothes on their bare, indecent backs; adult Cochins, muffled and smothered up to the chin in a wealth of cinnamon feathers, and with cinnamon stockings down to their heels; Rouen ducks, and scraggy-necked turkeys. She is doing her very best to administer justice to her commonwealth, to protect the weak, to prevent aggression and violence; but like many another lawgiver she finds it rather up-hill work. Strive as she may, the ducks get far the best of it. They have no sense of shame, and can shovel up such a quantity at a time in their long yellow bills. The turkey-cock, on the other hand, gets much the worst, by reason of the long red pendant to his nose, that gets in his way and hinders him. They say that Nature never makes anything for ornament alone, divorced from use; but I confess to being ignorant as to what function that long flabby dangler has to fulfil. The stack-yard is all on the slant; it slopes down with its many stack-frames, to the old rough grey barn that is stained all over--walls and roof and door--with the stormy tears of a score of winters. There is no lack of voices all about the farm to-day: voice of Sarah chattering in the drying ground, where she is hanging Esther's cotton gowns and Jack's shirts on the lines; voice of Evan Evans, the carter, talking friendly to his heavy team in that deplorable tongue which, we trust, will soon be among the abuses of the past; voice of Seryn (Welsh for Star), from the pasture, lowing for her calf, which a day ago became veal, and a day hence (Oh blessed short memory! why cannot we take lessons from a cow?) she will have forgotten utterly. Presently comes another voice, clearer, stronger, nearer than the others--comes sailing up through the July air. "Es--ther!" "Ye--es!" responds Esther at the tip-top of her voice, and consequently not particularly harmonious. It is only the lark that can talk at the top of his voice and yet not be shrill. "Where are you?" (_Forte_.) "In the stack-yard." (_Fortissimo_). Obedient to this direction, in about two minutes the owner of the voice, and of the excellent lungs which sent it out, makes his appearance in loose cool clothes and a smile--Jack, in fact, looking very ugly and pleasant and good-natured. "Jack, dear boy, open the gate. Quick! Out of the way! Don't let him get under the stack-frame. Shoo!" cries Esther, in great excitement, rushing wildly about in her big apron, in pursuit of a large drake with a grasping soul, and a wonderful rainbow neck, who, with bill wide open and wings half extended, is waddling, flying, quacking away from Nemesis as hard as his splay feet and his full crop will let him. Jack obeys. "There is a person in the drawing-room wanting to speak to you," he says, leaning his arms on the top of the gate, and looking rather malicious. "What sort of a person?" Esther asks abstractedly, craning her long neck round the corner of the barn, to see whether the drake shows symptoms of returning. "There he is again! Shoo!" "What was the name of Esther's husband? the man that bullied his first wife so. Oh! I know; his name, oh Queen Esther, is Ahasuerus, which, being interpreted, is Bob." Esther's apron drops from her fingers and the wheat rolls down in a shower on to the broad backs of the Cochin householders. Fiercely the war of chickens--the pushing, the fluttering, the pecking--rages about her feet. "Already!" she says: and in her voice there is none of love's sweet quiver, nor on her cheeks is there any sign of love's pretty flag being hung out, neither the red nor the white one. She only looks a little blank--a little troubled. "Yes, already," says Jack, mercilessly; "and not only has he come himself, but he has brought all his household gods with him. He has come with a great company of old women at his back. I fancy they have brought a notary or a scrivener, or what do you call it? with them, and that there is to be a grand betrothal in form." "Nonsense!" says Esther, and she comes all over to the gate, and clasps two little petitioning hands on his shoulder. "You will come with me, won't you, Jack?" "Not I!" says Jack, stoutly. "I would not trust myself with those old maids, in their present excited state, if you were to give me my next half-year's rent: they would be employing the notary in my case too before I knew where I was." "Jack, is my hair pretty tidy?" stroking it down with the improvised brush and comb of her slim fingers. "Extremely so: it looks as if the chickens had got into it, and been scratching there by mistake." Meanwhile Master Brandon and his old women, to wit, his mother, Mrs. Brandon, and his sisters, the two Misses Brandon, are posed about the drawing-room, waiting. Waiting is always a painful process, from the modified form of suffering involved in the ten minutes before dinner, when every man's tongue is tied, and his wits congealed by the frost of expectant hunger; upward to the Gehenna of a dentist's antechamber. Robert is all on wires this morning: he cannot sit still; he keeps shuffling and twisting his long, awkward legs about, beating the devil's tattoo on the floor with his nailed boots, and hammering an ugly little tune with a paper knife on an old Book of Beauty on the table. "How you fidget, Bob!" cries his sister Bessy. Miss Elizabeth Brandon is ten years older and about ten feet shorter than her brother; she is in process of souring, like cowslip wine that has been kept too long, or small beer in thunder. She is not so very sour, after all, poor little virgin! only ten years ago she was, and ten years hence she will be mellower than she is now. "All right!" says Bob, "I won't;" and he stops, only to commence, two seconds later, a new noise, seven times worse than the first; a very disagreeable sort of scraping with the hind legs of his chair. Is not it one of Miss Yonge's goody heroes, who, when he feels disposed to be impatient, sits down and strums away at the "Harmonious Blacksmith?" Bob could not get through a bar of that soothing melody this morning. Mrs. Brandon is just beginning to say, "Do you think the servant could have told her?" when the door opens, and a little vision comes in with delicate hair ruffling about her sweet, shining eyes; a little vision that ought to be walking on rosy clouds, Bob thinks, with cherubim and seraphim holding up her train, instead of on shabby oil-cloth and faded carpet, dragging her train behind her. "I--I'm very sorry; I'm afraid I have kept you waiting: I did not" (did not expect you so early is on the tip of her tongue, but she remembers just in time that it would be about the impolitest remark she could make. Never, until the millennium, will the marriage of Truth and Civility be solemnized)--"did not know you were here till Jack came and told me a moment ago," she substitutes so adroitly that none of her auditors perceive the rivet that joins the two halves of her sentence together. "I don't know what your brother will say to us for taking his house by storm, but you must blame _him_, my dear, you must blame _him!_" says Mrs. Brandon, nodding her head towards Bob, and looking as if there was something peculiarly humorous in the idea of Esther being in a condition to blame him for anything he could do or leave undone. Mrs. Brandon is an old woman, with a smooth, holy face, and a villainous black poke bonnet: she kisses Esther, and the Misses Brandon likewise come forward and inflict a prim sisterly salute with their thin old-maid lips, on the velvet rose-leaf of her cheek. They had never kissed her before, and she felt as if the manacles were being fastened round her wrists, and the gyves about her ankles. She longs to cry out and say, "What are you all about? you are quite mistaken, every one of you; Mrs. Brandon, I am not your daughter; Miss Bessy, I am not your sister; I don't want to be: take back those kisses of yours, if you please, if they mean that!" Had she been alone with Robert, she would probably have said this; have said it without much difficulty, but now the words seemed infinitely, impossibly hard to frame. There is upon her the shyness of a young woman with an old one; the shyness of one against three. She feels, too, that it seems ungracious, churlish, when they are so glad to take her in to themselves, to adopt her as their own, not to be very glad too. When a person says to one, if not in words, yet with looks and gestures, "Our people shall be thy people, and our God thy God," it is not easy for a plastic, gracious nature to say "No, they shall not!" however little they may relish the arrangement. So, in her muteness, Esther accepts the Brandon God and people as hers. Wordless and demure, she sits down on a little low seat as far removed as may be from Robert. Esther will, no doubt, be an ugly old woman; she makes rather an ugly photograph; but who can deny that she is a delicious bit of colour as she sits there right in the eye of the morning sun, and not at all afraid of his strict scrutiny? So many women, now-a-days, are neutral-tinted, drabbish, greyish, as if the colours that God painted with were not fast, but faded, like Reynolds'. Esther's colouring is as distinct, as decided, as clean and clear as that on a flower's petal or a butterfly's wing. Nobody speaks, except the clock with the short-waisted Minerva on it, and it does not say anything particularly original. Then the old woman bends towards the young one, and says in a kind, low voice, "You see Robert has told us his news, my dear." There is flowing in through the French window a broad river of yellow light from the great fountain in the sky; it is deluging Mrs. Brandon's bonnet and Esther's hair. The bonnet is black, and the hair is black; but there are blacks and blacks. The May grass is green, and a beer bottle is green; but the resemblance between the two is not striking. Esther has not the remotest idea what answer to make; so she chooses one of the shortest words she knows of, and says "Yes!" half-assentingly, half-interrogatively. "And we could not rest till we came and told you what good news we thought it," pursues the old lady, encouragingly. Esther says nothing. Her eyelids feel glued down to her cheeks; she is conscious, with inward rage and vexation, of looking blushing, bashful, everything that a young betrothed should look. "I'm an old woman," concludes Mrs. Brandon, rather moved by her own eloquence, "and I cannot expect a great many more years of life. You know what the Psalmist sweetly says, love; but I trust I may be spared to see God bless both my children, and make them His happy servants for this world and the next." As she speaks she lays one hand on Esther's head. Bob is happily too far off, or she would lay the other on his, while the two little virgin clerks from the sofa cry "Amen!" in a breath. Esther is half-frightened. What with the serious words, with the three women's solemn faces, she half feels as if she were being married on the spot; her thoughts fly to Jack and the notary; after that "Amen!" she is not quite sure that her name is not Esther Brandon. She shrinks away a little, but not at all rudely. "You are very kind," she says, in her gentle voice, "and it was so good of you coming all through the wood--such a long walk for you, too; but I think--I'm afraid that there is some mistake about--this--about me; there is nothing settled--nothing at all, I assure you. I told your son so yesterday quite plainly, only I'm afraid he did not understand me," she concludes, looking rather reproachfully over at him. "I did understand you," protests poor Bob, eagerly, jumping up, upsetting his chair, and never thinking of picking it up again, "I did, indeed. I told mother your very words, only she would have it that they meant--what we all wished they should mean," he ends, looking very downcast and snubbed and disconsolate. There is another pause, then Mrs. Brandon rises and puts out her hand to Esther--in farewell this time. "I'm afraid I've been in too great a hurry, my dear," she says, trying not to speak stiffly, and not succeeding quite so well as she deserved. "But you'll forgive me, I'm sure; you see, mothers are apt to be partial people, and I could not imagine any one trying to love my boy, and not succeeding." But Miss Craven can never let well alone. She would marry Old Nick himself sooner than that his mother or sister should look askance at her, or seem hurt and grieved with her for expressing any want of relish for him, hoofs and tail and horns and all. "Oh no, you must not go!" she cries, in her quick, eager way, putting up two anxious hands in deprecation; "you must not be vexed with me; I did not mean to be disagreeable. I shall like very much to belong to you, I'm sure. I was only afraid of your expecting more from me than I had to give _yet_," she ends, with head drooped a little, and cheeks reddened like a peach's that the sun has been kissing all the afternoon. The stiffness goes away: nobody can be stiff for long with Esther Craven, any more than a snow-ball can remain a snow-ball under the fire's warm gaze. "We don't want you to belong to us if you don't wish it yourself," the old woman says, very gravely, yet not ill-naturedly. "I hardly know what I wish," answers the girl, naïvely, in a sort of bewilderment. Then they go, and Robert walks off with his old mother on his arm. He would walk down Pall Mall with her in that identical poke bonnet, and the two little dowdy vestals pottering behind in the most perfect unconsciousness and simplicity, even if he were to know that his brother officers, to a man, were looking out at him from the "Rag" windows. "Oh, my cheeks! my cheeks! will they ever get cool again!" cries Esther, flinging herself down on the oak bench in the porch, and laying her face against the cold ivy leaves. "You look rather as if you had been poking your countenance between the bars of the kitchen grate," responds Jack, with all a brother's candour. Jack has been dodging behind the laurel bushes, after the fashion in which the English gentleman is fond of receiving his friends when they come to call on him. "Why did not you come to my rescue, you unnatural brother? What chance had I, single-handed, against those three Gorgons? Pah! it makes my head ache to think of mamma's coiffure." "When a person gets into a scrape themselves, I make it a rule to let them get out of it themselves, as it makes them more careful for the future," replies Jack, with philosophy. "But I'm not getting out of it; I'm floundering deeper and deeper and deeper in, like a man in an Irish bog," says Esther, ruefully. "Oh, Jack!" she concludes, laughing, yet vexed (laughter is as often the exponent of annoyance as of enjoyment, I think), "if you could have heard the stories I was forced to tell, I'm sure I deserve to be wound up, carried out, and buried, as much as ever Ananias did." CHAPTER V. This world is divided into poor and rich; into those who do things for themselves, and those who get other people to do them for them. The Cravens belong to the former class. On the afternoon of the day mentioned in my last chapter, Miss Craven is doing for herself what she had much rather that some one else should do for her. She is sitting at her sewing-machine, with a pile of huckaback cut up into towel-lengths beside her. As long as civilization remains at its present ridiculous pitch of elevation, people must have towels, and there is a prejudice in favour of hemmed versus ravelled edges. In the kitchen garden the maid-servants are all busy, picking currants and raspberries for preserving. Owen, the gardening man, is helping them; they are combining business with pleasure; fruit-picking with persiflage. How loudly and shrilly they laugh! and yet loud, shrill laughter expresses mirth and cause for mirth, as well as low and silvery. Esther, grave and alone, catches herself wondering what the joke was that caused such general merriment two minutes ago. Probably, did she know it, she would not laugh at it, would see no point in it, perhaps, but she would be glad to hear it. The huckaback is thick and heavy; bending down one's head over one's work sends all the blood in one's body into it. Phew! How hot! How much pleasanter to be out of doors, tweaking off dead rose heads, watching the great red poppies straightening out their folded creases, pulling the green nightcaps off the escholtzia buds! A shadow darkens the French window, causing Miss Craven to give one of those starts that make one feel as if one literally jumped out of one's skin, and fill one with ungodly wrath against the occasion of them. "I rang several times," says Robert Brandon, apologetically, "but nobody came." "Oh! it's you, is it?" she says, with a tone not exactly of rapture in her voice; "our servants always manage to be out of the way on the rare occasions when any one calls. They are all in the garden, picking currants; one would have been plenty, but they prefer working, like convicts or navvies, in gangs." "I came to see whether you were inclined to take a walk?" he says, hesitatingly, for her manner is not encouraging. "Too hot!" she answers, lazily, leaning her head on the back of her chair, and closing her eyes, as if his presence disposed her to sleep. "Not in the wood?" he rejoins, eagerly. "Under our oaks it is as cool and almost as dark as night, and there is always a breeze from the brook." "I am busy!" she says, pettishly, annoyed at his persistence, and taking in with a dissatisfied eye his _tout ensemble_--yellow beard, frayed coat-sleeves, vigorous rustic comeliness. He does not pursue the subject further, but stands leaning wistfully and uncertain against the window. "Jack is not at home, I'm afraid," she says, stiffly, by-and-by. "I did not come to see Jack," he answers, bluntly. She does not invite him to come in, but he, crossing the threshold diffidently, takes a seat near, but not aggressively near, her. "Don't let me interrupt you!" he says, deprecatingly. She takes him at his word, and continues her homely occupation. Up and down, up and down her foot goes, keeping the wheel in motion; prick, prick, prick, the needle travels with its quick, regular stabs. If, as I have said, the process of bending over work on a July afternoon is heating, the consciousness that another person is watching every quiver of your eyelids, counting every breath you draw, and every displaced hair that straggles about brow or cheek, does not conduce to make it less so. The magnetic influence that sooner or later compels the eyes of the looked at to seek those of the looker, obliges Esther, after awhile, to raise hers--reluctant and protesting--to Robert's. "I wish my mother could see you!" he says, with a smile of placid happiness. Mr. Brandon carries his mother metaphorically upon his back, almost as much as pious Æneas did the old Anchises literally. Esther suspends her employment for a moment. "I beg your pardon; this machine makes such a noise that I did not catch what you said." "I was only wishing that mother could see you now." "It is a pleasure she enjoys pretty frequently. Why _now_ particularly?" "She would see how thrifty and housewifely you can be." "I am glad she does not, then," answers the girl, drily, beginning to work again faster than ever, and flushing with annoyance; "she would form a most erroneous estimate of me. I dislike particularly to be found by people in one of my rare paroxysms of virtue; they take it for my normal state, and judge and expect of me accordingly." "I shall tell her that, at all events, my judgment of you was nearer the truth than hers," says Robert, triumphantly. Esther laughs awkwardly. "I don't know whether you are aware of it, but you are conveying to my mind the idea that your mother has been pronouncing a very unfavourable verdict upon me and my character." "She thinks you are too pretty and lively, and--and--" (frivolous had been the word employed by Mrs. Brandon, but Robert cannot find it in his heart to apply it to his idol)--"too fond of society to care about being useful in tame, humdrum, everyday ways." Esther gives her head a little impatient shake. "Mrs. Brandon adheres to the golden axiom, so evidently composed by some one to whom beauty was sour grapes, that it is better to be good than pretty; an axiom that assumes that the one is incompatible with the other." So speaking she relapses into a chafed silence, and he into his vigilant dumb observation of her. At the end of a quarter of an hour, as he still shows no signs of moving, finding the present position of affairs no longer tolerable, Miss Craven jumps up, flings down her heap of huckaback on the floor, and says abruptly, with a sort of forced resignation: "I will come to the wood, if you wish; it will be all the same a hundred years hence." "I am perfectly happy as I am," he answers with provoking good humour, looking up in blissful unconsciousness at her charming cross face, and the plain yet dainty fit of her trim cheap gown. "But I am not," she rejoins brusquely; "indoors it is stifling to-day; please introduce me as quickly as possible to that breeze you spoke of; I have not been able to find a trace of one all day." She fetches her hat and puts it on; too indifferent as to her appearance in his eyes to take the trouble of casting even a passing glance at herself in the glass, to see whether it is put on straight or crooked. The Glan-yr-Afon wood is a fickle, changeable place; like a vain woman, it is always taking off one garment and putting on another. Three months ago, when the April woods were piping to it, it had on a mist-blue cloak of hyacinths--what could be prettier?--but now it has laid it aside, and is all tricked out in gay grass, green, flecked here and there with rosy families of catch-fly and groups of purple orchis spires. Do you remember those words of the sweetest, wildest, fancifullest of all our singers? "And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, That led through this garden along and across,-- Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,-- "Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells As fair as the fabulous asphodels, And flow'rets that, drooping as day drooped too, Fell into pavilions white, purple, and blue, To roof the glowworm from the evening dew." They describe Glan-yr-Afon wood much better than I can. It is a great green cathedral, where choral service goes on all day long, and where the rook preaches impressive sermons from the swinging tree-tops. "Had we not better walk arm in arm?" asks Esther, sardonically, as they march along in silence. "I believe it is the correct thing on these occasions; at least Gwen and her sweetheart always do on Sunday evenings." He turns towards her; an expression of surprised delight upspringing into his eyes. "Do you mean _really?_" She is mollified, despite herself, by the simple joy beaming in his poor, good-looking face--face that would be more than good-looking if only some great grief would give it fuller expression; if only a few months of late hours and mundane dissipations would wear off its look of exuberant bucolic healthiness. "No, no; I was only joking." "Shall we sit here?" asks Brandon, presently, pointing to a rustic seat that stands under a great girthed oak, taller and thicker-foliaged than its neighbours. "See! did not I tell you true? Hardly a sunbeam pierces through these leaves, and the brawling of the brook comes up so pleasantly from below." Esther looks, but the situation does not please her; it is too secluded, too sentimental; it looks like a seat on which Colin and Dowsabel might sit fluting and weaving ".... belts of straw and ivy buds," and simpering at one another over the tops of their crooks. "I don't fancy it," she says, beginning to walk on; "it looks _earwiggy_." "Only the other day you said it was quite a lovers' seat!" he exclaims, in surprise. "Exactly; and for that very reason I prefer waiting till I am more qualified to sit upon it." By-and-by Miss Craven finds a position that suits her better; one nearer the edge of the wood, in full view of the Naullan road, along which market women, coal carts, stray limping tramps, go passing, and where loverly blandishments are out of the question. The sun slides down between two birch stems that stand amid rock fragments, and riots at his will about her head, as she sits at the birch foot on a great grey stone, all flourished over with green mosses and little clinging plants. Below, the baby river runs tinkling; it is such a baby river that it has not strength to grapple with the boulders that lie in its bed; it comes stealing round their hoary sides with a coaxing noise, in gentlest swirls and bubbled eddies. The squirrels brought their nuts last autumn to Esther's stone to crack; the shells are lying there still; she is picking them up and dropping them again in idle play. Little dancing lights are flashing down through the birch's feathery-green locks, and playing Hide and Seek over Esther's gown and Robert's recumbent figure, as he lies in the repose of warmth, absolute idleness, absolute content at her feet. An hour and a half, two hours to be spent in trying to like Robert! Faugh! She yawns. "That is the seventh time you have yawned since we have been here," remarks her lover, a little reproachfully. "I dare say; and if you wait five minutes longer, you will probably be able to tell me that it is the seventy-seventh time." "You did not yawn while we were indoors." "I had my work; what is a woman without her work? A dismounted dragoon--a pump without water!" She stretches out her arms lazily, to embrace the dry, warm air. "Does every one find being courted as tedious a process as I do?" (Aside.) Aloud: "Some one said to me the other day, that no woman could be happy who was not fond of work. It is putting one's felicity on rather a low level, but I believe it is true." "In the same way as no man can be good-tempered who is not fond of smoking," says Bob, starting a rival masculine proposition. "I don't know anything at all about men," replies Esther, exhaustively. "No woman in the world can have a more limited acquaintance with the masculine gender than I have." "You are young yet," says Brandon, consolingly. "I was seventeen last May, if you call that young," she answers, her thoughts recurring to "Heartsease," the heroine of which is "Wooed and married and a'" before her sixteenth birthday. "You are eight years younger than I am." "Am I?" carelessly, as if such comparative statistics were profoundly uninteresting to her. "Yes; I am glad there is so much difference in age between us." "Why?" "Because you are the more likely to outlive me." She passes by the little sentimentalism with silent contempt. "I shall _certainly_ outlive you," she says confidently. "Women mostly outlive men, even when they are of the same age. We lead slower, safer lives. If I spend all my life here, I shall probably creep on, like a tortoise, to a hundred." "But you will not spend all your life here?" he cries, eagerly. She shrugs her shoulders. "_Cela dépend_. I shall live here as long as Jack remains unmarried." "That will not be very long, I prophesy," cries Brandon, cheerfully. "A farmer requires a wife more than most men." "More than a soldier, certainly," retorts she, with a malicious smile. He laughs; too warm and lazy and content to be offended, and makes ineffectual passes at a gnat that has settled upon his nose. "Has he never yet shown even a _preference_ for any one?" he asks, feeling a more personal interest than he had ever before experienced in Jack's amours and amourettes. "Not that I am aware of; Jack and I never show preferences for any one, nor does any one ever show a preference for us; we are a good deal too poor to be in any demand." "I am glad of it." "You may have the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that no one ever showed the slightest inclination to be your rival." "So much the better; I don't want you any the less because nobody else wants you." "Don't you? 'A poor thing, but mine own,' that is your motto, I suppose?" A pause. An old woman, with a myriad-wrinkled Welsh face rides by along the road on a drooping-headed donkey; a large blue and orange handkerchief tied over her bonnet and a basket on each arm. Esther watches her as she jogs along with a feeling of envy. Fortunate, fortunate old woman! she has no lover! "I wish you would not look so happy," Miss Craven says suddenly, flashing round an uneasy look out of her great black eyes at her companion. "Why should not I? I _am_ happy." "But you have no right to be, no reason for being so," she cries, emphatically. "I have, at all events, as much reason as the birds have and they seem pretty jolly; I am alive, and the sun is shining." "You were alive, and the sun was shining, this time yesterday," she says drily; "but you were not so happy then as you are now." At the decided damper to his hilarity so evidently intended in this speech, a slight cloud passes over the young man's face; he looks down with a snubbed expression. "I suppose I am over-sanguine about everything," he says, humbly, "because I have always been such a lucky fellow; my profession suits me down to the ground; I have never had an ache or a pain in all my life, and I have the best woman in England for my mother." A body free from disease, a commission in a marching regiment, a methodistical, _exigeante_ old mother. These would seem but a poor _chétif_ list of subjects of thankfulness to Fortune's curled and perfumed darlings. "Your acquaintance amongst old ladies must be extensive to justify you in that last statement," says Esther, with a smile. "The best woman I know, then." "It is a pity that when you went, like Coelebs, in search of a wife, you did not try to find some one more like her," rejoins Esther, piqued and surprised, despite her utter indifference to his opinion of her, at finding that, notwithstanding the imbecile pitch of love for herself at which she believes him to have arrived, he can still set a dowdy, havering, brown old woman on a pedestal, above even that which she, with all the radiant red and white beauty of which she is so calmly aware, all the triumph of her seventeen sweet summers, occupies in his heart. "You are young and she is old," says Robert, encouragingly; "I don't see why you should not be like her when you are her age." "I think not; I hope not," says Miss Craven, coolly, strangling her twenty-fifth yawn. "Without meaning any insult to Mrs. Brandon, I should be sorry to think that, at any period of my life, I should be a mere reproduction of some one else." Another long pause. (Have we been here an hour yet?) The brown bees go humming, droning, lumbering about, velvet-coated: a high-shouldered grasshopper chirps shrilly: the dim air vibrates. "Just listen to that cricket!" says Esther, presently, for the sake of saying something. "How noisy he is! I read in a book the other day that if a man's voice were as strong in proportion to his size as a locust's, he could be heard from here to St. Petersburg." "Could he?" says Bob, absently, not much interested in his betrothed's curious little piece of entomological information; "how unpleasant!" Then dragging himself along the grass and the flowers still closer to her feet, he says, "Esther, mother hopes to see a great deal more of you now than she has done hitherto." "Does she? she is very good, I am sure," answers Esther, formally, with a feeling of compunction at her utter inability to echo the wish. "She bid me tell you that she hopes you will come in as often as you can of an evening. We are all sure to be at home then; the girls read aloud by turns, and mother thought that----" "That it might improve my mind, and that it needs improving," interrupts Esther, smiling drily; "so it does. I quite agree with her; but not even for that object could I leave Jack of an evening; he is out all day long, and the evening is the only time when I have him to myself." "You find plenty to say to _him_ always, I suppose?" says Robert, with an involuntary sigh and slight stress upon the word _him_. "Not a word, sometimes. We sit opposite or beside each other in sociable silence." "_How_ fond you are of that fellow!" says Robert, sighing again, and thinking, ruefully, what a long time it would be before any one would say to her, "_How_ fond you are of Bob Brandon!" "He is the one thing upon earth that I could not do without!" she answers shortly, turning away her head. There are some people that we love so intensely that we can hardly speak even of our own love for them without tears. "I should be afraid to say that of any one," says Bob, bluntly, "for fear of being shown that I _must_ do without them." "What have I in all the world but him?" she cries, a passionate earnestness chasing the slow languor from her voice, all her soft face afire with eager tenderness; "neither kith nor kin; neither friends nor money. I am as destitute, in fact, though not in seeming, as that girl that passed just now, shuffling her bare feet along in the dust, and with three boxes of matches--her whole stock-in-trade--in her dirty hand. But for Jack," she continues, in a lighter strain, "you might at the present moment be carrying half a pound of tea or four penn'orth of snuff as a present to me in the Naullan almshouses." Robert looks attentive, and says "Hem," which is a sort of "Selah" or "Higgaion," and does not express much beyond inarticulate interest. "I often think that he is too good for this world," says the young girl, mournfully, picking an orchis leaf, and looking down absently on the capricious black splashes that freak its green surface. Bob is a little embarrassed between his love of truth and his desire to coincide in opinion with his beloved. Jack is not in the least like the little morbid boys and girls in his sister Bessy's books, who retire into corners in play-hours to read about hell-fire, to whom marbles and toffee and bull's-eyes are as dung, and who are inextricably entangled in his mind with the idea of "too good for this world." He evades the discussion of the alarming nature of young Craven's goodness by a judicious silence. "I am such an expense to him," continues Esther, lugubriously, the corners of her mouth drooping like a child's about to cry--"what with clothes, and food, and altogether. Even though one does not eat very much every day, it comes to a great deal at the end of the year, does it not?" "If you come to me, you would be no expense at all to him," Robert answers, stroking his great, broad, yellow beard (beard that will have to disappear before he rejoins his gallant corps in Bermuda), and looking very sentimental; yet not that either, for sentimental implies the existence of a little feeling, and the affectation of a great deal more. "He would have to provide me with a trousseau and a wedding-cake, even in that case." "I would excuse him both." "Would you?" she says, jestingly; "I wouldn't; it has always seemed to me that the best part of holy matrimony is the avalanche of new clothes that attends being wed." "You shall have any amount of new clothes." "I should be an expense to you, then," she says, giving him a smile that is grateful and bright and cold, all in one, like a January morning. Cold as her smile is, it is a smile, and he is encouraged by it to refer to a subject nearer his heart than Jack Craven's excellences. "If you cannot spare time to come to us of an evening, would you let me--might I--would you mind my joining you and Jack--now and then--for half an hour or so--if I should not be in the way?" Her countenance falls, more visibly than she is herself perhaps aware of. "Of course," she answers, in a constrained voice, "if you wish; we shall always be glad to see you, of course." "I would not come often," says the poor young man wistfully; "once a week perhaps--so that we might get to know one another better; mother says----" "Don't tell me any more of your mother's speeches to-day, or we shall have none left for to-morrow," interrupts Esther, with a sort of ironical playfulness, flapping about with her pocket-handkerchief at a squadron of young midges, and looking mild exasperation at the unlucky six-foot slave at her feet. Then she stretches out her hand, plucks a dandelion, or what was a dandelion a week ago, but is now a sphere of delicatest, fragilest, downspikes, and blows it like a child to see what o'clock it is. "One, two, three, four, five, six. Time to go home!" she says, flinging away the hollow stalk and springing up. "It seems only five minutes since we came," says Robert, with a great sigh of good-bye, looking down at the long stretch of bruised grass that indicates his late resting-place. "Do you think so?" exclaims Esther, opening her eyes very wide, and the most violent negative could not have expressed dissent more clearly. So they pass home through the loudly vocal wood, and he parts from her under the porch. He had meant to squeeze her hand at parting; perhaps still bolder forms of adieu flitted before his mind's eye, but a certain expression in her face makes all such plans take to their heels. He looks as if he would come in if he were asked; but he is not asked, therefore, courage failing him, he departs. She stands in the shadow watching him, and thinks, "What bad boots! and is not one shoulder rather higher than the other?" It is not the least bit higher; no young fir is straighter than he; but when a thing belongs, or may possibly belong, to oneself, one waxes marvellous critical. CHAPTER VI. "Something new! something new!" cried the Athenians; and across two thousand years we catch up and echo their greedy cry. But why do we? We all know well enough that there is nothing new; there was not even in King Solomon's time--not even in all his treasure-house, nor among his seven hundred wives. What an advantage those ancients who saw the world's infancy had over us--over us, who have to content ourselves with the lees of the wine, which the few dropped ears scattered about the great reaped harvest field! Who would not fain have lived in the days when nothing had yet been said--when everything, consequently, remained to be said? Who could be trite then, in that blest epoch when platitudes were unborn, when _Tupper_ was an impossibility, and even the statement that two and two make four had something startlingly novel about it? _Then_ a man's thoughts were his own, his _very_ own, his own by the best of all rights--creation; _now_ they are the bastard product of ten thousand buried men's dead ideas. Original is a pleasant word, is it not?--fair and well-sounding; but it is like the sample figs at the top of the box: it represents nothing, or something infinitely smaller than itself behind and underneath it. Is it too much to say that it is impossible to find an original idea in any writer we wot of? You meet, perhaps, some day in a book a thought, an image that strikes you. You say, "This is this thinker's own; there is the stamp of this one individual mind upon it;" when lo! mayhap but a few hours later you are reading the thoughts of some elder scribe, one that has been dust nigh ten or twenty centuries back, and you find the same thought, half fledged or quarter fledged, only in the egg, perhaps--but still it is there. There is nothing new under the sun. And if this is true of other subjects, how much truer of that most outworn, threadbare old theme, Love! The world has been spinning round six thousand years at the lowest, most exploded computation; in any thousand years there have been thirty or forty generations, and each unit in every one of those generations, if he has lived to man's estate, has surely loved after one fashion or another. Whosoever has done any worthy thing, whosoever has sent out his thoughts in writing or speech or action to the world, has felt the stirrings of this strange instinct; unconsciously it has moulded and permeated his deeds and his words: and yet, old as it is, we are not tired of it, any more than we are of the back-coming green of the spring, or the never-extinguished lamps of the stars. "The harvest is past, the summer is ended;" at least well nigh ended. Jack and Esther are at breakfast: outside the scarlet geraniums are blazing away in the morning sun, trying their best to shine as brightly as he is doing, and the gnats are dancing round and round on the buoyant floor of their ball-room--the air. I wonder that that incessant valsing does not make them giddy. I am not sure that human beings, like the lions and tigers and uneasy black bears in the Zoological, look their best at feeding-time; but such as they are, here they are. Esther in a chintz gown, sown all over with little red carnations as thickly as the firmament with heavenly bodies. She looks as fresh as a daisy--as an Englishwoman, to whom morning _déshabille_, wrapper, slippers, undressed hair, are unknown Gallic abominations--and is eating porridge with a spoon. Jack reading his letters, which look all bills and circulars, after the fashion of men's correspondence; for what man made after the fashion of a man, would sit down to indite an epistle to another man, were it his _alter ego_ unless he had something to say about a horse or a dog or a gun? Presently he finishes this cursory survey, crumples up the last blue envelope in his hand, flings it with manly untidiness into the summer-dressed grate, and says, resuming a conversation which had been interrupted a quarter of an hour ago by the entrance of prayers and the urn, "I cannot imagine what you have done to the fellow! he used not to be half a bad fellow to talk to. Never a genius, you know, but still I used to like to have him to walk over the farm with me--not that he knows a swede from a mangold: don't see much sign of his old mother's farming mantle falling upon him. But now he has not a word to throw to a dog; he is as stupid as a stuck pig." "I have not cut out his tongue or tied it up in a bag, if that is what you are hinting at," says Esther, with a smile as confused as a dog's, when, not quite sure of his reception, he sneaks up to you sideways, lifting his upper lip, and from tail to muzzle one nervous wriggle. "Perhaps he is like the birds, and gets silent towards the end of the summer." "Why you keep him dangling after you, like the tail of a kite, I cannot conceive," Mr. Craven cries, crumbling his bread with a little irritation. "It must be such a nuisance having a great long thing like him knocking about under your feet morning, noon, and night." Esther is silent; only her head droops lower, lower, till her little nose almost immerses itself in her stirabout. "Whereas," pursues Jack, helping himself to a great deal of cold beef, "if you were to give him his _congé_ now (Jack is by no means neglectful of the _g_ in the French word), he would be all right again in a fortnight, ready for the shooting." "He would, would he?" says Esther, lifting up her nose and reddening with vexation. No woman likes to think of her empire as anything short of eternal. "If you don't like to do it yourself, I'll do it for you," pursues her brother, making a magnanimously handsome offer. "I would say to him, 'My dear fellow, it is no good, she does not seem to care about you,' as soon as look at him." "What a delicate way of breaking the news!" cries Esther, ironically. "Commend me to a man for gentle _finesse_." "I don't believe in _breaking_ news," replies Jack, sturdily. "If you were to go off in a fit, or the bay colt was to break his leg, or anything to go wrong, I'd far sooner people would tell me so without any humming and hawing and keeping me on the tenter hooks. Breaking news is like half cutting your throat before you are hanged, making you die two deaths instead of one." "But suppose I do seem to care a little about him?" suggests Esther, blushing furiously, but holding up her head bravely, and looking straight at her brother. "Suppose the cow jumped over the moon," replies Jack with incredulity. "I don't know whether the cow has accomplished her feat, but I have accomplished mine," says Esther, trying to make her face as brass, and failing signally. Jack puts up his hand, and strokes the future birthplace of his moustache, to hide an unavoidable smile. "I don't wish to be rude," he says; "but may I ask, since when? Was it a week ago, or less, that you requested me to accompany you on one of your joint excursions to that everlasting wood, and told me you thought your watch wanted cleaning, the time seemed to go so slow?" "A week!" cries his sister, indignantly. "Three weeks, or a month, at least." "Wrong, Essie, wrong; it was this day fortnight, Ryvel Horse Fair, which was the reason why I had to decline your invitation." "What does a week one way or another signify?" she cries, becoming irrational, as a worsted woman mostly does. "Nothing to a woman or a--weathercock." This last insult is too much for Miss Craven. "I see you are determined to turn me into ridicule; I see you don't believe me!" she cries, preparing to rush from the room like a tornado. "My good Essie," says Jack, jumping up, taking her two hands, and manfully repressing his inclination to laugh--"here I am; tell me _anything_, and I'll swear by the tomb of my grandmother to believe it." "Why should not I like him? What is there in him so hateful as to make my being fond of him incredible?" asks Essie, unreasonable and sobbing. "Nothing that I know of--except his _boots_, and you told me _they_ were--" "So they are," she says, smiling through her tears--"more than hateful; they haunt one like a bad dream." "He is not the least penitent about them, I can tell you: only yesterday he showed them me with ungodly glee, told me he had got them at Hugh Hughes's, at Naullan, and advised me to go and do likewise." "But--but--his boots are not he; he is not his boots, I mean," remarks Miss Craven, with meek suggestion; "mercifully, they are separable." "He was not born in them, you mean? I did not suppose he was; he would have been worse than Richard the Third, who made his appearance with all his teeth in his head--didn't he?--if he had." "It is quite true--perfectly true," continues Esther, leaning her two hands on the back of a chair, and tilting it up and down, "what you say about his being so stupid; he _is_ extremely stupid: often I feel inclined to box his ears, for the thing he says, and for not understanding things, and having to have them explained to him; but after all, do you know, I am not sure that it is the people who say clever things, and snap one up all in a minute, that are the best to live with." "You contemplate living with him then, eh? Last time I was favoured with your plans, you were to be a vestal to the end of the chapter." "A provision for old age: I cannot expect you to be satisfied with me always," she answers, with rather a sad smile. "And when I am superseded, a good worthy simpleton, with obsolete chivalrous ideas of _Woman_ in the abstract--_Woman_ with a big _W_--who will laugh at my worst jokes whether he sees them or not, and make none himself, is better than nothing." "All right," says Jack, calmly, walking towards the door, and unfolding the _Times_ with a crackling that nearly drowns his voice: "please yourself and you'll please me: only be so good as to tell me when the wedding day is fixed, as I must get a new coat. I suppose that the one I had for Uncle John's funeral will not do, will it?" Who is it says in the "Tempest," if neither Ferdinand nor any other beautiful young Prince had come on the scene, yet if Miranda had remained alone with her father, and the storms and winds and water-spirits, she would have ended by loving Caliban? I do not know about Miranda, but I am sure that if Esther had been in Miranda's place she would have so ended; would have carried faggots in her slender arms for the shaggy monster--have called him caressing diminutives, and asked him little interested questions about his dam Sycorax. The desire to be loved is strong enough in us all; in this girl it amounted to madness: it is the key to all the foolish, wicked, senseless things you will find her doing through this history's short course. If she could have had her will, every man, woman, and child, every cow and calf and dog and cat that met her, would have watched her coming with joy and her going with grief. Add to which, in the summer time most women like to have a lover; it is almost as necessary to them as warm clothes at Christmas. In winter the fire is lover enough for any one. The frosty splendour of the stars and the chill flashing of the northern lights provoke no yearning in any one human soul towards any other; we peep at them through our icy casements, then drop the curtain shivering, and leave them alone to their high cold play in the sky. But who can look at a July moon alone? You will say that Esther was not alone, that she had her brother to look at it with her; but who will deny that a brother who makes agricultural remarks about the Queen of Night, and observes that the haze round her royal head looks well for the turnips, is worse, immeasurably worse than nobody? To me it seems that there is nothing absolute, positive in all this shifting, kaleidoscope world; everything is comparative. There is nothing either good, bad, pretty, ugly, large, small, except as compared with something better, worse, prettier, uglier, larger, smaller. Measure two men together, and you find one tall and the other short; put the short one by himself or among a world of pigmies, and straightway he grows tall. Lacking a standard to go by, we make egregious errors. I have known many a woman to pass through life with a pigmy beside her, taking him for a giant all the while, nor undeceived to the end. Esther has no man to measure her Robert by; none at all, save the cowman, the carter, and the groom. Intellectually, morally, physically, he outtops them in stature, and that is all she can as yet know about him. Moonlight, propinquity, total absence of objects of comparison--these three must be Esther's excuses. Robert is not much like her ideal, certainly--the ideal whose picture she has been painting life-size on the canvas of her mind during the vacant moments of the last two transitional years; but if we all waited to be wed till our ideal came knocking at our doors, the world would be shortly dispeopled of legitimate inhabitants. Miss Craven's ideal is dark; at seventeen, most ideals are dark: he has long, fierce, sleepy, unfathomable eyes. Robert is straw-coloured: his eyes are blue; very wide awake: they say exactly what his tongue does, neither more nor less, and there is absolutely no harm in them--a doubtful recommendation to a woman. The ideal's nose is fine cut, delicately chiselled; his cheeks are a little haggard, slightly hollowed and paled by five and thirty years or so of the reckless life of one that has lived, not existed. Robert's nose is broad and blunt; his cheeks have the roundness and bloom of a countryman's five and twenty. The ideal breaks most of the commandments with easy grace; is inclined to be sceptical and a little sarcastic over the old world beliefs, and facts hoary with time and reverence. Robert nightly prays on bent knees to be "not led into temptation but delivered from evil;" he believes firmly every thing that he ever was taught, from the Peep of Day upwards, and he could no more shape his honest lips into a sneer than he could square the circle. Before the fell shafts of the ideal's eyes women lie slain as thick as Greeks lay beneath the arrows of Apollo in the Iliad's opening clash; the number of Robert's female victims is represented by a duck's egg. "Je ne comprends pas l'amour sans effroi," says one of the characters in the best French novel I have read this many a day. The ideal inspires fear equally with love; you can imagine his being harsh, fierce, cruel, to the woman he loves. In none of the most hard-hearted of created beings could Robert provoke alarm. Children who see him for the first time come and thrust their little dimpled hands into his, and laugh up with confident impudence in his face. Dogs to whom he has never been introduced come and rub their shaggy heads against his knees, and curl and wriggle about his friendly feet. Esther can indulge no faintest hope that he will bully her. The ideal rides straight as a die, and is as much a part of his horse as a centaur. Robert is very fond of getting a day's hunting when he can afford the two guineas requisite for the hiring of a horse, which is not very often; and he likes to get his money's worth by blundering blindly over everything that comes in his way, but he has about as much idea of _riding_ as a tailor or a cow. The ideal is an idol to be set up and worshipped--a Baal to be adored with tears and blood and knife-gashings. Robert is a worshipper to be encouraged by a cold look and smile flung to him every now and then, like a bone to a dog, or spurned away with disapproving foot, as Cain was from his unaccepted altar. To worship is to a woman always sweeter than to be worshipped. To worship one must look up; to be worshipped one must look down.... Come with me this August Sunday through the wood from Glan-yr-Afon to Plas Berwyn--from Esther's home to Robert's. It is but a few hundred yards of shade and shine, a small, scarce trodden wood-path whose narrow, faint track the ripe grasses and the seeded ferns have wellnigh obliterated, flinging themselves across it in all the _abandon_ of their unspeakable grace. The apples' round faces are reddening in the little Plas Berwyn orchard; the shorn fields slope barely, slantwise along the hill-side in their yellow stubble. For weeks and weeks the corn has been whitening under the sun's hard, veilless stare, and now at last it has fallen; the barley has bowed its bearded head beneath the sickle's stroke, and the oats their tremulous ringlets. They are all gathered in, and garnered in Mrs. Brandon's stout, well-thatched stacks; to thatch a stack is the one thing a Welshman can do. It is an hour past noon, and the Reverend Evan Evans has released the bodies of his congregation from that white-washed, tumble-down old barn that he is pleased to call his church, and their minds from the tension necessary to take in the ill-strung-together, misapplied texts that he is pleased to call his sermon. Plas Berwyn is a house of about the same size as Glan-yr-Afon, but the rooms do not look so large, they are so full of large things and large people. The dining-room is crowded up with a great mahogany table, a great mahogany sideboard, great mahogany chairs--inconvenient relics, fondly clung to by people who from a larger house have subsided into a smaller one--a sort of warranty of past respectability like the cottager's japanned tea-tray and brass candlesticks. There is an atmosphere of lumbersome age and gravity about the whole place; none of the fragrance and light and melody that youth, sheer youth, even divorced from any other attractive qualities, brings with it. Of all the gods of the Greek mythology I will bring my votive crowns and my salt cakes to Bacchus. Not the bloated old gentleman striding drunk over a barrel, as we figure him, but Bacchus eternally young. What is there so worthy of adoration in this aging, wrinkling world as never ending youth? Most people are cross and most people are unusually hungry on Sunday. I do not know why it is, but if you observe your acquaintance you will find it to be true. Hungry or not, the Brandons are at dinner, dining frugally and sparely on cold roast beef and cold apple tart. Nothing hot ever figures on the Brandons' Sabbath table, not even potatoes; indeed, unless they boiled themselves, and hopped out of the pot judiciously when they found themselves done, I do not see how they could, as on the Sabbath morn every living soul at Plas Berwyn, every reluctant scullion and recalcitrant housemaid, is trundled off to church, the house-door locked, and the key deposited in Mrs. Brandon's pocket. All the Brandons hate dining in the middle of the day, consequently they always dine in the middle of the day on Sunday. Everybody knows that there are few things more distinctly unpleasant than to sit in the same room in which you have your meals; to live with the unending smell and steam of departed viands up your nose and eyes and ears: consequently the Brandons always sit in the dining-room on Sunday. Sunday is to them a sort of aggravated Ash Wednesday and Good Friday rolled into one. On Saturday night Miss Bessy Brandon swoops down upon all novels, travels, biographies, magazines, poetry books, that may be lying about, makes a clean sweep of them and consigns them to disgrace and a cupboard till the return of Monday releases them. The Brandon family at the present moment have got their Sunday faces and their Sunday clothes on, and they misbecome most of them very sorely. Very few men look their best in their Go-to-Meeting clothes. For some unexplained reason, a black coat made by a country tailor shows its shortcomings more plainly than a coloured one. The garment that cases Bob's broad shoulders would draw tears from Mr. Poole's eyes, could he see it. As for Mrs. Brandon, she always has more or less of a Sunday face on--which I do not say in any dispraise, but merely to express a sober, steadfast face, unfurrowed by any violent gust of mirth or blast of anger. She is like Enid and her mother, "clad all in faded silk," and on her breast she has a miniature of the departed Brandon, in Geneva gown and bands, about as big as a teacup, and with two small glutinous curls of the departed's hair at the back. It is so long ago since he died, that she must have forgotten all about him--what he was like, even; but she still wears his effigy, as an old inn continues to hang out the sign of the Saracen's Head, though it is centuries since ever a Saracen has been seen on the earth's face. Opposite each other, like little bad mirrors of one another, sit the Misses Brandon, in melancholy little gowns of no particular stuff and no particular colour, and little wisps of thin, fine hair well down over their ears, and minute chignons on the napes of their necks--their little, bustless, waistless, hipless figures, long plaintive noses, and meek, dull eyes proclaiming them of that virgin band to whom St. Paul has awarded the palm of excellence. The Sunday literature is scattered about on the hard-bottomed chairs. "Stop the Leak" lies on the pit of its stomach, open at the spot where Miss Bessy abandoned it in favour of the cold beef; the "Saturday Night of the World," with its mouth open, and a paper-knife in it. "Cut two or three good large slices, Bob, dear; they will be so nice for old John Owen," Mrs. Brandon is saying, in her benignant, cracked, old voice. "We can leave them as we go by to church; Bob can carry them," says Miss Brandon, with authority. Robert is silent. "Bob does not like the idea of being seen carrying a basket; he thinks it would spoil his appearance." "Hang the appearance!" says Bob, with an easy laugh. "If a man is a gentleman, it does not make him any the less a gentleman even if he were seen wheeling a perambulator down Regent Street; but, to tell the truth, I don't think I shall go to church this afternoon." "Not go to church! Not go to church!! Not go to church!!!" in three different keys, rising from astonishment to horrified incredulity. But seldom has Mr. Brandon missed attending divine service from the auspicious day, two and twenty years ago, when, at the tender age of three years, being, Eutychus-like, overcome with sleep, he fell down with much clamour from a high bench, and raised a mountainous red lump on his baby forehead, coming into contact with the hard pew floor: "And his head, as he tumbled, went knicketty-knock, Like a pebble in Carisbrook well." Robert feels the weight of public opinion to be heavy, but he sticks like a man to what he said. "Not to-day, mother, I think. Esther said she would be coming in by-and-by to say good-bye to you all, and, as it is her last day, I thought I might as well have as much as I could of her." "What _do_ you mean, Bob? Is the girl going to die to-night?" inquires Miss Brandon, perking up her little tow-coloured head sharply. "God forbid!" he cries, with a hasty shudder; "don't suggest anything so frightful; but she is off to-morrow for a week or ten days on a visit to some friends." "Going away without mentioning a word about it!" "Going away _now!_" These two sentences shoot out with simultaneous velocity from two mouths. "Are you surprised at her not telling _us_ where she is going? Does she ever tell _us_ anything? Does she make _us_ her confidants!" subjoins Miss Bessy, with mild spite. Spite is permissible on the Sabbath, though hot potatoes and novels are not. "She did not know herself till yesterday," says Bob, briefly, cutting away rather viciously at the beef. "But who are these sudden friends that have sprung up all at once? What are their names? Where do they live? Tell us all about them, dear boy," says the old woman, gently, seeing that her son is chafed. "Their names are Sir Thomas and Lady Gerard; they are old friends of the Cravens' father, and they live in ----shire; that is all I know about them." "A steady-going old couple, I suppose? Will not that be rather dull for a little gay thing like Esther?" "There is a girl of about her own age, I believe, a ward of Sir Thomas's." "A ward!--oh!" "And also a son." "A son! o--h!" "Well, why should not there be a son? What harm is there in that?" asks Robert, raising his voice a little in irritation. "No harm whatever! Much better thing than a daughter! Can push his own way in the world. Not that I know in the least what you are talking about," cries a young, saucy voice, which, with the little sleek, dark head it belongs to, appears uninvited at the door at this juncture. "Oh! I see you are all at dinner, so I'll stay outside till you have finished; it is so horrible to be watched when one is eating, isn't it? I hate it myself." And the head and the voice disappear again as quickly as they came. A ruddier tinge rushes into Robert's already ruddy cheek--ruddy as King David's when he tended his few sheep in the Syrian pastures, before the weight of the heavy Israelitish crown, and of his own wars and murders had blanched it. Down go the carving knife and fork with a clatter, and, "like a doting mallard," he flies after the little vision, banging the door behind him with an impetus that makes his sisters bound up from their horsehair chairs like two small parched peas. Presently he brings her back in triumph. "So you are going to run away from us, my love?" says Mrs. Brandon, holding Esther's young white hand in her old veiny one. "Yes, I'm afraid so; it is a great bore, isn't it?" answers Esther, trying her best to lengthen her round face and look miserable. "If it is a bore, why do you go?" inquires Miss Bessy, drily. "Because I think I ought to make some friends for myself; I never met anybody before that had no friends, as Jack and I have not; we literally have not one--except all of you, of course," she ends with a happy after-thought. "When you come to my age, my dear," says Mrs. Brandon, shaking her head, and all the innumerous stiff frillings of her cap, and bringing to bear on Esther's sanguine youth the weight of her own gloomy experiences, in the infuriating way that old people do, "you will have found out that a few good friends are worth more than a great many indifferent ones." "But why should not these people be good friends?" asks the girl, a little incredulously. "Who knows? Surely there must be more good people in the world than bad ones; so the chances are in favour of them." "We are expressly forbidden to judge," begins Miss Bessy, charitably; "otherwise----There's the first bell beginning; we had better go and put on our things, Jane." CHAPTER VII. Five minutes more, and three large brown parasols, a large black poke bonnet and two little dirt-coloured ones, are seen slowly pacing down the hill to the House of Prayer. The lovers have Plas Berwyn to themselves. Bob has gained his point, despite a parting fleer from Bessy as to the undesirability of neglecting the Creator for the creature. "Tim Dowler! Tim Dowler! Tim Dowler!" cries Esther, joyously, jumping about the room like a child, and mimicking the one church bell which is heard clearly tinkling through the valley. "Listen, Bob! Does it not say 'Tim Dowler' just exactly as if it were speaking it? Oh! look here: I'll lose all their places for them in their good books, and I bet anything they'll never find them again." So saying, she proceeds to remove the paper-knife from the "Saturday Night of the World," and carefully closes "Stop the Leak." "What spirits you are in to-day, Essie!" says Bob, balancing himself on the window-sill, with his long legs dangling lugubriously, and following her about the room with his eyes, as a child does a butterfly. "I believe it is because you are going to be rid of me for a fortnight." "Partly, I think," replies Esther, nonchalantly. "It seems as if all my life I had seen and heard of nothing but Glan-yr-Afon and Plas Berwyn, Plas Berwyn and Glan-yr-Afon, and now I'm going to see and hear something fresh; it may be better and it may be worse; but, at all events, it will be something different. Perhaps I shall come back as the country mouse did, more in love than ever with my own cheeseparings and tallow-candle ends; perhaps"--swinging her Sunday bonnet by the strings and looking up maliciously--"perhaps I shall see some one I like better than you, and not come back at all." "Hush!" he cries, hurriedly, putting up his hand before her mouth. "Don't say that; it is bad luck. I should not mind your saying it if it were not so horribly probable." Esther subsides into gravity. "I wish to Heaven you were not so fond of me!" she says, hastily; "please do try not to be: it makes me feel as if I were cheating all the time--having things and not paying for them." "I could have given you up _at first_, if you had told me it must be so positively; I'm sure I could have made shift to do without you, as I have made shift to do without many a thing that other fellows consider necessaries of life; but now----" He has seized her two hands, and now holds her standing there before him. To hold her hand is the one familiarity Robert is permitted; not once in all his life has he kissed his betrothed. "It was a foolish, silly custom," she said one day, pettishly--"no sensibler than rubbing noses together, as the Feejee islanders did; for her part, she hated it, &c." "But now, what? finish your sentence, please," says the little captive, gaily. "Esther, I wish these people had not got a son." "What people?" "These Gerards." "Why so? Do you think that they would have left you their money if they had not?" "No, not that," smiling against his will. "But, Essie, you'll promise to write and tell me what he is like?" "Yes." "What sort of age?" "Yes." "Whether you see much of him?" "Yes." "What he says to you?" "Come, I cannot promise that," says Esther, bursting out laughing. "Oh you dear old goose! are you jealous of a name, a shade, an imagination?" "I _am_ jealous," he answers, reddening. "I can no more help it than a man in the gout can help having twinges. I shall always be jealous until you are really mine past stealing or taking back again: after that I never shall." "I should hope not," retorts she, with levity: "if you were, I should think it my duty to try and give you some cause." The church bell has ceased; there is no sound in the quiet room but that of one fat-bodied bluebottle, labouring and buzzing up the pane, and then tumbling back again. Robert has abandoned the window-sill, finding it a painful and not luxurious seat: he is walking up and down, up and down; one stride and a half of his long legs taking him from end to end of the little room. Esther has thrown herself into an American rocking chair, and is rocking violently backwards and forwards, trying her best to tip herself over. "Promise me, Essie," says the young man, coming to a sudden standstill beside her--"promise me that you'll talk seriously of--you know what--when you come home; I give you till then? Good heavens! what sort of stuff could Jacob have been made of to have held out all those fourteen years!" "'The little maid replied, Some say a little sighed, And what shall we have for to eat, eat, eat? Will the love that you're so rich in Make a fire in the kitchen, Or the little god of love turn the spit, spit, spit?'" answers Esther, evading her lover's urgency by a quotation. "If I could get an Adjutancy of Volunteers," pursues he, resuming his walk, with his eyes bent on the ground, and frowning away in the intensity of his thinking, "or, better still, a Militia one, or a Chief Constableship, or the Governorship of a gaol: there are always some of those sort of things going about. Why should I not come in for one as well as another fellow? We want so little----" "Want so little?" interrupts Esther, briskly. "Speak for yourself, please: I want a great deal; only, as far as I can see, want is likely to be my master." "You are no fine lady," pursues he, talking more to himself than to her, "that requires to be waited on; you can make your own bonnets and gowns, cannot you? My sisters always do." "So I should imagine," says Esther, drily. "What do you mean? Are not they all right? is there anything the matter with them?" inquires he, stopping short and looking surprised, as if the idea of there being any deficiency in his sisters' costumes was an entirely new light to him. But Miss Craven purses up her pretty mouth in a silence more damnatory of the Misses Brandon's toilettes than any words could be. "If we had not a large enough income to live by ourselves," says he, beginning again his tramp, tramp, "we might join housekeeping with mother and the girls; they would not object, I'm sure." "But I should, _strongly_," cries Esther, springing up, and getting crimson with vexation. "Why, we should all be by the ears in a week. Robert, how many times will you make me tell you that I like you well enough to go sailing along beside you on the sea of life as long as it is nice and smooth, but I really do not love you enough to go bumping over rocks and into breakers with you? I would do it for Jack, and welcome, but for no other human being on the face of the earth." "Will you never like me as well as you do Jack?" he inquires, sadly, looking at her with eyes so loving, that one would think her own must catch the infection. But, no; they remain coldly bright, with the cold brightness of friendship. "Never." "Not after ten years?" "No." "Nor twenty?" "No." "Nor thirty?" "No, nor a thousand. Cannot you see what a different thing it is? If one loses a lover one can get a hundred more just as good as, if not better than, the one lost; but if I were to lose Jack--oh, God! how can I suggest anything so awful--who could give me another brother?" "So be it, then, since it must be that I am to play second fiddle all my life (sighing); but, Essie, you'll promise to write to me every day, won't you?" "Certainly not." "Every second day, then?" "Certainly not." "Twice a week, then?" "Per--haps; if I have anything to say." "And you'll be sure not to stay beyond the fortnight?" "That depends. If they are _fine_, and inclined to 'country cousin' me, I shall probably be back the day after to-morrow: if they make a great fuss with me, and if Mr. Gerard is young and handsome and civil-spoken, I dare say you will not see me again under two months." He looks so sincerely pained that her conscience smites her. "There," she says, "I have teased you enough for one day; let us kiss and make friends,--that is, figuratively. Come," putting out her hand to draw him along with her, "let us go to the kitchen garden and see if the wasps have left us any apricots. If Bessy were here, she would tell us some pleasing anecdote of how some people went and picked apricots on the Sabbath, and got stung in the throat and swelled, and died in great agonies; but I'm willing to run the risk if you are." * * * * * Nine o'clock! The maid-servants are at evening church, combining the double advantage of _making their souls_ and meeting their sweethearts. Esther, happily rid of hers, is sitting on the ground at the French window of the study, beside her brother. The rooks that blackened the meadow awhile ago have flapped heavily home to the mile-off rookery. It is such a great, still world; who would fancy that there were so many noisy men, barking dogs, snorting steam-engines in it? It seems a world of stars and flowers, as one would imagine it after reading one of Mrs. Heman's poems. Jack is smoking; now and then Esther takes the pipe out of his mouth, gives a little puff, coughs and chokes, and puts it back again. Oh, blessed state of intimacy, when you may sit by a person for hours and never utter to them! Esther is thinking what a pretty, pleasant Idyllic life hers is; like an Arcadian shepherdess's in this lovely valley, far away from smoky towns and vulgar cares and sordid toils. Young and beautiful (what pretty woman is mock-modest to her own thoughts?), living with a brother who is to her what father, mother, brothers, sisters, husband, children, are to other women; a brother who is only three years older than herself, consequently not likely to die much before her. She is thinking, a little regretfully, that, fair and poetic as this life is, it is passing, and that as it passes she does not feel its beauty as acutely as she ought--does not suck out all its sweetness, as a man swallows a delicious draught hastily, carelessly, without tasting and dwelling upon its rare flavour. It is the same _sort_ of thought (only much weaker) as those that torment us as we sit alone by the hearth mourning our dead, and reproach ourselves, with a yearning pain, that while they were yet with us we did not draw our chairs half close enough to theirs--did not take hold of their hands and kiss their faces half often enough--did not half often enough tell them, with eager lips, how preciouser than life they were to us. "What will you be doing this time to-morrow, Essie?" asks Jack, breaking in upon her reverie; and has not he a right, for is not he king and hero of it? "Wishing myself back again, to a dead certainty," answers Essie, emphatically. "Jack" (rubbing her cheek up and down softly against his shoulder--Jack is but a young, slight stripling), "I do believe that if I were in heaven, and saw you sitting all alone here smoking your pipe, I should have to throw away my harp and crown, and come down to keep you company." "If you were in heaven," returns Jack, gravely, "I think you would be so surprised and pleased to find yourself there that you would be in no hurry to come out again for me or anybody else." "Perhaps so, but I think not," she answers, sighing, and thrusting her arm gently through his. "Have you got any money, Essie?" "Plenty." "How much?" "Plenty." "But how much?" "Never you mind." "But I do mind." "Enough to take me there and bring me back again, and I don't suppose they'll charge me for board and lodging." "Servants at those sort of swell places expect such a lot of tipping," says Jack, pensively, knocking the ash out of his pipe. "They may expect, then; a little disappointment is very wholesome for us all. They are much better able to tip me than I them." "There are sure to be charity sermons, too," continues the boy, with a forethought worthy of riper years. "I don't know how it is, but I never went to a strange place in my life without there being a collection for the Kaffirs or the Jews or the Additional Curates or something the very first Sunday after I got there." "I would pretend I had forgotten my purse." Jack puts his pipe in his pocket, rises, retires into his sanctum, lights a candle, rummages in a drawer, and presently returns with a five-pound note. Bank notes grew but in scanty crops at Glan-yr-Afon. "Here, Essie." "No! _no!_ NO!" cries Essie, volubly, jumping up and clasping her hands behind her back. "Yes! _yes!_ YES!" "No! no! You won't have enough money to pay the men on Saturday night." "Talk about what you understand," says Jack, gruffly. "Do you think I'm going to let my sister go about like a beggar and whine for halfpence?" "Oh, Jack, Jack!" throwing herself about his neck, and burying her face in his sunburnt throat. "How bitter it is always to take, and never to give! Oh! if I had but something to give you; but you know I have got nothing in the world." "You have got Bob." "Ah! so I have" (making a little grimace); "and if he would do you any good, you might have him, and welcome, to make mincemeat of, if you liked." CHAPTER VIII. The 2.25 train from Brainton is due at Felton at 5.30. It is drawing near Hither now, escorted by a vanguard, bodyguard, and rearguard of dust-clouds; it rushes along, with the sun beating down on the roofs of the carriages, making them like little compartments of Hades. If the devil took a hint from the Coldbath Fields cells for "improving the prisons of Hell," he certainly might take a hint from the Brainton train for improving the travelling conveyances of the same locality. In one of the first-class carriages there is a baby: it has got a cold, and seems rather inclined to be sick; so both the nurse, on whose lap it lies gaping and blowing bubbles, and the idolising mother, who sits over against it, insist on keeping its window tight up. There is a rusty old divine, in gilt-rimmed spectacles and a jowl, reading the _Guardian;_ a commercial traveller, with his hat off, his legs up, and a gaudy cap on his head, fast asleep; and, lastly, a little young lady, sitting facing the engine, with the dusty blast driving hot and full in her face, blinking, coughing, choking, with the utmost patience. On her lap lies a huge bunch of red and yellow roses and heavy-scented double-stocks, all limp and drooping and soiled. Bob gave them to her when he came down to the station to see her off--and very kind of him too, and very nice they are; but all the same, as she has already a bag, a box, and a parasol to carry, she thinks (though she barely owns it to herself) that she would almost as soon have been without them. The dusty blast blows gentler, moderates to a dusty zephyr; the train is slackening speed. "Fel--ton!" "Fel--ton!" cry a row of green-fustianed porters, as the long bulk draws up at the platform. "Please 'm, are you Miss Craven?" inquires a tall footman in powder and a cockade, touching his hat to Esther, as she stands all by herself, trying to take several beams out of her own eye. "Yes." "The carriage is here for you, 'm. Would you please to show me which is your maid and luggage?" "I have no maid, and there's my luggage," responds Esther, pointing with one grimy kid finger to a small trunk standing on its head, and looking half inclined to burst asunder in the midst. She is ashamed of her destitute condition, and ashamed of herself for being ashamed of it. "Will it change into a pumpkin?" thinks Miss Craven, as she steps into a large yellow barouche, with two fidgety, showy greys, that is waiting for her at the station gate. After the yammering of the baby, the dull rumble-rumble of the train, how delicious! "If it were only my own," she says to herself, throwing herself back with a consequential feeling on the soft cushions, as some country people pass and pull their forelocks to the well-known liveries. "Well, odder things have happened! _But_ for Bob! The Prince fell in love with Cinderella at first sight; why should not Prince Gerard with me? I dare say I'm quite as good-looking as Cinderella was!" As they pass Lady Gerard's model school, twenty little charity girls come trooping out in the uniformity of their cotton frock and straw bonnet livery, and drop twenty bob courtesies to Esther, who feels as the man in the "Arabian Nights" did who woke and found himself Sultan. Labouring men go stumping heavily home, with their tools over their shoulders and their heads bent earthwards, as is always the case with the tillers of the soil, who must--oh, hard necessity!--be ever looking down. Park palings, through which the strong brake fern is thrusting itself, slide past; then a red lodge, picked out with blue bricks, where an obsequious old woman rushes out from the washtub, with hands all soapsuds, to open the gates; then a grassy, knolly park; then a great red house, likewise picked out with blue bricks; then stones clattering under an echoing portico; then the pumpkin stops, and Cinderella descends. "Miss Craven!" announces the butler, opening a tall door; and Miss Craven, plucking up heart, marches into a high, dark library, lined with high, dark books--marches in, looking very much like a chimney sweep. Dust lies in ridges on her once white bonnet; dust, instead of belladonna, in streaks under her eyes; dust on the parting of her hair, on her eyelashes, up her nose (on which there is also, though, happily for her, she does not know it, a large smut), and a double portion of dust on the great, faded, yellow roses, to which she cleaves with as much pertinacity as the idiot in "Excelsior" clave to that senseless banner which he was so determined to run up hill with. As she enters, a goddess rises like an exhalation (as Pandemonium did), and comes floating on lilac clouds towards her. This is as things seem to her; in reality, a large, fair, young woman comes forward in a long-tailed mauve muslin. Simultaneously a man's two legs are seen disappearing over the window-sill. "How do you do?" says the goddess, sweetly. "I think the train must have been rather late; we expected you half an hour ago." "Yes." A little pause, each taking stock. "Won't you have some tea?" "Thanks." The tea is poured out; it has been standing on the table an hour, and is perfectly cold. The goddess and the little female collier examine each other stealthily. "Rather alarming," thinks the latter: "talks in such a low voice, and has such a difficulty in pronouncing her _r_'s. So that is the correct thing, is it? Well, I'll always call Robert _Wobert_ for the future." "Might be pretty, if she were not so filthy," thinks the other. "Same age as I am, indeed! She looks five years older." "I think, if you don't mind, we had perhaps better be going to dress. Sir Thomas is so very particular as to punctuality." "Is he? was that Sir Thomas that got out of the window just as I came in?" "Oh no! that was St. John." ("St. John! What a pretty name! How much prettier than Bob!") * * * * * Sir Thomas Gerard is walking up and down the library, with his watch in his hand, prepared the instant the clock strikes to ring the bell violently, and inquire what is the meaning of dinner being so late. Sir Thomas is a big man, who affects the country squire, the good, old English gentleman--plain Sir Thomas, without any nonsense about him; dresses to the character, and succeeds in looking not unlike the Frenchman's idea of an English _milord_, as depicted in _Punch_ some years ago, where he is represented in low-crowned hat and breeches, with the face of a truculent butcher, cracking a whip, and exclaiming, with equal coherency and elegance, "Rosbif! I send my wife to Smiffel! God dam!" Sir Thomas does not use such strong language when speaking of Lady Gerard, but in other respects the portrait is not unfaithful. Lady Gerard is lying in an arm-chair. She is fat to make you shudder; she has a short, turn-up nose, short legs, a red skin, and next to no hair--all very good points in a pig, but hardly so good in a lady. The clock strikes, and at the same instant the butler opens the door, and announces "Dinner!" "Come along, Conny!" says Sir Thomas, sticking out his elbow to his ward. "Are not you going to wait for Miss Craven? And St. John is not down, either," suggests Lady Gerard, who is hoisting herself slowly up out of her chair. "Wait for 'em? Not I," responds Sir Roger de Coverley. "If people don't choose to conform to the rules of my house, they may go without their dinner for all I care, and serve 'em right, too. Come along, Conny!" The soup is nearly ended when two people, who have come together by a fortuitous concourse of atoms at the door, make a simultaneous entry into the dining-room. "Companions in iniquity!" says St. John, with a sarcastic look at his father, bowing to Esther, as he seats himself beside Miss Blessington. "How do?" says Sir Thomas, putting out his left hand (his right is still grasping his spoon). "Never wait for anybody here; would not let the soup get cold for the Queen nor the Lord Chancellor either." "Miss Craven mistook you for Sir Thomas before dinner," says Miss Blessington, in her sweet, smooth way to her neighbour. "Did she? Unintentional compliments are always the most flattering," replies Mr. Gerard, quietly. Then he looks across through the partition wall of great bigonias in silver pots, and sees a little face peeping at him under and over the broad crimson leaves. No one would ever call Esther's a Madonna face. No artist would ever ask her to sit for St. Catherine, or St. Cecilia, or St. Anybody else; hers is essentially _beauté du diable_--one of those little, sparkling, provoking, petulant faces that have a fresh dress of smiles or tears, or dimples or blushes, for every trivial, passing question; one of those little faces that have been at the bottom of half the mischiefs the world has seen. "I only saw a pair of legs," replies the face, exculpating itself; "how could I tell whether they were young or old legs?" Miss Blessington looks rather shocked, as if she thought that Esther's modes of expression were somewhat _libre;_ and indeed at the rate of purity at which we are advancing, _legs_ will soon walk off into the limbo of silence and unmentionableness; _arms_ will probably follow them, and then perhaps noses. Although Miss Blessington looks shocked, St. John only laughs. He looks pleasant when he laughs; he did not look pleasant just now, when he was turning up his nose at his cold soup. When he is in an ill-humour he has a decided look of his father, though it puts him into an awful rage to tell him so. He is not handsome, certainly; not a straight-nosed, pink-cheeked, flaxen-curled, fairy prince at all; neither is he very young--not a boy, that is to say--five-and-thirty, or thereabouts; his face has a weather-beaten look, as of one that has felt many an icy wind and many a tropic sun beat against it. No lily-handed, curled woman's darling. "What do you mean?" cries Sir Thomas, raising his voice, and turning round in a fury (with his stiff grey hair standing upright, and the veins in his forehead swelling) upon an unlucky footman, who has had the _maladresse_ to drop three spoons that he was carrying upon a tray. "You stupid hound, mind what you are about, or else keep out of the room, one or the other!" Esther's mouth opens; she feels a sensation of shamefaced aghastness; but the rest of the company sit with the composure induced by long familiarity with the good old English gentleman's courtesies. Only one little flash of indignant contempt shoots from St. John's grey eyes. "How I hate my father!" would be his reading of the great statesman's dying ejaculation, "How I love my country!" Nobody ever speaks much at dinner at Felton. St. John because he knows, if he trusted himself to speak at all, it would be to contradict his father flat _whatever_ he said, for the mere pleasure of contradicting him; Lady Gerard because she has heard that it is impossible to do two things well at the same time, and as she is quite resolved upon doing the eating part well, she thinks she will leave the talking alone; Miss Blessington because, having contributed her hard, cold beauty to the entertainment, she thinks she has done enough. The company being rather silent, Esther turns her eyes round the room, and scans the pictures. Two or three Gerards, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in very full dress; a large copper-coloured woman by Rubens, in no dress at all; "Susanna and the Elders;" "Jupiter and Leda" (twice life-size); a "Venus Sleeping, surprised by Satyrs" (a great gem); and many other like subjects, such as one mostly meets with in the dining-rooms of English nobles and gentles--subjects pleasant and profitable, to employ the eyes and minds of their daughters while engaged in eating their dinners. Esther is staring hard at Susanna's fat, coy face, when her attention is recalled by Mr. Gerard's voice addressing her. She starts and blushes furiously, like a child whose fingers have been found straying among the jam-pots. He looks amused at her confusion. "I have just been thinking, Miss Craven, how pleasant your first impressions of us must be. What a well-mannered, courteous family you must think us!--I tumbling out of the window at the risk of breaking my neck to avoid you, and my father and mother going to dinner without you." "If you had been a little quicker in your movements, I should have known nothing about you," responds she, the carmine called forth by her detection dying slowly out of her cheeks, and noticing only the half of his sentence that refers to himself. "Ah! I am not so young as I was" (with a sigh); "but, to tell the truth, we had just been dragging the pool, like Boodles in 'Happy Thoughts,' and I was such a mass of mud that I had not moral courage to face you." "We should have met on equal terms. I was as black as a coal, was not I?" "Railroads do make one wonderfully dusty," replies Miss Blessington, with a polite, evasive platitude. "I had a worse infliction than any dust to bear," says Esther, stretching her long throat around the bigonia to get a fuller view of her _vis-à-vis_. "A baby, of course?" replies he, stretching his neck too for a like purpose. "An aggravated case of baby--a baby that had something odd the matter with it." "Not so bad as a man drinking sherry," says he, his grey eyes and a bit of his nose laughing through the leaves; "a woman eating gingerbread is bad enough. I travelled once with a woman who ate gingerbread from London to Holyhead without stopping." "And did not offer you any?" "Good heavens, no! What a prodigious suggestion!--that would have been adding insult to injury." "If I had been travelling with you I should undoubtedly have offered you some. I should have judged you by myself, and I am very fond of gingerbread." "Indeed!" "And" (with a mischievous look) "fonder still of peppermint lozenges, particularly in church on hot Sunday afternoons." They were getting quite voluble, chatting and chirping like a nest of magpies--like children playing and laughing in a garden, unmindful that in a cave in a corner is a great old bear who may pounce out on them at any moment. The Felton bear pounces. "What the devil do you mean leaving that door open? Morris! John! George! Here, some of you! there's a door open somewhere between here and the kitchen. Don't contradict me, sir! I say there is; if I catch you propping those swing doors open," &c. &c. * * * * * The birds have gone to bed, and the slugs come out to walk on the damp garden paths. Now and then a little wind gets up, whispers a word or two to the polished laurel leaves, and lies down again. There is a carpet of thin, smoke-grey clouds over heaven's blue floor. The two girls are strolling up and down the terrace walk. Esther has got a red cloak thrown about her shoulders; she is not in the least afraid of taking cold, and declined the offer of it in the first instance; but on second thoughts, reflecting that the dining-room windows look on the terrace, and that the fairy prince may see and like the combination of black eyes and red cloth (fairy princes being always partial to gay colours), accepted it. I have called Esther "little," and Miss Blessington "large" but the truth is they are much of a height. The difference between them is, that one is a young, slight sapling that has been so busy shooting up skywards, that it has had no leisure to grow broad, and that the other is a full-grown, spreading, stately forest tree. And yet they are the same age; but some women develop, mind and body, much quicker than others. From the unshuttered dining-room windows comes a great square of yellow lamplight, and lies smooth upon the gravel. Looking in you see rifled fruit dishes, half-filled wine-glasses, moths flying round and round the lamp globes, trying their best to find an entrance to fiery death. Sir Thomas, in his red velvet easy chair, with his white duck legs stretched out before him--duck trousers and a blue coat and brass buttons are, I need hardly say, the fine old English gentleman's dinner costume--with his head thrown back, till you can see either up into his brains or down his throat, whichever you choose. St. John, with his elbow resting on the shining oak table, which reflects it as a mirror would, and his head on his hand, in a brown study. "Do you always walk up and down here, Miss Blessington?" inquires Esther, who is getting rather tired of pacing along, along, along monotonously, with her gown sweeping a little avalanche of pebbles behind her. "Generally" (with a pretty smile). Miss Blessington has a very pretty smile--an "angelic smile"--people say who see her only once; but it is only one, and is aired every hour of the day--comes out for Sir Thomas, for Lady Gerard, for servants, for dogs, for callers, for old almswomen, for St. John--so that none can take it personally, can they? "By yourself?" "Not generally." The pretty smile is dashed with a faint complacency. ("H'm! That means with St. John-- "'Walking in a shady grove With my Juliana.' "Pleasant look-out for me! A bad third! What a pity that Bob is not here! we should be a _partie carrée_, and might change partners every now and then; Miss Blessington should have Bob, and I would have St. John!") Below the terrace spreads a large square of grass, uninvaded by flower-bed or shrub, mowed and rolled, rolled and mowed, into the similitude of a pancake for flatness. There croquet-hoops glance whitely in the soft half-light; mallets lie strewn like dead soldiers after a battle; balls red, blue, and yellow, like great ripe fruit tumbled among the grass. "Is this your croquet-ground?" "Yes." "Nice and level?" "Yes." "Like a billiard table, only a prettier green?" "Yes; would you like a game?" "Better than doing nothing, isn't it?" answers Esther, cheerily; she being a young woman to whom the words _rest_ and _enjoyment_ are not synonymous, as they mostly grow to be to people in later years. From the dining-room comes the faint melody of the trombone, played with the skill of much practice by Sir Thomas's nose. Some one comes to the window, looks out, puts a hand on the sill, and jumps down. St. John apparently has an aversion from going out and coming in by the authorised modes of exit and entrance. Now that one can see him without any bigonia interposing, one notices that he has kind, eager eyes--eyes that seem to be looking, looking for something that they have not found yet--and rather a long nose, that the sun has got hold of and browned, as a cook browns mashed potatoes. "Won't you join us, St. John?" asks Miss Blessington, stooping to reinstate a fallen hoop, and looking calm invitation at him out of her great, fine, passionless, cow eyes. St. John hesitates, and looks towards Esther to see whether she is not going to second the invitation; but she is balancing herself with her two feet on a croquet-mallet, and does not appear to see him. "Gooseberry I may be," she thinks, "but, at all events, I won't be instrumental in making myself so." "Do I ever play?" asks he, with petulance, walking off in a huff. "He did not accept your invitation with the exultant gratitude one would have expected, did he?" says Miss Craven, maliciously. "He hates the game," replies Miss Blessington, rather sharplier than is her wont--"particularly playing with odd numbers." "Oh!" The match begins; it is about as fair as a foot race between Deerfoot and a lame baby. Esther has played about six times in the course of her life; Miss Blessington about six thousand. Miss Blessington makes the round of the hoops in triumphant solitude, while poor Essie struggles feebly, ignorantly, unscientifically, to ring a bell that refuses to emit the faintest tinkle. "Hare and tortoise!" cries she, laughing at her own discomfiture; "you'll go to sleep presently, and I shall crawl in and win." "Since you wish me, I don't mind taking a mallet," says St. John, appearing suddenly round a big Wellingtonia, and looking confusedly conscious of being seen descending very awkwardly from his high horse. "How do you know we wish you to take one?--we never said so," says Essie, flashing at him with her wicked, laughing, half-lowered eyes. ("Since I am another's and he is another's, I don't see why we should not try to amuse each other," she says to herself.) "It is your turn to play, Miss Craven," interposes Constance, coldly. "Come to my rescue, won't you?" says Esther, making her seventy-second careless, abortive attempt at the bell, and throwing twice as much _empressement_ into her voice from the amiable motive that she thinks such _empressement_ is displeasing to Miss Blessington. "You snubbed me so just now that I don't think I will. I'll leave you to perish miserably," answers he, looking at her as he speaks with an intentness only excusable by the dim light, and the indistinctness of all objects in it. "Constance, if you don't mind I'll take one of Miss Craven's balls." "If you remember, I asked you to join us half an hour ago," replies Constance, in her measured way. "I make one stipulation before we start," cries Esther, gaily, "and that is, that you make no remarks upon my play except such as are of a laudatory nature." "I'll make no stipulation of the kind," answers he, gaily too; "if I see anything reprehensible I shall testify." Fate does not smile upon the union of St. John and Esther. Disgrace and disaster attend their arms; in ignorance, unskilfulness, and general incapacity, St. John is no whit inferior to his partner. "Why, you play worse than I do," cries she, delighted at the discovery. "I know I do," he answers, not too amiably; "I should be ashamed of myself if I did not; it is the vilest, stupidest game ever any idiot invented; no play in it whatever. All luck! all chance! Look there!" pointing with a sort of ill-tempered resignation to Constance, who, with dress delicately lifted with one hand, and foot gracefully poised, is inflicting heavy chastisement, with a calm, satisfied vindictiveness, on his ball. "Take that, you fool you!" (this is addressed to the ball, not to Miss Blessington) hurling his mallet at it as it scuds swiftly over the sward and lodges in the pink and purple breast of an aster bed. The head and handle of the mallet fly asunder from the violence of their passage through the air, and Mr. Gerard is reduced to the ignominy of picking up the _disjecta membra_ and hammering them together again. "You must make a sensation when you go to a croquet party," remarks Esther, sarcastically. "Do you think so badly of me as to suppose I ever do? is thy servant a curate that he should do this thing?" he answers, coming over and standing close to her. "Please attend to the game, St. John! It is you to play!" exclaims Constance, with suppressed, lady-like irritation, from the other end of the ground, where she stands in majestic solitude. It is the penalty of greatness to be lonely. A few more egregious blunders on the part of the firm of Gerard and Craven, a few more masterstrokes by Miss Blessington, and the game draws to a conclusion. "It is ridiculous playing against such luck as yours, Constance," cries St. John, flinging down his weapon in an unjust, unreasonable fury. "It is always the same; it does not matter what--whist, billiards, anything--always the same story. Take my advice" (turning to Essie, and speaking eagerly), "never play at anything, or do anything, or be anything with me, or you'll be sure to be a loser. I am the most unlucky devil under the sun." Then he feels that he is making a fool of himself, and walks off in a rage. "Why, he is _really_ cross," says Esther, opening her great eyes and looking a little blankly after him. "He is rather odd-tempered," answers Miss Blessington, composedly; "and the most singular thing is, that it is always the people he is fondest of with whom he is most easily irritated." "How fond he must be of you!" says Esther, internally. CHAPTER IX. Death and the sun are very much alike in one respect, and that is, their utter impartiality and stupid want of discernment. They make no difference between those who love them and those who hate. They pay their visits equally to those who are longing for and lifting up eager hands towards them, and those who would much prefer to be without them. I will drop the parallel, which cannot be carried much farther, and talk of the sun only. He certainly shows very little judgment, and less taste, in these matters. He gives his great, warm light just as readily to a scullery as a boudoir, to an ill-smelling dunghill as to a bed of mignonette; kisses with just as much relish the raddled cheeks of an old fish-wife as the fresh scarlet lips of a young countess. This present August morning he is blazing full and hot on that very grievous daub of Mrs. Brandon in a no-waisted black satin, out of which she appears to be bursting, like a chrysalis from its sheath, in the Plas Berwyn dining-room, and not a whit more fully or more hotly on the exquisite "Monna Lisa" of Da Vinci, which is the chief jewel of the Gerard collection. The same sunbeam that brings out with such clearness Monna Lisa's faint, weird smile, takes in also within its compass Esther's small, swart head, round the back of which coils a great, loose, careless twist of burnished hair, like a black snake. She is standing outside the dining-room door, with her lithe, _svelte_ figure stooped forward a little. The family are at prayers, as she ascertained by applying her ear to the key-hole, and hearing a harsh, elderly voice going at a good round trot through a variety of petitions, for himself, his children (he has only one, and hates him), his friends, his enemies, his queen, his bishops and curates, his black brethren, &c., all without the vestige of a comma between them. "What! eavesdropping?" asks St. John, coming down the handsome, shallow stairs in knickerbockers and heather-mixture stockings that his old mother made him. "Hush!" holding up her forefinger; "they are at prayers." St. John listens too, and a sneer comes and settles on his mouth. "Isn't he a worthy rival for the man who said he would give any one as far as Pontius Pilate in the Creed, and then beat him?" "You ought not to abuse your own father" (in a whisper). "I know I ought not" (in another whisper). "Why do you, then?" casting down her eyes, that he may see how large a portion of downy cheeks her long curly lashes shade. "I only do for him what I know he would do for me if he had the chance." "Hush! they are nearly over." "... be with us all evermore. Amen. Morris!" "Yes, Sir Thomas." "What the deuce do you mean sticking the legs of that chair against the wall knocking all the paint off the wainscot?" "Oh! blessings on his kindly voice, And on his silver hair!" says St. John, in ironical quotation; and then the door opens, and a long string of servants issue out, and the two culprits again, as on the previous evening, together enter. Lady Gerard never appears at breakfast. About twenty years ago she had an illness, and, on the strength of it, has kept up a character for invalidhood ever since. Miss Blessington takes her place at the head of the table; she is sitting there now. Her shapely hands are busy among the teacups; her white lids drooped over her calm eyes. There is a great gold cross on her breast, that rises and falls in soft, even undulations. Eve, as she was when first she grew into separate entity and embodiment out of Adam's side; Eve, of creamiest flesh, and richest, reddest blood, before a soul--a tormenting, puzzling, intangible, incomprehensible soul--was breathed into her. When Constance marries, her husband will gaze at her as a man might gaze at Gibson's "Venus," supposing that he had bought for a great price that marvel of modern sculpture, and had set it up in the place of honour in his gallery. He would half-shut his eyes, the better to appreciate the exquisite turn of the cold, stately throat, the modelling of the little rounded wrist; would put his head on one side, and look at it this way and that, to determine whether he liked the tinting. "Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null," as the pithy line that everybody knows, and that next to nobody could have written, hath it. At forty Constance will be a much handsomer woman than Esther. At forty those clean-cut, immovable, expressionless features will be hardly the worse for wear; that colourless marble skin will be hardly less smoothly polished than it is now. At forty Esther (if she live so long) will have cried and laughed, and fretted and teased herself into a mere shadow of her present self. Every one's letters at Felton are put on their plate for them. As Esther takes her seat, she perceives that there is one for her--one directed in a scrawling, schoolboy hand. The blood rushes to her face, as it does to a turkeycock's wattles when he is excited or angry, and she thrusts it hastily into her pocket. To her guilty imagination it seems that written all over it, in big red letters, legible to every eye, is, "From Bob Brandon, Esther Craven's lover." As her eyes lift themselves shyly, to see whether St. John is observing her, they meet his, looking at her curiously, interestedly, puzzledly. "We allow people to read their letters at breakfast here," he says, with a friendly smile; "we are not particular as to manners, as I dare say you have found out by this time." "Oh! thanks, I'm in no hurry; it's of no consequence--it will keep," answers Esther, disjointedly, with would-be indifference, and the turkeycock hue spreading to the edge of her white gown. The morning hours at Felton are not exciting. Sir Thomas is building a new orchid house, and spends much of his time standing over the bricklayers, like an Egyptian overseer, telling them with his usual courteous candour how much more he knows about their trade than they themselves do, who have been at it all their lives. St. John disappears too, and Constance and Esther are left _tête-à-tête_. Esther has plenty of time to read Bob's letter, and to understand it, which latter requires some ingenuity, as, from the greater rapidity of his thoughts than of his pen, he omits most of the little words--_tos_ and _ands_ and _whichs_ and _whos_ and _hes_ and _shes_. There is a good deal about his mother in it: several messages from her; a great many questions as to what Mr. Gerard was like, with solemn adjurations to answer them; a sheet devoted to the exposition of the luxury in which it is possible to live on £300 a year; and, lastly, a sentence or two as to his great loneliness, and his eager longing to have his darling Esther back again--not much on that head, as if he were afraid of marring her enjoyment by intruding upon her the picture of his own disconsolateness. It was not an eloquent letter; in fact, it was rather a stupid one, and had evidently been written with a very nasty scratchy pen; but for all that it was a nice one, and so Esther felt, and wished that it had been less so. Bob is a dear fellow; and, no doubt, when she goes back to Glan-yr-Afon, she will be very glad to see him, and be very fond of him; but, for the present, she would like to forget him altogether--to have a holiday from him: he seems to come in incongruously now somehow. "Where's St. John?" grunts miladi, who makes her appearance towards luncheon time, from the arm-chair which is witness to so many gentle dozes on her part. Miladi likes St. John; he is very good to her, and often stands in the breach between her and Sir Thomas. "Vanished," answers Miss Blessington, in her slow, sweet drawl. "I think Miss Craven must have frightened him away." It is very pleasant, is not it? when you think you have been making a highly favourable impression on a person, to hear that they have fled before you in abject fear. "I had no idea that he was such a timid fawn," answers Essie, nettled. "He is very peculiar," says Constance, her white fingers flying swiftly in and out among the coloured silks of the smoking cap she is embroidering; "and has a most unfortunate shrinking from strangers." "The greatest friends must have been strangers once," objects Essie, feeling rather small. "Quite true, so they must; but he is so very _difficile_, we never can get him to admire any one--can we, aunt?" But "aunt" has fallen sweetly asleep. "With the exception of two or three fortunate blondes--I prefer dark people myself infinitely, don't you?" "Infinitely," replies Esther, with emphasis. It is not true--she does nothing of the kind; but, after all, what is truth in comparison of the discomfiture of an adversary? CHAPTER X. Luncheon comes, but no St. John. After luncheon Sir Thomas, Miss Blessington, and Miss Craven go out riding. Miss Craven's knowledge of horsemanship is confined to her exploits on a small, shaggy, down-hearted Welsh pony, concerning whom it would be difficult to predicate which he was fullest of, years or grass. Miss Blessington has lent her an old habit; it is much too big in the waist and shoulders for her, but a well-made garment always manages to adapt itself more or less to any figure, and she does not look amiss in it. It is a matter of very little consequence to her at the present moment how she looks; she is the arrantest coward in Christendom, and her heart sinks down to the bottom of her boots as she sees three horses that look unnaturally tall and depressingly cheerful issue through the great folding-doors that open into the stable-yard. "Oh, Sir Thomas! it is a chesnut, is it? Don't they say that chesnuts always have very uncertain tempers? Oh! please--I'm rather frightened. I think, if you don't mind, I'd almost as soon----" "Fiddlesticks!" answers Sir Thomas, roughly. "Cannot have my horses saddled and unsaddled every half-hour because you don't know your own mind. God bless my soul, child! Don't look as if you were going to be hanged! Why, you might ride her with a bit of worsted. Here, Simpson, look sharp, and put Miss Craven up." After two abortive attempts, in the first of which she springs short, and glides ignobly to earth again, and in the second takes a bound that goes near to carrying her clean over her steed, after having given Simpson a kick in the face, and torn a hole in her borrowed habit, Miss Craven is at length settled in her seat. It is a hot afternoon; after all, I think that miladi has the best of it, sitting in a garden-chair under a tulip tree, eating apricots. The deer, with dappled sides and heavy-horned heads, are herding about the rough, knotted feet of the great trees that stand here and there in solitary kingship about the park. They spread their ancient, outstretched arms between earth and heaven, and man and beast rejoice in the shade thereof. The dust lies a hand-breadth thick upon the road; the nuts in the hedgerow, the half-ripe blackberries, the rag-wort in the grass--all merge their distinctive colours in one dirty-white mask. "Is she going to kick, do you think?" asks Esther, in a mysterious whisper of Miss Blessington, across Sir Thomas. "Does not it mean that when they put their ears back?" "I don't think you need be alarmed," answers Constance, with politely-veiled contempt; "it is only the flies that tease her." The animal that inspires such alarm in Esther's mind, is a slight, showy thing, nearly thoroughbred; a capital lady's park hack. It is quiet enough, only that the quietness of a young, oats-fed mare, and of an antediluvian Welsh pony blown out with grass, are two different things. She is sidling along now, half across the road, coquetting with her own shadow. "Oh, Sir Thomas!" (in an agonised voice) "why does not she walk straight? Why does she go like a crab?" "Pooh!" answers Sir Thomas, in his hard, loud voice; "it's only play!" "If I'm upset, I don't much care whether it is in play or earnest," rejoins Esther, ruefully. The glare from the road, the dust and the midges, make people keep their eyes closed as nearly as they can: so that it is not till they are close upon him that they perceive that the man who is dawdling along to meet them on a stout, grey cob, with his hat and coat and whiskers nearly as white as any miller's, is St. John. He looks rather annoyed at the rencontre. "I have been over to Melford, Sir Thomas, to see that pointer of Burleigh's. It will not do at all; it's not half broken." "You had better turn back with us, St. John," suggests Constance, graciously. "No, thanks; much too hot!" "_Au revoir_, then," nodding her head and her tall hat, and about a million flies that are promenading on it, gracefully. Esther's fears vanish. "Three is no company," she says in a low voice, and making rather a plaintive little face as he passes her. Drawn by the magnet that has succeeded in drawing to itself most things that it wished--viz., a woman's inviting eyes--he turns the cob's head sharp round. "But four is," he answers, with an eager smile, putting his horse alongside of hers. She was rather compunctious the moment she had said it. It is reversing the order of things--the woman after the man; "the haystack after the cow;" as the homely old proverb says. The road is broad, and for a little while they all four jog on abreast, as in a Roman chariot-race or a city omnibus--rather a dreary squadron. "This is very dull," thinks Esther. "Oh! if I could lose my handkerchief, or my veil, or my gloves! Why cannot I drop my whip?" No sooner said than done. "Oh! Mr. Gerard, I am so sorry, I have dropped my whip!" Mr. Gerard, of course, dismounts and picks it up; Sir Thomas and his ward pass on. "What a happy thought that was of yours!" says St. John, wiping the little delicate switch before giving it back to her. "_Happy thought!_ What do you mean?" (reddening). "Oh! it was accident, was it? I quite thought you had dropped it on purpose, and was lost in admiration of your ingenuity." He looks at her searchingly as he speaks. "I _did_ drop it on purpose," she answers, blushing painfully. "Why do you make me tell the truth, when I did not mean to do so?" "Don't you always tell truth?" (a little anxiously). "Does anybody?" "I hope so. A few men do, I think." "As I have no pretensions to being a man, you cannot be surprised that my veracity is not my strongest point." "You are only joking" (looking at her with uneasy intentness). "Please reassure me, by saying that you do not tell any greater number of fibs than every one is compelled to contribute towards the carrying on of society." "Perhaps I do, and perhaps I do not." He looks only half-satisfied with this oracular evasion; but does not press the point farther. "It is not often that my papa and I take the air together; we think we have almost enough of each other's society in-doors." "He is your father," says Esther, rather snappishly; a little out of humour with him for having put her out of conceit with herself. "I never could see what claim to respect that was," answers he, gravely; "on the contrary I think that one's parents ought to apologise to one for bringing one, without asking one's leave, into such a disagreeable place as this world is." "Disagreeable!" cries Esther, turning her eyes, broad open, in childish wonder upon him. "Disagreeable to _you!_ Young and----" "Beautiful, were you going to say?" "No, certainly not----and with plenty of money to make it pleasant?" "But I have not plenty of money. I _shall_ have, probably, when I'm too old to care about it! _he_ is good for thirty years more, you know," nodding respectfully at Sir Thomas's broad, blue back. "It _must_ be tiring, waiting for dead men's shoes," says Esther, a little sardonically. "_Tiring!_ I believe you," says St. John, energetically; "it is worse than tiring--it is degrading. Do you suppose I do not think my own life quite as contemptible as you can? Take my word for it" (emphasising every syllable), "there is no class of men in England so much to be pitied as heirs to properties. We cannot dig; to beg we are ashamed." "I never was heir to anything, so I cannot tell." "I should have been a happier fellow, and worth something then, perhaps, if I had been somebody's tenth son, and had had to earn my bread quill-driving, or soap-boiling, or sawbones-ing. I think I see myself pounding away at a pestle and mortar in the surgery" (laughing). "I should have had a chance, then, of being liked for myself too, even if I did smell rather of pills and plaister; whereas now, if anybody looks pleasant at me, or says anything civil to me, I always think it is for love of Felton, not of me." "You should go about _incognito_, like the Lord of Burleigh." "He was but a landscape painter, you know. Do you know that once, not a very many years ago, I had a ridiculous notion in my head that one ought to try and do some little good in the world? Thanks to Sir Thomas's assistance and example, I have very nearly succeeded in getting rid of that chimera. If I am asked at the Last Day how I have spent my life, I can say, I have shot a few bears in Norway, and a good many turkeys and grebe in Albania; I have killed several salmon in Connemara: I have made a fool of myself once, and a beast of myself many times." "How did you make a fool of yourself?" pricking up her ears. "Oh! never mind; it is a stupid story without any point, and I have not quite come to the pitch of dotage of telling senile anecdotes about myself. Here, let us turn in at this gate, and take a cut across the park: it is cooler, and we can have a nice gallop under the trees, without coming in for the full legacy of Sir Thomas's and Conny's dust, as we are doing now." "But--but--is not it rather _dangerous?_" objects Esther, demurring. "Don't they sometimes put their feet into rabbit-holes, and tumble down and break their legs?" "Frequently, I may almost say _invariably_," answers St. John, laughing, and opening the gate with the handle of his whip. The soft, springy, green turf is certainly pleasanter than the hard, whity-brown turnpike road, and so the horses think as they break into a brisk canter. The quick air freshens the riders' faces--comes to them like comfortable words from Heaven to a soul in Purgatory--as they dash along under the trees, stooping their heads every now and then to avoid coming into contact with the great, low-spreading boughs. Laughing, flushed, half-fright, half-enjoyment: "She looked so lovely as she swayed The rein with dainty finger-tips; A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this-- To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips." "Delicious! I'm not a bit afraid now; I bid defiance to the rabbit-holes," she cries, with little breathless pauses between the words. Let no one shout before they are out of the wood. Hardly have the words left her mouth, when all at once, at their very feet almost, from among the seven-foot-high fern, where they have been crouching, rise a score of deer with sudden rustling; and, their slender knees bent, spring away with speedy grace through the mimic forest. Esther's mare, frightened at the sudden apparition (many horses are afraid of deer), swerves violently to the left; then gets her head down, and sets to kicking as if she would kick herself out of her skin. "Mind! Take care! Hold tight! Keep her head up!" shouts St. John, in an agony. Next moment the chesnut, with head in the air, nostrils extended, and bridle swinging to and fro against her fore legs, tears riderless past him. In a second he is off, and at the side of the heap of blue cloth that is lying motionless among the buttercups. "I'm not dead," says the heap, raising itself, and smiling rather a difficult smile up at him, as he leans over it or her, his burnt face whitened with extremest fear. "Don't look so frightened!" "Thank God!" he says, hardly above his breath, and more devoutly than he is in the habit of saying his prayers. "When I saw you there, lying all shapeless, I half thought--Oh!" (with a shudder) "I don't know what I thought." "I must be tied on next time, mustn't I?" says Essie, putting up her hand to her head with an uncertain movement, as if she were not quite sure of finding it there. "Oh! Mr. Gerard,"--the colour coming back faintly to her lips and cheeks--"I _do_ hate riding! it's horribly dangerous! quite as bad as a battle!" "Quite!" acquiesces St. John, laughing heartily in his intense relief. "And you are quite sure you are not hurt?" "Quite!" "Really?" "Really!" To prove how perfectly intact she is, she jumps up; but, as she does so, her face grows slightly distorted with a look of pain, and she sinks back on her buttercup bed. "Not quite sure, either; I seem to have done something stupid to my foot--turned it or twisted it." So saying, she thrusts out from under her habit a small foot. It _is_ a small--a _very_ small--foot; but the boot in which it is cased is country made, and about three times too big for it; so that it might rattle in it, like a pea in a drum. Even at this affecting moment St. John cannot repress a slight feeling of disappointment. "I'm awfully sorry! Whereabouts does it hurt? There?" putting his fingers gently on the slender, rounded ankle. "Yes, a little." "I'm awfully sorry!" (You see there is not much variety in his laments.) "What can I do for it? gallop home as hard as I can, and make them send the carriage?" "With a doctor, a lawyer, and a parson in it? No, I think not." "But you cannot sit here all night. Could you _ride_ home, do you think?" "On that dreadful beast?" with a horrified intonation. "But if I lead her all the way?" "Very well" (reluctantly); "but (brightening a little) I cannot ride her; she is not here." "I suppose I must be going to look after her," says St. John, dragging himself up very unwillingly. "Brute! she is as cunning as Old Nick! And you are sure you don't mind being left here by yourself for a minute or two?" "Not if there are no horses within reach," she answers, with an innocent smile, which he carries away with him through the sunshine and the fern and the grass. Essie spends full half an hour pushing out, pinching in, smoothing and stroking Miss Blessington's caved-in hat; full a quarter of an hour in picking every grass and sedge and oxeye that grew within reach of her destroying arm; and full another quarter in thinking what a pleasant, manly, straightforward face St. John's is--what a thoroughly terrified face it looked when she met it within an inch of her own nose after her disgraceful _bouleversement_--what a much better height five feet ten is for all practical purposes than six feet four. At the end of the fourth quarter Mr. Gerard returns, with a fire hardly inferior to St. Anthony's in his face; with his hair cleaving damply to his brows, and without the mare. "Would not let me get within half a mile of her! far too knowing! Brute! and now she'll be sure to go and knock the saddle to pieces, and then there'll be the devil to pay!" "I'm so sorry," says Esther, looking up sympathisingly, with her lap full of decapitated oxeyes. "So am I, for your sake: you'll have to ride the cob home." "I shall have to turn into a man, then," she says, glancing rather doubtfully at the male saddle. "No, you won't," (laughing). He rises, and unfastens the cob from the tree-branch to which he has been tied. He has been indulging a naturally greedy disposition--biting off leaves and eating them--until he has made his bit and his mouth as green as green peas. "You must let me put you up, I think," says Gerard bending down and looking into his companion's great, sweet eyes, under the rim of her battered, intoxicating-looking hat. "Must I?" (lowering her eyelids shyly.) "Yes; do you mind much?" "No--o." He stoops and lifts her gently. He is not a Samson or a prize-fighter, and well grown young women of seventeen are not generally feather-weights; but yet it seems to him that the second occupied in raising her from the ground and placing her in the saddle was shorter than other seconds. A man's arms are not sticks or bits of iron, that they can hold a beautiful woman without feeling it. St. John's blood is giving little quick throbs of pleasure. His arms seem to feel the pressure of that pleasant burden long after they have been emptied of it. "I think you must let me hold you," he says, gently and very respectfully passing his arm round her waist. "No, no!" she cries, hastily, pulling herself away--"no need!--no need at all! I shall not fall." She feels an overpowering shrinking from the enforced, unavoidable familiarity. It does not arise from any distaste for St. John certainly, nor yet from any quixotic loyalty to Bob; it springs from a new, unknown, uncomprehended shyness. "Very well," he answers, quietly, releasing her instantly, and taking the bridle in his hand. "But I'm afraid you will find that you are mistaken." They set forward across the park, at a foot's pace and in silence. Esther twists her hands in the cob's mane, and tries to persuade herself that pommelless pigskin does not make a slippery seat. Every two paces she slides down an inch or so, and then recovers herself with an awkward jerk. The sun is hot. Now and then, as the cob puts his foot on a mole-hill, or some other slight inequality in the ground, her ankle bumps against the saddle-flap. She feels turning giddy and sick with the heat and the pain. "Mr. Gerard! Mr. Gerard! I'm falling!" she calls out loud, stretching out her arms to him, and clutching hold of his shoulder with a violence and tenacity that she herself is not in the least aware of. He is magnanimous. He does not exult over her; he does not say, "I knew how it would be; I told you so!" He only says, in a kind, anxious voice, and plainlier still with kind, anxious eyes, "I'm afraid you are in great pain?" and replaces the rejected arm in its former obnoxious position. As they enter the lodge gate, they see Sir Thomas and his ward advancing down the avenue towards them. Miss Blessington is a great favourite of Sir Thomas's. She is good to look at, and hardly ever speaks; or, if she does, it is only to say, "Yea, yea, and Nay, nay." "Now for an exchange of civilities," says Gerard, rather bitterly; "even at this distance I can see him getting the steam up." "Miss Craven has had a fall, Sir Thomas, and hurt herself," he remarks, explanatorily, as soon as the two parties come within speaking distance. "Broken the mare's knees, I suppose?" cries Sir Thomas, loudly, taking no notice whatever of Miss Craven's casualties. "Some fool's play, of course; larking over the palings, I dare say. Well, sir, what have you done with her? where have you left her? out with it!" (lashing himself up into an irrational turkeycock fury.) "Damn the mare!" answered St. John in a rage, growing rather white, and forgetting his manners. St. John's rages, when he does get into them, which is not very often, are far worse ones than his papa's, and so the latter knows, and is cowed by the first symptoms of the approach of one. Miss Blessington looks up shocked. This _jeune personne bien élevée_ always is shocked at whatever people ought to be shocked at--Colenso, Swinburne, skittles, &c. "You are not much hurt, _really_, I hope?" she says, suavely, walking along beside Esther, while Sir Thomas and his heir wrangle in the background. "Which way did you come, and what _has_ become of your horse?" "We came through the park," answers Esther, holding on by her eyelids to the cob's slippery back; "so I suppose the horse is there still. Mr. Gerard tried to catch it, and could not." "Through the park!" repeats Miss Blessington, with a slight smile of superior intelligence. "Oh! I see; a short cut home! Poor St. John has such a horror of taking a ride for riding's sake, that he always tries to shorten his penance as much as possible!" CHAPTER XI. It is the 1st of September, and the seal of impending destruction is set upon many a little plump brown bird; but ignorance is bliss, and the little brown birds do not know it, and are walking about the turnip ridges and amongst the stubble fields as confidently as if there were no such man as Purdey, and no such infernal machine as a gun. St. John and his papa go out shooting together. Sir Thomas knocks up by luncheon time, and returns to his orchid-house, and to the goading the bricklayers, as King Agamemnon did his fellow-chiefs, with bitter words. Esther spends the day in her bedroom, lying in state on a sofa with her ankle bandaged up. It hurts her acutely if she attempts to walk on it; but if she keeps quiet, she is hardly aware of there being anything wrong with it. It is very annoying having to play the invalid for an ailment that is purely local when you feel in riotous health and spirits--to have your dinner sent up to you on a tray when you are so hungry that you could eat double your allotted portion, if it were not that, being an invalid, you are ashamed to say so. One has a sense of shamming, malingering. Poor Miss Craven passes a very dull day; the red rose on one side the window, and the travellers' joy on the other, look in and say, "Why is this lazy child lying all day on a couch, when we and so many other flowers have been calling to her with our voiceless voices to come out into the breeze and shine?" A bee comes in sometimes, and goes buzz--buzzing about, telling himself how busy he is, and that he has no time to waste now that his honey-harvest is drawing so near to its sweet close. The room is so still that, but for feeling intensely alive, and not having her chin tied up, Esther might almost imagine herself laid out previous to her interment. Now and again Miss Blessington enters noiselessly, says "I hope you are feeling a little easier," in her soft monotone, and then rustles gently away again. She has provided Esther with a novel and a book of acrostics, and thinks she has done her duty by her neighbour amply. The novel is one written with a purpose; a dull one-sided tilt against Ritualism. Esther never found out an acrostic in her life, and has seldom been so completely vacant of employment as to try. She is, therefore, reduced to spending half the day in writing to Bob--half the day! and yet when the letter is finished it only covers three sides of a sheet. She has written, rewritten, and re-rewritten it. All around and about her lie half-covered, quarter-covered, whole-covered sheets, all stamped with the seal of condemnation. Gerard is the stumbling block; his name either will not come in at all, which looks unnatural, or else insists on thrusting itself in every second line. This is the form in which Miss Craven's billetdoux finally presents itself at Plas Berwyn: "Dear Bob,--Thanks very much for your letter; please put a few stops next time. I had a very disagreeable journey here--bushels of dust and a sick baby. This is a very handsome place, and they are all very kind to me. (H'm! are they? I don't know about that; _one_ of them is.) Yesterday I went out riding with Sir Thomas and his ward (so I did; I set out with them), and I stupidly fell from my horse, a sort of thing that nobody but I would have done, and hurt my foot a little; but nothing to speak of. Miss Blessington, the ward, is remarkably handsome, but looks a great deal older than I do. My love to your mother, and thanks for her kind messages; the same to the girls. Tell Bessy that it is hardly worth while sending me 'The Sinfulness of Little Sins,' as I shall have more time for reading when I get home again. "Yours affectionately, "E. C. "P. S.--Mr. Gerard is not at all good-looking; he seems very fond of shooting; he has been out all to-day." "The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs." Dinner is over; nothing to look forward to but bed-time. Yah! How dull! A knock comes at the door. Miss Blessington enters with flowers in her hand--jessamine, heliotrope, everything that smells sweetly and not heavily--unlike Bob's well meaning but annihilating double stocks. "I hope you are in less pain now" (the usual formula, that comes as regularly and frequently as the doxology in church). "Oh yes! thanks; I'm very well" (yawning and looking woefully bored.) "What lovely flowers!" "St. John sent them to you" (rather shortly). "Mr. Gerard?" (with animation, the bored look vanishing.) "How very kind of him!" "He always is so good-natured," answers Constance, with a cold generality. "It is so particularly kind of him, when he has such an overpowering aversion for strangers," continues Essie, with a malicious twinkle in her eyes. Constance sweeps to the window, slightly discomfited. "He told me to ask you whether you would like him to come and carry you downstairs for an hour or two?" she says, in a somewhat constrained voice; "but I daresay you would rather be left in peace up here; and I should think that the quieter you kept your foot the better for it." "On the contrary, I should like it of all things," cries Essie, with perverse alacrity. "In your cheerful company downstairs, I shall be more likely to forget my sufferings, such as they are, than all by my dull self up here; to tell the truth, I was meditating asking your maid to come and talk to me about haberdashery." Outside Miss Craven's door St. John pauses, as one that is devout hesitates on the threshold of a sanctuary. Chintz curtains rose-lined, white-dressed toilet-table, simple valueless ornaments lying about, two little slippers, that look as if they had been just kicked off--his eye takes in all the details. He feels like Faust in Marguerite's chamber. And Marguerite herself, lying careless, restful on her couch, her two arms flung lazily upwards and backwards, to make a resting-place for her head; the smooth elbows and shoulders gleaming warm, cream-white, through the colder blue-white of her dress; and the up-looking face, childish in its roundness, and blooming down--but oh! most womanish--in the shafts of quick fire that greet him from the laughing, sleepy eyes. Where did she learn that art of shooting? From the pigs and cabbages at Glan-yr-Afon? From old Mrs. Brandon? From Miss Bessie? From--"Stop the Leak?" Deponent sayeth not whence. "_How_ good of you!" she says, with emphasis, stretching out her hand to him, as he stands beside her sofa, looking rather fagged with his day's work. "I had just been calculating how many hours there would be before I could have a decent pretext for going to bed; one gets so tired of oneself." "Not so tired as one does of one's family," answers St. John, rather ruefully. "I have no family," she rejoins, simply. "We Gerards have a particularly happy knack of rubbing each other the wrong way," he says, rather irritably. "I am sometimes tempted to think that we are the most unamiable family God ever put breath into." "People always think that of their own family," answers Essie, laughing; "they know their own little crookednesses much better than any one else's." "Has Miss Craven changed her mind, St. John?" asks Miss Blessington from the doorway. St. John starts. "Not that I know of." He stoops, and lifts her carefully, as a thing most precious; as he does so, a little foolish trembling passes over her, as a baby-breeze passes over some still pool's breast, hardly troubling the sky and the trees that lie far down in the blue mirror. Down the grand staircase he bears her, and Constance follows to see that there is no loitering by the way. The morning-room at Felton (so called because the family always sit there in the evenings) is very lofty. You have to crane your neck up to see the stucco stalactites, faintly imitative of Staffa and Iona, pendant from the ceiling. There are statuettes in plenty standing about in niches and on pedestals. Venuses and Minervas and Clyties, all with their hair very elaborately dressed, and not a stitch of clothes on. There is a great litter of papers and magazines on the round table: the _Justice of the Peace_, that is Sir Thomas's; the _Field_, that is St. John's; the _Cornhill_, that is everybody's. Sir Thomas and miladi are playing backgammon; miladi is compelled to do so every night as a penance for her sins--four rubbers, and if _he_ wins, as she prays and endeavours that he may, five. "Don't take the dice up in such a hurry, miladi," he says, snappishly; "how the deuce can I see what your throw is?" "Seizes, Sir Thomas," responds miladi, meekly. "Seizes! don't believe a word of it! much more like seize ace!" Miss Blessington, dressed by Elise in Chambéry gauze, and by Nature in her usual panoply of beautiful stupidity, which she wears sleeping and waking, at home and abroad, living and dying, is at work at a little table, a nude Dian, with cold, chaste smile and crinkly hair, on a red velvet shrine just above her head. "Do they play every evening?" asks Esther, from the recess where she has been deposited by St. John, whose eyes she encounters, considering her attentively over the top of the _Saturday_. Shams, Flunkeyism, Woman's Rights, Dr. Cumming, the Girl of the Period--they have all been passing through his eye into his brain, and, mixed with Esther Craven, make a fine jumble there. St. John has been rather unlucky in his experiences of women hitherto. He has got rather into the habit of thinking that all good women must be stupid, and that all pleasant women must be bad. Esther is not stupid. Is she bad, then? Those glances of hers, they give a man odd sensations about the midriff; they inspire in him a greedy, covetous desire for more of them; but are they such as Una would have given her Red Cross Knight? Are they such as a man would like to see his wife bestow on his men friends? The wilder a man is or has been himself, the more scrupulously fastidious he is about the almost prudish nicety of the women that belong to him. He likes to see the sheep and the goats as plainly, widely separated as they are in the parable; it moves him to deep wrath when he sees a good woman faintly, poorly imitating a bad one. I do not think that good women believe this half generally enough; or, if they do, they do not act upon it. "Do they play every evening?" "Every evening, and Sir Thomas always accuses my mother of cheating." "And you, what do you do?" "Read, go to sleep, play cribbage or bézique with Conny." "Does she live here always?" "Always." "You and she are inseparable, I suppose?" "We get on very well in a quiet way; she is a very good girl, and comes and sits in my smoking-room by the hour with me." "Wrong, but pleasant, as the monkey said when he kissed the cat," remarks Esther, flippantly. "You are very fond of her, I suppose?" "H'm!" shrugging his shoulders. "I have a cat-like propensity for getting fond of anything that I live and eat and breathe with--like the fellow in the Bastille, don't you know, that got so fond of a spider. I never should have grown fond of a spider, though; they have got such a monstrous lot of long legs; but the principle is the same." "Why are not you fond of Sir Thomas then?" "So I am, I suppose, _in a way;_ if he were to tumble into the pool, I suppose I should hop in and fish him out again; I'm not quite sure about that, either." "We'll have another rubber, miladi?" shouts Sir Thomas's stentor voice, elate with victory; "that is the ninth game I have beat you to-night; you'll never win as long as you leave so many blots--I have told you so a score of times." Poor miladi, strangling a gigantic yawn, begins to set her men again; she had hoped that her punishment was ended for the night, and that she might be dismissed to the _otium cum dignitate_ of her armchair and nap. St. John jumps up and walks over to the players; there are few things in life he hates so much as playing backgammon with his father, but he hates seeing his mother bullied even more. If a man is cursed with a necessity for loving something, the chances are that he will love his mother, even if she bear more resemblance to a porpoise than to a Christian lady. "I'll have a rubber with you, Sir Thomas; my mother is tired." "Fiddlesticks!" growls Sir Thomas. "Tired! what the devil has she been doing to tire herself?--fiddle-faddled about the garden, picking off half a dozen dead roses. Very good thing for her if she is." But the man's will is stronger than the turkey-cock's, and the latter yields. CHAPTER XII. A sprained ankle takes mostly a tedious weary time in getting mended. Esther's, however, is but a slight sprain, and entails only a week's lying on a thoroughly comfortable, well-stuffed sofa close to one of the library's windows, where mignonette sends up continual presents of the strongest and sweetest of all flower-perfumes to her grateful nostrils--entails also being made a fuss with. If Miss Blessington had had her will, the sofa would have been upstairs, and the being made a fuss with, save by a compassionate lady's maid, dispensed with. Miss Blessington desires sincerely, in her affectionate solicitude for her welfare, to keep the young patient in a graceful and pleasing solitude upstairs. The young patient, being of a gregarious turn of mind, desires sincerely to be brought down: and the son of the house, although not particularly young, and in general not particularly gregarious, desires sincerely to bring her down. It is a case of Pull, Devil; Pull, Baker!--Baker being represented by Constance, Devil by St. John and Esther. But two pull stronger than one, and they gain their point. "Is Miss Craven ready to come down?" asks St. John, one morning, addressing the question to Miss Blessington as they stand together after breakfast. "I don't know, I'm sure. St. John?" "Well!" "If," she says, giving a little factitious cough, and speaking with her usual amiable smile, "it is any object to Miss Craven to get well----" "I should imagine that there could be no doubt on that point," he answers, picking up the _Pall Mall_. "I don't know," she rejoins, with a certain air of doubtful reserve. "It is generally considered pleasanter to have two legs to go upon than one, isn't it? It is not many people that, like Cleopatra, can 'hop forty paces through the public streets.' Have you any reason for imputing to Miss Craven a morbid taste for invalidhood?" "No; but she is hardly an invalid, and to be made so much of as you, with your usual good-nature to the waifs and strays of humanity, make of her, must be a sensation as pleasant as novel." "I _am_ wonderfully good-natured, aren't I?" he says, laughing broadly to himself behind the little yellowy sheets of the _Pall Mall_. "There is not one man in a hundred that, in my place, would do the same, is there?" She is silent; the resentment of a slow nature, that has a suspicion of being laughed at, but is not sure of it, smouldering within her. "Come, Conny, you began a sentence just now which you left unfinished, like a pig with one ear. 'If it is really an object to Miss Craven to get well'--what then?" "If it is really an object to Miss Craven to get well, I should think that she would be more likely to attain it by lying quietly upstairs than by being continually moved from place to place; _that_ is what I was going to say." "I am sorry you think me such an Orson as to rush up and downstairs with such tremendous violence as to run the risk of dislocating her limbs." Miss Blessington turns away pettishly. "I wonder the girl likes to give you the trouble of perpetually carrying her about the house." "She is well aware that trouble is a pleasure." "Fully half her day is spent on the staircase and in the passages in your arms." "What a horribly immoral picture--vice stalking rampant through the Felton corridors in the shape of me carrying a poor lame child that cannot carry herself!" "It may be a pleasure to you," says Constance, harking back to her former speech, "but it can hardly be so to her--to be haled about like a bale of goods by a total stranger like yourself. If you were her brother, I grant you, it would be different." "If I were her brother it _would_ be different," assents Gerard, blandly. The sentence is Miss Blessington's own, and yet, by fresh accentuation, it is made exactly to contradict itself. "You mean it good-naturedly, I don't doubt, but I am not at all sure that it is not mistaken kindness." "That _what_ is not mistaken kindness?" "You are very dull of comprehension this morning, St. John." "I always am at these untimely hours; it requires the flame of evening to light up the torch of my intellect. Be lenient to my infirmities, and explain; I am all attention." "My meaning is sufficiently clear, I should imagine," she retorts, with lady-like, gentle exasperation. "If you had left the girl in her original obscurity, it would have been all very well; but to be taken up and dropped again----" "Like a hot chesnut!" "Pshaw! to be taken up and dropped again is hardly pleasant." "Hardly." "And when you drop her----" "Literally or metaphorically?--on the stone floor, or out of the light of my favour?" "When you drop her" (disdaining to notice the interruption)---- "Well, what then?" he says, laying down the paper, and turning his face, kindled by a certain honest self-contempt, towards her--"To be dropped by me! what a prodigious calamity! Hitherto, Conny, your sex has made, with regard to me, more use of the active than the passive voice of the verb to drop." "Nonsense!" she says, scornfully; "that _is_ the pride that apes humility. Of course, so much notice as you lavish on her is likely to turn the head of a girl who has hitherto probably received no attentions more flattering than those of some Welsh grazier; and when you drop her----" "When I drop her," he repeats, impatiently, tired of the subject, and of the repetition of the phrase--"she will be no worse off than she was before that misfortune happened to her." So Esther lies all day long in lazy contentment upon the sofa, looking out at the garden, and at the fountain where four bronze dolphins spout continual showers of spray in the autumn sunlight; dips into Owen Meredith's last poems; peeps between the crisp uncut leaves of new magazine or novel; and looks forward towards the ante-dinner hour, when St. John will come in from the day's amusement or occupation, and passive content will be exchanged for active enjoyment. Esther has, as you know, made but light of her accident in her letters to her lover; fearing lest, in his eager anxiety on her account, he might get into the train, and give her the unexpected pleasure of seeing him arrive at Felton--seeing him arrive in his threadbare shooting jacket, through whose sleeves he always appears to have thrust his long arms too far, and his patched, creaking, Naullan boots. Imagine St. John introduced to those boots! A cold shiver runs down her spine at the bare idea. St. John is no dandy, it is true, but coats from Poole's are as much a matter of course to him as a knife and fork to eat his dinner with, or a bed to lie upon. On the afternoon of the day on which the above-reported short dialogue took place, St. John and his father, converging from different points of the compass to one centre, enter almost at the same moment the library. Two canary-coloured Colossi have just deposited tea on a small table. St. John has neither neckerchief nor collar; his brown throat is bared in a _négligé_ as becoming to most men as the _à quatre épingles_ exactitude of their park get-up is unbecoming. A man in the loose carelessness of his every-day country clothes is a man: in the prim tightness of his Pall Mall toilette he is a little, stiff, jointless figure out of Noah's ark. "Slops again!" says Paterfamilias, very gruffly. "I never come into this room at any hour of the day or night without finding you women drinking tea! Why on earth, if you are thirsty, cannot you drink beer or water, instead of ruining your insides with all that wash?" At this courteous speech a silence falls on the company. Sir Thomas mostly brings silence with him; he is half-conscious that at his entry voices are choked and laughter quenched, and it serves to exasperate him the more. "You sit with your knees into the fire in air-tight rooms all day long," pursues he, in his loud, hectoring voice, "and destroy your digestions with gallons of hot tea, and then you are surprised at having tallow in your cheeks, instead of lilies and roses, as your grandmothers had!" "Perhaps," says St. John, drily, "the ladies deny the justice of your conclusions; Sir Thomas; perhaps they do not own the soft impeachment of tallowy cheeks which you so gallantly ascribe to them." As he speaks, his eyes involuntarily rest on the clear, rose brilliance of the young stranger's happy, beautiful child-face. "I don't mind being called 'tallow face,'" says Esther, with a low laugh--"Juliet was; her father said to her, 'Out, you baggage! you tallow face!'" "He must have been an ancestor of Sir Thomas's in direct male line, must not he?" says the young man, gaily stooping over her and whispering. Seeing them so familiarly and joyously whisper together, Constance looks up with an air of astonished displeasure, which Gerard perceiving, instantly turns towards her. "What are you making, Conny?" "Braces." "For me, no doubt? With your usual thoughtfulness, you recollected that my birthday falls next week, and you were preparing a little surprise for me. Well, never mind; though I have made the discovery rather prematurely, I'll be as much surprised as ever when the day of presentation arrives." "They are not for you, St. John; they are for the bazaar." "The bazaar!" he repeats, a little testily. "For the last month all your thoughts have tended bazaarwards; you neither eat, nor sleep, nor speak, nor hear, nor smell, without some reference to the bazaar." "Bazaar! Humbug!" growls Sir Thomas, rising and walking towards the door. "A parcel of idle women getting together to sell trash and make asses of themselves!" Then he goes out, and bangs the door. "I would not for worlds have given him the satisfaction of agreeing with him while he was in the room," says St. John, insensibly speaking in a louder key now that the autocrat before whom all voices sink has removed himself; "but, for once in my life, I must confess to coinciding in opinion with aged P.: to be pestered with unfeminine, unladylike importunity to buy things that one would far rather be without--to be lavishly generous, and get no credit for it--to be swindled without any hope of legal redress; this is the essence of a charitable bazaar!" "Dear me!" says Esther, with a crestfallen sigh. "And I had been looking forward to it so much!" He sits down on a low chair beside her sofa. "Looking forward to a bazaar!" he echoes, with a half-incredulous smile. "My dear Miss Craven, what a revelation as to your past history that one sentence is! Why, I should as soon think of looking forward to a visit to the dentist, or to my mother's funeral!" "No one expects to _enjoy_ it; it is a necessary evil," says Miss Blessington, with resignation. "Like dancing with married men, or going to church?" "Conny! Conny!" shouts Sir Thomas from somewhere in the unseen distance. Conny rises, though reluctantly, and leaves the other two _tête-à-tête_. "Miss Blessington is going to have a stall," says Esther, presently, for the sake of saying something, catching a little nervously at the first remark that occurred to her. "Yes." "And I am to help her." "Yes." "But I will promise not to pester you with unfeminine, unladylike importunity to buy my wares." "I am sorry to hear it." "Miss Blessington has two friends coming to stay with her for it." "Yes." "Are you glad or sorry?" "Glad is a weak word to express my feelings; I am in ecstasies!" "They are beautiful, I suppose--refined, witty, as I always picture the women of your world?" she says, a little enviously. "On the contrary, it would be impossible to find two more faded, negative specimens of Belgravian womanhood: they have not a single angle in either of their characters." "Do you think _that_ a recommendation?" "I did not say so." "But you implied it, by expressing such exaggerated joy at their coming." "So I did--so I do: and if they were to rise in number from two to fifty, like Falstaff's highwaymen, I should express greater joy still." "And why?" raising herself from her cushions to get a straighter, truer look into his bright, grave eyes. "Because," he says, lowering his voice a little, and leaning closelier over her, "the larger the party the better chance there is of undisturbed _tête-à-têtes_ between congenial spirits. Do you see?" And Esther _does_ see, and thinking on Robert Brandon, is uneasily joyful. * * * * * Ere the arrival of the looked-for bazaar, Miss Craven's cure is complete. On the day preceding the one appointed for that philanthropic festivity, she has been walking in the late evening about the moon-coloured garden, free from any remaining lameness, leaning on St. John's arm. She does not need the slight stay, but it pleases him to give and her to receive it. It does not please Miss Blessington, however, watching them from an upper chamber--watching Esther dabble her small hands in the opal water in the great bronze water-lily leaf that makes the basin of the fountain--watching St. John, rapt and absorbed in her pretty foolish chatter. And yet their talk, if she could but hear it, holds nothing obnoxiously fond or _flirtatious;_ it might be proclaimed by the bellman in the streets. "How nice it is to be no longer a devil upon two sticks!" the young girl is saying, joyfully; and the man makes answer, "You will be up to another gallop across the park to-morrow?" "Never, _never!_" she cries, bringing together emphatically her two gleaming, wet hands. "You have witnessed my first and last equestrian feat; with my own free-will I will mount never a horse again, unless it is the rocking-horse at the end of the north gallery: it is frisky, yet safe; gallops and plunges, yet stands still: that is the horse for me." He laughs, and then they are silent. A star falls, hurling itself mysteriously down the sky, and into the dark; two bats glide past, dusky, noiseless. Bats always seem to me like the ghosts of dead birds, that haunt the green gardens and copses they used to love. St. John speaks presently. "One forms mistaken estimates of people's characters; I should not have imagined you a coward." "But I am one, physically and morally," she answers, sighing. As the ladies retire to bed, Miss Blessington enters Esther's room--a familiarity which somewhat surprises that virgin, as it is the first time that it has been accorded to her. "I have come to congratulate you!" Constance says, civilly; "you have made a wonderful recovery." "Yes, wonderful!" "You can walk perfectly well without assistance, cannot you?" "Perfectly" (turning away her head, in the guilty consciousness of having, despite her soundness of limb, not walked without assistance). "St. John is very useful as a walking-stick, isn't he?" (playfully.) "He thought it would tire me less," replies the other, flushing; "he has been most kind!" "He always is," answers Miss Blessington, quickly: "it is his nature; old beggarwomen, dogs, cats, dirty children in the gutter--it is all one to him." "Really!" "That universal geniality amounts almost to a weakness, though an amiable one; it has often been the cause of exciting hopes that, of course, he had neither the wish nor the power to gratify." "What! in old beggarwomen, dogs, cats, and dirty children in the gutter?" says Esther, smiling merrily, yet with scorn. "If I did not take an interest in you," continued Constance, leaning in a graceful artistic pose against the mantelpiece, "I should, of course, not take the trouble to mention the subject; but, as I do, I thought it the kindest thing I could do to you to set you on your guard against attentions to which you, who do not know him, might, without vanity, attribute some importance, but which I, who know him so thoroughly, know to mean absolutely nothing, beyond a sort of general _bonhomie_ towards the whole of the human race." "I am deeply grateful," answers the young girl, with sarcastic emphasis; "but in my part of the world, girls are not in the habit of cherishing vague hopes because a man has the civility to offer them his arm when they are disabled by an accident from walking by themselves." "Well, forewarned is forearmed, you know" (nodding and smiling); "and from some careless, slighting remarks that St. John let fall the other day, I thought I should not be acting the part of a friend by you if I did not warn you against a snare into which I have seen others older, and knowing more of the world than you do, fall. Good night!" "Stay!" cries Esther, springing up, and catching hold of her companion's gauzy dress in detention. "It is unfair to tell a person half, and not the whole. What were the slighting remarks that Mr. Gerard made _à propos_ of me?" "Really, I--I--don't remember exactly," replies Constance, with reluctance, half-feigned, half-real; "I did not pay much attention at the time; it was an admission that slipped out without my intending it." "But now that it has slipped out," cries the other, authoritatively, "you must explain it fully, please." "Well, really--please don't look so tragic, it can be of so very little consequence to you what he said or did not say about you----" "Infinitesimally little! but still I mean to hear it." "Well" (with rather an awkward laugh), "the situation is hardly worth such Mrs. Siddons' airs: it was only that, when I was remonstrating with him the other day on his manner to you, he said, in his off-hand, abrupt way, something to the effect that _when_ he threw you over--never for a moment denying that sooner or later he would do so--you would get over it soon, or something of that description. I cannot recall the exact phrase. Good night." But beautiful Esther, standing there stricken, credulous, with eager, angry eyes, forgets to make the answering greeting. CHAPTER XIII. The Bazaar day has arrived; so likewise have Constance's chosen friends, the Misses De Grey; so likewise has their brother, commonly called Dick De Grey, for no other reason that we wot of but that at his baptism he received the name of Charles. The large open carriage which had so impressed Esther on her first arrival at Brainton station, and St. John's smart T.-cart, with his big, black horse, at whose head, or rather at some distance below whose nose, a cockaded infant stands trim and tidy, are at the door. "How are we to divide?" says Miss Blessington, coming out under the portico and unfurling her white Honiton parasol. "How many of us are there? Adeline, Georgina, Miss Craven, and myself, four, and you two gentlemen six. St. John, will you drive Miss De Grey?" "I should be delighted," he answers, slowly and tardily, not looking up from the gardenia which he is fastening on his coat; "but I believe I am under an old engagement to drive Miss Craven. You have never been in a T.-cart, have you?" (looking at her imploringly, to back him up in the ready lie to which, for love of her, he has just given vent.) "Never!" she answers, smiling coldly. "And now that I see to what a height one has to climb, and in what close proximity one must be to that huge quadruped's heels, I am in no hurry to make the experiment. I release you from your engagement, Mr. Gerard, if it ever existed; if it is all the same to everybody, I prefer the--I never can recollect the names of carriages--barouche, sociable, landau, which is it?" He stares at her for an instant in blank astonishment; then, turning away quickly to hide the mortification which he knows to be legible on his face, without a word or a groan helps the oldest, plainest, languidest of the Misses De Grey into the T.-cart and drives off with her. And Esther steps into the sociable, and tries to feel triumphant and dignified, contemplating, for a dozen miles, Miss Georgina De Grey's gold-dusted hair and featureless face, and submitting meekly to having the modest proportions of her own toilette covered up and smothered in the abundance and volume of her _vis-à-vis_' laces and frillings. "Since he means to throw me over, it is as well to be beforehand with him," she says to herself, her eyes fixed pensively on the revolving black and yellow wheel; "in such cases it is always best to take the initiative. It would have been very pleasant, so high up out of the dust; but what have I to do with aristocratic vehicles? A gig, a wheelbarrow, a pig-tub--such are the only conveyances I am likely to have experience of in after-life; why then inoculate myself with a taste for luxuries that are for my betters?" And meanwhile St. John holds dreary converse with himself, while a river of sound, on which the words Nilsson, Romeo e Giulietta, Schneider, drums, Holland House, garden party float, pours into his ear from the direction of his companion. "She is honest, at all events; does not relish my society, and does not affect to do so; tolerated me only as long as I was useful, like a dog, in fetching and carrying. Why am I so unpopular with women? Is it what I do, what I say, or what I am, that makes me so? Is it anything mendable or unmendable?" * * * * * Precisely seventeen minutes past two of the clock, the Melford town-hall clock, and visitors are beginning to arrive pretty thickly; three or four barouches, seven or eight waggonettes, and nine or ten pony-carriages, are trotting and walking and crawling up the steep Melford street. Climbing the side of a house is child's play to the ascent of that most perpendicular of high streets. The doctor's house, red, and with redder berries thick about its plate-glass windows, stands on your right as you go up the town. The Doctor and the Doctress are issuing from the brass-knockered hall door--she in a grey moire antique, that old Mrs. Evans' quinsy paid for, and gold bracelets that took their rise from Mr. Watkin's decline and fall. The town-hall stands in its grey limestone respectability in the market place, over against the Bell Inn; it has an arched doorway, and under this arch man, woman, and child go pacing in little, smart tulle bonnets and black hats, with their purses full of small change, and their hearts of that most excellent virtue--Christian charity. Round the hall counters are ranged, and behind these counters stand a phalanx of young women, prepared to exert their little abilities in overreaching and circumventing their fathers, lovers, and brothers, to the utmost. Miss Blessington's stall is next-door neighbour to poor Mrs. Tomkins', the Felton curate's fat, childridden wife--as, in some foreign city, they tell us that you may see marble palaces and mud hovels cheek by jowl; for, as is a mud hovel to a marble palace, so is poor Mrs. Tomkins in the Melford table of valuation to Miss Blessington. Mrs. Tomkins' main hope is in her sister, pretty, second-rate, pert Miss Smith, who, with a dog-collar round her waist, to demonstrate its tenuity, and two long, uncurled curls, vulgarly known as "Follow me, lads!" floating over her fat shoulders, has been kissing strawberries and rose-buds, and selling them at half-a-crown apiece, to such attorneys' clerks and doctors' assistants of weak intellect as inhabit Melford town. On Miss Blessington's other side the Misses Denzil hold sway--daughters of a neighbour baronet, whom for twenty years past Sir Thomas has hated with the hate of hell, because he once beat him in a contest for the county. Belinda Denzil, an elderly young lady, tall and yellow and stately; likest to a dandelion among the flowers of the field; and Priscilla, a beady-eyed, brisk brune, of whom her admirers predicate that she could talk the hind leg off a mule! Mr. Gerard and Mr. De Grey are strolling about together arm in arm; criticising the wares a little and the saleswomen a good deal. They are not particularly fond of one another; but no more was Alexander Selkirk, I dare say, of his next-door neighbour, when he lived in town, if he ever did. All the same, if the said next-door neighbour had happened to land on that most irreligious of desert islands, where the benighted valleys and rocks never heard the sound of the church-going bell, don't you suppose that he would have rushed into his arms? So in this desert island of Melford, St. John and Dick, the only two respectable fellows, as they think, among a savage horde of squireens, march about, hooked on together for mutual defence against the barbarians. "You seem to be driving a thriving trade," remarks St. John, who, after his wanderings, has at length come to anchor at Miss Blessington's stall, addressing Esther, but addressing her diffidently, as one that, after the severe and uncalled-for snubbing he had this morning received, was by no means sure of the reception his civilities might meet with, while three old women and a parson squeeze in beside himself and his friend. "Perhaps you will kindly contribute towards making it more thriving, by buying something;" replies Miss Craven, coolly and drily. "Let me recommend this cigar case to your notice; it is rather ugly, and very dear, but one must not mind trifling drawbacks of that kind on an occasion like the present." "Did you make it?" "Yes; but please don't be so polite as to buy it on that account, as, upon the same grounds, you would have to buy a large proportion of the beautiful works of art before you." So speaking, she turns away from him to another customer, as if glad to be rid of him. "May I ask what the price of this is?" asks Mr. De Grey, leaning with languid familiarity over Miss Smith's counter (everybody is familiar with Miss Smith; that is one of her great charms), and holding up a gorgeously-embroidered smoking cap between his finger and thumb. "One pound eleven and sixpence halfpenny," replies the young lady, with glib obsequiousness, all a-twitter with excitement at being addressed by an august being in a cutaway coat who is known throughout the room to be a visitor at Felton Hall. "But, dear me!" (fussing about with unnecessary _empressement_) "I have got a much more stylish one somewhere, if I could but lay my hands on it--one that I made myself, if that is any recommendation! He! he!" (with a giggle.) "Can you doubt it?" retorts he, sucking the top of his cane, and staring at her with lazy impertinence. Meanwhile the room is getting very crowded and stuffy: it is a very small town-hall, and all Melford and the southern half of ----shire are compressed into it--the result being much animal heat, some ill-humour, and infinite grief over rent garments; which is reversing the case of the ancients, who rent their garments in sign of grief. And in and through and about this warm throng, many girls, emissaries from different stalls, go pushing and elbowing to enlist unwilling subscribers to raffles. Philanthropy has gone nigh to unsexing them; it has turned modest, reserved ladies into forward importunate Mænads. Foremost, most energetic, most unrebuffable of these emissaries is Miss Priscilla Denzil. She flies about hither and thither, with her white gown all limp and tumbled, and her rough hair pushing its way resolutely from under the blue ribbons which make a vain show of confining it _à la Grecque_. She is not thinking a bit of how she is looking; her whole soul is intent on doing a good stroke of business, and none can escape her. Sir Thomas Gerard has just entered the hall. Having ridden into Melford on magisterial business, the idea has struck him of how much better and more cuttingly he will be able to abuse the bazaar at dinner this evening if he has had the advantage of seeing it. With a dog-whip in his hand, and an intense desire to lay it about the shoulders of the company expressed in his cross face, he is pushing his way along when attacked by the dauntless Priscilla. "Oh! Sir Thomas, please let me put you down in the raffle for a fender-stool; _so_ handsome! white arums on a red ground; _do_ let me, _so_ handsome!" "A _what_, Miss Priscilla?" "A fender-stool." "Humph! the stupidest things that ever were invented," answers the baronet, snarling. "If they had been made expressly to trip people up, and pitch them head-foremost into the fire, they could not have answered the purpose better." "Did they ever pitch you head-foremost into the fire?" asks Miss Prissy, insinuatingly ("because [aside], if so, I wonder whoever was fool enough to pick you out again!") "No, and they shall never have the chance as long as I can prevent them," replies the gracious elder, walking off. For a minute Priscilla stands still, rebuffed; but recovering herself, speedily rushes off again, charges with her fender-stool an old maid who has one already, and a poor little whity-brown curate who has no house to put one in, &c., &c. "I am afraid I have not done them up very neatly," Esther is saying, as she gives a parcel into Mr. De Grey's hands--Miss Smith having at length frightened that gentleman from her side by the rapid strides to intimacy which she was making with him--"My fingers toil in vain after the nimbleness with which shopmen whisk a parcel into shape and compactness before you have time to look round." Mr. De Grey has spent a small fortune in pincushions, kettle-holders, dressed dolls, and many other such-like articles which no young man of fashion should be without. "What have I done to be so neglected, Miss Craven?" asks Gerard, elevating his eyebrows plaintively. "Am I expected to put on these slippers on the spot, that I am given no paper to pack them up in?" "Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought that Miss De Grey was attending to you," answers Esther, in the most business-like, shop-woman voice, without smiling, or lifting her eyes. "I thought no one ever gave change at a bazaar," he says, trying to make her look up at him, as she puts a few shillings into his hand. "I do not approve of such extortion," she answers, demurely; "honesty is the best policy." "That proverb must have been invented, as Whately justly observed, by some one who had tried the other alternative." She smiles a little against her will. "I wish you two would go now," she says, addressing both young men indifferently: "you are only making me idle. Look! there are three old maids ready to storm the position, and only deterred by you." "Rhadamantha, Hebe, and Niobe!" says St. John, laughing. "Please go; I know you are not thinking of buying anything more." "Don Ferdinando can do no more than he can do, and at present he is pretty well cleaned out." At Miss Blessington's stall trade is certainly very brisk; it is considered a fitting mark of respect to the family to buy their goods, and so the honest burgesses of Melford make it a point of honour to buy Miss Blessington's and Miss De Grey's blotting books and babies' socks in preference to anyone else's, however superior in fabric and less exorbitant in price anybody else's might be. Miss Blessington has just sunk upon a chair, with an affectation of great fatigue, and is saying languidly, "If ever any one deserved the martyr's crown, that person is _I;_ within the last ten minutes I have sold nine cushions and fifteen pairs of muffetees." "There's plenty of cool tea and warm ices at the other end of the room, if you think they are likely to restore you," suggests Gerard, who is still leaning his elbow on the counter, and has not gone away as commanded. "It makes one quite hot," pursues Miss Blessington, leaning back and fanning herself vigorously, "merely to look at Prissy Denzil rushing about like a Mæenad, worrying every one to put into raffles." "Providence made a great mistake when it made that girl a lady," says St. John, following, with a look of half-disgust in his fastidious eyes, Priscilla's little dishevelled figure; "she would have been much happier haggling for halfpence at a huckster's stall." The afternoon draws towards its close; people have come and bought, and raffled and gone again, carrying manifold ill-tied paper parcels with them. The farmeresses and yeomen's wives of the Melford district have departed, carrying with them, in their mind's eye, for imitation against next Sunday, the cut of Miss Blessington's skirt, and the profuse curls and _bandeaux_ of Miss De Grey's intricate _coiffure_. The room is emptying, and the day's duty approaching its end. "I say, old fellow," remarks Mr. De Grey, touching St. John on the shoulder as he leans against the wall, gazing somewhat morosely at his own boots, "don't you think we might as well be saying Ta-ta? I don't know what you have, but _I_ have had nearly enough of this gay and festive scene." "All right," answers the other, shaking off dull care; "I have put into exactly twenty-five raffles, and only got a christening robe and a squirt, so I think I may be supposed to have done my duty." At the door there is a little confusion--carriages driving up, carriages driving away; a small crowd gathered to see the smart ladies; two policemen. The Felton equipage and Mr. Gerard's T.-cart stand at some little distance down the street. St. John offers Esther his arm, and she, having no decent excuse for declining, takes it. As they walk along, he speaks to her hurriedly and not without temper. "If you have no special ground of quarrel against me--and Heaven knows why you should have--but feel only that weariness to which most women seem, in my society, to be more or less subject, be unselfish, and let me drive you home. I will not speak, neither need you, if you will have it so; there are many things more unsociable than absolute silence." "Why cannot you be satisfied with this morning's arrangements?" she asks, demurring; the recollection of his reported insult rankling in her mind. He shrugs his shoulders expressively. "If you had had three fourths of 'Le Follet' and half the _Morning Post_ poured into your reluctant ears, as I have, you would not have asked that question." "If you have heard _half_ the _Morning Post_, is it not a thousand pities that you should not hear the other half?" she inquires, drily. They have reached the T.-cart, the big black horse, the baby-tiger; in the low, red sun the new harness shines brightly. "I almost wish you could sprain your other ankle," Gerard says, recovering his good humour. "As long as you were lame, you were much more amiable." Ten minutes more, and the Melford steep street and railway bridge are left behind them, they are trotting with smooth briskness between the nutty, briary hedgerows. At first the silence which Gerard had guaranteed threatens to remain unbroken; it is infringed at last by Esther, out of whose heart the fair late breeze, the happy yellow stillness, and lastly, the proximity to and solitude with the beloved one, are smoothing all angry creases. ("If he did speak lightly of me," she thinks, sorrowfully, "we shall not have the chance of many more drives together; whether he think ill or well, highly or meanly, of me, let me be happy with him while I may!") "What a pleasant vehicle this would be to make a driving tour in!" "A tour of all the cathedral towns throughout England, as the Heir of Redclyffe proposed spending his honeymoon in making!" She laughs. "I remember long ago the _Saturday Review_ saying of some she-novelist's men, that they were like old governesses in trousers: it was not a bad simile, was it?" Silence falls on them again; broken this time by Gerard, who, turning abruptly towards his companion, says, "You are _not_ bored by my society, Miss Craven? Unless you are cast in a mould different from the rest of humanity, you _must_ be bored by the society of the Misses De Grey. Why, then, were you so resolute this morning in rejecting the one and accepting the other? This is the problem that has been puzzling me for the last half mile." She hangs her head like a scolded school-child. "What _was_ your motive?" "A prudential one, partly," she answers, rallying her spirits. "I knew that in after life I should have small experience of T.-carts and such rich man's luxuries, so I thought it wiser not to run the risk of contracting a taste for them." "How do you know what the experience of your after life may be?" "One may argue from the known to the unknown; I can give a pretty shrewd guess." "And was that your sole motive?" "What does it matter to you whether it was or not?" "Nothing; except that, to a philosophical mind like mine, woman and her caprices are an interesting psychological study. Did you ever hear of an essay of Addison's entitled 'Dissection of a Coquette's Heart?'" "I am not a coquette," she cries, indignantly, answering the indirect accusation directly. "I did not say you were. I hope you are not--I hope to God you are not!" he answers, with more vehemence than the occasion seems to demand. "And yet," she says, feeling oppressed by the solemnity of his manner and trying to speak lightly, "I have heard it said that no woman can be thoroughly attractive who is not something of a flirt." "I had rather that she should be thoroughly _un_attractive then," he answers, shortly and grimly. "Men always wish to have a monopoly of all pleasant sins," she retorts, a little cynically. "If you think that the reason why I wish you not to flirt is that I want a monopoly of that occupation, you are mistaken," he says, gravely; "it is an art that I have not either the will or the power to practise." "Really?" "Really." "Seriously?" "Seriously. Confess that, after that admission, your opinion of me is considerably lowered." No answer but a smile. "Confess that you feel for me as sovereign a contempt as the ladies of the last century felt for a man that never got drunk." "I feel," she says, averting her head and speaking under an impulse that kindles her cheeks and makes her voice falter--"I feel a surprise that the words you say and the words you are reported to say do _not_ tally better together." "What am I reported to say?" (a little impatiently.) "A _réchauffé_ of one's own stale speeches is not an appetising dish, but may be wholesome as an exhortation to consistency." "A person--I was told--" begins Esther, floundering in confusion among different forms of speech--"I was told--by a person that ought to have known--that you had spoken in a slighting, disparaging way of--of--of--a person." "Who told you so?" (breathlessly.) "That can be of no consequence." "Without your telling me I know," he says, his face growing hot with the red of indignant anger, not guilt. "God forgive her for such a lie!" "It was not true, then?" she asks, eagerly, lifting her eyes, brimful of joyful relief, to his. "Such an accusation is not worth rebutting," he answers, contemptuously. "Is a man likely to speak slightingly of----" He stops abruptly. ("Not yet! not yet! it is impossible that she can like me yet. Am I an Antinous, to be loved as soon as seen? Let me be patient--be patient!") CHAPTER XIV. "I am afraid that their names will not convey much idea to your minds, as you do not know our part of the world, but you may have met some of them in London: Sir Charles and Lady Bolton; Mr. and Mrs. Tredegar; Mr., Mrs., and Miss Annesley; the Misses Denzil (by-the-by, you saw them at the bazaar yesterday); and two or three stray men." This remark is addressed by Miss Blessington to her two friends on the afternoon following the bazaar, and contains a list of the guests expected at dinner at Felton that evening. "So there's to be a party?" says Esther, from a window recess, where, hidden by a drooped curtain, she has been lying _perdue_ up to the present moment, deeply buried in the unwonted luxury of a French novel. Constance gives a little start. "I did not know that you were there! Yes; there are a few people coming to dine!" "Don't you like parties?" asks Miss De Grey, half turning round her head, and a coquettish little lace morning cap, in the direction whence Esther's voice proceeds. "I--I--think so; I hardly know." "I suppose that you have only just left the schoolroom?" Esther laughs. "I can hardly be said to have left it, for I was never in it." "Did you never have a governess, do you mean? What a fortunate person!" "Never." "I am not sure that the other alternative, going to school, is not worse." "I never went to school." "Is it possible? Do you mean (raising herself, and opening her eyes) that you have never had any education at all?" "I suppose not," answers Esther, reluctantly; regretting having made an admission which evidently tells so much against her. "How very odd!" "What's very odd?" asks her brother, who, with St. John, lounges in from the billiard-room, where they have been knocking the balls about and getting tired of one another. "Miss Craven has just been telling us that she has had no education," answers Constance, in her even voice--perhaps not sorry of an opportunity to let Gerard know his _protégée's_ deficiencies. "I am sure (civilly) that we should never have found it out if she had not told us." The _protégée_ droops her black eyes in mortification over her book, in which she has already found several things that amuse, several things that startle, and several other things that profoundly puzzle her innocent mind. How unnecessary to make the admission of her own illiterateness, and how needless for Constance to be in such a hurry to repeat the confession! "What an awful sensation it must be being such an ignoramus!" says Gerard's voice, low and laughing, as he sits down on the window-seat beside her. "What does it feel like?" She looks up with a re-assured smile. "At all events," continues he, glancing at her book, "you are doing your best to supply your deficiencies, _however late in life_." She colours a little, and involuntarily puts her hand over the title. "What is it? May I see?" She hesitates, and her other hand goes hastily to its fellow's help; then, changing her mind, she offers the book boldly to him. He looks at the title, and a slightly shocked expression dawns on his features: men are always shocked that women should _read about_ the things that _they do_. "Where did you get this?" (quickly). "I climbed up the ladder in the library; pleasant books always rise to top shelves, as the cream rises to the top of the milk." "Will you oblige me by putting it back where you took it from?" "When I have read it? Of course." "_Before_ you have read it." "Why should I?" (rather snappishly). "Why should you," he repeats, impatiently--not much fonder of opposition than are most of his masterful sex. "Why, because it is not a fit book for a--a _child_ like you to read." "A _child_ like me!" (sitting bolt up and reddening). "Do you know what age I am?" "I have not an idea; forty, perhaps." She laughs. "Don't you know that all women are children till they are twenty-one; and you are particularly childish for your age." "I am, am I?" "Child or no child, this is a book that no modest woman ought to read." "But that all modest _men_ may, with pleasure and profit for themselves," rejoins she, ironically. "Well, when I have finished it I shall be better able to tell you whether I agree with you or not." "Do you mean to say that, after what I have told you, you are still bent on reading it?" he asks, astonishment and displeasure fighting together for the mastery in his voice. "Certainly!" (looking rather frightened, but speaking with a sort of timid bravado). "Do you suppose that Eve would have cared to taste the apple if it had been specially recommended to her notice as a particularly good, juicy Ribstone pippin? Give it me, please!" "Take it!" he says, throwing it with hasty impoliteness into her lap. "Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest every word of it; and since you have a taste for such literature, I can lend you a dozen more like it." So speaking, he rises abruptly, and leaves her side and the room at almost the same moment. When he is gone, finding that the rest of the company have likewise slipped away in different directions, Esther relieves her feelings by flinging the disputed volume on the floor; sits for a quarter of an hour staring uncertainly at it; then, pocketing her pride, picks it up, sneaks off with it to the library, and, climbing the high, steep ladder, deposits it in the hole whence she had ravished it, between two of its fellows, as agreeably lax and delicately indelicate as itself. Half an hour later, passing through the hall, she sees the door of Gerard's sanctum ajar, and hears some one walking to and fro within. To one so praise-loving, the temptation to trumpet forth her own excellence is irresistible. She knocks timidly. "Come in!" "I don't want to come in," she answers, standing in beautiful, bashful awkwardness in the aperture. "Is there anything that I can do for you?" he asks, advancing towards her, looking slightly surprised. "No, nothing; I--I--only came to tell you that I had put--_it_ back." At the end of her sentence her eyes, downcast at first, raise themselves to his with the innocent, eager expectancy of a child that waits for approbation of some infantile good action. "You have, have you?" he cries, joyfully, catching both her hands; "and was it because I asked you?" "I don't know for what other reason," she answers, unwillingly. "And have not read a word more of it?" "Not a word." "Not even looked at the end?" "No." "Well, you _are_ a good child!" "_Child! child!_--always _child!_" she cries, puckering up her low forehead into the semblance of a frown. "I have a good mind to go and fetch it down again!" "A good old woman, then! a good old lady!--which is best? which is most respectful? Don't go!" (seeing that she is about to withdraw.) "It is dressing-time!" "Not for half an hour yet," pulling her gently in, and closing the door. "See!" she says, half embarrassed by this _tête-à-tête_ that she has herself invited, holding up a bunch of scarlet geraniums that she has lately reft from one of the garden's dazzling squares--"I have been stealing! I hope Sir Thomas won't prosecute me; but as a new dress is with me a biennial occurrence, these are the only contributions I can make to the evening's festivity." "_Red_, of course!" he answers, smiling. "I never saw you that you had not something red or yellow about you. But why scarlet geraniums? Don't you know that the least imaginable shake (suiting the action to the word, and gently jogging the hand that holds the flowers)--there!" as a little scarlet shower confirms his prognostications. She stoops to pick up the scattered blossoms. "If I had some gum, I would drop a little into the centre of each flower; _that_ keeps the petals quite firm; I have often done it at home," she says, kneeling on one knee, and looking up gravely for advice and assistance into his friendly, dark face: "but I have no gum." "Haven't you? I have--somebody has" (ringing the bell). "Please sit down" (drawing an armchair forwards for her). "This is Constance's chair: and don't look as if you were racking your brains for a decent excuse to get away from the only comfortable room in the house." She obeys, and her eyes wander curiously round. Pipes, whips, saloon pistols, prints of Derby winners; photographs of Nilsson tricked out in water-weeds as "Ophelia;" of Patti gazing up, as "Marguerite," into Mario's fortunate eyes; a table strewn with books--two or three yellow-paper backed, with enticing Gallic titles, similar to the one she has just so heroically foregone. Looking up from these latter, she involuntarily catches his eye. "You are thinking that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," he says, laughing rather consciously; "but I assure you that it is not so. The gander is not nearly such a delicate bird, and takes much stronger seasoning." The gum arrives. She holds the flowers, while he with a paint-brush delicately insinuates one drop into the scarlet heart of each. Their heads are bent so close together that his crisp brown locks brush against the silk-smooth sweep of hers. "Gently, gently!" cries Esther, pleasantly excited by the consciousness of doing something rather _hors de règle_ in that prim household, in having this impromptu _tête-à-tête_ with its heir--"not so much! the least _soupçon_ imaginable--there! does not it look like a sticky dewdrop?" "These people that are coming ought to be very much flattered by the efforts you are making in their honour," says Gerard, half jealously. "Are they worth making efforts for?" "_You_ must tell _me_ that to-morrow." "Who will take me in to dinner, do you think?" she asks, confidentially, looking up at him with childish inquisitiveness. "I have not an idea; but make your mind easy; it won't be Sir Thomas or me." "Hardly; but I am sorry that you do not know who it will be, as you might have told me what to talk about." "Do you always get up your subject beforehand, like Belinda Denzil, out of the _Saturday_ or _Echoes of the Clubs_?" "Oh no! but--" "St. John! St. John!" shouts Sir Thomas, banging a swing-door, behind him, and coming heavy-footed through the hall. "It's Sir Thomas!" says Esther growing suddenly pale: and if she had said, and had had reason to say, "It's the Devil!" she could not have made the communication in a more tragic whisper: then, not waiting for any advice as to her conduct, snatching up her bouquet, she flies as if shot from a crossbow, out of the window and into the garden. * * * * * Was not it Lord Chesterfield who said that the guests at a dinner party should never be less than the Graces or more than the Muses? Kant preferred the Grace number, and had daily two friends, never more, to dine with him. The guests at the Felton banquet greatly exceed the Chesterfieldian limits. Those who have come only to dinner have been bemoaning themselves heavily, as they came along, on the hardship of being forced away from garden and croquet-ground, and obliged to drive three, four, five miles bare-necked and bare-backed--and a woman nowadays in full dress is verily and indeed bare-necked and bare-backed--through the mellow crimson evening. To even these grumblers, however, destiny now appears kinder--now, I say, that the too candid daylight is shut out, that the amber champagne-- "With beaded bubbles winking at the brim--" is creaming gently in every glass, and the _entrées_ are making their savoury rounds. Esther has fallen to the lot of one of the stray men of whom Miss Blessington spoke--a man who, when bidden to dinner, complies with the letter of his invitation, and _dines_ chiefly and firstly; looks upon the lady whom he escorts to the social board as a mere adjunct--an agreeable or disagreeable one, as the case may be, but as merely an adjunct, as the flowers in the vases, or the silver Cupids that uphold the fruit baskets. In the intervals of the courses he has no objection to being amused: it is too much exertion to be very amusing himself, but he is not unwilling to smile and lend an indulgent ear to his companion's prattle, so as that prattle does not infringe upon the succulent programme that he has, by diligent study of the _menu_, laid out for himself. Baffled on her left hand, Miss Craven turns to her right, to be baffled there also. Not that this right-hand neighbour labours under any excessive _gourmandise_--he is willing, on the contrary, that the unknown, black-eyed innocent and the turtle cutlet should share and share alike in his regards; but ere a quarter of an hour their conversation has come to a shipwreck. In it he takes too much for granted: as, for example, that she has been to London this season; that she has seen Faed's last picture; that she has been at Lady ----'s ball; that, by having seen both, she is in a position to judge of the comparative merits of Mademoiselle Nilsson's and Madame Carvalho's rendering of "Marguerite." Tired at length of saying, "I was not there," "I have not seen it," "I never heard of her," she relapses into a mortified silence; thinking, what an impostor must I be to have thrust myself in among all these fine people--I, who cannot even catch their jargon for five minutes! Foiled in her own little conversational ventures, she tries to listen to other people's. In vain: if, above the general hum, she catches the beginning of one sentence, it is immediately joined on to the end of another. As well, listening to the sultry buzz of a swarm of bees, might one try to distinguish each separate voice. But the dumb show, at least, is left her: the waggling heads, the moving jaws--poor jaws, that have to talk and eat both at once! To put a history to each of these heads--to pick out characters by watching the delicate shades of difference with which each person sits; says, "No, thank you;" laughs--this is not unamusing. Yes, to study the faces, and find similitudes for them: one nut-cracker; several flowers; one plum-pudding; one horse, one vulture, one door-knocker. She is puzzled to find a resemblance for all; for Belinda Denzil, for instance, who, virginally clad in white muslin, that seems to mock her thirty celibate years, is apparently forcing the suave yet weary De Grey into an up-hill, one-sided flirtation. No man has hired Belinda, and it is, with her, the eleventh hour. What fowl, or fish, or quadruped, or article of furniture is she most like? Before Esther can decide this point quite to her mind, the signal of retirement is given, and each maid and wife rises obedient and vanishes. * * * * * It is the general complaint in the Felton neighbourhood that at that house the men sit unfashionably, wearisomely long over their wine. Sir Thomas belongs to that excellent school that in their hearts regret the good old days, when a man never rejoined the ladies without seeing double their real number. Half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hour and a quarter have passed. Several girls are beginning to yawn behind their fans; the Misses De Grey are driving heavily through a long duet, with never a squire to turn over the leaves (in the wrong place) for them. The door opens, and a fat, bald head appears; the most uninteresting always come first, but, like Noah's dove, he is the harbinger of better things. Five minutes more, and the room is as full of broadcloth as of silk and satin. The younger men are still hovering about uncertainly, unfixed as yet in their minds as to which elaborate fair one they shall come to final anchor by. The epicure, now that there is nothing to eat, casts his eyes round in search of the finest woman and the comfortablest chair to be found in the great gilded room. Both requisites he finds united in Esther's neighbourhood. Accordingly he is moving towards her, when his attention is happily arrested by a remark that he overhears as to the best method of dressing _beccaficos_. Instantly Miss Craven's white, silky shoulders and red-pouted lips go out of his head. White shoulders and red lips are good things in their way, but what are they to _beccaficos!_ Esther draws a long breath of relief. What an escape! In a minute more suspense is ended, and the low armchair beside her is occupied by the person for whom it was intended--for whom, indeed, she has been slyly keeping it half-covered by her dress. "Well! and how are you getting on?" says Gerard, asking a silly question for want of a wiser one occurring to him, and looking rather affectionate. St. John is not in the very least degree elevated; but it is useless to deny that the best and fondest of men are still fonder after dinner than before: it must be a very, _very_ deep love that cannot be a little deepened by champagne. "Better than I thought I should be a few seconds ago, when that odious gourmand seemed to be steering this way," she answers, not taking any great trouble to hide her pleasure in his neighbourhood. "Poor devil! he must not come to you for a character, I see." "I could forgive a man _most_ sins," she says, rather viciously, "but I _never_ could forgive him the making me feel in his estimation I stood on a lower level than red mullet and ortolans." "Well, you know, they _are_ very good things," answers Gerard, chiefly to tease her, but partly also because he really thinks so. "Don't look so disgusted," he continues, laughing. "I was afraid you were bored at dinner: you looked absent; I tried to catch your eye once or twice, but you would not let me." "I was not bored," she answers, simply; "I was quite happy. You see I did not know who was who, and I amused myself pairing the people: I find that I paired them all wrong, though." "Gave every man his neighbour's wife, did you? I dare say that some of them would not have objected to the arrangement." "I married _that_ old man" (indicating with the slightest possible motion of her head the persons alluded to) "to _that_ old woman; I wish it was not ill-manners to point. They both looked so red and pursy and consequential, as if they had been telling each other for the last thirty years what swells they were!" "_Which_ old man to _which_ old woman? Oh! I see." "They are rather like one another, too," she continues, gravely; "and you know people say that, however unlike they may be at starting, merely by dint of living together, man and wife grow alike." "Do they?" he says, a transient thought flashing through his mind as to whether, after twenty years of wedlock, that blooming peach face would have gained any likeness to his hard, mahogany one. "But how did you find out your mistake?" "He put down her cup for her so politely just now, that I knew he could not be her husband." He looks amused. "You are rather young to be so severe upon wedded bliss." "Was I severe?" she asks, naïvely; "I did not know it; but, you know, a man may be fond of his wife, may be kind to her, but can hardly be said to be _polite_: politeness implies distance." "Does it?" he says, involuntarily drawing his chair closer to hers, and leaning forward under pretence of looking at the flowers that make a scarlet fire in her hair. "By-the-by, how does the gum answer?" She forgets to reply to his harmless question, while her eyes fall troubled, half-frightened: the eyes that cannot, without a theft upon a third person, give him back his tender looks--the eyes in whose pupils Brandon is to see himself reflected for the next forty, fifty, sixty years. There is a little stir and flutter among the company: Belinda Denzil moving to the piano; a music-stool screwed up and down; gloves taken off; then a polite hush, infringed only by a country gentleman in the distance saying something rather loud about guano, while Belinda informs her assembled friends in a faint soprano that "He will return; she knows he will." She has made the same asseveration any time the last ten years; but he has not returned yet, and her relatives begin to be afraid that he never will. During the song Gerard falls into a reverie. At the end, coming out of it, he asks with an abrupt change of subject: "What did you say the name of your place was?" "Glan-yr-Afon." "Glan Ravvon?" (following her pronunciation.) "Yes; you would never guess that it was sounded _Glan Ravvon_ if you were to see it written: it is spelt quite differently." "What does it mean? or does it mean anything?" "It means 'Bank of the River;' so called, because it is not near the bank of any river." "What part of the world is it in?--Europe, Asia, Africa, America, or the Polynesian Islands?" "It is three miles from Naullan, if you are any the wiser." "Naullan! Naullan!" he repeats, as if trying to overtake a recollection that eludes him. "Of course it does: why I was _at_ Naullan once." "Were you?" (eagerly.) "When?" "Two years ago; no, three. I was staying in the neighbourhood with some people for fishing. No doubt you know them--the Fitz-Maurices?" Esther's countenance falls a little. "I--I--have heard of them," she says, uncertainly. "Why, they must be neighbours of yours." "They are rather beyond a drive, I think," she replies, doubtfully. "If you are three miles from Naullan, and they are only four, I don't see how that can be." She does not answer for a moment, but only furls and unfurls her fan uneasily; then, looking up with a sudden, honest impulse, speaks, colouring up to the eyes the while. "Why should I be ashamed of what there is no reason to be ashamed of? They _are_ within calling distance, and I do know them in a way; that is to say, Lady Fitz-Maurice bows to me whenever she recollects that she knows me; but, you see, they are great people, and we are small ones." He looks thoroughly annoyed. The idea that the woman of his choice is by her own confession not _exactly_ on his own level, grates upon his pride. "Nonsense!" he says, brusquely, "one gentleman is as good as another, all the world over; and it must be the same with ladies." "St. John, you are wanted to make up a rubber," interrupts Constance, sweeping up to them, resplendent but severe, in green satin and seaweed, like a nineteenth century Nereid, if such an anachronism could exist. "Am I?" looking rather sulky, and not offering to move. "We have got one already, but Sir Charles and Mrs. Annesley wish for another.' "Let them play double-dummy!" settling himself resolutely in his chair, and looking defiantly at her out of his quick, cross eyes. "Absurd!" "If you are so anxious to oblige them, why cannot you take a hand yourself?" "You know how I detest cards!" "And you know how I detest Mrs. Annesley." (Mrs. Annesley is the vulture of Esther's lively imagination.) Too dignified to descend to wrangling, Miss Blessington desists, and moves away, casting only one small glance of suppressed resentment at the innocent cause of Mr. Gerard's contumacy. "How _could_ you be so disobliging?" cries Esther, reproachfully, in childish irritation with him at having drawn her into undeserved disgrace. "Why shouldn't I?" he asks, placidly. "Believe me, it is the worst plan possible to encourage the idea that you are good-natured among your own people; it subjects you to endless impositions. For the last thirty years I have been struggling to establish a character for never doing what I am asked; would you have me undo all my work at one blow?" "St. John is impracticable," says Constance, returning from her fruitless quest, and stooping over the card-table her golden head and the sea-tang twisted with careless care about it. "You must accept of me as his substitute, please; he is good-naturedly devoting himself to my little friend. Did you happen to notice her, Lady Bolton? She is really looking quite pretty to-night. She does not know anybody, poor child! and he was afraid she might feel neglected." CHAPTER XV. The world's life is shorter by a fortnight than it was on that last day I told you of, and during that fortnight the ordinary amount of things have happened. The usual number of people have had their bodies knocked to atoms and their souls into eternity by express trains; the usual number of men and maids have come together in the _Times_ column in holy matrimony; and the usual number of unwelcome babies have been consigned to the canals. A great many players have laid down their cards, risen up, and gone away from the game of life; but whether winners or losers, they tell us not, neither shall we know awhile; and other players have taken their places, and have sat down with the zest of ignorance. "Nature takes no notice of those that are coming or going." She is briskly occupied at her old business--the business that seems to us so purposeless, progressless, bootless--the making only to unmake; the beautifying only to make hideous; the magnifying only to debase. Oh life! life! Oh clueless labyrinth! Oh answerless riddle! September is waning mellowly into death, like a holy man to whom an easy passage has been vouchsafed; the land has been noisy with guns, and many partridges have been turned into small bundles of ruffled feathers--little round, brown corpses. Bob Brandon walks stoutly up the furzy hill sides and along the stony levels after the shy, scarce birds; he is out and about all day, but you do not hear him whistling or humming so often as you used to do. "He goeth heavily, as one that mourneth." The fortnight is past, and yet another week, and still Esther holds no speech of returning; her letters have waxed fewer, shorter, colder. Since that first one, mention of Gerard's name is there in them none. Bob is not of a suspicious nature, but he can add two and two together. He has been doing that little dreary sum all the last ten days, till his head aches. But though he can do this sum himself, he will not suffer any one else to do it--at least in his presence. One day at dinner, when Bessy was beginning a little sour adaptation of the text, "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye," &c., to Esther, he interrupted her with downright outspoken anger and rebuke; and, though he apologised to her afterwards, and begged her pardon for having spoken rudely to her, yet she felt that that theme must not be dealt with again. He had promised to love her always in all loyalty, and whether she were loyal or disloyal to him made no difference. He will let no man, woman, or child speak evil of her in his hearing: ".........love is not love That alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove." Jack Craven, too, is beginning to wonder a little when Esther is going to return to the old farmhouse--beginning to feel rather lonely as he sits by himself on the window-ledge of an evening, smoking his pipe, with no one to take it out of his mouth now, and thinking on his unpaid for steam ploughs and sterile mountain-fields, with no one to speak comfortably to him, or console him with sweet illogical logic. "All is not gold that glitters." Care gets up behind the man, however fine a horse he may be riding. Care is sitting _en croupe_ behind Miss Craven, and she cannot unseat him. It strikes her sometimes with a shock of fear that she is succeeding _too_ well; that the admiration and liking and love she had hankered so greedily after, had striven unfairly for, had made wicked lightnings from her eyes to obtain, was ready to be poured out lavishly, eagerly, honestly at her feet, and she dare not put out a finger to take them up. She had been walking miles and miles of nights, up and down her bedroom, from door to window, from window to door, when all the rest of the house are abed and asleep. "What _shall_ I do?--what _shall_ I do?" she cries out to her own heart, while her hands clasp one another hotly, and the candles, so tall at dressing time, burn short and low. "Oh! if I had some one to advise me!--not that I would take their advice, if it were to give up St. John! Give him up! How can I give up what I have not got? Oh Bob, Bob, if you only knew how I hate you!--Only less than I hate myself! Oh! why was not my tongue cut out before that unlucky day when I said I would _try_ to like you? Try, indeed! If there is need for trying, one may know how the trial will end. Shall I tell St. John? What! volunteer an unasked confession? Warn him off Robert's territory when he is not thinking of trespassing? And if I were to tell him--oh Heaven! I had sooner put my hand into a lion's mouth--what _would_ he think of me? He, with his fastidious, strict ideas of what a woman should be and do and look? Shall I write and ask Bob to let me off? It would not break his heart; he is too good; only bad people ever break their hearts, as I shall do some day, I dare say. Oh! poor Bob, how badly I am treating you! Poor Bob! and his yellow roses that St. John made such fun of! How I wish that the thoughts of your long legs and your little sour Puritan sisters did not make me feel so sick! Oh! if you would but be good enough to jilt me! What _shall_ I do?--what _shall_ I do? Wait, wait, go on waiting for what will never come, probably, and when I have degraded myself by waiting till hope is quite dead, go back whence I came, and jig-jog through life alongside of Bob in a poke bonnet like his mamma's. Ah Jack, Jack! why did I ever leave you? How I wish that all Bobs and St. Johns and other worries were at the bottom of the Red Sea, and you and I king and queen of some desert island, where there was nothing nearer humanity than monkeys and macaws, and where there was no rent nor workmen's wages nor lovers to torment us!" One must go to bed at some time or other, however puzzled and pondering one may be; and in furtherance of this end, Esther, having reached this turn in her reflections, begins to undress. In so doing she misses a locket containing Jack's picture, which she always wears round her neck. She must have dropped it downstairs, where perhaps some housemaid's clumsy foot may tread upon it, and mar the dear, ugly young face within. She must go and look for it, though the clock is striking one. She takes up her candle, and runs lightly downstairs. The gas is out. Great shadows from behind come up alongside, and then stretch ahead of her; the statues glimmer ghostly chill from their dark pedestals. With a shock of frightened surprise she sees a stream of light issuing through the half-open door of the morning-room. Is it burglars, or are the flowers giving a ball, as in Andersen's fair, fanciful tale? She creeps gently up, and peeps in. The lamp still burns on the centre table, and pacing up and down, up and down, as she has been doing overhead, is a man buried in deepest thought. Fear gives place to a great, pleasant shyness. "I--I--I have lost my locket," she stammers. He gives a tremendous start. "You up still!" he says, in astonishment. "Lost your locket, have you? Oh! by-the-by, I found it just now; here it is. Do you know (with a smile) I could not resist the temptation of looking to see who you had got inside it. Are you very angry?" "Very!" she answers, drooping her eyes under his. She could sit and stare into Bob's eyes by the hour together, if she liked, only that it would be rather a dull amusement; with St. John it is different. "Don't go; stay and talk a minute. It is so pleasant to think that we are the only conscious, sentient beings in the house--all the others sleeping like so many pigs," he says, coming over to her with an excited look on his face, such as calm, slow-pulsed English gentlemen are not wont to wear. "No, no, I cannot--I must not." She has taken the bracelets off her arms, and the rose from her hair: there she stands in her ripe, fresh beauty, with only the night and St. John to look at her. "Five minutes," he says, with pleading humility, but putting his back against the door as he speaks. "If you _prevent_ my going, of course I cannot help myself," she answers, putting on a little air of offended dignity to hide her tremulous embarrassment. "Don't be offended! Do you know" (leaving his post of defence to follow her)--"do you know what I have been doing ever since you went--_not_ to bed apparently?" "Drinking brandy and soda-water, probably" (looking rather surly, and affecting to yawn). "That would have been hardly worth mentioning. I have been wondering whether my luck is on the turn. I have been da----I mean very unlucky all my life. I never put any money on a horse that he was not sure to be nowhere. Luck does turn, sometimes, doesn't it? Do you think mine is turning?" "How can I tell?" "You don't ask in what way I have been so unlucky. Why don't you? Have you no curiosity?" "I never like to seem inquisitive," answers Esther, coldly, hoping that he does not notice how the white hands that lie on her lap are trembling. "Do you recollect my telling you that I had made a great fool of myself once?" "Yes." "Do you care to hear about it, or do you not?" pulling at his drooping moustache, in some irritation at her feigned indifference. "Yes, I care," she answers, lighting up an eager, mobile face--fear, shyness, and the sense of the impropriety of the situation all ceding to strong curiosity. "Well, it was about a woman, of course. _Cela va sans dire;_ a man never can get into a scrape without a woman to help him, any more than he can be born, or learn his A B C." "Was she handsome?" looking up, and speaking quickly. That is always the first question a woman asks about a rival. I do not know why, I am sure, as many of the greatest mischiefs that have been done on earth have been done by ugly women. Rousseau's Madame d'Houdetot squinted ferociously. "Pretty well. She had a thundering good figure, and knew how to use her eyes. By-the-by" (with an anxious discontent in his tone), "so do you. I often wish you did not; I hate being able to trace one point of resemblance between you and her." "Did she refuse you?" asks Esther, hastily, too anxious for the sequel of the story to think of resenting the accusation made against her eyes. "Not she! I should not have been the one to blame her if she had; one cannot quarrel with people for their tastes. She swore she liked me better than any one else in the world; that she would go down to Erebus with me, be flayed alive for me--all the protestations usual in such cases, in fact, I suppose," he ends bitterly. "And threw you over?" says Essie, leaning forward with lips half apart, and her breast rising and falling in short, quick undulations. "Exactly; had meant nothing else all along. I filled only the pleasant and honourable situation of decoy duck to lure on shyer game, and when the bird was limed--such a bird, too! a great, heavy, haw-haw brute in the Carabineers, with a face like a horse--she pitched me away as coolly as you would pitch an old shoe--or as you would pitch _me_, I dare say, if you had the chance." "And what did you do?" asks Essie, breathlessly, her great eyes, black as death, fastened on his face. St. John smiles--a smile half fierce, half amused. "Run him through the body, do you suppose?--spitted him like a lark or a woodcock?--cut out his heart and made her eat it, as the man did to his wife in that fine old Norman story? No; I could have done any of them with pleasure if I had had the chance; with all our veneering and French polish, I think the tiger is only half dead in any of us; but I did not; I did none of them: I--prepare for bathos, please--I went out hunting; it was in winter, and, as misfortunes never come singly, I staked one of the best horses I ever was outside of: that diverted the current of my grief a little, I think." He speaks in a jeering, bantering tone, scourging himself with the rod of his own ridicule, as men are apt to do when they are conscious of having made signal asses of themselves in order to be beforehand with the world. "And she told you she was fond of you?" ejaculates Essie, raising her sweet face, sympathetic, indignant, glowing, towards him. "Scores of times--swore it. I suppose it is no harder to tell a lie a hundred times than once; _ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte_. Tell me," he says, vehemently, leaning over her, and taking hold of her hand, as if hardly conscious of what he was doing--"you are a woman, you must know--tell me, is there no difference between truth and lies? have they both _exactly_ the same face? How is a man to tell them apart?" They are both speaking in a low key, almost under their breath, for fear of drawing down upon themselves the apparition of Sir Thomas in _déshabille_ and a blunderbuss. Their faces are close together; she can see the lines that climate and grief and passion have drawn about his eyes and mouth--can see the wild, honest anxiety looking through his soul's clear windows. "I--I--don't know," she answers, stammering, and shivering a little, half with fear at his vehemence, half with the strong contagion of his passion. "Do you ever tell untruths?" he asks, hurriedly, scanning her face with anxious eyes, that try to look through the mask of fair, white flesh, and see the heart underneath. "Don't be angry with me, but I sometimes fancy that you might." "_I!_ what do you mean?" snatching away her hand, and the angry blood rushing headlong to her cheeks. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Hazael was only the first of a long string who have asked that virtuously irate question. His countenance clears a little. "You must forgive me," he says, repentantly. "I suppose it is my own unlucky experience that has made me so suspicious; because my own day has been cloudy, I have wisely concluded upon the non-existence of the sun. But, come" (smiling a little), "one good turn deserves another: have you nothing to tell me in return for the long list of successes I have been confiding to you?" He watches her changing, flushing, paling face, with a keen solicitude which surprises himself. What can this downy, baby-faced rustic have to confess? Now for Bob! Now is the time--now or never! Sing, oh goddess, the destructive wrath of St. John, the son of Thomas! What time, place, situation, can be suitabler for such a tale? It is an hour and a half past midnight; they love one another madly, and they are alone. Are they alone, though? Is this one of the statues stepped down from its pedestal in the hall that is coming in at the door, severely, chilly, fair, with a candle in its hand? "Miss Craven!" ejaculates Constance (for it is she), stopping suddenly short, while a look of surprised displeasure ripples over her calm, smooth face. Silence for a second on the part of everybody. "It is a pity, St. John," says Miss Blessington, drawing herself up, and looking an impersonation of rigid, aggressive, pitiless virtue, "that you and Miss Craven should choose such a very unseasonable time for your interviews; it is not a very good example for the servants, if any of them should happen to find you here." "The servants have something better to do than to come prying and eavesdropping upon their betters," retorts St. John, flushing angry-red to the roots of his hair, and not taking the most conciliatory line of defence. "You are mistaken if you think I have been eavesdropping," says Constance, with dignified composure, her grave face looking out chastely cold from the down-fallen veil of her yellow hair. "I could not sleep, and came down to look for a book. Pray don't let me disturb your _tête-à-tête!_" making a movement towards going. "Don't be a fool, Conny!" cries St. John, hastily, in bitter fear of having compromised Esther by his ill-advised detention of her: "it is the purest accident your having found Miss Craven and me together here!" "I am well aware of that," she answers, with a little smiling sneer. "You know what I mean, perfectly well: it is the purest accident our _being_ here. Miss Craven lost her locket, and----" "And" (smiling still)--"and you have been helping her to look for it. Yes, I see. Well, I--hope you will find it. Good-night!" going out and closing the door behind her. "What did she say?--what does she mean?" cries Essie, panting, and with a face hardly less white than her dress. "What does it matter what she means? She's a fool!" answers St. John, wrathfully. "Go to bed, and don't think about her; who cares?" But he looks as if he did care a good deal. CHAPTER XVI. The weekly clearance of mundane books has been made at Plas Berwyn; the skimp drab gowns, and the ill-made frock coat, whose flaps lap over one another so painfully behind, have been endured by the Misses Brandon and their brother respectively. At church has been all the Brandon household: son and daughters, man-servant and maid-servant, ox and sheep, camel and ass. I need hardly say that the last quartette have been introduced merely for the sake of euphony, and to give a fuller rhythm to the close of the sentence. The Misses Brandon always stand as stiff as pokers during the creed, with their backs to the altar. It amuses them, and it does not do anybody else any harm, so why should not they, poor women? Bob truckles to the Scarlet Woman; he bows, and turns his honest, serious face to the east. The service is in Welsh, of which he does not understand a word. He can pick his way pretty well through the prayers, however, by the help of a Welsh and English prayer book. There are several landmarks that he knows, whose friendly faces beam upon him now and again when he is beginning to flounder hopelessly among uncouth words of seven consonants and a vowel. These are his chief finger-posts: "Gogoniant ir Tad, ac ir Mab, ac ir Yspryd Glan;" that is, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." "Gwared ni, Arglywd daionus!" "Good Lord, deliver us!" "Na Ladratta!" "Thou shalt not steal!" Jack Craven has been to church too, and has, as he always does, been reading the inscriptions on the coffin-plates, nailed up, Welsh fashion, against the dilapidated, whitewashed walls, in lieu of monumental tablets. Esther has also been to church; has been in state in a great, close carriage, in company with Sir Thomas, Miladi, and Miss Blessington. Sir Thomas has been storming the whole way about a gap he detected in a hedge that they passed, through which some cattle have broken, so that they all arrive at the church door in that calmly devout state of quietude which is the fittest frame of mind for the reception of Divine truth. The Gerard pew in Felton church is as large as a moderate-sized room, and is furnished with arm-chairs and a fire-place. In winter, Sir Thomas spends fully half the service time in poking the fire noisily and raking out the ashes. There is no fire now, and he misses it. A high red curtain runs round the sacred enclosure, and through it the farmers' wives and daughters strain their eyes to catch a glimpse of Miladi's marabout feathers, and Miss Blessington's big, golden chignon, and little green aerophane bonnet. St. John generally pulls the brass rings of his bit of curtain aside along the brass rods, to make a peep-hole for himself over the congregation. The shape and size of the pew do away with the necessity for any wearisome conformity of attitude among the inmates. During the prayers, Sir Thomas stands bolt upright, with one bent knee resting on his chair; his bristling grey head, shaggy brows, and fierce spectacles looming above the red curtain, to the admiration and terror of the row of little charity girls beneath. Constance kneels forward on a hassock, with a large, ivory prayer book, gold-crossed, red-edged, in one hand, and a turquoise and gold-topped double scent-bottle and cobweb cambric handkerchief in the other. She confesses in confidence to her pale lavender gloves that she has done that which she ought not to have done, and has left undone that which she ought to have done; making graceful little salaams and undulations of head and body every two minutes. Miladi confesses that she has gone to sleep. St. John makes no pretence of kneeling at all: he leans, elbow on knee and head on hand, and looks broken-hearted, as men have a way of doing in church. In the afternoon, no one at Felton thinks of attending Divine service. It is a fiat of Sir Thomas's that no carriage, horses, or servants are to be taken out more than once a day, and the two miles' walk is an insuperable impediment to Lady Gerard, and hardly less so to Constance. After luncheon the three ladies are sitting in the garden, with the prospect of four unbroken hours of each other's companionship before them. Masses of calceolarias, geraniums, lobelias, are flaring and flaunting around them--masses in which the perverted eye of modern horticulture sees its ideal of beauty. Nature, in her gardening, never plants great, gaudy squares and ovals and rounds of red and blue and yellow, without many shades of tenderest grey and green to soften and relieve them. Across the grass St. John comes lounging; his Sunday frock coat sitting creaseless to his spare, sinewy figure. Esther hates the sight of that coat: it reminds her so painfully, by its very unlikeness, of the singular garment that forms the head and crown of her betrothed's scant wardrobe. "Do you know, I have half a mind to go to Radley church this afternoon. Will any one come with me?--will you, Conny?" turning, mindful of last night, with a conciliatory smile to Miss Blessington. "How far is it?" she asks, indolently, divided between her hatred of walking and her desire to frustrate the _tête-à-tête_ she sees impending between St. John and Esther. "Three or four miles; four, I suppose." She lifts her large blue eyes languidly, "Four miles there, and four miles back! Are you mad, St. John? What do you suppose one is made of?" "Will _you_ take pity on me then, Miss Craven?" turning eagerly to Esther. She tilts her hat low down over her little, straight, Greek nose, looks up at him with shy coquetry under the brim, but answers not. "A man who delights in solitude must be either a wild beast or a god, don't you know? I have no pretence to be either: I hate my own society cordially. Come" (with a persuasive ring in his pleasant voice); "you had much better." "Don't be so absurd, St. John!" cries Miss Blessington, pettishly. "Miss Craven would far rather be left in peace." "Would you?" (appealing to her.) "No--o; that is--I mean--I think I should like the walk, if I may. May I, Lady Gerard? do you mind?" (turning sweet red cheeks and quick eyes towards her hostess.) "I, my dear! Why should I mind?" responds Miladi, leaning back and fanning herself with a large fan (I believe that fat women often suffer a foretaste of the torments of the damned in the matter of heat)--"so as you don't ask me to go with you (with a fat smile). And, St. John, be sure that you are back in time for dinner, there's a good boy! You know what a fuss Sir Thomas is always in on Sunday evening?" "I know that Sir Thomas is digging his grave with his teeth as fast as he can," answers St. John disrespectfully. "Shall not we be rather late for church if we have four miles to go?" asks Esther, as she steps out briskly beside her companion, while heart and conscience keep up a quarrelsome dialogue within her. "It is not four miles; it is only three." "You told Miss Blessington four?" "So I did; but I drew for the extra mile upon the rich stores of my imagination." "Why did you?" she asks, turning a wondering rosy face set in the frame of a minute white bonnet towards him. "Did you ever hear of the invitations that the Chinese give one another?" he asks, laughing, and switching off a fern-head with a baby umbrella--"which, however pressing they may be, are always expected by the giver to be declined. My invitation to Conny was a Chinese one: I was not quite sure that she would understand it as such, and I was so afraid that she would yield to my importunities, that I had to embroider a little in the matter of distance; do you see?" There has been rain in the morning; now the clouds have rent themselves asunder, and broken up into great glistering rocks, peaks, and spires, such as no fuller on earth could white: "Blue isles of heaven laugh between." The breeze comes more freshly over the wet grasses and flowers, and blows in little fickle puffs against St. John's bronzed cheeks and Esther's carnation ones. The girl's heart is pulsing with a keen, sharp joy; all the keener, as the heaven's blue is deeper for the clouds that hover about it. "I shall have him all to myself for three hours," she is saying inwardly; "he will speak to no one but me; he will hear no one else's voice (she forgets the parson and the clerk). Surely Bob may spare me these three hours, and just a few more, out of the great long life during which I shall tramp-tramp at his side! Three hours: "Then let come what come may No matter if I go mad, I shall have had my day." "Let me carry your prayer book?" "No, thanks; it is not heavy" (retaining it, mindful of a certain inscription in the fly-leaf). "I am like a retriever; I like to have something to carry" (taking it from her with gentle violence). "'_Esther Craven_ from _Robert Brandon_.' Who _is_ Robert Brandon when he is at home?" (speaking rather shortly.) Esther's heart leaps into her mouth. Shall she tell him _now_, this minute, without giving herself time for second thoughts, which are not by any means always best? Shall she lift off the weight of compunction, anxiety, shame, that has been pressing upon her for the last fortnight?--let it fall down, as the dead albatross fell from the Ancient Mariner's neck-- "Like lead into the sea?" The subject has introduced itself naturally, easily, without any of the dragging in by the head and shoulders of the officiously-volunteered confessions that she had salved her conscience by deprecating. Shall she, with strong, brave hand, push away all hope of the fine house and the broad lands, of the carriages and horses, the roses and pine-apples, the down pillows and fragrances of life? Shall she courageously, nobly, and yet in mere bare duty, turn away from the fairy prince and return to her hovel and scullionship? Shall she, or shall she not? "Who _is_ Robert Brandon?" repeats St. John, rather crossly. In the second that follows Esther's life destiny is settled. She refuses the good and chooses the evil. ("He is the man I am engaged to," that is what she ought to have said.) "He is in the ----th foot." This is what she does say, blushing till the tears come into her eyes, turning away her head, and feeling stabbed through and through with shame. "An ally of yours?" (quickly.) "I have known him all my life," she answers, evasively. "I thought he was a very young child, from this specimen of his caligraphy," remarks Gerard, superciliously, examining Bob's sprawly, slanty characters. "He would be none the worse for a few writing lessons." Esther is a mean young woman: she feels ashamed of her poor lover, and his pothooks and hangers, and yet vexed with St. John for sneering at them. "It was a fact worth inscribing, I must say," continues he, ironically--"the making of such a very handsome present," holding the poor little volume between his lavender kid finger and thumb, and surveying it with a disparaging smile. "He must have had a great deal of change out of sixpence, I should think." "If you have nothing better to do than abuse my property," cries Esther, impulsively, snatching it out of his hand, "you may give it me back," looking half disposed to whimper. "I apologise," responds St. John, gravely. "I did not mean to offend you; I give you _carte blanche_ to insult mine" (holding out a very minute Russia leather one). "But may I ask, is Mr. Robert Blandon, or Brandon, or what's his name, your godfather?" "No; why?" "Because I never heard of any one being given a prayer book except as a wedding present, or by their godfathers and godmothers at their baptism. As you are not married, I know it could not have been the first case, and so I concluded it must be the last." "Robert is not old enough to be my godfather," says Essie, overcoming by a great effort the repugnance to pronouncing the fateful name: "he is quite young; a great deal younger than you," she ends, rather spitefully. "He might easily be that," replies St. John, coldly. "Once, not so very many years ago, in whatever company I was, I always was the youngest present; now, on the contrary, in whatever company I am, I always feel the eldest present. I don't suppose I always am, but I always feel as if I were." "I believe old people have the best of it, after all," says Esther, recovering a little of her equanimity: "they have certainly fewer troubles than young ones. I should say that Sir Thomas was decidedly a happier man than you are." "A man's happiness is proportioned to the simplicity of his tastes, I suppose," answers St. John, sardonically. "Sir Thomas's happiness lies in a nutshell: he has two ruling passions--eating and bullying; he has a very fair cook to satisfy the one, and my mother always at hand for the gratification of the other." "We have all our ruling passions," rejoins Esther, with a light laugh, "only very often we will not own them. Mine is burnt almonds; what is yours?" "Going to church," he replies, in the same tone; "as you may perceive by the strenuous efforts I have made to get there this afternoon." Radley church stands on a knoll. Radley parishioners have to go upwards to be buried--a happy omen, it is to be hoped, for the destination of their souls. The church has a little grey tower, pretty, old, and squat, and a peal of bells--these are its claim to distinction--a merry peal, as people say; but to me it seems that in all the gamut of sad sounds there is nothing sadder, sorrowfuller, than bells chiming out sweetly and solemnly across the summer air. Rung in by the grave music of their invitation, St. John and Esther enter. Verger or pew-opener is there none, so they slip into the first of the open sittings that presents itself. The clergyman is young and energetic: he has rooted up the tall, worm-eaten, oak pews--disfiguring compromises between cattle-pen and witness-box--has clothed several "Dear little souls In nice white stoles,--" and is trying to teach himself intoning. He produces at present only prolonged whining groans, but it is a step in the right direction. Rest is good after exertion, and so Essie thinks. The south wind has been playing tricks with the dusk riches of her hair. Nature has been laying on her bistre under the great liquid eyes, and emptying a whole potful of her rouge on the rose velvet round of her cheeks. She is not in apple-pie order at all, and yet "She was most beautiful to see, Like a lady from a far countree." If Esther were to murder any one, and her guilt were to be brought home to her as plainly as the eye of day shines in the sky at noon, judge and jury would combine to acquit her. "Blessed be God, who has made beautiful women!" says the Bedouin, and Gerard echoes the benediction, as he stands with his big lavender thumb on one side of the hymn book, and her small, lavender thumb on the other, while the "dear little souls" are singing sweetly and quickly: "There God for ever sitteth, Himself of all the Crown; The Lamb, the Light that shineth, And goeth never down." Grand words, that make one feel almost good and almost happy merely to say them! There is only one hymn-book in the pew, and St. John is glad of it. There is something pleasant in the sense of union and partnership, though it be only a three minutes' partnership in a dog's-eared psalter. "Is not there some different way of going home?" asks Essie, as they stand side by side, after service, in the high churchyard, looking down on the straggling damson trees, the grey smoke spiring northwards under the south wind's faint blowing, the dark-blue green of the turnip fields. "I hate going back the same way one came; it shows such a want of invention!" "There is another way," answers St. John, scooping out a little plump green moss from a chink in the wall with the point of his umbrella, while the parson and the parson's sister, on their homeward way, turn their heads to look at them--the parson at Esther, the parson's sister at St. John--Jack at Jill, and Jill at Jack as is the way of the world; "but it is a good deal longer and a great deal muddier than the one we came by." "I like mud," says Essie, gaily, stooping and picking a daisy from a little child's grave at her feet; "it is my native element; at home we are up to our knees in mud in winter, and over our ankles in summer." So they chose the longer and the muddier way. It is its length that is its recommendation to them both, I think. Down the village street, past the Loggerheads and the Forge, and along a long country lane, paved unevenly with round stones after a way our forefathers in some of the northern counties had of paving, in imperfect prophetic vision of MacAdam. To-day no broad waggon-wheel groans, nor hoofed foot clatters along; only a few cottagers and smart-bonneted servant girls trudge along to the Primitive Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, built A.D. 1789, that stands in simple, dissenting ugliness at the hill-foot, while over its newly-painted, gingerbread-coloured door stands this modest announcement: "This is the Gate of Heaven." "It strikes me," says St. John, rousing himself out of a reverie which has lasted a quarter of an hour--"it strikes me as one of the few instances in which one's experience tallies with what one reads in novels, the awkward knack people have of interrupting one at the wrong moment." "How do you mean?" asks Essie, coming out of a reverie, too. "I never," pursues he, taking off his hat, and passing his hand over the broad red mark it has made on his forehead--"I never read aloud to any one in my life--I was rather fond of reading poetry at one period of my history, I leave you to guess which--not that she cared about it--she did not know Milton from Tommy Moore; but I never read to her in the course of my life without the footman coming in to put coals on at the most affecting passages--Arthur's parting from Guinevere, say, or Medora's death--and clattering down the tongs and shovel, making the devil's own row." Esther laughs. "These reflections are _à propos_ of--what?" "Of Conny's most ill-timed entry last night," he answers, with energy. "I don't suppose she makes such a midnight raid once in five years, and she certainly could not have found you and me _tête-à-tête_ at two in the morning more than once in fifty years. Why could not she leave us in peace that once? We did not grudge her any amount of pleasant dreams; why need she grudge us our pleasant wakefulness?" "Do you think she came on purpose, then?" asks Essie, her eyes opening as round in alarmed surprise as a baby's when a grown-up person makes ugly faces at it. He shrugs his shoulders slightly. "Cannot say, I'm sure. Conny is not much in the habit of burning the midnight oil in the pursuit of knowledge generally. If it _was_ accident, she came in at a wonderfully _à propos_, or rather _mal à propos_, moment. Tell me," he says, crossing over to her side of the road, and fixing frankly-asking eyes upon her; "I may be mistaken--it is a misfortune to which I am often incident--but I could not help thinking that, just as that unlucky candle appeared round the corner last night, you were going to tell me something--something about yourself? I thought I saw it in your face. I think I deserved some little reward for raking up for your behoof the ashes of that old fire that I burnt my fingers at so badly once." Esther still remains silent, but turns her long neck from one side to the other with a restless, uneasy motion. "Are lamplight and the small hours indispensable accessories?" he asks, with gentle pleading in look and words--"or could not you tell me as well now?" "Tell you what?" she says, turning round sharp upon him, and snapping, as a little cross dog snaps at the heels of the passer-by--"must I invent something?" "Are you sure that it is _necessary_ to invent?" he asks, scanning the fair, troubled face with searching gaze. She pulls a bunch of nuts out of the hedge from among their rough-ribbed green leaves, and begins to pick them out of their sheath. "What am I to tell you?" she says, petulantly, a suspicion that he may have heard a rumour of her engagement crossing her mind: "that I live in an old farmhouse with my brother Jack, and that we are very hard up--you know already; that 'Su dry da chi' is Welsh for 'How do you do?' and that our asparagus has answered very badly this year?" "Of course, I cannot force your confidence," he answers, rather coldly. "Why do you insist upon my having something to confide? What reason have you for supposing that I have?" she cries, with increased irritation. "None whatever, but what you yourself have given me!" "_I!_" "Yes, _you;_ not your words, but your face now and then. Don't think me impertinent. You know what unhappy reason I have had to be suspicious. But tell me" (trying his best to get a look round the corner into the averted, perturbed face of his companion)--"tell me whether there is not something between you and--and--that fellow that gave you the prayer-book?" Esther's heart gives one great bounding throb; the thin muslin of her dress but poorly conceals its hard, quick pulsings. One more chance for her! Fate generally gives us two or three chances before it allows us to consign ourselves irrecoverably to the dogs. One more choice between loyalty and disloyalty--a plain question, to be answered plainly, unequivocally--Yes or No; Robert or St. John. The man whose conversation bores her, whose proximity and whose gaze leave her colder than snow on an alp's high top an hour before sunrise, and with whom she has promised to live till death do them part; or the man, no whit better or handsomer, whose coming, felt, though unseen, makes her whole frame vibrate, as a harp's strings vibrate under the player's hands--beneath whose eyes hers sink down bashful, yet passionate--the man whom, after this week, she must see never again until death do them unite. Woman-like, she tries to avoid the alternative. "What is that to you?" she retorts, abruptly, endeavouring to be playful, and succeeding only in being rude. "Nothing whatever," he replies, flushing angrily; and then they walk on for some distance in silence. "Are you angry?" asks Esther, presently, with a smile, half saucy, half frightened. "_I?_ not in the least," he replies, with an air of ostentatious indifference, but with a complexion undoubtedly florider than nature made his. "You look excessively cross, and have not uttered a word for the last half mile," she says, pouting out her full red under-lip, and then looking (a little alarmed at her own audacity) to see in what spirit he takes her impertinence. "When I do not get civil answers to civil questions, I think it best to hold my tongue," he says, stalking along with his head up, and hitting viciously with his umbrella at the tall, yellow mulleins in the hedge. "People's ideas differ as to what _are_ civil questions," says Essie, trying to stalk too, and to elevate nose and chin in emulation of his. "Suppose that I had asked you how many times you had been refused, would you have answered me?" "Undoubtedly I should," he replies, gravely. "How many times have you?" she asks, coming down from her elevation of offended dignity with a jump, and looking up at him with naïve, eager curiosity. "Questions should be answered in the order of priority in which they are asked," he replies, with a smile of amusement at her simplicity, but with a good deal of dissatisfied doubt underlying the smile. "Answer my question, and I'll answer yours." Esther turns away, and passes her hand along the hedge, catching idly at any grasses or flowers that come in her way, to the great detriment of her Sunday gloves. His anxiety overcomes his hurt pride. "Give me an answer one way or another," he says, breathing rather short. "Is there not something between you and him?" Esther is silent. "No" is a plain downright lie, at which conscience demurs, and "Yes" a cannon-ball that will knock her away from St. John's side out into the drear, great world for ever. "For God's sake answer me!" he says again, in great agitation at a dumbness that seems to him ominous. Hearing the sharp pain and angry fear in his voice, she hesitates no longer. Lie or no lie, she takes the plunge. "Nothing!" she says, faintly, turning first milk-white, then red as a rose in her burning prime. "Why do you turn away your face? Are you quite certain?" he asks, quickly, only half convinced by her weak negation. "Certain," she replies, indistinctly, as if just able to echo his words, but not to frame any of her own. "Why do you stammer and blush, then, whenever his name is mentioned?" he asks, with jealous impatience. "I won't stand being catechised in this way," she cries, blazing out angrily, and stopping short, while sparks of fire, half quenched in tears of vexation, dart from the splendid night of her eyes. "I have answered a question which you ought never to have asked; you must be a person of very little observation," she continues, sharply, "not to have discovered during the three weeks that I have been with you that I blush at everything and nothing; I should be as likely as not to blush when Sir Thomas's name was mentioned, or--or----" "Or mine," suggests St. John, ironically; "put it as strongly as you can." "Or yours, if you like," she answers, hardily, but crimsoning painfully meanwhile in confirmation of her words. At a little distance farther on, their path forsakes the road and leads across a line of grass fields. St. John crosses the first stile, and waits politely on the other side to help Esther over. "No, no!" she cries, petulantly, withdrawing her foot from the first rung--"I hate being helped over stiles. Go on, please." He obeys, and walks on. Her dignity does not allow her to hurry her pace to overtake him, nor does his permit him to slacken his steps till she come up with him; and they walk on in single file, goose-fashion, through two fields and a half. Dividing and watering the third field, as the four ancient rivers divided and watered the rose gardens and asphodel fields of Paradise, a little beck, with many turns and bends and doublings back upon itself, strays babbling, like a silver ribbon twisted among the meadow's green hair. It is not like the Welsh brooks, fretful and brawling, making little waterfalls and whirlpools and eddies over and about every water-worn stone; smoothly it flows on, as a holy, eventless life flows towards the broad sea whose tides wash the shores of Time. In dry weather it is slow-paced enough, and crystal clear; now the late heavy rains have quickened its current, and rolled it along, turbid and muddy. Even though swollen, however, it is still but a narrow thread, and St. John clears it at a jump. "Shall I go on still?" he asks, with a malicious smile from the other side, addressing Esther, who stands looking down rather ruefully at the quick, brown water at her feet. "I believe you knew of this, and brought me here on purpose to make a fool of me," she cries, reproachfully. "I did nothing of the kind," he answers, quietly. "Last time I was here there was a plank thrown across; but you see the stream has been higher than it is now" (pointing to the drenched grass and little deposit of sticks and leaves on the bank), "and has probably carried it away." "How _am_ I to get over?" she asks, hopelessly, with a look of childish distress on her face. "I'll carry you," he answers, springing back to her side; "the brook is shallower farther down; I can lift you over with the greatest ease imaginable." "_That_ you shan't!" answers Esther, civilly turning her back upon him. "May I ask why?" he asks, coolly. "After the number of times I have carried you up and down stairs at Felton, you can hardly be afraid of my letting you fall?" "The very fact of my having already had so many obligations to you makes me resolved not to add to their number," she replies, stiffly, with an effort to look dignified, which her laughing, _débonnaire_, seductive style of beauty renders peculiarly unsuccessful. "If you can suggest any better plan, I shall be delighted to assist you in carrying it out," rejoins he, smothering a smile. "I'll jump!" she says, desperately, eyeing meanwhile the hurrying stream and space between bank and bank with calculating look. "You cannot," he cries, hastily; "you'll get a ducking as sure as I stand here. Don't be so silly!" The word "silly" acts as a whip and spur to Essie's flagging courage. She retreats a few yards from the edge, in order to get a little run to give her a better spring. "As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile!" remarks Gerard, resignedly, quoting Mrs. Malaprop and folding his arms. Neither the preparatory run, nor the tremendous bound she takes, avail to save Miss Craven from the fate which her obstinacy and the comparative shortness of her legs render unavoidable. She jumps short, and falls forward on the wet bank; her lavender kid gloves digging convulsively into it, and her legs disporting themselves fish-like in the brook. He is at her side in an instant, raises gently and lifts her on to the grass, unmindful of the pollution caused to his coat by the muddy contact. "What a fool I was!" she cries, passionately, sinking down among a grove of huge burdock leaves, smothered in shame and angry blushes. St. John thinks it rude to disagree with her, so holds his peace. "Why don't you laugh at me? why don't you jeer me?" she continues, vehemently; "why don't you tell me you are very glad of it, and that I richly deserve it, as I see you are longing to do? Anything would be better than standing there like a stock or a stone!" "It is not of much consequence how I stand or how I look," he replies, coldly. "It would be more to the purpose to know how you are to get home!" "I will walk as I am," she cries impulsively, springing to her feet; "it will be a fit penance for my idiocy, and you shall go on ahead. I don't want you to be disgraced by being seen in company with such an object." "That is very probable, isn't it?" he answers, laughing good-humouredly. "No, I have a better proposition than that, I think. It has just occurred to me that an old servant of ours lives at no great distance from here, her cottage is not more than three or four fields off. If you can manage to get there she would dry your clothes for you in a minute." Rendered docile by her late disaster, feeling very small, and hanging her head, Esther acquiesces. Her gown, from which every particle of starch or stiffness has fled, clings to her limbs and defines their form; the water drips down from her in a thousand little spouts and rivulets: bang, bang, go her soaked petticoats against her ankles at every step she takes. "You have had almost enough of taking me out to walk, I expect," she remarks presently, rather grimly. "You have had almost enough of jumping brooks, I expect," he retorts, drily; and then they walk on in silence till they reach a little whitewashed cottage, with its slip of potato ground and plot of pinks and marigolds and lark-spurs--an oasis of tilled ground among the wilderness of pasturage. St. John knocks at the half-open door and puts his head in. "Are you at home, Mrs. Brown? How are you?" says he, in that frank, friendly voice that goes far to make the Felton tenants wish that Sir St. John reigned in Sir Thomas's stead. "Quite well, thank you, Mr. St. John; I hope I see you the same," replies the person addressed, coming to the door with a jolly red face and a voluminous widow's cap that contradict one another; "it's a long time since we've seen you come our way." "So it is, Mrs. Brown; but, you see, I have been after the partridges." "And Sir Thomas, I hope he keeps pretty well, Mr. St. John?" "Yes, thanks." "And Miladi, I hope she has her health." "Yes, thanks." "And Miss Bl----?" "Yes, thanks," interrupts St. John, rather impatiently, breaking through the thread of her interrogatories. "Do you see, Mrs. Brown, that this young lady has met with an accident: she has tumbled into the brook. Do you think you could let her dry herself at your fire a bit?" "Eh dear, Miss, you _are_ in a mess!" ejaculates Mrs. Brown, walking round Esther, and surveying her curiously, as she stands close behind Gerard, dripping still, with a hang-dog air and chattering teeth. "Why, you have not a dry stitch upon you; you are one _mask_ of mud! Would you please to step in?" Mrs. Brown and Essie retire into an inner chamber for the purpose of removing the wet clothes and replacing them temporarily with some of the contents of Mrs. Brown's wardrobe. St. John remains in the outer room, looks at the clock, behind whose dial-plate a round china-moon-face peeps out; takes up the mugs on the dresser: "For a Good Boy," "A Keepsake from Melford," "A Present from Manchester," hiding amongst numberless gilt flourishes; chivies the tabby cat; counts the flitches of bacon hanging from the rafters; walks to the door, and watches the bees crawling in and out of the low door of their straw houses, and the maroon velvet nasturtiums trailing along the borders, and lifting their round leaves and dark faces up to the knees of the standard rose. As he so stands, whistling softly and musing, some one joins him in the doorway. He turns and beholds Esther, bashful, shame-faced, metamorphosed. To Mrs. Brown's surprise, she has declined the magnanimous offer of her best black silk. There is nothing coquettish or picturesque, as she is aware, about an ill-made dress that tries to follow the fashion and fails--destined, too, for a woman treble her size. She has chosen in preference, a short, dark, linsey petticoat and lilac cotton bedgown, which, by its looseness, can adapt itself to the round slenderness of her tall, lissom figure. Her bonnet was not included in the ruin of her other garments, but she has taken it off, as destructive to the harmony of her costume. St. John surveys her for some moments: looks upward from petticoat to bedgown, and downward from bedgown to petticoat, but observes a discreet silence. "Does it become me?" she asks at last, with shy vanity. "Why do not you say something?" "I have been so unlucky in two or three of my remarks lately," replies he, with a concluding glance at the round, bare arms that emerge whitely from the short cotton sleeves, "that I have become chary of making any more." "You need not be afraid of offending me by telling me that it is unbecoming," she says, gravely--"quite the contrary!"--she continues rather discontentedly--"think that it suits me _too well_, as if it were a dress that I ought to have been born to. Upon Miss Blessington now such a costume would look utterly incongruous." St. John bursts out laughing. "A goddess in a bedgown! Diana of the Ephesians in a linsey petticoat! Perish the thought!" Esther looks mortified, and turns away. The cleansing of Miss Craven's garments is a lengthy operation. Mrs. Brown retreats into her back kitchen, draws forward a washtub, kneels down beside it, turns up her sleeves, and with much splashing of hot water and s lathering of soap, rubs and scrubs, wrings out, dries, and irons the luckless gown and petticoat. It is latish and duskish by the time that St. John and his companion set out on their homeward way. Two or three starflowers have already stolen out, and are blossoming, infinitely distant, in the meadows of the sky. They are not loquacious: it is the little shallow rivulet that brawls; the great deep river runs still. Silently they walk along; her little feet trip softly through the rustling grass beside him: the evening wind blows her light garments against him. He has taken her little gloveless hand as he helps her over a stile (adversity has made her abject, and she no longer spurns his assistance), and now retains it, half absently. Bare palm to bare palm, they saunter through the rich, dim land. It is dusk, but not so dusk but that they can see their dark eyes flashing into one another: sharp, stinging pleasure shoots along their young, full veins. The vocabularies of pain and of delight are so meagre, that each has to borrow from the other to express its own highest height and deepest depth. As they pass along a lane, whose high grass banks and overgrown hawthorn hedges make the coming night already come, Esther's foot stumbles over a stone. The next moment she is in his arms, and he is kissing her repeatedly. "Esther, will you marry me?" he asks, in a passionate whisper, forgetting to make any graceful periphrasis to explain his meaning, using the plain words as they rise in his heart. No answer. Emotions as complicated as intense check the passage of her voice. Even here, on this highest pinnacle of bliss--pinnacle so high that she had hardly dared hope ever to climb there--the thought of Bob and his despair flashes before her: her own remarks about the senselessness of kissing--about its being a custom suited only to savages, and her own great aversion to it--recur to her with a stab of remorse. "You won't?" cries St. John, mistaking the cause of her silence, in a voice in which extreme surprise and profound alarm and pain are mixed in equal quantities. Still no answer. "If you have been making a fool of me all this time, you might, at least, have the civility to tell me so," he says, in a voice so sternly cold that remorse, coyness, and all other feelings merge into womanish fear. "Don't blame me before I deserve it," she says, with a faint smile. "I will mar----" She finishes her sentence on his breast. Perfect happiness never lasts more than two seconds in this world; at the end of that time St. John's doubts return. He puts her a little way from him, that she may be a freer agent. "Esther," he says, "I half believe that you said 'yes' out of sheer fright; you thought I was going to upbraid you; and I am aware" (with a half smile) "that there are few things you would not do or leave undone to avoid a scolding; you did not say it readily, as if you were glad of it. I know that you have only known me three weeks, that I am not particularly likeable, especially by women, and that I always show to the worst possible advantage at home. All I beg of you is, tell me the truth: Do you like me, or do you not?" "I do like you." "Like is such a comprehensive word," he says, with a slight, impatient contracting of his straight brows. "You _like_ Mrs. Brown, I suppose, for washing your clothes?" "I like you better than Mrs. Brown." "I did not doubt that," he answers, laughing; "probably you like me better than Sir Thomas, than my mother, than Constance, perhaps; but such liking as that I would not stoop to pick off the ground. I must be first or nowhere. Am I first?" "No, you are not," she answers firmly. His countenance falls, as Cain's did. "I am not!" he repeats, in a constrained voice. "Who is then, may I ask?" "Jack, my brother--he is, and always will be!" "Bah!" cries Gerard, laughing, and looking immensely relieved. "How you frightened me! I believe you did it on purpose, as you said to me about the brook this afternoon. After him, am I first?" "Yes." "Before----what's his name?--the fellow that writes such a remarkably good hand--before Brandon?" "Why do you always worry me about him?" she exclaims, angrily, turning away. "Why do you so strongly resent being worried about him?" retorts St. John suspiciously. "It is wearisome to hear a person always harping on one string," she answers coldly. "Believe me or not, as you choose; but please spare me the trouble of these repeated and useless asseverations." "I beg your pardon!" he says, his countenance clearing, and passing his arm round her half-shrinking, half-yielding form. "I will never dig him up as long as I live. Peace to his ashes! Oh darling!" he continues, his voice changing to an emphatic, eager, impassioned key--"I have been so little used to having things go as I wish, that I can hardly believe it is I that am standing here. Pinch me, that I may be sure that I am awake! Oh Esther! is it really true? Can you possibly be fond of me? So few people are! Not a soul in the wide world, I do believe, except my old mother. The girl that I told you about last night lay in my arms, and let me kiss her as you are doing; she kissed me back again, as you do not do; I looked into her eyes, and they seemed true as truth itself, and all the while she was _lying_ to me: my very touch must have been hateful to her, as it is to you, perhaps?" "You are always referring to that--that _person_," says Esther, lifting great jealous eyes, and a mouth like a ripe cleft cherry, through the misty twilight towards him. "I perceive that I am only a _pis aller_ after all. If you had ceased to care for her, you would have forgiven her long ago, and have given up measuring everybody else by her standard." "I have forgiven her fully and freely," he answers, magnanimously, and standing heart to heart with a woman ".........fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; More lovely than the monarch of the sky, In wanton Arethusa's azured arms." He may afford to be magnanimous. "I not only forgive her, but hale down blessings on her own and her plunger's ugly head. To be candid," he ends, laughing, "I forgave her a year ago, when I met her at Brainton Station, grown fat, with a red nose, and a tribe of squinting children, who, but for the finger of Providence interposing, might have been mine." Speaking, he lays his lips upon the blossom of her sweet red mouth; but she, pricked with the sudden smart of recollected treachery, draws away from him. "Come," she says, with a slight shiver, "let us go home. We shall get into dreadful disgrace as it is; what will Sir Thomas say?" "I can tell you beforehand," says St. John, gaily; "he will say, with his usual charming candour, that, if we ask his opinion, we are a couple of fools to go gadding about to strange churches just to see a parcel of lighted candles and squeaking little boys and popish mummeries; that, for his part, he has stuck to his parish church for the last fifty years, and means to do so to the end of the chapter; and that, if we don't choose to conform to the rules of his house, &c." "Does he always say the same?" asks Esther, smiling. "Always. A long and affectionate study of his character has enabled me to predicate with exactness what he will say on any great subject, Esther." "How do you know that my name is Esther?" she asks naïvely. "You have never heard any one call me so." "Do you forget the flyleaf of the Prayer-book that----Hang it! I was on the point of uttering the forbidden name!" Smiling, he looks for an answering smile from her, but finds none. "I have heard of you as Esther Craven from my youth up," he continues. "Before you came we speculated as to what 'Esther' Craven would be like; it was only when you arrived _in propriá personâ_ that you rose into the dignity of 'Miss' Craven." "I hate being called Esther," she says, plaintively, with eyes down-drooped to the lush-green grasses that bow and make obeisance beneath her quick feet; "it always makes me feel as if I were in disgrace. Jack never calls me Esther unless he is vexed with me. Call me _Essie_, please." "Essie, then." "Well?" "I think it right to warn you" (putting an arm of resolute possession, bolder than ever poor Brandon's had been, round her supple figure--for who is there in these grey evening fields to witness the embrace?)--"I think it right to warn you that I may very possibly grow like Sir Thomas in time; they tell me that I have a look of him already. I do not see that myself; but, even if that does come to pass, can you promise to like me even then?" "Even then." "I may very probably d--n the servants, and be upset for a whole evening if there are lumps in the melted butter; I may very probably insist on your playing backgammon with me every evening, and insist, likewise, on your being invariably beaten. Can you bear even that?" "Even that." They both laugh; but in Esther's laugh there is a ring of bitterness, which she herself hears, and wonders that he does not. As they near the house, they see thin slits of crimson light through the dining-room shutters. Esther involuntarily quickens her pace. "Why are you in such a hurry?" he asks, his eyes shining eager with reproachful passion in the passionless white starlight. "Who knows? to-morrow we may be dead; to-day we are as gods, knowing good and evil. This walk has not been to you what it has to me, or you would be in no haste to end it." "I don't suppose it has," she answers, half-absently, with a sigh. He had expected an eager disclaimer, and is disappointed. "There can be but one explanation of that," he says, angrily. "If you only knew----," begins Esther, with an uncertain half-inclination to confess, though late. "If you are going to tell me anything disagreeable," he says, quickly putting his hand before her mouth, "stop! Tell me to-morrow, or the day after, but not now--not now! Let there be one day of my life on which I may look back and say, as God said when he looked back upon His new world, 'Behold, it is very good!'" She is silent. "And yet, perhaps, it would be better if I knew the end of your sentence; if I only knew--what?--how little you care about me?" "You are mistaken," she answers, roused into vehemence. "I love you so well, that I have grown hateful to myself!" and having spoken thus oracularly, she raises herself on tiptoe, lifts two shy burning lips to his, and kisses him voluntarily. Then, amazed at her own audacity, clothed with shame as with a garment, she tears herself out of his arms, as in delightful surprise he catches her to his heart, and flies with frenzied haste into the house. CHAPTER XVII. The sweetness of September is that of the last few days spent with a friend that goeth on a very long journey; and we know not whether, when he returneth, we shall go to meet him with outstretched arms, or shall smile up at him only through the eyes of the daisies that flower upon our straight green graves. "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought," and our sweetest seasons are, to my thinking, those in which the ecstasies of possession are mixed with the soft pain of expected parting. A September sun--such a one as warmly kissed the quiet faces of our young dead heroes, as they lay thick together on Alma's hill-side--is shining down with even mildness upon the just and the unjust, upon Constance Blessington's grass-green gown as she sits at breakfast, and on the hair crown of yellow gold with which Providence has seen fit to circle her dull fair brows. "I think that you must have regretted being in such a hurry to run away from the garden and us," she is saying, with a gentle smile of lady-like malice, to Esther, _à propos_ of her yesterday's misadventure. "Sitting in the shade eating nectarines is certainly pleasanter occupation than grovelling on your hands and knees on a mud-bank," replies Esther, demurely. "St. John is so terribly energetic!" says Miss Blessington, rather lackadaisically; "he would have walked me off the face of the earth long ago if I had let him." Remembering the Chinese invitation, Esther cannot repress an involuntary smile. "What about St. John?" says the young man, entering; having caught his own name, with that wonderful acuteness of hearing with which every one is endowed when themselves are in question. "Much better have stuck to your parish church," says Sir Thomas, brandishing a large red and yellow bandanna, which is part of the old English costume, "than gone scrambling heigh-go-mad over hedges and ditches after new-fangled Puseyite mummeries!" Gerard and his betrothed exchange a glance of intelligence. Gerard is looking slightly sentimental; his head is a little on one side; but on his discovering that he is an object of attention to Constance, it returns rather suddenly to the perpendicular. Esther's eyes are brillianter than their wont; her cheeks are flushed with a deeper hue than the crimson lips of a foreign shell, but it is not the flush of a newly-departed sleep. The angel of slumber has passed by the portals of her brain, as the destroying angel passed by the blood-painted lintels of Israel. Thoughts sweeter than virgin honey, thoughts bitterer than gall, have kept her wakeful. Ere she went to bed, she spent three hours in writing letters of dismissal to Brandon, and at the end left him undismissed. "I _cannot_ write it to him!" she cries, sitting up in bed in the dark, and flinging out blind arms into the black nothingness around her; "anything written sounds so harsh, so abrupt, so hard. I must tell him myself very gradually and gently, and tell him how sorry I am, and beg him to forgive me, and cry--go down on my knees, perhaps. No; I should look such a fool if I did that! After all, no one cries long over spilt milk--least of all any one so sensible and utterly unimaginative as poor dear Bob." And with that, thinking in a disparaging, hold-cheap way of him and his love, she turns the pillow over to try and find a cooler place on the under side for her burning face to rest on. * * * * * "Two dissyllabic names now passing many mouths by three dissyllabic names are here expressed," reads Miss Blessington, with distinct gravity, after breakfast that morning, out of an acrostic book that lies on the work-table before her, while Esther sits opposite with pencil and paper, ready to write down the products of the joint wisdom of their two minds. But the top of the pencil is being bitten by the young scribe's short white teeth, and her eyes are straying away absently--away through the open window and out to the sunshiny sward, where two of St. John's dogs, forbidden by Sir Thomas on pain of death, to set paw within the house, are rolling over one another, making abortive bites at each other's hind legs, and waggishly, with much growling and mumbling, taking each other's heads into their mouths. "That is the whole," continues Constance. "These are the proofs; a woman, a wise man, a king, a poet, a beauty!" Silence. "A woman!" says Miss Blessington, cogitatively, resting her smooth chin on her hand, and looking vaguely round at the cabinets and busts for inspiration. Esther makes no suggestion. "A woman!" repeats Miss Blessington, raising her voice a little. Esther comes back to consciousness with a little jump. "Oh! I beg your pardon; I don't think I was attending. A----what did you say?" "A woman!" repeats Miss Blessington, for the third and last time. "A woman!" echoes Esther, vacantly; "that is rather vague, is it not? There have been a good many women, one way or another." "Let us try the next, then," says Constance, obligingly: "A wise man." "Solomon!" answers Esther, glibly. "I said a _dis_syllable name," remarks Constance, with gentle asperity. The door opens, and St. John enters. "Tell us a wise man's name?" "Who was a wise man?" cry they both in a breath. "Solomon!" replies St. John, brilliantly. "So I said," says Esther, smiling; "but, unluckily, it must be a _two_-syllabled wise man. I'm afraid that it would be disrespectful to abbreviate him into _Solmon_, wouldn't it?" "One ought to be provided with a Bible, a Lemprière, and an encyclopædia before one attempts to grapple with these devices of Satan," says Gerard, sitting down on the arm of the sofa beside Constance and looking over her shoulder. "A woman! Who is the woman?" "We have not found out yet." "A king! Who is the king?" "We have not found out yet." "You seem to be on the highroad to success," says he, laughing, and throwing himself back lazily. "We have only just begun," says Miss Blessington, a little reproachfully. "You and Miss Craven are always so impatient." "There are a great many two-syllabled kings' names," says Esther, with a prodigious effort to look intelligent and interested: "Edward, Henry, Louis, Ahab, Alfred, Joash!" "I daresay it is one of those Jewish kings," says Constance, reflectively; "they are always fond of introducing Bible names into acrostics. Is there a Bible anywhere about, St. John?" St. John walks slowly round the well-laden tables; looks over photograph books, Doré's "Elaine," Flaxman's "Dante;" but in vain. He comes back, and shakes his head. "I will go and fetch one," says Constance, rising with noiseless grace, and rustling softly away among the console tables. "May she long be occupied in searching the Scriptures for a dissyllabic king!" cries Gerard, drawing a long breath, and yawning as the door closes behind her. "I am glad she is gone," says Esther, looking rather embarrassed, "as I have something to say to you." "Say on." "I must go home to-morrow," she continues, drawing hideous faces and wooden-legged cows on her bit of paper. "Are you beginning to try experiments on me already?" he asks, incredulously, leaning his folded arms on the little table which forms a barrier between them. "No; but I have received a letter from Jack this morning, which----" "Which you are going to read to me?" "Oh, no--no!" she answers, hastily, putting her hand in involuntary protection over her pocket; "it--it--wouldn't interest you." (It would have interested him rather too much.) "He seems to be missing me a good deal." "Be honest," says St. John, stretching out his hand and taking hers captive, pencil and all. "Does he miss you as much as I shall?" "More, a good deal, I should say," she replies, looking up with an arch smile; "I don't make your tea, and order your dinner, and darn your socks. One, two, three, four weeks," continues she, marking each number with her slender fingers on the table. "I have actually been here nearly a month, and" (with a half-absent sigh), "do you know, the very day I left home I told them----" "Who's them?" She blushes furiously. "Them--did I say them? Oh! I meant _him_, of course--Jack." "Does he always speak of himself in the plural, like a king, or a reviewer?" "Nonsense!" cries Esther, pulling away her hand rather impatiently. "Do you never make slips of the tongue?" "Frequently. Well, you must write and tell _them_" (with a laughing emphasis on the _them_) "that they must get some one else to darn their socks, for that you have found something better to do." "I could not have anything better," she answers, reddening with indignation. "You don't understand about Jack, or you would not make jokes!" "It is a fault I'm not often guilty of; being funny never was my besetting sin," he answers, drily. "Essie, whenever you do go home, I have a great mind to go with you--if you will invite me." "Oh, no, don't!" she cries, with involuntary eagerness, the pencil dropping from between her fingers. "I believe you are ashamed of me," he says, angrily, walking off to the window to hide the flush of vexation which is invading his weather-worn cheeks. "Ashamed of myself more likely," she cries, jumping up suddenly and following him. "Why?" "You fine gentlemen do not understand the "'short and simple annals of the poor,'" she answers, with a forced laugh. "You would probably be in the position of Mother Hubbard's singularly ill-used dog; "When you came there, The cupboard was bare.'" "You think that gluttony, like gout, must be hereditary," says Gerard, laughing again, and yet looking very tender withal--not with the puling, milk-and-water tenderness of a green love-sick boy, but with the condensed, strong passion of a world-worn, world-tainted, half world-weary-grown man. "There are other reasons too," says Essie, drooping her eyelids, over which the small blue veins-- "wandering, leave a tender stain--" with a maiden's shyness, under the new-known fire of a lover's gaze. "What other reasons?" "I have never mentioned anything about you to Jack!" she answers, twisting her one paltry ring round her finger. "I don't suppose he is aware of your existence, unless he has bought a new 'Baronetage' since I left home--a piece of extravagance that I do not think he is likely to have been guilty of: and he would think it so odd if I were to appear suddenly on the scene, dragging you in tow." "That would be easily explained," replies St. John, gravely, drawing himself up, and looking rather too conscious of the eight centuries of Norman blood in his strong veins. "I suppose that a man may be allowed to travel for a few hours in company with his future wife without any one being straightlaced enough or behind the world enough to call it _odd!_" "Your future wife!" she repeats, with a dreamy, mournful smile. "Am I that? I think not. I shall _never_ be your wife," she says, a look of melancholy inspiration crossing and darkening, as a travelling cloud crosses and darkens the blue eyes of a June brook, the sweet red and sweeter white of her little piquante face. "Do you know any just cause or impediment why you should not be?" he asks, gaily. "None," she answers, shuddering a little, as she has got into the habit of doing lately--"except" (throwing herself impulsively into his glad arms) "that it would make me so intolerably happy!" There is a pause--a little brief pause--in which that shyest, fleetest-winged of earth's visitants--Happiness--folds her pinions and settles down for a little minute on two beating, trembling human hearts. "Do you know," continues Essie, after awhile--raising herself, and looking up, with tears glistening, like dew on the autumn grass, upon her long swart lashes--"Do you know that in a book I was reading the other day I met this sentence: 'Le bonheur sur terre est un crime puni de mort comme le génie, comme la divinité'? It has haunted me ever since yesterday." "As far as that goes," he answers, thoughtfully, "there is nothing in this world that is not punished with death, except Death himself. Well" (smiling fondly, and stroking her ruffled, scented love-locks), "may I come? may I be Mother Hubbard's dog?" "Why do you want to come _now_, particularly?" she asks, in rather a troubled voice. "Because I am a coward," he answers, laughing--"because I like a quiet life, and I imagine that there will be squally weather here when I announce my intention of taking you as a helpmeet for me." "I _am_ a _mésalliance_, I suppose?" she answers, rather sadly. "What will Sir Thomas say? Anything very bad?" "Oh, nothing out of the way," answers Gerard, with a careless shrug. "He will call me an ass, and tell me that I always was, from a boy, the biggest fool he ever came across; and that, for his part, he'll wash his hands of me: and he'll probably conclude with a threat of cutting me off with a shilling." "And will he?" asks Esther, quickly, looking up eager-eyed, parted-lipped. "Why do you ask?" said the young man, sharply. "Do you think that I want to marry a _beggar?_" inquires she, playfully, not detecting his suspicion. "You need not be alarmed," he replies, coldly, and his arms slacken their fond hold a little. "He will not, for the very excellent reason that he cannot." The door handle, turning, rattles. With one spring, Esther returns to her seat--to her deserted cows and impossible profiles. St. John looks out of the window. No transformation scene at Drury Lane could be more complete. "Ahab--Jehu--Zimri--Omri--Joash!" recites Miss Blessington, entering, with an open Bible in her hand. CHAPTER XVIII. "I am afraid you must think it very rude of us, leaving you alone on the last evening of your visit," says Miss Blessington next day to Esther, as the two girls stand together in the conservatory, picking bits of heliotrope and maidenhair, and regardless of the ten and twenty little pots that their long gowns have knocked down; "but, you see, it is such a long-standing engagement, and we can so seldom induce Sir Thomas to go to a ball, that we really could hardly get out of it." She speaks politely, with that friendly suavity that one feels on the ultimate and penultimate days of their stay to a guest that one is glad to be rid of. "Oh, never mind me," says Essie, lightly; "I can always amuse myself: and, besides, it will be very nearly bedtime by the time you go." "They intend me to go with them," St. John had said to her overnight, _à propos_ of this ball, "and of course I intend it too; only some prophetic instinct tells me that my head will begin to ache prodigiously towards dressing-time. I am half divided between that and toothache, only I suppose that the latter necessitates the simulating of acute bodily torture, and subjects one to unlimited offers of boiled figs, hopbags, laudanum, and the Lord knows what." Gerard had found his betrothed stubborner than he had expected as to her expressed resolution of departure. Looking at the childish roundness of her soft face, at the dewy meekness of her heavenly eyes, he had fancied her malleable by his hand, as clay by the potter's; and so, in most things, she would have been. In most things, it was to her easier to yield than to resist--less trouble--and, besides, it pleased people; but in the one prime passion of her life, her love for her brother, you might as well try to move the Tower of London with your finger and thumb as to stir her. After half an hour of arguments, persuasions, caresses, St. John is constrained vexedly to own to himself that in that young faithful heart _lover_-love holds as yet only the second place. The sole concession he could win from her was that of one day, the day of the ball. "We may imagine the clock put on thirty years, and ourselves already in possession," he says, laughing--"only minus the gout and wrinkles and spectacles we shall also have come into possession of by then." * * * * * "What the devil do people mean," says Sir Thomas, entering the morning-room that evening after dinner, with his hair brushed up into a stiff cockatoo, and tugging away at a huge pair of white kid gloves, off which he has already succeeded in bursting both buttons, "dragging a man away from his own fireside to see a lot of fools cutting capers, and flourishing their heels in each other's faces?" From Sir Thomas's description one would imagine that the Cancan was habitually danced at the balls he frequents. The door opens, and Miss Blessington makes her appearance; looking, not vain or conscious, but calmly defiant of any one to make a better--a triumph of lace and tulle and flowers, and milk-white flesh, and grand, cold curves and contours. "Oh, how beautiful!" cries Essie, clasping her little hands, with the unaffected admiration of one handsome woman for another. "I know it is rude to make personal remarks; but is not she, Lady Gerard?" "It is a pretty dress," replies miladi, whose unwieldy bulk not even the cunningest of Parisian _couturières_ has been able to fashion into anything nearer than an approximation to any shape at all; "but I never think that Elise's taste is as good as Jane Clarke's used to be." Constance has walked to a pier-glass, and is examining with anxiety a bite that a gnat has been savage enough to inflict on her face, a little under the lower lip, and which has been disturbing her wonted composed serenity ever since 3 p.m., when the catastrophe took place. "Does it show much?" she asks, turning with a concerned, serious look to Esther. "Oh no! hardly at all." "I think I will put a little bit of sticking-plaster on it," she continues, gravely. "It will only look like a patch; and patches are always so becoming." "Let me go and get you a bit!" cries Essie, good-naturedly, running off. When she returns Sir Thomas is saying, fussily: "Now, why is not that boy dressed? Always the same! Always late! Never in time for anything!" "He is not coming, Sir Thomas; he has got a headache, and is gone to lie down--at least he said so," replies Constance, coldly, but casting a scrutinising glance at Esther (who is deftly, with a small pair of scissors, cutting out a little circle of sticking-plaster) as she speaks. "Stuff and nonsense!" cries "that boy's" papa, angrily--"a pack of lies! A fine Miss Molly you have made of your son, miladi! He'll be afraid of going out shooting next year for fear of getting his feet wet!" "Is that about the right size?" inquires Esther, timidly, raising a pair of guilty pink cheeks, and exhibiting the result of her labours on the point of the scissors. "Good God! miladi, do take that plaguy long tail of yours up! How the devil can I help treading on it?" These are the last sweet words of Sir Thomas, as he follows wife and ward into the carriage. They are gone, and Essie sits down in the large empty room to await the resurrection of her lover. The sort of shy half-fear which always assails her at his expected approach comes over her more strongly than ever. A distant door bangs faintly somewhere about the house; then another nearer. "He is coming!" she says to herself, and the quick blood rushes tingling to her fingers' ends. It is a hot night, and the tall French windows stand unshuttered and open. Some impulse of timid coquetry urges her to flee from before him: she is ashamed that he should see the plain letters of joy written on her face at his coming: she would fain have yet a few moments of the happiness of expectancy, to whose delights those of reality are but seldom comparable. From the terrace a flight of stone steps leads down, with many a twist, to the mere. In a minute Essie has run lightly down, and is standing by the water's edge. The dahlias are nodding their round drowsy heads, and the sentinel hollyhocks stand up stiff and pompous with their clustered flower-spikes--rulers and law-givers among the flower-people; the little ripples are biting with playful tooth the low sedge-banks, and the tall bulrush forest, whence the coot and the waterhen families sailed out into life in the warm spring weather. To and fro rock the heavy, lazy, water-lily leaves, whose bloom-time is past two months ago. Through her garden, the sky, the high moon walks stately, holding her silver lamp, in whose light all things shine deliciously. Essie stands entranced. It seems to her like the intermediate residence of some happy soul, freed from the world's toil and moil, shrived from sin, emancipated from life, where it should dwell in tempered bliss till that last day when heaven's brighter glories, stronger raptures, should burst upon and clothe it for aye. She strolls along the narrow gravel path, bathing her hands with childish delight in the moonbeams, and then stoops and picks up two or three little stones that the night's sweet alchemy has gifted with a bright short glory not their own. So stooping, she hears a man's quick firm foot running down the garden steps. She raises herself, and goes to meet him with "a moonlight-coloured smile" on her face. "Aren't they lovely?" she asks, holding up her pebbly treasures for him to look at. Not speaking, he takes the little pink palm, stones and all, into his hand, and looks into her face; and then, as if yielding to a temptation that he hates, that he would fain resist, and to which, being over-strong, he must yet succumb, he snatches her to his breast, and kisses her fiercely--eyelids, lips, and neck--with a violence he is himself hardly conscious of. "Stop!" she cries, surprised, half-shocked, pushing him away from her. "What do you mean? You frighten me!" He recollects himself instantly, and releases her. "It _is_ alarming being kissed, especially when you are not used to it," he answers, with a sneer. She looks up at him in blank astonishment. Has he gone mad? Is it the moonlight that has given him that white wrathy look? "Something has happened!" she says, quickly. "What is it? tell me!" "Oh! nothing--a mere bagatelle!" he replies, with a little bitter laugh. "It is only that I have been hearing a pleasant piece of news." "What is it?" "Only that an acquaintance of mine is going to be married!" "Is it an acquaintance of mine too?" "About the most intimate you have, I should say: yourself, in fact!" "Is that news?" she asks, trying to smile. "I _am_ going to be married, am not I, to you?" "I am not aware that my name is--Brandon," he answers, coldly, while his sorrowful, fierce eyes go through her heart like poisoned arrows. She turns her head aside and groans. A great vague darkness blots out the broad moon, and the stars' thick cohorts; the bright water beside her grows black as hell's sluggish rivers. He had not known how much he had been buoyed up by hope till that mute gesture of hers bid him despair. "It's true, then?" he asks in a voice of sharp rage and anguish, catching hold of the white wonder of her arm, on which his fingers, unwittingly cruel, leave crimson prints. "Is _what_ true?" she asks, faintly, trying for yet a little longer to stave off Fate, to push away Nemesis, with her weak woman-fingers. "That you are--God! am I choking?--engaged to Brandon?" "I was once," she falters under her breath. "How long ago?" "When first I came here." "And since then you have written to break it off?" he asks, while a tone of joyful hope vibrates in his deep voice. "No, I have not," she answers, in a frightened whisper. St. John's face gathers blackness. "I am to understand, then," he resumes, in a constrained voice, out of which the man's strong will keeps the pent passion from bursting forth, "that you belonged to him at the time when I kept you out of bed one night to listen to an interesting chapter in my own autobiography?" "Yes." "And when, in reply to my inquiries, you denied having any connection beyond common acquaintance with--with him?" "Yes." "And when you were good enough to overlook all trifling obstacles, and to consent to marry me?" "Yes." The little catechism ended, the last cobweb of doubt torn away, they stand dumb. Esther's guilty head sinks down on her breast as a flower's head sinks overladen with rain. Suddenly she looks up and stretches out her arms. "Speak to me!" she says, huskily. "Curse me! strike me! call me some bad name--only speak!" "I wish to God you were a man!" he answers, in a hard, low voice; while his straight brows draw together into one dark line across his face, and his lips look white and thin under his moustache. "That you might _kill_ me!" she says, incoherent with excitement. "Well, kill me now! If revenge is so pleasant to you, I give you leave!" "Let us have no heroics, please," says he, contemptuously; "you don't appear to be aware that it is not the fashion for English gentlemen to murder women who make fools of them. It may be a sensible practice, but it is at present confined to the _tiers état_." Having spoken, he makes a slight movement to depart. "Are you going to give me up?" she cries, smiting her hands together, and forgetting in her great dismay to reflect whether the remonstrance accorded well with her dignity or not. "I have no claim upon you," he answers, icily. "What do you mean?" she cries, passionately. "You are unjust. There could be nothing too bad for _him_ to say of me, but what injury have I done you? You ought to thank me and praise me for having been wicked and dishonourable and double-dealing for your sake." "For my sake!" he repeats, with a sardonic smile. "I am hardly so conceited as to take it personally." "What do you mean?" she asks, quickly. "If I did not do it for your sake, for whose did I?" He is silent. "Do you mean," she inquires, slowly, her cheeks paling to the whiteness of snowdrops blowing, "that you think I gave him up because I wanted to be a grand lady--because I wanted to have all these fine things" (looking round at the flowering gardens, at the broad lake, at the stately house shimmering in the moonshine) "belonging to me?" Still he holds his peace. "Is that what you meant?" she repeats, urgently. "I meant," he says, looking up, his eyes flashing with a hard, metallic gleam, "that you thought a rich man a better investment than a poor one, and, being equally and conveniently indifferent to both, you thought it wisest to select the former." "If such is your opinion of me," she says, turning away indignantly, "I don't wonder at your being in such a hurry to be rid of me!" He looks askance at her out of the corners of his eyes. She has hidden her face in her hands, but by the panting breast and heaved white shoulder he sees that she is weeping--that a storm of sobs is shaking her childish frame. "I am in a hurry to be rid of you!" he says, harshly, steeling himself against her. "From a woman who could throw a man over with the deliberate, cold-blooded artlessness you have done, one may well sing 'Te Deum' for being rescued in time." She flings up her little head proudly, and the dusk splendour of her eyes blazes through great tears. "Listen to me!" she says, laying hold of his arm with one small burning hand. "I am a bad girl, I know, but I am not the calculating, mercenary wretch you take me for. I tell you honestly that the first day I came here--I had never been staying at a great house before--I thought it must be pleasant to live in large rooms, and have gilt and ormolu and fine pictures about one, and to have carriages and horses and servants, and not to be obliged to think twice before one spent sixpence; and I thought, too" (her long neck droops, and she blushes painfully as she makes the confession), "what a pity it was that I was already engaged, for that otherwise, as I was pretty, you might have taken a fancy to me----" She stops, choked with maiden shame. Upon his averted face an enduring flush, like a hectic autumn leaf's, burns red and angry. "But as soon as I saw you, almost," she continues, commanding her tears with great difficulty--"as soon as you spoke to me, all such thoughts went out of my head. I don't know why they did," she says, simply. "You were not particularly pleasant or civil; I did not think you good-looking, and you gave me the idea of being ill-tempered; but" (with a sigh) "one cannot reason about those sort of things. I began to think so much about what you _were_, that I forgot to remember what you had." He makes no comment upon her confession. "Do you believe me?" she asks, eagerly, her little fingers tightening their clasp upon his coat-sleeve. Still he is dumb. "Do you?" she repeats, excitedly, the quick breath passing to and fro pantingly across the threshold of her crimson lips. "Why do you insist on making me uncivil?" he says, with a sarcastic smile. "I do _not_ believe you. I dare say you fancy you are telling truth; but if another man were to come on the scene with a few thousands a-year more, and a higher position in the social scale, you would enact the same part over again. Women must be true to their instincts. Those who are bent on rising must kick down the ladder by which they have climbed: it is an irreversible law." "You are mistaken," she says, eagerly. "I have no desire to climb; if I came here with any silly, childish idea that rich people were happier than poor ones, I have been quite disillusioned. Bob" (how oddly the little unromantic name comes in among her heroics!)--"Bob is a happier man than you are, though he is only a lieutenant in a foot regiment, and has next to nothing to live upon." "I have no doubt that _Bob_" (with a little sneering emphasis on the monosyllable) "is in all respects a very superior person to me," says St. John, with a bitter pale smile, like a gleam of wrathful sunlight on a day of east wind and clouds and driving sleet. "I quite agree with you," she answers eagerly, her great eyes flashing angry, like unwonted meteors that blaze fitful in the winter sky, "and I wish to Heaven I had never left him!" Over Gerard's features a spasm, contracting and puckering them, passes ugly and painful; his hands clench themselves in the mightiness of his effort to govern his smitten soul. "That is easily remedied," he answers, after a little pause, in a clear cold voice. "Why should not you go back to him as you came? There is no reason why he should ever hear of this--this _episode_, this _interlude_, this _farce_." "And you think that I am to be bandied about like a bale of goods!" she cries, scornfully, voice trembling and lip quivering with passion. "You are like the woman in the Judgment of Solomon, who said, 'Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it!' _You_ love me! You never did!" "Perhaps not," he answers, with slow difficulty; "perhaps what I loved was my ideal that I fancied I had found in you, and when I found I was mistaken, perhaps the love went too! My God, I wish it had!" Through the proud calmness of his voice penetrates a tone of bitter, unwilling tenderness. Hearing it, her whole soul is melted into fresh, quick tears. "It is not my ideal, or any one else's, that I love in you!" she cries, stretching out eager white arms towards him; "it is yourself--your very self! Oh, if I could but tear out my heart, and show it you! Oh! why won't you believe me?" He looks at her--looks at the innocently-wooing arms, at the tear-stained, dimpled, tremulous face--and feels his resolution wasting away like wax before the fire, as Samson's wasted away in Delilah's lap. He turns his eyes away across the cool silvered flood, and hardens his heart against her. "Why cannot you?" she repeats, in her sweet, vibrating voice. "Because I have not the faith that removes mountains," he answers, harshly; "because a thing must be probable, or at least possible, before I can give credit to it; because I am unable to understand how, for a man whom you confess to having thought ill-looking, ill-tempered, and ill-mannered, you could, out of pure disinterested love, throw over one to whom you must, at least, have pretended to be sincerely attached." "I never pretended anything of the kind," she answers, vehemently. "If you don't believe me, ask him. I was engaged to him because he seemed unhappy, and because I did not see any particular reason why I should not, and because he asked me." Through all his bitter, surging wrath, St. John can hardly forbear a smile. "And you became engaged to me because I asked you?" he says, drily. "At that rate, there is no reason why the number of your aspirants should not be increased _ad infinitum_. "And were you going to play the play out to the end, may I ask, and _marry_ us both?" he inquires, in the same cutting key. No woman can stand being sneered at; she much prefers having the tables and chairs flung at her head. "Do you think it manly or witty to jeer at me," cries Essie, stung almost to madness by his taunts, "because I have been fool enough to desert for you a man worth a hundred of you?" Gerard stands motionless in the moonlight, with folded arms, and a chill, painful smile on his stern mouth. "I have already announced my conviction of his superiority, and have advised you to return to him," he says. "Do you mean _really?_" asks Essie, her wild, wide eyes flaming in half-incredulous fear on his face. "I do," he answers, with icy steadiness. "And you have done with me altogether?" she says, brokenly, her tears forcing their way through her slight shielding fingers, and falling one after another, slow and heavy, on the stones at her feet. "Serve me right!--Serve me right!" Once again, intoxicated by her great fairness, he goes nigh to pardoning her; once again his obstinate will comes to his aid. "If I were to marry you now," he says, resolutely, "my life would be one long suspicion: I should love you madly, and should disbelieve in you." With that, and his saying he should love her madly, a little creeping hope steals warmly about her heart. "Why should you disbelieve in me?" she asks, putting out a timid peace-making hand. "Because a faith once broken can never be mended," he answers, sternly--"it may be patched up, but a patched faith will not do to go through life with; because a woman who has deceived a man once for one object may deceive him a second time for another. I should never," he says (words coming quicker and emotion deepening as he proceeds), "look in your sweet eyes without thinking I read some treachery in them; I should never press your heart against mine without fearing that it was beating for some one else." She withdraws her rejected hand, and falls to weeping sorelier than ever, but very mutely. "What madness induced you to tell me so many lies?" he cries, passionately, with mournful severity. "Were you bent on putting a gulf, that could never be bridged through all eternity, between us? Did not you know that that is the one sin I could never forget or forgive?" She looks down humbled and crestfallen, and says, sobbingly, "I was afraid of you. I thought that, if I told you, I should lose you as I have done now, without telling you. I was on the point of speaking two or three times, but you looked so angry that my courage failed, and I _dared_ not." "Afraid of me!" he says, reproachfully. "By your own showing, then, you could not have loved me perfectly, for 'perfect love casteth out fear,' If you are afraid of me, it is indeed time for us to part." "I see you are bent on misconstruing every word I say," she says, hopelessly, and yet with a little petulant movement of shoulder and head, "and so I'll hold my tongue." He looks at her, not relentingly, but with infinite sadness. "I almost wish that Constance had left me in my Fool's Paradise!" he says. "Constance!" exclaims Esther, quickly. "Was it she that told you?" "It was," he answers, quietly: "she heard it this morning; she was annoyed with me for not going to the ball, and chose this ingenious and, I must say, complete mode of revenge." "What _had_ I done to her?" says Essie, bringing her two hands together sharply, and looking upwards to Heaven's great black, blue floor above her, "Thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." "What _had_ I done to her," she says, in a sort of wonder, "that she should do me such a mischief?" Looking at her as she stands with upturned eyes, like some sweet prayerful saint or penitent Magdalen, drawn by a cunning hand that has been resolved three centuries back into elemental dust--dust that has stopped a bunghole perhaps, like Alexander's--Gerard's resolution breaks a little; not his resolution of parting from her--_that_ remains firm as ever--but his power of so parting with nonchalant coldness. "Child!" he cries, a little roughly, and yet with a half-groan, placing a hand heavily on each of her shoulders--"Child! why are you so pretty? If it was your nature to be deceitful and underhand, why could not you be ugly too? Your beauty is the one thing about you that I believe in, and it drives me distracted!" "And yet," she answers, with a melancholy smile, "you told me just now, very calmly, to go back to--to _him:_ you seemed to contemplate with great equanimity the prospect of seeing me and my _distracting beauty_" (with a bitter emphasis) "in another man's possession." "You are mistaken," he answers, with quick violence. "By God's help, I'll never see you again after to-night." Hearing that heavy sentence, her knees tremble beneath her a little; a momentary dimness comes over her eyes; voice, breath, and heart seem to suspend their functions. No word of protest, of lamentation, of entreaty, crosses her whitened lips. "What right have I to be with you?" he asks, indignantly--"I, who cannot see you without coveting you? What right have I to steal another man's wife, any more than his horse or his money?" "Let me go, then," she answers, with a low, moaning sigh--"since it must be so. You know what is right better than I do. Good-bye!" "Good-bye!" he answers, very shortly, and turns away his head sharply, that only the lake and the stars may see the distortion that the passion of that parting is working on his face. "Say you forgive me before I go!" says the tender, tremulous voice, that might unman a hero--might unsaint an anchorite--as she lingers yet a little minute beside him. "Why should I say what is not true?" he asks, turning round roughly upon her. "I don't forgive you, and never shall, either in this world or the next." "You must!" she says, sobbingly, the words coming a little wildly through a tempest of tears. "I cannot go unless you do; if I went now, I should remember you all my life as you are to-day; to-day would blot out all the happy hours we have been together!" For all answer he turns away from her, and buries his face in his hands. "Look at me kindly once again!" she says, calmness growing out of her strong emotion, putting up her two small hands and trying to draw his away from before his hidden face. "I may be very wicked; I suppose I am--as you say so--mean, underhand, deceitful; but yet, for the sake of what is gone, look at me kindly once again: that won't hurt you, as it is for the very last time!" Still Gerard remains speechless--not from obstinacy, but because he cannot command his voice: and his pride revolts from speaking shakily, quaveringly, like an hysterical woman or paralytic old man. "If I were a thief, or a murderer!" she says, indignantly, withdrawing her hands, "you could not turn from me with greater loathing!" "You are a murderer!" he answers, with fierce vehemence, looking at her once again as she had asked him--looking at her with wrathful, reluctant passion, but not kindly. "You have murdered my whole future--my hope, my belief in women, in truth--my everything of life but what is merely animal. If you had murdered my body I could have forgiven you much more easily. Time or disease must have done that sooner or later, but now--" He stops abruptly. "If I am a murderer, I am a suicide too," she replies, with a smile more tearful than her tears. "St. John," she says, earnestly, "don't you know that people always attend to dying requests, however foolish and unreasonable they may be? This of mine is a dying request, for after to-night I shall be dead to you. Say, 'Essie, I forgive you.'" "What is it to you whether I forgive you or not?" he inquires, sullenly, with a certain savage pulling and biting of his moustache. "Are you mistaking me for Brandon again? Why should two indifferent acquaintances like us go through the farce of begging each other's pardons? What are we to one another?" "Nothing," she answers, calmly; "you need not be so eager to remind me of that; my memory needs no refreshing; but we _have been_ something--do what you will you cannot take that away from me--so for the sake of that 'have been,' say you forgive me!" "Falsehoods don't pass my lips so glibly as they do yours," he answers, doggedly. "If I were to say, 'I forgive you' a thousand times, I should be no nearer the doing it. Good-bye!" he says again, abruptly, putting out his hand; feeling that the strain is too great for him, and that if it last much longer he, being but human, will break under it. Her answering farewell is to fling herself upon his breast. "I can no more say 'good-bye,'" she says, desperately, in a passionate whisper, "than you can say 'I forgive you.' St. John, take me back, try me once again! I know I ought not to say it--that it is undignified, unwomanly, perhaps--but I cannot see my everything going away from me without reaching out a hand to stop it. Oh, my darling! give me one more trial!" Her arms cling about his brown throat close as the bindweed clings about the hedges in sultry August; her white warm breast heaves and pants against his, as the sea heaves and pants against the shore's tawny sides; her eyes, impassioned as only dark eyes can be--alluring, despairing--flame into his eyes, and down through his eyes into his heart. Prisoned in those sweet, frail fetters, he feels strength and name and fame ebbing from him, as Merlin's ebbed under Vivien's wily charm. "Is not it better to be tricked by such a woman," Passion whispers, "than to spend long æons of unswerving fidelity with one less maddeningly fair? Were not such moments of ecstasy very cheaply purchased, even by years of suspicion and deceit?" But Will and Honour push her back with their strong right hands. "She has deceived you once, and therefore she will deceive you twice. She is enacting _this_ melodrama on _your_ breast: she may enact the next on another man's. Put her away!--put her away!" Hearkening to them, he, with a groan as of one that teareth out his right eye, with relentless fingers unfastens her arms from about his neck. "_Your_ darling!" he says, contemptuously; "you are forgetting whom you are addressing!" "I am, indeed," she answers, with a sudden revulsion of feeling; "but it is a mistake that one does not make twice in a lifetime." "I hope not," he answers, taking, refuge in surly rudeness from the almost overpowering temptation to fall at her feet and say, "Essie, come to me! deceive me! outwit me! overreach me; do what you please, I cannot help it! If there were a thousand Brandons and ten thousand treacheries between us, I _must_ be yours, and you _must_ be mine!" "I have degraded myself once to the dust before you," rejoins Essie, in a voice that tries to be angry, but is only trembling; "but there is no fear of my doing it again. And yet," she continues, after a pause, her soft nature making it more difficult for her to part from him in anger than to incur his contempt by again descending to supplication--"and yet, since I have confessed to having been wicked, you might as well forgive me. How much the better will you be for going through life with the consciousness that you have made one wretched woman even more unhappy than she would otherwise have been? You forgave that other girl who deceived you because she did not love you. Forgive me, who deceived you, because I loved you too well!" "I forgave her," he answers, sternly, "because I had ceased to care about her--because what she stole from me had lost its value. Perhaps at some future period I may be in the same frame of mind towards you; at present I am some way off it. I neither can forgive you, nor have I the slightest wish to do so!" Seeing that she is abasing herself in vain, she refrains. "Well, then, since you wish it, so it must be," she answers, with meek despair; and catching suddenly his hand before he has time to prevent her, she kisses it very humbly and sorrowfully. Then, unforgiven, unrecalled, she passes away. And Gerard, the battle over, the victory won, sits down on a garden-seat, and cries like a child for his pretty lost plaything. CHAPTER XIX. And so that act of the play is finished: all the actors have strutted and fumed and fretted through their little parts, and now the curtain has fallen. When next it rises, the principal actress in this tragic drama is discovered lying full-dressed on her bed; her pretty face buried--eyes, nose, and mouth--in the tumbled pillow; her little neat-shod feet hanging over the bedside. She looks as if she had been thrown there, an inert, passive mass, by some spiteful giant. Six miles away, at Lord ----'s ball, the fiddles are squeaking, and the pink-and-green Chinese lanterns swinging to and fro among the orange boughs in the slight wind made by the rustling dresses and passing men and women. Sir Thomas, with his hands in their burst white gloves under his coat tails, and his blue-cloth back leaning against a marble mantel-piece, is talking sweetly, in his hard, rasping voice, of scab and foot-rot. Miladi is gone down to supper for the sixth time on the sixth devoted married man's arm; she is eating game pie, and drinking sherry and champagne and moselle in turns. Miss Blessington, sweeping about on the arm of a small white gentleman, whose estate is as large as his person is minute, is responding a little superciliously to a presumptuous younger son, who, annihilated by her Greek profile and Juno bust, has invited her to tread a measure with him. "No, tha--anks; I never da--ance round da--ances." Meanwhile Esther lies stretched upon the counterpane, while a gloomy pageant of all that she has lost passes before her eyes. Greedier than the dog in the fable, she had tried to keep shadow and substance: Gerard's love, Brandon's liking. Now, lo! both have fallen into the water. There are a few circles, a few rising bubbles; then all is over--gone, sunk to the bottom, to come up again never more. Vanished from her grasp is the great house--are the buhl and marqueterie cabinets--are the "Venus surprised by Satyrs" and the "Susanna and the Elders"--are the vineries, pineries, peacheries. Did they ever exist? or were they only a mirage, such as the sky presents to us sometimes--a mirage of ships shocking together, of armed men meeting in fight? "Go back to your pigstye!" said the magic fish to Ilsabil, the fisherman's wife, when she modestly requested to be made lord of the sun and moon. "Go back to your pigstye!" cries Fate to Esther. At any other time the subsiding from the prospect of being rather a great lady into the certainty of being a very small one would have caused considerable annoyance to Esther's aspiring soul. _Now_, the _things_ she has lost merge and lose themselves in the _person_ she has lost. But is he lost necessarily, irrecoverably? Despite the forlorn attitude, the tear-swollen face, trying to suffocate itself in down, Hope is busy whispering, "You will see him again to-morrow: men in real life are not like men in novels--changeless of purpose, hard as iron or adamant. What they are one half-hour, they are the exact reverse of the next; what they swear to-night they will unswear to-morrow." As Hope, the deceiver, thus murmurs, there comes to her ear the sound of wheels briskly rolling to the door. "Is the ball over so early? are they come back already? or----?" She does not give herself time to speculate on any other hypothesis, but, springing from the bed, runs to the window, draws aside curtain and blind, and looks out. The hall-door is open; a vehicle stands before it. The moonlight and the light shed from the hanging-lamp in the portico are fighting together, struggling for possession of a horse and dog-cart, of two footmen's floured heads, and of a portmanteau and hat-box that they are carrying out. "Thud! thud!" she hears the portmanteau go in at the back of the cart. Then a man comes out--a man in hat and overcoat--drawing on dogskin gloves, and saying, "John, go and look for my box of cigar-lights; I left it on the smoking-room table." It is St. John, speaking in much his usual voice. He is going away! going away! and he can think of his cigar-lights! Her heart stops pulsing for a second, then sets off galloping at the rate of a hundred and twenty a minute. Going without making any sign! She leans further out of the window, and rests her white arms, that look whiter than any lilies in the moonlight, on the sill. He is so close beneath her, if the servants were not there, she might call to him; as it is, he will never know that she has watched his departure. A sudden impulse prompts her to throw up the window higher, to rustle her dress, to cough, in order to attract his attention. At the unexpected noise John and Thomas turn their heads and look up, but their master does not. He gives a slight start, but, instantly recovering himself, walks steadily to the cart and gets in. Then she knows that he knows that she is looking at him--knows that he is resolute to part from her-- "taking no farewell--" as Lancelot took none of Elaine. The horse is a little fidgety at starting. "Wo-o-o! Gently, old lass!" This is the affecting form that St. John's last words take. She cranes her neck out of the window; she leans out her lithe body, reckless of the danger of losing her balance and tumbling on the hard gravel drive below, in her eagerness to catch the last glimpse of the lessening, dwindling bulk; then, forgetting to shut the window, careless of any cold or stock of rheumatism that she might be laying up for herself, she returns to her former position, flings herself again prone on her bed, again buries her face in the pillow; but this time no beguiling hope sits and whispers pleasant falsities to her. Hope got up upon the dog-cart, and drove away with Gerard. The night wanes; morning dreams, that they say come true, invade many sleepers' brains. At Lord ----'s ball people are still dancing with the fury produced by champagne and supper; but Sir Thomas, Miladi, and Miss Blessington, are at home again, and in bed. Constance is not one of those hard dancers who think that one after-supper galop is worth ten ante-coenal ones. Not for all the entrancing valses Strauss ever composed would she run the risk of damaging the freshness of her toilette, nor the still more serious risk of exchanging the marble coolness of her cheeks for the unsightly flush of heat or the ugly pallor of exhaustion. Dawn is just beginning stealthily to unlatch the eastern gate; her torch, new-lit, makes but a puny opponent for the night's one great and myriad lesser lamps. Esther has fallen into an uneasy doze, her damp brow and loosened hair resting on her bare, outflung arm. Suddenly a knock at her door makes her start up in a vague, confused horror. Is it St. John come back? Is it some one come to murder her? A thousand impossibilities flash across her bewildered brain. Without waiting for permission, the person who knocked enters; not St. John, nor a murderer--only a dishevelled housemaid, who has evidently just thrown a gown over her night attire, and endeavoured abortively to gather up the straggling hair out of her sleepy eyes under a muslin cap put on awry. "A tallygraph for you, miss!" says she, coming forward, holding in one hand a blue envelope, and in the other a tall, solemn tallow candle, as sleepy as herself. A telegraphic message! Oh hateful telegraph! Cruellest of modern inventions! Oh hastener of evil tidings, that, without you, come all too speedily! Oh maker of sick hearts and blanched cheeks and arrested pulses! Esther snatches it, while a sudden, awful cold grasps her heart, and reads by the wavering, feeble light these words, in a scrawly clerk's hand: "Robert Brandon to Esther Craven. Come home instantly; Jack is very ill." With how few pen-strokes can a death-warrant be written! For a moment she sits bolt upright, void of breath or motion, as a white dead woman, from the house of whose fair body the spirit departed an hour ago; the telegram grasped in a stiff hand that knows not of it. Then consciousness returns, brought back by a huge, tearing, killing agony; then even the agony yields to one intense, consuming longing--one all-dominating purpose--the longing to slay time and space; to be with him _now_, this instant; to be beside Jack dying, not Jack dead. "Can I see Sir Thomas?" she asks collectedly, but in a rough, deep voice. "I have had bad news from home: my brother is very ill." "Indeed, 'm, you don't say so;" replies the servant, growing broadly awake under the delightful excitement of a calamity having happened to somebody, and of herself being the first recipient of the news. "I _must_ see Sir Thomas!" Esther says, putting her hand up in a bewildered way to her head, and then springing off the bed and walking quickly towards the door. "See Sir Thomas," repeats the woman, the most unfeigned alarm painting itself on her broad face--"_now!_ Indeed, ma'am, you must be mad to think of such a thing! It would be as much as all our places are worth if he were to be disturbed before his usual time." Esther turns and clutches her arm, while her great eyes brimful of despair, burn on her face. "I tell you my brother is _dying!_" she says, hoarsely--"I know he is; I must go to him _this minute;_ for God's sake help me to get to the station!" "Indeed, 'm, I'm sorry to see you in such trouble, _that_ I am!" answers her companion, moved to compassion by the terrible, haggard misery of the young, round face, that she, in company with her fellow-servants, had often admired in its happy, dewy rosiness at prayers on Sunday evenings; "but, you see, all the men are in bed, and Simpson 'ud cut off his own 'ead afore he'd venture to take out the carriage without Sir Thomas's orders." The tall, yellow candle flares between them: lights up the tortured beauty of the one woman, the placid stolidity of the other. Esther groans, and smites her hands together. "Is there _no_ vehicle I can have?" she asks in impatient agony--"no cart?--no anything? I'd give all I have in the world to any one who would take me. Oh God! how many minutes I am wasting." The housemaid puts down her flat candlestick on the table, and rubs her forehead with her rough fore-finger to aid her thinking powers. "There's the dog-cart that the under-servants goes to church in," she says, presently, with an uncertain suggestion: "if we could knock the men up, you might have _it_, perhaps." "Knock them up this instant, then!" cries Esther, with passionate urgency--"_now, this minute!_ Go, for God's sake!" So saying, she almost pushes the woman out of the room, and herself follows her. Through long passages and corridors, full of emptiness and darkness--darkness utter and complete, save where through the gallery's high-stained east window the chilly, chilly dawn comes peeping, with a grey glimmer, about the black frames, never closing eyes, and stiff, prim simpers of the family portraits--down to the lower regions, where the huge kitchen-grate yawns, black as Erebus--up steep back-stairs along other passages. In one of these passages Esther stands, her frame trembling and teeth chattering with cold and nervous excitement, while her companion raps with broad, hard knuckles on a door, and loudly calls on Simpson to awake. But hard workers are hard sleepers, and it is some time before the coachman can be induced to leave the country of slumber. When at length he is aroused, and has come out to them, in all the yawning sulkiness of disturbed sleep, it is a still longer time before he can be induced to admit the possibility of _any_ vehicle whatever being put at Esther's disposal: with so righteous a fear of his wrath has Sir Thomas succeeded in inspiring his subordinates. It is not without the aid of all her remaining money, with the exception of what is needed for the purchase of her railway ticket--not without the aid of all that is left of poor Jack's hardly-spared five-pound note--that she is able at length to induce him to consent to the getting ready of the dog-cart "in which the under-servants goes to church." Fully three-quarters of an hour more elapse before one of the helpers can be knocked up, can dress himself, can harness the oldest and screwiest horse in the stables, and put him, with many a muttered grumble, into the cart. Wretched Esther follows the man and his lanthorn to the stable-yard, with the vain idea that her presence may hurry his movements. During most of the three-quarters of an hour she walks quickly up and down over the hard, round stones with which the yard is paved, or stands watching, with greedy eyes, every step in the harnessing process; while her hands clench themselves, as his are clenched who is dead by some very cruel, violent death, and a pain like a red-hot, two-bladed knife keeps running through her heart. Before the horse is well between the shafts, she has climbed into the cart and taken her seat. "The luggage is not in yet, 'm," suggests the groom, respectfully. "Oh! never mind the luggage," cries Esther, feverishly; "I don't want it! I don't want anything! I'm ready! Get in, please, and set off this minute!" Dawn is breaking, slowly, coldly, greyly, without any of the rose-coloured splendours that mostly gild the day's childhood, as the glorious delusions of youth gild our morning. There has not been a positive, actual frost in the night--not frost enough to congeal the wayside pools or to kill the dahlias--but the air has, for all that, a frosty crispness, as of the first breath of coming winter. The trees and hedgerow holly-bushes loom gigantic, formless, treble and quadruple their real size, folded round and round in a mantle of mist; the meadows are like lakes of mist; sheets of vapour steaming damply up to the shapeless, colourless, low-stooping heavens. Esther has forgotten to take any wrap: through the poor protection of her thin cotton dress and jacket the mist creeps slowly, searchingly, making her limbs shake and shudder; but she herself is unconscious of it--she could not have told you afterwards whether she had been warm or cold. At the turnpike gate a sleepy old man comes hobbling out (men at toll-gates are mostly one-legged), in his hand a candle, to which the white morning is beginning to give a very sickly, yellow look: it seems to Esther that he will never have done fumbling in his breeches-pocket for the sixpence of change that eludes his search. "Why do you stop? Cannot you go a little quicker?" asks Esther, hoarsely, her teeth chattering with cold and misery, as the groom allows his horse to walk up a long, gentle incline. "Sir Tummas allus gives pertikler horders as we should walk the 'orses up this 'ill," replies the man; "you see, 'm, it's collar-work pretty nigh all the way from our place to Brainton." "But it is such a little hill, and Sir Thomas need never know," pleads Esther, imploringly. "I have not got any money now, but if you'll take me quicker--a good deal quicker--I will send you five shillings--ten shillings--by post, when I get home." "Much obliged to you, ma'am," answers the man, touching his hat, and giving another instance of the influence of filthy lucre by whipping up his horse. "When is the next train to Berwyn?" cries Esther, almost before they had pulled up at the station, to a porter, who stands waiting to receive any arriving passengers. "7.20," replies the man, briefly. "And what time is it now?" "6.15." "Is not there one before 7.20?" "None; you are just too late for the 6.10 one; it has been gone about five minutes." Unmindful of the presence of the careless, indifferent onlookers, Esther clasps her cold hands together and groans. In a great despair, as in a great bodily agony, we do not much mind who sees or hears us. "Too late!" she says, with a heavy, tearless sob--"five minutes too late! Oh God, it _is_ hard!" "Any luggage, Miss?" asks the porter, in his civil, matter-of-fact voice. The common-place question brings her back to life. "No, none," she answers, collecting herself; and so saying walks into the station, and, taking refuge in the waiting-room, sinks down upon a green Utrecht velvet chair. Owing to the earliness of the hour, other occupant of the room is there none; neither is there any fire (a fire always looks in good spirits; it never has the blues). Alongside of the empty fire-place stands a stiff, green Utrecht velvet sofa, and round the bare table more green Utrecht velvet chairs. Opposite to Esther, against the wall, hangs a roll of texts. Involuntarily her haggard eyes lift themselves to them, and light upon this one--which, under the slightly inappropriate title of "Encouragements to Repentance," heads the list: "Woe to me, for I am undone!" She shudders, "Is it an omen?" turns away her head quickly, and tries to look out of window, but the wire-blind hinders her gaze. Once again, "Woe is me, for I am undone!" standing out clear and black in large type from the white paper, greets her eyes. She can bear it no longer, but rising hastily, runs out, and begins to walk swiftly up and down the platform. Brainton is a large station--a junction of many lines. Engines are snorting and puffing about; boilers letting off steam, with a noise calculated to break the drum of any ear; tarpaulin-covered waggons standing shunted on side lines. A train has just come in, and is disgorging its human load; a man with a hammer is walking along by the side of it, stooping and tapping the wheels; porters are driving luggage-piled trucks before them, and shouting out, "By your leave!" to any unwary traveller who may cross the relentless path of their Juggernaut: other parties are enduring and answering, with angelic patience and _bonhomie_, the agitated and incoherent questions of unprotected females in waterproof cloaks and turn-down hats. Everybody and everything is rampantly _alive;_ even to his handiwork, man seems to have imparted some of his own intense vitality; to the engines he has given motion and voice--motion and voice ten thousandfold stronger than his own. In her hurried walks, Esther suddenly comes face to face with a fair-haired youth, who, followed by a porter carrying a gun-case, is walking lightly along with his hands in his pockets, whistling for very lightheartedness, "I paddle my own canoe." Jack's tune! What business has he to whistle it? All fair-haired youths, with nothing very prominent in any of their features, are more or less alike; and this amount of resemblance the unknown bears to her boy. Long after he has passed her, amid the shrieking of the engines, the shouts of the porters--"Take your seats for Wolverhampton, Birmingham!" "All here for Chester, Warrington, and Manchester?"--the well-known tune echos faintly back to her ears. An overpowering, blinding, deafening rush of feeling comes over her; she sits down hastily on a bench that is near at hand, in close proximity to an Irish labourer, with a blue-spotted bundle, and, careless of the contaminating contact, buries her head in her hands, and rocks to and fro in a paroxysm of despair. It is one of those incontrovertible facts that we all know to be true, and that we all feel to be false, that every hour is of the same length; that in an hour of Elysium there are sixty whole minutes, and that in an hour of Hades there are only sixty. In Esther's hour of waiting there are, however, seventy-five minutes, as the train is a quarter of an hour late. "Is it a fast train?" she asks eagerly of the bearded guard, who, with the politeness inborn in guards, opens the carriage-door for her. "No, miss," he answers, with suavity--"slow train, miss; stops at every station; 6.10 was the fast train, miss!" Off at last, sliding slowly at first past platform, officials, trucks, book-stalls, dowdy women and dusty men; then the wind comes beating with a strong rush against Esther's cheeks, blowing back her hair, as they fly through the air at the rate of fifty miles an hour. The transit from Brainton to Berwyn occupies three hours, and during the greater part of that time Miss Craven maintains almost exactly the same attitude; with her greedy eyes devouring every field and tree and homestead as they run past--each village spire and bridge a finger-post to tell her that she is so much nearer her boy. She does not cry at all, or groan. Even had she wished to do so, conventionality--that makes us laugh when we would fain weep, makes us weep when we would fain laugh--would have forbidden her, for she is not alone in the carriage. Two other travellers share it with her--two extremely cheerful young men, to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference how many hedges and meadows are before, how many behind them. They are not exactly gentlemen: and indeed it is a matter of almost as curious inquiry as what becomes of all the pins that are made and lost, in what part of the train, if it be not in the guard's van, gentlemen and ladies travel, as assuredly they are but seldom to be met with in first-class carriages. The two youths have made themselves and their hat-boxes, rugs, &c., luxuriously comfortable, and seem rather disposed to be funny--to "show off," as children say, for the benefit of the lovely girl, who looks so disconsolate and dishevelled, who seems so unflatteringly unaware of their presence. They eat sandwiches and drink sherry; they are provided with a large stock of all the morning papers, and by-and-by the eldest and boldest of them proffers _Punch, Fun_, and half-a-dozen other dreary comicalities to Esther. She looks at him for a second with her large wistful eyes as she declines the offered civility, and then resumes her watch. Having obtained that one short glance, he ceases from his witticisms, half-conscious of being in the company of a great sorrow--as we involuntarily hush our voices and speak softly in the presence of our great master and owner--Death. Perhaps, cowardly slaves as we are, we fear lest, if we should speak loudly, he might be reminded of our existence--might lay his heavy hand on our shoulders also. Another hour of waiting at Berwyn--another hour before there is any train for the branch line that leads to Glan-yr-Afon--any train, at least, that stops at so insignificant a station. Another hour of tramping in forlorn, impotent impatience up and down the platform, hustled by a hurrying crowd, who know nothing, and care, if possible, less, about her and her grief. Well, if every one in England wept for every one else's sorrows, the noise of tears and sobbings would drown the whirring of all the mills in Leeds and Manchester--the booming of all the cannon at Shoeburyness. It is half an hour past noon, when, almost before the train has stopped at the little wayside station, Esther springs out. She is the only passenger for Glan-yr-Afon; and the man who unites in himself the functions of station-master and porter looks at her with a recognising eye. He must know whether Jack is alive or dead. He looks much as usual, but so he would whether Jack were alive or dead. Feeling an overmastering sense of fear of and repugnance from the news he may have to give her, she runs to the little wicket that leads out into the road. "Your ticket, please, miss!" cries the man, following her. She had forgotten it; it takes a minute to extricate it from her glove; she thinks that he looks as if he were going to speak; and, in a blind terror of what he might say, turns from him and rushes down the road. Any suspense is better than some certainties. CHAPTER XX. The mountains stand still and drowsy in the sleepiness of midday. Through the mistiness of the air, the russet glories of the dying bracken blaze on their breasts: the oak-woods still keep their deep dusk green, but the sycamore has felt the kiss of winter, and is growing red and sere beneath it. The sun is reigning, sole despot of the sky, having banished every rebel cloud beyond the horizon's limits. It is almost always fine weather when we are most miserable. Whatever poets say to the contrary, Nature is not sympathetic: rather is she very insolent to us in her triumphant, durable beauty. She loves to say to us, "Though you are weeping, my eyes are dry: though you are very sick and feeble, I am strong and fair: though you are most short-lived, here to-day and gone to-morrow, I am eternal, I _endure_." In the meadow below the house, Jack's sheep are browsing--the Cheviots that he was so proud of: down the stony, steep back-road the cart-horses come jogging, to be watered at the pool at the hill-foot. With shortened breath and straining muscles, Esther runs fleetly past them, not daring to look into the carter's face. Through the gate, by the stables, and then the familiar little old house comes in sight, with its high-pitched roof and its old-fashioned chimney-pots. White pigeons are walking about on the gravelled sweep, bowing and scraping, and making love, with a formal solemnity worthy of Sir Charles Grandison. The Virginia creeper's scarlet banners wave from the wall; the hall-window is open; on the ledge lies a tabby cat, with one eye open and the other shut; two cocks are crowing in emulous rivalry in the farmyard. Everything looks peaceful, happy, _alive_. Gathering a little feeble hope from these signs, Esther collects her small remnant of breath, and runs towards the door. She has nearly reached it, when, stepping hastily out from the porch, one comes to meet her: _one_, but not _the_ one: he will pass through that porch but once again, and then not of his own accord, but borne heavily on others' shoulders. Unable to frame any speech, Esther looks up mutely in Brandon's face (for it is he), and there reads her doom. "He is dead--he is dead!" she sees written wetly on either eye. "He is better off than we are," says the young man, brokenly, taking hold of both her hands. She sits down heavily on the bench in the porch: what hurry is there now? After all, it is but a poor shabby remnant of us that Death gets when he makes his final claim upon us; in most of us the greater, better part has died long before. Of Esther, three-fourths died as she sat on the oak bench in the porch that autumn morning: breath remained, and blood still circulated through veins and arteries, and speech and hearing were left; but youth, and hope, and heart, died very suddenly and utterly, to come back to life again never any more. She sits staring vacantly at the seat opposite her for several minutes, and then speaks distinctly, almost loudly: "How long ago?" "About eight," answers Brandon, briefly and sadly, turning away his head to hide his womanish tears for the young fellow that fell asleep so gently in his arms, in the early morning, when other folks were waking. "What was it killed him?" asks the girl, in the same hard, clear voice. Bob looks at her in astonishment: he had been steeling himself against faintings, hysterics, a terrible scene of shrieks and waitings, but this conscious stony collectedness fills him with a fearful surprise. "It was diphtheria," he answers, sorrowfully taking her hand again, and stroking it, while his hot tears fall thick upon it. She leaves it in his, passive as the hand of a statue, unknowing, indifferent, whether he held it or not. "Did he suffer much?" she inquires, lifting her lovely, hopeless eyes piteously to his face. "Not at the last," answers Brandon, evasively, almost under his breath. Silence for a few seconds: the cocks are still crowing, the pigeons courting, the cat purring on the window-sill: Nature is fond of these horrible contrasts. Presently she speaks again: "Why was not I sent for before?" she asks in a rough, harsh whisper. "We telegraphed for you yesterday morning, the instant that we found there was any danger," he replies, speaking very gently, but wincing a little under the reproach implied in her question. "And it did not reach me till this morning. If I had had it when I ought, I suppose I should have been in time to see him," she says, with apathy, looking away towards the misty hill. "He sent you his love," says Brandon, struggling again with that same breaking in his voice. "Dear fellow! he was quite happy!" "Was he?" she says, with the same vacant look. "I'll go to him." As she speaks, she rises and moves towards the door. "You had better not," he says hastily, laying his hand on her arm. "Why?" inquires she, looking at him with perfect calmness; "are you afraid of my fainting or going into hysterics? You need not be; it is only that I am not the least sorry that Jack is dead, and that I want to be." "It is not that," he answers, earnestly; "but--but--you know, dear, that it is a terribly infectious complaint." "Is it?" she answers, a ray of animation lighting up her haggard face. "I'm glad; perhaps God will let me catch it!" Seeing that she is resolute, he ceases trying to dissuade her. In the small dark hall, old Luath is lying on the rug; seeing Esther enter, he raises himself quickly, and goes to meet her, with heavy tail wagging and affectionate eyes, on which age is written in blue dimness. Now that the master's sister has come home, he is sure that the master cannot be far behind. He is waiting for him, waiting to walk round the farm; he has been waiting this long time, thinking that he has gone upon a journey; and so he has. But oh! Luath, it is a journey on which man may take neither horse nor dog, neither wife, nor sister, nor friend; a journey on which some man, woman, or child is setting off every minute that beats; and whence no explorers return, with maps and charts, and wondrous tales, to vaunt themselves of their exploits, and be extolled and praised as benefactors to their race. Let us hope that it is because they find that country most pleasant that they come not again. In the drawing-room a canary is shrilling his loud, sharp song: they have thrown a shawl over his cage to keep him quiet; but through the shawl the sun pierces, and the bird's keen clear jubilation goes up to meet it. How can he sing so very gaily now Jack is dead? At the room-door they pause. "Don't come in! I'd rather have him to myself, please," Esther says, in a steady whisper. "Promise not to kiss him, Essie!" Brandon rejoins, very earnestly; also in a whisper, "We cannot spare you too." She takes no notice of his request, but, opening the door gently, enters the chamber, where the king of kings, and lord of lords, almighty Death--before whom we all grovelling do unwilling obeisance--is holding one of his myriad courts. It is but a small, slightly furnished room in which he is holding this one, but that concerns him but little. His majesty is so great that he can afford to dispense with the adventitious adjuncts of pomp and circumstance. Without his crown and sceptre, without his courtiers--Plague, Pestilence, and Famine--he is still very king and emperor. The window is open, but the white curtains drawn-- "While through the lattice ivy shadows creep." On the table stand physic-bottles--puny foils with which we fence with death--and an open Bible, out of which Brandon, with shaking voice, and a weak, dying hand held in his strong tender one, read the old comfortable words that have soothed many a transit, to the young traveller who was setting out meekly, and not fearfully, in the autumn morning. Over the bed spreads a white sheet, and beneath it a formless form! Can that be Jack? Can that be Jack, lying still and idle in the bright midday?--Jack, to whom the shelter of a house was ever irksome, who was up and about at cock-crow, to whom all weathers were the same, and the bracing wind blowing about the heathery hills the very breath of his nostrils? A feeling of incredulity steals over her. She walks to the bed and turns down the sheet from the face, and the incredulity deepens into incredulous awe. Oh, ye liars! all ye that say that sleep and death are alike! what kinship is there between the pliant relaxer of soft limbs, the light brief slumber, that, at any trivial noise, a trumpeting gnat or distant calling voice, flies and is dissolved, and the grave stiff whiteness of that profoundest rest that no thousand booming cannons, no rock-rending earthquake, no earth-riving thunderbolt can break? It is an insult to that strong narcotic to liken any other repose to that he gives. They have crossed the young fellow's hands upon his unheaving breast, meekly, as the hands of one that prayeth; and laid sprigs of grey-flowered rosemary in them. She looks at him steadfastly, a great, awful amazement in her dilated eyes. Is _this_ the boy that whistled "I paddle my own canoe"--whose step, glad and noisy, echoed about the stairs?--the boy that sat and smoked at the study window, with her fond head resting on his young slight shoulder?--the boy that was worried about failing crops and barren land?--the boy whose laugh had a sincerer ring in it than any one else's, who made so many jokes, and had such a light heart? Can _this_ be he--this white, awful, beautiful statue? Was ever crowned king, in purple and minever, half so majestical as he, as he lies on his narrow bed in the scant poor room, with that serene stern smile that only dead mouths wear on his solemn changed face?--that smile that seems to say, "I have overcome! I _know!_" Esther's love for Jack is great as love can be--greater than Jonathan's for David, greater than David's for Absalom; and this pale, prone figure is unearthly fair and grand; but can she connect the two ideas? What have they to say to one another? Can she realise that if this form be not her brother, neither will she find him again on the earth's face, though she seek him carefully with tears. For one instant it comes home to her; for one instant light darts into her soul--light keen and cruel as the forked lightning flash that, on some mirk night, glares blinding bright into a dark room, illumining every object as with the furnace-fires of hell! She sinks on her trembling knees by the bedside, and says, with dumb, heart-wrung entreaty--"God! God! give him back to me, or let me go where he is." But the great Lord that said once, "Lazarus, come forth!" has said "Come forth!" to never another since him. "Lie thou still, till I call thee!" He says; and none durst move hand or foot. But since he cannot come to her, why should not she go to him? Has the disease that slew him spent all its force on that one slight frame? Is not there enough of it left to kill her too? It was Juliet's thought when she spake reproachingly to her dead Romeo, as she looked into the empty poison-cup-- "Oh, churl! drink all and leave no friendly drop, To help me after----." Suddenly Brandon's beseeching words recur to her: "Promise not to kiss him, Essie!" If she kiss him, he may give her the boon of death. Instantly she rises, and stooping over him, lays her tremulous warm lips on his still cheek. The unearthly awful cold of the contact between the dead and the living strikes a chilly shrinking along her veins and limbs; but not for that shrinking does she desist. Again and again she kisses him, driven on by that strong drear hope, saying moaningly, "My boy,! my boy!--give it me! give it me!" Then unbelief comes back. This is not Jack: he is somewhere else. She will find him by-and-by. This is very terrible, this present experience, but she catches herself thinking she will tell Jack all about it when she sees him. To the incredulity succeeds a stupid apathy. She sinks down upon her knees again, with her elbows resting on the counterpane, and fixes her stony eyes upon the dead stripling; watches him; looks at him steadfastly, without intermission; looks at "the shell of a flown bird," as the old philosopher very grandly said. She does not know how long she means to stay there; she does not know how long she has already staid there; when some one entering, lays his hand upon her shoulder, and says, with kindly gravity, "Come away, dear!" "I am doing no harm!" she answers dully, not moving her eyes. "Come, darling!" he says, not attempting to reason with her, but speaking in the coaxing tone one would use to a fractious sickly child. She answers neither "Ay" nor "Nay;" she neither resists nor consents, and so, half carrying, half leading, he takes her from the room, and they leave poor Jack lying all alone in his shroud, smiling sternly sweet. CHAPTER XXI. So the blinds are drawn down; a sort of notice that people put in their windows, saying, "Do not look in, or you will see Death!" and the few neighbours round drive up and inquire how Miss Craven is, and are informed that she is pretty well. And the servants each do the other's work; and there is a general interesting _bouleversement_ in the household, and much chattering and crying and a stream of visitors in the kitchen. And Brandon goes hither and thither, taking upon himself all the drear work of arranging Jack's final departure from his home among the mountains, and keeping at bay his mothers and sisters, who, armed with bibles, hymnals, and "Reflections for a Mourner," are prepared to sally forth in proselytising ardour upon the conquest of Esther's soul. And Esther herself is, for the time, soulless as the fair marble mask in the quiet room upstairs. "His lips are very mild and meek; Though one should smite him on the cheek, Or on the mouth, he will not speak." If any one were to smite her on lip or cheek, neither would she resent it or complain; she sits in an armchair, in the drawing-room, with her hands folded in her lap, and the servants bring her tea every half-hour (incessant tea being supposed to be the necessary accompaniment of great grief), and request her to "keep up." So she sits in the armchair all day long--trying to be sorry, trying to weep. She has had Sarah in, and has made her tell her all the particulars of her brother's last hours; has listened attentively while the woman--the easy tears streaming down her cheeks--relates how "Mr. Brandon was with poor master all along, from the very first, and if he had been his own born brother, he could not have been kinder," and how he lifted him up in his arms, and laid his head on his shoulder--"Master could breathe easier so, poor dear young gentleman!"--and _he_ (master) had been so pleasant-spoken to the last, and had said, said he, 'God bless you, old fellow! I'd have done as much for you, if I had had the chance;' and how, about seven o'clock, he had asked what o'clock it was--we all knew what that meant--and had then seemed to fall asleep in Mr. Brandon's arms, and just as the clock struck eight, he gave a sigh--like that--and a sort of pleasant bit of a smile, and was gone all in a minute!" It is very touching, but it does not touch Esther. She rises and walks into the hall, and looks at his greatcoat and his hat, and kisses his gloves, that seem to retain somewhat of the shape of the kind hands that once filled them. She thinks resolutely of how he has been her one friend throughout life; thinks of the presents he gave her, and of how seldom he went to any town without bringing her some little remembrance back from it; thinks of that last five-pound note, so hardly spared, and yet so very gladly given; thinks of how poor he was, how slight, how young. But it is all no good; it seems to her like some pathetic tale about a stranger that she is telling herself. And the days pass, and she grows weak from inanition, but refuses all food. If she can be unnatural, horrible enough to feel hunger and thirst now Jack is dead, at all events she will not indulge her low nature; and so she eats not, and her pulse grows feeble, "And all the wheels of being slow!" So it comes to pass that she falls sick and is carried up to bed, and lies there half in sleep, half in insensibility. And the mornings and the evenings go by, and Jack's burial-day comes. They had hoped that it would have passed without her knowing, but it was not so. Now that he is leaving his home for this last time, he does not go light-springing down the stairs, as at other times, but with much tramping of strange feet, with purposed muffling of strange voices. How can she fail to hear, "The steps of the bearers heavy and slow?" Through all her trance it breaks; from her little latticed window, with her sick limbs trembling beneath her, and her miserable eyes nailed to the gaoler coffin, in whose strait custody her dead lies prisoned, she sees the drooped pall and the black-scarfed mourners. These mourners are but few, for Jack--though now awfuller than any absolutest monarch--was, in life, poor and of little consequence: the gap made by the extinction of that one young life is but narrow. Standing there, she feels a pang of bitter regret and anguish that there are not more people to be sorry for Jack. And so, being weak, the fountains of her soul are broken up within her, and she falls to weeping mightily; and, but for that weeping, she would, perchance, have died, some say; but I think not--for why should grief, being our natural element, kill us any more than water the fish, or air the bird? CHAPTER XXII. Thus the grave yawns for another victim, and having swallowed him, and a million more that same day, returns to its former state of insatiable famished greed. It is a law--natural, wise, and comprehensible by the feeblest understanding--that all created beings, in which there is progressive life, must come forth, ripen, decay, and fall. But why, oh! why, in too many cases does the decay and fall forerun the ripening? Why is so many a worm permitted to gnaw out so many a closed bud's green heart? Why is the canker death allowed to pasture on so many an unblown life? Why are so many little toddling children, not yet come into the heritage of reason to which we are all by our human birth entitled, borne from their mother's emptied arms to their small short graves? Is it, as Hartley Coleridge very nobly, whether truly or untruly, said-- "God only made them for his Christ to save?" Very wasteful is the mighty mother, knowing that her materials are inexhaustible. And so they lay Jack down in the wormy grave. "Bear, bear him along, With his few faults shut up like dead flow'rets." No one will ever abuse him or say anything ill-natured of him again; for to speak evil of the helpless, speechless, answerless dead, requires a heart as bad, a nature as cowardly vile, as his must be that foully murders a young child. And the mourners go home, and take off their hatbands and scarves, and give them to their wives to make aprons of. And old Luath lies in the hall, watching still, with ears attentively pricked at any incoming footstep, and hope drooping, as day droops too, begins to howl dismally towards sun-down. And Esther--"You ought not to grieve for him; it is a happy change for him; he is in Heaven!" So they had said to her weepingly, as people do say to us, when the desire of our eyes has left us; but even as they spake them, she felt that they were but words, hollow and empty as the greetings in the market-place with which we salute our indifferent acquaintance. Was she so sure that the change had been a happy one? It was a change from the known to the unknown, from moderate certain evils, and moderate probable good, to infinite possibilities of horror or blessedness. Where lay this heaven, this promised land, where we so confidently lodge our dead? Was it up above that highest bluest arch that looks in truth pure enough, and solid enough, to be the floor of some sweet elysium? Ah! no! Human knowledge, that like a naughty, prying child, has found out at once so infinitely too much and too little, tells us that that skyey vault is but thin air. She thinks, shuddering--"What if heaven itself be but thin air? _Is it anywhere?_ What if its existence at all be but the fine-spun fancy of poor human hearts, that must needs frame for themselves some blessed definite hope, since _real_ hope have they none? Is it a beautiful tender fraud practised by themselves upon themselves, to save them from the despair of the black vagueness into which they must send out their departed ones, and go out themselves when life's little day is over? Oh, light! light! When the great God said, 'Let there be light!' in the material world, why did not He say so too in the world of spirits? I know that my soul shall live for ever! I know that there is that within me over which the most insatiable of monsters, insatiabler than any slain in classic tale--a monster that turns beauty to unsightliness, whose handmaid is corruption, and whose drink is tears--has no power. But alas! alas! can I rejoice in my immortality, when I know not where, or under what conditions, those endless, endless æons will roll themselves away into the past?" * * * * * "We must bow beneath the rod," says old Mrs. Brandon, nodding her head and her poke bonnet. It is the identical poke bonnet, and not another, in which she once paid her congratulatory visit. The summer sun had browned it a little, but otherwise it is in a state of high efficiency. "We must bow beneath the rod, knowing that it is a _tender Father's_ hand that wields it." "I suppose so," answers Esther, listlessly. To her it seems a matter of indifference whose hand it was that inflicted such an immedicable hurt, seeing that it has been inflicted by some one, and now yawns, a gaping rift in her soul, never to be assuaged by any balsam. "Suppose!" cries Miss Bessy, her long, uncertain nose reddening a little in her righteous zeal, at the slackness of Esther's faith. "Surely, surely, if we are _Believers_, there can be no '_suppose_' in such a case." "I did not mean to express any doubt," Esther says, gently, but wearily. "_Suppose_ will not do us much good at the _Last Day_," continues Miss Bessy, rather venomously. "Unless we can lay fast hold upon Jesus" (_laying hold of a roll of paper to exemplify the tenacity of her own grasp_[1]), "unless we have assurance that we are _Elect_, where are we?" "If it is any comfort to you, love, you know that you have our prayers," says Mrs. Brandon, squeezing Esther's hand. "We have set apart a special day with several Christian friends," says Bessy, with animation, "to wrestle in prayer for you, that this searching dispensation may be blessed to your conversion--that you may find the Lord." "Thanks," answers Esther, meekly, too broken-down to resent even the indignity of being set up on a metaphorical stool of repentance, amid a select circle of Miss Bessy's Christian friends. "If we could send you anything from Plas Berwyn--" begins Mrs. Brandon. "Any books or leaflets," interrupts Bessy. "Any eatables, or anything of that kind," amends her mother. "I daresay you have not been thinking much about housekeeping lately, my poor child; and you know whenever you feel inclined to come to us _for good_, you will always find open hearts and open arms," concludes the good old woman, suiting her action to her words, and folding Esther in a black bombazine embrace. "Thank you very much," replies the girl, gratefully, her low, sad voice almost smothered by her mamma-in-law's bonnet strings, amongst which her little disconsolate head is lying _perdue_. "We are only broken cisterns, you should remember, mamma," says Bessy, a little reprovingly of her parent's carnal materialism; "leaky vessels, all of us! You should direct Esther to the one _Ebenezer_." The race of Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, is by no means extinct: if not in the male line, at all events in the female, it still survives in the person of many a Miss Bessy Brandon. * * * * * Brandon has been busy all day with Jack's lawyer: returning in the afternoon, he finds Esther sitting on the study window-ledge, on which she and Jack used to sit on summer nights, and watch the little feathery, plumy clouds sail along the sky's sapphire sea; used to watch "The large white stars rise one by one," and speculate who lived in them, and what they were made of. Jack has entered into the ranks of the initiated, but she still sits and wonders. "Come out for a stroll, Essie," says the young man, stooping over her till his yellow beard, curly as a bull's forehead, almost touches her dark, drooped head. "If you like," she answers, indifferently; and so drags herself slowly up, and walks away heavily to get ready. "Where shall we go?" inquires he, as they stand at the farmyard gate. The callow Cochin chickens have grown up, and are stalking about, in all the dignity of long, yellow legs and adolescence, under the frames of the corn-ricks, "Where shall we go?--to see my mother?" "That would be returning her visit almost too promptly," answers the young girl, with a weary smile; "it is not more than half an hour since they left this house." "_They!_ Were my sisters here too, then?" inquires Bob, quickly; his confidence in his sisters' infallibility as to words and actions not being so perfect as in his mamma's. "I hope their coming did not worry you much." "Nothing worries me now," she answers, calmly; "I defy anything to worry, or anger, or frighten me. Do you remember a line of Mrs. Barrett Browning's? Oh no, by-the-bye, you never read poetry-- "'Fallen too low for special fear.' "That is exactly my case." "I never know the right sort of thing to say, don't you know," remarks Brandon, rather awkwardly, looking down, and poking about little pebbles with the end of his stick. "But I had hoped that mother might have hit upon something that would have comforted you a little." "She meant to, I am sure," replies Esther, gravely. "She was very kind, and so were the girls, I suppose; only some of Bessy's speeches rather reminded me of Eliphaz the Temanite's, 'Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?'" "I wish to heaven that Bessy could be possessed with a dumb devil!" says that young lady's brother, looking up, red with sudden anger. "No one should ever have my leave to try and cast it out." "Let us go to the common," Esther says, abruptly, not heeding him. [1] A fact. CHAPTER XXIII. The common stretches, long and stony, at the top of the hill that backs Glan-yr-Afon. To reach it they have to climb through the waving woods, where the beeches and sycamores emulously cast down their crimson and amber leaves to strew the path before their feet. To reach it, they have to pass the woodman's stone cottage, his pigstye, and his little yap-yapping rude dog. From the common you may look upwards or downwards--northwards, to the valley-head; southwards, to the sea. From among the scant brown mountain-grass, the limestone crops frequent, in peaks, and slabs, and riven rock-fragments. Far down in chinks and crevices little black-stemmed ferns grow darkling, and over the rock's rough face, the lichens, drab and yellow, make their little plans and charts. One may fancy some former people of strong giants sleeping very sweetly beneath those unchiselled tombstones, with their epitaphs written out fairly in Nature's hand in green mosses and rain furrows. In spring the hill's harsh front is crowned with a yellow splendour of gorse-flowers, but now a single blossom blows here and there desolate, just to hinder the old saying from being quite a lie. Below, in the valley, the mists roll greyly; and out above them Naullan church spire rises, pointing heavenwards, as if showing the way to the dead flock gathered round its feet; points heavenwards, like the finger of some sculptured saint. The autumn winds are piping bleakly, singing an ugly peevish dirge for the gone summer, bending the frost-seared brake-fern all one way, and with rough hands pushing back Robert and Esther, saying, "This is _our_ territory; what brings you here?" Esther shivers. "You are cold, I'm afraid," says Brandon, anxiously, putting his head on one side, not out of sentimentality, but in the endeavour to keep his hat on. "Yes," she answers, rapidly; "and I'm glad of it. I should _hate_ to feel warm and comfortable; I want to be cold, and faint, and miserable _always_. Do you know," she continues, excitedly, laying her hand on his arm, "yesterday I _laughed?_--yes! I actually _laughed!_ and it is only a fortnight since--wasn't it horrible of me? I want the days and the weeks to go by quickly: I want it to be a long time since Jack died!" Brandon makes no answer--partly because he is utterly at a loss for a reply, partly because he is still wrestling with his hat. Presently they come to a disused quarry, where the quarrymen have hewn out rock-ledges into comfortable seats for them. The wind howls above them, angry and sad, and flings hither and thither the flowerless broom-pikes that look over the cliffs, but it cannot reach them. "Esther," says Bob, taking up a sharp stone, and beginning to draw white lines on the rock's smooth surface, "it seems as if I had no other occupation nowadays than to say disagreeable things to you, but I cannot help it: do you think you can bear to leave Glan-yr-Afon in three weeks or so?" "Bear!" she repeats, bitterly; "I can bear anything--I have proved that already, I think. Any one that had had any feeling would have died of _this;_ but I--I sleep and eat as well as ever: I am like the baker who refused Christ the loaf--I _cannot_ die!" "Hush!" he says, eagerly; "don't want to go before your time, or perhaps the Almighty might take you at your word." There is silence for a moment or two, then Brandon speaks again: "At the end of three weeks you will come to us then?" No answer. Thinking that the wind has carried away his words, he repeats his question: "At the end of three weeks you will come to us, then?" She turns her head round slowly. "Could not I live in some hovel by myself?" He shakes his head. "Impossible! You see," he says, speaking with slow reluctance, "he--poor dear fellow!--laid out a great deal of money on all the latest improvements in farming implements, and things of that kind, and they did not bring him anything back; they would have done, no doubt, if he had been given time," he adds, quickly, afraid of seeming to cast the faintest slur upon the dead boy. "You mean to say that I have no money--that I am a beggar," she says, fixing her clear, steadfast eyes upon him: and in them is none of that dismay which her words seem to imply. "I mean to say," he answers, heartily, "that henceforth you are to be one of us, and that we are very, _very_ glad of it." She does not say "Thank you;" she neither assents nor refuses; she only looks away, and watches the distant trees tossing violent arms, in riotous fight with the wind. Something in her manner makes Brandon uneasy. "It is agreed, then?" he asks, eagerly. No reply. "Why don't you answer me, Esther?" (with a slight natural impatience in his tone). She turns her face slowly round towards him--a face paled by her late agonies, thinned by long fastings, and by thousands of great tears. "Because," she replies, "I have one friend in the world now; and when I have answered you, I shall have none!" "What _do_ you mean?" "If I were to come to you, I should come as your supposed future wife, shouldn't I? Well, I should be an impostor." A great sickening fear whitens his brown face, but he contains himself, and speaks quietly: "Do you think I meant to _bargain_ with you? Do you think I meant to make a profit for myself out of your troubles? What have I ever done to make you think me so mean?" he asks, reproachfully. She draws a heavy sighing breath. "Why am I beating about the bush?" she says, chiding herself; "it must out, sooner or later! Oh, Bob! Bob! if I had it in me to be sorry about anything, I should be sorry about this!" "About what?" he asks, cruelly excited. "Look this way, Esther. Is it--is it what I have been afraid of all along?" Her head sinks in shamed dejection on her breast. "Yes, it is," she answers, faintly. There will be a great storm at sea to-night; the gulls are circling about, calling wildly to one another--here, twenty miles inland. "Who is it?" asks Bob, in a husky whisper, presently. She sighs again, profoundly. "Do you remember," she says, "before I went to the Gerards'--how many hundred years ago was that?--your saying one day that you wished they had not got a son, and my laughing at you about it? Well! you were right!--it is he!" Brandon turns away his head, speaks not, nor gives any sign. It is in silence that a good brave man meetliest takes his deathblow. "I don't think he would have cared much about me, if I had let him alone," says Esther, taking a sort of gloomy pleasure in painting herself as black as possible. There is a pause--a pause, during which Brandon is fighting one of those duels in which most men have to engage at least once in their lives--the duel with a mortal agony, that says, tauntingly, "I am your master! I have conquered you!" to which one that is valiant makes answer, "You are strong, you are terrible; but you are _not_ my master. I will keep you under!" "You will go to him then, of course, instead of coming to us?" he says, presently, speaking in some one else's voice (for it certainly is not his own), and keeping his head turned away; for no one is willing to parade their death-pangs before others' eyes. She laughs derisively. "Go to him! Hardly! I should get but an indifferent welcome if I did. You know I never told him a word about you--ladylike and honourable of me, wasn't it?--but some one else did him that good office; and now, if he were to see me falling over the edge of that cliff, he would not put out a finger to save me. That is his sort of love!" She ends, bitterly, "And I think he is right." Another longer silence. Brandon is wrestling with that adversary of his, that deadly anger and pain; that riotous, tigerish jealousy, that makes us all murderers for the time, in thought at least; that mad, wild longing--madder, wilder than any love ardour, than any paroxysm of religious zeal--to have his hands, for one moment of strong ecstasy, about the throat of the rich man that has robbed him of his one ewe lamb. The sweat of that combat stands cold upon his brow, but he overcomes. After a while he speaks gently, as one would speak to a little sick child: "Were you very fond of him, Esther?" "I suppose so," she answers with reflective calmness, looking straight before her. "I must have been, or I should not have said and done the mean things I did. I should not have degraded myself into begging him to take me back again, when I might as well have begged of this rock" (thrusting her soft hand against it) "to turn to grass and flowers. He told me that he would never forgive me, either in this world or the next! I thought it very dreadful at the time, but I don't much care now whether he forgives me or not." "Have you forgotten him so completely already?" asks Bob, forgetting his own misery for the moment, in sheer blank amazement. "Forgotten him!" she repeats thoughtfully. "No, not that! not that! I might as well try to forget myself. I remember every line of his face, his voice, and his ways, and every word he said almost; but if I were to see him standing close to us here, I should not feel the slightest inclination to go to him, or to call him to come to me. I feel all dead everywhere." They remain in the same attitude for several minutes, neither of them stirring nor uttering a word. Then Esther speaks, with a certain uneasy abruptness. "Well!" she says, "I am waiting!--waiting for you to call me a murderess and a bad woman, and all the other names that St. John gave me, on much less provocation. Make haste!" she says, with a nervous forced laugh; "I am in a hurry to hear that I have succeeded in getting rid of my last friend. Quick! quick!--tell me that you hate me, and have done with it!" "_Hate_ you!" he repeats, tenderly; his brave voice trembling a little in spite of himself, and the meekness of a great heroism ennobling his face. "You, poor soul! Why should I hate you because another man is better and more loveable than I, and because you have eyes to see it?" The eyes he speaks of turn upon him, wide and startled, in astonished disbelief of his great generosity. "You don't understand!" she says, quickly. "You don't take it in. I was _engaged_ to him; I was going to marry him, and all the time I never once mentioned your name to him, of my own accord; and when he asked me about you, I said you were only a common acquaintance. You _must_ hate me!" she ends, vehemently; "don't pretend that you don't!" "Hush!" he answers sorrowfully, but very gently, "that is nonsense! I don't even hate him; at least" (pausing a moment, to thrust down and trample under foot one more spasm of that intolerable burning jealousy)--"at least, I try not. It was my own fault. I knew all along that I was poor, and stupid, and awkward, that I had nothing but sheer love to give you, and I hoped against hope that that might win you at last. We all set our affections upon some one thing, I suppose," he says, with a patient, pitiful smile, "and I daresay it is all the better for us in the end that we don't often get it: but oh, love! love! you might have told me!" Then his resolution breaks a little, and, covering his face with his hands, he groans aloud, in a man's dry-eyed agony--how much awfuller to see than a woman's little tears, that flow indifferently for a dead pet dog, or a dead husband! Esther sits looking at him during several minutes, awestruck, as a child that has made a grown-up person cry; then one of those quick impulses that carry some women away seizes her. "Bob!" she says, putting her sweet mouth close to his ear, while her gentle, vibrating voice thrills down to his stricken soul, "I have been very bad to you, but I will make up for it!" "Will you?" he says, looking up with a mournful, sceptical smile; "how?" "I'll marry you, if you'll have me, and make a very good wife to you," she says, simply, with unblushing calmness, eyelids unlowered, and voice unwavering. "Child!" he cries, "you are very generous, but do you think I cannot be generous too?" "It is not generosity," she says, eagerly; "I _wish_ to marry you!" He shakes his head sadly. "You don't know what you are saying," he answers, taking her little hand between both his--holding it almost fatherly, in a tender prison. "You don't know what marriage is. You don't understand that a union so close with a person you don't love would be infinitely worse than being tied to a dead body; the one could not last very long, the other might for years." She looks at him silently, with her grave, innocent eyes, for an instant or two while she tries to get down to the depth of her own heart--tries to feel something besides that numb vague indifference to everything. "If I don't love you," she says, doubtfully, "I love nobody; I like you better than anyone else in the world! Didn't Jack die in your arms?" she says, breaking out into sudden and violent tears. "Wasn't his head resting on your shoulder when he went away? Oh, dear, dear shoulder!" she cries, kissing it passionately. "How can I help loving you for that?" At the touch of her soft mouth, that has been to him hitherto, despite his nominal betrothal, a sealed book, his steadfast heart begins to pulse frantically fast: if a river of flame instead of blood were poured through his veins, they could not have throbbed with an insaner heat: his sober head swims as one that is dizzy with strong drink; reels in the overpowering passion of a man that has not frittered away his heart in little bits, after our nineteenth-century fashion, but has cast it down, _whole_, unscarred by any other smallest wound, at one woman's feet. Oh, if he might but take her at her word! Or, if there must be no marriage between them, why may not there be a brief sweet marriage of the lips? It would do her no harm--since kisses, happily for the reputation of ninety-nine hundredths of the female world, leave no mark--and it would set him for an instant on a pinnacle of bliss that would equal him with the high gods. But the paroxysm is short. Before she who has caused it has guessed at its existence, it is put down, held down strongly. Women are very often like naughty children, putting a lighted match to a train of gunpowder, and then surprised and frightened because there is an explosion. "You are deceiving yourself," he says, speaking almost coldly. "You think you like me, because I happened to be the last person that was with the dear fellow that's gone--because you knew that I was grieved about him too: but think of me as you thought of me when you were at the Gerards', and you'll know how much you love me for myself." "Love!" she repeats, dreamily--"love! love!" saying over and over again the familiar, common word, until by very dint of frequent repetition it grows unfamiliar, odd, void of meaning. "I have used up all I ever had of that: perhaps I never had much, but I think you the very best man that ever lived. Is not that enough to go upon?" He shakes his head with a slight smile. "Worse and worse! that would be a difficult character to live up to. No!" he says, looking at her, with the nobility of an utter self-abnegation in his sorrowful blue eyes. "I will _never_ marry you, Essie! never!--I swear it! If you were to go down on your knees to me, I would not: I should deserve that God should strike me dead if I could be guilty of such unmanly selfishness!" "You refuse me then?" she says, with a sigh of half-unconscious relief. "Was ever such a thing heard of? And I have not even the satisfaction of being able to be angry with you." "I refuse you!" he answers, steadily, taking her two little hands in his. "But--look at me, dear, and believe me--as I said to you before, so I say now, I shall love you to-day, and to-morrow, and always!" The two young people sit silent; each looking down, as it were with inner eyes, on the wreck of their own destiny--wrecked already! though their ships have so lately left the port. The vapours still curl about the dun hills: the clouds stoop low, as if to mingle with their sister mists. With many a sigh, and with many a shiver, the trees shower down the ruddy rain of their leaves; earth is stripping her fair body for the winter sleep. Then Brandon speaks: "Promise me one thing, Essie!" "_Anything_ almost." "That this--this--_talk_ we have had shall make no difference as to your coming to us!" "What!" she cries, suddenly springing to her feet, tears of remorse and mortification rushing to her eyes. "After having done you the worst injury a woman can do a man, am I to be indebted to you for daily bread--for food, and clothes, and firing? How much lower do you wish me to fall? Have you _no_ pity on me?" "You are misstating the case," he says, quietly, his downcast eyes fixed on a little fern that, with his stick, he is up-digging from its strait home between two neighbour rocks: "you will be indebted to _me_ for nothing; I shall not even be there; I shall have gone back to Bermuda." "Gone!" she repeats, blankly. "Are _you_ going too? Is everybody going away from me? And do you think," she continues, passionately, "that it will be easier for me to lie under such an obligation to your mother and sisters than to you? Is not it always harder to say 'Thank you!' to a woman than to a man? And would not I immeasurably rather sell matches, or hot potatoes at the street-corners, than do either?" He smiles slightly, yet very ruefully withal. "My darling!" he says, looking wistfully at her noble head and delicate, thoroughbred face, "you are a great deal too pretty to sell hot potatoes, or matches either; bread-winners should not have faces like yours!" "That is bad reasoning," she answers, trying to laugh; "if I am pretty, people will be more likely to buy my wares. Oh, Heavens!" she cries, throwing up her eyes to the dark wrack driving over head, "what business have people to bring children into the world only to starve, or to sponge upon others? There ought to be an Act of Parliament against it! Oh, why--why is not one allowed to have a look into life before one is born--to have one's choice whether one will come into it at all or no? But, if one had, who _would_ come?--who would?" "I would," answers Bob, stoutly. "I don't think the world is half a bad place, though it is the fashion to abuse it now-a-days, and though it does do one some curiously dirty turns now and then. But after all," he adds, very gravely, "bad or good no one can accuse it of lasting long, and there's a better at the other end of it." "Or a worse," says Esther, gloomily. "Who knows? One cannot fancy the world without one, can one?" she continues, following out her own ideas. "One knows that, not long ago, there _was_, and not long hence there _will be_, no _I_; but one cannot realize it!" "Why should one bother one's head trying?" says Bob, with philosophy. "The leaves seem to come out in the spring," she continues musingly, without heeding him, "the winds to blow, and the birds to sing, all with some reference to _oneself:_ one cannot understand their all going on when oneself has stopped!" Reflections of this character are not much in Bob's way. Pensive musings upon the caducity of the human race are, generally, rather feminine than masculine. A woman dreams over the shortness of life, while a man crowds it with doings that make it, in effect, long. Brandon turns the conversation back into a more practical channel. "Have you any friends that you have known longer than you have us, Essie?" "None." "Any to whom it would be less irksome to you to lie under an obligation, as you call it?" "None." "Any that you like better, in short?" "None," she answers, with a little impatience, as if, in a way, ashamed of her own destitution. "Good or bad, I have _no_ friends, _none_, and you know it." He looks at her with a sort of shocked amazement. "Good God! what is to become of you, then?" he asks, bluntly. "I don't know." "How are you to live?" "I don't know." "Have you never once thought about it?" "Never. I thought that we," she says, her lips beginning to quiver piteously, and her faithful thoughts, that never wander far from it, straying back to the new bare grave, where one half of that "_we_" lies sleeping--"I thought that we should have lived to be old together: most people live to be old!" A great yearning pity--purer, nobler, with less of the satyr and more of the god in it, than in any access of human passion between man and woman--seizes him as he looks at her, sitting there so forlorn, with one thin hand lifted to shield her weary purple-lidded eyes, that have grown dim with weeping for "her boy." "Poor little soul!" he says, compassionately; and he takes, with brotherly intimacy, the other hand, that lies listless in her lap, and lays fond lips upon it. When one is on the verge of a burst of crying, a harsh word may avert the catastrophe, but a kind one inevitably precipitates it. With how unjust, unreasonable a hatred does one often regard the person who ill-advisedly speaks that kind word! As for Esther, she buries her face on his shoulder and begins to sob hysterically. Her hat falls off, and her bare, defenceless head leans on his breast, while the autumn wind wafts one long lock of her scented hair against his face. She has forgotten that he _was_ her lover, has forgotten that he is a man; she remembers only that he is a friend, which is a sexless thing--that he is the one being who cares about her, in all the great, full, crowded world. Despite the utter abandonment of her attitude, despite the clinging closeness of her soft supple form to his, he feels none of the painful stings of passion that so lately beset him. They are tamed, for the moment, by a nobler emotion: they dare as little assail him now, as they dare assail the holy saints in Paradise. With any other man such abandonment might have been dangerous: with him she is safe. He lays his kind broad hand on her ruffled head, and strokes it, just as Jack used to do, in the pleasant days before he went. "Come to us, Essie!" he says, with persuasive tenderness; "we'll be good to you; we won't plague you; you would have come to us as my wife, why won't you come as my sister?" "Because I like buying things better than being given them!" she answers, vehemently, though still incoherent from her tears. "If I had come as your wife, I should have given you something in exchange,--_myself_, body and soul, my whole life. It would have been of no value _really_, but you would have thought it something; as your sister, I shall give you absolutely nothing!" "Child! child! why are you so proud?" he asks, with mournful reproachfulness. "Why are you so bent on standing alone? Which of us _can_ stand alone in this world? We all have to lean upon one another, more or less, and the strongest of us upon God!" "Yes, I know that!--I know that!" she answers, hastily; "but I would far rather beg, and have to be obliged to any common stranger that I had never seen before, and that most probably I should never see again, than to you. With them I should, at all events, start fair: I should have no old debts to weigh me down; but to you I owe so much already, that I am racking my brain to think how I can pay some part of it, instead of contracting new ones." "You would contract no new ones," he rejoins, earnestly; "on the contrary. Essie, you told me just now that you would be very glad to be able to make up to me for any pain you may have made me suffer: _now_ is your time!--_now_ is your opportunity!" "How?" she sobs, lifting up her head, and speaking with a slow, plaintive intonation. "You will be at the other side of the world, thousands of miles away! How will it affect _you?_" "I _shall_ be at the other side of the world," he answers, steadily; "better that I should be so! better so! But do you think that my being so far away will make it pleasanter for me to think of the one creature I love above all others on the face of the earth, starving, or worse than starving, at home?" "Worse than starving!" she repeats, opening her great, wide eyes in astonishment. "What _can_ be worse than starving? Oh! I see what you mean" (a light breaking in upon her, and the colour flushing faintly into her face). "You think I should go to the bad--do something disgraceful, if I had nobody to look after me: I am sorry you have such a bad opinion of me, but I don't wonder at it," she ends, with resigned depression. "I have no bad opinion of you!" he answers, eagerly; "but I know the end that women, originally as pure and good as you, have come to before now. I know how hard it is for a beautiful poor girl to live _honestly_ in this world, how frightfully easy to live _dis_honestly!" "Well!" she says, recklessly; "and if I did live dishonestly, what matter? Whom have I got to be ashamed of? Whom have I got to disgrace?" Brandon looks inexpressibly shocked. "Hush!" he says, putting his hand before her mouth; "you don't know what you are saying! For Heaven's sake, talk in that strain to no one but me! Any one that knew you less well than I do might misunderstand you." She looks up at him, half-frightened. "One does say dreadful things without intending it," she says, apologetically; "but I only meant to express, as forcibly as possible, how little consequence it was what happened to me." "For God's sake, word it differently then!" he says, almost sternly; "or, better still, don't say it or think it at all! It is morbid, and it is not true. If it is of no consequence to any one else what becomes of you, it is of intense, unspeakable consequence to me: how many times must I tell you that before you mean to believe it?" "To _you!_ in _Bermuda?_" she says, with a little doubting sigh. "Yes, to _me_, in _Bermuda_," he answers, firmly. "Perhaps you think that it was only because I looked upon you as my own, my _property_, that I took so great an interest in you: it was not as _mine_, it was as _yourself_, that I cared about you. You are _yourself_ still, though you are not nor ever will be mine." Then, like Guinevere's, "his voice brake suddenly." "Then, as a stream, that spouting from a cliff Fails in mid-air, but gathering at the base, Remakes itself and flashes down the vale, Went on in passionate utterance." "Essie! they say that women are more capable of self-sacrifice than men. Prove it to me now! Sacrifice this pride of yours; consent to the one thing that would make me leave England with almost a light, instead of _such_ a heavy heart!" She is silent for a minute or two, halting between two opinions; hesitating, struggling with herself: then she speaks, rapidly, but not easily-- "I cannot, Bob--I cannot! Ask me anything, not quite so hard, and I'll do it! Just think how young I am, seventeen last birthday, I have probably forty or fifty more years to live; do you wish me to promise to be a pensioner for _half a century_ on your mother's charity?" He does not answer. "Don't be angry with me for having a little self-respect!" she cries, passionately, snatching his hand. "I will go and stay with your people till I have found something to do, if they will have me. I will get your mother to help me in looking for work; I will take her advice in _everything_, do whatever she tells me; I will do anything--anything in life to please you, except----" "Except the one thing I wish," he answers, sadly and coldly. "If you speak in that tone I shall have to promise you _anything_," she says, despairingly; "but it will only be perjury, for I shall infallibly break my promise again. Why should not I work?" she goes on, in a sort of indignation at his silence. "Am I a cripple, or an idiot? Let me wait till I am either the one or the other, before I _come upon the parish!_" she says, with the bitter pride of poverty; "at all events, let us call things by their right names." "As you will," he answers, deeply wounded. "If you take it as a great indignity to be offered a home with the oldest friends you have in the world, of course I can say no more; but oh, child! you are wrong--you are wrong!" CHAPTER XXIV. It is Sunday evening. Miss Craven has been to church for the first time since her _bereavement_, as people call it. She has displayed her crape in all its crisp funeral newness before the eyes of the Plas Berwyn congregation. Also, she has been made the subject of conversation, over their early dinner, between the imbecile rector and his vinegar-faced, bob-curled wife; the latter remarking how unfortunately unbecoming black was to poor Miss Craven--really impossible to tell where her bonnet ended and her hair began; and how lucky it was for her that people did not wear mourning for as long a time as they used--three months being _ample_ nowadays, _ample_ for a brother! Esther has sat in their pew for the first time alone: she has looked at Jack's prayer-book, at his vacant corner under the dusty cobwebbed window, with eyes dryly stoic; she has walked firmly after service down the church-path, past a grassless hillock, where he who was her brother lies, dumbly submitting to the one terrific, changeless law of decay--the law that not one of us can face, as applying to ourselves, without our brains reeling at the horror of it. Oh! thrifty, harsh Nature! that, without a pang of relenting, unmixes again those cunningest compounds that we call our bodies--making the freed elements that formed them pass into new forms of life--makes us, who erewhile walked upright, godlike, fronting the sun, communing with the high stars--makes _us_, I say, creep many-legged in the beetle, crawl blind in the worm! It is evening now, and Esther sits, in her red armchair, beside the drawing-room fire, _alone_ again. The wind comes _banging_ every minute against the shuttered French window, as one that boisterously asks to be let in; the ivy leaves are dashed against the pane, as one that sighingly begs for admittance. Every now and then the young girl looks round timidly over her shoulder, in the chill expectation of seeing a death-pale spirit-face gazing at her from some corner of the room; every now and then she starts nervously, as a hot cinder drops from the grate, or as the small feet of some restless mouse make a hurry-skurrying noise behind the wainscot. As often as she can frame the smallest excuse, she rings the bell, in order to gather a little courage from the live human face, the live human voice, of the servant that answers it. Around Plas Berwyn also the wind thunders--against Plas Berwyn windows also the ivy-leaves fling themselves plaintively; but there the resemblance ends. The steady light from the lamp outblazes the uncertain, fitful fire-gleams: at Plas Berwyn there are no ghost-faces of the lately dead to haunt the inmates of that cheerful room. They are all sitting round the table on straight-backed chairs--no lolling in armchairs, no stealing of furtive naps on the Sabbath--sitting rather primly, rather Puritanically, reading severely good books. To Bob's palate, the _Hedley Vicarsian_ type of literature is as distasteful as to any other young man of sound head and good digestion, but he succumbs to it meekly, to please his mother; if Sunday came _twice_ a week, I think he would be constrained to rebel. From the kitchen, the servants' voices sound faintly audible above the howling wind, singing psalms. The family are divided between prose and poetry. Miss Brandon is reading a sermon; her sister a hymn. Here it is:-- THE FIRM BANK.[1] "I have a never-failing bank, A more than golden store; No earthly bank is half so rich, How can I then be poor? "'Tis when my stock is spent and gone, And I without a groat, I'm glad to hasten to my bank, And beg a little note. "Sometimes my banker, smiling, says, 'Why don't you oftener come? And when you draw a little note, Why not a larger sum? "'Why live so niggardly and poor?-- Your bank contains a plenty? Why come and take a one-pound note When you might have a twenty? "'Yea, twenty thousand, ten times told, Is but a trifling sum To what your Father hath laid up, Secure in God his Son.' "Since, then, my banker is so rich, I have no cause to borrow: I'll live upon my cash to-day, And draw again to-morrow. "I've been a thousand times before, And never was rejected; Sometimes my banker gives me more Than asked for or expected. "Sometimes I've felt a little proud, I've managed things so clever: But, ah! before the day was done I've felt as poor as ever! "Sometimes with blushes on my face Just at the door I stand; I know if Moses kept me back, I surely must be damned. "I know my bank will never break-- No! it can never fall! The Firm--Three Persons in one God! Jehovah--Lord of All!" A charming mixture of the jocose and familiar, isn't it? "Mother," says Bob, rather abruptly, looking up from a civil-spoken, pleasant little work, entitled "Thou Fool!" which he is perusing (it is generally an understood thing that conversation is not to be included among the Sabbath evening diversions at Plas Berwyn)--"Mother, do you know I don't think I shall try for extension, after all?" The gold-rimmed spectacles make a hasty descent from their elevation upon Mrs. Brandon's high thin nose. "Dear Bob! why not?" "Because I don't see why I should," he answers, frankly. "I'm perfectly well: why should I shirk work any more than any other fellow? I might say that I prefer a cool climate to a hot vapour-bath, English winds to oily calms, but I don't suppose that I am singular in that!" "My dear boy!" says the old woman, tremulously, stretching out her withered hand across the table to him,--"why did you ever go into that dreadful profession? Why did not you enter the ministry, like your dear father, as I so much wished you to do?" "I'm very glad I didn't, mother!" replies the young man, bluntly; "I should have been a fish sadly out of water, and, after all, I hope that Heaven will not be quite so full of black coats that there will not be room for one or two of our colour." "Have you told Essie?" inquires his eldest sister, joining in the conversation. "Yes, she knows." "Will she be ready to go with you on such short notice?" "No." "You'll leave her behind, then?" "Yes." "I thought you always had such a horror of long engagements?" "So I have, but--but" (involuntarily lowering his voice, and lifting "Thou Fool!" to be a partial shade for his face)--"there is no engagement between us now!" Six startled eyes fix themselves upon his face. "What!" cry three simultaneously shrill female voices. "No engagement! Has she thrown you over?" "No." "Have _you_ thrown _her_ over?" (with an astonished emphasis on the pronouns). "No." "Have you quarrelled, then?" "No, we haven't," answers Bob, wincing. "Poor little child! one would hardly choose such a time as this to quarrel with her. Cannot you understand two people coming to the conclusion that they are better apart; better as friends than as--as anything else?" His three comforters stare at one another in bewilderment; then his parent speaks, shaking her head oracularly: "I'm afraid I see how it is, Bob; you have found out that this unfortunate girl is, in some way, unworthy of you, and you are too generous to confess it, even to us." Bob dashes down "Thou Fool!" in a fury, and his blue eyes shine with quick fire. "Mother, do you call that the 'charity that thinketh no evil?' I tell you, Essie is willing to marry me to-morrow, but I--" "But you are _not_ willing!" interrupts the domestic pack, bursting again into full cry. "Tell us something a _little_ more probable, Bob, and we'll try and believe it," subjoins Bessy, with a small curling smile. "It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether you believe me or not," replies the young man, sternly; keeping under, with great difficulty, an unmanly longing to box Miss Bessy's ears. "I only tell you, _upon my honour_, that Essie is willing to marry me, and that I--solely for her own sake, solely because I know that an inferior being cannot make a superior one happy--am _not_ willing." "And a very good thing too," cries Bessy, viciously. "I always thought you were singularly ill-suited to one another; I always said so to mamma and Jane. Didn't I, mamma?--didn't I, Jane? 'Can two walk together except they be agreed?' you know." "Girls," says poor Bob, harried almost beyond endurance, and addressing his sisters by the conveniently broad appelative which covers everything virgin between the ages of six and a hundred--"Girls, would you mind going into the dining-room for a few minutes? I want to speak to mother alone." The "girls" look rebellious, but their rebellion does not break into open mutiny. Rising, they comply with his request. "Of course, what _most nearly_ concerns our _only_ brother cannot be supposed to have any interest for _us_," says Bessy, leaving her sting behind, like a wasp, and shutting the door with as near an approach to a bang as her conscience will admit. As soon as they are well out of the room, Bob comes and sits at his mother's feet, and lays his head on her lap, as he used to do when he was a very little boy. She passes her fingers fondly through his curly hair. "This is a severe trial, my dear boy," she says, a little tritely; "but take an old woman's word for it; look for comfort in the right direction, and you'll _surely, surely_ find it!" "_I_ don't want comfort," answers Bob, pluckily; he having by no means exiled his sisters in order to pule and whimper over his own woes. "_I_ do very well." "I thought you had come to your old mother for consolation," answers his parent, a little aggrievedly: naturally somewhat disappointed at being balked of the office of Paraclete, so dear to every woman's heart; "if not, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about that you did not wish your sisters to hear?" "About _her!_" he answers, emphatically, lifting up his head, and reading her face earnestly. "I didn't wish her to be the mark for any more of Bessy's sneers. I wonder," he says, a little bitterly, "that she who is always talking about '_our Great Exemplar_' does not recollect that _He_ never sneered at any one." "Did you say that it was Esther Craven that you wished to speak to me about?" inquires Mrs. Brandon, rather coldly. "Mother," he says, passionately, "she has not a farthing in the world! What _is_ to become of her?" "Any one that my dear son takes an interest in will always be welcome to a home with me, for as long as they like to avail themselves of it," says the old lady, primly. He shakes his head. "She would not come," he says, despondently; "she is too proud: she hates to be beholden to any one: she is bent on working for her own living." "And a very proper resolution, too," replies his mother, stoutly, her heart being steeled against Esther by a latent conviction that that fair false maid has dealt unhandsomely by her son. "Providence is always more willing to help those that help themselves." "How _can_ she help herself?" cries Esther's champion, indignantly. "What sort of work are those little weak hands, that little inexperienced head, fitted for?" "Women with hands as weak and heads as inexperienced have toiled for their daily bread before now, I suppose," rejoins Mrs. Brandon, with a certain hardness, foreign to her nature, and arising from that spirit of contradiction, innate in us all, which makes us look coldly upon any object that some one else is making a fuss over. Bob springs to his feet in great wrath, and speaks low and quick: "Mother! I'm sorry I ever broached this subject to you; one takes a long time, I see, to get acquainted with one's nearest relatives' characters. If you can see the child of one of your oldest friends working her poor little fingers to the bone for the bare necessaries of life without stretching out a finger to help her, _I_ cannot!" Speaking thus disrespectfully, he walks towards the door. "A spaniel, a woman, and a walnut tree, The more you beat 'em, the better they be." says the rude old saw. Every woman, from a mother to a mistress, enjoys, rather than otherwise, being bullied. The old woman half rises, and stretching out her hand to her son, says, "My boy! come back! let us talk rationally: don't quarrel with your old mother about a person that will never be so good a friend to you as she is." He turns, half hesitating: anger's red ensign still aflame on his honest face. "Shall I tell you, Bob, why I cannot feel common compassion for--for this girl?" "Why?" "Because," says the old lady, with emotion, Mr. Brandon's image heaving up and down rather quicklier than usual upon her ample breast,--"because some instinct tells me that she has not had common compassion upon you." "'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;' in fact," answers Bob, with a sarcasm unusual to him, "you are forgetting, mother, how often you have impressed upon me that we are no longer under the Mosaic dispensation! But why should she have compassion on me, may I ask? In what way do I stand in need for it? _I_'m not a woman, thank God!" She looks at him, intently, with a steadiness that disconcerts him. "Bob, can you look me in the face and tell me that you have not been unhappier since you knew Esther Craven than ever you were before in all your life?" "I have," he answers, simply, "and happier too; so that makes it square." Foiled in this direction, she varies her point of attack a little: "Can you look me in the face, and tell me that since your engagement she has behaved to you as a modest, honourable woman should behave to the man she has promised to marry?" He casts his eyes down troubled, and begins to fidget with a dilapidated little Chelsea Cupid on the mantelshelf, too truthful to say "Yes," too generous to say "No." "She is ready to fulfil her promise," he answers, evasively. "She is willing to marry me whenever I like, as I told you before--to-morrow! to-night! this instant, if I wish!" "For a home, of course; one can understand that, in her situation," says his mother, in a tone of slighting pity. Bob perceives, and is stung by it. "No, not for a home!" he answers, indignantly. "Poor soul! she may have that without paying such a heavy toll for it." "To what motive, then, do you ascribe her willingness?" "She told me that she liked me better than any one else in the world," he answers, with the reluctance of one who is making a statement that he believes will not be credited by the auditor to whom it is addressed. "My poor simple boy! and you believed her?" (with a sort of compassionate scorn). He hesitates. "I believe that she meant what she said at the moment," he replies, doubtfully. "If there was such perfect harmony of opinion between you, why was the engagement broken, may I ask?" she inquires, a little sharply. No answer, except quickened breathing, and a frown slightly contracting his climate-bronzed forehead. "Was it--oh, my dear boy! if it was so, no one can respect your scruples more than I do--was it because you were not quite sure that she was one of the Lord's people?" "Oh, dear, no," answers the young man, quickly, with scarcely repressed impatience in his tone--"nothing of the kind. God forbid my being so presumptuously uncharitable! How am I to know who is, or who is not? All I know is that if she is not, neither am I; and I trust, mother, that you will find, by-and-bye, that they are not quite such, a scanty nation as you seem to imagine." "A higher authority than I am has expressly designated them 'a little flock,'" says the old woman, sententiously, pursing up her mouth; "but far be it from me to wish to judge, whatever you may imply. But I am still waiting to hear what your motive was for breaking your engagement, a motive which you seem to have such an unaccountable difficulty in telling me." He looks down, for an instant or two, biting his lips, then speaks petulantly: "Why should I tell you, mother?--why should I tell any one? A man's _motives_ are his own concern, whatever his actions may be; if mine are strong enough to satisfy myself and her, surely that is enough." "Oh, of course," answers his mother, rather nettled at what she considers a want of confidence; "only that, unless I am put in possession of the circumstances of the case, I really don't see how I can be expected to give advice----" "I don't want advice," interrupts the young man, eagerly. "I want a much better thing--assistance." "Assistance in what?" "Why, in hindering that poor girl," he says, with warmth, "from being thrown upon the world penniless, helpless, and without a friend, as she will be after the sale at Glan-yr-Afon." "Not without a friend, as long as you are alive, Bob; one can answer for that!" rejoins his mother, rather tartly. "I count for nothing," says Bob, quietly. "A man's friendship can be of no service to a woman, unless he is in some authorised position of relationship or connection with her; otherwise he does her more harm than good. What she needs, and what I hoped she would have found in you, mother, is a woman-friend." "If," replies his mother, drawing herself up and looking very stiff--"If she is, as you say, _too proud_ to avail herself of the home that I am, _for your sake_, willing to offer her, she is likely to be _too proud_ to consent to be befriended in any other way." Brandon looks at her for a moment with something akin to indignant scorn in his face, dutiful son as he usually is; then, repenting, throws himself on his knees beside her, and clasping his arms about her withered neck, says, entreatingly: "Mother, why are you so hard upon her?--what has she done to you? Just think, how would you have liked Jane or Bessy, when they were her age, to have been driven out into the world to make their own way, without a single soul to say a kind word to them, or give them a helping hand; and," he continues, musingly, "they never could have been exposed to the temptations she will be--they never were beautiful, like her!" He had never spoken truer words in all his life, but the truth is not always the best to be spoken. "At all events," says the old lady, with emphasis, freeing herself from his arms, and getting rather red in the face--"At all events, Bob, however disparagingly you may speak of them, they were and are good, modest, pious girls, that would not trifle with an honest man's affection for their own amusement, as handsomer ones have done before now." "I never heard of any honest man having given them the chance," retorts Bob, sarcastically, quitting his caressing posture, with a revulsion of feeling as sudden as it was complete. "The servants are assembled," says the youngest, best, modestest, piousest of the girls, opening the door, and putting in her little drab face. "Must I tell them to go back to the kitchen for a quarter of an hour, or has Bob nearly finished his _private communication?_" "Quite!" replies Bob, emphatically. He is standing leaning against the chimneypiece, his colour heightened, and a sorely angered look on his open simple face. "You need not wait for me, mother," he continues, seeing his parent look inquiringly towards him, as she moves with the slowness of age and portliness to the door; "I shall not come to prayers to-night. When one prays, one ought to be in charity with all the world, ought not one? And I am not." [1] A real Revivalist hymn. CHAPTER XXV. The rough winds and the spiteful rains have wellnigh stripped all their red-and-yellow clothing off the trees: upon the oaks alone some leaves still hang persistent, though withered and crackly. The apples and pears are all gathered and stored for the winter; even the dark-blue Orleans plums, that require the crisping frost to ripen them, are eaten and gone. The sale at Glan-yr-Afon is over; it is enrolled among that countless array of unrecallable events, great and little, that is past. The new tenant, an ordinary Welsh farmer, with an overfull quiver of sprouting Welshmen and Welshwomen, has entered into possession. No one has taken the trouble to "redd up" the garden for the winter; flowers do not help to pay the rent--they give back nothing but their beauty and perfume; and so, over Esther's trim flower-beds, sheep-dogs gallop, and children, boisterous with health and spirits, run races. The rustic seat under the old cherry-tree--the seat that Jack fashioned in the summer evenings--has been broken up for firewood; and in Jack's chair in the dining-room, the father of the family reposes his plethoric bulk of an evening, when he does not happen to be getting drunk at the "Punch Bowl," and snores euphoniously. And Bob, pursued by blessings, prayers, lamentations, and strong wishes for his safe back-coming, is gone--gone away in a smoky steamer, over the mist-mantled grey sea. Not a few of the tears that fell for him came from Esther's eyes--not love-tears, shed privily, secretly, dashed away with hasty care at the sound of any approaching footsteps, but poured out openly, publicly, in the presence of his mother and sisters--mingled with theirs, indeed, as of no different quality. Not more openly, not more publicly, had she wept for old Luath, when, on the day before the sale, the old dog, who had ailed and moped ever since his master's (to him) unaccountable disappearance, crawled weakly to her feet, and, looking up dimly wistful into her face for the last time, died licking her tender hand. On the day before his departure, Brandon came to say "Good-bye" to her. "I have told mother _nothing_," he says, with some embarrassment, in allusion to their late engagement--"nothing, except that I was sure that I could not make you happy. I have given her no reason, Esther--give her none either! She will not ask you point-blank, and it is always easy to evade indirect questions; there are some things that it is of no use being confidential about." "I see," she answers, with a faint smile. "I understand, neatly as you have gilded the pill, you are afraid that she would turn me out-of-doors if she knew what a treacherous, black-hearted wretch I have been; that I should have to take refuge even sooner than I must otherwise do in the workhouse, to which I always look forward as my final destination." Then, bidding God bless her, he wrings her hand, strongly, and so takes his last farewell of her, nor ever sees her fair face and great gentle stag eyes again. And now he is gone--gone with a difficult smile on his face, and very little money in his pocket. He never has much, but he has less than usual now; having spent his few last sovereigns on the erecting a plain white cross at the head of Jack's low grave, that, when this generation has passed, his place of sleeping may not be quite undistinguished from that of his neighbour dust. He has gone, with his heart's strongest longing balked, his prime hope death-smitten; but yet not despairing--not cursing his day, nor arraigning High God, saying, "Why do I, undeserving, thus suffer?" He carries away with him no heavy seething load of revenge, no man-slaying ardour of hatred against the woman that has wronged him, and the man for whose sake she did it. Life is full, interesting, complex--not all on one string, whatever morbid women and moody rhymers may say; not all sexual love--all of it, that is, that is not devoted to drinking, as Anacreon, Catullus, and Moore have dulcetly told us. And therefore, though poor, disappointed, and heart-wrung, Brandon is not all unhappy. He has been greatly sinned against, and has forgiven, thus exercising the function that raises us nearest to a level with the Godhead. And meanwhile Esther, left behind in wintry Wales, takes his emptied place at _triste_ Plas Berwyn. Despite all her resolves, despite her high talk that a morsel of Mrs. Brandon's bread would choke her--that it would be better to starve than to be under any obligation to the family of the man she has betrayed--she is now eating that suffocating bread, now lying under those annihilating obligations. Want makes us swallow our dignity--makes us do many mean things. One _must_ live; one must keep in that breath that perhaps is only spent in sighs: and Mr. James Greenwood has made us all out of love with the workhouse. So she sits down three times a day at Mrs. Brandon's table, the unwillingest guest that ever sat at any board, and eats the bread of charity, and the roast mutton and apple-tart of charity, when the conclusion of the long Puritan grace gives her permission to do so. There is plenty of time for thinking at Plas Berwyn, for in that still household talk is not rife. When people never leave their own little one earth-nook, rarely see any one beyond their immediate family circle, and rarelier still read any reviews, papers, books, that treat of any subject but one, they have not much to talk about. There are few minds original enough, copious enough, to suffice to themselves--to be able to do without supplies derived from external objects. Our thoughts are generally our own, merely by right of immediate possession; mostly they are the thoughts of others, more or less digested, more or less amalgamated with thought-matter of our own. They are not unkind to her, these chill faded women. Not loving her--for, as Bessy appositely quoted, "Can two walk together except they be agreed?"--and Esther and they are most surely in nothing agreed; mistrusting her, though not knowing, of having dealt falsely by their brother; sincerely, though bigotedly, looking upon her society as unprofitable--nay, almost contaminating; as being one of the unregenerate many--one standing in the cold, outside their little clique of elect, safe souls: despite all this, they are yet willing to give her food and shelter, to give them her for an indefinite number of years, to make her a part of their own dry sapless lives. But she is not willing--oh, most unwilling! Let me not be mistaken, however: it is not with the dryness and saplessness of the offered life that she quarrels. Life must henceforth be to her, everywhere, dry and sapless; the duller it is, the less it contrasts with her own thoughts. It must be lived, somewhere: it can be lived pleasurably nowhere. Then, why not unpleasurably, greyly, negatively, at Plas Berwyn? Why not, supposing that she had been able to pay for her own cups of tea and slices of mutton, for her own iron bedstead and deal washhand-stand? But, supposing that she was not able; supposing that she was so destitute as to be glad, even while weeping over his poor rough body, that her old dog had died because she was too poor to be able to keep him; supposing that this life entailed upon her the bitter pain of being daily, hourly grateful to people for whose society she had a strong repugnance, and upon whom, in the person of one of their nearest and dearest, she had inflicted a mortal injury? It is hard to live with people whose every idea runs counter to your own--whose whole tone of thought and conversation is diametrically opposed to what you have been used to all your life--and yet not be able to contradict, to argue with, or differ from them, because you are eating of their bread and drinking of their cup. The mere fact of feeling that you are too deeply indebted to people to be able, without flagrant ingratitude, to quarrel, makes you desire ardently to fall out with them. "How much better to be a professed beggar at once!" thinks Esther, with a sort of grim humour. "How much better to whine and shuffle along the streets at people's elbows, swearing that you have a husband dying of consumption, and six children all under three years of age starving at home!" It is only the very basest and the very noblest natures that can accept great favours and not be crushed by them. Esther's is neither. To her it is only the thought that her state of dependence is temporary that makes it supportable. She has lost no time in appealing to Mrs. Brandon for her aid in the search for work--_work_, that vague word, that conveys to her no distinct idea, that stands to her in the place of something to be done by her, in return for which she may be able to obtain food and drink, without saying "Thank you" to any one for them. On the afternoon of the day of Bob's departure Esther has been sitting for an hour or more, in listless sadness, on the fender-stool before the fire, her eyes staring vacantly at the battered Michaelmas daisies and discoloured chrysanthemums in the wintry, darkening garden outside. Mrs. Brandon's steel knitting-pins click gently, as she knits round and round, round and round, in the monotonous eternity of a long-ribbed knickerbocker stocking. The fire-gleams flicker dully red on the sombre, large-patterned flock-paper, which makes the room look twice as small and twice as dark as it need otherwise do. Esther is roused from her reverie by the entrance of the servant with the moderator lamp. "Mrs. Brandon!" she says, addressing her hostess. "Yes, my dear!" The "my dear" is a concession to Bob's memory. "Bob told me," says the young girl, with some diffidence, "that you were good enough to say that you would help me in looking for--for--something to do!" The old lady looks scrutinizingly at her over the tops of her spectacles. "My dear son expressed such great, such _surprising_ anxiety, considering that your connection with him is at an end, about your future, that I _did_ promise." "And you will?" asks the other, timidly. "_I_ always keep _my_ promises, Esther, I hope" (with a slight expressive accent on the _I_ and _my_). "When will you begin?--soon?--at once? to-morrow?" cries the girl, eagerly. Mrs. Brandon hesitates: "I must first know for what sort of employment you wish--for what sort you are best suited?" "I am suited for nothing," she answers, despondently; "but that must not deter me. If nobody did any work but what they were fitted for, three quarters of the world would be idle." "Would you be inclined to take a situation as governess, if one could be found for you in a respectable pious family?" She shakes her head. "I don't know enough, and I have no accomplishments. I can read a few pages of 'Racine' or 'Télémaque' without applying _very_ often to the dictionary; modern French, with its colloquialisms and slang, baffles me; and I can play a few 'Etudes' and 'Morceaux de Salon' in a slipshod, boarding-school fashion; but these extensive requirements would hardly be enough." Mrs. Brandon pauses in consideration. "There are so few occupations open to _ladies_," she remarks, with an emphasis on the word. "Most professions are closed up by our sex, and all _trades_ by our birth and breeding." "When one is a pauper, one must endeavour to forget that one ever was a lady," answers Esther, rather grimly; "my gentility would not stand in the way of my being a shoeblack, if women ever were shoeblacks, and if they paid one tolerably for it." "Would you like to try _dressmaking?_" inquires her companion, rather doubtfully. Esther gives an involuntary gasp. It is not a pleasant sensation when the consciousness that one is about to descend from the station that one has been born and has grown up in is first brought stingingly home to one. Happiness, they say, is to be found equally in all ranks, but no one ever yet started the idea that it was sweet to go down. Quick as lightning there flashed before her mind the recollection of a slighting remark made by Miss Blessington, _à propos_ of two very second-rate young ladies, who had come to call at Felton one day during her visit there, that "they looked like little milliners!" Was she going to be a "_little milliner?_" "I'm afraid I don't sew well enough," she answers, gently, wondering meanwhile that the idea has never before struck her what a singularly inefficient, incapable member of society she is. "I cannot cut out: I can make a bonnet, and I can mend stockings in a boggling, amateur kind of way, and that is all!" Recollecting whose stockings it was that she had been used to mend in the boggling way she speaks of, a knife passes through her quivering heart. "The same objection would apply to your attempting a lady's-maid's place, I suppose?" "Yes, of course" (bending down her long white neck in a despondent attitude); "but" (with regathered animation in eye and tone)--"but that objection would not apply to any other branch of domestic service--a housemaid, for instance; it cannot require much native genius, or a very long apprenticeship, to know how to empty baths, and make beds, and clean grates: I ought to be able to learn how in a week." Mrs. Brandon's eyes travel involuntarily to the small, idle, white hands that lie on Esther's lap--the blue-veined, patrician hands that she is so calmly destining to spend their existence in trundling mops and scouring floors. "My dear child," she says, with compelled compassion in her voice, "you talk very lightly of these things; but you can have no conception, till you make the experiment, of what the trial would be of being thrown on terms of equality among a class of persons so immensely your inferiors in education and refinement." "I believe it is a well-authenticated fact," answers Esther, firmly, "that in some town in one of the midland counties a baronet's wife is, or was, earning her living by going out charing. What right have I to be more squeamish than she?" "It is unchristian," pursues Mrs. Brandon--unconvinced by Esther's anecdote, which indeed she treats as apocryphal--"to call anyone common or unclean, and God forbid that I should ever do so! But imagine a lady, born and bred like yourself, exposed to the coarse witticisms of the footman and the intimate friendship of the cook!" Esther's little face seems to catch some of the deep fire-glow--her breast heaves up and down in angry, quick pants. "Mrs. Brandon, do you suppose that they would be so _impertinent_----?" she begins, fiercely; then breaks off, ashamed. "I forgot; it would be no impertinence then! Well!" (with a long low sigh) "I am tough: I have borne worse things! This is but a little thing, after all; I can bear this!" "I think, Esther, that if, as I fear, you are leaning on your own strength, and not on an _Unseen Arm_, you are overrating your powers of endurance." "Perhaps; I can but try." "Impossible!" answers Mrs. Brandon, with cool, common sense. "Who would hire you? Ridiculous!--childish! No, Esther; we must try and find something more eligible for you, if you are still foolishly bent on declining the _happy_, and respectable, and (I humbly hope I may say) _pious_ home that I am so willing--that we are all so willing--to offer you." "Oh yes! yes! yes!" cries the child, passionately. "I _am_ bent on it! It is less degrading even to be exposed, as you say, to the witticisms of the footman and the friendship of the cook, than to live upon people on whom you have no claim beyond that of having been already most ungrateful to them--than to impose on their generosity, to sponge upon them!" "As you will, Esther," answers Mrs. Brandon, loving her too little, and respecting her independence of spirit too much, to reason further with her. There is a pause--a pause broken presently by Esther, who speaks diffidently: "Mrs. Brandon, don't you think that if I could get into one of those large shops in London, or one of our great towns, I could try on cloaks, and measure yards of ribbon, without requiring any great amount of knowledge of any kind, theoretical or practical?" Mrs. Brandon looks doubtful. "It is not so easy as you may imagine, my dear, to obtain admission into one of those shops: a friend of mine made great efforts to get a situation for a _protégée_ of hers at Marshal & Snelgrove's, or Lewis & Allenby's, and after waiting a long time, was obliged to give it up as hopeless." "Perhaps she was not tall?" suggests Esther, rather timidly. "I really never inquired." "They like them tall!" says the girl, involuntarily drawing up her slight _élancé_ figure; "and I'm tall, am I not?" "I should imagine that that qualification alone would hardly suffice," answers the old lady, drily; "and indeed," she continues, pursing up her mouth rather primly, "even if it would, I should hardly think a situation in a shop, or other place of public resort, desirable for a girl so young, and of so--so--so _peculiar_ an appearance as you." "Peculiar!" repeats Esther, rather resentfully, raising her great eyes in unfeigned, displeased surprise to her companion's face. "Am I so very _odd-looking_, Mrs. Brandon? I don't think I can be, for no one ever told me so before!" "I did not say _odd-looking_, my dear," returns Mrs. Brandon, sharply; "please don't put words into my mouth." "If people came to buy cloaks, they would surely be thinking of how _they_ were looking, not how _I_ looked," says Esther, not yet quite recovered from her annoyed astonishment; "_my_ appearance, beyond the mere fact of my being tall, could not be of much consequence one way or another." Mrs. Brandon takes off and lays down her spectacles the better to point the rebuke she is about to administer. "Esther," she says, severely, "since you insist on my explaining myself more clearly, I must tell you that I think a girl should be steadier in conduct, and more decidedly imbued with religious principles than I have any reason for supposing you to be, before she is exposed to the temptations to which a young and handsome woman is liable in one of those sinks of iniquity, our great towns." Esther flings up her head with an angry gesture. "I really don't see what temptations a person even as unsteady and irreligious as I am," she says, contemptuously, "could be exposed to in a haberdasher's shop. Temptation, in a woman's mouth, always implies something about _men;_ and in a place specially devoted to woman's dress, one would be less likely to see them than in any other spot on the face of the earth." "If you are so much better informed on the subject than a person of _treble_ your years and experience," says Mrs. Brandon, resuming her spectacles, and beginning to knit faster than ever, "I have, of course, no more to say." An apposite retort rises prompt and saucy to Esther's lips, clamouring for egress through those sweet red gates; but the recollection of Mrs. Brandon's weak tea and legs of mutton, and the obligations thereto hanging, drives it back again. She leans her elbow on her knee, and elevates her straight dark brows. "The question is," she says, gravely, "can you suggest anything better? When one has no money, and none of the acquirements that command money, one must take what one can get, and be thankful." But Mrs. Brandon is silent, counting her stitches, buried in calculations as to whether her stocking-leg has attained the length and breadth suited to the dimensions of one of her son's large limbs. The wind shakes the shutter as if, in its lonely coldness outside, it coveted the fire and lamp-light. The old grey cat sits on the fender-stool beside Esther, yawning prodigiously every now and then; her round fore-paws gathered trimly under her, and the sleepy benignity of her face half-contradicting the fierce stiffness of her whiskers, and the tigerish upward curve of her lips. "What is done in haste is always ill-done, my dear!" says Mrs. Brandon, presently, having satisfactorily calculated that five more rows will conduct her to Bob's large heel--giving utterance to her little trite saw with a certain air of complacency. Original remarks come forth doubtfully, questioningly, feeling their way: it is only a well aired platitude that can strut and swagger forwards in the certainty of a good reception. "We will think over the subject seriously and prayerfully: we will take it with us to the Throne of Grace, and make it the subject of _special_ intercession of worship this evening." "Oh no, no! please not!--_please_ not!" cries Esther, the lilies in her fair cheek turning quickly to deepest, angriest carnations. "I should not like it: I could not come to prayers if you did. Why cannot we talk it over _now_, this instant? There's no time like the present." "I see no hurry, Esther," answers Mrs. Brandon, coldly. "But there is a hurry!--_every_ hurry!" exclaims the girl, passionately, throwing herself on the floor beside Mrs. Brandon, too much in earnest to be chilled by the frosty cold of her manner; her whole soul thrown, in bright entreaty, into the great clear pupils of her superb, up-looking eyes. "I don't think I ever knew what the words meant till now. I don't believe I ever could have been in a real hurry in my life before! Put yourself in my position, Mrs. Brandon," she says, laying her little eager hand on her companion's rusty-black-coburg knee; "imagine how you would like to be wholly dependent, not only for luxuries and comforts--one might well do without them--but for bare bread and water, on people that are neither kith nor kin to you, and that have taken you in out of Christian charity, and because they think it right--not in the least because they love you!" "If I were exposed to such a trial, Esther," replied Mrs. Brandon, deliberately rubbing her spectacles gently with her pocket-handkerchief, "I hope that I should bear it meekly; that I should kiss the rod, knowing that it was an Allwise Hand that brandished it, and that I was so chastened in order to lower the pride of a too carnal heart." "Then God forbid that my carnal heart may ever be so lowered!" cries the other, springing impetuously to her feet, and drawing up her head haughtily. "Why," she continues, beginning to walk up and down the little room with agitated steps and fingers hotly interlaced--"why did God implant such an instinct as self-respect in us, if supinely submitting to what destroys all self-respect is a passport to heaven? Who would bow beneath any rod if they could get from under it? It is a metaphor that always reminds me of a naughty child, or a broken-spirited cur." Mrs. Brandon deposits her knitting on the table; rises slowly--old people's joints, like wooden dolls, decline to bend on short notice (it is a pity, is it not, that our machinery is not calculated to remain in a state of efficiency, even through our paltry seventy years?)--dismounts from the footstool, on which her feet have been perched, walks to the door, there stands, and, shaking her stiff, grey curls, speaks with trembling severity: "Esther, until you can discuss this subject with less irreverent violence, I must beg to decline any further conversation upon it." CHAPTER XXVI. "Wanted, by a young person, aged 17, a situation as companion to an invalid or elderly lady. Salary not so much an object as a comfortable home in a pious family. Address, A. B., Post Office, Naullan, N.W." This is the modest form in which Miss Craven's desire for work comes before the public. She had begged earnestly for the expunging of the "pious family." "It is not true, Mrs. Brandon," she says, with vexed tears in her eyes; "it is nothing to me whether they are pious or not--the salary is far the greatest object." "If it is, my dear, it ought not to be," answers promptly Mrs. Brandon, who, having paid for the insertion of the advertisement, thinks that she has a right to word it as she wishes. And now it has gone forth through the length and breadth of the civilized world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Poles--has found its way into clubs and cafés, hotels and private houses, numerous as the sea-sand grains, in the overgrown advertisement sheet of the _Times_. To not one in ten thousand of that journal's millions of readers is it more interesting than any other announcement in the long columns of-- "Wanted, a cook." "Wanted, a cook." "Wanted, a good plain cook." "Wanted, a footman." "Wanted, a footman." A companionship, then, is what has been decided upon as the vocation to which Esther is best suited: it requires neither French nor German, neither astronomy nor the use of the globes: it demands only a patience out-Jobing Job, a meekness out-Mosesing Moses, a capacity for eating dirt greater than that of any _parvenu_ struggling into society, health and spirits more aggressively strong than a schoolboy's, and a pliability greater than an osier's. These qualities being supposed to be more quickly acquirable than music, drawing, and languages, Esther has decided upon entering on the office that will call for the exercise of them all. Besides the printed advertisement above quoted, Mrs. Brandon has been advertising largely in private, by means of many long-winded epistles; has been seeking far and wide among the circle of her acquaintance for some grey maid, wife, or widow, in the tending of whose haggard, peevish age Esther may waste her sweet, ripe youth, unassailed by wicked men, in safe, respectable misery. And meanwhile Esther waits--waits through the fog-shrouded, sun-forgotten November days, through the eternal black November nights,--waits, straying lonely along the steaming tree-caverned wood-paths--the solemn charnels of the dead summer nations of leaves and flowers. Preachers are fond of drawing a parallel between us and those forest leaves; telling us that, as in the autumn they fall, rot, are dissolved, and mingle together, stamped down and shapeless, in brown confusion, and yet in the spring come forth again, fresh as ever; so shall we--who, in our autumn, die, rot, and are not--come forth again in our distant spring, in lordly beauty and gladness. So speaking, whether thinkingly or unthinkingly, they equivocate--they lie! It is not the _same_ leaves that reappear; others _like_ them burst from their sappy buds, and burgeon in the "green-haired woods;" but _not_ they--_not_ they! They stir not, nor is there any movement among the sodden earth-mass that was _them_. If the parallel be complete, others like us--others as good, as fair, as we! but yet _not we_--other than us, shall break forth in lusty youth, in their strong May-time; _but we_ shall rot on! "Oh touching, patient earth, That weepest in thy glee; Whom God created very good, And very mournful we!" how much longer can you bear the weight of all your dead children, that lie so heavy on your mother breast! * * * * * One morning, on joining the Brandon family before prayers, Esther finds Mrs. Brandon reading aloud a letter; but on Esther's entrance she desists. Hearing her voice stop, the young girl comes forward eagerly. "Is it about me?" she asks, panting, forgetting her morning salutations. "Yes, Esther," replies Mrs. Brandon, laconically, continuing to read, but this time to herself. Esther walks to the window, drums on the rain-beaten pane, returns to the table; takes up the bread-knife, and begins to chip bits of crust off the loaf; sits down, gets up again; then, unable to contain herself any longer, cries out, hastily, "Will it do?--will it do?" "If you will give me time, my dear, to finish this letter in peace, I shall have a better chance of being able to tell you," answers the old lady, drily. Esther sits down again, snubbed; and then the door opens, and the three middle-aged, quakerish maid-servants make their sober entry, each with bible and hymnal in her hand; and the long exposition, the eight-versed hymn, and extempore prayer set in. To Esther's ears, all the words of exposition, hymn, and prayer seem to be, "Will it do?--will it do?" "I have received a letter," begins Mrs. Brandon, slowly addressing Esther, when the "exercise" is ended, "from a valued Christian friend of mine, who has lately met with a lady and gentleman considerably advanced in life, who are on the look-out for a----" "Companion?" interrupted Esther, breathlessly. "For a young person who may supply the place of their failing sight, by reading to them, writing letters for them--may arrange the old lady's work, and make herself a generally useful, agreeable, and ladylike companion." "That does not sound hard, does it?" says Esther, with a nearer approach to hopefulness in her face than has been seen there since her brother's death. "Neither reading, writing, nor being ladylike are very difficult accomplishments, are they? Oh, Mrs. Brandon, I hope they'll take me, don't you? What is their name?" "Blessington!" "Blessington!" repeats Essie, her lips parting in some dismay. "I wonder are they--can they be--any relation to Miss Blessington, Sir Thomas Gerard's ward?" "I really cannot tell you, my dear. You have given us so very little information as to your visit to the Gerards, that I was not even aware that Blessington was the name of Sir Thomas's ward." Esther passes by the small reproach in silence. "Perhaps they may be her father and mother," suggests Bessy. "She has no father nor mother." "Her grandfather and grandmother?" "She has no grandfather nor grandmother." "Her great-uncle and great-aunt?" "Possibly." "Very likely the same family," remarks Mrs. Brandon, intending to say something rather agreeable than otherwise. "Blessington is not a common name." "I recollect," Esther says, contracting her forehead in the effort to recall all that was said upon a subject which at the time interested her too little to have made much impression--"I recollect her mentioning one day having some old relations in ----shire, whom it was a great bore to have to go and visit." "These people live in ----shire." "Then it must be the same," cries Essie, a look of acute chagrin passing over her features. "Oh, Mrs. Brandon, what a disappointment! I'm afraid we shall have to look out again! I'm afraid this won't do!" "And why not, pray?" inquires the other, staring in displeased astonishment from under her thick white eyebrows at her young _protégée_. Silence. "Did you," inquires the old lady, looking rather suspiciously at her, "have any quarrel or disagreement with the Gerards during your visit which could render you unwilling to meet any one in any way connected with their family?" "Oh no! no!--certainly not!" answers Essie, vehemently, blushing scarlet as any June poppy. The elder woman's sharp ancient eyes pass like a gimlet through and through the younger one. They fasten with the pitiless fixedness of one who has passed the age for blushing, and has consequently no compassion for that infirmity upon the betraying red of her sweet bright cheeks. "Are you _quite_ sure, Esther?" "Quite," replies Esther, with steady slowness. "I don't like them, as a family. In fact, I _hate_ them all; but I have had no quarrel with them." "I wonder that you cared to spend a whole month and more with people that you hated," says Miss Bessy, with a sprightly smile. "So do I, Bessy," answers Esther, bitterly, turning away her head; "but that's neither here nor there." "Am I to understand, then," says Mrs. Brandon, with an inquisitorial elevation of nose and spectacles, "that an apparently _groundless_ and, as far as I can judge, _ungrateful_ feeling of dislike towards people who, from the little you have told us of them, seem always to have treated you with indulgent kindness, is your sole motive for wishing to decline this very desirable situation?" "When one has seen better days," answered the poor proud child, sighing, "one wishes to keep as far as possible from any of those who have known one formerly." "Tut!" answers Mrs. Brandon, chidingly; "it can be a matter of very little consequence to people in the position of the Gerards whether you have a few pounds a year more or less. They can afford to be kind to you, whatever your circumstances may be!" "I don't _want_ them to be kind to me," cries the girl, fiercely, stung into swift anger. "I know nothing I should dislike more. The only wish I have, with regard to the whole family, is that I should never hear their names mentioned again!" Mrs. Brandon seats herself at the table, and begins to pour out the tea out of a huge, deep-bodied family tea-pot. Miss Bessy divides the small curling rashers of fat bacon into four exactly equal portions. At Plas Berwyn it is generally a case of "Cynegan's Feast; or enough and no waste." That is to say, at the first onslaught _everything_ vanishes; and if any one, with fruitless gluttony, craves a second help, he must console himself with the idea that many medical men agree in the opinion that, in order to preserve ourselves in perfect health, we should always rise from table feeling hungry. "If," says Mrs. Brandon, resuming the conversation, and setting her words to the music of a peculiarly crisp piece of toast, which she eats with a rather infuriating sound of crunching--"If, Esther, you can be deterred by so trivial an obstacle from availing yourself of an opportunity, humanly speaking, so promising--a door, I may say, opened for you in a _special_ and _remarkable_ manner, in answer to prayer--you cannot expect me to exert myself a second time on your behalf." Esther stoops her head in silence over her fat bacon, which she has not the heart to eat. "Esther is more difficult to please than we expected, is not she, mamma," says Bessy, smiling slightly--"considering that she told us yesterday she envied the man who brought the coals, because he earned his own living?" "And so I did," answers Esther, gloomily. "I'm afraid, Esther," says Mrs. Brandon, taking another piece of toast, and shaking her head prophetically, "that you will have to pass through a _burning fiery furnace_ before the stubborn pride of the unregenerate heart is brought low!" "Perhaps so," answers the young girl, calmly; but to her own heart she says that she defies any earthly furnace to burn hotlier than the one she has already passed through. CHAPTER XXVII. In another week letters have passed, references been asked and given; Esther proved unimpeachably respectable; the amount of her salary agreed upon; the day of her journey into ----shire fixed, and all preliminaries settled previous to her undertaking the agreeable, free, and independent office of companion to John Blessington, Esq., of Blessington Court, in the county of ----, aged eighty-nine, and to Harriet Blessington his wife, aged eighty. Miss Craven has but one good-bye to say, and on the afternoon of the day before her departure she stands in the churchyard ready to say it. It is only to a grave. Huge cloud headlands, great leaden capes and promontories, mournful and heavy with unwept snow-tears, heap and pile themselves up behind the dim mirk hills; it snowed last night, but the snow has nearly all melted; only enough remains to make the old dirty church-tower, from which great patches of whitewash have fallen, look dirtier than ever. Upon the broken headstones, all awry and askew with age and negligence, the lichens flourish dankly. Wet nettles and faded bents overlie, overcross each cold hillock. No one cares to weed in the garden of the dead. Each hillock is the last chapter in some forgotten history. Oh! why must all stories that are told truly end amongst the worms? Why must death be always at the _end_ of life? Oh! if we could but get it over, like some cruelest operation, in the middle or early part of our little day; so that we might have some half a life, some quarter or twentieth part even of one, to live merrily in, to breathe and laugh and be gay in, without, in our cheerfullest moments, experiencing the chilly fear of feeling the black-cloaked skeleton-headed phantom lay his bony finger on us, saying, "Thou art mine!" Upon the grey flat tombstone near the church-gate the great grave yew has been dropping her scarlet berries, one by one--berries that shine, like little lights, amid the night of her changeless foliage: there they lie like a forgotten rosary, that some holy man, having prayed amongst the unpraying dead, going, has left behind him. Evening is closing in fast; the air is raw and chill; no one that can avoid it is outside a house's sheltering walls: there is no one to disturb Esther's meeting with her brother. What cares she for the cold, or for the six feet of miry earth that part them. She flings herself upon the sodden mound; stretching herself all along upon it, as the prophet stretched himself on the young dead child--hand to hand, heart to heart, mouth to mouth. She lays her lips upon the soaked soil, and whispers moaningly, "Good-bye, Jack--good-bye! Oh! why won't they let you answer me? Why have they buried you so deep that you cannot hear me?" Lord God! of what stuff can Mary and Martha have been made, to have overlived the awful ecstasy of seeing their dead come forth in warm supple life out of the four-days-holding grave! Their hearts must have been made of tougher fibre than ours, or, in the agony of that terrible rapture, soul and body must have sundered suddenly, and they fallen down into the arms of that tomb whence their brother had just issued in his ghastly cerements, in dazed, astonished gladness! As Esther lifts her streaming eyes, they fall upon the inscription on the cross at the grave-head: "Here lieth the Body of JOHN CRAVEN, Who departed this Life Sept. 24th, 186-. Aged 21 years." "_Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!_" She casts her arms about the base of the holy symbol; she presses her panting breast against the stone. "Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!" she cries too; and surely the live sinner needs mercy as much as the dead one? And as she so lies prostrate, with her forehead leant against the white damp marble, a hideous doubt flashes into her heart--sits there, like a little bitter serpent, gnawing it: "What if there be _no_ Lord! What if I am praying and weeping to and calling upon nothing! "...................Let me not go mad! Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be No God, no heaven, no earth in the void world-- The wide, grave, lampless, deep, unpeopled world." They tell us--don't they?--in our childhood, that wickedness makes people unhappy: I think the converse is full as often true--that unhappiness makes people wicked. A little icy wind creeps coldly amongst the strong nettles and weak sapless bents, blowing them all one way--creeps, too, through Esther's mourning weeds, and makes a numbness about her shivering breast. For a moment an angry defiant despair masters her. "What if this great distant being, who, without any foregone sin of ours, has laid upon us the punishment of _life_--in the hollow of whose hand we lie!--what if He be laughing at us all this while! What if the sight of our writhings, of our unlovely tears and grotesque agonies, be to Him, in His high prosperity, a pleasant diversion!" So thinking, against her will she involuntarily clasps closer the cross in her straining arms--involuntarily moans a second time, "Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!" No--no! it cannot be so! it is one of those things that are too horrible to be believed! There is no justice _here!_ none! but it exists _somewhere!_ How else could we ever have conceived the idea of it? It is, then, in some other world: we shall find it on the other side of these drenched, nettly charnels--on the other side of corruption's disgrace and abasement: "...........................If this be all, And other life await us not, for one I say, 'tis a poor cheat, a stupid bungle, A wretched failure! I, for one, protest Against it--and I hurl it back with scorn!" Despair never stays long with any one, unless it is specially invited. Struck with sudden horror at the daring blasphemy of her thoughts, wretched Esther, with clasped hands and a flood of penitential tears, sinks upon her trembling knees. God grant that the thoughts that come to us, we know not whence, that stab us in the dark, that we welcome not, neither cherish at all--yea, rather, drive them away rudely, hatingly--may not be counted to us for crimes in His great Day of Reckoning, any more than the sudden-smiting disease that makes the strong man flag in his noonday is counted to him! With a sudden revulsion of feeling, with a paroxysm of devotion, powerfuller than the former one of doubt had been, the desolate child, prone on the grave of her one treasure, lifts quivering lips and emptied arms to Him who "...................For mankynde's sake Justed in Jerusalem, a joye to us all!"-- to Him of whom "..........They who loved Him said 'He wept,' None ever said 'He smiled!'" Perhaps the good Lord, who was sorry for Mary and Martha, may be sorry for her too. Perhaps, after all, her boy is well rid of troublesome breath--well rid of his cares, and his farm, and his useless loving sister! Perhaps she is falsely fond to desire him again--to be so famished for one sight more of his grey laughing eyes, of his smooth stripling face! Beyond her sight, he may be in the fruition of extremest good--in the sweet shade, beneath pleasant-fruited trees, beside great cool rivers. Would she tear him back again thence to toil in the broiling sun, because, so toiling, he would be in her sight? "If love were kind, why should we doubt That holy death were kinder?" The night falls fast; she can scarcely any longer distinguish the clear, new black letters on the cross. Lights are twinkling from the village alehouse; the forge shines like a great dull-red jewel in the surrounding grey; laughing voices of boisterous men are wafted unseemly amongst the graves. Shuddering at the sound, she raises herself up quickly; then, stooping again, kisses yet once more the wet red earth that is now closest neighbour to her brother, and sobbing "Good-bye, my boy, good-bye!--God bless you, Jack!" gathers her dusky cloak about her slight shivering figure, and passes away through the darkness. CHAPTER XXVIII. It has snowed all day; an immense white monotony is over all the land. The clouds that piled themselves in sulky threatening last night behind the Welsh hills, and many others like them, have to-day fulfilled their threats, and have been, through all the daylight hours, emptying their flaky load on the patient earth. It is as if a huge white bird had been shaking his pinions somewhere, high up in the air--shaking down millions of little down feathers. Rain always seems in earnest, snow in play--with such delicate leisureliness does it saunter down. The rushing train, that bears Esther to her new distant life, is topped like any twelfth-night cake; so are the wayside stations; so are the houses in the smoky towns; so are the men, sparsely walking about on the country roads; so are the engine drivers and stokers; so are the sheep in the fields. Miss Craven has been sitting all day long in the narrow _enceinte_ of a railway carriage, between the two close-shut, snow-blinded windows--sitting opposite a courteous warrior, who, travelling with all the luxuriousness which his sex think indispensable, is magnanimous enough to share his buffalo-robe and foot-warmer with her. A _tête-à-tête_ of so many consecutive hours with a man would, under any other circumstances than a railway journey, have produced an intimacy that would last a life-time; but now, all the result of it is a couple of bows on the platform at Paddington--a look of interested curiosity after his late companion's retreating figure, as she hurries herself and her small properties into a filthy four-wheeler, on the part of the warrior, and total oblivion on the part of Esther. Since that time she has traversed London in her dilapidated shambling _growler_, she has had awful misgiving that the "cabby," with the villany that all women ascribe to all "cabbies," is purposely taking her in a wrong direction--is bearing her away to some dark, policeless slum, there to be robbed and murdered. She has reflected, with cold shivers of terror, as to what would be the wisest course to pursue, supposing such to be the case. Should she look silently out of window till she caught sight of the friendly helmet and tight frock-coat of some delivering "Bobby," and then scream? Should she open the door and jump out on the snowy pavement? While still undecided, her cab stops, and--all mean back-streets and sorry short-cuts being safely passed--deposits her and her box, bag, and umbrella, beneath the Shoreditch lamps and among the Shoreditch porters. Then an hour's waiting in the crowded general waiting-room, where all the chairs are occupied by fat men, none of whom make a movement towards vacating theirs in favour of the slender weary woman, who, with crape veil thrown back from her sad child-face, is holding her little numb hands over the fire, trying vainly to bring them back to life. Then more train; then a three-miles' drive in a fly, up hill and down dale, along snowy country lanes. And now her journey is ended: the fly has stopped at the door of a great, vague, snow-whitened bulk, that she takes upon trust as Blessington Court. The driver, having rung the bell, now stands banging his arms, each one against the opposite shoulder, in the rough endeavour to restore circulation. The servants are too comfortable--the butler over his mulled port in the housekeeper's room, and the footmen over their mulled beer in the servants' hall--to be in any hurry to attend to the summons. At length, after five minutes' waiting, a sound of withdrawing bolts and turning keys makes itself heard; the heavy door swings inward, and a footman appears in the aperture, blinking disgustedly at the snow, which drives full into his eyes. Esther immediately descends, and enters with the abrupt haste characteristic of extreme nervousness. "Will you pay him, please?" she says, with a certain flurry of manner, to the servant. "I--I don't know how much I ought to give him--how many miles it is." While the man complies with her request, she stands in the huge stone-floored hall, lit only by firelight, shivering with cold and fear. She peers up at the ceiling--of which, by-the-bye, there is none, as the hall runs up to the top of the house; at the walls, from which great life-size figures, dimly naked, glimmer uncomfortably cold. Anxious doubts assail her as to whether there are any rules of which she is ignorant for a "companion's" behaviour and deportment; she is not aware that she has ever seen one of those curious animals hitherto in the course of her life. Ought they to make a reverence on entering a room? Ought they to say "Sir" or "Ma'am" to whoever they address? Ought they to laugh at everybody's jokes?--not sit down unless given leave so to do, and not speak unless spoken to? So wondering, she tremblingly follows the footman as he opens the door of an adjoining apartment, and, announcing "Miss Craven," retires joyfully to the society of his compeers and his beer. The apartment in which Esther is thus left stranded is as large as the hall that she has just quitted. It seems to her oppressively immense--quite a long walk from the door to the inhabited portion. A very big roasting fire burns on the hearth: and right in front of it, in the very glare of its hot red eyes, sits a very old man, doubled together in an armchair--one hand in his breast, and his aged head sunk upon it, apparently fast asleep. An old lady, wrapped up in a shawl, reposes in another easy-chair, with her eyes likewise closed. A lamp with a green shade burns faintly on a centre table, and beyond lamp and table sits a third person, hidden by the lamp-shade from Esther's eyes. "Are they all asleep?" thinks the poor girl, advancing with gentle, hesitating steps. "They seem to be. How can I wake them?--or would it be disrespectful?" While she so speculates, the third person rises and comes forward. "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?" says a bland, unforgotten voice. It is Miss Blessington. In an instant, Esther seems to have jumped back over the past intervening months--to be just entering on her Felton visit. There is the same voice greeting her--the same tones of polite inquiry; the same words almost, except that _then_ it was, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a hot journey, I'm afraid?" and now it is, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?"--the same undulating walk; the same effect of lilac evening clouds. Involuntarily she turns her head and glances towards the window, half-expecting to see St. John's legs disappearing through it. Instead, an old woman's voice sounds quavering: "Are you Miss Craven, my dear? Come here!" Esther does not hear. "It _was_ rather cold," she says, answering Constance, in half bewilderment between past and present, her eyes dazed with the light after her long, dark journey. "Mrs. Blessington is speaking to you," says Constance, in mild reminder. Esther turns round quickly. "Oh! I beg your pardon--I did not hear--I hope I was not rude," she cries, forgetting the "Ma'am" she had half-purposed employing. "Who's there?--who's talking?" asks the old man, lifting up his head, and speaking in a voice tremulous indeed, but with a remnant of the power and fire that "youth gone out had left in ashes." No one answers. "Who's there, Mrs. Blessington?" he repeats, with querulous anger. "Miss Craven, uncle--the young lady that we expected to-day--don't you know?" replies Constance, stooping gracefully over him, and putting her lips as close as possible to his withered ear. "H'm! Tell her to come and speak to me. I want to see what she is like," he rejoins, much as if she had not been in the room. "Go to him, my dear," says the old lady. "And speak as loud as you can; he is as deaf as a post," adds Constance, not in the least lowering her voice at the announcement, in perfect confidence of the truth of her assertion, shrugging her handsome shoulders as she speaks. Esther goes trembling, and lays her small cold hand in the long bony wreck of muscle, vein, and flesh that is stretched out to her. He gazes at her face with the eager intentness of the purblind. "What is your name?" he asks abruptly. "Esther," she answers, faltering. "Cannot hear a word you say--you mumble so," he says, pettishly. "Go round to the other side; the other ear is the best," suggests Constance, calmly. Esther obeys. "_Esther_," she repeats, speaking unnecessarily loud this time--at the top of her voice, in fact, out of sheer nervousness. "You need not scream at me, my dear, as if I were stone deaf. _Esther_ or _Hester_, did you say?" "Esther." "And who gave it you, pray?" "My father and mother, I suppose." "H'm! Well, you may tell them, with my compliments," he says, with a senile laugh, "that I think they might have found a prettier name to give a young lady, and that the old squire says so. The old squire says so," he repeats, chuckling a little to himself. "I cannot tell them," answers Esther, half-crying. "They are dead." "Oh, indeed!" There his interest in the new comer seems to cease. His white head sinks back on his breast again, and he relapses into slumber. Esther has had neither luncheon, dinner, nor tea--a fact which none of her companions appear to contemplate as possible. _One_ bun has been her sole support throughout the long bitter day--only _one_, because all such buns must be bought with Mrs. Brandon's money. "I daresay you would like to go to bed, dear, you look tired," says Mrs. Blessington, scanning rather curiously Esther's fagged, woebegone little face. "Travelling is so much more fatiguing than it used to be in former days, when one travelled in one's own carriage, whatever they may say. I remember," she continues, with an old woman's garrulity, "Mr. Blessington and I travelling from London to York by easy stages of twenty miles a day, in our own curricle, with outriders. One never sees a curricle nowadays." "I _am_ rather tired," the girl answers, with a faint smile, "and cravingly hungry," she might have added, but does not. "Ring the bell for James to light the candles." Weak from inanition, and with limbs cramped by long remaining in one position, Esther follows Miss Blessington up low flights of uncarpeted stone stairs, through draughty twisting passages, along a broad bare gallery, down more passages, and then into a huge gloomy, mouldy room--frosty, yet cold, despite the fire burning briskly on the old-fashioned-hobbed grate; a vast dark four-poster, hung with ginger-coloured moreen; a couch that looks highly suitable for lying-in-state on; an old-fashioned screen, covered with caricatures of Fox, Burke, the Regent, and Queen Caroline; and on the walls a highly valuable and curious tapestry, which waves pleasantly in the bitter wind that enters freely beneath the ill-fitting old door, giving an air of galvanic motion and false life to the ill-looking Cupids, green with age, that play hide-and-seek amongst vases, broken pillars and wormy blue trees. "You have plenty of room, you see," says Miss Blessington, with a curve of her suave lips, as she lights the candles on the dressing-table, which, instead of being pink petticoated, white-muslined deal, is bare sturdy oak, with millions of little useless drawers and pigeon-holes in it. "Plenty," echoes Esther, rather aghast, surveying her premises with some dismay. "You must not be frightened if you hear odd noises; it's only rats," says her companion, putting one small white-booted foot on the fender. "I wish that--that stuff would not sway and shake about so," says the young girl, pointing nervously with one timid fore-finger to the tapestry. "Might not some one get behind it very easily and hide, as it does not seem to be fastened down?" "Possibly," replies Miss Blessington, indifferently. "I never heard of such a thing having happened." "Am I near any one else--tolerably near, I mean?" asks Esther, her heart sinking. "Not very." "Would no one hear me if I screamed?" she inquires, laying her hand unconsciously on the marble round of her companion's firm white arm, while her frightened eyes burn upon Constance's impassive face. "We will hope that you will not make the experiment," she answers, with a cold smile, and so goes. CHAPTER XXIX. I think that people's value, or want of value, is seldom their own: it belongs rather to the circumstances that surround them--to attributes foreign to themselves--outside of them. Had Robinson Crusoe, while walking down Bond Street in flowing wig and lace ruffles, first met his man Friday, he might have tossed him sixpence to avoid his importunities; but would hardly have taken him into intimate friendship--would hardly even have admitted him as a man and a brother. Among the blind the one-eyed is king, and among a crowd of total strangers an acquaintance rises into a friend. Lonely Esther is half-inclined to effect this metamorphosis in the case of Miss Blessington. The mere fact of having eaten, drank, and slept for a considerable period under the same roof with her--the bare fact of having lived with and disliked her during a whole month and more--was enough recommendation in a house not one of whose inmates had she ever beheld before. Almost as a friend has she greeted her this morning. With admiration most unfeigned, though made a little bitter by mental comparison with her own dimmed, grief-blighted beauty, has she regarded the stately woman, the splendid animal, sleek and white as a sacred Egyptian cow; the brilliancy of whose pale, bright hair, and the perfect smoothness of her great satin throat, are heightened by the sober richness of her creaseless black velvet dress. Voluptuous, yet cold, the passions that her splendid physique provoke are chilled to death by the passionless stupor of her soul. I am not at all sure that impassioned ugliness--supposing the ugliness to be moderate, and the passion immoderate--has not more attraction for the generality of men than iced beauty. Esther's warmth is thrown away; she might as well expect that the "Venus de Medici" would return the pressure of warm clinging fingers with her freezing, sculptured hand. "I was so glad to find you here last night: it was so pleasant to see a face one knew," Miss Craven says, with the rash credulity of youth unexpectant of snubs. Miss Blessington looks slightly surprised. "Tha--anks; it is very good of you to say so, I am sure," she answers, rather drawlingly, and with a small, cold smile that would repress demonstrations much more violent than any that Esther had meditated. It is difficult _always_ to remember that one is a "companion." The Blessington dining-room is, like the other reception-rooms, huge and very nobly proportioned. Did we not know that our seventeenth and eighteenth century ancestors were not giants, we should be prone to imagine that it must have been a race of Anakims that required such great wide spaces to sup, and sip chocolate, and play at ombre in. The furniture is in its dotage; it has, figuratively speaking, like its owners, lost hair and teeth, and all unnecessary etceteras; it is reduced to the bare elements of existence. Three tall windows look out upon a flat lawn, and in the middle of this lawn, exactly opposite Esther's eyes, as she sits at breakfast, is an unique and chaste piece of statuary, entitled "The Rape of the Sabines." The space afforded by the stone pediment is necessarily limited, and consequently Roman and Sabines, gentlemen and lady, are all piled one a-top of another in such inextricable confusion as to demand a good quarter of an hour's close observation to determine which of the muscular writhing legs belong to the Roman ravisher and which to the injured Sabine husband. As the sculptor has given none of his _protégées_ any clothing, the snow has been kind enough to throw a modest white mantle over them all. "Mr. and Mrs. Blessington do not come down to breakfast?" says Esther, interrogatively, as the two girls seat themselves at table. "No; they breakfast in their own rooms." "I suppose," says Esther, with some embarrassment, "that they will send for me if they want me for anything, won't they? Perhaps" (with diffidence)--"perhaps you will kindly tell me the sort of things they will want me to do?" "My uncle will be down presently," answered Miss Blessington, "and he will then expect you to read to him until luncheon." "To read what? The Bible?" inquired Esther, who has a vague idea that the Bible is the only form in which literature should employ the attention of the aged. "The Bible? Oh, dear, no!" (with a little laugh). "The papers: the _Times_, _Saturday_, and _Justice of the Peace_, are his favourites; he takes a great, a _remarkable_ interest, considering his age, in politics." "I like reading aloud," says Esther, resolute to look on the bright side. "Reading aloud to my uncle is very fatiguing," replies Constance, cheeringly: "one has to sustain one's voice at a pitch several octaves higher than the natural one. I attempted reading to him once or twice, but it affected my throat so much that I had to leave off," she ends, with a little lackadaisical cough. "I daresay it won't affect mine," rejoins the other rather drily. There is a pause. Talking is a vice to which Miss Blessington is nowise addicted--more especially objectless talking to a little person of the feminine gender who is not one of _nous autres_. "I hope," says Esther, presently, trusting to the obtuseness of her companion's perceptions not to discover the flagrant hypocrisy of the question--"I hope that Sir Thomas was quite well when you left Felton?" "Quite--thanks." "And Lady Gerard?" "Yes--thanks." "And--and" (bending down her head in the vain endeavour to screen the red blush that the frosty sun, flaming in through the window opposite, makes obtrusively evident)--"and Mr. Gerard?" "He is _very_ well--thanks," replies Miss Blessington, with the conscious smile that had formerly exasperated Esther, and with an emphasis not common with her. Miss Blessington does not usually employ emphasis: it is _mezzoceto_, as is enthusiasm of which it is the exponent. Half an hour later Esther is sitting beside the old squire, as close as possible to his best ear, brandishing the _Times'_ giant squares in her unaccustomed hand. The old squire is a superb wreck. Spiteful Time is fond of removing the landmarks that youth sets upon our faces; is fond of changing great, clear, almond eyes into little damp jellies--sweet moist pursemouths into dry bags of wrinkles; but it is a task beyond even _his_ power to destroy the shape of that grand old bent head--to deface the outlines of that thin-nostriled, patrician nose. "What shall I read first?" asks the young girl, timidly, but enunciating each syllable with painstaking slowness and clearness. "The State of the Funds," replies the old gentleman, promptly, thrusting his hand into his breast, and closing his eyes, in his favourite attitude. Esther has not the most distant idea where the "State of the Funds" lives: she turns the huge sheets topsy-turvy--inside out, outside in--in the vain search for their habitat, making, meanwhile, the most unjustifiable aggressive rustling and crackling, which she presumptuously trusts to his deafness not to hear. "Don't make such an infernal crackling, my dear!" he says presently, with some pettishness. "I thought you could not hear," she unwisely answers, trembling. "God bless my soul, child! The dead would have heard the noise you were making," he rejoins, snappishly. Having at length mastered the fact that the "State of the Funds" comes under the head of "Money Market and City Intelligence," Esther gives the desired information. Then follows a leader: "The position of American politics is at this moment peculiarly perplexing and anomalous; so perplexing that even those English observers who, like ourselves, have given a careful and constant attention to the course of the Transatlantic movement since the first appearance of Secession, can hardly pretend clearly to understand----" "Pretend clearly to _what?_ For God's sake don't gabble so!" "Can--hardly--pretend--clearly--to--understand--the--full--meaning --of--the--situation,--and--must--feel--that--it--would--be----" "Is there no medium, may I ask, between gabbling and drawling?" "And must feel that it would be rash to express a confident opinion thereupon." Esther now proceeds for a considerable period unchecked--gradually and unconsciously relapsing into the brisk gallop so dear to youth when engaged upon a subject that does not interest it. Suddenly a deep slumberous breath, drawn close to her ear, makes her aware that her hearer has lapsed into sleep. "I have read him to sleep," she says to herself, with a sort of triumphant feeling at her own prowess, taking furtive glances at the wrinkled profile, sunk, in perfect imbecility of slumber, on his breast. Not feeling any particular personal interest in the effect of Secession upon American politics, she stops, and gazes vacantly out of window at the "Rape of the Sabines." But the cessation of the sweet monotony that lulled him, arouses the old man. "Go on--go on!" he cries, fussily, lifting his head and opening his dim eyes. "What are you stopping for? Read that paragraph over again; you read it so fast that I could not quite follow the meaning of it." She complies, and so, with dozing and waking, waking and dozing, on one side, reading and stopping, stopping and reading on the other, the little drama plays itself out till nearly luncheon-time. "We are going to drive into Shelford this afternoon; do you feel inclined to come with us, Constance, my dear?" asks the old lady, as they quit the luncheon-table--Esther dutifully bringing up the rear, with air-cushion, footstool, and _couvre-pied_. "Not to-day, aunt, I think--thanks," answers Constance, with the utmost sweetness; the "Not to-day" seeming to imply that on some future morrow she will gladly avail herself of the invitation to join her elderly relatives in their _triste_ airing; but Miss Blessington being in her generation a wise woman, that morrow never comes. The old family-coach rolls round the frosty sweep to the door; two large horses, sleek and fat with over-many oats and over-little work, draw it. "The tails of both hung down behind, Their shoes were on their feet." "Give me your arm, Miss Craven; one is very apt to fall this frosty weather," says the old lady, appearing at the door, transformed, by the aid of numberless cloaks and shawls, and a huge velvet bonnet, date anno domini, into a large and perfectly shapeless bundle. Supported on one side by Esther's slender arm, and on the other by the florid and plethoric butler, she is hoisted up the three steps into the body of the ancient machine, which is painted invisible green, and hung marvellous high in air. The same course is pursued with the old gentleman, who, muffled, comfortered, and scarved up to the tip of his venerable nose, follows. Lastly, the young prop steps in, and sits down humbly with her back to the horses--a process which usually ends in making her sick. The windows are shut tight up; a great hot skin of some wild beast is thrown over their knees; in that confined atmosphere it emits a strong furry odour, more powerful than agreeable; striving emulously with it--sometimes mastering it, sometimes mastered by it--is the fusty smell of the cloth lining. The old people do not seem to perceive either; old noses have less keen scent, old lungs require less air to feed on, than young ones. "Trit-trot, trit-trot, trit-trot," goes the old vehicle along the beaten snow of the broad turnpike-road. As they are jogging a little brisklier than usual down a _very_ slight decline, the old gentleman speaks--his strong, shaky old voice loudly audible above the "rumble--rumble--rumble," which, joined to the want of air, is fast making Esther faint and headachy: "What the deuce does Ruggles mean going at such a pace down these steep hills? Does he think he is to knock my horses' legs all to pieces for his own amusement?" "I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Blessington," answers the old lady, nervously laying hold of the side of the carriage; "it is not at all safe this slippery weather; I'm sure I hope the horses are roughed." "Miss Craven, tell him to mind what he is about; tell him to go slower--_much_ slower," says the old gentleman, in some excitement. Miss Craven, having with some difficulty lowered the front window, thrusts her head out of it, and, having taken the opportunity to open mouth and nose and eyes as wide as they will go, to inhale as large a quantity as possible of crisp fresh air, cries: "Ruggles! Ruggles! go slower! _much_ slower!" Ruggles grins, but complies, and subsides into a solemn walk, which continues until they reach Shelford. There smug bareheaded shop-keepers, violet-nosed, scarlet-fingered, standing out in the cold street at the carriage-door, executing with pleased alacrity extensive commissions of half a yard of elastic for Miss Blessington--three ounces of red wool for Mrs. Blessington's knitting--half a dozen blue envelopes for Mr. Blessington. Then, "trit-trot, jig-jog," home again. Dinner at six: a later hour would be fatal to his digestion, the old gentleman thinks, then, a nice long evening--long as one of those _Veillées du Château_, when Madame la Baronne read aloud some enthralling yet severely moral tale, and Cæsar and Caroline and Pulchérie all sat entranced, unheeding the flight of time, as ticked away by the château clocks. There is only one small lamp in the whole of the grand old room, and that, in deference to the old man's failing eyes, is hung with so large and deep a green shade, that it is impossible to see to do anything by its light. There is nothing for it but to gape, from seven till ten, at the great battle-pieces hung round the walls--to endeavour to make out, by the aid of the fitful firelight, the singularly clean dead bodies, free apparently from the slightest speck of dust, or stain of blood; at the red-nostriled chargers, snorting away their ebbing lives with all four legs in the air. At ten o'clock, James rung for, to light the candles: then Mrs. Blessington, her air-cushion, work-basket, and Shetland shawl, escorted to her room; two long chapters and several psalms read to her; then a frightened rush along dark passages and draughty galleries to the great distant bedroom--to the rats' multifarious noises; to the ingenious tunes played by the wind upon the rattling window-frames; to the ginger-curtained bed and many-folded screen; to _possible_ sleep, and _certain_ terrors--terrors none the less awful for being totally unreasonable. CHAPTER XXX. This first day is a sample of Esther's new life; the other days were like it--not a jot better, not a jot worse. The same thing happened at the same time each day: no two things ever changed places. It was a life that provided all the necessaries of life--that demanded no hard manual labour, no overworking of the brain. The intellectual faculties that it called into play must have been possessed by any moderately intelligent seven-years' child. No one bullies Esther; no one oppresses her; no one troubles their head much about her. So as she performs her monotonous, easy, tiresome little duties towards them, the old people have no sort of objection to her enjoying life, _if she can_. With the aged, comfort and happiness are interchangeable terms: continuous warmth of body, pleasant-tasted meats, a profound stagnant quiet around their arm-chairs, much sleep--these are their _summum bonum_. They have had love, and have outlived it--excitement also, and grief: they have outlived all but the elemental instincts that refuse to be outlived. Looking back from the vantage-ground of dotage on the fought battle of life, they wonder that any one can long to be in the thick of it. In this life of Esther's there are no hardships to be borne--none of those sufferings, the enduring of which with self-conscious complacent heroism almost compensates them. It has none of the elements of tragedy: there is nothing very noble in bearing with respectable patience the trifling annoyance of making yourself hoarse roaring the price of wheat, and the pros and cons of disendowment, into an old man's ear; there is nothing grand in picking up the countless dropped stitches in an old woman's knitting. In it there is nothing to endure, nothing to enjoy; it is essentially negative, flat, stale, sterile. It would be all very well if any end were to be seen to it; if it were not a sort of small Eternity in life; if there were to be distant holidays to be looked forward to, when the few saved pounds might be poured, with the joyful generosity of the very poor, into some stricken parent's lap--might go to buy boots and shoes for needy little brothers and sisters. But "Fatherly, motherly, sisterly, brotherly Home she has none." All her life seems crowded into the seventeen years behind her; there seems to be nothing left to happen in the fifty or sixty years ahead. She has nothing to look forward to but huge cycles of newspaper-reading, footstool-carrying, message-running; of lending all her useful organs of sight and hearing and touch to others; of keeping for herself only her suffering, aching, empty heart! "Every succeeding year will steal something away from her beauty." People pity her now, because she is so young and pretty--not reflecting that the possession of the two best gifts under heaven makes her so much the less worthy a subject for compassion. Twenty years hence, she will probably be a "companion" still--will be not near so young, nor near so touching, and infinitely more to be pitied. The snow lies long--longer than it generally does at this time of year. Ordinarily the old Cheshire saying holds good: "If there's ice in October as 'll hould a duck, All the rest of the winter 'll turn to muck!" But this October there has been ice enough to hold many ducks; but yet the rest of the winter shows no signs of, as the homely saw phrases it, "turning to muck." In the little flower-garden, round three sides of which the ivied buttressed house is built, only a white heap here, and a white depression there, show where bush or bed were wont to be. Over the fair wide park, with all its mimic hills and valleys, copses and spinneys, God has laid a great sheet--great as the one that was let down by its four corners on the housetop to the fastidious Apostle--a sheet purely, crisply, miserably white. In the park Esther, in the early gloaming, after the daily drive, so literally a promenade _en voiture_, takes long walks; ruins her boots, discolours her petticoats, and makes her crape crimp with snow-water: strolls listless and alone under the old bare trees that have stripped off all their clothing--now at the very time that they seem to need them most; traces the slender footprints of the famished birds--the little delicate tracks crossing and recrossing one another. And always the leading thought--displaced now and then by lesser thoughts, that flit like travelling swallows through her mind, but ever, ever returning--is, "Where is Jack? Where has my boy gone to? Where is he _now, at this moment?_" If some trusty messenger could but come to her, with sure tidings, saying, "It is well with him!" Has she any reason for believing him to be in heaven, beyond the vague confidence that most people seem to feel that their relatives must be there, on the principle, I suppose, of the French Duke, of whom his kindred remarked, that "God would certainly think twice 'avant de damner une personne de sa qualité!'" Jack's death had been most unlike the deaths of the shining Evangelical lights in Bessy Brandon's books, whose whole lives had been but trifling prologues to the jubilant drama of their death. Death had been to them an ecstasy; they had died with words of confident rapture on their lips, with strains of welcoming music in their ears: he had departed painfully, sadly, almost dumbly; no sound of triumphant clarions greeted him from beyond Death's deep ford. Is he, then, in _hell?_ Oh blessed doctrine of cleansing purgatorial pains! if our faith would but admit of you! Which of us does not seem to himself so much too bad for heaven, so much too good for hell? "Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved!" Where is he, then?--where is he? She takes counsel of the mute forces of nature--of the clouds, the snows, and the blasts. But of what use? They knew not of his story; or, if they did, they were forbidden to tell of it: silence was laid like a seal upon their lips. It is not in the most edifying books that the grandest sayings are to be found. What can be nobler than this of Rousseau's dying Julie: "Qui s'endort dans le sein d'un père, n'est pas en souci du réveil?" The wearier in body she can return from these long, sad rambles, the better pleased is Esther; for is not weariness the father of sleep--sleep, the one impartial thing under heaven; sleep, the radical; sleep, the leveller, that leaves a king's arms to embrace a tinker? But of what use is it to sleep, if in sleep one hear-- "False voices, feel the kisses of false mouths, And footless sound of perished feet?" And worse even than such dream-tortured slumber is fear-tortured waking. Constitutionally timid, a weakened body and broken spirit have made Esther pitiably nervous. Jealousy, remorse, and fear run a dreary race for the palm of extremest suffering; and I am not sure that fear does not win. The poor child suffers the torments of the damned in her huge hearse-bed in the far-off, rat-haunted, ghostly old chamber. She dreads falling asleep, for fear of waking to find the low fire playing antics with Burke's long nose and spectacles, with Pitt's maypole figure on the screen; flickering over the malignant fleshy Cupids on the wall; waking to see, looking in upon her through the curtains, Jack's face--not kind, _débonnaire_, smiling, as she used to see it in the study at home (for _that_ could frighten no one), but solemn, stiff, with closed eyes and bandaged chin, as she had last seen it. Sometimes she sits up in bed, a cold sweat standing on her brow, as some noise, distincter than usual, sounds through the room; "thud, thud," as of some falling object; an unexplained rustling in the passage; a little clicking in the door-lock--sits up, listening with strained ears, thinking, "Can _that_ be rats?" Momently she expects to see some crape-masked burglar enter the door or window. And if such burglar did enter, it would be useless to scream for help; she is too far off from the rest of the household to be heard: it would be of no use to ring the bell, for it rings downstairs, miles away, and everybody is in bed and asleep upstairs. So she lies quaking--her terror now and then rising to such an uncontrollable pitch that she feels as though, if it lasted a moment longer, she must go mad: listening with intense impatience to the leisurely "Tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack" of the cuckoo-clock outside; listening with inexpressible longing to hear it say, "Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!" four times. At four o'clock she will be safe, she thinks; at four o'clock cocks begin to crow, dairymaids to get up, the bodiless dead return to their churchyard homes, night's unutterable horror to pass. What wonder if, after the agony of such vigils--agony causeless, you will say, unreasonable, but none the less real, none the less acute for that--she comes down in the morning wan, nerveless, with haggard cheeks, and great dark streaks under the unrested beauty of her eyes? "The time is near the birth of Christ." "Stir-up Sunday" is past; people have bought their raisins, and suet, and citron, and begun to mix their Christmas puddings. Turkeys lie dead, thick as autumn-leaves in Vallambrosa. The snow is gone, but not without leaving Miss Craven the legacy of a very bad cold, derived from countless soaked stockings and neglected wet petticoats. She has had it a fortnight, and her weakened, lowered frame seems incapable of shaking off the trifling ailment. For a week her voice has been almost gone, and she has consumed many sticks of liquorice, many boxes of black currant lozenges, in the endeavour to bring it back to the requisite shouting pitch for the inevitable daily newspaper reading. It is afternoon: heavy rain, following the thaw, has prevented the invariable drive to Shelford. Mrs. Blessington and the two girls are sitting in the great room hung with battle-pieces, which is old-fashionedly named "the saloon." It is a mercy that it is a great room--else the fire, piled halfway up the chimney, and the never-opened windows would render it unendurably close. As it is, the atmosphere, though less stifling than that of the interior of the family-coach, is fustier than is altogether agreeable. "My dear," says Mrs. Blessington, shivering, "pick up my shawl; I really must have sand-bags to those windows; there comes in a wind at them that positively nearly blows one out of one's chair." Esther complies, and then resumes her occupation of holding a skein of wool for Miss Blessington to wind. As often as she can do so without positive rudeness, she takes long looks at her companion's face--immovably polished, like a monumental angel's: looks at her, half out of that sheer love of beauty in any form, from a man's to a beetle's, which is innate in some sensuous natures; partly, and much more, because each frosty-fair feature of her face, each trinket almost upon her person, is linked indissolubly in her mind with some look or word of St. John. Association, they say, lies stronger in a smell than in aught else--stronger than in anything seen or heard; and so now the slight subtle scent floating from Constance's perfumed hair recalls to the sad young "companion," with a thrust of sharpest pain, her one day's betrothal; that one day for whose sweet sake she does not regret having endured the calamity of existence; that day when they sowed-- "......Their talk with little kisses, thick As roses in rose harvest." It is odd how often, when one is musing dumbly on some unspoken name, the people in whose company one is give utterance to that name, without any former conversation having led up to it. "My dear Constance," says Mrs. Blessington, her slow old thoughts having at length travelled from draughts and sandbags, "do you think St. John has any fancy as to what room he has? Young men are sometimes _faddy_. I depend upon you to tell me, and I will give Franklin orders about it." St. John's room! He is coming here, then! The wool that she is holding drops forgotten into Esther's lap; the old delicious carmine that used to make her so like a dog-rose springs up suddenly lovely into her face. Love is as hard to kill as any snake: "Now, at the last gasp of love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies; When faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And innocence is closing up his eyes: Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over From death to life, thou mightst him yet recover." "Unless you hold the skein differently, Miss Craven, I'm afraid I really cannot wind it," says Constance, a slight shade of contemptuous displeasure in her voice. Esther jumps back to reality, to find Miss Blessington's icy, unescapable eyes riveted upon her. She cannot turn away her head, nor dive under the table for an imaginary lost handkerchief; she cannot lift her hands to hide her face; her occupation, which keeps both ruthlessly employed, forbids it. She can only sit still, plainly crimson, and be stared at. "Thanks, very much, aunt," Constance says, in her ladylike, piano voice, beginning again to turn the scarlet ball swiftly through her long pale fingers; "but I don't think he has any fancies. I could not think of letting you spoil him by supposing he has; I'm sure he will be very happy, wherever you put him." "The blue room, in the west gallery, is one of the warmest in the house," rejoins the old lady, gathering her wraps closelier about her: "it is next but two to Miss Craven's; it has the same aspect. Yours is warm--isn't it, my dear?--and there is a bath-room opening out of it." "Is Mr. Gerard coming here?" asks Esther, tremulously, resolute to show Miss Blessington that she _can_ mention his name. "Yes, my dear--to-morrow. Do you know him? Oh no! of course you cannot," replies the old lady, looking a little inquisitively at the tender rose-face of the girl. "Miss Craven met him at Felton, last autumn," Constance answers for her--no faintest gust of feeling apparently agitating the even indifference of her voice. "He was most good-natured to her; riding and walking, and altogether making a martyr of himself. St. John makes himself very useful, flirting with all the young ladies that come to the house: he really is invaluable in that way!" Esther stoops her head low down, choked with indignation. "Perhaps I don't come under the head of a 'young lady,'" she says, almost in a whisper; "but he certainly did not flirt with me." "Didn't he?" Constance replies, carelessly. "Oh, if I recollect right, he amused himself a little--he always does. I often take him to task about that manner of his; it might give rise to unlucky mistakes; people who don't know him don't understand it." Esther bites her lips, but has the sense to allow, with vast difficulty, this last observation to pass unquestioned. "His horses have arrived already," continues Constance, placidly; "he has actually been unconscionable enough to send four of them: he is evidently going to test uncle's and your patience to the utmost by making a perfect visitation." "Felton is such a good hunting country, that I wonder Mr. Gerard can bear to leave it now, just as the frost has broken up," remarks Esther, almost composedly; a dim, exquisite hope flashing up in her mind that he has heard of her being at Blessington, and is coming to ask her to forgive him--to forgive her, rather; to ask her to kiss and make friends. The story-book ending, "Lived happy ever after," is running through her brain, when her reverie is broken, gently, but very effectually, as reveries are apt to be, by a simple speech of Miss Blessington's, spoken with a little smile: "It is evident that Miss Craven has not heard our news, is not it, aunt?" "What news?" inquires the girl, eagerly. "Nothing of much interest to any one but ourselves, I suppose. It is only" (speaking with slow triumph, and narrowly watching the effect of her words) "that St. John and I have made up our minds to marry one another!" The knife cuts as clean and clear as she could have wished; the divine happy rose-flush slips away suddenly out of the poor blank face opposite her; a grey ashy-white takes its place. She had thought that pain and pleasure were buried with Jack on the slope of Glan-yr-Afon's mountain graveyard; but that moment of raging agony undeceives her. For an instant the table and chairs seem dancing round; a humming buzz sounds dully in her ears; then the faintness passes; the table and chairs stand still again; the buzz ceases; and she is sitting on an old gilt chair: her arms still moving mechanically, with the outstretched wool upon them, while Constance goes winding, winding on--winding away hope and pleasure and joy; while the ball, growing larger under her hands, seems to have stolen its red colour from Esther's heart-blood. "Our friends have really been very disagreeable to us about it," says Miss Blessington with a subdued laugh; "they tell us that it is the most uninteresting marriage they ever heard of, for that they had all foretold it, heaven knows how many centuries ago!" "It is very seldom," replies Mrs. Blessington, shaking her head slowly to and fro, "that a young man shows the sense St. John Gerard has done in coming into his parents' views for him: in the present day they are mostly so headstrong and resolute to pick and choose for themselves, which generally ends in their selecting some worthless person utterly unsuited to their rank and fortune." "How long have you been engaged?" asks Esther, presently, framing her words with as much difficulty as though they had been spoken in some little-known foreign tongue. Worse to her than the loss of St. John is the consciousness that that loss is written in despair's grey colours on her faded face, right under her rival's victorious eyes. "How long? I really forget," answers Constance, with affected carelessness. "Oh, no! By-the-by, I recollect; it was almost immediately after you left Felton. I daresay" (with a smile) "that you were among the ranks of the prophets; lookers-on proverbially see most of the game." "Indeed--no!" cries the girl, with a passionate disclaimer, the agony of loss made sharper by the humiliation of defeat. "Nothing ever struck me as more unlikely!" "Indeed! And why, may I ask?" The skein is finished; Esther lifts one hand to her face, and feels a slight relief in the partial shade. "Why, pray?" with a slightly sharpened accent. "Because--because," she answers, in confusion, "you had been brought up together from children; because Mr. Gerard's manner seemed so much more like a brother's than a--a--lover's." The word so applied half chokes her. "We dislike public demonstrations of affection, both of us," rejoins the other, coldly displeased; "we leave those to servants and _savages_." A footman enters with tea in handleless red dragon cups, costly as age, brittleness, and ingenious ugliness can make them. Esther leans back in her chair, idle, staring vacantly at the pane, blurred with big rain-drops. After a pause, "You have not congratulated me, Miss Craven," Constance says, sipping her tea delicately; her madonna smile relaxing the severely correct lines of her Greek mouth. Esther gives a great start. "I? Oh, I beg your pardon! I--I forgot; I--I--I congratulate you!" "I was just going to write and tell you the news," says Constance, graciously--"I thought it might interest you, as you had been with us so lately, and seen the whole thing going on--when we heard of your brother's sudden death." Esther rises abruptly, and walks to the window, with that painful hatred in her heart towards Miss Blessington that we feel towards those who lightly name our sacred dead to us. "Was he your _only_ brother, my dear?" inquires Mrs. Blessington, with languid interest. "Yes." "Dear--dear! Very sad--very sad! And what did he die of? Consumption?" "No--diphtheria." "Ah! A very fatal complaint, my dear, especially among children. I have always had a great horror of it. In my younger days it used to be called sore throat, but I suppose it killed just as many people then as it does now that it has got a fine long Latin name. I suppose your poor brother suffered a great deal--didn't he, love?" No answer, except a stifled sob, a rush from the room, and the sound of flying feet upon the hall's stone floor. There are some things past human endurance; and to hear Jack's parting agonies--agonies whose memory she herself dare as yet hardly contemplate in her heart's low depths--lightly discussed by a gossiping old woman, is one of those things. CHAPTER XXXI. "Get me some fresh candles--long ones; longer than these--as long as you possibly can," Esther says that same evening, on going to bed, to the housemaid whom she finds putting coals on her fire. "I think, 'm, that you will find these will last for to-night," the woman answers, looking at the very respectable dimensions of the unlit candles on Esther's queer old-fashioned toilet-table. "No--no, they won't!" she answers, nervously; "it is better to be on the safe side." "Would you like a night-light, miss?" "Oh no, no! they make the corners of the room blacker than ever, and they cast such odd shadows. I'm _so_ afraid of the dark," she ends, shuddering. "I'm afraid you don't sleep well, 'm?" "Not very. By-the-by" (with a sudden inspiration), "have you got anything that you could give me to make me sleep--any opiate of any kind?" "I've got a little laudanum, ma'am, that Mrs. Franklin give me last week when I had a bad face." "Fetch it me," she cries, eagerly; "that is, if you don't want it yourself. It is very foolish of me," she says, looking rather ashamed, "but I cannot sleep for fright." The servant goes, and presently returns with a small dark blue bottle. "About how much ought one to take, I wonder?" Esther says, holding it up between herself and the firelight. "If you have never been used to take it before, I should think two or three drops would be _hample_, 'm; I hope, 'm" (with a little anxiety in her florid plebeian face), "as you'll be careful not to take a _h_overdose, or you might chance never to wake up again: I knew a young person as took it by mistake for 'black dose'--it was the fault of the chemist's young man--and in an hour she was a corpse; they said as she had took enough to kill ten men." "It is no wonder that she was a corpse, then," Miss Craven answers, with a slight smile. "I should not think" (scrutinising the little bottle inquisitively), "that there was enough here to kill one woman, let alone ten men. Yes, I'll be careful; thanks, very much. Good night!" (with her pretty courteous smile). The housemaid being gone, Esther bolts the door--a weakly defensive measure against one class of assailants, the crape-masked burglars; though, as she is aware, utterly impotent against the other and worse class--the intangible, unkeep-outable _revenants_; the rustlers along the passage, the rattlers of the lock. She then seats herself at the dressing-table, flings down her arms among her brushes and combs, and sinks her head upon them, in closest proximity to the candles, whose little spires of flame the wind, thrusting its thin body in between window and frame, drives right against the tumbled plenty of her hair. In this attitude she remains a long time; forgetting even to search under the bed, up the chimney, behind the screen, or in the huge japanned chest, upon which a disconnected but interesting landscape of cocks, pagodas, and junks picks itself out, in tarnished yellow, from the dull black ground. It is impossible for the most comprehensive mind or body to contain any two distinct, even though not necessarily opposite feelings, in their fullest force, at the same time. If one is famished with hunger, one cannot be consumed by thirst; if one is consumed by thirst, one cannot be famished with hunger. If one is in despair at being forgotten by one's lover, one is indifferent as to the onset of any number of ghosts and murderers; if one is paralyzed by fear of ghosts and murderers, one is tolerably indifferent as to one's lover's lapse of memory. For the first time since his death, Jack is not the leading thought in Esther's mind. Poor dead! How can they be so unreasonable as to expect to be anyone's leading thought? Even we noisy, voiceful, visible living are obliged to keep crying out, "I am here--remember me," in order not to sink into oblivion amongst our neighbours and kinsfolk. "Wilt thou remember me when I am gone, Further each day from thy vision withdrawn-- Thou in the sunset, and I in the dawn?" Pretty, tender, touching lines; but I think that the answer to them, if given truly, would hardly content the asker: "I will remember thee for a very little while; even till I see some one younger and prettier than thou wert, and then I will forget thee!" Miss Craven starts up, after awhile, and begins to walk up and down, over the creaky, up-and-downy boards, and to speak vehemently and out loud to the rats, who, numerous and cheerful as usual, are scrabbling, pattering, squeaking under the floor, behind the wainscot, in the japan-chest. "At all events," she says, with a sort of savage satisfaction, "there is one comfort: he'll be miserable--he'll curse the day when he ties himself to that lump of blancmange. Blancmange! white meat! that exactly expresses her; she looks as if she would be good to eat--soft, luscious, ripe. Unfortunately, a man does not contemplate _eating_ his wife!" But even this little angry gleam of comfort has but a short life. Soon, too soon, it occurs to her that men do not look at a woman with women's eyes. Men, being three parts animal themselves, condone any offence to a woman the animal part of whom is perfect and beautiful. How else is it that beauty--mere blank beauty, although destitute of any accessory charms--can always command its price in the market, and that price a high one? In marrying Constance, St. John will have no disappointments to undergo, no discoveries to make. He has known her all her life; has seen her change from a handsome stupid child into a handsomer stupider girl, and bloom, lastly, into a handsomest, stupidest woman. Constance has no antecedents; she is a woman without a history. That also is in her favour. A man likes to write his name on a sheet of white paper better than on one upon which many other men have written theirs. Perfectly virtuous, perfectly healthy, perfectly beautiful, young, rich, not ill-tempered, not fast, not shrew-tongued--surely she is a prize worth any man's drawing. If, in addition to her long list of qualifications, she possessed also Desdemona's heart and Imogen's mind, it would be too hard upon the rest of womankind: "Why should one woman have all goodly things?" Want of sympathy with the companion of her life makes a woman embittered, reckless--sends her often trespassing on her neighbours' preserves, in the endeavour to find there that congeniality of spirit which is not to be met with in her own. Want of sympathy with the companion of _his_ life sends a man oftener to his club; makes him much pleasanter to other women when he goes into society; makes him sulky and sleepy when he dines at home--that is all. Doubtless St. John will be indifferent to his bride at first; he will dislocate his jaw with yawning during their wedding-tour, but she will bear him children; "selon les us et coutumes Anglaises, elle aura beaucoup d'enfants;" he will like her for that. Year by year they will come here to Blessington, probably. Year by year she (Esther) will see the blossom of a fuller contentment on his wide brow, the quiet of a deeper rest in his restless eyes. And she herself will be here always, for one cannot throw away one's daily bread. Year by year they will find her with ever thinner hair, sharper shoulders, drabber cheeks; and he, looking upon her with the forgiveness of complete indifference, will say to himself, "She is bad, and she is ugly; I was well rid of her!" Than to be so forgiven, how much rather would she have been struck down dead by his hand, lifted in righteous anger and vengeance, on that moonlit September night, beside the glassy rush-brimmed mere at Felton! A sudden rage at her own fatuity fills her, when she looks back on that idiotic hope that had upsprung in her mind, that his object in coming to Blessington was to pardon her, and take her back to himself. Do men ever pardon a sin against themselves? "...............Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope. It is the only ill which can find place Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost, That it should spare the eldest flower of spring; Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch Even now a city stands, strong, fair and free, Now stench and blackness yawns like death. Oh! plead With famine and wind-walking pestilence, Blind lightning, or the deep sea; not with man-- Cruel, cold formal man--righteous in words, In deeds a Cain." She sits down before her looking-glass, and stares desperately, with inner eyes, at the blank ruin of her life; with outer eyes at the ruin mirrored in her sunken, altered face, that the old looking-glass, blurred with rust stains, makes look more sunken and altered still. Involuntarily she lifts her thumb and forefinger, and lays them in the hollows of her cheek, as if seeking for the red carnations that used to flower so fairly there. She has noticed before the decay of her beauty--noticed it with apathy, as who should say, "Everything else is gone, why should not this go too?" But now she observes it with a sick pang, as at the parting with a friend; she would give ten years of her life to reach it back again. "It was only for my beauty he liked me," she says, still speaking aloud; "it was only for my beauty that anybody could like me; there is nothing else to like in me. I never was clever, or said witty things, or sang, or played: I was only pretty. Now that that is gone, everything is gone!" As one shipwrecked, floating about on a plank among the weltering waves of some great plunging, grey-green sea, strains his eyes along the horizon to see some sail-speck, some misty palm-island, that looks as though it were hung midway in air; so she strains her mental eyes to catch sight of some friendly ship that may take her off from this rock of her despair. This world is full of pairs, but some oversight has left a good many odd ones also; Esther is an odd one. Her road has come to a blank wall, and there stopped. Is there no ladder that can overclimb this wall?--no gap in all the thickness of its brick-and-mortar?--no outlet? She rises and stands by the fire; her eyes down-dropped on the blue-and-white Dutch tiles--on the hobs, and queer brass-inlaid dogs: involuntarily she raises them, and they rest upon the little laudanum-bottle on the chimneypiece. Quick as lightning, an answer to her thought-question seems flashed across her mind. There is a ladder that can overclimb _any_ wall; there is a gap that can give egress through the stoutest masonries; there is an outlet from the deepest dungeon; and this ladder, this gap, this outlet, men call _Death_. Over the sea of her memory the housemaid's words float back: "I hope you'll be careful not to take an overdose, 'm, or you might chance never to wake again!" They had been spoken in careful warning; to her they seemed words of persuasive promise. Never to wake again! Never to say again in the evening, "Would God it were morning!" and in the morning, "Would God it were evening!" To Esther, the great sting of death had always laid in his pain--in his gasping breath, twitched features, writhen unfleshed limbs; but this death that comes in sleep can be no bitterer than a mother that lifts her little slumbering child out of his small bed (he not knowing), and bears him away softly. The idea of self-slaughter, when first suggested, has always something terrific, especially to us, who from our birth have been taught to look upon it as a crime hardly second to murder; to us, to whom Cato's great heroism and Lucretia's chaste martyrdom seem as sins. Some vague idea that suicide is forbidden in the Scriptures runs through Esther's mind. She sits down at the table, and, drawing a Bible towards her, searches long among the partial, temporary, and local prohibitions and commands of the Books of the Law, and still longer among the universal, all-applying prohibitions and commands of Gospel and Epistle. Whether it be that she search ill, or that there is nought therein written on the subject she seeks, she knows not; only she finds nothing; and, closing the book, she leans her pale cheek on her closed white hand. Her brain feels strangely calm, and she even forgets the darkness of the night, musing on a deeper darkness. What is this death, that we write in such great black letters? After all, what is it that we know about him, for or against? Is it fair to condemn him unheard, unknown? Why should we give him any embodiment?--why should we personify him at all? He is but an ending: what is there in the end of anything more terrifying than in its beginning, or its middle? Death is but the end of life, as birth is its beginning, and as some unnoticed moment in its course is its middle. Why are the waters in which we set our feet at the last more coldly awful than those out of which we stepped at the first? Both--both, are they not portions of the great sea of Eternity that floweth ever round Time's little island? A clock is wound up for a certain number of hours; when that number of hours has elapsed, it stops. Our more complicated machinery is wound up to go for a certain number of years, months, days; when that number of years, months, and days is elapsed, we stop--that is all. What is this life, about the taking or keeping of which we make such a clamour, as if it were some great, costly, goodly thing? "It is but a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep." It is cowardly, disloyal, say they, for a soldier to desert the post at which he has been set. Ay, but the galley-slave, chained to an oar, if he can but break his chain and be gone, may flee away, and none blame him. A prisoner that is not on parole, what shall hinder him from escaping? If he can but burst his bars, and draw his strong bolts, may he not out and away into the free air? If, before our birth, in that unknown pre-existence of ours at which backward-reaching memory catches not, we, standing looking into life, had said, "Oh, Master, give me of this life! I know not what it is, but I would fain taste it; and if Thou givest it to me, I swear to Thee to keep and guard it carefully, as long as I may----." But have we ever so asked for it? Has it not been thrust upon us, undesiring, unconsulted, as a gift that is neither of beauty nor of price? Who can chide us, if, laying it down meekly at the everlasting feet, we say, "Oh, Great Builder! take back that house in which, a reluctant tenant, Thou hast placed me. Resume Thy gift; it is a burden too heavy for me! Lay it, I pray Thee, on shoulders that mayhap may bear it stoutlier!" She lifts the bottle, having uncorked it, to her lips and tastes. It has a deathly, sickly flavour, not enticing. Hesitating, she holds it in her hand, half-frightened, half-allured; while her heart beats loud and hard. "It is the key to all my doubts," she says within herself, looking steadfastly at it; "it is the answer to all my questions. If I do but drink this little draught, I shall have all knowledge; I shall never wonder again! I shall know where Jack is; I shall be with him! But shall I?" Ay, that's the rub! Even in this small world, to be alive at the same time with another person is not necessarily, or even probably, to be _with_ him. Wide continents, high mountains, deep rivers often sever those that are closest of kin; and in the world of the dead, which, being so much more populous, must be so much the greater, is it not likely that still wider continents, higher mountains, deeper rivers, may part two that would fain be together? What if, before her time, she incur the abasement of death, the dishonour of corruption, and yet attain not the object for whose sake she is willing desperately to lay her comely head in the dust? She changes her attitude, puts down the bottle, and again stoops her small flower-face on her bent fingers--her thoughts varying their channel a little: "If I go, I shall leave no gap behind me, any more than a teacupful of water taken out of a great pool leaves a gap behind. If it is disgraceful to go willingly out of the world, instead of being dragged unwillingly out of it, my disgrace is my own. I involve no one else in it; there is no one of my name left to be ashamed of me. I leave no work undone in the world. Hundreds of others can carry air-cushions, and read to a deaf old man far more patiently than I have done. My fifty pounds a year will go to put daily bread into some other poor woman's mouth, to whom it may perhaps taste sweeter than it has done to me." Her head sinks forward again on her outstretched arms.... "It is awful to go out into the dark all by oneself," she thinks, with a pang of intense self-pity, as she feels the warm, gentle life throbbing in her round, tender limbs: "and I, that hate the dark so----, is it very wicked of me to think of this thing? People will say so, but I will not hear them. Where shall I be to-morrow at even?" "You will be at Blessington, and feeling a good deal ashamed of your absurd paroxysm of cowardly despair," answers plain common sense, who, in the shape of an untold multitude of rats, begins rushing and gnawing, hundred-toothed, scampering hundred-footed behind the walls. Esther lifts her foolish prone head, and listens. "Skurry--skurry!" go the rats; "Crack!" go the beams; "Thud!" goes some unexplained bulk, in the dining-room underneath! As the tide, at flood, creeps up and over the sands, so the child's old fear creeps up and over her new mad scheme of suicide. "Rustle--rustle!" come the ghostly dresses along the China gallery; "Click, rattle--rattle, click!" goes the door-lock. Down goes the laudanum bottle on the table, and Esther, springing to her feet, begins to unfasten, with fingers rendered nervous by extreme haste, her dress and the belt round her slim waist. "Crack--crack--crack!" goes something close to the bed-head; "Bang!" goes a distant door. There is no wind; what or who can have executed that bang? The fire, which has been burning hollow for some time, collapses, and falls in suddenly with a clear, loud noise. In one leap Miss Craven is in bed and beneath the sheltering bed-clothes. All very well pensively to contemplate, in half-earnest, the conveying oneself out of a world that has been a most harsh step-mother to one, but by no means well to have one's graceful farewells to existence broken in upon by a nation tailed and whiskered--by the spirits of old reprobates in flowered dressing-gowns, and of ladies, who nightly carry their patched and powdered heads like parcels under their arms. Good night, wicked woman! May the rats career all night over your small face, as a punishment for your great idiocy! CHAPTER XXXII. St. John has arrived; he has jumped down from the dog-cart that brought him from the station, wrapped up in a huge greatcoat lined with otter-skin, that makes him look like "three single gentlemen rolled into one." His nose, always rather a salient point in his face, is reddened by the east winds, and his eyelids purple with want of sleep, as he has been travelling night and day--not from any violent hurry to reach his destination, but because boats and mail-trains suited--from the South of Ireland, where for the last ten days he has been daily shooting the wily woodcock, and nightly putting into practice the excellent resolution expressed in the song of "not going home till morning," with some rather fast bachelor-friends, who, like himself, are as yet destitute of household angels, to bring heaven to their hearths, to take away their cues, blow out their cigars, and reduce the number of their brandies and sodas. Neither a good-looking nor a good-tempered young man does he look as he makes his descent. The first he cannot help--the second he can. His ill-humour is owing partly to a violent headache; partly to the information, just imparted to him by the butler, that "the family dines at six o'clock now _reg'lar_--no difference made whatever company there may be--on account of the old squire's 'ealth." Perhaps, had St. John known that a woman was watching his arrival, he might have endeavoured to smooth his features into an expression of greater amiability. Had he known that that woman was Esther Craven, the look of bored annoyance would certainly have given way to a stronger one, whether of pleasure or pain. Crouched on one of the paintless window-seats in the China gallery, she watches his coming, as she had watched his going; only that now she makes no smallest effort to attract his attention--cowers away rather in the dark, while he stands, unconscious and grumbling, in the patch of red light that comes through the open hall-door. He has been here half an hour now--half an hour spent in the hot airtight saloon, where the giant fire draws a strong woolly smell from Miss Blessington's winter dress, as she sits right into the fire--a practice not permitted by the autocrat of Felton, and consequently largely indulged in by his subjects when away from his master-eye. The old squire has requested St. John to come round to his other side--to draw his chair closer to his--to speak more distinctly. The old lady has explained to him the exact manner in which the draught comes through the middle window, and catches her just at the back of the neck, so that when she wakes in the morning it is so stiff that she can hardly turn it a quarter of an inch one way or another. Miss Blessington has expressed one fear that he had had a cold journey down, and another that he had not been able to get a foot-warmer at Shoreditch; there were always so shamefully few there, particularly these afternoon trains, that all the business-men came down from their offices by. Constance had certainly never spoken a truer word, than in saying that she and her lover were not fond of public demonstrations; the question that their acquaintance asked each other was, whether they were any fonder of private ones. As the clock strikes half-past five, Miss Blessington rises and floats away lightly, and without noise, to dress. Not for a kingdom would she rob one second from the sacred half-hour--all too short already--though the toilette to be made is only for the benefit of two purblind old people, who cannot see it, and of a young man who does not know gingham from "gaze de Chambéry," and who has seen her in short frock and trousers, in long dress and chignon, in court-dress, in ball-dress, in walking-dress, in driving-dress, in staying-at-home dress, any thousand number of times during the last seventeen years. Momently the hot close atmosphere is making Gerard's headache worse; momently the prospect of the six-o'clock dinner becomes more intolerable to him. Heroically, however, he enters into conversation with his great aunt-in-law elect. "So you have been trying an experiment, I hear," he says, scratching the cat's ear and cheek and chin as she successively lifts them to him for titillation,--"set up a 'companion,' haven't you? Do you find it work well?" "You must ask grandpapa," replies the old lady, looking towards her husband, who, with head sunk on chest, lips protruded, and eyes closed, seems at the present moment hardly in a condition to be put through a catechism on any subject; "he has more to say to her than I have. You see it was too great a strain on dear Constance's strength reading to him every day, and he dislikes Gurney's reading" (Gurney is the valet): "he says he never minds his stops, and _bawls_ at him; and so we thought it better to get a person of more education, who would be always on the spot, and---" "And whose strength," interrupts St. John, a little ironically, "unlike Constance's, would be warranted _un-overworkable?_" "Exactly," answers the old lady, innocently. "And she is a satisfactory beast of burden, I hope?" says Gerard, yawning till the tears come into his eyes; "fetches and carries well?" "She seems a nice, quiet, ladylike person enough," replies Mrs. Blessington, leaning back placidly in her chair, with her hands, in black kid half-gloves, lying folded in her lap--"only, unfortunately, over-sensitive: those sort of people always are. Why, it was only yesterday that she rushed from this room with such violence that she nearly shook Constance and me out of our chairs, because I made some slight observation about a brother of hers who died lately, and to whom, it seems, she was much attached. I'm sure I had no intention of hurting her feelings, poor girl!" "Girl!" repeats St. John, laughing; "that means a gushing thing of fifty, I suppose?" "More like fifteen. By-the-by, she said something the other day about having known _you_." "Known me!" cries the young man, opening his quick grey eyes. "Well, 'more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.' I never knew any one in my life that had a 'companion'--of this sort, I mean. What may my unknown friend's name be?" But at this juncture, before the name of his unknown friend can be confided to him, the old squire, waking up, urgently requests to be told what they are talking about, which information is communicated, in a succession of long dull roars, into his good ear. St. John takes advantage of the diversion to leave the room, and, running upstairs, knocks at Constance's door. "Constance!" "Who's there?" (Voice rather muffled--from under an avalanche of hair apparently). "I. Can you come out and speak to me for a minute, if you are not in too great deshabille?" "Certainly." Ordinarily, Miss Blessington is a prude; but to appear for an instant before her betrothed in light-blue cashmere lined with blue satin, and her hair in golden rain about her shoulders, is, she thinks, for once permissible. Has he come to make some demonstration of affection?--to give her some warmer greeting than the nonchalant handshake with which they met? Or has he, has he--oh sweeter, warmer thought!--brought her a present from Ireland? Visions of Irish poplin, Irish lace, bog-oak and gold, cunningly fashioned together into bracelet or necklace, float before her mind's eye. In a moment, with a little affected coyness on her face, she stands before him; stands before him--and he does not even see her! He has opened one of the rusty casements in the passage, and thrust his head out, feeling the keen eastern blast blow against his throbbing brow with a sense of relief. He has evidently no gift in his hand, nor does he seem to be assailed by any very overpowering temptation to embrace her, blue and gold and white miracle though she be. Hearing her he turns, and the expression of his countenance is glum. "I say, does this sort of thing happen every day?" "What sort of thing?" (with a little pique at the errand on which she has been called away from among her cosmetics). "This feeding, I cannot call it dining, like savages, at mid-day?" "It is a fancy of my uncle," replies Constance, with the door-handle still in her hand; "he imagines that, if he dined later, he should not have time to digest his food before going to bed." St. John utters an impatient exclamation. "In Heaven's name let him digest in bed, then; or, if not, let him dine by himself! I'm sure no one would object to that arrangement. Poor old boy! he can't help it; but it does take away one's appetite to see a very old man mumbling his food, like a toothless old dog over a bone." "I suppose he may dine at what hour he chooses in his own house?" says Constance, coldly. "Of course he may. He may go back to the manners and customs of the ancient British," rejoins Gerard, impatiently; "he may get up in the middle of the night and paint himself in blue-and-white stripes, instead of wearing coat and waistcoat, if he chooses--only he can hardly expect civilized beings to join him." "I always think it right, on principle, to humour old people's whims," answers Constance, taking the high moral tone that she has adopted more than once since their engagement in any discussion with her lover, a tone symptomatic of what the postnuptial line of attack is likely to be. "A very excellent sentiment, my dear," says St. John, a little mockingly, "worthy of being copied by little boys and girls after they have mastered straight strokes and pothooks; but to-night I must request the aged to humour my whim, and my whim is to absent myself from this symposium. I have got a splitting headache, and am altogether pretty nearly dead-beat. I have hardly a leg to stand upon: if you won't take it as a personal insult, I have a good mind to turn in at once. I have not been in bed, for any time worth speaking of, for the last ten days." "Indeed!" replies Constance, freezing up, and looking as though tortures should not wring from her any question as to what had been the vicious pursuits that had detained her lover from balmy slumbers. "You will please yourself of course." "If every one pleased themselves, and no one else, this would be a much more passable world to live in," retorts St. John, with a little misanthropy; "for then each person would get their fair share of attention neither more nor less, which is what they do not now." But the last half of his sentence is addressed to himself, as his madonna has retired again within her shrine. Meanwhile, for the first time since her brother's death, the "companion"--the nice, quiet, young ladylike person, whose only fault is being over-sensitive--is, like Constance, making a toilette. Since Jack's death she has daily put on her clothes, as a necessary preliminary to the day's work; but it has been a task full of weariness--devoid of pleasure. To-night, like Constance, she makes a toilette, and like Constance, it is for the benefit of the young man who does not know gingham from "gaze de Chambéry." It is not, however, with any faintest hope that her Sunday frock, any more than her work-a-day one, will bring back her lost lover to her side, that she puts the former on. The very strength of her faith in his honour hinders the possibility of his turning away from the woman he has promised to marry to any other woman from entering her head. Only, seeing, as plainly as if it were another's and not her own, the ruin of the face that meets her, daily and nightly, in the dim oval of the old glass in its tarnished frame, she wishes that that ruin might be revealed slowly, and by degrees (not _all at once_), to him that had once thought her so fair. For this one night, she would fain look like her old self--would fain be pretty plump Esther Craven, whose face, dimpled and _débonnaire_, men used to turn round in the street to look after--instead of the thin depressed "companion," whom if men looked at at all, it was only to pity her sunken white cheeks and sombre mourning weeds. Her Sunday frock is a lugubrious combination of cheap black silk and crape, against which her artistic eye has been revolting ever since she heard of St. John's coming. A little white tucker will not make her any the less mindful of Jack. And so she has been devoting most of the short winter daylight to the inserting of such a tucker, and to cutting the funereal body square. The alterations have been effected, now the Sunday frock is on: if it had been costliest velvet or satin, instead of papery silk at two-and-sixpence a yard, its black could not have contrasted better with the milkwhite of the long lily throat and swelling bust. Esther has lost flesh a good deal lately; but, being small-boned and thoroughly well-made, no unsightly hollows show as yet, like salt-cellars, beneath her collar-bones--not yet are elbows or shoulders sharp. Brilliancy of colouring is gone; but the head, arched like the Clytie's, is still left, and great plenty of night-dark hair to clothe it. Instead of the unnatural protuberance of a chignon, she has arranged this hair in the thick plain twists with which in the old time Miss Blessington's betrothed used-- .......... "to play Not knowing----," and, so playing, spoke in loving commendation of them. In like twists Miss Blessington herself often disposes her locks--twists purchased by her for a considerable price from M. Isidore, golden hair being hard to match, and consequently expensive. It is five minutes to six. The toilette is finished, and Esther stands before the glass considering it; but with none of the triumphant self-content with which a fine woman usually regards the victory that art and nature, fighting side by side, have achieved on the battle-field of her face. Colour had been Esther's strong point, and colour has gone from her; as it goes from a violet sent in a letter, or from a poppy dried between the leaves of a love-song. A raging desire for rouge, raddle, plate-powder--anything to bring back that flower-flush that used to need no persuasion to stay with her--enters her mind. But neither rouge nor raddle is near, and for plate-powder she would have to apply to the butler--an effort for which not even her great wish to appear once more red-cheeked before her ex-lover can nerve her. Suddenly, her eyes fall on a spray of scarlet geranium, that, plucked this morning in the conservatory, she has worn all day in the breast of her dress. A recollection comes to her of having, when a child, crushed one of those dazzling flowers against the face of another child, and of having laughed with pleasure at the scarlet stain. She snatches up eagerly some of the petals, and rubs them on her cheeks; the hue produced, though too scarlet for nature, is vivid and beautifying. She sets to work on the other cheek. Esther is not a very cunning artiste; she has no idea of softening off edges with cotton-wool--of working deftly from cheekbone downwards. She is only possessed by a great longing to get back, for this one night, something of her old brilliancy. And in this she partially succeeds. The result of her labours is, indeed, a too hectic bloom; but the bright colour seems to fill up somewhat the hollowed cheeks--seems to bring back a little of the old childish _débonnaire_ grace. Her labour ended, she runs downstairs quickly--not giving herself time for remorse at the meretricious nature of her charms, and listens, trembling all over, at the saloon-door before entering. There is no sound except the rolling grunts with which, unheard by himself, the old gentleman accompanies every respiration. A footman crosses the hall; the "companion" must not be caught eavesdropping; she turns the door-handle and goes in. The old squire, with coat-tails under his arms, standing on tottery old legs before the fire; the old lady, in her evening-cap, sunk in armchair and Shetland shawls; Miss Blessington, with blue bands binding close her waved golden hair, and an expression of face less bland than usual, on the ottoman. No one else. "How smart you are, my dear!" the old lady says, not unkindly, her faded eyes straying slowly over the square-cut bodice, white tucker, and cabled hair. "Is that in honour of Mr. Gerard?" "It is rather thrown away if it is," says Mr. Gerard's future owner, with some temper: "St. John has chosen to make an invalid of himself to-night, and has gone to bed." No need now for the geranium dye: a great hot blush bums through it--burns throat and brow and neck; she has _made herself up_ in vain. "Gone to bed!" repeats Mrs. Blessington, raising herself a little from among her pillows--"at _six_ o'clock! Dear me, love, I hope he is not ill! I thought he seemed rather absent when he was talking to me before I went to dress; and he left the room so abruptly too! Are you sure, Constance, that he would not like something sent up to him?" "He is quite able to take care of himself, I assure you--thanks, aunt," replies Constance, not without a vexed ring in her low flute voice. "If we served him right, we should accept him as the invalid he pretends himself, and allow him nothing but a little water-gruel or arrowroot." "It seems so unnatural, a young man going to bed without his dinner; I'm sure, dear, I hope it is nothing serious," cries the old lady, with that righteous horror of death and sickness which, by some strange contrariety, one finds so often amongst the aged, so seldom amongst the young. "Nothing more serious than the natural results of ten days' Irish hospitality," replies Constance, with a laugh, which, though low and highbred, is not mirthful; "men are so fond of one another's society when they get together, that they never can take it in moderation. I dislike bachelor parties particularly." "He is making the most of his time, my dear--he knows it is short," suggests the old lady, smiling and nodding, and looking wise. "Quite right, too!--quite right! Sensible fellow--knows when he is well off! So did I when I was his age--eh, Mrs. Blessington?" chimes in the squire, who, for a wonder, has caught the drift of the talk; chuckling to himself at the recollection--perfectly clear, though he forgets what happened yesterday--of the pleasant immoralities that have the weight of over half a century lying upon them. "Dinner!" announces the butler, coming close up to his master, and bawling unnecessarily loud. "You'll have to be content with the old squire again, Conny, my dear," says the old man, putting out his feeble arm; "you'll find the old fellows are best, after all." "I quite agree with you, uncle--I think they are," replies Constance, gravely; and so, the old man supported on one young girl's arm, and the old woman on another's, the procession toddles solemnly, at a snail's pace, into the carefully-warmed and shaded dining-room. "What a brilliant colour you have to-night, Miss Craven!" says Constance that evening; endeavouring vainly to get a strong light thrown upon Esther's countenance--the one small lamp, with its deep green shade, effectually baffling her. "I went out in the wind, and it caught my face," answers Esther, hurriedly: involuntarily raising her hands to her cheeks and then snatching them away again, in the fear that the scarlet dye, staining them, may betray her secret. "But there was no wind to-day, and I did not think that you had been outside the doors?" "Yes, I was; I went for a run in the park just before dressing-time." "It must have been quite dark." "It is never _quite_ dark out-of-doors; total darkness is a human invention, I think; there is always a sort of _owl_ light." Constance shrugs her shoulders: "_Chacun à son goût_, I prefer leaving it to the owls." "It stifles me staying indoors all day; I have never been used to it." Miss Blessington unbuttons her great eyes a little: "Really?" "Yes, really." "But there was no wind, surely?" persists Constance. "Not a breath!" replies the other, absently, forgetting her former excuse for her brilliant face. "There never is any wind worth calling a wind in these low countries; the winds keep to the mountains, and very wise of them too." "But you said it was the wind that had caught your face?" says Constance, raising herself from her lounging attitude with more animation than is customary to her. Esther starts. "Oh! so I did--I forgot; I meant the air, of course." Constance looks slightly sceptical, but is too well-bred to pursue her inquiries further; merely saying, languidly, as she rearranges the cushions upon which her stately shoulders rest posed, "Glycerine-cream is the best thing in the world for a chapped face." "Is it?" answers Essie, guiltily conscious that a little cold water is the only glycerine-cream needed to effect the cure of _her_ chapped face. "Have you seen St. John since he came?" asks Constance, presently; the links that connect his name with her artificially-reddened countenance being painfully evident to Miss Craven. "No--yes--no, not to speak to." "You were out when he came, I suppose, weren't you?" "No, I was upstairs." "I have not told him you are here; it will be a surprise to him to meet an old acquaintance." Esther gives an involuntary start of dismay. "Why did not you tell him?" she asks, hurriedly. "_I!_ Oh, I don't know; I have the worst memory in the world. I have intended to tell him in every letter, but I have always forgotten." "Will he stay here long?" asks Miss Blessington's unsuccessful rival, in a low voice, bending down her head. "I don't know, I'm sure; he is always so full of engagements, and I never allow him to refuse a good invitation on my account." "Will your wedding be soon, Miss Blessington?" (spoken quietly and firmly). "I really have not thought about it" (with a little yawn, as if the subject were rather a wearisome one than otherwise); "'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' I don't suppose I shall be given more than two or three months longer; some time in the spring, I daresay." "I always think it is a good omen when people are married in the spring," says the young companion, with a dreamy smile; "when the world is beginning all over again, it is right that people's new life should begin with it." "Do you think so? I don't much believe in omens. May is certainly the best time for Paris. I have set my heart upon seeing the Grand Prix run for; unfortunately, St. John hates Paris." "All men hate all towns, I think, except American men; 'good Americans when they die go to Paris,' somebody said, didn't they?" "Did they? It was rather irreverent, don't you think? By-the-by, some one told me in the summer that you were engaged to be married; is it true? I hope you won't think me impertinent for asking." "Not in the least; but it is not true." "Really? How odd it is the way those sort of reports get about!" "Very odd; people are singularly fond of pairing their neighbours, but they don't often hit upon the right pairs." "Perhaps not," answers Constance, closing her eyes, and looking bored, whereupon Esther lapses into silence. Every Jack has his Jill; but my Jill is probably in Siberia or Hong Kong, and yours is close at hand; so I marry yours, and you, being in Siberia or Hong Kong, marry mine, and we both rue it to our dying day. CHAPTER XXXIII. Next morning St. John wakes, recovered from his ill temper, his headache, and all the effects of his Irish saturnalia. Perhaps, had he known who it was that lay wakeful in a great ginger four-poster, two doors off, his slumbers would not have been so profound. The hounds meet twelve miles away, at Shepherds Hatch. By nine o'clock he is in the saddle, and riding quietly along the deep Essex lanes and wet fields, with a soft, south wind blowing in his face, and the grass, crisped by the slightest possible frost, beneath the horse's hoofs. He is lucky enough to come in for the run of the season; has the satisfaction of seeing many better men than himself floundering, hatless and well-watered, in a brook, or getting croppers over stiff hawthorn hedges; over all which obstacles his grey, a new investment, of whose fencing powers he and his groom had been unjustly doubtful, carries him like a bird. As to whether his ladylove may relish this early preference of "bold Reynolds" to herself, any more than she relished his fatigue and headache last night, he troubles himself but little. He has no intention whatever of being a hen-pecked husband. When he proposed to her, he told her what he could give her, and what he could not--what she might expect, and what she might not: nor has this day's desertion been any departure from his half of the bargain. Somewhere about five o'clock he is back again at Blessington, splashed from head to heel; his tops, in which this morning you might have seen your face, all stained and discoloured; with a dab of mud on each cheek, and a third on the bridge of his nose. He runs upstairs lightly, whistling a tune, and has just reached the first landing, when, "Click-clack," he hears a woman's high-heeled shoes descending. It is Esther, who is walking listlessly down, with her eyes fixed on a great picture let into the wall--a large, white woman, with her clothes tumbling off, hurling her substantial person upon a spear; a young man, with arms like a blacksmith's, lying on the ground, making a profuse display of his charms, and, though with no very perceptible wound, evidently _in articulo mortis;_ a fat Cupid blubbering hard by--the whole entitled "Pyramus and Thisbe." St. John looks upward, to see who the author of the "click-clacking" may be. "Who the devil is this pretty girl?" is his first thought. His second--a thought that makes him stagger back with the colour hurrying from his healthy cheek--a thought full of anger, astonishment, desire, and pain--a thought that involuntarily he speaks aloud, is "Esther." At almost the same moment she has caught sight of him. In her case, there is no surprise; but the pain is as great, if not greater. "Yes, it is I," she answers, almost inaudibly, trembling all over. His first impulse seems to be to rush away from her, to pass quickly upstairs; his second takes him to her side. "In Heaven's name, what brings _you_ here?" he asks, in a voice almost as low as her own, from intense repressed emotion. No answer. His voice has carried her back, across the gulf of Jack's death, of her own servitude and failing health, to that night when, in the starry Felton fields, she had stood by his side, his beloved, promised wife. She is silent--struggling with a strong, vile, degrading temptation to fling down her tired head upon the shoulder of Miss Blessington's affianced husband, and weep out loud. "Are you on a visit here?" he asks again, with stern brevity. "Yes," she answers, bitterly, strengthened by his tone, in which there is small kindness, and much wrath; "I am paid fifty pounds a year to visit here." "What _do_ you mean?" "I am Mr. and Mrs. Blessington's 'companion.'" "Good God! You are here _always_, then?" "Always." A pause! Against his will his eyes dwell upon her, hungry and fierce, astonished at the alteration wrought in her whom he had once thought fairest among women. Faded, wasted, forlorn, to his cost he finds that he still thinks her so. "Is this bondage to last all your life, then?" he inquires more collectedly, after a few seconds. "Until they die, or until my voice fails." "And what then?" "I must look out for some other old people, to whom I can be ears, and voice, and feet." "Good God! And what _can_ be your motive?" "One _must_ live." "I had thought the world wide enough for two people to walk apart," he says, with almost a groan. "I have entreated God that I might never look on your face again, and this is how my prayer is answered." Another pause. "Tick-tack--tick-tack--tick-tack," goes a clock in the gallery overhead. "You look extremely ill!" "Do I?" "You are wonderfully altered!" "Yes, I know it!" "What is it ails you?" "Nothing." "What does _this_ mean?"--touching her black dress with a jealous pang of fear that his innocent rival, the "lout who gave her the sixpenny Prayer Book, and inscribed his name with a crooked pin on the fly-leaf," is numbered with the dead; and that the hollow cheeks, dejected droop of the head, and crape-covered garments are for him. The tears crowd into her eyes; they know the way there so well now. She turns away, and leans against the banisters to hide them. A light breaks in upon him. He remembers that she had a brother, her girlish rhapsodies about whom used to make him rather impatient. "I see," he says, in a softer tone; "forgive me for asking." Encouraged by his voice, she lifts her face towards him with a tearful smile. "You may be satisfied, I think," she says, simply. "You have had your revenge; I have been punished almost enough." Revenge is sweet, they say; but at this moment I do not think that St. John finds it so. "You did not know that I was here?" she asks, presently. "Know it!" he repeats, passionately. "Not I. Do you suppose I would have come within a hundred miles of this house if I had known it?" "I will try to keep out of your way," she answers, meekly. "For God's sake, do! It is the most merciful thing that you can do for both of us." "I would leave this place to-day, if I could," she answers, humbly raising her wistful, deprecating eyes to his; "but I cannot. My daily bread is here--yours is not. Why cannot you go?" He hesitates. "I ought, I suppose," he answers, doubtfully. "I will, if you wish it." "It is as _you_ wish," she replies. Footmen are passing to and fro, through the hall, busy with preparations for dinner; any moment Mr. Gerard's blue-and-white angel may come sweeping downstairs and surprise them. "I have not congratulated you yet, Mr. Gerard," Esther says, timidly. "Congratulated me!--what upon?" he asks, absently, staring vacantly at her. "Upon your engagement to Miss Blessington." A shade crosses his face. "Oh yes, to be sure! I had forgotten. Thanks! you are very good, I'm sure." "I hope you will be very happy--_quite_ happy." "Thanks. Wish that I may be Prime Minister, or Commander-in-Chief, or something equally probable, while you are about it," he says, sardonically. "I wish you to be happy," she repeats, gently, "and I hope that is not improbable." "Such a wish in your mouth is something like a butcher with his knife at its throat wishing a sheep a long life!" A guilty sense of hypocrisy in wishing him happy whom, less than forty-eight hours ago, she had been congratulating herself on his certain misery, keeps her dumb. "Why could not you have sent me word that you were here, and I would have kept away?" he asks, flashing angrily upon her. "I asked Miss Blessington to tell you, but she forgot." He turns away with a muttered exclamation, not benedictory towards his betrothed, between his teeth. "I will try to be as little annoyance to you as I can," says the poor child, in bitter mortification. "You will be out hunting most of the day, I daresay, and, except when I am waiting upon either Mr. and Mrs. Blessington, I am not often downstairs." He takes no notice of her submissive speech, but stands, with his eyes moodily downcast, upon the white stone of the cold carpetless stairs. "Believe me, I would go away, if I could," she says, piteously. "I did not wish to be in your way; but I had nowhere to go to." A shade of pity softens his stern face. "Are they kind to you?" he asks abruptly. "Yes--oh yes--quite kind." "And what, in God's name," he says, slowly, as if the question were forced from him against his will, by the slender fragility of her figure, by the pallid delicacy of her face--"And what, in God's name, can have induced your friends to allow you to accept such a situation, for which you are about as well fitted as I for the archbishopric of Canterbury?" "I have not many friends, and I did not ask the advice of the few I have." "They ought to have given it unasked," he says, gruffly. "So they did, but I did not take it." "Well, it is no business of mine," he says, harshly, ashamed and angry at himself for his temporary lapse into friendliness. "God knows I have had as good reason to hate you, and wish you ill, as ever man had! I _have_ hated you," he says, with fierce heartiness, "during the last three months, as I should not have thought it possible to hate anything so weak and tender. I _hope_ I hate you still!" Remembering how much deeplier she had sinned against that other, and with how godlike a fulness and freedom he had pardoned her, she feels her heart rise up against him. "The worse case I see you in, the more I ought to rejoice--the more I _should_ have rejoiced yesterday," he continues, with rapid passion; "and yet--and yet--" He passes his hand across his forehead, pushing the hair away; and not even the dab of mud on his nose can hinder the expression of his countenance from having something of a tragical pathos in it. "And yet what?" she asks, tremulously, moving a step nearer to him. "And yet, for the life of me, while I am _with_ you, I cannot. When I am away from you, I can remember what you _are;_ when I am with you, I see only what you seem. Esther! Esther! why, in God's name, don't the two tally better?" "Whether they tally or not can be of but little concern to you now, Mr. Gerard," she answers, with some exasperation. His brown cheek flushes into shamed angry-red. "You are right," he says, stiffly. "It _is_ no concern of mine; I am sorry I needed reminding." "Why must we waste time digging that poor old past out of its grave?" she says, with persuasive gentleness, as her hand lays itself lightly, as if half afraid of being shaken off, upon his scarlet sleeve. "Why cannot we let bygones, that" (with a sigh) "are so completely bygones, be bygones? I did you an injury once--not an irreparable one, you will allow, since it is already repaired" (smiling half-scornful, half-melancholy); "and my whole life since has been a punishment--O God! _what_ a punishment!" (putting her hand for a second over her eyes). "I am tired of being punished now. We shall see very little of one another henceforth, but that little might as well be in civility as in incivility--mightn't it?" "Civility!"--he repeats, without much of that quality in his tone--"civility between you and me! And what would that end in, pray? It would be oversweet at first, and bitterer than wormwood afterwards, as our former _civility_ was. No--no! we will have no sophisms, no absurd Platonisms here! God forbid my thrusting myself into temptation again! We will say 'good morning' and 'good evening' to one another, as people would remark it if we did not. But for the rest, let us hold our tongues and keep apart; and as soon as I can do it, without exciting great question, you may rely upon my going; and then we shall have done with one another for good, I pray God!" She bends her head submissively. "You are right, I think." "Click-clack--click-clack," come other high-heeled shoes; "swish! swish!" a long dress trails along. From the heaven of the upper regions the blue-and-white angel is in the act of descent. Without another word, the two part--the woman going quickly down, the man as quickly up. "Good morning, Conny! Rather late in the day to say 'good morning,' isn't it?" This is his greeting, accompanied with a rather constrained laugh, to his future proprietor. "So you and Miss Craven have been renewing your acquaintance upon the landing?" replies the divinity, smiling a little inquisitively. "I was looking down at you from the gallery; you looked so picturesque!" "If being cased from top to toe in black mud is picturesque, I am eminently so," answers he, looking down at his legs to hide a transient expression of confusion. "Well, good-bye for the present; I suppose I must be going to adorn for this unearthly meal." CHAPTER XXXIV. No one ever accused the dinners _en famille_ at Felton of being too lively; but, that evening, Gerard decides that they yield the palm, in point of perfect stagnation, to Blessington. There is, indeed, none of that lynx-eyed watching of the servants, none of that pouncing upon their minutest derelictions, which makes dining in Sir Thomas's company so thoroughly uncomfortable a process: no one calls the fat red-faced butler and the two blue-and-yellow footmen "hounds, louts, fools." At Blessington, indeed, the servants have things pretty much their own way; and, accustomed to their master's total and mistress's partial deafness, have got into a habit of conversing with one another in a tone of voice considerably above that usually considered seemly in civilised _ménages_. With one member of the company (Miss Craven) St. John has entered into a pact to exchange no remarks, good or bad; a second member (Mr. Blessington) contributes nothing to the conversation but a series of inarticulate though loud mumblings over his food--with the exception of a question, addressed to the butler, as to what the viands upon the table under his sightless eyes consist of. "'Aricot--Volly Vong--Line of Mutton--Biled Turkey," enumerates that functionary, glibly, at the top of his voice. From a third member (Mrs. Blessington) St. John has already heard all that is to be said on the subject of draughts and sand-bags; and with the fourth member, conversation always drives as heavily as a loaded waggon dragged up a perpendicular hill. The evening is but a prolongation of the dinner, with the additional disadvantage of there being no eating and drinking to employ the otherwise unoccupied jaws. "England expects every man to do his duty!" She expects every man who has the misfortune to be in the position of an affianced to sit, hours long, idle beside his betrothed--however ardently his soul may be sighing for a sheet of the _Times_ or a whiff of Latakia: to hold converse with no other man, woman, or child, if she be in the room. Since, at the entrance of the gentlemen, Constance looked up expectant, and since he has a vague idea that it is part of his share of their bargain to pay her all outward observance and attention, St. John seats himself on the sofa beside her. She sits rather forward, upright as a dart; he leans back, with his arms resting on the sofa behind her. It is not a caress; but, from a little distance, it has the air of one. The old gentleman, rendered surprisingly wakeful by the unwonted incident of the addition of a stranger to his little circle, insists upon hearing a pungent article on Gladstone and the Irish Church, over which he has fallen asleep in the morning, re-read to him by his little white slave. "I am afraid I can hardly see, Mr. Blessington; there is so little light!" she has remonstrated, mildly. "Light!--pooh!" repeats the old gentleman, gaily. "What do young eyes like yours want with light? They ought to be able to see in the dark, like cats. You'll be borrowing Mrs. Blessington's spectacles next--eh, Mrs. Blessington?" "Mrs. Blessington is asleep, Mr. Blessington." "Oh! Go on, then, my dear--go on. Let us hear what they have got to say for these rascally placehunters, who are trying to remove the landmarks of the Constitution for the sake of getting into office." Her long damp evening rambles--rambles on which a mother would have put so decided a veto--have brought back Miss Craven's cold. She has been hoarse all day; and it is a well-known fact that hoarseness always becomes worse towards night: a tiresome little tickling cough interrupts her every moment. Add to which, her attention is completely distracted from the subject in hand by the involuntary and vain effort to catch what Mr. Gerard and his love are saying to one another. She would hardly have been repaid for her trouble had she succeeded. "Had you a good run to-day?" "Yes, rather a quick thing." "Which horse did you ride?" "The grey--one you have not seen. I bought her in Ireland of Brownrigg; _he_ required more of a weight-carrier." "Does she seem likely to prove satisfactory?" "Very: she has a good turn of speed, jumps capitally, and is very temperate." "Was it a large field?" "Middling." "Any one you knew?" "Two or three" (with a yawn). "You are going out to-morrow again, of course?" with a slight attempt at a pout, which is not even perceived by the person for whose benefit it is intended. "No, I think not; it is five-and-twenty miles, and the trains do not fit: one gets lazy in one's old age. I suppose I shall agree soon with Brakespeare, of the --th, who sent seven horses down to Melton last year; and at the end of the season confessed that he hated hunting, and that he thought it a very dangerous amusement." "Really?" answers Constance, who always takes everything _au sérieux_, opening her great eyes. "No, not really--most assuredly!" he answers, laughing lazily. "On the contrary, I am nearer coinciding with the opinion of the Jewish gentleman, who said it would be a very pleasant world if there were no _shummers_ and no _shabbaths_." It is hardly worth Miss Craven's while, you will perceive, to lose her place twice, and get rated by her old employer, for the sake of hearing brilliant questions and answers of the above description. Though her jealous eyes are fixed upon the _Saturday's_ columns, they see, none the less clearly, those two figures reclined upon the distant sofa. Once she sees St. John raise himself, and, stooping forward over his companion, speak with more animation than he has yet used. If she break the drum of her ear in the attempt, she _must_ catch the drift of that remark--some delicious tender nothing, no doubt. She succeeds: "By-the-bye, Conny, how was the lump on your pony's leg when you left home?" As another and another article follow the first, Esther's cough becomes increasingly troublesome: her throat aches with the effort of reading: her voice at each paragraph waxes huskier and huskier. For several minutes past Gerard's answers to Miss Blessington's questions have been growing ever more wildly random; suddenly he leaves the sofa, and comes over to Mr. Blessington's armchair. "Will you let _me_ read to you a bit?" he asks, in that loud unmodulated roar that people unused to the deaf think the only method of making them hear. "Eh! what does he say?" inquires the old gentleman, sharply, lifting his head, and peering blindly up in the direction whence the voice came. "I asked whether you would let _me_ read to you, for a change, instead of Miss Craven?" "No--thanks, no," replies the old man, ungraciously. "Much obliged to you, but I cannot hear a word you say; you run all your words into one another." "Do I? I daresay," rejoins Gerard, good-humouredly; "but have you ever heard me read? I think not." "Begging your pardon, I have, though; I heard you read prayers here one Sunday evening." "And I am afraid my mode of conducting divine worship has not left a pleasant impression," says the young man, laughing. "Well, but I promise to read as slow as ever you choose, and to count four at every full-stop." "No--no," cries the old man, obstinately. "Get away with you, my dear boy! you are interrupting us. No offence, but we are very happy without you--aren't we, Miss Esther? You attend to your own business; we don't offer to help you in that--do we--eh, my dear?" Baffled and vexed, St. John stands silent; and as he so stands, the young girl lifts her great meek eyes, dumbly grateful, to his. He has forbidden her to speak to him, but he cannot lay an embargo upon the gentle messages sent from those sorrowful shining orbs. His own meet them for an instant; then he turns away with a half-shudder. "What a churchyard cough that girl has!" says Miss Blessington, fanning herself gently, as he reseats himself beside her; "it really quite fidgets one. Of course it is very unjust of one, but I always feel so _angry_ with a person who goes 'cough, cough, cough' every minute." "I feel angrier with the person who is the cause of it," answers Gerard, thoroughly chafed: "it is positive barbarity. You see what success _I_ met with when I tried to relieve guard. Suppose you offer: you can always make him hear!" "I should be delighted," answers Conny, blandly; "only, unfortunately, this damp weather makes my throat so relaxed" (touching the firm round pillar with two white slender fingers), "that I really should be afraid." "Just try--there's a good girl," urges he, coaxingly; "you can stop in a minute if you find that it hurts you." A mulish expression comes into her face; small good would persuasion, cajolery, threats, or promises do now! "I am very sorry I cannot oblige you; but as I am to dine out on Thursday, and one is always expected to sing, I really must nurse my voice." CHAPTER XXXV. "When the days begin to lengthen, Then the cold begins to strengthen." This ancient distich proves true in the year I am speaking of. Not later than Christmas does the moist mild weather last. With January the frost comes hurrying back; hanging great icicles on the house-eaves, throwing men out of work, and pressing with its iron finger the thin faint life out of half-a-dozen old almsmen and almswomen. The foxes have a little breathing-time--a little space in which to steal and eat three or four more fat capons and stubble-fed geese--before that evil day when their dappled foes shall tear their poor little red bodies limb from limb. Hunting is stopped, and men are hurrying up from the shires to London. St. James's Street and its hundred clubs are crowded. At Blessington everybody is pirouetting on the ice. St. John, passionately fond of all out-of-door sports, spends the whole day on the mere. One afternoon a large party comes over from Lord Linley's place, five miles away. Not in all Lord Linley's grounds is there such a stretch of smooth ice as the Blessington pool affords; and so they are all come to show their prowess on its hard flat face. Esther keeps well out of their way. From her post of observation--the deep window-seat in the China gallery--she has watched their arrival, heard their gay voices in the hall, and then, unnoticed, unmissed, she has stolen out upon one of her long, dawdling, cold-giving strolls in the park: over the frost-crisped grass, under the branchy trees, whose staglike crowns cut the pale sky--up little knolls and down into dips where, in summer time, the fern stands neck high. At last she comes in sight of the mere; and, impelled by curiosity, trusting in her own insignificance to escape notice, sits down on a bank that slopes gently down towards the sheet of water, and looks upon the unwonted brilliance of the scene. Girls in velvet short costumes; bright petticoats, furs, hats with humming birds on them, curls, fair chignons, glancing in the cheerful winter sun. Fashion in all its folly and extravagance, but picturesque withal; it is as if a company of Dresden shepherdesses had stepped off the mantelshelf, and come tripping, dainty-footed, over the frozen water. Her eyes follow the shepherdess figures with eager interest--so seldom in her simple country-bred life has she been brought into contact with any of Fashion's bright daughters. The men have less attraction for her. Under no most prosperous conjunction of circumstances could she ever have been a man; but under happier auspices she might have been one of these fluttering butterflies--a prettier butterfly than any there, her heart tells her. Shylock's words recur to her: "Am not I 'fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer?' Why, then, are they frisking about in purple and fine linen upon the ice, with half-a-dozen young patricians (in trousers of surprising tightness and coats of unequalled brevity) in their train, while I am perched here upon the all-alone stone, among these stiff cold sedges, with only the Canada geese, with their long necks craned out, screeching above my head?" Meanwhile, Miss Craven is the subject of more remark than she is at all aware of. "I say, Gerard," says Lord Linley's heir--a goodnatured ugly little prodigal, who is one of the shining lights of Her Majesty's Household, and goes among men by the _sobriquet_ of "Gaolbird," for which he has to thank the unexampled brevity of his locks--"I say, Gerard, you ought to know all the remarkable objects about here: tell us, who is the _mourner_ in the distance?" St. John's eyes follow the direction indicated by his friend, and a shade of annoyance crosses his face. "Her name is Miss Craven, I believe," he answers, shortly. "Uncommon good-looking girl, whoever she is!" says a second man, who has just stopped to adjust his skates; "I have been perilling my life among those d----d rushes by the edge, to get a good look at her!" "Deuced good legs!" subjoins a third, remarkable for his laconism; taking his pipe out of his mouth to make room for his criticism, and fixing upon that part of a woman's charms which is always the first to enchain the masculine attention. "She is vewy like a girl I used to know at the Cape," says a "Heavy," who has been vanquished in single combat by the letter R. "The _Fly_ we used to call her, because when she settled on a f'la, it was mowally impossible to dwive her off." St. John, who has been listening with ill-concealed anger and disgust to these comments--free as if they had been upon the points of a horse--on the charms of the woman for whom he has been trying to persuade himself that he feels inveterate aversion, turns to move away; but Linley's voice recalls him. "I say, Gerard!--Gerard!" "Well?" "Do you know her?" "Slightly." "Introduce me, then--there's a good fellow!" "And me!" "And me!" "My acquaintance with Miss Craven is not such as to justify my introducing any one to her," answers Gerard, stiffly, and so walks resolutely off. "Sly dog!" cries Linley, laughing; "means to keep her all to himself--a nice quiet little game of his own." "Means to drive a pair then--eh?" asks the laconic youth. "Vewy seldom pays," says the "Heavy," sagely; "one or other invawiably jibs." But Mr. Linley, being more in earnest than he usually is about most things, is not so easily balked. After many fruitless inquiries among the company, he at length appeals to Miss Blessington. "Do you know, Miss Blessington," he says, peering up at her with his quick terrier-face (for her stately height exceeds his), "I have actually been putting the same question to twenty people running, and never yet succeeded in getting an answer? You are my last hope: who _is_ that lady in black?" "The lady in black!" repeats Constance, amiably--following, as her lover had done, the direction of his gaze. "Oh!" (with a little, slighting laugh), "nobody very particular; only poor Miss Craven, my aunt's companion!" "Poor girl!" he says--his eyes still riveted upon the pensive oval face, and his interest in her not the least lessened by the information as to her social status, that Constance had thought so damning. He does not want to _marry_ her; and for any other purpose a pretty woman is a pretty woman, be she duchess or fishwife. "It must be very slow for her, mustn't it? I always hate looking on--don't you? I always like to have a hand in everything, whatever it may be; it would really be a charity to go and speak to her, only I'm afraid she would take it as an insult if I went up and introduced myself." "I assure you she is quite happy watching us," replies Constance, sweetly; being, for the most part, not fond of going shares with a sister fair one in any of the proper men and tall that are wont to gather about her. But he is persevering. "Don't you think that a little improving conversation with me would tend to make her happier still?" he asks, banteringly, yet in earnest. "I tried to get Gerard to introduce me, but I could not make out exactly what was up; he seemed to take it as a personal insult. You won't mind doing me that good turn, I'm sure?" "I shall be most happy, of course," she answers, hiding her displeasure under the calm smile which covers all her emotions, or approximations to emotion. And with apparent readiness she leads the way to the spot where, couched in her rushy lair, the subject of their talk sits unconscious, with her eyes riveted on the darting forms beneath her. "Miss Craven, Mr. Linley wishes to be introduced to you." "To _me!_" she says, starting; her eyes opening wide, and cheeks flushing with surprise. Then two bows are executed, and the thing is done. Esther is not longer upon the all-alone stone; she has other occupation for her ears than to listen to the screeching of the Canada geese; she, too, like the other butterflies, has got a tight-trousered, short-coated patrician in tow. "Linley has succeeded, do you see?" says the man to whom Esther's legs have had the happiness to appear "very good." "Mostly does; it is a little way he has!" "Who did they say she was?" "Somebody's companion; old Blessington's, I think." "Cunning old beggar! He knows what he is about, though he does pretend to be stone-blind." "Old Blessington's companion, eh? I'm sure I wish she were mine." "A sort of 'Abishag the Shunammite,' I suppose?" These are some of the comments that the unknown beauty draws forth. Five minutes later, Miss Craven's scruples--such as never having skated before, having no skates, &c.--being overruled by her new acquaintance, she is sitting on the bank; and he, kneeling before her, is fastening some one else's unused skates on her little feet. A great desire for pleasure has come over her--a great longing for warmth and colour in her grey life, that looks all the greyer now in the contrast to the brilliant reds and purples of these strange lives with which it is brought into sudden contact. A great delight in the wintry brightness fills her--in the shifting, varying hues--in the bubbling laughter; a great impulse to laugh too, the spirit of youth rising up in arms against the tyranny of grief. The low sun shoots down dazzling crimson rays on the mere's dirty white face. The swans and Solan geese are exiled to a little corner, where the ice has been broken for them, and where they have to keep swimming round and round to prevent the invasion of their little territory by the grasping frost. Girls that cannot skate being pushed about in chairs; "Whirr! whirr!" they rush along the smooth surface at a headlong pace. Men, with their arms stretched out like the sails of a windmill, advancing cautiously--first one foot, then the other--just managing to keep on their feet, and thinking themselves extremely clever for so managing. Other men and women flying hand-in-hand, from one end of the pool to the other, in long, smooth slides--as safe and secure as if running upon their own feet on the grass. Others, cutting eights, and all manner of figures, whirling round upon one leg, and making themselves altogether remarkable. One poor gentleman with his skates in the air, and head starring the ice; brother men laughing and jeering; pretty girls pitying--light laughter mixed with their condolences also. Eight people dancing a quadrille, _chaîne des dames:_ in and out, in and out--right, left--go the moving figures, the cerise petticoats, the glancing feet. It is all so pretty and gay. When one has spent the best part of three months in weeping, when one has the quick blood of seventeen in one's veins, one longs to get up and run, and dance, and jump about too. "There's no wind to-day," says Linley, turning his face to the north-east, whence a bitter breath comes most faintly; "when there is, it is the best fun in the world to get a very light cane chair and a big umbrella--to sit on the one and hold the other up; you can have no conception of the terrific rate that one gets along at." "I should think it sometimes happened that the cane chair and the big umbrella went on by themselves and left you behind?" says Esther archly. "Frequently, but that makes it all the more exciting." "Does it?" "Keep hold of the chair, push it gently before you, and try to balance yourself as well as you can," continues he, giving grave instructions to his new pupil. "How _can_ one balance oneself on things no bigger than knife-blades?" she asks, grasping desperately the chair-back. "Rome was not built in a day," he answers, with a cheery laugh; "try!" She obeys, and moves forward two or three timid inches; then stops again. "I have that poor gentleman's fate before my mind's eye," she says, nervously. "I feel as if, by some natural attraction, one's feet must go up sky-wards, and one's head make acquaintance with the ice." "No necessity at all," replies the young man, encouragingly. "That fellow is a duffer at everything; he is the very worst rider I ever set eyes on--holds his whip like a fishing-rod." "Does he?" "Look at that girl, now, with the purple feather! She skims along like a bird; she is as much at her ease as if she were in her arm-chair at home. By Jove! no, she ain't though!" For, as he speaks, "Thud!" comes the girl with the purple feather down in a sitting posture on the ice: men crowd round, inquire into casualties, pick her up again: off she goes! "You must be more careful next time in your selection of examples," Esther says, smiling mischievously; "_that_ one was not encouraging, you must allow." Constitutionally timid, she stands hesitating, in half-shyness, half-fear, and whole dread of being ridiculous; laughing, reddening, dimpling in the happy sunlight--as pretty a picture as ever little terrier-faced member of the Household has seen. "Perhaps you'd get on better if you tried walking between two people," he says, suggestively; "it is easier than with a chair. That is the way my sister began--I on one side, don't you know, and another fellow on the other. Here, Gerard, come and make yourself useful; give Miss Craven your arm!" Gerard looks--has been looking all the while; sees the face, that had met him so pale and dejected three hours ago, transformed by the keen January air, and the excitement of the moment, into more than its old loveliness; sees the soft splendour of languishing almond eyes, the guileless baby-smile. It is the transient happiness of a moment that has wrought the change, and he, in his rough anger, attributes it to the insatiate rabid desire for admiration. "She would flirt in her coffin," he says to himself, bitterly; and so answers, coldly, "I cannot--I have taken my skates off!" "All right," says Mr. Linley, gaily, and then, in an aside to Esther, "On duty, evidently!" "Evidently!" She assents with a faint smile, but her lips quiver with a dumb pain. "He need not have slighted me so openly," she thinks, in cruel mortification. "Perhaps if you gave me your hand I might manage to steady myself gradually," she says naïvely. Mr. Linley has no objection whatever to having his hand convulsively clutched by a very pretty woman, even though it is so clutched, not in affection to himself, but in the spasmodic effort to maintain the perpendicular--in the desperate endeavour to hinder her feet from outrunning body and head. And so she totters along--amused, flattered, frightened; and far too much absorbed in considerations of her own safety, to be at all aware of the condescending notice that several of the more worthy gender are good enough to bestow upon her, though the conceit inborn in the male mind would have made them completely sceptical of that fact, had they been told it. Meanwhile Miss Blessington, a little out of breath with her exertions, is resting on a chair, in bright blue velvet and a more delicate pink-and-white porcelain face than any of the other shepherdesses. Over her Gerard is leaning--frowning, sad, and heavy-hearted. Over and over again he has tried to turn his eyes to other groups, but again and again, contrary to his will, they return and fix themselves upon that slender staggering figure in black. Once he sees her on the point of falling--saved only by being caught with quick adroitness in her companion's arms. He draws his breath involuntarily hard. How dare any man but he touch her--lay a finger upon her fair person? One of the old simple instincts, stronger--oh, how far stronger!--than any of the restrictions with which our civilisation has sought to bind them--a great lust of raging jealousy--is upon him. "I _hate_ her!" he says to himself, fiercely; "she is a vile unprincipled coquette. Thank God, I found her out in time! Thank God, I washed my hands of her before it was too late! And yet--and yet--if I could but pick a quarrel with that fellow!" What right has Gerard to object if every man upon the ground catch her in big arms, and hold her there under his very eyes? He has washed his hands of her, thank God! All his rights of proprietorship in womankind centre in the calm blue statue, smiling with even placidness on himself, on his poodle, on all the world--his Constance, whom no one is thinking of taking from him; his own--oh, blissful thought!--in life, in death, and in eternity! In the meantime the remarks upon Esther vary from the wildly laudatory to the discriminatingly censuring. "She is extwemely dark," says the _dwagoon_, as he would have called himself; "a thowough bwunette; must have a touch of the tar-bwush, I fancy!" The stable-clock strikes four. Esther starts, as much as scullion Cinderella started at the chiming midnight. "I must go" she says, hastily; "I shall be wanted." "Wanted?" he repeats, inquiringly. "And are not you wanted here? You cannot be in two places at once, like a bird." "Mrs. Blessington will want me--I am her companion," she answers, colouring slightly. "I daresay you did not know it." ("He would not have been so civil to me if he had, I daresay," is her mental reflection.) "Yes, I did." "Who told you?--or have all 'companions' such a family likeness that you detected me at a glance?" "Miss Blessington told me; and for the first time in my life I wished myself an old woman," he replies, sentimentally. She laughs, a little embarrassed. She knows as well as he does that he does _not_ wish to be an old woman, even for the pleasure of having her to carry his air-cushion and spectacle-case. But civil speeches are always more or less untrue, and none the less pleasant for that. "If the frost holds," says the young man, suggestively--taking the small black hand which she has timidly proffered, not being by any means sure that it is etiquette for a "companion" to shake hands with lords' eldest sons--"If the frost holds, will you be inclined for another lesson or two? There is nothing like making hay when the sun shines--say _to-morrow?_" Her face brightens for a moment; it is so pleasant to talk gaily, and be admired, and made much of, and reminded that there are other things besides death and poverty and servitude; then her countenance falls. "To-day has been very pleasant," she says, naïvely, "but I cannot answer for to-morrow." "Are you so changeable," he asks, with a laudable though unsuccessful endeavour to fashion his jolly little dog-face into an expression of reproachful sentiment, "as not to know to-day what you will like or not like to-morrow?" "I know what _I_ shall like," she answers, gently, "but I don't know what other people will. Would not you think it very odd if your valet were to make engagements without consulting you? _I_ am Mrs. Blessington's valet." She evidently thinks this argument so conclusive, and that it so decidedly closes the question, that he has no choice but to loose her hand; and she, having no other farewells to make, turns and passes homewards through the crisply rustling sedges. "_Very_ clean about the fetlock!" ejaculates the laconic youth, unable to raise his mind from her legs; following them with his eyes, as she climbs the grassy slope. "Yes, but what howible boots! Whoever could have had the atwocity to fwame such beetle-cwushers?" CHAPTER XXXVI. The frost goes, but so does not St. John. He hunts all day, and all the long evenings lounges sedulously on the sofa beside Constance, trying to feel affectionate: trying to make her talk--trying, metaphorically, to pull the string at his fine wax-doll's side, to make her say "Pap-pa" and "Mam-ma" prettily. "Since I am to spend my life with this woman," he says to himself, heavily, "I must try and make the best of her." And, alas! alas! the best is not very good. He is thirty now, and--the Gerards are a long-lived, tough race--he may live till ninety. He asks himself, now and then, in a sort of startled terror, is he to see opposite him at breakfast, every day for the next sixty years, this carven face, changeless as the stone saints on the walls of Felton Church? Of all the one-half of creation, is this unsuggestive, unresponsive, negative woman to be his sole portion? "It is her misfortune that she is not a woman of science," as Mr. Shandy mildly remarked of his wife, "but she _might_ ask a question." Strive as he may against the conviction, the yoke that he has taken upon himself in careless apathy has already begun to gall his withers. And yet it was not (as you may imagine) _pique_ that first made Gerard Miss Blessington's lover. It was partly that numb indifference as to anything that might happen to him, that always follows a great blow, partly sheer weariness of his father's importunities upon the subject of his marriage. He is the last scion of a family that has come down in direct male line from a Norman robber: if it be tersely predicated of him on his tombstone that he died S. P., the Hall, and the lake, and the wide fat lands will go to some distant needy cousins, with whom Sir Thomas is at dagger's drawing, and for whom he cherishes a hatred livelier even than that which poachers, Irish beggars, and vulpecides inspire in his gentle breast. The fact of his responsibilities has been chimed into St. John's ears till he is rather weary of it: he has been hearing it for the last five-and-twenty years--ever since indeed, that solemn day when, petticoats being cast aside, he was invested with the virile dignity of round jacket and breeches. "Why don't we cut off the entail?" he asks impatiently, one day, shortly after Esther's visit--a visit which has naturally given him a greater distaste for the subject than he had ever before experienced. "You and I together can do it, cannot we, Sir Thomas, and leave the property to the Foundling, or Hanwell, or to some hospital or penitentiary, where it would do a deal more good, I don't doubt, than it ever has in our hands?" But he does not mean it; his pride in the old house and the old name is as great, though not as offensively shown, as his father's. "It's all your cursed selfishness," says his parent, strutting and fuming about, one morning, over the crimson and ash-coloured squares of the library carpet; puffing out his feathers, as it were, and beginning to gobble-obble. "You prefer your lazy, lounging club life, your French chef, and d----d sybarite habits, to everything else under heaven; you don't reflect that, when a man has been given such advantages as yours, he owes corresponding duties to his country and his estate, and--and--and his _father_----" concludes Sir Thomas, rather at a loss for a peroration. St. John lifts his eyebrows almost imperceptibly at the last clause. "If you like to look out for a wife for me," he says, flinging himself indolently into an arm-chair, and speaking half-seriously, half-derisively, "and will engage to undertake all the bore of the preliminaries--love-making, dancing attendance, etc.--I have no objection to marrying, since the duty of continuing this illustrious race has been perverse enough to devolve on me, who, God knows, am not ambitious of perpetuating myself." "Love-making!--pooh!" repeats Sir Thomas, contemptuously; "we need have none of that rubbish; respect and esteem are a deal the best basis to go upon; that's what your mother and I began life with----" "And have continued undiminished up to the present day," says St. John, with a slight sneer. "Well" (yawning), "if you can find, amongst the wide range of your acquaintance, any young lady who is willing to respect and esteem me--which is not likely--or to respect and esteem Felton--which is more probable, and, after all, comes to much the same in the end--she may have the felicity of being your daughter-in-law, for all I shall do to hinder it: anything for a quiet life." Sir Thomas turns his bright little fierce eyes sharply upon his offspring, prepared, at a moment's notice, to precipitate himself into one of his blustering, sputtering, God damning rages if he detect the slightest sign of mirth or derision on the young man's face. But none such is to be found; his downcast eyes are fixed with lazy interest upon his own substantial legs, stretched in black-and-crimson-ribbed stockings, straight before him. The ire of his parent's gaze is mitigated. "If you are in earnest," he says, surlily, "and not making a jest of this, as you mostly do of every serious subject, why--why--there's no use in going far afield for what one has ready to one's hand." "Where?" asks St. John, thoroughly mystified by the Delphic obscurity of his papa's remark, looking vaguely round the room, out on the terrace, at the laughing, tumbling fountain, at the garden roller. "Where?" repeats Sir Thomas, rather irritated at his son's obtuseness. "Why, here! not five yards off! in this very house!" Then, seeing him still look puzzled: "God bless my soul, sir! where are your wits to-day? How can you do better than Conny? That bit of land of hers down at Four Oaks dovetails into ours as neatly as possible; it seems as if it were intended by Providence," ends Sir Thomas, piously. St. John gives a long, low whistle. "Conny!" he repeats, in unfeigned surprise. "I should as soon have thought of marrying my mother. Why, we have been like brother and sister all our lives." "Fiddlesticks!" says Sir Thomas, gruffly. "She is no more your sister than I am. When I was young, if people were born brothers and sisters they called themselves so, and if they were not they did not. I hate your adopted brother and sister and father and motherhoods." "Conny!" ejaculates St. John, again, reflectively. The idea is thoroughly new, certainly, but it does not altogether displease him. He is thinking of her approvingly, as the one woman whom, above all others, it would be impossible for him to love. After all, it is not a wife for him that is required; God knows, he has no desire for such an appendage; it is a mother for the heir to Felton that is wanted; and for that purpose she will do as well as another--better than most, indeed, being statelier, fairer, of better growth. If she can transmit to her progeny her own straight features, instead of Sir Thomas's bottle nose, or St. John's long nondescript one, so much the better for them. "Well?" says Sir Thomas, impatiently, strutting up and down, with his hands under his green-coat tails. "If she have no objection, neither have I; 'one woman is as good as another, if not better,' as the Irishman said," answers the young man, indifferently. "Well, Sir Thomas," rising and looking excessively bored, "I suppose I may go now, mayn't I? I promised Bellew to go down to the kennels with him, and as it is past twelve o'clock, I'm afraid my bliss cannot well be consummated to-day." He wants an heir, and she wants diamonds, and so the bargain is struck. "She is good to look at, and she does not pretend to care two straws about me--both causes for special thankfulness," he says to himself, with a sort of sardonic philosophy, after his decisive interview with his betrothed. "'On this day two years I married: Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.' Will Byron's summary of wedded felicity be mine also? Probably. I suppose one may think oneself tolerably lucky nowadays if one steer clear of Sir James Wilde, and if one's children do not bear a very striking resemblance to one's neighbour." "And I know he's Mary's cousin; For my firstborn son and heir Much resembles that young guardsman, With the selfsame curly hair." Meanwhile Esther's little holiday is succeeded by no others; it remains one green oasis, with well and palm-trees, among long stretches of shifting, blinding, desert sand. Mr. Linley, indeed, has been to call, and has been rewarded for his attention by a three-quarters-of-an-hour _tête-à-tête_ with Mrs. Blessington. Esther is aware of his presence; is visited, indeed, by a small and contemptible desire to go down and chat with the young fellow; feels a weak craving for the touch of a friendly hand, for the greeting of admiring eyes and courteous words. But, being dimly conscious that the small acquaintance she has already had with him has made Gerard conceive an even worse opinion of her than he had before nourished, she restrains herself, in her great desire to prove to him that she is not the insatiable greedy coquette he falsely thinks her; and stays upstairs in the cold, in her great bare barrack, curled up on the broad paintless window-seat, and vainly trying to read "Pamela"--the hairbreadth escapes from RUIN (in big letters), in the shape of a handsome and generous master, of that most austerely virtuous and priggish of waiting-maids being one of the newest works of fiction in the Blessington library. And St. John hears of Linley's visit, and does not hear of Esther's little self-abnegation; and, too proud to ask any questions about the matter, pictures to himself soft _oeillades_, challenging smiles, hand-pressures, under the purblind eyes of the old lady, and, so picturing, eats his heart out with a dumb gnawing jealousy. One evening, in one of her late lonely saunters (Miss Blessington never accompanies her on her walks), Esther has strayed outside the park paling into the road, lured by the splendour of a great holly-bush, all afire with thousand clustered berries, amid the dark glister of varnished leaves. Now, although having well understood (as "Johnny and his sister Jane, While walking down a shady lane," unfortunately for themselves, did not) that "Fruit in lanes is seldom good," Esther has coveted those berries. Fond of bright colours as a child or a savage, she has been wrestling obstinately with the stout tough stems, and has come off ultimately victor, with only one very considerable scratch, and several lesser ones on each bare hand. This spoil, robbed from niggard winter, will make the old rat palace at home so bravely, warmly gay. As she strolls slowly along, considering her treasures, the sound of a trotting horse on the road behind her reaches her ears. She turns, and sees a glimmer of scarlet flashing through the misty light. Is it St. John coming back from hunting? If St. John have a figure light and spare as a jockey's, have a large red moustache, and a small questioning _retroussé_ face, this is he; if he have not, this is not he. "How de-do, Miss Craven?" says Linley, throwing himself off his horse, and coming towards her with ready right hand heartily outstretched. "Could not imagine who you were. I thought, perhaps, you were the spirit of a departed Blessington, and as I am rather nervous, and frightened out of my wits at ghosts, I had half a mind to turn and flee." "Only curiosity got the better of fear," she says, smiling up at him, or rather down on him, through the steaming January evening; "you thought I might prove human, after all?" "Why did not you come and see me the other day when I came to call upon you?" he asks, walking along beside her; "I believe you were at home all the time." In his heart he does not in the least believe it. She does not answer; but, without thinking of what she is doing, picks off the berries, the procuring of which had cost her so many wounds, and strews them along the road. "Were you _really_ at home?" he repeats, a misgiving as to such having been the case crossing his mind, and giving his vanity a slight prick. "Yes, I was." "And knew I was there all the time?" "Yes." "A prey to Mrs. Blessington----?" "Yes." "And never came to my rescue?" "Did you expect the butler and housekeeper to come and entertain you?" she asks, a little bitterly. "Have you forgotten what I told you the other day--that I am Mrs. Blessington's _valet?_ I have as little concern with her visitors as the kitchen-maids have." "But I was not _her_ visitor," objects the young fellow, stoutly--"at least" (laughing) "I _was_, but Heaven knows I did not mean to be! However, 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' and I obtained a great deal of information gratis upon a subject on which I really never had reflected as seriously as, it appears, I ought to have done----" "Draughts and sandbags! I know what you are going to say," interrupts Esther, breaking into a childish lighthearted laugh. "We do hear a great deal about them; but I don't mind now; I'm used to it. I fall into a sort of waking trance when the subject is first broached, and say 'Yes' and 'No,' and 'H'm' and 'Oh,' at stated intervals; it does just as well as listening all through." Linley laughs too. He is always glad of an excuse for laughing. Life has been to him as yet only laughable or smileable. "Not a bad plan," ha says, commendingly; "but, really now, I flattered myself I struck out one or two very original thoughts on the subject of sash-windows; I said several rather brilliant things, only she did not seem to see them. I hoped she would have found my conversation so improving that she would have asked me to come again; but she did not do anything of the kind." "They never ask anybody to Blessington," says Esther, feeling the string of her tongue loosed, and experiencing, despite herself, great enjoyment in having some one to chatter to, at whom it is not necessary to bawl, and who does not answer her monosyllabically with _fade_ chilly smiles. "They are too old to care for society; like Barzillai the Gileadite, they cannot hear any more 'the voice of singing men and singing women.' They have the clergyman and his wife to dine on Christmas Day, and there their gaiety for the year begins and ends." "And yours too?" "And mine too. But I don't wish for gaiety," she answers, gravely, with an involuntary glance at her crape, which has grown very brown, and rusty, and shabby genteel. "It must be an awful fate being shut up with those two old mummies," says Linley, compassionately, his pity for Miss Craven made vivid by his personal recollections of Mrs. Blessington's conversational power. "I had rather live in a lighthouse, or sweep a crossing, by long odds." "So would I," she answers, drily, "if any one would set on foot a subscription to buy me a broom." "You have Miss Blessington now as a companion, at all events," rejoins he, glad to fix on any bright spot in his poor new acquaintance's mud-coloured life. "Yes; she is pleasant to look at." "And to talk to." "She never talks." "And Gerard? He is not particularly pleasant to look at, certainly----" "Not particularly," she assents; feeling a hot glow steal all over her, as at an insult to herself. "But when he is not in one of his sulks, as he was the other day--do you remember?--he is not a bad fellow, as fellows go." "Isn't he?" He looks at her with surprise. "Why, surely, living in the same house with him, you ought to know him, at least as well as I do?" "I never speak to him, and he never speaks to me," she answers, shortly. Linley bursts out laughing. "Good heavens! what a horrible picture you draw! You remind one of Mr. Watts's pretty little hymn-- "'Where'er I take my walks abroad How many poor I see! And as I never speaks to them They never speak to me.'" Esther laughs; but anyone listening might have heard a melancholy ring in her merriment. "Does _nobody_ speak to _anybody_ then at Blessington?" asks the young man, aghast at the state of things as revealed by his companion's answers. "Mr. Blessington roars at Mrs. Blessington, and Mrs. Blessington roars at Mr. Blessington, and I roar at them both." "And the other two--do not they speak?" "We are, none of us, much addicted to conversation," she answers, grimly; "but, _en revanche_, what we do say we say very loud." "Are you _all_ deaf, then?" "No; but when one lives with deaf people, one gets into the habit of thinking that the whole world is hard of hearing; one bawls at everyone." "What an exhausting process!" he says, with a shrug; "takes a great deal out of you, doesn't it?" "A good deal; lately, I have generally ended the day without any voice at all. I don't mind making short remarks at the top of my voice, but shouting out six columns of the _Times_, as is daily my pleasing task, is rather fatiguing." "How inhuman of them to allow you!" he cries, indignantly, looking at the slender, fragile figure, at the childish face--so appealing, so touching in its utter paleness, now that he sees it without the temporary rose-flush of excitement. "Not at all," she answers, simply; "they pay me for it." "It would require very high pay to indemnify any one for the sacrifice of the best years of their lives to those two old fossils; I thought I was entitled to something considerable for standing the old woman for three-quarters of an hour the other day without uttering a groan," answers the young man, more seriously than he generally takes the trouble of saying anything. "My pay is fifty pounds a year," she answers, frankly, "if you call that high." Fifty pounds! It would not find him in cigars. He has thrown away five times that sum, before now, at lansquenet at one sitting. Involuntarily his thoughts glance back over his own life--the luxurious sybarite life in which, hitherto, the heaviest misfortunes have been a too-prolonged frost, a disease among the grouse, the coming in second at a steeplechase, or the pressure of a heavy helmet on his forehead when on duty on a hot summer afternoon. Involuntarily, he compares this life of his with the existence of the slight frail child beside him: but the comparison is disagreeable, and so he stifles it, as he always stifles, on principle, every painful thought, as a sin against his religion of ease. "Fifty pounds!--what a pittance!" he ejaculates. "Do you think so?" she answers, surprised. "I think it is a good deal. Considering that they find me in food and lodging, and that I do for them only what any charity-school boy could do nearly as well, it is surely enough." Her companion differs widely in opinion from her, but "When ignorance is bliss 'Tis folly to be wise;" and reflecting that it is fortunate that she is satisfied, on whatever insufficient grounds her satisfaction rests, he drops the subject, and continues his catechism on a different head. "Have you no amusement of any kind_--none?_" "Oh dear, yes! We drive into Shelford every day in a close carriage, with all the windows up." "Terrific! And what do you do when you get there?" "We come back again." "And have you no visitors? Does no one ever come to call?" "Yes; you came the other day." "And am I a solitary instance of would-be sociability?" "Not quite. Mr. Blessington gets into a panic about himself, sometimes, and thinks that he is drawing near his latter end; and he bids us all good-bye; and _he_ cries, and _we_ cry, and then Mr. Brand, the doctor, comes and reassures us." "I had no idea that there was anything the matter with the old gentleman." "No more there is. He has no more idea of dying _really_ than you have; less, probably. You may break your neck out hunting, and he cannot well break his out of his armchair. When a person has got into such a confirmed habit of living as he has," she concludes, drily, "they find it extremely difficult to break themselves of it." He smiles. "After all," she continues, thoughtfully, "since it is wear-and-tear of mind, brain and heart-work, that drives people to the churchyard, I don't see any reason why mere sleeping and eating machines should not go on for ever." It would be impossible to imagine a more innocent dialogue than the foregoing, would not it? But the interlocutors have involuntarily fallen into a very gentle saunter, as two people that, finding each other's society agreeable, are in no haste to part. With his horse's bridle carelessly thrown over his arm, a small muddy scarlet gentleman strolls along with his face turned with interest towards his companion, who is chattering away to him freely and readily--not as having any particular partiality for him, but as being something young, friendly, compassionate. This is the picture--invested by twilight with an air of mystery that it would not have worn in daylight--that salutes the eyes of a second and larger scarlet gentleman, splashing home through the puddles on a tired horse. As he passes them, Gerard (for it is he) pulls up his horse into a walk, for he would not have the incivility to cover any woman with dirt, even though the woman in question be a vile greedy coquette, to whose insatiable vanity all men are meat. Then, raising his hat stiffly, he rides on without speaking. As he trots homeward through the dusk, the thought flashes into his writhing heart: "It was an assignation! She arranged it with him on the day he came to call. Damnable flirt! Is not she satisfied with _two_ ruined lives? Is she fool enough to think that Linley will marry her? A nice time of night for a respectable young woman to be out walking with a man she has only seen twice in her life! And I heard her tell Mrs. Blessington the other day that she never went outside the park-gates! Liar! What man was ever deep enough to be up to a woman's tricks? She'll go to the dogs, as sure as fate, if she is left to herself! Pshaw! I daresay she knows the way there already. She is _so_ young; shall I warn her? Shall I speak to her? Not I. Thank God, it is no business of mine!" "Gerard!" says Linley, as, having passed them, he strikes into a brisk trot--looking as if he were going to his own funeral, and just about to join the _cortège_. "Certainly being in love don't improve him; he is not half the fellow he was last season." But Esther, in the moment of his passing them, had caught a glimpse of the eager white anger of his face, and she hardly hears. "I'm afraid Mr. Gerard thought it odd my being out so late," she says, trembling with recollected fear of those altered, wrathful eyes. "Well, and if he did?" cries Linley, impatiently. "It _is_ very late," she says, looking round into the dusk; "it must be, by the light. I never noticed how dark it has grown since you overtook me." "It is no darker than it was before Gerard passed us," he answers, rather nettled. "No, but--" "Why, how scared you look!" he interrupts her. "You don't mean to say you are _afraid_ of him?" (incredulously.) "If I were you, I don't think I should pay much deference to the opinion of a person who, as you say, never has the civility even to speak to you." She is silent. "It is the authority of his eye that awes you, I suppose?" says the young man, vexed and sneering:-- "'An eye like Mars', to threaten and command.' "_Threaten!_ Yes--I can testify to that!" Hearing his words, Esther recovers her self-possession, and speaks with some dignity: "You are quite wrong. Mr. Gerard's opinion has no influence whatever on my sayings or doings; it would be very ridiculous if it had. It was merely that his look of surprise reminded me of what I ought to have recollected without reminding, that I _should_ have been home an hour ago." "Wanted again, I suppose?" says the young man, with the air of an aggrieved person. "I wish you were not in quite such request; you are always being wanted." "There is a stile close here," says Esther, evidently in a hurry to be off; "if I cross it, and make a short-cut across the park, I shall be home twenty minutes sooner than if I went by the road. Good-bye." "Good-bye," he says, reluctantly. "I'm not a bloodthirsty fellow generally, but I wish that Gerard had broken his neck over that bullfinch that he came to grief over to-day, before he had come poking his ugly nose here, where nobody wanted him; at least I did not, and, to judge by your face, neither did you. Well! when are we to meet again, I wonder?" "Never!--some time or other--soon!" answers Esther, hastily and contradictorily, running up the gamut of adverbs in search of the one most likely to obtain her release. Having gained that object, she jumps over the stile, and disappears into a sea of mist. Meanwhile St. John, having arrived at Blessington, and given up his horse to a groom, enters the house; but the confinement of roof and walls is insupportable to him. So he goes out again, and, walking up the avenue, stations himself at the gate. There, resting his arms on the topmost bar, he stands, straining his eyes down the road by which he expects to see Esther and her companion make their appearance. "They will defer their parting to the last moment--that is of course," he says to himself, in his lonely pain. "Well," taking out his watch and minuting them, in order to drink the cup of his jealous misery to the dregs, "it is not more than a mile and a half from here to the place where I passed them; let us see how long a time they will manage to be in doing the distance." He has not long to wait. Before five minutes are over he hears the sound of a horse's feet. "Linley must not see him watching them," he thinks, with a sort of shame at himself, and so steps back into the shade of a great tree. Linley rides by _alone_. His face is turned towards the house, in whose great black façade the lighted windows make oblong-shaped red glories; his eyes are trying to fix upon Esther's casement. Of course he hits upon the wrong one, and directs his sentimental gaze towards the apartment where, with wig off and teeth out, Mrs. Blessington, aided by her maid, is slowly moving through the stages of her dinner toilette. "She must have taken the short-cut across the park," thinks Gerard, with a sense of unwilling relief. "Afraid of my telling tales of her escapade, I suppose." He retraces his steps down the avenue, and, following a back road that skirts the kitchen-garden, reaches another gate that leads into the park, and there stands and waits again. The short-cut has proved rather a long one. Part of the park has been fenced off, to keep the deer and the Scotch cattle separate; a gate which she had reckoned upon finding open, she discovers to be padlocked, and has to make a long circuit round to another gate. As she toils weary-footed through the wet grass, vague alarms assail him that watches for her. Can any evil have come to her in the darkness? Most improbably in that still, safe park. After a while, and when his reasonless fears are beginning to gather more strongly about his heart, he hears the sound as of some one running pantingly. Esther is not so good at running as she was in the old Glan-yr-Afon days. She has been flying along in hot haste, with a mixed fear of Scotch bulls and goblins in pursuit. As she approaches the gate, Gerard opens it for her. Seeing it swing open without any apparent cause, she gives a great nervous start; then, discovering the motive cause of the phenomenon, drops into a walk. "It is rather late, Mr. Gerard, I'm afraid, isn't it so?" she asks, with some hesitation at this disobedience to his command of silence. And yet, surely, if he had meant not to speak to her, he would not have come thither. Two speech-gifted human beings could hardly be expected to meet with less civility than two pigs, who would at least exchange a grunt. He looks at his watch again. "It is ten minutes to six," he replies with punctilious politeness. "Is it _really?_ I had no idea how the time went," she says, apologetically, "until your look of--of--_surprise_ reminded me." The line of defence she has hit upon is unlucky. "Really!" he answers, stiffly. "I had not noticed how the light had gone, nor anything about the matter," she continues, innocently, floundering at every word into deeper disgrace. "I daresay not," he replies, freezingly. She had addressed him, penitent and humble, willing to take a scolding in all submissiveness, but the chill brevity of his answers turns her meekness to gall. "When one is in pleasant company," she remarks, with a rather hysterical laugh, "one forgets the flight of time." "Undoubtedly," replies Gerard, endeavouring to conceal his anger under an appearance of calmness, and unable to manage more than one word at a time. "If one has not taken a vow of perpetual silence, it is a great relief to have a little conversation with a person who is neither _deaf_ nor _dumb_," she says, emboldened by exasperation. "An immense relief, no doubt," he answers, in deep displeasure. "And yet, if you will allow me," he continues, unable to resist the temptation to lecture her--"who am so much older than you, and can have no interest in the matter but your own advantage--to give an opinion, I should recommend your choosing a fitter time of day for your meetings, even with so desirable and congenial a companion as Mr. Linley." "Beggars must not be choosers," she answers, sulkily. "You seem to forget how very small a portion of the day I have at my own disposal." He draws himself up to his full height, and a stern expression makes his lip thin. "I was right," he says internally; "it was no accident!" Then aloud: "I apologise, Miss Craven, for interfering in your affairs, in which, God knows, I have small concern. I only thought that, as you are so young, you might not be aware that _nocturnal_ walks with a man of Linley's character are not advantageous to any woman's reputation." "I know nothing about his character," retorts she, defiantly; "I daresay it is as good as other people's. All I know is, that he is very kind and civil to me, which is what nobody else is nowadays." Then, to avoid the disgrace of seeming to court his compassion by tears, she darts from his side, and rushes to that harbour of refuge--her great, bare sleeping-chamber. CHAPTER XXXVII. Time goes by. Since Joshua, God-bidden, commanded sun and moon to stand still, who has been able to stop it? Gerard still remains at Blessington--remains, despite the six-o'clock dinners; despite the inarticulate and inharmonious mumblings with which old Blessington takes away the appetites of such as feast with him; despite the utter failure of his endeavours to draw from the mind of his betrothed any ideas but such as _Le Follet_ and _Le Journal des Demoiselles_ had just put into it. Latterly he has abandoned the attempt, has taken to reading the _Times_, _Field_, anything in the evening, instead; has even, in his despair--modern works of fiction being, as I have before observed, unknown at Blessington--waded through two chapters and a half of "Pamela," which Esther had inadvertently left on the table. Sometimes, to his own surprise, he catches himself wishing that his wedding-day were over. "When we are married, we need never speak to one another," he reflects. "Thank God, we shall not be so poor as to be obliged to keep together from economy; a dinner of herbs and hatred, or, worse still, indifference therewith, _would_ be hard to digest; she may go her way, and I mine. I will get up a great stock of beads, and looking-glasses, and red calico, and make an expedition to Central Africa; learn some euphonious African tongue, all made up of Ms and Ns; and carefully abstain from engaging in arguments upon the immortality of the soul with intelligent natives." Now and again conscience's voice thunders at him in the recesses of his soul: "You are paltering with temptation. Arise!--flee!--begone!" But he, strong in the innocence of his acts and words, replies doughtily: "Temptation is there none for me here. The occupations of my life are such as they would be at home; I am struggling to know and like better her with whom my life is to be passed. As to that other woman, I see her rarely, speak to her never, look at her as seldom as it is possible to me." And, in the meantime, that other woman droops like an unwatered flower, day by day. When the mainspring of a watch is broken, must it not stop? If hope, the mainspring of life, be broken, must not life stop--not all at once, as the watch does, but by gentle yet sure degrees? A slow fire burns in the child's veins; before this man had come, she had peace--a sad stagnant peace, indeed, but still peace. _Now_ she lives in a state of perpetual concealed excitement. True, they meet but rarely, speak to each other never; but the same roof covers them both. From her outlook in the China Gallery, she can watch his going forth in the morning, his coming back at evening. At breakfast and dinner he sits opposite to her; she can study his face, with stealthy care, lest she may be observed, while he drives heavily through slow trite talk with her that fills the place in his life that, for a golden day, from one sundown to another, was Esther's. Sometimes they meet upon the stairs; her black dress lightly touches him, as they pass one another dumbly. At night she lies awake, waiting to catch the sound of his footfall in the gallery past her door; has to wait long hours often; for he, unknowing that any one takes note of his vigils, sits in the smoking-room far into the small hours, puffing out of his well-coloured meerschaum great volumes of smoke--wishing, not seldom, I think, that he could puff away Constance, his beloved, into smoke volumes and thin air. Fed by no kindly words, nourished only upon neglect and cold looks, Esther's love for Gerard yet strikes out great roots downwards--shoots forth strong branches upwards. A tree of far statelier growth it stands than in the days when the soft gales and gentle streams of answering love fanned and watered it. Who cares for what they can have? Who cries for the moon? It is the intermediate something--the something that lies just a handbreadth beyond the utmost stretch of our most painfully-strained arms, that we eat out our hearts in longing for. Esther never goes beyond the park palings now, deterred by the fear of being waylaid by Linley. She need not have been alarmed. As long as she came naturally in his way, he was delighted to see her: as we stoop and pick gladly the fruit that drops off the tree at our feet. He had even, on a day when the frost forbade hunting, and when he had got tired of skating, taken the unwonted trouble of riding over to Blessington, to warm himself at the fire of those great black eyes, that have still for him the charm of novelty upon them; but women, many and fair, came too readily to his hand to make him very keen in the chase of any one individual woman. In former generations men used to be the pursuers, women the pursued. In this generation we, who have set right most things, have set right this also. _Now_, the hares pursue the harriers, the foxes the hounds, and the doves swoop upon the falcons. During these latter evenings Mr Blessington has been very alert and wakeful--has insisted on being read to from tea to bed-time--a liberal hour. But, however hoarse and voiceless the young reader may be, Gerard never now comes to the rescue, never interferes, though the frequent teasing cough of the "damnable flirt" goes through his heart like a sword. With steady certainty, through frost and thaw, rain and shine, through all the alternations of an English winter, the young girl's health declines. To all but herself is this fact evident, and she, unaccustomed to illness--never having seen the signs of premature decay in others--thinks it is but a little weariness, a little languor, a nothing. It will pass when the swooned world revives into spring and the buttercups come. Sunday is here again, the initial letter in the week's alphabet: "The Sundays of man's life, Threaded together on Time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King." Ah me! the languid, yawning Sundays of most of us will make but sorry bracelets for any one, methinks. Sunday--the day on which the Shelford shopboys and shopgirls walk about gloriously apparelled, arm-in-arm, man and maid, filling their lungs with country air,--day on which the gentlefolks, such as are men of them, debarred from horse and hound and cue, smoke a cigar or two more than usual over the instructive pages of Messieurs De Kock, Sue, Balzac, etc.; while such as are women, being for the most part piously disposed, hold Goulburn's "Thoughts on Personal Religion," or Hannay's "Last Day of Our Lord's Passion," open on their velvet laps, and kill a reputation between each paragraph. On this especial Sunday Esther has risen, feeling feebler, more nerveless than usual. Something in the influence of the weather--soft, sodden, sunless--weighs upon her with untold oppression. She would fain not go to church, remain at home, and lie on her bed; but this cannot be. Foremost in importance, in indispensability, among her duties are these Sunday ones. If the weather be tolerable, Mr. Blessington is always scrupulously punctual in attending Divine worship. Leaning on his valet's arm, he totters up the church, in his old tail-coat, tightly buttoned over his sunken chest, and, arrived at the Blessington pew, is deposited in a little nook thereof, partitioned (in some quirk of his, while he could yet see) from the rest. In this nook there is room for two people--to wit, for Mr. Blessington, and for the happy person who is to guide his devotions. And to conduct Mr. Blessington's prayers and praises is, I assure you, no sinecure. Almost entirely deaf, almost entirely blind, he is yet resolute to take a part in the services by no means less prominent than the clerk's. It is, therefore, his attendant's duty to shout the responses in his ear, in order to give him some clue to the portion of the ritual which has been arrived at and to check him with elbowings and nudgings, when his aberrations from the right path become so flagrantly noticeable as to distract the attention of the other worshippers. But too often, however, the attempts at repression on the part of the acolyte are so much labour lost. In the region of darkness and silence in which his infirmities have placed him, the old man frequently becomes impatient of the slow progress of the service as notified to him by the roars of his companion. Not seldom he proclaims, in a voice distinctly audible throughout the building, the point at which, according to his reckoning, priest and people should have arrived. "And with thy spirit," cries the squire, with unction in his deep, tremulous bass, while the sleek young rector's gentle "The Lord be with you" does not follow till five minutes later. In the Creed there is but one course to pursue: to start him, if possible, fair--happy, indeed, if he does not insist on turning to the altar somewhere towards the close of the second lesson or beginning of the Jubilate,--to start him fair, I say, and then in despair, give him his head. Fervently, loudly, rapidly, he announces his belief in the articles of the Christian faith, while parson, clerk, and congregation toil after him in vain. Occasionally--especially at such portions of the service as refer to our need of forgiveness, our sinfulness, our mortality,--he breaks out into senile tears; too deaf to hear his own penitent sobs, he has no idea of the loudness with which they reverberate through the church. Strangers, hearing, perk their heads up above their pews, and then fling them down again on their pocket-handkerchiefs convulsed with inextinguishable laughter; but the greater part of the assemblage are used to these spasms of grotesque devotion--it is only "t'oud squoire." Esther always draws a long breath of relief when "Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon us!" has been safely tided over without any unusually noisy burst of lamentation. On the Sunday I speak of "t'oud squoire's" prayers were more unruly than usual. Whether it was that Esther's weakened voice was unable to guide them into the right channel, or to whatever other cause assignable, certain it is that his vagaries were more painfully evident--ludicrously to the congregation, distressingly to his family--than on any former Sunday within the memory of man. Many heads turn towards the Blessington pew; even the rector--meekest among M.A.s--looks now and again with gentle reproach at the old man, who is, with such aggressive loudness, usurping his office of leading the devotions of his flock. A proud woman is Esther Craven when the Liturgy comes to a close. In the sermon there are, thank God, no responses for the congregation to make; it is not even customary to cry, "Hear, hear!" "Hallelujah!" "More power to you!" at intervals. In the sermon, therefore, the old gentleman composes himself to sleep, and there is peace. The Blessington pulpit is to-day occupied by a stranger--a Boanerges, or Son of Thunder, in the shape of a muscular, half-educated, fluent Irishman--a divine who would fain _flog_ his hearers to heaven, show them the way upwards by the light of hell's flambeaux--one of that too numerous class who revel in disgusting descriptions, and similes drawn from our mortality. It is impossible to help listening to him, and difficult to help being sick. Esther listens, trembling, while he descants with minute relish on "the worm that never dies." The worm that never dies! Surely, a terrible picture enough, in its simple bareness, without enlargement thereupon! With imagination rendered more vivid, and reason weakened by sickness, the unhappy girl pictures that worm gnawing at her brother's heart--gnawing, crawling, torturing eternally. She covers her face with her hands; it is too horrible! A sort of sick feeling comes over her--a giddy faintness. If she can but reach the open air! She rises unsteadily, opens the pew-door, and walks as in a mist down the aisle, between the two rows of questioning faces, and so out. As she passes through the church-door she staggers slightly, and catches at the wall for support. Gerard, watching her anxiously, sees her unsteady gait, and the involuntary gesture of reaching out for some stay for her tottering figure. Instantly, without giving thought to the light in which his beloved may regard his proceeding, he, rising, quickly follows the young girl. She has just managed to reach a flat tombstone, and there sits, with her face turned thirstily westwards, whence a small soft wind blows fitfully. "You are ill," he says, bending solicitously over her, and laying aside in that compassionate moment the armour of his coldness. She does not answer for awhile; then, drawing a long breath, and trying to smile: "The church was so close," she says, sighingly; "and that smell of escaped gas always makes me feel faint, and--and" (with a shudder)--"that dreadful man--with his metaphors all taken from the charnelhouse!" "I wish he were there himself, with all my heart," answers Gerard, devoutly; "he might there frame metaphors to his taste at his leisure." "And it is so terrible to think that it is all _true_, isn't it?" she says, fixing her great awestruck eyes upon, his face, as if trying to find comfort and reassurance there; "that the reality exceeds even his revolting word-painting; that we _shall_ be _loathsome_, all of us!--you and I and everybody--young and old, beautiful and ugly! How _could_ God be so cruel as to let us know it beforehand?" "Knowing it beforehand is better than knowing it at the time, which, at least, we are spared," replies St. John, composedly. "But are we?" she cries, eagerly: "that is the question! Latterly I have been beset by a fearful idea that death is but a long catalepsy. In a catalepsy, you know, a person seems utterly without consciousness or volition; breath is suspended, and all the vital functions; and yet he feels and sees and hears more acutely than when in strong health. Why may not death, too, be a catalepsy?" "Absurd!" he says. "My poor child, it is thoughts like these, gone wild, that fill madhouses. According to your theory, at what point of time does your catalepsy end? When we are dissolved into minutest particles of dust does each atom still feel and suffer?" "My theory, as you call it, will not hold water, I know," she answers gravely, "but it does not haunt me any the less. There are times when one cannot reason--one can only _fear_." "You should not give way to these morbid fancies," he says, chidingly; "they are making you ill." "Am I ill, do you think? Do I look ill?" she asks, with startled eagerness. The havoc worked in face and figure by the last few months is too directly under his eyes for him to answer anything but truthfully. "Very ill." "You don't think I'm going to _die?_" she says, lowering her voice, and laying her hand on his arm, while her great feverish eyes burn into his very soul. "People are not any the more likely to die for being thin and weak, are they? Creaky doors hang the longest." "Die!--God forbid!" he replies, trying to speak lightly. "Let us banish death from our talk. I suppose it is this place of tombs that has made him take such a leading part in it. Come, you are not at all fit to go back into church, and I am not anxious to hear the tail-end of that wormy discourse. The smell of brimstone is quite strong enough in my nostrils already. Let us go home!" So they return to the house, and he still shows no inclination to leave her. He draws a chair for her near an open window, and stands with his hand resting on the back. It is almost like the old times--the old times that he thinks of, "As dead men of good days, Ere the wrong side of death was theirs, when God Was friends with them." Something in the recollection of those days makes soft his voice, which is not wont to be soft. "You are not fit for this life," he says, stooping down his face towards her small wan one. "It requires a tough seasoned woman, in middle life. Tell me why you have undertaken it? Why are you not--not married?" She turns away, crimsoning painfully. "Because no one has asked me, I suppose," she answers, trying to speak banteringly. "But you were engaged when--when we parted?" "Yes." "And you are not now?" With ungovernable, unaccountable impatience, he awaits the slow brief answer. "No." "Had he then--h'm! h'm!--_discovered_ anything?" Gerard asks, finding some difficulty in framing the question politely. She fires up quickly. "_Discovered_ anything!" she repeats, indignantly. "Do you think it is impossible for me to be honest even _once_ in my life? I told him myself." "_You_ broke it off, then?" "No, I didn't." "_He_ did?" "Yes." "Poor fellow! he had good cause to be angry," says St. John; the old bitterness surging back upon him, as he reflects on the cowardly duplicity that had made waste two honest lives. "But he was _not_ angry," she cries, eagerly: "he was grieved--oh, _so_ grieved! Shall I ever forgive myself when I think of how he looked when I told him?" (her eyes gazing out abstractedly at the "Rape of the Sabines," as her thoughts fly back to that quarried nook on the bleak autumnal hillside, where she had broken a brave man's heart). "But he was not angry. Oh, no! he never thought of himself! he thought only about me! Ah! _that was_ love!" "He would not marry you, however?" says St. John, exasperated at these laudations, which he imagines levelled as reproaches against himself. "No," she answered quietly, "you are right; he would not marry me, though I begged him. But that was for my sake, too--not his own; he told me that he could not make me happy, for that I did not love him. He was wrong, though. I did love him--I love him now. If I did not love the one friend I have in all this great empty world, what should I be made of?" she concludes, while the tears come into her eyes. "You have a great capacity for loving," says St. John, who, though not usually an ungenerous fellow, is maddened by the expressions of affection, the tears and regretful looks bestowed upon his rival. "I envy, though I despair of emulating you." "Men have but _one_ way of loving," she answers, gently; "women have several. I love him as the one completely unselfish being I ever met. I agree with you, that the way of loving you mean comes but once in a lifetime." At her words, and the fidelity to himself which they so innocently imply, a fierce bright joy upleaps in his heart--a joy that clamours for utterance in violent fond words, in the wild closeness of forbidden embraces; but honour, that strong gaoler that keeps so many under lock and key, keeps him too. "For Love himself took part against himself To warn us off; and Duty, loved of love-- Oh! this world's curse, beloved but hated--came, Like death, betwixt thy dear embrace and mine, And crying, 'Who is this? Behold thy bride!' She push'd me from thee." He only holds out his hand to her. "Esther, let us be friends. I am tired of this silence and estrangement; let there be peace between us!" "I have always wished for it," she answers meekly, laying her little trembling hand in his--"you know I have; but let us be at peace _apart_, and not _together_; that will be better. How long," she asks, impulsively, lifting quivering red lips and dew-soft eyes to his--"how long--how much longer--do you mean to stay here?" "Why do you ask?" he says, in a troubled voice, hurt pride and hot passion struggling together. "Surely in this great wide house there is room for you and me; I am not much in your way, surely?" "You are," she answers, feverishly--"you are in my way; you would be, in the widest house that ever was built. Every day I long more and more to be a great way off from you. I think I could breathe better if I were." He does not answer: leaning still over her in a dumb agonised yearning, that--with the chains of another still dragging about him--may not be outspoken. "That day we met upon the stairs," she continues, eyes and cheeks aflame and lustrous with the consuming fire within her, "you promised me you would avail yourself of the first opportunity to leave this place; a month or more is gone since then. Surely the most exacting mistress could spare you for awhile now? Why have you broken your word, then? Why are you here?" He is silent for a few moments, questioning his own soul--questioning that conscience whose monitions he has hitherto so stoutly resisted. Then he speaks, a flush of shame making red his bronzed cheek: "Because I have been dishonest to myself and to you. This place has had an attraction for me which I see now it would not have had had _she_ only been here. I linger about it as a man lingers about the churchyard where his one hope lies buried." "Don't linger any longer, then," she cries, passionately, taking his hand between both hers; "don't be dishonest any more! Tell _yourself_ the truth, if you tell no one else, and go _at once_, before it is too late; for if you won't, _I_ must!" She is weeping freely as she speaks; her tears drop hot and slow, one after another, upon his hand. He flings himself on his knees beside her, his mastery over himself reeling in the strong rush of long-pent passion. "You tell me to go," he says, in a voice choked and altered with emotion, "and in the very act of telling me you cry. Which am I to believe, your words or your tears?" "My words," she answers, trying to speak collectedly, and by gaining calmness herself to bring it back to him. "I have been dishonourable once--you know it; don't let me have the remorse of thinking that I made an honourable man palter with temptation--made him sully his honour for me. If _I_ am the inducement that keeps you here, _go; for my sake, go!_ I say it a hundred times; promise me you will go--_soon, this week._ Let me hear you swear it; you will not break your oath, I know!" He is silent; hesitating to take that step of irrevocable banishment--banishment from the woman that he cast away in righteous wrath, and in whose frail life his own now seems to be bound up. "Swear!" she says again, earnestly, with a resolute look in her soft face. "I beg it of you as a favour; for if you won't, though my only chance of daily bread lies here, I must go to-night." The determination in her voice recalls him to his senses. "I will not drive you to such extremities," he says, coldly. "Give me only till to-morrow morning--twenty-four hours cannot make much difference to you, and a man going to be hanged likes to have a little respite--give me till to-morrow, and I will swear whatever you wish." "That is right," she answers, trying to smile through her tears. "Some day you will thank me; you will say, 'She was a bad girl, but she did me one good turn!'" The people are flocking out of church; the squire, in a low pony-chaise, driven by a groom as old and toothless as himself, and drawn by a pony (considering the comparative ages of horses and men) also nearly as old, is bowling gently up the drive. "I must go," Esther says, rising hastily; "Mrs. Blessington hates red eyes as she hates a black dress, and for the same reason!" CHAPTER XXXVIII. At Blessington no one goes to church twice. It is the bounden duty of every Christian man, woman, and child to go to church in the morning; it is the duty of only the clergyman, the school-children, and the organist to go to church in the afternoon. The old people sleep side by side in the blaze of the saloon-fire; being, both of them, happily deaf, they are undisturbed by each other's grunts and snores. Since the beginning of St. John's visit, the north drawing-room has been made over to him and his betrothed to be affectionate in, so that they may enjoy, uninterrupted, those fits of affection to which all engaged people are supposed, and sometimes unjustly supposed, to be liable. Whether they have reached the requisite pitch of warmth on the afternoon I speak of is, to say the least, doubtful; but, all the same, in the north drawing-room they are. Constance leans back in an armchair, rather listless. She is fond of work, and it is not right to work on Sunday: her feet repose on a foot-stool before her--her eyes are fixed upon them: she is thinking profoundly whether steel buckles a size smaller than the ones she is at present wearing would not be more becoming to the feet. St. John sits by the table; his left hand supports his head; his right scribbles idly, on a bit of paper, horses taking impossible fences, prize pigs, ballet-girls, little skeleton men squaring up at one another. He, too, is thinking--but not of shoe-buckles. He has got something to say to Miss Blessington--something unpleasant, unpolite; and he cannot, for the life of him, imagine how to begin to say it. Chance favours him. Miss Blessington, happening to look up, catches her lover's eyes fixed, with an expression she had never before seen in them--not on herself, as she, for the first second imagines, but (as a second glance informs her) on some object outside the window. Her gaze follows his, and lights upon "nobody very particular--only poor Miss Craven!" who, with head rather bent, is trudging by towards the garden. "How ill that girl looks!" she says, pettishly. "I really believe those sort of people take a pleasure in looking as sickly and woebegone as possible, in order to put one out of spirits," The opening he has been looking for has come. "Constance," ho says, bending his head, and speaking in a low voice, "what fatuity induced you not to send me word when you found that that girl was here?" "You forbad me ever to mention her name to you," she answers, coldly; "and, to tell you the truth, I thought it was a good thing that you should see her. If you had not met again, you might have carried a sentimental recollection of her throughout life, which you can hardly do now that you have seen with your own eyes how completely she has lost her beauty." St. John lifts his head, and stares at her in blank astonishment. "Lost its beauty!"--that "Face that one would see, And then fall blind, and die, with sight of it, Held fast between the eyelids." "Lost her beauty!" he repeats, in a sort of stupefaction. "Well," she replies, languidly, "why do you repeat my words? You know I never admired her much. I never can admire those black women, but that is a matter of taste, of course. It is not matter of taste, however--it is matter of fact, that whatever good looks she once had are gone--_gone_." Gerard smiles contemptuously. "I do believe that you women lose the sight of your eyes when you look at one another." "What do you mean?" she asks, with some animation. "Is it possible that you don't agree with me as to her being quite _passée?_" "I think her, as I always thought her," he answers, steadily, "the loveliest woman I ever beheld; a little additional thinness or paleness does not affect her much. Hers is not mere skin beauty: as you say, tastes differ, and I like _those black women_." "That is a civil speech to make to me!" she answers, reddening--an insult to her appearance or her clothes being the one weapon that has power to pierce the scales of her armour of proof. St. John smiles again. "When we engaged to marry one another, did we also engage to think each other the handsomest specimens of the human animal Providence ever framed?" "It is, at least, not usual for a man to express an open preference for another woman to the girl to whom he is engaged." "It is no question of _preference_," he answers, quietly. "I had no thought of drawing any comparison between you and Miss Craven at the moment; I was not thinking of you." "You said she was _the_ loveliest girl you had ever seen!" objects Constance, pouting. "So I did--I do think her so," he rejoins, calmly. "If there is some defect in my eyes, hindering me from seeing things as they are, it is my misfortune, not my fault. Cannot you be content," he asks, banteringly, "with being the _next loveliest?_" She turns away her head, too indignant to answer. He changes his tone. "Constance," he says, gravely, "when I proposed to you, did not I tell you, honestly, what I could give you and what I could not? Love (odd as it may sound between engaged people), and the blind admiration that accompanies love, I had not got to offer you; this is true, is not it?" "Perfectly true," she answers, resentfully; "and as I am not, nor ever was, one of those inflammable young ladies, who think that _burning_, and _consuming_, and _melting_ are essential to married happiness, I did not much regret its absence. I have always been brought up to think," she continues, having recourse to the high moral tone which is her last sure refuge, "that respect and esteem are the best basis for two people to go upon, and I think so still." "But do you and I respect and esteem one another?" he asks, half-cynically, half-mournfully. "Is it possible that I can respect you, who, though you did not care, or affect to care, two straws about me personally--though you knew, at the time I asked you to marry me, that I was madly in love with another woman--were yet willing to give yourself to me, soul and body--to be bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, because I was a good _parti_, as the vile phrase goes? And as for me," he ends, in bitter self-contempt, "what is there in all my idle wasted life, from beginning to end, that any one can respect or esteem?" "Has this struck you now for the first time?" she asks, drily. "I am not aware of any change in our relative circumstances since our marriage was arranged; I suppose our feelings towards each other are much what they were then, when you were troubled with none of these scruples." "And what _were_ our feelings then?" he asks, bitterly; "what brought us together? Was not it that our properties dovetailed conveniently into one another, as Sir Thomas says--that it was advisable for both of us to marry some one--that we were of suitable age, and had no positive distaste for one another: was not this so?" "I suppose so," she answers, sulkily. "And yet," he continues, sternly, "although I had laid bare to you all my wretched story--although you were well aware that I was utterly without the safeguard of any love to yourself--you yet let me fall into this temptation--the cruelest I could have been exposed to--without a word of warning. Was this fair? Was this right?" "Since you put me on my defence," she answers, with anger, "I must repeat to you what I said before, that it seemed to me the best method of curing you of your ill-placed fancy for Esther Craven--a fancy which she repaid with such disgraceful deceit and duplicity--was to let you see for yourself what a wreck she had become!" "You meant well, perhaps," he rejoins, with a sigh that is more than half a groan; "but it was terribly mistaken--terribly ill-judged; it has done us both an irreparable injury." "I am not aware that it has done me any injury whatever," she answers, coldly, mistaking his meaning "I was not alluding to you," he replies, curtly. She makes no rejoinder, and he, rising, begins to walk up and down the room with his hands in his pockets. He has made his meaning clear enough, surely, and yet she does not appear to see it. As she continues resolutely silent, he stops opposite to her, and speaks earnestly, and yet with some embarrassment, as one who knows that what he says will be unpleasing to his listener. "Constance, I must tell you the truth, though I suppose it is hardly of the complexion of the pretty flattering truths or untruths that you have been used to all your life. But, at least, it is better that you should hear it now, than that we should tell it one another a year hence, with mutual, useless recriminations; there is no use in disguising the fact that you and I do not feel towards each other as husband and wife should feel." "Pshaw!" she says, pettishly, turning her head aside; "we feel much the same as other people do, I daresay." "If," he continues, very gravely, "marriage were a temporary connection, that lasted a year--five years say--or that could be dissolved at pleasure, there might be no great harm in entering upon it with the sort of negative liking, the absence of repugnance for one another, which is all that we can boast; but since it is a bargain for all time, and that there is no getting out of it except by the gate of death or disgrace, I think we ought both to reflect on it more seriously than we have yet done before undertaking it." "It is rather late in the day to say all this," retorts she, indignantly. "You have known me all my life; you must have been well aware that I never could enter into those highflown, romantic notions, which I have heard you yourself ridicule a hundred times. These objections should have occurred to you before you proposed to me, and not now, when we have been engaged two months, and when our marriage has been discussed as a settled thing by all our acquaintance." "You are right," he answers, quietly. "They should have occurred to me before; but, in justice to myself, I must say that they would never have occurred to me: I should have remained in the same state of supine indifference to everything in which I came here, had not you yourself thrown me in the way of Esther Craven." She sits upright in her chair; her pale, handsome face paler, harder than usual, in her great anger. "The drift of this long tirade, when translated into plain English, is, I suppose, that you wish to marry Esther Craven instead of me?" He is silent. "Is it so?" she repeats, her voice raised several notes above its wonted low key. "When I am engaged to one woman," he answers, slowly, reluctantly, yet steadily, "I hope I am not dishonourable enough willingly to harbour the thought of marriage with any other." The Gerard diamonds flash before her mind's eye: they are so big, and numerous--necklace, aigrette, stomacher. The idea of seeing them gleam restless in Esther's hair, on Esther's fair neck, is insupportable to her. She will not release him, ardently as he wishes it; she will hold him by a strong chain that will not snap--his honour. "I am glad to hear it," she answers, coldly. "In common fairness to me, you could hardly have entertained such an idea. It is a great disadvantage to a girl to be engaged, to have her engagement as widely known as mine has been, and then to have it broken off; people never think the same of her again." He turns to the window, to hide his bitter disappointment. "Very well," he answers, calmly; "things will remain as they are, I suppose, then? I only thought it right to warn you how small a chance of happiness there is in a marriage so loveless as ours: for the rest you must blame yourself." CHAPTER XXXIX. Night's black sheet drawn off the other half of the world is thrown over us; the dark side of the lantern is turned towards us. Esther has fallen asleep, with almost a happy smile upon her soft, parted lips. She is forgiven; and is there any sweetness like the sweetness of being pardoned, having sinned? He no longer hates her! That was not hate that looked out of his quick, keen eyes to-day, as he leant over her while she sat, dizzy and faint, on that churchyard slab, or as he knelt in strong emotion at her knees. And now, though at her own telling, he is going away from her to-morrow--though, when next they meet, either they will have put off mortality's tatters, God will have laid "Death, like a kiss, across their lips;" or else, to look and lean as he looked and leant to-day will be deadly sin--yet creeps there a sorrowful joy about her heart. He has given her back the past--the short, happy Felton past; no one can take it from her again; not even Miss Blessington, who has taken all else--present and future and all. She is dreaming of him now--dreaming that she is sitting in the library at Felton, in the fragrant gloom made by the lowered Venetian blinds, by dark oak bookshelves, by plentiful sweet flowers, and so sitting hears the sound of his quick feet coming along the passage. He is at the door--he is opening it. But, ah! what is this?--it will not open; it is stiff on its hinges. He is pushing it--pushing gently, pushing hard--but it will not move. What a stealthy noise it is he makes, as if he were afraid of some one hearing him! She starts up, broad awake; it is not all dream; there is some one pushing stealthily, yet audibly, against a door. For the first bewildered moment of sick fear she imagines that it is her own door on which this attempt is being made; but a moment's listening undeceives her. The sound comes from underneath her window, apparently. It is not rats this time; a rat, with all its ingenuity, would be puzzled to make a noise so distinctly human. Upon her mind there flashes suddenly the recollection of a door leading into the garden beneath her casement, but not so immediately beneath but that she can see it; a door that stands wide open all the summer through, when people step from house to garden, from garden to house, a hundred times a day, but which in winter is rarely used. She sits up motionless, while round her utter darkness surges. The noise is repeated: push--push! creak--creak! it is as if some one, with hand and knee, were attempting to obtain entrance. When light is withdrawn hearing becomes preternaturally sharpened; in an instant she has jumped out of bed, and run barefoot over the cold boards to the window. There, pulling aside the blind, she, trembling all over, peeps out. Moon is there none, but the joint light of countless star-squadrons, faint though it be, is yet strong enough to enable her distinctly to make out the figure of a man pressing itself against the door in question. With bodily eyes she at length looks upon that burglar, whom, with the terrified eyes of imagination, she had so often beheld. Whether he wear a crape mask or not it is too dark to discern. What _is_ she to do?--she, in all probability, the only wakeful, conscious being in all that great house. For a minute she stands irresolute, while a rushing sound fills her ears, and her teeth chatter dismally in the cold. Shall she alarm the servants? But how to reach them? She does not even know the way to their sleeping-places. They are miles away, in the other wing of the house, where she has never been. Shall she go to Miss Blessington? At least she knows the way thither, though it is some distance off. But of what avail would that be? Of what use would two girls be, any more than one, against the onslaught of daring unscrupulous robbers? Shall she betake herself to St. John, whose room is but two doors off? No sooner does this idea suggest itself to her, than she puts it into practice. Hastily striking a light, and wrapping her dressing-gown round her, she opens her door, and, flying down the passage, knocks loudly at Mr. Gerard's. But Gerard, having a not particularly bad conscience, and a particularly good digestion, is a sound sleeper. She knocks again, more violently, almost to the flaying of her knuckles: "Mr. Gerard!--Mr. Gerard!" "Hullo! who's there?" responds a sleepy voice. "It's I! Esther!" she cries pantingly. "Open the door, please--this minute--quick!" "_Esther!--you!_" says the voice, perfectly awake this time. "What on earth is the matter?--wait one second!" He hurries on his clothes, and then hastens to accede to her request of opening the door. "Are you ill?" he asks, anxiously, seeing her lean against the door-post, with death-white cheeks and terror-struck eyes. "No--no!" she answers, hoarse and breathless, while St. John, candle, and door, all seem to be dancing a jig round her. "It is not I, but there's a man--getting into the house--by the garden-door. I saw him!" "The devil there is!" replies the young man, with animation. "Here, give me your candle, and I'll go and see what he wants." "No--no!" she cries, with all a woman's unreason. "Don't go; you must not!" (though for what other purpose she had sought his assistance she would have been puzzled to say). "I won't let you; you'll be killed!" and so, gasping, stretches out her white arms towards him, and, letting drop her candle, falls insensible, in the total darkness, into his embrace. For a month past or more, the dream that has pursued Gerard night and day--unchecked in sleep, in waking faintly repressed by considerations of honour--is to hold that fair woman's form in his arms; and now he so holds her in reality. And yet, as the fulfilment of our wishes seldom affords us the gratification we had anticipated, so it is with him. Now that he has got her, he does not quite know what to do with her. Shall he, encumbered by his beautiful burden, grope his way back into his room, and lay her down there, while he goes and investigates into the cause of her terror and swoon? But the household, being alarmed, may find her there; and, so finding, would not the reputation of her, most innocent, be endangered? Her head droops heavy in its perfect lifelessness on his shoulder; her soft warm hair caresses his cheek in the blackness of the night. He looks down the passage. From Esther's open door a flood of light streams; at all events there is a candle left burning there. In a moment he has borne her into her own chamber, and has laid her most gently down upon the ginger-moreen bed. He has no time to try and revive her now. "Perhaps it was only her own imagination, poor child!--her own imagination, and those infernal rats!" is the hasty thought that has crossed his mind; but looking through the window, as she had done, he sees, as she had seen, a man's dim figure in the starlight. Without a moment's delay, without casting another thought even to the fair swooned woman he leaves behind him, Gerard runs down the corridor, his blood pleasantly astir with the thought of a possible adventure--through interminable dark galleries, down the gleaming cold of white stone stairs, through hall, saloon, north drawing-room, and justicing-room--till he reaches a narrow short passage that leads to the garden door. As he and his light draw near, the noise suddenly ceases. He stands still for a moment, expecting to hear it repeated, but it is not. Setting down his candle, therefore, he advances towards the door and unfastens it--it is secured by an old-fashioned catch inside--opens it, and looks out into the night. At first he can discern nothing but the chill wintry garden, and the million stars scattered broadcast over God's one great unenclosed field of the sky; but a second glance reveals to him a dim figure crouching indistinct in the shadow of a projecting buttress. "Who's there?" he cries, in a loud clear voice. No answer. "Who's there?" he repeats. "If you don't answer, I'll fire." Firing, in this instance, must mean using the flat candlestick as a projectile, for other weapon has Mr. Gerard none. Hardly have the words left his mouth, however, before the figure springs forth from its hiding-place, and stands erect before him. "Don't fire, sir, please; it's I." Livery-buttons flash in the starlight: behold the culprit revealed!--a young and lighthearted footman, who has on one or two previous occasions been suspected of a too great proclivity towards the nocturnal festivities of the "Chequers." A sense of infuriation at the bald tame end of the adventure gets possession of St. John. "What the devil do you mean, sir, skulking here, alarming the whole household, and frightening the young ladies out of their senses?" he asks, with a gruff asperity not unworthy of his papa. "If you please, sir, I was only--only--taking a bit of a walk in the park, sir." "A likely tale!" cries St. John, angrily. "A walk in the park at this time of night! Come, don't let us have any lies, my good fellow; that is covering a small fault with a much greater one. You were at the 'Chequers,' I suppose? Come, out with it!" "If you please, sir," replies the man, hanging his head, and looking very sheepish, "there was a young woman, as come all the way from Shelford, and as she was a bit timid, I promised to send her home." "A young woman!" repeats St. John, repressing an inclination to smile. "Well, next time, you must be good enough to choose more seasonable hours for your meetings with young women." "And when I come back, sir, I found all the house made up for the night, and I could not get no one to hear me; and I thought as how, very like, I might find this 'ere door open, if so be as Betsy had forgot to bolt it, as she mostly does, only it is so plaguy stiff on its 'inges----" "And, for a wonder, Betsy had not forgotten to bolt it," interrupts Gerard, drily. "Well, don't let us have anything of this kind again, or, I warn you, you'll be packed off without a character." Relieved at being let off so easily, the young fellow slinks away, and Gerard retraces his steps upstairs again. He cannot help laughing as he thinks of poor Esther's tragic fears, of her agonised pleadings: "You _must_ not go! I won't let you go! you'll be killed!" "If I'm never in nearer peril of death than I was to-night," he thinks, "I have every chance of outliving Methuselah. Was ever mountain delivered of so contemptible a mouse?" He laughs again. "'I won't let you! you'll be killed!' Poor little thing! I wonder has she come to herself yet! I must let her know that this bloodthirsty villain has not slain me outright this time." Having reached her door, he pauses and listens. There is no sound within. He knocks gently--no answer: knocks again--still no reply. Half-hesitating, as one that stands doubtful on the threshold of a church, he opens the door and enters. The light burns on the dressing-table, and she lies still prone, where he had laid her, on the bed, still completely insensible. This swoon is horribly deathlike: ".............................But she lies Not in the embrace of loyal death, who keeps His bride for ever, but in treacherous arms Of sleep, that sated, will restore to grief Her snatch'd a sweet space from his cruel clutch." Her head is thrown back, and her round chin slightly raised. Over the tossed pillow wander the tangled riches of her swart hair; nerveless on the counterpane lie the white, carven hands and blue-veined wrists, on which the faint fine lines make a tender network. Half-shadowed by her dressing-gown, half-emerging from it gleam bare feet, "That make the blown foam neither swift nor white." He leans over her, gazing with passionate admiration at the heavy shut lids and upward curling lashes--with passionate admiration mixed with sharp pain; for he can see, plainlier now in this long quiet look than in the hasty, stolen glances he has hitherto given her, the purple stains under closed eyes, the little depressions in the rounded cheek, the droop of the sweet sorrowful mouth. Iachimo's words recur to him--Iachimo's, as he gazed in his treachery upon the sleeping beauty of Imogen: "..........................Cytherea! How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily! And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch! But kiss--one kiss! Bubies unparagon'd, How dearly they do't!--'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper Bows towards her, and would underpeep her lids To see the enclosed lights now canopied Under those windows......................" But looking at a person with ever such warm approbation will not recover them from a swoon. What is he to do? He is horribly puzzled, so seldom before has he seen a fainted fellow-Christian. Vague ideas of having heard of burnt feathers held under nostrils recur to his mind. But whence to obtain feathers, unless he takes a pair of scissors and snips a hole in the feather-bed? There is nothing in all the great room more feathery than the stumpy end of an old quill pen, with which Miss Craven is wont to indite her small accounts. Another specific flashes before his mental eye. Smelling-salts! He walks to the dressing-table, and carefully overlooks its slender load: brushes and combs, a Bible, and a fat pincushion--neither essence, unguent, nor scent of any kind. Esther's toilette apparatus is but meagre. Shall he throw cold water over her? What! and deluge all the ginger moreen bed, thereby making it an even more undesirable resting-place than it is at present? Quite at a loss what to do, he returns to the bedside, and begins to chafe her cold hands between his two warm ones. Then he stoops over her, trying to discover any smallest sign of returning consciousness. When his lips are so close to hers, how can he help laying them yet closer? Men seldom do resist any temptation, unless it is very weak, and the objections to it very overwhelming. This temptation is not weak, and there are absolutely no objections to it. No one will ever know of this theft--not even the person upon whom it is committed: it will do her no harm, and to kiss her even thus unknowing, unreturning, gives him a bitter joy. But, having once kissed her, he refrains himself, nor lays his lips a second time upon hers. Something of shame comes over him, as one that has taken advantage of another's helplessness--one that, for an instant, has let the brute within him get the upper hand of the man. Only he caresses gently her two cold hands, and his eyes dwell on her face, watching longingly for the first small symptom of back-coming life. His patience is rewarded, after a time; after a time there comes a quivering about the eyelids, a tremor about the mouth--then a deep-drawn sighing respiration. Always with a sigh does the soul come back to its dark cottage, having journeyed away from it for awhile. The curtain-lids sweep back from the spirit's windows; and, pale and clear, her eyes' dark glories shine upon him, conscious yet bewildered. Then a little stealing red, like the tint that dwelt in a sea-shell's lips, flows into each pure cheek; then comes full consciousness, and with it recollected terrors. "Where is he?" she asks, in a low frightened voice. "Is he gone?--did he get in?--did he hurt you?" "He was not a very formidable burglar, after all," Gerard answers, with a reassuring smile: "it was only Thomas, who had been seeing his sweetheart home, and was trying to get into the house without being heard." "Oh, I'm so glad! But" (her eyes straying confusedly round the room) "how did I get here? When last I remember any thing I was in the passage." "I carried you here." "And then went and found out about this man?" "Yes." "And then came back here?" "Yes. I hope you don't think me very impertinent," he says, apologetically; "but I could not bear the idea of your lying here, insensible, without any one making an attempt to bring you round." Recollecting what his own method of bringing her round had been, his conscience gives him a compunctious stab. She blushes furiously, and, raising herself into a sitting posture, begins to twist up her hair with both hands. "You are better now," he says, tenderly, but with perfect respect; "I will go." He moves towards the door, but, before he can reach it, it flies open hastily, and Constance, dishevelled, dressing-gowned, flurried out of all likeness to herself, bursts in. "Oh, Miss Craven! I'm so frightened! I heard people talking outside----_St. John!!_" Mrs. Siddons might have been defied to crowd more solemnly tragic emphasis into one word than does Miss Blessington into the innocent dissyllable, "St. John!" "Well!" replies St. John, tartly, vexed past speaking at being discovered in such an utterly false position. "I suppose I may be allowed to ask what brings _you_ here?" she says, drawing herself up to her stately height. "You certainly may," he answers, endeavouring to recover his self-possession; "and I have not the slightest objection to telling you. What brought me here was the endeavour to recover Miss Craven from a faint into which she fell on coming to tell me--as the only person within her reach--that a man was, as she imagined, endeavouring to break into the house." Even to his own ears this tale, as he tells it, sounds wofully improbable. "And you took no steps to prevent him?" cries Constance, quickly; her fears for her personal safety, for the moment, outweighing the claims of outraged virtue. "Pardon me! I did; but having discovered that it was only one of the footmen, who had been accidentally locked out, I came back to tell Miss Craven so, if she were recovered! and, if not, to give her that assistance which anyone human being may render to another without being called to account for it." Having spoken, he folds his arms, and confronts her, calm and stately as herself. "I should hardly have imagined it was _your_ business," she replies, with scarce-concealed incredulity. "May I ask why you could not ring for the servants?" "Because, as you are well aware," he answers, trying to quell his rising anger, "if I were to ring from now till doomsday, not a soul would hear me; all the bells ring downstairs, and the servants' bedrooms are at least a quarter of a mile distant up-stairs." "Why could not you have come to me, then?" "The impropriety would, in that case, have been at least equal," he answers, sarcastically; "and, to tell you the truth, such a course never occurred to me." Something in his tone irritates her. "It is, of course, no concern of mine," she says, with icy coldness. "If Miss Craven chooses to receive the visits of gentlemen, HERE, at two o'clock in the morning, it does _me_ no harm!" She moves towards the door, but he places himself between her and it; and, grasping her wrist with unconscious roughness, speaks in a voice low and hoarse with anger, while his roused wrath glances upon her from out of his grey eyes--the eyes that hitherto have looked upon her only with indifference. "Constance! what do you mean by these insults? How dare you give utterance to them? Is your own mind so impure that you cannot believe in the purity of others?" "You must allow that it is at least an equivocal position," she answers, half-frightened by his stern looks, but keeping resolutely to her text. "It is," he answers, remorsefully; "I allow it--I bitterly feel it. And yet, if it were only myself that were concerned, I should scorn to descend to any more explanation than that I have already given you; but for the sake of this most innocent girl, whom by my folly I have compromised, I swear to you, Constance--I solemnly take God to witness!--that it is exactly and simply as I have told you. Miss Craven had not recovered from her insensibility more than two minutes before you came into the room; I was in the act of leaving it as you entered. This is the whole plain truth: do you believe it?" She does not answer. "Do you believe it?" he repeats, earnestly. The mulish look comes into her face--the look he has begun to know so well. "It cannot be of much consequence to you whether I believe it or not," she answers, still with that freezing calm of voice and face. "You have, at all events, adopted the best method of obtaining your release from that engagement, which you so broadly hinted, only yesterday afternoon, that you wished to be free from. You have your wish--you are free!" "As you will," he answers, gloomily. "God knows there never was much love in our connection; an iller-mated pair never came together; it was a mere matter of business on both sides. But, as to saying that the pure accident which has brought Miss Craven and me into slight and transient collision to-night can have any influence upon the conclusion or continuance of our engagement--it is tantamount to telling me that what I have sworn to you, upon my honour as a gentleman, to be true, is false!" he says, his face growing white and fierce. "Is it?" she says, with a quietly enraging smile; having that confidence in the shield of womanhood, which makes so many a woman gall a man to the uttermost, and expect him to stand by, serene, polite, and smiling. "Unfortunately," she continues, "I am behind the spirit of the age; I am shackled with obsolete old notions of propriety and decency; and therefore--as you have no longer any smallest control over my actions--will you be so good as to allow me to go?" He drops her hand instantly, and, opening the door for her, bows his head haughtily, saying, "Go! I have neither the wish nor the power to detain you;" and as he so speaks she passes out. Meanwhile Esther, having slidden from her bed, stands with trembling limbs, grasping the back of a chair, and gazing from speaker to speaker with a world of surprise and horror in her great innocent eyes. As Miss Blessington leaves the room, St. John turns to her: "My darling!" he says, with an accent of passionate remorse, "how will you ever forgive me for having exposed you to this!" She turns away from him, and covers her burning face with her hands. "Go!" she says, faintly--"go, this minute! Don't say another word! Don't give her any more reason for her wicked slanders! Go!" And he goes. CHAPTER XL. Of the three persons whose repose has been disturbed by the amours of Thomas the footman, only one is able to take up again the thread of interrupted slumber. Miss Blessington, having returned to her chamber, and having meditated calmly for a quarter of an hour on the knot in her destiny she has just untied, and having given one great sigh to the memory of the Gerard diamonds, lays down her golden scented head on her pillow again, and sleeps the sleep of the just. Miss Blessington has well nigh mastered the secret of eternal youth and perennial beauty--incapacity for feeling any emotion. It is hardly likely that the god Sleep, who loves a quiet house, will visit two such unquiet temples as the brains of St. John and Esther: he goes away from them utterly, taking his gentle poppyheads with him. St. John walks miles and miles up and down his bedroom carpet, pondering, deeply and vexedly, not on what his own course of conduct shall be--_that_ he is already determined upon--but on what effect Miss Blessington's coldly sceptical reception of his wildly improbable yet true tale is likely to have upon Esther. And Esther herself, having conceived a mortal aversion for the shelter of the ginger-canopied pavilion, wraps a great shawl round her, and, sitting down on the deep window-seat, watches for the first streaks of dawn, which, on these winter mornings, are long, long coming. Though it is a winter night, her hands burn hot and dry; for the last few days she has had a sharp pain in her side--to-night it is getting yet sharper; it begins to hurt her to draw her breath. Two thoughts keep buzzing about her brain: "I am going to be ill," and "I am going to be turned away." She throws aside her shawl, but the dry burning still continues. She has sat here for hours now, and the dawn's feet are beginning slowly to climb the steps from the eastern gate. The battle between day and night is yet undecided; almost equally they divide the sky between them. Perhaps it is the night's excitement that has given her this fever; perhaps the cold morning air would refresh her. She waits until day's victory is complete, and then--being already dressed--puts on her hat and jacket, and steals noiselessly downstairs, to the garden door that has been the cause of so much mischief, out into the garden between the brown earthed beds, where the winter aconite's small yellow heads and green tippets are beginning to push themselves into sight, and thence into the park. There is no wind abroad, only heavy rain-clouds outwalling the infant sun, and the unarmed air has a piercing chillness in it. Esther has not proceeded far, and is standing thoughtful on the brow of a little knoll, from whence one looks down on the dark flag-fringed pool, when she is aware of a footstep behind her; and the next instant St. John Gerard stands by her side. "What have you come here for? Why have you followed me?" she asks, turning upon him in hasty dismay. "Miss Blessington's windows look this way--she will see us together." "Let her see us," he answers, doggedly. "She will never believe that it was by accident we have met," cries poor Esther, in great agitation. "She will be right, then; it is not accident." "She will think that it was an appointment!" she says, clasping her hands in unfeigned distress. "Let her think so!" "It is very well for you to talk in this way," she says, with passionate reproach. "You are a man--you may defy the opinion of the world; but is it so easy for me?" "Why should her opinion concern either you or me?" he inquires, gravely. "What is she to either of us? Did not you last night, with your own ears, hear my dismissal pronounced?" She stoops her head until her hat almost conceals her face from him. "She was angry," she says, in a low voice; "she will be sorry for the things she said; she will forgive you." "Will she?" he answers, quietly smiling. "I think not; to tell you the truth, I don't mean to ask her." She lifts her face, suddenly earnest, to him. "You _must!_" she says, eagerly. "You must explain to her, as you tried to do last night, that what happened then" (a painful blush) "is no possible reason why her engagement to you should be broken off. You must convince her of this--you must, indeed; for my sake _you must!_" He looks down, frowning heavily. "When a galley-slave's chains have been knocked off, must he handcuff himself again?" "Why did you handcuff yourself at first?" she asks, with impulsive vehemence. "Whose doing was it but your own? What madness first impelled you to ask her to marry you?" "Because," he answers, with emotion, fixing his upbraiding eyes upon her--"because I was smarting miserably under the blow you had just given me--you, who had made me mistrust everything attractive, and womanly, and innocent-seeming. I was obliged to marry some one; that is one of the many curses attached to being an eldest son, and the last male heir of an inconveniently old family. I said to myself, 'She is too dull to deceive me, too passionless to disgrace me.' I chose her because she was, of all the women I knew, the one least capable of calling forth emotion of any kind whatever in me--consequently, the one most powerless to make me suffer." The words of his defence came quick and hurried. She is silent for a moment; then, uplifting imploring eyes to his: "Mr. Gerard," she says, tremblingly, "the twenty-four hours you asked me to allow you yesterday are nearly expired: have you come to say 'good-bye' to me? If so, it is well; you remember your promise?" "I remember it," he answers, slowly, "and I am prepared to--_break_ it. Don't look so reproachful, Esther! I am ready to make you as good a one instead. I am ready to swear," he says, his face all kindling in the grey cold morning with eager passion--"I am ready to swear to you that I will never leave you again, unless you send me away, until death do us part. Will that promise do as well as the other?" She gives a little cry of astonishment. "What do you mean?" she asks, faintly, moving a step farther away from him. "I mean," he says, solemnly, his countenance all shining with the light of a great new joy, "that I am sick of my life without you, Esther; and you--you are sick of yours without me, aren't you?" She cannot deny it, and is unwilling to allow it; so keeps a troubled silence. "There must be some reason," he continues, passionately, "for your failing health, for your thin white cheeks, for your total loss of beauty" (with a smile), "as Constance tersely worded it yesterday. Am I right; or is it my conceit that makes me think that I have some concern in the change?" "You are mistaken," she cries, hastily--the idea that pity for her miserable appearance has brought him back to her flashing gallingly across her mind. "I was very fond of you--_very;_ it was a great grief to me when you threw me away from you; but I could have done without you, if--if--I had not lost my boy." She turns away, to hide her quivering lips and swelling tears: it is so seldom that she speaks of her dead, that the mere naming of him seems to make his loss the clearer. Gerard's face falls a little. "Could you?" he says, simply and sadly. "No doubt! I was unreasonable to suppose that _I_ could be indispensable to any one." They walk on in silence side by side. It is beginning to rain, heavy drops ushering in a winter storm. The deer-barn is near--the deer-barn, with steep red roof, lichen-painted, standing on a little rise, among a company of ancient hornbeams, whose twisted trunks lean this way and that. For the last twenty years, every young lady that has come to stay at the hall has sketched the deer-barn. "This is not fit weather for you to be out in," Gerard says, solicitously glancing at his companion's slight figure and fever-bright eyes. "Let us shelter here till the storm is over!" Having reached it, Esther stands watching Heaven's quick large tears falling heavy on Earth's chill breast; St. John walks up and down on the rough earth-floor, buried in thought. At length, rousing himself, he approaches Esther, and speaks, calmly at first, but with increasing vehemence as he proceeds: "Esther, I have been thinking what a short section of my life, counting by days and weeks, the time that I have known you forms; that month at Felton, when we had scarcely eyes or ears for any one but each other, and this month here, when we have hardly exchanged two words. I suppose I know very little about you, _really;_ you may be a very bad worthless girl, for all I know to the contrary. God knows I have not had much reason to think you a very good one; and yet, good or bad--well, as you say, and as I have no reason to doubt, that you can get on without me--I cannot, for the life of me, bear any longer the dragging of the endless empty days without you. Esther!" he says, with passionate hunger in his eyes, "I _want_ you! I _must_ have you for my own! Is there now any reason why I should not?" "Have you forgotten," she asks, with a melancholy smile, "the night when you told me that you would never forgive me, either in this world or the next? What have I done since to make you change your mind? I am no different to what I was then--unless, perhaps, I may be a little wickeder; I have been most unhappy, and adversity makes one wicked." "I suppose I have lost my senses," he answers, with excitement; "but it seems to me now that, even were you to deceive me again, as you did at Felton--if you were to cheat me, and tell me falsehoods with the same baby-innocent face that you did there--that even then I should not repent of my bargain. Of two evils it would be the least; it would be better than never to have possessed you at all. Only, child, one thing I beg of you," he continues, with reproachful entreaty: "if you mean to trick me a second time, don't let me find it out for a little while! Let me be happy for a year--a month--a week!" Her eyes rest on the ground, and a painful red spreads on either cheek. Despite the honest yearning love that vibrates along his voice, she cannot cast out from her heart that galling suspicion that has stolen there. "You are very good," she makes answer, in a constrained voice; "and it is very generous of you trying to hide your real motive; but I can see it: it is _pity!_ You look at me, and think, 'She was a pretty girl once, and now she has grown old and thin and plain, and it is all for love of me!' Yes, it is pity!" "You are right," he answers, earnestly; "it is pity, profound pity, for the most miserable, discontented fellow upon God's earth--to wit, myself." She raises her eyes slowly, and fixes them searchingly on his eager flushing face; and, looking, can doubt no longer. "If I was over-harsh to you that night at Felton," he continues, rapidly, "and I am willing now to own that I was--for, after all, it was not against me that you had most greatly sinned--I have, at all events, paid heavily enough for it. What do you suppose I have suffered during the last month, watching you day by day wearing out your young life in a cold servile drudgery--hearing you strain your poor little tired voice in the interminable readings to that insatiable old man! Essie, I'm not a particularly pleasant fellow to live with--sometimes I believe I am particularly unpleasant--but, at _my worst_, I'm not so bad as old Blessington." At that she laughs a little, but shakes her head. "Why do you shake your head?" he asks, manlike, pursuing the hotlier the more she seems to hold back. "Is it," he says (a heavy fear quickening his pulses, and making his voice come thick and harsh), "that you want to tell me by signs, what you dare not tell me in words to my face, that the old love is _dead_, killed by my hard words that miserable night at Felton? Oh, love! it must have been but a weakly thing, if a few rough words could kill it." She does not answer. "You _did_ love me once, Esther," he continues, vehemently; "I know you did! I knew it then, only, in my blind rage, I affected to disbelieve it. You _must_ have loved me, when you, who had always been so shy, so reserved, so maidenly to me, of your own accord--do you recollect, sweet?--held out your arms to me, and flung yourself upon my breast. God only knows how hard it was for me to put you away!" At the recollection his speech calls up, her face is stirred with a convulsive emotion; but still she holds her peace. "Esther, speak!--and yet, perhaps, when you have spoken, I shall wish that you had kept silence. Say anything you will, do anything you will, only don't kill me by telling me that so sweet a thing can be _dead!_" She lifts her heavy eyes to him, and in them is the look of a hunted animal. "Why do you torment me with these questions?" she asks, passionately. "If my love for you is dead, you ought to be thankful; for, while it was alive, it brought nothing but misery to either of us." "If you think so, it must indeed be dead," he answers, deeply wounded. "Why will you insist on driving me into a corner?" she asks, with the accent of a person rendered irritable by pain. "Why will you force me to make admissions that I don't want to make? What is the good of my owning that I love you still, when I am determined never to marry you?" "_Never to marry me!_" he repeats; unable, in his immense surprise, to do more than say her own words after her. A man is always overwhelmed with astonishment at the idea of any woman not being overjoyed to espouse him. "Never to marry you!" she reiterates, steadily. "I was a bad-enough match for you before--without fortune, position, or connexion; people would have pitied you then for being drawn into such a marriage; but now----" "But now, what?" "But now that I am a _companion_," she continues, with a bitter pride--"an anomalous animal, just two shades higher than the lady's-maid in my own estimation, and probably not that in any one else's--a companion, too, of whom people can say the things that Miss Blessington will say of me now----" "What do you mean? What sort of things _can_ she say?" But Esther maintains a shamed red silence. "That you are completely _passée?_" "No, not that!--that would not concern me much." "That the way you cough in the evening fidgets her to death?" "No, not that." "That you are over-sensitive, as these sort of people always are?" (with a faint mimicking of Miss Blessington's slow languor of articulation). "No, not that." "What then?" "You _must_ remember the things she said; you were there, and it is not more than five hours ago," she answers, with some impatience. "I forget every word she uttered except three." "And what were they?" "You are free." "She did not mean them," says Esther, trying to speak with dispassionate calmness; "she was under an erroneous impression when she said them; she will take you back again." "Take me back again!" he repeats, angrily. "Good heavens, Esther! are you bent on driving me mad? Not satisfied with refusing me point-blank yourself, are you determined to insult me, by forcing upon me a woman for whom, as you know--as you must have known from the first moment you saw us together--I have never felt anything but the profoundest, coldest indifference?" "I meant no insult," she replies, apologetically: "I only meant to say what is true--that _she_ is a suitable match for you--that _she_ is your equal." "Is she?" he retorts ironically. "You are very good, I'm sure; I ask for bread, and you give me a stone. For God's sake, Essie, if you will have nothing to say to me yourself, at least spare me the degradation of listening to your kind and disinterested plans for my welfare!" Under this severe snub, Miss Craven remains silent. "Is it," he continues, presently, his indignation being a little cooled, "the mere fact of my being well-off that damns me in your eyes? If so, I think I may plead 'not guilty,' seeing that this oppressive wealth of mine lies on the other side of Sir Thomas's death--an event probably, at least, as distant as the millennium." She gazes out (not seeing it the while) at the driving rain, while a troubled look flits over her small grave face; but she says neither "Yea" nor "Nay." "When I am asking you to give me your whole sweet life," he cries, impulsively, snatching one of her little cold hands, "are you so ungenerous as to wish me to have absolutely nothing to offer you in return?" Still silence. "Essie!" he says, drawing her nearer to him, and looking resolutely down into her timid reluctant eyes, "I don't ask you to have pity upon me--that is a puling, cowardly way of making love, I always think; if the only road to a woman's heart lies through her compassion, I had rather never get there at all--but I ask you to pity _yourself_. To be my wife, ill-tempered and jealous as I, no doubt, should often be, would be distinctly a better fate than to be old Blessington's drudge. Child! have you no pity for yourself?" "None whatever," she answers, with emotion. "I am not in the least sorry for myself; I richly deserve everything that is come to me. As long as I am unhappy myself, I can better bear the recollection of my vile conduct to the best and loyalest lover ever any woman had; if I began to be happy, I think my remorse would kill me." He drops her hand suddenly, with a gesture of anger. "I have been sacrificed to him once already," he says, fiercely; "am I to be sacrificed a second time to a sentimental recollection of him--to the mere memory of his perfections?" She raises her rejected hand and its fellow deprecatingly towards him. "Don't be angry with me," she cries, pleadingly; "this has nothing to say to him; the reason why I will not marry you is that I am a _mésalliance_ for you." "That is my concern, I imagine," he answers, stiffly. "I think not," she rejoins, gently. "You have lost your senses, as you told me just now; you are mad, and I am sane; therefore I can judge better than you yourself what is for your good: some day you will agree with me." "Never!" he replies, emphatically; and with that, she standing nigh, and the temptation being mighty, he flings his arms _sans cérémonie_ about her supple body, and strains her to his breast. Outside, the rain streams down with a continuous quiet noise; the dappled deer are herding their branchy heads together under the old leafless hornbeams for shelter. For one moment Esther lies passive in her lover's arms, yielding to the bliss of that rough embrace; and, after all, among the blisses that we wot of, what is there so great as, "After long grief and pain, To feel the arms of your true love Round you once again?" Then her recollected resolution comes back. "Let me go," she says, faintly; "this is not right!" "Right or wrong," he answers, doggedly, "it is the one moment worth being called 'life' that I have spent since I was fool enough to cut my own throat by parting from you." "Let me go!" she says, again; and he, holding her still prisoner, but putting her a little farther from him, that he may the more distinctly see the workings of her countenance, says steadily: "Essie, I am not unjust; I will let you go this instant, to any quarter of the world that you wish, without a word of remonstrance, if you will only look up in my face and say, 'St. John, I don't love you.'" She lifts, with infinite difficulty, eyes in which pride and shy passion are fighting a duel to the death, and falters: "St. John, I don't----" but, in the mid-utterance of that falsehood, her voice fails suddenly, and she buries her burning shamed face on his breast. "I knew it," he cries, triumphantly, dropping a light kiss--for has not her hesitation confessed him her owner?--upon her bent head. "I risked my everything upon that test, and it has not failed me. Even your miserable pride, Esther, could not constrain you to such a lie! With your heart beating against mine, as if we had but one between us, your lips did not dare frame those ugly words." She gives no verbal answer; but, with head shame-drooped, tries, with trembling hands, to push away the arms that so closely, warmly bind her. "Oh love!" he cries, with an accent of impatient but tender upbraiding, "are you struggling to get away from me still? Am I never to persuade any good thing to stay with me? Will you never forgive me the sin of being an eldest son? God knows it is not my fault--that it was not my choice to be born amongst the drones! Oh, Essie, is it just of you to punish me for what I cannot help?" "I don't wish to punish you," she answers, trembling (seeing that she wished to be away from him, he has released her from his arms). "The real way to punish you would be to let you have your will--to say, 'I will marry you, St. John!'" "In God's name punish me, then! No one ever took chastisement meeklier than I will this." "And what would the end be?" she asks, sadly. "You would be insanely happy for a little while--a month--two months, perhaps--and then you would get tired of me. There is nothing in me, I think," she says, simply, "to keep a man's love after the first madness is over: I never had anything but a pretty face, and now even that is gone in the eyes of every one but you." "What! in Linley's?" he asks, with a half-jealous smile. She blushes, but goes on, without heeding the enquiry. "Some day you would wake up and say, 'I have thrown myself away;' and I--I prefer to say it for you now, while it is yet time." He makes a movement to interrupt her, but she continues. "When a person has once lost confidence in another, they can never get it _quite_ back again; you would never _quite_ trust me. Only the other day you thought hard things of me, because I seemed grateful to Mr. Linley for talking friendly to me: I saw it in your eyes as you rode past us that night: and--which is the last and greatest reason of all--you would not like people to say of your wife the things that Miss Blessington will enable them to say of me." "Even granting," breaks in Gerard, with indignant violence--"and God forbid my ever granting anything of the kind!--that it is in her or any one else's power to blast your reputation, what pleasure could it possibly give one girl to sully the good name of another, whom she must know in her heart of hearts to be as innocent as herself?" "None whatever, perhaps, if I remain as I am," she answers, collectedly, though a little bitterly. "As Esther Craven, I am too insignificant to clash with her; but if I were to be your wife--if I were to be her successor in that position for which she is, in her own and her friends' opinion, so well suited--would not she be likely to give her own explanation of the change? She would describe things as they seemed to her, and people would believe her." "Let them!" he answers scornfully. "If you loved me perfectly, the only people that existed in the world for you would be yourself and me." "I do not love you perfectly, then, I suppose," she answers, calmly; "for not even the enormous happiness of being with you always, of being half your life, could compensate me for the degradation of bringing you a sullied name." He turns away, with hands clenched and lips bitten, in the endeavour to be master of his useless surging rage. "St. John," she says resolutely, laying her hand upon one of his, "you have made me two promises--one that you will go away and leave me to-day, and one that you will leave me never until I send you away. I keep you to the first: I send you away." "But I will not be sent," he cries fiercely, giving the reins to his passion. "The conditions under which that promise was made are utterly changed; the obstacle that parted us _then_ no longer exists: there is none between us now but what is of your own raising. I am, therefore, no longer bound by that oath; I will not go!" "Very well," she answers, sighing: "then I must; and when one is to have a foot or a hand cut off, it is best to do it at once. St. John, I will not sleep another night under the same roof with you! Goodbye!" But he turns away sullenly. "You may say 'goodbye' to me, but I will never say 'goodbye' to you: death is the only 'goodbye' I will accept as valid between us." She makes no rejoinder, but, slipping from his side out into the wild wintry rain, flies across the park away from him. "Esther!--Esther!" he calls after her: but the "drip, drip" of the great swollen rain-drops from the eaves of the deer-barn is his only answer. CHAPTER XLI. The rain ceases, and St. John endeavours to work off his disappointment and rage in a very long walk. When he at length re-enters the house, the two old people are hobbling into luncheon, and Miss Blessington sweeping, slowly and alone, after them. Her face is serene, and, to his surprise, wears no bellicose expression towards himself. To tell the truth, during three hours of point-lace work, the Gerard diamonds have kept flashing and gleaming, restless-bright, before her mind's eye. She has been telling herself that she was over-hasty in the relinquishment of them--has been resolving to make one effort, if consistent with dignity, for their recapture. "Does Miss Craven know that luncheon is ready?" asks St. John of the butler, when they have all been seated for some minutes. "If you please, sir, I don't think that Miss Craven is coming to lunch." "Why not?--is she ill?" he inquires, anxiously, perfectly indifferent as to whether his anxiety is remarked or no. "I believe she is rather poorly, sir." Luncheon over, the old people are convoyed back to their arm-chairs. Gerard stands with his back to the hall-fire, with the _Times_ in his hand. Constance, under some pretext of looking over the day's papers, lingers near him. "I have been telling my aunt about our alarm last night, St. John," she says, as sweetly as usual. "Indeed!" "And its tame prosaic _dénouement_." "Indeed!" "I am afraid I was unreasonably angry with you for what was evidently a mere accident; but when one is nervous and frightened, one really does not know what one says. I'm sure I have the vaguest recollection of what I said." "I remember distinctly what you said, Constance." "Indeed!" (with a smooth low laugh). "You don't bear malice, I hope? Things are much as they were before, I suppose?" He lays down his paper, and looks at her steadily with his clear grey eyes. "Things are between us as they have been all our lives up to last October; as they have been since then, they will never be again." She turns away quickly, to hide the mortification which even the cold pure mask of her face cannot wholly conceal. "That is what I meant," she answers, quietly--with great presence of mind endeavouring to prevent her defeat from being converted into a rout; and though she deceives neither herself nor him, the effort to do both is at least laudable. And Esther, interrupted midway in the packing of her few and paltry goods by the sharper recurrence of that pain in her side, lies on her bed, shut out by the strength of that bodily agony from all power of mental suffering. The excitement of the night--the exposure to the chill morning air--the thorough wetting undergone in her wild run through the park, amid the driving rain, have hastened the coming of that great sickness with which for weeks past she has been threatened. Darkness falls: dinner-time comes. Presently the housemaid, who had formerly given her the laudanum, knocks at her door. "Dinner, please, miss." "I cannot go down," answers the poor child, rather piteously, sitting up, and pushing away the tumbled hair from her flushed cheeks, while her eyes blink in the candle-light. "I don't want any dinner; I'm ill!" "Dear me, 'm! you _do_ look bad!" exclaims the woman, drawing nearer to the bed, and speaking with an accent half-shocked, half-pleased; for, in a servant's eyes, the next best thing to a death in the house is a serious illness. "Would not you like to have Mr. Brand sent for?" "Oh, no--thanks!" replies the girl, sinking wearily back on her pillow. "I daresay it will go of itself."--"If I did send for him, I have no money to pay for him," is her mental reflection. The evening drags away about as heavily as usual in the saloon. Gerard, having ascertained that Miss Craven is still in the house, and has consequently broken her resolution of not sleeping another night under the same roof with him, tries to content himself with the idea that to-morrow--her temporary indisposition probably past--he will have another opportunity of reasoning and pleading with her. About nine o'clock Miss Blessington's maid appears at the door. "Please 'm, might I speak to you for a moment?" "Certainly," answers Constance, graciously, rising and walking off to the demanded conference. Constance is always polite to her servants; it is a bad style, middle-class to be rude to one's inferiors. "If you please, 'm, I really think as something oughter to be done for Miss Craven; she is uncommon bad, poor young lady!" "What is the matter with her?" inquires the other, placidly; "nothing but influenza, I daresay; it always goes through a house." "Indeed, 'm, I don't know; but she has a hawful pain in her side, and she can scarce draw her breath, and she is hot--as hot as fire." "Good heavens!" cries Constance, thoroughly roused by this gay picture; "I hope it is not anything _catching!_" Reassured on this point, and having ordered the attendance of Mr. Brand, she returns unruffled to the fireside. "What was that mysterious communication, Constance?" asks St. John, lazily, quite willing to be amicable now that their relative positions are made clearly evident. "She only came to tell me that Miss Craven was very unwell," she answers, carelessly. "Servants exaggerate so; I daresay it is nothing!" "What is the matter with her?" he asks, hurriedly. "I really don't know," she replies, drily; "you had better wait till Mr. Brand comes, and ask him." Ten o'clock! The old couple are trundled off to their separate apartments: and Miss Blessington, having bidden St. John a cold "good-night," sails, candle in hand, up the grand staircase, to that sleep that never fails to come at her calm bidding. Gerard foregoes his evening pipe, because the smoking-room does not look to the front. In painful unrest, he unfastens the shutters of one of the saloon-windows, and, raising the stiff and seldom-opened sash, leans out, looking and listening--looking at the maiden moon that rides, pale and proud, while black ruffian clouds chase each other to overtake her. Mr. Brand is out, apparently; for half-past ten has been struck, in different tones--bass and treble, deep and squeaky--by half-a-dozen different clocks, and still he has not arrived. At length, to the watcher's strained ear, comes the sound of wheels descending the steep pitch, from Blessington village; then a brougham's lamps gleam, issuing from between the rhododendron banks, and roll, like two angry eyes, to the door. In his feverish anxiety, and impatience at the long tarrying of the sleepy footman, St. John himself admits the doctor; and, following him at a little distance, as he is ushered upstairs, sits down in his own bedroom, with the door wide open, ready to pounce out upon the small Æsculapius, as he passes along the gallery at his departure, and learn his verdict. The visit is rather a long one; to St. John, sitting still in his idle impatient misery, it seems as though the sound of Esther's opening door would never come; but never is a long day. At length the welcome sound is heard; and the young man, precipitating himself into the passage, comes face to face with a small elderly gentleman, shiveringly taking his way down the unwarmed ghostly old corridors. "Is it a serious case?" he asks, abruptly, framing the simple words as they rise from his full heart. Mr. Brand stares, surprised, at his questioner's blanched face. He had imagined that his patient was a little friendless orphan companion, whose life or death--save as a mere matter of compassion--were subjects of almost equal indifference to the people under whose roof she lies, panting out her young life. "_Serious?_ Well--oh! I assure you there is no cause for alarm, my dear sir," he says, imagining that he has got the key to the mystery; "it is nothing infectious, I assure you--nothing whatever!" "That is not what I asked," rejoins Gerard, bluntly. "I don't care whether it is infectious or not; is it _dangerous?_" "Are you any relation of the young lady, may I ask?--brother, perhaps?" inquires the little doctor, peering inquisitively, though under difficulties--for the abundant wind is playing rude tricks with the flame of his candle--into St. John's sad brown face. "No--none." "Well, then, to be candid with you, it _does_ look rather serious," he answers, with the careless deliberate calmness which those whose half-life is spent in pronouncing death-warrants seem insensibly to acquire: "a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs, brought on by neglect and exposure. By-the-by, can you inform me whether there is any predisposition to lung-disease in Miss--Miss Craven's family?" "I know nothing about her family," replies the other, gloomily. He has no reason, beyond the probability of the thing, for supposing that she had ever had a father or mother, much less a grandfather or grandmother. Mr. Brand retires, completely mystified; and St. John, re-entering his room, throws himself into an arm-chair, and, covering his face with his hands, sends up violent voiceless prayers for the young life that is exchanging the first passes with that skilfulest of fencers, whom the nations have christened "Death!" In all his rough godless life he has had small faith in the efficacy of prayer: but, on the bare chance of there being some good in it, he prays wordlessly in his stricken heart for her. Before they have done with him, the inmates of Blessington Hall have grown very familiar with Dr. Brand's face; night and morning, night and morning, coming and going, coming and going, through many days; for the adversary with whom the child is wrestling has thrown many a better and stouter than she--and the battle is bitter. It is of little use now that she hate the shadowing ginger curtains of the vast old wooden four-poster; there must she lie, through all the weary twenty-four hours, in paroxysms of acutest pain, in fits of utter breathlessness, in agonies of thirst. Grief for Jack, love for St. John, shamed concern at Miss Blessington's damaging story and insulting words, are all swallowed up in the consuming craving for something to wet her parched lips, to cool her dry throat--something to drink! something to drink! By-and-by, with the pain, she becomes light-headed--wanders a little--"babbles of green fields;" babbles to the uninterested ears of the sleepy tired nurse, of the twisted seat under the old cherry-tree, of the tea-roses up the kitchen-garden walk, of the yellow chickens in the rickyard. Then her delirium grows wilder: the green flabby Cupids on the walls come down out of the tapestry, and make at her. One, that is riding on a lion and blowing a horn, with fat cheeks puffed out, comes riding at her--riding up the bed-quilt, riding over her. Then the black and gold cocks on the old japan-chest, that, with neck-feathers ruffled, and heads lowered, stand ever, in act to fight, change their attitude: come pecking, pecking at her--pecking at her eyes; and she, with terrified hands stretched out, fights at them--thrusts them away. "And thrice the double twilights rose and fell, About a land where nothing seemed the same, At morn or eve, as in the days gone by." And it comes to pass, that there falls a day when these sick fancies pass--when the pain and breathlessness pass--and when Esther lies in utter exhaustion, weak as a day-old babe, whiter than any Annunciation lily, between her sheets. Eyes and ears and power of touch are still hers: but it seems as though all objects of sensation, of sight and sound and touch, reach her only through a thick blanket. She can see, as if at an immense distance off, shrouded in mist, the faces of doctor and nurse as they lean over her, and then, turning away, whisper together. She cannot hear what they say; she has no wish to hear--she has no wish for anything; only she lies, staring, with great eyes, straight before her at the bed-hangings, at the ceiling, at the little countless pigeon-holes in her toilet-table. One of the windows is open; and heaven's sweet breath circulates fresh and slow through the quiet room. It is Sunday; the village people are clustering about the church-door; the violets, like blue eyes that have slept through winter's night, are opening under the churchyard wall. The bells are ringing; now, loud and clear--"ding-dong bell! ding-dong bell!" almost as if they were being rung in the still chamber itself--they come; now, faint and far; the wind has caught the sound in his rough hand, and carried it otherwhither. Whether they ring loud or faint, whether they ring or ring not at all, she has no care; she has no care for anything. She is very weary: it seems as if there were but a faint life-spark left in her; she can scarce lift her hand to her head. Now and then they raise her up, and, without asking her consent, pour brandy and beef-tea down her reluctant throat. She is _so_ tired! Oh! why cannot they leave her alone! The slow hours roll themselves round; the people have gone into church, and have come out again. Mr. Brand is here still; he is entering at the door; he is leaning over her. What can he have to say that he must needs look so solemn over? "My dear Miss Craven," he begins, with slow distinctness, as if he imagined that her illness had carried away her powers of hearing, "Mr. Winter is here; would not you like to see him?" Mr. Winter is the meek M.A., whose voice the old squire drowns. She fixes her great eyes, "Yet larger through her leanness," upon his face--wondering as a child's just opened upon this strange green world. "I--why should I?" she asks, in a faint astonished whisper. She cannot speak above a whisper. The good man looks embarrassed. "You are very ill," he says, indirectly. "Am I?" "And people in your situation generally wish for the holy offices of a minister of the Church." "Do they?" She is too feeble to join one link to another in the simplest chain of reasoning. She has failed to grasp his meaning. He looks baffled, uneasy. "My dear young lady," he says, very gravely, "it is very painful for me to have such a sad task to perform; but I cannot reconcile it with my conscience not to tell you that, in all human probability, you have not many more days to live." Through the thick veil of her weakness and its attendant apathy pierces the sting of that awful news: her eyes dilate in their horror and fear, and she falls to weeping, feebly and helplessly. "Don't say that--it is not true. How unkind you are! I don't want to die; I'm so young; I have had so little pleasure!" "We must submit to God's will," says the doctor, a little tritely. It is so easy to submit to God's will towards one's friends and acquaintance. She does not answer, but raises her hands with difficulty to her wasted face, while the tears trickle hot and frequent through that poor white shield. "Have you any relations that you would like to have sent for?" inquires Mr. Brand, not unkindly; stooping over her, rather moved, but not very much so. Often before has it been his portion to say, to youth and maid and stalwart man, "Thou must die!" "I have no relations," she answers, almost inaudibly. "Any friends?" "I have no friends." "You have, then, no wish to see any one?" "No. Stay," she says, as he turns to leave her, reaching out her hand to detain him; "are you _quite_ sure that I shall die?" (Her lips quiver, and a slight shudder passes over her form, as she utters the words, "Is it _quite_ certain?") "It is impossible to be _quite_ certain in any case," he answers, slowly; "while there is life, there is hope, you know; but--but--I cannot buoy you up with a false confidence." She lies quiet a moment or two, regathering her spent strength. "How long do you think I shall live?" "It is impossible to say exactly," he replies, gravely. "A few days--a few hours; one cannot be certain which." Again she is silent, exhausted with the slight effort of framing a sentence. "Ask Mr. Gerard to come and see me--_now--at once--before I die!_" He looks at her in astonishment, with a half-suspicion that she is light-headed; but her eyes look back at him with such perfect sanity in their clear depths, that he must needs abandon that idea. He cannot choose but undertake her commission at her bidding. And St. John comes. They are singing the "Nunc Dimittis," which, saith Bacon, "is ever the sweetest canticle" in the Church, as he crosses the threshold of that room, and draws near that bed on which, but a few short nights ago, he had seen her, with his covetous lover's eyes, lying in all her round dimpled beauty. There comes no greeting blush _now_ into her cheeks--the cheeks, that the sound of his far-off footfall had been wont to redden. How can she, that is the affianced of great Death, blush for any _mortal_ lover? Her eyes lift themselves languidly to his face; and, even in the "valley of the shadow," dwell there comfortably; though in that countenance--never beautiful, and now made haggard by watching, with reddened eyelids and quivering muscles--a stranger would have seen small comeliness. "So I am going to die, they tell me!" she says, whisperingly--says it simply and mournfully. Gerard cannot answer; only he flings himself forward upon the bed, and devours her thin hand with miserable kisses. "Perhaps it is not true! Oh, I hope it is not, St. John!" she says, falling to weeping; in her feebleness and great dread of that goal to which all our highways and byways and field-paths lead: "Death, and great darkness after death!" Still no answer. "Cannot they do anything for me?" she asks piteously. He lifts his head; and in his eyes--the eyes that have not wept more than twice since he was a little white-frocked child--stand heavy burning tears. "Nothing, darling, I'm afraid," he answers, in a rough choked voice. "There is _no_ hope, then?" "Oh, poor little one! why do you torture me with such questions? I _dare_ not tell you a lie!" "You mean that I am _sure_ to die!" she says, faintly, with a slight shudder, while a look of utter hopeless fear comes into her wan face. He throws his arms about her in his great despair. "Why do you make me tell you such news _twice?_ Is not _once_ enough?" "It is _quite_ sure! Oh, I wish I was not so frightened!" His features contract in the agony of that moment; an overpowering temptation assails him, to tell her some pleasant falsehood about her state; but he resists it. "As far as anything human _can_ be sure, it is so," he says, turning away his head. "Are you sure there is no mistake?--is it _quite_ certain?" "Quite." "Then"--essaying to raise herself in the bed, and reaching out her slight, weary arms to him--"then kiss me, St. John!" Without a word he gathers her to his breast; fully understanding, in his riven heart, that this embrace, which she herself can ask for, must indeed be a final one; his lips cling to hers in the wild silence of a solemn last farewell. "I'm glad you are not angry with me now," she whispers, almost inaudibly; and then her arms slacken their clasp about his bronzed neck, and her head droops heavy and inert on his shoulder. And so they find them half an hour later: he, like one crazed, with a face as ashen-white as her own, clasping a lifeless woman to his breast. CHAPTER XLII. Lifeless! Yes! But there are two kinds of lifelessness: one from which there is no back-coming--one from which there is. Esther's is the latter. Although a member of that fraternity whose province it is to kill and to make alive has sapiently said of her, "She will die!--she has not week to live!" Mother Nature has made answer, "She shall _not_ die; I will save her alive! She has yet many years." And Esther lives. For many days, it is hard to predicate of her whether she be dead or alive; so faintly does the wave of life heave to and fro in her breast--so lowly does life's candle burn. But though the candle burn low, it is not blown out. By-and-bye strength gathers itself again, and comes back to pulse and vein and limb. At seventeen life holds us so fast in his embrace that he will hardly let us go. To the sick child there come sweet sleeps; there comes a desire for food--a pleasure in the dusty sunbeam streaming through the window--in the mote playing up and down on ceiling and wall. I marvel will the bliss of spirits at the Resurrection dawn, feeling the clothing of pure new bodies, surpass the delight that attends the renewal of the old body at the uprising from a great sickness? The blanket that hung between Esther and all objects of sensation is withdrawn: full consciousness returns, and remembrance; and in their company, untold shame--shame at not having died! The celandine's greenish buds are unclosing into little brazen wide-awake flowers in the hedge-banks: the crocuses in the garden-borders hold up their gold chalices to catch the gentle February rain and the mild February sunbeams; in the wood-hollows the mercury--spring's earliest herald--flourishes, thick and frequent, its stout green shoots. About the meadows, small gawky lambs make a feeble "ba-a-a-ing." It is drawing towards sundown. The window is open; and near it, on a beech bough, a thrush sits, singing a loud sweet even-song. Esther has been fully dressed for the first time, and has been moved into an adjoining dressing-room. In the small change of scene, there is, to her, intense delight--delight even in the changed pattern on the walls, in the different shape of the chairs--even in the brass handles of the old oak chest of drawers. Every power seems new and fresh--every sensation exquisitely keen; in every exercise of sight and sound and touch there is conscious joy. She has been amusing herself making little tests of her strength. She lifts a book that lies on the table beside her; it is small and light, but to her it seems over-heavy; she has to take two hands to it. She makes a pilgrimage from her arm-chair to the window--she has to catch at the wall, at the furniture, for support; but she gets there at last, and, sitting down on the window-seat, looks out at the quiet sky, blackened with home-coming rooks--at the pool made flame-red by the westering sun--at the peeping roof of the distant deer-barn. That little bit of roof brings a flood of recollections to her, and first and foremost amongst them stands St. John and her last interview with him. Although she is quite alone, a torrent of red invades cheeks and throat and brow, even to the roots of her hair. "_I sent for him_," she says to herself, with a sort of gasp; "_I asked him to kiss me_, and _I did not die!_ How horrible! I must never see him again." Then she falls to thinking about him: whether he is still in the house? whether he has made up his differences with Miss Blessington? whether he is very joyful at her own recovery? whether he is not penetrated with the ridiculousness of her impressive leave-taking, which, after all--oh bathos!--was no leave-taking at all? "He must never hear me mentioned again," she says, twisting her hands nervously together. "Perhaps he will forget it in time; perhaps he will not tell any one about it. How soon shall I be well enough to go?--in a week? five days? four? three?--and whither am I to go?" Aye, whither, Miss Craven? There are but two alternatives for her--the Union and Plas Berwyn. She must swallow her pride, and return to the Brandons: to the long prayers; to the half-past six tea and bread and scrape; to the three bits of bacon at breakfast; and to the perusal of the _Record_ and the _Rock:_ she must induce Mrs. Brandon again to advertise for a situation in a pious family. This morning's post has brought her four pages of doctrine, reproof, and instruction from Miss Bessy, and, lurking within them, has come a short, sweet, metrical prayer, adapted to every Christian's daily use: "My heart is like a rusty lock, Lord, oil it with Thy grace; And rub, and rub, and rub it, Lord, Till I can see Thy face." There is no time like the present; she will write now. She has drawn paper and pens towards her, when the door opens, and her friend the housemaid enters. Doctor and nurse have fled, "Like bats and owls, And such melancholy fowls, At the rising of the day." "If you please, Miss Craven, do you feel well enough to see visitors?" She looks up astonished. "I'm well enough for anything; but I'm sure I don't know who is likely to visit me." "Mr. Gerard was asking whether he might speak to you 'm?" "Certainly not--I mean yes--No.--Yes, I suppose--if he wishes," replies the girl, stammering hopelessly. Miss Craven looks rather small, and excessively childish, sunk in her huge elbow-chair; a white wrapper envelopes her figure; her hair, which she has not taken the trouble to dress properly, is twisted up in the loosest, unfashionablest, sweetest great knot at the back of her neck; while a cherry-coloured ribbon coquettishly snoods her noble small head: the innocentest, freshest, shyest rosebud-face, and the liquidest southern eyes, complete the picture. St. John apparently treads hard upon the heels of the messenger, for, before permission is well accorded him, he is in his mistress's presence. Upon his brown face is untold gladness--in his eyes enormous love; and in them lurks also a look of half-malicious, half-tender mirth. She rises, and then sits down again, in unutterable confusion; and at length holds out her hand with distant diffidence to him, while as intense a blush as ever made mortal woman call upon the hills to cover her, bathes every inch of her that is visible. Her cheeks feel like gigantic red globes, over which her eyes have difficulty in looking. _His_ eyes, laughing, pitiless, yet impassioned, refuse to leave her. "You did not give me so cold a greeting when I last saw you, Essie?" he says, with an enraging smile of passionate triumph. She turns away her head, and covers her face with both hands; but, in the interstices between her fingers, the lovely carnation blazes manifestly vivid. "Oh, don't--don't be so cruel!" she murmurs, in a stifled voice. "The truth can never be cruel!" he says quietly, smiling still; and so kneels down on the floor beside her. But she only murmurs, "Go away; _please_ go away! please let me alone!"--the words coming half-broken, half-lost, from behind the covering of her hands. He puts up his, and tries to draw away the screen from her shamed discomfited face, saying, "Look at me, Essie!" But she, with all her feeble strength, resists. "I cannot!--I cannot!" she cries, vehemently; "don't ask me! Why didn't I die? When they saw I was getting well, they ought to have killed me. Oh, I wish they had!" "I'm rather glad, on the whole, they did not," he answers, gravely; and so, with one final effort, he being strong, and she being weak, he obtains possession of her two hands, and her face lies bare, unshaded--dyed with an agony of shame--clothed with great beauty--under the hungry tenderness of his happy eyes. "To think of making one's last dying speech and confession, and then not dying after all," she says, in torments of confusion, yet unable to restrain an uneasy laugh. "It is _too_ disgraceful! I shall never get over it! _Never!_--NEVER!--_NEVER!!_" "Time, which mitigates all afflictions, _may_ mitigate yours," he replies, gaily, unable to resist the exquisite pleasure of teasing her. She turns from him with a petulant movement of head and shoulder. "Why don't you go?" she cries, the angry tears flashing into her eyes; "I hate the sight of you!" At that he grows grave. "Essie," he says, slipping his arms round her as she sits, shrinking away from him in the deep chintz chair, "in that awful moment, when you thought--and God knows I thought so too--that we were saying 'goodbye' to one another for _always_, the barriers that your wretched false pride had built up between us were knocked down; try as you may, you can never build them up again." "I knocked down plenty of barriers, I'm aware," she answers, ruefully. "You need not remind me of that!" "Never to be built up again any more--never any more!" he says, his mirth swallowed up in great solemn joy. She has fallen forwards into his embrace; he holds her little trembling form against his heart--a posture to which she submits, chiefly because it affords her an opportunity of hiding her face upon his shoulder. "Never any more!" she repeats, mechanically, and then there is silence, save for the thrush, that trills ever his high tender lay. Presently Essie stirs, and whispers, with uneasiness, "St. John!" "Well?" "You won't tell any one, will you?" "Tell them what?--that you and I are going to be married? By this time to-morrow I hope to have told every one I meet: I am not so selfish as to wish to keep such good news to myself." "No--I don't mean that; but you won't tell any one about--about--about _that?_" This is the nearest approach she can bear to make to the abhorred theme. "Esther!" "And you'll promise never to joke about it?" "_Never_, by the holy poker!" "And you won't twit me with it when we quarrel?" "What! you contemplate our having little differences of opinion?" "Of course," she answers, laughing; "when two such ill-tempered people come together, how can it be otherwise?" "Quarrel or no quarrel," he cries, passionately kissing her sweet shy lips, as one that can never be satiated with their tender warmth, "we are together now, for bad and good, for fair weather and foul, till death us do part! Say it after me, Essie; don't let ours be a one-sided compact." And Essie, obedient, murmurs after him, "Till death us do part!" * * * * * And so it comes to pass that in the sweet spring weather, when the ground is a carpet of strewn cherry-blooms, when the cows stand knee-deep in buttercups, and the brake-fern is uncrumpling its tender fronds, the church-bells ring out, and they two are wed. And the sun, that shines down on the bravery of the wedding pomp, as bride and groom pace by, shines also hotlier, with a more brazen sickly glare, on a soldier's grave, over which, three days ago, his comrades fired the parting volley on Bermuda's sultry shore. The name of the soldier to whom Heaven has granted his discharge is Robert Brandon. Esther Gerard may spare her remorse now; treachery of hers can wound that loyal heart, on which the worm feeds sweetly, never more! Not unknowing of the good fortune of the woman he had so madly, miserably, nobly loved, has he passed away. In his poor schoolboy scrawl he had written her a little simple, badly-worded note, bidding, "God bless and speed her on her way!" The tears had fallen hot and thick upon the paper; but he had wiped them off, and she had never guessed them. He has hoarded his scant pay, has denied himself many of the small comforts that to his brother-officers are bare necessaries of life, that he may send her a wedding-gift befitting Gerard's bride. And he had gone about his wonted ways with no moping martyr's airs, unshaken in his simple creed that, since God wills it, all must be for the best. His honest laugh, if it come seldomer than it used, yet is none the less hearty and genial when it does come. And then, that pestilence which, at stated seasons, never forgetting its appointed periods, visits that tropic clime, comes and lays its heavy hand on the shoulder of many a fair-haired youth; and, among the first, upon the stalwart shoulder of Robert Brandon. And he, with no life-hating madness, with no quarrel against fate, yet not all unwilling, having stoutly fought life's hard battle: "Surrenders his fair soul Unto his Captain--Christ!" THE END. 
55025	----	CELTIC FOLKLORE WELSH AND MANX BY JOHN RHYS, M.A., D.Litt. HON. LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH PROFESSOR OF CELTIC PRINCIPAL OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD VOLUME I OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS MDCCCCI TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE IN ANY WAY CONTRIBUTED TO THE PRODUCTION OF THIS WORK IT IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN TOKEN OF HIS GRATITUDE BY THE AUTHOR Our modern idioms, with all their straining after the abstract, are but primitive man's mental tools adapted to the requirements of civilized life, and they often retain traces of the form and shape which the neolithic worker's chipping and polishing gave them. PREFACE Towards the close of the seventies I began to collect Welsh folklore. I did so partly because others had set the example elsewhere, and partly in order to see whether Wales could boast of any story-tellers of the kind that delight the readers of Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands. I soon found what I was not wholly unprepared for, that as a rule I could not get a single story of any length from the mouths of any of my fellow countrymen, but a considerable number of bits of stories. In some instances these were so scrappy that it took me years to discover how to fit them into their proper context; but, speaking generally, I may say, that, as the materials, such as they were, accumulated, my initial difficulties disappeared. I was, however, always a little afraid of refreshing my memory with the legends of other lands lest I should read into those of my own, ideas possibly foreign to them. While one is busy collecting, it is safest probably not to be too much engaged in comparison: when the work of collecting is done that of comparing may begin. But after all I have not attempted to proceed very far in that direction, only just far enough to find elucidation here and there for the meaning of items of folklore brought under my notice. To have gone further would have involved me in excursions hopelessly beyond the limits of my undertaking, for comparative folklore has lately assumed such dimensions, that it seems best to leave it to those who make it their special study. It is a cause of genuine regret to me that I did not commence my inquiries earlier, when I had more opportunities of pursuing them, especially when I was a village schoolmaster in Anglesey and could have done the folklore of that island thoroughly; but my education, such as it was, had been of a nature to discourage all interest in anything that savoured of heathen lore and superstition. Nor is that all, for the schoolmasters of my early days took very little trouble to teach their pupils to keep their eyes open or take notice of what they heard around them; so I grew up without having acquired the habit of observing anything, except the Sabbath. It is to be hoped that the younger generation of schoolmasters trained under more auspicious circumstances, when the baleful influence of Robert Lowe has given way to a more enlightened system of public instruction, will do better, and succeed in fostering in their pupils habits of observation. At all events there is plenty of work still left to be done by careful observers and skilful inquirers, as will be seen from the geographical list showing approximately the provenance of the more important contributions to the Kymric folklore in this collection: the counties will be found to figure very unequally. Thus the anglicizing districts have helped me very little, while the more Welsh county of Carnarvon easily takes the lead; but I am inclined to regard the anomalous features of that list as in a great measure due to accident. In other words, some neighbourhoods have been luckier than others in having produced or attracted men who paid attention to local folklore; and if other counties were to be worked equally with Carnarvonshire, some of them would probably be found not much less rich in their yield. The anglicizing counties in particular are apt to be disregarded both from the Welsh and the English points of view, in folklore just as in some other things; and in this connexion I cannot help mentioning the premature death of the Rev. Elias Owen as a loss which Welsh folklorists will not soon cease to regret. My information has been obtained partly viva voce, partly by letter. In the case of the stories written down for me in Welsh, I may mention that in some instances the language is far from good; but it has not been thought expedient to alter it in any way, beyond introducing some consistency into the spelling. In the case of the longest specimen of the written stories, Mr. J. C. Hughes' Curse of Pantannas, it is worthy of notice in passing, that the rendering of it into English was followed by a version in blank verse by Sir Lewis Morris, who published it in his Songs of Britain. With regard to the work generally, my original intention was to publish the materials, obtained in the way described, with such stories already in print as might be deemed necessary by way of setting for them; and to let any theories or deductions in which I might be disposed to indulge follow later. In this way the first six chapters and portions of some of the others appeared from time to time in the publications of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion and in those of the Folk-Lore Society. This would have allowed me to divide the present work into the two well marked sections of materials and deductions. But, when the earlier part came to be edited, I found that I had a good deal of fresh material at my disposal, so that the chapters in question had in some instances to be considerably lengthened and in some others modified in other ways. Then as to the deductive half of the work, it may be mentioned that certain portions of the folklore, though ever apt to repeat themselves, were found when closely scrutinized to show serious lacunæ, which had to be filled in the course of the reasoning suggested by the materials in hand. Thus the idea of the whole consisting of two distinctly defined sections had to be given up or else allowed to wait till I should find time to recast it. But I could no more look forward to any such time than to the eventual possibility of escaping minor inconsistencies by quietly stepping through the looking-glass and beginning my work with the index instead of resting content to make it in the old-fashioned way at the end. There was, however, a third course, which is only mentioned to be rejected, and that was to abstain from all further publication; but what reader of books has ever known any of his authors to adopt that! To crown these indiscretions I have to confess that even when most of what I may call the raw material had been brought together, I had no clear idea what I was going to do with it; but I had a hazy notion, that, as in the case of an inveterate talker whose stream of words is only made the more boisterous by obstruction, once I sat down to write I should find reasons and arguments flowing in. It may seem as though I had been secretly conjuring with Vergil's words viresque adquirit eundo. Nothing so deliberate: the world in which I live swarms with busybodies dying to organize everybody and everything, and my instinctive opposition to all that order of tyranny makes me inclined to cherish a somewhat wild sort of free will. Still the cursory reader would be wrong to take for granted that there is no method in my madness: should he take the trouble to look for it, he would find that it has a certain unity of purpose, which has been worked out in the later chapters; but to spare him that trouble I venture to become my own expositor and to append the following summary:-- The materials crowded into the earlier chapters mark out the stories connected with the fairies, whether of the lakes or of the dry land, as the richest lode to be exploited in the mine of Celtic folklore. That work is attempted in the later chapters; and the analysis of what may briefly be described as the fairy lore given in the earlier ones carries with it the means of forcing the conviction, that the complex group of ideas identified with the little people is of more origins than one; in other words, that it is drawn partly from history and fact, and partly from the world of imagination and myth. The latter element proves on examination to be inseparably connected with certain ancient beliefs in divinities and demons associated, for instance, with lakes, rivers, and floods. Accordingly, this aspect of fairy lore has been dealt with in chapters vi and vii: the former is devoted largely to the materials themselves, while the latter brings the argument to a conclusion as to the intimate connexion of the fairies with the water-world. Then comes the turn of the other kind of origin to be discussed, namely, that which postulates the historical existence of the fairies as a real race on which have been lavishly superinduced various impossible attributes. This opens up a considerable vista into the early ethnology of these islands, and it involves a variety of questions bearing on the fortunes here of other races. In the series which suggests itself the fairies come first as the oldest and lowest people: then comes that which I venture to call Pictish, possessed of a higher civilization and of warlike instincts. Next come the earlier Celts of the Goidelic branch, the traces, linguistic and other, of whose presence in Wales have demanded repeated notice; and last of all come the other Celts, the linguistic ancestors of the Welsh and all the other speakers of Brythonic. The development of these theses, as far as folklore supplies materials, occupies practically the remaining five chapters. Among the subsidiary questions raised may be instanced those of magic and the origin of druidism; not to mention a neglected aspect of the Arthurian legend, the intimate association of the Arthur of Welsh folklore and tradition with Snowdon, and Arthur's attitude towards the Goidelic population in his time. Lastly, I have the pleasant duty of thanking all those who have helped me, whether by word of mouth or by letter, whether by reference to already printed materials or by assistance in any other way: the names of many of them will be found recorded in their proper places. As a rule my inquiries met with prompt replies, and I am not aware that any difficulties were purposely thrown in my way. Nevertheless I have had difficulties in abundance to encounter, such as the natural shyness of some of those whom I wished to examine on the subject of their recollections, and above all the unavoidable difficulty of cross-questioning those whose information reached me by post. For the precise value of any evidence bearing on Celtic folklore is almost impossible to ascertain, unless it can be made the subject of cross-examination. This arises from the fact that we Celts have a knack of thinking ourselves in complete accord with what we fancy to be in the inquirer's mind, so that we are quite capable of misleading him in perfect good faith. A most apposite instance, deserving of being placed on record, came under my notice many years ago. In the summer of 1868 I spent several months in Paris, where I met the historian Henri Martin more than once. On being introduced to him he reminded me that he had visited South Wales not long before, and that he had been delighted to find the peasantry there still believing in the transmigration of souls. I expressed my surprise, and remarked that he must be joking. Nothing of the kind, he assured me, as he had questioned them himself: the fact admitted of no doubt. I expressed further surprise, but as I perceived that he was proud of the result of his friendly encounters with my countrymen I never ventured to return to the subject, though I always wondered what in the world it could mean. A few years ago, however, I happened to converse with one of the most charming and accomplished of Welsh ladies, when she chanced to mention Henri Martin's advent: it turned out that he had visited Dr. Charles Williams, then the Principal of Jesus College, and that Dr. Williams introduced him to his friends in South Wales. So M. Martin arrived among the hospitable friends of the lady talking to me, who had in fact to act as his interpreter: I never understood that he could talk much English or any Welsh. Now I have no doubt that M. Martin, with his fixed ideas about the druids and their teaching, propounded palpably leading questions for the Welsh people whom he wished to examine. His fascinating interpreter put them into terse Welsh, and the whole thing was done. I could almost venture to write out the dialogue, which gave back to the great Frenchman his own exact notions from the lips of simple peasants in that subtle non-Aryan syntax, which no Welsh barrister has ever been able to explain to the satisfaction of a bewildered English judge trying to administer justice among a people whom he cannot wholly comprehend. This will serve to illustrate one of the difficulties with which the collector of folklore in Wales has to cope. I have done my best to reduce the possible extent of the error to which it might give rise; and it is only fair to say that those whom I plagued with my questionings bore the tedium of it with patience, and that to them my thanks are due in a special degree. Neither they, however, nor I, could reasonably complain, if we found other folklorists examining other witnesses on points which had already occupied us; for in such matters one may say with confidence, that in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. JOHN RHYS. Jesus College, Oxford, Christmas, 1900. CONTENTS PAGE GEOGRAPHICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES xxv LIST OF BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES xxxi CHAPTER I Undine's Kymric Sisters 1 I. The legend of Llyn y Fan Fach 2 II. The legend of Llyn y Forwyn 23 III. Some Snowdon lake legends 30 IV. The heir of Ystrad 38 V. Llandegai and Llanllechid 50 VI. Mapes' story of Llyn Syfadon 70 CHAPTER II The Fairies' Revenge 75 I. Bedgelert and its environs 75 II. The Pennant Valley 107 III. Glasynys' yarns 109 IV. An apple story 125 V. The Conwy afanc 130 VI. The Berwyn and Aran Fawdwy 135 VII. The hinterland of Aberdovey 141 VIII. Some more Merioneth stories 146 IX. The Children of Rhys Dwfn 151 X. Southey and the Green Isles of the Sea 169 XI. The curse of Pantannas 173 XII. More fairy displeasure 192 CHAPTER III Fairy Ways and Words 197 I. The folklore of Nant Conwy 197 II. Scenes of the Mabinogi of Math 207 III. Celynnog Fawr and Llanaelhaearn 214 IV. The blind man's folklore 219 V. The old saddler's recollections 222 VI. Traces of Tom Tit Tot 226 VII. March and his horse's ears 231 VIII. The story of the Marchlyn Mawr 234 IX. The fairy ring of Cae Lleidr Dyfrydog 238 X. A Cambrian kelpie 242 XI. Sundry traits of fairy character 244 XII. Ynys Geinon and its fairy treasures 251 XIII. The aged infant 257 XIV. Fairy speech 269 CHAPTER IV Manx Folklore 284 The fenodyree or Manx brownie 286 The sleih beggey or little people 289 The butches or witches and the hare 293 Charmers and their methods 296 Comparisons from the Channel Islands 301 Magic and ancient modes of thought 302 The efficacy of fire to detect the witch 304 Burnt sacrifices 305 Laa Boaldyn or May-day 308 Laa Lhunys or the beginning of harvest 312 Laa Houney or Hollantide beginning the year 315 Sundry prognostications and the time for them 317 CHAPTER V The Fenodyree and his Friends 323 Lincolnshire parallels 323 The brownie of Blednoch and Bwca'r Trwyn 325 Prognostication parallels from Lincolnshire and Herefordshire 327 The traffic in wind and the Gallizenæ 330 Wells with rags and pins 332 St. Catherine's hen plucked at Colby 335 The qualtagh or the first-foot and the question of race 336 Sundry instances of things unlucky 342 Manx reserve and the belief in the Enemy of Souls 346 The witch of Endor's influence and the respectability of the charmer's vocation 349 Public penance enforced pretty recently 350 CHAPTER VI The Folklore of the Wells 354 Rag wells in Wales 354 The question of distinguishing between offerings and vehicles of disease 358 Mr. Hartland's decision 359 The author's view revised and illustrated 360 T. E. Morris' account of the pin well of Llanfaglan 362 Other wishing and divining wells 364 The sacred fish of Llanberis and Llangybi 366 Ffynnon Grassi producing the Glasfryn lake 367 The Morgan of that lake and his name 372 Ffynnon Gywer producing Bala Lake 376 Bala and other towns doomed to submersion 377 The legend of Llyn Llech Owen 379 The parallels of Lough Neagh and Lough Ree 381 Seithennin's realm overwhelmed by the sea 382 Seithennin's name and its congeners 385 Prof. Dawkins on the Lost Lands of Wales 388 Certain Irish wells not visited with impunity 389 The Lough Sheelin legend compared with that of Seithennin 393 The priesthood of the wells of St. Elian and St. Teilo 395 CHAPTER VII Triumphs of the Water-world 401 The sea encroaching on the coast of Glamorgan 402 The Kenfig tale of crime and vengeance 403 The Crymlyn story and its touch of fascination 404 Nennius' description of Oper Linn Liguan compared 406 The vengeance legend of Bala Lake 408 Legends about the Llynclys Pool 410 The fate of Tyno Helig 414 The belief in cities submerged intact 415 The phantom city and the bells of Aberdovey 418 The ethics of the foregoing legends discussed 419 The limits of the delay of punishment 420 Why the fairies delay their vengeance 423 Non-ethical legends of the eruption of water 425 Cutting the green sward a probable violation of ancient tabu avenged by water divinities 427 The lake afanc's rôle in this connexion 428 The pigmies of the water-world 432 The Conwy afanc and the Highland water-horse 433 The equine features of March and Labraid Lore 435 Mider and the Mac Óc's well horses 436 The Gilla Decair's horse and Du March Moro 437 March ab Meirchion associated with Mona 439 The Welsh deluge Triads 440 Names of the Dee and other rivers in North Wales 441 The Lydney god Nudons, Nuada, and Llud 445 The fairies associated in various ways with water 449 The cyhiraeth and the Welsh banshee 452 Ancestress rather than ancestor 454 CHAPTER VIII Welsh Cave Legends 456 The question of classification 456 The fairy cave of the Arennig Fawr 456 The cave of Mynyd y Cnwc 457 Waring's version of Iolo's legend of Craig y Dinas 458 Craigfryn Hughes' Monmouthshire tale 462 The story of the cave occupied by Owen Lawgoch 464 How London Bridge came to figure in that story 466 Owen Lawgoch in Ogo'r Dinas 467 Dinas Emrys with the treasure hidden by Merlin 469 Snowdonian treasure reserved for the Goidel 470 Arthur's death on the side of Snowdon 473 The graves of Arthur and Rhita 474 Elis o'r Nant's story of Llanciau Eryri's cave 476 The top of Snowdon named after Rhita 477 Drystan's cairn 480 The hairy man's cave 481 Returning heroes for comparison with Arthur and Owen Lawgoch 481 The baledwyr's Owen to return as Henry the Ninth 484 Owen a historical man = Froissart's Yvain de Gales 487 Froissart's account of him and the questions it raises 488 Owen ousting Arthur as a cave-dweller 493 Arthur previously supplanting a divinity of the class of the sleeping Cronus of Demetrius 493 Arthur's original sojourn located in Faery 495 CHAPTER IX Place-name Stories 498 The Triad of the Swineherds of the Isle of Prydain 499 The former importance of swine's flesh as food 501 The Triad clause about Coll's straying sow 503 Coll's wanderings arranged to explain place-names 508 The Kulhwch account of Arthur's hunt of Twrch Trwyth in Ireland 509 A parley with the boars 511 The hunt resumed in Pembrokeshire 512 The boars reaching the Loughor Valley 514 Their separation 515 One killed by the Men of Llydaw in Ystrad Yw 516 Ystrad Yw defined and its name explained 516 Twrch Trwyth escaping to Cornwall after an encounter in the estuary of the Severn 519 The comb, razor, and shears of Twrch Trwyth 519 The name Twrch Trwyth 521 Some of the names evidence of Goidelic speech 523 The story about Gwydion and his swine compared 525 Place-name explanations blurred or effaced 526 Enumeration of Arthur's losses in the hunt 529 The Men of Llydaw's identity and their Syfadon home 531 Further traces of Goidelic names 536 A Twrch Trwyth incident mentioned by Nennius 537 The place-name Carn Cabal discussed 538 Duplicate names with the Goidelic form preferred in Wales 541 The same phenomenon in the Mabinogion 543 The relation between the families of Llyr, Dôn, and Pwyll 548 The elemental associations of Llyr and Lir 549 Matthew Arnold's idea of Medieval Welsh story 551 Brân, the Tricephal, and the Letto-Slavic Triglaus 552 Summary remarks as to the Goidels in Wales 553 CHAPTER X Difficulties of the Folklorist 556 The terrors of superstition and magic 557 The folklorist's activity no fostering of superstition 558 Folklore a portion of history 558 The difficulty of separating story and history 559 Arthur and the Snowdon Goidels as an illustration 559 Rhita Gawr and the mad kings Nynio and Peibio 560 Malory's version and the name Rhita, Ritho, Ryons 562 Snowdon stories about Owen Ymhacsen and Cai 564 Goidelic topography in Gwyned 566 The Goidels becoming Compatriots or Kymry 569 The obscurity of certain superstitions a difficulty 571 Difficulties arising from their apparent absurdity illustrated by the March and Labraid stories 571 Difficulties from careless record illustrated by Howells' Ychen Bannog 575 Possible survival of traditions about the urus 579 A brief review of the lake legends and the iron tabu 581 The scrappiness of the Welsh Tom Tit Tot stories 583 The story of the widow of Kittlerumpit compared 585 Items to explain the names Sìli Ffrit and Sìli go Dwt 590 Bwca'r Trwyn both brownie and bogie in one 593 That bwca a fairy in service, like the Pennant nurse 597 The question of fairies concealing their names 597 Magic identifying the name with the person 598 Modryb Mari regarding cheese-baking as disastrous to the flock 599 Her story about the reaper's little black soul 601 Gwenogvryn Evans' lizard version 603 Diseases regarded as also material entities 604 The difficulty of realizing primitive modes of thought 605 CHAPTER XI Folklore Philosophy 607 The soul as a pigmy or a lizard, and the word enaid 607 A different notion in the Mabinogi of Math 608 The belief in the persistence of the body through changes 610 Shape-shifting and rebirth in Gwion's transformations 612 Tuan mac Cairill, Amairgen, and Taliessin 615 D'Arbois de Jubainville's view of Erigena's teaching 617 The druid master of his own transformations 620 Death not a matter of course so much as of magic 620 This incipient philosophy as Gaulish druidism 622 The Gauls not all of one and the same beliefs 623 The name and the man 624 Enw, 'name,' and the idea of breathing 625 The exact nature of the association still obscure 627 The Celts not distinguishing between names and things 628 A Celt's name on him, not by him or with him 629 The druid's method of name-giving non-Aryan 631 Magic requiring metrical formulæ 632 The professional man's curse producing blisters 632 A natural phenomenon arguing a thin-skinned race 633 Cursing of no avail without the victim's name 635 Magic and kingship linked in the female line 636 CHAPTER XII Race in Folklore and Myth 639 Glottology and comparative mythology 640 The question of the feminine in Welsh syntax 642 The Irish goddess Danu and the Welsh Dôn 644 Tynghed or destiny in the Kulhwch story 646 Traces of a Welsh confarreatio in the same context 649 Þokk in the Balder story compared with tynghed 650 Questions of mythology all the harder owing to race mixture 652 Whether the picture of Cúchulainn in a rage be Aryan or not 653 Cúchulainn exempt from the Ultonian couvade 654 Cúchulainn racially a Celt in a society reckoning descent by birth 656 Cúchulainn as a rebirth of Lug paralleled in Lapland 657 Doubtful origin of certain legends about Lug 658 The historical element in fairy stories and lake legends 659 The notion of the fairies being all women 661 An illustration from Central Australia 662 Fairy counting by fives evidence of a non-Celtic race 663 The Basque numerals as an illustration 665 Prof. Sayce on Irishmen and Berbers 665 Dark-complexioned people and fairy changelings 666 The blond fairies of the Pennant district exceptional 668 A summary of fairy life from previous chapters 668 Sir John Wynne's instance of men taken for fairies 670 Some of the Brythonic names for fairies 671 Dwarfs attached to the fortunes of their masters 672 The question of fairy cannibalism 673 The fairy Corannians and the historical Coritani 674 St. Guthlac at Croyland in the Fens 676 The Irish sid, side, and the Welsh Caer Sidi 677 The mound dwellings of Pechts and Irish fairies 679 Prof. J. Morris Jones explaining the non-Aryan syntax of neo-Celtic by means of Egyptian and Berber 681 The Picts probably the race that introduced it 682 The first pre-Celtic people here 683 Probably of the same race as the neolithic dwarfs of the Continent 683 The other pre-Celtic race, the Picts and the people of the Mabinogion 684 A word or two by way of epilogue 686 Additions and Corrections 689 Index 695 We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion--of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd--could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony? That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire--that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed--that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest--or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring--were all equally probable where no law of agency was understood.... There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be criticised. Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia. A GEOGRAPHICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES AND SOURCES OF THE MORE IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WELSH FOLKLORE ANGLESEY. Aberffraw: E. S. Roberts (after Hugh Francis), 240, 241. Llandyfrydog: E. S. Roberts (after Robert Roberts), 239, 240. Llyn yr Wyth Eidion: (no particulars), 429. Mynyd y Cnwc: A writer in the Brython for 1859, 457, 458. Mynyd Mechell: Morris Evans (from his grandmother), 203, 204. Towyn Trewern: John Roberts, 36-8. ? : Lewis Morris, in the Gwyliedyd, 450-2. BRECKNOCKSHIRE. Cwm Tawe: Rd. L. Davies, 256, 257. ,, : Rd. L. Davies (after J. Davies), 251-6. Llangorse: Giraldus, in his Itinerarium Kambriæ, 72. ? : Walter Mapes, in his book De Nugis, 70-2. ? : The Brython for 1863, 73, 74. Llyn Cwm Llwch neighbourhood: Ivor James, 21, 430, 445. ? : Ed. Davies, in his Mythology and Rites, 20, 21. CARDIGANSHIRE. Atpar: John Rhys (from Joseph Powell), 648, 649. Bronnant: D. Ll. Davies, 248, 249. Cadabowen: J. Gwenogvryn Evans, 603, 604. Llanwenog: J. Gwenogvryn Evans, 648. Llyn Eidwen: J. E. Rogers of Abermeurig, 578. Moedin: Howells, in his Cambrian Superstitions, 245. ,, : D. Silvan Evans, in his Ystên Sioned, 271-3. Ponterwyd: John Rhys, 294, 338, 378, 391, 392. ,, : Mary Lewis (Modryb Mari), 601, 602. Swyd Ffynnon: D. Ll. Davies, 246, 247, 250. Tregaron and neighbourhood: John Rhys (from John Jones and others), 577-9. Troed yr Aur } : Benjamin Williams (Gwynionyd), 166-8. and } : Gwynionyd, in the Brython for 1858 and 1860, Verwig? } 151-5, 158-60, 163, 164, 464-6. Ystrad Meurig: Isaac Davies, 245. ,, ,, : A farmer, 601. ? : A writer in the Brython for 1861, 690. CARMARTHENSHIRE. Cenarth: B. Davies, in the Brython, 1858, 161, 162. Llandeilo: D. Lleufer Thomas, in Y Geninen for 1896, 469. ,, : Mr. Stepney-Gulston, in the Arch. Camb. for 1893, 468. Llandybie: John Fisher, 379, 380. ,, : Howells, in his Cambrian Superstitions, 381. ,, : John Fisher and J. P. Owen, 468. Mydfai: Wm. Rees of Tonn, in the Physicians of Mydvai, 2-15. ,, : The Bishop of St. Asaph, 15, 16. ,, : John Rhys, 16. ? : Joseph Joseph of Brecon, 16. ? : Wirt Sikes, in his British Goblins, 17, 18. Mynyd y Banwen: Llywarch Reynolds, 18, 19, 428-30. ? : I. Craigfryn Hughes, 487. CARNARVONSHIRE. Aber Soch: Margaret Edwards, 231. ,, : A blacksmith in the neighbourhood, 232. ? : Edward Llwyd: see the Brython for 1860, 233, 234. ? : MS. 134 in the Peniarth Collection, 572, 573. Aberdaron: Mrs. Williams and another, 228. ? : Evan Williams of Rhos Hirwaen, 230. Bedgelert: Wm. Jones, 49, 80, 81, 94-7, 99, 100-5. ,, : ,, in the Brython for 1861-2, 86-9, 98-9. ,, : The Brython for 1861, 470, 473, 474. Bethesda: David Evan Davies (Dewi Glan Ffrydlas), 60-4, 66. Bettws y Coed: Edward Llwyd: see the Cambrian Journal for 1859, 130-3. Criccieth neighbourhood: Edward Llewelyn, 219-21. ? : Edward Llwyd: see the Camb. Journal for 1859, 201, 202. Dinorwig: E. Lloyd Jones, 234-7. Dolbenmaen: W. Evans Jones, 107-9. Dolwydelan: see Bedgelert. ,, : see Gwybrnant. Drws y Coed: S. R. Williams (from M. Williams and another), 38-40. ? : ,, 89, 90. Edern: John Williams (Alaw Lleyn), 275-9. Four Crosses: Lewis Jones, 222-5. Glasfryn Uchaf: John Jones (Myrdin Fard), 367, 368. ,, ,, : Mr. and Mrs. Williams-Ellis, 368-72. Glynllifon: Wm. Thomas Solomon, 208-14. Gwybrnant: Ellis Pierce (Elis o'r Nant), 476-9. Llanaelhaearn: R. Hughes of Uwchlaw'r Ffynnon, 214, 215, 217-9. Llanberis: Mrs. Rhys and her relatives, 31-6, 604. ,, : M. and O. Rhys, 229. ,, : A correspondent in the Liverpool Mercury, 366, 367. ? : Howell Thomas (from G. B. Gattie), 125-30. ? : Pennant, in his Tours in Wales, 125. Llandegai: H. Derfel Hughes, 52-60, 68. ,, : ,, ,, in his Antiquities, 471, 472. ,, : E. Owen, in the Powysland Club's Collections, 237, 238. Llandwrog: Hugh Evans and others, 207. Llanfaglan: T. E. Morris (from Mrs. Roberts), 362, 363. Llangybi: John Jones (Myrdin Fard), 366. ,, : Mrs. Williams-Ellis, 366, 471. Llaniestin: Evan Williams, 228, 229, 584. Llanllechid: Owen Davies (Eos Llechid), 41-6, 50-2. Nefyn: Lowri Hughes and another woman, 226, 227. ,, : John Williams (Alaw Lleyn), 228. ,, : A writer in the Brython for 1860, 164. Penmachno: Gethin Jones, 204-6. Rhyd Du: Mrs. Rhys, 604. Trefriw: Morris Hughes and J. D. Maclaren, 198-201. ,, : Pierce Williams, 30. Tremadoc: Jane Williams, 221, 222. ,, : R. I. Jones (from his mother and Ellis Owen), 105-7. ,, : Ellis Owen (cited by Wm. Jones), 95. Waen Fawr: Owen Davies, 41. ? : Glasynys, in Cymru Fu, 91-3, 110-23. ? : ,, in the Brython for 1863, 40, 41. ? : A London Eistedfod (1887) competitor, 361, 362. ? : John Jones (Myrdin Fard), 361, 362, 364-8. ? : Owen Jones (quoted in the Brython for 1861), 414, 415. Yspytty Ifan?: A Liverpool Eistedfod (1900) competitor, 692. DENBIGHSHIRE. Bryneglwys: E. S. Roberts (from Mrs. Davies), 241, 242. Eglwyseg: E. S. Roberts (after Thomas Morris), 238. Ffynnon Eilian: Mrs. Silvan Evans, 357. ,, ,, : Isaac Foulkes, in his Enwogion Cymru, 396. ,, ,, : Lewis, in his Topographical Dictionary, 395, 396. ,, ,, : P. Roberts, in his Camb. Popular Antiquities, 396. ,, ,, : A writer in Y Nofeld, 396. Llangollen: Hywel (Wm. Davies), 148. Pentre Voelas: Elias Owen, in his Welsh Folk-Lore, 222. FLINTSHIRE. Nil. GLAMORGANSHIRE. Bridgend: J. H. Davies, D. Brynmor-Jones, J. Rhys, 354, 355. Crymlyn: Cadrawd, in the South Wales Daily News, 405, 406. ? : Wirt Sikes, in his British Goblins, 191, 192, 405. Kenfig: Iolo Morganwg, in the Iolo MSS., 403, 404. ? : David Davies, 402. Llanfabon: I. Craigfryn Hughes, 257-268. Llanwynno: Glanffrwd, in his Plwyf Llanwyno, 26. Merthyr Tydfil: Llywarch Reynolds (from his mother), 269. Quakers' Yard: I. Craigfryn Hughes, 173-91. Rhonda Fechan: Llewellyn Williams, 24, 25. ,, ,, : J. Probert Evans, 25, 27. ,, ,, : Ll. Reynolds (from D. Evans and others), 27-9. Rhonda Valley: D. J. Jones, 356. ? : Dafyd Morganwg, in his Hanes Morganwg, 356. ? : Waring, in his Recollections of Edward Williams, 458-61. MERIONETHSHIRE. Aberdovey: J. Pughe, in the Arch. Camb. for 1853, 142-6, 428. ,, : Mrs. Prosser Powell, 416. ? : M. B., in the Monthly Packet for 1859, 416, 417. Ardudwy: Hywel (Wm. Davies), 147, 148. Bala: David Jones of Trefriw: see Cyfaill yr Aelwyd, 376, 377. ,, : Wm. Davies and Owen M. Edwards, 378. ? : Humphreys' Llyfr Gwybodaeth Gyffredinol, 408-10. ? : J. H. Roberts, in Edwards' Cymru for 1897, 148-51. Dolgelley: Lucy Griffith (from a Dolgelley man), 243, 244. Llandrillo: E. S. Roberts (from A. Evans and Mrs. Edwards), 138-41. Llanegryn: Mr. Williams and Mr. Rowlands, 243. ,, : A Llanegryn man (after Wm. Pritchard), 242. ,, : Another Llanegryn man, 242, 243. Llanuwchllyn: Owen M. Edwards, 147. ? : J. H. Roberts, in Edwards' Cymru for 1897, 215-7, 457. ? : Glasynys, in the Brython for 1862, 137. ? : ,, in the Taliesin for 1859-60, 215, 216, 456, 457. MONMOUTHSHIRE. Aberystruth: Edm. Jones, in his Parish of Aberystruth, 195, 196. Llandeilo Cressenny: Elizabeth Williams, 192, 193. Llanover: Wm. Williams and other gardeners there, 193, 194. ,, : Mrs. Gardner of Ty Uchaf Llanover, 194, 195. ,, : Professor Sayce, 602. Risca?: I. Craigfryn Hughes (from hearsay in the district between Llanfabon and Caerleon), 462-4, 487, 593-6. MONTGOMERYSHIRE. Llanidloes: Elias Owen, in his Welsh Folk-Lore, 275. PEMBROKESHIRE. Fishguard: E. Perkins of Penysgwarne, 172, 173. ,, : Ferrar Fenton, in the Pembroke County Guardian, 160. Llandeilo Llwydarth: The Melchior family, 398. ,, ,, : Benjamin Gibby, 399, 400. Nevern: J. Thomas of Bancau Bryn Berian, 689. Trevine: 'Ancient Mariner,' in the Pembroke County Guardian, 171. ? : Ferrar Fenton, in the Pembroke County Guardian, 171. ? : Ab Nadol, in the Brython for 1861, 165. ? : Southey, in his Madoc, 170. RADNORSHIRE. Nil. TO ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN The author would be glad to hear of unrecorded Welsh stories, or bits of Welsh stories not comprised in this volume. He would also be grateful for the names of more localities in which the stories here given, or variants of them, are still remembered. It will be his endeavour to place on record all such further information, except stories about spooks and ghosts of the ordinary type. LIST OF BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES Ab Gwilym: Bardoniaeth Dafyd ab Gwilym, edited by Cyndelw (Liverpool, 1873), 206, 233, 439, 444, 671. Adamnan: The Life of St. Columba, written by Adamnan, edited by William Reeves (Dublin, 1857), 545. Agrippa: H. Cornelius Agrippa De Occulta Philosophia (Paris, 1567), 213. Aneurin: The Book of Aneurin (see Skene), 226, 281, 543. Antiquary, the, a magazine devoted to the study of the past, published by Elliot Stock (London, 1880-), 467. ,, : the Scottish: see Stevenson. Archæologia Cambrensis, the Journal of the Cambrian Archæological Association (London, 1846-), 73, 141-6, 233, 366, 403, 468, 528, 532, 533, 542, 566, 570, 579. Athenæum, the, a journal of English and foreign literature, science, fine arts, music, and the drama (London, 1828-), 335, 612. Atkinson: The Book of Ballymote, a collection of pieces (prose and verse) in the Irish language, compiled about the beginning of the fifteenth century, published by the Royal Irish Academy, with introduction, analysis of contents, and index by Robert Atkinson (Dublin, 1887), 375. ,, : The Book of Leinster, sometimes called the Book of Glendalough, a collection of pieces (prose and verse) in the Irish language, compiled, in part, about the middle of the twelfth century, published by the Royal Irish Academy, with introduction, analysis of contents, and index by Robert Atkinson (Dublin, 1880), 381, 390, 392, 528, 531, 616, 618, 635, 657. Aubrey: Miscellanies collected by John Aubrey (London, 1696) [the last chapter is on second-sighted persons in Scotland], 273. Bastian: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, edited by A. Bastian and others (Berlin, 1869-), 684. Bathurst: Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park: see 445, 446. Behrens: Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Litteratur, edited by D. Behrens (Oppeln and Leipsic, 1879-), 480. Bell: Early Ballads, edited by Robert Bell (London, 1877), 317. Bertrand: La Religion des Gaulois, les Druides et le Druidisme, by Alexandre Bertrand (Paris, 1897), 552, 622, 623. Bible: The Holy Bible, revised version (Oxford, 1885), 583. ,, : The Manx Bible, printed for the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1819), 288, 297, 348. Boschet: La Vie du Père Maunoir, by Boschet (Paris, 1697), 386. Bourke: The Bull 'Ineffabilis' in four Languages, translated and edited by the Rev. Ulick J. Bourke (Dublin, 1868), 606. Boyd Dawkins: Professor Boyd Dawkins' Address on the Place of a University in the History of Wales (Bangor, 1900), 388, 389. Bray: The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, their Natural History, Manners, Customs, Superstitions, &c., in a series of letters to the late Robert Southey, by Mrs. Bray (new ed., London, 1879), 213. Braz: La Légende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne, Croyances, Traditions et Usages des Bretons Armoricains, by A. le Braz (Paris, 1892), 273. British Archæological Association, the Journal of the: see 674. British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report of the (John Murray, London, 1833-), 103, 310, 346, 590. Brynmor-Jones: The Welsh People, by John Rhys and David Brynmor-Jones (London, 1900), 421, 448, 454, 488, 548, 554, 613, 656, 661. Brython, Y: see Silvan Evans. Cambrian: The Cambrian Biography: see Owen. ,, : The Cambrian Journal, published under the auspices of the Cambrian Institute [the first volume appeared in 1854 in London, and eventually the publication was continued at Tenby by R. Mason, who went on with it till the year 1864], 81, 130, 201, 202, 480, 564. ,, : The Cambrian newspaper, published at Swansea, 468. ,, : The Cambrian Popular Antiquities: see Roberts. ,, : The Cambrian Quarterly Magazine (London, 1829-33), 202. ,, : The Cambrian Register, printed for E. and T. Williams (London, 1796-1818), 217. Campbell: Popular Tales of the West Highlands, with a translation, by J. F. Campbell (Edinburgh, 1860-2), 433, 434, 690. Caradoc: The Gwentian Chronicle of Caradoc of Llancarvan, 404. ,, : The History of Wales written originally in British by Caradoc of Lhancarvan, Englished by Dr. Powell and augmented by W. Wynne (London, 1774), 476, 480. Carmarthen: The Black Book of Carmarthen (see Skene), 543. Carnarvon: Registrum vulgariter nuncupatum 'The Record of Carnarvon,' è Codice msto Descriptum (London, 1838), 70, 201, 488, 567-9, 693. Carrington: Report of the Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire, Chairman, the Earl of Carrington (London, 1896), 488. Chambers: Popular Rhymes of Scotland, by Robert Chambers (Edinburgh, 1841, 1858), 585. Charencey, H. de, in the Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 664. Chaucer: The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited from numerous manuscripts by the Rev. Prof. Skeat (Oxford, 1894), 75. Chrétien: Erec und Enide von Christian von Troyes, published by Wendelin Foerster (Halle, 1890), 375, 672. Cicero: OEuvres Complètes de Cicéron (the Didot ed., Paris, 1875), 652. Clark: Limbus Patrum Morganiæ et Glamorganiæ, being the genealogies of the older families of the lordships of Morgan and Glamorgan, by George T. Clark (London, 1886), 26. Clodd: Tom Tit Tot, an essay on savage philosophy in folklore, by Edward Clodd (London, 1898), 584, 598, 607, 627, 628, 630. Cochrane: The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Robert Cochrane, Secretary (Hodges, Figgis & Co., Dublin), 546. Cockayne: Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of early England, by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne (Rolls Series, London, 1864-6), 293. Cormac: Cormac's Glossary, translated and annotated by John O'Donovan, edited with notes and indices by Whitley Stokes (Calcutta, 1868), 51, 310, 521, 629, 632. Corneille: Le Cid, by P. Corneille, edited by J. Bué (London, 1889), 655. Cosquin: Contes populaires de Lorraine, by Emmanuel Cosquin (Paris, 1886), 520. Cothi: The Poetical Works of Lewis Glyn Cothi, a Welsh bard who flourished in the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII, edited for the Cymmrodorion Society by the Rev. John Jones 'Tegid,' and the Rev. Walter Davies 'Gwallter Mechain' (Oxford, 1837), 74, 134, 135, 201. Coulanges: La Cité antique, by N. D. Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1864), 649, 650. Courson: Cartulaire de l'Abbaye de Redon en Bretagne, published by M. Aurélien de Courson (Paris, 1863), 544. Craigfryn: Y Ferch o Gefn Ydfa, by Isaac Craigfryn Hughes (Cardiff, 1881), 173. Cregeen: A Dictionary of the Manks Language, by Archibald Cregeen (Douglas, 1835), 288. Cumming: The Isle of Man, its History, Physical, Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Legendary, by Joseph George Cumming (London, 1848), 314. Curry: The Battle of Magh Leana, together with The Courtship of Momera, with translation and notes, by Eugene Curry [later O'Curry] (Dublin, 1855), 393: see also O'Curry. Cyndelw: Cymru Fu, a selection of Welsh histories, traditions, and tales, published by Hughes & Son (Wrexham, 1862) [this was originally issued in parts, and it has never borne the editor's name; but it is understood to have been the late poet and antiquary, the Rev. Robert Ellis 'Cyndelw'], 66, 91, 109, 123, 155, 156, 481. Dalyell: The Darker Superstitions of Scotland illustrated from History and Practice, by John Graham Dalyell (Edinburgh, 1834), 273. Davies: The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, by Edward Davies (London, 1809), 20. Davies: Antiquæ Linguæ Britannicæ et Linguæ Latinæ Dictionarium Duplex, by Dr. John Davies (London, 1632), 13. Derfel Hughes: Hynafiaethau Llandegai a Llanllechid (Antiquities of Llandegai and Llanllechid), by Hugh Derfel Hughes (Bethesda, 1866), 52, 480. Dionysius: Dionysii Halicarnassensis Antiquitatum Romanorum quæ supersunt (the Didot edition, Paris, 1886), 650. Domesday: Facsimile of Domesday Book, the Cheshire volume, including a part of Flintshire and Leicestershire (Southampton, 1861-5), 563. Dovaston: [John F. M. Dovaston's poetical works appear to have been published in 1825, but I have not seen the book], 410-3. Doyle: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by A. Conan Doyle (London, 1893), 690. Drayton: The Battaile of Agincourt, by Michaell Drayton (London, 1627), 164. Dugdale: Monasticon Anglicanum, a history of the abbeys and other monasteries in England and Wales, by Sir William Dugdale (vol. v, London, 1825), 443, 469, 479. Edwards: Cymru, a monthly magazine edited by Owen M. Edwards (Welsh National Press, Carnarvon), 148. Elfed: Cyfaill yr Aelwyd a'r Frythones, edited by Elfed (the Rev. H. Elvet Lewis) and Cadrawd (Mr. T. C. Evans), and published by Williams & Son, Llanelly, 23, 376, 418. Elton: Origins of English History, by Charles Elton (London, 1882), 615. Elworthy: The Evil Eye, an Account of this ancient and widespread Superstition, by Frederick Thomas Elworthy (London, 1895), 346. Evans: The Beauties of England and Wales [published in London in 1801-15, and comprising two volumes (xvii and xviii) devoted to Wales, the former of which (by the Rev. J. Evans; published in London in 1812) treats of North Wales], 563. Folk-Lore: Transactions of the Folk-Lore Society (published by David Nutt, 270 Strand, London), 273, 338, 341, 344, 346, 356, 358-60, 584, 585, 593, 608. Foulkes: Geirlyfr Bywgraffiadol o Enwogion Cymru, published and printed by Isaac Foulkes (Liverpool, 1870), 396. Fouqué: Undine, eine Erzählung von Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqué (11th ed., Berlin, 1859), 1, 2, 27, 437, 661. Frazer: The Golden Bough, a study in comparative religion, by Dr. J. G. Frazer (London, 1890), 638, 662. ,, : The Origin of Totemism (in the Fortnightly Review for April, 1899), 662, 663. Froissart: OEuvres de Froissart, Chroniques, edited by Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1870-7), 489. ,, : Chroniques de J. Froissart, published for the 'Société de l'Histoire de France,' by Siméon Luce (Paris, 1869-), 489-91. ,, : Lord Berners' translation (in black letter), published in London in 1525, and Thomas Johnes', in 1805-6, 490. Gaidoz: Revue Celtique, 'fondée par M. Henri Gaidoz,' 1870-85 [since then it has been edited by H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, and it is now published by Bouillon in Paris (67 Rue de Richelieu)], 60, 374, 375, 387, 389, 390, 427, 432, 435, 480, 519, 546, 573, 580, 581, 603, 618, 619, 629, 631, 649. Geoffrey: Gottfried's von Monmouth Historia Regum Britanniæ und Brut Tysylio, published by San-Marte (Halle, 1854), 4, 280, 281, 374, 406, 448, 503, 507, 547, 562, 611. Gilbert: Leabhar na h-Uidhri, a collection of pieces in prose and verse in the Irish language, compiled and transcribed about A.D. 1100 by Moelmuiri mac Ceileachar, published by the Royal Irish Academy, and printed from a lithograph of the original by O'Longan & O'Looney (preface signed by J. T. Gilbert, Dublin, 1870), 381, 387, 414, 424, 435, 498, 537, 547, 611, 613, 618, 620, 624, 654, 657, 661. Gillen: The Native Tribes of Central Australia, by Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen (London, 1899), 662, 663. Giraldus: Giraldi Cambrensis Itinerarium Kambriæ et Descriptio Kambriæ, edited by James F. Dimock (Rolls Series, London, 1868), 72, 90, 269-71, 303, 389, 414, 441, 507, 509, 660. Glanffrwd: Plwyf Llanwyno: yr hen Amser, yr hen Bobl, a'r hen Droion, by Glanffrwd [the Rev. W. Glanffrwd Thomas] (Pontyprid, 1888), 26. Gottingen: Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, unter der Aufsicht der königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Gottingen, 1890), 544. Gregor: Notes on the Folk-lore of the North-east of Scotland, by the Rev. Walter Gregor, published for the Folk-Lore Society (London, 1881), 103. Griffin: The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Gerald Griffin (Dublin, 1857), 205, 418. Gröber: Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, unter Mitwirkung von 25 Fachgenossen, edited by Gustav Gröber (Strassburg, 1886), 563. ,, : Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, edited by Gustav Gröber (Halle, 1877-), 563. Gruter: Iani Gruteri Corpus Inscriptionum (part ii of vol. i, Amsterdam, 1707), 580. Guest: The Mabinogion, from the Llyfr Coch o Hergest and other ancient Welsh manuscripts, with an English translation and notes by Lady Charlotte Guest (London, 1849), 69, 123, 196, 386, 442, 502, 507, 509, 538, 553, 560, 613, 620, 629, 645-7, 649, 672. Gwenogvryn: Facsimile of the Black Book of Carmarthen, reproduced by the autotype mechanical process, with a palæographical note by J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Oxford, 1888), 216, 217, 383, 384, 413, 432, 478, 513, 527, 543, 545, 563, 565, 619, 621. ,, : Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language, published by the Historical MSS. Commission (vol. i, London, 1898-9), 280, 330, 487, 573. ,, : The Text of the Bruts from the Red Book of Hergest, edited by John Rhys and J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Oxford, 1890), 163, 201, 442, 506, 512, 562. ,, : The Text of the 'Mabinogion' and other Welsh Tales from the Red Book of Hergest, edited by John Rhys and J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Oxford, 1887), 69, 142, 196, 207, 208, 217, 218, 225, 226, 233, 264, 280, 287, 315, 386, 388, 425, 430, 439, 440, 442, 498, 500, 502, 506, 507, 509-16, 519-27, 529-34, 536, 537, 543, 546-8, 550, 551, 553, 560, 561, 565, 580, 608-10, 613, 619, 620, 622, 628-30, 636, 637, 644, 645, 647, 649, 657, 672. ,, : The Text of the Book of Llan Dâv, reproduced from the Gwysaney manuscript by J. G. Evans, with the co-operation of John Rhys (Oxford, 1893) [this is also known as the Liber Landavensis], 163, 398, 476, 478, 528, 531, 568, 691. Hancock: Senchus Mór, vol. i, prefaced by W. Neilson Hancock (Dublin, 1865), 617. Hardy: Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, by Thos. Duffus Hardy (vol. i, London, 1862), 476. Hartland: The Legend of Perseus, a study of tradition in story, custom, and belief, by Edwin Sidney Hartland (London, 1894-6), 662. Hartland: The Science of Fairy Tales, an inquiry into fairy mythology, by Edwin Sidney Hartland (London, 1891), 18, 268, 583. Henderson: Fled Bricrend, edited with translation, introduction, and notes, by George Henderson (London, 1899), 501. Henderson: Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, by Wm. Henderson (London, 1879), 340, 346. Herbord: Herbordi Vita Ottonis Ep. Bambergensis, in vol. xiv of Pertz' Monumenta Germaniæ Historica Scriptorum [= Script. vol. xii], edited by G. H. Pertz (Hanover, 1826-85), 553. Hergest: The Red Book of Hergest: see Guest, Gwenogvryn, Skene. Heywood: The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood (London, 1874), 694. Higden: Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis, together with the English translations of John Trevisa and an unknown writer of the fifteenth century, edited by Ch. Babington (Rolls Series, London, 1865-86), 330, 331. Holder: Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, by Alfred Holder (Leipsic, 1896-), 533, 622, 659. Howells: Cambrian Superstitions, comprising ghosts, omens, witchcraft, and traditions, by W. Howells (Tipton, 1831), 74, 155, 160, 173, 204, 245, 268, 331, 424, 453, 469, 576-9. Hübner: Das Heiligtum des Nodon: see 446. ,, : Inscriptiones Britanniæ Latinæ, edited by Æmilius Hübner and published by the Berlin Academy (Berlin, 1873), 535. Humphreys: Golud yr Oes, a Welsh magazine published by H. Humphreys (vol. i, Carnarvon, 1863), 493. ,, : Llyfr Gwybodaeth Gyffredinol, a collection of Humphreys' penny series (Carnarvon, no date), 408. Iolo: Iolo Manuscripts, a selection of ancient Welsh manuscripts in prose and verse from the collection made by Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg), with English translations and notes by his son, Taliesin Williams Ab Iolo, and published for the Welsh MSS. Society (Llandovery, 1848), 564, 565, 569, 619. Iolo Goch: Gweithiau Iolo Goch gyda Nodiadau hanesydol a beirniadol, by Charles Ashton, published for the Cymmrodorion Society (Oswestry, 1896), 281, 367. Jacobs: Celtic Fairy Tales, selected and edited by Joseph Jacobs (London, 1892), 567. Jamieson: An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, by John Jamieson (new ed., Paisley, 1881-2), 591. Jamieson: Popular Ballads and Songs, by Robert Jamieson (Edinburgh, 1806), 592. Jenkins: Bed Gelert, its Facts, Fairies, and Folk-Lore, by D. E. Jenkins (Portmadoc, 1899), 450, 453, 469, 533, 567. Johnstone: Antiquitates Celto-Normannicæ, containing the Chronicle of Man and the Isles, abridged by Camden, edited by James Johnstone (Copenhagen, 1786), 334. Jones: see p. 195 for Edmund Jones' Account of the Parish of Aberystruth (Trevecka, 1779), 195, 196. ,, : see p. 195 as to his Spirits in the County of Monmouth (Newport, 1813), 195, 217, 350. Jones: The Elucidarium and other tracts in Welsh from Llyvyr Agkyr Llandewivrevi, A.D. 1346 (Jesus College MS. 119), edited by J. Morris Jones and John Rhys (Oxford, 1894), 529, 693. Jones: The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, collected out of ancient manuscripts, by Owen Jones 'Myvyr,' Edward Williams, and William Owen (London, 1801; reprinted in one volume by Thomas Gee, Denbigh, 1870), 441, 469, 529, 560, 610, 619. Jones: A History of the County of Brecknock, by the Rev. Theophilus Jones (Brecknock, 1805, 1809), 516-8. Joyce: Old Celtic Romances, translated from the Gaelic by P. W. Joyce (London, 1879), 94, 376, 381, 437, 662. Jubainville: Le Cycle mythologique irlandais et la Mythologie celtique, by H. d'Arbois de Jubainville (Paris, 1884), 616, 617, 620. ,, : Essai d'un Catalogue de la Littérature épique de l'Irlande, by H. d'Arbois de Jubainville (Paris, 1883), 549, 616, 617, 620. Kaluza: Libeaus Desconus, edited by Max Kaluza (Leipsic, 1890), 562. Keating: Forus Feasa air Éirinn, Keating's History of Ireland, book i, part i, edited, with a literal translation, by P. W. Joyce (Dublin, 1880), 375. Kelly: Fockleyr Manninagh as Baarlagh, a Manx-English Dictionary by John Kelly, edited by William Gill, and printed for the Manx Society (Douglas, 1866), 316, 349. Kermode: Yn Lioar Manninagh, the Journal of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society, edited by P. M. C. Kermode (Douglas, 1889-), 284, 289, 311, 334, 434. Kuhn: Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der arischen, celtischen und slawischen Sprachen, edited by Kuhn and others (Berlin, 1858-76), 629. ,, : Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen, edited by Kuhn and others (Berlin, 1854-), 625. Lampeter: The Magazine of St. David's College, Lampeter, 156. Leem: Canuti Leemii de Lapponibus Finmarchiæ Commentatio (Copenhagen, 1767), 658, 663. Leger: Cyrille et Méthode, Étude historique sur la Conversion des Slaves au Christianisme, by Louis Leger (Paris, 1868), 553. Lewis: A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by Samuel Lewis (3rd ed., London, 1844), 395, 397, 470. Leyden: The Poetical Works of John Leyden (Edinburgh, 1875), 466. Lhuyd: Commentarioli Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum, by Humfrey Lhuyd (Cologne, 1572), 412. Lindsay: The Latin Language, an historical account of Latin sounds, stems, and flexions, by Wallace Martin Lindsay (Oxford, 1894), 629. Loth: Les Mots latins dans les langues brittoniques, by J. Loth (Paris, 1892), 383. Llais y Wlad, a newspaper published at Bangor, N. Wales, 234. Mabinogion: see Guest and Gwenogvryn. Macbain: The Celtic Magazine, edited by Alexander Macbain (Inverness, 1866-), 520. Malmesbury: De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum Libri Quinque, edited by N. E. S. A. Hamilton (Rolls Series, London, 1870), 547. Malory: Le Morte Darthur, by Syr Thomas Malory, the original Caxton edition reprinted and edited with an introduction and glossary by H. Oskar Sommer (Nutt, London, 1889), 476, 562. ,, : Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, with a preface by John Rhys, published by J. M. Dent & Co. (London, 1893), 543, 565. Mapes: Gualteri Mapes de Nugis Curialium Distinctiones Quinque, edited by Thomas Wright and printed for the Camden Society, 1850 [at the last moment a glance at the original Bodley MS. 851 forced me to deviate somewhat from Wright's reading owing to its inaccuracy], 70-2, 496. Marquardt: Das Privatleben der Römer, by J. Marquardt (Leipsic, 1886), 650. Martin: A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, by M. Martin (London, 1703), 615, 691, 692. Maspero: see 682. Maximus: Valerii Maximi factorum dictorumque memorabilium Libri novem ad Tiberium Cæsarem Augustum (the Didot ed., Paris, 1871), 623. Mela: Pomponii Melæ de Chorographia Libri Tres, ed. Gustavus Parthey (Berlin, 1867), 331, 550. Meyer: Festschrift Whitley Stokes, dedicated by Kuno Meyer and others (Leipsic, 1900), 645. ,, : The Vision of MacConglinne, edited with a translation by Kuno Meyer (London, 1892), 393, 501. Meyer: Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, edited by Kuno Meyer and L. C. Stern (Halle, 1897-), 500. Meyer: Romania, Recueil trimestriel consacré à l'Étude des Langues et des Littératures romanes, edited by Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris (vol. xxviii. Paris, 1899), 690, 693, 694. Meyrick: The History and Antiquities of the County of Cardigan, by Samuel Rush Meyrick (London, 1808), 579. Milton: English Poems, by John Milton, 288. Mind, a quarterly review of psychology and philosophy, edited by G. F. Stout (London, 1876-), 633. Mommsen: Heortologie, antiquarische Untersuchungen über die städtischen Feste der Athener, by August Mommsen (Leipsic, 1864), 310. Monthly Packet, the, now edited by C. R. Coleridge and Arthur Innes (London, 1851-), 416, 417. Moore: The Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man, by A. W. Moore (London, 1891), 284. ,, : The Surnames and Place-names of the Isle of Man, by A. W. Moore (London, 1890), 311, 332, 334. Morgan: An Antiquarian Survey of East Gower, Glamorganshire, by W. Ll. Morgan (London, 1899), 404. Morganwg: Hanes Morganwg, by Dafyd Morganwg [D. W. Jones, F.G.S.] (Aberdare, 1874) [an octavo volume issued to subscribers, and so scarce now that I had to borrow a copy], 356. Morris: Celtic Remains, by Lewis Morris, edited by Silvan Evans and printed for the Cambrian Archæological Association (London, 1878), 148, 413, 564, 566, 694. Myrdin: Prophwydoliaeth Myrdin Wyllt: see 485. Nennius: Nennius und Gildas, edited by San-Marte (Berlin, 1844), 281, 406, 407, 537-9, 570. New English Dictionary, edited by Dr. James H. Murray and Henry Bradley (London and Oxford, 1884-), 317. Nicholson: Golspie, contributions to its folklore, collected and edited by Edward W. B. Nicholson (London, 1897), 317. Nicholson: The Poetical Works of Wm. Nicholson (3rd ed., Castle Douglas, 1878), 325. Notes and Queries (Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane, E.C.), 563. ,, : Choice Notes from 'Notes and Queries,' consisting of folklore (London, 1859), 140, 213, 217, 325, 418, 453, 454, 494, 596, 601, 611, 612. Nutt: The Voyage of Bran son of Febal to the Land of the Living, by Kuno Meyer and Alfred Nutt (London, 1895, 1897), 618, 620, 622, 657, 662. ,, : Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, by Alfred Nutt (London, 1888), 287, 438, 548. O'Curry: On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, a series of lectures delivered by the late Eugene O'Curry (London, 1873), 375, 392, 617, 632: see also Curry. O'Donovan: Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, from the earliest period to the year 1616, edited by John O'Donovan (2nd ed., Dublin, 1856), 414, 426-8, 433, 546, 569. O'Grady: Silva Gadelica, a collection of tales in Irish, with extracts illustrating persons and places, edited from manuscripts and translated by Dr. S. H. O'Grady (London, 1892), 381, 437. O'Reilly: An Irish-English Dictionary, by Edward O'Reilly, with a supplement by John O'Donovan (Dublin, 1864), 142. Oliver: Monumenta de Insula Manniæ, being vol. iv of the publications of the Manx Society, by J. R. Oliver (Douglas, 1860), 314, 334. Owen: Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, edited by Aneurin Owen for the Public Records Commission (London, 1841), 421. Owen: Welsh Folk-Lore, a collection of the folk-tales and legends of North Wales, being the prize essay of the National Eistedfod in 1887, by the Rev. Elias Owen (Oswestry and Wrexham, 1896), 222, 275, 690. Owen: The Poetical Works of the Rev. Goronwy Owen, with his life and correspondence, edited by the Rev. Robert Jones (London, 1876), 84. Owen: The Description of Pembrokeshire, by George Owen of Henllys, edited with notes and an appendix by Henry Owen (London, 1892), 506, 513, 515. Owen: The Cambrian Biography, or Historical Notices of celebrated men among the Ancient Britons, by William Owen (London, 1803), 169, 170. Paris: Merlin, Roman en Prose du XIIIe Siècle, edited by Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich (Paris, 1886), 563. Parthey: Itinerarium Antonini Augusti et Hierosolymitanum ex Libris manu scriptis, edited by G. Parthey and M. Pinder (Berlin, 1848), 514. Pembroke County Guardian, the, a newspaper owned and edited by H. W. Williams and published at Solva, 160, 171, 172. Pennant: A Tour in Scotland, by Thomas Pennant (Warrington, 1774), 310. ,, : A Tour in Scotland and a Voyage to the Hebrides, MDCCLXXII, by Thomas Pennant (Chester, 1774), 692. ,, : Tours in Wales, by Thomas Pennant, edited by J. Rhys (Carnarvon, 1883), 125, 130, 532. Phillimore: Annales Cambriæ and Old-Welsh Genealogies from Harleian MS. 3859, edited by Egerton Phillimore, in vol. ix of the Cymmrodor, 408, 476, 480, 551, 570. Phillips: The Book of Common Prayer in Manx Gaelic, being translations made by Bishop Phillips in 1610 and by the Manx clergy in 1765; edited by A. W. Moore, assisted by John Rhys, and printed for the Manx Society (Douglas, 1893, 1894), 320. Plautus: T. Macci Plauti Asinaria, from the text of Goetz and Schoell, by J. H. Gray (Cambridge, 1894), 535. Plutarch: De Defectu Oraculorum (the Didot ed., Paris, 1870), 331, 456, 493, 494. Powysland: Collections, historical and archæological, relating to Montgomeryshire and its Borders, issued by the Powysland Club (London, 1868-), 237. Preller: Griechische Mythologie, von L. Preller, vierte Auflage von Carl Robert (Berlin, 1887), 310. Price: Hanes Cymru a Chenedl y Cymry o'r Cynoesoed hyd at farwolaeth Llewelyn ap Gruffyd, by the Rev. Thomas Price 'Carnhuanawc' (Crickhowel, 1842), 490. Ptolemy: Claudii Ptolemæi Geographia: e Codicibus recognovit Carolus Müllerus (vol. i, Paris, 1883), 385, 387, 388, 445, 581. Pughe: The Physicians of Mydvai (Medygon Mydfai), translated by John Pughe of Aberdovey, and edited by the Rev. John Williams Ab Ithel (Llandovery, 1861) [this volume has an introduction consisting of the Legend of Llyn y Fan Fach, contributed by Mr. William Rees of Tonn, who collected it, in the year 1841, from various sources named], 2, 12. Pughe: A Dictionary of the Welsh Language explained in English, by Dr. Wm. Owen Pughe (2nd ed., Denbigh, 1832), 383, 502. Rastell: A. C. Mery Talys, printed by John Rastell, reprinted in Hazlitt's Shakespeare Jest-books (London, 1844), 599. Rees: An Essay on the Welsh Saints or the primitive Christians usually considered to have been the founders of Churches in Wales, by the Rev. Rice Rees (London and Llandovery, 1836), 163, 217, 396, 534. Rees: Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, by the Rev. W. J. Rees, published for the Welsh MSS. Society (Llandovery, 1853), 693. Rennes: Annales de Bretagne publiées par la Faculté des Lettres de Rennes (Rennes, 1886-), 500. Revue Archéologique (new series, vol. xxiii, Paris, 1800-), 386. Rhys: Celtic Britain, by John Rhys (2nd ed., London, 1884), 72. ,, : Lectures on Welsh Philology, by John Rhys (2nd ed., London, 1879), 566. ,, : Hibbert Lectures, 1886, on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by Celtic heathendom, by John Rhys (London, 1888), 310, 321, 328, 331, 373, 387, 432, 435, 444, 447, 511, 542, 570, 613, 654, 657, 694. Rhys: Studies in the Arthurian Legend, by John Rhys (Oxford, 1891), 217, 287, 331, 375, 382, 387, 435, 438-41, 466, 494, 496, 561, 573, 610, 613. Rhys: Cambrobrytannicæ Cymraecæve Linguæ Institutiones et Rudimenta ... conscripta à Joanne Dauide Rhæso, Monensi Lanuaethlæo Cambrobrytanno, Medico Senensi (London, 1592), 22, 225. Richard: The Poetical Works of the Rev. Edward Richard (London, 1811), 577. Richards: A Welsh and English Dictionary, by Thomas Richards (Trefriw, 1815) 378. Roberts: The Cambrian Popular Antiquities, by Peter Roberts, (London, 1815), 396. Rosellini: see 682. Rymer: Foedera, Conventiones, Literæ et cujuscunque Generis Acta publica inter Reges Angliæ et alios quosvis Imperatores, Reges, Pontifices, Principes, vel Communitates, edited by Thomas Rymer (vol. viii, London, 1709), 490. Sale: The Koran, translated into English with explanatory notes and a preliminary discourse, by George Sale (London, 1877), 608. Sampson: Otia Merseiana, the publication of the Arts Faculty of University College, Liverpool, edited by John Sampson (London), 393, 451. San-Marte: Beiträge zur bretonischen und celtisch-germanischen Heldensage, by San-Marte (Quedlinburg, 1847), 611. Schwan: Grammatik des Altfranzösischen, by Eduard Schwan (Leipsic, 1888), 563. Scotland: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Edinburgh), 244. Scott: the Works of Sir Walter Scott, 320, 643, 689. Sébillot: Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne, by Paul Sébillot (Paris, 1882), 273. Shakespeare: The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare, 197, 636, 694. Sikes: British Goblins, Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions, by Wirt Sikes (London, 1880), 17, 18, 99, 155, 160, 173, 191, 192. Silvan Evans: Dictionary of the Welsh Language (Geiriadur Cymraeg), by D. Silvan Evans (Carmarthen, 1888-), 387, 431, 539, 580, 620, 621. ,, ,, : Y Brython, a periodical in Welsh for Welsh antiquities and folklore, edited by the Rev. D. S. Evans, and published by Robert Isaac Jones at Tremadoc (in quarto for 1858 and 1859, in octavo for 1860-2), 40, 73, 86, 98, 134, 137, 141, 151-5, 158-60, 202, 321, 413, 442, 456, 464, 470, 481, 690. ,, ,, : Ystên Sioned, by D. Silvan Evans (Aberystwyth, 1882), 271-3. Simrock: Die Edda, die ältere und jüngere, nebst den mythischen Erzählungen der Skalda, translated and explained by Karl Simrock (Stuttgart, 1855), 652. Sinclair: The Statistical Account of Scotland, drawn up from the communications of the ministers of the different parishes, by Sir John Sinclair (Edinburgh, 1794), 310. Skene: Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots, and other Memorials of Scottish History, edited by Wm. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1867), 374. Skene: The Four Ancient Books of Wales, by Wm. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1868) [vol. ii contains, besides notes and illustrations, the text of the Black Book of Carmarthen, 3-61; the Book of Aneurin, 62-107; the Book of Taliessin, 108-217; and some of the poetry in the Red Book of Hergest, 218-308. These four texts are to be found translated in vol. i], 226, 233, 269, 281, 387, 442, 541, 543, 550, 614-7. South Wales Daily News (Duncan, Cardiff), 376. Southey: Madoc, a poem by Robert Southey (London, 1815), 169-71. Speed: The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, by John Speed [not Speede] (London, 1611), 208. Steinmeyer: Die althochdeutschen Glossen, collected and elaborated by Elias Steinmeyer and Eduard Sievers (Berlin, 1879-98), 683. Stengel: Li Romans de Durmart le Galois, altfranzösisches Rittergedicht, published for the first time by Edmund Stengel (Tübingen, 1873), 438. Stephens: The Gododin of Aneurin Gwawdryd, with an English translation and copious notes, by Thomas Stephens; edited by Professor Powel, and printed for the Cymmrodorion Society (London, 1888), 310, 543, 647. Stevenson: The Scottish Antiquary or Northern Notes and Queries, edited by J. H. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1886-), 693. Stokes: Cormac's Glossary: see Cormac. ,, : Goidelica, Old and Early-Middle-Irish Glosses, Prose and Verse, edited by Whitley Stokes (2nd ed., London, 1872), 295, 374. ,, : Irische Texte mit Uebersetzungen und Wörterbuch, edited by Whitley Stokes and E. Windisch (3rd series, Leipsic, 1891), 631. ,, : The Tripartite Life of Patrick, edited, with translations and indexes, by Whitley Stokes (Rolls Series, London, 1887), 535. ,, : Urkeltischer Sprachschatz von Whitley Stokes, übersetzt, überarbeitet und herausgegeben von Adalbert Bezzenberger, forming the second part of the fourth edition of Fick's Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen (Gottingen, 1894), 671. Strabo: Strabonis Geographica recognovit Augustus Meineke (Leipsic, 1852-3), 654. Sturlæus: Edda Snorronis Sturlæi (Copenhagen, 1848), 652. Tacitus: Cornelii Taciti de Origine et Situ Germanorum Liber, edited by Alfred Holder (Freiburg i. B., and Tübingen, 1882), 271. Taliesin, a Welsh periodical published at Ruthin in 1859-60, 135-7, 269. Taliessin: The Book of Taliessin (see Skene), 550, 614-7. Tegid: Gwaith Bardonol y diwedar barch. John Jones 'Tegid' [also called Joan Tegid], edited by the Rev. Henry Roberts (Llandovery, 1859), 445. Triads: [The so-called Historical Triads, referred to in this volume, are to be found in the Myvyrian Archaiology (London, 1801), series i and ii in vol. ii, 1-22, and (the later) series iii in the same vol., 57-80. In the single-volume edition of the Myvyrian (Denbigh, 1870), they occupy continuously pp. 388-414. Series ii comes from the Red Book of Hergest, and will be found also in the volume of the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 297-309], 170, 281, 326, 382, 429-31, 433, 440, 441, 443-5, 498, 500, 501, 503-9, 565, 569. Tylor: Primitive Culture, Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom, by Edward Tylor (2nd ed., London, 1873), 290, 329, 601, 603, 641, 658. Twyne: Thomas Twyne's Breuiary of Britayne, a translation of Humfrey Lhuyd's Fragmentum (London, 1573), 412. Ulfilas: Ulfilas, Text, Grammar, and Dictionary, elaborated and edited by F. L. Stamm (Paderborn, 1869), 626. Vigfusson: An Icelandic Dictionary, enlarged and completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson (Oxford, 1874), 288, 652. Vising: see 563. Waldron: A Description of the Isle of Man, by George Waldron, being vol. xi of the Manx Society's publications (Douglas, 1865), 290. Waring: Recollections and Anecdotes of Edward Williams, by Elijah Waring (London, 1850), 458. Westermarck: The History of Human Marriage, by Edward Westermarck (London, 1894), 654. Weyman: From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, by Stanley Weyman (London, 1895), 690. Williams: The English Works of Eliezer Williams, with a memoir of his life by his son, St. George Armstrong Williams (London, 1840), 493. Williams: Brut y Tywysogion, or the Chronicle of the Princes, edited by John Williams Ab Ithel (Rolls Series, London, 1860), 79, 513. Williams: A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen, by the Rev. Robert Williams (Llandovery, 1852), 534. ,, : Y Seint Greal, edited with a translation and glossary by the Rev. Robert Williams (London, 1876), 438, 514, 580. Williams: The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn, by Taliesin Williams (London, 1837), 561. ,, : Traethawd ar Gywreined Glynn Ned, by Taliesin Williams: see 439. Williams: Observations on the Snowdon Mountains, by William Williams of Llandegai (London, 1802), 48, 673, 674. Windisch: Irische Texte mit Wörterbuch, by Ernst Windisch (Leipsic, 1880), 501, 657. ,, : Kurzgefasste irische Grammatik (Leipsic, 1879), 291, 501, 502, 531, 546, 547, 603, 613, 618, 691. ,, : Über die irische Sage Noinden Ulad, in the Berichte der k. sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (phil.-historische Classe, Dec. 1884), 654. Woodall: Bye-gones, a periodical reissue of notes, queries, and replies on subjects relating to Wales and the Borders, published in the columns of The Border Counties Advertizer, by Messrs. Woodall, Minshall & Co. of the Caxton Press, Oswestry, 169, 378. Wood-Martin: Pagan Ireland, by W. G. Wood-Martin (London, 1895), 612. Worth: A History of Devonshire, with Sketches of its leading Worthies, by R. N. Worth (London, 1895), 307. Wright: The English Dialect Dictionary, edited by Professor Joseph Wright (London and Oxford, 1898-), 66. Wynne: The History of the Gwydir Family, published by Angharad Llwyd in the year 1827, and by Askew Roberts at Oswestry in 1878, 490, 491, 670. Y Cymmrodor, the magazine embodying the transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society of London (Secretary, E. Vincent Evans, 64 Chancery Lane, W.C.), 374, 384, 480, 510, 513, 520, 600, 610, 690, 693, 694. Y Drych, a newspaper published at Utica in the United States of North America, 234. Y Gordofigion, an extinct Welsh periodical: see p. 450. Y Gwyliedyd, a magazine of useful knowledge intended for the benefit of monoglot Welshmen (Bala, 1823-37), 450. Y Nofelyd, a Welsh periodical published by Mr. Aubrey, of Llannerch y Med, 396. Young: Burghead, by H. W. Young (Inverness, 1899), 345. CELTIC FOLKLORE WELSH AND MANX Gallias utique possedit, et quidem ad nostram memoriam. Namque Tiberii Cæsaris principatus sustulit Druidas eorum, et hoc genus vatum medicorumque. Sed quid ego hæc commemorem in arte Oceanum quoque transgressa, et ad naturæ inane pervecta? Britannia hodieque eam attonite celebrat tantis cerimoniis, ut dedisse Persis videri possit. Adeo ista toto mundo consensere, quamquam discordi et sibi ignoto. Nec satis æstimari potest, quantum Romanis debeatur, qui sustulere monstra, in quibus hominem occidere religiosissimum erat, mandi vero etiam saluberrimum. Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XXX. 4. Pline fait remarquer que ces pratiques antipathiques au génie grec sont d'origine médique. Nous les rencontrons en Europe à l'état de survivances. L'universalité de ces superstitions prouve en effet qu'elles émanent d'une source unique qui n'est pas européenne. Il est difficile de les considérer comme un produit de l'esprit aryen; il faut remonter plus haut pour en trouver l'origine. Si, en Gaule, en Grande-Bretagne, en Irlande, tant de superstitions relevant de la magie existaient encore au temps de Pline enracinées dans les esprits à tel point que le grand naturaliste pouvait dire, à propos de la Bretagne, qu'il semblait que ce fût elle qui avait donné la magie à la Perse, c'est qu'en Gaule, en Grande-Bretagne, et en Irlande le fond de la population était composé d'éléments étrangers à la race aryenne, comme les faits archéologiques le démontrent, ainsi que le reconnait notre éminent confrère et ami, M. d'Arbois de Jubainville lui-même. Alexandre Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois, pp. 55, 56. Une croyance universellement admise dans le monde lettré, en France et hors de France, fait des Français les fils des Gaulois qui ont pris Rome en 390 avant Jésus-Christ, et que César a vaincus au milieu du premier siècle avant notre ère. On croit que nous sommes des Gaulois, survivant à toutes les révolutions qui depuis tant de siècles ont bouleversé le monde. C'est une idée préconçue que, suivant moi, la science doit rejeter. Seuls à peu près, les archéologues ont vu la vérité.... Les pierres levées, les cercles de pierre, les petites cabanes construites en gros blocs de pierre pour servir de dernier asile aux défunts, étaient, croyait-on, des monuments celtiques.... On donnait à ces rustiques témoignages d'une civilisation primitive des noms bretons, ou néo-celtiques de France; on croyait naïvement, en reproduisant des mots de cette langue moderne, parler comme auraient fait, s'ils avaient pu revenir à la vie, ceux qui ont remué ces lourdes pierres, ceux qui les ont fixées debout sur le sol ou même élevées sur d'autres.... Mais ceux qui ont dressé les pierres levées, les cercles de pierres; ceux qui ont construit les cabanes funéraires ne parlaient pas celtique et le breton diffère du celtique comme le français du latin. H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, Les premiers Habitants de l'Europe, II. xi-xiii. CHAPTER I UNDINE'S KYMRIC SISTERS Undine, liebes Bildchen du, Seit ich zuerst aus alten Kunden Dein seltsam Leuchten aufgefunden, Wie sangst du oft mein Herz in Ruh! De la Motte Fouqué. The chief object of this and several of the following chapters is to place on record all the matter I can find on the subject of Welsh lake legends: what I may have to say of them is merely by the way and sporadic, and I should feel well paid for my trouble if these contributions should stimulate others to communicate to the public bits of similar legends, which, possibly, still linger unrecorded among the mountains of Wales. For it should be clearly understood that all such things bear on the history of the Welsh, as the history of no people can be said to have been written so long as its superstitions and beliefs in past times have not been studied; and those who may think that the legends here recorded are childish and frivolous, may rest assured that they bear on questions which could not themselves be called either childish or frivolous. So, however silly a legend may be thought, let him who knows such a legend communicate it to somebody who will place it on record; he will then probably find that it has more meaning and interest than he had anticipated. I. I find it best to begin by reproducing a story which has already been placed on record: this appears desirable on account of its being the most complete of its kind, and the one with which shorter ones can most readily be compared. I allude to the legend of the Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach in Carmarthenshire, which I take the liberty of copying from Mr. Rees of Tonn's version in the introduction to The Physicians of Mydvai [1], published by the Welsh Manuscript Society, at Llandovery, in 1861. There he says that he wrote it down from the oral recitations, which I suppose were in Welsh, of John Evans, tiler, of Mydfai, David Williams, Morfa, near Mydfai, who was about ninety years old at the time, and Elizabeth Morgan, of Henllys Lodge, near Llandovery, who was a native of the same village of Mydfai; to this it may be added that he acknowledges obligations also to Joseph Joseph, Esq., F.S.A., Brecon, for collecting particulars from the old inhabitants of the parish of Llandeusant. The legend, as given by Mr. Rees in English, runs as follows, and strongly reminds one in certain parts of the Story of Undine as given in the German of De la Motte Fouqué, with which it should be compared:-- 'When the eventful struggle made by the Princes of South Wales to preserve the independence of their country was drawing to its close in the twelfth century, there lived at Blaensawde [2] near Llandeusant, Carmarthenshire, a widowed woman, the relict of a farmer who had fallen in those disastrous troubles. 'The widow had an only son to bring up, but Providence smiled upon her, and despite her forlorn condition, her live stock had so increased in course of time, that she could not well depasture them upon her farm, so she sent a portion of her cattle to graze on the adjoining Black Mountain, and their most favourite place was near the small lake called Llyn y Fan Fach, on the north-western side of the Carmarthenshire Fans. 'The son grew up to manhood, and was generally sent by his mother to look after the cattle on the mountain. One day, in his peregrinations along the margin of the lake, to his great astonishment, he beheld, sitting on the unruffled surface of the water, a lady; one of the most beautiful creatures that mortal eyes ever beheld, her hair flowed gracefully in ringlets over her shoulders, the tresses of which she arranged with a comb, whilst the glassy surface of her watery couch served for the purpose of a mirror, reflecting back her own image. Suddenly she beheld the young man standing on the brink of the lake, with his eyes riveted on her, and unconsciously offering to herself the provision of barley bread and cheese with which he had been provided when he left his home. 'Bewildered by a feeling of love and admiration for the object before him, he continued to hold out his hand towards the lady, who imperceptibly glided near to him, but gently refused the offer of his provisions. He attempted to touch her, but she eluded his grasp, saying-- Cras dy fara; Hard baked is thy bread! Nid hawd fy nala. 'Tis not easy to catch me [3]; and immediately dived under the water and disappeared, leaving the love-stricken youth to return home, a prey to disappointment and regret that he had been unable to make further acquaintance with one, in comparison with whom the whole of the fair maidens of Llandeusant and Mydfai [4] whom he had ever seen were as nothing. On his return home the young man communicated to his mother the extraordinary vision he had beheld. She advised him to take some unbaked dough or "toes" the next time in his pocket, as there must have been some spell connected with the hard-baked bread, or "Bara cras," which prevented his catching the lady. 'Next morning, before the sun had gilded with its rays the peaks of the Fans, the young man was at the lake, not for the purpose of looking after his mother's cattle, but seeking for the same enchanting vision he had witnessed the day before; but all in vain did he anxiously strain his eyeballs and glance over the surface of the lake, as only the ripples occasioned by a stiff breeze met his view, and a cloud hung heavily on the summit of the Fan, which imparted an additional gloom to his already distracted mind. 'Hours passed on, the wind was hushed, and the clouds which had enveloped the mountain had vanished into thin air before the powerful beams of the sun, when the youth was startled by seeing some of his mother's cattle on the precipitous side of the acclivity, nearly on the opposite side of the lake. His duty impelled him to attempt to rescue them from their perilous position, for which purpose he was hastening away, when, to his inexpressible delight, the object of his search again appeared to him as before, and seemed much more beautiful than when he first beheld her. His hand was again held out to her, full of unbaked bread, which he offered with an urgent proffer of his heart also, and vows of eternal attachment. All of which were refused by her, saying-- Llaith dy fara! Unbaked is thy bread! Ti ni fynna'. I will not have thee [5]. But the smiles that played upon her features as the lady vanished beneath the waters raised within the young man a hope that forbade him to despair by her refusal of him, and the recollection of which cheered him on his way home. His aged parent was made acquainted with his ill-success, and she suggested that his bread should next time be but slightly baked, as most likely to please the mysterious being of whom he had become enamoured. 'Impelled by an irresistible feeling, the youth left his mother's house early next morning, and with rapid steps he passed over the mountain. He was soon near the margin of the lake, and with all the impatience of an ardent lover did he wait with a feverish anxiety for the reappearance of the mysterious lady. 'The sheep and goats browsed on the precipitous sides of the Fan; the cattle strayed amongst the rocks and large stones, some of which were occasionally loosened from their beds and suddenly rolled down into the lake; rain and sunshine alike came and passed away; but all were unheeded by the youth, so wrapped up was he in looking for the appearance of the lady. 'The freshness of the early morning had disappeared before the sultry rays of the noon-day sun, which in its turn was fast verging towards the west as the evening was dying away and making room for the shades of night, and hope had wellnigh abated of beholding once more the Lady of the Lake. The young man cast a sad and last farewell look over the waters, and, to his astonishment, beheld several cows walking along its surface. The sight of these animals caused hope to revive that they would be followed by another object far more pleasing; nor was he disappointed, for the maiden reappeared, and to his enraptured sight, even lovelier than ever. She approached the land, and he rushed to meet her in the water. A smile encouraged him to seize her hand; neither did she refuse the moderately baked bread he offered her; and after some persuasion she consented to become his bride, on condition that they should only live together until she received from him three blows without a cause, Tri ergyd diachos. Three causeless blows. And if he ever should happen to strike her three such blows she would leave him for ever. To such conditions he readily consented, and would have consented to any other stipulation, had it been proposed, as he was only intent on then securing such a lovely creature for his wife. 'Thus the Lady of the Lake engaged to become the young man's wife, and having loosed her hand for a moment she darted away and dived into the lake. His chagrin and grief were such that he determined to cast himself headlong into the deepest water, so as to end his life in the element that had contained in its unfathomed depths the only one for whom he cared to live on earth. As he was on the point of committing this rash act, there emerged out of the lake two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and strength of youth. This man addressed the almost bewildered youth in accents calculated to soothe his troubled mind, saying that as he proposed to marry one of his daughters, he consented to the union, provided the young man could distinguish which of the two ladies before him was the object of his affections. This was no easy task, as the maidens were such perfect counterparts of each other that it seemed quite impossible for him to choose his bride, and if perchance he fixed upon the wrong one all would be for ever lost. 'Whilst the young man narrowly scanned the two ladies, he could not perceive the least difference betwixt the two, and was almost giving up the task in despair, when one of them thrust her foot a slight degree forward. The motion, simple as it was, did not escape the observation of the youth, and he discovered a trifling variation in the mode with which their sandals were tied. This at once put an end to the dilemma, for he, who had on previous occasions been so taken up with the general appearance of the Lady of the Lake, had also noticed the beauty of her feet and ankles, and on now recognizing the peculiarity of her shoe-tie he boldly took hold of her hand. '"Thou hast chosen rightly," said her father; "be to her a kind and faithful husband, and I will give her, as a dowry, as many sheep, cattle, goats, and horses as she can count of each without heaving or drawing in her breath. But remember, that if you prove unkind to her at any time, and strike her three times without a cause, she shall return to me, and shall bring all her stock back with her." 'Such was the verbal marriage settlement, to which the young man gladly assented, and his bride was desired to count the number of sheep she was to have. She immediately adopted the mode of counting by fives, thus:--One, two, three, four, five--One, two, three, four, five; as many times as possible in rapid succession, till her breath was exhausted. The same process of reckoning had to determine the number of goats, cattle, and horses respectively; and in an instant the full number of each came out of the lake when called upon by the father. 'The young couple were then married, by what ceremony was not stated, and afterwards went to reside at a farm called Esgair Llaethdy, somewhat more than a mile from the village of Mydfai, where they lived in prosperity and happiness for several years, and became the parents of three sons, who were beautiful children. 'Once upon a time there was a christening to take place in the neighbourhood, to which the parents were specially invited. When the day arrived the wife appeared very reluctant to attend the christening, alleging that the distance was too great for her to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses which were grazing in an adjoining field. "I will," said she, "if you will bring me my gloves which I left in our house." He went to the house and returned with the gloves, and finding that she had not gone for the horse jocularly slapped her shoulder with one of them, saying, "go! go!" (dos, dos), when she reminded him of the understanding upon which she consented to marry him:--That he was not to strike her without a cause; and warned him to be more cautious for the future. 'On another occasion, when they were together at a wedding, in the midst of the mirth and hilarity of the assembled guests, who had gathered together from all the surrounding country, she burst into tears and sobbed most piteously. Her husband touched her on her shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping: she said, "Now people are entering into trouble, and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me without a cause." 'Years passed on, and their children had grown up, and were particularly clever young men. In the midst of so many worldly blessings at home the husband almost forgot that there remained only one causeless blow to be given to destroy the whole of his prosperity. Still he was watchful lest any trivial occurrence should take place which his wife must regard as a breach of their marriage contract. She told him, as her affection for him was unabated, to be careful that he would not, through some inadvertence, give the last and only blow, which, by an unalterable destiny, over which she had no control, would separate them for ever. 'It, however, so happened that one day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the mourning and grief at the house of the deceased, she appeared in the highest and gayest spirits, and indulged in immoderate fits of laughter, which so shocked her husband that he touched her, saying, "Hush! hush! don't laugh." She said that she laughed "because people when they die go out of trouble," and, rising up, she went out of the house, saying, "The last blow has been struck, our marriage contract is broken, and at an end! Farewell!" Then she started off towards Esgair Llaethdy, where she called her cattle and other stock together, each by name. The cattle she called thus:-- Mu wlfrech, Moelfrech, Brindled cow, white speckled, Mu olfrech, Gwynfrech, Spotted cow, bold freckled, Pedair cae tonn-frech, The four field sward mottled, Yr hen wynebwen, The old white-faced, A'r las Geigen, And the grey Geingen, Gyda'r Tarw Gwyn With the white Bull, O lys y Brenin; From the court of the King; A'r llo du bach, And the little black calf Syd ar y bach, Tho' suspended on the hook, Dere dithau, yn iach adre! Come thou also, quite well home! They all immediately obeyed the summons of their mistress. The "little black calf," although it had been slaughtered, became alive again, and walked off with the rest of the stock at the command of the lady. This happened in the spring of the year, and there were four oxen ploughing in one of the fields; to these she cried:-- Pedwar eidion glas The four grey oxen, Syd ar y maes, That are on the field, Denwch chwithan Come you also Yn iach adre! Quite well home! Away the whole of the live stock went with the Lady across Mydfai Mountain, towards the lake from whence they came, a distance of above six miles, where they disappeared beneath its waters, leaving no trace behind except a well-marked furrow, which was made by the plough the oxen drew after them into the lake, and which remains to this day as a testimony to the truth of this story. 'What became of the affrighted ploughman--whether he was left on the field when the oxen set off, or whether he followed them to the lake, has not been handed down to tradition; neither has the fate of the disconsolate and half-ruined husband been kept in remembrance. But of the sons it is stated that they often wandered about the lake and its vicinity, hoping that their mother might be permitted to visit the face of the earth once more, as they had been apprised of her mysterious origin, her first appearance to their father, and the untoward circumstances which so unhappily deprived them of her maternal care. 'In one of their rambles, at a place near Dôl Howel, at the Mountain Gate, still called "Llidiad y Medygon," The Physicians' Gate, the mother appeared suddenly, and accosted her eldest son, whose name was Rhiwallon, and told him that his mission on earth was to be a benefactor to mankind by relieving them from pain and misery, through healing all manner of their diseases; for which purpose she furnished him with a bag full of medical prescriptions and instructions for the preservation of health. That by strict attention thereto he and his family would become for many generations the most skilful physicians in the country. Then, promising to meet him when her counsel was most needed, she vanished. But on several occasions she met her sons near the banks of the lake, and once she even accompanied them on their return home as far as a place still called "Pant-y-Medygon," The dingle of the Physicians, where she pointed out to them the various plants and herbs which grew in the dingle, and revealed to them their medicinal qualities or virtues; and the knowledge she imparted to them, together with their unrivalled skill, soon caused them to attain such celebrity that none ever possessed before them. And in order that their knowledge should not be lost, they wisely committed the same to writing, for the benefit of mankind throughout all ages.' To the legend Mr. Rees added the following notes, which we reproduce also at full length:-- 'And so ends the story of the Physicians of Mydfai, which has been handed down from one generation to another, thus:-- Yr hên wr llwyd o'r cornel, The grey old man in the corner Gan ci dad a glywod chwedel [6], Of his father heard a story, A chan ci dad fe glywod yntau Which from his father he had heard, Ac ar ei ôl mi gofiais innau. And after them I have remembered. As stated in the introduction of the present work [i.e. the Physicians of Mydvai], Rhiwallon and his sons became Physicians to Rhys Gryg, Lord of Llandovery and Dynefor Castles, "who gave them rank, lands, and privileges at Mydfai for their maintenance in the practice of their art and science, and the healing and benefit of those who should seek their help," thus affording to those who could not afford to pay, the best medical advice and treatment gratuitously. Such a truly royal foundation could not fail to produce corresponding effects. So the fame of the Physicians of Mydfai was soon established over the whole country, and continued for centuries among their descendants. 'The celebrated Welsh Bard, Dafyd ap Gwilym, who flourished in the following century, and was buried at the Abbey of Tal-y-llychau [7], in Carmarthenshire, about the year 1368, says in one of his poems, as quoted in Dr. Davies' dictionary-- Medyg ni wnai mod y gwnaeth A Physician he would not make Mydfai, o chai dyn medfaeth. As Mydfai made, if he had a mead fostered man. Of the above lands bestowed upon the Medygon, there are two farms in Mydfai parish still called "Llwyn Ifan Fedyg," the Grove of Evan the Physician; and "Llwyn Meredyd Fedyg," the Grove of Meredith the Physician. Esgair Llaethdy, mentioned in the foregoing legend, was formerly in the possession of the above descendants, and so was Ty newyd, near Mydfai, which was purchased by Mr. Holford, of Cilgwyn, from the Rev. Charles Lloyd, vicar of Llandefalle, Breconshire, who married a daughter of one of the Medygon, and had the living of Llandefalle from a Mr. Vaughan, who presented him to the same out of gratitude, because Mr. Lloyd's wife's father had cured him of a disease in the eye. As Mr. Lloyd succeeded to the above living in 1748, and died in 1800, it is probable that the skilful oculist was John Jones, who is mentioned in the following inscription on a tombstone at present fixed against the west end of Mydfai Church:-- HERE Lieth the body of Mr. DAVID JONES, of Mothvey, Surgeon, who was an honest, charitable, and skilful man. He died September 14th, Anno Dom 1719, aged 61. JOHN JONES, Surgeon, Eldest son of the said David Jones, departed this life the 25th of November, 1739, in the 44th year of his Age, and also lyes interred hereunder. These appear to have been the last of the Physicians who practised at Mydfai. The above John Jones resided for some time at Llandovery, and was a very eminent surgeon. One of his descendants, named John Lewis, lived at Cwmbran, Mydfai, at which place his great-grandson, Mr. John Jones, now resides. 'Dr. Morgan Owen, Bishop of Llandaff, who died at Glasallt, parish of Mydfai, in 1645, was a descendant of the Medygon, and an inheritor of much of their landed property in that parish, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his nephew, Morgan Owen, who died in 1667, and was succeeded by his son Henry Owen; and at the decease of the last of whose descendants, Robert Lewis, Esq., the estates became, through the will of one of the family, the property of the late D. A. S. Davies, Esq., M.P. for Carmarthenshire. 'Bishop Owen bequeathed to another nephew, Morgan ap Rees, son of Rees ap John, a descendant of the Medygon, the farm of Rhyblid, and some other property. Morgan ap Rees' son, Samuel Rice, resided at Loughor, in Gower, Glamorganshire, and had a son, Morgan Rice, who was a merchant in London, and became Lord of the Manor of Tooting Graveney, and High Sheriff in the year 1772, and Deputy Lieutenant of the county of Surrey, 1776. He resided at Hill House, which he built. At his death the whole of his property passed to his only child, John Rice, Esq., whose eldest son, the Rev. John Morgan Rice, inherited the greater portion of his estates. The head of the family is now the Rev. Horatio Morgan Rice, rector of South Hill with Callington, Cornwall, and J.P. for the county, who inherited, with other property, a small estate at Loughor. The above Morgan Rice had landed property in Llanmadock and Llangenith, as well as Loughor, in Gower, but whether he had any connexion with Howel the Physician (ap Rhys ap Llywelyn ap Philip the Physician, and lineal descendant from Einion ap Rhiwallon), who resided at Cilgwryd in Gower, is not known. 'Amongst other families who claim descent from the Physicians were the Bowens of Cwmydw, Mydfai; and Jones of Dollgarreg and Penrhock, in the same parish; the latter of whom are represented by Charles Bishop, of Dollgarreg, Esq., Clerk of the Peace for Carmarthenshire, and Thomas Bishop, of Brecon, Esq. 'Rees Williams of Mydfai is recorded as one of the Medygon. His great-grandson was the late Rice Williams, M.D., of Aberystwyth, who died May 16, 1842, aged 85, and appears to have been the last, although not the least eminent, of the Physicians descended from the mysterious Lady of Llyn y Fan [8].' This brings the legend of the Lady of the Fan Lake into connexion with a widely-spread family. There is another connexion between it and modern times, as will be seen from the following statement kindly made to me by the Rev. A. G. Edwards, Warden of the Welsh College at Llandovery, since then appointed Bishop of St. Asaph: 'An old woman from Mydfai, who is now, that is to say in January 1881, about eighty years of age, tells me that she remembers "thousands and thousands of people visiting the Lake of the Little Fan on the first Sunday or Monday in August, and when she was young she often heard old men declare that at that time a commotion took place in the lake, and that its waters boiled, which was taken to herald the approach of the Lake Lady and her Oxen."' The custom of going up to the lake on the first Sunday in August was a very well known one in years gone by, as I have learned from a good many people, and it is corroborated by Mr. Joseph Joseph of Brecon, who kindly writes as follows, in reply to some queries of mine: 'On the first Sunday in the month of August, Llyn y Fan Fach is supposed to be boiling (berwi). I have seen scores of people going up to see it (not boiling though) on that day. I do not remember that any of them expected to see the Lady of the Lake.' As to the boiling of the lake I have nothing to say, and I am not sure that there is anything in the following statement made as an explanation of the yearly visit to the lake by an old fisherwoman from Llandovery: 'The best time for eels is in August, when the north-east wind blows on the lake, and makes huge waves in it. The eels can then be seen floating on the waves.' Last summer I went myself to the village of Mydfai, to see if I could pick up any variants of the legend, but I was hardly successful; for though several of the farmers I questioned could repeat bits of the legend, including the Lake Lady's call to her cattle as she went away, I got nothing new, except that one of them said that the youth, when he first saw the Lake Lady at a distance, thought she was a goose--he did not even rise to the conception of a swan--but that by degrees he approached her, and discovered that she was a lady in white, and that in due time they were married, and so on. My friend, the Warden of Llandovery College, seems, however, to have found a bit of a version which may have been still more unlike the one recorded by Mr. Rees of Tonn: it was from an old man at Mydfai last year, from whom he was, nevertheless, only able to extract the statement 'that the Lake Lady got somehow entangled in a farmer's "gambo," and that ever after his farm was very fertile.' A 'gambo,' I ought to explain, is a kind of a cart without sides, used in South Wales: both the name and the thing seem to have come from England, though I cannot find such a word as gambo or gambeau in the ordinary dictionaries. Among other legends about lake fairies, there are, in the third chapter of Mr. Sikes' British Goblins, two versions of this story: the first of them differs but slightly from Mr. Rees', in that the farmer used to go near the lake to see some lambs he had bought at a fair, and that whenever he did so three beautiful damsels appeared to him from the lake. They always eluded his attempts to catch them: they ran away into the lake, saying, Cras dy fara, &c. But one day a piece of moist bread came floating ashore, which he ate, and the next day he had a chat with the Lake Maidens. He proposed marriage to one of them, to which she consented, provided he could distinguish her from her sisters the day after. The story then, so far as I can make out from the brief version which Mr. Sikes gives of it, went on like that of Mr. Rees. The former gives another version, with much more interesting variations, which omit all reference, however, to the Physicians of Mydfai, and relate how a young farmer had heard of the Lake Maiden rowing up and down the lake in a golden boat with a golden scull. He went to the lake on New Year's Eve, saw her, was fascinated by her, and left in despair at her vanishing out of sight, although he cried out to her to stay and be his wife. She faintly replied, and went her way, after he had gazed at her long yellow hair and pale melancholy face. He continued to visit the lake, and grew thin and negligent of his person, owing to his longing. But a wise man, who lived on the mountain, advised him to tempt her with gifts of bread and cheese, which he undertook to do on Midsummer Eve, when he dropped into the lake a large cheese and a loaf of bread. This he did repeatedly, until at last his hopes were fulfilled on New Year's Eve. This time he had gone to the lake clad in his best suit, and at midnight dropped seven white loaves and his biggest and finest cheese into the lake. The Lake Lady by-and-by came in her skiff to where he was, and gracefully stepped ashore. The scene need not be further described: Mr. Sikes gives a picture of it, and the story then proceeds as in the other version. It is a pity that Mr. Rees did not preserve the Welsh versions out of which he pieced together the English one; but as to Mr. Sikes, I cannot discover whence his has been derived, for he seems not to have been too anxious to leave anybody the means of testing his work, as one will find on verifying his references, when he gives any. See also the allusions to him in Hartland's Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 64, 123, 137, 165, 278. Since writing the foregoing notes the following communication has reached me from a friend of my undergraduate days at Jesus College, Oxford, Mr. Llywarch Reynolds of Merthyr Tydfil. Only the first part of it concerns the legend of Llyn y Fan Fach; but as the rest is equally racy I make no apology for publishing it in full without any editing, except the insertion of the meaning of two or three of the Welsh words occurring in it:-- 'Tell Rhys that I have just heard a sequel to the Medygon Mydfai story, got from a rustic on Mynyd y Banwen, between Glynnêd and Glyntawë, on a ramble recently with David Lewis the barrister and Sidney Hartland the folklorist. It was to the effect that after the disappearance of the forwn, "the damsel," into the lake, the disconsolate husband and his friends set to work to drain the lake in order to get at her, if possible. They made a great cutting into the bank, when suddenly a huge hairy monster of hideous aspect emerged from the water and stormed at them for disturbing him, and wound up with this threat:-- Os na cha'i lonyd yn ym lle, If I get no quiet in my place, Fi foda dre' 'Byrhondu! I shall drown the town of Brecon! It was evidently the last braich, "arm," of a Triban Morgannwg, but this was all my informant knew of it. From the allusion to Tre' Byrhondu, it struck me that there was here probably a tale of Llyn Safadon, which had migrated to Llyn y Fan; because of course there would have to be a considerable change in the "levels" before Llyn y Fan and the Sawde could put Brecon in any great jeopardy [9]. 'We also got another tale about a cwmshurwr, "conjurer," who once lived in Ystradgyrlais (as the rustic pronounced it). The wizard was a dyn llaw-harn, "a man with an iron hand"; and it being reported that there was a great treasure hidden in Mynyd y Drum, the wizard said he would secure it, if he could but get some plucky fellow to spend a night with him there. John Gethin was a plucky fellow (dyn "ysprydol"), and he agreed to join the dyn llaw-harn in his diablerie. The wizard traced two rings on the sward touching each other "like a number 8"; he went into one, and Gethin into the other, the wizard strictly charging him on no account to step out of the ring. The llaw-harn then proceeded to trafod 'i lyfrau, or "busy himself with his books"; and there soon appeared a monstrous bull, bellowing dreadfully; but the plucky Gethin held his ground, and the bull vanished. Next came a terrible object, a "fly-wheel of fire," which made straight for poor Gethin and made him swerve out of the ring. Thereupon the wheel assumed the form of the diawl, "devil," who began to haul Gethin away. The llaw-harn seized hold of him and tried to get him back. The devil was getting the upper hand, when the llaw-harn begged the devil to let him keep Gethin while the piece of candle he had with him lasted. The devil consented, and let go his hold of Gethin, whereupon the cwmshurwr immediately blew out the candle, and the devil was discomfited. Gethin preserved the piece of candle very carefully, stowing it away in a cool place; but still it wasted away although it was never lighted. Gethin got such a fright that he took to his bed, and as the candle wasted away he did the same, and they both came to an end simultaneously. Gethin vanished--and it was not his body that was put into the coffin, but a lump of clay which was put in to save appearances! It is said that the wizard's books are in an oaken chest at Waungyrlais farm house to this day. 'We got these tales on a ramble to see "Maen y Gwediau," on the mountain near Coelbren Junction Station on the Neath and Brecon Railway (marked on the Ordnance Map), but we had to turn back owing to the fearful heat.' Before dismissing Mr. Reynolds' letter I may mention a story in point which relates to a lake on the Brecon side of the mountains. It is given at length by the Rev. Edward Davies in his Mythology and Rites of the British Druids (London, 1809), pp. 155-7. According to this legend a door in the rock was to be found open once a year--on May-day, as it is supposed--and from that door one could make one's way to the garden of the fairies, which was an island in the middle of the lake. This paradise of exquisite bliss was invisible, however, to those who stood outside the lake: they could only see an indistinct mass in the centre of the water. Once on a time a visitor tried to carry away some of the flowers given him by the fairies, but he was thereby acting against their law, and not only was he punished with the loss of his senses, but the door has never since been left open. It is also related that once an adventurous person attempted to drain the water away 'in order to discover its contents, when a terrific form arose from the midst of the lake, commanding him to desist, or otherwise he would drown the country.' This form is clearly of the same species as that which, according to Mr. Reynolds' story, threatened to drown the town of Brecon. Subsequent inquiries have elicited more information, and I am more especially indebted to my friend Mr. Ivor James, who, as registrar of the University of Wales, has of late years been living at Brecon. He writes to the following effect:--'The lake you want is Llyn Cwm Llwch, and the legend is very well known locally, but there are variants. Once on a time men and boys dug a gully through the dam in order to let the water out. A man in a red coat, sitting in an armchair, appeared on the surface of the water and threatened them in the terms which you quote from Mr. Reynolds. The red coat would seem to suggest that this form of the legend dates possibly from a time since our soldiers were first clothed in red. In another case, however, the spectre was that of an old woman; and I am told that a somewhat similar story is told in connexion with a well in the castle wall in the parish of Llandew, to the north of this town--Giraldus Cambrensis' parish. A friend of mine is employing his spare time at present in an inquiry into the origin of the lakes of this district, and he tells me that Llyn Cwm Llwch is of glacial origin, its dam being composed, as he thinks, of glacial débris through which the water always percolates into the valley below. But storm water flows over the dam, and in the course of ages has cut for itself a gully, now about ten feet deep at the deepest point, through the embankment. The story was possibly invented to explain that fact. There is no cave to be seen in the rock, and probably there never was one, as the formation is the Old Red Sandstone; and the island was perhaps equally imaginary.' That is the substance of Mr. James' letter, in which he, moreover, refers to J. D. Rhys' account of the lake in his Welsh introduction to his Grammar, published in London in 1592, under the title Cambrobrytannicæ Cymraecæve Linguæ Institutiones et Rudimenta. There the grammarian, in giving some account of himself, mentions his frequent sojourns at the hospitable residence of a nobleman, named M. Morgan Merêdydh, near y Bugeildy ynn Nyphryn Tabhîda o bhywn Swydh Bhaesybhed, that is, 'near the Beguildy in the Valley of the Teme within the county of Radnor.' Then he continues to the following effect:--'But the latter part of this book was thought out under the bushes and green foliage in a bit of a place of my own called y Clun Hîr, at the top of Cwm y Llwch, below the spurs of the mountain of Bannwchdeni, which some call Bann Arthur and others Moel Arthur. Below that moel and in its lap there is a lake of pretty large size, unknown depth, and wondrous nature. For as the stories go, no bird has ever been seen to repair to it or towards it, or to swim on it: it is wholly avoided, and some say that no animals or beasts of any kind are wont to drink of its waters. The peasantry of that country, and especially the shepherds who are wont to frequent these moels and bans, relate many other wonders concerning it and the exceeding strange things beheld at times in connexion with this loch. This lake or loch is called Llyn Cwm y Llwch [10].' II. Before dismissing the story of Llyn y Fan Fach I wish to append a similar one from the parish of Ystrad Dyfodwg in Glamorganshire. The following is a translation of a version given in Welsh in Cyfaill yr Aelwyd a'r Frythones, edited by Elfed and Cadrawd, and published by Messrs. Williams and Son, Llanelly. The version in question is by Cadrawd, and it is to the following effect--see the volume for 1892, p. 59:-- 'Llyn y Forwyn, "the Damsel's Pool," is in the parish of Ystrad Tyfodwg: the inhabitants call it also Llyn Nelferch. It lies about halfway between the farm house of Rhonda Fechan, "Little Rhonda," and the Vale of Safrwch. The ancient tradition concerning it is somewhat as follows:-- 'Once on a time a farmer lived at the Rhonda Fechan: he was unmarried, and as he was walking by the lake early one morning in spring he beheld a young woman of beautiful appearance walking on the other side of it. He approached her and spoke to her: she gave him to understand that her home was in the lake, and that she owned a number of milch cows, that lived with her at the bottom of the water. The farmer fancied her so much that he fell in love with her over head and ears: he asked her on the spot for her hand and heart; and he invited her to come and spend her life with him as his wife at the Rhonda Fechan. She declined at first, but as he was importunate she consented at last on the following conditions, namely, that she would bring her cattle with her out of the lake, and live with him until he and she had three disputes with one another: then, she said, she and the cattle would return into the lake. He agreed to the conditions, and the marriage took place. They lived very happily and comfortably for long years; but the end was that they fell out with one another, and, when they happened to have quarrelled for the third time, she was heard early in the morning driving the cattle towards the lake with these words:-- Prw dre', prw dre', prw'r gwartheg i dre'; Prw Milfach a Malfach, pedair Llualfach, Alfach ac Ali, pedair Ladi, Wynebwen drwynog, tro i'r waun lidiog, Trech llyn y waun odyn, tair Pencethin, Tair caseg du draw yn yr eithin [11]. And into the lake they went out of sight, and there they live to this day. And some believed that they had heard the voice and cry of Nelferch in the whisper of the breeze on the top of the mountain hard by--many a time after that--as an old story (wedal) will have it.' From this it will be seen that the fairy wife's name was supposed to have been Nelferch, and that the piece of water is called after her. But I find that great uncertainty prevails as to the old name of the lake, as I learn from a communication in 1894 from Mr. Llewellyn Williams, living at Porth, only some five miles from the spot, that one of his informants assured him that the name in use among former generations was Llyn Alfach. Mr. Williams made inquiries at the Rhonda Fechan about the lake legend. He was told that the water had long since been known as Llyn y Forwyn, from a morwyn, or damsel, with a number of cattle having been drowned in it. The story of the man who mentioned the name as Llyn Alfach was similar: the maid belonged to the farm of Penrhys, he said, and the young man to the Rhonda Fechan, and it was in consequence of their third dispute, he added, that she left him and went back to her previous service, and afterwards, while taking the cattle to the water, she sank accidentally or purposely into the lake, so that she was never found any more. Here it will be seen how modern rationalism has been modifying the story into something quite uninteresting but without wholly getting rid of the original features, such as the three disputes between the husband and wife. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that this water appears to form part of a bit of very remarkable scenery, and that its waves strike on one side against a steep rock believed to contain caves, supposed to have been formerly inhabited by men and women. At present the place, I learn, is in the possession of Messrs. Davis and Sons, owners of the Ferndale collieries, who keep a pleasure boat on the lake. I have appealed to them on the question of the name Nelferch or Alfach, in the hope that their books would help to decide as to the old form of it. Replying on their behalf, Mr. J. Probert Evans informs me that the company only got possession of the lake and the adjacent land in 1862, and that 'Llyn y Vorwyn' is the name of the former in the oldest plan which they have. Inquiries have also been made in the neighbourhood by my friend, Mr. Reynolds, who found the old tenants of the Rhonda Fechan Farm gone, and the neighbouring farm house of Dyffryn Safrwch supplanted by colliers' cottages. But he calls my attention to the fact, that perhaps the old name was neither Nelferch nor Alfach, as Elfarch, which would fit equally well, was once the name of a petty chieftain of the adjoining Hundred of Senghenyd, for which he refers me to Clark's Glamorgan Genealogies, p. 511. But I have to thank him more especially for a longer version of the fairy wife's call to her cattle, as given in Glanffrwd's Plwyf Llanwyno, 'the Parish of Llanwynno' (Pontyprid, 1888), p. 117, as follows:-- Prw me, prw me, Prw 'ngwartheg i dre'; Prw Melen a Ioco, Tegwen a Rhudo, Rhud-frech a Moel-frech, Pedair Lliain-frech; Lliain-frech ag Eli, A phedair Wen-ladi, Ladi a Chornwen, A phedair Wynebwen; Nepwen a Rhwynog, Tali Lieiniog; Brech yn y Glyn Dal yn dyn; Tair lygeityn, Tair gyffredm, Tair Caseg du, draw yn yr eithin, Deuwch i gyd i lys y Brenin; Bwla, bwla, Saif yn flaena', Saf yn ol y wraig o'r Ty-fry, Fyth nis godri ngwartheg i! The last lines--slightly mended--may be rendered: Bull, bull! Stand thou foremost. Back! thou wife of the House up Hill: Never shalt thou milk my cows. This seems to suggest that the quarrel was about another woman, and that by the time when the fairy came to call her live stock into the lake she had been replaced by another woman who came from the Ty-fry, or the House up Hill [12]. In that case this version comes closer than any other to the story of Undine supplanted by Bertalda as her knight's favourite. Mr. Probert Evans having kindly given me the address of an aged farmer who formerly lived in the valley, my friend, Mr. Llywarch Reynolds, was good enough to visit him. Mr. Reynolds shall report the result in his own words, dated January 9, 1899, as follows:-- 'I was at Pentyrch this morning, and went to see Mr. David Evans, formerly of Cefn Colston. 'The old man is a very fine specimen of the better class of Welsh farmer; is in his eighty-third year; hale and hearty, intelligent, and in full possession of his faculties. He was born and bred in the Rhonda Fechan Valley, and lived there until some forty years ago. He had often heard the lake story from an old aunt of his who lived at the Maerdy Farm (a short distance north of the lake), and who died a good many years ago, at a very advanced age. He calls the lake "Llyn Elferch," and the story, as known to him, has several points in common with the Llyn y Fan legend, which, however, he did not appear to know. He could not give me many details, but the following is the substance of the story as he knows it:--The young farmer, who lived with his mother at the neighbouring farm, one day saw the lady on the bank of the lake, combing her hair, which reached down to her feet. He fell in love at first sight, and tried to approach her; but she evaded him, and crying out, Dali di dim o fi, crâs dy fara! (Thou wilt not catch me, thou of the crimped bread), she sank into the water. He saw her on several subsequent occasions, and gave chase, but always with the same result, until at length he got his mother to make him some bread which was not baked (or not baked so hard); and this he offered to the lady. She then agreed to become his wife, subject to the condition that if he offended her, or disagreed with her three times (ar yr ammod, os byssa fa yn 'i chroesi hi dair gwaith) she would leave him and return into the lake with all her belongings. '1. The first disagreement (croes) was at the funeral of a neighbour, a man in years, at which the lady gave way to excessive weeping and lamentation. The husband expressed surprise and annoyance at this excessive grief for the death of a person not related to them, and asked the reason for it; and she replied that she grieved for the defunct on account of the eternal misery that was in store for him in the other world. '2. The second "croes" was at the death of an infant child of the lady herself, at which she laughed immoderately; and in reply to the husband's remonstrance, she said she did so for joy at her child's escape from this wicked world and its passage into a world of bliss. '3. The third "croes" Mr. Evans was unable to call to mind, but equally with the other two it showed that the lady was possessed of preternatural knowledge; and it resulted in her leaving her husband and returning into the lake, taking the cattle, &c., with her. The accepted explanation of the name of the lake was Llyn El-ferch [13] (= Hela 'r ferch), "because of the young man chasing the damsel" (hela 'r ferch). 'The following is the cattle-call, as given to me by Mr. Evans' aged housekeeper, who migrated with the family from Rhonda Fechan to Pentyrch: Prw i, prw e [14], Prw 'ngwartheg sha [= tua] thre'; Mil a môl a melyn gwtta; Milfach a malfach; Petar [= pedair] llearfach; Llearfach ag aeli; Petar a lafi; Lafi a chornwan [= -wèn]; [...] 'nepwan [= -wèn], 'Nepwan drwynog; Drotwan [= droedwen] litiog; Tair Bryncethin; Tair gyffretin; Tair casag du Draw yn yr ithin [= eithin], Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin. 'Mr. Evans told me that Dyffryn Safrwch was considered to be a corruption of Dyffryn Safn yr Hwch, "Valley of the Sow's Mouth"; so that the explanation was not due to a minister with whom I foregathered on my tramp near the lake the other day, and from whom I heard it first.' The similarity between Mr. Evans' version of this legend and that of Llyn y Fan Fach, tends to add emphasis to certain points which I had been inclined to treat as merely accidental. In the Fan Fach legend the young man's mother is a widow, and here he is represented living with his mother. Here also something depends on the young man's bread, but it is abruptly introduced, suggesting that a part of the story has been forgotten. Both stories, however, give one the impression that the bread of the fairies was regarded as always imperfectly baked. In both stories the young man's mother comes to his help with her advice. Mr. Evans' version ascribes supernatural knowledge to the fairy, though his version fails to support it; and her moralizings read considerably later than those which the Fan legend ascribes to the fairy wife. Some of these points may be brought under the reader's notice later, when he has been familiarized with more facts illustrative of the belief in fairies. III. On returning from South Wales to Carnarvonshire in the summer of 1881, I tried to discover similar legends connected with the lakes of North Wales, beginning with Geirionyd, the waters of which form a stream emptying itself into the Conwy, near Trefriw, a little below Llanrwst. I only succeeded, however, in finding an old man of the name of Pierce Williams, about seventy years of age, who was very anxious to talk about 'Bony's' wars, but not about lake ladies. I was obliged, in trying to make him understand what I wanted, to use the word morforwyn, that is to say in English, 'mermaid'; he then told me, that in his younger days he had heard people say that somebody had seen such beings in the Trefriw river. But as my questions were leading ones, his evidence is not worth much; however, I feel pretty sure that one who knew the neighbourhood of Geirionyd better would be able to find some fragments of interesting legends still existing in that wild district. I was more successful at Llanberis, though what I found, at first, was not much; but it was genuine, and to the point. This is the substance of it:--An old woman, called Siân [15] Dafyd, lived at Helfa Fawr, in the dingle called Cwm Brwynog, along the left side of which you ascend as you go to the top of Snowdon, from the village of lower Llanberis, or Coed y Dol, as it is there called. She was a curious old person, who made nice distinctions between the virtues of the respective waters of the district: thus, no other would do for her to cure her of the defaid gwylltion [16], or cancerous warts, which she fancied that she had in her mouth, than that of the spring of Tai Bach, near the lake called Llyn Ffynnon y Gwas, though she seldom found it out, when she was deceived by a servant who cherished a convenient opinion of his own, that a drop from a nearer spring would do just as well. Old Siân has been dead over thirty-five years, but I have it, on the testimony of two highly trustworthy brothers, who are of her family, and now between sixty and seventy years of age, that she used to relate to them how a shepherd, once on a time, saw a fairy maiden (un o'r Tylwyth Teg) on the surface of the tarn called Llyn Du'r Ardu, and how, from bantering and joking, their acquaintance ripened into courtship, when the father and mother of the lake maiden appeared to give the union their sanction, and to arrange the marriage settlement. This was to the effect that the husband was never to strike his wife with iron, and that she was to bring her great wealth with her, consisting of stock of all kinds for his mountain farm. All duly took place, and they lived happily together until one day, when trying to catch a pony, the husband threw a bridle to his wife, and the iron in that struck her. It was then all over with him, as the wife hurried away with her property into the lake, so that nothing more was seen or heard of her. Here I may as well explain that the Llanberis side of the steep, near the top of Snowdon, is called Clogwyn du'r Ardu, or the Black Cliff of the Ardu, at the bottom of which lies the tarn alluded to as the Black Lake of the Ardu, and near it stands a huge boulder, called Maen du'r Ardu, all of which names are curious, as involving the word du, black. Ardu itself has much the same meaning, and refers to the whole precipitous side of the summit with its dark shadows, and there is a similar Ardu near Nanmor on the Merionethshire side of Bedgelert. One of the brothers, I ought to have said, doubts that the lake here mentioned was the one in old Siân's tale; but he has forgotten which it was of the many in the neighbourhood. Both, however, remembered another short story about fairies, which they had heard another old woman relate, namely, Mari Domos Siôn, who died some thirty years ago: it was merely to the effect that a shepherd had once lost his way in the mist on the mountain on the land of Caeau Gwynion, towards Cwellyn [17] Lake, and got into a ring where the Tylwyth Teg were dancing: it was only after a very hard struggle that he was able, at length, to get away from them. To this I may add the testimony of a lady, for whose veracity I can vouch, to the effect that, when she was a child in Cwm Brwynog, from thirty to forty years ago, she and her brothers and sisters used to be frequently warned by their mother not to go far away from the house when there happened to be thick mist on the ground, lest they should come across the Tylwyth Teg dancing, and be carried away to their abode beneath the lake. They were always, she says, supposed to live in the lakes; and the one here alluded to was Llyn Dwythwch, which is one of those famous for its torgochiaid or chars. The mother is still living; but she seems to have long since, like others, lost her belief in the fairies. After writing the above, I heard that a brother to the foregoing brothers, namely, Mr. Thomas Davies, of Mur Mawr, Llanberis, remembered a similar tale. Mr. Davies is now sixty-four, and the persons from whom he heard the tale were the same Siân Dafyd of Helfa Fawr, and Mari Domos Siôn of Tyn [18] Gadlas, Llanberis: the two women were about seventy years of age when he as a child heard it from them. At my request, a friend of mine, Mr. Hugh D. Jones, of Tyn Gadlas, also a member of this family, which is one of the oldest perhaps in the place, has taken down from Mr. Davies' mouth all he could remember, word for word, as follows:-- Yn perthyn i ffarm Bron y Fedw yr oed dyn ifanc wedi cael ei fagu, nis gwydent faint cyn eu hamser hwy. Arferai pan yn hogyn fynd i'r mynyd yn Cwm Drywenyd a Mynyd y Fedw ar ochr orllewinol y Wydfa i fugeilio, a bydai yn taro ar hogan yn y mynyd; ac wrth fynychu gweld eu gilyd aethant yn ffrindiau mawr. Arferent gyfarfod eu gilyd mewn lle neillduol yn Cwm Drywenyd, lle'r oed yr hogan a'r teulu yn byw, lle y bydai pob danteithion, chwareuydiaethau a chanu dihafal; ond ni fydai'r hogyn yn gwneyd i fyny a neb ohonynt ond yr hogan. Diwed y ffrindiaeth fu carwriaeth, a phan soniod yr hogyn am idi briodi, ni wnai ond ar un amod, sef y bywiai hi hefo fo hyd nes y tarawai ef hi a haiarn. Priodwyd hwy, a buont byw gyda'u gilyd am nifer o flynydoed, a bu idynt blant; ac ar dyd marchnad yn Gaernarfon yr oed y gwr a'r wraig yn medwl mynd i'r farchnad ar gefn merlod, fel pob ffarmwr yr amser hwnnw. Awd i'r mynyd i dal merlyn bob un. Ar waelod Mynyd y Fedw mae llyn o ryw dri-ugain neu gan llath o hyd ac ugain neu deg llath ar hugain o led, ac y mae ar un ochr ido le têg, fford y bydai'r ceffylau yn rhedeg. Daliod y gwr ferlyn a rhoes ef i'r wraig i'w dal heb ffrwyn, tra bydai ef yn dal merlyn arall. Ar ol rhoi ffrwyn yn mhen ei ferlyn ei hun, taflod un arall i'r wraig i roi yn mhen ei merlyn hithau, ac wrth ei thaflu tarawod bit y ffrwyn hi yn ei llaw. Gollyngod y wraig y merlyn, ac aeth ar ei phen i'r llyn, a dyna diwed y briodas. 'To the farm of Bron y Fedw there belonged a son, who grew up to be a young man, the women knew not how long before their time. He was in the habit of going up the mountain to Cwm Drywenyd [19] and Mynyd y Fedw, on the west side of Snowdon, to do the shepherding, and there he was wont to come across a lass on the mountain, so that as the result of frequently meeting one another, he and she became great friends. They usually met at a particular spot in Cwm Drywenyd, where the girl and her family lived, and where there were all kinds of nice things to eat, of amusements, and of incomparable music; but he did not make up to anybody there except the girl. The friendship ended in courtship; but when the boy mentioned that she should be married to him, she would only do so on one condition, namely, that she would live with him until he should strike her with iron. They were wedded, and they lived together for a number of years, and had children. Once on a time it happened to be market day at Carnarvon, whither the husband and wife thought of riding on ponies, like all the farmers of that time. So they went to the mountain to catch a pony each. At the bottom of Mynyd y Fedw there is a pool some sixty or one hundred yards long by twenty or thirty broad, and on one side of it there is a level space along which the horses used to run. The husband caught a pony, and gave it to the wife to hold fast without a bridle, while he should catch another. When he had bridled his own pony, he threw another bridle to his wife for her to secure hers; but as he threw it, the bit of the bridle struck her on one of her hands. The wife let go the pony, and went headlong into the pool, and that was the end of their wedded life.' The following is a later tale, which Mr. Thomas Davies heard from his mother, who died in 1832: she would be ninety years of age had she been still living:-- Pan oed hi'n hogan yn yr Hafod, Llanberis, yr oed hogan at ei hoed hi'n cael ei magu yn Cwmglas, Llanberis, ac arferai dweyd, pan yn hogan a thra y bu byw, y bydai yn cael arian gan y Tylwyth Teg yn Cwm Cwmglas. Yr oed yn dweyd y bydai ar foreuau niwliog, tywyll, yn mynd i le penodol yn Cwm Cwmglas gyda dsygiad o lefrith o'r fuches a thywel glan, ac yn ei rodi ar garreg; ac yn mynd yno drachefn, ac yn cael y llestr yn wag, gyda darn deuswllt neu hanner coron ac weithiau fwy wrth ei ochr. 'When she was a girl, living at Yr Hafod, Llanberis, there was a girl of her age being brought up at Cwmglas in the same parish. The latter was in the habit of saying, when she was a girl and so long as she lived, that she used to have money from the Tylwyth Teg, in the Cwmglas Hollow. Her account was, that on dark, misty mornings she used to go to a particular spot in that Hollow with a jugful of sweet milk from the milking place, and a clean towel, and then place them on a stone. She would return, and find the jug empty, with a piece of money placed by its side: that is, two shillings or half a crown, or at times even more.' A daughter of that woman lives now at a farm, Mr. Davies observes, called Plas Pennant, in the parish of Llanfihangel yn Mhennant, in Carnarvonshire; and he adds, that it was a tale of a kind that was common enough when he was a boy; but many laughed at it, though the old people believed it to be a fact. To this I may as well append another tale, which was brought to the memory of an old man who happened to be present when Mr. Jones and Mr. Davies were busy with the foregoing. His name is John Roberts, and his age is seventy-five: his present home is at Capel Sïon, in the neighbouring parish of Llandeiniolen:-- Yr oed ef pan yn hogyn yn gweini yn Towyn Trewern, yn agos i Gaergybi, gyda hen wr o'r enw Owen Owens, oed yr adeg honno at ei oed ef yn bresennol. Yr oedynt unwaith mewn hen adeilad ar y ffarm; a dywedod yr hen wr ei fod ef wedi cael llawer o arian yn y lle hwnnw pan yn hogyn, a buasai wedi cael ychwaneg oni bai ei dad. Yr oed wedi cudio yr arian yn y ty, ond daeth ei fam o hyd idynt, a dywedod yr hanes wrth ei dad. Ofnai ei fod yn fachgen drwg, mai eu lladrata yr oed. Dywedai ei dad y gwnai ido dweyd yn mha le yr oed yn eu cael, neu y tynnai ei groen tros ei ben; ac aeth allan a thorod wialen bwrpasol at orchwyl o'r fath. Yr oed y bachgen yn gwrando ar yr ymdidan rhwng ei dad a'i fam, ac yr oed yn benderfynol o gadw'r peth yn dirgelwch fel yr oed wedi ei rybudio gan y Tylwyth Teg. Aeth i'r ty, a dechreuod y tad ei holi, ac yntau yn gwrthod ateb; ymbiliai a'i dad, a dywedai eu bod yn berffaith onest ido ef, ac y cai ef ychwaneg os cadwai'r peth yn dirgelwch; ond os dywedai, nad oed dim ychwaneg i'w gael. Mod bynnag ni wrandawai y tad ar ei esgusion na'i resymau, a'r wialen a orfu; dywedod y bachgen mai gan y Tylwyth Teg yr oed yn eu cael, a hynny ar yr amod nad oed i dweyd wrth neb. Mawr oed edifeirwch yr hen bobl am lad yr wyd oed yn dodwy. Aeth y bachgen i'r hen adeilad lawer gwaith ar ol hyn, ond ni chafod byth ychwaneg o arian yno. 'When a lad, he was a servant at Towyn Trewern, near Holyhead, to an old man about his own age at present. They were one day in an old building on the farm, and the old man told him that he had had much money in that place when he was a lad, and that he would have had more had it not been for his father. He had hidden the money at home, where his mother found it and told his father of the affair: she feared he was a bad boy, and that it was by theft he got it. His father said that he would make him say where he got it, or else that he would strip him of the skin of his back, at the same time that he went out and cut a rod fit for effecting a purpose of the kind. The boy heard all this talk between his father and his mother, and felt determined to keep the matter a secret, as he had been warned by the Tylwyth Teg. He went into the house, and his father began to question him, while he refused to answer. He supplicatingly protested that the money was honestly got, and that he should get more if he kept it a secret, but that, if he did not, there would be no more to be got. However, the father would give no ear to his excuses or his reasons, and the rod prevailed; so that the boy said that it was from the Tylwyth Teg he used to get it, and that on condition of his not telling anybody. Greatly did the old folks regret having killed the goose that laid the eggs. The boy went many a time afterwards to the old building, but he never found any more money there.' IV. Through the Rev. Daniel Lewis, incumbent of Bettws Garmon, I was directed to Mr. Samuel Rhys Williams, of the Post Office of that place, who has kindly given me the result of his inquiries when writing on the subject of the antiquities of the neighbourhood for a competition at a literary meeting held there a few years ago. He tells me that he got the following short tale from a native of Drws y Coed, whose name is Margaret Williams. She has been living at Bettws Garmon for many years, and is now over eighty. He does not know whether the story is in print or not, but he is certain that Margaret Williams never saw it, even if it be. He further thinks he has heard it from another person, to wit a man over seventy-seven years of age, who has always lived at Drws y Coed, in the parish of Bedgelert:-- Y mae hanes am fab i amaethwr a breswyliai yn yr Ystrad [20], Betws Garmon [21], pan yn dychwelyd adref o daith yn hwyr un noswaith, darfod ido weled cwmni o'r Tylwyth Teg ynghanol eu hafiaeth a'u glodest. Syfrdanwyd y llanc yn y fan gan degwch anghymarol un o'r rhianod hyn, fel y beidiod neidio i ganol y cylch, a chymeryd ei eilun gydag ef. Wedi idi fod yn trigo gydag ef yn ei gartref am ysbaid, cafod gandi adaw bod yn wraig ido ar amodau neillduol. Un o'r amodau hyn ydoed, na bydai ido gyffwrd yndi ag un math o haiarn. Bu yn wraig ido, a ganwyd idynt dau o blant. Un diwrnod yr oed y gwr yn y maes yn ceisio dal y ceffyl; wrth ei weled yn ffaelu, aeth y wraig ato i'w gynorthwyo, a phan oed y march yn carlamu heibio gollyngod yntau y ffrwyn o'i law, er mwyn ceisio ei atal heibio; a phwy a darawod ond ei wraig, yr hon a diflannod yn y fan allan o'i olwg? 'The story goes, that the son of a farmer, who lived at the Ystrad in Bettws Garmon, when returning home from a journey, late in the evening, beheld a company of fairies in the middle of their mirth and jollity. The youth was at once bewildered by the incomparable beauty of one of these ladies, so that he ventured to leap into the circle and take his idol away with him. After she had tarried awhile with him at his home, he prevailed on her, on special conditions, to become his wife. One of these conditions was that he should not touch her with iron of any description. She became his wife, and two children were born to them. One day the husband was in the field trying to catch the horse; seeing him unsuccessful, the wife went to him to help him, and, when the horse was galloping past him, he let go the bridle at him in order to prevent him from passing; but whom should he strike but his wife, who vanished out of his sight on the spot.' Just as I was engaged in collecting these stories in 1881, a correspondent sent me a copy of the Ystrad tale as published by the late bard and antiquary, the Rev. Owen Wyn Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Glasynys [22], in the Brython [23] for 1863, p. 193. I will not attempt to translate Glasynys' poetic prose with all its compound adjectives, but it comes to this in a few words. One fine sunny morning, as the young heir of Ystrad was busied with his sheep on the side of Moel Eilio, he met a very pretty girl, and when he got home he told the folks there of it. A few days afterwards he met her again, and this happened several times, when he mentioned it to his father, who advised him to seize her when he next met her. The next time he met her he proceeded to do so, but before he could take her away, a little fat old man came to them and begged him to give her back to him, to which the youth would not listen. The little man uttered terrible threats, but the heir of Ystrad would not yield, so an agreement was made between them, that the latter was to have the girl to wife until he touched her skin with iron, and great was the joy both of the son and his parents in consequence. They lived together for many years; but once on a time, on the evening of the Bettws Fair, the wife's horse became restive, and somehow, as the husband was attending to the horse, the stirrup touched the skin of her bare leg, and that very night she was taken away from him. She had three or four children, and more than one of their descendants, as Glasynys maintains, were known to him at the time he wrote in 1863. Glasynys regards this as the same tale which is given by Williams of Llandegai, to whom we shall refer later; and he says that he heard it scores of times when he was a lad. Lastly, I happened to mention these legends last summer among others to the Rev. Owen Davies, curate of Llanberis, a man who is well versed in Welsh literature, and thoroughly in sympathy with everything Welsh. Mr. Davies told me that he knew a tale of the sort from his youth, as current in the parishes of Llanllechid and Llandegai, near Bangor. Not long afterwards he visited his mother at his native place, in Llanllechid, in order to have his memory of it refreshed; and he also went to the Waen Fawr, on the other side of Carnarvon, where he had the same legend told him with the different localities specified. The following is the Waen Fawr version, of which I give the Welsh as I have had it from Mr. Davies, and as it was related, according to him, some forty years ago in the valley of Nant y Bettws, near Carnarvon:-- Ar brydnawngwaith hyfryd yn Hefin, aeth llanc ieuanc gwrol-dewr ac anturiaethus, sef etifed a pherchennog yr Ystrad, i lan afon Gwyrfai, heb fod yn nepell o'i chychwyniad o lyn Cawellyn, ac a ymgudiod yno mewn dyryslwyn, sef ger y fan y bydai poblach y cotiau cochion--y Tylwyth Teg--yn arfer dawnsio. Yr ydoed yn noswaith hyfryd loergannog, heb un cwmwl i gau llygaid y Lloer, ac anian yn distaw dawedog, odigerth murmuriad lledf y Wyrfai, a swn yr awel ysgafndroed yn rhodio brigau deiliog y coed. Ni bu yn ei ymgudfa ond dros ychydig amser, cyn cael difyrru o hono ei olygon a dawns y teulu dedwyd. Wrth syllu ar gywreinrwyd y dawns, y chwim droadau cyflym, yr ymgyniweiriad ysgafn-droediog, tarawod ei lygaid ar las lodes ieuanc, dlysaf, hardaf, lunieidiaf a welod er ei febyd. Yr oed ei chwim droadau a lledneisrwyd ei hagwedion wedi tanio ei serch tu ag ati i'r fath radau, fel ag yr oed yn barod i unrhyw anturiaeth er mwyn ei hennill yn gydymaith ido ei hun. O'i ymgudfa dywyll, yr oed yn gwylio pob ysgogiad er mwyn ei gyfleustra ei hun. Mewn mynud, yn disymwth digon, rhwng pryder ac ofn, llamneidiod fel llew gwrol i ganol cylch y Tylwyth Teg, ac ymafaelod a dwylaw cariad yn y fun luniaid a daniod ei serch, a hynny, pan oed y Tylwyth dedwyd yn nghanol nwyfiant eu dawns. Cofleidiod hi yn dyner garedig yn ei fynwes wresog, ac aeth a hi i'w gartref--i'r Ystrad. Ond diflannod ei chyd-dawnsydion fel anadl Gorphennaf, er ei chroch dolefau am gael ei rhydhau, a'i hymegnion diflino i dianc o afael yr hwn a'i hoffod. Mewn anwylder mawr, ymdygod y llanc yn dyner odiaethol tu ag at y fun deg, ac yr oed yn orawydus i'w chadw yn ei olwg ac yn ei fediant. Llwydod drwy ei dynerwch tu ag ati i gael gandi adaw dyfod yn forwyn ido yn yr Ystrad. A morwyn ragorol oed hi. Godrai deirgwaith y swm arferol o laeth odiar bob buwch, ac yr oed yr ymenyn heb bwys arno. Ond er ei holl daerni, nis gallai mewn un mod gael gandi dyweud ei henw wrtho. Gwnaeth lawer cais, ond yn gwbl ofer. Yn damweiniol ryw dro, wrth yrru Brithen a'r Benwen i'r borfa, a hi yn noswaith loergan, efe a aeth i'r man lle yr arferai y Tylwyth Teg fyned drwy eu campau yng ngoleuni'r Lloer wen. Y tro hwn eto, efe a ymgudiod mewn dyryslwyn, a chlywod y Tylwyth Teg yn dywedyd y naill wrth y llall--'Pan oedym ni yn y lle hwn y tro diwedaf, dygwyd ein chwaer Penelope odiarnom gan un o'r marwolion.' Ar hynny, dychwelod y llencyn adref, a'i fynwes yn llawn o falchder cariad, o herwyd ido gael gwybod enw ei hoff forwyn, yr hon a synnod yn aruthr, pan glywod ei meistr ieuanc yn ei galw wrth ei henw. Ac am ei bod yn odiaethol dlos, a lluniaid, yn fywiog-weithgar, a medrus ar bob gwaith, a bod popeth yn llwydo dan ei llaw, cynygiod ei hun idi yn wr--y celai fod yn feistres yr Ystrad, yn lle bod yn forwyn. Ond ni chydsyniai hi a'i gais ar un cyfrif; ond bod braid yn bendrist oherwyd ido wybod ei henw. Fod bynnag, gwedi maith amser, a thrwy ei daerineb diflino, cydsyniod, ond yn amodol. Adawod dyfod yn wraig ido, ar yr amod canlynol, sef, 'Pa bryd bynnag y tarawai ef hi â haiarn, yr elai ymaith odi wrtho, ac na dychwelai byth ato mwy.' Sicrhawyd yr amod o'i du yntau gyda pharodrwyd cariad. Buont yn cyd-fyw a'u gilyd yn hapus a chysurus lawer o flynydoed, a ganwyd idynt fab a merch, y rhai oedynt dlysaf a llunieidiaf yn yr holl froyd. Ac yn rhinwed ei medrusrwyd a'i deheurwyd fel gwraig gall, rinwedol, aethant yn gyfoethog iawn--yn gyfoethocach na neb yn yr holl wlad. Heblaw ei etifediaeth ei hun--Yr Ystrad, yr oed yn ffarmio holl ogled-barth Nant y Betws, ac odi yno i ben yr Wydfa, ynghyd a holl Gwm Brwynog, yn mhlwyf Llanberis. Ond, ryw diwrnod, yn anffortunus digon aeth y dau i'r dol i dal y ceffyl, a chan fod y ceffylyn braid yn wyllt ac an-nof, yn rhedeg odi arnynt, taflod y gwr y ffrwyn mewn gwylltineb yn ei erbyn, er ei atal, ac ar bwy y disgynnod y ffrwyn, ond ar Penelope, y wraig! Diflannod Penelope yn y fan, ac ni welod byth mo honi. Ond ryw noswaith, a'r gwynt yn chwythu yn oer o'r gogled, daeth Penelope at ffenestr ei ystafell wely, a dywedod wrtho am gymmeryd gofal o'r plant yn y geiriau hyn: Rhag bod anwyd ar fy mab, Yn rhod rhowch arno gób ei dad; Rhag bod anwyd ar liw'r can, Rhodwch arni bais ei mham. Ac yna ciliod, ac ni chlywyd na siw na miw byth yn ei chylch. For the sake of an occasional reader who does not know Welsh, I add a summary of it in English. One fine evening in the month of June a brave, adventurous youth, the heir of Ystrad, went to the banks of the Gwyrfai, not far from where it leaves Cwellyn Lake, and hid himself in the bushes near the spot where the folks of the Red Coats--the fairies--were wont to dance. The moon shone forth brightly without a cloud to intercept her light; all was quiet save where the Gwyrfai gently murmured on her bed, and it was not long before the young man had the satisfaction of seeing the fair family dancing in full swing. As he gazed on the subtle course of the dance, his eyes rested on a damsel, the most shapely and beautiful he had seen from his boyhood. Her agile movements and the charm of her looks inflamed him with love for her, to such a degree that he felt ready for any encounter in order to secure her to be his own. From his hiding place he watched every move for his opportunity; at last, with feelings of anxiety and dread, he leaped suddenly into the middle of the circle of the fairies. There, while their enjoyment of the dance was at its height, he seized her in his arms and carried her away to his home at Ystrad. But, as she screamed for help to free her from the grasp of him who had fallen in love with her, the dancing party disappeared like one's breath in July. He treated her with the utmost kindness, and was ever anxious to keep her within his sight and in his possession. By dint of tenderness he succeeded so far as to get her to consent to be his servant at Ystrad. And such a servant she turned out to be! Why, she was wont to milk the cows thrice a day, and to have the usual quantity of milk each time, so that the butter was so plentiful that nobody thought of weighing it. As to her name, in spite of all his endeavours to ascertain it, she would never tell it him. Accidentally, however, one moonlight night, when driving two of his cows to the spot where they should graze, he came to the place where the fairies were wont to enjoy their games in the light of the moon. This time also he hid himself in a thicket, when he overheard one fairy saying to another, 'When we were last here our sister Penelope was stolen from us by a man.' As soon as he heard this off he went home, full of joy because he had discovered the name of the maid that was so dear to him. She, on the other hand, was greatly astonished to hear him call her by her own name. As she was so charmingly pretty, so industrious, so skilled in every work, and so attended by luck in everything she put her hand to, he offered to make her his wife instead of being his servant. At first she would in no wise consent, but she rather gave way to grief at his having found her name out. However, his importunity at length brought her to consent, but on the condition that he should not strike her with iron; if that should happen, she would quit him never to return. The agreement was made on his side with the readiness of love, and after this they lived in happiness and comfort together for many years, and there were born to them a son and a daughter, who were the handsomest children in the whole country. Owing, also, to the skill and good qualities of the woman, as a shrewd and virtuous wife, they became very rich--richer, indeed, than anybody else in the country around; for, besides the husband's own inheritance of Ystrad, he held all the northern part of Nant y Bettws, and all from there to the top of Snowdon, together with Cwm Brwynog in the parish of Llanberis. But one day, as bad luck would have it, they went out together to catch a horse in the field, and, as the animal was somewhat wild and untamed, they had no easy work before them. In his rashness the man threw a bridle at him as he was rushing past him, but alas! on whom should the bridle fall but on the wife! No sooner had this happened than she disappeared, and nothing more was ever seen of her. But one cold night, when there was a chilling wind blowing from the north, she came near the window of his bedroom, and told him in these words to take care of the children:-- Lest my son should find it cold, Place on him his father's coat: Lest the fair one find it cold, Place on her my petticoat. Then she withdrew, and nothing more was heard of her. In reply to some queries of mine, Mr. O. Davies tells me that Penelope was pronounced in three syllables, Pénelôp--so he heard it from his grandfather: he goes on to say that the offspring of the Lake Lady is supposed to be represented by a family called Pellings, which was once a highly respected name in those parts, and that there was a Lady Bulkeley who was of this descent, not to mention that several people of a lower rank, both in Anglesey and Arfon, claimed to be of the same origin. I am not very clear as to how the name got into this tale, nor have I been able to learn anything about the Pellings; but, as the word appears to have been regarded as a corrupt derivative from Penelope, that is, perhaps, all the connexion, so that it may be that it has really nothing whatever to do with the legend. This is a point, however, which the antiquaries of North Wales ought to be able to clear up satisfactorily. In reply to queries of mine, Mr. O. Davies gave me the following particulars:--'I am now (June, 1881) over fifty-two years of age, and I can assure you that I have heard the legend forty years ago. I do not remember my father, as he died when I was young, but my grandfather was remarkable for his delight in tales and legends, and it was his favourite pastime during the winter nights, after getting his short black pipe ready, to relate stories about struggles with robbers, about bogies, and above all about the Tylwyth Teg; for they were his chief delight. He has been dead twenty-six years, and he had almost reached eighty years of age. His father before him, who was born about the year 1740, was also famous for his stories, and my grandfather often mentioned him as his authority in the course of his narration of the tales. Both he and the rest of the family used to look at Corwrion, to be mentioned presently, as a sacred spot. When I was a lad and happened to be reluctant to leave off playing at dusk, my mother or grandfather had only to say that 'the Pellings were coming,' in order to induce me to come into the house at once: indeed, this announcement had the same effect on persons of a much riper age than mine then was.' Further, Mr. Davies kindly called my attention to a volume, entitled Observations on the Snowdon Mountains, by Mr. William Williams, of Llandegai, published in London in 1802. In that work this tale is given somewhat less fully than by Mr. Davies' informant, but the author makes the following remarks with regard to it, pp. 37, 40:--'A race of people inhabiting the districts about the foot of Snowdon, were formerly distinguished and known by the nickname of Pellings, which is not yet extinct. There are several persons and even families who are reputed to be descended from these people.... These children [Penelope's] and their descendants, they say, were called Pellings, a word corrupted from their mother's name, Penelope. The late Thomas Rowlands, Esq., of Caerau, in Anglesey, the father of the late Lady Bulkeley, was a descendant of this lady, if it be true that the name Pellings came from her; and there are still living several opulent and respectable people who are known to have sprung from the Pellings. The best blood in my own veins is this fairy's.' Lastly, it will be noticed that these last versions do not distinctly suggest that the Lake Lady ran into the lake, that is into Cwellyn, but rather that she disappeared in the same way as the dancing party by simply becoming invisible like one's breath in July. The fairies are called in Welsh, Y Tylwyth Teg, or the Fair Family; but the people of Arfon have been so familiarized with the particular one I have called the Lake Lady, that, according to one of my informants, they have invented the term Y Dylwythes Deg, or even Y Dylwythen Deg, to denote her; but it is unknown to the others, so that the extent of its use is not very considerable. This is, perhaps, the place to give another tale, according to which the man goes to the Lake Maiden's country, instead of her settling with him at his home. I owe it to the kindness of Mr. William Jones, of Regent Place, Llangollen, a native of Bedgelert. He heard it from an old man before he left Bedgelert, but when he sent a friend to inquire some time afterwards, the old man was gone. According to Mr. Jones, the details of the tale are, for that reason, imperfect, as some of the incidents have faded from his memory; but such as he can still remember the tale, it is here given in his own words:-- Ryw noson lawn lloer ac un o feibion Llwyn On yn Nant y Betws yn myned i garu i Glogwyn y Gwin, efe a welod y Tylwyth yn ymlodestu a dawnsio ei hochr hi ar weirglod wrth lan Llyn Cawellyn. Efe a nesaod tuag atynt; ac o dipyn i beth fe'i llithiwyd gan bereiddra swynol eu canu a hoender a bywiogrwyd eu chwareu, nes myned o hono tu fewn i'r cylch; ac yn fuan fe daeth rhyw hud drosto, fel y collod adnabydiaeth o bobman; a chafod ei hun mewn gwlad hardaf a welod erioed, lle'r oed pawb yn treulio eu hamser mewn afiaeth a gorfoled. Yr oed wedi bod yno am saith mlyned, ac eto nid oed dim ond megis breudwyd nos; ond daeth adgof i'w fedwl am ei neges, a hiraeth yndo am weled ei anwylyd. Felly efe a ofynod ganiatad i dychwelyd adref, yr hyn a rodwyd ynghyd a llu o gymdeithion i'w arwain tua'i wlad; ac yn disymwth cafod ei hun fel yn deffro o freudwyd ar y dol, lle gwelod y Tylwyth Teg yn chwareu. Trod ei wyneb tuag adref; ond wedi myned yno yr oed popeth wedi newid, ei rieni wedi meirw, ei frodyr yn ffaelu ei adnabod, a'i gariad wedi priodi un arall.--Ar ol y fath gyfnewidiadau efe a dorod ei galon, ac a fu farw mewn llai nag wythnos ar ol ei dychweliad. 'One bright moonlight night, as one of the sons of the farmer who lived at Llwyn On in Nant y Bettws was going to pay his addresses to a girl at Clogwyn y Gwin, he beheld the Tylwyth Teg enjoying themselves in full swing on a meadow close to Cwellyn Lake. He approached them, and little by little he was led on by the enchanting sweetness of their music and the liveliness of their playing until he had got within their circle. Soon some kind of spell passed over him, so that he lost his knowledge of the place, and found himself in a country, the most beautiful he had ever seen, where everybody spent his time in mirth and rejoicing. He had been there seven years, and yet it seemed to him but a night's dream; but a faint recollection came to his mind of the business on which he had left home, and he felt a longing to see his beloved one. So he went and asked for permission to return home, which was granted him, together with a host of attendants to lead him to his country; and, suddenly, he found himself, as if waking from a dream, on the bank where he had seen the fair family amusing themselves. He turned towards home, but there he found everything changed: his parents were dead, his brothers could not recognize him, and his sweetheart was married to another man. In consequence of such changes he died broken-hearted in less than a week after coming back.' V. The Rev. O. Davies regarded the Llanllechid legend as so very like the one he got about Cwellyn Lake and the Waen Fawr, that he has not written the former out at length, but merely pointed out the following differences: (1) Instead of Cwellyn, the lake in the former is the pool of Corwrion, in the parish of Llandegai, near Bangor. (2) What the Lake Lady was struck with was not a bridle, but an iron fetter: the word used is llyfether, which probably means a long fetter connecting a fore-foot and a hind-foot of a horse together. In Arfon, the word is applied also to a cord tying the two fore-feet together, but in Cardiganshire this would be called a hual, the other word, there pronounced llowethir, being confined to the long fetter. In books, the word is written llywethair, llefethair and llyffethair or llyffethar, which is possibly the pronunciation in parts of North Wales, especially Arfon. This is an interesting word, as it is no other than the English term 'long fetter,' borrowed into Welsh; as, in fact, it was also into Irish early enough to call for an article on it in Cormac's Irish Glossary, where langfiter is described as an English word for a fetter between the fore and the hind legs: in Anglo-Manx it is become lanketer. (3) The field in which they were trying to catch the horse is, in the Llanllechid version, specified as that called Maes Madog, at the foot of the Llefn. (4) When the fairy wife ran away, it was headlong into the pool of Corwrion, calling after her all her milch cows, and they followed her with the utmost readiness. Before going on to mention bits of information I have received from others about the Llanllechid legend, I think it best here to finish with the items given me by Mr. O. Davies, whom I cannot too cordially thank for his readiness to answer my questions. Among other things, he expresses himself to the following effect:-- 'It is to this day a tradition--and I have heard it a hundred times--that the dairy of Corwrion excelled all other dairies in those parts, that the milk was better and more plentiful, and that the cheese and butter were better there than in all the country round, the reason assigned being that the cattle on the farm of Corwrion had mixed with the breed belonging to the fairy, who had run away after being struck with the iron fetter. However that may be, I remember perfectly well the high terms of praise in which the cows of Corwrion used to be spoken of as being remarkable for their milk and the profit they yielded; and, when I was a boy, I used to hear people talk of Tarw Penwyn Corwrion, or "the White-headed Bull of Corwrion," as derived from the breed of cattle which had formed the fairy maiden's dowry.' My next informant is Mr. Hugh Derfel Hughes, of Pendinas, Llandegai [24], who has been kind enough to give me the version, of which I here give the substance in English, premising that Mr. Hughes says that he has lived about thirty-four years within a mile of the pool and farm house called Corwrion, and that he has refreshed his memory of the legend by questioning separately no less than three old people, who had been bred and born at or near that spot. He is a native of Merioneth, but has lived at Llandegai for the last thirty-seven years, his age now being sixty-six. I may add that Mr. Hughes is a local antiquary of great industry and zeal; and that he published a book on the antiquities of the district, under the title of Hynafiaethau Llandegai a Llanllechid, that is 'the Antiquities of Llandegai and Llanllechid' (Bethesda, 1866); but it is out of print, and I have had some trouble to procure a copy:-- 'In old times, when the fairies showed themselves much oftener to men than they do now, they made their home in the bottomless pool of Corwrion, in Upper Arllechwed, in that wild portion of Gwyned called Arfon. On fine mornings in the month of June these diminutive and nimble folk might be seen in a regular line vigorously engaged in mowing hay, with their cattle in herds busily grazing in the fields near Corwrion. This was a sight which often met the eyes of the people on the sides of the hills around, even on Sundays; but when they hurried down to them they found the fields empty, with the sham workmen and their cows gone, all gone. At other times they might be heard hammering away like miners, shovelling rubbish aside, or emptying their carts of stones. At times they took to singing all the night long, greatly to the delight of the people about, who dearly loved to hear them; and, besides singing so charmingly, they sometimes formed into companies for dancing, and their movements were marvellously graceful and attractive. But it was not safe to go too near the lake late at night, for once a brave girl, who was troubled with toothache, got up at midnight and went to the brink of the water in search of the root of a plant that grows there full of the power to kill all pain in the teeth. But, as she was plucking up a bit of it, there burst on her ear, from the depths of the lake, such a shriek as drove her back into the house breathless with fear and trembling; but whether this was not the doing of a stray fairy, who had been frightened out of her wits at being suddenly overtaken by a damsel in her nightdress, or the ordinary fairy way of curing the toothache, tradition does not tell. For sometimes, at any rate, the fairies busied themselves in doing good to the men and women who were their neighbours, as when they tried to teach them to keep all promises and covenants to which they pledged themselves. A certain man and his wife, to whom they wished to teach this good habit, have never been forgotten. The husband had been behaving as he ought, until one day, as he held the plough, with the wife guiding his team, he broke his covenant towards her by treating her harshly and unkindly. No sooner had he done so, than he was snatched through the air and plunged in the lake. When the wife went to the brink of the water to ask for him back, the reply she had was, that he was there, and that there he should be. 'The fairies when engaged in dancing allowed themselves to be gazed at, a sight which was wont greatly to attract the young men of the neighbourhood, and once on a time the son and heir of the owner of Corwrion fell deeply in love with one of the graceful maidens who danced in the fairy ring, for she was wondrously beautiful and pretty beyond compare. His passion for her ere long resulted in courtship, and soon in their being married, which took place on the express understanding, that firstly the husband was not to know her name, though he might give her any name he chose; and, secondly, that he might now and then beat her with a rod, if she chanced to misbehave towards him; but he was not to strike her with iron on pain of her leaving him at once. This covenant was kept for some years, so that they lived happily together and had four children, of whom the two youngest were a boy and a girl. But one day as they went to one of the fields of Bryn Twrw in the direction of Pennard Gron, to catch a pony, the fairy wife, being so much nimbler than her husband, ran before him and had her hand in the pony's mane in no time. She called out to her husband to throw her a halter, but instead of that he threw towards her a bridle with an iron bit, which, as bad luck would have it, struck her. The wife at once flew through the air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion Pool. The husband returned sighing and weeping towards Bryn Twrw, "Noise Hill," and when he had reached it, the twrw, "noise," there was greater than had ever been heard before, namely that of weeping after "Belenë"; and it was then, after he had struck her with iron, that he first learnt what his wife's name was. Belenë never came back to her husband, but the feelings of a mother once brought her to the window of his bedroom, where she gave him the following order:-- Os byd anwyd ar fy mab, If my son should feel it cold, Rho'wch am dano gob ei dad; Let him wear his father's coat; Os anwydog a fyd can [25], If the fair one feel the cold, Rho'wch am dani bais ei mam. Let her wear my petticoat. 'As years and years rolled on a grandson of Belenë's fell in love with a beautiful damsel who lived at a neighbouring farm house called Tai Teulwriaid, and against the will of his father and mother they married, but they had nothing to stock their land with. So one morning what was their astonishment, when they got up, to see grazing quietly in the field six black cows and a white-headed bull, which had come up out of the lake as stock for them from old grannie Belenë? They served them well with milk and butter for many a long year, but on the day the last of the family died, the six black cows and the white-headed bull disappeared into the lake, never more to be seen.' Mr. Hughes referred to no less than three other versions, as follows:--(1) According to one account, the husband was ploughing, with the wife leading the team, when by chance he came across her and the accident happened. The wife then flew away like a wood-hen (iar goed) into the lake. (2) Another says that they were in a stable trying to bridle one of the horses, when the misfortune took place through inadvertence. (3) A third specifies the field in front of the house at Corwrion as the place where the final accident took place, when they were busied with the cows and horses. To these I would add the following traditions, which Mr. Hughes further gives. Sometimes the inhabitants, who seem to have been on the whole on good terms with the fairies, used to heat water and leave it in a vessel on the hearth overnight for the fairies to wash their children in it. This they considered such a kindness that they always left behind them on the hearth a handful of their money. Some pieces are said to have been sometimes found in the fields near Corwrion, and that they consisted of coins which were smaller than our halfpennies, but bigger than farthings, and had a harp on one side. But the tradition is not very definite on these points. Here also I may as well refer to a similar tale which I got last year at Llanberis from a man who is a native of the Llanllechid side of the mountain, though he now lives at Llanberis. He is about fifty-five years of age, and remembers hearing in his youth a tale connected with a house called Hafoty'r Famaeth, in a very lonely situation on Llanllechid Mountain, and now represented only by some old ruined walls. It was to the effect that one night, when the man who lived there was away from home, his wife, who had a youngish baby, washed him on the hearth, left the water there, and went to bed with her little one: she woke up in the night to find that the Tylwyth Teg were in possession of the hearth, and busily engaged in washing their children. That is all I got of this tale of a well-known type. To return to Mr. Hughes' communications, I would select from them some remarks on the topography of the teeming home of the fairies. He estimated the lake or pool of Corwrion to be about 120 yards long, and adds that it is nearly round; but he thinks it was formerly considerably larger, as a cutting was made some eighty or a hundred years ago to lead water from it to Penrhyn Castle; but even then its size would not approach that ascribed to it by popular belief, according to which it was no less than three miles long. In fact it was believed that there was once a town of Corwrion which was swallowed up by the lake, a sort of idea which one meets with in many parts of Wales, and some of the natives are said to be able to discern the houses under the water. This must have been near the end which is not bottomless, the latter being indicated by a spot which is said never to freeze even in hard winters. Old men remember it the resort of herons, cormorants, and the water-hen (hobi wen). Near the banks there grew, besides the water-lily, various kinds of rushes and sedges, which were formerly much used for making mats and other useful articles. It was also once famous for eels of a large size, but it is not supposed to have contained fish until Lord Penrhyn placed some there in recent years. It teemed, however, with leeches of three different kinds so recently that an old man still living describes to Mr. Hughes his simple way of catching them when he was a boy, namely, by walking bare-legged in the water: in a few minutes he landed with nine or ten leeches sticking to his legs, some of which fetched a shilling each from the medical men of those days. Corwrion is now a farm house occupied by Mr. William Griffiths, a grandson of the late bard Gutyn Peris. When Mr. Hughes called to make inquiries about the legend, he found there the foundations of several old buildings, and several pieces of old querns about the place. He thinks that there belonged to Corwrion in former times, a mill and a fuller's house, which he seems to infer from the names of two neighbouring houses called 'Y Felin Hen,' the Old Mill, and 'Pandy Tre Garth,' the Fulling Mill of Tregarth, respectively. He also alludes to a gefail or smithy there, in which one Rhys ab Robert used to work, not to mention that a great quantity of ashes, such as come from a smithy, are found at the end of the lake furthest from the farm house. The spot on which Corwrion stands is part of the ground between the Ogwen and another stream which bears the name of 'Afon Cegin Arthur,' or the River of Arthur's Kitchen, and most of the houses and fields about have names which have suggested various notions to the people there: such are the farms called 'Coed Howel,' whence the belief in the neighbourhood that Howel Da, King of Wales, lived here. About him Mr. Hughes has a great deal to say: among other things, that he had boats on Corwrion lake, and that he was wont to present the citizens of Bangor yearly with 300 fat geese reared on the waters of the same. I am referred by another man to a lecture delivered in the neighbourhood on these and similar things by the late bard and antiquary the Rev. Robert Ellis (Cyndelw), but I have never come across a copy. A field near Corwrion is called 'Cae Stabal,' or the Field of the Stable, which contains the remains of a row of stables, as it is supposed, and of a number of mangers where Howel's horses were once fed. In a neighbouring wood, called 'Parc y Gelli' or 'Hopiar y Gelli,' my informant goes on to say, there are to be seen the foundations of seventeen or eighteen old hut-circles, and near them some think they see the site of an old church. About a mile to the south-east of Corwrion is Pendinas, which Mr. Hughes describes as an old triangular Welsh fortress, on the bank of the Ogwen; and within two stone's-throws or so of Corwrion on the south side of it, and a little to the west of Bryn Twrw mentioned in the legend, is situated Penard Gron, a caer or fort, which he describes as being, before it was razed in his time, forty-two yards long by thirty-two wide, and defended by a sort of rampart of earth and stone several yards wide at the base. It used to be the resort of the country people for dancing, cock-fighting [26], and other amusements on Sundays. Near it was a cairn, which, when it was dug into, was found to cover a kistvaen, a pot, and a quern: a variety of tales attaching to it are told concerning ghosts, caves, and hidden treasures. Altogether Mr. Hughes is strongly of opinion that Corwrion and its immediate surroundings represent a spot which at one time had great importance; and I see no reason wholly to doubt the correctness of that conclusion, but it would be interesting to know whether Penrhyn used, as Mr. Hughes suggests, to be called Penrhyn Corwrion; there ought, perhaps, to be no great difficulty in ascertaining this, as some of the Penrhyn estate appears to have been the subject of litigation in times gone by. Before leaving Mr. Hughes' notes, I must here give his too brief account of another thing connected with Corwrion, though, perhaps, not with the legends here in question. I allude to what he calls the Lantern Ghost (Ysbryd y Lantar):--'There used to be formerly,' he says, 'and there is still at Corwrion, a good-sized sour apple-tree, which during the winter half of the year used to be lit up by fire. It began slowly and grew greater until the whole seemed to be in a blaze. He was told by an old woman that she formerly knew old people who declared they had seen it. In the same way the trees in Hopiar y Gelli appeared, according to them, to be also lit up with fire.' This reminds me of Mr. Fitzgerald's account of the Irish Bile-Tineadh in the Revue Celtique, iv. 194. After communicating to me the notes of which the foregoing are abstracts, Mr. Hughes kindly got me a version of the legend from Mr. David Thomas, of Pont y Wern, in the same neighbourhood, but as it contains nothing which I have not already given from Mr. Hughes' own, I pass it by. Mr. Thomas, however, has heard that the number of the houses making up the town of Corwrion some six or seven centuries ago was about seventy-five; but they were exactly seventy-three according to my next informant, Mr. David Evan Davies, of Treflys, Bethesda, better known by his bardic name of Dewi Glan Ffrydlas. Both these gentlemen have also heard the tradition that there was a church at Corwrion, where there used to be every Sunday a single service, after which the people went to a spot not far off to amuse themselves, and at night to watch the fairies dancing, or to mix with them while they danced in a ring around a glow-worm. According to Dewi Glan Ffrydlas, the spot was the Pen y Bonc, already mentioned, which means, among other things, that they chose a rising ground. This is referred to in a modern rhyme, which runs thus:-- A'r Tylwyth Teg yn dawnsio'n sionc O gylch magïen Pen y Bonc. With the fairies nimbly dancing round The glow-worm on the Rising Ground. Dewi Glan Ffrydlas has kindly gone to the trouble of giving me a brief, but complete, version of the legend as he has heard it. It will be noticed that the discovering of the fairy's name is an idle incident in this version: it is brought in too late, and no use is made of it when introduced. This is the substance of his story in English:--'At one of the dances at Pen y Bonc, the heir of Corwrion's eyes fell on one of the damsels of the fair family, and he was filled with love for her. Courtship and marriage in due time ensued, but he had to agree to two conditions, namely, that he was neither to know her name nor to strike her with iron. By-and-by they had children, and when the husband happened to go, during his wife's confinement, to a merry-making at Pen y Bonc, the fairies talked together concerning his wife, and in expressing their feelings of sympathy for her, they inadvertently betrayed the mystery of her name by mentioning it within his hearing. Years rolled on, when the husband and wife went out together one day to catch a colt of theirs that had not been broken in, their object being to go to Conway Fair. Now, as she was swifter of foot than her husband, she got hold of the colt by the mane, and called out to him to throw her a halter, but instead of throwing her the one she asked for, he threw another with iron in it, which struck her. Off she went into the lake. A grandson of this fairy many years afterwards married one of the girls of Corwrion. They had a large piece of land, but no means of stocking it, so that they felt rather distressed in their minds. But lo and behold! one day a white-headed bull came out of the lake, bringing with him six black cows to their land. There never were the like of those cows for milk, and great was the prosperity of their owners, as well as the envy it kindled in their neighbours' breasts. But when they both grew old and died, the bull and the cows went back into the lake.' Now I add the other sayings about the Tylwyth Teg, which Dewi Glan Ffrydlas has kindly collected for me, beginning with a blurred story about changelings:-- 'Once on a time, in the fourteenth century, the wife of a man at Corwrion had twins, and she complained one day to a witch, who lived close by, at Tydyn y Barcud, that the children were not getting on, but that they were always crying day and night. "Are you sure that they are your children?" asked the witch, adding that it did not seem to her that they were like hers. "I have my doubts also," said the mother. "I wonder if somebody has exchanged children with you," said the witch. "I do not know," said the mother. "But why do you not seek to know?" asked the other. "But how am I to go about it?" said the mother. The witch replied, "Go and do something rather strange before their eyes and watch what they will say to one another." "Well, I do not know what I should do," said the mother. "Well," said the other, "take an egg-shell, and proceed to brew beer in it in a chamber aside, and come here to tell me what the children will say about it." She went home and did as the witch had directed her, when the two children lifted their heads out of the cradle to find what she was doing--to watch and to listen. Then one observed to the other, "I remember seeing an oak having an acorn," to which the other replied, "And I remember seeing a hen having an egg"; and one of the two added, "But I do not remember before seeing anybody brew beer in the shell of a hen's egg." The mother then went to the witch and told her what the twins had said one to the other; and she directed her to go to a small wooden bridge, not far off, with one of the strange children under each arm, and there to drop them from the bridge into the river beneath. The mother went back home again and did as she had been directed. When she reached home this time, she found to her astonishment that her own children had been brought back.' Next comes a story about a midwife who lived at Corwrion. 'One of the fairies called to ask her to come and attend on his wife. Off she went with him, and she was astonished to be taken into a splendid palace. There she continued to go night and morning to dress the baby for some time, until one day the husband asked her to rub her eyes with a certain ointment he offered her. She did so, and found herself sitting on a tuft of rushes, and not in a palace. There was no baby: all had disappeared. Some time afterwards she happened to go to the town, and whom should she there see busily buying various wares, but the fairy on whose wife she had been attending. She addressed him with the question, "How are you to-day?" Instead of answering her, he asked, "How do you see me?" "With my eyes," was the prompt reply. "Which eye?" he asked. "This one," said the woman, pointing to it; and instantly he disappeared, never more to be seen by her.' This tale, as will be seen on comparison later, is incomplete, and probably incorrect. Here is another from Mr. D. E. Davies:--'One day Guto, the farmer of Corwrion, complained to his wife that he lacked men to mow his hay, when she replied, "Why fret about it? look yonder! There you have a field full of them at it, and stripped to their shirt-sleeves (yn llewys eu crysau)." When he went to the spot the sham workmen of the fairy family had disappeared. This same Guto--or somebody else--happened another time to be ploughing, when he heard some person he could not see, calling out to him, "I have got the bins (that is the vice) of my plough broken." "Bring it to me," said the driver of Guto's team, "that I may mend it." When they finished the furrow, they found the broken vice, with a barrel of beer placed near it. One of the men sat down and mended the vice. Then they made another furrow, and when they returned to the spot they found there a two-eared dish filled to the brim with bara a chwrw, or "bread and beer." The word vice, I may observe, is an English term, which is applied in Carnarvonshire to a certain part of the plough: it is otherwise called bins, but neither does this seem to be a Welsh word, nor have I heard either used in South Wales. At times one of the fairies was in the habit, as I was told by more than one of my informants, of coming out of Llyn Corwrion with her spinning-wheel (troell bach) on fine summer days and betaking herself to spinning. While at that work she might be heard constantly singing or humming, in a sort of round tune, the words sìli ffrit. So that sìli ffrit Leisa Bèla may now be heard from the mouths of the children in that neighbourhood. But I have not been successful in finding out what Liza Bella's 'silly frit' exactly means, though I am, on the whole, convinced that the words are other than of Welsh origin. The last of them, ffrit, is usually applied in Cardiganshire to anything worthless or insignificant, and the derivative, ffrityn, means one who has no go or perseverance in him: the feminine is ffriten. In Carnarvonshire my wife has heard ffrityn and ffritan applied to a small man and a small woman respectively. Mr. Hughes says that in Merioneth and parts of Powys sìli ffrit is a term applied to a small woman or a female dwarf who happens to be proud, vain, and fond of the attentions of the other sex (benyw fach neu goraches falch a hunanol a fydai hoff o garu); but he thinks he has heard it made use of with regard to the gipsies, and possibly also to the Tylwyth Teg. The Rev. O. Davies thinks the words sìli ffrit Leisa Bèla to be very modern, and that they refer to a young woman who lived at a place in the neighbourhood, called Bryn Bèla or Brymbèla, 'Bella's Hill,' the point being that this Bella was ahead, in her time, of all the girls in those parts in matters of taste and fashion. This however does not seem to go far enough back, and it is possible still that in Bèla, that is, in English spelling, Bella, we have merely a shortening of some such a name as Isabella or Arabella, which were once much more popular in the Principality than they are now: in fact, I do not feel sure that Leisa Bèla is not bodily a corruption of Isabella. As to sìli ffrit, one might at first have been inclined to render it by small fry, especially in the sense of the French 'de la friture' as applied to young men and boys, and to connect it with the Welsh sil and silod, which mean small fish; but the pronunciation of silli or sìli being nearly that of the English word silly, it appears, on the whole, to belong to the host of English words to be found in colloquial Welsh, though they seldom find their way into books. Students of English ought to be able to tell us whether frit had the meaning here suggested in any part of England, and how lately; also, whether there was such a phrase as 'silly frit' in use. After penning this, I received the following interesting communication from Mr. William Jones, of Llangollen:--The term sìli ffrit was formerly in use at Bedgelert, and what was thereby meant was a child of the Tylwyth Teg. It is still used for any creature that is smaller than ordinary. 'Pooh, a silly frit like that!' (Pw, rhyw sìli ffrit fel yna!). 'Mrs. So-and-So has a fine child.' 'Ha, do you call a silly frit like that a fine child?' (Mae gan hon a hon blentyn braf. Ho, a ydych chwi'n galw rhyw sìli ffrit fel hwnna'n braf?) To return to Leisa Bèla and Belenë, it may be that the same person was meant by both these names, but I am in no hurry to identify them, as none of my correspondents knows the latter of them except Mr. Hughes, who gives it on the authority of the bard Gutyn Peris, and nothing further so far as I can understand, whereas Bèla will come before us in another story, as it is the same name, I presume, which Glasynys has spelled Bella in Cymru Fu. So I wrote in 1881: since then I have ascertained from Professor Joseph Wright, who is busily engaged on his great English Dialect Dictionary, that frit [27] is the same word, in the dialects of Cheshire, Shropshire, and Pembrokeshire, as fright in literary English; and that the corresponding verb to frighten is in them fritten, while a frittenin (= the book English frightening) means a ghost or apparition. So sìli ffrit is simply the English silly frit, and means probably a silly sprite or silly ghost, and sìli ffrit Leisa Bèla would mean the silly ghost of a woman called Liza Bella. But the silly frit found spinning near Corwrion Pool will come under notice again, for that fairy belongs to the Rumpelstiltzchen group of tales, and the fragment of a story about her will be seen to have treated Silly Frit as her proper name, which she had not intended to reach the ears of the person of whom she was trying to get the better. These tales are brought into connexion with the present day in more ways than one, for besides the various accounts of the bwganod or bogies of Corwrion frightening people when out late at night, Mr. D. E. Davies knows a man, who is still living, and who well remembers the time when the sound of working used to be heard in the pool, and the voices of children crying somewhere in its depths, but that when people rushed there to see what the matter was, all was found profoundly quiet and still. Moreover, there is a family or two, now numerously represented in the parishes of Llandegai and Llanllechid, who used to be taunted with being the offspring of fairy ancestors. One of these families was nicknamed 'Simychiaid' or 'Smychiaid'; and my informant, who is not yet quite forty, says that he heard his mother repeat scores of times that the old people used to say, that the Smychiaid, who were very numerous in the neighbourhood, were descended from fairies, and that they came from Llyn Corwrion. At all this the Smychiaid were wont to grow mightily angry. Another tradition, he says, about them was that they were a wandering family that arrived in the district from the direction of Conway, and that the father's name was a Simwch, or rather that was his nickname, based on the proper name Simwnt, which appears to have once been the prevalent name in Llandegai. The historical order of these words would in that case have been Simwnt, Simwch, Simychiaid, Smychiaid. Now Simwnt seems to be merely the Welsh form given to some such English name as Simond, just as Edmund or Edmond becomes in North Wales Emwnt. The objection to the nickname seems to lie in the fact, which one of my correspondents points out to me, that Simwch is understood to mean a monkey, a point on which I should like to have further information. Pughe gives simach, it is true, as having the meaning of the Latin simia. A branch of the same family is said to be called 'y Cowperiaid' or the Coopers, from an ancestor who was either by name or by trade a cooper. Mr. Hughes' account of the Smychiaid was, that they are the descendants of one Simonds, who came to be a bailiff at Bodysgallan, near Deganwy, and moved from there to Coetmor in the neighbourhood of Corwrion. Simonds was obnoxious to the bards, he goes on to say, and they described the Smychiaid as having arrived in the parish at the bottom of a cawell, 'a creel or basket carried on the back,' when chance would have it that the cawell cord snapped just in that neighbourhood, at a place called Pont y Llan. That accident is described, according to Mr. Hughes, in the following doggerel, the origin of which I do not know-- E dorai 'r arwest, ede wan, Brwnt y lle, ar Bont y Llan. The cord would snap, feeble yarn, At that nasty spot, Pont y Llan. Curiously enough, the same cawell story used to be said of a widely spread family in North Cardiganshire, whose surname was pronounced Massn and written Mason or Mazon: as my mother was of this family, I have often heard it. The cawell, if I remember rightly, was said, in this instance, to have come from Scotland, to which were traced three men who settled in North Cardiganshire. One had no descendants, but the other two, Mason and Peel--I think his name was Peel, but I am only sure that it was not Welsh--had so many, that the Masons, at any rate, are exceedingly numerous there; but a great many of them, owing to some extent, probably, to the cawell story, have been silly enough to change their name into that of Jones, some of them in my time. The three men came there probably for refuge in the course of troubles in Scotland, as a Frazer and a Francis did to Anglesey. At any rate, I have never heard it suggested that they were of aquatic origin, but, taking the cawell into consideration, and the popular account of the Smychiaid, I should be inclined to think that the cawell originally referred to some such a supposed descent. I only hope that somebody will help us with another and a longer cawell tale, which will make up for the brevity of these allusions. We may, however, assume, I think, that there was a tendency at one time in Gwyned, if not in other parts of the Principality, to believe, or pretend to believe, that the descendants of an Englishman or Scotsman, who settled among the old inhabitants, were of fairy origin, and that their history was somehow uncanny, which was all, of course, duly resented. This helps, to some extent, to explain how names of doubtful origin have got into these tales, such as Smychiaid, Cowperiaid, Pellings, Penelope, Leisa Bèla or Isabella, and the like. This association of the lake legends with intruders from without is what has, perhaps, in a great measure served to rescue such legends from utter oblivion. As to a church at Corwrion, the tradition does not seem to be an old one, and it appears founded on one of the popular etymologies of the word Corwrion, which treats the first syllable as cor in the sense of a choir; but the word has other meanings, including among them that of an ox-stall or enclosure for cattle. Taking this as coming near the true explanation, it at once suggests itself, that Creuwyryon in the Mabinogi of Math ab Mathonwy is the same place, for creu or crau also meant an enclosure for animals, including swine. In Irish the word is cró, an enclosure, a hut or hovel. The passage in the Mabinogi [28] relates to Gwydion returning with the swine he had got by dint of magic and deceit from Pryderi, prince of Dyfed, and runs thus in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation: 'So they journeyed on to the highest town of Arllechwed, and there they made a sty (creu) for the swine, and therefore was the name of Creuwyryon given to that town.' As to wyryon or wyrion, which we find made into wrion in Corwrion according to the modern habit, it would seem to be no other word than the usual plural of wyr, a grandson, formerly also any descendant in the direct line. If so, the name of an ancestor must have originally followed, just as one of the places called Bettws was once Betws Wyrion Idon, 'the Bettws of Idon's Descendants'; but it is possible that wyrion in Creu- or Cor-wyrion was itself a man's name, though I have never met with it. It is right to add that the name appears in the Record of Carnarvon (pp. 12, 25, 26) as Creweryon, which carries us back to the first half of the fourteenth century. There it occurs as the name of a township containing eight gavels, and the particulars about it might, in the hand of one familiar with the tenures of that time, perhaps give us valuable information as to what may have been its status at a still earlier date. VI. Here, for the sake of comparison with the Northwalian stories in which the fairy wife runs away from her husband in consequence of his having unintentionally touched or hit her with the iron in the bridle, the fetter, or the stirrup, as on pp. 35, 40, 46, 50, 54, 61. I wish to cite the oldest recorded version, namely from Walter Mapes' curious miscellany of anecdotes and legends entitled De Nugis Curialium Distinctiones Quinque. Mapes flourished in the latter part of the twelfth century, and in Distinctio ii. 11 of Thomas Wright's edition, published in the year 1850, one reads the following story, which serves the purpose there of giving the origin of a certain Trinio, of whom Mapes had more to say:-- Aliud non miraculum sed portentum nobis Walenses referunt. Wastinum Wastiniauc secus stagnum Brekeinauc [read Brecheinauc], quod in circuitu duo miliaria tenet, mansisse aiunt et vidisse per tres claras a luna noctes choreas fæminarum in campo avenæ suæ, et secutum eum eas fuisse donec in aqua stagni submergerentur, unam tamen quarta vice retinuisse. Narrabat etiam ille raptor illius quod eas noctibus singulis post submersionem earum murmurantes audisset sub aqua et dicentes, 'Si hoc fecisset, unam de nobis cepisset,' et se ab ipsis edoctum quomodo hanc adepta [read -us] sit, quæ et consensit et nupsit ei, et prima verba sua hæc ad virum suum, 'Libens tibi serviam, et tota obedientiæ devotione usque in diem illum prosilire volens ad clamores ultra Lenem [read Leueni] me freno tuo percusseris.' Est autem Leueni aqua vicina stagno. Quod et factum est; post plurimæ prolis susceptionem ab eo freno percussa est, et in reditu suo inventam eam fugientem cum prole, insecutus est, et vix unum ex filiis suis arripuit, nomine Triunem Uagelauc. 'The Welsh relate to us another thing, not so much a miracle as a portent, as follows. They say that Gwestin of Gwestiniog dwelt beside Brecknock Mere, which has a circumference of two miles, and that on three moonlight nights he saw in his field of oats women dancing, and that he followed them until they sank in the water of the mere; but the fourth time they say that he seized hold of one of them. Her captor further used to relate that on each of these nights he had heard the women, after plunging into the mere, murmuring beneath the water and saying, "If he had done so and so, he would have caught one of us," and that he had been instructed by their own words, as to the manner in which he caught her. She both yielded and became his wife, and her first words to her husband were these: "Willingly will I serve thee, and with whole-hearted obedience, until that day when, desirous of sallying forth in the direction of the cries beyond the Llyfni, thou shalt strike me with thy bridle"--the Llyfni is a burn near the mere. And this came to pass: after presenting him with a numerous offspring she was struck by him with the bridle, and on his returning home, he found her running away with her offspring, and he pursued her, but it was with difficulty that he got hold even of one of his sons, and he was named Trinio (?) Faglog.' The story, as it proceeds, mentions Trinio engaged in battle with the men of a prince who seems to have been no other than Brychan of Brycheiniog, supposed to have died about the middle of the fifth century. The battle was disastrous to Trinio and his friends, and Trinio was never seen afterwards; so Walter Mapes reports the fact that people believed him to have been rescued by his mother, and that he was with her living still in the lake. Giraldus calls it lacus ille de Brecheniauc magnus et famosus, quem et Clamosum dicunt, 'that great and famous lake of Brecknock which they also call Clamosus,' suggested by the Welsh Llyn Llefni, so called from the river Llefni, misinterpreted as if derived from llef 'a cry.' With this lake he connects the legend, that at the bidding of the rightful Prince of Wales, the birds frequenting it would at once warble and sing. This he asserts to have been proved in the case of Gruffud, son of Rhys, though the Normans were at the time masters of his person and of his territory [29]. After dwelling on the varying colours of the lake he adds the following statement:--Ad hæc etiam totus ædificiis consertus, culturis egregiis, hortis ornatus et pomeriis, ab accolis quandoque conspicitur, 'Now and then also it is seen by the neighbouring inhabitants to be covered with buildings, and adorned with excellent farming, gardens, and orchards.' It is remarkable as one of the few lakes in Wales where the remains of a crannog have been discovered, and while Mapes gives it as only two miles round, it is now said to be about five; so it has sometimes [30] been regarded as a stockaded island rather than as an instance of pile dwellings. In the Brython for 1863, pp. 114-15, is to be found what purports to be a copy of a version of the Legend of Llyn Syfadon, as contained in a manuscript of Hugh Thomas' in the British Museum. It is to the effect that the people of the neighbourhood have a story that all the land now covered by the lake belonged to a princess, who had an admirer to whom she would not be married unless he procured plenty of gold: she did not care how. So he one day murdered and robbed a man who had money, and the princess then accepted the murderer's suit, but she felt uneasy on account of the reports as to the murdered man's ghost haunting the place where his body had been buried. So she made her admirer go at night to interview the ghost and lay it. Whilst he waited near the grave he heard a voice inquiring whether the innocent man was not to be avenged, and another replying that it would not be avenged till the ninth generation. The princess and her lover felt safe enough and were married: they multiplied and became numerous, while their town grew to be as it were another Sodom; and the original pair lived on so astonishingly long that they saw their descendants of the ninth generation. They exulted in their prosperity, and one day held a great feast to celebrate it; and when their descendants were banqueting with them, and the gaiety and mirth were at their zenith, ancestors and descendants were one and all drowned in a mighty cataclysm which produced the present lake. Lastly may be briefly mentioned the belief still lingering in the neighbourhood, to the effect that there is a town beneath the waters of the lake, and that in rough weather the bells from the church tower of that town may be heard ringing, while in calm weather the spire of the church may be distinctly seen. My informant, writing in 1892, added the remark: 'This story seems hardly creditable to us, but many of the old people believe it.' I ought to have mentioned that the fifteenth-century poet Lewis Glyn Cothi connects with Syfadon [31] Lake an afanc legend; but this will be easier to understand in the light of the more complete one from the banks of the river Conwy. So the reader will find Glyn Cothi's words given in the next chapter. CHAPTER II THE FAIRIES' REVENGE In th'olde dayes of the king Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; This was the olde opinion, as I rede. I speke of manye hundred yeres ago. Chaucer. I. The best living authority I have found on the folklore of Bedgelert, Drws y Coed, and the surrounding district, is Mr. William Jones, of Llangollen. He has written a good deal on the subject in the Brython, and in essays intended for competition at various literary meetings in Wales. I had the loan from him of one such essay, and I have referred to the Brython; and I have also had from Mr. Jones a number of letters, most of which contain some additional information. In harmony, moreover, with my usual practice, I have asked Mr. Jones to give me a little of his own history. This he has been kind enough to do; and, as I have so far followed no particular order in these jottings, I shall now give the reader the substance of his letters in English, as I am anxious that no item should be lost or left inaccessible to English students of folklore. What is unintelligible to me may not be so to those who have made a serious study of the subject. Mr. Jones' words are in substance to the following effect:-- 'I was bred and born in the parish of Bedgelert, one of the most rustic neighbourhoods and least subject to change in the whole country. Some of the old Welsh customs remained within my memory, in spite of the adverse influence of the Calvinistic Reformation, as it is termed, and I have myself witnessed several Knitting Nights and Nuptial Feasts (Neithiorau), which, be it noticed, are not to be confounded with weddings, as they were feasts which followed the weddings, at the interval of a week. At these gatherings song and story formed an element of prime importance in the entertainment at a time when the Reformation alluded to had already blown the blast of extinction on the Merry Nights (Noswyliau Llawen) and Saints' Fêtes [32] (Gwyliau Mabsant) before the days of my youth, though many of my aged acquaintances remembered them well, and retained a vivid recollection of scores of the amusing tales which used to be related for the best at the last mentioned long-night meetings. I have heard not a few of them reproduced by men of that generation. As an example of the old-fashioned habits of the people of Bedgelert in my early days, I may mention the way in which wives and children used to be named. The custom was that the wife never took her husband's family name, but retained the one she had as a spinster. Thus my grandmother on my mother's side was called Ellen Hughes, daughter to Hugh Williams, of Gwastad Annas. The name of her husband, my grandfather, was William Prichard [= W. ab Rhisiart, or Richard's son], son to Richard William, of the Efail Newyd. The name of their eldest son, my uncle (brother to my mother), was Hugh Hughes, and the second son's name was Richard William. The mother had the privilege of naming her first-born after her own family in case it was a boy; but if it happened to be a girl, she took her name from the father's family, for which reason my mother's maiden name was Catharine Williams. This remained her name to the day of her death: and the old people at Bedgelert persisted in calling me, so long as I was at home, William Prichard, after my grandfather, as I was my mother's eldest child. 'Most of the tales I have collected,' says Mr. Jones, 'relate to the parishes of Bedgelert and Dolwydelen. My kindred have lived for generations in those two parishes, and they are very numerous: in fact, it used to be said that the people of Dolwydelen and Bedgelert were all cousins. They were mostly small farmers, and jealous of all strangers, so that they married almost without exception from the one parish into the other. This intermixture helped to carry the tales of the one parish to the other, and to perpetuate them on the hearths of their homes from generation to generation, until they were swept away by another influence in this century. Many of my ancestors seem to have been very fond of stories, poetry, and singing, and I have been told that some of them were very skilled in these things. So also, in the case of my parents, the memory of the past had a great charm for them on both sides; and when the relatives from Dolwydelen and Bedgelert met in either parish, there used to be no end to the recounting of pedigrees and the repeating of tales for the best. By listening to them, I had been filled with desire to become an adept in pedigrees and legends. My parents used to let me go every evening to the house of my grandfather, William ab Rhisiart, the clerk, to listen to tales, and to hear edifying books read. My grandfather was a reader "without his rival," and "he used to beat the parson hollow." Many people used to meet at Pen y Bont in the evenings to converse together, and the stories of some of them were now and then exceedingly eloquent. Of course, I listened with eager ears and open mouth, in order, if I heard anything new, to be able to repeat it to my mother. She, unwilling to let herself be beaten, would probably relate another like it, which she had heard from her mother, her grandmother, or her old aunt of Gwastad Annas, who was a fairly good verse-wright of the homely kind. Then my father, if he did not happen to be busy with his music-book, would also give us a tale which he had heard from his grandmother or grandfather, the old John Jones, of Tyn Llan Dolwydelen, or somebody else would do so. That is one source from which I got my knowledge of folklore; but this ceased when we moved from Bedgelert to Carnarvon in the year 1841. My grandfather died in 1844, aged seventy-eight. 'Besides those,' Mr. Jones goes on to say, 'who used to come to my grandfather's house and to his workshop to relate stories, the blacksmith's shop used to be, especially on a rainy day, a capital place for a story, and many a time did I lurk there instead of going to school, in order to hear old William Dafyd, the sawyer, who, peace be to his ashes! drank many a hornful from the Big Quart without ever breaking down, and old Ifan Owen, the fisherman, tearing away for the best at their yarns, sometimes a tissue of lies and sometimes truth. The former was funny, and a great wag, up to all kinds of tricks. He made everybody laugh, whereas the latter would preserve the gravity of a saint, however lying might be the tale which he related. Ifan Owen's best stories were about the Water Spirit, or, as he called it, Llamhigyn y Dwr, "the Water Leaper." He had not himself seen the Llamhigyn, but his father had seen it "hundreds of times." Many an evening it had prevented him from catching a single fish in Llyn Gwynan, and, when the fisherman got on this theme, his eloquence was apt to become highly polysyllabic in its adjectives. Once in particular, when he had been angling for hours towards the close of the day, without catching anything, he found that something took the fly clean off the hook each time he cast it. After moving from one spot to another on the lake, he fished opposite the Benlan Wen, when something gave his line a frightful pull, "and, by the gallows, I gave another pull," the fisherman used to say, "with all the force of my arm: out it came, and up it went off the hook, whilst I turned round to see, as it dashed so against the cliff of Benlan that it blazed like a lightning." He used to add, "If that was not the Llamhigyn, it must have been the very devil himself." That cliff must be two hundred yards at least from the shore. As to his father, he had seen the Water Spirit many times, and he had also been fishing in the Llyn Glâs or Ffynnon Lâs, once upon a time, when he hooked a wonderful and fearful monster: it was not like a fish, but rather resembled a toad, except that it had a tail and wings instead of legs. He pulled it easily enough towards the shore, but, as its head was coming out of the water, it gave a terrible shriek that was enough to split the fisherman's bones to the marrow, and, had there not been a friend standing by, he would have fallen headlong into the lake, and been possibly dragged like a sheep into the depth; for there is a tradition that if a sheep got into the Llyn Glâs, it could not be got out again, as something would at once drag it to the bottom. This used to be the belief of the shepherds of Cwm Dyli, within my memory, and they acted on it in never letting their dogs go after the sheep in the neighbourhood of this lake. These two funny fellows, William Dafyd and Ifan Owen, died long ago, without leaving any of their descendants blessed with as much as the faintest gossamer thread of the story-teller's mantle. The former, if he had been still living, would now be no less than 129 years of age, and the latter about 120.' Mr. Jones proceeds to say that he had stories from sources besides those mentioned, namely, from Lowri Robart, wife of Rhisiart Edwart, the 'Old Guide'; from his old aunt of Gwastad Annas; from William Wmffra, husband to his grandmother's sister; from his grandmother, who was a native of Dolwydelen, but had been brought up at Pwllgwernog, in Nanmor; from her sister; and from Gruffud Prisiart, of Nanmor, afterwards of Glan Colwyn, who gave him the legend of Owen Lawgoch of which I shall have something to say later, and the story of the bogie of Pen Pwll Coch, which I do not know. 'But the chief story-teller of his time at Bedgelert,' Mr. Jones goes on to say, 'was Twm Ifan Siams (pronounced Siams or Shams), brother, I believe, to Dafyd Siôn Siams, of the Penrhyn, who was a bard and pedigree man. Twm lived at Nanmor, but I know not what his vocation was; his relatives, however, were small farmers, carpenters, and masons. It is not improbable that he was also an artisan, as he was conversant with numbers, magnitude, and letters, and left behind him a volume forming a pedigree book known at Nanmor as the Barcud Mawr, or "Great Kite," as Gruffud Prisiart told me. The latter had been reading it many a time in order to know the origin of somebody or other. All I can remember of this character is that he was very old--over 90--and that he went from house to house in his old age to relate tales and recount pedigrees: great was the welcome he had from everybody everywhere. I remember, also, that he was small of stature, nimble, witty, exceedingly amusing, and always ready with his say on every subject. He was in the habit of calling on my grandfather in his rambles, and very cordial was the reception which my parents always gave him on account of his tales and his knowledge of pedigrees. The story of the afanc, as given in my collection, is from his mouth. You will observe how little difference there is between his version [33] and that known to Edward Llwyd in the year 1695. I had related this story to a friend of mine at Portmadoc, who was grandson or great-grandson to Dafyd Siôn Siams, of Penrhyn, in 1858, when he called my attention to the same story in the Cambrian Journal from the correspondence of Edward Llwyd. I was surprised at the similarity between the two versions, and I went to Bedgelert to Gruffud Rhisiart, who was related to Twm Siôn Siams. I read the story to him, and I found that he had heard it related by his uncle just as it was by me, and as given in the Cambrian Journal. Twm Ifan Siams had funny stories about the tricks of Gwrach y Rhibyn, the Bodach [34] Glas, and the Bwbach Llwyd, which he localized in Nanmor and Llanfrothen; he had, also, a very eloquent tale about the courtship between a sailor from Moel y Gest, near Portmadoc, and a mermaid, of which I retain a fairly good recollection. I believe Twm died in the year 1835-6, aged about ninety-five.' So far, I have merely translated Mr. Jones' account of himself and his authorities as given me in the letter I have already referred to, dated in June of last year, 1881. I would now add the substance of his general remarks about the fairies, as he had heard them described, and as he expressed himself in his essay for the competition on folklore at the Carnarvon Eistedfod of 1880:--The traditions, he says, respecting the Tylwyth Teg vary according to the situation of the districts with which they are connected, and many more such traditions continue to be remembered among the inhabitants of the mountains than by those of the more level country. In some places the Tylwyth Teg are described as a small folk of a thieving nature, living in summer among the fern bushes in the mountains, and in winter in the heather and gorse. These were wont to frequent the fairs and to steal money from the farmers' pockets, where they placed in its stead their own fairy money, which looked like the coin of the realm, but when it was paid for anything bought it would vanish in the pockets of the seller. In other districts the fairies were described as a little bigger and stronger folk; but these latter were also of a thieving disposition. They would lurk around people's houses, looking for an opportunity to steal butter and cheese from the dairies, and they skulked about the cow-yards, in order to milk the cows and the goats, which they did so thoroughly that many a morning there was not a drop of milk to be had. The principal mischief, however, which those used to do, was to carry away unbaptized infants, and place in their stead their own wretched and peevish offspring. They were said to live in hidden caves in the mountains, and he had heard one old man asserting his firm belief that it was beneath Moel Eilio, also called Moel Eilian, a mountain lying between Llanberis and Cwellyn, the Tylwyth Teg of Nant y Bettws lived, whom he had seen many a time when he was a lad; and, if any one came across the mouth of their cave, he thought that he would find there a wonderful amount of wealth, 'for they were thieves without their like.' There is still another species of Tylwyth Teg, very unlike the foregoing ones in their nature and habits. Not only was this last kind far more beautiful and comely than the others, but they were honest and good towards mortals. Their whole nature was replete with joy and fun, nor were they ever beheld hardly, except engaged in some merry-making or other. They might be seen on bright moonlight nights at it, singing and carolling playfully on the fair meadows and the green slopes, at other times dancing lightly on the tops of the rushes in the valleys. They were also wont to be seen hunting in full force on the backs of their grey horses; for this kind were rich, and kept horses and servants. Though it used to be said that they were spiritual and immortal beings, still they ate and drank like human beings: they married and had children. They were also remarkable for their cleanliness, and they were wont to reward neat maid-servants and hospitable wives. So housewives used to exhort their maids to clean their houses thoroughly every night before going to bed, saying that if the Tylwyth Teg happened to enter, they would be sure to leave money for them somewhere; but they were to tell no one in case they found any, lest the Tylwyth should be offended and come no more. The mistresses also used to order a tinful of water to be placed at the foot of the stairs, a clean cloth on the table, with bread and its accompaniments (bara ac enllyn) placed on it, so that, if the Tylwyth came in to eat, the maids should have their recompense on the hob as well as unstinted praise for keeping the house clean, or, as Mr. Jones has it in a couplet from Goronwy Owen's Cywyd y Cynghorfynt-- Cael eu rhent ar y pentan, A llwyr glod o bai llawr glân. Finding the fairies' pay on the hob, With full credit for a clean floor. Thus, whether the fairies came or not to pay a visit to them during their sleep, the house would be clean by the morning, and the table ready set for breakfast. It appears that the places most frequently resorted to by this species were rushy combes surrounded by smooth hills with round tops, also the banks of rivers and the borders of lakes; but they were seldom seen at any time near rocks or cliffs. So more tales about them are found in districts of the former description than anywhere else, and among them may be mentioned Penmachno, Dolwydelan, the sides of Moel Siabod, Llandegái Mountain, and from there to Llanberis, to Nantlle Lakes, to Moel Tryfan [35] and Nant y Bettws, the upper portion of the parish of Bedgelert from Drws y Coed to the Pennant, and the district beginning from there and including the level part of Eifion, on towards Celynnog Fawr. I have very little doubt that there are many traditions about them in the neighbourhood of the Eifl and in Lleyn; I know but little, however, about these last. This kind of fairies was said to live underground, and the way to their country lay under hollow banks that overhung the deepest parts of the lakes, or the deepest pools in the rivers, so that mortals could not follow them further than the water, should they try to go after them. They used to come out in broad daylight, two or three together, and now and then a shepherd, so the saying went, used to talk and chat with them. Sometimes, moreover, he fell over head and ears in love with their damsels, but they did not readily allow a mortal to touch them. The time they were to be seen in their greatest glee was at night when the moon was full, when they celebrated a merry night (noswaith lawen). At midnight to the minute, they might be seen rising out of the ground in every combe and valley; then, joining hands, they would form into circles, and begin to sing and dance with might and main until the cock crew, when they would vanish. Many used to go to look at them on those nights, but it was dangerous to go too near them, lest they should lure the spectator into their circle; for if that happened, they would throw a charm over him, which would make him invisible to his companions, and he would be detained by the fairies as long as he lived. At times some people went too near to them, and got snatched in; and at other times a love-inspired youth, fascinated by the charms of one of their damsels, rushed in foolhardily to try to seize one of them, and became instantly surrounded and concealed from sight. If he could be got out before the cock crew he would be no worse; but once the fairies disappeared without his having been released, he would never more be seen in the land of the living. The way to get the captured man out was to take a long stick of mountain ash (pren criafol), which two or more strong men had to hold with one of its ends in the middle of the circle, so that when the man came round in his turn in the dance he might take hold of it, for he is there bodily though not visible, so that he cannot go past without coming across the stick. Then the others pull him out, for the fairies, no more than any other spirit, dare touch the mountain ash. We now proceed to give some of Mr. Jones' legends. The first is one which he published in the fourth volume of the Brython, p. 70, whence the following free translation is made of it:-- 'In the north-west corner of the parish of Bedgelert there is a place which used to be called by the old inhabitants the Land of the Fairies, and it reaches from Cwm Hafod Ruffyd along the slope of the mountain of Drws y Coed as far as Llyn y Dywarchen. The old people of former times used to find much pleasure and amusement in this district in listening every moonlight night to the charming music of the fair family, and in looking at their dancing and their mirthful sports. Once on a time, a long while ago, there lived at upper Drws y Coed a youth, who was joyous and active, brave and determined of heart. This young man amused himself every night by looking on and listening to them. One night they had come to a field near the house, near the shore of Llyn y Dywarchen, to pass a merry night. He went, as usual, to look at them, when his glances at once fell on one of the ladies, who possessed such beauty as he had never seen in a human being. Her appearance was like that of alabaster; her voice was as agreeable as the nightingale's, and as unruffled as the zephyr in a flower-garden at the noon of a long summer's day; and her gait was pretty and aristocratic; her feet moved in the dance as lightly on the grass as the rays of the sun had a few hours before on the lake hard by. He fell in love with her over head and ears, and in the strength of that passion--for what is stronger than love!--he rushed, when the bustle was at its height, into the midst of the fair crowd, and snatched the graceful damsel in his arms, and ran instantly with her to the house. When the fair family saw the violence used by a mortal, they broke up the dance and ran after her towards the house; but, when they arrived, the door had been bolted with iron, wherefore they could not get near her or touch her in any way; and the damsel had been placed securely in a chamber. The youth, having her now under his roof, as is the saying, endeavoured, with all his talent, to win her affection and to induce her to wed. But at first she would on no account hear of it; on seeing his persistence, however, and on finding that he would not let her go to return to her people, she consented to be his servant if he could find out her name; but she would not be married to him. As he thought that was not impossible, he half agreed to the condition; but, after bothering his head with all the names known in that neighbourhood, he found himself no nearer his point, though he was not willing to give up the search hurriedly. One night, as he was going home from Carnarvon market, he saw a number of the fair folks in a turbary not far from his path. They seemed to him to be engaged in an important deliberation, and it struck him that they were planning how to recover their abducted sister. He thought, moreover, that if he could secretly get within hearing, he might possibly find her name out. On looking carefully around, he saw that a ditch ran through the turbary and passed near the spot where they stood. So he made his way round to the ditch, and crept, on all fours, along it until he was within hearing of the family. After listening a little, he found that their deliberation was as to the fate of the lady he had carried away, and he heard one of them crying, piteously, "O Penelop, O Penelop, my sister, why didst thou run away with a mortal!" "Penelop," said the young man to himself, "that must be the name of my beloved: that is enough." At once he began to creep back quietly, and he returned home safely without having been seen by the fairies. When he got into the house, he called out to the girl, saying, "Penelop, my beloved one, come here!" and she came forward and asked, in astonishment, "O mortal, who has betrayed my name to thee?" Then, lifting up her tiny folded hands, she exclaimed, "Alas, my fate, my fate!" But she grew contented with her fate, and took to her work in earnest. Everything in the house and on the farm prospered under her charge. There was no better or cleanlier housewife in the neighbourhood around, or one that was more provident than she. The young man, however, was not satisfied that she should be a servant to him, and, after he had long and persistently sought it, she consented to be married, on the one condition, that, if ever he should touch her with iron, she would be free to leave him and return to her family. He agreed to that condition, since he believed that such a thing would never happen at his hands. So they were married, and lived several years happily and comfortably together. Two children were born to them, a boy and a girl, the picture of their mother and the idols of their father. But one morning, when the husband wanted to go to the fair at Carnarvon, he went out to catch a filly that was grazing in the field by the house; but for the life of him he could not catch her, and he called to his wife to come to assist him. She came without delay, and they managed to drive the filly to a secure corner, as they thought; but, as the man approached to catch her, she rushed past him. In his excitement, he threw the bridle after her; but, who should be running in the direction of it, but his wife! The iron bit struck her on the cheek, and she vanished out of sight on the spot. Her husband never saw her any more; but one cold frosty night, a long time after this event, he was awakened from his sleep by somebody rubbing the glass of his window, and, after he had given a response, he recognized the gentle and tender voice of his wife saying to him:-- Lest my son should find it cold, Place on him his father's coat; Lest the fair one find it cold, Place on her my petticoat. It is said that the descendants of this family still continue in these neighbourhoods, and that they are easy to be recognized by their light and fair complexion. A similar story is related of the son of the farmer of Braich y Dinas, in Llanfihangel y Pennant, and it used to be said that most of the inhabitants of that neighbourhood were formerly of a light complexion. I have often heard old people saying, that it was only necessary, within their memory, to point out in the fair at Penmorfa any one as being of the breed of the Tylwyth, to cause plenty of fighting that day at least.' The reader may compare with this tale the following, for which I have to thank Mr. Samuel Rhys Williams, whose words I give, followed by a translation:-- Yr oed gwr ieuanc o gymydogaeth Drws y Coed yn dychwelyd adref o Bedgelert ar noswaith loergan lleuad; pan ar gyfer Llyn y Gader gwelai nifer o'r bonedigesau a elwir y Tylwyth Teg yn myned trwy eu chwareuon nosawl. Swynwyd y llanc yn y fan gan brydferthwch y rhianod hyn, ac yn neillduol un o honynt. Collod y llywodraeth arno ei hunan i'r fath radau fel y penderfynod neidio i'r cylch a dwyn yn ysbail ido yr hon oed wedi myned a'i galon mor llwyr. Cyflawnod ei fwriad a dygod y fonediges gydag ef adref. Bu yn wraig ido, a ganwyd plant idynt. Yn damweiniol, tra yn cyflawni rhyw orchwyl, digwydod ido ei tharo a haiarn ac ar amrantiad diflannod ei anwylyd o'i olwg ac nis gwelod hi mwyach, ond darfod idi dyfod at ffenestr ei ystafell wely un noswaith ar ol hyn a'i annog i fod yn dirion wrth y plant a'i bod hi yn aros gerllaw y ty yn Llyny Dywarchen. Y mae y tradodiad hefyd yn ein hysbysu darfod i'r gwr hwn symud i fyw o Drws y Coed i Ystrad Betws Garmon. 'A young man, from the neighbourhood of Drws y Coed, was returning home one bright moonlight night, from Bedgelert; when he came opposite the lake called Llyn y Gader, he saw a number of the ladies known as the Tylwyth Teg going through their nightly frolics. The youth was charmed at once by the beauty of these ladies, and especially by one of them. He so far lost his control over himself, that he resolved to leap into the circle and carry away as his spoil the one who had so completely robbed him of his heart. He accomplished his intention, and carried the lady home with him. She became his wife, and children were born to them. Accidentally, while at some work or other, it happened to him to strike her with iron, and, in the twinkling of an eye, his beloved one disappeared from his sight. He saw her no more, except that she came to his bedroom window one night afterwards, and told him to be tender to the children, and that she was staying, near the house, in the lake called Llyn y Dywarchen. The tradition also informs us that this man moved from Drws y Coed to live at Ystrad near Bettws Garmon.' The name Llyn y Dywarchen, I may add, means the Lake of the Sod or Turf: it is the one with the floating island, described thus by Giraldus, ii. 9 (p. 135):--Alter enim insulam habet erraticam, vi ventorum impellentium ad oppositas plerumque lacus partes errabundam. Hic armenta pascentia nonnunquam pastores ad longinquas subito partes translata mirantur. 'For one of the two lakes holds a wandering island, which strays mostly with the force of the winds impelling it to the opposite parts of the lake. Sometimes cattle grazing on it are, to the surprise of the shepherds, suddenly carried across to the more distant parts.' Sheep are known to get on the floating islet, and it is still believed to float them away from the shore. Mr. S. Rhys Williams, it will be noticed, has given the substance of the legend rather than the story itself. I now proceed to translate the same tale as given in Welsh in Cymru Fu (pp. 474-7 of the edition published by Messrs. Hughes and Son, Wrexham), in a very different dress--it is from Glasynys' pen, and, as might be expected, decked out with all the literary adornments in which he delighted. The language he used was his own, but there is no reason to think that he invented any of the incidents:--'The farmer of Drws y Coed's son was one misty day engaged as a shepherd on the side of the mountain, a little below Cwm Marchnad, and, as he crossed a rushy flat, he saw a wonderfully handsome little woman standing under a clump of rushes. Her yellow and curly hair hung down in ringed locks, and her eyes were as blue as the clear sky, while her forehead was as white as the wavy face of a snowdrift that has nestled on the side of Snowdon only a single night. Her two plump cheeks were each like a red rose, and her pretty-lipped mouth might make an angel eager to kiss her. The youth approached her, filled with love for her, and, with delicacy and affection, asked her if he might converse with her. She smiled kindly, and reaching out her hand, said to him, "Idol of my hopes, thou hast come at last!" They began to associate secretly, and to meet one another daily here and there on the moors around the banks of Llyn y Gader; at last, their love had waxed so strong that the young man could not be at peace either day or night, as he was always thinking of Bella or humming to himself a verse of poetry about her charms. The yellow-haired youth was now and then lost for a long while, and nobody could divine his history. His acquaintances believed that he had been fascinated: at last the secret was found out. There were about Llyn y Dywarchen shady and concealing copses: it was there he was wont to go, and the she-elf would always be there awaiting him, and it was therefore that the place where they used to meet got to be called Llwyn y Forwyn, the Maiden's Grove. After fondly loving for a long time, it was resolved to wed; but it was needful to get the leave of the damsel's father. One moonlight night it was agreed to meet in the wood, and the appointment was duly kept by the young man, but there was no sign of the subterranean folks coming, until the moon disappeared behind the Garn. Then the two arrived, and the old man at once proceeded to say to the suitor: "Thou shalt have my daughter on the condition that thou do not strike her with iron. If thou ever touch her with iron, she will no longer be thine, but shall return to her own." The man consented readily, and great was his joy. They were betrothed, and seldom was a handsomer pair seen at the altar. It was rumoured that a vast sum of money as dowry had arrived with the pretty lady at Drws y Coed on the evening of her nuptials. Soon after, the mountain shepherd of Cwm Marchnad passed for a very rich and influential man. In the course of time they had children, and no happier people ever lived together than their parents. Everything went on regularly and prosperously for a number of years: they became exceedingly wealthy, but the sweet is not to be had without the bitter. One day they both went out on horseback, and they happened to go near Llyn y Gader, when the wife's horse got into a bog and sank to his belly. After the husband had got Bella off his back, he succeeded with much trouble in getting the horse out, and then he let him go. Then he lifted her on the back of his own, but, unfortunately, in trying quickly to place her foot in the stirrup, the iron part of the same slipped, and struck her--or, rather, it touched her at the knee-joint. Before they had made good half their way home, several of the diminutive Tylwyth began to appear to them, and the sound of sweet singing was heard on the side of the hill. Before the husband reached Drws y Coed his wife had left him, and it is supposed that she fled to Llwyn y Forwyn, and thence to the world below to Faery. She left her dear little ones to the care of her beloved, and no more came near them. Some say, however, that she sometimes contrived to see her beloved one in the following manner. As the law of her country did not permit her to frequent the earth with an earthly being, she and her mother invented a way of avoiding the one thing and of securing the other. A great piece of sod was set to float on the surface of the lake, and on that she used to be for long hours, freely conversing in tenderness with her consort on shore; by means of that plan they managed to live together until he breathed his last. Their descendants owned Drws y Coed for many generations, and they intermarried and mixed with the people of the district. Moreover, many a fierce fight took place in later times at the Gwyl-fabsant at Dolbenmaen or at Penmorfa, because the men of Eifionyd had a habit of annoying the people of Pennant by calling them Bellisians.' In a note, Glasynys remarks that this tale is located in many districts without much variation, except in the names of the places; this, however, could not apply to the latter part, which suits Llyn y Dywarchen alone. With this account of the fairy wife frequenting a lake island to converse with her husband on shore, compare the Irish story of the Children of Lir, who, though transformed into swans, were allowed to retain their power of reasoning and speaking, so that they used to converse from the surface of the water with their friends on the dry land: see Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. x, 1-36. Now I return to another tale which was sent me by Mr. William Jones: unless I am mistaken it has not hitherto been published; so I give the Welsh together with a free translation of it:-- Yr oed ystori am fab Braich y Dinas a adrodai y diwedar hybarch Elis Owen o Gefn y Meusyd yn lled debyg i chwedl mab yr Ystrad gan Glasynys, sef ido hudo un o ferched y Tylwyth Teg i lawr o Foel Hebog, a'i chipio i mewn i'r ty drwy orthrech; ac wedi hynny efe a'i perswadiod i ymbriodi ag ef ar yr un telerau ag y gwnaeth mab yr Ystrad. Ond clywais hen fonediges o'r enw Mrs. Roberts, un o ferched yr Isallt, oed lawer hyn na Mr. Owen, yn ei hadrod yn wahanol. Yr oed yr hen wreigan hon yn credu yn nilysrwyd y chwedl, oblegid yr oed hi 'yn cofio rhai o'r teulu, waeth be' deudo neb.' Dirwynnai ei hedau yn debyg i hyn:--Yn yr amser gynt--ond o ran hynny pan oed hi yn ferch ifanc--yr oed llawer iawn o Dylwyth Teg yn trigo mewn rhyw ogofau yn y Foel o Gwm Ystradllyn hyd i flaen y Pennant. Yr oed y Tylwyth hwn yn llawer iawn hardach na dim a welid mewn un rhan arall o'r wlad. Yr oedynt o ran maint yn fwy o lawer na'r rhai cyffredin, yn lan eu pryd tu hwnt i bawb, eu gwallt yn oleu fel llin, eu llygaid yn loyw leision. Yr oedynt yn ymdangos mewn rhyw le neu gilyd yn chwareu, canu ac ymdifyru bob nos deg a goleu; a bydai swn eu canu yn denu y llanciau a'r merched ifainc i fyned i'w gweled; ac os bydent yn digwyd bod o bryd goleu hwy a ymgomient a hwynt, ond ni adawent i un person o liw tywyll dod yn agos atynt, eithr cilient ymaith o fford y cyfryw un. Yrwan yr oed mab Braich y Dinas yn llanc hard, heini, bywiog ac o bryd glan, goleu a serchiadol. Yr oed hwn yn hoff iawn o edrych ar y Tylwyth, a bydai yn cael ymgom a rhai o honynt yn aml, ond yn bennaf ag un o'r merched oed yn rhagori arnynt oll mewn glendid a synwyr; ac o fynych gyfarfod syrthiod y dau mewn cariad a'u gilyd, eithr ni fynai hi ymbriodi ag ef, ond adawod fyned i'w wasanaeth, a chydunod i'w gyfarfod yn Mhant--nid wyf yn cofio yr enw i gyd--drannoeth, oblegid nid oed wiw idi geisio myned gydag ef yn ngwyd y lleill. Felly drannoeth aeth i fynu i'r Foel, a chyfarfydod y rhian ef yn ol ei hadewid, ag aeth gydag ef adref, ac ymgymerod a'r swyd o laethwraig, a buan y dechreuod popeth lwydo o dan ei llaw: yr oed yr ymenyn a'r caws yn cynhydu beunyd. Hir a thaer y bu'r llanc yn ceisio gandi briodi. A hi a adawod, os medrai ef gael allan ei henw. Ni wydai Mrs. Roberts drwy ba ystryw y llwydod i gael hwnnw, ond hynny a fu, a daeth ef i'r ty un noswaith a galwod ar 'Sibi,' a phan glywod hi ei henw, hi a aeth i lewygfa; ond pan daeth ati ei hun, hi a ymfodlonod i briodi ar yr amod nad oed ef i gyffwrd a hi a haiarn ac nad oed bollt haiarn i fod ar y drws na chlo ychwaith, a hynny a fu: priodwyd hwynt, a buont fyw yn gysurus am lawer o flynydoed, a ganwyd idynt amryw blant. Y diwed a fu fel hyn: yr oed ef wedi myned un diwrnod i dori baich o frwyn at doi, a tharawod y cryman yn y baich i fyned adref; fel yr oed yn nesu at y gadlas, rhedod Sibi i'w gyfarfod, a thaflod ynteu y baich brwyn yn direidus tu ag ati, a rhag ido dyfod ar ei thraws ceisiod ei atal a'i llaw, yr hon a gyffyrdod a'r cryman; a hi a diflannod o'r golwg yn y fan yn nghysgod y baich brwyn: ni welwyd ac ni chlywyd dim odiwrthi mwyach. 'There was a story respecting the son of the farmer of Braich y Dinas, which used to be told by the late respected Mr. Ellis Owen, of Cefn y Meusyd, somewhat in the same way as that about the Ystrad youth, as told by Glasynys; that is to say, the young man enticed one of the damsels of the fair family to come down from Moel Hebog, and then he carried her by force into the house, and afterwards persuaded her to become his wife on the same conditions as the heir of Ystrad did. But I have heard an old lady called Mrs. Roberts, who had been brought up at Isallt, and who was older than Mr. Owen, relating it differently. This old woman believed in the truth of the story, as "she remembered some of the family, whatever anybody may say." She used to spin her yarn somewhat as follows:--In old times--but, for the matter of that, when she was a young woman--there were a great many of the fair family living in certain caves in the Foel from Cwm Strállyn [36] down to the upper part of Pennant. This Tylwyth was much handsomer than any seen in any other part of the country. In point of stature they were much bigger than the ordinary ones, fair of complexion beyond everybody, with hair that was as light as flax, and eyes that were of a clear blue colour. They showed themselves in one spot or another, engaged in playing, singing, and jollity every light night. The sound of their singing used to draw the lads and the young women to look at them; and, should they be of clear complexion, the fairies would chat with them; but they would let no person of a dark hue come near them: they moved away from such a one. Now the young man of Braich y Dinas was a handsome, vigorous, and lively stripling of fair, clear, and attractive complexion. He was very fond of looking at the fair family, and had a chat with some of them often, but chiefly with one of the damsels, who surpassed all the rest in beauty and good sense. The result of frequently meeting was that they fell in love with one another, but she would not marry him. She promised, however, to go to service to him, and agreed to meet him at Pant y--I have forgotten the rest of the name--the day after, as it would not do for her to go with him while the others happened to be looking on. So he went up the next day to the Foel, and the damsel met him according to her promise, and went with him home, where she took to the duties of a dairymaid. Soon everything began to prosper under her hand; the butter and the cheese were daily growing in quantity. Long and importunately did the youth try to get her to marry him. She promised to do so provided he could find out her name. Mrs. Roberts did not know by what manoeuvre he succeeded in discovering it, but it was done, and he came into the house one night and called to "Sibi," and when she heard her name she fainted away. When, however, she recovered her consciousness, she consented to marry on the condition that he was not to touch her with iron, and that there was not to be a bolt of iron on the door, or a lock either. It was agreed, and they were married; they lived together comfortably many years, and had children born to them. The end came thus: he had gone one day to cut a bundle of rushes for thatching, and planted the reaping-hook in the bundle to go home. As he drew towards the haggard, Sibi ran out to meet him, and he wantonly threw the bundle of rushes towards her, when she, to prevent its hitting her, tried to stop it with her hand, which touched the reaping-hook. She vanished on the spot out of sight behind the bundle of rushes, and nothing more was seen or heard of her.' Mr. Ellis Owen, alluded to above, was a highly respected gentleman, well known in North Wales for his literary and antiquarian tastes. He was born in 1789 at Cefn y Meusyd near Tremadoc, where he continued to live till the day of his death, which was January 27, 1868. His literary remains, preceded by a short biography, were published in 1877 by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones of Tremadoc; but it contains no fairy tales so far as I have been able to find. A tale which partially reminds one of that given by Dewi Glan Ffrydlas respecting the Corwrion midwife, referred to at p. 63 above, was published by Mr. W. Jones in the fourth volume of the Brython, p. 251: freely rendered into English, it runs thus:-- 'Once on a time, when a midwife from Nanhwynan had newly got to the Hafodyd Brithion to pursue her calling, a gentleman came to the door on a fine grey steed and bade her come with him at once. Such was the authority with which he spoke, that the poor midwife durst not refuse to go, however much it was her duty to stay where she was. So she mounted behind him, and off they went, like the flight of a swallow, through Cwmllan, over the Bwlch, down Nant yr Aran, and over the Gader to Cwm Hafod Ruffyd, before the poor woman had time even to say Oh! When they reached there, she saw before her a magnificent mansion, splendidly lit up with such lamps as she had never seen before. They entered the court, and a crowd of servants in expensive liveries came to meet them, and she was at once led through the great hall into a bed-chamber, the like of which she had never seen. There the mistress of the house, to whom she had been fetched, was awaiting her. The midwife got through her duties successfully, and stayed there until the lady had completely recovered, nor had she spent any part of her life so merrily, for there nought but festivity went on day and night: dancing, singing, and endless rejoicing reigned there. But merry as it was, she found that she must go, and the nobleman gave her a large purse, with the order not to open it until she had got into her own house. Then he bade one of his servants escort her the same way that she had come. When she reached home she opened the purse, and, to her great joy, it was full of money: she lived happily on those earnings to the end of her life.' With this ending of the story one should contrast Dewi Glan Ffrydlas' tale to which I have already alluded; and I may here refer to Mr. Sikes' British Goblins, pp. 86-8, for a tale differing from both Dewi's and Jones', in that the fairies are there made to appear as devils to the nurse, who had accidentally used a certain ointment which she was not to place near her own eyes. Instead of being rewarded for her services she was only too glad to be deposited anyhow near her home. 'But,' as the story goes on to relate, 'very many years afterwards, being at a fair, she saw a man stealing something from a stall, and, with one corner of her eye, beheld her old master pushing the man's elbow. Unthinkingly she said, "How are you, master? how are the children?" He said, "How did you see me?" She answered, "With the corner of my left eye." From that moment she was blind of her left eye, and lived many years with only her right.' Such is the end of this tale given by Mr. Sikes. 'But the fair family did not,' Mr. William Jones goes on to say, 'always give mortals the means of good living: sometimes they made no little fun of them. Once on a time the Drws y Coed man was going home from Bedgelert Fair, rather merry than sad, along the old road over the Gader, when he saw, on coming near the top of the Gader, a fine, handsome house near the road, in which there was a rare merrymaking. He knew perfectly well that there was no such a building anywhere on his way, and it made him think that he had lost his way and gone astray; so he resolved to turn into the house to ask for lodgings, which were given him. At once, when he entered, he took it to be a nuptial feast (neithior) by reason of the jollity, the singing, and the dancing. The house was full of young men, young women, and children, all merry, and exerting themselves to the utmost. The company began to disappear one by one, and he asked if he might go to bed, whereupon he was led to a splendid chamber, where there was a bed of the softest down with snow-white clothes on it. He stripped at once, went into it, and slept quietly enough till the morning. The first thing to come to his mind when he lay half asleep, half awake, was the jollity of the night before, and the fact of his sleeping in a splendid chamber in the strange house. He opened his eyes to survey his bedroom, but it was too wide: he was sleeping on the bare swamp, with a clump of rushes as his pillow, and the blue sky as his coverlet.' Mr. Jones mentions that, within his memory, there were still people in his neighbourhood who believed that the fairies stole unbaptized children and placed their own in their stead: he gives the following story about the farmer's wife of Dyffryn Mymbyr, near Capel Curig, and her infant:-- Yr oed y wraig hon wedi rhodi genedigaeth i blentyn iach a heinif yn nechreu y cynheuaf ryw haf blin a thymhestlog: ac o herwyd fod y tydyn getyn o fford odiwrth lan na chapel, a'r hin mor hynod o lawiog, esgeuluswyd bedydio y plentyn yn yr amser arferol, sef cyn ei fod yn wyth niwrnod oed. Ryw diwrnod teg yn nghanol y cynheuaf blin aeth y wraig allan i'r maes gyda'r rhelyw o'r teulu i geisio achub y cynheuaf, a gadawod y baban yn cysgu yn ei gryd o dan ofal ei nain, yr hon oed hen a methiantus, ac yn analluog i fyned lawer o gwmpas. Syrthiod yr hen wreigan i gysgu, a thra yr oed hi felly, daeth y Tylwyth i fewn, a chymerasant y baban o'r cryd, a dodasant un arall yn ei le. Yn mhen ennyd dechreuod hwn erain a chwyno nes deffro y nain, ac aeth at y cryd, lle y gwelod gleiriach hen eidil crebachlyd yn ymstwyrian yn flin. 'O'r wchw!' ebai hi, 'y mae yr hen Dylwyth wedi bod yma;' ac yn dioed chwythod yn y corn i alw y fam, yr hon a daeth yno yn diatreg; a phan glywod y crio yn y cryd, rhedod ato, a chodod y bychan i fynu heb sylwi arno, a hi a'i cofleidiod, a'i suod ac a'i swcrod at ei bronnau, ond nid oed dim yn tycio, parhau i nadu yn didor yr oed nes bron a hollti ei chalon; ac ni wydai pa beth i wneud i'w distewi. O'r diwed hi a edrychod arno, a gwelod nad oed yn debyg i'w mhebyn hi, ac aeth yn loes i'w chalon: edrychod arno drachefn, ond po fwyaf yr edrychai arno, hyllaf yn y byd oed hi yn ei weled; anfonod am ei gwr o'r cae, a gyrrod ef i ymholi am wr cyfarwyd yn rhywle er mwyn cael ei gynghor; ac ar ol hir holi dywedod rhywun wrtho fod person Trawsfynyd yn gyfarwyd yn nghyfrinion yr ysprydion; ac efe a aeth ato, ac archod hwnnw ido gymeryd rhaw a'i gorchudio a halen, a thori llun croes yn yr halen; yna ei chymeryd i'r ystafell lle yr oed mab y Tylwyth, ac ar ol agor y ffenestr, ei rhodi ar y tan hyd nes y llosgai yr halen; a hwy a wnaethant felly, a phan aeth yr halen yn eiriasboeth fe aeth yr erthyl croes ymaith yn anweledig idynt hwy, ac ar drothwy y drws hwy a gawsant y baban arall yn iach a dianaf. 'This woman had given birth to a healthy and vigorous child at the beginning of the harvest, one wretched and inclement summer. As the homestead was a considerable distance from church or chapel, and the weather so very rainy, it was neglected to baptize the child at the usual [37] time, that is to say, before it was eight days old. One fine day, in the middle of this wretched harvest, the mother went to the field with the rest of the family to try to save the harvest, and left her baby sleeping in its cradle in its grandmother's charge, who was so aged and decrepit as to be unable to go much about. The old woman fell asleep, and, while she was in that state, the Tylwyth Teg came in and took away the baby, placing another in its stead. Very shortly the latter began to whine and groan, so that the grandmother awoke: she went to the cradle, where she saw a slender, wizened old man moving restlessly and peevishly about. "Alas! alas!" said she, "the old Tylwyth have been here"; and she at once blew in the horn to call the mother home, who came without delay. As she heard the crying in the cradle, she ran towards it, and lifted the little one without looking at him; she hugged him, put him to her breast, and sang lullaby to him, but nothing was of any avail, as he continued, without stopping, to scream enough to break her heart; and she knew not what to do to calm him. At last she looked at him: she saw that he was not like her dear little boy, and her heart was pierced with agony. She looked at him again, and the more she examined him the uglier he seemed to her. She sent for her husband home from the field, and told him to search for a skilled man somewhere or other; and, after a long search, he was told by somebody that the parson of Trawsfynyd was skilled in the secrets of the spirits; so he went to him. The latter bade him take a shovel and cover it with salt, and make the figure of the cross in the salt; then to take it to the chamber where the fairy child was, and, after taking care to open the window, to place the shovel on the fire until the salt was burnt. This was done, and when the salt had got white hot, the peevish abortion went away, seen of no one, and they found the other baby whole and unscathed at the doorstep.' Fire was also made use of in Scotland in order to detect a changeling and force him to quit: see the British Association's Report, 1896, p. 650, where Mr. Gomme refers to Mr. Gregor's Folk-lore of the North-east of Scotland, pp. 8-9. In answer to a question of mine with regard to gossamer, which is called in North Wales edafed gwawn, 'gwawn yarn,' Mr. Jones told me in a letter, dated April, 1881, that it used to be called Rhaffau'r Tylwyth Teg, that is to say, the Ropes of the Fair Family, which were associated with the diminutive, mischievous, and wanton kind of fairies who dwelt in marshy and rushy places, or among the fern and the heather. It used to be said that, if a man should lie down and fall asleep in any such a spot, the fairies would come and bind him with their ropes so that he could not move, and that they would then cover him with a sheet made of their ropes, which would make him invisible. This was illustrated by him by the following tale he had heard from his mother:-- Clywais fy mam yn adrod chwedl am fab y Ffrid, yr hwn wrth dychwelyd adref o ffair Bedgelert yn rhywle odeutu Pen Cae'r Gors a welod beth afrifed o'r Tylwyth Bach yn neidio a phrancio ar bennau y grug. Efe a eistedod i lawr i edrych arnynt, a daeth hun drosto; ymollyngod i lawr a chysgod yn drwm. A phan oed felly, ymosodod yr holl lu arno a rhwymasant ef mor dyn fel na allasai symud; yna hwy a'i cudiasant ef a'r tuded gwawn fel na allai neb ei weled os digwydai ido lefain am help. Yr oed ei deulu yn ei disgwyl adref yn gynnar y nos honno, ac wrth ei weled yn oedi yn hwyr, aethant yn anesmwyth am dano ac aethpwyd i'w gyfarfod, eithr ni welent dim odiwrtho, ac aed gan belled a'r pentref, lle en hyspyswyd ei fod wedi myned tuag adref yn gynnar gyda gwr Hafod Ruffyd. Felly aed tua'r Hafod i edrych a oed yno; ond dywedod gwr yr Hafod eu bod wedi ymwahanu ar Bont Glan y Gors, pawb tua'i fan ei hun. Yna chwiliwyd yn fanwl bob ochr i'r fford odiyno i'r Ffrid heb weled dim odiwrtho. Buwyd yn chwilio yr holl ardal drwy y dyd drannoeth ond yn ofer. Fod bynnag odeutu yr un amser nos drannoeth daeth y Tylwyth ac a'i rhydhasant, ac yn fuan efe a deffrôd wedi cysgu o hono drwy y nos a'r dyd blaenorol. Ar ol ido deffro ni wydai amcan daear yn mha le yr oed, a chrwydro y bu hyd ochrau y Gader a'r Gors Fawr hyd nes y canod y ceiliog, pryd yr adnabu yn mha le yr oed, sef o fewn llai na chwarter milltir i'w gartref. 'I have heard my mother relating a tale about the son of the farmer of the Ffrid, who, while on his way home from Bedgelert Fair, saw, somewhere near Pen Cae'r Gors, an endless number of the diminutive family leaping and capering on the heather tops. He sat him down to look at them, and sleep came over him; he let himself down on the ground, and slept heavily. When he was so, the whole host attacked him, and they bound him so tightly that he could not have stirred; then they covered him with the gossamer sheet, so that nobody could see him in case he called for help. His people expected him home early that evening, and, as they found him delaying till late, they got uneasy about him. They went to meet him, but no trace of him was seen, and they went as far as the village, where they were informed that he had started home in good time with the farmer of Hafod Ruffyd. So they went to the Hafod to see if he was there; but the farmer told them that they had parted on Glan y Gors Bridge to go to their respective homes. A minute search was then made on both sides of the road from there to the Ffrid, but without finding any trace of him. They kept searching the whole neighbourhood during the whole of the next day, but in vain. However, about the same time the following night the Tylwyth came and liberated him, and he shortly woke up, after sleeping through the previous night and day. When he woke he had no idea where on earth he was; so he wandered about on the slopes of the Gader and near the Gors Fawr until the cock crew, when he found where he was, namely, less than a quarter of a mile from his home.' The late Mr. Owen, of Cefn Meusyd, has already been alluded to. I have not been able to get at much of the folklore with which he was familiar, but, in reply to some questions of mine, Mr. Robert Isaac Jones of Tremadoc, his biographer, and the publisher of the Brython, so long as it existed, has kindly ransacked his memory. He writes to me in Welsh to the following effect:-- 'I will tell you what I heard from Mr. Owen and my mother when I was a lad, about fifty-seven years ago. The former used to say that the people of Pennant in Eifionyd had a nickname, to wit, that of Belsiaid y Pennant, "the Bellisians of the Pennant"; that, when he was a boy, if anybody called out Belsiaid y Pennant at the Penmorfa Fair, every man jack of them would come out, and fighting always ensued. The antiquary used to explain it thus. Some two or three hundred years ago, Sir Robert of the Nant, one of Sir Richard Bulkeley's ancestors, had a son and heir who was extravagant and wild. He married a gipsy, and they had children born to them; but, as the family regarded this marriage as a disgrace to their ancient stem, it is said that the father, the next time the vagabonds came round, gave a large sum of money to the father of the girl for taking her away with him. This having been done, the rumour was spread abroad that it was one of the fairies the youth had married, and that she had gone with him to catch a pony, when he threw the bridle at the beast to prevent it passing, and the iron of the bridle touched the wife; then that she at once disappeared, as the fairies always do so when touched with iron. However, the two children were put out to nurse, and the one of them, who was a girl, was brought up at Plas y Pennant, and her name was Pelisha [38]; her descendants remain to this day in the Nant, and are called Bellis, who are believed there, to this day, to be derived from the Tylwyth Teg. Nothing offends them more than to be reminded of this.' Mr. R. I. Jones goes on to relate another tale as follows:-- Dywedir fod lle a elwir yr Hafod Rugog mewn cwm anial yn y mynyd lle y bydai y Tylwyth Teg yn arferol a mynychu; ac y bydent yn trwblio'r hen wraig am fenthyg rhywbeth neu gilyd. Dywedod hithau, 'Cewch os caniatewch dau beth cyntaf--i'r peth cyntaf y cyffyrdaf ag ef wrth y drws dorri, a'r peth cyntaf y rhof fy llaw arno yn y ty estyn hanner llath.' Yr oed carreg afael, fel ei gelwir, yn y mur wrth y drws ar ei fford, ac yr oed gandi defnyd syrcyn gwlanen yn rhy fyr o hanner llath. Ond yn anffodus wrth dod a'i chawellad mawn i'r ty bu agos idi a syrthio: rhoes ei llaw ar ben ei chlun i ymarbed a thorod honno, a chan faint y boen cyffyrdod yny ty a'i thrwyn yr hwn a estynnod hanner llath. 'It is said that there was a place called Hafod Rugog in a wild hollow among the mountains, where the fair family were in the habit of resorting, and that they used to trouble the old woman of Hafod for the loan of one thing and another. So she said, one day, "You shall have the loan if you will grant me two first things--that the first thing I touch at the door break, and that the first thing I put my hand on in the house be lengthened half a yard." There was a grip stone (carreg afael), as it is called, in the wall near the door, which was in her way, and she had in the house a piece of flannel for a jerkin which was half a yard too short. But, unfortunately, as she came, with her kreel full of turf on her back, to the house, she nearly fell down: she put her hand, in order to save herself, to her knee-joint, which then broke; and, owing to the pain, when she had got into the house, she touched her nose with her hand, when her nose grew half a yard longer.' Mr. Jones went on to notice how the old folks used to believe that the fairies were wont to appear in the marshes near Cwellyn Lake, not far from Rhyd-Du, to sing and dance, and that it was considered dangerous to approach them on those occasions lest one should be fascinated. As to the above-mentioned flannel and stone a folklorist asks me, why the old woman did not definitely mention them and say exactly what she wanted. The question is worth asking: I cannot answer it, but I mention it in the hope that somebody else will. II. Early in the year 1899 [39] I had a small group of stories communicated to me by the Rev. W. Evans Jones, rector of Dolbenmaen, who tells me that the neighbourhood of the Garn abounds in fairy tales. The scene of one of these is located near the source of Afon fach Blaen y Cae, a tributary of the Dwyfach. 'There a shepherd while looking after his flock came across a ring of rushes which he accidentally kicked, as the little people were coming out to dance. They detained him, and he married one of their number. He was told that he would live happily with them as long as he would not touch any instrument of iron. For years nothing happened to mar the peace and happiness of the family. One day, however, he unknowingly touched iron, with the consequence that both the wife and the children disappeared.' This differs remarkably from stories such as have been already mentioned at pp. 32, 35; but until it is countenanced by stories from other sources, I can only treat it as a blurred version of a story of the more usual type, such as the next one which Mr. Evans Jones has sent me as follows:-- 'A son of the farmer of Blaen Pennant married a fairy and they lived together happily for years, until one day he took a bridle to catch a horse, which proved to be rather an obstreperous animal, and in trying to prevent the horse passing, he threw the bridle at him, which, however, missed the animal and hit the wife so that the bit touched her, and she at once disappeared. The tradition goes, that their descendants are to this day living in the Pennant Valley; and if there is any unpleasantness between them and their neighbours they are taunted with being of the Tylwyth Teg family.' These are, I presume, the people nicknamed Belsiaid, to which reference has already been made. The next story is about an old woman from Garn Dolbenmaen who was crossing y Graig Goch, 'the Red Rock,' 'when suddenly she came across a fairy sitting down with a very large number of gold coins by her. The old woman ventured to remark how wealthy she was: the fairy replied, Wele dacw, "Lo there!" and immediately disappeared.' This looks as if it ought to be a part of a longer story which Mr. Evans Jones has not heard. The last bit of folklore which he has communicated is equally short, but of a rarer description: 'A fairy was in the habit of attending a certain family in the Pennant Valley every evening to put the children to bed; and as the fairy was poorly clad, the mistress of the house gave her a gown, which was found in the morning torn into shreds.' The displeasure of the fairy at being offered the gown is paralleled by that of the fenodyree or the Manx brownie, described in chapter iv. As for the kind of service here ascribed to the Pennant fairy, I know nothing exactly parallel. III. The next four stories are to be found in Cymru Fu at pp. 175-9, whence I have taken the liberty of translating them into English. They were contributed by Glasynys, whose name has already occurred so often in connexion with these Welsh legends, that the reader ought to know more about him; but I have been disappointed in my attempt to get a short account of his life to insert here. All I can say is, that I made his acquaintance in 1865 in Anglesey: at that time he had a curacy near Holyhead, and he was in the prime of life. He impressed me as an enthusiast for Welsh antiquities: he was born and bred, I believe, in the neighbourhood of Snowdon, and his death took place about ten years ago. It would be a convenience to the student of Welsh folklore to have a brief biography of Glasynys, but as yet nothing of the kind seems to have been written. (1) 'When the people of the Gors Goch one evening had just gone to bed, they heard a great row and disturbance around the house. One could not comprehend at all what it was that made a noise at that time of night. Both the husband and the wife had waked up, quite unable to make out what it might be. The children also woke, but no one could utter a word: their tongues had all stuck to the roof of their mouths. The husband, however, at last managed to move, and to ask, "Who is there? What do you want?" Then he was answered from without by a small silvery voice, "It is room we want to dress our children." The door was opened: a dozen small beings came in, and began to search for an earthen pitcher with water; there they remained for some hours, washing and titivating themselves. As the day was breaking, they went away, leaving behind them a fine present for the kindness they had received. Often afterwards did the Gors Goch folks have the company of this family. But once there happened to be there a fine plump and pretty baby in his cradle. The fair family came, and, as the baby had not been baptized, they took the liberty of changing him for one of their own. They left behind in his stead an abominable creature that would do nothing but cry and scream every day of the week. The mother was nearly breaking her heart on account of the misfortune, and greatly afraid of telling anybody about it. But everybody got to see that there was something wrong at the Gors Goch, which was proved before long by the mother dying of longing for her child. The other children died broken-hearted after their mother, and the husband was left alone with the little elf without any one to comfort them. But shortly after, one began to resort again to the hearth of the Gors Goch to dress children, and the gift, which had formerly been silver money, became henceforth pure gold. In the course of a few years the elf became the heir of a large farm in North Wales, and that is why the old people used to say, "Shoe the elf with gold and he will grow" (Fe daw gwidon yn fawr ond ei bedoli ag aur). That is the legend of the Gors Goch.' (2) 'Once when William Ellis, of the Gilwern, was fishing on the bank of Cwm Silin Lake on a dark misty day, he had seen no living Christian from the time when he left Nantlle. But as he was in a happy mood, throwing his line, he beheld over against him in a clump of rushes a large crowd of people, or things in the shape of people about a foot in stature: they were engaged in leaping and dancing. He looked on for hours, and he never heard, as he said, such music in his life before. But William went too near them, when they threw a kind of dust into his eyes, and, while he was wiping it away, the little family took the opportunity of betaking themselves somewhere out of his sight, so that he neither saw nor heard anything more of them.' (3) 'There is a similar story respecting a place called Llyn y Ffynhonnau. There was no end of jollity there, of dancing, harping, and fiddling, with the servant man of Gelli Ffrydau and his two dogs in the midst of the crowd, leaping and capering as nimbly as anybody else. At it they were for three days and three nights, without stopping; and had it not been for a skilled man, who lived not far off, and came to know how things were going on, the poor fellow would, without doubt, have danced himself to death. But he was rescued that time.' (4) The fourth story is one, of which he says, that he heard it from his mother; but he has elaborated it in his usual fashion, and the proper names are undoubtedly his own:--'Once on a time, a shepherd boy had gone up the mountain. That day, like many a day before and after, was exceedingly misty. Now, though he was well acquainted with the place, he lost his way, and walked backwards and forwards for many a long hour. At last he got into a low rushy spot, where he saw before him many circular rings. He at once recalled the place, and began to fear the worst. He had heard, many hundreds of times, of the bitter experiences, in those rings, of many a shepherd who had happened to chance on the dancing place or the circles of the fair family. He hastened away as fast as ever he could, lest he should be ruined like the rest; but, though he exerted himself to the point of perspiring and losing his breath, there he was, and there he continued to be, a long time. At last he was met by an old fat little man, with merry blue eyes, who asked him what he was doing. He answered that he was trying to find his way home. "Oh," said he, "come after me, and do not utter a word until I bid thee." This he did, following him on and on until they came to an oval stone; and the old fat little man lifted it, after tapping the middle of it three times with his walking-stick. There was there a narrow path with stairs visible here and there; and a sort of whitish light, inclining to grey and blue, was to be seen radiating from the stones. "Follow me fearlessly," said the fat man; "no harm will be done thee." So on the poor youth went, as reluctantly as a dog to be hanged. But presently a fine, wooded, fertile country spread itself out before them, with well arranged mansions dotting it all over, while every kind of apparent magnificence met the eye and seemed to smile in the landscape; the bright waters of the rivers meandered in twisted streams, and the hills were covered with the luxuriant verdure of their grassy growth, and the mountains with a glossy fleece of smooth pasture. By the time they had reached the stout gentleman's mansion, the young man's senses had been bewildered by the sweet cadence of the music which the birds poured forth from the groves: then there was gold dazzling his eyes, and silver flashing on his sight. He saw there all kinds of musical instruments and all sorts of things for playing; but he could discern no inhabitant in the whole place; and, when he sat down to eat, the dishes on the table came to their places of themselves, and disappeared when one had done with them. This puzzled him beyond measure; moreover, he heard people talking together around him, but for the life of him he could see no one but his old friend. At length the fat man said to him: "Thou canst now talk as much as it may please thee;" but, when he attempted to move his tongue, it would no more stir than if it had been a lump of ice, which greatly frightened him. At this point, a fine old lady, with health and benevolence beaming in her face, came to them and slightly smiled at the shepherd: the mother was followed by her three daughters, who were remarkably beautiful. They gazed with somewhat playful looks at him, and at length began to talk to him; but his tongue would not wag. Then one of the girls came to him, and, playing with his yellow and curly locks, gave him a smart kiss on his ruddy lips. This loosened the string that bound his tongue, and he began to talk freely and eloquently. There he was, under the charm of that kiss, in the bliss of happiness; and there he remained a year and a day without knowing that he had passed more than a day among them; for he had got into a country where there was no reckoning of time. But by-and-by he began to feel somewhat of a longing to visit his old home, and asked the stout man if he might go. "Stay a little yet," said he, "and thou shalt go for awhile." That passed: he stayed on, but Olwen, for that was the name of the damsel that had kissed him, was very unwilling that he should depart. She looked sad every time he talked of going away; nor was he himself without feeling a sort of a cold thrill passing through him at the thought of leaving her. On condition, however, of returning, he obtained leave to go, provided with plenty of gold and silver, of trinkets and gems. When he reached home, nobody knew who he was: it had been the belief that he had been killed by another shepherd, who found it necessary to betake himself hastily far away to America, lest he should be hanged without delay. But here is Einion Lâs at home, and everybody wonders especially to see that the shepherd had got to look like a wealthy man: his manners, his dress, his language, and the treasure he had with him, all conspired to give him the air of a gentleman. He went back one Thursday night, the first of the moon of that month, as suddenly as he had left the first time, and nobody knew whither. There was great joy in the country below when Einion returned thither, and nobody was more rejoiced at it than Olwen his beloved. The two were right impatient to get married; but it was necessary to do that quietly, for the family below hated nothing more than fuss and noise; so, in a sort of a half-secret fashion, they were wedded. Einion was very desirous to go once more among his own people, accompanied, to be sure, by his wife. After he had been long entreating the old man for leave, they set out on two white ponies, that were, in fact, more like snow than anything else in point of colour. So he arrived with his consort in his old home, and it was the opinion of all that Einion's wife was the handsomest person they had anywhere seen. Whilst at home, a son was born to them, to whom they gave the name of Taliessin. Einion was now in the enjoyment of high repute, and his wife received due respect. Their wealth was immense, and soon they acquired a large estate; but it was not long till people began to inquire after the pedigree of Einion's wife: the country was of opinion that it was not the right thing to be without a pedigree. Einion was questioned about it, but without giving any satisfactory answer, and one came to the conclusion that she was one of the fair family (Tylwyth Teg). "Certainly," replied Einion, "there can be no doubt that she comes from a very fair family; for she has two sisters who are as fair as she, and, if you saw them together, you would admit that name to be a most fitting one." This, then, is the reason why the remarkable family in the Land of Enchantment and Glamour (Hud a Lledrith) is called the fair family.' The two next tales of Glasynys' appear in Cymru Fu, at pp. 478-9; the first of them is to be compared with one already related (pp. 99, 100), while the other is unlike anything that I can now recall:-- (5) 'Cwmllan was the principal resort of the fair family, and the shepherds of Hafod Llan used to see them daily in the ages of faith gone by. Once, on a misty afternoon, one of them had been searching for sheep towards Nant y Bettws. When he had crossed Bwlch Cwmllan, and was hastening laboriously down, he saw an endless number of little folks singing and dancing in a lively and light-footed fashion, while the handsomest girls he had ever seen anywhere were at it preparing a banquet. He went to them and had a share of their dainties, and it seemed to him that he had never in his life tasted anything approaching their dishes. When the twilight came, they spread their tents, and the man never before saw such beauty and ingenuity. They gave him a soft bed of yielding down, with sheets of the finest linen, and he went to rest as proud as if he had been a prince. But, alas! next morning, after all the jollity and sham splendour, the poor man, when he opened his eyes, found that his bed was but a bush of bulrushes, and his pillow a clump of moss. Nevertheless, he found silver money in his shoes, and afterwards he continued for a long time to find, every week, a piece of coined money between two stones near the spot where he had slept. One day, however, he told a friend of his the secret respecting the money, and he never found any more.' (6) 'Another of these shepherds was one day urging his dog at the sheep in Cwmllan, when he heard a kind of low noise in the cleft of a rock. He turned to look, when he found there some kind of a creature weeping plenteously. He approached, and drew out a wee lass; very shortly afterwards two middle-aged men came to him to thank him for his kindness, and, when about to part, one of them gave him a walking-stick, as a souvenir of his good deed. The year after this, every sheep in his possession had two ewe-lambs; and so his sheep continued to breed for some years. But he had stayed one evening in the village until it was rather late, and there hardly ever was a more tempestuous night than that: the wind howled, and the clouds shed their contents in sheets of rain, while the darkness was such that next to nothing could be seen. As he was crossing the river that comes down from Cwmllan, where its flood was sweeping all before it in a terrible current, he somehow let go the walking-stick from his hand; and when one went next morning up the Cwm, it was found that nearly all the sheep had been swept away by the flood, and that the farmer's wealth had gone almost as it came--with the walking-stick.' The shorter versions given by Glasynys are probably more nearly given as he heard them, than the longer ones, which may be suspected of having been a good deal spun out by him; but there is probably very little in any of them of his own invention, though the question whence he got his materials in each instance may be difficult to answer. In one this is quite clear, though he does not state it, namely the story of the sojourn of Elfod the Shepherd in Fairyland, as given in Cymru Fu, p. 477: it is no other than a second or third-hand reproduction of that recorded by Giraldus concerning a certain Eliodorus, a twelfth-century cleric in the diocese of St. David's [40]. But the longest tale published by Glasynys is the one about a mermaid: see Cymru Fu, pp. 434-44. Where he got this from I have not been able to find out, but it has probably been pieced together from various sources. I feel sure that some of the materials at least were Welsh, besides the characters known to Welsh mythology as Nefyd Naf Neifion, Gwyn ab Nud, Gwydion ab Dôn, Dylan, and Ceridwen, who have been recklessly introduced into it. He locates it, apparently, somewhere on the coast of Carnarvonshire, the chief scene being called Ogof Deio or David's Cave, which so far as I know is not an actual name, but one suggested by 'David Jones' locker' as sailors' slang for the sea. In hopes that somebody will communicate to me any bits of this tale that happen to be still current on the Welsh coast, I give an abstract of it here:-- 'Once upon a time, a poor fisherman made the acquaintance of a mermaid in a cave on the sea-coast; at first she screeched wildly, but, when she got a little calmer, she told him to go off out of the way of her brother, and to return betimes the day after. In getting away, he was tossed into the sea, and tossed out on the land with a rope, which had got wound about his waist; and on pulling at this he got ashore a coffer full of treasure, which he spent the night in carrying home. He was somewhat late in revisiting the cave the next day, and saw no mermaid come there to meet him according to her promise. But the following night he was roused out of his sleep by a visit from her at his home, when she told him to come in time next day. On his way thither, he learnt from some fishermen that they had been labouring in vain during the night, as a great big mermaid had opened their nets in order to pick the best fish, while she let the rest escape. When he reached the cave he found the mermaid there combing her hair: she surprised him by telling him that she had come to live among the inhabitants of the land, though she was, according to her own account, a king's daughter. She was no longer stark naked, but dressed like a lady: in one hand she held a diadem of pure gold, and in the other a cap of wonderful workmanship, the former of which she placed on her head, while she handed the latter to Ifan Morgan, with the order that he should keep it. Then she related to him how she had noticed him when he was a ruddy boy, out fishing in his father's white boat, and heard him sing a song which made her love him, and how she had tried to repeat this song at her father's court, where everybody wanted to get it. Many a time, she said, she had been anxiously listening if she might hear it again, but all in vain. So she had obtained permission from her family to come with her treasures and see if he would not teach it her; but she soon saw that she would not succeed without appearing in the form in which she now was. After saying that her name was Nefyn, daughter of Nefyd Naf Neifion, and niece to Gwyn son of Nud, and Gwydion son of Dôn, she calmed his feelings on the subject of the humble cottage in which he lived. Presently he asked her to be his wife, and she consented on the condition that he should always keep the cap she had given him out of her sight and teach her the song. They were married and lived happily together, and had children born them five times, a son and a daughter each time; they frequently went to the cave, and no one knew what treasures they had there; but once on a time they went out in a boat pleasuring, as was their wont, with six or seven of the children accompanying them, and when they were far from the land a great storm arose; besides the usual accompaniments of a storm at sea, most unearthly screeches and noises were heard, which frightened the children and made their mother look uncomfortable; but presently she bent her head over the side of the boat, and whispered something they did not catch: to their surprise the sea was instantly calm. They got home comfortably, but the elder children were puzzled greatly by their mother's influence over the sea, and it was not long after this till they so teased some ill-natured old women, that the latter told them all about the uncanny origin of their mother. The eldest boy was vexed at this, and remembered how his mother had spoken to somebody near the boat at sea, and that he was never allowed to go with his parents to Ogof Deio. He recalled, also, his mother's account of the strange countries she had seen. Once there came also to Ifan Morgan's home, which was now a mansion, a visitor whom the children were not even allowed to see; and one night, when the young moon had sunk behind the western horizon, Ifan and his wife went quietly out of the house, telling a servant that they would not return for three weeks or a month: this was overheard by the eldest son. So he followed them very quietly until he saw them on the strand, where he beheld his mother casting a sort of leather mantle round herself and his father, and both of them threw themselves into the hollow of a billow that came to fetch them. The son went home, broke his heart, and died in nine days at finding out that his mother was a mermaid; and, on seeing her brother dead, his twin sister went and threw herself into the sea; but, instead of being drowned, she was taken up on his steed by a fine looking knight, who then galloped away over the waves as if they had been dry and level land. The servants were in doubt what to do, now that Nefyd Morgan was dead and Eilonwy had thrown herself into the sea; but Tegid, the second son, who feared nothing, said that Nefyd's body should be taken to the strand, as somebody was likely to come to fetch it for burial among his mother's family. At midnight a knight arrived, who said the funeral was to be at three that morning, and told them that their brother would come back to them, as Gwydion ab Dôn was going to give him a heart that no weight could break, that Eilonwy was soon to be wedded to one of the finest and bravest of the knights of Gwerdonau Llion, and that their parents were with Gwyn ab Nud in the Gwaelodion. The body was accordingly taken to the beach, and, as soon as the wave touched it, out of his coffin leaped Nefyd like a porpoise. He was seen then to walk away arm in arm with Gwydion ab Dôn to a ship that was in waiting, and most enchanting music was heard by those on shore; but soon the ship sailed away, hardly touching the tops of the billows. After a year and a day had elapsed Ifan Morgan, the father, came home, looking much better and more gentlemanly than he had ever done before; he had never spoken of Nefyn, his wife, until Tegid one day asked him what about his mother; she had gone, he said, in search of Eilonwy, who had run away from her husband in Gwerdonau Llion, with Glanfryd ab Gloywfraint. She would be back soon, he thought, and describe to them all the wonders they had seen. Ifan Morgan went to bed that night, and was found dead in it in the morning; it was thought that his death had been caused by a Black Knight, who had been seen haunting the place at midnight for some time, and always disappearing, when pursued, into a well that bubbled forth in a dark recess near at hand. The day of Ifan Morgan's funeral, Nefyn, his wife, returned, and bewailed him with many tears; she was never more seen on the dry land. Tegid had now the charge of the family, and he conducted himself in all things as behoved a man and a gentleman of high principles and great generosity. He was very wealthy, but often grieved by the thought of his father's murder. One day, when he and two of his brothers were out in a boat fishing in the neighbouring bay, they were driven by the wind to the most wonderful spot they had ever seen. The sea there was as smooth as glass, and as bright as the clearest light, while beneath it, and not far from them, they saw a most splendid country with fertile fields and dales covered with pastures, with flowery hedges, groves clad in their green foliage, and forests gently waving their leafy luxuriance, with rivers lazily contemplating their own tortuous courses, and with mansions here and there of the most beautiful and ingenious description; and presently they saw that the inhabitants amused themselves with all kinds of merriment and frolicking, and that here and there they had music and engaged themselves in the most energetic dancing; in fact, the rippling waves seemed to have absorbed their fill of the music, so that the faint echo of it, as gently given forth by the waves, never ceased to charm their ears until they reached the shore. That night the three brothers had the same dream, namely that the Black Knight who had throttled their father was in hiding in a cave on the coast: so they made for the cave in the morning, but the Black Knight fled from them and galloped off on the waves as if he had been riding for amusement over a meadow. That day their sisters, on returning home from school, had to cross a piece of sea, when a tempest arose and sunk the vessel, drowning all on board, and the brothers ascribed this to the Black Knight. About this time there was great consternation among the fishermen on account of a sea-serpent that twined itself about the rocks near the caves, and nothing would do but that Tegid and his brothers should go forth to kill it; but when one day they came near the spot frequented by it, they heard a deep voice saying to them, "Do not kill your sister," so they wondered greatly and suddenly went home. But that night Tegid returned there alone, and called his sister by her name, and after waiting a long while she crept towards him in the shape of a sea-serpent, and said that she must remain some time in that form on account of her having run away with one who was not her husband; she went on to say that she had seen their sisters walking with their mother, and their father would soon be in the cave. But all of a sudden there came the Black Knight, who unsheathed a sword that looked like a flame of fire, and began to cut the sea-serpent into a thousand bits, which united, however, as fast as he cut it, and became as whole as before. The end was that the monster twisted itself in a coil round his throat and bit him terribly in his breast. At this point a White Knight comes and runs him through with his spear, so that he fell instantly, while the White Knight went off hurriedly with the sea-serpent in a coil round his neck. Tegid ran away for his life, but not before a monster more terrible than anything he had ever seen had begun to attack him. It haunted him in all kinds of ways: sometimes it would be like a sea, but Tegid was able to swim: sometimes it would be a mountain of ice, but Tegid was able to climb it: and sometimes it was like a furnace of intense fire, but the heat had no effect on him. But it appeared mostly as a combination of the beast of prey and the venomous reptile. Suddenly, however, a young man appeared, taking hold of Tegid's arm and encouraging him, when the monster fled away screeching, and a host of knights in splendid array and on proudly prancing horses came to him: among them he found his brothers, and he went with them to his mother's country. He was especially welcome there, and he found all happy and present save his father only, whom he thought of fetching from the world above, having in fact got leave to do so from his grandfather. His mother and his brothers went with him to search for his father's body, and with him came Gwydion ab Dôn and Gwyn ab Nud, but he would not be wakened. So Tegid, who loved his father greatly, asked leave to remain on his father's grave, where he remains to this day. His mother is wont to come there to soothe him, and his brothers send him gifts, while he sends his gifts to Nefyd Naf Neifion, his grandfather; it is also said that his twin-sister, Ceridwen, has long since come to live near him, to make the glad gladder and the pretty prettier, and to maintain her dignity and honour in peace and tranquillity.' The latter part of this tale, the mention of Ceridwen, invoked by the bards as the genius presiding over their profession, and of Tegid remaining on his father's grave, is evidently a reference to Llyn Tegid, or Bala Lake, and to the legend of Taliessin in the so-called Hanes or history of Taliessin, published at the end of the third volume of Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion. So the story has undoubtedly been pieced together, but not all invented, as is proved by the reference to the curious cap which the husband was to keep out of the sight of his mermaid wife. In Irish legends this cap has particular importance attached to it, of which Glasynys cannot have been aware, for he knew of no use to make of it. The teaching of the song to the wife is not mentioned after the marriage; and the introduction of it at all is remarkable: at any rate I have never noticed anything parallel to it in other tales. The incident of the tempest, when the mermaid spoke to somebody by the side of the boat, reminds one of Undine during the trip on the Danube. It is, perhaps, useless to go into details till one has ascertained how much of the story has been based on genuine Welsh folklore. But, while I am on this point, I venture to append here an Irish tale, which will serve to explain the meaning of the mermaid's cap, as necessary to her comfort in the water world. I am indebted for it to the kindness of Dr. Norman Moore, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who tells me, in a letter dated March 7, 1882, that he and the Miss Raynells of Killynon heard it from an old woman named Mrs. Dolan, who lived on the property of the late Mr. Cooke of Cookesborough, in Westmeath. The following was her tale:--'There was a man named Mahon had a farm on the edge of Loch Owel. He noticed that his corn was trampled, and he sat up all night to watch it. He saw horses, colts and fillies rather, come up out of the lake and trample it. He chased them, and they fled into the lake. The next night he saw them again, and among them a beautiful girl with a cap of salmon skin on her head, and it shone in the moonlight; and he caught her and embraced her, and carried her off to his house and married her, and she was a very good housewife, as all those lake people are, and kept his house beautifully; and one day in the harvest, when the men were in the fields, she went into the house, and there she looked on the hurdle for some lard to make colcannon [41] for the men, and she saw her old cap of fish skin, and she put it on her head and ran straight down into the lake and was never seen any more, and Mahon he was terribly grieved, and he died soon after of a decline. She had had three children, and I often saw them in the Mullingar market. They were farmers, too, on Loch Owel.' IV. Let me now return to the fresh-water fairies of Snowdon and give a reference to Pennant's Tours in Wales: in the edition published at Carnarvon in 1883 we are told, ii. 326, how Mr. Pennant learned 'that, in fairy days, those diminutive gentry kept their revels' on the margins of the Snowdon lake, called Llyn Coch. There is no legend now extant, so far as I can ascertain, about the Llyn Coch fairies. So I proceed to append a legend differing considerably from all the foregoing: I owe it to the kindness of my friend Mr. Howell Thomas, of the Local Government Board. It was written out by Mr. G. B. Gattie, and I take the liberty of prefixing to it his letter to Mr. Thomas, dated Walham Grove, London, S.W., April 27, 1882. The letter runs as follows:-- 'I had quite forgotten the enclosed, which I had jotted down during my recent illness, and ought to have sent you long ago. Of course, the wording is very rough, as no care has been taken on that point. It is interesting, as being another version of a very pretty old legend which my mother used to repeat. She was descended from a very old north Welsh family; indeed, I believe my esteemed grandfather went so far as to trace his descent from the great patriot, Owen Glendower himself! My mother delighted not only in the ancient folklore legends and fairy tales of the Principality, with which she was perfectly familiar, but especially in the lovely national melodies, all of which she knew by heart; and, being highly accomplished, would never tire of playing or singing them. You will see the legend is, in the main, much as related by Professor Rhys, though differing somewhat in the singular terms of the marriage contract. The scene of the legend, as related by my late mother, was, of course, a lake, the Welsh name of which I have, unfortunately, forgotten, but it was somewhere, I think, near Llanberis, and the hero a stalwart young farmer.' The legend itself reads as follows:-- 'One hot day, the farmer, riding by the lake, took his horse into the water to drink, and, whilst looking straight down over his horse's ears into the smooth surface, he became aware of a most lovely face, just beneath the tide, looking up archly at him. Quite bewildered, he earnestly beckoned, and by degrees the head and shoulders which belonged to the face emerged from the water. Overcome with emotion, and nearly maddened by the blaze of beauty so suddenly put before him, he leaped from his horse and rushed wildly into the lake to try to clasp the lovely vision to his heart. As this was a clear case of "love at first sight," the poor young man was not, of course, answerable for his actions. But the vision had vanished beneath the waves, to instantly reappear, however, a yard or two off, with the most provoking of smiles, and holding out her beautiful white hands towards her admirer, but slipping off into deep water the moment he approached. 'For many days the young farmer frequented the lake, but without again seeing the beautiful Naiad, until one day he sat down by the margin hoping that she would appear, and yet dreading her appearance, for this latter to him simply meant loss of all peace. Yet he rushed on his fate, like the love-sick shepherd in the old Italian romance, who watched the sleeping beauty, yet dreaded her awakening:--Io perderò la pace, quando si sveglierà! 'The young man had brought the remains of his frugal dinner with him, and was quietly munching, by way of dessert, an apple of rare and delicious quality, from a tree which grew upon a neighbouring estate. Suddenly the lady appeared in all her rare beauty almost close to him, and begged him to "throw" her one of his apples. This was altogether too much, and he replied by holding out the tempting morsel, exhibiting its beautiful red and green sides, saying that, if she really wanted it, she must fetch it herself. Upon this she came up quite close, and, as she took the apple from his left hand, he dexterously seized tight hold of her with his right, and held her fast. She, however, nothing daunted, bawled lustily, at the top of her voice, for help, and made such an outrageous noise, that at length a most respectable looking old gentleman appeared suddenly out of the midst of the lake. He had a superb white beard, and was simply and classically attired merely in a single wreath of beautiful water-lilies wound round his loins, which was possibly his summer costume, the weather being hot. He politely requested to know what was the matter, and what the young farmer wanted with his daughter. The case was thereupon explained, but not without the usual amount of nervous trepidation which usually happens to love-sick swains when called into the awful presence of "Papa" to "explain their intentions!" 'After a long parley the lady, at length, agreed to become the young man's wife on two conditions, which he was to solemnly promise to keep. These conditions were that he was never to strike her with steel or clay (earth), conditions to which the young man very readily assented. As these were primitive days, when people were happy and honest, there were no lawyers to encumber the Holy Estate with lengthy settlements, and to fill their own pockets with heavy fees; matters were therefore soon settled, and the lady married to the young farmer on the spot by the very respectable old lake deity, her papa. 'The story goes on to say that the union was followed by two sons and two daughters. The eldest son became a great physician, and all his descendants after him were celebrated for their great proficiency in the noble healing art. The second son was a mighty craftsman in all works appertaining to the manufacture and use of iron and metals. Indeed it has been hinted that, his little corracle of bull's hide having become old and unsafe, he conceived the brilliant idea of making one of thin iron. This he actually accomplished, and, to the intense amazement of the wondering populace, he constantly used it for fishing, or other purposes, on the lake, where he paddled about in perfect security. This important fact ought to be more generally known, as it gives him a fair claim to the introduction of iron ship-building, pace the shades of Beaufort and Brunel. 'Of the two daughters, one is said to have invented the small ten-stringed harp, and the other the spinning-wheel. Thus were introduced the arts of medicine, manufactures, music, and woollen work. 'As the old ballad says, applying the quotation to the father and mother:-- They lived for more than forty year Right long and happilie! 'One day it happened that the wife expressed a great wish for some of those same delicious apples of which she was so fond, and of which their neighbour often sent them a supply. Off went the farmer, like a good husband that he was, and brought back, not only some apples, but a beautiful young sapling, seven or eight feet high, bearing the same apple, as a present from their friend. This they at once proceeded to set, he digging and she holding; but the hole not being quite deep enough he again set to work, with increased energy, with his spade, and stooping very low threw out the last shovelful over his shoulder--alas! without looking--full into the breast of his wife. She dropped the sapling and solemnly warned him that one of the two conditions of their marriage contract had been broken. Accident was pleaded, but in vain; there was the unfortunate fact--he had struck her with clay! Looking upon the sapling as the cause of this great trouble he determined to return it forthwith to his kind neighbour. Taking a bridle in his hand he proceeded to the field to catch his horse, his wife kindly helping him. They both ran up, one on each side, and, as the unruly steed showed no signs of stopping, the husband attempted to throw the bridle over his head. Not having visited Mexico in his travels, and thereby learned the use of the lasso, he missed his horse's head and--misfortune of misfortunes--struck his wife in the face with the iron bit, thus breaking the second condition. He had struck her with steel. She no sooner received the blow than--like Esau--she "cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry," and bidding her husband a last farewell, fled down the hill with lightning speed, dashed into the lake, and disappeared beneath the smooth and glassy waters! Thus, it may be said that, if an apple--indirectly--occasioned the beginning of her married life, so an apple brought about its sad termination.' Such is Mr. Gattie's tale, and to him probably is to be traced its literary trimming; but even when it is stripped of that accessory, it leaves us with difficulties of somewhat the same order as those attaching to some of the stories which have passed through the hands of Glasynys. However, the substance of it seems to be genuine, and to prove that there has been a Northwalian tradition which traced the medical art to a lake lady like the Egeria of the Physicians of Mydfai. V. Allusion has already been made to the afanc story, and it is convenient to give it before proceeding any further. The Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 142-6, gives it in a letter of Edward Llwyd's dated 1693, and contributed to that periodical by the late Canon Robert Williams, of Rhyd y Croesau, who copied it from the original letter in his possession [42], and here follows a translation into English of the part of it which concerns Llyn yr Afanc [43], a pool on the river Conwy, above Bettws y Coed and opposite Capel Garmon:-- 'I suppose it very probable that you have heard speak of Llyn yr Afanc, "the Afanc's Pool," and that I therefore need not trouble to inform you where it stands. I think, also, that you know, if one may trust what the country people say, that it was a girl that enticed the afanc to come out of his abode, namely the pool, so as to be bound with iron chains, whilst he slumbered with his head on her knees, and with the grip of one hand on her breast. When he woke from his nap and perceived what had been done to him, he got up suddenly and hurried to his old refuge, taking with him in his claw the breast of his sweetheart. It was then seen that it was well the chain was long enough to be fastened to oxen that pulled him out of the pool. Thereupon a considerable dispute arose among some of the people, each asserting that he had taken a great weight on himself and pulled far harder than anybody else. "No," said another, "it was I," &c. And whilst they were wrangling in this way, the report goes that the afanc answered them, and silenced their discontent by saying-- Oni bae y dai ag a dyn Ni dactha'r afanc byth o'r llyn. Had it not been for the oxen pulling, The afanc had never left the pool. 'You must understand that some take the afanc to be a corporeal demon; but I am sufficiently satisfied that there is an animal of the same name, which is called in English a bever, seeing that the term ceillie'r afanc signifies bever stones. I know not what kind of oxen those in question were, but it is related that they were twins; nor do I know why they were called Ychain Mannog or Ychain Bannog. But peradventure they were called Ychain Bannog in reference to their having had many a fattening, or fattening on fattening (having been for many a year fattened). Yet the word bannog is not a good, suitable word to signify fattened, as bannog is nought else than what has been made exceeding thick by beating [or fulling], as one says of a thick blanket made of coarse yarn (y gwrthban tew-bannog), the thick bannog [44] blanket. Whilst I was dawdling behind talking about this, the oxen had proceeded very far, and I did not find their footmarks as they came through portions of the parish of Dolyd-Elan (Luedog) until I reached a pass called ever since Bwlch Rhiw'r Ychen, "the Pass of the Slope of the Oxen," between the upper parts of Dolydelan and the upper part of Nanhwynen. In coming over this pass one of the oxen dropped one of its eyes on an open spot, which for that reason is called Gwaun Lygad Ych, "the Moor of the Ox's Eye." The place where the eye fell has become a pool, which is by this time known as Pwll Llygad Ych, "the Pool of the Ox's Eye," which is at no time dry, though no water rises in it or flows into it except when rain falls; nor is there any flowing out of it during dry weather. It is always of the same depth; that is, it reaches about one's knee-joint, according to those who have paid attention to that for a considerable number of years. There is a harp melody, which not all musicians know: it is known as the Ychain Mannog air, and it has a piteous effect on the ear, being as plaintive as were the groanings of these Ychain under the weight of the afanc, especially when one of the pair lost an eye. They pulled him up to Llyn Cwm Ffynnon Las, "the Lake of the Dingle of the Green Well," to which he was consigned, for the reason, peradventure, that some believed that there were in that lake uncanny things already in store. In fact, it was but fitting that he should be permitted to go to his kind. But whether there were uncanny things in it before or not, many think that there is nothing good in it now, as you will understand from what follows. There is much talk of Llyn Cwm Ffynnon Las besides the fact that it is always free from ice, except in one corner where the peat water of clear pools comes into it, and that it has also a variety of dismal hues. The cause of this is, as I suppose, to be sought in the various hues of the rocks surrounding it; and the fact that a whirlwind makes its water mixed, which is enough to give any lake a disagreeable colour. Nothing swims on it without danger, and I am not sure that it would be very safe for a bird to fly across it or not. Throw a rag into its water and it will go to the bottom, and I have with my own ears heard a man saying that he saw a goat taking to this lake in order to avoid being caught, and that as soon as the animal went into the water, it turned round and round, as if it had been a top, until it was drowned.... Some mention that, as some great man was hunting in the Snowdon district (Eryri), a stag, to avoid the hounds when they were pressing on him, and as is the habit of stags to defend themselves, made his escape into this lake: the hunters had hardly time to turn round before they saw the stag's antlers (mwnglws) coming to the surface, but nothing more have they ever seen.... A young woman has been seen to come out of this lake to wash clothes, and when she had done she folded the clothes, and taking them under her arm went back into the lake. One man, whose brother is still alive and well, beheld in a canoe, on this same lake still, an angler with a red cap on his head; but the man died within a few days, having not been in his right mind during that time. Most people regard this as the real truth, and, as for myself, I cannot refuse to believe that such a vision might not cause a man to become so bewildered as to force on a disease ending with his death....' The name Llyn Cwm Ffynnon Las would have led one to suppose that the pool meant is the one given in the ordnance maps as Llyn y Cwm Ffynnon, and situated in the mountains between Pen y Gwryd and the upper valley of Llanberis; but from the writer on the parish of Bedgelert in the Brython for 1861, pp. 371-2, it appears that this is not so, and that the tarn meant was in the upper reach of Cwm Dyli, and was known as Llyn y Ffynnon Las, 'Lake of the Green Well,' about which he has a good deal to say in the same strain as that of Llwyd in the letter already cited. Among other things he remarks that it is a very deep tarn, and that its bottom has been ascertained to be lower than the surface of Llyn Llydaw, which lies 300 feet lower. And as to the afanc, he remarks that the inhabitants of Nant Conwy and the lower portions of the parish of Dolwydelan, having frequent troubles and losses inflicted on them by a huge monster in the river Conwy, near Bettws y Coed, tried to kill it but in vain, as no harpoon, no arrow or spear made any impression whatsoever on the brute's hide; so it was resolved to drag it away as in the Llwyd story. I learn from Mr. Pierce (Elis o'r Nant), of Dolwydelan, that the lake is variously known as Llyn (Cwm) Ffynnon Las, and Llyn Glas or Glaslyn: this last is the form which I find in the maps. It is to be noticed that the Nant Conwy people, by dragging the afanc there, got him beyond their own watershed, so that he could no more cause floods in the Conwy. Here, as promised at p. 74, I append Lewis Glyn Cothi's words as to the afanc in Llyn Syfadon. The bard is dilating in the poem, where they occur, on his affection for his friend Llywelyn ab Gwilym ab Thomas Vaughan, of Bryn Hafod in the Vale of Towy, and averring that it would be as hard to induce him to quit his friend's hospitable home, as it was to get the afanc away from the Lake of Syfadon, as follows:-- Yr avanc er ei ovyn Wyv yn llech ar vin y llyn; O dòn Llyn Syfadon vo Ni thynwyd ban aeth yno: Ni'm tyn mèn nag ychain gwaith, Odiyma hedyw ymaith. [45] The afanc am I, who, sought for, bides In hiding on the edge of the lake; Out of the waters of Syfadon Mere Was he not drawn, once he got there. So with me: nor wain nor oxen wont to toil Me to-day will draw from here forth. From this passage it would seem that the Syfadon story contemplated the afanc being taken away from the lake in a cart or waggon drawn by oxen; but whether driven by Hu, or by whom, one is not told. However, the story must have represented the undertaking as a failure, and the afanc as remaining in his lake: had it been otherwise it would be hard to see the point of the comparison. VI. The parish of Llanfachreth and its traditions have been the subject of some contributions to the first volume of the Taliesin published at Ruthin in 1859-60, pp. 132-7, by a writer who calls himself Cofiadur. It was Glasynys, I believe, for the style seems to be his: he pretends to copy from an old manuscript of Hugh Bifan's--both the manuscript and its owner were fictions of Glasynys' as I am told. These jottings contain two or three items about the fairies which seem to be genuine:-- 'The bottom of Llyn Cynnwch, on the Nannau estate, is level with the hearth-stone of the house of Dôl y Clochyd. Its depth was found out owing to the sweetheart of one of Siwsi's girls having lost his way to her from Nannau, where he was a servant. The poor man had fallen into the lake, and gone down and down, when he found it becoming clearer the lower he got, until at last he alighted on a level spot where everybody and everything looked much as he had observed on the dry land. When he had reached the bottom of the lake, a short fat old gentleman came to him and asked his business, when he told him how it happened that he had come. He met with great welcome, and he stayed there a month without knowing that he had been there three days, and when he was going to leave, he was led out to his beloved by the inhabitants of the lake bottom. He asserted that the whole way was level except in one place, where they descended about a fathom into the ground; but, he added, it was necessary to ascend about as much to reach the hearth-stone of Dôl y Clochyd. The most wonderful thing, however, was that the stone lifted itself as he came up from the subterranean road towards it. It was thus the sweetheart arrived there one evening, when the girl was by the fire weeping for him. Siwsi had been out some days before, and she knew all about it though she said nothing to anybody. This, then, was the way in which the depth of Llyn Cynnwch came to be known.' Then he has a few sentences about an old house called Ceimarch:--'Ceimarch was an old mansion of considerable repute, and in old times it was considered next to Nannau in point of importance in the whole district. There was a deep ditch round it, which was always kept full of water, with the view of keeping off vagabonds and thieves, as well as other lawless folks, that they might not take the inmates by surprise. But, in distant ages, this place was very noted for the frequent visits paid it by the fair family. They used to come to the ditch to wash themselves, and to cross the water in boats made of the bark of the rowan-tree [46], or else birch, and they came into the house to pay their rent for trampling the ground around the place. They always placed a piece of money under a pitcher, and the result was that the family living there became remarkably rich. But somehow, after the lapse of many years, the owner of the place offended them, by showing disrespect for their diminutive family: soon the world began to go against him, and it was not long before he got low in life. Everything turned against him, and in times past everybody believed that he incurred all this because he had earned the displeasure of the fair family.' In the Brython for the year 1862, p. 456, in the course of an essay on the history of the Lordship of Mawdwy in Merioneth, considered the best in a competition at an Eistedfod held at Dinas Mawdwy, August 2, 1855, Glasynys gives the following bit about the fairies of that neighbourhood:--'The side of Aran Fawdwy is a great place for the fair family: they are ever at it playing their games on the hillsides about this spot. It is said that they are numberless likewise about Bwlch y Groes. Once a boy crossed over near the approach of night, one summer eve, from the Gadfa to Mawdwy, and on his return he saw near Aber Rhiwlech a swarm of the little family dancing away full pelt. The boy began to run, with two of the maidens in pursuit of him, entreating him to stay; but Robin, for that was his name, kept running, and the two elves failed altogether to catch him, otherwise he would have been taken a prisoner of love. There are plenty of their dancing-rings to be seen on the hillsides between Aber Rhiwlech and Bwlch y Groes.' Here I would introduce two other Merionethshire tales, which I have received from Mr. E. S. Roberts, master of the Llandysilio School, near Llangollen. He has learnt them from one Abel Evans, who lives at present in the parish of Llandysilio: he is a native of the parish of Llandrillo on the slopes of the Berwyn, and of a glen in the same, known as Cwm Pennant, so called from its being drained by the Pennant on its way to join the Dee. Now Cwm Pennant was the resort of fairies, or of a certain family of them, and the occurrence, related in the following tale, must have taken place no less than seventy years ago: it was well known to the late Mrs. Ellen Edwards of Llandrillo:-- Ryw diwrnod aeth dau gyfaill i hela dwfrgwn ar hyd lannau afon Pennant, a thra yn cyfeirio eu camrau tuagat yr afon gwelsant ryw greadur bychan lliwgoch yn rhedeg yn gyflym iawn ar draws un o'r dolyd yn nghyfeiriad yr afon. Ymaeth a nhw ar ei ol. Gwelsant ei fod wedi myned oditan wraid coeden yn ochr yr afon i ymgudio. Yr oed y dau dyn yn medwl mae dwfrgi ydoed, ond ar yr un pryd yn methu a deall paham yr ymdanghosai i'w llygaid yn lliwgoch. Yr oedynt yn dymuno ei dal yn fyw, ac ymaith yr aeth un o honynt i ffarmdy gerllaw i ofyn am sach, yr hon a gafwyd, er mwyn rhoi y creadur yndi. Yr oed yno dau dwll o tan wraid y pren, a thra daliai un y sach yn agored ar un twll yr oed y llall yn hwthio ffon i'r twll arall, ac yn y man aeth y creadur i'r sach. Yr oed y dau dyn yn medwl eu bod wedi dal dwfrgi, yr hyn a ystyrient yn orchest nid bychan. Cychwynasant gartref yn llawen ond cyn eu myned hyd lled cae, llefarod lletywr y sach mewn ton drist gan dywedyd--'Y mae fy mam yn galw am danaf, O, mae fy mam yn galw am danaf,' yr hyn a rodod fraw mawr i'r dau heliwr, ac yn y man taflasant y sach i lawr, a mawr oed eu rhyfedod a'u dychryn pan welsant dyn bach mewn gwisg goch yn rhedeg o'r sach tuagat yr afon. Fe a diflannod o'i golwg yn mysg y drysni ar fin yr afon. Yr oed y dau wedi eu brawychu yn dirfawr ac yn teimlo mae doethach oed myned gartref yn hytrach nag ymyrraeth yn mhellach a'r Tylwyth Teg. 'One day, two friends went to hunt otters on the banks of the Pennant, and when they were directing their steps towards the river, they beheld some small creature of a red colour running fast across the meadows in the direction of the river. Off they ran after it, and saw that it went beneath the roots of a tree on the brink of the river to hide itself. The two men thought it was an otter, but, at the same time, they could not understand why it seemed to them to be of a red colour. They wished to take it alive, and off one of them went to a farm house that was not far away to ask for a sack, which he got, to put the creature into it. Now there were two holes under the roots of the tree, and while one held the sack with its mouth open over one of them, the other pushed his stick into the other hole, and presently the creature went into the sack. The two men thought they had caught an otter, which they looked upon as no small feat. They set out for home, but before they had proceeded the width of one field, the inmate of the sack spoke to them in a sad voice, and said, "My mother is calling for me; oh, my mother is calling for me!" This gave the two hunters a great fright, so that they at once threw down the sack; and great was their surprise to see a little man in a red dress running out of the sack towards the river. He disappeared from their sight in the bushes by the river. The two men were greatly terrified, and felt that it was more prudent to go home than meddle any further with the fair family.' So far as I know, this story stands alone in Welsh folklore; but it has an exact parallel in Lancashire [47]. The other story, which I now reproduce, was obtained by Mr. Roberts from the same Abel Evans. He learnt it from Mrs. Ellen Edwards, and it refers to a point in her lifetime, which Abel Evans fixes at ninety years ago. Mr. Roberts has not succeeded in recovering the name of the cottager of whom it speaks; but he lived on the side of the Berwyn, above Cwm Pennant, where till lately a cottage used to stand, near which the fairies had one of their resorts:-- Yr oed perchen y bwthyn wedi amaethu rhyw ran fychan o'r mynyd ger llaw y ty er mwyn plannu pytatws yndo. Felly y gwnaeth. Mewn coeden yn agos i'r fan canfydod nyth bran. Fe fedyliod mae doeth fuasai ido dryllio y nyth cyn amlhau o'r brain. Fe a esgynnod y goeden ac a drylliod y nyth, ac wedi disgyn i lawr canfydod gylch glas (fairy ring) odiamgylch y pren, ac ar y cylch fe welod hanner coron er ei fawr lawenyd. Wrth fyned heibio yr un fan y boreu canlynol fe gafod hanner coron yn yr un man ag y cafod y dyd o'r blaen. Hynna fu am amryw dydiau. Un diwrnod dywedod wrth gyfaill am ei hap da a dangosod y fan a'r lle y cawsai yr hanner coron bob boreu. Wel y boreu canlynol nid oed yno na hanner coron na dim arall ido, oherwyd yr oed wedi torri rheolau y Tylwythion trwy wneud eu haelioni yn hysbys. Y mae y Tylwythion o'r farn na dylai y llaw aswy wybod yr hyn a wna y llaw dehau. 'The occupier of the cottage had tilled a small portion of the mountain side near his home in order to plant potatoes, which he did. He observed that there was a rook's nest on a tree which was not far from this spot, and it struck him that it would be prudent to break the nest before the rooks multiplied. So he climbed the tree and broke the nest, and, after coming down, he noticed a green circle (a fairy ring) round the tree, and on this circle he espied, to his great joy, half a crown. As he went by the same spot the following morning, he found another half a crown in the same place as before. So it happened for several days; but one day he told a friend of his good luck, and showed him the spot where he found half a crown every morning. Now the next morning there was for him neither half a crown nor anything else, because he had broken the rule of the fair folks by making their liberality known, they being of opinion that the left hand should not know what the right hand does.' So runs this short tale, which the old lady, Mrs. Edwards, and the people of the neighbourhood explained as an instance of the gratitude of the fairies to a man who had rendered them a service, which in this case was supposed to have consisted in ridding them of the rooks, that disturbed their merry-makings in the green ring beneath the branches of the tree. VII. It would be unpardonable to pass away from Merioneth without alluding to the stray cow of Llyn Barfog. The story appears in Welsh in the Brython for 1860, pp. 183-4, but the contributor, who closely imitates Glasynys' style, says that he got his materials from a paper by the late Mr. Pughe of Aberdovey, by which he seems to have meant an article contributed by the latter to the Archæologia Cambrensis, and published in the volume for 1853, pp. 201-5. Mr. Pughe dwells in that article a good deal on the scenery of the corner of Merioneth in the rear of Aberdovey; but the chief thing in his paper is the legend connected with Llyn Barfog, which he renders into English as the Bearded Lake [48]. It is described as a mountain lake in a secluded spot in the upland country behind Aberdovey; but I shall let Mr. Pughe speak for himself:-- 'The lovers of Cambrian lore are aware that the Triads in their record of the deluge affirm that it was occasioned by a mystic Afanc y Llyn, crocodile [49] of the lake, breaking the banks of Llyn Llion, the lake of waters; and the recurrence of that catastrophe was prevented only by Hu Gadarn, the bold man of power, dragging away the afanc by aid of his Ychain Banawg, or large horned oxen. Many a lakelet in our land has put forward its claim to the location of Llyn Llion; amongst the rest, this lake. Be that as it may, King Arthur and his war-horse have the credit amongst the mountaineers here of ridding them of the monster, in place of Hu the Mighty, in proof of which is shown an impression on a neighbouring rock bearing a resemblance to those made by the shoe or hoof of a horse, as having been left there by his charger when our British Hercules was engaged in this redoubtable act of prowess, and this impression has been given the name of Carn March Arthur, the hoof of Arthur's horse, which it retains to this day. It is believed to be very perilous to let the waters out of the lake, and recently an aged inhabitant of the district informed the writer that she recollected this being done during a period of long drought, in order to procure motive power for Llyn Pair Mill, and that long-continued heavy rains followed. No wonder our bold but superstitious progenitors, awe-struck by the solitude of the spot--the dark sepial tint of its waters, unrelieved by the flitting apparition of a single fish, and seldom visited by the tenants of the air--should have established it as a canon in their creed of terror that the lake formed one of the many communications between this outward world of ours and the inner or lower one of Annwn--the unknown world [50]--the dominion of Gwyn ap Nud, the mythic king of the fabled realm, peopled by those children of mystery, Plant Annwn; and the belief is still current amongst the inhabitants of our mountains in the occasional visitations of the Gwraged Annwn, or dames of Elfin land, to this upper world of ours. A shrewd old hill farmer (Thomas Abergraes by name), well skilled in the folk-lore of the district, informed me that, in years gone by, though when, exactly, he was too young to remember, those dames were wont to make their appearance, arrayed in green, in the neighbourhood of Llyn Barfog, chiefly at eventide, accompanied by their kine and hounds, and that on quiet summer nights in particular, these ban-hounds were often to be heard in full cry pursuing their prey--the souls of doomed men dying without baptism and penance--along the upland township of Cefnrhosucha. Many a farmer had a sight of their comely milk-white kine; many a swain had his soul turned to romance and poesy by a sudden vision of themselves in the guise of damsels arrayed in green, and radiant in beauty and grace; and many a sportsman had his path crossed by their white hounds of supernatural fleetness and comeliness, the Cwn Annwn; but never had any one been favoured with more than a passing view of either, till an old farmer residing at Dyssyrnant, in the adjoining valley of Dyffryn Gwyn, became at last the lucky captor of one of their milk-white kine. The acquaintance which the Gwartheg y Llyn, the kine of the lake, had formed with the farmer's cattle, like the loves of the angels for the daughters of men, became the means of capture; and the farmer was thereby enabled to add the mystic cow to his own herd, an event in all cases believed to be most conducive to the worldly prosperity of him who should make so fortunate an acquisition. Never was there such a cow, never such calves, never such milk and butter, or cheese, and the fame of the Fuwch Gyfeiliorn, the stray cow, was soon spread abroad through that central part of Wales known as the district of Rhwng y dwy Afon, from the banks of the Mawdach to those of the Dofwy [51]--from Aberdiswnwy [52] to Abercorris. The farmer, from a small beginning, rapidly became, like Job, a man of substance, possessed of thriving herds of cattle--a very patriarch among the mountains. But, alas! wanting Job's restraining grace, his wealth made him proud, his pride made him forget his obligation to the Elfin cow, and fearing she might soon become too old to be profitable, he fattened her for the butcher, and then even she did not fail to distinguish herself, for a more monstrously fat beast was never seen. At last the day of slaughter came--an eventful day in the annals of a mountain farm--the killing of a fat cow, and such a monster of obesity! No wonder all the neighbours were gathered together to see the sight. The old farmer looked upon the preparations in self-pleased importance--the butcher felt he was about no common feat of his craft, and, baring his arms, he struck the blow--not now fatal, for before even a hair had been injured, his arm was paralysed--the knife dropped from his hand, and the whole company was electrified by a piercing cry that awakened echo in a dozen hills, and made the welkin ring again; and lo and behold! the whole assemblage saw a female figure clad in green, with uplifted arms, standing on one of the craigs overhanging Llyn Barfog, and heard her calling with a voice loud as thunder:-- Dere di velen Einion, Cyrn Cyveiliorn--braith y Llyn, A'r voel Dodin, Codwch, dewch adre. Come yellow Anvil, stray horns, Speckled one of the lake, And of the hornless Dodin, Arise, come home [53]. And no sooner were these words of power uttered than the original lake cow and all her progeny, to the third and fourth generations, were in full flight towards the heights of Llyn Barfog, as if pursued by the evil one. Self-interest quickly roused the farmer, who followed in pursuit, till breathless and panting he gained an eminence overlooking the lake, but with no better success than to behold the green attired dame leisurely descending mid-lake, accompanied by the fugitive cows and their calves formed in a circle around her, they tossing their tails, she waving her hands in scorn as much as to say, "You may catch us, my friend, if you can," as they disappeared beneath the dark waters of the lake, leaving only the yellow water-lily to mark the spot where they vanished, and to perpetuate the memory of this strange event. Meanwhile the farmer looked with rueful countenance upon the spot where the Elfin herd disappeared, and had ample leisure to deplore the effects of his greediness, as with them also departed the prosperity which had hitherto attended him, and he became impoverished to a degree below his original circumstances; and, in his altered circumstances, few felt pity for one who in the noontide flow of prosperity had shown himself so far forgetful of favours received, as to purpose slaying his benefactor.' Mr. Pughe did a very good thing in saving this legend from oblivion, but it would be very interesting to know how much of it is still current among the inhabitants of the retired district around Llyn Barfog, and how the story would look when stripped of the florid language in which Mr. Pughe thought proper to clothe it. Lastly, let me add a reference to the Iolo Manuscripts, pp. 85, 475, where a short story is given concerning a certain Milkwhite Sweet-milk Cow (y Fuwch Laethwen Lefrith) whose milk was so abundant and possessed of such virtues as almost to rival the Holy Grail. Like the Holy Grail also this cow wandered everywhere spreading plenty, until she chanced to come to the Vale of Towy, where the foolish inhabitants wished to kill and eat her: the result was that she vanished in their hands and has never since been heard of. VIII. Here I wish to add some further stories connected with Merionethshire which have come under my notice lately. I give them chiefly on the authority of Mr. Owen M. Edwards of Lincoln College, who is a native of Llanuwchllyn, and still spends a considerable part of his time there; and partly on that of Hywel's essay on the folklore of the county, which was awarded the prize at the National Eistedfod of 1898 [54]. A story current at Llanuwchllyn, concerning a midwife who attends on a fairy mother, resembles the others of the same group: for one of them see p. 63 above. In the former, however, one misses the ointment, and finds instead of it that the midwife was not to touch her eyes with the water with which she washed the fairy baby. But as might be expected one of her eyes happened to itch, and she touched it with her fingers straight from the water. It appears that thenceforth she was able to see the fairies with that eye; at any rate she is represented some time afterwards recognizing the father of the fairy baby at a fair at Bala, and inquiring of him kindly about his family. The fairy asked with which eye she saw him, and when he had ascertained this, he at once blinded it, so that she never could see with it afterwards. Hywel also has it that the Tylwyth Teg formerly used to frequent the markets at Bala, and that they used to swell the noise in the market-place without anybody being able to see them: this was a sign that prices were going to rise. The shepherds of Ardudwy are familiar, according to Hywel, with a variant of the story in which a man married a fairy on condition that he did not touch her with iron. They lived on the Moelfre and dwelt happily together for years, until one fine summer day, when the husband was engaged in shearing his sheep, he put the gwelle, 'shears,' in his wife's hand: she then instantly disappeared. The earlier portions of this story are unknown to me, but they are not hard to guess. Concerning Llyn Irdyn, between the western slopes of the Llawllech, Hywel has a story the like of which I am not acquainted with: walking near that lake you shun the shore and keep to the grass in order to avoid the fairies, for if you take hold of the grass no fairy can touch you, or dare under any circumstances injure a blade of grass. Lastly, Hywel speaks of several caves containing treasure, as for instance a telyn aur, or golden harp, hidden away in a cave beneath Castell Carn Dochan in the parish of Llanuwchllyn. Lewis Morris, in his Celtic Remains, p. 100, calls it Castell Corndochen, and describes it as seated on the top of a steep rock at the bottom of a deep valley: it appears to have consisted of a wall surrounding three turrets, and the mortar seems composed of cockle-shells: see also the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1850, p. 204. Hywel speaks also of a cave beneath Castell Dinas Brân, near Llangollen, as containing much treasure, which will only be disclosed to a boy followed by a white dog with llygaid arian, 'silver eyes,' explained to mean light eyes: every such dog is said to see the wind. So runs this story, but it requires more exegesis than I can supply. One may compare it at a distance with Myrdin's arrangement that the treasure buried by him at Dinas Emrys should only be found by a youth with yellow hair and blue eyes, and with the belief that the cave treasures of the Snowdon district belong to the Gwydyl or Goidels, and that Goidels will eventually find them: see chapter viii. The next three stories are from Mr. Owen Edwards' Cymru for 1897, pp. 188-9, where he has published them from a collection made for a literary competition or local Eistedfod by his friend J. H. Roberts, who died in early manhood. The first is a blurred version of the story of the Lake Lady and her dowry of cattle, but enough of the story remains to show that, had we got it in its original form, it would be found to differ somewhat on several points from all the other versions extant. I summarize the Welsh as follows:--In ages gone by, as the shepherd of Hafod y Garreg was looking after his sheep on the shores of the Arennig Lake, he came across a young calf, plump, sleek, and strong, in the rushes. He could not guess whence the beast could have come, as no cattle were allowed to approach the lake at that time of the year. He took it home, however, and it was reared until it was a bull, remarkable for his fine appearance. In time his offspring were the only cattle on the farm, and never before had there been such beasts at Hafod y Garreg. They were the wonder and admiration of the whole country. But one summer afternoon in June, the shepherd saw a little fat old man playing on a pipe, and then he heard him call the cows by their names-- Mulican, Molican, Malen, Mair, Dowch adre'r awrhon ar fy ngair. Mulican, Molican, Malen and Mair, Come now home at my word. He then beheld the whole herd running to the little man and going into the lake. Nothing more was heard of them, and it was everybody's opinion that they were the Tylwyth Teg's cattle. The next is a quasi fairy tale, the outcome of which recalls the adventure of the farmer of Drws y Coed on his return from Bedgelert Fair, p. 99 above. It is told of a young harpist who was making his way across country from his home at Yspyty Ifan to the neighbourhood of Bala, that while crossing the mountain he happened in the mist to lose his road and fall into the Gors Fawr, 'the big bog.' There he wallowed for hours, quite unable to extricate himself in spite of all his efforts. But when he was going to give up in despair, he beheld close to him, reaching him her hand, a little woman who was wondrous fair beyond all his conception of beauty, and with her help he got out of the Gors. The damsel gave him a jolly sweet kiss that flashed electricity through his whole nature: he was at once over head and ears in love. She led him to the hut of her father and mother: there he had every welcome, and he spent the night singing and dancing with Olwen, for that was her name. Now, though the harpist was a mere stripling, he thought of wedding at once--he was never before in such a heaven of delight. But next morning he was waked, not by a kiss from Olwen, but by the Plas Drain shepherd's dog licking his lips: he found himself sleeping against the wall of a sheepfold (corlan), with his harp in a clump of rushes at his feet, without any trace to be found of the family with whom he had spent such a happy night. The next story recalls Glasynys' Einion Las, as given at pp. 111-5 above: its peculiarity is the part played by the well introduced. The scene was a turbary near the river called Afon Mynach, so named from Cwm Tir Mynach, behind the hills immediately north of Bala:--Ages ago, as a number of people were cutting turf in a place which was then moorland, and which is now enclosed ground forming part of a farm called Nant Hir, one of them happened to wash his face in a well belonging to the fairies. At dinner-time in the middle of the day they sat down in a circle, while the youth who had washed his face went to fetch the food, but suddenly both he and the box of food were lost. They knew not what to do, they suspected that it was the doing of the fairies; but the wise man (gwr hyspys) came to the neighbourhood and told them, that, if they would only go to the spot on the night of full moon in June, they would behold him dancing with the fairies. They did as they were told, and found the moor covered with thousands of little agile creatures who sang and danced with all their might, and they saw the missing man among them. They rushed at him, and with a great deal of trouble they got him out. But oftentimes was Einion missed again, until at the time of full moon in another June he returned home with a wondrously fair wife, whose history or pedigree no one knew. Everybody believed her to be one of the Tylwyth Teg. IX. There is a kind of fairy tale of which I think I have hitherto not given the reader a specimen: a good instance is given in the third volume of the Brython, at p. 459, by a contributor who calls himself Idnerth ab Gwgan, who, I learn from the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, the editor, was no other than the Rev. Benjamin Williams, best known to Welsh antiquaries by his bardic name of Gwynionyd. The preface to the tale is also interesting, so I am tempted to render the whole into English, as follows:-- 'The fair family were wonderful creatures in the imaginary world: they encamped, they walked, and they capered a great deal in former ages in our country, according to what we learn from some of our old people. It may be supposed that they were very little folks like the children of Rhys Dwfn; for the old people used to imagine that they were wont to visit their hearths in great numbers in ages gone by. The girls at the farm houses used to make the hearths clean after supper, and to place a cauldron full of water near the fire; and so they thought that the fair family came there to play at night, bringing sweethearts for the young women, and leaving pieces of money on the hob for them in the morning. Sometimes they might be seen as splendid hosts exercising themselves on our hills. They were very fond of the mountains of Dyfed; travellers between Lampeter and Cardigan used to see them on the hill of Llanwenog, but by the time they had reached there the fairies would be far away on the hills of Llandyssul, and when one had reached the place where one expected to see the family together in tidy array, they would be seen very busily engaged on the tops of Crug y Balog; when one went there they would be on Blaen Pant ar Fi, moving on and on to Bryn Bwa, and, finally, to some place or other in the lower part of Dyfed. Like the soldiers of our earthly world, they were possessed of terribly fascinating music; and in the autumnal season they had their rings, still named from them, in which they sang and danced. The young man of Llech y Derwyd [55] was his father's only son, as well as heir to the farm; so he was very dear to his father and his mother, indeed he was the light of their eyes. Now, the head servant and the son were bosom friends: they were like brothers together, or rather twin brothers. As the son and the servant were such friends, the farmer's wife used to get exactly the same kind of clothes prepared for the servant as for her son. The two fell in love with two handsome young women of very good reputation in the neighbourhood. The two couples were soon joined in honest wedlock, and great was the merry-making on the occasion. The servant had a suitable place to live in on the farm of Llech y Derwyd; but about half a year after the son's marriage, he and his friend went out for sport, when the servant withdrew to a wild and retired corner to look for game. He returned presently for his friend, but when he got there he could not see him anywhere: he kept looking around for some time for him, shouting and whistling, but there was no sign of his friend. By-and-by, he went home to Llech y Derwyd expecting to see him, but no one knew anything about him. Great was the sorrow of his family through the night; and next day the anxiety was still greater. They went to see the place where his friend had seen him last: it was hard to tell whether his mother or his wife wept the more bitterly; but the father was a little better, though he also looked as if he were half mad with grief. The spot was examined, and, to their surprise, they saw a fairy ring close by, and the servant recollected that he had heard the sound of very fascinating music somewhere or other about the time in question. It was at once agreed that the man had been unfortunate enough to have got into the ring of the Tylwyth, and to have been carried away by them, nobody knew whither. Weeks and months passed away, and a son was born to the heir of Llech y Derwyd, but the young father was not there to see his child, which the old people thought very hard. However, the little one grew up the very picture of his father, and great was his influence over his grandfather and grandmother; in fact he was everything to them. He grew up to be a man, and he married a good-looking girl in that neighbourhood; but her family did not enjoy the reputation of being kind-hearted people. The old folks died, and their daughter-in-law also. One windy afternoon in the month of October, the family of Llech y Derwyd beheld a tall thin old man, with his beard and hair white as snow, coming towards the house, and they thought he was a Jew. The servant maids stared at him, and their mistress laughed at the "old Jew," at the same time that she lifted the children up one after another to see him. He came to the door and entered boldly enough, asking about his parents. The mistress answered him in an unusually surly and contemptuous tone, wondering why the "drunken old Jew had come there," because it was thought he had been drinking, and that he would otherwise not have spoken so. The old man cast wondering and anxious looks around on everything in the house, feeling as he did greatly surprised; but it was the little children about the floor that drew his attention most: his looks were full of disappointment and sorrow. He related the whole of his account, saying that he had been out the day before and that he was now returning. The mistress of the house told him that she had heard a tale about her husband's father, that he had been lost years before her birth while out sporting, whilst her father maintained that it was not true, but that he had been killed. She became angry, and quite lost her temper at seeing "the old Jew" not going away. The old man was roused, saying that he was the owner of the house, and that he must have his rights. He then went out to see his possessions, and presently went to the house of the servant, where, to his surprise, things had greatly changed; after conversing with an aged man, who sat by the fire, the one began to scrutinize the other more and more. The aged man by the fire told him what had been the fate of his old friend, the heir of Llech y Derwyd. They talked deliberately of the events of their youth, but it all seemed like a dream; in short, the old man in the corner concluded that his visitor was his old friend, the heir of Llech y Derwyd, returning from the land of the Tylwyth Teg after spending half a hundred years there. The other old man, with the snow-white beard, believed in his history, and much did they talk together and question one another for many hours. The old man by the fire said that the master of Llech y Derwyd was away from home that day, and he induced his aged visitor to eat some food, but, to the horror of all, the eater fell down dead on the spot [56]. There is no record that an inquest was held over him, but the tale relates that the cause of it was, that he ate food after having been so long in the world of the fair family. His old friend insisted on seeing him buried by the side of his ancestors; but the rudeness of the mistress of Llech y Derwyd to her father-in-law brought a curse on the family that clung to it to distant generations, and until the place had been sold nine times.' A tale like this is to be found related of Idwal of Nantclwyd, in Cymru Fu, p. 85. I said 'a tale like this,' but, on reconsidering the matter, I should think it is the very same tale passed through the hands of Glasynys or some one of his imitators. Another of this kind will be found in the Brython, ii. 170, and several similar ones also in Wirt Sikes' book, pp. 65-90, either given at length, or merely referred to. There is one kind of variant which deserves special notice, as making the music to which the sojourner in Faery listens for scores of years to be that of a bird singing on a tree. A story of the sort is located by Howells, in his Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 127-8, at Pant Shon Shencin, near Pencader, in Cardiganshire. This latter kind of story leads easily up to another development, namely, to substituting for the bird's warble the song and felicity of heaven, and for the simple shepherd a pious monk. In this form it is located at a place called Llwyn y Nef, or 'Heaven's Grove,' near Celynnog Fawr, in Carnarvonshire. It is given by Glasynys in Cymru Fu, pp. 183-4, where it was copied from the Brython, iii. 111, in which he had previously published it. Several versions of it in rhyme came down from the eighteenth century, and Silvan Evans has brought together twenty-six stanzas in point in St. David's College Magazine for 1881, pp. 191-200, where he has put into a few paragraphs all that is known about the song of the Hen Wr o'r Coed, or the Old Man of the Wood, in his usually clear and lucid style. A tale from the other end of the tract of country once occupied by a sprinkling, perhaps, of Celts among a population of Picts, makes the man, and not the fairies, supply the music. I owe it to the kindness of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who heard it from the late sexton of the parish of Dollar, in the county of Clackmannan. The sexton died some twelve years ago, aged seventy: he had learnt the tale from his father. The following are Mr. Clark's words:-- 'Glendevon is a parish and village in the Ochils in County Perth, about five miles from Dollar as you come up Glen Queich and down by Gloomhill. Glen Queich is a narrowish glen between two grassy hills--at the top of the glen is a round hill of no great height, but very neat shape, the grass of which is always short and trim, and the ferns on the shoulder of a very marked green. This, as you come up the glen, seems entirely to block the way. It is called the "Maiden Castle." Only when you come quite close do you see the path winding round the foot of it. A little further on is a fine spring bordered with flat stones, in the middle of a neat, turfy spot, called the "Maiden's Well." This road, till the new toll-road was made on the other side of the hills, was the thoroughfare between Dollar and Glendevon.' The following is the legend, as told by the 'Bethrel':--'A piper, carrying his pipes, was coming from Glendevon to Dollar in the grey of the evening. He crossed the Garchel (a little stream running into the Queich burn), and looked at the "Maiden Castle," and saw only the grey hillside and heard only the wind soughing through the bent. He had got beyond it when he heard a burst of lively music: he turned round, and instead of the dark knoll saw a great castle, with lights blazing from the windows, and heard the noise of dancing issuing from the open door. He went back incautiously, and a procession issuing forth at that moment, he was caught and taken into a great hall ablaze with lights, and people dancing on the floor. He had to pipe to them for a day or two, but he got anxious, because he knew his people would be wondering why he did not come back in the morning as he had promised. The fairies seemed to sympathize with his anxiety, and promised to let him go if he played a favourite tune of his, which they seemed fond of, to their satisfaction. He played his very best, the dance went fast and furious, and at its close he was greeted with loud applause. On his release he found himself alone, in the grey of the evening, beside the dark hillock, and no sound was heard save the purr of the burn and the soughing of the wind through the bent. Instead of completing his journey to Dollar, he walked hastily back to Glendevon to relieve his folk's anxiety. He entered his father's house and found no kent face there. On his protesting that he had gone only a day or two before, and waxing loud in his bewildered talk, a grey old man was roused from a doze behind the fire; and told how he had heard when a boy from his father that a piper had gone away to Dollar on a quiet evening, and had never been heard or seen since, nor any trace of him found. He had been in the "castle" for a hundred years.' The term Plant Rhys Dwfn has already been brought before the reader: it means 'the Children of Rhys Dwfn,' and Rhys Dwfn means literally Rhys the Deep, but the adjective in Welsh connotes depth of character in the sense of shrewdness or cunning. Nay, even the English deep is often borrowed for use in the same sense, as when one colloquially says un dîp iawn yw e, 'he is a very calculating or cunning fellow.' The following account of Rhys and his progeny is given by Gwynionyd in the first volume of the Brython, p. 130, which deserves being cited at length:--'There is a tale current in Dyfed, that there is, or rather that there has been, a country between Cemmes, the northern Hundred of Pembrokeshire, and Aberdaron in Lleyn. The chief patriarch of the inhabitants was Rhys Dwfn, and his descendants used to be called after him the Children of Rhys Dwfn. They were, it is said, a handsome race enough, but remarkably small in size. It is stated that certain herbs of a strange nature grew in their land, so that they were able to keep their country from being seen by even the most sharp sighted of invaders. There is no account that these remarkable herbs grew in any other part of the world excepting on a small spot, about a square yard in area, in a certain part of Cemmes. If it chanced that a man stood alone on it, he beheld the whole of the territory of Plant Rhys Dwfn; but the moment he moved he would lose sight of it altogether, and it would have been utterly vain for him to look for his footprints. In another story, as will be seen presently, the requisite platform was a turf from St. David's churchyard. The Rhysians had not much land--they lived in towns. So they were wont in former times to come to market to Cardigan, and to raise the prices of things terribly. They were seen of no one coming or going, but only seen there in the market. When prices happened to be high, and the corn all sold, however much there might have been there in the morning, the poor used to say to one another on the way home, "Oh! they were there to-day," meaning Plant Rhys Dwfn. So they were dear friends in the estimation of Siôn Phil Hywel, the farmer; but not so high in the opinion of Dafyd, the labourer. It is said, however, that they were very honest and resolute men. A certain Gruffyd ab Einon was wont to sell them more corn than anybody else, and so he was a great friend of theirs. He was honoured by them beyond all his contemporaries by being led on a visit to their home. As they were great traders like the Phoenicians of old, they had treasures from all countries under the sun. Gruffyd, after feasting his eyes to satiety on their wonders, was led back by them loaded with presents. But before taking leave of them, he asked them how they succeeded in keeping themselves safe from invaders, as one of their number might become unfaithful, and go beyond the virtue of the herbs that formed their safety. "Oh!" replied the little old man of shrewd looks, "just as Ireland has been blessed with a soil on which venomous reptiles cannot live, so with our land: no traitor can live here. Look at the sand on the sea-shore: perfect unity prevails there, and so among us. Rhys, the father of our race, bade us, even to the most distant descendant, honour our parents and ancestors; love our own wives without looking at those of our neighbours; and do our best for our children and grandchildren. And he said that if we did so, no one of us would ever prove unfaithful to another, or become what you call a traitor. The latter is a wholly imaginary character among us; strange pictures are drawn of him with his feet like those of an ass, with a nest of snakes in his bosom, with a head like the devil's, with hands somewhat like a man's, while one of them holds a large knife, and the family lies dead around the figure. Good-bye!" When Gruffyd looked about him he lost sight of the country of Plant Rhys, and found himself near his home. He became very wealthy after this, and continued to be a great friend of Plant Rhys as long as he lived. After Gruffyd's death they came to market again, but such was the greed of the farmers, like Gruffyd before them, for riches, and so unreasonable were the prices they asked for their corn, that the Rhysians took offence and came no more to Cardigan to market. The old people used to think that they now went to Fishguard market, as very strange people were wont to be seen there.' On the other hand, some Fishguard people were lately of opinion that it was at Haverfordwest the fairies did their marketing: I refer to a letter of Mr. Ferrar Fenton's, in the Pembroke County Guardian of October 31, 1896, in which he mentions a conversation he had with a Fishguard woman as to the existence of fairies: 'There are fairies,' she asserted, 'for they came to Ha'rfordwest market to buy things, so there must be.' With this should be compared pp. 9-10 of Wirt Sikes' British Goblins, where mention is made of sailors on the coast of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, 'who still talk of the green meadows of enchantment lying in the Irish Channel to the west of Pembrokeshire,' and of men who had landed on them, or seen them suddenly vanishing. The author then proceeds to abstract from Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, p. 119, the following paragraph:--'The fairies inhabiting these islands are said to have regularly attended the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking, laid down their money and departed, always leaving the exact sum required, which they seemed to know without asking the price of anything. Sometimes they were invisible; but they were often seen by sharp-eyed persons. There was always one special butcher at Milford Haven upon whom the fairies bestowed their patronage instead of distributing their favours indiscriminately. The Milford Haven folk could see the green Fairy Islands distinctly, lying out a short distance from land; and the general belief was that they were densely peopled with fairies. It was also said that the latter went to and fro between the islands and the shore, through a subterranean gallery under the bottom of the sea.' Another tale given in the Brython, ii. 20, by a writer who gives his name as B. Davies [57], will serve to show, short though it be, that the term Plant Rhys Dwfn was not confined to those honestly dealing fairies, but was used in a sense wholly synonymous with that of Tylwyth Teg, as understood in other parts of Wales. The story runs as follows, and should be compared with the Dyffryn Mymbyr one given above, pp. 100-3:--'One calm hot day, when the sun of heaven was brilliantly shining, and the hay in the dales was being busily made by lads and lasses, and by grown-up people of both sexes, a woman in the neighbourhood of Emlyn placed her one-year-old infant in the gader, or chair, as the cradle is called in these parts, and out she went to the field for a while, intending to return, when her neighbour, an old woman overtaken by the decrepitude of eighty summers, should call to her that her darling was crying. It was not long before she heard the old woman calling to her; she ran hurriedly, and as soon as she set foot on the kitchen floor she took her little one in her arms as usual, saying to him, "O my little one! thy mother's delight art thou! I would not take the world for thee, &c." But to her surprise he had a very old look about him, and the more the tender-hearted mother gazed at his face, the stranger it seemed to her, so that at last she placed him in the cradle and told her trouble and sorrow to her relatives and acquaintances. And after this one and the other had given his opinion, it was agreed at last that it was one of Rhys Dwfn's children that was in the cradle, and not her dearly loved baby. In this distress there was nothing to do but to fetch a sorcerer, as fast as the fastest horse could gallop. He said, when he saw the child, that he had seen his like before, and that it would be a hard job to get rid of him, though not such a very hard job this time. The shovel was made red hot in the fire by one of the Cefnarth [58] boys, and held before the child's face; and in an instant the short little old man took to his heels, and neither he nor his like was seen afterwards from Aber Cuch to Aber Bargoed at any rate. The mother, it is said, found her darling unscathed the next moment. I remember also hearing that the strange child was as old as the grandfather of the one that had been lost.' As I see no reason to make any profound distinction between lake maidens and sea maidens, I now give Gwynionyd's account of the mermaid who was found by a fisherman from Llandydoch or St. Dogmael's [59], near Cardigan: see the Brython, i. 82:-- 'One fine afternoon in September, in the beginning of the last century, a fisherman, whose name was Pergrin [60], went to a recess in the rock near Pen Cemmes, where he found a sea maiden doing her hair, and he took the water lady prisoner to his boat.... We know not what language is used by sea maidens ... but this one, this time at any rate, talked, it is said, very good Welsh; for when she was in despair in Pergrin's custody, weeping copiously, and with her tresses all dishevelled, she called out: 'Pergrin, if thou wilt let me go, I will give thee three shouts in the time of thy greatest need.' So, in wonder and fear, he let her go to walk the streets of the deep, and visit her sweethearts there. Days and weeks passed without Pergrin seeing her after this; but one hot afternoon, when the sea was pretty calm, and the fishermen had no thought of danger, behold his old acquaintance showing her head and locks, and shouting out in a loud voice: 'Pergrin! Pergrin! Pergrin! take up thy nets, take up thy nets, take up thy nets!' Pergrin and his companion instantly obeyed the message, and drew their nets in with great haste. In they went, past the bar, and by the time they had reached the Pwll Cam the most terrible storm had overspread the sea, while he and his companion were safe on land. Twice nine others had gone out with them, but they were all drowned without having the chance of obeying the warning of the water lady.' Perhaps it is not quite irrelevant to mention here the armorial bearings which Drayton ascribes to the neighbouring county of Cardigan in the following couplet in his Battaile of Agincourt (London, 1631), p. 23:-- As Cardigan the next to them that went, Came with a Mermayd sitting on a Rock. A writer in the Brython, iv. 194, states that the people of Nefyn in Lleyn claim the story of the fisher and the mermaid as belonging to them, which proves that a similar legend has been current there: add to this the fact mentioned in the Brython, iii. 133, that a red mermaid with yellow hair, on a white field, figures in the coat of arms of the family resident at Glasfryn in the parish of Llangybi, in Eifionyd or the southern portion of Carnarvonshire; and we have already suggested that Glasynys' story (pp. 117-25) was made up, to a certain extent, of materials found on the coasts of Carnarvonshire. A small batch of stories about South Wales mermaids is given by a writer who calls himself Ab Nadol [61], in the Brython, iv. 310, as follows:-- 'A few rockmen are said to have been working, about eighty years ago, in a quarry near Porth y Rhaw, when the day was calm and clear, with nature, as it were, feasting, the flowers shedding sweet scent around, and the hot sunshine beaming into the jagged rocks. Though an occasional wave rose to strike the romantic cliffs, the sea was like a placid lake, with its light coverlet of blue attractive enough to entice one of the ladies of Rhys Dwfn forth from the town seen by Daniel Huws off Trefin as he was journeying between Fishguard and St. David's in the year 1858, to make her way to the top of a stone and to sit on it to disentangle her flowing silvery hair. Whilst she was cleaning herself, the rockmen went down, and when they got near her they perceived that, from her waist upwards, she was like the lasses of Wales, but that, from her waist downwards, she had the body of a fish. And, when they began to talk to her, they found she spoke Welsh, though she only uttered the following few words to them: "Reaping in Pembrokeshire and weeding in Carmarthenshire." Off she then went to walk in the depth of the sea towards her home. Another tale is repeated about a mermaid, said to have been caught by men below the land of Llanwnda, near the spot, if not on the spot, where the French made their landing afterwards, and three miles to the west of Fishguard. It then goes on to say that they carried her to their home, and kept her in a secure place for some time; before long, she begged to be allowed to return to the brine land, and gave the people of the house three bits of advice; but I only remember one of them,' he writes, 'and this is it: "Skim the surface of the pottage before adding sweet milk to it: it will be whiter and sweeter, and less of it will do." I was told that this family follow the three advices to this day.' A somewhat similar advice to that about the pottage is said to have been given by a mermaid, under similar circumstances, to a Manxman. After putting the foregoing bits together, I was favoured by Mr. Benjamin Williams with notes on the tales and on the persons from whom he heard them: they form the contents of two or three letters, mostly answers to queries of mine, and the following is the substance of them:--Mr. Williams is a native of the valley of Troed yr Aur [62], in the Cardiganshire parish of that name. He spent a part of his youth at Verwig, in the angle between the northern bank of the Teifi and Cardigan Bay. He heard of Rhys Dwfn's Children first from a distant relative of his father's, a Catherine Thomas, who came to visit her daughter, who lived not far from his father's house: that would now be from forty-eight to fifty years ago. He was very young at the time, and of Rhys Dwfn's progeny he formed a wonderful idea, which was partly due also to the talk of one James Davies or Siàms Mocyn, who was very well up in folklore, and was one of his father's next-door neighbours. He was an old man, and nephew to the musician, David Jenkin Morgan. The only spot near Mr. Williams' home, that used to be frequented by the fairies, was Cefn y Ceirw, 'the Stag's Ridge,' a large farm, so called from having been kept as a park for their deer by the Lewises of Aber Nant Bychan. He adds that the late Mr. Philipps, of Aberglasney, was very fond of talking of things in his native neighbourhood, and of mentioning the fairies at Cefn y Ceirw. It was after moving to Verwig that Mr. Williams began to put the tales he heard on paper: then he came in contact with three brothers, whose names were John, Owen, and Thomas Evans. They were well-to-do and respectable bachelors, living together on the large farm of Hafod Ruffyd. Thomas was a man of very strong common sense, and worth consulting on any subject: he was a good arithmetician, and a constant reader of the Baptist periodical, Seren Gomer, from its first appearance. He thoroughly understood the bardic metres, and had a fair knowledge of music. He was well versed in Scripture, and filled the office of deacon at the Baptist Chapel. His death took place in the year 1864. Now, the eldest of the three brothers, the one named John, or Siôn, was then about seventy-five years of age, and he thoroughly believed in the tales about the fairies, as will be seen from the following short dialogue:-- Siôn: Williams bach, ma'n rhaid i bod nhw'i gâl: yr w i'n cofio yn amser Bone fod marchnad Aberteifi yn llawn o lafir yn y bore--digon yno am fis--ond cin pen hanner awr yr ôd y cwbwl wedi darfod. Nid ôd possib i gweld nhwi: mâ gida nhwi faint a fynnon nhwi o arian. Williams: Siwt na fyse dynion yn i gweld nhwi ynte, Siôn? Siôn: O mâ gida nhwi dynion fel ninne yn pryni drostyn nhwi; ag y mâ nhwi fel yr hen siówmin yna yn gelli gneid pob tric. John: 'My dear Williams, it must be that they exist: I remember Cardigan market, in the time of Bonaparte, full of corn in the morning--enough for a month--but in less than half an hour it was all gone. It was impossible to see them: they have as much money as they like.' Williams: 'How is it, then, that men did not see them, John?' John: 'Oh, they have men like us to do the buying for them; and they can, like those old showmen, do every kind of trick.' At this kind of display of simplicity on the part of his brother, Thomas used to smile and say: 'My brother John believes such things as those;' for he had no belief in them himself. Still it is from his mouth that Mr. Williams published the tales in the Brython, which have been reproduced here, that of 'Pergrin and the Mermaid,' and all about the 'Heir of Llech y Derwyd,' not to mention the ethical element in the account of Rhys Dwfn's country and its people, the product probably of his mind. Thomas Evans, or as he was really called, Tommos Ifan, was given rather to grappling with the question of the origin of such beliefs; so one day he called Mr. Williams out, and led him to a spot about four hundred yards from Bol y Fron, where the latter then lived: he pointed to the setting sun, and asked Mr. Williams what he thought of the glorious sunset before them. 'It is all produced,' he then observed, 'by the reflection of the sun's rays on the mist: one might think,' he went on to say, 'that there was there a paradise of a country full of fields, forests, and everything that is desirable.' And before they had moved away the grand scene had disappeared, when Thomas suggested that the idea of the existence of the country of Rhys Dwfn's Children arose from the contemplation of that phenomenon. One may say that Thomas Evans was probably far ahead of the Welsh historians who try to extract history from the story of Cantre'r Gwaelod, 'the Bottom Hundred,' beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay; but what was seen was probably an instance of the mirage to be mentioned presently. Lastly, besides Mr. Williams' contributions to the Brython, and a small volume of poetry, entitled Briallen glan Ceri, some tales of his were published by Llallawg in Bygones some years ago, and he had the prize at the Cardigan Eistedfod of 1866 for the best collection in Welsh of the folklore of Dyfed: his recollection was that it contained in all thirty-six tales of all kinds; but since the manuscript, as the property of the Committee of that Eistedfod, was sold, he could not now consult it: in fact he is not certain as to who the owner of it may now be, though he has an idea that it is either the Rev. Rees Williams, vicar of Whitchurch, near Solva, Pembrokeshire, or R. D. Jenkins, Esq., of Cilbronnau, Cardiganshire. Whoever the owner may be, he would probably be only too glad to have it published, and I mention this merely to call attention to it. The Eistedfod is to be commended for encouraging local research, and sometimes even for burying the results in obscurity, but not always. X. Before leaving Dyfed I wish to revert to the extract from Mr. Sikes, p. 161 above. He had been helped partly by the article on Gavran, in the Cambrian Biography, by William Owen, better known since as William Owen Pughe and Dr. Pughe, and partly by a note of Southey's on the following words in his Madoc (London, 1815), i. III:-- Where are the sons of Gavran? where his tribe, The faithful? following their beloved Chief, They the Green Islands of the Ocean sought; Nor human tongue hath told, nor human ear, Since from the silver shores they went their way, Hath heard their fortunes. The Gavran story, I may premise, is based on one of the Welsh Triads--i. 34, ii. 41, iii. 80--and Southey cites the article in the Cambrian Biography; but he goes on to give the following statements without indicating on what sources he was drawing--the reader has, however, been made acquainted already with the virtue of a blade of grass, by the brief mention of Llyn Irdyn above, p. 148:-- 'Of these Islands, or Green Spots of the Floods, there are some singular superstitions. They are the abode of the Tylwyth Teg, or the fair family, the souls of the virtuous Druids, who, not having been Christians, cannot enter the Christian heaven, but enjoy this heaven of their own. They however discover a love of mischief, neither becoming happy spirits, nor consistent with their original character; for they love to visit the earth, and, seizing a man, inquire whether he will travel above wind, mid wind, or below wind; above wind is a giddy and terrible passage, below wind is through bush and brake, the middle is a safe course. But the spell of security is, to catch hold of the grass, for these Beings have not power to destroy a blade of grass. In their better moods they come over and carry the Welsh in their boats. He who visits these Islands imagines on his return that he has been absent only a few hours, when, in truth, whole centuries have passed away. If you take a turf from St. David's churchyard, and stand upon it on the sea shore, you behold these Islands. A man once, who thus obtained sight of them, immediately put to sea to find them; but they disappeared, and his search was in vain. He returned, looked at them again from the enchanted turf, again set sail, and failed again. The third time he took the turf into his vessel, and stood upon it till he reached them.' A correspondent signing himself 'the Antient Mariner,' and writing, in the Pembroke County Guardian, from Newport, Pembrokeshire, Oct. 26, 1896, cites Southey's notes, and adds to them the statement, that some fifty years ago there was a tradition amongst the inhabitants of Trevine (Trefin) in his county, that these Islands could be seen from Llan Non, or Eglwys Non, in that neighbourhood. To return to Madoc, Southey adds to the note already quoted a reference to the inhabitants of Arran More, on the coast of Galway, to the effect that they think that they can on a clear day see Hy-Breasail, the Enchanted Island supposed to be the Paradise of the Pagan Irish: compare the Phantom City seen in the same sea from the coast of Clare. Then he asks a question suggestive of the explanation, that all this is due to 'that very extraordinary phenomenon, known in Sicily by the name of Morgaine le Fay's works.' In connexion with this question of mirage I venture to quote again from the Pembroke County Guardian. Mr. Ferrar Fenton, already mentioned, writes in the issue of Nov. 1, 1896, giving a report which he had received one summer morning from Captain John Evans, since deceased. It is to the effect 'that once when trending up the Channel, and passing Grasholm Island, in what he had always known as deep water, he was surprised to see to windward of him a large tract of land covered with a beautiful green meadow. It was not, however, above water, but just a few feet below, say two or three, so that the grass waved and swam about as the ripple flowed over it, in a most delightful way to the eye, so that as watched it made one feel quite drowsy. You know, he continued, I have heard old people say there is a floating island off there, that sometimes rises to the surface, or nearly, and then sinks down again fathoms deep, so that no one sees it for years, and when nobody expects it comes up again for a while. How it may be, I do not know, but that is what they say.' Lastly, Mr. E. Perkins, of Penysgwarne, near Fishguard, wrote on Nov. 2, 1896, as follows, of a changing view to be had from the top of the Garn, which means the Garn Fawr, one of the most interesting prehistoric sites in the county, and one I have had the pleasure of visiting more than once in the company of Henry Owen and Edward Laws, the historians of Pembrokeshire:-- 'May not the fairy islands referred to by Professor Rhys have originated from mirages? During the glorious weather we enjoyed last summer, I went up one particularly fine evening to the top of the Garn behind Penysgwarne to view the sunset. It would have been worth a thousand miles' travel to go to see such a scene as I saw that evening. It was about half an hour before sunset--the bay was calm and smooth as the finest mirror. The rays of the sun made A golden path across the sea, and a picture indescribable. As the sun neared the horizon the rays broadened until the sheen resembled a gigantic golden plate prepared to hold the brighter sun. No sooner had the sun set than I saw a striking mirage. To the right I saw a stretch of country similar to a landscape in this country. A farmhouse and out-buildings were seen, I will not say quite as distinct as I can see the upper part of St. David's parish from this Garn, but much more detailed. We could see fences, roads, and gateways leading to the farmyard, but in the haze it looked more like a panoramic view than a veritable landscape. Similar mirages may possibly have caused our old tadau to think these were the abode of the fairies.' To return to Mr. Sikes, the rest of his account of the Pembrokeshire fairies and their green islands, of their Milford butcher, and of the subterranean gallery leading into their home, comes, as already indicated, for the most part from Howells. But it does not appear on what authority Southey himself made departed druids of the fairies. One would be glad to be reassured on this last point, as such a hypothesis would fit in well enough with what we are told of the sacrosanct character of the inhabitants of the isles on the coast of Britain in ancient times. Take, for instance, the brief account given by Plutarch of one of the isles explored by a certain Demetrius in the service of the Emperor of Rome: see chapter viii. XI. Mr. Craigfryn Hughes, the author of a Welsh novelette [63] with its scene laid in Glamorgan, having induced me to take a copy, I read it and found it full of local colouring. Then I ventured to sound the author on the question of fairy tales, and the reader will be able to judge how hearty the response has been. Before reproducing the tale which Mr. Hughes has sent me, I will briefly put into English his account of himself and his authorities. Mr. Hughes lives at the Quakers' Yard in the neighbourhood of Pontyprid, in Glamorganshire. His father was not a believer [64] in tales about fairies or the like, and he learned all he knows of the traditions about them in his father's absence, from his grandmother and other old people. The old lady's name was Rachel Hughes. She was born at Pandy Pont y Cymmer, near Pontypool, or Pont ap Hywel as Mr. Hughes analyses the name, in the year 1773, and she had a vivid recollection of Edmund Jones of the Tranch, of whom more anon, coming from time to time to preach to the Independents there. She came, however, to live in the parish of Llanfabon, near the Quakers' Yard, when she was only twelve years of age; and there she continued to live to the day of her death, which took place in 1864, so that she was about ninety-one years of age at the time. Mr. Hughes adds that he remembers many of the old inhabitants besides his grandmother, who were perfectly familiar with the story he has put on record; but only two of them were alive when he wrote to me in 1881, and these were both over ninety years old, with their minds overtaken by the childishness of age; but it was only a short time since the death of another, who was, as he says, a walking library of tales about corpse candles, ghosts, and Bendith y Mamau [65], or 'The Mothers' Blessing,' as the fairies are usually called in Glamorgan. Mr. Hughes' father tried to prevent his children being taught any tales about ghosts, corpse candles, or fairies; but the grandmother found opportunities of telling them plenty, and Mr. Hughes vividly describes the effect on his mind when he was a boy, how frightened he used to feel, how he pulled the clothes over his head in bed, and how he half suffocated himself thereby under the effects of the fear with which the tales used to fill him. Then, as to the locality, he makes the following remarks:--'There are few people who have not heard something or other about the old graveyard of the Quakers, which was made by Lydia Phil, a lady who lived at a neighbouring farm house, called Cefn y Fforest. This old graveyard lies in the eastern corner of the parish of Merthyr Tydfil, on land called Pantannas, as to the meaning of which there is much controversy. Some will have it that it is properly Pant yr Aros, or the Hollow of the Staying, because travellers were sometimes stopped there overnight by the swelling of the neighbouring river; others treat it as Pant yr Hanes, the Hollow of the Legend, in allusion to the following story. But before the graveyard was made, the spot was called Rhyd y Grug, or the Ford of the Heather, which grows thereabouts in abundance. In front of the old graveyard towards the south the rivers Taff and Bargoed, which some would make into Byrgoed or Short-Wood, meet with each other, and thence rush in one over terrible cliffs of rock, in the recesses of which lie huge cerwyni or cauldron-like pools, called respectively the Gerwyn Fach, the Gerwyn Fawr, and the Gerwyn Ganol, where many a drowning has taken place. As one walks up over Tarren y Crynwyr, "the Quakers' Rift," until Pantannas is reached, and proceeds northwards for about a mile and a half, one arrives at a farm house called Pen Craig Daf [66], "the Top of the Taff Rock." The path between the two houses leads through fertile fields, in which may be seen, if one has eyes to observe, small rings which are greener than the rest of the ground. They are, in fact, green even as compared with the greenness around them--these are the rings in which Bendith y Mamau used to meet to sing and dance all night. If a man happened to get inside one of these circles when the fairies were there, he could not be got out in a hurry, as they would charm him and lead him into some of their caves, where they would keep him for ages, unawares to him, listening to their music. The rings vary greatly in size, but in point of form they are all round or oval. I have heard my grandmother,' says Mr. Hughes, 'reciting and singing several of the songs which the fairies sang in these rings. One of them began thus:-- Canu, canu, drwy y nos, Dawnsio, dawnsio, ar Waen y Rhos Y' ngoleuni'r lleuad dlos: Hapus ydym ni! Pawb ohonom syd yn llon Heb un gofid dan ei fron: Canu, dawnsio, ar y ton [67]-- Dedwyd ydym ni! Singing, singing, through the night, Dancing, dancing with our might, Where the moon the moor doth light, Happy ever we! One and all of merry mien, Without sorrow are we seen, Singing, dancing on the green, Gladsome ever we! Here follows, in Mr. Hughes' own Welsh, a remarkable story of revenge exacted by the fairies:-- Yn un o'r canrifoed a aethant heibio, preswyliai amaethwr yn nhydyn Pantannas, a'r amser hwnnw yr oed bendith y mamau yn ymwelwyr aml ag amryw gaeau perthynol ido ef, a theimlai yntau gryn gasineb yn ei fynwes at yr 'atras fwstrog, leisiog, a chynllwynig,' fel y galwai hwynt, a mynych yr hiraethai am allu dyfod o hyd i ryw lwybr er cael eu gwared odiyno. O'r diwed hysbyswyd ef gan hen reibwraig, fod y fford i gael eu gwared yn digon hawd, ac ond ido ef rodi godro un hwyr a boreu idi hi, yr hysbysai y fford ido gyrraed yr hyn a fawr dymunai. Bodlonod i'w thelerau a derbyniod yntau y cyfarwydyd, yr hyn ydoed fel y canlyn:--Ei fod i aredig yr holl gaeau i ba rai yr oed eu hoff ymgyrchfan, ac ond idynt hwy unwaith golli y ton glas, y digient, ac na deuent byth mwy i'w boeni drwy eu hymweliadau a'r lle. Dilynod yr amaethwr ei chyfarwydyd i'r llythyren, a choronwyd ei waith a llwydiant. Nid oed yr un o honynt i'w weled odeutu y caeau yn awr; ac yn lle sain eu caniadau soniarus, a glywid bob amser yn dyrchu o Waen y Rhos, nid oed dim ond y distawrwyd trylwyraf yn teyrnasu o gylch eu hen a'u hoff ymgyrchfan. Hauod yr amaethwr wenith, &c., yn y caeau, ac yr oed y gwanwyn gwyrdlas wedi gwthio y gauaf odiar ei sed, ac ymdangosai y maesyd yn arderchog yn eu llifrai gwyrdleision a gwanwynol. Ond un prydnawn, ar ol i'r haul ymgilio i yst felloed y gorllewin, tra yr oed amaethwr Pantannas yn dychwelyd tua ei gartref cyfarfydwyd ag ef gan fod bychan ar ffurf dyn, yn gwisgo hugan goch; a phan daeth gyferbyn ag ef dadweiniod ei gled bychan, gan gyfeirio ei flaen at yr amaethwr, a dywedyd, Dial a daw, Y mae gerllaw. Ceisiod yr amaethwr chwerthin, ond yr oed rhywbeth yn edrychiad sarrug a llym y gwr bychan ag a barod ido deimlo yn hynod o annymunol. Ychydig o nosweithiau yn diwedarach, pan oed y teulu ar ymneillduo i'w gorphwysleoed, dychrynwyd hwy yn fawr iawn gan drwst, fel pe bydai y ty yn syrthio i lawr bendramwnwgl, ac yn union ar ol i'r twrf beidio, clywent y geiriau bygythiol a ganlyn--a dim yn rhagor--yn cael eu parablu yn uchel, Daw dial. Pan oed yr yd wedi cael ei fedi ac yn barod i gael ei gywain i'r ysgubor, yn sydyn ryw noswaith llosgwyd ef fel nad oed yr un dywysen na gwelltyn i'w gael yn un man o'r caeau, ac nis gallasai neb fod wedi gosod yr yd ar dan ond Bendith y Mamau. Fel ag y mae yn naturiol i ni fedwl teimlod yr amaethwr yn fawr oherwyd y tro, ac edifarhaod yn ei galon darfod ido erioed wrando a gwneuthur yn ol cyfarwydyd yr hen reibwraig, ac felly dwyn arno digofaint a chasineb Bendith y Mamau. Drannoeth i'r noswaith y llosgwyd yr yd fel yr oed yn arolygu y difrod achoswyd gan y tan, wele'r gwr bychan ag ydoed wedi ei gyfarfod ychydig o diwrnodau yn flaenorol yn ei gyfarfod eilwaith a chyda threm herfeidiol pwyntiod ei gledyf ato gan dywedyd, Nid yw ond dechreu. Trod gwyneb yr amaethwr cyn wynned a'r marmor, a safod gan alw y gwr bychan yn ol, ond bu y còr yn hynod o wydn ac anewyllysgar i droi ato, ond ar ol hir erfyn arno trod yn ei ol gan ofyn yn sarrug beth yr oed yr amaethwr yn ei geisio, yr hwn a hysbysod ido ei fod yn berffaith fodlon i adael y caeau lle yr oed eu hoff ymgyrchfan i dyfu yn don eilwaith, a rhodi caniatad idynt i dyfod idynt pryd y dewisent, ond yn unig idynt beidio dial eu llid yn mhellach arno ef. 'Na,' oed yr atebiad penderfynol, 'y mae gair y brenin wedi ei roi y byd ido ymdial arnat hyd eithaf ei allu ac nid oes dim un gallu ar wyneb y greadigaeth a bair ido gael ei dynnu yn ol.' Dechreuod yr amaethwr wylo ar hyn, ond yn mhen ychydig hysbysod y gwr bychan y bydai ido ef siarad a'i bennaeth ar y mater, ac y cawsai efe wybod y canlyniad ond ido dyfod i'w gyfarfod ef yn y fan honno amser machludiad haul drennyd. Adawod yr amaethwr dyfod i'w gyfarfod, a phan daeth yr amser apwyntiedig o amgylch ido i gyfarfod a'r bychan cafod ef yno yn ei aros, ac hysbysod ido fod y pennaeth wedi ystyried ei gais yn difrifol, ond gan fod ei air bob amser yn anghyfnewidiol y buasai y dialed bygythiedig yn rhwym o gymeryd lle ar y teulu, ond ar gyfrif ei edifeirwch ef na chawsai digwyd yn ei amser ef nac eido ei blant. Llonydod hynny gryn lawer ar fedwl terfysglyd yr amaethwr, a dechreuod Bendith y Mamau dalu eu hymweliadau a'r lle eilwaith a mynych y clywid sain eu cerdoriaeth felusber yn codi o'r caeau amgylchynol yn ystod y nos. Pasiod canrif heibio heb i'r dialed bygythiedig gael ei gyflawni, ac er fod teulu Pantannas yn cael eu hadgofio yn awr ac eilwaith, y buasai yn sicr o digwyd hwyr neu hwyrach, eto wrth hir glywed y waed, Daw dial, ymgynefinasant a hi nes eu bod yn barod i gredu na fuasai dim yn dyfod o'r bygythiad byth. Yr oed etifed Pantannas yn caru a merch i dirfediannyd cymydogaethol a breswyliai mewn tydyn o'r enw Pen Craig Daf. Yr oed priodas y par dedwyd i gymeryd lle yn mhen ychydig wythnosau ac ymdangosai rhieni y cwpl ieuanc yn hynod o fodlon i'r ymuniad teuluol ag oed ar gymeryd lle. Yr oed yn amser y Nadolig--a thalod y darpar wraig ieuanc ymweliad a theulu ei darpar wr, ac yr oed yno wled o wyd rostiedig yn baratoedig gogyfer a'r achlysur. Eistedai y cwmni odeutu y tan i adrod rhyw chwedlau difyrrus er mwyn pasio yr amser, pryd y cawsant eu dychrynu yn fawr gan lais treidgar yn dyrchafu megis o wely yr afon yn gwaedi Daeth amser ymdïal. Aethant oll allan i wrando a glywent y lleferyd eilwaith, ond nid oed dim i'w glywed ond brochus drwst y dwfr wrth raiadru dros glogwyni aruthrol y cerwyni. Ond ni chawsant aros i wrando yn hir iawn cyn idynt glywed yr un lleferyd eilwaith yn dyrchafu i fyny yn uwch na swn y dwfr pan yn bwrlymu dros ysgwydau y graig, ac yn gwaedi, Daeth yr amser. Nis gallent dyfalu beth yr oed yn ei arwydo, a chymaint ydoed eu braw a'u syndod fel nad allent lefaru yr un gair a'u gilyd. Yn mhen ennyd dychwelasant i'r ty a chyn idynt eisted credent yn dios fod yr adeilad yn cael ei ysgwyd id ei sylfeini gan ryw dwrf y tu allan. Pan yr oed yr oll wedi cael eu parlysio gan fraw, wele fenyw fechan yn gwneuthur ei hymdangosiad ar y bwrd o'u blaen, yr hwn oed yn sefyll yn agos i'r ffenestr. 'Beth yr wyt yn ei geisio yma, y peth bychan hagr?' holai un o'r gwydfodolion. 'Nid oes gennyf unrhyw neges a thi, y gwr hir dafod,' oed atebiad y fenyw fechan. 'Ond yr wyf wedi cael fy anfon yma i adrod rhyw bethau ag syd ar digwyd i'r teulu hwn, a theulu arall o'r gymydogaeth ag a dichon fod o dydordeb idynt, ond gan i mi derbyn y fath sarhad odiar law y gwr du ag syd yn eisted yn y cornel, ni fyd i mi godi y llen ag oed yn cudio y dyfodol allan o'u golwg.' 'Atolwg os oes yn dy fediant ryw wybodaeth parth dyfodol rhai o honom ag a fydai yn dydorol i ni gael ei glywed, dwg hi allan,' ebai un arall o'r gwydfodolion. 'Na wnaf, ond yn unig hysbysu, fod calon gwyryf fel llong ar y traeth yn methu cyrraed y porthlad oherwyd digalondid y pilot.' A chyda ei bod yn llefaru y gair diwedaf diflannod o'u gwyd, na wydai neb i ba le na pha fod! Drwy ystod ci hymweliad hi, peidiod y waed a godasai o'r afon, ond yn fuan ar ol idi diflannu, dechreuod eilwaith a chyhoedi Daeth amser dial, ac ni pheidiod am hir amser. Yr oed y cynulliad wedi cael eu mediannu a gormod o fraw i fedru llefaru yr un gair, ac yr oed llen o brudder yn daenedig dros wyneb pob un o honynt. Daeth amser idynt i ymwahanu, ac aeth Rhyderch y mab i hebrwng Gwerfyl ei gariadferch tua Phen Craig Daf, o ba siwrnai ni dychwelod byth. Cyn ymadael a'i fun dywedir idynt dyngu bythol ffydlondeb i'w gilyd, pe heb weled y naill y llall byth ond hynny, ac nad oed dim a allai beri idynt anghofio eu gilyd. Mae yn debygol i'r llanc Rhyderch pan yn dychwelyd gartref gael ei hun odifewn i un o gylchoed Bendith y Mamau, ac yna idynt ei hud-denu i mewn i un o'u hogofau yn Nharren y Cigfrain, ac yno y bu. Y mae yn llawn bryd i ni droi ein gwynebau yn ol tua Phantannas a Phen Craig Daf. Yr oed rhieni y bachgen anffodus yn mron gwallgofi. Nid oed gandynt yr un drychfedwl i ba le i fyned i chwilio am dano, ac er chwilio yn mhob man a phob lle methwyd yn glir a dyfod o hyd ido, na chael gair o'i hanes. Ychydig i fyny yn y cwm mewn ogof dandaearol trigfannai hen feudwy oedrannus, yr hwn hefyd a ystyrrid yn dewin, o'r enw Gweiryd. Aethant yn mhen ychydig wythnosau i ofyn ido ef, a fedrai rodi idynt ryw wybodaeth parthed i'w mab colledig--ond i ychydig bwrpas. Ni wnaeth yr hyn a adrodod hwnnw wrthynt ond dyfnhau y clwyf a rhoi golwg fwy anobeithiol fyth ar yr amgylchiad. Ar ol idynt ei hysbysu ynghylch ymdangosiad y fenyw fechan ynghyd a'r llais wylofus a glywsent yn dyrchafu o'r afon y nos yr aeth ar goll, hysbysod efe idynt mai y farn fygythiedig ar y teulu gan Fendith y Mamau oed wedi godiwedid y llanc, ac nad oed o un diben idynt fedwl cael ei weled byth mwyach! Ond feallai y gwnelai ei ymdangosiad yn mhen oesau, ond dim yn eu hamser hwy. Pasiai yr amser heibio, a chwydod yr wythnosau i fisoed, a'r misoed i flynydoed, a chasglwyd tad a mam Rhyderch at eu tadau. Yr oed y lle o hyd yn parhau yr un, ond y preswylwyr yn newid yn barhaus, ac yr oed yr adgofion am ei golledigaeth yn darfod yn gyflym, ond er hynny yr oed un yn disgwyl ei dychweliad yn ol yn barhaus, ac yn gobeithio megis yn erbyn gobaith am gael ei weled eilwaith. Bob boreu gyda bod dorau y wawr yn ymagor dros gaerog fynydoed y dwyrain gwelid hi bob tywyd yn rhedeg i ben bryn bychan, a chyda llygaid yn orlawn o dagrau hiraethlon syllai i bob cyfeiriad i edrych a ganfydai ryw argoel fod ei hanwylyd yn dychwelyd; ond i dim pwrpas. Canol dyd gwelid hi eilwaith yn yr un man, a phan ymgollai yr haul fel pelen eiriasgoch o dân dros y terfyngylch, yr oed hi yno. Edrychai nes yn agos bod yn dall, ac wylai ei henaid allan o dyd i dyd ar ol anwyldyn ei chalon. O'r diwed aeth y rhai syd yn edrych drwy y ffenestri i omed eu gwasanaeth idi, ac yr oed y pren almon yn coroni ei phen a'i flagur gwyryfol, ond parhai hi i edrych, ond nid oed neb yn dod. Yn llawn o dydiau ac yn aedfed i'r bed rhodwyd terfyn ar ei holl obeithion a'i disgwyliadau gan angeu, a chludwyd ei gwedillion marwol i fynwent hen Gapel y Fan. Pasiai blynydoed heibio fel mwg, ac oesau fel cysgodion y boreu, ac nid oed neb yn fyw ag oed yn cofio Rhyderch, ond adrodid ei golliad disymwyth yn aml. Dylasem fynegu na welwyd yr un o Fendith y Mamau odeutu y gymydogaeth wedi ei golliad, a pheidiod sain eu cerdoriaeth o'r nos honno allan. Yr oed Rhyderch wedi cael ei hud-denu i fyned gyda Bendith y Mamau--ac aethant ag ef i ffwrd i'w hogof. Ar ol ido aros yno dros ychydig o diwrnodau fel y tybiai, gofynnod am ganiatad i dychwelyd, yr hyn a rwyd ganiatawyd ido gan y brenin. Daeth allan o'r ogof, ac yr oed yn ganol dyd braf, a'r haul yn llewyrchu odiar fynwes ffurfafen digwmwl. Cerdod yn mlaen o Darren y Cigfrain hyd nes ido dyfod i olwg Capel y Fan, ond gymaint oed ei syndod pan y gwelod nad oed yr un capel yno! Pa le yr oed wedi bod, a pha faint o amser? Gyda theimladau cymysgedig cyfeiriod ei gamrau tua Phen Craig Daf, cartref-le ei anwylyd, ond nid oed hi yno, ac nid oed yn adwaen yr un dyn ag oed yno chwaith. Ni fedrai gael gair o hanes ei gariad a chymerod y rhai a breswylient yno mai gwallgofdyn ydoed. Prysurod eilwaith tua Phantannas, ac yr oed ei syndod yn fwy fyth yno! Nid oed yn adwaen yr un o honynt, ac ni wydent hwythau dim am dano yntau. O'r diwed daeth gwr y ty i fewn, ac yr oed hwnnw yn cofio clywed ei dad cu yn adrod am lanc ag oed wedi myned yn disymwyth i goll er ys peth cannoed o flynydoed yn ol, ond na wydai neb i ba le. Rywfod neu gilyd tarawod gwr y ty ei ffon yn erbyn Rhyderch, pa un a diflannod mewn cawod o lwch, ac ni chlywyd air o son beth daeth o hono mwyach. 'In one of the centuries gone by, there lived a husbandman on the farm of Pantannas; and at that time the fairies used to pay frequent visits to several of the fields which belonged to him. He cherished in his bosom a considerable hatred for the "noisy, boisterous, and pernicious tribe," as he called them, and often did he long to be able to discover some way to rid the place of them. At last he was told by an old witch that the way to get rid of them was easy enough, and that she would tell him how to attain what he so greatly wished, if he gave her one evening's milking [68] on his farm, and one morning's. He agreed to her conditions, and from her he received advice, which was to the effect that he was to plough all the fields where they had their favourite resorts, and that, if they found the green sward gone, they would take offence, and never return to trouble him with their visits to the spot. 'The husbandman followed the advice to the letter, and his work was crowned with success. Not a single one of them was now to be seen about the fields, and, instead of the sound of their sweet music, which used to be always heard rising from the Coarse Meadow Land, the most complete silence now reigned over their favourite resort. 'He sowed his land with wheat and other grain; the verdant spring had now thrust winter off its throne, and the fields appeared splendid in their vernal and green livery. 'But one evening, when the sun had retired to the chambers of the west, and when the farmer of Pantannas was returning home, he was met by a diminutive being in the shape of a man, with a red coat on. When he had come right up to him, he unsheathed his little sword, and, directing the point towards the farmer, he said:-- Vengeance cometh, Fast it approacheth. 'The farmer tried to laugh, but there was something in the surly and stern looks of the little fellow which made him feel exceedingly uncomfortable. 'A few nights afterwards, as the family were retiring to rest, they were very greatly frightened by a noise, as though the house was falling to pieces; and, immediately after the noise, they heard a voice uttering loudly the threatening words--and nothing more:-- Vengeance cometh. 'When, however, the corn was reaped and ready to be carried to the barn, it was, all of a sudden, burnt up one night, so that neither an ear nor a straw of it could be found anywhere in the fields; and now nobody could have set the corn on fire but the fairies. 'As one may naturally suppose, the farmer felt very much on account of this event, and he regretted in his heart having done according to the witch's direction, and having thereby brought upon him the anger and hatred of the fairies. 'The day after the night of the burning of the corn, as he was surveying the destruction caused by the fire, behold the little fellow, who had met him a few days before, met him again, and, with a challenging glance, he pointed his sword towards him, saying:-- It but beginneth. The farmer's face turned as white as marble, and he stood calling the little fellow to come back; but the dwarf proved very unyielding and reluctant to turn to him; but, after long entreaty, he turned back, asking the farmer, in a surly tone, what he wanted, when he was told by the latter that he was quite willing to allow the fields, in which their favourite resorts had been, to grow again into a green sward, and to let them frequent them as often as they wished, provided they would no further wreak their anger on him. '"No," was the determined reply, "the word of the king has been given, that he will avenge himself on thee to the utmost of his power; and there is no power on the face of creation that will cause it to be withdrawn." 'The farmer began to weep at this, and, after a while, the little fellow said that he would speak to his lord on the matter, and that he would let him know the result, if he would come there to meet him at the hour of sunset on the third day after. 'The farmer promised to meet him; and, when the time appointed for meeting the little man came, he found him awaiting him, and he was told by him that his lord had seriously considered his request, but that, as the king's word was ever immutable, the threatened vengeance was to take effect on the family. On account, however, of his repentance, it would not be allowed to happen in his time or that of his children. 'That calmed the disturbed mind of the farmer a good deal. The fairies began again to pay frequent visits to the place, and their melodious singing was again heard at night in the fields around. 'A century passed by without seeing the threatened vengeance carried into effect; and, though the Pantannas family were reminded now and again that it was certain sooner or later to come, nevertheless, by long hearing the voice that said-- Vengeance cometh, they became so accustomed to it, that they were ready to believe that nothing would ever come of the threat. 'The heir of Pantannas was paying his addresses to the daughter of a neighbouring landowner who lived at the farm house called Pen Craig Daf, and the wedding of the happy pair was to take place in a few weeks, and the parents on both sides appeared exceedingly content with the union that was about to take place between the two families. 'It was Christmas time, and the intended wife paid a visit to the family of her would-be husband. There they had a feast of roast goose prepared for the occasion. 'The company sat round the fire to relate amusing tales to pass the time, when they were greatly frightened by a piercing voice, rising, as it were, from the bed of the river [69], and shrieking:-- The time for revenge is come. 'They all went out to listen if they could hear the voice a second time, but nothing was to be heard save the angry noise of the water as it cascaded over the dread cliffs of the kerwyni; they had not long, however, to wait till they heard again the same voice rising above the noise of the waters, as they boiled over the shoulders of the rock, and crying:-- The time is come. 'They could not guess what it meant, and so great was their fright and astonishment, that no one could utter a word to another. Shortly they returned to the house, when they believed that beyond doubt the building was being shaken to its foundations by some noise outside. When all were thus paralysed by fear, behold a little woman made her appearance on the table, which stood near the window. '"What dost thou, ugly little thing, want here?" asked one of those present. '"I have nothing to do with thee, O man of the meddling tongue," said the little woman, "but I have been sent here to recount some things that are about to happen to this family and another family in the neighbourhood, things that might be of interest to them; but, as I have received such an insult from the black fellow that sits in the corner, the veil that hides them from their sight shall not be lifted by me." '"Pray," said another of those present, "if thou hast in thy possession any knowledge with regard to the future of any one of us that would interest us to hear, bring it forth." '"No, I will but merely tell you that a certain maiden's heart is like a ship on the coast, unable to reach the harbour because the pilot has lost heart." 'As soon as she had cried out the last word, she vanished, no one knew whither or how. 'During her visit, the cry rising from the river had stopped, but soon afterwards it began again to proclaim:-- The time of vengeance is come; nor did it cease for a long while. The company had been possessed by too much terror for one to be able to address another, and a sheet of gloom had, as it were, been spread over the face of each. The time for parting came, and Rhyderch the heir went to escort Gwerfyl, his lady-love, home towards Pen Craig Daf, a journey from which he never returned. 'Before bidding one another "Good-bye," they are said to have sworn to each other eternal fidelity, even though they should never see one another from that moment forth, and that nothing should make the one forget the other. 'It is thought probable that the young man Rhyderch, on his way back towards home, got into one of the rings of the fairies, that they allured him into one of their caves in the Ravens' Rift, and that there he remained. 'It is high time for us now to turn back towards Pantannas and Pen Craig Daf. The parents of the unlucky youth were almost beside themselves: they had no idea where to go to look for him, and, though they searched every spot in the place, they failed completely to find him or any clue to his history. 'A little higher up the country, there dwelt, in a cave underground, an aged hermit called Gweiryd, who was regarded also as a sorcerer. They went a few weeks afterwards to ask him whether he could give them any information about their lost son; but it was of little avail. What that man told them did but deepen the wound and give the event a still more hopeless aspect. When they had told him of the appearance of the little woman, and the doleful cry heard rising from the river on the night when their son was lost, he informed them that it was the judgement threatened to the family by the fairies that had overtaken the youth, and that it was useless for them to think of ever seeing him again: possibly he might make his appearance after generations had gone by, but not in their lifetime. 'Time rolled on, weeks grew into months, and months into years, until Rhyderch's father and mother were gathered to their ancestors. The place continued the same, but the inhabitants constantly changed, so that the memory of Rhyderch's disappearance was fast dying away. Nevertheless there was one who expected his return all the while, and hoped, as it were against hope, to see him once more. Every morn, as the gates of the dawn opened beyond the castellated heights of the east, she might be seen, in all weathers, hastening to the top of a small hill, and, with eyes full of the tears of longing, gazing in every direction to see if she could behold any sign of her beloved's return; but in vain. At noon, she might be seen on the same spot again; she was also there at the hour when the sun was wont to hide himself, like a red-hot ball of fire, below the horizon. She gazed until she was nearly blind, and she wept forth her soul from day to day for the darling of her heart. At last they that looked out at the windows began to refuse their service, and the almond tree commenced to crown her head with its virgin bloom. She continued to gaze, but he came not. Full of days, and ripe for the grave, death put an end to all her hopes and all her expectations. Her mortal remains were buried in the graveyard of the old Chapel of the Fan [70]. 'Years passed away like smoke, and generations like the shadows of the morning, and there was no longer anybody alive who remembered Rhyderch, but the tale of his sudden missing was frequently in people's mouths. And we ought to have said that after the event no one of the fairies was seen about the neighbourhood, and the sound of their music ceased from that night. 'Rhyderch had been allured by them, and they took him away into their cave. When he had stayed there only a few days, as he thought, he asked for permission to return, which was readily granted him by the king. He issued from the cave when it was a fine noon, with the sun beaming from the bosom of a cloudless firmament. He walked on from the Ravens' Rift until he came near the site of the Fan Chapel; but what was his astonishment to find no chapel there! Where, he wondered, had he been, and how long away? So with mixed feelings he directed his steps towards Pen Craig Daf, the home of his beloved one, but she was not there nor any one whom he knew either. He could get no word of the history of his sweetheart, and those who dwelt in the place took him for a madman. 'He hastened then to Pantannas, where his astonishment was still greater. He knew nobody there, and nobody knew anything about him. At last the man of the house came in, and he remembered hearing his grandfather relating how a youth had suddenly disappeared, nobody knew whither, some hundreds of years previously. Somehow or other the man of the house chanced to knock his walking-stick against Rhyderch, when the latter vanished in a shower of dust. Nothing more was ever heard of him.' Before leaving Glamorgan, I may add that Mr. Sikes associates fairy ladies with Crymlyn Lake, between Briton Ferry and Swansea; but, as frequently happens with him, he does not deign to tell us whence he got the legend. 'It is also believed,' he says at p. 35, 'that a large town lies swallowed up there, and that the Gwraged Annwn have turned the submerged walls to use as the superstructure of their fairy palaces. Some claim to have seen the towers of beautiful castles lifting their battlements beneath the surface of the dark waters, and fairy bells are at times heard ringing from those towers.' So much by the way: we shall return to Crymlyn in chapter vii. XII. The other day, as I was going to Gwent, I chanced to be in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, where the names in the churchyards seem largely to imply a Welsh population, though the Welsh language has not been heard there for ages. Among others I noticed Joneses and Williamses in abundance at Abbey Dore, Evanses and Bevans, Morgans, Prossers and Prices, not to mention Sayces--that is to say, Welshmen of English extraction or education--a name which may also be met with in Little England in Pembrokeshire, and probably on other English-Welsh borders. Happening to have to wait for a train at the Abbey Dore station, I got into conversation with the tenants of a cottage hard by, and introduced the subject of the fairies. The old man knew nothing about them, but his wife, Elizabeth Williams, had been a servant girl at a place called Pen Pôch, which she pronounced with the Welsh guttural ch: she said that it is near Llandeilo Cressenny in Monmouthshire. It was about forty years ago when she served at Pen Pôch, and her mistress' name was Evans, who was then about fifty years of age. Now Mrs. Evans was in the habit of impressing on her servant girls' minds, that, unless they made the house tidy before going to bed, and put everything in its place overnight, the little people--the fairies, she thinks she called them--would leave them no rest in bed at night, but would come and 'pinch them like.' If they put everything in its place, and left the house 'tidy like,' it would be all right, and 'nobody would do anything to them like.' That is all I could get from her without prompting her, which I did at length by suggesting to her that the fairies might leave the tidy servants presents, a shilling 'on the hearth or the hob like.' Yes, she thought there was something of that sort, and her way of answering me suggested that this was not the first time she had heard of the shilling. She had never been lucky enough to have had one herself, nor did she know of anybody else that 'had got it like.' During a brief but very pleasant sojourn at Llanover in May, 1883, I made some inquiries about the fairies, and obtained the following account from William Williams, who now, in his seventieth year, works in Lady Llanover's garden:--'I know of a family living a little way from here at ----, or as they would now call it in English ----, whose ancestors, four generations ago, used to be kind to Bendith y Mamau, and always welcomed their visits by leaving at night a basinful of bread and milk for them near the fire. It always used to be eaten up before the family got up in the morning. But one night a naughty servant man gave them instead of milk a bowlful of urine [71]. They, on finding it out, threw it about the house and went away disgusted. But the servant watched in the house the following night. They found him out, and told him that he had made fools of them, and that in punishment for his crime there would always be a fool, i.e. an idiot, in his family. As a matter of fact, there was one among his children afterwards, and there is one in the family now. They have always been in a bad way ever since, and they never prosper. The name of the man who originally offended the fairies was ----; and the name of the present fool among his descendants is ----.' For evident reasons it is not desirable to publish the names. Williams spoke also of a sister to his mother, who acted as servant to his parents. There were, he said, ten stepping stones between his father's house and the well, and on every one of these stones his aunt used to find a penny every morning, until she made it known to others, when, of course, the pennies ceased coming. He did not know why the fairies gave money to her, unless it was because she was a most tidy servant. Another Llanover gardener remembered that the fairies used to change children, and that a certain woman called Nani Fach in that neighbourhood was one of their offspring; and he had been told that there were fairy rings in certain fields not far away in Llanover parish. A third gardener, who is sixty-eight years of age, and is likewise in Lady Llanover's employ, had heard it said that servant girls about his home were wont to sweep the floor clean at night, and to throw crumbs of bread about on it before going to bed. Lastly, Mrs. Gardner of Ty Uchaf Llanover, who is ninety years of age, remembers having a field close to Capel Newyd near Blaen Afon, in Llanover Uchaf, pointed out to her as containing fairy rings; and she recollects hearing, when she was a child, that a man had got into one of them. He remained away from home, as they always did, she said, a whole year and a day; but she has forgotten how he was recovered. Then she went on to say that her father had often got up in the night to see that his horses were not taken out and ridden about the fields by Bendith y Mamau; for they were wont to ride people's horses late at night round the four corners of the fields, and thereby they often broke the horses' wind. This, she gave me to understand, was believed in the parish of Llanover and that part of the country generally. So here we have an instance probably of confounding fairies with witches. I have not the means at my command of going at length into the folklore of Gwent, so I will merely mention where the reader may find a good deal about it. I have already introduced the name of the credulous old Christian, Edmund Jones of the Tranch: he published at Trefecca in the year 1779 a small volume entitled, A Geographical, Historical, and Religious Account of the Parish of Aberystruth in the County of Monmouth, to which are added Memoirs of several Persons of Note who lived in the said Parish. In 1813, by which time he seems to have left this world for another, where he expected to understand all about the fairies and their mysterious life, a small volume of his was published at Newport, bearing the title, A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales, with other notable Relations from England, together with Observations about them, and Instructions from them, designed to confute and to prevent the Infidelity of denying the Being and Apparition of Spirits, which tends to Irreligion and Atheism. By the late Rev. Edmund Jones, of the Tranch. Naturally those volumes have been laid under contribution by Mr. Sikes, though the tales about apparitions in them are frequently of a ghastly nature, and sometimes loathsome: on the whole, they remind me more than anything else I have ever read of certain Breton tales which breathe fire and brimstone: all such begin to be now out of fashion in Protestant countries. I shall at present only quote a passage of quite a different nature from the earlier volume, p. 72--it is an interesting one, and it runs thus:--'It was the general opinion in times past, when these things were very frequent, that the fairies knew whatever was spoken in the air without the houses, not so much what was spoken in the houses. I suppose they chiefly knew what was spoken in the air at night. It was also said that they rather appeared to an uneven number of persons, to one, three, five, &c.; and oftener to men than to women. Thomas William Edmund, of Havodavel, an honest pious man, who often saw them, declared that they appeared with one bigger than the rest going before them in the company.' With the notion that the fairies heard everything uttered out of doors may be compared the faculty attributed to the great magician king, Math ab Mathonwy, of hearing any whisper whatsoever that met the wind: see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 60, and Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 219; see also respectively pp. 94, 96, and pp. 308, 310, as to the same faculty belonging to the fairy people of the Corannians, and the strange precautions taken against them by the brothers Llûd and Llevelys. CHAPTER III FAIRY WAYS AND WORDS Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy! Shakespeare. In the previous chapters, the fairy lore of the Principality was hastily skimmed without any method; and I fear that, now I have to reproduce some of the things which I gleaned somewhat later, there will be, if possible, still less method. The general reader, in case he chances on these pages, will doubtless feel that, as soon as he has read a few of the tales, the rest seem to be familiar to him, and exceedingly tiresome. It may be, however, presumed that all men anxious to arrive at an idea as to the origin among us of the belief in fairies, will agree that we should have as large and exhaustive a collection as possible of facts on which to work. If we can supply the data without stint, the student of anthropology may be trusted in time to discover their value for his inductions, and their place in the history of the human race. I. In the course of the summer of 1882 [72] I was a good deal in Wales, especially Carnarvonshire, and I made notes of a great many scraps of legends about the fairies, and other bits of folklore. I will now string some of them together as I found them. I began at Trefriw [73], in Nant Conwy, where I came across an old man, born and bred there, called Morris Hughes. He appears to be about seventy years of age: he formerly worked as a slater, but now he lives at Llanrwst, and tries to earn a livelihood by angling. He told me that fairies came a long while ago to Cowlyd Farm, near Cowlyd Lake, with a baby to dress, and asked to be admitted into the house, saying that they would pay well for it. Their request was granted, and they used to leave money behind them. One day the servant girl accidentally found they had also left some stuff they were in the habit of using in washing their children. She examined it, and, one of her eyes happening to itch, she rubbed it with the finger that had touched the stuff; so when she went to Llanrwst Fair she saw the same fairy folks there stealing cakes from a standing, and asked them why they did that. They inquired with what eye she saw them: she put her hand to the eye, and one of the fairies quickly rubbed it, so that she never saw any more of them. They were also very fond of bringing their children to be dressed in the houses between Trefriw and Llanrwst; and on the flat land bordering on the Conwy they used to dance, frolic, and sing every moonlight night. Evan Thomas of Sgubor Gerrig used to have money from them. He has been dead, Morris Hughes said, over sixty years: he had on his land a sort of cowhouse where the fairies had shelter, and hence the pay. Morris, when a boy, used to be warned by his parents to take care lest he should be stolen by the fairies. He knew Thomas Williams of Bryn Syllty, or, as he was commonly called, Twm Bryn Syllty, who was a changeling. He was a sharp, small man, afraid of nothing. He met his death some years ago by drowning near Eglwys Fach, when he was about sixty-three years of age. There are relatives of his about Llanrwst still: that is, relatives of his mother, if indeed she was his mother (os oed hi'n fam ido fo, ynté). Lastly, Morris had a tale about a mermaid cast ashore by a storm near Conway. She entreated the fishermen who found her to help her back into her native element; and on their refusing to comply she prayed them to place her tail at least in the water. A very crude rhyme describes her dying of exposure to the cold, thus:-- Y forforwyn ar y traeth, Crio gwaedu'n arw wnaeth, Ofn y deuai drycin drannoeth: Yr hin yn oer a rhewi wnaeth. The stranded mermaid on the beach Did sorely cry and sorely screech, Afraid to bide the morrow's breeze: The cold it came, and she did freeze. But before expiring, the mermaid cursed the people of Conway to be always poor, and Conway has ever since, so goes the tale, laboured under the curse; so that when a stranger happens to bring a sovereign there, the Conway folk, if silver is required, have to send across the water to Llansanffraid for change. My next informant was John Duncan Maclaren, who was born in 1812, and lives at Trefriw. His father was a Scotsman, but Maclaren is in all other respects a Welshman. He also knew the Sgubor Gerrig people, and that Evan Thomas and Lowri his wife had exceeding great trouble to prevent their son Roger from being carried away by the fairies. For the fairy maids were always trying to allure him away, and he was constantly finding fairy money. The fairy dance, and the playing and singing that accompanied it, used to take place in a field in front of his father's house; but Lowri would never let her son go out after the sun had gone to his battlements (ar ol i'r haul fyn'd i lawr i gaera). The most dangerous nights were those when the moon shone brightly, and pretty wreaths of mist adorned the meadows by the river. Maclaren had heard of a man, whom he called Siôn Catrin of Tyn Twll, finding a penny every day at the pistyll or water-spout near the house, when he went there to fetch water. The flat land between Trefriw and Llanrwst had on it a great many fairy rings, and some of them are, according to Maclaren, still to be seen. There the fairies used to dance, and when a young man got into one of the rings the fairy damsels took him away; but he could be got out unharmed at the end of a year and a day, when he would be found dancing with them in the same ring: he must then be dexterously touched by some one of his friends with a piece of iron and dragged out at once. This is the way in which a young man whom my notes connect with a place called Bryn Glas was recovered. He had gone out with a friend, who lost him, and he wandered into a fairy ring. He had new shoes on at the time, and his friends brought him out at the end of the interval of a year and a day; but he could not be made to understand that he had been away more than five minutes, until he was asked to look at his new shoes, which were by that time in pieces. Maclaren had also something to say concerning the history and habitat of the fairies. Those of Nant Conwy dress in green; and his mother, who died about sixty-two years ago, aged forty-seven, had told him that they lived seven years on the earth, seven years in the air, and seven years underground. He also had a mermaid tale, like that of Pergrin from Dyfed, p. 163. A fisherman from Llandrillo yn Rhos, between Colwyn and Llandudno, had caught a mermaid in his net. She asked to be set free, promising that she would, in case he complied, do him a kindness. He consented, and one fine day, a long while afterwards, she suddenly peeped out of the water near him, and shouted: Siôn Ifan, cwyd dy rwyda' a thyn tua'r lan, 'John Evans, take up thy nets and make for the shore.' He obeyed, and almost immediately there was a terrible storm, in which many fishermen lost their lives. The river Conwy is the chief haunt of the mysterious afanc, already mentioned, p. 130, and Maclaren stated that its name used to be employed within his memory to frighten girls and children: so much was it still dreaded. Perhaps I ought to have stated that Maclaren is very fond of music, and that he told me of a gentleman at Conway who had taken down in writing a supposed fairy tune. I have made inquiries of the latter's son, Mr. Hennessy Hughes of Conway; but his father's papers seem to have been lost, so that he cannot find the tune in question, though he has heard of it. Whilst on this question of music let me quote from the Llwyd letter in the Cambrian Journal for 1859, pp. 145-6, on which I have already drawn, pp. 130-3, above. The passage in point is to the following effect:-- 'I will leave these tales aside whilst I go as far as the Ogo Du, "the Black Cave," which is in the immediate vicinity of Crigcieth [74], and into which the musicians entered so far that they lost their way back. One of them was heard to play on his pipe, and another on his horn, about two miles from where they went in; and the place where the piper was heard is called Braich y Bib, and where the man with the horn was heard is called Braich y Cornor. I do not believe that even a single man doubts but that this is all true, and I know not how the airs called Ffarwel Dic y Pibyd, "Dick the Piper's Farewell," and Ffarwel Dwm Bach, "Little Tom's Farewell," had those names, unless it was from the musicians above mentioned. Nor do I know that Ned Puw may not have been the third, and that the air called Ffarwel Ned Puw, "Ned Pugh's Farewell," may not have been the last he played before going into the cave. I cannot warrant this to be true, as I have only heard it said by one man, and he merely held it as a supposition, which had been suggested by this air of Ffarwel Dic y Pibyd.' A story, however, mentioned by Cyndelw in the Brython for 1860, p. 57, makes Ned Pugh enter the cave of Tal y Clegyr, which the writer in his article identifies with Ness Cliff, near Shrewsbury. In that cave, which was regarded as a wonderful one, he says the musician disappeared, while the air he was playing, Ffarwel Ned Puw, "Ned Pugh's Farewell," was retained in memory of him. Some account of the departure of Ned Pugh and of the interminable cave into which he entered, will be found given in a rambling fashion in the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine (London, 1829), vol. i, pp. 40-5, where the minstrel's Welsh name is given as Iolo ap Huw. There we are told that he was last seen in the twilight of a misty Halloween, and the notes of the tune he was last heard to play are duly given. One of the surmises as to Iolo's ultimate fate is also recorded, namely, that in the other world he has exchanged his fiddle for a bugle, and become huntsman-in-chief to Gwyn ab Nûd, so that every Halloween he may be found cheering Cwn Annwn, 'the Hounds of the Other World,' over Cader Idris [75]. The same summer I fell in with Mr. Morris Evans, of Cerrig Mân, near Amlwch. He is a mining agent on the Gwydir Estate in the Vale of Conwy, but he is a native of the neighbourhood of Parys Mountain, in Anglesey, where he acquired his knowledge of mining. He had heard fairy tales from his grandmother, Grace Jones, of Llwyn Ysgaw near Mynyd Mechell, between Amlwch and Holyhead. She died, nearly ninety years of age, over twenty years ago. She used to relate how she and others of her own age were wont in their youth to go out on bright moonlight nights to a spot near Llyn y Bwch. They seldom had to wait there long before they would hear exquisite music and behold a grand palace standing on the ground. The diminutive folks of fairyland would then come forth to dance and frolic. The next morning the palace would be found gone, but the grandmother used to pick up fairy money on the spot, and this went on regularly so long as she did not tell others of her luck. My informant, who is himself a man somewhat over fifty-two, tells me that at a place not far from Llyn y Bwch there were plenty of fairy rings to be seen in the grass; and it is in them the fairies were supposed to dance [76]. From Llanrwst I went up to see the bard and antiquary, Mr. Gethin Jones. His house was prettily situated on the hillside on the left of the road as you approach the village of Penmachno. I was sorry to find that his memory had been considerably impaired by a paralytic stroke from which he had suffered not long before. However, from his room he pointed out to me a spot on the other side of the Machno, called Y Werdon, which means 'The Green Land,' or more literally, 'The Greenery,' so to say. It was well known for its green, grassy fairy rings, formerly frequented by the Tylwyth Teg; and he said he could distinguish some of the rings even then from where he stood. The Werdon is on the Bennar, and the Bennar is the high ground between Penmachno and Dolwydelan. The spot in question is on the part nearest to the Conwy Falls. This name, Y Werdon, is liable to be confounded with Iwerdon, 'Ireland,' which is commonly treated as if it began with the definite article, so that it is made into Y Werdon and Werdon. The fairy Werdon, in the radical form Gwerdon, not only recalls to my mind the Green Isles called Gwerdonau Llïon, but also the saying, common in North Wales, that a person in great anxiety 'sees Y Werdon.' Thus, for instance, a man who fails to return to his family at the hour expected, and believes his people to be in great anxiety about him, expresses himself by saying that they will have 'seen the Werdon on my account' (mi fydan' wedi gwel'd y Werdon am dana'i). Is that Ireland, or is it the land of the fairies, the other world, in fact? If the latter, it might simply mean they will have died of anxiety; but I confess I have not so far been able to decide. I am not aware that the term occurs in any other form of expression than the one I have given; if it had, and if the Werdon were spoken of in some other way, that might possibly clear up the difficulty. If it refers to Ireland, it must imply that sighting Ireland is equivalent to going astray at sea, meaning in this sort of instance, getting out of one's senses; but the Welsh are not very much given to nautical expressions. It reminds me somewhat of Gerald Griffin's allusion to the Phantom City, and the penalty paid by those who catch a glimpse of its turrets as the dividing waves expose them for a moment to view on the western coast of Ireland:-- Soon close the white waters to screen it, And the bodement, they say, of the wonderful sight, Is death to the eyes that have seen it. The Fairy Glen above Bettws y Coed is called in Welsh Ffos 'Nodyn, 'the Sink of the Abyss'; but Mr. Gethin Jones told me that it was also called Glyn y Tylwyth Teg, which is very probable, as some such a designation is required to account for the English name, 'the Fairy Glen.' People on the Capel Garmon side used to see the Tylwyth playing there, and descending into the Ffos or Glen gently and lightly without occasioning themselves the least harm. The Fairy Glen was, doubtless, supposed to contain an entrance to the world below. This reminds one of the name of the pretty hollow running inland from the railway station at Bangor. Why should it be called Nant Uffern, or 'The Hollow of Hell'? Can it be that there was a supposed entrance to the fairy world somewhere there? In any case, I am quite certain that Welsh place-names involve allusions to the fairies much oftener than has been hitherto supposed; and I should be inclined to cite, as a further example, Moel Eilio [77] or Moel Eilian, from the personal name Eilian, to be mentioned presently. Moel Eilian is a mountain under which the fairies were supposed to have great stores of treasure. But to return to Mr. Gethin Jones, I had almost forgotten that I have another instance of his in point. He showed me a passage in a paper which he wrote in Welsh some time ago on the antiquities of Yspyty Ifan. He says that where the Serw joins the Conwy there is a cave, to which tradition asserts that a harpist was once allured by the Tylwyth Teg. He was, of course, not seen afterwards, but the echo of the music made by him and them on their harps is still to be heard a little lower down, under the field called to this day Gweirglod y Telynorion, 'The Harpers' Meadow': compare the extract from Edward Llwyd's correspondence at p. 202 above. Mr. Gethin Jones also spoke to me of the lake called Llyn Pencraig, which was drained in hopes of finding lead underneath it, an expectation not altogether doomed to disappointment, and he informed me that its old name was Llyn Llifon; so the moor around it was called Gwaen Llifon. It appears to have been a large lake, but only in wet weather, and to have no deep bed. The names connected with the spot are now Nant Gwaen Llifon and the Gwaith (or Mine) of Gwaen Llifon: they are, I understand, within the township of Trefriw. The name Llyn Llifon is of great interest when taken in connexion with the Triadic account of the cataclysm called the Bursting of Llyn Llifon. Mr. Gethin Jones, however, believed himself that Llyn Llïon was no other than Bala Lake, through which the Dee makes her way. II. One day in August of the same year, I arrived at Dinas Station, and walked down to Llandwrog in order to see Dinas Dinlle, and to ascertain what traditions still existed there respecting Caer Arianrhod, Llew Llawgyffes, Dylan Eilton, and other names that figure in the Mabinogi of Math ab Mathonwy. I called first on the schoolmaster, and he kindly took me to the clerk, Hugh Evans, a native of the neighbourhood of Llangefni, in Anglesey. He had often heard people talk of some women having once on a time come from Tregar Anthreg to Cae'r 'Loda', a place near the shore, to fetch food or water, and that when they looked back they beheld the town overflowed by the sea: the walls can still be seen at low water. Gwennan was the name of one of the women, and she was buried at the place now called Bed Gwennan, or Gwennan's Grave. He had also heard the fairy tales of Waen Fawr and Nant y Bettws, narrated by the antiquary, Owen Williams of the former place. For instance, he had related to him the tale of the man who slept on a clump of rushes, and thought he was all the while in a magnificent mansion; see p. 100, above. Now I should explain that Tregar Anthreg is to be seen at low water from Dinas Dinlle as a rock not far from the shore. The Caranthreg which it implies is one of the modern forms to which Caer Arianrhod has been reduced; and to this has been prefixed a synonym of caer, namely, tref, reduced to tre', just as Carmarthen is frequently called Tre' Gaerfyrdin. Cae'r 'Loda' is explained as Cae'r Aelodau', 'The Field of the Limbs'; but I am sorry to say that I forgot to note the story explanatory of the name. It is given, I think, to a farm, and so is Bed Gwennan likewise the name of a farm house. The tenant of the latter, William Roberts, was at home when I visited the spot. He told me the same story, but with a variation: three sisters had come from Tregan Anrheg to fetch provisions, when their city was overflowed. Gwen fled to the spot now called Bed Gwennan, Elan to Tydyn Elan, or Elan's Holding, and Maelan to Rhos Maelan, or Maelan's Moor; all three are names of places in the immediate neighbourhood. From Dinas Dinlle I was directed across Lord Newborough's grounds at Glynllifon to Pen y Groes Station; but on my way I had an opportunity of questioning several of the men employed at Glynllifon. One of these was called William Thomas Solomon, an intelligent middle-aged man, who works in the garden there. He said that the three women who escaped from the submerged city were sisters, and that he had learned in his infancy to call them Gwennan bi Dôn, Elan bi Dôn, and Maelan bi Dôn. Lastly, the name of the city, according to him, was Tregan Anthrod. I had the following forms of the name that day:--Tregar Anrheg, Tregar Anthreg, Tregan Anrheg, Tregan Anthreg, and Tregan Anthrod. All these are attempts to reproduce what might be written Tre'-Gaer-Arianrhod. The modification of nrh into nthr is very common in North Wales, and Tregar Anrheg seems to have been fashioned on the supposition that the name had something to do with anrheg, 'a gift.' Tregan Anthrod is undoubtedly the Caer Arianrhod, or 'fortress of Arianrhod,' in the Mabinogi, and it is duly marked as such in a map of Speede's at the spot where it should be. Now the Arianrhod of the Mabinogi of Math could hardly be called a lady of rude virtue, and it is the idea in the neighbourhood that the place was inundated on account of the wickedness of the inhabitants. So it would appear that Gwennan, Elan, and Maelan, Arianrhod's sisters, were the just ones allowed to escape. Arianrhod was probably drowned as the principal sinner in possession; but I did not find, as I expected, that the crime which called for such an expiation was in this instance that of playing cards on Sunday. In fact, this part of the legend does not seem to have been duly elaborated as yet. I must now come back to Solomon's bi Dôn, which puzzles me not a little. Arianrhod was daughter of Dôn, and so several other characters in the same Mabinogi were children of Dôn. But what is bi Dôn? I have noticed that all the Welsh antiquaries who take Don out of books invariably call that personage Dòn or Donn with a short o, which is wrong, and this has saved me from being deceived once or twice: so I take it that bi Dôn is, as Solomon asserted, a local expression of which he did not know the meaning. I can only add, in default of a better explanation, that bi Dôn recalled to my mind what I had shortly before heard on my trip from Aberdaron to Bardsey Island. My wife and I, together with two friends, engaged, after much eloquent haggling, a boat at the former place, but one of the men who were to row us insinuated a boy of his, aged four, into the boat, an addition which did not exactly add to the pleasures of that somewhat perilous trip amidst incomprehensible currents. But the Aberdaron boatmen always called that child bi Donn, which I took to have been a sort of imitation of an infantile pronunciation of 'baby John,' for his name was John, which Welsh infants as a rule first pronounce Donn: I can well remember the time when I did. This, applied to Gwennan bi Dôn, would imply that Solomon heard it as a piece of nursery lore when he was a child, and that it meant simply--Gwennan, baby or child of Dôn. Lastly, the only trace of Dylan I could find was in the name of a small promontory, called variously by the Glynllifon men Pwynt Maen Tylen, which was Solomon's pronunciation, and Pwynt Maen Dulan. It is also known, as I was given to understand, as Pwynt y Wig: I believe I have seen it given in maps as Maen Dylan Point. Solomon told me the following fairy tale, and he was afterwards kind enough to have it written out for me. I give it in his own words, as it is peculiar in some respects:-- Mi'r oed gwr a gwraig yn byw yn y Garth Dorwen [78] ryw gyfnod maith yn ol, ag aethant i Gaer'narfon i gyflogi morwyn ar dyd ffair G'langaeaf, ag yr oed yn arferiad gan feibion a merched y pryd hynny i'r rhai oed yn sefyll allan am lefyd aros yn top y maes presennol wrth boncan las oed yn y fan y lle saif y Post-office presennol; aeth yr hen wr a'r hen wraig at y fan yma a gwelent eneth lan a gwallt melyn yn sefyll 'chydig o'r neilldu i bawb arall; aeth yr hen wraig ati a gofynnod i'r eneth oed arni eisiau lle. Atebod fod, ag felly cyflogwyd yr eneth yn dioed a daeth i'w lle i'r amser penodedig. Mi fydai yn arferiad yr adeg hynny o nydu ar ol swper yn hirnos y gauaf, ag fe fydai y forwyn yn myn'd i'r weirglod i nydu wrth oleu y lloer; ag fe fydai tylwyth teg yn dwad ati hi i'r weirglod i ganu a dawnsio. A ryw bryd yn y gwanwyn pan esdynnod y dyd diangod Eilian gyd a'r tylwythion teg i ffwrd, ag ni welwyd 'mo'ni mwyach. Mae y cae y gwelwyd hi diwethaf yn cael ei alw hyd y dyd hedyw yn Gae Eilian a'r weirglod yn Weirglod y Forwyn. Mi'r oed hen wraig y Garth Dorwen yn arfer rhoi gwraged yn eu gwlâu, a bydai pawb yn cyrchu am dani o bob cyfeiriad; a rhyw bryd dyma wr bonedig ar ei geffyl at y drws ar noswaith loergan lleuad, a hithau yn glawio 'chydig ag yn niwl braid, i 'nol yr hen wreigan at ei wraig; ag felly aeth yn sgil y gwr dïarth ar gefn y march i Ros y Cowrt. Ar ganol y Rhos pryd hynny 'r oed poncan lled uchel yn debyg i hen amdiffynfa a llawer o gerrig mawrion ar ei phen a charned fawr o gerrig yn yr ochor ogledol idi, ag mae hi i'w gwel'd hyd y dyd hedyw dan yr enw Bryn y Pibion. Pan gyrhaedasan' y lle aethan' i ogo' fawr ag aethan' i 'stafell lle'r oed y wraig yn ei gwely, a'r lle crandia' a welod yr hen wraig yrioed. Ag fe roth y wraig yn ei gwely ag aeth at y tan i drin y babi; ag ar ol idi orphen dyna y gwr yn dod a photel i'r hen wraig i hiro llygaid y babi ag erfyn arni beidio a'i gyffwr' a'i llygaid ei hun. Ond ryw fod ar ol rhoi y botel heibio fe daeth cosfa ar lygaid yr hen wraig a rhwbiod ei llygaid â'r un bys ag oed wedi bod yn rhwbio llygaid y baban a gwelod hefo 'r llygad hwnnw y wraig yn gorfed ar docyn o frwyn a rhedyn crinion mewn ogo' fawr o gerrig mawr o bob tu idi a 'chydig bach o dan mewn rhiw gornel, a gwelod mai Eilian oed hi, ei hen forwyn, ag hefo'r llygad arall yn gwel'd y lle crandia' a welod yrioed. Ag yn mhen ychydig ar ol hynny aeth i'r farchnad i Gaer'narfon a gwelod y gwr a gofynnod ido--'Pa sud mae Eilian?' 'O y mae hi yn bur da,' medai wrth yr hen wraig: 'a pha lygad yr ydych yn fy ngwel'd?' 'Hefo hwn,' medai hithau. Cymerod babwyren ag a'i tynod allan ar unwaith. 'An old man and his wife lived at the Garth Dorwen in some period a long while ago. They went to Carnarvon to hire a servant maid at the Allhallows' [79] fair; and it was the custom then for young men and women who stood out for places to station themselves at the top of the present Maes, by a little green eminence which was where the present Post-office stands. The old man and his wife went to that spot, and saw there a lass with yellow hair, standing a little apart from all the others; the old woman went to her and asked her if she wanted a place. She replied that she did, and so she hired herself at once and came to her place at the time fixed. In those times it was customary during the long winter nights that spinning should be done after supper. Now the maid servant would go to the meadow to spin by the light of the moon, and the Tylwyth Teg used to come to her to sing and dance. But some time in the spring, when the days had grown longer, Eilian escaped with the Tylwyth Teg, so that she was seen no more. The field where she was last seen is to this day called Eilian's Field, and the meadow is known as the Maid's Meadow. The old woman of Garth Dorwen was in the habit of putting women to bed, and she was in great request far and wide. Some time after Eilian's escape there came a gentleman on horseback to the door one night when the moon was full, while there was a slight rain and just a little mist, to fetch the old woman to his wife. So she rode off behind the stranger on his horse, and came to Rhos y Cowrt. Now there was at that time, in the centre of the rhos, somewhat of a rising ground that looked like an old fortification, with many big stones on the top, and a large cairn of stones on the northern side: it is to be seen there to this day, and it goes by the name of Bryn y Pibion, but I have never visited the spot. When they reached the spot, they entered a large cave, and they went into a room where the wife lay in her bed; it was the finest place the old woman had seen in her life. When she had successfully brought the wife to bed, she went near the fire to dress the baby; and when she had done, the husband came to the old woman with a bottle of ointment [80] that she might anoint the baby's eyes; but he entreated her not to touch her own eyes with it. Somehow after putting the bottle by, one of the old woman's eyes happened to itch, and she rubbed it with the same finger that she had used to rub the baby's eyes. Then she saw with that eye how the wife lay on a bundle of rushes and withered ferns in a large cave, with big stones all round her, and with a little fire in one corner; and she saw also that the lady was only Eilian, her former servant girl, whilst, with the other eye, she beheld the finest place she had ever seen. Not long afterwards the old midwife went to Carnarvon to market, when she saw the husband, and said to him, "How is Eilian?" "She is pretty well," said he to the old woman, "but with what eye do you see me?" "With this one," was the reply; and he took a bulrush and put her eye out at once.' That is exactly the tale, my informant tells me, as he heard it from his mother, who heard it from an old woman who lived at Garth Dorwen when his mother was a girl, about eighty-four years ago, as he guessed it to have been; but in his written version he has omitted one thing which he told me at Glynllifon, namely, that, when the servant girl went out to the fairies to spin, an enormous amount of spinning used to be done. I mention this as it reminds me of the tales of other nations, where the girl who cannot spin straw into gold is assisted by a fairy, on certain conditions which are afterwards found very inconvenient. It may be guessed that in the case of Eilian the conditions involved her becoming a fairy's wife, and that she kept to them. Lastly, I should like the archæologists of Carnarvonshire to direct their attention to Bryn y Pibion; for they might be expected to come across the remains there of a barrow or of a fort. III. The same summer I happened to meet the Rev. Robert Hughes, of Uwchlaw'r Ffynnon, near Llanaelhaearn, a village on which Tre'r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, looks down in its primitive grimness from the top of one of the three heights of the Eifl, or Rivals as English people call them. The district is remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants, and Mr. Hughes counted fifteen farmers in his immediate neighbourhood whose average age was eighty-three; and four years previously the average age of eighteen of them was no less than eighty-five. He himself was, when I met him, seventy-one years of age, and he considered that he represented the traditions of more than a century and a half, as he was a boy of twelve when one of his grandfathers died at the age of ninety-two: the age reached by one of his grandmothers was all but equal, while his father died only a few years ago, after nearly reaching his ninety-fifth birthday. Story-telling was kept alive in the parish of Llanaelhaearn by the institution known there as the pilnos, or peeling night, when the neighbours met in one another's houses to spend the long winter evenings dressing hemp and carding wool, though I guess that a pilnos was originally the night when people met to peel rushes for rushlights. When they left these merry meetings they were ready, as Mr. Hughes says, to see anything. In fact, he gives an instance of some people coming from a pilnos across the mountain from Nant Gwrtheyrn to Llithfaen, and finding the fairies singing and dancing with all their might: they were drawn in among them and found themselves left alone in the morning on the heather. Indeed, Mr. Hughes has seen the fairies himself: it was on the Pwllheli road, as he was returning in the grey of the morning from the house of his fiancée when he was twenty-seven. The fairies he saw came along riding on wee horses: his recollection is that he now and then mastered his eyes and found the road quite clear, but the next moment the vision would return, and he thought he saw the diminutive cavalcade as plainly as possible. Similarly, a man of the name of Solomon Evans, when, thirty years ago, making his way home late at night through Glynllifon Park, found himself followed by quite a crowd of little creatures, which he described as being of the size of guinea pigs and covered with red and white spots. He was an ignorant man, who knew no better than to believe to the day of his death, some eight or nine years ago, that they were demons. This is probably a blurred version of a story concerning Cwn Annwn, 'Hell hounds,' such as the following, published by Mr. O. M. Edwards in his Cymru for 1897, p. 190, from Mr. J. H. Roberts' essay mentioned above at p. 148:--'Ages ago as a man who had been engaged on business, not the most creditable in the world, was returning in the depth of night across Cefn Creini, and thinking in a downcast frame of mind over what he had been doing, he heard in the distance a low and fear-inspiring bark; then another bark, and another, and then half a dozen and more. Ere long he became aware that he was being pursued by dogs, and that they were Cwn Annwn. He beheld them coming: he tried to flee, but he felt quite powerless and could not escape. Nearer and nearer they came, and he saw the shepherd with them: his face was black and he had horns on his head. They had come round him and stood in a semicircle ready to rush upon him, when he had a remarkable deliverance: he remembered that he had in his pocket a small cross, which he showed them. They fled in the greatest terror in all directions, and this accounts for the proverb, Mwy na'r cythraul at y groes (Any more than the devil to the cross).' That is Mr. Roberts' story; but several allusions have already been made to Cwn Annwn. It would be right probably to identify them in the first instance with the pack with which Arawn, king of Annwn, is found hunting by Pwyll, king of Dyfed, when the latter happens to meet him in Glyn Cuch in his own realm. Then in a poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen we find Gwyn ab Nûd with a pack led by Dormarth, a hound with a red snout which he kept close to the ground when engaged in the chase; similarly in the story of Iolo ab Huw the dogs are treated as belonging to Gwyn. But on the whole the later idea has more usually been, that the devil is the huntsman, that his dogs give chase in the air, that their quarry consists of the souls of the departed, and that their bark forebodes a death, since they watch for the souls of men about to die. This, however, might be objected to as pagan; so I have heard the finishing touch given to it in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, by one who, like Mr. Pughe, explained that it is the souls only of notoriously wicked men and well-known evil livers. With this limitation the pack [81] seems in no immediate danger of being regarded as poaching. To return to Llanaelhaearn, it is right to say that good spirits too, who attend on good Calvinists, are there believed in. Morris Hughes, of Cwm Corryn, was the first Calvinistic Methodist at Llanaelhaearn; he was great-grandfather to Robert Hughes' wife; and he used to be followed by two pretty little yellow birds. He would call to them, 'Wryd, Wryd!' and they would come and feed out of his hand, and when he was dying they came and flapped their wings against his window. This was testified to by John Thomas, of Moelfre Bach, who was present at the time. Thomas died some twenty-five years ago, at the age of eighty-seven. I have heard this story from other people, but I do not know what to make of it, though I may add that the little birds are believed to have been angels. In Mr. Rees' Welsh Saints, pp. 305-6, Gwryd is given as the name of a friar who lived about the end of the twelfth century, and has been commemorated on November 1; and the author adds a note referring to the Cambrian Register for 1800, vol. iii. p. 221, where it is said that Gwryd relieved the bard Einion ab Gwalchmai of some oppression, probably mental, which had afflicted him for seven years. Is one to suppose that Gwryd sent two angels in the form of little birds to protect the first Llanaelhaearn Methodist? The call 'Wryd, Wryd,' would seem to indicate that the name was not originally Gwryd, but Wryd, to be identified possibly with the Pictish name Uoret in an inscription at St. Vigean's, near Arbroath, and to be distinguished from the Welsh word gwryd, 'valour,' and from the Welsh name Gwriad, representing what in its Gaulish form was Viriatus. We possibly have the name Wryd in Hafod Wryd, a place in the Machno Valley above Bettws y Coed; otherwise one would have expected Hafod y Gwryd, making colloquially, Hafod Gwryd. Mr. Hughes told me a variety of things about Nant Gwrtheyrn, one of the spots where the Vortigern story is localized. The Nant is a sort of a cul de sac hollow opening to the sea at the foot of the Eifl. There is a rock there called Y Farches, and the angle of the sea next to the old castle, which seems to be merely a mound, is called Y Llynclyn, or 'The Whirlpool'; and this is perhaps an important item in the localizing of Vortigern's city there. I was informed by Mr. Hughes that the grave of Olfyn is in this Nant, with a razed church close by: both are otherwise quite unknown to me. Coming away from this weird spot to the neighbourhood of Celynnog, one finds that the Pennard of the Mabinogi of Math is now called Pennarth, and has on it a well-known cromlech. Of course, I did not leave Mr. Hughes without asking him about Caer Arianrhod, and I found that he called it Tre' Gaer Anrheg: he described it as a stony patch in the sea, and it can, he says, be reached on foot when the ebb is at its lowest in spring and autumn. The story he had heard about it when he was a boy at school with David Thomas, better known by his bardic name of Dafyd Du Eryri, was the following:-- 'Tregaer Anrheg was inhabited by a family of robbers, and among other things they killed and robbed a man at Glyn Iwrch, near the further wall of Glynnllifon Park: this completed the measure of their lawlessness. There was one woman, however, living with them at Tregaer Anrheg, who was not related to them, and as she went out one evening with her pitcher to fetch water, she heard a voice crying out, Dos i ben y bryn i wel'd rhyfedod, that is, Go up the hill to see a wonder. She obeyed, and as soon as she got to the top of the hill, whereby was meant Dinas Dinlle, she beheld Tregaer Anrheg sinking in the sea.' As I have wandered away from the fairies I may add the following curious bit of legend which Mr. Hughes gave me:--'When St. Beuno lived at Celynnog, he used to go regularly to preach at Llandwyn on the opposite side of the water, which he always crossed on foot. But one Sunday he accidentally dropped his book of sermons into the water, and when he had failed to recover it a gylfin-hir, or curlew, came by, picked it up, and placed it on a stone out of the reach of the tide. The saint prayed for the protection and favour of the Creator for the gylfin-hir: it was granted, and so nobody ever knows where that bird makes its nest.' IV. One day in August of the same summer I went to have another look at the old inscribed stone at Gesail Gyfarch [82], near Tremadoc, and, instead of returning the same way, I walked across to Criccieth Station; but on my way I was directed to call at a farm house called Llwyn y Mafon Uchaf, where I was to see Mr. Edward Llewelyn, a bachelor then seventy-six years of age. He is a native of the neighbourhood, and has always lived in it; moreover, he has now been for some time blind. He had heard a good many fairy tales. Among others he mentioned John Roberts, a slater from the Garn, that is Carn Dolbenmaen, as having one day, when there was a little mist and a drizzling rain, heard a crowd of fairies talking together in great confusion, near a sheepfold on Llwytmor Mountain; but he was too much afraid to look at them. He also told me of a man at Ystum Cegid, a farm not far off, having married a fairy wife on condition that he was not to touch her with any kind of iron on pain of her leaving him for ever. Then came the usual accident in catching a horse in order to go to a fair at Carnarvon, and the immediate disappearance of the wife. At this point Mr. Llewelyn's sister interposed to the effect that the wife did once return and address her husband in the rhyme, Os byd anwyd ar fy mab, &c.: see pp. 44, 55 above. Then Mr. Llewelyn enumerated several people who are of this family, among others a girl, who is, according to him, exactly like the fairies. This made me ask what the fairies are like, and he answered that they are small unprepossessing creatures, with yellow skin and black hair. Some of the men, however, whom he traced to a fairy origin are by no means of this description. The term there for men of fairy descent is Belsiaid, and they live mostly in the neighbouring parish of Pennant, where it would never do for me to go and collect fairy tales, as I am told; and Mr. Llewelyn remembers the fighting that used to take place at the fairs at Penmorfa if the term Belsiaid once began to be heard. Mr. Llewelyn was also acquainted with the tale of the midwife that went to a fairy family, and how the thieving husband had deprived her of the use of one eye. He also spoke of the fairies changing children, and how one of these changelings, supposed to be a baby, expressed himself to the effect that he had seen the acorn before the oak, and the egg before the chick, but never anybody who brewed ale in an egg-shell: see p. 62 above. As to modes of getting rid of the changelings, a friend of Mr. Llewelyn's mentioned the story that one was once dropped into the Glaslyn river, near Bedgelert. The sort of children the fairies liked were those that were unlike their own; that is, bairns whose hair was white, or inclined to yellow, and whose skin was fair. He had a great deal to say of a certain Elis Bach of Nant Gwrtheyrn, who used to be considered a changeling. With the exception of this changing of children the fairies seemed to have been on fairly good terms with the inhabitants, and to have been in the habit of borrowing from farm houses a padell and gradell for baking. The gradell is a sort of round flat iron, on which the dough is put, and the padell is the patella or pan put over it: they are still commonly used for baking in North Wales. Well, the fairies used to borrow these two articles, and by way of payment to leave money on the hob at night. All over Lleyn the Tylwyth are represented as borrowing padell a gradell. They seem to have never been very strong in household furniture, especially articles made of iron. Mr. Llewelyn had heard that the reason why people do not see fairies nowadays is that they have been exorcised (wedi eu hoffrymu) for hundreds of years to come. About the same time I was advised to try the memory of Miss Jane Williams, who lives at the Graig, Tremadoc: she was then, as I was told, seventy-five, very quick-witted, but by no means communicative to idlers. The most important information she had for me was to the effect that the Tylwyth Teg had been exorcised away (wedi 'ffrymu) and would not be back in our day. When she was about twelve she served at the Gelli between Tremadoc and Pont Aberglaslyn. Her master's name was Siôn Ifan, and his wife was a native of the neighbourhood of Carnarvon; she had many tales to tell them about the Tylwyth, how they changed children, how they allured men to the fairy rings, and how their dupes returned after a time in a wretched state, with hardly any flesh on their bones. She heard her relate the tale of a man who married a fairy, and how she left him; but before going away from her husband and children she asked the latter by name which they would like to have, a dirty cow-yard (buches fudur) or a clean cow-yard (buches lân). Some gave the right answer, a dirty cow-yard, but some said a clean cow-yard: the lot of the latter was poverty, for they were to have no stock of cattle. The same question is asked in a story recorded by the late Rev. Elias Owen, in his Welsh Folk-lore, p. 82 [83]: his instance belongs to the neighbourhood of Pentrevoelas, in Denbighshire. V. When I was staying at Pwllheli the same summer, I went out to the neighbouring village of Four Crosses, and found a native of the place, who had heard a great many curious things from his mother. His name was Lewis Jones: he was at the time over eighty, and he had formerly been a saddler. Among other things, his mother often told him that her grandmother had frequently been with the fairies, when the latter was a child. She lived at Plâs Du, and once she happened to be up near Carn Bentyrch when she saw them. She found them resembling little children, and playing in a brook that she had to cross. She was so delighted with them, and stayed so long with them, that a search was made for her, when she was found in the company of the fairies. Another time, they met her as she was going on an errand across a large bog on a misty day, when there was a sort of a drizzle, which one might call either dew or rain, as it was not decidedly either, but something between the two, such as the Welsh would call gwlithlaw, 'dew-rain.' She loitered in their company until a search was made for her again. Lewis Jones related to me the story of the midwife--he pronounced it in Welsh 'midwaith'--who attended on a fairy. As in the other versions, she lost the sight of one eye in consequence of her discovering the gentleman fairy thieving; but the fair at which this happened was held in this instance at Nefyn. He related also how a farmer at Pennant had wedded a fairy called Bella. This tale proceeded like the other versions, and did not even omit the fighting at Penmorfa: see pp. 89, 93, 220. He had likewise the tale about the two youths who had gone out to fetch some cattle, and came, while returning about dusk, across a party of fairies dancing. The one was drawn into the circle, and the other was suspected at length of having murdered him, until, at the suggestion of a wizard, he went to the same place at the end of a year and a day: then he found him dancing, and managed to get him out. He had been reduced to a mere skeleton, but he inquired at once if the cattle he was driving were far ahead. Jones had heard of a child changed by the fairies when its mother had placed it in some hay while she worked at the harvest. She discovered he was not her own by brewing in an egg-shell, as usual. Then she refused to take any notice of him, and she soon found her own baby returned; but the latter looked much the worse for its sojourn in the land of the Tylwyth Teg. My informant described to me Elis Bach of Nant Gwrtheyrn, already mentioned, p. 221, who died somewhat more than forty years ago. His father was a farmer there, and his children, both boys and girls, were like ordinary folks, excepting Elis, who was deformed, his legs being so short that his body seemed only a few inches from the ground when he walked. His voice was also small and squeaky. However, he was very sharp, and could find his way among the rocks pretty well when he went in quest of his father's sheep and goats, of which there used to be plenty there formerly. Everybody believed Elis to have been a changeling, and one saying of his is still remembered in that part of the country. When strangers visited Nant Gwrtheyrn, a thing which did not frequently happen, and when his parents asked them to their table, and pressed them to eat, he would squeak out drily, Buta 'nynna buta'r cwbwl, that is to say, 'Eating that means eating all we have.' He told me further that the servant girls used formerly to take care to bring a supply of water indoors at the approach of night, that the fairies might find plenty in which to bathe their children, for fear that they might use the milk instead, if water was wanting. Moreover, when they had been baking, they took care to leave the fairies both padell and gradell, that they might do their baking in the night. The latter used to pay for this kindness by leaving behind them a cake of fairy bread and sometimes money on the hob. I have, however, not been able to learn anything about the quality or taste of this fairy food. He had also a great deal to say about the making of bonfires about the beginning of winter. A bonfire was always kindled on the farm called Cromlech on the eve of the Winter Calends or Nos Galan Gaeaf, as it is termed in Welsh; and the like were to be seen in abundance towards Llithfaen, Carnguwch, and Llanaelhaearn, as well as on the Merioneth side of the bay. Besides fuel, each person present used to throw into the fire a small stone, with a mark whereby he should know it again. If he succeeded in finding the stone on the morrow, the year would be a lucky one for him, but the contrary if he failed to recover it. Those who assisted at the making of the bonfire watched until the flames were out, and then somebody would raise the usual cry, when each ran away for his life, lest he should be found last. This cry, which is a sort of equivalent, well known over Carnarvonshire, of the English saying, 'The devil take the hindmost,' was in the Welsh of that county-- Yr hwch du gwta [84] A gipio'r ola'; that is to say, 'May the black sow without a tail seize the hindmost.' The cutty black sow is often alluded to nowadays to frighten children in Arfon, and it is clearly the same creature that is described in some parts of North Wales as follows:-- Hwch du gwta A cutty black sow Ar bob camfa On every stile, Yn nydu a chardio Spinning and carding Bob nos G'langaea'. Every Allhallows' Eve. In Cardiganshire this is reduced to the words:-- Nos Galan Gaea', On Allhallows' Eve Bwbach ar bob camfa. A bogie on every stile. Welsh people speak of only three Calends--Calan-mai, or the first of May; Calan-gaeaf, the Calends of Winter, or Allhallows; and Y Calan, or The Calends par excellence, that is to say, the first day of January, which last is probably not Celtic but Roman. The other two most certainly are, and it is one of their peculiarities that all uncanny spirits and bogies are at liberty the night preceding each of them. The Hwch du gwta is at large on Allhallows' Eve, and the Scottish Gaels have the name 'Samhanach' for any Allhallows' demon, formed from the word Samhain, Allhallows. The eve of the first of May may be supposed to have been the same, as may be gathered from the story of Rhiannon's baby and of Teyrnon's colt, both of which were stolen by undescribed demons that night--I allude to the Mabinogi of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. VI. At Nefyn, in Lleyn [85], I had some stories about the Tylwyth Teg from Lowri Hughes, the widow of John Hughes, who lives in a cottage at Pen Isa'r Dref, and is over seventy-four years of age. An aunt of hers, who knew a great many tales, had died about six years before my visit, at the advanced age of ninety-six. She used to relate to Lowri how the Tylwyth were in the habit of visiting Singrug, a house now in ruins on the land of Pen Isa'r Dref, and how they had a habit of borrowing a padell and gradell for baking: they paid for the loan of them by giving their owners a loaf. Her grandmother, who died not long ago at a very advanced age, remembered a time when she was milking in a corner of the land of Carn Bodüan, and how a little dog came to her and received a blow from her that sent it rolling away. Presently, she added, the dog reappeared with a lame man playing on a fiddle; but she gave them no milk. If she had done so, there was no knowing, she said, how much money she might have got. But, as it was, such singing and dancing were indulged in by the Tylwyth around the lame fiddler that she ran away as fast as her feet could carry her. Lowri's husband had also seen the Tylwyth at the break of day, near Madrun Mill, where they seem to have been holding a sort of conversazione; but presently one of them observed that he had heard the voice of the hen's husband, and off they went instantly then. The fairies were in the habit also of dancing and singing on the headland across which lie the old earthworks called Dinllaen. When they had played and enjoyed themselves enough, they used to lift a certain bit of sod and descend to their own land. My informant had also heard the midwife story, and she was aware that the fairies changed people's children; in fact, she mentioned to me a farm house not far off where there was a daughter of this origin then, not to mention that she knew all about Elis Bach. Another woman whom I met near Porth Dinllaen said, that the Dinllaen fairies were only seen when the weather was a little misty. At Nefyn, Mr. John Williams (Alaw Lleyn) got from his mother the tale of the midwife. It stated that the latter lost the sight of her right eye at Nefyn Fair, owing to the fairy she there recognized, pricking her eye with a green rush. During my visit to Aberdaron, my wife and I went to the top of Mynyd Anelog, and on the way up we passed a cottage, where a very illiterate woman told us that the Tylwyth Teg formerly frequented the mountain when there was mist on it; that they changed people's children if they were left alone on the ground; and that the way to get the right child back was to leave the fairy urchin without being touched or fed. She also said that, after baking, people left the gradell for the fairies to do their baking: they would then leave a cake behind them as pay. As for the fairies just now, they have been exorcised (wedi'ffrymu) for some length of time. Mrs. Williams, of Pwll Defaid, told me that the rock opposite, called Clip y Gylfinir, on Bodwydog mountain, a part of Mynyd y Rhiw, was the resort of the Tylwyth Teg, and that they revelled there when it was covered with mist; she added that a neighbouring farm, called Bodermud Isa', was well known at one time as a place where the fairies came to do their baking. But the most remarkable tale I had in the neighbourhood of Aberdaron was from Evan Williams, a smith who lives at Yr Ard Las, on Rhos Hirwaen. If I remember rightly, he is a native of Llaniestin, and what he told me relates to a farmer's wife who lived at the Nant, in that parish. Now this old lady was frequently visited by a fairy who used to borrow padell a gradell from her. These she used to get, and she returned them with a loaf borne on her head in acknowledgement. But one day she came to ask for the loan of her troell bach, or wheel for spinning flax. When handing her this, the farmer's wife wished to know her name, as she came so often, but she refused to tell her. However, she was watched at her spinning, and overheard singing to the whir of the wheel:-- Bychan a wyda' hi Little did she know Mai Sìli go Dwt That Silly go Dwt Yw f'enw i. Is my name. This explains to some extent the sìli ffrit sung by a Corwrion fairy when she came out of the lake to spin: see p. 64 above. At first I had in vain tried to make out the meaning of that bit of legend; but since then I have also found the Llaniestin rhyme a little varied at Llanberis: it was picked up there, I do not exactly know how, by my little girls this summer. The words as they have them run thus:-- Bychan a wyda' hi Mai Trwtyn-Tratyn Yw f'enw i. Here, instead of Sìli go Dwt or Sìli ffrit, the name is Trwtyn-Tratyn, and these doggerels at once remind one of the tale of Rumpelstiltzchen; but it is clear that we have as yet only the merest fragments of the whole, though I have been thus far unable to get any more. So one cannot quite say how far it resembled the tale of Rumpelstiltzchen: there is certainly one difference, which is at once patent, namely, that while the German Rumpelstiltzchen was a male fairy, our Welsh Sìli ffrit or Sìli go Dwt is of the other sex. Probably, in the Llaniestin tale, the borrowing for baking had nothing to do with the spinning, for all fairies in Lleyn borrow a padell and a gradell, while they do not usually appear to spin. Then may we suppose that the spinning was in this instance done for the farmer's wife on conditions which she was able to evade by discovering the fairy helper's name? At any rate one expects a story representing the farmer's wife laid under obligation by the fairy, and not the reverse. I shall have an opportunity of returning to this kind of tale in chapter x. The smith told me another short tale, about a farmer who lived not long ago at Deunant, close to Aberdaron. The latter used, as is the wont of country people, to go out a few steps in front of his house every night to ---- before going to bed; but once on a time, while he was standing there, a stranger stood by him and spoke to him, saying that he had no idea how he and his family were annoyed by him. The farmer asked how that could be, to which the stranger replied that his house was just below where they stood, and if he would only stand on his foot he would see that what he said was true. The farmer complying, put his foot on the other's foot, and then he could clearly see that all the slops from his house went down the chimney of the other's house, which stood far below in a street he had never seen before. The fairy then advised him to have his door in the other side of his house, and that if he did so his cattle would never suffer from the clwy' byr [86]. The result was that the farmer obeyed, and had his door walled up and another made in the other side of the house: ever after he was a most prosperous man, and nobody was so successful as he in rearing stock in all that part of the country. To place the whole thing beyond the possibility of doubt, Evan Williams assured me that he had often seen the farmer's house with the front door in the back. I mention this strange story in order to compare it, in the matter of standing on the fairy's foot, with that of standing with one's foot just inside a fairy ring. Compare also standing on a particular sod in Dyfed in order to behold the delectable realm of Rhys Dwfn's Children: see p. 158 above. VII. Soon afterwards I went to the neighbourhood of Aber Soch and Llanengan, where I was lucky enough to find Professor Owen of St. David's College, Lampeter, since appointed Bishop of St. David's, on a visit to his native place. He took me round to those of the inhabitants who were thought most likely to have tales to tell; but I found nothing about the fairies except the usual story of their borrowing padell a gradell, and of their changing children. However, one version I heard of the process of recovering the stolen child differs from all others known to me: it was given us by Margaret Edwards, of Pentre Bach, whose age was then eighty-seven. It was to the effect that the mother, who had been given a fairy infant, was to place it on the floor, and that all those present in the house should throw a piece of iron at it. This she thought was done with the view of convincing the Tylwyth Teg of the intention to kill the changeling, and in order to induce them to bring the right child back. The plan was, we are told, always successful, and it illustrates, to my thinking, the supposed efficacy of iron against the fairies. On the way to Aber Soch I passed by an old-fashioned house which has all the appearance of having once been a place of considerable importance; and on being told that its name is Castellmarch, I began thinking of March ab Meirchion mentioned in the Triads. He, I had long been convinced, ought to be the Welsh reflex of Labhraidh Lorc, or the Irish king with horse's ears; and the corresponding Greek character of Midas with ass's ears is so well known that I need not dwell on it. So I undertook to question various people in the neighbourhood about the meaning of the name of Castellmarch. Most of them analysed it into Castell y March, the 'Castle of the Steed,' and explained that the knight of the shire or some other respectable obscurity kept his horses there. This treatment of the word is not very decidedly countenanced by the pronunciation, which makes the name into one word strongly accented on the middle syllable. It was further related to me how Castellmarch was once upon a time inhabited by a very wicked and cruel man, one of whose servants, after being very unkindly treated by him, ran away and went on board a man-of-war. Some time afterwards the man-of-war happened to be in Cardigan Bay, and the runaway servant persuaded the captain of the vessel to come and anchor in the Tudwal Roads. Furthermore he induced him to shell his old master's mansion; and the story is regarded as proved by the old bullets now and then found at Castellmarch. It has since been suggested to me that the bullets are evidence of an attack on the place during the Civil War, which is not improbable. But having got so far as to find that there was a wicked, cruel man associated with Castellmarch, I thought I should at once hear the item of tradition which I was fishing for; but not so: it was not to be wormed out in a hurry. However, after tiring a very old blacksmith, whose memory was far gone, with my questions, and after he had in his turn tired me with answers of the kind I have already described, I ventured to put it to him at last whether he had never heard some very silly tale about the lord of Castellmarch, to the effect that he was not quite like other men. He at once admitted that he had heard it said that he had horse's ears, but that he would never have thought of repeating such nonsense to me. This is not a bad instance of the difficulty which one has in eliciting this sort of tradition from the people. It is true that, as far as regards Castellmarch, nothing, as it happens, would have been lost if I had failed at Aber Soch, for I got the same information later at Sarn Fyllteyrn; not to mention that after coming back to my books, and once more turning over the leaves of the Brython, I was delighted to find the tale there. It occurs at p. 431 of the volume for 1860. It is given with several other interesting bits of antiquity, and at the end the editor has put 'Edward Llwyd, 1693'; so I suppose the whole comes from letters emanating from the great Lhwyd, for so, or rather Lhuyd, he preferred to write his name. It is to the following effect:-- One of Arthur's warriors, whose name was March (or Parch) Amheirchion [87], was lord of Castellmarch in Lleyn. This man had horse's ears (resembling Midas), and lest anybody should know it, he used to kill every man he sought to shave his beard, for fear lest he should not be able to keep the secret; and on the spot where he was wont to bury the bodies there grew reeds, one of which somebody cut to make a pipe. The pipe would give no other sound than 'March Amheirchion has horse's ears.' When the warrior heard this, he would probably have killed the innocent man on that account, if he had not himself failed to make the pipe produce any other sound. But after hearing where the reed had grown, he made no further effort to conceal either the murders or his ears. This story of Edward Llwyd's clearly goes back to a time when some kind of a pipe was the favourite musical instrument in North Wales, and not the harp. VIII. Some time ago I was favoured with a short but interesting tale by Mr. Evan Lloyd Jones, of Dinorwig, near Llanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones, I may here mention, published not long ago, in Llais y Wlad (Bangor, North Wales), and in the Drych (Utica, United States of North America), a series of articles entitled Llen y Werin yn Sir Gaernarfon, or the Folklore of Carnarvonshire. I happened to see it at a friend's house, and I found at once that the writer was passionately fond of antiquities, and in the habit of making use of the frequent opportunities he has in the Dinorwig quarries for gathering information as to what used to be believed by the people of Arfon and Anglesey. The tale about to be given relates to a lake called Marchlyn Mawr, or the Great Horse-lake, for there are two lakes called Marchlyn: they lie near one another, between the Fronllwyd, in the parish of Llandegai, and the Elidyr, in the parishes of Llandeiniolen and Llanberis. Mr. Lloyd Jones shall tell his tale in his own words:-- Amgylchynir y Marchlyn Mawr gan greigiau erchyll yr olwg arnynt; a dywed tradodiad darfod i un o feibion y Rhiwen [88] unwaith tra yn cynorthwyo dafad oed wedi syrthio i'r creigiau i dod odiyno, darganfod ogof anferth: aeth i fewn idi a gwelod ei bod yn llawn o drysorau ac arfau gwerthfawr; ond gan ei bod yn dechreu tywyllu, a dringo i fynu yn orchwyl anhawd hyd yn nod yn ngoleu'r dyd, aeth adref y noswaith honno, a boreu drannoeth ar lasiad y dyd cychwynnod eilwaith i'r ogof, ac heb lawer o drafferth daeth o hyd idi: aeth i fewn, a dechreuod edrych o'i amgylch ar y trysorau oed yno:--Ar ganol yr ogof yr oed bwrd enfawr o aur pur, ac ar y bwrd goron o aur a pherlau: deallod yn y fan mai coron a thrysorau Arthur oedynt--nesaod at y bwrd, a phan oed yn estyn ei law i gymeryd gafael yn y goron dychrynwyd ef gan drwst erchyll, trwst megys mil o daranau yn ymrwygo uwch ei ben ac aeth yr holl le can dywylled a'r afagdu. Ceisiod ymbalfalu odiyno gynted ag y gallai; pan lwydod i gyrraed i ganol y creigiau taflod ei olwg ar y llyn, yr hwn oed wedi ei gynhyrfu drwydo a'i donnau brigwynion yn cael eu lluchio trwy daned ysgythrog y creigiau hyd y man yr oed efe yn sefyll arno; ond tra yr oed yn parhau i syllu ar ganol y llyn gwelai gwrwgl a thair o'r benywod prydferthaf y disgynod llygad unrhyw dyn arnynt erioed yndo yn cael ei rwyfo yn brysur tuag at enau yr ogof. Ond och! yr oed golwg ofnadwy yr hwn oed yn rhwyfo yn digon i beri iasau o fraw trwy y dyn cryfaf. Gallod y llanc rywfod dianc adref ond ni fu iechyd yn ei gyfansodiad ar ol hynny, a bydai hyd yn nod crybwyll enw y Marchlyn yn ei glywedigaeth yn digon i'w yrru yn wallgof. 'The Marchlyn Mawr is surrounded by rocks terrible to look at, and tradition relates how one of the sons of the farmer of Rhiwen, once on a time, when helping a sheep that had fallen among the rocks to get away, discovered a tremendous cave there; he entered, and saw that it was full of treasures and arms of great value; but, as it was beginning to grow dark, and as clambering back was a difficult matter even in the light of day, he went home that evening, and next morning with the grey dawn he set out again for the cave, when he found it without much trouble. He entered, and began to look about him at the treasures that were there. In the centre of the cave stood a huge table of pure gold, and on the table lay a crown of gold and pearls. He understood at once that they were the crown and treasures of Arthur. He approached the table, and as he stretched forth his hand to take hold of the crown he was frightened by an awful noise, the noise, as it were, of a thousand thunders bursting over his head, and the whole place became as dark as Tartarus. He tried to grope and feel his way out as fast as he could. When he had succeeded in reaching to the middle of the rocks, he cast his eye on the lake, which had been stirred all through, while its white-crested waves dashed through the jagged teeth of the rocks up to the spot on which he stood. But as he continued looking at the middle of the lake he beheld a coracle containing three women, the fairest that the eye of man ever fell on. They were being quickly rowed to the mouth of the cave; but the dread aspect of him who rowed was enough to send thrills of horror through the strongest of men. The youth was able somehow to escape home, but no health remained in his constitution after that, and even the mere mention of the Marchlyn in his hearing used to be enough to make him insane.' Mr. Lloyd Jones appends to the tale a note to the following effect:--There is a small eminence on the shore of the Marchlyn Mawr, in the parish of Llandegai, called Bryn Cwrwgl, or the 'Hill of the Coracle'; and Ogof y Marchlyn, or the 'Marchlyn Cave,' is a name familiar enough to everybody in these neighbourhoods. There were some--unless he ought to say that there still are some--who believed that there was abundance of treasure in the cave. Several young men from the quarries, both of the Cae and of Dinorwig, have been in the midst of the Marchlyn rocks, searching for the cave, and they succeeded in making their way into a cave. They came away, however, without the treasures. One old man, Robert Edwards (Iorwerth Sardis), used to tell him that he and several others had brought ropes from the quarry to go into the cave, but that they found no treasure. So far, I have given the substance of Mr. Jones' words, to which I would add the following statement, which I have from a native of Dinorwig:--About seventy years ago, when the gentry were robbing the poor of these districts of their houses and of the lands which the latter had enclosed out of the commons, an old woman called Siân William of the Garned was obliged to flee from her house with her baby--the latter was known later in life as the Rev. Robert Ellis, of Ysgoldy--in her arms. It was in one of the Marchlyn caves that she found refuge for a day and night. Another kind of tale connected with the Marchlyn Mawr is recorded in the Powys-land Club's Collections, Hist. and Arch., vol. xv. p. 137, by the Rev. Elias Owen, to the effect that 'a man who was fishing in the lake found himself enveloped in the clouds that had descended from the hills to the water. A sudden gust of wind cleared a road through the mist that hung over the lake, and revealed to his sight a man busily engaged in thatching a stack. The man, or rather the fairy, stood on a ladder. The stack and ladder rested on the surface of the lake.' IX. Mr. E. S. Roberts, of Llandysilio School, near Llangollen (p. 138), has sent me more bits of legends about the fairies. He heard the following from Mr. Thomas Parry, of Tan y Coed Farm, who had heard it from his father, the late Evan Parry, and the latter from Thomas Morris, of Eglwyseg, who related it to him more than once:--Thomas Morris happened to be returning home from Llangollen very late on one Saturday night in the middle of the summer, and by the time he reached near home the day had dawned, when he saw a number of the Tylwyth Teg with a dog walking about hither and thither on the declivity of the Eglwyseg Rocks, which hung threateningly overhead. When he had looked at them for some minutes, he directed his steps towards them; but as they saw him approaching they hid themselves, as he thought, behind a large stone. On reaching the spot, he found under the stone a hole by which they had made their way into their subterranean home. So ends the tale as related to Mr. Roberts. It is remarkable as representing the fairies looking rather like poachers; but there are not wanting others which speak of their possessing horses and greyhounds, as all gentlemen were supposed to. One of Mr. Roberts' tales is in point: he had it from Mr. Hugh Francis [89], of Holyhead House, Ruthin, and the latter heard it from Robert Roberts, of Amlwch, who has now been dead about thirty years:--About 105 years ago there lived in the parish of Llandyfrydog, near Llannerch y Med, in Anglesey, a man named Ifan Gruffyd, whose cow happened to disappear one day. Ifan Gruffyd was greatly distressed, and he and his daughter walked up and down the whole neighbourhood in search of her. As they were coming back in the evening from their unsuccessful quest, they crossed the field called after the Dyfrydog thief, Cae Lleidr Dyfrydog, where they saw a great number of little men on ponies quickly galloping in a ring. They both drew nigh to look on; but Ifan Gruffyd's daughter, in her eagerness to behold the little knights more closely, got unawares within the circle in which their ponies galloped, and did not return to her father. The latter now forgot all about the loss of the cow, and spent some hours in searching for his daughter; but at last he had to go home without her, in the deepest sadness. A few days afterwards he went to Mynadwyn to consult John Roberts, who was a magician of no mean reputation. That 'wise man' told Ifan Gruffyd to be no longer sad, since he could get his daughter back at the very hour of the night of the anniversary of the time when he lost her. He would, in fact, then see her riding round in the company of the Tylwyth Teg whom he had seen on that memorable night. The father was to go there accompanied by four stalwart men, who were to aid him in the rescue of his daughter. He was to tie a strong rope round his waist, and by means of this his friends were to pull him out of the circle when he entered to seize his daughter. He went to the spot, and in due time he beheld his daughter riding round in great state. In he rushed and snatched her, and, thanks to his friends, he got her out of the fairy ring before the little men had time to think of it. The first thing Ifan's daughter asked him was, if he had found the cow, for she had not the slightest reckoning of the time she had spent with the fairies. Whilst I am about it, I may as well go through Mr. Roberts' contributions. The next is also a tale related to him by Mr. Hugh Francis, and, like the last, it comes from Anglesey. Mr. Francis' great-grandfather was called Robert Francis, and he had a mill at Aberffraw about 100 years ago; and the substance of the following tale was often repeated in the hearing of Mr. Roberts' informant by his father and his grandfather:--In winter Robert Francis used to remain very late at work drying corn in his kiln. As it was needful to keep a steady fire going, he used to go backwards and forwards from the house, looking after it not unfrequently until it was two o'clock in the morning. Once on a time he happened to leave a cauldron full of water on the floor of the kiln, and great was his astonishment on returning to find two little people washing themselves in the water. He abstained from entering to disturb them, and went back to the house to tell his wife of it. 'Oh,' said she, 'they are fairies.' He presently went back to the kiln and found that they were gone. He fancied they were man and wife. However, they had left the place very clean, and to crown all, he found a sum of money left by them to pay him, as he supposed, for the water and the use of the kiln. The ensuing night many more fairies came to the kiln, for the visitors of the previous night had brought their children with them; and the miller found them busy bathing them and looking very comfortable in the warm room where they were. The pay that night was also more considerable than the night before, as the visitors were more numerous. After this the miller never failed to leave a vessel full of water in the kiln every night, and the fairies availed themselves of it for years, until, in fact, they took offence at the miller telling the neighbours of the presents of money which had been left him in the kiln. Thenceforth no fairies were known to frequent the kiln belonging to the Aberffraw mill. The last tale communicated to me by Mr. Roberts is the following, which he elicited from Margaret Davies, his housekeeper, by reading to her some of the fairy legends published in the Cymmrodor a short while ago--probably the Corwrion series, one of which bears great resemblance to hers. Mrs. Davies, who is sixty-one years of age, says that when her parents, Edward and Ann Williams, lived at Rhoslydan, near Bryneglwys, in Yale, some seventy-five years ago, the servant man happened one day in the spring to be ploughing in a field near the house. As he was turning his team back at one end of the field, he heard some one calling out from the other end, Y mae eisieu hoelen yn y pìl, or 'The peel wants a nail'; for pìl is the English peel, a name given to a sort of shovel provided with a long handle for placing loaves in an oven, and for getting them out again. When at length the ploughman had reached the end of the field whence he guessed the call to have proceeded, he there saw a small peel, together with a hammer and a nail, under the hedge. He saw that the peel required a nail to keep it together, and as everything necessary for mending it were there ready to hand, he did as it had been suggested. Then he followed at the plough-tail until he came round again to the same place, and there he this time saw a cake placed for him on the spot where he had previously found the peel and the other things, which had now disappeared. When the servant related this to his master, he told him at once that it was one of the Tylwyth Teg of that locality that had called out to him. With this should be compared the story of the man who mended a fairy's plough vice: see p. 64 above. X. Early this year I had occasion to visit the well-known Hengwrt Library at Peniarth, and during my stay there Mr. Wynne very kindly took me to see such of the Llanegryn people as were most likely to have somewhat to say about the fairies. Many of the inhabitants had heard of them, but they had no long tales about them. One man, however, told me of a William Pritchard, of Pentre Bach, near Llwyngwryl, who died at sixty, over eighty years ago, and of a Rhys Williams, the clerk of Llangelynin, how they were going home late at night from a cock-fight at Llanegryn, and how they came across the fairies singing and dancing on a plot of ground known as Gwastad Meirionyd, 'the Plain of Merioneth,' on the way from Llwyngwryl to Llanegryn. It consists, I am told by Mr. Robert Roberts of Llanegryn, of no more than some twenty square yards, outside which one has a good view of Cardigan Bay and the heights of Merioneth and Carnarvonshire, while from the Gwastad itself neither sea nor mountain is visible. On this spot, then, the belated cockfighters were surrounded by the fairies. They swore at the fairies and took to their heels, but they were pursued as far as Clawd Du. Also I was told that Elen Egryn, the authoress, some sixty years ago, of some poetry called Telyn Egryn, had also seen fairies in her youth, when she used to go up the hills to look after her father's sheep. This happened near a little brook, from which she could see the sea when the sun was in the act of sinking in it; then many fairies would come out dancing and singing, and also crossing and re-crossing the little brook. It was on the side of Rhiwfelen, and she thought the little folks came out of the brook somewhere. She had been scolded for talking about the fairies, but she firmly believed in them to the end of her life. This was told me by Mr. W. Williams, the tailor, who is about sixty years of age; and also by Mr. Rowlands, the ex-bailiff of Peniarth, who is about seventy-five. I was moreover much interested to discover at Llanegryn a scrap of kelpie story, which runs as follows, concerning Llyn Gwernen, situated close to the old road between Dolgelley and Llanegryn:-- As a man from the village of Llanegryn was returning in the dusk of the evening across the mountain from Dolgelley, he heard, when hard by Llyn Gwernen, a voice crying out from the water:-- Daeth yr awr ond ni daeth y dyn! The hour is come but the man is not! As the villager went on his way a little distance, what should meet him but a man of insane appearance, and with nothing on but his shirt. As he saw the man making full pelt for the waters of the lake, he rushed at him to prevent him from proceeding any further. But as to the sequel there is some doubt: one version makes the villager conduct the man back about a mile from the lake to a farm house called Dyffrydan, which was on the former's way home. Others seem to think that the man in his shirt rushed irresistibly into the lake, and this I have no doubt comes nearer the end of the story in its original form. Lately I have heard a part of a similar story about Llyn Cynnwch, which has already been mentioned, p. 135, above. My informant is Miss Lucy Griffith, of Glynmalden, near Dolgelley, a lady deeply interested in Welsh folklore and Welsh antiquities generally. She obtained her information from a Dolgelley ostler, formerly engaged at the Ship Hotel, to the effect that on Gwyl Galan, 'the eve of New Year's Day,' a person is seen walking backwards and forwards on the strand of Cynnwch Lake, crying out:-- Mae'r awr wedi dyfod a'r dyn heb dyfod! The hour is come while the man is not! The ostler stated also that lights are to be seen on Cader Idris on the eve of New Year's Day, whatever that statement may mean. The two lake stories seem to suggest that the Lake Spirit was entitled to a victim once a year, whether the sacrifice was regarded as the result of accident or design. By way of comparison, one may mention the notion, not yet extinct, that certain rivers in various parts of the kingdom regularly claim so many victims: for some instances at random see an article by Mr. J. M. Mackinlay, on Traces of River Worship in Scottish Folklore, a paper published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1895-6, pp. 69-76. Take for example the following rhyme:-- Blood-thirsty Dee Each year needs three; But bonny Don She needs none. Or this:-- Tweed said to Till 'What gars ye rin sae still?' Till said to Tweed 'Though ye rin wi' speed An' I rin slaw, Yet whar ye droon ae man I droon twa.' XI. In the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig, between the Teifi and the Ystwyth basins, almost everybody can relate tales about the fairies, but not much that is out of the ordinary run of such stories elsewhere. Among others, Isaac Davies, the smith living at Ystrad Meurig, had heard a great deal about fairies, and he said that there were rings belonging to them in certain fields at Tan y Graig and at Llanafan. Where the rings were, there the fairies danced until the ground became red and bare of grass. The fairies were, according to him, all women, and they dressed like foreigners, in short cotton dresses reaching only to the knee-joint. This description is somewhat peculiar, as the idea prevalent in the country around is, that the fairy ladies had very long trains, and that they were very elegantly dressed; so that it is a common saying there, that girls who dress in a better or more showy fashion than ordinary look like Tylwyth Teg, and the smith confessed he had often heard that said. Similarly Howells, pp. 113, 121-2, finds the dresses of the fairies dancing on the Freni, in the north-east of Pembrokeshire, represented as indescribably elegant and varying in colour; and those who, in the month of May, used to frequent the prehistoric encampment of Moedin [90] or Moydin--from which a whole cantred takes its name in Central Cardiganshire--as fond of appearing in green; while blue petticoats are said, he says, to have prevailed in the fairy dances in North Wales [91]. Another showed me a spot on the other side of the Teifi, where the Tylwyth Teg had a favourite spot for dancing; and at the neighbouring village of Swyd Ffynnon, another meadow was pointed out as their resort on the farm of Dôl Bydyë. According to one account I had there, the fairies dressed themselves in very long clothes, and when they danced they took hold of one another's enormous trains. Besides the usual tales concerning men enticed into the ring and retained in Faery for a year and a day, and concerning the fairies' dread of pren cerdingen or mountain ash, I had the midwife tale in two or three forms, differing more or less from the versions current in North Wales. For the most complete of them I am indebted to one of the young men studying at the Grammar School, Mr. D. Lledrodian Davies. It used to be related by an old woman who died some thirty years ago at the advanced age of about 100. She was Pàli, mother of old Rachel Evans, who died seven or eight years ago, when she was about eighty. The latter was a curious character, who sometimes sang maswed, or rhymes of doubtful propriety, and used to take the children of the village to see fairy rings. She also used to see the Tylwyth, and had many tales to tell of them. But her mother, Pàli, had actually been called to attend at the confinement of one of them. The beginning of the tale is not very explicit; but, anyhow, Pàli one evening found herself face to face with the fairy lady she was to attend upon. She appeared to be the wife of one of the princes of the country. She was held in great esteem, and lived in a very grand palace. Everything there had been arranged in the most beautiful and charming fashion. The wife was in her bed with nothing about her but white, and she fared sumptuously. In due time, when the baby had been born, the midwife had all the care connected with dressing it and serving its mother. Pàli could see or hear nobody in the whole place but the mother and the baby. She had no idea who attended on them, or who prepared all the things they required, for it was all done noiselessly and secretly. The mother was a charming person, of an excellent temper and easy to manage. Morning and evening, as she finished washing the baby, Pàli had a certain ointment given her to rub the baby with. She was charged not to touch it but with her hand, and especially not to put any near her eyes. This was carried out for some time, but one day, as she was dressing the baby, her eyes happened to itch, and she rubbed them with her hand. Then at once she saw a great many wonders she had not before perceived; and the whole place assumed a new aspect to her. She said nothing, and in the course of the day she saw a great deal more. Among other things, she observed small men and small women going in and out, following a variety of occupations. But their movements were as light as the morning breeze. To move about was no trouble to them, and they brought things into the room with the greatest quickness. They prepared dainty food for the confined lady with the utmost order and skill, and the air of kindness and affection with which they served her was truly remarkable. In the evening, as she was dressing the baby, the midwife said to the lady, 'You have had a great many visitors to-day.' To this she replied, 'How do you know that? Have you been putting the ointment to your eyes?' Thereupon she jumped out of bed, and blew into her eyes, saying, 'Now you will see no more.' She never afterwards could see the fairies, however much she tried, nor was the ointment entrusted to her after that day. According, however, to another version which I heard, she was told, on being found out, not to apply the ointment to her eyes any more. She promised she would not; but the narrator thought she broke that promise, as she continued to see the fairies as long as she lived. Mr. D. Ll. Davies has also a version like the North Wales ones. He obtained it from a woman of seventy-eight at Bronnant, near Aberystwyth, who had heard it from one of her ancestors. According to her, the midwife went to the fair called Ffair Rhos, which was held between Ystrad Meurig and Pont Rhyd Fendigaid [92]. There she saw a great many of the Tylwyth very busily engaged, and among others the lady she had been attending upon. That being so, she walked up to her and saluted her. The fairy lady angrily asked how she saw her, and spat in her face, which had the result of putting an end for ever to her power of seeing her or anybody of her race. The same aged woman at Bronnant has communicated to Mr. D. Ll. Davies another tale which differs from all those of the same kind that I happen to know of. On a certain day in spring the farmer living at ---- (Mr. Davies does not remember the name of the farm) lost his calves; and the servant man and the servant girl went out to look for them, but as they were both crossing a marshy flat, the man suddenly missed the girl. He looked for her, and as he could not see her he concluded that she was playing a trick on him. However, after much shouting and searching about the place, he began to think that she must have found her way home, so he turned back and asked if the girl had come in, when he found to his surprise that nobody had seen her come back. The news of her being lost caused great excitement in the country around, since many suspected that he had for some reason put an end to her life: some accounted for it in this way, and some in another. But as nothing could be found out about her, the servant man was taken into custody on the charge of having murdered her. He protested with all his heart, and no evidence could be produced that he had killed the girl. Now, as some had an idea that she had gone to the fairies, it was resolved to send to 'the wise man' (Y dyn hysbys). This was done, and he found out that the missing girl was with the fairies: the trial was delayed, and he gave the servant man directions of the usual kind as to how to get her out. She was watched at the end of the period of twelve months and a day coming round in the dance in the fairy ring at the place where she was lost, and she was successfully drawn out of the ring; but the servant man had to be there in the same clothes as he had on when she left him. As soon as she was released and saw the servant she asked about the calves. On the way home she told her master, the servant man, and the others, that she would stay with them until her master should strike her with iron, but they went their way home in great joy at having found her. One day, however, when her master was about to start from home, and whilst he was getting the horse and cart ready, he asked the girl to assist him, which she did willingly; but as he was bridling the horse, the bit touched the girl and she disappeared instantly, and was never seen from that day forth. I cannot explain this story, unless we regard it as made up of pieces of two different stories which had originally nothing to do with one another; consistency, however, is not to be expected in such matters. Mr. D. Ll. Davies has kindly given me two more tales like the first part of the one I have last summarized, also one in which the missing person, a little boy sent by his mother to fetch some barm for her, comes home of himself after being away a year or more playing with the Tylwyth Teg, whom he found to be very nice, pleasant people; they had been exceedingly kind to him, and they even allowed him to take the bottle with the barm home at the last. This was somewhere between Swyd Ffynnon and Carmarthen. Mr. D. Ll. Davies finds, what I have not found anywhere else, that it was a common idea among the old people in Cardiganshire, that once you came across one of the fairies you could not easily be rid of him; since the fairies were little beings of a very devoted nature. Once a man had become friendly with one of them, the latter would be present with him almost everywhere he went, until it became a burden to him. However, popular belief did not adopt this item of faith without another to neutralize it if necessary: so if one was determined to get rid of the fairy companion, one had in the last resort only to throw a piece of rusty iron at him to be quit of him for ever. Nothing was a greater insult to the fairies. But though they were not difficult to make friends of, they never forgave those who offended them: forgiveness was not an element in their nature. The general account my informant gives of the outward appearance of the fairies as he finds them in the popular belief, is that they were a small handsome race, and that their women dressed gorgeously in white, while the men were content with garments of a dark grey colour, usually including knee-breeches. As might be expected, the descriptions differ very much in different neighbourhoods, and even in different tales from the same neighbourhood: this will surprise no one. It was in the night they came out, generally near water, to sing and dance, and also to steal whatever took their fancy; for thieving was always natural to them; but no one ever complained of it, as it was supposed to bring good luck. XII. Mr. Richard L. Davies, teacher of the Board School at Ystalyfera, in the Tawë Valley, has been kind enough to write out for me a budget of ideas about the Cwm Tawë Fairies, as retailed to him by a native who took great delight in the traditions of his neighbourhood, John Davies (Shôn o'r Bont), who was a storekeeper at Ystalyfera. He died an old man about three years ago. I give his stories as transmitted to me by Mr. Davies, but the reader will find them a little hazy now and then, as when the fairies are made into ordinary conjurer's devils:-- Rhywbeth rhyfed yw yr hen Gastell yna (gan olygu Craig Ynys Geinon): yr wyf yn cofio yr amser pan y bydai yn dychryn gan bobl fyned yn agos ato--yn enwedig y nos: yr oed yn dra pheryglus rhag i dyn gael ei gymeryd at Bendith eu Mamau. Fe dywedir fod wmred o'r rheiny yna, er na wn i pa le y maent yn cadw. 'R oed yr hen bobl yn arferol o dweyd fod pwll yn rhywle bron canol y Castell, tua llathen o led, ac yn bump neu chwech llath o dyfnder, a charreg tua thair tynnell o bwysau ar ei wyneb e', a bod fford dan y daear gandynt o'r pwll hynny bob cam i ogof Tan yr Ogof, bron blaen y Cwm (yn agos i balas Adelina Patti, sef Castell Craig y Nos), mai yno y maent yn treulio eu hamser yn y dyd, ac yn dyfod lawr yma i chwareu eu pranciau yn y nos. Mae gandynt, mede nhw, ysgol aur, o un neu dwy ar hugain o ffyn; ar hyd honno y maent yn tramwy i fyny ac i lawr. Mae gandynt air bach, a dim ond i'r blaenaf ar yr ysgol dywedyd y gair hynny, mae y garreg yn codi o honi ei hunan; a gair arall, ond i'r olaf wrth fyned i lawr ei dywedyd, mae yn cauad ar eu hol. Dywedir i was un o'r ffermyd cyfagos wrth chwilio am wningod yn y graig, dygwyd dyweyd y gair pan ar bwys y garreg, idi agor, ac ido yntau fyned i lawr yr ysgol, ond am na wydai y gair i gauad ar ei ol, fe adnabu y Tylwyth wrth y draught yn diffod y canwyllau fod rhywbeth o le, daethant am ei draws, cymerasant ef atynt, a bu gyda hwynt yn byw ac yn bod am saith mlyned; ymhen y saith mlyned fe diangod a llon'd ei het o guineas gando. Yr oed efe erbyn hyn wedi dysgu y dau air, ac yn gwybod llawer am eu cwtches nhw. Fe dywedod hwn y cwbl wrth ffarmwr o'r gymdogaeth, fe aeth hwnnw drachefn i lawr, ac yr oed rhai yn dyweyd ido dyfod a thri llon'd cawnen halen o guineas, hanner guineas, a darnau saith-a-chwech, odiyno yr un diwrnod. Ond fe aeth yn rhy drachwantus, ac fel llawer un trachwantus o'i flaen, bu ei bechod yn angeu ido. Canys fe aeth i lawr y bedwared waith yngwyll y nos, ond fe daeth y Tylwyth am ei ben, ac ni welwyd byth o hono. Dywedir fod ei bedwar cwarter e' yn hongian mewn ystafell o dan y Castell, ond pwy fu yno i'w gwel'd nhw, wn i dim. Mae yn wir ei wala i'r ffarmwr crybwylledig fyned ar goll, ac na chlybuwyd byth am dano, ac mor wir a hynny i'w dylwyth dyfod yn abl iawn, bron ar unwaith yr amser hynny. A chi wydoch gystal a finnau, eu bod nhw yn dywedyd fod ffyrd tandaearol gandynt i ogofau Ystrad Fellte, yn agos i Benderyn. A dyna y Garn Goch ar y Drum (Onllwyn yn awr) maent yn dweyd fod canoed o dynelli o aur yn stôr gandynt yno; a chi glywsoch am y stori am un o'r Gethings yn myned yno i glodio yn y Garn, ac ido gael ei drawsffurfio gan y Tylwyth i olwyn o dân, ac ido fethu cael llonyd gandynt, hyd nes ido eu danfon i wneyd rhaff o sand! Fe fu gynt hen fenyw yn byw mewn ty bychan gerllaw i Ynys Geinon, ac yr oed hi yn gallu rheibo, mede nhw, ac yr oed sôn ei bod yn treulio saith diwrnod, saith awr, a saith mynyd gyda y Tylwyth Teg bob blwydyn yn Ogof y Castell. Yr oed y gred yn lled gyffredinol ei bod hi yn cael hyn a hyn o aur am bob plentyn a allai hi ladrata idynt hwy, a dodi un o'i hen grithod hwy yn ei le: 'doed hwnnw byth yn cynydu. Y fford y bydai hi yn gwneyd oed myned i'r ty dan yr esgus o ofyn cardod, a hen glogyn llwyd-du mawr ar ei chefn, ac o dan hwn, un o blant Bendith y Mamau; a bob amser os bydai plentyn bach gwraig y ty yn y cawell, hi gymerai y swyd o siglo y cawell, a dim ond i'r fam droi ei chefn am fynyd neu dwy, hi daflai y lledrith i'r cawell, ai ymaith a'r plentyn yn gyntaf byth y gallai hi. Fe fu plentyn gan dyn o'r gym'dogaeth yn lingran am flynydau heb gynydu dim, a barn pawb oed mai wedi cael ei newid gan yr hen wraig yr oed; fe aeth tad y plentyn i fygwth y gwr hysbys arni: fe daeth yr hen wraig yno am saith niwrnod i esgus bado y bachgen bach mewn dwfr oer, a'r seithfed bore cyn ei bod yn oleu, hi a gas genad i fyned ag ef dan rhyw bistyll, mede hi, ond medai'r cym'dogion, myned ag ef i newid a wnaeth. Ond, beth bynag, fe wellod y plentyn fel cyw yr wyd o hynny i maes. Ond gorfu i fam e' wneyd cystal a llw wrth yr hen wraig, y gwnai ei dwco mewn dwfr oer bob bore dros gwarter blwydyn, ac yn mhen y chwarter hynny 'doed dim brafach plentyn yn y Cwm. 'That is a wonderful thing, that old castle there, he would say, pointing to the Ynys Geinon Rock. I remember a time when people would be terrified to go near it, especially at night. There was considerable danger that one might be taken to Bendith eu Mamau. It is said that there are a great many of them there, though I know not where they abide. The old folks used to say that there was a pit somewhere about the middle of the Castle, about a yard wide and some five or six yards deep, with a stone about three tons in weight over the mouth of it, and that they had a passage underground from that pit all the way to the cave of Tan yr Ogof, near the top of the Cwm, that is, near Adelina Patti's residence at Craig y Nos Castle: there, it was said, they spent their time during the day, while they came down here to play their tricks at night. They have, they say, a gold ladder of one or two and twenty rungs, and it is along that they pass up and down. They have a little word; and it suffices if the foremost on the ladder merely utters that word, for the stone to rise of itself; while there is another word, which it suffices the hindmost in going down to utter so that the stone shuts behind him. It is said that a servant from one of the neighbouring farms, when looking for rabbits in the rock, happened to say the word as he stood near the stone, that it opened for him, and that he went down the ladder; but that because he was ignorant of the word to make it shut behind him, the fairies discovered by the draught putting out their candles that there was something wrong. So they found him out and took him with them. He remained living with them for seven years, but at the end of the seven years he escaped with his hat full of guineas. He had by this time learnt the two words, and got to know a good deal about the hiding places of their treasures. He told everything to a farmer in the neighbourhood, so the latter likewise went down, and some used to say that he brought thence thrice the fill of a salt-chest of guineas, half-guineas, and seven-and-sixpenny pieces in one day. But he got too greedy, and like many a greedy one before him his crime proved his death; for he went down the fourth time in the dusk of the evening, when the fairies came upon him, and he was never seen any more. It is said that his four quarters hang in a room under the Castle; but who has been there to see them I know not. It is true enough that the above-mentioned farmer got lost, and that nothing was heard respecting him; and it is equally true that his family became very well to do almost at once at that time. You know as well as I do that they say, that the fairies have underground passages to the caves of Ystradfellte, near Penderyn. There is the Garn Goch also on the Drum (now called Onllwyn); they say there are hundreds of tons of gold accumulated by them there, and you have heard the story about one of the Gethings going thither to dig in the Garn, and how he [sic] was transformed by the fairies into a wheel of fire, and that he could get no quiet from them until he sent them to manufacture a rope of sand!'--A more intelligible version of this story has been given at pp. 19-20 above. 'There was formerly an old woman living in a small house near Ynys Geinon; and she had the power of bewitching, people used to say: there was a rumour that she spent seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes with the fairies every year in the cave at the Castle. It was a pretty general belief that she got such and such a quantity of gold for every child she could steal for them, and that she put one of those old urchins of theirs in its place: the latter never grew at all. The way she used to do it was to enter people's houses with the excuse of asking for alms, having a large dark-grey old cloak on her back, and the cloak concealed one of the children of Bendith eu Mamau. Whenever she found the little child of the good woman of the house in its cradle, she would take upon herself to rock the cradle, so that if the mother only turned her back for a minute or two, she would throw the sham child into the cradle and hurry away as fast as she could with the baby. A man in the neighbourhood had a child lingering for years without growing at all, and it was the opinion of all that it had been changed by the old woman. The father at length threatened to call in the aid of "the wise man," when the old woman came there for seven days, pretending that it was in order to bathe the little boy in cold water; and on the seventh day she got permission to take him, before it was light, under a certain spout of water: so she said, but the neighbours said it was to change him. However that was, the boy from that time forth got on as fast as a gosling. But the mother had all but to take an oath to the old woman, that she would duck him in cold water every morning for three months, and by the end of that time there was no finer infant in the Cwm.' Mr. Davies has given me some account also of the annual pilgrimage to the Fan mountains to see the Lake Lady: these are his words on the subject--they recall pp. 15-16 above:-- 'It has been the yearly custom (for generations, as far as I can find) for young as well as many people further advanced in years to make a general excursion in carts, gambos, and all kinds of vehicles, to Llyn y Fan, in order to see the water nymph (who appeared on one day only, viz. the first Sunday in August). This nymph was said to have the lower part of her body resembling that of a dolphin, while the upper part was that of a beautiful lady: this anomalous form appeared on the first Sunday in August (if the lake should be without a ripple) and combed her tresses on the reflecting surface of the lake. The yearly peregrination to the abode of the Fan deity is still kept up in this valley--Cwmtawë; but not to the extent that it used to formerly.' XIII. Mr. Craigfryn Hughes has sent me another tale about the fairies: it has to do with the parish of Llanfabon, near the eastern border of Glamorganshire. Many traditions cluster round the church of Llanfabon, beginning with its supposed building by Saint Mabon, but which of the Mabons of Welsh legend he was, is not very certain. Not very far is a place called Pant y Dawns, or the Dance Hollow, in allusion to the visits paid to the spot by Bendith y Mamau, as the fairies are there called. In the same neighbourhood stand also the ruins of Castell y Nos, or the Castle of the Night [93], which tradition represents as uninhabitable because it had been built of stones from Llanfabon Church, and on account of the ghosts that used to haunt it. However, one small portion of it was usually tenanted formerly by a 'wise man' or by a witch. In fact, the whole country round Llanfabon Church teemed with fairies, ghosts, and all kinds of uncanny creatures:-- Mewn amaethdy ag syd yn aros yn y plwyf a elwir y Berth Gron, trigiannai gwedw ieuanc a'i phlentyn bychan. Yr oed wedi colli ei gwr, a'i hunig gysur yn ei hamdifadrwyd a'i hunigrwyd oed Gruff, ei mab. Yr oed ef yr amser hwn odeutu tair blwyd oed, ac yn blentyn braf ar ei oedran. Yr oed y plwyf, ar y pryd, yn orlawn o 'Fendith y Mamau'; ac, ar amser llawn lloer, bydent yn cadw dynion yn effro a'u cerdoriaeth hyd doriad gwawr. Rhai hynod ar gyfrif eu hagrwch oed 'Bendith' Llanfabon, ac yr un mor hynod ar gyfrif eu castiau. Lladrata plant o'r cawellau yn absenoldeb eu mamau, a denu dynion trwy eu swyno a cherdoriaeth i ryw gors afiach a diffaith, a ymdangosai yn gryn difyrrwch idynt. Nid rhyfed fod y mamau beunyd ar eu gwyliadwriaeth rhag ofn colli eu plant. Yr oed y wedw o dan sylw yn hynod ofalus am ei mab, gymaint nes tynnu rhai o'r cymydogion i dywedyd wrthi ei bod yn rhy orofalus, ac y bydai i ryw anlwc ordiwes ei mab. Ond ni thalai unrhyw sylw i'w dywediadau. Ymdangosai fod ei holl hyfrydwch a'i chysur ynghyd a'i gobeithion yn cydgyfarfod yn ei mab. Mod bynnag, un diwrnod, clywod ryw lais cwynfannus yn codi o gymydogaeth y beudy; a rhag bod rhywbeth wedi digwyd i un o'r gwartheg rhedod yn orwyllt tuag yno, gan adael y drws heb ei gau, a'i mab bychan yn y ty. Ond pwy a fedr desgrifio ei gofid ar ei gwaith yn dyfod i'r ty wrth weled eisiau ei mab? Chwiliod bob man am dano, ond yn aflwydiannus. Odeutu machlud haul, wele lencyn bychan yn gwneuthur ei ymdangosiad o'i blaen, ac yn dywedyd, yn groyw, 'Mam!' Edrychod y fam yn fanwl arno, a dywedod o'r diwed, 'Nid fy mhlentyn i wyt ti!' 'Ië, yn sicr,' atebai y bychan. Nid ymdangosai y fam yn fodlon, na'i bod yn credu mai ei phlentyn hi ydoed. Yr oed rhywbeth yn sisial yn barhaus wrthi mai nid ei mab hi ydoed. Ond beth bynnag, bu gyda hi am flwydyn gyfan, ac nid ymdangosai ei fod yn cynydu dim, tra yr oed Gruff, ei mab hi, yn blentyn cynydfawr iawn. Yr oed gwr bychan yn myned yn fwy hagr bob dyd hefyd. O'r diwed penderfynod fyned at y 'dyn hysbys,' er cael rhyw wybodaeth a goleuni ar y mater. Yr oed yn digwyd bod ar y pryd yn trigfannu yn Nghastell y Nos, wr ag oed yn hynod ar gyfrif ei ymwybydiaeth drwyadl o 'gyfrinion y fall.' Ar ol idi osod ei hachos ger ei fron, ac yntau ei holi, sylwod, 'Crimbil ydyw, ac y mae dy blentyn di gyd a'r hen Fendith yn rhywle; ond i ti dilyn fy nghyfarwydiadau i yn ffydlon a manwl, fe adferir dy blentyn i ti yn fuan. Yn awr, odeutu canol dyd y foru, tor wy yn y canol, a thafl un hanner ymaith odiwrthyt, a chadw y llall yn dy law, a dechreu gymysg ei gynwysiad yn ol a blaen. Cofia fod y gwr bychan gerllaw yn gwneuthur sylw o'r hyn ag a fydi yn ei wneuthur. Ond cofia di a pheidio galw ei sylw--rhaid ennill ei sylw at y weithred heb ei alw: ac odid fawr na ofynna i ti beth fydi yn ei wneuthur. A dywed wrtho mai cymysg pastai'r fedel yr wyt. A rho wybod i mi beth fyd ei ateb.' Dychwelod y wraig, a thrannoeth dilynod gyfarwydyd y 'dyn cynnil' i'r llythyren. Yr oed y gwr bychan yn sefyll yn ei hymyl, ac yn sylwi arni yn fanwl. Ym mhen ychydig, gofynnod, 'Mam, beth 'i ch'i 'neuthur?' 'Cymysg pastai'r fedel, machgen i.' 'O felly. Mi glywais gan fy nhad, fe glywod hwnnw gan ei dad, a hwnnw gan ei dad yntau, fod mesen cyn derwen, a derwen mewn dâr [94]; ond ni chlywais i na gweled neb yn un man yn cymysg pastai'r fedel mewn masgal wy iar.' Sylwod y wraig ei fod yn edrych yn hynod o sarug arni pan yn siarad, ac yr oed hynny yn ychwanegu at ei hagrwch, nes ei wneuthur yn wrthun i'r pen. Y prydnawn hwnnw aeth y wraig at y 'dyn cynnil' er ei hysbysu o'r hyn a lefarwyd gan y còr. 'O,' ebai hwnnw, 'un o'r hen frid ydyw!' 'Yn awr, byd y llawn lloer nesaf ym mhen pedwar diwrnod; mae yn rhaid i ti fyned i ben y pedair heol syd yn cydgyfarfod wrth ben Rhyd y Gloch; am deudeg o'r gloch y nos y byd y lleuad yn llawn. Cofia gudio dy hun mewn man ag y cei lawn olwg ar bennau y croesffyrd, ac os gweli rywbeth a bair i ti gynhyrfu, cofia fod yn llonyd, ac ymatal rhag rhodi ffrwyn i'th deimladau, neu fe distrywir y cynllun, ac ni chei dy fab yn ol byth.' Nis gwydai y fam anffodus beth oed i'w deall wrth ystori ryfed y 'dyn cynnil.' Yr oed mewn cymaint o dywyllwch ag erioed. O'r diwed daeth yr amser i ben; ac ar yr awr apwyntiedig yr oed yn ymgudio yn ofalus tu cefn i lwyn mawr yn ymyl, o ba le y caffai olwg ar bob peth o gylch. Bu am hir amser yno yn gwylio heb dim i'w glywed na'i weled--dim ond distawrwyd dwfn a phrudglwyfus yr hanner nos yn teyrnasu. O'r diwed clywai sain cerdoriaeth yn dynesu ati o hirbell. Nês, nês yr oed y sain felusber yn dyfod o hyd; a gwrandawai hithai gyda dydordeb arni. Cyn hir yr oed yn ei hymyl, a deallod mai gorymdaith o 'Fendith y Mamau' oedynt yn myned i rywle. Yr oedynt yn gannoed mewn rhif. Tua chanol yr orymdaith canfydod olygfa ag a drywanod ei chalon, ac a berod i'w gwaed sefyll yn ei rhedwelïau. Yn cerded rhwng pedwar o'r 'Bendith' yr oed ei phlentyn bychan anwyl ei hun. Bu bron a llwyr anghofio ei hun, a llamu tuag ato er ei gipio ymaith odiarnynt trwy drais os gallai. Ond pan ar neidio allan o'i hymgudfan i'r diben hwnnw medyliod am gynghor y 'dyn cynnil,' sef y bydai i unrhyw gynhyrfiad o'i heido distrywio y cwbl, ac na bydai idi gael ei phlentyn yn ol byth. Ar ol i'r orymdaith dirwyn i'r pen, ac i sain eu cerdoriaeth distewi yn y pellder, daeth allan o'i hymgudfan, gan gyfeirio ei chamrau tua 'i chartref. Os oed yn hiraethol o'r blaen ar ol ei mab, yr oed yn llawer mwy erbyn hyn; a'i hadgasrwyd at y còr bychan oed yn hawlio ei fod yn fab idi wedi cynydu yn fawr iawn, waith yr oed yn sicr yn awr yn ei medwl mai un o'r hen frid ydoed. Nis gwydai pa fod i'w odef am fynud yn hwy yn yr un ty a hi, chwaithach godef ido alw 'mam' arni hi. Ond beth bynnag, cafod digon o ras ataliol i ymdwyn yn wedaid at y gwr bychan hagr oed gyda hi yn y ty. Drannoeth aeth ar ei hunion at y 'dyn cynnil' i adrod yr hyn yr oed wedi bod yn llygad dyst o hono y noson gynt, ac i ofyn am gyfarwydyd pellach. Yr oedd y 'gwr cynnil' yn ei disgwyl, ac ar ei gwaith yn dyfod i'r ty adnabydod wrthi ei bod wedi gweled rhywbeth oed wedi ei chyffroi. Adrodod wrtho yr hyn ag oed wedi ei ganfod ar ben y croesffyrd; ac wedi ido glywed hynny, agorod lyfr mawr ag oed gando, ac wedi hir syllu arno hysbysod hi 'fod yn angenrheidiol idi cyn cael ei phlentyn yn ol gael iâr du heb un plufyn gwyn nac o un lliw arall arni, a'i llad; ac ar ol ei lladd, ei gosod o flaen tan coed, pluf a chwbl, er ei phobi. Mor gynted ag y buasai yn ei gosod o flaen y tan, idi gau pob twll a mynedfa yn yr adeilad ond un, a pheidio a dal sylw manwl ar ol y 'crimbil,' hyd nes bydai y iâr yn digon, a'r pluf i syrthio ymaith oddiarni bob un, ac yna i edrych ym mha le yr oed ef. Er mor rhyfed oed cyfarwydyd y 'gwr,' penderfynod ei gynnyg; a thrannoeth aeth i chwilio ym mhlith y ieir oed yno am un o'r desgrifiad angenrheidiol; ond er ei siomedigaeth method a chael yr un. Aeth o'r naill ffermdy i'r llall i chwilio, ond ymdangosai ffawd fel yn gwgu arni--waith method a chael yr un. Pan ym mron digaloni gan ei haflwydiant daeth ar draws un mewn amaethdy yng nghwr y plwyf a phrynod hi yn dioedi. Ar ol dychwelyd adref gosodod y tan mewn trefn, a lladod yr iâr, gan ei gosod o flaen y tan disglaer a losgai ar yr alch. Pan yn edrych arni yn pobi, anghofiod y 'crimbil' yn hollol, ac yr oed wedi syrthio i rywfath o brudlewyg, pryd y synnwyd hi gan sain cerdoriaeth y tu allan i'r ty, yn debyg i'r hyn a glywod ychydig nosweithiau cyn hynny ar ben y croesffyrd. Yr oed y pluf erbyn hyn wedi syrthio ymaith odiar y iâr, ac erbyn edrych yr oed y 'crimbil' wedi diflannu. Edrychai y fam yn wyllt o'i deutu, ac er ei llawenyd clywai lais ei mab colledig yn galw arni y tu allan. Rhedod i'w gyfarfod, gan ei gofleidio yn wresog; a phan ofynod ym mha le yr oed wedi bod cyhyd, nid oed gando gyfrif yn y byd i'w rodi ond mai yn gwrando ar ganu hyfryd yr oed wedi bod. Yr oed yn deneu a threuliedig iawn ei wed pan adferwyd ef. Dyna ystori 'Y Plentyn Colledig.' 'At a farm house still remaining in the parish of Llanfabon, which is called the Berth Gron, there lived once upon a time a young widow and her infant child. After losing her husband her only comfort in her bereavement and solitary state was young Griff, her son. He was about three years old and a fine child for his age. The parish was then crammed full of Bendith y Mamau, and when the moon was bright and full they were wont to keep people awake with their music till the break of day. The fairies of Llanfabon were remarkable on account of their ugliness, and they were equally remarkable on account of the tricks they played. Stealing children from their cradles during the absence of their mothers, and luring men by means of their music into some pestilential and desolate bog, were things that seemed to afford them considerable amusement. It was no wonder then that mothers used to be daily on the watch lest they should lose their children. The widow alluded to was remarkably careful about her son, so much so, that it made some of the neighbours say that she was too anxious about him and that some misfortune would overtake her child. But she paid no attention to their words, as all her joy, her comfort, and her hopes appeared to meet together in her child. However, one day she heard a moaning voice ascending from near the cow-house, and lest anything had happened to the cattle, she ran there in a fright, leaving the door of the house open and her little son in the cradle. Who can describe her grief on her coming in and seeing that her son was missing? She searched everywhere for him, but it was in vain. About sunset, behold a little lad made his appearance before her and said to her quite distinctly, "Mother." She looked minutely at him, and said at last, "Thou art not my child." "I am truly," said the little one. But the mother did not seem satisfied about it, nor did she believe it was her child. Something whispered to her constantly, as it were, that it was not her son. However, he remained with her a whole year, but he did not seem to grow at all, whereas Griff, her son, was a very growing child. Besides, the little fellow was getting uglier every day. At last she resolved to go to the "wise man," in order to have information and light on the matter. There happened then to be living at Castell y Nos, "Castle of the Night," a man who was remarkable for his thorough acquaintance with the secrets of the evil one. When she had laid her business before him and he had examined her, he addressed the following remark to her: "It is a crimbil [95], and thy own child is with those old Bendith somewhere or other: if thou wilt follow my directions faithfully and minutely thy child will be restored to thee soon. Now, about noon to-morrow cut an egg through the middle; throw the one half away from thee, but keep the other in thy hand, and proceed to mix it backwards and forwards. See that the little fellow be present paying attention to what thou art doing, but take care not to call his attention to it--his attention must be drawn to it without calling to him--and very probably he will ask what thou wouldst be doing. Thou art to say that it is mixing a pasty for the reapers that thou art. Let me know what he will then say." The woman returned, and on the next day she followed the cunning man's [96] advice to the letter: the little fellow stood by her and watched her minutely; presently he asked, "Mother, what are you doing?" "Mixing a pasty for the reapers, my boy." "Oh, that is it. I heard from my father--he had heard it from his father and that one from his father--that an acorn was before the oak, and that the oak was in the earth; but I have neither heard nor seen anybody mixing the pasty for the reapers in an egg-shell." The woman observed that he looked very cross as he spoke, and that it so added to his ugliness that it made him highly repulsive. 'That afternoon the woman went to the cunning man in order to inform him of what the dwarf had said. "Oh," said he, "he is of that old breed; now the next full moon will be in four days--thou must go where the four roads meet above Rhyd y Gloch [97], at twelve o'clock the night the moon is full. Take care to hide thyself at a spot where thou canst see the ends of the cross-roads; and shouldst thou see anything that would excite thee take care to be still and to restrain thyself from giving way to thy feelings, otherwise the scheme will be frustrated and thou wilt never have thy son back." The unfortunate mother knew not what to make of the strange story of the cunning man; she was in the dark as much as ever. At last the time came, and by the appointed hour she had concealed herself carefully behind a large bush close by, whence she could see everything around. She remained there a long time watching; but nothing was to be seen or heard, while the profound and melancholy silence of midnight dominated over all. At last she began to hear the sound of music approaching from afar; nearer and nearer the sweet sound continued to come, and she listened to it with rapt attention. Ere long it was close at hand, and she perceived that it was a procession of Bendith y Mamau going somewhere or other. They were hundreds in point of number, and about the middle of the procession she beheld a sight that pierced her heart and made the blood stop in her veins--walking between four of the Bendith she saw her own dear little child. She nearly forgot herself altogether, and was on the point of springing into the midst of them violently to snatch him from them if she could; but when she was on the point of leaping out of her hiding place for that purpose, she thought of the warning of the cunning man, that any disturbance on her part would frustrate all, so that she would never get her child back. When the procession had wound itself past, and the sound of the music had died away in the distance, she issued from her concealment and directed her steps homewards. Full of longing as she was for her son before, she was much more so now; and her disgust at the little dwarf who claimed to be her son had very considerably grown, for she was now certain in her mind that he was one of the old breed. She knew not how to endure him for a moment longer under the same roof with her, much less his addressing her as "mother." However, she had enough restraining grace to behave becomingly towards the ugly little fellow that was with her in the house. On the morrow she went without delay to the "wise man" to relate what she had witnessed the previous night, and to seek further advice. The cunning man expected her, and as she entered he perceived by her looks that she had seen something that had disturbed her. She told him what she had beheld at the cross-roads, and when he had heard it he opened a big book which he had; then, after he had long pored over it, he told her, that before she could get her child back, it was necessary for her to find a black hen without a single white feather, or one of any other colour than black: this she was to place to bake before a wood [98] fire with its feathers and all intact. Moreover, as soon as she placed it before the fire, she was to close every hole and passage in the walls except one, and not to look very intently after the crimbil until the hen was done enough and the feathers had fallen off it every one: then she might look where he was. 'Strange as the advice of the wise man sounded, she resolved to try it; so she went the next day to search among the hens for one of the requisite description; but to her disappointment she failed to find one. She then walked from one farm house to another in her search; but fortune appeared to scowl at her, as she seemed to fail in her object. When, however, she was nearly disheartened, she came across the kind of hen she wanted at a farm at the end of the parish. She bought it, and after returning home she arranged the fire and killed the hen, which she placed in front of the bright fire burning on the hearth. Whilst watching the hen baking she altogether forgot the crimbil; and she fell into a sort of swoon, when she was astonished by the sound of music outside the house, similar to the music she had heard a few nights before at the cross-roads. The feathers had by this time fallen off the hen, and when she came to look for the crimbil he had disappeared. The mother cast wild looks about the house, and to her joy she heard the voice of her lost son calling to her from outside. She ran to meet him, and embraced him fervently. But when she asked him where he had been so long, he had no account in the world to give but that he had been listening to pleasant music. He was very thin and worn in appearance when he was restored. Such is the story of the Lost Child.' Let me remark as to the urchin's exclamation concerning the cooking done in the egg-shell, that Mr. Hughes, as the result of further inquiry, has given me what he considers a more correct version; but it is no less inconsequent, as will be seen:-- Mi glywais gan fy nhad ac yntau gan ei dad, a hwnnw gan ei dad yntau, Fod mesen cyn derwen a'i phlannu mwn dár: Ni chlywais yn unman am gymysg y bastai yn masgal wy iâr. I heard from my father and he from his father, and that one from his father, That the acorn exists before the oak and the planting of it in the ground: Never anywhere have I heard of mixing the pasty in the shell of a hen's egg. In Dewi Glan Ffrydlas' story from the Ogwen Valley, in Carnarvonshire, p. 62 above, it is not the cooking of a pasty but the brewing of beer in an egg-shell. However what is most remarkable is that the egg-shell is similarly used in stories from other lands. Mr. Hartland cites one from Mecklenburg and another from Scandinavia. He also mentions stories in which the imp measures his own age by the number of forests which he has seen growing successively on the same soil, the formula being of the following kind: 'I have seen the Forest of Ardennes burnt seven times,' 'Seven times have I seen the wood fall in Lessö Forest,' or 'I am so old, I was already in the world before the Kamschtschen Wood (in Lithuania) was planted, wherein great trees grew, and that is now laid waste again [99].' From these and the like instances it is clear that the Welsh versions here in question are partially blurred, as the fairy child's words should have been to the effect that he was old enough to remember the oak when it was yet but an acorn; and an instance of this explicit kind is given by Howells--it comes from Llandrygarn in Anglesey--see p. 139, where his words run thus: 'I can remember yon oak an acorn, but I never saw in my life people brewing in an egg-shell before.' I may add that I have been recently fortunate enough to obtain from Mr. Llywarch Reynolds another kind of estimate of the fairy urchin's age. He writes that his mother remembers a very old Merthyr woman who used to tell the story of the egg-shell cookery, but in words differing from all the other versions known to him, thus:-- Wy'n hén y dyd hedy, Ag yn byw cyn 'y ngeni: Eriôd ni welas i ferwi Bwyd i'r fedal mwn cwcwll [100] wy iâr. I call myself old this day, And living before my birth: Never have I seen food boiled For the reapers in an egg-shell. As to the urchin's statement that he was old and had lived before, it is part of a creed of which we may have something to say in a later chapter. At this point let it suffice to call attention to the same idea in the Book of Taliessin, poem ix:-- Hynaf uyd dyn pan anher A ieu ieu pop amser. A man is wont to be oldest when born, And younger and younger all the time. XIV. Before closing this chapter, I wish to touch on the question of the language of the fairies, though fairy tales hardly ever raise it, as they usually assume the fairies to speak the same language as the mortals around them. There is, however, one well-known exception, namely, the story of Eliodorus, already mentioned, p. 117, as recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis, who relates how Eliodorus, preferring at the age of twelve to play the truant to undergoing a frequent beating by his teacher, fasted two days in hiding in the hollow of a river bank, and how he was then accosted by two little men who induced him to follow them to a land of sports and other delights. There he remained long enough to be able, years later, to give his diocesan, the second Menevian bishop named David [101], a comprehensive account of the people and realm of Faery. After Eliodorus had for some time visited and revisited that land of twilight, his mother desired him to bring her some of the gold of the fairies. So one day he tried to bring away the gold ball with which the fairy king's son used to play; but he was not only unsuccessful, but subjected to indignities also, and prevented from evermore finding his way back to fairyland. So he had to go again to school and to the studies which he so detested; but in the course of time he learned enough to become a priest; and when, stricken in years, he used to be entreated by Bishop David to relate this part of his early history, he never could be got to unfold his tale without shedding tears. Among other things which he said of the fairies' mode of living, he stated that they ate neither flesh nor fish, but lived for the most part on various kinds of milk food cooked after the fashion of stirabout, flavoured as it were with saffron [102]. But one of the most curious portions of Eliodorus' yarn was that relating to the language of the fairies; for he pretended to have learnt it and to have found it to resemble his own Britannica Lingua, 'Brythoneg, or Welsh.' In the words instanced Giraldus perceived a similarity to Greek [103], which he accounted for by means of the fabulous origin of the Welsh from the Trojans and the supposed sojourn made in Greece by those erring Trojans on their way to Britain. Giraldus displays quite a pretty interest in comparative philology, and talks glibly of the Lingua Britannica; but one never feels certain that he knew very much more about it than the author of the Germania, the first to refer to it under that name. Tacitus, however, had the excuse that he lived at a distance and some eleven centuries before the advent of Gerald the Welshman. Giraldus' words prove, on close examination, to be of no help to us on the question of language; but on the other hand I have but recently begun looking out for stories bearing on it. It is my impression that such are not plentiful; but I proceed to subjoin an abstract of a phantom funeral tale in point from Ystên Sioned (Aberystwyth, 1882), pp. 8-16. Ystên Sioned, I ought to explain, consists of a number of stories collected and edited in Welsh by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, though he has not attached his name to it:--The harvest of 1816 was one of the wettest ever known in Wales, and a man and his wife who lived on a small farm in one of the largest parishes in the Hundred of Moedin (see p. 245 above) in the Demetian part of Cardiganshire went out in the evening of a day which had been comparatively dry to make some reaped corn into sheaves, as it had long been down. It was a beautiful night, with the harvest moon shining brightly, and the field in which they worked had the parish road passing along one of its sides, without a hedge or a ditch to separate it from the corn. When they had been busily at work binding sheaves for half an hour or more, they happened to hear the hum of voices, as if of a crowd of people coming along the road leading into the field. They stopped a moment, and looking in the direction whence the sounds came, they saw in the light of the moon a number of people coming into sight and advancing in their direction. They bent then again to their work without thinking much about what they had seen and heard; for they fancied it was some belated people making for the village, which was about a mile off. But the hum and confused sounds went on increasing, and when the two binders looked up again, they beheld a large crowd of people almost opposite and not far from them. As they continued looking on they beheld quite clearly a coffin on a bier carried on the shoulders of men, who were relieved by others in turns, as usual in funeral processions in the country. 'Here is a funeral,' said the binders to one another, forgetting for the moment that it was not usual for funerals to be seen at night. They continued looking on till the crowd was right opposite them, and some of them did not keep to the road, but walked over the corn alongside of the bulk of the procession. The two binders heard the talk and whispering, the noise and hum as if of so many real men and women passing by, but they did not understand a word that was said: not a syllable could they comprehend, not a face could they recognize. They kept looking at the procession till it went out of sight on the way leading towards the parish church. They saw no more of them, and now they began to feel uneasy and went home leaving the corn alone as it was; but further on the funeral was met by a tailor at a point in the road where it was narrow and bounded by a fence (clawd) on either side. The procession filled the road from hedge to hedge, and the tailor tried to force his way through it, but such was the pressure of the throng that he was obliged to get out of their way by crossing the hedge. He also failed to understand a word of the talk which he heard. In about three weeks after this sham funeral [104], there came a real one down that way from the upper end of the parish. Such, in brief, is the story so charmingly told by Silvan Evans, which he got from the mouths of the farmer and his wife, whom he considered highly honest and truthful persons, as well as comparatively free from superstition. The last time they talked to him about the incident they were very advanced in years, and both died within a few weeks of one another early in the year 1852. Their remains, he adds, lie in the churchyard towards which they had seen the toeli slowly making its way. For toeli is the phonetic spelling in Ystên Sioned of the word which is teulu in North Cardiganshire and in North Wales, for Old Welsh toulu. The word now means 'family,' though literally it should mean 'house-army' or 'house-troops,' and it is practically a synonym for tylwyth, 'family or household,' literally 'house-tribe.' Now the toeli or toulu is such an important institution in Demetian Cardiganshire and some parts of Dyfed proper, that the word has been confined to the phantom, and for the word family in its ordinary significations one has there to have recourse to the non-dialect form teulu [105]. In North Cardiganshire and North Wales the toeli is called simply a cladedigaeth, 'burial,' or anglad, 'funeral'; in the latter also cynhebrwng is a funeral. I may add that when I was a child in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, on the upper course of the Rheidol, hardly a year used to pass without somebody or other meeting a phantom funeral. Sometimes one got entangled in the procession, and ran the risk of being carried off one's feet by the throng. There is, however, one serious difference between our phantom funerals and the Demetian toeli, namely, that we recognize our neighbours' ghosts as making up the processions, and we have no trouble in understanding their talk. At this point a question of some difficulty presents itself as to the toeli, namely, what family does it mean?--is it the family and friends of the departed on his way to the grave, or does it mean the family in the sense of Tylwyth Teg, 'Fair Family,' as applied to the fairies? I am inclined to the latter view, but I prefer thinking that the distinction itself does not penetrate very deeply, seeing that a certain species of the Tylwyth Teg, or fairies, may, in point of origin, be regarded as deceased friends and ancestors of the tylwyth, in the ordinary sense of the word. In fact all this kind of rehearsal of events seems to have been once looked at as friendly to the men and women whom it concerned. This will be seen, for instance, in the Demetian account of the canwyll gorff, or corpse candle, as granted through the intercession of St. David to the people of his special care, as a means of warning each to get ready in time for his death; that is to say, to prevent death finding him unprepared. It is hard to guess why it was assumed that the canwyll gorff was unknown in other parts of Wales. One or two instances in point occur in Owen's Welsh Folklore, pp. 298-301; and I have myself heard of them being seen in Anglesey, while they were quite well known to members of Mrs. Rhys' mother's family, who lived in the parish of Waen Fawr, in the neighbourhood of Carnarvon. Nor does it appear that phantom funerals were at all confined to South Wales. Proof to the contrary is supplied to some extent in Owen's Folklore, p. 301; but there is no doubt that in recent times the belief in them, as well as in the canwyll gorff, has been more general and more vivid in South Wales than in North Wales, especially Gwyned. I have not been fortunate enough to come across anything systematic or comprehensive on the origin and meaning of ghostly rehearsals like the Welsh phantom funeral or coffin making. But the subject is an interesting one which deserves the attention of our leading folklore philosophers, as does also the cognate one of second sight, by which it is widely overlapped. Quite recently--at the end of 1899 in fact--I received three brief stories, for which I am indebted to the further kindness of Alaw Lleyn (p. 228), who lives at Bynhadlog near Edern in Lleyn, and two out of the three touch on the question of language. But as the three belong to one and the same district, I give the substance of all in English as follows:-- (1) There were at a small harbour belonging to Nefyn some houses in which several families formerly lived; the houses are there still, but nobody lives in them now. There was one family there to which a little girl belonged: they used to lose her for hours every day; so her mother was very angry with her for being so much away. 'I must know,' said she, 'where you go for your play.' The girl answered that it was to Pin y Wig, 'The Wig Point,' which meant a place to the west of the Nefyn headland: it was there, she said, she played with many children. 'Whose children?' asked the mother. 'I don't know,' she replied; 'they are very nice children, much nicer than I am.' 'I must know whose children they are,' was the reply; and one day the mother went with her little girl to see the children: it was a distance of about a quarter of a mile to Pin y Wig, and after climbing the slope and walking a little along the top they came in sight of the Pin. It is from this Pin that the people of Pen yr Allt got water, and it is from there they get it still. Now after coming near the Pin the little girl raised her hands with joy at the sight of the children. 'O mother,' said she, 'their father is with them to-day: he is not with them always, it is only sometimes that he is.' The mother asked the child where she saw them. 'There they are, mother, running down to the Pin, with their father sitting down.' 'I see nobody, my child,' was the reply, and great fear came upon the mother: she took hold of the child's hand in terror, and it came to her mind at once that they were the Tylwyth Teg. Never afterwards was the little girl allowed to go to Pin y Wig: the mother had heard that the Tylwyth Teg exchanged people's children. Such is the first story, and it is only remarkable, perhaps, for its allusion to the father of the fairy children. (2) There used to be at Edern an old woman who occupied a small farm called Glan y Gors: the same family lives there still. One day this old woman had gone to a fair at Criccieth, whence she returned through Pwllheli. As she was getting above Gors Geirch, which was then a turbary and a pretty considerable bog, a noise reached her ears: she stopped and heard the sound of much talking. By-and-by she beheld a great crowd of men and women coming to meet her. She became afraid and stepped across the fence to let them go by. There she remained a while listening to their chatter, and when she thought that they had gone far enough she returned to the road and began to resume her way home. But before she had gone many steps she heard the same sort of noise again, and saw again the same sort of crowd coming; so she recrossed the fence in great fear, saying to herself, 'Here I shall be all night!' She remained there till they also had gone, and she wondered what they could be, and whether they were people who had been to visit Plas Madrun--afterwards, on inquiry, she found that no such people had been there that day. Now the old woman was near enough to the passers-by to hear them talking (clebran) and chattering (bregliach), but not a word could she understand of what they uttered: it was not Welsh and she did not think that it was English--it is, however, not supposed that she knew English. She related further that the last crowd shouted all together to the other crowd in advance of them Wi, and that the latter replied Wi Wei or something like that. This account Alaw Lleyn has got, he says, from a great-granddaughter of the old woman, and she heard it all from her father, Bard Llechog, who always had faith in the fairies, and believed that they will come again to be seen of men and women. For he thought that they had their periods, a belief which I have come across elsewhere, and more especially in Carnarvonshire [106]. Now what are we to make of such a story? I recollect reading somewhere of a phantom wedding in Scotland, but in Wales we seem to have nothing more closely resembling this than a phantom funeral. Nevertheless what the old woman of Glan y Gors thought she saw looks by no means unlike a Welsh wedding marching on foot, especially when, as I have seen done, one party tried--seemingly in good earnest--to escape the other and to take the bride away from it. Moreover, that the figures making up the two crowds in her story are to be regarded as fairies is rendered probable by the next story, which describes the phantoms therein expressly as little men and little women. (3) The small farm of Perth y Celyn in Edern used to be held by an old man named Griffith Griffiths. In his best days he stood six foot, and he has left behind him a double reputation for bodily strength and great piety. My informant can well remember him walking to chapel with the aid of his two sticks. The story goes that one day, when he was in his prime, he set out from Perth y Celyn at two in the morning to walk to Carnarvon to pay his rent: there was no talk in those days of a carriage for anybody. After passing through Nefyn and Pistyll, he came in due time to Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl [107]: he writes this name also Bwlch Drws Wncwl, with the suggestion that it ought to be Bwlch Drws Encil, and that the place must have been of importance in the wars of the ancient Kymry. The high-road, he goes on to say, runs through the Bwlch, and as Griffith was entering this gap what should he hear but a great deal of talking. He stopped and listened, when to his surprise he saw coming towards him, devoid of all fear, a crowd of little men and little women. They talked aloud, but he could not understand a single word they said: he thought that it was neither Welsh nor English. They passed by him on the road, but he moved aside to the ditch lest they should knock against him; but no feeling of fear came upon him. The old man believed them to have been the Tylwyth Teg. In the story of the Moedin funeral the language of the toeli was not intelligible to the farmer and his wife, or to the tailor, and here in two stories from Lleyn we have it clearly stated that it was neither Welsh nor, probably, English. Since the fairies are always represented as old-fashioned in their ways, it is quite possible that they were once regarded as talking a more ancient language of the country. Which was it? An early version of these legends might perhaps have supplied the answer, and told us that it was Gwydelig or Goidelic, if not an earlier idiom, to wit that of the Aborigines before they learnt Goidelic from the Celts of the first wave of Aryan invasion, whether it was in the region of the Eifl or in the Demetian half of Keredigion. As to the former it is worthy of note that when Griffith had reached Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl he was in the outskirts of the Eifl Mountains, on one of whose heights, not very far off, is the extensive prehistoric fortress of Tre'r Ceiri, or the Town of the Keiri, a vocable which may be provisionally rendered by 'giants.' In any case it dissociates that stronghold from the Brythonic people of Wales. We shall find, however, that a Goidel, or Pict, buried in a cairn on Snowdon, is known as Rhita Gawr, 'Rhita the Giant'; and it is possible that in the Keiri of Tre'r Ceiri we have no other race than that of mixed Goidels and Picts whom the encroaching Brythons found in possession of the west of our island. Nay, one may say that this is rendered probable by the use made of the word ceiri in medieval Welsh: thus in some poetry composed by a certain Dafyd Offeiriad, and copied by Thomas Williams of Trefriw, we have a line alluding to Britain in the words:-- Coron ynys y Ceûri [108]. The Crown of the Giants' Island. Here Ynys y Ceûri inevitably recalls the fact that Britain is called Ynys y Kedyrn, or Island of the Mighty, in the Mabinogion, and also, in effect, in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen. But such stories as these, which enabled Geoffrey to say, i. 16, when he introduced his banal brood of Trojans, that up to that time Britain had only been inhabited by a few giants, are the legends, as will be pointed out later, of the Brythonicized Goidels of Wales. So one may infer that their ancestors had given this country the name of the Island of the Mighty, unless it should prove more accurate to suppose them to have somehow derived the term from the Aborigines. This last surmise is countenanced by the fact that in the Kulhwch story, the British Isles as a group are called Islands of the Mighty. The words are Teir ynys y kedyrn ae their rac ynys; that is, the Three Islands of the Mighty and their Three outpost Islands. That is not all, for in the same story the designation is varied thus: Teir ynys prydein ae their rac ynys [109], or Prydain's Three Islands and Prydain's Three outpost Islands; and the substantial antiquity of the designation 'the Islands of Prydain,' is proved by its virtual identity with that used by ancient Greek authors like Ptolemy, who calls both Britain and Ireland a nêsos Pretanikê, where Pretanic and Prydain are closely related words. Now our Prydain had in medieval Welsh the two forms Prydein and Prydyn. But some time or other there set in a tendency to desynonymize them, so as to make Ynys Prydein, 'the Picts' Island,' mean Great Britain, and Prydyn mean the Pictland of the North. But just as Cymry meant the plural Welshmen and the singular Wales, so Prydyn meant Picts [110] and the country of the Picts. Now the plural Prydyn has its etymological Goidelic equivalent in the vocable Cruithni, which is well known to have meant the Picts or the descendants of the Picti of Roman historians. Further, this last name cannot be severed from that of the Pictones [111] in Gaul, and it is usually supposed to have referred to their habit of tattooing themselves. At all events this agrees with the apparent meaning of the names Prydyn and Cruithni, from pryd and cruth, the words in Welsh and Irish respectively for form or shape, the designation being supposed to refer to the forms or pictures of various animals punctured on the skins of the Picts. So much as to the practical identity of the terms Prydyn, Cruithni, and the Greeks' Pretanic; but how could Cedyrn and Prydein correspond in the terms Ynys y Kedyrn and Ynys Prydein? This one is enabled to understand by means of ceûri or ceiri as a middle term. Now cadarn means strong or valiant, and makes the plural cedyrn; but there is another Welsh word cadr [112] which has also the meaning of valiant or powerful, and may have yielded some such a medieval form as ceidyr in the plural. Now this cadr is proved by its cognates [113] not to have always had the meaning of valiant or strong: its original signification was more nearly 'fine, beautiful, or beautified.' Thus what seems to have happened is, that cadarn, 'strong, powerful, mighty,' influenced the meaning of cadr, 'beautiful,' and eventually usurped its place in the name of the island, which from being Ynys y Ceidyr became Ynys y Cedyrn. But the former meant the 'Island of the fine or beautiful men,' which was closely enough the meaning also of the words Prydain, Cruithni, and Picts, as names of a people who delighted to beautify their persons by tattooing their skins and making themselves distingué in that savage fashion. That is not all, for on examination it turns out that the word ceiri, which has been treated up to this point as meaning giants, is but a double, so to say, of the word cadr in the plural, both as to etymology and original meaning of beautiful. It is a word in constant use in Carnarvonshire, where it is ironically applied to pretentious men fond of showing themselves off, especially in the matter of clothes. 'D ydi nhw 'n geiri! 'Aren't they swells!' Dyna i ch'i gawr! 'There's a fine fellow for you!' and so also with the feminine cawres. Of course the cawr of standard Welsh is familiar enough in the sense of giant to Carnarvonshire people, so the meaning can be best ascertained in the case of the plural ceiri, which they hardly ever meet with in print; and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, by ceiri they mean--in an ironical sense it is true--fine fellows, with reference not to great stature or strength but to their get-up. Thus one arrives at the true interpretation of the name Tre'r Ceiri as the Town of the Prydyn or Cruithni; that is to say, the Town of the Picts or the Aborigines, who showed themselves off decorated with pictures. So far also from Ynys y Ceiri being an echo of Ynys y Cedyrn, it turns out to be really the more original of the two. Such names, when they are closely examined, are apt to prove old beyond all hastily formed expectation. CHAPTER IV MANX FOLKLORE Be it remembrid that one Manaman Mack Clere, a paynim, was the first inhabitour of the ysle of Man, who by his Necromancy kept the same, that when he was assaylid or invaded he wold rayse such mystes by land and sea that no man might well fynde owte the ysland, and he would make one of his men seeme to be in nombre a hundred.--The Landsdowne MSS. The following paper exhausts no part of the subject: it simply embodies the substance of my notes of conversations which I have had with Manx men and Manx women, whose names, together with such other particulars as I could get, are in my possession. I have mostly avoided reading up the subject in printed books; but those who wish to see it exhaustively treated may be directed to Mr. Arthur W. Moore's book on The Folklore of the Isle of Man, to which may now be added Mr. C. Roeder's Contributions to the Folklore of the Isle of Man in the Lioar Manninagh for 1897, pp. 129-91. For the student of folklore the Isle of Man is very fairly stocked with inhabitants of the imaginary order. She has her fairies and her giants, her mermen and brownies, her kelpies and water-bulls. The water-bull or tarroo ushtey, as he is called in Manx, is a creature about which I have not been able to learn much, but he is described as a sort of bull disporting himself about the pools and swamps. For instance, I was told at the village of Andreas, in the flat country forming the northern end of the island, and known as the Ayre, that there used to be a tarroo ushtey between Andreas and the sea to the west: it was before the ground had been drained as it is now. And an octogenarian captain at Peel related to me how he had once when a boy heard a tarroo ushtey: the bellowings of the brute made the ground tremble, but otherwise the captain was unable to give me any very intelligible description. This bull is by no means of the same breed as the bull that comes out of the lakes of Wales to mix with the farmers' cattle, for there the result used to be great fertility among the stock, and an overflow of milk and dairy produce, but in the Isle of Man the tarroo ushtey only begets monsters and strangely formed beasts. The kelpie, or, rather, what I take to be a kelpie, was called by my informants a glashtyn; and Kelly, in his Manx Dictionary, describes the object meant as 'a goblin, an imaginary animal which rises out of the water.' One or two of my informants confused the glashtyn with the Manx brownie. On the other hand, one of them was very definite in his belief that it had nothing human about it, but was a sort of grey colt, frequenting the banks of lakes at night, and never seen except at night. Mermen and mermaids disport themselves on the coasts of Man, but I have to confess that I have made no careful inquiry into what is related about them; and my information about the giants of the island is equally scanty. To confess the truth, I do not recollect hearing of more than one giant, but that was a giant: I have seen the marks of his huge hands impressed on the top of two massive monoliths. They stand in a field at Balla Keeill Pherick, on the way down from the Sloc to Colby. I was told there were originally five of these stones standing in a circle, all of them marked in the same way by the same giant as he hurled them down there from where he stood, miles away on the top of the mountain called Cronk yn Irree Laa. Here I may mention that the Manx word for a giant is foawr, in which a vowel-flanked m has been spirited away, as shown by the modern Irish spelling, fomhor. This, in the plural in old Irish, appears as the name of the Fomori, so well known in Irish legend, which, however, does not always represent them as giants, but rather as monsters. I have been in the habit of explaining the word as meaning submarini; but no more are they invariably connected with the sea. So another etymology recommends itself, namely, one which comes from Dr. Whitley Stokes, and makes the mor in fomori to be of the same origin as the mare in the English nightmare, French cauchemar, German mahr, 'an elf,' and cognate words. I may mention that with the Fomori of mythic origin have doubtless been confounded and identified certain invaders of Ireland, especially the Dumnonians from the country between Galloway and the mouth of the Clyde, some of whom may be inferred to have coasted the north of Ireland and landed in the west, for example in Erris, the north-west of Mayo, called after them Irrus (or Erris) Domnann. The Manx brownie is called the fenodyree, and he is described as a hairy and apparently clumsy fellow, who would, for instance, thrash a whole barnful of corn in a single night for the people to whom he felt well disposed; and once on a time he undertook to bring down for the farmer his wethers from Snaefell. When the fenodyree had safely put them in an outhouse, he said that he had some trouble with the little ram, as it had run three times round Snaefell that morning. The farmer did not quite understand him, but on going to look at the sheep, he found, to his infinite surprise, that the little ram was no other than a hare, which, poor creature, was dying of fright and fatigue. I need scarcely point out the similarity between this and the story of Peredur, who, as a boy, drove home two hinds with his mother's goats from the forest: he owned to having had some trouble with the goats that had so long run wild as to have lost their horns, a circumstance which had greatly impressed him [114]. To return to the fenodyree, I am not sure that there were more than one in Man--I have never heard him spoken of in the plural; but two localities at least are assigned to him, namely, a farm called Ballachrink, in Colby, in the south, and a farm called Lanjaghan, in the parish of Conchan, near Douglas. Much the same stories, however, appear to be current about him in the two places, and one of the most curious of them is that which relates how he left. The farmer so valued the services of the fenodyree, that one day he took it into his head to provide clothing for him. The fenodyree examined each article carefully, and expressed his idea of it, and specified the kind of disease it was calculated to produce. In a word, he found that the clothes would make head and foot sick, and he departed in disgust, saying to the farmer, 'Though this place is thine, the great glen of Rushen is not.' Glen Rushen is one of the most retired glens in the island, and it drains down through Glen Meay to the coast, some miles to the south of Peel. It is to Glen Rushen, then, that the fenodyree is supposed to be gone; but on visiting that valley in 1890 [115] in quest of Manx-speaking peasants, I could find nobody there who knew anything of him. I suspect that the spread of the English language even there has forced him to leave the island altogether. Lastly, with regard to the term fenodyree, I may mention that it is the word used in the Manx Bible of 1819 for satyr in Isaiah xxxiv. 14 [116], where we read in the English Bible as follows: 'The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow.' In the Vulgate the latter clause reads: et pilosus clamabit alter ad alterum. The term fenodyree has been explained by Cregeen in his Manx Dictionary to mean one who has hair for stockings or hose. That answers to the description of the hairy satyr, and seems fairly well to satisfy the phonetics of the case, the words from which he derives the compound being fynney [117], 'hair,' and oashyr, 'a stocking'; but as oashyr seems to come from the old Norse hosur, the plural of hosa, 'hose or stocking,' the term fenodyree cannot date before the coming of the Norsemen; and I am inclined to think the idea more Teutonic than Celtic. At any rate I need not point out to the English reader the counterparts of this hairy satyr in the hobgoblin 'Lob lie by the Fire,' and Milton's 'Lubber Fiend,' whom he describes as one that Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And crop-full out of doors he flings, Ere the first cock his matin rings. Lastly, I may mention that Mr. Roeder has a great deal to say about the fenodyree under the name of glashtyn; for it is difficult to draw any hard and fast line between the glashtyn and the fenodyree, or even the water-bull, so much alike do they seem to have been regarded. Mr. Roeder's items of folklore concerning the glashtyns (see the Lioar Manninagh, iii. 139) show that there were male and female glashtyns, and that the former were believed to have been too fond of the women at Ballachrink, until one evening some of the men, dressed as women, arranged to receive some youthful glashtyns. Whether the fenodyree is of Norse origin or not, the glashtyn is decidedly Celtic, as will be further shown in chapter vii. Here it will suffice to mention one or two related words which are recorded in Highland Gaelic, namely, glaistig, 'a she-goblin which assumes the form of a goat,' and glaisrig, 'a female fairy or a goblin, half human, half beast.' The fairies claim our attention next, and as the only other fairies tolerably well known to me are those of Wales, I can only compare or contrast the Manx fairies with the Welsh ones. They are called in Manx, sleih beggey, or little people, and ferrishyn, from the English word fairies, as it would seem. Like the Welsh fairies, they kidnap babies; and I have heard it related how a woman in Dalby had a struggle with the fairies over her baby, which they were trying to drag out of the bed from her. Like Welsh fairies, also, they take possession of the hearth after the farmer and his family are gone to bed. A man in Dalby used to find them making a big fire in his kitchen: he would hear the crackling and burning of the fire when nobody else could have been there except the fairies and their friends. I said 'friends,' for they sometimes take a man with them, and allow him to eat with them at the expense of others. Thus, some men from the northern-most parish, Kirk Bride, went once on a time to Port Erin, in the south, to buy a supply of fish for the winter, and with them went a Kirk Michael man who had the reputation of being a persona grata to the fairies. Now one of the Port Erin men asked a man from the north who the Michael man might be: he was curious to know his name, as he had seen him once before, and on that occasion the Michael man was with the fairies at his house--the Port Erin man's house--helping himself to bread and cheese in company with the rest. As the fairies were regaling themselves in this instance on ordinary bread and cheese at a living Manxman's expense, the story may perhaps be regarded as not inconsistent with one mentioned by Cumming [118] to the following effect:--A man attracted one night as he was crossing the mountains, by fairy music, entered a fairy hall where a banquet was going on. He noticed among them several faces which he seemed to know, but no act of mutual recognition took place till he had some drink offered him, when one of those whom he seemed to know warned him not to taste of the drink if he had any wish to make his way home again. If he partook of it he would become like one of them. So he found an opportunity for spilling it on the ground and securing the cup; whereupon the hall and all its inmates instantaneously vanished. On this I may remark that it appears to have been a widely spread belief, that no one who had partaken of the food for spirits would be allowed to return to his former life, and some instances will be found mentioned by Professor Tylor in his Primitive Culture, ii. 50-2. Like the Welsh fairies, the Manx ones take men away with them and detain them for years. Thus a Kirk Andreas man was absent from his people for four years, which he spent with the fairies. He could not tell how he returned, but it seemed as if, having been unconscious, he woke up at last in this world. The other world, however, in which he was for the four years was not far away, as he could see what his brothers and the rest of the family were doing every day, although they could not see him. To prove this, he mentioned to them how they were occupied on such and such a day, and, among other things, how they took their corn on a particular day to Ramsey. He reminded them also of their having heard a sudden sharp crack as they were passing by a thorn bush he named, and how they were so startled that one of them would have run back home. He asked them if they remembered that, and they said they did, only too well. He then explained to them the meaning of the noise, namely, that one of the fairies with whom he had been galloping the whole time was about to let fly an arrow at his brothers, but that as he was going to do this, he (the missing brother) raised a plate and intercepted the arrow: that was the sharp noise they had heard. Such was the account he had to give of his sojourn in Faery. This representation of the world of the fairies, as contained within the ordinary world of mortals, is very remarkable; but it is not a new idea, as we seem to detect it in the Irish story of the abduction of Conla Rúad [119]: the fairy who comes to fetch him tells him that the folk of Tethra, whom she represents, behold him every day as he takes part in the assemblies of his country and sits among his friends. The commoner way of putting it is simply to represent the fairies as invisible to mortals at will; and one kind of Welsh story relates how the mortal midwife accidentally touches her eyes, while dressing a fairy baby, with an ointment which makes the fairy world visible to her: see pp. 63, 213, above. Like Welsh fairies, the Manx ones had, as the reader will have seen, horses to ride; they had also dogs, just as the Welsh ones had. This I learn from another story, to the effect that a fisherman, taking a fresh fish home, was pursued by a pack of fairy dogs, so that it was only with great trouble he reached his own door. Then he picked up a stone and threw it at the dogs, which at once disappeared; but he did not escape, as he was shot by the fairies, and so hurt that he lay ill for fully six months from that day. He would have been left alone by the fairies, I was told, if he had only taken care to put a pinch of salt in the fish's mouth before setting out, for the Manx fairies cannot stand salt or baptism. So children that have been baptized are, as in Wales, less liable to be kidnapped by these elves than those that have not. I scarcely need add that a twig of cuirn [120] or rowan is also as effective against fairies in Man as it is in Wales. Manx fairies seem to have been musical, like their kinsmen elsewhere; for I have heard of an Orrisdale man crossing the neighbouring mountains at night and hearing fairy music, which took his fancy so much that he listened, and tried to remember it. He had, however, to return, it is said, three times to the place before he could carry it away complete in his mind, which he succeeded in doing at last just as the day was breaking and the musicians disappearing. This air, I am told, is now known by the name of the Bollan Bane, or White Wort. As to certain Welsh airs similarly supposed to have been derived from the fairies, see pages 201-2 above. So far I have pointed out next to nothing but similarities between Manx fairies and Welsh ones, and I find very little indicative of a difference. First, with regard to salt, I am unable to say anything in this direction, as I do not happen to know how Welsh fairies regard salt: it is not improbable that they eschew salt as well as baptism, especially as the Church of Rome has long associated salt with baptism. There is, however, one point, at least, of difference between the fairies of Man and of Wales: the latter are, so far as I can call to mind, never supposed to discharge arrows at men or women, or to handle a bow [121] at all, whereas Manx fairies are always ready to shoot. May we, therefore, provisionally regard this trait of the Manx fairies as derived from a Teutonic source? At any rate English and Scotch elves were supposed to shoot, and I am indebted to the kindness of my colleague, Professor Napier, for calling my attention to the Leechdoms of Early England [122] for cases in point. Now that most of the imaginary inhabitants of Man and its coasts have been rapidly passed in review before the reader, I may say something of others whom I regard as semi-imaginary--real human beings to whom impossible attributes are ascribed: I mean chiefly the witches, or, as they are sometimes called in Manx English, butches [123]. That term I take to be a variant of the English word witch, produced under the influence of the verb bewitch, which was reduced in Manx English to a form butch, especially if one bear in mind the Cumbrian and Scottish pronunciation of these words, as wutch and bewutch. Now witches shift their form, and I have heard of one old witch changing herself into a pigeon; but that I am bound to regard as exceptional, the regular form into which Manx witches pass at their pleasure being that of the hare, and such a swift and thick skinned hare that no greyhound, except a black one without a single white hair, can catch it, and no shot, except a silver coin, penetrate its body. Both these peculiarities are also well known in Wales. I notice a difference, however, between Wales and Man with regard to the hare witches: in Wales only the women can become hares, and this property runs, so far as I know, in certain families. I have known many such, and my own nurse belonged to one of them, so that my mother was reckoned to be rather reckless in entrusting me to y Gota, or 'the Cutty One,' as she might run away at any moment, leaving her charge to take care of itself. But I have never heard of any man or boy of any such family turning himself into a hare, whereas in the Isle of Man the hare witches may belong, if I may say so, to either sex. I am not sure, however, that a man who turns himself into a hare would be called a wizard or witch; and I recollect hearing in the neighbourhood of Ramsey of a man nicknamed the gaaue mwaagh, that is to say, 'the hare smith,' the reason being that this particular smith now and then assumed the form of a hare. I am not quite sure that gaaue mwaagh is the name of a class, though I rather infer that it is. If so, it must be regarded as a survival of the magic skill associated with smiths in ancient Ireland, as evidenced, for instance, in St. Patrick's Hymn in the eleventh or twelfth century manuscript at Trinity College, Dublin, known as the Liber Hymnorum, in which we have a prayer-- Fri brichta ban ocus goband ocus druad. Against the spells of women, of smiths and magicians [124]. The persons who had the power of turning themselves into hares were believed to be abroad and very active, together with the whole demon world, on the eve of May-day of the Old Style. And a middle-aged man from the parish of Andreas related to me how he came three or four times across a woman reputed to be a witch, carrying on her evil practices at the junction of cross-roads, or the meeting of three boundaries. This happened once very early on Old May morning, and afterwards he met her several times as he was returning home from visiting his sweetheart. He warned the witch that if he found her again he would kick her: that is what he tells me. Well, after a while he did surprise her again at work at four cross-roads, somewhere near Lezayre. She had a circle, he said, as large as that made by horses in threshing, swept clean around her. He kicked her and took away her besom, which he hid till the middle of the day. Then he made the farm boys fetch some dry gorse, and he put the witch's besom on the top of it. Thereupon fire was set to the gorse, and, wonderful to relate, the besom, as it burned, crackled and made reports like guns going off. In fact, the noise could be heard at Andreas Church--that is to say, miles away. The besom had on it 'seventeen sorts of knots,' he stated, and the woman herself ought to have been burned: in fact, he added that she did not long survive her besom. The man who related this to me is hale and strong, living now in the parish of Michael, and not in that of Andreas, where he was born. There is a tradition at St. John's, which is overlooked by the mountain called Slieau Whallian, that witches used at one time to be punished by being set to roll down the steep side of the mountain in spiked barrels; but, short of putting them to death, there were various ways of rendering the machinations of witches innocuous, or of undoing the mischief done by them; for the charmers supply various means of meeting them triumphantly, and in case an animal is the victim, the burning of it always proves an effective means of bringing the offender to book: I shall have occasion to return to this under another heading. There is a belief that if you can draw blood, however little, from a witch, or one who has the evil eye, he loses his power of harming you; and I have been told that formerly this belief was sometimes acted upon. Thus, on leaving church, for instance, the man who fancied himself in danger from another would sidle up to him or walk by his side, and inflict on him a slight scratch, or some other trivial wound, which elicited blood; but this must have been a course always attended with more or less danger. The persons able to undo the witches' work, and remove the malignant influence of the evil eye, are known in Manx English as charmers, and something must now be said of them. They have various ways of proceeding to their work. A lady of about thirty-five, living at Peel, related to me how, when she was a child suffering from a swelling in the neck, she had it charmed away by an old woman. This charmer brought with her no less than nine pieces of iron, consisting of bits of old pokers, old nails, and other odds and ends of the same metal, making in all nine pieces. After invoking the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, she began to rub the girl's neck with the old irons; nor was she satisfied with that, for she rubbed the doors, the walls, and the furniture likewise, with the metal. The result, I was assured, was highly satisfactory, as she has never been troubled with a swelling in the throat since that day. Sometimes a passage from the Bible is made use of in charming, as, for instance, in the case of bleeding. One of the verses then pronounced is Ezekiel xvi. 6, which runs thus:--'And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.' This was told me by a Laxey man, who is over seventy years of age. The methods of charming away warts are various. A woman from the neighbourhood of St. John's explained to me how a charmer told her to get rid of the warts on her hands. She was to take a string and make a knot on it for every wart she had, and then tie the string round her hand, or fingers--I forget which; and I think my informant, on her part, forgot to tell me a vital part of the formula, namely, that the string was to be destroyed. But however that may be, she assured me that the warts disappeared, and have never returned since. A lady at Andreas has a still simpler method of getting rid of warts. She rubs a snail on the warts, and then places the snail on one of the points of a blackthorn, and, in fact, leaves the snail to die, transfixed by the thorn; and as the snail dies the warts disappear. She has done this in the case of her niece with complete success, so far as the wart was concerned; but she had forgotten to notice whether the snail had also succumbed. The lady who in this case applied the remedy cannot be in any sense called a charmer, however much one may insist on calling what she did a charm. In fact, the term charmer tends to be associated with a particular class of charm involving the use of herbs. Thus there used to be at one time a famous charmer living near Kirk Michael, to whom the fishermen were in the habit of resorting, and my informant told me that he had been deputed more than once by his fellow fishermen to go to him in consequence of their lack of success in the fishing. The charmer gave him a packet of herbs, cut small, with directions that they should be boiled, and the water mixed with some spirits--rum, I think--and partly drunk in the boat by the captain and the crew, and partly sprinkled over the boat and everything in it. The charmer clearly defined his position in the matter to my informant. 'I cannot,' he said, 'put the fish in your nets for you; but if there is any mischief in the way of your luck, I can remove that for you.' The fishermen themselves had, however, more exaggerated notions of the charmer's functions, for once on a time my informant spent on drink for his boon companions the money which he was to give the charmer, and then he collected herbs himself--it did not much matter what herbs--and took them to his captain, who, with the crew, went through the proper ritual, and made a most successful haul that night. In fact, the only source of discontent was the charmer's not having distributed the fish over two nights, instead of endangering their nets by an excessive haul all in one night. They regarded him as able to do almost anything he liked in the matter. A lady at Andreas gave me an account of a celebrated charmer who lived between there and the coast. He worked on her husband's farm, but used to be frequently called away to be consulted. He usually cut up wormwood for the people who came to him, and if there was none to be had, he did not scruple to rob the garden of any small sprouts it contained of cabbage or the like. He would chop them small, and give directions about boiling them and drinking the water. He usually charged any one leaving him to speak to nobody on the way, lest he break the charm, and this mysteriousness was evidently an important element in his profession. But he was, nevertheless, a thriftless fellow, and when he went to Peel, and sent the crier round to announce his arrival, and received a good deal of money from the fishermen, he seldom so conducted himself as to bring much of his earnings home. He died miserably some seven or eight years ago at Ramsey, and left a widow in great poverty. As to the present day, the daughter of a charmer now dead is married to a man living in a village on the southern side of the island, and she appears to have inherited her father's reputation for charming, as the fishermen from all parts are said to flock to her for luck. Incidentally, I have heard in the south more than once of her being consulted in cases of sudden and dangerous illness, even after the best medical advice has been obtained: in fact, she seems to have a considerable practice. In answer to my question, how the charmer who died at Ramsey used to give the sailors luck in the fishing, my informant at Andreas could not say, except that he gave them herbs as already described, and she thought also that he sold them wisps to place under their pillows. I gather that the charms were chiefly directed to the removal of supposed impediments to success in the fishing, rather than to any act of a more positive nature. So far as I have been able to ascertain, charming is hereditary, and they say that it descends from father to daughter, and then from daughter to son, and so on--a remarkable kind of descent, on which I should be glad to learn the opinion of anthropologists. One of the best Manx scholars in the island related to me how some fishermen once insisted on his doing the charmer for them because of his being of such and such a family, and how he made fools of them. It is my impression that the charming families are comparatively few in number, and this looks as if they descended from the family physicians or druids of one or two chieftains in ancient times. It is very likely a question which could be cleared up by a local man familiar with the island and all that tradition has to say on the subject of Manx pedigrees. In the case of animals ailing, the herbs were also resorted to; and, if the beasts happened to be milch cows, the herbs had to be boiled in some of their milk. This was supposed to produce wonderful results, described as follows by a man living at a place on the way from Castletown up South Barrule:--A farmer in his parish had a cow that milked blood, as he described it, and this in consequence of a witch's ill-will. He went to the charmer, who gave him some herbs, which he was to boil in the ailing cow's milk, and the charmer charged him, whatever he did, not to quit the concoction while it was on the fire, in spite of any noises he might hear. The farmer went home and proceeded that night to boil the herbs as directed, but he suddenly heard a violent tapping at the door, a terrible lowing of the cattle in the cow-house, and stones coming down the 'chumley': the end of it was that he suddenly fled and sprang into bed to take shelter behind his wife. He went to the charmer again, and related to him what had happened: he was told that he must have more courage the next time, unless he wished his cow to die. He promised to do his best, and this time he stood his ground in spite of the noises and the creaking of the windows--until, in fact, a back window burst into pieces and bodily let a witch in, who craved his pardon, and promised nevermore to molest him or his. This all happened at the farm in question in the time of the present farmer's grandfather. The boiling of the charmer's herbs in milk always produces a great commotion and lowing among the cattle, and it invariably cures the ailing ones: this is firmly believed by respectable farmers whom I could name, in the north of the island in particular, and I am alluding to men whom one might consider fairly educated members of their class. In the last mentioned instance not only is the requisite cure effected, but the witch who caused the mischief is brought on the spot. I have recently heard of a parallel to this in a belief which appears to be still prevalent in the Channel Islands, more especially Guernsey. The following incidents have been communicated to me by an ardent folklorist, who has friends in the islands:-- An old woman in Torteval became ill, and her two sons were told that if they tried one of the charms of divination, such as boiling certain weeds in a pot, the first person to come to the house would prove to be the one who had cast a spell over their mother. Accordingly they made their bouillederie, and who should come to the door but a poor, unoffending Breton onion seller, and as he was going away he was waylaid by the two sons, who beat him within an inch of his life. They were prosecuted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment; but the charming did not come out in the evidence, though it was generally known to have been the reason for the assault. This account was given my informant in 1898, and the incident appears to have happened not very long before. Another is related thus:--A certain family suffered from a plague of lice, which they regarded as the consequence of a spell. They accordingly made their boiling of herbs and looked for the first comer. He turned out to be a neighbour of theirs who wished to buy some turnip seeds. The family abused him roundly. He went away, but he was watched and caught by two of the sons of the house, who beat him cruelly. They, on being prosecuted, had to pay him £5 damages. This took place in the summer of 1898, in the narrator's own parish, in Guernsey. I have also another case of recent date, to the effect that a young woman, whose churning was so unsuccessful that the butter would not come, boiled herbs in the prescribed way. She awaited the first comer, and, being engaged, her intended husband was not unnaturally the first to arrive. She abused him so unsparingly that he broke off the engagement. These instances go far enough to raise the question why the boiling of herbs should be supposed to bring the culprit immediately on the spot, but they hardly go any further, namely, to help us to answer it. Magic takes us back to a very primitive and loose manner of thinking; so the marvellously easy way in which it identifies any tie of association, however flimsy, with the insoluble bond of relationship which educated men and women regard as connecting cause and effect, renders even simpler means than I have described quite equal to the undoing of the evils resulting from the activity of the evil eye. Thus, let us suppose that a person endowed with the evil eye has just passed by the farmer's herd of cattle, and a calf has suddenly been seized with a serious illness, the farmer hurries after the man of the evil eye to get the dust from under his feet. If he objects, the farmer may, as has sometimes been actually done, throw him down by force, take off his shoes, and scrape off the dust adhering to their soles, and carry it back to throw over the calf. Even that is not always necessary, as it appears to be quite enough if he takes up dust where he of the evil eye has just trod the ground. There are innumerable cases on folk-record of both means proving entirely efficacious, and they remind one of a story related in the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 11, by Giraldus, as to the archbishop when he was preaching in the neighbourhood of Haverfordwest. A certain woman had lost her sight, but had so much faith in that holy man that she sent her son to try and procure the least bit of the fringe of his clothing. The youth, unable to make his way through the crowd that surrounded the preacher, waited till it dispersed, and then took home to his mother the sod on which he had stood and on which his feet had left their mark. That earth was applied by her to her face and eyes, with the result that she at once recovered her sight. A similar question of psychology presents itself in a practice intended as a preservative against the evil eye rather than as a cure. I allude to what I have heard about two maiden ladies living in a Manx village which I know very well: they are natives of a neighbouring parish, and I am assured that whenever a stranger enters their house they proceed, as soon as he goes away, to strew a little dust or sand over the spot where he stood. That is understood to prevent any malignant influence resulting from his visit. This tacit identifying of a man with his footprints may be detected in a more precarious and pleasing form in a quaint conceit familiar to me in the lyrics of rustic life in Wales, when, for example, a coy maiden leaves her lovesick swain hotly avowing his perfect readiness to cusanu ol ei thraed, that is, to do on his knees all the stages of her path across the meadow, kissing the ground wherever it has been honoured with the tread of her dainty foot. Let me take another case, in which the cord of association is not so inconceivably slender, namely, when two or more persons standing in a close relation to one another are mistakenly treated a little too much as if mutually independent, the objection is heard that it matters not whether it is A or B, that it is, in fact, all the same, as they belong to the same concern. In Welsh this is sometimes expressed by saying, Yr un yw Huw'r Glyn a'i glocs, that is, 'Hugh of the Glen and his clogs are all one.' Then, when you speak in English of a man 'standing in another's shoes,' I am by no means certain, that you are not employing an expression which meant something more to those who first used it than it does to us. Our modern idioms, with all their straining after the abstract, are but primitive man's mental tools adapted to the requirements of civilized life, and they often retain traces of the form and shape which the neolithic worker's chipping and polishing gave them. It is difficult to arrange these scraps under any clearly classified headings, and now that I have led the reader into the midst of matters magical, perhaps I may just as well go on to the mention of a few more: I alluded to the boiling of the herbs according to the charmer's orders, with the result, among other things, of bringing the witch to the spot. This is, however, not the only instance of the importance and strange efficacy of fire. For when a beast dies on a farm, of course it dies, according to the old-fashioned view of things as I understand it, from the influence of the evil eye or the interposition of a witch. So if you want to know to whom you are indebted for the loss of the beast, you have simply to burn its carcase in the open air and watch who comes first to the spot or who first passes by: that is the criminal to be charged with the death of the animal, and he cannot help coming there--such is the effect of the fire. A Michael woman, who is now about thirty, related to me how she watched while the carcase of a bewitched colt was burning, how she saw the witch coming, and how she remembers her shrivelled face, with nose and chin in close proximity. According to another native of Michael, a well informed middle-aged man, the animal in question was oftenest a calf, and it was wont to be burnt whole, skin and all. The object, according to him, is invariably to bring the bewitcher on the spot, and he always comes; but I am not clear what happens to him when he appears. My informant added, however, that it was believed that, unless the bewitcher got possession of the heart of the burning beast, he lost all his power of bewitching. He related, also, how his father and three other men were once out fishing on the west coast of the island, when one of the three suddenly expressed his wish to land. As they were fishing successfully some two or three miles from the shore, they would not hear of it. He, however, insisted that they must put him ashore at once, which made his comrades highly indignant; but they soon had to give way, as they found that he was determined to leap overboard unless they complied. When he got on shore they watched him hurrying away towards where a beast was burning in the corner of a field. Manx stories merge this burning in a very perplexing fashion with what may be termed a sacrifice for luck. The following scraps of information will make it clear what I mean:--A respectable farmer from Andreas told me that he was driving with his wife to the neighbouring parish of Jurby some years ago, and that on the way they beheld the carcase of a cow or an ox burning in a field, with a woman engaged in stirring the fire. On reaching the village to which they were going, they found that the burning beast belonged to a farmer whom they knew. They were further told it was no wonder that the said farmer had one of his cattle burnt, as several of them had recently died. Whether this was a case of sacrifice or not I cannot say. But let me give another instance: a man whom I have already mentioned, saw at a farm nearer the centre of the island a live calf being burnt. The owner bears an English name, but his family has long been settled in Man. The farmer's explanation to my informant was that the calf was burnt to secure luck for the rest of the herd, some of which were threatening to die. My informant thought there was absolutely nothing the matter with them, except that they had too little food. Be that as it may, the one calf was sacrificed as a burnt offering to secure luck for the rest of the cattle. Let me here also quote Mr. Moore's note in his Manx Surnames, p. 184, on the place-name Cabbal yn Oural Losht, or the 'Chapel of the Burnt Sacrifice.' 'This name,' he says, 'records a circumstance which took place in the nineteenth century, but which, it is to be hoped, was never customary in the Isle of Man. A farmer, who had lost a number of his sheep and cattle by murrain, burned a calf as a propitiatory offering to the Deity on this spot, where a chapel was afterwards built. Hence the name.' Particulars, I may say, of time, place, and person, could be easily added to Mr. Moore's statement, excepting, perhaps, as to the deity in question: on that point I have never been informed, but Mr. Moore was probably right in the use of the capital d, as the sacrificer was, according to all accounts, a devout Christian. I have to thank Sir Frederick Pollock for calling my attention to a parallel this side of the sea: he refers me to Worth's History of Devonshire (London, 1886), p. 339, where one reads the following singular passage:--'Living animals have been burnt alive in sacrifice within memory to avert the loss of other stock. The burial of three puppies "brandise-wise" in a field is supposed to rid it of weeds.' The second statement is very curious, and the first seems to mean that preventive sacrifices have been performed in Devonshire within the memory of men living in the author's time. One more Manx instance: an octogenarian woman, born in the parish of Bride, and now living at Kirk Andreas, saw, when she was a 'lump of a girl' of ten or fifteen years of age, a live sheep being burnt in a field in the parish of Andreas, on May-day, whereby she meant the first of May reckoned according to the Old Style. She asserts [125] very decidedly that it was son oural, 'for a sacrifice,' as she put it, and 'for an object to the public': those were her words when she expressed herself in English. Further, she made the statement that it was a custom to burn a sheep on Old May-day for a sacrifice. I was fully alive to the interest of this evidence, and cross-examined her so far as her age allows of it, and I find that she adheres to her statement with all firmness, but I distinguish two or three points in her evidence: 1. I have no doubt that she saw, as she was passing by a certain field on the borders of Andreas parish, a live sheep being burnt on Old May-day. 2. But her statement that it was son oural, or as a sacrifice, was probably only an inference drawn by her, possibly years afterwards, on hearing things of the kind discussed. 3. Lastly, I am convinced that she did hear the May-day sacrifice discussed, both in Manx and in English: her words, 'for an object to the public,' are her imperfect recollection of a phrase used in her hearing by somebody more ambitious of employing English abstract terms than she is; and the formal nature of her statement in Manx, that it was customary on May-day to burn as a sacrifice one head of sheep (Laa Boaldyn va cliaghtey dy lostey son oural un baagh keyrragh), produces the same impression on my mind, that she is only repeating somebody else's words. I mention this more especially as I have failed to find anybody else in Andreas or Bride, or indeed in the whole island, who will now confess to having ever heard of the sheep sacrifice on Old May-day. The time assigned to the sheep sacrifice, namely May-day, leads me to make some remarks on the importance of that day among the Celts. The day meant is, as I have already said, Old May-day, in Manx Shenn Laa Boaldyn, the belltaine of Cormac's Glossary, Scotch Gaelic bealtuinn. This was a day when systematic efforts were made to protect man and beast against elves and witches; for it was then that people carried crosses of rowan in their hats and placed May flowers over the tops of their doors and elsewhere as preservatives against all malignant influences. With the same object in view crosses of rowan were likewise fastened to the tails of the cattle, small crosses which had to be made without the help of a knife: I exhibited a tiny specimen at one of the meetings of the Folk-Lore Society. Early on May morning one went out to gather the dew as a thing of great virtue, as in other countries. At Kirk Michael one woman, who had been out on this errand years ago, told me that she washed her face with the dew in order to secure luck, a good complexion, and safety against witches. The break of this day is also the signal for setting the ling or the gorse on fire, which is done in order to burn out the witches wont to take the form of the hare; and guns, I am told, were freely used to shoot any game met with on that morning. With the proper charge some of the witches were now and then hit and wounded, whereupon they resumed the human form and remained cripples for the rest of their lives. Fire, however, appears to have been the chief agency relied on to clear away the witches and other malignant beings; and I have heard of this use of fire having been carried so far that a practice was sometimes observed--as, for example, in Lezayre--of burning gorse, however little, in the hedge of each field on a farm in order to drive away the witches and secure luck. The man who told me this, on being asked whether he had ever heard of cattle being driven through fire or between two fires on May-day, replied that it was not known to him as a Manx custom, but that it was an Irish one. A cattle-dealer whom he named used on May-day to drive his cattle through fire so as to singe them a little, as he believed that would preserve them from harm. He was an Irishman, who came to the island for many years, and whose children are settled in the island now. On my asking him if he knew whence the dealer came, he answered, 'From the mountains over there,' pointing to the Mourne Mountains looming faintly in the mists on the western horizon. The Irish custom known to my Manx informant is interesting both as throwing light on the Manx custom, and as being the continuation of a very ancient rite mentioned by Cormac. That writer, or somebody in his name, says that belltaine, May-day, was so called from the 'lucky fire,' or the 'two fires,' which the druids of Erin used to make on that day with great incantations; and cattle, he adds, used to be brought to those fires, or to be driven between them, as a safeguard against the diseases of the year. Cormac [126] says nothing, it will be noticed, as to one of the cattle or the sheep being sacrificed for the sake of prosperity to the rest. However, Scottish [127] May-day customs point to a sacrifice having been once usual, and that possibly of human beings, and not of sheep as in the Isle of Man. I have elsewhere [128] tried to equate these Celtic May-day practices with the Thargelia [129] of the Athenians of antiquity. The Thargelia were characterized by peculiar rites, and among other things then done, two adult persons were led about, as it were scapegoats, and at the end they were sacrificed and burnt, so that their ashes might be dispersed. Here we seem to be on the track of a very ancient Aryan practice, although the Celtic season does not quite coincide with the Greek one. Several items of importance for comparison here will be found passed under careful review in a most suggestive paper by Mr. Lawrence Gomme, 'On the Method of determining the Value of Folklore as Ethnological Data,' in the Fourth Report of the Ethnographical Survey Committee [130]. It is probably in some ancient May-day custom that we are to look for the key to a remarkable place-name occurring several times in the island: I allude to that of Cronk yn Irree Laa, which probably means the Hill of the Rise of Day. This is the name of one of the mountains in the south of the island, but it is also borne by one of the knolls near the eastern end of the range of low hills ending abruptly on the coast between Ramsey and Bride parish, and quite a small knoll bears the name, near the church of Jurby [131]. I have heard of a fourth instance, which, as I learn from Mr. Philip Kermode, editor of the Lioar Manninagh, is on Clay Head, near Laxey. It has been attempted to explain it as meaning the Hill of the Watch by Day, in reference to the old institution of Watch and Ward on conspicuous places in the island; but that explanation is inadmissible as doing violence to the phonetics of the words in question [132]. I am rather inclined to think that the name everywhere refers to an eminence to which the surrounding inhabitants resorted for a religious purpose on a particular day in the year. I should suggest that it was to do homage to the rising sun on May morning, but this conjecture is offered only to await a better explanation. The next great day in the pagan calendar of the Celts is called in Manx Laa Lhunys, in Irish Lugnassad, the assembly or fair, which was associated with the name of the god Lug. This should correspond to Lammas, but, reckoned as it is according to the Old Style, it falls on the twelfth of August, which used to be a great day for business fairs in the Isle of Man as in Wales. But for holiday making the twelfth only suited when it happened to be a Sunday: when that was not the case, the first Sunday after the twelfth was fixed upon. It is known, accordingly, as the first Sunday of Harvest, and it used to be celebrated by crowds of people visiting the tops of the mountains. The kind of interference to which I have alluded with regard to an ancient holiday, is one of the regular results of the transition from Roman Catholicism to a Protestant system with only one fixed holiday, namely, Sunday. The same shifting has partly happened in Wales, where Lammas is Gwyl Awst, or the festival of Augustus, since the birthday of Augustus, auspiciously for him and the celebrity of his day, fell in with the great day of the god Lug in the Celtic world. Now the day for going up the Fan Fach mountain in Carmarthenshire was Lammas, but under a Protestant Church it became the first Sunday in August; and even modified in that way it could not long survive under a vigorous sabbatarian régime either in Wales or Man. As to the latter in particular, I have heard it related by persons who were present, how the crowds on the top of South Barrule on the first Sunday of Harvest were denounced as pagans by a preacher called William Gick, some seventy years ago; and how another man called Paric Beg, or Little Patrick, preaching to the crowds on Snaefell in milder terms, used to wind up the service with a collection, which appears to have proved a speedier method of reducing the dimensions of these meetings on the mountain tops. Be that as it may, they seem to have dwindled since then to comparative insignificance. If you ask the reason for this custom now, for it is not yet quite extinct, you are told, first, that it is merely to gather ling berries; but now and then a quasi-religious reason is given, namely, that it is the day on which Jephthah's daughter went forth to bewail her virginity 'upon the mountains': somehow some Manx people make believe that they are doing likewise. That is not all, for people who have never themselves thought of going up the mountains on the first Sunday of harvest or any other, will be found devoutly reading at home about Jephthah's daughter on that day. I was told this first in the south by a clergyman's wife, who, finding a woman in the parish reading the chapter in question on that day, asked the reason for her fixing on that particular portion of the Bible. She then had the Manx view of the matter fully explained to her, and she has since found more information about it, and so have I. It is needless for me to say that I do not quite understand how Jephthah's daughter came to be introduced: perhaps it is vain to look for any deeper reason than that the mention, of the mountains may have served as a sort of catch-word, and that as the Manx people began to cease from visiting the tops of the mountains annually, it struck the women as the next best thing for them to read at home of one who did 'go up and down upon the mountains': they are great readers of the Bible generally. In any case we have here a very curious instance of a practice, originally pagan, modifying itself profoundly to secure a new lease of life. Between May-day and November eve, there was a day of considerable importance in the island; but the fixing on it was probably due to influence other than Celtic: I mean Midsummer Eve, or St. John's. However, some practices connected with it would seem to have been of Celtic origin, such as 'the bearing of rushes to certain places called Warrefield and Mame on Midsummer Even.' Warrefield was made in Manx into Barrule, but Mame, 'the jugum, or ridge,' has not been identified. The Barrule here in question was South Barrule, and it is to the top of that mountain the green rushes were carried, according to Manx tradition, as the only rent or tax which the inhabitants paid, namely, to Manannán mac Lir (called in Welsh Manawydan ab Llyr), whom the same tradition treats as father and founder, as king and chief wizard of the Isle of Man, the same Manannán who is quaintly referred to in the illiterate passage at the head of this chapter [133]. As already stated, the payment of the annual rent of rushes is associated with Midsummer Eve; but it did not prevent the top of South Barrule from being visited likewise later in the year. Perhaps it may also be worth while mentioning, with regard to most of the mountains climbed on the first Sunday of Harvest, that they seem to have near the summit of each a well of some celebrity, which appears to be the goal of the visitors' peregrinations. This is the case with South Barrule, the spring near the top of which cannot, it is said, be found when sought a second time; also with Snaefell and with Maughold Head, which boasts one of the most famous springs in the island. When I visited it last summer in company with Mr. Kermode, we found it to contain a considerable number of pins, some of which were bent, and many buttons. Some of the pins were not of a kind usually carried by men, and most of the buttons decidedly belonged to the dress of the other sex. Several people who had resorted many years ago to St. Maughold's Well, told me that the water is good for sore eyes, and that after using it on the spot, or filling a bottle with it to take home, one was wont to drop a pin or bead or button into the well. But it had its full virtue only when visited the first Sunday of Harvest, and that only during the hour when the books were open at church, which, shifted back to Roman Catholic times, means doubtless the hour when the priest was engaged in saying Mass. Compare the passage in the Mabinogi of Math, where it is said that the spear required for the slaying of Llew Llawgyffes had to be a whole year in the making: the work was to be pursued only so long as one was engaged at the sacrifice on Sunday (ar yr aberth duw sul): see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 76. To return to Man, the restriction, as might be expected, is not peculiar to St. Maughold's Well: I have heard of it in connexion with other wells, such as Chibbyr Lansh in Lezayre parish, and with a well on Slieau Maggyl, in which some Kirk Michael people have a great belief. But even sea water was believed to have considerable virtues if you washed in it while the books were open at church, as I was told by a woman who had many years ago repeatedly taken her own sister to divers wells and to the sea during the service on Sunday, in order to have her eyes cured of a chronic weakness. The remaining great day in the Celtic year is called Sauin or Laa Houney: in Irish, Samhain, genitive Samhna. The Manx call it in English Hollantide, a word derived from the English All hallowen tide, 'the Season of All Saints [134].' This day is also reckoned in Man according to the Old Style, so that it is our twelfth of November. That is the day when the tenure of land terminates, and when servant men go to their places. In other words, it is the beginning of a new year; and Kelly, in his Manx-English Dictionary, has, under the word blein, 'year,' the following note:--'Vallancey says the Celts began their year with January; yet in the Isle of Man the first of November is called New Year's day by the Mummers, who, on the eve, begin their petition in these words: To-night is New Year's night, Hog-unnaa [135], &c.' It is a pity that Kelly, whilst he was on this subject, did not give the rhyme in Manx, and all the more so, as the mummers of the present day, if he is right, must have changed their words into Noght oie Houney, that is to say, To-night is Sauin Night or Halloween. So I had despaired of finding anybody who could corroborate Kelly in his statement, when I happened last summer to find a man at Kirk Michael who was quite familiar with this way of treating the year. I asked him if he could explain Kelly's absurd statement--I put my question designedly in that form. He said he could, but that there was nothing absurd in it. He then told me how he had heard some old people talk of it: he is himself now about sixty-seven. He had been a farm servant from the age of sixteen till he was twenty-six to the same man, near Regaby, in the parish of Andreas, and he remembers his master and a near neighbour of his discussing the term New Year's Day as applied to the first of November, and explaining to the younger men that it had always been so in old times. In fact, it seemed to him natural enough, as all tenure of land ends at that time, and as all servant men begin their service then. I cross-examined him, without succeeding in any way in shaking his evidence. I should have been glad a few years ago to have come across this piece of information, or even Kelly's note, when I was discussing the Celtic year and trying to prove [136] that it began at the beginning of winter, with May-day as the beginning of its second half. One of the characteristics of the beginning of the Celtic year with the commencement of winter was the belief that indications can be obtained on the eve of that day regarding the events of the year; but with the calendar year gaining ground it would be natural to expect that the Calends of January would have some of the associations of the Calends of Winter transferred to them, and vice versa. In fact, this can, as it were, be watched now going on in the Isle of Man. First, I may mention that the Manx mummers used to go about singing, in Manx, a sort of Hogmanay song [137], reminding one of that usual in Yorkshire and other parts of Great Britain, and now known to be of Romance origin [138]. The time for it in this country was New Year's Eve, according to the ordinary calendar, but in the Isle of Man it has always been Hollantide Eve, according to the Old Style, and this is the night when boys now go about continuing the custom of the old mummers. There is no hesitation in this case between Hollantide Eve and New Year's Eve. But with the prognostications for the year it is different, and the following practices have been usual. I may, however, premise that as a rule I have abstained from inquiring too closely whether they still go on, but here and there I have had the information volunteered that they do. 1. I may mention first a salt prognostication, which was described to me by a farmer in the north, whose wife practises it once a year regularly. She carefully fills a thimble with salt in the evening and upsets it in a neat little heap on a plate: she does that for every member of the family, and every guest, too, if there happen to be any. The plate is then left undisturbed till the morning, when she examines the heaps of salt to see if any of them have fallen; for whoever is found represented by a fallen heap will die during the year. She does not herself, I am assured, believe in it, but she likes to continue a custom which she has learned from her mother. 2. Next may be mentioned the ashes being carefully swept to the open hearth, and nicely flattened down by the women just before going to bed. In the morning they look for footmarks on the hearth, and if they find such footmarks directed towards the door, it means, in the course of the year, a death in the family, and if the reverse, they expect an addition to it by marriage [139]. 3. Then there is an elaborate process of eavesdropping recommended to young women curious to know their future husbands' names: a girl would go with her mouth full of water and her hands full of salt to the door of the nearest neighbour's house, or rather to that of the nearest neighbour but one--I have been carefully corrected more than once on that point. There she would listen, and the first name she caught would prove to be that of her future husband. Once a girl did so, as I was told by a blind fisherman in the south, and heard two brothers quarrelling inside the house at whose door she was listening. Presently the young men's mother exclaimed that the devil would not let Tom leave John alone. At the mention of that triad the girl burst into the house, laughing and spilling the mouthful of water most incontinently. The end of it was that before the year was out she married Tom, the second person mentioned: the first either did not count or proved an unassailable bachelor. 4. There is also a ritual for enabling a girl to obtain other information respecting her future husband: vessels placed about the room have various things put into them, such as clean water, earth, meal, a piece of a net, or any other article thought appropriate. The candidate for matrimony, with her eyes bandaged, feels her way about the house until she puts her hand in one of the aforesaid vessels. If what she lays her hand on is the clean water, her husband will be a handsome man [140]; if it is the earth, he will be a farmer; if the meal, a miller; if the net, a fisherman; and so on into as many of the walks of life as may be thought worthy of consideration. 5. Lastly, recourse may be had to a ritual of the same nature as that observed by the druid of ancient Erin, when, burdened with a heavy meal of the flesh of a red pig, he laid him down for the night in order to await a prophetic dream as to the manner of man the nobles of Erin assembled at Tara were to elect to be their king. The incident is given in the story of Cúchulainn's Sick-bed; and the reader, doubtless, knows the passage about Brian and the taghairm in the fourth Canto of Scott's Lady of the Lake. But the Manx girl has only to eat a salt herring, bones and all, without drinking or uttering a word, and to retire backwards to bed. When she sleeps and dreams, she will behold her future husband approaching to give her drink. Probably none of the practices which I have enumerated, or similar ones mentioned to me, are in any sense peculiar to the Isle of Man; but what interests me in them is the divided opinion as to the proper night for them in the year. I am sorry to say that I have very little information as to the blindman's-buff ritual (No. 4); what information I have, to wit, the evidence of two persons in the south, fixes it on Hollantide Eve. But as to the others (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5), they are observed by some on that night, and by others on New Year's Eve, sometimes according to the Old Style [141] and sometimes the New. Further, those who are wont to practise the salt heap ritual, for instance, on Hollantide Eve, would be very indignant to hear that anybody should think New Year's Eve the proper night, and vice versa. So by bringing women bred and born in different parishes to compare notes on this point, I have witnessed arguing hardly less earnest than that which characterized the ancient controversy between British and Italian ecclesiastics as to the proper time for keeping Easter. I have not been able to map the island according to the practices prevalent at Hollantide and the beginning of January, but local folklorists could probably do it without much difficulty. My impression, however, is that January is gradually acquiring the upper hand. In Wales this must have been decidedly helped by the influence of Roman rule and Roman ideas; but even there the adjuncts of the Winter Calends have never been wholly transferred to the Calends of January. Witness, for instance, the women who used to congregate in the parish church to discover who of the parishioners would die during the year [142]. That custom, in the neighbourhoods reported to have practised it, continued to attach itself to the last, so far as I know, to the beginning of November. In the Isle of Man the fact of the ancient Celtic year having so firmly held its own, seems to point to the probability that the year of the Pagan Norsemen pretty nearly coincided with that of the Celts [143]. For there are reasons to think, as I have endeavoured elsewhere to show, that the Norse Yule was originally at the end of summer or the commencement of winter, in other words, the days afterwards known as the Feast of the Winter Nights. This was the favourite date in Iceland for listening to soothsayers prophesying with regard to the winter then beginning. The late Dr. Vigfusson had much to say on this subject, and how the local sibyl, resuming her elevated seat at the opening of each successive winter, gave the author of the Volospá his plan of that remarkable poem, which has been described by the same authority as the highest spiritual effort of the heathen muse of the North. CHAPTER V THE FENODYREE AND HIS FRIENDS Emoi de hai sai megalai eutychiai ouk areskousi, to theion epistamenô hôs esti phthoneron..--Herodotus. The last chapter is hardly such as to call for a recapitulation of its principal contents, and I venture to submit instead of any such repetition an abstract of some very pertinent notes on it by Miss M. G. W. Peacock, who compares with the folklore of the Isle of Man the old beliefs which survive in Lincolnshire among the descendants of Norse ancestors [144]. She was attracted by the striking affinity which she noticed between them, and she is doubtless right in regarding that affinity as due in no small degree to the Scandinavian element present in the population alike of Man and the East of England. She is, however, not lavish of theory, but gives us interesting items of information from an intimate acquaintance with the folklore of the district of which she undertakes to speak, somewhat in the following order:-- 1. Whether the water-bull still inhabits the streams of Lincolnshire she regards as doubtful, but the deep pools formed, she says, by the action of the down-flowing water at the bends of the country becks are still known as bull-holes. 2. As to the glashtyn, or water-horse, she remarks that the tatter-foal, tatter-colt, or shag-foal, as he is variously called, is still to be heard of, although his visits take place less often than before the fens and carrs were drained and the open fields and commons enclosed. She describes the tatter-foal as a goblin of the shape and appearance of a small horse or yearling foal in his rough, unkempt coat. He beguiles lonely travellers with his numberless tricks, one of which is to lure them to a stream, swamp, or water-hole. When he has succeeded he vanishes with a long outburst of mockery, half neigh, half human laughter. 3. The fenodyree, one is told, has in Lincolnshire a cousin, but he is diminutive; and, like the Yorkshire Hob or Robin Round-Cap, and the Danish Niss, he is used to befriend the house in which he dwells. The story of his driving the farmer's sheep home is the same practically as in the Isle of Man, even to the point of bringing in with them the little grey sheep, as he called the fine hare that had given him more trouble than all the rest of the flock: see pp. 286-7 above. 4. The story of this manikin's clothing differs considerably from that of the fenodyree. The farmer gives him in gratitude for his services a linen shirt every New Year's Eve; and this went on for years, until at last the farmer thought a hemp shirt was good enough to give him. When the clock struck twelve at midnight the manikin raised an angry wail, saying:-- Harden, harden, harden hemp! I will neither grind nor stamp! Had you given me linen gear, I would have served you many a year! He was no more seen or heard: he vanished for ever. The Cornish counterpart of this brownie reasons in the opposite way; for when, in gratitude for his help in threshing, a new suit of clothes is given him, he hurries away, crying [145]:-- Pisky new coat, and pisky new hood, Pisky now will do no more good. Here, also, one should compare William Nicholson's account of the brownie of Blednoch [146], in Galloway, who wore next to no clothing:-- Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen, But a philabeg o' the rushes green. So he was driven away for ever by a newly married wife wishing him to wear an old pair of her husband's breeches:-- But a new-made wife, fu' o' rippish freaks, Fond o' a' things feat for the first five weeks, Laid a mouldy pair o' her ain man's breeks By the brose o' Aiken-drum. Let the learned decide, when they convene, What spell was him and the breeks between: For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen, And sair missed was Aiken-drum! The only account which I have been able to find of a Welsh counterpart will be found in Bwca'r Trwyn, in chapter x: he differs in some important respects from the fenodyree and the brownie. 5. A twig of the rowan tree, or wicken, as it is called, was effective against all evil things, including witches. It is useful in many ways to guard the welfare of the household, and to preserve both the live stock and the crops, while placed on the churn it prevents any malign influence from retarding the coming of the butter. I may remark that Celts and Teutons seem to have been generally pretty well agreed as to the virtues of the rowan tree. Bits of iron also are lucky against witches. 6. Fairies are rare, but witches and wizards abound, and some of them have been supposed to change themselves into dogs to worry sheep and cattle, or into toads to poison the swine's troughs. But they do not seem to change themselves into hares, as in Man and other Celtic lands. 7. Witchcraft, says Miss Peacock, is often hereditary, passing most frequently from mother to daughter; but when a witch has no daughter her power may appear in a son, and then revert to the female line. This appears far more natural than the Manx belief in its passing from father to daughter and from daughter to son. But another kind of succession is mentioned in the Welsh Triads, i. 32, ii. 20, iii. 90, which speak of Math ab Mathonwy teaching his magic to Gwydion, who as his sister's son was to succeed him in his kingdom; and of a certain Rhudlwm Dwarf teaching his magic to Coll, son of Collfrewi, his nephew. Both instances seem to point to a state of society which did not reckon paternity but only birth. 8. Only three years previous to Miss Peacock's writing an old man died, she says, who had seen blood drawn from a witch because she had, as was supposed, laid a spell on a team of horses: as soon as she was struck so as to bleed the horses and their load were free to go on their way again. Possibly no equally late instance could be specified in the Isle of Man: see p. 296 above. 9. Traces of animal sacrifice may still be found in Lincolnshire, for the heart of a small beast, or of a bird, is necessary, Miss Peacock says, for the efficient performance of several counter-charms, especially in torturing a witch by the reversal of her spells, and warding off evil from houses or other buildings. Apparently Miss Peacock has not heard of so considerable a victim as a sheep or a calf being sacrificed, as in the Isle of Man, but the objects of the sacrifices may be said to be the same. 10. Several pin and rag wells are said to exist in Lincolnshire, their waters being supposed to possess healing virtues, especially as regards eye ailments. 11. Love-spells and prognostications are mentioned, some of them as belonging to Allhallows, as they do partly in the Isle of Man: she mentions the making of dumb cake, and the eating of the salt herring, followed by dreams of the future husband bringing the thirsting lass drink in a jug, the quality of which indicates the bearer's position in life. But other Lincolnshire practices of the kind seem to oscillate between Allhallows and St. Mark's Eve, while gravitating decidedly towards the latter date. Here it is preferable to give Miss Peacock's own words:--'Professor Rhys' mention of the footmark in the ashes reminds me of a love-spell current in the Wapentake of Manley in North Lincolnshire. Properly speaking, it should be put in practice on St. Mark's E'en, that eerie spring-tide festival when those who are skilled may watch the church porch and learn who will die in the ensuing twelvemonth; but there is little doubt that the charm is also used at Hallow E'en, and at other suitable seasons of the year. The spell consists in riddling ashes on the hearthstone, or beans on the floor of the barn, with proper ceremonies and at the proper time, with the result that the girl who works her incantation correctly finds the footprint of the man she is to marry clearly marked on the sifted mass the following morning. It is to be supposed that the spirit of the lover is responsible for the mark, as, according to another folk-belief, any girl who watches her supper on St. Mark's E'en will see the spirit of the man she will wed come into the room at midnight to partake of the food provided. The room must be one with the door and windows in different walls, and both must be open. The spirit comes in by the door (and goes out by the window?). Each girl who undertakes to keep watch must have a separate supper and a separate candle, and all talking is to end before the clock goes twelve, for there must not be any speaking before the spirits. From these superstitions, and from the generally received idea that the spirits of all the parishioners are to be observed entering the church on St. Mark's E'en, it may be inferred that the Manx footprint is made by the wraith of the person doomed to death.' Compare pp. 318-9 above. What Miss Peacock alludes to as watching the church porch was formerly well known in Wales [147], and may be illustrated from a district so far east as the Golden Valley, in Herefordshire, by the following story told me in 1892 by Mrs. Powell of Dorstone, on the strength of what she had learnt from her mother-in-law, the late Mrs. Powell, who was a native of that parish:-- 'On Allhallows Eve at midnight, those who are bold enough to look through the church windows will see the building lighted with an unearthly light, and the pulpit occupied by his Satanic majesty clothed in a monk's habit. Dreadful anathemas are the burden of his preaching, and the names of those who in the coming year are to render up their souls may be heard by those who have courage to listen. A notorious evil liver, Jack of France, once by chance passed the church at this awful moment: looking in he saw the lights and heard the voice, and his own name in the horrid list; and, according to some versions of the story, he went home to die of fright. Others say that he repented and died in good repute, and so cheated the evil one of his prey.' I have no list of places in Wales and its marches which have this sort of superstition associated with them, but it is my impression that they are mostly referred to Allhallows, as at Dorstone, and that where that is not the case they have been shifted to the beginning of the year as at present reckoned; for in Celtic lands, at least, they seem to have belonged to what was reckoned the beginning of the year. The old Celtic year undoubtedly began at Allhallows, and the day next in importance after the Calends of Winter (in Welsh Calangáeaf) was, among the Celts, the beginning of the summer half of the year, or the Calends of May (in Welsh Calánmai), which St. Mark's Eve approaches too nearly for us to regard it as accidental. With this modified agreement between the Lincolnshire date and the Celtic one contrast the irreconcilable English date of St. John's Eve; and see Tylor's Primitive Culture, i. 440, where one reads as follows of 'the well-known superstition,' 'that fasting watchers on St. John's Eve may see the apparitions of those doomed to die during the year come with the clergyman to the church door and knock; these apparitions are spirits who come forth from their bodies, for the minister has been noticed to be much troubled in his sleep while his phantom was thus engaged, and when one of a party of watchers fell into a sound sleep and could not be roused, the others saw his apparition knock at the church door.' With an unerring instinct for the intelligent colligation of facts, Miss Peacock finds the nearest approach to the yearly review of the moritures, if I may briefly so call them, in the wraith's footprint in the ashes. Perhaps a more systematic examination of Manx folklore may result in the discovery of a more exact parallel. For want of knowing where else to put it, I may mention here in reference to the dead, a passage which has been copied for me by my friend Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, from Manuscript 163 in the Peniarth Collection. I understand it to be of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, and p. 10 has the following passage:-- Yn yr ynys honn [Manaw] y kair gweled liw dyd bobyl a vvessynt veirw / Rrai gwedi tori penav / eraill gwedi torri i haelode / Ac os dieithred a dissyfynt i gweled hwynt / Sengi ar draed gwyr or tir ac velly hwynt a gaent weled yr hyn a welssynt hwyntav. 'In this island [Man] one beholds in the light of day people who have died, some with their heads cut off and others with their limbs cut off. And if strangers desire to see them, they have to stand on the feet of the natives of the land, and in that way they would see what the latter had seen.' A similar instance of the virtue of standing on the feet of another person has been mentioned in reference to the farmer of Deunant, at p. 230 above; the foot, however, on which he had to stand in order to get a glimpse of the fairy world, was a fairy's own foot. Lastly, the passage in the Peniarth Manuscript has something more to say of the Isle of Man, as follows:-- Mawr oed arfer o swynion a chyvaredion gynt yn yr ynys honn / Kanys gwraged a vydynt yno yn gwnevthvr gwynt i longwyr gwedir gav mewn tri chwlm o edav aphan vai eissie gwynt arnynt dattod kwlm or edav anaynt. 'Great was the practice formerly of spells and sorceries in this island; for there used to be there women making wind for sailors, which wind they confined within three knots made on a thread. And when they had need of wind they would undo a knot of the thread.' This was written in the sixteenth century, and based probably on Higden's Polychronicon, book I, chap. xliv. (= I. 42-3), but the same practice of wind making goes on to this day, one of the principal practitioners being the woman to whom reference was made at p. 299. She is said to tie the breezes in so many knots which she makes on the purchasing sailor's pocket-handkerchief. This reminds one of the sibyl of Warinsey, or the Island of Guernsey, who is represented by an ancient Norse poet as 'fashioning false prophecies.' See Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 136; also Mela's first-century account of the virgins of the island of Sena, which runs to the following effect:--'Sena, in the Britannic Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, is famous for its oracle of a Gaulish god, whose priestesses, living in the holiness of perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenæ, and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts to rouse the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn themselves into whatsoever animal form they may choose, to cure diseases which among others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. They are, however, devoted to the service of voyagers only who have set out on no other errand than to consult them [148].' It is probable that the sacrosanct [149] inhabitants of the small islands on the coasts of Gaul and Britain had wellnigh a monopoly of the traffic in wind [150]. In the last chapter I made allusion to several wells of greater or less celebrity in the Isle of Man; but I find that I have a few remarks to add. Mr. Arthur Moore, in his book on Manx Surnames and Place-Names, p. 200, mentions a Chibber Unjin, which means the Well of the Ash-tree, and he states that there grew near it 'formerly a sacred ash-tree, where votive offerings were hung.' The ash-tree calls to his mind Scandinavian legends respecting the ash, but in any case one may suppose the ash was not the usual tree to expect by a well in the Isle of Man, otherwise this one would scarcely have been distinguished as the Ash-tree Well. The tree to expect by a sacred well is doubtless some kind of thorn, as in the case of Chibber Undin in the parish of Malew. The name means Foundation Well, so called in reference probably to the foundations of an ancient cell, or keeill as it is called in Manx, which lie close by, and are found to measure twenty-one feet long by twelve feet broad. The following is Mr. Moore's account of the well in his book already cited, p. 181:--'The water of this well is supposed to have curative properties. The patients who came to it, took a mouthful of water, retaining it in their mouths till they had twice walked round the well. They then took a piece of cloth from a garment which they had worn, wetted it with the water from the well, and hung it on the hawthorn tree which grew there. When the cloth had rotted away, the cure was supposed to be effected.' I visited the spot a few years ago in the company of the Rev. E. B. Savage of St. Thomas' Parsonage, Douglas, and we found the well nearly dried up in consequence of the drainage of the field around it; but the remains of the old cell were there, and the thorn bush had strips of cloth or calico tied to its branches. We cut off one, which is now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. The account Mr. Savage had of the ritual observed at the well differed a little from that given by Mr. Moore, especially in the fact that it made the patient who had been walking round the well with water from the well in his mouth, empty that water finally into a rag from his clothing: the rag was then tied to a branch of the thorn. It does not appear that the kind of tree mattered much; nay, a tree is not, it seems to me, essential. At any rate, St. Maughold's Well has no tree growing near it now; but it is right to say, that when Mr. Kermode and I visited it, we could find no rags left near the spot, nor indeed could we expect to find any, as there was nothing to which they might be tied on that windy headland. The absence of the tree does not, however, prove that the same sort of ritual was not formerly observed at St. Maughold's Well as at Chibber Undin; and here I must mention another well which I have visited in the island more than once. It is on the side of Bradda Hill, a little above the village of Bradda, and in the direction of Fleshwick: I was attracted to it by the fact that it had, as I had been told by Mr. Savage, formerly an old cell or keeill near it, and the name of the saint to which it belonged may probably be gathered from the name of the well, which, in the Manx of the south of the island, is Chibbyrt Valtane, pronounced approximately Chuvurt Voltáne or Oldáne. The personal name would be written in modern Manx in its radical form as Boltane, and if it occurred in the genitive in Ogam inscriptions I should expect to find it written Boltagni or Baltagni [151]. It is, however, unknown to me, though to be placed possibly by the side of the name of the saint after whom the parish of Santon is called in the south-east of the island. This is pronounced in Manx approximately [152] Santane or Sandane, and would have yielded an early inscriptional nominative SANCTANVS, which, in fact, occurs on an old stone near Llandudno on the Welsh coast: see some notes of mine in point in the Archæologia Cambrensis, 1897, pp. 140-2. To return to the well, it would seem to have been associated with an old cell, but it has no tree growing by. Mr. Savage and I were told, nevertheless, that a boy who had searched the well a short time previously had got some coins out of it, quite recent ones, consisting of halfpennies or pennies, so far as I remember. On my observing to one of the neighbours that I saw no rags there, I was assured that there had been some; and, on my further saying that I saw no tree there to which they could be tied, I was told that they used to be attached to the brambles, which grew there in great abundance. Thus it appears that, in the Isle of Man at any rate, a tree to bear the rags was not an essential adjunct of a holy well. Before leaving these well superstitions the reader may wish to know how they were understood in Ireland not long ago: so I venture to quote a passage from a letter by the late Mr. W. C. Borlase on Rag Offerings and Primitive Pilgrimages in Ireland, as follows:-- 'Among the MSS. of the late Mr. Windele, of Cork, ... I find a passage which cannot fail to interest students of folk-lore. It relates to the custom of affixing shreds of rag to the hawthorn tree, which almost invariably stands by the brink of the typical Irish "holy well," and it gives us the meaning of the custom as understood, some half-century since, by the inhabitants of certain localities in the province of Munster. The idea is, says the writer, that the putting up these rags is a putting away of the evils impending or incurred by sin, an act accompanied by the following ritual words: Air impide an Tiarna mo chuid teinis do fhagaint air an ait so; i. e. By the intercession of the Lord I leave my portion of illness on this place. These words, he adds, should be uttered by whoever performs the round, and they are, no doubt, of extreme antiquity. Mr. Windele doubtless took down the words as he heard them locally pronounced, though, to be correct, for Tiarna should be read Tigerna; for teinis, tinneas; and for fhagaint, fhagaim [153].' From the less known saints Boltane and Santane I wish to pass to the mention of a more famous one, namely, St. Catherine, and this because of a fair called after her, and held on the sixth day of December at the village of Colby in the south of the island. When I heard of this fair in 1888, it was in temporary abeyance on account of a lawsuit respecting the plot of ground on which the fair is wont to be held; but I was told that it usually begins with a procession, in which a live hen is carried about: this is called St. Catherine's hen. The next day the hen is carried about dead and plucked, and a rhyme pronounced at a certain point in the proceedings contemplates the burial of the hen, but whether that ever takes place I know not. It runs thus:-- Kiark Catrina marroo: Gows yn kione as goyms ny cassyn, As ver mayd ee fo'n thalloo. Catherine's hen is dead: The head take thou and I the feet, We shall put her under the ground. A man who is found to be not wholly sober after the fair is locally said to have plucked a feather from the hen (T'eh er goaill fedjag ass y chiark); so it would seem that there must be such a scramble to get at the hen, and to take part in the plucking, that it requires a certain amount of drink to allay the thirst of the over zealous devotees of St. Catherine. But why should this ceremony be associated with St. Catherine? and what were the origin and meaning of it? These are questions on which I should be glad to have light shed. Manx has a word quaail (Irish comhdháil), meaning a 'meeting,' and from it we have a derivative quaaltagh or qualtagh, meaning, according to Kelly's Dictionary, 'the first person or creature one meets going from home,' whereby the author can have only meant the first met by one who is going from home. Kelly goes on to add that 'this person is of great consequence to the superstitious, particularly to women the first time they go out after lying-in.' Cregeen, in his Dictionary, defines the qualtagh as 'the first person met on New Year's Day, or on going on some new work, &c.' Before proceeding to give the substance of my notes on the qualtagh of the present day I may as well finish with Cregeen, for he adds the following information:--'A company of young lads or men generally went in old times on what they termed the qualtagh, at Christmas or New Year's Day, to the houses of their more wealthy neighbours; some one of the company repeating in an audible voice the following rhyme:-- Ollick ghennal erriu as bleïn feer vie, Seihll as slaynt da'n slane lught thie; Bea as gennallys en bio ry-cheilley, Shee as graih eddyr mrane as deiney; Cooid as cowryn, stock as stoyr, Palchey phuddase, as skaddan dy-liooar, Arran as caashey, eeym as roayrt; Baase, myr lugh, ayns uhllin ny soalt; Cadley sauchey tra vees shiu ny lhie, As feeackle y jargan, nagh bee dy mie.' It may be loosely translated as follows:-- A merry Christmas, a happy new year, Long life and health to all the household here. Food and mirth to you dwelling together, Peace and love to all, men and women; Wealth and distinction, stock and store, Potatoes enough, and herrings galore; Bread and cheese, butter and gravy; Die like a mouse in a barn or haggard; In safety sleep while you lie to rest, And by the flea's tooth be not distressed. At present New Year's Day is the time when the qualtagh is of general interest, and in this case he is, outside the members of one's own household, practically the first person one sees on the morning of that day, whether that person meets one out of doors or comes to one's house. The following is what I have learnt by inquiry as to the qualtagh: all are agreed that he must not be a woman or girl, and that he must not be spaagagh or splay footed, while a woman from the parish of Marown told me that he must not have red hair. The prevalent belief, however, is that he should be a dark haired man or boy, and it is of no consequence how rough his appearance may be, provided he be black haired. However, I was told by one man in Rushen that the qualtagh or 'first-foot' need not be a black haired person: he must be a man or boy. But this less restricted view is not the one held in the central and northern parts of the island, so far as I could ascertain. An English lady living in the neighbourhood of Castletown told me that her son, whom I know to be, like his mother, a blond, not being aware what consequences might be associated with his visit, called at a house in Castletown on the morning of New Year's Day, and he chanced to be the qualtagh. The mistress of the house was horrified, and expressed to the English lady her anticipation of misfortunes; and as it happened that one of the children of the house died in the course of the year, the English lady has been reminded of it since. Naturally the association of these events are not pleasant to her; but, so far as I can remember, they date only some eight or nine years ago [154]. By way of bringing Wales into comparison with Man, I may mention that, when I was a very small boy, I used to be sent very early on New Year's morning to call on an old uncle of mine, because, as I was told, I should be certain to receive a calennig or a calends' gift from him, but on no account would my sister be allowed to go, as he would only see a boy on such an occasion as that. I do not recollect anything being said as to the colour of one's hair or the shape of one's foot; but that sort of negative evidence is of very little value, as the qualtagh was fast passing out of consideration. The preference here given to a boy over a girl looks like one of the widely spread superstitions which rule against the fair sex; but, as to the colour of the hair, I should be predisposed to think that it possibly rests on racial antipathy, long ago forgotten; for it might perhaps be regarded as going back to a time when the dark haired race reckoned the Aryan of fair complexion as his natural enemy, the very sight of whom brought with it thoughts calculated to make him unhappy and despondent. If this idea proved to be approximately correct, one might suggest that the racial distinction in question referred to the struggles between the inhabitants of Man and their Scandinavian conquerors; but to my thinking it is just as likely that it goes much further back. Lastly, what is one to say with regard to the spaagagh or splay footed person, now more usually defined as flat footed or having no instep? I have heard it said in the south of the island that it is unlucky to meet a spaagagh in the morning at any time of the year, and not on New Year's Day alone; but this does not help us in the attempt to find the genesis of this belief. If it were said that it was unlucky to meet a deformed person, it would look somewhat more natural; but why fix on the flat footed especially? For my part I have not been trained to distinguish flat footed people, so I do not recollect noticing any in the Isle of Man; but, granting there may be a small proportion of such people in the island, does it not seem strange that they should have their importance so magnified as this superstition would seem to imply? I must confess that I cannot understand it, unless we have here also some supposed racial characteristic, let us say greatly exaggerated. To explain myself I should put it that the non-Aryan aborigines were a small people of great agility and nimbleness, and that their Aryan conquerors moved more slowly and deliberately, whence the former, of springier movements, might come to nickname the latter the flat footed. It is even conceivable that there was some amount of foundation for it in fact. If I might speak from my own experience, I might mention a difficulty I have often had with shoes of English make, namely, that I have always found them, unless made to measure, apt to have their instep too low for me. It has never occurred to me to buy ready-made shoes in France or Germany, but I know a lady as Welsh as I am, who has often bought shoes in France, and her experience is, that it is much easier for her to get shoes there to fit her than in England, and for the very reason which I have already suggested, namely, that the instep in English shoes is lower than in French ones. Again, I may mention that one day last term [155], having to address a meeting of Welsh undergraduates on folklore, I ventured to introduce this question. They agreed with me that English shoes did not, as a rule, fit Welsh feet, and this because they are made too low in the instep: I ought to have said that they all agreed except one undergraduate, who held his peace. He is a tall man, powerful in the football field, but of no dark complexion, and I have never dared to look in the direction of his feet since, lest he should catch me carrying my comparisons to cruel extremes. Perhaps the flatness of the feet of the one race is not emphasized so much as the height of the instep in those of the other. At any rate I find this way of looking at the question somewhat countenanced by a journalist who refers his readers to Wm. Henderson's notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties, p. 74. The passage relates more particularly to Northumberland, and runs as follows:--'In some districts, however, special weight is attached to the "first-foot" being that of a person with a high-arched instep, a foot that "water runs under." A flat-footed person would bring great ill-luck for the coming year.' These instances do not warrant the induction that Celts are higher in the instep than Teutons, and that they have inherited that characteristic from the non-Aryan element in their ancestry. Perhaps the explanation is, at least in part, that the dwellers in hilly regions tend to be more springy and to have higher insteps than the inhabitants of flatter lands. The statement of Dr. Karl Blind on this point does not help one to a decision when he speaks as follows in Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 89:--'As to the instep, I can speak from personal experience. Almost every German finds that an English shoemaker makes his boots not high enough in the instep. The northern Germans (I am from the south) have perhaps slightly flatter feet than the southern Germans.' The first part of the comparison is somewhat of a surprise to me, but not so the other part, that the southern Germans inhabiting a hillier country, and belonging to a different race, may well be higher in the instep than the more northern speakers of the German language. But on the whole the more one examines the qualtagh, the less clearly one sees how he can be the representative of a particular race. More data possibly would enable one to arrive at greater probability. There is one other question which I should like to ask before leaving the qualtagh, namely, as to the relation of the custom of New Year's gifts to the belief in the qualtagh. I have heard it related in the Isle of Man that women have been known to keep indoors on New Year's Day until the qualtagh comes, which sometimes means their being prisoners for the greater part of the day, in order to avoid the risk of first meeting one who is not of the right sex and complexion. On the other hand, when the qualtagh is of the right description, considerable fuss is made of him; to say the least, he has to accept food and drink, possibly more permanent gifts. Thus a tall, black haired native of Kirk Michael described to me how he chanced on New Year's Day, years ago, to turn into a lonely cottage in order to light his pipe, and how he found he was the qualtagh: he had to sit down to have food, and when he went away it was with a present and the blessings of the family. Now New Year's Day is the time for gifts in Wales, as shown by the name for them, calennig, which is derived from calan, the Welsh form of the Latin calendæ, New Year's Day being in Welsh Y Calan, 'the Calends.' The same is the day for gifts in Scotland and in Ireland, except in so far as Christmas boxes have been making inroads from England: I need not add that the Jour de l'An is the day for gifts also in France. My question then is this: Is there any essential connexion of origin between the institution of New Year's Day gifts and the belief in the first-foot? Now that it has been indicated what sort of a qualtagh it is unlucky to have, I may as well proceed to mention the other things which I have heard treated as unlucky in the island. Some of them scarcely require to be noticed, as there is nothing specially Manx about them, such as the belief that it is unlucky to have the first glimpse of the new moon through glass. That is a superstition which is, I believe, widely spread, and, among other countries, it is quite familiar in Wales, where it is also unlucky to see the moon for the first time through a hedge or over a house. What this means I cannot guess, unless it be that it was once considered one's duty to watch the first appearance of the new moon from the highest point in the landscape of the district in which one dwelt. Such a point would in that case become the chief centre of a moon worship now lost in oblivion. It is believed in Man, as it used to be in Wales and Ireland, that it is unlucky to disturb antiquities, especially old burial places and old churches. This superstition is unfortunately passing away in all three countries, but you still hear of it, especially in the Isle of Man, mostly after mischief has been done. Thus a good Manx scholar told me how a relative of his in the Ronnag, a small valley near South Barrule, had carted away the earth from an old burial ground on his farm and used it as manure for his fields, and how his beasts died afterwards. The narrator said he did not know whether there was any truth in it, but everybody believed that it was the reason why the cattle died; and so did the farmer himself at last: so he desisted from completing his disturbance of the old site. It is possibly for a similar reason that a house in ruins is seldom pulled down, or the materials used for other buildings. Where that has been done misfortunes have ensued; at any rate, I have heard it said so more than once. I ought to have stated that the non-disturbance of antiquities in the island is quite consistent with their being now and then shamefully neglected as elsewhere. This is now met by an excellent statute recently enacted by the House of Keys for the preservation of the public monuments of the island. Of the other and more purely Manx superstitions I may mention one which obtains among the Peel fishermen of the present day: no boat is willing to be third in the order of sailing out from Peel harbour to the fisheries. So it sometimes happens that after two boats have departed, the others remain watching each other for days, each hoping that somebody else may be reckless enough to break through the invisible barrier of 'bad luck.' I have often asked for an explanation of this superstition, but the only intelligible answer I have had was that it has been observed that the third boat has done badly several years in succession; but I am unable to ascertain how far that represents the fact. Another of the unlucky things is to have a white stone in the boat, even in the ballast, and for that I never could get any explanation at all; but there is no doubt as to the fact of this superstition, and I may illustrate it from the case of a clergyman's son on the west side, who took it into his head to go out with some fishermen several days in succession. They chanced to be unsuccessful each time, and they gave their Jonah the nickname of Clagh Vane, or 'White Stone.' Now what can be the origin of this tabu? It seems to me that if the Manx had once a habit of adorning the graves of the departed with white stones, that circumstance would be a reasonable explanation of the superstition in question. Further, it is quite possible they did, and here Manx archæologists could probably help as to the matter of fact. In the absence, however, of information to the point from Man, I take the liberty of citing some relating to Scotland. It comes from Mr. Gomme's presidential address to the Folk-Lore Society: see Folk-Lore for 1893, pp. 13-4:-- 'Near Inverary, it is the custom among the fisher-folk, and has been so within the memory of the oldest, to place little white stones or pebbles on the graves of their friends. No reason is now given for the practice, beyond that most potent and delightful of all reasons in the minds of folk-lore students, namely, that it has always been done. Now there is nothing between this modern practice sanctioned by traditional observance and the practice of the stone-age people in the same neighbourhood and in others, as made known to us by their grave-relics. Thus, in a cairn at Achnacrie opened by Dr. Angus Smith, on entering the innermost chamber "the first thing that struck the eye was a row of quartz pebbles larger than a walnut; these were arranged on the ledge of the lower granite block of the east side." Near Crinan, at Duncraigaig and at Rudie, the same characteristic was observed, and Canon Greenwell, who examined the cairns, says the pebbles "must have been placed there with some intention, and probably possessed a symbolic meaning."' See also Burghead, by Mr. H. W. Young (Inverness, 1899), p. 10, where we read that at Burghead the 'smooth white pebbles, sometimes five or seven of them, but never more,' have been usually arranged as crosses on the graves which he has found under the fallen ramparts. Can this be a Christian superstition with the white stones of the Apocalypse as its foundation? Here I may mention a fact which I do not know where else to put, namely, that a fisherman on his way in the morning to the fishing, and chancing to pass by the cottage of another fisherman who is not on friendly terms with him, will pluck a straw from the thatch of the latter's dwelling. Thereby he is supposed to rob him of his luck in the fishing for that day. One would expect to learn that the straw from the thatch served as the subject of an incantation directed against the owner of the thatch. I have never heard anything suggested to that effect; but I conclude that the plucking of the straw is only a partial survival of what was once a complete ritual for bewitching one's neighbour, unless getting possession of the straw was supposed to carry with it possession of everything belonging to the other man, including his luck in fishing for that day. Owing to my ignorance as to the superstitions of other fishermen than those of the Isle of Man, I will not attempt to classify the remaining instances to be mentioned, such as the unluckiness of mentioning a horse or a mouse on board a fishing-boat: I seem, however, to have heard of similar tabus among Scottish fishermen; and, according to Dr. Blind, Shetland fishermen will not mention a church or a clergyman when out at sea, but use quite other names for both when on board a ship (Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 89). Novices in the Manx fisheries have to learn not to point to anything with one finger: they have to point with the whole hand or not at all. This looks as if it belonged to a code of rules as to the use of the hand, such as prevail among the Neapolitans and other peoples whose chief article of faith is the belief in malign influences: see Mr. Elworthy's volume on The Evil Eye. Whether the Manx are alone in thinking it unlucky to lend salt from one boat to another when they are engaged in the fishing, I know not: such lending would probably be inconvenient, but why it should be unlucky, as they believe it to be, does not appear. The first of May is a day on which it is unlucky to lend anything, and especially to give anyone fire [156]. This looks as if it pointed back to some druidic custom of lighting all fires at that time from a sacred hearth, but, so far as is known, this only took place at the beginning of the other half-year, namely, Sauin or Allhallows, which is sometimes rendered into Manx as Laa 'll mooar ny Saintsh, 'the Day of the great Feast of the Saints.' Lastly, I may mention that it is unlucky to say that you are very well: at any rate, I infer that it is regarded so, as you will never get a Manxman to say that he is feer vie, 'very well.' He usually admits that he is 'middling'; and if by any chance he risks a stronger adjective, he hastens to qualify it by adding 'now,' or 'just now,' with an emphasis indicative of his anxiety not to say too much. His habits of speech point back to a time when the Manx mind was dominated by the fear of awaking malignant influences in the spirit world around him. This has had the effect of giving the Manx peasant's character a tinge of reserve and suspicion, which makes it difficult to gain his confidence: his acquaintance has, therefore, to be cultivated for some time before you can say that you know the workings of his heart. The pagan belief in a Nemesis has doubtless passed away, but not without materially affecting the Manx idea of a personal devil. Ever since the first allusion made in my hearing by Manxmen to the devil, I have been more and more deeply impressed that for them the devil is a much more formidable being than Englishmen or Welshmen picture him. He is a graver and, if I may say so, a more respectable being, allowing no liberties to be taken with his name, so you had better not call him a devil, the evil one, or like names, for his proper designation is Noid ny Hanmey, 'the Enemy of the Soul,' and in ordinary Anglo-Manx conversation he is commonly called 'the Enemy of Souls.' I well remember getting one day into a conversation with an old soldier in the south of the island. He was, as I soon discovered, labouring under a sort of theological monomania, and his chief question was concerning the Welsh word for 'the Enemy of Souls.' I felt at once that I had to be careful, and that the reputation of my countrymen depended on how I answered. As I had no name anything like the one he used for the devil, I explained to him that the Welsh, though not a great nation, were great students of theology, and that they had by no means neglected the great branch of it known as satanology. In fact that study, as I went on to say, had left its impress on the Welsh language: on Sunday the ministers of all denominations, the deacons and elders, and all self-respecting congregations spoke of the devil trisyllabically as diafol, while on the other days of the week everybody called him more briefly and forcibly diawl, except bards concocting an awdl for an Eistedfod, where the devil must always be called diafl, and excepting also sailors, farm servants, post-boys and colliers, together with country gentlemen learning Welsh to address their wouldn't-be constituents--for all these the regulation form was jawl, with an English j. Thus one could, I pointed out to him, fix the social standing of a Welshman by the way he named 'the Enemy of Souls,' as well as appreciate the superiority of Welsh over Greek, seeing that Welsh, when it borrowed diabolos from Greek, quadrupled it, while Greek remained sterile. He was so profoundly impressed that I never was able to bring his attention back to the small fry, spiritually speaking, of the Isle of Man, to wit, the fairies and the fenodyree, or even the witches and the charmers, except that he had some reserve of faith in witches, since the witch of Endor was in the Bible and had ascribed to her a 'terr'ble' great power of raising spirits: that, he thought, must be true. I pointed out to him that a fenodyree (see p. 288) was also mentioned in his Bible: this display of ready knowledge on my part made a deep impression on his mind. The Manx are, as a rule, a sober people, and highly religious; as regards their tenets, they are mostly members of the Church of England or Wesleyan Methodists, or else both, which is by no means unusual. Religious phrases are not rare in their ordinary conversation; in fact, they struck me as being of more frequent occurrence than in Wales, even the Wales of my boyhood; and here and there this fondness for religious phraseology has left its traces on the native vocabulary. Take, for example, the word for 'anybody, a person, or human being,' which Cregeen writes py'agh or p'agh: he rightly regards it as the colloquial pronunciation of peccagh, 'a sinner.' So, when one knocks at a Manx door and calls out, Vel p'agh sthie? he literally asks, 'Is there any sinner indoors?' The question has, however, been explained to me, with unconscious irony, as properly meaning, 'Is there any Christian indoors?' and care is now taken in reading to pronounce the middle consonants of the word peccagh, 'sinner,' so as to distinguish it from the word for a Christian 'anybody': but the identity of origin is unmistakable. Lastly, the fact that a curse is a species of prayer, to wit, a prayer for evil to follow, is well exemplified in Manx by the same words, gwee [157], plural gwecaghyn, meaning both kinds of prayer. Thus I found myself stumbling several times, in reading through the Psalms in Manx, from not bearing in mind the sinister meaning of these words; for example in Psalm xiv. 6, where we have Ta 'n beeal oc lane dy ghweeaghyn as dy herriuid, which I mechanically construed to mean 'Their mouth is full of praying and bitterness,' instead of 'cursing and bitterness'; and so in other cases, such as Ps. x. 7, and cix. 27. It occurred to me on various occasions to make inquiries as to the attitude of religious Manxmen towards witchcraft and the charmer's vocation. Nobody, so far as I know, accuses them of favouring witchcraft in any way whatsoever; but as to the reality of witches and witchcraft they are not likely to have any doubts so long as they dwell on the Biblical account of the witch of Endor, as I have already mentioned in the case of the old Crimean soldier. Then as to charmers I have heard it distinctly stated that the most religious men are they who have most confidence in charmers and their charms; and a lay preacher whom I know has been mentioned to me as now and then doing a little charming in cases of danger or pressing need. On the whole, I think the charge against religious people of consulting charmers is somewhat exaggerated; but I believe that recourse to the charmer is more usual and more openly had than, for example, in Wales, where those who consult a dyn hyspys or 'wise man' have to do it secretly, and at the risk of being expelled by their co-religionists from the Seiet or 'Society.' There is somewhat in the atmosphere of Man to remind one rather of the Wales of a past generation--Wales as it was at the time when the Rev. Edmund Jones could write a Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales, as a book 'designed to confute and to prevent the infidelity of denying the being and apparition of spirits, which tends to irreligion and atheism': see pp. 174, 195 above. The Manx peasantry are perhaps the most independent and prosperous in the British Isles; but their position geographically and politically has been favourable to the continuance of ideas not quite up to the level of the latest papers on Darwinism and Evolution read at our Church Congresses in this country. This may be thought to be here wide of the mark; but, after giving, in the previous chapter, specimens of rather ancient superstitions as recently known in the island, it is but right that one should form an idea of the surroundings in which they have lingered into modern times. Perhaps nothing will better serve to bring this home to the reader's mind than the fact, for which there is proof, that old people still living remember men and women clad in white sheets doing penance publicly in the churches of Man. The following is the evidence which I was able to find, and I may state that I first heard in 1888 of the public penance from Mr. Joughin, who was an aged man and a native of Kirk Bride. He related how a girl named Mary Dick gave an impertinent answer to the clergyman when he was catechizing her class, and how she had to do penance for it at church. She took her revenge on the parson by singing, while attending in a white sheet, louder than everybody else in the congregation. This, unless I am mistaken, Mr. Joughin gave me to understand he had heard from his father. I mentioned the story to a clergyman, who was decidedly of opinion that no one alive now could remember anything about public penance. Not long after, however, I got into conversation with a shoemaker at Kirk Michael, named Dan Kelly, who was nearly completing his eighty-first year. He was a native of Ballaugh, and stated that he remembered many successive occupants of the episcopal see. A long time ago the official called the sumner had, out of spite he said, appointed him to serve as one of the four of the chapter jury. It was, he thought, when he was about twenty-five. During his term of office he saw four persons, of whom two were married men and two unmarried women, doing penance in the parish church of Ballaugh for having illegitimate children. They stood in the alley of the church, and the sumner had to throw white sheets over them; on the fourth Sunday of their penance they stood inside the chancel rails, but not to take the communion. The parson, whose name was Stowell or Stowall, made them thoroughly ashamed of themselves on the fourth Sunday, as one of the men afterwards admitted. Kelly mentioned the names of the women and of one of the men, and he indicated to me some of their descendants as well known in the neighbourhood. I cross-examined him all the more severely, as I had heard the other view of the remoteness of the date. But nothing could shake Kelly, who added that soon after the date of the above mentioned cases the civil functionary, known as the vicar-general, put an end to the chapter jury and to public penance: according to his reckoning the penance he spoke of must have taken place about 1832. Another old man, named Kewley, living now near Kirk Michael, but formerly in the parish of Lezayre, had a similar story. He thinks that he was born in the sixth year of the century, and when he was between eighteen and twenty he saw a man doing public penance, in Lezayre Church, I presume, but I have no decided note on that point. However that may be, he remembered that the penitent, when he had done his penance, had the audacity to throw the white sheet over the sumner, who, the penitent remarked, might now wear it himself, as he had had enough of it. Kewley would bring the date only down to about 1825. Lastly, I was in the island again in 1891, and spent the first part of the month of April at Peel, where I had conversations with a retired captain who was then about seventy-eight. He is a native of the parish of Dalby, but he was only 'a lump of a boy' when the last couple of immorals were forced to do penance in white sheets at church. He gave me the guilty man's name, and the name of his home in the parish, and both the captain and his daughter assured me that the man had only been dead six or seven years; that is, the penitent seems to have lived till about the year 1884. I may here mention that the parish of Dalby is the subject of many tales, which go to show that its people were more old-fashioned in their ways than those of the rest of the island. It appears to have been the last, also, to be reached by a cart road; and I was amused by a native's description of the men at Methodist meetings in Dalby pulling the tappag, or forelock, at the name of Jesus, while the women ducked a curtsy in a dangerously abrupt fashion. He and his wife appeared to be quite used to it: the husband was an octogenarian named Quirc, who was born on the coast near the low-lying peninsula called the Niarbyl, that is to say 'the Tail.' To return to the public penance, it seems to us in this country to belong, so to say, to ancient history, and it transports us to a state of things which we find it hard to realize. The lapse of years has brought about profounder changes in our greater Isle of Britain than in the smaller Isle of Man, while we ourselves, helpless to escape the pervading influence of those profounder changes, become living instances of the comprehensive truth of the German poet's words, Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. CHAPTER VI THE FOLKLORE OF THE WELLS ... Iuvat integros accedere fontes.--Lucretius. It is only recently [158] that I heard for the first time of Welsh instances of the habit of tying rags and bits of clothing to the branches of a tree growing near a holy well. Since then I have obtained several items of information in point: the first is a communication received in June, 1892, from Mr. J. H. Davies, of Lincoln College, Oxford--since then of Lincoln's Inn--relating to a Glamorganshire holy well, situated near the pathway leading from Coychurch to Bridgend. It is the custom there, he states, for people suffering from any malady to dip a rag in the water, and to bathe the affected part of the body, the rag being then placed on a tree close to the well. When Mr. Davies passed that way, some three years previously, there were, he adds, hundreds of such shreds on the tree, some of which distinctly presented the appearance of having been very recently placed there. The well is called Ffynnon Cae Moch, 'Swine-field Well,' which can hardly have been its old name; and a later communication from Mr. Davies summarizes a conversation which he had about the well, on December 16, 1892, with Mr. J. T. Howell, of Pencoed, near Bridgend. His notes run thus:--'Ffynnon Cae Moch, between Coychurch and Bridgend, is one mile from Coychurch, one and a quarter from Bridgend, near Tremains. It is within twelve or fifteen yards of the high-road, just where the pathway begins. People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted, but very old tree, and is simply covered with rags.' A little less than a year later, I had an opportunity of visiting this well in the company of Mr. Brynmor-Jones; and I find in my notes that it is not situated so near the road as Mr. Howell would seem to have stated to Mr. Davies. We found the well, which is a powerful spring, surrounded by a circular wall. It is overshadowed by a dying thorn tree, and a little further back stands another thorn which is not so decayed: it was on this latter thorn we found the rags. I took off a twig with two rags, while Mr. Brynmor-Jones counted over a dozen other rags on the tree; and we noticed that some of them had only recently been suspended there: among them were portions undoubtedly of a woman's clothing. At one of the hotels at Bridgend, I found an illiterate servant who was acquainted with the well, and I cross-examined him on the subject of it. He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the well or a rag being tied to the tree. My next informant is Mr. D. J. Jones, a native of the Rhonda Valley, in the same county of Glamorgan. He was an undergraduate of Jesus College, Oxford, when I consulted him in 1892. His information was to the effect that he knows of three interesting wells in the county. The first is situated within two miles of his home, and is known as Ffynnon Pen Rhys, or the Well of Pen Rhys. The custom there is that the person who wishes his health to be benefited should wash in the water of the well, and throw a pin into it afterwards. He next mentions a well at Llancarvan, some five or six miles from Cowbridge, where the custom prevails of tying rags to the branches of a tree growing close at hand. Lastly, he calls my attention to a passage in Hanes Morganwg, 'The History of Glamorgan,' written by Mr. D. W. Jones, known in Welsh literature as Dafyd Morganwg. In that work, p. 29, the author speaks of Ffynnon Marcros, 'the Well of Marcros,' to the following effect:--'It is the custom for those who are healed in it to tie a shred of linen or cotton to the branches of a tree that stands close by; and there the shreds are, almost as numerous as the leaves.' Marcros is, I may say, near Nash Point, and looks on the map as if it were about eight miles distant from Bridgend. Let me here make it clear that so far we have had to do with four different wells [159], three of which are severally distinguished by the presence of a tree adorned with rags by those who seek health in those waters; but they are all three, as the reader will have doubtless noticed, in the same district, namely, the part of Glamorganshire near the main line of the Great Western Railway. There is no reason, however, to think that the custom of tying rags to a well tree was peculiar to that part of the Principality. One day, in looking through some old notes of mine, I came across an entry bearing the date of August 7, 1887, when I was spending a few days with my friend, Chancellor Silvan Evans, at Llanwrin Rectory, near Machynlleth. Mrs. Evans was then alive and well, and took a keen interest in Welsh antiquities and folklore. Among other things, she related to me how she had, some twenty years before, visited a well in the parish of Llandrillo yn Rhos, namely Ffynnon Eilian, or Elian's Well, between Abergele and Llandudno, when her attention was directed to some bushes near the well, which had once been covered with bits of rags left by those who frequented the well. This was told Mrs. Evans by an old woman of seventy, who, on being questioned by Mrs. Evans concerning the history of the well, informed her that the rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool. She was explicit on the point, that wool had to be used for the purpose, and that even woollen yarn would not do: it had to be wool in its natural state. The old woman remembered this to have been the rule ever since she was a child. Mrs. Evans noticed corks, with pins stuck in them, floating in the well, and her informant remembered many more in years gone by; for Elian's Well was once in great repute as a ffynnon reibio, or a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated. I infer, however, from what Mrs. Evans was told of the rags, that Elian's Well was visited, not only by the malicious, but also by the sick and suffering. My note is not clear on the point whether there were any rags on the bushes by the well when Mrs. Evans visited the spot, or whether she was only told of them by the caretaker. Even in the latter case it seems evident that this habit of tying rags to trees or bushes near sacred wells has only ceased in that part of Denbighshire within this century. It is very possible that it continued in North Wales more recently than this instance would lead one to suppose; indeed, I should not be in the least surprised to learn that it is still practised in out of the way places in Gwyned, just as it is in Glamorgan: we want more information. I cannot say for certain whether it was customary in any of the cases to which I have called attention to tie rags to the well tree as well as to throw pins or other small objects into the well; but I cannot help adhering to the view, that the distinction was probably an ancient one between two orders of things. In other words, I am inclined to believe that the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease of which the ailing visitor to the well wished to be rid, and that the bead, button, or coin deposited by him in the well, or in a receptacle near the well, formed alone the offering. In opposition to this view Mr. Gomme has expressed himself as follows in Folk-Lore, 1892, p. 89:--'There is some evidence against that, from the fact that in the case of some wells, especially in Scotland at one time, the whole garment was put down as an offering. Gradually these offerings of clothes became less and less till they came down to rags. Also in other parts, the geographical distribution of rag-offerings coincides with the existence of monoliths and dolmens.' As to the monoliths and dolmens, I am too little conversant with the facts to risk any opinion as to the value of the coincidence; but as to the suggestion that the rag originally meant the whole garment, that will suit my hypothesis admirably. In other words, the whole garment was, as I take it, the vehicle of the disease: the whole was accursed, and not merely a part. But Mr. Gomme had previously touched on the question in his presidential address (Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 13); and I must at once admit that he succeeded then in proving that a certain amount of confusion occurs between things which I should regard as belonging originally to distinct categories: witness the inimitable Irish instance which he quotes:--'To St. Columbkill--I offer up this button, a bit o' the waistband o' my own breeches, an' a taste o' my wife's petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin' made this holy station; an' may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.' Here not only the button is treated as an offering, but also the bits of clothing; but the confusion of ideas I should explain as being, at least in part, one of the natural results of substituting a portion of a garment for the entire garment; for thereby a button or a pin becomes a part of the dress, and capable of being interpreted in two senses. After all, however, the ordinary practices have not, as I look at them, resulted in effacing the distinction altogether: the rag is not left in the well; nor is the bead, button, or pin attached to a branch of the tree. So, in the main, it seemed to me easier to explain the facts, taken altogether, on the supposition that originally the rag was regarded as the vehicle of the disease, and the bead, button, or coin as the offering. My object in calling attention to this point was to have it discussed, and I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed; for, since my remarks were published [160], a paper entitled Pin-wells and Rag-bushes was read before the British Association by Mr. Hartland, in 1893, and published in Folk-Lore for the same year, pp. 451-70. In that paper the whole question is gone into with searching logic, and Mr. Hartland finds the required explanation in one of the dogmas of magic. For 'if an article of my clothing,' he says, 'in a witch's hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart ... has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear, upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, or making a pilgrimage to a sacred well, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat.... In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well--my name written upon the walls of a temple--a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn--is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me.' Mr. Hartland concludes from a large number of instances, that as a rule 'where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versa.' This wider argument as to the effluence of the divinity of a particular spot of special holiness seems to me conclusive. It applies also, needless to say, to a large category of cases besides those in question between Mr. Gomme and the present writer. So now I would revise my position thus:--I continue to regard the rag much as before, but treat the article thrown into the well as the more special means of establishing a beneficial relation with the well divinity: whether it could also be viewed as an offering would depend on the value attached to it. Some of the following notes may serve as illustrations, especially those relating to the wool and the pin:--Ffynnon Gwynwy, or the Well of Gwynwy, near Llangelynin, on the river Conwy, appears to be partly in point; for it formerly used to be well stocked with crooked pins, which nobody would touch lest he might get from them the warts supposed to attach to them, whence it would appear that a pin might be regarded as the vehicle of the disease. There was a well of some repute at Cae Garw, in the parish of Pistyll, near the foot of Carnguwch, in Lleyn, or West Carnarvonshire. The water possessed virtues to cure one of rheumatism and warts; but, in order to be rid of the latter, it was requisite to throw a pin into the well for each individual wart. For these two items of information, and several more to be mentioned presently, I have to thank Mr. John Jones, better known in Wales by his bardic name of Myrdin Fard, and as an enthusiastic collector of Welsh antiquities, whether in the form of manuscript or of unwritten folklore. On the second day of the year 1893 I paid him a visit at Chwilog, on the Carnarvon and Avon Wen Railway, and asked him many questions: these he not only answered with the utmost willingness, but he also showed me the unpublished materials which he had collected. I come next to a competition on the folklore of North Wales at the London Eistedfod in 1887, in which, as one of the adjudicators, I observed that several of the competitors mentioned the prevalent belief, that every well with healing properties must have its outlet towards the south (i'r dê). According to one of them, if you wished to get rid of warts, you should, on your way to the well, look for wool which the sheep had lost. When you had found enough wool you should prick each wart with a pin, and then rub the wart well with the wool. The next thing was to bend the pin and throw it into the well. Then you should place the wool on the first whitethorn you could find, and as the wind scattered the wool, the warts would disappear. There was a well of the kind, the writer went on to say, near his home; and he, with three or four other boys, went from school one day to the well to charm their warts away. For he had twenty-three on one of his hands; so that he always tried to hide it, as it was the belief that if one counted the warts they would double their number. He forgets what became of the other boys' warts, but his own disappeared soon afterwards; and his grandfather used to maintain that it was owing to the virtue of the well. Such were the words of this writer, whose name is unknown to me; but I guess him to have been a native of Carnarvonshire, or else of one of the neighbouring districts of Denbighshire or Merionethshire. To return to Myrdin Fard, he mentioned Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan, or the Well of the Lleithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynyd y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Lleyn. In the case of this well it is necessary, when going to it and coming from it, to be careful not to utter a word to anybody, or to turn to look back. What one has to do at the well is to bathe the warts with a rag or clout which has grease on it. When that is done, the clout with the grease has to be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. This brings to my mind the fact that I noticed more than once, years ago, rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there. On the subject of pin-wells I had in 1893, from Mr. T. E. Morris, of Portmadoc, barrister-at-law, some account of Ffynnon Faglan, or Baglan's Well, in the parish of Llanfaglan, near Carnarvon. The well is situated in an open field to the right of the road leading towards the church, and close to it. The church and churchyard form an enclosure in the middle of the same field, and the former has in its wall the old stone reading FILI LOVERNII ANATEMORI. My friend derived information from Mrs. Roberts, of Cefn y Coed, near Carnarvon, as follows:--'The old people who would be likely to know anything about Ffynnon Faglan have all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish of Llanfaglan, remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it, when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism; and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well, at Tan y Graig, said that he remembered it being cleaned out about fifty years ago, when two basinfuls of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say, dadwitsio. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well. There is a very large and well-known well of the kind at C'lynnog, Ffynnon Beuno, "St. Beuno's Well," which was considered to have miraculous healing powers; and even yet, I believe, some people have faith in it. Ffynnon Faglan is, in its construction, an imitation, on a smaller scale, of St. Beuno's Well at C'lynnog.' In the cliffs at the west end of Lleyn is a wishing-well called Ffynnon Fair, or St. Mary's Well, to the left of the site of Eglwys Fair, and facing Ynys Enlli, or Bardsey. Here, to obtain your wish, you have to descend the steps to the well and walk up again to the top with your mouth full of the water; and then you have to go round the ruins of the church once or more times with the water still in your mouth. Viewing the position of the well from the sea, I should be disposed to think that the realization of one's wish at that price could not be regarded as altogether cheap. Myrdin Fard also told me that there used to be a well near Criccieth Church. It was known as Ffynnon y Saint, or the Saints' Well, and it was the custom to throw keys or pins into it on the morning of Easter Sunday, in order to propitiate St. Catherine, who was the patron of the well. I should be glad to know what this exactly meant. Lastly, a few of the wells in that part of Gwyned may be grouped together and described as oracular. One of these, the big well in the parish of Llanbedrog in Lleyn, as I learn from Myrdin Fard, required the devotee to kneel by it and avow his faith in it. When this had been duly done, he might proceed in this wise: to ascertain, for instance, the name of the thief who had stolen from him, he had to throw a bit of bread into the well and name the person whom he suspected. At the name of the thief the bread would sink; so the inquirer went on naming all the persons he could think of until the bit of bread sank, when the thief was identified. How far is one to suppose that we have here traces of the influences of the water ordeal common in the Middle Ages? Another well of the same kind was Ffynnon Saethon, in Llanfihangel Bachellaeth parish, also in Lleyn. Here it was customary, as he had it in writing, for lovers to throw pins (pinnau) into the well; but these pins appear to have been the points of the blackthorn. At any rate, they cannot well have been of any kind of metal, as we are told that, if they sank in the water, one concluded that one's lover was not sincere in his or her love. Next may be mentioned a well, bearing the remarkable name of Ffynnon Gwyned, or the Well of Gwyned, which is situated near Mynyd Mawr, in the parish of Abererch: it used to be consulted in the following manner:--When it was desired to discover whether an ailing person would recover, a garment of his would be thrown into the well, and according to the side on which it sank it was known whether he would live or die. Ffynnon Gybi, or St. Cybi's Well, in the parish of Llangybi, was the scene of a somewhat similar practice; for there, girls who wished to know their lovers' intentions would spread their pocket-handkerchiefs on the water of the well, and, if the water pushed the handkerchiefs to the south--in Welsh i'r dê--they knew that everything was right--in Welsh o dê--and that their lovers were honest and honourable in their intentions; but, if the water shifted the handkerchiefs northwards, they concluded the contrary. A reference to this is made by a modern Welsh poet, as follows:-- Ambell dyn, gwaeldyn, a gyrch I bant gorís Moel Bentyrch, Mewn gobaith mai hen Gybi Glodfawr syd yn llwydaw'r lli. Some folks, worthless [161] folks, visit A hollow below Moel Bentyrch, In hopes that ancient Kybi Of noble fame blesses the flood. The spot is not far from where Myrdin Fard lives; and he mentioned, that adjoining the well is a building which was probably intended for the person in charge of the well: it has been tenanted within his memory. Not only for this but also for several of the foregoing items of information am I indebted to Myrdin; and now I come to Mrs. Williams-Ellis, of Glasfryn Uchaf, who tells me that one day not long ago, she met at Llangybi a native who had not visited the place since his boyhood: he had been away as an engineer in South Wales nearly all his life, but had returned to see an aged relative. So the reminiscences of the place filled his mind, and, among other things, he said that he remembered very well what concern there was one day in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was a good sign: so he gave one to understand. As a sort of parallel I may mention that I have seen the fish living in Ffynnon Beris, not far from the parish church of Llanberis. It is jealously guarded by the inhabitants, and when it was once or twice taken out by a mischievous stranger he was forced to put it back again. However, I never could get the history of this sacred fish, but I found that it was regarded as very old [162]. I may add that it appears the well called Ffynnon Fair, 'Mary's Well,' at Llandwyn, in Anglesey, used formerly to have inhabiting it a sacred fish, whose movements indicated the fortunes of the love-sick men and maidens who visited there the shrine of St. Dwynwen [163]. Possibly inquiry would result in showing that such sacred fish have been far more common once in the Principality than they are now. The next class of wells to claim our attention consists of what I may call fairy wells, of which few are mentioned in connexion with Wales; but the legends about them are of absorbing interest. One of them is in Myrdin Fard's neighbourhood, and I questioned him a good deal on the subject: it is called Ffynnon Grassi, or Grace's Well, and it occupies, according to him, a few square feet--he has measured it himself--of the south-east corner of the lake of Glasfryn Uchaf, in the parish of Llangybi. It appears that it was walled in, and that the stone forming its eastern side has several holes in it, which were intended to let water enter the well and not issue from it. It had a door or cover on its surface; and it was necessary to keep the door always shut, except when water was being drawn. Through somebody's negligence, however, it was once on a time left open: the consequence was that the water of the well flowed out and formed the Glasfryn Lake, which is so considerable as to be navigable for small boats. Grassi is supposed in the locality to have been the name of the owner of the well, or at any rate of a lady who had something to do with it. Grassi, or Grace, however, can only be a name which a modern version of the legend has introduced. It probably stands for an older name given to the person in charge of the well; to the one, in fact, who neglected to shut the door; but though the name must be comparatively modern, the story, as a whole, does not appear to be at all modern, but very decidedly the contrary. So I wrote in 1893; but years after my conversation with Myrdin Fard, my attention was called to the fact that the Glasfryn family, of which the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis is the head, have in their coat of arms a mermaid, who is represented in the usual way, holding a comb in her right hand and a mirror in her left. I had from the first expected to find some kind of Undine or Liban story associated with the well and the lake, though I had abstained from trying the risky effects of leading questions; but when I heard of the heraldic mermaid I wrote to Mr. Williams-Ellis to ask whether he knew her history. His words, though not encouraging as regards the mermaid, soon convinced me that I had not been wholly wrong in supposing that more folklore attached to the well and lake than I had been able to discover. Since then Mrs. Williams-Ellis has taken the trouble of collecting on the spot all the items of tradition which she could find: she communicated them to me in the month of March, 1899, and the following is an abstract of them, preceded by a brief description of the ground:-- The well itself is at the foot of a very green field-bank at the head of the lake, but not on the same level with it, as the lake has had its waters lowered half a century or more ago by the outlet having been cut deeper. Adjoining the field containing the well is a larger field, which also slopes down to the lake and extends in another direction to the grounds belonging to the house. This larger field is called Cae'r Ladi, 'the Lady's Field,' and it is remarkable for having in its centre an ancient standing stone, which, as seen from the windows of the house, presents the appearance of a female figure hurrying along, with the wind slightly swelling out her veil and the skirt of her dress. Mr. Williams-Ellis remembers how when he was a boy the stone was partially white-washed, and how an old bonnet adorned the top of this would-be statue, and he thinks that an old shawl used to be thrown over the shoulders. Now as to Grassi, she is mostly regarded as a ghostly person somehow connected with the lake and the house of Glasfryn. One story is to the effect, that on a certain evening she forgot to close the well, and that when the gushing waters had formed the lake, poor Grassi, overcome with remorse, wandered up and down the high ground of Cae'r Ladi, moaning and weeping. There, in fact, she is still at times to be heard lamenting her fate, especially at two o'clock in the early morning. Some people say that she is also to be seen about the lake, which is now the haunt of some half a dozen swans. But on the whole her visits appear to have been most frequent and troublesome at the house itself. Several persons still living are mentioned, who believe that they have seen her there, and two of them, Mrs. Jones of Talafon, and old Sydney Griffith of Tydyn Bach, agree in the main in their description of what they saw, namely, a tall lady with well marked features and large bright eyes: she was dressed in white silk and a white velvet bonnet. The woman, Sydney Griffith, thought that she had seen the lady walking several times about the house and in Cae'r Ladi. This comes, in both instances, from a young lady born and bred in the immediate neighbourhood, and studying now at the University College of North Wales; but Mrs. Williams-Ellis has had similar accounts from other sources, and she mentions tenants of Glasfryn who found it difficult to keep servants there, because they felt that the place was haunted. In fact one of the tenants himself felt so unsafe that he used to take his gun and his dog with him to his bedroom at night; not to mention that when the Williams-Ellises lived themselves, as they do still, in the house, their visitors have been known to declare that they heard the strange plaintive cry out of doors at two o'clock in the morning. Traces also of a very different story are reported by Mrs. Williams-Ellis, to the effect that when the water broke forth to form the lake, the fairies seized Grassi and changed her into a swan, and that she continued in that form to live on the lake sixscore years, and that when at length she died, she loudly lamented her lot: that cry is still to be heard at night. This story is in process apparently of being rationalized; at any rate the young lady student, to whom I have referred, remembers perfectly that her grandfather used to explain to her and the other children at home that Grassi was changed into a swan as a punishment for haunting Glasfryn, but that nevertheless the old lady still visited the place, especially when there happened to be strangers in the house. At the end of September last Mrs. Rhys and I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Glasfryn, in the hope of hearing the plaintive wail, and of seeing the lady in white silk revisiting her familiar haunts. But alas! our sleep was never once disturbed, nor was our peace once troubled by suspicions of anything uncanny. This, however, is negative, and characterized by the usual weakness of all such evidence. It is now time to turn to another order of facts: in the first place may be mentioned that the young lady student's grandmother used to call the well Ffynnon Grâs Siôn Gruffud, as she had always heard that Grâs was the daughter of a certain Siôn Gruffyd, 'John Griffith,' who lived near the well; and Mrs. Williams-Ellis finds that Grâs was buried, at a very advanced age, on December 14, 1743, at the parish church of Llangybi, where the register describes her as Grace Jones, alias Grace Jones Griffith. She had lived till the end at Glasfryn, but from documents in the possession of the Glasfryn family it is known that in 1728 Hugh Lloyd of Trallwyn purchased the house and estate of Glasfryn from a son of Grace's, named John ab Cadwaladr, and that Hugh Lloyd of Trallwyn's son, the Rev. William Lloyd, sold them to Archdeacon Ellis, from whom they have descended to the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis. In the light of these facts there is no reason to connect the old lady's name very closely with the well or the lake. She was once the dominant figure at Glasfryn, that is all; and when she died she was as usual supposed to haunt the house and its immediate surroundings; and if we might venture to suppose that Glasfryn was sold by her son against her will, though subject to conditions which enabled her to remain in possession of the place to the day of her death, we should have a further explanation, perhaps, of her supposed moaning and lamentation. In the background, however, of the story, one detects the possibility of another female figure, for it may be that the standing stone in Cae'r Ladi represents a woman buried there centuries before Grace ruled at Glasfryn, and that traditions about the earlier lady have survived to be inextricably mixed with those concerning the later one. Lastly, those traditions may have also associated the subject of them with the well and the lake; but I wish to attach no importance to this conjecture, as we have in reserve a third figure of larger possibilities than either Grace or the stone woman. It needs no better introduction than Mrs. Williams-Ellis' own words: 'Our younger boys have a crew of three little Welsh boys who live near the lake, to join them in their boat sailing about the pool and in camping on the island, &c. They asked me once who Morgan was, whom the little boys were always saying they were to be careful against. An old man living at Tal Llyn, "Lake's End," a farm close by, says that as a boy he was always told that "naughty boys would be carried off by Morgan into the lake." Others tell me that Morgan is always held to be ready to take off troublesome children, and somehow Morgan is thought of as a bad one.' Now as Morgan carries children off into the pool, he would seem to issue from the pool, and to have his home in it. Further, he plays the same part as the fairies against whom a Snowdonian mother used to warn her children: they were on no account to wander away from the house when there was a mist, lest the fairies should carry them to their home beneath Llyn Dwythwch. In other words, Morgan may be said to act in the same way as the mermaid, who takes a sailor down to her submarine home; and it explains to my mind a discussion which I once heard of the name Morgan by a party of men and women making hay one fine summer's day in the neighbourhood of Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire. I was a child, but I remember vividly how they teased one of their number whose 'style' was Morgan. They hinted at dreadful things associated with the name; but it was all so vague that I could not gather that his great unknown namesake was a thief, a murderer, or any kind of ordinary criminal. The impression left on my mind was rather the notion of something weird, uncanny, or non-human; and the fact that the Welsh version of the Book of Common Prayer calls the Pelagians Morganiaid, 'Morgans,' does not offer an adequate explanation. But I now see clearly that it is to be sought in the indistinct echo of such folklore as that which makes Morgan a terror to children in the neighbourhood of the Glasfryn Lake. The name, however, presents points of difficulty which require some notice: the Welsh translators of Article IX in the Prayer Book were probably wrong in making Pelagians into Morganiaid, as the Welsh for Pelagius seems to have been rather Morien [164], which in its oldest recorded form was Morgen, and meant sea-born, or offspring of the sea. In a still earlier form it must have been Morigenos, with a feminine Morigena, but when the endings came to be dropped both vocables would become Morgen, later Morien. I do not remember coming across a feminine Morgen in Welsh, but the presumption is that it did exist. For, among other things, I may mention that we have it in Irish as Muirgen, one of the names of the lake lady Liban, who, when the waters of the neglected well rushed forth to form Lough Neagh, lived beneath that lake until she desired to be changed into a salmon. The same conclusion may be drawn from the name Morgain or Morgan, given in the French romances to one or more water ladies; for those names are easiest to explain as the Brythonic Morgen borrowed from a Welsh or Breton source, unless one found it possible to trace it direct to the Goidels of Wales. No sooner, however, had the confusion taken place between Morgen and the name which is so common in Wales as exclusively a man's name, than the aquatic figure must also become male. That is why the Glasfryn Morgan is now a male, and not a female like the other characters whose rôle he plays. But while the name was in Welsh successively Morgen and Morien, the man's name was Morcant, Morgant, or Morgan [165], so that, phonologically speaking, no confusion could be regarded as possible between the two series. Here, therefore, one detects the influence, doubtless, of the French romances which spoke of a lake lady Morgain, Morgan, or Morgue. The character varied: Morgain le Fay was a designing and wicked person; but Morgan was also the name of a well disposed lady of the same fairy kind, who took Arthur away to be healed at her home in the Isle of Avallon. We seem to be on the track of the same confusing influence of the name, when it occurs in the story of Geraint and Enid; for there the chief physician of Arthur's court is called Morgan Tut or Morgant Tut, and the word tut has been shown by M. Loth to have meant the same sort of non-human being whom an eleventh-century Life of St. Maudez mentions as quidam dæmon quem Britones Tuthe appellant. Thus the name Morgan Tut is meant as the Welsh equivalent of the French Morgain le Fay or Morgan la Fée [166]; but so long as the compiler of the story of Geraint and Enid employed in his Welsh the form Morgan, he had practically no choice but to treat the person called Morgan as a man, whether that was or was not the sex in the original texts on which he was drawing. Of course he could have avoided the difficulty in case he was aware of it, if he had found some available formula in use like Mary-Morgant, said to be a common name for a fairy on the island of Ouessant, off the coast of Brittany. Summarizing the foregoing notes, we seem to be right in drawing the following conclusions:--(1) The well was left in the charge of a woman who forgot to shut it, and when she saw the water bursting forth, she bewailed her negligence, as in the case of her counterpart in the legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod. (2) The original name of the Glasfryn 'Morgan' was Morgen, later Morien. (3) The person changed into a swan on the occasion of the Glasfryn well erupting was not Grassi, but most probably Morgen. And (4) the character was originally feminine, like that of the mermaid or the fairies, whose rôle the Glasfryn Morgan plays; and more especially may one compare the Irish Muirgen, the Morgen more usually called Líban. For it is to be noticed that when the neglected well burst forth she, Muirgen or Líban, was not drowned like the others involved in the calamity, but lived in her chamber at the bottom of the lake formed by the overflowing well, until she was changed into a salmon. In that form she lived on some three centuries, until in fact she was caught in the net of a fisherman, and obtained the boon of a Christian burial. However, the change into a swan is also known on Irish ground: take for instance the story of the Children of Lir, who were converted into swans by their stepmother, and lived in that form on Loch Dairbhreach, in Westmeath, for three hundred years, and twice as long on the open sea, until their destiny closed with the advent of St. Patrick and the first ringing of a Christian bell in Erin [167]. The next legend was kindly communicated to me by Mr. Wm. Davies already mentioned at p. 147 above: he found it in Cyfaill yr Aelwyd [168], "The Friend of the Hearth," where it is stated that it belonged to David Jones' Storehouse of Curiosities, a collection which does not seem to have ever assumed the form of a printed book. David Jones, of Trefriw, in the Conwy Valley, was a publisher and poet who wrote between 1750 and 1780. This is his story: 'In 1735 I had a conversation with a man concerning Tegid Lake. He had heard from old people that near the middle of it there was a well opposite Llangower, and the well was called Ffynnon Gywer, "Cower's Well," and at that time the town was round about the well. It was obligatory to place a lid on the well every night. (It seems that in those days somebody was aware that unless this was done it would prove the destruction of the town.) But one night it was forgotten, and by the morning, behold the town had subsided and the lake became three miles long and one mile wide. They say, moreover, that on clear days some people see the chimneys of the houses. It is since then that the town was built at the lower end of the lake. It is called Y Bala [169], and the man told me that he had talked with an old Bala man who had, when he was a youth, had two days' mowing of hay [170] between the road and the lake; but by this time the lake had spread over that land and the road also, which necessitated the purchase of land further away for the road; and some say that the town will yet sink as far as the place called Llanfor--others call it Llanfawd, "Drown-church," or Llanfawr, "Great-church," in Penllyn.... Further, when the weather is stormy water appears oozing through every floor within Bala, and at other times anybody can get water enough for the use of his house, provided he dig a little into the floor of it.' In reference to the idea that the town is to sink, together with the neighbouring village of Llanfor, the writer quotes in a note the couplet known still to everybody in the neighbourhood as follows:-- Y Bala aeth, a'r Bala aiff, A Llanfor aiff yn Llyn. Bala old the lake has had, and Bala new The lake will have, and Llanfor too. This probably implies that old Bala is beneath the lake, and that the present Bala is to meet the like fate at some time to come. This kind of prophecy is not very uncommon: thus there has been one current as to the Montgomeryshire town of Pool, called, in Welsh, Trallwng or Trallwm, and in English, Welshpool, to distinguish it from the English town of Pool. As to Welshpool, a very deep water called Llyn Du, lying between the town and the Castell Coch or Powys Castle, and right in the domain of the castle, is suddenly to spread itself, and one fine market day to engulf the whole place [171]. Further, when I was a boy in North Cardiganshire, the following couplet was quite familiar to me, and supposed to have been one of Merlin's prophecies:-- Caer Fyrdin, cei oer fore; Daear a'th lwnc, dw'r i'th le. Carmarthen, a cold morn awaits thee; Earth gapes, and water in thy place will be. In regard to the earlier half of the line, concerning Bala gone, the story of Ffynnon Gywer might be said to explain it, but there is another which is later and far better known. It is of the same kind as the stories related in Welsh concerning Llynclys and Syfadon; but I reserve it with these and others of the same sort for chapter vii. For the next legend belonging here I have to thank the Rev. J. Fisher, a native of the parish of Llandybïe, who, in spite of his name, is a genuine Welshman, and--what is more--a Welsh scholar. The following are his words:--'Llyn Llech Owen (the last word is locally sounded w-en, like oo-en in English, as is also the personal name Owen) is on Mynyd Mawr, in the ecclesiastical parish of Gors Lâs, and the civil parish of Llanarthney, Carmarthenshire. It is a small lake, forming the source of the Gwendraeth Fawr. I have heard the tradition about its origin told by several persons, and by all, until quite recently, pretty much in the same form. In 1884 I took it down from my grandfather, Rees Thomas (b. 1809, d. 1892), of Cil Coll Llandebïe--a very intelligent man, with a good fund of old-world Welsh lore--who had lived all his life in the neighbouring parishes of Llandeilo Fawr and Llandybïe. 'The following is the version of the story (translated) as I had it from him:--There was once a man of the name of Owen living on Mynyd Mawr, and he had a well, "ffynnon." Over this well he kept a large flag ("fflagen neu lech fawr": "fflagen" is the word in common use now in these parts for a large flat stone), which he was always careful to replace over its mouth after he had satisfied himself or his beast with water. It happened, however, that one day he went on horseback to the well to water his horse, and forgot to put the flag back in its place. He rode off leisurely in the direction of his home; but, after he had gone some distance, he casually looked back, and, to his great astonishment, he saw that the well had burst out and was overflowing the whole place. He suddenly bethought him that he should ride back and encompass the overflow of the water as fast as he could; and it was the horse's track in galloping round the water that put a stop to its further overflow. It is fully believed that, had he not galloped round the flood in the way he did, the well would have been sure to inundate the whole district and drown all. Hence the lake was called the Lake of Owen's Flag, "Llyn Llech Owen." 'I have always felt interested in this story, as it resembled that about the formation of Lough Neagh, &c.; and, happening to meet the Rev. D. Harwood Hughes, B.A., the vicar of Gors Lâs (St. Lleian's), last August (1892), I asked him to tell me the legend as he had heard it in his parish. He said that he had been told it, but in a form different from mine, where the "Owen" was said to have been Owen Glyndwr. This is the substance of the legend as he had heard it:--Owen Glyndwr, when once passing through these parts, arrived here of an evening. He came across a well, and, having watered his horse, placed a stone over it in order to find it again next morning. He then went to lodge for the night at Dyllgoed Farm, close by. In the morning, before proceeding on his journey, he took his horse to the well to give him water, but found to his surprise that the well had become a lake.' Mr. Fisher goes on to mention the later history of the lake: how, some eighty years ago, its banks were the resort on Sunday afternoons of the young people of the neighbourhood, and how a Baptist preacher put an end to their amusements and various kinds of games by preaching at them. However, the lake-side appears to be still a favourite spot for picnics and Sunday-school gatherings. Mr. Fisher was quite right in appending to his own version that of his friend; but, from the point of view of folklore, I must confess that I can make nothing of the latter: it differs from the older one as much as chalk does from cheese. It would be naturally gratifying to the pride of local topography to be able to connect with the pool the name of Owen Glyndwr; but it is worthy of note that this highly respectable attempt to rationalize the legend wholly fails, as it does not explain why there is now a lake where there was once but a well. In other words, the euhemerized story is itself evidence corroborative of Mr. Fisher's older version, which is furthermore kept in countenance by Howells' account, p. 104, where we are told who the Owen in question was, namely, Owen Lawgoch, a personage dear, as we shall see later, to the Welsh legend of the district. He and his men had their abode in a cave on the northern side of Mynyd Mawr, and while there Owen used, we are informed, to water his steed at a fine spring covered with a large stone, which it required the strength of a giant to lift. But one day he forgot to replace it, and when he next sought the well he found the lake. He returned to his cave and told his men what had happened. Thereupon both he and they fell into a sleep, which is to last till it is broken by the sound of a trumpet and the clang of arms on Rhiw Goch: then they are to sally forth to conquer. Now the story as told by Howells and Fisher provokes comparison, as the latter suggests, with the Irish legend of the formation of Lough Ree and of Lough Neagh in the story of the Death of Eochaid McMaireda [172]. In both of these legends also there is a horse, a kind of water-horse, who forms the well which eventually overflows and becomes Lough Ree, and so with the still larger body of water known as Lough Neagh. In the latter case the fairy well was placed in the charge of a woman; but she one day left the cover of the well open, and the catastrophe took place--the water issued forth and overflowed the country. One of Eochaid's daughters, named Líban, however, was not drowned, but only changed into a salmon as already mentioned at p. 376 above. In my Arthurian Legend, p. 361, I have attempted to show that the name Líban may have its Welsh equivalent in that of Llïon, occurring in the name of Llyn Llïon, or Llïon's Lake, the bursting of which is described in the latest series of Triads, iii. 13, 97, as causing a sort of deluge. I am not certain as to the nature of the relationship between those names, but it seems evident that the stories have a common substratum, though it is to be noticed that no well, fairy or otherwise, figures in the Llyn Llïon legend, which makes the presence of the monster called the afanc the cause of the waters bursting forth. So Hu the Mighty, with his team of famous oxen, is made to drag the afanc out of the lake. There is, however, another Welsh legend concerning a great overflow in which a well does figure: I allude to that of Cantre'r Gwaelod, or the Bottom Hundred, a fine spacious country supposed to be submerged in Cardigan Bay. Modern euhemerism treats it as defended by embankments and sluices, which, we are told, were in the charge of the prince of the country, named Seithennin, who, being one day in his cups, forgot to shut the sluices, and thus brought about the inundation, which was the end of his fertile realm. This, however, is not the old legend: that speaks of a well, and lays the blame on a woman--a pretty sure sign of antiquity, as the reader may judge from other old stories which will readily occur to him. The Welsh legend to which I allude is embodied in a short poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen [173]: it consists of eight triplets, to which is added a triplet from the Englynion of the Graves. The following is the original with a tentative translation:-- Seithenhin sawde allan. ac edrychuirde varanres mor. maes guitnev rytoes. Boed emendiceid y morvin aehellygaut guydi cvin. finaun wenestir [174] mor terruin. Boed emendiceid y vachteith. ae . golligaut guydi gueith. finaun wenestir mor diffeith. Diaspad mererid y ar vann caer. hid ar duu y dodir. gnaud guydi traha trangc hir. Diaspad mererid . y ar van kaer hetiv. hid ar duu y dadoluch. gnaud guydi traha attreguch. Diaspad mererid am gorchuit heno. ac nimhaut gorlluit. gnaud guydi traha tramguit. Diaspad mererid y ar gwinev kadir kedaul duv ae gorev. gnaud guydi gormot eissev. Diaspad mererid . am kymhell heno y urth uyistauell. gnaud guydi traha trangc pell. Bet seithenhin synhuir vann rug kaer kenedir a glan. mor maurhidic a kinran. Seithennin, stand thou forth And see the vanguard of the main: Gwydno's plain has it covered. Accursed be the maiden Who let it loose after supping, Well cup-bearer of the mighty main. Accursed be the damsel Who let it loose after battle, Well minister of the high sea. Mererid's cry from a city's height, Even to God is it directed: After pride comes a long pause. Mererid's cry from a city's height to-day, Even to God her expiation: After pride comes reflection. Mererid's cry o'ercomes me to-night, Nor can I readily prosper: After pride comes a fall. Mererid's cry over strong wines, Bounteous God has wrought it: After excess comes privation. Mererid's cry drives me to-night From my chamber away: After insolence comes long death. Weak-witted Seithennin's grave is it Between Kenedyr's Fort and the shore, With majestic Mor's and Kynran's. The names in these lines present great difficulties: first comes that of Mererid, which is no other word than Margarita, 'a pearl,' borrowed; but what does it here mean? Margarita, besides meaning a pearl, was used in Welsh, e.g. under the form Marereda [175], as the proper name written in English Margaret. That is probably how it is to be taken here, namely, as the name given to the negligent guardian of the fairy well. It cannot very well be, however, the name belonging to the original form of the legend; and we have the somewhat parallel case of Ffynnon Grassi, or Grace's Well; but what old Celtic name that of Mererid has replaced in the story, I cannot say. In the next place, nobody has been able to identify Caer Kenedyr, and I have nothing to say as to Mor Maurhidic, except that a person of that name is mentioned in another of the Englynion of the Graves. It runs thus in the Black Book, fol. 33a:-- Bet mor maurhidic diessic unben. post kinhen kinteic. mab peredur penwetic. The grave of Mor the Grand, ... prince, Pillar of the ... conflict, Son of Peredur of Penwedig. The last name in the final triplet of the poem which I have attempted to translate is Kinran, which is otherwise unknown as a Welsh name; but I am inclined to identify it with that of one of the three who escaped the catastrophe in the Irish legend. The name there is Curnán, which was borne by the idiot of the family, who, like many later idiots, was at the same time a prophet. For he is represented as always prophesying that the waters were going to burst forth, and as advising his friends to prepare boats. So he may be set, after a fashion, over against our Seithenhin synhuir vann, 'S. of the feeble mind.' But one might perhaps ask why I do not point out an equivalent in Irish for the Welsh Seithennin, as his name is now pronounced. The fact is that no such equivalent occurs in the Irish story in question, nor exactly, so far as I know, in any other. That is what I wrote when penning these notes; but it has occurred to me since then, that there is an Irish name, an important Irish name, which looks as if related to Seithenhin, and that is Setanta Beg, 'the little Setantian,' the first name of the Irish hero Cúchulainn. The nt, I may point out, makes one suspect that Setanta is a name of Brythonic origin in Irish; and I have been in the habit of associating it with that of the people of the Setantii [176], placed by Ptolemy on the coast of what is now Lancashire. Whether any legend has ever been current about a country submerged on the coast of Lancashire I cannot say, but the soundings would make such a legend quite comprehensible. I remember, however, reading somewhere as to the Plain of Muirthemhne, of which Cúchulainn, our Setanta Beg, had special charge, that it was so called because it had once been submarine and become since the converse, so to say, of Seithennin's country. The latter is beneath Cardigan Bay, while the other fringed the opposite side of the sea, consisting as it did of the level portion of County Louth. On the whole, I am not altogether indisposed to believe that we have here traces of an ancient legend of a wider scope than is represented by the Black Book triplets, which I have essayed to translate. I think that I am right in recognizing that legend in the Mabinogi of Branwen, daughter of Llyr. There we read that, when Brân and his men crossed from Wales to Ireland, the intervening sea consisted merely of two navigable rivers, called Lli and Archan. The story-teller adds words to the effect, that it is only since then the sea has multiplied its realms [177] between Ireland and Ynys y Kedyrn, or the Isle of the Keiri, a name which has already been discussed: see pp. 279-83. These are not all the questions which such stories suggest; for Seithennin is represented in later Welsh literature as the son of one Seithyn, associated with Dyfed; and the name Seithyn leads off to the coast of Brittany. For I learn from a paper by the late M. le Men, in the Revue Archéologique for 1872 (xxiii. 52), that the Île de Sein is called in Breton Enez-Sun, in which Sun is a dialectic shortening of Sizun, which is also met with as Seidhun. That being so, one would seem to be right in regarding Sizun as nearly related to our Seithyn. That is not all--the tradition reminds one of the Welsh legend: M. le Men refers to the Vie du P. Maunoir by Boschet (Paris, 1697) p. 126, and adds that, in his own time, the road ending on the Pointe du Raz opposite the Île de Sein passed 'pour être l'ancien chemin qui conduisait à la ville d'Is (Kaer-a-Is, la ville de la partie basse).' It is my own experience, that nobody can go about much in Brittany without hearing over and over again about the submerged city of Is. There is no doubt that we have in these names distant echoes of an inundation story, once widely current in both Britains and perhaps also in Ireland. With regard to Wales we have an indication to that effect in the fact, that Gwydno, to whom the inundated region is treated as having belonged, is associated not only with Cardigan Bay, but also with the coast of North Wales, especially the part of it situated between Bangor and Llandudno [178]. Adjoining it is supposed to lie submerged a once fertile district called Tyno Helig, a legend about which will come under notice later. This brings the inundation story nearer to the coast where Ptolemy in the second century located the Harbour of the Setantii, about the mouth of the river Ribble, and in their name we seem to have some sort of a historical basis for that of the drunken Seithennin [179]. I cannot close these remarks better than by appending what Professor Boyd Dawkins has recently said with regard to the sea between Britain and Ireland:-- 'It may be interesting to remark further that during the time of the Iberian dominion in Wales, the geography of the seaboard was different to what it is now. A forest, containing the remains of their domestic oxen that had run wild, and of the indigenous wild animals such as the bear and the red deer, united Anglesey with the mainland, and occupied the shallows of Cardigan Bay, known in legend as "the lost lands of Wales." It extended southwards from the present sea margin across the estuary of the Severn, to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. It passed northwards across the Irish Sea off the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire, and occupied Morecambe Bay with a dense growth of oak, Scotch fir, alder, birch, and hazel. It ranged seawards beyond the ten-fathom line, and is to be found on most shores beneath the sand-banks and mud-banks, as for example at Rhyl and Cardiff. In Cardigan Bay it excited the wonder of Giraldus de Barri [180].' To return to fairy wells, I have to confess that I cannot decide what may be precisely the meaning of the notion of a well with a woman set carefully to see that the door or cover of the well is kept shut. It will occur, however, to everybody to compare the well which Undine wished to have kept shut, on account of its affording a ready access from her subterranean country to the residence of her refractory knight in his castle above ground. And in the case of the Glasfryn Lake, the walling and cover that were to keep the spring from overflowing were, according to the story, not water-tight, seeing that there were holes made in one of the stones. This suggests the idea that the cover was to prevent the passage of some such full-grown fairies as those with which legend seems to have once peopled all the pools and tarns of Wales. But, in the next place, is the maiden in charge of the well to be regarded as priestess of the well? The idea of a priesthood in connexion with wells in Wales is not wholly unknown. I wish, however, before discussing these instances, to call attention to one or two Irish ones which point in another direction. Foremost may be mentioned the source of the river Boyne, which is now called Trinity Well, situated in the Barony of Carbury, in County Kildare. The following is the Rennes Dindsenchas concerning it, as translated by Dr. Stokes, in the Revue Celtique, xv. 315-6:--'Bóand, wife of Nechtán son of Labraid, went to the secret well which was in the green of Síd Nechtáin. Whoever went to it would not come from it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtán himself and his three cup-bearers, whose names were Flesc and Lám and Luam. Once upon a time Bóand went through pride to test the well's power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked withershins round the well. (Whereupon) three waves from the well break over her and deprive her of a thigh [? wounded her thigh] and one of her hands and one of her eyes. Then she, fleeing her shame, turns seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, (where she was drowned).' This is to explain why the river is called Bóand, 'Boyne.' A version to the same effect in the Book of Leinster, fol. 191a, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity. A similar story is related to show how the Shannon, in Irish Sinann, Sinand, or Sinend, is called after a woman of that name. It occurs in the same Rennes manuscript, and the following is Stokes' translation in the Revue Celtique, xv. 457:--'Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan son of Ler out of Tir Tairngire (Land of Promise, Fairyland), went to Connla's Well, which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again. Now Sinend went to seek the inspiration, for she wanted nothing save only wisdom. She went with the stream till she reached Linn Mna Feile, "the Pool of the Modest Woman," that is Bri Ele--and she went ahead on her journey; but the well left its place, and she followed it [181] to the banks of the river Tarr-cáin, "Fair-back." After this it overwhelmed her, so that her back (tarr) went upwards, and when she had come to the land on this side (of the Shannon) she tasted death. Whence Sinann and Linn Mna Feile and Tarr-cain.' In these stories the reader will have noticed that the foremost punishment on any intruder who looked into the forbidden well was the instant ruin of his two eyes. One naturally asks why the eyes are made the special objects of the punishment, and I am inclined to think the meaning to have originally been that the well or spring was regarded as the eye of the divinity of the water. Should this prove well founded it looks natural that the eyes, which transgressed by gazing into the eye of the divinity, should be the first objects of that divinity's vengeance. This is suggested to me by the fact that the regular Welsh word for the source of a river is llygad, Old Welsh licat, 'eye,' as for instance in the case of Licat Amir mentioned by Nennius, § 73; of Llygad Llychwr, 'the source of the Loughor river' in the hills behind Carreg Cennen Castle; and of the weird lake in which the Rheidol [182] rises near the top of Plinlimmon: it is called Llyn Llygad y Rheidol, 'the Lake of the Rheidol's Eye.' By the way, the Rheidol is not wholly without its folklore, for I used to be told in my childhood, that she and the Wye and the Severn sallied forth simultaneously from Plinlimmon one fine morning to run a race to the sea. The result was, one was told, that the Rheidol won great honour by reaching the sea three weeks before her bigger sisters. Somebody has alluded to the legend in the following lines:-- Tair afon gynt a rifwyd Ar dwyfron Pumlumon lwyd, Hafren a Gwy'n hyfryd ei gwed, A'r Rheidol fawr ei hanrhyded. Three rivers of yore were seen On grey Plinlimmon's breast, Severn, and Wye of pleasant mien, And Rheidol rich in great renown. To return to the Irish legends, I may mention that Eugene O'Curry has a good deal to say of the mysterious nuts and 'the salmon of knowledge,' the partaking of which was synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom: see his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 142-4. He gives it as his opinion that Connla's Well was situated somewhere in Lower Ormond; but the locality of this Helicon, with the seven streams of wisdom circulating out of it and back again into it, is more intelligible when regarded as a matter of fairy geography. A portion of the note appended to the foregoing legend by Stokes is in point here: he traces the earliest mention of the nine hazels of wisdom, growing at the heads of the chief rivers of Ireland, to the Dialogue of the Two Sages in the Book of Leinster, fol. 186b, whence he cites the poet Néde mac Adnai saying whence he had come, as follows:--a caillib .i. a nói collaib na Segsa ... a caillib didiu assa mbenaiter clessa na súad tanacsa, 'from hazels, to wit, from the nine hazels of the Segais ... from hazels out of which are obtained the feats of the sages, I have come.' The relevancy of this passage will be seen when I add, that Segais was one of the names of the mound in which the Boyne rises; so it may be safely inferred that Bóand's transgression was of the same nature as that of Sinand, to wit, that of intruding on sacred ground in quest of wisdom and inspiration which was not permitted their sex: certain sources of knowledge, certain quellen, were reserved for men alone. Before I have done with the Irish instances I must append one in the form it was told me in the summer of 1894: I was in Meath and went to see the remarkable chambered cairns on the hill known as Sliabh na Caillighe, 'the Hag's Mountain,' near Oldcastle and Lough Crew. I had as my guide a young shepherd whom I picked up on the way. He knew all about the hag after whom the hill was called except her name: she was, he said, a giantess, and so she brought there, in three apronfuls, the stones forming the three principal cairns. As to the cairn on the hill point known as Belrath, that is called the Chair Cairn from a big stone placed there by the hag to serve as her seat when she wished to have a quiet look on the country round. But usually she was to be seen riding on a wonderful pony she had: that creature was so nimble and strong that it used to take the hag at a leap from one hill-top to another. However, the end of it all was that the hag rode so hard that the pony fell down, and that both horse and rider were killed. The hag appears to have been Cailleach Bhéara, or Caillech Bérre, 'the Old Woman of Beare,' that is, Bearhaven, in County Cork [183]. Now the view from the Hag's Mountain is very extensive, and I asked the shepherd to point out some places in the distance. Among other things we could see Lough Ramor, which he called the Virginia Water, and more to the west he identified Lough Sheelin, about which he had the following legend to tell:--A long, long time ago there was no lake there, but only a well with a flagstone kept over it, and everybody would put the flag back after taking water out of the well. But one day a woman who fetched water from it forgot to replace the stone, and the water burst forth in pursuit of the luckless woman, who fled as hard as she could before the angry flood. She continued until she had run about seven miles--the estimated length of the lake at the present day. Now at this point a man, who was busily mowing hay in the field through which she was running, saw what was happening and mowed the woman down with his scythe, whereupon the water advanced no further. Such was the shepherd's yarn, which partly agrees with the Boyne and Shannon stories in that the woman was pursued by the water, which only stopped where she died. On the other hand, it resembles the Llyn Llech Owen legend and that of Lough Neagh in placing to the woman's charge only the neglect to cover the well. It looks as if we had in these stories a confusion of two different institutions, one being a well of wisdom which no woman durst visit without fatal vengeance overtaking her, and the other a fairy well which was attended to by a woman who was to keep it covered, and who may, perhaps, be regarded as priestess of the spring. If we try to interpret the Cantre'r Gwaelod story from these two points of view we have to note the following matters:--Though it is not said that the moruin, or damsel, had a lid or cover on the well, the word golligaut or helligaut, 'did let run,' implies some such an idea as that of a lid or door; for opening the sluices, in the sense of the later version, seems to me out of the question. In two of the Englynion she is cursed for the action implied, and if she was the well minister or well servant, as I take finaun wenestir to mean, we might perhaps regard her as the priestess of that spring. On the other hand, the prevailing note in the other Englynion is the traha, 'presumption, arrogance, insolence, pride,' which forms the burden of four out of five of them. This would seem to point to an attitude on the part of the damsel resembling that of Bóand or Sinand when prying into the secrets of wells which were tabu to them. The seventh Englyn alludes to wines, and its burden is gormod, 'too much, excess, extravagance,' whereby the poet seems to lend countenance to some such a later story as that of Seithennin's intemperance. Lastly, the question of priest or priestess of a sacred well has been alluded to once or twice, and it may be perhaps illustrated on Welsh ground by the history of Ffynnon Eilian, or St. Elian's Well, which has been mentioned in another context, p. 357 above. Of that well we read as follows, s. v. Llandrillo, in the third edition of Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Wales:--'Fynnon Elian, ... even in the present age, is frequently visited by the superstitious, for the purpose of invoking curses upon the heads of those who have grievously offended them, and also of supplicating prosperity to themselves; but the numbers are evidently decreasing. The ceremony is performed by the applicant standing upon a certain spot near the well, whilst the owner of it reads a few passages of the sacred Scriptures, and then, taking a small quantity of water, gives it to the former to drink, and throws the residue over his head, which is repeated three times, the party continuing to mutter imprecations in whatever terms his vengeance may dictate.' Rice Rees, in his Essay on the Welsh Saints (London, 1836), p. 267, speaks of St. Elian as follows: 'Miraculous cures were lately supposed to be performed at his shrine at Llanelian, Anglesey; and near to the church of Llanelian, Denbighshire, is a well called Ffynnon Elian, which is thought by the peasantry of the neighbourhood to be endued with miraculous powers even at present.' Foulkes, s. v. Elian, in his Enwogion Cymru, published in Liverpool in 1870, expresses the opinion that the visits of the superstitious to the well had ceased for some time. The last person supposed to have had charge of the well was a certain John Evans, but some of the most amusing stories of the shrewdness of the caretaker refer to a woman who had charge of the well before Evans' time. A series of articles on Ffynnon Eilian appeared in 1861 in a Welsh periodical called Y Nofelyd, printed by Mr. Aubrey at Llanerch y Med, in Anglesey. The articles in question were afterwards published, I am told, as a shilling book, which I have not seen, and they dealt with the superstition, with the history of John Evans, and with his confessions and conversion. I have searched in vain for any account in Welsh of the ritual followed at the well. When Mrs. Silvan Evans visited the place, the person in charge of the well was a woman, and Peter Roberts, in his Cambrian Popular Antiquities, published in London in 1815, alludes to her or a predecessor of hers in the following terms, p. 246:--'Near the Well resided some worthless and infamous wretch, who officiated as priestess.' He furthermore gives one to understand that she kept a book in which she registered the name of each evil wisher for a trifling sum of money. When this had been done, a pin was dropped into the well in the name of the victim. This proceeding looks adequate from the magical point of view, though less complicated than the ritual indicated by Lewis. This latter writer calls the person who took charge of the well the owner; and I have always understood that, whether owner or not, he or she used to receive gifts, not only for placing in the well the names of men who were to be cursed, but also from those men for taking their names out again, so as to relieve them from the malediction. In fact, the trade in curses seems to have been a very thriving one: its influence was powerful and widespread. Here there is, I think, very little doubt that the owner or guardian of the well was, so to say, the representative of an ancient priesthood of the well. That priesthood dated its origin probably many centuries before a Christian church was built near the well, and coming down to later times we have unfortunately no sufficient data to show how the right to such priesthood was acquired, whether by inheritance or otherwise; but we know that a woman might have charge of St. Elian's Well. Let me cite another instance, which I unexpectedly discovered some years ago in the course of a ramble in quest of early inscriptions. Among other places which I visited was Llandeilo Llwydarth, near Maen Clochog, in the northern part of Pembrokeshire. This is one of the many churches bearing the name of St. Teilo in South Wales: the building is in ruins, but the churchyard is still used, and contains two of the most ancient post-Roman inscriptions in the Principality. If you ask now for 'Llandeilo' in this district, you will be understood to be inquiring after the farm house of that name, close to the old church; and I learnt from the landlady that her family had been there for many generations, though they have not very long been the proprietors of the land. She also told me of St. Teilo's Well, a little above the house: she added that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told: the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family. To be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. Her eldest son, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions, that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else. Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. 'What skull?' said I. 'St. Teilo's skull,' was the answer. 'Where do you get the saint's skull?' I asked. 'Here it is,' was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine. I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was the upper portion of a thick, strong skull, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint's corpse. That story will be found in the Book of Llan Dâv, pp. 116-7, and according to it the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo--not simply one--and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one. I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been much thinned by the owner's use of it; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Llandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumph a dead Teilo each. The reader, perhaps, would like to take another view, namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos to three, in order to gratify the Welsh weakness for triads. Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there. My informant is Mr. Benjamin Gibby of Llangolman Mill, who writes mentioning, among other things, that the people around call the well Ffynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen's Well, and that the family owning and occupying the farm house of Llandeilo have been there for centuries. Their name, which is Melchior (pronounced Melshor), is by no means a common one in the Principality, so far as I know; but, whatever may be its history in Wales, the bearers of it are excellent Kymry. Mr. Gibby informs me that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint's skull as follows:--The saint had a favourite maid servant from the Pembrokeshire Llandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his end was approaching he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that in a year's time from the day of his burial at Llandeilo Fawr, in Carmarthenshire, she was to take his skull to the other Llandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it. So the belief prevailed that to drink out of the skull some of the water of Teilo's Well ensured health, especially against the whooping-cough. The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy, that they were wont to leave it, he says, with their constitutions wonderfully improved; and he mentions a story related to him by an old neighbour, Stifyn Ifan, who has been dead for some years, to the effect that a carriage, drawn by four horses, came once, more than half a century ago, to Llandeilo. It was full of invalids coming from Pen Clawd, in Gower, Glamorganshire, to try the water of the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well, they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody, and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time they did the right thing, we are told, and departed in excellent health. Such are the contents of Mr. Gibby's Welsh letter; and I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes why the site was chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, neither believe in the efficacy of the well, nor take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, as they put it, to hand the skull full of water to any one who perseveres in believing in it. In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, while the walls of the church have long fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of some primitive beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakably to an ancient priesthood of a sacred spring. NOTES [1] As to the spelling of Welsh names, it may be pointed out for the benefit of English readers that Welsh f has the sound of English v, while the sound of English f is written ff (and ph) in Welsh, and however strange it may seem to them that the written f should be sounded v, it is borrowed from an old English alphabet which did so likewise more or less systematically. Th in such English words as thin and breath is written th, but the soft sound as in this and breathe is usually printed in Welsh dd and written in modern Welsh manuscript sometimes like a small Greek delta: this will be found represented by d in the Welsh extracts edited by me in this volume.--J. R. [2] 'Blaensawde, or the upper end of the river Sawde, is situate about three-quarters of a mile south-east from the village of Llandeusant. It gives its name to one of the hamlets of that parish. The Sawde has its source in Llyn y Fan Fach, which is nearly two miles distant from Blaensawde House.' [3] The rendering might be more correctly given thus: 'O thou of the crimped bread, it is not easy to catch me.'--J. R. [4] 'Mydfai parish was, in former times, celebrated for its fair maidens, but whether they were descendants of the Lady of the Lake or otherwise cannot be determined. An old pennill records the fact of their beauty thus:-- Mae eira gwyn Ar ben y bryn, A'r glasgoed yn y Ferdre, Mae bedw mân Ynghoed Cwm-brân, A merched glân yn Mydfe. Which may be translated, There is white snow On the mountain's brow, And greenwood at the Verdre, Young birch so good In Cwm-brân wood, And lovely girls in Mydfe.' [5] Similarly this should be rendered: 'O thou of the moist bread, I will not have thee.'--J. R. [6] In the best Demetian Welsh this word would be hwedel, and in the Gwentian of Glamorgan it is gwedel, mutated wedel, as may be heard in the neighbourhood of Bridgend.--J. R. [7] This is not generally accepted, as some Welsh antiquarians find reasons to believe that Dafyd ap Gwilym was buried at Strata Florida.--J. R. [8] This is not quite correct, as I believe that Dr. C. Rice Williams, who lives at Aberystwyth, is one of the Medygon. That means the year 1881, when this chapter was written, excepting the portions concerning which the reader is apprised of a later date.--J. R. [9] Later it will be seen that the triban in the above form was meant for neither of the two lakes, though it would seem to have adapted itself to several. In the case of the Fan Fach Lake the town meant must have been Carmarthen, and the couplet probably ran thus: Os na cha'i lonyd yn ym lle, Fi foda dre' Garfyrdin. [10] Llwch is the Goidelic word loch borrowed, and Llyn Cwm y Llwch literally means the Lake of the Loch Dingle. [11] I make no attempt to translate these lines, but I find that Mr. Llewellyn Williams has found a still more obscure version of them, as follows:-- Prw med, prw med, prw'r gwartheg i dre', Prw milfach a malfach, pedair llualfach, Llualfach ac Acli, pedair lafi, Lafi a chromwen, pedair nepwen, Nepwen drwynog, brech yn llyn a gwaun dodyn, Tair bryncethin, tair cyffredin, Tair caseg du, draw yn yr eithin; Dewch i gyd i lys y brenin. [12] The Ty-fry is a house said to be some 200 years old, and situated about two miles from Rhonda Fechan: more exactly it is about one-fourth of a mile from the station of Ystrad Rhonda, and stands at the foot of Mynyd yr Eglwys on the Treorky side. It is now surrounded by the cottages of colliers, one of whom occupies it. For this information I have to thank Mr. Probert Evans. [13] It is to be borne in mind that the sound of h is uncertain in Glamorgan pronunciation, whether the language used is Welsh or English. The pronunciation indicated, however, by Mr. Evans comes near enough to the authentic form written Elfarch. [14] In the Snowdon district of Gwyned the call is drwi, drwi, drw-i bach, while in North Cardiganshire it is trwi, trwi, trw-e fach, also pronounced sometimes with a surd r, produced by making the breath cause both lips to vibrate--tR'wi, tR'wi, which can hardly be distinguished from pR'wi, pR'wi. For the more forcibly the lips are vibrated the more difficult it becomes to start by closing them to pronounce p: so the tendency with R' is to make the preceding consonant into some kind of a t. [15] This is the Welsh form of the borrowed name Jane, and its pronunciation in North Cardiganshire is Siân, with si pronounced approximately like the ti of such French words as nation and the like; but of late years I find the si made into English sh under the influence, probably, to some extent of the English taught at school. This happens in North Wales, even in districts where there are still plenty of people who cannot approach the English words fish and shilling nearer than fiss and silling. Siôn and Siân represent an old importation of English John and Jane, but they are now considered old-fashioned and superseded by John and Jane, which I learned to pronounce Dsiòn and Dsiên, except that Siôn survives as a family name, written Shone, in the neighbourhood of Wrexham. [16] This term dafad (or dafaden), 'a sheep,' also used for 'a wart,' and dafad (or dafaden) wyllt, literally 'a wild sheep,' for cancer or epithelioma, raises a question which I am quite unable to answer: why should a wart have been likened to a sheep? [17] The name is probably a shortening of Cawellyn, and that perhaps of Cawell-lyn, 'Creel or Basket Lake.' Its old name is said to have been Llyn Tardenni. [18] Tyn is a shortening of tydyn, which is not quite forgotten in the case of Tyn Gadlas or Tyn Siarlas (for Tydyn Siarlys), 'Charles' Tenement,' in the immediate neighbourhood. Similarly the Anglesey Farm of Tyn yr Onnen used at one time to be Tydyn yr Onnen in the books of Jesus College, Oxford, to which it belongs. [19] That is the pronunciation which I have learnt at Llanberis, but there is another, which I have also heard, namely Derwenyd. [20] Ystrad is the Welsh corresponding to Scotch strath, and it is nearly related to the English word strand. It means the flat land near a river. [21] Betws (or Bettws) Garmon seems to mean Germanus's Bede-hus or House of Prayer, but Garmon can hardly have come down in Welsh from the time of the famous saint in the fifth century, as it would then have probably yielded Gerfon and not Garmon: it looks as if it had come through the Goidelic of this country. [22] One of the rare merits of our Welsh bards is their habit of assuming permanent noms de plume, by means of which they prevent a number of excellent native names from falling into utter oblivion in the general chaos of Anglo-Hebrew ones, such as Jones, Davies, and Williams, which cover the Principality. Welsh place-names have similarly been threatened by Hebrew names of chapels, such as Bethesda, Rehoboth, and Jerusalem, but in this direction the Jewish mania has only here and there effected permanent mischief. [23] The Brython was a valuable Welsh periodical published by Mr. Robert Isaac Jones, at Tremadoc, in the years 1858-1863, and edited by the Rev. Chancellor Silvan Evans, who was then the curate of Llangïan in Lleyn: in fact he was curate for fourteen years! His excellent work in editing the Brython earned for him his diocesan's displeasure, but it is easier to imagine than to describe how hard it was for him to resign the honorarium of £24 derived from the Brython when his stipend as a clergyman was only £92, at the same time that he had dependent on him a wife and six children. However much some people affect to laugh at the revival of the national spirit in Wales, we have, I think, got so far as to make it, for some time to come, impossible for a Welsh clergyman to be snubbed on account of his literary tastes or his delight in the archæology of his country. [24] This parish is called after a saint named Tegái or Tygái, like Tyfaelog and Tysilio, and though the accent rests on the final syllable nothing could prevent the grammarian Huw Tegai and his friends from making it into Tégai in Huw's name. [25] For can they now usually put Ann, and Mr. Hughes remembers hearing it so many years ago. [26] I remember seeing a similar mound at Llanfyrnach, in Pembrokeshire; and the last use made of the hollow on the top of this also is supposed to have been for cock-fights. [27] My attention has also been called to freit, frete, freet, fret, 'news, inquiry, augury,' corresponding to Anglo-Saxon freht, 'divination.' But the disparity of meaning seems to stand in the way of our ffrit being referred to this origin. [28] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 63; Guest, iii. 223. [29] See the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 2 (pp. 33-5), and Celtic Britain, p. 64. [30] As for example in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1870, pp. 192-8; see also 1872, pp. 146-8. [31] Howells has also an account of Llyn Savadhan, as he writes it: see his Cambrian Superstitions, pp. 100-2, where he quaintly says that the story of the wickedness of the ancient lord of Syfadon is assigned as the reason why 'the superstitious little river Lewenny will not mix its water with that of the lake.' Lewenny is a reckless improvement of Mapes' Leueni (printed Lenem); and Giraldus' Clamosum implies an old spelling Llefni, pronounced the same as the later spelling Llyfni, which is now made into Llynfi or Llynvi: the river so called flows through the lake and into the Wye at Glasbury. As to Safadan or Syfadon, it is probably of Goidelic origin, and to be identified with such an Irish name as the feminine Samthann: see Dec. 19 in the Martyrologies. To keep within our data, we are at liberty to suppose that this was the name of the wicked princess in the story, and that she was the ancestress of a clan once powerful on and around the lake, which lies within a Goidelic area indicated by its Ogam inscriptions. [32] These were held, so far as I can gather from the descriptions usually given of them, exactly as I have seen a kermess or kirchmesse celebrated at Heidelberg, or rather the village over the Neckar opposite that town. It was in 1869, but I forget what saint it was with whose name the kermess was supposed to be connected: the chief features of it were dancing and beer drinking. It was by no means unusual for a Welsh Gwyl Fabsant to bring together to a rural neighbourhood far more people than could readily be accommodated; and in Carnarvonshire a hurriedly improvised bed is to this day called gwely g'l'absant, as it were 'a bed (for the time) of a saint's festival.' Rightly or wrongly the belief lingers that these merry gatherings were characterized by no little immorality, which made the better class of people set their faces against them. [33] Since the editing of this volume was begun I have heard that it is intended to publish the Welsh collection which Mr. Jones has made: so I shall only give a translation of the Edward Llwyd version of the afanc story: see section v. of this chapter. [34] This word is not in Welsh dictionaries, but it is Scotch and Manx Gaelic, and is possibly a remnant of the Goidelic once spoken in Gwyned. [35] Our charlatans never leave off trying to make this into Tryfaen so as to extract maen, 'stone,' from it. They do not trouble themselves to find out whether it ever was Tryfaen or not: in fact they rather like altering everything as much as they can. [36] Ystrádllyn, with the accent on the penult, is commonly pronounced Strállyn, and means 'the strand of the lake,' and the hollow is named after it Cwm Strállyn, and the lake in it Llyn Cwm Strállyn, which literally means 'the Lake of the Combe of the Strand of the Lake'--all seemingly for the luxury of forgetting the original name of the lake, which I have never been able to ascertain. [37] So Mr. Jones puts it: I have never heard of any other part of the Principality where the children are usually baptized before they are eight days old. [38] I cannot account for this spelling, but the ll in Bellis is English ll, not the Welsh ll, which represents a sound very different from that of l. [39] Where not stated otherwise, as in this instance, the reader is to regard this chapter as written in the latter part of the year 1881. [40] See Giraldus' Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 8 (pp. 75-8); some discussion of the whole story will be found in chapter iii of this volume. [41] Dr. Moore explains this to be cabbages and potatoes, pounded and mixed with butter or lard. [42] It would be interesting to know what has become of this letter and others of Llwyd's once in the possession of the canon, for it is not to be supposed that the latter ever took the trouble to make an accurate copy of them any more than he did of any other MSS. [43] There is also a Sarn yr Afanc, 'the Afanc's Stepping Stones,' on the Ogwen river in Nant Ffrancon: see Pennant's Tours in Wales, iii. 101. [44] The oxen should accordingly have been called Ychain Pannog; but the explanation is not to be taken seriously. These oxen will come under the reader's notice again, to wit in chapter x. [45] The lines are copied exactly as given at p. 189 (I. vi. 25-30) of The Poetical Works of Lewis Glyn Cothi, edited for the Cymmrodorion by Gwallter Mechain and Tegid, and printed at Oxford in the year 1837. [46] This, I should say, must be a mistake, as it contradicts all the folklore which makes the rowan an object of dread to the fairies. [47] See Choice Notes from 'Notes and Queries' (London, 1859), p. 147. [48] It is more likely that it is a shortening of Llyn y Barfog, meaning the Lake of the Bearded One, Lacus Barbati as it were, the Bearded One being somebody like the hairy monster of another lake mentioned at p. 18 above, or him of the white beard pictured at p. 127. [49] So far from afanc meaning a crocodile, an afanc is represented in the story of Peredur as a creature that would cast at every comer a poisoned spear from behind a pillar standing at the mouth of the cave inhabited by it; see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 224. The corresponding Irish word is abhac, which according to O'Reilly means 'a dwarf, pigmy, manikin; a sprite.' [50] I should not like to vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Pughe's rendering of this and the other Welsh names which he has introduced: that involves difficult questions. [51] The writer meant the river known as Dyfi or Dovey; but he would seem to have had a water etymology on the brain. [52] This involves the name of the river called Disynni, and Diswnwy embodies a popular etymology which is not worth discussing. [53] It would, I think, be a little nearer the mark as follows:-- Come thou, Einion's Yellow One, Stray-horns, the Particoloured Lake Cow, And the Hornless Dodin: Arise, come home. But one would like to know whether Dodin ought not rather to be written Dodyn, to rhyme with Llyn. [54] Hywel's real name is William Davies, Tal y Bont, Cardiganshire. As adjudicator I became acquainted with several stories which Mr. Davies has since given me permission to use, and I have to thank him for clues to several others. [55] Or Llech y Deri, as Mr. Williams tells me in a letter, where he adds that he does not know the place, but that he took it to be in the Hundred of Cemmes, in North-west Pembrokeshire. I take Llech y Derwyd to be fictitious; but I have not succeeded in finding any place called by the other name either. [56] Perhaps the more usual thing is for the man returning from Faery to fall into dust on the spot: see later in this chapter the Curse of Pantannas, which ends with an instance in point, and compare Howells, pp. 142, 146. [57] B. Davies, that is, Benjamin Davies, who gives this tale, was, as I learn from Gwynionyd, a native of Cenarth. He was a schoolmaster for about twelve years, and died in October, 1859, at Merthyr, near Carmarthen: he describes him as a good and intelligent man. [58] This is ordinarily written Cenarth, the name of a parish on the Teifi, where the three counties of Cardigan, Pembroke, and Carmarthen meet. [59] The name Llan Dydoch occurs in the Bruts, A.D. 987 and 1089, and is the one still in use in Welsh; but the English St. Dogmael's shows that it is derived from that of Dogfael's name when the mutation consonant f or v was still written m. In Welsh the name of the saint has been worn down to Dogwel, as in St. Dogwell's near Fishguard, and Llandogwel in Llanrhudlad parish in Anglesey: see Reece's Welsh Saints, p. 211. It points back to an early Brythonic form Doco-maglos, with doco of the same origin as Latin dux, ducis, 'a leader,' and maglo-s = Irish mal, 'a lord or prince.' Dogfael's name assumes in Llan Dydoch a Goidelic form, for Dog-fael would have to become in Irish Doch-mhal, which, cut down to Doch with the honorific prefix to, has yielded Ty-doch; but I am not clear why it is not Ty-doch. Another instance of a Goidelic form of a name having the local preference in Wales to this day offers itself in Cyfelach and Llan Gyfelach in Glamorganshire. The Welsh was formerly Cimeliauc (Reece, p. 274). Here may also be mentioned St. Cyngar, otherwise called Docwinnus (Reece, p. 183), but the name occurs in the Liber Landavensis in the genitive both as Docunn-i and Docguinni, the former of which seems easily explained as Goidelic for an early form of Cyngar, namely Cuno-caros, from which would be formed To-chun or Do-chun. This is what seems to underlie the Latin Docunnus, while Docguinni is possibly a Goidelic modification of the written Docunni, unless some such a name as Doco-vindo-s has been confounded with Docunnus. In one instance the Book of Llan Dâv has instead of Abbas Docunni or Docguinni, the shorter designation, Abbas Dochou (p. 145), which one must not unhesitatingly treat as Dochon, seeing that Dochou would be in later book Welsh Dochau, and in the dialect of the district Docha; and that this occurs in the name of the church of Llandough near Cardiff, and Llandough near Cowbridge. The connexion of a certain saint Dochdwy with these churches does not appear at all satisfactorily established, but more light is required to help one to understand these and similar church names. [60] This name which may have come from Little England below Wales, was once not uncommon in South Cardiganshire, as Mr. Williams informs me, but it is now mostly changed as a surname into Davies and Jones! Compare the similar fortunes of the name Mason mentioned above, p. 68. [61] I have not succeeded in discovering who the writer was, who used this name. [62] This name as it is now written should mean 'the Gold's Foot,' but in the Demetian dialect aur is pronounced oer, and I learn from the rector, the Rev. Rhys Jones Lloyd, that the name has sometimes been written Tref Deyrn, which I regard as some etymologist's futile attempt to explain it. More importance is to be attached to the name on the communion cup, dating 1828, and reading, as Mr. Lloyd kindly informs me, Poculum Eclyseye de Tre-droyre. Beneath Droyre some personal name possibly lies concealed. [63] Y Ferch o Gefn Ydfa ('The Maid of Cefn Ydfa'), by Isaac Craigfryn Hughes, published by Messrs. Daniel Owen, Howell & Co., Cardiff, 1881. [64] In a letter dated February 9, 1899, he states, however, that as regards folklore the death of his father at the age of seventy-six, in the year 1889, had been a great loss to him; for he adds that he was perfectly familiar with the traditions of the neighbourhood and had associated with older men. Among the latter he had been used to talk with an old man whose father remembered Cromwell passing on his way to destroy the Iron Works of Pant y Gwaith, where the Cavaliers had had a cannon cast, which was afterwards used in the engagement at St. Fagan's. [65] This term is sometimes represented as being Bendith eu Mamau, 'their Mother's Blessing,' as if each fairy were such a delightful offspring as to constitute himself or herself a blessing to his or her mother; but I have not found satisfactory evidence to the currency of Bendith eu Mamau, or, as it would be pronounced in Glamorgan, Béndith i Máma. On the whole, therefore, perhaps one may regard the name as pointing back to the Celtic goddesses known in Gaul in Roman times as the Mothers. [66] On Pen Craig Daf Mr. Hughes gives the following note:--It was the residence of Dafyd Morgan or 'Counsellor Morgan,' who, he says, was executed on Kennington Common for taking the side of the Pretender. He had retreated to Pen y Graig, where his abode was, in order to conceal himself; but he was discovered and carried away at night. Here follows a verse from an old ballad about him:-- Dafyd Morgan ffel a ffol, Taffy Morgan, sly and daft, Fe aeth yn ol ei hyder: He did his bent go after: Fe neidod naid at rebel haid He leaped a leap to a rebel swarm, Pan drod o blaid Pretender. To arm for a Pretender. [67] A tòn is any green field that is used for grazing and not meant to be mown, land which has, as it were, its skin of grassy turf unbroken for years by the plough. [68] On this Mr. Hughes has a note to the effect that the whole of one milking used to be given in Glamorgan to workmen for assistance at the harvest or other work, and that it was not unfrequently enough for the making of two cheeses. [69] Since this was first printed I have learnt from Mr. Hughes that the first cry issued from the Black Cauldron in the Taff (o'r Gerwyn Du ar Daf), which I take to be a pool in that river. [70] The Fan is the highest mountain in the parish of Merthyr Tydfil, Mr. Hughes tells me: he adds that there was on its side once a chapel with a burial ground. Its history seems to be lost, but human bones have, as he states, been frequently found there. [71] The above, I am sorry to say, is not the only instance of this nasty trick associating itself with Gwent, as will be seen from the story of Bwca'r Trwyn in chapter x. [72] This chapter, except where a later date is suggested, may be regarded as written in the summer of 1883. [73] Trefriw means the town of the slope or hillside, and stands for Tref y Riw, not tref y Rhiw, which would have yielded Treffriw, for there is a tendency in Gwyned to make the mutation after the definite article conform to the general rule, and to say y law, 'the hand,' and y raw, 'the spade,' instead of what would be in books y llaw and y rhaw from yr llaw and yr rhaw. [74] Why the writer spells the name Criccieth in this way I cannot tell, except that he was more or less under the influence of the more intelligible spelling Crugcaith, as where Lewis Glyn Cothi. I. xxiv, sang Rhys ab Sion â'r hysbys iaith, Gwr yw acw o Grugcaith. This spelling postulates the interpretation Crug-Caith, earlier Crug y Ceith, 'the mound or barrow of the captives,' in reference to some forgotten interment; but when the accent receded to the first syllable the second was slurred almost out of recognition, so that Crug-ceith, or Cruc-ceith, became Crúceth, whence Crúcieth and Cricieth. The Bruts have Crugyeith the only time it occurs, and the Record of Carnarvon (several times) Krukyth. [75] Out of excessive fondness for our Arthur English people translate this name into Arthur's Seat instead of Idris' Seat; but Idris was also somebody: he was a giant with a liking for the study of the stars. But let that be: I wish to say a word concerning his name: Idris may be explained as meaning 'War-champion,' or the like; and, phonologically speaking, it comes from Iud-rys, which was made successively into Id-rys, Idris. The syllable iud meant battle or fight, and it undergoes a variety of forms in Welsh names. Thus before n, r, l, and w, it becomes id, as in Idnerth, Idloes, and Idwal, while Iud-hael yields Ithel, whence Ab Ithel, anglicized Bethel. At the end, however, it is yd or ud, as in Gruffud or Gruffyd, from Old Welsh Grippiud, and Maredud or Meredyd for an older Marget-iud. By itself it is possibly the word which the poets write ud, and understand to mean lord; but if these forms are related, it must have originally meant rather a fighter, soldier, or champion. [76] There is a special similarity between this and an Anglesey story given by Howells, p. 138: it consists in the sequence of seeing the fairies dance and finding money left by them. Why was the money left? [77] It was so called by the poet D. ab Gwilym, cxcii. 12, when he sang: I odi ac i luchio To bring snow and drifting flakes Odiar lechwed Moel Eilio. From off Moel Eilio's slope. [78] This is commonly pronounced 'Y Gath Dorwen,' but the people of the neighbourhood wish to explain away a farm name which could, strangely enough, only mean 'the white-bellied cat'; but y Garth Dorwen, 'the white-bellied garth or hill,' is not a very likely name either. [79] The hiring time in Wales is the beginning of winter and of summer; or, as one would say in Welsh, at the Calends of Winter and the Calends of May respectively. In North Cardiganshire the great hiring fair was held at the former date when I was a boy, and so, as I learn from my wife, it was in Carnarvonshire. [80] In a Cornish story mentioned in Choice Notes, p. 77, we have, instead of ointment, simply soap. See also Mrs. Bray's Banks of the Tamar, pp. 174-7, where she alludes to H. Cornelius Agrippa's statement how such ointment used to be made--the reference must, I think, be to his book De Occulta Philosophia Libri III (Paris, 1567), i. 45 (pp. 81-2). [81] See the Mabinogion, pp. 1-2; Evans' Facsimile of the Black Book of Carmarthen, fol. 49b-50a; Rhys' Arthurian Legend, pp. 155-8; Edmund Jones' Spirits in the County of Monmouth, pp. 39, 71, 82; and in this volume, pp. 143, 203, above. I may mention that the Cornish also have had their Cwn Annwn, though the name is a different one, to wit in the phrase, 'the Devil and his Dandy-dogs': see Choice Notes, pp. 78-80. [82] As it stands now this would be unmutated Césel Gýfarch, 'Cyfarch's Nook,' but there never was such a name. There was, however, Elgýfarch or Aelgýfarch and Rhygýfarch, and in such a combination as Césel Elgýfarch there would be every temptation to drop one unaccented el. [83] Owing to some oversight he has 'a clean or a dirty cow' instead of cow-yard or cow-house, as I understand it. [84] Cwta makes cota in the feminine in North Cardiganshire; the word is nevertheless only the English cutty borrowed. Du, 'black,' has corresponding to it in Irish, dubh. So the Welsh word seems to have passed through the stages dyv, dyw, before yw was contracted into û, which was formerly pronounced like French û, as proved by the grammar already mentioned (p. 22) of J. D. Rhys, published in London in 1592; see p. 33, to which my attention has been called by Prof. J. Morris Jones. In Old or pre-Norman Welsh m did duty for m and v, so one detects dyv as dim in a woman's name Penardim, 'she of the very black head'; there was also a Penarwen, 'she of the very blonde head.' The look of Penardim having baffled the redactor of the Branwen, he left the spelling unchanged: see the (Oxford) Mabinogion, p. 26. The same sort of change which produced du has produced cnu, 'a fleece,' as compared with cneifio, 'to fleece'; lluarth, 'a kitchen garden,' as compared with its Irish equivalent lubhghort. Compare also Rhiwabon, locally pronounced Rhuabon, and Rhiwallon, occurring sometimes as Rhuallon. But the most notable rôle of this phonetic process is exemplified by the verbal nouns ending in u, such as caru, 'to love,' credu, 'to believe,' tyngu, 'to swear,' in which the u corresponds to an m termination in Old Irish, as in sechem, 'to follow,' cretem, 'belief,' sessam or sessom, 'to stand.' [85] In medieval Welsh poetry this name was still a dissyllable; but now it is pronounced Llyn, in conformity with the habit of the Gwyndodeg, which makes into porfyd what is written porfeyd, 'pastures,' and pronounced porféid in North Cardiganshire. So in the Lleyn name Sarn Fyllteyrn the second vocable represents Maelteyrn, in the Record of Carnarvon (p. 38) Mayltern: it is now sounded Mylltyrn with the second y short and accented. Lleyn is a plural of the people (genitive Llaën in Porth Dinllaën), used as a singular of their country, like Cymru = Cymry, and Prydyn. The singular is llain, 'a spear,' in the Book of Aneurin: see Skene, ii. 64, 88, 92. [86] It is also called dolur byr, or the 'short disease'; I believe I have been told that it is the disease known to 'the vet.' as anthrax. [87] Here the writer seems to have been puzzled by the mh of Amheirchion, and to have argued back to a radical form Parch; but he was on the wrong tack--Amheirchion comes from Ap-Meirchion, where the p helped to make the m a surd, which, with the syllabic accent on the succeeding vowel, became fixed as mh, while the p disappeared by assimilation. We have, later on, a similar instance in Owen y Mhaxen for Owen Amhacsen = O. ap Macsen. Another instance will be found at the opening of the Mabinogi of Branwen, to wit, in the word prynhawngweith, 'once on an afternoon,' from prynhawn, 'afternoon,' for which our dictionaries substitute prydnawn, with the accent on the ultima, though D. ab Gwilym used pyrnhawn, as in poem xl. 30. But the ordinary pronunciation continues to be prynháwn or pyrnháwn, sometimes reduced in Gwyned to pnawn. Let me add an instance which has reached me since writing the above: In the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, pp. 325-6, we have the pedigree of the Ameridiths from the Visitation of Devonshire in 1620: in the course of it one finds that Iuan ap Merydeth has a son Thomas Amerideth, who, knowing probably no Welsh, took to writing his patronymic more nearly as it was pronounced. The line is brought down to Ames Amerideth, who was created baronet in 1639. Amerideth of course = Ap Meredyd, and the present member of the family who writes to the Archæologia Cambrensis spells his patronymic more correctly, Ameridith; but if it had survived in Wales it might have been Amheredyd. For an older instance than any of these see the Book of Taliessin, poem xlix (= Skene, ii. 204), where one reads of Beli Amhanogan, 'B. ab Mynogan.' [88] This is pronounced Rhiwan, though probably made up of Rhiw-wen, for it is the tendency of the Gwyndodeg to convert e and ai of the unaccented ultima into a, and so with e in Glamorgan; see such instances as Cornwan and casag, p. 29 above. It is possibly a tendency inherited from Goidelic, as Irish is found to proceed in the same way. [89] I may mention that some of the Francises of Anglesey are supposed to be descendants of Frazers, who changed their name on finding refuge in the island in the time of the troubles which brought there the ancestor of the Frazer who, from time to time, claims to be the rightful head of the Lovat family. [90] According to old Welsh orthography this would be written Moudin, and in the book Welsh of the present day it would have to become Meudin. Restored, however, to the level of Gallo-Roman names, it would be Mogodunum or Magodunum. The place is known as Castell Moedin, and includes within it the end of a hill about halfway between Llannarth and Lampeter. [91] For other mentions of the colours of fairy dress see pp. 44, 139 above, where red prevails, and contrast the Lake Lady of Llyn Barfog clad in green, p. 145. [92] This name means the Bridge of the Blessed Ford, but how the ford came to be so called I know not. The word bendigaid, 'blessed,' comes from the Latin verb benedico, 'I bless,' and should, but for the objection to nd in book Welsh, be bendigaid, which, in fact, it is approximately in the northern part of the county, where it is colloquially sounded Pont Rhyd Fyndiged, Fydiged, or even Fdiged, also Pont Rhyd mdiged, which represents the result of the unmutated form Bdiged coming directly after the d of rhyd. Somewhat the same is the case with the name of the herb Dail y Fendigaid, literally 'the Leaves of the Blessed' (in the feminine singular without any further indication of the noun to be supplied). This name means, I find, 'hypericum androsæmum, tutsan,' and in North Cardiganshire we call it Dail y Fyndiged or Fdiged, but in Carnarvonshire the adjective is made to qualify dail, so that it sounds Dail Bydigad or Bdigad, 'Blessed Leaves.' [93] I am far from certain what y nos, 'the night,' may mean in such names as this and Craig y Nos, 'the Rock of the Night' (p. 254 above), to which perhaps might be added such an instance as Blaen Nos, 'the Point of (the?) Night,' in the neighbourhood of Llandovery, in Carmarthenshire. Can the allusion be merely to thickly overshadowed spots where the darkness of night might be said to lurk in defiance of the light of day? I have never visited the places in point, and leading questions addressed to local authorities are too apt to elicit misleading answers: the poetic faculty is dangerously rampant in the Principality. [94] Dâr is a Glamorgan pronunciation, metri gratiâ of what is written daear, 'earth': compare d'ar-fochyn in Glamorgan for a badger, literally 'an earth pig.' The dwarf's answer was probably in some sort of verse, with dâr and iâr to rhyme. [95] Applied in Glamorgan to a child that looks poorly and does not grow. [96] In Cardiganshire a conjurer is called dyn hysbys, where hysbys (or, in older orthography, hyspys) means 'informed': it is the man who is informed on matters which are dark to others; but the word is also used of facts--Y mae 'r peth yn hysbys, 'the thing is known or manifest.' The word is divisible into hy-spys, which would be in Irish, had it existed in the language, so-scese for an early su-squestia-s, the related Irish words being ad-chiu, 'I see,' pass. preterite ad-chess, 'was seen,' and the like, in which ci and ces have been equated by Zimmer with the Sanskrit verb caksh, 'to see,' from a root quas. The adjective cynnil applied to the dyn hyspys in Glamorgan means now, as a rule, 'economical' or 'thrifty,' but in this instance it would seem to have signified 'shrewd,' 'cunning,' or 'clever,' though it would probably come nearer the original meaning of the word to render it by 'smart,' for it is in Irish conduail, which is found applied to ingenious work, such as the ornamentation on the hilt of a sword. Another term for a wizard or conjurer is gwr cyfarwyd, with which the reader is already familiar. Here cyfarwyd forms a link with the kyvarwyd of the Mabinogion, where it usually means a professional man, especially one skilled in story and history; and what constituted his knowledge was called kyvarwydyt, which included, among other things, acquaintance with boundaries and pedigrees, but it meant most frequently perhaps story; see the (Oxford) Mabinogion, pp. 5, 61, 72, 93. All these terms should, strictly speaking, have gwr--gwr hyspys, gwr cynnil, and gwr cyfarwyd--but for the fact that modern Welsh tends to restrict gwr to signify 'a husband' or 'a married man,' while dyn, which only signifies a mortal, is made to mean man, and provided with a feminine dynes, 'woman,' unknown to good Welsh literature. Thus the spoken language is in this matter nearly on a level with English and French, which have quite lost the word for vir and anêr. [97] Rhyd y Gloch means 'the Ford of the Bell,' in allusion, as the story goes, to a silver bell that used in former ages to be at Llanwonno Church. The people of Llanfabon took a liking to it, and one night a band of them stole it; but as they were carrying it across the Taff the moon happened to make her appearance suddenly, and they, in their fright, taking it to be sunrise, dropped the bell in the bed of the river, so that nothing has ever been heard of it since. But for ages afterwards, and even at the present day indeed, nothing could rouse the natives of Llanfabon to greater fury than to hear the moon spoken of as haul Llanfabon, 'the sun of Llanfabon.' [98] It was peat fires that were usual in those days even in Glamorgan. [99] See Hartland's Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 112-6. [100] In no other version has Mr. Reynolds heard cwcwll wy iâr, but either plisgyn or cibyn wy iâr, to which I may add masgal from Mr. Craigfryn Hughes' versions. The word cwcwll usually means a cowl, but perhaps it is best here to treat cwcwll as a distinct word derived somehow from conchylium or the French coquille, 'a shell.' [101] The whole passage will be found in the Itinerarium Kambriæ, i. 8 (pp. 75-8), and Giraldus fixes the story a little before his time somewhere in the district around Swansea and Neath. With this agrees closely enough the fact that a second David, Dafyd ab Geralld or David Fitzgerald, appears to have been consecrated Bishop of St. David's in 1147, and to have died in 1176. [102] The words in the original are: Nec carne vescebantur, nec pisce; lacteis plerumque cibariis utentes, et in pultis modum quasi croco confectis. [103] Perhaps it is this also that suggested the name Eliodorus, as it were Hêliodôros; for the original name was probably the medieval Welsh one of Elidyr = Irish Ailithir, ailither, 'a pilgrim': compare the Pembrokeshire name Pergrin and the like. It is curious that Elidyr did not occur to Glasynys and prevent him from substituting Elfod, which is quite another name, and more correctly written Elfod for the earlier El-fodw, found not only as Elbodu but also Elbodug-o, Elbodg, Elbot and Elfod: see p. 117 above. [104] For one or two more instances from Wales see Howells, pp. 54-7. Brittany also is a great country for death portents: see A. Le Braz, Légende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1893), also Sébillot's Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1882), i. pp. 270-1. For Scotland see The Ghost Lights of the West Highlands by Dr. R. C. Maclagan in Folk-Lore for 1897, pp. 203-256, and for the cognate subject of second sight see Dalyell's Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 466-88. [105] Another word for the toeli is given by Silvan Evans as used in certain parts of South Wales, namely, tolaeth or dolath, as to which he mentions the opinion that it is a corruption of tylwyth, a view corroborated by Howells using, p. 31, the plural tyloethod; but it could not be easily explained except as a corruption through the medium of English. Elias Owen, p. 303, uses the word in reference to the hammering and rapping noise attending the joinering of a phantom coffin for a man about to die, a sort of rehearsal well known throughout the Principality to every one who has ears spiritually tuned. Unfortunately I have not yet succeeded in locating the use of the word tolaeth, except that I have been assured by a Carmarthen man that it is current in Welsh there as toleth, and by a native of Pumsant that it is in use from Abergwili up to Llanbumsant. [106] See, for instance, pp. 200, 221, 228. [107] Mrs. Williams-Ellis of Glasfryn writes to me that the place is now called Bwlch Trwyn Swncwl, that it is a gap on the highest part of the road crossing from Llanaelhaearn to Pistyll, and that it is quite a little mountain pass between bleak heather-covered hillsides, in fact a very lonely spot in the outskirts of the Eifl, and with Carnguwch blocking the horizon in the direction of Cardigan Bay. [108] For this I am indebted to Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans' Report on MSS. in the Welsh Language, i. 585 k. The words were written by Williams about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and his û does not mean w. He was, however, probably thinking of cawr, cewri, and such instances as tawaf, 'taceo,' and tau, 'tacet.' At all events there is no trace of u in the local pronunciation of the name Tre'r Ceiri. I have heard it also as Tre' Ceiri without the definite article; but had this been ancient one would expect it softened into Tre' Geiri. [109] See the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 110, 113, and 27-9, 36-41, 44, also 309, where a Triad explains that the outposts were Anglesey, Man, and Lundy. But the other Triads, i. 3 = iii. 67, make them Orkney, Man, and Wight, for which we have the older authority of Nennius. § 8. The designation Tair Ynys Brydain, 'The Three Isles of Prydain,' was known to the fourteenth-century poet, Iolo Goch: see his works edited by Ashton, p. 669. [110] For Prydyn in the plural see Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 209, also 92, where Pryden is the form used. In modern Welsh the two senses of Cymry are distinguished in writing as Cymry and Cymru, but the difference is merely one of spelling and not very ancient. [111] So Geoffrey (i. 12-15) brings his Trojans on their way to Britain into Aquitania, where they fight with the Pictavienses, whose king he calls Goffarius Pictus. [112] Cadarn and cadr postulate respectively some such early forms as catrno-s and cadro-s, which according to analogy should become cadarn and cadr. Welsh, however, is not fond of dr; so here begins a bifurcation: (1) retaining the d unchanged cadro-s yields cadr, or (2) dr is made into dr, and other changes set in resulting in the ceir of ceiri, as in Welsh aneirif, 'numberless,' from eirif, 'number,' of the same origin as Irish áram from *ad-rim = *ad-rima, and Welsh eiliw, 'species, colour,' for ad-liw, in both of which i follows d combinations; but that is not essential, as shown by cader, cadair, for Old Welsh cateir, 'a chair,' from Latin cat[h]edra. The word that serves as our singular, namely cawr, is far harder to explain; but on the whole I am inclined to regard it as of a different origin, to wit, the Goidelic word caur, 'a giant or hero,' borrowed. The plural cewri or cawri is formed from the singular cawr, which means a giant, though, associated in the plural with ceiri, it has sometimes to follow suit with that vocable in connoting dress. [113] The most important of these are the old Breton kazr, now kaer, 'beautiful or pretty,' and old Cornish caer of the same meaning; elsewhere we have, as in Greek, the Doric kekadmai and kekadmenos, to be found used in reference to excelling or distinguishing one's self; also kosmos, 'good order, ornament,' while in Sanskrit there is the theme çad, 'to excel or surpass.' The old meaning of 'beautiful,' 'decorated,' or 'loudly dressed,' is not yet lost in the case of ceiri. [114] For the text see the Oxford Mabinogion, pp. 193-4, and for comparisons of the incident see Nutt's Holy Grail, p. 154 et seq.; and Rhys' Arthurian Legend, pp. 75-6. A more exact parallel, however, is to be mentioned in the next chapter. [115] This chapter was written mostly in 1891. [116] The spelling there used is phynnodderee, to the perversity of which Cregeen calls attention in his Dictionary. In any case the pronunciation is always approximately fun-ó-dur-i or fun-ód-ri, with the accent on the second syllable. [117] I am inclined to think that the first part of the word fenodyree is not fynney, the Manx word for 'hair,' but the Scandinavian word which survives in the Swedish fjun, 'down.' Thus fjun-hosur (for the fjun-hosa suggested by analogy) would explain the word fenodyree, except its final ee, which is obscure. Compare also the magic breeks called finn-brækr, as to which see Vigfusson's Icelandic Dict. s. v. finnar. [118] Cumming's Isle of Man (London, 1848), p. 30, where he refers his readers to Waldron's Description of the Isle of Man: see pp. 28, 105. [119] See Windisch's Irische Grammatik, p. 120. [120] The Manx word for the rowan tree, incorrectly called a mountain ash, is cuirn, which is in Mod. Irish caorthann, genitive caorthainn, Scotch Gaelic caorunn; but in Welsh books it is cerdin, singular cerdinen, and in the spoken language mostly cerdin, cerding, singular cerdinen, cerdingen. This variation seems to indicate that these words have possibly been borrowed by the Welsh from a Goidelic source; but the berry is known in Wales by the native name of criafol, from which the wood is frequently called, especially in North Wales, coed criafol, singular coeden griafol or pren criafol. The sacredness of the rowan is the key to the proper names Mac-Cáirthinn and Der-Cháirthinn, with which the student of Irish hagiology is familiar. They mean the Son and the Daughter of the Rowan respectively, and the former occurs as Maqui Cairatini on an Ogam inscribed stone recently discovered in Meath, not very far from the Boyne. [121] I am sorry to say that it never occurred to me to ask whether the shooting was done with such modern things as guns. But Mr. Arthur Moore assures me that it is always understood to be bows and arrows, not guns. [122] Edited by Oswald Cockayne for the Master of the Rolls (London, 1864-6): see more especially vol. ii. pp. 156-7, 290-1, 401; vol. iii. pp. 54-5. [123] Mr. Moore is not familiar with this term, but I heard it at Surby, in the south; and I find buidseach and buidseachd given as Highland Gaelic words for a witch and witchcraft respectively. [124] See Stokes' Goidelica, p. 151. [125] This chapter was written in 1891, except the portions of it which refer to later dates indicated. [126] See the Stokes-O'Donovan edition of Cormac (Calcutta, 1868), pp. 19, 23. [127] Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, xi. 620; Pennant's Tour in Scotland in 1769 (3rd edition, Warrington, 1774), i. 97, 186, 291; Thomas Stephens' Gododin, pp. 124-6; and Dr. Murray in the New English Dictionary, s. v. Beltane. [128] In my Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom, pp. 517-21. [129] As to the Thargelia and Delia, see Preller's Griechische Mythologie, i. 260-2, and A. Mommsen's Heortologie, pp. 414-25. [130] See section H of the Report of the Liverpool Meeting of the British Association in 1896, pp. 626-56. [131] It is my impression that it is crowned with a small tumulus, and that it forms the highest ground in Jurby, which was once an island by itself. The one between Ramsey and Bride is also probably the highest point of the range. But these are questions which I should like to see further examined, say by Mr. Arthur Moore or Mr. Kermode. [132] Cronk yn Irree Laa, despite the gender, is the name as pronounced by all Manxmen who have not been misled by antiquarians. To convey the other meaning, referring to the day watch, the name would have to be Cronk ny Harrey Laa; in fact, a part of the Howe in the south of the island is called Cronk ny Harrey, 'the Hill of the Watch.' Mr. Moore tells me that the Jurby cronk was one of the eminences for 'Watch and Ward'; but he is now of opinion that the high mountain of Cronk yn Irree Laa in the south was not. As to the duty of the inhabitants to keep 'Watch and Ward' over the island, see the passage concerning it extracted from the Manx Statutes (vol. i. p. 65) by Mr. Moore in his Manx Surnames, pp. 183-3; also my preface to the same work, pp. v-viii. [133] Quoted from Oliver's Monumenta de Insula Manniæ, vol. i. (Manx Society, vol. iv) p. 84: see also Cumming's Isle of Man, p. 258. [134] See the New English Dictionary, s. v. 'Allhallows.' [135] This comes near the pronunciation usual in Roxburghshire and the south of Scotland generally, which is, as Dr. Murray informs me, Hunganay without the m occurring in the other forms to be mentioned presently. But so far as I have been able to find, the Manx pronunciation is now Hob dy naa, which I have heard in the north, while Hob ju naa is the prevalent form in the south. [136] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 514-5; and as to hiring fairs in Wales see pp. 210-2 above. [137] See Robert Bell's Early Ballads (London, 1877), pp. 406-7, where the following is given as sung at Richmond in Yorkshire:-- To-night it is the New-Year's night, to-morrow is the day, And we are come for our right, and for our ray, As we used to do in old King Henry's day. Sing, fellows, sing, Hagman-heigh. If you go to the bacon-flick, cut me a good bit; Cut, cut and low, beware of your maw; Cut, cut and round, beware of your thumb, That me and my merry men may have some. Sing, fellows, sing, Hagman-heigh. If you go to the black-ark bring me X mark; Ten mark, ten pound, throw it down upon the ground, That me and my merry men may have some. Sing, fellows, sing, Hagman-heigh. [138] The subject is worked out in Nicholson's Golspie, pp. 100-8, also in the New English Dictionary, where mention is made of a derivation involving calendæ, which reminds me of the Welsh call for a New-Year's Gift--Calennig! or C'lennig! in Arfon 'Y Ngh'lennig i! 'My Calends gift if you please!' [139] On being asked, after reading this paper to the Folk-Lore Society, who was supposed to make the footmarks in the ashes, I had to confess that I had been careless enough never to have asked the question. I have referred it to Mr. Moore, who informs me that nobody, as I expected, will venture on any explanation by whom the footmarks are made. [140] This seems to imply the application of the same adjective, some time or other, to clean water and a handsome man, just as we speak in North Cardiganshire of dwr glân, 'clean water,' and bachgen glân, 'a handsome boy.' [141] In Phillips' Book of Common Prayer this is called Lá nolick y biggy, 'Little Nativity Day,' and Lá ghian blieny, 'The Day of the Year's End,' meaning, of course, the former end of the year, not the latter: see pp. 55, 62, 66. [142] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 514-5, and the Brython, ii. 20, 120: an instance in point occurs in the next chapter. [143] This has been touched upon in my Hibbert Lectures, p. 676; but to the reasons there briefly mentioned should be added a reference to the position allotted to intercalary months in the Norse calendar, namely, at the end of the summer half, that is, as I think, at the end of the ancient Norse year. [144] My paper was read before the Folk-Lore Society in April or May, 1891, and Miss Peacock's notes appeared in the journal of the Society in the following December: see pp. 509-13. [145] See Choice Notes, p. 76. [146] See the third edition of Wm. Nicholson's Poetical Works (Castle-Douglas, 1878), pp. 78, 81. [147] See p. 321 above and the references there given; also Howells' Cambrian Superstitions, p. 58. [148] Pomponius Mela De Chorographia, edited by Parthey, iii, chap. 6 (p. 72); see also my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 195-6, where, however, the identification of the name Sena with that of Sein should be cancelled. Sein seems to be derived from the Breton Seidhun, otherwise modified into Sizun and Sun: see chap. vi below. [149] See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 195-7; also my Arthurian Legend, pp. 367-8, where a passage in point is cited at length from Plutarch De Defectu Oraculorum, xviii. (= the Didot edition of Plutarch's works, iii. 511); the substance of it will be found given likewise in chap. viii below. [150] For an allusion to the traffic in winds in Wales see Howells, p. 86, where he speaks as follows:--'In Pembrokeshire there was a person commonly known as the cunning man of Pentregethen, who sold winds to the sailors, after the manner of the Lapland witches, and who was reverenced in the neighbourhood in which he dwelt, much more than the divines.' [151] This may turn out to be all wrong; for I learn from the Rev. John Quine, vicar of Malew, in Man, that there is a farm called Balthane or Bolthane south of Ballasalla, and that in the computus (of 1540) of the Abbey Tenants it is called Biulthan. This last, if originally a man's name, would seem to point back to some such a compound as Beo-Ultán. In his Manx Names, p. 138, Mr. Moore suggests the possibility of explaining the name as bwoailtyn, 'folds or pens'; but the accentuation places that out of the question. See also the Lioar Manninagh, iii. 167, where Mr. C. Roeder, referring to the same computus passage, gives the name as Builthan in the boundary inter Cross Jvar Builthan. This would be read by Mr. Quine as inter Cross Ivar et Biulthan, 'between Cross-Ivar and Bolthane.' For the text of the boundary see Johnstone's edition of the Chronicon Manniæ (Copenhagen, 1786), p. 48, and Oliver's Monumenta de Insula Manniæ, vol. i. p. 207; see also Mr. Quine's paper on the Boundary of Abbey Lands in the Lioar Manninagh, iii. 422-3. [152] I say 'approximately,' as, more strictly speaking, the ordinary pronunciation is Sndaen, almost as one syllable, and from this arises a variant, which is sometimes written Stondane, while the latest English development, regardless of the accentuation of the Anglo-Manx form, which is Santon, pronounced Sántn, makes the parish into a St. Ann's! For the evidence that it was the parish of a St. Sanctán see Moore's Names, p. 209. [153] The Athenæum for April 1, 1893, p. 415. I may here remark that Mr. Borlase's note on do fhagaint is, it seems to me, unnecessary: let do fhagaint stand, and translate, not 'I leave' but 'to leave.' The letter should be consulted for curious matter concerning Croagh Patrick, its pagan stations, cup-markings, &c. [154] Since this paper was read to the Folk-Lore Society a good deal of information of one kind or another has appeared in its journal concerning the first-foot: see more especially Folk-Lore for 1892, pp. 253-64, and for 1893, pp. 309-21. [155] This was written at the beginning of the year 1892. [156] With this compare what Mr. Gomme has to say of a New Year's Day custom observed in Lanarkshire: see p. 633 of the Ethnographic Report referred to at p. 103 above, and compare Henderson, p. 74. [157] Old-fashioned grammarians and dictionary makers are always delighted to handle Mrs. Partington's broom: so Kelly thinks he has done a fine thing by printing guee, 'prayer,' and gwee, 'cursing.' [158] This was written at the end of 1892, and read to a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folk-Lore Societies on January 11, 1893. [159] Some account of them was given by me in Folk-Lore for 1892, p. 380; but somehow or other my contribution was printed unrevised, with results more peculiar than edifying. [160] In Folk-Lore for 1893, pp. 58-9. [161] In the neighbourhood I find that the word gwaeldyn in this verse is sometimes explained to mean not a worthless but an ailing person, on the strength of the fact that the adjective gwael is colloquially used both for vile and for ailing. [162] Since writing the above remarks the following paragraph, purporting to be copied from the Liverpool Mercury for November 18, 1896, appeared in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899, p. 334:--'Two new fishes have just been put in the "Sacred Well," Ffynnon y Sant, at Tyn y Ffynnon, in the village of Nant Peris, Llanberis. Invalids in large numbers came, during the last century and the first half of the present century, to this well to drink of its "miraculous waters"; and the oak box, where the contributions of those who visited the spot were kept, is still in its place at the side of the well. There have always been two "sacred fishes" in this well; and there is a tradition in the village to the effect that if one of the Tyn y Ffynnon fishes came out of its hiding-place when an invalid took some of the water for drinking or for bathing purposes, cure was certain; but if the fishes remained in their den, the water would do those who took it no good. Two fishes only are to be put in the well at a time, and they generally live in its waters for about half a century. If one dies before the other, it would be of no use to put in a new fish, for the old fish would not associate with it, and it would die. The experiment has been tried. The last of the two fishes put in the well about fifty years ago died last August. It had been blind for some time previous to its death. When taken out of the water it measured seventeen inches, and was buried in the garden adjoining the well. It is stated in a document of the year 1776 that the parish clerk was to receive the money put in the box of the well by visitors. This money, together with the amount of 6s. 4d., was his annual stipend.' Tyn y Ffynnon means 'the Tenement of the Well,' tyn being a shortened form of tydyn, 'a tenement,'as mentioned at p. 33 above; but the mapsters make it into ty'n = ty yn, 'a house in,' so that the present instance, Ty'n y Ffynnon, could only mean 'the House in the Well,' which, needless to say, it is not. But one would like to know whether the house and land were once held rent-free on condition that the tenant took care of the sacred fish. [163] See Ashton's Iolo Goch, p. 234, and Lewis' Top. Dict. [164] See my Hibbert Lectures, p. 229, and the Iolo MSS., pp. 42-3, 420-1. [165] A curious note bearing on this name occurs in the Jesus College MS. 20 (Cymmrodor, viii. p. 86) in reference to the name Morgannwg, 'Glamorgan':--O enw Morgant vchot y gelwir Morgannwc. Ereill a dyweit. Mae o en&wwelsh; Mochteyrn Predein. 'It is from the name of the above Morgan that Morgannwg is called. Others say that it is from the name of the mochdeyrn of Pictland.' The mochteyrn must have been a Pictish king or mórmáer called Morgan. The name occurs in the charters from the Book of Deer in Stokes' Goidelica. pp. 109, 111, as Morcunt, Morcunn, and Morgunn undeclined, also with Morgainn for genitive; and so in Skene's Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 317, where it is printed Morgaind; see also Stokes' Tigernach, in the Revue Celtique, xvii. 198. Compare Geoffrey's story, ii. 15, which introduces a northern Marganus to account for the name Margan, now Margam, in Morgannwg. [166] M. Loth's remarks in point will be found in the Revue Celtique, xiii. 496-7, where he compares with tut the Breton teuz, 'lutin, génie malfaisant ou bienfaisant'; and for the successive guesses on the subject of the name Morgan tut one should also consult Zimmer's remarks in Foerster's Introduction to his Erec, pp. xxvii-xxxi, and my Arthurian Legend, p. 391, to which I should add a reference to the Book of Ballymote, fo. 360a, where we have o na bantuathaib, which O'Curry has rendered 'on the part of their Witches' in his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, iii. 526-7. Compare dá bhantuathaigh, 'two female sorcerers,' in Joyce's Keating's History of Ireland, pp. 122-3. [167] For all about the Children of Lir, and about Liban and Lough Neagh, see Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 4-36, 97-105. [168] On my appealing to Cadrawd, one of the later editors, he has found me the exact reference, to wit, volume ix of the Cyfaill (published in 1889), p. 50; and he has since contributed a translation of the story to the columns of the South Wales Daily News for February 15, 1899, where he has also given an account of Crymlyn, which is to be mentioned later. [169] Judging from the three best-known instances, y bala meant the outlet of a lake: I allude to this Bala at the outlet of Llyn Tegid; Pont y Bala, 'the Bridge of the bala,' across the water flowing from the Upper into the Lower Lake at Llanberis; and Bala Deulyn, 'the bala of two lakes,' at Nantlle. Two places called Bryn y Bala are mentioned s. v. Bala in Morris' Celtic Remains, one near Aberystwyth, at a spot which I have never seen, and the other near the lower end of the Lower Lake of Llanberis, as to which it has been suggested to me that it is an error for Bryn y Bela. It is needless to say that bala has nothing to do with the Anglo-Irish bally, of such names as Ballymurphy or Ballynahunt: this vocable is in English bailey, and in South Wales beili, 'a farm yard or enclosure,' all three probably from the late Latin balium or ballium, 'locus palis munitus et circumseptus.' Our etymologists never stop short with bally: they go as far as Balaklava and, probably, Ballarat, to claim cognates for our Bala. [170] Cadrawd here gives the Welsh as '2 bladur ... 2 dyd o wair,' and observes that the lacuna consists of an illegible word of three letters. If that word was either sef, 'that is,' or neu, 'or,' the sense would be as given above. In North Cardiganshire we speak of a day's mowing as gwaith gwr, 'a man's work for a day,' and sometimes of a gwaith gwr bach, 'a man's work for a short day.' [171] See By-Gones for May 24, 1899. The full name of Welshpool in Welsh is Trallwng Llywelyn, so called after a Llywelyn descended from Cuneda, and supposed to have established a religious house there; for there are other Trallwngs, and at first sight it would seem as if Trallwng had something to do with a lake or piece of water. But there is a Trallwng, for instance, near Brecon, where there is no lake to give it the name; and my attention has been called to Thos. Richards' Welsh-English Dictionary, where a trallwng is said to be 'such a soft place on the road (or elsewhere) as travellers may be apt to sink into, a dirty pool.' So the word seems to be partly of the same derivation as go-llwng, 'to let go, to give way.' The form of the word in use now is Trallwm, not Trallwng or Trallwn. [172] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 39a-41b and Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 97-105; but the story may now be consulted in O'Grady's Silva Gadelica, i. 233-7, translated in ii. 265-9. On turning over the leaves of this great collection of Irish lore, I chanced, i. 174, ii. 196, on an allusion to a well which, when uncovered, was about to drown the whole locality but for a miracle performed by St. Patrick to arrest the flow of its waters. A similar story of a well bursting and forming Lough Reagh, in County Galway, will be found told in verse in the Book of Leinster; fo. 202b: see also fo. 170a, and the editor's notes, pp. 45, 53. [173] See Evans' autotype edition of the Black Book of Carmarthen, fos. 53b, 54a, also 32a: the punctuation is that of the MS. In the seventh triplet kedaul is written keadaul, which seems to mean kadaul corrected into kedaul; but the a is not deleted, so other readings are possible. [174] In the Iolo MSS., p. 89, finaun wenestir is made into Ffynon-Wenestr and said to be one of the ornamental epithets of the sea; but I am convinced that it should be rather treated as ffynnon fenestr with wenestir or fenestr mutated from menestr, which meant a servant, attendant, cup-bearer: for one or two instances see Pughe's Dictionary. The word is probably, as suggested by M. Loth in his Mots Latins, p. 186. the old French menestre, 'cup-bearer,' borrowed. Compare the mention of Nechtán's men having access to the secret well in Sid Nechtáin, p. 390 below, and note that they were his three menestres or cup-bearers. [175] See the Cymmrodor, viii. 88 (No. xxix), where a Marereda is mentioned as a daughter of Madog son of Meredyd brother to Rhys Gryg. [176] There is another reading which would make them into Segantii, and render it irrelevant--to say the least of it--to mention them here. [177] See the Mabinogion, p. 35: the passage has been mistranslated in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, iii. 117. [178] See my Arthurian Legend, pp. 263-4. [179] I do not profess to see my way through the difficulties which the probable etymological connexion between the names Setantii, Setanta, Seithyn, and Seithennin implies. But parts of the following string of guesses may be found to hold good:--Seithyn is probably more correct than Seithin, as it rhymes with cristin = Cristyn (in Cristynogaeth: see Silvan Evans' Geiriadur, s. v., and Skene's Four Ancient Books, ii. 210); and it might be assumed to be from the same stem as Seizun; but, supposing it to represent an earlier Seithynt, it would equate phonologically with Setanta, better Setinte, of which the genitive Setinti actually occurs, as a river name, in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 125b: see my Hibbert Lectures, p. 455, and see also the Revue Celtique, xi. 457. It would mean some such an early form Setntio-s, and Seithenhin, another derivative from the same stem, Setntino-s. But the retention of n before t in Setinte proves it not to be unconnected with Seithyn, but borrowed from some Brythonic dialect when the latter was pronounced Seithntio-s. If this be anywhere nearly right one has to assume that the manuscripts of Ptolemy giving the genitive plural as Setantiôn or Segantiôn should have read Sektantiôn, unless one should rather conjecture Segtantiôn with cht represented by gt as in Ogams in Pembrokeshire: witness Ogtene and Maqui Quegte. This conjecture as to the original reading would suggest that the name was derived from the seventh numeral sechtn, just as that of the Galloway people of the Novantæ seems to be from the ninth numeral. Ptolemy's next entry to the Harbour of the Setantii is the estuary of the Belisama, supposed to be the Mersey; and next comes the estuary of the Seteia or Segeia, supposed to be the Dee. Now the country of the Setantii, when they had a country, may have reached from their harbour near the mouth of the Ribble to the Seteia or the Dee without the name Seteia or Segeia having anything to do with their own, except that it may have influenced the latter in the manuscripts of Ptolemy's text. Then we possibly have a representative of Seteia or Segeia in the Saidi or Seidi, sometimes appended to Seithyn's name. In that case Seithyn Saidi, in the late Triad iii. 37, would mean Seithyn of Seteia, or the Dee. A Mab Saidi occurs in the Kulhwch story (Mabinogion, p. 106), also Cas, son of Saidi (ib. 110); and in Rhonabwy's Dream Kadyrieith, son of Saidi (ib. 160); but the latter vocable is Seidi in Triad ii. 26 (ib. 303). It is to be borne in mind that Ptolemy does not represent the Setantii as a people in his time: he only mentions a harbour called after the Setantii. So it looks as if they then belonged to the past--that in fact they were, as I should put it, a Goidelic people who had been conquered and partly expelled by Brythonic tribes, to wit, by the Brigantes, and also by the Cornavii in case the Setantii had once extended southwards to the Dee. This naturally leads one to think that some of them escaped to places on the coast, such as Dyfed, and that some made for the opposite coast of Ireland, and that, by the time when the Cúchulainn stories came to be edited as we have them, the people in question were known to the redactors of those stories only by the Brythonic form of their name, which underlies that of Setanta Beg, or the Little Setantian. Those of them who found a home on the coast of Cardigan Bay may have brought with them a version of the inundation story with Seithennin, son of Seithyn, as the principal figure in it. So in due time he had to be attached to some royal family, and in the Iolo MSS., pp. 141-2, he is made to descend from a certain Plaws Hen, king of Dyfed, while the saints named as his descendants seem to have belonged chiefly to Gwyned and Powys. [180] See the Professor's Address on the Place of a University in the History of Wales, delivered at Bangor at the opening ceremony of the Session of 1899-1900 (Bangor, 1900), p. 6. The reference to Giraldus is to his Itin. Kambriæ, i. 13 (p. 100), and the Expugnatio Hibernica, i. 36 (p. 284). [181] Instead of 'she followed it' one would have expected 'it followed her'; but the style is very loose and rough. [182] As a 'Cardy' I have here two grievances, one against my Northwalian fellow countrymen, that they insist on writing Rheidiol out of sheer weakness for the semivowel i; and the other against the compilers of school books on geography, who give the lake away to the Wye or the Severn. I am told that this does not matter, as our geographers are notoriously accurate about Natal and other distant lands; so I ought to rest satisfied. [183] Professor Meyer has given a number of extracts concerning her in his notes to his edition of The Vision of Mac Conglinne (London, 1892), pp. 131-4, 208-10, and recently he has published The Song of the Old Woman of Beare in the Otia Merseiana (London, 1899), pp. 119-28, from the Trinity College codex, H. 3, 18, where we are told, among other things, that her name was Digdi, and that she belonged to Corcaguiny. The name Béara, or Bérre, would seem to suggest identification with that of Bera, daughter of Eibhear, king of Spain, and wife of Eoghan Taidhleach, in the late story of The Courtship of Moméra, edited by O'Curry in his Battle of Magh Leana (Dublin, 1855); but the other name Digdi would seem to stand in the way. However none of the literature in point has yet been discovered in any really old manuscript, and it may be that the place-name Berre, in Caillech Bérri, has usurped the place of the personal name Béra, whose antiquity in some such a form as Béra or Méra is proved by its honorific form Mo-mera: see O'Curry's volume, p. 166, and his Introduction, p. xx.